#she likes the lengths he goes to to make amends for his lie

[wardencallings]

DA OC Question!!

Aside from their love interest, did your Warden/Hawke/Inquisitor have a crush on anyone? What did they admire about that person? Was it a fleeting crush, or something more?

[angstflavoured]

I do agree that just like killing Jimmy or putting him a crypod wouldn't have been the best options, but it was the fact that it was able to GET to this point of desperation thats the problem. Curly had 20 different chances along the years where he couldve done something about Jimmy, but didn't. He wasnt forced into this situation--he brought it upon entirely himself. There werent any measures on the ship for locking somone up because thats what the physch evals were for. the ones that jimmy didnt take seriously but curly let him on the ship anyways because hes his good friend.

Its a common misconception that Curly only knew about Anya's assult right before the crash. Its blantantly wrong. He didnt know she was pregnant, but it is confirmed that she and Curly talked about this before they even got on the ship.

Curly knew about what Jimmy did before he even did the psych eval. thats the whole point that hes been covering up for him and acting like he can fix things without any company interference.

In this scene as well, Curly tells Anya that she could've told him and that he wouldve done ANYTHING to help her. BUT SHE KNOWS THAT A FUCKING LIE!! She knows thats a lie, and so she doesnt even take the time to reply to what he said. Shes not like 'ah thank you so much for being so nice and doing everything you can to make me feel safe.' She knows she isnt safe on this ship, with Jimmy or Curly.

On top of all of this, most peoples reactions to figuring out their best friend raped and IMPREGNATED their other friend, wouldnt be "hm... well we can talk this out like reasonable gents."

But alas, this is Curly's reaction. He goes to Jimmy to talk things out. He isnt lying or decieving Jimmy, he's genuinely trying to make amends. He trying to get Anya and Jimmy on good terms so they dont have to tell anyone about this and no one has to get in trouble. Curly never fucking planned on letting the company know about this, if anyones telling anyone its going to be Anya telling the company and reporting them. Curly's playing every single side of the court and its doing nothing but HURTING EVERYONE involved.

I urge anyone who thinks differently to rewatch this scene because its actually insane. He's trying to string Anya and Jimmy together so no one has to get reported, and Jimmy TELLS him like 'no man. This times its over like im gonna get in big time fucking trouble. Or... I could just kill all of us.'

And Curly just. Doesnt say anything to that! Him and Jimmy share a moment of silence, Jimmy pats Curly on the shoulder, and says "Ill take care of it." And Curly WATCHES HIM WALK AWAY. TO CRASH THE SHIP. Because he would rather do literally anything but directly hurt a friend. Which isnt noble, its cowardly.

It isnt until the last fucking second that Curly grows some sense and tries to stop the ship. Which ends with him horribly disfigured.

Like oh my god, OH MY GOD!! Curly just is an awful person. He couldve done sooooo much more way before things got to the point they did, and even AFTER, he didnt do all he could. He didnt even put up a fight to stop Jimmy at all. And he didn't really seem to think of him all that differently even after Anya's assult.

Like... the lengths people will go to to defend Curly and say what he did was reasonable is insane to me. He didn't do nearly all he could've and THAT was a huge point of the game.

im gonna be honest. I think the idea that curly should have put jimmy in a cryo pod immediately after finding out is CRAZY. like yeah sure. I mean they're already short one pod in case of emergency but yeah throw jimmy in there. that'll be totally fine if smth happens to curly and there's no one to run the ship.

like idk was there not only like,,, a day between anya telling curly and jimmy crashing the ship? how was curly supposed to know the situation was so fucked that he needed to act immediately? and what was he supposed to do to deal with it. it goes beyond his desire to people please, he has been forced into a situation where there are no appropriate actions he can take due to corporate greed. they did not provide any options for a crew mate who needs to be detained. they didnt provide enough crew mates to replace a co-pilot if needed.

shit was never just as simple as put jimmy in the cryo pod. thats like. an incredibly important point the game is making.

[stolen-pen-name23]

Hi! Could you do 7 or 21 of the angst prompts for Obi Wan and Ahsoka please?

Hi! Thank you for the prompt (from these prompts)!! And yes, I can do both actually! Here ya go:

---

“You are so stupid.”

The words are dry — at least, Ahsoka hopes they are dry enough to hide the very real fear lingering behind them.

“Thanks,” Obi-Wan says between clenched teeth, obviously not hearing the full emotion behind Ahsoka’s sentiment. He is sitting across from her in the co-pilot’s chair — a bundle of bloodstained robes and tightened shoulders as he breathes through the pain. She shoots him another glare while she digs through the medkit, searching for a set of tweezers.

“Going after a bounty hunter who was carrying a slugthrower,” Ahsoka mutters. “What were you thinking?”

“Well, I—”

“No, don’t answer that,” Ahsoka says, raising her hand. “I already have the answer. You weren’t thinking.”

“Now hold on,” Obi-Wan pants. “We couldn’t let them capture the senator now, could we? We had a mission.”

“Yeah, and you made me stay behind and guard the other senators.”

“It was a very important task,” he says defensively.

“You made me their babysitter because you knew that going after Bane was dangerous. You knew and you went anyway.”

“To be fair,” Obi-Wan says, “he’s never used slugthrowers before.”

“And so what? You didn’t think he’d actually use it on you?”

“I was cautiously optimistic.”

“Look where that got you,” Ahsoka says, shaking her head. She continues rifling through the medkit until she finally finds a set of tweezers and a small scalpel. Obi-Wan eyes both items warily.

“I need to get a better look at the wound before I do anything,” Ahsoka says, trying to keep him calm, despite her current anger at him.

“Alright,” he nods, looking like he’s trying to reassure himself.

Ahsoka cuts through the fabric of his tunics and his undershirts and pulls them away. Underneath, a circular wound mars Obi-Wan’s skin. His muscles are tight, instinctively clenching in a vain attempt to ward off the pain.

“Hmmm.”

“What?” Obi-Wan asks.

“I have good news and bad news.”

“Do share.”

“The bad news is the bullet didn’t go all the way through. The good news is that it looks like it didn’t go too deep, so it shouldn’t be too hard for me to get it out. I won’t be needing this.” She sets the scalpel aside.

“Well, as long as there’s good news,” Obi-Wan sighs. “Though I suppose there was never a silver lining without a dark cloud behind it.”

“No, I suppose not,” Ahsoka says, offering him a sympathetic smile. “I need to get this out. You’ll get an infection if I don’t.”

“I know,” Obi-Wan says, resigned. “Let’s just get on with it then.”

Ahsoka takes a deep breath and relies on the Force to steady her hand. She presses the tweezers into the wound. A harsh breath escapes Obi-Wan’s lips, but he does not cry out. Ahsoka takes that as a sign to keep going. She pinches the bullet between the tweezers, but she slips and digs the metal deeper into the torn-up flesh.

Obi-Wan gasps and pulls away from Ahsoka.

“Sorry!” Ahsoka exclaims.

“It’s alright,” Obi-Wan pants, blinking back tears that had pooled in his eyes on reflex. “Just keep going.”

Ahsoka nods and goes back in with the tweezers, but Obi-Wan flinches back. Ahsoka tries again, and he recoils to the side.

“Stop that. Hold still,” Ahsoka says, exasperated.

“Sorry,” he says. “I’m just not used to this kind of wound”

“Yeah well… that’s what happens when you go after a bounty hunter who is openly wielding a slugthrower.”

“Alright, I get it,” Obi-Wan says, deflating slightly.

“I don’t think you do,” Ahsoka grimaces. “Now for real this time. Stay still.”

Obi-Wan nods tightly, while Ahsoka hones back in on the wound. She gets the tweezers around the bullet once more, and this time, they don’t slip. Slowly, she maneuvers the bullet out of Obi-Wan’s flesh until it clatters on the floor with a metallic ringing sound.

Ahsoka stares, frozen in place as the wound bleeds openly. Obi-Wan’s blood runs down his side now that there is no bullet to dam up its path.

“Oh,” Ahsoka says dumbly. “I always forget that slugthrower wounds don’t cauterize.”

“Yes, well, they don’t,” Obi-Wan says. Ahsoka glares at him. “Go get a needle and thread, I’ll put pressure on it.”

Ahsoka hands him a semi-clean rag and he presses it to his stomach. His breaths become a little more ragged.

“Hang in there Master,” Ahsoka says as she finds a sewing kit. She measures out a length of thread and cuts it. The eye of the needle is tiny and she struggles to get the thread to go through it.

“Maybe we should have prepared the needle before we took out the bullet,” Obi-Wan observes dryly.

“Why didn’t you tell me to do that?” Ahsoka asks, her voice going higher in pitch as she desperately tries to thread the needle.

“I was preoccupied, you know, with being shot.”

“That is your own kriffing fault and you know it,” Ahsoka retaliates.

Ahsoka calls on the Force to steady her hand once again. Finally, the thread obeys her commands and pushes through the eye of the needle. With deft fingers, she ties it off.

“Ready?”

From his tight nod, it is clear that Obi-Wan is not ready, but he knows as well as she does that there is little time for hesitation.

“Alright,” Ahsoka says, trying to keep her voice sure and even. “I’ll be quick.”

“I know,” Obi-Wan says.

Ahsoka is true to her word. She finishes the stitches in a manner of a few minutes. By the end of it, Obi-Wan is pale and sweating, but gratitude shines in his eyes.

“Done,” Ahsoka says after she ties off the end of the thread.

“Thank you Ahsoka,” Obi-Wan says. “I’ll be sure to come to you the next time I’m shot.”

“You’re impossible. Absolutely impossible. You know that right?”

“Well, Anakin is actually—”

“I’m not talking about Anakin, I’m talking about you,” Ahsoka huffs, suddenly feeling irked by Obi-Wan’s casualness. Now that he has been stitched back together, she has time to feel the anger starting to flood her bloodstream.

“Ahsoka…”

“Everyone thinks Anakin is the reckless one, and maybe he is, but when he’s not around to be the reckless one… Well, it’s like you don’t care if you live or you die.”

Obi-Wan looks down at his bloodstained hands. “Of course I care.”

She stops messing with the medkit and looks Obi-Wan dead in the eyes. “Then why are you always so reckless huh? Do you ever think about what would happen if something happened to you?”

“Life would go on without me, Ahsoka. If it’s the will of the Force…”

“Do not bring ‘the will of the Force’ into this. I’m talking about when you pull stunts like this.”

Obi-Wan is silent — the smooth-talking negotiator finally at a loss for words.

“Master,” Ahsoka says quietly. “If you died… I would be devastated.”

“Ahsoka…”

She doesn’t let him continue. “My feelings aside, think about Anakin. Do you know what would happen to him if he lost you? I can’t watch him go through that for a second time.”

Obi-Wan pales and Ahsoka isn’t sure if it’s from the blood loss or the words she is mercilessly volleying at him. She continues anyway.

“It would almost be worse than losing you. I know how to let go, but he… I don’t know what he would do if he lost you. He can’t… that can’t happen again.”

“I want to tell you it won’t.”

“Then tell me.”

“I can’t,” he says, his jaw tight with either pain or sorrow. Perhaps both.

“Please, just…”

“No. I will not make you a promise I can’t keep. Not while we’re in a war. Not ever.”

“Then promise me something else,” Ahsoka insists, grabbing his hand in hers and looking him directly in his ocean blue eyes.

He looks at her wearily. “What?”

“Promise you’ll stop being so reckless,”

“What did I just say about making promises I can’t keep?” Obi-Wan grins. Ahsoka lightly smacks his shoulder.

“Promise me you’ll try then!” Ahsoka amends.

“I’ll try,” he laughs. “I promise.”

Slowly, Obi-Wan stands up but has to steady himself on a leather handle affixed to the ceiling.

“I would love to continue this conversation,” Obi-Wan says, his voice starting to slur ever so slightly. “But I think I need to lie down. Or throw up. Or both.”

Ahsoka grimaces and hands him a canteen. “Drink,” she says. “You need to stay hydrated.”

“Need to lie down,” he repeats.

“Drink, and then you can lie down.”

Obi-Wan nods and takes a few sips from the offered canteen. He passes it back to her before curling up on a small bunk just outside of the cockpit. A slight shiver racks his frame and Ahsoka grabs a blanket and lays it over him. He hums in contentment.

“Are you going to be okay until we get to the temple?” Ahsoka asks nervously.

“Yes. The adrenaline’s just wearing off and the blood loss is catching up with me. I’ll be okay.” Ahsoka stares at him a moment longer. “I promise,” Obi-Wan adds on.

“You better keep that one.”

“I will.” A pause. “I am sorry,” he says. “I didn’t want to scare you. And I didn’t want to get shot.”

“I know,” Ahsoka says. “Just get some rest. We’ll be home soon.”

[bigfootwrites]

{escort fic}

This idea has been in my head for a while. People on the server seem to like it. I’ve gone back and forth on whether this is ooc or not but nobody has mentioned that it is so I’m gonna roll with it. It’s just a concept idea but if people are interested I’m happy to turn it into a full fic so please do let me know. Can also be read on ao3.

@today-in-fic @mypanicface  @improlificinsarcasm  @baronessblixen @foxscully @gillywitch @arboreta @agirlcallednarelle @starbuckthirteen @clarke-oswald

- - - 

He should go out and meet somebody. Get to know them, fall in love with them, build a relationship with them. Yet, relationships took time, he had been down this road multiple times and each one had ended just as badly as badly as the other, this recent relationship taking it to the next level.

He was divorced from somebody he once worshipped and the custody of their child on the line.

He wasn’t going to make a habit out of this. His hand and porn usually did the job but it didn’t always fill the void, fill that sense of loneliness that has been there since he was twelve. Sometimes he just wanted physical human companionship, sometimes he just wanted that too much.

Yet still even after swiping a leaflet that fell out of a magazine at the Lone Gunmen’s for an escort agency it took him a week to build up the courage to call them.

He chooses something called “A Girlfriend Experience”, picks someone somewhere within his age-range and tries not to feel guilty about the whole thing.

.:.:.:.:.:.

She was running late.

Tardiness never felt like an option with her yet Emily had refused to go to bed even after Dana told her she had to go to work. It had ended with Dana a few minutes behind and Emily asleep in her bed.

But it was time to push that life aside for now, to enter this restaurant as Danielle and Danielle doesn’t have a child named Emily or a pile of textbooks to study through.

The restaurant her client had chosen was nice enough; one of those business-y type places that not many wealthy people touched but it was still classy enough to be considered decent to use.

It was rare that she would be fed- food wasn’t often part of the price, after all, it was an extra expense. Besides, most of the men she had encountered just wanted a suck and a fuck and maybe the odd therapy session. Maybe around three of her requests were for this Girlfriend Experience and it wasn’t like she was rolling in requests that much anyway.

Dana had realised quickly the types of women men went for: blonde, tall, boobs. Short redheads who just about fitted into a B-cup never made the cut that often.

Yet, for whatever reason, she had be chosen. From the emails sent this man seemed nice enough of course from the stories she would hear that wasn’t something concrete to go off. People could carefully choose the words they typed, could portray themselves in a certain way online. The same could be said for in person interactions too but people were more likely to slip up during those.

For now, Dana is tucked away, she dons Danielle and approaches able 25 where her companion for the night waits for her.

When she gets there, it’s a gentle tap on the arm, a smile, and a simple “Hi, Mulder.”

.:.:.:.:.:.:.

Mulder’s heart stops in his chest as he stares at her, struck with the thought of how breath-taking she is.

He wouldn’t say little redheads was his ‘type’ but as he was going through the countless lists of girls he hadn’t wanted somebody his type, he wanted no reminder of Diana and so he had chosen her; Danielle, 5’3, 26 years old and the complete opposite to Diana.

He hadn’t seen her face before, for whatever reason she had kept it off the page, Mulder hadn’t been expecting much in terms of looks because of it yet he can’t keep his eyes off her.

He realises she’s said his name and almost comically stumbles his way to standing up, bashing a leg against the table making the cutlery jump and a brief amount of pain to ripple length ways across his right tigh.

“Danielle,” he says wincing through the pain. Her professional name knowing full well it wasn’t her real name. He might be new to this escort world but 1-800 numbers and taught him enough about fake names, maybe he should have considered using one.

She looks to be smiling at his clumsiness, fighting it back, trying to hide it.

A shaky start Mulder thinks, as he pulls out her chair yet she’s sitting down before he gets a chance to show how much of a gentleman he is.

He’s looking through the drinks menu when he realises she’s staring at him, drinking him in. It makes him feel self-conscious.

“What’s wrong?” he asks.

Danielle seems to have realised what she was doing, she quickly looks away from him.

“You’re just…different to who I usually meet with,” she says.

Mulder smiles wryly and cocks his head.

“Is that good or bad?” he asks unsure himself.

“That’s good,” she tells him. “Usually I get the…older men and they definitely don’t go out of their way to buy me food.” She lifts her head up and smiles waiting for his reply.

He has none other than how strange he must seem to her right now, how sad. He also tries not to feel jealous at the thought of her with other men. It’s a thought that comes out of nowhere, a thought he has no right in occupying.

“So do you come here often?” she’s asking.

The answer to was that no. It was a drive away from his apartment, away from any potential sightings of colleagues or people he sees on a daily basis.

“Never,” he says realising this could be chaotic.

But she’s laughing and it’s one of the nicest sounds his eyes have ever heard.

“I hope you didn’t come here just to try and impress me.”

“Try?” he counters. “So I take it you’re not so easily impressed?”

She shrugs. “I’ve been told as much.”

Mulder leans in, surprised at how comfortable he feels around her, how at ease he is.

“Well tell me,” he says. “Are you impressed?”

She looks around the establishment, pretending to think.

“Hmm…I think you could have done better.”

“Okay,” Mulder says leaning back and giving the room a once around himself. He would say he’s done pretty well but she’s laughing again, giggling actually, and the restaurant doesn’t matter.

They order food, not that he’s particularly hungry anymore, but for some reason he doesn’t want this to end. Spending $300 a night to talk seems better than spending $300 on an apology.

“So,” Mulder begins. “What do you do aside from…this.”

He wonders about the answer he will receive. She’s lied about her name, will she lie about this or will to follow the truth as much as she can, altering things here and there. He wonders how much of her true name is in her fake name.

“Well…through the day I study mostly,” she says and this perks his interest.

“What do you study?”

“Uh…” He sees she’s searching for an answer and it breaks his heart to know that he isn’t getting the truth though he had expected her to be a bit more prepared for these questions.

“Chemistry,” she finally says. “I wanted to be a scientist.” She says it almost shyly, tucking her head in and refusing to look at him. He amends his previous thought, perhaps there is a truth after all.

“Wanted?” Mulder asks. “Is that still not possible?”

“Well…I guess so. I’m just worried about somebody hiding out about…this.” She purses her lips and shrugs.

Mulder wonder if he’ll get to ask why she does this but then wonders if that’ll be rude to ask anyway even if did get the chance.

“Well, let me pose you a question,” he says just as their food arrives. “Do you believe in the existence of extraterrestrials?”

He watches as she processes his question, her eyebrows knitting together as she attempts to formulate an answer and Mulder is curious as to what that answer is.

“Logically, I would have to say no,” she says slowly. “Given the distances needed to travel from the far reaches of space, the energy requirements would exceed the spacecraft’s capabilities.”

Mulder finds himself impressed with her, the certainty in her answer, he wonders if he’s getting a glimpse of a real person beneath the professionalism, other character.

“Okay, conventional wisdom,” he says, he expected it. “But when convention and science fail us, should we not start looking to the fantastic as answers?”

He thinks he’s caught her, she takes a while to answer, thinking it over through mouthfuls of salads. Mulder is too preoccupied with her mind to worry about the food that goes cold beneath him.

She swallows her food, sitting back in her seat and Mulder waits for the mental foreplay.

“That’s only if convention and science actually fail us.”

He thinks he’s in love.

.:.:.:.:.:.:.

There’s an easiness Dana feels around Mulder. He’s nothing like her previous clients who see nothing beyond her sexual capabilities. Mulder seems to be interested in her mind, in her and she worries she might have revealed too much of herself to him but it’s rare she finds somebody to match her intellect, her classmates can’t keep up with her, her professors shut her down in order to give other members of the class a chance. She feels intellectually frustrated at times.

“Why do you ask all this?” she inquires.

Mulder shrugs. “Oh, it’s just a hobby.”

“Talking about extraterrestrials is a hobby?”

He looks away and mumbles something she doesn’t quite catch.

“What was what?” she asks.

“I look for them.”

It’s endearing, how different he is from anyone else she’s ever met.

“Do you think you’ll ever find them?” It’s not to jest or to make fun of him.

“I’d like to,” Mulder says with an essence of hopefulness in his voice.

.:.:.:.:.:.:.

He makes the decision that he won’t fuck her.

He’ll pay $300 as a fee to access her amazing mind if he must.

They go away from the talk of aliens, something for which Mulder was glad. He has his own secrets locked away and if they continued on the subject anymore, he was worried they would tumble out of his mouth and he’d reveal how spooky he really was. They talk of other stuff, he throws conspiracy theories at her that he barely believes in himself just to hear her debunk them with finesse. She was the one who was right and he was wrong and Mulder is completely okay with that.

He stops when he reaches her hotel, this is the end of one of the best nights of his life. He’ll go home, think of her, perhaps rub one off to the thought of her, and that will be that. He’ll bin that leaflet and they’ll never talk again.

But she’s stopping when she realises he isn’t beside her anymore and turns with a puzzled look on her face.

“Tonight was great, Danielle,” he tells her. “I really enjoyed it.”

Her face almost seems to fall when she realises what he’s doing but she picks herself back up again, nodding.

“Well,” she says walking back towards him. “If we’re not doing that anymore at least let me give you this.”

Her lips touch his and fireworks go off behind him. Mulder feels as though he’s experiencing his first kiss all over again, new and exciting, and a fear that he’s doing something he’s not meant to do.

It doesn’t take long before he’s kissing her back, his tongue trying to gain access to her mouth and to her own tongue. She grants him permission, thank god, and he almost melts inside her mouth.

They fall against a wall, his head collides with the brick but he doesn’t care, there is nothing else on his mind other than the want to pick her up. He’s bent at an awkward angle because even in heels her forehead just about reaches his chin. He’s unsure what to do with his hands, on her hips, on her waist. She seems to become annoyed at his indecisiveness and takes his hands in her own, placing them against her ass all the while not breaking the kiss.

He grows impossibly hard as his senses go into overdrive. He wants her so bad when he said he wouldn’t.

“Danielle…” he moans coming up for air.

“Dana,” he hears her say and at first he’s confused wondering what she’s talking about. “Call me Dana.”

The penny drops. Her name!

“Dana.”

She’s back on him, kissing him harder this time and Mulder was kidding himself before; he’s going to make love to her.

[magnoliasinbloom]

Lie To Me - 4

There is room for secrets, but not for lies. Is there a place for their love?

AO3 :: Previously

[NSFW]

Once inside her living space, he doesn’t stop to examine and wonder at the books, knick-knacks, or décor. The only lights are the street lamps’ glow pouring in through the windows. Claire leads him straight to her bedroom, and he closes the door behind them by pushing her against it, holding her arms above her head by the wrists and devouring her mouth.

Claire frees one of her hands to scrabble at his clothes urgently. She wants to touch him, feel him. He obliges, almost ripping off his blazer, dress shirt, and trousers. Jamie feels half-crazed with desire, heart pounding. But then he remembers something else: the incident, the flames, the pain, the scars on his body.

Standing in nothing but his underwear, already straining at attention, he gives her a few seconds to trace his toned and well-defined body, lithe and strong, before he spins her around, and her palms slam into the door.

Claire gasps, shocked at the sensation. He presses his chest against her body, and she can feel every line, every muscle, contoured deliciously. He grabs a handful of her arse and squeezes gently, eliciting a soft groan from her. He’s been longing to do that since he first saw her. But before they go on, he has to tell her.

“Claire, my back. The skin of my back, I mean.” He swallows hard, the practiced story flowing easier than he thought. “A few years ago, there was an accident. Electric wiring was faulty. It caused a fire. There were substantial burns. I’m alright now, but the skin on my back looks… it feels—”

“It’s alright. It doesn’t matter. I mean,” she amends, trying to look at him, but he won’t let her turn, “it doesn’t matter to me. You’re beautiful, Jamie.”

“No, you are.” His lips nip and bite at the nape of her neck, his nose nuzzling into her hair as he pulls the dress zipper down. He delights in the smooth ivory skin that is slowly revealed by his actions, skin so unlike his own.

Jamie slides the sleeves off her shoulders and lets the garment pool at her feet. She kicks off her shoes, and the difference in their heights becomes even more pronounced. He shifts her now, pupils widening as he notices her matching undergarments. He brushes a finger lightly around the edge of the lacy cup of her bra, before seeking her permission to continue. When she nods, Jamie tugs it down, bending to capture her breast in his mouth.

The heat of his lips and the contrast with the chill air of her bedroom peaks her nipples, and he takes turns laving each of them with his tongue, while his hands knead and her voice moans. Or perhaps it is his own.

Claire puts her arms around his shoulders, and he tenses. Holding his gaze, she tentatively touches the mangled skin of his back, scouting the rough terrain of burns and scars, covering everything to the small of his back. Jamie is like stone, apprehensive, but her eyes never waver from his. He knows others have viewed him with disgust and pity, but he finds nothing like this in Claire’s eyes. He understands she is sorry for what happened, but doesn’t feel sorry for him, and that makes all the difference.

Part of her thoughts switch into doctor mode as she feels the ridges embedded into his skin, conscious of the treatment and procedures Jamie has undergone to heal. The fire must have been monumental, and she is glad he is alive, here with her. Claire knows he is insecure about this part of him, what he thinks of as a great flaw; she finds it endearing and makes him all the more real to her.

Claire can’t wait any longer and she shoves away from the door, grasping Jamie’s arms to bring him with her to the bed. She fumbles with his boxer briefs before he takes her hands, gently pushing them away as he removes them himself. He is now nude before her, glorious and hard and stunning.

Not to be left behind, she undoes the clasp of her bra while Jamie removes the matching bottom half, untangling the underwear from her legs. Claire perceives how his eyes glaze over as he sees her laid bare, and she fights the urge to cover herself with the sheet, suddenly shy. Jamie senses this and crawls up her body instead, taking her mouth again, sheltering her nakedness with his.

Claire reaches down to the solid length of him, roughly caressing and causing him to gasp in her ear. Jamie skims the creamy expanse of her belly and hips before dipping a finger into her warmth; he can’t help imagining if this is how she feels now, what would it be like to be fully inside her? He circles the apex of her thighs with skill until she’s arching her back off the bed, her orgasm ripping through her.

Jamie swallows the sound, his tongue licking at the edges of her mouth. He asks her softly if she has any protection, and is promptly directed to her nightstand. Claire had asked her roommate for supplies. He slips on the condom and settles his weight in the cradle of her hips, where she is wet and yearning. His arms tremble with the effort of his restraint; she craves to break his control. A frown crosses his features, and she tries to kiss it away.

“Sassenach, I—” Jamie’s voice breaks the sacred silence, his breathing harsh.

“Don’t.” Claire presses her index finger to his lips, stopping his words. “Don’t think, don’t say anything. I want this. I want you.” She spreads her legs wider in invitation and he can feel himself instinctively probing for entrance.

With a loud moan, Jamie sinks into her, almost undone by the heat and silk and promise of their bodies joining. Claire encourages him, her heels digging into his arse, spurring him on. Her hands rove all over his back, as though it were nothing, panting in small huffs, and he touches his forehead to hers, wishing he could prolong this feeling forever. Tenderness swells inside her, unexpected, light and airy like hope.

Soon she is coming, crying out, and Jamie goes with her; the last, erratic thrusts of his hips have him groaning as though his heart would burst. Claire feels him pulse briefly as he withdraws, and bends his head to kiss her. She nips playfully at his bottom lip and he laughs, a fascinating sound she’s not heard before. Slowly, he relaxes and she curls into him, her head on his shoulder, spent. Even if this never happens again, Claire knows she’ll remember it forever.

His Sassenach drifts into a deep sleep, her arm across his chest. Late into the night, warm bodies pressed together still, Jamie holds Claire to him in a desperate embrace, trying to keep the nightmares at bay.

- - -

A/N: Thank you so much for all your comments. I'm swamped with work, so I can't always reply, but please know that I read every single one of them and appreciate them very much! <3

[harryandmolly]

Change of Pace - 1 (October 2003 - 16 years ago)

cowritten by @achinglyshawn

summary: Shawn and Maya meet again 10 years after life got in the way of love

warnings: language, NSFW

wc: 17.5k (we back, y’all)

------------

Shawn has had a crush on Maya Lu ever since she was his tour guide for freshman orientation at the University of Toronto. It’s pathetic, really, that he’s stuck on the first pretty upperclassman to give him a smile. But he can’t help it. He’s addicted to the thought of her, addicted to the daydream of being with her, holding her hand, feeling her lips pressed to his, hearing her dreams late at night when she can’t sleep and needs to talk.

He doesn’t even know her. Not really. Their friendship is mainly confined to MySpace and the occasional nod if he’s lucky enough to pass her on campus. So yeah, it’s pathetic. He’s fucking pathetic.

He decides goes to her art show.

To be fair, it’s not just her show. He’s got a hand full of actual friends presenting their work, so it’s not like he’s a stalker. He’s just lucky. He’ll have an excuse to exchange more than a passing ‘Hi!’

He knows her work will be good because she’s always posting photos of her in progress pieces on Facebook and he loves them. Maybe he’s biased, but he’s always had a fairly artistic eye so he thinks his impression of her talent is pretty accurate.

“You look hot,” Ash comments from his bed as he rolls the sleeves of his crisply ironed button down above his elbows. “Almost hot enough for Maya.”

Shawn rolls his eyes at his best friend in the mirror. He sighs, “I need to look nice. It’s an art show. There’s gonna be hors d’oeurves and fancy cocktails.”

“And Maya.”

“And our other friends,” he grouses, turning to face Ash instead of the mirror. “I’m not going for Maya.”

Ash giggles and falls back onto the bed, holding her sidekick in the air as she starts texting. “Whatever you say, Mendes. Either way, you look hot and she’ll definitely notice you.”

He’s glad she’s too busy clicking at her phone to see the tips of his ears go red.

+

Shawn’s been in the art building before, but it feels like a whole new world at night, the lobby adorned with twinkle lights and cloth-covered tables topped by sprawling bouquets for people to gather around as they discuss the art and munch on canapes.

He��s early, too early maybe, because the crowd is extremely thin and he feels completely exposed. Mostly, the only people here right now are the artists. He’s on high alert for Maya, but he forces himself not to look for her. You don’t really know her, he reminds himself, and instead scans the room for one of his actual friends.

He spots Parker in the corner standing proudly in front of her life size unicorn sculpture, and Shawn makes a beeline for her.

“Is she for sale? I’ve been looking for something to ride to class,” he opens with, grinning down at his friend.

“He is absolutely not for sale. He’s not chattel,” she chides with a smirk, popping up onto her toes to wrap her arms around his neck. He pulls her close, lets himself find comfort in her familiarity for a moment before they separate.

“I would say thanks for coming,” Parker starts as she drops down onto her heels, “but I know you’re only here for Maya Lu.”  

Jesus Christ. Is he really that transparent?

“You’re like, really obvious, baby,” she coos, as if reading his mind. Or maybe she just noticed the flash of panic across his face.

“I’m here for everyone,” he says, trying to ignore fluttering in his gut.

“Her pieces are right over there,” Parker says with a nod towards the wall just behind him, and the hair at the nape of his neck stands on end.

“And you’re right here,” he says, fighting the urge to turn around.

Parker laughs, shakes her head and grabs his hand, lacing their fingers together.

“C’mon, dude. You’ll never get anywhere if you’re scared to even look at her. Let’s go over there together.”

“Parker--”

“Shawn.”

“I’m not-- I was just gonna say hi later, you know, like--”

“Then why not say hi now, with me?”

Shawn opens his mouth. Closes it. Furrows his brows then rolls his eyes. Sighs.

“Fine, fuck. Let’s just-- do I look okay?”

“Hideous.”

“Oh, good. Perfect.”

Parker giggles, tugs his hand and heads for Maya. “C’mon, Mendes, she doesn’t bite. Well, maybe she does. You’ll have to find that out yourself.”

Shawn can’t argue, just flush bright red and stumble after her, his fingers curling into the back of her hand.

Maya stands with her hands on her hips overlooking her paintings on the wall. They’re clustered together in bunches -- the canvases tell different stories individually but when she groups them together like this they look like one painting split up between different canvases. That’s how she’s designed it.

But as she stands here studying them, she finds a million and one things she’d change. She sighs and taps her clunky heel against the ground, shaking her head.

She turns to Sasha, who’s eyeing the passed hors d'oeuvres like they’re a lover. She nudges her.

“This sucks, doesn’t it?”

“Shut up, Maya.”

“No. No I won’t shut up because I suck and I can’t believe you never bothered to tell me.”

Sasha groans a belabored sigh. “God, please, let’s not do this again. We barely made it out of the spring show alive last year.”

He sees Maya before he sees any of her art. Her back is facing the room as she looks up at one of her pieces, and he wonders if she’s happy with the way it turned out. His gaze flicks up to it, but he’s too distracted by his heart pounding in his throat to really process what it looks like.

“Maya!” Parker squeals as they draw closer, “I love all of your pieces so much!”

Shawn fights the overwhelming urge to run away as Maya turns around.  

Maya opens her mouth to argue when she hears Parker refute her before she can say anything. Sasha looks delighted. She elbows her before she can speak up.

“Thank you, Parker. I hate it. But what else is new?”

Parker brought a friend. Not just any friend. Parker brought the Cute Freshman (capitalized because that’s his formal title in Maya’s friend group). Maya feels a little better now. She likes having someone to flirt with at these things, especially when they look at her like that, like she made every piece of art in here and all of it is genius.

“Hi,” she says, tilting her head at him a little dangerously.

Maya Lu speaks to him. Parker doesn’t even have to make introductions.

He thinks he’s gonna die, right here, right now.

Oh god, Cute Freshman is so fucking cute.

He got the nickname by being tall and built and strong-jawed with the best head of hair she’s ever seen on anyone, but he kept the name by being completely adorable.

She loves running into him. He’s always good for a blushing smile or that little flappy wave he does with his big bear paw. Sometimes, when she’s really lucky, he’ll duck his head at her and look up through his eyelashes. He doesn’t even mean to, she can tell. It’s a natural response to being around her.

She loves it.

He sucks in a breath. “Hi,” he says with a crooked smile, then glances at her work hanging on the walls. He realizes, as he looks up at her pieces, that while each work can stand alone, they all fit together to create something truly fucking spectacular. He’s impressed. He knew she was good from Facebook, but this is something else.

“Parker’s right, this is— like, totally incredible.”

He seems to genuinely like what he sees (on the wall, that is), or he’s a really good liar. But she doubts it. He seems too wholesome to lie to her about this.

She glances over her shoulder and shrugs, “Thanks. It’s… it’s fine.”

Sasha snorts into a glass of champagne and shakes her head. Maya chuckles and wrinkles her nose.

He looks back at her, and trains his gaze on her forehead instead of scanning the length of her body, despite his baser urge to do just that.

“I’m Shawn,” he manages, sticking his hand out like someone’s dad or something.

He feels a flush spread from the tips of his ears down the back of his neck, but he doesn’t waver. He made his choice. Handshake it is.

He wants a handshake. Oh god, so cute.

Maya reaches out proudly and shakes his hand. “Hi, Shawn. I’m Maya. Thank you for coming tonight. Which artist is your favorite so far?”

Maybe she’s fishing for a compliment. She worked hard on these and has a sinking feeling in her gut about them. Maybe a compliment from an earnest, beautiful boy is what she needs right now.

Shawn has to pretend that the weight of her small hand doesn’t drive him absolutely insane. Her shake is confident, firm, and he loves that. He wants her to hold his hand like this forever. She doesn’t, obviously. But she does put him on the spot, and his cheeks feel warm as his heart stutters.

She probably shouldn’t get quite so much pleasure out of inflicting this awkwardness, especially since he already clearly has no idea how to act around her, but she can’t help it. She likes watching him squirm. She wonders how else she could make him squirm.

“Oh, um—“ he looks around the gallery. He hasn’t really checked out the other artists’ work, except for Parker’s unicorn. It’s cute and all, but not very personal, and he decides he can’t lie. He looks back down at her, pressing his lips together.

She watches his eyes shift around the room, scanning for something. He looks back at her and suddenly she regrets asking him. She doesn’t want his answer. She thinks maybe now he’s going to make her squirm.

“Well. You,” he finally says with a careful shrug of his shoulder.

And then he realizes what he’s just said, and what it sounds like.

“And I mean, I’m not— that’s not a line or anything. I promise,” he’s quick to amend, “I just really like this. It’s— well, I like how it’s beautiful but painful at the same time. And it feels really, like, honest, you know? Like maybe you’re trying to tell people something you’re not used to being open about. I don’t know. Maybe I’m just bullshitting.”

He laughs at himself, pushing his fingers into the curls at the nape of his neck and tugging, his gaze dropping to her purple-painted toes.

Maya stares at his lips as they move and spill beautiful truths about her work. She clasps her hands behind her back and hopes her eyes don’t fall right out of her head. He looks so sincere.

She licks her lips and releases a breath all at once. “Well,” she coughs, “Ok then. I think I’ll keep you.”

She reaches out for his arm and tugs him forward while Parker and Sasha exchange a look. Maya curls her arm around his and starts leading him around the gallery slowly.

Apparently, he’s said the right thing. His chest puffs slightly, unconsciously. He likes her praise. He wants more.

She curls herself around his arm, tucks herself into his side like she belongs there and he swears he can’t breathe. He’s barely able to walk with her, but he manages it without tripping, thank God.

Maya likes the way he feels against her. He’s firm and tall and warm and he smells really nice. She hasn’t been this close to a guy without fucking him in a while. It feels… good.

“What made you want to come tonight?”

You. You, you, you.

It’s the honest answer he won’t admit to his friends and barely wants to admit to himself. It almost rolls right off his tongue for her, though.

He manages to stop himself. She’s clearly taken a liking to him, and he doesn’t want to fuck that up by sounding like a huge creep.

He glances at her. “Got a few friends in your program, and some of them managed to be impressive enough as frosh to get put in the show.”

He hopes that’s enough for her. That’s all he is, an incredibly supportive friend.

He uses the term ‘frosh’ which she decides to forgive him for because, well, he is one. And as much as she likes watching him wriggle awkwardly, she doesn’t want to bully him. Instead she nods intently.

“We have a great new crop this year,” she comments, glancing around the gallery. As insecure as she is about this particular installation, she is proud to see how many of her fellow art students have risen to the challenge.

She thinks it’s nice that he came here for his friends. She doesn’t have a lot of non-art program friends that would do that for her. Especially not the straight male kind.

“What, um, what got you into art? Or well, painting, I guess.”

He stumbles through asking her a personal question and it’s all she can do not to plant her lips on his cheek and giggle.

“I’ve been drawing since I could hold things. Painting came later, in high school. I had this one really amazing art teacher who just kept putting things in my hands and making me try things. It felt like a safe space where I wasn’t afraid to fail. That’s hard to find anywhere, especially in high school. She got me into sculpture, too, and some photography. But painting is… I dunno. It feels like the best part of me.”

She blinks. That was… startlingly honest. That wasn’t what she planned to tell him when he asked. It just… happened.

He doesn’t expect her to get carried away. He expects a perfunctory answer, like the kind he gives when people ask him about music and he’s tired of explaining himself.

Maya, however, is shockingly honest. He doesn’t say anything because he wants her to keep talking, keep sharing little bits of herself that maybe she doesn’t share with everyone. He’s selfish, but he wants it.

He wants her.

He pushes the thought away.

He doesn’t flinch or balk at her slight overshare, instead he seems to be leaning closer to her, like he wants more.

Interesting.

“That’s— Yeah, that’s really awesome. Sounds like me and music,” he offers, looking down at her.

He’s a musician. Of course he is. Maya figures you’re not even allowed to be as good looking as he is and not also be a model or an actor or a musician, something that gets you famous one day. So, musician? Yeah, that tracks.

Shawn notices a loose strand of hair caught against her cheekbone, while the rest of her tendrils are tucked neatly behind her ear. He stops without thinking, lifts his fingers to carefully brush the stray strand away from her face, tucking it back with the rest of her hair.

Before she can start to dive into it, finding she also wants to know more about him, he brushes his fingertips across her cheek and stares at her with the most beautiful focus. She goes absolutely silent. She doesn’t realize she’s holding her breath.

He drops his hand like he’s just touched fire, and he feels as though he might burst into flames.

“Sorry, shit. I should’ve asked first but— you had a fly away. Sorry.”

“That’s— that’s ok. I’m… I mean, it’s nice to have someone looking out for the hair,” she jokes, realizing he’s thrown her off her game. She swallows roughly and regroups.

She doesn’t look too upset he touched her without permission. Maybe a little startled, but not upset. He counts it as a win.

“What kind of music do you play? Or write?”

“Oh. Well, I guess my official genre would be indie or alternative. Like any other douchey white dude my age,” he laughs. Truth is, he doesn’t really feel like he has a genre. He just loves music. He’ll play anything, though there are definitely certain songs he’s more suited for than others.

She chokes out a surprised laugh at his “douchey white dude��� comment. That sounds like the kind of thing she would’ve said in a snarky voice in her head. She’s glad he beat her to it.

She listens as they make their slow circuit. Maya’s already checked out the rest of the show. Actually, the program’s pretty small so she’s seen most of this work while it was in progress. She just doesn’t want to be staring at him the whole time he talks just because he’s pretty.

He wets his lips, continues, “But I’m all over the place, really. I’ll play anything my vocal chords can wrap around.”

She does look over while he’s wetting his lips and has to stop herself from making a strangled moaning noise.

He wants to know her favorite song, wants to learn it if he doesn’t already know it, and play it for her when they’re alone together. It’s an intoxicating fantasy.

He really wants it, like he does her.

“What sort of music do you listen to?” He asks in lieu of something creepy, like if she wants to come to his dorm for a private concert.

“I… oh, I like a lot of different stuff. I like some indie, some pop. Mostly… mostly I like cheesy 70s and 80s music. I was raised by hippies. “Hotel California” by The Eagles is like the equivalent of the Our Father in my family,” she confesses.

He wishes he had his guitar so badly right now. He knows Hotel California like the back of his hand. It’s one of his mum’s favorites. He’s guessing their parents are close in age, because he was raised on the 70s and 80s, too.

He smiles. He wants to impress her so fucking badly. She’s impressive herself. He just wants to  be worthy of all the time she’s already wasted on him.

Maya tries not to look too closely at his fingers but one glance and it’s too late. They’re thick and strong and somehow elegant and nimble all at once. She feels a little light headed and definitely can’t blame it on the champagne she only had a few sips of.

“Great fucking song,” he rasps as they stop in front of a couple of paintings that her own put to shame. “I could play it for you some time. You know, if you’re into douchebags with acoustic guitars.”

Self-deprecation is one of the best ways to charm people, he’s found. He knows he’s talented --good with his fingers on the strings and good at carrying a melody-- so admitting his faults where he sees them makes people tolerate him a bit more than the guys who act like they’re  God’s gift to music.

Shawn knows he’s not God’s gift to anything. He’s just a kid with a guitar and a decent falsetto.

She shouldn’t swoon at his admission that he also loves “Hotel California” because a lot of guys do and that doesn’t make them cool or worth her time. But… that song is special. Imagining Shawn playing it has her chest bubbling with anticipation.

She licks her lips and sighs, deciding to fall into it. Why the fuck not?

“I dunno about douchebags with acoustic guitars, but I’m starting to think I might be kinda into you.”

She smirks at her own line and lifts her eyes to his.

“Oh,” he coughs, eyebrows lifting. He didn’t expect her to say anything like that.

I might be kinda into you.

What does that mean? He’s not sure. Is she flirting with him? She sounds like she’s flirting, and she’s looking at him like she’s flirting, gazing up at him from under her lashes. His heart thrashes in his ribcage, makes him feel like he might spontaneously combust because never in a million years did he think that he would come here tonight and end up with Maya Lu curled into his side and looking at him like maybe she does want him to invite her to his dorm.

“You, ah, you’ll regret saying that when you decide you hate my Glenn Frey impression,” he says, because it’s safer than anything else bouncing around in his head.

Safer than, good, because I’m really into you. Safer than, let me show you how badly you fuck me up. Safer than, can I kiss you?

It’s the last one that he’s really afraid of blurting.

Carefully, he unwinds his arm from hers and takes a step back so he’s facing her straight on.

He goes all pink and squeaky after her not so subtle comment. She can’t stop grinning. She does, though, when he untangles from her and she wonders for a bleak moment if he’s about to bail out of fear or something. But then he does this golden retriever head tilt thing and asks her a question.

He slides his hands into his pockets and tilts his head. “How long do you have to be here?”

Maya stays cool, pursing her lips and glancing around the gallery. “I probably need to stay for fifteen more minutes before I can safely ditch. What did you have in mind?”

He has to speak through heart palpitations. She seems genuinely interested in bailing on this big deal gallery thing to hang out with him. A nobody freshman, who’s definitely not as cool as some of those senior photography guys. He wonders why she’s not planning to ditch with one of them, instead.

He won’t look a gift horse in the mouth.

“Nothing fancy,” he muses, lifting his shoulder in a small shrug. “We could grab burgers or something. And then I was thinking that maybe I could get you to sing Hotel California for me if I played the accompaniment.”

He gives her a grin he knows girls love. He’s got a fifteen year old little sister whose friends adore this smile, who look at him like he lit the fucking sun whenever he flashes it. He’s not sure if it’s gonna work on a girl who’s not actually a teenager anymore, but it’s worth a shot.

Maya likes watching the cogs of his brain turn as he comes up with a suitable date idea on the fly. He does well suggesting a burger. It’s casual and filling and happens to be one of Maya’s favorite things.

The singing suggestion makes her laugh for two reasons, one because he would need to get her very drunk if he wanted to hear her sing, and two because it’s a clear suggestion he wants to bring her to his dorm.

She looks him up and down, nothing subtle about it. He’s gorgeous, every wholesome Canadian inch of him. She wonders if maybe he’s got a not so wholesome side.

She lands on his smile and almost goes weak at the knees. She giggles a little foolishly and nods.

“You’ve got yourself a deal. Keep yourself busy for 15 while I make the rounds.”

He makes her laugh, so he thinks maybe he’s not so bad at this flirting-with-an-upperclassman thing. Or at pulling date ideas out of his ass.

He smiles, gives her a salute, “Sir, yes, sir.”

He ducks away before she can see the royal red blush that stains his cheeks. He goes from charmingly cool to incredibly stupid so fast, he might have given himself whiplash.

He just hopes Maya doesn’t change her mind. Maybe she’ll think he’s like, adorable or something. A-dork-able, as his kid sister would say.

He pretends to busy himself by looking at the rest of the art, but in truth, he’s watching her. He sneaks glances whenever she’s distracted by a friend or a professor, watches her talk with her hands and laugh with her head tilted to the side. She doesn’t smile at anyone like she did at him, though. Or at least he thinks. Maybe he’s making it up, but it’s a nice thought.

He winds up at the little minibar near the exit and sips on a coke. Parker sidles up to him when he’s watching Maya talk with who he thinks is a sculpting professor.

“You look like a stalker.”

He looks down at Parker, frowns. “No, I don’t. I’m drinking my pop.”

Parker giggles, orders white wine from the bartender. “Okay,” she says when she gets her drink, “then what are you doing? You two looked cozy for a while.”

“We’re gonna get burgers.”

“No shit?”

“No shit. She told me to wait for her.”

“Baby!” Parker squeals a little too loudly, and he winces. She hiccups a laugh and lowers her voice. “Baby, I knew she would dig you. Ash did too.”

“All right, all right. Just-- chill. You’re gonna jinx it.”

He’s not superstitious but he wants to be careful. He wants to really go somewhere with Maya Lu, and not just to the bedroom.

“Okay, okay, sheesh. I’m just saying. You’re a catch, kiddo.”

With a wink, Parker leaves his side, and he’s back to watching Maya charm everyone who looks her way.

Maya can feel his eyes on her. It’s not uncomfortable. She would think it would be, but it’s not. It’s kind of sweet, actually. He makes her feel so… desired.

She bounces around between cliques of art kids and says hi to professors, but her mind is elsewhere. It’s on the rest of her night as she wonders where it might take her with him.

At one point, she takes a glance over shoulder and sees him wide-eyed and embarrassed talking to Parker and she swears she’s never wanted to kiss someone so badly.

Plus, he’s been looking at her all night like she’s out of his league, so he’s likely to want to impress her. She lets the possibilities of that distract her until the fifteen minutes are up and she strolls across the room to fetch him, tugging at his arm and biting her lip.

He pretends to be distracted when she makes her way towards him, just so she doesn’t think he was being impatient or anything. Truth is, he would’ve gladly stood around watching her all night, if that’s what she wanted.

He feels a tug on his arm and he can’t stop the smile that pulls at his lips.

“You ready to blow this popsicle stand?”

“If there are popsicles here, I want one before we leave,” he says without thinking, looking around the gallery as if actually in search of an icy treat. But then he remembers she doesn’t know him, isn’t used to his bullshit, so he gives her a wide, crooked smile he hopes indicates he doesn’t actually think there are any popsicles here.

He just wants to make her laugh again. It’s such a pretty laugh.

He’s definitely a doofus. She kinda loves it. Boys aren’t usually so dorky around her, or around any girls she knows. But Shawn is genuine, every bit of him. It makes her smile.

“Next gallery show I will make sure we have popsicles,” she chuckles, leaning into his touch a little.

He bites his lip and reaches carefully for the small of her back, tipping his head towards the door. “Let’s go, Picasso.”

Maya rolls her eyes, but doesn’t correct him. Instead, they head for the door.

The night is frigid, because it’s Toronto. She leans into him further as they begin to trudge to the burger place that’s just off campus.

The crisp sting of cold air has her tucking herself closer to his side, though he likes to think that maybe she just wants to be close to him. He should be so lucky.

“So where are you from?”

“Oh, uh, just Pickering. Like thirty minutes from here,” he says as he pulls his jacket off and holds it out for her.

“Cold?” he asks with a tilt of his head, but doesn’t wait for her to answer before he drapes the jacket around her shoulders, making sure to pull up the collar to protect her neck, too. It’s a moment that feels like it belongs in a movie, but he loves it. He loves the way his jacket practically swallows her whole, and he wonders if she’ll end up wearing it long enough for her scent to linger on the leather after she’s gone.

She wasn’t really angling to get his jacket but she’s not going to turn it down. He doesn’t really give her a choice, dropping it around her shoulders and tucking it up against her neck. It’s silly, really, because it’s fucking cold out and he’s going to get cold too. But… it’s so warm. And it smells like him. He smells nice.

Once he’s settled the jacket around her, she curls up against him again under the guise of keeping him warm if she can.

He clears his throat, looks back to the sidewalk ahead of them as he slips his hands in his pockets. He hums. “What about you? You don’t sound very Canadian, if you don’t mind me saying. I haven’t heard you apologize once tonight.”

She chuckles at his comment. “No, I’m from Toronto, actually. Allenby. But my parents are both American so I’m not as Canadian as I could be, eh?”

She’s so fucking cute. He could spend all day listening to her put on a fake Canadian accent. He could spend all day listening to her do anything. He could spend all day doing anything, as long as he got to be near her.

She winks up at him as they’re walking into the burger place. She stares up at the menu and pretends to deliberate even though she knows exactly what she wants -- double cheeseburger with everything on it, including jalapenos, plus a fried egg. Extra crispy fries. Maya doesn’t even consider changing it for the sake of looking dainty on a date. There’s no point in hiding her voracious appetite, she figures. It would come out eventually.

The wink she gives him nearly makes him trip over his own feet. He catches himself but stalls a bit, just staring at the back of her head while she examines the menu above them. He wants to wrap himself around her from behind and tuck his chin on top of her head, but that’s-- it’s just a pipe dream at this point. They’re not together, and this is barely a date. He can’t press into her like he’s already hers.

Instead, he stands behind her, close enough to feel the warmth of her body but with space between them. He glances at the menu for a moment, but he already knows what he’s getting.

Carefully, he cups one of her elbows to get her attention. His brow furrows as he looks down at her. “Know what you want? I’ll order for us.”

Maya hums, bobbing her head. “Double cheeseburger with lettuce, tomato, ketchup, grilled onions, special sauce, jalapenos and a fried egg. Extra crispy fries.”

She turns on her heel to smirk up at him. “Can you handle that, cowboy?”

Looking up at him like this, standing here in her favorite burger joint with him in his nice shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, with his spicy-minty leather jacket around her shoulders, she’s never felt more like a character in a teen movie. And she doesn’t hate it.

She wants to kiss him so bad.

He wants to kiss her so bad.

She’s looking up at him with a smirk on her lips and a glint in her eye. It’s take more willpower than it should for him to not press her into a wall and find a way to turn that little smirk into a gasp, right in the middle of the restaurant.

“You know, I don’t think there are any cowboys in Canada,” he teases with a gentle squeeze to her elbow, then leans down to purr in her ear, “But I can handle whatever you want, honey.”

He brushes past her then, letting his hand graze against the small of her back as he approaches the register to place their order.

Right there in Sammy’s, he’s got her.

She’s floored. He murmurs against her skin and she can feel the tickle of his warm breath turn her entire body to goosebumps. She snaps her jaw shut to keep from potentially moaning because, Jesus, she was not expecting that.

He decides to go the same route she does, double cheeseburger with everything plus onions and an egg, but he does mayo instead of ketchup and bacon instead of jalapenos. And he orders a chocolate malt with two straws, like the cheesy bastard he is. He’s never had a lady and the tramp moment, but he’s thinking maybe now’s his shot.

“C’mon,” he says when he turns back to her, curling his fingers around hers, “the corner booth is free.”

She doesn’t even hear him order, just watches him slide past her to go to the counter. She stares at his ass for as long as it takes to complete the order. When he turns back and takes her hand, she’s still a little dumbstruck.

Who knew he had it in him?

What else does he have in him?

They slide into a booth across from each other. Maya crosses her legs and leaves her foot resting against his calf with a smile.

“This is one of my happy places on campus,” she tells him, brushing her foot against his leg a little, testing the waters.

It’s a game now. She started with a jab, and he hit back. Now, she’s trying to fucking kill him. Her foot grazes the length of his calf and if he were two years younger, he’d be hard for her already. As it is, he has to tug on one of his pant legs under the table. Just in case.

He slides his leg forward until their knees are pressed together, but he plays it like he has no clue. He settles his forearms on the table and leans forward slightly, tilting his head.

Maya isn’t into games with guys, generally. She never likes feeling like she has to play with a version of herself to get somewhere with someone. But this kind of game? Yeah, this is fun. She sweeps her tongue over her front teeth as his knee settles against hers.

“I like the trivia nights,” he admits, even though his friends think it’s super dorky of him. Maybe Maya will think it’s cute or charming or something. Trivia is fun. He’s fun. He wants to get a chance to show her that.

“And, you know,” he continues, “the giant milkshakes.”

He smiles at her and decides he’d really like to hold her hand, would like to reach across the table and slip their fingers together so they’re connected in as many places as is appropriate in public. His fingers twitch against the table, but he doesn’t move.

It’s not his turn, anyway.

“I’m really good at trivia,” she comments, tilting her head the same way he is.

“Bet you’re smarter than me,” he notes with a wink.

Maya eyes the waitress as she brings over one of the giant milkshakes he mentions. She smiles. She loves milkshakes.

The waitress sets it down. Maya leans forward to draw one of the straws into her mouth. In doing so, the v-neck of her dress tugs down and Shawn gets a peek at what’s beneath. She blinks up at him as she sucks and backs away slowly, swallowing.

“You got my favorite flavor.”

She makes it really, really hard for him to not kiss her. Her smile draws him in, in a way he couldn’t have imagined before tonight. What was once a crush has turned into heavy infatuation that makes butterflies swirl in his gut.

He tries so fucking hard not to watch the collar of her dress slip down her chest. He wants to see her, wants to see everything, but he doesn’t want it like this, sneaking a peek from across the table like a peeping Tom.

He watches her lips around her straw instead, and it’s almost as intimate as looking at her body.

“Chocolate’s a given when it comes to milkshakes,” he murmurs with a smile, reaching for the second straw and taking a sip of his own, looking up at her from under his lashes as he does.

He’s got such long, pretty eyelashes. They lay against his cheeks beautifully. It’s always unfair when boys have such nice eyelashes, but Maya appreciates his.

She sits back and crosses her legs again between his knees. It’s casually intimate, not in a first date way, but in an ‘I’ve known and loved you for years’ way.

It doesn’t feel wrong.

He pulls back from the shake only to let the waitress place their burgers in front of them. He plucks a fry and dips it in the shake.

“And,” he says as he lets the excess ice cream drip from the end of the potato, “chocolate also goes the best with fries.”

She grins down at her burger and sighs. “I personally like coffee shakes the best with fries but people think I’m a freak for that.”

She dips a fry and crunches into it, looking over to see what he got — it’s almost identical to her burger. Her heart flutters.

His brows raise. Coffee. He’s never even thought to try that in shake form, to be honest. She’s definitely smarter than he is. He laughs.

“Yeah, you are a freak. But you’re also a complete genius. Next time, we’ll get coffee.”

He already has a mouthful of fries when he realizes what he’s said. Next time. As if she’s automatically going to want to see him again. He should be so lucky.

Then again, her long, crossed legs are tucked tightly between his thighs, and it’s not even like, some kind of foreplay.

It’s more like, Hi. I just wanted to be as close to you as I could get.

So maybe there is hope for a next time.

He calls her a genius and she giggles around her enormous bite of food. She almost doesn’t even pick up on his ‘next time’ slip. But he flinches a little when he realizes it.

She swallows and dips another fry, shrugging. “Yeah, we could do that next time. Or we could try that new sushi place off Seven Oaks.”

She wiggles her nose to keep from grinning at him like a goof because she’s taken two bites of this burger and definitely wants a second date.

The butterflies in his stomach go mad, and he’s so not hungry at all anymore. He can’t just not eat, though. It’s rude and also would probably be really weird and she’d ask him what’s wrong and he’d have to say, ‘Absolutely nothing, I just think I’m already falling in love with you.’

So he takes a bite of his burger.

They continue chatting and eating and she gets more comfortable with him with every bite. He’s sweet and funny but not in that annoying way when boys know they’re funny and work it too hard. He’s naturally likeable. She likes spending time with him. And he has great taste in burgers, so.

He doesn’t know what to do about the fact that she’s acting like his girlfriend, beside totally freak out. It’s too good to be true. The girl he’s been crushing on since orientation seems to actually dig him, and not just in that one night stand sex way.

Why waste time on a burger if you just want to fuck?

It’s not just the burger. It’s in the way she laughs at his jokes and the way she looks him dead in the eye, like they’ve been staring at each other for years. It’s in the way she says his name like he’s already her best friend.

It’s completely surreal.

They stand to leave and she takes his hand again because it feels natural. Once they’re outside, she tucks their entwined hands into a pocket of his jacket she’s still wearing.

“Where to?” she asks with a twinkle in her eye.

He pretends to think of where they should go, but he really just wants to be alone with her. He’s just not quite sure how to ask her back to his dorm in a non-pervy way.

His thumb traces her knuckles as he bites his lip and looks down at her. He turns to face her, brings his free hand to her hair and tucks the few strands that have fallen loose behind her ear.

“I just like talking to you,” he says with a shrug. “So anywhere we can keep doing that?”

Shawn is tender with her, she’s noticed. She didn’t think from the way he acted that he was only trying to get in her pants at any point since they’ve known each other, but now she’s very sure that’s not it for him. Especially as he holds her hand like this, like he’s not sure she’ll ever let him touch her again.

She wants to assure him she will.

The final moment, the one that seals the deal for her, is when he doesn’t immediately suggest his dorm because he’s clearly worried it would be an overstep. Truth is though, that’s where she wants to be with him.

She holds her breath as he tucks some hair behind her ear. She releases it in a slow exhale and squeezes his fingers in her pocket.

“Can we go to your place, please?”

His chest relaxes and his heart follows, though only slightly. He’s not sure his heart rate will ever be normal around her.

He wets his lips as he looks down at her, ready to nod when something stops him. He presses his thumb to the back of her hand and tilts his head, his tongue darting out to glide across his lower lip.

Maya expects him to whisk her off to his dorm quickly before she can think about changing her mind, but he doesn’t. He stands firm and stares at her like a puppy with his head cocked.

“Can I kiss you first? Please.”

He’s so polite about it. It’s very Canadian. And, she thinks, very Shawn.

“Yes you may.”

Thank God.

His lips twitch with a hint of a smile before he presses them together, nodding. “That’s great, it’s--”

He cuts himself off with a shake of his head and brings his hands to her neck, cupping her carefully as he brushes his thumbs along her jaw until they meet at her chin. Tilting her head back, he ducks down and gently presses his lips to hers.

Oh god, he’s perfect.

It’s the first conscious thought that runs through her head after the brain scramble of feeling his lips on hers.

It’s a great kiss. It’s truly good in every way -- his hands aren’t grabby, his lips are so soft, he’s gentle without being too careful.

She lifts her hands to rest on his forearms and tilts her head to kiss him back, stepping just a bit closer to him.

Maya leans into him in a way he couldn’t have predicted. She melts, and he takes the opportunity to kiss her deeper, one hand dropping from her neck so he can wrap his arm around her waist and pull her until she’s flush against him.

It’s a few hot seconds before they pull apart. She gasps a little unconsciously and hums under her breath.

He stops kissing her only because he needs to breathe. He takes a breath, eyes still closed, and drops his forehead gently against hers.

“Mm, um,” he chokes out a breathless laugh, “Thanks. Thank you.”

She makes him an idiot.

He thanks her for kissing him. Like, actually thanks her. It’s the best thing she’s ever heard.

“You’re welcome,” she replies breathlessly, nodding at him as she starts to chuckle.

After a moment, he pulls away from her, untangling their bodies except from where they’re joined hand in hand.

“My dorm’s this way. It’s Chestnut, not too far,” he says, pulling her along through the chilly night that’s doing absolutely nothing to calm the heat radiating throughout his entire body.

Maya hustles along beside him until they reach Chestnut. She bites her tongue against mentioning she’s been here before -- freshman year she was hooking up with a guy that lived on the third floor. But that’s not important now.

They make their way up the elevators and down the hallway to Shawn’s room.

He got pretty lucky, dorm-wise. It’s a suite style room, with two singles attached to a common area with a kitchenette. Besides that, his roommate, Brian, spends most of his time at his sophomore girlfriend’s off-campus apartment. So really, Shawn gets the whole suite to himself more often than not.

He knows Brian is gone tonight, so he doesn’t have to send him a ‘GET OUT’ text as he and Maya ride the elevator.

He extracts himself from Maya’s side only to unlock the door and push it open for her. He doesn’t worry about running in first and cleaning shit up, because he’s a pretty clean guy as it is. Plus, he has plenty of female friends and he knows they think boys are pretty gross, so. He tries his best to be the exception to that rule. His mum taught him well enough, anyway.

“After you,” he says with a slight smile pulling at the corner of his lips. “Just, you know, make yourself at home.”

Shawn’s room is one of the cleaner boy’s dorms she’s ever been in. That bodes well, she thinks. She glances around with her hands clasped behind her back and realizes all of a sudden she’s nervous.

Not bad nervous, not run away nervous, but keyed up, like she’s a kettle full of steam. She just hopes she won’t start whistling as soon as he touches her again.

His room is warm and cozy, so she slips out of his jacket and places it on the chair, eyeing him to see what will happen next.

“Where’s that guitar of yours, pal?”

He flushes, glances behind him towards his room. He didn’t think she’d really want to hear him play. It feels a little… cheesy, you know? Like it’s just something he’s trying to do to get her panties off. Which is definitely not his angle. Well. He can’t pretend he doesn’t want her panties off, but that isn’t his only goal here. He wouldn’t even mind if they kept their clothes on all night, as long as she wanted to see him again.

He wants her to like him. And his guitar is part of that. So if she’s down, he is too.

“Just in my room,” he answers with a small smile. “You sit, I’ll go grab it.”

He nods towards the couch before falling back into his room. He toes his shoes off and tugs at his belt, removing it so he can relax a bit more. Though he’s not sure if that’ll be possible, what with Maya in his fucking room.

Shawn lights up when she mentions his guitar. As he hustles into his room, she sits on the edge of the sofa, bouncing her knee eagerly. She’s trying not to peek in and see his bedroom because it’ll probably just make her more nervous. Instead, she picks at her nails.

Shawn grabs his guitar off its stand and goes back to the common room, where Maya is perched on his sofa. He smiles and drapes the guitar strap over his shoulders before he sits down next to her.

He glances her way. “Any requests? Hotel California? Or something else?”

He comes back looking a little more comfy and she’s sure it has to do with the instrument in his hand. She smiles and pats the sofa beside her, kicking off her own shoes and sitting pretzel style, turned toward him.

She eyes the guitar, sees where it’s worn from his spending hours with it, plucking and strumming. It makes her smile to imagine what this guitar has seen and heard.

She makes herself comfortable next to him and he smiles at her as she beams at him. He could look at her smile forever, if she let him.

“Uhm… do you know She Will Be Loved?”

“Maroon 5, yeah? I love that song,” he says, looking down at his guitar and shifting his fingers on the neck of the guitar through the chords, just to make sure he’s got them sorted before he actually starts playing. He shoves his free hand into his pocket and finds a pick there, which is pretty typical for any given pair of pants he owns.

“I do a better piano cover of this,” he starts with a quirked smile, “But the guitar isn’t too bad.”

He doesn’t look at her when he starts playing, can’t look at her, because if he does he’ll get way too nervous. He’ll trip over chords and forget the lyrics. He keeps his eyes closed and focuses on the music, instead.

“Beauty queen of only 18, she had some trouble with herself…”

She’s just looking at his fingers as he starts to play, she doesn’t expect his voice to come out sounding like that.

Maya looks up from his pretty fingers and feels her smile drop in awe. His eyes are closed and his head is turned slightly away from her. It’s a mercy for them both, she thinks, as she tries to recover.

His voice is smooth and warm and well-practiced and somehow totally, beautifully Shawn. She leans closer unconsciously and licks her lips, bobbing her head a little as he continues.

It’s enchanting, sitting here like this with him as he plays one of her favorite songs. In some bleary, far off corner of her mind, she thinks this is probably the best first date she’s ever had, but she’s not thinking right now, just feeling.

Shawn’s eyes flutter open as he finishes singing, the last few chords of the song playing him out. He looks up to see Maya watching him, and he wonders if she did the entire time. The thought sends a shiver down his spine. He likes the way she looks at him.

He wets his lips and drops his fingers from the guitar to his knee, tilting his head.

“Hope I didn’t butcher one of your favorites,” he murmurs before lifting the strap and placing the guitar on the couch between them.

Maya blinks quickly when the song finishes. She sniffs gently, suddenly conscious of how intently she was watching him. When he looks up at her, he goes a little soft and shy and his reaction makes her decision for her.

“My falsetto isn’t exactly up to Adam Levine standards, but I think it’s getting there.”

He feels stuck now, sitting across from her on his couch. He has no other plans, besides wanting to grab her hand and pull her into him so he can kiss her again. He waits, with his heart lurching into his throat, for Maya to hopefully make the next move.

Maya tamps down a giggle and gently moves the guitar aside so there’s nothing left between them. She scoots in until her knees are touching his and places one hand on his as it rests on his knee and curls the other around his neck to scratch at the tiny curls that tickle him there.

She leans in until her eyes close, her nose brushes his, and she whispers, “Fuck Adam Levine.”

“Well, hopefully not--”

She kisses him with a smile on her lips.

He kisses her back easily, doesn’t even have to think about it. He just… melts. He melts into her, curling his fingers between hers, bringing his other hand to her hip so he can slide her a bit closer.

His hand wanders from her hip, to the small of her back, to her opposing hip so he can curl his arm around her waist. He holds her steadily and deepens the kiss, not as worried about being appropriate now that they’re safely tucked away in his suite. His tongue slips out and drags gently along her lower lip before he sucks at it, worrying the supple flesh with light nips of his teeth.  

He kisses her like he knows exactly how she likes it. She goes with him when he beckons, threading fingers through his curls and gasping at the gentle attentions of his teeth. Maya loses herself a little, climbing almost into his lap to feel warmer, closer, even better as he makes her feel so good. She’s hungry for it.

He pulls away just to breathe, nose nudging hers. “You-- eh, you feel--” he breathes out a laugh,  “Really good. That was really good.”

Really good is like, the understatement of the millennium, but he’s trying to avoid coming off as totally crazy. Even though that’s how she makes him feel. Totally and completely insane, in the absolute best way.

When he pulls back a little, she keeps her eyes shut and tugs teasingly at his hair, nodding at his clumsy but sweet assessment of the kiss.

“You feel… mhm, you feel good too.” Apparently the kiss melted both their brains.

He kisses along her cheek to her ear, mouthing at the shell as his nose grazes her hair.

He takes a breath. “Are you comfortable? I have a shirt you could wear.”

Maya’s breathing grows shallower as he finds his way to her ear, where she’s extra sensitive. His breath sets her whole body at a hum for him.

She swallows and takes a chance. “I don’t need a shirt if you’re going to take my clothes off.”

She gives him whiplash. He chokes against her ear and lets his forehead fall to her temple. He has to take a moment to breathe before he can look at her.

Slowly, he leans away from her so he can look her in the eye, his hand finding the back of her head, fingers slipping into her hair. He wets his lips. “Yeah? You-- That’s what you want?”

The seconds it takes him to inhale and lean back to look at Maya are some of the longest of her life. She looks down at his lips and back up. He’s looking at her like she just asked him if he wants a million dollars.

He figures it’s not something she’d accidentally say. But still. He needs to be sure he’s not dreaming. He needs to look her in the eye as she tells him it’s okay. He needs to know that she really does want him as badly as he wants her.

“Because we can just chill, you know, maybe watch The Office or something,” he offers, fingers scratching gently against her scalp and he studies her face.

He doesn’t really want to watch TV, but if that’s what she decides she wants, that’s what they’ll do.

And then, in the most Shawn-ish fashion, he offers a very vanilla, very sweet alternative. She can picture it, and it would be nice -- he’d get her a t-shirt to change into and would blush at all the leg she’s showing. They’d curl up under a blanket. Maybe he’d put his arms around her. They’d discuss their favorite episodes at length. It’s a great option.

It’s not the one she wants right now.

Maya leans in again, exhales slowly as she brushes the tip of her nose back and forth over his. “Maybe next time.”

She plants her hands on his shoulders and maneuvers herself into his lap to straddle him.

Next time. There’s that phrase again. He hopes to the God he doesn’t really believe in anymore that she’s not just playing with him. He wants next time so fucking badly, and this time isn’t even over yet.

His teeth sink into his lip as she slides into his lap, his hands immediately falling to her hips. He swallows, looks up at her from under his lashes as he pulls her flush against his thighs.

“You’re really fuckin’ beautiful, you know,” he murmurs, sliding one hand up her side until he can cup her ribcage, his thumb bracing her just beneath her breast. Slowly, he drops his head so he can dust kisses along her delicate collarbone, until he hits the strap of her dress. One hand slips to her ass as he nips at the fabric in his way, tugging it off of her shoulder before mouthing at her newly bared skin.

Maya smiles at his sweet comment and ducks her head a little. She manages to control the instinctive rolling of her hips as Shawn explores her clavicle and shoulder. His lips are soft but purposeful in their journey, wandering but not lost.

She presses back slightly into his hand when he dips it to cover her ass, wanting to feel just how big his hand is against her. She gasps breath around a gentle whimper of encouragement.

He wants to leave a mark, wants to leave evidence on her skin of their time together, of the way she makes him feel. His lips retrace their steps along her clavicle until he finds the base of her neck, flirting with the idea of sucking at her flesh until a bruise blooms beneath his teeth.

“How d’you like it?” he murmurs, gaze flicking up to her face as he lazily mouths at her throat. He hopes she knows what he’s getting at.

Shawn’s lips continue. Maya’s mouth is dry. Truthfully, she’s never let anyone give her a hickey before. In high school, she didn’t want to get caught with them. Now in college, she never wanted people knowing her business. But… there’s something in her fluttering gut that has her almost begging for one from him.

She perks up, peeking down at him and sinking her hand into his silky curls. “Want you to mark me.”

He groans, pressing his head into her hand and nodding. He nips at her skin, then soothes the reddening spot with his tongue.

“Okay, baby,” he murmurs, the pet name slipping out easily, as if he’s been calling her that for years.

Maya curls her fingers tight into his hair. The pet name makes her breath go short in her chest and she wriggles a little further up his lap, closer to him. She tips her head back and sighs, whispering his name under her breath.

He kisses her throat once, twice, then sucks her skin between his lips. He works her until she’s warm against his tongue. He releases her with a sucking ‘pop’ then nibbles her with his teeth until he’s satisfied with the red, splotchy mark that blossoms.

He knows exactly what he’s doing, and it’s so, so sexy. She wasn’t totally sure he would, given how blushy and sweet he’s been around her all night -- that doesn’t usually equate to confidence in the bedroom, but he’s proving her wrong with every firm purposeful nip and nibble.

God, he feels good. She blinks hard and realizes she’s said it out loud. Oh well. By the way she’s shifting in his lap, he probably knows how good she feels.

He pulls back, admires his work with a hum.

“Pretty,” he rasps, gaze flicking up to her flushed face. “Don’t think it’ll be too hard to cover down there, either.”

He pulls away with a wet noise that makes Maya’s thighs tighten against his. She lifts her fingers to trace where his mouth was and cracks a smile.

“I’m not hiding this one.”

A smile tugs his lips, but only for a moment. He dives back in to her neck, mouthing kisses along the column of her throat until he reaches her ear. “You wanna do me? Turnabout's fair play, and all that.”

Shawn’s hungry for more of her skin. She lets him have it willingly. His offer makes her bleary eyes open. She pulls away and looks him over, pink-cheeked, chest heaving, eyes wide and eager. She pinches his chin between her fingers and leans in, kissing him slowly. When she pulls away, she has a dangerous glint in her eye.

“Yeah,” she hums, leading a series of light kisses down his jaw to a spot under his ear that is so soft under her mouth she wants to plant a flag and call it hers. She flicks her tongue over it quickly and follows it with a nip before sucking his skin into her mouth.

Holy Shit.

“Holy shit,” he groans, his hips twitching as she latches on to one of his most sensitive spots. His hands fall to her ass so her can pull her closer, hold her tighter, even though they’re already pressed snugly together.

His cock is beyond hard in his slacks, pushing needily against his fly as his toes curl in his socks. She’s barely done anything and he feels like he might come. It’s always been his problem, getting too overwhelmed too quickly.

And with Maya it’s like, ten times worse.

“Fuck, sugar,” he groans as his head falls back against the couch, exposing even more of his neck for her while his fingers knead her round ass.

Maya nips a little harder than she means to when he grabs her ass and drags her until they’re chest to chest. She mewls into the mark she’s leaving him, wrapping her arms around his shoulders, reveling in how broad and strong he feels. And how totally at her mercy he is.

From this close, she can feel the length of him straining in his pants and she gets a little carried away, sucking and mouthing and nipping at this one spot until he’s almost purple. She winces and kisses it tenderly, sitting back a little to grin sheepishly as he massages her ass with his long fingers.

“Sorry,” she giggles, “That’s gonna be there for a while.”

His fingers find his neck for a moment, pressing into the sensitive, bruising skin beneath his ear. He moans, low and husky, and shrugs a little.

“S’okay. I--” he clears his gravelly throat, “I like it. I like you.”

He’s proud of himself. Proud that he can have the prettiest, sexiest, most fucking incredible girl in the world squirming in his lap and still not come in his boxers. Talk about fucking embarrassing.

He needs more.

“Wanna make you come. Please.” he pants, eyes shut as she kisses his neck. He pushes one hand under her dress, fingertips teasing the hem of her thong where it clings to the curve of her hip.

She trails along to the territory of his throat when he croaks at her again. She coos a sound of approval and sits back again to look at him. She nods frantically, pressing her hands into his chest to show her urgency.

“Touch me. I wanna feel you,” she pleads, squirming in his lap as his fingers scrape over her bare skin.

The whine in her voice makes his cock throb, and he sinks his fingers deeper into the soft flesh of her ass. He nods, licking his lips as he wraps an arm around her waist and stands up, holding her tight as he makes his way to his bedroom.

“In here,” he murmurs against her lips while kissing her, pecking her lower lip before sucking it between his teeth.

Shawn has enough presence of mind to take her to his bedroom. She stumbles over his feet a little, giggling into his mouth and it’s a warm comfort amidst all this sexy novelty. She rises on her toes to continue kissing him properly. He tastes so fucking good. She thinks she might not be able to leave his pretty lips alone now.

Carefully, he lies her down on his bed, then stands to the side. He tilts his head as he studies her, studies the rise and fall of her chest and the way the mark on her throat is beginning to turn purple. He smiles, just a quick quirk of his lips.

Maya fights herself to release him as he stands up beside her. His eyes are warm and curious as they look her over. She doesn’t flinch or shy away from them. She presses her ass into the bed and sighs needily.

“Do you want to take off your dress for me?” he asks in a low voice, his fingers finding the buttons of his shirt. He deftly snaps them open, then lets the dress shirt fall from his shoulders to pool at his feet.

But he gives her something to do and she’s grateful. She sits up, nodding as she stares at him. She glances away to fiddle with the zipper under her arm. When she’s got it, she looks back up and her face goes blank.

“Oh, holy fuck.”

His chest is firm and broad, leading to a tapered waist. His abs are beautifully defined without being overdone. He has a light trail of hair leading into his pants. Maya wants to cry.

Instead, she releases a whimper and lifts her dress over her head, climbing onto her knees. In her tiny thong and strapless bra, she’s still too clothed.

He looks up at her exclamation. She’s scrambling out of her dress, dropping it to the floor, and then she’s naked.

Well, not really naked, but still naked enough for his hand to fall to his clothed cock as he exhales through his nose, his lower lip tucked beneath his teeth.

“You okay?” he asks after a moment of looking, lifting a knee and pressing it to the bed. His hand drops from his dick and he reaches for her cheek instead, tilting her head back.

Shawn leans down, presses a kiss to the apple of her cheek, then to her jaw, then her earlobe.

He clearly misunderstands her expression of shock and awe and it only endears him to her more. So does his grabbing at his cock when she drops her dress.

“Tell me what you’re thinking, baby,” he murmurs, carefully licking at the shell of her ear, loving the way it makes a shiver roll down her spine.

As he lifts up onto the bed to kiss her face tenderly and tongue at her ear, her heart begins to race.

“You’re… so hot,” she croaks. After a moment, she chuckles nervously.

“I mean, you’re more than hot. Obviously. You’re incredibly sweet and thoughtful and funny and you tell stories well and you’re very handy with a guitar but Jesus Christ, you’re so fucking hot. Like, Cute Freshman is not an appropriate nickname for you at all. You’re… you’re definitely Fucking Hot Freshman,” she babbles.

He feels his cheek heat, and he’s suddenly very nervous despite all of the praises she gives. He presses his face into her neck so he doesn’t have to look at her, or else he might combust. He knew-- He knows he’s good looking, knows he’s not shabby in the body department either, but he didn’t know-- well, he didn’t think Maya was going just as crazy over him as he is over her.

Now, he thinks, maybe she is.

Maya takes the opportunity to play with his hair again when he tucks his face in her neck and kisses her there again. The skin is tender, but he’s gentle. She hums from the back of her throat and keeps her fingers entangled in his curls.

Maya blinks. “And… I like it when you call me ‘baby.’”

His heart stutters in his chest, and all he really cares about, more than being called sweet or hot or anything, is that apparently, he’s giving her things she likes. He kisses her neck, a careful brush of his slick lips against her bruised skin.

“And I like calling you baby,” he murmurs before pulling away so he can look at her, now that his breathing is somewhat under control.

“But who’s calling me Cute Freshman?” he asks with a cheeky grin, because he couldn’t help but notice that slight slip of her tongue.

She grins. “Oh, me. For a few months now. Well, not just me. Me and a bunch of the junior art girls. You’re just so… cute. Whenever I see you on campus, you smile at me. It’s cute.”

Maybe she should be embarrassed to admit she had a nickname for him before they even really knew each other, but she doesn’t care. Plus, she’s sitting naked beneath him feeling all the testosterone-driven heat melting off him, so it’s a little late for embarrassment over nicknames.

His head reels. A bunch of the junior art girls? He’s curious about it, but not as curious about the sounds Maya might make when he makes her come. He doesn’t care about other girls enough to distract himself from her.

Maya smoothes a hand down his chest, admiring his soft skin over rippling muscle. She skims over his slacks and cups his cock, lifting an eyebrow.

“But like I said, you’re so much more than just cute.”

His gaze drops to her hand and he hisses when she finds his cock, head falling back slightly as his hips press forward.

“Uh huh,” he rasps, because he’s quickly losing the ability to articulate actual words.

Shawn goes all throaty and soft when she gets a hand on him, but she doesn’t want to push it and start stroking him right away. She wants this to last and he… kinda looks like he’s already trying not to bust a nut. She drags her hand up to the button of his slacks and pulls at it, just flirting with the idea of taking them off.

“You-- ah, you know why I always say hi?” he asks to distract himself, to stop an unfortunate event from occurring in his slacks before they’ve gotten a chance to do much of anything. He clears his throat, looks down at her as he continues, “You were my orientation tour guide. I--” I think I’m kinda sorta a little bit in love with you. “--I thought you were so pretty. And smart. And just, someone I wanted to know.”

He wants to tell her he has the biggest fucking crush on her in the world, but he doesn’t. Her hand on his cock won’t get him to admit it, even though it seems like a sure sign she’d be okay with it.

He has to keep some cards to himself. For now, at least.

She frowns. She… doesn’t remember seeing him. How is that possible?

“Really? Shit, I don’t remember. I mean, it was a long summer of tours, I guess.”

She pushes hair off his forehead and smiles bashfully. “I… would’ve thought I’d remember you.”

He doesn’t care that she doesn’t remember him. He doesn’t blame her. She probably met like, a hundred different kids over the summer. He was just a face in the crowd.

She felt like a beacon to him.

He’s too fucking sappy for his own good.

“It’s okay,” he murmurs with a smile. “I’m pretty sure I remembered well enough for the both of us.”

Maya’s getting a little impatient. She curls her fingers through his belt loops and tugs him forward as she lies back until he’s planted above her.

“Kiss me,” she whispers.

His chest heaves as he watches her tug at his belt loops, stumbling forward until he’s over her on the bed, knees cradling her hips on either side. He drops a hand down to the pillow beneath her head, back curling as he leans down.

“I really like kissing you,” he murmurs before he catches her lips. His free hand slips between them, fingers teasing along her collarbone, down her sternum, until he reaches the little bow at the center of her bra. He realizes after a moment that beneath the bow lies the clasp, and he sucks in a breath.

Carefully, flicks the clasp and her bra falls open, the cups slipping away from her breasts. He keeps kissing her, keeps his lips flush against her cheek so he doesn’t distract himself by looking, not until she lets him know it’s okay.

Having Shawn propped up over her like this is a little intoxicating. He smells nice, like spicy cologne and clean boy. And god, can he kiss.

Maya drags her hands up his sides, feeling how they flare out to thick, warm shoulder blades. She holds on to them and goes still beneath him as his fingers meet the clasp of her bra. He gets it open without issue, which makes her smile into his warm, soft mouth. She teases his tongue with hers and lifts her back off the bed enough to pull the bra out from under her and drop it off the side of the bed.

From this angle, she can feel the way his cock strains against his pants. Maya breaks away from the kiss long enough to slide her fingers down his chest, around his belly button to the button of his slacks, looking into his eyes when she pops it open and starts tugging them down.

“Do you wanna touch me?” she whispers.

He pulls his head from her neck when she starts teasing her fingers down his torso until she reaches his pants. Her eyes are wide, glossy when he looks at her, and he wonders if he looks just as equally fucked. Probably more so, if he’s being honest.

He bites his lip and nods, lets his hand fall to her ribcage so he can cup her just beneath her breast. “All over, baby. Fuck,” he breathes, leaning back down to bite at her jaw.  

His thumb grazes the underside of her breast as he moves towards her nipple. He presses his face into her neck again and gently flicks the taut little peak. While mouthing at her throat, his hips drop and he presses his cock against her abdomen, slowly rutting against her.

“Feel so good, Maya,” he murmurs, kissing his way up to her ear and tugging at her nipple, giving it a little more attention than before.

Maya’s hungry hands come to a faltering stop around his hips when she feels his calloused thumb skim the underside of her breast. Her head tips to allow him access and she mewls gently, lifting a leg to wrap over his as he settles against her.

Maya’s nipples have always been so sensitive -- if he’d gone any further than the gentle flicking and tugging, she would’ve squirmed away uncomfortably. She knows he has no way of knowing that already, but it feels like he does. It feels like he just knows her. She arches into his touch, eyelids fluttering, hips rolling in time with his, nodding numbly.

“Yeah,” she breathes, “Feels like…”

She cuts herself off with a bite into her lower lip before she can say something ridiculous like “heaven” or “perfect.” She moans quietly instead.

She doesn’t finish her sentence and he doesn’t ask. He’s nervous to. He can fill in the blank in his mind, with something like, ‘Feels like I’m going crazy’ or even, ‘Feels like fucking heaven on earth.’

It’s nice, sometimes, to pretend.

“Where else?” he asks after a moment, finally ready to pull himself away from her neck, sitting back on his heels as he looks down at her. He swallows against a groan that threatens to spill from his lips. She’s gorgeous; flushed and arching beneath him, her dusky brown nipples taut, hopefully from his attention and not just the cool room.

“Where else do you wanna be touched, baby?”

He sits back and pants at her. Maya resists the urge to yank him back down on top of her because she misses his lips and fingers already. But it’s for a good cause.

Maya comes up on a forearm and watches him watch her. She sighs.

“Touch my pussy, Shawn. Please.” She drops back and lifts her hips, dragging her panties down her thighs, tossing them off the side of his bed.

“Shit,” he growls when she wiggles out of her panties and begs for him. It’s unbelievably sexy. Maya knows exactly what she wants and she’s not afraid of it. His cock throbs, but it’s not about him right now.

He swallows thickly as he lets his eyes wander down the length of her body, from her round tits to the soft curve of her stomach to her slick, spread thighs. He reaches for her knee just as he looks at her pussy, sucks in a breath at the sight of her.

Maya groans, eyelids fluttering as she finally gets the tiniest bit of relief from him sweeping his fingers down her stomach to spread her lips.

“Baby. Fuck, you’re pretty. And wet,” he growls, dropping his other hand to her cunt, pressing two fingers to her lips and spreading them wide.

He gets dirty fast and it takes Maya by surprise. She would’ve said she was expecting something a little more vanilla from him -- sweet missionary love making with whispered grunts and pretty words in her ear.

But this… this’ll work.

“You really this wet all for me?” he murmurs, eyes flicking up at her face as he massages her knee, tongue gliding slowly along his lower lip.

Maya spreads her legs further, needily. She chews on her lower lip and slides her hands up into her hair, nodding.

“God, yeah. Fuck, Shawn. So wet for you. All for you.”

She wonders if her dirty talk might be rusty, it’s been a while since she’s utilized it. But looking up at him while he’s looking at her like this, while he’s fucking touching her like this, she’s not worried. He may very well bring it out in her.

“You wanna make me feel good, baby?” she purrs.

He doesn’t know where his self control comes from, because she’s definitely trying to kill him. She spreads her legs, arches her back, grabs at her own hair like she’s absolutely desperate for him.

His hand goes to his cock again, because there’s only so much he can do.

“Yeah,” he rasps, slowly massages his fingers along her smooth, wet pussy lips. He avoids the tight clench of her entrance as well as her clit, curious to see how wet he can get her before he gives in and this is all over.

“I fuckin’ do, sugar. And I’m gonna— Gonna make you feel so good you’ll scream when you come all over my fingers,” he gets out in a growl, tugging at his cock as he spreads her lips wider and hangs his head so he can blow a sharp stream of air against her clit.

As she teases him, he teases her right back, and he knows exactly how. She hums and closes her eyes, focuses on the way his fingers feel as they stroke her, like they’re learning her and admiring her at the same time. She expected him to make quick work of her when he realized how wet she was, but he’s taking his time. Maya knows very well she’s worth the time, but most guys don’t realize that on the first date.

Her shiver at him calling her “sugar” again was followed quickly by a sharp gasp and the feeling that her entire body clenched hard for him all at once. She grabs at his hair and tugs, arching so hard off the bed that she almost knees him in the stomach but she’s out of control now. She squeals his name, feels herself drip onto his sheets below her.

“Jesus Christ, Shawn,” she pants, glancing down at him over her heaving chest. She’s beginning to realize he might end up being the best she’s ever had.

She whimpers at the idea and goes slack against the bed, ready to let him give it to her. “Please. Please touch me. Fuck me with your fingers.”

A slow, cocky grin splits his lips. She’s eager beneath him, responsive to him in a way he hasn’t seen before. He hasn’t even done much, but she says his name like a prayer.

The smile on his face has her on fucking fire. She’s almost delirious enough to look around her and make sure she’s not actively burning up.

He groans at her demanding pleas and drops down to kiss her, sucking at her bottom lip as his finger slip along her slit. Carefully, he nudges her dripping entrance with the calloused tip of his middle finger.

He nips at her before pulling away from her lips, then sits up straight again, head hung as he looks down at her.

“S’this what you like, baby?” he murmurs as he sinks the tip of his finger into her slick heat, hooking it slightly to press against her soft flesh. He’s not sure which angle is the best for her, but he’s gonna love taking his time to figure it out.

His kiss has her distracted again, sighing into his sweet mouth as he probes her wetness gently, exploring her, learning what gets her gasping. When he curls a finger inside her clenching walls, she moans, low and soft.

“Yeah,” she coos, “Yeah, I like that.”

Shawn doesn’t just thrust a finger inside and hope it gets the job done. He’s careful and meticulous, so gentle that she hangs on his every movement. She breathes heavily, looking between his hand and his face, pressing kisses into his cheeks and jaw every so often.

His free hand massages her inner thigh, slowly inching closer to her pussy with each press of his broad palm. Soon he’s close enough to stretch his fingers above her clit, teasing the neatly trimmed patch of curly hair there.

It’s fucking sexy, she’s so goddamn sexy.

He flirts with the notion of touching her clit. She lifts her hips to encourage him, but he smoothes through her patch of pubic hair to keep her on the edge.

“Feels so good,” she promises him, nodding as she wets her lips, “Need a little more, baby.”

He didn’t need her to tell him. He knows she needs more, knows he’s probably making her clit throb just as badly as his cock is. But that’s the best part.

He leans down, bites lightly at the apple of her cheek as he slips his fingers from her curls down to her spread lips, the tip of his index finger sitting just on top of her swollen clit. He taps her nub once, twice, then swirls his finger in a delicate, teasing circle, using her wetness for an easy glide.

Maya is trying not to get hysterical because that might be a little much for their first time doing anything sexual. He’s making it as difficult as he can to keep her from losing it and begging, wriggling her hips to get his finger in deeper.

She breathes through her nose and closes her eyes, yelping a little when he nibbles at her cheek. She giggles at his playfulness and tangles fingers in his hair to help steer him.

“Oh, yeah?” He purrs against her cheek, “Want my finger deeper in your pussy?”

He emphasizes his question with a flick to her clit, followed by a tight pinch between his forefinger and thumb.

His finger lingers around her clit, teasing her so gently her abdomen flutters. The sharp sensation of the flick and pinch sends her reeling.

“Ohmygod, oh my fucking god,” she croaks, nodding quickly, “Yeah. Deeper. Your fingers are so nice and long. I wanna feel them deeper.”

She doesn’t have the capacity to be embarrassed now. She’s laid it all out for him.

Shawn can’t hold out anymore; he gives her what she wants, sinks his finger deeper into her cunt, until he’s buried to the hilt.

He pulls back so he can watch himself play with her pussy. One finger circles her clit while he curls the other deep inside of her, before starting a slow rocking rhythm that has his knuckle grazing her sensitive walls.

As Shawn’s finger slides deeper, without much resistance due to how fucking wet she is, she exhales slowly, chest shuddering hard, chin tilting back with a quiet groan.

He’s working her up so good. He pays careful attention to each of her reactions, giving her exactly what she wants before she can show or tell him that she wants it. She’s high on him, rocking with each of his finger’s strokes, waiting for him to give her a little bit more.

“Shit,” he groans, “Look how wet you’re getting for me, sugar.”

He presses the front of his thigh against the inside of hers, spreading her legs wide so he can get a better angle to stroke her heat as he slips a second finger inside.

He tucks his fingers deep inside of her, then scrapes his thumb nail carefully over the sensitive nub of her clit, peeking out from under its hood.

Shawn spreads her legs further and looks down at her hungrily. He slips a second finger inside her easily, stretching her out, stroking her deeper. She swears under her breath and tucks her arms up under his pillow for something to hold onto as he tears her apart piece by piece.

With the sharp sensation on her clit, she bucks hard, hard enough his fingers almost slip out.

“Don’t stop, please don’t stop,” she begs, turning her flushed face into the pillow as she cries out for him, “Please, I’m so, so fucking close.”

He feels like sobbing as she whines and moans beneath him. She’s absolutely writhing for him, her wet cunt getting wetter with each flick of her hips and stroke of his fingers.

She’s particularly fond, it seems, of the rough scratch of his nail against her hard clit.

“Oh baby,” he coos, “You like it a little rough, huh?”

He swipes the roughened pad of his thumb across her clit before lifting his hand to give her a little spank, right on her perky nub.

She wants more, she gets more.

Maya flinches and gasps, “YES!”

Her clit throbs at his rough attentions. God, she’s definitely losing her fucking mind. And she’s definitely never had it this good, not from anyone.

He curls over her, kisses up the midline of her throat until he reaches her chin, then noses at her jaw. His fingers squelch as they pump in and out of her dripping, pink pussy.

“How’s that, Maya? God, you’re so gorgeous like this. I mean, shit, you’re always gorgeous but— Christ, can’t believe how good you feel on my fingers. So fucking good.”

Her cunt grips his fingers hard like she might not let him have them back. With every thrust he gives her, he gets her closer and closer. He murmurs quietly, kissing her inflamed skin nice and soft, and that’s what does it, more than the roughness or the careful attention to what she likes, it’s just… him.

“Shawn, I’m gonna come,” she pants, squeezing her eyes shut. Her toes curl against the bed and every muscle in her body tightens as it takes her. She gasps and roils against the sheets, holding onto it as long as she possibly can because Jesus, it’s so, so good. He’s so good.

She realizes she’s muttered that to him as she starts to come down with a goofy smile.

He’s never seen anything so breathtaking before. Her entire body clenches as her orgasm swells, and he’s mesmerized by the sound of her voice as she whines his praise.

He’s blushing, despite fucking her through it and blowing on her clit again. His cock twitches as he watches her drip all over his hand.

Her body relaxes around his fingers, her back relaxing into the bed as her orgasm begins to subside. He realizes his chest is heaving as he pulls his fingers from her pussy.

He looks from her flushed face to his wet fingers. He wants to taste her. He lifts his hand to his mouth and sucks at the tips of his fingers before cleaning the rest with long sweeps of his tongue.

“I think I’m gonna have to eat you out next time,” he murmurs as he sits back on his thighs. His cock aches at the thought.

“I mean, you know. If that’s okay with you like, consent wise and stuff. It’s whatever you want.” he says with a flush, eyes widening slightly.

Maya laughs cloudily, shaking her head at the look on his face when he tries to backtrack a little. She tilts her head at him.

“You can do whatever you want to me,” she hums, blinking sleepily.

After that performance, yeah, he’s got an all-access pass now. Maya shivers thinking about what he can do with his mouth after how worked up she got on his fingers.

Maya lifts her bare leg and wraps it around his back, urging him forward into her. Her hands reach to catch him as he lowers himself.

“C’mere,” she murmurs, looking for his mouth back on hers because it’s intoxicating and she wants to get him just as worked up as he did her.

She still wants him. He’s absolutely not complaining. He wasn’t going to ask if she didn’t offer, but this seems way more romantic than simple reciprocation. She actually wants him. Like it’d be an honor to make him feel as good as he made her.

He moans, soft and raspy, into her mouth as he rests on top of her, his cock rutting slowly against her belly.

She can taste herself on his tongue. It makes her arch into him, grip a little harder at the firm plane of his back as he rests over her, rocking against her gently, like he’s not sure she’s into it. She tightens the leg around his waist, squeezing him to give him permission.

“You—“ he pants against her lips, nudging at her nose with his. “I’m so fuckin’ hard for you. I hope that’s okay.”

He drops his lips to her jaw, nosing his way along her cheek as he pants into her skin. His cock twitches in his slacks and he swears he can feel her wetness seeping through the fabric.

Maybe he has a vivid imagination. He’s insanely hard, either way.

He breaks away to croak into her mouth. She bites her lower lip and groans gently at his honesty. She lies back, letting him explore her cheek and jaw tenderly as he grinds against her.

Maya sneaks a hand down to squeeze his ass, pushing at the fabric of his slacks to get him naked for her. She wants more of his flushed, pretty skin, wants to make him feel at least half as good as he did for her.

She gets frustrated by how tight his pants are. She grunts and sits up, almost knocking into his face as she does. She laughs and kisses him playfully, using both hands to shuck him out of his slacks and tip him onto his side.

He likes the way she handles him. Shuffles him out of his pants and pushes him down so she can have her way with him. Fuck. If this is how he dies, it’s a great way to go.

She straddles his hips, dropping to grind against him again, just for a little while, just to feel him, but by the look on his face, she can’t keep this up with him for long or he’s going to explode.

She presses her bare, wet pussy against his boxer-clad cock and rocks her hips, grinding into him like she wants him to explode. Shawn’s head falls back as he moans, his hands falling to her thighs to keep her tight against him.

“Jesus fucking Christ, Maya. You feel so fucking good like this.”

Maya gasps at the feeling of his hands sinking into the flesh of her thighs as she rocks into him. She plants her hands beside his head and struggles to regain her breath and her senses, but the noises he’s making and the shakiness in his voice as he praises her have her head spinning, have her all worked up again.

One naughty hand slips along her thigh towards her pussy. His thumb twirls through her pubic hair before slipping down to her swollen, sensitive clit. His hips buck so the head of his cock grinds against her clit while his thumb scratches lightly at the little hood.

“Oh god, ohmygod,” she swears. He’s touching her again. She’s got him on the edge of orgasm, about to lose his head, and he has the presence of mind to try to get her wet again.

God, she’s falling so hard for this kid.

“Could come like this,” he mutters, his voice fucked as he gazes up at her.

She leans forward until her lips drop to his cheek. She breathes softly, planting her hands beneath her so she can push herself up away from his lips that have her head all foggy and almost thinking, yeah, fucking let him come like this, grinding beneath me in his boxers.

She smiles gently, easing off his hips to his thighs, carefully pushing his boxers down his legs so she can finally get at him for real.

Maya drops a gentle fingertip to skate over his twitching cock as it rests wet and pink against his stomach.

“I wanna touch you,” she whispers, glancing up to his eyes for his permission.

He absolutely cannot argue with her. She can do whatever the fuck she wants with him.

His cock twitches as she grazes his shaft with her fingers. He drops his head back, lifts his hips and spreads his thighs.

“Yeah, please,” he nods, then looks down at her. “That sounds so— fuck— so good.”

Maya’s mouth waters a little when he spreads his thick, gorgeous thighs. She swallows a moan, trailing her fingertips down the inside of his left thigh, staring at him, admiring as he pants and fights to stay still for her.

He fists handfuls of duvet on either side of himself, biting his lips at he watches her. He’s not sure how long he’s gonna last, but he’s about to try his hardest not to be a mess before she really gets a chance to explore him.

“Do whatever you want to me,” he finally chokes, finding it easy to be so honest with her.

She smirks, watching him ball the duvet up in his fists. She makes a quiet humming noise in the back of her throat, dropping onto her forearms, brushing her lips over the sensitive tip of his throbbing cock. With just a gentle kiss, she pushes back up on her knees and wraps her fingers around his cock.

Her grip is reasonably tight. She licks her lips greedily, watching as she starts stroking him, long, slow, teasing strokes. She doesn’t know what’s gotten into her, but she kinda wants to hear him beg.

“How’s my hand feel?” she pants, grinning down at him.

She’s too fucking sexy for him. Too fucking charming and confident and a little too honest and a little too vulnerable and he loves every bit of it. It’s just her hand but it’s the best thing he’s ever had.

It’s her hand and he’s so fucking fucked.

He’s gonna call his mum in the morning and ask for love advice or something.

He really shouldn’t be thinking about mum.

Her voice draws his attention and he groans, squeezing his eyes shut as his head tips back.

“Maya, sugar— yeah, Jesus, so good.” He lifts his head, blinking at her as he pants, wets his lips. “You’re perfect. I’m so—“ his shut, he gasps and flicks his hips, cock twitching in her hand, “I’m so fucking into you.”

She’s really loving making him fall apart. He’s out of himself, bucking his hips and muttering sweet love words that make her smile. She tightens her hand, wrinkles her nose at him affectionately.

She bites her lip, sinks onto her forearm so she’s hovering over him, her hand still stroking, a little harder, a little faster, as she lies over him, close enough that she can see everything in his eyes.

“I like that you call me ‘sugar’,” she murmurs, leaning in to lick at his lower lip.

Maya slows her hand steadily, swiping her thumb up over the ridge on the underside of the head of his cock. She squeezes him gently, nudges his nose with hers.

“I’ll be your sugar if you be my baby,” she whispers before planting her lips against his.

His hips roll a bit faster as her slick, deft fingers grip his cock tighter. He pants against her lips, fingers curling into her thighs.

A growl passes between their lips as she kisses him, one hand flying up to cup the back of her head. He kisses her and kisses, tries to say, yes, please, whatever you want, without having to actually say it.

His cock throbs, weeping at the tip and dripping all over her hand. He bends his legs, slides his heels up the bed as he starts to fuck up into the tight clench of her fist.

He whines into her mouth, bites at her lower lip as he leaks all over them both.

He falls headfirst into her kiss, exactly where she wants him, where she needs him. She kisses back just as fiercely, massaging his tongue with hers in the same rhythm that she strokes his throbbing cock.

She loves how wet he’s getting her. She doesn’t think she’s ever had anyone want her so badly, be so ready to please her, show her how much she’s doing for him. She thinks she could pretty easily get hooked on this. On him.

“Gonna— shit, gonna come, Maya, my god,” he growls, head dropping back.

Maya tightens her hand and pumps faster, her heart sprinting in her chest as she chases him toward his orgasm. His feet slide up the bed and he’s fucking her hand and she realizes she’s whispering to him, telling him to come hard for her, she’s so into him, too.

Maya sits back and bites her lip, waiting for him to fall.

Her words of encouragement set him on fire. He nods but can’t answer, just grunts and reaches for her waist, gripping her as he rocks his hips up, pushing the head of his cock through the circle of her fist.

Maya doubles down, pulses his cock in her hand when he’s close enough to coming that it’ll throw him over the edge.

“Fuck-- fuck,” he growls, turning his head and pressing it into the pillow as his cock twitches, balls tightening before he comes, releasing himself across his abdomen and onto her fingers. His hips rock through it, her tight, warm hand milking him for all he’s worth.

He pants hard, bucks into her fist, goes all breathy and pink when he comes, splattering hard onto his chest and her hand. Maya strokes him through it, humming gently.

“Yeah, that’s it, baby,” she whispers, watching his frantic hips slow to a roll. She’s mesmerized, watching him fuck her hand, watching his eyes come back from wherever he went.

He groans as his cock aches, dribbles what’s left of his orgasm onto his stomach as he finally collapses down onto the bed. His legs slip out in front of him, his chest heaving as he sucks in a deep breath.

After a moment, his hand falls from her hip and he reaches for her wrist instead, pulling her from his dick. He bites his lip, looks up at her, blinking blearily a couple of times.

“Gimme a minute and I can get you a washcloth,” he murmurs, sending her a lazy smile.

Maya smiles gently and lets him tug her hand away from his sensitive cock. She nods and slides down on her side next to him, gripping his rib cage for his attention.

“No rush,” she murmurs, brushing her nose over his tenderly before kissing him, feeling the swell of his plump lower lip between hers, tasting his tongue.

She curls into his side easily, doesn’t even care that they’re both covered in his spunk. She doesn’t care because she likes being next to him, he thinks. Wants. Hopes.

He doesn’t like getting his hopes up too much, but he can’t help but read into the little hints Maya gives him. This night hasn’t made anything about his crush on her easier. It’s just that much harder, if anything.

He hasn’t fallen for a girl like this, ever.

She’s lying naked on his dorm bed beside him and they’re all sticky and she can hear drunk college kids singing and screaming on the quad outside his window. She smiles and turns her face into his chest, feeling it in her nose as his heart beat starts to settle.

Eventually, the come drying on his stomach gets a little too sticky and he carefully extracts himself from her side to fetch a couple of wet cloths.

He wipes his stomach off as he makes his way back into his bedroom, climbing up on the bed and handing off the warmed rag he brought for her.

Maya’s prepared to hunt down her panties and hurry away through the cold back to her off-campus apartment but she’s hoping he’ll have her stay. She thinks he probably will.

“You can stay, if you want,” he says with a little smile, tossing his cloth into the hamper in the corner before settling back against the pillows.

He settles back into bed with his invitation. She tries not to blush or look too smug. She sits cross-legged on the bed and plays with his fingers.

“Point me to your t-shirts, Mendes.”

God, yes.

He was worried for a moment she’d start getting dressed and make up something about needing to sleep in her own bed.

But she doesn’t, and now he’s dying to see her draped in his clothing.

“Oh-- duh, yeah. Hold on,” he grins at her before crawling off the bed and going to his dresser. He digs through the middle drawer and pulls out an old, soft Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure t-shirt and brings it over to her.

Maya doesn’t know why she blushes when he stands and scrambles to his dresser for a shirt for her. But he’s got a really great ass and she wants to grab it and smack it and bite it and oh, he’s coming back, she should probably look back up at his face now.

“That’s a good soft one,” he says as he places it in front of her before slipping back into bed himself. He presses his lips together as he watches her change.

Maya clears her throat and smiles, dropping the big, cool shirt over her chest. He’s right. It is nice and soft. She turns her nose into her shoulder and smiles at the way it smells like fabric softener. She knows she’s smitten now -- she’s giggling at the mental image of him doing laundry and using fabric softener.

“S’cool if I sleep naked, though? Not like-- I mean, this is how I always sleep but I can put boxers on if you want.”

He doesn’t exactly know how to do this. Girls either leave or kick him out, and the last girlfriend he had was in high school, and there were definitely no sleepovers there. So sleeping with a girl, like actually sleeping, is a pretty new thing for him.

Maya settles back against the pillow and shakes her head. “Go ahead, be free in your own bed.”

“I think I want to see you again this week please,” she murmurs sleepily, eyes drooping as she curls up against his side.

Shawn settles further into bed as Maya nestles into his side. He’s tired, but his heart is still racing. If she can hear it, she doesn’t let on.

“You can see me whenever you want,” he replies after a moment, his voice a gentle murmur as he watches her heavy eyes fall shut. Her chest rises and falls steadily, and she’s asleep within moments.

He doesn’t sleep much that night, too busy watching Maya sleep or waking up to see if she’s there, if she’s real, and to make sure the whole thing wasn’t a vivid fever dream.

She’s still there when dawn arrives, early morning sunlight beginning to creep in through the window. In a groggy haze, Shawn curls himself around her warmth and wakes her up with teasing kisses along the column of her throat. She stirs after six kisses or so, and they don’t leave the bed until their stomachs begin to growl in unison.

He takes her out for waffles and coffee milkshakes. It’s the perfect Next Time.

----------

Taglist: @the-claire-bitch-project @achinglyshawn @infiniteshawn @mendesoft @singanddreamanyway @alone-in-madness @abigfatmess @shawnitsmutual @awkwardfangirl2014 @september-lace @grittyisaho @sinplisticshawn @rollingxstone @yslsaint @randi-eve @fallmoreinlove @heyits-claire @itrocksmysocks @parkerspicedlatte @desire-to-live @jillian-nd

[hiding-under-the-willow]

EMH/Stan Frederick AU (kinda) Full Explanation

Okay, so

Basically I was thinking a lot about the Stan Frederick episode where they're trying to find out more about the rake and they're going through boxes and boxes of old research and at one point Susan pulls out a binder marked with purple duct tape, which she claims has a lot of info about the rake in it, an obvious homage to EMH. Stan immediately shuts Susan down when he sees what binder she's looking at, and the specific line "If we're ever that desperate..." just really stuck in my head for one reason or another. It got me thinking about Stan and Habit interacting, and while I thought that was interesting enough to go off with as an idea, but obviously we need a context for that interaction, that's where the AU comes in.

It takes place in an alternate iteration, one in which the majority of the story is the one that we have experienced alongside the EMH crew. We've made it all the way up to 'Sleeping dogs lie.' and it is the first iteration with this format in which Habit has managed to make it this far. He's furious that Vinnie has ruined the plan by going off to follow the leads presented by the Princeton tapes and is convinced that by following those leads Vinnie will end up dead. Deciding there's no fixing the iteration in its current state, he decides to fuck with it in a way that he finds entertaining, pulling someone else into the fray and trying to get them to go along with his plan the way Vinnie was meant to.

He thinks for a bit about who he could have the most fun messing with. Noah seemed like a fun choice but that was almost sure to start a fight with Firebrand and he wasn't exactly in the mood to fight that war, there was Micheal/Patrick but he still didn't know where they were (a fact he was fairly salty about considering the lengths he went to to lure Shaun to him as bait). This brings him to wondering "Hey what about that Stan Fredrick guy? The paranormal investigator Firebrand used to complain about, what ever happened to him?"

He looks into it and is honestly kinda excited by what he finds. This Stan guy, he's real entertaining to watch and looks like he would be great to mess with, and they share a common enemy, that old stick-in-the-mud. He's also fairly curious about the concept of corruptelams and since Stan is one after the events of '40. Amendments' he could do some research. He decides that if he's able to manipulate Stan just right, with promises of defeating slender, a happy ending where he gets to go back to a normal life with his wife, maybe even hinting at the possibility of being able to bring Stan fully back to life from his state as a corruptelam, he might just be able to have a bit of fun with this collapsing iteration, and he figures, just maybe, Stan could be powerful enough to complete his plan the way Vinnie was supposed to.

Stan on the other hand, is doing fairly okay, well, kinda. After the events of '40. Amendments' he basically went into hiding, traveling around the country to avoid staying in one place too long while also avoiding places like Maine, New Jersey, Florida, and Alabama, all to avoid being found by the monsters again and being pulled back into the fray, because he knows that as soon as his moster realized it missed a piece it'll come back to collect the rest of him. He's managed to stay safe, but he's become uncomfortable with his existence as a corruptelam, hating having to use the word to describe himself, and is depressed by his lonely existence, traveling from place to place in fear, never being able to see the people he cares about or get close to anyone. He's tired, but completely restless at the same time.

Habit brings Stan to his base of operations 'Severence' style while Stan is asleep, one of the few human comforts he's able to still enjoy as a corruptelam. Stan's sure at first that he's having a nightmare when he awakes in the unfamiliar house but quickly realizes that he's very much awake when confronted by Habit, who is very real and very much a threat. Stan is forced to confront the lack of humanity brought about by his existence as a corruptelam and the discomfort that that existence brings him. Habit, having done all of the possible research he could before hand, is perfectly prepared to emotionally manipulate Stan into joining him, and despite everything Stan has aligned himself with all these years and Habit's obvious pension for dishonesty he somehow allows himself to fall victim to this very blatant manipulation and joins Habit to defeat Slender in the hopes of returning to his old life with Susan without monsters and death looming over his shoulder the rest of his life.

Habit is absolutely ecstatic that his plan is working so easily, and even goes as far as agreeing to a couple of ground rules Stan wants set before they start working together (not actually planning on following them of course). They form a kind of symbiotic relationship while living under the same roof and planning their attack on slender, slowly learning more about eachother and the world around them from eachother. Stan learning more about the monsters that inhabit their world and the magic that surrounds them, Habit learning more about the psychology of humanity and Stan's general mindset in his strange situation. Habit comes to respect Stan in a strange way, and Stan gets to a point where he almost trusts Habit, at least not fearing him quite as much as he did before.

Stan finds himself surprised by how seemingly normal everything around them seems. They live like normal people, talk like normal roommates. If it wasn't for the fact that they were both supernatural creatures planning to take down a god like monster Stan might've almost found their situation comforting. But then, as always, there are those small things that remind him that things are, infact, not normal. The static behind Habit's voice, the way the air around him sparked with static electricity, the supernatural forces at play in the house, the feint smell of blood that stuck to Habit or certain rooms of the house at times. All of them would bring him back to reality and remind him of who he was working with and why he was doing so in the first place.

This all comes to a head with the release of 'The Drive West' and then 'Finding Fairmount'. Habit is struck with the realization that Vinnie is very much alive and has found the North Star, and now he has two very good candidates to finish the job and take down that old stick-in-the-mud.

Habit brings Vinnie back the same way he does in the iteration we witnessed. To say the least, Vinnie is surprised and a bit unsettled by Stan's presence. He encourages Stan to leave as soon as they get a second alone without Habit, he's noticed something different about the creature that's been inhabiting his friend and is worried about what exactly he has planned and what's going to go down. He knows this battle is his to fight, not Stan's. Stan isn't persuaded, he's determined to reap the rewards he has spend months working towards. There's no way he abandons everything now and goes back to his lonely existence empty handed after all this time he's spent dealing with Habit to get this far.

I don't want to spoil anything further than this because I have some plans for this AU in the future, but I will tell you that, to say the least, things do not end well.

[clarketomylexa]

That’s What Best Friends Do

“I love you,” she tells Lexa in earnest.

Lexa cocks her head, nose scrunched and finger curled into the spine of her book, marking the page. “Why.”

Clarke is taken back. Her and Octavia have been exchanging cheesy ‘I love yous’ since the second grade and there isn’t any real reason for it other than ‘that’s just what friends do’. She shrugs and purses her lips. “I don’t know,” she says plainly,  and amends the words Octavia tells her, “that’s just what best friends do.”

read on ao3

They meet in the first grade.

Lexa is sweet and Clarke thinks she is cool in her own quirky way.

She moves in on a Sunday and she stands on the other side of the picket fence as they talk, in a green sweatshirt with tiny, little pugs on it and one leg of her denim overalls rolled an inch higher than the other, rainbow piñata socks on show underneath scuffed up sneakers. Her hair is braided into a crown around her head—a style that Clarke files away among what Octavia likes to call a ‘fishtail braid’ and how to tie her shoelaces for later—and she has a scar above her top lip that Clarke imagines she got doing something exotic.

She’s so much cooler than the kids in her grade that Clarke almost wants to yell out how unfair it is that she won’t be going to her school in the Spring.

“But Oakside is so far away,” she laments, hands fidgeting with the Barbie doll tucked beneath her arm. Most of the kids her age in their cul-de-sac go to Ridgeview. Privately Clarke thinks Octavia is the only one worth talking to though, because she has it on good authority that Miller picks his nose and Bellamy just tries too hard.

She isn’t allowed to tell people that though so she watches Lexa shrug.

“My cousin goes there.”

Abby calls her from the porch a moment later and Clarke is forced to say goodbye to her new friend to wash up for sinner. She thrusts the topless Barbie over the fence in a form of peace offering—Lexa’s eyes bulge out of her head and Clarke wonders if she’s never seen a Barbie before so she makes a mental note to invite Lexa over to play with them—and tells Lexa with the utmost importance that she will talk to her tomorrow.

“I made a new friend today,” she tells Abby and Jake from her stool by the kitchen sink as she methodically washes her hands like the chart tacked to the wall tells her to. Jake says she’s a ‘sociable child’ which Clarke thinks is adult speak for ‘will talk to anything that moves’ because once she made friends with a duck in the park that had one leg and an eye that didn’t open. But if being ‘sociable’ means she can talk to Lexa again Clarke will accept the title gladly.

When she closes her eyes she can see Lexa’s pretty braid and the way her eyes aren’t quite one colour but not two either. Like what would happen in art class when Clarke mixed turquoise and forest green together on her plastic pallet because she was using what Miss Henry called ‘artistic license’. Maybe God or whatever Bellamy’s new theory on who created the universe used their ‘artistic license’ when they were making Lexa too.

It makes an awful lot of sense when she thinks about it.

“Clarke you’re wasting water,” Abby reminds her, ferrying pasta bake and green salad from the island to the table and Clarke dries her hands obediently and tucks her stool into the scullery to claim her chair.

“Her name is Lexa,” she continues. “She has piñatas on her socks. She lives next door.”

“The Shepard house sold?” Jake asks.

Abby nods. “I met the new owners at the open house last month. She’s a lawyer,” she looks at Jake in the way Clarke has noticed her parents do when they are talking about ‘parent things’. “I don’t think he’s in the picture anymore.”

“What picture?” Clarke pipes up, distracted as she uses the spoon to scrape the cheesy, bread crumb topping from the side of the dish. She likes drawing. Her favourite is when they finish their worksheets quickly on Friday afternoons and her teacher tells them to bring a piece of paper and a book to lean on, and takes them to the playground to draw the plants and the bugs. The boys in her class spend the time throwing sticks at each other but Clarke always finds a corner to tuck herself into and a lady bug to examine.

She likes the colours.

“Your Mom means that Lexa’s Dad doesn’t live with her anymore,” Jake explains. He takes the spoon from Clarke and scoops the stuck piece of pasta bake onto her plate before topping it up with salad and ignoring the way she frowns at the limp lettuce leaves.

Thinking on it, Clarke nods without ceremony. “If Lexa’s Mom’s a lawyer,” she posits, “can she arrest Nate for stealing my gel pens?”

Nate sits across from her in art class and has a habit of stealing her stationary when he thinks she isn’t looking because he likes colouring his notebooks with sparkles. It’s annoying because she refuses to tell on him and Abby says she doesn’t want to buy her more if they are going to continue to go missing so she has to resort to using Octavia’s ones without the good smelling scents.

“I don’t think that’s how it works, honey,” Abby laughs.

“That’s prob’ly for the best,” Clarke smacks her lips in thought, “he sticks them up his nose.”

Clarke invites Lexa over two days later to play with her Barbies and Lexa sits on her lawn in a bright pink long-sleeve with patches shaped like fried eggs on the elbows and socks that have milk and cookies on them.

When she jokes that Lexa is wearing her breakfast, Lexa smiles so wide Clarke thinks the world will split in two.

She invites Lexa to the lake three months later.

It’s a five hour drive to the house that has been in Jake’s family since he was Clarke’s age but it’s one that they take every twenty-second of June when Abby has cover at the surgery. The house is big and old, with a deck and a new paint job and big windows that overlook the lake. If you squint on a clear day, you can see the proud, white facades of the houses on the other side with their boat sheds, trellises and peaked roofs.

A jetty sits in the water and a tree clings to the bank with a tire-swing Jake had fastened to the middle-most branch—against Abby’s better judgement but she never can stop her husband when he has one of his ideas—so that when you stand as far as you can up the bank and let go you can fly out far enough not to touch the bottom of the lake. It’s Clarke’s favourite thing since she learnt how to do a handstand on the side of the garage.   

Not that Clarke has to sell it really, because after three months of Barbie Dream house in the front yard Lexa is nodding as soon as she mentions it would mean spending the summer with her. She explains diligently that there is a double bed in the room Clarke usually stays in—because Abby said that sometimes people don’t like sleeping in the same bed as other people—but that they can sleep in the bunk room instead, or Jake can pull the trundle bed out.

Lexa just nods.  

She is fairly sure that is she asked Lexa to jump off a cliff, she would walk straight off it, piñata socks and all but then Clarke would miss her too much.

She stands on the Griffin’s porch on the morning of the twenty-second, in cactus socks and second-hand short-alls—the pants cut down to her size—with funky patches sewn into the bib, thumbs working their way under the straps of her backpack as her mom thanks Abby profusely.   

She’s a pretty lady, with Lexa’s smile and round glasses who looks both flustered and relieved as she sweeps a hand over her daughter’s forehead and admits in a way Clarke knows she is supposed to pretend not to listen to that Lexa is having trouble making friends. Which Clarke thinks is ridiculous because Lexa is sweet and funny. She wears her hair like a crown and has been rolling the legs of her pants up at different lengths for three months because Clarke said she thought it was cool.

Clarke’s chest aches when Lexa won’t look up from the tips of her shoes and she thinks that Lexa’s mom mustn’t know what she’s talking about.

Clarke has been doing multiplication in math.

She knows that two and two is four, and three and three is six.

And if that’s true then she thinks Lexa and summer must equal something like ‘better than good’—but not ‘bestest’ because Lexa says ‘best’ is already a superlative.

Clarke doesn’t know what a superlative is, but Lexa can define words like ‘diversification’ so she thinks Lexa must be right.

They swim until water rattles in their ears and Jake teaches them to fish off the jetty after they stand on stools to help him pull the rods down from a shelf in the boat house, carefully showing them how to thread the bait onto the hook and cast the line into the water. When Lexa can’t get her hands around the line, face contorting unhappily, Jake heaves her onto his lap and repeats the process patiently until her frumpy frown straightens out.

They go out on the boat on hot days; Jake makes the boat corkscrew so that the water froths out in a V behind them, and when Clarke begs, he flings them writhing and giggling into the water by the strap of their life-jackets and fishes them out again while Abby rolls her eyes.

It’s in the quiet moments though, when the lie on the grass in damp swim suits and sunscreen-sticky skin, that Clarke discovers two very important things.

The first: Lexa does this thing when she is happy where she scrunches her eyes and throws her head back to laugh and it’s so ‘positively lovely’—which is another thing that Lexa says a lot—that Clarke makes it her mission to make her happy every day of her life.     

The second: every time Lexa is happy, it makes Clarke feel ten feet tall. It’s a feeling that starts in her toes, ticking the soles of her feet and shooting like growing pains up her legs until her stomach is hot and her cheeks are pink and she feels stronger than before. She is pretty sure that if she were to climb the tallest tree on the bank and let go, she would fly and not fall.

She thinks about it as she sits, chin sticky with lemonade popsicle on the jetty.

Lexa lays sprawled on her back, legs akimbo and arms stretched out into the sky. Her fingers are splayed and her whole face is contorted so that she can squint up at the sky and trap the sun in the circle of her fingers. She has freckles peeking out shyly from the bridge of her nose and when she notices Clarke staring, she drops her hand and smiles. It’s lopsided—like her pant legs and her socks—but it’s whole in a way that makes Clarke’s stomach flip-flop.   

“Want to see something cool?” she pokes Lexa in the soft of her ribs with her pointer finger.

Lexa nods, pushing herself up onto her elbows, intrigued, “uh huh.”

She folds her legs and cocks her head. Clarke makes sure she is watching before she picks her way up the jetty, where the grassy verge tangles with the roots and rocks.

The tire swing is tucked over a low branch—at her mom’s request because technically Clarke isn’t supposed to use it without ‘adult supervision’ but Lexa talks like an adult sometimes with her ‘therefore’ and ‘henceforth’, so she thinks it will be okay—and stands on a rock that juts out into the water with one leg, reaching out with the other until she can feel the tire under her fingers. Grinning, she pulls it into her hands and hooks a leg over the rope, taking three steps back and launching herself off the bank.

She lets go when the tire is just about to swing back like Jake taught her and surfaces just out of the shallows, hair in her eyes and heart thumping against the cage of her chest. When her ears unclog, Lexa is whooping and the jetty bends and gives beneath her uncoordinated victory dance.

“I can go higher,” Clarke garbles, mouth full of water.

Lexa’s whole face shoots upwards in disbelief. “Cannot,” she says.

“Can to,” Clarke insists, arms flailing as she doggy-paddles inelegantly to the shore.

Their life jackets are hooked over the railing of the deck and it crosses Clarke’s mind that maybe she should go and get hers, but if she does Abby will see her through the kitchen window and she gave them instructions not to go in the water when she went in to put lunch together.

She fishes the tire swing towards her and steps back as far as the rope will go this time, rooting her toes firmly in the soggy grass. Lexa is staring at her in wide-eyed apprehension but Clarke sets her brow until it furrows above her eyes and her stomach whooshes out from under her as she kicks off the bank, mud stuck between her toes.

It dawns on her when the air is whining in her ears that maybe this isn’t such a good idea.

Her foot catches and before she understand what is happening she is careening back towards the bank, heart stuck in her mouth.

Lexa lets out a sharp yelp, as Clarke’s hand slips. She lands face down in the dirt, the air punched out of her chest, still for a moment until pain blooms across her right cheek and a cry escapes her mouth before she can recognise it as hers. She hears a shout when her ears stop ringing, and rolls with a hard gasp onto her back as Lexa’s head and shoulders swim into her vision, awful worry crunching her face. She pets Clarke’s hair as Clarke blinks up at the sky, voice trembling as she coos ‘it’s okay, Clarke’ and ‘I’m here, Clarke’ in a high, thin voice that Clarke can’t help but think is less soothing and more unsettling, until the thick goo that seems to be sitting on her lungs seeps away and she can breathe.

But then her mom appears—all grumpy line in the place of her mouth—wiping her hands on her pants as she squats on the grass and Clarke thinks she is going to puke all over again.

“Mom,” she squeaks, whining as the right side of her face throbs hotly.

Abby takes one look at her—wet swimsuit and lank hair, blood pooling beneath her eye and Lexa’s hand squeezed tightly in a balled fist—and tsks, tucking a hand under her to sit her up and Clarke sways before falling into her chest, whining ‘it hurts’ into the soft neckline of her shirt.   

The first-aid kit is found and Abby asserts that it won’t need stitches.

She gets a talking to about not doing what she’s told—which Lexa stands through too, fingers wound through Clarke’s in a way that makes it hard to focus on why ‘insubordination’ is a bad thing—and she wears a hulk band-aid on the bony jut of her cheek for a week.

Lexa traces it with a feather-light finger as the lie, side-by-side in the double bed beneath the lazy turn of the ceiling fan in the room that has been Clarke’s since she was three years old. She wears llama pyjamas and is unapologetic about not wanting to sleep on the trundle bed Jake offers to make up for her, instead, pressing herself into Clarke to feel for the bump of the scab forming under the band-aid with a frown in the way that makes warmth curl under Clarke’s ribs.

“I did it on purpose,” Clarke says, eager for anything to get rid of the crunch between Lexa’s eyebrows. She wants to reach out and touch it but her hands shake so she doesn’t.

Lexa blinks slowly, “nuh uh,” she says without heat.

“Did to,” Clarke fists her hand under her chin and nudges Lexa’s nose with her own. She smells like bubble-gum toothpaste and the Griffin’s shower-gel and the wonderful notion that Lexa is hers wafts in her mind until she can’t help but smile. “Now I match you.”

Lexa reaches up to touch the shallow half-circle above her top lip like she’s forgotten about it, fingers tapping her teeth for a minute before she shakes her head. “Yours is cooler,” she says definitively, “I got mine falling off my bike,” she explains, “you got yours flying.”

Lexa smiles her world-splitting smile and Clarke thinks that while swimming and the fireworks Jake sets off for the Fourth of July are all well and good, bedtime might be better. It’s a secret she will take to the grave along with how she only pretends not to like broccoli but the stripy wallpaper and floral sheets of the room feel impenetrable and Clarke builds them a fortress out of cotton sheets and shadows cast from soft lamp-light; a place where Lexa is hers.

She wraps her fist around the top of the sheet and pull sit over their heads until they are breathing the same hot air.

“You’re my best friend,” she says wondering why her throat gets hot and tight as she does so. The words have been sitting on her chest since the day they met—a secret locked tight like the acorns she keeps in the sticker decorated box beneath her bed that is so true she feels it in her bones every time Lexa talks.

Lexa’s eyes go big. For a horrible second, Clarke thinks that it was the wrong thing to say and her stomach flip-flops but not in the way she has come accustomed to it doing when she is around Lexa—this flip-flop feels like the warning kind that comes before Clarke has to go in search for her mom in the middle of the night because she ate too much ice-cream in one go and it winds itself into a knot so tight the only way out is up. But then, Lexa mumbles ‘best friend’ under her breath like she wants to taste it and nods, smiling so warmly Clarke wants to wrap herself up in it like a blanket and never crawl out.

“I’ve never had a best friend,” she admits, cowering behind the words like they will change Clarke’s mind. When Clarke doesn’t reply, she peers at her intently and Clarke recognises the look that she gets when she is helping Clarke with her addition and subtraction worksheets. “Is it different from just being a friend?”

Clarke thinks about it for a moment.

“Yes,” she eventually lands on, “and no.” Lexa nods. “It just means more,” Clarke whispers, “it just makes it more special.”

“Okay, then,” Lexa decides.  “You’re my best friend too.”

Lexa is soft when she sleeps. With her admission she goes limp like pasta when you put it in the pot and Clarke manoeuvres her happily, all gangly limbs and knobbly joints, until she can tangle them together like a puzzle—the kind that isn’t meant to unravel—and when Abby comes to check on them, if it weren’t for the different colours of their pyjamas, she wouldn’t know where one started and the other ended.     

They talk during the year but it isn’t the same.

Lexa gives Clarke a pair of socks for her birthday with tiny little sloths embroidered into them—Clarke knows they cost her whole allowance and for that it means the world. She presents them with as much importance as when she knighted Clarke in the woods behind the lake house with an old plank of timber they found in the shed and she hangs over the fence every day after school with her lopsided smile and embroidered overalls, telling Clarke about the books she reads and her nine-year-old cousins shenanigans until her mom calls her in.

Sometimes, when Lexa’s mom is working she stays at Clarke’s on Saturday nights and on those days, Clarke can almost pretend it’s summer. They stand on stools in the kitchen side-by-side as Jake stirs the pasta sauce and lie in Clarke’s twin bed at night, watching the glow-in-the-dark stars. But Lexa is all angles unfortunately—she looks forlorn whenever someone mentions it to her, but Abby insists that she will grow into her lankiness—and while in summer it provides places for Clarke to tuck herself into comfortably, during the year, the positions she has to contort them into to make them fit clench at her chest.

She presses sloppy kisses to Lexa’s forehead to tries and convince herself otherwise, but Clarke comes to the conclusion that Lexa isn’t hers during the year when Lexa regretfully turns down an invitation to go bowling when Jake offers to take her, Octavia and Bellamy one Friday night.

She stares at her toes when she tells Clarke that her mom said no and she looks so much like the snail that Clarke found on the back path without its shell one morning that she pester her for more information.

Two weeks later, Clarke has to say no to backyard pizza with Lexa and her mom because of Octavia’s seventh birthday party—a slumber party that ends at eight when they all inevitably fall from their sugar highs that Lexa isn’t invited to despite Clarke’s best efforts.

Octavia doesn’t like Lexa. She says she’s ‘too colourful’ with her stripy shirts and rainbow patches even after Clarke explains her theory about ‘artistic license’ and Clarke thinks it’s a horrible reason not to like someone. When she asks her mom Abby tells her that Octavia is probably feeling left out and Clarke thinks that maybe, she isn’t Lexa’s during the year either.

The thought is so distressing, she lies awake with it at night, raggedy Ann doll squeezed under her armpit as she stares at the spot where the wall meets the ceiling. She twists her finger over the woollen curls.

Summer is four months away but suddenly, it becomes the center of her universe.

Clarke is nine years old and Abby has set them loose to play in the thatch of trees beside the house.

They pick through the leaves in shorts and t-shirts while their bathing suits dry over the railing and play catch with the neighbour kids until they are flush faced and breathless. Lexa wears popcorn socks beneath her sneakers and Clarke slips a hand, fingers splayed, over her mouth to mask the sound of her heavy breathing as they crouch in a heavy crush of limbs behind a tree. They are pressed so close together Clarke can feel the rapid pat-pat of her heart and when the Monty and Jasper run past in a flurry of kicked-up leaves and pine needles, Lexa licks a wet stripe across Clarke’s cupped palm with a fierce brand of mischief in her eyes until Clarke squeals away.

They spend the rest of the afternoon as the taggers but Clarke can’t find it in herself to complain.

The next day tag becomes boring and they think of a new game.

Clarke remembers the story book that she packed in preparation for the lazy hours her and Lexa were sure to spend lounging on the grass—a thick tome her grandmother gifted her for Christmas completed with the words ‘For Clarke’ scrawled inside the front cover in her thin, looped writing that Clarke equated to the threads of the spiderwebs that hung from the beams in the shed. It contains everything from fairy tales to folklore.

She lays it on the picnic table and points to the characters illustrated in battle garb, assigning one to each of them.

Clarke is the sky princess, thrust from her cloud-top home—Olympus, Lexa corrects her quietly, pointing to the illustration of a tall, columned building gleaming atop the point of a high mountain. Her inspiration comes from a short story about a boy named Hercules that Clarke knows nothing about except for the fact that she dimly remembers watching a Disney movie about a boy who was half-god and half-human and had an angry goat instead of parents. She drapes a strip of gauzy fabric over her shoulders rummaged from the depths of the house, a dress-up left over from her aunts’ childhood summers, and threads flowers through her hair, feeling suitably wispy and ‘effervescent’, which Lexa tells her means ‘like air’.

Lexa is the warrior queen whose territory Clarke falls unwittingly into. Clarke thinks it suits her—she peers at the illustration of the woman with braids and leather armour, riding a horse with a sword in her hand and battle-paint on her skin and the slight downward turn in the corner of her lips is so similar to the way Lexa’s face contorts sometimes and she congratulates herself for putting two and two together. Ignoring the short yelps when she mistakenly tugs a stray curl, she clumsily threads Lexa’s hair into a braid the way Octavia taught her at recess. The outcome is less than good. Lexa bears more resemblance to the mangy cat that stalks the neighbourhood begging from scraps than a warrior-queen but she smudges wads of dirt over her eyes to fix it ignoring the way everything inside her goes warm and melty when she smiles—like the s’mores the make in the fire-pit at night in when Lexa is in pyjamas that smell like the Griffin’s detergent and socked feet.

Jasper and Monty grow restless, encroaching on the bubble Clarke has built for them with bored whines and Clarke thinks it’s lucky that Santa Claus never gave her a baby brother for Christmas two years ago because she got Lexa instead and Lexa smells much better than a boy. She assigns them characters anyway; the palace guards, and they search the ground for suitable ‘spears’ wielding gnarled sticks with as much menace as nine-year-olds can.

She kneels before Lexa’s throne—a fork in the twisted branches of a tree—with a circlet made from daisy chains in her hair, head bowed and launching into a wistful monologue of her harrowing journey to the ground, complete with fierce dragons, and a sea-witch who tried to barter unsuccessfully for her voice, while Monty and Jasper level their sticks at her in mock-fighting stances.

Back straight, Lexa blinks at her behind her crude war paint and Clarke thinks time stops.

Later—after they are called into lunch by Abby—they lie, sprawled out in the grass in the sticky heat of the day. Lexa has her bathing suit on beneath her shortalls instead of a t-shirt and her hair has dried in soft corkscrew curls around her hairline so that if she wasn’t peering so intently down at the book she has spread out before her, Clarke would reach out and wind one around her finger.

Instead, she feels like her body is humming with energy she doesn’t know what to do with.

Jake always likes to explain his work to her, he sits her on his lap and draws out maps of electrical circuits, explaining the mechanics of them and Clarke feels oddly similar to an overloaded circuit right now. Like she is plugged in to too many things and it’s making her unable to sit still.

Fingers splayed on the grass, she kicks up into a handstand, grinning at how Lexa looks upside down and the way she mouths the words she’s reading like it will help her remember them better. When she stands back up, the blood rushes back to her head and she peers over Lexa’s shoulder.

“What does ‘fealty’ mean?”

The word sits on the top line of the page in neat, Times New Roman font and it tastes so elegant rolling over Clarke’s tongue she can’t help but ask.

Lexa cranes her neck to look up at her, squinting one eye against the glare of the sun. A swathe of sunburn tints her cheeks red. “It’s like a promise,” she poses like a question, grappling for the right explanation, “or a vow.” Clarke cocks her head. “It’s like when you make a promise to someone,” she tries again, pushing herself up onto her knees so that from her angle, Clarke blocks the sun, “like, ‘I’ll love you ‘till the end of time’.”

Clarke has to rally herself against the sudden burst of dizziness that hits her in the chest with the force of the tee-ball bat in gym class. Lexa kneels in front of her, freckled-nose and braided hair, and if Clarke thought time had stopped before, now it ceases to exist entirely. The world has become just them; this sticky-sweet moment that has wound itself so eagerly around her chest.

Fourth grade science class has brought rudimentary explanations of the universe—how everything they touch is made up of things called ‘atoms’ and how when she looks up at the sky, she has to imagine the biggest thing she can possibly comprehend and then quadruple it and it won’t be nearly a one billionth of what is really out there. To Clarke it doesn’t make an awful lot of sense, the vastness of it all makes her head spin but the one thing she does understand is how the earth rotates around the sun because it’s similar to the way she thinks she rotates around Lexa.

“I love you,” she tells Lexa in earnest.

Lexa cocks her head, nose scrunched and finger curled into the spine of her book, marking the page. “Why.”

Clarke is taken back. Her and Octavia have been exchanging cheesy ‘I love yous’ since the second grade and there isn’t any real reason for it other than ‘that’s just what friends do’. She shrugs and purses her lips. “I don’t know,” she says plainly,  and amends the words Octavia tells her, “that’s just what best friends do.”

Lexa doesn’t come with them in the summer between sixth and seventh grade.

With help from a contact at work her mom gets her to the top of the waiting list for a sleep away camp in the Maine and Lexa pulls up the website on the Griffin’s computer in the kitchen on Saturday night, scrolling through page after page of girls in tennis whites and soffe shorts, playing field hockey and toasting marshmallows around a campfire.

“I don’t really want to go,” Lexa says quietly, nose wrinkling at Clarke’s silence. Behind them Jake dices vegetables for tacos and a bespectacled Abby checks through Clarke’s book report for spelling eras but the comforting familiarity does nothing to stop Clarke souring at the blindside. “My mom thinks it will be good for me.”

Clarke is getting tired of what Lexa’s mom thinks will be good for her.

The woman is sweet and kind. She has heard her parents talking about how she ‘does her best’ for Lexa which she knows is what adults say when they are commiserating the hardships of single-parenthood but in her worst moments Clarke wants to shake the woman until she understands that Lexa’s quirks don’t make her ‘unique’ in the way that people talk about people who are different, they make her special.

So what if Lexa likes books better than people? Clarke likes girls better than boys and nobody is up in arms about it.

Sometimes it feels like Lexa’s mom aches for her to fit in more than Lexa does.

She can’t stop Lexa from going though, and the morning before they would usually leave for the lake sees her standing on Lexa’s front porch instead, with a horribly permanent pout on her mouth that she can’t shake. Lexa stands before her in sneakers, navy shorts and a tee with her camps logo printed on the front in bold white letters, her hair in two, tight braids and she looks so startlingly un Lexa-like stripped of her embroidered socks and circle of braids that when Clarke winds her arms around her neck in a dramatic goodbye, she finds herself mouthing a silent prayer to whomever is watching to put her best-friend back together again.

Hooking her chin over Lexa’s shoulder Clarke makes her promise to write weekly, hating the tears that seem to be squeezing their way out from beneath her eye-lids, and Lexa swears a solemn vow to do so, nose tucked into the crook of Clarke’s neck.

When it’s time to let go Clarke reluctantly untangles herself and retreats back to her own front yard, pressing herself against the white fence and waving vigorously as Lexa’s mom loads her and her trunk into the car and the Sedan inches its way out of the driveway.

“You’ll see her in August,” Abby reminds her, arms tucked over her daughter’s shoulders, “we can buy some stamps and you can write to her whenever you like.”

Clarke nods dumbly, trying not to let the whole affair feel like an awful betrayal.

When they make it to the lake two days later after a near silent five hour drive, it rains for the first time in as long as Clarke can remember.

In lieu of her best-friend, Abby has extended the invitation to her sister-in-law and her kids and Clarke stares at her cousins—five-year-old twins and a nineteen-year-old who is more interested in her boyfriend who insists on calling Clarke ‘squirt’ at age twelve-and-a-half than she is in Clarke—wondering how she is supposed to bestow the honour of her summers on people who are so clearly unqualified.

She wallows in the absurdity of it all as she is relegated to the bunk-room, watching with her stomach churning and a hot, angry thing she doesn’t care to understand clawing at her ribs as her Eden is invaded by her cousin and her Air Jordan wearing boyfriend with his stupid, unbrushed mop of hair. And even though Clarke is relatively sure a five story drop onto concrete wouldn’t do any damage to the twins—they’re dim-witted at the best of times and they paw at the t shirt Lexa bought her for her birthday like it’s something they are allowed to touch—her aunt decides it’s best if Clarke takes the top bunk, despite the fact that puberty is beginning to bring her her promised growth spurt and folding herself into the top bunk is a feat worthy of a contortionist.

The bout of water-logged days mean the boat stays in the shed and the twins grow restless in the sticky-wet heat. Clarke takes it upon herself to commandeer the role of ‘moody teenager’ two years too early and sprawls out on the wooden floors near the closed glass doors and punches the buttons of her Nintendo DS until Mario stops obeying her commands as the rain beats at the window panes. She thinks it’s pathetic fallacy, or whatever her English teacher had said when she explained the way authors use the ‘external environment’ to show a characters ‘internal emotions’, because if she could peel back a layer of herself and peer into her soul, she is sure the unhappy, slate-grey of the lake is what it would look like.

She hopes it isn’t raining on Lexa too.

They cut their trip short and Clarke is sitting with her chin in her hands when Lexa returns.

Her ponytail sticks to the nape of her neck where it is secured with an elastic, remaining stubbornly in her t-shirt and shorts even though Aurora invited them around for pizza and too cool off in the Blake’s pool—even the promise of seeing their newly acquired black Labrador puppy wasn’t enough of a bribe to get her to give up her post.

Her and Lexa have been exchanging letters once a week without fail over the eight weeks of Lexa’s session, detailing each other in on the smallest things. So much so that Clarke thinks she is the one who has been rotating through six activities a day and sounded off to sleep by Taps at precisely nine-twenty but it hasn’t been nearly enough. It’s stupid, but she needs to see Lexa again with her own eyes, as if to make sure she hasn’t disappeared into thin-air like a product of her imagination.

“Clarke!”

When she looks up, Lexa is standing three feet away from her, tanned and slightly breathless. Her mom’s Sedan is still inching its way into the drive, which means Lexa took a flying jump from the passenger door while the car was still in gear to find her. She’s wearing tiny, navy running shorts and her camp tee—slightly faded from almost daily washing and eight-weeks’ worth of sun—hangs off her teenage frame, knotted at her hip so that the hem rides up to reveal a long triangle of skin that makes a hot, aching thing build in the pit of Clarke’s stomach. Instead of deciphering it, she propels herself from her crouch on the porch to fling her arms around her best-friend’s neck, instantly recognising the way Lexa seems imperceptibly broader and stronger in her arms. Her shoulder blades flex beneath the press of Clarke’s hands as she draws her desperately closer and when Clarke prods a finger at the offending strip of skin at her waistband—teasing her mercilessly about her bare midriff—gone is the softness Clarke usually finds there when she curls into her in their shared bed at night.

Instead she is long limbs and lean muscle, her cheeks are dusted with sunburn and her hair is lighter, but the worst? Her freckles are on show and this time it isn’t Clarke who has put them there, but a girl by the name of Costia who’s neatly printed name is in the center of those scrawled on the back of Lexa’s shirt in permanent marker.

They lie on the mesh of Clarke’s trampoline after Lexa has hauled her trunk up to her room—her mom gave her four hours before she had to return next door and sort out her laundry—with cans of diet coke sweating in their palms as Clarke recounts the story of walking in on her cousin and her boyfriend being more intimate than strictly necessary on a family-friendly vacation.

“I almost barfed,” she giggles heartily, “I wanted to end it all right there but my mom talked me down from the ledge.”

“Oh, the dramatics,” Lexa sighs, grinning. She takes a sip then looks at Clarke seriously. “Was it really that bad without me?”

“I think you know the answer to that,” Clarke says softly. It wasn’t bad so much as it was empty, completely void of all of the things that made summer summer and Clarke has been left with the odd feeling that she is returning to school having not had a holiday at all.

Lexa screws her nose up and nods, “if it makes you feel better camp sucked too.”

“No it didn’t,” Clarke laughs, curling onto her side, “but thank you for making me feel better.”

Lexa piques a brow. “Are you call me a liar?” she accuses, feigning a hurt look. When Clarke shrugs, she flings a leg over her hips and pins her to the taut mesh of the trampoline with her arms by her ears and Clarke tries not to gasp at the electric shocks that skitter across her skin when they touch. Instead, she collapses into laughter, tipping her head to the side as Lexa knees her beneath the ribs, demanding ‘take it back, take it back’ in a low, teasing voice.

“Fine!” Clarke gaps, writhing against the assault, “fine!” She paws at the smooth length of Lexa’s thighs where they sit nestled against her waist. “I believe you.”

Clarke has a hard time pinpointing exactly what happens next.  

Somehow she raises her head and simultaneously, Lexa goes to lower hers. The result is a cacophonous collision of foreheads and noses; Clarke opens her mouth to whine in pain and finds a mouthful of Lexa’s bottom lip instead, eyes bulging as her pulse skyrockets to a speed she thinks surely signals a cardiac arrest.

Lexa makes a noise that resembles something close to an ‘oof’ then her fingers come to Clarke’s cheek in concern. “I’m sorry,” she smiles ruefully—it’s the same lopsided, word splitting smile she has always had and it does something to quell the stagnant uneasiness that has taken root in Clarke’s spine, if not the smouldering build up of who knows what in the pit of her stomach—and runs her thumb in a practiced motion over the short, white scar beneath Clarke’s eye.  

“It’s okay,” Clarke whispers. She fiddles with the edge of the tie-dyed bandana that is wrapped and knotted around Lexa’s wrist, trying not to focus on the impending sense of doom she feels as her body betrays her.

[ao3bronte]

ML Fluff Month

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Sommeil - Chapter 3 Bed Sharing

Art by: @shaniartist

et si je compte et je compterai pour toi / je te conterai mes histoire/ et je compterai les moutons, pour toi

Marinette is so done.

Slumped over on her mattress and turned away from her mannequin purely out of spite, Marinette wallows in her defeat by binge watching Laura Rossignol’s new reality TV show for a second time on Netflix because suits suck . She hates them, she hates everything about them and they’re stupid and awful and they need to all go away.

Grumbling death threats under her breath, Marinette mashes her fingers against the keyboard of her laptop much harder than necessary and goes to start the next episode.

knock knock knock

Startled, Marinette freezes and looks up at her ceiling, her ears perking up as she recognises the telltale pitter patter of paws over her head. She checks the time and gapes at the numbers on her bedside table with betrayal for several moments before scrambling to her feet and pushing open the trapdoor above her head with a mighty shove, “Chat?”

“Hey,” he greets her, his soft smile belying the absolute exhaustion sagging beneath his eyes, “A little late to be watching trashy television isn’t it?”

Marinette opens her mouth to argue but can’t quite find it in herself to say otherwise, the 01:13 on her bedside alarm clock blinking up at her innocently.

“I hope I’m not bothering you,” Chat amends quickly, taking her silence as something other than what it is and Marinette quickly vies to amend the situation, snatching his wrist without thinking in the hopes of dragging him down.

“No no, Chat, come in,” she tugs twice more and flops back down onto her mattress, watching quietly as Chat follows her through the entrance and latches it back up against the November chill, “I was just trying to de-stress before I went to bed.”

“De-stress?” Chat asks, holding her gaze. They’d usually have travelled down to the main floor of her bedroom by now but Marinette hardly has the energy, let alone the tenacity to face her abject failure, “I could use a little bit of that too.”

“Rough trip?”

“The roughest,” Chat scooches and promptly drops back, stretching his lanky limbs down passed the length of her bed frame, “After ten days, I’m just glad to be home.”

Marinette closes her laptop and tucks it beneath her pillow, “Want to tell me about it?”

“Maybe later,” Chat rolls onto his side to face her, “I’d rather hear about you.”

“Not much to talk about really,” she shrugs and there’s no lie in her words. There hadn’t been a single akuma attack in his ten day absence and the only action she’d gotten was a break-in at the Louis Vuitton store on les Champs-Elysées , “It’s been pretty quiet here. I’ve been working on my courses mostly as well as my advanced track design project.”

“And how’s that coming along?”

Marinette sticks out her lower lip, “Terribly. I hate suits.”

Chat’s eyes light up instantly, “Are these the same suits you used my measurements for?”

“Mmhmm,” she sulks, crossing her arms across her chest, “I can’t get the inner lining right.”

“Want me to take a look at it?”

Marinette’s eyebrows disappear beneath her bangs, “What?”

“Remember when I said I knew some things about fashion?” he says, referencing one of the many conversations they’d shared via Snapchat while he was away, “Well, I happen to know a few things about men’s fashion specifically, so I might be able to help. What do you say?”

“It’s okay,” she responds automatically, “I’ll figure it out eventually, there’s no need to—”

“No really,” Chat interrupts, launching himself off the bed platform soundlessly before she can so much as protest, “I want to help. All you do is help me all the time, so it’s only fair.”

“Wait!” she scrambles down the ladder after him, “Stop! Don’t—it’s not done! It’s not good and it needs so much work and—”

But Chat’s already got his claws beneath the white notch lapels, “This is actually really well done Marinette.”

Sputtering, she skids to a stop, “ Whaa? ”

“No really, look,” Chat peels open the unfinished white floral jacquard suit jacket and peers beneath, “This woven-in tapestry-style design is incredibly on trend right now, I mean, this is a pre-summer line right? This could show up on a Chanel runway right now and even Anna Wintour wouldn’t know the difference.”

If Marinette wasn’t short circuiting already, she certainly is now.

“But I see where the issue is. It looks like you’re off by a few centimetres on the lining, which is why the internal pockets are bunching. If you cut off a little here,” Chat points up towards the lapels again, “and here, you should be able to fix the issue. Want me to take it out for you?”

There’s a haze of pink and sparkles flooding her bedroom as Chat holds up his index finger, his claw as sharp as his smile, “Built in seam ripper. I’ll have this out in a jiff. Man, this is so 18th century chic, I can’t believe you made this, except I can because you’re awesome but still, this is on par with some of the things I’ve seen which is like, haute haute couture…”

Chat is still talking but Marinette is already gone, slack jawed and dazzled and horrified all at the same time as Chat works meticulously, expertly slicing through the thread she’d used to adhere the silk lining to the floral linen fabric that made the garment so unique. The silk loostens and Chat plucks it from the air just as it’s about to hit the floor, handing it over to her with a flourish, “See this part? When you fold it, you can see where your measurements are off. Cons of hand cutting fabrics but hey, could be worse right?”

“Uh…” Marinette blinks down at the proffered fabric and back up at him, repeating the gesture several times before scooping her jaw off the hardwood, “T-thanks.”

“No worries,” Chat replies but he’s looking a little unhinged himself, “I’d cataclysme it for you but I think you’d have better luck with scissors.”

“Y-yeah uh,” she stutters, taking the fabric from his fingers. Her bare hands brush against his glove just for a moment and she can feel the heat of him through his suit in a way she’s never paid attention to before, “Let me uh, let me just get my scissors.”

“Sure,” he says as she turns towards her desk, “It really is an awesome jacket. I kind of wish I had one myself.”

Marinette tries to quell the blush flooding her cheeks at the compliment and fails miserably, “You can have it when I’m done with it if you want.”

“Really?” she squeezes her eyes shut at the brightness in his voice and with a quick mental check, she turns herself back around to face him, “I would love that. I have the perfect white trousers for it.”

“You do?” Marinette desperately tries to recover, the weight of her fabric scissors comforting in her hands, “What do they look like?”

“Well, they’re slim fit so they’ll go with the way this jacket is cut so close to the body,” Chat rubs his thumb along the flowers at the bottom of the jacket, tracing them upwards until they thin to white near the breast pockets, “I love that, by the way. Last year was nothing but chunky, oversized silhouettes.”

“Oh, I remember,” Marinette still can’t believe she’s having an actual conversation about fashion with Chat (of all people!) , “Everyone looked like they were wearing empty sacks of flour. They were nicely adorned, but they were still kind of...well, ugly .”

“Right?” Chat snickers as he fetches her pin cushion, “Anyway, these trousers have a fleur de lys pattern on them, kind of like an overlay, but it’s so subtle that it won’t distract from this awesome flower pattern on the jacket. Oh, and shoes! I picked up these loafers recently, they’re black and white and have these fun little shark teeth tassels at the front. They’d be totally unexpected, or I could just go with the plain black ones, or the steel gray…”

Again, Marinette finds herself somewhat lost in the surrealism of it all as Chat continues to prattle on about haute couture, the latest designs and what have you. She’s watching him more often than not, enraptured with the way his arms move as he speaks, the way his eyes, although tired, light up with an unusual passion that has nothing to do with the typical flirting and carrying on. It’s bizarre and amazing all at the same time, watching Chat talk about fashion and move and act like an actual human being, not just some casanova wrapped in leather that she’s become so used to as Ladybug.

Finishing the last cut, Marinette brings the silk lining back over to the mannequin and chatters back and forth with him about the other finished pieces in her collection, content to work together as he hands her the pins one by one to put the lining back in place. Within only a few minutes, the jacket is finished and the two of them step back together in tandem, their arms brushing as they take in the fruits of their labour.

“I’ll sew it in tomorrow and make all the finishing touches,” Marinette says, beaming at the jacket before turning her attentions to Chat, “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Chat replies and his smile inspires that addictive feeling again, that familiar aura of pink and sparkles conspiring to steal her breath away, “What do you say to a little celebration for a job well done?”

Marinette sucks in a breath and tries to focus, “What exactly do you have in mind?”

He shrugs, “I don’t know. We could watch a movie? Relax? I’m kind of beat.”

“I can tell,” Marinette just barely resists the urge to brush her thumb across the bags beneath his eyes, “Come on, my laptop’s up there.”

“On your bed?” he asks, his voice just barely cracking and Marinette wonders for a moment if he too is finding this all a little surreal, “Are you sure?”

“Of course,” Marinette responds, staunchly ignoring the flutter in her abdomen as she scales the ladder, “We’re friends right? Chez moi, c’est chez toi, but only if you’re comfortable.”

“No no,” Chat immediately recovers, leaping up to where he’d been sprawled out on her mattress only a half hour before, “It’s good. I just...I don’t think I’ve ever...um, try not to take this weirdly.”

“I already am,” she says, peering at him strangely. It’s his turn to blush now, his glance pointedly fixed at her window across the way.

“I’ve just...you know, before all of this,” he gestures between them, still looking away, “I’ve never actually done the whole sleepover thing and...yeah.”

Marinette blinks several times and tries to get her tired brain to piece together whatever the hell he’s trying to say, “Wait, you’ve never had a sleepover before?”

“I guess?” Chat fidgets nervously, “I mean, I do all the time with you so not anymore but before that...no.”

“No sleepovers as a kid?”

“Wasn’t allowed.”

“And you never crawled in with your parents at night when you were little?”

“I tried once,” he leans back, propping himself on her pink kitten pillow, “That’s when they started locking my door at night.”

Outraged, Marinette barrels through myriad of emotions, none of them good, “Your parents locked you in your room at night?!”

“It’s not so bad,” he shrugs nonchalantly, still staring a hole into the opposite wall, “I got really good at ignoring thunderstorms after a while. Now I can sleep right through them.”

“But what if there was a fire or something?!”

“Good thing I’m Chat Noir then,” he taps the surface of his ring, “I can just jump out the window whenever I like.”

“I’m…” Marinette shakes her head, “I’m kind of mad at your parents right now.”

“Don’t be. I grew up purrrfectly fine, right Purrincess?”

Marinette knows a deflection when she sees one and let’s it slide, if only to avoid the unsettling truth he’d been laying out for her, “I don’t know about that. I’d say you could use another trip to the vet.”

“Meow-ch,” Chat brings a hand to his chest in mock offense, finally turning towards her, “Do you and Ladybug just sit around and come up with ways to insult me?”

“Nooooo” Marinette flounders for a second, overcompensating with a wild wave of her hand, “Ladybug and I? No no, you’re just a really easy target.”

“Am I?” he looks almost contemplative for a moment, “I’ll have to try and up my game then.”

“Good luck with that,” Marinette brings up her family’s Netflix account on her laptop and turns the screen towards him, “Any preferences?”

“What’s in the new releases?”

“Let’s look,” she clicks on it and brings up the list, “I haven’t seen any of these before.”

“Me neither. I don’t really have time to watch movies anymore.”

“It just takes so long,” Marinette replies emphatically, settling down beside him and she can practically feel his body heat coming off of him in waves, “I’ve got way too much to do so I mostly just play TV shows and listen to what’s happening.”

“I do the same thing!” Chat exclaims, thumping his fist against the mattress for emphasis, “We have a lot more in common that I realised.”

“We do,” she murmurs back just as Chat yawns, his sharp but still subtle fangs glinting off the light of her lamp, “You sure you can stay up to watch a movie?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” he nods his head, his eyes dropping just a little as he rolls towards her, “I actually didn’t sleep that badly while I was away thanks to all the gifts you gave me.”

“I’m glad you liked them,” she turns to smile at him only to find his nose just a few centimetres away, “I uhh...I mean, I’m just happy I could help.”

“Those bath bombs were the best,” he continues, seemingly impervious to the sudden closeness and Chat yawns again, stretching his limbs in a move so catlike that Marinette almost has to pinch herself to keep from commenting, “Everything was the best. You’re the best.”

His eyes begin to drift shut and Marinette’s mouth opens and closes a few times, trying to fight for the right response but it’s already too late, his breaths leveling, his lips parting ever so slightly as he sinks deeper into sleep against her pillow. Marinette has to bring her hands to her mouth just to keep herself from wheezing, or crying, or doing whatever it is her throat is doing because holy hell, has he always looked like this? She’s seen him fall asleep in front of her dozens of times, his eyes closing, his body going slack against her chaise, his head lolling over to one side. She’s used to that Chat, the puddle of grown up boy wrapped in magic leather Chat, the charity case all tucked in beneath her pink flannel blanket Chat.

But now?

He’s snuffling.

Ohhh, he’s being so damn adorable and she just wants to touch him so she does, finally giving into those god awful desires that seemed to have literally sprung up out of nowhere. Since when did she think he was cute ? And how did that happen? Yeah, she’d been indulging herself with the purring and the petting most nights, which hopefully he’d never find out about, but…??? It’s all just coming up question marks in her head, these feelings, these urges to just reach out and brush her fingers through his hair and yes here comes the purr, the one she's so fond of, the one that turns them both to goo if she’s going to be honest with herself. She loves the way it seems to vibrate through her mattress, making her entire body seem to thrum like lemon sherbets, the feeling effervescent on her skin and through her senses. She closes her eyes and revels in it, loses herself in it and suddenly she’s out like a light within minutes, her fingers still buried in his hair.

~

It’s just barely dawn outside when she begins to feel herself stir, roused from a cocoon of warmth so comfortable she’s loathe to part from it. She curls closer, burrowing deeper and there's a breeze on her cheek as humid as a July evening by the Seine, and for a moment, Marinette imagines herself being back there, her legs swinging freely from the flying buttresses of Notre Dame de Paris, not a care in the world as her partner sits beside her, lays beside her, their thoughts and voices intertwined—

There's a sudden, startling sensation, the slightest pressure gentle and featherlight against her skin. It's on her brow, pressing there like a promise, returning once more on the tip of her nose. It feels good, she thinks, and she leans into it, soft and warm and safe and comfortable in an embrace she can't quite decipher yet but god , does it ever feel good.

She fades out again as the pressures cease only to be roused again by a weight, this time against her lips, dry and warm and barely moving. It's over before she knows it, the light rush of breath against her cheek fleeting and she chases it instinctively, curling into it, hopelessly tangled in bedsheets and warmth as she loses herself to the throes of sleep once again.

“A plus, princesse.”

There’s a shift in her mattress and the warmth and weight is suddenly gone to the tune of her trapdoor’s latch closing shut, a quiet sound that’s just enough to wake her. She opens her eyes just as her sleep addled brain catches up with the rest of her body, her fingers finding their way to her lips.

Did he just...kiss me?

[fyeahfantasticfour]

Can you tell me the backstory behind Nathaniel Richards(Reed's father) and if possible maybe Franklin Storm(Sue and Johnny's father) as well?

Sure! First Franklin Storm because he appears in significantly fewer comics and is less complicated than the time-traveling lothario who is Nathaniel Richards.

Franklin was a famous neurosurgeon whose life fell apart after his wife died in a tragic car accident. He performed the surgery on her and failed to save her life, and of course blamed himself for all of it. (I suspect the sliding timescale would erase the surgery part at the very least – there’s no way that anyone nowadays would allow a man to operate on his own wife, especially if he’d just survived a terrible car accident.)

After his wife died, he began to drink heavily and gambled away his family’s entire fortune, leaving Johnny and Sue penniless, and, when a loan shark showed up to collect on one of his debts and pulled a gun, Franklin attacked him. The gun went off while they were struggling over it, the man died, and Franklin was sent to prison for murder, partially because he was too despondent to try to defend himself. 

Sue told Johnny their father died, and they were sent to live with their Aunt Marygay Jewel Dinkins. Sue kept lying to Johnny for YEARS about their father’s death, which is, uh, pretty messed up. There was never any real emotional fallout between Johnny and Sue over the revelation that she’d been lying to him for so long, even though there should have been.

Cut for length.

This is the backstory we get in Fantastic Four v1 #32:

How old Johnny and Sue were when their mother died and father went to jail has varied significantly over time as canon has shifted, but Johnny was likely extremely young at the time.

But, honestly, Franklin Storm checked out of being an actual father to Sue and Johnny long before he was stuck in a jail cell – even before his wife died. In Fantastic Four v1 #528, Reed speculates that Sue’s invisibility may have been a byproduct of feeling neglected by her bickering, indifferent parents:

He was never a good father.

In Fantastic Four v1 #31, Sue sees a newspaper headline saying her father escaped from jail – apparently, however, no one in the press had connected the dots between her and Johnny and their father:

Sue doesn’t mention any of this to Johnny because he still thinks his father is dead.

We’re never given an explanation for why he escaped, but when Sue’s badly injured, he shows up at the hospital and operates on her, thus saving her life and sort of, supposedly, redeeming himself for failing to save his wife. This, by the way, is how Johnny finds out his father is still alive.

Franklin operates on Sue, saves her life, and immediately gets carted back off to prison, where he’s attacked and replaced by the Super Skrull, who then escapes and goes around masquerading as him, dressed as a guy called the Invincible Man. The FF, of course, are sent to take him down, but Johnny and Sue don’t know what to do because they don’t want to hurt their father:

Reed figures out he’s an impostor, so he contacts the Skrulls and arranges a prisoner exchange – the Super Skrull for Franklin. When Franklin is teleported home in the Super Skrull’s place, however, he warns them all to stand back, rolls over, and thus shields them all from the bomb that’d been strapped to his chest. Somehow, he lives long enough to give a dying speech to his children about how he always loved them and how he hopes this all redeems him for having been a terrible father:

So, yeah, that’s the story of how Johnny and Sue had to watch their father die.

I also wonder how much of Johnny’s personality was influenced by his dad – when he’s hurting, he drinks and parties, the sacrifice play is his go-to…and, look, I’m not convinced that there isn’t a lengthy history of chronic depression in Johnny’s family that Johnny inherited.

On to Nathaniel!

Nathaniel Richards began working, in the 1950s, as a member of the Brotherhood of the Shield alongside Howard Stark. They were told that they had to abandon their families and both agreed. Howard had no qualms whatsoever, even arranging to have his death faked, but Nathaniel swore he’d come back to his son someday. Given the fact that Howard says “them,” I’m assuming Nathaniel’s wife, Evelyn, was still alive, meaning Reed had to have been younger than seven at the time, since that’s how old he was when she died. This means also that Nathaniel was likely gone a lot during Reed’s childhood.

This is from S.H.I.E.L.D. v1 #5:

….I’m beginning to wonder if Nathaniel was even around when Evelyn died. Nathaniel’s basically the guy who chose science and the greater good over family – i.e., everything Reed haters accuse Reed of being when he isn’t, and that’s in direct reaction to his father. Reed tries so hard to be a good, present father because his father wasn’t.

We know that when Nathaniel visited Reed in college a few years later, Nathaniel acted as though he hadn’t seen Reed since Reed was a child – probably since he began working for the Brotherhood. This is from Hickman’s run – Fantastic Four v1 #581:

We find out in Fantastic Four v1 #271 that Nathaniel disappeared for good about three years before the spaceflight crash and left Reed two billion dollars, which Reed used up to fund his rocket. Reed hadn’t seen him at all since then.

He clearly knew he was going to be gone for a while.

Reed and the FF find Nathaniel’s time platform in his lab at the Richards family estate, and Reed realizes that his father’s blueprints are incorrect and that he must have been shunted off into an alternate universe, so they go to rescue him. In Fantastic Four v1 #272, they discover that there’s a cruel warlord who has taken over the alternate Earth, who Reed realizes, much to his dismay, is his father. 

Yeah, this account of Reed’s childhood doesn’t entirely match up with what later writers did with Nathaniel.

But anyways, it turns out Nathaniel’s been fooled by his wife, who is actually the warlord and had been using Nathaniel’s scientific knowledge to conquer the planet. Nathaniel eventually decides to stay on this parallel world and try to make amends, and also raise his baby son, Reed’s half-brother. It turns out at the end of this issue – which is expanded upon in Avengers v1 #269 – that this reality is actually the one Kang the Conqueror is from, and that Kang, whose real name is Nathaniel Richards, is actually Nathaniel’s descendant and/or son, and thus distantly related to Reed or his half-brother. 

So Nathaniel basically went to an alternate world and started a new family, away from Reed.

Nathaniel doesn’t return until Fantastic Four v1 #375, but when he does it’s just to cause trouble. This is the characterization of Nathaniel that’s stuck. He cares about his family, but he’s almost ruthlessly practical when it comes to protecting the timestream, and he’ll lie, manipulate, and deceive his family to make that happen. Reed and Sue discover that in Fantastic Four v1 #376, when Nathaniel kidnaps his grandson in order to prevent some apocalyptic future from occurring.

Franklin returns moments later…but instead of a 5yo, he’s a teenager, raised in the future by his grandfather. Reed and Sue discover they’ve missed his entire childhood, and Sue, for one, is livid and refuses to believe it.

The FF, understandably, have a very difficult time forgiving Nathaniel for this. They mostly think of him as manipulative, self-serving, and largely uninterested in his family.

When Reed is seemingly killed in action, Nathaniel shows up for the reading of his will…and Ben clearly despises and distrusts him. From Fantastic Four: Unplugged #2:

Despite Nathaniel’s mistreatment of Reed, Reed keeps seeking his approval and love, but Nathaniel consistently denies it to him. We see this in Marvel Knights 4 #18, when Reed begs his father to stick around and actually be a parent, and Nathaniel just…leaves.

Reed always sees the best in everyone….even if it’s difficult.

We discover too that Nathaniel has been posing as Doom because he is searching for his son, who is destined to become the absolute ruler of Latveria. Sue at first assumes he means Doom, but it turns out he was talking about Kristoff, Doom’s adopted son, who is thus Nathaniel’s biological son and Reed’s half-brother.

In Fantastic Four v1 #581, we find out that an explosion that occurred while Nathaniel was working for the Brotherhood left him potentially immortal and with the ability to travel through time. Also, that it affected every Nathaniel in every universe, and that they were all ordered by Immortus and the Time Variance Authority to hunt each other down and kill each other until there’s only one left. Nathaniel gets Reed, Ben, and Victor to help him murder the final one. I am…so impressed by Nathaniel’s parenting skills. What kind of parent wouldn’t disappear for YEARS and then reappear only to ask their college-aged kid and his friends to help them murder their alternate self?

He is so bad at parenting. It’s really a wonder Reed turned out so well.

Hope that helped!

[deanwinchesterpityparty32]

Pinkie Promise- Chapter 4: It’s Time

Ao3 Link: http://archiveofourown.org/works/13614066/chapters/31394811

        The following month, exactly in the middle of the summer holiday, Remus Lupin began packing his suitcase in his study. It was approaching evening on the night of the full moon, and for the first time since he was a school boy, Remus was afraid for someone other than himself. He latched the suitcase and turned to find his husband standing in the doorway.

         “You’re leaving?” Sirius asked, unsurprised and extremely unimpressed.

         “You know I have to,” Remus replied, his voice shaking. “I’m a monster, Sirius. I cursed my daughter to the same life I’ve had to lead.”

         Sirius nodded, lighting a new fire of panic in Remus’ chest. “You have,” Sirius agreed, “but you didn’t do it at the last full. You didn’t do it when you bit her. You’re doing it now.” Sirius’ voice was a low growl as he approached Remus and seized the suitcase.

          “Sirius, I— “

          “Don’t start, Remus. Your twelve-year old daughter saw you packing and ran to her room. She’s crying her eyes out because she thinks that you-“ and Sirius shoved Remus’ shoulder- “hate her now.”

         “No!” Remus protested, glancing in the direction of Lincoln’s room.

         “Yes,” Sirius confirmed. “Do you know what she said to me, Remus? She said, ‘Papa, Daddy’s leaving. He hates me, he doesn’t want me now that I’m ruined. I thought he’d still love me, because he’s like me, but he’s leaving.’ And she wouldn’t even let me hold her because she’s afraid to hurt me.” Sirius’ grey eyes burned with rage. “If you go, Remus, you are dooming Lincoln to the same childhood of fear and doubt and self-loathing that you had to live through. If you can live with that, then fucking go,” he snarled, shoving Remus’ suitcase into his chest, “but don’t you ever come back. You could stay, you could help Lincoln through her transformations, since she’s too young and too small to take the wolfsbane potion. But if you’d rather run away, then do it, Remus, and stay gone.”

         “Sirius, what if I hurt her again?” Remus demanded loudly.

         “You can’t!” Sirius shouted back. “You bloody idiot, you can’t! Lincoln… I couldn’t stop her from coming out into those woods. I didn’t… didn’t catch her in time,” Sirius sobbed, the noise ripping from his chest. “You don’t get to leave us, Remus, because I don’t know how to make this easier for her!”

        Remus dropped the suitcase and pulled Sirius close, letting him sob against his chest. “You couldn’t have stopped her, Sirius. And you couldn’t have stopped me. It’s just a miracle you and James kept me from killing her.” He ran his hand through Sirius’ thick, shoulder-length hair, certain that there was more grey in the ebony hair than was there a month ago. Remus sighed heavily. “This isn’t your fault, Sirius. But you’re right, I don’t get to just leave. I need to go talk to Lincoln. Will you bring some blankets down to the cellar?”

        “We can’t-“

        “We have to, Sirius. She will hurt somebody if we don’t. Bring the blankets down to the cellar, take the kids to Lily’s, and then come back with James.” Remus’ voice was finally firm, no longer shaking or unsure.

        Sirius nodded and left, and Remus went to Lincoln’s room. He could hear her barely-stifled sobs. He knocked gently and called, “Lincoln, may I come in?”

        There was no answer, so Remus went into the room. Lincoln was sitting cross legged on her bed, staring out the window. “I owe you an apology. Well, about a thousand, actually,” Remus amended, wincing. “But I never meant to make you feel as if I don’t love you anymore.”

         “But you don’t,” Lincoln flung back. “You’re leaving, aren’t you?”

         Remus sighed and sat next to her. “Look at me, darling,” he urged. When she did, her eyes were no longer green like they’d been all her life, but the same amber-yellow as his own. “I’m not leaving. I was going to, because I let my fear of hurting you or Micah or Cassi take over. But your papa talked some sense into me. I won’t let you go through this alone.”

        “You’re not leaving? You don’t hate me?” Lincoln asked in a small voice.

         “Of course not, darling,” Remus assured her. Before he could continue, Lincoln launched herself into his arms, sobbing. “It’s okay,” Remus murmured, tucking her head under his chin and slowly rocking her. “I’ve got you.”

         “Daddy, I’m scared,” Lincoln sobbed into Remus’ sweater. “Is it going to hurt?”

          Remus blinked back tears. “Yes, Lincoln. I’m not going to lie to you, it’s going to hurt a lot. But Papa and I will be with you, and we’ll keep you as safe as we can. We’ll do our best to keep you from hurting yourself too much.”

          Lincoln glanced up at him. “Am I gonna have scars like you?” she asked. She had stopped crying when she learned that Remus and Sirius would stay with her.

         “Most likely, yes. I’m sor-“

          “Good.” Lincoln nodded resolutely. Remus gaped at her. “That’s good. I don’t want to hide this, I don’t want to run from it. I’m gonna be brave and honest like you, Daddy.”

         “Lincoln, I’m… I am so sorry. You can’t take wolfsbane yet, not till you’re seventeen. It could kill you if you tried to now. So we have to…” Remus trailed off, unable to say the words.

         “The cellar?” Lincoln guessed. When Remus nodded, she asked, “You’ll still take the potion, right? Uncle Prongs can’t fit in that cellar, and two werewolves would probably be more than Papa could handle.”

         Remus nodded. “Uncle Prongs will stand guard outside the cellar in case anything goes wrong. You’ll be safe. I promise.”

         “Pinkie promise?” Lincoln asked in a small voice, her little finger outstretched.

         Remus linked his little finger with Lincoln’s. “Pinkie promise. Now come on, love. It’s time.”

         Remus stopped in his study to take the wolfsbane potion, then took Lincoln’s hand and led her downstairs. James and Sirius were just stepping out of the fireplace.

         “Hey, Linc, how are you holding up?” James asked, concern in his voice that he was trying to cover with casualness.

         “Ask me that in about-“ Lincoln looked out the window- “ten hours, when this bullshit is over.”

         James laughed. “Sorry, she’s funny!” he protested when Sirius hit him.

         “Glad you think so, Uncle Prongs,” Lincoln deadpanned, indicating Remus’ death grip on her shoulder.

         “You’re hilarious, Lincoln,” Sirius assured her. “Your dad’s just starting to feel the moon.” And he pointed to the dark sky.

         “Come on, love. It’s going to start soon.” Remus steered Lincoln outside, to the cellar.

         “Dad, my clothes, they’ll rip,” Lincoln said.

         “Just take them off. See, Papa brought blankets we can cover up in until we change,” Remus told her gently.

         The cellar was no longer the cold, dank room Remus remembered from his childhood. When James closed the doors behind them with a call of, “Good luck, Moonslet,” Sirius lit the candles he’d brought down with a wave of his wand. The soft glow revealed a relatively clean room with a nest of pillows and blankets in the middle. Sirius changed into the shaggy black dog, and Remus turned to give his daughter privacy as she undressed.

         When Lincoln was sitting on a pillow and waiting for the moon to come, Sirius brought over the softest blanket, draping it over her shoulder. “Thanks, Papa,” she said, then turned to Remus. “Daddy, I think… I think I can feel it coming.”

          Remus nodded. “You feel the itch? Look, the hair is coming first. Trust me, it’ll… well it’ll be over soon.”

          Sirius whined and nuzzled Lincoln’s cheek, trying to comfort her.

          Remus watched, barely noticing his own transformation, as Lincoln’s bones rearranged, cracking and snapping sickeningly. He kept waiting for her to cry out with the pain—indeed, he had done so every transformation until he was nineteen—but she never did. Several long moments passed, and a small wolf with impossibly long limbs and sandy fur stood in Lincoln’s place. The wolf sniffed the air, searching for the scent of human prey, and howling her rage when she didn’t find it.

          Sirius barked sharply and Remus growled a warning to him. Sirius took a playful stance, hoping to bring some fun to his daughter’s fear, but the wolf had taken over Lincoln, and wasn’t interested in playing. She took to pacing, biting and scratching at herself all the while. She spotted the crack of moonlight coming from the cellar door and loped over to the door, scratching at it and whining.

          Remus snarled sharply at her, shoving her away from the door and growling. He asserted himself as the alpha easily. The young wolf recognized his scent; this was her father, her maker, and the dog was familiar too. But she wanted blood and meat and there was none to be found. Frustrated, she returned to taking out her destructive energy on herself. Sirius whined again and Remus snapped his teeth at her, but she paid them no mind.

          Hours later, the she-wolf had exhausted herself. She was bleeding from three nasty cuts on what would become her left forearm, but she was asleep in the nest of blankets with Sirius curled protectively around her.

          Remus watched them sleep, feeling an unexpected burst of affection for the two of them, as well as a glimpse of hope. Without a doubt, this would make Lincoln’s life immeasurably more difficult. But for now, while he and Sirius could protect her, perhaps it wouldn’t be as difficult for her as it had been for Remus as a child.

           Around 4:30 in the morning, Remus and Lincoln both woke from their slumbers to change back to human, and Lincoln was barely back into her jeans and tank top before Remus had pulled her into his arms, kissing the top of her head.

           “You did so well, Lincoln,” he murmured into her sandy hair. “You did so, so well.”

           “’M thirsty,” she croaked. Remus chuckled and found the water bottles in the bag Sirius had brought down.

           “How do you feel?” Remus asked as Lincoln drank quickly.

           Lincoln tore herself from the water, gasping. She made to speak, but instead, turned and was sick on the floor. “That about sums it up,” she quipped. Then she leaned heavily on Remus’ arm.

           “That’s normal, love. Here, lie down with Papa. I’ll heal your arm and bandage it, you go to sleep.”

           Lincoln lie back down, pillowing her head on Sirius’ furry side. “It’s going to scar. Daddy, is it always going to be like this?”

           “Yes, Lincoln. I’m so sorry.”

           “Daddy, it was my fault.”

           Remus looked up from bandaging Lincoln’s arm. “Darling, don’t say that.”

           “No, Dad, I… I wanted to see what you were like as a wolf. And I knew that you were out of wolfsbane, because Micah and I knocked the bottle over when we were playing. I thought if I stayed in the tree, you wouldn’t be able to smell me, so I took Uncle Prongs’ broom and I flew over here from his house…”

           “Lincoln, I know,” Remus said gently, and finished with the bandage. “I know. It’s alright. I’m not angry, and Papa’s not angry with you, either. Go to sleep, baby girl. Things will look much better in the morning.”

           Lincoln fell asleep almost instantly, and Remus curled around her and Sirius, pulling a blanket up to cover them.

[sandythereadingcafe]

COVER REVEAL

THEN YOU HAPPENED by K. Bromberg

“Bromberg is a master at turning up the heat.”

–Katy Evans, New York Times bestselling author

Then You Happened, an all-new standalone contemporary romance about trusting fate and finding yourself again from New York Times bestselling author K. Bromberg, is coming February 3rd and we have the gorgeous cover!

Jack Sutton was the man I didn’t want to need.

His know-it-all attitude. His annoying suggestions. His outlook on life.

He was determined to help me while I had resolved to figure it out on my own.

But he taught me things I’d forgotten.

How to trust. How to believe in myself. Who I was.

The problem?

I went and fell in love with him.

—

Tatum Knox was the disaster I should have walked away from.

Her ruined reputation. Her failing business. Her chaotic life.

She hated me at first sight and yet intrigued me all at the same time.  

I was only supposed to be there six months.

I was supposed to use that time to make amends for things I’d done wrong.

Instead I fell in love with her.

—

They say it’s better to have loved and lost, then not to have loved at all. Does that hold true when the love is based on a lie to begin with?

(THEN YOU HAPPENED is a STANDALONE enemies to lovers, small town romance. Full-length at one hundred and seven thousand words)

Pre-order your copy today!

Amazon: https://amzn.to/35G3VI6

AppleBooks: https://apple.co/2FdNSqn

Amazon Worldwide: http://mybook.to/YouHappened

Nook: http://bit.ly/39yXfi7

Kobo: http://bit.ly/35fDXeb

Google Play: http://bit.ly/2N7qH5s

Amazon Paperback: https://amzn.to/2FF2f6Z

Add Then You Happened to GoodReads: http://bit.ly/2Fr5OOp

Be notified FIRST when Then You Happened goes live: http://bit.ly/254MWtI

About K. Bromberg

New York Times Bestselling author K. Bromberg writes contemporary novels that contain a mixture of sweet, emotional, a whole lot of sexy, and a little bit of real. She likes to write strong heroines, and damaged heroes who we love to hate and hate to love.

A mom of three, she plots her novels in between school runs and soccer practices, more often than not with her laptop in tow.

Since publishing her first book in 2013, Kristy has sold over one million copies of her books across sixteen different countries and has landed on the New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal Bestsellers lists over twenty-five times. Her Driven trilogy (Driven, Fueled, and Crashed) is currently being adapted for film by Passionflix with the first movie slated to release in the summer of 2018.

She is currently working on her Everyday Heroes trilogy. This series consists of three complete standalone novels—Cuffed, Combust, and Cockpit (late spring 2018)—and is about three brothers who are emergency responders, the jobs that call to them, and the women who challenge them.

She loves to hear from her readers so make sure you check her out on social media or sign up for her newsletter to stay up to date on all her latest releases and sales: http://bit.ly/254MWtI

Connect with K. Bromberg

Website:  http://www.kbromberg.com

Facebook:  http://bit.ly/2QYIfBC

Twitter: http://bit.ly/2sVi7Qe

Instagram: http://bit.ly/36ywE2S

Amazon Author: http://amzn.to/204Qnfz

GoodReads:  http://bit.ly/1koZIkL

Join her Reader Group: http://bit.ly/1PMUoG3

Stay up to date with K. Bromberg by joining her mailing list:http://bit.ly/254MWtI

[bookloversreviewer]

“Bromberg is a master at turning up the heat.”

--Katy Evans, New York Times bestselling author

Then You Happened, an all-new standalone contemporary romance about trusting fate and finding yourself again from New York Times bestselling author K. Bromberg, is coming February 3rd and we have the gorgeous cover!

Jack Sutton was the man I didn’t want to need.

His know-it-all attitude. His annoying suggestions. His outlook on life.

He was determined to help me while I had resolved to figure it out on my own.

But he taught me things I’d forgotten.

How to trust. How to believe in myself. Who I was.

The problem?

I went and fell in love with him.

---

Tatum Knox was the disaster I should have walked away from.

Her ruined reputation. Her failing business. Her chaotic life.

She hated me at first sight and yet intrigued me all at the same time.

I was only supposed to be there six months.

I was supposed to use that time to make amends for things I’d done wrong.

Instead I fell in love with her.

---

They say it’s better to have loved and lost, then not to have loved at all. Does that hold true when the love is based on a lie to begin with?

(THEN YOU HAPPENED is a STANDALONE enemies to lovers, small town romance. Full-length at one hundred and seven thousand words)

Pre-order your copy today!

Amazon: https://amzn.to/2QALvmE

AppleBooks: https://apple.co/2FdNSqn

Amazon Worldwide: http://mybook.to/YouHappened

Nook: http://bit.ly/39yXfi7

Kobo: http://bit.ly/35fDXeb

Google Play: http://bit.ly/2N7qH5s

Amazon Paperback: https://amzn.to/2QfU2we

Add Then You Happened to GoodReads: http://bit.ly/2Fr5OOp

Be notified FIRST when Then You Happened goes live: http://bit.ly/254MWtI

About K. Bromberg

New York Times Bestselling author K. Bromberg writes contemporary novels that contain a mixture of sweet, emotional, a whole lot of sexy, and a little bit of real. She likes to write strong heroines, and damaged heroes who we love to hate and hate to love.

A mom of three, she plots her novels in between school runs and soccer practices, more often than not with her laptop in tow.

Since publishing her first book in 2013, Kristy has sold over one million copies of her books across sixteen different countries and has landed on the New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal Bestsellers lists over twenty-five times. Her Driven trilogy (Driven, Fueled, and Crashed) is currently being adapted for film by Passionflix with the first movie slated to release in the summer of 2018.

She is currently working on her Everyday Heroes trilogy. This series consists of three complete standalone novels—Cuffed, Combust, and Cockpit (late spring 2018)—and is about three brothers who are emergency responders, the jobs that call to them, and the women who challenge them.

She loves to hear from her readers so make sure you check her out on social media or sign up for her newsletter to stay up to date on all her latest releases and sales: http://bit.ly/254MWtI

Connect with K. Bromberg

Website: http://www.kbromberg.com

Facebook: http://bit.ly/2QYIfBC

Twitter: http://bit.ly/2sVi7Qe

Instagram: http://bit.ly/36ywE2S

Amazon Author: http://amzn.to/204Qnfz

GoodReads: http://bit.ly/1koZIkL

Join her Reader Group: http://bit.ly/1PMUoG3

Stay up to date with K. Bromberg by joining her mailing list: http://bit.ly/254MWtI

[hail--to-the-queen]

Marauders Era Headcannons

Ok so no one asked but these are mine. It’s really long, so sorry about that. A lot are based on inspo I’ve seen on Tumblr, tweaked to my liking, which is probably wrong but I just have all these feelings that I’ve gotta get out so here goes. If you see an idea that’s originally yours/you know who’s it is, please message me and I’ll credit your genius.

Peter

 Shortest marauder. like hella short. 

He wasn’t visibly muscled bc he liked food so damn much, but he wasn’t a creampuff either

preferred coffee over tea, and was the person who introduced coffee to Marlene

Funniest marauder. Could spin a tale/tell jokes like no one’s business. 

Towhead, tanned up nicely, brown eyes

was actually very particular about how his hair was combed/parted, but didn’t fuss about it openly *cough cough Sirius*

just didn’t get the hype behind Quidditch. sure, he liked it, but he couldn’t imagine letting a sport take over your life like James always did and even Sirius did during season

was actually hella perceptive and good at figuring things out about other people

like for real I think he was the first one to notice a lot; Remus’ condition, Sirius’ abusive home situation, when Lily’s feelings for James started to change, how James himself started to change

Was also the swiftest/sneakiest of all the marauders (rat!) and collected all of their intel

didn’t much care about school, and wanted to open a cafe in Diagon Alley after school

Had something of a talent for Divinations. Like, wasn’t a seer or anything, but he understood the theory and appreciated the art

fell in love with Marlene McKinnon in their 6th year, and her death in the first wizarding war (Mentioned in Lily’s letter to Sirius) is what pushed him over the edge and away from the Order. he was already struggling before then, but she grounded him and gave him something to fight for, and without her he just couldn’t handle anything. grew angry, bitter, resentful, flipped on the order and tore apart his friends. yuck.

  Remus

V tall. Tallest Marauder. Tallest student. certified tallboy.

Tea and chocolate and jumpers

smoker, but only right before and right after the full moon. it helps him cope

only swears when he’s well and truly angry

Brown hair with hints of copper that grows into a kind of mop. He manages it, somehow, even though it’s way out of style, and it just works

pale, brown eyes with gold in them

Messy to a fault, but somehow always has what he needs in the moment

LOVES quidditch, and attends every match especially because Sirius is a beater and damn just look at his arms

is the strategic brains behind the marauders operation. as much of a strategist as Ron is, Remus was too, and he was very good at planning things, especially things like breaking into filches office or putting potions in the Slytherin’s morning pumpkin juice that makes them all turn red and roar spontaneously  

Always studied, because if he didn’t put in the work he wouldn’t pull good grades

Forms a very close relationship with Lily in their 5th year when they’re both prefect

realized he was bi (and totally in love with Sirius) in his 4th year

Refuses to come out to his parents because they already have a broken son, and he didn’t want to expand on those feelings

tutors kids for chocolate bars or spare change whenever he has the time

was terrified of being made head boy, because he just knew he couldn’t handle it, and was relieved when it was James (bc he just knew Lily was a shoe-in for Head Girl)

Is the first person Lily actually admits her confused feelings about James to

Sirius

Second-shortest Marauder (much to his chagrin)

has excellent posture as a result (because if he slouches he’s the same height as Peter)

Long black hair, grey eyes, regal/sharp features. 

has a leather jacket that he picked up at a muggle consignment store when he was 14. it’s worn & covered in patches, and when his mother finds it in his closet his father uses the cruciatus on him

speaks excellent french. a side effect of Toujours Pur

Always paints his nails black or grey. When they chip, he paints over them, so it’s just layers and layers of paint

Starts to grow his hair out in the summer before his third year. Keeps it roughly shoulder length, and trims it himself after he had Emily Tefty teach him how

Incidentally, the summer before third year is when he stopped believing he could ever make amends with his parents. The only reason he went home after that was for Reg

Wants to live in London and work in a muggle garage

Is very smart, but doesn’t try. can ace every test though

is particularly gifted at CoMC

Smokes way more than he should

gets his first tattoo (a lion, what else) in Knockturn alley when he was 15. it paces and roars depending on his mood, and is on his ribcage, protecting his heart because he’s so afraid that one day he wont be able to protect his heart from his parents ideology 

realized he was Gay (and in love with Remus) in the start of their 5th year

was so terrified of that fact that he went on a year-long dating extravaganza, in which he dated and snogged every girl he could get to agree to go out with him (which was, of course, almost all of them) in an attempt to find someone he liked better than Remus. It failed.

Ran away from home for good after a particularly brutal beating between 5th and 6th year

cried for days when he heard about Reg getting marked

hates Snape because snape doesn’t have the shackles of a pureblood fundamentalist family, but actively seeks that lifestyle, while he would give anything to be free of it

James

Gets up every morning and goes for a run around the grounds, no matter how cold it is

eats healthy, but he’s a growing boy so a second helping of pudding isn’t going to kill him

Lives, breathes, eats, and sleeps quidditch. Wants to be a professional player someday and probably could have

half-hindu, so dark complexion, dark eyes and dark hair

keeps said hair wildly messy in a lighthearted rebellion against his family

has a massive soft spot for the house elves, and sneaks into the kitchen more often to visit with them than he does to get remus and himself a cuppa

is the literal life of the party

Has loved Lily since 2nd year

doesn’t understand why she doesn’t like him for a long time, but eventually he gets it   

is naturally smart/gifted, and doesn’t understand why Remus has to study all the time

Disliked Severus for a multitude of reasons; his closeness with Lily, his inclination towards the Pureblood agenda, the fact that he was a Slytherin and was proud of it. This made him an easy bullying target for James, but he only started to truly hate Severus after the mudblood incident 

is very careful with his belongings

Dated a cute Ravenclaw for the first 6 months of his 6th year, but eventually broke it off because Lily was single again because they just didn’t have that spark 

Was terrified when he was made head boy, just like he was terrified when he was made Quidditch captain the year before

Is literal Mr. Oblivious. Doesn’t realize the wolfstar situation, doesn’t realize that what he says has an impact on people, doesn't realize how many girls are interested in him, doesn’t realize that not everyone is as smart as he is, doesn’t realize when Lily’s feelings change.

literally peter has to spell out the wolfstar thing to him 

Is terrified of the mermaids in the Black Lake

Lily

the most feminist feminist who ever feministed 

Kept a muggle record player from her father that Remus helped her charm to work in Hogwarts during 4th year

Was definitely very close to being in love with Severus before the mudblood incident. He was her first kiss

she and Severus both made up their own spells, and correct their potions books with better instructions. Muffiato was her creation

Smart, but studies very hard nonetheless, Bc in the back of her mind she was terrified that someone someday will take away her wand

Actual queen of sarcasm

knitted in her spare time (the muggle way)

Long (like, can tuck it in her waistband) red hair, creamy skin (burns like a lobster in direct sunlight)

Cuts her hair after the mudblood incident because Severus always loved to play with it

this is 100% someone else’s idea, but i cant for the life of me find the post. If it’s your’s, or you know who’s it is, PLEASE message me and let me know and I’ll give them all the credit 

Ends up with a bob and scraggily bangs. Keeps it for a month, then magically grows it back out until it’s below her shoulder blades. Keeps the bangs, because she likes them

Figures out Remus’ secret after 3 months of prefect duty in 5th year. Tells him, just to make sure he doesn’t feel like he has to lie or hide from her.

 can banter back and forth with Peter so well that they leave the others in stitches every time

Loved her parents, but never had much of a relationship with her mother

Officially gave up on trying with Petunia in the summer before 4th year, when she threw a scarf Lily had knitted her for her birthday in the bin immediately upon opening it, because she was convinced Lily had knitted it with magic

fell in love with James somewhere in the middle of 6th year, and was terrified of it, because they had managed a truce/friendship and she was so afraid to mess that up

legitimately doesn't believe she’s good enough to be Head Girl

Fierce protector of all the muggleborn students 

Retreated into a shell of a person early in 6th year when her dad died of cancer. the marauders and Marlene took 2 months to try and get back to being herself

Dated Amos Diggory for the first 3 months of 6th year, but ultimately broke it off because of James because they just didn’t have that feeling

when Severus started sending her letters threatening to harm himself if she wouldn’t talk to him, she stopped opening them, and reported him to Slughorn as a suicide risk

Wanted to become a healer and totally could have

Marlene

Best friends with Lily since the first night of first year

Sucker for a funny guy

Talented artist, terrible in all of her courses (she only passes because of Lily)

dyslexic as hell

hated tea with a passion, but fell in love with coffee after Peter introduced it to her during their 2nd year

now she buys it from columbia (that and art supplies are the only things she shamelessly splurges/spends her family’s vast wealth on)

Is a pureblood, but her whole family rejects the doctrines, and she’s very proud of that. Especially after seeing what its like for Sirius to fight his family.

wants to become a wizard tattoo artist and totally could have

has a floral 1/2 sleeve she designed herself

short stature, wavy blonde hair, blue eyes

does commission work for students and faculty 

By 7th year, starts giving illegal frowned upon tattoos to students in her dorm (but only those of age). Lily turns a blind eye to this because she knows Marlene is clean and safe and damn good at what she does, and she feels the need to support her best friend’s dreams

Started to fall for Peter in 6th year, because he made her laugh

 See’s the good in (almost) everyone

original queen of the bat bogey hex

 Went on one date with Sirius to Hogsmede in their 5th year, during which they talked about tattoos and neither of them felt anything other than friendship

Keeps lots and lots of plants in her room (if she was ever good at any class, it was herbology. She just couldn’t take the tests/do the readings/write the essays)

had multiple piercings all the way up her ears

once hexed Lucius Malfoy’s hair off of his head for sneering at her for spending time with non-purebloods

served almost as many detentions (almost) as the marauders

commentated quidditch matches

Severus

Loved Lily since they were 9 and he saw her first do magic on the playground

He had pretty regal features, if he would just get his hair out of his face

he wasn’t really greasy, thats just something the marauders called him

Dark eyes, light complexion, long, straight, black hair

Was a very talented student, but really only cared about defense and potions

secretly hated the slug club and all it stood for, but was a member because he saw the value of networking

loved pepper imps, and would buy them whenever he had any extra money

was very good at budgeting

Had an abusive father who used to beat him, until one day when Severus was 7 and his father was chasing him with a belt. He made the china cabinet unscrew from the wall and crash down on his father

Refuses to let his mother buy him new clothes until he desperately needs them, because he knows how expensive they are and can’t stand the thought of her going without because of him

Hates James from the moment he shows any interest in Lily

See’s Lily as a possession to be hoarded 

Refuses to acknowledge that his love for her conflicts with his pure blood agenda

legitimately believes he can have both, even if that means hiding her away. He even draws up plans of how he would accomplish this

Loves to play with her hair

Wrote Lily letters following the incident in which he threatened to harm himself if she wouldn’t talk to him. She never did, and neither did he.

Figured out Remus’ secret in 5th year after Sirius gave him a huge hint, and was basically forced to make an unbreakable vow with Dumbledore that he would never tell anyone

[raisingcain-onceagain]

FeanorianWeek Day #7

·         Day 7- Nerdanel and Feanor-> Mahtan, Marriage, Reunion, Traveling, Creation, Healing

 “I intend to marry you someday,” Annoying Princeling says serenely, fully confident that this statement will be met with agreement rather than a fist to anywhere anatomically important.

“And I intend to tell you exactly what I think of that proposal, as soon as my father leaves the room,” Nerdanel replies, conversationally, and pretends not to notice when Mahtan’s shoulders heave.

Annoying Princeling stares at her – in shock that someone would speak so to him, or that she would speak so of her father? Not that Nerdanel cares a whit either way – and she knows she must be imagining things, but it seems that the shock turns to adoration and then swiftly to cunning.

 ~ ~ ~

“I do not know why I married you!” he shouts, and his voice, the voice of an orator, reaches the rafters and roils against them as if to lift them right into the pitchy sky above.

“Nor do I, you!” she roars, and her voice, the voice of a stonemason, rumbles right beneath his and swallows it whole, like an avalanche that would pull the rafters right into the ground, even from so lofty a height as the sky.  

And that, for the first time since the Trees had gone out, makes Feanor fall silent. They stare each other down from across the room, both heaving, and Nerdanel wonders, idly, when they had come to this.

She is sick of being asked – no, expected – to play the bigger man all the time, but she will try this once, once more, for she can see he is still in turmoil at the news of Finwë’s death. “I cannot imagine how this must affect you, Fëanáro, but your father would not-“

“Do not even say it, whatever pointless comfort you think to offer me,” Feanor snaps, a dangerous tone in his voice. “You could not know, you could not! Do not think that your geniality with my father, or your flippancy with your own, would enable you to understand the depths to my love.”

And oh, that is it.

“And do not think that you know all the forms of love, or that whatever you feel for our fallen king will be excuse enough to amend whatever madness you think to commit in his name,” Nerdanel grits through her teeth. “No, do not lie to me!” for oh, her mate has become no better at that pursuit, and never will – he is planning something, and it will be grand, and horrible, and he will do it all for his mad ideas of how love must be shown in ever-increasing gestures or else it will be withdrawn.

But something of what she was trying to do must have made it across, for he nods, and steps a length closer, and lays his hand on her shoulder, and she does not shake him off.

“I will make it right, though,” he says, and for all that he has never Sung, there is power gathering in the back of his throat, and it will out, somehow. She can only hope the outing will not cause too much more damage than has already been done.  

“Leave the children out of it, though,” she says later that long endless night, when he comes to her and tells her he is riding back to Tirion.

He nods but does not meet her eyes, and later she will regret that she was not the first to demand of him, or of them, an oath.

It is a terrible thing to regret, but then, the Oath they do take is a terrible thing too.

 ~ ~ ~

When word comes that Fëanor wishes to speak with her, Nerdanel laughs and laughs until the messenger, a Vanyarin youth of only some thousand-odd years, has to help her to a seat, and then hovers above her anxiously as she sobs until she chokes.

“Will you be well?” he asks, poor young thing, and she realizes that he does not know who she is, that she was married to the legendary prince who is for the first time voicing demands from the Halls.

“I do not know, sweet, but I appreciate the thought all the same,” she says, and she even manages a smile for him when she looks up.

His return smile is wavering, and worried, but he leaves her alone as she asks and rides back with her vehement denial of Fëanor’s request likely ringing in his ears.

His name is Sanya, she learns eventually, as the young messenger from the Halls is sent to her again and again over the years, Feanor’s request never changing in tone or in urgency. “Law-abiding” – how fitting a name, when Sanya is pure, and strong, and everything that neither Nerdanel nor her former mate have been since almost the dawn of her people. He is also good-hearted enough that he does not deny her the comfort she eventually asks of him – and better-hearted still, that when she asks if he cares for her, he tells her he does.

They are happy, then, and the Halls send no more messengers for a long time.

 ~ ~ ~

It doesn’t last, of course. Eventually a Maia is sent for her, and not wanting to see the damage that such a creature could wreak on her father’s people, or Sanya’s good heart, she goes.

She mislikes leaving her body just lying there in the Gardens, but she is not given another option, for Fëanor cannot come to her.

“They tell me you have a suitor,” his spirit says to hers, when finally they are left alone. Even after all this time in the Halls he looks old, and drawn, and weary, and his voice is nothing like the fiery brand it used to be, applying itself to the hearts and minds of all who heard (all but her) and driving them forward into madness.

Now, it sounds as thin and tired as he does, even in the spirit alone.

“I know I should not ask it of you,” Feanor continues, in his new soft wandering murmur, “but I cannot help it. Do you still-“

She cuts him off with a sharp gesture.

“Do not even think to finish that question, Fëanáro. Not to me.” She is not even angry, just tired, of a sudden. It amazes her that he can even ask, or begin to ask, after all he has said - all he has done - but she cannot say it is completely unexpected.

“Very well.” And although his voice has not changed, she knows, knows, that he thinks he is gearing up to make some heroic, self-sacrificing gesture that will make up for everything. “I will take Míriel’s choice, then, and remain here for all time, so that you may be with him.”

The very nerve of him. . .  

A slap means less in the Halls, perhaps, because there is no weight she can put behind it, but it resounds all the same. And although there can be no pain, he looks at her in such surprise – ever the princeling, even after everything else.

“I need no dispensation from the Valar, Fëanáro Curufinwë, and certainly no magnanimous gestures of release from you. After everything you have done to your people – to your sons, Fëanáro, our boys, we have lost two for good they tell me – I am damn well entitled to live my life as I see fit. As I always have been!”

And if there is a tear in her eye when she wakes, and sits up, and flexes her arms to make sure that Namo’s Maia have left her hröa intact, well. And if that tear, and others like it, fall as she rides home to Sanya, well – bless him, he does not even ask when she hops from her horse and gathers him to her in a fierce embrace.

[clarenecessities]

spooky scheming

Rating: PG 13 for language Word Count: 1308

Summary: tfw only one of you is a long-term thinker Chapter Warnings: death mention, residual destruction

[First] [Previous] [Next]

“This is great and all,” said Nino, voice tight with stress, “but do we have a plan? I’m freaking out a little and the moon is like, barely waning. Need some structure in my life, here.”

“I’m working on it,” said Marinette, gaze distant and blank. Her magic was beginning to settle, and Adrien, hyperaware of his ability to sense it, was fascinated. Even in stillness, Marinette’s magic had a presence to it, a tangibility he could hardly believe he hadn’t noticed before. As it quieted it revealed an unexpected depth, like ripples settling on a pond—and in a similar vein, he could see his own magic reflected back at him.

Her magic was coolness and shadows, the pull of the tides, the sound of the rain, soft and measured and gentle. He wanted to lie down and soak in it. Was all witch magic like this?

Not for the first time, he wished he knew what he had done to piss off the witches. His running theory was that Plagg did something irritating, and he was collateral damage.

He should probably focus on whatever was currently trying to murder him.

“She went a bit south,” he informed the group at large. Nino looked to Alya, who sighed and pointed south.

Maybe he should say things like ‘left’ next time.

“Okay,” said Marinette. “I think I’ve got something. Nino, Ivan, and Adrien: go down to the ground floor. You’re going to be our close range combatants.”

“See, I can’t help but notice that’s got the word ‘combat’ in it—”

“If everything goes well, you’ll just be standing around,” said Marinette, silencing Nino with a look. “If she’s an elemental, we’re going to be dealing with long-range stuff. Adrien, could you tell what element?”

“Uh, a water and air combo,” said Adrien, wincing a little. Combination elementals were rare, but tended to pack a wallop. He really wasn’t looking forward to this, no matter what the plan was.

“Good,” said Marinette, grinning.

Her classmates stared at her as if she’d begun speaking in tongues.

“I have a plan!” she insisted, huffing at them. “Ivan, you can do like, magma fists, right?”

“Yeah, but if I get hit with water it’s just rocks and steam,” said Ivan, rather dubiously. “If it was just wind I’d be okay, you know, I think that’s why I didn’t get blown over. ‘M too heavy.”

“Just checking,” said Marinette. “Okay, Juleka and Alya—I want you out on whatever’s left of the walkways. You’re gonna be our distractions. Little illusions, nothing too flashy—you want to draw her attention, but not make her suspicious.”

“You’re asking me to not be flashy?” asked Alya, sounding almost insulted. “Marinette. Who do you think I am?”

“You’re the best, and will therefore listen to your beloved friend when she asks you to pretty please keep the illusions believable.”

“Oh, fine,” said Alya. “But I’ll have you know, flashy is a lot more distracting than—”

Marinette put a finger on Alya’s mouth without looking at her, effectively ending her speech.

“Alix, you’re with me. We’re going in high. Everybody keep your phones turned on so we can communicate,” said Marinette, pulling out her own and flipping through the screen.

“Uh,” said Adrien, “I don’t have a phone. Or opposable thumbs.”

Marinette clicked her tongue, frowning, then dug into her bag. Adrien exchanged a nervous glance with Nino, who shrugged at him.

“Here!” she said triumphantly after a moment, fishing a length of bright red ribbon from a side pocket. Before Adrien could ask what she was talking about, she’d looped it around his shoulders. He made a small, indignant mew as she tied it into a—well, not a bow exactly, but a knot that left him with lengths of ribbon brushing his chest.

“Excuse me,” he protested. He didn’t pull away despite his confusion; he was sure she had a plan, he just wanted to know what it was.

“Hold on,” said Marinette, both hands going up to her left ear, removing an earring the same shade of scarlet as the ribbon. It had little black spots on it, almost like—

“Is that a ladybug?” blurted Adrien, delighted.

“An enchanted ladybug,” she corrected, rolling her eyes at him. “My mom made them. If you touch the center dot and speak, I’ll be able to hear you.” She secured the earring on the back of the ribbon, then turned the entire makeshift collar so that it was against his throat and the eye-catching semi-bow was perched above his shoulder blades.

“Cute and helpful,” said Adrien, purring as he tapped it experimentally with a paw.

“You talking about the earrings, or Marinette?” asked Nino with a devious smirk.

“Maybe hold off on broadcasting just purring sounds,” Marinette cut in with a laugh.  

“Testing, testing,” he purred a little louder, “1, 2, 3.”

“I’ll add the rest of you to a group text,” said Marinette, finally electing to ignore him entirely. “If you see anything, or the plan changes, update it. I’ll keep Adrien posted.”

“Why do I feel like this is going to go horribly wrong?” Nino muttered as they all got cautiously to their feet.

“Anxiety,” Alya supplied.

While the rest of the students looked nervous (and perhaps a little queasy,) Alya was brimming with excitement, her grin a bit too sharp to be entirely human. At some point two bright bottlebrush tails had appeared beneath her jacket, twitching as though she were suppressing the urge to wag them.

“I don’t have ‘anxiety’ I’m totally chill and very reasonably concerned!” Nino hissed at her.

“Anxiety isn’t unreasonable…” said Juleka, a little uncertainly.

“Oh, well, no,” Nino amended immediately, “I—I just meant that I’m not—that I don’t have… uh… oh my god, I have anxiety.”

“And we love and support you,” said Alya, giving the brim of his hat a reassuring pat, ignoring his half-hearted scowl.

“You know, if I ever want a therapist—”

“Are you not in therapy?” Alix asked, spinning on her heel to cast him a horrified look. “Dude.”

“What am I supposed to do? Just clear my weirdly hectic schedule, waltz into their office and say, ‘What’s up Doc, I’m a werewolf, wanna dissect my personal issues and get me real upset? There’s only like an eighty percent chance it’ll end in—’”

THWOOM.

This explosion was much louder than the one that had taken out their classroom wall.

Ivan braced himself in front of them, and they all leapt into an impromptu chain, forming a sort of defensive conga line. Adrien dug his claws into Nino’s shirt with a small growl, squeezing his eyes shut against the blast of wind. It was colder than he had been expecting, causing his fur to automatically stand on end.

“Did she see us?” murmured Juleka, who didn’t appear to be affected by either the gust or its temperature, floating a few feet away and peering into the courtyard.

“I don’t think so,” said Alix. “Think she just got kinda pissed off and blasted like, everything.”

“Where is she?” asked Alya, straining to see over Ivan’s shoulder.

“Middle of the courtyard, but she’s facing the other way,” he answered.

“Alright, break,” said Marinette, immediately taking off with Alix towards the front of the school.

“God damn it,” Nino muttered, clutching the back of Ivan’s shirt like a lost toddler as the three of them made a much slower bid for the stairs.

“Don’t die!” Alya stage-whispered after them, waving from where she had crouched behind the banister.

“Don’t tell me what to do,” Nino hissed back, turning his hat backwards. He reminded Adrien of Ash, preparing to battle. He resettled on Nino’s shoulders with a slight frown—that sort of made him Pikachu.

Pikachu, who got beat up.

Like, a lot.

Fuck.