#so now a good chunk of us are sitting in the cold gym of the hs

[tazzykiki]

The apt across from us caught on fire and now we won't be able to come back for like a week or more, wooo

[cactuswaterscactusfields]

Routines

Rating: Explicit Word Count: 1.4k

Warnings: no beta we die like graves, this is another one-shot you hecks. Angst, fluff, memories, nostalgia, PTSD and referenced mental health struggles. Canon-typical violence, stabbing, descriptions of blood and injury.

I wanted to write something along the vein of To Me, You’re All I Am since I loved the relationship between Soap and Ghost. This is another one-shot, so you don’t need to read the other fic to read this. 

OR

Soap and Ghost are sharing an evening and Ghost gets distracted by memories. Soap brings him back to the present, back to Simon.

Crossposted here on ao3

–

Warm tea, milk, the slightest sprinkling of sugar. That’s how Simon takes his tea. Soap’s had it burned into his memory since the moment they set down the last box in their new apartment, the first morning they woke up next to each other to the sound of birdsong instead of gunshots. Every morning, Simon wakes up at 0600 and drinks 1.5 cups of London fog tea, and finishes the last bit with his lunch, which is always a ham-and-cheese sandwich with chips. Always a pattern, always the same routine with Simon.

Simon is a man of routines. When he’s Ghost rather than Mr. Simon Riley-MacTavish, he wakes up at 0400 and takes a cold shower, before hitting the gym. If it’s Monday, Wednesday, or Friday, he works his cardio and close-quarters-combat techniques. Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays, he lifts. Sundays, he instead goes on a four-mile run as his rest day. After working out for exactly 1.5 hours, he goes to the mess hall and eats two scoops of scrambled eggs and his classic London fog, a single cup without sugar. 

Soap has spent their entire relationship watching Ghost’s routines. He has them memorized so well he could probably follow them in his sleep. And yet, he still barely knows Ghost. There are times he can’t tell if he’s speaking to his husband or to a masked supersoldier who just buried a knife into someone’s jugular. 

Tonight is one of those nights, Soap thinks to himself. He and Ghost are sitting on their couch, donated to them by Laswell after her wife decided that they did not want it anymore. Something about wanting an open concept and window wall, she had said. There’s some reality tv program playing on the TV, but Soap stopped listening a while ago. He can see Simon’s hands twitching, and for a moment, he wonders who he’s staring at. He can’t tell, sometimes. Not now, especially. Simon is asleep, but his hands are vice-gripped around a rifle that isn’t there.

Shit.

–

Blood, fire, smoke, a massive explosion. Ghost dodges around a chunk of rubble flying toward him from the heli that Price just dropped with a well-placed RPG shot, and lets off a few bullets into a sniper watching him. He has eyes for that sort of thing.

Where the hell is Soap?

He hasn’t seen his idiot since their transport crashed, since they were separated. Price was the first to speak to him over the comms, asking if he was alive, asking where Gaz was, asking if Soap had survived the fall. 

No clue, sir. That was his answer. He doesn’t fucking know. He knows nothing beyond the fact that they’re in a hot zone taking effective fire, and he needs to find Johnny.

“C-Captain?” Gaz’s voice crackles over the comm.

Good to know those two lovebugs are at least alive. Ghost has seen the way that Price and Gaz look at each other, has seen the way they speak to each other. Sometimes, he sees that same look in Soap’s eyes, in his own reflection of the soul orbs that the scot ogles him with. He just wishes he knew if Soap was alive. If Johnny was alive.

He turns the corner around a crumbling building, dodging behind a concrete wall, and his nose is burning with the smoke. He has a mask, but fuckall good it’s doing, and the air is thick with debris. 

“Gaz. Where are you?” Price’s voice is rough. 

“A-At a church, I think.” “That’s the rendezvous point. Ghost, meet us there. Try to find Soap if you can.” 

If you can. 

Ghost’s blood runs cold, as he twists around a pillar, taking a shot or two at a nearby Al Qatala operative. Why the hell did they fly here, anyway? Al Mazrah is a hellzone, and they have more important investigations than here in this desert shithole. And thanks to this stupid damn assignment, Soap’s MIA and possibly KIA. 

His chest is rising and falling, hard. He looks down at the rifled stained with blood and dirt in his hands, sees the cuts, bruises, and scrapes marring his black turtleneck, effortlessly ripping holes through the thin fabric to expose the wounds underneath. If he and Soap make it out of this, Johnny will chew him the hell out for ruining the sweater that Soap just fixed.

Sorry, love.

Actions have consequences, that’s always what he’s said. If Johnny was here now, Ghost just knows that the scot would be scratching away at that phrase like a cat. What actions led us to this? What actions are we suffering the consequences of? Tell me, L.T., tell me why. Ghost knows he’d be half joking, knows he’d just be doing it to bother the manchester native, and yet, what Ghost would give to be bothered right now.

He jumps over a half-wall made of concrete and immediately wishes he could go back to this morning when Soap woke him up with a kiss, tea, and a rush of dopamine. The only rush Ghost is getting now is adrenaline, as he takes in the scene before him.

Soap is out-fucking-cold. His mic is smashed on the ground next to him, and an AQ operative is standing over him, rifle to the scot’s forehead.

What happens next is a blur. Ghost practically teleports over to the hostile, burying a knife into his chest, and twisting until he’s sure the already-slumped man is very dead. No one touches his Johnny and lives to see another day. He rips the knife out, before stabbing him again and again and again, in the throat, in the heart, in the stomach, again and again and again, until his hardshell is smeared with blood, his arms tinged scarlet, the knife dulled from impacting flesh and bone. 

He’s shaking.

He slowly drops the body, before stepping over it and crouching down next to his husband.

Johnny, why don’t shrimp share?

They’re a little shellfish.

 He can imagine it now, the Scottish accent ringing in his ears like a warm summer evening as he laughs, finishing the joke.

Soap should be telling him that. Soap should be awake. Soap should be alive. And yet, Ghost isn’t sure of any of those things. Will Johnny ever wake up, will he ever–

–

“Steamin’ Jesus, Simon. Wake up!” Soap is gripping Simon’s shoulders, shaking the asleep veteran. 

That was a mistake. 

Ghost’s eyes immediately flick open and snap onto Johnny’s face, before he shoves the scot onto the ground, pinning him with a forearm to the throat. That’s another one of Ghost’s routines. If you wake him up abruptly, he responds by immobilizing you as quickly as he fucking can. Simon hasn’t woken that way in a while, but..apparently, he still struggles with it.

“Steamin’ Jesus, Si, please. Stop.” Soap desperately pushes Ghost off, and Ghost slowly stands up, hands flexing, before he collapses back onto the couch. Soap quickly follows, sitting down next to him, and he gently takes the Brit’s hand.

“Where were you?” Soap asks gently.

“Al Mazrah. After the crash.” Soap nods. He remembers the crash, waking up afterward with a very bloodied and very angry Ghost over him. He was worried he’d never see Simon again, only this hard-shelled phantom.

He begins twisting the wedding band on Ghost’s finger, staring at the way the gunmetal catches the light. Ghost was never good about keeping delicate things intact, so he elected to have a classic metal band while Soap went for an intricately patterned band inlaid with some kind of blue metal he forgets the name of from time to time.

“Ghost, tell me five things you can see.”

Ghost exhales heavily. A grounding technique. Of course.

“The tv, your hands, your stupid mohawk, this couch, your dog tags.”

“Good. Give me four things you can hear.” Ghost sighs again and stretches, curling into Soap quietly.

“Your voice. The cars outside. The hum of the fan. My voice.” “That’s good. Where are you?” Soap watches Simon, and he runs his hand through the manchester native’s blonde hair, tracing his finger along a particular scar across Si’s face. He’s always loved that scar. Even though Simon hates it, and hates to see it, the way he got it is one of Soap’s favorite memories. He had slipped and sliced his face while doing a knife trick at their wedding. Even though he was freaked out about it, the stupidity of the whole situation de-stressed the grooms, and they were able to laugh about it later on.

“Somewhere safe. With someone I love. Someone alive.”

That’s one more routine of Simon’s. He tells Soap he loves him whenever he gets the chance. He reminds himself whenever he can of Soap–no, of Johnny’s life. Their lives are too short for Simon to forget what really matters to him.

“I love you too.”

–

Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed this, especially since I wrote it in a couple hours.

[glitterge1pen]

You Only Water Plants With Cool Water

Rukawa Kaede x reader, sfw, fluff, word count 1,435

reader is a painter 

Rukawa and you both had practice. Studio sessions, gym time, he needed to go to the store for new basketball shoes, you needed new paper or canvas. He knew when you had had a bad day. When every stroke of pigment was wrong, when you had to change water too many times. You knew when he had messed up his scoring percentages, or when he’d landed a shot not to his liking.

You also had good days though. Ones where you would be electrified, dragging Rukawa to the tiny bedroom studio in the apartment, excited to show him a new piece. He tried to be subtle about sharing his smaller successes with you. Quietly asking to go on a walk to the park on weekend mornings, picking up a basketball before heading out the door.

While Rukawa couldn't exactly understand painting, or art, he did understand you. He saw how hard you worked, the same as him. You too were striving for something. So he lets you ramble on about new art books you had bought, different painters you admired, ones you hated, an art supplies store you wanted to try your luck at. This was also how you understood him. You saw how at home Rukawa watched all the NBA games, kept tabs on different players.

The two of your respective passions consumed lots of your life. Which is why he didn't mind when you had the door to the studio closed when he got home from the gym. You didn't bother him when he was watching a game. He would sleep on the small couch you had tucked in the corner of the studio, the radio giving a play by play of some game. Legs hanging off the arm rest, simply enjoying being in your presence. Some days you would go to his practices, half watching, half sketching out ideas for a new chunk of canvas. This was one of those days.

Looking up from your lap you see that practice is almost over. You set aside your work to focus on Rukawa completely. He really is something else on the court. Brash, aggressive, and still sly. Those parts of Rukawa were the same. The part of him that bluntly told you while out shopping what did look ugly, that way you swore he moved stuff around in the fridge to mess with you, or how he shoulder checked people a little too often. When he was playing basketball it was like the various gears and screws that made up Rukawa were perfectly made to play, like it was the only that life made sense to him. It added something to his outward psyche, a fire of energy that exuded from every pore.

You watch as the team starts to wind down. Shooting from various points on the court, running sprints from one side to the other, to end practice there was a complicated passing drill that you couldn't follow. You were prepared to leave, grab some take out on the way home, but when Rukawa came over to you he flopped onto the bleachers.

“Hey! Come on you can't sleep here”

With a sweat towel covering his face he mumbles,

“I can sleep anywhere, just give me a couple minutes”

But you know with Rukawa that a couple minutes can range from thirty minutes to hours. You pull on his arm trying to get him up, his eyes are stubbornly closed though. You poke, you blow air on his nose, you ruffle his hair and pull on his clothes. When that doesn't work you try threats.

“I won't pay for dinner”

“I was going to pay”

He says, words muffled by the towel. Exasperated you sit back onto the cold bleachers. You reach into a plastic bag you have settled down by your feet. It's from the craft store, new paint, new brushes, you had stopped there on the way to see Rukawa. Cautiously you pull out some paint and let it rest against Rukawa's skin.

“If you don't get up, I’m gonna paint you”

“I dont care”

“Really?”

“Why would I care?”

Before you two had been playful, teasing, but when he asks that he is genuine. Like he couldn't possibly comprehend why that would bother anyone. He has one eye open now, peaking at you, seeing that you are considering it now.

“I don't care, go ahead, just let me sleep”

At first you're still a little apprehensive. You are slow to fill up one of the paper cups from the players bench with the water fountain. You use the colors little by little. Mixing them in the palm of your non dominant hand. You start with his arm. The paint moves differently on his sweat tinted skin and you have to adjust.

Rukawa floats in and out of sleep. Lazily watching your concentrated expression move expertly over him. He likes the way the brushes feel, the cool of the paint. He notes that you're holding his hand differently, it's deliberate, your fingers not laced with his but clasping onto him. You do this so you can twist his arm this way and that. He can see blues and greens mixed onto your own skin in puddles. Then he’s back asleep.

You are no longer paying attention to Rukawa, or the dance group that came to use the gym for practice. You like working here. The gym lights are bright, the AC blasting cold air. You were originally only going to do something small. But now Rukawa's entire right arm has been consumed by paint. You are putting the last few strokes of detail on his arm knowing that you aren't done yet. You are afraid to dab at the paint to see if its dry, you blow on it and Rukawa gives a small smile at the sensation.

You pull the towel off of Rukawa’s head and lay it over his chest, placing his arm there too. You grab your bag of supplies and move to the row of bleachers below Rukawa. His left leg your new target. This is harder for Rukawa to sit through at first. The bristles of the brush more ticklish, but it is soon calming once again. He wants to see what you’ve painted on his arm but his eyes are still so heavy, he so tired.

“Wow you're really good!”

“Thanks! He’s a pretty good canvas!”

Rukawa wakes at the sound of your voice.

“Oh sorry I didn't mean to wake you!”

It must be one of the girls from that dance team he decides.

“It’s okay he sleeps plenty”

You tell the girl, she laughs a little before waving herself away. You're packing up your things, swirling brushes into the cup of water, twisting paint tubes closed. Finally feeling satisfied with his nap, Rukawa slowly gets up. Used to sleeping wherever he pleases the dull ache from the bleachers doesn't bother him much. He rubs the sleep from his eyes and sees it.

You've painted a river. From his right shoulder to his left ankle is a river. Patches of grass and flowers growing along parts of it, stones, clouds, waterfalls, waves of water. It’s dynamic, twisting over the grooves of his muscles. You are surprised at how gentle his fingers move along the outline of the water, tracing it down his whole arm. In between his knuckles the water fades off his hand in droplets. The red flowers a bold contrast to the cool colors of the water. Fish leaping in and out of the water, some not even breaking the blue surface of paint, shadows of warm color beneath the water.

“You like it?”

You ask, he only nods, still admiring your work. You get him off the bleachers, once standing the daze he was in wears off. He grabs his duffle bag and the two of you head out. The night air is refreshing, the sky dark blue but bright like how it is in the summer. The street is still buzzing from the dusk. People on the way home from work, light traffic in the street, store and street lights flickering in the newness of the night.

“I’m sorry”

“Huh?”

You don't know what Rukawa could possibly be apologizing for.

“I’m gonna have to take a shower and the paint will wash off”

“That’s okay I knew that when I did it”

Rukawa seems discontent with this answer but you aren't sure how to help ease him. At the next block Rukawa turns the wrong way.

“Where are you going the-”

“Walgreens”

“What?”

“They have disposable cameras at Walgreens.”

☽༓･*˚⁺‧͙·͙*̩̩͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩̥͙　✩　*̩̩̥͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩͙‧͙ .·͙*̩̩͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩̥͙　✩　*̩̩̥͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩͙‧͙ .‧͙⁺˚*･༓☾　　

A/N: If someone made a bingo chart of my writing Walgreens would be on it. Will post this on ao3 later today :) Also no :) I did not :) edit this :) 

[pixieungerstories]

Quarentine - 1

They always say ‘buy the worst house on the best block that you can afford’ and god knows this place was a total shit hole.  1200 square feet on an overgrown lot surrounded by McMansions.  Hell, I paid less for the place that the land was worth.  I’m amazed someone hadn’t bulldozed the place years ago.

To make a long story short, I did not look a gift house horse in the mouth.

I mean, it wasn’t a total write off.  None of the windows were smashed.  There were mature fruit trees in the backyard.  If you ignored the weeds and rotting fruit, there was a lot of potential.  The plumbing was lead pipes and the electrical was knob and tube, but I know people and I could trade favours to get that replaced.  The foundations were good and the roof barely leaked.

I spent the summer camping in a tent in the back yard and slowly getting the place winterized enough that I could move it.

It was still a creepy ass house when I did.  It had a boiler.  I had no idea how to deal with that, but I was learning.  And I learned how to ignore the whistles, hissing and banging sounds that went with having a boiler.  The old rads were cast iron with pretty little details in the corners.

There were holes in the plaster, but I just ignored them.  It wasn’t worth fixing when I was going to gut the place and put up drywall eventually.  It just made it easier to get at the plumbing.

I started just living in the kitchen and ignoring the rest of the house.  I had disconnected the rest of the electrical and plumbing and was using that as a home base while I renovated outwards from there.

There is nothing quite as creepy as sleeping in a sleeping bag on what were probably asbestos tiles in an old house that makes the weird noises that old houses make.  I kept reminding myself that they only seemed louder than normal because the place was empty and there was nothing to muffle the sound.  The shrieking had to be the upstairs window that didn’t quite shut properly.

I had the feeling that something was watching me and prayed to god it wasn’t rats.

I was in this for the long haul.  Get up, shower at the gym, go to work, come home, renovate until it gets dark, shower at the gym, camp out in the kitchen.  Not exciting, but satisfying.  Let’s face it, this was the only way I was ever going to be able to afford a house.

When the work from home order came, I had to actually get a phone line installed so I could have internet access.  Me, my laptop and a kitchen table I rescued from the curbside a while back.

The creepy feeling was worse.  I told myself it had to be the isolation kicking in.  I skyped with my best friends at night to make up for it.  The power was still a bit dodgy and kept going out, but that’s what laptop batteries and cell phones are for, right?

I was sure the cough was from the dust.

The guy delivering groceries left them on the sidewalk instead of the porch.  It was fine.  I understood completely.  I hadn’t done much work on the outside of the building at all. 

I realized I was sneezing a bit when I started having to use toilet paper as kleenex.

I was fine.  I was young and healthy.  I didn’t have any sick days at work so I was determined to just push through.

I tried to get more rest.

I dreamed about something laying a cool hand on my forehead.

The grocery store was out of thermometers.

I mean, did it really matter if I had a fever?  I wasn’t leaving the house to share with anyone.

My cough got worse overnight.  I was vaguely aware of someone lifting me up and holding a cup of cool water to my lips.  I was so fucking thirsty. 

“You shouldn’t be here,” I mumbled.  “I don’t want you to get sick.”

“I won’t,” a rumbling voice assured me.

I didn’t remember making soup, but I jolted into awareness sitting at the table with a steaming bowl in front of me.  Chicken noodle out of a can.  It’s not that hard to make.  I’m sure I could add water and heat in my sleep.  Apparently, I just did.

I was so cold that night.  I don’t know where the extra blankets came from, but they were there in the morning.

I don’t know how I ordered a bed while I was sick, but it was there and on my credit card.  So was the mattress and sheets.  It must have been the fever talking when I ordered them.  I would not have picked out anything that old fashioned looking.

How did I get all this stuff up to the second floor bedroom?  I’m sure I don’t remember stripping the paint off the closet doors.   I must be losing my mind.  I slept, I ate, I stopped logging in at work.  I just needed to concentrate on getting better.

By the time I was able to stay awake for more than an hour at a time, the city was shut down.  I was confined to my house whether I liked it or not.  I was suddenly glad my fever addled brain had ordered a bed while I still could.  

The watched feeling was worse.  I ordered some rat traps with my groceries.  I didn’t catch anything.  They didn’t take the bait.  I swear I heard snickering when I checked them in the morning.  That was a new sound for the boiler to make.

“I am losing my mind,” I repeated to myself.  Then blushed when I realized I had said it aloud.  “And yes, I also talk to myself,” I added for good measure.  “At least it is some sound,” I muttered.  “I should turn on some music or something.”

Work was officially shut down but I still had the dumpster outback.  I spend my awake time cleaning out the other rooms.  The advantage of living in a construction zore was all the dust masks.  When I needed to actually go out, that might help.  In the meantime, I carefully sorted through the things the previous owners had left behind.  Some of it was just trash, but there were some old photographs, lost buttons, even a single antique earring.

“No chance of finding a pair, I bet.  Still this could be made over into a necklace or something.”  Shit.  I was talking to myself again, wasn’t I?

I still got tired easily.  I dreamed about my mom stroking my hair as I slept.

The footprints I couldn’t explain away.

I had taken down a section of wall and spent the day carrying out the chunks of plaster before microwaving a pizza pop and tucking in early.  In the morning there were footprints in the dust.  They weren’t mine.  They were huge and it was hard to believe they were human.  Weird long toes, with the claw tips a little in front were not what I was expecting.

That was the first time I had wanted to leave the house.

I grabbed my stuff and made it to the front yard before I was spotted by a passing patrol car and ordered back inside.  I had no idea how to explain that I thought there was some sort of monster living in my house.  I was shaking as I went back inside.

“Hello?”  I called from the doorway, ready to run.  I had no idea where I could even run to.  “Um…  Is anyone there?”  I don’t know what I was expecting.  “Hi?  Um ….  I bought the house, I didn’t know there was any … thing living here.  I have been trying to fix it up.”

“I know.”

Fuck.  The scratchy, rasping bass voice was not what I was expecting.  “I … uh…  I can go back to camping in the yard,” I suggested.

“No.”

I waited to hear if he (?) was going to say anything else.

Apparently not.

“Uh … no I can’t stay here?  Or no, you don’t even want me camping in the backyard?”

“If I didn’t want you here, I would have had many opportunities to get rid of you.”

Shit.  That wasn’t ominous or threatening at all.

With a low chuckle the voice asked, “Did you mean to say that out loud?”

I froze and tried to remember what I had said.  Oh.  “No, that was an accident.  I’m not used to having anyone around to hear me.”

“I always hear you.”

I closed the door and went out to sit in the garden for a moment to think about that.  I ended up pacing, swearing and wishing for a cigarette.  I hadn’t smoked in years.    The sun started to go down and the bugs came out.  I was being eaten alive outside.  Going inside was scary but he was right.  He had lots of time to …

I flung open the door.  “Did you order furniture on my credit card?”  I demanded.

The laughter that rang out was a whole other level of creepy.  I shivered and thought about going back outside.  The door pulled itself closed behind me.  I spun to look at it and didn’t see anything.  I could hear something breathing. I turned again.  Nothing.

“If we are both going to live here, can we at least agree on some ground rules?”

“Like what?” was almost purred in my ear.  Looking around wildly, I still couldn’t see anything.

I was shaking now.  “Is there a way for you to be less scary so I don’t have a heart attack?” I squeaked.

There was nothing but silence.  Still my sense of the presence suggested it was gone.

I didn’t sleep that night.  I would just start to nod off then jerk myself awake and look wildly around the room.  I never saw anything.

Six am, my alarm went off and I could smell coffee.

All the dust had been swept up.

“Hello?” I whispered.

Nothing.  I had coffee and cereal and tried not to think about my surprise roommate.  I was so tired, I passed out at my computer in the kitchen at some point that morning, only to wake in bed upstairs in the afternoon.  “I don’t want you to touch me while I’m sleeping,” I mumbled, painfully aware that there was dick all I could do to stop it.

“Alright,” the voice said, coming from somewhere in the direction of the closet.  “But don’t fall asleep at the table then.”

I breathed a faint sigh of relief.  I wasn’t expecting the next part.

“You need to eat something now.  You are still recovering.”

There was a can of soup heating on the stove.  My breakfast dishes were gone.  I found them clean and dry in the cupboard.  “Thank you,” I whispered.  He didn’t reply.  As I ate lunch, I was psyching myself into going upstairs to look in the closet.  The door had been painted shut when I got the house, but at some point had been stripped down to the bare wood.

I hadn’t worked up the nerve by the time I was done eating.  Or washing and drying the dishes.  I found myself at the bottom of the stairs staring up at the second floor.  Did I really want to see what was in that closet?

No.

But it would be better to look during the light of day.

Eventually, I made it up there.  I put my hand on the knob and tried to turn it.  It didn’t budge.

“You want rules?” the voice growled behind me.  I spun, there was nothing there.  “Do not open that door.  Do not come into my space.”

I went from trembling from nerves to bolting down the stairs in an instant.  I nearly tripped, but felt something - him? - catch me and set me on my feet.

“Careful,” he purred.

I spent the rest of the day in the garden again.  I was still out there when the sun went down and the back light turned on.  Then the kitchen light and for a moment I could see something outlined against the antique curtains I hadn’t replaced in the kitchen.  I tried to remind myself that he wasn’t necessarily that big.  He might just be closer to the light and casting a bigger shadow.

I didn’t believe it, but I tried.

I crept back into the house like a scared child who wasn’t sure how angry their parents were going to be after they had done something wrong.  I turned on all the lights on the main floor and stayed in the kitchen away from the stairs.

“Planning on staying up all night?”

I jumped.  “How are you always behind me?”

“I live in the shadows.  Go to bed.”

“Um…  I was thinking, that should be your room, really.  Your closet.  You picked out the bed.  I can just camp down -”

“No.  Go to bed.”

“Do you really think I’m going to be able to sleep in a room with a closet that must not be opened?  I have read Blue Beard, you know.”

“So have I.  The wife gets the house and lives happily ever after.”

“The last wife does,” I pointed out.  “The first dozen or so didn’t.”

He chuckled at that.  “We made a deal, remember?”

“Are you teasing me?  What deal?”

“I don’t touch you in your sleep.  You don’t sleep in the kitchen anymore.”

“How big are you?”

The lights flickered and went off.

“Do you want to see me?”  he purred, so close that I could feel his breath on my neck.

“Not in the dark,” I squeaked.

“Go to bed.”  

The light snapped back on, leaving me blinking.

I spent the night sitting on the bed with my back pressed against the headboard trying to see the whole room at one.  Eventually, I fell asleep.

My alarm did not go off at six.  It had been turned off.  The coffee was ready but not turned on when I went down stairs.  The air smelled faintly of solder.  There was a post-it stuck to the coffee maker.  Fine copperplate handwriting told me:

I have replaced the plumbing

I stared at it dumbly.  I had replaced the plumbing to the kitchen sink and the downstairs powder room and had been washing out of the sink since I had been forced to stay home.  The only other plumbing was down to the washing machine in the cellar and the upstairs bathroom.  I pushed the button on the coffee maker and slowly crept upstairs.

Sure enough the stack of copper pipe waiting in the other bedroom was gone. 

Well, not gone.  I could see it installed through the holes in the walls.  I turned on the tap to the sink and sure enough, I had water.  I now had an upstairs, working bathroom with a clawfoot tub.

And no walls.

“I don’t like the idea of you watching me bathe,” I called out.  Then I felt like an idiot because if whatever it was had voyeur tendencies, it could have been watching me for months.  I tried all the taps and the toilet.  Everything worked.

“Thank you,” I mumbled, unsure if I was talking to myself.

“You’re welcome.”  It was the least creepy, most normal thing I had heard from him.

----

When I got back downstairs, there still wasn’t coffee but there was a new note:

Humans who do not sleep start to hallucinate

I crumbled it up, threw it across the room and jabbed the on switch on the coffee maker.  Nothing happened.  I growled as I plugged it in.  The power went out.

“Oh come on!  Withholding coffee is cruel and unusual punishment!”

“Sleep.”  It sounded like the whole house had murmured that last bit.

I wish I could say I handled it gracefully, but I didn’t.  I stomped back up to the bedroom like a petulant child.

I woke to bright sunlight streaming in through the window.  The house was quiet and it felt empty for the first time in days.  I had a bath and washed my hair and I felt better than I had in days too.  Clean and dry and dressed, I bounced into the kitchen to try and turn on the coffee again only to see my laptop snap shut.

It was with a lot of trepidation that I opened it.  I was expecting a ridiculous online purchase which is why I stared dumbly at the screen unable to process what I was seeing.

It was a CGI woman with her hands tied to something over her head being railed by a monster who was fingering her clit with one hand and fondling her breasts with the other while her belly distended in rhythm with his thrusts.

“Ugh!  Dude!  You can NOT watch porn on my laptop!” I shrieked as I frantically tried to close the window.

“Would you rather I watch you?” he asked calmly from somewhere to the left of me.

I breathed out a shaky breath.  “OK.  Let’s talk about private browser windows and how not to get a computer virus.”

When I got to the end of my tentative explanation, I asked, “Do you need … some alone time?”

There was another house shaking howling laugh.

“Is that a yes or a no?”

“You need to eat.”

That brought up a whole other issue.  “Do you?  Eat I mean.  Do you eat?  What do you eat?”

“Don’t worry about me.  I am not going to eat you.  Unless you ask nicely.”

I blushed even further but got out a pan and a skillet meal from the fridge.

I spend the rest of the afternoon weeding the garden.  I came in when it got dark, heated up my leftovers from lunch and tried to figure out what to do with myself.  The nap had meant that I wasn’t tired for the first time in days.

I wondered what he would do if I watched a movie.  I hunted through the cupboards and found a bag of microwave popcorn from before the virus started.  Right! I thought.  Bowl of popcorn, a movie, skype with a few friends.  Pretend none of this was happening.

I wasn’t surprised when the lights went out.  That was just a thing now.  My computer was still illuminating a bubble around me and B99 was still hilarious.

I wasn’t expecting the bed to dip next to me.  That once again raised the question of how to deal with him around others.  I hit the mute button.  “What are you doing?” I asked icily.

“Not touching you.  What are you eating?”

“Human food.”

“Hmmm.”

I unmuted my computer to answer Penny’s question about how stir crazy I was going.

“12/10 on the looney toons scale,” I offered.

She just laughed.

All of the popcorn was gone.

“Ah hell.”

“What’s wrong?” Penny asked.

“All my popcorn is gone,” I grumbled.  I didn’t add that I had more than half a bowl left a moment ago.  Not eating me, I reminded myself.

“That sucks.  Need to pause and get more?”

“I don’t have anymore.”

She just laughed, “But do you still have toilet paper and hand sanitizer?”

I chuckled, “Toilet paper, at least.”

“I should go.  It’s getting late,” she said with a yawn.

“Yeah.  Good night.”  After Penny signed off, I just let Netflix autoplay the next episode.

“Do you need to sleep?” The whisper seemed to come from the direction of the closet but the bed was still dipped under his weight on my other side.

My heart leapt to my throat.  “How many of you are there?”

“Just me,” he purred too close to my ear.  I flung myself away from him and toppled out of bed.  Two hands caught me.

Two other hands caught my laptop.

I stared as it was placed back on the bed a little way in front of me.  The hands on my arms were cool and smooth.  “What are you?”

“I am me.  I have not asked your name.  You will not ask mine.”

“My name is on the mail.  And my credit card.  You know my name,”  I pointed out keeping my eyes locked on the screen, fighting the urge to look around.

“Nonetheless.”

This wasn’t going to work, but I had to try.  “I would like to be alone now.”

The bed shifted as the weight was removed from the side.  The black shadows that could be fingers moved from my computer.  The voice said, “Good night” from the direction of the closet.  

I sat frozen.  “In the morning, I’m moving the bed to another room.”

“Why?”

“Because the closet is yours and it’s scary being here with you,” I admitted.

“I have never done anything to harm you.”

“You scare the shit out of me multiple times a day.”

There was a long pause before he replied, “And yet you haven’t left.”

“The city is on lock down.  I can’t leave.”

“Hmm.”  

I jumped as my laptop snapped shut.  I fumbled in the dark trying to find it on my bed, “What are you doing?” I demanded.

“Taking this downstairs.  I will not bother you tonight.”

“What-” I started to say, then snapped my mouth shut as the realization that this may be his ‘alone time’.

This time the “Good night,” came from the bedroom door.

In the morning the only thing in my browsing history was netflix.  This was less comforting since I had shown him how to clear the cache.  I told myself at least the keyboard wasn’t sticky.

[abarbaricyalp]

Do you take explicit prompts? Asking for a friend, and if you do >_>

Accidental kink discovery (your choice of kink, prefer sambucky) if this is something you are even comfortable with

I do, but I'm not very good at it, lol. Partial text here for spicy reasons

The rest is on AO3

Currently taking prompts

You're In My Lungs (i'm behind your ribs)

“I brought you Captain America,” the Winter Soldier said. “The fact that you never managed to do it yourself shows your unimaginable incompetence.” He shoved Sam forward and Sam stumbled, not quite able to catch his balance with his hands tied in front of him.

“I like you more with the mask on,” Slade, Hellfire, whatever he called himself these days, muttered.

“Why don’t you come close enough to try’n put it on me?” the Soldier threatened. When Slade reached for Sam, the Soldier yanked him away, wrapping the metal arm around Sam’s neck. He felt Sam swallow thickly, felt him squirm against the Soldier’s body, fingers finding the inside of the Soldier’s thigh to pinch. “I want the chain first,” he said.

Slade’s hand went to his hip, the coil of chain that hung unassuming against his leg. “It’s no good without me,” he said. “Don’t know why you need it so bad. You’re the fucking Winter Soldier.”

“The chain,” the Soldier repeated. A knife appeared in his hand and he held it against Sam’s throat, dragging the dull edge just above his collarbones.

“Aaa-hh,” Sam moaned.

“What the fuck?” Slade asked, like there was some answer to that.

“Excuse me?” Bucky added, shoving Sam’s shoulder until he turned around.

“I tried to warn you!” Sam hissed.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Slade snarled.

“About which part?” Bucky asked. “The fact that we’re working together or the fact that Captain America apparently gets off on being bodily threatened.”

“Did you think I wasn’t attracted to you before you showed up in Louisiana and made yourself useful?” Sam asked. “Of course I think you and the shit you can do is fucking hot.”

“Are you really having this conversation in front of me?” Slade asked.

“Right, we’ll table this for now,” Bucky agreed, pulling that stupid fucking face that Sam hated. Like he thought whatever was currently happening in front of him was simultaneously the weirdest thing to happen and not important enough to be bothering him. “I’d really like that chain now,” he said, turning his attention to Slade again.

“Over my dead fucking body!”

“That can be arranged,” Bucky promised and yanked the knot on Sam’s wrist-tie so they go charge head first into the fight.

Sam ended up with a concussion by the time they wrangled Slade into heat-proof cuffs and unburdened him of the chain. As it turns out, hellfire or not, getting hit in the head with a substantial chunk of metal was bad for the brain. So they couldn’t explore all the implications of Sam’s accidental confession right away. The next time Sam could sit up without throwing up, he found himself in one of the training gyms, watching Bucky teach Torres some complicated knife trick. The likelihood that it would be any good to Torres in the air was pretty slim, but the kid tripped over himself to get any training time with Bucky in. Sam hadn’t figured out if it was because he genuinely respected Bucky as a fighter or if it was because he took great pleasure at landing blows every now and then.

Knife training, at least, was quiet, so supervising the two of them wasn’t making the multi-day migraine Sam kept fighting come roaring back. Yet. He couldn’t hear what Bucky was telling Torres, only picked up on the low rumble of his voice every now and then. And he figured he could watch the two of them from half lidded eyes, leaned back on the pile of mats. And, really, he didn’t need to shout encouragement or adjustments so often. This was fine. Just a few minutes of quiet sparring, some darkness, the warmth of the gym. No thinking...

Sam woke up to Bucky kicking his foot and grumbling, “Torres took the shield out.” Sam blinked blearily up at him. He found the shield, Bucky’s shoulder and part of his face swimming into focus a second later.

“Looks like you got it back,” he said.

“Figured he should get a taste of what it feels like in his hands,” Bucky said. “If he’s gonna be flying with you, he might need to catch it or throw it back or something.”

“That’s remarkably kind of you. You’re a lot less possessive with it than you used to be. ‘S good growth,” Sam joked and let his eyes fall shut again.

Bucky kicked his foot again. “Get up, you can’t sleep on the gym floor.”

“That’s the thing you’re possessive over now? Sleeping in uncomfortable places?”

“Let’s get a little sparring in. See how you’re putting yourself back together.”

“Fuck, Barnes, I’m really not in the mood,” Sam said and felt the migraine drilling in again, just behind his right eye.

The edge of the shield found the soft underside of Sam’s chin and his eyes fluttered open. Bucky pressed it back until it slotted against some probably important cartilage in his throat and he pressed just enough that Sam felt a blood rush to his temples, a strain on the back of his throat.

“Fuck,” he groaned, dropped his head back, let his hips stutter off the floor.

“Je-sus Chrrrist,” Bucky breathed. The shield fell away and, in the next breath, Bucky had a hand curled in his shirt. He hauled him up, threw him over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes and by the time Sam had found his breath again, they were in the showers.

Bucky wrenched the water on, so hot that steam began to fill the space within moments. He wouldn’t leave it like that, not while Sam was around at least. But he hated cold tile and cold air and he especially hated cold water. Sam couldn’t complain. He hated cold showers too. His reasoning was just a lot less traumatic.

Sam worked through his spinning head--though it was clearing the more of Bucky’s body he saw--to undress himself before Bucky could lose patience and destroy his clothes. Again. By the time Bucky was whirling him around and shoving him against the wall, the tile was warm to the touch. Bucky had managed to fix the water temperature to something just hot enough to sweat in, but not hot enough to burn in without Sam noticing. It really wouldn’t have mattered how hot the tiles or the water was though, because Bucky pressed his body along Sam’s and all other thought and experience cut right out of his head.

Continue on AO3

[applepiry]

Popsicle [Yuu Nishinoya]

Or Day 4. Food Play [Yuu Nishinoya]

!!18+!!

WC: 1154

Pairing: NishinoyaxFem!Reader

Contains: College AU, Popsicle play, Temperature play, teasing, oral, squirting

Ry: I- Well, here we go let's see if I get reported

[Smut under Cut]

Nishinoya’s brown eyes watched you closely as you sucked at your popsicle, sitting outside the gym with him on his break from practice. You had brought him a banana and another water bottle, but had grabbed a popsicle for yourself since it was so hot out. 

“Can I have some?” he whined softly, scooting closer.

Licking it one more time, you nod, “Of course,” you tell him, holding out the popsicle for him.

He shakes his head and leans around it, kissing your lips, flicking his tongue over them and grinning, “Is that a soda flavored pop? You know those are my favorite!” he says, leaning back as he licks his lips. 

You laugh softly at his actions, he was always so affectionate with you. “You’re so sweet,” you murmur softly, sucking on the popsicle again.

“Nah, that’d be you~” he said happily, his head snapping to the door when he heard it open.

“Hey break is over!” Tanaka said from the doorway, then noticed you, “Oh hey YN! Sorry, we have to have Noya back!”

“No,” you say, pouting as you wrap your arms around him, the popsicle dripping down your hand. 

He nuzzles you happily, “I should get back,” he whispers in your ear, “They’re useless without their libero.”

Your face feels hot as you pull back and nod slowly, “Fine but only because my popsicle is melting,” you pout for a second but smile, licking the popsicle’s melting juice from your hand. 

Noya visibly shivers before he jumps up, kissing your cheek and taking his leave, running inside, “I’ll see you later, love you!” he shouts before disappearing inside.

It was a few hours later when he finally got back to your shared apartment. As he walks in with an “I’m home!” you’re sitting on the couch, playing a game.

“Welcome home!” you reply, putting the game on pause as Noya came into the living room, tackling you from behind after dropping the bag he was holding.

“How was the rest of your day?” he asks you, peppering your neck with kisses.

You wiggle and let out soft moans, “It was- hnnn- Good,” you get out as his kisses turn into nibbles. “Someones still full of energy,” you tilt your head to the side, your eyes fluttering closed as you enjoy the feeling of his mouth against your skin. You were used to him spoiling you with attention constantly, considering the only one who rivaled Noya’s energy was Hinata.

“I’ve been thinking about you ever since you came for break,” he whispers in your ear, flicking his tongue over it. “About that popsicle you kept licking, teasing me,” his voice was getting huskier as he spoke, his memory flickering back to the way you lapped at the popsicle juice. “Speaking of,” he said, suddenly disappearing from behind you. When he comes back, he’s holding a bag of popsicles, gently shaking it with a smirk on his face. 

“Let’s play with these,” he says, licking his lips, his eyes sparkling with excitement.

That was how you ended up naked on the bed, a fluffy comforter curved around you perfectly, neither of you concerned with popsicle juice on the bed.

Nishinoya was hovering above you, on his knees between your legs. A popsicle hung in his mouth as his hands squeezed at your thighs, gently massaging them before taking the popsicle out, now dripping on his hand. 

“That’s tasty…” he murmured as he licked his lips, his brown eyes staring down at your exposed pussy. Moving the popsicle over your stomach, letting it drip down onto you slowly. You arched up, whimpering softly at each drop, watching his face closely. Your hands clenched into the sheets, wiggling your hips to get to tease him. While Noya was amazing at foreplay, he usually wanted to get straight to delving into you in some form. He smirked back at you, pressing the popsicle next to your belly button and dragging it down. “Want to get fucked that badly, my goddess?” his voice is deeper than usual, making your stomach churn with need. 

“Yes,” you answer honestly, one of the parts about you that Nishinoya loves so much is the way you respond to his praise, with such confidence. 

Noya smirked and moved the popsicle down, smearing it across your mound, making the soft popsicle spread all over. You jump at all the cold builds, wiggling around until Noya’s hand pressed down into your hip to make you stop. There wasn’t much left of the popsicle, but he pressed the rest to your lips. When you open your mouth, he sticks it in and takes his hand back, expecting you to hold it in there. 

You sucked on the popsicle, slurping the juices down, letting out soft moans. Nishinoya let out his own moan before his head dipped down, sucking at the popsicle juice all around your mound, nibbling at the chunks. You throw your head back, moaning around the popsicle and nearly choking on it before grabbing the stick out, panting softly as your eyes flicker to him. He keeps at this until all the popsicle juice and chunks are gone, licking all around your mound until his tongue finally slipped between your pussy lips. Moaning loudly as your hands fly to his hair, tangling in them, you wiggle your hips again as you try to get more friction. He groaned as you grabbed his hair, loving when you touched him, causing a vibration through his tongue. 

Rolling your hips up into his mouth, he buries himself as far as he can into you, his tongue shoving inside you as he slurps your juices up, his eyes rolling back a bit in pleasure. His hands slip under you, groping at your ass as he ate you out, moving his tongue and lips against your soaking wet pussy. You could feel yourself building up in the pit of your stomach, getting closer, shivering as your toes curled. One of his hands moved, two fingers suddenly slipping into your walls, curling to find your bundle of nerves, his tongue rolling around your sensitive bud. He began to use his fingers to fuck you quickly, keeping his mouth attached to your clit. A loud moan ripped from your throat as you felt an odd pleasure you hadn’t felt before leaving your body. Your hands forcing his head down as your thighs squeezed against his head, your orgasm washing over you. Finally, your knees fell to your sides, your feet sliding down as you panted heavily, your hands loosening from Noya’s hair. 

Nishinoya’s head popped up, swallowing loudly before taking in a deep breath and grinning widely at you, “Wow you squirted in my mouth!”

“W-What?!” you squeaked, your head shooting up.

“I actually really… liked it,” he said, licking his lips. Noya’s eyes were sparkling with a new interest and pride, having never gotten you to squirt before.

You could tell it was going to be a long night.

​ This is for @vixenpen​  @starry-eyed234​ ‘s Event! 

MasterList for XXXMas

Main Event Post

[kinglazrus]

A Helping Hand

Phic phight 2020

Submitted by @trainernick: Lancer telling Danny he knows his secret and admitting trying to help him throughout high school (maybe at prom or graduation) - wholesome found family

Summary: Everyone says prom is supposed to be one of the best nights of Danny's life. And even though he wrecks his suit, ditches his date, and gets attacked by Skulker, it sort of is. But not for the reasons everyone says it should be.

When Lancer sees his student feeling low, he does what he can to make sure Danny knows there are always people rooting for him.

Hurt/comfort

Word count: 3923

People like to talk about milestones. They divide their lives into neat little segments and mark the years with special occasions. First steps, first words, first day of school, first car, first kiss, first job. Lots of firsts. They're important. But they aren't the be-all, end-all of those experiences. People keep talking after their first word. They keep walking after their first steps. They continue to learn, and drive, and kiss—if they're into that sort of thing—and work, and work, and work until that's all they ever do.

The firsts matter, but they don't matter so much that you can never do any of those things ever again.

Some milestones can't be repeated, though. Or, at least, people build them up so much and make such a big deal out of it that even if you can repeat it, it'll never be the same. They make it sound like if you do it wrong then you'll never get to do it right. That's how Danny feels about prom.

It doesn't matter how often he tells people there will be other parties, that this won't be the only time he ever dances with his peers, that this won't even be his only prom because he probably won't be able to graduate this year. Prom is big. Prom is important. Prom is special. He has to do it right or else he'll never get to do it again.

Danny tries his best.

He gets a date, one of his best friends, Sam. It takes him a few weeks to ask her out, because he can't figure out how to do it. He wastes hours writing out what he wants to say. Four days before prom, he sees Sam in the middle of a ghost fight, grinning like mad, hoisting a bazooka on her shoulder, ectoplasm stuck in her hair, and Danny blurts the question out right there because holy shit she's beautiful. It totally throws all his careful, romantic planning out the window, but she still says yes.

He gets a suit. Black jacket, black shirt, purple vest, purple tie, because he thinks Sam will like it. She calls him a dork as soon as she sees him in it, which means she does like it, very much so. He gets a corsage of blue poppies for Sam's wrist, to go with his boutonniere. He gets Jazz and Dani to watch the city for the night so that nothing will distract him from the dance.

He does everything he can to make sure he does prom right. But, in the end, he still gets in a ghost fight.

Danny leans his head back against the wall of the shower stall in the boys' locker rooms. His lungs burn, his body aches, and his knuckles are bruised. The water's turned up as hot as it can go. It succeeds in getting the worst ectoplasm out—cold water would have set the stains—but now he's completely soaked, and his suit is still ripped.

Looking down, he catalogues the damage, both to his body and his rental suit. A gash on his right shoulder to go with the torn seam of the sleeve. The left sleeve is ripped from cuff to elbow, his cufflink lost somewhere on the street outside. There's a matching slice in his arm, stretching from his palm around to the outside of his elbow.

The cut stings in the hot water, same with the wound on his shoulder, and he should probably take care of both before he loses too much blood. But he has a couple minutes to spare.

His pants got out of the fight okay, minutes a little tearing on the knees, the skin beneath scraped and red. He doesn't think the store is going to take the suit back.

There's a knock on the stall door and Danny lifts his head. Through the foggy glass, he sees Tucker.

"You good, man?" Tucker asks.

Danny swallows, glad he doesn't taste blood. Skulker really held nothing back today. He calls back, "Yeah, I'm good. Suit's a little torn, though."

"Why'd you fight in your suit?" Tucker asks, a hint of laughter in his voice.

"I think Skulker borrowed some of Vlad's tech. He shorted out my powers for a little bit, but," Danny raises his hand and forms a swirling ball of ectoplasm in his palm, "they're back now."

"Okay. Lancer's doing a headcount. I told him you had gone to the bathroom just before Skulker showed up, so I'll let him know you're safe."

"Thanks. I won't be long."

Tucker's silhouette does finger guns and he clicks his tongue twice, then leaves. Danny waits until he hears the locker room door closing before he stands up. The ectoplasm in his hand turns blue, its temperature dropping a few degrees, and he drags his palm along the cut on his left arm. Ice seeps over the wound, sealing it shut and stopping the bleeding. It also works fantastically at numbing the entire limb so it doesn't hurt to move.

After rotating his arm a few times, testing its mobility, he does the same to the gash on his right shoulder. It's only a temporary measure, until he can get home and get Jazz to help stitch him back up. Sam and Tucker used to be in charge of doing that, but Jazz is by far the better seamstress, and leaves fewer scars behind.

Danny shuts the water off and heads toward the lockers. Rather than going for his own locker, he stops in front of Tucker's. Danny usually has extra clothes for emergencies like this, but he used them last week and hadn't brought them back since. Tucker keeps a few spares, though, because of the last few times Dash and Kwan stole his clothes while he was in the shower.

Turning his hand intangible, Danny sticks it through the locker door and grabs a shirt from the top shelf. When he pulls his hand out the shirt unfurls, and he stiffens.

"You've got to be kidding me," he says. It's a black button-up shirt, which is perfect. But it's also covered cartoonish pictures of Danny Phantom's face. Reaching back into the locker, he tries to find another, but this is the only one. He could use his gym shirt, but he needs the long sleeves to hide his left arm.

With a groan, Danny strips, laying his jacket, vest, tie, and shirt out on the benches. He and Tucker are around the same size, so the shirt fits, for the most part. It's a little tight across the shoulders and bites into his skin when he bends his arms, but it'll do. As long as he doesn't get into another fight and tear this shirt up, too.

Danny pulls his jacket and vest back on, although he does neither up, and drapes his shirt across his arm. With his left hand facing down, you can't even he's injured. Minus the scrapes on his knees, but if anyone asks, Danny will just say he tripped running away from the ghost

When he exits the locker room, Danny looks left and right, checking to make sure the hallway is clear before slipping out. His wet shoes squeak on the floor, and water drips from his hair onto his nose. He probably should have tried drying off. Especially since the water from his jacket is now seeping into Tucker's shirt. But, Fentons are stubborn, and Danny's already on his way back to the gym.

Prom posters featuring smiling members of the dance committee stair down at him as he walks, silently judging him. Their blank eyes follow his every move. Somehow, Danny feels like he's failed them.

He expects the dance to be back in full swing by the time he makes it back, because Casper High is just like that sometimes, but he couldn't be more wrong. The music has stopped. No one's dancing. There's a massive hole in the outside wall, letting in the cool night air. A wave of shame rolls through Danny as he remembers he did that.

His gaze drifts up to the ceiling, where there's another, smaller hole. That's where Skulker burst through, shouting about the glory of capturing his prey on such a momentous occasion. Seconds later, Danny blasted him through the wall and took off after him. Without even a single glance back at the chaos he'd caused.

Paulina, Star, and other members of the dance committee hustled about, directing people to help with the cleanup so they could get things started again. City protocol said to wait for an official cleanup crew, but this was prom, damn it, and Paulina wasn't about to let a couple ghosts ruin her chances of getting crowned queen.

He finds Sam and Tucker quickly. They're helping Elliott move one of the larger chunks of concrete. The front of Sam's dress is covered in dust and her corsage it crushed.

Another wave of guilt pushes Danny out the door. He backs into the hallway, gives the ruined dance one last look, then turns and heads for the front door. There's no point sticking around and risk ruining things even more.

The cold air and his wet clothes shill Danny to the bone when he gets outside, but he doesn't mind. The benefits of having an ice core means he can weather the cold better than most people. But, being half-human still, he's not infallible. Danny sits down on the front steps, slipping his hands into his pockets, and sighs. Maybe he should just go home.

Since Danny doesn't have his license—he never had time, with all the ghost fighting—Tucker gave Sam and Danny a ride. So, if he does leave, he won't be abandoning Sam without a way home. Going for a fly sounds pretty nice right now. There's not much he can screw up when he's miles above the city. Although, if anyone could find a way, it would be him.

The only thing he can ever seem to do right is fight ghosts. It's not too late to make a career out of it. At this point, it's basically his job already, and it'd be nice to get paid for it. Maybe the G.I.W. are hiring.

Danny laughs. It's a bitter, self-deprecating sound.

"They'd probably cut me open first," he tells the open air.

"Modern Prometheus, Mr. Fenton, that's quite the accusation."

"Holy sh–" Danny jumps, nearly toppling off the step, and whips around to see Lancer behind him. "Mr. Lancer! Uh, what are you doing here?"

"Checking on my student," Lancer says. "I wasn't satisfied with Mr. Foley's assurances and wanted to make sure you were safe myself."

He steps forward and looks down at Danny, frowning. "Are you... dripping, Mr. Fenton?"

"Uh." Danny glances down at his soaked clothes. "I fell in a puddle."

"While you were in the bathroom?"

"I went for a walk and then fell in a puddle."

"It hasn't rained in three weeks," Lancer says.

"So crazy, right?" Danny chuckles. He silently wills Lancer to go away, preferring to be alone right now. Instead, Lancer does the complete opposite and sits down next to Danny.

"Is something bothering you?" he asks.

"What makes you think that?"

"I've worked with teenagers for a long time, Mr. Fenton. I can tell when things aren't okay. And I think, by now, your tells are somewhat obvious to me."

Danny refuses to meet Lancer's gaze. He's probably the last person Danny wants to see right now. Not because he hates Lancer, but because he cares too much what Lancer thinks. While he didn't like the man much during freshman year, things changed over time. Lancer started actually believing in Danny. He's the only teacher who never gave up on him, who always had their door open.

Lancer even leant Danny his ear on more than one occasion. Danny tried to avoid this as much as possible, but there were some things he just couldn't talk to his sister or friends about.  And Danny's willing to admit, although somewhat grudgingly, that he's become attached to his English teacher.

"Prom's ruined," Danny finally says.

"Is that so?"

"I mean, yeah. Sk– uh, that big metal ghost dude kind of crashed the party. And then Phantom fucked it all up."

"Language," Lancer says. He gives Danny a critical look. "Why are you blaming Phantom?"

"He kind of destroyed a whole wall. He could have just, I don't know, thrown the ghost back through the hole that was already there?" If only Danny had thought of that at the time. But in his desperation to not ruin prom, he went ahead and ruined prom.

"I think Phantom did a fantastic job," Lancer says.

Danny gapes at him.

"Yes, the wall was damaged, but no one got hurt. And your classmates are displaying wonderful teamwork skills by clearing out the debris so the dance can go on. It wasn't Phantom's fault the ghost decided to interrupt," Lancer says. "Although I have to say, it's extremely lucky of us that he was so close by. In fact, it was almost like he was there before the ghost arrived."

Lancer smiles. Something about it puts Danny on edge. It's a familiar smile, a fond one. It's the smile he gives students who do exceptionally well. It's the smile he gives Danny when he does well.

"Oh, yeah. That's really lucky, yep. Must be because of how often the school gets attacked. I mean, if I were him, which I'm not, I'd probably hang around the place that gets attacked the most, too," Danny says, a little too quickly. He was cold seconds ago, but now he's uncomfortably warm.

"Which you're not," Lancer repeats slowly. His gaze is intense and critical. Danny can only bear to meet it for a few seconds before he has to look away.

He tries to distract himself, looking at the cars lined up along the street. There are a few limousines amongst them. Danny would bet his ghost half on one of them being here for the A-listers', who came together as a group rather than bringing dates. There were so many cars already parked by the time Danny and his friends got here that Tucker was forced to park his old Camaro around the block.

It's a pretty nice car, despite how old it is. A hand-me-down from Tucker's dad, they fixed it up together, making it good as new. Danny tries to picture doing something like that with his own dad. Jack would probably deck the car out in ghost weapons and stamp the word "Fenton" across it.

They could call it the Fentonmobile.

"Danny," Lancer says.

The use of his nickname gives Danny pause. Lancer never calls him Danny. It's one of his most frustrating traits. Every student is always Mr., Ms., or Mx. As annoying as it is, Danny can't deny that it feels nice at the same time. Like Lancer actually respects them as people, doesn't look down on them the way most adults do.

After everything Danny's been through, he thinks he warrants a little basic decency.

Lancer continues. "I know."

Everything stops. Every thought in Danny's head comes to a screeching halt. He stares at Lancer. Maybe he heard it wrong. Maybe he doesn't mean what Danny thinks he means. But the longer Danny stares, the longer Lancer stares right back. At first, dread fills him. His secret is blown. This is it. The G.I.W. are on their way.

That dread quickly drowns in a tidal wave of relief, because Lancer knows. And he isn't hurting Danny, or calling him a freak, or doing anything.

"You know," Danny repeats in a breathy whisper.

"I know."

Danny slops backward, burying his hands in his hair. He lets out a soft laugh. "You know. How long?"

"Almost three years now," Lancer says.

Danny's stunned into silence. Three years. That's nearly as long as he's been a ghost. He had his accident a couple months into freshman year and started fighting ghosts a few days after that.

"I," he pauses, "am a terrible liar. Aren't I?"

"I'm surprised you've lasted this long," Lancer says.

Danny laughs sharply. Sitting back up, he turns to face Lancer proper, running his hands through his hair again. It's a nervous habit he's never been able to kick. "What gave it away?"

"Your first weeks at Casper High, I thought you were a talented student with a lot of potential. You managed average grades on your first couple of assignments, but I could tell you were struggling in the environment. Not a fan of classroom learning?" Lancer asks, quirking his eyebrow.

"It's hard to focus. Sometimes," Danny admits.

"But you managed. And then you disappeared from school for two weeks. When you came back, your grades plummeted. I blamed it on the stress of your accident, at first, which I excused. But then your delinquent behaviour started."

Danny winces. He knows exactly how he looks to other people. A problem child, skipping school, not doing his assignments, barely studying. Coming to class with bruises on his knuckles. Tetslaff tried to "set him straight" once. She said some good physical activity would help him channel his issues and convinced his parents to sign him up for volleyball.

Tetslaff kicked him off the team after his third missed game.

"To me, my students are my children. I want to see them succeed in every way they can, and do what I can to make that happen. In that way, I failed you freshman year. I'm ashamed of how I reacted." Lancer pauses. He looks away from Danny, tipping his head back to search the sky instead.

Danny wonders what he's thinking. He wishes he knew.

"I'm even more ashamed of the fact that if I hadn't seen you transform, I might not have changed my attitude at all."

"You saw me transform," Danny deadpans. First Jazz, and then Paulina—although she was possessed at time, Danny still counts it—and now Lancer. How many times is this going to happen? He asks, "Where?"

"Here, at school."

Danny sputters in disbelief. "What?"

"You were in the middle of the cafeteria, Danny. You stood on a table and cried 'I'm going ghost.' I'm surprised more people didn't see you," Lancer says. He shoots Danny an amused grin.

Danny blushes, burying his face in his hands. "I thought it was cool," he mumbles into his palms. It made him feel like a superhero. Until he wizened up and stopped shouting out warnings to every ghost within earshot.

Lancer had a point, how did people not see him more often? Maybe there's an entire cult in Amity Park of people who have seen Danny transform. They could call themselves the Phentons. Or the Fantoms. Or the Keepers of the Great One. Frostbite would probably like that last name.

"Why are you telling me this now?" Danny asks.

"Because I think you need to know there are people on the sidelines who are willing to help you, who have helped you, even if you don't realize it."

"How do you mean?" Danny already knows he has people looking out for him. Jazz, Tucker, and Sam always have his back and they've helped him more than he can ever thank them for. He's going to miss Sam and Tucker next year when they move on to college and he's stuck repeated senior year.

Lancer reaches into his pocket and pulls out a folded piece of paper. Unfolding it, he smooths it out on his knee and passes over.

It’s a schedule for April, May, and the first week of June. Two dates are circled. April 18th, today, and June 4th, the graduation day. The weeks between are full of markings. Squinting at the thin writing, Danny reads "Packet One: Biology" written over next week. Skipping over the rest of the schedule, he finds "Packet Two: History," "Packet Three: Applied Math," all the way up to "Packet Six: English" the final week before June. They're all classes Danny is taking this year, including ones he already failed last semester.

"What is this?" Danny asks.

"A study guide, of sorts. I spoke to the other teachers about your grades. Because of 'special circumstances,'" Lancer makes finger quotes, "they agreed to give you a chance to redeem your grades. You did well on your exams overall, but it's your course work that failed you. Each of your teachers has put together a packet of bonus assignments that, if you finish successfully, will earn you a passing grade in each class."

Danny's breath hitches. "You mean..."

"With any luck, I will not be seeing you again in these halls next year."

Danny's eyes burn. He lowers his head, hiding his face in the crook of his elbow. He tries to stay quiet, because the last thing he wants to do is cry in front of a teacher, but he can't help it. The tears won't stop. A few gross sobs fight their way through his hiccups. Lancer rubs Danny's back as he cries, a soothing gesture.

"Thank you," Danny says, as soon as he can gather the breath for it. He wipes his nose on his sleeve and shoots Lancer an elated grin. "I hope I don't see you here next year either."

Lancer smiles in return. "We could head back, if you'd like. The dance should be starting up again right about now. Ms. Sanchez certainly knows how to whip a cleaning crew into action. I never expected such leadership from her."

"I did kind of ditch Sam," Danny says. He hopes she's not too mad. "But I kind of need to take care of something first."

"The ghost? I always did wonder what you did with them after capturing them in your... lunchbox?"

Danny laughs and shakes his head. "It's a thermos. But, no, he'll be fine in there for a while. I actually, uh," he trails off. Sheepishly, he pulls back his left sleeve and shows Lancer his injury.

"The English Patient, Mr. Fenton, you need medical attention!" Lancer shoots to his feet, digging his phone out of his pocket.

"No hospital!" Danny shouts. He scrambles up after Lancer and covers his phone. "My body's different. They'd notice something. I just need some stitches and my healing will take care of the rest."

"That's reassuring, I suppose." Lancer lowers his phone. "I have keys to the nurse's office, and I'm no slouch with a needle."

"Oh. I can just take of it myself, at home. Or get Jazz to do it."

"Nonsense, Mr. Fenton. What kind of teacher would I be if I let you go home in that state?" Lancer beckons for Danny to follow. He only hesitates for a second before complying.

Danny doesn't want to see Lancer in these halls again, but he certainly hopes graduation won't be the last time he ever sees the man. It's nice, knowing there's another person out there who has his back. Someone who can give him a stern word when he's being stupid, and a helping hand when he's lost. It's almost father-like, now that Danny thinks about it.

He stares at Lancer's back and thinks. Lancer looks the kids of Casper High and sees them not just as students, but as his children. Danny doesn't mind looking back and seeing a parent instead of a teacher.

[recurring-polynya]

can you please do a drabble where Renji is remembering his wild squad 11 style birthday party but then at the end once he finishes his flashback he’s celebrating his birthday in the present with Rukia and Ichika

“This is number 10,” Zaraki informed Renji, beady, bloodshot eye staring into beady, bloodshot eyes. “Not everyone makes it to ten.”

“I would stop after one,” Yumichika made his frowniest frowny face.

“You’re smarter than the rest of us,” Iba replied.

“I am ready,” Renji confirmed, gripping his cup as the Kenpachi filled it with sake from his “special stash.”

Renji had drunk a lot of horrible sake in his time. As it turned out, rotgut from deep North Rukongai had an entirely different flavor profile than the pigswill of his Southern youth. It hit you in the nose, rather than the ears, smelled more like a bog than an armpit, and the unpleasant aftereffects tended to come out the opposite end. On the other hand, bad sake was bad sake, and it was hardly a birthday without it.

“Kampei!” Renji and Zaraki shouted together, and down the hatch it went. Cheers went up around them.

“You’re a good man, Abarai,” Zaraki declared, standing up, and clapping him on the shoulder. “Happy birthday. I’m out. Yachiru! It’s bedtime!”

“Thank you, sir!” Renji hollered, far too loud, as Yachiru abandoned the bowl of wasabi peas she had been mainlining to hop onto the Kenpachi’s shoulder.

“Night, sir!” various members of Squad 11 chorused.

Zaraki was a good captain, Renji mused to himself, drunkenly. He showed up, drank enough to show that he cared, but then he took off, because no one really wanted to get birthday-wasted in front of their boss.

Birthdays at the Eleventh were very thoughtful affairs, in Renji’s opinion. First thing in the morning, you got to have a big public fight with anyone from the squad. Seated officers could choose to fight the big man, which, of course, he had. This year, he had made it 52 seconds, and was feeling very pleased with himself. He was given the rest of the morning off to nap, and then he got to run newb drills all afternoon. And now it was half past booze o’clock. A perfect end to a perfect day.

“I got you your favorite. Happy birthday, loser,” Iba announced, sliding a fizzy blue concoction bristling with fruit on toothpicks down the table.

“Maybe you should give him a chance to catch his breath,” Big Maki suggested. “Zaraki shots are no joke.”

“This is catching my breath,” Renji replied, fishing out a pineapple chunk and eating it. Iba always got him this tropical shit as a joke, and Renji always drank them, absolutely stonefaced, as though curly straws and paper umbrellas were just standard issue drinking equipment. The joke was on Iba, to be honest, these damn things were delicious.

“Where is the birthday booooooy?” a musical voice trilled.

Renji’s head whipped around, which immediately made him very dizzy. He waved his hand enthusiastically.

“Don’t get up,” Yumichika warned, standing and beckoning more staidly. “He’s over here! He’s pretty well soaked already.”

Suddenly, there was a shapely pair of arms wrapped around Renji’s neck, and a more sensuous than necessary kiss pressed into his cheek. “Happy birthday, cute stuff!” Matsumoto said throatily. “That’s a fancy drink, can I have some?”

“Get your own!” Renji crowed cheerfully.

“Ha, ha, I would never,” the lieutenant of the Tenth laughed, sliding into the seat next to him, and then stealing a cherry out of his glass.

“I would not have guessed a bar called ‘Five Fingers of Death’ would serve fruity drinks,” Hisagi Shuuhei, Third Seat of the Ninth added, plopping down on Renji’s other side.

“Shuuhei!” Renji exclaimed.

Ever since he got promoted to Sixth Seat, Yumichika had been trying to get Renji involved in his larger social circle, which mostly orbited around Matsumoto. The fact that it included Hisagi, whom he had known in school, had been a pleasant surprise. He definitely remembered looking up to Hisagi in his youth, but since they had reconnected, Renji was continually struck with how cool the guy was, and also how good-looking.

“Well?” Renji demanded from Shuuhei, with a boldness that came from having enough sake in his gut to pickle a daikon. “Matsumoto paid up. Where’s my birthday present?”

Shuuhei laughed and planted a kiss on his other cheek, before fishing something that might have been a chunk of mango out of the blue monstrosity. Renji felt warm and happy. “Better buy me another drink, Iba,” he hooted, “Everyone’s stealing mine.”

“Buy your own, asshole” Iba rejoined merrily.

“That wasn’t your birthday present, by the way,” Matsumoto replied suggestively.

“Oh?” Renji asked, trying to raise an eyebrow, except that he couldn’t feel most of his face.

“A little bird,” Matsomoto went on, “who went to school with you, told me about a trick you used to do at the bar.”

Renji wracked his brains. He hadn’t done a lot of drinking in his school days, and certainly not a lot of drinking in bars, mostly because he’d been broke all the time.

“It wasn’t at the bar, it was at the gym,” Shuuhei clarified.

Realization hit Renji like a dropped free weight. He slammed his hands palm down on the tabletop excitedly. “Is it Bench Your Friends day?”

“You’re not benching me,” Yumichika immediately declared.

“What’s Bench Your Friends day?” Ikkaku demanded, intrigued.

“Bench press is a very efficient way to work your entire upper body,” Renji explained with the self-perceived gravitas that comes with being sloshed out of your gourd. “Free weights are a better way to build muscle, ‘cause you are responsible for your own balance and stability. Next step up from that, control-wise, is to bench press a person, especially if that person doesn’t particularly want to be bench-pressed.”

“Why would you let him do this to you?” Yumichika grimaced.

“Well, I really just want to see him bench press someone else, but I wouldn’t mind,” Matsumoto mused. “I think I would look very sexy being used as exercise equipment.”

“If you can bench Hisagi, I’ll let you try to bench me!” Ikkaku roared.

“I did not volunteer,” Hisagi pointed out.

“DEAL!” Renji bellowed.

🎉 🍹 💪

“UP!”

Renji blinked, slowly returning to present day reality. “Huh?”

“Pick me UP, Daddy! I want to do a high dive!”

“Alright, alright.”

It took two tries to get up from the lawn chair, but he made it. He took a long stretch, and made a show of flexing his upper arms for his daughter, who was completely unimpressed. Finally, he scooped her up and held her by the hips over his head. “You ready?”

“I am ready!” she announced, holding her arms over her head in a diving position.

“Here we go!” Renji yelled, and lowered her slowly into the rubber inflatable pool that was set up in their backyard. Ichika made a variety of poses on the way down, pointing her toes, making wide, elegant gestures with her arms. “Perfect 10,” Renji announced, when she was sitting in the pool, spitting water in a little fountain. “Do you want to go again?”

“I want to run around.”

“Go, then.”

Ichika leapt to her feet and went tearing, pell-mell around the yard again. Renji flopped back into his lawn chair and plopped his feet back in the pool.

It had been brutally hot all day, but the heat was finally starting to subside as evening came on. Akon had made the pool and brought it over last week for Nemu and Ichika to play in, because evidently, every time he set one up over at the 12th, it got “repurposed.” Renji did not want to know the details. Renji was a big fan of the pool. Ichika had been nominally playing in it all afternoon. Mostly, she was running around in her bathing suit, shouting. Occasionally, she would hurl herself into it, thoroughly splashing her father, and then run off again.

Rukia stepped onto the porch, sliding the door closed behind her with one foot. She’d changed from her shihakushou into a Living World style sundress that left her arms and legs bare. Even after a long day at work, she looked cheerful and gorgeous. Renji smiled fondly at her. After a long afternoon of chasing his toddler around, he was sure he looked like hot, damp dogshit.

Rukia made her way over to him, nimbly dodging Ichika as she serpentined her way around the yard. She held out a glass containing a pale green liquid. It was practically radiating cold. “I have made you,” she said, as Renji took it gratefully from her hand, “a margarita. I followed Uryuu’s directions very carefully and then doubled the alcohol.”

Renji took a sip as Rukia flopped into the lawn chair next to his, and slid her feet gracefully into the pool. “It’s perfect,” he declared. “You’re a genius.”

“Happy birthday,” Rukia said, tipping her head over onto his shoulder. “I’m sorry it wasn’t much.”

“What are you talking about?” Renji grunted. “I got to yell at my squad for 2 hours this morning, like I like. I spent all afternoon digging up worms with my amazing kid, and then my beautiful wife brought me take-out, so I didn’t have to cook. I am way too tired to actually go to the bar, but I don’t have to, because you brought this right to me, here, in my luxury cabana. Another one or two of these and I am definitely gonna be lights out. Can’t think of a more perfect birthday, to be honest.”

“Hmm, if we can get Ichika to go to sleep, I had some ideas for some things that could happen between margaritas number two and three.”

“Oh, really?” Renji asked, cocking an eyebrow.

Suddenly, Ichika crashed into his lap, wet, with bits of grass plastered up her legs. “DADDY!” she yelled. “Is it dessert time! Can we eat the taiyaki Mama brought home now?”

“The what Mama brought home?” he asked, faking surprise.

“Do you remember what a secret is?” Rukia reminded her daughter. “We talked about it?”

“But it’s time to eat them, so they aren’t secret anymore!”

“Yeah, Rukia, obviously,” Renji managed with a perfectly straight face.

“I would call you a traitor, but it’s your birthday, so I will go get you your fish waffles,” Rukia replied, shoving her drink into his free hand and pressing a kiss into the side of his temple.

“I LOVE TAIYAKI!” Ichika sang at the top of her lungs. “I WISH EVERYDAY WAS DADDY’S BIRTHDAAAAAAAAY!”

Renji admired the way his wife’s rear end swayed as she headed back into the house. He contemplated whether he could still drink out of two glasses at the same time, another old bar trick he was once modestly famous for. “Me, too, kid,” he agreed. “Me, too.”

[darlinrogue]

“ sometimes i realize one day i could die, i could just disappear and the world would be none the wiser. there’d be no one to miss me and that terrifies me more than death itself. ” — kenny @ adam!

It’s All Down Hill From Here Ya’ll

Adam and Kenny || @ofgrief

Adam woke-up with the hangover of a lifetime. A whole ass construction crew wedged inside his cranium going to demolition town. Big, sweaty, muscly guys with jackhammers, wrecking balls, and heavy machinery. For some stupid reason he left the curtain open last night. Morning light spilled into the room and stabbed his eyeballs with serrated knives. Adam groaned and rolled over. He pressed his face into the pillow. His body ached, his head hurt, he was nauseous, and he kinda had to pee— shit, he hadn’t woken-up like this in a minute. Someone needed to shut-up their phone, the incessant chiming was getting on his last nerve. Then it hit him. That was his phone and his alarm going off at God’s forsaken hour of six-thirty. 

Adam slapped at the nightstand. He smacked the shit out of the alarm clock and knocked his car keys to the floor, no phone. Adam weathered the agony of lifting his head-up enough to look and hear the blasted thing beneath him. He slid halfway out of the bed and clawed at the floor beneath the headboard. Then, bingo, his hand closed around the phone and he pressed the power button to shut it up. With most of his upper body hanging off the mattress, Adam crumpled to the floor. His calves tangled with the blankets and he dragged the sheets clean off the bed with him. Flopped against the carpet, he massaged the bridge of his nose. There was a black hairband around his wrist and he had no clue where it came from. Adam yanked back his tangled, frizzy hair into a ponytail to get it out of his eyes. He laid there, blithe and numb, letting incoherent thoughts skim the surface of his consciousness. Bit-by-bit, Adam reconstructed the past twenty-four hours and it was enough to make him laugh. 

Damn, he was good.  

Eager to bask in a rare accomplishment, Adam turned his attention to his phone. He blinked and wiped the grit from his eyes as the screen flicked to life. He had one text message in his notifications. Kenny Omega, at a little past midnight texted him: [Wanna hang out?]

Adam let that time bomb tick as he unlocked his phone and checked Twitter instead. He searched Matt Hardy and perused the iconic’s Twitter feed. Another grin cracked Adam’s face down the middle. Hardy had no idea. That little task of self aggrandization done, Adam opened the messaging app. He stared at the screen and the little bubble of text from Kenny. Absent-minded, Adam reached down and yanked his belt off— only now realizing he never took it off. Then he answered Kenny’s question with a question.

[Got anything in mind?]

He paused, tongue running over his lips. Then, he untangled his legs from the sheets and blankets. Adam pushed to his feet and stumbled across the room to his bag on the desk. Inside he found Advil and a flask of whiskey. He washed the pain medicine down with a generous swig of alcohol. Adam coughed, beating on his chest to clear his dry throat. On the way to the bathroom he stripped out of his jeans. While brushing his teeth, his phone chimed. Adam spat into the sink and leaned over to read Kenny’s reply.

[My place. Dinner at six?] 

Okay, so that wasn’t ‘hanging-out.’ In Adam’s book, ‘hanging-out’ with Kenny was playing video games or going to an arcade. Maybe they’d work-out, train and drill in the ring, sit around the hotel room and watch movies. All the little things they did as a tag-team to kill time on the road or between matches. What Kenny proposed sounded like a —dare Adam say it— a date. Like two adults, sitting down over a candle-lit table, and talking about serious things for a couple of hours. Which, it was Kenny, so not a big deal, but at the same time, it was Kenny, which was a big deal. 

Since, November their relationship had been stuck in this weird, strange, gray, Twilight-Zone that was neither friendship or anything else. Cuddling in bed or on a couch, flirting, lingering too close, heady with physical desire, and softened by intimacy. Stablemates were always close, stuck on buses and planes for hours together enforced liking someone. Kenny and Adam had seen each other at the worst, at their best. This thing went beyond that. They were friends, tag-partners for a period, all they had left, and yet, nothing at all. Adam could ask Kenny: ‘What the fuck are we?’ If he thought he’d get a straight answer.

Unwilling to unpack all that, Adam dressed to work-out. He left his hotel room and started down the stairs to the lobby. He thought about dinner at six. Today’s original plan was to drive seven hours back to North Carolina, shooting straight-up I-95 along the coast. If Adam left after breakfast he’d be back in the afternoon. Staying another evening in Jacksonville wasn’t a big deal. Such were the benefits of a lonely bachelor life. A neighborhood girl usually took care of Adam’s dogs on Wednesdays. He could call her, offer a generous tip, and get another night. Around the sixth floor landing, he yanked his phone out of his pocket and gave Kenny his answer. 

[Sure, I’ll bring milk and beer. Give me your address.]

Down in the hotel gym he started his work-out, running through reps with almost memorized, mechanical ease. While Adam counted bicep curls, his phone chimed and he glanced at it long enough to see that Kenny had sent the address. Between sets, Adam popped the address into Google Maps. The house was a little over a half-hour drive away on Pointe Verde Beach, just outside of Jacksonville. Strange, because Adam had no memory of Kenny owning a house in or around Jacksonville. He heard whisper of a house near Orlando. He was vaguely aware that Kenny had stayed with Callis or Nakazawa a few times. Adam shuffled this mystery home off as another thing he just didn’t know about Kenny. He finished his work-out on the treadmill, running until endorphins blasted Kenny and the last of the hang-over from his brain. Adam returned to his hotel room to shower. 

While hot water rolled down his back and he scrubbed conditioner from his hair, Adam wondered after Kenny’s ulterior motives. Back in December Kenny made it clear what he wanted from Adam: sex. That wasn’t Adam’s own ego talking, that was straight out of the horse’s mouth. Kenny had said he wanted Adam to kiss him, touch him, and fuck him. That was what he said, almost verbatim. Adam was an adult. He spent a significant chunk of his twenties sexually active. He wasn’t shy or prudish, he had no hang-ups. He could do all the things Kenny wanted. Hell, he’d gladly do them, under the right circumstances. Provided Adam could negotiate the differences between male and female anatomy with any competence. Physical desire was absolutely a dimension of his attraction to Kenny. Except, he wasn’t sure if this was the right circumstances. The thought that Kenny was inviting Adam over to dinner for the sole purpose of propositioning him for sex, turned Adam’s stomach over. He cranked the water cold and sobered beneath the icy spray, jaw tight. He turned off the water and toweled off. Adam texted Kenny again. 

[Nak’s not going to be there, is he?]

Two seconds later, Kenny replied: 

[Nope, just us.]

And to keep some kinda banter, Adam texted him back, hoping that the words read as teasing.

[No Callis, either?]

[lmao no he’s in Tennessee doing Impact crap for the PPV. He left this morning.]

And Adam hadn’t felt this nervous about being alone with Kenny since the first time they played Mario Tennis with Chase Owens. Because shit, he’d been stringing Kenny along for months now. Sure, Callis had been a consistent cock block, but Adam wouldn’t pretend he and Kenny weren’t playing some kinda game. A no-rules, Calvinball-Esque, game with moving goalposts. There were no boundaries because Kenny and Adam never set any. That would imply proper and honest communication. All of it was impromptu and they were living on a prayer that neither of them stepped on any toes. In a way, Daily’s place was a blessing. The presence of others acted as a natural check-and-balance on Kenny and Adam’s weird dynamic. So long as they didn't talk about it, didn't acknowledge the elephant in the room, everything was fine. An evening alone felt like cutting the breaks. It wasn’t that Adam feared having sex with Kenny or Kenny outright trying to jump his bones. It wasn’t that he didn’t want that, or that he hadn’t thought about it. 

It was just that he wanted more.

Call him a sap, but Adam loved Kenny and he wanted Kenny to love him too. He wanted to go on dates. He wanted to wake-up in the same bed in the morning and to kiss Kenny awake. He wanted the small pleasure of fixing breakfast for both of them. Even to do the dishes together and all the boring domestic tasks of day-to-day life. To talk about how their days went but also to exist in quiet intimacy. He wanted to walk down the street holding Kenny’s hand. To drop casually in conversations, “My boyfriend Kenny—” To argue, make-up, and do better next time, all of it. And they were so off the rails because Adam was afraid that saying ‘no’ to Kenny in any capacity would kill what little they had. The what-ifs piled in Adam’s brain. Kenny using him for sex and then never talking to him again. Kenny telling him off for introducing more emotion that was necessary to a physical relationship. Kenny letting Adam know that he had finally moved on from his hot cowboy tag-partner and he won’t be needed anymore. The moment Kenny figured-out that he wasn’t going to get what he wanted from Adam— was the moment Adam lost him. 

Adam ate breakfast at the hotel hot bar. He had yogurt, an orange, eggs, and some links of sausage. He arranged for an extra night at the hotel and texted the girl who took care of his dogs. Then he got hustled by said teenager for almost twice the usual rate because she had, ‘lots of homework.’ Adam couldn’t complain because he was honestly kinda proud. She’d make a great carny one day. With not much else to do in Jacksonville, he left the hotel to go shopping. Adam had only packed for one night and not for a maybe-date with Kenny. He bought a white button down at a clothing store. Then, stopped by an uptown grocery store to buy 2% milk and local IPAs. Adam spent about three minutes lingering by a display of pre-arranged bouquets at the store, wondering if flowers would be too much. He walked away from the display, walked back, almost walked away again, stopped, and then stared a little longer. His hand fluttered by his side and before he could stop himself, Adam grabbed a bouquet of yellow flowers. Shit, he was an idiot. 

He thought, as the cashier rang him up, that Kenny was going to laugh at him. 

He took a lunch break at a small Mexican hole-in-the-wall because his diet was shot to hell today and he’d just have to admit it. Back at the hotel, he did his second work-out, showered again, and then realized he had three whole hours to kill. Three hours to get dressed, fuss over his hair, sit around, stare at the dumb flowers he bought, and consider if waterboarding would be a more or less effective form of torture. He scrolled Twitter, did some Duolingo. His body was tense, a live wire, his heart pounding. Adam left thirty minutes early and so took a twenty-minute detour, just to kill time. All so he wouldn’t look like a complete, desperate dweeb— showing-up early and with flowers? That would be way too much. 

The house was situated in an upscale, rich and retired, suburb nestled by the ocean. It was smaller, blander than the two, three story beach homes that towered around it, with their sparse lawns and obnoxious, pastel colors. It was a one-story, Spanish-style home with a brown roof and off-white siding. Palm trees and shaped topiary decorated the well-tended front yard. The sun back dropped the city to the West, burning gold. The angles of light painted the thin, sparse clouds pink, purple, and orange creamsicle. Adam parked in the driveway in front of the garage. He stepped out of his car and the wind, tasting of salt, pulled at his hair. Between the neighbor’s fence and the sand dunes, he caught sight of the Atlantic. The waves rolled and churned, edged by white foam-like lace. Adam walked around to the other side of the car. On the floorboards were the milk and beer, and on the passenger seat were the flowers. His hands trembled and his heart thudded against his chest like a hammer. Do or die, he had to commit now— fuck it, life was short and that bouquet was like twenty bucks. He tucked the beers under his arm, picked-up the milk in one hand, and the flowers in the other, 

Adam walked up to the front porch and used his elbow to ring the bell. Before Adam even retracted his hand, the door opened. Kenny stood on the other side of the threshold. His hair was yanked back into a loose ponytail at the nape of his neck. Flour dusted his pink t-shirt across the chest. Adam’s eyes drifted down to khaki shorts and the loafers he wore without any socks. For a brief second, Kenny stared at Adam, also giving him a once-over. Adam hesitated, trying to decide if he should give Kenny the flowers or put something down to offer a handshake— like a dork. He managed neither before Kenny cussed. 

“Son of a bitch, you dressed nice, shit, stay there.” Kenny pointed at Adam to indicate where he should 'stay.' Then, Kenny vanished into the house, leaving the door ajar. Adam gaped, brow furrowed and blinking like an owl. A Gregorian choir in his brain chanted, ‘dork, dork, massive dork!’ 

Kenny hadn’t come back by the time Adam processed his absence. So, he took the first step over the threshold. “Uh, Kenny? I’m coming in?” Adam called, to no reply. 

The inside of the house had a blandly typical beach house vibe. White walls, seashell decor, stock paintings of the ocean, and blue accents. There was a wood sign on the entry hall wall that read: Happiness comes in waves. To his left was the kitchen, a large space, with expansive white countertops and black appliances. There were a few bowls and dishes left out, with signs of being used. The sink was to put it lightly, a wreck, filled with utensils, cutting boards, and knives. Adam put the milk and beer in the fridge. Then noted that the dining room table was set. Each place had a gleaming crimson plate. No forks or knives, just chopsticks. A drinking glass for water. Kenny even had even folded the cloth napkins. All set on a black placemat. Adam wandered on into the rest of the house in search of Kenny. Connected to the dining room was the living room. Tall windows on the East wall allowed an expansive view over the pool, yard, and ocean. The sliding glass back door had been left cracked, to allow the cool and brisk breeze in. Adam pushed his hands into his pockets and soaked in the ocean at sunset. 

Footsteps echoed down the far hall. Kenny passed the living room doorway, on the way to the kitchen. He caught Adam out of the corner of his eye and pulled back, changing direction at the last second. Kenny smiled and spread his arms wide so Adam could admire new outfit. He’d changed into dark jeans, a red v-neck, and a black blazer. Still in the loafers, Adam noted, but that was just part of the Kenny charm. 

“Better, right?” Kenny asked. He did a full turnaround and then jaunted over to Adam. He smoothed the lapel of his blazer down. “I didn’t give you a dress code, so I packed something nice to wear just in case. Didn’t wanna feel awkward in khakis, ya know?”

“Yeah, you look good,” Adam agreed, returning Kenny’s grin. They diverted their gaze to the floor together. Adam, trying to find something to say, exaggerated a  look around the house. “Is this your uh, home?”

“Nope! I rented it on Air BnB,” Kenny said, proudly. “I’ve never used the app before, but it found this pretty sweet crib, so I’m impressed. A little pricey maybe, but for an evening, just for us? Worth it, I’d say.”

Adam heard Kenny but he couldn’t think of a response. It hit him that the food on the counter, the set table, the entire house, pointed-to one thing. Kenny had planned this. He had to look for a house, find one, pay for it, plan a menu, buy food, bring tableware, find time. He had planned this at personal expense. He had put real thought into setting-up a dinner for him and Adam.  This wasn’t some off-the-cuff idea. The only improvised part about this was inviting Adam himself. And to think, Adam thought Kenny only wanted to Netflix and chill. 

“I, uh, I got you these,” Adam stammered. He held out the flowers to Kenny. “Just, a housewarming, gift, I guess for — for you.”

“Oh, you did, thank you, Cowboy,” Kenny smiled, he took the bouquet from Adam. He hesitated, awkwardly gripping the plastic casing of the flowers. 

“I guess, you can put it in some water?��� Adam suggested. He scratched at the back of his head. 

“Yeah, right, good idea,” Kenny nodded, he stepped back from Adam, lingered for a second, and then headed to the kitchen. 

Adam followed Kenny and while Kenny tore through the cabinets in search of a vase, Adam took a second look. Beside the stove were three white bowls with flour, eggs, and panko crumbs. On the burner sat a large, cast-iron pot filled several inches deep with cooking oil. A thermometer rested beside the burner. Kenny exclaimed, “ah-ha,” When he came up with a vase. He filled it with water and settled the flowers in. Brow furrowed he poked a couple daisies upright. Kenny set the vase with the flowers in the middle of the table, as an impromptu centerpiece.

“There, that livens-up the place,” Kenny said, putting his hands on his hips. He smiled at Adam and the ocean, through the windows behind him, framed his face. His eyes bluer than the sea and Adam only just noticed he didn’t have his glasses on. Instead, the glasses were hooked in the pocket of his blazer. Adam was invited here, talking with Kenny, about to have dinner, and his trepidation only grew.

“Is this all for us?” Adam asked, he leaned against the kitchen doorway and shoved his hand in his pocket. With his other he gestured broadly at everything. 

“Yeah, I thought it would be nice?” Kenny admitted, it was his turn to shrug. “Just us, for once. We haven't gotten to spend a lot of time together recently and there's some, some things I wanted to talk to you about. Stuff that's— that's better here maybe than at Daily’s Place. Is it too much?”

Kenny looked bashful, his smile soft, peering at Adam, his hand working over the back of a chair. It was nervous and sweet, open in a way that Adam hadn’t seen in months. Words were hard, but pushing off the doorpost and walking over to Kenny was easier. For a second, Adam’s hands hovered between them, and then he hooked his fingers beneath Kenny’s lapel. Kenny giggled and rested his forehead against Adam’s, his breath tickling Adam’s bottom lip. 

“It’s perfect,” Adam murmured. He untangled from Kenny’s jacket and slid his hands down Kenny’s sides until Adam held his hips. Adam pushed his palms against the jut of Kenny's bone, “What's for dinner, chef Kenny?”

Kenny giggled and gripped at Adam’s hands. “Well, I was thinking,” he glanced back at the kitchen, “I’d make us Tonkatsu, you know, those pork cutlets you get in Japan, with the breading and cabbage? I haven’t had any in a while and it’s one of my favorite dishes. And I ordered sushi, and dessert, from a couple local places—”

“So, you’re cooking?” Adam asked, he quirked an eyebrow. “Really?”

“Yeah, what’s so bad about that? I can cook,” Kenny protested. He pulled back from Adam and moved into the kitchen. Adam returned to his position by the doorpost as Kenny rummaged in the fridge. He pulled-out a bag of plastic boxes and then a platter of salted pork. Kenny rolled his eyes, “Don’t tell me you’re afraid I’ll burn it? I promise only a little singe, for flavor. I mean it’s Tonkatsu, grade school children can make it.”

“I didn’t say anything,” Adam laughed, he lifted his hands to placate Kenny. “It’s just, you never hit me as the cooking type. Order in and dine-out always seemed more your style.”

Kenny stuck his tongue out at Adam. He laughed though and turned the stove on to heat the oil. The plastic bag crinkled as Kenny sorted through small platters of elegant sushi and laid each on the counter. “We can eat this while the oil heats. I wish I had a nicer serving tray but I didn’t think to bring one, and this house doesn’t have one— I looked. Oh, and I don’t know how you feel about it, but I got some sake too. It’s in the fridge. Do you like it hot? I’ve never had it, so, I don’t know what’s better.”

“Man, I don’t even know,” Adam said. He never liked the flavor of sake —too dry for his taste— so he’d let the discussion drop and hope that was better than rejecting Kenny’s offer. Adam walked over to help Kenny carry the sushi to the table. “I got you milk, though, two percent. I uh— put it in the fridge.”

“Oh, hell yeah,” Kenny smiled.  

While Kenny removed the covers from the sushi, Adam fetched his meager contributions to the meal. He returned with the gallon of milk and an IPA. Adam poured Kenny a tall glass of milk and Kenny poured Adam’s beer. Teeth buried in his bottom lip, like this task was monumental, Kenny dumped the bottle into the glass. By the time the bubbles fizzed down, Adam’s ‘beer’ was mostly air. It was the thought that counted and Kenny looked pleased. Before sitting down himself, Kenny pulled-out Adam’s chair for him. Adam muttered his thanks and sat down. Kenny took his place on the opposite side of the table and used his chopsticks to divvy up the sushi pieces between them. 

“Where’d you get this?” Adam asked. 

“Sushiko, a small place by the river, Cody recommended it,” Kenny said. “It’s a nice little restaurant and we’re by the coast so the seafood is fresh. I mean it’s not really, authentic, but that’s hard to get in America anyway.”

“Yeah, but it’ll be good,” Adam countered. “Do you want the ginger?”

“Nah, you can have it,” Kenny said, to punctuate his point he picked up a heap of the ginger and plopped it onto Adam’s plate. “Do you remember how to use the chopsticks? It hasn’t been that long since you were last in Japan, right?”

“I order take-out once a month to keep my skills sharp,” Adam promised. He picked-up the chopsticks by his plate. Then, took the ends and stuck them beneath his top lip like a walrus, “Goes like this right?”

Kenny laughed, hand lifting to cover his mouth as his shoulders shook with racks of giggles. Adam smiled and wiped off his chopsticks with his napkin. It was the kinda joke he’d crack when he was ten, on the rare occasion his parents took the family out to eat. His sister would find it hilarious, his father and mother less so. Yet, it seemed to amuse Kenny to no end, and all that bashful shyness was gone when the laughter subsided. 

“Yeah, close enough,” Kenny said, waving his hand. “Here you should try the tempura roll, it’s my favorite of all the inaccurate American sushis.”

Kenny picked up a piece of sushi with his chopsticks and offered it over the table for Adam to try. Adam didn’t point out that he already had a piece of that type on his plate. He only leaned forward and opened his mouth so Kenny could feed him the sushi. Adam bit down and savored the taste of shrimp, rice, and crunchy breading. 

“It’s good,” he said, nodding and humming his approval.

“Isn’t it?” Kenny asked, he jammed a roll with avocado in his mouth and grinned, pleased. “It’s kinda cliché, but I love this stuff.” 

Adam took a sip from his beer to wash down the rice gummed behind his teeth.

“I’ve always meant to ask,” Kenny said, he pointed with his chopsticks at the beer. “Do you... like that stuff?”

“Beer? Yeah, pretty well, it’s not my favorite drink,” Adam admitted. He ate another piece of sushi and chewed through his thoughts. “It has to be a good beer, the cheap crap isn’t worth the calories. Pleases the hell out of a crowd though.”

“Yeah, don’t you have to drive back?” Kenny’s brow furrowed. 

Adam laughed, “A beer or two isn’t going to send me over, Kenny. It's not like liquor, it's a much lower alcohol content. I probably won't even feel the buzz, especially drinking on food. By the time I leave, I'll be close to zero. I try to keep track of my limits these days, and you know, it’s hard to be no carb and take shots.”

“Trainers got you on no carb?” Kenny asked, with a lifted brow. It was a quick change of topic and Adam appreciated the tact. 

“Yeah, have been for a while now, it’s probably better that way,” Adam shrugged. “You know not all of us shred fat like you.”

“Well, that’s not so easy these days,” Kenny admitted. “Not all of us are as young as you.”

“Hey, a few months and I’ll be thirty,” Adam pointed-out. “Or like, twenty-four by Cody’s metric, something like that.”

“You can’t say that being youngest wasn’t a good shake,” Kenny said. “You never had to pay for anything.”

“Just all the ribbing,” Adam grinned.

Adam popped some ginger in his mouth and waggled his eyebrows for emphasis. Kenny was all grins and the smiles were a relief. This wasn’t a total cluster fuck and Adam hadn’t said something to screw-up the mood. This was going much better than his anxiety allowed him to anticipate. A pause to eat lulled the conversation to a brief silence. Yet, Adam could tell by the way Kenny studied his Philadelphia roll, there was something on his mind. 

“So, uh, last night,” Kenny said, he placed his elbow on the table. “Did you sign a contract with Matt Hardy? Did I interpret that segment correctly? I was preparing for my match so I wasn’t really paying attention, but—”

Adam paused, chopsticks halfway to his mouth, and then he grinned. “I did.”

“Did you read that contract?” Kenny probed. “Listen, I know you and Hardy go back but I’m not sure you should trust that guy, Page. He’s a bit of a carny— I mean his gimmick is ‘Big Money Matt.’ That has got to be a warning sign. I know Matt and Nick brought him in by burying his vessel or whatever, but he’s changed a lot since the Stadium Stampede. He’s got the whole, I guess split personality thing going on?”

“Oh, I read the contract I signed,” Adam nodded. He savored the taste of a Dragon roll, fishy and popping with acidity. “Hardy didn’t, but I did.”

“Oh, really,” Kenny waxed, he pressed his finger tips to his chin. “Something you wanna fill me in on?”

“Yeah, I switched the contracts,” Adam said. 

Kenny gasped, “You switched the contracts?! Oh, ho, Page, I knew you were smart, brilliant, tell me everything.”

“Well, I knew he was going to invite me to a bar, because he said so on Twitter,” Adam began. “Like, you said, I’ve known Matt for a while and he’s always been a dick. He was talking all about how I’m going to be some great star or the ‘top guy’ in AEW, or whatever, some bullshit, but I kinda figured his plan was to get me drunk and willing to sign something stupid.”

He leaned back in his chair, sipping on his beer and thinking. Adam couldn’t get why every other manager in AEW was salivating at the idea of getting him on their payroll. The Dark Order was trying to recruit him. Taz was talking about him. Matt Hardy seemed to think Adam was the second coming of Jesus. Adam assumed that he was so sought after because the actual best wrestler in AEW was already spoken-for. And Jon Moxley wasn’t the type to tolerate companionship. So, that left Adam Page. Talk about scraping the bottom of the barrel. 

“So, I uh, had a little something prepared for him,” Adam shrugged. “I don’t think he’s figured it out yet, so like, don’t go spreading it around? Snitches get stitches, Kenny, and I mean it.”

“My lips are sealed,” Kenny promised. He pantomimed zipping-up his mouth, locking it, and throwing away the key. He leaned forward, hand bracing against the table. “But really, what was in the contract?’

“You wanna know?” Adam asked. 

“Yeah, I wanna know!” Kenny said. 

“Well, I’m not going to tell you,” Adam smirked. “You’ll just have to find-out with Matt Hardy and everyone else. I don’t wanna pop the surprise.”

“Aw, Pizz, you’re killing me, now that’s all I’m going to think about for the rest of the night!” Kenny laughed, he deflated into his chair. Then he bounced back, livened with an idea. “Oh, I know, you made it so you get a third of his merch sales? A half?! Man, that’s brutal. Ooh, I know what you should’ve done, what I would do? Make him your butler for a few weeks, that would be funny.”

Adam chuckled, cheeks flushed with amusement. All he did was shake his head and keep his mouth shut. Kenny gave-up, lifting his hands in a gesture of peace. While they ate, Kenny talked about the Women’s Title Eliminator tournament and all that went into organizing it. He seemed excited to debut the woman’s bracket next week. He promised that he had seen the matches, and they were, “fantastic.” In particular he was ecstatic about Aja Kong and Yuka progressing. Adam had no idea who Maki Itoh was beyond her Twitter, but Kenny was adamant she get a contract at some point. On his part Adam was happy to sit back —long after polishing off his own plate— and listen to Kenny, occasionally interjecting a question or an affirming, “mhm.” Eventually, Kenny got around to eating his last piece of sushi. His eyes darted beyond Adam’s shoulder and pushed himself to his feet to go check on the oil. 

Adam turned in his seat to watch Kenny in the kitchen. He was eyeing a thermometer dipped in the pot. Pleased with the temperature, he moved to start working with the meat. Kenny used a skewer to dip a pork cutlet into the flour, then egg, then back into the flour. Adam cleared the sushi plates from the table. He rinsed them in the sink. He cleaned a few other dishes, cutting boards, and knives, listening to Kenny complain about getting flour on his fingers. Adam put the dishes on the rack and dried his hands on a towel. He wandered to Kenny’s side. Kenny had coated two cutlets in panko crumbs and the breaded meat sat on a plate ready to go. He fiddled with the thermometer, brow furrowed in concentration. He adjusted the temperature on the stove and then gripped the pot handle to center it on the burner. He hissed when his hand touched hot metal. Kenny stuck his finger in his mouth. 

“Hot,” he breathed to Adam. 

“Yeah, no shit, go rinse it under the cold water,” Adam ordered. “Are you okay?”

“Just my pride,” Kenny said, as he ran his finger under the faucet and washed his hands of flour. “I thought I was going to be so cool, making Tonkatsu for you, and you’d be like, ‘wow, look at Kenny be a boss in the kitchen,’ and now I’m just kinda—”

He returned to the stove and looked at the simmering oil with particular trepidation. 

“Now, I’m just kinda nervous,” he admitted, smiling again. “Like, I don’t want to fuck this up and ruin the evening, or something.”

“Do you want help?” Adam asked.

“How heroic,” Kenny pined. “A cowboy come to save me.”

“Yeah, yeah, mostly I just don’t want the food burned,” Adam said, stepping to Kenny’s side. He nudged his hip against Kenny’s and picked-up a skewer. The task was simple, pick-up the two pieces of meat and plunge them into the boiling oil. Yet, when Adam did it, Kenny looked at him like he did something astounding. Adam handed the tongs to Kenny, “you can flip them on your own, right?”

“Pfft, I got that,” Kenny bragged, taking the utensil from Adam. He positioned himself, watching as bubbles formed around the meat. The panko browned to an appetizing gold. As the meat cooked, it exuded juices that caused the oil to spit. Kenny yelped, when some struck his arm, shifting behind Adam. “Unless it fights back?!”

“Aren’t you the guy who fought a G1 with a fractured heel?!” Adam snapped. “Don’t be a baby, it’s just oil, it’s not going to bite you! Get in there.”

Kenny patted Adam’s shoulder and shifted to plunge the tongs into the oil. He flipped both pieces of meat. Although, he held the tongs at the furthest extent to avoid oil splatter. Adam placed his hand on the small of Kenny’s back to hold him steady as they waited the last minute for the meat to finish. It was such a simple gesture but Kenny’s nerves seemed to evaporate under his touch. Kenny fished out the cutlets and placed them diagonally on a draining rack. The cooking done, Kenny kicked Adam out of the kitchen while he finished the rest of the meal. Adam returned to the dining table, sat down, and enjoyed his beer. The soothing melody of Kenny banging around behind him as background noise. 

A few minutes later, Kenny placed a plate in front of Adam. The cutlet had been sliced thin and fanned across the edge of the plate. A generous heap of shredded cabbage piled in the middle garnished with a slice of tomato and lemon. On the side were pickled radishes. The colors popped and the meat smelled delicious. Kenny laid a small container of pouring sauce between them on the table. Kenny sat down with his own plate across from Adam.

“This is so— great, Kenny,” Adam breathed, looking over the food. He picked-up his chopsticks and dove in for the Tonkatsu. It was juicy and savory, with a nice crunch. Adam groaned, “It tastes fantastic.”

“Thanks, I was worried about overcooking it, but with you at my side, it was easy,” Kenny said, he smiled. He poured some sauce on his cutlet. “We make a great team.” 

Adam focused on pinching some cabbage between his chopsticks, eyes casting down to the plate. “Yeah, I— I guess we do.”

“Hey, it was just an observation,” Kenny said, he nudged Adam’s foot under the table with his own. "It doesn't have to mean anything."

“No, no, it’s fine,” Adam said. He took a sip of beer but didn’t taste it. “You’re right, I was just thinking— I’ve tagged with a lot of people lately, and none of them are like you. You really are the best.”

“That’s sweet, cowboy,” Kenny grinned, but Adam sensed the need to change the conversation. Mourning the tag-team wasn’t uplifting for either of them. 

“So, where did you learn to make this?” Adam asked. He gestured at the Tonkatsu. “’Cause it’s really good. Not going to lie, that’s what I miss about Japan— the food. They just don’t have the same, I don’t know, style? Yeah, style, in America.”

“Well, I learned from one of the ladies I stayed with when I first moved to Japan in, 2008, well, kinda learned,” Kenny elaborated. He shrugged, “mostly I just watched her cook and sometimes she let me help. She always did the bits with the oil because she was afraid I’d burn myself. My Japanese wasn’t good back then but I’m pretty sure she thought I was just an idiot.”

“I mean, you can be a bit,” Adam paused. Kenny pressed his lips thin, so he picked his next word carefully, “ditzy?”

“I’ll give you that,” Kenny said. “I wouldn’t trust me around a big pot of boiling oil either. You handled yourself pretty well in there, though.”

“Deep fried is a staple food in the rural south," Adam said. "It's a survival skill, where I'm from. It's okay, Kenny, you can kick my ass Street Fighter, later, so that way we're even."

The conversation slowed so they could finish eating. Just the sounds of chewing and chopsticks clacking. It was good, the cabbage contrasting to the meat, and the sauce adding a hint of sweetness. It wasn't an awkward or uncomfy silence, Adam wasn't looking for an excuse to breach it. It was just them, together, enjoying the mutual company. When Adam finished eating, just to gross out Kenny, he picked up his plate and licked it clean. The gesture had the intended effect of making Kenny screw-up his nose and expression. Adam took his last swig of beer and then carried both their plates to the sink. Adam helped Kenny tidy-up the kitchen. Adam washed the dishes and Kenny dried, putting the plates away on the shelves. They moved around each other like this was something they did every night. Yet, each time Kenny’s elbow jostled Adam or he moved a step closer, a warm heat spread across Adam’s skin. It was dark outside when they finished and Kenny turned on lights in the house to illuminate the rooms. 

“You up for cake, cowboy?” Kenny asked as he returned. He took a box out from the fridge and finagled the lid open. Inside the box was a small, white cake decorated with vanilla icing, raspberries, and fancy swirls. Kenny smacked Adam’s hand away when he tried to taste the frosting. 

"Ow," Adam grunted. He cradled his hand to his chest.

“I didn’t really know what you liked, but everyone likes vanilla, so I figured I couldn't go wrong,” Kenny admitted as he took the cake out of the box. Adam got plates and a knife to cut with. Kenny stuck his tongue out as he sliced into the cake. It was obnoxiously cute. He pointed with the knife, “Is this big enough?”

“That’ll do it,” Adam said.

 Kenny sliced the cake and put a piece on a plate that he handed to Adam, then cut his own piece. The inner filling of the cake was a bright red raspberry and Adam hummed, eager. to try Kenny took a fork and cut off a small piece of his cake slice. He offered the morsel to Adam. Once again, Adam let Kenny feed him. It was sweet, with a delicate crumb, and acidic with the fruit. Kenny opened his mouth, making an ‘ah’ sound, to indicate he wanted Adam to return the gesture. Adam obliged, watching with fascination as Kenny’s lips closed around the fork. A speck of icing trapped at the corner of his mouth. Before he could stop himself, Adam leaned forward and kissed it off— grinning all the way back as Kenny’s cheeks flushed. 

“You remember when we tricked that waitress into giving us free cake?” Kenny asked. His eyes lit-up, to divert his attention though, he glanced down for another bite. “That was— fun.”

“I don’t think we tricked anybody,” Adam laughed. "I think the waitress knew what was up the whole damn time."

“What, we weren’t a convincing couple?” Kenny asked. The question so earnest, his voice so soft, that Adam almost dropped his plate. Deep in Kenny's eyes hid a kernel of curious probing. Like he was testing the waters. Wading-out waist high in a surging tide.

“I— um, I guess we were.” Adam ducked his head, but Kenny shoved at his shoulder and the tension dissipated. 

“I’m just teasing you, Hangers,” he laughed. “Eat your cake, before I do. Hey, I know, why don’t we go sit outside? C’mon.”

Kenny had already split off and so that settled it. Adam got a beer from the fridge and followed Kenny out the back door. At the edge of the pool was a small sitting area with chairs and a couch. The ocean crashed against the shore, loud and echoing in Adam's inner-ear. He felt the tide wearing away the sand in his teeth. Kenny sat down on the couch, tossing his phone on the coffee table. He crossed his legs up and finished off his cake. Adam joined him on the other side of the couch. They remarked on the flavors of the cake and speculated if the icing was cream cheese or not. Finished eating, Kenny put his plate down and lounged back against the cushions. 

Adam studied Kenny’s profile. His straight nose and angular jaw, the untamed stubble on his cheeks. His lips pink with red raspberries. In red and black, he looked marvelous. The wind tussling his curls. And his eyes, so scarce these days, holding every emotion Adam hoped to see reflected in them. Adam’s heart collided with the inside of his ribs. He took his last bite of cake and put aside the dishes. Then, for courage, he swigged on his beer and set that aside too. He leaned into the cushions, adjusting a pillow underneath his right elbow. 

“Hey,” he said, voice coarse and weak, the word lost to the ocean. Kenny looked at him, hearing him anyway, and Adam opened his arms wide, “What are you doing over there? Get your ass over here.”

Kenny slid over until he leaned against Adam’s side. Adam swung his legs up onto the couch and pulled Kenny against his chest. Kenny settled between his legs and Adam draped his arm over Kenny’s back. Something dislodged in Adam’s lungs and he breathed easy for the first time in months. Kenny sighed and pressed his cheek to Adam’s collarbone. His hand ran over Adam’s bicep. Adam reached over Kenny, picked-up his beer, and took another casual swig. Part of him regretted the alcohol because now his breath must smell like beer and cake. The other part of him needed it to function in this moment. 

Adam drew broad circles between Kenny’s shoulder blades, feeling each hard muscle, defined and strong beneath his hand. Kenny was warm in contrast to the cool night, like a little personal heater. Adam chuckled, content as he leaned back against the arm rest. Kenny turned his face into Adam’s chest and buried his nose into Adam’s shirt. He shuddered in Adam’s arms, a full body tremble working all the way down his spine. Adam lifted his hand to work his fingers through Kenny’s hair and curls. A little coarser now since he dyed it, black and silver. Adam didn’t know what else to say or think, or do. Didn’t know if this was Kenny using him for comfort or something more. If he was supposed to read between the lines, look for the fine text, or just be a quiet and good pillow. Maybe, he'd just pretend that the way Kenny clung to him was because of love. 

“I like your hair like this,” Adam mused. He ran his fingers through Kenny’s scalp. It was an easier question than: why did you bring me here? What do you want from me? What are we? 

“Thanks,” Kenny muttered. He turned his cheek to press against Adam’s chest. Adam considered that an improvement. 

“Are you okay?” He managed. 

Kenny sighed, shoulders heaving. He wrapped his arms around Adam’s waist and cinched in, holding him close. It was the total experience of being owned. That Adam was Kenny’s to have and hold onto. It was possessive in a way that thrilled Adam. That there were seven billion people on this planet and he was the one Kenny Omega invited to a rented house for dinner. Adam was the one who got to hold Kenny Omega, not anyone else. Adam was the one Kenny Omega wanted to be held by. It had to mean something. He wanted it to mean something. Please, let it mean something. 

“It’s just,” Kenny whispered. His voice soft, but Adam carded his fingers through Kenny’s hair to encourage each word forth. “Sometimes, I realize one day I could die. I could just disappear and the world would be none the wiser. There’s be no one to miss me and that— that terrifies me more than death itself.”

Then, Kenny laughed, shaking his head, giggling like he said something funny. Not something that Adam had no idea how to react to. Every word of it raised a protest inside Adam though. That he cared, that he would notice, that he would be devastated to lose Kenny. That he lost Kenny once and he had no intentions of ever doing it again. Except, Adam had no idea how to say all that in a way that made sense. When he opened his mouth to speak nothing came out but a huff of carbon dioxide. Kenny tensed, feeling Adam’s diaphragm tighten. It was as if Adam’s anxiety infused and intertwined with Kenny's, into something ugly between them. Adam could just hold Kenny tighter and that would make Kenny understand. Hold so tight to Kenny that he couldn’t leave, couldn’t go anywhere, and they’d just fit together, and it’d work. 

Except, Adam was no longer so young and stupid as to believe that would work. It wasn’t enough to ask Kenny, ‘do you trust me,’ when he already breached that trust. Adam couldn’t hold on alone, they had to meet in the middle. These things had to be mutual. This was a two street and Adam had no idea if Kenny was walking towards him or away. He was just a blur in the distance that he was chasing like hell. As if, when he caught Kenny, he’d get the answers to the questions he was too afraid to ask. 

Kenny shifted, pushing back against Adam and the awkward silence between them. The silence Adam let linger too long. He wondered if just screaming would work better than this. Kenny sat-up, and tucked a piece of hair behind his ear. He clung to one of Adam’s hands like it was a life raft in the middle of that ocean out there. They sat thigh-to-thigh, hip-to-hip. Maybe, that’s how Adam felt, like Kenny was drowning and all he could do was yell advice from the shoreline. 

“Look,” Kenny began, he licked his lips. He stared at where their knees touched. Adam could feel Kenny's pulse fluttering beneath his fingers. “There’s something I gotta tell you.”

Kenny giggled again, shoulders shaking and Adam had no idea what the joke was. He placed his other, free hand on Kenny’s shoulder. 

“I set all of this up to tell you, but I— I don’t know what to say,” He admitted. He shook his head and squeezed Adam’s hand. 

“Whatever, whatever you feel, man,” Adam offered, lamely. “You know I’m here for you.”

“Look—” Kenny began.

He looked-up, gunmetal blue eyes matching Adam’s gaze. The warm glow from the house burned his cheeks gold and he shivered. Kenny was scared, the thought hit Adam like a gunshot. Terrified, looking at Adam, like Adam was going to hurt him. Like a whipped dog anticipating being taken out back.  

“Adam, I—”  he began, then a sharp chime cut him off.

Both Kenny and Adam looked down at Kenny’s phone on the coffee table. Don Callis, calling Kenny, the phone vibrating against the glass. Kenny withdrew his hand, untangling from Adam, scooting away. Like, he'd been burned and scalded, like he just put his hand back on that pot handle and this time gripped tight. “I’m not— I’m not going to answer it. I— I told him I’d be busy,” Kenny stammered, his hands working through his hair. There was a bite to his tone that set Adam’s heart on fire. “I don’t know why he’s calling me he should know.”

As Kenny’s pitch hitched and his voice cracked, Adam lunged forward to hit the decline button on the phone. The phone stopped ringing and Kenny sighed, his face stricken pale. Adam himself breathed for the first time in almost a minute, slowly leaning back into the couch. His hands rested on his knees. The ocean crashed and receded. 

“He can leave a damn voice mail,” Adam managed, cracking a half-grin but when he looked at Kenny it was not returned. Instead, Adam met wild eyes and a pale face, white with fear. In a few seconds it calmed, the war raging in Kenny dying down as he glanced away from Adam. As Adam watched Kenny pulled the glasses-free from his front pocket and shoved them on his face. He licked his lips, jaw working tight. “Kenny, is everything okay?”

“Fine, it’s fine, I’m fine,” Kenny repeated, his hands rubbed over his thighs. “I’m not— I’m not going to keep you, you can go. It was— It was fun tonight, thanks.”

Kenny lifted and waved his hand as if to dismiss Adam. Adam’s felt his temper go through the roof, just a moment of complete rage that calmed immediately. There were no words, just screaming like if he opened his mouth, a long drawn howl would escape instead of anything coherent. And that was the best he could do to express the emotions in his head. His teeth gritted and Adam rubbed his hands through his hair, trying to clear out the thoughts from his head. 

“No, wait, Kenny what did you want to tell me?” Adam asked. “What were you trying to say before Don called?”

“All, I wanted to do was just tell you that— that,” Kenny stuttered, and Adam had no faith that what came out of his mouth next was the truth. “That you can always talk to me if you need it. That, that I’m here for you, Page, and like, that you don’t need to go signing stupid contracts with Matt Hardy, but you didn’t so, it’s really not a problem. You— you didn’t need me.”

“Is that it?” Adam asked, he glanced around the house. Thought of the sushi and the home-cooked meal. Of cake and Kenny dressing nice just for Adam. “You did all this, just to tell me that? Are you sure that’s what you wanted to tell me?”

“What do you think?” Kenny asked, he peered at Adam. The glasses and his expression were like a brick wall. Impassive, unreadable, and drawing Adam to a total stop. Adam’s stomach twisted, lips parted in unvoiced confusion. Adam couldn’t answer the question because he was afraid of what Kenny thought. Kenny didn't love him, Kenny didn't care, Kenny was using him.

 “Seriously, Page, I’m fine— you can leave if you want,” Kenny repeated. “It was fun tonight.”

“No, no, no, Kenny,” Adam interjected. “No, I’m not just leaving, I’m not going anywhere until I get some damn answers about what the hell is going on. I’ve been out of my mind for months trying to figure us— this, out.  It ain’t even just about what you did to Moxley or any of the other crap. I was with you in Japan, I know how you are. Excalibur may be scandalized but I was there when you won the Intercontinental title off Tanahashi. I know how it goes. What gets me, is that you hadn’t done that shit since Japan. Ever since Don Callis came back you’ve been acting weird and I think by this point I deserve some damn answers.”

“Okay, fine, fine, what do you want to know?” Kenny demanded. He crossed his arms over his stomach. “I am an open book.”

“It’s just, I don’t know—” Adam stumbled over his words, the real questions getting in the way of the ones he could actually ask. What are we? So, instead, he stumbled-on, “Are you sure you can trust Don?”

“Of course, I can,” Kenny scoffed. “We’re changing the business Adam, changing the world, history! All those solid steel doors, those arbitrary barriers in our sport? They’re gone now! Impact, New Japan, NWA, Stardom, they’re all clamoring to get a spot on our show. We are the hottest thing in wrestling, not WWE, us. Tony Khan, the Bucks, and Cody, the whole locker room, they should be thanking us, we’re giving them jobs, improving their pay checks, and what do we get?! Just like you said, Excalibur on commentary with a bad attitude. No one else shares my vision, no one else gets it, not like Don does.”

Kenny shook his head, curls flopping around. He spoke fast, quickly, trying to get to the next words as soon as possible. 

“I thought that was all bullshit,” Adam admitted. “Just shit Don was making-up to justify taking the title.”

“Page, please!” Kenny said, his hand fluttering in Adam’s direction. “We’ve been planning something like this for years. This isn’t a mere money-making scheme, Don isn’t like Matt Hardy. And yeah, maybe that means I can’t be around Matt and Nick as much anymore, maybe the locker room hates me, maybe I’m not as popular with the audience— big deal. They’ll come around, they always come around, they’ll realize how much I’ve done for them. People change, this is— this is bigger than any one person.”

“Oh, Don isn’t like Matt Hardy?” Adam asked, he lifted an eyebrow. “Are you sure?”

Kenny pushed to his feet and Adam stood too. Kenny’s hands fluttered around and something flexed in his jaw like he was chewing on sand. His voice was darker, biting with anger as he shook his finger at Adam. “Don’t even start with me, Page, about who to trust. We both know your track record.”

“Matt Hardy doesn’t give a shit about me,” Adam stated. Kenny stepped-in like it was a warning, but Adam squared his shoulders and with a look wilted Kenny. Adam took sick satisfaction in the inch or two of height he had. To lift his chin, and stand his ground. “And Don Callis doesn’t give a shit about you.”

“Don is like family to me,” Kenny snapped, his finger jutted into Adam’s face, his voice lifting in pitch and volume. Adam couldn’t remember if they ever got to this point with each other, yelling. No, he remembered some shoves in the ring. “He cares about me. I know he does. I’ve known him since I was a child, Page. It’s not the same thing.”

Adam worked his teeth into his bottom lips. He placed his hand on his hips and glanced towards the ocean. Black and churning, the waves thrown in turmoil, rolling, clawing-up the beach to high tide. Adam let himself feel the wind in his hair and his pounding heart. He glanced back at Kenny. 

Back in the day, Biz Cliz days, the Bullet Club, and the Elite was Kenny’s family. They were the ones who looked after him after matches. They were the ones who fetched ice or hot packs for his injuries. They were the ones at ringside. The ones in his tag-teams. The ones who helped him pick-out clothes or get in his ring gear. Adam thought they were family and he had fought like hell for that family. Scrabbled to keep the little niche of home he’d found, that place he belonged. He spared a thought, that something had gone wrong, terribly wrong. So wrong, that Kenny, went to someone else instead of his family. FTR, the Dark Order, Matt Hardy, the Good Brothers, Don, all these side distractions instead of the stable that cared about them. Egos blew-up, friendships faded, but it took more than a couple of arguments to break the Elite. There was a looming specter, sticking his fingers in the crack. Adam may’ve left the Elite but he always thought there’d be something to go back to. He never thought his absence would unravel his friends— never dreamed it. 

He didn’t even think they’d notice he was gone. 

“Does your family usually hit you with a microphone?” Adam asked. 

Kenny’s lips parted, his jaw falling slack. His shoulders drooped and then he rubbed his hand beneath the rims of his glasses. He crossed his arms, gaze turning downwards. Adam’s hands fell to his sides, feeling that the fight was over. Kenny shook his head as if to physically dislodge Adam’s words from his skull. Kenny was a fighter, he was a leader, he was a crazy visionary, who did his own thing. He always had an argument in him. He always kicked-out. He fought sixty minute matches against Okada. The way he capitulated in defeat here and now was fascinating because it was so against him. It was like Adam pushed back and found nothing but dust. That he had glanced back over his shoulder and suddenly Kenny had turned to salt. A pillar of salt, crumbling in Adam’s hands. A divine and cruel trick, stealing from him what he most desired, at the last possible second. 

Adam sighed, shoving his hands in his jeans pockets. Then, Kenny lurched forward and pressed his forehead into Adam’s shoulder. Adam closed his eyes and reached-up to tangle his fingers back in Kenny’s hair. He worked out a knot and then smoothed his palm down Kenny’s back. Kenny trembled against him, fingers twisted in Adam’s shirt. It was a desperate grip, like this attention and concern was foreign to Kenny. Like he was starved and Adam supposed that made sense because this didn’t feel like something Don Callis would do. Because Don Callis didn't care about Kenny. He wouldn't take care of Kenny, not like his friends would— like they were supposed to. They had failed Kenny and so he went to someone else. (They had failed Adam and so he had went to someone else). Adam hummed, low in his throat, and buried his nose in Kenny’s hair. He smelled of cologne and sea salt, and everything Adam missed. 

“Forget about Don,” Adam said. “I— I shouldn’t’ve said that, it’s none of my damn business.”

“I just don’t want to fight with you,” Kenny admitted. “I don’t— I don’t deserve you, Page.”

“Nah, don’t say that,” Adam shook his head. “Because if you were gone, you know I’d miss you, right? I ain’t got that many friends left, Kenny. You’re special to me.”

“Charmer,” Kenny grunted. 

“Can’t coast on just my good looks, you know,” Adam chuckled. He wrapped both his arms around Kenny and drew him tighter. Knowing that he was being used. Knowing that they were no closer now than they were before. “Gotta have some personality.”

“Hmm, but you are good-looking,” Kenny agreed. His hands smoothed down Adam’s side, unabashed in feeling the muscles and curves of his waist. “You’re very handsome, cowboy.”

Adam chuckled as Kenny wrapped his arms around him. It felt good to be needed. Good to be wanted and held. To be possessed by someone. Adam wanted Kenny to own him. But, he wasn’t sure if it was real or if Adam was just here, and hot, and it worked. 

“I can stay,” Adam murmured. “Just one night, you and me, like— like in the hotel.” 

“You— you want to?” Kenny asked. He pulled from Adam to look at him, or rather let Adam look at his glasses. “I have an extra toothbrush.”

“Good, because all my shit is at the hotel,” Adam said, flashing a grin. 

Adam tapped Kenny on the back to urge him back inside. Adam carried in the plates and his mostly undrunk beer. At the kitchen sink, he chugged a few big gulps and poured the rest of the alcohol down the drain. Adam rinsed and cleaned the dishes, while Kenny finished tidying-up behind him. The domesticity was intoxicating, giving Adam more of a buzz than the beer. It was deceptive too. For a second, Adam could pretend they did this little ritual every night. Clean-up after dinner, put-away all the dishes, and then, turn off the kitchen lights, head for bed. As Adam followed Kenny down the hall to the master bedroom, he rubbed the sweat off his palms and onto his pants legs. 

The master bedroom had a large bed, a couch, desk and chair, and a TV on a stand. A sliding door connected to the back patio outside. Airy, light blue curtain hung over the windows and glass. The walls were painted white and the bedding was blue. The typical beach decor was as bland as the rest of the house. Kenny rummaged around in a suitcase, left on a couch with a few stray articles of clothes on the cushions. He procured a set of soft fabric shorts and tossed them to Adam. 

“I don’t sleep in pajamas like you do, Pizz,” Kenny said. His early energy was gone and he said all of it like it was a statement of fact. Adam didn't doubt Kenny's ability to put on a show though. Even if he felt like shit he'd find a way to hide it. “So, you’ll just have to do with my work-out clothes. I washed them, I promise.”

“Are you going to sleep in your X-men undies again?” Adam teased. Kenny found a toothbrush but instead of handing it to Adam, he chucked it at Adam’s head. Adam caught the flung toothbrush with a clap of his hands. “Hey, I like Wolverine!”

“No, for the record I wore briefs this time,” Kenny said. He shrugged off his blazer and smiled softly, almost regretfully. “I came prepared.”

Adam stepped around the edge of the room, watching as Kenny peeled off his shirt. He’d seen Kenny shirtless a thousand times. He could map each expanse and stretch of muscle, the powerful curve of his back, his thick arms, and broad shoulders. This time felt special, significant, especially when Kenny glanced over his shoulder at Adam and caught him watching. Adam ducked his head and escaped into the bathroom. 

Once the door was closed behind him, he stared at himself in the mirror. Adam splashed cold water on his face and then brushed his teeth. He changed into Kenny’s shorts, used the toilet, and left, wiping his hands on the hand towel. Kenny had changed into a pair of sweat pants and he was yanking the curtains closed over the window. Adam walked-up behind him, hooked an arm around Kenny’s waist and pulling him back to his chest. 

“I’ll wait for you in bed,” Adam murmured, dipping his head to speak in Kenny’s ear. “Don’t take too long, I’m tired.” 

“Yes, sir,” Kenny chuckled. “You know, I like it when you boss me around.”

“Make sure you wash behind your ears,” Adam ordered, severely. 

Adam tapped Kenny’s hip and sent him off towards the bathroom. He turned off the bedroom lights and the nightstand lamp then slid underneath the covers of the bed. It felt like this would be easier if he didn’t have to look at Kenny. Then they wouldn’t have to face anything, just be with each other. The bed was softer than Adam was used to and he fought the mattress to roll over on his side, punching at the pillow to get it shaped right. The ocean rumbled and Adam sighed, exhaling with the tide. He heard the bathroom door open and the latch close behind Kenny. He heard each pad of Kenny’s footsteps on the carpet before the mattress dipped and Kenny slid into bed. Adam rolled over, reaching for Kenny and guiding him closer. Kenny shimmied over and Adam tucked his arm over Kenny’s side, his hand resting over Kenny’s stomach. He pressed his nose into Kenny’s neck and Kenny hooked his calf around Adam’s leg to bring them flush. Every inch of Kenny’s body pressed against Adam. Kenny laid his hand over Adam’s and intertwined their fingers. Kenny rumbled, content, then slid his foot down to put his ice cold toes on Adam’s ankle. Adam jerked, cussing, and Kenny giggled. 

Adam’s eyes fluttered closed. Kenny’s breath as gentle as the ocean. He’d been dreaming about this for months, having Kenny back here. The memory of the hotel room a poor substitute for having him under Adam’s arm. Warm, heavy, his pulse tangled with Adam’s. Adam wiggled his arm underneath Kenny and clutched him tighter. He nuzzled his nose into Kenny’s neck. Here he could say anything. Anything at all, whisper it and pretend Kenny was sleeping, and Kenny could pretend he was sleeping if he didn’t want to hear it. And it’d be like a confession, words lost to empty air, absolution offered to wash them clean. Adam opened his mouth and nothing came out. Instead his lips moved and he mouthed, “I love you.” Without uttering a single sound. Then again, “I love you.” 

“Adam,” Kenny grunted, and Adam almost panicked, wondering for a second if he had actually said those things out loud. “Thank you.”

“For what?” Adam asked, sleep dragged at his mind, making him a little dumb. 

“Staying,” Kenny said. “I know I— I freak-out on you there.”

“It's fine,” Adam whispered. “It happens. Wanna hear a crazy idea I have?”

Kenny shifted, wiggling in Adam’s arms to turn over. Adam grunted when Kenny dug his elbow into his ribs so he could leverage himself onto his opposite side. Kenny buried his face in Adam’s chest and Adam wondered if that was just how he preferred to sleep. Adam rolled onto his back and dragged Kenny with him. He let his fingers play with the ends of Kenny’s hair as the other hand interlaced with Kenny’s on his stomach. Kenny settled himself and Adam licked his lips, just stupid enough to share this crazy idea. 

“Hit me, cowboy,” Kenny ordered. 

“We leave in the morning,” Adam suggested. “I don’t know where to, maybe nowhere specific, but it’s just the two of us. Sleeping in motels, eating shit at dinners, and working the indies— making like fifty bucks a show, so there’s never enough money but we make it work. Maybe we’re a tag-team again or it’s just us in singles. We dominate the competition, earn those dumb little regional belts we used to own. No more stakes, no more crap, just— wrestling, fun as it used to be.”

“We’d be recognized,” Kenny muttered, and Adam remembered the goofy BTE bits he used to shoot down for Kenny. Poking holes in the logic or saying the joke wasn’t funny. All because he was afraid of committing to an idea. Turn about was fair play he guessed. “We could— we could wear masks.”

“You ever wrestle in a mask?” Adam asked. 

“No,” Kenny admitted.

“Sucks,” Adam grunted, “And the moment you did a One-Winged Angel, everyone would know who you are. It’d just be El Generico all over again.”

“We should go horse riding,” Kenny suggested, he yawned. “I haven’t done that in a long time.”

“Next time you’re in Virginia,” Adam promised. “I’ll take you.”

“Mhmm, maybe that should be sooner, rather than later,” Kenny smiled. He settled then and Adam shut-up so he could sleep. In a few moments Kenny breathed easily, and steadily, his eyes closed. Adam twirled a black curl around his finger, absent-minded. 

“I love you,” he said, to the empty room. An observation, a statement of fact, Adam kissed the top of Kenny’s head. This time, he whispered into those curls, “I love you.” 

And then he adjusted himself so he was comfortable in the pillows. Adam sagged, the tension bleeding out of his stiff frame like water. Kenny mumbled softly in his sleep and Adam tucked him close to his side. Thoughts twisted-up in his head, Adam drifted unconscious. Then, when his eyes opened, the room was bright, light spilling in through the thin curtain. The sea raged and the gulls cried. His arm was dead weight, asleep. Adam blinked, lifting his head. In the night, he and Kenny had shifted. Kenny’s head laid on his bicep as he slept. His hand rested on Adam’s chest, fingers crooked. Needing blood flow back in his fingers, Adam slipped his arm out from under Kenny’s head. He sat-up in the bed, careful not to jostle the mattress too much. Adam opened and closed his hand, fingertips tingling painfully. He looked down at Kenny. 

His hair was in total disarray, tangled on the pillows. A little bit of drool welled at the corner of his parted lips and he breathed rough, long, slow. Without Adam, he turned onto his side. Adam slid out of the bed. He found his jeans and changed back into his clothes. Adam stepped into his boots and returned to the kitchen. He rummaged in the fridge, the options were meager. Eggs, ketchup, cheese, milk, and luckily, a pack of bacon— probably stuff Kenny bought specifically for breakfast, based on the large container of protein powder beside the fridge. He poked through the cabinets and found the flour from last night, but also sugar, baking powder, cheap imitation vanilla, and salt. 

Adam was methodical as he cracked eggs to scramble and for pancakes. He whipped-up the batter in a bowl and found the frying pans in a lower drawer. The back burner slow-cooked bacon with a tantalizing sizzle and on a front burner, Adam cooked the pancakes. Making just enough for him and Kenny. He cleaned-up as he went, leaving dishes on the drying rack. He did the eggs last, scrambling them with cheese and pepper, when he heard the water run, indicating Kenny was up and using the bathroom. A few minutes later Kenny wandered into the kitchen, rubbing the heel of his hands over his eyes. He paused in the doorway, gaping as Adam assembled two plates of pancakes, eggs, and bacon.

“Mornin’,” Adam grunted, as he took a knife and fork out of the drawer. He walked over to the table and sat down. 

“You made breakfast? I should invite you over more, geez,” Kenny said. He sat down with his plate. “Did you sleep, okay?”

“Not too bad,” Adam said. He watched as Kenny took a bite of eggs and grinned as Kenny moaned almost obscenely. “Was pretty nice sleeping next to you.”

“Well, cowboy, you can do that anytime you want,” Kenny promised. He tapped his fingers against the table. “So, I guess you’re heading out then?”

“Yeah, I gotta,” Adam said. “I got a seven-hour drive, training and working-out to get on, and like, I’m bleeding money paying my neighbor’s daughter to watch my dogs. But uh, this, thing, last night, it was fun? We should do it again.”

“Including the cuddling?” Kenny asked, propping his chin against his hand. He picked-up a piece of bacon between his fingers and cheekily tore a piece off. “I couldn’t agree more. Especially, if you’re going to cook like this.”

“Definitely the cuddling, you’re a pretty good hand warmer,” Adam nodded. He scrapped the last of the eggs onto his fork and polished it off with some pancake. He stood-up and took his plate to the sink while Kenny finished eating. 

Kenny followed Adam out as he returned to his car. They hugged and Adam settled into the driver seat. He recalled the inane story he spun last night, where they go back to the indies and pretended the past year didn’t happen. It wasn’t fleeting because it was impossible. It was simply too late. As Adam turned the ignition he wondered if he could convince Kenny to come back with him to North Carolina instead. Just hide there until the next Dynamite or something. Steal a little bit more time. He put the car in the reverse and let the thought die under the rear wheels. 

[ilovecitrusfruits]

Thinking about how Katy Perry used to be one of the biggest icons in pop music and is now pretty much entirely forgotten by the mainstream... I remember “hot n cold” playing on the radio as my mom drove my sister and I to Baskin Robbins, the summer was hot and lazy and we’d just moved to our new home which was novel but unmooring. Even by age 8 I felt like I was leaving my childhood behind

I remember “last friday night” playing in middle school as I walked across the pavilion during lunch too. in my head I pretended I was above it all (as usual) but I was definitely a part of it, I was right there in the middle of it all, and if ignorance is bliss I think my attempts to deliberately ignore the overwhelming bliss of being young and free would be charming if I wasn’t, well, entirely insufferable.

By the time “dark horse” and the like came out, I think Katy Perry and I had already dug our own graves. I would say she for her career and I for my innocence, but if it hasn’t been clear already I spent a good chunk of my childhood trying to escape it prematurely anyway. “E.T.” was playing during the first high school dance I attended, everyone was grinding on each other, circled up in throngs and the gym was so humid it fogged up my plastic-frame glasses. I danced with one girl, felt a bit grotesque and spent the rest of the dance sitting outside on the steps. I guess that’s what teen spirit smells like...

Katy Perry is still releasing albums, but I don’t think they’ll ever be the same. I’m still around, too. I think I’ve been a child for longer than I’ve ever realized

[prorevenge]

Buddy, You Picked the Wrong Person to Harass

The year was 2014 (or maybe 2013? who gives a shit?), and I was a freshman in high school. On a general basis it sucked. I mean, it was an American public high school with literally thousands of kids, it's a given that it's gonna blow some major balls. One thing in particular that made it extra sucky though was gym class. Specifically, this one guy in gym class.

This dude's name was Jack A. McGee, the 'A' of course being short for 'Ass'. As the name would imply, he was a jackass.

At first, it was pretty standard "high school guy in gym class"-level of obnoxious prick. You know the type: overly loud, unreasonably aggressive during games, bossy, tossing the collective brain cell back and forth between his two equally ape-like buddies. The usual.

I don't know when, exactly, it happened, but he developed a sort of... eye for me, after the first couple of weeks or so. He started asking me bizarre questions that I now believe may have been some sort of innuendo, sitting uncomfortably close to me, resting his hand on my gym shoe- general creepy behavior.

He once blocked a doorway with his body (this dude was massive), forcing me to literally squeeze my way through and crawl over him. He then tried to grab me and pin me to him once I was almost through, but I'm very good at dodging physical contact whenever possible, and dipped on him before his giant gorilla arm could catch me. I still shudder thinking about it. I cannot emphasize enough how terrible this dude smelled.

But the true breaking point came during the peak cruelty of this school mandated sadism: gym swim.

Before anyone asks, let it be known that yes, I did try to tell someone about this. I told my gym teacher first semester, really early on, that Jack was making me incredibly uncomfortable. The gym teacher waved it off, saying he was "just playing around" and that "it's probably because he likes you". His suggestion was basically to just put up with it and wait it out, because he was sure Jack would lose interest soon anyways.

Spoiler alert: he didn't

Second semester rolls around, and the four week period of gym swim descends upon us like the bloated carcass of a catapulted whale, crushing us beneath its wet, foul smelling body. 40 some odd adolescents forced into a cold, overly chlorinated pool for 50+ minutes, adorned in swimsuits determined to crawl up into our assholes like Antman himself.

It was hell on earth, basically.

As I've mentioned in a previous post, I am autistic, so the echoing sounds, reflected fluorescent lights, pungent odors, slimy floors, and assorted BS made the situation even worse for me. I wasn't officially diagnosed yet, so my complaints were written off as me being whiny, and I was told to shut up and deal with it. So I did. I think I had more meltdowns in that four week span than I've had in the past two years combined, but whatever.

On top of the sensory overload, there was Jack.

I think something about being allowed to go shirtless and stare at the nearly bare asses of girls for an entire period emboldened him, because Jack promptly lost whatever semblance of restrain he'd had until then.

He made frequent attempts to grab me, trying to hold me against his bare skin, which was disgusting, and I spent most of the class trying to evade him. The swimsuit I was forced to wear fit a little awkwardly around my chest, which he delighted in pointing out to his buddies, staring unabashedly at my breasts. He managed to sneak up behind me and snap the strap of my swimsuit, even trying to pull it down off my shoulder, but I jerked away fast enough to prevent that. I was furious at this point, but I'm like, 5'2", maybe, whereas he was easily over 6'5", probably 300+ pounds, and I'm not stupid.

While all of this was happening, my new gym teacher, (they switched every semester), was busy trying to keep a couple of the other guys from drowning each other. She was one adult forced to watch over 40 rowdy ass kids in a swimming pool; she was a bit preoccupied.

The final straw came one Wednesday afternoon, the event that finally pushed me off the edge of the rationality I'd been clinging to and sent me plummeting into full on bloodthirst.

There I was, paddling around, minding my own business, when Jack and his two goons manage to corner me. I'm immediately suspicious, hackles raised, as they ask me fairly banal questions about how the pool is today and the like, sniggering the whole time. I give short, terse answers, trying to see if I could maybe slip past them. I spot an opening and bolt for it, but Jack was apparently expecting this.

As I swim through the narrow gap between him and one of his friends, he stretches his arm out, and actually manages to slip his hand under my suit to grab my breast. I froze for a moment, the delighted giggling of him and his friends echoing in my ears as if from a thousand miles away.

The next thing I knew, I was out of the pool, being held back by the gym teacher, and Jack had a bloody nose. He was shouting angrily at me, calling me a "crazy bitch!!" as his nose gushed blood into the water. There was mass confusion among the class. I was told to change quickly and sit in the hallway.

Apparently, the gym teacher had heard me screech like a banshee, followed by a number of shouts, and had looked over to see me wrestle out of Jack's grip, jump on his back, and throw him off balance enough to smash his face into the edge of the pool wall. I remembered none of this, but I did find a few chunks of greasy brown hair clenched in my fist that I'd evidently ripped from his scalp when the teacher pulled me off. I washed my hands thoroughly.

It was decided that I'd go in early to school tomorrow to have a little talk with the Dean. They would've just sent me there straight away, but gym was my last class of the day, and the Dean had already left by then for whatever reason, so it had to be postponed a little while. It was pretty heavily implied that I was going to be suspended, quite possibly even expelled, for what had happened.

I was furious. Not only had Jack made my life a living hell, but his horse shit was now going to be the cause of my expulsion?!? I wasn't about to go down without a fight, but I realized that I'd have to play this pretty smart if I wanted to weasel out of it.

The next morning, I did two things: I put on mascara, and I made a superficial, but rather painful incision on my right thigh, high enough so as to be covered by my shorts.

Normally, I hate wearing makeup, because I don't like the way it feels, but I'd worn mascara before and noticed the interesting effect it had on my appearance. Specifically, I already have pretty long, pretty dark eyelashes, so adding mascara draws a lot of attention to my eyes and makes them look huge. Like, total Bambi eyes- wide, innocent, naive, harmless.

I sat down in front of the Dean at 6:40 a.m. I didn't need to fake the fear in my expression, but I made sure to throw in something that could be interpreted as guilt, too, bowing my head and twisting my face in dismay.

Needless to say, the Dean was pretty pissed.

"Do you know why you're here, young lady?" he said

"Yes," I said softly.

"And you know that what you did is very serious?"

"Yes," I said again, making my voice tremble.

"Care to explain yourself, then?"

"I..." I began, my voice shaking. "I just wanted him to stop..."

"Stop what?" The Dean prompted, his eyebrows furrowed.

"I just wanted him to stop touching me!" I blurted. As I said this, I reached my hand under the table where he couldn't see it and dug my finger into the cut on my leg, causing me to lurch forward as if in a sob, my other hand covering my face as my eyes watered from the pain.

"Touching you?" The Dean asked, his brows now on a collision course for Mars.

I spent the next several minutes divulging all the shit that had happened to me that year, digging into my injury for some tears whenever necessary, and by the end of it the Dean looked horrified. He reaffirmed that no, I shouldn't have attacked Jack like that, but that they'd have to investigate the matter further.

I basically got off with a slap on the wrist, and after multiple testimonies from other girls, Jack got suspended for two weeks. I wasn't satisfied. They hadn't been able to expel him due to "lack of hard evidence", but I was out for blood.

He returned to school two weeks later, and I was ready.

One of his friends had a little brother in my bio class, a fairly chill dude named Owen, who I had worked out a deal with. See, Jack had been very vocal about his displeasure with me to his friends, which made its way to Owen, who, for the low low price of bailing his dumb ass out in biology, was more than willing to share that information with me. I had a direct pipeline.

Anything Jack shared with his friends made its way directly to me via Owen, and, as it turns out, this dude didn't keep a whole lot to himself.

There was a lot of shit I was tempted to nail him for. For instance, I found out he was selling drugs (mostly adderal and some occasional weed) from his locker, and had been cheating his way through most of his classes. However, I knew how suspicious it would look for me to report something like that so soon. It'd probably just look like I had a grudge, (which I did), and was trying to get even, (which I was).

He slipped up really, really bad about a week after his return, and that was when I struck.

See, he hadn't been subtle about his displeasure with my retaliation, and spent most of gym class sending really ugly looks my way. The gym teacher kept us as far away from each other as possible, but he managed to track me down in a passing period one day and rant at me about how I had screwed him over and that I was a lying little bitch, yada yada yada, and that he'd make me regret it. Funny, stole the words right out of my mouth.

I found out from Owen later that Jack had been bragging to his friends last night about the switchblade he'd stolen from one of those hunting stores downtown, and promised he'd show it off to them later that day.

I seized the opportunity.

I took a few seconds in the bathroom mirror, scratching at the scab on my leg until my eyes were teary enough to really sell the "terrified victim" look, then bolted down to the Dean's office, stuttering and shaking, crying out for help. The front desk lady was understandably startled by the sight of a seemingly panicked freshman girl bolting into the office, and called the Dean out right away. His face grew serious when he saw me.

"M-Mr. Dean, please help! He's gonna kill me!" I cried.

"Now, slow down," he said. "What happened?"

"Jack!" I said, resisting the urge to grin maniacally at the hardness that appeared in the Dean's eyes. "He, he cornered me in the hall! He called me a bitch and said he was gonna make me regret telling on him! H-he's got a knife!!"

"He what?!" The Dean barked.

Everything moved very quickly after that. The security guards were told to search the kids locker, while a couple other security officers were called down to get Jack out of his classroom and take him to the office. I was told by the front desk lady, who had heard the whole exchange, to hide with her in the copier room so Jack wouldn't see me.

They found the (stolen) knife in his backpack, and the drugs in his locker. That, combined with his previous charges, was enough to get him not only expelled, but arrested. I never saw him again, which is probably a good thing because I'm still mad and would probably try to kill him if given the opportunity.

TL;DR: Guy sexually harasses me in gym class, I give him a bloody nose, a two week suspension, an expulsion, and a criminal record, all in that order.

(source) story by (/u/FeralTaxEvader)

[screensirenfic]

Black Leather - Chapter 42

“Just a little more, and then you’ll be ready.” I advised, still smearing on powder blue eyeshadow onto El’s eyelids until I’m pretty sure she looked like a budget Cindy doll, but it had been what she wanted; and fuck if I was gonna tell the kid what to dress like after the ass saving she’d done this year.

“Can you keep still a minute?! I’m almost done.” I complained, still struggling to blend at the corners, because putting makeup on a thirteen year old was like putting diapers on a puppy; probably pointless, with you having to deal with far more wriggling than necessary.

“Ah— Okay, okay...” She managed between squirms, eventually managing to sit still on the stool I’d moved into the bathroom.

The kid had shown me a picture of some young starlet on the cover of Seventeen with bright pink lips and sparkly blue eyeshadow.

The look on a whole made me want to barf, reminding me far too much of Tina and her cronies in school, but the kid’s eyes lit up at it; so I tried my best.

Once I’d made her eyes suitably blue and “alluring”; as the magazine sold it, I put the eyesore of a shadow down, picking up a shiny pink gloss I’d managed to pick up in Melvald’s, which wasn’t quite as ghastly as the shade on the cover.

“Okay; you can open your eyes...” I said; popping open the lid of the gloss, whilst I checked my handy work was even.

“And open your with your lips like this...” I demonstrated, rolling my lips over my teeth so I could get a smooth canvas.

Eleven followed my instructions, stretching her lips so I could smear the pale pink gloss all over them. It was a little stickier than I’d have liked, but I guess that served me right for shopping in the dollar aisle.

All that was left was a little blush; the same pale pink shade I used thankfully complimentary to her skin tone, and then I was done.

“Voila!” I made us of the sole bit of french I learned in class as I pulled back, admiring the much more flattering copy I’d done of Seventeen’s cover photo on a face I honestly much preferred.

The kid instantly got to her feet, making her way over to the bathroom mirror to admire her reflection.

“Do I look pretty?” She asked, nervously fiddling with a lock of hair that had managed to escape the reach of my hairspray can.

“No... you look beautiful.” I reassured her; smiling as I tucked the stray curl behind her ear.

She beamed; a thing that was almost too bright to look at, filled with genuine warmth and enthusiasm, and in that moment I decided that yes; she was beautiful.

And she was my little sister.

—————————————————-

Dad had insisted on driving us both over to the school, and in hindsight; it was probably wise, considering my only mode of transportation was a motorcycle, and that was hardly conducive with wearing a prom dress.

El had been nervous the whole ride over, fidgeting restlessly in her seat, and I wondered if I’d ever been that high strung.

Then I remembered my own first dance, and how I’d spent the most of it hunched over a toilet bowl; Steve holding back my hair whilst I blew chunks down the porcelain.

When we arrived, she’d been hesitant to get out the car at all; last minute jitters hitting her harder than before.

“I feel sick...” She stated as I began to climb out the car, clutching her stomach in what I guessed was a convincing act for a kid who spent most of her life as a lab rat.

“It’s just nerves; they’ll pass in a minute.” I reassured her; knowing that if she could take on a damn demogorgon, she could go to one stupid school dance.

She shook her head, fingers bunching tightly in the fabric at the front of her dress, before saying;

“I want to go home.”

“Well; what do you mean you want to go home?! You were looking forward to this...” Dad turned in his seat to put in his penny; the irritated tone of his voice far too familiar a thing.

El just continued to shake her head, clutching more desperately at her stomach.

“I wanna go home.” She repeated; glitter rimmed eyes wide and nervous.

I sighed and crouched down beside her, already overly familiar with the number anxiety could do on your good mood, but unwilling to let her miss out on what may very well be the best night of her life so far.

“Tell you what; how about you and I just take a look inside and see what’s what...” I offered, hoping the kid couldn’t already see through my poorly thought up rouse.

“No pressure; just a quick in and out, and if you don’t like it, we can go home and eat pizza and watch looney tunes.” I continued, already knowing her weakness of junk food and kids cartoons.

She thought on it for a second, before nodding.

“Okay. Just a look.” She agreed, and I took her hand to lead her out of the car.

———————————————————-

Getting El into the gymnasium wasn’t the arduous affair I had prepared for; the kid only needing to take a look through the windows in the gym doors to decide she wanted in.

We’d walked in at the far end of the gym; the dance already fat too well into the swing for any of the kids to notice a newcomer, even a total stranger like Eleven.

Already I could tell she felt out of place; her hand reaching out to grab my own in a clammy grip, needing some grounding in what might’ve been the busiest room she’d ever been in.

“Every Breath You Take” was playing loud on the speakers, and from wall to wall, some lucky kids were enjoying some one on one time with their chosen partner. Those that weren’t so lucky stuck to the sidelines, staring on wistfully at the happy couples.

El scanned them all hopefully, clearly searching for someone in particular amongst the sea of bad perms and old wedding—

She’d found who she’d been looking for, and judging by the way her face lit up like a Christmas tree; he must’ve seen her too.

I followed her gaze, until I laid eyes upon a rather dapper looking Mike Wheeler, suited and booted and dressed to the nines as he made his way towards her.

Eleven stared at him; her face the picture of teenage romance as she watched her love struck Romeo stride towards her.

“Well; what are you waiting for? Get over there!!” I urged her on; managing to garner a quick smile, before she dropped my hand and cut through the crowd to meet him halfway.

The two of them met in the middle of the dance floor, and I could already sense the makings of a romantic epic blossoming between them; their faces too full of innocent adoration to be captured even in the pictures.

They talked for a moment, before Mike offered El his hand, and she took it; the pair of them disappearing onto the dance floor to enjoy the rest of their night.

My work here was done.

——————————————————-

The cold evening air outside Hawkins Middle hit me harder than I expected the moment I walked out of the fire escape doors. I pulled my leather jacket tighter around my shoulders, determined to smoke my cigarette quickly, then get the hell out of there; because it was far too fucking cold to spend the night outside in th—

“Aren’t you a little to old to be a middle schooler?” A familiar cheery voice pulled my attention away from attempting to light the smoke braced between my lips.

“I could say the same to you, Harrington...” I retorted, turning towards the lanky brunette leant up against his BMW.

“You here to drop the kid off?” I asked as I made my way over to his car; guessing Steve probably offered to act as Dustin’s chaperone for the night.

“No; I just came because I love booze free punch and glitter curtains…” He joked, moving so I could settle next to him on the car, lighting up my cigarette and taking a drag.

“So you managed to convince your dad to let her go?” Steve asked, nodding towards the school in a clear reference to Eleven.

“Yeah. He was pretty stubborn about it at first, but I managed to talk him round.” I replied, pulling the cigarette away from my lips and offering it to him.

He took it, taking a drag and exhaling smoke, before replying;

“You’re going soft in your old age…”

“Me soft?! You’re the one going around adopting random thirteen year olds.” I retorted, snatching my smoke back from him to take another drag.

“What can I say? I’ve got a weakness for short stacks with bad hair and big mouths.” He smirked, glancing at me with teasing eyes.

I elbowed him hard at that, starting off a chain reaction of quiet chuckles from both of us.

I loved moments like these.

Stupid, pointless moments when we could just sit back and be ourselves.

No Tommy or Ally, or even Nancy; just me and Steve smoking cigarettes by his car and telling bad jokes.

I smiled, leaning back against the car and breathing in the crisp night air; a cool contrast to the warm smoke of my cigarette, just enjoying the muted murmur of The Police seeping out from the gym.

Steve swayed slightly to the music, bumping me every now and then with his hip as he hummed along with the music; happy to just enjoy the silence and the cold with me.

“Hey… Do you— do you wanna dance?” He suddenly asked, spinning to face me and taking a few steps back from the car.

“Steve; we’re in a parking lot.” I pointed out; raising an eyebrow at him skeptically.

“So what. The songs not called Dancing In The Streets for nothing.” He smiled goofily; the bad joke earning him a groan from me.

Still; it didn’t dampen his spirits, him already rhythmically stepping side to side in the worst possible example of a solo slow dance I’d ever seen, but still; it was Steve, and his goofiness always made me laugh.

“Come on; Lo. Don’t make me dance all by myself…” He coaxed me from his makeshift dance floor; his ridiculous dance moves making me chuckle and look to the heavens, because; really?

This was who it was gonna be?

Still; I decided to humour him, dropping my cigarette to the floor and putting it out with my boot, before stepping forward to join him.

His smile lit up at my unexpected compliance; me stepping close to him to loop my arms around his neck in what must’ve been the closest I’d been to an actual slow dance since I was thirteen.

Steve settled his hands on my waist, holding me gently as we swayed side to side to the music; big dumb smiles on our faces, because this was ridiculous.

We were two seventeen year olds dancing outside a middle school dance like it was fucking senior prom.

It was stupid and dorky, and maybe even a bit pathetic,

But it was nice.

And that was enough as I swayed side to side with someone who’d rapidly become my best friend over the past five years; someone who cared about me more than anything.

Someone who lo—

Someone who loved me.

I leaned forward, staring back into Steve’s warm brown eyes as I came to a realisation.

Steve loved me.

He always had; and as he closed the last few centimetres gap between us, soft pouty lips colliding with my own, I couldn’t help but smile.

Steve was an idiot; he was dumb and dorky, had too much money to know what to do with and was far too pretty for his own good.

But he was my idiot.

I lifted my hand, letting it tangle in thick, hairspray coated locks, leaning into the smell of overpriced cologne and savouring the taste of cherry lip balm, and smiled.

Things didn’t change, but some things never had to.

And Hawkins never changed.

[until-theend-oftheline]

Failure

Pairing: Sebastian x Reader

Warnings: Relationship hard patch, teething baby, being a parent is not always easy  

Word Count: 1900ish

A/N: This can be a read as a one-shot but to give a deeper look into Seb’s state of mind before this I recommend you read Extended Family first

It’s part of my LLL verse and it’s late summer 2014. Sebastian and Y/N have 8 months old Isabella, but they aren’t currently living together as their relationship hit a rough patch.  

Betaed by: Thanks to my Jules for betaing this one for me @jewels2876

***My fics are not to be saved nor posted on any other sites without my express written permission.***

Your head was spinning. Isabella had been crying non-stop for the past two days. She had gone through bad days teething before when she was younger but nothing like this. She had a low fever and barely slept, which in return meant you didn’t sleep. You had offered her biting toys but she just screamed and shook her head violently. She barely ate anything and she had just now started vomiting too.

You were tired and just wanted the crying to stop. You were at your wit's end and felt like the world’s worst mom. You were in a fragile headspace as it was and not being able to calm your daughter wore you down fast.

“Isa. Honey please try and eat something,” you offered the crying baby a spoonful of cold strawberry porridge only to have a screech in return as she hit the spoon sending the porridge flying across the kitchen. Isabella continued to cry as you let the spoon fall onto the table covering your face in your hands as tears fell from your eyes.

Rachel had been for a visit this morning which had let you relax for a few moments, but the crying prevented you from sleeping. You couldn’t fall asleep when your daughter was in pain like this. You had no idea what to do. You just wanted Isabella to eat and for both of you to sleep for like a week.

You barely heard the knock on the door over Isabella’s screaming. You raised yourself up, drying your eyes, frowning a little wondering if Rach had returned so soon. Whoever it was had the code to the building since you hadn’t buzzed them in.

You picked up your daughter, flinching a little as the screaming got closer to your eardrum, but gently rocked her on your arm hoping it would soothe her a little.

When you reached the door, you looked through the spy to see who was on the other side of the door and your heart skipped a beat before you felt your entire body relax. You had been too stubborn to admit it to yourself but the person waiting on the other side of the door had been the one person you had needed to be here through all of this. Not only was he the one person that would understand just how much Isabella’s crying hurt you, he was also the one person, despite everything, you wanted to be able to lean on when things were rough.

You instantly opened the door and Sebastian’s smiling face fell when he saw how tired you and his crying daughter both looked.

“Hi sweetheart,” Sebastian spoke softly, reaching out to Isabella and you instantly handed her over to him.

“She has been like this for two days. I was at Dr. McKnight’s office yesterday. She is just teething but she won’t eat or sleep and she has been crying like this non-stop,” you felt the tears build behind your eyes as you explained the situation.

Without skipping a beat, Sebastian put the bag he had been carrying down on the table and pushed the door closed with his foot before pulling you tightly against his chest with his now free arm. You wrapped your arms around his waist and buried your face against him, letting your tears flow freely.

“Shhh. It’s okay,” Sebastian soothed. You weren’t sure if he was speaking to you or Isabella but it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that he was here now.

“Come on. Let’s get you two something to eat,” Sebastian gave you a small squeeze, causing you to look up into his eyes. You could see the pain in them. You weren’t sure if it was yours or Isa’s tears that caused it or just how things were between you and him.

“She won’t. I just tried,” you pulled back a little, drying your eyes on your sleeve. You wanted to put on a brave face for him. He was hurting too and you didn’t want to make things worse.

“I might have a trick,” Sebastian winked at you, gently rocking his screaming daughter. She was now clinging to him for dear life as he carried her into the kitchen along with the bag he had brought.

You followed after him, too tired to argue and honestly not wanting too either. You just hoped whatever he was going to try would work.

“Rach stopped by the gym today,” Sebastian looked over at you sheepishly as he gently guided a disgruntled Isabella back into her high chair.

“She told me Isa was teething,” Sebastian explained as you sat down.

He rubbed your daughter’s belly trying to calm her a little as he kept talking, “So I asked mom for a few tricks. Apparently, I did a lot of screaming too around her age.”

“So you’re the one to blame,” you rubbed your templates, forcing out a small smile when Sebastian looked over at you to let him know you weren’t really serious.

“Sorry?” he grinned, as he began pulling supplies out of the bag. “I knew you don’t really eat when you’re tired. So I brought you soup.”

Sebastian pushed the box across the table and laying a spoon next to it. You were just about to protest when your eyes met his and you stopped when you saw the concern there.

“Please?” he begged and you sighed.

“Get her to eat something and I will too,” you challenged, making Sebastian smile.

“Oh that’s how it is?” he chuckled, pulling another box out of the bag. “Challenge accepted.”

You rolled your eyes at him, but couldn’t help but smile as Sebastian sat down across from his daughter.

“Okay. You’ve got to be hungry too right?” Sebastian cooed, digging a spoon into the green substance he brought, making you frown and wonder what it was. You didn’t say anything though, you just let him try.

The first spoonful was sent flying through the kitchen and you felt yourself tear up again. Sebastian, on the other hand, wasn’t so easily discouraged.

“Prințesă. I promise I didn’t make this. No reason to throw it,” Sebastian playfully poked her belly and the screaming turned into sobs.

“That’s it. How about you try and taste it huh?” Sebastian tried with a new spoonful only to get a violent head shake in return. “You don’t trust me huh?”

Sebastian guided the spoon into his own mouth. “Hmmmm so good,” he exclaimed to the little girl and you couldn’t help but smile. Sebastian was such an amazing patient dad. Isabella’s eyes never left him, but she didn’t stop her sobbing either.

“How about we try it like this?” Sebastian dug a finger into the cup and offered it to his daughter. She looked a little suspicious but this time she didn’t slap his hand away. Instead, she let him guide his finger into her mouth and she fell quiet as she began sucking on it.

“That’s it. Good girl,” Sebastian praised, feeding her a few more chunks with his finger before trying with the spoon again. This time she took it and you looked on in awe.

“How’s that soup coming? Want me to feed you too?” Sebastian looked over his shoulder with a playful glimmer in his eyes.

“What in the world are you feeding her?” you asked, still trying to comprehend that your baby was finally eating something.

“Frozen pistachio yogurt,” Sebastian grinned to you before returning his attention to the baby.

“Mom’s idea. Well, the yogurt was. Pistachio was mine cause our little prințesă has a sweet tooth doesn’t she?” Sebastian cooed as he kept feeding the little girl.

Sebastian made sure you both ate before he pulled another trick from his bag. Apparently, Georgeta was full of them and almond extract really did seem to soothe the little girl’s pain. Enough for you and Sebastian to give her a bath before he shooed you out of the room to get some rest as he tried to tuck her in.

Half an hour later Sebastian emerged and you were fast asleep sitting in your favorite chair in the living room. You barely felt him lift you out of it and carry you to bed. Nor did you register him helping you change or even the multiple times during the evening and night your daughter woke up crying. Sebastian who had stayed on the couch did however and every time she woke up for a few hours Sebastian was up with her. Changing, feeding, soothing and rubbing almond extract on her sore gums.

You, on the other hand, didn’t wake up until the late next morning after having slept for almost sixteen hours. You jumped from the bed rushing into the living room to find Sebastian dead asleep on the couch with Isabella in her transportable crib next to him. She rarely used it but Sebastian hadn’t wanted her to use the one in your bedroom out of fear of waking you.

You smiled, tearing up a little at the sight. Yesterday you had felt like a failure as a mom, but at this moment you felt like you were failing you and Sebastian. You loved him and you wanted a life with him. You just weren’t sure how to get back to where you were before all the fighting had begun.

You took a deep breath, tearing yourself from looking at the two people you loved more than anything and walked into the kitchen to cook breakfast.

Once the pancakes were done, Sebastian and Isabella were still asleep. You smiled as you placed the plates on the coffee table before sitting down on the couch next to him. You gently ran your fingers through his hair and over his jawline, and his eyes slowly fluttered open.

“Hi,” he smiled pushing himself up on his elbows, looking down at Isabella, “I think she is starting to feel a bit better. The last few times she woke up, she was more fussy than full on crying.”

“I love you, Seba,” you blurted out, causing Sebastian to freeze for a second before sitting up straight to look at you. You didn’t say anything else or take back the words. You didn’t want to. You had never stopped loving him. You just hadn’t said it for a long time.

Sebastian reached out, gently tugging a wayward strand of hair behind your ear, smiling softly at you. “I love you too, Y/N/N. I always have.”

“Me too,” you leaned into his touch, closing your eyes.

“I want us to talk to someone. I want to find a way to work things out between us,” you slowly opened your eyes, surprised to see the tears in Sebastian’s eyes as you did.

“Oh God, Y/N, you have no idea how happy it makes me to hear you say that,” he took your hand, gently tugging you towards him. “I miss you so much.”

You wrapped your arms around his neck, feeling as a stone had been lifted from your heart when he wrapped his arms around you. You knew this didn’t fix anything, but it was the start and you knew the two of you could make it through this. You loved each other too much not to find a way back to each other.

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Sebastian Stan Tag Team

@feelmyroarrrr @sleepretreat @thejourneyneverendsx @roxyspearing @jewels2876  @hellaqueerangelofthelord @danijimenezv @cd1242 @mizzzpink @rumoured-whispers @becs-bunker @janeyboo @smoothdogsgirl @blacktithe7 @ifyougetkilled-walk-it-off @jae-sch @grace-for-sale @scarletlingeries @mizzezm @readitandweepfics @averyrogers83 @captainsamwlsn @sebs-potato @sorenmarie87 @docharleythegeekqueen @erosbellarke @the-wayward-robot @super100012 @myfanficlibrarium @lucifersbird @achishisha @hp-hogwartsexpress @winchesters-favorite-girl @awkwardfangirl2014 @igotkatiepowers

LLL Tag Team

 @ishipmybed

[pixieungerstories]

Quarantine

They always say ‘buy the worst house on the best block that you can afford’ and god knows this place was a total shit hole.  800 square feet on an overgrown lot surrounded by McMansions.  Hell, I paid less for the place that the land was worth.  I’m amazed someone hadn’t bulldozed the place years ago.

To make a long story short, I did not look a gift house horse in the mouth.

I mean, it wasn’t a total write off.  None of the windows were smashed.  There were mature fruit trees in the backyard.  If you ignored the weeds and rotting fruit, there was a lot of potential.  The plumbing was lead pipes and the electrical was knob and tube, but I know people and I could trade favours to get that replaced.  The foundations were good and the roof barely leaked.

I spent the summer camping in a tent in the back yard and slowly getting the place winterized enough that I could move it.

It was still a creepy ass house when I did.  It had a boiler.  I had no idea how to deal with that, but I was learning.  And I learned how to ignore the whistles, hissing and banging sounds that went with having a boiler.  The old rads were cast iron with pretty little details in the corners.

There were holes in the plaster, but I just ignored them.  It wasn’t worth fixing when I was going to gut the place and put up drywall eventually.  It just made it easier to get at the plumbing.

I started just living in the kitchen and ignoring the rest of the house.  I had disconnected the rest of the electrical and plumbing and was using that as a home base while I renovated outwards from there.

There is nothing quite as creepy as sleeping in a sleeping bag on what were probably asbestos tiles in an old house that makes the weird noises that old houses make.  I kept reminding myself that they only seemed louder than normal because the place was empty and there was nothing to muffle the sound.  The shrieking had to be the upstairs window that didn’t quite shut properly.

I had the feeling that something was watching me and prayed to god it wasn’t rats.

I was in this for the long haul.  Get up, shower at the gym, go to work, come home, renovate until it got dark, shower at the gym, camp out in the kitchen.  Not exciting, but satisfying.  Let’s face it, this was the only way I was ever going to be able to afford a house.

When the work from home order came, I had to actually get a phone line installed so I could have internet access.  Me, my laptop and a kitchen table I rescued from the curbside a while back.

The creepy feeling was worse.  I told myself it had to be the isolation kicking in.  I skyped with my best friends at night to make up for it.  The power was still a bit dodgy and kept going out, but that’s what laptop batteries and cell phones are for, right?

I was sure the cough was from the dust.

The guy delivering groceries left them on the sidewalk instead of the porch.  It was fine.  I understood completely.  I hadn’t done much work on the outside of the building at all. 

I realized I was sneezing a bit when I started having to use toilet paper as kleenex.

I was fine.  I was young and healthy.  I didn’t have any sick days at work so I was determined to just push through.

I tried to get more rest.

I dreamed about something laying a cool hand on my forehead.

The grocery store was out of thermometers.

I mean, did it really matter if I had a fever?  I wasn’t leaving the house to share with anyone.

My cough got worse overnight.  I was vaguely aware of someone lifting me up and holding a cup of cool water to my lips.  I was so fucking thirsty. 

“You shouldn’t be here,” I mumbled.  “I don’t want you to get sick.”

“I won’t,” a rumbling voice assured me.

I didn’t remember making soup, but I jolted into awareness sitting at the table with a steaming bowl in front of me.  Chicken noodle out of a can.  It’s not that hard to make.  I’m sure I could add water and heat in my sleep.  Apparently, I just did.

I was so cold that night.  I don’t know where the extra blankets came from, but they were there in the morning.

I don’t know how I ordered a bed while I was sick, but it was there and on my credit card.  So was the mattress and sheets.  It must have been the fever talking when I ordered them.  I would not have picked out anything that old fashioned looking.

How did I get all this stuff up to the second floor bedroom?  I’m sure I don’t remember stripping the paint off the closet doors.   I must be losing my mind.  I slept, I ate, I stopped logging in at work.  I just needed to concentrate on getting better.

By the time I was able to stay awake for more than an hour at a time, the city was shut down.  I was confined to my house whether I liked it or not.  I was suddenly glad my fever addled brain had ordered a bed while I still could.  

The watched feeling was worse.  I ordered some rat traps with my groceries.  I didn’t catch anything.  They didn’t take the bait.  I swear I heard snickering when I checked them in the morning.  That was a new sound for the boiler to make.

“I am losing my mind,” I repeated to myself.  Then blushed when I realized I had said it aloud.  “And yes, I also talk to myself,” I added for good measure.  “At least it is some sound,” I muttered.  “I should turn on some music or something.”

Work was officially shut down but I still had the dumpster outback.  I spend my awake time cleaning out the other rooms.  The advantage of living in a construction zore was all the dust masks.  When I needed to actually go out, that might help.  In the meantime, I carefully sorted through the things the previous owners had left behind.  Some of it was just trash, but there were some old photographs, lost buttons, even a single antique earring.

“No chance of finding a pair, I bet.  Still this could be made over into a necklace or something.”  Shit.  I was talking to myself again, wasn’t I?

I still got tired easily.  I dreamed about my mom stroking my hair as I slept.

The footprints I couldn’t explain away.

I had taken down a section of wall and spent the day carrying out the chunks of plaster before microwaving a pizza pop and tucking in early.  In the morning there were footprints in the dust.  They weren’t mine.  They were huge and it was hard to believe they were human.  Weird long toes, with the claw tips a little in front were not what I was expecting.

That was the first time I had wanted to leave the house.

I grabbed my stuff and made it to the front yard before I was spotted by a passing patrol car and ordered back inside.  I had no idea how to explain that I thought there was some sort of monster living in my house.  I was shaking as I went back inside.

“Hello?”  I called from the doorway, ready to run.  I had no idea where I could even run to.  “Um…  Is anyone there?”  I don’t know what I was expecting.  “Hi?  Um ….  I bought the house, I didn’t know there was any … thing living here.  I have been trying to fix it up.”

“I know.”

Fuck.  The scratchy, rasping bass voice was not what I was expecting.  “I … uh…  I can go back to camping in the yard,” I suggested.

“No.”

I waited to hear if he (?) was going to say anything else.

Apparently not.

“Uh … no I can’t stay here?  Or no, you don’t even want me camping in the backyard?”

“If I didn’t want you here, I would have had many opportunities to get rid of you.”

Shit.  That wasn’t ominous or threatening at all.

With a low chuckle the voice asked, “Did you mean to say that out loud?”

I froze and tried to remember what I had said.  Oh.  “No, that was an accident.  I’m not used to having anyone around to hear me.”

“I always hear you.”

I closed the door and went out to sit in the garden for a moment to think about that.  I ended up pacing, swearing and wishing for a cigarette.  I hadn’t smoked in years.    The sun started to go down and the bugs came out.  I was being eaten alive outside.  Going inside was scary but he was right.  He had lots of time to …

I flung open the door.  “Did you order furniture on my credit card?”  I demanded.

The laughter that rang out was a whole other level of creepy.  I shivered and thought about going back outside.  The door pulled itself closed behind me.  I spun to look at it and didn’t see anything.  I could hear something breathing. I turned again.  Nothing.

“If we are both going to live here, can we at least agree on some ground rules?”

“Like what?” was almost purred in my ear.  Looking around wildly, I still couldn’t see anything.

I was shaking now.  “Is there a way for you to be less scary so I don’t have a heart attack?” I squeaked.

There was nothing but silence.  Still my sense of the presence suggested it was gone.

I didn’t sleep that night.  I would just start to nod off then jerk myself awake and look wildly around the room.  I never saw anything.

Six am, my alarm went off and I could smell coffee.

All the dust had been swept up.

“Hello?” I whispered.

Nothing.  I had coffee and cereal and tried not to think about my surprise roommate.  I was so tired, I passed out at my computer in the kitchen at some point that morning, only to wake in bed upstairs in the afternoon.  “I don’t want you to touch me while I’m sleeping,” I mumbled, painfully aware that there was dick all I could do to stop it.

“Alright,” the voice said, coming from somewhere in the direction of the closet.  “But don’t fall asleep at the table then.”

I breathed a faint sigh of relief.  I wasn’t expecting the next part.

“You need to eat something now.  You are still recovering.”

There was a can of soup heating on the stove.  My breakfast dishes were gone.  I found them clean and dry in the cupboard.  “Thank you,” I whispered.  He didn’t reply.  As I ate lunch, I was psyching myself into going upstairs to look in the closet.  The door had been painted shut when I got the house, but at some point had been stripped down to the bare wood.

I hadn’t worked up the nerve by the time I was done eating.  Or washing and drying the dishes.  I found myself at the bottom of the stairs staring up at the second floor.  Did I really want to see what was in that closet?

No.

But it would be better to look during the light of day.

Eventually, I made it up there.  I put my hand on the knob and tried to turn it.  It didn’t budge.

“You want rules?” the voice growled behind me.  I spun, there was nothing there.  “Do not open that door.  Do not come into my space.”

I went from trembling from nerves to bolting down the stairs in an instant.  I nearly tripped, but felt something - him? - catch me and set me on my feet.

“Careful,” he purred.

I spent the rest of the day in the garden again.  I was still out there when the sun went down and the backlight turned on.  Then the kitchen light and for a moment I could see something outlined against the antique curtains I hadn’t replaced in the kitchen.  I tried to remind myself that he wasn’t necessarily that big.  He might just be closer to the light and casting a bigger shadow.

I didn’t believe it, but I tried.

I crept back into the house like a scared child who wasn’t sure how angry their parents were going to be after they had done something wrong.  I turned on all the lights on the main floor and stayed in the kitchen away from the stairs.

“Planning on staying up all night?”

I jumped.  “How are you always behind me?”

“I live in the shadows.  Go to bed.”

“Um…  I was thinking, that should be your room, really.  Your closet.  You picked out the bed.  I can just camp down -”

“No.  Go to bed.”

“Do you really think I’m going to be able to sleep in a room with a closet that must not be opened?  I have read Blue Beard, you know.”

“So have I.  The wife gets the house and lives happily ever after.”

“The last wife does,” I pointed out.  “The first dozen or so didn’t.”

He chuckled at that.  “We made a deal, remember?”

“Are you teasing me?  What deal?”

“I don’t touch you in your sleep.  You don’t sleep in the kitchen anymore.”

“How big are you?”

The lights flickered and went off.

“Do you want to see me?”  he purred, so close that I could feel his breath on my neck.

“Not in the dark,” I squeaked.

“Go to bed.”  

The light snapped back on, leaving me blinking.

I spent the night sitting on the bed with my back pressed against the headboard trying to see the whole room at one.  Eventually, I fell asleep.

My alarm did not go off at six.  It had been turned off.  The coffee was ready but not turned on when I went down stairs.  The air smelled faintly of solder.  There was a post-it stuck to the coffee maker.  Fine copperplate handwriting told me:

I stared at it dumbly.  I had replaced the plumbing to the kitchen sink and the downstairs powder room and had been washing out of the sink since I had been forced to stay home.  The only other plumbing was the upstairs bathroom and the antique washing machine in the basement.  I pushed the button on the coffee maker and slowly crept upstairs.

Sure enough the stack of copper pipe waiting in the other bedroom was gone. 

Well, not gone.  I could see it installed through the holes in the walls.  I turned on the tap to the sink and sure enough, I had water.  I now had an upstairs, working bathroom with a clawfoot tub.

And no walls.

“I don’t like the idea of you watching me bathe,” I called out.  Then I felt like an idiot because if whatever it was had voyeur tendencies, it could have been watching me for months.  I tried all the taps and the toilet.  Everything worked.

“Thank you,” I mumbled, unsure if I was talking to myself.

“You’re welcome.”  It was the least creepy, most normal thing I had heard from him.

[maladaptive-ninja-returns]

Kira (8)

CHAPTER 8: Discoveries

Loki x fem!Reader (Kira)

Series: Will contain fluff, smut, bloodshed, violence, anxiety, tears and the cries of my wilted soul.

Chapter content: like the title says...

Warnings: old repressed memories

Word count: Finally! This is only up because of Tari so you all have her to thank for this.

I miss my old colleagues. Taught me so much. This new part of the company is...weird. But I have been taking my rage out in the gym so there’s that.

MASTERLIST & Taglist in bio, my love

The morning breeze saturated with the cold and smell of dewy grass and flowers tip-toes inside your room with the grace of a professional ballerina. Your bare back, with the loss of the duvet's hug, can feel the sweet kisses she leaves all over your susceptible skin. A turn over the bed and you can feel the shift in the warmth of the duvet surrounding your naked form. Your arms sense the disparate temperature over the other side of the bed, forcing you to open your eyes and find it empty.

Where did you go?

As if to answer your thoughts, the sound of the shower running in your bathroom comes as soothing waves, bringing with it the tiny fishes that tickle you while they eat away the muck on your feet you never thought you had.

It is a task to get up from this cocoon of warmth but the thought of what may be on the other side of the wall makes it easier to be up on your legs and strut towards the door.

The door clicks open and you can already feel the heat inside the bathroom the moment you step in. The shower is turned to cold but the vapours leaving the surface of the body that stands under it are visible from where you stand. The glass door to the shower temple is opened and you step in, too entranced by the muscles peaking from beneath the scars that mar the otherwise flawless perfection. The rivulets on that pale skin make it glow in its entirety save for the parts where the scars rest. The strong pressure of the water perfectly disguises the head with its white foam, letting you focus more on the liquid snakes slithering down that naked back.

And just like that, your fingers are tracing them; both the snakes and the scars- too enchanted for your own good. Your touch makes the muscles flinch and the body turn, bringing his face out of the white foam to watch you with his ocean eyes while his hands wrap themselves instinctively around yours and take them behind your back as he softly bares his teeth at you when he brings you close to him. The push from his chest is enough to drive you into the wet wall behind, the cold tiles rubbing against your surfaces, letting you know the depth of pressure and- somewhere deep down inside you- the height of pleasure.

The blue glows lustfully green in the soft yellow lights above and around the two of you. Your breaths are ragged while his chest rises and falls with graceful movements of a calm ocean wave gently rocking a pirate ship.

"Say it."

The words are soft but the ripple that they carry holds the strength to tear you to shreds on the inside. The vibrations from your soul's core are visible on your skin to the onlooker as he tries to test them for himself when he brings his face closer to yours.

"Say it," his lips move in a whisper right in front of yours and you have to focus all your strength in keeping yourself balanced on your two legs as they begin to shudder.

"Loki."

His name is a whisper of a prayer to call unto him from your lips while the stray drops from his hair, head and chest fall over your breasts.

His arms that now rest on either side of you seem to be holding him in place as he restrains himself from doing something he should not.

But oh! Even the Gods do not have the strength to keep away from the temptations that they secretly want to worship themselves.

His lips gently collide with yours, pushing you back into the wall as his hands let go of yours to grab your heated hips and pull them closer to his already primed length.

Your hands find their place around his neck and once the chains inside your mind let go, the force with which you pull him close is unknown even to you.

He loves it.

He craves it.

And so, his fingers tease your skin when they move down to grab your perfect thighs in their firm grasp and lift you up, your legs locking him in place while his body does the same with you by keeping you against the cold tiles.

Neither of you wants to let go of the lips when the tongues dance in harmony and moans are gulped down with pure contentment.

He stops.

You growl.

But he continues to look at you as you feel his hands snaking down your wet caverns, the dark greens nearly hitting the edge as they watch you gasp at his mere touch.

"Yes."

You cannot stop yourself. Your eyes are already closing, your walls threatening to give up, your fingers digging into his skin as he strokes your walls right where they are bound to light up and gyrate.

And he lets go.

Only to come back with his length pushing inside you this time.

.

The jolt that your body goes through when your eyes pop open hits hard when you find yourself lying in your bed. It reverberates harder when you sit up and feel the morning pleasantness chilling every little bead of sweat over your surface.

The bed is empty. The doors are closed. The birds are chirping. The sun is up.

Everything is as it's supposed to be.

Everything except your senses that are still trying to get used to the idea of you having woken up from a way too realistic sex dream with your boss.

"Good morning, Kira!"

Ygritte's voice from the living room makes you jump.

Holy shit!

"Morning, um... Ygritte."

The sounds of her picking up the remnants of last night while dusting off your space are both welcoming and a bit intrusive.

"What would you like to have for breakfast, Kira?"

"...I'm good with sandwiches."

You can hear her pick up your laptop from the floor to place it on the desk.

Picking up the bottle of water on your nightstand, your lips run for a quick gulp to moisten that dried up throat.

"Something refreshing and green or meaty and juicy?"

And all the water goes down the wrong way because of the scandalous imagery your brain comes up with. Again.

.

Fenrir lounges on the refreshing grass, judging you without shame as you eat a vegetable kebab sandwich with greens that are too crispy for someone who has survived on two-days worth of groceries for an entire week.

"I feel I might hurt my teeth eating this lettuce," you mutter to yourself while Fenrir tilts his head with a scoff and a whining growl before trying to push your feet away so he can do a full stretch.

"Shut up, you whiney wolf," you hiss softly at him- which he completely ignores - biting into the deliciously minty kebabs and tomatoes while trying to keep the lettuce in place with your teeth.

"Don't forget we have to leave tonight."

Now it is completely normal for you to find yourself in situations where you lock eyes with a complete stranger at a restaurant while trying to fit a burger in your mouth and failing to do so. What makes this situation worse is to watch your boss and his pet wolf look at you with sheer amusement in their glittery eyes as the lettuce hangs from your mouth before you try to find a seemingly graceful way to fit the entire thing in your mouth with your fingers.

"I've made the arrangements," you finally speak after the green chunk of cool crisp finally goes down your throat.

"Did you get Gustav to ready my suits in time?"

"All three of them are ready to fly off with the rest of your luggage."

"What about the arrangements for the stay?"

"I talked to Friday and she's assured us of our stay at the expo for the week. She's Mr Stark's assistant."

"What about you?"

"What about me?"

You turn to face Loki for the first time during the day, catching the man dressed in the deepest hue of the blue t-shirt over his chest while the black trousers compliment his legs. And other parts.

"What about your dress up for the expo dinners, darling?"

Darling.

The shimmers of this unexplained pain carefully intertwined with a latent string of pleasure pulling through your subconscious do not go unnoticed by your existence when you feel your legs shudder.

"I uh...I don't..."

Your words do not come out as the sleeves are rolled up and the tie goes away to let the collar be unbuttoned.

"Call Gustav," Loki picks up an unmarked sack kept by the end of the porch and puts it over his back, "he'll fix something up for you."

Without another word, he walks off on a trail somewhere in the estate you do not want your mind to wander in this heated condition.

"Gustav."

Forcing yourself out of your own punishing trance, you call the man of every hour to help you out.

.

"You all right?" Robert asks you the moment you step out into the living room, dressed for the afternoon you'd planned.

"Yeah, why?"

"You said you'd be out in twenty minutes. Ygritte was worried about you."

"Oh," you breathe out, tucking a side of your hair behind your ears, "I had an issue...with my bathroom."

"..."

"Couldn't find myself to walk inside," you whisper to yourself, chugging down a glass of water without touching it with your lips.

"Something broke?" Robert's brows furrow in concern.

"Yeah," you mutter as you walk out towards the front door, "me. I'm broke."

“What?”

“What?”

.

"I have to say it is good to see you in not-formals!"

Sam's chirpiness is a drizzle of fresh waves as he makes you chuckle.

"Wait. Really?"

"Yeah," he nods, his eyes stealing a quick look at Robert walking five steps behind you, "I've only ever seen you leave your house to go to work."

"Huh," you pretend to wonder out loud, "so you've tried to see me every time I leave my place?"

The heat evidently reaches his ears as he fumbles through the words, making it harder for you to suppress your chuckles.

"Welcome to the Violet Springs, Madame, Sir."

The greeting by the hostess helps break out of the rush of embarrassment pooling up through Sam's skin that you can conveniently compliment in his summer blue shirt and sand trousers, playing well with your sky blue sundress.

"Yes, um," Sam tries to clear his throat, "we have a reservation under Sam Diaz."

The hostess barely takes a minute to look up the name before taking you and him to the seats by the edge of the restaurant with the view of the city below you.

Sam takes a moment to bask in the glory of the concrete world around him while you look for Robert and find him standing on the other edge with a wide view of the entire hall.

I still don't get why he has assigned himself to me. The only reason I'll be requiring his expertise is when I step on my own foot.

And like a note struck from the instrument of epiphany, you sit straight and take out your phone to send a quick text before giving all your attention to your neighbour.

If this little date goes bad, you're responsible for getting me out of here.

"Before we begin," you start, catching every bit of Sam's senses, "I’m letting you to know we are splitting the bill and that is final."

Words on your phone light up against the otherwise asleep screen- That *is* my job, Miss

"We haven't even started talking yet! Or had anything to drink!" Sam brings out of this shared internal joke from the man you can't see smiling from across the room.

"That's exactly why," you chuckle.

You can see his brown eyes take your features in. You can sense it even when you look away, appearing to smudge something off the wine glass kept in front of you.

Wait. This place has wine glasses. Oh, it's expensive, isn't it? For expensive people.

"You look amazing today, by the way."

Robert watches as you go blank and blink at Sam in return for something the boy said to you. He has seen that look on your face- like you are lost somewhere for a second, trying to find the weight of whatever you witness with your senses. You've done this before, in his boss' presence more times than he can count. Only this time, you don't try to busy your hands and tear away your gaze as if you're not supposed to be in the presence of the person in front of you.

.

The grub hoe hits the cooler layer of the soil hard before Loki finally gets up and drops the tool away from him.

Sweat beads are teased by the afternoon breeze which is comparatively cooler than what the city is witnessing at this moment, thanks to the generous amount of trees surrounding him.

Picking up his shirt lying on the chunk of stone two feet away from the shallow plot he has dug, he allows the cotton fabric to soak up the sweat from everywhere he is exposed.

"Lemonade, Master Loki," Ygritte's call comes right on time as she sets down the tray on the table made of stone under an old sacred fig. Fenrir is not far behind.

"Nice weather for a Saturday," she hums as she uses tongs to pick up the spherical ice cubes from the bucket and masterfully drop them in the tall glass before pouring the jug of lemonade blessed with mint leaves.

Fenrir walks over to the freshly dug up plot to smell the wet earth before putting his paw over the cool dirt.

"Get away from there, Fenrir," Loki commands without looking at the wolf, who growls in protest before coming to the table to demand his share of the treats.

Before he can bring his nose up the surface to sniff the contents of the jug, Loki shoves his face away.

"Only the wolves who work hard get to have a feast," he announces to the enormous body of fur staring at him with nothing but animosity right now.

"Go play with Kira."

Fenrir slumps down and lets the grass rub his wiggling back, making Loki's eyes reflect disgust as he downs his glass.

"Miss Kira isn't home, Master Loki," Ygritte responds as she pours him a refill.

She does not get a response back from Loki but can see his fingers twitch before he goes for the glass and empties it again.

"Thank you, Ygritte," he greets flatly before dragging the sack towards the pit and scattering its contents- which look like sesame seed-sized violet pellets- all over the freshly dug ground.

"Make sure everything is ready before nine tonight," he throws into the air for the woman to catch as she walks back while Fenrir lays in the grass and shade to watch his master work.

.

"I..."

"You don't like wine?"

The look Sam and the waiter give you is that of pure betrayal before one of them composes themselves.

"That's okay we can order something else," Sam chimes.

"I've tried to get used to the taste but..." The sentence hangs mid-air as you give a light shrug as a loose apology. "I'm good with Long Island, though."

Their brows quirk as Sam nods in approval while the waiter's lips stretch just a little at one corner.

"I'll have a Caipiroska," Sam declares as he closes the menu.

"You can order wine, if you want," you try to persuade him as his liquid honey eyes seem to get struck by something new whenever he looks at you- something you do not seem to get used to.

He is about to say something when a heavy voice filled with aged sophistication fills the air around you.

"Good afternoon, young lads. How are you liking the place?"

You reluctantly look up from the food menu to watch a middle-aged man with a well- groomed beard looking and soft honey eyes with flecks of deeper darker brown scattered in them. From the looks of his effortless blue suit that went with the theme of the restaurant, he seems like the manager here.

This is an expensive place.

"It's nice," you feel generous for the lack of experience in settings like this.

"It's brilliant," Sam beams.

The smile stretches from within the manager's beard as he clasps his hands together. For some reason, it even feels like a smile you'd seen somewhere before.

"Wonderful then," he continues, "if I may be so bold to suggest, try our Asian cuisine today and while your server gets back to you with your drinks, take a look at the new art installed in our Galleria for the New Foundations charity."

You turn towards Sam with a glimmer in your eye and a childlike smirk on your face. "This sounds fun."

.

All clothes are dumped on the observatory floor as the dirt-laden feet take the stairs towards a lone room and come back with a towel in one hand and swimming trunks cajoling the perfect shape of the rear that walk out of the place and towards the glass building that houses nothing but a pool and its required necessities.

Leaving the towel on the lounging seats, he dives into the cold water with the grace of a dolphin and intention of tiger, letting his body ride like a free wave till he has to come to the surface to breathe before going down again.

At first it's a blur. The shape. But the more time Loki spends inside the water, the more he can see a figure adroitly floating in the pool with enchanted shimmers all around it.

The hair takes the shape of whatever it wants to, going graciously wild as it lifts the veil from the face.

Your face.

Your glittering eyes that look through his soul.

He stops just to float towards you, stands in the deep waters to look at the wound he helped take care of while internally appreciating the view of watching you untethered.

Of imagining you untethered.

Just as his mind realises this- a second too sooner- he pushes to the surface to breathe. Hard.

He stills in the water around him, questioning himself, his sanity, wondering where you came from; out of the blue, curious as to why you, bewildered at the thoughts slowly scratching a surface he knows is not there.

Curse you, Kira.

And with that contemplation left in the air, he goes free on his back, back into the water.

.

"If it's alright with you, Mr-"

"Harrison."

"Mr Harrison," you continue, "I'd like to talk to my boss about this charitable event so that the company can do its bit to help out in any way."

The manager, Harrison, smiles with his teeth out.

Why is that smile so familiar?

"Brilliant idea!" Harrison laughs.

"Hold on, let me get your contact details." Opening your phone, you jot down his number from his visiting card that marks the hotel's sigil and his designation.

"May I get your full name?" You ask him, trying to open the save option quickly and get over with this to get back to your date, who seems to be shaking with restlessness now.

"Yes. It's Harrison Wardwell."

With one strike of a peaceful clink echoing inside your head, you have travelled back to a dimly lit room. The curtains are drawn over the windows because the sun is too bright. The edge of the desk is lined up right with the window, with books and notebooks scattered over the wooden structure. Plushies crowd the bed as someone lies under the sheet on the side of the bed that is nearer to the window.

There are no birds chirping outside. Why would there be? It's a hot afternoon. There is no creak of the door opening because it is never shut. The footsteps are quieter than a cat's. The fingers are rubbing against the sweaty palm before they touch the edge of the bed. The movement is slow but that does not stop the hand from disappearing under the sheets.

The phone drops from your hand over the tiled floor.

"Oh, sorry," escapes your trembling lips as you bend down to pick it up, using the bare seconds to compose yourself before getting up.

"It's Wardwell with a 'W'."

The voice pierces through your throbbing skull.

"Yeah," you nod without bringing your eyes to look back at him, "I got it. I'll go back now."

He wishes you a great time but your body and mind do not register anything.

You do not even realise when you've come back sat down on the table till Sam is fighting for your attention to ask you about your choice of entrées. The stickiness on your palm and the heat radiating from behind your eyes are warning you for what is about to come. And so, you do what you do best.

"I'm sorry, Sam," you blurt out as you get up, catching Sam's face fall, "I'm not feeling well. I'll have to go back. I'm really sorry."

Robert is already on his heels, walking towards you, sensing trouble from the way you stand.

"Yeah, no," Sam stammers, "it's okay. Is everything okay? Anything I can do? Want to get some air?"

"No, no. I'd rather go home," you mention, already picking up your purse and walking away, "thank you for understanding."

You're nearly at the door, your breaths shallow, your back marred with sweat, almost ready to collapse when Robert takes hold of you before getting into the elevator.

The doors close for the ground floor but Robert does not let you go.

"Water?" He simply puts.

You shake your head, your breathing growing rougher while your nails are beginning to dig into his jacket.

"Do you have medication?" He doesn't stop.

You nod your head furiously.

"It's back home."

The tears stinging your eyes are just sitting over the edge, waiting for one light push.

"Would you like to lie down somewhere?" The softness in his voice is soothing but the idea brings back the face of the man.

"I want to go home," you breathe out with all your strength.

Robert's concern takes another shape over his features. The shape of resolve. Carefully wrapping his arms over your back to help you stand straight he walked you to the entrance.

"Then let's get you home."

.

The crisp black shirt tries it's hardest to flutter on Loki's back but the buttons in front stop the wind from taking advantage of the breathing fabric and the body it has been wrapped around.

The walk back to the house is a languid one with Fenrir by his side- something both seem to be enjoying this suddenly breezy noon with a grey cloud approaching from the city side.

The French doors are still slid open when he reaches the back to watch the hazy sun reflect streaks of wetness from your eyes to your chin as you rush towards your part of the house in clothing he has never seen you in.

Loki's gait is composed, though the grip on the bag of his sweat-soaked clothes grows tight.

"Robert," he calls out to the man in charge of your security, who is refraining himself from following you to make sure you're okay, "a word."

.

The rumble of thunder outside is not welcomed by Fenrir, who howls at the black clouds and lightning streaks to drive them away.

The cold breeze travels inside to whirl around the lounge, swinging around every little furniture piece.

Loki turns off the light to his study and walks out, feeling the playful current over his neck even from here.

"Ygritte," he shouts, but never condescendingly, walking down the hallway, "you know Fenrir will soil his paws in the dirt outside and then you will have to cl-"

He turns the corner to have every authoritative atom in his voice die down when his eyes lock to your figure asleep in the living room just where the winds are blowing in.

With your laptop still on, your diary untraditionally left open, your phone continuously buzzing with messages, he figures you dozed off while working.

'She had a panic attack, sir. One moment she was talking to the manager and next when she came back at the table, she was pale.'

Peace.

'No, sir. That boy had nothing to do with it. He is a gentleman. I ran a background check on him just to be safe.'

You are at peace.

'I have never seen her go through something like this before either, sir. Something must have triggered it. She was fine five minutes earlier.'

Sleeping without any worries. Floating in some dream, he thinks. A beautiful one, he prays.

Your hair, usually tied up, strays loose, partially covering your cheeks while moving to the tunes of the pleasant air. Your lips are slightly apart, one sure sign of how deep the sleep is. Your glasses hang awkwardly over your nose, almost making the man smile at the unintentionally delicate, purely appealing picture you've painted.

The gust of wind coming from the open doors forces you to bring your body close to yourself to ward off the cold and without any forewarning, Loki's body is already moving to slide the glass close, giving one snap of his finger and pointing to the floor near his feet to bring Fenrir inside without so much as a squeak.

The lightning outside the glass lights up his face, illuminating this deep ocean of green in his eyes as he blinks with a tender thought before slowly making a one-eighty to stand right at the back of the sofa where you lay.

One step and he can see your arm and shoulders move with your gentle breathing. One more and he watches this side of your face already sinking in some dream.

Know your lines, Loki.

His fingers twitch at the thought. He looks around for a sign of help but gets none. So, one lungful of air later, his hands lightly brush away your hair from your face, making sure they never touch your skin.

The thumb and index place themselves securely around the edges of the frame of your glasses before they are pulled away with commendable patience. Even the lungs are allowed to breathe only when he has snapped the temples in.

It is hard for his eyes to break away from your face but he does so unwillingly to bend over the sofa from here he stands to place the glasses on the coffee table in front of you, his fingers accidentally brushing your exposed waist.

The second it takes his nerves to realise what kind of contact was made, you wake up with a gasp and a withered moan.

Loki cannot understand what he is watching for a moment there.

Red eyes looking around in unadulterated horror, lips trembling with the intensity of a cracking winter, fingers digging into the fabric of the sofa you lie on, breaths shallower than the pit he dug this morning.

But the worst of the thump in his heartbeat comes when you turn to look at him with the look of a victim of dreadful deception. A quick breath is taken in by the parted lips of Loki, the man of the multi-million empire who bows to no one, to bring himself to explain himself to you.

"Is he here?"

The words on the edge of his tongue stare at you with a tingling shock.

"...what?"

A single tear falls from your eye over the cheeks heated for all the wrong reasons.

"That man," your words come out broken and wounded, similar to the look in your eyes, "is he-is he here?"

Something inside his chest rips apart and comes off and he has no idea what it is or how to put it back up.

"I... it's just me," he finally speaks, the confusion along with this unknown searing pain piled up between his brows, almost regretting saying it the moment those words leave his mouth.

"Oh, thank God," you wheeze through the shiver in your throat, striking the man again with your words, "thank God."

He can see you struggling with your breathing while your eyes still go out to make out the shadows you don't trust.

"Kira," he finally speaks, bringing your attention to him with this soothing composure in his voice, "look at me."

So you do.

"Whoever he is, isn't here. He will never be."

Lightning lights up the green in his eyes, showing him in a brilliant light.

Like a natural reflex, you nod in response to the assurance.

"Go get some sleep," he speaks softly, "we have to leave in seven hours."

Your head turns towards the golden base clock before getting up and walking to the East wing.

Loki doesn't move from where he stands till he sees you walk down the corridor, turn on your lights for a few minutes and then turn them off.

Fenrir is shifting his weight between his paws before Loki finally tells him to go and he dashes to where you went.

The cellphone is already out and the phone is ringing on the other side.

"Yes, Sir?" The familiar Scottish accent drips through the earpiece.

"You said she talked to the manager. Who is he?"

A two-second pause. "A Harrison Wardwell, sir. Do you want me to-"

"I need everything on that man."

Thunder rumbles violently, rattling the strongest doors and windows of the house.

"Every. Single. Thing."

[hereticpriest]

Like It Really Rough Guy Part 1

Billy Hargrove Soulmate AU

Warnings: Language, NSFW content

Enjoy!!

~

A black Chevy Impala rolled into the parking lot of Hawkins High School and backed into a parking spot near the exit to the lot, far away from the front doors of the school where students were piling up. The driver door opened and one foot clad in a black hiking boot braced on the pavement. A girl with auburn hair that trailed down in her shoulders in thick waves swung out of the seat with a heavy sigh. She wore a pair of high-waisted black pants adorned with silver buttons, and black leather jacket overtop of a white The Clash tank top. Her shirt was tucked into her pants, and her wrists were covered in bracelets of various materials, along with a massive silver watch clearly made for a man. A gold chain hung around her neck, along with a silver chain that clasped a chunk of pink sea glass. The girl’s skin was light, but sun kissed, and contrasted nicely with her pale green eyes. She tucked her hair behind her ear, revealing two studs in the lobe, a gold hoop in her helix, and a copper cuff clasped around the highest point of her ear.

“Hey, space cadet!” A loud, male voice rang out across the parking lot, and the girl tensed, groaning quietly and leaning her head back, “Daisy!”

“Stevie, are you always this much of a pain in the ass?”

“Only for you, Daisy.” Steve laughed, yelping when Daisy punched him gently in the ribs.

“Sorry, Hazy-Daze. I meant to stop him from ambushing you, but Jonathan parked far away.” Nancy teased, jogging towards them.

“Jonathan, save me from this freak show please!” Daisy called out to the dorky brunette as he slid out of his beat up old car.

“No can do, Daisy. I have to hand in a project before first period!” Jonathan called back, heading towards the school. Daisy snorted and rolled her eyes, lighting a cigarette while Nancy complained and tried to bat it away from her. Steve slid an arm around Nancy’s waist and the other around Daisy’s shoulders, leading the girls towards the school. They all paused, however, when a blue camero pulled into the parking lot. The guy that slid out of it was far hotter than any man had any right to be, and he knew it. The new kid as of last week, Billy Hargrove. Daisy eyed him for a moment, until Steve jostled her and kept walking. Her soul mark was itchy today, and had been off and on since that weekend. It wasn’t abnormal for soul marks to get itchy, warm, cold, or even painful with your soulmate’s emotions. Hers was particularly active, though primarily in the more negative range.

“You itchy again?” Steve asked, and Daisy looked at him for a moment before noticing she was scratching at her ribs on the left side.

“Yeah, guess they’re pissed off or something.” Daisy shrugged, tracing the mark on Steve’s neck, “You ever get that?”

“Not nearly as often as you, sugar.” Steve replied. Nancy laughed quietly.

“Mine is just… comfortable all the time.” The brunette mused. Daisy smiled, reaching over Steve to ruffle Nancy’s perfectly curly hair.

“Course it is, Queenie. That’s because your soulmate is a total sugar pie.” Daisy teased, laughing as Nancy slapped at her hand to get her to stop messing up her hair. Daisy stubbed out her cigarette on the brick of the school, checking her pocket to be sure her cigarette case was still there with her money clip. Her metal lighter was in the opposite pocket, along with her keys and the small case she kept her pills in. She threw her backpack into her locker, grabbed her notebook and the textbook she needed for English, then headed towards her class. On the way, she slung an arm around Steve’s waist. Nancy had already run off towards her first class despite the bell not being for a good seven or eight minutes from then. She was probably aiming to steal a kiss from her soulmate since her morning classes weren’t with him.

“Guess who’s got the good stuff?” Daisy asked, bumping her hip into Steve’s.

“Seriously? Jesus, how do you always manage this shit?” Steve lifted her and swung her around in a little circle, then dropped her and kept walking. Daisy punched his shoulder, then looped her arm through his.

“Because I’m the best, duh.” Daisy laughed. It was odd to see her with Steve Harrington, considering he used to be such a douchebag. Daisy had never been particularly popular or unpopular. She was a bit more grown up than the rest of her classmates, having lived on her own for over two years now. Getting emancipated at 16 had been a struggle, but she worked hard and had managed to provide for herself since then. She ignored the rumours around school about her, was patient in the face of any bullying she did receive, and she balanced three jobs on top of maintaining good grades.

“Clearly. Hey, do you still need help with the new place?” Steve asked, and Daisy nodded.

“Of course I do. Johnny boy is in, Nance said she’d help, and apparently the kiddo troupe is all coming along to help too. I am hoping that after you, I’ll be able to get another person who is strong enough to help with some of this. I have a lot that I need to do before my furniture comes on Monday.” Daisy left him at his Math class with a pat on the back.

“I’ll see if I can get anyone to come. No douchebags, I promise.” Steve headed into his class, and Daisy continued to her English class. Her seat was in the back, next to the window, and it hadn’t surprised her when the new kid flopped into the seat next to her last week. Despite herself, Daisy found herself looking him over from head to toe again, not bothering to try and hide it. Warmth pulsed through her soul mark, and Daisy bit the inside of her cheek. He was… beautiful. She couldn’t even deny it, even though the cocky smirk on his face made her want to gag. Last week, he’d been distracted by Jenny Reed, and this week he had spent most of his time allowing Heather Thomas to drool all over him. He hadn’t had time to get to know Daisy yet, and for that, she was thankful. She had enough distractions in her life, and enough responsibilities. She didn’t need someone pulling her focus away from the important things in her life. Of course, all good things come to an end. She had caught his attention today, dressed as she was.

“Billy Hargrove. What’s your name, princess?”

Daisy held her hand out to him, twisting a little in her seat to face him.

“Daisy Prince. Nice to meet you, Billy Hargrove.” She said, tensing up when he brushed his lips over her knuckles. His eyes narrowed just a little bit, his free hand cupping just under his left pec. Daisy felt her soul mark burn, but there was no pain, just overwhelming heat. She wrenched her hand free of his, swallowing around the lump in her throat, and looked determinedly out the window. Billy reached out after a moment, but before he could make contact, the teacher began the class and told him off.

After class, she headed to the bathroom and shrugged her jacket off of her shoulder, then pulled her shirt up to show off the spirals of blues that made up her soul mark. She loved her mark. It looked like a watercolour painting, swirls of colour that she tried time and time again to recreate. Not everyone had a soul mark, and not everyone with one would ever find their soulmate, but it was special when you did. It was meant to be, and from what she understood, it was never wrong. Soul marks weren’t perfect – Jonathan and Nancy were in the same school for ages without realizing they were soulmates. They had never seen each other’s marks, and hadn’t noticed that they were sharing emotions through their marks until after Will’s disappearance.

This just had to be a coincidence. Sighing, Daisy dropped her shirt and shrugged her jacket back on. She wouldn’t fuss. She’d just let things happen, and she was sure she’d figure it out eventually. Yeah, no reason to freak out, or overthink things.

“Daisy, are you okay?” Nancy asked from behind her, startling her out of her thoughts.

“Oh, yeah, Nance, it’s okay. My soul mark is just acting up – no big deal.”

“Maybe they’re close by.” Nancy mused, fixing a couple bits of Daisy’s hair for her. Daisy snorted.

“Let’s hope not.” Daisy retorted, which made Nancy raise her brows. Daisy led her out of the bathroom, and at the sight of Billy Hargrove leaning against a locker just outside of the bathroom with Tommy H, a sharp intake of breath drew both his and Nancy’s attention to her. Nancy noticed Daisy’s unease and dragged her away.

“Okay, so, what was that?” Nancy demanded once they were away from Billy and Tommy.

“Nothing. It’s nothing.” An incredulous look from Nancy made Daisy sigh, “Okay, so, he just… I don’t know, he kissed my knuckles in class and it made my…”

Nancy raised her brows, tilted her head and urged her to continue.

“Me uncomfortable. That’s all.” Daisy lied, “You better go, or you’ll be late for class.”

Nancy cursed, squeezing her arm and then running off towards her class while Daisy watched. Once she was out of sight, Daisy threw her books into her locker and grabbed her gym uniform. She changed by herself once the changing room was empty, not caring that it made her late to class. Coach Alan began to give her shit for it, but one look at who was late and he huffed, telling her to hurry up and join the others. Laps went by easily, as did push ups, sit ups, and rope climbing. The girls were set up to play volleyball, while the boys were set up to play basketball, and she felt a little bit jealous. She quite liked basketball, but when she noticed Steve and Billy amongst the boys playing, she decided she’d be fine with watching between rounds of volleyball. Daisy wasn’t one to play on any sports teams, but she was quite good at sports with the right practice. Her team was leading when she got traded out for a break, and she sat on the lowest rung of the bleachers to watch the games. Billy and Steve were facing off, and she had to pout a little that Steve was on the shirts team, but seeing Billy’s shoulders and the dimples in his back brought her a thrill.

And then he turned around, and his soul mark was on show, right upon his pec. It was identical to hers, swirls of blue and white like watercolour brushstrokes. Her heart began to pound, eyes slightly wide, and Billy’s hand covered his soul mark again, giving Steve a chance to steal the ball again. Daisy tripped over herself to get up, slamming into the ground but quickly shooting back up and running for the change rooms.

“Miss Prince?” The Coach called out, but she was gone before he could catch up. Daisy showered, ignoring the Coach banging on the change room doors. When Robin entered the room and said the Coach sent her, Daisy leaned out of the shower stall with a hand covering her soul mark.

“Hey, Robin, sorry. Can you just tell him I’m feeling sick? I can’t… I can’t be out there right now.” Daisy requested. Robin nodded, pacing a little closer and leaning against the wall outside of the showers.

“Are you okay? Harrington’s pretty worried. He wanted to storm in here to make sure you were okay. I guess the doofus forgot that he’s not allowed in here, since he’s probably been in here before and all.” Robin mused, and Daisy snorted.

“Sounds like Steve. He’s just a worry wart. He helped me through a lot of shit last year, so I don’t blame him.” Daisy admitted, finishing her shower and wrapping a towel around herself, a smaller towel ruffling her hair. Robin hopped up onto the counter beside her as Daisy began to dry and brush her hair.

“I like your hair curly. You shouldn’t brush them out so much. It suits you.” Robin gave one of the curls a tug, and Daisy laughed.

“Thanks. You think they look good? I always thought the curls were a bit much.” The auburn haired girl replied, blushing when Robin nodded, “You’re sweet, Robin. I’ll let the curls settle. We’ll see if you like them dry, ‘cause they’re a bit of a mess.”

Robin headed out to let the Coach and Steve know she was okay, and Daisy scrunched and finger-curled her hair to make it a bit less messy. Once she was done, she got dressed and put her eyeliner back on, swept a bit of lip balm over her pouty lips, and headed out of the change room. Steve was at her side before she could leave the gym, and she had to hold him at arm’s length to keep him from covering her in his sweat.

“Gross, Stevie. You’re a sweaty mess, babe. You can hug me later, after you shower. Now, get back to class before Coach gives you shit. I’m fine, I just need a breather.” Daisy promised, kissing her fingers then pressing them to his cheek.

The picnic tables outside were her normal lounging place, and they were blessedly clear. Daisy draped herself over one, her leather jacket rolled up as a pillow and a cigarette hanging from her lips. Coincidences happen, and there was no way this wasn’t just a coincidence. If she had actually had a chance to compare their marks close up, there would be some obvious difference. Had to be. She was just gagging for it and needed to sate herself, that’s why she thought the hot new guy was her soulmate. Thank God it was Friday. She could put all of her energy into fixing up her new house instead of focusing on her physical needs. It had been a long time since she last slept with someone, and that was all this little phase was.

Daisy felt Steve crawling onto the table with her before she saw or heard him, and it took her a moment to will herself to open her eyes. She stretched one leg out over his lap as he settled on the edge of the table with his feet on the bench. He was quiet for a moment, but soon enough, he looked up at her with concern brimming in his gaze.

“Is it your parents?” Steve asked, and Daisy nearly choked on her own spit.

“Oh, shit, Stevie… no, no it isn’t. I’m sorry for worrying you.” Daisy sat up, pressing closer to Steve and giving him a brief hug, “I’ll explain once I work things out, okay? I just have to think about things a little bit more.”

Steve nodded, heaving a sigh when Daisy began to comb her fingers through his hair. He leaned into her shamelessly, letting out a hum when Daisy dragged her nails over his scalp. Her other friends understood bits and pieces of what had happened to her, but Steve was the only one who knew everything. She hadn’t meant for him to ever get involved, and it had honestly been a complete fluke that he was there for some of it all, but he had been a stable rock for her to latch herself onto in the hardest moments of it all. Steve had gone from someone she despised to someone she cherished with every bit of her. She couldn’t lie to him, but he wouldn’t push her if she told him she couldn’t talk about it yet.

“Well, isn’t this cute?” Tommy H’s voice rang out, and Daisy grimaced at the sound. He stood with Carol and Billy, and Steve tensed up against her in preparation for the bullshit that came with dealing with them. Daisy looked them over for a moment, brow arched delicately to show her absolute disdain for Tommy.

“Hey Tommy. Did you forget what I told you last year?” Daisy asked. Carol tensed and Tommy sneered, but Billy looked amused and mildly confused.

“I see you’re still playing the stuck-up bitch card. Didn’t your parents ever teach you manners? Oh, wait…” Tommy faked a pout, and Steve froze against Daisy. Before he could move, Daisy offered Tommy a killer smile and took a puff off of her cigarette, then blew the smoke out at him.

“I see you’re still playing the ‘second fiddle to the popular douchebag of the minute’ card, huh?” Daisy untangled herself from Steve and stepped closer to Tommy, sliding her arms around his neck and pressing her body up against his, “You still mad that I told you I’d rather eat dirt than ever touch your dick, sweetie? How about you fuck off before I make copies of those notes you left in my locker, huh? No point ruining what little reputation you have. Leave me and my friends alone, or I’ll kick your ass, Tommy. I’m crazy, don’t you remember?”

Carol grabbed Daisy’s arm, but she ripped her hand away and twisted Carol’s arm, then used her grip on her to shove the girl away from her. Billy watched, endlessly amused by this girl humiliating his posse. Tommy tried to shove her, but Daisy planted her feet and checked him hard, knocking him on his ass.

“Run away, Tommy.” Daisy growled, while Tommy scampered up with Carol’s help. They both stalked off, acting like their pride wasn’t bruised, but Billy remained where he stood. Daisy ignored him, stubbing out her burnt out cigarette on the bench of the table.

“Motherfucker wasted my cigarette.” Daisy grumbled, brow arching and shoulders tensing when Billy lit one and offered it to her. She took it, locking her gaze with him for a moment to ponder her reaction, then flicked her tongue out to lick the underside of the filter before putting it into her mouth and taking a puff. Billy smirked, and Daisy blew out the smoke in his face to hide her reaction when the mark on her chest began to feel warm and almost fluttery. Looking into Billy’s eyes, she got a feeling that he wasn’t as oblivious as she hoped, but he was clearly content with going with the flow for now. Daisy couldn’t help but smile when Billy stepped closer and stole the cigarette back from her, taking a long drag off of it while his gaze ran over her body, and then over to Steve.

“So, crazy girl, you got plans this weekend?” Billy asked, and Daisy snorted, stepping closer to him and stealing the cigarette back from him.

“Yeah, I do actually. I’m finishing up renovations at my house. Move in trucks are coming by Monday, so I have to get it all done before then. No time for anything else.” Daisy replied.

“You the newbie on Cherry Lane?” Billy asked, raising his brows, a sly smirk crossing his face when Daisy hesitated.

“Uh, yeah, that’s me. How’d you know?”

“I live at 4819 Cherry Lane. You’re across the street and a house over. 4823 right?” Billy smirked, “I knew I saw someone working in there.”

Daisy took a drag off of the cigarette and shrugged, “Yeah, that’s me. Tell us to shut up if we’re loud this weekend, I’m having people over to help me fix up the place, and we’re probably going to play music and shit.”

“Need any help?” Billy asked, and Steve made a weird noise behind her, so she glanced back at him. His eyes were wide, and he looked like he wanted to shout.

“Yeah, if you want to help. I’m paying, and providing dinner of pizza. Beer if you’re not driving.” Daisy replied, “Your little groupie idiots aren’t welcome. And there will be no fighting. That being said, anyone who helps is more likely to be invited over after. I live alone, so it’ll be a good place to hang out to get away from parents.”

“Well, now I’ve got to help. You starting tonight?” Billy asked, taking her wrist in his hand while the other pulled her closer. He took the cigarette into his mouth, his lips pressed against her fingertips, and the contact made Daisy’s breathing hitch. He smirked at her, scratching at his pec with his free hand while looking her in the eyes. Yeah, he definitely had caught on more than she hoped. He knew, but it was possible he didn’t know that she knew. Unlikely, but possible. Daisy let go of the cigarette, resisting the urge to shotgun the cigarette with him even as it bubbled inside of her. She licked her bottom lip, then pulled a cherry lollipop from her jacket pocket and ripped the packaging off. She tossed the packaging in the trash and flicked her tongue over the candy before popping it into her mouth, curbing her oral fixation that caused her to chain smoke when she was anxious.

“Yeah, tonight. Everyone’s coming around 5 for dinner before we start.” Daisy replied, and Billy nodded, tossing a wink her way, then heading back towards the building. Steve squeaked once he was gone, throwing his hands up.

“What was that, Daisy? Please don’t tell me you’re interested in that jackass.” Steve begged, and Daisy feigned a laugh that had him narrowing his eyes at her suspiciously.

“It was me getting another set of hands to help. If he wants to flirt along the way, he’s welcome to.” Daisy replied, and Steve knew she was omitting something, but she wasn’t technically lying, so he didn’t protest. He knew she’d open up eventually.