#sorry this has just been on my mind all day

[checkeredflagggs]

Melting Hearts

pairing: charles leclerc x chocolatier!reader

summary: Ferrari hires a chocolatier to cater for their anniversary celebrations! The chocolate isn’t the only thing to melt

a/n1: Twitter is dead to me. Bluesky forever.

a/n2: all chocolate creations are from the chocolate guy, amaury guichon

a/n3: user 19 and 53 are back 😂

scuderiaferrari

liked by yourusername, charles_leclerc, carlossainz55, and 2,112,134 others

tagged: yourusername, maison_du_chocolat

scuderiaferrari: We’re excited to announce that yourusername from the maison_du_chocolat has accepted our invitation to our anniversary celebration! We can’t wait to see what she makes for us!

view all comments

yourusername: Forza Ferrari Sempre! It was an honor to be chosen and I am excited to have the opportunity to be a part of this monumental event!

↳user1: oh man oh man oh man am I sooooo excited for this!

↳user2: Queen of chocolate!

user3: omg crossover of the century!

↳user4: i literally can’t wait to see what she makes!

↳user3: her creations are INSANE! her imagination…

charles_leclerc: can’t wait! 😊

↳arthur_leclerc: he really really can’t…

↳charles_leclerc: 😑

user5: I haven’t heard of her before but I just looked her up and damn…

↳user6: right?

↳user5: what I wouldn’t give to live in her mind?

↳user7: dude what?

↳user5: not in a creepy way but like how does she even imagine these things??

↳user8: acceptable answer

carlossainz55: Forza Ferrari Sempre! Welcome to the Ferrari family!

↳yourusername: glad to be here!

user9: I just checked her insta and damn…chocolate is not the only thing that’ll be melting

↳user10: keep it classy!

maison_du_chocolat

liked by scuderiaferrari, charles_leclerc, yourbff, and 1,877,455 others

tagged: scuderiaferrari

maison_du_chocolat: it has long been a dream of mine to go to Italy and visit the Ferrari factory! Now to be able to do that by invitation is an honor! Thank you scuderiaferrari

view all comments

user11: amazing!

user12: oh I can’t wait!

user13: cars? I have to care about cars now??

↳user14: I kkkknnnnoooooowww. Like mother why?

↳user13: vroom vroom I guess

charles_leclerc: it's our pleasure to have you!

↳user19: 👀👀

↳maison_du_chocolat: thank you! 😊

↳user19: 👀👀

↳user53: seriously? What now

↳user19: nothing nothing nothing

carlossainz55: again! Welcome to the family!

↳maison_du_chocolat: love to be here

yourbff: I expect all the details stat

↳yourusername: literally on my way to you right now

↳yourbff: with all the juicy details?

↳yourusername: with something certainly

user15: love that jacket!

↳maison_du_chocolat: gotta represent when I’m creating!

↳user15: it’s a chef’s jacket???

↳maison_du_chocolat: yup!

↳user15: oh my god 🥺🥺

Bluesky

maison_du_chocolat

liked by charles_leclerc, yourbff, user, and 1,828,828 others

tagged: scuderiaferrari

maison_du_chocolat: a little sneak peak of what’s coming!

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user16: the anticipation is gonna actually kill me i think

↳user17: extreme but understandable

user18: car? Horse? 3D model of the Ferrari logo?

↳user17: an actual life size f1 car that runs

↳user18: tbh it might actually be faster then what we’ve been given this year…

↳user17: removing the floor and letting Carlos and Charles run the race is faster then this tractor…

↳user18: you’re not wrong

scuderiaferrari: we’re eagerly awaiting the results!

↳maison_du_chocolat: cool cool cool cool. No doubt no doubt, no pressure no pressure

↳scuderiaferrari: you’ve got this!

↳maison_du_chocolat: admin why would you stress me out like this…

↳scuderiaferrari: from the bottom of my heart, my bad

user20: less than 1 week left!

↳user21: I know! I’ve been counting down the days

↳user22: me too!

charles_leclerc: any hints for your favorite driver?

↳maison_du_chocolat: sorry but Sebastian isn’t racing anymore…

↳charles_leclerc: 🥺😢

↳user19: 🧐🧐

↳user53: ok grandma let’s get you back to bed

↳user19: you just wait…you’ll see…

↳user53: see what you crazy bat???

scuderiaferrari

liked by maison_du_chocolat, maxverstappen1, carlossainz55, and 2,276,511 others

Transcript:

First frame: “And for our last topic,y/n from the La Maison Du Chocolat…”

Second Frame: “Carlos: hahahaha, Charles: Oh noooo……, Carlos: yes let’s talk about y/n”

Third Frame: “Oh? Are you guys excited for the exhibit?”

Last Frame: “Carlos: Charles definitely is!, Charles: She is very talented!, Carlos: Not what I meant”

tagged: yourusername, maison_du_chocolat

scuderiaferrari: we talk cars, collections, and chocolate!

view all comments

user23: awwww Charles is blushing ☺️☺️☺️

maxverstappen1: 😹

↳carlossainz55: it’s even worse than you think

↳maxverstappen1: how??

↳carlossainz55: they cut a LOT of footage

↳maxverstappen1: oh my god 😹

↳charles_leclerc: it was not THAT bad

↳carlossainz55: it was

user24: the challenge is don’t talk about your crush! Charles fails instantly

↳user25: no but for real he’s so in love??? He’s just heart eyes and blushing face the entire video

↳user25: and THEY TAGGED her too! scuderiaferrari sees the vision as well

↳user24: I’m confused on how they have EVEN MORE footage?? Like it’s already 30 minutes of him yapping about yourusername…

↳user25: I NEED them to release the uncut version! scuderiaferrari! Please we’ve never asked for anything

↳scuderiaferrari: 👀👀

↳charles_leclerc: no.

↳scuderiaferrari: 🫣 sorry 😞

user19: y’all aren’t ready for what i have to say

↳user53: I’m tired of this grandpa

↳user19: that’s too damn bad! They’re dating!

↳user53: seriously? Oh my god…

↳user19: just wait and see user53. Just wait and see

Private Messages

Bluesky

user26: oh my god

↳user27: are you thinking what I’m thinking?

↳user26: Charles Leclerc and y/n?

↳user27: yes!!

user28: that crazy bitch has done it again

↳user53: you better not be talking about user19 with that tone?

↳user28: that crazy bitch (respectfully) has done it again ??

↳user53: acceptable (barely)

user19: WHAT DID I SAY? I TOLD YOU

↳user53: this is not PROOF. It is gossip!

↳user19: I've been sayin' it. I've been sayin' it for ten damn years. Ain't I been sayin' it?

↳user53: do you ever run out of movie quotes?

↳user19: nope! CAUSE I WAS RIGHT!!

↳user53: 🙄😂☺️

Private Messages

maison_du_chocolat

liked by charles_leclerc, scuderiaferrari, carlossainz55, and 3,127,225 others

tagged: scuderiaferrari, charles_leclerc, carlossainz55

maison_du_chocolat: here we are! And away we go!

Thank you scuderiaferrari for this wonderful opportunity! I hope your day is as wonderful as you are!

This was a chance of a lifetime and there’s no words I can write that will fully capture how much this means to me so I’ll simply say thank you again! Forza Ferrari Sempre!

view all comments

scuderiaferrari: 😳😳😳

↳scuderiaferrari: THESE ARE WONDERFUL!

↳scuderiaferrari: The perfect way to celebrate!

↳scuderiaferrari: Forza Ferrari Sempre!

user29: the classic car and the new one side by side?? 👌👌

user30: the fomo I have…

↳user31: good god same. I wish I could have been there to see them in person…

charles_leclerc: magnifique!!

↳maison_du_chocolat: thank you! And thank you again for showing me your car — I definitely needed the close up reference

↳user19: !!!!

↳user32: on their thread??

↳user53: not the time user19

↳user19: but!

↳user53: no

carlossainz55: these are amazing! Such artistry!

↳maison_du_chocolat: stoopppp. I’m blushing!

↳carlossainz55: 😉😉

↳charles_leclerc: 🤨🤨

↳carlossainz55: 🤣

user33: the presentation of this was wonderful as well

↳user34: almost better than the actual life size chocolate cars if I’m being honest

↳user35: ok I don’t know if I’d go that far…

↳user34: there was fireworks…

↳user35: yeah ok

Bluesky

user36: starting a countdown…

↳user37: to what?

↳user36: just wait

user38: god when will it be my turn???

user39: they look so cute!

↳user40: you can’t see their faces?

↳user39: but they look so comfy together? Like even out in public, they’re leaning up against one another — that’s cute and lovely!

↳user40: …we need to get you a date

user19: !!!!

↳user36: this user37

↳user37: what?

↳user53: yes yes yes you’re probably gonna be right. Let’s not rub it in everyone’s face

↳user19: you never let me have any fun

↳user53: we still don’t know for certain that it’s y/n!

↳user19: it will be!

user41: I’ve never felt more single then these 2!! photos have made me feel

↳user42: same

↳user43: same

charles_leclerc

liked by yourusername, yourbff, and 1,213,455 others

tagged: yourusername

charles_leclerc: happy 2 years mon amour — they’ve been the happiest I’ve ever been.

Thank you for teaching me to bake Christmas cookies (and for the special love potion — although you certainly don’t need to give me one!)

view all comments

user44: oh my god! 2 years???

user46: how on earth did they keep it a secret for so long??

yourusername: Mon soleil…I thought you wanted to keep this a secret?

↳charles_leclerc: oops ☺️☺️☺️

↳charles_leclerc: not anymore!

↳charles_leclerc: I need everyone to know you’re mine

↳yourusername: Mon soleil…

↳charles_leclerc: ehehehehe 😊😊😊

user48: Mon soleil…she calls him her sunshine…

↳yourusername: he lights up my life!

↳user48: my heart…I can’t go on…

↳yourusername: oops??

maxverstappen1: finally

↳charles_leclerc: what?

↳maxverstappen1: you can now yap to everyone else about her

↳maxverstappen1: stop bothering me

↳charles_leclerc: when have i ever?

↳carlossainz55: you think you have it bad?? And charles_leclerc the entire flight to Miami

↳maxverstappen1: and Brazil

↳oscarpiastri: and to Australia

↳logansargeant: the entire driver’s parade in Monday?

↳alex_albon: and in spa?

↳landonorris: to and from silverstone?

↳charles_leclerc: let a romantic live will you?

↳yourusername: awww soleil you talk about me?

↳carlossainz55: yes

↳maxverstappen1: more words than I’ve ever spoken

↳oscarpiastri: nonstop

↳logansargeant: never ending

↳alex_albon: yes

↳landonorris: yes

↳charles_leclerc: yes 🥰

[gojoest]

“I can’t believe you let that guy hold your hand”

Satoru was upset. Really upset. You could see it all over his face — jaw clenched, brows furrowed, the vein on his forehead so swollen it was threatening to pop any second now.

“You are being ridiculous”, you sigh. He’s been at it for 3 hours now and you no longer have the energy to try and beat some sense into him, he’s not listening to you anyway. “Please stop”, you ask for what probably is the hundredth time.

“Okay”, he audibly breathes under his nose, but surely doesn’t sound the least bit convincing, nor does he look like he’s given up, judging by the way he’s fervently searching up something on his phone, tapping left and right, downloading all kinds of social apps. “What’s his name?"

“You’re not going to look him up now, are you?”

He can’t be serious, you try to reason internally. He’s just being too silly right now pretending to throw another jealousy fit to show you just how much he loves you and how crazy he is about you, you try to convince yourself.

Yet, the look in his eyes refutes all of your hopes.

He has gone mad. He really is after that guy.

“Bingo. Name, please”

“I don’t remember it”, you let out an exasperated whine.

“Fine, I’ll just have Ijichi track that homewrecker down, then I’ll go deal with him personally myself”

“…”, you sigh once again. “And then what?”

“I’ll cut his hand and burn it”, he nonchalantly blurts out, his eyes focused on his phone as he types out instructions to Ijichi, along with a photo attached to the message.

3 hours ago, when things went terribly wrong

As promised, you were showing Satoru your childhood albums.

He was very eager to see how the mini you looked backed in the day. Basking in the sight of your adorable self from the photos, gushing over your chubby cheeks and cute outfits, he was asking about the story behind each shot and curiously listening to you go on and on about the old times and the little you he didn’t know about.

…that was until a certain group photo from kindergarten caught Satoru’s eyes.

“What’s this”, he pointed at it.

“It’s a group pic from kindergarten when I was four, I think? The teachers made us pair up and hold hands for the photo, and I ended up with this boy here”

Silence. Something was off.

Satoru wasn’t reacting the way he was to the other pictures. His smile was frozen on his lips but it was gone from his eyes, and he was unusually quiet too. The aura he was giving off was definitely eerie, and not the least bit loving.

“Yeah?”, Satoru spoke in a dull voice. “And you let him hold your hand?”

“What?”, you blinked twice. “I—, what?”

“You let another man touch you?”

“A man? He was four, and so was I — we were children, Satoru”, you, in complete disbelief, try to laugh it off. There was no way he could be actually upset about and jealous over something so ridiculous (he was in fact very upset and very jealous, and yes, over something so ridiculous).

“It doesn’t change the fact that this bastard touched what’s mine”, he was gritting his teeth.

“I wasn’t yours back then”, and you were pouring oil into the fire.

“Look, just because we didn’t know each other doesn’t mean you weren’t mine. You were always mine, you just didn’t know it. But that guy—”

You cut him off, “Alright”, and took the photo album from his lap, closing it shut and tucking it under your armpit. “We’re done looking at my childhood pictures”

“Why? Are there more guys holding your hand in there?”, he protested in a high-pitched voice.

“…”

“Oh my god?”, he cried out. “There are?”

Yes, there were. And if he kept looking, by the end of the day, he would turn into a mass murderer.

a/n: mind you, the rest of the pictures are all on friendly terms too, purely platonic. but better safe than sorry! AHAHAH

[celestie0]

gojo satoru x reader | fake marriage au [18+]

in holy matriphony ch5. child's play

ᰔ pairing. fake marriage au - neighbor&realtor!gojo x nurse!reader (ft. choso x reader & suguru x reader)

ᰔ summary. gojo satoru is your extremely annoying next-door-neighbor who you're pretty sure is the most insufferable man you've ever met. given the fact that you exclusively work the night shift at a chaotic emergency dept, just got broken up with your boyfriend of seven years, and have been taking care of your sick mother ever since her multitude of diagnoses, yet somehow your neighbor is the main source of stress in your life should speak volumes. but when your mother's medical bills start to skyrocket to more than you can manage, and you learn that said neighbor of yours has the best private health insurance plan in the country, you ask him to enter a matrimonial agreement with you for the spousal benefits all in the name of saving a few hundred thousand dollars. but you'll have to see if suffering cohabitation w him is worth any amount of money.

ᰔ genre/tags. fluff, smut, angst, enemies to lovers (sort of), annoyances to lovers (that's more like it), small town romance, fake marriage, next door neighbors, lots of bickering, suburban shenanigans, slow burn, mutual pining, gojo likes to play house but you don't, hatred for the american healthcare system, gojo always forgets to mow the lawn, jealousy, an insane amount of profanity, mentions of cigarettes, depression/anxiety; btw gojo in this fic is in his mid 30s n reader is in her late 20s

ᰔ warnings. reader in this fic has a sick mother w alzheimer's & cancer so there is secondary medical angst!!

ᰔ chapter. 5/x

ᰔ words. 4.8k

a/n. helloo my ihm friends! long time no see. hope you're all doing well and thank you so much to everyone who sent me kind messages about the whole ihm gojo ex wife thing haha. i really appreciate it :) i feel more confident about my writing decisions now, and that's all thanks to you guys! anyways, i will be posting shorter chapters for ihm going forward, so sorry if some chapters have slightly abrupt endings or stuff like that. i guess my goal is to post shorter chapters but more frequently! we'll see how it works out. anyways, hope you enjoy this chapter and see you at the bottom!!

nav. ch1 :: ch2 :: ch3 :: ch4 :: ch5 :: ch6 (pending)

Ever since admitting your mother into hospice, things have been calmer inside your mind. After passing the initial wave of agony that came with no longer hearing her voice down the hall or seeing her silhouette in her bedroom as you walked past it, you realized that…a weight has been lifted off your shoulders. No longer setting alarms at the height of every other hour to remind your mother to take her medication, no longer viewing every interaction you had with her as some form of study you needed to jot down in a binder for her neurologist’s records, and no longer driving her to all of her chemotherapy appointments, only to leave them feeling like you purposefully just took your mother to a place where they sucked all the life out of her in exchange for the slim promise of giving it all back to her someday.

Maybe it was evident in the way your shoulders felt less tense as you rolled them back, tilting your neck to the side and no longer feeling the painful strain that tugs a wince onto your face. The other day, you caught yourself humming a song as you drove to work. Your skin, usually feeling cracked and dry from stress and exhaustion, now has a slight plumpness to it like before. A more youthful glow, like the version of yourself you were before your mother became sick. The version of you that so quickly deteriorated, and one you didn’t even know still existed somewhere within you. 

There has also been time for hobbies. Rarest of occasions, you find yourself sauteing some yellow and white peaches in a saucepan over medium heat in Gojo’s kitchen, humming that song once again that’s been stuck in your head. The sundress you’re wearing matches the pink of the syrup that pools at the bottom of the pan, and you feel like you’re living your cottage core dreams in this brief moment of reprieve you’ve allowed yourself to fall into.

The sound of slippers tapping down onto the hardwood floor startles you out of your gleeful trance, and you turn your neck to the right to see a pajama-clad messy-haired Gojo shuffling his feet across the open area into the kitchen with a dark black mug in his hand.

“Why aren’t you dressed??” you ask him in a panic.

“I’ll get dressed later,” he tells you dismissively as he grabs the glass pitcher of coffee from where the coffee machine was nestled up against one of the counter corners.

“You’re stressing me out. Your mom told us to be there in two hours,” you say, putting your hands on your hips in disapproval as you hear the sizzle of the peaches in the saucepan. 

He entirely ignores you, choosing to instead drag his gaze down the form of your body. “Woooow, twice this month I get to see you in a cute dress,” he comments, pouring coffee into his mug but his eyes are still on you, “lucky me.”

“Oh Shut. Up,” you sneer at him with a harsh roll of your eyes, “your fake flattery might work on the lonely middle-aged women you seduce to make a living, but it won’t work on me.”

His shoulders push back before he slumps them slightly, his brow lifting with confusion. “It’s not fake though? I mean it. You look really nice right now.”

You point an accusatory sugar-syrup coated wooden spatula at him. “You’ve just been conditioned by the patriarchy to get a boner at the sight of a woman in a kitchen.”

“What–...no–...why do you always have to say stuff like that whenever I compliment you? Can’t you just accept it?”

You cross your arms over your chest. “I refuse to be flattered by an insolent man like you.”

He sighs, setting his coffee mug down on the counter, and you watch the way the fringe of his hair hangs over his forehead as he gazes into the contents, swirling it around with a loose grip on the handle. “Is this how it’s going to be everyday? I try to be nice, and you–...well, you know, are you.”

“Well who else should I be?”

His eyes lift up to meet yours, the slightest of a cheeky grin on his face as his eyes wander down the form of you again. “I don’t know. Someone a little…softer? Like, you’ve got this really pretty dress on, and then you’re telling me off about patriarchy-induced boners. It’s a little, uh, contradictory?”

You gasp. “You’re trying to control me. I knew it. You are poisoned by the patriarchy.”

“What?”

Your eyes narrow at him. “You have this image of a perfect and cute little wife, who’s gonna wear pretty dresses all the time, and bake stuff in the kitchen, and get all blushy when you tell her she looks beautiful, and you expect her to have this soft little personality that never argues with you or disagrees with you…ALL BECAUSE OF THE PATRIARCHY!!!”

“...I–...Okay, you’ve lost me.”

You let out a hmph! noise. “Can’t even discern his own brainwashing. Sad.”

“All of this just because I tried to tell you that you look nice?”

“I know what your ulterior motives are, you creep.”

His eyes spark a little at that, the corner of his mouth tugging up into a cheeky grin as he sets the coffee mug down onto the marble counter and he straightens his spine. You blink, watching with confusion as he crosses the distance between the two of you, to where you’re taking a small few steps backwards until your lower back presses against the edge of the island countertop. He cages you into the surface with his frame, followed by the palms of his hands sliding over the marble on both sides of you, and you feel his forearms press against the curve of your waist as he traps you in with no way out.

“S-Satoru,” you stutter, looking up at him with wide eyes, “what are you doing?”

“What do you think I’m doing?” he says, his voice deeper with a nonchalance that has you shiver, his gaze dropping to your lips when you part them slightly.

“T-The patriar–” you squeak out, but he suddenly dips his head down to kiss you.

Your breath hitches in your throat, eyes immediately closing when he moves his lips against yours, one of his strong arms wrapping around your waist to pull you closer to him and your hesitation is something that only lasts a brief second before you find yourself kissing him back. Some noise leaves his throat, deep and raw and sounding pleasantly surprised as he captures your lips more fervidly now, his hands smoothing down to hold your hips and his teeth slightly nip at your bottom lip. 

You grab a fistful of his shirt, unsure of whether you want to pull him closer to you or push him away, but the moan that you mumble against his lips only makes his grip on your hips even stronger, fingers digging into the softness through the thin fabric of your dress. 

The oven suddenly starts beeping, startling you and you pull away from the kiss with a gasp, eyes rounded as you look up at him, but his are lidded and dilated as his gaze remains glued to your lips. 

With a heaving chest, you try to push him away by a weak fist to his sternum but he’s unrelenting.

“You taste sweet,” he says, like some comment he noted in his head but accidentally voiced out loud.

“I–...” you inhale sharply, “I just ate three macerated peaches.”

“Uh-huh,” he barely acknowledges before leaning in to get another taste, but you push him away harsher this time.

His hands let go of your hips entirely, finally breaking out of that kiss-induced trance he was in, but he still remains close to you in proximity, so much so to where you can feel the heat from his body. It’s comforting almost, radiating through the soft cotton of his long sleeve shirt, and you find yourself subconsciously leaning towards him before you snap out of it too, and rock your weight back against the island countertop.

You cross your arms over your chest, hoping the flush to your cheeks isn’t showing. “Oh okay so we just casually kiss now?”

He shoves his hands into his plaid pajama pant pockets, leaning away from you slightly. “For as long as I can get away with it, yeah.”

“You are breaking the rules.”

“You never said no kissing.”

“I said no touching.”

“Ehhh kissing isn’t really touching, though, is it?”

“You sound stupid.”

“I always sound stupid to you.”

The oven starts beeping again, and you realize it’s long been preheated to the setting you had placed earlier. You slip away from him with haste, feeling his gaze on you as you press a button on the oven to turn the alarm off, and you stare at the handle for a moment or two to calm the beating of your heart down. 

Your eyes catch sight of something on the side of the fridge. A little magnet made of rubber that has the word London on it as well as the design of the Westminster Cathedral with golden accents. You recall that Gojo went on a trip to London recently, and that he didn’t bring you back any souvenirs from there like he did for your other neighbors. And you want to pretend, you want to shove it down, that incessantly childish feeling that wonders why he didn’t bring you anything back. You want to continue to pretend like it doesn’t hurt your feelings. Something so miniscule and small. But you–...well, you can’t.

You spin around to face him. “Do you hate me?” you bluntly ask.

He blinks at you. “Huh?”

“Do you, what, I don’t know, think I’m annoying or something?”

He shrugs with his hands still in his pockets. “I mean, yeah, I do think you’re annoying sometimes. But in a silly way. Like we’re just pals horsin’ around, y’know?”

You snarl at him, putting your hands on your hips and narrowing your gaze until he’s hardly even visible anymore. “No. I actually find you annoying. Like, wanna-run-you-over-with-a-bus annoying. You just have horrendous social awareness and think that everyone loves you.”

“You actually don’t like me?” he asks, like he can’t even believe that someone wouldn’t.

“Yes,” you say, “now get out of my way.” You make an attempt to push past him, purposefully knocking your shoulder into him to assert dominance but he is unfortunately much bigger than you and so all it does is make you stumble ungracefully from the recoil.

He quickly grabs your arm to steady you, and you glare up at him before yanking yourself away and then step backwards until your back hits the fridge.

He studies your demeanor for a second before taking a deep inhale, and then lets it all go in a heaving sigh. “What do I have to do to get you to lighten up a bit?” he asks.

“You really want to know?” you sneer at him.

“Yes,” he says with a slight hint of frustration in his tone.

You cross your arms. “Pay for the fucking fence.”

He blinks at you, confusion replacing whatever frustration was previously decorating his tone. “What?”

“The fence,” you reiterate with a step forwards towards him, “the one I built six months ago. The one where you laughed in my face when I told you to help pay for it.”

He leans forward. “Yeah. Because I never wanted that fence built. Like I said, it fucked up the roots on my avocado tree. You should’ve asked me before building it. In fact, it’s illegal to build a fence without joint consent of both neighboring property owne–”

“Oh my god, okay, see? This is why I can’t stand you,” you snarl at him and make another move to get past him but he easily steps in front of you to keep you from going anywhere.

With a sigh, he relents. “Fine, I’ll pay for the fence.”

You try to keep the twitching muscles of your face still as you resolutely stare up at him, pressing your lips into a thin line. Through a strained tone, you say, “No. I don’t want you to pay for it anymore.”

He lifts a brow, utterly bewildered at this point. “Huh?”

“Now it just feels like pity. And I don’t want your pity money.”

“Two seconds ago, you did.”

“Yeah, well, whatever. That was two seconds ago.”

“So…let me get this straight, you don’t want me to pitch in?”

“No. I want you to have wanted to pitch in SIX MONTHS AGO.”

“Okay but what the fuck am I supposed to do about that now?”

“NOTHING!!!” you finally snap at him, the shrill to your voice startling him slightly to where you see his shoulders jump, and his eyes are now rounded blue as he looks at you. “There’s nothing you can do about it, there’s nothing you can do to get me to ‘lighten up’ or ‘act softer’ or whatever the fuck kind of damage control you aim to achieve with me due to your pestering incessant need to be liked by every fucking person you come across. So just deal with the fact that I hate you and let me do it in peace.”

He’s silent for what feels like a long time as he blinks at you, his bottom lip pushing up slightly in a way that suggests he’s almost impressed by your little outburst, then he takes a step forward, and in that one large stride, he’s closed any distance between the two of you. Your back is up against the frigid steel of the fridge, your heels tucked under the warm rubber at the foot of it, and you’re looking up at Gojo as he towers over you, his hands still annoyingly and relaxedly shoved into his pockets.

“Do you think it’s gonna be a problem that I think you’re kinda hot when you’re mad?” he asks you.

A small puff of air leaves your lips, like you just can’t believe the audacity, but also having him this close to you suddenly made it a little harder to breathe. “C–...Can you just be fucking serious for one second?”

His head dips down, the fringe of his hair tickling your forehead, tip of his nose slightly brushing against yours, but his gaze never falls to your lips. “You think I’m not being stupid fuckin’ serious when I say that you’re hot?”

“S–” your breath hitches in your throat, and his gaze finally falls to the lick you pass over your lips, “Satoru–”

Like God himself answered to your (cognitively dissonant) prayers, the bell rings, and Gojo leans himself away from you, straightening his spine so he can glance over his shoulder towards the door, a slight look of irritation on his face through the furrow of his brow.

You blink up at him. “A–...Are you expecting someone?”

He rubs the back of his neck. “No. Don’t think so.” He sighs before shuffling around the kitchen island and across the dining hall towards the entryway of the house, and you peer at the sight from across the hall.

When he opens the door, you see Sana standing outside, dressed in mom jeans and a t-shirt with her black Coach purse slung around her shoulder, arms crossed, and you barely register the fact that she looks pissed.

“Sana?” Gojo says, “what’s up.”

She entirely ignores him when she catches sight of you, pushing right past him and into the family room that you were currently finding solace in.

“You,” she points at you, storming right up to your personal space, “what the hell did you say to Juno when you were babysitting her?!”

“H-Huh??” you squeak out, taking a step backwards. “What are you talking about?”

“You told her to fight kids at school?!” she snarls at you, and your eyes widen.

“What?” you say, your face twisting with confusion, “I–...I never said that. I just said that she should stand up for herself if she needs to.”

Sana inhales deeply with rage, leaning back and jutting her hip out as she crosses her arms again. “Yeah, well, I had to pick her up early from school today because the principal called and told me she shoved a little girl on the playground during recess, and now she’s facing suspension.”

Gojo approaches suddenly from your periphery, standing in front of you as he faces Sana. You stand on your tiptoes to peer at her over his shoulder. “What? Why would Juno do something like that?

You hear Sana start to tap her foot impatiently against the hardwood floor, and then she turns her head away from Gojo as a slight hmph! noise leaves her throat. “The why is irrelevant.”

You poke your head out from behind Gojo and glare at her, but then Gojo turns around suddenly to look at you.

“y/n,” he says, “what’s going on?”

“I–” you start, glancing at Sana again who now has a solemn look on her face with pursed lips. You glance back at Gojo, who’s looking at you with confusion and anticipation. A heat spreads down your neck from the attention of the both of them on you, and you’re not sure what the smart thing to say is, so you figure you’ll just tell the truth as it is. “...I just didn’t want her getting bullied and thinking she can’t stick up for herself.”

At that, you see Gojo’s shoulders stiffen. “Bullied?” he repeats after you, then quickly turns towards Sana, “what does she mean, bullied? Juno’s getting bullied at school?”

Sana faces him full-on, raising a stern pointed finger between the two of them “No. Satoru. Stop. You always do this. This has nothing to do with you, so don’t even start. It’s not a big deal, let’s not make it one.”

“The fuck do you mean it’s not a big deal? She’s getting bullied at school, and you want her to just suck it up?” he asks, venom dripping from his tone. 

“It’s for her benefit!” Sana exclaims. “Jun and I have spent months trying to get her into this school! We don’t want her getting kicked out.”

“Y’know, I’m–” you stutter, “I’m gonna–...I’m just gonna go upstairs,” you say, “this seems like a family matter. I think you guys should probably just settle this on your ow–”

“No,” Gojo says, pointing to the couch that you were standing in front of, “sit down.”

You sit.

Gojo turns to face Sana again, and although you can’t see his face, you imagine he’s pissed off from the way Sana’s shoulders drop slightly and her sharp expression is cut into a more sheepish one.

“Who cares if Juno is suspended for sticking up for herself? It’s the teachers’ fault for not making sure she’s safe,” he says.

“Shoving other kids is not the solution.”

“Well if you fuck around, then you find out. Kids are too soft these days.”

“This is not the 90s, Satoru.”

You watch the back and forth between the two of them for the better part of an entire minute, feeling uneasy in the hostile environment of the room, but there’s a sense of underlying familiarity between the two, one that is recognizable amongst family. And you feel rather foreign, but then remember that, technically speaking, now that you’re married to Gojo, this is your family too.

Amongst the arguing of the adults, none of you noticed that Juno had gotten out of the car in the driveway and was now standing in the doorframe of the front entrance. She looks scared and guilty, fidgeting with her fingers in front of her, and you notice her scrapes and bruises that you tended to last week were now mostly healed. 

Gojo catches sight of her, and you see his shoulders relax. “Juno, c’mere.”

With the permission, she instantly runs towards him and into his arms from where he was crouched down to the floor in order to welcome her, and then she starts sobbing.

“I’m–hic,” she cries, “I’m so–hic–I’m so sowwyyy Uncle Toru…I’m–hic–I’m sorry mommyyyy.” 

You see Sana sigh and she makes a move to brush Juno’s tear-dampened hair out of her face when Gojo pulls her away from his shoulder by a delicate hold of her bony little shoulders.

“Juno. Listen. If people are being mean to you, then you do exactly as your auntie y/n said. You stand up for yourself. And if that doesn’t work, then you cuss at them and threaten to shove their faces into the dirt until they run away with their tails between their legs. Do you understand me?” Gojo tells her.

Sana gives you a pointed look.

“Oh, I–” you put your hands up in front of you, “I didn’t say any of that last part.”

“Do you understand me?” Gojo repeats again, and Juno nods her head slowly before she falls back into him and soaks his shirt with tears. “I’m soowwwwwyyyyyy.”

Gojo pats her back a few times to comfort her, and your heart breaks for the little girl. It’s bad enough to be bullied at school, but then to be reprimanded by your mother the one time you stand up for yourself…you can imagine how emotionally exhausting that would be for a five-year-old. 

Juno sniffles, rubbing her snot all over the cotton of Gojo’s shirt, and then pulls her face away to rub at her eye with a weakly closed fist. “I–hic–I just…I just wanted him to feel–hic–the same hurt.”

“Huh? Who?” Gojo asks.

“The boy,” Juno says, “the one that shoved me today.”

“It was a boy?!?!?!” Gojo yells. “Alright. That’s it. I’m grabbing my bat.”

“Satoru.” Sana deadpans.

Sana and Gojo continue to bicker about the ethics of threatening five-year-old boys with baseball bats, going back and forth about how Gojo wasn’t actually going to do anything but just wanted to instill fear (he’s lying), while Sana isn’t exactly sold on a single pacifist thing that he says, and you sigh, because you realize you’ve become invested in one of, what you feel like will become many, of their family quarrels.

Juno sneaks around Gojo’s legs and comes up to you while the arguing is taking place in the background, and she gently taps your knee as you’re seated on the couch. “Auntie y/n,” she whispers.

You rub an eye crustie from her face and then hold her hand in yours. “Yes?”

“Thank you.”

“Mm? For what?”

She smiles at you, her cheeks pink and flush from crying but rounded now in glee. “My mommy and daddy spoke a lot today at home for first time in long time because of me. Because I listen’ded to you. Thank you.”

Your eyes narrow. “What do you mean by that, sweetheart?”

Why wouldn’t Sana and Jun be on normal talking terms? What does Juno mean that it’s been a long time? What exactly was going on at home?

“Juno,” Sana’s voice interrupts your thoughts, her arms crossed across her chest, “c’mon. Let’s go.” She points a stern finger at Gojo. “Seriously. I mean it. No baseball bats or rodent traps involved. I’ll talk to the teachers and sort something out.” She glances at you, that strict look on her face now dissolving into one of pure exhaustion. One you can imagine only a mother can face. “See you later at dinner, you two.”

Juno runs up to her mom and grabs onto her outreached hand, and you see Gojo ruffle her hair as she walks past him, her giggles ringing in the air, and then he sees them out the door. 

The air is awkward, at least to you, the second he closes the door, and when he turns around to face you, your body stiffens up.

He leans back onto the front door, crossing his arms over his chest. “Thanks,” he says, “for telling Juno to stick up for herself.”

You blink at him. “Well. I don’t feel too great about it at the moment, to be honest.”

He sighs. “I just think that Jun and Sana are raising her to be…kinda meek. I wish they’d teach her to be more confident and take up space.”

“Mhm,” you nod. Because you agree. Little girls need to learn how to be that way at a young age, because the world is seldom very kind to them.

“Well, what you said to her is what I would’ve said to her anyways,” he says.

You roll your eyes, standing up from the couch and heading back into the kitchen to presume your work on your peach cobbler. “I never told her to shove kids’ faces into the dirt. But, uh, sure, I guess so.”

You see Gojo enter the kitchen too in your periphery, but you don’t give him any glance or look or attention. From what you can see as you stir around your macerated peaches in a Pyrex bowl, he’s leaning against the island counter about three feet away from you, his hands shoved in his pockets, and he’s watching you. A slight warmth radiates in your cheeks, but you attempt to ignore the nerves by being hypnotized by the pink syrup that pools at the bottom of the bowl.

My mommy and daddy spoke a lot today at home for first time in long time because of me. Because I listen’ded to you. Thank you.

An unsettling feeling takes over your senses. It could be the past few years you’ve spent walking on eggshells around your mother, or the way you’ve become so keen to her energy as a way of staying on top of any shift in her symptoms, any single sign of disease progression, any clue that she wasn’t getting better. Any clue that she wasn’t doing okay. And you feel a sense of dread, because that skill, you realize, has now made you aware of similar circumstances in the people around you.

Not to mention, you are a child of divorce. You know what that fear feels like.

You just want to know if Juno feels safe at home.

“Hey, um…” you start, turning slightly to finally face Gojo, your eyes hesitantly flickering up to meet his gaze, “when was the last time you saw your brother-in-law? And with Sana?”

He raises a brow at you. “I just saw them last weekend for one of Juno’s dance recitals.”

“Ah…I see,” you say. You purse your lips together. 

Right. Kids say things all the time. They believe in Santa Claus and think that blueberry pancakes are called blubbery pancakes. And they sometimes read too into things, and they sometimes read too little. Surely, things must be okay. Maybe Sana and Jun had had a little argument with some stubbornly thawing cold shoulders, a demeanor that was noticed by their child, and now things have resumed to normal. That was normal. Part of every family. “That’s good to know…” 

You turn away from Gojo to stare back down into the bowl of macerated peaches again. With a furrowed brow, you close your eyes tightly to try to shake the chilly feeling in your bones, and you feel better when you open them again. The slightly numb sensation in your hand dissipates and you have enough dexterity to mix the peaches around in the bowl.

“I wonder what news they want to share with us over dinner,” you say, to quell the awkward silence.

“Hm?” Gojo hums, and you see him turn around face the counter now, hovering over the bowl of raw crumble topping you had mixed together, prodding at it with the wooden spoon. “Oh, they’re moving.”

Your head snaps to look at him. “W-What?”

“Yeah,” he nonchalantly affirms, scooping up a spoonful of the crumble. “They wanted to up-size, and move a little closer to the school that Juno’s at. I found them a nice place about an hour from here on the outskirts of the city. They just signed the papers a couple weeks ago.” And then he shoves the spoon into his mouth.

“Oh…wow,” you say. “Okay…”

“Damn,” Gojo says with surprise laced in his tone, "this is really good.” He’s staring into the bowl in awe and then scoops up some more crumble with a spoon.

You blink at him, irritated that he’s eating all your ingredients without even asking, and before you’ve even finished your dessert. It’s like he was born to piss you off.

You walk up to him and yank the bowl away, “Gimme that.” Then you pull it into the divot of your waist possessively and glare at him. 

He sighs, and then says something out loud that you’re sure he meant to keep in his head:

“I’ll get used to it.”

.

.

.

[end of chapter 5]

a/n. it feels so strange to post such a short chapter bahaha hopefully the ending isn't too abrupt. but hope you enjoyed! i'm so sorry ab the slow burn in this series aaa but i can try to assure you that it'll all be worth it hopefully lol i'm really excited for what i have planned for this series!! alsooo sorry if there are errors or anything, i'm trying to spend less time editing since it really stalls me n leads to writer's block lol. hope to see you in the next one :) much love! - ellie

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[luveline]

Hii, Jade 🤍 please bring back singledad!spencer, reader and Amanda 🥹 they r so special

—Spencer experiences your first Spencer-brought-upon baby fever, to his shock. fem, 2k 

(cw: reader is written as enthusiastically wanting kids) 

Spencer’s been reading to Amanda since the moment she could open her eyes. By two months she was cooing in delight whenever he spoke, and that included during story time. He didn’t mind that she didn’t understand, he just loved being with her. He still does. 

So when Amy interrupts your conversation to beg for him to read her something, he gives you an apologetic look, asking, “Do you mind?” 

“Of course I don’t mind.” You wouldn’t, you’re like an angel, leaning back on the couch with little urgency as Amy climbs into Spencer’s lap.

“Thank you. Sorry for interrupting,” Amy says. 

“Gosh, you’re so smart,” Spencer says, tucking a curl of her hair behind her ear. “Interrupting, that’s a big word.” 

“Go ahead,” you say, getting comfortable in front of one of Spencer’s woven cushions. “I’ll listen too, if that’s okay.” 

Spencer opens the storybook to the first page. Amy likes this one. The corners of the pages are soft with use. “Cerys’ Brave Day,” he begins, grinning as Avery pushes herself up his chest to look down at the illustrations. “Cerys wakes up without mommy. Cerys makes her own way out of bed. There is no mommy to wipe her face or brush her hair. My mommy, she thinks, is not there.” 

Amy smiles into Spencer’s cheek. He wraps an arm around her, as if to say, I know, angel, it’s exciting. “Her mommy must be having a slow day. She doesn’t appear to give Cerys any help. And Cerys says–”

“No way!” Amy finishes, pointing at the drawing of a bathroom sink and toothbrush. “I don’t want to brush my teeth by myself!” 

It goes on like that for some time. Spencer notices you getting closer as he goes on, your arm pressing to his side. 

Cerys finds that her mommy is having a slow day. Cerys’ mommy is just as loving as the other mom’s, but sometimes she takes longer to help Cerys brush her hair, and get dressed. Cerys has to be a brave, smart girl, and help her mommy with the small things. Spencer enjoys it, and thought it was a great expression of empathy for Amy to one day understand.

“Later, when mommy feels better, she says I’m sorry for being so slow. Mommy didn’t mean to forget her, she just struggles to get up and go. 

“Cerys doesn't want her to be sorry. She loves helping her mommy out. Because mommy loves Cerys, and Cerys loves mommy, and that’s never been in any doubt.” 

Amy turns her face to Spencer with a huge smile, somehow bigger than when it started. “I love that story,” she says. 

Spencer lets the storybook fall closed in her lap. “It’s a good one, huh?” 

“What do you think, Y/N?” Amy asks. 

You’re delighted by Amy in a way Spencer’s used to seeing in the mirror. “I loved it. Daddy’s a good storyteller, and you’re such a good assistant. You know lots of the big words.” 

She preens. “Thanks.” 

You can’t resist her, pushing against the top of her head with a nice palm. “You’re welcome.” 

“Can we have another one?” she asks. 

Spencer checks the time on his watch. Amy realised it was bedtime before he did, it seems. “Come on, lovely girl. Let’s start getting ready for bed, and you can have any story you want.” 

He’s obviously not expecting you to leave, but at the same time, things are new enough between you that when he asks if you want to sleepover, your grinning “Yes, please,” throws him for a loop. 

You have spare clothes and toiletries in the bedroom. You ask to take a quick shower and get all smiley and shy when he says you never have to ask. 

“So dad,” Amy says. 

“So Amy,” he says, pulling down the blankets on her bed. She has five layers because suddenly November is cold. He wonders if she needs a sixth. 

“I can’t sleep in the big bed tonight.” 

“Well, that depends on how badly you want to.”

“Really?” 

“You’ve known Y/N for a long time, right? She’s been my friend for a long time, before she was my partner. I think she’d be okay with having you sleep in the big bed again if you need to. It was your place before it was her place, and she knows that.” 

“Well…” 

He grabs her under the arms and places her in bed. She could use her stepping stool, but he likes picking her up and putting her down. It makes him feel super paternal. “Just think about it, angel. If you change your mind, you can just come and knock the door. 

“Promise?” 

“Honey.” He kisses her forehead twice, before pulling the blankets up over her, and turning on her mushroom night light. “How’s that? Okay, I promise you can still come knock my door. Cross my heart.” 

“Can you stay for a little?” she asks. 

Spencer sits on her bed by her legs. They feel weirdly small under his hand despite the padding he’s given her. “Babe, are you sure you’re warm enough? This does not feel like enough blankets.” 

“It’s loads. Give me a hug.” 

Spencer lays down in her bed, almost falls off, and covers her with his arm. Their curls tangle together on the pillowcase. 

“Like this?” he asks. 

“Exactly.” 

“Amy, you’re using such big words, you’re so smart.” He’s gonna take her for an assessment at some point. He doesn’t care if she’s super intelligent or not, but lately it’s like she’s so much older than she is. A few days ago she said the word discombobulated. “My smarty-pants.” 

“I like big words,” she says. 

“I love you.” 

“I love you, too.” 

“Remember what Amanda means?” he asks. 

Amy giggles as he shakes her by the tummy. “She who must be loved.” 

“Exactly. Loved by everyone, deserving of love. Always, from the second you were born!” He leans down to kiss her cheek, meeting her eyes as he pulls back. “Okay?” 

She certainly feels loved, he’d wager. He loves her so much it’s like an extra part of his soul in another person. “Story?” she asks. 

“Yes, I did say we’d have one, didn’t I?” He’d almost forgotten. Spencer grabs a couple of her soft backs from the book stand and lets her choose. 

After he’s read a few books and given her a couple of cuddles, Amy begins to list. She presses her nose to his shoulder and mumbles something he doesn’t hear. 

“What did you say, sweetpea?” he mumbles. 

“Just goo’night.” 

“Goodnight. I’ll tuck you in, okay?” 

“Spence?” 

He’d almost forgot you were here. You’re standing in the doorway, arms still damp, pyjama pants stuck to your calves. “Where’s the fire?” he asks. 

“What?” 

“In a rush?” 

“Oh, I just wanted to hear story time. Did I miss it?” 

Spencer kisses Amy again. “I think so. I’m just saying goodnight.” 

You lean against the door. “Goodnight, then, lovely girl.” 

Spencer forces himself up to tuck her in. “Goodnight,” he says again, stroking the hair from her eyes, though they’re closed already. She doesn’t manage to say goodnight back, just touches his arm before he goes. 

You take his hand when he’s close enough. He follows, pressing his face to your shoulder from behind. 

“I like watching you be a dad.” 

“Yeah?” 

“Mm, you’re good at it. It’s… I don’t know, I know Amy isn’t my baby, but I do love her, so it’s never not gonna be nice to watch you, and… I’m worried to say this.” 

“Just say it.” 

“Maybe one day, I…” You catch his eye and give him a panicked smile. 

You climb into bed together. He tries to get you to finish what you’d been saying but doesn’t succeed, no matter how nicely he draws that shape you love into your neck. It’s alright, though. It doesn’t matter. He nearly forgets you’ve brought it up at all until you’re lifting yourself up from your place on his chest. “Spence?” you ask, so close it makes him nervous, his stomach twitching of its own volition. 

“What?” he asks. 

“I know it’s soon. I know we’re not… locked in. I was just thinking about our future and our family, and I’m really happy. And– and if you did want to, I guess I wanna know if… would you ever have more?” 

“More kids?” he asks, dumbfounded. 

Your pupils are massive, staring down at him, giving your eyes this darkness so rare in your gaze. “Have you ever thought about it?” 

“Of course I have, especially with you.” 

You fluster but push through. Your laugh warms his lips as you lean down. “Don’t say that.” 

“Isn’t that what you just said?” 

You kiss him. He lifts his chin too fast to follow you and ends up pushing you away. His cheek is burning in your hand, your index finger to the corner of his eye and so, so tender where it touches an eyelash. “Amy’s so much like you, honey,” you say, tucking a long flyaway strand behind his ear. “And it’s all you.” 

Spencer wonders if you’re perhaps entering the ovulation stage of your period, but forbids himself from asking, should he sound like a freak. But surely you can’t be feeling as strongly as you are about this from story time alone. He’s not that good at telling them. 

“It’s not all me. Amy’s herself, and she’s parts of everyone she’s ever met. I think she’s been a lot braver since she met you,” Spencer says. 

He’s not sure what he said there, but you peer down at him like he’s entirely new. 

“Spencer,” you murmur, drawing a line across his cheek.

“I’d love to have a baby with you, I just thought saying that might be too much too soon.” 

“Well, it is,” you say, sounding insanely pleased, at odds with your words, “that’s so soon. You shouldn’t say stuff like that.” 

He thinks he gets it. Spencer covers your hand where you’re been caressing his cheek and brings it to his mouth, giving your knuckles a kiss. “You’re already so caring, you’ll make an amazing mother.” 

“Not just if we have babies though.” 

“No, I know.” His hand acts for itself as he tucks your hand against his neck. “Amy loves you.”

“She’s brilliant, Spence.” And whatever adoring you’d been ladening on him comes to an end. “Her vocabulary is insane for her age, she really is her father’s daughter.” 

You lay yourself across his chest again for a hug. 

Spencer applauds himself for surviving whatever that was. You, eyes dark and imploring, asking him about babies and touching him like that. “Amy would love a baby sibling,” he says. 

“How many should we have?” 

He laughs loudly. The taboo of everything being too soon is forgotten as you and Spencer talk about babies, houses, what middle school Amy might go to, what daycare you could send your babies to. It’s so exciting it makes his chest pang, thinking about living with you, about marrying you. And your enthusiastic answers make it worse. It’s clear you’ve thought about some of this stuff at depth. 

You could really get married one day, Spencer thinks. There’s a real possibility you might say yes. 

“Do you really think Amy wouldn’t mind a sister?” you whisper. 

“She’s asked me a couple of times how she can get one, so yeah. I think we can safely assume she’d like that.” 

“She asked you that?” you coo. “Aw, lovely girl, what did you tell her?” 

“Well, I told her she came from a pumpkin.” 

“You did?” 

“Mm. It was my fault then when she got very excited at Halloween.” 

You giggle into his neck. “When we have a baby, we’ll buy her a pumpkin.” 

“Or a squash, but I don’t think we could fit a baby in a butternut.” 

You hug him nice and hard. Spencer isn’t sure, but he suspects this is the beginning of a very new, very enjoyable chapter of your lives. Even more so when you nose at his jaw and mumble something about his ‘kissability’. 

[c0n-fus3d]

𝚂𝚑𝚎 𝙻𝚒𝚔𝚎𝚜 𝙰 𝙱𝚘𝚢.

(Older!Powder x fem!reader)

I'm sorry but I finished ep 1 of act 3 and had to write this to get my emotions out about ekko and powder being a thing in an alternative reality bcz just RAHHHFHSHEHSHHS my gay ass is crying (no offense to the timebomb shippers, you do you!! If you like this that's cool💪💪) ENGLISH ISN'T MY NATIVE LANGUAGE, IF I MADE SOME SPELLING MISTAKES I'M SORRY ALSO SPOILERS FOR ACT 3!!

Warnings: uhhh just angst, mostly angst, this is for my girlies who might be feeling the same

༺ღ༒ ༺ღ༒ ༺ღ༒ ༒ღ༻

You've always liked Powder, every since you were kids, and still when you are teenagers.

Their was always something about her. The way she made the most creative inventions, the way she always seemed to have some sort of spark in her eyes. Her laugh, her hair, her eyes, it's hard for you to explain the feelings you have towards her.

You knew the way Vi's death was heavy on her, you could see that with the days, and soon years that came after. You we're always trying to be there to support her, make her feel a little better. You gave her space when she needed it, and we're there for her when she needed you the most.

And then there was Ekko.

You never hated Ekko, you 𝙙𝙤𝙣'𝙩 hate Ekko. he was a good guy, you got along with him. He was around Powder nearly just as much as you we're, maybe even a little more. When you were around Powder, he wouldn't take long to show up as well. You didn't mind.

But you couldn't deny that you we're jealous of him, of Ekko. The way he charmed his way into Powder's heart over the years. With his sketches, ideas, personality, kindness and understanding. You wanted what him and Powder had as if what you already had wasn't enough for you. You could see the way she looked at him, how 𝙝𝙚 looked at her the same way.

You often wished it was you instead of him. You try to forget about your jealousy, push it asside. You try to push your jealousy and selfishness asside, keep everything natural between you three. But it got harder and harder the more time went on.

Ekko has been acting strange recently, or at least that's what Powder told you. How he 'seems not to remember anything' and how he says these things about how in a dream her and Vi we're completely different. You noticed yourself too, how he was more around then usual. You assumed it was because of his project or whatever.

Now you find yourself here, on the dance floor in the last drop. Inventions around you everywhere as music and colorful lights fill the bar. You look into the crowd, trying to spot Powder. It took you a whole 5 minutes to finally spot her, but to no suprise, Ekko was there. On the dance floor, with her. Dancing together to the beat of the music like it was just the two of them. You tried to move your eyes away from the sight, let them be happy and together. But the jealousy ate you from the inside out, this all just left a bitter taste on your tongue. It all got so overwhelming so quickly, so you decide to leave the place before you explode and do something stupid.

So you decide to go out to Powder's little Hideout for now and go back once you've cooled down. You look at the massive invention across the room, stunned as fuck how they made this. You don't want to pay too much attention to it though, so you continue walking through the massive space before sitting down in front of the small memorial that Powder made for Vi.

You lighten the place up before just.. Sitting there. You sigh, looking at the picture sat on the desk. Vi always knew you had a thing for Powder, she always encouraged you to tell her how you felt. Whenever the situation was on your mind, you'd go here. You'd talk, like she was still there. Because to you, she was. To everyone, she still was. Now wasn't any different, you talked about what has been going on recently. With Ekko, Powder, and everything else.

"I just.. Don't know what to do, I know I'm supposed to be happy for them.. Ekko is a great guy, a-and if they become a thing, I'll be fine with it but.. Theirs this voice in the back of my mind that just doesn't seem to go away.." You groan, your head in your hands as you thought for a moment.

You knew you couldn't hide your feelings forever. If Powder wasn't going to feel the same way towards you, you might as well tell her what you've been feeling all this time. Just for an answer, a yes or a no. Anything. If she didn't feel anything as well then at least she'd know.

"I'll tell her, tonight. Like you always wanted me to do.. I'll.. I'll get this over with, okay? For you."

You found yourself walking back towards the last drop, but then you see Powder, going in the direction of what you knew to be the place where Vi always took her to. So you decided to follow.

If only you weren't blind enough to see Ekko walking along with her.

You climbed up to the place, heart racing in your chest as you tried to think about the things you could say. Your mind was running a million miles and you tried desperately to calm your nerves.

You we're finally gonna do it, you we're gonna tell her how you feel.

But just as you nearly reach the top, you see her. And Ekko.

Their kissing.

In front of your eyes.

Your heart dropped, hope that you knew was useless in the end shattered as you saw the image.

Wrong fucking timing. You stood there, frozen in time before quickly getting out of there. Trying to hold back the tears that we're threatening to fall.

She likes Ekko. She only likes Ekko. It was never you. Not in childhood, not in teenage years.

She likes a boy. That boy.

Your not that boy, and for now, you had to live with that.

You we're never going to being the one kissing her. It was always going to be him in the end.

[maggieslver]

𒅌 | Raising the kids with Vander

— First of all, i’d like to thank the lovely doll that requested this!! I’m so sorry the og request post is now gone, my wifi just isn’t having it today unfortunately.

Now, I’d like to think that you and Vander are close enough that if he was struggling with stress or just it’s a busy day at The Last Drop—he’d be able to turn to you to help with the kids.

You two were a team, you worked together to ensure the kids get everything they’d need.

Whether it was getting them ready in the morning, or cleaning them up after some alleyway scrap they’d got themselves into.

The smell of eggs and bacon swam through the air, Powder kneeling between your legs on a cushion as she rambled excitedly about her dream. Mylo sitting beside you, groaning dramatically pretending to die of boredom.

You found her endearing, she was like a puppy—loud and never seemed to run out of energy. Not that you minded, she brought all the life Zaun lacked. Mylo was a charming boy, adoring that stupid wolffish grin (he’d learnt it off of Vander) any time he was in trouble.

Vander was cooking, bickering playfully with Violet as he scrapped the eggs around his pan—Claggor tinkering with some sort of contraption as he listened to the two.

Vander liked to say he was the ‘bad cop’—it was blatantly obvious his frustrations never lied with the kids. More the stupid situations they’d get themselves into.

His frustration stemmed with fear, he couldn’t imagine a world without the kids, he couldn’t bear the thought of loosing them.

He confessed this all to you late at night, you two were sitting on a couch together—he didn’t think everything he said was ever going to be spoken allowed. But, he spilt it all to you.

One thing I’d like to think is that Vander has a small collection of trinkets—A metal flower, covered in thorns and paint from Powder. A tiny figurine adoring stupidly massive gauntlets from Violet. One of those singing fishes, that only let out horrific screams from Mylo. And a new pair of work gloves from Claggor.

He held onto a lot, even if it seemed like junk—he kept everything he’d been given from them.

You thought it was cute, his frowning horde of random items.

You gave him one of his favourites, a strip of pictures taken in one of those dingy booths—you and the four kids all goofing around and pulling faces.

Overall you two take great care of each other and the kiddies!!

IM SO SORRY ITS SO SHORT

It isn’t my best work either, please try and ignore that 😭

[hoshifighting]

Hi. I love your writings. After I discovered Tumblr and your account... I don't know if I've had any day without coming back here... I had a request.

Bathroom sex with Minghao. It has been going on in my mind all day... Either bathtub or shower.

Even though he's not so masculine like others... I feel like he has an incredible core strength. So maybe putting the reader against the wall? Also if you're comfortable, could you add the reader as someone who's overweight and gets insecure from time to time.

It's like Minghao is comforting them through showing how beautiful they are through intimacy? Feels like something he would do.

Love your writing. Take care

bath sex with minghao

WARNINGS: bath sex, insecurities, praising, nipple sucking, penetrative sex, a tear dropping here or there...

a/n: thank you my love for making me part of your routine 😭🙏 I luv seeing you here, you are soooo sweet!! sorry for making u wait for so long 🥺 love you too, take care of yourself, and drink lots of water plsss

you’d been spiraling about it all damn day. the way minghao’s hands just felt—long fingers brushing your skin in passing, his touch so casual but also so intentional. it stuck to you like a tattoo, made your brain fuzzy. you didn’t even realize it, but the itch of your insecurities had been gnawing at you. maybe it was that girl in line earlier with the perfect ass and the confidence to match, or maybe it was just the mirror, the way it always reflected every single thing you couldn’t fix.

but minghao sees you, actually sees you, and it ruins you every time.

“you’ve been quiet all day,” he says from the bathroom doorway, his head tilted like he’s already piecing you apart, trying to read the shit you don’t say. “what’s going on in that pretty head of yours?”

you don’t answer right away—can’t, really—because he’s standing there in just his sweatpants, waistband hanging low, hair still damp from his post-workout shower. fucking unreal. and you hate it, the way you almost flinch at the word “pretty,” because yeah, he means it, but your brain won’t let you believe it.

“nothing,” you lie, but your voice cracks. his eyes narrow.

“bullshit.”

you huff, looking anywhere but him. “it’s not a big deal. just—ugh, i don’t know, okay? can we not do this tonight?”

but of course, minghao doesn’t take that. doesn’t let you slip into your head and drown in it. instead, he steps in, closing the door softly behind him, like he’s locking the world out. “you know you can’t bullshit me, baby. talk to me.”

and then he’s right in front of you, hands sliding over your arms, thumbs skimming your skin like he’s earthing you.

you mumble, “i just—i don’t feel good today, okay? like… about myself.”

his brows pull together, and you hate that he looks hurt on your behalf. “y/n,” he says, his voice softer now, “what the hell are you talking about?”

“you wouldn’t get it,” you mutter, but the words catch when he lifts your chin with two fingers, forcing you to meet his gaze.

“try me.”

and fuck, he’s patient, doesn’t rush you, just waits while his thumbs start rubbing little circles on your hips. finally, you crack. “i just… sometimes it’s hard, okay? i see all these girls who look perfect, and then there’s me. i don’t even know why you—”

“don’t,” he cuts you off, firmly. “don’t finsh it, don’t do that. don’t talk about yourself like that. do you know how fucking beautiful you are? like, actually?”

you laugh, but it’s bitter, because it’s not something you believe. “hao—”

he doesn’t let you finish, leaning in to kiss you, like he’s trying to rewrite whatever nonsense’s looping in your head. his lips move with yours, one hand sliding up your back, the other curling around your waist, and it’s so easy to melt into him, to forget everything else.

“i’m serious,” he murmurs against your mouth. “you’re the most gorgeous person i’ve ever seen. i love every. fucking. inch. of you.”

you want to argue, but then his hands are tugging at your shirt, and the air shifts. he pulls back just enough to look at you. “can i?”

your nod is shaky, he peels your shirt off like it’s a ritual, and when he sees the hesitance in your eyes, he leans in to kiss your shoulder, your collarbone, every patch of skin he uncovers.

he’s backing you up against the shower wall, his breath hot against your neck as he trails kisses down your jaw.

“hao,” you whisper, barely able to get the word out before he’s hooking your legs around his waist, his strength catching you like it’s nothing. “wait, i’m—”

“you’re fucking stunning,” he says, cutting you off, his lips crashing into yours again. “and i’m gonna make sure you never forget it.”

the sound of the water hitting the tile was loud, drowning out every thought in your head except him. minghao was everywhere—hands firm on your thighs, lips pressed to your chest, tongue teasing your nipples until you were squirming. the spray soaked through what little clothing you both had left, making the fabric cling before he shoved his pants and boxers down with one hand, the wet heap hitting the floor with an exaggerated plop.

“didn’t know your pants were that heavy,” you giggled. he smirked before leaning in to kiss you again.

“focus,” he murmured. his hips pressed forward, and you gasped when his cock brushed against your pussy—hard and ready, like it always was when it came to you. it was one of those things that made you feel… better, somehow. like maybe he really did mean all the things he said about how he wanted you, how he needed you. not that you’d ever admit it—god, no, he’d never let you live it down.

you squirmed against him, suddenly hyperaware of how high he had you hoisted. “hao, i—”

“relax,” he interrupted. “i’ve got you.”

“but what if—what if i fall?”

his jaw tensed, his hands tightened on you. “you won’t fall, y/n. do you trust me?”

you nodded, but it wasn’t enough for him. his eyes narrowed. “say it.”

your voice cracked. “i trust you.”

“good,” he said, but there was a shimmer of guilt in his expression when he saw the tears welling in your eyes. his voice softened immediately. “hey, baby—fuck, i’m sorry. didn’t mean to sound so harsh. you’re safe, okay? i promise.”

his lips brushed your cheek, catching the tear that spilled over, and you sniffled, clinging to him tighter. his forehead pressed to yours as he whispered, “you’re safe with me. i swear.”

and then he rolled his hips, sliding into you, and whatever insecurity you’d been holding onto was gone—just gone. all you could feel was him, thick and deep, stretching you until your head spun. he groaned, his breath hitching as he bottomed out. “you feel so fucking good, baby. perfect. perfect.”

your fingers dug into his shoulders, a whimper slipping past your lips as he pulled back and thrust again, deep. the angle made you gasp, made your whole body shake in his arms. “hao,” you choked out, overwhelmed, and he just smiled against your neck.

“that’s it babe,” he murmured, picking up his pace, his hips slapping against yours. “see? i told you, baby. you don’t have to worry about anything. i’ve got you. always.”

his words melted into the steam around you, and soon you weren’t sure if it was water or sweat trailing down your body. he fucked you, his grip on you steady and unrelenting, making it impossible to think about anything but the way he filled you, the way he made you feel like you were his.

“shit—fuck, hao, i’m gonna—”

“i know,” he cut in, his voice thick and breathless, but that smug grin never wavered. “let go for me, baby. you’re so fucking beautiful when you cum. let me see you.”

and when you did—when your body clenched around him and your moan echoed in the steam-filled space—he followed right after, his hips stuttering as he buried himself as deep as he could go. his head fell to your shoulder, his breath hot against your skin as he held you close, neither of you caring about the water still raining down around you.

“see?” he said after a moment, pulling back enough to look at you. his smile was soft now, tender. “told you I wouldn’t let you fall.”

[whytheylosttheirminds]

Don't Call Me Kid - Chapter 8 (part two)

(Rafe Cameron x Reader series, 6.2k words)

series summary: You'd had a crush on Rafe Cameron since you were six years old, but he friend zoned you at every turn. Once shy and insecure, you found new confidence and self-love after high school. When your high school friends go on a reunion beach trip, Rafe finally sees what he lost, but he isn't going to give you up without a fight.

tropes: unrequited crush, glow up, she fell first/he fell harder

series content: some angst, eventual fluff, slow burn, tomfoolery and shenanigans, drinking, fem!reader has occasional insecurity and body image issues

⇢ series masterlist

A blood curdling shriek rang through the house, jolting Carter from her restless dreams.

She sat straight up in bed, heart racing as she looked around the dark room, head so heavy she could barely remember where she was or how she got there.

In her hungover mental fog, she pieced it together slowly. She was at the beach house, in her room, it was early, she drank so much last night and Topper said -

“OH MY GOD!” 

Another sharp scream came from downstairs, and her heart rate spiked all over again. She pulled the fluffy comforter around her shoulders and hurried out of the room, quiet on the stairs as she nervously approached the source of all the commotion.

When she saw what was inducing Sabrina’s shock, she doubled back, hiding around the corner so they couldn’t see her. Her stomach churned with bitter loathing, and something else even more nauseating…

She dropped the blanket and rushed to the half-bath off the house’s entryway, doubled over the toilet bowl as last night’s poor choices continued to haunt her.

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Rafe drove faster than he had before your interrupted rendezvous, seeming not to want to drag this adventure out anymore. You eyed him nervously from the passenger seat, searching for words that weren’t coming to you. 

Tongue tied and exhausted was not how you wanted to begin this…whatever this was between you. Rafe had given you words, so many of them, back on the beach and all he asked in return was a simple yes or no.

Are you my girl?

No four words had ever felt so heavy. The shitty part was, you wanted to say yes. At the sound of his breathless question every cell in your body was screaming yes! I’m your girl! I’ve always been your girl! 

But then there was that pesky piece of self preservation that cemented itself in your heart all those years ago and didn’t plan to give up any time soon. 

He looked so disappointed when you couldn’t give him a quick and easy answer, his chest now deflated and shoulders sunken as he drove the rest of the route home. Despite your lingering hesitation, you felt like you needed to give him something, needed to lift the frown that was settled on the lips you had tasted so many times this morning.

“I’m sorry,” you mumbled.

“For what?” He asked.

“I’m…slow,” you began, “it takes me a while, y’know? To find the words. I’m not like you, I don’t know how you came up with that speech in less than a minute.”

Rafe laughed, confusing you.

“What?”

“You think I came up with that speech in a minute?” He chuckled, “I’ve been practicing it every day since senior year of high school.”

Your heart clenched at the endearing thought of him in front of the mirror, driving to class, taking a shower all while rehearsing what he’d say if you ever gave him the chance.

“Oh,” you tucked your hair behind your ear.

It was infuriating, your complete inability to get a grip on your own thoughts and feelings around him. It had always been this way. You were well-spoken and sound-minded, until this one person was in your atmosphere, his presence your own personal kryptonite.

To be fair to yourself, it wasn’t just your own weakness for him that had caused you to build such high walls. When you were kids, he sometimes made you feel this way on purpose. He used to have fun watching you get flustered, just the right amount of flirting to send you into a tizzy, only to leave you spinning like a top with no one to stop you.

You truly tried to leave the past behind, burying it somewhere back in the sand on the beach. You reminded yourself that the Rafe of your memories was not the one sitting next to you right now. But that might just be the problem, because at least you knew that Rafe, you knew exactly what he would do next.

If he grabbed your hand, you knew he was about to drop it. If he said something sweet, you knew he was about to say something passive aggressive. If he acted like he loved you, you knew he was about to act like he’d never met you a day in his life.

But this Rafe, this new one, was completely unpredictable. Wild and dangerous in his apparent affection for you. How were you supposed to know what he did next wasn’t going to hurt? He was right about what he said on the jet ski - you won’t know until you give him the chance. Easier said than done.

“You don’t have to say anything right now,” he offered after you’d been quiet for a long time.

“This week has just been…” trying to come up with one word to describe it felt like a futile task.

“Overwhelming?” Rafe tried to help.

“Surprising,” you countered. “I’ve never been good with surprises.”

“You like to know what’s coming next,” he nodded, once again displaying a deep knowledge of you that you never knew he possessed.

Like he could read your mind, his arm stretched across the small divide and his palm, warm and soft, settled on your thigh, a single soothing stroke to let you know he’s still here, he’s still yours. The feeling of his skin touching yours was like aloe vera directly on the burn.

With a grateful smile, you leaned back in the seat and took a deep breath as he steered you home.

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Carter padded down the hall, stopping three separate times, trying to decide if she should just go back to her own room. But the sight of her frantic texts to you still saying “delivered” and not “read” was too concerning to ignore.

She opened Topper’s door without knocking.

He was sitting up against his headboard, typing feverishly on his phone. At the sight of her, he clutched his duvet cover, pulling it up higher over his nearly naked body.

“Have you ever heard of knocking?” 

“Please, like I haven’t seen it all before. Like I didn’t see it yesterday,” she rolled her eyes.

“Oh okay, so you do remember. Based on the way you were acting last night I thought maybe you’d forgotten we’d ever been together,” he snipped at her.

“I don’t want to talk about last night,” she waved him off, dismissing his complaints flippantly, “are you aware of what’s happening downstairs right now? Of who is happening downstairs right now?”

“Yes, I saw her pull up,” he returned his attention to his phone and his frenzied typing.

Outside his cracked open door, Carter heard Kelce, Tom, and a few others come barreling up the stairs, chatting about the recent arrival.

“Be so fucking for real, did you invite her?” Carter said, attempting to lower her voice.

“I don’t know if anyone’s ever told you this but you do this thing where you think you’re whispering and you’re actually not,” Topper informed her.

“Topper…”

“No, I didn’t invite her.,” he answered. “Actually I was about to ask if you did.”

“Why the fuck would I do that? I hate her.”

“Wow alright, hate's a strong word, Carter, maybe calm down a little.”

Ever since their knock-down-drag-out at the club last night, the arguing that was usually playful and lighthearted had an edge of actual bitterness to it.

“First of all, if you ever tell me to ‘calm down’ again, I’m going full Lorena Bobbitt on your ass. Second of all, you need to go down there and tell her to leave,” she flicked her hair behind her shoulder and held her chin up as she bossed him around. He hated that despite how mad at her he was, he fucking loved it.

“How does that job possibly fall on me?” He scoffed.

“Aren’t you Mr. Team Rafe-and-my-sister? Don’t you want to get rid of the reason they stopped talking in the first place?” She reasoned.

“I’m not gonna tell her she can’t be here,” he shut her down. “It’s not my house, and it’s really none of my business. Or yours.”

Her eyes narrowed at him, “oh yeah? Then who are you texting so much over there?”

“I’m just giving him a head’s up,” he shrugged. “She should probably know too.”

“And you’re just assuming they’re together?” She snarled.

“Puh-lease,” he rolled his eyes, “did you see them at the club last night? There’s no way they didn’t hook up.”

She wouldn’t accept it, couldn’t, even though she knew somewhere deep in her gut that he was probably right. 

When Rafe still didn’t answer any of his texts, Topper sighed heavily, “fuck it, I don’t care if I’m cockblocking, I’m calling him.”

Before he could dial, the house shook with the slam of the front door. Carter and Topper hurried out to the hall and hesitated at the top of the steps. Your lone voice carried up to them, talking to no one in particular as you muttered, “un-fucking-belivable.”

Carter actually did whisper this time, “I think it might be too late for that…”

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The feeling of Rafe’s hand, warm and steady on your thigh, as he drove the rest of the route home was so nice and comforting, you let yourself slip into the possibility that this could actually be it. Maybe you really could just leave the past behind you, maybe you really had finally found each other and it could just be simple like this.

But your fantasy didn’t last long.

Rafe parked in the spot across the street that you had taken Carter’s car from a few hours ago. Even when he turned the key and cut the engine, he didn’t remove his hand from your leg. 

“You ready?” He sighed.

“For what?” You questioned, eyeing him curiously, his face serious as he looked down at the site of his hand on your skin.

He shook his head like he didn’t know the answer himself, “reality, I guess.”

You placed your hand over his, smirking at the sight of your fingers encompassing each other’s, wanting so much more from these hands and truly believing you’d have all the time in the world to enjoy them. 

“Bring it on,” you gave him a small smile.

“He leaned across the center console and dropped a deep kiss to your lips, causing you to sigh into his mouth. All the times you imagined kissing him, you never thought such a rough-around-the-edges guy would have such soft lips. You felt like you might be able to spend forever with them on your skin.

When he finally pulled away, you reached for the handle of your door, beginning to open it, but Rafe reached across your body and pulled it shut again.

“What are you doing?” You asked in surprise.

He smiled that perfect, dimpled grin of his, “extra credit.”

You giggled as he hurried to climb out of the driver’s side, hurrying around to your door and opening it with a chivalrous flair.

“Wow,” you beamed, accepting his hand as he helped you down from the tall vehicle. “You weren’t kidding about trying to be a gentleman.”

“For you, I’ll be anything,” he flirted.

Despite your best efforts not to, you blushed, the red hue on your cheeks deepening when Rafe kept your hand in his, intertwining his fingers with yours as you walked back to the house. It was the first time he’d held your hand out in the open like this, where anyone could look out from the windows of the beach house and see the two of you together. It was foreign to you, his public display of affection, and yet it felt so right. You couldn’t help but wish it hadn’t taken this long.

“Can I ask you something?” You said quietly.

“Anything,” he squeezed your hand assuringly. 

“Why didn’t we do this a long time ago?” 

Rafe’s face fell slightly, watching his feet as they made less and less forward progress on the sidewalk, until he came to a full stop. The question was mostly meant to be lighthearted, a tease really, but his solemn reaction made your stomach twist with concern.

“I…” he started, voice unsteady, not meeting your eyeline, “I don’t know if I should tell you this but -”

You never knew what he wasn’t supposed to tell you, because before he could, a sickeningly familiar voice called out from the front porch.

“Hey guys!”

Head snapping toward the sound, you looked up, and there she was, as stunning as ever in that same signature everything-you’re-not-ness. 

Cassie Bryant.

Her face was adorned with a glistening smile, yours was noticeably not. Everything in you sunk, including the corners of your lips, completely unable to hide the way your heart dropped six feet under the ground at the sight of her.

She was somehow even more golden and glowing now than she was back then. Glossy blonde hair flowing down her back like a waterfall of silk. Her perfect, blemish free skin glowed in the early morning light. Her big, round Disney Princess eyes quickly found Rafe and flicked over your joined hands, clocking the way they were folded together in unmistakable intimacy.

It happened so quickly, and yet it felt like years worth of hurt and heartache compacted into one small moment. 

At the sight of Cassie on the porch, Rafe dropped your hand.

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Surely, any minute now, a camera crew would pop out from the bushes and announce that you were being Punk’d.

Or maybe it’d be the Mythbusters:

The myth? That you can actually heal from your childhood trauma with just four years of painstaking hard work. Well, we’re about to prove that all of that can be unraveled in the span of 72 hours! Also, we will be using your heart as our crash test dummy. Myth busted!

You didn’t look over at Rafe, couldn’t bear to watch the way he pulled his body away from yours, ever-so-slightly, almost imperceptibly. But you could feel it all the same, and you were sure she could too. 

Before Cassie could say anything else, the front door opened behind her, Sabrina stepping out of the house and taking in the unfolding scene on the lawn.

“Oh shit,” she laughed, “this is awkward!”

It’s like her main goal in life was to find new and creative ways to make your bad moments worse.

“Is it?” Cassie asked, seemingly unaware of the cause of Sabrina’s laughter. “We were just saying hi.”

She caught your eye as she said it, a polite but knowing smile on her lips. You realized with shock that she absolutely knew what was happening and was trying to make you feel better about it. You should just be grateful for the unexpected kindness, but something in you was suspicious. The Cassie you knew would’ve jumped at the chance to embarrass you, and she would’ve loved the way Rafe was treating you like you had the plague.

Plus, her taking pity on you, acknowledging the way Rafe had just hurt you, was somehow worse than her just being mean to you. You’d rather she go back to that.

“Y’all having a good trip?” She asked you and Rafe when the silence had lasted just a little too long.

You looked to Rafe, waiting for him to answer, begging him silently to say something that indicated that you were in fact having a good trip…together.

But he just said, “it’s been cool. Weather’s shit, though.”

“Yeah that’s what Sab told me, but I got a few days off my internship so I thought I’d come hang with y’all,” she said, eyes on you as she spoke, like she owed you an explanation.

“Well, welcome, then,” you smiled a polite smile that didn’t meet your eyes.

“You ready?” Sabrina asked, linking arms with Cassie, thick as thieves. 

“We’re going into town for some brunch if you guys want to join,” Cassie offered.

“That’s okay, I need to check on Carter,” you declined, all eyes turning to Rafe for his response.

“Uh yeah, I’m good here, th-thanks,” he stuttered, so awkward and shaky, a completely different person from the guy who was delivering monologues and sweeping you off your feet just a few hours ago.

Cassie just smiled politely once more as Sabrina pulled her into the car. As they drove off, you stood wordlessly with Rafe on the front walk, your chest completely hollow. You mustered some nerve and finally looked at him, head tilted, a completely unamused smile tugging your lips.

“Weather’s shit?” You repeated his words back to him.

“Look…” he began but didn’t finish the thought.

You just laughed humorlessly, shaking your head at him as you stormed off toward the house. Rafe stood frozen for a moment, kicking himself mentally and begging his brain to catch up with the moment, finally rushing off after you, but not able to before you slammed the door in his face.

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Carter and Topper exchanged nervous glances at the sound of you stomping into the house. 

They slowly and quietly settled on the top step, sitting forward to listen in as the front door opened and closed again, Rafe’s voice echoing through the house.

“Wait…” he said, following after you as you marched further into the house toward the kitchen.

You didn’t stop, “No, go ahead, you should go to brunch with her. Don’t let me keep you from a good time.”

“Wait, let’s just talk,” he pleaded.

“I’m too tired, Rafe,” you rejected him. “I can’t do this right now.”

“So you’re not even gonna let me explain?”

At the top of the steps, Carter and Topper simultaneously held their breath as they listened, both jumping as Kelce’s voice startled them, “what are we listening to?”

“Shhh,” Carter waved her hand at him, motioning for him to shut up.

Kelce plopped himself between them on the top step, shuffling a bit so they’d make room for him. He listened in, picking up your and Rafe’s raised voices quickly.

“Oh shit,” he barely whispered, “trouble in paradise already?”

“Dude shut up,” Topper cut him off.

Soon, Maddie, Tom and Jack joined the little huddle on the top step, each cluing in on the source of the entertainment in their own disruptive way before being shushed by the group and eventually sitting. You continued your argument with Rafe, completely unaware you were performing in front of a live studio audience.

“You don’t need to explain,” you told him, trudging down the front hall toward the kitchen. “I know exactly what just happened because it’s happened a thousand times before. What I don’t know is why I’m even surprised.”

“Come on,” he caught up to you, stopping you in your tracks as his large frame rounded you. “It is not the same as it used to be.”

“It’s exactly the same,” you side-stepped him, walking into the kitchen and dropping Carter’s keys on the counter. “I mean jesus Rafe, it’s the same fucking person! I can’t believe I’m here again, it’s like I’m having a nightmare where I’m back in high school. Next thing you know I’m gonna walk into homeroom and I realize I’m completely naked.”

“Sounds more like a dream to me,” he smirked, trying to flirt.

You just blinked back at him, your sharp eyes cutting straight through his head.

“Do you think this is funny?”

His smirk dropped, snatched right off his lips by your ice cold tone. Good. You’d been waiting years to wipe that shit eating grin off his face. 

Something new was rising in your chest, knocking out the embarrassment and sadness with a closed fist, a fury long buried coming back with a vengeance.

“I thought all that shit was behind us, over and done.” Rafe reached out towards you but you stopped him with your own rough grip, lowering his hand away from you and dropping it like he’d dropped yours.

“Oh, it’s fucking done alright, so fucking done,” you spat.

 “You’re really gonna let ten stupid seconds ruin everything that’s happened between us? You’re not even gonna give me the benefit of the doubt. You really think that little of me?”

“It’s literally only been two hours, and you’ve already lied to me once and pushed me away the second someone saw us. And you wonder why I'm having a hard time saying yes to being with you? It’s because I fucking can’t trust you, Rafe!”

“I don’t know what else I can do to show you I’m different,” he threw his hands up in exasperation. “This is so fucking unfair.”

“Are you being fucking serious right now?” You stepped towards him as you snapped at him. “You’re actually pissed at me?”

“Yeah, I am!” 

“Why?”

“Because I lost my best friend!”

Everyone on the top of the stairs winced, air sucked from the room when Rafe raised his voice at you. For all his flaws and mistreatment, he had never raised his voice at you before.

“Oh shit,” Kelce whispered.

“Shhh!” Carter and Maddie hushed him in unison, everyone leaning in a little closer to hear how you’d react. But you said nothing. They couldn’t see the widening of your eyes, jaw locked tight as you gave him space to follow up on his outburst.

“Do you really think it didn’t hurt me when you just up and stopped talking to me back then?” He took the space you gave him and slowly unpacked the hurt feelings he’d buried for years. “I know I was a dick, I shouldn’t have taken advantage of how you felt about me, I shouldn’t have strung you along. But when that shit went down senior year and you just ghosted me, I wanted to talk to you and make it right. I tried, but you blocked me out, you went from talking to me every day to radio silence without giving me a single explanation. That fucking hurt. And you’re doing the exact same thing now, not even giving me a chance to explain things. So yeah, I am a little pissed. I’m pissed that you’re just gonna throw it all away again over nothing.”

He waited for your response with baited breath, prepared for you to yell, or cry, or do something. But you gave him nothing, mouth closed in a tight line as you turned on your heel and walked further into the kitchen, lifting the coffee pot from its home and filling it in the sink.

He watched your back as you scooped the grounds into the filter and turned on the machine. Minutes passed and you remained silent, hands on the counter, looking out the big window towards the ocean while the coffee brewed one drop at a time.

Finally, after eight cups had dripped into the pot, you spoke.

“How was prom, by the way?” You turned to face him, the edge of the marble countertop digging into your waist as you leaned back against it, hands crossed in hostility over your chest. “I never asked.”

Rafe’s gaze fell from you almost instantly. He didn’t have to ask why you were bringing this up, the ‘hell hath no fury’ look on your face dragging the memory forth from its carefully hidden spot in the back of his brain. Nothing made him feel like a jackass quite like that memory, and based on the mocking curve at the corner of your lips, you knew it.

The memory used to keep you up at night. 

For a full year after it happened, it was like a fire poker bent into the shape of regret and shame was branding your heart over and over. 

Now, the burn was healed over, still calloused and red at the edges, but you’d done your best to cover the scar tissue in the healing balms of self-love and lots and lots of therapy. Still, it was the moment in your life you were the least proud of.

You’d thought it was gonna be you. Really, earnestly, completely delusionally, you believed when he asked for your help with his grand prom-posal that it was all a playful ruse to ask you to be his date. You stayed up all night, decorating three different poster boards with glitter glue so he could pick the one he liked best. You bought out all the battery-powered candles at Michael’s - he said he’d pay you back, he never did. You waited with him in the park until the sun set, giddy with the hope that he’d drop the ruse and pop the question any minute.

“What will you do if ‘she’ says no?” You attempted to flirt.

“I guess I’d just have to take you.”

Every muscle in his body flinched at the memory and the white hot regret he felt every time it replayed in his head.

The kid who said those words was such an asshole. Standing here in the kitchen, looking down at you, the love of his goddamn life, and facing the possibility that he might lose you for good, he wanted to ring the idiot’s neck.

Because he hadn’t asked you. He made you watch while he asked her. And he didn’t even give you a ride home from the park.

Fuck, he wouldn’t forgive himself if he was you, either.

Rafe felt about two feet tall, looking back at you with absolutely nothing to say. He was relieved for a second when you opened your mouth to speak first, until he heard the words.

“You don’t understand. The voice in the back of my head, the one I’ve spent years trying to silence, the one that tells me I’m not enough, that I’ll never be enough…it’s your voice, Rafe.”

He grasped desperately for a reply, but there were no words in the English language that made that statement any less devastating.

“Maybe that’s not fair,” you continued before he could come up with anything, “but I don’t think I have control over that. I don’t know how to undo it, if it can be undone. So those ten seconds that just happened out there? They’re  not nothing to me. When you dropped my hand at the sight of her, I felt like I was that stupid teenage girl again, giving my whole heart to the one person who knows how to break it. Blind and foolish and desperate for you to notice her. I don’t like that girl.”

You made it through the whole speech with a steady voice, up until the last sentence. Your voice cracked on those words, your heart doing the same as you pictured your younger self. The one who would sit on her bed for hours, rereading the texts she sent him and praying he’d reply.

Thinking about that version of yourself, you weren’t sure if you wanted to hug her or slap her. Surely, she’d hit you right back if she saw what you were doing now, potentially pushing away the boy she loved more than anything, finally having him within your grasp and letting him slip right through.

At the top of the stairs, unbeknownst to you, Carter was picturing that girl, too. She would roll her eyes at you back then, using sarcastic comments like “are you sure Rafe even knows how to read?” to mask her truer concern; that he could but he wouldn’t, and the heart you wore on your sleeve would end up crushed again. Even now, she couldn’t protect it, couldn’t save it from reaching out to this boy who did nothing but break it.

Frustration welled inside her, the absolute powerlessness to put an end to this cycle that hurts you feeling like a dark cloud over her head. The anger manifested into hot, watery tears gathering on her lash line. Without permission, one slipped through, rolling down her cheek slowly.

Topper caught the whole thing, and despite their fight and his resolve to freeze her out until she apologized, he couldn’t stop his hand from reaching out and stroking her cheek softly, wiping the tear away with a gentle swipe of his thumb.

They shared a look so full of unspoken words and tender emotions that they almost forgot about the conversation in the kitchen, until Rafe’s voice cut through the moment and pulled them from their silent reconciliation.

“Are you okay?” He asked you after you’d been silent for nearly a minute, trying desperately to compose yourself.

“Yes, that's all just a lot. I’m processing,” you sniffled.

“Take your time,” he said, pulling out one of the high back stools from the counter and motioning for you to sit in it.

Your body was so exhausted, even your stubborn anger at him couldn’t stop you from accepting the offer. You slumped on the plush stool, folding your arms on the counter and resting your chin on them.

“How do you like your eggs?” Rafe asked.

“Is that a pick-up line?” 

“Nope, just a question,” he said as he opened the high cupboard and pulled out a frying pan.

You tried to remind yourself you should reject his offer to feed you, you should storm out, you should tell him where he can put his frying pan…but you were hungry. And so tired.

“Sunny side up,” you answered.

He nodded and got to work cooking you breakfast, eggs and bacon sizzling on the stove, Rafe close by with a spatula in hand, silent as he stirred and flipped. You rested your head on your folded arms, eyes half-closed and brain sleepy, watching him. 

If you blocked out the last twenty minutes, you could pretend this morning was your real life, could let yourself imagine it really was all this simple and pleasant and sweet; he’d cook you breakfast, you’d make him coffee, and you’d kiss until the sun rose.

At the top of the stairs, Kelce stood and started descending, before Carter reached up and grabbed his arm.

“What are you doing?” She whispered.

“I’m hungry!” He whined.

“You can’t go down there,” Maddie scolded him, “give them some space.”

“Are we just gonna stay up here all day?” Tom complained as he and Jack stood to join Kelce’s crusade into the kitchen.

“Everybody sit down!” Topper whisper-yelled. “Give them five fucking minutes, you’ll all survive. You can fuck off back to your rooms if you want but no one’s going down there.”

Carter couldn’t help the heart eyes she made at him, surprised and delighted by his show of aggression in your defense.

Kelce groaned as he backed back down, Tom rolling his eyes and throwing his hands up as he trudged down the hall back to his room, Jack following with a huff.

“Kelce, I have a granola bar in my purse, c’mon,” Maddie offered, leading him towards her own door.

Alone again, Topper and Carter looked at each other for a long, quiet moment.

“I’m sorry,” she mouthed.

“I know,” he mouthed back.

She scooted towards him, nuzzling into his side as he wrapped an arm around her shoulders, kissing her temple.

Downstairs, Rafe was done with your meal, scooping it onto a plate and sliding it to you across the counter.

“Thank you,” you sat up and began nibbling at a slice of bacon.

Rafe took the stool next to you with his own plate of food. You sat in silence for a while, only the sound of forks scraping against porcelain and the occasional “can you pass the salt?” between you.

Between bites, you rested your head on your arm again, nearly falling asleep.

“I’m so tired,” you mumbled sleepily.

“It’s been a long twenty-four hours,” Rafe agreed, taking a sip of his coffee.

“That’s an understatement,” you snorted, sitting up again and finishing the last bite of your eggs.

“What about…the next twenty-four hours?” He asked quietly.

You took a deep breath, the smile falling from your face as you considered the question underneath his question. You didn’t answer him right away, hopping down from the stool and collecting your plate and his, carrying them to the sink. Rafe was quick behind you, arm reaching around and pulling the dishes from your hands to lay them in the sink. His hand rested on your waist, turning you to face him, pulling you in. Reluctantly, and without returned tenderness, you let him.

“Rafe, I can’t…” you said sadly.

“Please just talk to me,” he pleaded, hands running up your arms and resting on your shoulders. You shook your head, blinking away fresh tears as you pulled away from him.

“It hurts too much, Rafe,” your voice cracked. “As great as the last few days have been, you can’t see that being close to you hurts me. I worked so hard to get over you. So this isn’t me throwing it all away, this is me protecting myself. Protecting what I’ve spent years rebuilding.”

“So what, that's it then? You’re just gonna go back to school and pretend this never happened?” The pain in his voice was palpable, and you cursed the part of you that wanted to reach out and make him feel better.

“I don’t know, Rafe,” a small tear slipped through, gliding slowly down your cheek.

“You’re just gonna stop talking to me, stop thinking about me?” He continued desperately.

You looked up at him finally, searching his face, nodding sadly.

“I’ve done it before.”

Hurt flashed in his crystal blue eyes, flinching like your words had burned him. “You didn’t…you don’t…think about me?”

“No,” you told him honestly, another tear joining the one before it. “Never. Because if I let myself think about you, I would’ve fallen apart. I’m not strong enough, I would’ve run to you, and every time I did that before, you’d let me down.”

“What about yesterday? What about this morning? Just think about the beach, everything was so good, it can be that way now…”

He reached out and cupped the side of your face, thumb brushing over the tears as he pulled you in toward him, kissing you out of sheer desperation. Like maybe if you tasted his lips, it’d transport you both back in time, back to the beach, back when he’d done and said everything right. 

You allowed him to take you there for just a second, before the incident on the front walk flashed in your mind again, the pain of rejection like a knife to your gut. You pulled away from him quickly, side stepping him and moving to the other side of the kitchen, creating as much distance between you as possible.

“No, no, you can’t just kiss me and act like what just happened with Cassie didn’t happen,” you shook your head rapidly, wiping your tear stained streaks with the backs of your hands. “I can’t do this right now, I need some time to think.”

It required fighting every impulse he had, but he didn’t push, didn’t close the space between you, didn’t try to regain the control he was so used to having. He just sighed deeply and nodded, eyes low.

“Okay, well let me know when you’re done…thinking.”

With one last longing look at you, he stepped away to the basement steps, stopping at the top and turning halfway toward you.

“Oh and that girl? The one who gave me her heart? For what it’s worth, I like her. Always have.”

With that, he was gone, the door clicking softly behind him.

Carter and Topper could hear you approach the bottom of the steps. Carter stood first, fully ready to greet you and grill you on everything that had happened since you last spoke. Topper could see all her questions and comments written on her face. He grabbed her hand and squeezed gently, stopping her before she marched down the stairs towards you. She looked at him in surprise but understood quickly as he gave her a slight shake of his head, whispering, “give her some space.”

Reluctantly, she nodded, allowing him to lead her quietly down the hall and into his room.

Your footsteps were heavy on the stairs, body aching. Your brain was so fried you couldn’t even pick one thing from the morning to focus on, like the part of your brain that processes events was temporarily out of order. So you stopped trying to think and just let your feet carry you to your bed, crawling under the covers in your clothes, falling quickly into a restless slumber.

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In your dreams, you were back in the kitchen with him, shoulder to shoulder in comfortable silence as you did the dishes together. Rafe washed and you dried. 

Only, it wasn’t the beach house kitchen, it was one you’d never been in before. And in that dream-state way of knowing something you don’t actually know, you were sure it was a kitchen the two of you shared, sometime in the distant, unwritten future.

(to be continued)

a/n: I'm so sorry, I had to do it.......also the prom thing may or may not be based on a true story and I may or may not have cried writing it....

also I’m sick and tired so I didn’t edit much sorry for typos! I’ll proofread again tomorrow 😘

please note: the taglist for this series is closed. For updates when I post, follow @whytheylosttheirminds-works and turn on notifs <3

[f1swiftiee]

Tipsy - LN4

pairings: lando x fem!reader, leclerc!reader

summary: lando has a massive crush on his rival's teammate, and his efforts to catch her attention never actually catches her attention, but rather everyone else's, until one day, when all things go downhill.

a/n: hii!! sorry it took me so long to write this! not proofread, so feel free to point out any mistakes. i changed a few details to make the story make sense. thanks and enjoy! there will be a part 2!

warnings: drinking, unplanned pregnancy, mention of sex, and thats all i think??

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It was no secret that Lando had a crush on you. Everyone seemed to just simply know that he was head over heels for you. Well, everyone, except you. Lando had tried countless times to make a move, but each time, you either didn't notice or took it as a joke. Lando was determined. No matter how long or how much effort it was going to take, he was willing to do it, for you.

౨ৎ

The sunlight of Miami shone through the blinds in your hotel room, which you were sharing with your brother, Charles, and his girlfriend, Alex. You didn’t mind staying with them, as you and Alex got along quite well. As soon as you fully woke up you saw that Alex was still asleep and that Charles had already left to head to the track. Slowly, you got out of bed and walked over and woke up Alex. Together, you two got ready and headed out the door.

On the drive there, Alex was driving, and the conversation somehow drifted over to which drivers would win the Dutch Grand Prix that day. “I bet you $100 that Charles is going to beat everyone today,” Alex said.

“You’re just saying that because he’s your boyfriend. I bet that Lando’s gonna win today. He’s been performing a lot better recently. Have you noticed that?” You had your mind set on Lando, for no reason at all, but you had a strange gut feeling.

“Maybe that's because a certain someone has been going to all the races recently,”, looking over and winking at you.

“Huh? I didn’t say anything about me? I was just saying that Lando and the team have been doing a lot better recently, unlike a certain someone. *cough* *cough* Charles.”

“No way you just said that! He got P5 yesterday!”

“Yeah exactly, and who was P1 in quali?” As you said that, Alex pulled the car into the parking lot and parked the car. After this, the two of you got out of the car and headed towards the garage, but not without passing the McLaren garage.

As you and Alex were passing McLaren, the two of you heard a voice, which you knew all too well call out. "Y/n!" You turned around and saw Lando standing a few feet away, beaming. He began running and quickly caught up to you and Alex.

"Y/n! I didn't know you were coming to the grand prix! You know, you should ditch Charles in the Ferrari garage and come over to the McLaren garage. Plus, Oscar brought Lily," Lando said, but not without his whole face turning red.

"Lily!! Wait, Lando, I'd love to, but I can't just leave Alex! Wait, can she come too?"

Quickly, Alex interrupted and said, "No, no, Y/n you should go to the McLaren garage. Also, I have Rebecca, so I won't be alone. Plus, Charles would kill me if he heard I was in McLaren."

"Soo, is that a yes, Y/n?" Lando said, and this time, even you could sense the excitement in his tone.

"Yeah, sure! Alex, I'll catch up with you later sometime during or after the race."

And with that, Lando led the way back to his garage. He showed you his car and led you towards his driver's room. As you were stepping into his driver's room, you spotted Lily, who was passing by with Oscar. "LILY!!" you called out.

"Y/N!!" Lily yelled. Lily started running towards you, and the two of you shared a tight embrace.

"Lily! It's been forever since I've last seen you! You haven't come to any of the races recently. Oh my gosh! I forgot to tell you about the cute guy I saw at this new cafe!"

Upon hearing that, Lando felt a sudden pang of jealousy. He decided that he was going to make a move that day so that no other guy would have the chance to date you before he did. Oscar glanced at Lando, and he was easily able to read Lando's face and understand what he was thinking. "Mate, if you really like her, you should do it. You know, she'd probably say yes," Oscar said, empathetically.

౨ৎ

It was now time for the drivers to head to the garages and get into the cars. You were still in the McLaren garage, and you were standing with Lily. The two of you's hearts were racing like crazy, as they always did before a race began. The drivers lined up, and the lights went out. The first half of the race went smoothly, until lap 38. Lando, Charles, and Max were all battling for the first-place spot. Not to mention that Carlos, Oscar, and George were not too far behind as well. The battle continued for a few more laps until Lando somehow managed to pull through and take the lead. Seeing this made you and Lily quite anxious, so you both talked for a bit and took a break from staring at the screen. After a few minutes, loud commotion was heard from the screen, and you both looked up to see a papaya car cross the line, earning first place. Seeing this, you blurted out, "Was that Oscar?"

Lily replied, "No! That was Lando! Oh my gosh! He won!! BY TWENTY SECONDS?" "WHAT??"

After learning that, you couldn't help but smile. You were so proud of Lando, after all that hard work that he had put into his performance and training, and it finally paid off. Seeing this, Lily smirked at you and said, "Ooh, someone's got a crush!"

"No! He's just a friend, Lily. I'm just really proud of him."

"Whatever you say," Lily said while shrugging her shoulders.

As you watched the drivers on the podium, you couldn't help but stare and Lando. The way his messy curls sat atop his head so perfectly and the way his green eyes reflected the sun was just so beautiful. The way that he did his champagne pop simply mesmerized you. You couldn't help but notice that he did look down at you quite a few times while standing on the top podium, with Max in second, and Charles in third.

Later that night, most of the grid went to a club nearby to celebrate and party. You were planning to meet them there afterward, with a few of your friends. After you arrived, you saw Carlos, Charles, Rebecca, and Alex at the bar and headed over to them. As the night went on, you and the drivers kept downing drinks, but no one was nearly as drunk as you were.

"Hey, has anyone seen Y/N?" one of your friends asked, as she approached the group.

"Uhh no? I thought she was with you guys? No?" Carlos said, clearly concerned.

"Yeah, me too. I thought she was with you too," Charles said.

"While we're on this topic of missing people, has no one else noticed that the race winner's gone too?" Daniel added. As soon as Daniel said this, everyone seemed to understand simultaneously.

"Daniel! Lando and my sister? Seriously?" Charles denied.

"You never know, mate," Oscar said, a large smirk evident on his face.

______________________________________________________________

austria gp

Later that day, all the drivers and wags were meeting up at 7 for dinner before the race weekend began, and you were planning to attend. It was currently 4 PM, and you were feeling quite nauseous. This had been going on for the past month or so. At first, you thought you had caught the stomach bug or something, but you were beginning to think that it wasn't.

_____________________________________________________________

30 minutes had passed since you had texted Alex, and you heard the door of your hotel room swing open. "Y/n!! I'm back!!!" Alex exclaimed. Alex ran over and hopped onto the bed next to you.

"What'd you get?" you asked, reaching over for the bag, "Wait, wasn't Charles with you?"

"No, he said he was gonna go with Carlos and that he would meet me at the restaurant," Alex replied.

You began digging through the bag, "Advil, Tylenol, Ibeuprofen... did you really need to buy all of this?" you remarked.

"Duh! I didn't know what you needed, so I got everything!"

You continued rummaging through the bag, and felt some sort of box at the bottom "Thanks Alex- wait what's this?" you questioned. You pulled out the white box and read the front, "PREGNANCY TEST" "Really?" you questioned.

"You never know! Better to be safe than sorry!" Alex said, shrugging her shoulders, "You might as well take it just to be sure!"

______________________________________________________________

You took the test in the bathroom, with Alex waiting outside the door. By now, it was almost 5 PM. "Can I come in?" Alex asked. "Yeah, one sec," you said while washing your hands. After you dried your hands, you opened the door and let Alex in. As soon as she stepped into the bathroom, your alarm went off. "Okay, you check for me. I'm too scared," you said nervously.

Alex flipped over the test. "OH MY GOD! Alex exclaimed.

"What? What? Is it bad? Let me see!" you said.

Alex handed the test and you gasped in horror at the test. "PREGNANT" This couldn't actually be happening, right? You were pregnant? You thought of what you had done the past two months and of anyone you had slept with, and one name came to your mind, Lando.

"OH MY GOD! I'M AN IDIOT!" you exclaimed, tears brimming your eyes.

"Hey, hey. It's okay! Do you know who the dad is? Wait, is it Lando?" Alex said, trying to calm you down and figure everything out.

Suddenly, all the memories came flooding back into your mind. Lando had driven you home that night, and you two ended up in the backseat of his McLaren. "Lando. Me and him had sex in his car when he took me back to my hotel room in Miami," you said, sobbing, "I can't believe this! I'm not ready to be a mom yet!"

"I'll go ahead and let Charles know that we won't be attending tonight," Alex told you, pulling out her phone.

______________________________________________________________

Charles and Carlos drove to the dinner, and Carlos could tell that something was off with Charles. "Charles, you've been acting off all night. Tell me what's wrong; I can tell when you have something bothering you," Carlos said, trying to pry an answer out of him.

"I-I'm not really sure. You know how y/n and Alex were supposed to attend the dinner, right?"

"Yeah," Carlos said, nodding. As he and Charles continued talking, they pulled into the parking lot and began making their way into the restaurant.

"Well, Alex texted me randomly and said they wouldn't make it, and when I asked her why, she wouldn't answer me. I think something's wrong with y/n. I told her I was going to come back to the hotel, and she freaked out on me. I don't know what to d-" Suddenly, Charles was interrupted by the ringing to Carlos's phone. He pulled it out and answered.

"Er, Hello?" Carlos said, sitting down at the table, waving to the other drivers.

"Hey, sorry for the short notice, but I can't make it tonight. Neither can Kika, Lily Z, Lily M, or Carmen."

"What, you too?"

"Yeah, I got to go! I'll call you later!"

Carlos glanced back at his phone. "CALL ENDED" Upon seeing this, he put his phone away back into his pocket.

The dinner continued, but Charles and Carlos couldn't shake away the feeling that something was wrong. None of the other drivers knew what was going on either.

౨ৎ

lando's pov

Lando was disappointed, as he was going to take this as an opportunity to try to talk to you after the night you spent together because you had been avoiding him ever since. He decided to send you a text, to see if you were okay and ask why none of the wags were attending.

He started at his phone for a moment, hoping for a response, but got none. He checked his phone a few minutes later and saw that he had been left on read.

౨ৎ

Back at the hotel room, it was as hectic as ever. Y/n was a complete mess, her mascara running down her face, as the wags sat around her, trying to comfort her.

"Are you completely sure you're pregnant? I mean, you only took one test. It wouldn't hurt to take another one just to be sure," Lily M said.

In unison, the rest of the wags nodded in agreement, and Carmen ran over to the corner, where the pharmacy bag was lying and got out another test. She walked back over and handed it to you.

Slowly, you got up and walked over to the bathroom, a million thoughts racing through your mind. Was this really happening? Were you even ready to be a mom? How would Lando react? Would he have time to be a dad, considering his F1 schedule?

The timer on your phone rang, and the wags sat on the bed, waiting in anticipation. You, however, could not bring yourself to turn over the test. "Hey, can someone come in here and see the test? I'm too scared to flip it over!" you called out. All the wags rushed over, and suddenly there was a whole group of you in the small hotel bathroom. Kika was the first to grap the test, and she gasped as she saw the result. "PREGNANT" She showed the test to everyone in the bathroom. Your knees gave out, and you slid down the wall, into a sitting position, leaning against the wall.

Lily Z crouched down and gave you a hug. "Hey, everything's gonna be okay. We're all here for you!", she said while comforting you.

The rest of the wags squatted down to face you, and they all assured you that no matter what happened, they would all be there for you.

part 2 coming soon!!

[a1ecmcdowell]

bonnie!reader & clyde!dean - the name of the game, baby!

includes, crime :( but for the good of the people! the sexual tension is high but nothing ever gets done ab it sorry for the edging pt 2 soon tho

★ ˚⋆

times were tough these days. dean hadn't known a moment of peace from the very moment he decided that hunting wasn't doing shit for sustaining him, and, well... when he met you.

he'd made up his mind already that hunting was a deadend for him. as much as it killed him to think, it was. how could you keep up a job that didn't pay you, and expect to stay afloat? he wasn't.

it started with dining and dashing when he could, scrounging together the scraps of change and loose bills in his pockets for better things than something like a meal that he had to have or he'd die. putting money directly into corporate pockets when he'd then be out of a bed for the night was not something that he ever wanted to do.

until he met you. by chance, and by the threads of fate, you wound yourself around his heart and never let go.

he was finishing up the handful of fries on his plate, eyes drifting around the room as the waitresses moved to-and-fro. they hadn't stopped by him in a while, so he figured that he was either safe, or about to get approached and interrogated about another round of beer.

he'd take one, sure, but it'd be added to a tab he wasn't going to pay, so it was in their best interest to keep their noses out of his business.

one of the women catches his eye anyways, and she's making her way over with a noticeable sway of her hips and a swish to her long blonde hair, when-

the bell over the entrance door rings as the glass bursts open. in stumbles you, buttoning up the white blouse you wore without even looking up from it, loose and disheveled hair swaying in the burst of air your entrance caused.

you were beautiful, even in your mess, and even when your mouth opened to beg for forgiveness to a man behind the counter. "sorry! my car is shit, it wouldn't start, and-"

"louise has been covering your ass for thirty extra minutes," the man interrupts, his face stoic and unbreakable. "unpaid. don't apologize to me on your lack of punctuality, apologize to louise."

dean watches the whole exchange from his red-cushioned booth by the window, each second making his eyes narrow further. great. now he was getting a heart about stealing from this joint, just because of the way he now knew you girls were treated here. probably would have to cover his tab yourselves.

he sighs. they can't all be winners.

you're making your way over to him, and at first, with his fry smothered in a slurry of ketchup, he thinks you must be the prettiest girl he's ever seen, and here he is, shoveling down fries like a starved man.

fry drops back onto the plate. the waitress who'd been on her way over to dean is halted by your worried little mouth running all over again. "louise-"

"fuck him. i don't mind a second of it." louise pats your forearm with her hand. "it's not even been busy. he's just a dick. this one's my last."

her free hand lifts to gesture at dean, and he again feels a flush of awareness when louise turns to him, and then follows you. your eyes nearly freeze him on the spot. big and bright. christ.

"no, it's okay, i've got him," you say, and the smile you give to him and then to her does freeze him, ice cold and solid in this shoddy little booth. "you just head on home, alright?"

dean at least tries to look like he hadn't been eavesdropping. drops his head again, picks up that discarded fry from his plate.

"hi, sorry about that," you say around a frazzled sigh when you approach his table, and he can't help but bristle at how many apologies he's heard you utter in the last five minutes, all of them unnecessary. "anything i can getcha?"

he actually cannot stop looking at you. you missed a button three down from your collar, the shirt a bit crooked because of the slip. your nimble hands were in the process of tying your hair up and out of your face, flyaways dancing in the fluorescents of the diner like strands of glitter.

no, he wasn't planning on getting anything else. had cemented that idea the moment he decided he couldn't just steal from this place.

but the thought of asking for the check after only getting a few moments with you... wasn't going to fly for him.

dean lifts the empty glass bottle from the edge of his table. "just another one of these, sugar."

your lips curl something wicked, and he doesn't know why, but he knows that he feels like a teenage boy again, with the way his heart flutters at the sight. "that it?"

"yeah, that's it," and you really are a little minx, not as innocent as the act you give to your boss and your coworkers, because he can almost see the fire brewing behind your eyes, "why, you got somethin' else you wanna give me?"

that usually gets him a flush, bright pink warmth on the faces of the waitresses he says it too. you, though, only seem to brighten at the question. fire stoked. "a piece of my mind, maybe."

"alright, so sit that pretty ass down and give it to me."

you seem taken aback by it for a second, your entire face warming to such a pretty pink. your eyes flit back to the kitchen, and then to the open space in the booth across from him, and slowly, you sink down into it.

"hit me, sugar," dean says, leaning back against the ruby red cushions, "give me a little piece of that mind."

"you were gonna steal, weren't you?" you say, so fast and quick that he's taken aback this time. "when lou was leavin'. you were bankin' on her back being turned."

dean resists the urge to whistle under his breath. what an odd little talent that is, catching crimes before they happen. "nah."

"'nah'," you mimic, and his eyebrows shoot up on his forehead, "i know your type. thinkin' you're some kind of robin hood, skippin' the dollar on big brother."

"i'm not going to, sugar," he insists, more firmly this time, feeling a little on edge by your blasé attitude. he'd expect someone so accurate in their assessments to already have him by the ear, leading him into the hands of the guys with cuffs. "can't make you pay for food you didn't eat, can i?"

"i can afford a beer and a plate of fries, babe," you shoot right back at him, a sickly sweet smile on those pretty pink lips of yours. "i can't afford to sit here and waste my time cracking jokes with a joke."

dean does whistle this time, a scoff of laughter falling from his mouth. "y'think i'm a joke, huh?"

"i think anyone who claims they're doing things to damn the man is." your arms fold over your chest, the blouse bunching up beneath your breasts and pushing them up just enough-- "hey. eyes up here." fuck. "that's exactly what i'm sayin'. all damn the man but you're still a tool."

"that mean you wanna use me?"

this little back and forth was the most fun dean had had in weeks. months, even, if he discredited the cheap nights with easy girls in dirty motel rooms.

"no," you stumble the words out, spluttering them out like they burn your tongue. "i don't even know your name."

"dean."

your eyes linger on his for a few moments longer, like you're trying to assess if this is another one of his lies. you must like what you see reflected back, though, because you smile, slow and languid. "dean."

the silence that follows is short-lived and buzzing. then, your lips part again. "were you really going to dine and dash?" a test. you don't sound mad, or like you're interested in turning him in at all.

his shoulders lift in a slight shrug. "that's just the name of the game, baby." he leans forward with his elbows resting on the rickety table between the two of you. "damn the man, right?"

one second passes, then two, and then you're snatching a fry from the plate in between you, dipping it in the pool of ketchup on the edge of his plate. "there are much more fun ways to damn the man."

notes, WEEEEEE i was gonna do fallen angel!dean first but something ab these two were STUCK in my head hope u dont mind

tags, @jasvtsc @depressionbarbie2023 @figthoughts @titsout4nicholas

(if u wanna be added to this btw / u are supposed to be and i keep forgetting pls know it's not a vendetta i am just a silly lil lady who doesn't know what she's doing ok)

[lloydskywalkers]

drywall

went to go work on raising hell and ended up missing Skylor, so!! I will always have so many emotions about s8/9 and the aftermath of it, here's another gallon of them.

Two months after they’ve taken back the city and the street lights are finally starting to work again, Lloyd shows up at the restaurant an hour past closing time, sporting a spectacularly bruise and enough blood across his gi to make the Ninjago City Blood Drive team’s day. 

“Hi, Sky.” Lloyd waltzes — or attempts to, it’s more of a stumbling collapse — right in as if nothing’s amiss in the slightest. “Sorry, I’m, uh. Was in the neighborhood and I wasn’ sure…where else t’ go.”

Skylor, still frozen over a stained tabletop with her dishtowel in hand, stares at him. 

All things considered, she should be fully prepared for something like this. It should practically be in her restaurant’s training manual, that at some point you’ll end up confronted with a bloody, half-dead ninja in your door. But given how slow the past few weeks have been, coupled with the sheer exhaustion of dealing with the lunch rush and the dinner rush and the late-night somewhat-inebriated people rush, her guard is apparently down enough to leave her reacting with a simple, useless, “Oh god.”

“Tha’s my grandfather,” Lloyd says. There’s blood at the corner of his mouth — coupled with the bruising, Skylor thinks (hopes) it’s simply from split skin or a bitten cheek, instead of crippling internal bleeding. 

Crippling internal bleeding is enough of a concern to finally spur her into action, dropping her towel and rushing over to help Lloyd finish stumbling through the door. She spares a moment of thanks, that there’s even a door at all — repairs in the city have been slow, since Harumi’s brief reign of terror, and the insurance provider is still holding out on her. 

But the door was a good thing to prioritize, she thinks, bolting it firmly behind them. 

“Sorry, again,” Lloyd murmurs. His jaw is working in the tight way it does when he’s biting back pain, his bottom lip bruised and bleeding. Skylor’s stomach twists. 

You’d think, after all she’s been through, she’d be more accustomed to seeing the people she cares about in pain. That she’d be desensitized enough, to fight back the aching nausea and the gnawing desire to look away. 

Or maybe she’s just a coward. That would track, she thinks. 

“Shush,” she says instead, maneuvering Lloyd further into one of the nicer booths, careful of the blood that’s…everywhere. “What did you do to yourself this time, huh?”

“I didn’t do anything,” Lloyd grumbles, his voice steadier now that he’s sitting down. Unfortunately, he’s only paler under the yellowy restaurant lights, and the blood looks about ten times worse. “I just…slipped. A bit.”

Slipped. Skylor could smack him, if he wasn’t already hurt. 

“Lemme see, then.” She bends down to where she can tug the folds of his gi back, trying to trace the blood to a source. She finally finds it — an ugly wound in his left shoulder, several long gashes across his forearm. A knife, maybe. Possibly a sword, but it looks close-up and quick. It’d need to have been quick, for whoever was wielding it to land this many hits. 

Or Lloyd would have to be sloppy. 

Lloyd gives a stifled, shuddery exhale, a dangerous preamble to tears. Skylor pauses, just for a moment, and deliberates. 

She’s got Nya’s number, carefully keyed into her phone ever since she and Kai started visiting the noodle house. There’s no doubt in her mind that she’d want to know about this — and there’s less doubt that Kai would want to know. if anything, she’s surprised he hasn’t burst through the restaurant doors already, summoned by whatever sixth sense he has that goes off when Lloyd’s in danger. 

But Skylor also knows there’s got to be a reason that Lloyd came here, despite his claims. Just as there’s probably a reason he didn’t call Kai or Nya, or any of the others. 

And perhaps she feels just a little proud, that Lloyd’s chosen her to come to. 

It’s quickly lost in the blood that coats her hands as she begins patching the wound in his shoulder, but the feeling’s there nonetheless. 

It’s a nice feeling, being relied on. Being trusted. 

“Who got you this bad?”

She speaks up mostly to break the quiet. Lloyd isn’t quite like Kai, who likes talking simply to fill a space, but she knows he isn’t fond of silence, either. It’s one of the things they share in common. 

“No one.” Lloyd sucks in a breath as she draws the bandage tight across his shoulder, wrapping it beneath his arm and back over. His eyes close briefly as she ties it off, forehead scrunching up, before he lets out another shuddery exhale. “Some guy, uh — guy on the way home, near the subway. I had answered a call earlier, and I guess — ow, hey—” 

“Sorry,” Skylor winces, as she finishes dumping antiseptic across the slashes on his arm. “It hurts less if you aren’t expecting it.”

“That’s a lie,” Lloyd says, pointedly. 

She shrugs. “So, random subway mugger?”

Lloyd looks away, his cheeks darkening. It’s a relief, to see any color in his face at all. “Sort of.”

He leaves it at that, lapsing back into silence. Skylor looks down, focusing on the butterfly stitches she’s placing across his arm. Were it anyone else, she’d have panicked for actual stitches, but Lloyd heals with an uncanny quickness. She remembers Nya complaining about it, back during the Resistance — how Lloyd threw a fit when his skin healed over the stitches, and they’d had to cut him open all over again. 

She’d probably throw a fit of her own, to be fair. 

“Well, if you see him,” she says, reaching for the roll of bandages. “Point him out. I could use a punching bag.”

Lloyd’s lips quirk, a ghost of a smile. 

“Thank you.”

It’s quiet enough she might’ve missed it, if they were any further apart. Skylor doesn’t miss the meaning, either. She simply shakes her head, wrapping another layer around his arm. 

“I’m just glad you came to someone,” she says. “Instead of half-assing it yourself.”

Lloyd’s fingers twitch. “I wouldn’t do that.”

“Uh-huh.”

She can’t pretend she doesn’t understand. Her childhood is filled with fun little memories of patching herself together, hiding wounds from Clouse or her father in an attempt to convince them she was better than she was.

Not that the people Lloyd is hiding from are anything remotely like her father, of course, but there’s an overlap between people you fear and people you love, and trying to convince them you’re stronger than you are. 

“That should do it,” she nods to herself, surveying her work. She feels unusually proud of herself — Skylor’s never really stayed with a team long enough to have many chances to patch people up. It’s rarer that people are so open to her touching them, once they’ve learned what her power is. The ninja are an exceedingly kind exception, but it still makes her feel warm, being given this kind of trust. 

She glances up, eyeing her patient. Lloyd’s still pale, but it’s far better than the ashy color from earlier anymore. “Anywhere else?”

“No.” Lloyd stares at the strip of bandages across his arms, shoulders hunched over on himself.

“I have Nya on speed dial, you know—”

“Its just a few scrapes,” Lloyd rolls his eyes. “It’s nothing.”

Skylor sighs. “Lemme see.”

Lloyd grumbles, but he lets her grab his arm again, wincing as she dabs antiseptic over the smaller cuts. There’s nothing serious — just a few nicks and scratches, the kind you get from eating the ground mid-fight. He’s got one uglier scrape, but it’s about as nasty as a skinned knee, and easily eclipsed by the scar it bleeds through. 

Her fingers falter. She knows this scar — she was there when Kai struggled to patch the wound it once was, back on her father’s island. It’s an ugly, jagged scar, a testament to how Kai’s hands had shook as he’d tried to be gentle. 

In hindsight, it had been a terrible moment. Kai wasn’t sure if Lloyd had picked up the wound from the underground tunnels, Chen’s cultists, or his own brief slip into the madness of the staff. Lloyd wouldn’t say where it was from, even if either of them had been much for talking. And Skylor had been an awkward, purple-scaled fixture next to them, holding the medical kit while the others planned how to kill her father. 

And yet, it was the lightest she’d ever felt. 

Skylor bites her lip. 

She’s never told Lloyd, what exactly he’d meant to her. He likely has no idea, what he’d represented when she’d first met him. 

The son of one of Ninjago’s greatest villains — and people loved him. 

Kai loved him. 

If Lloyd could overcome the hurdle of his parentage and choose to live the way he wanted, if people could look past the dark stain of his legacy and love him anyways, then maybe—

He’d been hope, when she needed it most. And Kai had lived up to that hope, taking Skylor’s half-formed, frail dream and fueling it into a blaze.

Her eyes close, briefly, and she shivers. 

“Are you okay?”

Blinking her eyes back open, she comes face to face with Lloyd’s concerned expression. She shakes her head, looking away. 

“I’m fine, I’m fine.” Embarrassment pulls at her. “Just a bit of…aftershocks. You know.”

Lloyd frowns, clearly not knowing. “Aftershocks,” he repeats. “From…”

His eyes go wide, only for his expression to immediately crumple. “Oh.”

Skylor waves her hands. “It’s not bad,” she reassures him. “I can barely feel him — his power — anymore. Just pins and needles in my hands sometimes, that’s all. Totally…totally normal.”

She hopes. Garmadon’s power had burned, in the way bitter cold feels against your skin, so a bit of numbness is pretty decent tradeoff, if she says so herself. 

Lloyd looks down, expression shadowed and hidden. Skylor could curse herself — she knows better, than to bring up—

“Here.” Lloyd’s suddenly holding his hand out, looking at her earnestly. It’s an almost childish expression of sincerity, one that makes him look much younger — a little more like the Lloyd she met on her father’s island, who beamed when his father ruffled his hair. 

Her chest aches fiercely, and Skylor holds out her hand before she can hesitate. Lloyd takes it carefully in his own, and she watches in fascination as the low shimmer of green engulfs her fingers. Lloyd’s power is as gentle as he is — nothing like the ravaging purple storm that was his father’s. 

“Oh,” she says. “That’s nice.”

Lloyd makes a humming noise. “I’ve been practicing. H-his power doesn’t get along with mine, that much. So it kinda…makes room. For whoever’s stronger, at the moment.”

Skylor fights back a shudder. Realistically, she knows she shouldn’t feel ashamed, that Garmadon overpowered her — he’s Garmadon. The reminder of how his power felt still stings, though. 

It’s a reassurance, that Lloyd’s power is stronger now. His element, if you can even call it that, is probably the one she’s the least familiar with — she’s never tried to copy Lloyd’s power. She isn’t entirely sure if she could, or if she should. Dipping into Garmadon’s power was dangerous enough. Skylor isn’t stupid enough to pretend she has the willpower to meddle with the power of the FSM’s family much more than that. 

“It feels like cheating, kinda,” she finally says. “That fighting fuels his power. How are you supposed to fight back?”

Lloyd shrugs, letting her hand go. “You don’t. You get really good at dodging.”

Skylor leans forward, propping her chin up in her palms. “That’s stupid.”

“Well,” Lloyd’s lips twitch, just the slightest bit. “That’s Garmadon, so.”

His expression immediately fractures, and Skylor can spot the battle in his eyes as he tries to grasp for composure. Her teeth worry at her lip.

She should really call Nya, now. Or try to track down Kai’s number. Or anyone else — it’s nearly two hours past closing, the kitchen’s still a mess, and Lloyd’s blood is all over her dishrags. Lloyd himself is hardly in better shape, the ghostly pale of his skin reminding her horribly of when she first saved them from the Sons of Garmadon, and Skylor is—

Not enough. 

She ought to know that, by now.

But the fact still stands, that Lloyd came to her. A part of her clings to that, and another selfish, awful part of her, the part that festered on her father’s island for so many years, the part that still flinches beneath the weight of her last name — well. 

Misery loves company, is probably the best way to put it. 

“I should…I should probably get going,” Lloyd says, uncertainly. He doesn’t make any move to get up, though, still small and weary where he’s hunched up in her booth. 

Skylor stares at him, and thinks of sitting for hours on the edge of her father’s island, staring at the sun on the water until her eyes ached. 

“Hey,” she says, a bit breathless, twisting her fingers together. “Wanna go skip rocks?”

Quite fairly, Lloyd stares at her like she’s lost her mind. 

They end up on the rickety end of one of Ninjago City’s abandoned docks anyways, a mismatched selection of somewhat flat rocks spilling out of a Chen’s to-go bag. Lloyd’s left arm is tied up in a mangled sort of sling they fashioned from Skylor’s old sweatshirt, leaving him to turn a rock over in his right hand awkwardly. 

“So, funny thing,” he says. “I don’t, uh. I’m not very good at this.”

“That’s okay,” Skylor says, sifting through the rocks they’ve gathered. “I’m not, either.”

“Yeah?” Lloyd sounds hopeful. “I mean, you at least know the trick to it, right?”

“I don’t,” she shrugs. “I’ve never…I’ve never skipped rocks before.”

Lloyd stares at her. 

“It’s not that weird,” she huffs, fighting back the urge to hide. “I mean, I never really had the chance, but I aways thought — I grew up near the ocean, and all these lakes, so I always thought it’d be fun to, y’know, skip rocks, since I didn’t really have…anyone else, to…”

The rest of the sentence is about to turn even more humiliating, so it’s a relief when Lloyd interrupts her. 

“I haven’t either.” 

He immediately flushes. “That’s why I’m not good at it.’Cause I’ve never actually skipped rocks.” 

“Oh.” Skylor looks at their bag, then back up at him. “Well, cool. We’ll both suck, then.”

“How hard can it be, anyways?” Lloyd says, sorting through their rocks. “You just find a flat one, right?”

“Yeah,” Skylor says. “Then you sort of just, frisbee it. I think.”

“Hm.”

“You haven’t thrown a frisbee either, have you.”

“Oh, like you have.”

Skylor presses her lips together, snorting. “Was wondering when your snark was gonna show back up.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Do you not remember half the stuff that came out of your mouth, back at the tournament?”

“You would’ve been out of your mind too, if you had to herd the guys around then — also, bold words coming from you, ooh, how dare you call me a traitor, even though it’s totally dead-on—”

“That wasn’t even close to what I said, and also—” Skylor snatches a smooth rock before Lloyd can, hefting it up. “It’s not like I was gonna admit to you all I was a traitor. That defeats the whole purpose of betraying. Lying my way out of a corner was the smart choice.”

“You’d be surprised,” Lloyd mutters, as Skylor flings her rock across the water.

They both watch as it splashes sadly, sinking instantly like, well. A rock. 

“Okay,” Skylor cringes. “That was a warm-up.”

Several warm-ups later, neither of them have made any progress whatsoever, save to torment whatever fish are hanging out on this side of Ninjago City’s harbor with relentless rock barrages. 

“This is ridiculous,” Lloyd huffs, watching as his rock all but torpedoes into the water. “What’s wrong with us, that we can’t get one stupid rock to skip?”

“Maybe it’s in the wrist?” Skylor flexes her hand, angling it one way then another. She winds ups, throws the rock out, and — nope. 

“I think we’re getting worse,” Lloyd remarks as Skylor sputters, wiping the seawater that splashed up from her face. 

She can’t help but agree. They’re down to a few rocks left, and neither of them have made any progress, much less skipped a single rock. At some point, they give up altogether, seeing who can throw their rock out the furthest instead. 

“This one’s going…” Lloyd raises his arm, closing one eye and squinting as he angles higher. He finally pauses with his hand pointing upwards toward Ninjago City. “Right through that weird oval thing on Borg Tower.” 

“Don’t hit it too hard,” Skylor says. “They just got it back up last week.”

“I’m not hitting it, it’s going through it, weren’t you listening?”

“To you? Nah. I’ve heard you suck at public speaking.”

“Wow, after you forced me into the live broadcast and everything—”

As if to emphasize his distress, Lloyd takes a running start, hurling the rock forward. They watch as it arcs across the skyline, before plummeting somewhere in the harbor. 

“So close,” Skylor murmurs. 

Lloyd flops on the ground with a dull thump, legs sprawling in front of him as he leans back on his elbows. Skylor’s makeshift sling isn’t doing much at all anymore, though it looks like he doesn’t need it to.

That, or he’s hiding pain stupidly well. Which wouldn’t be surprising, if disappointing. 

“Defeated,” he mourns. “Overthrown by rocks.”

Skylor dusts gingerly at the ground before sitting next to him. “They sure got the best of us, this time.”

“Maybe it’s a learning curve,” he says. “That or we missed, like, the optimal rock-skipping development time.”

“Mmh. Maybe we need to recruit a teacher who actually had a decent childhood.”

“If you find someone, lemme know.”

They both laugh, breathless and hollow, because they’re not much else they can say, to that. 

Lloyd sits up suddenly, pulling his knees to his chest. His arms wrap tightly around them, eyes glued forward. Instead of asking, Skylor follows his gaze to the skyline of Ninjago City, the darkened scars left behind by Garmadon and Harumi painfully pronounced this late at night. 

It couldn’t have been longer than two weeks, could it? Their rule over the city?

It feels like years.

She can’t imagine what it must’ve been like for the others — can’t imagine what it was like, ending it. 

It pains her, but Skylor doesn’t remember much of Garmadon’s defeat. She’d thrown everything she had into controlling his power, and when it had snapped back on her, ravaging through her like a cloying poison, everything had gone dark and hazy. 

It kind of sucks, because she’d done all that just to miss the most important parts, but…it is what it is.

What she does remember, besides Nya’s steady voice and Dareth’s panicked yelling, is the blazing warmth that was Lloyd carrying her.

That and his painfully bony shoulder digging into her stomach. 

“I was trying not to get us crushed,” Lloyd mutters, cheeks turning pink. “Sorry my shoulder wasn’t up to cushion-y standards.”

“And I’m trying to say thank you,” Skylor sighs. “But seriously. Put something on those bones.”

“Meh meh meh,” Lloyd mocks. There’s a lack of his usual energy in the action, the dullness to his eyes only made worse by the bruise-like circles beneath them. But it’s still very Lloyd — a flash of the friend she knows. 

“I really do mean it,” she says. “Thank you. For carrying me out of there. For saving me.”

Lloyd stares at her with dark eyes. Not as dark as they were, back when he’d lost his power, but the glow is almost entirely absent.

“You shouldn’t—” he bites off, frustrated. He tosses the rock he’s holding, up and down. “It was never a question.”

He glances at her. “Besides,” and there’s the closest she’s seen to a real smile. “You saved us first.”

Not nearly soon enough, she thinks. 

She should’ve told him, should have asked — should have let him know how it felt to watch her father fall deeper into madness, told him what it felt like to lose hope — what it meant, to move on. 

To cut ties, before they strangled you. 

“How are you,” she says, as gently as she can. Then, because gentle doesn’t always get you through the walls they build— “For real. Not how people want to hear you’re doing, or the answer you think they want. How are you.” 

Lloyd stiffens. There’s a flicker of fear in his expression, his mouth moving on instinct. 

“I’m doing okay.”

Tremors lace through his hand where he holds the rock, shuddering fingers tracing over the rough surface. 

“Okay as I can be.” He looks down, the rock slipping from his fingers as his arms wrap around himself. “I know that isn’t the answer you want, but I don’t…”

He looks back up, the lights of Ninjago City misty in his eyes.  

“I don’t know what people want me to say,” he whispers. 

Skylor wishes he’d screamed it. Wishes he’d snap, wishes he’d find the anger where it simmers inside him and turn it outwards against the world, rather than violently projecting it inwards like a masochistic missile all the time. Anything at all, instead of this hollow brokenness. 

It reminds Skylor a bit too much of—

Well. 

“I know I — things are—” Lloyd swallows. He pauses, raising his hand to scrub at an already-bloodshot eye. “Everything happened so fast. It was like — like getting hit with a bus, then another bus, then she — put the bus in reverse and ran me back over, and I never really had the chance to…to…”

“To get back up?”

Lloyd nods. He picks absently at a bloodstained patch on the leg of his gi. “And I know that’s just a stupid metaphor, but getting back up is…it’s really—”

Lloyd’s pulling threads loose now, tugging hard enough that he’s likely to start unraveling holes in his gi. 

“Can I tell you something? Something that’s not…not so good.”

“Hey, you know me.” Skylor elbows him. “I’m an expert at not-good.”

Lloyd’s eyes are a little too knowing. “You’re really not.”

And she’d turn a mirror on him, if she could. “What is it, then?”

Lloyd looks away, one unusually-sharp tooth gnawing at his lip. 

“I know my dad — my dad I used to have — he loved me. I know he did.” Lloyd sounds, rather devastatingly, like he’s trying to convince himself. “But now that he’s…now that he’s like this, and after everything that happened, I almost wish — I almost—”

He cuts off, covering his face with his hands. “Never mind.”

Skylor stays still, her gaze fixed ahead on a dark spot in the city skyline. If it were her, she’d want—

Lloyd’s voice is a muffled whisper. “I wish he’d never loved me at all.”

Skylor lets out a long, shaky breath. 

Lloyd gives a dry, horrible kind of laugh. “That’s terrible, isn’t it? It’s so selfish, it’s — I’m a horrible person, for thinking that way. But it — it hurts now, to think that — that maybe, now that I’m different — and her — that even my dad—” 

“It hurts,” she murmurs. “To lose it. To think that it’s your fault.”

Lloyd brings his arms over his head, the bandages on his left arm a stark white in the dimness as he buries his face in his knees. Curling up, as if he can make himself small enough the world will finally forget he exists. 

Skylor’s…familiar. 

But then again, is she? 

She swallows. Her father was one thing, but if — if he came back now, after she’s worked so hard to move on — at the height of his madness, what would she do? 

She’s out of her depth, as she’s always been.

But there was a reason she answered the call so fervently, a reason she followed Lloyd without hesitation. Skylor doesn’t put much stock in the Green Ninja, doesn’t put much in any kind of prophecy. But she does care, very much, about Lloyd, and she thinks that’ll take her a bit farther.

“You know.” She looks down, running her finger over their last rock. “You were one of the first people that gave me any hope that I could change. That, uh, someone could love me.”

Lloyd startles, emerging just enough that she can see the green of an eye. “Huh? Me?”

She nods. “Back on my father’s island, during the tournament. I was convinced that…that after everything I’d done, with who I was, there wasn’t a chance I’d find someone who loved me.”

Lloyd frowns, lowering his arms so he can look at her fully. “But I didn’t — Kai was the one who reached out to you. He was the one that saw you. I didn’t…I didn’t really do anything.”

“Yeah. He did. But he reached out to you, first.”

Lloyd stares at her, eyes wide. Skylor smiles at him. “You were good. No matter how bad your family had been. And it…it had been okay, for you.” 

The mistiness returns to Lloyd’s eyes as he looks back to the skyline, his lip caught tightly between his teeth. 

“We’re doing okay, right?” Skylor pulls her own knees up to her chest. “You and me. I mean, we helped, a lot. We fought back for the city. You did a lot more than me, obviously, but—”

“Don’t say that,” Lloyd sounds pained. “Don’t compare it, like I’m — I do a lot more harm than good, sometimes.”

“You don’t say that,” Skylor snaps. 

Lloyd flinches. She bows her head, staring down at her feet. 

“We’re good,” she says, hating the way her voice wobbles. “We’re different.”

It’s occurring to her, how cold it is out here on the water. She hopes Lloyd doesn’t get home with a cold, on top of everything else. 

“We’re different,” Lloyd echoes.

“Yeah.” Skylor swallows. “That has to count for something, right?”

Lloyd makes a small noise, but it isn’t one of disagreement. There’s a rustling as he reaches for the bag, then holds out their final, sad rock. 

“Wanna give it the last try?” He gives her a crooked, half smile. “Make it count?”

Her fingers close over the rough surface, cold against the warmth of his hand. 

The brightness of the sun against water on her father’s island in her eyes, Skylor flings the rock as hard as she can, far enough that it’s swallowed entirely by the harbor darkness. 

If she tries, she can imagine it skipping, just once, across the freezing waters. 

She tells herself, it counts anyways.

[laswells-ashtray]

thinking about retired MacMillan, about to go to bed... when suddenly his phone rings. He picks it up, ready to go off at whatever telemarketer dared to call him at 11pm at night

It's John Price, drunk out of his mind *sobbing* about how he's sorry, he was such a prick, he was a bad Sergeant and he understood MacMillan now. ((Soap just nearly blew himself up disobeying an order and Price had the sudden realization that *that was him as a Sergeant*)) Nikolai has to practically wrestle the phone away from drunken Price, apologizing to MacMillan for taking his eyes off him.

Price doesn't remember the phone call, and is very confused when a few days later MacMillan shows up to base demanding to see his "grand sergeants" as Price drunkenly said (you're they're grand-captain! and they're your grand-sergeants!!!)

They're at a bar when it happens. After a mission that was successful but not without a handful of life-threatening hiccups, John drinks more than usual and if Nikolai is honest, he suspects the captain's last whisky was spiked because it takes one song change for the gruff Englishman to quickly turn sombre and start reminiscing about his own captain.

Nikolai is quick to lead his partner out of the bar with a quick goodbye to the rest of them as he decides it's home time for the two of them. Three minutes. Three minutes is all it takes before he hears John sniffling and turns to see him mumbling into his phone, quickly dissolving into a genuinely emotional, heartfelt apology to whoever is on the other line. That's when he knows John's drink was tampered with. He takes a quick second to text Ghost and inform him of what's happened, telling him to watch around the bar in case it happens to someone else or one of them.

By then John is out of it, tears streaming down his face as he rants and raves about the difficulties of the mission and how they almost lost Soap to whoever's on the other end of the phone. The he catches it. "Fuck, 'm, sorry, Mac. Was a right git when I was a sergeant."

MacMillan. He drunk-dialed MacMillan, unsurprising. Nikolai likes the older man, always has and he knows John still keeps in touch even if the contact is rare with how busy he is.

He has to wrestle the phone out of his partner's hands with one of his own while using the other hand to ensure John remains standing. A task far more difficult than expected but he succeeds.

"Captain?"

"Wit the fu- Nikolai?"

"Да."

"Wit the fuck? Is John awright? Dinnae tell me the lad's concussed, or is he pished? Wit's he dribblin' oan about sergeants fir? Nikolai, why is my boy greetin' doon the phone like a bairn who's scraped his knee?"

For a brief moment, Nikolai curses your average Scotsman because he's a little drunk and if he thought Soap was bad then the young man has nothing on a tired MacMillan.

"Apologies, Captain. We were at a bar and I believe John's drink has been tampered with. He is rather out of it."

"Oh, for fuck sake. Is he awright? Are yous back hame or still fannyin' aboot at the pub?"

"We're heading back home now."

"Mac, I'm sorry-"

"Aye, a ken, son. Get hame and intae yer bed. Nikolai, get 'im in bed. geez a ring if there's any trouble. Awright lad?"

"Да, sir. Goodnight, captain."

"Night Nik."

After that Nikolai doesn't think much about the phone call. He's preoccupied with getting John home and responding to the text Ghost sends him. It's a picture of a man beaten bloody in an alley behind the pub. He knew Ghost would find the bastard tampering with drinks.

Then he gets called into John's office a few days later and is met with two faces. A very confused-looking John and a very fucking amused MacMillan.

"Ah, there he is. Nikolai, mind reminding our wee John here about that phone call from the other night? I believe I have, what was it you called grand-sergeants to meet? Where's the Scottish lad? I'm mighty interested in that one."

"What the fuck are you on about, Mac?"

"Oh, you don't remember? I'm glad. I can't wait to tell you all about your heartfelt apology for being a pain in my arse back in the day."

Nikolai knows he's in for it later when he snorts at the expression on John's face and his partner shoots him a glare. But the sheer unbridled joy on MacMillan's face when Nikolai lets slip that John's lieutenant and two sergeants are actually in the gym training with each other makes it worth it.

Hours later when MacMillan has the three men cracking up with old stories of John's batshit antics when he was a sergeant, Nik is happy. Happy that they're all relaxed for once and enjoying themselves but mostly he's happy that John, while moderately embarrassed, looks more content than he's been in weeks.

John Price might be a captain but he was MacMillan's sergeant long before that. It's an incentive to remind John to contact the older man more often. Just not at night, for the life of him, Nikolai cannot figure out what a bairn is.

[hayatoseyepatch]

What are the windbreaker boys' doing for no nut november lol

OOO HOW MUCH FUN IS THIS???

Also anon I am so so sorry how long this took me to get to, with my hiatus and the big sad I’m getting through everything now thank you for your patience MWAH.

No nut November for the windbreaker boys, I think can be broken up into a few categories (I hope it’s okay I did this kind of format I just wanted to include ALL the ones I could). SMUT under the cut.

Failed (lasted a week or less):

This man started it to join in on the challenge. He was absolutely so confident so absolutely CONVINCED that he could make it the whole month without finishing. However, when you walk into your shared living room in nothing but one of his shirts and a pair of panties he can swear that he could hear his heart racing in his ears. He swore you never looked more beautiful than you had in that moment. He felt faint, felt like he hadn’t had your taste on his lips in months (it had been three days). He craved you. It was then and there that he realized he made a grave mistake, he knew there was no way he was going to make it out of this month alive.

He tries, he tries to rush off to the bathroom, flushing his body with cold water or thinking of the most un-sexy things that he could, but he felt like it was putting a bandaid on a bullet hole. His cock ached, he craved you far too much. As he stood under the cold water of the shower, he wondered what he was doing this for. Some bragging rights? Yeah. Fuck. That. He is leaving that shower and walking right up to where you stood, not caring that his skin was cold and damp. His lips attaching to the skin of your neck in frenzied kisses.

“What are you doing? Aren’t you doing your challenge?”

Your words fell on deaf ears, any further ones would be silenced as his mouth claimed your own. Tongue invading your mouth before you had a chance to even string a coherent thought. Large hands hoisted you up on the counter, slotting himself between you parted thighs to deepen the kiss. One hand steadying you with a grip on your hip, the other still placed on your thigh to pull you as close as possible to his body.

“Fuck that dumb ass challenge, cant go another moment without having you, baby.”

(HAJIME UMEMIYA, Akihiko Nirei, Choji Tomiyama, Taiga Tsugeura, Teruomi Inugami, Minoru Kanuma & Kanon Banjo)

Failed (almost made it to the end of the month):

He was confident, too, had already lasted over half the month. Maybe even into the third week of the month. He could see, though, how it was affecting you. The way he had seen you rubbing your thighs together, the way you had curled around him in your sleep, you were being deprived of pleasure. That because of a challenge he decided to participate in, he inadvertently has force you to participate in as well. So he made the decision, confident enough in the control he had to at least pleasure you, without finishing himself.

So here he was, settled between your thighs. His tongue lapping at your clit, with two fingers buried deep within the gummy walls of your cunt. Gods, how had he gone without you this long? His mind was hazy, lost in the euphoria of tasting you on his tongue for the first time in weeks. Missing the delicious squelch that your wetness made when he pulled his fingers inside your pussy. So lost in the way you tasted on his tongue. The way your walls hugged his digits. The way your thighs wrapped around his head. He was so lost in you that he hadn’t noticed the way in which his hips began to rub against the plush mattress beneath him.

“Fuck baby, taste so fucking delicious.”

His words came out muffled into your cunt. Mouth greedily devouring your cunt as if he needed you like the air in his lungs. He craved this, craved you. His ministrations were making his own head fuzzy, so pussy drunk he couldn’t feel the coil tightening in his stomach. Couldn’t realize that the way he was rutting his clothed cock into the mattress below was bringing him to release. He was so sensitive after weeks of having not even a touch to himself. Before he realized what was happening he was spilling into his boxers at the same time you were riding out your own orgasm on his tongue. After you both come down from your high  and he realizes what he’s done, all he can think is “well I already lost, might as well make it worth it”.

(Haruka Sakura (only participated because he heard 'challenge' and that was it),  Jo Togame, Hiragi Toma, Tasaku Tsubaki, Shuhei Suzuri, Yukinari Arima, Yuto Kusumi, Uryu & Seiryu Sakaki)

Succeeded:

These men are extremely strong-willed, able to make it to the end of the month. Though not without some challenges, the was you had tried to make him crack throughout the course of the month did not go unnoticed. The short skirts, wearing his clothes around, foregoing the use of panties with making him aware of such, and overall just sauntering around in any state of undress within the walls of your apartment. He’s been using all those moments, committing them to memory for when the month was over. So when December 1st is here you better hide. Because the moment the clock hits midnight on December 1st he is on you before you can so much as think to try and escape him.

“You thought you were so cute this past month, didn’t you baby? What was that, hm? I can’t hear you.”

You were unsure how he expected you to be able to utter a single syllable. Not with the way his cock was bullying your insides. Not with the way your knees were pressed to your chest, they had at one point been over his shoulders, but with the way he took to devouring your mouth with his own they were placed as they are now. He didn’t know how he could have even succeeded in this, not with the delicious way you felt suffocating his cock with your cunt. He most certainly would never be doing this again. Never depriving you both of the pleasure of losing yourselves in each other’s bodies. Especially not with the way you called his name, looking up at him with half-lidded eyes so full lust like he was the only person to exist.

Yeah, no, he was never doing this again.

(HAYATO SUO, Ren Kaji, Mitsuki Kiryu, Saku Mizuki, Kota Sako, Akihiko Miyoshi & Kanji Nakamura)

Did not try at ALL:

There was nothing that he could think of that was stupider than this challenge. Couldn’t think of why on earth he would deprive not only himself, but you, of physical pleasure. He could not fathom why he would miss out on the way your gummy walls felt when they clung to his cock with a vice grip. Watching the way your eyes rolled into the back of your head as he fucked into your tight cunt. Or the way your mouth felt wrapped around his cock, the tears coating your lashes as he fucked that cute little throat. So, yeah, he thought it was stupid. He relished in he tortured looks of his friends as they struggled through the month, all while knowing he was going to be going home and spilling inside you the moment he could.

He shook his head, wondering if any of these guys even so much as asked their partner if they wanted partake in this dumb ass challenge. If they were okay with the decision to deny their pleasure from their partner for an entire month. All he knew was that wasn’t something he would every do to his partner. Instead when he got home, he trailed kisses up your spine, before settling in the crook of your neck. Being sure to leave a mark in his wake that would let anyone who saw it know that he both of you couldn’t care less about the challenge. His hands gripping firmly on your hips, rocking you back on him, eyes glued to the way his cock disappears within your depths.

“Fuck baby just like that, doing so fucking good for me.”

He emphasized each word of his sentence with a snap of his hips angling to hit deeper with every thrust. Head thrown back as he lost himself in the way you felt. Hips continuing their steady pace, chewing on his bottom lip as he fucked into you. Hips slapping against yours the wetness of your skin causing it to echo against the tile walls of your shared bathroom. He lets his fingers finally curl around your throat squeezing just enough to make gaining air flow a bit difficult as the other's thumb begins rubbing slow dragging circles against your puffy clit. The way your walls began to spasm around his cock made him all the more satisfied in his choice, because there was no way he’d be missing out on this for a whole month.

(YAMATO ‘why the fuck would I go an entire month without touching my partner’ ENDO, Haruka Sakura, Takiishi Chika (thinks it is stupid and does what he wants when he wants), & Kotaro Sugishita.)

[r-eatyourfriends-n]

SMOKED | l.hs 이희승 | Collide pt. 2

bestfriend!heesung x bestfriend!reader

READ PT 1 HERE.

warnings: smut (mdni), pwp (plot's there if you look hard enough), unprotected sex, overstimulation (sort of?), no use of "y/n", light switch!dynamics from both reader and heesung, car sex, unsafe driving lowkey, dryhumping, minor argument, heesung is down bad honestly.

wc: 3.8k

synopsis: days have passed after your first hook up with Heesung, though neither of you have said anything about it. Instead, you continue your search for a good one night stand somewhere else, but your mind and body know where you should be.

a/n: wow! the moral obligation I had to finish this before posting anything else was crazy, but after a huge block it's finally here. If you think this is better than pt1 it's because it is, but it's also because it has been approved by the one and only @molloygendered !!!!! my bestfriend and editor. he wanted to review this again before posting it but I'm a kid on sugar so I held him at gunpoint to approve this. any feedback is appreciated !!! hope you enjoy.

4 unread messages.

sorry to bother u so late

can u pick m up? pls

[Address]

idk if ure awake sorry

Heesung's screen lit up on his desk, breaking his focus from the heated game in front of him. He unlocked his phone, the other hand still gripping the controller tightly. His eyes moved quickly from the texts popping up and then back to the screen, which nearly got him killed. 

The team won eventually, but just barely. Heesung logged out as soon as it was over. He spent the whole time wanting to check his phone.

“Dude, what the fuck are you doing?”Jake yelled at him through the call. “We almost lost."

“My bad. Gotta go,” he said in a monotone voice, showing no remorse as he hung up the call despite Jake's groans.

He looked back down at his phone and texted back a short "omw" before getting up from his chair, stretching his arms. His bones cracked, so loud it made him wince at the sound.

With quick steps, he changed into something a bit more decent, just a plain white t-shirt on top of his cargo pants, which had been slowly losing their black tone after each wash. The chains on his thick belt dangled as he walked out of his room and began to head out of his apartment, taking his keys from the cat-shaped key holder you had put on his wall. He had been surprised the first time he hung his keys and a white cat popped up. It was supposed to be a prank, but Heesung never found it in him to take it off despite the fact that it didn't match with the overall vibe of his room one bit. The kitten disappeared inside the box as he left.

The distance to your location was short, or perhaps Heesung was driving a little too fast. Either way, he arrived about fifteen minutes after telling you that he was on his way to pick you up. He parked in front of a small, black gate which led to some stairs. The complex seemed fairly little, but somewhat cozy, with small balconies filled with pots and all kinds of houseplants. Although it was past midnight and dark, he could still make out the colors of the flowers that were placed by the edges of the windows, leaves moving along with the wind.

Leaving the car on, he hopped out, leaning back against  the driver's door to wait for you. Admittedly, it was ill-intended. He hoped your date would see him and would be thrown off. 

The wait felt like eternity. When the door opened, your figure finally appeared in a white dress with black dots, just a bit above the knee. The cleavage allowed for the black choker to stand out, your name's initial dangling softly. Heesung had always wished it was an H instead.

You smiled at Heesung when you saw him, tilting your head in confusion because why was he out of the car? Heesung smiled back at you, a soft beam on his lips. Then looked to your side when a boy appeared next to you.

He eyed your guy up and down as he said goodbye to you. He was tall like you liked them, with flawlessly tan skin and a face that was nothing short of charming, with a sort of boyish appeal to him, and it was obvious why you had said yes to a date in the first place. Heesung swallowed hard, his own jealousy burning down his throat.

You didn't seem too enchanted by the guy, though, looking almost uncomfortable as he leaned in to kiss your cheek. You fake-giggled (at least, he thought you did) and grinned at him politely before making your way to Heesung. The guy appeared to be a little turned off by you getting picked up by another man, for he did not take his eyes off of Heesung as he walked to the passenger's seat to open the door for you, a gesture that you were used to. Before hopping back in, Heesung winked at him, a smug grin forming. After that, you two were off speeding down the road. He'll take the long way home, he decided.

“Thanks for picking me up,” you broke the silence after a few minutes of driving. “You didn't have to wait outside though, it's freezing.” 

"I was trying to scare him off,” Heesung chuckled, a half joke that managed to pass as just something playful, making you laugh and hit his arm.

“I don't think he liked that,” you said after your laugh subsided.

“I think it was you who didn't like him.” 

You went silent for a bit, sulking on your seat.

“So, how was it?” 

“I liked him,” you mumbled, biting your lip in thought. “It was good, yeah.”

“But?” Heesung inquired, raising an eyebrow.

“I guess I was hoping for something more... intense?”

Heesung turned his face, pretending to check something on the rearview mirror so that you wouldn't notice him biting his lip. He hoped you were referring to him, about the intimate moment you two had shared a few nights before, about the bite that was still decorating your shoulder so beautifully. A purple light enough to resemble a bruise; poor clumsy you, tripped and hit yourself with his mouth.

“Intense how?” he asked.

“To hell if I know,” you shrugged.

He furrowed his eyebrows, glancing your way quickly. 

“You clearly do know.” 

“I don't. If I did I would tell you, Hee,” you said, confused.

“Like how you told me you were off to see another douchebag?” Heesung spat. 

His words made you quickly turn your head. And although he wasn't looking at you, you knew he could feel your glare burning through his skin. The sudden change in attitude had been nothing short of baffling. He seemed to keep his eyes on the road to avoid your stare rather than for safety. You couldn't tell if bouncing his leg was anger, anxiety, both, or something entirely different.

“How do you know he was a douchebag?! I told you it was fine!” you whined.

“Did he even make you come?” he asked. 

You opened your mouth to fight back, but the only sound that came out was your breath hitching. It had been such a simple question, but it ignited the memories of your one time affair with him. The soft promises, the surpassed expectations, the sweet, sweet release. Your body began to tingle in the places where his hands had lingered, and you found yourself shuddering on the seat. Of course Heesung had asked that, while knowing your answer, too.

“Sex is not all about that.” you said finally, voice low with uncertainty. 

“Oh, so that's why you fuck every idiot with a mushroom cut.” Heesung mumbled.

“What the hell is your problem? You don't even know him!” your ears rang as your voice raised in pitch.

“Oh I know him; clerk job moron who thinks sticking it in is enough.”

You tried to ignore the fact that he was a receptionist at your esthetician’s clinic who you happened to make conversation with during a long wait. He had been bold enough to ask you to grab dinner and two days later you were kissing in the elevator of his one-bedroom apartment. 

That kiss had set your expectations through the roof, hoping that you had landed your perfect match. And it had been nice, sort of, but not like you had wished for, or had imagined. The way you had envisioned things and the way said things happened were complete opposites. Maybe it had been your fault for already having something in mind.

The conflict his words caused reflected in your face, a turmoil evident as you stumbled out your next words.

“I still don't understand why it bothers you so much. I know I'm sleeping with a bunch of idiots.” 

“You're hellbent on letting these assholes touch you.” he grunted.“ I can't stand it, I don't get it. It's pointless, it's…”

You were barely able to make out the words; he was just rambling, or so you concluded.

“How is that your problem?” you cut him off, bringing him back from his thoughts.

Only then, Heesung realized the slip up. Yes, you were right, and regardless of how close the two of you were, it was ultimately your call who you slept with, which bothered Heesung to no end. Why were you so against calling him again? Why didn't you ask to have sex again? Why did he finally have you, only for you to slip through his fingers? 

He hoped you hadn't caught onto it, but you knew him too well not to. Everything made sense after; his seemingly sudden offer, waiting for you outside of the car, this angry fit.

“I said, how's that your problem? What about it?” you pushed, in response to Heesung's answer, which had been silence.

“You can do so much better than that.” he finally said.

“So,” you smiled at him. “Think you can be my better?”

Heesung pulled the car over, so quickly your body flew towards the door, and he almost hit his chest with the steering wheel. His grip on it was tight, and he began panting. You thanked god about the empty, dark road, otherwise it could've ended in a nasty crash.

Both of your eyes meet, his pupils blown out with a hint of a gleam in them. There was hope, a tad bit of anger, and an undeniable desire. His hands were twitching, itching to touch you, and you didn't remember ever feeling so wanted.

Heesung's gaze slowly drifted to your lips, almost involuntarily. Your mouth fell open to breath, uneven and quick. The car was cold, but your temperature went up like a fever.

“Are you going to kiss me?” 

His gaze met yours once more. “Can I?”

You nodded. It was all he needed to pull you in, holding your face with both hands as gently but firmly as he could. Afraid, in a weird way, that you would disappear if he let go. That this was all a sick dream from his hungry mind and that he was soon to wake up alone, in bed, with you far away from his grasp.

Despite how much he wanted to keep it slow, the kiss was just plainly instinctual. It had started soft, as if he wanted it to last forever, which he did. Then it was relentless, like nothing was enough, with your faces pressed so tightly together that you almost felt you couldn't breathe properly. Heesung allowed you a few seconds of air before he was onto you again.

It was hard to keep up with him, but you managed, because this was what you wanted anyway. It was hard to tell if you would ever get to feel something like this again; the desperation, your blood pounding in your ears from the anticipation before he made the move, and your whole body shaking in excitement as if it had a memory of its own, and could recognize the touch. 

“Backseat,” you muttered between kisses. 

He heard you, loud and clear, he just couldn't stop himself. He wanted more. Heesung wanted to do so much with you, and to you, that he was unable to do anything at all. He couldn't bring himself to separate his mouth from yours despite needing the air, and his hands roamed mindlessly and only for the sake of getting a feel. The once deliberate and calculated Heesung was now a wreck in your hands, melting in the heat like a popsicle. Sweet.

But you really had to pull him off, otherwise you'd turn blue. Your nails scratched his scalp as you yanked him back, making him whimper in the process. The way he looked burned in your memory; eyes half-lidded, lips pink and swollen, parted, panting. Even with his eyes nearly closed, you could see his darkened eyes.

“I said backseat, Heesung,” you repeated, letting go of his hair. “Do you want to fuck me or not?” 

In every single position there was. Fingers, tongue, cock, he wanted to give you everything and more, so he scrambled to the backseat as you had ordered. 

This is who you were; demanding and controlling. That one time he manhandled you? Only that, a one time thing, now you wouldn't give in so easily. Not after the little jealousy number he pulled, at least. You weren't all that resilient yourself, but you would drag it as far as you could.

Heesung thought that he had chosen the worst type of clothing possible. Had he kept the sweatpants instead of changing into something else, then maybe the friction would've been more bearable. The rough material of his pants brushing against his cock made him groan whenever he slightly shifted. And when he finally found comfort, you seated yourself on his lap and grinded, hard. 

“Ohfuck,” he whined, his hands flying to your hips to find some leverage. His nails dug into your sides. “You're gonna— I'm not gonna last.” 

You grinded down again. And again, until you set your pace, ignoring his cries. The nails trying to claw at your skin drove you further despite the sting. As much as he tried to slow you down in the name of ‘lasting longer', he still thrusted his hips up to meet you halfway, though his eyes were tightly shut, and lips pressed in a straight line.

“Please, please baby, I don't wanna come yet, please.” 

“Did I just hear The Lee Heesung begging?” 

He looked up at you, teary eyed. His bangs were stuck to his forehead, as sweat had already begun to drip from his hair. That had been enough of an answer.

Yes, you had. It had been about the hottest thing you had ever heard as well. Usually confident Lee Heesung, always took the lead Lee Heesung, would rather die than humiliate himself Lee Heesung, whining and whimpering about coming too fast after some kissing and humping. That same Heesung that had been able to get not one, but three orgasms out of you before even getting close. It was a sight to see.

You stopped, and Heesung sighed in relief, although the calm didn't last long. As a smirk formed on your lips, his eyes grew panicked. 

“If you come, I'll leave this car,” you said, rolling your hips again.

“No, no, no, no, no,” he whimpered. He squeezed his eyes shut again, the shape of his fingers imprinting onto your skin. Back then, when the two of you first had sex, this was the reality of what Heesung felt, even when he did a good job at not letting himself seem so desperate. 

He'd be damned if he looked like a loser in front of you, or so he thought. Because now that your wet underwear was soaking his pants, he was a mess. A hard, pathetic mess, desperately trying not to burst in his jeans from having you on top of him.

You yourself didn't believe you could keep torturing him, only because you were also torturing yourself in the process. His hard length along with the rough fabric of his pants brushed against your clit in a way that sent jolts through your body. It was harsh and uncomfortable while still feeling good enough not to stop.

Heesung's hips twitched with a mind of their own, searching for release against his wishes. You halted, leaning your body back to unbuckle his belt. He groaned at the loss of contact though didn't complain any further, and instead helped you get rid of his restraintments quicker. His breath ghosted over your skin as he sighed in relief, which made you shudder. 

His fingers went down to tease you under your dress, rubbing over the wetness seeping through your panties, and even with the layer in between, he could feel his fingers dampen. Heesung continued until you were left whining and attempting to grind your hips harder onto his hand. Only then did you feel him push the fabric to the side, and the tip of his cock pressed against your cunt.

After Heesung had you the first time, he knew that he couldn't let you go. Days went by where he would still feel your lips against his; the skin of your thighs, hot and sweaty, burning his cheeks as you closed your legs around his head while you came on his tongue. Not one day went by where he didn't fantasize about pushing himself inside you, and in some dreams, he would just stay there. 

But nothing was able to prepare him for when it actually happened. He thought the desperate way in which you lowered yourself on his cock might be too much for you. In reality, it was almost too much for him, as it forced a deep moan from his throat.

It was a little painful, walls tightening and loosening around him to accommodate the quick stretch, though the sting was worth Heesung's debauched expression. You wondered why,despite the uncomfortable, small space, it felt so much better than the first time. Maybe it was how much both of you had seemed to crave it, or the car forcing even more proximity between you two, as the things you could do were limited. Regardless, you could feel your lower region sticky and warm with the slick that had, apparently, dripped out of you and spread around your thighs and ass. 

You could barely hear your over breathing over Heesung's heavy one. His hands massaged the skin of your waist where he held himself, mostly to ground himself to earth, or so you guessed, because he looked completely gone. His cheeks cherry red and his lips a peach pink, and you succumbed to the urge to kiss him. 

This time, it was slow and calculated. He took the time to feel the rest of you, from threading his fingers in your hair, to ghosting his fingers over your spine from under the dress. You didn't fall behind, though, raising his shirt as much as you could to run your nails over your stomach, stopping to feel his muscles tense beneath your hands as you began to move your hips.

“Slow, baby, please,” he breathed out, it came out way more high pitched than he intended to. 

As much as you wanted to keep messing with him, the world had seemed to fade away, leaving you two alone with the car and the small piece of road that you were parked in, and you didn't feel like breaking the moment just yet. You placed your hands on his shoulders for better stability, and rested your forehead on the crook of his neck.

Whispers of praises poured from his lips. You're beautiful, you're amazing, could stay here forever, and another handful that got lost between all the shit's and fuck’s that also came nonstop. He followed all of his words and phrases by kissing your neck, sometimes even biting. You might find a mark when you look in the mirror, but you cared little about that. Instead, you decided to leave a mark of your own, sucking and biting on the most visible place that you could think of. That's when he began to meet your movements, thrusting up messily in an attempt to pick up a pace. 

“Say you're—,” he gulped, interrupting himself. “You're mine.”

“Always have been,” you smiled against the light red bite mark. 

Your voice as you rode his cock kept driving him closer to the edge. Every moan and whine just made him go faster, having already been close to his orgasm from the grinding before. And as you grew tired, it felt as if he was regaining some form of control. Heesung smirked when you laid, practically limp, against him, allowing him to set the speed that he wanted. He remembered that he loved being in control as much as he had loved giving it to you.

“F-faster,” you pleaded lowly.

Heesung pouted, even when you couldn't see him. “No manners, sweetheart?” 

Most likely, you were about to pay a small price for threatening him to leave. 

You swallowed, so loud you were sure he had heard. “Please.” 

“What? I didn't hear you.” 

“Go faster, Hee, please!” you nearly yelled. It had been hard to get the words out after getting him where you wanted.

“There we go!” 

Were you being pushed down on his cock or was he pushing up into you? By this point, you weren't really sure. What you were certain about, though, was that he reached wherever you needed him to, and the squelching sounds were at its loudest.

“Was he good like me?” Heesung asked, grunting through his teeth. “Were you thinking about me while he fucked you?”

He wasn't expecting to get answers, and he didn't. You were too focused on the feeling of your body overheating from the inside out, and all of your muscles tensing. Your walls clamped around him involuntarily as pushed you closer to the orgasm that you had been chasing since the beginning of your date a few hours ago.

Heesung wanted you to finish first, he truly tried, but there was no way to stop the waves of pure pleasure that hit as he came, and the fact that he got to come inside of you just made it hit harder, and you had to help him ride out his climax because he really couldn't move, just kept himself there with his brows furrowed.

You were close as well, so you didn't really stop despite Heesung reaching his orgasm first. Even through his over sensitivity, he helped you reach your own high. He sneaked his hand between your bodies to rub messy circles on your clit. You kept it slow on him, but he went fast. 

It didn't take long for you after that. Feeling you on his cock as you orgasmed almost made him hard again, if it wasn't so late and you hadn't been going at it for what felt like forever—not that he was complaining—. He got to watch your face contort into pure pleasure, better than any daydreams.

Heesung pressed his forehead against yours, unable to do anything other than show you something, whatever that something was. It lingered in the air, in the way he looked at you through his teary gaze. He kissed you, slower than ever before.

Whatever was going through his mind was deeper than lust, you could feel it in the way his lips moved so softly against yours, holding your face with both hands. You wondered if he knew that you didn't plan on slipping away again.

[3igbootyl0ver]

A New Face (Pt.4) | Home

pairing: Tara Carpenter x Reader

summary: after eight months, you and Tara are closer than ever. Her playful texts pull you away from a project, and you spend the night cuddling, reassuring her you're not going anywhere.

word count: 981

a/n: hi guys this is literally so short bc I didn't want to ruin it + I'm already working on another part for who hurt you. this can read as a oneshot by itself hence the extra title; anyways I hope u guys like it, any feedback is appreciated and I'm proud of myself for figuring out how to do this collage thing below xoxo

It’s been 8 months since you and Tara went on your first date and started dating; since then, you’ve shared countless memories, learned more about each other than you ever expected, and your bond only has deepened, making you both excited to see what the future holds together. There’s been a mix of growth, fun and intimate moments; and although there’s a few challenges, there’s always playfulness and banter in the relationship. 

Tonight, you’re focused on finishing your project, eager to submit it at least a day before the deadline so you won’t have to rush and send in poor quality work. But then, a ping on your phone distracts you.

Tara <3

can you come over? i miss you and I’m bored

Sent at 11.45pm

You

sorry babe, I can’t. i have a project due in a few days

Sent at 11.47pm

Tara <3

guess i’ll just sit in bed..alone,cold

all by myself

w nobody to cuddle with. allll alone

You

oh shut up I’m putting my shoes on

Sent at 11.55pm

This usual banter happens often. Honestly, you didn’t mind how clingy Tara is, you knew what the younger Carpenter has been through. She decided to let you know about her past after a month of dating, with what happened to her and the core four a year ago; and you comforted her with cuddles and kisses with soft whispers for being brave and having to go through all of that.

It’s almost midnight, but the way Tara’s playful messages cut through the tranquil night, it’s hard not to smile. You know her well enough to recognize when she’s pretending to be dramatic—and when she’s genuinely feeling a little lonely or vulnerable.The little banter between the two of you has become a ritual, a comfort. But beneath it all, there’s that deep understanding of each other’s lives, pasts, and fears. You know Tara’s history, and you know she’s been through a lot. You could never understand how anyone would willingly put her in harms way. A single glance from her could make you melt into a puddle, as if the weight of the world disappeared in the softness of her eyes, leaving you both grounded and utterly undone at the same time.

 You know that when you get to her place, all the tension in your body will melt away. As you head out, a small part of you can’t help but reflect on how far you’ve both come in just eight months—how much you’ve both grown together. Every little moment, where you can simply drop everything and be there for each other, makes all the difference.

Tara’s got a special place in your heart, and tonight, it’s all about making her feel seen, heard, and loved. For so long, the idea of "home" felt like a distant concept, something that belonged to a life you couldn’t fully reclaim after your parents passed. You thought you’d never feel settled again, that kind of deep connection, the feeling of being truly seen and understood. But with Tara, it’s different. It’s effortless, the way she makes you feel both grounded and free. Her presence fills spaces in your heart you didn’t know were empty.

As you may your way to her place, a soft smile tugs at the corner of your lips. It’s funny how simply being with her, in her space, cuddling under the blankets, or sharing small moments of laughter, feels more like home than anything else ever has. When you knock on her door, she’s already standing there, as if she already felt your presence from a block away; wrapped in a blanket, her hair falling messily around her face, and that familiar twinkle of mischief in her eyes. “You’re late,” she teases, her voice a soft mixture of playfulness and a hint of relief. Ever since you both got together, Tara’s been more anxious, fearing that Ghostface might pop out and take you from her. She’s expressed her concerns to you, and you’ve made sure to constantly remind her that you aren’t going anywhere. “I’m not going anywhere, Tara— you’re stuck with me, no matter what.” Besides, you don’t mind constantly texting her and sending pictures of whatever you’re up to.

“Lay with me? Please?” You fold almost instantly, allowing her to pull you into her bedroom while making sure to keep quiet, since Sam is asleep. Just as you settle onto her bed beside her, Tara does her little grabby hands and you pull her against you, her legs over yours and hugged your torso, resting her head and smiling into your shoulder, inhaling your scent as she had always associated you with safety. You smiled fondly, caressing her thigh with your hand before leaning forward to place a kiss on her forehead. Tara’s eyes fluttered at the gesture, and you can feel your heart soar at how adorable she is.

“I love you, so, so much. Did you know that?” You whispered close to her forehead. The warmth of your whisper sent a gentle shiver down her spine. “I know, but I don’t mind hearing you say it again, and again..” You chuckled softly at her statement.

“I don’t mind it either, because I’ll keep saying it; every day if I have to” You smiled softly, the words lingering between you.

Before you could say more, she pressed her lips to yours, soft and gentle—the familiar taste of strawberry from her lip balm making you sigh in content. The kiss was warm, comforting, like coming home. When she pulled back, her eyes fluttered open, a shy smile tugging at her corner of her lips. “I love you more,” she whispered, her breath mingling with yours.

It was safe to say that you didn’t manage to finish your project anytime soon. But with Tara in your arms, you wouldn’t have it any other way.

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

a/n: i hope this is enough for ya'll bc i literally couldn't figure out a way to continue without it being too draggy and boring. fyi 'who hurt you' pt 2 should be coming out in 2 days hopefully idk AND idk how this taglist thing works so lmk if you'd be interested in it

taglist: @bella423

[melmedarda]

Do you think this is the end of MelJay?

I really wished they had at least a scene in ep 9 of Mel searching for Jayce/mourning him... everything seemed to shift in favor of the relationship between Jayce and Victor, and they didn't even had them turn romantic 💀Why then even gut MelJay like that? Was their last scene supposed to be a break up? Because it didn't feel like it?? Idk why they didn't even let them share a last hug/kiss...

I just feel so stupid and bitter 😭😭😭

The ending seems to hint at them being reunited once more because of Swain raven finding the stone where Jayce and Viktor got sucked in and Mel going back to Noxus but... I'm not going to delude myself anymore, no high expectations, I've been hurt enough lol

Sorry for the rant, I have no else to talk about it with 🥹 Hope you have a lovely day 💖

Oh darling feel free to rant in the askbox any time!!

Meljay in Act 3 does not exist to me personally. Arcane Act 3 can't hurt me because it doesn't exist. But also. What the writers did with Meljay was very cheap and quite frankly disappointing. I don't think Meljay are broken up at all. But I feel like all the ships suffered from this (Caitvi's I'm so sorry they would ever do this to you) cheapening of relationships with little regard to like... apologies or emotions (I personally don't believe Vi should have gotten back with Caitlyn, because Caitlyn has not groveled enough imo). So many character choices come off as OOC to me this season. I'm not sure how but there was a ball dropped here. I'll not dwell to much on this because I get angry just thinking about it.

I will say that in my wonderful mind world, Meljay end up together in every universe Viktor hasn't ruined. They are together and they are happy and they COMMUNICATE. They have four kids, and one of their children is a daughter named Ximena and another of their children is a son named Kino. Thank you.