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rae-gar-targaryen · 8 months ago

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darling, how could i fear any hurricane? [qimir/the stranger x force sensitive!reader]

Summary: Neither the backwater planet you’d chosen for yourself, nor the sanctity of your own mind, is safe from the nightly visitations of your dream stranger. Is he real, or just another trick of the mind? And what of the power he promises? Desire, he’d spoken of. Desire, desire, desire…

Pairing: Qimir/The Stranger x Force-Sensitive!reader [my reader is written ambiguously, but as with all of my reader inserts are written with a Latina!reader in mind]

Warnings: 18+ please – fingering, dry humping, the brief mention of choking, Qimir being a seductive motherfucker, relatively minor smut, all things considered. The briefest descriptions of violence; reader has female anatomy.

Word Count: 5.7k of sinful soliloquy and definitely no manipulation. No, you want this power, don’t you??

A/N: Breaking my writing drought with this. I don’t know if it’s any good, and no one asked for it. But I’m glad to be sharing my writing again. Please be gentle!! Also, if you’ve ever read my Mandalorian x princess!reader fic, there’s an easter egg in here for you!

The verdant planet of Vorduun was known for very little – A small, outer-world, far from the shiny Core planets that boast chrome, progress, and bureaucracy. Lush plantlife, a fertile place with brimming riverbanks, and jungles teeming and thrumming to life with flora and fauna at the turn of the seasons. Off the edge of the map. Off the edge of the world. A perfect place to hide.

To lose yourself.

And the night is stifling, to say the least. Of all the Vorduunian summers you’d endured in your self-isolation, this one had to be the worst. The months’ long deluge of spring rains had made for a stiflingly humid summer, the green jungle steaming with sticky heat. If a saving grace was to be found in the swelter, it was that the night skies were unlike everything you’d ever beheld – a far cry from the fluorescent pollution endemic of your years on Courscant.

Tonight's Vorduunian sky is no exception – a clear expanse of rich velvet, stars like diamonds crushed into the smooth folds of the expansive sky. Twinkling and winking richly down at you through the gaping slats of the shack you now called home.

You twist, a serpent in your own threadbare bedsheets, attempting to find comfort in the sticky summer heat of the planet, chasing the elusive promise of coolness as you flip your pillow to the other side with a huff.

Kind of a sick game, if you thought about it. That if you weren’t running from something, you were chasing something else.

At present? Chasing a good night’s rest. Preferably dreamless, if you were honest. Your dreams of late are plagued with all sorts of incomprehensible flashes, feelings of being watched, feverish and hazy. Your subconscious’s foreboding certainty that if you’d only just turn around, you’d be met with a face that was not your own -– the disquieting sense of something, or someone, lurking just around a corner. Sprinting down echoing hallways with promises, greatness, a warrior's oath, all just out of reach, certain that if you’d slowed your pace, whatever was pursuing you might just snatch you, an unseen stranger.

Other nights, the dreams were different – the unflinching and unchanging grin set in a mask of metalloid teeth, baring themselves at you . Of ever-watchful eyes judging, as you forced yourself through training drills. The disapproving shake of your Master’s head, his disappointment palpable and always, always directed at only you . The seizing terror of being dropped into combat with no saber – of being skewered through by an unseen shadow with a red plasma blade. Of walls closing in on you. Of the Knights whom you had once considered your friends turning their backs on you while you fought tooth and nail. Of your lungs filled with your unreleased screams – of terror or frustration, you weren’t sure – pulling you down beneath the surface of your failure until you drowned in the disappointment of others’ unfulfilled expectations. Of hands on an unseen body tinkering with phials of something, producing poisonous concoctions of sickly green that the unseen stranger dripped down your throat, pouring them past your lips with sure, warm fingers pressing on your tongue. You swore you could feel the poison upon your waking, the phantom feeling of liquid shredding your veins with horrific heat, your heart thundering.

Other nights the dreams were different yet, still. Of shadows shedding their inky cloak to reveal hands that caressed. Of hands that held you and wiped your tears. Of thorns falling from vines – leaving what once had pricked and scratched you to now soothe with velvety softness as the vines wound their way around your wrists, tugging you into an unseen embrace with whispers of promises humming in your ears like the tufty wings of insects. And you would go willingly. Of the warm breath of another in your ear, their body warm behind you, distinct in its softness from that of the sunwarmed cliffs the two of you would watch the sunset from, just you and your unseen stranger. Of those same metalloid teeth melting into a radiant smile of brilliant white, beheld in a sharp jaw – the critique of disapproving masters replaced by his balmy, sublime approval.

Of the tease and taste of his cinnamon lips brushing your own, the fluttering fan of lashes along the peaks of your cheekbones. Of warm, wan whispers of want , desire , soothing your ears. Of warm, fine-boned, assured hands atop your own, guiding yours in a sensuous glide along your own skin. Promises of m ore, more, more as silken lips slipped their way along the column of your throat – your hitching gasps met with his rumbling hums of satisfaction that lasted in your ears for the duration of the following day. Of the gentle lapping of water over smooth-rocked shores, a hand grasping yours with a promise of power. Yet again of more, more, more, if you’d just … Well, you weren’t sure.

What you were sure of was that it had been weeks of these dreams. Your exhaustion was tugging at the corners of your reality, manifesting itself into silly mistakes – a slipped knife while cutting your meals, or the prickling feeling of someone watching from the dark corner of your room. At times, you weren’t sure what was real and what was dreamscape. A slow descent into madness, torment that felt justified, somehow –-

This purgatory was clearly your penance for your failure. To atone for the fact that you could never be more than what you are now – a former padawan cast out of a renowned Order, thanks in part to her own passions and propensities, roiling rages, and lilting lust. A warrior stripped of all pomp and credential. A blistering reminder of something never to be, of someone you could never be.

And so here you were. Piteous and exiled in the jungles of Vorduun with no one other than your occasional unseen dream stranger for company. And what of tonight? Had you slept? Were you asleep? The hazy jungle heat made it impossible to tell. When your days consist of the same, tedious routine maintenance to your little corner of jungle, purely isolated, save for irregular treks to the nearest settlement to barter … And when you tossed and turned your nights away in fitful fugue states of half-awake melded with oppressive dreams – well, who was to say what was really real?

The ghost of a touch along your exposed shoulder didn’t merit a response … Until it happened again. Causing you to sit bolt upright in bed, eyes tracking the room for any disturbance – seen or unseen.

That prickle, so like static rippling across your skin couldn’t be the Force. No, no. It was the trickle of sweat down the back of your neck, and nothing else. What reason would you have to feel the Force here, now?

Just another heated night, just another heated dream….

And now, were your eyes deceiving you, or were the shadows in the corner of your room were moving, swirling into shape as a well-toned arm emerges from the darkness, raised in a gesture of �� peace? And the rest of him follows, stepping into the muted illumination from your single gaslamp that sputters in the corner of your room, casting his shadow along the opposite wall, sinuous and slinking as he slowly approaches.

You spring from your bed, eyes darting to the loose slat in your floor where you housed your ill-used saber, quickly considering the relative size of your room and how many steps it would take him to reach you, arms outstretched, to snuff the life from you before you could call the blade to your hand .

His eyes track yours, clocking the floorboard, before placing both hands up in front of him now, a plea –

“You don’t need that,” he murmurs, taking a tentative step toward you. And whether it was the room that shrank around you both, or that was just his presence in your space – so unused to anyone but you – you weren’t sure.

“Need what?” Play dumb, and he won't have any reason to harm you, leaving you an opportunity to strike. Your favorite trick, a minor deception for a tactical advantage.

He steps into the dim, flickering light of the gas lamp, a mild smirk blooming along his full lips, the lamplight warming his skin.

“Your Jedi weapon.”

You glance once more between the loose floorboard and the man slowly approaching you, cocking your head as his features became revealed to you, your mind tickling with recognition as you noted the sharp angle of his jaw and the baleful, syrupy darkness of his eyes –

“You,” you breathe. “I know your face.”

“Do you?” His eyes meet yours, searching.

Yes. You had a good memory for faces, and his you had seen a few times before. Your trips to the nearest settlement every tenday for the open-air market to barter what you had cultivated from the land around your ramshackle home for fruit, thread, and other goods you didn’t often come by on your own. You had seen him at a stall selling tinctures and other apothecary-type goods. You’d never approached, of course. Hadn’t had a need for burn creams or toxins. But there was no denying the swooping lock of hair that would curtain over his eyes, the sharp angle of his features. The way his eyes would track the movement of the market, hawkish, despite the seeming ineffectual haze in them…

A minor deception, you now realize. But for what tactical advantage?

“The chemist from the bazaar,” you reply.

His lips quirk at your realization – the bud of the smirk now unfurling into a full smile.

“You’re more observant than I gave you credit for, warrior,” he stands before you now, hands still lightly held up in a gesture of peace. “That’s good… A nice surprise ,” his voice taking on an almost-purr of satisfaction.

You pause, lips parting lightly. What could he mean by that?

“Qimir,” he gestures to himself by way of introduction.

Qimir. Likely not his real name. Still, you ponder, an interesting choice. Qimir. Like Chimaera, something ancient and unknowable. A monstrous creature signifying the parable of illusion – the promise of something only too impossible to achieve. You wonder if he knew what his “name” sounded like when he’d picked it.

And you hope your face hasn’t betrayed your whirring thoughts as you continue your assessment, hoping to keep a sweep of neutrality across your features as you address him again.

“If you say so. Business must be slow if you’re here to rob me, poisoner. I’m afraid you’ll be sorely disappointed,” your eyes flit around the relatively bare bedroom, gesturing with your chin to the equally Spartan main room of your little ramshackle cabin. “Not much here of value.”

He crosses one foot over the other as he takes a step to orbit you, almost swordsmanlike. As though he were preparing to duel. You mirror his step, your back to your bed now, facing your doorway. His body between yours and your exit.

“I wouldn’t say nothing,” he brings a finger to his chin as if in ponderment. “You’re here, after all. And why would I give you my name, show you my face, if I intended to rob you?”

“Why you do anything means nothing to me,” you bite, “and you’ll have to forgive my manners if I don’t feel like giving you my name. Leave, now , while I let you leave, Qimir.”

His eyes sweep your form, note your weight on the balls of your feet, bracing for a fight. You probably have weapons other than your laser sword stashed away, if he had to guess . He takes a tentative step toward you, a low chuckle escaping him at the fire in your eyes, trying not to smile any wider than he has already, to give away his pleased impression of your fury.

“I know who you are,” you blink at his statement, trying not to let the surprise show on your face. “You don't have anything to fear from me, little Jedi.”

“I am no Jedi,” you snipped, rolling your eyes at the insolence of the man before you. If he cared at all about your rude display, Qimir said nothing.

“I am more than aware of that, too,” he murmured, his voice like silk in your ears as he takes yet another small step toward you, invading your space, close enough to breathe your air, a hair’s breadth from touch.

Too close. You flex your fingers, calling your lightsaber from its hiding place under your loose floorboard into the palm of your hand in a flash, the cool metal meeting your palm like an old friend, a sense of relief. You surge forward into Qimir’s space, pressing the hilt of the saber into his abdomen.

“If you know so much, then you also know you shouldn’t have come,” you snarl. “I don’t know if you didn't take the hint, here at the edge of the world, but I don't take kindly to uninvited guests.”

“You did invite me, little viper,” he insists, his voice never losing its even, dulcet quality.

At your furrowed brow, he gently brings his fingertips to brush the bare skin of your wrist that’s pressing the hilt of your lightsaber into his stomach. A familiar, prickling ripple bursts across your skin, causing goosebumps to stipple your arms. So familiar. So like the feel of lips from your unseen stranger. So like the Force.

The dark eyes that met yours in the low light of your room were familiar for more than just an observation in passing at the market.

“Y-you,” you gasp, the realization causing your chest to seize, to clench your teeth in the wave of seething anger. “You’ve been … in my head … for months …”

He cocks his head at you, watching the emotions process along your face. He had seen your fears and failures, your heart’s greatest desires. He had seen it all …

“The quickest way to your heart,” he reasons. “Through your head. So you’ll have to forgive my intrusion. I wanted to know you.” Sweet words meant to soothe.

You aren’t sure if that makes it any better. Perhaps the reasoning makes it worse.

“So like a poisoner,” you level his gaze with a steely one of your own. “To try to slip through the cracks unseen. But I know the quickest way to your heart.”

“You do?” He seems surprised at your rejoinder. As if he hadn’t expected you to play. To be so quick of wit as you were of reflex.

“Between your fourth and fifth rib,” you hum, your voice taking on an almost-seductive tone – a contradiction to the reminder of you pressing the hilt of the saber into him, precisely where you mean to.

“I appreciate a good threat. Clever,” he smiles, placating. “But there’s no need for that, little warrior. After all… I wouldn't leave you to the dark, not like they did,” he assures, brushing his fingertips against the bare skin of your wrist, so lightly you would’ve thought you’d imagined it. Using the contact to connect to you through the Force once more – your shared memories dancing behind one another’s eyes. Of your fellow Padawans succeeding while your Master only saw failure. Of the dazzlingly white smile of your classmate with the bronze skin and twists in his hair, his yellow lightsaber flashing as you drilled together, his smile fading to frown with the rest of his features as you had used the Force to push him away a bit too hard – rage bubbling to the surface – in direct violation of your training ordinances. Of your departure from Coruscant, no one to bid you goodbye, not even your training partner who had once called himself your friend.

You make to turn your head, to break contact with his dark, glimmering, all-seeing eyes. Like tar pits, drawing you ever deeper. His other hand catches your chin between thumb and forefinger, drawing you back to his gaze, an orbit you cannot escape. Would you even want to?

“And do you believe you would have belonged? The Jedi are deceivers. They deal in abandonment … cloaked in empty platitudes,” he trails his index finger along the curve of your jawline, an almost illusory brush of his skin against yours – the whisper of a touch, as though to illustrate the point. “The wisp of a promise, like spun sugar. Sweet, but false, their promises of righteousness. Of importance.”

Your lips part, catching the barest bit of his thumb as it does so, your eyes now searching his, seeking motive.

“And what do you offer instead? That's what this is, right? An offer?��

He smiles wider now, nodding in the barest acknowledgment. As though you’ve finally asked the right question.

“I … make the intangible tangible.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning …” his hand leaves the curve of your jaw to touch his fingertips to your temple, pressing, rendering a vision to your mind. And what Force magic was this? To make you see beyond your own eye’s sight. Foresight? An illusion? A vision? A memory? A promise or a deception?

Whatever it is, you see it so clearly – an uninhabited plant roaring with ocean as far as your eyeline can perceive. Waves lapping gently along grey-stoned shores. Moss-covered alcoves where you sit with him, your stranger, the sunset warming your skin as he caresses your face, your hair, whispering praises just beyond your mind’s own comprehension into your ear – the tone sinful, syrupy. His arms securing you in the night as you rest, no more dreams of abandonment.

Warmth, endless warmth… as his lips trail the shell of your ear, down your neck, bestowing belief of besotted brushes of lips. Adroit affection aimed right at the heart of you.

“Hmmm … meaning …. Your feelings, your power, your talent all working, to manifest toward something real. Something you want.” His hand leaves your temple and rests on your shoulder, taking advantage of your state of ponderment to gently guide you, ever mindful of the still-unlit lightsaber pressed to his stomach, leading away from your bed to the wall just next to the adjacent doorframe, the patient waltz of a waiting predator. He brings his hand to rest on the wall, next to your head.

“Something I want,” you reply dreamily, coming back to yourself just enough to realize what he’d said, exhaling through your nose in an indignant little huff. “In exchange for … ?”

“Tell me something,” he replies, lithely lilting around your question with one of his own, flexing his fingers where they rest on the wall. “Why are you no Jedi?”

“I … abjured,” you admit, a bit too primly, the lightsaber now feeling like an unbearable weight in your palm at your words, the weight of choices – both your own and those of whom purported to teach you. To guide you to something greater. Was it as he said? Were their promises so meaningless? “Broke my oath,” you suck your lower lip between your teeth, pausing before daring to meet his gaze again. “I couldn’t … suppress how they wanted me to. I didn’t want to fail anymore. I was so tired of failing. So, I … abjured. I was weak.”

Your eyes meet his once more at your admission, yours shining with unshed tears waiting to fall like stars. Shimmering promises to slip down your cheeks, unkept and unchecked. Your fingers fumbled, seemingly of their own accord, unwilling to hold the weight, the threat, of the saber against him any longer. The hilt clattered to the floor, a clanging finality to punctuate your words. And when was the last time you had been so honest, so vulnerable with another?

How … unlike you.

“Not weak,” he cups your cheeks with both hands, fine-boned thumbs tracing the peaks of your cheeks, as though to wipe away your unshed tears. “The same as me. Power searching for its other half. An unwaning, unflickering flame.”

Your unseen stranger, now seen, takes your hands in his, the buzz of the Force still tingling across your skin at his words, at the recognition of his power.

“You asked what I want. You want the same as me, and I the same as you. A companion . A partner. Unlike them, I won't judge you for your feelings. Won’t judge you for your power … You want – I can feel it rippling across your skin,” he closes his eyes, cocking his head, shivering as though to illustrate the point. “... Mmm, and I want, too. We can want together. If you'd let us.”

The flickering light of your room seemed to dim in tandem with his syrupy words, cloying and dripping like honey into golden nettle tea. The swirling honeytar of his eyes appraising you as the Force connection prickled with hazy heat between your bodies and the damnable musk of the jungle air.

You press yourself further into the wall he’d leaned you against, tilting your chin to appraise him in kind, searching for veracity in his words. Something more substantial than the “spun sugar” he’d accused the Jedi of weaving.

As though he could sense your trepidation before it could cross your face, he placed a hand on your hip, the contact searing you through the thin fabric of your tank top.

“They kicked you out because you feel. I'd never do that. I want you to feel … to feel power. To feel what you’re capable of. Of what it can become. Rage. Fear. Loss. Desire. Train with me, you’ll feel it all. I want you to feel it all … to feel me.”

Desire, he had spoken of. The gentle roll of his low voice over the syllables echoing perfectly in your ears. Desire, desire, desire. That desire, so like venom snaking its way through your blood, hot and purposeful. An all-consuming burn through your blood, befitting of a poisoner as he.

“You felt it, didn’t you? When I came in,” he iterates, somewhere south of a plea. “All. That. Power.” The hand not resting on your hip comes to cup your face once more. “I can teach you.”

You had read somewhere once, in the Archives, about creatures on long-abandoned planets with the ability to draw their prey in through vanity. The flash of feathers. Or shiny scales. Big, baleful eyes, perhaps. Only to sink their teeth in once their intended had come too close.

You draw in a breath, searching his pleasing face for any sign of a tell. Of the flicker of eyes that would signify deception. Of hidden fangs beneath his beautiful, full lips. Of anything that would bely his true intentions behind your Force connection. You swept your eyes across broad, defined shoulders, down toned, muscled arms exposed through his sleeveless shift. A warriors’ weapon wrapped in a pleasing package, to be sure. But … with no discernable hint of false suggestion.

You shift your weight once more onto the balls of your feet, away from the wall and into him . Continuing your appraisal as you tilt your head, allowing the scent of his skin – the tang of sweat from the humid jungle air commingling with something sharp and clean – to wash over you.

You invade his space now, leaning into the hand that grips your hip and the other that cradles your head, boldly brushing your lips along his with the barest hint of touch, feeling his lips smile against yours.

You whisper, your lips silken against his, “Tell me, poisoner … You seduce me with lies, is that it? You wish for me to call you Master? Forsake all else to worship at your altar?”

You catch the flash in his eyes as the word “seduce” leaves your lips.

“I haven't lied to you,” his voice is a hum. An attempt to provide reassurance as he couples them with what he hopes is a comforting gesture. His fingers travel from your hip to trail your ribs, a partial embrace.

“Do you consider not telling the entire truth to be a lie?”

“Have I shown you any lies? No. Just dreams. The promise of what could be. What I –,” he pauses, “– we could be. I cannot fabricate the Force, little warrior. Everything you feel tonight is you . It’s me. What more could you want? ”

Your once-steely resolve is crumbling under the weight of his insinuation … "everything you feel tonight” – the honey in his words sweet to your ears, you wonder fleetingly if he'd be even sweeter on your tongue.

And he knew you, didn’t he? By his own admission, he’d seen your faults and flaws for months … your desires. And he had shown you promises, premonitions, predilections… a future of power. And if there is power in two hemispheres – one of sweltering heat, one of blistering ice. Which were you? And which was he?

Together you would surely melt…

“No more rules, little warrior,” he sighs, “just the power of two.” He slides his lips across yours, purposeful, before capturing your lower lip between his teeth, nipping once before releasing, admiring the way your expression flickered from defiance to desire before surging forward, pressing you back into the wall as his lips capture yours.

He swallows your gasp, bringing his fingers to wrap loosely around your neck while his other hand slips beneath the hem of your shirt.

You break from his kiss with a gasp between swollen, bitten lips. But he gives you no reprieve, his lips trailing to your neck, where he sets about pressing hot-mouthed kisses. Molten lava flooding the column of your throat, chased with the scrape of nipping teeth. Soothe and scrape. Push and pull. Give, give, give, take.

You thread your fingers through the silken hair tucked behind his ears, tugging him from his ministrations on your neck and forcing him to meet your eyes – to see if the blaze of want you felt scorching your skin was reflected in the liquid coal, ready to ignite.

His lips twist into a smirk at your insistent tugging; if he was at all surprised, he didn’t show it. His face the perfect picture of pleasure.

“What would we do with it?” You inquire, “This power?”

“Hmmm,” he pretended to ponder, suddenly scooping you, a brief lift as he crossed the short distance to your bed, seating himself with you on his lap. No concession of dominance; merely placing you precisely where he means to. To allow you to feel him beneath you.

“What would you like to do, little warrior, hm?” His fingers flicked the thin straps of your flimsy sleep shirt, exposing your shoulders, leaning forward to trail his lips along the now-bared expanse of your shoulder, your collar bones, your neck, his eyes glancing up to watch your face as he went. “Make them pay? Take what’s yours?”

His hands feel their way down your form, down your sides, along your hips, the skin of his palms rasping against the smooth expanse of your thighs has his fine-boned fingers make their way beneath the loose fabric of the cropped pants you sleep in, dangerously close to the precipice of your desire , urging you to move. Guiding your hips in a rhythmic glide in his lap.

You gasp at his attentions, at the combination of his promises and the heady feel of his skin along yours, bringing your hands to grip his biceps – desperately seeking a way to anchor yourself.

And if it’s his poison that will bring you to the edge, would you regret it? You were starting to believe you could never regret him , not at the feel of his chest pressed against yours, the toned muscle beneath your fingers. His sharp angles caressing your soft curves, replacing the lonely ache in your bones with the lovely heat of him, both his promises and his attentions.

His mouth was keyed and intentional in its work of you, with pressed kisses like flower petals blooming along the skin of your neck, followed by the scraping thorns of his teeth. Brutish and beautiful, as his fine-boned fingers crept to the inside of your thighs, rubbing along your clothed center, intensifying the ache you felt. He shifts your weight in his lap, causing your legs to spread wider, straddling him lowly as he tugs the offending fabric aside, guiding your hips into a roll over his clothed lap and his growing hardness. Manifesting his delight at the choked gasp you emitted in the form of a teasing little buck of his hips, guiding you down as he guided himself up, delighting in the sharp gasps that met his ears as he continues to sway you to his rhythm.

“Desire isn't a sin, little warrior,” he breathes the words into your mouth, lips a hairs’ breadth apart, the better to swallow your moans. “What we feel feeds our connection to the Force, gives you strength ... If you know how. Let me show you. Touch me.”

It was as though electricity was crackling, popping beneath your fingertips as you took his instruction and began to explore the expanse of his body, slipping your hands beneath his tunic to feel the silken heat of his firm torso, the ache within you mounting at the heady combination of the feel of his skin beneath your fingertips – so long since you’d touched another, been touched – and his hardness between the cleft of your thighs. Smoldering, low-heat burned along your skin and beneath your fingertips. Or was it his fingers that were doing the burning? It was hard to tell where he ended and you began, one arm wrapped around your waist, pulling you bodily into him, an infinite loop of power and pleasure.

As you continue to touch him, you could feel it – his connection to the force, strong, volatile, like lightning striking the ocean – crackling and formidable like the man who contained it.

And Qimir – you had long since given up trying to determine if it was, in fact, his real name – rewards you with a gift of his own, the velvet rumble of a groan of pleasure emanating from his throat at your touch. A sound of syrup and satisfaction.

Pleased that you could garner such a reaction from a being as powerful as he, you smile, boldly meeting his lips with a kiss, opening your mouth with a gasp, allowing him to slip his tongue into your mouth, to taste the zip of power that he had determined in his moths of observation was just you, a torrent of citrus drizzle, bold and sweet.

Reluctantly, he parts his lips from yours, ducking his head to tug the straps of your top down with his teeth, exposing your breasts to the heated air of the room. And if your desire at the repeated rolling of his hips beneath yours wasn’t enough to do you in, you figured this might. Bathing in the celestial feel the press his lips to your nipple, tongue swirling over the peaking flesh. Pleased at the goosebumps that erupt now in the wake of his attention.

While he continues to tease your breasts with tongue and teeth, Qimir guides his other hand along your thighs, slipping his practiced fingers beneath your shorts, delighting in the wetness he was met with, basking in the jolting shiver the motion elicited from you, at the friction of his fingers rubbing along the seam of you – causing you to wiggle, to roll your hips into his touch.

And oh, as he slips his fingers inside of you, your eyes roll back, tilting your head to allow Qimir to admire the curving, elegant slope of exposed throat – prey before a predator, gasping at the pleasure he wrought. Breathless. If you thought he was teasing you before, his fingers inside of you were their own type of mocking punishment, well aware of his effect on you and the way your cunt throbs as he strokes inside of you. You could do nothing but wriggle your hips, whimpering piteously and attempting to roll your hips to follow his fingers as they work you, as this crescendo builds.

“Say you’ll be mine, warrior, and you can have it.” he promises. A new oath. One you’d never forsake. For him, you’d never turn, never abjure. Not so long as his touch made stars erupt behind your eyes, not so long as his lips dripped syrup promises down your throat.

Kissing you once more, golden and slow, molten and revelatory as he works his fingers inside of you, your thighs parting to accommodate him. His thumb rolls repeated brushes over your clit, delighting in the starshine burst as you reached your peak, a broken little moan that sounded suspiciously like the word “master,” passing your lips in a keening sigh.

You regard him through bleary, closing eyes and the warm, citrus haze of your orgasm as he slips his fingers from you, guiding you down to recline in your bed, stroking your hair as he does so, lulling you as a lover would.

“Sleep, warrior,” his velvet voice meets your ears, lyrical and lilting. “I’ll be back for you.”

And like each night before that one, his figure slips from you… as though he was never there. It wasn’t a dream, was it? It was hard to tell after months of this teasing game. After his promises built so much only to guide you to this release.

And in the silvery light of the jungle’s dawn, you awoke with that very question on your lips, met with the sight of your saber placed gently on your little bedside table as opposed to its usual hiding spot. You wake to the sweet afterache of something between your thighs, to the scraped marks of teeth along the expanse of your neck.

And to the promise of something – of a future of power and partnership. If only you’d be so bold as to accept it. As you eyed the saber, you recalled the prickle of his Force power along your skin, increasing with his proximity. And by the time he arrived to meet you again, you knew what your answer would be …

tagging:

@phoenixhalliwell @withahappyrefrain @inklore @spiderispunk @flightlessangelwings @joannasteez @gretagerwigsmuse @kalliravenne @mxgyver @princessphilly @s-u-t @ohmagawd-life @maryannsstrawberry @themultifandompictureshow @kallista-diune @crypt-keeper-soul @monlight-prose @joaquinwhorres @bobfloydsbabe @themarvelousbee @soulores @moonyslove78 @sio-ina-bottle @theradioactivespidergwen @drew-garfi @thegirlwhowritesfics @lady-morrigen @flordeamatista @forever-rogue @aphrogeneias @withmyteeth @superhoeva @pettyprocrastination @mortwig @petcr3

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amourquinn · 3 months ago

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( drabble ) rain

pairing : boyfriend!quinn x fem!reader wc. 900+

genre : fluff !! no warnings :3

summary : a date night with quinn that was not planned 🌧️

it had been quinn’s idea to try the new restaurant downtown, a cozy, hole-in-the-wall place that served the kind of pasta you’d only dream about after binge-watching food shows. you’d both been so excited—him for the food, you for the chance to steal a little time with him between games and practices.

the restaurant lived up to its reputation. it was small and bustling, lit by dim string lights that gave the place a warm glow. quinn’s eyes looked even softer in the amber light, the corners crinkling every time he smiled at something you said. you’d lost track of time, savoring the food and each other’s company, and it wasn’t until you stepped outside that you realized how late it had gotten.

the rain had started as a drizzle, just enough to make you glance at quinn. “you checked the weather, right?”

he grinned sheepishly. “yeah… but i guess i didn’t check the hourly.”

you playfully rolled your eyes and tugged your jacket tighter. “typical.”

still, you’d decided to take your chances. the walk back to your shared apartment wasn’t far, and the air was warm, the kind of sticky summer heat that felt alive. quinn had slipped his hand into yours, and despite the threat of rain, everything had felt perfect.

until the sky opened up.

it happened without warning. one minute, you were laughing at something quinn had said, and the next, sheets of rain were pouring down, soaking through your clothes almost instantly.

“oh my god!” you shrieked, trying to shield yourself with your arms.

quinn let out a laugh, loud and unrestrained, his hair plastered to his forehead. “come on!” he said, tugging your hand as he broke into a jog.

you ran through the streets together, puddles splashing underfoot as you darted for cover. by the time you reached your apartment building, you were both drenched, water dripping from your clothes and hair in streams.

“okay,” you panted, stepping into the elevator. “that might’ve been the worst idea you’ve ever had.”

quinn gave you a sheepish smile, his wet curls sticking to his forehead. “but it was kind of fun, right?”

you couldn’t help but laugh, shaking your head. “you’re impossible.”

when you finally got into your apartment, you kicked off your soaked shoes and peeled off your jacket, shivering slightly. quinn disappeared into the bathroom, returning with towels. he tossed one to you before running another through his hair, which only made it stick up in every direction.

“guess that’s the end of the date,” you said, toweling off your arms.

quinn paused, a sly smile creeping onto his face. “not necessarily.”

you raised an eyebrow. “oh?”

he gestured toward the kitchen. “we’ve got wine, snacks, and a couch. we could keep the date going right here.”

your lips quirked into a smile. “you’re just trying to make up for getting us soaked.”

“maybe,” he said, already heading for the kitchen.

you slipped into dry clothes while quinn rummaged around, and when you returned to the living room, he had a blanket draped over the couch and a small spread on the coffee table: a bottle of wine, a bowl of popcorn, and a plate of cookies that were clearly store-bought but still appreciated.

“you’re really pulling out all the stops, huh?” you teased, sitting down beside him.

“hey, i’m improvising,” he said, pouring you a glass of wine.

the two of you settled in, the rain still pounding against the windows. it was cozy, the kind of night that made you glad to be home, wrapped up in a world that felt like just yours and quinn’s.

you talked about everything and nothing, the conversation flowing as easily as it always did with him. he told you stories from the road—like the time his teammates had pranked him by hiding all his shoes—and you shared updates from work, your voice light and animated as you gestured with your hands.

at one point, you caught him staring at you, his expression soft.

“what?” you asked, suddenly self-conscious.

he shook his head, a small smile tugging at his lips. “nothing. just… you look happy.”

you felt your cheeks warm. “that’s because i am.”

the night stretched on, and before you knew it, the popcorn was gone, the wine bottle empty, and the cookies reduced to crumbs. you were lying on the couch now, your head resting in quinn’s lap as his fingers lazily traced patterns on your arm.

the storm outside had calmed, the rain now a gentle patter that filled the silence between your words.

“this might’ve been better than the restaurant,” you admitted, your voice soft.

quinn chuckled, his hand brushing a strand of hair from your face. “told you i could save the date.”

you smiled up at him, your eyes meeting his. for a moment, neither of you said anything, the air between you warm and easy.

“you know,” he said, his voice low, “i wouldn’t mind if all our dates ended like this.”

your heart fluttered, and you reached up to cup his cheek, your thumb brushing against his damp skin. “me neither.”

and just like that, the world outside didn’t matter. the rain, the chaos, the unexpected turn of the night—it had all led to this, a quiet moment that felt more perfect than anything you could’ve planned.

sometimes, you realized, the best nights were the ones that didn’t go as expected. and with quinn, you wouldn’t have it any other way.

#[ 📁 ] drabble #quinn hughes #quinn hughes x reader #quinn hughes fanfiction #quinn hughes fic #quinn hughes fluff #nhl hockey #vancouver canucks #fanfic

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eupheme · 2 months ago

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PPCU - 2024 FIC RECS

a rec list to share and support all the gorgeous fics I read this year. please check these out and support these writers, they are all incredible! 💖

COMANDANTE VERACRUX X READER

— the bet by @/flightlessangelwings

DAVE YORK X READER

— sweet dreams by @toomanystoriessolittletime

For you it was just a very intense wet dream, clearly never thinking a candle you bought at an occult store would give you the best orgasm you had ever experienced. For Dave York, cursed to fuck whoever lit said candle, you were a willing virgin waiting for him to take you.

DIETER BRAVO X READER

— i'll try anything once by @murder-wife

When you make a joke to your boyfriend about pegging him, he takes you up on it

FRANKIE MORALES X READER

— do me yourself by @/jolapeno

a meet-cute in a hardware store? impossible, out of the question. except, that's exactly what happens. a need for screws leads you to a broad-shouldered, brown-eyed man who you're sure is about to change your day, never mind your life.

— seasons of you by @kedsandtubesocks

your first winter in the valley brings in a frosty breeze & a push towards a certain blacksmith

— wet 'n wild by @/jolapeno

“This what you wanted?” His breath fans across your cheek, your neck—teeth all but gliding over your hammering pulse. “You just wanted me to touch you, querida?”

JACK DANIELS X READER

—trussed up by @wannab-urs

The stress of being a Statesman Agent, especially one in charge of the entire New York operation, gets to Jack sometimes. When he needs release, he comes to you.

JAVIER PEÑA X READER

— bite me nicely by @jolapeno

Javier Peña, a guilt-ridden vampire, struggles with the growing intimacy between him and Bones, the woman who willingly offers her blood to keep him alive.

JOEL MILLER X READER

— a happy man by @/psychedelic-ink

when your friend sets you up on a blind date, you had no idea how impactful it would be.

— anywhere but here by @pedgito

A poor damsel in distress, saved by the most unlikely of man.

— as it was by @/psychedelic-ink

you decide to host a New Year’s party and when Joel shows up soaked to the bone thanks to the rain, you lead him to the bathroom to dry him up.

— could i have this kiss forever? by @flightlessangelwings

— don't move, honey by @jolapeno

joel doesn’t want you to move or touch until he comes back to bed.

— eleven stitches by @/almostfoxglove

After Joel comes back from patrol injured, he wakes up restrained to a bed in Jackson's clinic where you've been tasked with patching him up.

— flowering by @tinycozycomfort

Always itching to be blamed for something, just so he can try and redeem himself; some kind of penance has sunk its teeth into the soft belly of his desire, staking its hold.

— first love in the late spring air by @moonlight-prose

in the late spring air with summer setting like the sun, life with joel suddenly becomes clear.

— get you alone by @5oh5

joel wants you, but you aren't his to have.

— half asleep, half awake by @morning-star-joy

Every time Joel Miller realizes he loves you. Every time he wants to tell you, and the time he does.

— handyman by @/mrsmando

it’s the worst time of the month for you, and you’re in pain. joel hates to see it, and will do whatever he can to make you feel better.

— him. he. joel. by @/jolapeno

you don't know his name. he doesn't know yours. yet.

— hiraeth by @honeyedmiller

the most invigorating and intoxicating drug you’ve had in your life is completely forbidden… and then there’s weed.

— his sweet secret by @ozarkthedog

joel fucks you over the kitchen sink.

— how do you sleep? @thriftedtchotchkes

joel's always there to comfort you with his words and a warm bed after a nightmare, but tonight, you need a little more

— is it that sweet? by @joelscruff

you probably shouldn't let some random middle aged man on the beach take nude photos of you, right? right?

— it’s different in the sun, in the day by @/jolapeno

— juno by @lotusbxtch

Your honeymoon with Joel is off to a bang.

— knuckles deep by @/ozarkthedog

joel fingers you for the first time in his truck.

— mornings like these by @pedrospatch

There’s a reason you’re always late to morning patrol. That reason’s name is Joel Miller.

— night breeze by @hier--soir

joel comes home to find you sleeping in his bed, wearing his clothes.

— no one can hurt you now by @guiltyasdave

You’ve been traveling through the country with Joel and Ellie. After finally arriving in the safety of Jackson, you realize how much Joel means to you.

— pretty baby by @mrsmando

working as a nanny for joel miller is about to get a whole lot more interesting.

— phonophilia by @ozarkthedog

Joel Miller loves how responsive you are.

— put your sweet lips on my lips by @/thetriumphantpanda

He won’t ever kiss you, those are the rules, but you fall in love with him anyway.

— real love, baby by @/honeyedmiller

joel has a bad day at work, but seeing you dancing in the kitchen makes it all better.

— red light by @kiwisbell

The men you keep bringing home are no good for you. It's up to your landlord Joel to protect you from heartbreak.

— ripe by @/hier--soir

a night out with old friends helps you and joel realise what’s been missing in your relationship.

— road trip by @elflutter

car sex with joel on the way home from a weekend trip ;)

— say yes to heaven by @/psychedelic-ink

joel finally allows you to pamper him.

— seasons of you by @kedsandtubesocks

it’s your very first spring living in the valley & you’re very sure Joel Miller already wants you to leave

— so much goddamn talkin’ by @stargirlfics

Sometimes Joel has to quiet the noise in your head. Luckily he’s quite good at that.

— sundown by @bageldaddy

you're used to being alone. that changes when joel moves into the trailer across from yours.

— sweet days of summer by @ozarkthedog

you and joel sneak away for a quick fuck during a family outing.

— sweet release by @/cavillscurls

the aftermath of finishing without joel’s permission.

— take care of you by @theidiotwhowritesthings

You spent your entire adult life supporting yourself and barely getting by. It’s why a life of ease offered to you by a mysterious stranger sounded so foreign and unbelievable. Joel Miller, dressed in flannels that had seen better days, didn’t look like the kind who could promise you the world on a plate, but he seemed desperate to help out. All he asks is that you let him take care of you. That wouldn’t be so hard. Would it?

— that pretty girlfriend by @psychedelic-ink

When your boyfriend is desperate to win back what he lost, he bets on you this time without your knowledge. And everyone knows you don't go back on your word when it comes to Joel Miller.

— the checklist by @thetriumphantpanda

Your new boyfriend Joel finds your hidden stash of porn, full of pages with their corners folded over, marking the things you like the most. Expecting him to feel bad about finding things you’re into, things you haven’t asked for from him, you’re surprised when he offers to help you tick them off.

— the duke's illicit affair by @hellishjoel

You want to tame the wild stallion that is ‘the Duke’, Joel Miller. Even if you have to lose your virtue in the process.

— the last day by @elflutter

It was the morning of his thirty-sixth birthday the last time he saw you.

— the older one by @frannyzooey

Best friends with younger one, you’ve known the Miller brothers since forever — you’ve wanted the older one for just as long.

— the way he was by @/cavillscurls

a recollection of joel miller and the man he was for you.

— trouble by @/mrsmando

joel miller hasn’t seen you for years, and what a goddamn surprise you turn out to be.

— you all the way down by @covetyou

You have a rare moment of privacy, a chance to luxuriate in bringing yourself closer and closer to a peak you’ve been teasing yourself with for hours…. Until a knock at your door snatches it all away.

— walking through fire by @macfrog

you’re neck-deep in a bout of seasonal depression. your boyfriend suggests an autumnal walk.

— what happens here, stays here by @fettuccin-e

— when his eyes open by @/jolapeno

joel wakes and admires you and the morning.

— wherever you stray, i'll follow by @cavillscurls

Joel resents the choice to allow an unmated omega into Jackson—until he’s the only one who can help her feel at home.

JOEL MILLER X READER X TESS SERVOPOULOS

— between two lungs by @/ozarkthedog

you join Joel and Tess mid fuck.

— july by @psychedelic-ink

you’re new to town and tess invites you to go camping with her and joel.

— three's a party by @/studioghibelli

joel knows you, his pretty little girlfriend, has always harbored sexual feelings for tess. he can’t help but oblige you on your birthday.

JOEL MILLER X TESS SERVOPOULOS

— wish you were here... by @always-andromeda

Joel mourns a life he wishes he could've had.

MARCUS ACACIUS X READER

— broken vows by @the-ginger-hedge-witch

When Acacius receives word that he is to be sent to the arena, he must decide where his true loyalties lie.

— prima nocta by @fuckyeahdindjarin

Tomorrow, you will marry your husband-to-be. But tonight - it belongs to his father.

MARCUS PIKE X READER

— give and take by @agentmarcuspike

marcus asks you for something he's wanted for some time...

MAXWELL LORD X READER

— stiff by @idolatrybarbie

Blackjack has the best odds of winning in any casino game. All you have to do is beat the dealer. Still, the notion doesn’t comfort Maxwell Lord. He likes to be certain. He likes to win.

MAX PHILLIPS X READER

— the prettiest by @almostfoxglove

After a restructuring at the company, Max finds himself dead—this time for good—and haunting his old duplex. Lucky for him, you move in. Now he'll do anything it takes to have you.

if you haven’t read these, you need to! and please support these amazing fics & writers by reading, reblogging & commenting! 💕

#joel miller x reader #javier pena x reader #maxwell lord x reader #max philips x reader #marcus acacias x reader #jack daniels x reader #frankie morales x reader #please support these creators!#jess reads #2024 fave fics #fic recs

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peachyparkerr · 5 days ago

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spring into summer | art donaldson x female! reader

or loving art even if it hurts <3

based off the song by lizzy mcalpine!

tags: yearning, fluff, angst, no use of y/n, stanford!art to atlanta!art, love "triangle", kissing and stuff, maybe not 100% true to the lyrics might even be out of order, hopefully this is not too long and not too many mistakes lol i dont want to proofread, i made my own challengers timeline because i can, challengers will always be on the mind <3

⋆｡𖦹°⭒˚｡⋆ a/n i hope you enjoy <3 plz be kind to me

Spring into summer, and the winter's gone I try to hold on to it, but the current's too strong Somebody finds me in the state I am Love you like I mean it when I know I can't

it’s a rainy day in late february at stanford. it’s cold, the fog’s coming in thick over the trees, and it’s hard not slip on the ground. all outdoor sports practices have been canceled or moved inside, and it’s probably the worst day to not have an umbrella or a rain jacket. art’s team practice had been canceled but he still wanted to work on his serve so he decided to practice at the indoor courts, he needed to blow off steam after being around patrick and tashi so much these days. their relationship is really weighing art down these days, so getting in the practice instead of taking a break seemed like an obvious time killer, he just hadn’t realized it was pouring this much. there was no way he was going to make it all the way to his dorm without being majorly drenched, so he decides to tackle the rain for the shorter walk between the indoor courts and the library and wait it out there. he’s definitely drenched when he enters the building, and it could be worse so he accepts it. the library’s fairly empty but he can’t quite decide where he wants to sit and if he actually wanted to do any studying at all, and then he sees you.

you, who is sitting cross legged in one of the big window nooks, headphones on with a book and laptop in your lap and in front of you but long forgotten as you watch the rain fall. he's seen you around before, but knows nothing about you, but you've always caught his eye. and seeing you right now watching the rain, in your own little world, is making his heart skip a beat more than it usually does when he sees you. suddenly, however much it sucks for him to always be around his best friend and his best friend's girlfriend that he secretly has been pining for all this time doesn't even matter to him. he doesn't even know your name, not yet at least, but he decides that he needs to. his legs are moving on their own accord as he makes his way to sit opposite of you in the nook.

he doesn't say anything at first, doesn't even ask if it's okay to sit there he just does even tho there are many open spots, and after what feels like forever of just looking at you looking out the window, you finally look his way.

"hi" he manages to speak out, voice just barely over a whisper.

"hi." you say back taking off your headphones. you have a bit of a confused look on your face but otherwise friendly. he'd never even heard your voice before but he thinks it's the most wonderful thing he's ever heard.

"i'm--" he goes to introduce himself nervously, but you interrupt him.

"i know who you are, art." you point out all soft and sweet and now he's embarrassed that he doesn't know who you are.

"you do?" he's flushing and running a hand through his wet hair.

"of course i do. we had a class together last semester and this one. you're also on the tennis team, right?" you laugh and say with ease. he's even more embarrassed now that he hasn't realized that he's had class with you this whole time but doesn't know your name, but the fact you're still giving him the time of day is encouragement enough for him to not run away right now.

he asks for your name and you give it to him with a smile and shake his hand. your hand fits perfectly in his, and he thinks your name is like a melody. the conversation that strikes up between the two of you is casual and easy, and you make him laugh in a way he hasn't in awhile. you tease him for not bringing an umbrella on the rainiest day, and he shakes his wet curls in your face like a dog just so he can hear your laugh again. if he could bottle up the sound and save it forever he would. but you offer to share your umbrella since as it turns out, you don't live that far away from him, and who is he to say no?

you guys huddle under the shared umbrella as you walk through the pouring rain, your hands brushing each other, making him feel all sorts of things. he's been in love with tashi all this time even if she can't be his, but something about your smile and simple kindness has him thinking just maybe he's not doomed at love. maybe he's getting ahead of himself, but as you guys reach his place and he insists on making it up to you for sharing your umbrella, he can't help but think this could be something good. who cares about tashi and patrick anyway?

⋆｡𖦹°⭒˚｡⋆

Hold it against me, cool to the touch Nobody knows what it's like to be us Somebody finds me in the shallow end Love you like I mean it just because I can

it starts slow. art can't quite decipher where his feelings for tashi end and where his growing ones for you begin, but he knows that he's drawn to you in a way he's never experienced before. he needed a distraction but thats not just what you are, what you're becoming to him, he thinks.

so he seeks you out more. finds a way to sit next to you in class. shares his notes with you, not that you need notes from him but he offers anyways. notices when you're feeling tired in class so he suggests getting coffee or a bite to eat after. sometimes you say yes, but other times you say no. you know he spends a lot of time with tashi duncan, star tennis player of the whole university, and sure she's dating his best friend, but you've heard the rumors. art's cute, but you don't want to get caught up in whatever that is.

but art's not just cute, he's sweet and effortlessly charming. he somehow just knows when you don't bring a drink to class and has one for you. he seeks you out in the library even though you know he's not really a scholar, and he offers to share his umbrella when its raining, which he always remembers to carry around now, even if its not raining hard, and even if he knows you have your own.

he's spending more time with you than he is with patrick and tashi. they don't really mind, even if part of them wonders what's going on with him. them not really minding has art feeling weird, because part of him still wants them to care, he wants tashi to care. but the rest of him is just glad that he's getting you to give him a chance. when it comes to you, the rest of the world seems to fade away for him.

before you even realize it, you've started to say yes to him every time he asks you to do something. you don't wait for him to seek you out in the library, you ask him to join you. you "forget" your umbrella just so you guys can share his. he takes the opportunities presented to him to shyly keep an arm around you or hold your hand, and when you don't tell him not to, he's never shy again.

the two of you are dating, even if it's not explicitly said. it's june now, and it seems like everything's really good and he's barely even thinking about tashi anymore. you're a welcome distraction but you're also everything and more to him. he wants to make you his, officially, and he's scared out of his mind to put a label on it but nothing would make him happier.

he plans this nice picnic on a rare sunny day. after indulging in some of your favorite snacks, he's laying on his back on the blanket, a baseball cap you got him on his head blocking the sun from his eyes, and you're on your stomach but resting your head on your hands on his chest, and you guys mindlessly talking about something. the sun's shining down on you so perfectly, the wind in your hair. he has no idea what you're saying at this point because he just can't stop looking at you. you're the most beautiful thing he's ever seen, and he longs to be with you even if you weren't with him. he feels so warm inside and out when he's with you.

he moves hair out of your face and he's interrupting whatever you're saying before he even realizes what he's saying.

"do you want to be my girlfriend?" he asks suddenly, still moving hair behind your ear. this wasn't part of the plan he had in mind today but here goes nothing.

"what?" you question with a confused and disbelieving laugh. he realizes what he's asked but he doesn't take it back, just smiles at you.

"i want to be your boyfriend, so i was just wondering if you'd want to be my girlfriend. like officially." he repeats, a little shy, a little nervous, albeit anticipating what you have to say.

"hmm like officially?" you tease, sitting up a bit, but smiling at him nonetheless.

"yea, like officially." he says simply, sitting up too, and gazing at you with that stupid grin he always has when he thinks knows he's getting what he wants.

you answer him by turning the hat on his head that you got him backwards and kissing him, soft and sweet. it's not the first time, but its definitely better than all the other times. he cups your face and kisses you back slow, happily and deeply. you hold a hand over his, your touch making him melt as usual. maybe everything is going to be fine.

⋆｡𖦹°⭒˚｡⋆

Taking a picture of all the people close to us Head below the surface, almost never certain of the truth (mm) I'm always, forever, runnin' back to you (you, ooh) Runnin' back to you (ooh) Runnin' back to you

you had become a plus one to art's place in his little trio. he had made it a point to include you whenever it felt like it was something he thought would be good. patrick was kind to you and was always willing to spill art's secrets to you. tashi talked to you, was friendly enough, but it's not like you were friends outside of this. you didn't have anything in common outside of your boyfriends. you didn't need her approval, but sometimes it felt like art did. you didn't want to question it, at least not out loud. it was just weird when you would go to his matches and after talking to you he'd ask her what she thought. maybe it's 'cause you're not a tennis player. that had to be the only reason. right?

but he was glad to have you come anyways. when you'd join for hangouts he he always said he played better when you were there. with you, he could hold his head high on and off the court. he wasn't always sure of himself in life or when playing tennis, but if he was almost certain of one thing it was that his heart beat for you. he kissed you like you were the oxygen filling his lungs before every match, always running to wrap you up in his arms as soon as it was over, win or lose. he always assured you you were his good luck charm, his best girl, the most important thing to him besides tennis. and you believed him. even when sometimes it felt weird to take pictures of just him and patrick and tashi when celebrating a win. they were important to him, you understood that, you just wanted to feel important too.

patrick and tashi weren't perfect individuals or a perfect pair but they fit. when he was away you didn't think it was that weird for art and tashi to get lunch just the two of them. art would relay to you that patrick and her sometimes fought, mostly about tennis, but other stupid stuff, and lunch was just a way for him to check in on her for his best friend since he couldn't be around. it was the truth. at least what he believed it was.

but when her injury happened, and patrick and her broke up, patrick's presence in art's life disappeared too. art wouldn't explain so you didn't want to pry more. you and art were still together, but this pit in your stomach started to form the more he was there for her during this tough time. he started being late or missing plans with you because he wanted to help her get back on the court or she didn't want to go to her physical therapy but obviously needed to so he'd take her to make sure she went.

one day, you and him were sat in your room. him on your bed, you leaning against your desk, keeping a distance from him. he wanted to reach out to you and pull you into his arms, make it all go away and show you that you were the one he wanted, but he knew he'd been messing up. you guys were supposed to do stuff today, but that didn't happen because he was with her.

"she had a rough day. i just wanted to be there for her." he said, defending himself after missing yet another hangout with you. he did feel guilty. he loved you. more than he could really put into words, but this felt like something he needed to do for her.

"i get that, i was just really looking forward to our plans. and you didn't call so i was just waiting around." you explained. you weren't mad, just disappointed, again.

"i promise we can go tomorrow. just you and me, i'll make it up to you." he pleaded, standing up and grabbing your hands. "i'm sorry. it won't happen again." he rested his forehead against yours, urging you to look at him. he believed in what he was saying. he knew he was pushing you away unintentionally, and he hated it, he just didn't know how to fix it sometimes. he just hoped it would work itself out and he didn't have to lose you. after all, he always came back to you at the end of the day.

"okay, tomorrow then." you sigh out softly, squeezing your eyes shut and squeezing his hands in yours three times as if to say the three words that seem impossible to say these days. he brings your hands to his mouth to adorn each individual knuckle with a kiss, before he presses a lingering one your forehead and hugs you, trying to make it all better.

and the next day, he follows through with his promise. but something has shifted. you both can't quite put your fingers on it, but it's there hanging over your heads.

he doesn't miss any more hangouts, but the amount of hangouts that get planned decrease. it's clear that tashi's not going to play tennis again. and she probably does need someone to lean on, more than she'd like to admit. sometimes she's seeking him out, but more often than not she doesn't have to because he's going to her anyway. you can't even hate her because it's not even her fault. it's not her fault that your boyfriend would do anything for her, the way he's supposed to do for you. the way he used to.

he loves you, and you love him, but it doesn't mean love is enough. not when this is happening. he'd never break up with you first, so you have to rip off the bandage.

it's february again and its raining out when you meet him outside his room. he doesn't exactly know why you asked to come here, or why you won't come in despite how wet you guys are becoming, but he has a feeling that it's not good.

"it's over, art." you say simply to him. his heart sinks in his chest, and he feels like he's going to throw up.

"why?" he asks, even if he knows the answer. he's getting drenched by the rain, the clothes he's wearing and the hat you got him sitting on his head probably getting ruined, but at least maybe the rain will conceal how he's about to cry.

"I just...can't anymore." you sound defeated and sad. he hates everything about this. he knows he's hurt you, but he doesn't know how to fight for you either.

"i'm sorry." that is all he can say, resisting every urge to pull you close and make this right.

"me too." you sigh out before leaving.

everything about this sucks. he knows a lot of it is his own fault. but he just can't do anything about it. so he goes back inside.

by june, him and tashi are already officially dating. he wishes she was you sometimes, often wonders how you're doing. but he doesn't reach out. he wanted to be the one to tell you that him and tashi were dating, he felt guilty about it and for some reason couldn't stand the idea of letting you find out through the grapevine. but he also knows you probably wouldn't want to hear from him anyway. so he doesn't.

⋆｡𖦹°⭒˚｡⋆

You're always gonna be someone that I want (oh) We have too many years between us If I could jump into the past, I'd only change one thing I'd never hurt you first, I'd never let you leave And now I'm here forever, runnin' back to you Always

two springs and summers had passed since the spring that you broke up with art. yet there's parts of him that are still holding onto the year you spent together, to the first spring he laid eyes on you in the library. him and tashi have been together for almost all this time. she never was able to play tennis again like she used to, but she'd become more than his girlfriend, now she was his coach. she shaped him into the player he needed to be to win the high profile titles he now holds. it wasn't that they weren't happy, the whole tennis community knew them to be a rising power couple, but the dynamic was different than it was with you.

tashi was beautiful, determined, rough around the edges and strategic. everybody knew her and wanted to be lucky enough to catch a glimpse of her light. he'd stood by her in her darkest time and she'd been standing by him at every win. pushing him harder than he'd ever been pushed towards greatness. she knew he needed tennis, especially if he couldn't have you, even if he wouldn't admit it. she wanted the greatness she couldn't have for herself for him and she was grateful to be able to be part of tennis and his life in this way. so sometimes it was easier for her to pretend they could love each other the way they should. the way he loved you and the way she loved tennis and patrick.

which brings him to the atlanta open. spring on this part of the east coast was nice and art was trying to enjoy it even he's still been feeling cold. his grandmother had died a couple months ago, leaving him her engagement ring, telling him to save it for someone special. those two things were weighing on his mind pretty frequently, especially because when you'd heard the news you reached out to him to give your condolences. you didn't have to say anything, but you were always the bigger person. it was one of the few times you and him had spoken over the years since you broke up. every single time fleeting and politer than he knew had earned and god did it make him miss you.

you, him, and tashi weren't at stanford anymore so there was no reason to see each other anymore, but the passing moments of inevitable running into each other on campus were things he looked forward to. but now you're all graduated, he hadn't seen you in person in about two years and ever seeing you again seems like it would never happen. his only choice is to focus on his skill, winning this open and the next, and tashi. he just wasn't sure if tashi was the special person his grandmother was talking about.

he had actually been looking for tashi when he headed down to the hotel lobby. he could've sworn he saw her sitting by a window, across from patrick, but not really wanting to deal with that he turns his attention to the fan that's called his name to ask for his autograph. when he turns back she's gone and he decides to get a drink anyway to wash down the long day he's had. he orders and that's when he now spots you on the other end, suitcase in hand and ordering the same drink he knows you always have.

art doesn't even know how long he's been frozen in place, taking you in, until you notice him too. you smile and before either of you notice you're sitting next to each other at the bar. you're the same, but different, better, even, if that was even possible. he's always thought you were perfect. he knew he loved you for all that you were before, but he's sure now more than ever that he's never stopped.

by pure coincidence, you're passing through on a work trip and are being put up by your company in the very same hotel. the more the two of you talk he doesn't think this is coincidence, he's convinced its fate. that the universe wants the two of you to be together. when some hair falls in front of your face as you laugh, a sound he hadn't realized he's missed so much even if it's been on replay in his mind all this time, he instinctually moves it behind your ear. he's barely realized he's done it until you're looking at him all wide eyed and he pulls his hand back. suddenly you're pretending to be tired, telling him it was great to catch up and to give tashi your best, and trying to leave.

his heart drops to his stomach at the possibility of losing you again and before he can convince himself it's a bad idea, he's begging you to meet him here tomorrow after your conference and after his match.

"i don't know...what about tashi?" you voice your concern and he hates that you're hesitating but he understands.

"i have no right to ask you to do anything for me, but i promise that if you meet me tomorrow i'll figure it out. i just can't let you go like this. not again." he's pleading with you, grabbing your hand. your skin is cool to the touch but he's burning up inside at the chance to be with you again.

you don't know if you can trust him, and you're not sure if you can handle being hurt by him again, but you've always had a soft spot for him, so you agree anyway.

his heart's racing as he returns to his own room. seeing you is something straight out of a movie, and he knows he's making no sense but he'd messed up once and he rather take a risk now then hate himself for the rest of his life. when tashi returns with patrick's cologne on her skin and asking if that was me she caught a glimpse of earlier, her and art both know its over. they'll keep it out of the press and if he'll find another coach if that's what he wants. usually they'd fight each other on this but they know they can't go on like this.

the next day he waits anxiously. watching the clock tick away. it's only ten minutes after the time you agreed to meet and he's scared you're not coming. he's bouncing his leg as a coping mechanism until you're walking in. he's nearly falling out of his seat as he stands up to meet you.

"you came." he stammers out taking you in.

"i wasn't sure if i should." you admit quietly.

he nods and momentarily takes off the baseball cap he's wearing to run a hand through his hair nervously. you know it's the one you gave him in college but you don't point it out.

"i get it. but i'm glad you came."

"so...you wanted to talk?' you ask awkwardly, unsure of how to navigate this. he nods again and suggests walking outside.

it's quiet at first, even as your arms brush each other's as you walk. but he stops suddenly, turning towards you, knowing that if he doesn't say anything now he might never.

"i'm sorry. for everything. " he begins to say, you try to interrupt and tell him it's been a long time but he doesn't let you continue, needing to say this. "i need you to know that i regret everything. that it's over with tashi, that it has been long before today. i had this idea that i needed her and i could still have you and i was wrong. i never needed her and i wasted so much time thinking that when the only person who was ever it for me was you. "

art's words are earnest and the tears in his eyes match the ones in yours.

"i don't hold it against you. i just wish you would've fought for me. for us. all i've ever wanted was for you to see yourself the way i did." you sniffle out. art's always had this sincere side to him, but it's been so long since you've seen it that it's just a lot to process.

"i know and i'm sorry. i'm so goddamn sorry that it took me losing you to understand that i've never wanted anything else than to be yours. " he cries, cupping your face, his thumbs wiping the tears there away.

art realized too late that he should've fought for you. you, who was always so patient and kind and accepting of who he was in and out of tennis. you, who was soft and thoughtful in ways he didn't think he deserved and taught him you can want things and get them without being so hard on yourself. he was the one who was lucky to be in your light, and he couldn't even blame you for leaving. he just wished he hadn't pushed you away, that he wasn't simultaneously an ass and a coward for letting you slip through his fingers. but this is him fighting for you now, and he was praying to a god he wasn't sure he always believed in that this was his chance to make it right.

"if you'll have me, i want to fight for you. i'll spend everyday for the rest of my life fighting for you, proving to you that i want you, that...i love you. i can't lose you again." he's still holding your face in his hands, gazing into your eyes and hoping that you can understand just how much regret he's been holding in, that you'll say something that'll make him stop shaking right now.

you bring a hand to move some hair that is stuck to his face from under the brim of his hat. he leans into the touch as you rest your hand on his own cheek, shivering at how it feels after all this time.

"you're always going to be someone that i want." you say softly.

and that's all it takes for him to surge forward and press his lips to yours. from that point on, he never feels cold again. and by next summer, his grandmother's ring is on your finger.

⋆｡𖦹°⭒˚｡⋆

Summer is falling, it's a distant dream If I turn around, you're runnin' back to me

a/n i kinda hate this but i needed to write it! plz be kind! likes and reblogs appreciated!

#art donaldson #challengers #mike faist #patrick zweig #art donaldson x reader #josh o'connor #zoewrites<3 #luca guadagnino #challengers 2024 #challengers fic #zendaya #tashi duncan #lizzy mcalpine #spring into summer #challengers movie #art donaldson fanfic #art donaldson fluff #art donaldson angst

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scary-grace · 3 months ago

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if my heart was a house - a shigaraki x f!reader fic

It's been nineteen years since Tomura was sentenced to death, and you've built a life in the space he left behind, braced each day for the worst. You're prepared for everything - the questions your daughter asks, the memories that sting a little more in the winter, the specter of the news you've been afraid of for years. But of all the things life's thrown your way, it's the one you haven't dared to hope for might be the one thing you can't handle. (cross-posted to Ao3) The prequel can be found here: what I can't remember now written for @pixelcafe-network's Challenge Friday event! Banner/divider by @cafekitsune

Chapter 1 Chapter 2

Chapter 1

You know even before you open your eyes that it’s snowed overnight. The world always sounds too quiet afterwards, and you used to have so many words to describe it – almost comforting, almost eerie, almost serene. But that was when you were young. Now you’d replace all those words with a different one: Empty. You used to love the winter, the first snowfall of the year, and you still do. But it always reminds you of him. And he’s gone.

He’s been gone for years now. The length of time you spent with him has been swallowed six times over by the time you’ve spent alone, and you’d like to think that even in the beginning, you wore your sadness well. Now, nineteen years in, it barely shows. You keep it buried through spring, summer, autumn – until the first frost, the first freezing rain, the first icicles on the eaves and the first drifts of snow on the ground, when it crawls free of the grave and sprawls on top of you at night. You met Tomura in the winter. Fell in love with him by spring. You got two more winters with him after that, and then he was gone, and nothing can fill the space he left behind.

But even if one chamber of your heart is frozen open for good, the rest is still alive. And there’s room for a different kind of love, a way for you to translate your grief rather than buckle beneath its weight. There’s a knock at the door to your room, and your daughter’s voice slips cautiously in. “Mom? Are you awake?”

“I’m awake,” you say, and you blink away the tears. “Come in.”

Even at eighteen, Chihiro still hesitates before she steps across the threshold, but once she’s made the choice, she throws herself onto the bed with abandon. “We got half a meter. That’s even more than the forecast said.”

“And we’ve still got power. Lucky us.” You wipe your eyes, just in case, and turn to face her. “Good morning, kiddo.”

“How long do I have to be kiddo? I’m almost done with high school.”

“Okay, you’re right,” you compromise, even as your throat tightens. She’s never met her father, never will, but the tone in her voice when she’s putting her foot down reminds you painfully of him. “What should I call you instead?”

“My name. You’re the one who picked it out.” Chihiro’s dressed in her pajamas with a hoodie thrown over them, and you can see her phone lighting up through the front pocket. “Don’t you like it anymore?”

“I love it,” you say, “Chihiro. Did you sleep okay?”

She nods. There’s something on her mind. You can tell by the way her brow furrows, and the way her mouth thins tells you that she’s planning to keep it quiet. Or that she’ll try. Chihiro has a hard time keeping her feelings inside. She and Tomura have that in common, but while you always gave Tomura space to figure out how to say what he needed to, you always let Chihiro know you’re aware, and listening. “What’s going on up there, Chihiro, my daughter who’s almost done with high school?”

She rolls her eyes, but a smile is pulling up the corner of her mouth. Her smile’s always been a little lopsided, but so has yours. “There’s only one morning of the year you ever sleep in,” she says. “The first time it snows. And then you’re different all day – not mad or depressed or anything. Just different. I was wondering why.”

“I’m sorry,” you say at once. “I’m not upset with you. It’s not anything you did. You could never do anything that would –”

“I know, Mom.” Chihiro’s crimson eyes are intent on your face. “It’s one day. You get to be weird if you need to. I just wanted to know – is it because of him? My dad?”

When she was little, you’d lie, and tell her the snow is so pretty that you can’t help but get emotional about it. There was a while where she didn’t ask. But she’s old enough now that you can admit it. You think. “Yeah,” you say. Your voice is steady. You’re proud of that. “This is around the time of year when I first met him. It brings back memories.”

“Good ones?” Chihiro settles into the pillows the way she used to when she wanted a bedtime story. “Tell me.”

You hesitate. “Not the gross stuff,” Chihiro clarifies. “I don’t want to know about that. Kaori’s mom tells her all about that stuff. And she bought her a vibrator for her birthday.”

“Huh,” you say after a second. “That’s sex-positive of her.”

“You’re being nice. What do you really think?”

You think she reminds you of Tomura. He never let you duck behind the niceties; he always wanted to know your real reaction. “I think it’s weird. Especially if Kaori didn’t ask.”

“She definitely didn’t. She’s really shy.” Chihiro grimaces. “I’m glad you’re not weird like that.”

Not weird is a good thing. Maybe. “You know I’m here if you need to talk about –”

“No, Mom. Gross.” Chihiro buries her face in the pillow. “Tell me about my dad.”

“Okay,” you say. “Your dad. He, um – there was something about him. I never met someone like him before, and I haven’t since. He told the truth about stuff, even if it wasn’t pretty, and he said what he thought even if it was a bad time. One time we went on a double date with one of his friends and their new boyfriend, and the first question out of your dad’s mouth was whether the boyfriend had drawn his facial hair on.”

Chihiro wheezes. “That’s awful,” she says, but she’s laughing – just like you were. “Had he, though?”

“We never got an answer,” you say, and Chihiro laughs harder. “Your dad could be a jackass sometimes, even to people he liked, but when it really mattered, he’d –”

Kill for them. You swallow the words. “He was there for people when they needed him,” you say instead. “He was always there for me. Even if he didn’t know the right thing to say, I could count on him to listen. And he never gave me a hard time for standing up for myself. Not even when we argued about things.”

You were sort of a pushover early on. You were worried that saying no would make you difficult, and being difficult would make him want to leave. It wasn’t how you were most of the time, or how you’d been before you and Tomura got together, and he wasn’t scared to call you out. You remember the grin on his face the first time you really put your foot down about something, set a boundary and held it. I knew you were in there somewhere, he said. This is how I like you.

That was something you loved about being with Tomura: You were good for each other. You made each other better. “It sounds like you were happy,” Chihiro ventures, and you nod. “Do you think you’d have gotten married sometime? Did you guys want kids?”

Married, maybe. Your friends and his all used to joke that the two of you were the old married couple of the group, but while you talked about the future, you almost never talked about marriage to go with it. Not until it was almost the end, and you never made it to the discussion, any discussion, about having kids. Your pregnancy was catastrophic because of what happened before it, but even if it hadn’t been, it would have raised a lot of questions that neither you nor Tomura knew how to answer. “We were really young,” you say. “I was only twenty-two. We hadn’t had that talk yet. But I think we’d have talked about it if –”

“Yeah.” Chihiro’s voice is muffled by the pillows. “Did he know about me? Before he died?”

Your stomach clenches in a tight, guilty cramp, one that’s been getting steadily worse over the years. “I didn’t find out until after he was gone.”

“Oh.” Chihiro’s voice goes small and wavering. “Do you think – um – do you think he would have liked me?”

There’s no way to know. That means what you say next isn’t technically a lie. “He would have loved you,” you say. Her shoulders shake, and you rest your hand on her back to settle her, the same as you’ve done since she was a baby. “Just like I do.”

Chihiro turns her head to look at you, her eyes glassy with tears. “Sorry.”

“No, it’s okay. Everything’s okay.” You rub her back in slow circles. “Ask about him whenever you want. I’ll always try to answer.”

“Do you miss him?”

Other than your daughter’s ragged breathing and your own steady, shallow sips of air, there’s no sound in the world. When you open up the blinds, you’ll see an empty snowfield, unmarked by human footprints for a little while longer. Footprints in the snow will be filled in by the next storm or melted away in the thaw, but the marks Tomura left on you are indelible. There will never be room for someone else where he stood, because he’s still standing there, somewhere you can’t reach.

Sometimes you’ve thought, selfishly, that it would be easier if he really was dead, just so you wouldn’t have to cope with knowing that he’s still out there, knowing exactly where he is with no way to get to him. You’ve let Chihiro think he’s dead. You tell yourself it’s easier for her this way. It’s better that she doesn’t know what really happened to Tomura. The fact that you know is bad enough.

“Mom?” Chihiro asks, and you realize you never answered her question. “Do you still miss my dad?”

You still love him. That’s the same thing. “I do,” you say. “Every day.”

Chihiro cries herself out, and then it’s time to get moving. Her school has a late start, not a snow day, and you still have to go to work. You make a special breakfast anyway, play the music you and she used to dance to when she was little, and soon your daughter’s smiling again. Chihiro doesn’t have trouble being happy, not like you and Tomura both did. Still do, probably. Your depression was just that, but the sheer weight of Tomura’s past regularly threatened to crush him, and you doubt the nineteen years he’s already spent in prison have done anything to improve things.

But Chihiro knows how to be happy, and you know, because she tells you when she’s not. You’re not naive enough to think your teenager tells you everything, but she knows she can talk to you. And she does talk to you, getting steadily back to herself as you eat breakfast and clean up and get ready, her for school, you for work. Then the two of you crunch your way to the car and start digging it out of the snow. The snowplows must have been out last night and early this morning, because the road doesn’t have much in the way of accumulation. You’ll have to be careful of ice.

You’re both a little sweaty under your winter coats when you get in the car at last. “I’m already gross,” Chihiro complains. “Why can’t we get a garage or something?”

“Where would we put it?”

“In your room,” Chihiro says. You snort. “Or in mine. Since I’m going to uni soon.”

Your heart sinks whenever she says that, but you’ll be damned before you let it show. “You’ll still need somewhere to stay when you come back,” you say. “Maybe we don’t really need a kitchen.”

Chihiro rolls her eyes. “What? You’re not planning to turn my room into, like, a sewing room or something once I go to school?”

"No," you say. "My parents did that when I went away. I hated it."

Looking back, you took it way too personally. They weren’t saying they were done with you, or that the place you’d grown up wasn’t home anymore. You were just hurting, and looking desperately for a reason why. Coming back on school break to find your room cleaned out was a good one. “I’m not going to do that,” you say to Chihiro.“Even when you live somewhere else, you’ll always have a place with me.”

Chihiro glances sideways at you. “Kaori’s mom is freaking about her moving away.”

“Kaori’s mom freaks out a lot,” you say. You and she should have bonded, because you’re the only single moms in this small town, but Kaori’s mom makes you nervous. “How does Kaori feel about it?”

“Her mom will be fine. She’s not worried.” Chihiro pauses for a long moment. “I am, though.”

Your grip on the steering wheel goes white-knuckled. “About Kaori’s mom?”

“About you,” Chihiro says. You reach a stop sign, come to a full stop, and turn to look at her. There’s a stubborn set to her jaw that’s all too familiar. “Kaori’s mom is crazy. But Kaori’s mom has a life. She goes out some nights and her friends come to visit and she has parties and hobbies —“

“I have hobbies,” you protest.

“Yeah. Your hobby means you hang out in the house all day,” Chihiro says. “You can't carry your sewing machine and all your fabric to a craft party. Maybe if you learned to knit or something —“

“I’m not going to knit.”

“Something,” Chihiro says firmly. “Something that means you’re not alone all the time. I’m excited to go to uni. I’m worried about what’s going to happen to you when I leave.”

You’ve fucked up, big-time. “Chihiro, I understand why you —“ No, you don’t. All you understand is that you were stupid to think your damage didn’t show, awful for making Chihiro think she has any responsibility for your mess of an internal life at all. “It’s not your job to make sure I’m okay. I can take care of myself.”

“It’s not about taking care of yourself,” Chihiro fires back. “It’s about being happy. You want me to be happy, right?”

“Of course I do,” you say. “I love you.”

“I love you, Mom.” Chihiro says it bluntly, unashamedly. “So I want you to be happy, too.”

You don’t know what to say. It’s quiet, and it keeps being quiet, until a car pulls up behind you and honks its horn. You refocus on driving in a hurry. With you distracted, Chihiro pushes the point. “You barely even talk to people, Mom. Kaori’s mom thinks you hate her because you never say yes when she asks to hang out.”

“I don’t hate her,” you say. Chihiro’s skeptical look skewers you to the seat. “Look, she’s just not — it’s complicated.”

“No it’s not,” Chihiro says. “Next time she asks to hang out, say yes.”

No. “What if I sign up for an art class at the community center instead?”

“Do that, too,” Chihiro says. You grimace. “You want me to be happy. I’ll be happy if I know you’re talking to other people and doing stuff that’s not in the house. I don’t want to come back on a school break and find out you’ve only been talking to the trees or something.”

She pauses. “I guess you can talk to them a little. As long as you don’t start thinking they talk back.”

“Got it.”

You drop Chihiro off at school less than a minute before the bell rings, but she still makes you get out of the car and hug her. She hugs really tight. She got that from you. Tomura used to complain jokingly that you were a boa constrictor in a girlfriend suit. You kiss her forehead and send her on her way, then get back in the car and drive to work, feeling even worse than you did when you opened your eyes to a snowy silence this morning.

Chihiro’s wrong about Kaori’s mom. It is complicated — not because you hate her, but because she’s the nosiest person in town, and because you’ve got a lot to hide. You didn’t mean to have a lot to hide. It was just something that happened, and as the years since Tomura’s conviction have unfolded, you’ve gotten steadily more attached to the lie. It’s not about you. It’s about Chihiro, who shouldn’t have to live with the knowledge that her father’s a convicted murderer awaiting execution in supermax prison, who shouldn’t have to deal with people looking at her differently. It’s about Chihiro. It’s not about you.

Or so you tell yourself. But there’s a reason you fled from Tokyo in the aftermath of Tomura’s sentencing, why you cut off contact with his friends and yours, why you dyed your hair and changed your phone number and nuked your social media along with every email address you ever had. People hated Tomura. And because you were with him, they hated you, too. It didn’t matter that you knew nothing. That the murders he was accused of committing took place before you met him. Even if you’d dumped him the second he was arrested, you’d have been called stupid for not seeing it all along. You couldn’t hack it. You were headed for a breakdown at high speed. But you would have stayed, if Tomura hadn’t told you to go.

The last time you spoke to him was after his sentencing, as they were taking him away. You seized his hands, already cuffed, his wrists chafed raw, and for a split second, he held on so tightly that one of your fingers broke. Then he looked up, hopeless fury in his eyes. Get out of here. Don’t come back. I don’t want you to watch.

You thought he meant he didn’t want you to watch him being shoved into an armored truck for transport, but when your letters came back unopened, when he refused to let you visit or even call him, you realized the truth. He wanted you gone, just as completely as he was gone from you. That moment in the courtroom was the last one you’d ever have with him. And that was what tripped the breakdown at last. You were throwing up too much to overdose and you were too chicken to try another way, so you went to the doctor to figure it out so you could kill yourself with your chosen method. You just wanted anti-nausea pills. The doctor did bloodwork, made you give a urine sample, and gave you a diagnosis.

“Hyperemesis gravidarum,” he said, and you looked at him blankly. “You’re pregnant.”

He expected you to get an abortion. Everybody and their mother probably expected you to get an abortion. If Tomura had been there, if your accidental pregnancy had been something the two of you were dealing with together, it probably wouldn’t have even been a question. And for any other pregnancy, it would have been the only viable option in your mind. But when you thought about it, about this pregnancy, your mind rejected the idea so violently that you threw up again. You couldn’t get rid of this baby. You needed it. Looking back, you know your reasons were terrible. You had a kid so you wouldn’t be alone. So you’d keep some memory of Tomura close to you always. So you’d have a reason to keep getting up in the morning, a reason to eat and sleep and exercise, a reason to find a new job in your new town and work hard at it. So someone would need you. So you could do something with your agony at losing Tomura, grab it with both hands and twist it back into love. Deciding to have the baby was the most selfish thing you’ve ever done. And raising Chihiro, loving her, is the most important thing you’ll ever do.

She’s right about you. You do live for her. And if that means signing up for a pottery class at the community center and agreeing to grab tea with Kaori’s crazy mom so she won’t worry, that’s what you’ll do.

You work in the combined billing/records/HR department at your town’s medical clinic, with occasional ventures to the front desk when a receptionist is out sick. You spend a lot of time staring at the computer, a lot of time on the phone, and very little time talking to your coworkers — but you’ve been here for seventeen years, longer than almost anyone else. You were working here before some of your coworkers were out of primary school.

Dr. Kawada is your age, though. He greets you as you walk in. “Glad you made it. Anybody who lives past the town limits is staying home.”

“They should. The roads are terrible even with the plows out.” You hang up your coat, then sit down and power up your computer. “How many patients do you think we’ll get?”

“We have a ton of cancelations already,” Keiko, the nurse-practitioner, reports. She would be the one to make it in — Kawada would crawl here with his teeth if he had to, and she’s his wife, so of course she tagged along. “And there was a call for you, bright and early.”

“For billing? Somebody must have been losing sleep.”

“Not for billing. For you,” Keiko admonishes. “I forwarded it to your phone. It seemed kind of urgent.”

You log into your computer, then decide to check the message while you’re waiting for it to perk up. The voice on the other end of the line is completely unfamiliar. “Hi there. My name is Midoriya Izuku, and I’m a lawyer with the —" There’s a really loud sound on the other end of the line, completely obliterating whatever he was about to tell you about the organization he’s part of. “Due to confidentiality I can’t share much over the phone, but it’s really important that I get in touch with you! Please call me back to arrange a meeting —“

You hang up and delete the message. You don’t like lawyers, and this guy sounds like he has prosecutor written all over him. Or else he’s a reporter lying to you about his credentials to trick you into giving him a quote. The twenty-year anniversary of Tomura’s conviction is coming up, and there were articles at the ten-year mark, too. You’re more concerned about how this Midoriya Izuku got your number in the first place. You’re not easy to find. You made yourself tough to find on purpose.

It’s a quiet day at the office. Almost all the appointments are canceled, which means that the walk-ins get seen almost immediately, and you have time to start on your end-of-the-year reports. And time to talk, because Keiko and Dr. Kawada are in talkative moods, and you’re the best and only target. “How’s Chihiro?” Keiko asks. “Has she picked a school?”

“Not yet. Still weighing her options,” you say. And then, because you’re tired: “She’s worried about what will happen to me once she leaves.”

“Tell her not to worry. We’ll take care of you!” Dr. Kawada says with a grin. “What’s she worried about, anyway? You seem fine.”

“I am fine. But I’m signing up for an art class so she’ll stop worrying that I’m going to wither away alone,” you say. Dr. Kawada snorts. “How I’m doing isn’t her responsibility. She didn’t ask to be born and I didn’t have her so she could take care of me.”

“Nobody thinks that,” Keiko says. She gives you a weird look, but then she changes the subject. “Hey, but even once she moves out, you don’t have to be alone! Me and Shogo know lots of people we want to set you up with!”

You’re pretty sure your face goes dead white. “What?”

“I mean, I know you haven’t been seeing anyone since you moved here —"

“Because it’s not about me anymore. It’s about Chihiro.”

“Yeah, but if it’s about Chihiro, shouldn’t you want her not to worry?” Kawada’s not helping. You feel like you might be sick. “I moved here right around when you did and I’ve never seen you date anybody. Things must have gone down real bad with your ex —"

“Shogo!” Keiko swats him, mortified, then looks at you. “Sorry. He should know better.”

“Chihiro’s dad isn’t my ex,” you say. “He’s — gone.”

It’s the same trick you’ve been pulling on Chihiro since she was old enough to ask, and it works on adults, too. Kawada backs off, chagrined. “Sorry,” he says. There’s an awkward silence. “I’ve known you for seventeen years. How did I miss that?”

“I don’t like to talk about it.” You don’t even like thinking about Tomura, but every winter, it’s unavoidable. Every winter the sadness curls up around you, and although time is supposed to heal things, it’s never gotten any easier to throw off come spring. “I wouldn’t wish it on anybody.”

“Yeah,” Keiko agrees. Her eyes are sad. “Still. Tell Chihiro not to worry. We’ll keep an eye on you.”

You force a smile, force your eyes to brighten. “Thank you.”

It’s the clinic’s slowest day in a while, and you spend a lot of it screwing around on the computer. You sign up for an art class, one that meets the same night as Chihiro’s choir practice, so you can pick her up on the way home. You google therapists, too — maybe she’ll feel better if she knows you have one. And maybe you need one. Chihiro’s your daughter, the most important person in the world, the one you’d sacrifice everything to care for. Caring for her takes up most of your thoughts, distracts you from the pain of losing Tomura. Once Chihiro goes away for school, there won’t be anything left to keep your sadness at bay.

Tomura’s been on death row for nineteen years. They could execute him at any time, and you’d never know until his name was released by the government. During his trial, when you realized the death penalty was on the table, you looked up how it would happen. It still haunts you sometimes. You don’t want to think of Tomura with his neck broken, his eyes open and staring, dying with feet chained together and his hands bound behind his back. You want to remember him before it all went wrong. Back when you still believed he was the best thing that ever happened to you.

You met him at university, on a day when the campus was iced over. Your on-campus job started early, which meant you had to make your way to the library on paths that wouldn’t be de-iced for another hour. Tomura had an early class. He was headed the opposite way from you, and you were both so focused on not slipping and falling that you walked headlong into each other and fell on your asses anyway.

Your backpack slid from your shoulders, and the papers Tomura was carrying scattered across the path. Fuck, Tomura said, with feeling, and you laughed. What’s so funny? You fell down, too.

I know, but — An image popped into your head and set you off all over again. We look like we’re in a cartoon. Except without the stars and planets around our heads.

No stars and planets? I want a refund, Tomura said, and cracked a smile that opened up a split in his lower lip. Damn it —

Here. You retrieved your fallen backpack and a packet of tissues, then started gathering the papers Tomura had dropped. Sorry. It looked like you were in a hurry to go somewhere.

Comp-Sci building. I’m never signing up for a 7am again. Tomura’s phone buzzed, and he yanked it out of his pocket. And now it’s canceled. Motherfucker. I have to walk all the way back —

Maybe not all the way, you said, and he looked at you. I work at the library. It’s definitely open. You can hang out there until they get the paths salted.

Tomura looked at you, the tissue still pressed to his bloody lip. You didn’t know his name yet, didn’t know anything about him, but there was something you liked about his face. Something you liked about how he still got in on your joke, even though he was pissed about the fall. Something about the fact that he hadn’t gotten up yet, even though you’d gathered all his papers and were holding them out for him to take. I’ll level with you, he said after a second. I’ve never been to the library.

I get that a lot, you said, and you stood up. The plan was to hold out your hand to help him up, but you moved too fast, and your feet slid out from under you again. You managed to hang on to Tomura’s papers, but you went down hard. Fuck!

Tomura didn’t ask if you were okay. He just lifted the papers out of your hands, set them aside, and helped you sit up with hands that shook ever so slightly. I’m surprised you swore, he said, and you raised an eyebrow. You look like the type who says fiddlesticks instead.

Fuck off, you said, and he laughed. Making him laugh felt like an achievement, one you were proud to win. Looking back, that was when you knew you were in trouble. Maybe we should just crawl to the library.

It’s cold. Walking’s faster. Tomura got shakily to his knees, then his feet, and you copied him. I bet we can make it.

He stumbled twice on the way there, and you stumbled once, but neither of you fell again. You were leaning on each other to balance, more contact than you ever made with guys you weren’t dating, and nothing about it felt tense or awkward. It was just the only thing that made sense to do.

And that’s how everything was with Tomura. It just made sense, and you were so happy — and you think Tomura was, too. You fought sometimes, sure, but everyone does. Sometimes you didn’t know the right thing to say, but neither did he. He had a rough past, and you didn’t push him to talk about it. You just let him share what he wanted to, when he wanted to, and towards the end you had something close to the whole picture. It just didn’t have the murders in it.

No. You don’t want to think about this. You know what you believe about this, and going in a circle won’t help solve anything. You decide to redirect your feelings of frustration by looking up the lawyer who called you. Sure enough, he’s a prosecutor— or he was. Looking at the profile on his law firm’s website, you’re not sure what he does. He was in the news a year or so ago. Some case involving the yakuza.

The bell rings, and since Keiko’s on break and the receptionist got snowed in, you hurry up to the front to check the new patient in. It’s a good distraction. It helps to stay busy. When you’re busy, you don’t have to think about any of it — not Tomura, not the fact that he’s gone, not the fact that your daughter is leaving soon, too. And you don’t have to think about how it won’t be long before all your distractions run out.

Chapter 2 ->

#shigaraki tomura x reader #tomura shigaraki x reader #shigaraki tomura x you #tomura shigaraki x you #shigaraki x reader #shigaraki x you #reader insert #x reader #man door hand hook car door #a bisquared production

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aphroditesmoon · 1 year ago

Text

lacrymosa [part 1]

clarisse la rue x fem!hecatecabin!reader [boarding school au]

PART 2

summary: you were sent to a prestigious boarding school to be rid from your father as a burden, but when strange things begins to happen upon your arrival, you wonder what truly lies behind the school walls. And as you attract attention from an infamous student, your plans to lie low is disrupted for the semester.

warnings: basically pjo plot in a different font, wlw relationships and what that entails, artist!reader. warnings will be according to the chapter.

wc: 5.2k

a/n: part 2 will hv more clarisse, also I've never been good at finishing series, but here's to an attempt! Comment if you'd like to be added to the taglist!

The violent wind coming from outside of the car window sent a sharp shiver down your spine. You readjust your sitting position, pushing your school bag further away from you.

"Would you like to close the window, miss?" The driver asked, sparing a glance to your way. "No, it's fine." You assured him.

You have always liked the cold, it calms your nerves in a way. And for a day like this, you need all the help you can get.

Your father hadn't even been home to see you off for the last time. But you were kind of grateful for that. Usually you'd find it upsetting. But it was a clear decision that he purposely wanted you out of his line of vision when he had registered you into this boarding school.

Prestigious and highly acclaimed, he called it. Those were just polite words for strict and overbearing.

You have stopped wasting time trying to figure out why he hates you. Your mother dying from your birth was only the tip of the iceberg. Your whole existence is a burden to him, no matter how hard you've tried to change it.

I wonder if I'll even miss the hostility he's always given me, or the empty white walls of his mansions that have seen me at my worst and at my best. Those thoughts shouldn't matter anymore, you told yourself.

You've never been happy in that house, but familiarity, sometimes, was better than nothing. You fiddled with your crimson red tie that came with the uniform. What you could tell from the way you're dressed along with the down payment your father had to pay for you is that this place is an exaggerated babysitting place for rich kids with attitude problems.

You've been sent to many places away from your father. Summer camp, Spring camp, summer school and all that. But nothing this far away.

As per your research, the school seemed to be located far from the city and near the mountains up north. There are two buildings divided by gender that stands a few meters away from each other. Not that it'd be a problem for you. You've never been interested in boys much.

It was sunny earlier on the road, but the nearer you are to your destination, the cloudier the sky gets. "Looks like it's about to rain." You mumbled to yourself.

"That's normal here, miss. The weather here's always cold." The driver spoke from the front. You hadn't realized that he heard what you said.

It was a few minutes later when you finally see a large building from a distance. The view lived up to it's reputation even from a far. You feel your heart sinking into a stomach, the anxiety worsening.

This was it. This will be your home for the next 2 or 3 years.

Your driver speeds up once drizzling rain begins to fall down from the sky. You allow him to close the window from his seat and lower down the ac.

Feeling your fingers pruning up, you rub your palms together for warmth after reaching for your bag, pulling it closer to you.

The weather wasn't going to be a problem, and hopefully the people here won't be too.

---

When the car slowed down in front of the entrance, you let yourself take in the view of it all, girls ranging from your ages to younger, walking past of sitting by the stairs. All of them wearing the same thing that you are.

You didn't mean to make the driver open the door for you, but he did anyways as you're too distracted to stop him.

He moves straight to the back to retrieve your other bags as you step out of the vehicle. Some of the girls stopped and stared at you, knowing how rare it is to have new students here.

You couldn't tell what lies behind their long glares and gazes, but you had a feeling that they were eyeing you up like a predator does to their prey. Focusing on the large cream and white colored building staring you down, your heart whispered out a hopeful wish that you could just get back in the car and drive off.

You fix up your plaited skirt and turn towards your driver. "Do you need help to bring these in?" He asks.

You shook your head, immediately taking them into your hands. "No, I got it. But thank you." He smiled warmly as he shut the car hood close. "Have a great year, miss." He tells you politely before walking back to the driver's seat.

And that was the last familiar face you'll ever see for the rest of the semester. You lift up your hand in a tiny wave as you watch him reverse and drive off from the school ground.

You see him wave back before he finally disappears for good.

The staircase made it harder for you and your bags, and if you were expecting any kind eyes to offer some help, none came to it. Instead they all looked at you like you were stupid.

You counted the steps under your breath, stopping when you reached number 5, and then starting back again from 1. It was also an effort to keep your anxiety together, but at certain times like these, you wondered if breathing exercises are all lies made up by a psychiatrist to worsen someone symptom and continue to drive them crazy.

After a couple series of 1 to 5s, you finally made it to the top of the stairwell and into the open doors of the school.

If the rain outside hadn't been freezing your toes, inside was much more brutal. The school is air conditioned, of course it is.

When you said you liked cold, you didn't mean the frozen kind. The strawberry pink socks you're wearing aren't doing you any favors either as you breath out a tired sigh, full hands dragging your bags with you until you reach a tiny counter with the label "office" above the glass.

A teacher, or a guardian, sits inside, working on some paperwork. She looked up when she heard the rolling sound of the wheels on your bag and offered a small smile.

"You're new here, I take it?" You nodded your head and pursed your lips tightly. "Can I have your name?"

You gave her the information needed, from yoir name to your birth certificate. And once she's done compiling the necessary paperworks into a file, she stacks it in the shelves behind her.

"Here's your class schedule, and here's your dorm key." You slid the key onto your pocket and slipped the paper under your arms as you listened to her explaining how the dorm building is in a complete other side of this place, and that you'd have to drag your bags back down the lengthy staircase and walk another 6 minutes towards the other building on the left of the school. Not to be mistaken with the boy's dorms on the right.

You ignored the continuous staring from the other student as you forced yourself down again, and into the left.

The road to the dorm was nicely designed, a straightly drawn black and white concrete pavement in squares with grass on its side. It made the place look more homely. But of course, it wasn’t really gonna fool anyone.

The dragging became easier on the ground. You thanked the gods once you got to the other building once you spotted an elevator. Your first thought was, oh thank fuck for these rich assholes. And your second thought was, oh these are some real rich assholes.

There are less staring here since mostly everyone is already in school. You took your time walking once you're out of the elevator, reading the large signs of the dorm level names.

There are 20 levels to be accurate. And yours, unfortunately, is level 20.

You stood up straight in that elevator for what felt like a whole 10 minutes until it dinged open. Finding your room was much easier, you didn't have to walk very far to find your door. You used the key given to you to unlock the doors and pushed your bags into the room first before you.

You halted for a minute when you met with two strange girls from the inside.

Your roommates apparently have not gone to their classes yet and are still here. They looked at you expectantly as you stared right back.

"Uh-" your daydreams broke. "I'm new here." You announced.

One of the two laughed slightly and shook their head. "We know, we were waiting for you. I'm Harper, and this is Olivia." They extended their hands and you shook them without question.

"So, where'd you come from?" Olivia asks. She had beautiful green eyes and wavy blonde hair. Harper on the other hand, had dark hair and bold blue eyes. Next to each other, the two looks quite the pair. You began rearranging your bags on your side and taking out important things needed for your classes as you answer their inquiries. "New York."

"A city girl, that's nice. The difference here must be jarring." You snorted whilst you hang your clothes on to your small closet. "Very."

They walked out with you once you were done unpacking, leading you back to the school.

"The teachers won't mind you being late, with you being new and all that. But make a habit out of it and you'll get a penalty for it." Harper explained. "Penalty?"

They both nodded and kept on walking up towards the entrance. "Attendance is very important, this isn't public school, lying about health problems to get out of class or skip and disappear for more than 3 times, you could get expelled."

That is insane, you thought. "I didn't know they're that strict." Harper smirked and shrugged at that. "Yeah, I mean unless you're a legacy student, or your parents donate a lot for the school, you won't get many benefits."

Of course, even among the rich, the most privileged still get to escape justice and fairness. "Are you both legacy students?"

"No." Olivia snorted. "What's your locker number?" She takes a peek at your papers and moved right to your locker, opening it with ease.

"Thanks." You tell her while shoving your books inside of it.

"There aren't many legacy students here." Harper spoke from your side, referring back to your question from earlier.

"There are only certain families with histories deeply rooted within the school walls, like Luke Castellan or Silena.”

Your brows raises at those names as the three of you leaned back on the lockers. "Let me guess, they're brats who can get you expelled?"

"Worse." Olivia corrected with a sarcastic smile. "They can do whatever shit they want to you, and will not get expelled for it."

"But don't worry, half of them are decent, just don't piss them off and they'll leave you alone." You nod in understanding, knowing that it was your plan anyways, even if they hadn't warned you.

"Luke's not even entitled or mean, he's actually pretty nice. He helped me take out a book from the library once." Olivia added, wiggling her brows.

"You're just saying that because you like him." Harper scoffed and rolled her eyes.

"Even if I didn't, he's still not an ass." The bell rang the minute her sentence was finished. The two girls groaned and started saying their goodbyes before they parted ways to attend their classes.

"Meet up back for lunch?" Harper initiates. "Sure." You told her before following her directions to pre Calculus.

Your brain still hadn't fully registered what just happened. You just made two new friends, and that is a relief. Though you enjoy your alone time along with some quiet and peace, that doesn't mean you don't get lonely or feel isolated. Having bad social skills doesn't exactly equate to joy wanting a social life at all.

You walk into the half filled classroom and scan the space for an empty seat.

Some kids up front started whispering to themselves as they watched you from the corner of their eyes, but none of them tried speaking to you directly.

You flinch when you heard the teacher's voice, booming through the classroom as she enters right behind you. "You're the new girl?" She drops her bag onto her chair and looked you directly in your eyes.

"Yes." The teacher hummed to herself and turned towards her other students. "Do we have any empty seats at the back?" She asks loudly.

"There's one, but it's Chase's." A boy responded. "He's not in today, is he?" He shook his head at her.

"Alright, you can sit there temporarily, I'll ask the boys to bring in an extra table and chair for you tomorrow." You thanked her and walked right to your seat.

Grateful to be seated at the last row by the window, you slumped against the chair, relaxing your back.

The kids at the front stop wasting their time twisting their heads to stare at you, and as the class begins, you tell yourself that maybe this isn't as bad as you thought it'd be.

Your first class ever had been less exciting than expected. You had spent the last 20 minutes of the class trying not to doze off.

Barely any sleep came to you last night, considering how nervous you were for this day. All the worries you've had were for nothing, so far it's all been a bore, and all you wanted to do was to crawl back on to your bed at home and escape all of this strangeness.

Get your shit together, you scolded yourself. You've been all alone your whole life, how different is it now?

The girl on the seat next to yours had craned her neck in your direction, trying to peek through your notebook. Instinctively, you closed over it with your arm.

She did not need to see how there are zero equations in your notebook, all replaced with doodles of flowers and frogs.

When all is hopeless, your passion is where you turn to. Life is suffering in parts, but you find that being able to make it into art, makes the suffering less painful, or at least, more manageable.

Your father had never liked how you prefer to spend your time in art class over piano. In fact, when you were much younger, he even took the initiative to throw out all of your sketchbook. You had to find time to practice your drawing when you aren't at home, knowing his ignorance for your privacy.

But here, hopefully, you'll have ample time to draw and paint.

Once the class is dismissed, you make your way straight into the bathroom, trying to get into a booth before it gets crowded. You caught a glimpse of your reflection from the mirror and cringed at yourself. For some reason, even when you're not doing anything, the school air still finds a way to turn your hair frizzy.

You ran into the small space with open doors and knocked it shut as soon as you're in.

You could hear footsteps entering in right after you're done peeing. A cacophony of running sink water and empty chatter fills your ears as you stood up to fix your skirt and your socks.

The zip of your skirt seemed to have an issue getting stuck on a piece of string, holding it back from fully zipping up. You lifted it up higher and pulled the string out before using your teeth to rip it off of the zip and waving it onto the floor.

There was a moment of silence outside the door just before you were going to exit it. But a loud sound of slamming doors and laughter stops you at your place.

"Lock the doors." You hear another female voice command. She was not shouting, but she had a bold voice that seemed fit for a leader, straight to the point and confident.

Any noise of giggling or chatting immediately died down the moment the girl and her friends stepped in, and now you wonder if getting out would be a good idea at all. So you stayed quiet inside the bathroom.

Your palms are held against the door while you lean into it, trying to hear her clearer.

"What did I tell you last week?" The girl spoke again. She sounded upset or the second worst thing, disappointed.

Another voice rose up in response, meeker in comparison. "You said to have it by Monday."

"It's Wednesday today."

"But I have it now!" The other girl pleaded. "I don't care. I asked for it on Monday, you're two days late." The silence that came after her words was worrying. It was only when she spoke again that you felt your racing heart slowing down.

"You know what you're gonna do right now?" She asks. Silence. "You're going to hand me the money, and then you're going to give me 20 on the ground, right here."

20 what? You frowned in confusion. Money?

You expected resistance, begging, or even defiance from the other girl, but you only heard a resigned sigh from the other side of the door.

The door creaked slightly. You tried to balance yourself away from it when you accidentally slipped. Your fingers reach for the door handle to pull yourself up, and just when you thought it couldn't get worse, the door slams back on its hinges. You cursed yourself internally.

"What the fuck." The first girl snapped. "Booth number 2." She called out. "Get out of there right now or I'll break the door now."

Your breath hitches at the direct interaction and your hands hesitate to unlock the booth. But you'd rather get it over with than risk being taunted in a toilet.

You unlatch the lock with your fingers and slowly pull open the door. The first face you're met with is the one you assume who had addressed you seconds ago.

She had a naturally terrifying expression, with her brows knitted together and her hair pulled up in a ponytail. The bronze skinned girl connecting her gaze to yours.

The staring did not last as she soon started eyeing you up and down like she's analyzing every bad decision you've ever made.

But when she lifts her head back up to your face, you noticed that her frowning had lessened slightly. "You're new." She states aloud.

"How'd you know?" You ask her. "Anyone who's been here for more than a week would have the mind to run out of the bathroom as soon as they heard me." She answered coolly, taking a few steps nearer to you.

"What's your name?" She asks you. You tell her your first name.

She hums in acknowledgement before repeating your name, letting the syllables roll against her tongue. "I assume you haven't been making any friends yet, have you?"

You tried not to look to her side at the girl that was currently half squatting on the floor. "You're making her do push ups." You think aloud, ignoring her question.

"What? Oh, her? She's not important, and she's lucky i’m only making her do 25." The girl waved off like it's a silly joke. "I thought you said 20?" The other girl muttered under her breath.

She snapped her head at the younger girl and glared at her. "One more word and I'll make it 30."

Turning her head back to you, the anger she bore dissolved. "It's a good thing you've met me," she started. "In this place, it's all about making the right type of friends, just in case and not enemies."

"I don't plan on making enemies." You tell her. She was trying to intimidate you. Or at least, ruffle your feathers.

"No one does, but they just do it anyways without realizing." She answers with a shrug.

"And I suppose, if I'm with you, I won't fall down that road?" You didn't mean for it to sound insulting or sarcastic, but when she raised a brow in response, a ghost of smirk over her face, you realized that it was too late to take back your words.

"No, you won't. Because I am that enemy that you should be avoiding." You wondered if she is one of those people that's all talk and no bite, but the way she's folding her arms together as she stands inches away from you, radiated something much more sinister than you'd expect from a typical bully.

"I have to go." You say suddenly, a sense of urgency filled you when you remembered that Harper and Olivia would be waiting for you in the cafeteria. "I won't tell anyone about this." You added, trying to make sure there'd be no bad blood between the two of you.

"You can tell anyone you'd like, it wouldn't matter." She replies, stepping away from you to lean her back on the sink counter.

You clicked your heels away from her and made your way out, taking off the locks before you could swing the door open. You could feel her gaze on you as you left, but didn't twist your head back to confirm.

It didn't matter who she was. A few hours from now you'd forget you even met her, and just like always, you'll blend in with the crowd and be out of her sight.

---

"Where have you been?" Harper inquired once you sat next to her.

She had half a donut in her mouth as she asked this. "Don't talk with your mouth full." You chided her. She groans and mumbles something else you can't understand but chews the food until she's finished before she speaks again.

"We waited for like 10 minutes, you know recess isn't that long." You took a bite of your own sandwich and shrugged at her like nothing. "I was in the bathroom, there was a line." Harper nodded in understanding, but Olivia made a face of disgust as she toyed with her food.

"I hate the bathroom here, the dorm bathrooms are better." She said.

"What if you really need to pee?" You ask in disbelief. "I hold it in."

"What if you had explosive diarrhea?"

"Well, that would suck." Harper chokes out laugh, trying not to spit out her donut. You joined her with a chuckle, shaking your head at your friend.

"Your fear of public bathrooms will be the death of you." Harper quipped after taking a long sip of water. "I think it makes me stronger." Olivia argues.

"Well, I think it's gonna mess with your bladder." The brunette argues back. You listen to their back and forth until the bell rings again, indicating the end of recess.

You were a bit bummed that your classes aren't aligned with theirs, your nerves are much less triggered when they're around, a sense of familiarity of a sort.

Though, there was nothing you can do about it. You say your goodbyes at your lockers and parted ways again for your last 2 classes. The rest of school time was made bearable with the reminder that you at least shared rooms with your two new friends, and so there was nothing to worry about at all actually.

A part of you feels safer when you're around them. Though your mind is constantly bringing up the girl you've met in the bathroom. Her brown eyes and the way she looked at you.

She didn't strike you as someone admirable, but you had to admit, her features were remarkable. You had pulled out a pencil and a paper for a quick sketch of her eyes during Literature class.

It only hit you then, that you haven't even asked for her name. She knew yours, but you didn't know hers.

What would it matter? You asked yourself. If all goes well, you'll never see her for the whole semester at all. And she'd be nothing more than another face in your sketchbook.

You paid attention to the lesson, but your hands just needed something to work on while you were listening. Tapping your fingers repeatedly on the table was getting old, so you got productive and drew up a little something.

You had managed only half of her face on the paper by the time the class ended. Slipping the book into your tote bag, you follow the rush of students leaving class and heading back to your locker to switch your books for the last class.

It was 8pm when you were finally in the dorm elevator, back against the cold silver metal, relieving the warmth that radiated off of your body. The gym here is open all day and night, and even if the only equipment they had was a treadmill, you intended to utilise them fully.

Working out helps to take your mind off things, and it tires you out enough to help you sleep easier at night.

And so while everyone went back to their dorms, you stashed your bag by the gym entrance and tied your hair back up and went ahead for a good 40 minutes run.

You kept your eyes on the elevator level, watching the number get higher and higher until it eventually reached 20. It dinged open and allows you out with your poor tired feet and worn out expression.

It was quiet on the top floor, nothing like you’d predict what with the hour still being early. The small light bulbs above your head led you straight down the long corridor until you reached your room.

You took out your key and slashed it into the keyhole and heard your friends’ voices evolving from muffled noises into a clearer state as you pushed the door open.

You expected the girls to scold you over your absence again, as you do make it a habit of going places without letting them know, but what you didn't expect once you enter your dorm room, is for them to genuinely fret over your late arrival.

"You can't just disappear without telling anyone!" Olivia exclaimed, her large green eyes staring into your soul as you took your uniform off. "I was at the gym." You explained.

“In your school clothes?” Harper scrunches her nose in disagreement. “Hey, it's convenient.” You retorted.

"Were there other people there?" You shook your head no. "Well, maybe next time we'll go with you. I know you're not used to the unspoken rules here, but there are seriously more creeps than you can imagine in this place."

They were both sitting on their beds as they're talking to you, fully dressed in their matching pajamas like twins.

Harper had a face mask on as she rested her head on her pillows, her elbows used to help her sit up. They had music playing in the background, a song you recognized as Tourniquet by Evanescence. “I love this song.” You say randomly.

“Don’t change the subject.” You look over at them in confusion once you're finished changing.

"I didn't know it'd be such a big deal, I'm doing what everyone else does."

"I know, but I'm just saying, maybe we should all just play it safe for the semester. We don’t want another Samara accident." Harper reasoned.

You walked over to sit by the edge of her bed and asked her who's Samara.

"Samara Turner. She's a senior from last year. Some kid found her passed out by the back garden, her eyes were rolled back, and she was basically frothing from the mouth. When the ambulance came, it was too late. She was gone."

“Are you just making this up to scare me?” You ask them suspiciously. “No!” Olivia denies. “It's a real story, the teachers covered it up real good for future students, not even the news got a hold of Samara's fate.”

"Does anyone know what really happened?" You questioned them.

"The police ruled it as an overdose, but I can't imagine any type of drug running through her veins. And also, in the garden? That's just weird." Olivia says, shaking her head in disbelief.

"You guys think someone drugged her?" Harper shrugged and pursed her lips, inconclusive.

"Either way. It happened when she was alone. What was she even doing in the garden late at night? No one knows. But everyone will point their finger right back at her and say it's her own fault." You understood what they meant. This place isn't as picture perfect as it seemed, just like any other place, it has its holes and flaws.

"Okay, the next time I'm going anywhere other than my classes, I'll let one of you know." Harper and Olivia smiled and looked relieved. You could tell they were satisfied by your answer. "And if we're going anywhere, we'll tell you."

"Okay." You assured them.

You've never really known what it was like to have people worry over you this way. Most of the time, people were grateful when you minded your own business and hid away. And sure there is a little bit of annoyance that comes with being scolded like a child, but it also felt good to have someone care for you this way.

You folded your knees onto your chest, repositioning yourself on her bed. It is only after you move closer to her that you notice your sketchbook on her side table.

"Where'd you find that?" You jolted up, eyes widening..

"Oh, this is another thing we wanted to ask you about." Harper exclaimed, stretching her arm towards the book and passing it over to you. "Clarisse came over here like 15 minutes ago, said you dropped this."

"Who's Clarisse?" You frowned.

"Oh that's funny, you don't know who Clarisse is, and yet she's talking about you like you've been friends for ages." Harper says it like a mother hen catching her daughter red handed, but you're only further confused.

"No, seriously. Who's Clarisse?"

Olivia sighed from her bed and waved her hand exaggeratedly. "Curly hair, dark skin, looks like she can dropkick you in 6 different ways." Instantly, something in your brain clicked.

"Oh, her." Their expression changed into curiosity as they await for you to add more.

"I...met her in the bathroom. She was making a kid do pushups. But we barely talked, I just left."

"Yeah well, she asked where you were when she came by, and we told her we didn't know. And then she gave me this." You opened the book and found that the page with her face on has been ripped away.

Something eats away at your heart when you saw the torn pages, but you said nothing and instead just tossed the book onto your own bed. "What's her deal anyways." You huffed.

"Legacy students, they're all a little entitled like that, her more than others." Olivia answered.

"Oh, she's entitled alright." You muttered to yourself and rolled your eyes.

"I think I'm just gonna go catch up on homework now, unless there's anything else you two want to nag me on." Harper snorted and shoved you playfully but still smiled.

"No, no more nagging." Olivia concluded.

#clarisse pjo #clarisse la rue #clarisse la rue x reader #clarisse x reader #pjo series #percy jackson #percy jackon and the olympians #percy jackson and the olympians #percy jackson x reader #pjo x reader #dior goodjohn #dior goodjohn x reader

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herstoryheaven · 7 months ago

Text

Lando Norris x Reader: Compliments In The Rain

Prompt: Lando catches you off guard with a series of sweet and genuine compliments about your appearance and personality. Your blush and flustered reactions make him smile, and he ends up reassuring you of how much he loves and appreciates you.

Reader: Gender Neutral

Word count: 830

Average reading time: 3 min

Category: Fluff

Warnings: None

The evening in Monaco was wrapped in a gentle hush, the weekend off giving way to a serene calm. As you and Lando wandered along the waterfront, the sky transitioned from a warm amber to a deep indigo, punctuated by distant flashes of lightning that hinted at a summer rain. The crisp air carried the faint scent of sea salt and blooming flowers, and the sound of gentle waves lapping against the shore created a soothing backdrop.

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Disclaimer: All events portrayed in my stories are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events is purely coincidental. Any actions or behaviours portrayed by the characters may differ from reality and cannot be connected to any actual person. This work is purely fictional and intended for entertainment purposes only.

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The rain began to fall softly, a delicate drizzle that quickly grew into a more persistent shower. Laughing at the sudden downpour, you and Lando sought shelter under a nearby roof. Your fingers intertwined and your shoulders pressed close together, the warmth of his body against yours felt comforting. You nestled into him, feeling a mix of contentment and affection that seemed to amplify with each passing second.

Lando's gaze was soft as he looked at you, his usual playful smirk replaced by something more tender. He gently brushed a stray lock of wet hair from your face, his touch light and loving. "You know," he began, his voice a soothing murmur as he leaned in closer, "I've been meaning to tell you something."

You tilted your head, curiosity lighting up your eyes. "What is it?"

Lando’s fingertips traced a gentle path along your jawline, sending a shiver of delight through you. "You look absolutely stunning tonight," he said softly. "The way the rain makes your eyes sparkle... it’s like you’re glowing."

A deep blush spread across your cheeks, and you looked down, flustered by his words. "Lando, you’re making me blush."

He chuckled softly, the sound warm and rich with affection. His hands cupped your face, his thumbs brushing tenderly across your flushed cheeks. "It’s true. But it’s not just your appearance that takes my breath away. It’s your heart, the way you bring so much kindness and joy to everyone around you. I admire how you always find the strength to be positive, even when things are tough."

You felt a rush of warmth spread through you, his compliments sinking deep into your heart. "You always know just what to say," you murmured, feeling a little overwhelmed.

Lando’s eyes searched yours with a loving intensity. He gently tilted your chin up, his lips finding a sweet spot just below your ear. He pressed a tender kiss to your neck, the touch so soft it felt like a whisper. "I don’t just say things to make you feel good," he said against your skin. "I say them because they’re true. And I want you to know how much I appreciate everything about you, your strength, your humor, even the way you laugh at my worst jokes."

Your heart fluttered as his kisses continued to trail along your neck, each touch a gentle caress that made your skin tingle. You closed your eyes, savoring the intimate moment. "I never know how to respond to this," you admitted softly, your voice a breathless whisper.

"Love," Lando said, his lips brushing your ear as he spoke, "you don’t need to respond. Just know that I mean every word. You’re incredible, and I feel so lucky to have you by my side."

He pulled you closer, wrapping his arms around you in a tender embrace. His embrace was more than just physical; it was a cocoon of warmth and safety. His hands traced soothing patterns on your back, and you could feel the steady beat of his heart against your chest. "I love you so much, Lando," you whispered, your voice trembling slightly with emotion.

"I love you too," he murmured, his breath warm against your ear. He pressed a series of soft, lingering kisses to your neck and shoulders, each touch a testament to his affection. The gentle rain outside seemed to echo the rhythm of his tender caresses. "I promise to always remind you of how amazing you are. You deserve to hear it, and I’ll never tire of telling you."

As the rain continued to fall around you, its gentle patter blending with the rhythm of your heartbeats, you felt completely enveloped in love. Lando’s tender touches and heartfelt words created a cocoon of intimacy that made the world outside seem distant and unimportant.

He leaned back slightly, just enough to look into your eyes. His fingers traced a loving path from your collarbone up to your jaw, and he pressed a soft kiss to your forehead. "There’s something magical about moments like this," he said, his eyes sparkling with an affection that felt both timeless and precious. "Just us, the rain, and the way I get to show you how much I care."

You smiled, feeling a profound sense of contentment. The simplicity of his love, expressed through soft kisses and gentle caresses, was a reminder of how deeply he cared for you. And in that moment, with the rain washing away all worries, you knew that you were cherished beyond measure.

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Copyright: All stories contained herein are the intellectual property of the author. Unauthorized copying, reproduction, or distribution of these stories, in whole or in part, without explicit written permission from the author, is strictly prohibited and may result in legal action. Respect the creator's rights and creativity. For permissions or inquiries, please contact: [email protected].

Request Guidelines: When submitting a request, please ensure that your request does not contain any explicit sexual content or graphic depictions, and avoid any form of extreme violence or graphic descriptions of violent acts. I appreciate your understanding and cooperation in maintaining a respectful and inclusive environment for all readers. If you're unsure about your request or want to request about someone I haven't written about yet, feel free to ask me anytime.

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nothorses · 6 months ago

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So I'm thinking of going on low dose T, and ofc I'll get more feedback from doctors when I see them, but I know one of the changes is that you run warmer and have lower heat tolerance, and I'm already kind of heat sensitive (sweating is a sensory ick). Do you or your followers have any kind of coping strategies that have helped with that?

I ran warm before, too, and I'm definitely warmer now! I also have Raynaud's which kind of makes the whole experience a clusterfuck, but that's besides the point. lmao.

I live in a pretty cool/temperate area, so it isn't normally an issue except in the (increasingly horrible) summers, but I've found that the hardest time to stay cool has been at night. I share a bed with my partner who runs even warmer, and it's been 2.5 years of struggling to figure out how to be a comfortable temperature together.

The best advice I can give you is to just stay as far away from synthetic fibers as you can; "sweat wicking" and "cooling" and "athletic" stuff included. It's a lie. They're all plastic, and while they might feel cool to the touch at first, plastic doesn't breathe. It'll trap heat and moisture against your skin after enough time, especially in the form of blankets. (Fuck the Rest Evercool. Worst recommendation I've ever gotten.)

Look for 100% linen, or 100% cotton. I've heard wool also works well, but I haven't had luck with that personally. Woven fabrics are going to be cooler and more breathable than sateen, and waffle weave is like, the single most breathable weave afaik (it's more common in blankets, but some clothes are waffle).

Some of these things can be pretty scratchy at first, and I recommend a couple of washes on a high heat & some fabric softener before you start using them. We were able to break in our waffle blanket super quickly this way! (I know some folks recommend against softener for breathability reasons, but it's the only thing that actually worked for us, and it hasn't impacted breathability). After you break them in, though, cotton and linen fabrics are SUPER soft!

I also recommend staying away from leather. It's natural, but trust me: it's not breathable. It's coveted in outdoor rec spaces BECAUSE it's somewhat waterproof.

Outside of that, I'd really encourage you to lean towards multiple light layers that you can change/remove throughout the day to suit your needs (ex: light tee + fleece + wind/rain layer, maybe throw in a flannel somewhere), instead of one or two heavy ones (ex: shirt + big puffy cold weather jacket). It's a strategy common in the PNW that works great for regulating your temperature when you're dealing with humidity and somewhat unpredictable weather, and imo, it also really translates if you're just generally sensitive to heat and sweat.

Outside of that... depending on where you live, I really recommend having an AC/dehumidifier. Don't bother with trying to rig up a swamp cooler if you're sensitive to sweat- the increased humidity will make things worse. The general advice I heard when researching a good AC was that window units will always be more efficient than portable units (and a mini split is better than either), but if you have to go with a portable unit, go with a dual-hose. They'll be more efficient just because they don't create a vacuum that pulls in warm air from outside. This is the model we settled on- it was really highly recommended and cost effective for what it is, and it's been absolutely fantastic this summer.

Idk how you are about pits, but I wash mine with a benzoyl body wash and then use a deodorant with antiperspirant every day, and I virtually never smell or sweat. 🤷‍♂️ ymmv though

I'm sure folks will have things to add, so check the notes on this post- and good luck!

#advice

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sai-int · 8 days ago

Text

LOW COUNTRY | HARD LUCK

johnny mactavish x reader

[PREV] [NEXT] [AO3] [MLIST]

pining—but nothing ever comes easy

Ever since the fence checks some three weeks ago, you and Johnny have been inseparable.

Always near each other. Always finding excuses to linger. The small things are driving you insane—fingers brushing when you pass tools to each other, stolen glances when you think the other isn’t looking. Thick, suffocating tension that's replaced most of the humidity since summer’s left.

A few days after the fences while walking back home from the stables, he bumped into you—a harmless accident, at first. You had nudged him back, bumping your shoulder against his bicep. Then he nudged you back. So you nudged him again. And then, without warning, he full-on shoved you, sending you both stumbling into a pit of mud, arms flailing, laughter bursting from your lungs as he landed on top of you, splashing each other in the process.

You had both ended up completely covered, caked in thick, cool mud, layers of it sticking to your clothes, your skin, your hair. There was no saving anything now. The mud clung to every inch of you, heavy and wet, the kind that made your boots feel like they weighed a hundred pounds each. You had looked like a couple of disasters, and there was no point in trying to salvage the mess.

Which meant there was only one solution: the hose.

You both had trekked the rest of the way to the house, mud squelching with every step, straight to where the hose lay coiled by the back door. The second you grabbed it, you turned the nozzle on Johnny, blasting him with a sharp, cold stream of water. He had let out a yelp before bursting into laughter, standing there with his hands on his hips like this was the funniest thing in the world. You had aimed right for his chest, soaking him instantly, the fabric of his shirt clinging to his skin as the mud slid off.

Then he had snatched the nozzle from you, cranking it on full blast.

You barely had time to react before he drenched you. The icy water sent a shiver straight through your spine, soaking you completely. You had shrieked, sputtering as you tried to swat at him, but he kept spraying, grinning like a devil as you both ended up more soaked than you were in the first place. Mud slid off in chunks, the water mixing with the dirt until you were both just a dripping, shivering mess.

Eventually, you had both trudged inside, still dripping all over the hardwood floor, still grinning. The evening had passed in a haze of warmth—hot showers, dry clothes, the comforting scent of the farmhouse wrapping around you like a well-worn quilt. It was one of those moments that stuck with you, one of those memories you’d look back on during the rougher days.

But the world keeps spinning, and the last remnants of August are scattered and blown away with the leaves as September rolls in. September cools the lingering summer heat, but with it comes the rain.

A lot of rain.

The crop fields eventually flood. They barely ever have time to dry despite the tile lines, weeds take root faster than you can pull them, and harvesting is next to impossible. Every step outside is a battle against the sinking earth.

The animals are restless and need even more attention, the barns reek of damp hay, and everything feels like it takes twice the effort. The mud is relentless, coating their coats and clinging to their hooves, and Johnny’s right there with them, hosing them down, cleaning their hooves before hoof rot can take hold. The mud pits are the worst, constantly growing, threatening to swallow everything in their path.

It’s a never-ending cycle that chews through your patience like rust on metal.

Even the simplest tasks feel like a battle. The dampness seeps into your clothes, cold against your skin, making it impossible to feel dry for more than a few minutes. The weight of the work drags on, each chore stretching longer than the last, and there’s no break in sight. It’s exhausting, the kind of tiredness that sticks to your bones and makes you wonder if you should just sleep in and forget about the farm for one day of your damned life.

You used to dread this time of year, but now, there’s Johnny.

Every time frustration threatened to settle in, he was there, breaking the tension with some terrible joke that was so stupid you couldn’t help but laugh, the sound ringing out through the fields, cutting through the dreary days like sunbeams cascading through the cracks in the clouds.

September 8th was the start of it all— the first serious downpour since the Spring. It didn’t bring hurricane levels of devastation, per se, but it definitely gave Johnny a run for his money. After watching him scramble to fill muddy pits in the pastures with gravel, the next day you decided to teach Johnny how to do it with the tractor, for efficiency’s sake. But first, you had to teach him how to actually drive a tractor.

The midday sky was surprisingly clear, blue skies with a couple clouds, the sun shining but hardly doing enough to dry up the ground. The air still carried the fresh scent of wet grass from the previous night’s downpour. You were both already filthy—mud smeared up your jeans, damp hay clinging to your shirts, the sticky kind of sweat settling beneath your collars from the morning’s labor.

It was the kind of day that stretched long, the kind where there was too much to do and not enough hands to do it. The both of you had spent most of the day patching up the farm from whatever damage the rain did.

Johnny had leaned against the rusting side of the machine as you gave him a general rundown of how the tractor worked—its parts, what to use it for, what not to use it for. His baby blues were locked on you, arms crossed with his faded flannel rolled up to his elbows, forearms streaked with dirt. His hair was all grown out, a mess, tousled from the wind with just a few strands curling against his forehead where sweat had dampened them.

After—you realized a slight predicament.

There was, in fact, only one seat.

Which, you obviously knew. You had just… Forgotten. It’s not like you had anyone else to share it with until a month ago, and it wasn’t exactly built for more than one person, and lord knew this old ‘72 hunk of junk wasn’t equipped with any fancy modifications.

Still, you and Johnny stood on either side of it, both perched on the step bars, staring at the problem in front of you.

“So,” Johnny had said, running a hand through his hair. “How’re we doin’ this?”

You had frowned, scanning the interior like the answer was hidden somewhere in the cracked leather or dusty floorboards. “Uh…”

“Ye gonna balance on the fender?”

You snort, “That’s a terrible idea.”

“Alright,” he said easily, grinning as he cocked his head. “Guess tha’ leaves my lap.”

Your eyes had snapped to his, narrowing as heat prickled at your neck. “Yeah, I’m sure you’d enjoy that.”

He chuckled, far too pleased with himself. “No one’s stoppin’ ye from enjoyin’ it too.”

“So, you’re saying you would enjoy it?”

He lifted one shoulder in a lazy shrug, palms slightly upturned as if the answer was obvious, a grin tugging at the corner of his mouth.

You had opened your mouth to argue, but before you could even think of another alternative, he had already climbed up, settling into the seat like it was the most natural thing in the world. Then, without missing a beat, he had turned toward you, eyebrows raised expectantly.

You had just stared at him. Incredulously.

He had stared right back, completely unbothered. Then, he slung one arm over the back of the seat, stretching out like he had all the time in the world, and patted his thigh.

“Can wait all day, Hen.”

You had huffed, crossing your arms. “You’re insufferable. Genuinely.”

“Ye love it.”

Fuck him and that stupid little grin.

You had climbed up, settling onto his lap with as much dignity as you could muster, ignoring the way your pulse jumped at the warmth of him beneath you.

You stuttered through a more detailed explanation while ignoring the heat in your cheeks. You told him about the throttle, the gears, how to ease the clutch off when he lets go of the parking gear. You hoped he would gently ease the thing forward instead of throwing it into motion like a lunatic.

You looked back at him occasionally from where you were perched atop his thick thigh and he would nod along, serious, focused, like he was actually going to listen. You should have known better.

The second he stretched his arms around you and on the wheel, gripping it like he was about to tame a wild beast, Johnny just had to be Johnny.

The engine had growled as he threw it into gear, and before you could shout at him to slowly let off the clutch , the tractor lurched forward like it had been shot out of a cannon.

The wheels had spun up mud, slinging it in every direction. You had barely had time to curse before—CRACK, the tractor had slammed dead-on into the fence ahead. The sound of splintering wood had been so loud it echoed, the entire structure shaking as the impact sent a fresh spray of wood pieces flying. The whole thing had happened so fast, leaving nothing but the dull hum of the idling engine and the unmistakable sight of a fence massacre.

Johnny had frozen in the seat, hands still gripping the wheel like it might try to escape. His eyes had been locked on the wreckage, mouth slightly parted in dumbfounded horror. You had been the same way, staring at the fresh hole in the fence, at the broken post dangling pathetically from its base.

Then laughter erupted out of you.

It had punched through the silence, doubling you over, your arms wrapping around your stomach as you absolutely lost it.It had been the kind of laughter that stole your breath, that shook your shoulders and left you gasping, because of course this would happen. Of course.

Johnny had groaned, dragging a hand down his face, mud smeared across his cheek from where he had touched it earlier.

“Fan-tastic,” he muttered.

You had barely gotten the words out through your laughter. “If your goal was destruction, then great job.”

You felt his glare on the back of your head, but there had been no real heat behind it—just pure, exhausted exasperation. He had known, just as well as you did, that this was never something you were ever going to let him forget.

“Oh, ha-ha. Real funny,” he had deadpanned, finally releasing the steering wheel, resting one arm loosely around your waist and the other on his thigh.

“I’m sorry, I swear,” you had wheezed, still bent over, hands on your knees as you tried to pull yourself together. But the second you looked back at the fence, at the carnage he had caused, another burst of laughter had escaped. You had clamped a hand over your mouth, shaking your head. “Okay—okay, I’m done.”

Johnny had squinted at you, clearly not buying it.

“Uh-huh,” he had drawn, “Think tha’ was funny, do ye?”

You had snorted, wiping at your eyes, still breathless. “I mean—yeah, kind of.”

“Yeah? How funny’s this then?”

Before you could react, his hands had shot out, fingers digging into your ribs. You had yelped, instinctively jerking away, but he had been faster. His arms had wrapped around you, keeping you against him as he attacked your sides, relentless, grinning like the menace he was.

“Oh, god—Johnny, please!” you had shrieked, laughter spilling from you in uncontrollable waves as you twisted in his grasp, trying to escape.

“What was that abou’ ‘destruction’? Hmm?” he teased, chuckling as you squirmed, his grip strong enough to keep you trapped but gentle enough not to actually hurt you.

Through your breathless giggles, you had tried to shove at his shoulders, but your strength was useless in the face of your own traitorous laughter. “This— This can’t get worse than the fence!”

“Oh, but can’t it?” His fingers had found a spot just above your waistband, and you had nearly fell off the tractor right then and there.

“Johnny!” you had gasped between fits of laughter, trying desperately to push him off.

Eventually, either out of mercy or just the need to breathe himself, he had finally stopped, still grinning as you staggered back, hands on your knees, panting.

“Oh God—” Your breaths came in gasps, “You’re the worst,” you had huffed, face flushed, chest heaving.

He had just smirked, all smug and self-satisfied. “I know.”

Even though you had wanted to glare at him, to scowl and tell him off, you just… couldn’t.

Instead, you had rolled your eyes, shoving him lightly before turning your attention back to the fence. Another thing to add to the never-ending list of work to be done. The thought should’ve frustrated you, but instead, a quiet warmth settled in your chest—the kind that came from the easy company, the laughter, the way he made even the worst days feel lighter.

Speaking of things piling up, just two days later, you found out Shimmer was pregnant.

At first, you weren’t sure. Maybe she was just putting on weight, despite the diet you had her on. But then you started noticing the little things—how her middle grew rounder, how she moved slower, more deliberate, only bothering to graze when necessary. She’d nuzzle into your shoulder more often, leaning her weight against you in a way that felt almost… maternal. And when she missed her heat cycle, that sealed it.

You had your answer.

Pregnant mares don’t always get special treatment from their stallions, but Scout’s different. He’s a gentle giant, and he’s still sticking by her, lingering behind her. When they graze, he just hovers by, protecting her, ears flicking attentively, like he knows she’s carrying something precious. A bond like that’s a rare thing, but you can’t say you’re surprised.

It just meant more work, more things to keep an eye on. She’d need extra care in the coming months—better feed, closer monitoring, maybe even a vet visit just to be sure. And yet, despite the added responsibility, you couldn’t help but feel a small flicker of excitement. A foal.

Something new. Something good.

Maybe that was what you needed—a reminder that not everything about this time of year had to be miserable. That there were still things worth looking forward to.

Little things had a way of breaking through the routine, slipping into the cracks of everyday life in a way that softened the edges. Like the prospect of a foal. Or Johnny’s absolutely horrible jokes. Or—Dixie.

Johnny had been trying—really trying—to befriend the old girl, but there was hesitation in him, something careful and cautious. He had mentioned once that he wasn’t too fond of dogs. You hadn’t pushed to know why. Instead, on one particularly easy day, you had found yourselves in the sheep barn, sitting cross-legged on the dusty floor. Dixie was curled up in your lap, her graying fur warm against your skin, her breathing slow and steady.

Johnny had watched from a short distance, his arms resting loosely on his knees, his expression unreadable. You had patted the empty space beside you, wordlessly inviting him closer.

Johnny had sat next to you, his gaze soft as he watched Dixie—how her chest had risen and fallen in a peaceful rhythm, her graying muzzle tucked under her paws, the faintest snores escaping her every so often. He hadn’t spoken, hadn’t moved—just watched her for a while, his eyes following every slow rise and fall of her chest, like he was memorizing the simple, quiet moment.

The silence had stretched between you, comfortable, not needing words. There had been something in the way Johnny had focused on the old dog, something unexpectedly tender in his expression. He had reached out, tentatively at first, his fingers hovering just above her fur, unsure if he should touch or leave her undisturbed. Dixie hadn’t stirred, the slow rhythm of her breathing a quiet invitation for him to try.

His fingers had grazed the top of her head, gentle, testing. She hadn’t reacted, just let him. After a moment, he had stroked his hand down her back, a slow, uncertain motion that had turned steady as he realized—she wasn’t a threat. She had leaned into the touch, and Johnny's hand had moved with more confidence, his gaze softening as he continued.

You hadn’t interrupted. You had just watched, silently, as something had shifted in his expression—a flicker of adoration, quiet affection, the kind you had seen in moments that had come and gone without fanfare. And yet, each time, those moments had burrowed deeper under your skin, nestling into places you didn’t quite know how to name.

There had been an undeniable warmth that had settled in your chest, something that didn’t quite belong but had fit all the same.

You never used to care for small things like this—like the way Johnny cares for something as simple as Dixie, the way he tackles you into the mud or makes you laugh until you cry.

Everything he does—everything he is—steadily takes root in you in ways that leave you confused but increasingly and indubiously tethered to him.

And then Pa notices.

Of course he does.

He’s been around long enough to hear the way you and Johnny laugh—really laugh, not just the surface-level chuckles, but the deep, real laughter that comes from inside, the kind that makes you forget about the world for a while. He hears the little jabs, the teasing, the way Johnny’s softened around you, the subtle changes in the way you interact, the way you both speak your own language without realizing it.

Pa sees it all—the way you and Johnny are starting to slip into a rhythm, a shared dynamic that no one else quite understands. He sees the little looks that pass between you two when the other isn’t looking, how your smiles have grown more weighted, less guarded.

He’s not blind, not deaf, and he’s certainly not stupid. It’s in the way you speak to each other, the way your shoulders brush when you’re close, the quiet moments that pass between you and Johnny that tell a story he doesn’t need words to understand.

As dinner wrapped up one evening, the silence stretched just a little too long as you cleaned up. Pa leaned back in his chair, his eyes narrowing just a little as he watched you and Johnny exchange a look and small, pinched smiles, an inside joke that only the two of you understand.

When Johnny headed upstairs to shower for the night, Pa spoke. His voice was calm. Too calm. Eerily casual, but laced with weight, like a loaded gun aimed under the table, safety off.

“There better not be anything happenin’ between you two.”

Your hands froze in the sink. The words hit all at once, but they sank in slowly, like a thresher cutting through a field, one pass at a time. You turned your back to the sink, swallowing hard against the bile rising in your mouth. Pa’s eyes are already on you, steady, unyielding.

“That boy’s here to work—” he paused, his gaze sharpened, “and that’s that.”

Heat crept up your neck, a slow burn of embarrassment, irritation, something else you couldn’t name if you tried. Half of you wanted to snap—ask him why the hell it would matter anyway. Tell him he should mind his own damn business. But you knew he was right.

Because technically, nothing is happening—but simultaneously, everything is. The glances. The touches, how the tension between you both feels like a wire pulled too tight, on the verge of snapping.

You scoff, shaking your head. “Nothing’s happening.”

Because what the hell else are you supposed to say? That you’re aching for something to happen? That you can always feel Johnny looking at you like he’s fighting a battle with himself—like he’s on the edge of breaking, one heartbeat away from pulling you into him and kissing you senseless, but he won’t. He’s just staring, and you’re both drowning in it. And it’s driving you insane, gnawing at you, every nerve screaming for him to make a move, but he won’t.

Yes, things are happening. But if he never actually does anything, does it even count? If you load the shells and pump the forearm, but don’t plan on pulling the trigger, what’s the fuck’s point of even bringing out the shotgun?

You clenched your jaw, exhaled slowly through your nose, and turned back to the sink, shoving plates into the drying rack with more force than necessary.

Behind you, Pa didn’t say another word. He didn’t have to.

It’s September 14th, a lazy Sunday evening, and the world has slowed to a quiet hum as the sun dips below the horizon. The air is growing crisper by the day, the subtle whispers of fall creeping in, carrying the chill that promises the change of seasons.

And then, the crack of the bat.

Cecil Fielder, the Detroit Tigers' powerhouse, smashes a home run clean out of Milwaukee Stadium. From the kitchen radio, Ernie Harwell’s voice cuts through the hum of the evening, crackling with excitement, his call booming through the house—“That one’s looooong gone!”

You can’t help but smile at the familiar sound, the way Harwell’s voice seems to carry more energy than the whole room. Even Pa stirs in his chair, the game catching his attention for a moment, though his eyes are still fixed on the TV.

You’re standing side by side with Johnny at the sink, cleaning up after dinner. Plates clink, the dish sponge flicks lazily in your hands, and you both nudge each other, sharing some silent joke only the two of you get. His whispers and half-laughs make you giggle like a teenager, the kind of stupid, effortless laughter that catches you by surprise and escapes before you even know it. It’s easy—too easy—like it’s always been this way, like you’ve been doing this for years.

Johnny’s leaning on the counter next to you, drying a plate as he cracks another joke, his voice low enough that Pa can’t hear. Across the room, Pa’s planted in his armchair, eyes locked on the TV, his face stone still as the news anchor drones on about the hurricane coming Thursday. The rain’s been on and off for days, and the weatherman’s only making it sound worse.

The news perks your ears and you put down the sponge. You wander through the kitchen doorway, leaning against the stairwell banister as you watch the screen, arms crossed, brows slightly furrowed as you listen to the predicted wind speeds for Hurricane… Bob? They were just running out of names these days.

Johnny silently follows, pausing just behind you. You feel him before you see him, solid and steady, a quiet heat at your back. He’s gentle, reliable like the weight of a heavy coat in winter. Always lingering, steadily hovering.

Like he’s protecting you. Whether he means to or not.

Today’s just one of those fucking days.

The 18th starts with a crack of thunder rattling the house, jerking you awake from a restless sleep. The sound is too loud, like it’s coming from inside your own room. You pull the blanket tighter around your shoulders, but it doesn’t block the noise, doesn’t drown out the howl of the wind through your windows or the draft that accompanies it. You groan, sinking back into the pillow, praying for a few more minutes of sleep. You glance at the clock—7:03 AM. Shit, you should’ve been up 30 minutes ago.

Oh right—it’s Thursday.

With a grunt, you push the covers off and swing your legs over the side of the bed. Your feet hit the cool floor with a soft thud, your socks slipping slightly as you stand. You push your bedroom door open and make your way across the hall, steps muffled by the runner. The faint sound of running water comes from the bathroom, steady and constant, and you frown.

You hesitate for a moment, then knock lightly on the door, only to hear the water stop, a muffled grunt from inside. He’s not done yet. You wait a few minutes longer, but the sound of the water running again makes your patience snap.

“Johnny,” you say, your voice rough from sleep, “I need to get in there.”

No answer. There’s no time for this bullshit, you were supposed to be up at 6:30. You twist the knob slowly, and when you crack open the door, he’s shirtless, muscles rippling as he hunches over the sink, mouth covered with white toothpaste-foam. You don’t bother with pleasantries, you just fling the door open, stepping into the space and reaching around him to grab your toothbrush.

He lifts his head, blinking at you through the mirror with a lazy, half-awake look. “Cah i no’ ha fi minuhts?”

Between the accent, the toothbrush wedged in his mouth, and your foggy mind, you don’t even try to decipher what he just said. You stare at him for a beat longer than necessary before turning away with your toothbrush in hand, mumbling something under your breath about him always hogging the bathroom. Guess you’ll have to brush your teeth in the kitchen sink. How cleanly.

The moment you step downstairs, the kitchen feels heavy, almost suffocating like it’s been holding its breath all night. You inhale deeply, trying to shake off the tired haze still hanging on to your thoughts.

You set to work on breakfast, but from the start, everything goes wrong. The eggs burn, the bacon curls into crispy charred strips, the toast miraculously gets stuck in the toaster causing it to burn, and when you finally start to scramble the eggs again, they spill over the edge of the pan, landing in a sizzling mess.

You curse under your breath as you glance at the clock. 7:34—already too late. You should’ve been out in the fields by now, getting everything locked down before the storm rolls in. Apparently the Universe has other plans today, but everyone’s gotta eat, right?

You try to salvage what you can from the mess you made, but it’s like everything’s working against you. Nothing cooperates. The more you try to fix it, the worse it gets, and soon, you're moving in circles, rushing, frantic. You can feel the little voice in your head nagging you—telling you you're already behind, that you’re fucking everything up.

Just when you're ready to scream, the sound of footsteps on the stairs interrupts your spiraling. You barely look up, but when you do, you see Johnny—looking like a goddamn daydream. His work jeans fit just right, hugging his thighs and ass in a way that makes your chest tighten. And that shirt—tight, the kind that shows off the muscles you know are hiding underneath. He looks like he just stepped out of a catalog, and it makes your stomach flip in ways you're really not in the mood for.

Meanwhile, you're still in your pajamas, frizzy hair sticking up like you’ve been wrestling a tornado, and in the middle of World War III (smacking the toaster to get it to just spit up the damn bread). You narrow your eyes as he strolls into the kitchen, fresh as a daisy, not a hair out of place.

He glances at you with a grin that’s too soft for how much it’s getting on your nerves. “Mornin’,” he says casually, like he didn’t just hog the bathroom for 45 fucking minutes.

“We, uh... gonna eat breakfast?” he asks casually, as if you’re not struggling to get anything on the table before Pa’s complaints come flying in from the living room via pigeon.

Your nerves tighten as you slam the spatula a little too harshly, the sound of it smacking against the pan filling the otherwise still air. Johnny could tell something was eating at you, but he doesn’t push, doesn’t say anything more. You can feel the weight of his gaze, feel the way it lingers on you. Normally it’d be enough to make you weak in the knees—but today—it’s enough to make you want to slam the pans on the stove and walk away.

“I’m working on it.”

Gloves are off, now, Bob.

Once you finally get something halfway edible on the plates, you sit down at the table, hands tight around your coffee mug, just trying to breathe for a moment. Johnny’s sitting next to you and Pa’s already in his usual chair. He’s half-hidden behind a wrinkled newspaper, but you can feel his eyes flicking up to you and Johnny, that same sharp, assessing gaze you felt your whole childhood. It makes your skin crawl. It’s that look that says he knows more than he’s letting on, but purposefully keeping his trap shut.

You shove a forkful of food into your mouth, chewing with a dull, rhythmic motion, as if each bite might somehow lessen the mounting tension in the air, like you were trying to swallow the storm before it hit the farm.

Pa’s voice breaks through the stillness, “Those animals need to be locked up before the rain hits. Don’t want ‘em out there when it starts comin’ down hard.”

Your throat tightens. The Nobel Committee is waiting for your next profound revelation, Pa. You exhale through your nose, but your frustration continues to rise in a slow, steady burn. Everything about this day is stacking against you, one thing after another.

And to make it worse, there’s Johnny. Just… being Johnny.

He’s sitting there, relaxed as ever, like there’s nothing wrong. He’s just eating, like everything’s normal. Like you’re not both staring down Hurricane Bob as he’s about to nearly ransack the farm. Johnny’s untouchable, the stress glides off his back like water on duck feathers and it fucking grates on you. The calmness he exudes feels like it’s directly mocking the chaos you’re already drowning in.

You and Johnny don’t get to the fields anywhere near as early as you should’ve. The rain’s already started. It’s light at first, just a steady drizzle, but it doesn’t take long before it picks up, turning the soil beneath your boots into mush. The crop field is nearing the point where you can’t even walk through it without your boots sinking with every step, and harvesting is absolutely out of the question. The ground’s too wet, the crops and weeds too soft to even think about pulling.

On Johnny’s end, the animals, already edgy from the rain, get startled by the noise, their nerves running wild. They don’t want to cooperate, moving erratically and making every damn task harder than it needs to be. The usual rhythm of the work feels completely out of sync.

It’s a mess. The kind of mess that makes you wonder if it’s even worth trying today. But you keep going. Because what else is there to do?

By midday, the sky grows heavier, the wind picks up, biting at your skin as it stirs the trees, carrying the unmistakable scent of rain and earth. The pressure builds in every gust, every shift in the atmosphere. It’s only a matter of time until the storm breaks.

You finish up what you can with the crops, but it feels futile. Every movement feels wasted, undone by the breeze and the moisture in the air. You let out a heavy sigh, frustration building all on top of your shitty morning.

With a groan, you turn away from the field. The cool air creeps in through the holes of your clothes, but you press forward, boots squelching in the mud as you walk the path toward the stables. You don’t need to look at the sky to know it’s about to break wide open.

The stable door creaks as you tug it open, the familiar smells of hay and leather greeting you like a small comfort in the growing chaos outside. You make your way down the line of stalls, pulling your jacket tighter against the chill creeping in. You spot Shimmer, her dark eyes following you as you approach her stall.

You run a hand over her sleek coat, the gentle stroke grounding you for a moment. Her soft nicker brings a small smile to your face. You grab her tack, moving through the motions without thinking, attaching the bridle and girth with a practiced ease. It’s familiar—her, the routine, the comforting weight of the leather in your hands.

When you take the lead and step to walk her out of the stall, you freeze.

Scout’s stall is directly across from Shimmer’s, usually home to the large, chestnut stallion. But now—there’s no Scout. The stall is empty, the gate shut, the hay undisturbed.

For a moment, you just stand there, staring at the empty stall, the air thick with the growing tension of the storm outside. Your mind races for an explanation. Johnny must have taken Scout out already, right? He wouldn’t leave the horse unattended, especially not with the weather about to turn. You glance outside toward the livestock pastures, but the view’s obstructed by some hills.

A knot tightens in your stomach, but you shake it off, telling yourself he’s probably already on it, handling the animals, preparing them for what’s to come. Still, the unease gnaws at you, but you push it down, forcing your focus onto Shimmer.

You settle the saddle on her back and then move to the stirrups, lifting yourself onto her back with ease.

The wind outside howls, rattling the stable doors. The storm is nearing its worst, and if you don’t get a move on, the animals are screwed. You glance down at Shimmer, her steady, calm presence offering a small comfort amidst the shitshow that’s been your day so far.

You click your tongue to the roof of your mouth, urging her forward, but as you move toward the stable door you can’t shake the nagging feeling that something’s still off, but there’s no time to dwell on it now. Johnny’s out there, already dealing with the rest of the animals, and you figure you might as well give him a hand.

You ride over to the livestock pastures, gripping the reins as the wind picks up, circling around you like a pack of wolves, pulling at your jacket and tugging at your hair loose from where it’s tied up. The storm is worsening, the skies darkening overhead. The last thing you need is for the livestock to be caught out in it, panicking and running wild.

You approach the pastures, you tug on the reins, leaning back in the saddle to halt Shimmer’s forward momentum. You scan the fields, squinting through the rain, and your heart skips a beat when you realize—Johnny’s nowhere to be seen.

Instead, you’re met with chaos. Half the cows are scattered across their respective fields, their bodies jerking with erratic movements, as if the very air itself has made them nervous, spooked. Their eyes are wide, and their bodies huff short, panicked breaths as the storm bears down on them.

Your heart drops to your ass as the panic rises in your chest. You swallow hard, trying to force the anxiety down, but the knot only tightens. You can feel it in the pit of your stomach, that sickening sense of urgency. If you don’t get these animals into the barn soon, They're already testing the fences, straining against them, and you know it’s only a matter of time before they break through and bolt. That’s the last thing you need.

You urge Shimmer forward, kicking her into a trot as you take her into the pastures, trying to herd at least the cows in the right direction and toward the barn. But they’re not cooperating. Their anxiety is spreading like wildfire, and it’s only getting harder to keep them together. Your heart pounds in your chest as you try to make sense of it all.

The rain begins to fall in a steady trickle, but you know it’s only the beginning.

Where the fuck is Johnny?

After about 45 grueling minutes, you and Shimmer manage to get the cows into their barn. You see Johnny’s already fed them and cleaned their water troughs, but why were they all just out? Once you know for a fact all the cows are secure, you lock up the barn and kick Shimmer into a gallop, riding toward the rest of the pastures with your heart beating a mile a minute. Thunder crackles overhead and lightning strikes across the sky like a claw. The storm’s not waiting for you, and neither are the animals. Each raindrop that hits your face feels like a reminder of how much time is slipping away.

Your gaze darts from barn to barn, every corner, every shelter—hell, even the wells where you know Johnny sometimes checks for strays—your mind a tangled mess of questions, frustration, and fear.

You can’t help but think something’s happened to him. Something must’ve, right? Your stomach tightens with each passing second, every minute that ticks by.

You call for him, your voice lost in the howling wind. You can barely hear yourself over the storm, but you shout anyway, hoping, praying that he'll answer, that he'll show up and make everything make sense again.

But the rain is coming down harder now, turning the earth beneath Shimmer's hooves into a slippery mess, and the more you search, the more it feels like you’re chasing shadows. The storm is swallowing the land, the mist of it clouding your thoughts, and everything is slipping through your fingers like water. The harder you try to hold on, the more it seems to break apart.

"Johnny!" you shout again, but the wind swallows the sound before it can even reach the next field. Your heart beats harder, faster—every second feeling like a threat as you urge Shimmer on, desperation creeping into your veins. You can’t afford to lose him.

And then, finally, you spot Scout.

You pull Shimmer to a halt outside the sheep barn, your legs burning from the frantic ride, your chest tight with the effort of trying to keep your head above water. You dismount quickly, tying her next to Scout, who is securely tied up outside. Most of the sheep are already safely inside, and for a brief second, relief floods through you.

But it’s short-lived.

You push open the rattling barn door, the sound of it scraping against the floor unnervingly loud in the tense silence, and you call for him, “Joh-”

The sight of him hits you like a slap in the face.

He’s sitting there, propped up against one of the pillars, Dixie curled up in his lap, her body trembling with anxiety. His fingers stroke the top of her head in slow, calming motions, completely unaware of your presence.

You stare, your heart still thudding in your chest. You don't know what to think. You don’t know what to feel—frustration and worry all swirling together in a tight knot in your stomach. You were pissed, thinking he’d skipped out on you, or worse, that something had happened to him. That maybe he was hurt, and you weren’t there to help him, somehow riding in all the wrong directions like an idiot. You’ve been stressed and anxious, and now here he is, sitting in the dim barn with Dixie, like the skies are blue and the birds are chirping.

You almost want to hate it— to hate him for looking so comfortable when everything about this day has been shit from the second it started. The sight of him, so quietly gentle with Dixie, should be endearing. Hell, if this weren’t happening, you might’ve thought it was sweet.

But just like that, the moment of softness is swallowed up by a loud crash of thunder. A harsh crack that shakes the barn, pulling you back to reality, and the air thickens with the weight of the impending chaos outside. You grit your teeth and march over to him, your boots thudding against the wet floor. Each step feels like it echoes in the chaos of the storm.

You glare at him sitting there, his hands gently petting Dixie, so unbothered, so utterly calm .

“You—” your voice cracks, thick with anger, “you couldn’t be bothered to get the fuckin’ cows in, could you? Left me to deal with all that shit by myself. They were about to break through the fucking fence—”

“Love, listen—” He starts, but you don’t let him speak. You’re already too fired up, the frustration spilling out, impossible to stop.

“No! You don’t get to say anything right now! You’re supposed to be helping! We were supposed to be trying to get everything locked down as soon as possible, and you—” your breath hitches as you cut yourself off, “you were just—just here! Doing—” you wave your hands around in the air, gesturing to the barn, “nothing!”

The rain pelts against the tin roof, but it's still not enough to drown out your voice.

“I’ve had a shit day, Johnny! A shit day. First breakfast—then I had to rush through everything—did you know my shirt’s on backwards?—couldn’t catch a damn break, the fucking crops all mushy, and then—then this shit!” You pant, trying to catch your breath between the ranting and the way your heart is still palpitating.

“I’ve been riding around, looking for you, calling for you, freaking out... I thought something happened to you! I thought—God, I thought you were hurt, or worse—” Your voice breaks and you just turn away from him.

His face flickers with something. Guilt? Confusion? You aren’t sure, but the way his eyebrows are furrowed and his jaw is slack tells you it’s both.

You take a deep breath, rubbing your temples for a moment, trying to clear your head, but it’s no use. You exhale slowly, the weight of everything is too much, and you finally stop.

You face him, but you don’t meet his eyes. “Just lock up the barn,” you say tersely. “Dixie will be fine.”

Without waiting for him to respond, you turn on your heel and storm back outside, shoving the barn door open. You climb back onto Shimmer without a word, the tension between your shoulders still tight, your anger still seething beneath the surface. You urge her into a trot, the barn shrinking behind you as you make your way back to the stables

The rain feels like a waterfall now, soaking through your jacket in an instant, and it’s hard to see past the sheets of water pouring down. The wind has picked up, slapping each raindrop against your skin with a force that’s starting to sting, making the trees around you bend with it, their branches groaning under the pressure. Your boots slide in the stirrups as you urge her forward. The rain’s deafening, drowning everything but the sound of your own pulse in your ears.

You hear frantic whinnies, high-pitched and panicked in the distance, echoing from the stables. Your stomach drops. If I had just finished breakfast sooner, if I hadn’t wasted time, none of this would be happening. The thought eats at you. You grit your teeth as you push forward.

You can just barely hear Scout as Johnny follows you, his figure a blur in the rain as he rides behind you. He’s trying to catch up, but that doesn’t matter right now. You’ve got to get to the horses.

You hold the reins tighter, kicking her into a gallop, desperation mixing with anger. The wind’s so fierce it nearly knocks you sideways. The air feels thick with it, heavy and suffocating, making every breath harder to catch as you push Shimmer faster, your heart hammering, just as frantic as the animals inside.

When you finally reach the stables, Shimmer’s front is caked with mud, but you make it inside with a breath of relief. You dismount, heart still racing from the ride, and immediately lead Shimmer to her stall. She’s jittery, her sides heaving from the sprint, but she’s calm enough now that you can quickly unbuckle her tack and guide her into the hay. You slip the halter off, and she nuzzles your arm, her warm breath a small comfort.

Once she’s settled, you hurry to the other stalls trying to calm the other horses. The barn’s echoing with frantic hooves and anxious whinnies, the air thick with their panic. You work your way down the row, talking softly to each one, doing your best to calm them with gentle strokes and soft whispers, though your own nerves are barely holding it together.

You hear the heavy thud of boots on the floor just as the last horse settles down—no thanks to him. You turn to see Johnny slide in through the door, Scout at his side. His clothes are drenched, hair sticking to his forehead. He leads Scout to an empty stall, whispering softly to him as he removes his tack.

Once all the horses are okay, you find yourself standing near Shimmer, absently running your hand along her coat, trying to calm your racing thoughts, Your back is to Johnny.. He’s on the other side of the barn, taking some pieces of hay out of Scout’s hair. His back is to you.

A bright flash of lightning, then thunder booms across the sky like a gunshot. The weight of it all crashes down like a ton of bricks, the pressure in your chest suddenly unbearable. It’s not just the rain, not just the howling wind—it’s just fucking everything.

Johnny and all the weeks of what-ifs and wondering what you two are, and the hours—the fucking hours—you spent racing against time today, trying to keep everything together, Pa’s words from the other night echoing in your mind like a warning. The ever-present ache in your muscles from the long hours in the fields, the weight of your sopping wet jacket.

Everything about this day has been a fight—against the rain, against the animals, against your own fucking emotions. It feels like you’ve been battling the whole world since you shucked off your blankets this morning, and now the weight of everything else comes crashing down with it,

You’re fucking done.

You push off the stall with a violent jerk, your fists clenched tight at your sides. Without thinking, you storm off, every stride taking you further from whatever the hell this is, whatever the hell he’s making you feel.

The adrenaline still pumps through your veins, a sharp edge that slices through the fog of your thoughts, and the anger, the rage—it explodes with each furious step, each squelch of mud beneath your foot. You can feel it all spilling out of you—every ounce of pent-up frustration, every silent scream, every moment you’ve tried so hard to hold it all together, and every goddamn moment he’s reeled you in so close you could feel the heat of his skin.

You’re sick of the rain. Sick of the way it makes everything feel like it’s flooding, drowning you in everything you can’t control. Sick of him. Sick of waiting for something to happen when all you ever get are vacillating gestures of affection and unsung words.

And most of all, you’re sick of yearning for something you shouldn’t, something that can’t happen no matter how much you crave it.

You don’t look back as you storm out. You can’t. Not when everything feels like it’s slipping through your fingers like water, drowning you in all the things you’ll never have.

The rain pelts you as you move through it, but it doesn't stop you. You head toward the old barn by the crop fields, the one long abandoned and filled with dry hay, broken machinery, and bags of bad fertilizer. It’s empty. Quiet. And that’s exactly what you need.

Johnny’s so lost in his own thoughts, in the quiet rhythm of his movements with Scout, that he doesn’t notice you leave at first. His hands are steady, methodical, as he dries the horse’s muzzle, brushing away the dampness with the cloth. The soft strokes against the horse’s coat are the only sounds in the barn, other than the wind and the distant thunder.

For a moment, it feels like time has stopped, just him and Scout as he replays your words in his mind. But then, as if pulled out of a trance, Johnny glances up, his brow furrowing with guilt when the silence lingers a little too long.

He clears his throat, the words hanging between them before he speaks, breaking the tension, “Can we talk, Hen?” His voice is low, careful—a gentle prod into the quiet.

His gaze flicks over to you, but you’re long gone.

It takes a moment for it to click. When he turns around, that’s when he sees it—the stable door is swinging wide in the wind, the hinges creaking, but it’s the wet trail of your footprints on the floor that really catches his attention.

His stomach drops. Without another thought, he’s after you before he even knows what he’s doing.

Of course, he’s right there, trailing behind you. Because Johnny can never let things be easy, and he won’t let you push him away even when you need him most.

You hear his footsteps behind you in the distance as he calls your name, the soft squelch of his boots in the mud, but you don’t stop. You don’t turn around. You just keep walking, your legs moving on their own as you trudge through the hurricane .

The fury in your chest surges with every step you take, mixing with the rain that’s pouring down harder, as if the heavens themselves are pissed off too. It feels like everything is pushing you forward, pushing you away from him, away from all of it. Away from the guilt, the confusion, the frustration, the ache of wanting something that just isn’t happening.

But Johnny doesn’t stop. His heavy footsteps continue, relentless, just like him. You can feel him getting closer, like he’s not going to let you fall apart alone. And it only makes you angrier, because goddamn it, why can’t he just let you have this? Let you be angry without trying to fix it? Let the rain wash it away like you need it to?

The storm roars, drowning out most of what Johnny’s trying to say, but you hear your name through the flashes of lightning and the deafening booms of thunder. His voice is laced with agonizing concern, and it only makes the frustration claw at you harder. You keep your head down, not slowing your pace, not giving him the satisfaction of a response. You just need to escape, to have some silence—some space to breathe.

His voice keeps calling, cutting through the storm. You can feel his presence nearing, until his hand wraps around your forearm. The sudden pressure shocks you, making you spin around, hair plastered to your face, eyes wide, breath coming out in quick bursts from the cold and the adrenaline.

"Leave me the fuck alone," you snap, but he doesn’t let go. His grip is firm, but not forceful—steady, like he’s not letting you walk away from this.

His face is right there, close enough that you can see the tension laced in his jaw, the distress etched deep in his eyes. He doesn’t speak at first, just stares at you, lips parted like he’s about to say something. His chest rises and falls with his breath, like he’s trying to steady himself, trying to figure out how to fix this.

"I-I’m sorry," he stutters, his voice soft, but still thick with urgency. "I didn’t mean tae leave ye hanging like that earlier. But damn it, just tell me what’s happenin’. Please."

You stare him down, your heart still racing, pulse in your ears. You’re shaking—not from the cold, not from the rain—but from the tension that’s built up between you two. It’s like everything’s been pulling tighter and tighter, and now it’s ready to snap.

“It’s nothing,” you shout over the barrage of rain. You know it’s a lie the second it leaves your mouth. You can’t even convince yourself, and you doubt you convinced him.

He gives you a look, and for a split second, his frustration mirrors yours. “Bullshit,” he yells insistently. “I know ye better than that. Ye wouldn’t be out ‘ere in this weather, shuttin’ me out like this unless something’s up. So stop actin’ like it’s nothin’.”

You stare at him, chest heaving. Your fingers flex into fists at your sides, but they’re trembling. “What do you want me to say, Johnny? That I’m pissed? That I’m beyond frustrated?”

He steps toward you, ignoring the way the rain is soaking him through. His eyes are searching yours, his face inches from yours, and the intensity in them just makes everything worse.

“I want ye tae tell me what’s goin’ on! This isn’t you,” he says, his words sharp but laced with concern. “The you I know wouldn’t react like this. Talk tae me, Hen.”

For a second, you freeze, your heart pounding in your ears. The storm seems to roar even louder, as though it’s trying to drown out everything, but all you can hear is your own pulse in your head. You don’t know how to say it—don’t know how to say what’s been building inside you for weeks.

It feels like you've been holding your breath too long, choking on something sharp and acrid, unfit for human lungs. The longer it sits in your chest, the more it festers, burning like acid searing down your throat.

Hold it in any longer, and you might come undone, as if the rain pouring around you could melt you down and wash you away with the rest of the puddles on the earth.

“I'm tired of waiting, Johnny,” you say, your voice unsteady but resolute. “Tired of holding my breath for something that’s never gonna happen.”

Johnny’s expression shifts, confusion washing over him like a wave.

“What the hell are ye talkin’ abou’?” He steps even closer, his brows furrowed, his voice low but filled with something close to desperation. “What’s never gonna happen?”

You let out a breath, angry and sad all at once, “This!” you shout, throwing your hands up, motioning to both of you, the rain, the storm, everything. “Us! All of it! I’m tired of waiting for... I don’t know, for things to change, for it to finally make sense! You... you act like you want this but then never make a move. And— And I’m sick of trying to figure out what you want when you won’t even fuckin’ say it.”

The words hang in the air between you, and for a second, you regret them. You wish you could take them back, shove them back down your throat and stitch up your lips, but it’s too late now. The truth is out, and you only hope it doesn’t ruin everything.

Johnny looks like someone just hit him with two shots to the liver. His face softens—guilt, regret, maybe even hurt flash across his features—but it’s quickly replaced with something else. His lips part, but he doesn’t speak right away. He’s too busy processing everything you just threw at him.

After a second, he steps forward, his hair plastered to his forehead, wet with rain and falling into his eyes, his shirt sticking to his muscles in ways that you can’t help but notice. He lifts a hand, shaky but determined as he gently cups your cheek. His touch is like a bonfire against your frozen skin, grounding you despite the roar of the hurricane around you.

“Don’t say that,” he mutters, his voice gravelly, the storm pushing his words into your chest like a physical force. His gaze locks onto yours, a fire behind it that refuses to be put out.

“I’m no’ tryin' to make ye wait. I just... I don’t know how to say it without messing it all up. I never did.” His lips twist, and you can tell he's trying to keep it together, like everything inside him wants to explode but he’s holding it in just to communicate to you.

The rain hits like bullets against his face, but his eyes stay fixed on yours. It’s hard to breathe with him so close, with the weight of everything heavy in the air between you two. He’s holding something back, and you can see it—he’s trying not to let it slip.

You want to say something, but the words feel lost in your throat, swallowed by the storm. He steps forward, closing the space between you until there’s nothing but rain and your ragged breaths separating you.

“God,” he sighs your name, “ye think I don’t see how ye look at me? I’m no’ fuckin’ blind.”

His hands are warm when they find your shoulders, gripping like he’s afraid you might slip away, like you might get washed away in the flood. “Ye’re scared ‘cause I’ve never made this real—’cause I’ve never said it. I’ve been scared too. Scared to let ye see how much I need you—”

One hand slides from your shoulders to cup both your cheek once more, the roughness of his fingertips tender against your damp skin as the other snakes around your waist.

“Love, I’m no’ asking ye tae wait around for me,” he says, voice breaking just enough that it shakes you. “I’m asking you to stop wondering if you matter to me, because you do. I’m just... tryin’ tae figure out how tae make it real for the both o’ us.”

His thumb brushes your cheek, and your breath hitches. For a moment, there is no storm, no farm, no Pa, just his hand on your face and the weight of his words hanging between you. You don’t even realize you’re crying until you feel the hot tears mix with the rain as they slip down your face.

His thumb brushes over your cheek again, this time slower, lingering, as if committing the curve of your face to memory. He looks at you like you’re the only thing he’s ever wanted, the only thing that has ever mattered.

You let out a sharp breath, something between a laugh and a sob, your chest heaving with the weight of everything that’s led to this moment. The frustration, the waiting, the wondering. The days and hours spent circling each other like the Earth and the Moon—locked in orbit, never quite colliding. Until now.

He tilts his head, breath warm against your lips. His fingers tighten at your waist, and the space between you disappears. His lips meet yours, soft and searching, hesitant like he’s afraid he might break you if he's not careful. But you don’t want careful. You don’t need careful. You need real.

You need him.

You want him.

So you kiss him back, pushing up against him, pressing into every solid inch of him, hands fisting the sodden fabric of his shirt like you’re afraid he’ll vanish if you let go.

And that’s all it takes for his restraint to snap.

He groans against your mouth, the sound low and desperate, and then suddenly, it’s no longer a kiss—it’s a claiming, a long-overdue confession written in the way his hands pull you closer, in the way his lips part against yours, deepening, consuming, drinking you in like you’re something he’s been dying for. His hands slide up, one cradling the back of your head, the other gripping your waist so tight you think you might just melt into him.

The storm rages on, but it’s nothing compared to what’s building between you. The air crackles, electric, charged with the heat of something unstoppable. Your fingers tangle in his wet hair, pressing him impossibly closer, and he shudders against you, a quiet, needy sound slipping past his lips that has your heart threatening to beat out of your chest.

You can taste the rain on his lips, feel the fevered heat of him searing into your skin, even through the cold. And it’s intoxicating. Maddening. Because this—this is everything you’ve been waiting for.

When you finally break apart, it’s not because you want to. It’s because you have to breathe. Foreheads pressed together, breath mingling, his nose nudges yours in the softest, most aching touch. His hand cradles your face so gently, the other hand still splayed across your back like he can’t bring himself to let go.

The world goes quiet. The thunder rumbles overhead, but it sounds distant now, like it belongs to another world entirely.

“You’re it,” he says, voice hoarse, the rain still beating down.

“Fuck, you’ve been it since the second you opened your door.”

111 notes · View notes

yeyinde · 2 years ago

Text

lavender skies | Kyle "Gaz" Garrick x GN!Reader

Then suddenly, and all at once, there's a loudness in your head: a hundred whispers echoing in time to the same off-beat rhythm, full of memories and moments shared between you, threads woven throughout the years all buoying to the surface as you realise you're a little bit in love with him. (And that, maybe, you've been a little bit in love with him the whole time.)

tags: friends to lovers (but the type of friends who are basically already dating and everyone knows except them - until suddenly they do), mutual pining. Slight Kent bashing, oops. Golden Girls as a coping mechanism. warnings: none. very tame, considering who I am as a person. Heavy make-out sess, though. word count: 6,6k notes: This has been sitting in my requests forever (I lost the original, but the gist was: Gaz + pining + idiots in love). You can blame a lot of this on summer rain and 80s city pop. Been going to the pier and listening to it while I wrote this. Not my best, sure, but it was fun.

The Tinder date he warned you not to go on (and seriously, mate, who uses Tinder anymore?) ends like this:

Your date, the biggest gentleman in Kent, as proclaimed in his bio (a red flag in hindsight—there's no such thing as a gentleman from Kent), sneaks his number to the waitress, and then leaves you behind in downtown Manchester to go bar hopping with a group he just met.

It's not a great loss. All things considered, it's not even the worst date you've ever been on. It was just a spur-of-the-moment whim—equal parts anxiety and megrim: the sudden fear of being single forever (and no, despite what Kyle might say, it has nothing to do with the wedding invitation you'd gotten on Facebook, or the three others that came before it)—and therefore, there isn't much to be upset about. Not really.

But the world doesn't work on half-hearted lies and shaky truths, and on a dank little corner in Manchester, abandoned by your ride home, your abysmal date who barely looked at you, you can't deny that it hurts. That it's a little bit of a hit to your self-esteem in a way that makes you angrier than you were before, because, honestly—he wasn't even a catch to begin with.

Stupid.

You should have listened to Kyle, to his immaculate wisdom and emotional maturity far beyond his years, but you hadn't because—

Well. Sometimes the world should work on little lies. If only to the ones you tell yourself. Ones like:

It's completely fine—really it is—if your friend of nearly eight years is moving on with his life. And it's totally, absolutely okay if your best friend meets some flighty barista in Amsterdam and won't stop talking about her for the meagre three weeks he's been back from his impromptu trip to the Netherlands, then to Mexico. It's fine. It's all fine.

Because maybe you are, too.

And maybe that's the reason you went out with David from Kent.

From Kent? He texted, only hours before your date. (Hours because he'd been busy with this thing for his job—his boss is corrupt and the world is, too, but at least Amsterdam Barista is doing fine). You can do so much better than that, birdy.

You wanted to say, what? Like someone from Amsterdam instead? but you're doing this new thing where you try not to sound as mad as you think you are. Zen, maybe. Internal peace and happiness. So, instead, you say:

He's nice. I like him.

Words that, of course, have come back to bite you.

He isn't nice. He wouldn't stop staring at the waitress, and talking over you, or just generally ignoring your existence. He left you downtown, stranded without a way home. You don't like him. You really don't even think you were that interested in him.

But it makes sense.

Kyle is moving on. Your friends are getting married.

And where does that leave you?

Well—

It leaves you stuck downtown with shoes that were intended to be used for aesthetics, the kind that means standing entirely still and immobile, and not walking the fifteen kilometres to your flat because you'd spent all your money on this super flattering outfit and these unfunctional shoes, and can't afford a cab or an Uber.

Sometimes, you pretend you're a functional adult—one who knows how to navigate everything with ease, and you live in the present, the real world, where time is fluid and unchangeable, and things make sense (maths and geometry and physics) unless they don't (black holes and the vastitude of space and fate)—but moments like these remind you that you don't. That you live, instead, somewhere in the parentheses of both.

The indigo sky, murky black and void of any stars, seems to grumble along with you as you turn toward the street, readying yourself for the long walk home. Except the groan sounds less commiserating and more ominous. A noise that seems to reverberate through the crowded street, and right into your bones.

Some have the wherewithal to find shelter. A smart move because almost a moment later, the heavens split, and a summer deluge drenches the street. It's unrelenting in its downpour, soaking everything in its path in a shrill roar.

Caught in the middle of St Peter's Square, there are not many places to duck under for sanctuary, but you find an alcove beside a store, and dart toward it. The non-functional boots are pretty to look at, but with each step, you feel the hard synthetic rubber grind against your heel. Blisters form, break. The burn makes you inhale sharply against the pain, hobbling now on tender feet.

The wall is slick with condensation, but you lean against it to keep your feet from taking the brunt of your weight.

It reminds you, quite suddenly, of that night in Cardiff with Kyle. When you'd drank three-dollar margaritas at some downtrodden bar with your friends and ate rather limp-looking fish tacos (a mistake, of course, and Kyle still can't look at corn tortillas the same way), and laughed until your belly hurt at something he'd said—the words lost to alcohol and faded with time—and then leaned over, promptly throwing up in a bush.

You still can't drink tequila without giggling (and gagging) at nothing, a phantom memory, and the thought presses against a tender spot in your chest in all the wrong ways.

Time is fluid. An unavoidable truism that you can't escape.

There are people you've known since you were a child whose faces you can barely remember. Ones you promised the world to, to always be together, who you hardly think of anymore.

Moving on. Moving forward.

You think, then, of Kyle. Of the distance that lingers between you both, widening each day. It's nothing you've done, nor he; it's just—

Life. Concurrent. Everpresent.

It hurts to lose a friend, you'd always think. A small moment of grief, of loss. But not like this. Never like this.

Stuck in a downpour in the middle of Manchester, you realise you miss him. Have been missing him.

Huddling under an awning, you fish your phone from your soaked pocket, and pull up the only person you want to be around right now, in this moment of vulnerability. Loneliness.

You send him a quick text, date was a bust. Stuck downtown. Are you busy?

Kyle's reply comes three breaths later. For you? Never. Send me your location.

You send him your pin.

Another message pops up: stay put. I'm on my way.

You met Kyle Garrick at university.

It's one of those things in life that just sometimes happens. A happy accident. An eventuality that makes the world feel a little less daunting. A lock and key sliding into place. Sunsets in pretty ochre.

Someone you knew and someone he knew (two people who are now best man and groom in the upcoming wedding) decided to invite all of their friends out for a night, and it was then, slightly tipsy on cheap ale when you realised the boy in the back—a head taller than everyone else and more befitting inside the glossy pages of a magazine—was different, somehow, from anyone else you'd ever met.

It started when some stupid kids decided to pick on another. A smaller boy with a blue cap.

Kyle was the only one who noticed. The only one who seemed to care.

It was his anger that drew you to him in the first place. Moth to a flame. It's quick—the sizzling flame of a lit match: suddenly burning the wick and nearly uncontrollable. But it's short. A flickering star, burning bright, burning hot, and then being tempered and swallowed down until it's smouldering. Still hot, still dangerous, but—

Managed.

It was a snap. He was laughing, jovial. Telling jokes, and having fun, but still maintaining that enviable enigmatic persona: reserved but kind. Funny, but mature. And then it crumpled in an instant, folded away into anger. Bright and blistering. He walked to them, eyes blazing, and didn't wait for any excuses when the kids noticed him, just quickly decimated their foundations, and crushed their feeble lies between his teeth.

"Bullyin'? That's a pretty foul thing to do, innit, mate?"

And that was that.

He handed the kid back his hat—the one the others knocked off into the gutter—and told him, clipped, that he was better than them.

Just keep your chin up, yeah? Fuckin' losers, that lot. Don't go messing about with them anymore. Fucking pricks. That's a nice hat, too. Where'd you get it? Really? Oh, that's mint—

It was that moment when, unprompted and unnoticed, he easily slipped away from the group to help some kid he didn't even know that you realised you were very keen to get to know him.

"Fancy a kebab, hero?" You asked, smirking up at him.

A grin broke across his face. Sharp, feral. "I could always go to a lamb kebab."

The rest, really, just came quite naturally. Your best friend. The person you go to for anything—even terrible dates that leave you stranded in the rain.

You just wish you knew when it all began to change, to fall apart.

Kyle meets you near St Peter's Square.

You spot him first from your hiding spot beneath the awning, catching sight of his form moving through the (now) empty streets, hands shoved in the pockets of his denim trousers, the bottoms tucked, sensibly, into his fawn-coloured boots.

Even with the hood of his windbreaker pulled low over his brow, you can pick him out of a crowd with an ease that is as warming as it is jarring.

You wave him over when he stops on the mouth of Mount Street, looking in toward the Starbucks on the corner.

He finds you just as easily. And oh, his expression makes your toes curl in your misshapen boots.

Anger pinches the corner of his mouth, and hangs off the furrow of his brow, the divot between his eyes.

"Unbelievable," he huffs when he reaches you in the middle of the street, and sucks his teeth when you open your mouth to protest.

"It is what it is," you offer, playing the peacekeeper. You fall into step with him, trying not to wince. "I'm over it."

"Yeah?" The shadows across his brow deepen. "Are you sure? 'Cause… I'll fuck him up for you."

Setting your friend on a man from Kent feels entirely too vindictive, despite how much of a rush you get at the thought of seeing the man cowed a little bit. You shake your head, playing the part of a reasonable adult.

"It's okay. I'm just—I'm just, over this, yeah? Can we—"

Kyle stops you with his hand against your shoulder. "You alright?"

"My feet hurt," your smile is strained. "Terrible shoes."

"Take 'em off."

"Are you crazy—?"

"I brought slides for you. Figured you'd wear something stupid."

"Okay, fair. But—ouch? We can't all be crazy good-looking Armani models. Some of us have to work for it."

Kyle snorts. "Just take your shoes off, yeah? Throw 'em in my bag."

You can't deny it feels blissful when you lean against the slick wall outside of a shop, toeing off your tight boots. Aching feet freed from their prison. The sigh you let out makes him glance up at you from the pavement, bent over the rucksack he brought.

There's disapproval in his gaze—maybe at your choice. Choices. The date he warned you about. The boots. The socks he spots are stained with blood on the knob of your foot.

He tuts. A soft admonishment that cuts through the silence of the empty square. But it's all he says. He swallows the rest and drops the shoes he grabbed on the pavement in front of you, slowly pushing them forward with the tip of his toe.

You try not to grin when you see them.

Crocs. The ugliest ones you could find in Schuh. You'd bullied him into getting a matching pair with you. Neon yellow adorned with little clips.

You slip them on as Kyle reaches down to grab your boots. He pauses with them in his hand, eying them with something that taints the air with his disdain.

"When did you buy these?"

"On Friday." When he was sleeping off his impromptu trip to Chicago. He brought you home deep-dish pizza, frozen, and promised that it tasted much better fresh. "For the date."

"Why?" Is all he asks.

You shrug. "They're cute…?"

His eyes stray to your shoulders. The wet fabric of your shirt. His chin lowers slightly, but his eyes stay fixed on your flesh, on the goosebumps that bubble to the surface, spreading over your exposed skin. Eyes flicker, catching a droplet of water you can feel running down from behind your ear, falling over the slope of your neck. It breaks against your collarbone. He watches it all.

There's tension in the air. Static. The pressure builds and reeks of ozone when it presses into you, knuckles digging into the hollow of your throat. It renders you unable to speak—locked in a paradigm where the world beyond the honeycomb of his eyes ceases to matter, to exist almost. Thick honey ensnares you. Molasses. It clots against reason, logic, and makes you feel weightless. Floating, unmoored, in this unfamiliar abyss that closes in around you.

Except—

It isn’t.

There’s something aberrant about it, anomalous, that you can’t ignore; but beneath it sits a preternatural sense of familiarity that bends the paradox into knowns. Into tangibles. Concretes.

This is the same tension that has been simmering—festering, almost—since before he joined the miliary. In Cardiff when he leaned against you in the taxi, boney shoulder digging into your arm, and said, ‘dunno what I'd do without you, y’know?

It was the hazy smear of neon from the shops perched on the street. An ethereal gold hue streamed in from the window, cutting across the tenebrous in an asymmetrical chiaroscuro. The light was soaked up by him. Warm honey, the perfect compliment to his eyes, to the soft pink of his lips.

How could you possibly describe the feeling that spumes in the pit of your stomach outside of undiluted comfort?

Home.

It feels like like in shades; muted. A soft undercurrent that lingers inside something else, something deeper—

Moments in the foyer when he was heading back home for the evening. When he’d linger in the doorway, shoulder balanced against the frame, arms folded over his chest, and warned you not to watch Taskmaster without him.

He’d know, he said.

When you asked how, he just said:

“Because I know you.”

It feels like that. Like that and something more. Everything, all of it, coalesces into this. Into this moment where you can’t stop staring into the flecks of mahogany and charred birchwood in his eyes, and he can’t seem to decide where to keep his, vacillating between the slope of your neck and matching your stare. A lurch, a flash of something in your chest when your gazes meet. The deep sfumato of a bare forest in the middle of winter—rich browns, raw topaz, honey and amber in a sea of white. A sleepy hinterland. Solemnent and peaceful. Dreamy. Hypnogogic.

The world always seems to shudder into a deep slumber whenever he’s around.

He dips closer, swaying into you. Gravity, maybe. Tidally locked satellites on the same rung. Something bubbles in your chest. Unwinds from its dormant perch between the gaps in your ribs, and climbs up your esophagus. Ready, you think, to be free—

In the distance, tyres squeal against the pavement.

—and all at once, the moment burst, breaks. Shatters into a million pieces, cosmic dust, and you watch them fall around you, blinking rapidly, as though you’ve just woken.

It feels like slowly coming down to earth when you quietly gather your things, words now stuck in your throat. In their prison.

Kyle tears his gaze away from your bare skin, clearing his throat.

"Hardly." He murmurs after a moment and slips his jacket off his shoulders before wrapping it around yours. It smells of rainwater, wet rubber. Beneath the polymer, you can smell Kyle—vetiver, cypress, jasmine; sweet and heady—and you bury your nose in the hood when he turns back to the empty street. “Well, uh—”

You can’t speak. Not yet.

He seems to understand.

"Yeah," he nods, and reaches out, tugging on the end of the drawstring. "Let's get out of here."

The rain lightens into a muted drizzle, soft droplets that fall, almost rhythmless, on the wet pavement. The town sleeps, the streets bare. Empty. The only sounds come from your slick footfalls, a horn in the distance.

It’s an easy silence that lapses between you—not at all unlike the lulls before, when things were easy and featherlight and endless; when you could talk to him about everything, anything, and all of the worries in your life were saved for something else. Never him. Never, ever him.

But it tugs at something in your chest. The same pressure blooms at the edges, lingering in the periphery. You think of the spell you fell under—quiet yearning—and shake your head, desperate now to break it.

It’s just as easy to slip into familiarity. To tease, and taunt. And so, you do.

"I'm surprised you haven't said I told you so by now. That's so impressive self-restraint."

His gaze slides over to you. "Well, you know, it's implied."

"Oh, is it, now?"

"Yeah, like when you messaged me and told me about it and I said—"

"Who even uses Tinder?"

"—that he's knobhead, and you're gonna get hurt."

You scoff. "He's from Kent, so."

"Even worse," he makes a face, derision contrasted by the jaundiced lamp spilling over the pavement. "A Tinder date with a guy from Kent? What's next? Moving to Bristol?"

"It's a nice area."

He rolls his eyes. "Sure. As nice as Essex, maybe."

"The two are not even comparable—"

"'Dunno why you're rushing into anything, anyway,” he angles his chin toward you. “If this is about Carver's wedding, I said I'd go with you, didn't I?"

"Yeah, but…"

"But what?"

"That's sort of—like, you just have your own thing going on. I don't want to get in the way."

"I've always had my own thing going on. So have you. But that's never stopped us before, has it? What's changed."

"What about—" you swallow down something thick, bitter that wells in the back of your throat. "You know. Amsterdam. The Barista, or whatever."

His brow knots together. "And what about David from Kent?"

You sweep your hands out, motioning morosely toward your Crocs, your damp outfit. "This is what happened with David from Kent. Not exactly the fairytale meet cute you have with Amsterdam—" he makes a noise, like he means to interrupt. You cut him off. Bury it. "And besides, you should take her. I'll just—"

"I want to go with you."

"Why?"

Kyle falls to a stop near the Kebab shop you usually go to whenever he comes back from his missions, when he's craving good, hearty food that will rot his insides and clog his arteries. A small comfort from before, when everything he has now was just a dream, and you were struggling students in university who could barely afford a meal each and would split a lamb dinner over ale and terrible movies from the noughties back at your flat.

The suddenness of it all makes you blink beside him, slowly angling your chin up at him. A questioning noise wells in the back of your throat, but when you finally turn your gaze to him, it does out. A snuffed flame.

He brings his hand up, finger scratching at the soft patch of skin on the bridge of his nose where it starts to arch up. The look on his face, hidden, slightly, by the night blanketing overhead, but just illuminated enough by smears of neon and flushed street lamps for you to see it clove into something slightly flustered, hesitant. Sheepish, almost, like he hadn't meant to say what he did, and now doesn't know how to proceed forward. Cards tucked tight to his chest. Does he play his hand or fold?

You blink. Then blink again. Struggling, almost, to take in the suddenness of his flustered state.

Because the thing is:

Kyle doesn't get embarrassed or sheepish.

A running gag in your mutual friend group is that Kyle is twenty-eight going on sixty-five. An old man crammed inside the body of a young adult. He runs hot—passionate about his beliefs, quick to temper when he thinks an injustice is being doled out; a disciple of loose stoicism, but of a new age variety that is half parts stereotypical stoner chillness and ripe maturity—but he rarely is ever caught unawares enough to become embarrassed by something. He just has a perfect gauge of himself and those around him, able to quickly make friends with anybody he meets, and self-aware enough to know when he's in the wrong, when he needs to dial it back.

Being his friend for so long, you know the nuance of these expressions. His mien is ingrained in your head: known and catalogued. Nothing about Kyle is a mystery to you except the things you're barred from knowing (his second life away from home, you often joke: wholly confidential, entirety draped in secrecy).

But the look on his face is entirely alien to you. An expression you hadn't thought him capable of making.

It's jarring. It bludgeons into you with a ferocity that takes your breath away.

You know the man standing beside you, but this, everything else, is so unearthly. So foreign.

"Kyle," you hedge, taking a small step closer to him. You're not sure why. Maybe to reacquaint yourself with the man standing before you. Maybe to find something of familiarity within him to comfort the sudden crescendo of your pounding heart because even just the heady scent of his cologne—vetiver, amber—quells the sudden bloom of anxiety in the pit of your stomach. "Are you—?"

"No," he mumbles, then huffs out a soft laugh. It sounds mean, in a self-deprecating way, and your heart lurches for him. "Yeah, no. I'm alright. I just—shit, you know? 'Course I'd wanna go with you. Should be kinda obvious, no?"

Sure, you want to say. Sure, no, totally. Very obvious. And maybe had he not stopped, not made this peculiar expression on his face—like he isn't sure what to do when he always knows what he wants, what he's meant to do—you might have said them. Might let them tumble from your lips, equally self-deprecating and a touch forlorn despite never really knowing why, but that would be a lie, now.

Because you do.

The look on his face is upsetting—not because Kyle never makes that expression, or because he's never uncertain about anything, ever, but because you don't know it. It's not something you've ever seen before. And it hurts.

It's stupid. This whole thing. It shouldn't make you feel some sense of loss when he does something you don't expect. He always does. It's his brand, now—jettisoning across the world to catch bad guys and slap the trite American sense of justice and liberty for all across the faces of anyone who tries to oppose it—and you're very much acclimated to this side of him, the one he hides away from you, giving nothing at all about where he's going, what he's doing, what he's done, until he's back in England, safe and sound, and texting you at six in the morning for an English spread because he missed home. And maybe, maybe he missed you, too.

Those quiet moments are tucked into a cosm where it's only you and him, and greasy food, and reruns of Golden Girls together with your feet in his lap as you sit on the chaise and pick favourites (his is, of course, Rose) until the sun goes down, and he heads home because he has a debriefing in the morning in Hereford, and you have work. It's bereft of unease, of tension. Time slips through your fingers fluidly, and you hardly notice it's been hours since he first arrived. Comfortable, wholly, in his presence and in your skin.

Soulmates, everyone used to joke. You just get each other. Near finish each other's sentences.

Except for lately, where there has been this undeniable tension simmering between the two of you—a sense of fragility that you can't comprehend.

Growing apart, you thought. And then: guess it's time to do the same.

It made sense to make the first move. To download Tinder—much to his chagrin—and start looking for your—

Your Barista from Amsterdam.

And oh.

Oh.

Maybe it's the way the street light frames the angles and plains of his face, or the shadows that run deep lines of tenebrous across the valleys in his eyes, the sharp slope of his lips, the soft pout. The inscrutable expression that rents a jagged divot between his brow, and an unsure twist of his mouth. Maybe it's everything. Nothing.

But the only thing you know right now is that you know him. Have known him. Deeply. Intimately. In a way that goes beyond the boundaries of bodies, of flesh and blood. Bones and marrow. You know his soul. His essence. The foundations of who he is cobbled together in a lonely kebab shop over cheap ale, commiserating on an endless stream of papers and assignments; the eventuality of ever after when you hand in the final one. Over beans and toast in the afternoon, a whole day spent lounging in your flat watching reruns of Golden Girls, and petty arguments over Taskmaster that always seem to go a little bit too far, and never far enough. Fights that end two days later when he shows up with Greggs and a complete box set of that show you said you wanted to watch but never had the time for. Bargain shopping in Tottenham on an early Saturday morning because there's this chair, you see, one that you saw on their Instagram page and you simply must have it.

Soft moments in between, brackets where life doesn't seem to wrap its cold hands around your throat. Time spent in each other's company just for the sake of it.

Climbing onto your roof—a thatched mess of moss and straw and broken asphalt shingles that will one day give under your weight—and watching the stars, always searching for one that rockets across the sky while he murmurs beside you, quiet in this stillness that falls like snow in the dead of night around you. A hushed whisper as he relays the places he's been—all stars, he rasps, hand brushing wide strokes across the raspberry sky, dusted with light pollution: I'll take you there one day to see. Best fucking beer I'd ever had, too, just don't tell my cousin because he thinks the shitty lager he makes for his bar is good—and you try to picture it amongst the grey clouds. A life on the opposite side of the world. Just the two of you. Always.

And that's what it's always been, hasn't it? Just you. Just him.

It's sometime past midnight on a street corner in Manchester. Your feet hurt from walking all night, and your clothes are damp from the rain that caught you off-guard. A summer downpour. It clings to your skin in a way that's both freeing and wholly uncomfortable, but you're not thinking about that. You're not thinking about anything at all, not now. Not really. There's a silence in your head as the world falls into pieces, breaking like the jaundiced light that cuts crevasses and canyons in the tenebrous that colours sharp valleys of his face. He turns, then, a gentle list of his head as he takes you in, breathes your silence and questions the wideness of your eyes, the soft parting of your lips. The movement makes the light spill over the arch of his nose, the slope of his brow. The dawning of a new day. A new world. The untouchable of the moon where no light shines now burning hot under the sun.

(And maybe you've been a little bit in love with him the whole time.)

So, you say it. You whisper all the words that bubble up, impatiently waiting between your teeth, effervescent and burning white-hot as they throw themselves over bone and flesh to be free.

Confessing goes like this:

Molten agony in your guts as the secrets you barely understand yourself dissolve into the atmosphere, spoken aloud and born on cobblestone and petrichor. Wide-eyed shock, uncertainty, as a new quiet falls over your shoulders, louder than anything you'd ever heard. Guncotton in your nose. A million detonations in your ears.

You've never much liked the silence. You break it, then, with your bare hands.

"...and that's basically it."

It isn't much. It isn't poetry. You're not even sure the words were real. A figment of your imagination, broken free because of baristas in Amsterdam and losers from Kent, abysmal dates and the unending fear of being wholly alone in a world you're not prepared for, all without the person who makes you feel a little bit better about the nothingness that permeates around you.

And sure. Sure. You don't need him. If Kyle decided never to speak to you again, you'd cry and you'd hurt, but you wouldn't be less of a person because of his absence. He doesn't complete you in the same way you've read about in thick books with strong-willed protagonists and an abundance of petty misunderstandings, but he compliments you. Elevates the good and stifles the bad. You want to experience things with him—not because there's some grand force at play, red strings knotted around your fingers that lead you back to him—but because you like his company. His thoughts. His mind. His presence. His essence fills you with joy in the same strokes it makes you want to pull your hair out sometimes. Good and bad. You want it all.

You want it. Want him.

And he—

He's taking you home a little past midnight where you'll make yourself beans and toast and maybe try and sleep, or turn on the television to watch four women you're intricately connected to eat cheesecake and solve each other's problems. He could be at his own flat right now, playing that video game he said he wanted to try when he got back, or watching that movie he was supposed to with his flatmates, his friends. He could be talking to some barista in Amsterdam.

But he isn't.

He's here with you. Still. Still.

"I just—," you say, or try to.

But the rest is a muffled gasp against soft lips when he presses his against yours, stealing the words out of your mouth.

You can feel your heart beating through your lips. Taste him on your tongue when he draws you closer, hands reaching, grasping. Pulling you into him, into his body. You fit against him, tucked safe between the parentheses of his arms. He tastes of cardamom and cornflower. Lavender notes between his molars. Hints of milk on his tongue. You drink him down and know, then, that this is what they mean they talk about love being a feast because you chase this taste for the rest of your life and never be satiated.

He loops his arm around the small of your back, dragging you closer still. As if any atom between your bodies is an affront. There’s no hesitation in the action, in the way he burrows into your skin. No trepidation.

And maybe it would be silly for there to be any. You know him—every iota, every inch; secrets whispered at midnight in a shallow breath and dreams uttered at noon. To be known, to know, is a powerful thing. You feel it ghost across your flesh, featherlight, and reach for it with your bare hands. Seeking, searching. You don’t stop until the tips of your fingers meet his warm skin, curling around him. Anchoring yourself to him. Stuck, now, in permanence.

You find spots that were untouched before. Behind his ears, the dip of his brow, the curve of his nose, and the slope of his jaw. Cupping it in the palm of your hand, a plinth for him to rest his chin.

Your canvassing makes him groan, makes him tilt down into you as he begins his own exploration, chasing you in a mad pursuit. Sliding over your valleys, your plains. Running over the rugged mountains and the steep cliffs. He scours your topography with eager, nimble fingers. It’s slow, languid. There’s no rush with this, a consensus you both seem to come to rather quickly when he pries open your mouth and tangles his tongue with yours. It’s sweet, soft. His hands mimic his chase, sliding along your body as if he means to commit the entirety of you to memory, searing it in his brain.

It’s only when he comes to a crossroads at your navel, pushed flush against his body, does he stop. You moan in despair at it, wanting more and more, not ready to give up this taste that curls over your tongue—saccharine sweet, salty—and Kyle echoes the noise with a groan, a quiet plea for air that both of you desperately need but can’t quite make yourself take.

“Fuck—” he groans again, breath stuttering out in sharp, deep gasps. “Can’t bloody tell you how long I wanted to do this for, fuck—”

His words seem to peel back the dreamy gossamer of a slowly burning sensuality. It ignites in a blaze, not at all unlike the swiftness of his anger. The sharp, sudden strike of a match. The crackle and hiss of flames renting the air.

The blaze starts at the point where your upper lip touches his, and almost immediately, it consumes you.

It's frenzied when he kisses you again—feral and wild: all teeth and tongue and nips against your bottom lip but the moment you sink into the fervour, Kyle changes it. Slows down. Chaste pecks to your sore lips amid a sensual onslaught. A languid roll of his tongue, soothing the burn his teeth left behind.

The way he kisses you feels like a paradox.

It's organised chaos. Refined madness. A cluttered mess of finesse and deliberate suckles; an artist's masterstroke.

You can't keep up. His rhythm is fierce and uncatchable.

Each step seems to stutter. An avartan you can’t keep pace with. Elongated taals, dips. A crescendo of harmony that is matchless, unreproducible. You struggle along with his swift current, his unerring tide that sweeps you away; unmoored, adrift. The tentative exploration ends. He knows you, now. All of you. And this is his summit. His scramble to the top. It’s biting passion; roaring flames.

You cling to him, holding tight to the liferaft he offers in a slow huff, a gust of mirth across your lips and into your lungs, slowing down to accommodate you. Malleable, now, he lets you lead, lets you take over, and move seamlessly with him. In tandem, parallel. Equilibrium brings you to heel, and you sigh into his mouth—a deep exhale of everything that has been building and building, tipping the scales around you until it was unbalanced and precarious. Teetering on the edge a precipice unknown.

His hand roams across your known geography—hills and streams, rivers and canyons—until he reaches your hand still bracketed around his cheeks, slowly peeling it away from his flesh to slide his fingers between yours, holding tight, and—

Kissing is immaculate. Bending at an altar, and making an offering to something bigger than yourself. It’s the spark of lightning flashing overhead, static in the air. Magnets drawing closer and closer until they snap together in the middle.

But holding his hand?

It feels like coming home.

The world tipping back into place. Amber warmth in your veins; the softness of a jasmine petal. You suck in a deep breath at the shock of it all.

You think of missing puzzles and loose sea ice drifting alone in the vastitude of the ocean. You think of a life where he isn’t in it and find yourself shuddering at the wrongness that emanates from it.

You want him. Want him—

It’s Kyle who pulls away first, resting his forehead against yours. You blink slowly, eyes catching dark amber, honeycomb. It draws a smile from you, full and deep. Giddy on the taste of him, of this.

The only thought in your head is finally, finally.

You see his lips curl in response, eyes lidded and heavy. Blooming with want, affection. Adoration.

"What, ah—," he laughs a little, then, breathless and happy, and the noise anchors itself to your breastbone, pressing into the hollow of your ribs. A place you'll keep it forever. "What now?"

He hands you the starless sky, and places it into the cup of your palm. Breathes laughter in the air, paints the moon with his joy. You think about the places he wants to take you, and the ones he swears you'll never go. You think about aeons from now when the world is gone and the stars all die out, when there's just the hazy lavender of endless abyss you can't make sense of. You think of him, and you think of you, and you wonder when it started to just make sense for there to always be two.

Maybe that night in Cardiff when he held your shoes and gave you his coat. When he draped his arm around your shoulders, laughing at something stupid you'd said. A year before he joined this task force he makes cheeky remarks about but never goes too deeply into detail. When it was just endless summers spent working and drinking and eating good food.

He'd asked the same thing, then, half slumped over in the taxi, and three sheets to the wind. It made his eyes darken, endless pits. Black holes. The expanse of the sky is framed by brown lashes, and drooping lids.

And you'd said—

"Beans and toast?" It feels right. It feels good. "We can—"

He huffed, too, just like he does now, and squeezes your hand once, tugging you along.

"We're not watching Golden Girls."

You watch Golden Girls. Kyle wraps his arm around your neck, keeps you tucked in close to his side. He steals kisses from you when Sophia says something that makes you laugh until you're breathless and trembling.

When David from Kent texts you, he grins wide, and whispers in your ear, think I've always been a little bit in love with you, you know?

Yeah, you say, and kiss back until the taste of him is etched into the space between your teeth. Since Cardiff. For you?

"Since Uni for sure." He smiles again, sheepish and a touch flustered. It glitters on his brow and nips the apples of his cheeks. "You stole my heart when you devoured four lamb kebabs and then ate my tabbouleh. Said to myself, yeah, that's the one for me, innit?"

"On second thought, what's that Barista's number? Might try my luck instead."

"Nah, you're smitten," he presses his lips into the hollow of your throat, nips his teeth against your pulse point. "And you're all mine. No take backs."

"Ah, for fuck's sake—"

Ahhhhhhhh. Sappy romcoms are my kryptonite and it shows.

COD MASTERLIST | NAVIGATION

#kyle gaz garrick x reader #gaz x reader #cod gaz x reader #cod mw2 fanfic #ehhhhhh #these are my sloppiest tags #i didn't feel like making a gif so i threw this together real quick #will fix in the am #when my eyes aren't on fire

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catsgut · 2 years ago

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Torturous//bully!weasley twins x afab!reader

CW: mentions past bullying, reader is a hufflepuff and goes through puberty summer before 7th year. Later on, this story will contain dark content such as nonconsensual sex, abuse, and manipulation. Read at your own risk!

word count: 1k

Never in your life did you think you would turn into the young woman you were today. Sure, you weren’t as beautiful as your mother (although she would say differently), but you were impressed with how you filled out the summer before your last year at Hogwarts. It wasn’t unknown that you were a late bloomer, but better late than never, right?

Maybe you would even find yourself a boyfriend, you thought as you finished packing your suitcase. It was the night before you left home for school. You never got over the excitement of getting to finally see your friends again and your favorite professors.

With a squeal, you rolled into bed and coved the majority of your face. Staring up at your ceiling, a feeling of dread washed over you. The twins. How could you forget? The thought of your peaceful summer coming to an end made you sigh. They were your worst nightmare. That’s the one thing you were worried about and it was enough to even make you reconsider going this year. But alas, it was your last year. Just one more and you would be free from the tortures they put you through… forever.

You giggled softly as one of your friends pointed as Charlie, a cute boy in your house passed by your cart. He smiled at you and continued to make his way down the train. “You look good!” she said, wiggling her eyebrows. “I see your chest finally grew in,” her comment made you blush as you rolled your eyes. “Not as much as moms…. but I’m glad I finally look a little more my age,” you agreed, thoughts drifting back to Charlie. Maybe he would notice? You hoped.. he might even think you were cute and ask you on a date! I mean, you were both Hufflepuffs. The thought was enough to boost your confidence a little. A date with the cutest boy in your house, a girl could dream!

Your day dream was cut short by a hand snapping in front of your dazed face. “Wake up, love,” the deep voice spoke in your ear. You turned your head in horror to see the red head smirk. “Pleasure seeing you again, ay?” Fred teased and you scooted back towards the window. “Go away,” was all you managed to squeak out before he laughed. Winking at you, he followed his brother down the aisle. You grimaced.

“You have got to stand up for yourself this year! It’s bad enough you let them torment you, but this year will be different. You can’t let the bullying happen anymore, y/n….” but you weren’t listening to her, only thinking about how uncomfortable you felt with his face next to your head. It wasn't the first time Fred had gotten in your face, usually to spew nasty words at you, but it was the first time you felt a burn in your lower stomach. You weren’t sure what it was, maybe how much taller and muscular he was now or the fact that he finally got a much needed haircut, but the feeling slowly pooled up inside your underwear. “This year will be different for sure,” you mumbled as the train's horn shot through the air.

Later that night as you ate dinner after the sorting hat ceremony, your eyes drifted back over to where Fred and George were sitting. The both of them were laughing with some sixth-year Gryffindor; she was twirling her hair and giggling in between them. You almost felt jealous of her, but chalked it up to you never really catching the eye of any boy your age. Actually, the twins were the only ones who ever gave you any kind of attention. 'Just the shitty kind,' you grumbled to yourself. Deciding it would be smart to have an early night, so you left the Hufflepuff table and made your way to your common room.

The empty walls were cold and the air almost felt damp from the pouring rain outside. You shivered and hugged your arms around your freezing body, feeling the goosebumps littering your arms. It almost hurt; it felt like your body was in fight or flight by the way your heart was racing. You were actuall starting to get nervous as the feeli-

"Hello there,' a voice said in your left ear, making you quickly turn your head. Nothing. "Over here," it said again to your right. There they stood leaning against each other. "i'll say, y/n... you've grown," George chuckled and made a point to look at your chest. Fred snickered and walked forward taking a handful of your hair. "We missed you, love," he said using the nickname he's always called you. You rolled your eyes, "I'm sure you did, Fred, but now isn't the time." you tried to sound unintimidated, but you were sure they saw right past that.

Your hand came up to grab Fred's wrist, but George caught it before you could. "Watch yourself, we just wanted to say hello," he spoke sternly with amusement in his eyes. Fred tugged your hair a bit to the side before letting go. "George and I were bored all summer without little y/n to keep us company. I'm excited for all the fun the three of us will be having... especially now that you've finally grown into a young woman," he winked and the two of them made their way towards their common room, leaving you sweating despite the air's temperature.

Laying in bed that night you wondered what the twins had meant. Sure they messed with you every year, but something about their tone scared you even more than usual. What had you going through puberty have anything to do with it. You had a feeling they had something sinister planned, and with a gulp you rolled over and tucked the blanket up over your head. 'This year will be different. This year will be different,' you chanted over and over till you fell asleep while down in the Gryffindor common rooms, the twins smiled knowingly at each other. They finally had their toy back in their grasp, only they were going to end this year with a bang.

Thank you for reading! I'm excited to continue this story!! i’m having fun with it:)

#fred weasley smut #george weasley smut #weasley twins x reader #harry potter smut #harry potter fanfic #weasley twins smut

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torturedtypewritersdept · 5 months ago

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proclivity - part four - savior complex

✯ pairing:

ex!bff!rafe cameron x diabetic!kook!fem!reader

✯ summary:

at one point in time rafe was your best friend. can summer romance erase all the damage he's done?

✯ [4.1k] warnings:

mature themes, mentions of anxiety, nostalgia, heartbreak, diabetes lingo, injury, ghosting, fluff and fear, domestic violence (not rafe), mean!ex!jj etc.

✯ a/n:

nothing!! please don't engage if you have a hard time with any of these topics <3 this was origianlly posted on my old blog @/illicitfixations, @/lovelornanonymity and i have rewritten + reshared it here :) trying out a new format with this post, hope you like it!

As you pulled away from the kiss, panting, you searched Rafe’s eyes and only found solace in them. Why did this feel so right? Was it the greenhouse or the beauty of the plants surrounding you, the hues of green in the leaves that towered over your figure? Was it the romance or the pouring rain? You couldn’t put your finger on it and then, his blue eyes bore into yours and you could. It was Rafe. It was the man of your dreams kissing you at the college you’d both attend. You’d dreamed about this moment forever, thinking it would never really come and yet, you had your guard up, wondering when things got tough, if he’d run away again.

“Rafe-”

He kissed you passionately again, cutting off your words, both hands cradling your cheeks like his life depended on it. You chuckled.

“Rafe..”

You placed your hands against his chest, pushing him away.

“What is it, sweet girl?”

His tone was kind. It stung. You wanted him as close as you could get him, his sweet voice replaying over and over again in your ears forever.

“I-, w-we can’t do this.”

You stuttered out.

“What do you mean?”

The hurt washed over his face and you immediately regretted the words that left your lips.

“I’ve wanted this with you forever and-”

Your words were cut off by Rafe once more, his pleading eyes, begging you not to let the moment end.

“Then, have it with me. I’m right here.”

Before your brain could register its next move, the words were spewing out of your mouth at an aggressive volume.

“You have a reputation with girls, okay?”

You said forcefully.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

He asks, accusingly. Though, the hurt laced in his blue eyes makes your chest tight.

“It means I can’t be another one of your conquests. I can’t be another girl at a party or in your truck or on your lap in a golf cart if you’re not going to care about me next week. I’ve been there before, I can’t do it again.”

You blurted out without thinking, really. But, you can’t deny the words – you meant them. The truth was, you had been that girl, minus the sex, you’d been his girl and then one day, like whiplash after a car accident, you’d woken up and he was gone. You knew you wouldn’t be able to handle that again.

“Is that what you think of me?”

His head hung low as he whispered. Before you were able to reply, your thoughts were quickly shoved away when the dinging of your phone erupted from within your backpack that still sat on Rafe’s shoulders. His features softened as yours fell.

“You feel okay? Is that the tone for your blood sugar?”

He asks gently.

“It always does some stupid shit at the worst conceivable time.”

He could tell you beat yourself about it, your illness. He wondered why, no one could help being sick. Who had made you feel like it was a problem? You looked down at your phone as Rafe handed it to you and realized your blood sugar was fine, you perked up at that. But, mentally cursed at Topper’s contact flashing across your screen.

“I’m okay, Rafe. Don’t worry. It’s just Top.”

You gave him a reassuring smile and he returned it. The words from moments ago seemingly forgotten, at least for now.

“Hello?”

You asked, clearing the phlegm from your throat.

“Hey, where are you guys?”

He questioned.

“We’re in the arboretum.”

You replied with the hint of a smile.

“You and that fucking greenhouse, I swear. Okay, well. Let’s get a move on. It’s pouring rain and I’m ready to go home.”

Topper’s attitude had hurt you more than usual and your smile quickly faltered.

“O-okay. We’ll be there soon.”

You spoke into the speaker, trying to keep your voice even as you ended the call.

“Everything okay?”

Rafe asked, hesitantly.

“Yeah, Topper just being Topper. He’s ready to go home because of the rain.”

You let out a defeated chuckle, eyes tracing to your feet. Rafe had heard what Topper said. You and that fucking greenhouse. Rafe never understood how Topper could be so tone deaf, such a fucking idiot. Why was loving beautiful things so wrong?

“Okay.”

Rafe nodded and led you out of the front door of the greenhouse. This time there was no hand on your back or smile from him and you had never craved his warmth so much. There were no words exchanged between the two of you, only your guilt eating away at your core and before you knew it you were back at the Jeep. Rafe didn’t open your door for you and at that revelation, you swallowed thickly and tears lined your eyes. You had ruined your one chance with him. Topper and Kelce were taken aback by the sudden rigidity between you and the Cameron boy, but knew better than to say anything about it. They only assumed the happiness was short lived and you’d go back to hating each other. The car ride was long and agonizing and after two hours of radio silence from Rafe, you were in shambles. So you did what any teenager with no self respect would, you texted him.

Y: Can we talk?

R: for what

Y: i’m sorry

R: why

Y: I was mean and you didn’t deserve that, just got scared

R: scared? Of what?

Y: you.

R: why would you be scared of me?

Y: because I know what kind of hurt your absence can bring.

He didn’t respond to the last text and you took that as the final nail in the coffin. You had fucked this up. This entire day was perfect until you opened your big fat dumb fucking mouth and now the intimacy, the closeness, the Rafe you had so desperately prayed for was slipping out of your grasp. You could almost cry, but you knew if you started you’d never stop. Brought out of your thoughts by Rafe’s gruff voice, you looked to him as he spoke to Topper.

“Just go to Y/N’s house instead of mine.”

Your face fell and you started to spiral, he had taken back his dinner invitation and you could no longer hold in your tears, scared he was going to go away again, this time maybe permanently. You simply couldn’t bear that pain again.

“Are you alright, Y/N?”

Topper questioned, worry lacing his features as he took in the look on your face.

“Yeah, m’fine.”

The tone of your voice made the hair on the back of Rafe’s neck stand up. It was flat, in a broken, numb sort of way. He hadn’t heard you use that tone since the night he took Maggie Mills up to his room after a party. He never understood why that had upset you so much. He looked at you, watching as tears threatened to spill from the corners of your eyes and you stared at the floorboard of Top’s car. You couldn’t feel anything, numbness over taking your body. He placed his hand on your shoulder, begging you to look at him, but your eyes remained locked on the floor. You couldn’t face him, not now, not after you had ruined things with him, again. You were brought away from the sadness by the ding of your phone. It was Rafe, again.

R: please tell me what’s wrong

Y: isn’t it obvious

R: no, please tell me

Y: you don’t want me at dinner now. You don’t want me.

R: what?

Rafe began to put two and two together and visibly winced at the fear he had struck within you.

R: I just wanted you to have fresh clothes. I’m sorry, I should’ve said that. Please don’t cry, pretty girl. I’d never do that to you.

You didn’t reply to his message, but he looked on as your body slowly began to relax and reached over, wiping the tears from your cheeks and giving you a subtle smile. You returned it. Rafe had always catered to your anxiety, but he hadn’t been around you in so long, he almost couldn’t recognize it when it overcame you. Topper pulled into your driveway soon after and you were quick to rush inside, slipping into a new dress, adorned with pale pink lilies, and grabbing extra insulin before making your way back out to the jeep and climbing in next to Rafe. You quickly unzipped the bag that sat in between the two of you and shoved the insulin inside and you looked down at your phone, checking your levels one more time. They were still fairly normal, reading at 85 mg. Rafe looked over your shoulder, making sure your levels were okay and he was pleased when he saw they were. He knew it had been a long time since you’d eaten and you needed real food soon. As the sound of Topper’s brakes bringing the car to a halt met your ears, you locked eyes with Rafe who hopped out of the car almost immediately.

“Well boys, this was fun. I’ll see you two soon.”

You say with a false cheek.

“Bye, beautiful.”

Kelce muttered, dragging out the “L” on his last word. Topper simply nodded his head in your direction, unsure of what was going on between you and Rafe, but too tired to ask questions. By the time you had said your goodbyes to both boys, Rafe had made his way around to the side of the car and opened your door, helping you out with the grasp of his hand.

“Thanks, Rafe.”

You whispered, looking at the ground, still too spooked to look him in the eye.

“No problem, pretty girl.”

He smiled in response to your gratitude and the both of you made your way into the house.

“Rafe, is that you?”

Rose called to him as you both entered the foyer.

“Yeah, it’s us.”

He called back to her. She quickly emerged from the kitchen, meeting you both in the huge room, giving her greetings and ushering you over to the table where you were met with your father’s disapproving eyes.

“Honey! It’s so good to see you. I was wondering where you were all day.”

Your mother chimed in, walking over to you, placing a kiss on your cheek.

“Hi, mama. Yeah, Rafe, Topper, Kelce, and I left early this morning to tour UNC. We made it back just in time for dinner.”

“That’s wonderful, sweet girl! Did you love it?”

She questioned.

“Yes. Rafe took me to the greenhouse.”

You smiled, but it quickly faded as you looked over at him, remembering the events that followed. He didn’t meet your gaze.

“Rafe! Thank you, that’s been my girl’s dream for quite some time, being in that greenhouse, with you especially.”

She smiled brightly in his direction and gave him a wink. Your cheeks flushed, embarrassed at your mother’s outburst of too much fucking information. Rafe let out a low chuckle and your brother, Brock, opened his mouth to speak.

“Hopefully she wasn’t too much trouble for you, today, Rafe.”

He spoke, his tone demeaning.

“She’s never any trouble, she’s my best girl.”

Rafe responded in an even, joking tone, in an attempt to diffuse the situation before his temper got the best of him. His hand made its way to your thigh, giving it a reassuring squeeze. When did your brother become such a dick and what gave him the right to speak about you like you weren’t in the room? The subject quickly changed as Rose and Ward began asking you and Rafe about the campus and your majors.

“So, Y/N, what are you thinking of majoring in?”

Ward questioned.

“I’d like to go into English with a minor in entrepreneurship. I’d like to take some business classes, too, I think.”

You responded.

“That’s wonderful! Business and English are two things that will help you so much in the working world.”

He replied, truly excited for you. He’s always been one of your favorite adults.

“Yeah, thank you! I think so too.”

You replied with a sweet smile.

“You know, you could always intern at Cameron Development this summer and get some hands on training with Rafe, Brock, and I.”

He suggested.

“Thank you, Ward. I seriously would love that!”

You smiled his way, unsure if you’d take him up on his offer. It would look good on college applications and it would mean more time with Rafe, those were both good things, right?

“Don’t get too ahead of yourself, y/n. I don’t know that you could handle the workload, what with your condition and all.”

Brock said quickly with a sneer. You cast your eyes immediately down to where your hands sat in your lap.

“What about you, Rafe?”

Your mother questioned him, ignoring your brother. It hurt that they oftentimes bowed down to his asshole nature, not wanting to fight with him. Sometimes you just wanted to feel fought for.

“Dad and I have been talking about me going to business school and running the company eventually.”

Rafe replied quietly, still unsure he had heard Brock correctly. Because the guy he knew loved his sister, he wouldn’t be treating you like this, especially not in public.

“Of course! You’re a smart young man, it’s only fitting. You have a bright future ahead of you.”

She replied with a cheerful tone.

“Thank you, that means so much coming from you.”

He replied with a kind smile. He always loved your mother and her sweet words meant the world to him. The familiar beep of your glucose monitor brought your attention away from the conversation and toward your phone in your lap. Rafe watched you intently, reading the levels over your shoulder. 80mg. ‘That can’t be good’, he thought.

“Are you alright, sweetheart?”

He whispered into your ear and you met his eyes.

“I’m not feeling good, but I’m fine. I need to eat soon.”

You responded, reassuring him. Even though you knew your levels were getting dangerously low.

“How much longer on the food, Rose?”

Rafe questioned.

“About 5 minutes.”

She smiled, letting him know it would be right out. Thirty seconds passed and the alert on your phone beeped loudly once more. You averted your gaze from your brother’s eyes and let out a sigh, but that didn’t stop his mouth from opening.

“Not this shit again.”

He spoke, boldly.

“What did you just say?”

Rafe’s tone was coated with venom, as he gave your brother a tight lipped smile, urging him to repeat himself, daring him to.

“I’m just tired of the same shit everyday. She needs sugar, she needs insulin, blah, blah, blah. Everything is always about her.”

He gritted out.

“Oh you’re tired of it?! How the fuck do you think she feels?”

Your father interjected, keeping his voice low, his kind honey-colored eyes becoming dark at Brock’s words. He’s clearly had enough.

“Well, I’m sorry, this might not be my place. But, I don’t think she’s thrilled about it either and here she is dealing with it. It went off and she sighed, all she did was fucking sigh. She didn’t demand attention from everyone in the room. All she did was fucking sigh and you know what? She’s allowed to do that. She’s allowed to be frustrated about something that is wrong with her body. You could show some fucking compassion.”

Rafe growled.

“Rafael Joseph Cameron! Language!”

Ward spoke Rafe’s full name, his tone laced with warning.

“What dad?! You can’t let him talk about her like that!”

He said, exasperatedly.

“Ward, it’s really okay. He deserves to be bitched at.”

Your mother spoke, sticking up for Rafe.

“She’s a type one diabetic, not a fucking drug addict and i’ll be damned if I let you sit here and treat her like one.”

At Rafe’s words the table fell silent. His father knew what the weight of his words carried, and now, so did you. Luckily for you, Rose served you your food first after the meal was done cooking and your sugar quickly went back up to normal levels, which was a giant relief to Rafe. Most of the dinner was silent after the conversation fizzled out. The words of your father affected you more than you cared to admit, yet not as much as Rafe’s. Rafe stood up for you in a room with two men that scared the shit out of you, all without batting an eye or worrying about a consequence. He stood up to his father for you and you knew you couldn’t just let that go. The conversations quickly became about business and Rafe watched as you mentally checked out, which probed his next question to you.

“Why don’t we go out to the dock, sweet girl?”

You simply nodded in response, thankful to him for saving you from listening to your brother’s bullshit business plans any longer. Rafe helped you out of your chair and pushed it in behind you, leading you out the patio doors with his large hand placed on the small of your back. You quickly made your way to the dock on the other side of the cool grass, taking your shoes off and plunging your feet in as you sat on the edge of where the wood met the water.

“You okay?”

He asked, his cerulean eyes taking in your form.

“Yeah, I am. Thank you for sticking up for me in there.”

You gave him your best smile, even though he could see right through it.

“How long has he been treating you that way?”

“Since the day I came home from the hospital.”

You whispered, but Rafe heard you, loud and clear.

“Can you tell me about it? I mean, what happened when you got sick.”

You swallowed thickly. Talking about your illness was easy but talking about it with Rafe was just different. He wasn’t there when you got sick and you resented him for it, but you also resented yourself for not giving him the opportunity to be.

“It happened the Thursday after we stopped talking. I was with Topper, we were at the club, just swinging some golf balls and dicking around. He was with me everyday that week just to make sure I was handling things well and I wasn’t, so I’m glad I had him.”

You said, with no particular emotion.

“I’m sorry.”

He whispered out, hanging his head in shame.

“You don’t have to apologize Rafe, I’m not here to make you feel guilty. I just-, if I’m gonna tell you what happened, I have to tell the whole story.”

You replied, trying to reassure him.

“I know and I want to know everything.”

He stated with a sheepish smile, nodding his head for you to continue.

“I told Top I wasn’t feeling good that morning, but I thought it was just because I was hungover and when we went to play golf, I figured I’d be fine. But when we got to the third hole, I noticed that I was kinda nauseous and dizzy and my hands were shaking. I heard Top ask if I was okay before I hit the ground but I couldn’t register anything. Evidently he had called an ambulance because I woke up in the ICU three days later. They said I had a seizure and went into diabetic shock, which is when we found out I had type one.”

You finished with a swirl of anxiety in your belly.

“As much as it pains me to say this, I’m thankful you had Top.”

Rafe smiled into his joke. His distaste for the closeness Topper shared with you had always been prevalent, but especially after the two of you had gone your separate ways.

“Yeah, the funny thing is, I laid in that hospital bed for days willing myself to call you but I couldn’t do it.”

You said suddenly.

“I wish you would have.”

Your eyes flickered up to meet his immediately.

“I couldn’t do that to you. You decided you wanted a life without me in it and I respected that even if I didn’t understand it. I never wanted me being sick to be the reason you came back, I wanted you to come back because you wanted to. But it hurt like hell that I had to walk through that without you.”

Rafe quickly pulled you in and wrapped his large hand around the back of your head, pooling your hair in his hands. He hugged you tightly and suddenly it felt like all the broken pieces of your heart had been mended.

“I’m so sorry, sweet girl. Please, forgive me.”

His voice broke as the words stumbled out of his mouth. He felt like there was no air in his lungs and all he knew was that he needed your forgiveness like he needed to breathe. He pulled back, holding you by your shoulders, looking to your eyes for confirmation of the hatred he was sure you felt for him, yet he couldn’t find it.

“I forgave you a long time ago, Rafael.”

You spoke softly, giving him the sweetest smile you could muster up.

“Y/N, I need you to know that I’m never going to leave you again.”

He said so sure – more sure of anything than he has ever been in his entire life.

“I appreciate that Rafe and I hope it’s true. It’s just so hard for me to trust that.”

You replied candidly.

“I know and I’m going to work everyday to prove to you that you can trust me.”

He responded, willing to do anything to prove that to you.

“I hope you do.”

He nodded, giving you the reassurance you needed.

“So, uh, where’d you learn to kiss like that?”

He asked, sheepishly, as he rubbed his hand against the back of his neck - one of his many nervous habits. His voice came out small and awkward and it made you laugh.

“I don’t know, Cameron. Where did you learn to kiss like that?”

Your eyes met, as you nudged his shoulder, which made him smile.

“Lots of practice.”

He replied and you visibly winced at the words that you had spoken to him earlier. You have a reputation with girls, okay? The hurt that laced his irises when the words left your lips would haunt you forever.

“Hey, listen, about what I said earlier-”

You began, but didn’t get to finish.

“It’s okay, I deserved it.”

He replied, his head hanging low. You gently lifted his chin, so his eyes met yours.

“You didn’t, not from me.”

You said, very matter-of-factly.

“What do you mean?”

He asked, scrunching his eyebrows together.

“I mean, I’ve always been your person – the one you tell anything to. It isn’t fair of me to project my shit onto you, so I’m sorry. That’s not what I think of you, Rafe and I need you to know that. I just got scared.”

You replied, laying your heart directly in his hands.

“Why are you so scared, sweet girl?”

He wasn’t trying to pry, he just genuinely didn’t understand what you had to be afraid of, surely it wasn’t him.

“I just-, I went through some things with JJ.”

He nodded, trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together in his brain.

“I see. You know you can talk to me, right? I mean – if you want to tell me, ya know, I’m the guy you tell.”

He replied, assurance laced in his blue orbs.

“Yeah, I do and I will when I’m ready.”

He nodded, taking your answer as gospel. He knew you’d tell him when you were ready. He quickly changed the subject.

“What days are you working this week?”

He questioned.

“Uh-, Tomorrow, Wednesday, and Friday. Why?”

You asked, confused.

“Is it okay if I come see you?”

He questioned, voice sheepish, unable to make eye contact with you in fear of your rejection. That’s what all this has been about to begin with hasn’t it – the years away from you, the fear that he just wasn’t enough.

“You can always come see me. But, why do you want to hang out at the club?”

You smiled in his direction, noting how respectful it was for him not to just show up.

“I am a member, you know?”

He joked and flush filled your cheeks. Bold of you to assume he'd be there for you, you thought. He must have noticed the change in your demeanor, because he grabbed your hand and lifted your chin.

“I want to spend time with you, silly girl and I can only gain your trust by spending all the time I can with you.”

You smiled at him.

“Thank you, Rafe. That’s sweet.”

You looked in his eyes, thanking him for more than just his sweet words and he had no idea.

You walked into the club at 4pm the next day, spotting Rafe immediately as he sat at the bar, waiting for your inevitable arrival. You were shocked to see him, even though he said he’d come. Truth be told, you hadn’t taken most of what Rafe Cameron said seriously in the last few years, but him showing up meant something to you. It meant more to you than you cared to admit. After you clocked in and made your way behind the bar, your eyes met his.

“Well, hey pretty girl.”

He flashed you that Rafe Cameron smile and it was over. You were done for.

“Hello, Rafael, to what do I owe this pleasure?”

You said, smiling back at him.

“Just wanted to hang out with my girl, that’s all.”

He replied cheekily. You rolled your eyes playfully.

“She’s working.”

You retorted, a fun-loving tone soaking your tongue, dispersing from him to check on your tables. You glanced his way a few times, only to be met with eyes studying your form. Your co-worker Emily made her way over to you, noticing his gaze.

“So, why is Rafe Cameron being a creepy stalker and staring you down like a serial killer?”

You chuckled, Emily or Em as she was known by her friends, had quite the knack for being dramatic.

“Em, he is not a serial killer or creepy!”

You yelped, rolling your eyes at her.

“Whatever you say, angel. But, I better not see your face on the side of a milk carton any time soon.”

You jokingly rolled your eyes at her and made your way back to the bar. You wanted to chat with Rafe for a bit while the club was slow, but he was heading out for the night and that stung a little. As he gathered his wallet and keys in his hands, you snuck up behind him, placing your arm at the small of his back.

“You just gonna leave with no goodbye?”

You smiled up at him, secretly hoping that wasn’t his intention. His face lit up at the sight of your smiling face beaming up at him and he relished in the feeling of your hand on his back, touching him like this.

“No way, pretty girl. Never. Dad called and needed me home, something with Sarah.��

He responded.

“Okay. Well, be careful.”

You replied.

“Always am. You call if you need me to take you home, okay?”

He asks, but it’s not a question.

“Okay, Rafael. Be good.”

You smiled at him, squeezing his hand before letting him go and watching him walk out the front door. The rest of the night drug by, Sundays were usually very busy with Kildare residents playing golf while heavily intoxicated, but most of the traffic died down around dinner time. It was your night to close so you were by yourself after Emily went home at 4 and that meant blasting Taylor Swift while you started closing the club down for the night. You wiped the tables down first, belting out the lyrics to your favorite Taylor song to date I Almost Do. You could remember it having a different meaning when you and Rafe had parted ways, singing it at the top of your lungs in your bedroom, willing yourself to pick up the phone and call him. Now, the words didn’t sting as much and instead, you just wanted to feel his warmth. It was no longer the song of your heart, now it was just another song. Those feelings seemed so far away and you couldn’t help but feel thankful. You were brought out of your thoughts by none other than JJ Maybank busting through the front door of the club and you knew this could only mean disaster. You locked eyes with him and that devilish smirk that he somehow always sported sent chills down your spine.

“Miss me, angel?”

He questioned, hiss in his tone. You ignored him, which you knew better than to do. You knew what it would do to him. You knew it drove him absolutely insane, but you did it anyway because it felt good.

“Look at me when I’m talking to you!”

His yell echoed through the building and the fear that you remembered so well returned.

“What, JJ? What do you want?”

You scoffed.

“I want your attention, honey.”

He spoke softer now and you couldn’t help but think wow, what a psycho.

“Sorry, you’ve lost that privilege.”

“I haven’t lost anything, darling. Don’t forget who you belong to.”

His sneer was sinister and you knew what he meant, what he was capable of. As he walked out of the door, tears filled your vision. You wanted so badly to call Rafe but you knew it would only mean disaster. He couldn’t know everything, yet. So, instead you finished closing the club and went home.

taglist:

@maybankslover @inthelibrarybtw @luvrcndy @silkylovey @yagirlwrites @obxbabygirl @rafeecameronsbitch @klutzy-kay24 @roseczbalt

as always, if you'd like to be tagged please let me know <3

#bestie ♡#rafe cameron x reader #rafe cameron #rafe x reader #outerbanks rafe #rafe cameron obx #rafe cameron prompt #rafe obx #rafe outer banks #rafecore #rafe imagine #rafe <3 #rafe cameron fanfiction #rafe smut #rafe cameron imagine #ex bff!rafe x diabetic!reader

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coolemmasulivan2 · 6 months ago

Text

Rewinding Us | 4

Pairing: Mason Mount x Reader

Summary: You and Mason built a love story over five years, but after an accident, your memories are wiped away, including any feelings for your constant bickering "rival". Can you remember your love story with Mason, or will you have to start all over?

Word count: 2523

YYou can read more chapters here.

You are the only one I'll ever love Looking back on my life You're the only good I've ever done (ever done) Yeah, you, if it's not you, it's not anyone (anyone) Not anyone

The weather in Manchester was unpredictable, providing you with both happiness and annoyance. When you longed for the chill of winter, the sun would shine and when you craved a dose of vitamin D, the sky would unleash an amount absurd of rain. Today was no exception. It was August and it felt like nature was teasing your wish for some sunshine.

You returned home after a long day at work, packed with groceries for dinner. It had been a week since you'd returned to Manchester, and tonight, you were finally going to see Mason again. He had a reason to visit, something to pick up from the house and since you were aware of everything, he'd simply asked instead of sneaking in when you weren't home.

Since your last encounter, Mason had encouraged you to reach out whenever you had questions about your shared history. True to his word, you had bombarded him with texts, curious about the memories that were slowly coming back to you. The most recent memory had occurred at three in the morning when you dreamed about a dog.

You: Did we had a dog?

Mason was fast asleep when his phone buzzed, the sound jolting him awake. Without moving his face, he reached out and grabbed the phone, his fingers fumbling in the darkness. As he saw your name on the screen, his heart skipped a beat. Worry gnawed at him as he unlocked the phone, fearing the worst.

When he read your question, his relief turned into a mix of amusement.

"She's going to kill me!" He muttered, sinking back into the pillow.

He quickly typed out a reply, attaching a photo of Ace.

Mason: We still do! His name is Ace.

The photo showed Ace sitting beside you by the pool, your smile bright and infectious. Seeing the image, you couldn't help but smile.

That night, you bombarded Mason with questions about Ace, your curiosity insatiable. Later that day, when you turned on the TV and saw him preparing for a match, you let out a curse. You'd completely forgotten about his game. He'd stayed up late, answering your endless questions, when he should have been resting.

Today, knowing Mason was coming over, you asked if he could bring Ace and without even realizing it, you ended up inviting him to dinner. It wasn't a romantic dinner, you kept reminding yourself. Just 'friends' having a meal.

Since the kiss you exchanged in the car, you couldn't stop thinking about him. The constant texting wasn't helping. One moment, you'd despise him, and the next, you'd be imagining what lay beneath his clothes.

Cooking had always been your therapy, you were always good at it, so that wasn't the problem. What made you nervous was not knowing what to wear. A dress? You were at home. It wasn't a date. Why did it matter?

"Just wear something casual but nice." Your friend and coworker, Dianne, said over FaceTime. "Like a blouse or a nice shirt. I mean, Mason would probably love you even if you were wearing a potato sack."

You threw the long summer dress you were holding onto the bed. "You're not helping." You muttered.

"I'm just telling you the truth." She insisted. "That man is so head over heels for you, he wouldn't notice if someone else was in the room."

A blush crept across your face. It was nice to hear those kinds of things, to know you were loved and appreciated. Your past relationships had been a series of disappointments, but with Mason, it seemed different.

"Since we came back, I can't stop thinking about him." You admitted, running your hands through your hair. "It's like… something clicked when he told me we used to date. Sometimes I want to punch his stupid face but at the same time I…"

"At the same time, you want to jump on him." Your friend finished your thought.

You groaned, falling back onto the bed. "I hate this!" You exclaimed, tossing your phone onto the mattress making Dianne face the ceiling.

"Girl, I've seen your relationship with Mason. You love him, and he loves you. You're that perfect couple who's still in their honeymoon phase, and it's inspiring to watch." She said, her voice filled with admiration. You listened attentively, her words sinking in. "Don't be afraid to approach him." She encouraged you.

You thanked her for her support and ended the call.

Gathering the clothes from the bed, you opted for a pair of nice jeans and a floral tank top. The weather outside was miserable, but inside the house, it was warm and cosy.

The food was in the oven, and you were chopping tomatoes and onions for the salad when the doorbell rang, making you jump. Ace's excited woof echoed outside the house.

Drying your hands, you hurried to the door barefoot, nearly tripping over the rug. Taking a deep breath, you opened the door.

A wave of happiness washing over you as you saw Ace running towards you, his tail wagging furiously. He'd missed you, that was clear.

You crouched down, welcoming Ace's enthusiastic jumps and licks. Dogs had always been your favourite, growing up with more than one back in the day when you lived with your parents. You spent a few minutes showering him with affection, your worries - or even Mason - temporarily forgotten.

"Hello, Ace." You said, stroking his soft fur. "You're so pretty, you big goofball." Ace's tail wagged with happiness. His eyes, filled with love and adoration, mirrored your own emotions.

Mason stood behind and watched you interact with Ace, a tender smile playing on his lips. His love for you was evident in his gaze.

"Hi." You managed to squeak out, your voice barely audible.

"Hi." He replied, his voice equally soft.

You stood up, Ace disappearing into the house. You tucked a strand of hair behind your ear, your nerves showing. Mason mirrored your posture, his hands stuffed in his hoodie pockets.

"Come in!" You insisted, opening the door wider.

Mason mumbled a thank you and stepped inside, the familiar scent of home washing over him. "It smells good." He commented as the smell from the kitchen hit him.

You closed the door behind him and smiled. "Thank you. Dinner's almost ready. I was just finishing the salad."

He followed you into the kitchen. "Need help?" He asked.

"No, you can sit." You replied, continuing with the salad as he sat on a stool by the kitchen island. "Thank you for bringing Ace."

Mason watched as Ace wandered around the kitchen, his tail wagging happily. "Why don't I let him stay here and see if you feel the same way after." He suggested a playful glint in his eye. You stopped cutting the onion, your eyes locking with his. "It was a joke, Y/n." He added, sensing your reaction.

"But he can stay!" You persisted, your eyes sparkling. "I love dogs."

Mason chuckled, his heart melting. "He's your dog too." He said. "It's only fair to share custody."

You grinned, looking down at Ace. "Did you hear that, goofball? You're staying with me!" Ace's tail wagged with enthusiasm. Mason couldn't help but smile at the heartwarming interaction.

Mason had placed the salad on the table when the oven timer beeped. You grabbed the oven gloves and started walking towards the oven, but Ace, catching you by surprise, ran between your legs, causing you to lose your balance.

"ACE!" Mason shouted, his voice filled with both irritation and concern. He quickly reached out, his arm wrapping around your waist and pulling you towards him. Your back pressed against his strong chest and you could feel his warm breath against your ear. "Are you okay?" He asked, his voice laced with worry.

His hand rested on your belly, his warmth seeping through your tank top. For a moment, you felt an overwhelming urge to turn around and kiss him, but you resisted, your heart pounding in your chest. "I'm fine." You whispered, your voice barely audible. "Thank you."

You didn't step away, and neither did he. The warmth of his body against yours was comforting, a familiar sensation that sent a shiver down your spine. You stood there for a moment, lost in the moment until Ace's loud woof broke the spell.

As Mason stepped away, you felt a pang of disappointment. "Let me help you." He offered, taking the oven gloves from your hands.

He carefully removed the food from the oven and placed it on the table. You both sat down, the aroma of the meal filling the air. Ace sat at your feet, his tail wagging hopefully.

The dinner passed in a blur, the awkwardness of the beginning replaced by a comfortable ease. Mason's ability to make you laugh was infectious, and before you knew it, hours had flown by.

As you cleaned up the rest of the kitchen, Mason reminded you of the time. "It's getting late." He said, glancing at the clock. "I guess I should go get my things." You nodded, a pang of disappointment settling in. He dried his hands on the kitchen cloth after helping you and then disappeared upstairs.

You didn't want him to leave. The thought of staying alone in the big house again made you feel unsettled. Having him by your side felt comforting and familiar, and you didn't want that to change.

Ace, curled up on the living room rug, looked up at you. "Guess it's just you and me, goofball." You said, playing with his fur.

A chill had settled in the air, and you shivered involuntarily, so you grabbed the blue Nike hoodie you had left in the bathroom and you pulled it on.

As you sat down on the sofa, Ace eagerly joined you, his head resting on your lap. You turned on the TV, the soft glow illuminating the room.

Mason's footsteps sounded from the hallway. "Y/n?" he called out.

"In the living room." You replied.

"Have you seen a blue hoo--?" He stopped when he saw you wearing the hoodie he was looking for.

You shifted uncomfortably. "Is it your hoodie?" You asked him, realizing why the hoodie was so big on you. "Sorry, I didn't know." You grabbed the ends, ready to take it off, but Mason quickly stopped you.

"It's fine." He said, a playful glint in his eye. "It looks better on you anyway."

You blushed, feeling a warmth spread through your cheeks. "But you wanted it."

"It's fine. I have plenty." He insisted.

"But--"

"Y/n--"

"You can hav--"

"It was an excuse!" He said and you looked at him.

"What?"

Mason ran his hand through his hair. "I found what I was looking for yesterday in one of my suitcases, but you had already invited me over, so, my excuse was going to be the blue hoodie… You have on."

"Oh." You looked at him as he looked down in embarrassment.

"The things I do just to be with you." He whispered. He let out a shy chuckle and you gave him a smile. "Sorry."

"You don't need to apologize. I get it. This was your life for five years and I took it from you."

Mason shook his head. "You didn't! The man that hit your car did. It's not your fault." You looked at him, not knowing what to say. Mason took your hand and held it tightly. "We didn't do anything wrong."

You looked down at your hand in his, feeling a warmth spread through you. Your eyes met his, and a smile crept across your face. "Do you want to watch a movie? I know it's late, but you can sleep in the guest room," you suggested.

Mason smiled, his gaze lingering on your face. "I'd like to, but I have training tomorrow morning." He replied.

A blush crept across your cheeks. "Oh, yeah, right."

He took a step closer, his hand still holding yours. "But I would like to take you on a date." He said, his eyes filled with sincerity. "If you want, of course."

Your heart skipped a beat. "I-I would like that." You stammered, your voice barely audible.

Mason squeezed your hand. "Good!" He said, a wide smile spreading across his face. "I'll call you." You nodded. He looked down at Ace and petted him. "You're staying with Y/n, buddy! It's your job to protect her, okay?" The dog gave him his paw and you laughed.

"I'll walk you out." You offered.

You followed him toward the front door. "Just to be clear," He started, stopping himself when you opened the door. "I'm asking you out because I love you and I want you back. It doesn't matter if you don't have your memories back. I want you to fall in love with me again, so, I'm going to do whatever it takes for that to happen." He said. You felt like your legs were going to give up as he leaned in and kissed you softly on the cheek. "Good night, Y/n!"

"Good night, Mason!"

You watched Mason's car disappear down the driveway, a wave of sadness washing over you. You closed the door and leaned against it, letting out a sigh.

A few weeks ago, if someone had suggested you would develop feelings for Mason, you would have laughed in their face. The idea had been absurd, but here you were, feeling sad after seeing him leave.

As you sat down on the sofa, Ace joined you once again. "Do you like Mason, goofball?" The dog looked up at you, his ears perking up at the mention of his favourite human and let out a joyful woof. "Me too! Me too!"

Half an hour later, you were lost in thought when the doorbell rang, startling you out of your trance. Standing up, you approached the door and swung it open, your surprise evident as you saw Mason standing on the doorstep.

"Hey, is everything okay? Did you forget something?" You asked, your voice laced with concern.

Mason's gaze flickered between your eyes and your lips, a hint of something unsaid lingering in his expression. "I re- I remembered you didn't have Ace's food." He stuttered, his words stumbling over each other.

"Oh." You replied, disappointment washing over you. "You want to take him back!"

"No, no. It's not that." He said quickly, shaking his head. He went back to his car and returned with a bag of dog food.

You watched him, a knowing smile playing on your lips. "You didn't have to." You said, your voice soft.

He shrugged, his cheeks reddening. "I thought it would be nice."

Your heart swelled with warmth. "Thank you, Mason." You looked at him, your heart pounding in your chest. "You're sure you don't want to stay over?" You asked, your voice barely a whisper.

Mason hesitated, his eyes locking with yours. He took a deep breath, his chest rising and falling. "I'll stay." He smiled and said, his voice barely audible.

Relief washed over you, a smile spreading across your face, as you closed the door.

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