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queenshelby · 4 years ago

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Just Friends - Cillian Murphy Imagine

Featuring: Cillian Murphy x Reader

Warning: SMUT

Words: 5034

Foreword:

I have never written anything for an actual person. For my own comfort, I will not be referring to Cillian’s actual family and, instead, I have created two small biographies for the Reader and Cillian.

Biography:

The Reader:

The Reader is 24 years old and recently moved to Dublin with her 5 year old son, Max in order to take up a fantastic job offer.

Max’s father isn’t interested in a relationship with his son and separated from the Reader pretty much as soon as she found out that she was pregnant.

The Reader is a novelist and editor for the Irish Times.

The Reader’s interests include books, listening to records, theatre and attending live music gigs.

The Reader has a close relationship with her grandmother who is 65 years old and a writer herself. She also lives in Dublin with her second husband, who is originally from Galway.

Cillian:

Cillian is 42 years old in this story. He is divorced from his wife Siobhan and has two kids, Charlie (6) and Hendricks (8).

He lives in a town house in Dublin and shares custody.

In this story, he finished filming Season 4 of Peaky Blinders about three months ago, which is when the Reader first met him.

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JUST FRIENDS

Three and a half months ago you moved to Dublin to take a position as editor at the Irish Times. Initially, the move was daunting to you as you were a single mother and moving your son to a different preschool concerned you.

Fortunately, your grandmother was living in Dublin as well and offered to help you with looking after your son, Max. She was a retired novelist herself and you always had a close relationship with her. Having her around was a blessing.

Over the years, you also met some Irish writers and established good relationships with them. Therefore, finding friends in Dublin was not an issue.

One of your best friends was a play writer from London and was working in Ireland at the time, promoting her theatre play called ‘Blessings’. She introduced you to a bunch of people, most of which were working in the entertainment industry in some way or another.

Whilst all of your new found friends were a fair bit older than you, you related to them. You had interests in common and most of them had children, just like you. They understood that sometimes plans had to be cancelled and flexibility was limited. Having children is a commitment which many of your younger friends didn’t understand. You weren’t interested in late nights because a young child meant early mornings. For this reason, you would much rather attend a dinner and board game night as a opposed to a night club.

And this is how you met a very interesting man named Cillian. Three months ago, your friend Orla invited you to a board game night with a couple of her friends. Cillian was pretty much the only other single person in attendance and, since this was a board game that had to be played in teams of two, you and Cillian were paired up with him.

He was funny and smart and very attractive. You had a good time that night and even won the game with your combined knowledge of random trivial facts.

He was a fun person to be around and you had several common interests.

Over the next few months, you spent a fair bit of time together, mostly with other friends but sometimes alone when your friends were doing things as couples with their partners.

Just recently, you went record shopping together and the weekend before last you and another friend of yours would take all of your kids to Dublin Zoo for the day. Your son Max developed a great friendship with Cillian’s youngest son Charlie. Playdates were a common occurrence.

While both of you separately explored the dating world, you really enjoyed Cillian’s company as a friend and he enjoyed yours and you would often chat about the mishaps you encountered and laugh about them. Dates gone wrong was one of your favourite topics.

The last relationship Cillian had was with a co-worker, which was far from ideal. They’ve met on set of one of his movies about a year after he divorced from his wife, but things didn’t go as planned and the relationship didn’t last. It ended about four months ago, being just one month before you met.

The last relationship you had was over a year ago and it also didn’t last as your boyfriend couldn’t deal with the fact that you were a single mum and that your son always came first.

For Valentines Day this year, your friends set up dates for each of you. It was disastrous. Neither of you were interested in committing at this point and you both were rather flustered about your friends’ efforts after you both had told them not to bother.

You were happy singles.

Theatre Night

As happy singles, you decided to go and see your friend’s new play ‘Blessings’ with some of your other friends on the night you all managed to be child free for once. It took a while to organise but was worth the effort.

‘Hi Max, how was preschool?’ Cillian asked as he opened the door to your townhouse for Cillian while you were in the bathroom, putting up your hair.

Max met Cillian numerous times and got along with him very well. After all, Cillian had a son the same age as Max.

‘Good. Do you want me to show you what I made?’ Max asked while you waived at Cillian from the bathroom.

‘Absolutely, show me’ Cillian said with a smile as he followed Max into the living room.

‘Look’ Max said as he held up two paintings.

‘Wow, is that a T-Rex?’ Cillian asked, causing Max to nod with excitement.

‘That’s very cool…he looks super scary’ Cillian added just as there was another knock on the door.

It was your grandmother who was here to pick up Max for his sleepover at her house.

You opened the door and asked Max to get his bag from the living room which you had packed for him earlier.

‘Nan, this is my friend Cillian’ you said as you introduced Cillian to your grandmother.

‘Hello Cillian, I am Margot. I loved Grief is a Thing with Feathers. It was such an intense play’ she said, knowing right away who he was despite the fact that you had never mentioned him to her before.

‘Thank you Margot and I loved By The Sea, it was a fantastic book’ Cillian responded. He read the book after you told him about your grandmother. Your writing style was very similar to hers and he always loved a good book.

‘Oh thank you very much. Now Max, are you ready?’ your grandmother asked.

Max was ready and you said goodbye, giving him a big hug and thanking your grandmother for looking after him for the night.

While Cillian waited in the living room, you finished your make up and slipped on your shoes.

‘Thank you for picking me up. I really have no idea where this place is’ you said as you grabbed your bag and the two of you were heading out of the door.

‘Any time Y/N, it isn’t far from here actually’ Cillian said.

As you were walking to the Arthouse Theatre you talked about all sorts of things, music, childcare and books.

It was a cold night in Dublin and you were probably underdressed for the occasion.

At the Arthouse Theatre you met up with another two friends of yours. They were both married, to each other, and shared three children. Luckily for them, they had a baby sitter that night.

The play was amazing and you all enjoyed it with a few glasses of wine which were served at the theatre. Cillian had good taste when it came to wine and you usually sought his guidance on what to order.

After you left the theatre, you felt awfully hungry. You hadn’t eaten dinner that night.

‘I am starving, is anyone else up for Pizza?’ you asked your three friends, including Cillian

‘We would love to, but only have a baby sitter until 9pm, sorry’ Amanda said, explaining that she and her husband had to head home fairly soon.

‘What about you Cilly?’ you asked.

‘I would love some Pizza, let’s go to Pizzinis’ he said.

Both you and Cillian said goodbye to your friends and made your way to Pizzinis.

As usual, it was packed and there were no table available.

‘Wanna grab them take away and go back to my place? I’ve got wine and you can show me this new album you were talking about earlier’ you said.

‘Sounds good, let’s do that’ Cillian said before ordering two pizzas.

More than Friends

You arrived at your apartment about 30 minutes later and Cillian put on some music. He found this new Irish band he liked and you were really keen to hear them.

‘Hmm Indie…I like it’ you said as he connected his i-phone to your speakers.

‘Wine?’ you asked as you grabbed a bottle of wine from the shelf.

‘Yes please and thanks’ Cillian said as he put the pizzas on the table.

‘I was meant to ask you, how was your Valentine’s date?’ Cillian asked before taking the first bite of the pizza.

‘Oh god, don’t remind me on it please’ you said with a laugh.

‘That good ey? What happened?’ Cillian laughed.

‘He was weird. He basically left after I told him about Max’ you responded.

‘I think that sometimes guys your age might be a bit freaked out by the fact that you have child. I can’t say that I blame them. I couldn’t imagine myself becoming a step father when I was in my 20s’ Cillian said.

‘He was 32’ you responded.

‘Well maybe he was just weird and you are just unlucky when it comes to dating’ Cillian laughed.

‘Yeah, maybe…I am just over dating’ you said…’What about your date?’ you asked.

‘Pretty average. I mean she was nice but had no sense of humour’ Cillian said.

‘Oh what, wait…she didn’t laugh at your Irish jokes?’ you laughed.

‘Outrageous I know. I mean how could she not?’ Cillian joked.

‘Here is to failed dates’ you said as you held up your wine glass for a toast.

‘To failed dates’ Cillian responded with smile.

Over the next hour or so, Cillian and you finished both pizzas and talked about books, including the book you were currently writing, music and embarrassing things your kids had done.

Quite music was playing in the background by then while you talked and laughed together until Cillian brought up a specific book he had read recently, written by a writer named J A Hanson, which he said reminded him on you in a way.

‘I have read all of her books and I really wish I could write romance as well as her’ you said.

‘Her books aren’t exactly romantic’ Cillian responded.

‘Her storylines aren’t romantic, but the character she uses in all of her books involves herself romantically with several other characters throughout the series. The way she writes makes you relate to the character even in these intimate moments’ you explained.

‘She is 60 and probably speaking from experience. I have read in a paper a few months back that she had quite an interesting and adventurous youth in the 70s and 80s’ Cillian said.

‘Free Love…Yeah, I have read this too’ you laughed. ‘Perhaps I just need some inspiration to get over my block, otherwise I will never finish this damn novel’ you said as you poured yourself some more wine.

‘You don’t have to answer this, but when was the last time that…?’ Cillian asked and, before he could finish his question, you interrupted him.

‘That I had sex? Gosh…well over a year ago’ you responded, causing Cillian’s chin to drop.

‘Over a year? Seriously? I mean, surely, a woman like you would get plenty of offers…’ Cillian said, not knowing what else to tell you.

‘A woman like me? What do you mean by that Cilly?’ you asked with a slight giggle.

‘Well, you are attractive, smart and funny. You would get a fair bit of interest’ Cillian responded.

‘So, you think I am attractive?’ you asked with a smirk, causing Cillian to choke slightly on his wine. He regretted what he had said almost instantly, causing awkwardness between you.

‘Well yeah, I think you are an attractive woman’ Cillian said quietly. ‘In a totally objective way of course’ he added, while, just in this moment, you observed his facial expressions.

You observed him drop his eyes to your lips as he said it, and then lower to the place where your shirt opens at the collar, the buttons undone to below your collarbone.

He pressed his lips together. ‘I think I should probably get go…’ he said, and, before he could finish his sentence, you leaned in and kissed him suddenly, like the peck you give a boy you like on the school bus the second before you jump up and get off – a brief bravery without a plan.

He was caught by surprise.

‘Y/N’ he said and, before he could say something else, you apologised to him for what just happened.

‘I am sorry Cilly, I don’t know what just came over me’ you said.

‘It’s alright, I shouldn’t have said what I said. It was inappropriate’ Cillian said.

But, with Cillian’s response, you couldn’t leave it alone and asked ‘So, you don’t think that I am attractive?’ you asked, giggling slightly with some embarrassment.

‘Any man who thinks that you aren’t attractive is clearly blind. But, with that being said, it doesn’t matter what I think, you are 18 years younger than me and it would be wrong for us to take this further. Despite, I don’t want to fuck up our friendship’ Cillian said calmly.

You didn’t know what to say to his comment and, instead of using any words, you ran your hand gently over the side of his perfect face while biting your lip.

‘Just one kiss between friends then, we can blame the red wine after’ you whispered as a comfortable hot feeling washed over you. You felt some sort of attraction towards Cillian since the moment you met him, but didn’t want to admit it to yourself, let alone to him.

‘I don’t know Y/N’ Cillian said as you leaned closer towards him and pressed your lips onto his. You knew he was reluctant but he didn’t push you away.

To the contrary, as you kissed him, his hand came up in a rush to the back of your neck, pulling you in closer. Within seconds, his tongue slipped between your lips, whispering over your teeth and began dancing with your tongue.

You noticed the brush of his stubble on your cheek, the press of his lips on yours and the way his mouth tasted, a mix of minty gum and red wine.

It shouldn’t have been so hot, but it was. The taste of him, the smell and flavour, and it made you whimper in your throat. You knew this was one off and you didn’t want this moment to end.

‘Are you ok?’ he asked after he pulled back a little and paused. He was scanning your eyes and there was a cautious considering from his side. You could tell that he was surprised about what had just happened.

‘Yeah, you?’ you said as you couldn’t help yourself but stare into his baby blue eyes.

‘Yes’ he said as he cleared his throat slightly.

There was an awkward silence in the room and you couldn’t stand it.

You build up all of your courage again and leaned over him, pressing your lips onto his once more.

Cillian didn’t hesitate then.

His tongue slipped right back into the same spot than before, before his lips then moved over your face and down to your neck, leaving gentle bites and kisses.

Cillian’s hands were busy touching you at the same time his lips were trailing over your neck.

One of his hands was in your hair at the back of your head while his other hand was moving down to press the small of your back so that your body was pulled forward into his.

As you were exchanging passionate kisses, you could feel the shape of him, the firmness of his body against yours, your legs pressing into his and his chest pressing into your breasts. You could also feel his erection through his jeans, hard as anything, rigid and warm against your tummy.

By this time, you wanted more than just kisses.

‘Sleep with me, just that once’ you whispered.

‘I can’t Y/N, you are 24, it is not right’ Cillian said pulling away from you.

‘It’s just sex Cilly, I am old enough for that’ you laughed.

‘Yes, but I don’t want this to ruin our friendship’ Cillian said.

‘It won’t. There are no strings attached, it’s just sex. Unless you don’t want me’ you responded. ‘Although I think you do’ you giggled as you ran your hand over his pants, feeling his erection.

Your comment made Cillian chuckle.

‘This is a one off, alright?’ Cillian asked, causing you to nod.

‘One off…and it stays our little secret’ you said before smashing your lips back onto his for another minute or two.

After you exchanged more passionate kisses you stood up.

‘Common, I show you my bedroom’ you said cheekily, taking his hand and guiding him towards the bed.

‘Can you help me with this please’ you asked, turning around to face the bed. Your back was now facing Cillian and you pulled your hair aside so that he can open the zipper of your dress.

Cillian unzipped your dress carefully, exposing your black lace underwear.

As you pushed your dress down onto the floor, Cillian began kissing your back and neck, while running his hands over your breasts and stomach, all the way down in between your legs.

You let out a brief moan before turning around to face him and help him pull his t-shirt over his head, exposing his perfectly shaped biceps.

Looking into his eyes, your hand glided gracefully, for once, past Cillian’s belt buckle and into the holy crevice of his Calvin Klein briefs. His cock was hard and ready.

You moved it between my your slowly, relishing his obvious eagerness.

You used the other hand to unbuckle his belt and unzip his jeans, shortly after which he pushed them down to the floor while your other hand never left his warm and hard cock.

After the jeans came off, Cillian pressed his lips back onto yours while using his skilled hands to unclip the back of your bra. The bra also landed on the floor within seconds.

‘Lie down’ he whispered into your ear. You obliged and crawled onto the bed, facing him.

He loomed over you, climbing on to the bed as you scooted backwards further so that he could straddle your hips while you pushed up against him, wanting the rub and friction against you.

Cillian kissed you passionately as one of his hands moved in between your legs.

He could feel your body tensing up as he ran his fingers over the top of your panties

After all, he knew that it had been a while since you’ve been with anyone. He knew to take it slow and give you some reassurance.

‘Just relax’ he whispered into your ear with his thick Irish accent as he edged his fingers over the lace of your panties, his hand leisurely rubbing up and down the length of your squirming crotch, until he pulled your underwear aside and slipped two fingers inside of you.

You could feel your mouth widen and a loud moan escaped you as he teased the full mound of your clit. The stroke of his thumb was purposeful and steady on your firm, dripping pulse while his fingers plunged in and out of you, sinking further and further.

You held onto him tightly as the slipperiness he found made it easy for him to penetrate you with his fingers. You were so wet.

You shuddered at the pattern, shocked to find it could still stun you, unlocking newfound levels of moisture and desire, even when you began to meet the repetition of his thrusts. You naturally tilted and buckled beneath him.

As he was pushing his fingers in and out of you, he trailed kisses down your neck while your hands clutched at his shoulders, scratched down his back, held him tighter to you as I screamed into his skin.

Cillian’s breath grew more desperate and rugged.

‘It seems like we should take these off’ he said, causing you to nod with anticipation.

‘Don’t move’ Cillian ordered as he lowered himself on the bed while removing your lace undies.

Within seconds, Cillian’s lips were an inch away from your crotch, where he painted your inner thigh with tiny and soft kisses.

Cillian pushed your legs apart gently and you knew what would be next. You have read about this many times but this was the first time any man had gone down on you before and you were nervously biting your lip.

You tried hard to relax as Cillian’s lips finally reached your entrance, tasting the evidence of how much you wanted him.

‘Oh god, fuck’ you moaned as his head dove between your legs. His tongue prodded you softly, short licks against your clit.

Instantly, all restraint and reservations you had vanished. You were relaxed completely as his tongue danced and writhed inside of you.

With each skillful stroke, your thighs clenched. But you still needed more and he read you just right; he didn’t stop as you pushed yourself up the bed. Instead, he held you steady, causing you to look down at him and watching his eyes widen as they met yours, reacting to the rush of your wetness.

‘Cillian, oh god…you need to stop, I am so close’ you moaned, not wanting it to be over. You never came more than once so you wanted to feel him inside of you first.

‘That’s good, just let go’ Cillian said quietly with a grin before he continued and slid two fingers back inside of you while whirling his tongue over your clit.

You couldn’t hold on any longer, no matter how hard you tried. Your exhales began to emerge as deepening sighs and you leaned my head back and lived out the fantasy that had flashed through your mind all along.

‘Oh god Cillian’ you moaned as your back arched and a rush of ecstasy flew through your body. You grabbed onto Cillian’s hair as he sucked every drip from you as your orgasm flooded your body.

As you came down from your orgasm, Cillian shuffled himself back up the bed, kissing you passionately.

You could taste yourself on his lips and you were ready for more.

‘I want to feel you’ you whispered after your lips drifted apart and while reaching for Cillian’s hard cock.

‘Do you have a condom?’ he asked, causing you to nod. You had purchased some before your Valentine’s Date, just in case you needed them.

You reached for the bedside table and opened the pack of condoms, handing one to Cillian.

Cillian was quick to get rid of his briefs and put on the condom, before positioning himself on top of you, in between your legs.

He shuddered a great rushing gasp of breath as he entered you. He couldn’t believe how good you felt, so tight.

You felt him push into you then, slowly and carefully, filling you completely.

‘Cillian’ you moaned as you held onto him tightly as he slowly began to move.

With every thrust, you gasped, whimpered, soft mewling noises, begging for more.

You felt him all the way to your belly button and screamed out with pleasure, your hands taking the heat as he thrusted fast and deep.

As he picked up his pace, you got louder, groans becoming moans becoming shouts, and the bed frame thumped against the wall, louder and faster and louder and faster.

‘Oh god, don’t stop’ you moaned, his skin slapping against yours.

‘You are so beautiful’ Cillian said in between his moans before pulling out of you slowly and lifting up your legs above his shoulders.

He knew exactly that, this way, he would be reaching your g-spot while he was fucking you.

You were slightly surprised by this position but were flexible enough to run with it.

As he entered you again slowly, you let out a loud moan.

‘Fuck’ you moaned in between the high-pitched noises that escaped you.

‘Does this feel alright?’ Cillian asked, wanting to ensure that you are comfortable.

You nodded eagerly and whimpered a shaky ‘yes’ as he continued to thrust into you. He was right at your g-spot and you could barely control yourself.

He slowly picked up the speed and you could feel another orgasm coming on as the tip of his cock kept hitting your g-spot over and over again.

‘Cillian, oh my god, don’t stop…’ you moaned as you held onto his arms tightly.

You began to shake heavily as your orgasm washed over you and tears of joy escaped your eyes.

‘Fuck, Y/N’ Cillian groaned loudly as he felt your walls tightening around him. The sensation coupled with the sounds you were making sent him over the edge and he almost came in sync with you.

As soon as he came, you released your legs from his shoulders and he collapsed on top of you, kissing you passionately.

You could still feel Cillian pulsing inside you when the sudden oddness of what you had done washed over you.

‘Are we ok?’ Cillian asked as he slowly pulled out of you and removed the condom, disposing of it discreetly.

‘I think so’ you said shyly.

‘Good…because I really enjoyed this’ Cillian said as he ran one of his hands over your cheek gently.

‘Me too…plus, I’ve got some inspiration for my book now’ you said cheekily.

‘I am glad to having been of assistance. Make sure you credit me in the end notes’ Cillian said jokingly.

‘Hmm, if I did, it may become a best seller…Sex Scene Inspired by Cillian Murphy’ you said with laughter, causing Cillian to laugh also.

‘I should better get home’ Cillian said as he was playing with your hair. He really didn’t want to leave, but he felt as though it was inappropriate for him to stay the night.

‘You can stay here if you like…’ you offered, but Cillian declined.

After all, this was supposed to be a one off. You are nothing more than friends, or are you?

You accepted Cillian’s decision to leave and weren’t upset by it. You enjoyed your time with Cillian and slept well that night, snugging up in the doona which smelled like his aftershave.

Finishing the Book

The next morning, you got up early to begin writing the intimate chapter of your book. This was the chapter you had struggled with for a while and you finally felt comfortable writing it. If readers would know that, in this particular scene of your book, you were basically reliving your night with your friend, Cillian Murphy, that would be scandalous.

So, you decided to make sure that no one would ever find out about your little adventure.

Unfortunately for you, your grandma seemed to have a good sense of what was going on.

She was on time as usual and dropped Max back at your house at 10am.

‘Had a good night my dear? I can see you are working on your book.’ She said.

‘Yes nan, the play last night was lovely. It has given me some inspiration’ you said.

‘The play has given you some inspiration to write about orgasms?’ your grandmother asked with laughter as she read the screen on your lap top.

‘Nan! Oh my god, don’t read what I am writing’ you said with embarrassment.

‘Oh dear, it’s alright. Believe it or not, I used to write novels myself with a little hint of filth now and then. But, somehow, I don’t think that it was the play that gave you the inspiration to write this little naughty chapter. By looking at the bruises on your neck, perhaps it was your friend Mr Murphy who gave you this inspiration?’ your grandmother said with sarcasm.

‘Nan, no Jesus, please’ you said as your face became flushed.

‘Don’t be embarrassed dear’ your grandmother said. ‘It is good for you. I mean, he is handsome and I saw the way you looked at him yesterday evening…and the way he looked at you’ your grandmother continued.

‘There is nothing between us nan, we are just friends’ you explained with total embarrassment.

‘Alright dear, whatever you say’ your grandmother said, not believing a single word that came out of your mouth.

‘I better go, I have lunch with Alma later… I love you my dear’ your grandmother said before heading out of the door.

‘Love you too nan’ you said.

WHO WANTS A SECOND PART OF THIS?

#cillian murphy #cillian murphy smut #Cillian Murphy x Reader #Tommy Shelby #tommy shelby smut #tommy shelby x reader #cillian murphy imagine #smut #fanfic

595 notes · View notes

jawllines · 4 years ago

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“You’re really gonna go in there?” Y/N queries gently, and Harry only nods his head in response, reaching for the door handle. An urgent, delicate touch of Y/N’s hand startles him, looping around his wrist and dragging his attention toward her, “Shouldn’t we have a game plan if something is behind the door?” She asks, her hold on him tightening just a little, and Harry notes how soft her palm feels against his skin, “Like, let’s say we open the door and a behemoth is standing there, what do we do?”

“The only behemoth that could fit in this tiny room is the band from Poland, Babe, and I reckon they have better things to do on a Thursday night,” he retorts, clenching around the knob and tilting it down, “Now unless you want to hold hands in there. . .”

She lets go before he can finish, and he doesn’t have to look back at her face to know she’s irate. A small smile quirks at his mouth as he pushes his shoulder against the heavy door to aid him opening it, bracing himself to see something potentially horrid. . .

And there’s nothing.

Harry and Y/N are witches, they hate each other, and something’s coming

19K+ words

(A/N: Hiii!! So, I’ll be honest I know absolutely nothing about real witches at all, so what is in this story is not fact! it’s just an AU and doesn’t speak toward any of my real witches out there unless i accidentally got some things right. Happy reading, I really liked writing these guys I hope you like them just as much!!)

It was dark.

Both in the state of the sky and the feeling that slithered through Y/N’s body while she tended to the Brugmansia finally flowering in her garden. The shift in the air could have easily been inculpated by the cool breeze that blew past her face, shepherding clouds thick and heavy with autumn rain, but Y/N knew better than that. Those feelings typically bring her peace; the rattle of thunder soothes her aching bones while fat drops paint the pavement, wet the dirt to mud, and feed the drying grass.

This feeling made her bones rattle. It crawled beneath her skin like billions of tiny beetles unearthed within her vessels; her stomach churned, her shoulders were weighed down, there was a gnawing pain at her temples, so fierce she held her hand to them. The cold brass of her ring cools her heated skin. This feeling was vile, it was awful, for fuck sake what was causing it?

She stood from her crouched position and slid back into her store. Technically, she’d closed about three hours prior so she should have been home well by now, but when she’d finally gathered her things in her duffle at 12, she looked out the back window and noticed some of her moonflowers had begun to bloom. There was a small part of her that had been reluctant to step outside at all, but she needed to greet them and water them, no matter the odd, unfamiliar troubling sense that had initially confused her. She ignored it -- she thought maybe she was just nervous to say hi to them, sometimes she was.

(Flowers and plants hold a special connection with their caretaker, from a tiny seed to a flourishing garden, they place their lives in the care of the earth or a human. If not properly nursed, their wilted petals appear so quickly, a silent plea for water, or sun, or even a little attention -- Y/N found that plants liked a little attention. That’s why she spoke to them, she cooed and gave them well-wishes when she left them alone. They felt just a part of her family as any blood relative had, from the moment she had sliced the tip of her finger in a torn brush and the petal she’d touched afterward fused together her tiny wound. Her nan had always told her that maybe she was a bit closer to plants than others were, so she probably shouldn’t share this with kids in her class because they might be jealous of her (Y/N knows now her nan just didn’t want her getting picked on.)

It was clear to her now that this feeling was a bit more than that when her goose pimples sunk back into her skin after stepping into the warmth of her store. Though it was not just because she had been keeping her shop pleasantly warm as the nights grow colder and longer; she kept herself protected in here. In between these walls lied a sanctitude that kept all evil out, in all manners, of all species, besides two.

One of which is her bunny, Thumper, who in all ways but emotionally was her familiar. He was a ghostly white Holland lop, with big dopey ears that she slid her fingers beneath and flipped up and down in spare moments. She accuses him of being evil because he’s always nipping at her fingertips, demanding food with a stomp of his foot, and gives the silent threat that he’ll nibble on her plants if she really pisses him off (he stands by them, twitches his little nose and shows his two front teeth until she gives him what he wants -- it’s usually more hay). He’s nothing but a little, greedy nuisance that showed up on her step one day and hadn’t left since.

The other. . .well, the other was Harry Styles.

Y/N liked most witches, no matter their point of interest. She knew that there could be a certain level of distrust amongst the syndicate -- hexes, and curses placed upon one another, but she tried to stay out of that -- she held no disfavor toward most of the others either. Everyone connected with things very differently, what she may connect with might not be that of what her neighbor connected with and that was okay. Her nan’s emotions had been in accord with the sea, and even though Y/N spent most of her life fearing water, she bore no judgment.

What she does is done in the mind of good favor, of bettering oneself with the world around them in a way that would beneficial to not only them but the people in their lives. Open up otherwise closed eyes to the beauty of the spirit and soul they possess, and the beauty and soul that the world around them held. The town she had moved to at 20 was so rich in natural beauty, ponderosa pine and hemlock trees grew tall in an extensive, juniper green forest almost always clouded with thick fog, the soil was soft and fertile, the air was crisp and clean. She felt happy here and wanted the others around her to recognize how lucky they were to be in an area so free of sordidity.

There was an empty shop up the brick road of the older part of town, that had been crowded in cobwebs, leaves that had blown in from the broken window, and animal droppings. Her nan came to help her clean it up (her mum had too, but she was dog tired after her workweek so spent most of the visit asleep on Y/N’s couch), and did something short of absolving the land so that she could grow a garden behind the store, in the clearing of 200 or so meters before it meets the mouth of the forest. She sold herbs, people came to her for intricate, meaningful bouquets with flowers that could not be found in just any store (and she was good to her plants, so if she asked very kindly, and sent them with a packet that produced a very special brew when dumped in the water, they would live very, very, suspiciously long), plants that would liberate people of their aches and pains so long as they tended to them, journals of reused paper, scrubs, oils. . .there were many things. She offered classes too, to help people learn how to better cater to their flowers.

That had been a year ago, so she was still finding her footing, but not six months into this happy reality she had created for herself, Harry Styles had come to town. It took nothing but a few minutes of coming to contact with him that he was a bad apple, and when the once sweet-tempered town had begun mottling with dark splotches, she knew for sure. Harry was like her, but his book of shadows had pages filled with wicked words of revenge, conjuring demons and letting them wreak havoc. His business was more under the cuff -- he posed as a writer who needed a scenery change for his work, but Y/N knew it had to be more than that -- but he did his bidding in the night, seeding through clubs, in alleyways, in the forest. . .if someone knew about Harry, it was because they knew a guy who knows a guy.

And for some reason, unbeknownst to her, he refused to leave her be.

This is why it almost makes sense that the bell of her store would jingle brightly no matter the fact she’d locked the doors hours ago, and her attention would be brought to the pest himself. He wore a sweater that threatened to swallow him whole, and baggy, holey jeans he rolled at the cuff showing off his bat printed socks, stuffed into grandpa-Esque loafers. The necklace he always wears around his neck (a small pendant that she had never gotten close enough to make out) is sat atop of his sweater today rather than hidden beneath it as it usually is. His hair is getting longer, more unruly with his warm brown curls than it had been when she first met him -- she really hadn’t known he’d had curly hair until the more recent months when it had started growing out.

His eyes were always the same soft, crystal green that matched his character none, and a pawky smirk on his mouth as he dragged his fingers along the lavender jars placed on her shelves, “Shouldn’t you be home by now? I figure it’s past your bedtime.” He leans down like he is about to pick something up, and when Y/N peers over the counter, she sees him slide his hand beneath Thumper’s soft white belly and pull him up to his chest. That was another indicator that Harry was just no good -- he was the only human that he liked, and the little creatine didn’t even like her.

“Shouldn’t you?” She flips it, continuing to gather her things so she could head home for the night.

“You know these are my typical hours, Babe -- everyone wants to curse someone at 1 AM, there was a study done in the east end.” He pets between Thumper’s ears as he sets him down on the counter beside the cash register, before he reaches out for the wooden crafted incense burners, “Have these cheap little things been selling any?”

“Piss off,” she stuffs her phone into her purse, then flips through her things to make sure her wallet was tucked in there as well, “What do you want, Harry? I’m about to go home, if you wanted to come around to bother me you should have hours ago.”

Harry feigns a gasp like he does any time she curses, “Thought good little witches didn’t have such foul tongues?” He flicks the candle jar on her counter, an apple scent had been melting around the wick for the better half of the day, “I don’t want anything in particular, just passing through. You know you’re right in the way of the forest, don’t you? S’kinda of obnoxious when you’re trying to summon imps at the cave -- they hate the bloody “stench” of the flowers.”

“Good,” she retorts, “You shouldn’t be summoning around here anyway, this area’s off-limits.”

It was barely an agreement but still an agreement nonetheless -- if Harry left her be, she would leave him be because Y/N wasn’t an idiot. If he wanted a fight, Harry could start one and he would fight dirty. All she asks him is to stay away from her store and her flat, and to keep away from certain areas of the forest where the soil was always soft -- in return, he would do his activities, sometimes he would need her flowers for different spells and she would turn a blind eye to what he was doing. She does a few gentle protection spells here and there but otherwise, he’s a free man to do as he pleases, just so long as he respects her request. He’d seemed perturbed by the conditions none -- had even chuckled and said as long as he let her keep her “pretty little flowers” he could get away with murder.

A heavy, weary sigh leaves him, “Yes, I’m well aware,” he rolled his eyes before crossing his arms on top of the counter and tucking his face in his elbow, “Gimme a moment though, it’s warm in here and I was freezing outside.” He muffles into his sweater.

Y/N had almost forgotten what she had felt prior to coming back inside, but his words bring it clearly to the forefront of her mind once more. She shifted her weight from foot to foot, hearing the floorboards creak beneath her as she wondered if he’d felt it too. It couldn’t have been him -- no, he was powerful but by no means powerful enough to conjure up something like that. And she’d like to ask him, but Harry has never been someone who took her seriously -- he would just make a joke of it, probably, or tease her. It wouldn’t be worth asking.

But the feeling that she’d gotten is chewing on her memory, so she asks anyway, “Hey,” she began and the only indication that he was listening to her is the fact his fingers stopped tapping against the wood beneath them, “Did you. . .when you were outside, did you feel that?”

He picks his head up from the crevice of his arm, “You’re gonna have to be a bit more descriptive than ‘that’,” his brows are raised as he continues, “Are you talking about the new pleasant but cold breeze we’ve gained for autumn, or the gut-twisting odious one?”

Y/N looks at him impassively, “The latter, idiot.”

“Yeah, I felt it,” he ignores her insult, “What about it?”

The skin between her brows pinches, “Are you not concerned? It felt. . .bad,” she couldn’t think of a better word to describe it, “I didn’t like it at all.”

“Are you scared?” There is delight swimming in Harry’s gaze as he stands up straighter, “Don’t tell me Glinda the Good Witch herself is scared of a little frightening feeling? I thought you were tough as nails and all that, hm?”

“Never mind, forget I even brought it up,” she tried to dismiss it, as she slings her purse over her shoulder and plucks Thumper up to sit him in the cradle of her arms -- she knew better than to ask him like she might get any comfort at all from his words.

He steps up and in front of her before she could start toward the door, “Oi, listen scaredy-cat, I don’t know if you’re aware but I deal with shite like this all the time, which means I’ve got a few banishments spells up my sleeve. If it’s really something that awful, I’ll cast it back to hell, easy as that.” Harry follows close behind her as she exits the door, feeling the same shiver of fear slither through her body, “I do want to see what it wants first though.”

“Of course you do,” she utters in disappointment, “Just keep it away from my garden, please.”

“I’ll try,” he tells her just as she reaches her car before he dips into his pocket and reveals that he’d stolen a baggy of chamomile, “If I didn’t keep your precious garden safe, then I wouldn’t have anywhere to get enchanted chamomile, and it works lovely in a sleepy time tea, I’ll tell you that -- your lavender is shit though. Never puts me to sleep like it ought to.”

She pops open her car door, “Stop taking stuff from the store, or I’ll start lacing it with laxatives.”

“While you’re doing that, won’t you plant them Clathrus mushrooms? I reckon the imps would prefer them way more than the mums.” He looks serious -- not a trace of a joke laced in his features and somehow that leaves Y/N more irritated than if he were laughing at her as he spoke.

Her response is blunt, “No.”

“Listen --”

“Harry, I’m not going to plant mushrooms for the damn imps!”

. . .

When Y/N had met Harry, she was angry.

She had never been a very angry person. Seldom has someone or something truly has gotten so deeply beneath her skin that she felt the need to yell or grump about it -- mild irritation was never off the table, but true, unadulterated wrath and resentment? It was rare she ever felt the need to even make a snide comment. And that wasn’t to say she was better than anyone else, she was just mild-tempered and forbearing. . .it took a little more than a remark or two to make her angry.

But when she was angry, she was an amalgamation of vexation and fire, and there was no surer way to disrupt her peaceful demeanor than to compromise her flowers.

The day had been uneventful up to that point. It’d been a week since Harry had moved into town and Y/N was surely feeling the negativity that followed in his wake, but she was focusing on maintaining the tranquil, idyllic environment that she had around her previous. As much as she would have loved to seek him out, ready to squabble, tell him off for bringing any dark energy into such a calm place -- she had to come at it pragmatically. She and her friend Niall (who wasn’t a witch but knew about her) had both agreed that while it was aggravating, they didn’t know him. They did not understand the depth of his power, or what he was here for, nor had they understood wholly what he was capable of. Y/N had felt his presence, but Niall had confirmed it after hearing the underground chatter of a dark witch who made promises to turn glitter to gold.

She was on her way to her store. Though she was closed on weekends, she always went by to check on the flowers, water them, tell them about her day, and with her was Thumper who would be hopping around the grassy field and gnawing on the blades. It was very peaceful -- the time she spent with her plants -- so she always looked forward to it, but that day she was filled with trepidation as she parked her car. Something was off. . .not in the air, but with her flowers -- she could feel it deep in her marrow that they were in pain.

So she huffed it to the back of the store, and there she found Harry, two of her purple vervains nestled against his palm. He noticed her before she could even think to say anything, and something short of relief had flushed through him, “Oh thank fuck, you’re here,” he sighs, referencing her garden with a wave of his hands, “I cannot for the life of me remember what hazel looks like.”

“What the hell are you doing?” Y/N demanded, stomping toward him, but instead of shoving him to the ground like she wanted to, she dropped to her knees and caressed the remaining vervain, “Why would you pluck them like that? They aren’t ready!”

“Ready? They’ve flowered haven’t they?” His brows had been tilted while his mouth dipped in a frown, “I need them for an incantation, figured you wouldn’t mind if I borrowed these two. Aren’t we meant to help each other out?”

“You should have asked, you prick,” she pointed up at him, “And even if you had, I would have said no. I don’t know what you’re doing here, but you’re really disturbing an otherwise pleasant place. I wish you would leave.’

Harry feigned hurt, placing a hand to his chest, “You wound me,” he mocks her, “Listen Glinda Good Witch, we all gotta get by somehow, yeah? Not all of us talk to plants or whatever it is you do. So do you want me to pay or --”

“Those won’t work for whatever it is you’re trying to do,” she cut him off, “If it’s something with cruel intent, it won’t happen -- they were grown to do good.”

“Which is exactly why I needed them from you,” he wiggles them in her direction, “Well, I need to get going. You’re awful in particular about a garden that is subpar at best. Wish you well, see you later.”

Then he left. No guilt, no apology -- he just up and left, and Y/N was livid.

(Later that night when she had explained the situation to Niall, he was nothing short of outraged, so they had tried to find out more about Harry. Anything about him, really, but he leaves a very little paper trail in his endeavors -- from public records they find that he’s 25 and from Holmes Chapel, and from a google search they find he has two books out, published online, and doing decently well. There was nothing else apart from that, he kept his socials pretty dry, and what he did post was nonsensical drivel.)

Y/N thinks about this, as she sinks into her tub, the burning water scalding against her skin. Harry had always driven her mad but he has never seemed half as angry as she was -- hell if anything he always seemed like he enjoyed it.

He was just absolutely rotten.

. . .

Harry thinks Y/N is just absolutely rotten.

There were many reasons that he had classified her as such, but namely what he was concerned about now was how she kept her shop closed on the weekends.

Who kept their store closed the entire bloody weekend?

It wasn’t so much that he wanted to see her -- Harry actually found the girl quite plaguy. Her opinions on his practice were priggish, not unlike the others like them he had met in the past. There has always been an unfaltering stigma that was carried with what he did, one that was quite hard to shake within the factions of other witches that are sprinkled across the world. He’s seen as careless, cruel, greedy, and selfish -- he doesn’t practice magic for the love of the world around him, to feel a deeper, spiritual connection with the fecund soil that covered the earth, or with the water gently slipping past rocks along a stream bank. They look at him and see someone who shakes hands with the devil and ruins lives for a cookie.

Harry lets them think as they wish, he has no patience to attempt correcting them. If they’d bothered to learn an inch about him at all before passing their judgment then they would have a clue about his true character, but the jury had already made the decision before Harry even realized he was on trial. They never really wanted to give Harry a chance, so he knew he would be hated no matter where he decided to reside. The pack mentality that they carry is the reason he has to move around so often though (more than any 25 years old was typically doing) he gets run out of a lot of areas because a group of soft witches decides he’s no good.

That’s what drew him to this place -- there was practically nobody. He could sense when there were more like him loitering around an area, and made an effort to keep a decently low profile so that he could stay around longer (but they always managed to find him), but here, he only sensed one. That had been good enough for him to know this was the right move -- the beautiful scenery surrounding them; the soft bed of dirt that Harry’s feet would sink into easily; the dense, damp fog that covered the forest floor in the early mornings; the lush, green trees and how life seemed to remain there when it was meant to be waning in the colder months -- all of that, had only been a plus.

When he’d met Y/N, he knew that she disliked him, but Harry had expected as much so it disturbed him none. If anything, he was delighted to have a purer witch than himself around, all things considered. There were no others that she could develop a hive mind with to drive him out of town, but she was no competition to the businesses that he provided, and when a decoction called for an obscure plant or an unsullied petal -- well, a Garden witch was not the worst kind to have nearby. She may be devout in her notions that Harry was a disagreeable, repugnant being, but she was good at what she did. Anything done with her plants was twice as effective as any other person’s flowers he’d used in the past, so it was necessary he bothered her often.

She refused to sell to him -- something about her doing business with a demon, or whatever she’d said -- but so long as he doesn’t go and cut them from the stem himself, she helps him out. Will give him the plants he needs, and in return, he doesn’t taint certain areas of the town and the forest that she declared were off-limits. It was a spoken commercial agreement that both of them went by and because of it, their lives near to one another were comparatively peaceful to any other situation Harry has found him in prior.

That didn’t come without its faults. They butt heads often, their bickering is nonstop, and Harry could think of many things he would rather do than have to stay in a room with her for longer than the ten minutes it takes him to get what he needs. It was fun to fluster her -- getting beneath her skin was an easy feat that he found a lot of joy in, and sometimes she gave him a run for his money. He always kind of liked making a normally mild-tempered person grump at him a little, if not for his impish ways, then so he could get to know them as their full self.

So he wasn’t mad that she was closed because he particularly wanted to see her, no, he was mad because he was exhausted. Absolutely drained. The business was incredible when you’re the only dark witch willing to do some questionable, immoral things, but that also meant long nights and incredible emotional toil -- it wasn’t a walk in the park to conjure up a bloody demon!

Ever since Harry had started this path, he’d had immense trouble sleeping at appropriate times, if he could fall asleep at all. He guesses this was what he gets in return for what he practices, and it could be worse so he doesn’t mind it too much, but it was still a hassle. It had been a good four years since Harry just had a good, peaceful night of sleep.

Up until he had moved here, of course, because the same little garden witch that thought he was the devil incarnate, made a tea he could brew that set him right to sleep. Kept him asleep the entire night too, which had always been an impossible endeavor spanning back to when he was a child, but there was something about her chamomile -- hell, it really knocked him out.

He tested his theory -- part of him thought that maybe chamomile was suddenly working for him, but no matter the brand that he tried, or the amount of tea he drank, none of it could compare to what Y/N’s did. When he visited her store, he took what he could to hold him off to the next time he came by. He hadn’t realized how low he was though when he had seen her last and she threatened to lace it with laxatives -- he should have taken two because he used his last bit the night prior to the one he’s suffering through right now.

And he could have gotten more this morning if she didn’t close her stupid shop on weekends!

If Harry were not positive that he needed to rest, he wouldn’t bother to be trying. There was nothing worse to him than the laying in his bed and waiting for sleep that refused to come...it felt like he was being stood up by a date. It hasn’t happened often, but enough that Harry could match the feeling low in his stomach, indicative of discontent and sadness while he waited. . . . .and waited. . . .and waited. . . .and waited.

It was useless -- the universe’s retribution for summoning spirits to the living world left him with what a doctor might diagnose as chronic insomnia, but none of the treatments did him any good. No mortal medicinal could soothe him of this ailment. So one would think he would be smarter about keeping a hearty stock of it at his disposal rather than one at a time, but Harry never claimed to be the best at planning ahead.

And now here he was, staring at his ceiling fan whirl, his cat at his side while he contemplated if breaking and entering her shop was against his morals (he had a few left, surprisingly).

God, she was so rotten!

. . .

“Have you felt weird lately?”

“Hm?” Niall’s face scrunches up in confusion, his mouth stuffed full of noodles he just slurpped into his mouth, “Wha’ d’ya mean?” He muffles out, reaching over to her side of the table for a napkin to dab at the corners of his mouth.

The record store that Niall worked at wasn’t too far from Y/N’s shop so if her day wasn’t too busy, she would step away from the store for her lunch break and seek him out. It was never a planned ordeal; Y/N would stop off somewhere to get them something to eat and appear at his storefront, the sharp ding of the bell knotted on the door alerted him of her presence. He was always one of two places: in the back, tuning the old guitars the owner would bid on different websites, or he was in the front thumbing through the record baskets, organizing and reorganizing them by name. Sometimes he would be sat behind the counter, with his feet kicked up just beside the register but Y/N scolds him for that (he’s always wearing a dingy, scuffed pair of shoes that have no business seeing the light of day, let alone be shown off to others).

His head would perk up, he would look toward the door, and his face would bloom into one of sheer delight as he would call over to her, “Oh, thank fuck! Thought I would go crazy if I had to listen to myself think for one more second.”

Today was no different. She brought him ramen from the place three buildings down from his own, where she bends down a street that feels more like an alleyway and the door is hidden beneath a brassy fire escape. The owners were always very kind to her, and since she came often and tipped well, they would give her free bowls if they were in the mood. Y/N never liked the idea of a one-sided relationship with a business, so she always brought them herbs, and gardenias to plant at home (they were the husband’s favorite). She takes their fliers and posts them up in high traffic areas too, and when they have their business cards made and an extra hundred or so, she slips them in the paper baggies that she gathers her customer’s things in before sending them on their way.

Niall was grateful. He did a little cheer, left his spot from behind the counter, and urged her to follow him to the back where the break room was located (if a customer came around he would hear the bell and duck his head out to greet them, but for the most part their Tuesdays were pretty uneventful). He told her he had sensed her coming so he already had two stools set out for them to sit on, and napkins placed in the middle of the table, but she’s almost a hundred percent sure they had been left like that last time she was here.

Try as she might to let her mind flee from the dark, hazed feeling that had overcome her last week, she couldn’t. Even as she listened to Niall prattle about some Gibson Les Paul custom that the owner purchased a while back, she struggled not to wonder what it was that was worming itself into her brain; slick tendrils of dismay overcame her. The true, unadulterated, execrable feeling only truly hits her in the night if she is outside the safety of her home or her shop, but otherwise, it was memories of this haunting aura that struck her throughout the day.

She couldn’t place her finger on it though, what it could be. There are feelings she garners when Harry summons certain spirits, but she can typically tell when he’s doing that, and they’ve never felt so. . .evil, before. What Harry deals with is evil, sure, but this was so smothered in turpitude that she couldn’t make it out. Like spilling black ink over a letter written in blue.

That’s why she asks Niall -- it feels too strong for it to be something only felt by her and Harry. It would also soothe her mind if someone had felt it as horribly and heavily as she did, considering it wasn’t affecting Harry enough that he would try to banish the damn thing before things went sour.

“Like, do things just not feel. . .off, to you?” She didn’t want to feed him any impressions of what she might be speaking about -- she would like to know if it were true to him. Niall is sweet as he could be, but not always when it was appropriate; he would tell her he did just to spare her from feeling foolish. It’s why she thought berets were her thing for about a month when really she looked like a washed-up indie artist trying too hard (Niall had agreed they weren’t her best fashion venture, but he certainly didn’t think they were that bad).

His face contorts in a pout as he mulls it over in his head, stabbing his fork into the noodles and catching a bit of pork on two of the pronks, “Hm, let’s see. . .” he looks like he’s spinning through a Rolodex, “I have not for the life of me mustered enough energy to have a wank in about a week, that’s some cause for concern,” when she responds with a blank stare, he holds his hands up, “Okay, fine -- Butternut was biting at the air when I took him on his walk the other night -- like. . .chomping at it, I was actually gonna ask you what that might be about.”

Now, don’t get Y/N wrong, any other time Niall would have told her that his great Pyrenees puppy was yapping and chomping at the wind, she would have brushed it off. “Niall, you’re just going to have to accept that he’s going to be a big, sweet dummy when he’s older.” But she was so desperate for something, anything -- because if something felt it other than she and Harry, then she wouldn’t feel quite as crazy.

“Sometimes it feels a bit like something’s watching me,” he tacks on at the end, taking the brown napkin from the stack in between them and dabs roughly at his mouth, “At night, when I’m walking Butternut, I get these chills but there’s no wind around.”

Y/N leans forward, thankful, “Yeah?” she presses, “Is it like -- describe it. What does it feel like?”

“Y’know, I do forget you’re a witch until times like these,” he leans back in his chair, a heavy sigh slides from his lips before he closes his eyes like he’s trying to place himself back at the moment, “I’ll tell ya what, it’s fuckin’ -- it’s a bit like I feel it right down to my bones, but then --” he opens his eyes, raises his closed fists and flicks his fingers out at her, “Poof, s’gone as quick as it came and I forget about it. My nan used to tell me that was the devil patting your shoulder, but if it went away quick s’because an angel kicked his arse out of there.”

It’s enough, Y/N decides, so she nods and relaxes back in her seat, “Okay, good.”

“Good?” His brows furrow, as he reaches for his can of soda and the aluminum can crinkles beneath his fingers, “Tell you that I get chills and you’re relieved? Should I be relieved too, or worried?”

“It isn’t anything to concern over, I don’t think,” she explains to him, “If anything changes I’ll let you know.”

Niall uses one of his fingernails to dig the dirt from beneath the other, “Did that Harry bloke muster some horrible demon up again?” His voice is laced with vexation. Niall wasn’t a hard guy to get along with -- he was loud and Irish, could chat up a storm about anything and everything, and while he could be scrappy at times, it was for all the right reasons. He was equanimous in most situations, even-tempered to a fair degree; if Y/N were in a situation where a cool, calm collected head would be the best approach then Niall was definitely the person she wanted on her side.

(Like when they had to drive home from a day trip to the massive lake just north of them, but the roads hadn’t been pretreated for the icy sleet that gripped the pavement. He drove them the whole way on the windy roads with little traction from the tires to the road, and was still bobbing his head and singing along to Ed Sheeran on the radio).

But Harry Styles? Oh, the mention of his name could dig right beneath Niall’s skin. Y/N would like to think that it was because he was so cruel to her, but she knows that there are two main reasons Niall is not too fond of him nor his craft. One of which is the fact that he slept with Liana (she happened to be one of Niall’s flings at the time -- there were plenty, but Y/N only remembered this one’s name because she shared it with a woody stem rooted to the forest soil that made for easy climbing), and the other, the fact that he had helped the captain of the opposing summer footie team with one of his enchantments to make them win. There are few things Niall cares for so deeply that he would dislike someone, but his sex life and his footie were two things a person just couldn’t mess up for him.

“No, it wasn’t him this time,” she clears her throat, pushing the rest of her ramen around idly, “It’s a bit too strong to be his doing -- more sinister too. He conjures mostly petty demons; the little ones that don’t have much better to do anyway. This is something. . .I don’t know, it just feels different.”

Niall sighs heavily, “Well, thanks for that, reckon I won’t be sleeping tonight,” he pushes the container away from himself to signify he’s done and when she takes a peek inside and sees nothing but a few noodles limp along the sides, “I like that you keep me in the loop, but sometimes I wish you would let me live in ignorance.”

“You know, I would apologize, but you’ve gone into an in-depth description of your arsehole to me so I thought any boundaries and forms of secrecy were long gone by now.”

His brows furrow features contorting into that of the same desperation he had come to her with two months ago, “Ugh, c’mon! You’re practically like a witch doctor or somethin’, I thought you would have a cream or something for it.”

“You had a hemorrhoid, Niall, for fuck sake! Even if I were a “witch doctor” then I would never let you put anything that came from my plants on your filthy bum.”

Niall stands, gathering their trash from the break room table but using his free hand as he passes her, he swats her shoulder, “You better be nice to me, or you’re gonna have to start eating lunch with Styles.” He steps on the level for the waste bin, throwing the trash in the bag, “Though I think you two would just end up hate fucking and the food would go cold.”

“No,” she rolls her eyes, “I would never let that Gremlin near my naked body.”

“Listen, I’m not saying I want the guy anywhere near your naked body,” he plops back down in his seat, “What I am saying is that you lot have such unbridled sexual tension it is practically palpable when I’m at the shop with the both of you. Maybe it’s ‘cos the two of you are the only witches, and opposites at that.”

Y/N snorts, “Maybe if we were in some enemies to lovers film, sure.”

After they finish their break, and Y/N realizes that she’s been with him for a little over an hour, they make plans to meet up tomorrow for a movie and she heads out. The air was cool -- when she had made her way over here the sun had been glittering rays down that bathed the world in gold, but it was now hidden beneath an overcast of thick clouds. Rain always carried a familiar scent just before it started to pour and Y/N had forgone a jacket, so she huffed her way back, breathless by the time she made it up the hill and saw Harry leaning against her door.

The sight of him makes her exhausted, but not in the usual way it does. He looks awful -- and typically he doesn’t! Y/N could admit that Harry was gorgeous; his hair always appeared soft, loose curls dispersed along the brunette strands, his eyes are a sea green, tender in his gaze when he wasn’t being an absolute prick and always bright (even when he was). His lips were pink, shaped perfectly, and his skin is typically smooth but even when he grows out his facial hair it still manages to look good. He had dimples. . .hell, Y/N would place a bet that he’d made a deal with the devil to look like that.

But today, he just looked worn down, and exhausted, like he might not have slept the entire weekend. His eyes were closed, his hands were in his pockets and his chin was tilted down towards his chest. If not for the way his head perked up immediately when her foot crunched into the gravel pathway leading up to her store from the small parking area (that was more so a beaten down, once grassy area now just dirt with tire tracks in it), she would have thought he was asleep standing up. There’s relief in his eyes when they meet her own, which she isn’t used to seeing from him, “Thank fuck.”

“You look horrible,” Y/N slides her hand into her pocket, pulling out her keys so she could unlock the door, “Budge over.”

“I feel it,” he rubs tiredly at his eyes, “Go on and open up quickly then. Why the hell do you keep your store closed on weekends?”

Y/N fits her hand over the knob, twisting it and shoving the door open with her shoulder. Thumper greets them at the door, nudging the top of his head against her ankle, “Do you work every night?”

“No --”

“I keep it closed on weekends for the same reason why you don’t work every night,” she heads toward the counter, settling her things down and reaching in for Thumper’s hay stash so that she could give him some, “What’re you here for? You usually come around to bother me later.” She chances petting at Thumper’s head for a moment, and since he was preoccupied with his hay he would allow it.

“Fuck!” Y/N startles, popping up from behind the counter, looking back up only to see Harry with wide, disgruntled eyes, “Where’s your chamomile?”

Her brows dip, “I’m out right now, so --”

“How the hell did you run out? Shit, what am I going to do now, hm? Shouldn’t you keep up with shite like this?” He’s going a mile a minute, he’s walking closer to her, distress was written all over his face and Y/N is alarmed to a fair degree -- Harry’s always seemed very collected and calm, it was seldom she ever seen him have more emotion than pure elation to fuck with her or displeased with her presence.

“ -- so I’m going to make more today. What’s going on with you? Why are you so pissy over it?” She finishes her previous thought, watching as he leans against the counter, propping his face up with his hand and she could now more clearly make out the bags beneath his eyes.

He rubs at his temple with the finger closest to it, “The only way I can sleep is with your bloody tea,” he grumbled, “That’s why I come around all the time -- well, that and to fuck with you, but mostly the tea.”

“Oh?” She reaches down, plucking Thumper from where he’d been positioned by her feet and setting him on the counter. He thumps his foot at her once but eventually makes his way over to Harry, sniffing at his chin before resting right before him. Y/N wasn’t necessarily doing it to be nice, but the energy he was exuding could really dampen the growth rate of her plants, and Thumper had a soothing way about him that drew all that negativity out. It was one of those odd little familiar powers that went unexplained for the most part. “Why aren’t you sleeping?”

“Dunno,” he shrugged his shoulders, but the tension in them begins to dissipate as Thumper snuggles beneath his chin, “Reckon I pissed off some demon or summat -- usually it isn’t this bad. Without your tea, I can at least get to bed for three hours before waking up and catch cat naps during the day, but nothing was working this weekend. I think I’ve slept a total of two hours?”

“Christ,” she tuts her tongue, but her brain starts churning, “Do you think it has anything to do with that. . .with that thing, that’s around? That feeling?”

Harry huffs a sigh, “Fuck, here you go again -- Babe, listen, I can barely keep a coherent thought, so why don’t I just give you some money and you make that tea for me, alright?”

“That’s no way to ask,” Y/N chastises him, and though she is already beginning to gather the supplies she needs so she could go out and harvest her leaves, she taunts him, “You’ll have to say please, or I might just decide to wait on this batch.”

“Please,” he wastes no time in saying, “Pretty please harvest the chamomile so that I can sleep and I promise I’ll sit and theorize with you over whatever the fuck thing you’re feeling.”

Y/N could go through the trouble of doing a blood binding with him to ensure that he wasn’t lying to her, but she felt that was a little on the extreme side so she took his word for it. She could easily harvest her chamomile here at the shop -- she had two doors behind the counter, one that led to her garden, the field, and the forest outside while the other led to a backroom that was made into a little kitchen area. It was easier for her to do things here rather than at home and have to risk tainting them in transport; for the best results to any enchanted item, one has to seal it immediately and it should only be reopened prior to use.

She wouldn’t allow Harry to hover over her while she worked, so she sat him behind the counter and told him to not speak to any customers if they come through (“Wasn’t planning to,”) while she went to work. Y/N gave Thumper a look when he had started to follow her, and with a small thump of his foot (his way of saying Fine!) he hops himself into Harry’s lap and settles there. The tension once again eases from Harry’s features, soothing the pinch in his brow and the way his lips had been pursed in a frown.

It was silent as she set to work, and save for a few customers who filtered in and out (at least a dozen of them, only eight purchased something but her Mondays were always pretty slow so that was expected), there wasn’t much to disturb what appeared to be a dozing Harry. He looked much more peaceful than she’s ever seen him, and for a brief moment she contemplates sending Thumper back home with him, but she shakes her head physically as if to expel the thought from her brain. What was she going on about? She would give him his tea and send the heathen on his way. No matter how empathetic she felt for him (she had struggled with issues sleeping when she was a lot younger), there was no need to go out of her way. . .even if she could admit that the sight of him cuddling with a bunny was a little too sweet not to be documented somewhere.

She’s finished drying the leaves and carefully stirring them in the fine powder that she still had leftover from her last batch (there were many flowers from her garden ground up and enchanted with an incantation, which sounds like a simple enough task but the entire process took a little over a week -- the magic had to be purified several times, and the potential adverse effects had to be mollified. . . if she didn’t, instead of pleasant dreams of floating in clouds, her customers would be in an unsolicited astral projection) in a little over an hour. Y/N takes care to bag them delicately, adding a little extra in the two bags she would be giving Harry so that he would bother her less over it.

By the time she’s retreated from the back preparation room, she finds that Harry is awake now, eyeballing her Intimacy and Romance section. When he sees that she’s returned to the front, he holds up the small, cardboard parcel, “I didn’t know you doubled as a Pulse and Cocktails.”

“That’s a natural aphrodisiac,” she tells him, walking over to her empty chamomile shelf before she begins to fill it, “You might want to take some so your partners will actually desire you for once.”

“Oh, Honey,” he shakes his head, a look on his face almost like he pities her, “Don’ know a thing about how people desire me. Barely have to take my cock out for them to be gagging for it -- kind of how you are, but won’t admit it to yourself.”

Y/N kisses her teeth, “Alright lecher, come and get your chamomile then,” she plucks the two remaining bags from the box she brought them in and holds them out for him, “You should look into some spells to combat that though -- if a demon is purloining your sleep, then it’s probably still hanging around and like deluging your flat with negative energy.”

“Dunno’ if you know this, but I work with demons often, I’m always surrounded by negative energy,” he plucks the chamomile from her grasp, before reaching in his pocket and producing a small wad of cash that he places in her palm-- Y/N opens her mouth to decline it (she felt that his money was earned in a dishonest way and would not accept it for her flowers, because it felt as if she were disrespecting them. . .she would much rather give it to him for free), but he cuts her off, “Oh, hush and take the money. This is from a care package my Nan sent me, so it wasn’t earned in any rotten way, you spoiled brat.”

She sighs, clutching the money in her hands, “You still better keep your end of the deal,” Y/N tells him, “I want to talk about this. . .whatever that feeling is, around here lately. And I want you to be serious about it!”

Harry was already retreating, waving his hand up at her, “Yeah, sure thing, I’ll have my secretary get in contact with you --”

“Harry --”

“M’only joking. I’ll come around Friday.”

. . .

Later that night, with Thumper snuggled in her lap snoozing, Y/N looks into purging a home of sleep stealing spirits.

She’s only curious.

. . .

Sleep comes gradually, then all at once, like the shift between summer and fall.

Wind whistles past window sills singing shallow songs of change, while red apples ripen on their branches in the orchard during harvest season. The air grows colder in the mornings and at night, the day is still steeped in the sun’s benevolent kisses of heat at first until even that begins to wane. An aesthetic of reds, oranges, forest greens and golden hues occupy the minds of many as the leaves start to stain with color. Everyone waits with bated breath for true autumn to come around the corner.

And when it does, it’s with a cold slap of air against the face when they step outside. The air carries that distinct autumn smell, the world is chilly enough for thicker jackets and long socks, rain comes in sheets during the evenings, and the colorful leaves that had drooped from the trees adhere to the concrete, or in matted piles on the forest floor. Suddenly, the warm drink in everyone’s hand is a little less for the excitement and impatience for fall to begin, and more so to warm their cold palms from the onslaught of biting wind.

It isn’t autumn, and then it is -- just like sleep. Harry’s awake one minute, and then he’s passed right out.

Well, with Y/N’s help, bless her. Sure, she had been rotten before, but she made him a new batch and sent him off with two hearty bags full of tea that would soothe his worries and put his arse to bed. Plus, he had cuddled with her sweet little bunny Thumper for a while and he had a feeling the little bugger was exuding some sort of her soft magic unto him in the form of calming waves. When the rabbit sat in his lap, all the tension eased from his muscles and he sank into an otherwise uncomfortable chair like it was the softest mattress he’d ever been privy to. So by the time he came home, started the kettle, drank a mug full, and hot tailed it to his bed, he was asleep before his head could even quite hit the pillow.

It was so good. His dreams were pleasant, his sleep was heavy, and deep, and lasted around fifteen hours -- which in the grand scheme of things, made him feel a bit like a sloth, but he knew he needed it. He still couldn’t quite pinpoint what had happened that he just couldn’t sleep even a little bit, but he has no interest in investigating now that he had a full night’s (and partially day’s) rest. Plus, there was no time to do any exploring when he needed to make up for the work he’d missed in his time exhausted -- his powers are nowhere near as strong if he is tired, and it’s incredibly dangerous to be working with little sleep. He could mess up, and a mess-up could mean someone would likely end up possessed and -- albeit how interesting they are -- Harry’s intrigue with exorcisms ended after the seventh one he performed.

After he woke up, showered off, and ate brekkie, he sat down with his kitten and they cleaned his crystals and a few amulets before he set on preparing some of his finer elixirs, that he always waited until he was down to the last drop to begin making more canisters of considering how extensive the process was. It would be easier if he had someone else to help out, but the only other witch within 160 kilometers of him, he wouldn’t label as the type all too willing to help him break into a blood bank.

But he did have his kitten Oat. He was his little miracle -- Harry had been so sad when he learned that witches could have familiars, but the animal would come to him and he was supposed to just know. At that point, he’d been practicing for three years and the only feelings he could sense from any animal around him were fear and disdain, so he had thought that maybe he just wasn’t meant to have one. Which felt horrible. . .he loved animals.

One day, when the chill in the air rosied his cheeks and the cardigan he sported did little to shield him from the cold, he was taking a walk in the forest nearby. He’d left the trail, but not because he was working. . .if he were honest, he thought that the garden that Y/N kept out there was quite magnificent. It flourished even in the winter, a meadow of flowers that’s petals never frost, and the ground never grew hard. There was an air around it that made him feel warm and pleasant, so he visited often without letting her know. Which was what he was doing, walking through the small path that she had created so that she could tend to them (he’d seen her water them once when he’d come unknowing that she was there to cater to them).

And one moment he was looking at what he believed to be an oat grass, he heard a rustle from the bushes to his left that he looked toward (it was a bird flying away), and when his gaze returned to where it had once been, there a small kitten was laying. She was the kind of small that made his heart ache, with her eyes barely open as she yawned and stretched very wide -- she wasn’t there, and then she was. Harry always liked to say she was born from the soft soil of Y/N’s garden which was why her grey fur felt like clouds and she always smelled sweet as heliotrope. . .and, well, she smelled a lot like Y/N too. He may not be all too fond of the girl, but she did always smell nice.

She hadn’t grown bigger than one of his boots, the tiny little thing, but not because she was malnourished in any way (Harry always made sure she was well-fed), he just thinks she’s finished growing. He couldn’t tell her breed, but if he had to guess she was some mix between a munchkin and a ragamuffin cat. Harry knows all familiars have their duties and special abilities, but he wasn’t quite sure what hers was -- he just knew that he loved her to bits and pieces, and couldn’t ask for a better little ball of fur to sit on his shoulder while he made coffee in the morning.

What Harry did know, was that none of the demon’s he had ever conjured had ever bothered her, and she loved to be rubbed behind her ears.

So Thursday night, when the town grew quiet and the air was still, Harry ventured out with his tote bag slung over his shoulder. It was easy to move about relatively unseen in a place like this, that wasn’t so big there were people constantly looming around the corners of every nook and cranny, but wasn’t so small that everybody knew everyone’s business. It was a pleasant in between, where he could snake through the mouth of the forest, walk a trail and end up on the other side of town without having been seen by more than a few critters. He typically made this journey relatively late, without a worry or stressor in sight -- it only took him about an hour and a half to get everything done.

Today though -- today, he felt off. It hadn’t been immediately when he’d stepped outside, but after some time in his walk, goosebumps prickled his skin and the hair at the back of his neck stood on end. He couldn’t quite decipher what was making him feel like this when the wind hadn’t rustled the trees in a few minutes, but it put him on guard. He disliked the feeling and had only truly sensed it to this degree that night Y/N had originally questioned him about it. It was an unsavory sensation, and for it to even make him feel uneasy was saying something tremendous.

He attempts to ignore it, even though it only grew stronger the closer he was to his destination. He weaves through the trees, stepping over the thick roots, crunching over fallen leaves, and appreciating the scent of autumn as he goes. It was a nice night, despite the chill that ran just beneath his skin. . .it was the kind of night that he might go out on his balcony and sip on his tea until he grew weary enough to step inside. Oat liked to sit outside with him, curled peacefully in his lap and resting without a care in the world (she made him feel not so lonely all the time, which he appreciated immensely).

Harry was thinking about how that was precisely what he was going to do as soon as he returned home after he had emerged from the trees and walked through an expansive field, toward an old road that led him back into town and entered the blood bank (after melting the lock with one of his crystals). Though he sensed something strong when he was walking down the cold, dark hall. . .or someone that is, who -- before he could register their presence -- ran straight into him as they were peeling around the corner and nearly knocked him on his arse (but definitely knocked them on theirs).

“Fuck sake!” He cried out, steadying himself, looking down at the assailant, “Watch where you’re going, mate, or you’ll -- oh, Y/N?” He pauses, confusion laces through his brain as he recognizes her, “What’re you doing here so late?”

Y/N was on her bum, scowling at him as she gathered herself before flattening her palms to the cold, white tiled floor and pressing up to a stand, “I could ask you the same question.”

“It would be a silly one if you did, ‘cos you and I both know what I’m doing for a living,” he watches as she swipes her bum of the dust adhering to her sweatpants -- he had never seen her so dressed down before, in a dark-colored hoodie that just about swallowed her whole. She appeared much less ferocious this way -- not that she appeared very ferocious before, but he is always intrigued to see typically put together people in their sleep clothes. . .he thinks it says a lot about a person. From Y/N’s choice of pajamas, he could tell that she probably kept her flat on the side of too cold because she liked to bundle up. . .she felt safe that way, he would guess, and he would bet 50 quid that there was bunny hair all over it because -- despite his grumpy tendencies -- Thumper loved a good cuddle.

“I felt it again,” she says after a moment, her voice only above a whisper, though there was no security here -- or anyone, for that matter since the place closes at 7 PM, but her eyes still shift around like she’s a high schooler ditching class and the headmaster's down the hall, “. . .that thing, y’know, while I was getting ready for bed, so I followed where it felt grossest and came to check it out to see if it led me anywhere.”

Harry’s brows furrowed, “Well that was stupid,” he derides her, fixing the tote around his shoulder and shifting weight from one heel to the other, “What were you going to do if you found something, hm? Fight it off with your bunny and rose petals?”

Her scowl returns, “Piss off,” she utters before her gaze flickers to his tote and the reason he’s here becomes clearer to her than it had been before, “You shouldn’t be stealing blood. Isn’t that unethical?”

“It’s either this or siphoning it from a live vein, Babe, and while I’m aces at plenty of things, I have not been properly trained to set up an IV. I only take the blood that’s about to expire anyway,” He nods down the hallway, toward the refrigeration where they kept all of the baggies, “You might as well continue investigating while we’re here because it’s coming from that way -- plus you can make yourself useful by keeping the door propped open for me.”

In all honesty, Harry expects more fight than he was given considering how often she seems to object to every move he makes, but she merely rolls her eyes and starts ahead of him. The feeling does grow stronger the further they descend into the hallway and he knows Y/N can feel it too, from the way she shuffles just a little closer to him, and he can hear her breathing hitch to a small halt as they stood before the door and it felt like it had all been focused just behind the door. As strong as the taste of frozen orange juice concentrate, it made his face pucker just slightly as he raised his fingers toward the keypad and began punching in the code.

And there’s nothing.

Actually, as soon as they open the door, the dark, odious feeling that had been encompassing both of them disappears entirely. “Whoa,” Y/N pushes her hand against the door and keeps it open, taking one step inside of the room, “There’s a lot of blood in here.” His gaze flickers back at her, as she looks around, looking more intrigued than disgusted -- there was a lot of blood, 8 by 5-meter room just filled with it, so he could understand some of the awe. The more he returns, the less awe he feels, but he reckons that was to be expected.

“There are about five other refrigerators in this building too,” he tells her as he lowers to his knees, cracking open his tote, “This one’s computers are easier to get into though, and doesn’t say the date and time the amount was changed so nobody knows anything is missing. Easy peasy.”

Y/N nods, “Right. Stealing blood -- easy peasy,” she leans against the door, “What is it that you use it for?”

“It really depends,” he murmurs as he pulls out a rack, counting out the baggies he needed, “Some demons like blood more than ash, so they come when called and are more willing to help you out when given a little gift. There are a few spells that call for it, and elixirs are twice as potent — sometimes I have to drink it, which is...unpleasant,” he hears her shiver, “—but it makes the outcome better. All in a day's work.”

“Oh wow,” Y/N hummed, “That’s...different. I think the weirdest thing I’ve had to drink for a spell was doe milk and I felt guilty the whole time. Like I was taking it from a fawn that needed it.”

Harry huffed out a laugh — Y/N was a soft little thing, comparing drinking blood to milk — sometimes he forgets how sheltered her world of magic is compared to his own. It was easy to forget with all the spiteful words she could throw his way, but to see her out of her comfort zone. . .it’s refreshing. Not because she is less confident in her surroundings, but because she is more open to his own If someone would have told Harry they would be even remotely civil with one another in a room full of blood, he would have snorted before asking what they were snorting.

“I oughta call you Bambi then.”

He was on his last baggy of blood, checking the expiration date, and logging it into the computer when the dreadful feeling returned. Like a fly to rotting meat, it clings back to the room they were in tenfold. From behind him, a sharp clatter and Y/N’s squeal startles him to look back at her, “Harry!” She cried, pointing ahead of her, “The walls! L-look at the walls!”

Harry follows her finger, watching as a thick, black substance oozes from the wall’s coving. When Y/N had noticed as much, she knocked down a stray IV pole that had been left in here, and it lay at her feet where the same black ooze had begun seeping up from the trim of the floors. In all his time doing what he does, Harry had never seen something so odd, nor had he ever felt something this grotesque overcome his being. It makes him act quickly, and while he doesn’t speak, he does fix his tote over his shoulder and practically jog the short distance to Y/N, knocking her out of the room, grabbing the door by the handle, and swinging it shut. He had hoped to seal it in there, whatever it was, but when they look down at the floor, the goo bleeds beneath the door and they both take a startled step back, “Oh fuck me,” Harry mutters to himself, shaking his head.

“What the hell is this?” Y/N is panicked -- it’s very clear in her voice, and while Harry was a tad thankful not to be dealing with this alone, he can’t say that a soft which, who planted pretty flowers and made sleepy time tea was necessarily the backing he wanted in the event he had to exorcise a demon. He didn’t even have the proper tools for it. . .he didn’t know what he was exorcising, fuck sake -- “Harry, shouldn’t we --”

“We need to leave,” he states, pivoting on his heel and hustling down the hall, Y/N was quick to scurry behind him, though she still murmurs some protest.

“We shouldn’t just --”

“Listen, unless you have any idea what that is and how to clean it, let alone banish it to hell, I saw we have a better chance through those doors than we do staying in here for even a second more,” he told her, holding out his hands to the crash bar, shoving the heavy door open, only looking back to make sure that Y/N had made it through, seeing that the black ooze had been following them before he promptly slammed the door shut.

This was one of the back doors, so it spits them out to the graveled employee parking lot that dances along one of the many mouths of the forest that surrounded them. They’re both out of breath, adrenalin zipping through their veins in a tidal wave as their chests heave and they stare at the door. They wait for it to crawl beneath these doors. . .they wait for the building to either be overcome by sludge or combust from whatever sinister being had decided to preoccupy this space.

But nothing happens.

The wind picks up, the leaves rustle against the branches, and as if it were a gift from the Earth, the sordid feeling blew right away with it.

“What the hell was that?” Y/N asks for the second time.

Harry straightens out from where he’d been crouched, inhaling the cool air, appreciative to be in it.

“Do you think for a second, with my reaction, that I have any fucking clue?”

. . .

Y/N doesn’t have people at her flat often.

Actually, apart from Niall and a few maintenance men, nobody had ever really come over. Not for any particular reason, really, and not because she didn’t want them to necessarily -- the opportunity just rarely arose, or more so, she didn’t often allow it to. If she were going to meet someone then she would meet them somewhere else, and they would part ways after they were finished (again, apart from Niall, who would simply follow her home, kick his trainers off, and head toward her couch which he had told her was simply the comfiest he’d ever been on). Her home was her humble abode. . .it was where she came to destress after a long day, and where Thumper sometimes waited for her debating whether or not he wanted to nibble her bathroom rug to shreds.

Not to mention she had plants growing here too, and flowers that she held dear to her, and while people are more reluctant to go touching what isn’t their business at a store, they are much less disinclined to give that same respect to her plants. Once Y/N had a maintenance man over to fix her faucet and she’d walked out from her room to see that he was caressing her snake plant’s leaves. She couldn’t blame him -- the plant had a very encompassing presence about it and had a way of drawing people in if they weren’t careful. . .hypnotized by the way it made them feel. All of Y/N’s soil and seeds are charmed with special incantations and concoctions that took her years to perfect, she would be disappointed if they weren’t causing people to leave all semblance of professionalism to even for a moment feel as if they were in a room with such clear air, their lungs felt renewed and they deemed it necessary to get closer.

But then she had to apologize to her snake plant for nearly two days after! It had been so upset with her, she could feel it, so she started being even more careful about who she let in. If she was going to go out of her way to have someone over, then there was a good reason for it. . .or it was Niall.

And a demonic, gooey substance sweating from the walls of a blood bank, was well enough a good reason to have Harry over.

It took some coaxing on her part -- he was convinced that they needed to just go back to their respective flats and go to bed, but Y/N was adamant in vetoing the idea. “We’re supposed to talk tomorrow anyway, so we might as well just go ahead and do it tonight -- and you are not leaving me alone after whatever the fuck that was!”

After a good ten minutes, he finally relented as long as they could stop by his flat so he could get his kitten. Y/N hadn’t known that he had a kitten and thought maybe he would bring out some ragged-looking thing, but she was surprised to see through her windshield window that Harry was approaching her car with a small grey kitten. Her face contorts in the way everyone’s face might when they see something small and cute, “Look at her,” she coos once Harry opens his door, “What’s her name?”

“This is Oat,” he answered, holding her out for Y/N to pet, “Be careful, she’s vicious.”

Y/N pet at her head and Oat’s eyes shut as she nuzzled into her palm, “Oh yeah, what a panther.”

Apart from the nerves that had already materialized from what they had seen in the blood bank, she was a little worried about inviting him into her home. When she visualized her safe space, Harry was not typically who she saw sitting on her couch when she came in from the kitchen, holding mugs of warm tea. Yet there he was, introducing Thumper and Oat to one another (who merely sniffed each other, then immediately cozied against her olive throw blanket on the end of the couch), and Y/N is handing him his steamy mug.

“I’ve been thinking,” he began, immediately nursing the mug between his palms and lifting it up to his mouth for a small sip -- the steam disperses around his face in plumes, “And it wouldn’t make sense for. . .for whatever that is to just be a demon.”

“What?” She inquires, taking her seat beside him on the couch, her body twisted so she was facing him entirely. Y/N had adjusted the temperature to something that would be a bit more suited toward having a guest -- when she’s alone, she keeps it ungodly cold so she has an excuse to bundle up in her clothes and blankets. There’s nothing like feeling safe in a cocoon of various fabrics with Buffy the Vampire Slayer on the telly.

Harry strategically places the mug between his knitted socked feet, steadying it there as he begins to play with the thick, brassy tiger ring on his index finger, “Demons are strong, sure, but if they’re gonna be that strong there’s typically two reasons for it: they have already inhabited that area, or someone is controlling them behind the scenes. I would be more inclined to believe the prior, but I’ve been going to this blood blank for about a year now and unless there were some pentagrams I’ve missed or a gruesome ordeal that never made the papers in the past two weeks -- then there’s no reason for that to have happened at the hands of a spirit. Even a blood demon isn’t strong enough to make what happened in there happen, and they literally feed off the substance in the room.”

“So you think someone summoned it or something? I thought you were the only one around here that did that?” Y/N probes, trying to look in his eyes but she keeps getting distracted by his rings -- how many did he have? She thinks he nearly has one on each finger, and he’s plucking them off and placing them on different knuckles as he speaks. Y/N wonders if it’s something he does in response to a stressor, like how she picks at her nails.

“I’m the only witch that summons things around here, but not even I could conjure something that feels that vile.” He explained, fitting the last ring against his knuckle before he pops the bones in his fingers, and Y/N watches as the skin stretches and moves around the muscles in his hands, “I think someone is trying to manifest something without the proper safeguards in place. . .the lack of protection charms, crystals, and spells can invite much more heinous creatures to the living world. They feed off shite like that -- naivety. . .thinking that any person could decide they’ll have a demon carry out a job for them. It’s easier for them to take advantage of them that way.” Harry exhales, running the pad of his thumb around the rim of the mug— she’s given him the one that has intricate, realistic drawings of beluga whales on it, not for any other reason apart from that one was her favorite and she liked to see it in use, “And with a full moon coming up? Recipe for disaster.”

“Oh shit,” Y/N holds her tea closer to her being, “That’s why the feeling is so profuse and disagreeable in the air then, ‘cos they aren’t containing it right? When I was looking into a little bit of what you do, I read that there are containment spells so the demon or spirit doesn’t have free range to do as it pleases, but the spell is dependent on the demon in question and the severity of its power.”

Harry looked pleasantly surprised, “Yeah, that’s right -- what’re ya looking up what I’m doing for?” He settles into her couch, “Have you got a crush on me or summat?”

If Y/N rolled her eyes any further back, she thinks they would have done a 360 in her eye sockets, “I fell down a rabbit hole the other night when I was trying to figure out why you couldn’t sleep,” an impish grin slides onto his mouth, “And not because I’m “in love with you” -- I just thought it would be interesting to know if your insomnia was the reason of a demon because that would mean one of my items combats against that and wins. My. . .most of my magic is based on prevention when it comes to dark things like that, not really to fight what’s already there.”

“So your flowers don’t like -- I dunno, Little Shop of Horrors it?” He teases, motioning to her Hoya plant that had just begun to bloom for her, “I reckon when I think of plant magic, I think of you snapping your fingers and thorned ivy whipping around to slow assailants.”

“No, none of that,” she laughs lightly, shaking her head, “They’re much too nice and gentle. . .they only want to help. And I’m rarely in a situation where I would need thorned ivy whipping around.” Y/N locks eyes with Oat for a moment, whose eyes close nice and slow before she reopens them and Y/N thinks she might just melt, “What do we do then? How do we stop it?”

He slides a ring with teddy bears from his pinky and spins it between his forefinger and thumb, “There’s nothing to do -- if we don’t know who the problem is, then we can’t fix anything.” Harry shrugs his shoulders, and the action makes his already loose cardigan slide down his arms, revealing more of the cream-colored shirt he wore with Smokey the Bear on the front reading Only YOU! can prevent forest fires, “All we can do is wait for the next fucked feeling and hopefully run into the person causing -- oh,” Harry pauses, motioning toward her, “You’ve got a new friend.”

Y/N’s confused, brows knitted until she feels a paw press against her shoulder and the telltale purr of a happy kitty. When she turns her head, she finds that Oat has snuck her way up to her, and is now attempting to perch on Y/N’s shoulder. She presses closer to the back of the couch so that she had a better footing, and in return Oat bumps at her cheek with the top of her head, “You’re so cute, stop it,” she murmurs, and when she takes a breath through her nose, she smiles, “She smells like my heliotrope flowers too! How are you the familiar of such a grumpy, cruel lug, huh?”

“Oi,” Harry mutters, “I resent that. I’m not grumpy or cruel, you’re just rotten.”

A retort plays at Y/N’s mouth but her phone screen lights up from where it’s sat on the coffee table and strays her attention. She’s confused -- the only person who would be messaging her this late was Niall but she’s almost a hundred percent certain that he was supposed to be out at the bar tonight. It is him though.

Fuck me, have ya looked at the news? Is this that thing we were talkin bout?

Harry is a nosy bugger, and after reading the message with her he reaches for her remote, “You told him about it?” He turns on her telly, quick to open her TV guide, “So he knows about you?”

“Yeah, he knows -- turn to 3,” she tells him, and soon enough the local news is playing out, big bold letters on the blue band stretched across the bottom of the screen.

MAN TO BE CHARGED WITH ATTEMPTED MURDER ON GIRLFRIEND

He turned the volume up, so they could hear the news reporter who was on site. There was yellow caution tape stripped around a house, police lights, cops walking around in the back, and frightened neighbors who had left the comfort of their homes to investigate what was happening. The woman on screen had long blonde hair that whipped when the wind blew and muffled her microphone feed, her face set stony as she recounted the events as the police had told her, “. . .has no recollection of the event, and is claiming the “walls” were dripping in blood and demanding that he do it. Jacobs is being taken in for further questioning and pending a psychiatric evaluation -- his girlfriend Amanda Wilson is being rushed to hospital that’s all anyone knows right now. Back to you Tom...”

“Oh, fuck sake,” Harry groaned, shaking his head, “Now this is a problem, problem innit?”

“Was it not before?” Y/N takes the remote from him, turning the volume down, “Do you -- does that sound like anything you’ve dealt with? That would try hurting someone like that?”

He presses his knuckles to his eyes, sighing, “Not that I remember -- I’ll have to do some digging. . .this is bollocks, you know how bad this is for business? Nobody wants to mess with dark magic when shit like this is going on.”

“Aish, don’t think so selfishly. People are in danger,” she tsks at him, “And we’ll need to -- what are you doing?” She asks as he removes his feet from where they had been on the couch, reaching down for his loafers like he was about to put them on.

“S’getting late,” he responded, “I was g’na head home --”

“No you’re not,” she told him, her face dropping in borderline disgust as he seemed genuinely confused with her, his face twisting, “We experience something like that, then see the news, and you not only want to separate, but you want to walk all the way home, alone, in the dark? No way, that’s too stupid, you’re staying here.”

Harry’s brows dipped in, irritated, however, he did stop reaching for his loafers, “But --”

“Listen, we may not be fond of each other but I’m not letting you put yourself in danger,” she tells him, before adding quickly, “And you are fucking not going to leave me alone after that! Are you mad?”

“I’m sorry, I thought I’d be doing you a favor without bothering ya with my presence. Never thought Miss. Good Witch of the North would want me breathing her air for too long.” He ripostes and it reinvigorates any distaste for Harry that had been easing throughout the night the more they spoke. He always did that -- always made her feel like she was some stuck up prick who never gave him a chance, but she would have if he hadn’t started out being such an arse to her. Sure, the circumstances they had met under weren’t fantastic. . .she snapped at him for taking her flowers without asking, but he could have just apologized -- could have said sorry, and they could have started over but he was immediately put off by her she presumes, because ever since he’d been nothing but cruel to her. His knocking her out of the room in the blood bank was probably the first kind thing he’d ever done for her, and she isn’t a hundred percent certain that she wasn’t just in his way while he was trying to get out.

So she glowers at him as she pushes from her couch, “Sod off. I’ll get you some blankets.”

He almost immediately replaces the spot that her body had been with his legs, stretching out as far as he could and his feet flop on the arm of the sofa, “Reckon you should make me some of that tea though, so I can sleep.” He called after her. Thumper hops off and follows after her, while Oat finds her spot at Harry’s side and cuddles into where his cardigan’s extra fabric bundles. Y/N goes to the closet in the hall that leads to her bedroom, pries it open, and reaches to the top shelf where she keeps her extra blankets and pillows. Despite how irritated he makes her, she grabs him one of her heavier quilts, because even with her heat kicked up higher than normal her flat has very poor insulation, and the night’s into early mornings get pretty cold. She’s about to grumble at him that he better thank her for this and the bloody tea, but when she returns to the living room. . .he’s asleep.

Harry just fell right to sleep.

She’s confused -- understandably, she thinks, because she remembers how much of a fit he’d thrown about her tea and how she was closed on weekends so he couldn’t have any of it. Had whined how he wasn’t able to sleep without the tea, and she had only given him peppermint tea tonight, so there was no reason that should have put him to bed.

Yet there he was, fast asleep with his arms crossed over his chest.

Tutting her tongue quietly, she unrolls the blanket she had chosen for him and strategically places it over his legs. She is careful to move Oat so that she doesn’t suffocate under the covers as she pulls them over, up to Harry’s chest before replacing her in the spot she had snuggled prior. She pauses for a moment before she leaves them, taking in a completely relaxed Harry -- not that he doesn’t seem relaxed all the time, but he’s just. . .calm. His muscles have melted against her couch cushions, his brow has soothed and his amaranth pink lips are soft and parted. Gentle, easy breaths slip through his mouth. . .Y/N thinks that she likes him like this. Not spiteful, or crass -- this Harry doesn’t seem to hate her. This Harry is warm and comfortable enough to just fall asleep on her couch.

Thumper thumps his foot against the floor, his not-so-silent request that they go to bed and Y/N snaps out of whatever hypnotic state she’d been in watching him rest. She feels creepy but shakes it off, reaching down to pick up Thumper by his belly and cradling him to her chest as she leaves the living room, keeping her lamp on for him in case he wakes up to have a wee or anything.

It’s when she goes to the kitchen to grab him a bottle of water to leave at the coffee table for him, that she can feel Thumper judging her. This is only confirmed by the way he is looking up at her when she looks down at him, his small, pink nose twitching, and she can just sense him repeating Harry’s tease of have you got a crush on me or summat? -- it’s not like he hasn’t questioned her before. She reckons if Thumper could actually speak and not just implant little thoughts of his in her head through whatever little bond they have, he would be very free with his accusations about who she might have feelings for.

Y/N rolls her eyes.

“No, I don’t,” she disagrees with him quietly, “What do you know about crushes, hm? You’re just a bunny.”

. . .

It had been a while since Harry had worked.

Though he was always hesitant to call it work, all things considered. Y/N had once described to him that what he did was lurk around seedy clubs and wait to be recognized by a sorry sap that wanted something they didn’t want to put much effort towards, and Harry can’t necessarily say she’s wrong. He preyed on the lazy; men and women who couldn’t be arsed to obtain a goal without the help of a little magic no matter how negative, and Harry couldn’t really fault them for it. One, because sometimes goals are unattainable with literally anything other than a demon's help, and two because he gets a hefty wad of cash in his pocket for his trouble. How hypocritical could he be to deprecate their usage of dark magic when he is doing the same thing. . .when he relies on that more than anything, even the silly little romance novels he writes so that nobody questions where his money’s coming from.

It was a Friday night, and since he was no longer tied to the commitment of meeting Y/N to discuss the horrible, no good, terrible thing that was slithering its way through town and apparently spurring bouts of attempted murder -- he was able to visit a club. Though Y/N had made him lock pinkies with her that morning, telling him to keep his eye out for anything suspicious that may or may not have led to the events from the night prior.

Promise me that you’ll keep informed on what’s going on there, okay? And promise me that you’ll tell me about it.

The club he’d visited was one of the more popular of the four he frequented, and within the walls, amongst the gyrating bodies in scant clothing and sweat-drenched skin, were many of his regular clients. One of which had been blowing up his phone for the past week telling him how he desperately needed help, and he needed it ASAP. Harry finally replied to his message with a simple time that he would meet him, and that they would discuss the cost once he’s explained what is being asked of him. This guy, in particular, wanted many frivolous things, and typically his requests revolved around wealth, though Harry thought he had more than enough. And while Harry could do a few simple spells that would bring the money gradually and don’t come with the dangers that a demon will, he refuses. Harry has always told each of his clients that a spell and a demon could do the same thing, but demons brought faster results, albeit potentially precarious consequences.

And when it comes to summoning, things can get a bit tricky. If the person who is summoning is the person who will benefit from the demon’s will directly, then it may come with a price, and that price may or may not be hidden between the lines. Especially when it is someone who has no clue about the actual process, offerings that could be made without including their soul for the taking, and spells that could be done that would protect them. After doing this for so long, Harry had developed and harnessed enough power that it was rare a spell every backfired or a demon ever bested him, but if Bradley Evans tried this himself, he’d be good as dead.

This is why, no matter how this man grates every open end of his nerves with a dull blade, he continues to help him. Again, Harry gets paid an obscene amount of money for what he does, so he sucks it right up -- and it’s not as if this money is just for him. He has people to take care of, his own personal gripes with the smarmy, rich, meat-headed pricks that want him to summon Clauneck for a trip to the Bahamas matter very little in the grand scheme of things.

He’s leaning against the far back corner, at a table that he’d claimed for the night and a cherry mango cocktail that wets his lips and stains them red. He really isn’t scouting for suspicious behavior like he had promised to, only because his mind had floated elsewhere entirely. Like how, after so long of only ever being able to rest with help of Y/N’s chamomile, he was able to fall asleep without the help of anything. He had asked her about the tea that she and he drank prior to him passing out unprompted on her couch, but she told him it was just a store-bought strawberry tea that was a guilty pleasure.

It perplexed him greatly. He only remembers her demanding him to stay the night because she didn’t want to be alone (and if he’s honest, neither had he after the night they had), he remembers her standing and him stretching out on her couch, and he remembers asking her for the tea that would help him sleep.

And then he remembers waking, feeling refreshed, and renewed. Confused, but reinvigorated, he had a wee before poking around in her kitchen for something to satiate his grumbly stomach. Y/N was still asleep -- he’d peeked his head into her cracked open door only to find her dreaming peacefully, relaxed, and content. As creepy as it felt to stare at her as she slept, he did watch for a moment. It was different to see her without the accompanied scowl he usually coaxed upon her face -- the blissful gleam that exudes from her now is the same that he sees when she’s tending to one of her gardens.

He brewed two chai lattes in her Keurig with Oat on his shoulder like a bird and she woke as he was taking the second mug, setting it on her kitchen counter, “G’morning,” she yawned, Thumper hopping behind her, looking just as sleepy, “Did you sleep through the night? I made you a cuppa and kept it in the microwave in case you woke up.”

His heart had lurched. . .a genuine clench that Harry had not felt in a while.

“Oh,” he blinked at her owlishly, “I slept just fine, but thank you.”

“Mm, good,” she was so sleepy still, Harry remembers wondering if she was even fully awake speaking to him, “I have sliced fruit in the fridge if you want, for brekkie.”

It was a domesticated scenario that Harry had not been privy to.

Had it been her flat? Maybe the plants that she had strewn about the room were all enchanted, singing sweet songs of sleep that lulled him to sleep without him knowing. All he could recall was feeling so unbelievably comforted and no matter how cold it was in that damn flat, he felt so warm. . .so warm, and it smelled so good, and Oat was snoozing happily at his side. Plus she had wrapped him in this quilt that was heavy and smelled nice -- he thinks, in that moment, he finally understood why babies liked feeling contained in a swaddle blanket. Regardless of what happened at the blood bank, and what they found out on the news, Harry felt safe in her flat. And he probably wouldn’t have left either, if he didn’t have to work.

He’s so caught in his reverie, that Bradley’s arrival truly startled him. A clearing of his throat catches his attention, dragging his unfocused gaze from the crowd of dancers to Bradly, dressed in a Lacoste polo that thought was ugly but he would never say it aloud, “Oh,” he straightened up, bringing the rim of his glass to his mouth and taking a small sip of it, “Right then, what can I do for you? Another trip to Barbados?”

Bradley shakes his head a little frantically, and it's only then that Harry takes in the actual appearance of him, that surpasses the Lacoste and zeros in on the panic that decorates his face, “I need like -- like a demon protector or some kinda spell or -- I don’t fucking know, or something.”

“Oh --” his brows dip, “What’s wrong? Is something bothering you?”

He starts to nod, then switches it to a shake of his head, and that morphs into a shrug of his shoulders, “I don’t know man, I just don’t feel -- I don’t feel safe. I wondered if one of those demons from before were like. . .after my soul or summat.”

“Not possible,” Harry dismisses the idea, setting his glass down on the high round table, “When I work with them we make a spiritual, contractual agreement that they are bound to. If your soul was not on the table, then it will never be on the table -- it must be something else,” he thinks for a moment before a slither of realization stokes the fire in his brain, that sets the coals aflame and heats the cogs to a churn, “What -- explain to me what you’re feeling?”

“Like something is watching me,” he blinked, crossing his arms on top of the table and leaning most of his weight onto it, the scent of liquor wafts over Harry’s face when Bradly breathes, “It’s heavy and. . .it’s like swimming in ink. It’s horrible and frightening, and I’ve never -- I’ve never been one to rely on vibes, but mate, they were bad. . .they were like -- vile. Vile vibes, man.”

Harry thinks, while his description is repugnant, he knows exactly what he’s talking about, but there wasn’t much he could do. Harry can make protection spells that are generalized but he doesn’t believe that any of them are strong enough to fend off whatever this thing is. In cases like this one, sometimes dark magic is not good to fight dark magic, it can only make it grow and fester like a nasty, infected wound. He really did not want to try that out on Bradley. . .he may not be fond of the guy, but he didn’t wish anything ill on him.

“You wouldn’t come to me for a protection spell, for something like that,” Harry begins, “You would need --” You would need Y/N -- is what is about to leave his lips, but it drops away. As much as it’s true -- as much as Harry knows that the reason he felt the safest he’s ever had in Y/N’s presence was whatever protection spells she had put in place and strengthened -- he couldn’t. The thought of sending someone like Bradley to someone like Y/N, makes him feel sick. “Give me one second, yeah? Stay here.”

Y/N gave him her number that morning, telling him that it was silly for them to be unable to contact one another. Harry saved it into his phone and sent her a picture of Oat so that she would have his, but left it at that -- he had assumed, until this moment, that he would never have a reason to have her number. If he ever wanted anything from her he would just show up at her store.

But here he was, scrolling through his contact list to find her, pressing her number and holding his phone up to his ear. It only rings twice before she’s answered it, “Hello? Is everything okay Harry, did you get a lead?”

Harry laughs in disbelief, “What’re you, a detective?” He cleared his throat so he could speak over the music clearly, “I need you for something, and I’ll give you half. And before you get all high and mighty, it isn’t for anything bad -- one of my regulars is experiencing the same fucked thing we have only it’s more vile vibes opposed to blood seeping from the walls. Need a protection spell -- whatever you use for your flat and store.”

She’s quiet for a moment, long enough that Harry questions if his service dropped, but her voice reappears.

“Where are you?”

Fifteen minutes later, Harry is flagging Y/N down to his spot in the club where he stood next to Bradley whose friends kept coming around wondering if Harry was his pull for the night. Her jumper with a printed bunny right in the center made him chuckle to himself -- it was more than clear that she had not planned on coming out tonight, and if not for Harry, he thinks she would have spent three more hours at her store tending to the garden there if not for him. When she sees him, noticeable relief makes her shoulders slump, and as she gets closer, she reaches into her pocket, “Thank god,” she called over the music, “I’ve been in here for three minutes and if I got knocked into one more time I was going to lose it.”

She produces two things -- one is a tiny vial, with an unidentified green liquid, and the other is a small baggie of her tea. Harry takes both from her hand, “Thank you,” he murmurs, before dipping down closer to her ear, “Go over to that empty table near the bar, I don’t want this guy seeing you clear enough that he could ask you for anything ever again.”

Though she was confused, she listened to him, slinking her way over to the table while Harry turned to Bradley who had been looking at his phone, before both were placed in front of them, “Thank you,” he tells him, “Thank you, thank you, thank you. How much?”

“850,” Harry says without batting an eyelash. Typically his business runs closer to the thousands but he cuts the guy a break since he’s scared.

“Each or what?” Bradley asks as he fishes his wallet from his pocket, flipping the leather open and beginning to thumb through his bills.

“No, just 850,” he takes the bills from him, folding it between his fingers, “I shipped your crystals last week, did they come?”

Bradley nods, a big grin on his face, “Oh, fuck yeah dude, I almost forgot! I already transferred you the money for them right?”

Harry thinks it’s a shame that he doesn’t keep track -- he could really scam him if he wanted to, with these black crystals bathed in the water of Asmodeus (they increases stamina and aids them in not being shit in bed; it was a fucking full-day event to get Asmodeus to recognize the clear stream water, in an incubator that he checks every 15 minutes or so to see if the water has been touched red) “Yeah, you sent double the amount ‘cos your buddy wanted some too, right?”

“He loved them, mate, he’s way less narky too now that he’s getting his dick wet.”

Harry holds back a grimace, “Alright then, stay safe. You know how to contact me if you need anything.”

Bradley bids his goodbye and Harry seeks out Y/N, who is picking idly at her fingernails and bobbing her head slightly to the music. When he gets close enough to her, he starts on his spiel as he waves the money toward her,

“Listen, Babe, you used your plants to help him, honestly you deserve way more than this -- a fucking Nobel Prize probably,” he holds it out to her, “Here.”

She shakes her head, but not in the way she would if she were refusing it because she was disgusted by him -- no, instead she closes his hand around it again and presses it closer to his body, “No, no, you keep it, he’s your guy or whatever.”

Harry tilts his head, brows knitted, “But they’re your plants.”

“Yeah, but I would just feel guilty taking it from you so --”

He sighs, counting out 450 of it, taking her hand, opening her fingers, and sliding the bills into her palm, “Even split then. If you’re going to utilize something precious to you to help someone like that fucker, you deserve a little compensation for it. “

Y/N must realize that he wasn’t going to let it go, because she finally folds it in her hands, slipping it into her pocket, “What’s with that guy then? Why do you not like him?”

Harry can see it clearly; the image of his childhood self, his family struggling to make ends meet but going to primary school with the wealthier kids. The ones who laughed at his faded shirts, and holed winter coats -- who would ask him to their birthday parties and talk shit about the gift he’d scraped up coins for doing miscellaneous work around the neighborhood. He thinks about how he knew they would go home to kitchens full of food, and bountiful dinners that they would never appreciate, while Harry never took seconds because no matter how hungry he was, he made sure their bellies were as full as they could be. And Harry remembers how the headmaster did nothing to quell his worries because those kid’s parents could buy out the school if they wanted to.

He sees it all, and he hears it all, and for a moment -- selfishly -- it makes Harry wish he had never given Bradley the protection spell at all.

But he only shakes his head, “He’s just a prick,” he answers simply, before nodding his head toward the door, “Reckon we should get out of here, it smells like piss.”

It’s always a little easier to leave the club than it is to enter it, so they’re out in the cool air soon enough. A small line had formed outside since Harry had been in there last, and as they step out, a group of three is let in through the rope chain that the bouncer is policing. This part of town is always bustling late into the night, so neither feel the cold brush of fear they have been when they’re out in the dark -- or at least the relaxed way Y/N is looking around tells him that she’s pretty content.

“Do you want to get something to eat?” She asks him, pointing at the 24-hour diner right across the street, that had been strategically placed there because people who are drunk and high who just sweat out half their body weight love greasy food, “I skipped dinner today.”

“What a coincidence -- so did I.”

They got a booth in the far back corner, where the white and maroon tilted floor glistened wet from a recent scrub from the mop, and the air smells of lemon pine-sol. This along with the fact that the black leather seats were dusted of the crumbs that usually mottles them, Harry would assume that they had come just in time for their 12 AM clean up, where the first batch of besotted clubbers had left a mess and they were waiting for the second wave to come through. He didn’t miss the eye that the waitress had given them, looking them up and down like she was trying to decipher what state they were both in, but when neither of them wobbles in their stance, or slur through their words asking for a table, she relaxes and asks them where they’d like to sit.

After they get settled and order their food (Harry convinces her to get one of their malted milkshakes with him -- his favorite was strawberry and after she confessed that she never had their strawberry malt, he was insistent on her trying it), Harry’s curiosity is suddenly piqued as he thinks of something he hadn’t thought of before, “How did you make it over to the club so fast, hm? Do you just have jars of this stuff made laying around?”

Y/N sticks her clear straw in the icy glass of water she’d been poured, stirring it like there was anything to mix, and the ice cubes clink together soundly, “No, no, I actually don’t make protection spells unless I’m asked directly -- or usually that’s the case, but I was already in the middle of making some for you and me, so I had a little leftover.”

“For me too?” Harry inquires, genuinely surprised by the concept that she would make him something to keep him safe. She nods though, like it was silly that he thought she wouldn’t have, only this time she reaches into her purse and retrieves two much larger vials with little cork tops, and one bigger bag of the dried leaves, accompanied by a smaller one tied with red ribbon.

“I was doing some research while I was at work --”

“You do a lot of research, don’t you?” He cuts her off and she nods.

“Mhm -- and there’s this like. . .there’s this elder witch who lives an hour or so drive away from us who I think might be immortal, but that’s beside the point. She has this blog that I was scrolling through and she linked her email, so I messaged her and she sent me her number and told me to call her immediately.” She slides one of the vials over to him, along with the tree leaves, “When I did, she told us that we were in a little more danger than everyone else ‘cos like -- whatever this thing is could start trying to feed off of us, especially you. Said that we needed a potent protection spell, and I told her about mine. You feel safe in my store and in my flat right? Like -- like whatever that thing is couldn’t get to us?” He nodded, eyes fixed on hers, “So this is a version of that suitable for our bodies. The tea leaves are for your flat, and then this little bag here --” she points at the one tied closed with the small strip of red ribbon, “-- this is a tea version of it safe for Oat to drink.”

Not only had she made him some, but she also made Oat some too? As much as he disliked her before, he can’t help how this warms his heart, zipping through his body and makes him feel just as safe as he did when he was wrapped in her quilt snug on her couch. Harry wonders if this is what she’s like all the time with her friends. . .he wonders if this side of her, that researches and makes protection goodies, brews him a cuppa just in case he woke up in the middle of the night and comes out in the depth of night to the seedy clubs she despises just because he called and asked -- if that’s what they get to see. If that’s what he would have seen had their meeting been any different.

“Thank you,” he murmurs, taking the vial and the bags, looking at them against his palm, “A lot. You didn’t have to do this for me.”

“I did though,” she takes a drink of the water through her straw, “I may not agree with what you do but we’re the only two witches here and there is power in unity, even if our versions of magic are different. We have to be there for each other -- Thumper agrees, and that’s a lot coming from him because he doesn’t like much of anybody. . .he barely likes me,” she holds her hand up, the index finger of her other going from finger to finger as she lists off the ingredients, “So we’ve got fern, anise, leaves from the ash tree in the forest, fennel -- the nice old woman told me to hold off on the mugwort unless we’re planning on astral projecting or doing anything with divination, but if we felt that it was necessary we could wear a wreath of it around her necks. That’s an old wives tale though, I’m pretty sure.” She wiggles her fingers, “All that and a little bit of moon water, and we have ourselves a little protection spell! I dipped my finger in for a taste test and I’ll be honest, it’s awful and plant-y but I reckon we can toss them back like a shot and chase it with a sweet drink like juice or something.”

It hits Harry that he gave Y/N very little credit for what she did, but now as he’s looking at something that she’d made specifically with him in mind, that wasn’t just a glorified sleepy time tea, it puts some things in perspective for him. Sure, she’s been a dick to him in the past, but he was a dick too, about her magic. While he isn’t going to start kissing the ground she walks on, he decides then that he’ll be more mindful of her craft. Plus, from the amount of time that they’ve had to spend together in the past two days, she’s tolerable when she isn’t on her high horse about him summoning spirits and ruining the town. She’s even helpful.

“Thank you,” he repeats, “I really mean it, I appreciate this a lot.”

Y/N smiles at him and it’s a smile that he’s never been gifted before. A smile that makes him smile back, as she places her elbow on the table and holds out her pinky toward him -- she’s big on pinky swears, he’s finding.

“We’re looking out for each other, okay? I’ve got your back if you’ve got mine. . .I swear it.”

Harry locks his pinky with hers without a second thought.

#WRITING #WOOOOOOOOO #SPOOKY #YAHTZEE #I HOPE YOU GUYS LIKE IT BECAUSE I LOVE IT LOADDS #AND I LOVE YOU LOADS #HAPPY READING :D #HARRY STYLES

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didyoubringauntienat · 3 years ago

Note

Bestie I challenge you: 1-60 for the ask game

wooooow... @stephanieromanoff I’ll get my revenge

what does your wallet look like?

favourite colour?

Red or black

do you own a pride flag, or more than one?

I sadly don't own one

describe your favourite outfit.

A baggy top with some joggers

when was the last time a girl made your heart flutter? how’d she do it?

I honestly can't remember

do you use nail polish?

Nope

do you keep organized?

Nope

ever take naps?

Yeah

who was your first crush?

I think it was a guy in my class called Jack?

what are your crush tendencies? fall hard or often?

I literally have a crush on the bar staff so yeah I fall hard

describe your ideal day.

My ideal day includes having no work needed to be done and no interruptions whilst I binge watch tv and do some diamond art

describe your ideal date.

Dinner and a movie before going on a night time walk

what’s your favorite food?

Cheesy chips

who do you feel most comfortable around?

My friends and my baby brother

what is your favorite compliment to receive?

I don’t like compliments

did you/do you like highschool?

I did to begin with but then I soon hated it

favorite animal?

Dog

do you like your name?

what kind of weather is your favorite?

Sunny but not too sunny that when you’re driving it blinds you

do you believe in horoscopes?

I guess

tell us about your music taste.

I like anything with good lyrics that I can actually understand

have you had your first kiss? if so what was it like?

Yeah I had it when I was four. It was with Jack underneath a post office in nursery. Some girl snitched and the teacher caught us

did you have a favorite stuffed animal as a kid?

Yeah his name is Mr Ted I’ve had him all my life

what time do you usually wake up/go to bed?

I usually wake up before 12 if I don’t have an alarm and go to sleep around 4am

what dream trip would you take with your wife?

Oooooh I’d go through Europe

do you have any pets?

I have two pugs and a terrapin

what pair of underwear is your favorite?

My white boxers

what makes you smile?

Comedy and hugs

what makes you feel heavy?

My uni work or an argument

what makes you feel better?

Cuddles

how do you show your love?

Touch but if they’re not into it I just let them tell me what to do

when is it time to get a haircut?

When I can afford it

where would you live if you could live anywhere?

Probably somewhere hot like Spain

do your friends and family take good care of you?

I believe so

have you always used the labels you use now?

what makes you laugh?

Literally everything

who is your favorite fictional character?

At the moment probably Fez

who do you admire?

My friends

describe yourself with three words.

Stupid (in a good way), funny and chaotic

how long does it take you to get ready in the morning?

Like 20 minutes

what do you wish you could tell your younger self?

Do get those tinsel looking highlights

what would you do if you won the lottery?

Faint

would you call yourself a romantic?

I’m not sure

what is your gayest childhood memory?

Having a full on breakdown when my mum wanted me to wear a cheerleader outfit to school for world book day as I had started not to like dresses then

do you have tattoos or want any?

I don’t have any but I’d love some

what’s your worst habit?

Smoking when drunk

what are you proud of?

Performing twice at west end (UK version of Broadway)

did you know you’re actually a gift to the world, for real?

No so shut up

what’s your favorite memory?

Meeting my present bestie

do you have a sweet tooth?

Yes

what do you like most about yourself?

At the moment nothing

what makes you fall for a girl?

If they match my vibe

make a recommendation.

Margø on spotify

have you ever had your heart broken?

Yes twice recently

when do you feel most yourself?

When I’m on stage

name a gorgeous celeb.

Jenna Coleman

what are some of your favorite songs this week?

LOVELOST by Margø

tell us 2 of your biggest hopes and fears.

Biggest hopes- that I complete second year and don’t spend all my loan at once this term

Biggest fears- not having my biggest hopes

what flavor of chapstick/lip balm is the best?

At the moment I love my Minnie Mouse one

are you okay?

No but I’ll be okay

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zeppelin-and-unicorns · 4 years ago

Text

Fanfic recommendations part six: 100% Alternate Universe stories.

Hey! It took me a while to post this and I’m sorry, got too caught up with, well, you know, life (ew). But I’m back!

All the stories listed in this are stories are 100% AU (yes, I’m including the Soulmate AU’s in this category). I’ve read and enjoyed them all.

Accidentally In Love by the bohemian flow.

Rachel Hyde was a witness to a strange romance that blossomed between her twin brother, Steven, and Jackie Burkhart, of all people. Her and Steven weren't the biggest fans of Jackie, but now, he loves her. How could Rachel possibly put up with her brother's girlfriend?

AU where Hyde has a sister. Not 100% focused on J/H, since it’s from Hyde’s sister POV, but it’s still pretty good.

This story is a WIP and it’s being updated constantly.

109k words, 28 chapters so far.

Rated T.

Pairings: Jackie/Hyde, OC/Kelso, OC/Eric, Eric/Donna.

A Different Start Could Lead to a Better End by SoftBubbles

Instead of Hyde meeting her as Kelso's annoying girlfriend, what if he met her as his annoying English partner, whom he quickly learns is more than she seems.

This story is not complete, it was last updated on July of 2020, and I pray for the author to come back to it one day, it’s a really good story.

Trigger warning for child abuse.

13k words, 14 chapters.

Rated T.

Pairings: Jackie/Hyde

Bad Moon on the Rise by Badfanfic

Set around season 2. Jackie starts to develop feelings for Hyde, even though its the last thing she wants. Hyde is just trying to survive but is having difficulty controlling himself, especially around a certain cheerleader.

Hyde is a werewolf in this story. And THIS IS GOOD Y’ALL, I’ve read this like 10 times already.

Unfortunally, I think this story is abandoned, the last time the author updated was in June of 2020, but I still have hope, it’s really good and I’m DYING to read more. I absolutely adore stories with supernatural elements, and it’s so hard to find good ones in this fandom. Please read this.

13k words, 9 chapters.

Rated T.

Pairings: Jackie/Hyde

Focus by Jenny7

After a metaphysical awakening, Hyde develops the ability to telepathically connect with a single stranger. What he doesn't expect is that the girl that he shares the connection with, a rich cheerleader with a complicated past, will forever alter his views on life and love.

SO GOOD. It’s complete and it has a sequel (that’s not complete but still worth the read), called Darlin, Walk Awhile With Me.

2k words, 19 chapters.

Rated T.

Pairings: Jackie/Hyde.

History Rewritten by kezztip

What if Hyde got his Season 1 wish and stole Donna away from Eric? And then what if Eric had turned to a certain tiny cheerleader instead?

This story is complete, and if you have a soft spot for Eric/Jackie, than you might like this a lot.

81k words, 25 chapters.

Rated T.

Pairings: Jackie/Hyde, Jackie/Eric, Hyde/Donna, Eric/Donna.

(I absolutely hate the Hyde and Donna pairing but it’s temporary so it’s okay).

Playing Pretend by isnotme

Caught up in her teenager concerns – and some wounds to heal, Jackie didn’t realize that her parents' marriage was crashing down for real, causing a major turnaround in her world.

In the edge of seventeen, Hyde had too much on his mind. With graduation coming so soon, he knew too well he was about to be kicked out of the Forman's home. But when Bud’s illegal activities came to knock on his door, Hyde saw his plans falling apart once again.

An AU where Jackie and Hyde get themselves in one of those fake relationship situation and somewhere along the way, they find somethings in commun. Highly inspired in every cliché Rom Com ever made, including Netflix's most recents TATBILB and Isi and Ossi.

This story is a WIP and it’s being updated often.

33k words, 13 chapters.

Rated T.

Pairings: Jackie/Hyde, background Eric/Donna

Pretty in Wisconsin by BelleBae

Jackie Burkhart has a lot to deal with. Her dad is in prison, her mum can't get it together and one of her best friends is in love with her. Will she be able to sort everything out by Prom? Inspired by Pretty In Pink.

Cute and complete.

20k words, 23 chapters.

Rated T.

Pairings: Jackie/Hyde

Rock You Like a Hurricane by zeppelinandunicorns (yours truly)

Alternative universe where Donna met Jackie before meeting Eric and the rest of basement gang.

Jackie and Donna are 16 and 17 when they finally met the four basement misfits after a Fleetwood Mac concert.

This story is a WIP, and I do not plan on abandoning it, I love it too much to do that.

77k words, 15 chapters so far.

Rated M.

Pairings: Jackie/Hyde, Eric/Donna, background Red/Kitty and eventual Fez/Laurie and Kelso/Brooke.

Also Available on AO3

She Belongs to me series by QueenBookBuff

A universe where Kelso cared a lot more about Jackie and Hyde getting together and implications of a deeper background for both Jackie and Hyde and Kelso and Jackie.

This got me hooked, it’s really good, please read it.

It’s complete and there are sequels! They are called All Our Tomorrows

and The Scarlet and SJ Chronicles.

27k words, 7 works in total.

Rated M.

Pairings: Jackie/Hyde

Summer Music Series by Wickedfetch

What if Hyde and Jackie didn't meet until 1985?

Complete.

7k words, 3 chapters.

Rated T.

Pairings: Jackie/Hyde

Also Available on AO3

That 70s show by Zenmaster21

What if Jackie had dated Hyde from the beginning instead of Kelso? This is simply a re-write of the episodes had Jackie and Hyde always been together.

One of my favorites stories from the entire fandom.

Not complete, but please read it, it’s worth it.

Trigger warning for child abuse.

152k words, 37 chapters.

Rated M.

Pairings: Jackie/Hyde, Eric/Donna

The Fifth Forman by BlueZeppelin

What if it wasn't just Eric and Laurie? What if they had another sibling? Like...Jackie? What would happen with Hyde? Would Eric be happy with his sister dating his best friend? Would Red like his daughter to be with one of the basement dumbasses?

This story is complete!!

52k words, 18 chapters.

Rated T.

Pairings: Jackie/Hyde

The One Where Jackie Moves In by Floweerchild96

Jackie has been living in New-York with her family but after her father goes to jail and her mother abandons her, she is forced to return to a town she thought she was done with for good. How will Jackie's reemergence in the basement effect the gangs lives?

A really good story, but unfortunally, it’s not complete. Still worth the read.

103k words, 20 chapters.

Rated T.

Pairings: Jackie/Hyde, background Eric/Donna.

Wall Around Your Heart by ourinvisibleink

Jackie Burkhart-Forman was adopted at almost ten years old by Red and Kitty, after her parents flee the country for drug trafficking crimes. Laurie grapples with addiction, Eric is messed up because of Red’s verbal abuse, Steven’s arrival is brought on by Jackie, Kelso is neglected, Fez is victim to racism, and Jackie befriends Jason, the new kid who happens to be gay.

This story is really good, but it deals with some serious stuff. I still love it.

Complete and it has a sequel called Plastar and Mortar.

52k words, 26 chapters.

Rated M.

Pairings: Jackie/Hyde, Eric/Donna, Fez/Laurie, Red/Kitty.

One-shots:

A Little Less 70s, A Little More Modern AU by fairytalesandfolklore

A modern AU where the characters from That 70’s Show grew up in the 90’s x early 2000’s instead.

Cute as hell!!! Worth the read!

1k words.

Rated T.

Pairings: Jackie/Hyde

found a wife and a home (and a family that matters) by blackorchids

Hyde’s been part of the Forman family for years before they make him move in.

I placed this in the AU category because apparently Jackie and Hyde always dated, it doesn’t specify much.

1k words.

Rated G.

Pairings: background Jackie/Hyde and background Red/Kitty. This is not focused on the couples, but on Hyde’s relationship with the Forman’s.

Lady and The Tramp by soobeans

'See, I, myself, don't like you. I find you abrasive. But if I didn't know you, and I'd never talked to you, I'd think you were totally hot.'

In Point Place, Wisconsin, there are only three distinct areas. The Western area consists of the burnouts, thugs, outcasts, hopeless dreamers, poor people, and overall, tramps. The Eastern area holds the classy, rich, and more fortunate ladies and gentlemen. In between is where the two are forced to intermingle, but of course, they found a few ways to separate themselves.

8k words.

Rated T.

Pairings: Jackie/Hyde, some minor background Eric/Donna moments.

That Disco Episode: Zenmasters Style by springsteenicious

What if Hyde had learned how to dance to impress Jackie instead of Donna? And what if Jackie hadn’t been dating Kelso?

That Disco Episode, rewritten for Jackie and Hyde.

2k words.

Rated T.

Pairings: Jackie/Hyde

Bonus: Soulmate AU’S:

I am so in love with Soulmate AU’s that I’m currently writing one, I wanted to make a special post just for this category but it would be too small so I just included it in here.

Finders Keepers by nannygirl

It's said that before you find your soulmate you will find one of their lost items first, so what happens when Hyde finds a gold bracelet in The Formans' backyard? Will it lead him to his soulmate, someone who he's sure probably doesn't even exist?

This story is not complete, but worth the read.

5k words, 2 chapters.

Rated K+.

Pairings: Jackie/Hyde, some background Red/Kitty

It Takes Time to Fall in Love by yabookreader96

Jackie can't wait to meet her soulmate, but a dire mistake on her part leads her to mistakenly identify him as Michael, while Hyde watches his soulmate clock hit zero and immediately knows that it's Jackie. Years pass, Jackie with Michael, Hyde saying nothing as he knowingly watches from the side. Will this dynamic be permanent or will destiny bring the true soulmates together?

This story is complete.

18k words, 12 chapters.

Rated T.

Pairings: Jackie/Hyde, temporary Jackie/Kelso.

Mistaken Messages by MistyMountainHop

Jackie longs for her soulmate to accept her, and Hyde hopes his will leave him alone because he's in love with someone else. A stack of mystical index cards lets them communicate with their as-yet unidentified soulmates. But the more their soulmates write, the less control Jackie and Hyde seem to have over their fate.

This story is complete.

23k words, 5 chapters.

Rated M.

Pairings: Jackie/Hyde, background Eric/Donna

Also Available on AO3

Until We Get There by poetdameron

Running away from their own wedding is the craziest thing Hyde and Jackie have ever done together. But the tug he feels at his heart when realizing she doesn't want to marry him? The worst.

This story is complete.

39k words, 8 chapters.

Rated M.

Pairings: Jackie/Hyde

Also Available on AO3

Voodooized by mc_1

Eric’s been noticing something weird going on between Jackie and Hyde. At a party one night, all of Eric’s suspicions are confirmed when the two become love-marked- an event that occurs when soulmates are ready to be together, resulting in a mark on the skin that bonds them together for life. The unlikely couple puzzle over how they could possibly be paired together as they struggle to understand each other.

This story is a WIP.

14k words, 4 chapters.

Rated M.

Pairings: Jackie/Hyde. Eric/Donna

Where It Wasn’t Supposed To Be by moved-ao3

Jackie thinks it's a blessing, Hyde a curse. Set in an alternate universe where characters receive a list with their soulmate's worst qualities, Jackie and Hyde struggle to navigate their feelings for each other when everything else seems pitted against them.

Not complete, and it makes me want to cry, but it’s really good.

15k words, 5 chapters.

Rated T.

Pairings: Jackie/Hyde

Also Available on AO3

One-shots:

all i need by orphan_account

"When he is six years old, the words 'Pudding Pop' appear on his wrist in the curliest, loopiest handwriting he's ever seen. There's even a little heart dotting the 'i'."

1k words.

The author didn’t rate this one, I would rate it as T.

Pairings: Jackie/Hyde

Blush by springsteenicious

On a person's eighteenth birthday, they swap bodies with their soulmate. Hyde doesn't have high hopes for his soulmate, but when he wakes up in a very pink room with posters and painted nails, his life is changed for the better.

4k words.

Rated T.

Pairings: Jackie/Hyde

Also Available on AO3

I believe this is all!

I’ll repeat this at the end of every single post (seriously, I literally copy and paste this every single time): Speaking as someone who writes, it would be really cool if you guys decide to leave a review (or a comment, if the story is on AO3) in the stories you read, especially the unfinished ones. It really motivates the authors, and receiving a compliment is always a mood lifter. I’ve seen some authors updating stories after years because of nice reviews, so… yeah, this is just an idea.

Feel free to reply to this post if you think I left out a good story!

Next category: Christmas fics!

#jackie x hyde #jackie and hyde #zenmasters #fanfic #fanfic rec #that '70s show #that 70s show #alternate timeline #soulmate AU #fanfic recommendations

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cornacopicimagines · 5 years ago

Text

best of friends │t.h

pairing: single dad!mob!tom holland x single mum!reader

words: 9k (oh god, i’m so sorry)

warnings: SMUT, swearing, praise kink, oral (female recieving), slight violence, mentions of verbal abuse/ degration & rough sex if you squint

summary: Theo y/l/n and James Holland are the best friends that only 8-year-olds can get, their parents though are a little less happy with their lives. For James' dad; Mob-King Tom, he can't seem to catch cupid's arrow. Better yet, he refused to even let the stupid cherub let it fly free. For Theo's mum; y/n, it's her confidence that shakes her love life until there's nothing there. So it was meant to be.

a/n: at first i hated this fic (i still sort of hate the first part) but i think it’s really grown on me :)

masterlist

part 2

━━★✼☆｡

y/n smiled as she waved off the last group of kids, the small children giving her tight hugs before running off to their parents. She truly loved her job; she couldn't ask for anything other than the life she has right now but something has always been devoid. Alas, being a primary school teacher with an 8-year-old son can keep you busy enough to forget about your past problems.

"Muuum," Theo dragged on as he danced around one desk lazily, "when are we going home, I've got some cartoons to watch," he said snappily, y/n debated on whether she should call her son out on his attitude.

"Soon, you little devil," y/n replied, still happily dismissing her students. Seeing as most of the kids had gone or having a chat with their parents, y/n took that as a sign to pack up her classroom.

"I think Molly has a crush on me," Theo told y/n with a wide grin on his face. She stared up at him with a matching smile.

"Really, how do you know that?" y/n asked cheekily, she waited for her son's answer but only got a shrug and a sigh. She chestily laughed as she started to pack up her bag. "That's not an answer little man!"

"Ask James, he agrees with me," Theo defended.

"You two have really been making a ruckus in my classroom, I should probably split you two up," y/n falsely threatened as she slipped on a small touch up of her pale red lip gloss.

Theo immediately ran to the front of her desk with sad eyes, "please don't mum, we'll be extra good," Theo lifted his pinky finger to wave in her face, "I pinky promise."

y/n stared down and captured his tiny finger with hers, sealing the deal. As she grabbed the rest of her things from underneath her desk, she heard the small pitter patter of an extra pair of feet.

"Hi, Ms.y/l/n" a soft worried voice called out, y/n lifted her head to see James Holland with his bottom lip trembling and his eyes filling with hot tears not daring to spill over. y/n almost jumped over the desk to comfort the young boy.

"Oh James, what's the matter?" she asked gently as she gently wiped the liquid from his cheeks.

"I was supposed to-to be picked up-p a long t-t-time ago," James told her through stifled sobs. y/n felt her heart shatter with absolute sadness for this little boy. It had been an hour since school ended, his parents must be late. "I was wondering if I could go home with you until my dad or his assistant can come and get me."

y/n knew that James's dad did some shady business. She wasn't dumb; she picked up on everything. Whenever his so-called assistant would come to get James she would always ask what he did to dress so sharply and the blonde would constantly have a different answer or sometimes he would deflect the question altogether. She also noticed the gun that lay hidden underneath his jacket and the small pocket knives around his waist. She never thought too much about it because James was the sweetest kid on the planet and he made Theo thrilled, she would not take that away from him by alerting the police to a threat that she had nothing but a hunch about.

Theo burst into a roar of excited cheers as soon as the sentence fell off James's lips. y/n shushed her son before turning back to James. "As much as both of us would love that, you can't come home with us without your dad's permission."

"Can't you just call him?" James exclaimed as he corked an eyebrow at her, as small blush arose on her cheeks; sometimes she felt dumber than the kids. As school policy goes, y/n must have a small binder with all the parents' contacts in case of emergencies.

"Great idea," she complimented as she quickly went to make the phone call. Her finger skimmed around the book, finding the last name Holland and the first name Tom underneath James's page. She had heard that name before she just can identify where. Either way, she rang and someone answered after a few rings.

"Hello?" a male voice called out.

"Hi, this is Ms. y/l/n," y/n told him sweetly. "I have James here saying that nobody has picked him up yet," she told him.

"Fuck, I knew I forgot something!" the voice shouted, y/n was 99% sure the boys could hear it, "shit, Tom will gut me like a fish," the man sounded worried and flustered with panic and fear.

"Wait, who am I exactly talking to?" she pondered.

"Harrison, I'm Tom's assistant." Harrison rolled the assistant slowly. An obvious diversion that she wasn't idiotic enough to fall for.

"Well, if it makes any difference, Theo and James have just made plans for James to come home with myself and Theo," she spoke quietly. "Would that be okay?"

The line was silent for a second or two before Harrison quickly responded, "Yes that will be fine, someone will pick him up around 6," he snapped at her before cutting off the line abruptly.

y/n stared at her phone for a moment before she stared at the boys with a wide gleam. "You're coming home with us James and its homemade pizza for dinner tonight!"

With that, the pair of boys rejoiced and the three of them walked out of the classroom and towards the exit.

━━★✼☆｡

Tom sat in his impressively large chair, his eyes never leaving the clock that lay between photos of his family and his son James. He had been in meetings all day with people that pissed him the fuck off. All Tom had been looking forward to is seeing his son and spending his time playing with James. But yet, it had been an hour since he should have been out of school, meaning he should have been home 20 minutes ago. There as a few harsh knocks, Tom instantly knew who it was.

"Got some news mate," Harrison told him before he had even entered the room.

Tom let his head lean back and a hoarse groan slips out, "it better be good otherwise, I don't want to fucking hear it," Tom spat, "I've been in meetings all day, just wanna see my son."

"About that." Harrison trailed off. Tom felt his heart stop. He instantly rushed over to Harrison's side. "I forgot to pick James up from school today and-"

"You absolute dumbass!" Tom roared. "Other Mob bosses know who he is. I can't have him walking the school ground by himself he'll get bloody kidnapped!" Tom started to ramble, he hardly ever did such an infantile act. He hadn't rambled since James was left on his doorstep with a note saying he was Tom's son and that was eight years ago!

Tom couldn't help but feel guilt rack his body, a million thoughts ran through his mind and he felt as if he was on the verge of tears, but he refuses to let even one go. Suddenly, he snapped out of it and almost sprinted towards Harrison. His hands clasped around Harrison's collar and brought him in so fast, Harrison's knees buckled at the force and skidded across the hard floor. "If you didn't pick him up, where the fuck is he?"

Tom watched as Harrison gulped loudly. Tom hated getting violent with Harrison, but with the safety of his son. Tom would mow downfield of people if it meant James was alive.

"He is with his teacher and her son. She said that I have to pick him up later," Harrison told him weepily. Tom didn't know if it relieved him to know that his son was with good hands with his teacher, who Tom had only heard good things about from Harrison or that his right-hand man let his son go off with a woman Tom has never met. "Listen, she said they are making homemade pizza and that we are welcome to join her when I go pick James up."

"Hm, pick him up when it is necessary," Tom grunted as he walked off, suddenly much calmer than he was before. Harrison regained his composure and ran to Tom's side.

"No, I think you should go pick him up," Harrison told him. Coming from anyone else, Tom would have their tongue cut out, but Tom felt obliged to let it slide after his recent outburst at Harrison. "I think it would be good for James to see his own father come pick him up for once and it wouldn't hurt to meet Ms. y/l/n," Harrison spoke the last part with a wiggle of his eyebrows.

"Before you scheme and manipulate your way into making me do something, you know I don't want any woman taking advantage of me- again," Tom hated saying that sentence, he hated giving James's mother the satisfaction that she broke the heart of the world's hardest mobster. That a dancer from a strip club he owned broke the one heart that was never meant to; his. Tom took it as a sign that love wasn't in his card, only single parenthood. Though deep down, Tom wanted someone else, he didn't want to sleep around with expensive strippers and high-end prostitutes for the rest of his life, he would not die with that being his greatest achievement in the sex department. He'd never admit that to a single soul.

"Come on, get back on the horse," Harrison told him gleefully, "She's a nice woman and you've always complained that all the girlfriends you've had since James have hated children, well she works with your son almost every day. There's a fucking jackpot right in front of you, mate."

Tom groaned in disapproval, "How do you even know she's single, she got an 8-year-old son, she's married" he sighed

"You have an eight-year-old and you aren't fucking married you twat," Harrison scoffed, "plus I've never seen a ring on that finger," he held up his ringer finger and swirling it in his face.

"I don't want to do this anymore, Harrison," Tom complained as he smacked Harrison hand away, "I think it's time to give up, my schedule is too busy, I can barely see my own fucking son!" Tom called out as he rested his hands on his hair, "How can I sustain an actual relationship?"

Harrison said nothing but stared at his best friend. To Harrison, Tom looked flustered, angry and tense. Harrison knew that Tom blamed only himself for the misfortunes in his life, even though all the shit that was happening to him wasn't his fault at all.

Tom could see Harrison was pondering at him. He hated it. "If I do this, will you give it a fucking rest," Tom compromised. Harrison looked at him smugly.

━━★✼☆｡

y/n stood at the messy benches of her kitchen, shredded cheese fell everywhere and a three quarterly cut pepperoni stick was about to fall off. A warm and delicious smell over the house from the full oven; it was her favourite thing. Currently, y/n was finely chopping basil and rosemary while the two boys sat at the island table, flour and sauce almost covered the entire table and the power creates a ring around the boys.

"Now, Theo do you want to tell James how to lay the pepperoni to make sure it doesn't get all soggy," y/n asked him sweetly, trusting him enough to not have to turn around completely.

"Yesmum!" Theo called out as if she wasn't in the same room. She chuckled to herself before she dumped the herbs into a bowl and came over to the table, sitting on one of the free chairs.

y/n watched as Theo taught James the perfect placing of pepperoni on the spare pizza. It was if y/n intrigue of James's father had hit an all-time high as she stared at the young boy. Before she taught James, she remembers hearing a lot of rumours about James's father from the other teachers and even other mothers about how he was mysterious and them handsome. She used to giggle at the rumours; she supposed that some lonely suburban housewives concocted the rumours, that they had nothing better to do than lust after the young bachelor because their husbands can find the g-spot.

But now that she is teaching James, the rumours seem to come alive the longer she knows the boy. She can't help but fall into the trap of her primal curiosity because of a stranger she's never even met and that very stranger could deal with a shady past or worse a shady present.

"So, James, how your dad?" y/n asked innocently. James stopped placing the toppings to talk to her (much to Theo's disapproval).

"Oh, he's awesome, I don't get to see him a lot but when I do it's amazing," James squealed happily. y/n cocked her eyebrow at the boy.

"What do you mean, you don't get to see him a lot', doesn't your dad pick you up from school every day," y/n pressed, she knew she shouldn't be asking him these types of questions but she couldn't help it and James seemed happy enough to answer.

"My dad partner picks me up, his name's Harrison, and he's the best," James smiled widely as Theo tried to get him to pay attention.

"So, what does your dad do?" y/n queered again, genuinely interested in James' answer. The little boy scratched his head a bit before shrugging his shoulders in confusion, y/n laughed sweetly. "You know how I work as your teacher-"

"And you're the best!" James cut her off suddenly.

"Thank you, but what does your dad do during the day," she spoke quietly but it appeared James got the memo.

"My dad does deals with people where he shouts at them and sometimes, I see this icky dark red stuff on him, but dad just tells me it's just paint," James replied sweetly unaware of y/n shocked face. Sure, she had her doubts and suspicions, but she never expected them to be true. Her heart dropped into the pit of her stomach. She has the son of Tom fucking Holland in her house, likely without his knowledge. She'd be lucky if Tom leaves her bloody and bruised. y/n didn't want to believe that this angelic and adorable boy has the world's most feared mobster has a father. How the fuck did she not notice the queue with all the bodyguards that come along to pickup time, the expensive stuff that he brings to class and why Harrison is always wearing a very expensive suit just to bring an eight-year-old back home.

"We're done, ma," Theo called her out of her anxiety-driven haze. She smiled sheepishly as she took the pizzas from the boys and put them in the oven. "Are you okay, mum?" Theo asked again as he crawled off the chair and went to throw the scraps in the bin.

"Yes sweetheart," y/n replied shakily. What was she going to say to him, how was she going to explain, how is she going to keep her son safe, what if she-

Ding!

The doorbell rang, the sound almost deafened her. y/n steadied her nerves and walked over to open the door. Outside stood two bulky 6'4" men and a nicely dressed one in the middle. For some odd reason, y/n felt her cheeks heat and her heart rate pick up. The messily pushed back brown curls seemed to fall perfectly in place and frame his face. Massive diamond rings laced his fingers as he slightly tapped at his wrist, that she might add was decorated stunningly with pronounced veins that made her weak.

"Um, welcome," y/n spoke quietly, the man in the middle (who she assumed was Tom) stared at her darkly before stepping inside. The warm lighting of her hallway seemed to illuminate Tom's features y/n noticed the sharp jaw, and she was just able to make out his dark brown eyes underneath the Versace sunglasses. "Hi, you m-must be James's dad, I'm Theo's mum; y/n," she extended her hand to meet his.

Since she opened the door, entrancement seemed to flow through him. Sure, it wasn't romantically at first, but the woman surely intrigued him. She had her hair tucked behind her slightly sauced ears and behind a flour-covered apron seemed to be a tight-fitting red pin-up dress, which he compliments shows off her curves nicely. Tom felt like he had to smile at her, not in a joking way but in a way that he couldn't explain. In a way that he had to smile when he saw Tessa trip over her own feet. It was adorable; she was adorable.

When he heard her speak, it felt like a breath of fresh air had hit him. He felt as if he was in his childhood home again and she was the beautiful nanny Tom would have had a crush on. Tom felt instantly out of place when he walked in. He was so used to the dark setting and furniture of his massive mansion. He was so used to walking the long empty halls and going to bed in a vacantly giant room. Now though, her home felt so cosy. The walls were tight enough to feel warm but wide enough to not squeeze you. The rooms seemed busy with colours and clothes and her kitchen was small but still seemed homey.

In an act of complete defiance to himself, Tom thought he could live here if he wanted, and he wanted to. It was so different from his regularly scheduled life, her home, her arrangement and even y/n herself made Tom feel so out of place that he had to give her all his undying attention as if she was a magnet of everything Tom needed to balance his life. What the fuck is going on with him? So he snapped himself out of it.

"Where's my son," Tom asked her. He tried not to sound like a total dick, but it was hard not to. Tom felt worse when he saw y/n flinch slightly after he snapped, "I'm sorry," Tom has never apologised to anyone other than his son, he has to get his shit together quickly.

"Oh no, it's okay," y/n smiled warmly, the apology from the mobster made her feel a little better about her situation. "James is hanging out with Theo, you're welcome to stay if you'd like," she invited. Tom felt like he had to stay, and it didn't help that when James saw him in the hallway, he started to cry and whine.

Tom immediately ran to his side, but James pushed him away and hugged Theo, which he happily reciprocated.

"No, I'm not going, you can't make me!" James yelled furiously as he turned his back to his father. Tom sighed loudly. He bent down and placed his hand against James's back.

"Come on, little man, I don't want to intrude," Tom explained sweetly, his hand rubbing small circles. y/n didn't know a man such as Tom Holland could speak that softly and sweetly; it made her want to swoon.

"He's not in-intruding Mr Holland," Theo told her quietly. Tom noticed the boy had stumbled over the hard word. He couldn't help but admit defeat and regained his composure.

"Harrison told me you were making pizzas, it's been a while since I've had some well at least homemade ones," Tom announced loudly, "so I guess we are staying."

The two boys rejoice before they made their way back to the TV and left Tom and y/n by themselves. y/n awkwardly made her way to the kitchen, and Tom dismissed the two bodyguards behind him and happily followed her.

As he walked down the hallway, he took slight notice of the different photos that hung on the walls. Most of them were of Theo, one had him in a karate uniform holding a trophy and a toothy smile while another had a photo of y/n and Theo at the park. Tom couldn't help but smile at them. Once more did he have the feeling of need for all of this to be in his life, he wanted more, correction he needed more. He squeezed through her slim doorway and stumbled into y/n's endearingly kitchen.

He had never seen a mess like her kitchen; he saw flour on the floor and sauce on the cupboards. Tom couldn't help but let a small chuckle escape his lips as he sat opposite her.

Tom wasn't an idiot. He could see how scared he was making her just by sitting closer to her. y/n on the other end of the table was almost shitting herself, she could feel her throat becoming dry and tried her best to avoid connecting their eyes even if she desperately wanted another peek at his warm brown eyes.

Tom stared at her with guilt racking his body, "I will not hurt you," Tom told her gently and for some odd reason, he fought back the urge to hold her trembling hand as he spoke. y/n didn't believe him, she knew deep down that this is what he says to his victims before he blows their fucking brains out, until "I promise." Tom had even surprised himself with his words. He has promised nothing other than when he promised his son he could ice-cream for dinner one night, Tom wasn't sure what was washing over him but worse he didn't know if he liked the feeling or not.

Tom waited for her response. He waited for y/n to give him any cue to tell him she felt safe around him. Finally, y/n lifted her eyes to meet his. Tom hadn't really gotten a good look at the door. Her eyes matched her whole persona, it almost entranced him. They were young but filled with such wisdom and knowledge; he didn't know what to do. It was an obvious y/ec, but it was like he was experiencing the colour for the first time in his 27 year life.

y/n slowly lifted her eyes to meet his and Tom's heart jumped into his throat. Never has a woman had this effect on him; it addicted him. Tom spotted a faint smile on her sauce, dusted lips and couldn't help but return the favour. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't be this cold towards you," she spoke softly.

"Oh, it's fine. I get it all the time," Tom responded with a small giggle.

"That's awful," y/n immediately protested, her full attention on him.

"What I do is awful sweetheart, it comes with the job," he told her as he leaned back in his chair. y/n pulled back, how could she be so dumb?

Tom noticed her sudden shift in mood and cleared the air, "I don't mean to pry but is Theo's father around, I didn't notice him in any of the photos," Tom asked awkwardly, he genuinely wanted to know but immediately realised his mistake, "or is that not a talking topic?"

"No, it's okay," y/n responded with a light chuckle, something Tom desperately wanted to hear more of, "Theo's dad and I split badly and I haven't spoken to him in years," the memory still haunts y/n but she could only let fragmented pieces out at a time, "Theo has never met his father and I intend on keeping it that way."

Tom's brain started to concoct a sadly romantic fairy tale with both of them but he quickly scolded himself. Suddenly, y/n perked up. She jumped from the table, took one pizza out of the oven, and started to cut it.

"What about you?" y/n asked with her back turned.

"What about me?" Tom responded, nobody has ever asked him that.

"A good-looking man like you with a son has to be married," y/n exclaimed before placing a pizza in front of them both and calling for the boys, giving them their pizza.

"Sadly, no, I'm not married," Tom chuckled as he picked up a piece. "I had James with his mother on a whim I guess." Tom saw y/n cocked her eyebrow in confusion. "That's all I'm letting out." Tom crossed his arms and leaned away.

y/n though leaned in and batted her eyelashes, "No, you got me intrigued," y/n whined. "If you tell me, I will tell you my backstory the next time we meet."

"We're going to meet again?" Tom smirked widely, suddenly pulled into her spell. Tom saw the heat rise to her cheeks and her face scrunch up as she tried to rack her brain for a proper answer. She was gorgeous; he wanted to stare at her face for all eternity.

"O-of course," she stuttered, tripping over her own tongue suddenly. She doesn't know why she's acting like this. Sure he's a godly handsome man that is ticking all of her boxes in a matter of moments but her brain seems to keep forgetting that she's sitting just a few feet away from the King of the English Mafia. A man who could kill her in a second, still she couldn't help the primal attraction that was cursing through her.

Tom held his hand out to her. "All right darling, it's a deal," he spoke lowly. Any logical person would have kept their hand to themselves. Any reasonable educated person would not raise their hand and shake Tom's. y/n was a logical and educated woman, but not with Tom around. So she took his hand in hers and shook slowly.

"Jame's was- how do I say this? Not planned." Tom sighed as he played with the pizza in front of him. "When I first got control over the Mafia. I bought this strip club just down the street. I used to go in there almost every night. I thought if I went in it would make me feel like a true Mafia King. The Mafia King who sleeps with whoever he wants whenever he wants, but I guess I am more of a romantic than I thought. There was this girl, she was interesting, and I found her mesmerising from the second I saw her. So like an idiot I started to see her only, I bought her things, I gave her safety and let her decide in the Mob. I guess one night I forgot to put on a condom and she left me the very next night. Nine months later, James was wailing on my doorstep with a small note saying 'I am so sorry, he's yours and I can't look after him', I still remember the words on that stupid fucking note," Tom felt his voice crack, he peered over to James who was eating his pizza and pretending to fight the bad guys on the T.V, "I adore my son with every fibre in my being but I just wish things were a little different."

Tom swivelled around and saw y/n almost in tears, "I'm sorry," y/n snapped out of her emotional haze and started to wipe away some tears, "I don't know what came over me."

"That's all right, my mum was in tears for days after James arrived." Tom stared down, remembering the feelings of the room on that day, "happy tears."

y/n felt an overwhelming surge of emotion hit her like a truck. She has heard no one talk with such passion. "Wow, that's um-" she blushed, "quite a story."

Tom gave her a weak smile. He noticed the blush that bubbled to the surface of his cheeks. Tom noticed a lot of other things while she sat opposite him. He noticed the small dimples that would peak out if she smiled. He noticed the freckles that perfectly sprinkled her skin. He was sure that if he sat here for long enough, he could count every one of them.

"Is there something on my face?" y/n's concerned voice snapped him out of his lovesick haze. Tom shook his head slightly before y/n took the back of her hand to wipe the non-existing grime off her cheek only to smear sauce all over her.

"Well, now there is," Tom laughed before he leaned over and wiped the sauce with his napkin. y/n came closer to help him reach her but in the process only pushed her cleavage up, causing Tom's chair to slide out from under him. Their faces were so close, y/n felt the warmth from Tom's body wafting and swirling around her as if he was entrancing her. Problem was, she was fully under his spell now.

"Are you going to kiss my dad?" James ecstatic voice called out abruptly. y/n almost fell off her chair just from the pair eyes. Theo was standing just behind James with a smile that matched his friend as they watched their parents compose themselves.

Tom tried to piece an answer to give his son while still leaving his options open with y/n. "None of your business little man," Tom faked growled as he tickled James and Theo's bellies, causing them to run off squealing with excitement.

Tom turned around to face her, the faint glow of the kitchen made y/n look like an angel. He felt overwhelming an urge to fall to his knees and pray to her, but he slid it to back of his mind. Hoping that maybe he could do it soon.

They talked for what seemed like a second but in reality; they had been talking for an hour. Tom would give every cent away just to keep hearing her sweet-like honey voice. y/n as well couldn't get enough of him, the more she allowed herself to open up to him the more she seemed to love his company. He was intelligent, well-spoken and off the record; he was so goddamn attractive. y/n believes she was to go to the nearest church just for having him near her. Still, he made her feel safe. He made her feel something that she hasn't felt since Theo's father left her. It scared her. Her heart picked up and her brain started to overwork itself. He was just humouring her; he would leave her in a heartbeat; he's got rows of women begging to sleep with him, why would he want her?

"Oh god, w-would you look at the t-time," y/n stuttered as she rushed to get him out of the house before she broke down in tears. y/n jumped out of her chair and almost threw the plates into the sink.

Tom stood up in a panic. He was having a wonderful time with her, why was she so eager to get herself alone?

"It's only a quarter to ten," Tom chuckled as he checked the watch on his wrist. y/n didn't want to make him leave. If it were up to her, she would let the kids' sleepover and pull him into her sheets as fast as possible but her subconscious had other plans.

"I'm sure the King of The Mafia has a busy schedule," she replied as she ran to get the boys' plates and get them back to the kitchen. She was right, Tom did have a lot happening tomorrow. He was most likely going to get his hands dirty. He kept his mouth shut on that remembrance.

"Well, how about you come over to mine tomorrow night," Tom suggested. y/n stood dead in her tracks. "I need to repay you for this wonderful night." A blush formed on her cheeks.

She sighed and before she could even let a single syllable out-, "We would love to Mr. Holland!" Theo's voice shot up. His head appeared just behind her with a straight smile. Tom immediately matched Theo's, knowing y/n couldn't refuse the two of them.

"Yes, we would love to and we will-" y/n head dropped, "and we will be there."

Tom let himself fist bump the air as he went to get James off the couch. "How's 9:30 sound, I have some stuff to deal with beforehand?"

"Sounds g-great," y/n sighed. Tom quickly pecked her cheek as he went for the door. y/n turned to him in disbelief.

"Can't wait angel," Tom whispered just before he closed the door. Jesus Christ, he would be the death of her.

"He seems like a nice guy," Theo blank voice rang out. He leaned up against the back of the couch as he raised his eyebrows at y/n suggestively. she gave him a light smack on his arm.

━━★✼☆｡

Tom sat in his chair. The cloud of smoke and the sounds of ragged panting wafted over the room. Percy's head drooped low as he waited.

"Where's your fucking brother Percy?" Tom asked non-nonchalantly. His eyes never wavered off the man.

"Like I told you buffoons before," Percy lifted his head weakly, "I have no clue where my crackhead brother is," Tom glimpsed his prize. Percy's sweaty hair stuck to his head, the crusted blood started to fall from the gash on eyebrow onto his bound feet. Percy stared at him with one eye open; all he could achieve. Tom smiled gleefully.

"Don't you fucking lie to me, you little shithead!" Tom roared. His hands slammed down on the desk. Everyone to jump. Tom paced around to lean on the front of his marble desk. "I have some very important people coming in about-" Tom glanced at his watch, "10 minutes."

"I will not rat my own fucking brother out," Percy responded defiantly. Tom's patience was thinning with every tick of the clock.

"I don't want to hurt you, Percy," Tom faked a smile, "not tonight at least. So you better make this quicker than me taking a fucking piss." One of his men pulled Percy's hair back, "Where is you goddamn brother."

Percy felt the barrel of Tom's gun roughly shoved up against his temple. He fought back a tear. "Columbia, trying to smuggle your drugs into Ecuador," Percy revealed.

The door swung open to reveal a completely un-phased Harrison. "They're here."

Tom immediately straightened up. "Perfect Timing!" Tom started to his men, "get rid of him." As his men dragged Percy out of his office. Tom straightened his coat as wiped off the dried blood on his chin. Harrison chuckled lightly before Tom ran out.

"They're in the upstairs hallway," Harrison called out, but Tom was already too far gone.

The massive painting loomed over y/n. She had completely forgotten how powerful Tom was, the matter that Tom commanded respect had slipped her mind. He stood in a black suit. Like something straight out a mobster movie. she giggled to herself at that thought.

"I begged my mother not to have me painted, but she insisted," Tom called out to her. y/n jumped at his voice but softened when she saw him approaching in the same outfit as the portrait.

"Well I think you look devilishly handsome," y/n responded with a wide smile, a smile that made Tom's heart flutter. As he got closer, he noticed the absence of a certain 8-year-old.

"Where's the munchkin?" he asked as he searched around her.

"He's upstairs with James. He took Theo's hand and ran off as soon as we stepped into the door," she laughed. Tom couldn't help but smile along with her. He wondered if she let this side of her out often. Genuinely giddy and joyous. "Do you look at most women like this?" She broke his concentration. y/n stood there with her eyebrow quirked and a smirk plastered on her face. Tom begged whatever god was up there to allow him just a single kiss.

"Only to you, angel," Tom responded, his pearly white teeth shining through a wide smile. y/n's cheeks flustered and her whole face glowed red. He was pushing all of her buttons, wasn't he?

"Come upstairs, I want to show you something," Tom exclaimed as he captured y/n's hand within his. Tom led her up a small flight of stairs and into a large room. The dim bedroom had red plastered everywhere. The carpet was a soft red velvet and the sheet; a luxurious red and black silk. Hell even the walls were painted with a deep maroon. y/n looked over to him with shock. "Dont worry sweetheart, the surprise is outside," Tom chuckled before his calloused hand landed on the small of her back nudging her softly. y/n's breath hitched into the back of her throat.

y/n pushed the glass doors. The dense forest of trees sparkled in the bright moonlight. The faint glow of London's lights dimmed in the background. She knew this might not have been the most aesthetically pleasing view, but it felt more than it looked. The safety and security of the view made her swoon. "Is this a date, Mr. Holland?" y/n smirked as she sat down in the glass chair.

Tom had never heard his last name sound so sweet.

"Only if you want it to be Ms. y/l/n," he responded, quickly trying to conceal his blush.

She stared out for a moment. y/n didn't know why, but she felt like a shy teenager again. A girl sitting next to a hot guy who has no real interest in her. It was nostalgic in some sick way.

They talked for hours. Tom couldn't get enough of her. It was like she was some beautiful drug. A drug so addictive, he's hooked after one night. Every time a laugh surpassed her soft lips, Tom can't help but let his heart flutter. She, too, was quite enjoying herself. y/n let her walls down slowly but surely. The more he talked, the more she leaned. The more she felt as though this was fate. That though was a juvenile thing to even fathom. So y/n wondered what her life would have been if she met Tom before her ex. Would she be happy or would she still be silently crying to herself to make sure Theo didn't hear even a peep.

A curt knock at the door interrupted them. A middle age woman peeked her head in.

"They're both in bed," she spoke happily. "It took a while to get Theo off to sleep though."

y/n giggled, "I'm not surprised."

Tom stared at her for a moment, imagining that Theo and James were their sons, and she was his wife who always seemed to amaze him. Maybe in the near future, he thought to himself.

"Thank you Ms Smith," Tom smiled warmly at her, y/n looked over to him in childlike shock.

"You have a nanny!" y/n poked Tom in his bicep. He gently swatted her finger away.

"Less about me, angel," Tom sighed. "Now, we had a deal," Tom's eyebrow cocked, and a smirk filled his face.

y/n smiled weakly at him. I will need a shit ton of booze, she thought. She grabbed the bottle of expensive wine and poured herself a glass. She gulped it down. Then she poured another one, drinking it down quicker than the first one. Finally, one more glass of wine went down, and she was ready to open her mouth.

"Mind saving a little for me, angel." Tom chuckled lightly, y/n made work getting him a glass (and more for herself wouldn't hurt.)

"Okay, so it was my last year of high school. I had been fawning over this guy since I was twelve. Then, out of nowhere, he's pulling me into empty stalls and telling me he can't be without me and he's in love with me," y/n started, she was cut off by the man next to her.

"How could he not?" Tom quipped as he took a small gulp of his wine. y/n gave him a hard glare as she tried to steal his attention away from the flush of her cheeks.

"Anyway, it took a bit of time but like the idiot I am, I gave in. We went on a few dates; we were happy for a good while. Until those two stupid fucking lines," she felt her voice break. Her head started to feel dizzy. Like it would roll off her neck will the snap of a finger. "Maybe, I was feeling all maternal, and I told him I was pregnant. To my surprise, he stayed with me for my first trimester. He refused to tell his parents, I of course, had to confess to mine. Sometimes I think that was the first red flag. It wasn't until the middle of my third trimester things went downhill. It's normal for women to put on a little weight when they're pregnant. Obviously, he didn't have a fucking clue." y/n felt herself, get more furious and more upset with every word that rolled off her tongue. "He started telling me 'You look enormous', 'I have a fat whale for a girlfriend, 'I wish you had aborted that thing, so I wouldn't have to look at you like this'," She was in tears now, the salty liquid dripped from her cheeks onto her dress. Tom knelt in front of her, his hands rubbing small circles on her knees. "He abandoned me, right when it counted." She started him. Tom felt his heart shatter. "Everyone leaves me Tom."

"I'll never leave you, y/n" Tom reassured her, he took her shaking hands in his. y/n peered down, she shook her head.

"Tom, you don't want me," y/n sobbed, "No one does, it's okay."

"y/n," Tom hovered above her, his palms rested on her warm cheeks. "I want you, more than I have ever wanted something in my life." Their eyes met. "You are the most beautiful woman I have ever laid eyes on."

y/n was in disbelief, her hands rested on his wrist. Her cries stopped as soon as she felt his thumb stroking soft circles on her cheek.

Tom still saw that look in her eyes. The look of a woman so broken by a man who never loved her, who took advantage of her admiration. Something Tom needed more than air to breathe. He was making it his mission, that y/n would not leave his home until she finally knew that not only did her son appreciate her, but he did just as much.

So, he took a chance. He bent down and encaptured her lips with his. She tasted like everything, he dreamt of. She tasted like the cakes his mother would make for him on his birthday. She was the breath of sweet excitement when he smelled homemade pancakes. It surprised him he hadn't completely dissolved at this simple touch.

y/n sat in shock for a moment. Her brain tried to catch up to his movements. He didn't move against at first. She pressed into it. Her hands gripping slightly at his wrists as she reciprocated the tender kiss. She, too, felt the satisfaction of knowing what he too tasted like. She took notes of all the little details; the taste of freshly smoked nicotine, the smell of his cologne wafted around her; the pronounced viens in his hands. She was in heaven.

Their lips moved against each other. It wasn't needy or rushed. It was steady and passionate. y/n has experienced a kiss like this in her 24-year-old life. "Take me to the bedroom," she spoke through mousey breathless moans. Tom pulled away completely at this.

"I don't want you to feel like I'm taking advantage of you," Tom told her sweetly, y/n hands caress his cheek gently as she gave him a warm smile.

"You're not taking advantage of me Tom," she stood from her chair, never letting her eyes tear from his, "I want this."

Tom beamed. His hands snaked their way to the underside of her bum, pinching softly. Instructing her to jump, which she happily obliged. y/n could feel him, grasp at her bare thighs. Every time he touched her skin, it burned with sinful passion.

Perhaps it was the one too many wines she had downed in less than a minute or that this was the first man she's really been intimate with since Theo's father left. Either way, her skin felt so susceptible to each kiss her laid on her. Hyper sensitive to every pull at her skin. So responsive to his touches.

Tom took his time laying her on the sheets. He took his time to look at her flushed skin in the dim lighting at how she looked like something sent from God. Why God was sending him something in the first place was a question for later. As he sauntered away from her to lock the door, y/n noticed the decor until the feeling dawned on her. Was she really about to sleep with Mafia King; Tom Holland. She had only one answer- obso-fucking-lutely.

Tom tenderly pushed her onto her back, his face now level to hers. y/n thought she looked as red as a tomato, Tom would agree but wouldn't protest at all. He laid a soft kiss to her lips, then a slightly harder one to her neck, then to her collarbone. His hands snaked up her dress. His fingers clutched her hips, pulling her clothed heat closer to his already painful hard groin.

y/n watched every move he made, every attempt to bruise her skin. Tom whined quietly when his lips met the fabric instead of her flesh. y/n giggled and lifted her dress over head and onto the floor next to her.

Tom couldn't help but pull away to take a glimpse of her. Her flushed breasts hidden behind a plain black bra. Most wouldn't think too much of it, but he couldn't help himself. Tom could see her hardened nipples peeking through the material. He pulled the cup down slightly. Tom heard her hiss quietly at the sudden exposure. His lips came down to the bud gently. His teeth pulling at the erect skin ever so lightly only to flick the nub quickly. Hearing her quiet moans and praises spurred him on. He needed more.

"T-tom please," y/n whimpered quietly, her fingers tangling themselves in his messed brown curls. Tom smirked up at her.

"What are you begging for angel face," Tom asked her innocently.

y/n couldn't get a single word out with Tom's fingers dancing at the skin near her soaked panties. Even dipping underneath them for split seconds.

"Do something, with y-your," she struggled. Tom was enjoying every moment. "f-fingers."

"Your wish is my command," Tom rasped out as he pulled her panties down her legs and got between them. He let his pointer finger paint a long strip up her slit. y/n's hips buckled. "You're so wet doll, being such a good girl."

y/n could only let out a hum. Tom wanted to hear that divine voice of hers, so he blew a wisp of air against her clit making her cry out. He was lucking the boys' rooms where so far from here. "Look at me, I want to see those gorgeous eyes gloss over when I make you cum," he promised as he laid a chaste kiss to her inner left thigh. y/n couldn't wait another moment, she might explode. Slowly her eyes met his. His face was mere centimeters from her cunt.

Tom didn't take a second longer. As soon as her eyes were on him, he went in hard. His tongue latched onto her throbbing clit, pulling and sucking so hard it was audible for the both of them to fawn over. He couldn't forget about the promise he made, so his digits circled her hole delicately before he slipped two of his fingers into her.

y/n felt her whole body go numb. It was a feeling so exotic to her. Yet, here she was. Barely able to make a sentence as she tried to bite back constant moans that begged to be let out. Her toes curled even picking up some sheets beneath her.

Tom could feel her fingers pulled at the roots of his hair. He couldn't but moan against her pussy, causing vibrations in every nerve in her already sensitive body.

"Oh my god, y-yes," She let slip. y/n swears she's starting to see stars now. "F-fucking hell, you're a-amazing."

Tom allowed his fingers to hit deeper inside her with that comment. He was making her cum now, or he will blow without even feeling her yet. He wouldn't be able to live with himself if that happens. He pulled his mouth away from her clit with a loud pop, letting his digits do all the work. He watched her writhe and pull at anything she could grasp. God, she was so fucking perfect.

"Christ, j-just like that," y/n encouraged him, "I'm going to c-cum."

"Do it angel face, cum all around my fingers." Tom whispered to her, "let me taste your sweetness."

y/n felt her first orgasm wash over her like a tsunami. She needed to scream her heart out but quickly smothered her moan in the pillows beside her. Tom peered at her intently. To him, he was watching an angel. Seeing her cum is now his new favourite thing. Being the one to cause such pleasure within her makes him feel as though he's on top of the world. His fingers rode her through her orgasm until she hit the end. Her hair sprawled out as she tried to catch any breath left in her lungs. Hell, she was trying to regain some of her sight. Tom brought his fingers to his mouth. His tongue licked them clean. Her juices tasted like nothing he's ever had before and he immediately knows, there is no way he's letting this go.

Tom stripped himself bare now. He crawled above her once more. His curls falling slightly in his face. y/n opened her eyes to see him on top of her. y/n took this moment to run her hand down his torso. Each time her fingers lapped over a muscle, she felt herself recapture her arousal. Her fingers found the base of his dick.

He was bigger than what she thought, bigger than her ex. It started her a tad when she felt his hard length. She started pumping his slowly. Tom's arms almost buckled at the feeling.

"If you keep doing that, I'm going to cum into your hand," his pulled her wrist away from him to above her head, "and I just want to pound this sweet little cunt into oblivion." The words cause y/n to whimper, eager for him to fulfill his promise.

"Then do it," she leaned up to whisper in his ear. As she pulled back, he locked eyes with her. Utter shock and an animalistic urge filled his every thought. He didn't even give her a warning before he slammed right into her. y/n cried out and wrapped her legs around his waist.

Tom couldn't believe the feeling. She was hugging every vein, every mark, every inch of his cock and yet so was still so fucking tight. He pulled out of her, only to ram back into her. "Fucking hell, you're divine," Tom growled, still deep inside of her. Slowly, he picked up a rhythm.

Every part of y/n's post was filled the brim by him. He hit her g-spot almost instantly. His name became a chant to her as it never ceased to spill from her lips. Each time he pounded back into her, y/n's voice became horse and rougher. Her nails dug into his bag as she clawed for support. Any support she could get from him.

Tom's been with countless women. Now he's finding it hard to sustain a sentence. He can hardly make out anything other than y/n's name. He wasn't complaining though, her tight walls constricting around with every movement. Tom wondered for a moment if he died and went to heaven and was fucking the dirtiest angel he could find.

"You look so goddamn beautiful taking my cock," he praised. He let his head fall into the crook of her neck, smelling her perfume made him almost lose his shit right there. "You feel so good squeezing around me."

Every word was threatening to her. Every word was pushing her closer to her limit. Every word was forcing more moans out of her mouth. "I'm going to cum, Tommy," she warned him.

The nickname only helped Tom lodge himself deeper and harder into her, "I am too, don't hold back angel face," he pressed a kiss underneath her ear.

y/n's second orgasm rolled over more intense the second time than the first. She pulled her head into his skin, biting and pulling to contain herself. Her legs gave out on her and flopped from his waist and quivered beside him. Tom was quick to follow her. How could he not, with how firmly she was gripping his cock. He pulled out quickly and spurted out streams across her belly. The white liquid dripping over her skin made him see stars.

He collapsed next to her, heaving and panting. y/n turned to him. She placed a long kiss on his lips, bringing his face closer. Tom happily hummed against her skin.

He pulled her into a tight hug. Her fingers traced the outline of his pec. "I'm infatuated with you," he told her plainly. y/n didn't move nor did she flinch. She just stared up at him with a wide smile.

"As am I," she responded quietly. He wanted her to stay here forever, he had admitted to himself that he wanted to be near her for the rest his life. It was like she had cast some spell over him. He, though, had happily fallen for it.

In his eyes, she was a goddess among women.

━━★✼☆｡

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whosemorales · 3 years ago

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Heartbeat

IMPORTANT INFO Post Civil War and Spider-Man Homecoming. Infinity War and Endgame never ever happened cause no one needs that much sadness in their life. None of these one-shots are related unless it says otherwise. And I don't know when I'm going to post but I will try and make it weekly. I don't take requests, but you are free to comment.

Peter couldn't keep the smile off his face all day. It was Friday the last day of school for the week, but that wasn't why Peter was excited, he was excited because he was spending the entire weekend at the Avengers Tower.

Ever since he stopped the Vulture from stealing Mr Starks plane, he spent more and more time with Mr Stark and had grown a lot closer to him. He had met the Avengers a few weeks ago after the accords were sorted out they were welcomed back to the tower, it had been a bit awkward at first but they all grew closer and upon meeting Peter they absolutely adored him.

Peter was currently in his last class of the day, history, the only subject he didn't have with Ned, and he was bored. Don't get him wrong he loved history but they were learning about WW2 and Peter already knew heaps about it (courtesy of Steve and Bucky). So he decided to occupy himself with designing new Web formula, one that would be stronger than anything he's had before, hopefully, strong enough to hold down the hulk.

*20 minutes later*

Peter was writing down the last few equations in his book when the bell suddenly rang through the classroom, causing him to wince due to his heightened hearing, quickly grabbing his stuff he made his way out of the classroom and into the crowded halls of the school.

He met up with Ned on the way to his locker and they both started to talk about the new lego set Ned's mum had just bought him. While Ned was talking Peter was grabbing the books he would need and shoving them into his bag.

"What up losers." Both boys turned to see MJ standing there, but she wasn't looking at them; she still had her nose in her book.

"Oh hey MJ." Peter and Ned said at the same time, laughing the two boys grabbed their stuff and the three made their way out of the school. They spoke outside for a little while until a black Audi pulled up out the front.

"That's Happy I gotta go, bye guys!" Peter yelled as he walked over to the car.

"Hey Happy." Peter greeted as he tossed his bag onto the back seat and climbed in.

"Hey, Pete."

As Happy pulled onto the main road Peter began to ramble on about his day and the amount of homework the teachers had given them.

About an hour later they pulled into the back entrance of the tower to avoid the paparazzi.

Hopping out of the car Peter called out a quick 'goodbye' to Happy before getting into the elevator. When the doors closed Friday's voice rang through the speakers.

"Hello Peter, how was school?" The AI asked.

"It was good Friday. Could you please take me to whatever floor Mr Stark is on.?" Peter questioned.

"Of course Peter, Boss is currently on the Penthouse floor with the avengers. Would you like me to inform him of your arrival?" Friday questioned.

"Yes please." With that, the elevator started to make its way to the penthouse floor.

When the elevator stopped Peter thanked Friday and made his way out, he dropped his bag on the kitchen counter and walked into the main living area. Peter saw that all the avengers were watching TV (Everyone except Thor who is in Asgard with Loki). Steve, Sam and Bucky were all sharing the couch closest to the window, Tony, Bruce, Rhodey and Nat were on the middle couch directly in front of the TV and Wanda and Vision were sharing a chair together. Mr Stark was the first to notice Peters presence.

"Oh, hey kid, how was school?" Mr Stark asked.

"It was good but boring I already knew most of the stuff they were teaching anyway, but I did get time to design a new formula for my webs," Peter announced taking a seat on one of the empty chairs.

"Well if you want we can go down to the lab and start working on them." Mr Stark offered.

"Really!! That would be awesome Mr Stark!"

The billion air sighed. "Kid how many times do I have to tell you, it's Tony, Mr Stark makes me feel old."

"I know," Peter smirked, "But I'm going to keep calling Mr Stark because you won't stop calling me kid."

"Touché."

The others laughed at the duo's interaction. They were going to turn back to the TV when Fridays voice stopped them.

"Boss Miss Potts would like me to inform you of her arrival."

"Peppers back?" Peter chimed in, a wide smile taking over his features. Pepper had recently been on a trip to Tokyo to help strengthen the company.

"How come you call her Pepper but me Mr Stark!" Tony grumbled, Peter just rolled his eyes making the others laugh. Just then the elevator dinged drawing everyone's attention. Now Peters hearing is amazing meaning that he can hear things that not even Steve or Bucky could, so when Pepper walked out of the elevator he was confused when he heard two heartbeats.

"Hey everyone." Pepper greeted, receiving numerous hi's and hello's from everyone in the room, everyone except Peter that is, who was still trying to figure out what he had just heard.

"Um, Pete you wanna so hi?" Wanda asked, looking at the boy with furrowed eyebrows.

"What? Oh yeah um hi Pepper how was Tokyo?" Peter smiled deciding to ignore what had just happened.

"Tokyo was amazing but the people well they were draining," Pepper laughed, "What have you guys been up to?" Pepper asked taking a seat next to Tony.

"Not much," Natasha replied.

"Miss Potts," Fridays voice rang through the room, " Miss Pierce would like me to inform you that she finished all the paperwork you asked for and she also needs your signature for one of the documents."

"Who the hell is Miss Pierce?" Tony wondered aloud.

Pepper rolled her eyes, "She's the new assistant I told you I was hiring her name is Freya Pierce." As soon as Peter heard her name he got a tingly feeling in the back of his neck. Something wasn't right.

"Tell her to take it to my office and I'll meet her there please Fri," Pepper answered, getting up from her seat.

"Um, Pepper could I come with you?" Peter asked quickly.

"Of course." Pepper smiled.

The two made their way over to the elevator and got in, as soon as the doors closed Peter frowned he could still hear the sound of three heartbeats and then his brain suddenly clicked, Pepper was pregnant.

"Um, Pepper? This is going to be a really weird question but are you pregnant?" Peter asked sheepishly.

Peppers eyes went wide, "H-How did you know?"

"Heightened hearing." Peter shrugged.

Pepper facepalmed, "Of course I totally forgot about that, it was supposed to be a surprise I was going to tell everyone at dinner."

"I won't tell anyone, " Peter assured, a smile slowly growing on his face, "Is it a girl or a boy?"

Pepper laughed, "It's a girl."

"Yes!" Peter triumphed.

Then the elevator dinged cutting off Peters celebrations and he remembered why he was really here, the doors opened to show the hall leading to Peppers office, standing out the front was a young girl round about Peters age, she had brown curls that descended past her shoulders, she was wearing black jeans, black boots and grey shirt with a black leather jacket, in her hands was the paperwork Peter assumed Friday was talking about.

"Thank you so much, Freya, come in here and I'll sign the documents." Pepper gestured to her office. Opening the door the three of them walked inside, as soon as the door closed Peters spider-sense went haywire.

"Just place them on the desk please Katherine." Pepper smiled, Freya nodded and walked over to the desk placing them on the edge.

Freya stood back giving Pepper room to sign the documents, Peter kept his eyes on her the whole time making himself ready for whatever she was planing. A sudden grunt from Pepper made him whip his head around, Pepper had just cut her finger on the paper, but a few seconds was all Freya needed, realising his mistake Peter quickly turned back around only to be face to face with a gun barrel.

"There, all done." Pepper smiled, oblivious to the gun being pointed at Peter.

"Um, Pepper."

"Yes, hun?" Peter would normally smile or blush slightly but now wasn't really the time.

"You might want to turn around." Turning around Pepper gasped in surprise, she slowly put her hands up.

Freya smirked. "It's been wonderful working for you Miss Potts it really has, but I'm afraid I won't be able to make it in tomorrow," she fake pouted. God Peter really hated this woman, he slowly put his hands behind his back preparing to shoot his Web shooters only to realise that they weren't on his wrists. Crap! That might be a problem.

"What are you doing?" Pepper asked.

"I'm getting my revenge," she answered.

"Revenge for what? We haven't done anything."

Freya let out a bitter laugh. "Because I used to have a family, a loving caring family and then our village was attacked with the same weapons that were made in this very tower. I watched my entire family get killed with one blast of a bomb, the only reason I survived was because my mother and father shielded me from the blast, but I didn't get away unscathed," She took off her jacket to reveal burn marks covering her skin, shrugging her jacket back on Freya then turned to Peter.

"And you, not scared? Trying to act brave by not putting your hands up?"

Peter just shrugged. "Not the first time someone's held a gun at me. And quite frankly you're just being dumb I mean seriously, you pull a gun on Miss Potts and don't think that she would have some way of contacting all the avengers with just a push of a button." Peter asked raising his eyebrows, but he was only buying time and praying to the gods that Friday had alerted the avengers.

Freya's facade faltered but she quickly replaced it with a smirk.

"It doesn't matter whether or not they get me, it's whether or not they save her on time." Freya suddenly turned the gun on Pepper and fired. Peter silently thanked the gods for his enhanced reflexes as he jumped in front of her not wanting to hurt her or the baby by pushing her out of the way.

Peter felt the bullet pierce his skin and embed its self in his flesh, he let out a cry and dropped to his knees but still stayed in front of Pepper ready to protect her again if Freya decided to fire another bullet.

Freya was shocked but decided not to dwell on it turning around she ran as fast as she could trying to make it out before the avengers got there.

"Friday call the avengers now!" Pepper yelled as she ran to help Peter, who was still on his knees trying to stop the blood flow with his hands.

"Are you ok? Is the baby ok?" Peter asked looking over at Pepper with worry.

"I'm fine Pete I'm not the one who just got shot."

"Sorry." Peter winced, as Pepper pressed a towel on the open wound.

"What are you sorry for?" Pepper asked trying to put enough pressure on at the same time.

"I'm getting blood everywhere."

Pepper sighed this kid was too good for his own good. "Pete right now that is the least of my problems."

"I'm fine, it's just a bullet wound, I've had way worse trust me." Peter laughed slightly but stopped when he saw the expression on Pepper's face.

"What-" Pepper stopped herself, "That's a question for another day right now I need to get you to the med-bay."

Pepper put Peters arm over her shoulder and hers under his and started to lift him up. Peter winced a couple of times until he was standing up fully straight, or a straight as you could be when half of your body is leaning in the other direction.

"Friday tell Bruce to set up the med-bay," Pepper called out as she helped Peter make his way to the door.

"Bruce is currently in the med bay setting up and the rest of the Avengers are on their way," Friday responded, as if on cue the elevator opened up and the avengers ran out decked in full gear. Peter would have laughed if it wasn't for the pain in his side and the fact he was starting to see two of everything.

"What the hell happened?!" Tony exclaimed as he grabbed Peters other arm to help with the weight.

"We don't Have time for that right now, we need to get him to the med-bay he's losing a lot of blood."

Clint ran over and took Peppers place and helped Tony take Peter to the med bay all the while trying to keep the young spiderling awake.

When they got to the med-bay they quickly but carefully placed Peter down on the bed that Bruce set up, Peter winced at the movement and bit his lip to keep himself from crying out. Bruce quickly ushered everyone out of the way and began to take the bullet out before his enhanced healing covered it. Unfortunately one of the downsides to having an enhanced metabolism is that it eats through the sedatives way too quickly, meaning that Peter had to be awake while Bruce took the bullet out. Bruce was halfway through taking the bullet out when Peter finally passed out. *******

The others were anxiously waiting outside the room, praying that Peter would be alright. Bucky, Steve, Wanda, Rhodey, Sam and Pepper were sitting on the chairs out the front of the med-bay Vision was floating close to Wanda and Tony was pacing back and forth running his hand through his hair over and over again.

"What happened?" Tony asked suddenly stopping and turning to Pepper.

Pepper sighed and began to tell them exactly what happened.

"-And then I heard the gunfire and I closed my eyes waiting for the bullet to hit me but instead I heard Peter cry out and when I opened my eyes he was in front of me with a bullet wound in his side, and then Freya ran so I tried to stop the bleeding and helped him up and that's when you guys came in."

"Well Freya didn't get very far, security stopped her before she could get out," Sam smirked.

"Of course the kid would try and save you, but why didn't he push you out of the way," Tony asked, "I mean if he pushed you out of the way then you both would have gotten out unscathed and Peter would have been able to catch her, so why did he stand in front of you?" Tony asked mainly to himself.

"I-I don't know." Pepper cursed herself for stuttering.

Tony frowned slightly. "Pep why did he jump in front of you?" he asked again this time to Pepper.

The others were listening in closely for her answer.

"I don't know," Pepper repeated.

"Tony just leave it and come sit down." Rhodey pipped up gesturing to the seat beside him.

"NO! No, I will not just leave it my kid is in there with a bullet wound that he wouldn't have got if he had just pushed Pepper out of the way so why didn't he?" Tony demanded.

"BECAUSE I'M PREGNANT!" Pepper finally yelled.

Everyone went silent, their eyes grew wide and small smiles started to form on their faces.

"What?" Tony asked his voice barely above a whisper.

"I'm pregnant," Pepper repeated with a soft smile. Before Pepper could even register what was happening she was being enveloped in a hug, Tony held her tight his face nuzzled into her neck and pepper could have sworn she felt something wet fall onto her shoulder. When Tony finally let go he brought Pepper in for a passionate kiss.

When they pulled away Tony frowned. "Wait how did Peter know, did you tell him before me." He gasped bring his hand up to his heart in mock hurt, making the others laugh.

"No, it's because of his enhanced hearing, when we were in the elevator he asked me, I was shocked at how he knew but then he told me it's because he could hear a second heartbeat."

"Wow, that kid really is something," Bucky said.

"Yeah, he sure is." Bruce agreed, startling everyone as he came out of the med-bay.

"Bruce, how is he?" Tony asked quickly praying to gods it didn't hit anything important and that Peter was going to be ok.

"He's fine," Bruce assured, "Actually he's better than fine, his system I-I've never seen anything like it before. I mean Steve's and Bucky's is good but Peter's is amazing the way it works is fascinating. Normally when Steve or Bucky get shot it takes a little while to heal, but Peters system is working at a phenomenal speed, meaning when he wakes up he might feel a bit sore but it will only feel like a bruise." Bruce explained.

Everyone was shocked, they knew Peters healing was good but they didn't know it was that good.

"Can we go in?" Tony question, Bruce gave him a nod and Pepper and he rushed in.

When they got to Peters bed they saw the bandage wrapped around his waist and the heart monitors finger clip attached to his finger, the monitor was beeping in a steady rhythm, indicating that Peters heart rate was normal.

They both took a seat on either side of Peter and took his hand making sure that they would be the first ones he would see when he woke up. They sat in the med-bay for half an hour before the little spider started to wake up.

"Mmhm." Peter moaned trying to open his eyes, but once they did open he regretted it because a bright light blinded him. He waited a couple of seconds before opening them again.

"What happened?" Peter mumbled, but he suddenly sat bolt upright scaring the daylights out of Pepper and Tony, "Is Pepper OK! Is the baby OK!" He asked quickly looking around still waiting for his eyes to adjust properly.

Tony and Pepper laughed softly. "She's fine kiddo, and so is the baby," Tony answered.

"Oh, hey Mr Stark," Peter waved slightly before his eyes went as wide as dinner plates, "OMG! I just told him about the baby! I promised I wouldn't tell because you were going to tell them all at dinner. I am a despicable human being." Peter gasped, putting his face in his hands.

Pepper laughed, "Pete it's fine I already told him."

"Oh thank the gods." Peter sighed.

Just then the vent swung open and Clint fell out.

"Ow." He groaned, but a smile quickly took over his face when he saw that Peter was awake.

Getting off the floor he gave Peter a hug ruffling his hair making Peter growl. Soon all the avengers were in the med-bay they all gave Peter a hug, glad that he was ok. And Peter loved it he loved them and sure they were a very dysfunctional family but they were his dysfunctional family.

"So Pepper, what are you going to name the baby?" Natasha asked.

"WAIT YOU PREGNANT!!!" Bruce yelled.

#irondad #spiderson #spiderman #avengers #avengers tower #marvel #mcu #fluff

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brookexjohnson · 4 years ago

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Is that LAURA HARRIER on campus? Oh no, that’s BROOKE JOHNSON. From CHICAGO, the 20 year old has come to study DRAMA. Rumor has it she is FIESTY and TOUGH, but IMPULSIVE and HEADSTRONG, which is why she is known as THE VIXEN. She resides in ZETA TAU ALPHA and can’t wait to graduate.

Name: Brooklyn Bella Johnson Birthday: 3rd December Pronouns: She/Her Nationality: American Study Field: Drama Occupation: Hair & Make-up at San Diego Plaza Clubs: Mixed Cheerleading, Student Theatre, LGBTQ+ Accommodations: Zeta Tau Alpha (Social Chair of)

Trigger Warnings: Cancer

Brooklyn is the youngest and only daughter to her parents. She has three older brothers - the first two being twins and the second one being a few years older than her.

After giving birth to Brooke, her mum suffered with postpartum depression which was only made worse when shortly after the birth, she was diagnosed with cancer. Her mum chose to blame Brooke like she was a poison that gave her the cancer and ended up leaving the family when Brooke was almost one year old.

Being raised in an all male household made Brooklyn a very strong person. She had to hold her own and although her brothers are very protective of her, she still had to fight to be heard and this has grown her to be very headstrong and feisty.

In her dad’s adult years, he was a soul singer in a band. They weren’t big at first but they did become a little bigger just as his boys were being born but when Brooke was born and his wife left them, he settled down. Instead of touring and focusing on the performing side of his career, he left the band and set up his own record label. It wasn’t a big label at first but over the years it has grown and allowed him to provide for his family.

Brooke found her love for acting pretty early in life. In fact, she did a good number of commercials as a kid and did a few small acting gigs but that was about it. Her dad put the money she earned from those in to a savings account so when she turned 18, she would have full access to that account. Her mum hated seeing her daughter on TV and often ended up calling Brooke’s dad telling him to make it stop. The number of arguments Brooke heard over the phone was way too many.

Her oldest brother, Leon, worked a lot with his dad and ended up going in to singing, signing up with his dad’s label. He’s worked hard to make a name for himself. His twin, Mason, went more down the athletic route and loved boxing. He has ended up owning a gym in Chicago and running clubs for both adults and kids and does a lot of work for households less fortunate. He other brother, Kayden, is known as the brainy child and is currently working as a junior doctor.

Brooke did a lot of hair and beauty courses when she left school and is actually trained to be a hairdresser and beautician. She liked to deal with more textured hair as she knew how hard it was to maintain and did a lot to help out less fortunate families who couldn’t afford everything they needed to maintain their hair.

After just under two decades, her mum has reentered her families lives fully and worked her way back in to a relationship with Brooke’s dad. Her mum is cancer-free but still hates her daughter and still views her as a thorn in the family and frankly, Brooke is over it. She can’t understand why her dad took her mum back after how many arguments they had when she was growing up. However, she worked out that her mum is extremely fake when in front of her dad which makes her think she’s only here for the money.

Tired of all the bullshit at home, she decided to use her savings account from her acting gigs to move out to San Diego and study drama like she always had wanted to do which has brought her to Monarch.

She has been at Monarch for about 6 months now and has recently taken on being the social chair for Zeta Tau Alpha. Since she has been here for six months, she will have made some connections with people so feel free to hit me up!

#monarchintro

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trashinaglass-archive · 5 years ago

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Little Bug

Harry and y/n get pregnant at a young age

Request: Hello! Can you possibly write a Harry imagine where him and the reader have been dating for many years and he gets her pregnant by accident and they kinda freak out cause they are only 20, so they have to tell Harry’s family (cause the reader isn’t close with hers) and at first they are disappointed but of course are supportive. Also maybe a flash forward to when the baby is there and everyone spoiling it! Thank youuu

A/n: Not gonna lie, when I first read this I thought you meant Harry Styles, and I was like why would his family be disappointed cause he’s like 25? But I get it now, I gotcha. Harry Holland boy, he we go.

Four years.

If someone asked you, that was a pretty long time to be with one person. Sure, it was nothing compared to adults who had been married for thirty plus years, but as a young kid, it was a big deal to you.

You couldn’t hold back your squeal of excitement as the doorbell rang, running to the door.

“Hey,” Harry laughed as you threw yourself into his arms, hugging him tightly.

“Happy four years,” you smiled at him.

“And happy anniversary,” he replied, a smile masking your own as he placed a kiss to your lips. “Let’s get out of here.”

. . .

You held Harry’s hand in yours as you walked into the movie theater, moving to stand in the concessions line. The smell of the popcorn hit you hard, an instant wave of nausea rolling through your body. Your jaw clinched as you felt the uneasy feeling in your stomach increase.

“‘Scuse me,” you said quickly as you ran to the bathroom, anything that was in your stomach making an appearance in the toilet. You leaned your head onto your hands as you sat back, lightheaded and drained of all energy you had earlier.

“Y/n?” You heard an unfamiliar voice ask, a gentle hand touching your back. “You’re boyfriend asked me to check on you. Are you alright?”

“I don’t know,” you said softly, thinking about what just happened as the nausea began to fade. “It was like the smell of the popcorn made me sick.”

“I don’t mean to pry or be rude,” the lady began. “But have you two had sex recently?” Your heart stopped at the suggestion, understanding what she was hinting at. “When I was pregnant, certain smells made me sick too.”

“I can’t be,” you whispered, tears beginning to well in your eyes.

“I would check,” she suggested gently before rummaging through her purse. “Here’s some gum. Do you need help with anything?”

You shook your head as you chewed the gum, welcoming the minty taste. You tried to process the idea of you possibly being pregnant, it was crazy.

You eventually stood up, making your way outside where you found a very concerned boyfriend.

“Are you okay? What happened?” He asked as he saw you.

“The popcorn smell is making me sick,” you told him. “Can you take me to a shop and then we can hang at your place?”

“Yeah, that’s fine. Are you okay?”

“As soon as I’m out of here, I’ll be fine,” you told him, nodding your head.

He nodded back, taking your hand and leaving the theater. He stopped at a drugstore, unbuckling his seat belt about the get out. “Can you wait in here while I go in? Please?” You requested.

“Why?” He asked confused.

“Just- please,” you pleaded. He let out a breath, closing his door and watched as you went in the store by yourself. You bought three pregnancy tests along with some ginger ale and candies to cover what you actually bought, asking the cashier to double bag it. You sat back in the car, “ready?” You smiled softly, Harry reciprocating before driving back to his home.

. . .

“What happened?” Dominic asked as you two walked through the door. “Surely the movie isn’t over yet.”

“Yeah, um,” Harry began looking at you unsure if he was suppose to tell them or not. You shrugged motioning that you didn’t care. “Y/n fell sick at the theater so we’re just going to hang here.”

“You alright, darling?” Nikki asked you. You nodded, not really wanting to say anything. “If you need anything, let me know.” She smiled at you, and you felt a little better knowing she cared.

“Yes ma’am,” you replied softly before making your way upstairs, going straight to the bathroom.

“Sick again?” Harry asked as you closed the door.

“Maybe? I don’t know,” you told him. “It might just be another wave of nausea. I’ll meet you in your room when I’m done.” You listened for him to walk away before opening anything.

“Okay. Call if you need anything.”

“Yeah,” you replied quietly, hearing his footsteps walk away, opening a door, and the springs of his bed as he sat on it. You opened the boxes as quickly and quietly as you could, peeing on them and waiting the three minutes. It felt like literal hell waiting for that long. After the time passed, you looked at the tests.

Six bold pink lines.

Three positive tests.

You closed your eyes as you sank to the floor, your head resting on your knees as you tried not to freak out. Tears began to well in your eyes, spilling over the edge as you couldn’t hold them back. You looked up as the bathroom door opened.

“Oh! Sorry! Um,” Paddy stumbled before he realized something wasn’t right, running to Harry’s room to get him. Your eyes squeezed tighter as you heard him approach you.

“Hey- what’s wrong, love?” Harry asked as he crouched in front of you, hands holding the sides of your face, brushing the tears from your eyes.

“Could it be these?” Paddy asked as he noticed the tests on the sink counter. You could hear the uncertainty in his voice- he didn’t know where you stood emotionally and didn’t want to hurt you more than you already looked.

Harry stood up looking at the tests as he took one in his hand, studying it over. “You just took these?” He asked for clarification. You only nodded in response. He sighed, rubbing over his eyes as he tried to process this information. In nine short months, he was going to be a dad.

“Are you going to leave me now?” You asked him, fear obvious in your voice. He looked at you, tears in his own eyes as he reached his hands out to you. He pulled you to your feet, wrapping you in his arms.

“I’m with you for the long run, baby doll,” he said, placing a kiss to the top of your head. Hearing his words, you squeezed him tighter, tears rolling out of your eyes faster. You hadn’t mentioned it, but you knew what would happen when you got home. Your parents weren’t the best, and they weren’t going to have a pregnant girl or her kid in their house. You needed him more than he knew.

“Do we tell them now?” He asked you after you both calmed down, knowing both of your parents needed to know. You nodded, unsure of what else you would do with the new information. Harry guided you downstairs, a hand on your back as you wiped your face, hoping you didn’t look too messed up. Your nerves shot through the roof as you saw the two parents come into view. “Mum? Dad?”

“What’s wrong?” Nikki asked as she saw your faces, probably looking utterly terrified.

“Um,” Harry started, unsure how to say it. He gestured for you to sit on the chair across from his parents, leaning against the armrest beside you. “You know y/n was sick, and I thought it was just a bug or something, but it’s not a bug. Definitely not a bug. Unless you think it’s cute to call it a bug,” he began to ramble, but you interrupted him.

“I’m pregnant,” you said softly. Nikki and Dom’s eye widened at your admission.

“Yeah,” Harry said.

“You’re sure?” Nikki asked, needing the clarification.

“I have three bold yes’s in the bathroom. It’s no sonogram, but what are the chances that three tests will show up that bold falsely?”

“Not much,” Nikki nodded, letting out a sigh. “First thing tomorrow, you need to make an appointment with your doctor.” You nodded your head, showing you understand.

“So you guys aren’t mad?” Harry asked nervously.

“We’re certainly not happy about it, but the deed is done. Another life is involved, and the best we can do is make sure it gets the best care possible,” Dom nodded.

“Have you mentioned it to your parents yet?” Nikki asked, still fixated on you.

“No. I just found out literally, what, fifteen minutes ago?”

“Are they going to be okay with it?” She asked carefully, knowing the troubles you’d been through with them. You shook your head, not looking her in the eye.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if they kick me out,” you shrugged, Harry’s hand reaching out to rub your back.

“Well if that happens, you pack your stuff and come here. We’ll take care of you,” Dom assured you.

“Thank you,” you replied with a small smile.

. . .

Like you predicted, after telling your parents of the pregnancy, they kicked you out. Wishing you good luck with the future, they no longer wanted to be apart of it. But that’s okay- the Holland family were the perfect replacement. The place where you and your baby belonged.

The baby arrived after the months passed, a little boy named Tristan Robert Holland. He was born a few weeks early, but he was the most perfect being you had ever laid eyes on. The trials and pain were worth going through to be able to hold your gorgeous boy in your arms.

“Look at that precious bug,” you said in a higher pitched voice, leaning over to planting kisses all over Tristan’s face. He squealed out a laugh. A perfect laugh you’d come to obsess over.

“And wouldn’t he be more precious with this amazing Spider-Man onesie?” Tom asked as he appeared with said onesie. You couldn’t hold back the laugh as Harry let out a scoff. “What? He’s my nephew. I can spoil him with Spider-Man goodies if I want to.”

“I don’t really care what onesie he wears, but look at this bear I found,” Sam chimed in, holding up a teddy bear that was holding onto a golf club. “Definitely going to be on my team.”

“Whatever, mate. He’s my son- of course he’ll want to be on my team,” Harry fought back causing a bicker over whose golf team the baby would be on.

You couldn’t help but roll your eyes as you listened to them looking down at Tristan with a smile on your face. “You’re more well behaved than all of them, aren’t you?” You cooed, Tristan laughing back. “You are!”

“Shut up, y/n,” Harry laughed, sitting next to you. “It’s called living with siblings.”

“Which he won’t have for a long, long time,” you said, the little boy laughing with no idea what you were talking about.

“I don’t know, I think we could do that again,” he joked as he took Tristan in his arms, the baby bouncing on his lap. “I’ll carry the baby this time.”

“Will you?” You laughed, Harry nodding his head yes. “We can probably arrange that then.”

“You guys are fucking weird,” Paddy commented as he walked past you to the kitchen, making you and Harry laugh. You shrugged, it wasn’t exactly untrue.

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let-it-raines · 5 years ago

Text

Rising from the Ashes (21/21)

When her husband died, Emma wasn’t sure that she could ever move on. He left her with a broken heart and a baby who was only three-months old. It’s enough to take most people down, to make them not want to keep going, but Emma Swan isn’t most people. She’s stronger than she has any right to be.

And after years of heartache, she’s found ways to move on…one of those being in Neal’s best friend, Killian Jones.

As she’s always known, however, things are more complicated than they ever seem to be.

Rating: Mature

A/N: So this long, angsty, sometimes happy story has come to an end, and I have to thank all of you for reading with me along the way even though some of you swore that you wouldn’t. lol. But you made it, and I hope you enjoy this last chapter to wrap everything up💙

We’ve got one final flashback, and it’s a long time coming!

Found on AO3: Beginning | Current

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Tag list: @ultraluckycatnd @jamif @cs-forlife @qualitycoffeethings @resident-of-storybrooke @captainsjedi @captswanis4vr @teamhook @ekr032-blog-blog @mayquita @bmbbcs4evr @pirateherokillian @wellhellotragic @kmomof4 @jennjenn615 @onceuponaprincessworld @shady-swan-jones @snow-into-ash @andiirivera @mariakov81 @shireness-says @facesiousbutton82 @superchocovian @jonirobinson64 @snowbellewells @thejollyroger-writer @tiganasummertree @idristardis @blowmiakisscolin

-/-

Killian dives under the water, tightly shutting his eyes to keep the salt out, before jumping back up to the surface and leaping over to tug on Henry’s legs as he kicks out at him in an attempt to get away. They’ve been lounging around in the ocean for a solid two hours, their skin wrinkled at the fingertips and toes – not that his skin isn’t already a bit wrinkled – and he wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world as he chases after Henry and continually keeps him from getting too far away. It helps that Henry’s got a small paddle board sans the paddle strapped to his ankle so he can’t move as quickly as he normally would be able to if he were swimming. Then again, the lad is also nearing twelve this summer, and while he’s grown quite a bit recently, he’s still far shorter than Killian is.

He never had a chance.

“Dad,” Henry gasps when Killian grabs onto his ankle and pulls him back to his stomach as small waves tumble over toward them and fade out into whitewater, “that’s not fair.”

“I gave you a head start,” he protests, angling Henry’s board toward the shore since they’re already out further than they should be and need to head back. “Are you getting hungry? I’m absolutely starving.”

“I could be hungry if we’re having grilled cheese.”

“You are just like your mum.”

“They’re good.”

“Not when you use the artificial cheese.”

“That’s the best kind.”

“Whatever you say.”

“I’m right.”

“You are not.” “Agree to disagree.”

Killian clicks his tongue as he starts guiding them closer in, wrapping his arm over Henry’s back and kicking his legs out as he swims. “You really are just like your mum if you’re saying phrases like that.”

“She works at my school. I can’t get away from her, and now you’re saying I sound like her. I can’t win.”

“Do not say that around her,” he gently warns as they get a little closer to shore so that he can see Emma building a sandcastle with Ada near their umbrella so that she still has her eyes on Nathan as he sleeps in his seat. Seven-month-olds aren’t exactly huge fans of the beach, but when it’s a summer day and no one has work or school, they’re not about to pass any of this up when they now live a few feet away from the ocean.

They moved to Boothbay a little less than two years ago after everything happened. He and Emma hadn’t wanted to live in Portland anymore, couldn’t live in their house, and as much as he hated to leave the place where so many of the great moments of his life happened, he knew that it was the right decision. They went through hell as a family, and even though picking up and moving to a new place is no way to solve issues, it was a start for them. They thought about leaving that summer, but he and Emma both decided that they would let Henry stay in his school for one more year so he didn’t have to deal with anymore upheaval in his life. He was going through a lot without the emotional capabilities to handle it, and they weren’t about to take him away from his friends and his family. But when they’d brought up the idea of moving, even if it is only two hours away, he’d been excited. Killian still thinks that Henry mostly wanted to move because they told him they’d be living in a house on the beach instead of one in a suburb, but honestly, the kid is happy now. That’s all that matters.

His family’s happiness is all that’s ever mattered to him, and even though there are days when he’s pissed at Emma, frustrated with Henry, and struggles dealing with Ada and Nathan, he treasures that happiness more than anything in the world.

No part of him takes any kind of happiness for granted.

Not his own, not his children’s, not his wife’s.

Wife.

The word still almost feels foreign to him despite he and Emma having gotten married two and a half years ago during an absolute torrential downpour in August. For him to have had the ring for nearly an entire year before he got to use it, the engagement and wedding sure as hell did happen quickly.

-/-

“Babe,” Emma calls.

“Babe.”

“Killian.”

“Killian,” Emma huffs, pressing her hand into his shoulder and pushing him a little on the bed until he opens his eyes, wondering why the hell Emma is jostling him awake when he’s getting to sleep in for once in his life.

“If you’re waking me up for morning sex, I’m going to need a minute or two.”

“Oh my gosh,” she groans, sitting down on the mattress next to him and moving down until her cheek is right next to his, her ass moving the mattress enough to jostle him a little bit more awake so that he twists his head to fully look at her while his hand lazily finds her thigh underneath the cover, squeezing the warm, bare skin a bit before resting it there, “no. I’m not waking you up for sex.”

“Pity.”

“Maybe later if you don’t bother me too much today.”

“Is that a promise?” he smirks, knowing that Emma most likely thinks he looks a little more ragged than handsome this morning.

“It’s a maybe,” she laughs, dipping her head down until he feels her lips against his forehead.

It’s still early, far too early, and if he knows anything about his surroundings today, it’s that the sun hasn’t made its way into the sky, the air outside still shrouded in darkness. And for Emma to be up this early on a Saturday without having been woken up by Henry or Ada, it’s basically a once in a lifetime day.

But she’s happy. He notices that too. Her face is bare of all makeup, freckles smattering across her nose, and he can see the blonde tips of her lashes that are often hidden by mascara. And her hair is a mess, the curls around her face a little more prominent, and her teeth look especially white against the tanned skin this summer has brought her.

They’ve been in a dark place since May, and even though Emma has made an effort to have things go on as normal, they haven’t.

Getting over what Neal did to them is such a slow process, one that he’s sure will manifest itself as different challenges and issues for the rest of their lives, and though it’s been easier for about a month and a half now, he still often can’t fall asleep at night because his mind runs through everything. Mostly he thinks about Emma and Henry, how they’re dealing with it, and that’s exactly what keeps him up.

They’re…he and Emma are good, though. He thinks that they may be better than they’ve ever been. It’s certainly not like it once was when they were dating and thinking about the prospect of having Ada. It’s different, but he thinks that it’s better. There’s more trust between them, more faith too, and after a year of sometimes feeling like they weren’t even playing the same game, he thinks that they’re solidly on the same team.

Co-captains.

He loves her, and he can’t ever imagine anything changing that. And if something tries, he won’t let it.

She’s happy.

He’s happy.

They’re happy in spite of everything, but this morning it’s almost as if there’s a different light around Emma than the one that usually stays with her.

“So tell me, my love,” he sighs, inching his hand a little higher on her thigh to tease her skin while he tilts his head up to look at her, “if not because I am simply so irresistible, why are you waking me up this morning?”

“Ada took her first real steps this morning.”

“What?”

“Ada. She took her first steps.”

“When?” he chuckles, moving up on the bed so that he can look at Emma a little more clearly, his chin resting in the dip between her breasts. “How long have you been awake?”

“At, like, two this morning. Her monitor went off, and I couldn’t get her to stop crying. I guess she was just really hungry since she didn’t really eat dinner last night, so I fed her and then we played for a few minutes, and she took her steps.”

“Bloody hell,” he mutters, throwing the blanket off of him and rising from the bed, tugging up at his pajama pants and adjusting his t-shirt as his heart beats wildly in his chest, excitement heating his cheeks and the tips of his ears.

“Babe,” Emma laughs, sitting up on the bed and moving the remaining blankets off of herself so he can see the skin of her legs, not that he’s really paying that much attention to them anyways. That’s a once in a lifetime thing. “Killian,” she giggles, probably at the fact that he got out of bed so quickly and is now standing in place with his hands in his hair while Emma sits further up on her knees, “what in the world are you doing?”

“She took her first steps?” he questions, the disbelief still running through him. Ada’s been nearly there for months now, seemingly always staying the cruising stage, and she took her first steps. God, he can’t…his little love continuously reaching new little milestones that are always so miraculous as he watches her develop.

He can’t believe he missed these too.

Emma smiles, and even though he already knew the answer, that’s all of the reassurance that he needed.

He’s obviously not thinking straight, his mind all over the place, but he’s so damn happy that all he can think to do is bend down and wrap his arms around Emma, pulling her up and off the bed so that he legs dangle in the air while she squeals, wrapping her arms around his neck while he gets a better grip holding her under her ass. It’s definitely not the most coordinated thing in the world, but he doesn’t care as Emma’s legs wrap around his waist with her ankles crossing at her back while he slams his lips into hers, capturing her laugh and any other words she had to say as he slowly sways them back and forth in their room, not daring to move with his eyes closed.

He can feel Emma’s smile through the kiss.

“I’m going to tell Ada to walk more often if I get that reaction out of you.”

“A bloody brilliant plan that.”

Emma laughs again, and he nips at her upper lip before pulling back and peppering kisses across her face while pleasurable shivers run down his spine with how she’s playing with his hair at the nape of his neck. She hums then, and when he pulls back, he takes the opportunity to start walking them out of the room.

“Wait. Where are you going?”

“My daughter took her first steps, love. I want to see her do it again.”

“She’s asleep.”

He pinches her ass before carefully opening the door. “I know.”

“Killian, I swear, do not wake her up. She’s going to be cranky if you wake her up, and I don’t want to deal with that.”

“I’ll deal with it.”

“You’re being ridiculous.”

“Says the woman who woke me up to tell me this.”

“It’s big news, but I just got her back down.”

“Aye.” He nods, the reality of what she’s saying sinking in as he thinks of what their day will be like if they get Ada to be all riled up when she needs sleep. “You’re right. I’m just…I got a little overexcited there.”

“Well, you do tend to have the opposite thing happen to you when you’re woken up.”

He chuckles and turns them around in the hallway, his arms aching the slightest bit from having held Emma for so long. She’s a slight little thing, but even Ada gets too heavy to carry after he’s held her for too long. When he makes it back to the bedroom, he flips the switch to turn the light on their ceiling fan on, casting the room in a bright white light, before gently placing Emma down onto the bed, letting her fall back on her elbows with her hair falling down her back while she smiles up at him.

Somehow, he can feel the smile in his own cheeks.

And it all hits him suddenly. His daughter, the one who was once no more than seven pounds and could do little more than cry, is walking on her own, even if it’s only a step or two. His son is turning nine next month. He’s been with Emma for five years, and he turned thirty eight at the end of May.

Life is moving on.

For a long while, it stood still, the insanity swirling around them and causing a thick haze that no one could see through, but they made their way through it eventually even if some of the haze still surrounds them. But they keep walking, keep moving forward, and suddenly he doesn’t want to wait another moment to find the perfect moment when there has never been a more perfect moment than right now.

“Darling, wait right there.”

He doesn’t let her respond before he’s quickly moving the few steps to the closet and turning to grab the box out of his uniform pocket, the blue velvet smooth under his fingertips as a smile forms on his face, all of the nerves he thought he would feel nowhere to be seen as he pops the box open and removed the ring, holding it in the palm of his hand. He’s got no clue what he’s going to say, how he’s going to ask, so when he gets back into the bedroom to see Emma still in the same place with her brows raised high on her forehead, he simply steps in front of her and gets down on one knee on the hardwood floor.

If Emma’s brows could get any higher, they would, both of them practically in her hairline, but as quickly as they rise, they also lower to their normal spot all the while the corners of her lips curve into a smile that makes the green of her eyes nearly disappear.

But just nearly.

“Yes,” she blurts out, the word loud and yet somehow a quiet whisper in the room.

He chuckles, wanting to close his eyes with his laughter but not wanting to look away. “Emma, you have to let a man ask.”

“Sorry, sorry. I’m – ”

“I know, love. I know.” She’s getting ahead of herself, just like he did this morning, and that seems to be a habit of theirs. He doesn’t mind. “Emma, my love, the first time I saw you in that damned bar and made you laugh, I had absolutely no idea that we were going to go through so much together, that we were going to have this life and our kids and each other, that you were going to give me the greatest parts of my life, that you would be the greatest part of my life. I love you more than anything, and while I can’t guarantee anything else, I can guarantee that I will always, always be by your side. So what do you say? Will you marry me?”

“Of course, yes. Killian,” she sighs leaning forward and grabbing his face until her lips are on his, an insistent press that is somehow the lightest touch he has ever felt. He’s kissed Emma more times than he can count, had her lips softly gliding over his every day for years now, but right now he can barely contain himself over how much everything is different and yet very much the same. “I will marry you, and I will be right there by your side annoying you every step of the way.”

A laugh escapes him, and he presses forward to brush his lips over the corner of hers, unable to keep himself from covering every inch of her warm skin with his lips as all of the turmoil and heartache disappears and he can only feel joy that rivals the day Ada was born or the day that Henry called him his dad for the first time.

Or maybe every other moment that he’s had with Emma.

“I love you,” she whispers, pressing her forehead into his while her hands reach up to clutch his face.

“I love you,” he echoes, wishing he had the words to express his love more than those three words do. He reaches up to grab her left hand from his face, pulling it down to rest between them as he quickly slides the ring onto her finger, marveling at the fact that it’s finally in the place that it should be. “You and the kids are the best things that have ever happened to me.”

“You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to us.”

“I mean, I already knew that.”

“Stop,” Emma laughs, falling back against the bed while he gets up from the ground to place his hands on either side of her head, dipping his head down to kiss her neck, spending a bit of time there while Emma’s laughs turn into gasps. He rather likes that. “Oh, I think I changed my mind about the morning sex.”

“Proposing did it for you then?”

“I mean, I was already considering it, but I do think that encouraged me the smallest bit.”

“Well, I will take what I can get.”

“You’ve always been a man of standards.”

He winks. “I try.”

Later, when they’re sated and their hair is a little messier than before, his skin still tingling from the way Emma felt wrapped around him, he finds the strength to rise from the bed when he hears Henry walk past their bedroom, obviously having woken up and probably wanting breakfast.

“I can go feed Henry,” Emma mumbles, rising from the bed and pulling on a t-shirt to cover her breasts while she quickly combs her hair back into a bun, which really doesn’t do anything to hide the fact that they were just intimate, but it’s not as if Henry will know, especially not with a new ring on her finger he’s sure she’ll be talking about. “If memory serves, there’s a little girl who you were very excited to see much earlier this morning.”

“I can make breakfast, love.”

“No,” Emma insists, pressing up on her toes to brush her lips over his cheek once, twice, three times, “I will. I think today deserves celebrating with something good and unhealthy that you would never let us have.”

“I think I could make an exception today.”

“Still. I can do it.”

He nods in agreements, and when she turns around to walk away, he quickly reaches down to grab her ass, making her giggle as she turns around to briefly look at him before walking out of the room with the slightest shake of her head.

That woman is going to be his wife.

He’s the luckiest man.

After getting dressed back in his pajamas, he quietly makes his way down the hallways and into the nursery, finding Ada standing against the railing with her brown hair standing up in so many different ways that he knows she got it from him and the weird cowlicks that he has.

“Dada,” she squeals, her face lighting up in a way that will never fail to amaze him that someone so little loves him so much.

“Good morning, sweetheart. You been keeping your mummy up at weird times?”

“No,” she giggles, her favorite word as of late. He picks her up out of the crib and kisses her cheeks, making her giggle more. “No, no, no.”

“Oh come on, I think you did. And you walked too? It’s been a very big morning in this house.”

“No.”

“But it is,” he insists, standing her up on the changing table. “Your mummy told me she wants to marry me, my love bug.”

-/-

They’d gotten engaged after far too long of a time, and Emma told him that she didn’t want to wait anymore, that there was no point in delaying something that they both wanted to do. So with the help of Mary Margaret, planner extraordinaire, they planned a small wedding to happen in the backyard of Ruth’s house before Henry went back to school and Emma went back to work. Except it rained so much that everything happened in the living room, decorations haphazardly placed in the spots where the furniture had been carried to other rooms. It was a mess, but it was as close to perfect as he ever could have imagined. Liam, Belle, and Caleb decided to fly in from England, Belle absolutely insistent that she would not miss the wedding, and he finally got to meet his nephew who is now his favorite little man to get to video chat at least twice a week. David applied for a license online to marry them, and even though Emma laughed for a solid ten minutes at the image of David marrying them, she did come around to the idea.

He asked Henry to be his best man, told him it was one of the most important jobs for him to have after being a good big brother, and they let Ada be their flower girl even if it was an absolute disaster since she nearly fell every other step. He’d had to walk toward her and lean down in front of her at the end of their makeshift aisle and clap to her to continue her walking. She’d just taken those infamous first steps four weeks prior, and it was definitely still a work in progress. Emma had been standing at the back of the room in her dress, a small lacy thing that hugged her chest and flowed from her hips, and she hadn’t been able to help herself from quickly walking toward him and helping to encourage Ada to walk until she got to the end of the aisle with a small basket full of the flower petals they completely expected her to drop the moment she was handed it.

The entire thing was imperfect, crazy, and yet it was the most intimate moment of his life as he got to officially commit himself to Emma for the rest of his days.

He loves her with every beat of his heart, and while it’s never been easy, even in the days of flirting and teasing, they have fought for the love that they share because they both know it’s been worth it. He’ll never be one to claim that falling in love and getting married solves problems and brings utter happiness because that’s simply not true. Fights and petty arguments happen, disagreements over how to raise children occur, and heated discussions over what to have for dinner happen frequently. But that’s what happens when you share your life with someone else.

The disagreements, though, are always smaller than the love and happiness, and he’s thankful that he’s got this woman by his side who is his partner in all things.

And they’ve got three kids who they love more than anything.

Killian officially adopted Henry after they got married, and even though it required legally working with Neal, it was still one of the best decisions he’s ever made. The fact that Henry asked for it makes it all the sweeter. The kid has always been his son, and adoption or not, that was never going to change. Nathan arrived back in October two weeks before Emma’s birthday, and while they had planned him, it was still somehow a shock to have another little one in his arms.

(Changing the little lad’s diaper was a bit of a shock too since he was used to Ada and wasn’t around for changing a lot of Henry’s diapers.)

But a good shock.

And his little love Ada isn’t quite as little anymore, even if she’s a bit on the small side and takes after her mother in nearly every way but her hair and the indent of her chin, as she’s now four and more full of life than he ever thought possible. She talks, just all of the time, and he’s not sure if he can quite keep up with her. When he can’t, she makes sure to tell him, placing her hands on her hips and staring at him with furrowed brows until he catches up with whatever creation she’s making or story she’s telling.

He’s got good kids.

And a beautiful wife who works as a high school vice principal now while he spends his days managing the harbor for the town since they have such traffic for their boat tours and shipping. It doesn’t pay as much as his last job, but the cost of living here is cheaper. Mostly, though, he’s happy in his job, and it doesn’t make him constantly feel like he’s at war both physically and with himself.

Happy.

That’s the word he keeps coming back to.

For so long, their word was normalcy. All they wanted was for everything to go back to normal. After everything, they’re happy. They still have their difficult days, all of them still in therapy and still struggling some days, but they’re happy.

“Daddy,” Ada yells from the shore, getting up and nearly kicking over the tower on her sandcastle much to Emma’s dismay, “I want to go surfing too.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know how to surf, love bug,” he sighs, unstrapping Henry’s ankle wrap so that he can stand up on his own. “We only have this paddleboard.”

“Mommy said it was a surfboard.”

Emma shrugs her shoulders and raises her hands in the air while her lips press into her skin and her brows raise. “That’s my bad. I forgot the name for it. I was stuck somewhere between boogie board and surf board, so I feel like I was close enough.”

“Not really,” Henry adds in.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m never right. I get it.”

“Daddy,” Ada whines again as she runs up to him and wraps her arms around his calf, weighing him down so that he has to kick up to walk, “please. I want to.”

He glances over to Emma to see what she has to say since they really need to get back up to the house, and when she nods her head, he reaches down and picks Ada up to rest on his hip as he grabs Henry’s paddleboard, which they have been decidedly not using the paddle for. Henry just got the thing last week, and they’re still working on coordination.

“Five minutes,” he tells Ada, pulling at her braided pigtails while wading out until he’s waist deep in the water.

“That’s not very long.”

“Well, we’ve got to get inside to get food in your tummy.”

“I like food.”

“You and me both.”

He steadies the board on the nearly still water before sitting Ada down on it. He already knows that she’s going to topple over into the ocean, but her lips are pursed in that way that she gets from Emma that means she’s determined to do something.

“Alright, love,” he tells her as he stands her up, one hand wrapped around her stomach while the other stays steady on the board, “you have to stay still and suck in your tummy like you do on the balance beam at gymnastics, yeah?”

“I know.” “Oh, well if you know then.”

“I do. You have a lot of hair on your tummy, Daddy.”

“Your mummy likes that hair.” “That’s weird.”

“No, it’s not. I like the hair on you head.”

Ada sighs while he gently moves her around as he keeps her wobbly legs from falling as much as he can. She’s such a little spitfire, and that’s not at all what he was expecting for how calm of a baby she was.

It’s payback for something. It has to be.

“But it’s on my head and not on my tummy. Mommy doesn’t have hair on her tummy. You’re like a bear.”

He laughs underneath his breath before he lets go of the board to run his fingers over Ada’s stomach, making her giggle and lose her footing until she falls onto the board, the air escaping her for a moment as she lands on her bottom. He stands her up once more, but she never quite gets over her giggling fit, so he makes the executive decision that their time is up and they can go inside. Grabbing Ada, her props her up on his shoulders and grabs the board so they can walk back up onto the sand where Emma and Henry are already packing up their things.

“Nathanial, my man, why are you not helping out?” “Babe,” Emma groans, throwing her head back as she puts some of Nathan’s toys in his bag, “his name is not Nathanial. It’s Nathan, and we call him Nate. I don’t know why you insist on calling him Nathanial like he’s a little old man from two centuries ago.”

He plops Ada down on the ground with the paddleboard. “Because it bothers you, my darling wife,” he sighs, dipping his head enough so that he can slide his lips over hers, the taste of salt water and a little bit of sunscreen consuming him. “And I believe I promised to bother you every single day in my vows.”

“That is not at all what happened.”

“It’s not,” Henry adds in, walking up to her with his float wrapped around his waist and his hair lying flat on his head. “You guys said the normal vows or whatever because I remember you talked about it forever.”

“Hey now, lad, you were very excited for your mum and I get to married. You can’t act like you weren’t.”

“Yeah, but I was nine, and I didn’t realize how gross you two were then.”

Emma looks at him, and he shrugs, his brows waggling across his forehead. Such a pre-teen. “Ada bug, why don’t you go give your big brother a kiss?”

“Please no,” Henry whines, already closing his eyes while Ada nods her head and practically pounces on Henry, scrambling up into his arms until she’s placing a smattering of wet, sloppy kisses all over Henry’s face. He always acts like he hates it, but he doesn’t. Even when he’s moody because his siblings are so much younger than him and he has to watch children’s shows, he would do absolutely anything for his younger siblings.

He’s a good kid. The best kid who he absolutely loves with his entire heart.

“Henry,” Ada giggles, “stop tickling me.”

“Stop kissing me.”

“Fine,” Ada huffs until Killian is grabbing her out of Henry’s arms and resting her on his hip as both Emma and Nate laugh behind them. “Daddy, can we go get food now?”

“Absolutely, my love. You have to go pack up your things, though, okay? Pick up all of the toys.”

It takes far longer to clean up all of their things than it should, but that always seems to happen whenever they let the kids help with things like that. It’s so much easier to do things themselves, but Henry and Ada have to know to clean up their own things. And they’re not on a timeline today anyways, so it’s fine as they take their time getting everything together and walking back up to the house. As always, getting Ada showered in their outdoor shower is a struggle with her squirming away from the cold water, but he’s got to get the sand off of her before she tracks it through the house.

That happened once, and he swears the rug in the living room has never quite been the same.

“Mom, can we have grilled cheese for lunch?” Henry asks after they’ve all showered and changed into dry clothes. Emma’s simply in her pajamas, one of his t-shirts and a pair of loose shorts, and he can see her hair already curling as it dries down her back. It’s gotten curlier since they moved here, and he quite likes the way it snaps back into place after he runs his fingers through it. “I really want grilled cheese.”

“Sure. Your dad will make it because I have to feed Nate.”

“No,” Henry and Ada yell at once, and he can’t help the little sting of insult that rushes through him. “He makes it with the weird cheeses,” Henry finishes, repeating their conversation from earlier.

“I will only make it with the cheese you guys like,” he promises with a roll of his eyes as he picks Nate up from his playmat and hands him over to Emma, “but you guys also have to eat some kind of vegetable.”

“I like carrots.”

“Okay, we’ll just go with the orange foods today then.”

He turns some music on his phone, one of his playlists that he knows doesn’t have cursing in it, and plays it over a little speaker they keep in the kitchen while both Ada and Henry sit at the island scrolling through an iPad as they play whatever game they’ve agreed on lately. Emma is sitting with Nate in the living room, and when he turns around, he can easily see her. That’s one of his favorite things about this house, the openness of it all. Their entire downstairs is basically one large room with a bathroom hidden in the back, and it makes everything seem much larger despite this house being smaller than their last one. Most of their old furniture remains, the same gray couch and loveseat with the brightly colored armchair all sitting in the living room with a white and gray striped rug (the one Ada stained) underneath it. The television rests above a white brick fireplace, and it’s all backed up to a few floor-to-ceiling windows that give a view of the ocean. There are curtains that they close at night or when they want privacy, but rarely does he want to not have the view of the water.

A part of him would like to say the house is clean, but Nathan’s toys are scattered everywhere no matter how often they’re put away in their bins, Ada’s joining them, and even though Henry mostly keeps his things in his room, occasionally some of his belongings will make their way downstairs. It’s definitely a home that’s lived in, and he can get over his far too rigid ways for that.

There are too many awful, difficult things in the world for him to be constantly worrying about everything being clean all the time even if cleanliness is something he’s trying to instill in his children.

It’s a balancing act.

He finishes cooking for everyone, cutting up the sandwiches in everyone’s preferred ways and piling the plates with vegetables before sliding over the plates and cups of water to Ada and Henry, hoping that Ada won’t manage to spill her water. After they’re fed, he takes Emma’s plate over to her and places it on the end table so that she can eat too. He’ll fix himself something later once the smell of processed cheese is out of the air.

Nathan starts whining, the beginnings of a cry that he recognizes and usually dreads.

“Oh no, kid,” Emma sighs when he unlatches and his wails get a little louder. She gets up from the chair, pulling her t-shirt down in the process, and starts walking him around. “Don’t cry. We’re happy, aren’t we? We just ate, Nate. Ooh that rhymes, see? You should like rhyming. You probably don’t get it, but that fine.”

His wails calm down to quiet sniffles as Emma sways him back and forth to the sound of the music, dancing with their son until he quiets down. He’s a good baby, a little fussier than Ada was, but he’s generally pretty happy. It helps that this is their first child where nothing crazy has happened in the months after their birth, so they’re calmer, their stress levels much lower. They’ve got a pretty relaxed life, and that’s exactly what he wants.

“You used to be louder than that,” he overhears Henry tell Ada from behind him.

“I was not,” she protests.

Killian laughs to himself before rising from the couch and moving to stand in front of Emma, motioning for her to hand him Nate. She does, passing him off with a smile before she settles down in the armchair, curling her legs up underneath her as she takes a bite out of her sandwich.

“Now, Nate,” he says, swaying his hips from side to side and poking his son’s nose, “there is a secret to dancing. Sometimes you can be silly and move your arms and your bottom however you want, but then other times there’s a specific flow of how to dance. Your mum is a natural at dancing, but I believe that’s because she picked a partner who knew what he was doing.”

“You’re full of yourself.”

“No, no, I am not.” Nate babbles at him before reaching up to grab at his face, his little smile so happy when he was red faced moments ago. “You see, I used to have to go to military balls, my boy, and one time I had the pleasure of dancing with your mother. She nearly stepped on my toes, but I made sure that she didn’t. It was all very romantic.”

“We weren’t even dating at the time.”

He winks at Emma. “Doesn’t mean I didn’t think it was romantic.”

He keeps moving around with Nate while Emma eats, trying to keep him occupied. He’s attached to Emma, is always wanting to be with her, so it’s always a bit of a bonus for Nathan to be so happy when Killian’s playing with him and Emma’s just a few feet away. Ada joins in, deciding she wants to dance too, and while Henry doesn’t really have any interest, he settles down on the couch until Emma pulls him up and forces him to join her. He’s reluctant about it, but he does it.

Eventually they all get tired out, so Emma closes the curtains and turns on a movie, letting Nathan sleep on her chest and Ada nap at her side while he and Henry debate if Spiderman or Batman would be better at saving the town if they were to ever come under any danger. Henry has had to grow up quickly because of the circumstances of his life, but it’s comforting for him to get to have these little conversations about something as inconsequential as superheroes.

(Spiderman would definitely be better.)

The rest of their day is spent lazily, only getting up to eat or use the restroom, and by the time night falls, they’ve got Ada and Nathan sleeping and Henry settled in his room reading one of his books with the promise to turn off the lights before ten. He knows it won’t happen, but he can hope.

Walking through their bedroom, he makes his way to the bathroom where Emma is standing in front of the mirror spraying something in her hair before she attempts to brush out the tangled curls. He knows it’s not fun because he did the same for Ada after taking her braids out, and it was a mess. When she curses under her breath at a knot, he steps forward until he’s swaying into her space and pressing their bodies together while his hands press up under her shirt to splay over her stomach, her skin warm from the sun she got this morning.

“Hi,” he whispers before dragging his lips across her neck, tasting the salt that still remains on her skin as she leans back into him. There will never be a more beautiful, loving woman, and he’s grateful that she’s his every day.

“Hi.”

“The kids are asleep.”

“That tends to happen at night.”

He hums in agreement before pressing another kiss to her neck as his hands wander up her stomach to her breasts, running his fingers over her nipples while Emma arches her back into him. “You know what else tends to happen at night?”

“Late night talk shows.”

“Tease,” he laughs, stopping his ministrations and resting his chin on her shoulder so that he can look at the two of them in the mirror. His eyes are immediately drawn to the little bit of gray peppering in his hair, just at the temple, and as much as Emma tells him that he’s beginning to be her silver fox, he’s not overly fond of this proof of aging, especially when his wife and his children are still so young and vibrant. “Today was a good day.”

“It was,” Emma agrees, reaching her hand up to scratch at the back of his head that sends shivers down his spine. “I wish you had off of work more often during the summers so we could have days like this.”

“It’s my busy season.”

“I know, I know. I like eating too much for us not to have jobs.”

“And the roof over our head.”

“Yeah, that too,” she chuckles before she manages to grab the corner of his lips with hers. “Give me ten minutes, and I’ll come to bed, okay?”

“I like that plan.”

He lets Emma brush through her hair and wash her face while he brushes his teeth and washes his own face, slipping out of his sweats so that he’s only wearing his boxers before leaving the bathroom and moving to settle down under the plush white comforter in their bedroom. It’s still early enough for them not to be in bed, and he knows that he has laundry to do, but he’ll let that slide until tomorrow. It takes him a few minutes to find something on television to watch, settling on reruns of Seinfeld, and Emma joins him, laying her head against his chest and wrapping her arms around his stomach while he plays with her untangled hair as they sit in silence for a few minutes, the lights on the screen flickering in the dim lights of the room.

“We need to get Henry packed for his camp tomorrow. And Ada has a gymnastics class at the same time that I need to be dropping Henry off.”

“I can take Ada. I don’t have to be at work until ten on Monday.”

“That works for me, but don’t forget her - ”

“Scrunchie. Aye, I know, love,” he promises, dipping his head down to kiss the top of Emma’s hair. “I know how she absolutely has to have her hair done. She’s a particular lass.”

“I wonder where she gets that from.”

“Obviously not me.”

Emma pats his stomach and turns her head to kiss his chest. “Sure, babe. You’re never particular about anything.”

“Never.”

His hand travels down her back to run over her ass, lightly teasing the firm skin before he drags his fingers back up, scratching at her skin. He doesn’t have any devious intent, simply moving his hand up and down Emma’s body because it’s relaxing to her in the times when he’s not riling her up. And if it happens to bring a little energy back to them as they’re half asleep.

“You know, Mrs. Jones, I’ve been thinking.”

“That’s never a good thing.”

“It is at least one out of every ten times.”

“That’s debatable.”

“Anyways,” he laughs, cupping her chin and tilting her head up so that his thumb rubs over the indent in her chin and he can look into her eyes, “I was thinking that it’s such a shame that I never did get to take you as my date to one of the military balls we attended. We could have gotten dressed up, danced all night until you had me carrying your shoes because your feet hurt. You deserve nights like that.”

“Killian, we got married in my mom’s living room when we could have had a big party wearing nice clothes where we danced all night and got drunk off our asses. I don’t...it would have been great to get to go to those balls together, to have the fancy nights out, but I don’t need any of that. It’s so much better for you and me to do stupid dances in the living room with our kids. I couldn’t ask for more because I love you, and I’m happy.”

He dips his head to slide his lips over hers, quick and warm and insistent, but he likes it most of all because he can feel her smile mixed in with his.

“My love, your happiness is all I desire.”

“Same.”

“That’s not quite as eloquent.”

“Yeah, well, eloquence was never in the deal when you signed up for this package.”

He smiles at her, pressing forward to kiss her one more time as their noses brush together. “I’m more than good with that.”

#rising from the ashes #cs fic #cs ff #captain swan fic #captain swan

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