#they were blocking off the exit for one of our neighbors

[simplyghosting]

Train engine and caboose

[hwanchaesong]

Love Scenario

Jeong Yunho X Reader

genre & warnings: fluff, angst, historical au! (kind of like forbidden love), mentions of illness, death/killing, betrayal and heartbreak, bittersweet ending lmao

word count: 3.1k

a/n: here ya go~ @marievllr-abg i chose Yunho for this one cuz i can really imagine him in a historical au 😭 hope you like it! to anyone who wants to request, these are the rules. thank you 🫶

You rolled your eyes for the fifth time that day, adjusting your outfit and trying to block the words that keep on coming out of your mother's mouth.

"Oh! And make sure not to go over the river, that is not our territory anymore. They might kill y-"

"Mom." you called out for her, cutting off her sentence and giving her a hug. You felt her tense body relax for a bit, "It'll be fine. I'm old enough to know all the rules of our land."

Your mother sighed, finally hugging you back, "Just make sure to follow all of it, it's dangerous out there, honey."

You gave her a squeeze and pulled away, a large grin broke out on your face before you hurriedly picked up your things when you heard the call of your trainer.

"I'll come back to you mom, safe and sound, I promise." you pecked her cheek and bade her goodbye, running downstairs that you almost bumped to your brother.

"Watch where you're going! Oh? Is it today?" the prince of your kingdom, Mingi, inquired.

"Yep!" you gleefully replied as your giant of a brother waved you off, murmuring a soft 'take care' before going on his own way.

You understand why your family protects you so much, the only princess of your land. They still see you as their fragile and sickly girl, and you can't blame them for that. You had been terribly ill as a child, god almost took you from your them one time, but that was long ago! Now, you're a strong and healthy lady, ready to be independent.

Your kingdom has this coming of age tradition, in which all of the young highnesses were allowed to explore the entirety of the nation, including the vast forests and cold seas. Accompanied by a veteran trainer trusted by the monarchs, this will last for two days and three nights.

You were beyond excited and nervous as your feet took you to your father's chamber, wanting his blessing before you go.

You opened the grand doors of the room, your father's eyes crinkling with happiness when he saw you, "Ah, my princess is all grown up."

You giggled, coming up to him and wrapping your arms around him, your father immediately reciprocating the action, "I was actually waiting for this my whole life."

"I know, I know." he cleared his throat and you took this as a sign to get serious. You pulled away and bowed down, watching as he took a sword and unsheathed it, the blade gently touching your shoulders alternately as your father chanted akin to that of a prayer.

"May you do great as always, my daughter." you looked up and saw the sword being handed to you. With determination in your eyes, you gratefully accepted the sword, "Yes, I will father."

Upon exiting the palace, your trainer slash cousin Seungcheol is already waiting for you in front of the carriage. "There you are, now come so we'll arrive at the destination before afternoon."

During the trip, you can't help but miss your family already, your cousin's words drowning under your thoughts.

"So that happens when you pass the river- Hey! Hey! Okay then, don't listen to me." he sulked, crossing his arms like a child.

You turned to him and tapped his biceps, laughing a bit, "I'm sorry, I'm just thinking."

"About what?"

"Hm," you put a hand under your chin, "about the river something?" you smiled sheepishly, earning a groan from Seungcheol.

"I'll repeat it, listen carefully this time!"

You nodded your head, full attention on the male in front of you.

"Pretty sure that you already know about the 'no trespassing the river' rule because of some ghosts." you laughed a bit when his tone went sarcastic. "In reality, it was said that an assassin from the neighboring kingdom lives just beyond that boundary. So never step foot in there in order to stay alive."

You listened well to him. Followed all the advice that everyone told you. But when left alone while exploring, (Seungcheol told you to get yourself familiar with the area while he set up the camp) a tiny curiosity couldn't help but creep within your insides.

And what do they always say? Curiosity killed the cat. Well no, but an arrow almost killed you.

If you were to explain yourself, you were just mesmerized at the beauty of the plains that you completely forgot all about the rules and regulations. C'mon, those pretty wild flowers were practically begging to be picked and made into a flower crown. You didn't realize that the said river was already in front of you, carelessly crossing over it when an arrow suddenly went 'woosh!' right beside your head.

You are doomed. So doomed and frankly, you are more scared of Seungcheol's scolding than the dilemma at hand.

A sharp edge was felt behind your head and you supposed that it was the arrow of the perpetrator, "Who are you and what do you need in here?"

You broke into a cold sweat, racking your brain for some sort of lie that you could make up on the spot, "I um, I am.. a-a merchant?"

The stranger raised an eyebrow, "You don't seem so sure of your own occupation."

You straightened up and cleared your throat, "A merchant."

The man behind you scanned your figure before heaving a sigh, lowering his weapon down and giving you a warning, "Well, Miss Merchant, I suggest you leave as soon as possible. This is not a place for commoners like you."

You heard him scuffling before picking up his footsteps. Now, you consider yourself a logical person. Someone who thinks before doing some things, but as of the moment, it seems like you love to surprise yourself even more.

"Excuse me, sir!" you acted before you could think. Turning around and catching a glimpse of him before he could walk away from you.

And my god was he beautiful.

His skin glows under the afternoon sunlight, casting an orange hue over his soft yet sharp features that made him appear ethereal.

"What is that you want?" he asked, tone annoyed at your persistence.

You dumbly pointed over to the flowers, "I um," you winced when you realized that you stammered for the second time since you met with the guy, "those flowers. My family told me that they cost a lot, so would you please allow me to gather some before I leave."

His eyes scanned the area before he walked towards the fields, motioning for you to follow him. You smiled a bit, running after him and you couldn't help but observe him a bit more.

He is incredibly tall, heck, he could even match your brother's height! And it's not like you're bragging, but your lovely brother is considered the tallest in your kingdom.

You were so deep into your thoughts that you didn't notice him halt, causing you to bump into his broad back.

"Ouch!" you yelped, earning yourself a glare from him.

"Are you always this much of a klutz?" he pinched the bridge of his nose before pointing downwards, "Now gather. We don't have all day."

You hastily plucked some flowers, and when you were done, you thanked the man and sprinted out of there. You were scared shitless, his voice was cold and the way he looks at you was dangerous.

It doesn't take a genius to know who the man is. He was the infamous assassin that killed many of your nation's skilled knights. You weren't even sure where you got the courage to ask him a favor, let alone talk to him.

Only a few seconds of your marathon, a hand gripped your wrist.

Dear lord, are you gonna die?

You are so young. You still have a lot to do in this lifetime. How you wished you listened to your mother and cousin. If only you weren't so-

"You dropped this."

Oh?

You spun on your heels and saw his outstretch hand, handing you a red tulip that may have escaped your small bag. You cautiously took the flower in his hand, gazing at it intently, and when you were about to thank him.. he was gone.

When you got back to the camp, your ears almost got busted by Seungcheol. Your cousin was talking nonstop, asking questions here and there, and when you had enough, you escaped from him by pretending to be tired and sleepy.

Although, drowsiness didn't visit you. The man that you met earlier is fogging your mind, and in the midst of your stupidity, you decide to go back and meet him once more the next day.

Thus, the position you're in as of now.

"Why are you here again?" the tall man went closer to you, he had you pinned on a tree and a knife on your neck.

You grunted when he pushed you further into the tree, "It's either you tell me what you really want or you'll die right here."

The blade sunk deeper into your skin. Deeper. Deeper.

"I'm interested in you."

The blade stopped.

He squinted his eyes at you, doubting what he heard, "Pardon?"

"I said," you took a deep breath, "I am interested in you."

He scoffed, not believing your words, "You must be crazy." he lets you go, putting his knife back into his pocket.

"You must be too," you bite back, "seeing that you stopped attacking me."

He turned to you once more, willing himself to act civil in front of you, "What's your name, woman?"

"Y/N, and you?"

"Yunho. Jeong Yunho."

He doesn't know why and how, but as much as he hates to admit it, he does have this inkling inquisitiveness about you as well.

He couldn't get you out of his mind since he saw you yesterday. You with your bright eyes and innocent demeanor.

It wasn't a coincidence that his arrow missed, heck, he was the most vicious killer out there, yet he didn't put an end into your life.

He broke the first rule of his job, 'kill all intruders that dare to step in their kingdom's territory.'

And now, he is breaking the second rule, 'never give true information about yourself to anybody.'

"Yunho." your voice sends shivers down his spine, loving the way you say his name.

"Yeah?"

You gave him a dazzling smile, one that could potentially blind him if possible, "Would you be a dear and show me around?"

You bet he did.

With a bit of hesitance and convincing on your part, he accepted your offer.

He showed you every nook and cranny of the forests, shores and fields, and you enjoyed every moment with him.

At first, you were done doing all the talking. He had his guard up the whole time, but when lunch time came and you brought out a whole ass meal... dude became a whole different person.

He was beaming like a little kid, munching away and at the end of it, you were the victor as he gave you a compliment about your food (no, you did not cook it, credits are rightfully given to Seungcheol).

The peak of your hang out with him was when he led you to a secluded area on the top of a hill, the sunset showcasing its grace.

"Woah, it's beautiful." you murmured, mesmerized at the scenery.

"It is." his gaze went over to you, and he thinks that he must have been blessed if he's able to see such a lady like you.

"Hey." your voice brought him out of his daydream, "I wanna give you this." you pulled out a flower crown from your bag, abruptly putting it on his head that caught him off guard.

"You look pretty in that." you snickered, standing up and dusting off your dress.

"You're going?" he asked, still in a daze to what is happening.

"Yes. It's almost seven, I have to go or else that man will end up scolding me again."

'That man?'

Yunho could feel the familiar green monster creeping up on him, thus, he followed you home.

He was surprised when you hugged a guy, laughing and talking to him like he means the world to you. He won't accept that.

Last night that you'll be able to meet with him, and you surely did not expect him to put you in this position.

"Yunho? What are you doing?" you questioned him, his body awfully close to yours.

"I should ask you that question. Who was that man you were with last night?"

Ah, so he was jealous.

You cup his cheeks, a soft expression on your face, "That was my cousin, you fool."

Yunho was relieved to say the least, no competition on his part.

"Thank god."

It was the irony of the situation that made it ridiculous of him to thank the heavens. He was so sure that the deities out there resent him for everything that he had done, even up to this moment, the facade he had been keeping.

Truly, he was a fool, and so are you. Allowing a murderer like him to hold you like this. Allowing the close proximity between your faces, lips close enough to touch, breaths mingling with each other.

"Y/N!" a booming, familiar voice startled the both of you. Your heart was beating so fast, you think it'll leap outside of your chest any minute now.

"You fucker!" Seungcheol jumped from the trees, ready to slash Yunho "How dare you lay a hand on her!"

Luckily, Yunho's flexibility is excellent, easily reacting from the other male's attack and pushing you away at the same time.

"No, Seungcheol!" you yelled, trying to alleviate the situation.

"He's-"

"Shut it, Y/N. I knew something was up when you avoided my questions the other night." he countered, eyes full of rage.

"Seungcheol, please listen to me." you plead, eyes getting watery to the situation presented in front you.

Your cousin paid no mind to you, turning his body to Yunho, fully drawing his sword out and getting ready to fight the assassin.

"What are you planning?" he questioned the larger guy's intentions, "You knew this girl you're with is the princess of your rival nation."

He knew who you were?

"My plan's ruined now, I guess." a smirk made its way to Yunho's lips. His dark eyes focused on you two, "I just want some information, to be honest."

Information? From you?

Your head was spinning and you felt like throwing up, "What is happening?" you bumbled, making Yunho raised an eyebrow.

"You really are dumb aren't you? You think I'll be with you if you're a commoner?"

Tiny pieces of your heart are shattered. So this is what getting your heart broken feels like.

You didn't notice the tears that rolled down your cheeks. You didn't notice the way Yunho widened his eyes with regret.

"You insolent little-!" Seungcheol charged forward, keen on killing the assassin, or at least hurt him. It was effective, seeing that Yunho was distracted.

"Tch." Yunho leaped away, preparing to depart, "You'll pay for this wound you gave me, Choi Seungcheol. I'll be back."

He gave you one last look, then he was gone.

"I can't believe you were this close to death. What were you thinking, making contact with a menace like him!?" your mother wailed beside your bed, holding your hands tightly.

You heard her, but you were too out of it to even give a coherent reply.

You were used. Deceived. Broken.

Mixed emotions and thoughts swirling around your heart and mind, you were such a dimwit. Thinking that you could change a man like him, or maybe he could treat you differently.

Outside the palace, you could hear the shouts of the men, chaos ensuing all over as the order to capture Jeong Yunho was issued.

"Get him!"

"Find everywhere! Anywhere!"

"If you can't capture him, kill him. That is an order!"

"Your majesty!" a guard knocked on your door, "The king wants to have a conversation with you."

Your mother stood up, glancing at you worriedly before walking out, "I'll be back soon, honey. Wait for me."

You were unmoving for a few minutes when loud thumping resonated from your window. You were alarmed, but still went over to your window.

You got the shock of your life when you saw the person outside.

Jeong Yunho.

His expression says it all, practically begging you to open up and let him in. To let him explain.

So you did, knowing how weak you are for him.

"Y/N!" he enveloped you in his arms, savoring the moment.

"Yunho." your arms automatically clung to him, "Yunho!" you sobbed. You couldn't let go of him.

"This will be quick Y/N. Listen to me and please, please believe everything that I will say."

You nodded and he leaned his head forward, his forehead resting against yours. "I am truly sorry for what I said the other day. I didn't mean it."

"Really?" you whispered, wanting more assurance from him.

"Yes. I will never mean that. I just.. I just have to keep an act. I have to do it in order to protect you."

He knows that if he spelled his realest, deepest feelings for you during his encounter with Seungcheol, you'll be in bigger trouble. He doesn't want that to happen to you, he wants you to live comfortably, even if it means that he'll go through hell for it.

You didn't know what to say, you were at a loss for words, and he took it as his cue to continue.

"I am sorry. I-"

"Someone has broken in!" a shriek outside made him flinch, and he knows that he has to end this meeting.

"I will come back for you, I promise. Even if it kills me."

"No!" you wailed, clinging to him even more, "Please stay alive for me."

He couldn't take this anymore, the emotions are bubbling up inside him and there is only one way he knows how to project all of it.

Thus, he kissed you passionately.

Lips moving in sync and the precious moment was cut short when loud footsteps were fast approaching your room.

Then you felt something soft in your head, followed by a last kiss before he disappears into the darkness, "Y/N, I love you. Always remember that."

You gasped when your door opened, your mother and father's concerned gazes bore into you before it traveled onto your head.

"What's that?"

You immediately grabbed the item, salty tears forming in the corner of your eyes upon seeing what it was.

The flower crown that you gave him.

The flowers are starting to wilt, but if you observe closely, one can see that it was taken care of. Handled gently as to not destroy it. Exactly how he held and stared at you for tonight... Tender and full of adoration.

You held it close to your chest, holding back your cries as you pray to anyone who could hear to protect the man that you'll tirelessly wait for.

"I love you too, Yunho."

[butternuggets-blog]

A Quiet Night In

Slow Horses; River/Hobbs/Spider

'What the fuck is that?'

'What does it look like?' said River. 'It's a baby.'

'No-no-no-no-'

Duffy was fast but Hobbs was faster, blocking his boss from exiting while simultaneously swinging Spider outside and depositing him neatly on the top step.

'Don't do this to me, there's a game on for fuck's sake!'

'Then bring the rest of your boys round here,' said River, breezing past. 'I know they've been dying to have a good snoop.'

'She's had a bottle and a nappy change, all you have to do is keep her entertained for a bit until we get back,' Hobbs followed his partners out the door and left Duffy standing in the middle of the hall, metaphorically clutching his pearls and staring at the babbling, gummy blob in the rocker.

________________________________________________________________

They heard the congratulatory cheering halfway up the street.

River, hyper-aware of neighbors, had initially refused Hobbs' pleas to purchase the obnoxiously loud speaker system. Hobbs had gently persuaded River, and Spider, at the same time, several times in a row, to let him have the thing and now it sat pride of place in the living room, directly under the TV.

Spider unlocked the front door to a wall of sound. The Dogs were gathered around the set, shouting and eating snacks while football players ran back and forth onscreen kicking a ball. Duffy was perched above them in an armchair with the baby in his lap; she was wearing noise cancelling headphones and a miniature team jersey.

'-you send in two teams; one round the front to cover the kitchen and laundry, and one round the front to cover the downstairs and upstairs-'

'Are you teaching her about clearing safe houses?' Hobbs bellowed over the din.

'Got to start them off early. Here,' Duffy scooped up the baby and dumped her into Hobbs' arms. 'I'm off for a piss. Don't sit in my chair.'

'This is our house!' River said, but Duffy was already gone.

[ashestoashesjc]

“So,” said their landlord with her lips pursed, her legs crossed, her glasses dipped down the bridge of her nose. “Explain your situation to me. Again.”

“Right,” said Ben. “No problem.” 

Sophie sat beside him on the couch, her hand in his. She gave it a gentle squeeze. Ben hadn’t realized how fast his heart was beating. He squeezed back. 

“There’s not much to explain, really,” he said. “Soph and I are as happy as ever. Happier.” That much was true. 

Sophie added: “And we’re neighborly to a fault. Isn’t that right, Ben? We’ve basically got an open-door policy.” Which was less than true but from the heartiness of Ben's nodding, you’d never guess. 

The landlord sighed. “You’ve said as much.” She pulled off her glasses and pinched the space between her eyes. “Now I’ve never made a habit of laying down rules for guest stay lengths and the like. I trust my tenants to not try and pull one over on me by letting unauthorized persons take up residence in their apartments.”

Sophie and Ben traded shocked expressions, looked at the landlord incredulously, then back to each other. 

“I can’t believe anyone would…” began Sophie, covering her mouth, trailing off, turning away. 

Ben shook his head. “You think you know your neighbors.”

“Yes,” said the landlord, “speaking of your neighbors.” Then flicking out a folded sheet of paper, she stated, “I’ve received numerous reports over the last few months of a man, late 20s, early 30s, seen entering and exiting the complex, your unit specifically, at strange hours, and in various states of undress. Does that sound familiar?”

Sophie caught Ben’s eye and in the space of a millisecond, through the enigmatic power of marital telepathy, they shifted gears. 

“Oh, Mark?” said Sophie, with an air of total relief. 

Ben nodded. “Ah. Yeah. Gotta be Mark.” 

“You know him then?”

“Hardly,” said Ben. “He’s a friend of a friend we let crash occasionally. Uh, down on his luck sort. You know how it is.”

“But our being good Samaritans doesn’t mean we're taking in men off the streets,” said Soph. “We’re not that good.”

“And the suitcases? The bags?” 

“Laundry,” spouted Ben in the same instant as Sophie's wholly confident: “Donations.”

“One, then the other,” said Ben.

“The needy deserve fresh linens too.” 

“Hm,” hummed the landlord. Then “hm” again. “Hm” went on for so long Ben was beginning to worry they’d need to put in a request for a replacement model. Does maintenance cover landlords? 

When she did speak again, it was a strained: “Alright.” But she was adamant that washer and dryer services are only available to residents. She’d be charging them extra for the past several months. If there was nothing else, she was leaving, but she was happy to hear about their “open-door policy” for the next time the complex is in search of event hosts. Oh, and to suggest to their friend that “if he stopped donating so much, he’d have plenty of shirts to wear.”

With that, she was gone. And not a moment too soon. 

“Must’ve just missed her,” Mark said as he plopped onto the couch between Ben and Sophie. Wrapping an arm each around their shoulders, he breathed deep and exhaled loud. “Ahhh. Home sweet home.” 

Mark was a professional temp; construction one day, system-wide file transfers the next. This week, he was assisting a welder, whose usual assistant was on a brief sabbatical while their finger finished reattaching. 

“Not too loud or you’ll get us evicted,” said Ben, prompting Mark to slap his hand over Ben's head, ruffling his hair and blocking his eyes. 

Ben could feel Sophie lean into Mark’s side, could hear him kiss her head. Then Sophie asked, “So, what’s for dinner?” and they spent the next half hour debating whose turn it was to cook, before deciding none of them wanted to move from right where they were.

[mortemoppetere]

TIMING: current LOCATION: outside something wicked news PARTIES: @stainedglasstruth & a mysterious man… SUMMARY: after getting nowhere with wynne, our mystery man decides to approach arden in search of answers instead. CONTENT: none!

The neighbor was, perhaps, the most logical dynamic the man had observed in the new life of Emilio Cortez. It seemed he’d set himself up as an investigator in this town — whether this was a genuine passion or a simple means of making cash remained unclear — and an investigator working side-by-side with a journalist certainly made sense. The relationship clearly wasn’t one that was strictly professional, though. There was a certain back and forth between them, a banter that implied some form of friendship. It was the kind of thing that could be made useful.

Approaching as the hunter’s friends left their places of employment seemed the most effective method. There was little chance of running into the hunter himself, and leaving work for the day tended to leave people relaxed enough to be a little more open. So the man waited outside the newspaper (newsletter? Was that what they were called online?) office for the journalist to exit. When she stepped out, he stepped forward. He held his hands up, palm out; she struck him as the paranoid type. “Excuse me, miss.” His accent was thick, heavy. English wasn’t something he’d practiced, and it showed. “I am hoping to speak with you on something. Is very important.” 

—

Arden liked her job. She didn’t always love it, but she liked it, the process, the research, the editing. It was satisfying work, and she had spent the last several years of her life focusing almost entirely on her career as she avoided facing herself. So it felt strange to notice that she was obsessively checking the clock these days, eager to get back home to Teagan and the cats, or to go catch up with Metzli or drop in on Leila or hang out with Wynne or whatever it was she happened to be doing on any given day. 

That day, she was just ready to get back to the cabin, and curl up in bed and take a damn nap– preferably with Teagan. As she stepped out, though, she almost immediately found her path blocked by a man stepping forward. Despite the winter gear and the poor posture he was clearly rather buff, and he was taller than her for sure. Judging by his appearance and the slight wrinkles, she’d guess he was Latine, probably somewhere in his late 40s or 50s. And, man, he had a mean look on his face. 

It was clear he'd been waiting outside the office to approach whoever was leaving, which made her feel slightly wary, but wasn’t alarming enough to set off alarm bells quite yet– though the raised hands almost felt more suspicious than a normal approach. A precaution, maybe, to counteract the resting bitch face? Either way, if he was hanging around the office, it was likely business related to the paper. 

“And what would that be?” Arden asked, looking up at him, brow raised. 

—

There was no greeting, no hello, but he supposed that was to be expected. Americans had a reputation of rudeness, after all, and the man had approached with little warning. Besides that, he suspected that anyone who spent a considerable amount of time around hunters were bound to inherit some of that patented paranoia. (Did she know, he wondered? Did she have any idea what her neighbor got up to in his free time? The things he’d done, the things he likely continued to do now… Was she ignorant, or complacent? Either way, he thought, it was sure to say something about her.) 

He tried for a smile, but it was an unpracticed thing. Clumsy and unnatural, like it had been carved onto his face by force. If anything, it looked like more of a grimace. Most expressions did, these days. It was difficult to manage anything else. The last few years had been especially hard on him, after all. 

He made no move to get closer to her. The last thing he wanted was for her to run, to have to chase her down or to have her call the hunter and end all of this before it could begin at all. He needed her — and the rest of them — unassuming. Or, as close to it as he could hope to make them. The man had never been particularly good at coming off as nonthreatening; it wasn’t in his nature, and it was difficult to sell such a monumental lie. Still, he made some attempt. He allowed the distance to remain between them, allowed that grimace of a smile to remain on his face. “Is about a friend you have,” he said. “A neighbor. Emilio Cortez?” He watched her expression carefully, waiting to see if there was any shift there, any change. Even the smallest details could give him more information than he had now, and information would be helpful during the inevitable confrontation to come.

—

He seemed to be trying to appear non-threatening with the raised hands and pitiful attempt at a smile, but it only served to assure that she would not be lowering her guard anytime soon. He surprised her, though, with the mention of Emilio. Her brows furrowed slightly as an uneasy feeling settled in her gut, the situation immediately feeling more suspect, more dangerous. 

The man wanted to talk about Emilio. Emilio, who had a knack for finding trouble, making enemies–especially the undead– and pissing people off. (Distantly, Arden remembered Teddy mentioning something about goons.) He knew they were friends, which, granted, they did have public conversations online from time to time, and he knew that they were neighbors, which would’ve been clear had he gone looking for their addresses, regardless of their current living situations. But it meant he’d clearly done at least the bare minimum of looking into them both. He’d even sought her out at work.

She didn’t like this.

“Can I ask what this is about?” she asked, trying not to let her nerves show. She was hyper aware of the knife in her coat pocket, the familiar weight of it a slight comfort. It would be ballsy to try to attack her immediately in front of the paper offices, but, well, she was just human, and the man was large. There was only so much she’d be able to do about it. 

—

He saw it happen. He saw her guard shoot up even further, saw those already impressive walls grow in magnitude. He hadn’t gotten much from the kid, but he felt like he’d at least walked away with a little more than he’d had before that conversation. But here? With her? The man had a feeling he’d be getting nothing from this. It wouldn’t dissuade him from trying, of course. The stakes were too high to walk away without so much as an attempt. Even if the reporter was closed off and unwilling to share, there was always an attempt she might let something slip unintentionally, between the words. The man was good at picking up on those things.

So he kept that forced, unnatural smile firm on his face, he shrugged a shoulder. “Not very interesante, I think. I knew him back in México. Would like to catch up with him here, but, ah…” He trailed off with a hapless shrug. “He is… hard to approach, no? Best to know what… state he is in before trying to say hello.” He’d yet to actually lay eyes on the hunter as of yet — he wasn’t sure how he’d react, even from a distance — but he’d gathered a few nuggets of information here and there. After what happened in Mexico, the hunter was bound to be on edge. It would do the man no good to ignite his plans half-cocked, with no information on his side. If he wanted this to go his way, he needed to know everything he could.

It started here. With the reporter, with the kid, with whatever friends or acquaintances the man could approach without giving himself away. Tangaroa wasn’t the threat he would have been years ago, but unapproachable all the same. The man didn’t particularly want to tangle with the rangers the hunter seemed to have been spending time with, either, or the other slayers. Keeping to humans for now, the kind with no enhanced senses to speak of… That was his best bet. Even if those humans were as guarded as the reporter seemed to be. “I’d just like to know… what state he’s in these days. How he is doing.” He heard the hunter walked with a limp now. It seemed to track with the massacre. It seemed like it could be useful, if it needed to be. But emotional state… that would be handy to know. That was the sort of thing you could only learn by asking. 

—

There was something about his tone, his phrasing, that didn’t sit right with her. Maybe she was just being paranoid, but it felt like he was trying to play this off casually, keyword: play. The explanation didn’t really make sense, either. If he was a friend– a word he hadn’t said, she noted– why wouldn’t he just go say hello? Why come to her? And why would he need to know Emilo’s state?

She really didn’t like this. 

Her mouth twitched at the ‘hard to approach’ comment, so she leaned into it, allowing it to grow into a smile that she hoped seemed somewhat sincere as she back on how she had confidently strode into Axis so many months back. “Oh, are you an old friend, then?”

Someone from Mexico, though… 

Emilio hardly ever mentioned his home, his past. Arden hadn’t heard the entirety of the confrontation he’d had with Teagan at the cabin months ago, but it was her understanding that hunters had killed his family, same as the nix. They hadn’t spoken about it, though, and she knew nothing of the details, didn’t know what had happened or when, or if there was even more tragedy in his past. All she knew was that Rhett was the only family he had left …and she had caught him fidgeting with a ring a few nights when they’d had too much to drink. Other than that, though, she just knew he’d left two years ago. There certainly hadn’t been any mention of friends. 

“How nice of you to check in on him,” she continued. After a moment, she cocked her head to the side. “You know, I don’t think I caught your name.”

—

It felt like a game between the two of them; a chess match that he doubted either of them was entirely prepared for. How much did the reporter know about the hunter’s past, he wondered? It was unlikely he’d go into detail, if his patterns over the last two years were to be taken into account. The hunter stayed in a town only as long as he needed to before moving on to the next. But Wicked’s Rest was already an outlier, wasn’t it? He’d stayed here long enough for the man to catch up with him, put down enough roots for there to be reporters and kids and friends to approach with questions. Maybe he’d broken his usual pattern in other ways, too. Maybe the reporter knew more than he’d assumed she did. That was an answer all its own, wasn’t it? The hunter had people here. 

It was a good thing to know.

“Friend, yes. Something like that,” the man replied, his smile tightening around the edges just a little. It would have been easier if these people were only associates, he was realizing. Friends asked too many questions, had protective streaks. But the hunter didn’t seem to have gathered a good deal of casual associates; he was inspiring a loyalty in this town that was surprising to say the least. The man hadn’t thought him entirely capable of it. 

More unwelcome inquiries. The man shrugged again, noncommittal. “I didn’t say it,” he replied. “You know, the last time I saw Emilio, he was in… ah… a state. Bad. Not easy to talk to. All I want to know is if he is still so… voluble. If you can’t tell me this, maybe I just go on my way, no?”

—

Arden had seen that look far too many times to miss the way his smile tightened. She was annoying him. He didn’t like her asking questions, clearly, but he should have thought of that before approaching a journalist– this was literally part of her job description. 

Something like that. Like that wasn’t super fucking suspicious. Her lips curled up at the next words out of his mouth. It was almost funny, he didn’t even try to give her some bullshit name, he just wasn’t giving her anything. It hardly seemed fair when he clearly knew hers– he’d come looking for her, after all. She was tempted to say just that, but she didn’t want to anger this stranger. She was already annoying him, and she didn’t know not what he was or what he was capable of. It wasn’t the time to be a smartass, though, she had no doubt that Emilio would disagree were he there.  

Voluble, that one wasn’t in her vocabulary. Damn her terrible Spanish. She was fairly certain she got the gist of it, context clues and all, but she tried to file it away to look up the moment she had the opportunity.

She really wanted to push, wanted to see if she could turn the tables on the man and get him to spill some information, but it was a risky move. There was too much she didn’t know, and the more she spoke the more she risked spilling information herself. Not to mention she would possibly be putting herself in danger. 

No, she needed to be smart about this, quit while she was ahead. 

“I think that might be for the best,” Arden agreed, still in that polite tone of voice. 

—

He was a little surprised at her response. He’d expected her to push more — to try to get more out of him, and to unintentionally give him more in return. But she was smart, it seemed; smarter than he’d given her credit for. Too smart to be running around with hunters, isn’t she? What was someone like this doing associating with a man like Emilio Cortez? There was more to the story here, more to the relationship. There were pieces the man didn’t have, and there was a part of him that wanted to push for those, wanted to take things apart bit by bit until he held more of the puzzle than she did. 

But doing this would mean giving her something in return. She was too smart to walk away with nothing, and he was too desperate to give up anything that he had. He wanted the upper hand when he finally approached the hunter firsthand; giving away too much here would mean losing it. Nothing was worth that. Not even satiating his desperate curiosity. 

So, hating it a little, the man nodded his head. “Perhaps there are others I can ask, then.” Doubtlessly, the journalist and the kid would put two and two together that the same person had been in contact with them both; the man remembered uncovering a shared address between the two when he was in the earliest stages of his fact-finding mission. He wondered if they would approach the hunter separately or together, or if the kid had told him already. Would the next person he approached see him coming? Time, he thought, would be the only thing to tell.

He took a step backwards, not taking his eyes off the journalist, not turning his back. A hand in her pocket — would she go for her cell phone, or a weapon? He was confident he could take her in a fight, but it would be a bigger mess than he was hoping to leave behind here. It would almost certainly expose him to the hunter with less doubt than he had working for him now. Not worth it; best to avoid.

“It was nice to be meeting you,” he said politely. “Maybe next time, you’ll have more to say.” Let her take it how she wanted — a threat, or a friendly goodbye? It served the man’s purpose better to confirm neither option.

—

He hadn’t expected her to agree, it seemed. She took a bit of satisfaction from it, the way his eyes narrowed in response. But of course he wouldn’t just approach her, would he? And if he knew about her, he likely knew about Wynne. The thought both worried her and pissed her off, however Arden tried her best to keep it from showing. 

When he moved, her hand went to her pocket, clutching the hilt of the knife in her hand as she watched him slowly back away, staring right back at him. 

“Likewise.” Though, her grip only tightened as he offered his goodbye. A threat. Excellent. “Maybe so,” she replied, offering him another fake smile. 

She didn’t look away, watching his retreat until he disappeared out of sight. And even then, she gave it a moment before turning around and heading back into the office. It was only once she was safely back inside, back pressed to the door, that Arden allowed her face to fall. 

She needed to talk to Emilio.  

[xochitai]

Star Crossing: Animal Valley

Today's Earth object of fascination was: a game. 

Lotor had brought it back—though Kolivan wasn't entirely sure when or where he got it from—and they did have a free day...

So here they were, setting up a device with a small army of adaptors. Surely, that could be simplified, but Lotor insisted it was more authentic this way. Neither were fluent in any of Earth's languages, but they visited their daughter and her family often enough they could open and start a new game without any trouble. The "new game" option always being on top didn't hurt either.

A short animation played before a character creation screen appeared. The default avatar was a stout little thing, with round hands and a large head. Beside is a menu, with several tabs. There were many colors, but few selections of ears. It was a human game, after all, and their ears are rather... standard in shape.

The two ended up making a character that looked like a blend of both of them.

Then they accidentally hit "reset."

—

"So that symbol represents confirmation, the other denial. What does that squiggling one do?"

"Let's see." He clicked it, and a block of text appeared. Between the two of them, they knew about half the words.

He closed it.

—

The screen went dark, and then the character they had finished remaking appears, lying on the ground in a grassy landscape. A creature approaches from the tall grass.

"That one has ears like yours."

"It's not human though."

"I am aware."

Many paragraphs of dialogue passed between the characters. Hopefully, it wasn't anything too important.

—

"Oh, we get a house."

—

"They keep showing that little picture of a crystal."

"We have a counter in the corner."

"Perhaps it's a form of currency?"

—

"I wonder why that text is red?"

—

"How do we owe money? We just arrived."

—

Lotor was muttering to himself, "I'm certain this was labeled as something for leisure. Why would one create a game meant for fun yet start the player off with debt? Is it a sort of teaching device? To warn young ones to be cautious of predatory loan agencies?"

—

They planted a variety of things, mostly around the house. The layout was messy, but it could be fixed later.

—

"A couch? Is that not a leaf?"

—

At some point, a selection of tools had been added to their inventory.

They tried one, and with a click, a chunk of the hill beside them had been removed.

—

There is a pond behind the house now.

—

Another creature appeared, this one very orange compared to the first. They clicked through the dialogue and then the screen went black.

"What did we do?"

But when the screen lit up again, the creature was still there, emerging from a tent, with a small building being constructed behind them.

"I think we got a neighbor."

—

The trees—once just saplings—beside their house had blossomed, and now bore fruit. However, there was something odd amongst the branches.

"What is- that rodent is eating our lemons! Why are you getting out the net?"

"I'm going to catch it."

"It is destroying our fruits!"

"I'm not going to kill it for that!"

—

They decorated a portion of the town before taking a break to explore. At the base of a mountain, they found a cave. They entered, but the only things the screen would display was the glowing outline of the exit and their silhouettes in front of it. They would need some kind of lamp.

—

More colorful creatures joined the town. Some looked almost familiar, but that was probably a coincidence.

—

They found an almost laughably simple way to pay off their debt: a vegetable called "radish" can be sold to a character that randomly appears in the valley for many crystals. Their garden has two rows of them, along with their inventory.

���

There were boards in the center of town, with a character's face and an item. Presumably, the player was meant to retrieve those items. Each had notes, but not many either of them could read in full. Why does that character need so many "apple seeds" though? 85 seems like a lot...

—

The lantern had been crafted; it was time to head into the cave. They descended. Every few levels, the environment changed. First was an abandoned mine, then a natural cave system. Soon, bits of crystal appeared in the walls, that got larger and larger as they went deeper. The crystals started glowing, or at least they seemed to, until they saw the glowing fungi that began covering the passage.

They found the entrance to the next level in the same place it always was, but this time a menu pops up with a bit of text and two symbols: confirm or deny.

They click "confirm."

Yet again, the screen goes dark.

Slowly, a sickly green light swells, revealing a towering fungus, filled with holes where insects fly in and out. It shook, and from it emerged a massive insectoid with sharp mandibles and a pulsing abdomen tipped with a barbed stinger. It noticed the intruders and buzzed with anger. 

Another menu appeared, with pictures of each tool they had obtained so far. One box at the very end was locked—likely the one that would actually be useful.

They paused for a moment to deliberate before choosing the pickaxe. They tried to leave the area as soon as it closed, but the game wouldn't let them.

There was no other choice: they had to fight.

—

It didn't attack directly, not at first. Instead it summoned a flood of buzzing drones from its colony. Frantically, they searched their inventory. Tools were not available, but other items were...

—

They threw a radish at one of the drones. Enraged, it bites the vegetable in half.

Time to start swinging.

—

Thirty seconds later, the drone that bit the radish collapses from the air. The two give each other a knowing look.

—

It took every last one of their radishes, and, if the shaking bar at the top of the screen meant what they thought it did, nearly their life. But they made it out of the cave.

It was morning when they had left, and now the sun is rising over the mountains. They returned to the house, to let the character rest, and passed the orchard, where a rat sits in their lemon tree, feasting. Again.

[noro-noro-noro]

I've genuinely been too lazy to write my dreams down in as much detail as I usually do & it's becoming annoying for me. it's bc I sleep too much when I don't have work on days I don't go in. hey on the bright side my dad said he was leaving on vacation "at the end of the week" so I assumed he meant today Friday but he actually meant Saturday!

anyway\

I was in my 2nd grade classroom but at college age. there was some kind of project where we had to pick a Minecraft seed & go through, but going through the world was actually more like subnautica. the water was clear. there were other divers & less sealife, but there were some. I remembered the cuddle fish & also something similar to the Mesmer but it just looked like floating anime eyes instead, but the lashes were teeth.. anyway once we came back up our seed spawned us the middle of the ocean, but there was a village nearby! I suggested we relocate to the village (we came back into the classroom) but my group members didn't understand they didn't have to build a house at spawn. it would be difficult to do an underwater house anyway... I said I'd go in & show them what I meant, but then the neighboring teacher came over & it was my 7th grade math teacher & he was apparently teaching something about modules and tesselations by using some dark blue origami thing I'd left in his classroom 10+ years ago, but it was fallint apart so he needed me to fix it & I was like yeah sure okay & tried fixing it, but I had no idea what it was that I'd made. the pieces kept slippinf out after I'd slot them together. it was getting annoying.

2. I just finished up at some kind of event with people from high school. I remember a dude named Alton, but he was walking around like color inverted in ms paint. the area was the shopping center with the Arby's that's about 10 min away from home, but the parking lots and in fact the entire layput had changed. it was around evening. I got to my car (it was parked bext.to some lime green jeep & the dude was like wow love the color of your car) (but my car is like plain silver) & started to drive away but he wasn't paying attention & almost walked in front like a moron!

anyway the parking lot was different. I couldn't figure out how to leave. there was some gas station place that also served bbq meat at one exit, which was blocked off & there was a tunnel with stairs heading down where I assumed I wasn't supposed to drive into so I turned around and parked somehwerr else. I was like dang I ca t figure out how to leave so I might as well buy dinner here & went to look for a restaurant I was interested in. there was a man with a quest marker at this one place that had no walls but it did have fluouescence & I was trying to ask about rgeir menu, butbhe was complaining about his fiance or maybe wife. she didn't care for him bc he was too gloomy, but he was gloomy bc she was mean to him & seemed very flighty. I saw there was a locked option under the dialogue tree for "how do I get out of here" called "after the divorce" that was in green, which meant it was positive & would give me an item or advance things somehow like unlocking the door. I remembered in one of the girls speech bubble at the gas station diner, she was complaining about her husband, so I went back down there. it smelled good so I tried to order something while chatting with her, & she was like "you're chill & easy to talk to." but she wasn't getting on the topic of her husband & instead asking what I was ginna order, but the menu she handed me was a scrap of lined paper that just had random stuff written on It & I was like where's the food ....

[denimbex1986]

'Approaching Andrew Haigh’s bewitching “All of Us Strangers,” it’s best to submit to the film’s every whim. This intimate, heartbreaking fantasy centers around an irresistible premise: what if we had more time with someone we lost? Taking it further, Haigh (45 Years) cranks up the emotional stakes: what if that person, those people, weren’t actual angels but warm bodies with the capacity to express true love and dish out judgment and pain in equal measure. Backed by a stunning foursome (Andrew Scott, Paul Mescal, Claire Foy, and Jamie Bell), Haigh’s film earns and rewards the audience’s buy-in. Avoiding rote sentimentality, “Strangers” trades on the considerable chemistry between its key performers (Scott and Foy especially) to spin an imaginative conceit into an extraordinary fable which layers on the heartbreak, offering a complex tribute to love, death and life itself.

Watching a movie in a theater can feel like a public event; but really, it’s a private experience, since each person brings their own histories—all of the hurt, loss, and hope—into a viewing. The moments that sting in “Strangers” might vary from person-to-person, but the suffering rendered is ample, spread fairly evenly among the stars. Far from a dreary downer, Haigh deals with loneliness and loss with a roving, curious eye, going for the jugular and then pulling back, giving all viewers room to process what’s happening on screen and make those fictional maladies our own. At no point does Haigh or any of his game cast feel like they’re overdoing it, nor manipulating emotions for easy tears. The waterworks come, to be sure, but it’s the personal baggage that each viewer carries which will dictate the response, and that’s a testament to the story’s depth.

Of Time Passed and Walls Coming Down

A plot description is necessary, but inadequate: Adam (Andrew Scott) is a blocked writer who lives alone in a London flat. One night, his neighbor Harry (Paul Mescal) introduces himself, knocking on his door and flirting with a bottle in hand. Adam’s flattered, and maybe a bit scared, and above all he needs to get back to work, so he seeks inspiration back where he grew up, taking a train to the suburbs. Once off the train, he follows a mysteriously familiar face—seen exiting a liquor store—back to his childhood home. It’s Adam’s dad (Jamie Bell), mustachioed and looking not a year older than his son. The easygoing banter between the two leads and the warm greeting from Adam’s mum (Claire Foy) at the house overshadows the fact that both of Adam’s parents died in a car accident when he was twelve years old.

The casual reunion slips back to the ‘80s (soundtrack included) with ease, no need to rush discussing the obvious elephant in the room. But, in acknowledging how Adam has grown into a man, dad and mum aren’t ignoring the surreal dreamscape the trio inhabits. Invigorated, or maybe just love-drunk, Adam goes home and invites a sober and embarrassed Harry (“I don’t drink anymore”) over, and the walls quickly come down. That they have sex doesn’t hurt to break the ice, but it’s Harry’s sensitive inquisition and sharing of his own personal history which brings out Adam’s honesty. Adam admits that he hadn’t favored sex (“Because I was afraid it would kill me”) over the years, and when Harry mentions his family, Adam then reveals that both parents were killed decades ago. Harry’s therapeutic grace—neither shocked nor per-formatively pitying—has an almost angelic quality, a foil to Adam’s hardened exterior.

Humanizing the Dead and Paying Respect

Emboldened, and a bit mystified by his abundant companionship, Adam returns home again the next day. When his mum asks if he has a girlfriend, Adam clenchingly delivers the news that he’s gay. Watch this exchange on mute, and the two faces tell all the story. Foy is aghast, stripped of a poker face and making no effort to withhold disappointment, while Adam is wounded, yet continues to reassure mum (“It’s different now”), assuming the role of caretaker when he’s the one who deserves compassion and empathy. The next day, Adam’s father (mum won’t come downstairs to see them) wonders why he didn’t come out when he was younger, and in a shocking admission, tells his son that he probably would have bullied—or at best ignored—a kid like Adam growing up.

No one apologizes for these harsh prejudices, and Haigh’s storytelling skill is evident here, allowing the people to resolve conflict instead of editorializing or inserting some heavy-handed lesson about why mum and dad acted so horribly. They’re dead, after all. And by humanizing the parents, in all their folly, Haigh pays respect to the dead, letting them be who they are, or who they would’ve been, rather than summoning a more predictable trope of the all-knowing heavenly figures in classics such as “A Matter of Life and Death” (1946) and “Here Comes Mr. Jordan” (1941). The ignorance, in Adam’s eyes, doesn’t make his parents less capable—or worthy—of love. So he forges ahead, literally sandwiching himself between his parents in their bed, wearing his old pajamas, and talking about his childhood dreams of going on vacation with his mum, fighting and making up.

The Necessity of Preserving the Past

Of course, Adam insists that Harry meet the parents, and when that visit goes awry, it sets in motion a breathtaking, enigmatic finale. Part of why a plot synopsis here is particularly insufficient is because any number of Haigh’s strategies could come off as contrived or frivolous. (A grown-up Adam wearing his childhood clothing, for one.) But these are calculated risks, and Haigh’s leaning on his own imagination, subverting certain death-and-after-life cinematic touchstones to unveil a singular love story, whose components: father/son, mother/son, mother/father and Adam/Harry are all so clearly too good to be true. Credit goes to Haigh for pulling this off, but much needs to be said about the otherworldly performances. Foy, to me, is the beating heart, and her two-hander scenes with Scott (equally commanding) are still vibrating in my head, like so many of Haigh’s on-point needle drops.

It’s customary to see the bereaved on-screen, mourning a loss and, if they’re lucky, achieving some closure. But Haigh’s gamble is to show that those who survive and grieve aren’t the only ones who have suffered. Dead parents hurt too. And if that sounds glib, it’s just another coup of Haigh’s to make us cry for the departed, not because we miss them—there’s that too—but because they’ll never live to see us love, hurt, fall down flat and soar again. This is a film that offers a realistic depiction of a magical scenario, and is less concerned with answers than questions. Talking to his mum in bed, Adam describes—with a smile—a dream in which they went on vacation and just kept fighting. Death might kill part of the future, but luckily for Adam, the past didn’t evaporate alongside it.'

[sweetsweetjellybean]

Eddie Munson x Married FemReader One shot Part 2

TW: Smutolicous, Smut-o-Rama, Smut, NSFW, Dubious Consent, Cheating, Squirting, Toys, Insults, Idk what else. Don't try this at home unless, but if you do I want to hear about it.

Thanks to @loveshotzz & @myobmaya who feed my Eddie brain rot.

Read Part 1 Here Fic Menu

🍬🍭🍬🍭🍬🍭🍬🍭🍬🍭🍬🍭🍬🍭🍬🍭🍬🍭🍬

The screen door of your trailer whines as you push it open. Stepping out into humid air, it slams closed behind you with a loud whhhacck. Your eyes crinkle at the edges as you watch with amusement as a blonde with a ponytail and perky tits storms out of Eddie's trailer. He follows right behind her, bare-chested in a pair of sweats, throwing his hand in the air. 

"Oh. Come on."

"Screw you!" She screams at him over her shoulder as she gets in her car and drives off. He stands with his hands on hips, watching her drive down the road. With your arms crossed, you saunter across the street to chat with your neighbor. 

"Another satisfied customer?" You ask, coming to a stop beside him.

"Hardly," he says, watching her car kick up a cloud of dust as it heads down the road.

"What's the matter? You couldn't get her off?" He squares up to you, standing closer than considered polite.

"Actually," he drops his voice. "I was fucking her face, and I called out your name when I shot my load down her throat. I didn't come half as hard as I did with you."

"I'm flattered," you say, hooking your thumbs in your back pockets, and pushing out your chest to show him how hard your nipples just got.

"Did you get that thing yet?" Running your tongue over your teeth, you shake your head from side to side.

"Why not? You know you'll like it."

"I'm still thinking about it. What are you going to get out of it?"

"Don't worry about me, Sweetheart." He tucks some hair behind your ear. "Trailer trash pussy is my new bad habit." Your smile fades, and your face heats up at his insult. He catches your wrist before you can walk away.

"Get it. I'll meet you after work the day after tomorrow." Pulling your wrist out of his grip, you scoff at his audacity.

"You'll do it. We both know you like it when I tell you what to do. Shit, you're probably wet right now." He's right; you can feel your underwear stuck in between your damp folds. Moving closer, you push up on your toes, getting in his face.

"Fuck. You." You emphasize every syllable.

"Oh, Sweetheart. I know you'll be a good girl and do what you're told. I would hate to tell your husband about our playtime." His lips take on a cocky smirk that perfectly matches his tone.

"You think he would believe you over me. You're fucking delusional." You start walking across the road, but he stops you cold with his words. 

"What about when I tell him about that little birthmark you have on the inside of your thigh, or maybe I should describe the exact color of your nipples. Do you think he would believe me then?"

Spinning around, you give him a furious look, but he just grins.

"I'll see you the day after tomorrow. Oh, and Sweetheart, wear something pretty."

🍬🍭🍬

The cool material of your peach silk teddy glides over your hot skin as you open the door of room number seven with a strap falling off one shoulder. He has his hands on either side of the door frame, blocking the exit like he thinks you might run away. He's trying to look unaffected, but the way he's swallowing gives him away. His cropped band tee shows off the trail of hair that leads into his sweatpants, and it's your turn to swallow. 

"Very nice, Sweetheart. Sexy."

Wordlessly, you turn away from him and move further into the room. His hand comes down hard on your ass as the door clicks shut.

"Jesus, Eddie, that hurt. Keep your hands to yourself." The soft silk soothes your skin when you rub your hand over your backside.

"Come on, don't ruin all the fun." He takes a seat on top of the desk. 

"Fun? Is that what we're doing here? I thought we were here to fuck." Taking a seat on the edge of the bed, you lean back with your hands flat on the bed behind you. 

"We'll get to that. Did you get it?"

Cocking your head to the side, you flick your eyes toward the black shopping bag beside him on the desk.

"How did you feel buying it? Did you like everyone in the store knowing what you will do with it?"

 Using your arms, you slide back on the bed and rub your thigh together.

"You better start giving me your words, Sweetheart. Or I'm gonna think of a better use for your mouth." He warns, picking up the bad and looking inside.

"It made my pussy wet. I hope everyone in there thought about me using it. I hope they got off picturing me coming. But I wasn't as wet as I am now."

"Show me." His eyes are dark, and the bulge in sweats is starting to grow.

He can see the slick wetness glistening on your thighs as soon as you stand. Pushing the thin straps off your shoulders, the teddy slips down your body, ghosting over your hard nipples before pooling around your ankles. You let him look his fill before returning to the bed and spreading your legs, showing him your drenched cunt. 

"Jesus Christ. If you were mine, I wouldn't let you leave the house until I fucked your pussy raw." He reaches for the bag. "Cute," he says, pulling the hot pink dildo out of the bag.

"It's not as pretty as yours or as big. It's a shame. You'll never be inside me." His lips twist angrily as he stands up and pulls his shirt over his head before toeing off his shoes and socks.

"Lie down in the middle of the bed and spread your legs."

Pleased with yourself, you scoot your body to the center of the bed. Lying flat on your back, knees bent, you let your legs fall open. The cool air on your wet pussy has you clenching on nothing and rolling your hips while anticipating his next move. He watches you move as a small wet spot forms on his tented sweats. The side of the bed dips when he sits on the edge, one leg bent on the mattress, the other extended straight, his foot flat on the floor. Those chocolate eyes roam your body appreciatively. He reaches out his hand slowly, and you suck in a breath as his calloused fingers make contact with the skin of your shoulder. They smooth a path down your arm until he covers the top of your hand with his. He moves your joined hands until the pads of your fingers reach your slick heat. His hand never leaves yours as it moves through your folds. The feeling of the sides of his fingers brushing your puffy labia is even more intense than your fingers hitting your aching clit. 

"What are you doing? You can't touch me." Your breathy voice is hardly a protest.

"Relax," He says, pressing down a little harder. "I'm just touching your hand, helping you get ready. It's the neighborly thing to do, after all. Let me make it good for you."

"I didn't know that mattered to you."

"Of course it does. I can make it really good if you quit acting like a brat." His fingers are getting coated with your wetness. "Or don't. I'm fucking this cunt either way."

Your eyes flick to the dildo in his other hand. He sets it down on the bed near your head. Swallowing hard, you run your eyes over it, imagining him forcing it inside you. 

"Fuck, you just got even wetter. Don't worry, Baby. We are going to take this nice and slow." He pulls your hand away from your pussy and folds your glistening fingers so only your pointer finger is the one extended. Still covered by his, he brings it to your throbbing entrance. Pushing your finger inside, he slides his back to your knuckle, careful not to enter you. He moves your finger in and out, but it's too shallow, too small, and you ache to be filled. Moaning and thrusting your hips upward, the tip of his finger breaches your needy hole. 

"Please, Eddie. I need more." You plead, already teetering on the edge of orgasm, and you've barely been touched. It's his fingertip dipping in and out of you. Knowing with just a flick of his wrist or a hard thrust of your hips would have him inside you. Where you want him. Just the thought has your insides fluttering. 

"I know you do, Sweetheart. I'm going to help you." Reaching over your head, he takes the dildo in his other hand. Seeing him holding it makes you cry out. With a cocky smirk, he moves it toward your pussy. He gently rubs the head through your folds, bumping your fingers and driving them deeper. He taps the toy against your clit, and an electric shock runs through your body.

"Fuck. Yes. Please." You beg, but he pulls it away. It's dripping with your juices. "I want to taste you so bad. Can I?"

"Hmm. Yes." Writhing on the bed, you try not to thrust your hips, knowing the move would push him in deeper. Instead of licking the silicone, he smears it across your nipple. Before your lust-fogged brain calculates his intention. He dives for your tit, sucking in as much as possible, his teeth gently close on you as his tongue swirls over your nipple. 

"Eddie." Your hips fly off the mattress, you're coming. It hits you hard, your whole body shaking. As the aftershocks make your muscles clench, you realize your fingers aren't in your pussy. You have a death grip on his wrist. It's his finger swirling inside you. His teeth scrape your breast before catching just your nipple, biting down harder before releasing with a pop.

"You do taste good. Sorry, Sweetheart, I guess I broke the rules a little, although you don't seem to mind." He wiggles the finger you still have shoved inside you. Blood pounds in your ears as you pull his hand out and turn your red face away from him. He chuckles at your anger. "Well, that's one. I haven't decided how many times you'll come before I let you go." 

"Lucky me. Too bad you'll just end up coming in your pants. A little pathetic, don't you think?" 

"I can understand why that would disappoint you. We both know how much you love being covered in my cum."

Switching the toy to his dominant hand, he trails it over your cheek and across your breasts before running it through your folds. Shamelessly, you grind yourself against it.

"I'm tired of this game. You want me to come? I'll come, and then I'll leave, and you can jerk off all alone."

"Well, we better get to it then," he says as he angles the head of the toy at your entrance, slowly pushing it in. He watches as the shaft disappears into your tight hole.

"Oh god," you moan as you stretch around it, feeling its ridges drag against your inner walls. He pushes it in until its base is just outside your entrance and then pulls it out equally as slowly.

"It's already covered in your cum." His eyes are wide with fascination, and he adjusts his hard cock. Licking your lips as you watch him palm himself, you sneak a hand to lazily circle your clit. He shoves the dildo in hard, and it steals your breath. "None of that. I'm the one who's going to make you come." He fucks you hard. "Take your hand off your cunt." Sliding your fingers across your clit one last time, you let your hand drop to your side. "Good Girl." He slows his movements, pushing the toy in with one finger and allowing your muscles to push it back out again. The slow tease is excruciating, and a few tears of frustration run down your cheeks. He rubs his dick over his pants. "Your so fucking wet. I bet it's enough that this rubber cock would slide right in that tight ass. What do you think, Sweetheart? Want to find out?"

"No."

"No?" He's moving faster, timing it with the hand that strokes his cock. "You would look so pretty with your ass up in the air, this pink toy shoved inside, while your cunt drips. God, I could lay right under you and let your juice drip in my mouth." Little whimpers pass your lips, and your hands move to your breasts, roughly tugging your nipples. He starts crawling over you, his hand still working between your legs. "That's what really gets you off, isn't it? Knowing how much I want you. All the filthy things I want to do to you. Why don't you be a good girl and just give in." His face is just inches from yours, holding himself off you with one hand while slowly fucking the dildo into you over and over. 

"I don't fucking want you," you spit out, still rubbing at your tits. He chuckles darkly.

"Oh, Sweetheart, now you're a liar and a whore." He drops his hips and starts grinding, using his pelvis to fuck the toy into you. Lacing his finger with yours, he brings your joined hands up beside your head, holding you down while he thrusts. "Tell me how good this feels." He looks into your eyes, watching you pant and gasp.

"It feels so good. I love this cock inside me. It feels so much fucking better than you ever would."

"I'd feel a lot better than your limp-dick husband. Who won't even fuck you." He lets go of your hand to grab your tit, giving it a light slap before rolling your nipple. "My dick would wreck your cunt. I'd fill you with my cum and send you home to him with it dripping down your legs." 

"Please. Please…Eddie." All you can do is babble and claw at his back while bucking your hips desperately, trying to get more friction with the toy. 

"That's what you want. You want me to fuck all of your holes until they are overflowing with my cum. I'd eat it out of your cunt just so I could fill you up again. Tell me, that's what you want?" His words have you on the edge, but it's not enough.

"No. I don't want it. I don't want you." But your free hand starts pushing down his sweats until his cock is free; you can feel it dripping on you.

"You can't fucking have me." 

He reaches between you and pulls out the toy. Clenching on nothing, you whine at your sudden emptiness. Grabbing his cock you line it up at your entrance. As soon as his head is at your needy hole, he thrusts inside, filling you to the hilt. You open your mouth to scream, but no sound comes out; your walls are stretched more than ever before, instantly sending you over the edge; you come hard on his cock. He lets out a long groan at the feeling of your pussy milking him. 

He gives you no time to recover before he starts driving into you, deep and hard. He hits something in you no one's ever found before. It's too much. Something builds in your belly. He lets go of your other hand and pushes your knees up to your ribs. 

"Eddie, stop," you stutter even as your hands move to his ass, pulling him into you harder. 

"I can't, Sweetheart. I don't know if I will ever be able to stop fucking your tight cunt." He grips the headboard, his knuckles white, his arms and chest muscles flexing. He fucks into you, snapping his hips hard, his pubic bone hitting your clit on the upstroke. You can't hold back anymore, moaning; your pussy gushes around him. 

"Holy..fu..Jesus H. Christ, you're squirting all over me." Your muscles are so tight, but he fucks you right through it, and more and more of your juice splashes him. His movements are becoming erratic. One hand releases the headboard to wildly rub at your clit. 

"Fuck. No. Eddie. I can't. Please." You cry, tears running down your face. 

"I'm gonna come. I'm gonna fill you so full." Your legs are still shaking, and your senses are overloaded. He roars, and you can feel his hot cum starting to fill you. Your orgasm has never ended. It feels violent, you have absolutely no control, your cunt pulses as you moan and whine. He pulls out, your mixed cum dripping off his dick. His mouth goes right to your raw clit, sucking it and flicking it with his tongue. Shooting up, you kick and push until he's off you before rolling to your side, tucking your legs up, closing your eyes, catching your breath, and twitching through the aftershocks. 

He lies behind you, panting, stroking his softening dick. Gently, he rubs your slit, spreading the cum as it drips out. With a contented sigh, you cover his hand with yours, encouraging him to play in your folds. 

"Eddie, are you ever going to kiss me?"

"Sorry, Sweetheart, I can't have you falling in love with me."

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[myelocin]

Postcards From: Kanazawa | Tsukishima Kei

Synopsis: The fear that comes with love is the realization that it isn't always just light. Love, rediscovered as both the fear and the drive that depicts the push and pull of whether it's worth it to say "I do," if the unknown is what's to come beyond the vow. In which it's a week until the wedding, and the both of you return to Kanazawa--to day one--as strangers.

Characters: Tsukishima Kei

Genre/Tags: Engagement!AU, Hurt/Comfort, Angst with Happy Ending | WC: 10,200+

A/N: this is a piece commed by @tsukishumai​ ;w; tq for trusting me w u and ur bb boi ily to the moon n back

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commissions | ko-fi

The illusion of the soul is the false belief that love must always—always—be just light.

The truth is, it’s not. Love is many things. Primarily, love begins from desire. Then, that desire seeps into a drive that pushes you to keep wanting. Then finally, when it’s seeped in through the skin deep enough, love pools in the soul.

Love is bound to be raw at the very core. A desire. To say, “I want you,” and think it holds as much credibility as “I love you.”  To look at what you know is only the tendrils of something at the very most, and trick yourself into thinking that it’s enough. A beating heart—bloody red. The line just barely hanging in-between what’s selfish and selfless, before it ultimately sways and becomes selfish sometimes.

Sometimes, being right now, Tsukishima thinks.  

Sandwiched in-between you to the left, and Yamaguchi to his right, he finds his eyes flickering towards the clock a lot more often than he would have liked. Akaashi, who sat across from his seat on the table, was the first to catch on.  

He quirked a brow, presumably in question earlier, and mouthed the question if he was in a rush. Tsukishima’s never been known for having too many words, but because Akaashi pauses and insists to relieve his question with an answer, he shrugs, waving him off and mouthing back that he’s alright.  

“So,” Bokuto starts, his voice already slipping into somewhat of a slur. “How’s it feel to be the first to pop the question?”

You laugh, finding amusement in the man’s enthusiasm. Turning to Tsukishima, you sit and wait, expectant of a reaction.  

In response, he just shrugs, but a smile breaks through and redefines the nonchalance of his expression anyway. Raising the glass to his lips, he takes a quick sip before answering smugly, “It’s nice to finally settle down. You should try it sometimes.”

Bokuto waves him off, cheeks flushed and eyes already drooping from the inebriation. “Nah,” he slurs, shaking his head. The exaggeration warrants a quick laugh from Sugawara, who sits on the other side, nursing his own drink. Continuing, Bokuto huffs and takes a slight pause before he connects the last of what he says with, “—getting married is nice and all, but I don’t know, man,” he laughs. “Just feels like I’ll end up hitting a fucking blank space after I do or whatever. Not my vibe.”

Visibly, Tsukishima shifts a little, the smile on his face maintained but the lighthearted energy that earlier fueled it just slightly more drained now.  

From the corner of your eye, you notice it. Though, Akaashi’s the one who gives him a pointed stare, to which the former simply ignores.  

“But—“ Bokuto continues, as if trying to remedy the cracked part of the atmosphere that isn’t even visible in the first place—“If that’s your thing, then I’m obviously not going to judge you for that.”

Tsukishima responds by his silence. Bokuto, with his head still warped around the heavy state of his inebriation, doesn’t do so much other than sip a little more of his barely filled glass of beer, Tsukishima’s apathetic expression just a blur in his eyes now.  

“You seem happy, though,” Bokuto notes, then raises his glass towards you.

Blinking at being the sudden subject of his interest, you raise your own glass of water. The ice inside shifts, clinking against the sides of the glass, and slowly, Tsukishima watches. There’s familiarity in the way it moves down: trickling slow like the patience inside him that’s suddenly running by the clock. His palms just barely gripping the utensils, clammy. While his head, still whirs at Bokuto’s halfhearted words.  

It’s halfhearted, he reminds himself.

The thought of hitting a plateau after “I do,” in a way is terrifying.  

But he is happy, right?

The way his palms respond solely through tensing suddenly spikes the fear that maybe his ring will slip. So he looks at you, trying to find an anchor to keep the love he pushes to stay intertwined with his truth afloat as he responds, “Of course I am. I’m happy.”

You look back at him, eye to eye, though you find something waver just for a split second— wondering if there’s credibility in the saying that gold will always deliver truth.

-

The rest of the night flows easy.  

Almost naturally, he’s quick to wave off Bokuto’s invite for more drinks at the bar just down the street, tugging your interlaced hands towards the parking lot as soon as the group found its way to the exit.  

“You know he probably just wanted more company,” you laugh. Thirty minutes after making it back home, instead of jumping straight into the shower and getting ready for the night routine, you instead take out the suitcase and take your place, seated on the floor in the living room.  

“We needed to pack,” you hear him respond, his voice a little distant from the bedroom down the hall.  

You shrug. “Yeah, but we could have made time.”

“Sometimes we can’t just make things, if we don’t have any to make it with in the first place,” he sighs.

You chuckle. Perhaps it’s just one of those nights again. In the ten years you’ve known Tsukishima Kei, you found that he had a tendency to become a multitude of things.  

A stranger, at the start, because that’s where every connection begins. The neighbor who lived with his grandfather across the street from your childhood home. Kanazawa was a long way from Sendai, but before his parents had whisked him off to Miyagi some years later, he had been the friend that oftentimes spent his afternoons with you.  

Strawberry cake and tiny sips of boxed juice from the convenient store down the street, and not much conversation exchanged between the both of you. He’d tell you about the things on his grandfather’s old encyclopedia, and you’d listen with rapt attention, finding it nice how he seemed to carry a little bit of the stars the more his eyes gleamed. He just talked about dinosaurs, you remember. At ten, Tsukishima had always been a wonderer.  

Then he moved.  

From the friend who told you stories and shared his juice boxes with you under that tree, to the occasional email that would pop up on your phone, when you were in highschool and weaving your way in and out of pathways and dead-ends. Miyagi was a little like Kanazawa, he said. There was a lot of quiet in the two cities. His email would come once a week, then twice when you reckon he felt a little lonely.  

You’d reply with the same kind of enthusiasm as he had established, though you still couldn’t deny the fact that the notification with his name on it never failed to have you smiling—at least just a little bit. At fifteen, Tsukishima was far from a stranger, but he was also falling just a little short in making it to the halfway mark of being a friend too.  

The once-a-week emails were welcome, none the less. It stayed like that, until once a week turned into twice. Though most were just the customary how-are-yous and obligatory holiday greetings once the seasons came and went, one year it turned into emails about the little nothings.  

‘I had strawberry cake today,’ it once read. ‘The one we used to share tasted sweeter.’

‘I joined the volleyball team.’

‘Winter here is a little colder. I remember your puffy green jacket.’

‘I don’t know if you want to know…or if I should tell you...but our team won, and we’re going to nationals.’

Somehow, you were managed to be convinced by one of your friends that same week to travel with your own highschool’s volleyball team to assist in the preparation for nationals in Tokyo. It was just a coincidence, you used to reason. You were there, and so was he. There was a hundred other courts his team could have played at, and your priority was assisting your own team in what they needed.  

But still, you couldn’t help but wave back and cheer the loudest from your stands when he perfected the block and scored the winning point for the first set.

It was then, where you realized that perhaps Tsukishima Kei wouldn’t just be a stranger.  

Kanazawa to Miyagi, but somehow Tokyo became the in-between. Childhood friends to the sort-of friends from the other ends of the country sharing a few scattered memories in slices of strawberry shortcake and random dinosaur trivia from an old man’s outdated encyclopedia.  

He was the first to approach you after that match. A hand held out to shake, perhaps to commemorate the evident shift between strangers to friends—but it was nice.  

Because after that, friends turned into something more.  

Maybe Tokyo really was the middle ground. After you graduated and moved out of your respective cities, Tokyo became the third place of hello.  

Then things just slipped into place. He was here, and so were you. He had plans to stay, and you just signed the contract that bound you to the city for the next two and a half years. The apartment right down the hall from yours was recently vacated, and he was looking for a place to stay.  

His new work place, coincidentally enough, was just a stop away from the train station closest to your place.  

You had always doubted the presence of serendipity and everything that had to dictate with the celestial control of fate, but the ease that came with the relief of him signing the lease the very next week almost seemed to validate what had been just a farfetched something.  

From strangers, to friends, to lovers, then to this:

Ten years later, a ring on your finger, and an I do, bound to be said just a little over seven days from now.  

Tokyo was kind to the both of you. His mother’s close enough to visit on the weekends, while Kanazawa was just a shinkansen away from Tokyo station. A new apartment with enough space for two, plus maybe an extra, and a bakery right down the street with the best strawberry shortcake made fresh every day.  

The wedding’s just a week away. His grandfather, still living in Kanazawa was meant to travel with Akiteru to Tokyo last week, but because plans changed, the both of you were instead tasked with going there yourselves to travel with him. While Tsukishima hesitated, you didn’t. Yes was easy to say in a situation like this. Though your parents had moved to Tokyo some years ago, you were aware that his grandfather didn’t.  

The house across the street was still his, while the one you grew up in just now became a summer home your family would frequent to when Tokyo became too swarmed with tourists.  

You look at the half-filled contents of the suit case on the floor in front of you. The right side’s meant to hold your clothes, while the left was left bare for Tsukishima’s. You turn and look at him.  

“You can just grab the stuff you need me to bring for you and I’ll fold it in. We should probably catch the first train tomorrow if we wanna get there before sundown.”

What comes as a reply is only prolonged silence.  

You let what he started stay for a little, but because you had never been the type to be fond in gouging out answers from the blank spaces, you sigh, and break the impending silence before it could get a chance to even settle. “You’re quiet again, Kei.”

When he makes it to the living room, instead of coming back out with a stack of clothes, he stands by the wall with his hands in his pocket. His eyes shift from wall to wall, but skip over you.  

Knowing that you’ll just prompt another conversation again the more he keeps his silence, he sighs, swallowing the hesitation and clinging onto the bits of courage that floats by him in the moment. Grasping at the very tips of it, he forces the words out of his mouth. “Are you really coming with me?”

You raise a brow. “Back to Kanazawa? Of course. I’m from there too, you know. Plus I haven’t seen Grandpa in a while.���

He shifts his gaze to the side, thankful for the blur that came with forgetting to slip on his glasses. He’s always had a tendency to give in the moment he looks at you, so the vagueness in the blur was a welcome change. “It’s just for a week,” he mutters. “I think I’ll handle the trip just fine.”

“Plus,” he adds, the hike in the tone of his voice giving away his panic. “—I heard there was a problem with the florists? Maybe one of us needs to go in and fix it ourselves just in case.”  

In the ten years you’ve known him, you’ve always considered it a given that you’ve well perceived him by now. In front of you, he’s stammering. While Tsukishima has never been the face to poise and perfection—because at the end of the day he still is just a boy—you knew he only stammered when he was nervous.  

Perhaps trying to manipulate the situation through a wordless exchange was his way of doing so. In your head, you chuckle. Tsukishima Kei is many things, and is witty when it counts—but he could never be blunt when it came to the things he was unsure of.  

You try to gouge out his truth. Speaking straight to the point, you let him know that there’s no purpose in trying to skirt around. You turn to him, his sweater half folded on your lap. “You know I could have believed what you just said, but,” you pause, giving him a pointed look, “—you’re not even looking at me.”

“Is this about what Bokuto said earlier?”

The way he shifts his weight from one foot to the other awkwardly, confirms your suspicions that that it is about that, before he can muster up the courage to even say it. “Tell me,” you initiate. You’ve never been afraid to speak what needs to be said. “What’s got you so afraid?”

Once more, he hopes for the silence to speak for him. And like before—it doesn’t. Silence was never meant to fill in the blanks. What it did, rather, is add three seconds more on the clock that’s ticking regardless. Tsukishima bets on a timed clock to speak for him, and because you’ve never been the type to shrink at the presence of raw truth, you huff and poke into what obviously hits for him just a little deeper.  

“You’re afraid we’ll hit a blank space after we get married, aren’t you?”

He doesn’t look away, but little by little, his body language starts slipping bits and pieces of the truth you’ve already long sensed. “I think I just need to think this through.”

“What?” you scoff. “You planned to go to Kanazawa by yourself for a week to what? Soul search? To decide if you even wanna marry me?”

“I’m sor—“

“That’s what you’re not supposed to say,” you interrupt him. “You don’t say you’re sorry for how you’re feeling, because you’re allowed to feel it how it is, but shit, Kei,” you exhale, pausing to suck in a quick breath. “You couldn’t have just said this earlier?”

He looks away again, the guilt evident on his features. “You’re mad.”

“Do you blame me?”

This time, he turns to you. “No,” he murmurs. “I don’t, but I’m gonna be blunt here—“

“—first time—“

He gives you a pointed look, but in the moment, you don’t really have much in you to care too much.  

“I think I need space to clear my head.”

“Sounds like you’re contemplating on whether you wanna stay with me or not,” you respond. “I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel about that.”

Tsukishima’s steady, this time. “Of course I wanna stay with you.”

“But,” you counter. “You aren’t sure if you want to marry me.”

He looks away. “What if—we hit a plateau after.”

“That’s still not an excuse to back out before we even try, Kei,” comes your reasoning.  

“You’re right,” he sighs. “It’s not.”

Then it’s you, who shrugs this time, giving in a little and throwing him what you hope he doesn’t see as a lifeline. There’s no comfort found in knowing that an out is a means of mercy when it comes to love. Why should there even be an out?

You settle for just cracking the door open instead. Though it was never locked, the fact that it remained close must have been understood differently by him.

“Let’s go back to Kanazawa separately, then,” you propose. The open suitcase in front of you still has the right half filled with his half folded clothes, so you reach in, taking it out one by one. “You stay with your grandfather and I’ll stay at my parent’s house.”

Tsukishima raises a concern. “He’ll wonder why we aren’t staying together.”

In response, you shrug. “Just make something up then.”

“Is this just a passive aggressive way to say you’re mad at me?”

You scoff. “When have I ever been passive aggressive, Kei? I’ve said shit as it is since day one.”  

He flinches, maybe because of what you said or the tone of the deliverance, but either way, you decide you can’t give much of a shit. It’s a given that you’re angry, but because being hurt just paves the path to silence more than lashing out, it’s not much of a surprise that you probably look deflated in front of him.  

“What I’m saying is,” you explain. “Let’s go back to Kanazawa as strangers. Do what you gotta do, however you’ve gotta do it to get your head sorted out, and then we’ll talk. I’m not dancing around in circles with you on this. Either we get married next week, or we don’t.”

He panics. “I don’t want to lose you—“

“You’re already talking like you’ve decided that you won’t be at the other end of that aisle, Kei.”

Words feel lacking all of a sudden, so you pause. The absence of the split second brevity has Tsukishima standing still, his breath held, throat dry.

But like always, clarity seems to weave its way through the cracks in the room and find you first. “Yes or no isn’t easy to decide between,” you finally mutter. Eyes to the half folded sweaters you meant to tuck into the other half of the suitcase, you realize that you’ll need to switch to a smaller trolley now because you won’t be needing this much space anyway. “I don’t know what I should tell you, because I don’t know that we’d be having a possible fallout a week before the wedding. But at the same time—I don’t want to say you’re despicable for feeling like that, Kei. It just—“

“—fucking sucks,” you sigh.  

“If you feel like you need a week to figure whatever this shit is, then okay,” you nod. “Okay. Let’s be strangers for a week and by the time we’re back in Tokyo, you give me a yes or no and be fucking blunt with it.”

-

Later that night when you turn your back against him and face the wall, his whisper breaks through the quiet. “Why are you still patient with me about this? You could have just left me.”

You shift, laying on your back and sighing to the makeshift glow in the dark stars stuck to the ceiling of your room. “Because I love you,” you sigh. “Loving someone just means you have to exhaust every other option before even thinking of throwing in the towel.”

He sleeps that night, feeling heavy.

-

He woke up later that morning, feeling the same too.  

In a sense, things admittedly started weird. You woke up before he did this time, when he usually would be the one trying to be quiet when he slipped out of bed. Even though early mornings had never been a thing for the both of you, there was still something unpleasant in waking up to an empty bed.

The sheets on your side were done, and your phone that usually would be pinging with email notifications by now wasn’t there.  

It’s odd, he thinks. While he agreed to be strangers for a week, the walk to the train station was the same. Silence was normal, but the five extra inches that added to the distance between the both of you wasn’t. You nodded his way when he pointed at the shinkansen’s direction, and wordlessly would hand him his usual brew when you stopped at the coffee shop just before going in.  

Seated beside you in the train, he tries to ignore the urge to poke you on the side and make conversation. Words have always come easy when it came to moments with you, he noticed.

Tsukishima’s aware that he’s always been dubbed as the kind of person who never preferred to say too much, and while that was true—to an extent—he realizes that there is some truth to the saying that silence kills.  

You’re seated beside him on the train, eyes to your phone, and earbuds in place. He resorts to just staring at you through his peripherals, caught in between wanting to satiate the want to talk to you by breaking the silence, or keeping it as is.  

This is where fear grips him a little tighter. The deal was, as you had pointed out just last night, that the both of you would move through the week pretending to be strangers again. You’d stay on your side of the street, while he stayed in his.  

It’s a given that his grandfather’s bound to ask about you, and so in the event that it does happen, you would just spend a few hours with them and pretend like everything was fine.  

You made it clear that you’d try to exhaust all the options before resorting to that, though. And it’s easy, he thinks, doing so. It doesn’t take much to fake a phone call from work or a last minute meeting with an old friend that wouldn’t be able to make it to the city for the supposed wedding.  

The lines were drawn, and the outline of what was to be expected in the next week was made clear.  

He thinks of what you said before you slept. Love, as that one drive that has you exhausting all your options before even thinking of quitting. It’s fair, he thinks. You’ve always been the rational thinker in the relationship.  

But then again, he doesn’t doubt your hurt either. A week was lengthy, he realizes, and to act as strangers again just a week before the wedding was a different kind of test when it came to your patience.  

Still, he owes you truth.

You’ve always told him to lay things bare, and even though what’s bare is ugly, because love always pushes to try—he stays, doing just that.  

Undoubtedly, this is a jump. There’s no question in the fact that the possibility of reaching the peak and coming face to face with a plateau scares him. But still, his thoughts counter, to face a drop that doesn’t guarantee a landing somehow terrifies him even more.

The sound of your phone vibrating snaps him out of his thoughts. Before you answer it, he snags a look of the name written on the screen—Akiteru’s.  

Tsukishima sighs, shooting you a cautious stare as you pick up the phone and turn to him.  

The tone of your voice is easy, though you look at him, unbothered. “Hey,” you answer. “Just got in the train, so Kei should be calling you in about three hours when we’re there.”

In comes a pause, before you chuckle a little. Unconsciously, Tsukishima scooches in, curious. But before he could get a chance to lean in too close, you pull away a little, looking at him curiously, an eyebrow raised. “I meant to tell you,” he hears you say, and as you look at him, he chooses to hold your stare.

“Kei and I will be staying separately for the week.”

Beside you, he shifts, fighting the urge to turn away and face forward.  

Assuming that your flinch afterwards was only a response to what he’s only certain is Akiteru’s sudden outburst, the prior nervousness of his stare shifts into concern. Understanding the are-you-okay that he mouths, you wave him off. “We’re fine,” you laugh. “I just miss staying at the house that’s all, and I’m pretty sure Kei wants to spend quality time with his grandfather.”

You stay silent after that, which truth be told, doesn’t exactly help with his nerves.  

“He’s right next to me,” you add. “We’re fine, I swear. Just wanna enjoy Kanazawa in different ways that’s all.”

-

To put it bluntly, the first day is awkward.  

His grandfather’s waiting from outside the gate the second you make it to that familiar street. Nothing much has changed, the two of you notice. The gate’s rusted a little by the edges, and the door’s still got the same chip on the left side he always said he’d take a look at.  

“Heard they were cutting down that tree,” his grandfather says, when it’s a little over three hours later and you’re all seated at a local restaurant for dinner. His old friend owned the place, he explained. Low lights, home cooked meals, and a family run business you vaguely remember your father talking about when you were young.  

Tsukishima pauses, eyebrows rising in question. “What do you mean that tree?”

“The one you used to run off to,” he laughs.  

Elbowing him, you nod towards his grandfather before pointing out, “We met by that tree, you know.”

His grandfather’s quick to responding, laughing at Tsukishima’s perplexed expression. “Seems like your grandfather’s memory is doing better these days than you, boy.”

You suppose that at the end of the day, it shouldn’t have been a big deal that he forgot. You’ve never been one to dwell too deep within the symbolic little nothings that’s bound to come with life. Rationally speaking, maybe you’re just a little miffed because of what he said the night before. And maybe that’s the reason why you’re taking this a little harsher than you would have on a normal day.  

But strangers, you remember. Strangers wouldn’t care if the other forgot.  

So with that, you shrug. You take another spoonful of the food in front of you and shift your body just slightly to the left—to which Tsukishima took noticed—and leaned forward. Without even saying much, his grandfather already has his attention on you, the smile on his face kind.

He’s always been kind, you remember. With a smile, you choose to keep the peace in the room at bay, willing yourself to ignore Tsukishima’s stare boring holes into the side of your head from beside you.  

“Now that I think about it, I don’t remember a lot of people stop by that tree,” you comment, as you take a step into nostalgia.  

His grandfather shrugs, absentmindedly nodding his head as he mulls over your word through a spoonful of broth. “It was in the middle of a residential area. Bound to get taken down if you ask me. People nowadays need a place to park.”

This time, you really feel his stare beside you almost intensify. Truth is, you can make sense of what you know he only fears. The point in life was to brave through the unfamiliar to establish a consistency in familiar grounds. To continuously rise from day one, only to hit the peak and possibly come face to face with a plateau instead of something greater than even the height of all highs—you admit that it’s terrifying.  

The plateau, that perhaps works sort of like that tree.  

It’s been there, so here it still is.  

You’ve both been at that tree—at the start—so here you both still are. Side by side back in Kanazawa, sharing a meal like I do, isn’t hanging on the line.

His grandfather’s voice snaps you out of your thoughts. “You’re not wearing your ring.”

Tsukishima’s voice is quick to cut into the conversation, his voice smooth. “She just doesn’t wanna lose it.”  

You nod along to his lie, undecided with how to feel in regards to how smooth he seemed to have delivered his lie.  

“You know, now that I think about it, it’s good that they’re cutting down that tree.”

Tsukishima speaks his mind this time. “Last week, you said you were looking forward to coming back home so you could visit that tree again.”

You don’t look at him when you answer. “I know, but your grandfather has a point. When things change, what else can you do but get rid of it?”  

“Oh nothing’s changed,” he laughs across you. “Even before the two of you were born, people would always talk about how it’s just there when the space could have been used for parking.”

“Then why put off cutting it down this long?”

“Who knows,” he laughs. There’s an unfound wisdom in his eyes that read through your soul when he looks at you. “Maybe cutting down what people already see as a permanent fixture will do more harm than good in the long run.”

“Even if it doesn’t contribute anything?”

Tsukishima thinks of his fear, then of the plateau.  

Through the rim of the glass, he keeps a steady eye on his grandfather, breath held as the anticipation for his words begin to really settle.  

“People these days just see what’s the most obvious from the surface and consider it as the only fault then run with it. Maybe it’s not the tree,” he laughs. “Maybe it’s just the people. They want convenience so they cut off everything around them instead of adjusting to it.”

The food tastes bland in his mouth, suddenly.

“Goes to show how selfish people can get sometimes,” his grandfather finishes, as an afterthought. “A shame, really. That old tree’s done nothing but give people shade.”

-

At the end of the day, you really had to give his grandfather a lot more credit than what was due.  

The second and third day was awkward. Even though you tried to stay inside for most of your day, venturing outside and meeting up with old friends was inevitable. And really, you should have remembered that he often started his day with a couple laps walked around the block.  

On day two, he hinted that he could sense something was off. Tsukishima had been a lot more silent lately, he pointed out. First, as just a passing comment, then by the third time he’d bring it up and wouldn’t get too much of a response out of you, there came more emphasis to what he says.  

He passed by the tree every time you’d round the street too. It occurs to you that passing through it was a shortcut, and contradicted his prior statements to having a route that catered towards the long way home, but you chose to not comment much about it.  

The second day was curiosity, and you figured that you could live at least just a week with it.  

The third day, on the other hand, gave you a little more trouble than you had bargained for.  

You’re on your way home from an old friend’s house, and ironically enough, both Tsukishima and his grandfather are out by their front door, tending to the weeds of a garden that doesn’t even look remotely grown.  

Tsukishima’s the first to look at you.  

Stubborn, and frankly intent on upholding your end of the deal in staying strangers, you attempt to wave them off with a passing greeting as you look through your bag, feeling around for the keys to the gate.  

“You don’t have to think of an excuse,” you hear him say. “He’s back inside now. It’s just you and me here.”

It’s funny how ever since you’ve made it back to Kanazawa, he’s been the one to break the silence a lot more lately.  

You don’t turn. Strangers, you think. The deal was to pretend the other was a stranger.  

“Cam,” he calls out again, the desperation in his voice inching more and more out of its shell. “I’m really sorry.”

You turn around, the buried anger getting the best of you in the moment. “You know the more you say that, the more convinced I am that I should just give you back your ring right now and go back to Tokyo alone. You talk like the only thing you’re sure of is the fact that you won’t be marrying me next week, Kei.”

The moment you shift your gaze from the ground to his eyes, a part of you aches at the idea that you may have to bid farewell to gold. Swallowing down the mass of emotions you hope isn’t entirely just made of anger, you steady yourself and sigh.  

It hits you that it’s been a long day.  

“It’s just you and me here,” you repeat, slowly. There’s a flutter in your heart that tells you it’s still love that stares back when you look at him. “Then why do you feel so far away, Kei?”

-

He doesn’t sleep that night.  

Day three of being strangers, but he hasn’t had anything figured out. They say absence makes the heart grow fonder, but what only grew was the silence. The distance is really just a few feet away—across the street and through the leaves of that tree that your father would always say he’d get to.  

The light from your room is still turned on, though the curtains are drawn.

8PM and it’s early. 8PM, and on a usual day, you’d usually be seated beside him in your Tokyo apartment’s living room, mulling over the nothings that went on in your day.  

It’s nice to talk about the rest of the world as if all they’re meant to be is just a passing blur in the background, he thinks. He’s never been much for words, but you were.  

Then again, you had always been one for truth.  

Reality is, he knows he could always swallow his doubts, walk across the street, cover the distance, and apologize to you with an I’m sorry, that covers all that needs to be addressed in a standard apology. Life can be lived as easy as that. You swallow your own thoughts, adhere to what they say needs to be done in the way they tell you how to do so, and be done with it.  

But he knows you just as well as he knows himself.  

You’d call him a coward—and truth be told, he’ll think the same.  

Present wise—he does think he is a coward.

Tsukishima sighs, knowing that blinking at your closed curtain visible from his window won’t do much of a difference. Begrudgingly, he sits up, grabbing his glasses from the bedside table.  

The streets around the neighborhood are quiet this time of night. The perks about living away from the city was the silence, he thinks. As soon as he tugs on a sweater, he makes his way downstairs, carefully, so he doesn’t stir his grandfather he presumes is sleeping on the room across the hall.  

He exhales, relieved at the barely audible creak the door clicks to as soon as he shuts it and turns the lock from the outside. The keys, jingling in his pockets, is the only sound that rings in the quiet.  

It isn’t lonely, but it isn’t comfortable either.  

Kanazawa has always been a town he’s considered as a piece of constant that’s meant to drift inbetween.  

Neither like Tokyo or the towns by the outskirts of Okinawa, it stays as is. Twenty years ago, the crack on the sidewalk was there, and now, twenty years later, it remains.  

There’s comfort in recognizing constants, Tsukishima admits. The tree just down this road, the crack on the asphalt, and the fact that your room is still the second window to the left visible from his on the second floor.  

When he was younger, he remembers he often would stand under your window, caught in between wanting to knock on your door and ask permission from your parents if you could accompany him for the afternoon, or just wait around until you’d come down yourself.  

While he left a lot of things on chance, the conscious choice to stay rooted in the spot by your window remained constant.  

The gravel under his feet crackle everytime he’d take a step. The moon’s hazy behind the clouds tonight, he muses. While you’d wish for the stars, he found a temporary safety in the midnight clouds. A timelessness felt when it’s midnight, stays.  

Before he turns to the corner that would lead home, he stops midway—recognizing the tree from a good few meters away.  

There’s a sense of feeling an urgency to let something go, the more he stares at it. Nearing autumn, the colors start to change, and just like that, he’s reminded of the impermanence in life.  

As the earth eventually changes throughout the years, he fears that perhaps in love—it would too.

-

“You’re out late,” is the first thing Tsukishima hears as soon as he enters the room.  

From the genkan, he peers over the shelf, noticing the lights from the kitchen is what floods into the dim living room. Slipping on his house slippers and making his way around the corner, Tsukishima gets a feel of the warmth that’s radiating from the familiarity of the space.  

After his grandmother had passed, his grandfather stayed in Kanazawa. Though his mother often expressed her desire for him to move with the rest of the family in Tokyo, every time, he’d only wave them off and say that there’s too much rooted here for him to just up and leave.  

Walking into the kitchen, his grandfather’s the first to raise a mug his way and offer a smile. “I’d ask you if everything’s fine, but I think I’ll just wait around and see if you’re even willing to tell me.”

Tsukishima chuckles airily. “Sounds like you wanna ask anyway.”

He takes a slow sip. “Okay then,” he nods, smiling like he’s just struck a deal. “First question is—are you okay?”

In response, Tsukishima smiles, pulling the chair and taking the seat across his. He nods. “’Course I am.”

His grandfather’s eyes don’t leave him. “You’re not wearing the ring, and neither is Cam.”

Suddenly feeling like he’s caught in between a blocked exit and the spotlight, Tsukishima freezes, but wills himself not to look away. “Just needed some space, that’s all.”

“To think?”

He sighs. “To reconsider.”

“Ahh,” the older man sighs. “Cold feet. Pretty normal, if you ask me.”

He raises a brow in question. “It’s normal?”

“To be nervous, yeah,” his grandfather laughs. “But looks like it’s a different case for you.”

Tsukishima doesn’t respond, his eyes fixated towards a spot on the wall that feeds more into the blank space of his thoughts than anything more.  

“You’re afraid,” Tsukishima hears, and as soon as the retaliation he tries to string together at the very last minute don’t come—he realizes the core of all the chaos in his head is meant to be just like that—

Blank.

“What are you so afraid of, boy?”

In the silence, he lets the rawness of his truth slowly spill. “What if I hit a plateau after this?”  

His grandfather wastes no second in countering.  “How is it life if we just keep climbing? What’s the point in doing all that work if we never get rest?”

Tsukishima laughs. “You know, by that logic it can just go the other way around too.”

He settles in his seat, trying to appreciate the silence instead of looking for company in the noise, before he adds, “What if we decide we don’t love each other anymore?”  

“That’s not all there is to a plateau,” he laughs. “It’s a valid fear, but being afraid isn’t all there is after you marry someone.”

“Then what’s there?”

With a smile, his grandfather leans back, raises the mug to his lips, and relaxes—his eyes looking fondly at a faded photograph hung beside the wall clock. “Everyday,” he answers. “What’s there after I do is just everyday.”

Sensing that his grandfather means to say more, he chooses to retain his silence. Sighing softly, his grandfather keeps his smile steady as he continues to speak. “Everyday you wake up. You roll over in bed, you think about the checklist you do to consider a day done, then you come home, eat a meal, rest a little and start the whole day over the next day. Everyday’s like that.”

He shifts, leaning forward with his arms crossed supporting his weight on the table as he eyes his grandson with a smile. “Best part is, you can do all that with someone you love. Makes the boring part of the plateau a lot more bearable.”

“You wake up with them and complain about how boring the rest of your day will be, then come home and eat a meal with them. Wash the dishes, share the silence, and just go to bed knowing you’ll wake up with somebody.”

The smile on his face is honest, then he shrugs. “It’s nice, though. The plateau after you hit a certain point in life is just inevitable, Kei. You can either complain about life alone or complain about it with somebody. At least there will be two pairs of slippers by the genkan waiting for you everytime you come home. You’ll say you’ve made it home and someone will greet you. You’ll roll over in bed at 2am and someone will be there with you. The point of climbing in life is to get somewhere, not ascend past the norm.”

Tsukishima stays quiet, pondering over the truth in his grandfather’s words. “So life’s just meant to stay in the middle?” he asks, slowly coming into terms with his grandfather’s redefinition of the plateau.  “Life’s meant to find a consistency in everyday,” he corrects.

A few moments pass before he stands back up, pointing to the counter with a thermos. He knows it’s yours. The old one that your mother refused to throw away, because there’s a crack by the lid and a couple faded sailor moon stickers stuck by the side.  

“Look at that,” Tsukishima hears. He turns his head just in time to see the old man offer him a patient smile, the message in his eyes delivered without a hitch. “That old thing’s seen a couple of decades, but it still gets to you when you need it, right?”

It’s not so bad to have an old thing be your constant, right?

-

Twenty minutes after his grandfather climbs back to his room upstairs, Tsukishima’s seated on the side of the table beside the window. Peeking through the half-opened blinds, he can still see that the light from your room is still flicked on.  

Without mulling over the decision, he takes his phone out, scrolling through the contacts until he taps your name. A swipe without too much pressure, because even his thumb’s memorized where your name is by now. Kind of like muscle memory, he supposes.  

Bypassing the unannounced rules about what to do as the strangers you had claimed from the start of this week, it results to the lack of hesitation as he types a quick text and presses send without a thought that would counter it.  

I love you, it reads.  

From his spot in the kitchen, he leans back and smiles, pouring himself a cup of the tea he knows you brewed yourself on the nights where he can’t sleep.

The lights from your room stay on for a few more moments before it dims, but before the metaphoric silence could take root, the screen of his phone lights up.

Stop walking around at night. Drink the tea and try to get some sleep.

Exhaling almost in relief, it’s the slow beating of his heart that resettles him back into the love he’s known everyday.  

It’s not quite the end, but it isn’t exactly somewhere unpleasant either.

-

Two days before you’re meant to return to the city, instead of spending the day in your room—like you had initially planned—you somehow found yourself in the passenger seat of his grandfather’s old car, with a grocery list in hand.  

You sigh, understanding what his grandfather’s trying to do.  

As you look down, there’s nothing much written in the grocery list. He had complained about some back pain earlier, followed up by his insistent request of desperately needing his groceries done so when Akiteru was to arrive later on, dinner would be taken care of.

Beside you, with his hands on the wheel, Tsukishima sighs. “We could have just ordered in food for dinner. It’s just Akiteru coming,” he mumbles.  

Keeping your eyes to the window to your left, you shrug. “He likes making the ordinary special, I guess.”

Tsukishima stays silent after that, mentally thankful for the green light and the empty roads. The more stops, the longer silence would stay. And even after the sort of middle ground from the night before, he doesn’t know what to say to you.  

After making a quick turn, he pulls up into the parking lot and kills the engine. Unbuckling his seatbelt, he turns to you, with an expectant look. “You can just stay here if you don’t wanna go in with me,” he offers. “It’s a short list, I can be in and out in a bit.”

You wave him off, already slinging on your bag and opening the car door—the list on your hand. “It’s alright. I think I’m more familiar with this area than you are, so we can just meet back in the car in thirty minutes if that’s okay with you.”

“You don’t need me to come with you?” he raises a brow.

You shake your head no, but upkeep the smile on your face anyway as you exit the car and close the door.  

-

Something about what you say sticks with him, the more he thinks about it.

He can distinguish the hesitation laced each of your decisions. You look past him, but not exactly at him. You speak to him, but keep the conversations short. Though conversation was rare between the both of you this past week, the times that you did speak to him, your words often were clipped short.  

It’s your means of upkeeping your end of the deal, he realizes.  

You’ve always been one for communication, but then again, patience can only stretch so much.  

He respects your wish for distance and walks the opposite way from the grocery store, towards a building he doesn’t really known. It’s a gallery, he realizes. Three steps past the entrance, he notices that he’s one of the few that’s in the room.  

Traditional artwork line the wall, hung in frames that have rusted throughout time.  

Tsukishima stares, eyes drawn to the pieces of art he recognizes from the few scattered memories in his childhood that relate to his time in the city.

A fieldtrip, when he was seven. He remembers leaving the house upset over the yellow hat he had to wear, and the rain boots his teacher wouldn’t let him change out of. Unlike the present, rain was present that day. He stood beside you in line, and had to tilt his head up at the piece of art he always thought was the prettiest out of the bunch.  

And now, almost two decades later, he still thinks the same.  

He smiles at the memory, finding the comfort of returning to what’s familiar, pleasant.  

As if caught by an epiphany, and suddenly enveloped in a sense of a rediscovered home, here, within a room that’s familiar, he finds purpose in the permanence of love.

Love, that’s never meant to be stretched into the likeness of what the poets declare as the absolute form of love after “I do.”

Staring at the piece of art with the rusting frames, the strokes within the canvas still depict the same story. It still is beautiful.  

It’s doesn’t become more—but it stays as is.

And maybe that’s what his grandfather was trying to convey.

To fear a certain phase in love is something that comes and goes, but it often never stays. It can linger, but eventually, it too, fades.  

What stays is what’s rooted.  

Primarily, just you. Truly, just love.

That tree in that old street, these paintings on the walls, and the kind of serenity that washes over him at the thought of you.  

The fear in life comes in the form of thinking that beyond the peak lays a plateau. Beyond “I do,” what’s next to come is love, dwindling until “I don’t love you anymore,” is the only thing left to be said.  

It’s fear, that spoke to him the past few weeks, so this time, as he gives in, he listens to love.  

It’s quiet.

But through the smoke in the room, the message that’s meant to deliver truth comes in full clarity. Illuminated, it appears before him as it is. A painting that’s struck him as beautiful then and now, and the thought of you as the face that’s always been the first to greet him every morning for more than just a few years now.  

An old man stands not too far from him, hands clasped behind his back as he stares—with a smile on his face—at a similar painting on the wall. Sensing Tsukishima’s presence, he looks over and redirects the smile his way. “Been coming here for years, and looking at this still feels the same.”

Poking at the doubts, Tsukishima responds, “Are you afraid that it won’t get old?”

The gentleman laughs, though soft enough so it doesn’t echo too much in the halls. The joy lingers around Tsukishima, on the other hand. “To have something grow old with you isn’t a bad thing. Day one, this piece was beautiful, and now, almost forty years later, I look at it and think the same too.”

A beat of silence passes, but the man speaks once more.  

“My wife, when she was alive, showed me this piece. Maybe I look at this and still find it beautiful after all these years because I think of her, but I don’t think trying to focus on that matters much. The feeling’s the same, even if it grew old.”

Reciprocating the older man’s goodbye with a nod to the head, it’s then where he laughs, a little bit more of the truth unraveling as each moment comes and goes. Thinking of his words, he dwells on its meaning.  

Standing there, alone in the museum hall, the smoke clears, and he presents himself his words of blended truth and patience.  

Love is timeless, his thoughts say. The plateau after the peak is as possible as the drop, but life’s meant to be lived in the lows and in betweens as much as the highs. Time moves in waves, and perhaps love doesn’t always grow stagnant. It can be timeless, even though the frames rust. His hair will grey, and maybe you’ll stop linking your pinky with him beneath the sheets during the rainy season’s thunderstorms, but the root of love stays.  

Within the plateau, time will move, and you’ll both grow old, but the taste of the tea you’ll brew for him will remain the same.  

And thirty minutes later, when he makes it back to the parking lot with you waiting by the door, the love that steadies his beating heart will be the same too.  

Steady, present, and timeless.  

-

Eyeing the dashboard, you’re the first to break the silence. “Why’d you buy a postcard?”

Rolling into a stoplight, he eases on the brakes and shrugs. “Lived here for so long, and I don’t even own a postcard from here.”

“Me neither,” you blink.

A couple minutes pass, and the car’s rolling again, but he misses a turn. Assuming that he’s just not used to the usual route, you stay quiet—until about he pulls up to a familiar street.  

Parked to the side, through the windshield, you find yourself face to face with a familiar tree. “Kei.” He hums.  

The coming autumn has a few leaves beginning to change its colors, you notice. The summer hues, unbalanced, as bits of red begins to bleed through the green. “You were supposed to turn there, not here.”

He shifts the gear into park, then takes his hands off the wheel, leaning back. “I know.”

It’s quiet after that, but it isn’t all that unpleasant either.  

This is the part where the questions begin to poke at you, the what-ifs in love let out in the open as you voice a little bit of your vulnerability. And because the truth is daunting, you hope he understands you through the metaphors. “Do you really think they’ll cut it down?”

He doesn’t allow the silence to take more than a moment. “I think so,” he nods his head.

“It’ll be good though, I think,” you add, nodding your head.  

It’s quiet in the room even though the words of your truth coaxes the unhealed wound to resurface. As it comes into light, it doesn’t sting.  

Sitting shoulder to shoulder beside him in the car, the tree that witnessed the first hello stays rooted, and watches.  

He doesn’t turn to you as he speaks, but in a way, you feel as if a farewell was the finale that was meant to be delivered somehow. “It’s good,” he starts. “Letting go of something that needs to be let go of.”

-

Tokyo

-

Tsukishima’s the first to speak.  

“I’m not good with words,” he starts.  

There’s a hush in the crowd, so you stay with it, knowing you’ll only add to the silence should you choose to respond. It wasn’t your turn anyway, so you will yourself to be still and listen.  

“Hey Cam,” Tsukishima continues, choosing to begin his vow with a hello. “I think a lot about what love’s supposed to have meant, mean, or eventually mean in the long run. I thought too much about it to the point where it…” he trails off, blinking at the piece of paper before flicking his eyes up to you with a slight shrug. “—to the point where love began to scare me.”

For a brief moment, he closes his eyes, confident in the fact that when he opens them, he knows he’ll see the world in clarity this time. With the smoke cleared and the scattered pieces of all his doubts set in order, the words of his truth may not speak of the most tender poem of love—but within the lines lies his truth.

As he lays his truth on you, he holds a breath and lets it all go. “I wanna wash the dishes with you for the rest of my life,” he laughs, exhaling softly, his shoulders shaking a little. “Never occurred to me how much of a liar the downside of your thoughts are when you listen to everything that isn’t love,” he continues.  

Your shoulders relax, and even through the blur of the veil, you can tell his eyes are steadily watering.  

“I’m sorry,” he says, the microphone just barely picking up what he says. You nod your head anyway, wishing you were holding his hands instead of the bouquet. Reassurance comes in many forms, but you know he’s always been the type to receive it well through physical touch.  

A kiss on the cheek, your head on his shoulder, or your hands squeezing his. But the smile you give him suffices for now, you think.  

“I wanna wash the dishes with you for the rest of my life. I’ll wash, and you dry. Nothing much happens in our day usually, but nothing has to. I’ll listen to you talk about how shit the traffic is in the city, because I know you’ll listen to me talk about the same complaints I have from Monday to Friday anyway.”

You realize he’s written his vows in the back of a postcard—the one you saw on his dashboard a few days ago, from Kanazawa.  

He sniffles a little then looks up, laughing to himself at how emotional he’s getting. Allowing more than just truth to trickle out slow is a part of love too, he realizes, so with a soft laugh, he lets the tears be and speaks again. “What needed to be let go of was let go of,” he exhales, like he’s been holding his breath for this long.  

In a sense, maybe he has. Sometimes fear grips you tightly enough that it shifts your point of view from one thing to another. What’s love, becomes fear. Then what’s fear, becomes the smoke that buries the core of truth too deep within the haze.  

“I let go of the thought the thought that after marriage, if nothing great would come then that would be the end of love,” he breathes. “I stared at that tree and thought of Grandpa’s words again and again then wrote my apology and I love you on the back of a postcard that only had one a couple of blank lines at most.”

He waves it for you, then to the crowd, to see. The words, jumbled up together look almost incomprehensible written so closely together, but in a way, you have a feeling that he’s just speaking the rest of his truth as it comes in the moment.  

The truth in love, you realize, is that its truth comes, fully unraveled the moment the initial plan falls apart.  

He puts down the postcard, and just looks at you.  

“There’s a lot I don’t think I will ever understand when it comes to love, but maybe I’m here to just feel it and not try to decipher it.” He pauses, ignores the few tears that roll down, and shrugs his shoulders, admitting to himself that the truth in his love is the first thought that comes.

“Love doesn’t have to the greatest,” he tells you. “I just wanna wash dishes with you for the rest of my life and hear about how traffic was unbearable.”

You smile, and your assurance reaches him.  

“I think that counts as love too,” he finishes, the smile on his face tender.

-

As he leans in after I do, he murmurs a question in your ear that you’ve been expecting since the start.

You could have just left, he said. How did you deal with me and still choose to stay?

Your answer was said without a hint of hesitation. With a shrug, and an honest smile, you told him, “Because I love you.”

“I think we both had to let go of the thought that to love always means to have the biggest reasoning behind it. We do things for love, and because of love. That’s just how it is,” you shrugged.

Oddly enough, it’s in that same exact moment where he remembers Bokuto’s question from that dinner a week and some days ago.  

How does it feel? he recalls, and even though words have never found him first nor met him in the middle easy, he gathers what he can and just settles on the conclusion that it just feels like love.

Wherein love, is this.

An identical band on his and your finger, and the taste of I do pleasant on the tongue. I love you, as a truth that’s easy to fathom and healing to hold, and the fear of what comes next just a passing thought that goes as soon as it comes.  

Later that evening his grandfather sits him down and asks him what he really thinks about why people have been putting off cutting down that tree for a few decades now.  

With a laugh, the hesitation that often turns decisions is made clear to him. “You know I think that people would decide things and think they’re so solid on it before even being face to face with it. The second they get to that tree with a chainsaw, I promise you they changed their minds. You think you go there and cut off or let go of one thing, then realize you’re cutting off something else in the end. They go back to what’s been there and realize that it’s not the problem at all.”

Tsukishima sighs, and his grandfather watches, the smile on his face easy. It’s like watching some emerge from a smoked out room, he thinks. Clarity’s always been a blessing, and he’s glad his grandson’s finally found it.  

“Sometimes going back to the start is the one thing you need to be reminded that it’s worth it to keep going.”

“Sounds like you’re not talking about the tree,” his grandfather comments.  Looking at you, Tsukishima smiles. “You could say that too.”

[specford59-blog]

23 February, 2023

Contrasts

Like it or not, we all live precariously dangling on chance and a gossamer thread above an eternity that may or may not be reality. But, we go about our lives hardly thinking about "what if" our connection to the here and now snaps or imperceptibly frays at the edges and then suddenly lets go.

Oddly enough, those thoughts go through my mind almost at every intersection of life. I suspect it goes back a long way, even perhaps my earliest memories. An uncle of my dads was killed in Kansas while hunting coyotes from a plane. I was just 4 years old but recall the somber funeral and the dusty Kansas small town, with a wooded ravine across from the funeral home. Hunting plane accident, death and funeral were my earliest memories.

Then close on the heels of the Starkweather rampage, 4 kids from the local high school, one of which was our neighbor a block away died in a tragic accident. I was 7 years old, we went to see the car displayed on the front yard of the high school for all to see what happens when you do a burn out while exiting the local soda shop and drive head on in to a large massive elm tree. The scar on the trunk never really healed, and gave witness to the horror of that night until the tree was finally taken down more than 30 years later. Life, was unpredictable. You could die, driving out of Kings drive in.

A young man from our church, who's dad was our banker developed cancer (Hodgkin's disease) and as my mom was one of the head nurses at the hospital and there was no such thing as HIPAA 60 years ago, I heard the story. So when he recovered and he was the star coming off the bench to win the state championship basketball tournament for the local high school, I was perhaps the only kid in the stands who knew what he'd gone through from the medical point of view. And, less than two years later when he succumbed to his relapsed cancer, it made an indelible impression on me. Life, it is unpredictable. You could die of cancer with in two years of winning the state basketball championship.

There was a University of Texas star football player, Freddie Steinmark, lost his leg because of cancer, then despite his sacrifice died 2 years later. Life, it is unpredictable. You could die of cancer despite sacrificing a leg and despite being a nationally recognized star athlete.

At 14 my mother was diagnosed with advanced cancer, and after 6 years in and out of the hospital, after multiple operations and brutally archaic chemotherapy and radiation, she died. Life, it is unpredictable.

So, by age 20 the phrase, "life is short, embrace the moment" had already been emblazoned onto my consciousness. That philosophy coupled with the concept that unpredictable catastrophic failures occur despite attempts at risk reduction have led me to embrace adventure carried out with training and attempts at risk reduction, but with the ever present thought that the moment of embarkation may be the last.

In the end, it is this "edge" that awakens us. Edging up to whatever brings immediate awareness beyond simply existing. Each one of us has an asymptotic limit that we inch up to and attempt to hover at without falling into the abyss on the other side of life. For some it is free climbing El Capitan for some in a wheel chair, simply crossing a busy street is edging along the abyss itself.

To be continued:

Finally,

It is sunny cold and actually I want to get out on my new X country skis and practice. But, here I am. After too much time on the laptop, first doing CME to keep up some skills, and then doing some research for a lovely young lady unfairly afflicted with lung cancer. It gives me some sense of satisfaction to help her understand the process and pathway she is being directed to follow. I make no recommendations, only elucidate points for her when she asks.

Fourteen months ago, I left a thriving oncology practice after tending to cancer patients for over 42 years. It was for me a way of life, and I looked forward to seeing my patients and helping them through the minefield that is cancer. Yes, there was sadness, but often I finished the day with joy and fulfillment from sometimes small and sometimes momentous victories. And, I could have stayed, continued to practice if not full time then part time for a few years. But, I took a month off and discovered the pure luxury of free open ended time that drew me in like a siren song. It was and is both a gift and a curse.

So it is that 14 months later, I have forgotten many of the common meds I prescribed daily, and have lost track of the new protocols that would be applied to the various diseases and stages of cancer that were common to me in my practice.

Ski Patrol:

In place of the thought pathways, that are now distant in memory I have become more expert at immediate measures of life support in trauma and cardiac arrest for use on the ski hill as I have become a volunteer ski patroller. The transition is not as odd as it seems. I love skiing, becoming more expert ,and the sense physical exertion and relaxation that comes at the end of a great day on the mountain. But, becoming a volunteer medical ski patroller gives me some sense of purpose beyond just a few days on the slope that used to be my norm for years. I can still provide some medical advice, help with injured skiers as I assist the EMT patrollers sometimes with meds and often with direction and assurance. But, at the end of the day, my responsibilities are complete and I can relax with a book a movie and now worry about prepping for a new potential catastrophic relapse in the clinic.

Stories:

Over my 4 decades in practice, I was witness to many remarkable life stories that left indelible memories. It is my plan in the coming months to record here some of those stories.

Stay tuned

[redorich]

May I request the aftermath of Cleo learning about the magic restrictions please and thank you.

The unfortunate thing about the Dream SMP is that there is no such thing as neutral ground. Everyone's in a faction, and everyone's got beef with everyone else. The only "neutral ground" is the unsettled wilds. When Philza reports this back to Cleo, who reports it back to Xisuma, Cleo wears a put-upon look and says that her and Joe's castle will do just fine, thank you, so stop worrying about it.

The day of the meeting comes, and though Philza is hesitant to return to the castle that scared Techno half to death and activated Ranboo's main character energy, he didn't spend all that time with Cleo handing out the invitations for nothing. Cleo herself won't be present, but her partner in crime Joe will be.

Inside the castle, past the courtyard teeming with armor stand faux-life, there is a meeting room with a table. There are exits on each of the four walls, so no one feels trapped, and the table is circular so that no one feels less important than anyone else. It's all a very Socratic setup.

At the far end of the room, where the head of the table would be were it rectangular, Xisuma sits calm as can be despite the powder keg of important people with grudges he's invited into his presence. On his right is Joe, whose eyes are lit up bright white, though he's still wearing his glasses. To Xisuma's left is Grian, and to Grian's left is Doc. Continuing around the table, next sits Eret representing the Pride Palace and, to a lesser extent, the Dream SMP as a whole. After them, the next person is Philza representing the Syndicate, then Bad representing the Eggpire.

Given the antagonistic nature of the Eggpire, Bad's neighbors have been chosen very carefully; on his other side sits Ghostbur representing L'Manberg. (Philza had awkwardly told Cleo that inviting a L'Manberg representative wasn't necessary, since the place was gone, but she insisted that it was "the principle of the matter". Ghostbur seems happy enough to be invited, anyway.)

On Ghostbur's left, Sam attends on Dream's behalf. Obviously, no one is going to invite Dream, and as Dream's would-be warden, Sam was nominated to attend in his stead. Next to Sam there's an empty chair for George; Philza and Puffy both warned the Hermits that George was allergic to "lore", whatever that meant, but his place at the table was set nevertheless.

The last person to fill in the table is Tubbo, representing Snowchester. He quietly expresses to Sam that he's wary about how few Hermits there are in proportion to the number of Dream SMP citizens. Sam shrugs, and murmurs back to Tubbo that there's probably more Hermits hiding somewhere nearby. After all, isn't that what the Hermits do?

Xisuma claps his hands together once in a polite bid for everyone's attention. They settle down slowly, and once they do, he stands.

"Right, everyone-- thank you all for coming. Let's get right into it, shall we?" He smiles, though it's hard to see beneath the helmet. "With some help from Puffy and Philza, my friends and I were able to figure out why we were trapped in your server."

Sam crosses his arms. He doesn't give much of a shit about the Hermits, he tells himself, unless they have something to do with Dream-- Sam's greatest failure. (It's a lie. He looks at Doc, the only other creeper-person he's ever met-- the first creeper-person, who fought a god and won the right to live for all mob hybrids who came after him. Doc, whose eyes are fixed solely on Xisuma.)

Clearing his throat to cover up the moment of weakness, Sam speaks up. "That's great and all, but why do we care? No one was living in L'Manberg anyway; it was practically free real estate."

The callous words net Sam a glare from Tubbo and a hurt look from Ghostbur. Before either can protest, Xisuma cuts in smoothly.

"It's an issue with your server," he says, "one that Dream should have fixed. It's the reason for this meeting, actually; if there was a responsible admin in the server, I would have just told them. First, a history lesson-- Doc, if you please?"

Doc nods somberly, savoring the opportunity to ham it up a bit. "For those of you who don't know, there are three Eras. The first is the beginning of time, when Mojang created the world as we know it. Players had infinite respawns, the world was less advanced, and redstone had just been created."

"Don't you think you're going a little too far back in history?" Bad asks skeptically.

"He's getting there," Eret defends.

Doc picks up where he left off. "In the Mojang pantheon, there was a god named Notch who wanted to expand the world's horizons, to give them new biomes and mechanics and blocks they'd never seen before... but you can't make something out of nothing. He needed magic to make his big updates a reality, and he stole it from the players behind the other gods' backs."

Ghostbur gasps, horrified. "He stole magic?"

"And so the gods killed him and gave the magic back, end of story," Sam snaps, then instantly regrets it. He's too on edge.

Thankfully, Doc either doesn't mind it or doesn't notice. "Not quite," he says. "When Notch took the magic from players, they lost the ability to respawn at all, marking the beginning of Era Two-- the Hardcore Era. When the gods found out, they were angry at Notch, so they exiled him to the Void. They tried to give players back their magic, but Notch had already taken too much, and servers and updates kept needing more and more... That's how Era Three started. It's the one you live in now, with the three life system."

"So... why does this matter?" Tubbo asks. "I mean, what does this have to do with why you're stuck in our server?"

"There's a parasite on your server, eating up all the magic," Xisuma says carefully. "Your server needed extra magic to keep up, so when we went through the infinity portal it grabbed us. As a group comprised mostly of Era One players, we have the magic that the server needs to compensate for the parasite."

Most of the Dream SMP citizens look either nauseous or extremely worried at the thought of a parasite. With a furrowed brow and a chewed lip, Eret breaks the silence.

"Do you know who it is?"

They all look around the table with wary gimlet eyes, attempting to suss out the imposter among them.

"A parasite..." Sam snorts derisively. "Sounds like that damn egg."

"Language," Bad snaps, but doesn't resort to violence.

"No no, he's got a point," Grian speaks for the first time. He'd been told to stay silent, but he's not a man who will ever pass up an opportunity to meme.

Bad's face falls, and he takes on a placating tone in an attempt to persuade the Hermits to his side. "Hey, don't be like that, the Egg's never done anything wrong!"

Sam's eyebrows raise practically to the ceiling. He looks at Bad in disbelief. "Never done anything wrong?" he says. "Remember when you--"

"That was me, not the Egg," Bad cuts in with a nervous laugh.

"You tried to kill Puffy over it, then killed Foolish instead," Philza says solely because he wants the Hermits to be mad about the Egg.

"Hm," Joe hums to himself. Up until this point the man everyone knows as Herobrine has been quiet, fading into the background, but now that he's made his presence known they can't help but be wary.

He drums his fingers on the table. "Yeah, I think we need some backup. False, Iskall?"

"On it," Doc grumbles, and reaches under the table to flip a couple trapdoors.

Out of nowhere, as though they'd ender pearled in, a blonde woman and a cyborg man appear behind the Hermits' end of the table. Bad stands up suddenly, knocking his chair backward, but Doc presses another button and all four entrances to the room are shut by pistons.

The woman, False, vaults herself over the table with nothing but upper body strength and tackles Bad to the floor. While the demon is still stunned, Iskall dashes around the circumference of the table to flank him. Doc once again presses a button and the floor opens up to reveal a secret staircase, which False and Iskall drag Bad down kicking and screaming. Once they disappear into the depths of the basement, the floor closes back up and the doors reopen like nothing ever happened.

"Well," Xisuma says with a small smile, lacing his fingers together as he addresses the group.

They stare back at him in horror.

He clears his throat awkwardly. "So, with the removal of the Egg, your server will stabilize and we Hermits will be able to leave you in peace..."

"I'm sensing a but," Eret says tentatively. They take off their sunglasses with a minute sigh, reminding themself that it's because of these Hermits that their curse was removed, that they can take off their sunglasses and have gray eyes again.

Taking a deep breath, Xisuma speaks. "We think we have a way to fix the three-life system."

[raindownforme]

omg omg ok ok so maybe for a request charlie and the reader and how they interact as streamers?? like a friends to lovers au but you can tell how they fall in love through all their interactions online & in games (๑˃̵ᴗ˂̵)

like for example whenever they play on the smp charlie only reaaallly wants to help the reader and when anyone else asks he’s like hm? what? IT JUST SEEMED CUTE IN MY HEAD ☹️💌

Lore

Charlie slimecicle x reader [they/them used]

“Hello twitchers.” y/n smiled into the face cam, watching the chat fly by a mile a minute. They knew they’d draw in a larger audience today, it being their first official stream on the Dream SMP. They loaded up the game, spawning in a wooded area surrounded by cobblestone. “Alright where do we- hello?”

y/n leaned closer to the screen. They could see someone standing behind a tree. Someone in glasses and green blotchy skin. They typed into the in-game chat, trying to get who ever it was to come closer. Thankfully they did, revealing a character named Slimecicle. y/n looked over to the discord server, pulling themselves into a voice channel with the mystery person.

“Hi there!” Slimecicle’s voice rang through y/n’s headphones and they smiled. They liked the sound of his voice. “Im Charlie. Welcome.”

“Thanks. Do you know how to get anywhere?”

“Yeah!” Charlie’s character jumped as y/n followed after him. Charlie led them to a snowy mountainside that had been covered with sand. Someone had built a white mansion and several other buildings, including a fountain and a tall tower. “This is where I live.”

“This mansion?” y/n panned to look around the mountainside. They glanced over to watch their chat fly by.

“No I just live in the country in general. Las Nevadas!” Charlie jumped up and down, punching y/n in a friendly manner. “Oh are you hungry? I have food!”

Charlie’s character threw a stack of lamb chops at y/n. They smiled at him, then quickly realized he couldn’t see them. “Thanks! Where is this by the way.”

“Only the best country ever. It’s Las Nevadas! Do you want to live here?”

“Sure!” y/n followed as Charlie ran around. He showed them all around the country; the casino, the strip club, the restaurant, and even the garden. “Charlie this is so cool!”

“I know!” Charlie jumped up and down in a circle. “I’m not the guy who owns it but I’m sure he’d like to meet you.”

“Oh.” y/n paused, biting their cheek. “Will he be okay with me being here?”

“Of course he will. It’s Quackity! Let’s find you somewhere to live.” y/n followed Charlie to the tall white tower. He led them behind it to a flat plot of sand. “Here! We’ll be neighbors.”

“Awesome. I don’t have anything to build with yet but-“

“Oh here!” Charlie ran into the base of the tower, coming back 30 seconds later. He threw two stacks of oak logs to y/n. “Is this what you needed?”

“I- yeah. That’s a lot of wood.”

“I want you to have it!”

y/n smiled bashfully, trying to swallow the heat rising to their cheeks. They could see their twitch chat running by with messages asking if it was lore or cannon. “Here. Take this then.”

Charlie marveled at the flower y/n had tossed him, a blue cornflower. He smiled, holding a hand over his mouth to hide from the prying eyes of his own twitch chat. “Thank you.”

y/n began running around the plot, randomly placing oak planks to make a frame for their house. They tossed Charlie some planks, allowing him to help build up the home. They continued beholding for another half an hour, allowing y/n to have a gorgeous one story home with room for storage and supplies.

“Thanks for all your help today.”

“Of course! Do I get to see you again?”

y/n smiled, glancing over at discord to make sure they’d requested to be friends with Charlie. “Of course! I’ll see you around the server?”

y/n and Charlie saw each other quite often around the server. y/n logged on, Charlie was there. They’d spend hours in the game mining together, building structures, hunting. It went on months of them interacting in streams and lore exclusively.

“You can’t do this Quackity.” y/n spoke slowly. They’d been practicing the recording for this lore for weeks now, and thank god it wasn’t live. “I trust you, and I’m glad we’re friends, but this? Burning it all? What will that do for you. What will any of this do for you?”

“I know you haven’t been here as long, but this is my fucking country. It’s my fucking war. Who the hell are you to think you have any understanding of this? And ideas?”

“Because this isn’t how it works. This isn’t going to work. How many times have you tried this and it just hasn’t happened or you? I don’t know, maybe think about Schlatt? Or Technoblade?”

Quackity froze, being eerily silent. y/n glanced over at the script, making sure nothing was missed. “How do you know about that? Who told you about that?” Quackity’s character ran forward with a diamond sword in hand. “That is none of your business.”

“It’s none of your business how I know.” y/n backed away from Quackity as he walked closer. “I may not have been here long but I have friends.”

“What friends you have-“ he paused, realization setting in. “You have Slime. My friend.”

Quackity came at y/n swinging, they tried to fight back, blocking with a shield and iron sword. “Quackity enough! This isn’t what you want! Quackity please-“

y/n stopped, holding a breath and muting their mic. Quackity had landed the final blow, taking their first cannon life. They moved slightly away from their set up, making sure to not touch any keys. They knew Quackity was still recording, and Charlie’s part was coming soon.

Quackity panted. Taking a shaky breath. “Fuck. Okay. God I can’t believe-“ y/n waited expectantly. Quackity’s pause meant that he saw Charlie. “Oh. Hey bud.”

“Quackity from Las Nevadas.” Charlie almost sounded like he was crying. “What did you do?”

“Slime, you don’t understand, they knew more than they should-“

“So you killed them?” Quackity was quiet. y/n silently cheered to themselves, proud of both Charlie and Quackity’s acting. “You- you took my friend. You took my friend away and- are they coming back? Is y/n coming back?”

“Slime, I took one life. It doesn’t matter. They don’t matter. They didn’t care about Las Nevadas, not like we do.” y/n could hear Quackity’s character moving from his audio in the discord call. “It’s you and me Slime, my best friend.”

“No.”

“No?” y/n looked over the shared script, searching for what part was happening. They hadn’t read this far ahead. “What do you mean no?”

“I cared about y/n. They were my friend. This is not how you treat a friend.”

“And how would you know?”

“Because I know Quackity. I know.”

Charlie and Quackity came to a halt, waiting a moment before speaking again. “That was great!” y/n exited the Minecraft world, turning their full attention to the discord call. Quackity had his camera on, smiling, but Charlie still kept his camera off. “Was there anything else to record today?”

“No that’s it.” There was some clicking from Quackity’s end. “Thanks again. I’ll talk to you later?”

“Yeah, later.”

Quackity exited the discord call, leaving Charlie and y/n in silence. Charlie cleared his throat, turning on his camera. His room was lit by just the lights behind his set up, casting his shadow over the shelves of stuffed toys and collectibles behind him. “Hey.”

“Hey!” y/n felt their face grow warm slightly. “I didn’t realize there was that much more to the script.”

“Yeah.”

y/n chewed the inside of their cheek. It almost sounded like Charlie was disappointed. “Are you okay? You sound upset.”

“I just-“ Charlie paused, resting his chin on his propped-up hands. “What do we do now? I don’t want to stop playing minecraft with you.”

“Charlie we don’t have to stop. Just because the lore goes one way doesn’t mean that we can’t interact.”

“But continuity-“

“You’re thinking like DnD.” y/n smiled gently at him. “If you still want to play together we can, it’ll just be like a secret. Or we can do our own lore. I’m sure if we talk to everyone about it me and you can write something.” Charlie didn’t say anything, and they frowned. “Is there something else?”

“I kind wish they didn’t kill you so early. I’ve still got my lives.”

“Maybe Quackity will kill you next.”

“That’s not-“ Charlie huffed, running a hand through his hair. “I like the character dynamic. I like us interacting. I like us.”

y/n paused, their face burning. They’d be lying if they said they hadn’t thought about the dynamic between themself and Charlie. The clips of them talking on late night streams. The fan-art all over Twitter. The edits recommended to them on Instagram. Hell, they thought about it even without seeing any prompted content. Charlie was on their mind most of the day. They’d constantly find themselves checking twitch to see if he was live or discord to see if he was active. Charlie had become a constant in y/n’s life and they indulged themself in it. “I like the dynamic too.”

“Well we don’t have that dynamic if you stop being part of Las Nevadas. There isn’t us.”

“Charlie, what are you talking about?”

“I’ve been— fucking— I’ve been using this stupid server to get closer to you. I thought that maybe you liked us the way that I liked us and I- I don’t know what I’m doing now.” Charlie rubbed his hands over his eyes. “I just didn’t want you to go.”

“Charlie I’m not going anywhere. I like us too.”

“You do?” Charlie perked up a bit, seeming more enthusiastic.

“Just cause we write lore doesn’t mean it affects us. Here, watch this.” y/n went onto the shared script, hoping Charlie still had it open, and began to type. They wrote about how y/n would possibly live alone in the woods on the outskirts of Las Nevadas, staying close to Charlie.

They could see Charlie smile on the other end of the call, then emit the sound of keys tapping. y/n watched as the words appeared on the page: Charlie tells y/n how he feels.

y/n gasped and turned back to the discord call. “I wanted to tell you soon. I guess I didn’t realize how upset the recording would make me.”

“Charlie, how long have you had a crush on me?”

“Uh, remember your first day?” y/n nodded eagerly. “Yeah. Probably about there.”

y/n turned back to the shared document, typing furiously. “It’s a good thing I like you too.”

Charlie smiled widely at the words; y/n returns his affection. He smiled at the discord call, resting his face in his hands. “Well then, what’s next for our lore darling?”

y/n chuckled, going back to open minecraft. “Help me make a new house.”

“Only if my bed can be next to yours.”

“Deal.”

They could hear Charlie tapping on his keyboard as he loaded in the game. “I know we haven’t met in person, but I’m serious. I like you.”

“And I’m serious. I like you too.” y/n looked at Charlie’s character on their screen. “It does kind of suck we’ve never met but that doesn’t mean-“

“I bought a ticket.”

“W-what? What kind of ticket?”

“A plane ticket. For next week. I mean if that’s okay. I can still cancel it.”

“No! I mean yes. I’d be delighted to have you come over Charlie.” y/n felt their smile soften.

“Can I still have a bed then?”

“Yes!” y/n laughed, going back to the game. They placed two beds side-by-side in the open air. “How’s this?”

“Better.” Charlie’s character went to stand on one of the beds. “Maybe we can write something different- oh.”

y/n looked at the document. Quackity had left them a comment on their new writing, telling them to flirt elsewhere. “Well, I guess he had a point.”

“Back to the game then darling?”

y/n smiled bashfully at the nickname. “Back to the game.”

[blouisparadise]

Upon request, here is a rec list of bottom Louis fics where Harry radiates sex appeal. We hope you enjoy this fics! If you find our rec lists useful, please support them by liking the post and reblogging it to help spread the word. Happy reading!

1) Gimme Gimme | Mature | 5957 words

He dragged himself to his bedroom and flopped down face-first onto the bed, groaning, and started thinking about that new neighbor. Maybe this was his chance. Maybe this was the time for him to actually try and find a love interest that lasted longer than 2 weeks. He rolled over and sat up on the bed, rubbing the back of his neck as he looked out the window.

And what he saw was probably the most amazing thing on the planet.

Walking into his new neighbor’s house was a man in a suit, carrying a briefcase while his Porsche sat in the driveway.

2) Under the Vanilla Sky | Explicit | 8006 words

Who the hell wears a hat like that on a yacht?  That's one of the things Louis thinks when he sees Harry from across the deck of the most expensive, ridiculous boat he's ever been on.  He also thinks he'd like to get closer.  Just to see what's under those aviators.  Just to verify that, yes, in fact, those white swim trunks might be a little see-through when wet.  Just to see if someone could really be that hot in real life.  On a yacht.  In the Caribbean sea just off the coast of St. Barts.  

Here's what really happened on that yacht.

3) Sweet Like Cherry Vodka | Not Rated | 8039 words

When he exits the building he instantly sees him. He’s leaning against his white Mercedes Benz convertible. The car makes him look more expensive. Of course, the navy blue suit that fits tightly around his broad shoulders — making Louis want to fall to his knees, mind you — also helps to get the message across. He looks up from his phone, his sleek black aviators block Louis from seeing his dark eyes.

When Louis knows Harry's watching him he smiles. A grin grows on Harry’s mouth, his strong jaw moves cockily while he chews his gum. How does someone make chewing gum so hot?

“Need a ride sweetheart?” Harry calls to him, the statement adds to his cocky demeanor.

“You know I do, silly.” Louis laughs at how ridiculous the older man can be.

4) You And I ‘Till The Day We Die | Explicit | 10807 words

Prompt 124: A fic inspired by Groupie Love by Lana Del Rey, where Harry is a Rockstar and Louis is his cute little boyfriend who tries to hide himself in the middle of the crowd. (Preferably set in the 80s)

5) Guns N Roses | Mature | 14069 words

Harry's an assassin, Louis is a government agent. They hate each other but not really.

6) My English Love Affair | Explicit | 19198 words

Note: This fic is locked and can only be read by AO3 users.

The thing about sleeping with a member of a famous indie band is that the inevitability of having a song written about you is most likely a hundred percent. The second thing is that in the end, nobody's supposed to find out it's about you.

The one where Harry writes a song about his English love affair and Louis sleeps with someone in White Eskimo and all he gets is a stupid song written about him.

7) The Way The Storm Blows | Explicit | 21649 words

Louis doesn’t have a habit of thinking about Harry’s dick.

That would be weird, seeing as they’re best mates, and they share a flat, and they’ve spent holidays at each other’s family homes. Their friendship hasn’t ever risen to a point where Louis should want to see his mate’s dick, and he’s happy to keep it that way.

Except, all that Louis can think about is exactly that. The size of it. The shape. The amount of people it’s been in.

Maybe it’s the tequila talking, or the fact that Louis’ just recently walked in to an eyeful of Harry taking turns on some slags that he’s never seen before, but. Louis’ mind can’t stop obsessing over the idea.

8) Even The Best Laid Plans | Explicit | 25190 words

Louis wants to have sex with someone and decides Harry is the perfect alpha for the job.

9) A Trail Of Honey Through It All | Explicit | 27086 words

The boy in front of him, well really, the man in front of him, was like something out of a confusing wet dream. Built, tall, tan and muscular, his skin glistened with sweat after a long day of working outdoors with his hands. He was wearing a cut up old American football shirt, the bottom hem was torn and the sleeves were cut off to the point where the t-shirt was really just a loose tank top. The shorts he had on had clearly been full length jeans at one point, and were now just crudely cut off above the knee. His white socks were pulled up too high on his calves, and the brown work boots he had on were old as fuck, the leather peeling along the edges of the soles. Curly brown hair stuck out from the edges of his backwards snapback, and there was a smudge of grease wiped along his brow bone. The smattering of hair along his jaw proved that he hadn’t shaved in a week or two, the hair growing in thicker across his upper lip and around his chin. His sinfully bowed mouth was pink and plump, and Louis was suddenly hyper-focused on the way that he chewed at the toothpick stuck between his lips. He looked like he needed a shower. Louis wanted to lick him.

10) Carnelian | Explicit | 30631 words

Louis finds himself donating blood to the most beautiful being he's ever seen.

11) Take My Pure (And Wash It All Away ‘Til I’m Cured) | Explicit | 40629 words

They're all 19. Louis is a twink, Harry is a frat boy hunk. Harry for some reason wants his makeup done for pride, and Louis is just trying so very hard to stay clear of all alleged fuckboys this year.

12) In The Still Of The Night | Explicit | 68568 words

The Dirty Dancing AU where Louis is a feisty omega who wants to change the world, Harry is an alpha from the wrong side of the tracks, and nobody puts Louis in a corner.

13) Waiting On You | Explicit | 76576 words

“Vampires,” Louis says with disgust, glaring over at the vampire who is noisily slurping from the woman’s neck nearby.

Zayn gives the neat fang marks on Louis’ neck a meaningful look.

“Can’t live with them, can’t live without them,” Louis finishes, ignoring Zayn when he rolls his eyes.

Louis takes a long sip of his milkshake, presses his fingers against the marks on his neck, and definitely doesn’t think about the vampire who left them there.

14) Your Name is Tattooed on My Heart | Explicit | 86809 words

Note: This fic has mentions of top Louis.

Louis is ready to find the love of his life, but first he has to stop falling for the punk rocker next door.

15) Beyond The Point Of Weird | Mature | 108331 words

Louis meets Harry one night and well... Of course things lead from one thing to another. How could Louis not be interested in having a go at the ex-Rockstar who'd starred in his first wet dream?

When Harry asks him to pretend to be his boyfriend to help him clear up his image, Louis agrees because why the fuck not. Yet it kind of feels like the only 'fake' part of their relationship is the title they chose for it... And then it gets confusing.

Louis' pretty sure he walked right into a trap - one he's not quite sure he wants to escape.

Check out our other fic rec lists by category here and by title here.

[junghelioseok]

clandestine. | 03

↳ forbidden fruit tastes the sweetest.

◇ jungkook x reader ◇ smut | fluff | brother’s best friend!au ◇ 9.2k [3/6]

notes: this will likely be my last update of this fic until the new year, because i have two (2!!!) other fics that i’m planning to post in december, including another jungoo one, so! please look forward to those, and enjoy this chapter in the meantime! 

warnings: jk’s massive noona kink: a recurring yet warranted warning, me absolutely fucking up everything about korea’s geography probably, semi-public? fingering???, jungkook....... shall we say, rocks the boat, there is one (1) dick pic but no one’s complaining

⇢ 01 | 02 | 03 | 04 | 05 | 06 

Monday - 11:27am

Kim Taehyung added you to the group: the great escape!!!!!! 🏝🚗💨

[11:27am] Taehyung: let’s gooooooooooo!!

[11:27am] Jisoo: ???

[11:28am] Lisa: go where?

[11:28am] Taehyung: parks lake house this weekend! we’re going on vacation!

[11:28am] You: hold up tae, we haven’t even asked our parents if we can have the house yet

[11:29am] Chimchim: oh yeah lmao

[11:29am] Chimchim: u wanna go ask noona??

[11:29am] You: nope

[11:30am] Chimchim: ugh, fine

[11:30am] Chimchim: u big baby

[11: 31am] You: 🙄

[11: 37am] Chimchim: they said yes!

[11:38am] Taehyung: LET’S GOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

[11:38am] Minho: sweet 👍

[11:38am] Taemin: tight

[11:39am] Jungkook: dope

[11:40AM] Jisoo: you’re all idiots 🙄

Tuesday - 2:34pm

[2:34pm] Chimchim: i’ve secured the van

[2:34pm] Chimchim: for the trip i mean

[2:35pm] Taehyung: noice

[2:35pm] You: 10 people aren’t gonna fit in mom’s van, chim

[2:37pm] Jungkook: i can drive too

[2:37pm] Chimchim: 👍👍

[2:37pm] Chimchim: see? nothing to worry about

[2:38pm] Jungkook: yeah noona, nothing to worry about. nothing at all.

Wednesday - 9:49pm

[9:49pm] Taehyung: oh my god we need FOOD

[9:49pm] Lisa: you’re just realizing that now?

[9:50pm] Taehyung: shut up

[9:50pm] Taehyung: i have a cooler

[9:51pm] Lisa: and ice?

[9:51pm] Taehyung: ………… i will buy some ice

[9:52pm] You: there’s a grocery store on the way up that we always used to go to, we can stock up there

[9:52pm] Taehyung: 👍

[9:54pm] You: you also better remember to bring your own towels. and more than one change of clothing

[9:54pm] Taehyung: 👍👍

[9:55pm] Chimchim: yes, mom

///

The day of the trip finds you standing in the foyer, rifling through your purse to make sure you have all the essentials. Off in the distance, you can hear Jimin sprinting around frantically, catching the briefest glimpse of his ruffled blond hair before he disappears again into the depths of the house.

“Chim, I swear to god. Why didn’t you pack earlier?”

“I did!” your brother whines, poking his head out from the living room where his suitcase is lying wide open, belongings scattered in every direction. “It’s just that—oh, fuck. Do you have my toothbrush?”

“Why would I have your toothbrush?” you deadpan.

He ignores you, and not two seconds later, he lets out an excited shout. “Never mind! I found it!”

You sigh and rub your temples. The trip hasn’t even begun, yet you’re already feeling the beginnings of a headache coming on. “I’m going outside,” you call to your brother, who grunts in acknowledgement. Opening up the front door, you drag your suitcase out onto the sun-drenched porch, relishing the welcome breeze that caresses your cheeks and whispers through your hair.

The rare moment of peace is broken almost immediately by the rumble of a starting engine—the sound shuddery and wavering before it finally evens out into a steady, mechanical purr. It’s coming from nearby, and your gaze immediately travels to the neighboring driveway where a beat-up sedan sits, torn between exasperation and amusement when you see Jungkook waving at you from the driver’s seat.

“I’m coming to pick you up!” he calls through the open window, and you hold back your laughter as he reverses out of his driveway, rolls ten feet down the street, and pulls into yours.

“Was that really necessary?” you ask once he’s parked.

“Of course it was,” he replies, hopping out to grab your suitcase. You watch as he pops the trunk and loads it inside, and blanch when you realize what that means.

“Wait a second. Am I riding with you?”

Some emotion flashes across his face, but he wipes it away before you can identify it. “Would that be so terrible?”

It’s been one week since Taehyung’s party, and Jisoo’s warning still rings loud and clear in your brain. Still, you feign nonchalance and tamp down the uptick in your heart rate, offering him a shrug. “Just wasn’t expecting it, that’s all.”

He grunts. An awkward silence settles over you as he adjusts your suitcase in the trunk beside his, and you distract yourself by fiddling with your purse strap until he slams the lid closed.

“So…” you start after a few seconds. “Are we picking anyone else up?”

“Yugyeom,” Jungkook replies, opening up the driver’s side door and climbing in. Hesitantly, you make your way over to the other side of the car, wondering if there’s any way you can avoid sitting in the passenger seat without looking like a total weirdo.

“Oh! Jungkook’s here already?” Jimin exits the house at last, lugging his suitcase and a smaller backpack. He shoves both into the backseat of your mother’s van before coming over, frowning when he sees you hovering near the trunk. “Why are you just standing there?”

You make a face at him. “We’re waiting for you, dumbass. Who’s riding with you?”

“Tae, Minho, and Taemin,” your brother replies. “Didn’t you see the group chat this morning?”

“I muted it days ago,” you admit. “You guys were annoying as hell.” Then another thought strikes you, your brain belatedly registering the names Jimin listed. “Wait, what about the girls? Aren’t they coming?”

Your brother rolls his eyes. “Jisoo’s working as a camp counselor this summer, and Lisa has other vacation plans. Maybe if you hadn’t muted the chat, you’d have known that.”

He has a point, though you aren’t about to admit that. You’re also wise enough not to inquire about the third member of the trio, remembering Jisoo’s revelation at the party. It’s no surprise that Chaeyoung isn’t joining you for the weekend—you’d want to avoid extended periods of time with your ex-boyfriend too. At the thought, your gaze reluctantly flits back over to the ex in question, who raises an expectant brow when he catches your eye.

“Ready?” he calls out the open window.

No, you want to say. But Jimin has already clambered into the van and slammed the door shut, and Jungkook’s car is blocking the van in the driveway so you suck in a deep breath and slide into the passenger seat beside your dark-haired neighbor.

“Yeah. Let’s go.”

Jungkook nods and throws the car into reverse. One hand splays across the wheel while the other comes up to rest on the back of your seat, and your breath hitches when he cranes around to check his blind spots, his face suddenly too close for comfort.

He’s playing with you, you tell yourself firmly, leaning back until your back’s pressed against the door and you can safely breathe again. Chaeyoung. Think about what he did to Chaeyoung.

“Hey, I made a roadtrip mix,” Jungkook pipes up all of a sudden. He grabs his phone from where it’s resting on the dashboard, tapping at the screen until the first strains of a melody filter through the car speakers. “It should last us the whole way.”

You perk up when you recognize the tune. “Oh! I love this song.”

Jungkook watches out of the corner of his eye as you bob your head to the beat, before smiling down at his lap. “Yeah. I know.”

///

Yugyeom lives on the other side of town, in a sprawling, winding neighborhood that sends your brain—and your phone’s GPS—into a complete and total tailspin. “Wait, wait—hang on. I think you missed a turn. You must have.”

Jungkook’s face crumples in confusion as he slows the car to a crawl, drawing a few irritated honks from the cars behind you. “There weren’t any streets back there, though.”

“Are you sure?” you ask, twisting in your seat to get a better look. “The directions said to take a right in… oh, fuck, hang on. We’re not even on a digitized road anymore, apparently.”

Jungkook heaves a sigh, but when you glance up at him, he’s wearing a grin. “Come on, Noona. You’re supposed to be my navigator. I’m depending on you.”

“I only know how to get us to the lake house, not Yugyeom’s,” you sniff defensively. “This is way beyond my pay grade.”

Jungkook chortles and reaches out, extending an open palm. “Can I see your phone for a sec?” You nod, handing it over, and he clicks his tongue as he turns it upside-down—rotating it a full three hundred and sixty degrees before returning it. “We might be lost,” he declares.

“Gee, you don’t say.”

He chuckles again. Picking up his own phone, he swipes a thumb across the screen before handing the unlocked device over. “Here, call Yugyeom. Put him on speaker, yeah?”

You hum in acknowledgement and scroll down in his contacts until you find the other boy’s name, clicking it open. A photo fills the screen as it rings—clearly a group photo from the way it’s cropped, zoomed in on Yugyeom and the ridiculous face he’s making.

“Is this from graduation?” you ask curiously.

Jungkook blinks and tears his gaze away from the windshield. “Huh?”

“Yugyeom’s contact photo,” you clarify, tilting the phone screen so he can see. “He’s got robes on.”

“Oh.” He looks away again, cheeks flushing. “Yeah. It’s lame, I know.”

You shake your head. “Don’t say that. I think it’s nice.”

Jungkook doesn’t get a chance to respond, but it’s impossible to miss the grin that crinkles his face and settles there. There’s a staticky hum as the line connects, and then Yugyeom’s voice is filling the vehicle, sounding as if he’s just rolled out of bed.

“Whaddaya want?”

“We can’t find your fucking house, man,” Jungkook says bluntly, turning onto a street that you’ve driven down at least three times by this point. “Where do you live?”

On the other end of the line, Yugyeom sighs. “Okay, okay. What street are you guys on?”

That gives Jungkook pause. “Uhh, Cedar Street? Oak Avenue? It has a tree name.”

“Neither of those streets exist, dude.”

“Birch Boulevard!” you exclaim. “We’re on Birch Boulevard. I saw the sign a while back.”

“Ah, okay. You’re close, then. Do you see a sign for Linden Lane?”

You glance around until you alight on a signpost. “Yeah.”

“Turn right onto it. Then take the first left, go past the cul-de-sac, and another left. Do not pass Go, and do not collect two-hundred dollars. I’m the fifth house on the right.”

He ends the call before you can ask him to repeat the directions, and you send Jungkook a helpless look. “Did you get all of that?”

“Besides the overused Monopoly joke?” Jungkook asks.. “Yeah, I got it. Right, left, left. Fifth house. Shouldn’t take more than a few minutes to get there.”

And true to his word, you arrive at the house three minutes later. Yugyeom is standing on the front step with rumpled hair and a duffel bag at his feet, and you snort when he throws open the car door and flops across the entirety of the backseat.

“Rough morning?”

“Stayed up late packing,” he says by way of explanation, his eyes already beginning to drift shut. Jungkook immediately turns the music up, and you giggle when Yugyeom shoots upright at the bassline that’s now shaking the entire vehicle. “I’m up, I’m up! Jeez, man.”

Jungkook just sends him an innocent grin in the rearview mirror. You turn the volume back down to a reasonable level as Yugyeom directs Jungkook onto the best route to take out of the neighborhood, and it isn’t long before you’re merging onto the highway that leads toward the coast.

You’re just beginning to get comfortable, staring out the window at the passing cityscape, when your leg vibrates with an incoming text notification. Glancing down, you see that Jungkook’s phone has slipped between your thigh and the seat, the screen lit with a new message.

[10:21am] Minho: gonna be at the store in 10

“Minho says they’ll be at the grocery store in ten minutes,” you relay to your companions. “We have a little longer to go. Probably another half hour or so.”

“We wouldn’t be so far behind if Yugyeom didn’t live in a fucking labyrinth,” Jungkook remarks, but a glance at the young man in the backseat reveals that he’s drifted off despite your earlier stunt. Rolling his eyes, he turns to you. “Can you text him back, Noona?”

You nod and hold out his phone so he can unlock it with his thumb. “Hey,” you say once you’ve hit send on the message. “Do you have a contact photo for me?”

Jungkook stiffens slightly, his gaze skittering between you and the road. “Oh. Uh, yeah, I guess I do. But it’s nothing, really. It’s kinda lame. But you… you can look at it if you want.”

Curiosity piqued, you scroll down until you find your name, tapping on the image beside it. The photo is from several years ago, during a family trip to the lake house with the Jeons. You are no older than fifteen, your arm slung around a fourteen-year-old Jungkook as the two of you stand knee-deep in the lake, wearing swimsuits and bright smiles. In the background, you can just barely make out a blurry Jimin mid-splash.

“I remember this,” you murmur, zooming in on your smiling faces. “That was a fun summer.”

“Junghyun was grumpy the whole time,” Jungkook recalls with a laugh. “But we had a good time, didn’t we? We practically lived in the lake that entire week.”

“Or that old canoe.” You grin, taking one last look at the photo before locking his phone and handing it back to him. “Remember? We’d always row out too far, and our parents would scream for us to come back before we fell in and drowned.”

Jungkook snickers. “As if I’d ever let you drown. I’m a great swimmer.”

“Are you saying I’m not?”

He backpedals immediately, realizing his mistake. “Hey, don’t twist my words. I said nothing of the sort.”

“That’s what I thought.” Giggling, you turn to look out the window, propping your chin in your palm as you watch the scenery flash past. “And I want that photo, by the way. Send it to me?”

“As soon as we get to the store,” Jungkook promises. “Speaking of which, we’re getting close. Keep an eye out for the exit for me?”

“Deal.”

///

Jimin and the others are waiting in the parking lot when you arrive, perched on and around the van as they watch Jungkook expertly maneuver the car into a neighboring parking space. “Took you long enough,” your brother says once the engine is cut, hopping off the hood and landing lightly on both feet.

“We’re here now, aren’t we?” you snark as you join the others hovering near the grocery store entrance. Jimin makes a face at you, and you stick your tongue out in response. After a quick huddle—wherein you form a very haphazard game plan—everyone disperses. Jimin grabs a shopping cart and heads inside with Taehyung and Minho, the latter of whom is trying to clamber his way into the cart to hitch a ride.

Sighing, you grab a shopping cart of your own and scan the interior of the store for the produce section. They’ve rearranged the aisles since you were last here, but you quickly find what you’re looking for and begin picking your way over when Jungkook materializes at your side.

“So, what are you thinking for food?” he asks, nudging you away so he can push the cart in your stead.

You allow him to take over, gesturing toward your destination. “I know my brother,” you tell him dryly. “He’s going to buy meat and completely forget about everything else. And I don’t trust any of you to buy a single fruit or vegetable.”

“I like fruit and vegetables,” Jungkook defends.

“You like everything,” you correct, flashing him a teasing grin before leading him into the produce section.

Grocery shopping with Jungkook turns out to be surprisingly pleasant—comfortable, even. He proves adept at finding the ripest fruits and greenest vegetables, and when you ask him to find some apples, he trots off immediately and returns with a handful of sweet potatoes in addition to your requested fruit.

You raise an eyebrow. “What are you planning to do with those?”

Jungkook feigns offense, slapping a hand to his heart. “That’s cold, Noona. Don’t you think I can cook?”

“I’ve never seen you cook in my life,” you respond. “How am I supposed to know if you can or not?”

“I can,” he promises. “And I’ll prove it too, if you let me.”

You get the feeling he’s not just talking about cooking anymore, but he doesn’t give you a chance to answer. Dropping the apples and potatoes into the cart, he flashes you a crooked little smile before turning toward a display of cabbages, leaving you to wonder at what exactly is going through his head.

///

It’s nearly one in the afternoon when you arrive at your family’s lake house. The last stretch of the drive takes you through the forest along a winding, narrow road, but Jungkook is a capable driver and you know the way well enough to warn him about any upcoming hairpin turns. Piling out of the car, the three of you make quick work of putting the food safely into the refrigerator. By the time you’re finished, Jimin and the others have arrived as well, lugging their belongings inside and setting them inside the entryway.

“So who’s sleeping where?” Taehyung asks, glancing around the house. It’s modestly sized, with a living area on one side and a combined dining room and kitchen on the other. Three bedrooms and a bathroom branch off of the hallway between them, ending in a back door that leads out to the lake. Through the window, you can see the water glimmering in the sunlight, hazy and golden.

“We’ll have to share,” Jimin says. “ If Noona takes one room, that leaves two bedrooms and the pullout couch for the rest of us.”

Jungkook tilts his head. “Rock, paper, scissors?” he suggests, drawing a chorus of groans.

“I always lose!” Jimin complains. “And Taemin cheats!”

“Do not!”

Laughing at the indignant expression on your brother’s face, you decide to leave them to it and head to your bedroom with your luggage in tow. The room is just as you remember it, with a bed tucked against one wall and a dresser on the opposite. There are three doors in total—one that you just entered through, and another that opens into a small closet. The third leads to a bathroom—shared with the bedroom on the other side of the wall that usually belongs to Jimin. Vaguely, you wonder who will be sleeping there tonight, before setting your suitcase on the bed and unzipping it.

“Fuck!”

You jump at the sudden shout, poking your head out into the hallway to see what’s causing all the commotion. Yugyeom is kneeling on the floor with his head down, a crestfallen Taemin standing beside him. Meanwhile, Taehyung and Minho look supremely pleased with themselves, and you see why when they grab their bags and practically skip to the master bedroom across the hall, collapsing onto the king-sized bed.

“Have fun on the couch, losers!” Jimin singsongs, grabbing Jungkook by the wrist and dragging him into their newly won bedroom on your side of the hallway. “Lake in fifteen minutes, so get changed! Last one there’s in charge of dinner!”

The door slams shut behind him, and you roll your eyes before turning back to your opened suitcase and pulling out a book. There’s a perfectly shaded spot beneath one of the trees along the water, and you fully intend to capitalize on the last few hours of daylight before the sun begins to set.

Minho is the only one outside when you exit the house, standing on the dock in a pair of green swim trunks. He waves at you cheerily before cannonballing into the lake, and you squeak as the resulting splash sends water splattering across the front of your shirt.

“Sorry!” he calls when he resurfaces, shaking his hair out like a wet dog.

You wave off his apology with a laugh, settling down onto the soft grass at the base of your chosen tree and opening up your book. The other boys trickle out of the house one by one, but you barely notice. It isn’t until a triumphant shout pierces the air that you finally glance up to see what’s causing all the commotion, your gaze immediately landing on Taehyung standing on the back steps of the house.

“Trust me,” he says, unbothered by his apparent tardiness. “You don’t want me to make dinner.”

Minho pulls a face and straightens up from where he’d been floating on his back. “You know, he kinda has a point there.”

Murmurs of agreement all around. Taehyung gives Jimin a smug smile, who scowls from where he’s sitting at the end of the dock, his bare feet dangling over the edge. “So what now? Do we have to play rock, paper, scissors again?”

“Nah, I’ll do it.”

Every head whips around to face Jungkook, yours included. He’s standing a short ways from where you’re sitting—his approach so quiet that you hadn’t even heard him arrive. The last time you checked, he’d been diving off the dock with Minho and Yugyeom, water pooling in his collarbones and dripping down the ridges of his taut abdomen each time he resurfaced.

Not that you’d been looking, of course.

“Really?” Jimin looks aghast at his best friend’s declaration. “You can cook?”

Jungkook scoffs in disbelief and plops down beside you, leaning back against the tree trunk. “Why does everyone in your family seem surprised by that?” he asks, his lip jutting out in a petulant frown. “Do I seem like someone who can’t cook?”

“Yes,” you tell him honestly, marking your page and letting the book fall shut. “Don’t take it personally, though. Men only learn how to cook in college when they have to start fending for themselves. And sometimes, not even then.”

The noise that leaves Jungkook’s mouth can best be described as disgruntled, but he doesn’t press any further. Instead, he peers over your shoulder to get a look at the cover of your book, mouthing the title to himself before glancing at you. “Haven’t I seen you reading this before?”

“Probably,” you admit. “It’s an old favorite.”

He hums, slouching back against the tree again, and when you look over, you see that both his eyes have fallen shut. With his mouth parted and his dark lashes resting on his cheeks, he looks years younger than he is—and so much more like the Jungkook you used to know.

“Tired?” you whisper.

“Long drive,” Jungkook whispers back, his head already beginning to loll. “Lemme sleep, Noona.”

Smiling to yourself, you return to your book and leave him to rest.

///

“So, what are you even planning to make?” Jimin asks, swinging his legs. He’s seated atop the kitchen counter, taking up the majority of what precious little space there is to begin with, and Jungkook sighs deeply as he’s forced to dodge around him yet again to peer into the refrigerator.

“You’ll see.”

“I don’t think you even know yet,” Taemin pipes up from the doorway. The other boys are in the living room playing Mario Kart, but Taemin and Jimin have selflessly pulled themselves away from the game to help their friend in the kitchen—or so they say. As far as you’re concerned, they’ve been nothing but a nuisance thus far, but you don’t voice that particular thought aloud.

“Ramen doesn’t count as making dinner,” Jimin points out snidely when Jungkook pauses too long next to the box of ramen packs. “Anyone can boil water. And you don’t get to add an egg and call it fancy, like you usually do.”

“My ramen is delicious, excuse you,” Jungkook retorts, pointing a spatula at him. “And that’s not even what I’m making, so fuck off.”

Jimin shrugs, but shuts his mouth nonetheless. You take the opportunity to throw some pork belly at him, the meat wrapped neatly in paper and tied off with twine. “Here,” you tell him. “You could at least make yourself useful and start grilling the meat.”

“Okay, mom,” your brother grumbles under his breath, hopping off the counter. He and Taemin head out to the back porch where the grill sits, and you join Jungkook at the stove where he’s staring thoughtfully at an empty pan.

“Try twisting the dial. I’ve heard that helps.”

Jungkook snaps out of his daze and turns to you. “Huh?”

“The stove. It won’t light itself, you know.”

Chuckling, Jungkook twists the dial as instructed, adding a drizzle of oil to the pan. As it heats up, he turns and selects a knife from the cutlery drawer. The sweet potatoes he’d insisted on purchasing are already washed and peeled, and you watch as he begins to slice them, your gaze automatically flitting down to his exposed forearms, his muscles flexing with every movement.

“Hey, Noona? Can you do me a favor?”

You blink, tearing your gaze from the branching veins lining his arms. “What?”

Jungkook, thankfully, doesn’t seem to notice your distracted state. “Can you put the rice in the microwave?” he asks, and you can’t help but giggle.

“Why?” you tease. “Are you still scared?”

“Of course not,” he retorts, but you don’t miss the wary look that flashes across his face when you plop the rice inside and go to punch in the cook time.

The remainder of the cooking goes smoothly. Jimin and Taemin return with the grilled meat, and Jungkook rebuffs your offer to set the table, leaving his position at the stove to lay plates and utensils down on the table himself. “I’m just about done, anyway,” he tells you, gesturing at the plate of glazed sweet potatoes on the counter. “Sit down and relax, Noona.”

“Fine,” you relent, taking a seat. Jimin takes the chair beside you, and Taemin plops down on his other side. Jungkook sits down just to your left once he’s finished laying out the food, and for a brief, insane moment, you almost think that he’s going to repeat what he’d done at his graduation dinner. But the dark-haired young man remains on his best behavior, keeping his hands to himself under the table, and you aren’t sure whether you’re grateful or disappointed.

The meal flies by in a flurry of laughter and conversation. Jungkook discovers that his glazed sweet potatoes have adhered to the plate, and sends everyone into hysterics when he promptly starts spinning it around like a steering wheel.

It’s a good night. And at the end of it, you go to bed warm and content, with a belly full of food and a smile on your face.

///

You awaken to the sound of chirping songbirds and gentle waves lapping at the shore the next morning, thoroughly rejuvenated after an undisturbed night’s sleep. Stretching your arms overhead, you yawn and bask in the comfort of your bed for a few more moments before getting up and heading to the bathroom, thankful that you don’t have to fight anyone for sink occupancy. The toilet seat is even down, which comes as a welcome surprise, all things considered.

Before long, you are back in your bedroom, rifling through the contents of your suitcase. Belatedly, you realize that you’ve packed only one swimsuit—and a bikini, at that. Cheeks warming, you pull the two pieces out, holding them up against your body. Has it always been this small? You don’t remember. All you know is that Jungkook has two fully functional eyes, and there’s no way that he won’t be looking at every inch of skin you choose to expose.

In the end, you settle on wearing the bikini beneath a flowy, floral kimono-style robe, tied at the waist to form a makeshift dress. The ensemble reaches just past your knees and is sheer enough to still show skin, but you no longer feel as self-conscious going out into the view of your companions and that’s a victory as far as you’re concerned. Checking your reflection one last time, you adjust your sash before opening the bedroom door and heading down the hall for some breakfast.

Unsurprisingly, the kitchen is empty when you walk in, tiptoeing past a still slumbering Taemin and Yugyeom on the pullout couch. You savor the quiet as you start up the old coffeemaker, pulling a mug from the cabinet and rinsing it out to get rid of any lingering dust. The weather app on your phone promises that it’ll be a clear, cloudless day, and a glance out the window confirms it. Silently, you debate whether or not to crack a window.

Your musings are interrupted by the arrival of Taehyung, his brown hair sticking up at all angles. Blearily, he trundles to the fridge and grabs the orange juice, seemingly two seconds away from chugging it straight from the carton before you clear your throat and push a clean glass toward him. You think you hear him mumble a thank you.

As the morning wears on, the others slowly begin to trickle in. Breakfast is a disorganized affair that leaves bread crumbs all over the counter, and nearly causes a fight when everyone seems to want their eggs cooked a different way.

“Look, if you wanted your egg soft-boiled, you should’ve made it yourself!” Jimin grouches to Taehyung, the t-shirt over his head muffling his words. Everyone else is already in the water, splashing about, but you’re seated on the end of the dock with your brother and Taehyung, who looks thoroughly unfazed behind his tinted sunglasses.

“Maybe if I knew how to soft boil an egg, I would have.”

“Google exists,” Jimin says, finally freeing himself from the shirt and tossing it aside.

Taehyung nods sagely. “Exactly. So why didn’t you use it?”

Jimin is beginning to look positively murderous, so when Minho swims over and taps your submerged ankle, you are beyond grateful for the distraction. “Hey. What’s up?”

“Are you gonna swim, or are you gonna sit onshore the whole time?” Minho asks, raking his wet bangs out of his eyes. “The water’s not even cold, so get in here.”

Pointedly, you wiggle your toes. “Feels pretty cold to me.”

“Okay, fine. It’s cold.” Minho grins. “But you get used to it.”

You sigh at his easy admission. “All men do is lie. How am I supposed to believe you?”

He raises a brow. “Do I need to pull you in and dunk you under?”

“I will kick you if you even try,” you tell him, standing up and shrugging off your robe. An audible hush falls as the gauzy material pools around your ankles—Jungkook stops wrestling with Yugyeom and trying to dunk him underwater, and Taemin pauses mid-splash, his hair drenched and dripping.

It’s Minho who breaks the silence first, letting loose a low whistle of appreciation. “Damn, {Name}.”

Jimin grabs a shoe from the pile on the dock and chucks it at him, hard. “Dude, that’s my fucking sister!”

“Ow! What the fuck, man, that’s my shoe!”

“Quit ogling my sister!”

“I’m not!” Minho yells, just as Jimin chucks the other shoe and hits him square in the mouth. “Okay, I’m not anymore. Sorry, okay?”

Once he’s sufficiently sure that Jimin is done attacking him, Minho turns to you. “I’m sorry,” he says sincerely. “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable or anything. You know that, right?”

“I know,” you reassure him. “Honestly, it was kinda good for my self-esteem. And I don’t need you defending my honor, or whatever it is you think you’re doing,” you add, glancing over at your disgruntled brother.

“Men are pigs,” Jimin sniffs. “I won’t apologize.”

You ruffle his hair good-naturedly. “I know, Chim. You’re right.” Then your smile turns mischievous. “I won’t apologize for what I’m about to do, either.”

And then you grab him by the arm and drag him into the lake, the cold water submerging you in an instant and stealing the breath out of your lungs. You’re both gasping by the time you resurface, blinking water out of your eyes, and you squeal when Jimin takes the opportunity to splash you again.

Hours pass—the sun rising higher overhead. Around noon, Taehyung disappears inside the house and returns with an assortment of snacks and sandwich fixings, ushering everyone over for an impromptu lunch on the dock. You dip your feet into the water as you munch on a bag of chips, and Jungkook plops down beside you with a juice box in one hand and a ham sandwich in the other.

“Wanna go for a ride in the canoe after lunch?” he asks, jabbing a thumb back in the direction of the house. “I found it in the garage.”

You laugh. “Really? I thought for sure we got rid of that thing. Are you sure it hasn’t sprung a leak?”

Jungkook’s face crinkles into a grin. “Guess we’ll have to wait and see, huh?”

You grin back and raise your cup, the lemonade inside swishing around. “I’ll hang on to this, just in case I need to start bailing water out.”

Lunchtime winds down gradually. Jungkook polishes off his sandwich and trots off to fetch the canoe, waving off your offers to help before disappearing around the corner of the house. You watch him return a few minutes later from your seat on the end of the dock, resting your weight back on your hands and swirling your pruney toes in the water. He’s stripped off the loose white tee he’d donned during lunch, his golden skin cast in shadow by the canoe perched across his bare shoulders, and your gaze trails from his bulging biceps down to the ridges of his abdomen. The muscles flex with every step he takes, and you hastily take another sip of lemonade in an effort to combat the sudden dryness in your throat.

With a grunt, Jungkook comes to a stop at your elbow, heaving the boat into the water. The impact sends ripples across the lake and the butterflies in your belly into a frenzy, and you nearly fall off the dock when Jungkook touches your shoulder gently.

“Ready to go, Noona?”

You nod, not quite trusting yourself to speak. Jungkook holds the boat steady with one hand while offering you the other, and you gratefully grasp it as you step off the dock. The canoe rocks dangerously when Jungkook clambers in after you, but quickly steadies when he picks up an oar and jabs at the dock to push off into the lake. The glimmering expanse of blue water stretches before you, and you relax as you let your fingers dangle off the side of the boat, watching ripples form beneath your fingertips.

“I can help row,” you say after a few moments, casting a glance over at Jungkook. He’s settled into a rhythm now, the veins and tendons in his arm flexing with each movement, and you’re suddenly very aware of how close he’s sitting.

“You—” Jungkook says, fixing you with a playful stare, “—just enjoy the ride, yeah?”

Shaking your head, you smile and turn back around to admire the view. Sunlight reflects off the rippling water, lending a golden iridescence to the glittering blue depths. In the distance, the opposite shoreline rises up, crowned with rocky outcrops and majestic dark green pines.

With a start, you realize how far away you’ve gotten from the other boys. The shouts and laughter from the house are quickly fading into the background, and you nervously turn to look at Jungkook as he rows you even further.

“God, my dad would freak if he saw us right now,” you remark, trying to diffuse the sudden tension that’s settled. “I mean, we don’t even have life jackets. He’d lose his mind.”

Jungkook hums. He stops rowing, his hands stilling on the oars, and you’re just about to ask him what’s wrong when a warm hand glides up your thigh.

“You think you could maybe stop talking about your dad, princess?” Then he smirks. “Unless you’re into the whole daddy kink thing, because I’d be down to explore that at some point if you want—“

“Jungkook!” you hiss, scandalized.

“Yes?” the young man in question hums, his face the picture of innocence. It’s hard to muster up your vocabulary when he’s looking up at you with those wide doe eyes, but you somehow manage to prevail over your malfunctioning brain.

“We’re in public!” you whisper, glancing back at the shore where your brother and his friends have started an impromptu game of water polo.

Jungkook smirks crookedly at you. “Guess you better not scream too loud, then.”

And then, before you can open your mouth to protest—before you can even try to call his bluff—he’s slipped his hand into your bikini bottoms and found his way to your clit. Your entire body spasms when he presses into it experimentally, and the resulting snicker that escapes him is nothing short of infuriating.

“Careful,” he coos, laying his free hand on your thigh, his thumb rubbing nonsensical circles into the soft skin. “Don’t wanna rock the boat, now.”

Then he returns his attention to your clit, pinching the nub just to watch you jolt in his grasp and soothing you with a gentle kiss to the knee afterward. Your skin warms beneath the plush of his lips, and the pleased smile that curves them is all the warning you get before he sheathes a single finger in your clenching core. “Jungkook—” you gasp, shoving uselessly at his bare shoulders, but you can’t keep the edge of desire out of your voice. You can’t hide the growing wetness between your legs either—wetness that he most certainly feels as he slips another finger inside, pumping into you with ease.

“God, look at you,” he murmurs, his eyes trained on the way you clench around him. “So pretty like this. So pretty, getting fucked by my fingers. I could do this all day.”

“We—we don’t have all day,” you whisper. The last syllable dissolves into a moan as Jungkook eases a third finger into your cunt, and you scrabble to ground yourself when he picks up his leisurely pace. One hand settles on the edge of the boat, your fingernails digging into the wood, while the other finds Jungkook’s bicep. His arm flexes beneath your grip with each snap of his wrist, and you keen when he crooks his fingers just right and sends stars skittering across your vision.

He knows that you’re getting close. You can tell from the growing furrow between his brows and the hard set of his jaw, and you can tell that he won’t stop until he gets you off. Concentration etches across his face, and you gasp when his thumb finds your clit again.

“Oh, fuck, Jungkook—”

“That’s it,” he rasps, digging deeper and thumbing roughly across your bundle of nerves. “Cum for me.”

And you do. With one final flick of his wrist, Jungkook sends you hurtling over the edge that he’s so effortlessly built, a cresting wave of pleasure overtaking your body and spreading through your veins. Your leg kicks out instinctively, rocking the canoe dangerously in the water, but Jungkook catches you by the ankle with his free hand and presses a kiss to the inside of your thigh. He shifts his weight until you’re steadied once more, and only then does he ease his fingers out of you, raising them to his mouth to lick them clean.

“Think we can sneak away so I can fuck you properly?” he asks.

Your cheeks heat up at the lewd display, warming even more when his words register in your muddled brain. “Oh my god, Jungkook.”

“That’s exactly what you’ll be saying when I really get my hands on you,” Jungkook agrees. Flashing you a mischievous grin, he drops his hand over the edge of the boat, letting the turquoise water wash away any lingering fluids. “What do you think? The backseat of my car isn’t half bad…”

“I will literally push you into this lake,” you tell him, trying and failing to hide a disbelieving laugh. “Why are you such a perv?”

“You like it,” Jungkook defends immediately. “‘Sides,” he adds, casting a wary glance at the shore where Jimin and the others are still fully engrossed in their game, “I wanna kiss you while I fuck you. It’s not as good like this.”

At that, something dangerously close to affection blooms in your belly, winding its curious tendrils around your heart. Swallowing the feeling down, you pick up one of the oars instead, handing it over to him before hefting the other. “Come on,” you murmur. “They’re gonna get suspicious if we’re gone too long.”

Jungkook hums. “Yeah. Probably.”

And then he raises the oar you just handed him, lifting it until the paddle covers both of your faces, and boldly plants a firm kiss on your mouth.

“I’ll row us back,” he declares casually when he pulls away, as if he hasn’t just stolen all the oxygen from your lungs. As if your lips aren’t burning where he’s kissed you, your cheeks hot beneath his gentle exhalations. As if you aren’t positively thrumming with the desire to pull him back in, and maybe take him up on his offer to fuck you in the backseat of his beat-up sedan.

“Yeah,” you say instead, your voice hoarse. “Let’s go.”

///

What few remaining hours of daylight you have, you decide to spend inside. Jungkook gets roped into the water polo match as soon as the two of you return to shore, and you take the opportunity to slip into the house and clean yourself up. Safely locked away in the bathroom, you strip off your damp bikini bottoms and toss them in the sink. The top follows, and you give both a quick wash, doing your best to ignore the remaining slick from your orgasm that stubbornly coats the material.

Once everything is washed and hanging up to dry, you step into the shower. Warm water soaks your hair and slides down your back, and you tilt your head back to let the spray wash your worries away, relishing in the rare moment of peace and quiet.

By the time you’ve toweled off and gotten dressed, you can hear the boys beginning to traipse back into the house. From what you can make out, they’re making dinner plans, and you poke your head out curiously when Jimin mentions you by name.

“What are you saying about me?” you ask, narrowing your eyes accusingly at your brother.

Jimin whirls around, his cherubic face a perfect picture of innocence. “Nothing! I was just talking about your fried rice and how good it is…”

“You’re trying to get me to make you dinner,” you sigh. “I knew it.”

“No, we’ll help!” your brother promises. “I swear, as soon as I get out of the shower, I’ll chop all the vegetables.”

“Sure you will,” you snort, brushing past him and heading for the kitchen.

Much to your surprise, the kitchen is already occupied when you arrive. Jungkook and Yugyeom are at the counter—the former poised with a knife at the ready, about to slice into an onion. The latter is digging through the cabinets, and both turn at the sound of your footsteps.

“Hey,” Yugyeom says. “You probably know where the bottle opener is, right?”

You nod. “Left of the sink, second drawer down.” Then you turn your attention to Jungkook, peering curiously over his shoulder. “What’s the onion for?”

“Dinner,” he replies, flashing you a crooked little smile. “We’re making fried rice, aren’t we?”

Your heart skips a beat in your chest and races to catch up, thumping erratically against your ribcage. It’s hard to ignore the warmth blossoming in your belly—near impossible to ignore the butterflies that have made a home there—but you somehow manage to school your expression into something passably neutral and busy yourself with the other vegetables on the counter. “I see Jimin got to you, too. Is the other cutting board clean?”

Jungkook nods, jabbing a thumb in the direction of the dish rack. “Washed it last night, yeah. It’s all yours, Noona.”

You hum and skirt around Yugyeom to grab the clean board and another knife. Chopping vegetables goes a lot faster with two people, and Yugyeom does his part by cracking open two bottles of beer and plunking one down next to each of you before opening a third for himself. “Hydrate,” he orders, and you roll your eyes before picking it up and taking a sip.

It doesn’t take long to finish making dinner. As promised, Jimin joins you as soon as he’s out of the shower, plucking the knife out of your hand and nudging you aside so he can finish cutting the vegetables. You fire up the stove and drizzle some oil into a pan, and smile when Taehyung brings you the container of leftover rice and a large serving bowl.

“You know what we should do?” Minho asks as you’re all sitting down to eat. Yugyeom’s opened more beers, and Jimin’s brought out the wine as well. Jungkook is spooning out fried rice for everyone, and you accept the bowl he hands you with a murmur of thanks before looking at Minho expectantly.

“What should we do?”

“Go to the beach,” he replies, tilting the remainder of his beer back into his mouth. “It’s only an hour away, isn’t it?”

“Closer to half an hour without traffic,” Jimin corrects. “But, yeah, we should go. That would be fun.”

By the time dinner is finished, you’ve finalized plans to drive down to the beach in the morning. “Remember, we’re leaving at ten,” you tell Jimin, elbowing him in the ribs. “That means you have to wake up before ten.”

“I know!” your brother whines, rubbing the spot where you elbowed him with a grimace. “Jeez, Noona. I’m good at waking up. It’s Jungkook and Tae you have to worry about.”

“Says the punk who takes hour-long showers,” you snark. “What are you gonna do when you have to pay your own water bills, huh?”

“Shower at your place,” he replies smugly. “You can’t turn me away. I’m your brother.”

“Please, that’s exactly why I can turn you away, you little mooch.”

“You love me!”

“Really? You wanna test that theory?”

The remainder of the evening passes in a blur of booze and board games, unearthed from the closet in the hall. Despite your collective agreement to go to bed early, it’s past midnight when you finally bid everyone goodnight and crawl underneath your covers. Shutting your eyes, you will your brain to settle and your limbs to relax, and you’re on the verge of drifting off when your phone suddenly buzzes. Lazily, you roll over and snatch the device off the nightstand, taking in the late hour before your eyes flit down to the new notification and go wide.

[1:02am] Jungkook: IMG_497

You freeze, thumb hovering just above the message. Even when your screen goes dark again, you can’t erase the sight of his name lighting up your phone, the attachment sitting there like a taunt. You shouldn’t open it. You can’t open it.

But curiosity gnaws at your belly, fraying the edges of your resolve. Slowly, you wake the screen, watching as Jungkook’s name fills it once more. You hesitate, bottom lip finding its way between your teeth.

And then your phone buzzes again, several times in quick succession.

[1:04am] Jungkook: i miss you, noona

[1:04am] Jungkook: miss your pretty face

[1:04am] Jungkook: miss how tight your pussy felt around my fingers

You drop the device as if scorched. It takes several moments to gather your wits again, but when you do, pick up your phone, clicking on his name and scrolling up to the attachment. In the darkness of your bedroom, you watch with bated breath as it downloads.

“Fuck.”

The expletive slips past your lips, unbidden, but you can’t help it. Jungkook stares out at you from the photograph illuminating your screen, his eyes hooded and his lips curled into a devious smirk. He’s in the shared bathroom between your bedrooms, and even though it’s dark inside, the flash of his camera is just enough to illuminate the distinctive palm tree patterned shower curtain behind him.

But, you aren’t focused on that.

No, your focus is zeroed in on the foreground of the photo, where you can perfectly make out the head of Jungkook’s cock, sticky and leaking copiously from between his fingers.

“Fuck,” you repeat, louder this time.

And as if reading your mind, another text flashes onto your screen.

[1:07am] Jungkook: wish your pretty little pussy was stretched around my cock right now, princess

You aren’t sure what possesses you to send the response you do, but your thumbs are moving before the more rational side of your brain can catch up and stop you.

[1:07am] You: why don’t you come over and make it happen then?

You’ve only just hit send when the bathroom door swings open, revealing Jungkook standing there in nothing but sweatpants. His face is illuminated in the stark white light shining from his screen, his eyes dark and his smirk even darker. Every movement drips with intent, from the way his lips quirk upward to the way he saunters over to join you on your bed, dropping his phone somewhere amongst the rumpled sheets. The room goes dark.

And then…

“Hey, princess.”

His lips are at your ear, hot breath caressing your cheeks and sending shivers down the length of your spine. The mattress dips beneath his weight as he joins you, a hand finding your bare thigh before sliding up to grasp your hip. Only an oversized t-shirt and a thin pair of cotton panties shield you from his roving fingers, and you can tell from the pleased curve of his mouth that he isn’t going to let either stand in his way. One hand slips beneath the hem of your shirt, dancing along your ribcage, and you let out a breathy gasp when he trails up and skims along the soft skin just below the swell of your breasts.

“Been thinking about you all night, you know,” Jungkook whispers, pushing up your shirt and peppering kisses along every inch of newly revealed flesh. “Been thinking about how pretty you looked, cumming around my fingers, and how much prettier you’d look cumming around my cock.”

Your shirt is long forgotten by this point, tugged overhead and thrown carelessly over his shoulder. Jungkook hauls you closer, slotting himself between your spread legs, and you shiver when he presses the pad of his thumb against your clothed clit, the material uncomfortably damp as it clings to your folds.

“Jungkook—” His name escapes you in an airy whisper. “Please.”

Even in the darkness, you can see the satisfied, self-assured tilt of his lips. “Such a good girl for me,” he croons, leaning down to press a kiss to your waiting mouth. His free hand comes up to cup your cheek while the other remains between your legs, and you gasp sharply when he digs his thumb a little harder against your clit, circling the sensitive bud.

Jungkook seizes upon the opportunity to slip his tongue past your lips, licking into your mouth with unrestrained ardor. Your panties are peeled away, the cottony material disappearing right alongside the pressure of his thumb, and the inadvertent whine that escapes you has him chuckling darkly in his throat.

“What is it, princess?” Jungkook rasps, his voice dipping several pitches. “You have to tell me what you want, remember?”

You clutch at his wrist weakly, tugging it back between your legs until he finally indulges you and resumes his lazy revolutions around your clit. “Want you,” you whisper. “Want you inside me.”

Jungkook lets out a pleased hum, rewarding you with a single finger that he slips into your sopping entrance, your juices aiding the smooth glide as he curls it up in search of the spot that’ll have you seeing stars. “See? That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

“No, it wasn’t,” you agree shakily. “But it looks like you are, so why don’t you let me help you out?”

Jungkook chuckles softly, his lips ghosting across the swell of your cheek. “Oh, yeah? And how exactly do you plan on helping me?”

Slowly, you reach down, letting your fingers graze the sizable bulge in his sweatpants. “You said it yourself, didn’t you? Me, stretched around your cock?”

A low groan escapes him when you give him a firm stroke, your fingers barely meeting around his length. “On your back,” he commands hoarsely, nudging you backward until you’re nestled into your pillows. Freeing his erection from the confines of his sweatpants, he settles comfortably between your spread legs, the mattress groaning in protest at the shift in weight.

“Wait,” you whisper, grabbing his wrist. “Did you hear that?”

His face scrunches in confusion. “Hear what?” he asks, as if he’s never heard that particular string of words before. “Are you sure it wasn’t just—”

He stops mid-sentence, and you both hear it again—the unmistakable creaking of bedsprings from next door. “Shit!” you hiss, scrambling back on the mattress until you’re nearly pressed against the headboard. “Oh, god. That’s Jimin. He’s going to kill you if he finds you in here—”

On the other side of the wall, the door to the shared bathroom opens, the light flickering on and illuminating the crack beneath your door. You hear your brother cursing sleepily under his breath as the toilet lid clatters open, and nearly shove Jungkook off the bed in your haste to get him out of your room.

“You have to go,” you whisper frantically, herding him toward the door that leads out into the hall.

Jungkook hurriedly pulls his pants back over his hips, and you can practically see him willing his erection to go away. “What am I supposed to say if he asks?”

“I don’t know! Pretend you were going for a glass of water or something!”

With a final push, you shove him out of your bedroom, leaning against the door with a relieved sigh when it clicks shut behind him. You hear Jungkook shuffle off just as Jimin flushes, and cast a prayer up to any deities that may exist as you listen to him wash his hands. And it seems your prayers are answered, as quiet descends over the house once more. Off in the distance, you think you hear Minho snoring.

Letting out another sigh, you return to bed, crawling beneath the covers and getting comfortable. And when sleep finally takes you, you dream of Jeon Jungkook.

[rosesvioletshardy]

we keep each other grounded - nolan patrick

okay so this is the first time i’m writing for nolan and the first time i’m writing in a while so i’m sorry if it’s really bad 

i tried my best to remember what happened in the first two game against the capitals so if i got anything wrong i’m sorry you have the right to yell at me

masterlist

warnings: fluff, suggested nsfw ??, none

# of words: 1,514 

--

home games had to be some of Nolan’s favorites because it didn’t involve that much travel but they often did mess with him knowing he’ll have to do better than usual. The past couple of mornings he’s been getting up earlier than his usual time to go out for runs and practice more before he left for practice with the guys. You started to notice how much quieter he got whenever home games happened and it was the first one that’ll have fans in Wells Fargo center which meant that he and the rest of the team would need to do a lot better than they were already doing. You knew that it wasn’t their fault with what was happening and they were trying their hardest. 

After the first game against the Capitals, Nolan had thought it was just the nerves that came from having fans in the arena again and being back in Philly that made them lose. Then the game against the Sabres boosted up their confidence a little more, especially after his shootout winning goal. They had another game against the Capitals again and he was for sure about bringing his A-game the night. Now, he was in your guys bedroom getting ready for the night and trying to calm his nerves that were getting to the best of him. He was fumbling with his tie knowing that he has trouble but tonight was bothering him even more and making it worse. You watched as he grunted in frustration and undid it before redoing it as you watched him. Nolan carefully started over again, mumbling to himself the instructions and words of encouragement, trying to calm himself down.

“You’re doing it wrong” you tell him as you walk over to him and take the tie from his hands. 

“I’m sorry, just nervous again i guess”

“You have nothing to apologize for. It’s okay to feel like this, it’s normal. You know it’s okay for you to express your feelings, even if you can’t put it in the right words sometimes, your body language says it all too.” you remind him giving him a small smile, fixing his collar as he gives a small smile

“Yeah, I know. It’s just there’s a lot of pressure that’s being put on us and we don't want another repeat of what happened.”

“You guys will do great, I promise. Now you better leave or you’ll be late. Remember, take deep breaths, talk to each other, or send signals, and good things will come.” you finished holding his hands before giving him a kiss. When you pulled away, your foreheads rested against each other and he held you in his arms before giving you one more kiss

“I love you. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

“I love you, and we keep each other steady. Good luck. I’ll be cheering you on” you tell him as you look down and point to your jersey with his name and number when he can’t help but smile big as the both of you left and headed towards the front door

“Thanks, i’ll see you later tonight.”

“Hey, remember: win or lose, i still love you.” you reminded him as he exited giving a small smile and mumbled it back

----

The entire game had you on the edge of your seat. As soon as you thought they were going to score, it ended up being blocked. You could tell that they were trying and wanted to win this game against the Capitals seeing that the last two times didn’t go so well. Sitting on the couch, you nervously watch the second period as JVR got them their first goal of the night. This boosted their confidence but you didn’t want to get your hopes up too quickly incase something ended up getting jinxed

“Okay, relax Y/N, relax. They still have some time left in this period and third period to catch up to them” you had to remind yourself constantly. 

At this point you were sure that you didn’t have any nails left due to the two shots the caps managed to get in such little time after they scored. It wasn’t until a couple of minutes later Nolan scored making you jump and start screaming, hoping the neighbors didn’t call the cops. Grabbing your phone, you quickly texted him a huge congrats even though he wouldn't be able to see it until after the game was over. 

The rest of the game consisted of you yelling at the tv hoping that the guys would get more goals but they ended up losing 5-4. You knew Nolan would be disappointed but he knew he had to keep a straight face throughout any interviews he had to do afterwards. When he read your text, it put a smile on his face seeing how proud you were of him and how much he deserved it.

“Oh, what is little baby cat smiling about?” hayes asked as he saw him smiling big at his phone

“It’s Y/N isn’t it? Was it about your goal?” Travis asked trying to sneak a peak over Nolan’s shoulder causing him to move and turn even more red

“Yes it was about my goal, no not like that by the way. I know what you’re thinking.” he shot back

“Wasn’t thinking about it. But seriously what did she say” travis asked 

“Just how proud she is of he” kevin answered as he looked over nolan’s shoulder

“Oh boys Patty here is whipped” they joked as everyone laughed and Nolan smiled. He didn’t mind being whipped seeing how much he loves and trusts you

“Not like you guys aren’t with your wives and girlfriends. But I don't know, we just feel safe with each other and always bring out the good in each other. I mean, I’m not saying we’re perfect either, we have fights too, but we just keep each other grounded and we’re there for each other even if we don’t want to be at the moment.” Nolan said, smiling and turning red just at the thought of talking about you. 

Yeah he didn’t like talking about his personal life, especially his dating one, but he felt comfortable enough to tell his friends how he feels about and around you. They all looked at him with big smiles as he looked at them with a concerned look but shook it off because he knew that wouldn’t be the only time they’d see him like that.

After getting dressed and finishing a couple of interviews, all he wanted to do was just go back to your apartment and hold you. The entire car ride home he kept drumming his fingers against the steering wheel waiting until the moment he can just relax with you and the dogs. You were doing the same, waiting for him to come home and just let him let out everything he’s feeling about the game and let him rant about things he would never tell anyone else, just let out all his frustration on whether it was the whole game in general or how he played.

 Hearing the door click, you jumped off the couch and went over to where he was and all he could do after dropping his stuff off at the door was hug you. You knew that even though they ended the game behind one point, you were still proud about it seeing how the other games went

“Hey” he said softly kissing you on the head

“Hey, you guys did good tonight and I'm proud of the goal you made. I think I may have scared our neighbors again with it since the game with the sabres.” you tell him, causing him to laugh, picturing the scenario of you having to explain to your neighbors that it was a misunderstanding.

“Thanks, I just think I could’ve done better-”

“Nols, stop. You did your best and I’m proud of you for it. You all tried your best and you did it. Maybe that green jersey brought you some luck and it helped.”

“Well, technically it was all because of you and your words”

“Oh please-”

“No i’m not kidding. Just you supporting me in general and helping me through everything when it comes to helping me through my migraines or in general, you’re always there for me even when I’m in another city playing. It’s because of you.” he whispered the last part causing you to blush

“I mean it. I mean you deal with everything that’s happened and help me calm down when I get into fights and get sent to the locker room. I’m glad you’re in my life and if it weren't for you I know I would’ve beaten myself up about this game” he finished. Staring into his eyes, you gave him a small smile before giving him a kiss 

“C’mon, you need to relax now and get your mind off the game. Especially after that goal you made.” you told him taking his hand and heading towards your bedroom