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crappymixtape · 2 years ago

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laugh like lovers, kiss like friends

you're getting married – steve’s in town for the ceremony and it dredges up old memories, ones you thought you'd forgotten, but you have to decide, will you say ‘i do’ or will your heart realize what you really want has been there all along? | ( 9.1k, angst, fluff, friends to lovers, steve x you, steve x reader )

L A U G H L I K E L O V E R S, K I S S L I K E F R I E N D S 🎶��cold water swimming, quiet houses

“How about these, dear? Eucalyptus pairs lovely with peonies. Besides, wildflowers for a wedding? In all my years as a planner I’ve never seen it. No one does it. It's just tacky, hon.”

Twirling the stem of a daisy between your fingers you bit the inside of your cheek, only half hearing the woman standing next to you among all the buckets and vases of flowers in the greenhouse.

Wildflowers for a wedding? No one does it.

Pulling your eyes off the daisy you forced a smile, “Of course, I’m sorry. Peonies sound great.”

“Wonderful, I’ll add it to the day-of agenda and make sure the florist knows you’ve made up your mind. It’s an excellent choice, one your fiance will be happy with I’m sure.”

Your fiance.

Sam proposed less than a month ago in the kitchen of your little downtown Indianapolis apartment with his grandmother’s ring. A huge, gaudy diamond that made your hands look even smaller than they already were and after you’d called your mom the news had spread like wildfire.

Sam didn’t want to wait, he probably would’ve dragged you down to the courthouse if it hadn’t been for his parents and your mom, but it meant things were moving at the speed of light and you were running to catch up.

When he’d looked up at you, ring box outstretched, you knew what your first thought should’ve been. Tears and overwhelming joy and a resounding Yes! but none of it came. Instead your first thought had been long stalks of grass. The glittering turquoise water of the quarry. Skunky weed and wildflowers and hot, sticky Indiana summers.

Steve.

“Babe, you gotta call the bakery back, the lady doesn’t get it. Idiot,” Sam’s voice cut through into your thoughts and you blinked them away.

“What?”

“The cake? She’s not getting it. I told her we wanted vanilla, like actual vanilla not that imitation shit.”

“Julie’s not an idiot,” your tone grew clipped, short, brow furrowing as you folded your arms across your chest. Julie had lived in Hawkins since before your family moved in across the street from her. The only, and best, bakery in town with the sweetest baker known to man. Julie was a saint.

“Okay, well then you try and explain it to her. I’m done,” Sam huffed, pinching his nose between his fingers and shaking his head. “I’m gonna go get food with my mom. Can’t wait until this is all over,” he grumbled under his breath. “I’ll see you back at the house," and with that he hastily pressed a kiss to your forehead before stalking out of the greenhouse.

“Not really a man’s arena is it,” the planner said giving you an overly sweet smile, “Better to let us take care of it, hm?”

“I guess,” you couldn’t bear to force another smile, “Thanks for your help, but I need to go get ready for tonight. Call me if anything else comes up.”

“On it and don’t you worry, only a few more days. Just think! The happiest day of your life!”

The happiest day of your life.

It sure as hell didn’t didn’t it feel like it.

The high vaulted ceilings in your parents’ living room looked the same as they had when you lived there. Same ugly, bumpy texture and yellowed color, now with a few too-high cobwebs just out of reach hanging in the corners.

The buzz of conversation filling the air around you was incessant, blending and blurring together and making you feel like you were far away. Like you were a spectator and not the bride-to-be and your chest squeezed with nerves. There were so many people packed into the house and as guests hurled their questions at you, your anxiety only grew.

“Oh, sweetie you look amazing! You’ll be a beautiful bride!” “Tell me again, where are you going for your honeymoon?” “Sam is such a catch, does he have any available friends? Just kidding! But seriously?” “Oh my god, look at that ring! He must really love you.”

One of Sam’s cousins had been hammering you with question after question, barely giving you any room to reply and you felt like you were drowning in it. The walls of the living room suddenly felt like they were closing in on you, making you feel claustrophobic and you needed air. Outside. Anything other than this. “Is-is it warm in here?” you stuttered, pulling at the collar of your dress.

“No? What d’you mean–”

“I’m sorry, excuse me,” you didn’t wait for her to finish and instead moved as quickly as you could through the crowd, trying not to project your panic with a fake smile plastered on your lips until you reached the slider door.

“Honey!” your stomach sank. Your mom. “Your aunt and uncle just got here, you need to say hello!”

Looking over your shoulder she was standing with her hands on her hips, brow furrowed in frustration, watching as your fingers gripped the handle of the patio door.

“I know,” your voice was edged with irritation and you bit your tongue. “Please? I just need some air for a minute. I’ll be right back,” and you could tell she didn’t like your answer, but she didn’t fight you on it as you slipped outside, all the noise and voices and music blunted and sliced in half as you shut the door behind you.

Leaning back against the glass, eyes closed, you pulled in a breath of air and let it out slowly. Trying, telling, yourself you had to keep it together. Just a minute out here and you’d feel right as rain. Ready to dive back in.

The happiest day of your life.

“Shouldn’t you be inside?”

Your eyes flew open, an all-too-familiar voice making your heart leap into your throat.

He was sitting on the edge of one of the pool loungers like it was nothing, a few locks of stray hair falling into his eyes, all warm honey and burnt caramel and the boyish grin he was giving you made you feel dizzy. Like it always did.

“I’ve been inside for like two hours,” you shot back, but you couldn’t ever bring yourself to really sound mad at him.

At Steve.

“Well don't sound like you’re having too much fun. Not like you’re getting married in three days or anything,” he teased, scooting over on the lounger, a silent invitation for you to sit next to him and you took it.

“Don’t remind me–” fell out, “–what I mean is–it's just–just planning everything has been...a lot.”

Steve caught your slip up, but didn’t call it out, only humming in reply as he threaded a hand through his hair, watching as you settled down next to him. “I’m about a month late, but congrats,” he offered with a small smile before taking a drink from his beer.

“Oh, yeah. Thanks,” you replied lamely, cheeks flushing when he looked over at you. You were entirely too sober for this. “Here, gimme that,” reaching over you took the beer from his hand, chugging half of it in one go and pulling a laugh out of Steve.

“Jesus,” Steve laughed, amused at you, a sound you’d missed so very much. “Take it easy,” he chided gently, but it was all warm and sticky sweet like popsicles on a hot day and when you gave it back he shook his head.

Silence lingered between you for a moment, the static sound of the pool filter trickling in the background, and your thoughts drifted back to a moment a few years ago. Up in your room while summer spun by outside. The last time he'd been over here. Steve.

Bobbing along to the music coming from your stereo, you crammed the last of your photos into one of the empty supply boxes Steve had brought over from Family Video.

“I wanted to be with you alone and talk about the weather, but traditions I can trace against the child in your face won't escape my attention,” you sang a little off key, giving your shoulders a little shimmy as you turned to grab the pile of books on your bed.

“You keep your distance via the system of touch and gentle persuasion. I'm lost in admiration, could I need you this much?” Steve sang back, browed knitted together in dedication to the bit, hips swaying as he wiped down your dresser. Turning with the roll of paper towels in his hand he held it out to you as the chorus neared, both of you singing horribly.

“Oh, you're wasting my time, you're just, just, just wasting time!”

“God, who’s gonna sing shitty with me when you’re not around?” Steve tossed the roll onto your bed, leaning back against the drawers behind him.

“Robin sucks more than I do,” you shot back, and Steve mumbled in agreement.

“Yeah, but she hates Tears for Fears,” there was a slight whine in his voice that made you look up at him over your box and grin.

“Well then save it for me when I’m back on Christmas break.”

Steve gave you a pout and folded his arms over his chest, “That’s like, a fucking eon from now.”

“It’s not that long,” you moved around the other side of your bed to sit in front of him, a small pause swallowing you both into silence.

Clearing your throat you dropped your gaze down your shoes, kicking them in time with the song still playing in the background. You glanced over at Steve’s dirty, beat up Blazers and smiled. “I guess I’ll miss you,” you teased, looking back up at him and he gave you a smile, but it softened the longer he looked at you.

“I know I’ll miss you,” he said, and you knew he meant it, and your heart fluttered in your chest like a bird caught in a cage as the air around you grew thick with words unsaid, but implied. Steve took a step away from the dresser, standing in the V of your legs, hand moving to lift your chin up with his thumb and forefinger.

You bit your bottom lip between your teeth, meeting his gaze, and everything felt hazy. “Miss you too, Stevie,” you murmured and he leaned down slowly. Tilting your chin ever so gently he hesitated for just a second before pressing his lips against yours. Your room and half-packed boxes and everything fell away in the warm, glittering feeling of Steve and summer and the last of the light falling through your window washed you both in gold like it wanted to hold you in that moment forever.

“How long are you in town for?” your voice broke the silence between you and Steve took another drink of his beer.

“Just til the day after the wedding, need to get back to things,” he said softly, stealing a look at you out of the corner of his eye, smiling at the way your nose scrunched up when you were thinking, “You look really pretty by the way.”

Your cheeks warmed and you stole a look at him too, “You have to say that.”

“No I don’t. I do on your wedding day, but this is a freebie,” he teased, trying to make it seem lighter than it was, but you both knew the weight it carried.

“Babe, c’mon. You gotta get back inside. It’s rude. People are looking for you,” the sudden sound of Sam’s voice sliced your moment in two and Steve sat up straight, leaning away from you as he rubbed the back of his neck.

“Alright, I just needed some air,” your voice sounded tired and Steve caught the look in your eyes as you roughed your hands over your face, “I’m coming.”

“Harrington,” Sam sniped, and Steve gave him a big smile, knowing just how much the other man hated finding the two of you sitting together.

“Sammy,” Steve teased and you had to bite back a laugh, hiding it in a cough, but Sam knew.

“I fuckin’ hate that,” Sam gave Steve a look and he just smiled.

“I think it’s cute,” you chimed in, but knew you should’ve kept it to yourself when Sam glared daggers at you.

“Inside,” he said, patience short, and you felt your own run out as you glared right back, but moved toward the slider door anyway.

“I’ll see you,” you told Steve and just before you slipped back into the chaos, he gave you a look. The same one you remembered from that hot summer evening in your room as you packed your life into boxes. A look that put fire to the embers lying dormant in your chest and something you thought had been extinguished flickered back to life.

“Sam, hurry up, we’re going to be late!”

“I’m trying. You know how much I hate being outside. These stupid boots are too tight and–” Sam grunted, leaning over to tug at his socks, “–these are itchy as hell.”

“You don’t have to wear them, but your legs are gonna get bit up and scratched on the trail,” you shook your head, yanking your own worn-in boots onto your feet.

“Bit? Are you kidding me?”

“What? It’s summer, there are a ton of bugs out right now.”

Sam sucked in a breath and put his face in his hands, standing on the other side of the bed from you. He’d agreed to it at first, thought maybe it might be a quaint little jaunt through a park, but when he realized it was an actual hike up the bluff just outside Hawkins – in nature – he’d thrown a fit.

It was one of your favorite places, a special piece of home, and you were going to go with or without him.

“Just stay home, Sam. It’s fine,” you huffed, kicking your suitcase shut, tugging your ponytail through the back of your baseball cap.

“You know what? Maybe I will. This whole place is too much. Jason’ll get beers with me,” he growled under his breath, yanking his boots off to get to his socks, “Enjoy your hike.”

“Great, thanks, will do,” you almost left the room without saying goodbye, but something made you hesitate and you paused for a second at the door, eyes squeezed shut. Why was everything so damn hard? This was supposed to be easy.

The happiest day of your life.

Resigned, you turned around and retraced the few steps over to Sam. “I’ll see you when we’re back,” you muttered, bending down and brushing a hasty kiss to his cheek.

“See you,” he didn’t meet your gaze, instead scowling at the ground and it was the push you needed to leave, the weight on your shoulders lifting as you hurried down the stairs and out the door.

The sun was just coming up, painting the sky cotton candy pinks and blurred warm tangerines. You could feel the heat already and as you got out of your car at the bluff the feeling of the sun on your bare legs pulled a heavy sigh from your lungs. Breathing out the stress and pressure of the last few days and you closed your eyes for a minute, leaning against the warmth of your car.

It would be okay. Today was for you. This was for you.

Opening them again you heard another car rumbling up the dirt road behind you and when you turned around you grinned so big your cheeks started to hurt.

“OH MY GOD,” Robin squealed. She practically leapt out of the backseat of Steve’s BMW and ran over to you, gathering you up in her arms and squeezing tight. “What the hell! You look amazing! Shit. Is this like, pre-wedding glow or did you stop eating meat or something? I hear it’s like, totally bad for your skin.”

“Robin,” Steve shook his head as he shut his car door before walking around to get Robin’s too.

“What? All legitimate questions! Right, Eds?” she shot back.

“I mean, not the first thing I’d ask,” Eddie replied with a grin, but you could hear the softness of him behind it.

“Alright, well I wouldn’t expect you to know anyway. Weddings are like a foreign language to you plebs,” Robin said simply, clicking her fanny pack around her waist.

“Hey, that’s not fair, I know enough,” Steve chimed in, propping a hand on his hip and giving Robin a look.

“Children, not about us today!” Eddie chided, following after Robin and gathering you up into one of his bear hugs. “Hi, sweetheart,” he held you out at arm’s length and gave you a warm Eddie smile.

“Hi,” you grinned back, the happiest you’d been in days just listening to the comforting sound of your friends bickering, “Missed you.”

“Mmm, you too,” Eddie hummed, shooting a quick glance over at Steve. “Some of us more than others,” he said a bit quieter, bringing his eyes back to you and you felt your cheeks flush.

“Okay, hike?” you deflected, then accusingly looked back at Eddie, “You’re not still smoking are you?”

“Only on Wednesdays,” he flipped back casually, but you knew he was full of shit.

“Munson, you’re a horrible liar,” Steve drawled, rolling his eyes, starting the walk to the edge of the bluff. “Nance and Jonathan are already at the top,” he said over his shoulder, “Jonathan wanted to get a time lapse of the sunrise.”

“Oh, sick,” Eddie clapped his hands, “I gotta see it. C’mon, Buckley get with it.” He waved an arm forward, pulling Robin into a jog and you shook your head with a soft laugh as you caught up with Steve. Starting up the bluff two by two.

The sounds of everything coming to life swirled around the four of you as you walked. The buzz of the insects, birds chirping their morning songs and tractors rumbling to life in the fields alongside the bluff.

Home.

“God, the last time we were up here was so Dustin could talk to Suzie,” Steve half-laughed, Eddie and Robin walking just ahead of you. You grinned at the memory.

“Oh no,” you shook your head, “They might be worse than we are at singing.”

“Didn’t think it was possible to be honest,” he teased gently, smiling over at you, looking for a long moment before dropping his gaze back down to his feet.

You could feel his eyes on you and the warmth of it filled you up and spilled over at the edges, making you happier than you’d been in a long time and a tiny pinch of guilt squeezed in your chest.

“Thanks for getting up so early,” you exhaled, breaths getting heavier as the incline of the bluff steepened, Steve pulling in a breath next to you.

“Oh, I don’t think I’ve slept in since high school,” he waved you off, “Managing a store’s got me up ass early every day. Besides, wouldn’t miss it.” Arms swinging at your sides, his fingers brushed against yours as you walked and the embers in your chest glowed bright.

“Yeah,” you sighed, wishing that for once Sam had come along. That he’d put even a little bit of effort into your interests. That he’d care even a fraction of what Steve cared and the embers flickered again with your frustration.

“You two are slow as hell!” Eddie teased and when you looked up you saw he and Robin had been moving much faster than you and Steve. “I’m smoking a victory cigarette at the top!” he yelled and Robin smacked him, both of them dissolving into laughter.

“C’mon, that asshole doesn’t need another cigarette,” Steve’s brow furrowed in frustration and he picked up the pace, pulling you along with him as he lengthened his stride.

Jonathan and Nancy were waiting for the four of you at the top and, much to Eddie’s dismay, Robin beat him by a couple of feet, stealing his cigarettes and jamming them into her fanny pack as punishment.

Jonathan had asked Nancy to marry him two years ago now, Christmas eve under the tree at the farm and they’d eloped that spring there on top of the bluff. It had been a small, but sweet ceremony, with only family and close friends. Perfectly Nance and Jonathan and as you thought back on it your stomach twisted with a longing feeling.

As you sat scattered among the long grass in pairs – Eddie and Robin, Nancy and Jonathan, you and Steve – a breeze picked up and blew through the wildflowers around you, taking then with it and you watched as the buttercups danced in the wind.

You wanted wildflowers. Not peonies and eucalyptus.

“Hey, where’d you go?” Steve’s voice pulled you out of your thoughts and you looked over at him, sat close enough to you in the grass that you could see all the little moles and freckles that dotted down the line of his jaw, his neck, the exposed skin along the top of his shirt.

“Flowers,” fell out and you didn’t shy away from him, meeting his gaze.

“Flowers?” he asked, brow knitting together in confusion.

“Stupid flowers. And cake. And nature and socks and–”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Slow down. What are you talking about?” Steve scooted closer to you, your legs pressing together as you sat facing each other and he put a hand on your knee.

Your throat tightened and you felt tears pricking at the corners of your eyes, but you willed them away. Not here. You didn’t mean it.

“Hey,” he said softer, hand lifting from your knee to press into yours and you blinked hastily, pulling in a breath to steady yourself.

“I don’t know,” you started, closing your eyes for a minute, trying to ground yourself. “I just–I thought this would be easier. We’re supposed to be in love and planning this should be fun, but it sucks and he–” catching yourself you looked back up at Steve and felt him squeeze your hand. “I’m sorry, it’s just stress. I shouldn’t–”

“You don’t have to apologize,” Steve said, thumb brushing over the bump of your knuckles, soft and warm and reassuring.

He was looking at you again like he had at the welcome party, like you were the only thing that existed in that moment and you felt yourself moving closer, your legs hovering over his with the lack of space.

“I wish Sam would look at me like that,” you whispered and Steve’s lips parted in surprise, anticipation grabbing hold of both of you as the wind picked up again.

“He’s an idiot if he doesn’t,” Steve whispered back, leaning closer still and you could feel his breath as it warmed over your cheek. The scent of his shampoo and spearmint gum and cedar and wildflowers flooding your brain and making everything feel hazy. His eyes all bright amber and flecks of gold in the sun. Closer and closer and closer and–

“Harrington! You left the food in the car!”

Leaning back from each other you felt the tension shatter with the bark of Eddie’s voice and you leapt to your feet.

“God, what a dingus,” Robin grumbled, “Now we gotta go back down.”

“Hey,” Steve scrambled to his feet ignoring them, grabbing your hand in his, “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, yeah I’m fine. I just–I forgot I have to meet with the baker today about the cake this morning.”

“Oh,” Steve’s expression was edged with concern and he let your hand drop as the others started moving to the top of the trail.

“Rehearsal dinner is tonight right?” Robin asked offhandedly, grabbing a piece of licorice from her fanny pack.

“You have licorice in there and didn’t offer me any?” Eddie accused.

“Yeah, tonight at seven at Hop and Joyce’s farm,” you said, trying to sound casual, but the warm feeling of Steve was still holding you tightly.

“Open bar?” Eddie grinned.

“Oh my god, Munson. Shut up,” Robin chided, shoving him as they all wandered down the path in a line, you and Steve bringing up the rear.

“Course it’s open bar,” you tried to laugh, but it fell short, everything feeling like it was crumbling now.

The breeze picked up, swirling around your feet, carrying spearmint and Steve’s shampoo and boy with it and as you watched the bachelor buttons sway with the wind you felt a thought gnawing at the back of your mind.

What if.

There was still time.

Nothing’s permanent.

People change their minds all the time and…

Come over here. All you've got is this moment, twenty-first century's yesterday. You can care all you want, everybody does, yeah, that's okay.

“Chug, chug, chug!” “Don’t be a pussy, Jason!” “No way, he’s too old!”

It felt like you were back in high school throwing a rager over at Tina Rochester’s house not having drinks after your rehearsal dinner, but after most of the ‘adults’ had all gone home things got carried away.

Hop and Joyce’s farm was far enough outside of town that the noise wouldn’t bother anyone and thank god because it was loud. Maybe open bar hadn’t been the best idea, but Sam was having a great time, smiling and laughing for once and you didn’t fight it. You were having fun too.

“Ohhh! He did it!!” “Get that man a medal!”

Jason Carver, Sam’s best man, crushed his empty beer can under his foot to whoops and hollers. You weren’t sure who started it, but someone had told someone else they could shotgun a beer faster and it spiraled from there. Sam was in his element, partying alongside the other ex-basketball players, and for a minute you felt like maybe things would be okay.

Gathering you up in his arms, Sam spun you in a circle, pressing his lips messy and drunk against your cheek. “God, babe. Should be illegal to look that good,” he slurred into your ear, arms still holding you tight as he lowered you slowly back to the ground.

A grin tugged at the corners of your lips. “Gonna write me a ticket?” you teased and he reached a hand around to grab at your ass.

“Maybe I will,” he breathed and you felt a shiver run down your spine, but then a voice pulled him away.

“Sam? Oh my god!”

Carol and Tommy. Great.

“Carol?? I didn’t think y’all were getting here til tomorrow! Tommy, you look like shit,” Sam barked a laugh and lunged at his old friend, grabbing him around the waist and pushing him across the patio.

“Fuck off, you’re one to talk,” Tommy growled back, digging his hands into Sam’s ribs and both of them fell back into their old selves. Talking about a couple of friends that had gone pro, work, what married life was like for Tommy and Carol.

“Babe, go get me another beer, huh?” Sam said over his shoulder and you rolled your eyes, but giving Carol a quick hug you made your way over to the keg.

Priming the tap you started to pour beer into a cup, but it sputtered and choked before spilling foam and you frowned. “Piece of shit,” kicking the keg you shook the garbage can it was sitting in and tried again, but this time nothing came out.

“Need a hand?”

Eyes still on the keg you sighed, a smile pulling at the corners of your lips as you dumped the foam in your cup onto the ground. “Tapped already,” you grumbled, turning around to see Steve grinning at you, hands jammed in his pockets, tie loose and hanging around his neck and you swore he was the most handsome human being you’d ever laid eyes on.

“Hmm, I don’t think so,” he took the last few steps toward you and primed the tap again, giving the keg one firm shake, and grabbed the cup from you. Foam started coming out and you jammed your tongue into your cheek.

“Ha! Told you–”

But then the foam turned into cold, amber beer, and you clamped your mouth shut.

“You were saying?” Steve teased and you shoved him, spilling some of the beer that he’d just poured into your cup on the ground. “Hey! You’re a menace,” he chided softly, shouldering you back, but grabbing the spout again he filled the cup once more and handed it back to you.

“Thanks,” you muttered, glancing over at him as you took a sip.

“Sam seems to be having a good time,” he commented, finding a cup of his own and filling it.

“Yeah, right back to high school.” You watched as your fiance, Tommy, and Jason all snickered and laughed at each other, talking about ‘the good old’ days, and your smile fell.

You couldn’t remember the last time he laughed like that with you. When he was drinking he got more handsy, liked to keep you close to his side and brag about how you were about to get married, but nothing about how hard you worked or the fact that you were saving up to buy a place.

“I dunno,” Steve sighed, taking a drink of his beer, “I don’t miss it.”

“Me either,” you agreed, glancing up at him, and your heart stopped.

God he was pretty. The string of lights that wound around the property washed him in a warm glow. Hair falling out of place as the night spun on, the line of his jaw cast in half light, dark and strong, the long sweep of his lashes as he blinked and looked down at you, the way his lips pulled up into that smile.

“What?” Steve asked, tone amused and playful and your eyes grew wide.

“What?” you echoed stupidly.

Steve laughed and gave you a lopsided smile. “You tell me, you’re the one zoning out,” he teased and your cheeks flushed.

“Oh, n-nothing,” you stumbled over your words and quickly filled the silence with another gulp of beer.

“Okay, well when it comes back to you lemme know.” His eyes lingered on yours for just a moment longer and then a look came over him. Like he remembered something. “Oh, hey. C’mere a minute,” and then he was grabbing your hand and pulling you around the side of the barn.

As he pulled you into motion you felt just how buzzed you were and a giggle pushed itself through your lips. “What the hell are we doing?” you asked, Steve loosing a laugh of his own as he yanked you both to a stop a few yards away from the party out in the long grass of Hop’s field.

“There,” he said pointing up and you followed the line of his arm into the sky until your eyes landed on it.

“Oh,” you breathed, pulling your gaze back to Steve as he looked up into the inky black expanse of the Indiana night. He was just how you remembered him. Hair messed, all boyish and eyes full of wonder and curiosity, just like he’d been those years ago that night in his backyard while you floated in his pool.

“Yeah, that one. Right there,” Steve swam closer to you, grabbing your arm, fingers folding yours in to make a point and tugging it up over your head.

Your breath hitched in your throat as his legs brushed against yours under the water and it took everything you had in you to pull your eyes from him to look up.

“See it?”

“That one?” you asked, pointing on your own, and he nodded as your eyes trailed up the line of your arm to land on an especially bright star.

“Mmhm,” Steve murmured and all you wanted was to look at him again, so you did. “While you’re gone you can just look up at that at night and think of me,” he said matter-of-fact, giving you one of his lopsided grins.

“What if we’re not looking at the same time?”

“I’ll always be looking,” Steve’s voice was barely above a whisper and the way he looked at you made you feel like you might melt. Blinking water from your lashes you lifted a hand to his cheek and at your touch his hands slipped along the bare skin of your waist, sliding down to your hips as he slowly pulled you into him.

The pool filter was humming heavy between the all crickets and frogs and lightning bugs, but you knew the thudding of your heartbeat was louder than all of it.

Wrapping your legs around Steve’s torso, you laced your fingers at the back of his neck, wanting him closer and tighter. Hair messed and flat against his forehead, his lips were parted as he breathed you in, water dripping off the end of his nose and eyes glittering in the pool lights, burnt caramel and honey and if he hadn’t been holding onto you, you would’ve floated away.

His fingers pressed into the soft skin at your hips and you sucked in a small gasp.

“Sorry,” he whispered, and you shook your head in reply. It’s okay. And then he gently pressed his thumb to the corner of your lips, swallowing against his nerves, and asked, “Can I kiss you?”

Heart racing, fingers still tangled at the back of his neck you whispered, “Yes.”

“Remember when we found it?”

Steve’s question brought you hurtling back to the present and you shook your head, heart racing in your chest like it had that night in his pool. “Of course I remember,” you murmured, and you knew you were crossing a line, knew you shouldn’t have done it, knew Sam was just around the other side of the barn, but something in you snapped. Shifted. Decided it didn’t care and you took Steve’s hand in yours.

His eyes flicked down to where they were joined and then back up to you, “But–”

“We’re friends,” you reasoned softly, “Friends hold hands.”

“Are we?” he asked and you swore you felt your heart crack as your fingers scrambled to tangle up with his.

“Yeah. Yes. We are,” your words came spilling out, the beer spidering warm and hazy through your body as you tried to justify your action and Steve’s brows furrowed as he dropped his gaze.

“I should go,” he said and regret gripped you like a vice.

“Don’t, please don’t,” your tone was almost pleading, watching as Steve’s eyes fluttered shut for a moment, working through his own decision and you thought for a minute he would cave like he always did for you, but then his hand was untangling from yours and the ache in your chest was almost enough to pull tears from your eyes.

“You’re getting married tomorrow,” he said, voice thick and low, and when he opened his eyes finally to look at you, you saw a thousand I’m sorrys, all the regret and lingering kisses on hot summer nights and promises whispered in the dark and you shook your head.

“But it’s not–we can’t–please stay,” nothing you said made sense and Steve ran a hand through his hair, pulling his lip between his teeth.

“Get some sleep. I’ll see you at the church.”

And as you watched his figure walk away, silhouetted and dark against the indigo sky, your star blinking bright above you, you felt tears finally well up and spill down your cheeks.

Sucking in a breath you turned back to the the wide open expanse of field behind you and buried your face in your hands, trying to calm down, willing the tears to stop, telling yourself that you loved Sam. You were getting married. The ring on your finger a constant reminder of what was supposed to happen tomorrow and when you finally lifted your head from your hands your eyes fell on a bright patch there in the field at your feet.

Wildflowers.

Walking back to the party felt like a blur, Steve’s words playing over and over in your mind, and when you came back into the glow of the strung up lights your eyes searched frantically for Sam. If you could just hold his hand, pull him in close you’d know you loved him. Would know you wanted to marry him, but he wasn’t there and everything felt like it was unraveling.

“Hey, are you okay?” Robin’s hand was at your elbow and when you looked up at her, her brow furrowed with worry. “Whoa, what happened?”

“I just need to find Sam, have you seen him?”

“Yeah, yeah I think he was just over here, c’mon. Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I just need Sam,” you choked out, Robin’s hand grabbing yours and pulling you along.

“Okay, we’ll find him, it’ll be okay.”

And as you rounded the corner into the quiet of the barn you heard hushed voices. Robin flicked on the overhead lighting to reveal Carol and Sam talking, huddled close to one another and your heart stopped in your chest.

“Wha–Sam? Carol?”

Carol’s eyes went wide and she took a couple steps back, giving you one of her smiles, all flimsy and saccharine sweet. “Oh my god, we thought you left!” she exclaimed, trying a laugh and you heard Robin mumble something under her breath next to you.

“Well, I didn’t. It’s my rehearsal dinner.”

“Babe, we were just trying to plan a surprise for you. For tomorrow, that’s all,” Sam said, taking the few steps toward you, taking your hand in his, but you felt sick to your stomach. You knew that look in his eye, his tone of voice overcompensating for something, lying.

“Yeah! Totally,” Carol said a little too enthusiastically and Robin had had enough.

“Oh my god, totally great!” she mocked, throwing one of Carol’s empty smiles back at her before taking your hand. “It’s super late, Carol. Time to go,” this time Robin’s voice was void of all joking and the look she gave the other girl was enough to push her to leave.

“Absolutely, sure thing. See you tomorrow! Can’t wait,” she purred, but her smile faltered as she met your gaze, walking quickly back out into the night.

“Babe, we really were planning a surprise, I–I just want tomorrow to be perfect,” Sam took your hand from Robin, shouldering her out of the way and she scoffed, still lingering in case you needed her.

“In here? In the dark?” your voice wobbled a bit as you realized what you were implying and Sam squeezed your hand, but it felt suffocating not warm or safe like Steve and you pulled it away. “I’m gonna go home, get some sleep.”

“Of course, baby. Whatever you need,” Sam crowded around you, rubbing your shoulders and pressing a kiss to the nape of your neck, but you didn’t want any of it and shrugged him off.

“Can you give me a ride, Robs?” you asked, pulling away from Sam, your feet not moving you fast enough.

“Yeah, yeah I can give you a ride,” Robin took your hand again, Sam finding himself alone in the wide expanse of the barn on the eve of your wedding.

The happiest day of your life.

“Listen, can I tell you something?” Robin said shifting into park as she turned down the radio and idled in your parents’ driveway.

“Sure,” your voice was small, timid, not you as your thoughts still lingered on what Steve had said. What Sam and Carol had looked like huddled close together in Hop’s barn. Asking yourself why. Asking yourself what you really wanted.

“I don’t think you should get married.”

Your head whipped up from your lap, brows knitted together. “What?”

“I don’t think you should get married,” Robin said again voice softer this time, knowing the weight it carried as she let it settle in the car between you.

“It’s literally happening tomorrow. What d’you mean don’t get married,” you were scrambling now, afraid of what would happen if you let her woods take root, the doubt that had been hovering deep down now pushing itself front and center.

“People do it all the time–”

“No, they don’t!” tears were welling up against your lashes, your face growing hot, willing yourself not to fall apart.

“Okay! Okay, I’m sorry. Of course I’m gonna support you no matter what you decide,” Robin quickly recovered, grabbing your hands in hers as her expression softened. “Just–” a small sigh escaped her and she squeezed your hand, “–I want you to be happy. That’s all. Are you happy?”

Are you happy?

Robin looked at you, eyes wide, hands still holding onto yours and you felt yourself wrestling with the three simple words she’d thrown at you. Swallowing thickly, you couldn’t meet her gaze and pulled your hands away, grabbing at the door handle.

“I’m happy, I am,” and even you knew how flimsy it sounded, but your friend didn’t push you on it.

“Okay, okay. See you in the morning,” Robin said softly and all you could do was nod in reply before shutting the door and hurrying up the walk and into your parents’ house.

You didn’t bother showering as you moved quickly up the stairs to your room, not wanting to face your parents, not like this. Quietly shutting your door you felt the sob in your chest clawing its way up your throat and you tried to swallow it down as you threw back your covers and hid in the deep pile of blankets. You thought for a split second to call Sam over at Jason’s, ask him if he really loved you, if he still wanted to go through with this, but you buried your face into your pillow and tried to push your thoughts away.

Doubt had started blooming in the pit of your stomach from the moment you’d said yes, but it had just felt like the next right thing. Felt like you were supposed to. Date your boyfriend for a couple of years, move in together, get married. Right? But the things you tried hard to ignore kept bubbling up.

Your hesitation when Sam first asked you out. Your trips home on breaks and seeing Steve. The feelings you wrestled with when you saw him. When he talked to you and listened, really listened and looked at you. How it felt like a giant weight being lifted from your shoulders without Sam there.

Your first fight with Sam over money. How he spent so much of it going out with his friends. How you knew they stayed out late and talked to other girls. The high he got from it too much to stop him from doing it. The smell of the other girls on his clothes.

The first time he cheated on you and begged you to take him back. How the first person you wanted to call was Steve, but you called Robin instead.

And now the planning. All the disagreements and arguing and fighting and you were exhausted and he couldn’t even keep away from other women, from Carol, still after all that time.

Are you happy?

Robin’s question looped in your head and you knew the real answer.

No. But then…

Tap. Tap, tap tap.

Peeking your head out from under your covers your ears strained, trying to decide what it was you’d heard. Then it happened again.

Tap, tap. Tap.

There was only one thing that could make that sound, an all too familiar one that pulled forth a flood of precious, happy memories.

Rocks on your window.

Steve.

Crawling out of your bed you hurried to your window and yarded it open, sticking your head out and looking down like you’d done hundreds of times before. “Steve?” you hissed into the dark, and as the wind blew the clouds away from the moon, it shone down on the lawn below you washing Steve in soft light.

“Can I come up?”

You bit your bottom lip between your teeth, but knew there was no debate. “Yeah, hurry up,” and you moved out of the way as he started climbing the gutter before you’d even said yes.

Stumbling in through the open window Steve straightened up and dusted off his old, faded Hawkins High Athletics shirt, a pair of grey sweatpants hanging on his hips, the same pair of dirty, beat up Blazers on his feet.

“Hi,” he said awkwardly, tongue jammed into his cheek as he rubbed the back of his neck.

“Hi?” it came out expectantly, a question, but you couldn’t hide the relief in your voice at the sight of him standing there in your room.

“Listen, I just wanted to say sorry. For earlier,” he said, walking to your bed and plopping down on the messed up covers.

“Oh, that’s okay, I shouldn’t have–”

“Just let me apologize,” he said shaking his head with a half laugh, expression mismatched as it twisted with something between regret and care.

So you listened and kept your mouth shut, instead deciding to settle down next to him on your bed, thighs pressed together on the small twin sized mattress. Silence lingered for a minute, but the air was heavy, loaded, like how it felt right before a thunderstorm. The sky holding its breath before opening up and pouring rain, cracking the sky in half with bright streaks of light.

You both stole a look at the same time and it pulled a smile from each of you, tiny breathy laughs falling from your lips, but when it quieted again the tension flooded back in.

“Do you love him?” Steve broke the quiet and you felt your chest tighten. When you hesitated he grabbed your hand in his. “Do you?”

Your pulse fluttered against your neck, your mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water and stumbling and choking on your words, but you knew the answer. You both did. You’d just admitted it to yourself before Steve had fallen through your window and the familiar feeling of panic started to creep in around you, flinging you back to right before you’d left home again. Before you met Sam.

“Steve! Wait!”

You were practically running after him as he stalked back to his car, the sky on fire with the sunset and streaked in cherry reds, sunflower yellows, and bright tangerine.

He fumbled with his keys and dropped them into the grass at his feet, “Shit.”

“Please, just wait,” you were out of breath as you finally reached him and you saw his frame crumple as he loosed a sigh.

“Jesus, what?” his tone was short, clipped as he stared through his car window, your reflection playing against the glass.

“It’s only for another year, it’s not like I’m gonna be gone for–”

“Yeah! Another year!” Steve spun around to face you, cheeks red and lips pulled down into a frown, a muddied mixture of sadness and anger swimming in his eyes. “Just admit it, you don’t wanna come back here, and that’s fine! But don’t make me wait. Please don’t make me wait anymore. It–” Steve choked on his words and dropped his eyes to his feet, biting on the inside of his cheek to blunt the feelings swelling his chest. “It hurts. To sit and wait here for you. Please,” his voice edged on pleading and you felt tears prick at the corners of your eyes.

“It’ll work! It’s just a little longer–”

Steve took a step into you, crowding over you, and you felt your heart stutter in your chest at the closeness of him. He lifted a hand to your cheek, his brows pulling together as he looked down at you, eyes searching yours. “Then be with me. If it’s not that long then be with me. Long distance for a little while until you’re done with school,” he said, voice barely above a whisper.

“Steve. I can’t–” your throat tightened around what you were about to say, scared of what that commitment looked like, scared to fuck it up between you, scared to lose your best friend, but your hesitation broke it anyway.

He dropped his hand away from your cheek, tongue flicking out to run along his lips as he held back his anger. His sadness. Frustration. Snatching his keys from the grass he unlocked the driver side door and flung it open rough.

“No! Wait! I just mean–”

“No!” he shouted into his car and then lowered his voice, tears streaming silently down his cheeks, “No. No more. Good luck with…everything.” And he piled into his car, slamming the door shut and ignoring your cries as you crowded against his window, asking him to stay. To talk about it. To figure things out, but he shifted it in drive and took off down your driveway and into the night.

You weren’t going to fuck it up. Not again.

“No,” and as your admission left your lips the heavy weight that had settled on your shoulders over the last two years started to melt away. “No. I don’t love him.”

Steve’s hold on you tightened, pressing your fingers into his palm and he lifted his free hand to your cheek, eyes searching yours, “Don’t marry him.”

Don’t marry him.

Your breath quickened and you pulled your bottom lip between your teeth, trying to reason out what you’d just decided and you felt anxious, but Steve was there. And your room was warm and safe. Just like it was when you were younger. When you both laughed and traded secrets and made promises to each other in the dark.

“But. The wedding. The flowers, the cake, the guests–”

“Fuck ‘em,” Steve said, still holding onto your hand, and his words swirled around in your head. “It’s only a wedding. This is your life,” brushing the rough pad of his thumb across your cheek you closed your eyes and leaned into his touch, “You’re not happy.”

And you weren’t. You’d had moments with Sam, moments in time where things felt right and like maybe it could be forever, but they were just that. Moments. It shouldn’t be this hard. You’d sacrificed, compromised, bent and twisted yourself to be what Sam wanted, what he needed, not what you wanted and when you finally looked up at Steve you felt tears welling up against your lashes.

“What will my mom say,” your voice wobbled as you tangled your fingers with Steve’s and he gave you a small, reassuring smile.

“She wants you to be happy too. She’ll be okay.”

You were dizzy, hazy with thoughts of not being engaged anymore, buzzing with the anticipation of what this decision meant. Of what it held. What the future could be and you looked back up at Steve, tears started to quietly spill down your cheeks and his hand was quick to gently wipe them away. You shook your head, holding your breath, and when you let it go everything came tumbling out.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry for making you wait. For hurting you. For everything–”

“Shh, it’s okay,” Steve softly chided, but you pressed on.

“No, no it’s my turn,” you said, voice thick through your tears, and then you turned to cup Steve’s face in your hands. A small smile pulled up at the corners of your mouth even through your crying and you pulled in a breath, “I love you, Stevie. I always have.”

The look on his face then was one of pure adoration, of relief, and he gave you a smile back, “I know. I love you too.”

I love you too.

Pulling him into you, you felt the soft warmth of his breath across your cheek, the smell of his shampoo and fresh laundry flooding your senses. Hesitating, waiting for him to tell you it was okay and he silently answered you by leaning in and closing the gap between your lips, pressing his softly into yours.

It was slow and languid, a thousand I love yous. Years of want and aching set free into the dark of your room as you breathed each other in like air. The feeling of Steve scattering you out into the stars to live with the one you’d deemed as yours, falling between all the glittering constellations and floating in each other.

I love you too.

Reluctantly Steve pulled away from you, eyes fluttering open to look into yours and he took hold of your waist. “Run away with me,” he whispered.

Your brows pulled together, “Run away?”

“Yeah. Right now. Throw your suitcase in my car and we’ll just drive. Get away from everything, just for a little while until you’re ready.”

Mind racing, working through the logistics of what he was suggesting, you almost protested, but something in you fought back. Told you to listen to your heart, not your head. What did you want? What would make you happy?

“Okay.”

“Really?” Steve’s face lit up at your response, like he hadn’t expected it, and you felt your lips pull up into a smile, tears drying on your cheeks as you let the feeling swallow you up in its warmth. The embers in your chest crackling and flickering with life, with a fire that burned only for him.

“Yeah, yeah I don’t care. I just want to be with you,” you felt yourself grow more and more confident, more decided and Steve pulled you in again to press another kiss to your lips. This time it was hotter, bolder, a confession of passion and you grinned into him.

“C’mon, if we go now we can get coffee at that shitty diner just off the highway outside of town,” he was grinning now too.

“They make the best pancakes,” you laughed softly and Steve’s smile melted as he looked at you.

Finally.

He helped you gather your things, carrying your suitcase out to his car, and you felt like you could fly. Lighter than you’d been in years and the thought of just driving down the road with him filled you with warmth. Like watching the sun set at the end of a hot summer day. Like dipping your feet in the pool after sitting in the heat. Sweet like the taste that followed after a tart drink of lemonade.

You left your engagement ring on your dresser, a small folded note under it for Sam telling him sorry. Telling him you hoped he would find what he wanted. That you knew he’d be okay. And as you closed the door to your parents’ house you felt like you were closing that chapter. Ready to start new. To free fall into this open-ended story with Steve and as you settled into his car your eyes caught a small patch of lawn on the side of your house. Bright and soft in the moonlight and full of color.

Wildflowers.

crappymixtape™ • steve harrington masterlist // stranger things masterlist

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camvrin · 4 months ago

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gang as streamers

maz would be the most problematic alongside me (given sometimes we say things on impulse and then backtrack by smacking a hand over our mouth with "I am so sorry. omg.")... but not "problematic" like Melanie Martinez no like. "oh hell nah y'all are WILDDDD for this 😭" "guys I can't keep defending u."

Devon is an actual Cory like they'll post something they'll stream but then go AWOL for six months and come back like "what's good chat 😈.."

Devon is the least interactive with their fan base outside of streaming unless they're tagged in shit or see something that makes them go "wait wait wait hold on a minute."

Jake has the LEAST problematic fanbase and he's easily more popular because. have you seen his rants he'd be like a Charlie but in a. Jake way

we're all the most problematic people ever whenever we're doing a stream together people have clips of things they shouldn't

ykw I'm talking about Devon being a Cory, I act like I hate my fanbase and proceed to disappear too "OLIVER stop posting on everything BUT yt/twitch. DO A STREAM ITS BEEN MONTHS"

we're like Inquisitormaster we have a plethora of ships left and right and one day we do a reaction and someone comes out and says "guys what if they're just poly?" and we make the mistake of entertaining without clarifying it was a joke and all fanbases go insane

drinking streams... 🤤 except I'm (me and probably Maz.) are raging alcoholics so there's a shit ton of clips which include Jake and Devon being tired of my (our) bullshit

irl streams once we're all comfortable like we do house tourssss, bakingggg, vlogsss,,,

"we've known each other since 2020... we were all still in late elementary or smth HAHA" and we earn the title of #onlinefriendshipgoals

ship clips

we have so many out of context compilations it could be damaging to our careers 😭🙏🏽

we all have roles too like "Jake being that tired older sibling for 13 minutes and 04 seconds" / "Solar being the baby for twenty minutes straight" / "Devon being a D1 Instigator™ during the Among Us stream" / "Cameron giving peak theatre kid for 10 minutes"

erm wait guys add more I'm pooping rn 🤓🤞🏽

@barneysbigstompers @anonoob @mazzywazzy69

#i think ab this a lot too highkey 😣

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newlabournewromantics · 3 months ago

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did you guys know tony blair actually wrote supercut by lorde?

this is dedicated to @tonyblairwitchproject thank u for enabling me

the process of putting together a supercut, of rewriting and reimagining an (artificially) positive version of a particular storyline, is eerily similar to what tony blair does in every aspect of his life. this is especially noticeable when it comes to his relationship with gordon though — he rarely goes into detail as to just how ugly their interactions were, and his public statements about why they grew apart are always imbued with soulless language about “professional” and “political” disagreements, rather than any honesty about the deep personal betrayal that was actually going on. plus, whenever tony does express any sense of anguish over the breakdown of the relationship, he’s always incredibly quick to defend his own behaviour (denying granita even happened… what the hell), erasing any responsibility he might bear. he is LITERALLY creating and playing a supercut, one which only has any traction in his own head.

journalists have written about new labour in 1997 being drenched in a certain magic, offering the public something to believe in. “gave” is past tense though, as the tbgb relationship began to deteriorate just months after getting into government, and newlab’s popularity would only dwindle as the years went on.

remember that one clip in the gq alastair campbell interview where tony refused to say he didn’t dream about gordon? yeah i remember it too, isn’t that funny!

two things to say here. one, tony can’t reach for gordon because they are not on speaking terms like whatsoever not even remotely. two, i truly think that tony has repeated his own version of events concerning gordon, both in his head and in public, so many times that he’s come to view them as reality — even if tony did interact with gordon properly, he would only be able to see the version of gordon that he’s created.

1994-2005 (ish), they wanted to reconcile and ease the tensions, but external pressures (teams around them, pressures of the jobs, emotional blockages etc) prevented them from truly fixing anything.

Tthese lyrics give me the impression that the speaker would twist themselves into any shape, fashion themselves into any persona, just to hold the attention of the person these lines are directed at. Very much reminds me of accounts re the 1994 leadership discussions, where it’s said that tony was promising gordon anything and everything to get him to swing behind him, then making similarly wild promises about succession later in government just to keep gordon playing the game. Also, it reminds me of that absolutely fucking awful (positive) rawnsley quote that goes something like “tony would cajole, plead, argue, rail against gordon”, just to get him to talk to him.

in my head, this section relates to his immediate post-pmship period, where he’s taking on international roles left and right to try and recreate the pure magic of newlab (and ultimately failing! lets’s not be dishonest here).

THIS IS THE MOST TONY BLAIR SET OF LINES IN EXISTENCE!!! PAY ATTENTION HERE!!!!!!!

first line relates to the nonsense (very sensible accurate analysis) i was spinning about tony rewriting his and gordon’s history, erasing his own culpability and capacity for TREACHERY! the lines about calling… such an obvious parallel with the infamous three hour phone calls, the “endless circular conversations”, the screaming fits down the telephone line…….

another dreaming reference? more likely than you’d think

this outro, although repeating lines i have already covered is actually very important to cover separately. the way that it just repeats itself, over and over and over and over, until the song finishes is actually incredibly aligned to tony’s mentality when it comes to tbgb. as i said earlier, i truly think that tony has repeated his own narrative regarding the way that he treated gordon — and his responsibility for how their relationship played out — enough times to view it as reality. he is insane and i understand him like nobody else.

#tony blair #gordon brown #tbgb #lorde #new labour #she speaks!#lolitics #i need to be sent away and given psychiatric treatment #what the hell am I on about #dare you to tell me I’m wrong though

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milekael · 3 months ago

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royai big bang ask game!

what was your favorite part/the part you were most excited about drawing for the big bang?

what are your favorite and least favorite royai tropes?

OH HELL YEA THANK U!

what was your favorite part/the part you were most excited about drawing for the big bang?

OUGH MMM I would say it was to make the two drawings with an specific color scheme! One is black and white because is a newspaper clipping and the other is a sepia photo. So not only doing monochrome but also trying to capture the texture of the papers was really fun!! The sepia one is my favorite one :3 what are your favorite and least favorite royai tropes?

HELP A LOT OF PEOPLE ASKED ME THIS ONE..... so I will give everyone some different things I like and dislike sdfgh Some of my favorite Royai fanfic ideas is when they focus on their day to day at the office! Idunno, there is something about showing their routine thats very charming to me. They might have all these big plans and this complex past filled with guilt and yet they better be up at 7am every day to go and spend their day dealing with their bureaucratic job from 9-to-5

For disliked huh something you know and anyone who I have talked to for a bit I end up commenting on but I don't think I have said it in here so lol. Lmao. Anyways I don't like Roy & Riza being parental towards Ed and Al SDFGHJK I have many reasons but it can all be summed up in I find it reductive and it ignores most other very meaningful relationships Ed & Al have for??? Reasons????

What I have to say is that if you like that concept you should play Ace Attorney and get to the relationship between Phoenix and Apollo I think is 10 times more compelling and it is actually fitting for their characters!!!!!

#royai big bang 2024 #Ask game!

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pondslime · 2 years ago

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@pretty-possum cynth, ur mind. ur fuckin MIND. thank u for sending me this electric idea bc it rlly had me spooning out my brain!! here’s some filthnasty for u in which he has way too much fun and it’s ickyweird

catching flies with honey (if the killing’s what you like, make it sweet)

bo sinclair x afab!reader

rating: explicit

wordcount: 4.8k

Reader POV. You keep telling him how much you hate him. You little spitfire! It's real cute. Anyway, he’s got something special to show you. He’s sure you’ll love it.

Also posted on AO3 here.

⚠️ Canon typical violence and fuckery. We’re in Bo’s hell basement for the first bit of this, so that means many references to past noncon. When we get to the wax museum nasty, it's dubcon under EXTREME duress. Reader dislikes Bo immensely and makes this clear to him multiple times. Bo finds this endlessly entertaining and adapts his approach to make her even more miserable. He's on his brat-taming shit. Sugary sweet, full of bullshit compliments, contrived as hell. He’s very smug and manipulative and slimy in this fic. HEAVY praise kink. Deviating from my other Bo fics, he doesn’t call you any awful names! Whoa! But he might as well! Because this really isn’t any better! Praise kink as degradation. A wax sculpture is destroyed, and the resulting viscera and nastiness is described in vivid detail. Some suspension of disbelief is necessary for the decomposition described, but that’s basically a warning for the original movie lmao. Mind break elements. He talks you through it (unfortunately). Multiple orgasms with a heavy focus on overstimulation. ⚠️

He’s red on the inside, same as you. It’s about time that somebody reminded him.

“I’m gettin’ sloppy.” Bo clicks his tongue. “Ain’t your fault, darlin’.”

“Don’t call me that.” You spit out, tugging at the restraints on the chair.

“What? You don’t like me bein’ sweet to you?”

He hums a tune as he clips your fingernails. You expect a sting of pain—want one, even—each time he lifts another finger. It never comes. He’s uncharacteristically gentle, pinching his tongue between his teeth and tilting his head as he studies your hands.

“Ain’t been takin’ care of you like I should, baby.” He murmurs.

Your lip trembles with indignation. You wear enough marks on your skin to know that his version of care isn’t something you want. Your eyes dart back to the scratch on his neck. You wish you could’ve done more, cut deeper—but you’ll take this small victory. It’s a reminder that he’s nothing more than human, shackled by the same mortality you are. You can see that in the pinpricks of blood blooming on his neck.

He bleeds like you and he can die just the same.

“I hope it scars.” You mutter.

Leveling his gaze to meet yours, Bo tips his head towards your bound wrists.

“Hope yours do to.” He chuckles. “You keep yankin’ on those things and we’re ‘bout to have a matchin’ set.”

The smile he gives you is warm and soft, crinkling at the corners of his eyes. It’s as counterfeit as the rest of his persona and just as paper-thin. You wonder who he stole that expression from. He only seems to have things that he’s taken from others.

You count the days with scratches on his Polaroids.

He keeps your nails short now, so you can’t dig into them like you used to. Despite that, you try your best, pressing a crescent moon of a cut into the glossy surface. He’s got enough of them hanging up that you doubt he’ll notice. If you know one thing for certain, it’s that he seems to have a remarkably one-track mind.

He comes down here for you. Everything else is as consequential as the dirt and rust that line the shelves. A product of years of neglect, just another piece of the background. When you think about it, even you are one of those incidental things. The previous occupants of this room watch you from the wall, a constant reminder that this has all happened before. Down here, you are not an anomaly. The technicalities of your self are really just that, technicalities.

It’s necessary to give him things (your body, your time, all that rust) because that’s how you stay alive. You can’t feel bad for that. It’s a hunger like anything else and you swallow it down like any of the other tasteless meals he brings you. It slides down your gullet and with every mouthful, the pang lessens. When the hunger is gone, all you’re left with is the way he sits in your stomach.

You have to be careful. If you’re not, there’ll come a point where there won’t be anything more to pry away. You have to stay awake.

You’re screaming. Bo’s yawning.

“Figured ya’ woulda gotten that outta your system by now.”

You ignore him.

“Want me to try and holler with ya’? Might help that sound carry.”

“Where’s everybody else?” You wheel around to face him, hands balled into tight fists. He’s sitting on the edge of the mattress, leaning back on his elbows.

“Dunno.” Scrunching his face up in thought, he purses his lips. “Haven’t seen nobody ‘round here in a minute. Just you.”

“Just me?” You chew on your bottom lip, searching his face. “You’re not a good liar.”

“I’m not lyin’.” He smirks at you.

“They’re all dead, aren’t they?” Your voice warbles a bit around the question, but you manage to steady your voice. You hope he doesn’t notice.

He does.

“Look darlin’, I know you’re real worried ‘bout those friends of yours.” He frowns at you, brow creased in a poor attempt at sympathy. “And I don’t wanna scare ya’ baby. I really don’t. But you gotta know. My brother…he ain’t right. If he got to ‘em first…can’t tell ya’ what could’ve happened.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s got this, uh—this compulsion.” He shakes his head slowly, letting out a low whistle. “Bad stuff. Gotta keep ya’ away from him.”

“Why?”

“Oh, ‘cuz you’re somethin’ special.” He drags the last word out, letting it pop in his mouth. “But you know that, don’tcha, baby?”

His praise might as well have been spat into your face with a wad of saliva.

Getting to his feet with a groan, he glances over his shoulder. He stands there for a beat too long, eying the Polaroids. Leaning over, he tugs one off the wall. You haven’t exactly been subtle with your date-keeping. He scans over the damage, his lips curling into a sneer.

“I’m gonna say this once.” His face twists into a scowl. “All this? It’s real cute—until it ain’t.”

There’s an eagerness to your breath as you watch him, your eyes darting from the ruined picture back to his face. It’s an odd, confusing thing, but part of you prefers him like this. The cruelty makes him predictable. You’re so sick of the platitudes, the sugary pet names. You know what he wants to call you, what he really thinks of you as. He may as well have branded those words deep into your skin.

You used to make him so angry. It almost felt like your encounters were equal parts punishment doled out to both of you, wrapped up around the callous bite of his voice. This recent change in demeanor frustrates you, it feels like it was born out of something you did. Nothing bothers you more than that. When you were a slut, or a whore, or a nasty little bitch, that was all him.

You ready yourself for what’s coming, knowing that it’ll hurt, but pleased to know that you managed to break his composure. Unable to hide behind thinly veiled niceties, he can’t pretend to be kind.

To your dismay, his face relaxes.

“Reckon it ain’t nice to tease ya’ with pictures when ya’ want the real thing.” He sighs, crumpling the picture in his hand. Your shoulders sag. “I’ll make it up to you, baby.”

You start your count back up on a new Polaroid. It feels less satisfying, but that’s routine for you.

You’re six notches deep into your new calender when Bo comes downstairs jangling his keys.

“Got somethin’ to show ya’ today.”

“…What is it?”

“Don’t wanna spoil the surprise.” He shrugs, shooting you a smile. “Can’t bring it here, so…how ya’ feel ‘bout takin’ a walk, darlin’?”

Outside the gas station, you shield your eyes from the sun.

Rustling in his pocket, Bo pulls out a crumpled box of cigarettes. You peer around as he flicks his lighter open, your heart stuttering in your chest. You’re not bound. There’s nothing preventing you from taking off down the street. But this is his test, and you know that.

The limits of the town are further than you’d thought. Even if you could make it to the mouth of the town without him at your heels, that’s only part of it. The momentum you’d need to sustain to get down the road means nothing if you lose it there, face-down in the gravel.

Bo’s taking a drag of his cigarette when you glance back at him, a smirk playing at the ends of his lips. He looks at you like he can tell what you’re thinking, as if he’s run through the same scenario a thousand times in his mind. He’s come out the winner every time. You’re sure he’d love for you to prove him right.

“You want one?” He gestures toward the cigarette.

In place of an answer, you glare at him.

“Suit yourself, sweetness.” He grins.

“Waste of money.” You murmur.

“You might be right. But I never buy any of ‘em.” There’s an edge of manic glee in his voice. “Not once.”

Keeping your eyes on him, you press your lips together. You can tell he wants you to ask what he means by that. He’s all but bouncing on his heels, eyes twinkling. He hasn’t fucked you in days, has barely seemed to have time to touch you. It felt like a reprieve at the time, but this barely-contained excitement worries you.

You don’t respond.

He finishes his cigarette, flicking it away.

“C’mon.”

Bo leads you up the hill to the wax museum. Reaching out, he closes his hand around the door handle. It opens with a creak.

“Go on. Ladies first.”

Inside, it’s quiet, but there’s no peace.

Sun reflects out through green panes, bathing everything in unnatural light. It feels wrong to stand here in the gloom, surrounded by an assortment of shadowy wax figures, their faces frozen in placid contentment. Nervousness gnaws at your chest, leaving your palms clammy.

“What are we doing here?” Your throat feels tight.

He doesn’t answer, just leads you deeper into the room. Your eyes land on a mirror against the far wall. In its dusty cloudiness, you both are shadowy blobs of shapes, completely insubstantial.

“Keep goin’. ‘S in the other room.”

He beckons you through an open doorway and dust tickles your nose. Following his gaze, your eyes land on another group of wax sculptures. Their clothes are just as dated as the others, all crushed velvet and strings of pearls. Despite this, they look newer, no tendrils of dust hanging off of their outstretched arms.

There’s something familiar about them, but it’s hard to tell in this light. You take a step closer, narrowing your eyes.

“Ya’ know, my brother likes projects.” You hear Bo say. “Guess that’s somethin’ we got in common.”

You blink in confusion, your mouth falling open. Of course they look familiar—you’d recognize those faces anywhere. Standing in front of you are wax replicas of your friends, leering at you with painted-on smiles.

“What is this?” Your hands are shaking. “Where are they?”

“Right in front of you, darlin’.” Bo exclaims. “Now, don’t they look good? I think they clean up real nice, don’t you?”

It’s nothing more than a cruel joke.

The anger that grips you is sudden, thoughtless. You reel around, your hand clenching into a fist. The punch you throw at him is a pitiful thing. He avoids it easily, catching your wrist in his hand and shoving you away. You back up frantically as he closes in on you, your heart skipping in your chest. Losing your footing, you smack into one of the figures.

“What, you ain’t thankful for the reunion? Thought you’d appreciate it.”

The sculpture totters behind you. You flail wildly as you try to steady yourself, but it’s no use—your feet slip out from under you. As you fall, it falls with you, hitting the floor with a shatter that sprays chips of paint and wax over the ground.

“Hate to say it, but I’m a bit disappointed in ya’, sweet thing.”

Wrenching your head back to look at the damage, your mouth falls open. The impact of the fall bisected the sculpture’s face, cracking it wide open. A scream bubbles up in your throat as you realize that it isn’t hollow. There’s something bloated and dead inside it, staring back at you with milky eyes.

You’d know that face anywhere.

“Dunno how I’m gonna explain this to Vincent, baby. He spent a lot of time on that one.”

You scramble to your feet with a shriek, backpedaling wildly until you run into him. His hands are quick to close around you, pinning your arms behind your back. You try your best to twist out of his grip, but he holds you still, pulling you against his chest.

“Figure he’ll need a replacement.” Bo leans down to murmur in your ear, his tone sickly and apologetic. “I’m gonna have a hell of a time tryin’ to convince him that it ain’t gonna be you.”

Your eyes dart between the figures, hardly registering his words. It’s impossible to make sense of what’s in front of you. Everything seems doused in unreality, tilted on its side. Your friends stand frozen, lips peeled away from their teeth in twisted imitations of smiles. It’s been so long that you can hardly remember what their voices sound like. You won’t hear them again. The people they used to be live on only in your head, spiraling into a mass of memory. The realization has your throat tightening, your eyes blurring with tears.

You feel his lips against your hair and a broken wail tips out of your mouth. You’ve walked straight into the gaping maw of an open grave. They’re here and they’re rotting and there’s nothing to be done because you’re too late. This is no museum—it’s a mausoleum, and you paid your respects through a splattering of viscera on the floor.

“It ain’t that bad. We’ll set somethin’ up real nice for ya’, sweetness. Right by the door.”

You shudder, yanking against his hands.

“Whatcha wanna wear, darlin’? I’ll getcha whatever ya’ want.”

“Don’t tell him!” Your voice comes out shrill, rushing out of you in a high-pitched whine. “Don’t, please, don’t—”

“Well, I gotta tell him, baby.” He sighs.

“No, no, no. Please—”

“You want me to lie to him?” He tugs at your ear with his teeth. “Dunno. Thought I wasn’t a good liar.”

“You can’t, you—” Your breath escapes you in shallow gulps.

Abruptly, he lets go of your arms, shoving you off him. You pitch forward onto the ground, blinking away tears. He pounces on you with a laugh, flipping you onto your back. His hands paw at your breasts, sliding down your stomach. He moves closer, positioning himself between your thighs to force your knees up, yanking your legs open. Your dress rides up, bunching around your hips.

“This ain’t somethin’ I take lightly.” He shakes his head, sighing. “I’d miss ya’.”

“Fuck you.” You squirm underneath him.

“There’s that mouth.” He grins down at you, wrapping a hand around your throat. “That’s my girl.”

You scrabble at his grip, twisting underneath him. Bo’s hand doesn’t budge, his fingers closing tighter around your neck.

“Fuck. You.” You wheeze, unable to muster the venom you intend.

If you’re going to die, you want him to bruise you, to mark you up in such a way that the person responsible for the macabre mannequins in the other room would notice. You want the signs of a fight clear upon your skin. Anything to make them rethink dressing you up in satin and costume jewelry; kept on display to be gawked at, locked in someone’s imagined view of you.

Leave that one to rot on the side of the road, she’s sick of being looked at.

“Well, since you’re askin’ so nicely…” He grins down at you, his eyes glinting. “How you want it?”

His fingers brush between your legs, cupping your pussy through the cotton. You let out a sputtered yelp as he pulls your panties to the side. His thumb begins to rub at your clit and you buck your hips up, making a desperate move to wrench yourself away from him.

“Right there, baby?”

His grip on your throat is rhythmic, tightening and loosening and tightening again. Helpless darkness grips you as your throat constricts, only to be met with the shuddering relief of air filling your lungs. Head spinning, you oscillate wildly between the two unyielding extremes. You gasp when he pushes his finger into you, horrified to find yourself wet enough that it slides in easily. Your pussy clenches around the intrusion involuntarily, making you squeal.

"Guess all that death don't bother you. You're a trooper, baby." He pumps a second finger in, stretching you open. Your thighs shake and you can’t help the desperate little mewl that escapes your mouth.

“Got yourself an audience and now you’re purrin’ like a kitten.” He smirks, amusement plain in his voice. “That’s all ya’ needed, huh?”

“No.” You hiss out.

“Mmm-hmm. I hear ya’, darlin’.” His voice drips with honey, warm and throaty above you. “Don’tchu worry.”

You twist your head to the side, forcing your eyes to focus on the unnatural poses held by the corpses of your friends. Maybe it would be better to be like they were, immobile in their grotesque funeral clothes. They wouldn’t know what it felt like to lose all this, to die while you still breathed. Your eyes fall on the shattered carnage that covers the floor a few feet away. The hopelessness numbs you, making it easier to ignore the distracting warmth between your thighs. You’ll look at all that death and he won’t be able to make you feel anything.

“Eyes up here, beautiful.” He forces your head back. “Don’t like you lookin’ at ‘em when I’m touchin’ you. Makes me jealous.”

The room is warm and you’re warmer still, uglier than you’ve ever felt, sweat beading on your brow and dripping down the side of your face. He works another finger into you, humming under his breath. You gasp around the added pressure, squeezing your eyes tightly shut.

“Just like that, baby.” He readjusts his grip on your throat, stroking a finger up the thundering beat of your pulse. “Make yourself feel good. You need it.”

You realize with a whimper that you’re doing just that, rocking down on his fingers. Your body is traitorous and so is that hunger, demanding to be full, to take in as much as it could. Like a whore, your mind offers up bitterly. Just like a whore. You bite back a moan, twisting under him. You wish that he’d call you that, that his hand was digging harder into your skin. You need this to hurt so you can focus on the poison that drips off his words. If you could manage that, you’d make it out of here.

This is about survival. That’s what you’re trying to do.

He shifts the angle of his hand slightly and you tense up, unable to muffle the moan that spills out of your mouth. Your orgasm is a shivery, unexpected thing, clambering up your spine and washing over you in a traitorous burst. It tastes like betrayal, shuddering its way through you with a shock, stealing the words from your tongue and leaving you gasping for air. Your eyes are watering when he finally lets go of your throat, tugging your underwear off.

"You got over that fast. Nothin’ brings you down, huh?” You hear the jingle of his belt as he undoes it. With a grunt, he nudges your legs wider apart with his knee, pulling you towards him. “You're a wonder, baby."

You jolt away with a gasp when you feel the head of his cock rub against your clit, your mouth falling open. He flashes a smile down at you, dragging his length through your folds.

“How’s that, baby?”

“It’s too much, it’s—” You take a ragged gasp as he presses against your entrance, screwing your eyes tightly shut.

“’S okay.” He murmurs, rocking the head of his cock slowly into your pussy with shallow thrusts. You grit your teeth together, hissing a shaky breath through your nose.

When he eases into you, you let out a watery sob. Pressing into you slow, you’re acutely aware of every inch of him. He’s usually too impatient to let you feel this gradual stretch, the way your walls clench helplessly around his cock.

“Feels good, huh?” He sinks deeper into you, and you tremble. “You like it?”

You shake your head sharply. You wiggle your hips down, anxious for him to fill you completely. You need it done so you can forget the way that this feels. There are things you shouldn’t see and things you shouldn’t feel, and today has been full of both.

“C’mon now, baby.” His tone is sugary sweet and patronizing. Each word plods out slow, as if he’s talking to a child. “If it feels good, you gotta like it.”

You feel a flicker of embarrassment, but it’s not enough to push past the fog of euphoria that’s coiling low in your belly. Your breath stutters out of you in uneven bursts, almost as if his hand is still around your throat. That’s how this pleasure feels—it’s a choking, inescapable thing, pinning you against the ground.

“You’re takin’ me so well, baby. You wanna know how good that feels ‘round my dick?”

He rocks into you, slow and deep, dragging a pitiful moan from your lips.

“Be careful, angel.” Bo lets out a breathless laugh. “You’re gonna wake up ya’ friends.”

A sharp bolt of revulsion thrums through you, tugging you out from under the throb of sensation. The shame twists in your stomach, rotten and sickly. Before it can stick, he reaches down and slips his hands under your waist. With hardly any effort, he lifts you off the floor, tilting your pelvis up to meet him. Your mouth is pooling with saliva, tears pricking at your eyes. At this angle, he’s so deep that it’s as if you can feel him everywhere, pushing at the back of your throat. You let out a desperate whine, locking your legs around his waist. Without his hands to hold you up, you feel like you’d melt away into the floor.

He rolls his hips and you stutter out a sob, tremors of desperate pleasure wracking your body. You’re shaking, hands reaching up to tremble uselessly at your chest.

“What am I doin’, baby?”

“You’re—” You slur out, panting. “You’re fucking me.”

“Uh-huh. Ya’ like it?”

You keen out an unintelligible reply, nodding up at him desperately. He rewards your answer with a brush to your clit and your mouth falls open.

“Good, baby. Gettin’ a little hard to talk, yeah?” His words are coated in self-congratulatory smugness that can’t manage to hide behind sweetness. It taunts you, clawing under your skin and tearing through you in a way that only serves to make you wetter. “You ain’t gotta care ‘bout nothin’ other than how that feels.”

He fucks down into you, his cock kissing something deep in you that has you gaping up at him, stuttering out a moan. He’s pushing deep, impossibly so, then pulling out to press back in. Here, in this desperate haze of feeling that has you arching your back on the ground, it all feels so unavoidable.

Distantly, you can hear him murmuring above you. You’re so good, aren’t you? Say yes, sweetheart, but only if you want to. Only if it feels right. A distant part of your brain reminds you that the last thing you want to be is good. Trying desperately to catch onto that thought only has it fading away into that all-consuming pressure building up between your legs.

“Whose girl are you?”

“Yours.” You hiccup out. You’re disloyal and fickle and weak—and you aren’t lying, you can’t lie.

“That’s right.”

It feels like you’re losing something, your thoughts unspooling and picking up momentum as they roll away, getting further and further from you with every thrust of his hips.

Everything you give him is nothing he deserves.

“You wanna show me what a good girl you are and cum?”

No.

“Nn—”

The pleasure is a knife in your gut, splitting you open from the base of your belly all the way up to the shuddering flesh of your throat. It feels like honey, like his voice above you—eviscerating, cruel because it isn’t cruel. Hurting because it doesn’t, because all you wanted was him and he gave it to you. You arch up desperately, chasing after more of that sensation.

“Oh, angel. That’s perfect.”

He holds you suspended in the rolling thrum of your orgasm, thrusting deeper into you. Your orgasm burns at the back of your eyes, a blinding thing, gouging you open with white-hot light. Unlike the first, this one seems to wash over you with no end. You cry out, thrashing under the unrelenting waves, his cock pulsing inside you. His breathing is labored as he works his hips, sweat plastering his hair to his brow.

You look up at him and you don’t hate him—and that’s the worst thing, dragging another woozy ripple of pleasure out of your core. Your heart hammers away in your chest, pounding hot and loud in your ears. He spills inside you with a groan, his hands digging tightly into your thighs. Your body seems to throb with warmth, rolling waves of it leaving your limbs numb and useless.

With an embarrassingly wet squelch, he pulls out of you. You close your eyes and the world spins inside your head, making your eyelids heavy. Dimly, you can hear him zipping up the fly of his pants, refastening his belt. He clears his throat, huffing out a tired laugh.

“Like I told ya’, baby. You’re somethin’ special.”

He says something else and you nod. You’re not sure what he might have asked you—but he likes agreement. You’ve never cared much for what he liked, never had a desire to give whatever that was to him. But it’s easier to say yes. You can’t pin down what part of you has decided that’s true, but it’s pulsing between your legs and sitting on your tongue like it belongs there.

“Think I’d let him get his hands on you? That’s crazy talk, girl.”

Your thighs spasm a bit and you gulp. He lowers himself over you, sinking onto his elbows to press a kiss onto your trembling mouth. You can feel his spend leaking out of you, running down between your legs and puddling underneath you. The ache is coming, you can feel it, throbbing deep in your cunt.

When you were little, you couldn’t swallow pills. You needed them ground up and mixed in with sugar, served up on a spoon for you to swallow. Even then, you knew it was there, felt like you could taste it. But it made it easier, didn’t it? You couldn’t tell then and you can’t tell now. You whimper and he smiles against your lips, teasing your mouth open with his tongue.

Seems like you can take anything if it’s hidden under sugar.

As the haze of pleasure begins to lift, the room starts to come back into focus. You’re remembering that you can’t be here, that death is familiar and close. You have to leave, you have to run. With a shaky sob, you feel the fear begin to hitch up in your throat again, crawling out of the pocket of your insides that it’s been hiding in.

You yelp as you feel him circle around your clit again. Thrashing underneath him, you shake your head wildly.

“Nice and sensitive now, yeah? Look at that.”

You whimper helplessly, the words forming on your tongue only to disappear a moment later. Your clit feels swollen between your legs, delivering a snap of electricity to your core with every unrelenting stroke of his fingers. You teeter on the razor-edge of pain and pleasure—ratcheted too high, past the point of enjoyment. There’s nowhere left for the feeling to go. You’ll need to claw your way out of your skin to alleviate it, you’ll need him to take you apart.

“Sto—” The word’s swallowed up by a series of high-pitched vocalizations, spilling from your lips, one tripping over the other. Your grasp on language feels as sloppy as your cunt. Slippery, needy things. What good were they now?

“Ya’ know what I think?” He murmurs. “I think this pussy’s got one more.”

Dizzily, you think about the cigarette he’d offered you earlier. You could use it now.

“I can’t, I can’t—”

“Pretty girl.” He reaches up with his free hand to wipe away the tears spilling down the side of your face. “It’s hard, I know.”

If you had any energy, you’d bite him, you’d take out as many chunks as you could. Are you sure? That version of you feels far away now. He sinks his fingers back into your pussy and you whine. There’s no resistance to be found inside you, just a quivering hole fucked wide, greedily squeezing around his fingers.

“You wanna know somethin’, baby? I’ve always been selfish. Got told that a lot, and I reckon they were right.” His voice is as soft as his hands, rumbling into your head. “Can’t help it.”

“Bo, please—” You’re wound too tight to cum again, each touch a shivery spike of feeling that leaves you wanting to vacate your body. You need to tell him that, you need to—

“Name sounds real good in that mouth.” You can hear the smile in his voice. “Say it again, would ya’?”

“Bo. Bo.” You let out a broken sob, a fresh wave of tears glazing over your eyes. “Bo…”

“Hush now, angel. Third times the charm.”

#using that gif to represent this fic bc he is v smug and ehehehehehe throughout this whole thing #he regrettably. has a great time #I do not know who (me) keeps letting him get away with this? who are they???? (it's me again)#house of wax #bo sinclair #bo sinclair x reader #slashers x reader #slasher fandom #x reader #my fics

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ejundo · 1 year ago

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- 𝐁𝐋𝐀𝐂𝐊 𝐒𝐖𝐀𝐍 -

ᴀᴏᴍɪɴᴇ ᴅᴀɪᴋɪ x ᴍ!ʀᴇᴀᴅᴇʀ

FEM ALIGNED PLEASE DNI! THIS STORY IS MADE FOR MALE READERS ONLY!! PLEASE AND THANK YOU FOR COOPARATING!! ٩(｡•́‿•̀｡)۶

warnings!; ice skater male reader | MALE reader | reader is a boy. | this won't have NSFW aomine is still a high schooler.... popular reader .. more to be added? slight of enemies to friends to lovers? most likely out of character

﹟ - ⌜𝐘𝐨𝐮'𝐫𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐧𝐨𝐲𝐢𝐧𝐠.. ⌝ ⌞𝐀𝐰𝐰.. 𝐛𝐮𝐭 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐥𝐨𝐯𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭.. ⌟ \ 𝐓𝐨 𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐚 𝐟𝐥𝐢𝐫𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐮𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐬𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭𝐥𝐲 𝐩𝐨𝐩𝐮𝐥𝐚𝐫 𝐡𝐢𝐠𝐡 𝐬𝐜𝐡𝐨𝐨𝐥𝐞𝐫 𝐦𝐞𝐞𝐭𝐬 𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐦𝐲 𝐀𝐨��𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐃𝐚𝐢𝐤𝐢. 𝐖𝐡𝐨 𝐞𝐱𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐥𝐲 𝐢𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐟𝐥𝐢𝐫𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐮𝐬 𝐥𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐫? 𝐖𝐞𝐥𝐥.. 𝐟𝐢𝐠𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐢𝐭 𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐮𝐫𝐬𝐞𝐥𝐟 𝐥𝐚𝐳𝐲 𝐛𝐮𝐦. .

this was copy and pasted off of my wattpad and onto my tumblr because i honestly really like this story imo its more me!!! [ i dont know what this writing style is called but..] ANYWAY ENJOYYYYYY ★ one - ur in it. - ★two

— — — — — — — ⋆ ⋆ ⋆ — — — — — — —

the sounds of chatter filled the air. gossip. boys fawning over female genitals and being overall.. disrespectful

well? seems like a normal day for M/n L/n.

well obviously , m/n l/n was apart of these cliques. socializing and gossiping with his friend. he's a popular one.. and this caught the attention of many..

he heard his name everywhere. everyone knew his name 'm/n! ' ' ohh m/n! ' he was slightly tired of it. but, he enjoyed the attention how everyone knew his name how popular he was he loved. it.

but one didn't he found it annoying.. so annoying... that was aomine daiki. he was tired of having to hear the name m/n constantly even his own teammates had said it.

' yo , did u see m/n today? ' ' that clip m/n posted on his ig was funny as hell ' ' i wonder if m/n wants to try out basketball we could teach him? ' > <

?? that's funny..

— — — — — — — ⋆ ⋆ ⋆ — — — — — — —

aomine grumbled as he jumped onto the small platform placed on the roof top. he was tired. no not because of basketball , how would thee aomine daiki get tired over basketball? exactly. he never did. never..

infact he was tired of m/n l/n and his stupid name. what was so special about this.. nobody?

he ice skates? so? i play basketball..

aomine though wasn't aware that he was exactly the same. let's move to m/n's point of view shall we?

stupid fucking aomine.. him and his name everywhere.. whats so special about him?

it seems the two have mutual feelings? and the same thoughts about each other.. woah

enemies.

how silly...

★

M/n was heading to the ice rink he goes to , to practice. He carefully made his way on roller skates. humming a random tune. He had finally arrived at the skate rink stepping inside quickly making his way towards the lockers.

After doing his usual routine , he glanced around. Usually his skating partner would arrive earlier but it seemed that they were absent... He didn't think to much of it but had a slight ping of worry , it was unusual for his colleague to never show up for practice. M/n was now finished with his routine , stepping out of the locker room and slowly making his way towards the rink.

★

'hm? oh momoi-san! hii! ' the figure skater halted as he saw a familiar pair of pink hair enter the rink. a smile on his face as he made his way towards her , though it had slowly faded as he saw the also very familiar dark blue hair alongside her.

aomine daiki was picking his nose. ' eugh... ' m/n shivered in disgust though finally arriving infront of momoi. she was grinnning happily and both aomine and m/n knew what she was gonna say wasn't going to be a good idea.

'n/n! dai-chan and i need your help!' she exclaimed though aomine shook his head ' i beg to differ.. though i have no idea to what you are trying to do...'

he sniffed his nose after finally NOT stuffing it with his finger flicking it somewhere...

' well! i was thinking that maybeee you m/n could help dai-chan study! he really needs it and you both are basically the same though specialize in different athletics and you on the other hand are really smart n/n! dai-chan really needs it... '

momoi quickly explained the ice skater could barely keep up with what she was saying...

' i mean i guess though i don't think me and aomine get along well.. at. all. ' m/n shrugged stepping off of the ice carefully slipping them off.

his feet were stinging from the previous moves he was doing though he was used to it.

'hahh.. i mean it can be a way of bonding trust me! ' momoi grinned looking towards the tanned basketball player. 'well? what do you say! it could really help you... '

aomine only shrugged ' i don't care if i get kicked off for my grades.. their loss.. '

momoi didn't take that nicely. smacking the back of aomine head , m/n only watched mentally laughing at the basketball player as he winced.

' fine..! good god... i guess this nerd can tutor me. ' m/n kicked the basketball players leg with his barefoot. well.. not bare but you get what i mean.. hopefully.

aomine grunted smacking the back of m/n's head exactly how momoi did it. which earned a punch to HIS and M/N's head from momoi curled up fist.

'QUIT IT YOU TWO!! '

★

..hm those two are interesting.. but those two were in a room studying like momoi wanted them too.. more specifically m/ns room. It was simple , clean , and very neat a nice satisfying smell of something.. fresh? filled the room, it fit m/n perfectly.

' i cant believe im doing this... what's your grade in english hm? ' m/n had muttered the first part though it was loud enough for aomine to hear. he rolled his eyes ignoring the comment ' D ' he answered. simple and dry. that ticked the skater off though he kept his cool. ' and whats your lowest grade and your highest grade. '

' my lowest is D which is english. and highest is A in gym. ' obviously... m/n only rolled his eyes of course this hunk had an A in gym.. though its quite surprising.. this thing? having a good grade.. what a joke..

' I suppose we can start off with english.. ' ★

pov . m [ a short time skip. ]

it's warm. thats.. weird. I slowly cracked open my eyes as my vision was blurred. the room was dark , and i tried remembering what had happened. well . from what I recalled...

! ★ fb ★ !

' were done for today.. you can head home now. ' i mumbled my eyes were heavy and head was banging from how absolutely stupid this fucker was.. he can't even understand a simple equation?

'oh? that's some way to treat your guest.. its 1 am n/n. ' i scoffed. who let him called me n/n? i definitely didn't.. ' don't call me that or i'll start calling you dai from now on. get it.. because dai sounds like "die" hah... ' now I am truly losing it.

he only rolled his eyes and started.. stripping? out of his clothes only leaving his undergarments on ' DUDE WHAT ARE YOU DOING!? ' I had finally realized the situation throwing a notebook at the boy. and of course he had dodged it ' well. im sleeping over considering it's 1 am.. ' he plopped down onto my bed and I could only roll my eyes. I grabbed a pair of sleepwear heading for the showers..

as I made it to the bathroom I turned the shower on stepping into it satisfied as the steaming water hit my body.. refreshing... I reached out for the bottle of shampoo putting a small glob onto my hand lathering it onto my hair.. the smell of roses calmed me. rinsing the shampoo out I had moved onto conditioner. and then body wash. and that is to when my shower ended.

I slowly stepped out with a towel drying myself , wrapping it around my waist afterwards. I had then moved to brushing my teeth and doing skincare.

after doing such i made it to my room quietly making sure to not wake up those who slept in the other rooms. stupidly unaware of the "sleeping" basketball player who was reading porn on his phone.. disgusting. turning on the light i stared at the blue haired man who was reading a porno.. he only stared back. ' nice body.. though these bodies are nicer.. ' he flipped his phone showing me, i immediately panicked ' YOU IDIOT! ' I threw the clothes I had in hand at him .

realizing what i had done i quickly made it to him grabbing the pair of clothes and his phone shutting it off slamming it onto the desk.

proceeding to change into my clothes WITH the light off. my hair now slightly dry though still wet. ' move over or sleep on the floor. ' muttering i could hear shifting and i put my hand down guiding myself only for my hand to touch the warm skin of aomine. ' I said move over you stupid fuck.. ' I could sense him rolling his eyes and smack his arm and he lazily rolled over.

atlas I laid down on the bed getting comfortable drifting off into a deep slumber..

★

so.. that's what happenedthat's embarrassing... where is he anyway...

lifting myself up i had realized i was laying on top of the stupid basketball player..

— — — — — — — ⋆ ⋆ ⋆ — — — — — — —

𝐁𝐋𝐀𝐂𝐊𝐒𝐖𝐀𝐍

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galvanizedfriend · 1 month ago

Note

hi friend <3 How are you?

This might sound weird, but sometimes I watch 1 or 2 clips of TO while reading TW, just to have a clearer picture of each character (especially those like Freya, Vincent and Marcel who never showed up on Tvd) and also to see what you changed from the Story.

Now, call me biased, but to this day I don't understand how your version is 100x more emotional and logical than the actual show 😭😭

An entire team of people who do scripts and directories for A LIVING somehow can't reach the level of your fanfiction. Granted, they give you a very big base to work with, but still.

I watched the clip where Klaus talked to Hayley right before going to Hope, just to see what she said, since they have a different dynamic than Klaroline (both in canon and TW) and i was SO disappointed 😭😭😭

"you were her fairy tale prince, you have a lot to live up to"

AND THAT'S IT?? THAT'S YOU WAY OF HELPING??? GIRL 😭 Honestly, the only cute thing I saw was the flashback of Vincent and Eva at the start!

that's what they mean when they say that curiosity kills the cat, I guess.

Anyway, all of this rumble just to say that you do a spectacular work, and you manage to make likeable, interesting, and logical even the worst kind of shit. You're a gift to this fandom!

have a good one, love u xoxo

Hi, friend! ✨ Sorry it took me a lil to answer this, I wanted to have proper time. 😊

This is so nice of you to say. 🥹 Whenever I get a stupid message about how it's basically the same thing as TO, objectively I know it isn't because I know how much work I put into it, but there's always that little voice of impostor syndrome whispering in my head. You have no idea how it brightens my day to read messages like this. Especially since you went back to rewatch the show!

That chapter in particular has a hell of a lot of stuff that was nowhere near the episode. It took me forever to get the vibes right because I wanted to change how a lot of things were portrayed, which requires a series of nuanced shifts that might seem simple but are not that easy to get right, especially to someone like me, not a native speaker 😂 Sometimes the words just refuse to come. 🥲 But this sums up what I have been trying to do from the very start. I keep the plot points (most of them, anyway), but that doesn't mean the story is the same because so much of the context is changed, there are so many scenes that aren't on the show, which creates major differences in how the characters relate to one another. I wanted to give to give depth to this fucking show, make things make sense and, above all, create a version of TO that would've kept me entertained and interested.

I could honestly write a whole ass essay about this chapter 😂 It's long as hell and I have feelings about it lol But just wanted to thank you for your very kind words ❤️ Sometimes I wonder if there's anyone still interested and enjoying this story or if I'm mostly just writing to get it out of my own system, but messages like this are a boost in confidence. 🥰🫶

#yokan answers #rosedforbes #nice people being nice

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unicyclehippo · 2 years ago

Note

reminder to self: finish the dang wash prompt

[have read it too many times & now my brain is fried so that’s it!! im done!! for @possibilistfanfiction the ray fic as promised, i hope u enjoy it!! for everyone else, if you think you’ve read this before, that’s because the start is functionally identical to the thing i posted a few weeks back for the “wash” prompt]

you should have listened to your brother.

the thought makes you shudder and you ignore it valiantly as you start your morning, because at the heart of it, that’s what you do: you’re a runaway.

hop out of bed; don’t think about it. make breakfast in your tiny kitchen, the overhead light a little dim but bright enough against blue pre-dawn morning; don’t think about it. get ready for work, check the to-do list note in your phone twice to make sure you’ve got everything you need; don’t think about it. not thinking about it works just fine until, asshole that he is, he calls you as you’re climbing into the car.

you think about ignoring him but as much as he ticks you off—and you know that the first or maybe last words out of his mouth are gonna be, when are you coming home, ray—it’s been three weeks since the last time you spoke and you miss him. plus, it’s not as if he’s wrong (ugh). it is lonely here, sometimes, and you have friends closeby but no family, and your stomach hurt all last winter because no one wanted to learn to surf when the water was fuck-off cold and the jobs you got to cover those in-between months didn’t ever last long enough, and he’s right about all of that but he’s wrong about it not being worth it. he’s wrong about you needing to come home, because there’s nowhere you’d rather be than right here and maybe, yeah, maybe that makes you selfish or reckless or any of the other things he’d called you in anger, regretted quickly, but the smell of seasalt and smog clings to you and you feel good, healthy, when you swing into the drivers seat of your car and excitement swells up inside of you—like always, every morning without fail—because this was never about running away, not really, it was always about this. about running to something, about having a different home, about making a place where you feel right in yourself, braver and better too. maybe when you explain that to him this time, for what feels like the hundredth time, he’ll get it.

you put the phone in its clip, up on the dash, and answer his call.

‘hey,’ he says, voice gravelly with the early hour and the crackle of your shitty reception. ‘didn’t think you were gonna pick up. figured you were still ignoring my calls.’

god, you miss him. but he’s your brother so you won’t ever say that except under pain of torture, maybe. Instead, you say, tone clipped,

‘thought about it.’ it’s not helpful to be short with him but hell, you answered, didn’t you? It doesn’t fall on you to fix all of this.

he sits with that for a second, then clears his throat. you can picture him clear as day: he’ll be leaning back against the counter of his kitchen, arms folded, face folded up as he listens hard to every word. there’ll be coffee brewing in a pot, and all the stuff for the kids lunches laid out ready for the assembly line.

he tries again. you love him for this, you admire him for this—not that you’ll ever admit it to him. he never stops trying.

‘you off to work?’

‘yeah.’

‘how’s that going?’

for a second, there’s another short answer on your lips. something terse, something not quite unkind but not welcoming or inviting. but then you think about him standing in the kitchen pre-dawn making your sandwiches, day after day, and glance to the passenger seat to your bag where you tossed the sandwich you’d made this morning in your tiny kitchen—exactly the way he used to make it, and makes now for his son and daughter—and instead you say,

‘i have a new student.’

‘oh? kid or adult class?’

‘adult.’

there’s a smile in his tone, just exactly as teasing as when you were fourteen and admitted to having a crush on sophie perez (a year older than you and so much cooler), when he says, ‘is she pretty?’

‘oh, come on marco.’

‘what! i’m just asking.’

‘you’re just being nosy is what you are.’

‘sorry, sorry,’ he laughs. ‘but that’s totally a yes, by the way.’

you roll your eyes. there’s not really a word for what beatrice is. pretty, yes, absolutely. but it’s sneaky, the ways in which she’s really stunning, and even after three sessions teaching her how to surf you still feel kinda knocked around by her, not quite able to find your feet. she’s so composed, always, that it makes you feel awkward. listens so intently to your instructions and advice that under that close attention you feel singular, like the only person in the world. and, you don’t tell him, cannot tell your brother without seeming like the world’s biggest weirdo, you’ve seen her smile two and a half times. the half had been an accident; you’d turned to her at just the right moment to witness it—she’d been looking at nothing in particular, an empty spot on the beach, eyes gone wistful—but it wasn’t for you, and it wasn’t exactly happy, so it doesn’t seem right to count it as a full third. each time she smiles, it makes you want to see another with a fierceness that startles you. you are no stranger to want, nor attraction, and you know that makes up part of your fascination with beatrice but, if that were not enough, there is even more to her.

all the rest, your brother could wheedle out of you eventually, but this is something you keep locked tightly away, something you have not ever spoken to him about.

you should, eventually. you will (you might).

the first time you met beatrice, spoke with her after wading up and out of the hissing surf, with her lingering on the outskirts of your lessons to “inquire how to take part”—she’d taken the sheet you’d handed her and filled it out right there and then in careful script, beatrice, she/her, twenty four, england, never surfed before, email, phone number, emergency contact, the last of which had made her pause for a long time—something in you had recognised something in her. grief, still painful, had welled up in your chest, nailed your tongue to the roof of your mouth, stung in your eyes powerfully that you’d had to turn away and run your fingers through your hair, dig your heels into the sand, step back into the wet sand and the water pooling around your ankles. the ocean takes away everything you’re not ready to feel; while you are out there, it holds you up, weightless. two minutes into talking with beatrice, you know that she wants the same thing.

none of which you particularly want to tell your brother, so you say, ‘yeah, she’s pretty.’

‘single?’

‘i haven’t asked.’

‘you should.’

‘should i?’

pulling neatly into the park by the boardwalk—your favourite, for no particular reason other than this was the same one you always take, the same one you took the first day you came here, ended up here—you turn off the car but don’t make any move to get out. the engine quietens, then goes silent. marco fills the silence. saying things like how long has it been since you went on a date and you never know unless you try. you pull the keys from the ignition, toss them into the little waterproof bag you’ll take down to the sand with you. sunscreen, food, first aid kit.

‘what happened to, it’s time to come home?’ you interrupt his teasing.

he sighs. the line crackles, weirdly high-pitched, as the kettle begins to make noise on his end.

‘listen, ray. i miss you. i’m not gonna pretend that’s not true, or that i don’t worry about you all the time. and with all the shit that’s been going on lately… i want you nearby. but asim said, and i guess he might be right, that i’m being overprotective. and an ass.’

you’ve thought similar things about him before. twice, just this morning. but hearing him say it, voice warm and tired and a little ashamed, makes you want to take the first plane home and hug him until all the weird, unsettled, lonely parts of you find their place. like all it’ll take to fix everything is a hug from your big brother. but you know that isn’t true. knowing it makes you feel a little old and sad. resolute too, because you’re good here, better than you were. you made this place for yourself and you’re filling it with good, important things.

that’s far too many feelings for four a.m. so you say, ‘say asim was right again,’ and marco laughs. and then, because he was open first, and that makes it easier to follow, to admit to your own missteps, mistakes, you say, ‘i think about it all the time. coming home, i mean. i love you guys, and i do miss you guys, and you’re right. it’s hard out here. but…i love it. my life, the beach.’ he laughs again at that, which is fair. you could have said one or the other; the beach is your life, after all. ‘hey marco, i gotta go. before the waves get tired.’

‘yeah. yeah, i get it. hey - talk later?’

‘yeah. anytime.’

‘love you. be safe out there.’

‘always am. love you too.’

beatrice is waiting on the sand when you finally get down there; she’s not looking for you, just watching the sun rise, and you’re going to call out to her when something changes—maybe some ephemeral thing, little more than a change in the quality of the light when you take a step closer; maybe the way she’s holding herself, one hand folded over her wrist where you’ve seen the black ink in the divot of her wrist, delicate letters small enough that you haven’t been able to read it when you’ve snuck a peek or two before. whatever it is, you decide to give her a second on her own.

the sand is hot on the surface and cooler beneath. you shift your weight, dig your feet down until the sand covers the tops of your feet, just to give yourself something to do. and then you stare out over the ocean and breathe.

it’s beautiful. it’s so fucking beautiful. you’ve known this was where you were gonna end up since you were eight years old and your cousin gabriel had pinned a photo of it to your wall—no one will ever consider it a masterwork of photography, that old blurred snapshot of sand and water and the sun, and just a tiny bit of his fingertip, no one but you because it had been his and he gave it to you, because he’d stood on the beach—maybe this beach, maybe right where you are now—and loved it so much he’d taken a photo of it and you’ve got the proof of it (proof of him, always) tucked into a book on your bedside.

‘good morning.’

you drag your eyes away from the sunrise—super gorgeous, thin wispy clouds like cotton-candy, pink in the sunlight, striped across the distant horizon, and everything shimmering in what, logically, you know is the smog haze but for a second it can just be beautiful too—to find that beatrice has wandered up to join you. she’s watching you with the attentive curiosity you’ve come to expect—warmer than polite, cooler than inviting.

‘hey, morning. sorry i’m late—got caught up talking to my brother.’

she nods her understanding. it has a thoughtful tilt to it, or maybe questioning. ‘does he live elsewhere in the world?’

‘excuse me?’

‘it’s early for a call. is he in another timezone?’

you don’t think she’s interrogating you, or she doesn’t mean to interrogate you. you actually think she’s trying to be nice and show interest, so you say, ‘well, he’s home—mexico—so… i think it’s an hour later for him. something like that. but he’s a get-up-and-go kinda guy—has been, ever since i took up surfing. he used to drive me to the water when i was a kid.’

‘older brother, then.’

‘only by a couple of years.’ you roll your eyes, ‘that’s all he needs to get up in my business.’

‘that’s what brothers are for. so i hear.’

‘true.’ you think about saying something more, because all you want to do right now is keep talking to her as long as possible, preferably forever, but that urge seems like a you problem, and something that’ll get washed away the second you dunk your head in the water. ‘okay! hey - mind taking this board and i’ll run back for the other one?’

when you return with your board, hauled down off the roof of your car, beatrice has set her sandals neatly beside her tote a few meters up from the tideline where it’ll all stay dry. you dump your bag right beside hers and jog to join her, check her out with a quick look. of the wetsuit, that is, that you had advised her to buy if surfing was something she wanted to keep doing.

she crouches, wets her hands, and secures the leash of her board carefully around her ankle.

‘good job!’ you compliment, because it’s four-something in the morning and, yeah, it’s your choice to get up this early but that doesn’t mean you’re firing on all cylinders yet. you want to say something impressive and kind and get her eyes on you because she’s pretty and interesting but, here’s the thing, most of the time you’re teaching children so the compliment comes out the way you would say it to little jayla (eight years old and nervous about everything and therefore, in your opinion, the bravest little soul in the world for keeping at it).

beatrice looks over at you, amused, and you earn your third full smile from her.

she’s laughing at you, definitely, which you don’t mind, have never minded when it comes to girls; years of report cards scrunched at the bottom of your bag, with comments amounting to smart enough but needs to spend more time listening and less time clowning around for the girls will back you up in that regard. your mami despaired of your grades and your attention (or lack of it) and she had chided you then, sat you down at the kitchen table opposite her as you made dinner together for the whole family, splitting the excess. she scolded—and pressed a ripped piece of bolillo into your hand to tide you over to dinner—she lamented—and passed over a bowl, diced tomatoes, crisp and red—and she talked to you about hard work and the importance of school and respect for your teachers and you know now that it was all love, that loud bright kitchen and how she made you handle it all together, space and work and life; you didn’t have the words to explain then—though you remember trying, loudly—that you knew, or thought, you were only really any good at two things, that most of the time you feel like you’re sleepwalking through your life and it’s only when you’re out there in the water, or making your friends laugh, that you feel totally real and vital and incredible.

here, today, beatrice’s eyes are on you and you’ve made her smile (laugh, even). you feel invincible.

you laugh at yourself. run a hand through your hair. ‘you wouldn’t believe how many people put their wetsuits on backwards, or don’t bother with the leg rope, so. really, you’re doing great.’

she shrugs very slightly, cheeks gone a little pink under the compliment, or the sunrise, or maybe—a girl can dream—your singular attention. ‘thank you, then.’

‘sure,’ you say, and, ‘i can get your zip for you, if that’s okay? it’s not quite all the way up.’

‘thank you, yes.’

she turns away from you so you can fix it and you do, immediately and without lingering. she has freckles across her shoulders; the teeth of the zipper tug closed, swallow up the sight of them. you think, briefly, about kissing her there on the back of her neck, her shoulders, of taking a zip between your fingers and pulling it down.

‘how does it feel? i know the wetsuits can be weird at first.’

‘it’s fine. i’ve worn stranger.’

you desperately want to ask for details but, aside from her first name, you don’t know anything much about her except that she wants to learn surfing, and probably the first time you ask for more information shouldn’t be about what she’s worn, even though your brain is filled with all kinds of theories. so instead you swallow back a flirty comment—also she is paying you to teach her, you remember abruptly, and maybe you should wait until after the lesson to flirt with her—and nod to the water.

‘let’s hit it, then.’

the sand is golden, and the ocean is starting to turn gold under the sunlight, and you feel a bit golden too. you think idly, self-indulgent, you want heaven to be like this. a golden beach, with everyone you’ve ever loved on it with you. you take it in—a great start to the morning—and, smiling, run forward into the water.

she’s lighter, after surfing.

in your first few lessons, you weren’t sure whether it would be like that for her. it’s not the physical part—she’s obviously fit and athletic enough to be good at surfing (you’ve noticed); there’s this…relaxation isn’t the right word, meditative is close but too dramatic for your tastes.

it’s like this. you paddle out to the calm, past the small waves that break close to the shoreline, and sit on your board and wait, legs dangling in the water, fingers drifting over the surface of it. maybe you sit in silence, maybe you chat with your buddy. and then you pick out a wave and then there’s this feeling when the wave swells and you catch it just right—you’re a little outside of yourself, entirely out of your head, and you experience it totally, trusting the wave to carry you and your body to move the way you’ve taught it to. you thought, when you first met her, that beatrice was too contained for that, every movement so precise, so controlled, intentional and intelligent and totally present, always watched, always watching herself. if there’s anyone who needs to get out of their head, you thought then and think now, it’s beatrice.

and now. it’s only been four lessons, four days of knowing her split up over a couple weeks. you’re sitting on your board, legs in the water, cold spray in your face. august and siti—a couple of the regulars, friendly, you talk sometimes enough to say hello at the least, and lent august your sunscreen last week when they forgot to pack some even though it is not cheap—are a decent way further out. you see a good wave start to roll in and before you can say anything to beatrice, she’s already spotted it and moving. you stay where you are, watching as she catches it alone so you can check her form and you see it happen. she pops up smooth and rides it all the way in. a second later, you’re searching for a wave you can catch and wave at her to stay; you tumble off in the shallows, not your most graceful wave ever, and rush up to her. beatrice is smiling (four and a half, you think, totally brainless), big and so pleased, and you can’t help but grin back at her.

‘you felt it!’ you call out—accuse, almost—when you’re close and she laughs. slicks her hair back off her face with a trembling hand.

‘i - i think - yes, i did, yes.’ she’s breathing hard, from excitement you think—she’s caught waves before, bigger ones even, but this is different and you can tell. it’s entirely confirmed when she reaches out, clasps your wrist, and smiles—all for you. (five and a half.) ‘thank you, thank you.’

‘yes,’ you say, a little brainless, a little helpless. ‘of course.’

(fourteen years old, madly in love with sophie perez and madly heart-broken when you spotted her hand-in-hand with some scruffy-haired unfunny boy, your cousin gabriel had driven far across town to pick you up and, ignoring the impressive sulk you’d sunken into, packed you into his car and took you to the beach. he hadn’t spoken to you at all while you cried into his shoulder, his arm thin and strong around you, holding you tight, a tether, and when you roughly scrubbed the tears off your shame-hot face, he’d smacked your hands away and pulled a pack of tissues from his bag, cleaned you up carefully. nodded when he was done, approving. and then he stood and walked knee-deep into the water, not seeming to care that he was in jeans or that you’d have to get back into his car in wet clothes.

love is like the ocean, he’d said.

you remember rolling your sore eyes because at fourteen years old you already knew that love wasn’t the ocean. love was enjoying all the same music and turning up early to class to get the seat across from hers and the way your heart sped up when you passed her in the hall and staying up way too late dreaming of ways to make her laugh in class the next day. but gabriel was your favourite so you listened carefully, and you’re thankful for that now because you can remember so much. his dark curls, the smudge of his eyeshadow, how cold the water had been on your skin, how warm his arm had been around your shoulders.

not everyone loves her the same way. some people stay for a day and then head back to the mountains. he’d paused. mountains are, i dunno, a loveless marriage in this metaphor. you’d laughed at him. some people paint it, or make movies, but they never swim in it. some people sail out in their nice boats and go fishing. take what they want from her and head back to dry land. but for people like us? gabriel wore rings on his fingers and a shirt, tight, in a dusky kind of orange. love for us is like the ocean. we could drown in it and it wouldn’t be enough. he had a boyfriend in the city, and was beautiful and proud and kind, and you’d looked out over the calm sea and thought the world must be really different for him, vibrant and strange and wonderful. you felt special, nestled into his side.

people like us, he’d said, and you remember because you remember everything about that afternoon, that in amongst his kindness, he’d sounded sad.)

you’re not fourteen anymore. you love the ocean more than you love anything else. when beatrice smiles at you, your heart swells, crashes, drags you under. you love her, too.

‘i love surfing,’ you tell her later, pleasantly tired.

you trudge up toward the car park, stumble a little at the tide-mark where wet sand turns dry and gives way under your weight. you swear under your breath; every spare moment of your life has been spent at one beach or another, and you’d think that would earn some kind of loyalty perk, like, never tripping over your feet in front of cute girls, but apparently it doesn’t work that way. but beatrice only laughs, kindly, and puts a hand out to steady you and you don’t need it but you take it, of course. beatrice is slimmer than you, and a little taller, and far more graceful; you wonder if she’s ever tripped over anything in her life. her hand is cool from the water and calloused and scarred, which you didn’t entirely expect but makes a kind of sense in the collage you’re putting together in your head of what little scraps of information she’s given you.

beatrice takes her hand back; you keep your observations to yourself.

‘you love surfing,’ she prompts. and then, ‘i’m starting to love it too, i think.’

‘it’s okay if you don’t, i won’t think less of you,’ you say, only lying a little bit, which you think she knows because she arches an eyebrow in your direction. you grin back. ‘of course i hope you do. but if you’re only coming to lessons for my many charms, i completely understand.’

‘is it hard? surfing, with such a large head?’ she snarks, unimpressed but eyes bright.

‘god never gives us more than we can handle,’ you say, absolutely facetious, absolutely cocky. she looks away. you put “doesn’t like jokes about god” in the collage of beatrice and move on. ‘you thanked me. earlier. you don’t need to. you’re paying me, first of all,’ you tease, ‘but. i love surfing for what it is, for myself, out there alone. i love every bit of it. but the teaching part… i didn’t expect to love that. it’s turned out to be so cool. getting to know all kinds of people, introduce them to surfing. and the water, too, sometimes. watching them fall in love with…’

you stop at the rocks and look behind you. the strip of sand, the greedy suck of the tide crawling higher up the beach, the shimmering green-glass sea.

‘with all of that.’

you think about being embarrassed about your tone—way too sincere, way too holy—but when you meet her eyes you see she understand this, too: that holy can be found outside the cathedral, that hymns can be the raucous gull shriek and wave crash and breath.

‘getting to partake, and teach, and do what i love every day? honestly my genuine pleasure.’

the words bring something complicated to her face. sad? wistful? a little angry, definitely. her eyes return to the view; you stay looking at her, not keen to lose whatever she might say to the crash and hiss of the waves.

‘i wish…’ she holds herself still. she’s lost the lightness surfing brought her; you don’t know if it’s your fault, you hope it isn’t, or if it was never going to last very long for her. ‘i wish i had that.’

if you were thinking about it properly, you don’t know beatrice or her situation well enough to give advice. but you like her, and you want to be able to help, and you get the impossibly strong (if slightly uncertain) vibe of queerness absolutely radiating off her and that you understand. plus, surfing makes you brave—a little stupid in that invincible way, like nothing can hurt you, like nothing can truly go wrong, like anything that does go wrong can be fixed—so, picking up your board again, you head off toward your car once more and she follows.

as you walk, you say, ‘i think you can have it. i think you can make it. joy, passions, a life you want to live… that doesn’t fall out of the sky, you know?’ she flinches at that but you keep going, since you already dove in. ‘most of the time, you have to work for it. all of the time, it’s about making decisions and figuring out what’s important. figuring out who you are—how you feel, how you want to exist, what you want to do. and then you have to find your way there.’ scraping your fingers through your hair, pushing it back out of your eyes, you take a second to think. ‘once you know the life you want to have, you can go out and get it. a little at a time.’

she stops where the sand hits concrete, which you get. the beach feels worlds away from reality, sometimes, and you get wanting to stay there as long as possible. everything seems smaller, compared to the ocean. more manageable. you stand there with her.

‘what if what i want is impossible?’

‘…damn. great question. i don’t know. set yourself an easier goal?’ that startles her, and for a moment you think it would have been better to be gentle or sincere but then she laughs, louder than before. god, you think, thank you for letting me meet her. thank you for letting me make her laugh. ‘i don’t always turn into a life coach and give unasked for advice after surfing, i swear. it costs ten bucks more for that package, if you want to spring for that next time, but hey, first one for free.’

‘perhaps i will. you seem to have all the answers.’

‘maybe not all of them but yeah, i know some stuff.’ you let sincerity bleed through, here, because you joke around but there’s something serious and seriously healing about being with other people, being able to be open and honest with them, and you can be that for beatrice, if she wants.

‘what about you?’

‘what about me?’

‘you made the decision to come here,’ beatrice says, with that faintly accusing, faintly interrogative tone she gets. ‘why?’

ah. here is what your invincibility gets you—the sting of salt in your eyes; a heavy pressure against your head, your ears, like you’ve dunked you head beneath the waves and all you can hear is the slam of your pulse; and that feeling—one that doesn’t hit so often anymore—that you are just one little creature treading water at the top of the vast ocean, alone, with no one around to help you out.

it only lasts for a few seconds.

you’ve talked to people, on and off, for a few years. and you know how to ground yourself in the here and now—the heat of the sand, the sun on your shoulders, your hair drying into careless waves and curling a little around your ears, tickling your jaw, the taste of salt and lip balm when you lick your lips, the click of your wrist when you flex it.

you step off the sand and into the parking lot, toward your car. for a minute, you work in silence getting your board up onto the rack; the work helps but the collar of your wetsuit is soaked and heavy, tight around your throat. when you turn back to help beatrice with her board, you grab for the zipper and tug it down an inch, let it slacken so you can breathe better.

it has been a long enough delay in answering her that she’s starting to make assumptions, observations of her own. she also has the faintly horrified look of someone who has stepped in something gross—dog shit, or, in this case, brought up a more deeply personal conversation than she was prepared for—and looks like she’s searching desperately for a way to change the subject. but it was a direct question, an honest one and not unfair, not one you’re unhappy answering, so you say,

‘when i say you make decisions, choices…things happen to us in life and we can’t control that shit. but you get to decide what to do after that. something… something kinda rough happened in my life.’ you look at her, and think of a grief so profound that you have to wear it on your skin. you flex your hands, and look down at the tattoo on her wrist that you still haven’t taken the time to examine, not visible under the sleeve of her wetsuit. ‘my cousin died,’ you tell her. ‘he was really important to me. and after that, i chose to come here. left my hometown, my family, and started again. i’d wanted to do it for ages and i guess i realised this was the only life i was gonna get. so here i am. and that,’ you say, tone much lighter, ‘is all you’re getting out of me this morning. you know how it goes—just a little of a great thing at a time. can’t risk you getting sick of me, can i?’

beatrice looks at you for a long moment, fingers resting on her wrist. eventually, she shakes her head, passes over her board. ‘i’m not sick of you.’’

‘oh yeah?’ you hoist up the board and fix it in place. when you look back over your shoulder, you mean to say something teasing but lose your head because she’s looking at you—your back, your arms. you flex a little more than you need to and her eyes dart to your muscles, your wrists, and linger on your tattooed hands.

she turns away with pink cheeks you’re certain isn’t the sun’s fault. clasps her hands behind her back.

‘thank you,’ she says, sincerely. ‘for sharing that with me.’

‘sure, of course.’ it’s not really an of course. you can count on two hands the number of people you would talk to about gabriel. but it’s an of course for her. you don’t think too hard about it.

‘and for the lessons.’

that makes you laugh. ‘the ones you are paying for? you’re welcome.’ it’s kind of obvious at this point that she’s just looking for things to say, to hang out a little longer, and you take pity on her. and also, you want to spend more time with her too so, hey, works out perfectly. ‘if you’re not busy, if you don’t have to run off, maybe we can talk some more? i don’t have to be anywhere for a while and there’s this place down the road—a few minutes that way, walking distance, easy. decent coffee, great view. we could get coffee. breakfast, even.’

beatrice turns super slowly and stiffly to look in the direction you point. it’s a long, long moment before she looks at you.

‘as a date?’

‘hopefully, yeah.’

‘oh.’ her eyes dart around the mostly empty parking lot—it can’t be later than six, if that—and suddenly contained seems a little more like hidden. ‘I’m—that’s kind of you—’ she swallows. sets her shoulders, her jaw, and meets your eyes. ‘i have a partner.’

‘that makes sense.’ you wonder, briefly, what her partner is like. you hope they’re stoic and serious as beatrice is, because if they’re hot and funny like you it’ll be vaguely devastating. maybe you’ll get to meet them. ‘as friends, then.’ beatrice hesitates. ‘would your partner be cool with that?’

beatrice smiles again, one of those not-for-you smiles. you think again, more fervently, that you’d like to meet her partner—they must be something seriously special to have captured beatrice’s attention, first of all, but to get her to smile like that…

‘she’d be delighted, actually.’ she touches her wrist and nods. ‘yes. thank you. i - we - can do that. get coffee.’

she makes it sound revolutionary, like she’s never had coffee before, which you know is not the case because you’d mentioned, offhand, that if one more goddamn politician or bank twitter account advised people to save money and make coffee at home you were gonna lose it, and she’d agreed that she preferred homemade tea and store-bought coffee, and mentioned an article she’d read on how coffee was produced and how it worked, which she though was “quite interesting” and when she forwarded it to your e-mail it wasn’t a think piece like you’d been expecting but rather a fourteen page research article, peer-reviewed, on the social aspects of caffeine consumption, or something like that. there’s genuine nerves in her rigid posture, and you think of how revolutionary, world-changing, bold, fucking terrifying and a little bloody it’s been to get here, where you’re standing now.

‘cool. if you’ve got time after, there’s this surf shop—it’s a bit of a hike but,’ you flick your eyes to the cloudless blue sky overhead. ‘nice day for it. we can look at a couple of boards for you. i’m happy to go with you, help you find something good. borrowing a board is fine while you’re learning but it’ll be easier and feel better when you’ve got one that’s properly suited to you.’

she nods seriously, the way she always does when you talk about surfing, student to teacher. ‘i - would like that.’

‘yeah? awesome, alright!’

the cafe is a decent size and decently popular, which normally makes it hard to get a seat sometimes but today is a day of miracles and a couple is clearing out right as you get in, freeing up a table in the laneway. it’s in a good spot, shaded by one of the wide umbrellas and not in the way of the servers, so you sit sideways in your chair and happily stretch out your legs, pluck off your sunglasses and hang them off the collar of your t-shirt. opposite, beatrice tucks herself into her seat prim and proper, no surprises there; what does surprise you is how still she sits and how, even though you know that she agreed—wants—to be here, it’s like she’s trying to go invisible.

the server who brings out your drinks is young and harried, doesn’t even pause when you thank him. you’d ordered an espresso, and beatrice had asked for the same, but now she’s staring down at it doubtfully.

‘did you want something else?’

she shakes her head no. ‘i’d like to try it. this is your preferred coffee?’

‘my abuelo makes the meanest espresso you’ve ever had. this is water in comparison.’

‘oh.’

‘but it’s a nice place and i like the beans they use here. i really should ask what their blend is one of these days but,’ you shrug. ‘i don’t have a machine at home so what’s the point, right?’

she nods. picks up the little cup and sips at it. immediately, her nose wrinkles and her lips twist and her perfect posture breaks for a second as she bodily fights the urge to say, presumably, judging by her grimace, ‘yuck!’ she lowers it but doesn’t set it down, like it would be impolite to abandon it immediately, and watches with the tiniest grimace as you drink it happily.

‘not for you?’

‘at risk of sounding like a stereotype, i am more of a tea drinker. this is…rather a powerful taste.’ she looks a little guilty setting it back down. ‘do you mind if i order something else?’

‘no, course not. but i might judge you on what you get,’ you tease, grinning, and she just rolls her eyes, nods. you split your attention between enjoying the morning and watching the line creep forward until she’s at the register, shake your head when she folds another note into the tip jar.

she comes back to the table with another coffee—an oatmilk latte, with lavender of all things—and, as promised, you tease her gently about it.

‘really settling in, aren’t you? very LA of you,’ you say, and pretend to gag. ‘lavender. gross.’

beatrice smiles over the lip of her cup, shakes her head. ‘your favourite drink tastes like battery acid, i don’t think your opinion counts.’

‘ouch.’

‘you mentioned your abuelo,’ she says. ‘do you have much family?’

talking about family is easy, even if beatrice does make it a little of an interrogation—she gets everyone’s names and ages, nodding with this intense look in her eyes like she’s filing it away somewhere in her brain, like if you never spoke again and ran into each other in ten years she would still remember. you don’t have anything to hide, happy to tell her: yes, you’ve been here a while, a little over five years; surfing has always been your favourite thing to do; no, it’s not your only job, you have a very boring desk job but the boring bits are compensated by the fact that you get to work from home and your boss is kind of amazing about letting you take your afternoon run down to the beach and back; yes, you’re queer, you’ve known forever and so has your family, and yes they’re fine with it, very supportive, and they love you the same as they always did after you came out.

‘barely needed to, really. my mami said she knew since i was like ten, eleven, maybe. all because i followed my tennis coach around like a duckling, which makes sense because i can’t think of why else i would play tennis, it fucking sucks.’ beatrice sips guardedly at her coffee, looking away, and it’s so carefully inoffensive that you have to laugh. ‘tell me you don’t love tennis, beatrice, please.’

she shrugs carefully. ‘i’ve enjoyed it in the past. both playing and spectating.’

you groan. ‘no, beatrice! christ.’

‘it’s an olympic sport—‘

‘it’s dead boring,’ you insist.

beatrice frowns at you, considering. ‘you’re bad at it,’ she announces after a moment, very confident. ‘if you were better at it, perhaps you’d enjoy it more.’ you laugh, shrug a little, because she’s hit the nail on the head. she continues, ‘to its credit, tennis has serena williams, the most incredible athlete—‘

‘messi.’

‘team sport,’ she counters, and you cede the point with a nod.

‘certainly she’s the greatest tennis player of all time—‘

‘oh undoubtedly.’

‘—and it’s also one of the only sports that pays men and women equal prize money, and has mixed competitions.’

‘great points,’ you allow. ‘and yet, somehow it’s still fucking boring.’ beatrice fully scowls, shaking her head, and you have to ask, ‘are you rethinking being friends with me?’

she relents after a moment. sets down her drink with a sigh. ‘we can be friends,’ she tells you after a moment. ‘so long as we’re on the same page regarding serena williams.’

‘i’d love to regard serena williams.’

‘you should watch tennis, then,’ beatrice tells you bluntly, and smiles, pleased, when you laugh hard at that.

‘okay. you know everything about me now so what about you?’

‘what about me?’

you push a hand through your hair, ruffle it; her eyes follow the movement, your hands, and then she stares down at her coffee. ‘how long have you been in LA?’

‘a month. perhaps a little less.’

‘and you came here because…?’ when she hesitates, you say, ‘wait, wait, let me guess—you’re going to be in movies, right?’ she laughs like that’s ridiculous—even if one in five people you meet here is an aspiring actor, and none of them as compelling or, honestly, attractive as beatrice is—and relaxes. ‘ok, not movies. tv?’

‘no, i’m not here to act. i’m here to…’ she picks up a knife off the table, turns the cutlery smoothly between her fingers. ‘settle, i suppose. i’ve been travelling for some time.’

‘oh yeah? where to?’

it takes a little nudging for her to get going but when she does, she speaks very sincerely of the world, of its people and religions, of sights natural and man-made. she’s light on details but you can tell that the travel was important and life-changing, which you sort of understand. you haven’t been many places but every town away from where you grew up felt like a whole new world, like freedom, and you can only imagine that beatrice’s travelling was like that but no doubt on a far grander scale.

‘and your partner? what are they like?’ you ask, and immediately know that you’ve fucked up, because beatrice looks abruptly striken. ‘sorry, i -‘

‘no. it’s fine. she - ‘ a little of the horror in her fades the moment she says she, like even the thought of her partner is enough to soothe, but most of it stays. she picks up one of the paper napkins, twists it harshly between her fingers. ‘she’s sick.’

sick, she says, voice thick, unsteady. it occurs to you that she’s lying, trying to soften the blow or maybe deny it to herself again, but beatrice doesn’t seem like a liar. you choose to believe her. this is what it was, you realise. the source of that grief you’d felt, seen, ever since you first met her. you recognise the grief in her eyes—loss, fear, confusion too, like she doesn’t know quite what to do with herself. you remember that. the fog, the ache, when he was gone like an organ removed and your life having to close and heal around the lack. trying to find something that filled in that empty space, or fit enough that it didn’t hurt so much.

love for us is like the ocean. that’s true for you, then and now. you don’t think it’s the same for beatrice.

there’s love in every part of her—the joy and the waiting, the grief and the hurting—and there’s a cross around her neck that drags low, heavy, and there are words on her wrist that stand out stark against her skin and you think for beatrice love is like religion, holy, dedicated, faithful. you’re terrified that she’s waiting for a miracle that will never come; you hope, of course you hope and will pray for it tonight, that she gets it.

it’s also far too much to consider on a weekday before coffee, and you’ve already planned to keep her in your life in whatever capacity you can, so. you can talk about it later.

‘oh. that’s -’ beatrice looks like if you say another word she’s gonna bolt; if she does, you’re not sure that she’ll come to her next lesson, even if she has already paid for it. instead of condolences or well wishes, you say, ‘do you wanna hear about the time i hopped a fence and ripped my pants? right in the butt.’

she wasn’t expecting that in the slightest, obviously. a small smile curls her lips upwards and she resettles, looking dramatically less like she’s going to flee. ‘yes. that sounds very amusing.’

‘it’s funny now, sure, but back then? first of all, i got teased a lot. and second, it fucking stung,’ you bemoan, grinning when she looks a little unsure of whether this was, like, the worst thing that’s ever happened to you. she relaxes a little more and you thank god and your parents and brother that you get to be the person you are, someone who can make other people laugh. that’s not a bad life–surfing at the beach, a boring job, and making your friends laugh? not bad at all.

‘sounds like a pain in the ass.’ beatrice says, looking very pleased with her joke when it makes you groan, which is a lot better than her looking devastated. ‘what happened?’

‘usual idiot kid stuff. playing footy with my brother, kicked the ball over the neighbours fence. i thought i could jump it, get it back for us, and i did. mostly,’ you add after a tiny pause. then, slyly, you say, ‘the only reason i didn’t rip my boxers and my pants is because i was going commando.’

‘no.’

‘better a cut up my ass than ruining my good boxers,’ you wink, and beatrice laughs.

it’s just as easy as that to turn the conversation to lighter topics. she knows what you’re doing—you can tell, because her smile is occasionally too grateful than is deserved for just a chat over coffee—but she allows you to do it, and all too soon it’s been an hour and she’s buying you a second coffee, takeaway this time, and tipping, like, two hundred per cent with the most pristine notes you’ve ever seen tucked away in this slim handsome wallet, and you’re walking lazily, slowly back the way you’d come toward the beach. it’s not really a surprise that she declines the offer of heading to the surf shop—she still seems a bit unsteady after the mention of her partner—and you’re a little worried that she’ll disappear from your life now so you slow your pace when you see your car, twirl your keys around your finger.

‘what is it, ray?’ she asks, a touch cautious but mostly good-natured, curious.

‘busted. i was just thinking… you have a partner—major bummer, by the way,’ you tease, which is a fucking risk, but she manages a tiny smile. ‘mostly for you, because i was gonna ask you out and it would’ve been a good time, i know all the coolest places in LA.’ her cheeks go a little pink but she’s still smiling, so, ‘so despite being heart-broken, i’m going to this party tomorrow night. just a small thing, house party with a bunch of folks i go surfing with. you’ll probably meet most of them, if you keep up the dawn patrol, but it might be nice to get to know them out of the water. y’know, wearing clothes.’ much more seriously, much more sincerely, you tell her, ‘it’s absolutely cool if you want to be with your partner, or if you’re not going out much, but i wanted to invite you anyway. i think you’d enjoy it. very casual scene—music, some beers, a disproportionate amount of queer folk. plus, i’ll be there looking hot, that’s always a plus. you can be my wingwoman!’

beatrice frowns, considering her words carefully. ‘my partner is… she’s in a speciality hospital so i don’t get to visit her. i - promised her i would have some fun,’ she tells you, fingers brushing against her wrist. in this life, you’ve managed to read now, sitting opposite her for an hour in the morning sunlight, drinking coffee that almost tastes like home, sitting in a body and a life that entirely feels at home, and you look across at beatrice and see someone who is almost there. almost certain, almost sure, almost happy. ‘yes,’ she says, after taking a bolstering breath. brave, you think, with sudden fondness, protective. it comes to you, a splinter of a memory, being afraid of the ocean; gabriel plunging in ahead of you with such joy that you forgot. ‘yes,’ she says again, ‘i’d love to come to the party.’

‘amazing!’

‘and, while i find it difficult to imagine you would have a problem finding people to go on dates with you, yes, i will be your…wingwoman, if you require it. what is the dress code?’

‘too hot for leather, unfortunately,’ you tease, and have the extreme delight of watching beatrice stumble over literally nothing, ears going pink. so, so valiantly you manage to not comment on it. instead, you say, ‘wear whatever makes you feel good and happy. hot, if you want to feel hot. that’s always the rule.’

‘you get to decide what you do.’ it takes you a second to place her words—they’re your words, from this morning, which makes you smile because she’s quoting you, very seriously and kindly like that actually helped her, maybe. ‘i do best with rules, or a guideline,’ she mutters, but sets her shoulders and nods, decisive. ‘i’ll find something to wear. you have my number.’

‘from your form, i do, yeah. it’s cool if i text you?’

‘yes.’

‘alright. awesome, i’ll pin the address for you.’

‘good.’

beatrice walks you all the way to your car, shakes your hand like you’ve just concluded a job interview, and then continues on quickly. she’s got a white-knuckle grip on the handle of her tote bag and walks away with this quick, neat stride that makes you feel self-conscious about your own walk, like maybe you’ve been doing it wrong for your whole life. more importantly, there’s about a thirty per cent change that beatrice will actually turn up at this party but you’ve hoped for things with worse odds that were way less important to you than this, so you easily, recklessly hope that she’ll turn up.

the likelihood of beatrice actually showing up is still low, you remind yourself, even though she had texted this morning to accept and had thanked you very sincerely - and formally - for the invitation. the uber drops you off on the corner where you had agreed to meet and you hop out, saying a cheerful goodbye to your driver, rajeev, who had taken one look at you and nodded and switched his playlist to something titled GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS which…accurate. he totally earned his five stars and you’re clicking through to leave a quick review—clean car, GREAT music—when beatrice calls your name.

‘hey! you came!’

beatrice strides up the street to join you. the timing of her arrival three seconds after yours is odd enough that, for a second, you wonder if she’s been waiting and for how long. then, you get distracted by beatrice in her gay ass outfit—lightwash jeans, loose, that fall to her ankles; a soft-looking crewneck, blue; and birkenstocks that are either brand new or excruciatingly well-cared for, with not a speck of dirt on the white sandals—and realise you’ve made a huge mistake. there’s no way beatrice can be your wingwoman. every queer woman in this house will flock to her and her damn british accent and her freckles and her polite, comfortable, slightly masculine air, and the way she looks at everyone like they’re important. god. beatrice is devastating at four in the morning in a wetsuit, hair slicked back with ocean water; she’s devastating now, with the sleeves of her crew folded just once, precisely, enough to show off the dip of her wrists, and her hair pinned up in a pristine bun.

she stops mid-step, looks you up and down, and you stop calling yourself an idiot long enough to preen. with beatrice coming tonight, you felt like getting a little dressy and picked everything with slightly more care, ending up in a satin-type top you’ve tucked into high-waisted pants. it drapes open rather handsomely almost to your belly button—you’ve only done up half the buttons tonight, because you believe sincerely in being god’s gift to women and it’s your duty to parade around with a little skin showing, enough to tantalize. maybe a little slutty, just for fun. you’ve got a few chains hanging around your neck, and some rings on your fingers.

‘oh, i am gay,’ beatrice mutters when she gets a good look at you. ‘sorry - that’s,’

you wave off her apology or whatever she’s going to say, because a compliment is a compliment and that is a damn good compliment, especially coming from her.

‘delighted to be of service, honestly. any time you need reminding.’ you stroll over to greet her properly—not a hug, but an obvious once over, so she can see how much you approve of her look too, and then a tap to her elbow in hello—and she examines you a second time, looking marginally less embarrassed to get caught. this time, her eyes linger on your necklaces; no, your cross.

‘catholic?’

‘born and raised. you?’

she only nods, lips pursed. glancing around, she says, ‘the party is around here?’

‘yeah. oh, yeah, it’s on this street. one minute walk, maybe two.’ she looks a little confused and you admit, ‘i wasn’t sure if you actually wanted to come. i wanted to meet up with you first, make sure you were comfortable.’

rather than being offended, beatrice relaxes. ‘that’s kind of you.’

‘well, i want you to have fun. it will be fun,’ you insist, and start in the direction of luis’s place. ‘i’ll take care of you tonight, i promise—you can drink, if you want, or smoke. no pressure. i’ll stay sober anyway. but what i really want is to introduce you to my friends, i really think you’ll like them.’

‘because we’re all queer?’ beatrice guesses, a note of something odd in her tone. it’s not suspicion, but something akin to it.

‘yeah, sure. i know what it’s like moving to a new place and not knowing anyone, it’s rough. especially for us,’ you say, light on the emphasis but apparent enough that beatrice looks at you again, and nods to herself. ‘but aside from being queer, i just really think you’ll like them. luis is the one hosting tonight. they’re super smart, they’re finishing a phd in anthropology, movement in borderlands—oh, and they will offer you weed every half hour but that’s not you, and you don’t have to accept, it’s just their idea of hospitality.’ beatrice nods very solemnly. you can practically hear the information being locked away in her brain and the image makes you smile. ‘it’s this one, up ahead.’

as promised, the party is pretty chill—low lights, not too packed, good music. it’s a really nice night and there are a few folk standing around on the porch, drinks in hand; when you get in, you’ll probably find most of the guests have spilled out into the back yard. plus, you’re only a few streets back from the beach—based on the last few parties luis has hosted, the beach is where you’ll end up in a few hours.

beatrice stops outside the house, stares in through the open door. she touches two fingers to her wrist. you stand with her, beside her, and part of you aches because you know that there is someone else who should be here, who she wants very badly to be here, and it seems terribly unfair that something this simple - a party, new friends, the distant sound of the ocean - isn't simple at all.

‘all good?’

‘thank you,’ she says, softly. ‘for inviting me. and don’t say you need a wingwoman because i sincerely doubt that.’

you grin. run a hand through your hair in a way that makes you look particularly douchey, according to your ex. ‘thanks. i appreciate that. and no, i don’t need a wingwoman but it can’t hurt... except if the girls hear that accent, actually,’ you say with a thoughtful frown, like it’s only occurring to you now that beatrice is hot. you step in front of her like you’re blocking her way to the house, even as you back up toward the house, the party. ‘this is bad, i’ve made a huge mistake, you gotta go,' you insist, teasingly.

beatrice laughs and follows you in.

#tagging my stories #prompt fill #warrior nun #avatrice #sort of but its also like. a love letter to the butch bea world & the introduction of ray my beloved #i need to read it again & edit before i post it to ao3 but its midnight so here have it before i scream

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