#usually I can ignore it but it’s starting to make my phone lag and eat my battery life up

[crybaby-bkg]

I’ve been catching up on fics I’ve had open on ao3 for months now, and I wanna do the same for on here but my phone gets so goddamn hot every time I have the app open for more than half an hour???? I’m sick of them mf updates 🤨

[laketaj24]

Needy: William, Lovecraft Fanfiction

Author’s Note: Hello again! I hope you all have been well. Conjured this up last night and had to post it! It’s smuttier than the last, sorry, but not for real lmao. Happy reading! Let me know what you think! Taglist/ Requests are open! To be added or removed hit my asks! Thank you! (SN: He doesn’t have a last name on the show, as far as I can remember, so I made one up. Thanks)

Pairings: William x Reader, Lovecraft Fanfiction

Warnings: Smut. Language.

William Bradford owned the law firm at the edge of downtown, perched on a corner, and lit by the streetlight, where he called the area a prime spot. There was no denying that there was a surplus of business flowing from the place; he was well known for having the legal talents to handle almost any case; it was irksome, sometimes. You stood at the frosted door, wondering if you should turn around; it had been a few days since you last saw William, and the last conversation had not ended on good terms. He had tried to call four times that you knew of, and you only knew because he left a message with your roommate. It was a risk to even leave a message with her; she already had doubts that your relationship with him was platonic.

The walk from uptown had given you time to think of why you were here in the first place; you were no longer content with the status of your relationship. No, there was not too much that could change, but you had a proposal that William would find interesting.

It took a few minutes, but you decided to enter the office; you did miss him after all, and walking the distance you did deserve at least a small reward, even if that was just seeing his face. The phone’s trill ring occurred every five seconds, and the curvy secretary did not seem to have enough hands or ears to get to them all.

“Bradford Law Firm?” She said with a deep sigh. “No, apologize; he is busy for the afternoon.” A moment of silence passes, and then she shakes her head as if the person on the other line could see her. “Yes, William has 3pm tomorrow available.”

You say nothing stepping away from her desk while slipping the gloves from your hands. The chill of the fall had started to take over outside. You loved the change in weather; you’d discovered it to be sexier for William to have more to take off when he had the chance. The walls of the office were basically bare; only the photo of his beloved car and his law degree had the privilege to be on them. He loved things simples, in decor but not so much in relationships. The relationship between the two of you was everything but simple.

“Ms. YN.” She looked up from her desk with a warm smile, but her eyes bared the truth. The secretary was not fond of the two of you; you didn’t care, though.

“Hi, Caroline.” You waved. “Mr. Bradford and I are having lunch.”

“I do not see you here on the schedule.”

 The door opened in front of you, and he appeared. The navy tailored suit fit him, well, accentuating the slender cut of his waist all while flaunting that he indeed was from old money. “Ms. Y/L/N, how can I be of service?” William’s hands were shoved into his pocket as he leaned against the wooden doorjamb. “Legal troubles?”

“Now you know damn well,” Your throat was dry all of a sudden; you cleared it subtly and exhaled. “Our lunch date,” You laughed, hoping that he would not embarrass you in front of this woman you barely even like.

“I was just informing Y/N she was not on the schedule.”

“Of course, she is not on it; she does not need to make an appointment for lunch or for anything for that matter.” William moves from the door with the slight swagger in his walk that you’d grown accustomed to walking from afar, and one thing was sure it looked better up close. His eyes carefully examine you from head to toe, pausing at the cream pencil skirt that halted just above your knee. He swiped his hand over his mouth and then smiled at you. “How are you?”

“Tired, I walked from across town for our lunch date, and you aren’t going to offer me a seat.” The harmless flirting in person was the closest thing to foreplay you’d manage to display. You return the lustful look, dragging your eyes over his body, stopping to meet his eyes.

“Forgive my manners or lack of any.” He sucked his teeth, turning to Caroline. “It appears you have earned yourself a long lunch. You can return at two.”

“That’s two hours.” She scoffed in protest.

“I know.” His lips were pursed in a fine line, displaying his dismay in her questions. “I stated it would be a long lunch.” William took her jacket and purse from the hook behind her and handed it to her.

“Will you need me to bring you anything to eat?”

“I plan to eat in.” He stated with a smirk. The words instantly making you clench your legs together. “Have a good lunch Caroline.”

The dismal did not last long, for as soon as she took her belongings, he was in front of you. His arms cornering you against the wall and nose gently rubbing down the line of your face. “I called you yesterday.”

“I was studying.”

“And that’s a good reason to not answer?”

“You lived, didn’t you?”

“Barely.” He answered.

The door closes, and your fingers wrap around his tie, tugging him closer to you. “I missed you.” you smile, hoping it would ease the sting of ignoring him for a day. William needed to be told no sometimes, you spoiled him. Always answer his beck and call; no was a good thing.

Then perhaps you should act as if you did.” William stepped back, taking your hands from his tie and cocking his brow. “Did you pass those tests?”

“Yes.” You beam at him. “Glad you care.”

“I always care.”

“You weren’t allowing me time to study, keeping me up all hours of the night.” The first step into his office is calming. This place was where you first met; he’d taken up being your lawyer for a small civil suit. There hadn’t been a need to come here multiple times a day other than for him to fuck you. You were addicted to the feel of him, the charming cadence of his words, and the magic of those fingers no matter the circumstances.

“Why walk across town?” William took a seat at his desk, adjusting his tie and then peering up at you. “I could have easily come to you.”

“I felt bad about not seeing you this past week.” The softness of your voice is unexpected, but the small truths come out when you are vulnerable; you knew this.

“Then you should have come over when I asked.” He adjusted the papers on the table and clears his throat. It was not in his character to not embrace any vulnerability in you, even when he was mad at you. He was that gentleman.  “Is this an apology, Y/N?” William waited for your response.

“I don’t think I owe you an apology, William. I wanted to talk to you about some things that have been heavy on me, though, if you have the time.” You take one step towards the desk, and he holds his hand, halting you. “What?” The tension lay thick in the air.

“I just know that if you walk over here, we won’t get to talk, and you claim that is why you’re here anyhow.”

“I want,” you paused. What did you want?

“What?” He folded his arms over his chest.

“You.” The weighty word floated from your lips precariously.

William motioned you over to him, and when you were in reach, he had his hands on you. Wet kisses trailed up your neck to the rose petal-soft lips that graced your face. If it was possible to be worshipped through touch, William had perfected it. His fingers lagged soft lines up your legs, pushing the pencil skirt to allow easier access. The talented lips sung rushed kisses that turned into slow lulls, mixed with nips from his teeth and tastes from his tongue. He was everywhere, and you loved it; you wanted more. He breathed heavily once he pulled you over him; your legs dangled on each side of him. William loved the feeling of you on top of him. The weight of you was overwhelming; the sound of your moans when his hands traveled up your exposed thighs to the line of your underwear than to your soaked middle. Two hours seemed like a long time, but in truth, it was nothing two the two of you. You pushed your skirt up higher, allowing you to feel his cock through his pants.

“I’m going to ruin this dress.”

“I have to walk back uptown.”

“No, you don’t.” William pushed the curls from your face and looked up at you. “I will take you back to your place.”

“You sure about that white boy?” Your teeth graze over his earlobe, only feeling more intoxicated by him while continuing the playful banter. “Not your side of town?”

“Wherever you are, is my side of town.” He pushes his two fingers in your mouth. “Suck.” You opened your mouth, taking them in your mouth, sucking for a moment, and they were gone, back in between your legs and pushing into you expertly, causing you to bow from him. You exhaled, locking eyes with him as he started his pursuit. William pumped his fingers into you, massaging your clit with his thumb each time they entered you. Your pussy enveloped them, welcoming them in like old friends and that they were. There was no room for a coherent thought, your head fell back, and eyes rolled as he started to fuck you with his fingers. He had barely even touched your clit, and somehow you were drenched for him. “You’re so needy.” He laughed.

There was no patience in your next movements; you reached between the two of you and unbuttoned his pants. His dick pressed against his boxers. Usually, there was a rhythm to these things. He liked to get undressed at his own pace and fuck you slow. This was not today. William stood, throwing you onto the scattered papers on his desk and spread your legs wide for him to admire you.

“You’re not allowed to run today.” He gave a small smile before he unsheathed himself, pumping up and down himself a few times. William hovered over you; his dick flinched warm over the entrance of your pussy. “Understand?”

“Yes.” You shook your head, you never really intended to run, but there was only many so many times you could cum.

William places his thumb on your clit and then slams into you, hilt deep, your body quakes taking all of him and reveling in pleasure. “Sweet Y/N.” He groans, his teeth clenched as he starts to fuck you. His hips snap onto your body, knocking your body up the desk. The tips of his fingers dig into the supple flesh of your thigh, pulling you to meet him at each thrust, and your hips naturally wind. Grinding on him, allowing that extra tease of pleasure to your swollen nub. The deeper he sunk into you, the more intense the pleasure grew. He pulls out of you, swiping his heavy cock down your slit and then tapping playfully only to flip you over. Your ass is sat up just for him; you didn’t want him to stop.

Impatiently you rub yourself against him, feeling him jump against your skin, and then chuckle. “Calm down, sweetheart.” The charming lull of his voice is followed by his hand, pressing the arch of your back and him slamming into you. Sweet delicious sting flooded through your entire body, setting each nerve afire with a tingling sensation you could not stop. Your body shook against, and he continued to fuck you, guiding your hips to meet his thrust. Your feet hovered over the ground, and you were more than grateful for the desk holding your body because had it not been there, you might have floated away. He made you feel weightless. Your toes curled as the high pitch mewls exclaimed your ecstasy. How the fuck had you gone a week, better yet a day without him?

The flowers on the corner of the desk crashed to the floor, the glass shattering and water spattering. William didn’t care; you gripped the table as he growled, and he snapped his hips on your ass. William was chasing his high, and it was inside of you. He fucked you deeper, leaning his body over yours fully and then spreading your legs wider for better access. You imagined what you looked like spread out on the desk beneath him, unable to stop yourself from coming over and over, and one thing was sure, you were needy. How in the fuck could you not be? He slammed into you once more, and this time he grew harder, releasing himself once he was deep enough in you, and then he continued to fuck into you. He wanted to savor the moment just as much as you.

There was a mess made of the office, his clothes, and yours; there was no redemption from it. William didn’t seem to mind; he fixed himself to the best of his capabilities and then turned his attentions to you, adjusting the mess of curls atop your head and then straightening your skirt. “What are your plans for the evening?”

“Cleaning, maybe reading.”

“No studying?” William wiped the remnants of the lipstick from the side of your face and cupped your face making sure your eyes were on him.

“I hadn’t planned it.”

“Good, then come home with me.” When you said nothing, he rolled his eyes, “You are not the only one that is needy.”

“I can do that.” The smile on your face was not able to be erased at the moment.

William draped you in his coat and placed the fedora atop his head. He opened the door, not expecting to Caroline there; the permanent scowl on her face did not phase him or you for that matter. “Caroline, glad to have you back. Cancel my meetings and clean the office.” Her mouth dropped, staring at you. “After that, you are free for the afternoon. Good day to you.”

Taglist: @richonne4life​​ @readsalot73​​ @taytayize123​​ @iammrsrogers​​ @therandomthoughtsofmsparker​​ @blackcoffeeisthetea​​ @bookcrazybby​​ @ritual-unions-gotme​​ @isthat-tyra98​  @whenimaunicorn​ @blackmissfrizzle​ @supernaturalvikingwhore​ @youwishiwasyobabymama​ @ceridwenofwales​ @lostinthoughtsandfeelings​ @artemiseamoon​ @iammrsrogers​  @peonylie @gearhead66​ 

[handy-dandy-monster-candy]

Wade, part Three

Rating: SFW Length: 1054 Pairing: Male Fishman/Gillman x GN Reader For @momolady​

xxx

You break and call Wade soon after the argument, but he never seems to be close enough to his phone to respond, or else he ignores you. Days turn into weeks and weeks turn into months, and still, Wade doesn’t call you. You find yourself perusing books that he would devour in your university’s library, contemplating food he likes in the grocery store, and constantly feeling like you’re forgetting something wherever you go. It’s as though a piece of you has gone missing, lost beneath the waves off the coast you grew up on.

It’s the longest you’ve ever gone without hearing his voice.

You go through the motions, attending your classes and sitting through seminars, taking notes and exams and extra credit where you can, but every time your studies take you out to the seaside, you feel a wordless anxiety claw its way up your throat like water filling your lungs. You make friends and go out when there are no classes to be had, but none of the people who flirt with you have bright pink eyes to hold you captivated in their gaze. None trade barbs as easily, none laugh as terribly, none tease you in the way that only he does. You have to start fresh with these people, and you crave the familiarity and ease he brings you with a fervour bordering on desperation.

The wrenching pain in your chest eventually eases into a dull ache—noticeable if you linger on it, but easily ignored if you keep yourself busy. You’re constantly on the field doing research, or else you’re furiously scribbling notes and working on papers, but in the quiet moments when you lay your head on your pillow and try to sleep, you miss his laughter so much it makes your stomach twist itself into wriggling, queasy knots. Summer can’t get here fast enough for the itching in your blood.

Your knees bounce the entire way home, from your cramped economy seats to the comparative luxury of the back seats in your Uber rides. You can’t seem to sit still, can’t seem to breathe under the suffocating weight of your lack. You smile and wave away your parents’ concerns, claiming jet lag and old fatigue. You’re only tired, you say; some rest will be enough to revive you. But you get little sleep that night, tossing and turning as you listen to the odd car pass in front of your house with tires on asphalt sounding like the hush of waves.

The next day, you take your bicycle down to the coast, picking your way down to the cove with your heart in your throat. You’re not surprised to find it empty, but you are surprised to see that Wade’s phone screen has been ruined, fine cracks spidering away from a point of impact in the middle of the glass. You find it in the middle of the sand in the cove far from its usual hiding spot, slightly damp from the early morning’s mist and scuffed by the rocks. Had Wade been angry enough to throw his phone, too? Did you hurt him that badly?

You stay in the cove for the remainder of the day, eating lunch that you bring from home and leaving only when the sun lowers enough in the sky that it makes it impossible to see what’s beneath the waves. You do this every day for a week, and every time you leave empty-handed, something within you crumbles a little more. On the ninth day, you head off to the coast again, but you don’t make it to the cove. A huge commotion at the beach leads you toward the shore like a moth drawn to a flame, and only when you reach the very edges of the crowd of onlookers does your curiosity turn into horror, numb hands dropping your bicycle into the sand.

“Wade!” you scream, pushing your way through the throng and shrugging off various elbows and curses thrown your way. There at the centre of the mass, waves lapping at his prone body, is Wade, one hand pressed to a bleeding wound where a harpoon juts from his flesh. Seeing you, he croaks out your name, trying and failing to sit up and hissing at the humans who were closest to him. You have never seen him this way, with all of his fins splayed and rustling, inhuman hisses and snarls leaving his mouth whenever any humans attempt to approach him. “Get away from him, you motherfuckers!”

“Stay back!” Wade calls, breathless from pain. “They have weapons!”

“Like hell I will,” you snarl, shoving past the last line of onlookers and marching forward to shield your friend with your body as you address the people around him. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?!”

“You stay out of this,” one man says, holding a revolver in one hand and using it to gesture towards Wade. “This catch is mine. I’ve already called the feds.”

“You’re not putting one finger on him,” you hiss. “He’s a sentient being!”

“What are you, some kind of hippie?” the man snaps, stepping towards you instead. “It ain’t human!”

“One step closer and I will show you just how inhuman I can be,” Wade rumbles, barely words. Then he switches to another language he’s taught you, saying, “My people will be here soon. They heard my distress.”

You barely spare a glance over your shoulder at Wade, changing languages to ask, “Your wound?”

“Feels worse than it is. I’ll live, so long as he doesn’t shoot me.”

“You can talk to it?” one onlooker asks, curiosity overcoming fear.

You huff and nod, tight-lipped, feeling your heart speed as sirens approach in the distance. “As I said, he is sentient. They have a whole culture and society, and if you kill him, you’ll be inciting a war.”

As if on cue, you hear splashing behind you, and the crowd gasps and murmurs and draws further away from the shore. Gillfolk of all shades of green and blue rise out of the shallows, armed to the teeth and eyeing the humans warily. One of them—a scarred and truly massive specimen—strides forward with purpose, flanked by what seems to be a personal guard.

“What is the meaning of this?” he asks, and chaos ensues.

[mostlycompetentwriter]

Any

F/M pairing: Fem!Reader x Felix (SKZ)

Genre: Sugar Daddy AU! Established Relationship

Word Count: 5K

Warnings: mature content, aged-up characters, and alcohol use

Summary: Despite your feelings, you couldn’t help but think that Felix viewed your relationship as nothing but superficial - he wanted a travel companion, and you needed money for your college tuition. But maybe you want more than that, and convincing Felix proves to be harder than you thought...

You were exhausted - an unfortunate result of all those college courses catching up to you at once.

It was difficult for you to open your eyes, groaning because you didn’t feel like dealing with real life. And while you stretched out your limbs across the bed, you wrinkled your nose at the thought of leaving the warm sheets. But a gentle chuckle broke through your reverie, and you followed the sweet sound to an angelic face shadowed by the corner.

“Felix?” you whispered, glancing to the side where the older man was watching you from a comfortable futon. He held a cup of coffee in one hand while his other was preoccupied with a string attached to his pants.

“I didn’t want to wake you,” Felix said with a deep morning voice that you could never resist.

“What time is it?” you asked, squinting at the alarm clock on the nightstand.

“8:00 AM,” Felix replied. “Your body isn’t used to this time zone.”

“I guess not,” you said, but it was never easy flying around the world with Felix. There was always the risk of jet-lag, long lay-overs, and the difficult adjustment of jumping between morning and night as you traversed the continents.

“Are you comfortable?” Felix asked. “I can send for whatever you like.”

“I’m okay,” you assured him, and then you eyed the inviting expanse of his lap. “Can I sit with you?” you asked with a smile.

Felix tilted his head to the side as he considered your request. “Of course.”

His easy compliance energized you more than any amount of sleep ever could, and you walked over to where he was waiting. It was the perfect start to your day, and you sat on his lap with a smile, wrapping your arms around his neck as you connected your lips for a passionate kiss tinged with the faint taste of the coffee lingering on his tongue.

It had taken a long time for you to convince Felix that it was okay for him to kiss you. During the first few months of your arrangement, you were lucky enough to even hold his hand, but he gradually warmed up the idea. Even if your very first kiss with Felix was nothing but a chaste peck that ended with you chasing after his lips while he resisted.

But it was more comfortable in the present. He even seemed to enjoy kissing you, and that was enough for your fragile heart which beat exclusively for him. Yet, Felix was still an enigma - a Matryoshka doll with layer upon layer of interesting details. And you were determined to understand him while doing your best to convince Felix that you considered your relationship to be much more than its premise. Back when he found your profile on an online Sugar Daddy website (which was totally your friend’s idea), and he sent you a rather complex email listing out everything that he wanted in a potential arrangement:

- Travel companion

- Confidant

- Event partner

You were shocked that he hadn’t included anything about intimacy because every other person on the site had specifically propositioned you with very explicit things. But sure enough, Felix met you the very next day and reiterated his conditions, and you discovered for yourself that he respected the boundaries he had established - barely even touching you unless it was at a dinner party and he politely kept you away from his much less civil co-workers.

But over time, the arrangement had evolved for you into something meaningful, and you found yourself wanting more as you grew increasingly attracted to him. Unfortunately, everything was playing out at a rather slow pace, and it was always you who encouraged Felix along, but maybe you also weren’t the best choice because you certainly lacked patience. But it was hard to hold yourself together around him, especially when he took the initiative to plunge his tongue between your teeth.

In a rush of arousal, you reached down for the noticeable bugle in his suit-pants, pressing down using the heel of your hand - rubbing generous circles against his erection. Felix moaned at the friction, but a warning alarm at the back of your mind told you that you were moving way too fast considering that Felix still blushed whenever you let him touch your breasts.

And it wasn’t entirely surprising when he grabbed your wrist, breaking the kiss with a wet smack while his eyes stared into yours. “Uhhh...”

“Let’s go downstairs for breakfast,” Felix said, shifting you off his lap and ignoring your pout.

You watched Felix leave the room with a sigh. Because despite all this time that you’ve spent together, Felix still refused to sleep with you, and you can’t figure out why he keeps turning down your blatant offers. He was paying you after all, and he was paying you a lot, so why didn’t he ever want anything more than a comfortable conversation or a gentle kiss? 

It seemed that your progress with him was at a standstill because anything past kissing or touching above the waist always ruined the mood. And at one point, you tried to encourage him to tell you about his interests and what he liked, but Felix never talked about himself. For example, whenever you asked him a question about his work or interests, he always offered you a vague answer before redirecting the questions back to you again.

But maybe there something wrong with you? Did he not find you attractive?

“Y/N,” Felix said to break your self-loathing thoughts. “Are you ready?”

“Give me a few minutes,” you said, and Felix nodded with a smile before closing the door and leaving you alone to consider what had just happened.

In between your travels with Felix, you tried to balance an active social life with a productive college course-load. It was really hard sometimes, especially when your instincts always led you to appease Felix above everything else. You had already lost count of the number of weekend parties and friendly get-togethers that you had missed to join him at the office or cancel plans when he mentioned another overseas business conference.

It was a little desperate on your part, but whenever Felix sent you a text message or called you on the phone, you always answered with a chipper smile and warm tone. You could be having the worst day of your life, but you would never let him know that. 

“Can you meet me at the office?” Felix had asked you earlier, and you agreed quietly before dismissing yourself from a lunch date that you were having with some friends who all whined about you leaving them.

But Felix was your priority, and you were genuinely excited when he pulled you into a hug before escorting you inside his office. “There’s some things to discuss,” Felix said, and you groaned because that usually meant sitting in front of his desk while he insisted on a serious demeanor. “Your classes,” Felix said once he sat down, holding out a hand expectantly which meant you were forced to pull up the grade-book for your courses online.

Felix was incredibly adamant about your grades, and he always insisted on checking-in to ensure that you were performing well. “It’s not completely updated,” you said once he took your phone and examined the screen.

“What happened in your math class?” Felix asked with narrowed eyes. “You told me about this one when we traveled to Europe.”

“Right,” you said with an anxious clearing of your throat. Because on that trip, Felix had insisted that you stay in the hotel room to study while he went downstairs to entertain some business partners. But you only got through the second chapter of your notes before throwing on your swimsuit and sneaking out to enjoy the poolside amenities. “My overall grade is still a B,” you said. “And the professor agreed to give me an extra credit assignment.”

Felix grunted at your words before sliding the phone screen back across to you. “When is next month’s tuition due?”

“At the end of November,” you said quietly, watching as Felix opened his laptop to peruse the bright screen. 

“Send me the bill,” he said. “I’ll have the money transferred.”

“Okay,” you said, wincing when he started frowning at something.

“Your checking account is low,” he remarked, and his fingers moved rapidly over the keys. “You’re supposed to tell me when its below $1,000.”

“Oh,” you mumbled. “I guess I forgot.”

 “I’ll fix it,” Felix said, and it always amazed you that he could be so nonchalant with giving you his money. “I see that your rent was payed last week.”

“Everything’s fine,” you said, hoping to cut this part of your conversation short because there was a part of you (growing bigger each day) that regretted the fact that Felix didn’t know your true feelings for him.

He meant a lot more to you than someone who gave you money like it was candy.

“Your meal plan carries over?” Felix asked. “Do you need me to upgrade it? Are you getting enough to eat? Because they have this unlimited plan...”

“Felix,” you interrupted. “It’s just right for me.”

“Well,” Felix said, sitting back further in his chair. “I do have something else to ask you.”

“About?”

“Your birthday,” Felix chuckled, and you were surprised that he remembered. “It’s next week, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” you said because you weren’t quite sure what to make of Felix’s impressive attention to detail.

“You’ll be turning 21,” Felix said. “I want to make it special for you.”

“We could just chill at my apartment,” you said, and Felix smiled at such a menial suggestion.

“Of course we’ll do that, but I’m sure there’s something else you want?” Felix asked, silencing an incoming call on his cellphone. “I’ll buy you anything.”

“I don’t know,” you trailed off sheepishly before fixing him with a warm smile. “I wouldn’t mind just spending time with you.”

“You don’t have to flatter me, Y/N,” Felix said. “Please let me buy you something.”

“Oh,” you said, caught off-guard by his insistence. “Maybe something that I need for school?”

“Y/N, that’s no good for a present,” Felix said. “Be honest with me. Do you need another computer? Is your apartment comfortable? What about your car, is it still in good shape?”

You hesitated at each of the ostentatious suggestions. “Uh, my phone is fi-”

“Done!” Felix said, and he immediately returned to his laptop screen. “The newest model has amazing storage space.”

“Does it?” you asked, but it was more rhetorical than anything. Because something was bothering you about the idea of Felix buying you such superficial things.

But it didn’t used to? What had changed?

“I know you have another class in an hour,” Felix said, and he stood from his desk with a smile. “My assistant can give you a ride back to your school.”

His hand was warm against you lower back as he led you closer to the door. “I’ll see you later,” Felix said, and he brushed his lips against yours before the office door was closing between you and the frustrating man who was completely oblivious.

For the most part, whenever Felix asked you to come over to his apartment, you often found yourself sitting on the edge of the counter while you watched him cook for you - a delightful combination of pasta dinners, brownies and cookies, and everything in between.

And even though you hadn’t quite turned 21, Felix never minded giving you some of his impressive collection of wine. He even insisted because certain wines complemented his dishes. “Try this with the chardonnay,” he said while pushing the glass closer to your pasta.

You nodded and brought the glass to your lips, watching as he returned to the oven to check on the brownies that he made for dessert. “Tell me about your music, Y/N,” Felix said while jabbing a toothpick into the gooey cake mixture.

“I have another composition in the works,” you said, and it was always really easy to talk about music with Felix. Because he was one of the only people you’d ever met who was so genuinely interested in hearing you talk about music - it’s what you talked about the most, especially in bed together. 

Apparently, Felix had once wanted to study music when he was younger, but his father pressured him into studying business so that he could takeover their accounting firm in the future. It was one of the very few things you knew about Felix, other than his insane cooking talents and sweet personality. 

But Felix loved to hear you discuss your music, and he adored your compositions when you played them for him over the impressive sound system in the living room. Oftentimes, Felix would make copies of your compositions for himself, despite your insistence that they weren’t very professional. He even had entire recordings on his computer that he listened to while he was working.

“It would sound better if I had a good microphone,” you said with a sigh, not really understanding the implications of your words until Felix spoke up again.

“Send me a description of what you need,” Felix said. “I’ll buy it for you.”

“Oh, Felix, it’s really not a big deal...”

“I insist,” Felix said while finishing off his wine. “I’ll have my assistant go out tomorrow and get it for you.”

You knew that it would be impossible to convince Felix otherwise, and there were more pressing things to worry about. Like when you noticed that he had only taken a few bites of his food before leaning in closer to you - chin propped against his hand as he listened to you speak. “Aren’t you hungry?” you asked, pointing to his discarded plate.

“Why? Would you like some more?” Felix asked, and you didn’t even get a chance to answer before he was pushing his plate in your direction. “Take as much as you want.”

“But it’s yours,” you said, even while Felix was already standing up from his chair to retrieve the brownies from the kitchen counter.

“I made these for you,” Felix said. “I noticed how much you liked them last time.”

“They’re amazing,” you said, and you were pleased when he lowered his head to connect your lips together.

“I also bought you something,” Felix said while pulling away from your kiss. “Check the bed.”

“What?” you laughed, and you accepted Felix’s outstretched hand as he led the two of you into his enormous bedroom. And sure enough there was a delicate package waiting on the center of the bed, wrapped neatly in purple wrapping paper with a cute bow on top. “You didn’t need to do this,” you said while reaching down for the gift.

“I thought of you when I saw it,” Felix said, and he lingered close to your side while you carefully discarded the paper and retrieved whatever was inside the velvety black box.

Unsurprisingly, the gift inside was gorgeous - a tiny set of earrings with a diamond center that probably cost him an atrocious amount of money. “They’re beautiful,” you told him, and you smiled when Felix insisted on putting them in himself.

“They complement your eyes,” he said once the earrings were in place.

“Thank you,” you said while holding back the overwhelming urge to kiss him again.

“I should also mention that I have a conference in Seattle this weekend,” Felix said, and he turned you from side to side with a pleased smile. “Are you available to come with me?”

“Of course,” you said, and you gave no thought to any prior engagements, holding out your hand when Felix dropped a ticket into your open palms.

“Let’s lie down for a little while,” Felix suggested, and you nodded your agreement while watching him drop down onto the edge of the bed to remove his watch. 

It was a familiar scene, and you carefully folded your ticket inside your jacket, removing it from your shoulders before crawling onto the bed next to him. “What should we talk about?” you asked around a yawn, snuggling closer to Felix’s side as he wrapped an arm around your waist.

“Tell me about the internship you’re applying for,” Felix said. “I’m very proud of your ambitions.”

You heart gave a happy flutter at the idea of Felix being proud of you for anything, and there was a deep-rooted desire to move even closer to him despite the fact that it wasn’t possible considering your current position. But you talked about the internship with unrivaled enthusiasm - a spot for a local radio station - and Felix listened as usual while his fingers curled through your own. 

It was incredibly warm and comfortable, and you loved being close enough to him to smell his cologne and connect the freckles beneath his eyes into fascinating constellations. There was nothing but affection in your heart, and maybe your feelings were even deeper than you anticipated, and you longed to go even further - to form a physical connection with him that was just as satisfying as the emotional one that often kept you up at night with dreams of the future.

“Felix,” you whispered, and he hummed in acknowledgement. “Can I kiss you?”

He shifted at your side, finding your gaze with a kind smile. “Of course you can.”

It was the only affirmation that you required to dig your fingers into the well-pressed collar of his shirt, keeping him close as you explored his lips with your tongue, tracing over the seam of his mouth as he opened up for you. And Felix moaned when your tongues met somewhere in the middle, forcing you to wonder if he tasted the chocolate from dinner with his penetrative exploration of your mouth. 

But you were feeling so aroused by his deep moans, and you threw one leg over his hip before grabbing his hand and leading it beneath your skirt. Felix gasped into your kiss when he realized that you weren’t wearing anything underneath, and he quickly snatched his hand away so fast that you almost got whiplash from the jarring movement. 

“Don’t do that,” Felix said, and he intertwined your fingers together before resuming your kiss like there was nothing wrong.

But you didn’t feel the same way, and you broke the kiss because you were suddenly feeling light-headed. Was there something wrong with you? Because his behavior had no other explanation, even as Felix simply continued to leave sweet kisses along your neck - gentle pecks that served more as a reminder of his presence rather than anything sensual.

You could feel your heart twisting inside your chest - a distant feeling of the earlier elation that had sent it palpating against your breastbone. There were also tears in your eyes when your mind instantly thought of a thousand different scenarios that all attempted to explain what had happened. Should you just keeping waiting? Maybe you needed to be more patient?

But you were done with having patience with a man who was almost ten years older than you! He should know how you feel, and he should’ve already recognized the signs you were giving off whenever you lingered in the same room. Instead, it almost felt like he was ignoring you, or choosing to remain in this strange limbo that was starting to become too much for your confused emotions.

“Y/N,” Felix whispered when he realized that you weren’t returning his affection. “Are you okay?”

“No,” you said in return, and it seemed to startle Felix who fumbled upwards into a sitting position. 

“Did I hurt you?” Felix asked, and you could tell that he was worried when he examined you closely.

“I don’t think you’ve realized...” you tried, but the words slipped away because you no longer felt confident enough to say them. “Do you not want me?” you asked him instead, looking at Felix with tears clumping the massacre on your eyelashes. 

“Y/N-”

“No!” You insisted firmly, surprising both Felix and yourself. “I’ve had enough, Felix. I’m going home.”

“Y/N!” Felix said, and his tone was much firmer as he grabbed your wrist and halted your attempts to leave the bed. “This is not how I’ll handle things with you. Tell me what I’ve done to upset you.”

You shook your head, seeing nothing but a hazy image of Felix from behind your tears. “You should already know,” you said while pulling your wrist away from him. “I thought I made my feelings clear, but you keep rejecting me!”

Felix’s eyes widened with the realization of what you meant. “Y/N, that was never apart of our arrangement.”

“Yeah.” You laughed, but it was mirthless. “Our arrangement.”

It was all the confirmation that you needed to understand that Felix would never see your relationship as anything but a man and a woman who met online and decided to try something that was never meant to last.

You had been hurt by men before, but you had also never cared as much about your past boyfriends as you did with Felix.

He had become everything to you, but the realization that your feelings weren’t mutual hurt your heart and spirit more than being left alone by a one-night stand or catching someone cheating on you. “It’s my fault, Y/N,” you friend said from your couch because you had called her on the way over to your apartment in tears. “I should’ve never encouraged you to sign up for that website.”

“Don’t blame yourself,” you said. “I should’ve never involved my feelings.”

“Well,” your friend said. “He’s still an ignorant asshole.”

You smiled at your friend’s defense of you, even if you didn’t agree. Despite everything that had happened that night with Felix, you couldn’t find it in yourself to hate him. And maybe that’s because the genuine feelings you had for him simply wouldn’t go away instantly.

It would take time to heal.

Closure.

Which is what you thought you were getting when you received a message from Felix later on:

FROM FELIX:

Y/N, I can’t express my thoughts in one or two sentences. Please pick-up when I call you. I feel it’s necessary to address these slights you’ve experienced, and you don’t even have to say a word to me.

You shivered at his request, clutching your phone tightly between your hands before it started ringing to penetrate the silence of your bedroom. “Hello?” you whispered into the other end, and there was a moment of quiet before Felix began to speak.

“This is not how I expected our night to end,” he said. “I’m deeply sorry for the pain that I caused you. I could see it in your eyes, and it hurt me more than you seem to think.”

You swallowed hard when he took a deep breath. “When I first found your profile, I hesitated to contact someone who, in my eyes, seemed like an untouchable slice of perfection. You loved music and dancing, and you had big dreams that you described with such elegant words. Although I was looking for a companion for my travels, I knew you would be so much more than my expectation, but it was hard to ignore how much I wanted to meet you.”

“I thought it would be best to establish boundaries because I initially imagined our relationship as nothing more than me helping out someone who needed the assistance that I could give. I couldn’t imagine you losing the chance to succeed because you weren’t able to afford tuition. When I was a student, I had the help of my father’s wealth, but he forced me to change my dreams because he wanted to mold me into an image of himself. And he was very successful because I used to be more carefree before I was told that I had to takeover our company. But I promised myself that I would help you because I wanted to be everything for you that my father was not.”

There was a shaky exhale, and you could hear the raw emotion in Felix’s tone. “You deserve better than me,” Felix whispered, and you could barely hold the phone as you felt the first tear fall. “I’m almost thirty-years-old, and I’m paying a student to spend time with me because I’m so bad at meeting people. I organized this whole thing to satisfy my own selfish desires to live vicariously through someone else and experience what my father never allowed me to have.”

You opened your mouth to speak, to reassure him that you had never felt like he was taking advantage of you, but the words were caught between your brain and tongue.

“As for your insinuation that I couldn’t possibly want you...” Felix paused, and you could easily imagine that the conversation had ended abruptly. “I chose not to have a physical relationship with you because I could never imagine in my wildest dreams that someone as young and beautiful as yourself could truly want a sexual relationship with an older man who spends most of his time balancing numbers. If we’re talking our truest desires, then there’s nothing more that I want in this world than your sweet touch, but I won’t allow myself to ruin someone as pure and good as you.”

He cleared his throat at that statement, and you wondered what your relationship might’ve looked like if you had been more honest with him from the beginning. “Perhaps I also grew too complacent with what we had because it was more than any scenario I could’ve came up with inside my head. I love our talks together, Y/N, and you can’t imagine how wonderful it is to travel the world with you - to sleep next to you at night and kiss you because I cherish every moment of your time with me.”

“So please don’t feel hurt by someone like me. Because you’re worth more than all the money I have, and you deserve a wonderful life where you become someone who recognizes the greatness that I see in her. But if this is meant to be goodbye, then know that I love you so much, and I will never forget the artist who changed my world.”

There was a click following his passionate declaration, and then you were greeted by the dial tone.

You thought about Felix for the entire week following his unexpected phone call. His words haunted you during your classes, and you could barely focus when you were working on your schoolwork or hanging out with friends. The confession of his love weighed heavily on your conscious, and you knew that you needed to see him again

It was incredibly risky, but there was an even bigger part of yourself that didn’t care about the consequences. And you found yourself taking a taxi to the airport where Felix was set to depart for Seattle, ticket tucked into the back of your jeans pocket while your suitcase rolled along next to you. Of course, there was a small part of you that worried you might not be able to find Felix, or maybe he wouldn’t want to see you.

But you were tired of being cautious, and Felix was worth the extra effort to hand over your ticket to the flight attendant who encouraged you to wait in the first-class lobby. You thanked her quietly, and your hand was shaking when you reached out for the door handle, pushing it open before scanning your eyes across the customers waiting inside.

It was mostly people in expensive suits, looking through their cellphone or reading the newspaper. But it was impossible to miss a familiar mop of blonde-hair, and your eyes met Felix’s from across the room - a moment in time when it felt like you were the only two people left in the room.

And you could tell that Felix was surprised, but he didn’t protest when you sat next to him. “Hi,” you said in a shy voice, fixing your suitcase against the wall while your hands curled together in your lap.

“Y/N,” Felix said with a gentle tone. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”

“I thought you wanted me to come,” you reminded him, and you held up your ticket with a smile. 

Felix visibly swallowed as he stared at you. “I figured you wouldn’t want to see me anymore.”

“Why?” you asked him. “After those things you said to me...Felix, I only want to see you more.”

He was silent then, contemplative as he took a deep breath. “I hurt you, Y/N. I don’t deserve to be with you.”

“That’s not true,” you said. “Well, maybe I felt hurt, but I think we’re both to blame.”

“You should know that I’ll continue to help you with your schooling,” Felix said. “But the other part of the arrangement...”

“Felix, I insist,” you said while grabbing his hand. “I like spending time with you, Felix,” you said. “You’re a literal angel.”

“I don’t know about that,” Felix said. “There’s a lot about me that you still don’t know.”

“And that’s okay,” you reassured him. “Because I’d really like to find out more about you and everything that you enjoy.”

“I’m still sorry,” Felix insisted. “I’m sorry that I let you get so involved while pushing you away at the same time.”

“I’ll just have to show you that I care more than you think,” you said. “Let me start helping you as well.”

“But you’ve already helped me,” Felix said. “You’ve done so much for me, and you can’t even imagine how grateful I am.”

“Well, I might since the feeling is mutual,” you said. “I don’t want you to question whether or not you deserve me because I love being with you, and this stopped being just a sporadic arrangement for me a long time ago.”

Felix nodded, even if there was still a touch of hesitation. “And how do you feel about...intimacy? I know that’s something you want.”

“I only want it if you’re interested,” I said.

“What if I wasn’t?”

“Then I would respect that,” you said. “It still wouldn’t send me away.”

“That means a lot to me,” Felix said. “I would be interested as long as you’re okay with me touching you,” Felix said, and he was clearly blushing at the idea.

But you found it to be endearing, prodding at the reddening skin of his face with your finger. “Let’s try a normal relationship,” you said. “Like a couple.”

Felix smiled, and he was much more suited for brightness as opposed to the despondency that you discovered when you first arrived. “I like that idea.”

“It seems better for us,” you said before expectantly turning your head in his direction. “Does that mean I can have a kiss?”

Felix laughed at your brazenness, and you were still smiling even while your lips smoothed across his in a passionate display of the secret feelings and affections that had finally been exposed for him to return with equal amounts of love and adoration.

[andydona-chan]

Glitching App

Just a little something I write cause I have some spare time, my first Danny Phantom fic in a long time, brong from a silly conversation, you can also find it at AO3 , nothing else, nothing more than getting used to this again.

                                                          *****

Danny Fenton, while not one without things to do, had needs, regular, basic needs like the need to eat, sleep, change his clothes every once in a while, and if he wanted to fulfill them he needed money, and as much as it was rewarding to keep the town safe and finally be recognized for doing it, but he wasn’t being paid for it.

But there were not many jobs out there that allowed him the time to get out and fight a ghost whenever the need aroused and even less that could give him time off to make his homework if he needed to do it, much less anyone who would be understanding of him sporting some injuries after fighting ghosts without freaking out. So as it was, Danny had to find something that could fit all of that, without the need to start a small business by himself, although his parents were way more eager to get him into offering their inventions when most of the population didn’t really have the need to use it that much, he usually managed to take care of it and they were also very enthusiastic when it came to ghost hunting, so with their help and usually the Red Huntress too it wasn’t as if people were in danger. On top of that, those who were interested and wanted to make sure there was a higher level of security had already reached out to the Fentons in order to get what they needed.

That’s how Danny had found himself, new motor bike and all using an infamous app to deliver food. He could be able to make some delivered without missing too much time and also stop it in order to take care of other important things. Most of the time he took the short routes, made sure he followed the gps and had for the past couple of weeks managed to get a good sum out of this new job. So far he had managed to do all of this as Danny Fenton, though there had been times where he had almost used his powers.

It could have been good if his luck had remained the one of a regular person, he could handle that, he could even spend some time dealing with traffic if it meant he could get the money to pay for his books, the service of his phone and wifi, and the occasional snack he needed now that he was focusing on school. His parents were helping him, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have the urge to feel independent now that he was in college. But speaking about his luck again, it wasn’t his fault that Technus had showed up just a couple of minutes after picking up his last delivery; he had personally taken care of him, parking his bike in a deserted alleyway, it was good that nothing had been lost or damaged during the couple of minutes it took, but the technology ghost had really made a show and caused damage to part of the main streets and traffic had real heavy in the minute it took him to go back and start the motor again.

He looked at the gps, there were some streets he could detour to arrive but it will make it longer than expected and the customer had already sent him a couple of worried texts, he answered mentioning the issue with Technus, but it seemed the person wasn’t going to go easy on him just because, he seemed to think that since he was on a motorcycle he could just skip cars or even skip some red lights and drive next to the traffic on the sidewalk to complete the delivery… If only things were that easy.

So after a bit of a text match he said he will try to deliver as soon as possible and started making his way through some streets trying to avoid the traffic. He was doing fine for a couple of streets but of course the issue that Technus had caused was just going to catch up at some point, so after a couple of turns he found the traffic was being affected on each way. Frustrated and really wanting to ignore the last message to hurry up from the customer he had to deliver the food to, he made a decision and transformed into Phantom. Once like that and wanting to avoid leaving his motor behind he turned everything intangible and flew, just like Johny 13 but without the actual roar of the motor, from here just pointing in the right direction he managed to skip a good part of the traffic, then he became human and tangible again on a side street and sent a notification of ‘I’m here’ to the poor desperate and hungry customer that had been waiting for him. (Yes, he was upset now, sue him!)

He approached the house, phone in hand and saw the person coming out of the front door looking at the phone with confusion. Danny confirmed the name and completed the delivery making sure to mark it fulfilled on his phone too, he knew the customer could still be upset so, not waiting for a thanks or anything more, he turned to leave, but was stopped by comment of the person behind him.

“That was a heck of a shortcut you took, for a moment I got worried my app was glitching or my internet lagging, the small bike… uh, the pointer seemed to float over the last couple… well, no many blocks”

Danny opened his mouth to answer but he couldn’t just straight admit what he had done to arrive there and tried to look for another way to explain it. “I… maybe it was my phone, some of the ecto… the static left behind by that ghost… may have messed with the signal… ?” he didn’t sound so sure and thanked everything that it had been Technus and not any other ghost or his explanation would end up being not that believable, but maybe the person didn’t know much about it either cause he waived a hand in a ‘whatever’ motion and pocketed his phone. “Have a nice day” was the last thing Danny said before turning around again, making a silent promise to never do something similar again.

[yoonia]

Mistakes and Retakes (M)

↳ Characters / Pairings | Kim Seokjin x reader

↳ Genre | Enemy to Lovers!au, smut, fluff, a bit of angst if you squint a little

↳ Word count | 18,5k words

↳ Summary | You hate to admit it, but making bad decisions and being reckless seems to be your forte. From saying yes to a last-minute meeting to ignoring your father’s warning about driving late at night on a slippery road. As if you haven’t gotten enough bad luck already, your high school nemesis decides to be a hero and comes to the rescue. Santa must have placed you in his naughty list for a dire punishment before Christmas.

↳ Author’s Note | A slight rom-com fic for Christmas, if you will. I had fun writing this but I do hope everyone would love it just the same.

↳ Warning | explicit sex scene, unprotected sex, a slightly unhygienic outdoor sex (please be safe, kids), portrayal of childhood bullying, mentions of/implied characters’ nude pictures.

↳  Part of the Stranded For Christmas Collab

↳ Music Companion | Not There - Zoey Lily, Indigo Svn

↳ Cross-posted | Inkitt | AO3 

Under any normal circumstances, you probably wouldn’t be here. You wouldn’t be driving through the long winding country road cutting through the forest so late at night just the night before Christmas Eve.

You would have gotten yourself an early morning ticket on a domestic flight or probably take a train instead. And you would have probably already been lounging in your family’s cabin, eating some homemade chocolate chip cookies that your Mom usually makes on holidays, instead of sitting behind the steering wheels, fighting off drowsiness and boredom from the long drive.

Travelling back home on your new car was not so much of your initial plan at all. But neither was agreeing to an urgent last-minute meeting at the office which had led you to miss a chance on getting a ticket ride home. You dub yourself more as a people pleaser, which was the only reason why you were unable to say no. Though as you are looking back to it now, as you are driving your car through the dark path still miles away from home, you are starting to question yourself whether or not it had been truly worth it.

Your hands grip the steering wheel tightly as you look up ahead on the empty road, focusing on the icy parts that are sparkling under the car’s headlights. You are not as familiar with this road as you do with the routes you go through daily back in the city. It has been a rare occasion for you to drive home this way and the darkness around you is making it harder to see and be sure that you are indeed going in the right direction.

“It’s just you and me, Buddy,” you mutter softly as you look down on your navigation system, giving it a few taps as if it would help nudge the thing back alive from being stuck on one point. “Just as long as you can come back online again, then we’re good.”

Getting further down the road, your GPS system has been losing transmission that it is starting to lag. All you have been seeing on the map is a long, straight road, and the dot that marks your location is still blinking at the part of the route you have left behind had an hour ago. With only thick lines of trees on both sides of the track, no streets signs, shops, or intersections appearing to you yet, you could only hope that you have yet to stray out of the route heading home or miss out on any turns that you are supposed to take.

Getting impatient, you press your foot down on the gas pedal and let the car accelerates forward to get you out of the dark woods. You are hoping that you can get some working internet transmission somewhere around the next intersection heading into town.

For a split second, while you are trying to ignore the eerie feeling growing in your chest from being surrounded by the dark woods, your mind wanders off to remind you of your father’s words about your reckless driving and what he had said to you when you told him about your plans to drive home.

"Drive carefully."

"Don't drive so carelessly! Pay attention to the road."

"Are you sure you want to drive in that tiny city car of yours? Can't you just ride a bus home? It’s not safe to drive so late, go in the morning.“

"Change your tires before winter comes.”

As if fate has it, just as you turn the car to follow the path as the road curves to the right, the tires slide against the frozen asphalt, sending your car tumbling out of control and skirting off of its path. You slam on the breaks to make it stop, yet it only throws the car into a spin as the road goes downhill, before landing itself in the ditch on the side of the road.

You can only sit there in silence as everything stops spinning, feeling your heart hammering in your chest from the shock. Trying to calm yourself down, you take a deep breath before clambering out of the car and walk around, checking to see if you can find any visible damage and how bad you are stuck.

After studying the awkward angle your car is in as it is lying on the ditch, you step back inside and crank the engine back to life. Once again keeping your father’s image in mind, you try to remember his lessons about how to get yourself out of this kind of trouble. You start trying to maneuver the car slowly up the embankment, moving it inches at a time until you get the car into position to push it off of the ledge and back up on the road.

Applying the gas slowly, you start leading the car to climb up the bank while increasing the pressure on the gas pedal as you go. You keep following the steps calmly, until you hear a sound that makes your heart sink down to your stomach—the sound of the tires spinning. Taking your foot off the gas, you switch the gear to reverse the car, hit on the gas again, only to have nothing happening. Unwilling to give up, you switch on the gear forward and hit the gas again. And nothing. Switching the gear backwards, you hit the gas again, repeating them a few more times, yet the only thing you keep getting is the sound of the tires spinning and the car not even moving an inch.

“Fuck it!” you cry out while beating your hands against the steering wheel. Grabbing your purse, you search for your phone, hoping to be able to call for help. Yet just like the deadbeat blinking you were getting on your GPS, there is no reception on your phone to make any call.

Falling back in your seat, you can only cry out helplessly when you realise the situation you have gotten yourself in. You are indeed, completely stuck.

“Why me?”

Either you have been struck with a string of bad luck or if you are simply being punished for being such a terrible decision maker, the unfortunate event does not stop there.

As if getting your car stuck in a ditch is yet to be enough of a trial, you slipped down the slope when you were climbing your way to the main road. One missed step was met with an icy ground as you scrambled up the side of the ditch and you were sent falling back down, leaving you with a coat and a pair of jeans that are now completely soaked with snow, a sore hip, and a possible sprained ankle.

You dread the fact that you are nowhere closer to the nearest town and that you have not seen any other car passing by so far that you could flag down for help. Standing at the side of the road, you lean down to check on your ankle first before whipping out your phone from your pocket. There is no visible injury or swelling on your throbbing ankle—not yet, at least—a fact that you are relieved to see, yet it means nothing when there is still no reception on your phone for you to call for help or send any news home.

Looking both ways down the road, you find the road completely void of cars. It is already extremely late in the night and your hope of getting any help is slowly waning thin.

You still have miles away to reach the family cabin, a journey which would have taken you another hour or two with your car. The next town is much closer, yet even if you bother to try to walk the distance, whether it is down the long empty road or looking for a shortcut through the trees, you know for sure that you wouldn't make it all the way there by foot until past midnight.

Especially not with this ankle.

You are not completely sure if it would be safe to leave your car and your luggage out in this place either.

“Damn it.”

You choose to walk anyway, figuring that you may still have a chance to either get a reception somewhere along the way or find a ride on the nearest intersection ahead. Moving carefully on the side of the road, you pay close attention on your cellphone while trying to make sure that you wouldn't slip on frozen ground or strain your ankle further.

You have managed to walk a few meters away from your car, hobbling on your way until you nearly give up and turn back around when there is no building or lights on sight. Suddenly, the thought of just staying inside your car to keep yourself warm sounds a lot nicer than having to walk through the cold and into the dark woods.

It is at that moment when you hear it, the sound of a car engine, or a truck, coming from behind you. Turning around, you see a pair of headlights coming towards you, steadily moving on the ice-covered road in the distance.

“Oh my God, thank you,” you mutter with a sigh. You are both relieved and in despair as you lift your hand, hoping that the driver would care enough to stop for you.

Maybe you could ask for a ride, or borrow their tools to pull your car out of the ditch so you can carry on with your journey home.

As the vehicle slows down the more it gets closer to you, it is finally becoming clear that it is indeed an old pick-up truck which you would normally see in the farms around town, letting you know that it is probably a local. Whoever it is, you can feel your heartbeat settling down with relief when the truck comes to a stop right in front of you. Maybe you could finally be saved.

The driver lowers the window on their passenger seat and you lean closer to speak, only to have chill running down your spine when the driver leans towards you, letting you see his face up close through the dark interiors of his truck.

"Well, now. If it isn't the beautiful city girl, miss _____. What are you doing out here so late, woman?” he says so cheerfully, his eyes carry a glint of recognition and mischief while his lips—still the plum and sexy pair that you had once adored and hated—are grinning wide for you.

Fuck. Maybe the whole holiday season is cursed, after all.

You have stopped believing that angels and good fortune existed since many years ago. And if there is anyone in this world to blame for it, then you would point your finger on one person only.

Kim Seokjin.

The pride of the town, now farming business extraordinaire ever since the day he took over his family’s farmlands, the model student at school, the golden boy of the track club, parents’—and apparently, starting some time since his puberty, also women’s—favourite, and your childhood bully.

He was a total jerk to you back in school.

For some reason, he had found the pleasure of rubbing you off the wrong way since you were kids and had made your life miserable for your entire teen life.

From throwing worms, bugs, and small frogs at you when you were kids, to tugging your hair when you started growing them out and putting them up into ponytails and french braids every summer in mid-school. What took the cake was what he did to you back in high school. There is a reason why you had cut all contacts to nearly everyone from school since the day you graduated and he was the one who gave you just the perfect reason for it. You have even dreaded going to school reunions to the fear that people would bring up all the past events. Or even worse, call you by the very same nickname he had given you that had spread like haywire within less than a day and lasted until the very last week before graduation.

Just thinking about everything has your stomach churning and your blood boiling hot. It is just unfortunate that the latter is still not enough to give you warmth as you continue the slow walk down the road while fighting off the cold.

And the stubbornly handsome lad? Oh, he is still there, following you close with his truck while shouting through the window with all the snarky comments he could think of as if it would get you to hop into his truck and spend the rest of the journey sitting next to him until you reach town.

“I can understand if you were homesick for being in the city so long, but I didn’t expect to see you walking your way back home,” he says, snickering to himself as if he had just said the funniest thing ever while you keep the permanent scowl on your face as you stay silent. “Feeling adventurous, are we?”

You snap a look at him and instantly regret it.

Sure, the man is gorgeous and good to look at, but does it matter when he is the devil himself? You are half ready to run back to your car, opting to hoist it out of the ditch yourself if only you could or just sleep inside it until it would be possible for you to get any kind of help in the morning. Grunting, you hate the fact that neither is possible to do and it would be ridiculous to just walk back and sleep on the side of the road.

Speaking of your car, your heart lurches to your throat as you remember that you still have your belongings left behind and you would certainly need to get them one way or another if you are going to leave this area. Eyeing the truck beside you, you wonder if it would be strong enough to pull the car out of the ditch.

But that only means you would be asking this jerk a favour. And it will require you to actually talk to him. Not to mention that you have no doubt he would use this sometime later against you. You just know that he would.

He keeps rambling on while the wheels in your head keep turning, and before you can think better of it, you start talking to him, only to make him stop blabbering about some stupid things. Something about the woods, wild animals, and being frozen in the woods.

"Why are you even around here, anyway?" you ask him without looking as you keep on walking, holding back from asking him the real question hanging on your tongue—’Why does it have to be you?’

"Umm, for starters, I do live around the area. Not everyone had the big dreams of leaving the small town to be a big hotshot working behind desk jobs, you know?” He comments so lightly without noticing how much his words feel more like a jab to you. Pursing your lips, you glance sideways to see his eyes softening, as if he regrets saying something that may resemble a call out for your wish to leave the town as soon as possible the moment you graduated years ago. Clearing his throat, Seokjin continues to speak, “I was just coming back from a neighbouring town to drop some goods and buy some supplies before the road would be closed off for the thick ice and snow. The shops will be closed until after the New Year. I'd hate to be stranded on the farm all through the holidays without supplies to help me get through the cold."

You listen to him without saying a word or responding to him. Not only because you couldn’t care less about his daily activities or to his survival needs, but because you also need to focus on your legs more. You have been trying to walk normally to hide and ignore the pain on your ankle, and it is getting even harder now as the cold is starting to seep deeper into your skin through the wet patches on your jeans.

“Are you back to ignoring me again?” Seokjin asks you when he is not getting any reaction from you.

A little annoyed for having to hear his voice again, you only reply him with, “I’m trying to convince myself that you are merely a figment of my imagination just to keep me company. You are not really here and I’m just listening to some wind trying to be you.”

“______, Come on. This road is highly deserted. I don’t know if you have been paying close attention, but nobody passes here once it gets dark. I can’t promise you that you will have another chance of getting help once I drive off,” he says after groaning in despair, no doubt already losing his patience for your attitude. ”Now, will you please get on the truck? Let me help you. Fuck, I can drive you to town, at least.”

You are tired, stressed, and in pain, and the answer is hanging right at the tip of your tongue. Yes, absolutely. Take me away from this dreadful place, please.

But as you remember how much you hate him and that he is the enemy, your mouth betrays you by saying, “No."

All of a sudden, Seokjin hits the breaks and the truck comes to a sudden halt. The sound made by the tires against the icy road and the jolt of movement causes you to stop walking, and you end up looking at him with wide eyes.

"Please, ____. You are completely soaked and I know that at least one of your legs is hurting."

Furrowing your brows, you begin to question why he seems so adamant to help you. Maybe he does care, or maybe you just look so desperate and he is doing this out of pity. You already hate the fact that he had caught on to how you have been basically dragging your ankle as you walk no matter how much you have tried to hide it from his eyes.

You always hate to appear weak in other people’s eyes, and it is even worse to show this side of you to Seokjin.

A flash of memory comes to your mind, of him standing in the school hallway, grinning wide as he called out to you. The kids around him started laughing and pointing at you after hearing what he said, and how you rushed to hide in the bathroom, hiding your reddened face while crying until the last period of the day.

And school was never the same again ever since.  

“Look, I know you hate me,” he says, nearly pleading at this point and you have to do everything in you to hold back from saying ‘You think?’ and make things even worse when it is obvious that he is trying. “And though I know I totally deserve the silent treatment, probably until hell freezes over, can’t we call it a truce for now so I can help you? At least until I can get you somewhere safe or to your family’s cabin in one piece. You also need to get your legs treated because there is no way you are getting through this cold with that leg of yours.”

Exhaling a deep sigh, you have to admit that he is right. There is no way you can keep on walking further in this state, and you hate to be too far away from your car without making sure that all of your belongings would be safe while you figure out how to get your car free. Right at this moment, you see no other possibility of getting help aside from the man that you have hated most for years.

“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but—” you release another sigh to push your anger away and let things go. For now. “Fine. I do need help, but remember that I’m only agreeing to do this because I have no other choice.” And you are also desperate, but he doesn’t need to know that. “Let’s call it a truce and I promise I won’t maul you if you can either get my car out of the hole it was stuck in or help me get my things first.”

Seokjin’s eyes light up instantly and you can see him releasing a relieved sigh as he smiles at you.

“So, truce?�� he asks again, offering his hand through the window for a shake, and you give your gloved one to grab onto him to shake his hand.

“Truce.”

Once you had gotten into his truck, you made Seokjin agree to turn his truck around and drive back to where your car had been stuck in. Seokjin had helped you step down the bank, carefully this time and without slipping down the slippery slope, then joined you as you examined your car.

You had asked him if he could pull the car out of the ditch, only to have him shaking his head, regretfully telling you that he wasn’t all prepared with the proper tools to do it when he was only planning to make a quick drive out of town and back and was not expecting to find you stranded in the area. The only option is to get your things out of the vehicle and get to town before midnight to decide how to go about it.

While Seokjin goes to the trunk to retrieve your bags and suitcase, you look down on the small car and wince at the sight of it. A huge dent is visible on its side where you felt it hit against the edge of the ditch and the way its tires are slanted sideways in awkward positions is not entirely a beautiful picture to look at.

You had relied too much on your new car when you decided to go on this trip, believing that it would never fail you. As a matter of fact, it didn't. It was more that you had failed your car more than it did to you when you were being reckless about the road.

Seokjin follows your gaze just as he hoists a suitcase out of your baggage trunk, looking down on the tires and mutters, “You weren’t using the right tires.”

You can only sigh when you know that he is right and you are too tired to defend yourself. “I have been too busy right before the holidays, and I couldn’t find the time to take it to the auto shop,” you tell him, furrowing your brows a little. “I wasn’t planning to drive home on it either until I had no other choice but to do it at the very last minute.”

He only stares at you and you bite your tongue. Squaring your shoulders, you wait for him to make a sarcastic comment to taunt you. Unexpectedly, Seokjin only nods. Maybe he had caught the distress in your eyes or see it on your face, because he only smiles knowingly and says, “It’ll be alright. We’ll just cover it up with something for now and lock up the doors. I’ll have my friend pull it out first thing in the morning. He has a tow truck which would be better to do the job than my truck and some old rusty chains would.”

Surprised to have his response, you can only return his gaze and absentmindedly murmur, “Okay.”

Both of you work systematically as you move your things from the car into his truck. Then you watch Seokjin placing some fallen branches and street markers to keep your car out of sight before hopping back on the truck to continue the journey. As you are soon back on the road, you slowly feel the cold coming back and tug at your coat to tighten it around you. You look down on the heater and notice it running, but say nothing even though you doubt that the thing is working properly in this old truck of his.

"You shouldn't have worn something so thin in this cold." Seokjin’s voice suddenly comes to steal your attention away from his dashboard and you find him glancing down on your body when you look at him.

"I wasn't exactly planning to be away from the wonderful heater that my car has,” you murmur with a sigh. “I also didn't plan to fall into the snow either."

“You fell?” he asks while glancing back and forth between you and the road ahead.

Nodding your head, you answer him with a light scoff. “I slipped on that ditch when I tried to get up on the road earlier.”

You hear him cursing under his breath. “Damn it. That explains your leg,” he mutters softly, once again surprising you when he looks even more concerned instead of laughing at you for it. The latter was something which he would have normally done on times like this. At least, in the past, there was no doubt that he would.

Looking out the window, you focus on the sight around you to ignore the weird feeling growing in your gut. For this one night alone, he has surprised you more than once with the way he acts. Once he was done being a smartass, he began to act really—nice. He even calls you with your name instead of that name. The mockery he gave you in senior high school which was the final straw for everything he ever did to you.

There is another reason why you are silent with your thoughts. Since the moment he brought up about your leg, you start feeling your ankle pulsing with pain when you could barely feel it earlier in the cold outside.

"You're shivering,” Seokjin suddenly speaks after a while, breaking the awkward silence that had been rising between you.  

“Um—what?”

You meet Seokjin’s knowing gaze with your confused one, until you finally notice that while you have been lost in trance, your body has started shivering again. As you watch the way your hands and your body tremble, Seokjin drops a small blanket on your lap.

“I don’t have a spare jacket, but you can use this lap blanket for now. You probably should lose the wet coat too, but I’m not sure that this thing will be enough to warm you if you’re only wearing that sweater of yours,” he says, tapping on his heater as if he is trying to wake the thing up.

“This is fine,” you tell him while covering yourself with his blanket, though the size only covers your chest and lap. His masculine scented cologne fills the air around you as you take a deep breath. Leaning back in your seat, you accidentally knock your sprained ankle against the floor and wince in pain. “Oh, shit. Ow!”

“What, what’s wrong?” he turns to you as he hears your voice. You are in too much pain that you only whimper and bend down slightly to hold your leg to stop it from hitting anything else. “Fuck, I almost forgot about your leg,” he says when he looks down to watch you massage your calf to ease the throbbing pain a little. “Are you okay?”

Whimpering, you can only shake your head and blink back the tears. “I don’t know. It’s hurting.”

You hear him cursing under his breath while he looks around through the woods, as if searching for something. Then suddenly, he changes gear and turns the wheel before you feel the truck leaving the main road, entering a gravelly pathway appearing between the line of trees. “Alright, hang on tight.”  

Reaching up to the handle on your door, you hold on tightly on it just as he had told you so while the truck shakes roughly down the pathway. You look around in shock, while Seokjin appears eerily calm as he drives the truck with rapt attention.

“What are you doing? Where are we going?” you finally ask him once you find your voice again, knowing that the main intersection leading to the town was not supposed to be around until another couple of kilometres and this is certainly not the turn you were hoping to see.

“It’s a shortcut. We’ll get there faster if we go through here. Trust me,” he says with a tiny grin on his stupidly handsome face which instantly melts your heart to a puddle. Sighing away, you have no choice but to actually trust him. Even if he is the last person on earth you would ever plan to give your trust to.

“Give it to me.”

He was just walking out of the changing room after practicing with the track team when you ambushed him. Like the true bully that he was, Seokjin was walking with confidence oozing all over him and was barely noticing you trudging over his way. As he looked at you, his eyes grew wide for a moment before his face turned cold.

“What are you talking about?”

“Give. It. To. Me.”

“Give what to you?”

“The goddamn picture! Do I really have to spell it out for you?” You screamed right at his face when he kept acting dumb about it, and you instantly looked around, afraid if anyone would hear you talking. Though it was more due to what you were talking about that you feared for people to find out, not for being caught talking to him in public.

“Ah, the picture!” He suddenly said, the expression on his face brightened as if he had a ‘eureka’ moment and you prayed to all the mighty above that you could hold back from scratching that smile off of his face. Literally. “I’m afraid I can’t.”

“What?”

Seokjin grinned wickedly as he leaned closer, whispering to you. “Why would I give such a nice picture to you after all the trouble I had gone through to get it? It’s my prized possession and I’d rather not lose it,” he said, his eyes glinting with pure mischief that had your body shivering in fear.

“What do you want with it anyway?” he asked, then his grin started to grow. “Do you find it thrilling to have a bare photo of you out there somewhere?”

“You—” you suddenly felt the urge to slap him on the face but you managed to hold back by clenching your hands right before you could swing it. Yet you still felt a small pride growing in your chest when he noticed your anger and flinched back in shock. “How the hell did you get it anyway?”

Seokjin only shrugged his shoulders. “Took it myself back in summer camp. You should be more careful when you go changing your clothes.”

“So, you—” you gasped. Clearly not believing your own two ears. “You really do have it.”

You tried to deny that it was true when there were people whispering rumours about how Seokjin had his hands on a certain picture of you. A polaroid picture that was said to be taken while you had your breasts revealed when you were about to go swimming in summer camp. You had waved it off when your best friend came to tell you about it and said that it was probably a lie, something he would ramble about with his friends just to put a shame on you. That the picture did not exist.

But this. This confirmed it.

You looked away when you felt your tears coming. Your chest had grown tight but you refused to let him see how weak he was making you feel. “How many people have seen it?”

“Just a couple of the guys who saw it in my room the first place. I don’t go around showing indecent pics to everyone I see. You should give me more credit than that.”

Forcing yourself to look at him, you practically started begging for his mercy. “Please, Jin. You can’t show it to anyone else or let it spread. Ever. If you really don’t want to give it to me or destroy it, at least promise me that you won’t show it to anyone.”

He was silent for a moment. “I promise,” he finally said. “And I’ll destroy it if anyone ever finds it.”

You didn’t truly expect that he would promise you that much, but you had to admit it gave you a good feeling when you heard it. “You do?”

“Scout’s honour.”

You were about to say something else when the other boys from the track team started walking out of the changing room. So all you did was give him your final threat before moving on. “I’m holding your words for it, Seokjin. And if I ever find out that you are spreading it around, I’m going to make you pay for it.”

You didn’t bother to wait for his response and quickly scrambled away from the spot, leaving the dumb pervert behind. If only you didn’t put so much hope and trust into him, you probably wouldn’t have regretted it later on.

Trees.

You look around and the giant trees are all you see aside from the dark void among them as the truck keeps driving through the woods. Seokjin has his eyes set forward as he drives the truck through the gravel-covered road.

Looking back and forth between the sight around you and him, you start to grow wary of the situation. Not only for the fact that you have no idea where you are going and that you cannot see anything outside the window, but also for the way his jaw is tight and his knuckles are turning white against the steering wheel.  

“Are we lost?”

Seokjin gives you no response at first, but then his jaw ticks for a brief moment and he forces himself to relax a little as he answers, “Uhm—no.”

“Oh, that sounds convincing,” you sarcastically comment on him while rolling your eyes. “Why don’t I believe you? I thought you knew the area.”

He glares at you for a second before turning back on the road. “I do. It’s just—I might have taken the turn a bit too early.”

Gasping, you look around you once again before turning to him with wide eyes. “You’re kidding me. Please tell me you’re kidding.”

“Look, I got this, alright? Fuck, I know these roads. It’s not my fault I kept getting distracted by you,” he suddenly snaps. “You know, I think you just succeeded in giving me your bad luck or something. It’s starting to feel like helping you is turning into bad karma.”

You let out a groan. Just when you are starting to think that you can start liking the guy and he just ruins it in seconds. “Bad karma? Now you’re saying I’m a bad karma? That bad luck started when I agreed on taking this damn ride with you.”

Shaking your head, you look away while cursing and calling him with every vile word you could think of. Then you ramble about how things have only been getting worse and you regret trusting him, starting from how you should have stayed back in your car and waited down the road instead of hitching a ride with him. You even add by telling him that it would have been better if you had camped out at the side of the road, to saying how you are starting to believe he is doing this on purpose to scare you or possibly kidnap you instead of taking you home. Then how you would rather risk being abducted by aliens than having to be taken by him.

All of a sudden, he starts to laugh, which stops you from calling him more names and have you turning to him, finding him looking amused while giving you his cocky smile for no reason at all.

“Sweetheart, you better stop blabbering shit and let a guy focus on driving before I kiss you.”

Huffing at him, you cross your arms and look away. You say nothing to him as he continues to drive. At least, not directly. Because you keep on muttering all the curses and threats you could think of to let him know that you would not be sitting down nicely if he fails to bring you home tonight.

“What if we get ambushed by wild animals? What if there’s a cliff on the end of this pathway? There is no possible way that this road is safe enough to drive on. I swear to God, if we don’t make it back safely, I’m going to—”

While you kept rambling on, Seokjin had only been silent. You could see his grin slowly fading away the more your voice got higher by the minute, words broken between each other as you were tossed and turned at every rough shake the truck had to endure the deeper it got into the woods.

Then, like a bad karma, your suspicion and doubt are both proven as the truck suddenly jolts, hitting a pothole in the middle of the road until you feel it tilting sideways before it falls to the other side as Seokjin presses the pedal, only to send it to another hole instead of releasing it free. When you hear him cursing while pressing the gas pedal, and all you could hear is the tire spinning instead of feeling it move, you know that you are both in trouble.

“Don’t tell me that we’re stuck.”

Seokjin snaps his eyes on you with his lips pursed tight to a thin line. He says nothing before he opens his door and steps outside, checking on the situation and any probable damage. Deep down, without having to hear him confirm it for you, you already know that you are completely stuck.

“Fucking great.”

Deciding not to be the bad guy, you carefully climb out of the truck to see what the problem is and maybe offer some help. Though you find it that you are probably useless when you could barely stand straight thanks to the numbing pain on one of your legs. You finally find a way to move around, however, but only by holding onto the side of the truck as you hop your way over to the other side.

You find Seokjin just standing up from looking into the tires, using his cellphone’s flashlight to be able to see better in the dark. You walk closer—or, in this case, hopping on your uninjured leg to keep yourself from walking on your hurting ankle—as he walks towards the truck’s compartment, and it is then when you finally see how the truck is angled awkwardly with its front tire buried in the snow. The snow had probably covered the deep pothole which he had missed earlier, and yes, now you are both stuck in the middle of nowhere. Right in the middle of the woods and the darkness around you is not helping to make you feel better at all.  

Turning to the back of the truck, you see Seokjin rummaging through the stuff he has back there and you call out to him. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

Seokjin nearly jumps, your voice has completely startled him as he didn’t even notice that you have gone out of the truck.

“Fuck, _____,” he gasps, pressing his free to his chest. “ No, I think I can handle it. What are you doing? You shouldn’t be walking, you’re going to make it worse,” he adds with a frown. He even turns his phone to light up your leg as if to make a point.

“I’m not standing on it,” you say to him while pointing at your leg that is slightly lifted off from the ground. “I just wanted to see what’s wrong. You can’t expect me to just sit in there and do nothing.”

Shaking his head, Seokjin reaches into the back of the truck once again and pulls out a car jack and a shovel. “Don’t worry, I got this,” he says while showing you his tools with a wink.

You look over to the tools he has in his hands and cannot help but ask, “You’re going to use those to do what, exactly?”

He looks down for a brief moment and starts explaining, “I’m gonna lift the truck up a little so I can see the hole and dig around it to make a path so the truck can climb up. It’s too dark and the snow is too thick, I need to do something before digging up to make sure I won’t be hitting the tire with the shovel.”

He may seem confident, but the way his eyes are shaking only lets you know that he is not truly sure about it either. He can probably see the dubious look on your face because he later adds, “Look, I don’t exactly know if it’ll work, but at least I can try to do something to get us out. Now move over and let me do the work.”

You do as he says and slide out of his way as he walks over, then he hands you his phone to help brighten things up for him. He calmly states that since there is still no reception showing on both your phones, they are completely useless at the moment except for their flashlights, and it would be the only thing you are allowed to do without adding injuries.

Seokjin kneels down next to his truck, getting the jack into place. Tossing his coat jacket away, he bends down and tries to nudge the tires out of the pothole using his tools. You point the lights from his phone towards him and lean against the side of the truck as you watch him work. Your eyes trail down as his muscles stretch and bulge underneath the tight long sleeves of his sweater, his shoulders looking strong and built as he pulls and pushes, groaning as he uses his strength to pull his truck out of the trap. His lips form into a pout and the frown on his face deepens as he concentrates.

You realise that even the darkness of the woods is not enough to mask his beauty. If only he had not opened his mouth to ruin things with his snarky comments and teases, you might have been swooning all over him like many of those students back in your high school, both girls and boys, would.

Noticing your silence, he glances over his shoulder and his cocky smirk grows when he notices where exactly you are currently looking at. “See something you like, sweetheart?” he teases.

Scoffing, you look away to hide the way your cheeks are warming up from being caught ogling him. I fact, you cannot believe you actually were seeing something that you like. Yet another thing he doesn’t need to know.

He continues to work once he is pleased to have you flustering. The space between you falls silent except for the sound of him working on the jack and his heavy breathing. And you cannot help but suddenly feel slightly nervous around him. Maybe it’s the cold, you wonder. Deciding that it must be messing your brain up.

You start wishing that you could be somewhere warm, with blankets around you instead of wet clothes and hot drinks. And hugs. Lots of hugs. Even Seokjin looks warm enough to snuggle with, with his strong arms and shoulders to lean on.

“Damn it,” he curses, snapping you out of your trance and have you looking at him again. He has moved from using the jack to digging into the ground with his shovel, and he looks annoyed when the couple of diggings he did had made no difference. “The ground is solid ice, the shovel can’t get through. I guess we’re going to be stuck here, after all.”

He tosses away the shovel and lets it land on the nearest pile of snow while he catches his breath. His face and neck are glowing with sweat, while you can feel your own skin blanch. Dread instantly takes over when you realise that you are going to be held up right here in the dark. And that is when you finally snap.

“Fine, you’re right. It’s probably me. I’m cursed. I must have done something wrong and whatever holy entity exists up there hates me.”

Of course, it had to be. You have been followed by one bad luck to another on this one night only and not even Seokjin’s presence could steer it away. Or maybe he is just a part of that bad luck? He isn’t really helping you, after all, so it could be it. At this point, you are starting to believe that the universe truly hates you.

“Have you gone insane?” Seokjin asks you with his eyes wide and a nervous chuckle coming out of his lips. He walks over to you and places both hands on your shoulders, lightly shaking you up as he calms you down. “Look, I was only joking when I said you were some sort of bad luck, okay? You seemed so into it when you were wallowing about how you got stranded, I thought it would be fun to tease you.”

Your heartbeat is still racing as if you are about to have a panic attack, but he forces you to keep looking into his eyes and you find both his words and his assuring gaze are distracting you just enough to have you slowly calm down.

“It’s nobody’s fault, things like this could happen to anyone, anytime. It could be worse, you know. I mean, we could have been stuck at different places on our own instead of together,” he adds with a playful shrug while throwing you a smile as he could tell that whatever he is saying to you is starting to get into your head.

“God, whatever,” you mutter while rolling your eyes. You cannot help the grin that comes from hearing his words. Looking away from his ridiculous happy face, you look out through the line of trees, into the darkness and the void that had scared you off earlier. Your eyes slowly adjust themselves to the dark, and just then, your sight clears out to show you something appearing from beyond the trees. “Hey, what’s that? Is that a—a house?”

Seokjin follows your gaze and he immediately laughs. “Well, what do you know? We were on the right track, after all,” he says, sounding relieved while you are left completely confused. Thankfully, he explains to you shortly, “That’s the Choi family’s old farm. We might be able to get us some help.”

You look over towards the old building, noticing the broken fences surrounding it and the way the main house looks more like a ran down shack and the old barn next to it is not looking so grand either. With no lights in the surrounding building, they look like nothing but a pair of haunted cabins. “But it’s dark and it seems—deserted.”

“Uh—yeah, old grandpa Choi lived here alone after his wife died. He only had a couple of horses, two cows, and a few chickens to take care of. I think I heard about him moving to be with his kids on the other side of the town after he got sick last year.”

You snap your eyes back to him, astounded. Even more so when he had spoken so lightly like it is no big of a deal.

“So—it basically is deserted.”

“I—technically, yes. But there has to be some electricity running or perhaps some tools left behind. Maybe a working house phone, or a first aid kit for your legs, who knows?” If he is completely unsure about his own ideas, he is clearly trying to hide it from you by turning around and quickly making his way towards the old farmland.

“And how exactly are we going to know that?” you ask while moving in small hops to follow him. “I’m not about to add breaking and entering to my naughty list.”

He stops dead in his track, turning around instantly when he heard what you just said. “A what—list?”

Waving both your arms, you voice out one of the most ridiculous things you could think of. “There has to be some kind of list of the bad things I did to deserve this much bad luck in one night.”

“Oh, you’ve got some bad luck, alright. But at least you got me, right?” he teases while chuckling. Though he stops when he sees that you are being serious. “Well, fine—do you have any better idea?”

Clearly, you have none. You are completely flabbergasted to the entire thing that you have nothing to offer at the moment, and he seems to be too impatient to wait until you can make up your mind. Obviously, there is no other choice but do exactly what he is planning to, which is why he turns around again and starts making his way through the trees.

“And we are not breaking into the property. I am,” he says to you while looking over his shoulders, not minding where he is heading as he trudges forward to the edge of the pathway.  

“Jin—” you call out to stop him just as he walks past the line of trees. But when he suddenly cries out and disappears as if the ground had just swallowed him, you know that you are too late.

“Oh, my God! Jin!”

It takes a lot of effort for you to hop off towards where Seokjin had fallen into. Once you reach the edge of the woods, you finally notice that the ground slightly descends from the pathway, going downhill towards the farmland beyond.

You can hear him laughing before you find him, lying down on his back and practically buried in the pile of snow. The broken patches of the snow around you shows you just where he had his misstep earlier before he came tumbling down.

“Jin, are you okay?” you shout out to him while taking another step forward while he is still chuckling like an ass down there.

As he notices you moving, he suddenly yells out, “No, ______. Stop!”

His warning is left unheard, however, when it is far too late. You have taken a step into the snowy hill and the ‘ground’ beneath you breaks, sending you slipping down the slope until you fall on your back, landing right beside him.

“Shit, _____,” you hear him calling as he crawls to you. “Are you okay?”

Seeing his face hovering above you snaps you right out of the shock, and then you start laughing.

“Oh, God,” you scream. “We are such a mess.”

“Shit, you scared me,” he says, slowly grinning when relief washes over him. “Yeah, we are quite the mess. And we are both soaking wet now.”

“Oh damn, you’re right,” you murmur as you look down on your clothes, and his own, all completely covered in snow. “No thanks to the snow, I guess.”

Lying back down against the slope beneath you, you look over to the farmhouse before you and wonder loudly, “Do you think we could just rest and shelter here?”

You feel cold and tired, and in more pain after the fall. The night is not getting any younger. And with this much stress, you know that you cannot force Seokjin to try and break his truck free in the dark and in this cold. You know that your family would be worried about you if you don’t reach home by tonight, but you also know that at least your father would still be logical enough not to unleash a whole search party for you only because you are late for half a day.

As long as you can go back on the road the moment the sun rises, that is.

As if reading your thoughts, Seokjin follows your gaze and nods. “Maybe. It might be better to rest than risk it in the dark. I can try again when the sun is up. Hopefully, the ground will break more easily once it has warmed up,” he says, before pushing himself off the ground. “Stay here for a moment and let me lock up the truck before leaving it.”

“Oh, don’t worry. It’s not like I can go anywhere,” you wave him off as he turns to run back up towards his truck, leaving you there to feel the throbbing pain on your ankle while wondering how terribly sore you are going to feel in the morning around the hips.

You were never one to go to high school parties.

But when your best friend became a host for one during her birthday on one Friday night, there was no way you were going to refuse. Especially when she had let you know that your crush was invited.

He was one of the boys from the track team, one of the few decent ones who had never been rude to you. Dongjun was always so nice and so full of smiles that you fell for him instantly. His personality intrigued you solely because he was different compared to the other boys, more mature, more gentle, and had always been so caring.

Through a scheme brought upon by your close friends, you had ended up inside the closet during a Seven Minutes in Heaven-ish game with the gorgeous boy himself. The seven minutes felt like a lifetime when you spent the first two talking shyly with him before spending the next five minute of it kissing.

Your very first kiss. With your very first crush.

Your heart was racing and there was no doubt your face would have a change of colour when you finally parted, and you had let him know about it being your first. “That was my first kiss.”

He smiled against your lips with his forehead on yours. “Then it was my honour to have been given a chance to give it to you,” he said then, and you felt so close to melting into a puddle. “How about I repay it by joining you at lunch next Monday?”

“S-sure.”

He was the one who left the closet first, after kissing you one last time with a brief, chaste kiss. And you were still smiling and flushing in bliss when you stepped out half a minute later.

The bliss you felt then was cut short, however, when you were met with the last person on earth you would ever wish to see.

“Someone looks happy,” Seokjin greeted you with a sing-a-long tone as he watched you stepping out of the closet.

“Who invited you?” you asked him with a frown. You were sure that your best friend had insisted not to invite the devil, yet here he was, looking bitter and evil as he always did when he saw you.

With his hands in his pockets, Seokjin grinned. “The boys from the club were invited and they needed a ride. So I had to be a good samaritan and offer my service.”

“Quite the samaritan, you are,” you scoffed, then tried to walk past him.

“I wonder if he would be even happier if he had seen your picture.”

Stopping in your tracks, you turned to him and glared. “Don’t. You. Dare.”

Seokjin backed away from you, chuckling. “We’ll see, little one. We’ll see.”

Seokjin trudges down the small snowy hill with you on his back. With every step he makes, your body bounces against his strong back a little. The warmth coming from his body and the strong grip he has on your thighs are enough to make your heart pounding and your insides tingling. You have your arms around his neck and it is quite surprising that you have no urge to strangle him while he makes the trip down to the deserted farmhouse.

He had tried to help you walk earlier, only to fail when the pain on your leg felt too unbearable. If it wasn’t so bad when you fell on it the first time, it certainly looks like the second fall had officially made it worse. Added with having it buried in the snow, though only briefly, there was no way you could walk on it on your own.

Between his show of clumsiness and your sprained ankle, it has been proven that the possibility of you falling again on your hurting leg would be much bigger if you had been hopping all the way down from the slopes to the old farmhouse, so he had offered to give you a lift on his back.

You say nothing as he finished the descent walk until he reaches the main house’s front porch. Just as you had suspected, the door and windows are locked and sealed tight and the electricity seems to have been cut off. After trying all the locks and fails at it, he then moves towards the barn on the other side of the property, instantly relieved to find that the front lock had been broken off.

“I guess this is where we’re staying the night,” he says while pulling the door open.

Seokjin hobbles into the barn while flashing his phone around. Finding a few wooden crates at the front side of the room, he walks over to them and carefully deposits you on top of one of them.

“Stay here, let me look around to see if there’s anything we could use.”

After settling down on one of the strongest crates, you watch as Seokjin stumbles further into the barn with the help of his phone to light the way. Within a minute, he reaches all the way back and shouts, “Hey, there’s a door here.”

“Is it leading somewhere?” you shout back, curious to know what he had found. You only have silence as your response and you use your own phone to light up your surroundings. All you could see with it are a couple of wooden crates like the one you are sitting on, a few piles of dry hay, and some dirty sacks which you may not want to know what they contain inside.

While you are marvelling on the interior of the barn and wonder how on earth you are going to stay here for the night, you can hear his muffled voice coming from the other side of the barn. Having no idea what he is saying, only able to hear random muffled words, you yell out to ask him, "Who has a nice rack?"

Seokjin returns from the other room, standing in the doorway with an amused look on his face as he laughs. "I was saying that there is a fireplace on the back,” he tells you as he makes his way back to you.  

"Oh."

"Come on,” he says as he turns, giving you his back while kneeling on the floor. It takes you seconds to climb onto his back, and he is careful enough as he lifts you up to not have you bumping your ankle as he takes you to the room out back.

You are surprised to find that the other room is a lot more descent than the front side of the barn. It looks more like a tiny lounge or a seating room, except with only a few broken chairs set aside and a large wooden chest placed across the fireplace. There is even a long cable hanging from the ceiling, as if there used to be a hanging lamp or a chandelier being set up there.

He points at the small fireplace in the smaller room as he slowly deposits you on the floor. “It may not seem much, but it would be enough to warm us for the night and keep us from freezing to death.” You look at the small furnace and the few blocks of wood left on its side, silently relieved to have it there and hope that he could make them work somehow.

“I also found this,” he says, pointing his lights towards the huge chest which has its lid left open. He helps you walk over to it before showing you the fuzzy blankets being kept inside.

“Blankets?”

He chuckles. “Yeah, they might be a bit damp but I think they’re usable. Let’s get you warmed up while I set up the fire.”

You didn’t even realise that you have been shivering until you try to speak and the words are caught on your numbing lips. As Seokjin moves to stand next to you, you finally notice that his lips had taken a bluish tint. The fall he had earlier in the snow had made his clothes all soaked and there is no doubt the cold temperature has gone through the thick clothes he is wearing, just the same way it has been for you.

Seokjin looks away from the pile of blankets, meeting your eyes with a determined look in them. ”You need to take those soaked clothes off. It won't help much if you keep them on."

"Are you trying to trick me into getting naked for you?"

"No, I'm just helping you out. I know that I’m a jerk but I know when to be nice, so stop thinking the worse about me, will you?" he suddenly snaps and you flinch at the tone. You were trying to make things light but perhaps the stress and the dire situation had pushed his emotions to the edge. You hear him sigh as he bends down, pulling a thick blanket and hands it to you gently. “Here, take everything off and wear this. We can hang them all dry by the fire later."

He pulls out another blanket for himself, and takes the extra one he finds inside and lays it down on the floor as a cover. Taking your hand in his, Seokjin helps you to sit down on it carefully. “I’ll help you take your boots off. I know it can be a pain in the ass,” he says while forcing a smile, as if he is trying to lighten things up again after his previous outburst.

A part of you wants to shut him off, still feeling the sting of his reaction earlier. But you figure that he is right, the hardest part of it would be pulling your foot out of the boots. The pain could be a bitch and there is no way you would be able to handle it on your own, much less brave enough to actually do it without someone else’s help.

“Okay,” you say to him, angling your leg towards him and let him hold it up gently in his hands. “I’m so going to hate this part.”

He chuckles. “Try not to kick my face,” he says, smiling as bends down.

“I’ll do my best,” you tell him while gritting your teeth.  

Pulling one boot off from your uninjured foot first, Seokjin places it gently beside the wooden chest, then he reaches for the hurting ankle. You clench your jaw as he holds tightly on the back of your knee, then pulls the boot off with the other hand. The pain is too much that it has you screaming and cursing as he tugs the boot off in one swift move, but you hold back just enough not to kick him right on his head.

“Great job, no more injuries for the night,” he teases as he puts the boot away. He looks down, studying your ankle for a moment before lowering your leg so you could rest it on the blanket. “It’s definitely a sprain. Be careful with it when you change. I’ll give you some privacy.”

He walks away to the other side of the room with his blanket folded on his arm and you wobble slowly on the blanket to turn around.

Keeping your back on him, you strip down to your underthings after making sure that the wetness has yet to soak that deep into them, then wrap the fading burgundy coloured blanket around your body. You could hear the crackling sound of fire behind you as Seokjin lights the fireplace up while you were taking your time with the thick layers of your clothes, and now warmth is starting to rise in the room.

You still hear him shuffling around behind you so you keep your back on him and take your time, inspecting your ankle using the lights from your phone. You hear the sound of his wet clothes falling on the ground before he whispers, “Are you decent?”

“Yeah, I am,” you tell him before turning around, finding him wrapped in a red blanket. He walks over to you with a white box in his hands.

“Is your leg still hurting?” he asks you, holding the box up to you. “Saw this by the fireplace. I think the bandages are still good enough to wrap that ankle of yours for a while until we can get something better to heal it.”

“Um, okay,” you answer him hesitantly as he kneels down in front of you with a bandage in his hands. “Do you know how to put that on me?”

His eyes twinkle in the dark. “I’m no doctor, but I used to fix up some of the boys from the track club whenever someone hurt their ankles during practice or at a competition back in school. Trust me, I know what to do.”

Sighing, you realise there is no point in denying his help by now. “Fine, as long as you can make sure I can still walk. I might sue you if I never walk again,” you joke with him, and you are relieved when he only laughs.  

Seokjin reaches up to hold up your leg, and you flinch back as he touches your skin. “Oh, sorry. Did I hurt you?” Seokjin asks you with a sheepish smile.

“No, you didn’t,” you answer while looking down, hiding the heat rising in your cheeks while wondering exactly why you are reacting this way. You keep your eyes looking down as he expertly wraps the bandage around your sprained ankle. His hands move gently as he treats you and his voice is soft when he says how he wishes he has some painkillers in hand to help you deal with the pain whenever you wince.

“There,” he says once he is done, and you mumble a soft, “Thank you,” while he slowly crawls next to you so he could lie down on the blanket by your side. “Are you comfortable?”

You try to smile at him and nod to respond, but even as you tug the blanket tighter around you, you are still shaking. He must have noticed it no matter how hard you try to hide it from him, because he looks over and gently tugs your blanket towards him. “You’re still freezing. Come here.”  

Looking up, you see him smiling as he shifts closer. “I know something that’ll warm you up,” he says as he moves his arms around you, pulling you to his side. It doesn’t take long for you to finally warm up. His body is doing much more to give you warmth than the blanket and fire do, just the way you had expected it would.  

You were still full of bliss from the Friday night party when you came to the school on Monday.

Pretty sure you were humming a song throughout the day, even through Math class that you had dreaded so much. You have yet to meet up with Dongjun since you arrived at school. The only time you did see him was during PE class, when he waved at you from the distance before the teacher tortured you on the tracks.

Your heart was racing rapidly right before lunchtime, and you had to stop yourself from running off to the cafeteria with the excitement of seeing your crush. You did rush out of the classroom the minute the bell rang and found him there, but the reaction he gave you when you came to him was completely unexpected.

“What’s wrong?”

You forced him to explain the reason why he was suddenly acting cold. He couldn’t even look at your face when you asked him if he still wanted to have lunch with you.

“I—I changed my mind. I also have practice right after this, so I have to go. Sorry,” Dongjun avoided you like a plague and you chased him out of the cafeteria for answers. Except that when the answer came, it arrived to you through the one person you dreaded to see most.

Just as you managed to stop Dongjun on the hallway, the devil came and wrapped his arm around Dongjun’s shoulder.

“What’s going on here? A lover’s quarrel?”

“This is none of your business,” you hissed at Seokjin, wishing he would just go away so you could finish talking to Dongjun again.

Instead of turning away and leave, he spoke with a wicked grin on his face, “I don’t know, I thought maybe Dongjun can share what is on his mind with me. We both received something special from you, after all.”

He winked, while you felt like you have been thrown to a burning flame.

“No,” you muttered, shaking your head while you looked between him and your crush; one who was looking at you with disgust while the other looked gleeful, and you carefully backed away from them.

Just as you turned around to leave the place, you heard Seokjin called out to you, “You know that you could just give him an extra copy to keep so I won’t have to show him mine, right—”

You were already dashing out of the hallway when he called you with a certain name, not using your name or the nickname he would usually use whenever he was taunting you. But another hurtful nickname which you could still hear even when you were putting distance between you. You could still hear the laughter coming from the students who were nearby and heard the name. And you could still hear his voice even until days, weeks, months passed, and people were still calling you with it.

It was the start of the war, right before hell was unleashed through your very own two hands.

Kim Seokjin was going to pay.

If only the one revenge that finally stopped him was enough to make the other kids stop all the same time.

Under the flickering light from the burning fireplace, you huddle close to each other with your backs against the wall. Groaning against his chest, you talk about the possibility of your parents making a missing person report for you while he promises that he will get things moving again by the break of dawn.

Bumping his blanket-covered shoulder against yours when you suddenly grow quiet right after, Seokjin asks you, “What are you thinking about now?”

“The apocalypse.”

“The—what, now?”

“You know those zombie movies?” You ask him while tilting your head to look up to his face, seeing him nod. ”In those movies, you’d see those characters that would meet up during trial times, then they end up teaming up to get to safety or fight to find a way out. Then just as you are starting to root for them to succeed, they’d get lost in the middle of nowhere, stumble into a group of zombies while running out of supplies and with no weapons to protect them, and you’ll either end up with a heartbreak from seeing them perish right at the end of the movie or ugly crying when they and up surviving and falsely think they are in love with each other from all the adrenaline they got from escaping death.”

Seokjin falls silent for a brief moment, appearing like he is in complete awe, before he starts laughing. “Are you saying that all of this reminds you of that?”

“Yep,” you say while emphasising the P. “Getting your car stuck in a ditch, followed by getting lost in the woods, find a deserted barn and choosing it as a shelter. Those are all in the checklist of doom in those movies I’ve seen.”  

Seokjin laughs. “You always did, and still do, have such a vivid imagination, ______.”

Smiling at him, you only shrug. “Can’t help it. It’s better than always thinking the worse of things, right? It always works to help you escape from the real world sometimes.”

“Oh, it does,” he agrees, still chuckling as he imagines the scene in his head and compares it with the current situation you are both in.  

When the last chuckle runs through him, he turns to you with a somber smile. “Hey, I wanted to say sorry—I know I was such an ass to you when we were younger. I was a total jerk and I had no excuse for all that I’ve done. And also for—” he swallows hard and stops himself, but you know exactly where he is getting at when you see the painful remorse in his eyes. “But, I want you to know that I am sorry, for everything.”

“Oh.”

You are caught by surprise to his sudden confession that you have absolutely no words to say at first. Especially not the right ones. But then you look up into his eyes to see the sincerity in them that finally brings your mind back to life. “I, uh—I don’t really know what to say. I had never thought you would apologise, ever. Least of all care enough to think about it.”

His gaze softens, but you could still see the sadness in his eyes growing while you nervously keep rambling on. “But I appreciate you for apologising. It really means a lot to me that you do.”

Seokjin cuts you off before you can finish talking, as his lips come pressing gently against yours.

You are caught completely off guard that your body freezes for a moment. Seokjin pulls back briefly, hesitant to continue at first, but little does he know that your nerves had just gotten awakened since the second his lips collided against yours. With a gasp, you lean forward against him to press your lips to his. You can feel him relaxing and breathing deeply as he moves his lips in tune with yours.

The kiss feels gentle and featherlight, but it is still enough to send your body buzzing with light sparks of warmth. Your eyes slowly flutter to close as he slowly deepens the kiss. Slowly melting into his touch, you feel his hands moving down your hips and you are suddenly lifted up as he is carefully pulling you onto his lap without harming your leg.

His fingers find their way to slip beneath the blanket and trail along your bare back, making shivers run down your spine with his delicate touch. One of his hands makes its way up to the back of your head where he cradles you, angling you so he can deepen the kiss. As his tongue laps along the seam of your lips, asking to slip in, his fingers tighten in your hair, pulling on the strands as he eagerly devours your lips.

Yet the moment your scalp stings from the pull, it triggers a memory from the past that instantly stops your brain from functioning. You are suddenly reminded to how he used to pull your hair as he sat behind you in class, before mocking how ugly you were with your hair all tied up. Then the other bad things he did, as little as they may be then, all start coming back to you.

As if there is a bucket of ice being poured over your head, you instantly snap out of your daze and push against his shoulders. Shoving him away, you push yourself off of his lap and try to sit up, though you can only shuffle back from him slightly when Seokjin still has his hands holding up your waist.

“What’s wrong?” he asks. His voice is deep and sounds like honey that it makes something inside you drip. It sounds like a sin, and you quickly remind yourself that this means nothing. That he means nothing.

Your chest tightens when your emotion is running wild and your mind is spinning like crazy. You look away as you climb down from his lap once he lets you go, and lie down next to him again.

What has gotten into you? You ask yourself, completely not believing that you had just kissed Kim Seokjin.

“_____, what is it? Is something wrong?” Seokjin reaches for your hand and entwines his fingers with yours, and only then do you realise that your hands have been shaking.

Looking up, you take in the sight of him. His lips plumped and swollen, pink and wet after the kiss. His eyes are hazy, and when they were showing you his dark desire only moments ago, they are now staring at you with a pained gaze in them.

“Did I really hurt you that bad, _____?” he murmurs softly, as if questioning himself rather than doing it to you. The worrying line appears thick on his face, enough to have you choking on your words.  

“Jin, I—”

“I’m sorry. I really mean it. I don’t know how many times I need to apologise, I will,” he cuts you off before you could say anything, not only with his pleas but with the touch of his lips. You have been so deep in your terrible memories that you didn’t notice it when he leans close. While you are distracted with his lips and his soft voice, he wraps his arms around you as if he wants to stop you from breaking apart.

“Just—” you clear your throat when you still cannot find your voice. “Just tell me why? Why did you have to torment me so much when we were kids?”

Remorse and sadness start to fill his eyes and you suddenly regret bringing things up. You probably should have said anything because his smile vanishes and a somber expression takes over his feature. The sight of him fractures something deep inside your heart that you start chewing the inside your cheeks, indecision weighing heavily in your gut. You still cannot believe that you had kissed him, even more so to think that you actually liked it. But you cannot deny that it still hurts every time the memory of the past comes back to you.

Seokjin’s eyes burn into yours when he slowly starts to speak. “I never hated you, if that’s what you are thinking. Even if I can truly understand if you do hate me for everything I did,” he says, sighing deeply while he runs his fingers through his hair. “Honestly, I don’t really have a great excuse. I kind of always liked you.”

That has you raising your brows. He liked you? But that makes no sense.

“Well, you sure have a terrible way of showing it. You kinda had then and still kind of do,” you murmur softly, confused, while his cheeks flush under your gaze.

With a small grin on his face, he responds to you slowly, “I know I do. Back then, I was just a stupid kid who wanted you to pay attention to me. Then, when I got older and we were in high school, I realised how stupid it was but you already hated me. So it was like, what the hell is the point on changing it now?”

That does sound stupid. Frowning at him, you can only ask, “And how did that lead to you embarrassing me in high school with the boob pic rumours and the name you gave me then?”

Seokjin blinks slowly and then his face pales. Turning his gaze on the floor, his hands clench tight on his side and he looks angry. Though it is clear that he seems to be angry at himself more than he does to you, or to the situation he created then.

Rubbing a hand on his face, Seokjin sighs. “There was never a boob pic,” he mutters while covering his lips with a palm.

“What?”

He looks over to you, the remorse in his eyes seems to grow deeper. “It was a lie, okay? It was true that the polaroid picture everyone found was of you, but it was a picture of you in that summer dress you loved so much. I took a candid photo of you because I had no idea if I could still see you that way again after that day. I hid it from everyone because it was my prized possession and people just assumed that it was—” he stops to clear his throat, “—something indecent, and started spreading that I was keeping a picture of your boobs since I fought real hard to keep people from seeing it. I couldn’t explain my friends that I kept it because I loved looking at you when I couldn’t do it openly when we met, and things just blew up into a big mess that whatever I tried to do to stop it didn’t matter anymore.”

“So, it wasn’t—” you choke out both from relief and astonishment that you cannot even say it out loud. It was never a photo of your private parts, he was never the pervert you thought he was, but it doesn’t stop the heat from rising on your cheeks that comes from knowing the truth behind those rumours.

“I still have it, you know. I can show it if you don’t believe me. It’s starting to fade a bit, but the image is still there.”

Your eyes turn wide, clearly not expecting that. But you find yourself believing him somehow without seeing it. “There’s no need. I—” you clear your throat before speaking again, suddenly feeling the way your heart flutters in your chest when you imagine him keeping a picture of you in his room and wonder the reason why. It has been years, after all. “That’s why you refused to give it to me.”

“Yeah, well—” he rubs the back of his neck while looking away sheepishly. “It would be embarrassing to let you know about my stupid crush then when you hated me so much,” he says with a chuckle.

You voluntarily join him, chuckling softly when the weight in your chest slowly fades. But there is one more thing you need to clear away to be able to move on. “And the nickname? You embarrassed me with that and mocked me right at my face with it. What was that all about?”

Seokjin flinches the moment he remembers about it and begins shaking his head. “That one, I can’t even defend myself. I was bitter and jealous. Dongjun came up to me that weekend and told me about you giving your first kiss to him, and he was planning to ask you out that day. I—” he groans as he pulls at his hair out of anger.

“Fuck, I feel like such a total ass,” he chuckles bitterly, shaking his head. “It’s not that I never truly realised that I was acting like one back then, but—God, I can’t believe I let that got into my head. I just—he kept bragging about the kiss and out of jealousy, I just told him that he could be happy with stealing your kiss all he wanted, but at least I was the one who got the boob pic. And I made that comment to make my point clear.”

You blink. “So, instead of clearing things up, you ended up using it to your advantage to stop him from making advances at me.”

“I’m such an ass,” he groans, once again rubbing his hand over his face.

“Yeah, you were,” you mutter, frowning. “The least you could have done was made a better rhyme for it. Betty Boob? Days after you called me that right at the school hall, people started calling me Betty with the Boobies or Boob Girl, before they got lazy and just cut it short with Boobies or changed it entirely to Grand Tits or something.” You ramble on, though what had made your stomach coil in anger and disgust back then now only gives you small trembles of laughter when you think about it. But you admit that perhaps you only feel that way because he had told you how sorry he was for being an ass to you. You have already started forgiving him, in a way, you just want to tease him a bit while asking for some explanation. Even if you were expecting to hear any other excuse than about him having a stupid crush on you.

Seokjin chuckles bitterly, noticing how much the tension between you has grown lighter, then his grin turns somber again when he speaks, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for any of that to happen. I swear. It was stupid of me for not keeping my mouth closed, and I’d no anything to make up for it.”

Exhaling a sigh, you let his words sink in for a moment. You have no idea why you are taking this a lot better than you had thought you would. But then again, this is still better than what you have been thinking about him all these years. Everything was still pretty messed up, but you had started hating him less since he admitted the truth about the polaroid picture and when he said that it was his prized possession. You may bring it up later in the future for him to prove it, though that has you thinking—does that mean you want to see him again?

Then the name-calling. You still hate it, but it seems funny now when you think about it, after you found out that it was merely a slip up caused by his ridiculous jealousy. It did ruin a chance for you with Dongjun, but was it really such a big deal at all? You only shared one kiss and it was an innocent crush that didn’t lead you to a huge heartbreak. So maybe it wasn’t so much of a big loss, after all.

But still—

“If it weren’t for you giving a permanent title on my name and the unrealistic boob pic, I would have probably hated you less.”

His face falls, then he nods weakly. “Yeah, I hated myself for letting things happen and I still kind of do. If I could go back in time and change everything, I would. I swear. I’m really sorry, _____.”

It sounds unbelievable, but you can see the truth in his words when you look at him. “Okay,” you whisper to him. You can still feel the hurt for bringing all of them up but it has grown much lesser now that you have talked about it. The only thing you are feeling now is the way your heart is clenching at the sight of his fallen expression, how his eyes are covered in hurt and how you want so bad to console him just as much as you need him to do the same to you.

“Thank you,” he says, sighing in relief. “Just—tell me what to do to make it up. I’d do anything.”

“Anything?” you ask him, while he nods. Your eyes fall to his lips, and you start feeling tingles on your own lips the moment you remember the kiss you shared. “Then—maybe you can make it up right now.”

“What do you have in mind?”

“This—” you whisper before lunging forward to him. Wrapping your arms around his neck, you tug him forward until he falls over your body. He could barely catch himself as he lands on top of you but still manages to hold his weight up as he plants his hands on either side of you.

He places a soft kiss on your lips, neck, on the bend of your shoulders, taking your mind away from the crumbling pain inside your chest while replacing it with heat that brings up a desirable shiver through your body.

The thought of him being the enemy is starting to get tucked away to the back of your mind. Your conscience keeps telling you to push him away, but your eyes look down on his body as you try to avoid his gaze, forgetting that just like you are, he is basically bare underneath the blanket he has wrapped around him, aside from his briefs. And you had pushed the thick fabric away when you were kissing him, giving you the perfect few of his muscular shoulders, his bulging pecs, his delectable abs that are calling you to run your fingers on and follow the trail leading down beneath his boxers.

Perhaps people were right about the advantage of kissing and making up, because your mind suddenly drifts. The anger and hate you have had on him for years suddenly start heating up into something else as they are slowly burning into something more feral between your legs.

Instead of pushing him away and ignoring it, you give in and pull him to you. Without any hesitation, his lips find yours once again, as if being apart from you was already too much and he needs to taste you again, breathing in your soft moans as he deepens the kiss. Your legs move apart as your body grows lax beneath him and he crawls between them. His crotch lands right at your covered center and you buck your hips up, grinding against his bulge to relief the itch growing at your core.

“Fuck, ______,” he groans as he pulls slightly away, keeping his lips hovering against yours. “You’re going to be the death of me.”

His complaints fall short because he already catches your lips with another kiss. It grows deeper and hotter by the second, getting even more desperate and needy as you suck his tongue inside your mouth and he bites and nibbles on your lips between each kiss. His hands roam down your body, touching every curve, every inch of your skin, before they make a quick work to relief you out of your underthings. Your own hands find their way down his bare chest, feeling his hot skin and tracing down the lines of his abs before you slip your fingers through the waistband of his briefs and push it down. Seokjin’s hand leaves your skin only to help you on it, and he is soon out of the last fabric covering his skin.

Once you are both completely bare, your blanket has fallen to your side while his own is still hanging desperately around his waist, he pulls back slightly and looks down at you.

“Are you sure that you want to keep on going? I don’t want you to regret this,” he murmurs against your lips, tracing them with his own. Breathless as he speaks, the pure desire in his eyes is clear.

“Please,” you start pleading, already too far gone to think clearly at this point. It feels as if the moment he had laid the truth and his own self bare before you, every wall you have put up crumbled to the ground and your true desire wins. “Get over here and fuck me,” you impatiently scold him when you notice that he has yet to make a move.

“Damn, you’re bossy,” he says as he grins at you.

“Yeah, well—you should’ve known that by now,” you tell him off while acting blasé, though the tremble that is slightly present in your voice betrays you and you just have to snug your bottom lip between your teeth to hold back a groan.

You watch him fisting himself, giving himself a couple of strokes as he slowly bends down. Moving over your body, Seokjin’s lips land on the column of your throat, tracing hot kisses all the way down until he finds your nipples. They have slightly turned hard from the cold air and incredibly sensitive that your whole body jolts with pleasure the moment he takes one into his lips, earning a loud cry coming from you.

He swirls his tongue around the bud, making you arch your back as you moan and sigh, pressing your breasts into his face to have him suck it harder into his mouth.

Releasing the pebbled nipple with a pop, he kneads the other breast, pinching the tip between two fingers. His eyes grow dark with lust as he watches the way the tip turns instantly hard as a pebble, how your chest heaves heavily for air while whimper after whimper keeps slipping through your parted lips.

Still stroking on his length, he moves the other hand from your breast to grip tight on your leg and spread it open for him, only to suddenly stop. As he blinks, the desire in his eyes is soon replaced with confusion, as if he had just realised that something is wrong.

“Ah, shit—I don’t have any condom. I wasn’t exactly expecting to have sex with anyone when I left this morning,” he says, chuckling nervously. He tries to make things light but you can definitely see the panic in his eyes and it squeezes your heart a little. “I—I can try and pull out though. I mean, I’ll do it, or we could—”

Chuckling softly, you reach up and place a finger on his lips to stop him from rambling. “It’s fine. I get checked regularly to know that I have nothing in me. I’m safe and I’m also on birth control,” you calmly explain to him while deep down cheering at yourself to have made the decision to do so even if you haven’t been with anyone else for months. But yeah, he doesn’t need to know that last one. “You don’t have to if you don’t want to, unless you have something—”

“I’m clean,” he quickly adds, appearing relieved for a moment before the dark gaze in his eyes returns. Leaning back down on you, he presses his lips against yours, while he lets a hand roam down your body, tracing down your skin from your waist to your belly, then down to your mound. At the touch of his fingers against your folds, you spread your legs wider, beckoning him closer as the need to have him inside you gets even stronger. You can feel yourself leaking down below, your arousal building and pooling around his fingers when he whispers, “And I also want to come inside you. Fill you up until you are all hot and full inside with my cum.”

“Jin,” you whine softly, your eyelids are fluttering when you feel like your whole body is burning with need. You barely catch on to his smile as it grows, when your eyes are filled with haze and tears as he slowly slides his fingers up and down your wet slit, gathering your arousal before he pushes two fingers inside, stretching your tight entrance with a slow thrust.

“Have patience, pretty girl. You know that I need to make sure you’ll be ready for me,” he says with a chuckle. Kissing your lips to tame your light whimpers, Seokjin pumps his fingers in and out of you a couple more times. You can feel the pleasure rising, edging you to the point that you are close to explode, but still not enough to reach it yet.

“Please—please, Jin. I need you,” you keep pleading while he only licks his lips, hiding the sly grin he is sporting as he watches your reaction to his touches. You give your all to keep your hands away from pulling his hand to reach deeper, clutching tightly on his upper arms to keep your hands out of the way. But then the need inside you wins and your body moves on its own, as you start moving your hips, humping yourself against his fingers to have them fucking you deeper.

Just as you are losing control of your body and desire, his own resolve seems to snap at the same time. With a whisper of a curse, he withdraws his fingers from the depth of your heat then slowly climbs his way on top of your body. Using one hand to hold himself up, he brings the other, the one which has been coated by your release, into his lips. You watch in awe as he licks his fingers, drinking in your sweet nectar with pure hunger in his eyes.

“I wanted to taste you the moment I saw how drenched you are,” he groans, then he moves his hand back to his shaft, covering his wide girth with his palm. He spreads your legs for him while he strokes himself, then aligns the tip of his length at your entrance.

“Relax for me, baby,” he whispers. Staring into your eyes, he enters you slowly, really slow, letting you feel it as he stretches you apart and fills you up with his thick girth. You feel it as his cock enters you inch by glorious inch, how each ridge and vein rub against your pulsing walls, and you clench your jaw while praying to the fucking universe that you wouldn’t come right this very second.

“Jin—” you gasp as he reaches deeper, pushing through the depth of your tight walls as if he wants to mark every nook and every cranny of your hot canal, torturing you once again by sending you to the edge before he could fill you up to the brim. “Oh God, you feel so good.”

You feel his chest rumbling against your breasts as he chuckles. “Really, now? Well, I’m nowhere done with you yet, pretty girl,” he says. His cock is already deep within you and he suddenly pushes forward, thrusting the last few inches of his length in one swift move until you feel the hard tip of his cock nudging at the brim. And your body erupts, the first spasm of your incoming climax runs through you, pulsing around his cock as your walls grow tight for him.

Gasping for breath, you don’t even notice it when your eyes are shut closed to how good you are feeling until he tells you to open them.

“Open up your pretty eyes for me, baby. I want to look into your eyes and see how good I’m making you feel,” he coaxes you while pressing his lips on yours to snap you back to focus on him. The moment you open your eyes for him, his smile grows and you find yourself wanting to see it even more. “Deep breath, baby. Are you ready?”

Exhaling a deep sigh, you nod your head. “Yes, give it to me.” And he does just that.

He pulls back slowly and starts moving immediately, as if he has been holding back for too long and it is time for him to get what he needs from you. Pistoning his hips, thrusting deep, he fills your tight channel over and over again with hard strokes. You can hear his curses each time his cock hits your depth and your walls clench tight around him, while your own curses come as he latches his lips around your nipple, nibbling and sucking the hard tip as his thrusts grow faster.

Your hands make their way from his pecs to his waist, before they land on his hips so you could hold him close to you and feel the way he swivels his body on each thrust he makes.

“Jin, more—more, please,” you beg him, pressing him by the hips and urging him to move faster, to fuck you harder, keeping him there even with your eyes closed from feeling too much and not having enough.

“You want more, baby?” he asks you once he releases your nipple from his hot mouth. You look up and see him moving to the other breast, licking the hard tip and blowing his warm breath on it.

“Yes, Jin. Faster. Harder. I want to—”

He gives you no chance to finish that very sentence when he suddenly gives you a hard thrust, and you instantly cry out his name when he hits you right at the very spot you needed him to be. He keeps repeating the motion, keeping up the steady pace as he hits the spot again, and again. One stroke, two strokes, three—

“Jin…I’m—shit!” you whimper as he nips at your throat, muffling his deep groans as he feels your walls clamping down on his cock as your pleasure starts building, tugging you close to the cliff’s edge.

“Come, baby. Come on, come for me,” he coaxes you with deep grunts as he continues to thrust, making your whole body shake and your thighs quiver harder around him. You start feeling his cock flutter inside you the more your body tightens around him, your stomach coils with your rising climax while he grows harder, his cock twitches against your walls to let you know that his own release is just on the horizon.

And then, you feel it, your whole body erupting in shocks of pleasure as your climax comes in massive waves. You feel like you are burning hot while your release coats his cock, your cries drown the slick noises of your cum against his thrusts, before you feel like your heart is about to burst out of your chest.

“Fuck, I’m coming—” he hisses, and like a huge eruption, he explodes with his own release. His entire body vibrates against yours as he fills your tight channel with every single drop of his cum and it sends your body into another climax. It feels smaller, but almost as intense as the previous one as you feel every drop of anger and frustration, every single want and need, all that have been accumulated for years to be relieved at this very moment.

Seokjin still moves in and out of you as he slowly comes down from his orgasm, while yours settles down into short spasms of pleasure until your body calms beneath him. You open your eyes slowly, blinking away the haze as you take in the sight of him, while his eyes are slowly opening as he finally comes to halt.

At that very moment, when you look into his eyes, you feel content for the very first time and you are starting to see him in a different light. His cheeks are flushed and his eyes are just as glossy as yours, his chest is rising and falling rapidly as he takes in deep breaths. His hair is a complete mess, both from your hands when you were kissing him and from his rapid movements when he was fucking you into oblivion. His lips are plumped and slightly parted, and you find yourself wanting to pull him back to you so you could kiss him again. And when you look at him, you no longer feel the same anger that you used to have for him whenever you saw him in the past. Instead, you are starting to feel like you want to see him like this and feel this exact moment with him again.  

To feel the same peacefulness and content that he brings after that wild, intense sex.

Staring into his eyes, you can see every emotion running through him. Everything that seems to mirror your own. His confusion, excitement, his want and need. Everything blurs together into one. For a moment, it feels too overwhelming that you look away from him, only to find yourself wondering why you are not having a hard time dealing with all of this.

The moment you snap out of your thoughts, you notice his eyes trailing up and down, giving you his perusal gaze before his cocky grin returns.

“You know, if only I had known that all I had to do was to fuck you senseless in order to stop us from fighting so much, I would have done it years ago,” he suddenly says, chuckling breathlessly. Meanwhile, you don’t stop yourself from rolling your eyes.

“Oh, shut the hell up and just kiss me before you ruin the whole moment, you jackass,” you snap at him, but let your lips spread to a grin when you cannot resist the bubbling laughter slipping out of your mouth right before he does what you asked him to do.

You are both smiling when he kisses you, his lips feel soft and his hands are gentle when he caresses your skin, before slowly taking you into his embrace. The moment a soft groan vibrates from deep inside his chest and his tongue slips through the seam of your lips, you realise that he is probably thinking the same thing you have in mind. That he wants to feel all of it and do everything all over again just as much as you do. And that makes you feel much better about wanting him instead of hating him like you were supposed to.

You wake up to the sound of birds chirping and loud shovelling in the distance.

The room is still quite dark when you finally open your eyes. The fire has died out, but you have some light faintly coming in through the opened small window close by. The sky is still dark outside but the sparks of light from the rising sun are slowly appearing, letting you see everything around you without the help of your flashlights.

The space beside you is empty but the continuous sound of a shovel hitting the ground lets you know where Seokjin is. The air is cold, but not as cold as it was last night. Your body feels sore, for numerous reasons, but at least the pain on your leg has become numb.

Pushing yourself to sit up, you finally realise that you have both your blanket and the one Seokjin was using last night wrapped around your body. No wonder it feels so warm, you wonder with a smile on your face—one that grows wider as you look over to find your clothes all folded so neatly on top of the wooden chest next to you.

You have just finished putting on every piece of clothing on your body—sans the boots—when Seokjin walks into the room.

“It worked!” he says. His whole face and hair are drenched with sweat but he has a huge smile on his face as he lifts up the shovel in his hand. You notice that it is a different one than the one he used last night, with a much bigger size and more dirt on it compared to the one he owns, and he is proud to show it off while explaining, “I went into the toolshed right out front and found this. The ice on the ground has melted a bit and this bad boy did the work in no time.”

“So we can go now?”

“Absolutely,” he says, nodding his head while throwing the shovel away so he could lift you in his arms.

An hour later, Seokjin pulls his truck into the driveway of your family’s cabin.

Your entire family welcomes you at the front door, both with relief for having you finally back home safely and the look of surprise on their faces of seeing you wrapped in Seokjin’s arms as he helps you walk inside. It is not until a few minutes later, after everyone is sitting in the dining room with hot drinks and some light meal for breakfast, when you tell them everything that had happened. Starting from how your car had skidded off the road to how Seokjin found you, only to end up getting stuck together in the Choi family’s old farm—skipping the part of your make up sex by the fireplace—and ensure your father that Seokjin’s friend is on his way to retrieve your car as you are having this conversation.

“We called him on the way here and he told us not to worry about it,” Seokjin tells your father while your mother is busy searching for some medicine in the kitchen. “He’ll call either one of us later to let us know once the car is safe in the auto shop.”

“That’s good,” your father says before he leaves the room to let the younger ones talk in the living room, which basically only includes Seokjin, your brothers, and yourself.

Your oldest brother keeps shaking his head as he listens to the details on how you decided to stay in the old barn and use it as a shelter and how Seokjin managed to get his truck free. “That’s unbelievable,” he wonders loudly while sipping on his coffee. “I wouldn’t have believed it happening if you had told me this any other day.”

“I’m just surprised to see the both of you getting here in one piece without killing each other,” your second brother speaks. Being the one who is closer to you by age and who is also basically your best friend, he is the only other person in the room who knew about your feud with Seokjin since he had been going to the same school as you did. As he looks over between you and Seokjin with a scrutinising gaze in his eyes, you know that you will have some explaining to do with him later. 

A lot of explaining.

Seokjin chuckles as he looks at your brothers. “You know what people used to say about Christmas. What better time to bury some old hatchet than on the most glorious time of the year, am I right?”

Rolling your eyes at him, you only respond to him with, “I have never once heard of that saying, but do go on.” Everyone laughs at your comment, but you quickly adds, “But in all honesty, I think being stranded and meeting each other on the way was an early Christmas blessing.”

“Yeah, it helped us made up,” Seokjin agrees while looking deeply in your eyes.

“That’s good to hear,” your brother speaks with a chuckle, earning all attention to turn to him just as he continues, “For everyone who witnessed the vendetta going on between you two, it was quite intense. I don’t think any one of us love remembering how _____ got suspended from school after she stole your car and left it by the lake with flat tires and scratches all over your new paint. That was a rough one.”  

While your brothers laugh at the memory of your eventful revenge, Seokjin looks at you with his brows raised, demanding some answers.

Oh, that’s right, you wince as you send him a sheepish smile. You knew there was something that you forgot to talk about last night. Judging by the way he grins as your gazes meet each other, you know exactly how to make up and make things right.

Hopefully, you can do it soon.

All Rights Reserved © 2016-2019 Yoonia

Disclaimer: All works are written by myself. Any copyright infringement, reposting on any other social media or website, and any act of plagiarism will be dealt with legal action

[bjy-on-ao3]

Fic Friday: Steamy Springs

(As usual, you can find the AO3 version of all my uploads [and some things I don’t post here to tumblr] via my Masterlist blog page.)

Okay, so, first off, happy birthday to this bastard who has lived in my head for...7 months now? Second, the timeline on this is reaching - We’re just gonna pretend they never caught him and fog isn’t an issue and this happens a bit before the anniversary of his arrival in Inaba (which seems to have been around early April?). But I wanted to do some stuff involving water/hot springs and such for this, so here we are.

I also don’t think the Amagi Inn had a co-ed bath, but let’s just pretend for the sake of this it does.

Summary Reader and Adachi take a trip to the Amagi Inn as a treat for his birthday, Adachi thinks that’s not enough of a present by itself.

Tags/Warnings Birthday Sex, Consensual Sex, Creampie, Established Relationship, Oral Sex, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Shameless Smut, Underwater Blowjobs, Vaginal Sex, Water Sex

Steamy Springs (F! Reader/Tohru Adachi)

Convincing Adachi to agree to take a day or two off of work to relax and enjoy his birthday had been a simple task. The relief that had dawned on him when you mentioned the idea was no surprise. As long as you’d known him, Adachi had been fond of being lazy and taking the easy route - whether it was slacking off on shift or doing the minimum work possible. All his dodging actual work had given you ample time to get to know him, though, so you couldn’t complain. More surprising, however, had been how easy convincing the police department to give him that time off had been. Though with the big murder case you’d heard about from the previous year being closed, it made sense there would be less work to do down at the police station and more wiggle room in schedules. 

The thought of enjoying the inn’s hospitality and traditional charm was exciting, though you had been looking forward in particular to the hot springs melting away every ounce of tension and stress. Not to mention, you knew if Adachi had his way there would be more to look forward to, as well - something less soothing but nonetheless enjoyable. The biggest upside to Adachi seemed to be not having to deal with the petty complaints of the townsfolk or getting yelled at by his partner, even if it was only a couple days.

You had arrived in the late afternoon, Adachi promising over the phone to meet you shortly after. His lagging behind worked out perfectly for your plans, however. When you arrived, you had set about dropping off your things in your room and briefly admiring the decoration and tranquil atmosphere.  You left for a little while to tend to several other things you needed to arrange for Adachi’s birthday. Perhaps it was silly you were making so much more of a fuss over it than he was, but you couldn’t help yourself. Preparations were completed quickly, mercifully with little hassle, and you returned to the room smiling to yourself and looking forward to the next couple days.

Returning to the room, there was no sign yet of Adachi. He was running later than expected. Knowing Adachi, you half expected there was something last minute he had forgotten about and needed to take care before he could head to the Inn. Shrugging, you peeled off your clothes and began the process of cleaning up and getting ready to indulge in the springs. Leaving a note on a table beside the futon, you made your way to the springs, already grinning stupidly in anticipation.

A muggy, swirling cloak of steam greeted you when you stepped out into hot springs area, and you took a deep breath, your smile widening. Surveying the edge of the water, you spied someone else - someone you recognized. Adachi was reclining languidly against the edge, leaning back on his arms, back facing you. Obviously he hadn’t been as late as you thought. You didn’t recall seeing any text or missed called, nor any of his clothes discarded in the room or bathroom though. You must have been in more of a rush than you thought. 

But you didn’t let the fact Adachi had made it to the springs first deter you, stepping closer to the edge of the bath. You took a moment to admire how relaxed he looked, as if he hadn’t a care in the world “Why didn’t you tell me you were here already?,” you asked cheerily, not wanting to startle him - he hadn’t seemed to have noticed you approaching beforehand, you assumed the lulling effect of the water was to blame.

“Took you long enough,” he shot back, ignoring your question, twisting around halfway and looking over his shoulder. The steamy haze and the heat of the bath painted a rosy blush across his cheeks and you had to admit silently it looked cute on him..

“Yeah, yeah,” you said, waving a hand dismissively while clutching your towel to you with the other, unable to suppress your smile. 

“The way you’re holding that towel, you’d think I hadn’t already seen it all,” Adachi remarked cheekily as you knelt at the edge of the water, before climbing carefully in.

You rolled your eyes half-heartedly before leaning back against the lip, seated a few lengths away from Adachi to give him space to stretch out his long limbs and relax, and grant yourself the same. You closed your eyes, sighing contentedly as the warm water quickly took effect. 

“You don’t have to sit so far away, y’know.” you cracked an eye open and gave Adachi a sidelong glance as he spoke. “I don’t bite.”

Opening both eyes, you turned to face him, crossing your arms over one another on the edge of the bath. “Ha-ha,” you began dryly, “that’s a lie and we both know it.”

“Yeesh, fine, but you like it when I do,” Adachi retorted, tossing his hands up in feigned defensiveness, a crooked, smug grin overtaking his features.

You sighed again, more for dramatic effect than a sign of relaxation, before moving and re-situating yourself within arm’s length of the detective, eyeing him purposefully. “Better?” you asked.

A small, mischievous sparkle in his grey eyes was your only warning before Adachi made his move. He acted quickly, leaving you no chance to dart away, grabbing you firmly by your waist. “A-Adachi, hey! Wait!” You had time to shout as he lifted you up and over, pulling you back down, settling your ass on his lap and pressing your chest against to his.

“There. Now it’s better,” he stated, sounding smugly satisfied. “Don’t you think so?”

There had been ulterior motives behind Adachi’s attempts to convince you to sit closer to him; the real reason he sounded so pleased with himself. Wriggling against his hold at first swiftly made you aware that Adachi had foregone a towel altogether while relaxing in the bath. Your squirming ceased and your glance flitted down briefly toward the beginnings of an erection poking between your thighs. You worried your lip between your teeth, fighting the sudden, overwhelming wave of heat that bloomed in you; a heat that had little to do with the sultry temperature of the hot springs. You swallowed thickly, trying to ignore the sensation and composing yourself before Adachi noticed how successfully he had flustered you and with such little effort.

“You could have just asked, you know,” you mumbled irritably into his shoulder, but you relaxed against his body. Denying you enjoyed being pressed so close to him would have been a lie. Just sitting in his lap, feeling the growing hardness between your legs, it was impossible to overlook how readily your body responded..

“Aw, but then I’d miss that surprised face,” he teased.

His hands twisted, smoothing over your waist and hips until they cupped your ass, pulling you more firmly against him, grinding you over his stiffening cock, his length taunting brushing your lips and making you let out a pathetic little gasp. He leaned forward hungrily, lips molding to yours in a way that was demanding, but shockingly restrained. Ordinarily when Adachi kissed you, it felt more like he wanted to eat you alive, but there was a more relaxed air to it this time. You weren’t going to stop and interrogate him over the difference.

Content to sit in his lap, you let him ravage your mouth, dragging his tongue over your lips until you parted them for him and slipping it inside. Despite the kiss being more docile than you were used to - a part of you dared think of it as almost sensual - there was an urgency and dominance in how his tongue twisted with yours, massaging but fighting it back down whenever you tried to win the upper hand. His hands kneaded your backside absently as he stole your breath away, and you involuntarily leaned harder into him, rolling your hips lightly.

By the time he broke away and started to pepper your neck with nips and kisses, each sloppier by the second, he was fully hard and throbbing beneath you. A sudden twitch of his erection made you shudder, your pussy clenching reflexively on emptiness, and your hips bucked again. Adachi let out a small laugh against the hollow of your throat that vibrated through you. “I think,” he started and you could feel the timbre of his voice rumble against your skin, “this could be a lot more fun,” he finished suggestively, moving down to outline your collarbone with the tip of his tongue where your towel had slipped down.

“I don’t know, Adachi…” you trailed off, pursing your lips, realizing that perhaps an open spring wasn’t the best place to be getting too hot and heavy.

“What? Worried about getting caught?” he returned, his lip curling a little in a taunting expression.

You set your lips in a hard line, a deeper frown, more indignant than worried. “Yes, I am,” you admitted huffily, cursing how the breathiness of your voice ruined your annoyance.

“C’mon, sweetheart. No one’s gonna know.” he coaxed. When you still looked unconvinced, he tried a different approach. “We’re here for my birthday. You wanna give me a proper present, don’t you?”

“Yes, but-” you protested, ready to explain you had plenty of things prepared for him.

“Then you shouldn’t have to think about it,” Adachi pushed, silencing your argument.

You gave in after another moment of consideration. “Alright.”

“Better get started then.”

You moved, angling your hips until the head of his dick teased your slit and pushed forward. But Adachi stopped you with one hand on your hipbone, his other hand migrating to the top of your head. “Aah, not like that,” he said, his voice playfully scolding. He pushed you away, pressing down on your skull and glancing down at the steaming surface of the water and his lap to illustrate what he had in mind.

After another quick internal debate on whether you should indulge him so much, you edged back and took a deep breath. You sank beneath the water, closing your eyes and guiding yourself by touch, wrapping a hand around his cock and pumping it up and down a few times. You carefully eased the head into your mouth, doing your best to keep a tight seal, lest the spring water trickle in. You continued until you had completely wrapped your lips around his length, the tip brushing the back of your throat. 

From there you hollowed your cheeks and began to suck, rolling your tongue along the underside and wriggling it against where the head met his shaft when you pulled back up. You eagerly stroked whatever part of his length your mouth didn’t take, cupping and massaging his balls with the other hand. You ignored the burgeoning ache in your lungs for as long as you could before drawing back and taking a second to catch your breath. You glimpsed Adachi’s face briefly, even more flushed than before, his eyes rolling back. You heard him groan, “Ah man, I didn’t think that could get any better.” And then you were below the surface once more.

You repeated the process once more, sucking him off as best you could while considering the water surrounding you and taking a breath when you couldn’t last any longer. When took him into your mouth for a third time, Adachi’s hips were twitching against yours, and you felt more than heard the muffled groans breaking over the surface of the water above you. Your heart jumped in your chest as his hips bucked suddenly, your held breath threatening to escape. You scraped your nails on his thigh lightly in a warning he subsequently ignored, and his hips rolled up again.

You choked around him, water churning and some of your held breath bubbling out around you. You had no choice left but to resurface earlier than before to replace it and tell him off. His hand returned to the back of your hand though, pressing you down. Your heart skipped another beat, this time in panic. He thrust into your mouth again, rougher, and you dug the nails of both hands into his legs sharply and fought against the pressure on your skull.

All at once, the pressure vanished and instead Adachi was tugging you to the surface. You coughed a bit, panting and breathless, glaring at him disapprovingly. “Running out of breath already, baby? Thought you could last longer than that,” he mocked meanly, though his voice was strained and breathy.

“If you’d stop trying to fuck my face while I’m down there, I could,” you spat back irritably.

”Oh, so sorry, sweetheart.” ‘Yeah right’ you told yourself. “You just suck my dick so well I can’t control myself. You forgive me, right?” He stroked your cheek with the back of his hand, the gentle gesture not matching the tone of his voice.

You just frowned at him, continuing to glare and try to catch your breath. You shook off his hand, giving an annoyed huff and folding your arms over your chest, your towel having dropped beneath your bust.

“Aw, don’t be like that,” he cooed, coaxing you back into straddling him. You tried not to think about how turned on feeling him throbbing between your thighs made you. He reached forward, groping at your chest with his other hand greedily and sharply pinching one nipple, and the simmering heat in your belly your irritation hadn’t dispersed intensified. “I bet I know just how to get rid of that sour look,” he said, moving both hands to your hips.

Before you had time to say anything, he positioned you over his length and pulled you down, impaling you on his cock completely and making you gasp. “Aah, Adachi,” the sultry words rolled off your tongue without thinking, breaking your displeased facade instantly.

Forgetting quickly how upset you were with him, distracted by the satisfying, aching fullness between your legs and the devious, hungry look on his face, you ground against him feverishly. Bracing your hands on his shoulders, you raised your hips and pushed back down, letting your head roll back as he stretched you all over again.

Adachi took the opportunity as you withdrew again and sank down to bend forward, pressing his lips to your throat. His breath against your neck was cool compared to the spring water, even his lips seemed colder, and you shuddered. ��Mm, keep moving just like that,” he urged, sighing when your heat enveloped him all over again. He leaned further into your neck, and between a slew of rough bites you heard him groan against your skin. “Fuck, I love it when I get to take it easy,” he purred, sounding thoroughly pleased and breathy.

Even running his mouth, Adachi was still far quieter than you. You rose back up and speared yourself on his cock again and again, sometimes stopping to grind yourself against him, hoping to add more friction to the scandalously blissful and lewd feeling of his cock spreading you open. Knowing in the back of your mind that you should be quiet, that you should try as little as possible to attract someone’s attention from beyond the spring, you couldn’t hold back. Coming back down, savoring each hot inch, combined with the touch of Adachi’s mouth, the friction, and the steaming spring water was ecstasy, near dizzying. Your mouth hung open, a chorus of moans drifting out into the thick, steam-choked air, obscene and growing louder by the thrust.

“Listen to you,” Adachi jeered, his lips whispering over your jaw up to your ear. His tongue snaked out and he bit down, and you gasped between cries. “I thought you were worried about getting caught. Doesn’t sound like it,” he continued, loving taunting you when you could hardly compose the will to keep your mouth shut, let alone try to refute his words. “Or were you just playing hard to get?” Adachi finished, a chuckle tickling your skin.

“F-fuck,” you sputtered incoherently for a moment, fighting off the moans and trying to gather your words. “I’m trying, I can’t, I-”

“Let me help you get that mouth under control, sweetheart,” he cut in, a smug glee seeping in among the husky undertones. 

His hand swept up, covering your mouth in a grip that was hardly gentle, but you didn’t care. Focusing back on the sweet ache between your legs and the coiling, overheated spring tightening in your belly, you stopped trying to be quiet. Even with his hand muffling them, your cries were loud and desperate, and among them you heard Adachi let out a shaky sound that belied the effect they had on him. When he spoke again, you could hear the strain creeping into his voice, a strain that grew more clear each time your hips met his.

“Fuck, you’re still making so much noise,” he observed, the fingers of his other hand digging almost painfully into your hip, flexing tighter and letting go in rhythm with your pace. “Maybe I should just let you scream; someone’s gonna hear at this rate, anyway.”

He pulled his hand away, and you were back to crying out unsuppressed into the heavy air again, nearly screaming, head dropping back again. His hand moved down, disappearing between your bodies and coming to play between your thighs, stroking your clit smoothly. Your pace faltered as you strove to press yourself into his touch, devolving more into grinding against him than riding him, your moans tapering off a bit, if only from the heavy, panting breaths spilling over your lips.

Displeased with your slowed pace, Adachi bucked his hips harshly up into yours, at the same time pushing you toward him with the hand on your hip. His fingers slowed until their pace was tortuous and you were whining plaintively. “Don’t get distracted now,” he warned you. “This is for me, isn’t? Are you gonna make me do the work?” He asked, his voice equal parts irritable, aroused, and smug.

“Ah, n-no. Fuck.” you quickly denied, shaking your head hazily. Biting down on your lip, you attempted to correct your pace, until you were riding him again, hard and fast, thrusting your hips even more eagerly against him as he resumed the motion of his fingers between your folds. It was a struggle not to fall back into only grinding against the delicious sensation of his fingers that further inflamed the molten tension in your abdomen.

He sighed and groaned again, all annoyance gone from his voice. “Good girl, that’s more like it.”

Despite his complaints of being made to ‘do the work’, Adachi couldn’t stop himself from matching your tempo the closer he drew to release. He could feel the familiar buildup and tightness of his own orgasm in his groin, and the way his thick, labored breathing mirrored yours. The promise of pleasure encouraged him to rock his hips to meet you as you sank down, and your moans pitched even louder, airy and clear and carnal, only adding to the urgency. His hand on your hip was a vice, holding the soft skin in a grip that was sure to bruise shades of purple and blue, and his fingers on your clit were became rushed and messy.

You reached your orgasm before Adachi, but only moved your hips more desperately against his, ignoring the oversensitivity trying to dissuade you. It was far too small a displeasure to stop you, to drown out the tingling waves of heat that surged outward from your core and made it hard to think. Even in dumbstruck pleasure, you moaned his name, as if it were the only word or thought that mattered.

“Mmph, this was supposed to be my present, but I think I’ve got something for you, sweetheart,” Adachi growled sleazily into your ear. The matching thrust of his hips against yours picked up, faster and harder until each rocked you with tiny aftershocks of pleasure as you dipped down from your climax. “You’ll be good… for me and… take it all, won’t you?” It was his turn to struggle for words, his speech interrupted by feral, bawdy noises.

“Yes, Adachi, yes, yes,” you moaned brokenly. The volume of your cries had lessened, but their number hadn’t, Adachi’s brutal pace still driving your own and dragging out the pleasure of your orgasm, even as it started to ebb away.

He mumbled some unintelligible, filthy praise, before stiffening against you, the hand on your hip urging you flush against him. He leaned in, biting sharply along your collarbone and the swell of your chest. When he finished inside you, you could feel the thick ropes of warmth fill you, and his panting breath puffed over your overheated skin. He held you still and tight against him for a bit, giving a few more shallow thrusts into your cunt, and eliciting soft, tired gasps from you. With a shaky breath, you collapsed forward, laying your head on Adachi’s while he rested on the soft curve of your chest. 

Eventually, you gathered enough of your strength and breath to pull away and lift yourself off Adachi’s softening cock. Instantly you were met with the lean strength of his arms, caging you in and preventing you from going far. “Where do you think you’re going?” He asked impishly, and even though he was still recovering, you could tell his appetite was hardly satisfied.

“Adachi… we can have more fun, just… can we get out of the baths at least?” You asked, hoping he would see reason. “I’m feeling lightheaded.” You weren’t sure if it was the heat or the sex or the combination, but you knew you wouldn’t survive another round with Adachi if the encroaching dizziness took you over.

He sighed dramatically, as if a change in location was a huge favor to ask of him “Fine, but you’re going to have to make it up to me.”

[dammitadolfnomorecake]

Once Bitten, Twice Stupid prt 117

117

   Lance was slowly dying inside, thanks to his dramatic flare for extremes. How he was sweating up a storm he didn’t know. He’d shed his jacket, now tied around Keith waist, as Kosmo tugged him onwards. It was hot. He’d gone from one extreme to another and questioned if he really was a tropical vampire. It was unusual for him to get this warm, his stomach gurgling as he followed his friends through the woods to where Matt and Rieva had been the previous night. He didn’t doubt their directional skills, able to pick up where Matt had marked trees along the way. The trees Kosmo seemed to really want to pee on matching Matt’s scent.

  Ahead of him, Keith had his camera out, stopping whenever anything took his fancy. Pidge had been a total poser, roping Curtis and Hunk into helping her onto fallen trees for the perfect shot. It really was only him who was slowing the group down, thankfully able to blame it on Kosmo, mentally promising extra belly rubs and treats for him later. Nature was nice. Garrison had a couple of wooded areas but nothing like this... the only problem was the humidity. He was not a “humid vampire”.  Rieva checking on him from time to time, making him paranoid that she knew. It didn’t help that he kept moving his hand to stomach without thinking. Feeling Kosmo tug on his lead a little too hard, Lance lurched with him, world spinning as smacked into the closest tree. “Not far” in werewolf speak seemed very fucking far as he rubbed his shoulder.

  Having seen what happened, Matt laughed at him

“Dude, you’re asleep on your feet”

“Fuck off, Kosmo has to pee every two minutes”

“Let me take him”

Nooooo. He’d lose his excuse for lagging

“I’ve got him. I’m not letting you corrupt my fur son”

“Don’t come crying to me when you...”

Matt’s words becoming a predication as he tripped over his own feet, glasses going flying as Kosmo jumped on him, yipping as he did

“... trip. Damn... Keith, your boyfriend’s klutz is in overdrive”

Jogging back to him, Keith pulled Kosmo back

“Give us a moment, we’ll...”

Being viciously attacked by a tree, followed by tripping, Lance sighed as he flopped sideways, sprawling out against the cool ground

“Babe!”

     “Here, give him some water. It’s pretty hot in here”

Shay offered her water bottle, Keith pulling out his own to offer Lance

“Guys, we’re going to take a break here. You guys go ahead”

“If he’s not feeling well, shouldn’t we turn back”

Fucking... fuck. Just... fuck. Someone shoot him. Shoot him and bury him here

“I’m fine. Just hot. Gimme a moment I’ll be good to go”

“You haven’t been well since we got here...”

“I’m fine, Shay. My body likes to either torture me with freezing my arse off or making me like I’ve landed on the surface of the sun”

“Are you sure? You look very pale”

“I’m fine. Sorry, Guys. Chocolate and hiking doesn’t seem to suit me. I don’t think I’m made for the wild outdoors”

Lance sent a mental apology to Hunk over Shay being so considerate, Hunk clearing his throat

“I can stay with you... if you want?”

“Nah, man. Shay’s totally loving this wild and manly adventurer look on you. We’ll catch up in a few”

  None of his friends were sure about leaving. Pidge and Hunk thinking of him too humanly. Shiro awkwardly holding Curtis’s hand, the lie probably weighing heavily on him. Matt and Rieva were sympathetic, but knew he always threw up when he ate. Begging Matt with his eyes, Matt sighed at him

“If you two losers aren’t there in the next five minutes, I’m coming back to kick your arses”

“Sounds good. Seriously guys, don’t hike and snack”

  Leaving them behind, Keith took him by the arm and pulled him away from the middle of the track. Sitting him down at the base of a tree, Lance was grateful Kosmo and Matt hadn’t peed against it

“You look hot. Do you have a fever?”

“Nah. Too much human food and heat. You could have gone with them”

“I’m not leaving you behind. I didn’t think you felt so sick”

“I don’t really. A bit dizzy but I’m okay”

Keith unclipped the handle part of Kosmo’s lead, extending it as far it went then clipping into place around his ankle so Kosmo wouldn’t wander off

“Water?”

“Please”

Sure. It’d come up. But he needed something to cool him back down.

  Drinking carefully from Keith’s water bottle, he passed it back. The others were fussing over him. Shay especially

“Babe... do you think we should tell Shay?”

Keith hummed

“I don’t know. She’ll probably freak”

“She’s already worried. I hate it...”

“I know. The others will look after her”

“Hunk and Pidge are worried too. I’m not usually like this camping”

“You’re worrying too much. Hunk asked me if this was normal when I was doing the dishes. I told him it’s because you have no self control when he’s cooking”

“That’s true... He’s such an amazing cook. I really want him to open his own place up. I don’t think I’d stop eating if he did”

“I think we’d all be fat if we lived off his cooking. He’s better than most chefs at the places in Rome”

“I’m not surprised... Babe, I’m okay. I was hot before, but I’m cooling down”

“You flopped on the ground”

“Because it’s nice and cool. Woodlands and forests have their own micro-climates... I don’t think I do humidity well”

“Better than snow?”

“Everything’s better than snow. You didn’t have to wait back with me”

“I told you it’s fine, and it is. How do your feet feel?”

  Lance tapped his heels together three times, finding himself still trapped in the toe eating boots

“Not too bad. Not as bad as my stomach, I’m like hungry again”

“Did you want to eat?”

“I didn’t bring... oh. No. No. I’ll be okay”

“Babe, that’s not what I’m asking”

“I know what you’re asking. The smell was super strong in the cabin, it’s like stuck in my nose or something”

“If you want...”

“We talked about this”

Keith sighed heavily. Yeah. He didn’t like Lance saying no

“I know, but you’ve been slowing down and you walked into a tree”

“I didn’t walk, I was pulled into by Kosmo. Matt scented the area last night and he’s trying to scent over it all”

“I still think if you’re hungry...”

“I’ll be fine. Just the change in weather or something. To think I was wrapped up and baking in front of the fire yesterday and here we are today”

“It is pretty extreme. I know it’s late to ask, but do you know where the others are?”

  Lance suppressed rolling his eyes at Keith

“Yeah. I can hear them and I can smell them. They haven’t reached this mythical pond yet”

“I thought it was going to be closer to camp”

“Apparently werewolves like to overestimate things”

Keith snorted, getting the joke that at one time would gone right over his head

“Matt’s not going to like that”

“Then he shouldn’t have lied about the length”

  Waiting, Lance shook his head when he heard a clear “Fuck you!” from Matt

“He didn’t like the joke”

“He heard?”

Seriously. How could a hunter...? How were the Blades still around?

“Babe, werewolf. And it’s not like we’re being quiet. I don’t need to feed, I’ve cooled down now and Kosmo seems to be trying to pull your leg off. Let’s go meet the others”

“You’ll tell me if you feel weaker or faint, won’t you?”

“Yes, mum. You’re fussing too much”

“Or am I fussing just enough?”

God. He loved this man. Keith was a special kind of idiot that owner his heart and soul.

    *

The pond found by Matt and Rieva was nice and all, but Keith wasn’t sure it was that nice. At least not work the trek to the middle of fucking nowhere just to see a pond that didn’t have all that much appeal. The underground lake had been awesome. The pond a solid “eh”. Duckweed clung around edges, the reeds kind of making it nice to photograph. Pidge wasn’t thrilled their walking had ended with a pond that didn’t look safe to swim in. Finding a stray branch, she poked at the duckweed at the side of the pond

“Reckon it’s safe?”

Matt chuckled at his sister

“It was last night”

“Yeah, before you go to it. Man, you could have said it was basically a swamp”

  Standing up, Pidge threw her branch into the water

“You’re just not seeing it’s potential”

“And I’m telling mum”

Matt gaped at Pidge. Keith sucking his lips in, trying not to laugh at the look on Matt’s face. With one gape he looked thoroughly betrayed

“That’s enough. We’re here now, we might as well make the most of it”

Shiro tried to restore calm with his “Dad” voice. Hunk nervously looking around them

“We’re not going to be killed here, are we? I feel like we could be killed here”

“Guys, you’re over reacting. It’s a nice spot”

Matt was trying too hard to make the sale no one buying

“Maybe if you’re a dog... Kosmo! Ack...”

  Keith hadn’t noticed he was standing in mud, Kosmo had. Shaking himself off, mud went flying, Kosmo’s tongue lolling as he looked up at them proudly. Pidge wiping flecks off mud from her face with an unimpressed grimace

“He’s a menace...”

Great now Matt looked like he wanted to wolf out and join Kosmo in the mud

“He’s just being a dog. You wouldn’t understand”

“No, I’ll leave that to you and him. Right, if you need me, I’ll be on my tablet”

    Hunk set up the snacks he’d brought at what he deemed a safe distance from the pond. Matt showing he didn’t care by wading out into the cold water, trying to coax Kosmo in for swim. Even Kosmo was smarter than to follow that idiot. Sitting next to Lance, his boyfriend had his head resting against Keith’s shoulder

“Hey babe, can you show me that thing on your phone again?”

He didn’t think Lance would ask in front of everyone. Pulling his phone out, he unlocked it then handed it over, Lance taking the device carefully, before starting to tap on the screen. It only took him a few moments to type his message out

“The pond sucks, but you’re beautiful”

Keith tried to ignore how happy the silly message made him, typing at the end of the Lance’s message with one finger that made things infinitely harder

“Can I be handsome?”

Lance nodding as he typed back

“Don’t forget rugged and grizzly”

  Keith ducked his head, embarrassed over the praise, Lance adding

“I really love you”

Which only made his heart do that stupid thing it did. After 6 months, he thought the butterflies and weird heart beats would stop, yet Lance always seemed to make it happen far too often. Taking his phone back, he added to the message

“I love you too babe. Sorry about the pond”

Lance shook his head, it seemed the conversation had ended naturally. A moment or two passing before Lance took his phone back

“I’m sleepy. Matt was right about this being a good nap place... apart from the smell”

Yeah. It stunk to him and he was human. Damn dogs and their attraction to smell dead things

“Wanna talk a walk?”

Lance moved his head up to smile at him

“Okay... but not too far”

“Nah. I want to get some photos”

And spend some alone time with Lance again.

   Picking a path around the pond, it was larger than reeds and duckweed made it seem. Lance holding his hand as they walked, Keith found he didn’t actually know what to say. Walking like this was nice. Maybe it was okay for things to be quiet? It didn’t feel uncomfortable until he realised they’d walked quite a way from the others. Pidge could still be heard yelling, some laughter in the otherwise still air... Then Lance went and sighed. He wished he knew what his boyfriend was thinking. And why he’d snapped at Shiro. Shiro seemed okay, and Lance would apologise again, even though he probably didn’t need to

“Babe?”

“I’m okay...”

“You sighed”

Lance sighed at him again, Keith rolling his eyes before pulling Lance in for a hug, Lance protesting lightly

“I’m fine”

“You still sighed”

“You weren’t saying anything...”

  Keith couldn’t help but chuckle

“I was thinking the same thing... it’s nice not being surrounded by noise”

“Speak for yourself”

Keith kissed Lance’s forehead as he slid his hands down to his boyfriend’s arse. Lance squeaking as he groped him lightly

“What was that for?!”

“Because I could. Want to take a break?”

“Actually, yeah... You haven’t been taking any photos”

“That’s because I was too busy holding your hand. Want to try to taking a photo with me?”

“Haven’t you got enough of me?”

Keith chuckled again. He’d meant of the lake, and he knew he was biased and all, but he couldn’t have enough photos of Lance

“Nope. Here, I want to show you something”

  Sliding around Lance, so he was now standing behind him, Keith popped the cap off the camera lens and flicked the knob to on. The camera chiming as it booted up

“Okay. Now, we’re going to take a photo”

“I know how to take a photo”

“Mmmm... but you said you weren’t sure about it and I want to share this with you”

In Rome he’d been shit scared everyone would find out and laugh at him over his hobby. Sometimes it was hard to have his camera out in front of their friends, but with Lance it was easier. His boyfriend never judged, even before they were dating

“It’s just duckweed”

Keith moved the camera to the right

“See how the light filters through the trees, and almost cuts the photo in half on the diagonal? If we zoom in, what do you see?”

On the screen he showed Lance the different. The way the one section caught the light, almost shimmering in the specs of water between the weedy growth

“That’s cool”

“Yeah... hold on”

Clicking the capture button, the image appeared on the screen for a few seconds before returning to viewfinder. Zooming out slowly, Lance perked up

“I like that one”

Keith bit down his snort. Lance must have assumed he’d already capture the image. His boyfriend reading his body language

“Not like that. It’s half and half properly now”

Keith clicked capture again, he personally would have moved the camera a little to the left to get the light balance two thirds instead of the half

“It is. But if we move it like this, tell me which looks better”

Adjusting his view, Lance hummed at him

“I get it... and it’d be a totally different picture again if you changed the angle”

“Yep...”

  Letting his head loll back on Keith’s shoulder, Lance smiled at him

“I don’t think I’ll ever be a star photographer, but it suits you”

“I could teach you properly”

“You offered before. Honestly, I really like watching you. The way your eyes light up when you’ve got a shot you like”

“Am I really that transparent?”

“A little. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone with eyes as honest as yours”

“Then you really do need glasses”

They would have forgotten Lance’s glasses earlier if Kosmo hadn’t pawed at them when they were getting ready to meet up with the other

“And you need to accept the compliment”

“You’re the one who compliments me too much”

“Then you shouldn’t be so kind to me”

Keith groaned. What was he supposed to do with that?

“Shut up”

Lance laughed at him. Keith dropping his left hand to rub his boyfriend’s stomach, Lance immediately letting out a soft moan that was far too cute

“Stoooooop”

“Why?”

“Because we’re got company that can hear me moaning and all you’re doing is messing with me”

“I’m not messing with you. Does it feel okay?”

“Honestly human food came up so hard in the cabin that I don’t want to eat”

“You kept the water down”

“I went and dealt with that while Hunk was finding the perfect picnic spot”

“You should have...”

“Babe. You know things came out one way or the other... Kind of comes with the whole being dead thing. I love that you care, but you’ve also got to remember I’ve been dealing with this for years and I’m used to dealing with it alone”

“Doesn’t mean you have to now”

“Fine, the next time I have to shit my guts out...”

Keith wrinkled his nose

“Okay. Okay. I’m overthinking. As long as you’re okay”

  It was then that Lance’s stomach let out a loud gurgle. His boyfriend closing his eyes as he groaned

“I’m sick of it. It’s been doing that nonstop”

“Are you hungry?”

“A little...”

“You should eat”

“I didn’t pack anything. I thought “short walk” would be like a “human short walk””

“You need to eat. It’s not good...”

“I’ll be fine”

“Babe...”

“Keith, I’ll be fine”

Lance needed to be eating more. More of everything if you asked Keith. He didn’t like Lance having to throw up, but he and their baby needed the calories

“Then take...”

“No”

“You... look. You can feed off my fingers again. Just enough to make the hunger go away”

“Why do you keep offering?”

  How did Lance not know? Other than the jealousy, which he was trying to work through, he didn’t have a problem. Lance wasn’t going to turn him from a feed. So why couldn’t his boyfriend see it was because of how he felt about him

“Because I love you. If we were in opposite positions, you’d be forcing it on me”

“I’m not that forceful”

“Right. And I’m not secretly half alien here hiding from the master race”

Lance laughed, face scrunched up as he did

“You know, you’d make a good half alien. I’d still love you just as much”

“You’re such a damn sap”

“And you’re twice as bad. Can we sit for a bit? I don’t feel like going back just yet”

“We’re not walking around the entire pond?”

Lance shrugged, opening his eyes

“I was following you”

Keith played along

“But I was following you”

His boyfriend shrugged again

“I guess we’re lost forever then”

“I think I’m okay with that”

     *

Lance’s knees gave out on the way back to the others. Disguising it as tripping, he wasn’t sure why they’d suddenly given out. Not until he saw his hands. His nails long, dug into the ground. He could feel his fangs against his lip, edges pressing down against the toughened skin. Raising his head to look at Keith, Keith swore softly, his boyfriend pushing him aside as he drew out his hand gun. Lance not even getting the chance to be shocked as Keith shot him.

  Shooting up from where he’d fallen asleep against Hunk, he realised everyone was staring at him. Right. They were in the main cabin now. He, Hunk, and Pidge had been sitting on the sofa. The three of them with their feet on the coffee table as they compared blisters and Curtis tended to their feet

“Ugh, bud? You okay there?”

Dropping back down beside Hunk, Hunk wrapped his arms around him. Keith was in the bathroom washing Kosmo with Shiro, so he couldn’t have been asleep for very long

“Yeah. Ugh ... I think I fell asleep”

“You did... I’ve been wondering how to wake you up so I could start dinner”

“How long was I out?”

“Half an hour. Keith’s still trying to get Kosmo clean...”

  Lance could feel the dirt beneath his nails. His body wouldn’t stop shaking at the thought of Keith putting a bullet in his brain... Whining the name of his best friend softly, he needed the comfort Hunk provided  

“Hunk...”

“Why don’t you help me with dinner? It’s been a while since we cooked together”

Lance kind of felt disappointed. He wanted to cuddle with his best friend, but Hunk liked to be moving when he had a lot to think about

“Okay... What’s for dinner?”

“Pasta, made fresh”

“Alright...”

  Lance washed his hands, the scent of blood from the morning had finally started to disappear. As Hunk grabbed the eggs out the fridge, he watched his friend. Pidge was watching from them from the sofa... probably worrying. He made everyone worry and it was so damn draining

“Right. Can you grab the flour out?”

“Ah... sure”

Lance should have picked up on the signs Hunk was trying to distract him. Grabbing the flour out the pantry, Hunk smiled softly as he moved to the kitchen bench, Lance joining him

“Bud, I know somethings up. You can tell me”

“It’s...”

He wanted to. He wanted to so badly... That nightmare had shaken him. He didn’t think he was strong enough to keep his secret

“I... Hunk...”

As he sniffled Hunk pulled him into a hug

“Whatever happens, Bud, you can rely on me”

“I know... I know... it’s just not... I... I don’t want you to hate me”

“I won’t... Do you need a bit to think it out?”

“Yeah... I had a nightmare Keith shot me in the head and... I’ve been lying again... and I hate it...”

“It’s alright. I mean, I know you’ve got a few secrets... you’d have to. Here, pour out the flour for me... and I’ll get the pasta machine out”

  Lance poured the flour on the bench, sniffling as he did. He didn’t know where everyone one was, but he did know he couldn’t mentally keep his secret any longer. He’d wanted to wait. To be more confident and sure of the pregnancy. Flattening out the flour, Hunk bumped into him gently

“It’s just flour, Bud. No need for the tears”

Fuck... He needed his best friend. Having a boyfriend was a different kind of friendship...

“I... I’m...”

“Lance, it’s okay, Bud. You don’t have to rush right away”

“It’s not that... you can’t tell”

“Now you’re making me worried”

“Just... hang on”

  Keith put the idea in his head, Lance spelling out his secret in the flour. Those simple letters with so much more meaning

“Don’t tell anyone yet...”

He spelt it out, waiting for Hunk to catch on, his bestie humming when he did, Lance brushing the flour back into place

“... Matt and Rieva hear everything”

Hunk nodded quickly, before drawing a smiley face in the flour

“I’m pregnant”

This two words had Hunk sweeping him into the tightest hug of his life as Lance messed the flour up to hide the evidence

“I... I wondered... are you...?”

Lance nodded as his nerves went weird. Hunk hugging him hadn’t been... well it’d been a dream

“Oh, man... it makes sense now... but... nope, I’ll ask later...”

“Thank you... I’m so sorry”

“Shhh... Keith, uh, he kind of put the idea in my head and I guess maybe he wanted me to work it out”

“Keith is very attached to “macaroon”... just don’t use the word too much”

  Hunk immediately let him go, hands going to Lance’s shoulders as he hung his head

“I thought you just wanted macaroons...”

“It’s okay, Hunk. But now Pidge is watching, she’s about ready to demand to know what’s going on”

“Oh, right. Be cool... be cool... do you need anything? Should you be resting?”

Great. Someone else to over worry about him...

“I’m okay. It’s not that different just more puking. Anyway, we should start dinner”

“Yeah, man. I’m making garlic knots. This is a special occasion”

“You’re not grossed out”

“I’m shocked, not quite sure how it works, or if I really want to ask, but as long as...”

Lance threw his arms around Hunk. Nearly sobbing in relief of the weight lifted off his shoulders, and, kind of more importantly, that his best bro wasn’t about to reject him.

  “Okay, you two are acting weird. What’s going on here? And why am I not part of it?”

Lance peered at Pidge over his best friends shoulder

“Hunk promised to teach me the secret ingredient in his mama’s spaghetti bolognese!”

Pidge’s eyes went wide

“That’s a top secret family recipe!”

“That’s why I’m excited... I’ve been after it for years!”

He already had the recipe, but there was something different about how Hunk’s mother made it taste. Being taught to be useful he’d offered to help Hunk’s mother, memorising things by watching her. She kind of loved him, not that he was bragging

“Sorry, guys. I can teach Lance the recipe but we’ll have to talk about it when we get home. I don’t have everything here”

  Lance pulled away, wiping at his eyes. The conversation may have gone differently if Keith hadn’t already planted that thought in Hunk’s brain

“Dude... I’m totally betrayed here. It’s a good thing the pastas going to be delicious”

“I wouldn’t say that...”

“Hunk, you are a kitchen god descended before us mostly human beings. Even Keith agrees. We’d all be fat with how good your cooking is, buddy”

Hunk shuffled nervously under the praise

“I don’t know. You and Miriam know so many great recipes too”

“Which I’ll totally teach you. Let’s get the pasta started”

“Sure thing, man”

Watching the exchange, Pidge grumbled

“Boys are so freaking weird. I’m going to go hang with Shay, at least she’s interesting”

“Let her nap. She’s making the most of getting some sleep in before she goes back to work”

  Lance realised he hadn’t thought to ask about Shay... Pidge made a show of climbing off the sofa, walking away from them with his feet turned slightly out to avoid pulling weight on the blisters on her big toes. Lance waited until she was gone before whispering

“Hunk, I want to ask you something and I want you to be honest. Do you think I should I tell her the truth? Like about me? I don’t want you having to lie to her, it sucked so damn hard having to lie to you, and I don’t want to rob you of your happiness with her”

“I don’t know, man... I don’t want to freak her out... I don’t want her freaking out at me for hiding it...”

“I know. I know and I’m sorry... I hated lying to you, but once you know about the scary things you can’t take it all back”

  Realising they were born whispering at the same time, the moves away from each other. Lance moving to start welling the flour, Hunk going on the search for his pasta rolling machine

“Let me think about it? I’m still... processing... I mean... you and Keith are dudes... you’re... a guy... and I’m not saying this right, man. I’m like super happy for you... but I still have like a hundred questions of how this even happens”

  They didn’t have time for the hundred questions. Lance still a hundred questions over how it’s happened and how he was going to get Hunk alone to fill him in on everything so far

“I’m a different type of vampire from drinking Keith’s blood. That still sounds really gross and wrong... I’m really gross when you think about it. I only did it to save his life and my body started changing thanks to it. I really love Keith, but I don’t... the thought of feeding from someone warm and living, makes me feel gross”

“I kind of don’t think about it. I mean, I do, but I mean like you’re our best friend. Me and Pidge are starting to get it”

“You shouldn’t have to though...”

“It’s weird, but when you think about it, blood is used in a lot of different dishes around the world. Mongolian tribes have this dish made of horse blood and milk, and then there’s things like blood sausages... I mean, no one gets hurt right? To get the blood?”

“It’s donated. People get compensated... Coran makes sure they’re not mistreated or anything like that... It’s... um... easier to eat when you don’t know where it’s from”

“Like it’s easier to eat devilled ham spread when you don’t know they use pig eyeballs and eye lashes in it”

  Lance shook his head, he didn’t want to feel so reassured that it was okay to be drinking human blood in front of his human friends

“You’re being too calm”

“Lance, have you ever wanted to feed off of me, or off of Pidge”

Lance took instant offence

“No! Ew... no. I love you guys, how could you even think that’s okay!”

“You just answered how we’re okay with this. You wouldn’t. Not unless there was absolutely no other option. You’ve got another option, but if you didn’t, neither of us want to see you suffer. We’re friends and friends work things out together”

  Oh.

  Deserting his role with the flour, Lance wrapped his arms around Hunk again

“I’m sorry I lost it... I shouldn’t have snapped...”

Hunk chuckled, always up for a hug

“It’s fine, man. Sometimes you get caught up in your head too much”

“I’ve never had... you know... human friends who knew about me. You guys... I love you guys so much. I’d never feed on you... I can’t...”

“I don’t know, Shay calls me her “tasty snack”...”

“Yeah. No. She can snack on you. I’m sorry, I’m being all weird”

“You’ve been weirder than normal for weeks now, but you’ve always been a little weird”

“I’ve been weird for 7 weeks... Keith’s accident started it all”

Hunk swatted at his arm

“Dude. Too much information”

“We we’re going to wait until the next time I saw Coran...”

“It’s okay. I’m not about to tell... but you need to be taking better care of yourself”

“I’m trying. God. At this rate dinner’s never going to be done”

“Are you saying my hugs aren’t worth it?”

“They’re totally worth it... you’re like, the coolest dude ever”

“It’s my gift and my curse”

  They both laughed. Out of everyone, he was so fucking relieved that Hunk knew. He just hoped Pidge would take the news as well as him.

[wonkystank]

Bad Decisions, Good Moments

By @wonkystank for @joyful-soul-collector as part of the @friendly-neighborhood-exchange

WC: 3k

Rating: Everyone (no swearing, tw for some discussion of anxiety, a character forgets to eat for a while)

Relationships: Tony Stark & Peter Parker, a bit of Tony Stark & May Parker

Characters: Tony Stark, Peter Parker, May Parker, and a few Midtown staff

Summary/Prompt: Peter forgets to eat breakfast and faints from hunger at school. Tony takes care of him, bringing him home to give him something to eat.

Notes: huuuge shout out to Marko for being there on a bad night when I barely knew them. I was really happy when I saw I was assigned to create for them and able to give back!!

Tony was idly fiddling on the newest StarkPhone model in his lab. He was in a concentrated daze when his phone suddenly rang, startling him out of his chair and onto the ground.

He cursed and rubbed his sore backside as he sat on the floor, somewhat frantically patting the desk to find his phone, which was out of sight. He located it on the fifth ring, right before it went to voicemail and spoke without looking at the caller.

"Stark. Who is this?" He panted, out of breath.

There was a long pause on the other side before, "Uh, Tony Stark? This is Midtown High, calling in regards to Peter Parker," the voice said, in a distinctly Southern accent. The voice then, continuing off to the side in a loud whisper, obviously not meant to be heard but failing spectacularly, "Tony Stark! I'm talking to Iron Man! I did not think this number would work."

Choosing to ignore that and spare the secretary some dignity, Tony asked, "Peter? What happened with him?"

"Oh, uh, of course. Peter was in gym class and fainted. He's currently in the nurse's office, and he's perfectly fine, but we recommend he go home for the last three periods of the day and rest. We called his primary contact with no answer so you were next on the list. Are you able to pick him up?"

Tony rolls his eyes at the kid's stupidity. Peter had probably forgotten to eat that morning and his metabolism screwed him over. He replied smoothly, "Should be no problem. I can make it there in 15, 20 minutes?"

"That would be excellent, sir, thank you."

"Great, see you soon."

Tony stood up off the floor, grumbling. He grabbed a suit jacket that was thrown over the back of a nearby chair, attempting to class up the t-shirt and jeans he was wearing.

"Friday? Shut down the lab for the night, I think the kid and I will just stick to my apartment."

Tony Stark lightly jogged up the front steps of Midtown High. He thought the security was a little lacking, and considered dropping by some other time and visiting the principal with his checkbook on him. But not today - he didn't want to bore Peter.

He strolled through the doors with a certain degree of the patented Tony Stark flair and glanced around, finding the office easily, continuing on his way.

The receptionist was on the phone when he walked in, and from her voice, she seemed to be the same one he had talked to. Not wanting to distract her, he lagged back a little from her desk as he waited.

When she set the phone down and looked up, he approached her and said, "Hi, Tony Stark, here to pick up Peter Parker?"

Her eyes widened and she said "Oh, uh, he's in the nurse's office right now - that's a little ways down the hall, first door on your left." Obviously having run through the whole spiel many times before, it seemed she forgot that it was Tony Stark in front of her and slipped into a monotone drone. She continued, "It's in the guidance office, the man at the desk there will help you. You'll need ID so he can make sure you aren't a kidnapper and that you're actually picking up the right kid."

Tony smiled, "Well, we wouldn't want that. Thank you for your time, Miss..?"

She startled, not expecting him to care about who she actually was, and replied slightly belatedly, "Miss Hodge. Pleasure meeting you, Mister Stark."

Tony turned and walked out the door, heading down the hall according to her instructions.

For a few moments, he idly wonders why the nurse's office is in Guidance. What kind of person would put the nurse's office there instead of the main office? He settled on the idea there was no explanation, but that it was decidedly stupid. As he walked, he fished out his wallet and pulled out his driver's license, just in case someone thought he wasn't Tony Stark. If that wasn't obvious.

He reached the doorway and wandered in.

Directing his request to the man at the desk, he asked, "Hi, Tony Stark, here to pick up Peter Parker?"

"ID please," the man droned.

He passed it over. The secretary glanced at it for half a second, handed it back with a form, and said in a bored tone, "The door behind you is the nurse's office, he'll be in there. Please sign this sheet to sign him out."

Honestly, the man not knowing him or not caring was kinda refreshing. At least Tony knew he wasn't a total bootlicker for nothing. He signed the paper a little less boldly than normal, because even though this guy didn't care, anyone who took a look at it after might, whether that was another secretary, a parent, or whoever, and he didn't really want to deal with that. It could end up putting a target on Peter's back if people realized they had a connection and that was the last thing Tony wanted. He already was in enough danger as Spider-Man.

Doing his best to shove all his fears and anxieties into a back corner of his brain, Tony slid the page back to the secretary and turned to the door behind him to get Peter.

He knocked twice and opened the door, stepping in. His attention turned to the brown-haired kid laying on the cot, and he smiled widely at the sight.

Peter was dozing away peacefully on the rubber-coated mattress. His hair was gelled back, but some of his curls had escaped and were flying away. He looked about three years younger than usual, carefree in a way that the teenager typically lacked.

Tony took in the sight for a few moments more and then plopped down on the cot beside him. He set a reassuring hand on the boy's ankle, then started, "Wakey-wakey, Mister Parker."

Peter slowly blinked awake, getting his bearings, but winced at the light.

"M'sser- Mister Stark? What are you doing here?"

"Hmm, well, I'll give you three guesses as to why," Tony replied, in a fake indifferent tone.

Much more aware then, Peter complained, "Don't try and be funny, your personal intern fainted today. Isn't that an emergency that deserves all your serious attention?"

"One hundred percent. On that note, how are you feeling?"

Peter tried to push himself upward and fell back, stifling a groan. On his second try, he fared better and managed to stay upright.

"Mmmph. Yeah, the nurse gave me an Advil, some water, and a pack of saltines before she went to go do a Sex Ed presentation or something. But you know me, that much doesn't really stick. Headache is still kinda killer."

Tony cupped Peter's jaw and rubbed his thumb over his cheek. His brow furrowed.

"Yeah, we really need to find a painkiller that actually works for you. And get some more food. Have you actually eaten in the past 24 hours?"

"Who can really say? Time is relative."

"Kid."

"Adult," came the response, just as dry.

"Y'know, I don't have to stand for this. I can just leave you here, bored and in pain. But I won't, because I enjoy you most of the time you aren't like this." Tony said, waving a hand dramatically. He continued, "Alright, let's break you out of here because there's no sense in staying in this broom closet."

"Agreed," Peter said firmly.

Tony offered him a hand up, steadying the kid when he started to tip. The mentor secured an arm around his shoulders just in case, and then they were off.

Tony tapped impatiently on the steering wheel as they waited at a red light. It had been silent for a few minutes, and Tony was thinking hard.

He broke the silence as the light turned green, asking tentatively, "Peter? Are you… okay? Because you need to eat, and you need to sleep, and if you aren't taking care of yourself, that's something we should talk about."

Peter visibly stiffened, and his voice was unusually hard when he scoffed back, "You're one to talk about taking care of yourself."

Tony blew out a breath slowly. In a calm voice, he said, "Peter."

The boy crumpled in on himself suddenly, wiping at his eyes and sniffling. His voice cracked and the dam inside him that kept all his feelings bottled up broke. The words tumbled out of his mouth before he could stop them, and said, "I- I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said that. That- that wasn't fair of me. It's… I dunno, it's been kinda hard lately. All my teachers are getting us freaked out about exams, and I'm still trying to keep up with patrolling, and MJ and I got into an argument and it's really, really just been a lot. And- and everything just swirls around in my brain at night and so I hardly sleep, and then I run out the door for school without grabbing any food. And the cycle just keeps going. May's been away for a work thing the past few days so she hasn't really been able to keep me in check. Today just sorta was my unlucky day, with the fainting thing. I just want to stop hurting. Is that not too much to ask?"

Tony wished he wasn't driving then, that he could devote 100% of himself to Peter in that moment. But keeping him alive by driving safely was also very important, so he made do with what he had and set a gentle hand on the kid's knee.

He glanced over for a second, making eye contact briefly before redirecting his attention to the road. "Pete, being completely honest with you, I can't help you all the way here. I can be here, listen, support you. And I'll be there, every time you need me. But I can't help you rewire your brain, in the way I think you know it needs. I think seeing a therapist would help you a lot, help you deal with your normal and night life stresses. I was where you were once, and I suffered alone like that for a really long time. It wasn't worth it. There's no shame in going to therapy. I go to therapy. If you're not ready yet, that's okay. But I swear to you, no matter what, it gets better. It always gets better."

Peter sniffed a few times, then cracked a small grin.

"Y'know, I'd hug you right now, but I'm pretty sure that'd be a really bad idea."

"Well, I think I can fit a hug into my schedule in a few minutes. But just a quick one, I have other stuff to do."

"Also, wow, when did you get so good at making impromptu motivational speeches? Has all that time with Captain America been rubbing off on you?" Peter wondered aloud.

"Kid, when you grow up famous, you learn a trick or two. Cap was very much in the ice when I learned all this sort of stuff."

"If that's what you say," the kid mocked.

"You're killing me, kid."

Back at the Tower, Peter stretched out on the couch closest to the kitchen.

"What are you making anyway? I thought you couldn't cook."

As Tony buttered a piece of bread, he replied, "Oh, a few years back, Pepper insisted on me becoming a sensible, capable adult, so she signed me up for cooking lessons. I'm no chef like Happy is, but I can hold my own."

Without looking over, Peter said, "So you're making me grilled cheese."

"Wh- yes, but how did you figure out that?"

"Well, I can hear you buttering bread because of my enhancement, but Tony Stark would not simply make a sandwich, ergo, you're about to turn on the pan and make grilled cheese. Easy, delicious, quick, and a step above average."

"What are you, a mentalist now?"

Peter popped his head up and stared eerily at Tony. He whispered, in a tone meant to be creepy but just reaching moderately weird, "I can read your mind."

"Sure kid. So, what happened at school today before your little episode?

"Well…" Peter trailed on about the exceptionally boring English class that morning, then moved on to telling him about Ned's latest obsession with some tech YouTuber. By the time he was finished talking about some idiot client May had at work, the grilled cheese was ready.

With an air of elegance, Tony waltzed over to Peter, plate balanced on one hand, and announced, "Apologies for the interruption, Mister Parker, but your food is ready. Bon appetit."

"Uh, merci, monsieur."

Tony lost the groomed facade and ordered, "Alright, now move your feet because I have to sit here too."

Peter scooched his feet back by one couch cushion. Through a mouthful of sandwich, he responded, "Wow, someone's bossy."

"I am going to ignore that and take the higher path - what are we going to watch?"

"Star Wars."

"You really didn't have to think about it at all, did you?"

Peter grinned, "You know how I said I could read minds? Well, your next question is going to be what episode. To that, I say, A New Hope, because it's the OG and that's what I feel like right now."

"You set me up for that one by purposely not saying which episode first."

"Still got it right, though didn't I?"

Pretending not to hear, Tony turned up to the ceiling. "FRIDAY? You heard the kid. Queue it up."

The opening music began and the text started scrolling across the screen. Peter shifted his legs again so that they were on Tony's lap.

Tony rolled his eyes, "Oh, you think I'm the bossy one? What do you call this."

Peter simply replied by shushing him loudly.

And who could say if Tony enjoyed the contact? (Well, FRIDAY probably could). He settled a hand on Peter's ankle and sat back to watch the show.

Halfway through, long after Peter's exhaustion had overcame him and made him fall asleep, Tony's cell rang. He did his best to slip out unnoticeably from under Peter's legs and went out into the hallway to answer the call.

"Hey May, I guess you heard?"

"Uh-huh. Fainted, right in the middle of class."

"Yeah, as it turns out, he hadn't eaten in a while, especially bad for his metabolism."

In a wry tone, May said, "The next time I go away, you're keeping our idiot kid at your place and taking care of him."

"Yeah, definitely don't want repeats on this episode," Tony replied.

"On second thought, I should make sure Pepper’s around, because we both know that you're almost as bad as Peter about that."

Tony let out a groan and whined, "I resent that. Why didn't I try harder to keep you two apart? I knew you'd swap stories and become more powerful."

May laughed. "You think you could've ever kept us away from each other? We're just trying to keep you in constant terror so you never step out of line."

"Y'know, I'm pretty sure that qualifies as abuse."

May smiles, then shakes her head, and her voice turns more serious. "Thank you, though, for being there for Peter when I couldn't. I'm glad he has someone else looking out for him again."

The unimaginable losses Peter had faced were woven into that sentence. First his parents, then Ben. It had only been May for far too long. But now, there was someone else to shoulder that weight again.

"Always, May. I'm always here." Tony says, in an equally somber tone.

Lightening the mood a little, May adds, "Hey, how about you come over to our place Sunday night? I'd say for dinner, but I'm sure Peter has told you stories about my cooking, so pizza? And a movie? As part of my thanks. I'm sure Pete would enjoy it."

"I think I can swing that," Tony said, "And hey, um, I was talking to Peter, and he seems to be struggling a lot right now. I can set him up with a therapist, get all the paperwork good for the secret superhero stuff. I'll take care of the money too, that's not something you should worry about."

There's a pause, and May's voice is low when she replies, "You're doing right by our kid, in case you ever doubt that. I'd really appreciate that, and I agree, I think he needs it."

"Of course. Uh, I should probably get back to the kid sleeping in the other room. Take care, May."

"See you soon, Tony."

"Buh-bye."

Tony walked back to the couch. He stopped, for a moment, taking a long look at the kid who turned his life around.

"I love you," he whispered. Peter wasn't awake to hear it, but Tony hoped he already knew. He'd say it some other time, when the moment was right and he had barely enough courage. He made a silent promise to himself to do that.

He sat back down, smiled, and basked in the rare peaceful moment he had. Life was good for Tony Stark because he had Peter Parker in his life.

[ugly-crying-over-bucky-barnes]

Roguish Women Part 12

Summary: Kate Rosseau is an American who fled to Paris to escape her past life. Now she's dancing and playing the part of a courtesan at the Moulin Rouge. There she meets Tommy Shelby who thinks she can be useful in expanding his empire. But has he been blinded?

Part 11: Tommy confides in Kate, telling her that he suspects Alfie isn’t loyal. 

            “I tell you, Esme, he’s really something else. I mean fuck’s sake I’ve seen Jewish gangsters before but Alfie Solomons.” Kate let out a low whistle. “I’d have to have an army behind me if I ever wanted to cross him. Knocked a man out cold with one blow. I mean Jesus Christ, that has to be some sort of talent of his.”

            Back in Birmingham, Kate was at the betting shop, alone with John’s wife who she got along well with. She was in the kitchen with the curtain open so she could talk to Esme while making something quick to eat for lunch.

            That’s when she heard the door open and suddenly, she realized Esme was focused on something else.

            “Es?” Kate walked out to see a well-dressed woman walking inside. The room suddenly became tense as the woman appeared out of her element and Esme was on guard. “Don’t think we’ve met.” She tried to break the discomfort in the air.

            “May Carleton.” The woman greeted in a posh accent. “I have an appointment with Mr. Shelby.”

            Kate subtly glanced at Esme who shook her head. “Here? He’s got an office, I mean. And it’s a lot nicer than this place.”

            “Oh, yes, I asked for this address. He said he ran a gambling den and I-” May looked a little pink in the face. “I wanted to see one but I see now I’m early and I don’t know how to behave.”

            “Well, it helps if you can hold your ground. Men ‘round here are a bit aggressive when it comes to placing bets.” Kate smiled and sat down.

            Esme still seemed suspicious of the wealthy looking woman but curious all the same. “What do you do, then?” She went back to her daily tasks about the shop.

            “Oh, I’m going to train Tommy’s horse for Epsom,” May answered as she took a look around the place.

            Kate sat down with her snack. “So that’s why he was asking if I knew anything about horses.” She realized. “He got himself a horse and someone to train it.”

            “You know horses?” May wondered.

            “No, Esme does.”

            John’s wife smiled and nodded. “Most gypsy girls do. We’re born riding horses.”

            “There’s a fucking great Riley parked out there and nobody’s watching it!” John entered the shop loudly, as he usually did.

            “That’s a nice car.” Kate gave May an impressed look. Apparently, her wealth wasn’t limited to just clothing.  

            “John,” Esme stepped in before he made any plans on nicking the car while its owner was in the room.

            “Hey!” Kate smacked his hand away as he tried to snatch her lunch instead. “Fuck off and go find Tommy, Miss Carleton here is looking for him.”

            Speak of the devil and he shall appear. Tommy entered the shop through the kitchen. “Sorry I’m late. Take a look around?” He wondered.

            “Because there’s just so much to see,” Kate mumbled. She couldn’t blame anyone for the monotonous surroundings. Small Heath wasn’t much to look at. Neither was London but at least Alfie Solomons kept Kate on her toes. Returning to Birmingham was like settling into a tepid bath. It was familiar but the same old thing. It didn’t help that she was back to the place where Santo knew she was.

            Tommy ignored the comment. “So, you’ve come to get my girl, aye?”

            “Yes.” May seemed a bit glad to get out of the betting shop.

            “Kate, I’ll be needing a word with you once I return from speak with Miss Carleton.”

            She brushed her hands off and stood up. “I can walk with you now. Unless Esme needs me here.”

            “No, she’ll keep it locked up for now.” Tommy lit up a cigarette. “Walk with us.”

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~

            May seemed to take the hint and lagged behind so Tommy and Kate could converse in private on the way to the Yard.

            “You got along easily with Alfie.”

            Kate crossed her arms over her chest and shrugged. “I get along easily with a lot of people. It’s called being outgoing.” She replied deadpan.

            “What I mean, is he seems to trust you.” Tommy reiterated to get his point across. He didn’t want to talk in circles with her, not when he was so busy.

            “I don’t like where this is going, Tommy. You asked me to conduct business with the man, that’s what I’m doing. You asked me for contacts in America, that’s what I gave you. I wouldn’t double-cross that man for any sum. So, don’t even try bargaining with me.”

            “Those words never came out me mouth, now did they?”

            Kate rolled her eyes. “Oh, don’t play games with me. I know what you were hinting at.” She stopped walking to face him, making sure May wasn’t in earshot. “I know you like to play your pieces and strategize or whatever.” She jabbed a finger into his chest. “But you’re not putting me in those cross-fires. I spelled out what I’d do for protection. Getting myself killed seems to be counterintuitive.”        

            Tommy cleared his throat and reached into the inside of his pocket. Inside an envelope were a train ticket and a roll of cash. “Go to London and pay him a visit. Don’t need to say anything, just discuss business as usual. If you notice something’s wrong, you bring that information back to me.”

            Kate’s hear tbeat rapidly in her chest. It was obvious Tommy knew something she didn’t. “No, no fuck off. I’m not doing that.” She stepped away from him and pushed the envelope back into his hand.

            “He requested a meeting, I said you’d go and see him.” He insisted.

            “And why don’t you go?” She demanded. “You go and find out what you want to know.”

            “I’m busy.”

            “Busy.” She scoffed. “With what?”

            Tommy sighed and glanced over his shoulder to May who was waiting patiently a few yards away.

            Kate let out a sarcastic snort. “Oh, I see you’re too busy with the pretty horse trainer. And here I was thinking you had sworn off women for good.”

            “For the Derby.” He clarified firmly. He didn’t want her going around toting off rumors that he was involved with May. Even if it was the intention, sort of.

            Kate wrinkled her nose in disgust and snatched the envelope from his hand. “Don’t fucking understand what all this fuss is about this Derby. One horse race and Tommy Shelby is going to end up with a key to the world? Isn’t that easy.” She snapped before walking off with the ticket and money in hand.

~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

            “Y’know, I’ve always had issues with Italians.”

            Kate clicked her tongue as she tried to keep track of the numbers on the ledger in front of her instead of Alfie’s out of the blue comment. If Tommy hadn’t said anything about Alfie’s loyalty, then she would’ve gladly accepted the trip to London without a second thought. She enjoyed the man’s presence. He was interesting, to say the least.

            “Is that right? Is it a preference? I knew many Jews in America who didn’t feel the same.”

            “Call it experience.” Alfie idly cracked his knuckles over his cane. “You must have the same preference, then, that right?”

            “I tend not to focus on ethnicities, Mr. Solomons.” Kate didn’t spare a moment to look up from the report he’d given her upon the start of the meeting.

            “’Less they’re hunting you down.”

            That made her set the ledger aside. She laced her fingers together and rested them on her knee. “I thought we had an understanding, Alfie. I like you and you like me. I don’t ask for a list of your enemies and you don’t ask about mine.”

            Alfie ran a hand over his beard a few times as he studied her face. “See, thing is, Kate, if I do business with someone, I do like to know whether there’s any sort of, well, liabilities.”

            It was like Tommy was there in spirit, pointing out all the little tells that something was wrong. Even in the roundabout way Alfie spoke, Kate could see he wasn’t being entirely honest. “Have you been speaking with Italians?” She asked in as casual of a manner she could muster.

            “We don’t ask about each other’s enemies, yeah?” His right hand twitched.

            “Would you like to talk about my enemies, Alfie?”

            He held his arms out as if embracing her from across the desk. “I’ve got all the time in the world, love.”

            That was enough of an answer for Kate. The answer that Tommy was right. There was something Alfie was planning behind the scenes. “His name is Santo Leoni, but I’m sure you already knew that. He’s from Boston. Runs everything on the Italian side, but you knew that as well. Something you might not know, Alfie,” She leaned forward. “but something I know and know very well. He leaves a trail of ash behind him. Everyone he wants dead, dies. He’s after me but he’s also after anyone I’ve been in contact with, anyone he thinks has been hiding me, helping me.”

            Alfie wasn’t scared, obviously, in fact, he looked completely unbothered. “So that’s what you give the Shelbys then, yeah, in return for giving you a bit of work?” He asked. “You set them up to be burned, that right?”

            “No.” Kate stood up and gathered her things. “Because I think they’re the only ones capable of taking him down.” Their eyes met for a moment, almost in an understanding. Alfie knew that she knew. And Kate knew that he had figured her out. “Good afternoon, Mr. Solomons.”

~~~~~~~~~~~ 

            At the train station, Kate phoned the office. Lizzie answered immediately.

            “Liz, I’ve got to speak to Tommy, it’s urgent.”

            The secretary paused. “He’s left for Surrey. I could try to find the number for the address but I don’t know how long it’ll take.”

            “Fuck, what on Earth is he doing in Surrey?” Kate threw her hand up in disbelief. The man was always on the move it was hard enough to pin him down when he was just in the office.

            “Visiting the racehorse for the derby,” Lizzie answered.

            “Visiting the-for the love of-too busy for-” She held back a frustrated scream. “Too busy to attend meetings but he can fuck off to Surrey with that woman. Jesus Christ, I need to speak with him now.” She insisted.

            “Arthur or John might be around, want me to get them?”

            “No, no, I-I don’t know what Tommy’s told them.” Kate ran a hand over her face in frustration. She wasn’t enjoying all the secrecy and hushed plans. It made it difficult to know where she stood. “I’m coming back to Birmingham now. If he calls, you tell him that he was right about Alfie.”

            “Right about…”

            “Just say those words exactly, he’ll know what it means.” Kate hung up the phone to hurry off to board the train. “At least I hope he knows.”  

Permanent Tag: @papa-geralt-of-cirilla​ @giftofdreams​ @biba3434​ @kimmietea​

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Masterlist

[harryandmolly]

Complicit // 7

summary: Shawn is under more pressure than he’s ever known. He craves release and comfort, the simplicity of sex. He gets more than he bargained for.

warnings: language, NSFW (unprotected sex, don’t do that), fireworks of one kind or another

WC: 9.2k (..... what)

----------

Penny barely noticed the June gloom this year. Her first few weeks of summer were so full of Shawn she never had the opportunity or need to pout about the hazy, cool gray of Los Angeles. She even found herself appreciating it on the morning she woke up tangled with him in Malibu, the screened window of their room open to let in the misty ocean air. The morning had blanketed them in fog. It felt like there was nothing left but them. 

Penny couldn’t scurry away from him fast enough.

But now, just like clockwork, the gloom is gone. It’s high summer in Southern California. The sun browns the palm fronds that have fallen on her patio. The hardwood is too hot to walk on in her sitting room if she accidentally leaves the curtains open in the afternoon. Penny loves it. The sun is her friend. She spends all her free time hiking Pamela around the canyons and taking her to the dog friendly beaches in Malibu, all the time she doesn’t spend with Shawn.

He asks for a day date on the morning of July 1st. Silver arranges an early check in time at a bungalow at the Fairmont Miramar in Santa Monica. They order breakfast, eat a few bites of their fruit plates, then end up fucking against the wall. After spending an hour talking and eating their now cold but still delicious omelettes, they fuck in the bed, hot and lazy with Penny stretched out flat, stomach down on the crisp white sheets, letting Shawn bite at her shoulder blades once she allows him to come.

He follows his nips and nibbles with kisses, wet and plush. He eases out of her carefully, tossing the condom in the bin by the bed. He rolls onto his back with a contented sigh, feeling like slippery jello all over. He reaches out a hand to find her hair with his eyes shut.

“You sick of me yet?” he grunts.

Penny, flushed and wet, fully sated after a four orgasm morning with him, cracks a smile and drapes an arm over his stomach.

“How could I be sick of this?” she teases, sweeping her fingers down to brush his tired cock. His abdomen visibly clenches. He grins and shakes his head.

“I just don’t want to take up all your time. I know… I mean, I’m not your only client. I don’t want to hog you.”

Except that I do.

He ignores the throbbing thought in his head, one of the only ones he doesn’t feel he can share with her. He lowers his gaze to her soft fingers.

“I don’t have that many clients,” she admits with a soft shrug. She wets her lips and decides to continue into territory that a few weeks ago would’ve been verboten, “Once you become a courtesan, the fewer clients you have, the more appealing you are. Exclusivity is sexy. So is being available at the drop of a hat.”

Shawn bobs his head. That makes sense. But he can’t help but wonder if there have been instances lately where her other clients have tried to book her but he’s already snatched her up. Not that he regrets it.

“Speaking of… being available,” he murmurs, clearing his throat, raspy from his heavy moans, “Do you have 4th of July plans?”

She shakes her head. “No. Pamela hates fireworks. I usually lock us in my bedroom where it’s dark and quiet.”

She blinks and looks away, startled at how easily she feels like she can talk to him about her normal life. Or parts of it.

Shawn nods. “Oh yeah, no, that makes sense.”

Penny turns onto her side, propping up on her elbow. “But Gus is an excellent dogsitter.”

Shawn’s nose twitches as he tries to control a goofy smile. “There’s this party in Malibu. It’s not… I mean, it wouldn’t really be a hotel room thing, y’know, like usual. It’s-- I guess it’s just something I’d like you there for. Like, as a friend. But I’d pay you, obviously.”

As he starts to stumble through his words, he feels the dominoes start to crash until he silences himself. He chuckles, squeezes his eyes shut and tilts his head back. He doesn’t right himself until he feels her little fingers circling his adam’s apple.

“Will there be hot dogs?”

She’s smirking at him, letting her fingers trail down a little further.

“I… don’t know. Probably?”

He knows she’s just joking but he does feel nervous all of a sudden. He’s bringing her to a party with his friends and some of his team. It’s a risk. But it’s the kind of event that there’s no point in bringing Bex to, because there are absolutely no phones or paparazzi allowed. So he wants to capitalize and enjoy himself as much as possible, which means he wants Penny there.

“Good. 4th of July parties should always have hot dogs.”

Shawn lays his hand against his chest, spreading his fingers so the tips brush her arm that’s splayed over his stomach. 

“It’s a white party. It’s at my friend’s friend’s house in Malibu, right by Nobu. It should be cool. Really chill, no photos or anything. And my friends will be there so you don’t have to worry about me, like, dragging you off to a bedroom or something.”

She lifts her eyebrows. He flushes, wondering how it is he lets his mouth just… go off without him like that.

“I wouldn’t say that’s something I ‘worry’ about,” she muses, “But are you sure you can keep those big beautiful hands to yourself that long?”

Shawn gapes playfully. “I have plenty of self control.”

The arm over his torso drifts so Penny’s hand can skim up and down the outside of his thigh. His adams apple bobs.

“Right. Your performance at the Vertigo Magazine party proved that.”

Shawn’s pink cheeks persist. He nudges her legs with his knee. “We were in that together.”

Penny’s lips purse. Her chin lifts, indignant but unwilling to pursue the point further. “Fine. If you’d like to prove you have self control, why don’t I put you to the test?”

Shawn’s cock stirs automatically at the idea of another challenge from her. He gropes desperately at any opportunity to impress her.

“Go one week without masturbating or having sex.”

Shawn blinks. “-- what?”

Penny’s placid smile grows a little evil. “Just a week. No hands, no toys, no girls until July 8th.”

He maps out the next week in his head. The party is in three days, then after that he’s doing a radio appearance in New York. He’ll be back in LA on the 8th.

“Ok,” he replies, “Fine. I can totally do that.”

Her lips curl. “I love the confidence. But… have you ever tried?”

Shawn frowns. “I mean, no. But I’m sure it’s happened.”

Of course it has. He’s busy. He travels all the time. He’s constantly exhausted and surrounded by people. Of course he’s gone a week without getting off.

…. Hasn’t he?

The hesitation must show up on his face. Penny’s haughty smile grows.

“Not since you were 11, I bet.”

Shawn huffs. “I can totally do this. This will be fine.”

Penny is quiet. He looks over at her, waiting impatiently for her next comment. She looks up from the firm muscles of his chest and raises a single perfect brow.

“You’re forgetting one thing.”

“What?” he sighs.

She relishes the hot, pulsing silence.

“You’ll see me in three days. And I’m not going to make it easy.”

+

The problem is, of course, that he’s thinking about it.

He probably could do it if he just did it accidentally, if he was so busy, flying four times in seven days like he sometimes is, his body lost between time zones with an orgasm the last thing on his mind.

But Penny did this to him on purpose. She planted the seed. Now, because he knows he can’t touch himself, it’s all he can do to stop.

He relishes every busy moment in the three days leading up to the party. He’s at a festival in Prague, of all places, so the jet lag helps keep him hazy enough that it’s not all consuming. He figures it’ll take a few days to cool down, that he’ll eventually forget he even needs to jerk off. He just has to get to the party on Friday.

But god, he knows her. He knows she’s not bluffing. She’s going to hang his blue balls like fuzzy dice from the rearview mirror of her Aston Martin by the end of this party. And he’ll be crawling after her for more.

He just… he loves the way she tastes. Her lips always feel so good anywhere they touch. Her skin is warm, but not in a way he’s used to. It’s not surface level, it’s like it bleeds out of her from somewhere deep. And she always smells nice. And he loves the noises she makes when she--

Shawn lets his head fall back against the American Airlines lounge wall with a clunk. He’s started to lose track of the number of times this train of thought has run him down in the last few days. But it’s Friday, July 4th. In a few hours, he’ll be stepping off the plane in LA and into a car to take him straight to Malibu, where the only thing that can save him from thinking about fucking Penny is booze. And maybe fireworks. Shawn loves fireworks.

Almost as much as he loves the way she whines when he gets his cock in her.

FUCK!

+

Penny plants a hand against the top of her head as she steps out of Gus’s Tesla. Her wide-brimmed snow white sun hat flutters in the coastal breeze. She pauses a moment, her back to the beach house, staring across the street at the line of valeted luxury cars as her hair flaps against her bare shoulders and back.

With a little wink and wave, and Gus’s paternal promise to be at a Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf 15 minutes away when she’s ready to leave, Penny shuts the door and turns to the house.

It’s very Malibu. It’s as sun-bleached white as she is, and matching every occupant she can see going in or out, and there are many. It’s gated and set back a ways from the main road, but she can make out throngs of rich, hot guests through the floor-to-ceiling windows and can hear the simmering house music from here.

In wide-legged trousers and a low cut halter, Penny looks more like a Studio 54 devotee than an LA-based escort at a 4th of July party. Her hips swing as she climbs the stairs, tilting her hat brim as she passes a group of curious twenty-something women in white bikinis.

She’s about to go wandering down one side of the crowded wraparound porch area when she hears him.

“Pen!”

Her head whips around. She grins, ignoring the sets of eyes on them from either side.

He’s barefoot in white jeans and a gauzy, partially see through white collared shirt unbuttoned down to there. His cheeks are bright pink, his curls are tamed with paste and his lips are wet from the beer in his hand.

He pads up to her with a big smile, hugging her around the shoulders lightly like she’s a casual friend who doesn’t know the kind of noises he makes when she strokes that one favorite spot of his with her lubed fingers.

He leads her inside where it’s less populated, weaving toward a quiet corner where she can put her bag. In a quiet bedroom, Penny has her back to him, dropping the almost comically large hat onto the bed and wiggling her fingers into her hair, fluffing her blown out curls, sweeping them off her back. Shawn watches them go and then fixes his eyes to what’s beneath. There’s a fading bruise on the top of her left shoulder blade from where he bit her as he came the last time they saw each other.

He has to remind himself with a rough swallow of beer that it’s not going to happen this time. It’s a little jarring, even though it’s not news.

“So,” Penny chirps, turning on the heel of her flat sandal, “Do I get a kiss?”

Shawn instinctively looks over his shoulder even though he knows very well the food was just served and the DJ’s second set just started so almost everyone is outside. He cracks a nervous smile.

“Ah, yeah, sure.”

Penny laughs. She doesn’t take his lack of enthusiasm personally. Especially because she knows exactly what happens to him when she gets her lips on his.

She crooks her finger at him, swiping the tip of her tongue along her lower lip as he approaches, slow and careful like she might bite him. Maybe if he’s lucky.

Penny drops a hand against his shoulder and tilts her chin up, waiting for him. He daintily places a hand on her waist and just brushes his lips against hers before slipping away.

Penny looks even more amused, digging her teeth into her lip. “That’s all I get, huh?”

Shawn shrugs, aims his gaze at the wall. “Well, you were the one that wanted to see my self control.”

Penny hums, nodding. “Very impressive. Let’s go find me a drink, hm?”

She slips past him, keeping her hair over her shoulder so her bare back is all he can focus on as he follows her.

+

Penny is the perfect courtesan, Shawn is absolutely convinced.

He knows he doesn’t have hard data on this, or even experience with more than one courtesan, but Jesus. She does her job so fucking well.

Up til now, he had only seen the closed doors part of her persona, the part that’s private, only for him (or for her other clients). Since they were avoiding each other at the Vertigo Magazine party, he hasn’t seen this side of her, the Professional Social Butterfly.

Penny is chatty without being obnoxious. She’s intelligent and well-spoken, a good listener and a great conversationalist. She’s witty and dry and earnest and sarcastic and sweet and the belle of the damn ball.

Shawn sighs as if in defeat, glancing at her over the rim of his vodka rocks. She’s been flitting around the party, focusing on his group of friends and teammates, charming each and every one. When they ask how she and Shawn met, she answers them without missing a beat.

“We met at the Vertigo Magazine Blue Hawaii party! He told me he liked my coconuts.”

Andrew barks a laugh at that. Shawn chuckles and goes crimson. Penny enjoys herself too much and tells the same punny joke half a dozen different ways depending on who asks.

He watches her turn from what looked to be a riveting conversation with Connor when a woman puts her hand on Penny’s shoulder. Penny turns and grins. She doesn’t look surprised at the greeting.

The woman, stately and palpably powerful in a blindingly white pantsuit with no shirt beneath the tailored, buttoned blazer, leans in to kiss Penny’s cheek. Her sheath of unbelievably straight black hair falls in front of them, obscuring his curious gaze. The woman murmurs something in Penny’s ear and then looks up at Shawn like she already knew he was there. Penny’s eyes follow. She smiles, and it’s quiet, reserved -- the same way she smiles at him when they’re alone talking in bed between orgasms.

It’s another half hour before she makes her way back to him, squeezing his bare arm. It’s somehow so casual that he doesn’t even think to look around for prying eyes when she does it, but so personal that his heart thrums faster in his chest.

“Hi.”

A single word and he’s practically panting for her. He doesn’t know if it’s from watching her blend so well into his real life or from the challenge she set him. Either way, he looks at her accusingly.

“You’re so good at this.”

His voice is hushed enough that she doesn’t have to shush him. She blinks.

“Good at what?”

“Everything,” Shawn groans.

Penny smiles and it makes Shawn wish she would pin him against a wall already and go to fucking town.

“Could you do me a favor?” she asks earnestly, cocking her head at him, looking apologetic. He nods.

“Could you grab the little blue case from my bag? I brought a couple joints from that place you like.”

Shawn smiles at her thoughtfulness and wanders off, pleased for something to do. He’s knuckle deep in her purse when he hears the door shut behind him in the spare, empty bedroom.

He looks over his shoulder. She’s there, holding her sweating glass of gin, looking hungry.

“Pen…” he warns weakly, shaking his head, knowing he won’t stop her doing whatever she wants. He knows he doesn’t want to.

She puts the glass of gin down on the glossy white dresser. Every piece of furniture in this house is white. Penny finds it cold and ridiculous. She rubs her fingers on the surface as she passes it with a sigh.

In an effort to distract her, Shawn pipes up.

“Who was the woman you saw before? It seemed like you knew her.”

Penny stops toe to toe with him, sliding a hand up his arm. She missed the firmness of it, the warmth, even if it’s only been a couple days. Even if he’s not really hers to miss.

“That… was Silver,” Penny answers carefully, glancing up to his eyes to catch the flash of recognition she knows she’ll see there.

“Oh!” Shawn crows, “Silver, Silver? La Splendeur Silver?”

Penny bobs her head and rests her cheek on his shoulder, letting her breath fan out over his bare chest, watching him quake. “The very one.”

Shawn stands awkwardly, every nerve ending in his body begging him to hold her as she rests herself against him, but he’s not so easily swayed, not even by Penny.

Right? Right.

“Wow. Did you know she’d be here?”

Penny nods, fingers tripping up over buttons to toy with his chest hair. Did her fingers get softer somehow?

Jesus, he’s losing it.

“This is her old house. She sold it to Natasha, who sold it to your friend Patrick. She gets invited every year.”

Shawn feels himself bobbing his head dumbly, trying to focus on the power of speech rather than the way Penny’s lips press lighter and lighter against every inch of his exposed chest. He can’t help it. He cups her hip, works at the fabric of her halter with his thumb until he reaches some bare skin.

“I should say hi later,” he whispers, tilting his head as her kisses reach a little higher to his collarbone and throat.

Penny grins, bare teeth against his neck, “Yes. Thank her for her service to the community. The woman that launched a thousand orgasms.”

Shawn’s eyes drift blissfully shut, unable to fight it a second longer when she gets her tongue on the set of freckles on his neck that everyone on social media says looks like a vampire bite.

“More than that,” Shawn sighs, “You’ve given me at least a couple thousand alone.”

Penny coos, leaves him a biting kiss for his sweetness. His breathing quickens pace.

“Just… don’t leave a mark, ok?”

Penny’s heavy lidded eyes blink slowly. Her long lashes skim his skin, leaving it erupting in a forest fire of goosebumps. She bites her pillowy lower lip and tilts her head.

“God, you really shouldn’t have said that.”

With a final nudge of her nose, Penny comes up higher on her toes and bites hard into those little freckles, feeling him tighten in her arms like the prey to her predator.

“Shit,” Shawn mutters, squeezing his eyes shut, his head falling back in surrender. 

She’s going in on his neck. He never had a chance, not as soon as she got her mouth on him. He huffs a breath, thinks about telling her to slow down, but then she’s pushing him into the wall and making this happy little suckling noise against his skin and he just… can’t.

Shawn’s hands fly up, cupping the back of her head, letting her have him. What else can he do? He sighs, brows furrowing with each shock of a nip she leaves along his throat and it starts to occur to him, slowly, foggily, that she’s not leaving one mark. She’s leaving a whole fucking trail of them.

“Penny,” he whines, weakly wriggling away from her constant, attentive sucking. Somewhere below his jaw, she squeaks, thrilled with her own mischief, and pulls away to assess.

Her slender fingers run against the trail that winds from his clavicle up to just under his ear. They’re an alarming, pulsing red, purpling by the second, the perfect claim.

Penny reaches for the tube of NARS lipstick and her compact while Shawn kneads his fingers against his skin. He watches her reapply, shaking his head.

“You’re gonna get me in so much trouble,” he groans, wincing when he pokes a particular tender spot and in the same moment, imagines Andrew’s face when he walks out with these red welts all over his neck.

Penny smacks her painted lips and reaches for the little blue case full of weed in her purse. She shakes it with an innocent grin.

“These should soften the blow.”

+

They didn’t. Andrew’s expression is flabbergasted, dumbstruck, annoyed, irate. He looks at Shawn, then back at Penny, then back at Shawn again. Penny doesn’t look fazed. She flicks at her lighter and passes the joint to Andrew.

“Here you go, man. That one’s all for you.”

With a tug on Shawn’s arm, she drags him away from his friends to wander the party.

“I can’t believe I let you maul me in the guest bedroom,” Shawn marvels, rubbing at his neck again. 

“You just taste so good, baby,” she sighs, like it was completely beyond her control. 

“So do you,” Shawn mutters a little bitterly.

Penny turns, wearing an amused smirk. “Have you been thinking about me this week?”

Shawn hesitates, then nods. He wets his lips, “But…” He lowers his voice, “I’ve been good.”

Penny already knows. She can tell. He’s not a mess or anything, just a little keyed up. She guesses he’d be even a little more relaxed without her here. But she told him she wasn’t going to make it easy. He had fair warning.

Penny perches on the edge of a chaise, gazing out at the water. She stretches one arm out beside her, rolling her melting ice cubes in her glass. 

Shawn watches her, knowing she can feel his attentive gaze. He studies the elegant shape of her nose and cheekbones, the wide set of her big brown eyes, the angle of her jaw. She’s beautiful in a perfectly touchable, comfortable way. He wants to touch her. He curses himself for not requesting the agency book them a room for after the party.

He’d even skip fireworks if it meant making some of their own.

Silver approaches from behind Shawn. Shawn doesn’t notice at first, not until Penny is smiling over his shoulder. He likes that smile. It doesn’t have the same mask to it that she wore at the Vertigo Magazine bash, or earlier with his team. It feels like a secret. 

Silver sweeps some of her angled bob out of her face in the ocean breeze and sits beside Shawn, her legs crossed at the ankles. Shawn blinks, finding himself wondering if Silver is the one who taught that to Penny. He straightens up, suddenly feeling tense, like the principal just walked into the classroom and he doesn’t want to be caught goofing off.

“Where’s your My Fair Lady hat?” Silver asks with a dry smile, sharing a conspiratorial glance with Shawn that settles him a little. His shoulders soften.

Penny’s little nose lifts defiantly. “Inside. It became… hazardous. It’s too big to be wearing at a party this crowded.”

Silver nods like she already knew what Penny was going to say. Penny huffs.

“I love that hat, I never get to wear it!” Penny crows.

Silver chuckles, then finally reaches out a hand to Shawn, deciding a formal introduction is in order.

“Silver Akiyama. Lovely to meet you.”

Shawn shakes her hand. It’s cold and bony but her grip is as firm as he expected from looking at her.

“I’m Shawn,” he replies, his voice a little blunted. Penny tries not to smile at his nervousness. She loves watching Silver make people squirm.

“I know,” Silver answers easily, taking her hand back. Shawn laughs awkwardly.

“It’s nice to meet one of Penny’s best friends,” Shawn blurts, looking between the women and down at his glass.

Silver’s crisp dark eyes lift curiously to Penny’s. Penny buttons her lips and looks back out at the water.

“Oh? Been a topic of conversation, have I?”

Shawn starts to blanch. “N-no, I just mean… I mean, she’s mentioned you, that’s all. Like, in passing. We don’t, like, talk about you. She’s just, y’know, she said…”

Penny sighs, flattening her smile. “She’s messing with you, Shawn.”

Shawn blinks. Silver’s smile is a flash of perfect teeth that reminds him of a shark. He again hisses an uncomfortable laugh.

“Oh.”

Penny snorts, shakes her head. “Cruel, cruel woman.”

“The young, sweet ones are so fun to torture,” Silver replies, like it’s obvious. Shawn quietly begs for a reprieve from the universe.

“He’s my toy to play with, Silver,” Penny hums, letting her eyes linger over the still angry marks on Shawn’s neck. Silver follows her gaze. Shawn’s face grows hot. Her territorial comment gets his blood moving south.

“Well I’m glad you two seem to enjoy each other’s company so much,” Silver murmurs, glancing between them. Shawn wonders what it is Silver sees.

He sits back a little and thumbs at the rim of his glass. “We do. A lot. Like making you come six times in a row a lot, right Pen?”

A bit surprised at his own quick serve back over the net, Shawn looks up at Penny from under his dark lashes. She looks surprised and a little impressed. Shawn slugs back what’s in his glass and reaches for the empty one in Silver’s hand.

“Can I get you a refill?”

Silver chirps a delighted laugh and hands him her glass. He strides off toward the bar, wondering if Penny is watching him walk away.

The party ended in the kind of fireworks Shawn used to love, but not the kind he’s craving with the woman standing in front of him. He craves being able to plant his hands on her waist and rock his hips against her while she kisses him hard and fast over her shoulder. He thinks about dropping to his knees and tugging at the zipper of her trousers. He thinks about scooping her up and taking her against the wall like she let him do in Vegas.

Instead, with a sparkle in her pretty brown eyes, she kisses him, slipping her tongue against his for the briefest moment before she’s settling into the backseat of the Tesla, grinning at Gus.

She promises to see him on July 8th and asks him if he’d like to pick the spot. Flustered, he mutters something about being willing to meet her behind a dumpster if it’s all he can get. She laughs, the real laugh, the one that pops and sizzles when she releases it, glowing and real, without a mask. He goes to bed smiling that night even without an orgasm.

+

If Penny had to guess, Silver’s least favorite thing about her is her inability to shut up while they’re working out.

It’s not even that Penny is a very chatty person. She’s more of a listener than a talker, which means her outings with Silver are pretty quiet, but comfortable. 

Not their fitness dates, though.

There’s something about the adrenaline of a workout that gets Penny’s mouth moving. She even got asked to leave a hot yoga class once because she couldn’t shut up about Peter’s summer exchange trip to Zimbabwe. Silver should’ve learned then. She should’ve stopped inviting her to workout classes. She always forgets what this is like.

In a naturally lit warehouse space in Los Feliz, Penny and Silver are positioned on side-by-side pilates reformers. Silver tilts her head to watch her chattering best friend and huffs.

Even though she can’t keep her mouth shut, Penny’s form is perfect. Her arms press the strength cables down to the bench while her outrageous legs stretch high in the air, toes pointed like a dancer as she scissors them slowly to the exact beat that their instructor counts out.

Silver groans, her arms shimmering with sweat as they bend a little at the elbow, slackening the cables. Penny doesn’t notice, talking over the instructor as she scissors faster like it’s no trouble at all.

“-- and I think it’s good, you know, that he’s trying something new. He’s never been on a date with a nice boy before. Peter loves a scoundrel. I guess we’ve always had that in common. But I mean--”

Silver’s quivering eyelids snap open. She has to find a way to shut her up. She turns her head and takes a shaky breath, interrupting.

“How is Shawn?”

Penny stops abruptly, looking over at Silver. Her scissoring loses rhythm. Silver feels only a little bad, and a lot competitive. 

“He’s… fine, I think. He’s not in LA right now.”

Silver nods. “When’s he coming back?”

Penny frowns and turns her face back up toward the ceiling. Silver watches her arms shake.

“Tomorrow, I think.”

I think. I think.

Penny pretends she doesn’t know. Silver knows. Silver knows that Penny knows. In fact, Silver is pretty sure Penny is counting the hours.

“What’s it been, over a month with him already, yeah?” Silver pants.

Penny huffs. “Yeah, I guess. Five weeks.”

“Hasn’t slowed down at all, like you thought it might.”

Penny shakes her head, closing her eyes as she fights to focus on her impressive core muscles.

“I wonder,” Silver begins, lifting her arms when the instructor directs them, “If maybe… there’s something to be careful of here. An attachment.”

Penny hasn’t heard this warning from Silver in a long time. Years. Since before they began La Splendeur. Not since she was a new escort getting used to the dynamic of offering so much emotional and physical comfort to a stranger and feeling that swell of affection and gratitude in return -- all on a strictly professional level.

“I’m not concerned about it.”

Penny’s voice is a little gruff as she shifts positions. On her knees, with her right foot hooked into the cable, she presses back slowly and easily against the resistance. Silver mirrors it, struggling a little more.

“No? Well, I suppose you would know,” Silver allows, holding something guarded in her voice, “I just wanted you to be aware of it.”

Penny’s eyes glaze as she stares down at the padded mat below her.

“Is… this about the necklace?” Penny pants as the exercise becomes a strain.

Silver shakes her head. “This is about the way I saw you looking at each other at that party. But you are very fixated on that necklace.”

Penny’s eyes squeeze shut. She hates it when she feels like she walks into Silver’s traps. They remind her too much of her actual mother, rather than the surrogate she has found in her older, wiser best friend.

“It confused me at first,” Penny argues, “But… it’s fine. It was just a nice, very generous gesture. He doesn’t… I mean, it doesn’t mean to him what it means to me.”

Silver opens her mouth, raises her eyebrows, about to respond when Penny speaks again.

“And if it doesn’t mean anything to him, then it doesn’t to me either. That’s the whole point. I got worked up over what I thought was a symbol that he doesn’t even understand. It’s fine. It’s just jewelry.”

Silver’s eyes slide shut as her limbs relax. The class is ending. They lie back to stretch.

“I didn’t mean to upset you,” Silver breathes, “I just want you to be careful. I see something between you. I don’t know what it is. But you need to know it’s there. And you need to watch it.”

Penny sniffs a little defiantly, then nods. “I know.”

Her voice is heavy. Silver reaches out, lays her hand on the edge of Penny’s machine. Penny looks down at it, somber.

“I know you do, love.”

+

It’s mid-afternoon on July 8th when Penny gets a call on her work cell. The gold-cased phone rattles against the marble countertop as Penny steps out of the shower smelling like citrus and gardenia. Dripping onto the floor mat, she reaches for the phone to see his initials flash on the screen.

S.M.

“Couldn’t wait four more hours to hear my voice?” she teases after answering.

“Hey,” Shawn murmurs, at once more agitated and somehow soothed by her voice, “I have to cancel tonight.”

Penny blinks at her reflection. She purses her lips. “Oh. Ok.”

“My… fucking flight got cancelled. There’s a storm in the midwest. No one can get anywhere west of Chicago.”

His voice is strained and quiet. He sounds like he’s at the airport. Penny sweeps her wet hair over her shoulder.

“That’s a shame,” she sighs.

Shawn’s head falls back. “Yeah.”

Penny, annoyed enough at the universe to want to twist the knife in him, says, “It’s really too bad. I’m all wet and everything.”

Shawn is quiet for a few beats too long. “... you…”

She chuckles. “I just got out of the shower.”

Shawn’s teeth scrape along his lower lip. He wants to taste her skin just out of the shower. He wants to know what she uses that makes her so soft.

“All cleaned up and nowhere to go.” He tries to laugh.

“Can you handle being my good boy a little while longer?” she asks, voice so warm and heavy he feels like she’s behind him, whispering in his ear.

Shawn scrubs a hand through his hair, tugging hard at the back to ground himself. “Yes.”

“Good. Call me when you’re back in LA. I’ll make it worth your while.”

She hangs up. He slumps against the hotel room wall.

+

Shawn hates the weather. He hates planes. He hates the midwest. He hates everything keeping him from her.

And he hates her, just a little. Because knowing he’s trapped in a hotel room in Manhattan, knowing he hasn’t gotten his rocks off in a week just because she asked him not to, knowing he’s alone and thinking about her, she decides it’s not enough.

At 10:24pm, he’s lying on top of the sheets in a t-shirt and boxers, staring at the Food Network, trying not to imagine what he’d be doing with her in their hotel room at the Hotel Bel Air. His phone buzzes. He swipes at the notification without even really looking first, desperate for stimulation.

But not this kind.

“Jesus fucking Christ, Penny,” he spits, his voice unrecognizably high and stretched. He drops the phone and springs off the bed, pacing.

It’s without a doubt the dirtiest, filthiest, sexiest sext he’s ever received. Out of nowhere, unprovoked, unwarranted. He groans, yanking at the hem of his shirt, tilting his forehead against the cool window that looks out into the humid New York night.

Her eyes are wisely left out of frame. He can see a hint of hard nipple at the bottom. Her fingers are wrapped around the handle of a slender purple vibrator that seems to be coated in, well, her. The curved tip is in her mouth, her tongue mid-swipe along the side, catching what she’s dripping. There’s no caption.

Shawn can’t fucking breathe. And there’s no escape. His cock twitches hard in his boxers and before he can get a handle on himself to stop, he shoves his hand below the waistband and wraps his fingers around his pulsing length.

“Baby,” he grunts, his eyes sliding shut, his head falling back. Even the gentle pressure has his head spinning.

He shakes his head. He can’t fucking wait anymore. He just can’t, it’s too much. He was only supposed to wait until today anyway. And she wasn’t supposed to send him… that.

Maybe this is her permission, he thinks desperately, thumbing at the waistband of his boxers and wriggling until they drop to his feet. He kicks out of them, reaching for the neck of his t-shirt, ripping it away from his overheating body.

Maybe this is Penny telling him to go ahead and get off, to start without her. He’s been good the whole week, did exactly what she asked. He even dealt with the consequences of her stunt with the hickeys on his neck at the party, telling a very stern Andrew that they’re just friends, really, and they were drunk and fucking around. It won’t happen again.

So he’s been her good boy. And she wouldn’t have sent him something so, so painfully hot if not to help him fuck his fist while imagining it’s her.

The logic is frayed and hazy but he’s too far gone to care. Once naked, he scrambles for his phone, staring at the picture, at the way her tongue curls around the tip of the toy, at how soaking wet it is right down to the handle. She took it so nice and deep just like she likes.

Shawn’s on his stomach with the phone on the pillow below him, rutting against the mattress. He releases a grunt with each thrust, raspy and a little manic. He’s let go of any of the self-awareness that would have him cringing at his own desperation, at his willingness to fuck a pillow just to satisfy himself on this basic level.

Shawn’s head lowers. He spreads his knees and rolls his hips harder, muttering her name under his breath. He closes his eyes. He feels her warm limbs wrapped around him, her plush lips on his ear while she whispers filthy things to drive him insane, her fingers tugging at his hair to make his hips snap a little faster.

But she’s not there. She’s not here.

Shawn’s hips slow. His shoulders start to soften. He sags toward the bed with a whimper.

She’s not here.

It’s not worth it. He knows it’s not what she wants. She wants him keyed up and ready to explode when he has the pleasure of being physically with her. He was kidding himself, making excuses to let himself give in.

His knees slide until he’s flat on the mattress with his aching cock trapped against the duvet. He closes his eyes and groans.

After a minute or two, he rolls over, tucks himself under the covers and forces himself into a fitful sleep with Ree Drummond on low volume teaching him how to make a chicken enchilada casserole.

+

Penny’s in the tub, luxuriating in her Laura Mercier Crème Brûlée Honey Bath after a good long run through the canyons with Pamela, who naps dutifully on the shaggy bath mat beside her. They both deserve a rest. It’s been hot as hades in Los Angeles the last few days, nearly unbearable. Penny wouldn’t have put Pammy through it, but the poor thing was desperate for the exercise. Penny ran them both ragged in the hopes that it would satisfy her pooch enough to keep them out of the sun for a while.

Penny eyes her snoring three-year-old German shepherd with a smug grin. She thinks it worked.

She eases back against the towel she rolled up as a neck pillow and closes her eyes, lifting her toes to peek out from between the bubbles. Her work phone buzzes persistently on the tile behind her.

S.M.

Her nose twitches over a little smile.

“Hey, you.”

“Hi,” he sighs, “I’m getting on a plane. If they want to cancel or delay this flight, they’re going to have to deal with me tying myself to the wing. I’m coming home. I want to see you. Please.”

He sounds like he’d start crying if she said no. She snuggles down further in her bubbles and narrows her eyes at her painted toes.

The truth is, she can’t tonight. She was vainly hoping whatever storm is clogging up flight patterns over the midwest would last a little longer. She has a date with Julia, who has been in Bahrain. Her suitcase is already packed with all Julia’s favorite things.

She bites her lip and lets her head fall back.

“Ok. Yeah. I-- I can make that work. I’ll call the agency and get us a room. I’ll text you the place.”

Shawn’s sigh of relief is enough to convince Penny she made the right move. She twists her fingers into her clipped up hair.

“Thank you. Ok. Yeah. I’ll see you later.”

+

Julia was gracious about it, of course. Penny has only cancelled on her once before and it was because she was so sick she couldn’t get out of bed. Penny made it up to her by sitting on her face for almost an hour the next week.

She’s power walking down the hall, cast in an orange glow, trying not to think about how eager her sore and exhausted body seems to be to see him. She manages to slow herself down, shaking her head a little, feeling her flossy curls bounce around her breasts. Her fingers flex and wiggle by her sides. She turns a corner and sees Gus standing sentry by the door, just as expected.

His eyebrows lift at her expression. She ignores it and pats his arm as a silent thank you. He opens the door.

Shawn’s standing just inside. He must have heard the snapping of her stilettos against the tile. His hands are clasped in front of him and his entire body is tight and tense. His eyes flash as he smiles at her.

“There’s my good boy,” she sighs, feeling her own body loosen in relief as she walks up to him, cupping his flushed face in her hands.

His eyes slide shut. He preens, basking in her attention.

“Oh god, I missed you,” he admits on a choked exhale. He shakes his head a little, laughing at himself.

Penny slips her hungry hands down to his shoulders, squeezing in admiration, stepping closer so he can cup her hips.

“I can feel it, baby. You’ve been so fucking good for me. Even after the trick I pulled on you yesterday.”

She bites her lip, a semi-apologetic gesture. He can see the flash of mischief in her eyes that tells him she's not really sorry. He wouldn’t expect her to be.

He ducks his head and laughs. “I almost…” He trails off and shrugs, “I knew I wanted to wait for you. It’s not the same without you.”

Penny runs her tongue along her top row of teeth. Her glossy lips glisten in the low light of the room. Shawn hums, staring at them.

“Damn fucking right it’s not.”

Her voice is as sharp as her slimly tailored black suit. She steps back and flicks her fingers at the button of her blazer, flinging it off into the corner. She’s bare beneath it, bronzed skin simmering warm, her light brown nipples hard at attention. Shawn swallows, watching her reach for the hook and zipper at her waist, shimmying out of her painted on ankle-length trousers, kicking at her patent leather heels.

She’s in quite a hurry to get naked for him. Maybe she’s needed this as badly as he has. Maybe the romp with the purple bunny toy wasn’t enough for her. Maybe she needs him, too.

He shakes his head to rid himself of the distracting idea once she’s down to a simple black satin g-string that’s getting kicked into a corner. Shawn drops to his knees automatically, a reflex he’s gained over the last month as he’s learned her and what she likes, what she expects from him.

“I bet you wanted it so bad last night. I bet seeing me get that toy so wet made you crazy,” she growls, her toes curling against the floor. He watches them in amazement until her fingers under his chin lift his gaze back back to hers.

“I bet you couldn’t stop thinking about how fucking wet I get on your cock, how tight and perfect I feel. How no one has ever made you feel like I do, how it gets better every fucking time.”

He’s blinking at her in amazement, his cock straining against his jeans, his hands planted firmly on his quads. He nods eagerly like she’s reading out the thoughts in his head word perfect.

“Yes,” he hisses, “Fuck, Penny, you know… god, you know how good you are. You know I’ve never come for anyone like I come for you. You know-- I’m--” He whimpers, lets his head tip back like he’s giving into it, “I’m yours.”

That sets something off in her like a bottle rocket. With a little fist clenched around the dark green collar of his shirt, she drags him to his feet and starts stripping him, not at all gently. He starts to try to help but his fumbling fingers just get in her way. She knocks them aside with a dangerous little giggle, getting his shirt unbuttoned in record time. He kicks off his boots, keeping his hands on her while she still lets him, skimming along her back and ass and upper thighs like he doesn’t know what he wants most. Finally, she gets him naked with her, his bare body pressed so insistently against hers there isn’t a breath of air between them.

With her hands on his ass, the one she had purpling for her this time last week, she maneuvers him to the couch and pushes him to sit, dropping into his lap to straddle him before he can even settle in.

“Shit, Jesus,” Shawn croaks as her wetness presses right up against his twitching cock. She shows him no mercy. He doesn’t want any, not if it means space from her, from this.

He looks straight at her. Their hungry eyes are level as she grinds into his hips. He scoops his hands up her lower back and under her hair to cup her shoulder blades. He grips her harder, gathers her closer. Her eyes go molten under heavy lids.

“Bet… you wanna kiss me,” she breathes. Shawn’s brow wrinkles as he moans. In their heated rush he realizes he hasn’t even tasted her mouth yet. His eyes lock with hers. He nods, tiny short little spasms of his head, insistent.

“Please.”

Penny smiles, lifts her fingers to his cheeks and closes her eyes, leaning in to him. Just before their lips touch, she pulls away. She watches his eyelids flutter open. She grins and leans back in, only to pull back again. He wets his lips and huffs impatiently. She knows he knows better than to take without her giving, even if he could do it easily.

“Say it again,” she breathes, her warmth and closeness dunking him into a fog. The crease between his brows softens.

“Please, Penny.”

She melts into his kiss -- it’s warm and soft, eager without being grabby. His fingers massage her shoulders as she tilts her head, exploring further, pushing him into the back of the couch.

Kissing him is unlike anything else she gets to do with Shawn. Nothing else gets him quite so soft and gentle and malleable in her talented hands. There’s something about her lips that quiets him so completely, silences what even she hears as the buzzing in his mind.

When she pulls back from him, their wet lips separating audibly, her fingers pinched against his cheeks, she licks her lips.

“My good, sweet boy,” she muses, running her lips that taste of him against the cut of his cheekbones, the edge of his nose, his forehead and eyebrows. He waits, breathing heavily, ever patient.

“I want to give you something special,” she continues, easing back a little to look at his face when she tells him.

His flooded eyes are wide and waiting. His lips twitch. She leans back in, tilting his head back, closing her eyes as she speaks into his mouth.

“Want you to come inside me.”

Shawn’s eyes snap open. His whimper is loud and forces all his muscles tight and coiled in shock. She licks inside his mouth, scraping against the ridge of his front teeth as she pulls back to look at him. She’s satisfied by the awestruck look on his pretty face.

“Yeah?” he breathes.

She nods. “Wanna feel you come so hot and hard in my pussy, Shawn. Can you do that for me?”

His arms tighten around her like he’s worried she’ll climb off him. He nods, big, heavy bobs of his head that leave no room for misinterpretation.

Penny hums and starts rocking her hips, watching his eyes glaze. His hands remain where they are, plastered to her back, slipping a bit as she beads sweat from the testosterone-fueled heat he’s bleeding all over her.

“Gonna hold on long enough to feel me come on your bare cock?”

He sounds like a leaky balloon and is sure the sound doesn’t inspire confidence, but he’s nodding again. He knows she knows he’ll last as long as he possibly can for her.

She seems satisfied enough by his answer to push up on her knees and secure a hand around him, guiding his leaking tip to her entrance. Her other hand plants on his chest. She lowers herself slowly, sinking until she’s full of him.

Shawn’s forehead falls to her shoulder. The sensation is… intense. With a condom, the barrier is palpable. She’s warm and wet, but in a veiled, untouchable way. With no physical protection, he can feel her in a way he hasn’t yet. He sobs an inhale, his nose rubbing her collarbone as her fingers smooth the curls on the back of his neck to soothe him.

“Just breathe,” she advises, her own voice sounding a little cracked and fucked out, because he feels different to her, too.

Penny sighs and swivels her hips in neat, circular strokes, easing into the way he stretches her from the inside out. She’s taken him in to the hilt, nice and deep, grinding even deeper on her downstroke in a way that has her head tipping back.

“Yes,” she whispers. 

This is what she was chasing with the purple bunny. Even as her body squelched around the vibrating toy, even as she came with a wet gasp, it didn’t feel like this. Nothing feels like this, having a partner who needs her so badly his hips rock up to meet hers when hers tip away, so badly he loses awareness of the sweet noises he makes against her skin, so badly he’s gone, lost inside of her.

Penny strokes harder, working a wider rhythm that has her sliding up and down, bouncing on his cock. Her wet skin slaps against his thighs. She can feel the warmth in her belly spreading, as well as the ache in her sore muscles. Her muscular thighs tremble already as she lifts and lowers. He lifts his head, noticing the way her breath struggles in her chest that he’s all pressed up against.

He cups her close, ducking his head to suck on her nipples while he looks up at her. “You ok?” he pants.

Her eyes slip shut. She nods. “‘M fine. My… legs are sore.”

Shawn’s swollen lips release her pebbled bud. He knocks the tip of his nose against it, ass clenching when her throat rumbles out a beautiful, grumbling moan. 

“From what?”

His eyes are big and curious, fluttering with each stroke. She laughs at the casual nature of his question and laces her fingers into his dewy hair.

“Hiking with Pammy earlier. Overdid it-- unf, just a little,” she pants.

Shawn turns his cheek to bury his face in her breasts for a moment, hissing at the increasingly easy slip of her tightening wet walls. He peers back up at her.

“Let me do the work then. I can do it, Pen. Let me make you come.”

Penny’s thrusts slow. Shawn swallows, waiting until she nods her assent. He bites into his lip and looks around him for a moment before scooping under her thighs to lock her legs around his waist. He stands, still inside her.

Penny squeaks in surprise and just as soon as they’re up, they’re down again with Shawn laying her onto her back on the cozy black carpet.

Shawn positions her carefully, spreading her legs enough for him to settle between. He plants his hands up beside her head, momentarily fascinated by the way her dark chocolate curls seem to blend into the rug. His fingers flex. His hips roll of their own volition. Penny’s body takes the easy swing and gives it back, just as lazy.

“Hold on to me,” Shawn hums, leaning in again, letting his hips dictate the rhythm. Penny smiles at his giving her a command for once and sinks her hands into the skin of his lower back, giving her enough leverage to guide him in and out at whatever pace pleases her.

She settles and lifts an eyebrow, waiting impatiently. Shawn wheezes a laugh and restarts their quick, shallow rhythm, his laugh slipping into a rough moan.

“I thought I was the desperate one?” he croaks, hoping to joke with her to distract himself long enough to hang on until she gets to where he is.

Penny’s lips curl. “I went a week without you just like you went a week without me.”

The hair stands straight on Shawn’s neck like he’s been electrocuted. “But-- you could touch your pussy… when you needed.”

Shawn shifts his hips until the head of his cock knocks straight into her g-spot with every thrust. Penny’s cry of pleasure has him bubbling so close to orgasm he has to close his eyes to keep from looking at her.

“Not the same,” Penny gasps.

Shawn’s eyes fly open. His hips stagger through one, two, three more strokes before he’s spurting hard into her welcoming cunt. The rough swings have her bursting beneath him, knees squeezing against his hips as he rides them through their peaks. Her nails dig into his back put stay put, just punctuating the sensation.

Penny thanks her lucky stars when Shawn’s head drops into her neck as his hips slow. She hasn’t let anyone come inside her in so long she forgot what it feels like, how… close it is. How intimate. She squeezes her eyes shut and breathes, trying to rid herself of the stunned look on her face.

By the time he lifts his head to look at her, her mask is intact. She smirks at him, gives him an extra squeeze around the hips with her knees.

“Worth the wait?”

Shawn groans, chuckling, “Every fucking second.”

-----------

Special thanks to @sippingchai for the extra dose of inspo this week 💜😈

Link to buy me a Ko-fi is in my bio if you feel so inclined!

Taglist: @smallerinfinities @the-claire-bitch-project @achinglyshawn @infiniteshawn @mendesoft @singanddreamanyway @alone-in-madness @abigfatmess @shawnitsmutual @awkwardfangirl2014 @september-lace @grittyisaho @sinplisticshawn @rollingxstone @yslsaint @randi-eve @fallmoreinlove @heyits-claire @itrocksmysocks @parkerspicedlatte @simpledomain @abeautiful-and-cloudy-day @thecurlsofgod @magcon7280 @bensbuttercup @shawnsmusical @paigeasourous @tell-me-when-ur-ready @softmendesss @searchingunderthestars @buggy-blogs @tnhmblive @greedydevil @tamegray @meltingicequeen @havethetimeeofyourlifee @normalcyisoverrated-beyou @t-i-n-y-d-i-n-o @hannahlouiseee @sarahlauramendes @shawnsmoose @mendezlatte @1dbetch @graysonmendes @shawnsababe @ineffsi

[seven-oomen]

Hi, Ben!  I hope your day is going well so far!  Are you still getting snow, or has the storm calmed a bit?  We’re supposed to be getting a potentially severe ice storm over the course of today.  There’s already a thin layer this morning, we’ll see how the rest of the day goes.  And temperatures are supposed to stay in about the -4 to -6C range the rest of the week.  I’m very glad that I’m off the next couple of days, and managed to get by the grocery last night after work.

I saw your post about writing and writing styles!  It was helpful because I’ve not really seen the different styles written out and explained before.  I’m still not 100% which I am, but probably either an intuitive plotter or a methodological pantser.  Usually there’s a scene or a line or two that I’m like “this needs to happen in this story” and everything else is fairly free-form.  I did try actually writing down an outline for IYWTD, but even then it’s more a list of beats/tropes and the order I want to include them in.  (And I’ve only just made it past halfway through, although a couple may need to be altered a bit, oh god, how did this get so long…)

It’s also always kinda of amusing to me how many of those writing advice lists are like “Don’t do this”, “Stop doing this”, “Never do that”, and then they’ll encourage you to find your own voice and style.  Like, bitch, you just told me not to ever do half the shit that makes up my style.  Which am I supposed to do?  Damn.  XD  (You will seriously pry adverbs and similar descriptors from my cold, dead, grasping hands.  Also the occasional epithet.  No, I’m not using a character’s name nine times in one paragraph, sorry, and pronouns don’t always help if the characters are the same gender.  The reader can deal. ;D )

And I feel ya on the tall, skinny, blue-eyed boys thing.  It doesn’t have to be just a white boy, but if he’s taller than me, slender, and has a pretty pair of baby blues, my higher brain functions tend to go into insta-lag.  I ain’t particularly proud, but I’ve long accepted this about myself (there are many reasons Luke became my forever BAE.)  That’s not to say a lack of any of those is a deal-breaker in the slightest, but it’s definitely going to immediately get my attention.

Speaking (vaguely) of Luke, I had a thought the other day of him and Din being off on some planet together (Grogu is staying with Aunt Leia and Uncle Han for a few days), and there’s a noise in the middle of the night, and Din refuses to accept Luke’s assurance that there’s nothing out there, and in true himbo fashion insists on going out to investigate having grabbed only the darksaber and his helmet to cover his face -but nothing else.  Luke just finds it a combo of hysterical and adorable (and kinda hot.)

I hope your novel is going well (whatever stage you happen to be at), and I’m always up for hearing whatever you feel like sharing about it.

I hope you’re still doing well with the whole eating and hydrating regularly thing (it’s also totally okay if you aren’t!), and I’m super proud of you for sticking to it as much as you can anyway.  That shit is hard.  (Also, ignore the 1500 calories thing, I swear that shit is designed for 130lb women trying to shed a few pounds, not people who need to safely and steadily lose larger amounts of weight.  But then I’ve also never fully understood making someone lose weight before surgery, either.  “We need you to get rid of some excess weight before we’ll okay this surgery to *checks notes* get rid of some excess weight."  Like, weird flex, but okay.)

Anyway, I’m rambling again, and should really eat some breakfast and try to write a little myself today, maybe.  Hope you’re feeling okay, and that things are going well overall.  I hope Mo is doing well, and enjoying his best cuddle buddy life.  Take care!  *Hugs!*

Okay, gonna try this this way so that I can refer back to the links on my phone if need be.  I couldn’t quite see the full entries for the physical descriptions, and when I tried clicking on them it kept asking for a login, but I think I saw enough to get the gist.  I’m not sure exactly what sort of feedback you’re interested in, if any, so this will mainly be my usual sort of rambling stream-of-consciousness type thoughts and questions.  Hope that’s okay.  Feel free to ignore if it’s not what you’re after right now!  :D

I think one of the first questions that popped to mind was where is/what happened to Ellie’s mom, and is that something that’s going to cause problems later in some way?  (I.e.- was she killed on a hunt, are they divorced, was it bitter or amicable [would she come after her daughter if she heard about his relationship?])  I guess technically similar questions could also apply to Nate (late husband, ex-husband, ex-boyfriend, one night stand, sperm donor?) it was just more noticeable with Ellie being so young still.  Although that could also be part of why he’s ended up in Wyoming, which was another question I had, although there I assume it’s hunt-related.

I also anticipate quite a bit of tension of all kinds when he and Nate first meet, because Faron strikes me from his descriptions as someone rather used to being able to get his own way either through the influence of who he is, or through his size (not necessarily in any kind of intentional or aggressive way, more in an unconscious privilege kind of way, if that makes sense?), and I don’t think Nate sounds like the type to give two shits about either of those things, and it would probably drive Faron up the proverbial wall that Nate isn’t intimidated by him in the slightest.  (I could be entirely wrong about all this, this is just the impression I get so far. :D )  And I think Nate being noticeably older than him would just make it that much more irritating at first, too.  Now, how long these impressions last will just depend on how quickly they get to know each other, and whether Bachelor #3 is helping or hindering things.  XD  The potential for just sitting back and watching the fireworks as “laid-back dad jokes with a quick temper” clashes with “quiet, reserved, and possibly takes themselves slightly too seriously” might prove too much for our last contestant for a while, depending on where his personality falls.  ;D  (Especially since Faron coming in and starting shit will likely come off as a direct threat to people and places Nate considers under his protection.)

Also, are any of these three going to have met before?  Will Nate already have some sort of relationship with the werewolf (Does he already know about the supernatural at all?)  Did he and Faron encounter each other on the trip to Europe you mentioned in the Life Highlights?  If he and the wolf already know each other, how does he get along with Cas, or Nate’s pets?  Is the werewolf also going to be native to the region?  Does he know anything about Faron’s family?  Does Faron already know he’s a werewolf, or is that going to be a bit of a crisis for him later?  A test of how well he’s learned not to judge?  If Nate doesn’t already know, how will he deal with both their secrets?  Do you plan for full-shift only wolves, partial-shift only wolves, or a mix of the two like TW?  Are there other supes in the area?

I think you mentioned maybe having him be of Native American descent?  I think that could be very interesting, but would require a LOT of research into which tribes are active in the Yellowstone area, and what their individual mythologies say about things like shapeshifters, and LGTBQ+ issues, etc., because there can be a fair amount of variance, I’m sure.  Also, I’m just overall curious how he’ll fit in with the other two size wise (get your mind out of the gutter, you know what I mean.  XD )  Also curious if any o them are going to have the slightest clue on the feelings front, or are they all going to be just absolute disasters?  Will the kids figure it out before they do?  Will the kids get along?  (Will BachelorWolf have any kids of his own, or just Nate and Faron?)  Will Nate’s coworkers have any clue about either the supernatural, or what’s going on with those three?  Because I suspect at least some of them will be way more obvious than they think they’re being.  XD

Uh… I think that was all that’s occured to me right now?…  I’m sorry you’re having a yucky day overall, and I hope tomorrow’s a bit better!  The ice storm has finally moved in here, and I can feel the temperature drop radiating off of the front door and windows.  It went from rain to freezing rain/hail and I’m not sure how long it’s supposed to last.  Hopefully only a little while.  Also, sorry your book was terrible.  I haven’t seen too many recent recommendations from friends, and I’ve been mostly reading “cozy” mysteries (Agatha Christie, Elizabeth Peters, etc) as my comfort reading myself, lately, so I can’t really suggest anything in particular, unfortunately.  At least, nothing I think you wouldn’t already know.  Anyway, hope you’re getting some decent rest, and hope you have a better day tomorrow!  Take care!  *Hugs!*

Alright since this is going to be like a very long one, I’m break it down into a few things.

First full physical descriptions, cause I didn’t know Milanote would be a bitch about it.

Nate:

164 cm (5'4), 75 kg (166 lbs), Short slightly overweight trans man in his middle age. Nearly always the shortest man in the room, only standing around 5'4 and weighing in around 166 lbs. With kind moss green eyes that have permanent crow's feet in their corners and a polite but reserved smile always on his face. 

A face that's framed by faint freckles that are only visible in the sunlight. A neatly trimmed beard spices up his features and frames his pink lips. His thick but short eyebrows frame his eyes and create a short arc to his slim nose. 

A high forehead separates his brows from his wavy dark blond hair that's always tucked behind his ears. 

He generally wears the Superintendents' Park Ranger uniform while on duty. When he's not he wears comfortable jeans and t-shirts, usually a mono color like green, white, or black, plaid flannel shirts, socks with the weirdest patterns and colors, and hiking boots. He wears a steel ring on his right index finger and has a little steel Mjolnir on a necklace around his neck.

He's missing two fingers (his ring and little finger) on his left hand due to a childhood accident.

Faron:

185 cm (6'1 ft), 93 kg (205 lbs), Faron is a tall man with plenty of muscle from his time hunting. He can seem daunting and intimidating when you first meet him but there is a kinder, softer side to him. He has a warm light brown skin color, blue eyes, and black natural tight curly hair that he keeps very short. His full dark beard decorates his cheeks and chin, connects to his upper lip, and all the way up to his sideburns.

  He tends to wear dark clothing, leather jackets, no jewelry that could identify him, jeans, henley shirts, or V-neck shirts, and black, brown, or red jackets. He usually wears black combat boots or dark brown hiking boots. He's got knives and other weapons hidden all over his body and pockets and it might take him a good few minutes to unload every single knife from his body when he was to disarm.

There are also scars all over his body, including some scars on his neck that are visible from day to day life. He had the bad luck of being struck down by a vicious Wendigo but managed to escape. He survived thanks to his sister's quick thinking and first aid.

He covers some of those scars up with tattoos; he has one tattoo of a dragon laying down on his shoulder, with its head on his chest and its body curling over his shoulder and ending just below his shoulder blades. And one tattoo covers up some scars on his lower arm, it's a tattoo of a wolf's head that covers up a bite mark.

Dichali:

He’s 37 and has 4 siblings, and two children, Kajika & Kaniya (Jika & Niya, identical twins, but one of them identifies as male, he’s trans. Kajika is his chosen/reassigned name. They are 10.) Dichali grew up in Riverton, WY, which is the largest town of 10,000 in the largest Native Reservation in Wyoming. He’s also a dear friend to our Nate (who is also his boss technically) and has slowly been falling in love with him for the last few years. (Although he still hasn’t realized that he loves his friend.) 

Yena, his coworker and friend, who’s much younger at 25 has been watching her coworker and her boss joke and dance around each other. She has a betting pool with her girlfriend on who snaps first.

Not sure how I’ll connect him to Faron if it’s more fun/better to have him find out later or to already know him and keep it quiet. 

I’m still working on him, so I don’t have much of personality and other things written down yet. But I have made his physical description:

At 178 cm (5'8) and 83 kilos (182 lbs) Dichali probably isn't the tallest man you've met, he's also not the shortest. And while he's got some good muscle on him from working as a Park Ranger, and being a werewolf, he also has some softer sides. All the better to cuddle with. He has long straight brown hair that falls to his mid-back and deep brown eyes and a long nose that ends prominently. His eyebrows are thin and he has a high forehead. His skin is a light Tawny color, there's a hint of an orange brown with a cool undertone.

His skin is also relatively clear and youthful looking because of his lycanthropy.

He tends to wear pants and jackets made by native designers and always incorporates native fashion into his outfits. He has jackets of mostly gray, blue, brown, and black colors made of denim, cotton, wool, or brass that are lined with more traditional cloths and patterns like the designer brand Ginew. Usually he pairs them with dark jeans, either black, gray, or dark blue. He pairs it with white, blue, red, black, or printed band t-shirts (Metallica, Green Day, Marianas Trench). 

For shoes he has brown hiking boots that are part of the Ranger uniform, more western styled boots like black cowboy boots, and a pair of sneakers.He also wears a copper bracelet with lighting bolts etched into it.

-

Now this whole story got started because I had the question what if we had a DILF romance going on while/because the following happened?

What if a YouTube video that accidentally got uploaded shows the existence of a werewolf in Yellowstone park? Threatening to expose the entire supernatural world.

The werewolves right now are a mix, so half shift is like the classical half shift of a wolf head on a man’s body, but the full shift is more like a larger wolf. Almost the size of a black bear. Though I might change those ideas as the story progresses.

But that is how the Cryptid of Yellowstone is brought into the world. And that brings problems. Big problems.

Wendigos, vampires, djins, I plan to create a world where a lot of supernatural creates exist. From all sorts of cultures. I’m also toying with the idea of Kelpies and Griffins. That kind of stuff.

The supernatural world is hidden from ours, hidden in plain sight if you will. Most encounters are written off as really strange, sometimes a picture pops up, but with the coming of the internet, things have gotten more complicated. Also with deforestation and competition with regular wildlife has made some bigger supernatural creatures either extinct or thought to be extinct. They’re not sure what still lives in Australia, though.

Nate or his son don’t know about the supernatural world. Neither does Yena. Or much of the world. Dichali, his children (to some extent), Faron, and Faron’s family do know about this world.

-

Alright, as for your other post XD

Right now it’s no longer storming but due to the freezing temperatures the snow’s not going away and all public transport and delivery services are still not driving/delivering/running. So that’s neat. Not. 

I swear we get some snow and the country is just down. Upside, ain’t nobody going outside and this helps with lockdown.

I hope your snowstorm won’t be too bad and everything thaws down soon. Snow’s fun for a day but after that...

Make sure you stay warm alright? And bundle up.

Yes dad... alright XD

Honestly, I’m glad to hear you liked my advice too. I’m getting quite a bit of positive feedback on it and that just makes me really happy ^^. I’m definitely writing more writing advice from everything I’ve learned so far.

There’s honestly so many contradicting ones out there, it’s a matter of picking and choosing which ones work best for you and applying those. And that’s the real trick of advice.

Fun fact, a lot of famous writers are also pantsers. Steven King, Neil Gaiman, George RR Martin are examples of famous pantsers or gardeners as they are also called. 

John Grisham, JK Rowling, RL Stein fall into the plotter or architect category. 

Writers like Hank Green seem to fall in the in-between category of plantser (somewhere between a plotter and a pantser. Or the Intuitive plotter.)

Okay but the DinLuke things is really really kinda hot and cute and adorable and has me smiling <3

And I can’t remember what else I wanted to say since it is like 2 am and my meds are seriously kicking in now.

But I hope you’re doing alright and that the snowstorm isn’t too bad where you’re at.

I’ll be alright, my diet hasn’t been going so well the last few days and I can’t really exercise, but I did mostly get healthy groceries that will be delivered friday so there’s that. 

Fingers crossed I can pick it back up.

Okay I’m heading to bed XD 

I’ll talk to you later, B <3 

Hugs from me and Mo <3

[noona-clock]

Untitled - Part 3

Genre: AU/Fluff

Pairing: Junmyeon x You (Female!Reader)

Warnings: None

Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10  |  Word Count: 3,670

Of course, one of the first things you did after arriving home from your second -- and much more successful -- date with Junmyeon was... text Trish.

You told her the evening had gone much better, and Junmyeon had been much less nervous and awkward around you. In fact, he really hadn’t been nervous or awkward at all. 

And you even brought up the fact he was going to bring you back a souvenir from his trip.

...She almost immediately started planning your wedding.

So, you turned your phone over and ignored her for the time being.

She was one of your best friends; she would understand!

To keep your mind occupied and not thinking about a potential wedding, you decided to navigate to YouTube and watch more of Junmyeon’s videos.

...Maybe not the best choice since the wedding you didn’t want to think about currently was the wedding you would have with the very same guy, but oh well! He was cute and he seemed to like you and you wanted to watch him travel around Japan, okay?

You watched as Junmyeon ate ramen and found weird vending machines and played with UFO catchers and visited the Hachiko statue and romped around Disneyland Tokyo and you fell asleep as he was shopping the Harajuku district.

To be honest, his voice was so soothing and comforting and sweet, it made you fall asleep with a smile on your lips -- as cheesy as it sounds.

The next morning, you found yourself going through your usual weekend AM routine: staying in bed for at least an hour after waking up and browsing multiple social media platforms on your phone.

You had just scrolled through Reddit for about half an hour, upvoting dorky writing memes and skincare advice, and now you were moving on to Instagram.

One of the first things you noticed was Junmyeon’s profile picture up at the top of the screen. He had added to his story, and apparently, the app wanted you to look at it. So... you clicked.

He only had two posts, the first one from about two hours ago. According to the video, he was headed to the airport. It had still been somewhat dark outside, and he had filmed the lights of the buildings as the car sped by. Next, he had uploaded a boomerang of him spinning his suitcase around.

So, he was already at the airport, but since the boomerang had been posted less than an hour ago, he obviously hadn’t left yet.

Would it be weird if you sent him a text?

Just a quick one! Wishing him a safe trip! That totally wouldn’t be weird.

...Right?

You were biting the inside of your cheek as you thought, and just as you were about to close Instagram and go to your Messages app...

You got a text.

From Junmyeon.

Okay, that was weird. You had just been thinking about sending him a text... and then he had sent you one.

You decided to just tell him that. He seemed like the kind of guy who would find it either amusing or spooky. Or both.

The next half-hour seemed to go by more quickly than just about any other half-hour in your life so far. You felt like you’d just started messaging him two minutes ago when he said:

Well, since he was requesting it, you really had no choice, right? You had to keep up with his Instagram! You were going to anyway, but now that you had his permission, you would feel like much less of a stalker.

Even though you knew Junmyeon’s flight to Guam would take a little while, you still checked his Instagram every so often... just to be sure. Maybe he had Wi-Fi on the flight and wanted to show his followers what movies he chose to watch!

But, alas, he didn’t update until he landed mid-afternoon -- your time. You had no idea what time it was in Guam.

As if he had somehow read your mind, though, his next story post included the clock widget. So, you got to see exactly what time it was there.

For the next several hours, you watched along as he rode to his hotel, gave a tour of his (really, really nice) room, showed the view from his balcony, ventured out to find a restaurant for breakfast (although it was more like lunch for him), ate some delicious-looking food, found a local shopping market, and visited the beach by his resort.

It all looked so beautiful there... and, you would have to admit, the selfie he posted on the beach was beautiful, too. Everything about it. Especially his face.

Oh, god, you suddenly realized you were biting your lower lip as you looked at his picture. You were holding back the cheesiest grin and the giddiest squeal in the history of the universe.

Apparently, you now had a full-blown crush on him because you were acting like a smitten teenager.

That... actually kind of scared you, though? Because it didn’t usually happen this quickly. It typically took you a few weeks or at least four dates to feel like squealing just from looking at a picture of the guy.

Instead of letting it scare you, you decided it was because you’d watched so many of his videos and felt like you knew him more than you actually did.

That made sense! That was totally the reason.

Plus, he also just had a super squeal-worthy face.

I mean, look at it. Look at his face.

Tell me you didn’t squeal.

OF COURSE, YOU DID! Because his face is totally squeal-worthy!

Oh my lord, can you imagine him in glasses?

Or a suit?!

Wow, okay, thinking about either of those was definitely too much to handle. You shook your head a little and quickly exited out of Instagram.

Maybe you should take a break from obsessively checking his story. Give yourself some time to... not be a lovesick teenager.

You were an adult with a real job and bills and your own place and you had been on two dates with the guy. There was absolutely no reason you should be imagining what he looked like in glasses or a suit.

...Wait, but what about glasses and a suit.

Holy mother of --

NO!

No. Stop.

You suddenly headed to your front door, grabbed your keys, and you headed to the grocery store. Wandering down aisles filled with food would surely take your mind off of Junmyeon, and there was no way you could keep thinking about him in glasses and a suit if you were trying to decide which cereal you wanted to eat for breakfast next week.

You (somehow) managed to busy yourself for the rest of the day, grocery shopping and getting things done around your house as you normally did on the weekend.

You still looked at Junmyeon’s Instagram story some, but you had calmed down considerably since earlier. You were no longer checking it every few minutes, and you were no longer (constantly) thinking about him.

Just after you ate dinner, you saw that he had added a text post to his story saying he was wiped and going to take a jet lag nap.

Aw, poor thing. Even though traveling around the world was fun, it did take a lot out of you, especially if you had to work like Junmyeon did. You were tempted to send him a message and wish him sweet dreams... but that would probably be weird.

So, you simply cleaned up your meal and headed into your living room to watch a few episodes of your favorite period drama.

When it became apparent you weren’t going to be able to watch another episode without falling asleep, you turned off your television and headed upstairs to get ready for bed.

Just like you had this morning, you followed your usual nightly routine of washing and moisturizing your face, brushing your teeth, changing into your pajamas, and snuggling in bed with your phone.

Unsurprisingly, you were scrolling through Instagram -- meaning you were watching Junmyeon’s latest story posts since he had, apparently, woken up from his nap and was just lounging in his hotel room. 

You were tempted to reply to his post, especially because he didn’t seem too busy at the moment... I mean, he had told you to keep up with his Instagram. So it truly wouldn’t be weird if you did send him a message.

You were just overthinking at this point.

And, again, just like this morning...

You got another message from him. 

This was getting a little too weird now. He really did seem to know when you were thinking about messaging him!

You couldn’t help but chuckle softly because he was apologizing for not talking to you even though he was basically halfway around the world!

What a cutie.

Honestly, you had to wonder if he was actually this sweet... or if he was just trying to butter you up since it was still the very, very beginning of your relationship.

Oh, wow. Calling it a ‘relationship’ was kind of weird.

But... what else would you call it?

Oh, thank god. 

You had been a little worried that the constant thinking and wondering had been one-sided. You thought maybe you were just going way overboard!

But, apparently, you weren’t the only one!

That made you feel so much better.

You just had to admit it.

Junmyeon had a way of making you smile and squeal like nobody else had before.

You wanted him to enjoy his time in Guam, try to relax some (even though he was there for work), but... if he wanted to talk to you...

Who were you to tell him ‘no’?

The two of you kept on messaging until your blinks began to last for more than a minute. At that point, you told him you couldn’t stay awake any longer, and he wished you a good night with sweet dreams.

When you woke up the next morning, your first thought was to check Instagram. Junmyeon had mentioned it wasn’t even time for dinner when you’d fallen asleep, so he might already still be awake... You doubted it since jet lag was no joke, but to your surprise, you saw his user name had ‘Active now’ underneath it.

So, you sent him a message.

And so the pattern continued for the rest of the week.

He would message you right before you were going to bed, and you would message him just after you woke up. There would be a few messages here and there throughout the day, but at night and in the morning (for you, at least) was when all the good conversations happened.

Sometimes you talked about silly, meaningless things like favorite television shows and what career you’d wanted when you were a kid and which kinds of Pop-Tarts were best (Strawberry frosted... obviously).

But sometimes things got pretty deep. One night, the conversation meandered to the topic of the most important thing in life. You told Junmyeon you thought it was just being happy, and he agreed with you. He said he had never thought about it in such simple terms, but you were totally right. When it came down to it, you needed to do what was going to make you happy - not just short-term, but in the long run.

And Junmyeon had low-key insinuated that going on another date with you would make him happy in the long run.

Each night and each morning, you found the smile on your face was growing wider and wider, brighter and brighter as you talked to him. It actually got to the point where you had to just stop telling Trish about him because she was almost legitimately planning a double wedding...

When the day came for Junmyeon to come home, you sent him a few messages before he boarded his flight back, just as you had earlier this week. You wished him a safe flight, and when he told you he couldn’t wait to see you again, you blushed furiously as you repeated the sentiment.

Obviously, you figured you wouldn’t see him face-to-face for your third date for another few days. You couldn’t even imagine how tired he must be, a combination of traveling, romping around Guam for a week, and some serious jet lag.

So, imagine your surprise when he called you the very next day.

Your brow furrowed immediately when you saw his name appear on your phone screen, and you were just a bit hesitant to answer.

“...Hello?” you answered with slight confusion.

“Y/N, hey,” Junmyeon greeted, a smile very apparent in his voice. “Are you free for lunch today?”

You blinked.

“Today?” you asked.

“Yeah, today,” he chuckled.

“...Today? I mean, you’re not a jet-lagged zombie?”

“Well, yeah, I kind of am,” he admitted. “But... I don’t think I can wait much longer to see you.”

And there goes that blushing again. You’d been doing it all week, but now that you actually heard his voice, it was even worse.

“Yes, I’m free for lunch today,” you answered, pressing the back of your knuckles against your feverish cheek. “If you haven’t noticed, I don’t really have much of a social life. I hang out with Trish and a couple of other people, but that’s about it.”

“That just means I can ask you out short-notice and actually get to see you,” Junmyeon grinned in reply.

“Yes, that’s very true,” you chuckled.

“So, where do you want to eat? You pick this time since I picked last time.”

You pursed your lips in thought, but it only took a few moments before you suggested, “Pizza? There’s a really good place near the museum.”

Even though thinking about the museum only brought up the incredibly awkward ending to your first date, you figured it would be good to replace that memory with a better one. You weren’t actually going back to the museum itself, but it was in the same area! It was close enough!

“Pizza is always okay by me,” Junmyeon laughed. “Just send me the address. I’ll meet you there at... noon?”

“Yeah, that works!”

“Perfect. See you then.”

You briefly bit your lip to keep yourself from smiling like an absolute goofball, and then you replied with, “See you then,” before hanging up.

It had been two weeks exactly since your first date with Junmyeon, and two weeks ago, you never would’ve thought you’d be here. You never would’ve thought you’d be giddy and giggling and smiling and anxious to see him. It was nice -- more than nice -- don’t get me wrong! You just... never would’ve thought you’d get here with him.

...And now you needed to go get ready as quickly as possible because it was almost 11 which meant it was almost 11:30, and you needed to leave by 11:30 if you wanted to get to the pizza place on time.

Ready, set, go!

Much to your delight, Junmyeon was waiting for you when you arrived at the pizza place right at noon. You’d scrambled to get dressed and ready, and even though you’d left five minutes later than you’d wanted to, you still arrived on time.

When Junmyeon noticed you approaching, you could see his face light up with a smile. He lifted a hand and waved at you, and you pressed your lips together to hold back a very cheesy, giddy grin.

When you got close enough, Junmyeon held out his arms and pulled you in for a hug.

Oh -- oh, my.

For some reason, you hadn’t been prepared for this. Even though the two of you had been talking every single day -- flirting every single day -- for the past week, you hadn’t even thought Junmyeon would go in for the hug.

But he had.

And you were now in the middle of it.

First of all, he smelled really nice.

Second of all, he was really warm. I mean, most everyone is warm when you hug them, at least physically. But Junmyeon was just... warm all-around. Physically and emotionally.

The hug was pretty brief, but you still managed to feel welcomed and safe and secure while you were in his arms.

“Hey,” he said softly just before he pulled away. “You look amazing.”

“Thanks,” you replied breathlessly. “So do you.”

Because even though he was clearly exhausted, he still looked amazingly handsome. It actually wasn’t fair.

The two of you headed into the restaurant, and once you were seated, Junmyeon raised his eyebrows and reached into his pocket.

“Oh, yeah, before I forget,” he murmured. He then took out a pen, handing it to you across the table. “Here is your souvenir.”

A smile immediately lit up your face, and you took the pen eagerly. It was a brightly colored pen from the resort with fun patterns and palm trees all over it.

“I hope it’s not too, like, tacky or anything --”

“No, it’s perfect,” you assured him, focusing your smile on him now. “I love it. Thank you.”

Junmyeon looked adorably pleased, but then all of a sudden, he looked adorably nervous. “I just have... one request.”

Your eyebrows raised, and you looked at him as if to say ‘Yes, go on...’

“I...” Junmyeon licked his lips and inhaled, his breath just a bit shaky. “I want you to write to me.”

“...Write to you? What do you mean?” you asked as your heart practically pounded in your chest. Was he requesting something super romantic?

“Like, write me letters. So I can read them when I’m on a trip and -- and missing you.”

Yep. He was requesting something super romantic.

“But you have to use that pen,” he continued, pointing to it as you held it. “Please. I mean, of course, you don’t have to if you don’t --”

“I will,” you interrupted. “When’s your next trip?”

Junmyeon’s lips split into a huge grin before he answered you. “In two weeks.”

You nodded, holding back a huge grin of your own. “All right. I’ll write as many letters as I can in two weeks and give them to you before you leave.”

The atmospheres during your first date and your second date had been pretty different - in a good way.

And the atmospheres during your second date and your third date had been even more different - in a very good way.

Maybe it was because the two of you had been talking more, or maybe Junmyeon was a little delirious from jet lag, but he was taking no measures whatsoever to hide how he felt about you. He was smiling almost constantly, complimenting you every few minutes, and he was just being generally charming and flirtatious. But not overly flirtatious, and not flirtatious in a gross, creepy way. He was subtle about it, and you liked that.

He made you laugh -- giggle, even. He made you smile. He made your heart flutter. He made you wonder what in the world he saw in you.

After splitting a pizza and talking for over an hour, Junmyeon ushered you out of the restaurant. When you stepped onto the sidewalk, you were just about to tell him you had, yet again, taken the subway. But he spoke before you could.

“Could I... would it be okay if I... took you home?”

Your heart stopped beating for just a millisecond, though you weren’t sure why. It was a simple request to take you home!

You nodded, lifting one corner of your mouth in a somewhat shy grin. “Yeah, sure.”

Junmyeon led you down the street to a nearby parking garage, his hand coming to rest on the small of your back as he guided you toward his car.

The drive to your place was fairly quiet; you murmured directions to him, and some music played softly on his Bluetooth. It wasn’t awkward, though. Not in the least. The silence was comfortable, and neither of you felt the need to fill it with random small talk.

It took Junmyeon about twenty minutes to drive to your house, and when he pulled into your driveway, you could’ve sworn you felt a sort of nervous tension suddenly appear between you.

But why?

You weren’t nervous.

“I’ll -- I’ll walk you in,” Junmyeon offered as he put his car in park and turned off the engine.

You murmured an ‘okay’ as you unbuckled your seat belt and opened your door, stepping out onto your driveway. Junmyeon jogged around the front of the car to meet you, his hand once again finding its way to the small of your back as he followed you up the walkway.

When you arrived at your front door, you started to open your bag to retrieve your keys, but Junmyeon gently put a hand on your wrist to stop you. You jumped just a little, not expecting it, but you still shifted your gaze to look over at him.

“I --” he began before cutting himself off. He shifted his weight awkwardly, and your heart started to race. That nervous tension from the car was back, and you now understood he was nervous. “I know I’ve probably said this a thousand times but... I like you. I really like you, and I want to keep seeing you.”

Why was he nervous about telling you that? Like he said, he’d said that about a thousand times already.

“I like you, too,” you replied with a soft grin. “I want to keep seeing you.”

Junmyeon’s gaze pierced into yours, his brow furrowed slightly. He opened his mouth to say something else, but he quickly closed it again.

The two of you stood there for a few moments in silence, neither of you moving.

And then, all of a sudden, Junmyeon leaned in and swiftly pressed his lips to yours.

...Oh.

So that’s what he was nervous about.

Part 4

[jenni42085]

Made in the AM <Two>

Ch. Two

Alex's POV

The rest of my day consisted of packing, making sure all my bills were paid up to date, and getting more coverage for my cellphone. I didn't have any idea of how long I'd be gone for but I packed enough clothing for atleast three weeks, hopefully that will be enough. Plus having two big suitcase with plenty of room for if I have any souvenirs.

"So where are you going first?" Tori asks while helping me straighten up my room. Figured since I might be gone a few weeks no need to come home to a dirty place.

"The itinerary says I'll start off in Singapore for a few days, and from there no idea really, I guess they figure if I finish quickly enough no need to fill me in. I hope to get a bunch of great pictures and souvenirs though in my down time. Are you sure you can't beg them to come with? I don't want to do this alone." I ask sitting down next to her resting my head on her shoulder.

"Lex, you are going to be fine. I'm sure they will absolutely adore you. Let's have our last lunch before you leave."

"T, what am I going to do without you there?" I ask getting my shoes on and lingering at the floor.

"You are going to shine bright like I know you can."

MANY HOURS LATER

"Alexandria, we're in Singapore." Paul nudges me awake.

I wipe the sleep from my eyes and look out the window. "What time it is? "

"Umm almost 8 am." Paul says as he hands my laptop bag from the overhead compartment. "We are heading to the hotel then possibly out to eat. The guys will probably be asleep until noon if not later."

"Ok, that's great because I'd like to sleep in an actual bed instead of on the plane. When will I meet them?" I ask because I'm not mentally ready yet. Most of the 15 hour flight was spent listening to their albums trying to figure out what kind of style they lean to. Mainly it is a lot of pop but some songs show a different kind of range in music, maybe I can use it towards my advantage. I didn't actually close my eyes until the last two hours of the flight.

"If you are up for it, you can meet them tonight before their show. If not tomorrow, I know jet lag is a pain."

"Understatement, I'll try to be up and ready to meet the guys tonight. I'm just exhausted."

"I understand, if you can't meet them today it is ok.  No stress.  " Paul replied leading to the black SUV.

We rode silently to the hotel, I was taking in the sounds, smells, and scenery of Singapore. This city is so large, I can't wait to explore but right now I can't wait to get to my room. Paul informed me that they had blocked off the entire penthouse so I wouldn't have to worry about anyone really bothering me.

I open the door to a large suite; most of the room was a crisp white color which was refreshing. There was a king size bed that has big plush white comforter on it. After my bags were in my room I stripped out of my clothes and step into the oversized bathroom. Seeing as I was too tired to soak in the tub, I opt for a shower because I don't think I could stay awake much longer. I dry off then apply some Love Spell body butter then put on a cami and some boy shorts then crawl into bed. Slowly, I close my eyes and drift off into dreamland.

BAM BAM BAM. What was that? I shoot up in bed with my heart racing. Seriously? I thought this was going to be a peaceful time of just exploring more emotions and writing but apparently not. These boys are already way to loud.  I grabbed my headphones and turn up some peaceful ocean waves then try to drift back to sleep.

I wake up to my once bright room to be dark but illuminated by the lights of outside. The city looks kind of like a Christmas wonderland with all the lights going on. I take out my camera and take a few shots of the beauty because it is absolutely breathtaking. I stretch once again and look at the clock. Paul had said that they try to leave for the arena by 8, that means I have less than forty-five minutes to get dressed.

Thankfully I'm not high maintenance it only takes fifteen minutes to get ready. I throw on my Old Navy skinny jeans with a plain white tee and my light weight gray hoodie. Part of me was afraid to wear flip flops in a high traffic place where someone might crush my toes so I fall back to my usual cotton candy colored Converse. Pretty sure that isn't the name of the color but I call them that since they are pastel purple, pink, and teal with a clear coat of glitter to make them sparkle.

Checking myself in the mirror I look more of a stage crew member then a song writer but meh. I'm comfortable and it looks semi cute. I throw my braids into a messy bun. So happy that my nap made me alert enough to not need any makeup, just some watermelon flavored Chapstick. I grab my mini Fossil cross body then pack the usual necessary items Chapstick, mirror, wallet, notepad, pen, room key, and cell phone then head out.

As I walk into the hallway I'm greeted by one of the security guards who looks rather intimidating. I give a small wave but he doesn't return it. "Miss Morris, this way to the van." I follow him down the hallway then midway I hear a door opening out comes Paul looking slightly stressed but upbeat.

"Glad to see you made it to our first concert after the break. They will be the best and most energetic. You can ride with us over there." I nod my head at him. " They should all be meeting us here in a moment and I'll introduce you."

I flash him a smile and reply "Great, can't wait." But mentally I can wait, this is seriously making my blood pressure jump a few points. This isn't what I need but yet here I am feeling hot and a little dizzy.

A loud noise approaching me knocks me out of my thoughts. What the fresh hell is going on? I turn around to be greeted with a herd of bodies. "Guys!! Seriously we don't need to get kicked out for all the noise." I stare back at the group of guys with wide eyes.

"Who's this? Your new assistant?" The blonde asks.

"No Niall, this is your songwriter. Her name is Alexandria. She is here to help you guys along. She is going to watch you guys tonight and probably travel with us for a few weeks. Be nice."

I have four sets of eyes shift in my direction suddenly I feel even more self conscious and kind of naked, I let a small " Hello" out with a wave.

"Hello Alexandria. I'm Niall." He offers his hand to me and I graciously shake it. He releases my hand then points out the rest of the guys, "That is Louis, Liam, and Harry."

Louis and Liam both give me a firm handshake while Harry barely acknowledges my presence. What crawled up his ass? Maybe he is still tired from traveling all day. Who knows, but it was kind of rude.  I guess my facial expression showed some disgust with his hand shake because Liam shot him a look. "Don't pay grumpy much mind, he didn't sleep to well on the drive here."

With that response I force my face into a half smile and nod. "No worries. And you can call me Alex."

"Well Alex, are you ready to see how we rock it out?" Niall asks excitedly. Again I nod feeling very shy and unsure of what I have signed up for. We pile into the van and head towards the arena. I wish I had brought that water I had just opened with me because my blood pressure is trying to get the best of me.

*****************************************************************************************************

Harry's POV

So this is our songwriter? She doesn't look like anything special. I was honestly hoping for someone a little fitter than that but I guess if you only write and never perform what would you expect.  Right?  This was not what I was expecting when Paul said Simon had sent us something that we needed. She seems nice enough just really quiet and very shy. It does beg the question as to how she was able to write music about love, life, and everything in between it doesn't seem like she even leaves the house often.

Niall and Liam are always the first to make friends with people. They have her seated in between them chatting it up like old friends."So what album were you working on last?" Louis asks as I shoot him a dirt look that he ignores.

"Umm, I... I have been working with Tori Kelly mainly." She finally managed to get out.

"Really!!?" Niall exclaims excitedly. "Her voice is powerful! Nobody Love is an epic song I bet the rest of her album will be amazing. How did you meet her?"

"High school."

"High school" the three of them repeat her as in a slight shock.

"Yeah, we have been best friends since freshman year."

Without even thinking I state, "So you are like riding off of her talent, yeah?" After the words left my mouth I knew I went to far. "Umm I'm sorry. I didn't mean it like that"

But it was too late the damage was done. The van fell silent. I turned around to get a look at her, her face was illuminated by her cell phone and her face was solemn with tears in her eyes. "No, I got here on my own merit. I work hard I just don't sing. Simon picked me for my skills." She calmly states in a flat tone.

I hear Liam whisper something to her. My intention wasn't to make her tear up like that. Louis smacks me in the back of the head. "Smooth move mate! You are going to have her crying and not for the right reasons."

"Fuck! I wasn't trying to be mean. I was just wondering how she got here." I say as we get out of the van. Niall helps her out of the van and puts an arm around her shoulder.

As I bring up the rear Paul stops me, "Look, I know you aren't thrilled about this but give her a break she didn't even want to come because her nerves are so bad. She has maybe said twenty words to me on the flight. Simon wants her here because he thinks this is what you guys need so....."

I cut him off already knowing what he is going to say. "So don't fuck this up." I sigh as I enter the dressing room. The guys are shooting me looks as if I don't already know I've messed up, I don't want to be in the doghouse much longer so I decide to formally apologize. But as I'm about to do so I don't see her anywhere. "Where did Alexandria go?"

"No idea. She kind wandered off once we got inside." Liam says with a slight worried expression.

*****************************************************************************************************

Alex's POV

<sigh> This is exactly what I didn't want to happen. I just wanted to stay on comfort zone. I can feel my mood shifting to depression so I do one of the few things that calm me when I'm depressed.

"Hello?"

"Hey T. I know it is late. I just need to talk."

"Alex, what happened?" She asks groggily. I give her a run down of what has happened and she takes a breath "He is a man who obviously can't deal with the fact that you are so special and talented. If everyone else is being nice to you don't let one prick try to drag you down."

I let her words penetrate my heart and think on things. <sigh> "Ok I'm going to show them all how talented I am. Thanks T. I don't know what I'd do with out you."

"No problem. Night."

"Night." I hang up the phone and pull out my headphones. I need some real music to clear my head. I felt kind of old school so I played some Maroon 5 Songs About Jane. Listening to this album always calms my nerves.

Listening to Adam Levine's voice gives me a pretty wicked beat, then I start thinking over the conversation with T, 'Don't let anyone drag you down'. I made notes on my phone and my fingers start flying as I'm typing out lyrics. Apparently, I was so in the zone that I didn't notice anyone come up to me. I feel a hand touch my shoulder and it makes me jump out of my skin. "What?"

It was Harry looking pretty hot minus his shitty attitude. He looked at me with big green eyes that I could see why the women love him. "Ummm, I'm sorry for earlier I haven't really been myself lately. I didn't mean to say that. Can you please...."

"Please what?  Just don't worry about it.  You already don't like me for whatever reason so, lets just steer clear of each other and everything will be ok.  Alright?"  I reply without shedding a tear or batting an eye.  The look on his face was of shock.  He stood there a moment about to open his mouth.  "Just go back and get ready.  I have songs to write."  With those few words I leave him standing there speechless and speed walk to the nearest ladies room so I can get a few more moments of peace of quiet because my mind is racing with song lyrics.  Maybe proving people wrong will fuel the fire that I need.  <sigh>  I wonder if they have a spare guitar for me to use......

*****************************************************************************************************

Harry's POV

I can't bloody believe she dismissed me like I was nothing!  I was trying to give her a heart felt apology and cover my ass at the same time.  Not going to lie, I hate that I did say that out loud to her because I really know nothing about her, plus she is only here to help. Walking back to my dressing room I start warming up my vocals.  But this just adds to the stress I'm already feeling.  I'll find a way to make it up to her, but after the show.  I need my head in the game.

"Did you find her?"  Liam asks, he is always playing Daddy Direction.

"I did."

"And?"  He stops  lifting weights long enough to look at me.  I swear that is his new favorite pass time.  

"Well I tried...."

"You tried?!!  Harry.  Seriously?" he rolls his eyes.  

"She didn't want to hear it.  She just shut me down and sprinted away."

"Well bull lox, you have to make it right.  Soon."  Liam replies as he walks away from me.  "Next time think before you speak.  She is a nice girl."

*****************************************************************************************************

Alex's POV

The news of me being new to the whole concert spread pretty quickly because when I asked for a spare acoustic guitar it took them no time to let me borrow one I guess they know their job kind of depend on me to write music.  I sit on the counter in the ladies room and start getting a melody in my head.  There was a knock on the door.

"Yes?"  I ask.

It was a male's voice but not really sure who's.  "Alexandria?"  

"You can just call me Alex.  And can I help you?"  I reply shyly.

"Can I come in?"

"Umm, I guess so.  Who is it?"

"Niall."

"Sure come in."  The adorable blonde hair,  blue eyed, guy comes into the bathroom which was probably the size of my bedroom back home.  He looks at the fact I'm sitting on the counter with headphones on, guitar out, and my notepad writing stuff down.  Still unsure of my mood he stands in front of the sink, glancing in the mirror then back at the mess I have on the counter.

"You ok?"  I look at him and pull my ear plugs fully out, I can tell he is sincerely asking about my well being.

"Well, when I finish this song I might be ok.  I'm just in the zone and need this out of my system.  Why?"

He flashes me a quick smile.  "You are already writing?  I thought we were supposed to be doing it together."

"Yes, you are but right now I'm in the zone and can't afford to lose this."

"Aye!  Can I hear what you have so far?"

That question really throws me off guard, I know that eventually they will have to see my work first hand.  I look at him moment thinking over if I really want to do this.  "OK,"  I slowly start to drum the cords out on the guitar,

"I've got fire for a heart

I'm not scared of the dark

You've never seen it look so easy

I got a river for a soul

And baby you're a boat

Baby you're my only reason."  

I stop and look at him then continue, "I'm not sure what would be the other part of the verse  but I have the chorus

All my life

You stood by me

When no one else was ever behind me

All these lights

They can't blind me

With your love, nobody can drag me down"  

I finish playing and give him a look indicating that I needed his opinion.

"I like it.  Did you  just come up with it?"

"Yes.  Was feeling down about the car ride and I had to call my bestie, then I listened to Maroon 5 and now I'm feeling a little better.  I can't let anyone drag me down.  Even your bandmate."  

Niall starts packing my stuff up for me.  I cock my head to the side.  "I know Harry can be a pain, but he is the baby of the group so I just don't think he realizes how much of a jack ass he can be at times.  And I'm only packing your stuff up so you can watch the show."  He pulls me off the counter and pulls me in for brief hug.  "It will get better I promise."

"If you say so."  I mumble into his chest.

"I do.  Come and watch us.  Please."  He does a puppy dog face which causes me to smile.

"You are a lady killer I swear.  You look innocent then you pull that.  Don't think it will work all the time on me."  I say with a a smirk.  He gives me a quick wink.

"I know it won't always work but I'm going to milk it until it no longer does."  He puts an arm around me and lead me back to their dressing room.  With Niall looking out for me maybe this trip won't be so bad.  I'm ready to see what these boys have to offer.  

[ratedbangtann]

✧˚₊‧𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐓𝐰𝐞𝐥𝐯𝐞 𝐃𝐚𝐲𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐂𝐡𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐦𝐚𝐬 - 𝐃𝐚𝐲 𝐓𝐡𝐫𝐞𝐞 ✧˚₊‧ 

𝙒𝙞𝙣𝙩𝙚𝙧 𝙒𝙤𝙣𝙙𝙚𝙧𝙡𝙖𝙣𝙙 || 𝙆𝙞𝙢 𝙎𝙚𝙤𝙠𝙟𝙞𝙣 

 𝚂𝚎𝚘𝚔𝚓𝚒𝚗 𝚙𝚕𝚊𝚗𝚜 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚖𝚘𝚜𝚝 𝚠𝚘𝚗𝚍𝚎𝚛𝚏𝚞𝚕 𝚏𝚎𝚜𝚝𝚒𝚟𝚎 𝚝𝚛𝚒𝚙 𝚘𝚏 𝚢𝚘𝚞𝚛 𝚍𝚛𝚎𝚊𝚖𝚜, 𝚓𝚞𝚜𝚝 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚑𝚒𝚖...

Pairing: Seokjin x reader

Word count: 4K

Warnings: Tooth-rottingly sweet fluff. Minor mentions of sexual content. Song: Winter Wonderland by Michael Bublé ✧˚₊‧

"Babe, where did you put my thermal socks?" Seokjin wailed through the dorm. He was frantically packing, having left it to the night before you flew to get his act together.

"In the drawer where they always are!" you yelled back at him from the kitchen as you cooked for not only him, but the rest of the boys too. You were much more relaxed than Jin; probably because you had packed two days ago and knew exactly where all your things were, ready to go.

"Can't believe you're going to Lapland... I'm so jealous!" Taehyung whined from where he sat on top of the kitchen counter. "Why can't we all go together? It'd be more fun with all of us!"

"Because, Tae-Tae, Mommy and Daddy need some time alone away from you kids," you teased, whacking the side of his thigh with a wooden spoon. Yoongi – who was sat at the dinner table with his lyric notebook – chuckled at that. Jin had booked this getaway just for the two of you to spend some time together alone. When the boys had complained – particularly the maknaes – he still wouldn't give in; you needed some y/n and Seokjin time.

"Ow!" Tae cried out, rubbing his thigh and pouting. "Mommy is mean." You chuckled at him.

"Food's ready," you called to the rest of the dorm, various other members practically crawling out of their bedrooms like zombies. Seokjin stormed out with his brows threaded together in annoyance.

"I swear, packing is the worst part of travelling," he grumbled, sitting in one of the chairs with you next to him as he picked up his chopsticks to eat the noodles you'd made for the group.

"Lapland was your idea, Jin. You left it last minute," you jeered. "Besides, it's going to be so cute. We've been together nearly four years and we've never done anything like this before, just us," you shoved a mouthful of noodles into your mouth, smiling as you chewed. Not that you minded your vacations usually including the rest of Bangtan, but you couldn't wait to have some alone time with the man you loved.

Jin smirked as he wound his noodles around his chopsticks, loving the idea of spending time alone with you too. He knew you loved Christmas, that's why Lapland was his first suggestion when you said you wanted a vacation before the holidays. Five days and four nights in your own little winter wonderland.

"If you'd actually let me help you pack, we'd get things done a lot quicker," you suggested.

"No!" he exclaimed suddenly. You jumped back a little, your eyes widening in shock. "I'm a big boy... I-I can do it myself."

"Okay... Weirdo. Eat your food," you nodded towards his bowl and continued to chow down.

*****

The first thing you noticed when you stepped off the plane? Baltic. Absolutely bloody freezing cold. Korea got cold in Winter, sure, but this? You needed some damn long-johns or something to survive this cold.

Trying to ignore it, you and Jin hopped on your transfer to the accommodation he had booked; a chalet in what was known as Tundrea. Essentially, a large wooden house decorated with modern yet rustic furniture. You had a hot tub, large living space, your own kitchen, a balcony to the master bedroom...

You both shrugged your parkas off and Jin hauled your bags up to the bedroom as you explored a little, checking out the views of the resort from the upstairs windows. It was truly beautiful, large fir trees coated in layers of thick snow; the ground completely white, sun illuminating it brightly.

He'd really gone all out when he booked this. You knew to expect grand, but this was incredible. Seokjin didn't do things by half. Not when it came to you...

"I've booked us a dinner tonight, but activities start tomorrow. We've only got another hour of daylight left and after that flight, I need my beauty sleep," Jin said as he stepped in behind you by the window, wrapping his arms around your waist.

"No amount of beauty sleep is gonna help you," you joked. "But that's fine; wonderful even. Jet lag will hit soon anyway."

"This place is beautiful, huh?" he admired, staring out at the winter scenes. "They said we can see the Northern lights from here. Pretty much anywhere around here actually, if the conditions are right."

"Wow... That would be incredible. I always wanted to see them," you really had been spoilt this Christmas. "Perfect," you hummed in satisfaction, laying your head back on his shoulder. He leaned down to peck a sweet kiss to your neck.

*****

"Seokjin, come on!" you whined from the bottom of the stairs in your cabin. He'd been faffing about in the bedroom for almost an hour, seemingly doing nothing but rummaging through suitcases and bags in a panic. "What are you looking for?"

He suddenly appeared at the top of the steps, jogging down them quickly.

"Never mind, found it. Let's go!" he shuffled into his snow boots and linked his arm with yours, dragging you out into the snow.

He'd planned your husky experience for today, getting to feed and pet the huskies that would be pulling your snowmobiles around. You couldn't wait; you loved dogs so much and these huskies were so, so beautiful.

You were given the chance to play with them a little, spend time with them before they were linked up to your snowmobiles.

You and Jin became competitive, racing your dogs over and over and speeding through the snow. You'd never experienced anything like this before and it was just magical, yet only the beginning of what would be the most sensational getaway you had ever had.

Just as much as you had wanted to spend time with the huskies, Jin wanted to go ice fishing. You didn't mind, this trip was for both of you and fishing was relaxing enough, one of Jin's favourite hobbies. You didn't think you'd be as good company as Yoongi may have been for this activity, but you'd certainly try your best.

Jin was a natural at it, obviously. His fishing experience came in handy despite the different techniques used and you just loved watching him get so excited when he caught his first fish. By the time you were done the sun had started to set, and the instructor lit the firepit to start cooking your catches. He did all the nasty stuff – gutting and chopping them up – but Jin had insisted he helped to cook. He wanted to learn, wanted to cook his catches for his girl. It was a humorous little display of masculinity but so charming.

"What's the plan now?" you asked, checking your phone for the time. It was still early evening despite the darkening skyline, and you wanted to do more, to explore more. Jin finished his mouthful of food before talking.

"Hot tub and champagne. I was going to suggest the northern lights, but the cloud cover is going to ruin that. Tomorrow is forecast clear," he shoved another mouthful of food into his mouth, pouting his lips as he chewed.

"Sounds good to me," you beamed, finishing off your meals in peace.

*****

From the hot tub, you watched Jin scurrying across the decking to get into the warmth of the water. The freezing air was biting at his skin, the idiot completely forgetting to put a robe on at least before he came outside in just his swimming shorts.

"You're supposed to wear a robe, Jin..." you laughed as he climbed into the tub.

"Shut up," he retorted, teeth chattering as he shook. He sunk into the water and let out a drawn out gasp of content. "Thank god, my nipples were so hard I thought they'd fall off..."

You laughed at him, shuffling over to sit next to him and shroud him in your warmth. He wrapped an arm around your shoulders, bringing you to lean against his chest as you enjoyed the jets of the tub.

"Thank you for bringing me here, Jin... It's so beautiful," you thanked him, still blown away by the incredible trip he had booked for you both.

"Only the best for my baby," he kissed your forehead. "You deserve it though. Honestly, I don't know how you put up with me. And not just me, but the six adopted children you've taken in as your own too."

"Ha, yeah I suppose... I adore the life you've given me though. Wouldn't change it for the world." It's true; the craziness of your life was what you loved so much about it.

"Four years of crazy," Jin reminisced, "In this for the long run, huh?"

You looked up at him to see him smiling down at you, hair pushed back off his forehead, beautiful eyes running over your features.

"Absolutely," you agreed, reaching up to kiss those deliciously plump lips of his. He turned into the kiss, wrapping his hand around your waist and pulling you closer. You moved against each other so naturally, lips colliding and moulding, tongues caressing and hands roaming.

You broke away from him to sit up and swing your leg over his lap, straddling him before you resumed your kiss. The heat of the hot tub only encouraged things to heat up a little more, slowly progressing until you pulled away for air.

"You know one thing I've never done?" you asked, smirking.

"What's that?" he urged, his mind hazy from making out.

"I've never had sex in a hot tub before," you teased.

"Me neither. First time for everything?" he suggested. You nodded excitedly, and without another word he was pulling the straps of your swimsuit from behind your neck to ping them free.

*****

"And on today's itinerary?" you leaned over the breakfast bar in the kitchen.

"We're meeting Santa," he grinned like a child.

"Oh, really? But... I don't think he'll like me," you played, pouting as Jin leaned over the other side of the bar, levelling with you.

"Why wouldn't he like my little princess?" he bopped your nose sweetly.

"Well, I think I'm on the naughty list after last night..." you smirked, pecking his lips a little. He chuckled, knowing exactly what you had done that was so naughty.

"Don't you worry, I'll slip him some cash," he joked.

"Excellent," you clapped.

"I booked our sleigh ride for tonight, with the reindeers and everything," he smiled. Wow...

"A reindeer sleigh ride? That's... whoa!" That was surely something people only did in movies, right?

"Yeah, and the conditions are perfect for the lights too so, fingers crossed." A sleigh ride under the northern lights... could it get any more magical than this?

"Come on, let's go see Santa," he stood up, walking around to your side and grasping your hand in his, pulling you to the front door to kit yourselves out in boots and thermal gear.

You were just about to leave when he suddenly yelled, "Oh! Wait one sec," and scarpered off up the stairs. He was gone for seconds only, running back down quickly. "Forgot my phone."

"Moron," you jeered affectionately, walking out the door.

When you arrived at Santa's workshop – a large cabin decorated with wreaths and ribbons with large candy canes sticking out of the snow – you noticed a small queue of families with small children on the little red carpet outside the door. The younger children looked so excited, bouncing around and playing around, running circles around their parents. You giggled to yourself.

"Cute," you muttered. Jin looked over at you and followed your gaze, smiling softly to himself too. "I think we're the only ones here without a child..." you laughed at the idea; two fully grown adults coming to see Santa Claus. But that was just how you and Jin were; children at heart.

"Is it weird?" he asked. "'Cause I could always steal one..."

"Shut up, Seokjin. You'll get us kicked out," you whisper shouted with a laugh and a smack to his puffy coat.

"Sorry, sorry... Maybe one day we'll come back with our own kid," he suggested cautiously. Your heart swelled at the notion.

"Maybe..." you murmured.

The queue slowly moved forward and you reached the front in no time at all. Staff dressed like elves escorted you through to a waiting room decked out like a traditional log cabin with festive red and green furnishings and a lit fireplace. You took a seat on one of the armchairs, Seokjin standing beside you as you waited patiently in the warmth.

"Santa's ready for you!" a young female elf popped through the second door to the room, her painted rosy cheeks bunching as she smiled.

You followed her in to find Santa sat on a large, red upholstered chair. He looked like the real deal; the red suit with white fur trimmings, large black boots, a thick white beard that actually grew from his own face, chubby red cheeks and little round glasses.

"Hi Santa!" you waved excitedly.

"Hello, y/n!" he cheered. He knew your names; a nice touch. "Come on in, tell me what you want for Christmas." He patted his lap and immediately you rushed to him to take a seat on the end of his knee. Seokjin smiled fondly at your excitement, like you really were a little child on Christmas morning. He stayed by the door, snapping a few photos on his phone.

"First of all, have you been good?" Santa asked you, raising his eyebrows at you. You turned to Jin who had burst into a fit of giggles, remembering your comment this morning.

"Mostly..." you sounded unsure, and Santa hummed in thought.

"Don't worry, I'm sure you're on the nice list. I'll have to check later... But if you are on the nice list, what would you like for Christmas this year?" he asked.

"Hmm..." you thought for a moment; what did you want? Nothing really... You had everything you ever wanted. Almost everything, anyway.

"Honestly Santa, I'm happy anyway. All I want for Christmas is him," you pointed to Jin stood by the door, who's heart was melting as you spoke with Santa. "I just want to spend it with him, be close to him and for him to be happy."

"Aw, that's beautiful, y/n. See? How could a nice girl like you be on the naughty list?" he replied with a signature 'ho ho ho' laugh. If only he knew...

"Seokjinnie's turn!" you sang, climbing off Santa's lap. You expected him to just come and sit on the step at Santa's feet, but he too sat on his knee. You laughed; he was such a goof, flicking his hair out of his eyes and dramatically wrapping an arm around Santa's shoulders.

"Well, hello Jin," even Santa was surprised. "What about you; have you been good this year?"

"Santa, I'm good every year, you know?" he said confidently. Santa chuckled.

"Is that so? Well, what can I get you for Christmas then?" Seokjin didn't hesitate, just leaned down to whisper into Santa's ear with his hand covering his lips from you. Santa nodded along to what he was saying, and his eyes flicked up to you, a smile spreading across his face underneath his beard.

"Well, Jin... I'm sure I can get you that, not to worry!" Santa patted his back and Jin smiled at him. "Say, would you two like a photo? I could ask one of my elves to take it for you!" You nodded excitedly, coming to sit on Santa's other knee opposite Jin. Santa called to one of the elves outside who wondered in, taking Jin's phone from him.

You both smiled for the camera, taking a sweet picture together before bidding your farewells to Santa. The elf led you out of the room and into Santa's workshop, where there were genuinely hundreds of people dressed as elves putting together little wooden cars and painting the faces on dolls. It was mesmerising to see the effort that was put into a place like this, the children on the same tour all going crazy with glee.

Jin held your hand as the tour continued, picking you out a toy at the end too just like the other kids were given. You had to laugh, he was just as excited and picked out a toy car for himself.

By the time you were done at Santa's workshop, it was starting to get dark. Jin took you to dinner again; a fancy restaurant that specialised in local cuisine. It was all very over the top, but so cute of him. He had put so much effort into your little getaway, thinking of every little detail.

You were dropped off by the aptly named 'snow taxis' to the drop off point for your sleigh ride, both you and Jin giddy with elation. You expected the sleighs to be little, pulled by one reindeer like you had seen in the brochures.

Oh, no. Jin doesn't do things by halves.

Instead, Jin had arranged for a large red sleigh with gold trimmings, pulled by a whole host of reindeer to pick you up for your evening under the stars together. All the reindeer had beautiful antlers, little jingle bells attached to them and red ribbon head-collars and reins to match. They were utterly beautiful, like something out of a fairy tale.

"Jin, what the hell?!" you cried as he removed his hands from your eyes, revealing your surprise to him. In the sleigh, there was a bottle of champagne in an ice bucket – not that it needed one in this temperature – and a bundle of roses waiting for you.

"You just gonna stand here gawking or are we gonna ride this thing?" he asked, taking your hand and helping you up onto the sleigh with him close behind you. The man leading the sleigh – the coachman – greeted you both as you took a seat and pulled on the reigns to signal the reindeer to move.

You dashed through the snow, much like the Christmas songs all suggested, the bells jingling away. You curled into Jin who was photographing the sleigh, the landscapes, you... You took selfies together and laughed at the funny faces he pulled, drank champagne and simply enjoyed your time together.

The sleigh slowed to a halt as you came to a clearing in some fir trees, the coachman turning around to face you both.

"This is a beautiful place to watch the lights, sir," he suggested.

"It's perfect, thank you," he smiled, ever appreciative.

"You're welcome. I'm going to let the reindeer off the sleigh to feed them, you two enjoy the show." And with that, he stepped down from the front of the sleigh, unhooking the reindeer but keeping them attached to each other so as not to lose one to the horizon.

"So, could be any minute now," Jin said, looking up at the sky in the clearing. You sat huddled together, not for warmth – your thermals were doing the trick – but for comfort; you sought each other's hold naturally.

You didn't have to wait long for the show to begin, the sky starting to shimmer with a beautiful green wave of light, mixing in with the natural dark blues and specs of shining white stars of the sky. The light only grew brighter, purple and a dash of red blending incredibly.

"Wow..." you gasped, never having seen such a beautiful natural phenomenon before. "Jin, I-" you couldn't even speak, finding yourself standing up and leaning over the front of the sleigh, staring up at the sky.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" he said from behind you, watching you get lost in the colours swirling above your head.

"I've never seen anything like this," you marvelled, "thank you so much for bringing me here, Jin," you turned around to look at him, "I can't believe you-"

You stopped in your tracks, words getting stuck in your throat.

Seokjin was on the floor of the sleigh, on one knee, with a little red velvet box outstretched in his hand. A beautiful diamond ring sat proudly in centre, sparkling under the lights.

"Jin..." tears welled in your eyes, realisation setting in.

"Y/n, I uh... Okay here goes; for a long time now, I've had everything I ever wanted; a wonderful career, wonderful friends and I had you. You and I have had four years of absolute happiness, some tough times too, but we've always pulled through. You've been my absolute rock, the person I can depend on for anything," his voice wavered with nerves, but he never stopped pouring his heart out to you.

"I've known for a while now that I never wanted this to end. I want you, for the rest of my life, because every day I wake up and think 'wow, I am the luckiest guy in the world. She makes me so, so happy'. And if you'll let me, I want to make sure that every single day you wake up feeling the same thing.

"So... y/n, will you do me the honour? Will you marry me?" he asked, hopeful; as if he needed an answer.

You nodded frantically, a sob rising in your throat and tears spilling down your cheeks.

"Y-Yes, yes of course I will..." you cried, wiping the tears from your cheeks with your gloves. His face broke into a wide grin and he leapt up, stepping towards you to throw his arms around your waist, lifting you off the ground as you held each other.

He put you down, immediately crushing your lips together with need. You desperately clung to him, your lips moulding together with his with so much love, so much devotion.

"Gimme your hand," he insisted. You did, and he removed the thick glove holding it in his teeth as he slipped the ring onto your finger gently. It fit perfectly, the single stone glinting under the light of the aroura.

You pulled the glove out of his mouth and kissed him again, both of you overwhelmed with utter joy at the promise of a future with each other.

"This is what I asked Santa for," he confessed. "I asked him to make sure you said yes when I proposed to you tonight."

"You crafty little..." you lightly smacked his arm, laughing. "Is this what you went back upstairs for this morning?" You held your hand with the ring on up to him.

"Yeah, almost forgot it..." he chuckled, "and that's why I wouldn't let you help me pack either." It all made sense now.

"And why you wouldn't let the others come on the trip with us..." you didn't have to ask; you were piecing it together now.

"Exactly. They have no idea I was going to ask either. Gonna surprise them when we get back," he grinned cheekily.

"They're gonna flip out," you laughed.

The two of you sat back down on the red velvet seats, snuggling up together once again to watch the lights above you. You had never felt so content in your life, so fulfilled – so whole.

"I love you, Seokjinnie," you cooed, squeezing your arms around him.

"I love you too, baby," he sighed, feeling just as content, fulfilled and whole as you.

[urmysilverlining]

Coming home

After a pretty rough day, the idea of closing your laptop and going to sleep, postponing your unfinished work to the following day, was getting ever more tempting; but your sense of duty was stronger than tiredness, so you ended up revising your last report. Once you ended, before you could actually put all away, the icon of an incoming call brightened up on your screen. You excluded it was someone from work, because they would have called you on the untraceable phone they gave you the day you started working for them. It had to be something personal, but it was not usual receiving calls at that hour of the night, since all the people you know, live at too many time zones of difference from you. Your spidey sense told you that you would have regretted not accepting this call, so you clicked to answer. A black haired woman appeared on your screen, and you felt a sense of apprehension at the sight of her.

“Hi Y/N, I’m so sorry for calling you at this hour, I know it’s pretty late by you, but I need your help to solve a problem we got to deal with” Matty Webber, talked in her fast and authoritative way, leaving you no time for questions or complaints.

“I’m confused, I thought I could have no relationship with my old agency”

“I’ve asked your boss to make an exception for this time, she’s going to give you all the details tomorrow before you’ll leave for Los Angeles.”

“What? Tomorrow? And how long do I have to stay there?” These questions reminded you of the first time you had to change country for work, leaving your old life and loved ones behind.

“She gave you two days, you’ll need to be fast. It’s nice to have you back in the team.” Matty smiled, and as the adoptive mother she is for you and all of your old mates, she asked: ”Is everything alright Y/N? I hope you are eating enough and not overworking yourself”

“Yes, I’m just tired, these last six months have been tough… ”

“Have you made new friends? You know, we work better with people we trust”

You preferred not to talk about this topic, so you , skillfully, changed the subject of the conversation: “Why are we just talking about me?! How is everyone?”

She smiled: “Mac is okay”

——————————————————————————

You are working in the lab, when you hear some steps getting closer to your desk. 

“Why didn’t you tell me that you were coming back to Los Angeles?” Mac’s voice distracts you from what you’re doing, so you turn on your chair to look at him, answering: “Matty told me last night, I haven’t had the time”

“You could have sent me a text, or just called me….even if you haven’t done it once in the last six months” 

“Mac, you know that I can’t have contacts with any of you. It’s not my choice…” 

“C’mon Y/N, you didn’t even try it! Bozer and Leanna stayed in touch for months after spy school, can you tell me how their situation was different from ours?”

Since you don’t give him any answers, he goes on: “I think that for you was easier to leave everything behind, including us”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about…”

“So why don’t you explain that to me?”

“How? We got no time, I have to leave tomorrow”

The door of the lab opens with a loud noise, and Bozer walks in, screaming at you and Mac: “Hurry up, guys, we need you in the war room!”

You get up, feeling overwhelmed by thousands of feelings: guilt for having ignored all Mac’s calls and messages for months, anger because of him not wanting to understand your point, but also frustration, loneliness…

Before you go out, he stands in front of you and says: ”Come to dinner with me tonight, I swear that I will let you move on with your life after that”

——————————————————————————

A soft music comes from the restaurant Mac gave you appointment in; you step in and walk towards the woman at the reception desk that shows you the room at her back, full of tables and people. Her help isn’t really necessary to lead you to the right place, you have spotted Mac, already sit at your table, from the very first moment you came in. 

“You look really good tonight, I mean, you always look good…”

“Thank you, I wasn’t expecting this when I’ve casually put some clothes in the suitcase, this morning”

He asks you about your new house and work, so you show him some pics on your phone of your apartment, how it was when you went to see it the first time and how it looks like now that you have furnished it; but every time you look up, you’ve got the feeling that he was already staring at you, giving you proof that his attention is caught by something way more interesting.

“What about you, do you have any news to tell me? That girl Matty recruited, Samantha Cage, seems nice. I couldn’t help to notice that you get along very well…” 

“Why do you bring her in the conversation, right now?” He questions, as things were flowing between you two, but you wanted to keep yourself at distance, anyways.

You nervously take a sip from the glass of white wine in front of you, looking away from his piercing blue eyes. Then, you slightly lean on the table, and say: “Mac, let’s be honest, we broke up from six months, I would understand if you were seeing someone else.”

“Really? Because if I knew that you are dating another man, well, that wouldn’t leave me indifferent. But maybe this is exactly the reason why you’ve never called me back, excluding the option of a long distance relationship. I wouldn’t be surprised if I saw the pics of your new boyfriend with the ones of your new apartment.”

He gets up from his place, walking towards the exit of the restaurant, leaving you alone. His words hurt you and leave you a little bit astonished, he has never been the jealous type, in all the time you’ve been together he never made such a burst out…

You go out, finding him walking back and forth some meters ahead the place of your meeting. When he sees you, he comes towards you and before you could say anything, he starts talking: “I’m sorry Y/N, I shouldn’t have said those things.”

“How can you think that it could work between us if you don’t trust me? I haven’t called you back because I thought it was the best for both! I don’t want that we loose our time or our jobs because of a story that has no future. I know that you don’t understand that but all I wanted was for you to be happy.”

“How can you know that? Do you really think that we got no future?”

“Mac, these things never work…” you say, hugging him.

He caresses your back, leaving you confused and out of words, and takes advantage of your silence to whisper: “I don’t feel anything for Cage, no one could ever take your place, neither in the team nor in my heart. I’m not over you yet, Y/N.”

“I was lying when I said that it would be okay for me if you dated her” 

You both laugh at your little confession, then breaking apart from his hug, you add “I think you don’t have to worry about me meeting someone else: I’ve hanged out with a couple of boys but I’ve felt no sparks with them” as he holds your hand, you can exactly feel the spark you’re talking about running through both your bodies. “Angus MacGyver, I fear you’re going to be my first and last boyfriend” 

“It doesn’t sound so bad” he smiles, as he gets closer to kiss you.

Before it could actually happen, Mac’s phone rings, taking you back to reality. 

“It’s a text from Jack, I forgot to tell him that I asked to see you tonight, so they’re everybody by me, right now.”

“If you have to go, don’t worry for me…”

“I don’t want to leave you just yet. It wouldn’t feel right. What about drinking a beer with us, later?”

“I don’t know, Mac. I’ve got my flight early in the morning, tomorrow.” 

“C’mon Y/N, do you really want coming back home without saying goodbye to your best friends?”

The word “home” sounds a little exaggerated, referring to the four walls that will welcome you the following day.

When you walk past Mac house’s door and see all your friends reunited around the fire pit, all the memories you have collected in the years you’ve been working together, come back to your mind: the missions you failed, Matty’s reproaches, the injuries, but also the evenings spent playing truth or dare or beer pong, the holidays, the laughs…

When everybody’s gone home, you stay a little longer to help Mac cleaning the balcony, and while you are putting empty bottles of beer in a black trash bag, you confess: “Thanks for convincing me to see them, I thought it would have been painful to say them goodbye twice, but I had a good time, instead. I felt to be home again after a long time.”

“I’m glad you had fun.”

You promised to yourself that you wouldn’t have cried, nor believed that things could have gone in a different way, but now that it’s time to go, you really can’t hold back your feelings anymore: “I can’t believe that tomorrow at this hour I will be at the opposite side of this country, again” 

“You know you don’t have to go” Mac comes closer, trying to reassure you “I mean, of course you’ll have to go, tomorrow, but stay here tonight”

——————————————————————————

You hear a female’s voice calling for your flight through the airport’s speakers, so you turns back to Mac and say: “I should go now”

He takes you in his arms and you kiss him as it was the last time, literally, trying to hold back the tears: “I’m so sorry for causing you this pain a second time, you don’t deserve this”

“It’s okay, you don’t have to worry for me, please just be careful”

You’re glad having told that you love him the night before, because you would have never been able to do it in that moment. 

You follow the queue and look over your shoulder to meet his gaze, trying to catch every details of him, wondering if this is going to be the last time you’ll ever see each other.

——————————————————————————

The watch on your nightstand rings and you just move your hand, looking for the button to make it stop. You slept really bad and still feel tired, but that’s not because of the jet lag: you’ve been crying all night, thinking about the events of the previous days. 

Instead of going straight to the bathroom to take a shower, you bring your laptop to bed and type a phone number.

“Please answer, please answer, please answer” you keep repeating in your mind.

“Hey Y/N, is everything okay?” You hear Mac’s sleepy voice, then you see him rubbing his eyes, on the other side of the screen.

“Y-yes, I-I just wanted to let you know that the flight went well and I’m arrived home with no problem” 

“Oh, it’s good..but are you sure that’s all? I am not complaining, but If I woke up someone at 3 in the morning, it would be for a real good reason” he shows his sly half smile and you can’t help but laugh, too.

“I just wanted to hear your voice before going to work” 

“You can call me whenever you want, honey. Can I ask you if you have changed your mind about us?”

“Mac, less than 24 hours have passed and I already miss you. I know it’s going to be hard, but I think that our love deserves that we give a try to a long distance relationship”

“In this case, what about I call you before going to sleep?”

“I will wait all day for it.”