#we had a bunk bed a second hand desk a chest of drawers each and plastic boxes for toys etc

[gaycousinlarry]

.

[smugzayn]

Roomies

“So, what’s that mean?” you ask, trying to keep the bite out of your voice. Whether it’s apparent or not, it’s easy to read all over your body. Your hands are on your hips, your right toe taps violently against the floor, and your neck is jutted just ever so slightly forward in irritation. 

“Well,” your R.A. starts gently. “There’s nothing that can be done for you right now. All the assignments are full and there are no empty beds. You’re just going to have to room with him for a while”

You stare at her, hoping that she’s going to change her mind. Or maybe she will start laughing because certainly, this is some sort of joke. After thirty seconds of her falsely apologetically soft smile, you huff. 

“So, I will just live with him, then? Just live with Harry? There’s nothing you can do. I’m just - just roomies with him.” 

She nods, already inching her way back into her room, slipping behind a gently closing door. 

You nod, tersely, disbelief painting over your irritation. This is not at all going to plan.  

OR somehow you and Harry are assigned a dorm room at university. 

One.

You had been waiting all summer for university to begin. Every prep course, accelerated class, and extracurricular had prepared you for this very moment. You had even made sure to check every box on your roommate application that guaranteed your new bunkmate would be just as focused, driven, and ambitious as you. 

As other girls on your co-ed floor were popping into the boys’ rooms or flirting in the corridor, you were arranging your highlighters on your desk, flipping through your planner, and making sure the reading lamp was fastened tightly to your headboard. You didn’t have time for distractions. 

You were just ruffling out a lump in your duvet, the final touch of settling in, when a loud thump sounded from the entryway behind you. 

“Oh,” you turned around to find a tall, shaggy-haired boy standing in your doorway with several fancy-patterned duffles weighing him down. He struggled to flip his black ray-bans atop his head as he looked at you in surprise.

“You must be in the wrong place; boys rooms are on the other side of the hall.”

“Hello,” he grinned, ignoring your comment and looking you up and down, bringing what you hoped wasn’t a noticeable blush to your cheeks. There were two deep dimples next to his upturned mouth, a charming smile twisting his lips and bunching the skin next to his eyes, and a mop of dark hair that looked like it, at any point, could overtake his whole head. Unceremoniously, he dropped all his bags to the floor and shoved a hand into his pocket to un-crumble a tattered piece of paper. 

“Room 212?” he asked, pinching the plump of his bottom lip between his thumb and index finger as he scanned his paper. His voice had a long, slow drawl to it. “Right? This is room 212?” 

You shook your head in confusion. 

“No - Well, yes,” you agreed hesitantly, scrunching your brows together in confusion. “It is, but the boys’ rooms are on the other side of the -” 

“No,” he interrupted. “This is right.” He held the paper out for you to inspect. You read it over: Harry Styles - ID#1D-557819, Room 212. When you looked up at him in disbelief, he just shrugged his shoulders and smiled joyfully as if the matter was settled.

What was wrong with him? This wasn’t going to work? You couldn’t bunk with - with him. You were no prude, but it wasn’t really proper to just live with a boy you didn’t know. And he just looked like a distraction. 

You stood there in shock as he lugged his duffle bags in one swift motion onto the empty bed beside you. With no concern for the situation, he started pulling out a very haphazardly packed luggage full of flannel shirts, graphic tees, pink flamingo stringed lights, and at least three different bottles of vodka.

When he turned around to dump a handful of mismatched socks on his desk, you noticed his grey sweatshirt read Margaritaville University. Oh god.

“What are you doing,” you sputtered from where you stood with your arms tight across your chest, clearly flustered.  “You can’t - we aren’t - You can’t be my roommate. You - you have to move.” 

He grabbed a pile of shirts with a big fist and stuffed them into a drawer. “Look, roomie,” he drawled lazily, just barely glancing over his shoulder towards you with an easy smirk. “It’s happening. Embrace it -” 

“Absolutely not,” you huffed, looking at him in disbelief. 

You watched him force a too full drawer shut by throwing his shoulder into it- you think it was a mix of pants, shirts, and beanies - before he walked over to stand in front of you. He sighed heavily, running his hands through his hair, leaning back to crack his spine and letting a sliver of skin at the bottom of his torso peak out. 

You hate that his smirk deepens when your eyes are drawn towards it. It’s infuriating.

“I’m Harry,” he says once again, flashing a sideways grin at you and holding out his hand in greeting. Shaking it would feel like some sort of agreement or a surrender to the situation. You’re not so easy to give in, so after you stare at it for a minute, he laughs dryly and shoves both hands into his pockets. “Do you have a name? Or should I just call you ‘roomie’?” 

“I’m going to go talk to the room advisor.” 

You storm out of the room, but his chuckle of “...nice to meet ya” still follows you out the door.  

.....

It takes about an hour after Harry moves into your room to find out that he’s terribly, terribly social.  

The university move-in date for Freshman is a Friday because they want Freshman to have the weekend to get “acclimated” before classes begin on Monday. So, you spend this time planning your routes to each class, visiting the library and booking a private study room for the semester, and starting an email chain to organize study groups for your courses. You go to the university bookstore and buy your books, begin taking notes on the introductory chapters, and hungrily read through the course syllabus listed on the online platform. 

Harry, on the other hand, well you’re not quite sure what he spends his time doing. He darts into your room to quickly change into a new top, or you pass him with a big group of people in someone’s room, or some girl pops by saying, “Oh, I didn’t know Harry had a girlfriend.” You are always quick to inform, begrudgingly, that you two are just temporary roommates. 

When the Sunday night before classes begin rolls around, he taps you on the shoulder from where you’re studying with headphones in at your desk. 

“What do you think?” he asks, modeling a black top and matching black jeans. He looks genuinely curious, like for some reason he truly wants a stranger’s input on his outfit. It’s disconcerting. “I’m worried it’s too much black.” 

You’re confused. 

“Is this what you’re wearing to class tomorrow?” 

He laughs loudly, falling back on his bed in the process. He starts shoving on a pair of black sneakers. “Class? What - no! I am going to a house party with a guy across the hall.” He flutters his eyelashes at you, “You want to be my date?” 

You rearrange your highlighters as an excuse to look away but still noticeably sputter, “I’m studying - and classes start tomorrow -” 

“Oh, god,” he groans, pretending to push a pair of glasses up his nose. “You are seriously going to have to loosen up. It’s the first weekend of university! What in the hell are you even reading?”

“It’s coursework -” you rebuke defensively. 

“Courses haven’t even started,” he interjects, reaching over you and snagging the book off your desk. “What even is this? Historical Particularism? Functionalism? Neo-What?”

“Classism. I’m pre-law.” You stand up to snatch your book back, but he plays keep-away and holds it with one long arm behind him. It isn’t until he pointedly clears his throat with a big, stupid smirk on his face that you notice you’re practically climbing atop him to get at it. 

You lean back, straightening out a wrinkle in your top, and holding out your hand impatiently. “Gosh! If you’re going, then just go.”

He rolls his eyes, but the amused smirk doesn’t falter. Teasingly slow, he gives you your book. “You’re going to be my date at some point,” he decides, as you look away. “You can’t be like this all semester.”

“I’m on scholarship.” You sit back down at your desk. “I have to get good grades.” 

You can tell he doesn’t really understand. He’s posh. From the moment he walked in you could tell it like he was wearing a public school uniform. He had the holiday tan, and his luggage was all the same matching, expensive print, and he had that confidence of someone who knows they belong. You’ve never had that assurance. You were the first in your family to attend college, you were proper working class, and you were here because of you. Not daddy’s money, or mummy’s network, or some sort of legacy connection. You were here because you had worked damn hard. 

Harry clears his throat from where he’s fixing his hair in the mirror. “But I still need your opinion.”

You throw your hands up in irritation. “On what?” 

“My outfit!” he growls, leaning back, posing with one foot out and a hand propped behind his head. He looks ridiculous. “Is the black-on-black okay? It’s a new top. I’m not sold on it. I’m going for rough and mysterious yet approachable and -”

“It’s fine,” you interrupt, cutting off the rambling description of his aesthetic. “What do you want my opinion for, anyway? It’s not like I even know you.”

He shakes his head in disappointment, but the smirk he bites back tells you he’s enjoying riling you up more than he lets on. “You’re my roommate. It’s what we do. I need your -” 

You spin around to glare at him, “We are not roommates.”  He makes a show of looking about the room at his stuff and your stuff - all in one room. Not having to say anything to point out the very clear fact that you are very much roommates. “This is temporary.”

“Right,” Harry nods his head in amusement, unwilling to push you any further on the topic. After a moment, he adds, “Then what you’re saying is that it’s too much black.” He grabs a flannel from the mess of clothes under his bed and ties it around his waist. Then, once again, he looks at you expectantly. 

“Oh my God,” you groan, flopping your head down on your desk into your open textbook. “Yes, it looks fine. The shoes, the tee, the flannel, and the black, and your hair all look great.”

He nods his head happily, and snags a bottle of something that he had hidden in some mess of a drawer. He tucks into a pocket, arranging the tied top around his waist to hide the bulge. “Perfect,” he whispers to himself, the smile clear in his voice as he walks to the door, finally leaving you to your studies. 

“You like my hair?” he asks cheekily, slipping into the corridor with a final irritating call of “Don’t miss me too much, roomie!”

The highlighter you throw bounces off the slammed door. 

.....

“Oh,” you say from where you’re reading on your bed. “I didn’t know you were coming back.” 

Harry shrugs his shoulders. He looks hungover. It’s Saturday morning, so he probably is. There have been four weekends since school began - Harry’s gone out for all of them. Even during the week he goes out a few times. You're thankful that he never comes back to your room after; you don’t know where or who he’s staying with, but at least it’s not with you. 

You accidentally squish your nose at him before you register what you’re doing. He reeks of stale alcohol and floral perfume. 

“Do I smell?” he asks, grabbing his towel off his bed and searching through his drawers for five minutes before finding a set of fresh clothes. 

“A little,” you lie, looking away from him and returning your eyes, if not your attention, back to your book. 

“Y’know, you should come out with me sometime.” He grabs the towel off the hook on his wardrobe and slings it around his shoulder. “Oh. Can I borrow your shampoo?”

“What?” you look at him suspiciously, trying to determine how serious he’s being. You’ve noticed Harry likes to say things just to distract you from studying. 

“Your shampoo,” he repeats, nodding to where you keep it. “It smells good - like strawberries, and I ran out of mine days ago.” 

You ignore the silly warmth that burns your cheeks. “Yeah,” you nod. “That’s fine.”

“Awesome. Thanks. And you should you know.” He snags the bottle out of your stuff. “I mean come out with me sometime. It would be fun” 

You roll your eyes and laugh easily. It’s a nice offer, but you’ve seen Harry’s crew. It’s big, the girls all look like they’ve got 5,000 Instagram subscribers, and you’re sure most of the guys do, too. 

“That’s okay,” you assure him. “It’s nice of you, but I’ve got my friends and you’ve got yours-”

“I’m not saying it to be nice,” Harry bites and the tension in his voice takes you by surprise. You look up from your book to see him leveling you with a hard glare from the open doorway; he has one foot out the door. “I’m saying it because I want to be friends.” 

“Harry, this is just temporary. I’m sure we will hear back from the R.A. any day with a new arrangement. I don’t think we really need to force anything.” 

You trail off awkwardly and squirm a little under his stare. He looks irritated, and it’s an unfamiliar look on his face. It darkens his features and makes him look dangerous. He rubs a big hand along his tense jaw and you can just barely hear the scratchiness of his stubble against his skin. 

He opens his mouth to say something, decides against it, and slams the door enough when he leaves that the pictures above your bed rattle slightly. 

Two. 

Your side of the room looks like this: your bed is neatly made, your wardrobe is tediously organized, and your desk is arranged for academic success. When you return from the shower, your towel gets hung, your dirty clothes go in the hamper, and your shower cubby gets tucked neatly away at the end of your bed. 

Harry’s side of the room looks like this: his duvet is a mess - always. He has five pillows, and none of them are ever on his bed. In an effort to be neat, the dresser drawers are bursting open with whatever clothes Harry has picked up off the floor and shoved in them. When he returns from the shower, his towel gets thrown somewhere, his dirty clothes get tossed by the hamper, and he returns your shampoo and body wash to you because he’s been using it ever since that day in September. 

You will appreciate that Harry does keep a nice dividing line between your structure and organization and his chaos and mess. He even hung his pink flamingo string lights down the middle of the room to remind himself. You don’t hate them that much. 

Despite the common ground that you two have seemed to find, your R.A. never gets back to you about the unconventional situation and your growingly impatient emails haven’t received their due response. So, five weeks in, it’s October, and you and Harry had fallen into a strange kind of normal. You wake up earlier than him, go to class, spend any free time at the library, and return basically just to study, shower, and sleep. You don’t even see him that much. The only time you really ever run into him is when he’s gaming or sleeping. 

You actually hadn’t seen him for three days before all the sudden you do. 

You’ve been studying in the library for about an hour between your political science and anthropology courses when all a sudden there’s a loud knocking and Harry’s big, dimply smile is waving at you from the window in the door. 

“Unlock it,” he whispers loudly through the glass. “Let me in. I need to talk!” A passerby curiously walks by and Harry adds, “Don’t worry. It’s just my roomie.” 

“Oi!” you hush, standing up quickly to unlock the latch. “Will you be quiet?” 

He clumsily swings open the door and throws his book bag to the floor before flopping down into the extra chair in the corner. 

“Roomie,” he begins, leaning forward to prop his elbows on his knees. “I need your help.” 

“Harry, what are you doing here?” You whisper, moving to shut the door that he had just left open. “How did you even know - Also, stop calling me roomie. It’s just a temporary -” 

“I checked your planner when you were in the showers Tuesday.” He cuts you off before you can object. “That’s not important. I need your help. I’ve got this math test tomorrow and I have no idea what the hell I’m doing. Plus, my literature class it’s just - I have some monster paper about some book an emo lady wrote and I don’t understand anything. I have no idea-”

“What lit class are you in?” 

“133. We’ve got our first paper due Monday, and I’ve got no idea -

“Harry -” you look at him in disbelief. “Please tell me it’s not with Professor Allison.” 

Harry nods, his fringe falling over his eyes until he swoops it back into place. “Yeah. Why?”

“Harry! How can you -” you regulate your voice back to a whisper when someone in the room beside you bangs on the wall. “I’m in that class. I’ve not seen you there once.” 

“Yeah,” he agrees. “That’s why I’ve got no idea what’s going on.” 

You sigh - deeply. 

“Please,” Harry begs, leaning forward until one of his hands is grabbing onto your knee in desperation. “I will do anything. Midterms are in two weeks, and I have to pass these classes. Please, please, please -”

You pull away, ignoring the warmth that flutters in your chest at his touch. 

“I don’t know, Harry. I’ve got a lot of my own stuff I need to -” 

He falls to his knees suddenly, close enough that his pleading fists are nearly sitting on your lap. 

You look anxiously to the window to make sure no one can see the strange scene. 

“Harry, really -” 

“I’ll move out at semester,” he promises, suddenly staring into your eyes. “I will take all my stuff and move across the hall with Daniel. His roommate already dropped, so he’s on his own. I’m sure it would  be-” 

You can’t mask the excitement in your voice. “Really? You will? You promise?”

Harry leans back, the loss of his touch taking a warmth with it. 

He runs his hands through his hair, pushing it all out of his face. “I swear on it. You help me pass this semester, and I will move out in December. You will be all on your own by January.” 

He sticks out a hand to shake and this time you don’t hesitate to agree wholeheartedly. 

.....

You step in front of Harry, toss your copy of Frankenstein onto his desk, and hit the power button on the XBox. 

“What the hell are you doing?” Harry blurts, pulling his headset off and looking at you in irritation. “We were just about to storm that -” 

“You asked for my help,” you shove a schedule into Harry’s outstretched hands and pull your desk chair over to sit. He grumbles something, but he drops his headset to the floor and glances at the paper unhappily. 

“Study group? Library? Wake up time? What is this?” 

“It’s your schedule.” You move on despite his grumbling. “There’s a study group for your math class on Wednesday nights at 6 and a grad student gives private lessons every Tuesday and Thursday mornings. I’ve signed you up for both. Also, I’m going to start waking you up for our lit class. There's really no reason that you can’t -”

Harry curses under his breath, but, again, you ignore it and push on.

“Plus, I’ve scheduled you for library time with me every Saturday afternoon. That’s the pink highlight. However, I thought we might start that paper now, your literature one...seeing as it’s due in -” you look at your phone, “six hours.” 

“Shit,” Harry groans, and leans back in his chair, already exhausted with the task. “Okay, roomie, let’s get to it.” 

“Harry -” 

“I know. I know. It’s just temporary,” he smirks, sliding his chair close to his desk and then grabbing yours and pulling you close in one swift motion. “I wish you’d stop saying that.” 

You reach around Harry to grab the book instead of meeting his eye. 

“So, what did you think about Frankenstein?” you ask, flipping through the text to re-read some of your annotations and find your favourite quotes. “Was it the frame narrative? Or the subversive female voice? Or maybe the complex relationship between the Monster and Victor?”

“Well, you see,” Harry drawls, forcing you to hide a smile as his face turns with a boyish smirk. “I would say that everything is my favourite because -”

“You haven’t read it,” you realise flatly. 

“I haven’t read it,” he agrees, his charming yet bashful smile still painting his face. 

You sigh heavily, letting your chest heave dramatically and ignoring the flash of amusement in Harry’s eyes. 

“Well,” you decide, flipping until you are on page one. “Then let’s start at the beginning.” 

.....

“Harry,” you try to keep the whine out of your voice, but it’s no easy task. How can someone that looks as good as he does be so absolutely frustrating? “Harry, get up! Come on!” 

You pull up the duvet so it’s covering his bare shoulder and then push to rouse him awake. “Let’s go! We’re going to be late. Really, Harry!” 

It’s been two weeks since you gave Harry his schedule. He’s attended every study session with the grad student (you checked) and has walked with you to the library for all his study groups. He’s even come and sat with you at the library for the last two Saturdays. Although, you would argue, he’s spent more time pestering you than actually completing any studying. 

This, however, has not been Harry’s easiest hurdle to jump. You spend every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday morning thinking of new, clever ways to convince him to wake up. Although, maybe you should just be grateful that he’s sleeping in his bed way more often. 

You think you’ve rubbed off on him in some small way, at least. 

“Please, Harry. We really need to -” a strong tug on your arm surprises you and Harry suddenly has you tangled up with him in bed. Your cheek falls against the skin of what was his carefully covered shoulder and his entire torso is bare up against you. 

“Harry,” you squeal, pressing against his chest, but his strong arms are wrapped around you. 

“Shhhh,” he mutters sleepily, nuzzling you into his chest and pulling you close until your nose is near smushed tight against the curve of his neck. “Lay with me for five minutes and then I’ll get up. Promise. Then I’ll get up.”

His voice sounds like gravel. 

You squirm and he hushes you again by promising just five minutes. 

“Fine,” you agree, not really seeing another option. His hold relaxes, and you weigh heavy in his arms. 

So, you lay there, in his bed, tight up against his body for five long minutes. You can feel his breath against your hair, and the rise and fall of his chest against your cheek, and even his thick, strong legs brushing the front of yours. It makes you nervous, and anxious, and warm, and confused. 

You check the clock seven times before the five minutes is up. As soon as Harry let’s you go, you grab your bag, run a brush through the back of your hair, and make an excuse to wait for him in the corridor. 

You can’t look at him when you walk to class without blushing that morning. You think he notices because he keeps finding excuses to shove his face right in front of yours: you’ve got an eyelash, or a piece of dust in your hair, or a fleck of something along your bottom lip. 

He laughs every time you shoo him away and asks coyly about why your face is so red.

After that morning, he makes you lay with him for five minutes before he wakes up every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday until midterms. He calls it a “roomie alarm” and somehow it becomes a normal thing. 

.....

“Thank god,” you sigh, flopping into your bed. You’ve just returned from your last midterm. The professor has already entered the grades, you aced it. Actually, you’ve aced all of them. You’re going to relax this weekend; you’ve completed your first quarter with a 4.0. 

You had gotten about four hours of sleep last night after staying up revising your paper on Canterbury Tales. You’ve decided there is a special spot in Hell for Chaucer. You’re just on the very verge of dozing off when the door to your room flies open, smashes into the wall, and a heavy mass falls atop you. 

“Oof,” you groan, wiggling uncomfortably until you feel the weight roll off you and thump to the floor. You prop yourself on your elbow and turn to see Harry laying on the floor, a giant grin on his face, a piece of paper held tightly to his chest. 

“We did it,” he laughs, holding the paper up to you. 

You sit up in excitement, grabbing it out of his hand and reading over it. One C, three B’s, and two A’s. You try to push away the thought that Harry had printed off his midterm report just to show you. 

“Oh my gosh, Harry! You got an A on your math and English midterms.” You look down at him, there are happy crinkles next to his eyes, and his dimples are two deep pinpricks. His smile makes your heart flutter. “I can’t believe you did it.”

He suddenly reaches for you, pulls you down by your arm, and hugs you tightly atop him. It’s like “roomie alarm,” but it feels different at this time of day, in the late afternoon light flooding the room. 

“Thank you,” he mumbles into your hair. “I couldn’t have done it without you.” 

You laugh nervously, trying to ignore the feeling of your chest pressed tight against his, and his mouth in your hair, and his hands warm against your back. It’s one thing when he’s half-asleep in the innocence of the morning light. Why does it feel so different now? Like it’s so much more?

“Well,” you mumble, leaning just a little bit away from him. You laugh, “I really want my own room.” 

You can feel his grip slacken slightly, his body freezing underneath yours. 

“Right,” he clears his throat, gently shuffling so you’re sitting beside him now. He doesn’t say anything for a moment, and you get up until you’re sitting back on your bed. Putting the distance between you and him before you can even meet his eyes. Even then, after a minute, he clears his throat once more only to repeat, “Right.”

You go to your desk and shuffle around some papers. 

“So,” you try to lighten the mood. “How are you going to celebrate? Get pissed with your friends? Hit the pub? Pull a girl?” You ask, smiling easily at him over your shoulder. “You should go celebrate with your friends! You’ve earned it.” 

He smiles, but it’s tight, and it doesn’t light his eyes. Propping himself up on an elbow from the floor, he laughs, a dry puff of air through his nose, but there’s no humor to it. It sounds sad. 

“Yeah,” he raises his eyebrows, looking at you imploringly. “I guess that’s what I do, right? Go out, get drunk, pull a girl. That’s who I am then, right?” 

“Harry,” you watch as he pulls himself up, grabs a snapback from his wardrobe and throws a plaid top on. “I’m sorry. I just meant that-”

“What? It’s nothing,” he interrupts, brushing past you when you reach for him. “I get it. You didn’t say anything wrong. Don’t apologize.” 

He doesn’t look back when he walks out the door. 

Three. 

After midterms, things continue like normal, except they don’t. 

Harry still meets you to study at the library, but he asks fewer questions, and there’s less touching that makes your heart beat faster, and you don’t find him staring at you when you’re not looking like you did before. You don’t look forward to Saturdays anymore. 

In the dorms, it’s different too. 

He’s there more but less. It’s weird. He’s there all the time now. He sleeps there every night, and he goes out with his friends less, but it doesn’t feel like you interact any more. He doesn’t drive you crazy by asking you ridiculous questions, or teasing you about being a nerd, or start yelling at the screen while he’s gaming until you throw a book at him. Instead, he’s lights out at ten, and headphones in all the time, and he never sleeps past his alarm, and he never needs five more minutes.

You hate it. 

“I’m sorry,” you blurt from across the table. 

Harry arrived in your study room twenty minutes ago, but aside from asking to borrow a pencil, he’s not said a word to you. 

“I didn’t mean all those things. I don’t think you’re just some stupid frat boy, or caveman, or something. I don’t even - I don’t even know why I said it. It was just - I think I was scared and I just said those things to be mean or to push you away. I don’t know. I’m just really, really sorry that I did.”

Harry leans back from where he was crouched over The Great Gatsby. You think he could give Jay Gatsby a run for his money. He runs a hand through his hair, pulling it away from his head, and looking a bit crazed as a result. 

“Wow,” he smirks, his lips turning at one side to make his mouth all crooked. “That was...out of nowhere.” 

You try to keep your voice from cracking, taking a moment to brush back your hair and hopefully distract from the heat in your face. “Well, yeah. I’ve been wanting to say it forever. Basically since that night - since midterms. I really am sorry.”

“Well, that’s great and all…” he trails off.

“But you’re still mad?” 

“No,” he shakes his head and reaches out to grab your hand assuringly. “I’m not mad, but you’re going to have to make it up to me.” 

You look at him skeptically. The giant, devilish smirk on his face doesn’t make him look very trustworthy. His eyes are normally just a beautiful green; right now they look dangerous.

“My mate’s having a party tonight. A house party,” he begins and starts piling up his books and notepad and shoving it carelessly into his bookbag. “I want you to come with me.”

“Okay, but not as your date -”

He nods his head and waves his hand to stop you from voicing the thought. 

“As my roommate,” he assures but there’s something in his eyes that makes you believe he knows something that you don’t. As if there's a secret that he’s left you out of. “Just a roommate.” 

He doesn’t give you a minute to respond. Instead, he piles all of your stuff up too and starts shoving it into your bookbag. He ignores your protests. 

“Let’s go,” he demands, slinging your book bag over his shoulder along with his own and grabbing your hand to pull you behind him out the door. “It’s Friday night. We are going to go out, get drunk, and have a fucking blast.” 

.....

Harry looks amazing. You want to give him absolute hell for looking exactly like the frat boy of your nightmares, but those nightmares seem much less like scary dreams when you look at him. He’s wearing jeans, and a plaid shirt rolled up a bit and a plain, white tee underneath, with a backward cap on with little flips of dark, curly hair sticking out and you don’t know that you’ve ever been so attracted to someone in your life. 

And what’s most terrible is that you feel like an absolute tit. You had borrowed an outfit from a girl down the hall. Your wardrobe consisted entirely of study clothes - leggings, too big sweatshirts, and tennis shoes. They had had a blast dressing you in a short, little black dress and some heeled booties. The dress felt a bit too big, the booties a bit too tall, and makeup and hair a bit too unfamiliar, but you’re just trying to hold on to the way Harry’s eyes brightened as he met you in the corridor on the way out of the dorm. 

“Does it look okay? I can still change. Should I just go change?” you had word-vomited as soon as he saw you. His hand wrapped around your wrist is what stopped you from turning back into your dorm. 

“Are you joking?” he roared, biting at his bottom lip. “Absolutely not. Don’t you fucking dare.”  

You were thankful his mobile had buzzed with a text at that moment. It gave you the opportunity to hide your blush by rifling through your bag. 

Now, at the house party, you still feel out of place, but you’re sure the shot you’re about to drown will help. 

“Ready?” Harry asks, his eyes twinkling in excitement. His smile makes your chest burn in the dark, crowded room. There are people everywhere. They are pressed up against you, and the music is so loud that you can feel the bass through your toes, and you're thankful for the cool breeze coming in through the open window. “On my count.” 

You grab the shot glass - it says, “YOLO” on it. You thought that was a phrase that rightfully died a long, long time ago. 

Harry counts to two, forgets three, throws the shot back, and then smiles from ear-to-ear as he watches you follow his late lead. He offers you some fizzy drink to chase; you gladly accept it with a grimace. 

“One more?” you ask and watch as he laughs in delight. A big, happy, throaty laugh that makes you want to jump his bones. 

He happily pours another, hands it to you, and this time, when he gets to two, you remember and take the shot right along with him. 

Initially, you think you’re immune to alcohol. Harry leads you around, a hand on your back, and you dutifully follow his guiding touch. You meet his mates and laugh gleefully as they tell you about how they know each other or banter back and forth. It feels like Harry knows everyone and everyone loves him. You knew he was social, but it’s nice to see it in action. He just bounces around from person-to-person and he’s got a story or a joke with all of them. 

And he makes it easy for you, too. He doesn’t make you feel like some afterthought or tag along; rather, he excitedly introduces you, or makes sure to include you in each story, or tells his friends some interesting anecdote about you that you didn’t even realise he had noticed: 

“Bro, she’s proper smart. She’s pre-law undergrad with a focus in family law.”

“Yeah, she played football and tennis growing up.” 

“She grinds her teeth so bad. Drives me absolutely mental.”

“She actually used to vacation by where your mom lives. She's still on the coast, right?” 

By the time you start to feel this warm, fuzziness building in your stomach, and chest, and head you’re not sure if it’s from Harry or the alcohol. However, when Harry leads you to a new spot in the house, gently guiding you with a hand on your lower back, you know it’s the alcohol that allows you to easily slip your hand into his, push him ahead of you, and hide behind his shoulder as he meanders his way to a new spot. 

You see him duck his head just slightly to hide the grin threatening to split his face in half. You hide yours, too. 

The new spot is the dance floor, and god there is nothing that could have been more perfect. 

It’s too loud to talk, there are so many people that you both have a good excuse to be pressed up tightly against each other, and someone bumps into Harry and makes him drop his beer, so now both his hands can wrap tightly around your body to pull you into him. 

You love the feeling of his body pressed against yours. You can feel the hard lines of his muscles, the tightness of his stomach, and the knotty muscles of his shoulder, back, and neck. It’s easy to sink into his touch, let his big hand run up your waist, graze the side of your neck, and take your cheek into this hand. When you lean up, giving yourself to him, he doesn’t hesitate to fall into you. His mouth crashes against yours, the warmth of his lips, and tongue, and his overpowering scent sending shocks through your body. 

“Oh my god,” you gasp, pulling away and trying to bite back a smile as Harry looks down at you. His lips are red and more swollen than usual, his cheeks flushed from the alcohol and heat, and bits of his hair are matted to his forehead. “Please, let’s go back to our dorm,” you ask, leaning up to pull him into a kiss. 

He laughs against you, holding your jaw in his hands until he forces you back and instead grabs your hand to lead you out. “I’ve been waiting all semester to hear that.” 

Four.

When you wake up the next morning, its snowed outside. 

It makes it easy to snuggle under the covers and burrow yourself into Harry’s body. You think it should be awkward, but it’s not. It feels overdue. 

“Good morning,” Harry grumbles, and you can feel his chest vibrate from where your cheek is pressed against him. A heavy palm sweeps through your hair, brushing it down, and his nails drag lightly along your scalp. 

“I didn’t know you knew so much about me.” You lean up from your spot on his chest, so you can see his face. “When you were talking to your friends, you actually knew a lot about me. Like what I want to do with my degree, and my favorite band, and all my siblings’ names. I didn’t know.”

Harry’s smile is soft. His hair is fluffy and somehow angry looking. It’s all messy from sleep and other activities. 

“I like you,” he shrugs simply. “I’ve always liked you.” 

You roll your eyes and smack him gently on the shoulder. “You did not always like me.” 

“I did too,” he insists earnestly, and the sincerity in his eyes erases your skepticism. “You’re just so fucking dense. As soon as I walked in here on move-in, I knew. You spent like two minutes straightening out a ruffle in the bed, and your wardrobe was color-coded, and everything was in neat rows on your desk. And then you were so goddamn huffy and puffy about me moving in -”

“And you knew?” you joke lightly, but he grabs your hand and kisses it with conviction. 

“I swear, I knew.” He throws his head back, ruffling a big hand through his messy hair. “Why do you think you never got a different roommate? Or I never got kicked out?” 

“Wait! What?” You sit up, staring at him in disbelief. “What do you mean?” 

“You didn’t think it was suspicious at all?” he asks, propping himself on his side with an elbow. “Sure it was pure coincidence that we got roomed together. But, I mean, you didn’t think it was weird that our R.A. never fixed our living arrangements? That never was like a red flag to you?” 

You shake your head. You had spent hours at the beginning of first quarter begging, reasoning, and even crying to the R.A. that you needed to be moved. 

“Well, I have my connections. I made sure it wasn’t going to change,” he smirks, seemingly pleased with himself.

“Harry,” you gasp, but dissolve into chuckles when he pulls you into his body, rolls you over onto your back, and leans over to kiss you deeply on the mouth. His hands tangle in your hair, and run along your jaw, and slide over the curves of your waist and hips. 

He eventually falls onto his side and pulls you into his stomach, the soft curves of your body melting into the hardness of his. His arms around you feel heavy, and make you feel secure and small. You think you could lay here forever. 

“I was looking at my schedule for next semester,” Harry begins and you nod back into his touch. “And, I’ve got a lot of hard courses. Geometry, another English, biology, philosophy, and music -” 

“Philosophy is not hard, and you’re excellent in music,” you point out. “You can play like three instruments, and I know that you-”

Harry stops any disagreement with light, nimble fingers that tickle your sides. 

“I’m going to need help. So -” 

“So, I don’t think you should move out,” you finish, turning in his arms until you can kiss him. “I think I would get lonely, and I think your grades would suffer, and I think I might like this.” 

“This?” he asks, leaning over you again and pressing you into the bed with a hand on your hip and a heavy thigh falling between yours. You shudder as he presses into you, the weight of his body holding yours down, and you can feel your heart rate rising up as his mouth crashes down on yours. 

His lips playfully kiss along your jaw, and neck, and collarbone. His hands feel like they are everywhere; their warmth covering your thighs, belly, and chest. You never want it to stop. You want to be here, with him, in this bed forever. 

“Hmmm?” he hums, leaning back to stroke a stray bit of hair from the side of your face. “What’s this?” 

“I like this,” you run a thumb over his plump bottom lip and guide his mouth down to yours, “being roomies.” 

xx

[masterpost]

[indiavolojones]

anon your MIND… 

 YE━(｡･`ω´･｡)ゞ ━S!!

Idk if you meant this as a request but I did it!!! I hope you like this incredibly spur of the moment, university wicked au lmfaoaoooo

5kish words, gen, asmo/solomon

“I can’t concentrate on coursework or go to bed if you’ve got someone moaning in your bed every other night.”

“Sounds like a personal problem,” Asmo sniffs, and Solomon very quickly finds the situation slipping through his fingers. All of his phenomenally constructed arguments for why Asmo should be a respectful roommate have disintegrated in the face of Asmo’s pure obstinance. “Besides, where would I take my partners if not to my room?”

“Their rooms. A car. A bathroom.  A dark alcove somewhere. I don’t care--anywhere else but here.”

Pls keep in mind a bunch of small notes:

-I haven’t seen Wicked, only listened to the soundtrack! I don’t remember what happened to make them room together/much of the plot hahaha. This is less of a wicked au and more a magical college au, whoooo~ -I made up so much shit for this. I was pulling lore outta my ass like nobody’s business -Everyone is human! -I skipped around a lot, so if there’s something that doesn’t make sense pls ask and I’ll clarify hahaha, I wanted to keep this short!! (is,.... 5k short...)

-

-

-

“We're all supposedly the best of the best, and yet none of us could stop a burst pipe," Solomon bemoans the status of their old dormitory.

“In our defense, it happened in the middle of the night and we had no idea what was going on?" Simeon offers, tilting his head with a sympathetic smile.

"But midway through the semester!" Solomon won't admit that the loss of one of his few friends being constantly at his side is more daunting than he thought it would be. Simeon is a phenomenal roommate, and understands Solomon better than anyone.

With the unfortunate mad dash to get all the affected students into new, undamaged rooms, the two of them are being split up, and now Solomon will have to get used to another, likely annoying roommate.

"I never realized you were this dependent on me." Simeon teases, and Solomon glares at him. Simeon swirls himself around in Solomon’s desk chair while Solomon walks by, cardboard box in his arms. Just to annoy him, his foot shoots out to stop Simeon mid-spin, and Simeon huffs, looking up at him.  

“Didn’t you say you were going to help?” Solomon asks.

Simeon laughs.

“You asked me to come help move boxes? I thought it was for sure because of you freaking out at getting a new roommate.” Solomon’s lips quirk downwards, and turns his head away with a scoff as he brings the box to the corner of his new dorm. Simeon props an elbow up on Solomon’s desk and watches the other.

“What could you possibly do to help with that?” Solomon asks, palm pressing to the box and releasing the sealing spell on it. “Do you have a solution for this?”

He gestures at the other half of the (thankfully) large room.

Instead of the traditional bunk bed and lower desk set like on Solomon's side of the room, the other half of the room consists of a large wardrobe as additional closet space, an extravagant vanity filled with beauty products, and a nest. A massive nest of pillows, sheets, and blankets—describing it feels ridiculous, but to look on its glory is surprisingly enticing. It does look… very comfortable.

“I think it looks rather nice,” Simeon examines the fairy lights strung up around the walls near the bed. The edges of his roommate's influence barely encroach onto what Solomon would consider to be his side, but as he’s the one imposing on this person’s space halfway into the year… he’ll bite his tongue.

Realistically, there’s no reason for RAD to have shared dorm rooms--the school is prestigious enough that each student could probably get their own living suite… but the chancellor of their particular location is the direct son of the president. He’s a bit eccentric, and enthusiastically vocal about the benefits of shared dorms as integral to the relationships they develop with their peers.

(There are things Solomon’s heard of him too: how he’s the youngest person in his role, how despite the accusations of nepotism he’s completely taken the magical community by storm in his unconventional approach to education.

An interesting man that Solomon would enjoy meeting face to face, rather than admire on a podium, even if he is quite handsome.)

Simeon purses his lips, before snapping his fingers, “A privacy screen?”

Solomon rolls his eyes hard enough that they feel like falling out of his sockets.

“I don’t know why you’re so up in arms about this. I’m sure your roommate will be fine,” Simeon says then, gentle--Solomon looks at the opposite side of the room and has his doubts. “It’ll be good for you to try making more than three friends, you know.”

Taking the books out of the box and lining them up on the shelves of the book case, Solomon tosses a glance back at Simeon.

Simeon isn’t wrong.

Solomon could be the most powerful sorcerer in the world, but it means absolutely nothing if he can’t effectively operate in the modern magical community. Maybe if he was born several hundred years earlier he could have swept up the world in the sheer magnitude of his power, but nowadays, politics infect everything. Solomon can’t patent a spell to wipe his ass without a sponsor, and no one wants to sponsor the intense kid with a bad attitude.

His ability to cast magic without any kind of aide or incantation launched him into the spotlight at an early age. Solomon has always been aware of what other people thought of him. When empty praise didn’t ingratiate his sycophants to him, it just as easily turned to criticism; kids are cruel, after all. As a result, Solomon has always struggled connecting with others.

By the time he realized he would have to work on his people skills to get anywhere, he was halfway through high school with a bad reputation, no friends, and no open doors.

(Funnily enough, it was around the same time that he met Simeon that he realized he needed to be less of an asshole if he was to ever get anywhere in life.

Simeon has been integral in teaching Solomon "how to person", as he puts it.)

“Who’s your new roommate, anyway?” Simeon asks when Solomon doesn’t respond to his comment. “I don’t think you said their name.”

"Did I not?” Solomon hums, “It’s someone named Mephistopheles.”

“Mephistopheles?” Simeon parrots, head tilting to the side, “Didn’t he get expelled?”

As Solomon opens his mouth to question Simeon, the door handle jiggles as someone unlocks it.

It swings open unceremoniously, followed by the quiet moans and shuffling of clothes as two people stumble inside the threshold. Simeon and Solomon can only watch in stunned silence as the taller, curly haired man presses a shorter woman against the wall, his face fully obscured in the curve of her neck as he lavishes it in open mouthed kisses.

Her eyelids flutter, he must be doing a great job--but the second she makes eye contact with Solomon, she shrieks.

“Asmo, Asmo wait--” The girl bats at his chest, her face bright red, “There’s people here!” Asmo pulls his face away from her skin to look at the room, a gorgeous smile on his face as he notices the others does not falter in the slightest.

“Oh, you’re Solomon!” Asmo smiles, before looking at Simeon, “And you’re Simeon. Lovely to meet you both.” Solomon looks at Simeon for some kind of hint as to what the fuck he should do here,  but Simeon also seems at a loss. Before either of them can say anything, Asmo slides a hand up the girl’s side to cup her cheek, speaking to them even as he stares deep into her eyes.

“Now, would the two of you kindly get out?”

-

-

-

The rest of living with Asmo is pretty much a continued repeat of their first meeting. Multiple times a week, sometimes once or twice in a day. Solomon has no fucking clue how someone like Asmo gets any schoolwork done, or hell, when the other gets sleep?

Regardless, it’s two weeks of Asmo getting laid and Solomon not getting proper amounts of sleep, and he’s sick of it.

“There need to be,” Solomon grimaces, swirling around in his desk chair but faltering as Asmo emerges from the bathroom, toweling his hair and jeans hanging low on his hips, “...ground rules.”

Asmo tilts his head, “Rules?” He says the words like it’s a foreign language, new and clunky in his pretty mouth. Solomon wants to sock him.

“You can’t keep bringing partners back here,” Solomon says. Asmo goes back to toweling his perfect fucking hair.

“And why is that?”

“I can’t concentrate on coursework or go to bed if you’ve got someone moaning in your bed every other night.”

“Sounds like a personal problem,” Asmo sniffs, and Solomon very quickly finds the situation slipping through his fingers. All of his phenomenally constructed arguments for why Asmo should be a respectful roommate have disintegrated in the face of Asmo’s pure obstinance. “Besides, where would I take my partners if not to my bedroom?”

“Their rooms. A dark alcove somewhere. A car. A bathroom. I don’t care--anywhere else but here.”

Asmo ponders this for a moment, before he shrugs his shoulders as he walks across the room to his drawers by the window, “Nope. I don’t think that’s considerate for them.” He digs through to presumably find a shirt, and Solomon bites the bullet.

“You’re on academic probation, aren’t you?” Solomon says, and Asmo freezes with his back turned to Solomon, tension evident in the line of his shoulders. When he turns around, his expression is colder than anything Solomon’s ever seen directed at him. In his brother Levi’s words, there it is: the infamous Bitch Smile.

“I didn’t know you cared about gossip,” Asmo looks like a dragon picking his teeth with human bones as he sits against the window sill.

The afternoon light drifting in through the sheer curtains casts him in an ethereal glow, and Solomon bites back his unnecessary request for Asmo to move out of such flattering lighting so he can negotiate with him properly.

“I don’t, which is how I know it’s true.”

“And? What? You’re going to try and blackmail me with this information?” Asmo sneers, but even crippling distaste is an attractive look for the other.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Solomon scoffs, “I’m offering to tutor you.”

Asmo blinks at that.

“I won’t tell anyone. You know my grades. Half of our required classes are together, so it’s not like it would put me under any more stress than not sleeping. And I’m not unreasonable,” Solomon says, “If you must bring people over, just let me know in advance and I’ll go to a coffee shop or the library. I do need to sleep, so I want them out by nine or ten at the latest.”

Asmo doesn’t immediately say no like Solomon thought he would, so things are already going much better than he expected. However, it still does not prepare him for Asmo’s response.

“Fine. Is that all you want?” He asks, and Solomon pointedly ignores the double entendre.  

“I want one of the shelves in the bathroom cabinet,” Solomon blurts, because Asmo has too many beauty products and there’s no space for him in the current set up. Asmo’s brow rises, even as his mouth twist into a wry, surprised smile.

“Maybe.”

“I can work with maybe,” Solomon smiles in return, standing and extending his hand out for a shake. “It’s a deal, then?”

Asmo stares at the hand, his expression unreadable, before something seems to break. He pushes off the window sill and in a few short strides, huffing with laughter, “What’s with the handshake? So formal.”

Solomon doesn’t rise to the bait even if there is a light dusting of pink on his cheeks. This is the first time they’ve touched, he realizes as his magic hums as Asmo’s hand is warm and steady in his own.

“It’s a deal.” Asmo says, and there’s a hint of interest in his eyes as he seems to see Solomon in a new light.

-

-

-

Solomon doesn’t mean to overhear it. He spends so much time in RAD’s library that it’s essentially his second home.

“How’s your shady roommate?” He hears a voice say, and it’s familiar enough to jarr Solomon from his thoughts.

A tinkling laugh, and Solomon blinks in realization. Asmo? Solomon tries to not eavesdrop, tries so hard to not let his interest wander from the potion formula in front of him, because it really has been giving him trouble...

“He’s not bad. Too stiff. Looks great when he comes out of the shower,” Asmo purrs. Solomon feels the bright pink blush rise to his cheeks. They’re talking openly about this in a library, of all places. RAD’s library is unreasonably huge, though--even on a busy weekday, one could be several aisles away from another human being in this space.

They’re both taking the same potions class, so it’s not too far off the mark that they’d both be in the same area looking for reading materials. Solomon should really just leave before he hears anything else that makes his ears burn.

“I don’t trust him.” Asmo’s brother, Satan, says. Of course. Solomon grinds his teeth. Asmo hmms.

“He definitely has a weird powerful vibe about him. I don’t blame you. His face just looks like he’s up to something,” Solomon swallows the spike of hurt that hits at Asmo’s words, even if he’s heard them before. Two months since he started tutoring Asmo. Three months since he moved in. Their cohabitation isn’t domestic, but it is at least civil. “I’ve seen him sleep but I don’t believe it, you know? I’ve never seen him do anything for fun. He’s so pent up and proper that I’m not sure how he does it.”

“He doesn’t.” Satan tsks, “You’ve heard about what happened, right?” Solomon feels his blood run cold.

That was different. It was an accident. He was a child. He was weak then. Solomon would never do anything like that on purpose again. Surely, surely Asmo wouldn’t--

“Of course! It figures though, all the super powerful kids are fucked in the head. But other than that, he’s not bad.”

But he’s not bad. But he’s not bad. As if Solomon would ever settle for not bad after such an callous description of his person. Fury, the kind that makes his magic churn under his skin at a rolling boil, rises in him: at Satan, at Asmo, at himself for.. For what? Believing that Asmo may actually have been different? That they could have been friends?

“What was that?” Satan asks, likely sensing the swirl of Solomon’s magic.

Cursing inwardly, he wrangles his wild emotions under control through years of practice. He will not prove them right. Solomon closes his textbook. His chair screeches against the floor as he stands, Satan and Asmo crossing out of the aisle into the open study area where Solomon has been seated, completely unhidden.

“Were you eavesdropping?” Satan accuses, his bright green eyes sharp and disdainful.

Years and years of diligently studying. Never losing his temper. His single minded determination to better himself has erected a wall that others look on in contempt. Do not prove them right about you, Solomon tells himself, nails digging into his palms hard enough to leave red crescent marks. Do not let the rumors be true.

He cannot look at Asmo, so instead, he smiles at Satan.

“No,” Solomon laughs, and the politeness in it is so fake that it hurts, “I was studying for the same test that Asmo is studying for. Voices carry quite well in a library.”

Satan glances at Asmo, but Solomon still cannot look at him. Tossing his book haphazardly into his bag, he throws it over his shoulder.

“I’ll leave the two of you to it, then.”

-

-

-

“Solomon, hey, wait!” Solomon is not running away, but he has a very brisk pace and does not feel bad when Asmo has to job to catch up with him. “Listen, about what I said--”

Solomon stops sharply enough that Asmo almost runs into him, but Solomon uses his magic to help steady Asmo. It isn’t to be helpful, it’s to stop Asmo from getting close enough to touch him, as if that will protect him from all of these hurt, churning emotions. He exhales through his nose.

“Since you’re actually taking the time to go to the library… I don’t think you need my help anymore.” Solomon forces himself to look at Asmo, steeling himself against whatever petulant expression is probably on the other’s face.

“Right?”

Asmo’s face is not petulant in the slightest. He seems… upset? Solomon feels the beast snarl inside him, a lick of rage at the downtrodden expression on the other’s face. He gets caught shit talking him openly and then has the gall to look hurt when he gets his free tutoring cut off? Asmo’s family is disgustingly rich and well connected. Let him lose his pride and ask them for help.

Solomon will last the year. He and Simeon will room together next year. Asmodeus will not be what breaks him.

Asmo falters at the intensity of Solomon’s gaze, the severity of his words.

“... Right.” Asmo says, and Solomon lets his feet carry him away before either of them say anything else.

- - -

After a week of tense, peaceful avoidance, Satan dropping into the seat opposite him at the campus coffee shop is the last thing Solomon expects.

“I apologize for my conduct the other day.”

Solomon blinks at him.

What is Satan doing here? Irritation immediately blossoms in his chest--he may not be furious anymore, but that doesn’t mean he wants to see Satan, nor had he expected to.

After cancelling their tutoring sessions, he’s made it a point to spend as little time in their (when had it become their room? It was always Asmo’s room at first) room as possible. Sure, it means spending garbage amounts of money on overpriced coffee and shitty wi-fi when the library gets too stuffy, but at least he can breathe.

None of that explains why Satan is here. Apologizing to him. Surely it must be some kind of a trap? A childish prank? Really? Would Asmo stoop so low? He doesn’t know either of these brothers enough to truly say. It’s best for him to be polite for now, until he can figure out Satan’s true motiv--

“You realize that a lot of people don’t trust you because there’s a moment on your face where you look like you’re actively plotting, and then you say some polite nonsense,” Satan says, and Solomon’s brain stops like a record screeching.

“Is this really an apology.” Solomon says, drily. Satan shrugs his shoulders.

“That was an observation. This is the apology.” Satan clears his throat, looking Solomon straight in the eyes. “It was unbecoming of me to speak of you like that in public. I should know better, and I’m sorry.”

“It’s what you thought,” Solomon says, because it’s true. It’s what they all think, and for a good chunk of his life, Solomon rarely tried to make them think differently.

“It was ignorant.” Satan’s bright green eyes stare into his own, and Solomon senses no dishonesty in his words. When Solomon speaks, he finds that he actually might believe them.

“Apology accepted.” Now leave me alone.

Satan narrows his eyes, “Really?” Solomon resists the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose.

“Yes, really.”

“Will you speak to my brother again, then?”

“It’s a little presumptuous of you to ask for my forgiveness and a favor in the same breath.”

“Asmo flunked the last test,” Satan says, in lieu of a proper answer, “He’s in a world of shit at the moment.”

“Why doesn’t he try flirting with the professor?” Solomon scoffs.

Satan props his chin up on his hand with a lopsided smile that’s far more relaxed than he’s ever seen from the fourth brother, “That’s the thing, he hasn’t. Lucifer chewed him out about it and he took it with his tail between his legs rather than kick up a fit about it too.” Solomon’s quick mind lets him skip over the next lines of whatever shitty banter they’ve got to reach Satan’s point.

“You want me to tutor him again.” Solomon asks in disbelief, despite himself. Satan snorts and leans back.

“Nothing so pedantic as that,” Satan waves the notion away, “Just stop avoiding him at every turn, and hear what he has to say. If you’re still mad at him after that, then that’s perfectly reasonable too, considering my brother is one of the biggest assholes to ever exist. He’s unbearably dramatic when he gets into fights with his friends.”

“... Friends?”

Satan stares at him like he’s grown another head, “Obviously.”

Solomon laughs so hard, he’s sure that he’s confirmed all of Satan’s weird opinions of him.

-

-

-

“Solomon?” Asmo breathes his name, hand lingering on the doorknob as he enters the room to see Solomon sitting in his desk chair.

“Satan talked to me,” Solomon says, reveling in the stunned look on Asmo’s face, before crossing his arms, ”He apologized for what he said. And then he asked me to at least hear you out because you’re sulking.”  Asmo pouts at Satan’s words, and Solomon quirks his brow.

“Is he wrong?”

In response to this, Asmo’s face looks pained, lips pressing together as he glances to the side. He’s like a petulant child, Solomon thinks, even if he’s somehow still amused by the other’s expression.

When Asmo looks at Solomon, and he throws his hands up in the air,  “I shouldn’t have said it. There, are you happy?”

“Not really,” Solomon admits, “I understand why your brother might think that of me, but to hear it from someone that I’m helping out...” He adds a little bit of a softer, sadder tone to his voice to make Asmo writhe, and ha, does it work.

Asmo groans, ruffling his hands through his hair, “Alright, I’m a dick! Are you happy? I’m a gossipy bitch and I say things I shouldn’t. You helped me out and I.. took advantage of it. I’m sorry!” Asmo’s arms cross, and he looks so genuinely uncomfortable that Solomon wants to laugh.  

“You’re terrible at this. I was confused as to why Satan might say I can still be mad at you after you say your piece but.. I get it. You’re even worse than he is at it, dare I say.”

“You haven’t met our eldest brother,” Asmo sniffs, before continuing, “Besides, words and emotions are hard, bodies are easier,” Asmo shrugs, like it’s the simplest thing in the world.

“You sound like a bad high school drama,” Solomon scoffs, rolling over Asmo’s affronted gasp, “In any case, I heard you flunked the last test we shared. Maybe if you spent less time flirting with the TA in that class, you could retain the information on the board.” Solomon brings his knuckles to his chin, holding his elbow in his other palm.

“It can’t be helped. If we can get you set up with some extra credit there and you ace the next few exams that should keep your grade above water.” Solomon runs the numbers in his head, but Asmo is waving his hands in the air.

“Wait, wait, waaaait! You’re forgiving me?”

“I’m considering it. You have to make it up to me somehow, but as for the tutoring.. we’re too close to exams for me to want to deal with another roommate if you get yourself suspended. I don’t have blackmail material on anyone else, unfortunately.” Solomon’s kidding about the blackmail, but Asmo deserves a little ribbing after that awful apology.

Although Asmo doesn’t seem offended by the joke. No, it actually seems to be... the opposite? As he speaks, Asmo’s looking at him with a blinding smile.

“Are you listening to me?” Solomon frowns, knocked off balance by Asmo’s expression, “Because if you aren’t, I swear i’m going to--”

A flurry of motion, Asmo crosses the space of their room quicker than Solomon’s ever seen him.

Asmo’s hand cups his face, the other lands on his hip; Solomon has very little time to think, because Asmo’s gorgeous face is in centimeters away from his own. The scent of Asmo’s perfume fills his senses, rendering him stunned--Asmo glances down at his parted lips, and then back up at Solomon’s eyes.

Asmo kisses him, and Solomon’s magic blows out the fuses in their entire building.

-

-

-

In the chaos of their plunge into darkness, Solomon’s hands shooting out to shove Asmo back accidentally activates his magic, and Asmo stumbles a few paces further before falling to the ground.

“Ah,” Asmo yelps, at the same time Solomon rises from his seat, “What the hell, Asmo?”

They’re not in total darkness, thanks to the dim light from the streetlamps outside, but it still takes Solomon’s eyes a few seconds to adjust. Asmo’s vague form is still seated on the floor, propped up on his elbows.

“What was that?” He demands, still haunted by the firm press of Asmo’s lips against his. Asmo shifts to get up, and Solomon’s arm immediately reaches out to offer his assistance. Asmo huffs at the motion, but takes his hand anyway.

“I thought I could make it up to you this way.”

“By offering to, what, make out with me?” Solomon says, disbelief mounting. Asmo shrugs his shoulders, one hand trailing up Solomon’s hip.

“Sure, we could do that. We could do whatever you want,” and now that Solomon’s eyes have adjusted to the dim lighting, he can see the coy smile playing at Asmo’s lips, “I see how you look at me, how could you not? Besides, you’re quite handsome yourself…” Asmo purrs, his free hand reaching up to graze against Solomon’s blushing cheeks.

For a moment, Solomon hesitates--Asmo is gorgeous. Even if Solomon were deaf to the campus’ adoration of him, he would have to be blind as well to not realize that just by existing near Asmo. There’s always a mix of challenging and inviting in his eyes, an ease that shows itself in all of his movements. Asmo exudes a level of sensual energy that is a powerful skill in its own right, and Solomon is a healthy young adult…

But Solomon has no desire to fall into Asmo’s bed like another one of his hundreds of admirers, clamoring to get into the other’s bed space. He has more important things in mind.  

“That’s not what I meant by making it up to me!” Solomon is very proud of his voice not cracking as he pushes Asmo’s hand away, and the coquettish expression is quickly replaced by Asmo’s pout.

“Well, how else am I supposed to show you how truly repentant I am!” He whines at his failed seduction.

“I can’t even begin to explain how screwed up that is, Asmo.” Solomon groans, running his hand through his hair, “You could have offered me another shelf in the bathroom cabinet or more sink space and I would have considered it a start.”  

Asmo blinks, tilting his head to the side, “... Really? That’s all you want?” He seems stunned that someone would turn down his body.

“Now that I know you were going to offer your body, half of the sink sounds too fucking small, doesn’t it?” Solomon retorts, and Asmo laughs.

A loud knock startles both of them out of their conversation, and he hears the muffled voice of their RA from the other side.

“Are you alright in there? There’s been a power outage -- will you be alright casting magelight, or do you need flashlights?”

Solomon, in desperate need of a reprieve from Asmo’s… Asmo-ness… goes to open the door as the RA speaks. After a quick exchange of assuring the doting senior in their pajamas, Solomon shuts the door with a sigh. When he turns around, Asmo is seated in his desk chair with a soft pink magelight floating idly nearby. Asmo seems to be deep in thought, and Solomon approaches him with slight hesitation.

As soon as Solomon gets closer, Asmo’s gaze snaps up to look at him so suddenly that Solomon almost balks.

“I know what I can do for you,” Asmo says, his eyes twinkling with mischief and utter glee. The pink light casts an almost eerie, and somehow still enticing shadow on the other’s face.  

Solomon isn’t too proud to admit he’s terrified by whatever Asmo is about to offer.

-

-

-

“... So you didn’t sleep with him?” Simeon asks, and Solomon chokes on his tea.

“What! Of course not!” He coughs through his instantaneous response, pounding his fist on his chest. “He said… oh hell, I can’t say this, it’s ridiculous.” Solomon covers his face with his hands, an unbidden blush rising to his cheeks.

“He said he was going to make me popular,” Solomon groans, a little quieter in volume. Simeon is silent for a long enough time that Solomon takes his face out of his hands to look at him questioningly, but Simeon’s got one hand over his mouth as he shakes in stifled amusement.

“Wh--” At Solomon’s confused expression, Simeon is unable to contain himself any longer, bursting into a loud fit of laughter. Simeon throws his arms around Solomon in a crushing hug, even as Solomon tries to shove his way out of it.

“Oh, this is going to be great.”  

-

-

-

I feel like this would definitely be considered #crack or #ooc slightly because it’s always hard to translate personalities that are defined by specific experiences (such as being alive for thousands of years) into any AU, but especially ones where they’re only 19/20 year olds lmaaoo

Facets of their personalities I tried to keep: Solomon’s ambition/the fact that people think he’s so shifty, and Asmo’s sexual bravado/blatant insecurities of his person. Who knows if that comes off here, but hey, I had fun lkajflaks

As always, ty for reading!!! I appreciate your kind words and responses on my stuff ;w;

[17mounteens]

hi!! I really like your blog! could I request a seungcheol smut with a daddy kink? thank you! keep on going with the good work!

special thanks to my angel of a friend for the main idea for this + giving an opinion on what I came up with 😘💕 I really hope you all like this!

» Includes: daddy kink (goes without saying, really), restricted wrists, spanking, aftercare etc

» If you’re using the tumblr app and can’t see the scenario, which is under a “keep reading”, please try opening the post in your phone’s internet browser (or a computer)! 💕

» 4,714 words

Lethal.

That was the only word that came to your mind when you thought about the way Seungcheol looked in the hip hop unit promotional photo for Seventeen’s upcoming concert tour, not to mention the behind the scenes material of the photoshoot.

The dark clothes, the styled hair, the steam, his pose… it all had shaken you to the core, and you had hardly been able to distract yourself from it ever since you had seen it for the first time.

The look and his demeanor in general screamed one thing, which just happened to be something you had, on some very pleasant occasions, been screaming yourself.

Daddy.

So, taking into consideration how badly you wanted and needed Seungcheol in the most sexual ways possible, you were bursting with excitement when he told you he’d have a full week off between the end of promotions and the beginning of proper tour preparations, after weeks of not having time to see you at all.

Only, a few days into that week, you realized that there was an obstacle: video games, which kept Seungcheol too occupied for him to pay enough attention to you to see how badly you wanted him.

It was Wednesday, and while you had been with him at the dorm, empty of all the other members, for a few hours already, he had yet to budge from the computer.

“Hongbin, I can’t find you,” Seungcheol muttered to microphone of the headset he was wearing, pouting a little, while moving around in the game. Judging by the snicker he let out, one of the people he was playing with - Hongbin - said something, and he shook his head. “Right, I’ll head there.”

You pouted, fiddling with the hem of your shirt. It was boring to just sit there, yet you couldn’t bring yourself to leave, either: the small hope that you’d still get to bang was too strong for you to abandon him.

Minutes passed, and with each one you grew more impatient, more than aware of how badly you needed to be touched and how sinfully good it felt to sit in certain angles. Seungcheol continued playing while chatting with his friends, and once you had had enough, you got up from the bed you had been sitting on and walked to the office chair he was seated on.

“Seungcheol?” you called, placing your hands on his shoulders and running them down his arms, feeling up his biceps through the thin oversized T-shirt he was wearing. The muscles alone had you biting your lip.

“Y/N, I’m playing,” Seungcheol muttered absentmindedly and shushed your hands away haphazardly before continuing with the game. “Sorry, my girlfriend’s here, so…”

You rolled your eyes and got down on the floor, where you could lean your head on Seungcheol’s lap and place your hand on his thigh. He frowned and looked down, and you smiled a little at him. He didn’t say anything, but the look in his eyes was practically a warning not to do anything.

Yet were you in the position to not do something? Not really.

While his game seemed to get more intense, with his voice getting a bit higher in volume and words faster as he spoke, the sounds of him pressing keys on his keyboard and clicking on his mouse only getting louder, too, you moved to be under the desk as subtly as you could - luckily you knew he was too focused on the game to see you move.

Once somewhat comfortable under the table, you looked at what you had in front of you: Seungcheol’s lower body, his legs slightly parted. Licking your lips as your mind went straight to what was underneath his joggers, you placed your hand on his thigh and moved it upwards slowly, until you could reach the waistband of his pants.

“Y/N,” Seungcheol called, covering his microphone, his voice stern. “I can’t focus.”

You frowned, but since you were unwilling to give up, slid your hand to his crotch to touch him lightly through his pants. Seungcheol groaned and grabbed your wrist.

“Come out of there.”

Gritting your teeth in annoyance and frustration of several kinds, you got up from underneath the table and watched him play for a while with your arms crossed by your chest.

“Sorry, guys, I got distracted,” he grumbled and ran his fingers through his hair. “It’s not my fault, okay?”

As he continued playing, visibly and audibly annoyed as he tried to regain what he had lost when you had been trying to get lucky with him, you moved closer again. When Seungcheol ran his fingers through his hair again, you found your chance and sat on his lap. He let out a heavy sigh, nearly speaking through his teeth. “Y/N.”

Placing your hand on his shoulder and moving it to caress his neck, you got as pleading of an expression on your face as you possibly could, aiming puppy eyes at him with your voice soft and pleading. “But daddy…”

Seungcheol’s pupils dilated at what you had called him, and he went red within a few seconds, both from that and the fact that he had a group of friends nearly yelling into his ear, “Did she just call you daddy?!”

When he spoke again, his voice was much lower than it had been before. “Sorry, I gotta go.”

He took off his headset and shut off his computer without much of a second thought, then took a deep breath as he looked at you, now with a smile on your lips as you played with the hair on the back of his neck.

“Daddy?” Seungcheol asked, his voice barely even steady, and placed his hand high up on your thigh. You nearly jolted at that, and leaned closer to him.

“Do I now have your full attention?” you asked innocently, and got a chuckle and a nod from your boyfriend.

“If you called me that just to get my attention, we might have to talk,” he noted, but got an excited grin to his face when you shook your head hurriedly.

Placing your hand on top of his and moving it even higher on your thigh, you leaned closer to his ear. “No… I had a lot more in mind, daddy.”

Seungcheol swallowed hard, his eyes growing darker as he looked into yours. “What brings this about?”

“Your promo posters,” you mumbled nonchalantly while playing with his hair. Seungcheol’s grin grew a bit smug - cocky, even - as he chuckled.

“Oh, I see,” he said and squeezed your leg, his grin slowly fading from his face. “I seem to have quite a bit of power over you, don’t I?”

Your breath hitched a little in your throat: the squeeze made you burn. “M-more than you can imagine.”

He hummed in approval and leaned up to kiss your lips passionately. “Well then, baby girl… daddy has a surprise for you.”

Seungcheol was almost amused by how excited you were just by his words, and you obeyed him eagerly when he told you to get to the bed - it was a fairly new, small double bed he had managed to get because he “needed a lot of space while sleeping.” He had had to bribe Mingyu, Jihoon and Jeonghan to plead for him, too, but it had been worth the large amount of money he had spent on buying them food. It was a lot more comfortable to have sex on it than it was on the bottom bed of a bunk bed, after all.

You sat on the plush bed, your thighs pressed together tightly, while Seungcheol walked to the nearest drawer, which you knew to be mostly in his use. When he pulled out one of his leather belts, you bit down on your lip.

“How will you use that, daddy?” you asked innocently, looking up at him when he began walking closer to you, touching the belt carefully.

Chuckling, Seungcheol raised his eyebrows a little, knowing exactly what you hoped he’d do with the belt. “Oh, baby, I don’t think you’ve been good enough for that.”

You pouted a little, but it faded from your face soon as Seungcheol stared down at you while holding the belt and spoke. “Now, take your shirt off for daddy.”

Doing as you were told, you took your shirt off, and it was soon followed by your bra. Seungcheol breathed heavily and told you to get up, and once you had, took one hand to your chest to hold your breast in it before moving to the other, touching them generously while eyeing them with the most appreciation in his eyes.

“Ah,” you sighed in satisfaction, finally getting the much needed touch of his hand, and felt the need between your legs only grow. When Seungcheol seemed unable to move forward from touching and staring at your chest, you giggled a little. “Did you miss me, daddy?”

“Very much,” he replied without hesitation and bit his lip a little when he rolled your pert nipple under the pad of his thumb, which made you moan and shy away from his touch a little. Then he squeezed your breast, loving how it felt in his hand, and shook his head quickly, as if to get back to his senses. “Alright, give me your hands.”

You stretched your arms out once Seungcheol had taken a few small steps back, and you raised your eyebrows in surprise when he began getting the belt around your wrists.

“I thought this would be enough of a punishment for you for distracting daddy from his game,” Seungcheol said, his voice low, and moved his eyes from your wrists to your eyes when he had fastened the belt. His eyes had a mischievous glint in them. “…For now.”

Your heart skipped a beat and you nodded excitedly, allowing your hands to fall down, which also made your breasts squish a little into each other, which Seungcheol appreciated. He placed his hand on your lower back and slid it a little into your pants to squeeze your ass while leaning down to kiss you passionately. His voice was raspy and full of desire when he spoke again, his lips still brushing against yours. “Get on all fours, baby.”

Obeying readily, you got on your hands and knees on the bed and looked back at Seungcheol when he sat down next to you and hooked his fingers on the waistband of your pants, nonchalantly pulling them over your ass and down your thighs. When they were low enough, he slid his hand up your leg until he could squeeze your ass, his fingers sneaking under your panties as he did.

“My little girl looks so good with her ass up,” Seungcheol noted, his breathing heavy as he placed his other hand on your ass, too, and kneaded it. “So good…”

With his words trailing off, he leaned down until you could feel his nose poking against your wet pussy through the thin fabric of your panties, and then his tongue giving you a long lick, which you wished was directly on you rather than on the panties. You whimpered and clutched your hands together. “Daddy…”

“Be patient,” Seungcheol muttered and pulled back a little, bringing one of his hands between your legs and dragging a couple of fingers up your slit, which made you jolt. His voice only got lower when he spoke. “Daddy wants to play.”

You whined in reply when he pressed his fingers hard against you through your panties, until the fabric got wet enough for him to feel it and your knees began quivering. Seungcheol chuckled and leaned down, this time pushing your panties aside so that he could give you a lick from your clit to your entrance, at which you moaned.

“Did the poster get you this worked up, doll?” he asked huskily, referring to the easily identifiable taste of your anticipation on his tongue, which he eagerly swallowed.

“Yes, daddy,” you admitted, slowly lowering your upper body yet keeping your ass up.

Seungcheol smirked and, in a swift movement, slid your panties down, which left your bottom bare, all for him to see and enjoy. “I like it.”

Before proceeding any more, he got your pants and panties completely off of you, helping you lift your legs and all that, and got rid of his own clothes in the process as well. He only left his boxers on, which didn’t leave much to imagination regarding the hard-on he was sporting.

“And because you’ve been a bad girl, daddy’s got a second part of your punishment planned,” Seungcheol said calmly as he returned to the bed and brought one of his hands between your legs again, rubbing his fingers flat against your clit. As he had expected, you mewled and shied away from his touch a little, and it didn’t take long for your knees to budge, too. He grinned. “If I catch your knees giving in the slightest bit, baby…”

“You’ll..?” you asked, trying to hide your excitement, and looked at him. Your heart was beating fast, and you could feel immense amounts of blood rushing to your pussy as your lust only continued growing.

Seungcheol smacked his other hand to your ass hard, at which you gasped loudly, and he chuckled as he grabbed your ass. “I think you can guess.”

In all honesty it probably wasn’t the best punishment because you enjoyed it so much, but he did, too, and it wasn’t exactly a secret that he loved making you feel good, so he didn’t particularly mind.

Regardless, only a few moments later you were a whimpering mess as Seungcheol ate you out slowly, taking his time circling your clit with his tongue and exploring other areas every now and then, too. You wanted to do something, whether it was push against him or something very different - had you had it your way you would’ve sunken down on his cock already - but you knew that if you didn’t do exactly as he wanted, you’d be punished.

And as much as you enjoyed said punishment, you didn’t want to purposefully upset him.

“I can hear your breath hitching,” Seungcheol mumbled against you and pressed his tongue to your clit before taking the nub between his lips and sucking ever-so-slightly. You moaned loudly and shook all over, and much to your misfortune, found your posture faltering. For a second you thought he didn’t notice, but then you felt his palm hit your ass and remain there, the coolness of his ring pleasant against your warm skin. “That was only the first one.”

“Yes, daddy,” you whined, squirming on the bed as he continued eating you out, this time a bit faster and more daringly. Somewhere between his tongue torturing your clit in the most delicious possible ways and you moaning and begging for more, you felt  Seungcheol’s fingertip circling your entrance before sliding into your drenched heat with ease.

“Look at you,” Seungcheol noted, his voice thick with lust, while moving his finger inside of you, easily able to feel just how wet you were. You were moaning quietly, and let out a satisfied sigh when he inserted another finger into you and curled his fingers. As he brushed by your sweet spot, your knees budged again and a mewl left your lips, and Seungcheol was quick to spank you. “Two.”

Pistoning his fingers in and out of you relentlessly, Seungcheol also continued massaging your clit with his tongue with varying pressure and angles - it didn’t have time to get boring in any way, and only drove you closer to your impending orgasm. His fingers felt amazing, as much as they weren’t quite what you wanted, and he soon added a third one, which stretched you a little.

“God,” you whimpered, your whole body shaking from pleasure, and held your hands tightly, the belt restraining your wrists efficiently. Seungcheol enjoyed the sight of you as weak as you were, desperate for him, and had no mercy as he kept eating you out while his fingers moved in and out of you, curling every now and then. Your knees budged again, and Seungcheol grinned before hitting your ass with his palm.

“Three,” he counted, and you moaned at all the sensations put together as you fixed your posture again.

“I’m sorry, daddy,” you whimpered when he flicked your clit with his tongue continuously while massaging your spot dead-on with his curled fingers. Your orgasm was so close that you were starting to shake, and let out a desperate cry when Seungcheol let out a low chuckle against you.

“Do you think you’ve deserved to cum, baby girl? Your knees have given in three times…” he mumbled, sounding both demanding and nonchalant at the same time, all the while massaging your spot with his lips pressed to your sensitive bundle of nerves. Your juices were dripping down your thighs and you were panting, only able to think about how badly you wanted him to fuck you and how awfully close you were to your orgasm.

“Daddy, please,” you whimpered, your knees shaking and pussy starting to clench around Seungcheol’s fingers already. “I r-really need to cum.”

“Will you be a good girl, then?” he asked, taking your nub between his lips lightly. You whimpered.

“I’ll be anything you want, daddy.”

Seungcheol’s cock twitched in interest at your words, and for a moment he stopped everything. “I like the sound of that.”

Barely even giving you enough time to process his words, Seungcheol then began pistoning his fingers into you hard and fast, and his tongue returned to your clit, too. Your lips parted into a cry as you came within a few seconds, as soon as Seungcheol had mumbled “Come for daddy,” and that was when your knees gave in immediately.

This time Seungcheol didn’t mind that you were lying flat on the bed, and instead continued fucking you with his fingers throughout your orgasm, even as you moaned and shook violently. It all only prolonged your orgasm, too intense for you to think straight in any way. He watched you almost hungrily as you writhed on the bed, your expression showing nothing but satisfaction with your eyebrows furrowed a little and your mouth still open.

Only when you begged for him to stop, too sensitive to stay in your senses, did he pull his fingers out, your anticipation glistening on them. He was quick to suck his fingers clean, however, and soon you had him leaning down to give you a long, passionate kiss, his cock pressing against your ass. He ran his fingers through your hair before taking a light hold of them, which made you moan quietly. “Be a good girl for daddy.”

You nodded and got up, feeling a little light-headed, while Seungcheol lay down on the bed and crossed his hands under his head, looking at you expectantly. His boxers showed his hard-on in its full glory, and the wet spot on the front of his underwear was prominent.

Once you had gotten your head clear enough, you moved to him, sitting on your knees between his legs before leaning down to palm him through his boxers and breathing some hot air to his cock. Seungcheol hummed appreciatively, but urged you to move on, so you were fast to pull his boxers down and take his cock into one of your restricted hands and stroke it slowly.

“What do you want, daddy?” you asked innocently, your voice still a bit weak, and looked into his eyes. His eyes were hooded as he looked back into yours, and slowly brought one of his hands to your hair.

“I think you know, baby,” Seungcheol answered, and his lips tugged into a smirk when you lowered your head. “Yeah, that’s a good girl.”

You smiled a little before parting your lips and taking his cock into your mouth, your tongue swirling around the head of it as you encased it in the warmth of your mouth. Seungcheol grunted and let his eyes fall shut, one of his hands remaining in your hair to pet it slowly while you began bobbing your head up and down slowly, knowing exactly what to do to have his toes curling.

Some minutes into you sucking him off, Seungcheol was starting to get close to his orgasm, his mind only filled with one thing, that he pulled you up from your hair and beckoned you to come closer, and soon you were sitting on top of his cock, which fit perfectly between your legs, while kissing him hungrily, your hands pressed on his chest. He had one hand on your ass, squeezing it tightly, and the other in your hair, stroking it slowly. “Daddy has an idea.”

Your heart skipped a beat, and you were excited as you asked, “What is it?”

He kneaded your ass, and his voice was low when he spoke. “I want you to ride me, but I also want to see your ass. Do you think you could do that, princess?”

The mere mention of reverse cowgirl, which you had only tried a few times - a few insanely amazing times - made your core clench around nothing, and you nodded excitedly. “Yes, daddy.”

You pulled back and turned around on Seungcheol’s lap, so that you ended up with your back facing him. Jutting your ass out better on purpose, you turned to look at him, as though asking if it was good. He let out a long, content sigh and placed his hand on your ass, giving it a generous squeeze. “Just perfect.”

“Good,” you hummed and, with your hands pressed on the bed to give you support, lifted yourself up a little, just enough for Seungcheol to be able to align his cock with your entrance and for you to slowly sink down on it, moaning in satisfaction as he filled you up.

“Fuck,” he grunted and shut his eyes tightly, too overwhelmed by the feeling of being inside of you to do much else. His hand remained on your ass, and was soon joined by his other hand while you rolled your hips, biting your lip contently at the sensations. Finally you were getting what you had been in need of for a good while, more so than before - him.

“I’ll make you feel good, daddy,” you said quietly and got an approving hum from Seungcheol, who spread your ass cheeks a little when you began rising and falling on his lap: he appreciated the way you were taking his cock so well, and the sight of it all only turned him on more.

“Such a good girl,” he mumbled and kneaded your ass, nearly grunting because of how amazing you looked in so many ways, starting from your pussy to your beautifully arched back and your face that he could see through the mirror on the wall, your expression focused yet incredibly sated.

His praise always felt good, and it definitely spurred you forward as you began riding him with a bit more force, your ass hitting his hips every time you fell on his lap. Seungcheol grunted every now and then, and whenever he told you how well you were doing - how amazing you were making him feel - you found yourself a bit closer to your climax.

Being on top was fun: while it did get straining on your muscles eventually, you loved the control you had over the angles, because it meant you could keep the angle that made you see stars for as long as you’d like. Seungcheol’s grunts were slowly turning into moans, signaling that he was getting sensitive and thus closer to his orgasm, and so it wasn’t all too surprising when you felt his hands forcefully keeping you down on himself all of a sudden.

“You’ve been so good for daddy, princess,” he began, voice nearly shaky, and brought his hands to your breasts that he fondled with for a moment before beckoning you to lie down on his chest, which you did with your heart beating fast in your chest. Seungcheol’s breath hit your ear, and it went straight to your pussy, much like his husky whisper did. “…Now let daddy be good for you.”

He planted his feet on the bed, which also spread your legs more open, and while playing with your breasts, he began thrusting into you desperately, hard and fast, and caught your moans with his lips when he had gotten you to turn your head a little. The kisses were messy and hardly muffled anything, really, but it was fun while it lasted.

Your moans got higher in pitch with every thrust, and when Seungcheol slid one of his hands down your body to rub circles into your clit, you were gone, clutching your hands tightly. “D-daddy, I’m gonna��”

Before he could even give you the permission to come, you were already releasing around him, crying out. Seungcheol groaned and continued thrusting until he was coming inside of you, too, his hips stuttering to a stop and knees giving in soon afterwards, which left you lying on top of him with his hands on your body, both of you breathing heavily.

“Holy shit,” you panted, your whole body quivering and your core clamping down around Seungcheol from the aftershocks of your orgasm. He swallowed hard, too, and planted a kiss on your shoulder.

“Y/N, I,” he began and stopped to catch his breath as well as help you off himself and get you lie down next to him so that he could take you properly into his arms once he had gotten the belt off   your wrists and rubbed them gently. He gave you a sweet kiss on your lips while running his hand up and down your back soothingly. “I love you.”

“I love you, too, Seungcheol,” you smiled and ran your fingers through his hair, the wide smile remaining on your face. “That was amazing. I’ve really missed this.”

“Just that?” he chuckled and quirked his eyebrow, which made you giggle.

“Not just that, dummy. I’ve missed you, your stupid jokes, how excited you get while playing, your warm hugs…” you muttered, feeling a bit emotional, and hid your face in his chest as your heart began feeling heavier. “I’m so happy you got some free time.”

Seungcheol smiled to himself and held you close, running his hand in your hair and pressing a kiss to the top of your head while continuing the soothing strokes on your back. “I missed you too, Y/N. It’s not easy on either of us.”

“Yeah,” you sighed and took a deep breath in an attempt to avoid the lump in your throat. You lifted your face and kissed Seungcheol slowly yet sweetly. “But it’s worth it. The wait, I mean.”

“It is,” he agreed. You were quiet for a moment, just enjoying each other’s closeness, until he kissed your forehead gently. “You’re staying over for the night, so how about we go have a shower, get something nice to wear and eat and, I don’t know, watch a movie until we fall asleep?”

“I didn’t know I was staying over, but sure?” you laughed happily and placed your hand on Seungcheol’s cheek, feeling up the familiar shape of his face and squishing his cheek when he began laughing. “Let’s go - you smell.”

He snickered, and while looking like that, you could hardly believe he was the same man you just had such dirty sex with - but that was one of the many reasons it was so enjoyable.

Before moving, however, Seungcheol merely looked into your eyes with a bright smile on his face, his dimples showing, and tucked your hair behind your ear. You quirked your eyebrow, unable to keep a smile away from your lips. “What’s that for?”

“I can’t believe you’re mine,” he said quietly and leaned in to kiss your forehead, after which he let his hand fall to your cheek to caress you gently. You pouted a little, and as you couldn’t find the words to say, resorted to just kissing him sweetly on the lips.

The disbelief was mutual.

Admin Scooter

[julez-the-great]

Han Shot First--Han Solo x Reader

“Here’s the problem,” you said to Han, pointing toward the faulty plasma capacitor. The hand-sized deficit was rusting over and a slight crack was beginning to form on it. You tapped on it lightly and heard a hollow noise. Han crawled over to your spot and looked up at the device, giving it a gander.

“What’s wrong with it?” He asked, slightly annoyed at the prospect of someone other than hum messing with the Millennium Falcon. You tapped on it once more, causing his annoyed look to turn into one of frustration.

“First off, the capacitor is rusty. Secondly, there’s a crack forming. And thirdly, it’s empty. No plasma within it means no energy,” you said to him, sliding out from your spot and lifting yourself inside of the ship. Han simply groaned, following you.

“I know what empty means,” he nagged, following you off of the ship and into the tropical atmosphere. You scanned your surroundings for any shop in this small village that would carry such an important device. Chewbacca howled, pointing to the shop closest to your position. A smile came across your face.

“Thanks, Chewy. Come on Han,” you said to both of the beings who were now behind you. Han grumbled, not happy that you were right once again.

You arrived at the little shop and observed the decorations that littered the shop–it’s more of a stand. On the wall behind the desk were many parts for many different types of machines. No one was around at the time, so you rung a bell that was placed for this purpose. Not two seconds later, a young man appeared in a grey jumpsuit covered in splotches of grease. He had messy black hair, smoothed back and his eyes were the brightest green color.

“Hello, sugar. What can I do for you today?” He asked, looking at you and then to your two companions in smuggling.

“I was actually wondering if you had a plasma capacitor,” you said to him, leaning your arms on the counter. A smirk was plastered on your face as you glanced at his name tag. “You think you could help a girl out, Douglas?”

“You’re just in luck, we just got some shipped in,” he stated before moving to the back and rummaging through some boxes. Moments later he returned, carrying a brand new capictor.

“That’ll be fifty credits,” he said, placing the capacitor on the counter before you. You sighed, knowing that neither you, nor Han had enough credits combined. You looked up at Douglas, unbuttoning the top buttons of your shirt, exposing some of your chest.

“It seems I don’t have enough credits. Is there any way you could drop the price to thirty credits?” You asked him, looking into his eyes and placing a delicate hand on his rough ones. “It’d mean the world to me.”

Douglas gave a little smirk as he moved his hand from yours before also leaning onto the counter. Meanwhile, Han was staring at the both of you, annoyance and jealousy raging through him.

“Maybe if you throw in a little kiss,” Douglas replied. You smiled as you placed thirty credits onto the desk and gave him a peck on the cheek, taking the capacitor and walking away–you even made sure to sway your hips as you walked away.

“What the hell was that?!” Han yelled, his face beginning to turn red. You smirked, buttoning your shirt back up.

“Is someone jealous?” You asked sarcastically before laughing it off and heading back to where the faulty capacitor was. Han didn’t reply. Chewbacca howled out an amused sound, causing Han to snap at him.

“Oh, shut it furball.”

–

“Where are we going?” You asked Han as you both walked through the dry desert planet of Tattooine.

“We’re going to the cantina to have a drink,” he replied, not looking at you. You smiled, excited that you were finally taking a break from smuggling.

Sweat dripped down your forehead and was slowly drenching the pits of your long sleeved white shirt. Of course you had rolled up the sleeves, but that only helped slightly. You were sure your shoes looked dusty and you cursed at yourself for wearing pants. Looking up, you finally saw the cantina the Han was talking about. A smile came once again as the three of you entered.

The music could be heard behind all of the conversations that each being was having. It was significantly cooler in this building and you were thankful for that.

“I’ll be over there,” Han said, pointing to an empty booth, “just come over if you guys need me.” With that said, he left you and Chewy to it. Immediately, Chewbacca wandered off, doing whatever it is that wookies do. You however went straight for the bar.

“What can I get ya?” The bartender asked, pouring a drink into a glass.

“Gimme a beer, please,” you said to her, watching as she nodded before handing the drink off to another customer. In a matter of moments, she handed you a cold bottle of beer with the cap popped off. You quickly paid.“Thanks.”

You walked around the cantina, sipping the bitter liquid and observing your surroundings. Smiling, you got onto the small dance floor and began dancing to the beat of the song. No you weren’t drunk, but you always liked to have fun anywhere you went. Before you knew it were getting another beer and continuing the cycle, even throwing in a little bit of socializing here and there.

When you were drunk, you decided to take a seat at an empty table, smiling to yourself and just watching as people came and went.

“Well, what’s a pretty thing like you doing in a dirty bar like this?” Someone asked you, sitting beside you. He placed a beer in your hands and took a sip out of his own.

“Oh, I’m with my friends,” you said, eyeing the bottle in your hands wearily. You set it down, thinking you had enough for the night.

“Really? I only see you sitting here,” he said, scooting closer to you. You eyed him before scooting away. “Aren’t you going to buy the drink I brought you?”

“No, I’m good. I should probably go now. Thanks anyway,” you said quickly, stumbling to your feet. He gripped onto your wrist, sitting you back down. You finally got a good look at the man before you and realized that it was the man that gave you a new part a couple of weeks ago–Douglas.

“I said I’m good, so let me go,” you demanded, hoping that he would let go of you. He shook his head, drinking down the rest of his beer.

“Not until you drink up, sweet cheeks,” he said, smirking. You looked around the whole room, searching for Han or Chewbacca. Then you saw them, sitting together, laughing.

“Han!” You slurred loudly, hoping he would notice. He didn’t. Anxiety was bubbling through you, not knowing what to do. You wished you had brought your blaster, but it was back on the ship. With a shaky hand, you took the bottle and dropped it onto the floor.

“You did that on purpose,” he growled, tightening his grip on your wrist. Tears pricked the lids of your eyes as you knew that he would retaliate. He quickly stood, beginning to pull you to the exit. “You’re coming with me.”

“No, she’s not,” you heard Han say, punching Douglas, which caused him to fall to the ground, releasing your wrist. He was unconscious. The music stopped and people stared at the two of you before Han wrapped his arms around your shoulders, leading you out of the cantina.

Upon reaching the Falcon, you stopped Han, grabbing onto his vest and crying into his shoulder. He wrapped his arms around you soothingly.

“Han, I was so scared,” you sobbed, burying your face deeper into his shoulder. “I wasn’t even that scared when we were transporting the baby Nexus.”

Han looked down at you, sympathy glistening in his eyes. He rubbed your back, not used to you being upset.

‘It must be the booze,’ he thought to himself before sighing.

“Well, let’s get you to bed, yeah? When you wake up, we’ll be off of this planet,” he soothed, trying to cheer you up. “Come on.”

You stopped crying and walked into the ship with the help of Han. You stumbled about, but Han made sure to keep you standing until the both of you reached your bunk. He carefully laid you down onto the bed before removing your shoes.

“Now sleep,” he instructed, putting a blanket over you and tucking you in. Your cheeks grew warmer than they already were as you looked toward the man in front of you.

“But I’m cold,” you whined, pulling the blanket over you. Han sighed before throwing one of his jackets your way. You smiled, pulling it over your shirt before snuggling into the blanket. “Thanks, love.” Han blushed before patting your shoulder and walking away.

–

The next morning, Han woke up to the feeling of someone else in his bunk, their arms wrapped around him tightly. Looking over, he saw your mop of hair, slightly confused as to why you were in his bed, cuddling up to him. He shook you slightly. When your eyes opened, he could see the blush rise in your cheeks as you scrambled away from him, hitting the wall.

“Well, it appears that you wanted to cuddle up to me in the middle of the night,” Han smirked. You sat up, crossing your arms only to realize you were also wearing his jacket. Then your head gave a dull pound.

“What happened?” You had asked him, having no memory of what happened. He chuckled, getting out of his bunk and stretching. You looked across the aisle to see the sheets of your bunk in a mess.

“Well, some guy tried to kidnap you so I took you back here,” he explained, grabbing some clothing from the drawer underneath his bunk.

“Ok, but why am I wearing your jacket and why am I in your bed?” Han looked at you, a playful look dancing across his features.

“You said you were cold and you must have woken up after I went to sleep and climbed in bed with me,” he said, smirking. You coughed, knowing that you did get overly affectionate when you got drunk, but not to this extent. You hoped that you hadn’t told him about how in love you were with him. “Oh, and you just begged me to stay with you.”

Your cheeks were now the deepest shade of red as you heard his words. Your flung your hands up to your face, covering your cheeks.

“I hate you, Han Solo,” you groaned, not wanting him to know about your crush on him yet. He let out a hearty laugh as he walked away, satisfied by your reaction. You were going to get payback.

–

You sat in the seat next to Han in the cockpit as Chewbacca was taking a nap in his bunk. You flew silently, stealing quick glances at the man beside you, thinking up a plan.

“Han, you have a stain on that shirt,” you stated, glancing over his clean chest. He looked down, searching for the supposed stain.

“Where? I don’t see a stain,” he stated. You held your finger out, pointing to a random spot. When he looked at that spot you quickly raised your finger, surprised the smuggler sitting beside you. He squinted his eyes in your direction before looking ahead. You laughed loudly at his scowl.

“Why are you so childish?” He grumbled to himself, not caring that you didn’t hear him.

“Is it getting warmer in here?” You said, moving your hair away from your face and unbuttoning the top two buttons of your shirt. Han glanced at you from the corner of his eye quickly before looking back in front of him. You then sighed, wiping your forehead from the non existent sweat. You were not satisfied with the reaction so you took it further by taking your shoes and socks off and resting them on the button less console in front of you.

“I think you’ve finally lost your marbles,” Han directed towards you. You laughed lightly, unbuttoning the rest of your shirt, revealing a tank top that fit to your curves perfectly. A slight pink dusted Han’s cheeks.

“I’m gonna go get a drink,” you said, standing up and touching his shoilder, letting your hand trail over to his neck and linger as you walked away. That is what did it for Han.

When you sat back down, you looked over at Han, noticing how red his cheeks have become. He shifted uncomfortably under your gaze as he coughed.

“What’s got you hot and bothered, Solo?” You asked, beginning to eat an ice cold popsicle. Han looked over at you to retort and just as he was about to speak, he saw you eating up the frozen juice.

“I hate you, (f/n) (l/n),” he grumbled, cheeks on fire. You laughed, knowing that you had gotten your revenge from him embarassing you that morning.

–

"Rise and shine, (y/n). We're here," Han exclaimed, causing you to fall out of the seat you were sitting in. He chuckled as he walked out of the door with Chewbacca in tow. You grumbled, strapping your blaster into its harness on your belt before following the pair.

"Why are we even here?" You asked Han, annoyed that he didn't tell you once again why you were going somewhere.

"We have a meeting with a customer who's willing to pay a lot of money for us," Han stated. Your ears perked at the prospect of getting more money.

The three of you stumbled inside of the palace and was greeted by someone who you couldn't identify, but by his looks, you saw that he had to be the one in need of your services.

"Welcome, welcome. I suppose that you're Han Solo?" The man asked, gesturing towards Han. He smirked.

"The one and only," he replied, shaking the hand of the man.

"I need you to transport these boxes to the blackmarket on Naboo, Mr. Solo," he announced. He lead you to three boxes that were an average size. Confusion washed over you.

"What's the precious cargo?" You asked the man.

"I cannot reveal that tidbit, but I will pay 5,000 credits for your group to smuggle it," he proposed, causing Han to suddenly agree to the deal. The three of you grabbed a box and walked onto the Millennium Falcon, placing the boxes in the open space.

"Oh, and Mr. Solo, I'll be taking the non-hairy one as insurance," your employer said, sending guards to grab your arms. You felt them take your blaster and carry you off of the ship.

"I'm sorry, but no-can-do. (Y/n) is a part of the team," Han said, facing the rich man. Han had a serious look on his face, and the other dude just laughed.

"Oh? Then hand over the boxes," he spat maliciously. Han then went inside the ship and him and Chewbacca emerged with the three boxes and setting them haphazardly on the ground. Mr. Fancypants didn't like that one bit and he instructed the guards to take you away.

"You will not treat my items in that way without punishment, Solo," the man said. Chewbacca yelled out to you as he watched you struggle against your captors.

"Bite me," Han said, dashing behind the man and to your captors, shooting at their feet with his blaster. They fell, releasing you and you darted for the Falcon.

"Not so fast," the man said, grabbing you and holding your own blaster to your head. The both of you faced Han and Chewy. Your heart was beating quickly and Han darted foreward. "Not another step or somebody dies."

Han looked to chewbacca and then to you, the fear in your eyes reaching out to him. You were frozen in the arms of a deal gone south. Han suddenly shot and a second later, the man shot at Han, releasing you. You scurried to the Falcon as you watch both men callapse. Chewbacca howled as he ran to Han, carrying him onto the Falcon. Then you left.

--

"You're such an idiot," you told Han as you dressed his wounds. He was lucky the blaster only grazed his arm. "You should have just left me there and gone through with the mission."

"I wasn't going to leave you behind," Han said. You smeared soothing cream onto his wound.

"Well you should have. 5,000 credits is a lot and besides, I'm not that important," you said, voice raising in volume. Han retorted, now yelling.

"You are so important," you wrapped his arm in a bandage, not believing your ears. Han's voice then quieted down from your bickering. "You're important to me."

"Is the Han Solo, expressing his affection to me?" You asked him, taking his hand in yours. He smiled, leaning forward and kissing your cheek.

"Maybe. I like someone who is as big of a tease as me," he replied, causing you to snort a laugh.

[sad-trash-writing]

Bite Me, Ch. 4

AO3 Link

Death wasn’t as permanent—or as painless—as Daisy had been led to believe. She drifted back into consciousness, long enough to figure out that she was in a foreign room, before the heavy lure of unconsciousness pulled her back. Several times, she drifted awake, but never managed to keep her eyes open for long. The first time, she picked up more details of the room. It was dimly lit and homey, but nowhere she had ever seen before.

The second time she picked up the hazy sound of voices talking nearby. One sounded vaguely familiar, but she couldn’t make out words. Just mutterings. The next time there was someone standing by her bed, fiddling with things. The world seemed clearer, but she must still be groggy, because the woman by her appeared to have two small horns curling out of her head. The woman saw her and smiled. 

“Glad to see you’re finally awake. I’ll let your friends know,” she said. 

Daisy tried to ask, 'What the actual hell?' but her eyes slid closed involuntarily and she fell back asleep.

Finally, she woke up fully, though she wasn’t sure that was actually an improvement on unconsciousness. Her arms still burned like they were hovering over a fire and every breath sent a dull ache through her chest. 

Daisy also realized she wasn’t alone. Two people were in her room talking in hushed tones. One of the voices was very familiar by this point.

Jemma. 

Daisy forced her eyes open and was again greeted by the unfamiliar, but cozy room. The two voices immediately hushed once they noticed her. 

“Daisy? Oh, thank god you’re finally awake,” Jemma said. 

Daisy had a thousand questions running through her head. What happened? How did you find me? Where am I? Wait, finally?!

“How long have I been out?” Daisy asked.

Jemma frowned. “About three and a half days. We were starting to get concerned.”

We?

Daisy finally noticed the source of the other voice: it was Professor Coulson. “How are you feeling today, Daisy?” he asked.

Daisy cocked an eyebrow. “Like I got hit by a bus. No offense, Coulson, but why—”

“In addition to teaching in the history department, I’m one of the guidance counselors for students in the Erebus school. Given your unique situation, I felt it would be a good idea to be here to give you some information,” Coulson replied smoothly. “It doesn’t have to be immediately, though. You are still recovering.”

“Trust me, I’m more than ready for information,” Daisy replied. 

She tried to push herself up into a sitting position, but winced at the stabbing pain in her chest. 

Jemma darted to her side. “Careful! You have two fractured ribs.”

Jemma helped carefully slide Daisy into a more dignified position (as dignified as she could be in her loose hospital gown and bulkily bandaged arms) and she waited for Coulson to begin. 

“Jemma informed me that you’re already somewhat aware of our school’s…situation when it comes to our student body,” he stated. Jemma fidgeted with her hands and looked at the floor. “That’s unusual in its own right, but given your recent incident, we need to have a bit of a different conversation.”

Daisy didn’t like the sound of that. 

Coulson continued anyway. “I’m sure you can piece together that it was not a normal animal that attacked you. It was one of the students in our werewolf pack. We know of all the werewolves that attend this school and, rest assured, the perpetrator who attacked you will be discovered and properly disciplined. However—”

Of course, he couldn’t have left it at that.

“I’m sure you know that werewolf bites tend to carry certain…side effects. Unlike most interpretations in popular culture, it’s not a sure thing, though. There hasn’t been a lot of research on what causes the change, but there seems to be some genetic component.”

“So, that means…what exactly?” Daisy asked. 

Jemma cut in. “Essentially, if the specific genetic markers that enable the wolf transformation aren’t present in a person, the bite of a werewolf will have no effect on an individual. Other than some minor scarring of course,” she finished, hopefully. 

Daisy blinked a few times to process. “So what your saying is…I won’t turn into a werwolf unless I’m already a werewolf?”

Coulson and Jemma glanced at each other. “That’s one way of putting it.” Coulson shrugged. 

“How do we know for sure?” Daisy replied. 

Jemma and Coulson shared another glance. They really needed to stop doing that or Daisy was going to scream. 

“Unfortunately, we won’t know until the next full moon. If you don’t transform, then you’re in the clear. If you do—” Coulson trailed off.

“I get to have another monthly curse to worry about forever. Got it,” Daisy finished. She was trying to keep herself from freaking out, but this was a lot to take in for only being awake for about ten minutes. 

“We still have a few weeks before we have to think about that. When it gets closer to the full moon, we’ll have to discuss some things in greater detail. For now we have another issue to discuss.

“Normally, all of our non-human students live in Knight Hall at the edge of campus on a floor with members of similar species. Given your in-between status currently, we’re not quite sure where to put you. Your normal dorm won’t work in case of an incident, but we don’t want to prematurely move you in with the pack—” Coulson said. 

“She can stay with me,” Jemma blurted. “I have plenty of space in my apartment. I can keep an eye on her while she heals and gradually introduce her to the other half of the student population. If she does end up unchanged, she can be just like our other human confidants, and if not she’ll already be familiar with the department.”

Coulson nodded as he considered this. “Daisy, do you have any issue with that arrangement?”

Daisy shook her head. “Um…I’ll need to tell my roommate I’m moving out.”

“We’ll make sure she knows.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Daisy was forced to stay in the clinic a few days more to make sure her bite marks were healing. She quickly learned that, since this was a private clinic for the non-human students at the university, it was considerably nicer than an average hospital. Also, her nurse was a satyr, so that was fun. Jemma outright laughed at the face Daisy made when she realized she hadn’t been hallucinating the horns. 

When she was finally allowed to check out of the clinic, Jemma came to walk her to her apartment that Daisy would be staying in for the next month. Whatever reservations Daisy might have about bunking with a vampire were quickly forgotten when Daisy remembered that she might be a werewolf in a month. She was still unsure why Jemma was being so hospitable towards her when they barely knew each other (though, when she thought about it, she didn’t know much about her previous roommate, Bobbi, other than that she was a biology student and had a sizable sword collection that Daisy stumbled upon when looking for her liquor stash). 

Still, Daisy didn’t seem to have many options at this point and she wasn't going to turn down Jemma. She was starting to really like her. 

Daisy followed Jemma to the far side of campus towards a set of historic buildings. They walked beyond the buildings along a wrought-iron fence that seemed to enclose the whole campus until they came to a massive brick building with stone gargoyles on each corner. Out of the corner of Daisy’s eye, she swore she saw one of the gargoyles move. 

Jemma tapped an ID card on a panel near the door, which beeped and then slid open. The inside of the apartment building was nicer than any dorm Daisy had ever seen. Marble lined the walls up to the arched ceiling that seemed to extend continuously in all directions. Plush armchairs and couches formed a spacious common area, which was currently empty. 

A man sat at an ornate desk near the door and watched them with hawk-like eyes as they strolled towards the elevator. 

Jemma lived on the top floor. Daisy prayed that the elevator wouldn’t stop on any other floor on the way up. She really wasn’t prepared to deal with more supernatural nonsense today, especially when her legs were still shaking from having not supported her weight in nearly a week.

Luckily, they arrived on Jemma’s floor without incident. It was eerily quiet for a dorm. Normally, in Daisy’s building, there were students out at all hours, inventing new ways to surf down the halls or ding-dong-ditching their friends. Though, Daisy kept forgetting this wasn’t a normal dorm. 

Jemma noticed Daisy’s confusion. “I’m the only vampire who currently goes here. Since it’s separated by floor, I get this whole wing to myself.”

“Huh. Must be nice,” Daisy replied. She thought about how nice it might be to not have anyone making noise while she was trying to study for her history test.

  “It can be. It gets a bit lonely, though.”

Jemma swung the door open into her room. It was much larger than the average dorm and had a small sectioned off kitchen and living room area. The furniture looked like a mismatched set of items that were found at various garage sales, like an average college student’s living space. The only thing that immediately made the room look strange were the heavy blackout curtains draped over every window. 

“Bedroom’s this way,” Jemma announced, “I put your things in there already and the bottom set of drawers in the dresser is open for you.”

“What? I’m not going to kick you out of your room. I can sleep on the couch,” Daisy protested. 

“Nonsense, you’re my guest for the next month. Besides, I don’t sleep that much anyway,” Jemma replied, waving Daisy off. 

Daisy wanted to protest further, but another part of Jemma’s statement caught her attention. “Wait, my things?”

Jemma pushed open the bedroom door and Daisy saw a small stack of boxes with most of the things from her dorm room. Stuck to one of them was a small post-it note with a note that said, 'Get well soon -Bobbi.'

“Bobbi helped pack up most of your things when we told her about your situation,” Jemma said, “She was sad to hear you were moving out, but she understood it was for the best.”

Daisy smiled. Maybe once all this werewolf business cleared up, she could move back into the dorm. For now, though, she was eyeing the giant, plush-looking bed that took up the majority of Jemma’s room. So this building is where all that tuition money is going, she thought.

“I’ll let you get settled in. We could go get some dinner in a few hours if you’d like,” Jemma said. 

“Yeah, sounds good,” Daisy replied. 

Daisy waited until Jemma slipped out of the room and then flopped on the cushy bed and nestled in.

[mosylufanfic]

Personal Effects

O hai! Guess who's reading the end of the Rogue One novelization? *sob*

Personal Effects

Private Jessuk Ordan, Second Class, had mouthed off to the wrong person and got put on grunt work. While most of the base scrambled around in after-battle madness, he was stuck cleaning out the rooms and bunks of people who had died at Scarif.

Traditionally, battle buddies or superior officers picked up this duty. But today, nobody had the time except for a couple of wet-behind-the-ears privates who didn't know enough to help anywhere else.

It was dull, brainless work, packing and folding and discarding. Morbid, too, he supposed, but only for the first few rooms. After that, you got used to it - filling bags of trash for the huge industrial recycler and boxing up personal effects to be sent home.

For her part, Private Doriya Argita, also Second Class, thought it was interesting to see the things that got left behind. The notes scribbled on pieces of paper, the mementos of missions long-over, the cheap, broken necklace tangled up in dust in the corner, the coin or two that had sneaked under the bed, all of them last touched by hands that were gone.

"Just things," he said, tossing the necklace into the bin bound for the recycler, and making a note of the coins before stashing them in the valuable-objects envelope.

She was a very new private, her enlistment papers barely registered in the Alliance's heavily coded databanks.

(She had decided to join the Alliance six months ago after seeing the assassination of the Imperial governor whose policies had crushed her family's farm and livelihood. She'd watched him crumple from a sniper's gun during a live broadcast, and something like life, or rage, had flickered awake in the hopeless ashes of her heart. The Empire could be hurt. Stabbed. And she had decided in that moment that she was going to be one of the knives.

Nobody ever learned who the sniper was.)

Jessuk shook his head at her shiny-eyed idealism. A few more duty rounds like this one would knock some of that out of her, he thought world-wearily, ignoring the minor point that the clothes he'd packed up in the last room had seen more action than he had.

He checked his datapad for the next room number as they wended their way through the barracks. "Okay, it's this one."

"Private quarters," she noted with envy. "Must've been an officer."

"Yeah, it says captain here." He tapped the code into the door and it zipped open.

She stepped in, brows raising at the plain, neat room. Their little helper droid trundled after them, supplies swaying on its back. No personal effects, no holos or notes or clutter. "Huh. Are you sure we haven't been here already?"

"This one was Intelligence. They're never here, anyway."

Her eyes brightened. "Intelligence?"

He snorted at her. "You won't find any spy secrets, newbie. Draven's people have already been through." He surveyed the small room, eyes flicking over the desk with a couple of books and a few pencils stacked up, the bed neatly made, the drawers in the chest tightly closed. "Shouldn't take long."

She unfolded a sheet of plastic from the droid's bin, folding edges and fitting tabs together until it stood up into a cheap, flimsy box that she set on the desk. He printed out a label from his datapad and stuck it on the lid. Quartermaster, she noted. It meant the dead man hadn't had anybody to leave his things to.

That wasn't uncommon. People who joined the Rebel Alliance often broke all ties with home, and while every attempt was made to return possessions to the survivors, where security permitted, this room wasn't even the first one this hour to be labeled with that destination.

The box would go to the quartermaster's depot, where the contents would be cleaned, sorted, and the ones with use in them still would go to Rebels who needed them.

They stripped the bed, which was all Alliance-issue - no worn quilt or knitted blanket - and bagged it up for the laundry. There was a small, dark stain high up on the left side of the mattress, Doriya noted, and eventually decided it wasn't quite large enough to get special attention. She wondered what had happened.

(He had come back with a less-minor-than-he-wanted-to-admit blaster wound in his shoulder. He'd broken the scab open when he rolled onto his side in his sleep. He'd been so tired that blood had seeped quietly into the sheets for several hours before he woke up and went to get it tended to.)

Jessuk pulled the drawers open and tugged out worn shirts, patched here and there, the collars and the underarms starting to go yellow from old sweat. Most of them were borderline. A few tended toward new, still unstained and crisp. One particularly ragged one went right into the recycler.

(He had worn it to the Ring of Kafrene. The freshest tear, in one of the cuffs, was from where a rough edge of the ladder had caught the cloth as he was scrambling up and away from the stormtroopers, Tivik's body cooling on the plascrete below.)

Pants fared better, only a few of them frayed around the cuffs or worn at the knees. Most of them could be used again. On the other hand, several of the socks were so full of holes you could see daylight through. Most of them went into the recycler after the shirt. The underwear followed.

Doriya cleared the shelves of equipment, packing them into the box. A few extra blaster packs, each of them for a different make and model of weapon. A vibroblade ankle sheath, one strap broken. It could be repaired, probably.

(It would be, but not well. In a few years, it would break again and fall off a soldier's ankle, to be left behind in the icy corridors of Echo Base as the Rebels evacuated.)

A flask. A backpack with a few ration bars and a half-depleted medpac inside. Heavy leather gloves. An infantry helmet, the metal scarred and dull.

(In three years, it would be vaporized, when its wearer would be struck full-on from an AT-ST's cannon in the forests of Endor.)

She moved to the hooks on the wall and took down a dull brown jacket with a few fresh tears in odd places. She poked at them before folding it into the box, wondering if secret spy equipment had been sewn into the jacket, then removed by Draven's people sweeping the room.

(They had.)

Next was a long, heavy blue coat with a thick fur collar. It smelled damp and musty and a little smoky, from rain and explosions on a distant planet.

(After a thorough washing, it would go to a SpecForces sharpshooter, who had always coveted it but hadn't wanted to get it like that. Still, he would wear it through years of missions. Many, many years later, long after the Empire was gone, his daughter would cut the tattered mess of a coat into pieces. Most of it would go to rags, but the fur around the collar was sewn into a stuffed animal for her first baby, who would love it to pieces.)

Jessuk checked the shelf at the base of the nightstand and found a metal can full of pebbles. He looked up at Doriya. "Rocks?"

She shrugged. "Paperweights?"

(One from each planet he visited, in his early days. He'd always picked up the most colorful, interesting pebble he could find. He would line them up on sleepless nights, remembering the planets he'd been to.

He'd stopped doing that somewhere around his nineteenth year, when the pebbles became too numerous, too heavy, and he could no longer remember where they were all from, and he no longer cared to.

He kept the old ones, though.)

Jessuk started to drop the can into the bag for the recycler, and the droid made a little warning sound. The recycler's mechanisms couldn't handle stone.

He dumped it out the window instead. The pebbles pattered to the ground outside, soon lost in the gravel at the base of the building. He dropped the empty can in the recycler bag and the droid let it go by.

She checked the drawers at the desk. "You think it's true?" she asked. "About the Death Star?"

"The higher-ups seem to think so." He shrugged, as if to say that whatever the higher-ups thought was above his head, although he'd been listening to the gossip as avidly as she had.

She pulled out a toolkit with tiny, delicate screwdrivers, pinky-nail-sized gears, and welding torches that produced a pinpoint flame. She eyed it for a moment, then dropped it into the half-full box. She'd ask the quartermaster for it later. Maybe if she bought them a drink.

(He'd used it to work on Kay-Too, tinkering with mechanisms, adding some features, taking others away, repairing what got broken. The edges of the kit were worn shiny from living in his pocket. He'd left it because he hadn't foreseen any use for it, and thought somebody might be able to use it.

Doriya would.)

"They say that's why the fleet went to Scarif," she told Jessuk. She squinted up into the sky, still vaguely envious of the people who'd seen battle. But the edge of that envy had grown duller and duller today, as she packed up the remnants of peoples' lives.

"To see the Death Star?"

She dropped her voice. "To get the plans."

(How many people in the Rebellion really know that a rogue band of deserters went there first? How many people remember the man who pulled strings, called in favors, whispered in ears for a few feverish hours, just days ago?

In twenty years, the Republic's official history will call Scarif a planned and coordinated attack, because reality is a far messier thing than histories would like to admit.)

"Did they?"

"I heard yes."

(Deep in the bowels of the tower, listening to Kay-Too die over comms, flinging himself out into the dark, the burn of a blaster shot to his side, falling, lying on the cold steel grating dizzy with shock. Then, climbing, climbing through the cloud of pain that his body had become. His finger slippery with his own blood on the trigger, his arm trembling with exertion, but his aim true as he fired into Krennic's back. Holding himself up against a steel strut and watching Jyn throw the lever to transmit, then turn to him with the light of triumph in her eyes, and feeling peace well up like a cool, clear spring in his gut.

Yes.

They had got the plans.)

"And they say there's a weakness," Doriya went on. "That it can be defeated."

"If there's a weakness, why aren't we hitting it now?" Jessuk asked.

"Because the Princess received the plans, and she's been captured." She gave a little nod. "But we'll get her back. There's already missions in the stars to find her and retrieve her. That's what I hear."

Jessuk shook his head at her. "People say a lot of things around you, don't they?"

She lifted a shoulder and let it drop. "I listen."

(In about six months, when she'd added the skill of silence to her aptitude for listening, Draven would offer her a position. She would accept.)

Doriya looked around. "Miss anything?"

He checked under the bed, in the drawers, behind the desk. "All clear."

(He would survive the war and retire gratefully to civilian life, telling stories of his time in the Rebel Alliance to get free drinks at bars and snare the attention of good-looking men. After his marriage, he would take a government job, on Hosnian Prime.)

She closed the box and sealed it, setting it outside the door. A cargo droid would be along to scoop the box up, scan the label, and convey it to the quartermaster. He added the bag for trash (black) and the bag for the laundry (white).

They departed, leaving the door open. The helper droid whirred around for a few moments, sucking up dust and dirt, before it trundled out the door too. The faint whine of its motors faded into the distance.

The air in the room stirred and settled. The glare of the gas giant spilled orange light across the clean floor and the bare desk, the stripped bed and the empty drawers.

Like all good spies, Cassian Andor was gone, as if he'd never been there in the first place.

(The Death Star will explode.

The Rebellion will fight on.

The Empire's banner will be torn down.  

This is not too high a price to pay.)

FINIS

[gaytrojangirls]

Chapter Two

Prologue | Chapter One

When Sara woke the next morning it was to Laila Dermott’s soft snoring. She yawned, interlacing her fingers and stretching up towards the ceiling. Looking around, Sara took stock. She was still partially in her clothing from yesterday, too far on the left side of tipsy and high on the adrenal rush of a party to bother changing the night before. Laila was fully pajamaed, sprawled out on her bed like she had been fighting with the bed sheets and they had won. Annabeth, on the other hand, was nowhere to be seen.

Without bothering to go to the bathroom for privacy Sara began to change out of her tight-laced romper and into something more comfortable when she stopped cold. Scrawled right across her abdomen was a myriad of words standing out in stark black.

Beautiful.

Funny.

Smart.

Gorgeous.

Amazing.

Sara quickly took stock of the rest of her body, finding Unfairly Tall twisting around her calf and Can I listen to her laugh forever? across her shoulder blade and creeping up towards her neck. The small black heart on her ankle that marked the soulmated was no longer a dull black but was instead a shining bright red. A lighthouse in the darkness that clearly marked Sara Alvarez as loved.

Sara couldn’t breathe. Her soulmate had practically written a thesaurus entry across her body for Incredible and Sara hadn’t been thinking about anyone but Laila Dermott last night. As if sensing that the backliner was thinking about her, Laila began to stir. Sara practically dove for her chest of drawers to pull on a t-shirt and pair of sweats.

“Morning, Dermott,” she said, trying for casual and mostly succeeding.

“Jesus shit, what time is it?” Laila asked, rubbing her eyes and blinking blearily.

“Just after eight,” Sara said. Every inch of her felt claustrophobic and contained and itching to move. “I’m going to go get us some coffee,” she offered. “Think Annie would want some?”

Laila pushed herself up just enough to look over at the top bunk above Sara where the other girl would’ve been sleeping and shrugged. “You’re lucky she didn’t hear you calling her that,” Laila said and Sara just laughed.

“Go back to sleep,” Sara said. “I’ll get the coffee.”

Sara wasn’t the only one searching for morning caffeination. As she jogged down the steps she almost ran straight into who she assumed to be another freshman. The guy was short, it was no wonder Sara hadn’t seen him, the kid didn’t even come up to her shoulders.

“Lo siento,” the boy said, looking up, startled. Sara felt her eyebrows jump in surprise at the sudden burst of Spanish. The boy’s cheeks when red when he realized his slip of the tongue, but Sara smiled.

“ No need to be sorry ,” she replied back in the language she grew up knowing. English was second tongue to her, having grown up in Arizona, surrounded mostly by her extended family and others of the same Hispanic heritage. She knew USC was known for its diversity standards, but still, it felt nice knowing there was someone else on this team who could understand her on a cultural level in more ways than one.

“Still, I practically ran you over, I feel bad,” he said, switching back to English. His accent wasn’t too heavy, but she could still hear the familiar roll of his ‘R’s.

“You couldn’t run me over if you tried,” she replied, smirking, “but if you feel bad, show me where to find cafe around here and we’ll consider it even.”

“There's a shop down the block one of them showed me yesterday,” he said, and he's gone back to being quiet. Everything about this boy was small; he held himself so as not to be noticed, a mouse of a thing, and even his eyes appeared small behind his wide rimmed glasses that did nothing to compliment him.

“I'm Sara, by the way,” she said as they descend the rest of the stairs. “Sara Alvarez.”

“Peter Solis,” he says, smiling his little smile.

Sunshine? she thought, mentally translating his last name. It was fitting somehow. His dark freckled face had obviously seen a lot of California suns and Sara got the feeling that when he smiled it would light up the world.

They walked silently across campus to a small one-manned coffee shop Peter had spotted. Sara was sure this place would be hoping once school got up and running but for now it was just the sports teams and all was quiet. Sara looked up at the menu only to realize she didn’t know what either of her roommates would like. She bit her bottom lip, thinking for a moment, before shrugging.

“I’m going to need a mocha, french vanilla latte, and chai tea latte, please. All large. And three blueberry muffins,” Sara said to the bleary-eyed cashier with a golden hoop pierced through their nose. When in doubt, get generic. Odds are out of the three at least one of them was going to end up happy. “And whatever Shortie wants.”

Peter’s eyes widened when he realized that she was talking about him.  

“Uh, small green tea, please,” he said, shuffling his feet nervously.

“Make it a large,” Sara told the cashier, rolling her eyes. Of course, the pipsqueak drank tea. As they took a seat at one of the small tables Peter kept watching her nervously. He was halfway hiding behind his dark brown curls that had escaped his ponytail and fell loosely around his face.

“You didn’t have to do that you know.”

“We’re teammates. An extra three bucks isn't going to kill me, and anyways, you look like you could use the sugar. You’re, like, drooping. Like a sad plant.” Peter couldn’t stop the laugh that burst forth from his throat.

“Did you just liken me to a lichen?” he says, and this time he was grinning.  

“Depends, did you really just use the word ‘liken’?”

Peter just rolled his eyes, but he was still smiling. Sara was right, his smile lit up the entire coffee shop.

As they went to collect their orders Sara couldn’t help but laugh - she didn’t even try to stop herself. Written across Peter’s cup in black sharpie was “Shortie.” His face turned a delightful shade of pink that caused Sara to laugh even harder.

As they walked back to the dorms, words filled the silence this time. It was just simple questions, nothing but idle chatter, but it still felt good to be getting to know someone whose life she’d be a part of for the next five years. Peter was a history major to Sara’s business degree and they actually grew up not far from each other. Sara in Arizona and Peter just a few miles from her town on the opposite state line.

As they parted at the dorms Peter looked to Sara, looked down at his cup of tea, and smiled. “Thanks, teammate,” he said. As he walked away Sara heard him mutter, “I’m not that short.”

“Yep, keep telling yourself that, Shortie,” Sara called back with a roll of her eyes. Peter laughed as he took the stairs to the boy's dorm two at a time.

When Sara arrived on the fourth floor, Laila was already dressed in a pair of jean shorts that were fraying stylishly at the edges and a white shirt with three small cactuses embroidered across the front. Annabeth had reappeared, sporting a pair of yoga pants and a sweat-stained t-shirt. Sara raised her eyebrows.

“Well, you’re on top of things. Coffee?”

“Please,” Laila said, jumping up from where she had been sitting on top of her desk. “Whatcha bring me?”

“Mocha, French Vanilla, or Chai Tea. Take your pick.”

There was a mischievous glint in the other girl’s eyes as she started to grin. “Surprise me,” she said, closing her eyes dramatically and holding out her hand to receive a cup. Even Annabeth had to let loose a giggle at the silly display. Sara just rolled her eyes, smiling, and picked a random cup to place in her hand.

“Mocha for Laila. What about you, Beth?”

“Just Annabeth,” she corrected. “And Vanilla, please. What do I owe you?”

“You can pay me back by going to change your clothes. You smell like sweat and work out. We don’t have to smell like that until tomorrow,” Sara said, shooing Annabeth towards her chest of drawers. The freshman just rolled her eyes but obligingly grabbed a new pair of pants and a shirt from her pile and retreated to the bathroom.

--

All of the freshmen girls, Anya and Naomi included, were on the receiving end of a mass text sent out by Diana around 10:30 that morning.

Diana: Lunch in the lounge, floor 3; 11:30. Be there. Be square. Etc.

To which Beatrice - call me Bea, I hate my full name - had responded:

You’re about to meet your new best friends.

Sara had looked over at Laila with raised eyebrows, but the other girl just shrugged. “Older teammates maybe?” she had suggested, but when they entered the lounge Sara realized that was not the case.

Loud laughter could be heard as they made their way down the hallway and this was the source: crowded around a tv screen was a gaggle of girls and one, lone guy. A tall, dark skinned girl was perched on the edge of the sofa arm, holding a gamecube controller tight in her hands as she cussed at the technicolor screen.

“Oh fuck you, Donkey Kong,” she said, leaning back against the sofa and crossing her arms. Sitting cross legged in another chair was the obvious victor. Her dark brown hair was cut in a short bob and her winning smile was as sharp as her eyeliner. Just as she was about to open her mouth to say something she was cut off by an excited squeal.

“Ohhh, new girls are here!” a blonde said, her ponytail twisted into a knot near the top of her head. She waved the freshmen Exy players excitedly into the lounge. Sara couldn’t help but smile at the girl’s obvious enthusiasm. At the blonde’s words, the rest of the gaggle looked up.

The tallest girl in the room with hair shaved down to her midnight black skin smiled welcomingly, in sharp contrast to the girl who had been cursing so colorfully not a minute before. She eyed the group with carefully wary eyes that hardly screamed welcome. The blonde stood from her seat and stuck out a hand to greet Sara - the impromptu leader of the exy girls - before turning to the rest.

The guy, on the other hand, kept himself slightly separate from the group, but was still smiling. Reserved, but not quite wary. Careful, Sara would say, but it didn’t fit quite right.

The exuberance of the group had been an easy distraction from the more superficial details, such as the matched jackets they all wore. The red, zip up hoodies were all embroidered with a golden “USC Cheer” on the backs. Ah , Sara thought as she took in the group with a new light.

No wonder ‘careful’ didn’t seem like the right adjective, all of these people threw themselves in the air as an extracurricular.

“Let's do introductions, shall we?” the black woman, their obvious leader, said. “I’m Margo, cheer captain extraordinaire. Junior here at USC. And these are my girls. Let’s do intros, shall we?” she said, motioning to the blonde standing next to her with adoring eyes.

“I’m Kensie,” she said. “Junior cheer captain. It’s real nice to meet y’all. And these are...”

“Jordan.” The darker skinned girl held up two fingers in acknowledgment.

“Elise.” The girl with the dark brown bob waved, flashing a friendly smile.

“And Teddy.” The lanky, redhead smiled.

Embracing her role of impromptu leader, Sara reached out a hand to Margo first and then Kensie. “It’s nice to meet you,” she said. “I’m Sara, new freshman backliner. We’re all from the Exy team, but I’m guessing you knew that?”

“Yeah,” Margo said. She smiled easily at the girls, her bright red USC jacket complementing her dark skin nicely. “I’m friends with your captain, Diana, and we’re pretty big on intra-team relations here. So consider this just a quick get together with some of our new freshman. It’s really nice to meet you, Sara. It’s nice to meet all of you, actually.”

“Ditto,” Laila said, being the next to hold out her hand to the cheerleader. “Laila; new goalkeeper, dog person, and blueberry ice cream addict.”

“Well, it was nice to meet you,” Annabeth said before abruptly turning on her heels only to find the pathway blocked by the overly zealous junior captain. There was a determined glee in Kensie’s eyes, even as she frowned. Sara had a brief moment where she felt like she could see exactly who this blonde cheerleader was: tall, confident, and just as in love with her cheerleading career as any of them were in love with Exy.

“You know, we’re just as much a part of your team as your fellow murder lacrosse junkies. As our captain,” she said, looking towards Margo with something akin to hero worship, “is quite fond of saying, ‘how far we will go is dependent on how much we trust one another.’ So yeah, maybe we’re not on the field with you but we are with you every single step of the way.”

“I’m not actually sure if I stole that from Diana or if she got it from me,” Margo added when Kensie had said her piece. “But the point stands. We’re here to be your friends. So let’s be friends.”

Annie didn’t quite manage not to roll her eyes but she did manage a smile. “Yeah,” she said more to the floor than the Margo. “I guess that doesn’t sound like a bad plan.”

Kensie’s smile was pure glee as Annie relented.

“Your pep talks are improving,” Margo told her junior captain with unabashed pride. Sara didn’t think it was possibly but Kensie’s smile got even wider.

“Did you know that the word trust appears 134 times in the King James Bible?” Naomi said brightly, if slightly out of nowhere. Sara and Laila’s eyes met and both blinked in vague confusion but Naomi interrupted the silence. “Is that Mario Kart?” she asked.

Jordan grinned, a wicked smirk crossing her face as she grabbed the remote from Elise’s hands. If Jordan heard the girl’s squawk of produce she firmly ignored it as she offered up the remote like she was throwing down the gauntlet.

“Yes. Now sit. It’s time to see what you Exy girls are made of.” There was a challenge in the cheerleader’s eyes and something inside Sara felt alive with the dare. Video games weren’t necessarily her battlefield, but she was a junkie for friendly and not-so-friendly competition alike.

“Oh, we’re made of plenty,” Sara challenged. “I play winner.” The exy girls sat themselves around the tv, draping themselves among the cheer squad, a sense of friendship settling among them.

--

Sara was awake nice and early the next morning, despite her body’s protests. Every alarm in Exy dorms was going off in unison as it was time to rise and shine. Annie was the only one who didn’t seem to have any trouble with the early wake-up call as she jumped from her bunk and took first claim of the bathroom before Laila even had her eyes open.

As Sara changed, again not bothering with the privacy that might’ve been afforded to her if she had gotten to the bathroom first, she searched her body for any obvious new words.

Much to her amusement, ‘Potty mouth,’ was scrawled across her bicep and was followed quickly by ‘I want to kiss that mouth.’ Sara felt her face burning as she pulled a t-shirt on, covering the words.

Somewhere in the not-too-far distance, Sara heard someone yelling. Hopefully, that wasn’t a usual occurrence.

“Someone tell them to shut up,” Laila moaned from her bunk, contemplating whether if she stared at the ceiling long enough she would magically become dressed.

“I don’t think that’ll help. Come on Sunshine, up and at ‘em.”

Eventually, with much fanfare and what sounded like even more screaming matches from down the hall, all the Freshman girls tumbled out into the hall to find Diana looking as perfectly poised as ever with a cheery Beatrice standing behind her and Vivian nowhere in sight.

“I can take two in my car, Bea’s got the rest of you,” Diana said and then started down the stairs towards the parking lot.

Arriving at the court felt like the moment Sara had been waiting for for years but didn’t know it until now. Excitement swelled up inside of her and when she took a look at Laila she saw the same eagerness mirrored. There was really only one word for the way Laila’s eyes crinkled at the edge of her smile, dimples shining bright, and that word was adorable . They got out of the car and headed inside, Diana leading them but leaving the freshmen to their own private moments.

Both girls turned to watch as they passed the plexiglass walls and got their first, real view of the court. Red and gold lines painted on spacious floors with a wide open goal at each end.

Sara could see it now: her on the court, Laila in the goal, the rest of the red-and-gold clad bodies forming defensive lines and holding the offense. The scoreboard would light up. The crowds would cheer. This would be their legacy, their championship, their life.

“You ready for this?” Laila asked, turning to Sara and drawing her out of the daydream. There was no hiding the obvious nerves in Laila’s voice as she looked at Sara with nothing but naked trust.

“I’ve never been more ready,” Sara said. She squeezed Laila’s shoulder gently, smiling. “We’re gonna be great, Laila. You and me, on this court, it’s gonna be great.”

Sara meant every word.