#when i thought these were going to be socks or hats i was all in. somehow for a scarf im having more trouble.

[graceisinthelibrary]

Oh, i love the fact that you are another round of prompts! The last ones were amazing!

Could you write 5 or 6 please?

Hi Honey,

thank you for asking :-) and your wish is my command! I chose no 5.

Here we go:

The wind was the culprit. The breeze, born from the heavy summer heat, had taken it, smashing it completely. A storm was coming up and she had opened the back door and the windows to get rid of the warmth stuck in the rooms.

The scullery was always the hottest room of the house; a blessing in the rough winter months and a nuisance in the summer. Now that she looked at the broken pieces of the photoframe on the floor, Audrey scolded herself for her headlessness. The frame was broken, the shards of the glass were scattered all over the floor. They were a danger for the soft dog paws and for Jimmy who spent most of his days running, not walking. 

“Bugger,” Audrey mumbled as she kneeled down and began to pick up the pieces. “I’m so sorry.” Speaking with Evelyn’s photo had become a habit that had rubbed up on her from Siegfried. He often talked to Evelyn’s photo, maybe not as much as he used to, but every now and then, he was sitting in the old arm chair in his study and just talked to her. Mostly it was just some natter about his day, sometimes he sought advice. 

And now the photo frame was broken. “I’m so sorry,” she repeated. She had placed the frame on her desk, after she had recovered it from the dispensary. She had given it a proper cleaning, because one could never know what fluids were stuck in the delicate ornaments after it had spent some time in there. And then the wind had torn it down. Just like that. One breeze and it was gone. 

“For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone…” She thought about the psalm and felt tears rising. 

She dreaded the facial expression when he learned that the frame was gone. He wouldn’t blame her. He never did, but she could easily picture the sadness on his face once he learned about its fate. 

As she collected all the broken pieces and used her dustpan and hand brush for the rest, she kept talking to Evelyn’s counterfeit and promised her to buy a home for her portrait as soon as possible. Maybe not exactly the same, but the most beautiful she could find. Maybe on her next trip to Skipton or Brompton. 

Through the open door she heard the thunder rumble outside and through the window she could see that the clouds had become heavy. Soon the storm would break loose and Siegfried hadn’t come home yet. 

“I always worry when he’s out in bad weather,” she told Evelyn’s picture that was now lying on the kitchen table, unscathed. “But I reckon you know all about that.” 

The house was so silent that it began to scare her. The dogs, who probably sensed the nearing thunderstorm, were probably hiding upstairs in one of the bedrooms, Helen and Jimmy were at Heston. James and Tristan had gone to the Drovers for a pint before dinner. 

The rain began without forewarning. Heavy, thick drops were hitting the windows and the wind that entered the house felt chilly. As she went to the door she saw the Rover as it raced around the corner. Relief filled her chest and she smiled at Siegfried as he stormed across the yard. She stepped aside, ready to take over his tweet jacket and hat. 

“It’s really coming down!” He complained as he dropped his bag to the floor and shook like a wet dog. A small puddle was forming around him as he took off his soaked shoes. Even his socks were wet. 

“I’ll get you a towel,” she said as she placed his jacket over the rest of the chair so it could dry.  

He spotted the photo on the table before she could tell him. A blush, fierce and fretful, creeped over her cheeks. “It were an accident,” she said softly when he picked it up. 

“I wanted to clean it and then…” 

“It’s alright,” he said. “Don’t worry.” He held the photo with both hands, running his thumbs over the beloved face of his wife.  

“I’ll get a new frame as soon as possible,” she promised as she stepped next to him. “It were a silly mistake. I didn’t pay attention…” 

“I know.” He placed the photo back on the table and turned to Audrey who threatened to burst into tears. With a tender smile on his face he wrapped his arm around her shoulder and placed a kiss on her forehead. 

“She would never blame you and neither do I.” 

Audrey nodded and sniffed. Evelyn’s memory wasn’t as precious to her as to him, but she had grown to love the woman who had been his first wife. Evelyn had loved him first and she wouldn’t want him to forget about her. 

“Why don’t we buy the next frame together?” He suggested as she leaned her cheek against his shoulder. 

“I would love that,” she whispered. 

He cupped her face with both his hands and brushed his thumbs over her cheeks. “And I, my dearest, love you.” 

[queerinette]

i got a PhD in always running away

hey @carelisswriting. i'm your way-past-christmas @mlsecretsanta. hope you're hungry...

They make it a pattern. 

They see each other, whether on the streets or a club or just at a clothing boutique because their patterns and lives have become mirrors from years of falling in and out of love. Marinette will smile at Chloé, walk over and greet her as if it hasn’t been mere months since they yelled at each other. Chloé will run her eyes over the shape of Marinette, from the slope of her nose to the curve of her lips, the shadow of her eyelashes and the gentle motions of her hand. 

An offer to grab a coffee leads them to Marinette’s bedroom—always Marinette’s bedroom—and then they’ll be memorizing each other’s bodies and swallowing the gasps of the other as if it wasn’t just weeks ago that they were yelling and cursing out each other’s names. They’ll spend 24 hours like that, talking in the spaces between to catch the other up. They’ll mold themselves together again, foolishly believing that this time it’ll be permanent, this time they won’t begin to breed hate in their hearts.

They’ll grab dinner three nights a week, buy each other scarves and hats and bracelets, giggle and call each other “girlfriend” with a flirtatious twist. Their friends will roll their eyes and ignore them constantly grabbing each other whenever they’re in public, will avoid bringing up their disheveled hair and clothing whenever they disappear together. Most days they’ll spend their nights together, make everything that belongs to one belong to the other too, as if this time they’ll last. 

And then the beginning of the end will come. A few months in, Chloé will start distancing herself, and Marinette will throw herself into designing. Their friend group will be split into two, with one half listening to Chloé complain about Marinette not giving her the time of day, and the other half listening to Marinette vent about Chloé shutting her out. They won’t talk to each other at all, will never acknowledge that if they don’t talk they’ll be shouting, have never thought to break their habit of resorting to resentment. 

There’s no more sitting in the back making out in movie theaters, no more silly fashion shows where the pièce de résistance is something completely ridiculous like a left sock or Marinette’s freckles or Chloé’s left forefinger nail. It’s empty silences and passive-aggressively setting their keys down on the counter. It’s sleeping alone in their own places, inhaling each others’ scent left on the bedding. They never think to themselves I can fix it, never say I should reach out. They leave that responsibility to the other, always have, blaming each other and pointing fingers the way they used to when they were younger. 

Marinette will swipe away the house key she gave to Chloé, and then show up a week later to find her tearing at all of Marinette’s gifts. They’ll yell and scream, shouting insecurities until all that’s left is shattered glass disguising their heart. Marinette will collect herself, set down the key she has to Chloé’s place and walk out. Chloé always waits three hours after Marinette leaves before breaking down, letting herself feel numb until the tears making their way down her face burn. 

And then they’ll avoid each other, go out of their way to stay away from the others’ favorite places until enough time has passed that they’re not worried about things being awkward. 

Then they run into each other, and the clock starts all over again.

find the rest on ao3

[unopenablebox]

plausibly im going to go with these, warp in the solid weft in the variegated. my main hesitation is that if the weft actually looks terrible when i start working it up, i almost definitely don't have anything else around that will go with this warp, and then i will have a puzzle to deal with. my other main hesitation is that it's insanely bright and i don't actually know anyone who seems like theyre desperate to wear this color combination and im somewhat worried its busyness will compete with being a nice exercise in herringbone

[airybcby]

Did You See Me On TV?

( bllk boys and being in a long distance relationship )

a/n — thought about this and just HAD to write. no long distance relationship experience, but def some long distance friendship experience. rather short, but i had to get it out.

content — fem! reader, set in the ' Neo Egoist ' era, some characters repeated, all characters 18+, angst, fluff, maybe some ooc for some people??, nicknames 'love' , 'babe' , 'baby' , ' my girl ' , and 'sweetheart' used

synopsis — yes, he's a world famous soccer player, but he's also your boyfriend. how does this effect your relationship?

⋆.˚✮🎧✮˚.⋆ ' you tell yourself it's fine, ' ⋆.˚✮🎧✮˚.⋆

✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ the... ' radio silence '

it's been a month since your boyfriend had left to go play for the soccer team he'd been assigned to, and what had you heard from him?

...complete and utter silence.

you understood he was busy now, you really did, but he hadn't even called while he'd been gone. any text he sent was no more than 3 words.

you were still in love with him, but was he in love with you anymore? had he forgotten all about you? was there another girl that was better than you?

the promise the two of you had made before he left sat on your tongue like lead now.

" you'll come back whenever you can, right? " you'd asked him. " for you? always. i couldn't imagine a life without you. i promise i'll call every chance i get. "

you stared at your phone, the text you'd sent him before his game started staring back at you...mocking you.

you: good luck, love!! i'm rooting for you from home! i love you, have fun, don't get hurt. call me when you can <3

it was almost pitiful. three almost exact texts sat above that one, and he hadn't even bothered to read them until after the game, simply replying with a...

him <3 : thanks

and no, if you were wondering, he hadn't ever called you.

and here you were, like a fool, curled up in your bed watching his game on live TV, watching as he made his second goal of the day.

maybe, just maybe, he'd call you after this one.

✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ SAE ITOSHI, isagi yoichi, RIN ITOSHI, oliver aiku, OTOYA EITA, rensuke kunigami

✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ the... ' a complete mess '

he'd been gone a month, and you can't count a single day he hasn't called you three times at minimum. you'd been together for a while, but you never realized how much he relied on you to do basic everyday tasks for him.

"babe? do you know where i usually keep my long socks?" you heard come from your phone speaker as you were trying to do your own homework, mind you.

" usually in the middle of your top drawer next to your underwear. unless you've changed it. " you stated, he'd asked you this question every single time he had a game since he had left, but you wouldn't dare expect him to remember that.

" you're the best, baby. what would i do without you? " your boyfriend asked as he pulled socks out of his drawer, propping his phone up on the bedside lamp as he slid the socks onto his feet.

" lose your head, probably. " you joked, looking up from your work to admire him.

yes, everyone got to see him as the big, bad soccer player on TV, but with you? he seemed like a completely different person, not someone who could get a hat trick and also simultaneously asking where their phone is while it's in their hand.

" your games soon, love. you gotta get going. " you helpfully reminded him, as if you were his personal alarm ( you were but that's besides the point )

" ah crap, thank you baby. i'll call you after i win," he said cheekily. " i'll score a goal just for you, so make sure you watch!"

" you know i will. call you later, i love you. " you reflected his smile through the phone. " i love you too! " he repeated. and just as you were about to press the 'end call' button...

"oh, baby? do you remember where i put my jersey?"

yeah, without you he'd be a train wreck.

✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ NAGI SEISHIRO, bachira meguru, HIORI YO, gin gagamaru, ZANTETSU TSURUGI, ranze kurona

✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ the... ' basically married '

it'd been a month since your boyfriend had left to go play professional soccer, and out of the four games he had played, you'd been flown out for three of them.

" do you like it? " he asked giddily, as if he was a child on christmas morning waiting to open presents. but instead of a gift, it was him showing you the hotel room he'd gotten you so you could watch his game this week too.

" you're too sweet to me, love. i would've been happy just sitting at home and cheering you on from there. " you told him. " nope! you're no longer allowed to watch the games from home," he said as if it was a fact.

oh, soccer players and their superstitions.

" even the whole team agrees! my girl is our lucky charm! "

the one game you missed, because you had a big test may i add, they lost. it wasn't a horrible loss, no, they went into additional time and lost 5-4.

your shock and confusion must have been written all of your face, because he just laughed. " c'mon sweetheart, why don't you just come live with me here ? "

many reasons, actually. you still had school, it was across the world (not really but it felt like it ), your family, your friends.

he knew all of this, of course. there usually wasn't a day that you seriously considered it. considered being here, with him, instead of having to facetime and miss him.

one day, you would, but not now...you think.

"oh, hush. you gotta get going, you have a game to win." you huffed, pushing at his shoulder to hopefully get him going out the door.

"alright, alright. i'll come back with you after the game, sweetheart. i love you, see you after my win! "

and win he would, because he swore to himself that if he won this game the velvet box that was hiding in his dresser would finally be able to come out.

but, hey, even if he didn't win, would you say no to the ring he had custom made for you?

✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ REO MIKAGE, isagi yoichi, YUKIMIYA KENYU, chigiri hyoma, nijiro nanase, BARO SHOEI

⋆.˚✮🎧✮˚.⋆ ' you're just in love ' ⋆.˚✮🎧✮˚.⋆

this was really written on a whim, but i hope yall liked it!

likes, comments, and reblogs appreciated!

[theblacklewinsky]

Note: Hey y'all! I hope y'all enjoy, the next one might be submissive Terry idkidk 🫣 kinda hate this one.

Perfect Gentleman. | Aaron Pierre.

Gentle!Terry Richmond x Black!Female Reader

Warnings: MNDI!! this story is 18+ with depictions but not limited to; sexual content ( penetrat!on, oral s3x ( m receiving), extreme language (cursing, sexual references) established relationship, slight daddy kink if you squint. Not proofread!

Summary: terry's been the perfect gentleman, maybe a little too gentle.

swear you can have me, you really one-of-one.

how you so nasty? you really one-of-one.

You eagerly scratched the itch away in your bitten up ankles. The mosquitoes out here in the Black Bayou had torn your exposed ankles up—and this was why camping wasn't your thing. You'd never complain though, any excuse to be with Terry was a good one.

"I told you to wear long socks," he chuckled looking back you and at how you'd scratched the skin on your ankles red, "all that gardenin' you do and you out here with no socks on," he softly lectured as you watched him pitch the tent, at his demand. He was such a gentleman.

You'd been dating Terry for over four months, you've both went on a plethora of dates, had the steamy first kiss, and even spent a night at each others apartment, but you still hadn't fucked yet. Was it you? You knew you had an Oscar worthy performance of your coy-innocent act that Terry ate up all of the time, but you weren't a prude. You couldn't count how many times you'd hinted, and seduced only to be met with more gentleness.

And you loved how patient, protective, and gentle he was with you. He was everything you'd practically asked for when you started dating. A nice man, a sweet man—and you got it, a full blown golden retriever boyfriend. He had so many amazing qualities, he was always on time arriving fifteen minutes early. Something he said was one of the most useful things he learned from his time in the Marine Corps. He was a full blown de-escalator, he never wanted to argue with you, always communicating as calmly as he could before coming to an understanding with you. He was gentle. But maybe he was too gentle? You wanted Terry in the worst ways. It didn't help that he stayed in good shape, gym four times a week, and his infinite morning runs kept him in tip-top shape.

You pouted, squinting your eyes as you looked at Terry from underneath the brim of the Nike bucket hat you'd retrieved from him. Although he was pitching the tent and the sun was currently beating down on him, he decided that, you, sitting in the shade doing nothing, needed the hat more. Such a man.

"You said come comfortable, and I garden in my crocs—that's what I came in!" You defended your reasoning for not wearing the socks that he did tell you to pack last night over a quick FaceTime call, but he did say come comfortable in the same sentence. "These mosquitos are relentless, baby, look at my ankles!" You frowned looking at how red and irritated the skin has gotten there even on your deep brown skin.

Of course Terry stopped his meddling with the tent and came over to assess your so badly injured ankles. He tsk'd softly his big hands cradling both of your ankles gently. Now push them behind my head! you eagerly thought feeling him touch you at all always sent shocks and shivers through your body.

"They eatin' my baby up," he somberly acknowledged rubbing his thumbs where the bites were firmly, "you put bug spray on like I told you?"

You nodded. "Yeah, just go and finish the tent," you dramatically sighed waiting to eagerly scratch at the bites, "I'll just be sitting over here, itchy, getting ate up." At least something was eating you up.

He brought your left ankle up to his lips casually, placing a soft kiss there before setting the both of them back down carefully. You almost moaned, it had been way too long. "stop scratchin' at em, you makin' em worse."

You looked at him, batting your eyelashes at him a dazed nod following right behind. He was so gorgeous, and it didn't help that he was so sweet and treated you like the absolute brat you were. He continued on with his quick work with the tent and you continued on with your sneaky scratching. After it was perfectly pitched, he got you inside as soon as it was done to rub a bit of alcohol on your itchy ankles and making you put on a pair of his socks that were way too big for you.

You frowned looking down at your legs later that night as you both set around the campfire, that you had gotten started. You hadn't forgotten all the survival tips your father had shown you. Terry focused on cooking the fish he and you caught earlier from the pier. He'd cleaned it and dissembled it himself. "These are puttin' a damper on my outfit, so not cute."

Terry chuckled, quickly flipping the searing fish over in the pan. Your eyes flickered over to him. "What?"

"You so country," he commented through a light chuckle, "damper?"

"That's not country!" You defended through a smile. "Everybody says damper!"

"Nobody says damper,"

"Does too!"

"Why you gotta be such a brat? Why you act like that?" He teased playfully, holding his hand out to you only to pull you up from your chair and into his lap. "Hm?" He hummed nuzzling his faced into your neck where he playfully nipped at the skin on your neck, knowing the ticklish effect it had on you.

You laughed hunching your shoulder up to push him away from the area, "stop!" The assault lasted a few more minutes before he reluctantly stopped, only when he seen the tears from your nonstop laughter, and how you cradled your aching stomach when you laughed.

"Brat," he mumbled in between persisting kisses to your lips. You happily returned each one, who were you to deny the brat allegations. They were very true. "Always gotta have yo way."

"You love how bratty I am," you retorted, trailing your own lingering kisses from his lips, to his jaw, to his neck.

"I do," he mumbled out an agreement making you laugh against his neck before continuing on, and you thought maybe, as his hands kneaded the back of your thighs and the undersides of your ass. But all that came undone when he urgently removed you from his lap in light hysterics about almost burning the fish.

The fish.

How could he even think about fish when he had your throbbing pussy in his lap, was he really blind to all this shit? Or was he just not sexually attracted to you? Or was he fucking celibate? The questions brought on a lingering insecurity. The rest of the night you were more distant, quiet, the situation left you a little embarrassed and salty. You'd never had a man be so indifferent to your advances. Or did he even see them as advances? Hell, you didn't know anymore.

Your distance and quiet demeanor didn't go unnoticed either Terry, who constantly made it his mission to see if you were okay and enjoying yourself. You answered the same all the time, yes, which did very little to comfort him—but he also didn't wanna push you into irritation.

"You sure you good, baby?" He asked later that night as you both settled into the cozy tent. You made sure to nestle yourself into your cute, pinky, sleeping bag. It was so you.

"Yeah." You simply answered with a nod, forcing the weak smile. Such a liar. But you weren't gonna admit that the situation left you feeling a little salty. You didn't wanna bring the situation up at all, you'd much rather forget it.

"You sure? You not actin' like yourself, baby. You want me to take you home?" There he went. Being so him. Always being so caring.

"No, I'm fine. It's nothing really, im just..itchy still." You seamlessly lied. Or maybe not. You were still itchy.

Terry decided not to press the issue instead making sure he got as close as possible to you, something he always did when you slept together, he loved being right up under you—you didn't contest to it. Ever. You both gave your good nights, and Terry made sure to turn off the LED lantern lamp you both had in the tent. A soft and easy silence falling over the both of you. Terry's soft breathing, body heat, chirping crickets and the pitch black were enough to lull you to sleep. And they almost did, but damn, you were still itchy.

You brought your knees to your chest, hastily scratching at your extremely itchy ankles, a heavy, draws out sigh from the temporary but almost euphoric relief skipped past your lips.

"Stop scratchin'." Terry's deep voice but through the silence, the raspiness on the edge of his voice attributed to the sleep that had took him in quick. The words halted your actions quickly as you tried to quietly morph into a comfortable position.

"I'm not," you spoke quietly.

"But you were."

His damn hearing. He heard everything.

"Well I wouldn't have been if I was doing something else." Your tone snappy but the suggestiveness fore fronted the sassiness.

"Somethin' else like what?" Terry questioned.

You huffed immediately, sitting up abruptly from your sleeping bag and flickering the lantern on. "Are you really that clueless?" You exclaimed almost, looking at his ever so lost expression. "Terry, are not you sexually attracted to me?"

Terry looked at you as if you'd grown two heads. Like he couldn't understand why you'd ask him such a question, like you didn't know he was a full blown raging man. "Why would you even ask me that, of course im sexually attracted to you, baby."

"You don't act like it," you quietly murmured, "it's like every time I try, you pull back. What is it? I really thought I was obvious enough with everything."

And you were. Terry wasn't ignorant to your advances. But he also wasn't ignorant to your past relationships and the men that you dealt with. Full blown sex addicts a few of them seemed to be, and some of them seemed unable to form a real bond with you without sex. He wanted to prove to you that he actually liked you, that he wanted to get to know you past sex. That he wanted this to last. It'd taken copious amounts of restraint for him to slyly deter away from the advances. Copious amounts.

He wasn't exactly sure how he made it to four months himself, without caving in. Maybe it was his serious he'd gotten about your relationship, maybe it was genuine like for you that made it somewhat easy. He was still a man though, taking care of himself when he was finally away from you.

He said your name slowly, sitting up himself, "im utterly, completely, and deeply sexually attracted to you. But I wanna show you that when it comes to keeping this together, sex is indifferent to me. I don't want you to think we need that shit to connect. I genuinely like you, alot."

"I like you too, but I already knew that Terry," he softly laughed, the weight of the insecurities dropping off your shoulders. You couldn't believe that once again, all this time, the lack of sex was catered to his feelings about you. You were gonna fuck this man so good. So good. "I knew that at the end of the first date when you didn't try to kiss me when you dropped me off." You giggled at the recanting of the memory.

"I wanted you to feel it though."

"And I do feel it," you slinked even closer to him, hand trailing up his thigh, "I feel it so much." You looked up at him, batting your long lashes.

Terry sat there slack mouthed, brows furrowed, his stormy eyes looking down at you with bursting pleasure and astonishment as he watched you suck him down. How the fuck did you get so good at this shit? You'd completely covered his shaft in your saliva, you were loud and sloppy. Just how he liked it. Throat so tight around him, every time you nuzzled him in. You were dazed yourself, tasting him, having him in the back of your throat where you craved him so many times before. You were savoring all of this.

Your hands wrapped themselves around his girthy length, stroking them at a brisk pace, your wet mouth guiding them in their dizzying up and down movements. His grunts and groans of approval only furthered you to please him more. You looked up at him, eyes watery, and soft as you took him down, spit bubbles formed around him, as you nuzzled him in deeper into your mouth. Removing a spit soaked hand, you nuzzled that into your soaked panties, pleasing him, pleased you.

"Sss-shitttt," he drug out through a groan, his strong hand grasping the back of your neck, as he bucked himself up into your mouth, relentlessly fucking your throat. You shut your watery, burning eyes letting him use you how he wanted. "Fuck, eat that dick up baby. You do that shit so good," he slurred through his persisting moans.

That only furthered your arousal, which furthered your efforts. The rough gags and choking from you was almost enough to send him over the edge. Almost. You finally pulled back, giving him a chance to recover and giving yourself a chance to catch your ailing breathing.

You stroke him off, spitting down on his shaft in your hands, eagerly stroking the lubrication in, leaning your head down to suck one of his balls into your mouth; gently. You knew too much. How did you know so much?

"Why you so nasty?" He mumbled grabbing your chin once you were done tending to his balls. "Hm?" He hummed before pressing your wet lips to his own. His kiss rushed, sloppy, and deep. His tongue searched every inch of your mouth, his lips sucking your own into his mouth.

Oh he was nasty like that?

"Move," he knocked your hands away from his still hardened dick, "take that shit off." He comments taking heed to the articles of clothing you still had on, his own hands slithering under the oversized shirt you'd put on for bed.

"But I wanted to make you cum—" you started, wiping your wet mouth with the back of your hand once he eagerly pulled your t-shirt off, nipples immediately pebbling due to the exposure of the cool night air in the tent. You didn't get to finish your sentence before Terry's lips were already latched onto the flesh on your neck, creating red blemishes as he cascaded down your body skillfully.

"You bout to," he mumbled attaching his lips to yours once again, "open up," he tapped your jaw firmly, "lemme see." The firm taps to your jaw ignited the fire and aching need in your belly, a moan slipped past your lips as you opened like he asked.

You watched, dazed, as he spat down into your mouth. Oh, he was nasty.

It was like yin and yang to you. This couldn't be your Terry. Not the Terry that bought you flowers every Sunday and never let you lift a finger Terry. This was a different Terry, nasty Terry. Impatient Terry. Demanding Terry. Just what you wanted.

"Oh my god-uhhhh!" You slurred out through a moan. Terry's vice grip on your locs matched the same vice grip you currently had him in right now. He had you positioned on all fours, one hand on your hip to steady his hard, dizzying strokes. He was fucking you hard, too hard. Too good. Your thighs trembled beneath you, knees threatening to buckle as he slammed into your heated core repeatedly. It's like he knew exactly where that spot was located. "Right there, daddy! Right fucking there," you whimpered, face pressed pathetically on the pallet beneath you.

"I know, i feel that shit," he groaned, sending another hard smack to your ass cheek, the recoil from his pelvis constantly slamming into your ass had him in a complete daze. Four months he kept himself from this, restrained himself from what he knew had to be good. But he didn't expect it feel like this. "Wettin' me right the fuck up—mm mm, keep that shit right there, you better not fuckin' lay down, keep that shit open just like that." He mumbled out into the tent, taking into head your trembling legs. The lewd sounds of your sopping wet pussy, followed by the loud slapping of your skin together filled your tent and your empty head.

"Fuckkkk," you groaned out, managing to sit up in your elbows, acrylics clawing at the covers beneath you, your eyes crossed as you felt his tip kissing a little too deep, "so deep, baby."

"Mhm," he hummed pulling your head back with his tight grip on your hair, his lust filled glare looking right down into your own crossed eyes, "right where i should be. Look at you, takin' this dick like a good girl. This what you wanted right?"

"Yesssss," you managed to fully get out, a series of breath taking moans following. He was giving you exactly what you wanted; hard, rough shit. He was fucking you like he hated you, like he had a point to prove. This shit was only making you delusional did he not understand the type of you he would get now?

"Yeah? Wanted daddy to dig yo' shit out just like this, huh?" He nodded watching you nod in response, your breaths coming out in a series of heavy puffs. "I know you did, can tell by the way you creamin' on my dick."

"Shittt!" You gasped out the exploitive, planting your hands flat against the ground, mustering yo whatever weak energy you had to fuck yourself back against him, working toward your own impending orgasm. "I'm finna cum!" You rushed out.

Terry pulled you back toward his chest, your small frame engulfed in his as you sat promptly in his lap getting impaled in the most delicious way possible. You felt lightheaded, high, and perfect all at once. "Babyyyy, im cummin'!" You whined out.

"Keep tellin' me, do that shit. Lemme feel you cum on my dick," he grunted, the lewd works making you clench around him as they clearly sent you tumbling over the edge. Terry mocking your long, loud and drawn out moans with his own. His lips attacking wherever they could on your exposed neck. His impaling strokes never stopped, even when it was clear you'd completely rode it out. He kept fucking you, sending you into a deep place of overstimulation. When was he ever planning to cum?

"Look at you," he mumbled a smug smirk on his lips, hand firmly holding your slacked jaw in his hand, "dick got you dumb—breathe through that shit, baby." He tapped your jaw, repeatedly. The sight of you alone, plus the constant contracting of your walls around him had earned you a deliciously sounding groan. You hadn't even realized you were holding your breath until he spoke up.

Everything was too much. It was too much to focus on. The pleasure, his voice, his kisses. Forgetting to breathe in the middle of your overstimulation was warranted.

Your breaths cane tumbling back to you fast, hard and quick you panted. Body trembling in Terrys grasp, as dared to lean forward feeling another orgasm approaching, but this one felt harder. Body-shattering. It hurt and felt so good at the same time.

"Fuck, ima nut baby," Terry grunted in your ear. "Pussy so good, why yo shit so good like this?" Finally.

"Cum in my pussy, please daddy," was the first and only thing you could get out, not even warning him about your oncoming orgasm. This one cramped everything, the tightness in your stomach didn't subside but seemed to get tighter. Your thighs were numb, but your legs ached. The squeal you let out left your throat raw, and that's why you didn't hear Terry when he finally announced that he was cumming, but you felt him for sure, right where you told him to.

You felt Terry's lips against your jaw, kissing you repeatedly. Telling you how well you did for him, how he couldn't believe he kept himself away from that for four months. How good it was. These were finally the words that lulled you off to a blissful sleep, you'd finally got what you wanted. There you were, fucked out In a tent, with cum leaking out of you. Such a whore. A happy whore.

-

still no tag list! 😭 hope you enjoy this little filler! 💕

[onlyswan]

summary: in which jungkook is one of your greatest fears and you’re his achilles’ heel.

idol!jungkook x reader, est. relationship / fluff, angst / word count: 4.1k

content/warnings: i love you i want us both to eat well T_T sigh. oc has abandonment issues pls protect at all costs + oc is worried bc jk is working so hard :( + a worm (???) cameo. ily protective and hopeless romantic iw!jk <3 the ending 🥲💔 this drabble literally goes 📈📉

> in which masterlist!

note: *insert my melody mugshot scene* me if planting puzzle pieces in my drabbles + making oc cry (IM SORRY) were a crime. this was sm fun writing <3 i cried and laughed they’re so precious </3

—

“jungkook, baby?”

your silky voice fills the quiet apartment as you pad across the floor. you’re carrying your heeled mary janes by its straps, leaving you only in your white socks.

“babe?”

you frown as the seconds pass and you receive no response from your lover. there’s no music playing, no rustling somewhere in the kitchen or the living room. the lights are dim like they usually are, but the vivid colors are absent.

him? asleep at 9pm? jeon jungkook? it can’t be, but you’d be delighted to finally see him resting early if it was real.

and so, spurred by that tiny glimmer of hope, you carefully crack the bedroom door open, as if you’re fifteen again and you just came back from sneaking out of the house.

but you’re grown now; you live in a building with complete strangers for neighbors. you just got home from work, and you’re no longer used to sleeping alone because you share the bed with another person.

you find it empty. devoid of any creases, sign of life. as neat as a hotel room’s make believe that no one lived there until two hours prior.

the disappointment weighs down on your shoulders, causing them to drop.

he didn’t tell you he was going somewhere else after practice, you think to yourself as your lips permanently shape into a pout. what happened to going out with you for dinner?

agreeing, your empty stomach grumbles angrily.

maybe he got caught up at work. maybe he’s on his way home. maybe he’s on his way to the restaurant and he’s about to text you to come over. maybe he forgot about your plans and he’s having dinner with somebody else.

whatever the reason is, you’re too lazy and tired to whip up something edible on your own. with or without him, you’re going out and you’re stuffing your mouth full with rice and meat. after all, autumn is here, your dear old friend.

in search for a coat that will accompany you in your late-night stroll, you enter the walk-in closet and flip on the lightswitch.

you can count them with just your fingers— the amount of times you’ve felt this type of fear. absent eyes, melting spine, chills running to the top of your head down to your fingertips, mind racing with an overload of thoughts (it appears as a blank page, the same way that white is the presence of all colors of visible light). this fear… you associate it with impulsive mistakes, fire, police and ambulance sirens, and… empty closets.

jungkook’s side of the closet is empty.

clothes. shoes. bucket hats. beanies. belts. everything. gone.

but the floor is scattered with random pieces of clothing that look like they accidentally fell while someone was in a rush to pack them all in a bag. so in a rush that they didn’t even bother to pick them up.

your weak knees almost give way, but you force yourself to stumble backwards until your back hits the doorframe— you refuse to let yourself look like you’ve been carelessly discarded too.

not again. not again. not this goddamn vicious curse you thought you’ve already broken out of. not. again.

you blink away the tears threatening to spill as you scramble to open the zipper of your bag, but they spill anyway when your shoes clatter to the floor. you flinch at the thunderous sound, clutching your phone tightly against your chest. you keep your eyes closed throughout the defeaning silence that comes after.

the empty space mocks you. it knows your intricate design was not meant to live in an empty home.

you guess nothing much has changed. you’re still afraid of jungkook and his power to take away the sun, just as he did before, and you deeply despise being afraid. you don’t like it when the walls are closing in on you, poisoning your mind into believing that you’re small when the heart inside your chest burns with a fire brighter than that of the damn sun.

anyone would be foolish to leave you; it’s only jungkook who could have you mourning the death of the garden you’ve given the past five years of your life to.

—

jungkook returns to the apartment half an hour later. despite the long, grueling hours of dance practice he nearly didn’t survive, the excitement vibrating through his body is manifested through the lightness of his movements. he’s finally seeing his lover for the first time today… awake.

when he brought his natural body warmth along with him to the bathroom this morning, you sunk yourself further into mattress, beneath the thick blankets and against the soft pillows. by the time he had to give you your obligatory goodbye kiss before he leaves for work (or else you’d sulk about it for the rest of the week), half of your face has been hidden from sight. he was only able to press a loving kiss on your forehead, and then your eyelids that were fluttering as you dreamt.

night time comes and he is still deprived of the sight of your beautiful face? he somberly wonders as he finds you slumped over the dining table; he swears that there is a dark rain cloud hovering above you. your arms are thrown over the hardwood as they serve as a makeshift pillow for your vessel— his little firefly curiously bleak.

“baby? are you sick?” he asks, voice dripping with concern as he tenderly rubs your back.

the legs of the chair screeches against the tiled floor, neglectedly pushed behind.

“kook?” you manage to choke out, frantically sitting up once your muddled brain registered the familiarity of his touch on your bare skin.

his heart drops to his stomach as your tear-stained face comes into view. this isn’t how he envisioned your greeting; it usually came in the form of a bright light not harsh as the sunlight, a softness that begs to be held.

“are you crying?!”

your reply only comes out as a pitiful whimper. he stumbles a step backwards when you unceremoniously jump into his embrace, wrapping your arms over his shoulders. he gets a whiff of your sweet perfume, and then it becomes the air that he breathes, but he doesn’t have much time to revel in it.

“baby!”

he squeezes your waist taut against his body, affectionately nosing at your cheek before giving you a kiss. “did something happen? tell me- tell me.”

“jungkook,” your voice cracks as you utter his name, sounding almost like a plea, and then an endless string of heartbreaking sobs comes out muffled against his shirt. “where have you been?”

this sends him into a state of panic. seeing you in pain— it’s his biggest weakness. after all, you are his achilles’ heel.

“why? why, why, why?” you’re weak and pliant as he pulls your arms down, collapsing against his chest when he envelopes you in his embrace. he cradles your head in his palm, soothing you with gentle pats and shushes. “shh, shhh- it’s okay, i’m here now. everything’s okay, you hear me?”

his efforts prove to be fruitless, because you only seem to cry harder as he slowly rocks your bodies back and forth.

you shake your head, hands attempting to hold on to the back of his shirt to regain sensation in your limbs, but they miserably fail and fall on the sides of his hips.

“talk to me… please, mhmm?“ he hums quietly, pressing his soft lips to your temple. “tell me what’s wrong and your boyfriend will take care of it.”

from your sniffles to your hiccups, you remain unable to form any coherent response, and it leads his imagination to construct the worst possible scenarios. he feels his stomach turn with uneasiness, jaw clenching as he carefully pulls away to meet you eye-to-eye.

“did someone touch you? hurt you?” he spits out with urgency, and the unparalleled care he displays puts you in a daze, simply dumbfounded as he strokes your face. “huh, baby? just tell me and i’ll take care of the rest.”

now that you’re being reminded that jungkook could quite literally kill a person with his bare hands if they ever inflict harm on you, the fog is clearing up and you feel so incredibly… stupid.

but that’s more the reason why it’s difficult not to be sensitive when it comes to him; his absence proves to be lethal.

“shit, you’re scaring me.” he breathes out shakily as he taps your cheek lightly to bring you back to him, the distant look in your eyes triggering the emergency alarms in his head.

he unconsciously licks his lips and he tastes your tears; he doesn’t want anybody else to ever come this close.

“okay, okay- let’s put that aside for now. what do you need? should we go to bed and rest instead?”

“i thought you left,” you whisper as you hang your head in shame.

he blinks at you in confusion. “to where? my flight isn’t until next week, baby.”

fantastic! now you sound like the most dramatic, clingiest bitch to ever grace the planet. you bury your face in your hands to hide the battle zone between your heart and mind, but your boyfriend seizes your wrists because he can’t bear another second of it.

“is-is that why you’re upset…?” he asks with not a trace of malice or ridicule. he is only filled with guilt as it dawns on him then— how you’ve only gotten used to always having him around four years into your relationship, when he was taking a break from work.

the changes in his life are also changes in yours, but they still affect you in many different ways.

“then just come with me. i’ll make it work. maybe we can extend for a bit, spend an entire day by ourselves- there’s a lot of museu-”

“i thought you left,” you repeat yourself, exposed and vulnerable, vision swallowed by the darkness because you can’t make yourself look at him. “your clothes… they’re gone, and i was calling but you… you weren’t answering my calls so i thought…”

“my clothes?” he exclaims, eyes going wide as he realizes that they’ve accidentally slipped from his mind. “ahh, i thought about cleaning the closet while waiting for you so i moved everything to the other room!”

you open your mouth to speak, but much to your chagrin, no words come out. you purse your lips as your chin wobbles— the new wave of tears in your eyes mimic shiny crystals.

“____!”

and at the stern mention of your name, you know that you’re about to receive a (loving) scolding from your boyfriend. your lips curve into a frown before a sob inevitably escapes past them.

“why would you think that? why would i leave you? that doesn’t make sense at all, does it…?”

you shake your head, hugging him so tight, possibly tighter than you’ve ever done before. between your bodies, his heart is being unbearably wrung.

“i’m sorry, baby. seeing you cry like this breaks my heart…” he closes his eyes with a heavy sigh, resting his cheek on the side of your head. “but why would that be the first thing you think of…? i must be doing something wrong, right? have i been too busy with work? am i neglecting you?”

you’re breathless, a little dizzy— bloodshot eyes meeting his that are now gleaming with sadness. “no, it’s not like that! i just panicked, i couldn’t think straight.”

“are you sure?”

he looks at you skeptically, scanning your face.

“baby-” his voice breaks, then he pauses with his gaze still trained on you. “okay, i’m sorry. i… should’ve thought about what cleaning the closet would look like.”

“i was just being stupid.” you give him a small smile, rubbing your eyes to chase away the burning sensation. “sorry for scaring you.”

“stop, you’ll hurt yourself.” he tuts, pushing your wrists aside to cup your face in his hands, much gentler in comparison to your own self. his thumbs draw shapes on your soft skin, and then out of the blue, he curiously squeezes one of the space buns on top of your head. “wow, this is so pretty?”

“huh…? oh, thanks.” you mumble, still feeling out of it.

“this, too.” the white silk ribbon wrapped prettily around your neck, he means, which he hooks a finger on to tug lightly. it matches the lace straps on your shoulders that falls across the underbust of your dress, tied together to form a ribbon in the middle of it. that makes two, so clasically you.

and while it may be partly true that he’s trying to lighten the atmosphere, he just can’t defy the urge to express his admiration for you, even in a situation like this. he’s perpetually love-drunk.

“thank you.” you nod, shyly looking away to sniffle. “but you’re the reason why my makeup is ruined… need to wash it off before we go.”

“you’re beautiful either way, baby.”

“i know.” you scoff. “would you date me for five years if i wasn’t?”

he releases a throaty chuckle, capturing your lips in his with a smile of endearment that he fails to subdue.

“you’re so fucking cute. i love you-” he says with merely an inch of distance between you.

he grunts in melodramatic anguish, overcome by the insensity of his affections overflowing past the brim of his very being, leaning so close that the edge of the table digs into your lower back, surely to leave a temporary mark.

and he carries on to kiss you so many times that you lose count; you can only melt as you collect them in that bottomless pocket located somewhere in your soul, where all the love you’ve received across lifetimes is recorded to prove i was once here.

“i love you, i love you, i love you, i love you, i love you. i’m never leaving. you’re stuck with me and bam forever.”

if the time comes that the two of you break up, who would bam come home to? jungkook stubbornly refuses to have that conversation.

however, you still can’t let go of something, and you pout as you shove him lightly. unsurprisingly, his strong build doesn’t budge at all.

“but why didn’t you answer my calls?” at last, you gain enough energy to complain, but your face grows hot as the urge to cry returns. “i mean, what else was i supposed to think?!”

jungkook is struck by yet another lightning.

may the heavens have mercy, he’s been making you angry more than usual lately.

“shit, i forgot. i turned off my phone.” he mutters under his breath, feeling extremely regretful that he was not reachable when you needed him most to be. “i wanted to focus only on you tonight. what do they call it again…? leaving work at work?”

he winces guiltily.

“i’m sorry. maybe it wasn’t a smart idea.”

“no, i like that.” you almost interrupt him from talking because of how fast you are to brush off his apology.

he makes a mental note of it— the way you’re gripping at his shirt in small fists. you’re tense and overwhelmed; you need him to stay close.

“leave work at work. focus on me, and let me be your rest.”

unbeknownst to you, jungkook bites back his tears then. after all this time, he still gets mesmerized by the tenderness that naturally governs your every word and action; he thinks that he needs you more than you need him.

—

“just eat, baby. i’ll cook the meat for us.” jungkook coos at you as he cuts more meat into bite-sized pieces using a pair of kitchen shears.

“okay, then i’ll make sure that you eat.” you grin excitedly, dragging your chair closer to his.

you set down the tongs, grabbing your chopsticks to pick up a cooked piece of pork belly from the grill. you don’t forget to blow on it, mindful of burning his tongue.

of course, you don’t want to hurt him, but it would be especially painful for him as a singer.

“ahhh-” still busy with cooking, jungkook opens wide at your cue, catching the meat in between his teeth.

“rice,” he demands as he chews.

you scoop up rice from your bowl, and he devours it happily as he continues to flip the strips of pork belly lined up across the grill.

“mmhmm, it’s so delicious!” he dramatically says out loud. his eyebrows are knitted together and his legs are bouncing under the table, tell-tale signs of him enjoying the food.

witnessing this kind of reaction, any chef would be happy to slave away in the kitchen to serve him a meal. you recognize it in the smile of the owner after jungkook ordered more side dishes, and the way he dashed through the door to reduce the waiting time.

“yah, feed yourself, too!” jungkook chides you after you feed him meat three times in a row, but with an open palm that catches the juice that drips from the kimchi, you still tap your chopsticks against his lips. he spares it a glance before catching it using his tongue.

“i am!” you then rush to wrap a piece of pork belly in lettuce, dipping it into ssamjang before stuffing it into your mouth.

“good job, baby.” he grins in satisfaction, rubbing your back as praise. this makes you preen. “make sure to eat lots, got it?”

but then you’re back to spoiling him rotten, this time with an egg roll. so far, he has only touched his own chopsticks twice.

“i just told you to eat first!”

you glare at him, pouting. “but you worked so hard practicing today and you haven’t even eaten properly yet.”

he is too busy with work, and it’s not news that you’ve been worried sick about his health. it’s difficult to watch him work himself to the bone, but no one truly has the power to stop jungkook from doing what he wants, sometimes not even himself. and you find it impossible to fault him for it when you know that everything he does is done out of love. from the vigorous vocal and dance lessons, and to the deep cleaning of the apartment because his baby has been developing an allergy to dust.

“you need to make it up to your body. here, please?”

he loves being loved, jungkook thinks to himself as he eats the egg roll whole.

—

you were already prepared to go home after dinner, but your night owl for a boyfriend insisted on going on a walk at the park because he wanted to, and you quote, ‘see you awake for a little while longer,’ or whatever the hell he meant by that.

with his tattooed arm protectively swung over your shoulder, you’re engulfed in a wave of nostalgia. for the first two years of your relationship, before you started living together, you only met with each other at night, save for the very rare day-offs that he got. the only places that are still open after midnight are nightclubs, fastfood chains, convenience stores… and well, parks.

and he would always hold you close like this to make you feel safe, and the rest of you melts away while the side of your ribcage that he is pressed against remains to shelter your heart. on the contrary, you also remember how your bodies used to be so tense. you wanted to sacrifice more sleep and to walk to the other side of the park, of the street, to that other convenience store five blocks away because this one didn’t have the flavor of ice cream you wanted, anything… just… anything so you could be with each other ten minutes more.

and it was cold. it was always cold.

“what do you mean ‘it exploded’?”

“it seriously exploded! it was on fire! that’s why i went out to buy a new extension cord!”

“jungkook, it’s because you plug in too many things at once!” you cry out in frustration, your steps becoming heavy stomps. “i told you to stop doing that!”

“what do you mean? if it has six slots, doesn’t that mean six devices is the maximum?” he continues to stubbornly defend himself, and you can only hang your head in defeat. “otherwise, it’s a scam!”

“it is a scam! see…? they made you buy a ne-”

your sentence is cut short as your tongue gets paralyzed.

a dark and striped, long figure approaching ahead, slithering its across the grass.

your mind immediately registers it as the animal you fear most.

oh, no. no, no, no, no, no.

“jungkook,” you utter his name with a tremble.

the same fear you experienced only two hours ago holds you hostage once more, add all the hair in your body standing up and you’re as frightened as a cat.

“what’s wrong? yah! what are you doing?! baby, ba- fuck!” he sputters out as you forcefully pull him back along with you, displaying a type of strength and agility he doesn’t normally see.

the two of you continue to stumble backwards as you struggle to maintain balance, and somehow jungkook manages to switch your positions so that you’re the one who lands on top him instead of the other way around when you eventually end up as a heap on the soft earth.

he begins to feel his throat closing up at the sight of pure, genuine fear in your eyes.

“jungkook, snake- it’s small bu-”

you interrupt your own sentence with a high-pitched squeal, garnering looks from strangers moving and unmoving. in the blink of an eye, your boyfriend has swept you off your feet as if you’re light as a feather, driven by the instinct to protect the love of his life.

you cover your mouth in shock, your other arm coming up around his neck to keep yourself from falling.

you think you may have fallen for jungkook all over again.

“are you spiderman?”

he was too busy searching for the subject of your fear under dim lights, and so he looks at you in bewilderment to ask, “what was that?”

you shake your head with your wide eyes shining with faux innocence. you squeak. “nothing.”

he releases a sigh, followed by a chuckle of obvious relief and amusement as he squeezes your body closer to plant a kiss on your forehead. “aigoo, my ____! why are you so scared today? what am i going to do with you…? it’s just a worm.”

“are you sure? i swear i saw it raise its head!“

“i’m sure,” he lulls you. “i think worms can do that, too?”

your face twists in an expression of mixed bewilderment and distrust.

“that i’m not sure about, but it’s really just a worm! would i still be standing here if it wasn’t?” he clicks his tongue sharply. “we need to get your eyes rechecked.”

you roll your eyes with a huff. you’ve have had enough of his teasing before it even starts.

“uh?! i’m serious over here!”

this is new— you mean bickering with jungkook in a public place isn’t, but being carried by him like a bride while it happens definitely is.

“fine, i’ll go this weekend. happy?” you fake an obedient smile. “you can put me down now.”

he blinks, and then he adjusts the way he’s holding you to ensure that your dress won’t show what’s for his eyes only— for a split second, you were flying.

“i’ll go with you,”

“okay. now put me down.“ you tap his shoulder repeatedly to prompt him to heed your words. “babe, this is embarrassing!”

“nope,” he ignores your protest with nonchalance as he resumes to walk the path you’re on, evidently enjoying the attention he’s stealing and the way you’re curling yourself smaller to hide.

“oh my god! weren’t you just complaining about your body hurting?!”

“you were scared of me leaving,” he smiles, glancing down at you. “so now i’m gluing you to myself.”

that made you quiet for a while. inside your tote, the container of kimchi, wrapped in a plastic bag, rattles with his every stride. you noticed that jungkook loved it so much, so you ordered it to go when he went to the bathroom before you were to leave the restaurant.

“you know, we used to just hold hands,” you mumble with a childish pout. “like normal people?”

“this is very normal,” he argues.

the scenery becomes more familiar as he takes the long way home.

“some would even say romantic.”

a wave of nostalgia hits, and you visibly shiver.

you don’t know if he would remember, but he has said the same exact words once before.

you scrunch your nose, supposedly to give him a look of disgust, but a giddy smile betrays you. you are five years younger again, and the night ends with the moon bidding you an adieu.

—

taglist in the reblogs! send an ask/dm if you want to be added (or removed) :D

—

[woso-dreamzzz]

Leaving VII

Alexia Putellas x Teen!Reader

Summary: Olympic chaos with your sister

Y/NPutellas.S has started a live video. Click to join!

"-Got two backpacks," You're saying as Alexia clicks on your video," I think one of them might become my racket bag because the one I'm using right now is falling apart."

You shove the bags away, glancing around the space as you drag more towards you.

"There's a toiletry bag as well which is full of stuff I probably won't even use."

You pause as you scroll through the comments.

"What sport am I competing in? Oh, I'm doing tennis...Who will be the hardest to play against? Iga, always. I train with her most of the time and I think I've only beaten her a few matches this year. She's scary. Coco always gives me a good competition too. I think she text me a few hours ago but I haven't answered just yet."

You go back to showing off your haul.

You're very complimentary of all of the shoes but you seem confused as to why you've been given so many socks.

Alexia takes a screenshot of a weird face you make while trying on the bucket hat and hastily makes it her profile picture.

"I'm not a fan of the opening skirt," You tell your followers," It's not really my style. I'll wear it because I have to but...What's that? My sister's here?"

You crowd a bit closer to your phone, brows furrowed as you scroll up looking for Alexia's comments.

She feels triumphant at the look of horror on your face when you see her profile picture.

"Alexia!" You shriek," Change it back! My eyes aren't even open! Ale, please!"

Alexia does not change it back and you swear under your breath at her.

"I'm telling Mama!"

Alexia Putellas: Go ahead, you little snitch

"I'm not a snitch!"

Alexia Putellas: Yes, you are

"Don't listen to her guys! She's such a liar!"

You've always been more active on social media than Alexia and fans eat up any content you post on your TikTok. Most of your fans are just people that watch tennis but you've gone viral overnight when you posted a video of you and Iga reuniting at the Olympic Village.

Suddenly, everyone wants content from you and you're posting more than you ever have before.

A lot of it still centres around your tennis, out on the practice courts with the rest of team Spain but there's more domestic things like you retaping your racket grip and showing off everything in the Olympic Village.

Something in Alexia snaps when you make a video complaining about how uncomfortable your cardboard bed is. Suddenly, she's stitching your video.

Her camera pans across her normal hotel bed and ends with her giving a thumbs up to the camera with a smug grin on her face.

Her own fans go crazy over her posting something outside of sponsorships and it's strange to see that some people don't even know who you are.

woso.alexia.engen: Who was the first person in the video???? -> captainklittle: Alexia's little sister! She's representing Spain for tennis!

A second stitch appears hours later, piggybacking off a video of you complaining about your lack of AC. There's no sound apart from the very deliberate flick of Alexia's own AC switch.

It seems every complaint you post, Alexia finds a way to show off how much better she has it in a hotel outside of Paris.

You decide, perhaps a little pettily, to show off what she's missing.

"Hi, guys!" You say," I know a lot of people were wondering about pin trading so I thought I would bring you along for the ride! I've already got a Poland one from Iga and a US one from Coco but I've been wanting a Team GB one and I'm also meeting up with Paolini so she can give me an Italy one."

It's another live video and thank god there's a break in training, so Alexia can jump onto it again.

Jenni and Misa crowd around her at the same time, curious as to what's going on with you.

"I was talking to Carlos at breakfast and he was telling me that the coaches have ordered us all mattress toppers because the beds have started to affect how we're performing."

Alexia Putellas: Sucks to be you, doesn't it?

"Alexia, I swear to god if you keep bullying me then I'm telling Mama and she'll fly out to whoop your ass!"

Alexia Putellas: 🤪

"And Jenni I knew that it's you that just sent that because Alexia doesn't understand emojis."

"Fuck," Jenni mutters.

"Wait, give me the phone. I'll fix it," Misa says.

Alexia Putellas: Who's Jenni?

"Misa, I know that's you as well. Stop trying to cover for each other and I'll tell Mama and she'll whoop all of you."

Alexia doesn't get her phone back for the rest of your live but she does get a strongly worded text from Eli after it's over to grow up and not let her friends bully you.

Alexia calls you a snitch.

You remind her that she should stop bullying you.

"Look who it is!" Jenni cajoles as you come running out of the village to crash into Alexia," Baby Putellas!"

But you're not really listening to her as Alexia presses her forehead against yours, whispering fast Catalan to you as you giggle.

"Aw..." Misa continues where Jenni left off," Look at them! Two sisters! Reunited!"

You and Alexia push each other away, turning your back and pretending that you weren't hugging just a few moments ago.

You turn back to her quickly, hand out. "Can I have your pins?"

"What? No! They're mine!"

"You're not even in the Village! You can't use them!"

"Yes I can!" Alexia splutters out," I've been trading them!"

"Yeah? With who?"

"Jenni!"

"Liar! You've got the same pins! Come on, Ale. Give them over!"

"I will...for a price."

As Alexia lays out her terms, you bring everyone up to your room.

Jenni and Misa split off briefly to check out the dining hall but Alexia comes straight up with you.

"It's actually cardboard," She says, poking at your bed frame.

"Yeah? Do you think we were all lying about that? It's proper cardboard. You can draw on it if you want."

A smile splits your sister's face open.

"Never mind. I don't want you drawing on my bed."

Alexia pokes it. "Do you think it's true? That two people can't get on it at the same time?"

You shrug, rummaging through your bedside table. "I don't know. Why?"

You never get your answer though.

Arms are around your waist suddenly and you're being hauled backwards as Alexia slams herself onto your bed, dragging you back with her.

You may not get an answer but Alexia certainly does because the moment the two of you land, there's an almighty ripping noise and your bed goes to ground very quickly.

"Oops," You sister says.

"Alexia!"

"Sorry?"

"You don't sound very sorry at all."

"Yeah...You're right. I'm not sorry in the slightest. Hey! Stop hitting me!"

"You're lucky I'm not beating you with my rackets!"

"Hey. Hey! It's fine! You can get a new bed."

"Jenni and Misa are going to take the piss out of me! How could you do this, Ale?"

As annoying as your sister is, she at least has the decency to push the blame off onto her friends as you both hastily raise your bed up again and wait for Jenni and Misa to arrive.

They seem to have the same idea as Alexia, jumping onto your bed without so much of a greeting.

But, as planned, the bed collapses under them and the shock of their faces is enough for Alexia breaking your bed to be worth it. Their faces are even funnier as they head downstairs to ask for a new one for you.

Behind your back, Alexia passes you a handful of pins.

JenniHermoso10 has started a live video. Click to join!

"Forward! Forward!"

"I am going forward!"

"More forward! When I say forward, it doesn't mean shuffle! It means walk forward! You're a person not a pigeon!"

"And here we have Olympic football player Alexia Putellas and Olympic tennis player y/n Putellas, attempting to climb onto the rings," Jenni narrates from behind the camera.

"It's not going well," Misa says, as Alexia nearly throws you from your spot on her shoulders," Alexia is clearly struggling."

"I'm not struggling!" Alexia insists, yelping as you twist her hair in your hands.

"Forward!

"This is as forward as I can get!"

"That's such bullshit! Move closer!"

"I can't!"

"You can!"

"I don't think they're ever going to make it," Jenni says," It's like they can't-"

"Stop! Ale, stop! Left a bit. No! Too left. Right again. Left! Right! Left!"

"Left, right, forward, back," Alexia mutters," Make up your mind."

"Left and...got it...Wait! Don't let go!"

You haul yourself from your sister's shoulders onto the centre ring, positioning yourself perched on the sliver of the yellow ring that enters the black one.

"Alright," Alexia says," Give me a hand."

"What? No! You'll pull me off!"

"Give me your hand!"

"No!"

"Yes!"

"No!"

She braces herself on the lower rings and grabs your hand, pulling herself into the centre ring before you can even shove her off.

"Oh," She says," That was pretty easy." Alexia grins at you but the smile drops from her face when she notices the pensive look you're wearing. "What is it?"

"I've just realised," You laugh in disbelief," When Mama said she wanted a picture of us and the rings. I think she meant in front of them. Not in them."

"Oh."

[esouliie]

Christmas at the Romanoff’s

(natasha romanoff x reader) & (platonic!yelena belova x reader)

tags | christmas headcanon – friends to lovers, first kiss, fluff and comfort!

notes | hello, pls take this small headcanon as a thank you for reading and supporting all my fics even though i cannot keep up with demand lmao. i promise to do better in the new year. merry christmas! <3

It’s your first Christmas with Natasha, and you quickly discover that the Black Widow is… not exactly a holiday enthusiast. At least, not in the traditional sense. When you first arrived at the apartment she shares with her sister, you were greeted by Yelena’s unholy mix of holiday cheer and chaos. Mismatched ornaments hung precariously from a tree that was way too big for their living room, a plate of burnt cookies sat on the counter, and garish Christmas music blared at an almost concerning volume. Natasha, however, looked like she was about two seconds away from wrapping the excessive lights around her neck.

“I hate Christmas music,” Natasha mutters under her breath as you hang up your coat. Yelena’s halfway through yelling “All I Want for Christmas is You” with a Santa hat perched at an angle on her head. “She’s been doing this for weeks,” she adds, her voice low like it’s some covert confession. It takes you all but twenty minutes to realise that Natasha has a very complicated relationship with Christmas. She doesn’t hate it exactly—she just doesn’t really know what to do with it. With all the joy. When you try to hand her a burnt gingerbread cookie, she looks at it like it’s some kind of alien artifact. “Why would I eat a cookie shaped like a man?” She asks flatly, before breaking it in half like it personally offended her.

She then proceeded to argue how she’d be more likely to eat one of these ‘monstrosities’ if it was shaped like a woman…

But there are little moments where she tries, and it’s adorable in the most understated way. You catch her quietly fixing the crooked ornaments on the tree when she thinks no one’s looking, muttering under her breath about how “the reds need to go next to the greens.” One night, after Yelena goes to bed, you find Natasha scrolling through YouTube tutorials for how to wrap presents, muttering curses in Russian every time the tape sticks to her fingers.

And then there’s the stockings. Yelena insisted everyone have one, even though Natasha grumbled about it. But before you went to bed on Christmas Eve, you noticed that Natasha’s stocking was the most stuffed. There’s a random assortment of things crammed in there—protein bars, an extra pair of thick socks, a tiny first aid kit. You don’t have to ask to know that she filled her own stocking, long before Christmas Eve. The thought makes your heart ache in the sweetest, saddest way. She spent so many holidays alone that it just… became her normal.

Finally, it’s Christmas morning and Natasha is draped over the couch like a cat, one leg tucked under her, watching as you and Yelena clean up the mess from last night. She’s quiet, sipping a mug of tea, but you’ve learned by now that quiet Natasha doesn’t exactly mean unhappy Natasha. In fact, she looks content—eyes crinkling every time Yelena grumbles about your “lack of enthusiasm” in picking up all the decorative pillows.

What really steals the show, though, is the mountain of presents you’ve brought. You didn’t mean for it to get out of hand, but once you started, it was impossible to stop. You’d see something and think, Yelena would love this, or Natasha would smile at that, and next thing you knew, you were hauling six bags into their apartment like some sort of festive mule. When the gift exchange begins, Yelena dives into her pile like a kid on sugar overload. Her laughter is infectious as she opens each one: a set of retro pins for her jacket, a waffle maker, a framed picture of you and her after a mission (that one earns a rare hug). She’s glowing, grinning so wide it’s almost blinding. Natasha just sits there, watching her sister, her fingers loosely holding the edge of the blanket draped over her lap.

You notice she hasn’t opened her gifts yet—not even the ones with her name written in your careful handwriting. You nudge her gently, teasing, “what’s the matter, Romanoff? Afraid you’ll cry if I outdid you?” She gives you a half-smile, the kind that makes your chest ache a little because it’s soft in a way she rarely lets herself be. “Just... enjoying the show” She says, her gaze flicking back to Yelena, who is now holding up a pair of horrible light-up slippers you found at a charity shop.

When Natasha finally opens her gifts, it’s much slower, deliberate. You’re nervous, even though you know she’ll never let you see it if she doesn’t like something. But the small things you picked—a leather journal, a new cream scarf, a rare first edition of a spy novel she once mentioned—earn a quiet “thank you,” each one accompanied by that little smile. It’s the last gift, though, that gets you. It’s a snow globe. Inside, there’s a tiny replica of a mountain standing tall in the heart of Russia, the one Natasha had mentioned missing when she told you about her childhood. The one she only saw once and yet managed to comfort her throughout her life. Her fingers tighten around it, and for a moment, her expression shifts—just enough for you to catch it. Sadness, maybe, or longing.

She doesn’t say much after that. But when you look at her later, as Yelena’s dancing around in her ridiculous slippers and yelling about how she’s making everyone waffles tomorrow morning, Natasha’s looking at you like maybe you’re the best gift she’s ever gotten. And maybe she wouldn’t mind Christmas each year if you were around.

Later that night, you find her in the kitchen with a mug of hot chocolate she swore she didn’t want. The two of you stand there in the soft glow of the tree lights, listening to Yelena snore on the couch. “I don’t really get Christmas.” She admits softly, her voice barely audible over the crackle of the fake fireplace video Yelena left running on the TV. “But… I think this year was nice.” And when she looks at you, the faintest hint of a smile tugging at her lips, you know she means it.

Without thinking, you step closer, reaching out to brush a stray curl from her face. “It’s more than nice. I’m so happy.”

And that’s when you hear it—a distant jingle. You glance up, realising Natasha’s holding a tiny branch of mistletoe above your heads, her expression smug but her cheeks just the faintest flush of pink. “Well, would you look at that…” You murmur, before giggling at her antics. She leans in slowly, her breath warm against your skin. The kiss starts soft, hesitant, like she’s testing the waters. But when you cradle her face in your hands, she melts into it, kissing you deeper, with a tenderness that leaves you breathless.

And when you finally pull back, her forehead resting against yours, she exhales a quiet laugh. “Okay,” she admits, her voice barely above a whisper, “maybe Christmas isn’t that bad.”

From the living room, Yelena’s snore breaks the silence—loud and obnoxious. Natasha groans, but you can see the affection in her expression when she shakes her head. “Don’t tell her I said that.” She adds, smirking. And just like that, the moment is gone, replaced by the familiar warmth of Natasha’s dry humor.

But later, when you catch her adding an extra blanket over Yelena on the couch, you realise that maybe, Natasha likes Christmas more than she’d like to admit. And maybe this Christmas might bring more than just holiday cheer.

[burrowdarling]

Playing Games

Summary: You head over to Joe's apartment for what you thought would be your usual hangout, things get competitive between you two in a whole new way.

Pairings: lsu!Joe x bestfriend!reader

Warnings: descriptions of sex (p in v), no protection (wrap it before you tap it), weed smoking, praise, MDNI

Note: Hi! Happy victory Monday 🧡 I got a bit carried away while writing this one, I tried to proofread the best I could so sorry for any mistakes. This is my longest fic to date, I hope you all enjoy it!

Word Count: 4.1k

Check out my Masterlist here!

Taglist: @burrowbarbie @definitelynotdomanique @one-sweet-gubler @plushkhiii @enchantedinfinity @iosivb9 Feel free to comment or message me if you'd like to be added to the taglist!

You arrived at Joe’s apartment for your usual weekly hangout, your bag slung over your shoulder as you used your spare key to let yourself in. You always brought your things for the next day, just in case you decided (or inevitably) fell asleep here. It wouldn’t be the fist time, having some of your clothes stashed here for those times. Joe didn’t seem to mind, appreciating that you guys had established a close enough friendship to do so. There was also a small part of him that wished you kept more of your things there.

You heard his footsteps padding down the hallway, towel drying his hair with sweatpants sitting low on his hips and his t-shirt slung over his shoulder. You took the time he was distracted to look at him a little longer than a best friend should. You’ve had the biggest crush on Joe since you guys met when you were younger, rekindling your friendship when Joe transferred to LSU. You stayed in touch before, but it was hard to make time for each other when you were apart, now it’s hard to imagine how things used to be between you two.

Joe looked up and held your gaze, smilings as he dropped the towel onto the back of the kitchen chair in front of him. He stepped closer to give you a quick hug, feeling the small droplets of water that remained across his back. He pulled away, reaching behind you to grab a drink from the fridge.

“Hey, I didn’t hear you come in” Joe spoke as he pulled his t-shirt over his head while heading towards the couch. You watched as his taut back muscles flexed as his arms went over his head to pull the short down, knowing how much work he put in day after day to have those. His work ethic was something you had always admired about him.

Joe settled in on the couch, propping his socked feet up against the edge of the coffee table and picked up his controller. He slipped the hat he left there backwards onto his head, letting out a content sigh as he settled in. You took his comfort as a cue to follow him, replying as you went.

“I wasn’t here long, we had some perfect timing” you said as you settled on the other side of the couch. You sat criss crossed with your back against the arm of the couch, facing towards Joe when you noticed the joint tucked behind his ear. He must’ve done that before you came over, knowing it was something you both liked to do from time to time. It wasn’t often that either of you smoked, but it was something that always eased the tension you felt in the room with Joe.

You felt extremely comfortable with him, it was more of the realization that your feelings for him weren’t going anywhere any time soon that made things harder, particularly in times like this. Joe was so laid back in this moment, no stress of classes or the season on his mind to weigh him down. Your time together was his priority and it put off an energy that made you want to be closer to him. The hard part was discerning the lines between what a best friend would do and when it felt like something more.

Joe must’ve felt your gaze on his face, slipping the joint into his fingers as he looked to face you. He toyed with it between his fingers before saying, “I was gonna head out for a smoke before we started anything, would you wanna join me?” Joe asked as he started to stand up.

You nodded your head, trying to keep your emotions in check as you followed Joe out onto his small balcony. You each took a seat across from one another at his small patio table. Joe took out the lighter from his pocket, bringing the joint to his lips as he lit the end of it. Joe took a good inhale, pulling it away from his lips as he held his breath for a few seconds. He let the smoke exhale from his lungs and oast his lips, blowing it straight up in the air. 

You felt your own breath catch in your throat at the sight of his exposed neck, wanting to drag your lips across it and mark it up to your heart's content. Joe passed the joint over to you, along with the lighter. You thanked him before repeating the actions he just did moments before. You didn;t smoke much, not loving the burn in your chest or how it could send you into coughing fits. You did love the way it made you feel, though this time would be one of the coughing sprees. You could feel your cheeks stat to heat, a small wave of embarrassment as if you couldn’t keep up washed over you.

Joe chuckled as he passed you his water and extended his other hand for the joint as a trade, nodding a silent thank you to him before downing some to give your throat some relief. You could see the gears in Joe’s head turning as he fiddled with the joint between his long slender fingers.

“I have an idea that might help you out and help you not cough so much. Do you trust me, sunshine?” you smiled at him from the use of your nickname. It was one Joe had given you years ago due to your happy-go-lucky nature and positive attitude, having stuck ever since.

“Of course I do, I would trust you with anything Joey” you said honestly. You meant it wholeheartedly, knowing he would never intentionally hurt you.

Joe nodded and he lit the joint again, and brought it to his lips to take an inhale of his own, motioning for you to move closer. You scooted your chair as close as you could with the proximity of the balcony. Joe exhaled the hit he took before preparing to take another, a look of confusion crossing your features.

“I’m gonna need you to open your mouth a bit and relax for me. Trust me remember?” Joe asked sweetly, not giving your brain much time to process his request and just doing what you were told.

Joe took another hit, this time leaning over in your direction. The next thing you knew Joe’s lips were ghosting dangerously close to yours, feeling the smoke exit his mouth and fill your own. In the haze of his actions, you could hear Joe instruct you to slowly inhale what he’d given you. You did so, holding it for a few seconds before exhaling. You didn’t feel the same burn you did before and there was no cough after, just the effects you liked to feel after you smoked. 

“Again,” you said before you could overthink it. Joe nodded and did as you asked, feeling yourself become more weightless as time went on. You and Joe chatted about nothing and everything while you smoked, catching the other up on anything they might have missed during your short time apart. By the end of the joint, Joe took the last hit while you were sat feeling like you were on cloud nine and let the realization hit you on how close you had come to locking your lips with his. There was so much charge behind the action, with his mouth so close to yours, it was a true test of willpower to not have closed the small gap and crossed over that line with him.

Joe was feeling a similar feeling, kicking himself for letting things get as close with you as he did. He never wanted you to feel uncomfortable with him and knew it would allow you to feel good without the added repercussions, he was always trying to make you feel good.

You took a minute to compose yourselves before making your way back into the apartment. You sat closer to each other this time, your legs grazing one another as you sat. Feeling the slight heat of his body against yours had your mind racing. The buzz from your high made you feel like you were tensionless, Joe’s energy pulling you into him. You couldn’t get your mind off his lips and what it felt like when they brushed against your own ever so slightly.

Joe handed you a controller, bringing your thoughts back to the present, thanking him lightly. He picked up the remote and started to get everything going.

“I figured we could fuck around with some Madden, it’s been so long since we played together” Joe said, reminiscing on how you guys loved to play when you were younger. Joe had the advantage having been better at video games than you ever were, but he’d always help you out. You nodded shyly, smiling to yourself as you thought back to similar memories when everything with him was easier.

You fiddled with it in your hand as he started to get everything set, wandering into the kitchen to find some snacks for you both to have on hand. Even doing the most mundane things this man was so distracting. You focused on the controller in your lap, trying to memorize where every button was instead, it being some time since you used one, in an effort to calm yourself.

You guys played a couple games, getting your bearing in your current states. You both were giggling throughout it all, making everything into a joke whenever you had the chance to do so. Joe’s laugh was like music to your ears. It was so contagious you found yourself laughing along with him, even if it was at nothing. You were unsure when the tension became palpable in the room, the air seeming light between you two for the majority of the evening. You felt your bodies drifting closer as you guys laughed, ending up slouched into one another. The feeling of Joe’s body on yours had your mind reeling with the most inappropriate thoughts about your best friend.

You let your eyes wander over him, taking him in as he played. Your eyes scanning over him, lingering too long in places they shouldn’t. You thought about what things would be like if you were on the same page with each other. If Joe really felt the same about you, desiring your body the same way you wanted his. You wondered what he thought about when he pleasured himself, what he liked. Your body reeling at the thought of Joe’s hand gripped around his cock, his mind filled with thoughts of you. It was as if Joe could read your mind, sensing exactly where your thoughts were headed. You couldn't help but think and hope that his mind went there too, wanting you in all the ways you desired him.

“What do you say we up the stakes, hm?” Joe spoke, cutting through the silence like a knife. His voice pulled you out of your thoughts of him to the one in front of you, the lines between the two starting to blur.

“What’d you have in mind?” you asked, feeling your competitive nature shining through at his idea. Bringing your attention there instead of where it shouldn’t be.

“What if instead of just a winner or loser, we make it into strip madden” he said so matter of factly, Joe’s idea causing your mind to go blank. You had to think for a second if he really jus said those words out loud. 

“Do tell, Burrow” you questioned as passively as you could muster, trying not to let your overt excitement show through.

“Every time the other person scores, you have to remove an article of clothing. If it’s something special like a 2-point conversion or an interception, it's an extra piece of the opponents choosing” Joe finished confidently, laying back on the couch as he spread his legs further apart. You couldn’t help your eyes trailing down to the lower half of his body, the weed lowering your inhibitions. You figured you didn’t have much to lose at this point, Joe seemed as engaged and turned on by the tension in the room  as you were.

You took an inventory of all of the layers you had on. You were wearing a hoodie and t-shirt, thanking yourself for it being the day you decided to wear a bra for an extra layer. You had on some leggings, underwear, and socks. It didn’t feel like much, but it felt fairly even to what Joe was wearing.

“You’re on, may the best player win” you said, taking a sip of your drink.

“I intend to have you naked for me by halftime”Joe said so matter of factly that you almost spit it right back out. How was he being so cool in this situation? You could already feel yourself crumbling for him.

“We’ll see about that” as composed as you could sound, keeping your focus on the screen. If you looked in his direction, you feared it would be game over before it even started. Joe lightly coughed to get your attention, his hand stuck straight out for a handshake. So you’d have to look at him AND touch him? He was smarter than you thought.

You shook on it to make the deal official and took up spots on opposite ends of the couch. You were hoping the slight distance you put between you would help to clear your mind a little. You hadn’t played in so long, hoping you could do well enough to get Joe to lose some clothing. Joe started up the game, scrolling through the different options for teams.

“I call the Bengals though,” you said with a playful smirk crossing your lips. Joe gestured as if to say ‘go right ahead’, opting to play as the Lions instead. You messed around, trying to pick the exact uniform you wanted before settling on the all-white one. Joe set the rules for the game, turning towards you and dropping a wink as he hit the start button. You inhaled a deep breath, giving yourself the strength to hold your own.

Joe scored the first touchdown fairly early on, with you opting to go for your socks first. You were intending to play hard to get, it was one of the only things you really had to hold on to if he was going to beat you. You slowly pulled them off one by one, wiggling your eyebrows at him while you did so, earning a small chuckle from him as he shook his head at you.

“You’ll have to score more than that to see what’s underneath, Joey” you said with a sing-song tone to your voice. You were enjoying this, watching his eyes darkness with lust as he looked at you. It was as if he was seeing right through you anyway, able to see every dip and curve of your body in his mind.

“Oh I intend to, I told you what my goal was and I’m not giving up on it” Joe said confidently. You felt your confidence waver slightly, feeling like this wasn;t just a game to him anymore, but a reason to have you where he wanted you.

“If you wanted me naked for you, all you had to do was ask me,” you said quietly, not as confident as it was in your head. The lines between friendship and more were essentially nonexistent at this point, both of your highs wearing off and the sober truth coming to the surface.

“Believe me I do, you have no idea how long I’ve wanted you. I’m also not a quitter and intend to draw this out fair and square, a deal is a deal after all” Joe said as he turned his focus back to the TV, leaving you breathless and thoughts spinning. His confession had heat shooting straight to your core, feeling yourself getting wetter with each second that passed.

By halftime, the game felt unfair despite having more layers on than Joe at the start. You managed to score two touchdowns, which felt like a victory in itself. Having copied your ideas to go socks-first, he was left shirtless which you weren’t complaining about. You, on the other hand, were left in just your bra and panties, watching as Joe had to try his hardest to keep his gaze fixed on the screen.

You could see the hard outline of his cock straining against his sweatpants, envisioning what it would look like to have your hands wrapped around it. Wondering if he would be too big to take in your mouth, needing to use your hands to take the rest of him. You squeezed your legs tighter at the thought, the movement not going unnoticed by Joe. You were silently wishing he chose to let you score more points to put you out of your misery. You felt like your skin was electrified with the amount of tension that was in the room. Just as the next half was about the start, you felt Joe move on the opposite end of the couch.

“Fuck the game, I’m taking you now” Joe said with a groan as he shifted over to your side, leaving you no choice but to end up underneath him.

Your breath hitched in your throat as your mind tried to process what was happening. The number of times you imagined this scenario in your head was too many to count, trying your hardest to be in the moment while it was happening. You were sure you had soaked through your panties by now, praising yourself for choosing a cute matching lace set this morning when you got dressed.

“Do you know how hard it was to just sit there and watch you play in this little excuse you call underwear, hmm?” Joe teased, his voice low and sultry. He brought his hand down to touch your bare shoulder as he inched closer to the strap of your bra.

“It seems like you’ve been enjoying the view of this little excuse just fine if you ask me” you chided back as you brought your own hand to his shoulder, letting it fall slowly down his chest. Your touch was feather light, a shiver coming from Joe as he let his eyes close just for a second to revel in the moment of having your hands on him. 

“Once we fully cross this line, I don’t want to go back to how things were with you. If you want out, now is your time to say so and we can forget all of this happened” Joe said with a sincere concern in his tone. You could tell by the look on his face that he meant every word he said, even if it would crush him to go back on things with you.

“I feel like we crossed that line hours ago and I have no intention of wanting to go back if you’ll have me Joey,” you said honestly as you locked eyes with each other. You gave him a nod and that was all it took. It was as if a cord of restraint had snapped within him, his head dipping down to your neck as his lips trailed kisses all along it. He found your sweet spot almost instantly, earning a moan from you that you tried your best to muffle with the back of your hand against your mouth. Joe stopped, moving his lips to your ear as his hot breath fanned over it.

“Don’t you dare quiet any of those sounds, I’ve wanted to hear what you sounded like beneath me for so long, don’t hold out on me now. Let me know just how good I’m making you feel sunshine” Joe said as he made quick work of trailing his hands down your body to your center. You let a loud moan escape your lips as your back arched up into Joe, a triumphant smile across his face.

“Is it bad to want to skip all of the other stuff and have you in me now?” you asked a bit shyly, hoping you weren’t coming off wrong. “Not that I don’t want to do everything else, considering I’ve imagined what it would be like to have my mouth on your cock.”

“Jesus, sunshine, you’ve got quite the mouth on you huh. As long as it means we can go back to it later, I’ve been dying to fuck you” Joe said as he moved his fingers to slip them into the waistband of your panties, slipping them down your legs and tossing them somewhere across the room. He dropped his face to be between your thighs as he licked a quick strip through your folds, a gasp coming from you. 

“I had to get a taste of you first, though and you bet your ass I’ll be going back for more later. I plan on having you be a mess below me and above me” Joe said as he made quick work of taking off his boxers, coming back to be above you on the couch. He lined himself up at your entrance, pausing to meet your gaze first.

“This okay?” he asked, wanting to make sure one final time. It was sweet how much he cared for you, always making you feel safe despite the situation.

“It’s perfect, Joey” you answered, your voice full of adoration for the man above you. With your reply, he slowly pushed himself into you. Your breath hitched in your throat before letting out a long moan. You heard Joe groaning above you as he moved himself deeper, allowing you time to adjust to his size. 

“God Joey you’re so fucking big” you moaned out, letting your head fall back against the couch and your eyes close.

“Eyes on me sunshine, I know you can take it” Joe talked you through it, eliciting sounds you didn’t even know you could make at his words. “I don’t know if I’m gonna last long, you’re so damn tight.”

“That’s okay, that’s what another round is for” you joked back, bringing your hands to his back as he started to move into you at a quicker pace. You dragged your nails down as he hit just the right spot, the feeling only making him fuck you harder. Joe was putting any of the other guys you had been with to shame, the expectations in every fantasy you’ve had being surpassed with flying colors.

“Fuck Joey, I’m gonna-” you didn’t finish your sentence before you felt one of his hands make its way down between you, his thumb rolling small circles on your clit. That’s all it took to send you over the edge, moaning out his name as you rode out your high. 

Joe finished soon after, the feeling of your walls tightening around him becoming too much to hold back. He pulled out quickly, finishing himself on your stomach with a few quick strokes of his hand. Your name fell from his lips as he tucked his face into your neck, leaving a few sweet kisses on your skin. You both took a few moments to catch your breath, lying and holding each other's soft gaze.

“What do you say we get you cleaned up in the shower, as much as I love what a mess I made of you” Joe asked, a hint of desire lacing his words. You simply nodded, feeling too worn out to speak. Joe chuckled, scooping you up into his arms and carrying you to the bathroom. He sat you gently on the counter while he started the shower and grabbed an extra towel.

“What does this mean for us?” you spoke up, voice soft and mellow. Joe turned to look at you from across the bathroom, making his way over and standing between your legs.

“I’d love to take you out on a real date, make you mine officially” Joe responded, brushing a stray hair from your face to tuck it behind your ear.

“I’d love that, though I feel like I’ve always been your girl” you said, full transparency in your words. Joe leaned down to meet your lips in a sweet slow kiss, the full gravity of the situation settling in the room between you.

“And I’ve always been your guy, sunshine,” Joe said as he parted from you and helped you into the shower. This was not the way you anticipated your weekend to go, but you wouldn’t change playing the game for the world.

[luvrodite]

keep me here (with your skin on mine again) [17.6k]

summary: it's been a long time coming. he's the bane of your existence, but there's no denying it. your roommate is hot.

cw: gn!reader, afab!reader, smut, jealousy, friends with benefits arrangement, original characters, stephanie brown cameo, intoxication, blowjobs, spit, fingering, handjobs, piv sex, minor voyeurism, references to past voyeurism, masturbation, slight dubcon re multiple orgasms as there isn't a discussion but it's consensual, references to reader's clothing – they wear clothes described as 'short' and 'tight', and 'slutty' at one point (not degradingly), mention of reader wearing a hair towel, presumably after a shower, use of 'cunt', arguments, miscommunication + reader and jason are both petty and imperfect !! minors, blank and ageless blogs do not interact, you will be blocked

Jason just about falls over himself laughing when you open the door and immediately you scowl. He doesn’t say a word, teal eyes taking in your outfit before his beautiful face screws up, a loud guffaw punching out of him. The force of his amusement is strong enough that he sinks to his knees, clutching the door-frame to steady himself.

“Oh–” you scoff, and he has to yank his fingers away before the door slams on them. “You’re so insufferable!”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” You hear a pause before he dissolves into laughter again, and you resist the urge to stamp your foot.

“No you aren’t. What the fuck do you want?”

“I can’t talk to you through the door, can you open up?”

You pout. “No.”

“Please? I swear I won’t laugh.”

You make a face at that, disbelieving. “You’re full of shit.”

Another muffled snort through the door. “Okay, I swear I’ll try not to laugh,” Jason amends.

You open the door and he struggles to keep a straight face. You know what you must look like, the hair towel, the pair of pink, heart patterned, fluffy pyjama pants and your bed socks.

“I’ll close this door again,” you remind him when you catch him eyeing the print on your socks, crossing your arms impatiently and he nods, biting his lip to compose himself.

“I thought you were going out.” Jason voices this out loud and you cut an unimpressed look his way when his voice wobbles with the weight of keeping his amusement at bay.

“I am.”

“Oh. Is that the look for tonight?”

You sneer at him. “Is this what you came to ask me?”

“It’s all I wanna talk about now,” he admits, shrugging. He points at your pants and you bat his hand away, hissing. “Where on earth did you get these from?”

“They’re comfortable–”

“I’ll say.”

“–and I got them from my parents, ass hat,” you finish pointedly, hands on your hips.

“Do they hate you?” he drops his voice into a conspiratorial whisper, eyes widening into faux sympathy and you roll your eyes.

“Whatever, man. What do you want? You’re interrupting my getting ready time.”

He lets out a breath obnoxiously, leaning into the door frame.

“Yeah, for bed, it seems.” You stare at him blankly, fighting the urge to strangle him with your bare hands. “Anyway, do you have my charger? Think I left it in here last night.”

Briefly, you consider telling him that you haven’t actually, despite knowing exactly where it is, having been plugged into the outlet between your bed and the wall during your marathon of Gilmore Girls last night. You end up opening the door, waving a hand dismissively at him to check for himself before you move further into your room, returning to your walk-in to contemplate your outfit for the night.

Jason enters the room and you see him move around in your periphery as you push the hangers around. He lingers in your room after he finds the charger, twisting the cable around his fingers absentmindedly.

“You should stick with that outfit,” he remarks, taking a seat on your bed. You look over your shoulder and he elaborates, helpfully, “I think it’ll be a real hit at the club.”

“I’m sure,” you say dryly. “The men’ll be falling all over me.”

He cracks a delighted smirk, nodding. “Exactly.”

“You’re not as funny as you think you are,” you inform him, emerging from the wardrobe and tilting your head to the door. “C’mon, you found your charger. I need to get ready.”

He boos you but stands up anyway and you push him out, palms pressing into his shoulder blades. Jason, ever resistant to making anything easy for you, ever, leans his weight into you, slowing down to a crawl. “So mean. You don’t wanna hang out? You’re breaking my heart, here. I thought we were best friends forever.”

“We’ll be best friends forever if you get out,” you retort, shoving him over the threshold and he cackles.

He’s still laughing long after the door slams behind him.

Jason becomes your roommate on a Wednesday morning. You remember this because you have a full day of classes on Wednesdays, and you’d spent the night before anxiously cleaning in preparation for his arrival. He moves in while you’re in class, and sends you a text as you’re getting out at 5 that he’s getting takeout and did you want anything from the Korean restaurant a few blocks away?

You get home to the smell of tteokbokki, fried chicken and japchae on the counter. Your return home, usually greeted by the sound of silence, is met with quite possibly the most attractive man you’ve ever met in your life in your kitchen, looking up from his phone and nodding a casual ‘hey’.

It isn’t as though you aren’t expecting this. You’d met him several times before, at gatherings and mutual friends’ birthday parties. Still, Jason’s beauty manages to leave you reeling every single time. You stare for a moment, startled, before rushing out a jerky, “Hi!”

He’s silent for a moment before he parts his lips. You track the motion, feeling your throat dry at the awkward, lopsided grin he shoots you.

“Wasn’t sure if you wanted to eat together, or...”

Your eyes widen and you take a few steps forward. “Oh! I’m so sorry, I should’ve told you to start without me, I didn’t think I’d take this long, there was construction on the road and we had to go a different way–”

“You took the bus?” he questions, eyebrows creasing and you nod.

“It’s easier, there’s a stop a block away and it drops me off five minutes from campus,” you tell him, and he nods slowly. “Anyway, I’m sorry, you’re probably hungry, you didn’t have to wait for me.”

He shakes his head, disappointed. “You know, our relationship’s already off to a terrible start, Roomie. I really don’t know how you’ll come back from this.”

You stare for a moment before it hits you: he’s making a joke. You let out a laugh, moving further into the apartment. “You’ll survive a few more minutes, I’m sure.”

“I’m withering away as we speak,” he calls out after you.

You break in your newfound coexistence over rice cakes and stir fried noodles, sweet and sour sauce staining your fingers, sitting at the coffee table while Jason goes through the things he needs to get done, reruns of an old show playing on the TV that neither of you pay much attention to.

“We can go together,” you suggest, when he mumbles something about picking up his groceries, typing out a list on his phone. He looks up in surprise, as though he hadn’t expected the offer.

“You sure?”

You shrug, spearing a rice cake onto your fork. “If you want. I need to get a few things anyway.”

He considers it a moment longer, before nodding. “Okay.”

It takes some getting used to, having this man in your apartment. A week in, you nearly scream when you walk into the kitchen half asleep to find him at the stove – the lack of a shirt is no help in calming your racing heart. But the weeks pass by, and Jason becomes less of the attractive man you share a living space with, morphing into something else entirely as he gets comfortable. By the time you hit the three month mark, his looks are the least of your concern – he’s the bane of your fucking existence.

Kind of.

The two of you settle into your routine and you find out that Jason has a mouth on him. He delights in riling you up, tourmaline eyes flashing with barely constrained glee when you react in kind – bitching at him for coming into the kitchen when it’s your turn to make dinner and offering unbidden suggestions, or squabbling over who got it wrong when you forget to tell him to take a turn on your way to go grocery shopping. You maintain the last one is his fault. How can you forget the route to the store when we’ve gone nearly a hundred times by now?

He somehow manages to draw it out of you, the bitchiness you’ve been carrying with you since middle school and have tried to bury down–nobody likes a smart mouth, after all. But he doesn’t flinch from it.

If you didn’t know any better, you might even say he liked it.

– You do know better, though.

(That one night spent with your hands under the blankets and thoughts of ultramarine eyes is nobody’s business but yours.)

You meet his family. He meets your friends – the ones he doesn’t already know. You somehow end up watching a show together. His sweater lays at the foot of your bed. You’ve slept in his bed and vice versa. You’re sure he’s one of the closest friends you have. He irritates you to no end.

Bit by bit, Jason worms his way into your life and settles comfortably there.

It’s probably why your girlfriends feel so comfortable calling him on your night out and how the ensuing mess occurs.

Jason gets the call around 2 in the morning, the ringtone blaring through his skull just as he’s about to fall asleep. He jerks up, glaring groggily at his phone. He contemplates leaving it to ring, but he spies your friend’s name on the screen and he sighs, wiping a hand down his face.

They’re playing loud rap music when he gets inside, descending the stairs into the dark club. He passes girls supporting their drunken friends on their way out and gently shoulders his way through a group lingering by the double doors leading to the actual club. More than once, he feels an appreciative stare on the back of his neck but he’s preoccupied.

It takes him a moment to spot you over the crowd, squinting his eyes to make out your form through the dim lights. When he does, his throat dries.

He hadn’t seen you after he’d been shepherded out of your room, pulled into a phone call with his younger brother who’d decided that nearing midnight was the perfect time to complain at length about their father. Damian hadn’t let him go until long after you’d left the house, your voice echoing through the walls with a “I’m going! Bye!” that he’d distractedly replied to in between making the appropriate listening noises to his increasingly agitated brother.

You’re holding your friend’s hand at the bar, smiling dreamily and swaying in place when the song abruptly switches to something slower. The clothes you wear leave little to the imagination, short, tight, sinful. He bites his cheek hard, swallowing roughly as he makes his way over. Something green curls in his vision when someone gravitates closer to you, yelling something in your ear. The guy is all leery smiles and appreciative eyes, gaze lingering on the dip of your neckline.

Much to Jason’s displeasure, you don’t back away in disgust, only frowning in confusion and tapping your ear – I didn’t hear you. He repeats himself and Jason watches you process whatever it is that he’s said before a smile breaks out and you laugh, shaking your head. Your eyes glitter, and jealousy burns low in his gut. You don’t seem to realise you’ve ensnared the other man in your orbit, staring up at him over the rim of your drink.

Jason breaks through the crowd and calls your name. Miraculously, it isn’t lost to the crowd and you look away. He finds smug pleasure in the way you startle in surprise, the shape of his name on your lips. He ignores the other guy, leaning an arm against the bar and between the both of you, effectively blocking you off. God, if Dick could see him now. Just the other week, his brother had been giving him shit for the apparent territoriality over you, and he’d gone blue in the face denying it, despite the knowing look on Dick’s face.

“What are you doing here?” you reach up on your tiptoes to ask him.

“Here to take you guys home,” he shouts, leaning in to get his words across. And he doesn’t need to, but he rests his hand on your waist as he does, and you press closer, tilting your face up to pout at him.

“What?” you protest. “Nooo, it’s still early!”

He grins at you unsympathetically. “It’s nearly 3 am, baby, c’mon. You look like you’re going to fall over.”

He only realises he’s made a slip up when your eyebrows crease but you say nothing, only staring up at him with moony eyes before smiling and placing your drink down to put a hand in his, mouthing an ‘okay’. He signals to your friend behind you, who’d called him earlier and watches the exchange with interest. She turns and shouts something over her shoulder, waiting for the third of your party to finish her drink before tugging her along. The three of you hold hands and follow him through the club in single file, a sight that he’s robbed of finding any amusement because he’s trying much harder not to pop a blood vessel at having to stop every few moments. The cause is, of course, you: each time he looks over his shoulder, another man has stopped you to flirt with you. He sends up a prayer for patience, hopes anyone is listening, and continues to pull you along.

The third time, he whirls around to tug you firmly into his side, barking out a harsh, “Fuck off.” at the guy and cutting a scolding look your way for answering his advances. It’s a waste of time, because you’re just grinning up at him in amusement, giggling. He sighs, steering you in front of him and nodding for your friend to take the lead. By the time he ascends the stairs to the exit, he’s sure his blood pressure is through the roof.

“Get in the car,” he sighs and you unlatch yourself from his side – a consequence of simultaneously risking twisting your ankle a block back and falling into oncoming traffic. He’d near grabbed you by the scruff of your neck in pulling you away from the kerbside and further onto the pavement, keeping an arm around your shoulder tightly.

“Okay.” You draw out the word playfully but sink into the passenger seat obediently, your friends following suit.

He shuts your car door, and sighs once more.

The door to your apartment opens quietly closer to 5 in the morning than he’d like, and he’s glad he’s not working the next day as he trudges through the threshold with you in tow, cradling a bag of takeout carefully as you toe off your shoes.

He throws his keys carelessly onto the counter, where he knows you’ll find them when you wake up and move them to the bowl in the entryway – where your keys are meant to go, a fact you’ve reminded him of unhelpfully when he’s running late and his keys aren’t where he left them. Between now and then, he’ll forget this fact, he always somehow does.

Now, you place the paper bag next to his keys and wander away – he looks over his shoulder and finds you shoving your feet into his house slippers, a shaking hand pressed against the wall to steady yourself as you put them on. The sight sends a bolt of affection through him and he turns away, focusing on washing his hands. He calls your name once he’s done, jerks his head to the tap. You don’t protest, only leaning into his side and sticking your hands under the stream of water.

He doesn’t know why he’s not moving away. Your vantage point makes it a little awkward to wash your hands, and it’d be easier if you switched places. Still, he stays, privately, guiltily admitting that the weight of you is nice against his side. Your bare arm is soft against his, and he can smell the perfume you’d used tonight, faint but sweet. If he looks out of the corner of his eye, he can see the glitter of your necklace, thin chains resting against your collarbones and décolletage.

You bump your head against his shoulder, and he blinks, drawn suddenly from his thoughts. Your stare is unnerving, and he almost wonders for a moment whether you can read the shameful attraction in his eyes.

“Come eat.”

He hopes you don’t notice the relief in his sigh as he follows you to the table. The two of you eat in silence for the most part, Jason picking at the edges of the burger he no longer wants and you stealing his fries in between bites of your wrap.

He gets up to go pour you some water – he isn’t sure how much you drank tonight, but he’ll sleep better once you’ve finished a few glasses – when you suddenly break the silence.

“I kissed a guy tonight.” Jason pauses his rummaging through the cupboard for a glass, and hears you muse to yourself, “It wasn’t very good, but I kissed him anyway.”

“Did you.” He keeps his back to you, fingers closing around the glass gently before he takes a breath and turns around. Mechanically, he pours you a glass of water, watching the liquid fill the cup as you stand from the table to pad over to him. He can feel you at his back and when he turns to face you, he thrusts the glass at you.

“Drink.” You take the glass, and he watches you down it. When you’ve finished, he pours you another and nods at you in instruction.

“You okay?” you ask, once he’s satisfied. His gaze catches on the sheen of water on your bottom lip.

“’M fine,” he bites out, forcing himself to relax when you reach out to touch his shoulder, but he only ends up curling his fingers into fists, pressing them into the laminate counter behind him. Your hand flattens against his shoulder, palm resting just above his heart. He can hear it beat in his ears, picking up further when you move into his space. Your chest brushes against his, and he remains still, backed against the counter.

He could move you right now, he knows he could. You’re off-kilter, and he’s much larger than you. He’s picked you up before, for a laugh. It’d be easy to move out from under you. But there he remains, with you drawing closer.

“You’re drunk,” he breathes out against your lips when you’re a hair’s breadth away, moving to press forward. Your lips are parted slightly, and he tracks your tongue as it darts out to wet your lips, flicks his gaze back up your pupils, dark and blown out.

“Not really,” you whisper, shaking your head. “Not as much. I’m just tipsy.”

A breathless sound punches out of him, and Jason feels his lips twitch. Somehow, his hands have migrated to settle against your waist. He runs his finger over the edge of your top, feeling your warmth sear through it. It’s a flimsy thing, thin and slutty – meant for darkened corners and wandering hands. No wonder you’d garnered the amount of stares you had tonight. He flicks his gaze down, and his fingertips have skimmed underneath its hemming, pressing lightly into your sides.

Had the guy you’d kissed tonight held you like this? Jason, envious, swipes his thumbs over your skin and delights in the shiver that rolls down your spine. Your eyelids flutter, and in the dark your eyes are covered in a sheen of liquid moonlight, the universe bottled and staring back at him. He bites back a swear, feeling his jeans tighten.

“You should get to bed.” It takes an effort to force the words out, and they come out hoarse. You stare at him for a few moments longer, unknowing that with each passing second, the thread of his restraint is steadily fraying. Alcohol and drunken desire weigh your eyelids down, and he grits his teeth at your lingering touch before you step away, turning on your heel in the direction of your room.

A single, solitary light in the hallway remains to keep him company in the kitchen, rooted to spot as he hears a muffled sigh of frustration through the walls. Then, the sounds of a zipper, and the rustle of your bed sheets. He curses his keen sense of hearing then, blood turning molten when, a few moments later, you whimper.

He knows the sound. It’s burned into his memory, the day he’d come home early and inadvertently overheard you touching yourself. Hearing it again has him dizzy and unable to move, clutching the counter tops as you try, pitifully, to muffle your moans.

Several minutes pass by. You fall silent after that. Jason thinks he must’ve done something awful in another life, and that this must be his penance, to have you so close yet be unable to do anything about it. He remains in the living room until he’s certain you’ve fallen asleep. Only when all movement in the next room ceases does he move.

You wake up a little past ten in the morning, to your surprise. The light pours in through the open blinds and you squint, rolling over to bury your face in your pillow. Your entire body cracks and you groan at the sensation, stretching across the expanse of your mattress. There’s grit in your eyes from the mascara you’d put on last night, you can feel the coarse flecks of it clumping your lashes together, and your face feels gross.

When you get up, you don’t bother to pull on a pair of pants – you’d discarded your bottoms last night before falling into bed – but switch the top for something looser, a t-shirt of Jason’s you think must’ve gotten mixed up in the laundry.

Your mind stutters over this name when you step into your shared bathroom, and you pause, hovering over the sink with your facial cleanser in hand.

Jason.

The memory of last night makes your face warm, recalling the sharp look he’d pinned you with, marbled features burning from the inside out as he’d let you draw closer and closer, eyes blazing. The ghost of his touch on your skin throbs, something like a live-wire threading itself alongside your every nerve.

You wash your face with careful movements, watching the makeup from last night swirl down the drain. Little else exists in your mind, save for the lingering desire of last night – and all the nights before that had led to it.

Where do you go from here?

You step into the shower, wondering if the two of you will pretend it never happened and continue as normal. You resolve to do as Jason does, nodding to yourself as you smooth your moisturiser into your skin. Judging by the sounds in the kitchen as you step out, you figure he has no intention of avoiding you. That, at least, reassures you and you walk out half an hour later with less hesitance.

“Morning,” you yawn and he looks over his shoulder, eyebrows furrowing, bemused.

“How the fuck are you awake?”

“What do you mean?” You take a seat at the counter, propping yourself up on an elbow. There’s a slice of toast on a plate, covered in melting butter and unabashedly, you reach for it.

“Just that you knocked out at like, 6 – that’s mine, you thief,” Jason explains, looking over his shoulder before sputtering when he catches sight of his toast in your mouth. You mumble an apology around the bread and he grumbles, turning back to the stove. “Yeah, you sound real sorry. You couldn’t wait a few more minutes to make your own?”

You grin to yourself, dusting your hands off and leaning forward on the counter. “Aren’t you making me breakfast? I thought that’s what this was. You know, feeding your poor, hungover roommate who you love so much?”

He shoots a flat stare at you and you know you’re right – there’s twice the amount of hash-browns in the pan that he would make for himself, and there’s a carton of juice on the counter waiting to be poured, a plate waiting by the toaster near him.

“You keep that up and I’m giving your share to the neighbor’s cat,” he says mildly and you pout, settling back into your seat.

“Whatever,” you murmur. “Why are you awake, if you fell asleep after me?”

“Because the universe hates me.”

“Bruce called?” you guess and he shakes his head, plating your hash-browns and toast and turning to place it in front of you.

“Dick. Wanted to catch up. Why he chose at 8 in the morning is beyond me, but what the fuck ever,” he mutters, handing you a fork and taking a seat next to you. The proximity makes you shiver when his shoulder brushes against yours and you catch a whiff of his cologne. You cross your legs beneath the counter and hope he doesn’t notice, leaning in to take a bite of your food.

“You hungover?” he mutters and you shake your head. “You drank a lot last night, didn’t you?”

You hum in affirmation, letting him steal a bite of your toast. “Don’t think so. I’m a bit achy, but that’s it.”

He makes a noise in his throat. “Lucky you.”

The way he’d tugged you into his side last night flashes in your mind and you duck your head, warm all of a sudden. “Yeah.”

You stand up to put your plate away, and only when you’re at the sink and Jason makes a choked noise do you realise what you’ve wandered out in. You stiffen.

“The fuck are you wearing?”

You blink, not expecting him to be so incensed. You set the plate down in the sink and turn, looking down at the shirt you wear– the shirt you’re only wearing – and back up at him. It hangs off your frame, somewhat, but you can admit it’s a little on the shorter side as far as oversized shirts go, just skimming below the tops of your thighs. Still, it doesn’t explain why Jason’s expression has gone taut.

“A shirt?” you offer, tentatively.

“Are you serious?” You pause when he gets short with you, eyes narrowing.

“Yes?” You don’t know what to say. “I’m sorry I forgot to put pants on. Why are you mad?”

He shakes his head. “I’m not mad.”

“You are.”

“Whatever.” He wrinkles his nose, and you can see his leg jumping as he taps his foot, agitated. “You should go put some clothes on.”

Your mouth tugs down into an unimpressed frown. “So you are mad about my clothes,” you say flatly. “You’ve never had a problem with what I wear around the house before.”

And you know that he knows it’s true. You’ve accidentally come out in your pyjamas when he’s had his friends over, not seeing the text he’d sent to give you a heads up and he’s only ever laughed it off. You know he’s seen you like this before, too. You’ve grown so used to Jason it no longer occurs to you to cover up – it’s only Jason. He’s used to it.

But then you look at the agitation on his face. You’re beginning to think that maybe he isn’t.

“Maybe I just didn’t want to say anything about it,” he says. “In the interest of keeping the peace.”

You shoot him a withering stare. He’s so full of shit. “So you’re not interested in keeping the peace anymore. Why are you saying something now?”

He lifts a shoulder, churlish. “Maybe I think it’s time. It’s not really appropriate, is it?”

If you weren’t growing madder by the second, you’d laugh in his face at the twitch of his eye as he says that, as though the words coming out of his mouth are pain to get out.

“I pay half the rent,” you tell him hotly. “There’s no one around and you know what, I don’t think you even care about what I wear.”

He looks startled when you say that and you know you’ve hit the nail on the head. You continue.

“All I’m hearing right now is a lot of ‘maybe’ and I’m not buying it. You’re a shit liar, Jason. What the fuck is your problem? The truth this time.”

He blinks, momentarily stunned. Anger like the tide, it washes away to make room for the truth before rushing back in. He stands up, breakfast abandoned, and your heart thrums in anticipation as the chair screeches backwards.

“My problem is you,” he says finally, and your mouth drops open.

“Me?” you squawk, indignant and he nods.

“Yeah, you.”

“What did I do?”

You wrack your brain, trying to come up with a reason he might be picking a fight with you. You hadn’t forgotten to take your clothes from the bathroom after you’d showered in a while, you’d been pretty good about replacing the liner in the bins when you noticed it was full – had you left your dishes in the sink yesterday before you’d gone out? Still, it didn’t warrant this level of a fight. This was beyond petty roommate squabbles – neither of you hesitated to get snippy about pulling your weight, and you forgave each other just as fast, too.

Jason was genuinely pissed off with you. You couldn’t for the life of you figure out why.

“Is this some sort of game to you?” he asks you, instead of elaborating and you’re left more confused.

“I’m not playing any games with you – what are you talking about?” you demand, exasperatedly and he rounds the counter, stepping close to you. Absently, you’re reminded of last night. (The beat of his heart under your fingers, angry thrumming that echoed the rush of your own in your ears.)

Blue-green eyes narrow at you and he scoffs. “You know how many guys I nearly got into it with last night because I had to come get your drunk ass? The entire time, you’re just smiling–I don’t think you even knew where you were at that point.”

“I knew where I was!” you argue but he continues.

“Then I finally get you home and you decide that wasn’t enough, you have to tell me you kissed some guy, try to put the moves on me, and then pretend like nothing’s happened this morning which – whatever, fine, but then you walk around in this? And I’m not supposed to think you’re playing games?”

You stare at him, heartbeat thundering in your ears.

“You are so stupid,” you breathe out. “What are you, jealous?”

“Yeah,” he huffs out, and you freeze. “Yeah, maybe I am.”

“What?” you mutter, barely audible.

He crowds you into the sink, until you can feel the edge of it pressed against your back. “You flirt with me, and I’m not supposed to do anything about it, because we live together. I have to watch you walk out of the house when you go out in your little outfits, and I’m not supposed to do anything about that either.”

He leans down and you’re nose to nose. “You accidentally send me something meant for someone else, and I’m not supposed to do anything about that, except all I can think about is how it’s meant for not me. Isn’t that a little unfair? How am I supposed to just move on from that? But I did. I made peace with the fact that you’re here, that you’re close enough for me to touch but I’m not supposed to.”

You go hot when you remember that, remembering the horror when in the heat of the moment you’d accidentally sent a photo meant for a hookup to Jason’s contact instead. It did little to comfort you when in response to your harried, apologetic explanation, Jason had simply sent you:

don’t worry i deleted it seriously it’s fine

He hadn’t acted in any way the next day to suggest that you’d ruined things or made it awkward, but you’d  been mortified. The way he looks down at you now, you think he must be better at hiding it than you thought. Barely concealed lust darkens his eyes, pupils blown wide. It coaxes your own want out of you, your hands beginning to shake as you rest them on the counter behind you. Water flecks your palms but you’re uncaring, staring back at your roommate.

Jason stares down at you, waiting.

Well. You had resigned to doing as he did.

You tilt your head, scrutinising him with narrowed eyes. The edges of your mouth twitch in an effort to stifle the urge to smirk.

“Maybe you should do something about that,” you challenge, leaning in until you can feel the warmth of his breath against your cheek. From here, you can count every eyelash that frames his eyes, can notice the scar just beneath his eyebrow, barely a quarter of an inch, a nick he must’ve gotten in his childhood. You add in a steady, derisive tone, tamping down the excitement that’s already begun to itch underneath your skin in anticipation, “instead of being quiet about it, like a coward. At least those guys had the nerve to try.”

His eyes flash and the breath he lets out is the only warning you get before you’re being kissed to within an inch of your life.

Your first thought is: why the fuck hadn’t you egged him on sooner?

Jason kisses like he might die if he doesn’t get to. You go boneless under the grip of his hands when they settle around your waist, tugging you into him urgently until your chest is pressed tight against his. You scramble for purchase, reaching to tug at his hair while his tongue swipes at your bottom lip and neither of you expect the breathless groan he lets out, but it goes straight to your gut, desire pooling low and driving you to tug again. Your noses bump and he lets out a wrecked laugh into your mouth.

“You’re seriously ruining it,” you mutter between kisses and he pulls away, much to your displeasure. You’re madder still at the way you chase his mouth, leaning in before blinking up at him.

“Yeah, what would you rather I do?”

Insufferable, even after having his tongue in your mouth. You tug his collar and pull him back down. He meets your height with a self satisfied smirk, laughter in his eyes. You’re not so amused.

“I’d rather,” you tell him, “you not laugh in my face while making out with me. It’s really making me reconsider letting you take this off me. I’m not wearing anything under this, you know.”

You want to laugh at how quickly his smirk drops at that but you’re too busy slipping out from the tight space, darting to the mouth of the hallway where you pause grin at him teasingly, tilting your head questioningly. Well? Are you coming or not?

He lunges forward and you squeal, taking off to your room with him hot on your heels. You’re just shy of your door when you’re flung over his shoulder, the world abruptly tipping as he grabs you. He laughs, victorious, and then a moment later he’s inside, you’re being thrown onto your bed. He stands at the foot of your bed for a moment, just staring and you feel a prickle of nervousness roll over your skin, ensnared in his gaze and the anticipation only made worse by the waiting.

And then he’s moving, a knee pressing into the bed as he climbs on, but you stop him, a hand flying to his shoulder. He goes still under your touch.

“Wait, can you–” you pause, feeling your face grow warm. “Can you close the blinds? I don’t want the neighbours to get a free show or something.”

He blinks, eyelashes fluttering before he snorts, shaking his head. “Yeah, okay, sure.” He looks back at you as he pulls them firmly shut, throwing the room sharply into dimness but not before you catch sight of that teasing grin. “And here I was thinking you were so bold.”

“Not that bold,” you mutter, before you grin. “Not yet, anyway.”

“Not with me,” he mutters, climbing back onto the bed. He doesn’t waste any time in putting his mouth to your neck, teeth barely grazing against the skin. You inhale sharply, eyes fluttering under the touch. Jealousy colours his words when he says, “Don’t want anyone else seeing you like that.”

“N-no?” you barely manage to eke out, fingers digging into your sheets. You don’t want to admit his tone sends a thrill down your spine. You’re lucky he’s preoccupied, arching into his touch when his fingers find your sides again, rucking your shirt up your thighs.

“No,” he says firmly, before kissing you again.

When he pulls away you’re a little dizzy, breaths coming out heavy. It takes you a moment to realise your shirt lays over your stomach now, pushed up – showing off the underwear you’d lied about not wearing. He raises an eyebrow at you, unimpressed and you shrug, unrepentant. A finger skims over the band on your hip, hooking underneath it to snap it against your skin. It makes you gasp, and his lips twitch.

“Not wearing anything under this, huh,” he mocks.

“How else was I gonna get you to take it off faster?” you provide by way of explanation, grinning and he shakes his head, looking quite as though he doesn’t know what to do with you. When he pauses, staring, you roll your eyes, pushing up to pull your shirt off. His eyes widen as you settle back into your pillows, and you tell him archly, “There. Now you still get to take off only one thing.”

You watch him swallow you with his gaze, blue-green lingering on every inch of skin bared to him, breathing out heavily. Knelt between your legs, his hands remain hovering by your hips and you push them up, shifting until you brush against him. Impatience makes you petulant, slinging a leg over his hip and reaching out to coax his hand to fucking touch you.

“Do you want to do this?” you ask, when he only brushes a hand over your hip once more, and he frowns.

“Why’re you asking me that? Do you want to stop?”

“No!” you protest. “It’s just – you’ve got me naked and you’re not doing anything about it. It kind of feels like you don’t want to.”

He grins then, incredulously. “God. You’re so whiny. Is this how you are with all your hookups?”

You scowl at him. “You really wanna talk about my hookups? Now?”

His nose wrinkles in disdain and he leans in. “No. I’m gonna make you forget about them, though.”

You don’t know what it is about Jason that draws it out of you – you speak without thinking, dryly telling him, “Yeah, we’ll see about that.”

He shuts you up with a glare and lowers himself down, settling on his stomach between your legs. You swallow nervously when his breath skims over the seat of your underwear, the lace already damp. Jason grins to himself when he nudges against the crease of your thigh with his nose and you tremble, biting down a gasp when his fingers hook into the lace and instead of pulling them off entirely, he only tugs them to the side.

He sighs, eyes flicking up to where you stare at him. “So fucking pretty.” He reaches a hand up to press to your mouth and you blink, letting your roommate part your lips with his fingers, pressing them flat against your tongue. It makes your head spin, and you drool over his fingers, wrapping your lips around them and sucking. You delight in the way he watches you do it and emboldened, you reach a shaking hand to encircle his wrist, keeping it in place.

Eventually he pulls himself out of your mouth, but not without shifting against the mattress, and you give him a smile, spit smearing down your chin. He curses under his breath, and you grin when you hear the words, “Fucking brat.”

Thoroughly soaked, he takes his fingers to your cunt and your eyes roll back when he spits onto your clit before attaching his mouth to you. Very quickly, Jason makes a mess of you under his fingers and tongue, pressing inside with ease and curling his fingers to hit the spot you can never quite reach yourself. You see stars, squealing when he bands his free arm over your stomach, pressing down and only intensifying the scale of your pleasure.

Sinking into the mattress, you lose sense of all else but the slick sounds of your sex and Jason’s ministrations, eyes fluttering closed as you whimper. He steadily increases his pace and you’re curling your fingers into the sheets, feeling the knot in your stomach twist and tighten. One twist of his fingers, the tug of his mouth on you, and you’re coming apart with a gasp of his name, hips straining upwards against his arm to ride out your high.

 “Fuck,” you breathe out, stunned and staring at the ceiling and he laughs, laving your cunt with another look before he pulls away, delight on his face at the whimper you let out.

“You still wanna talk shit?” he questions, pushing himself up to come into your line of vision. You blink blearily at him.

“Give me a minute. Then, maybe,” you mumble and he snickers.

“Don’t tell me you’re tapping out now. All that attitude, and you didn’t even last ten minutes.”

You frown at him, sitting up and he falls back on his haunches to give you room. “I’m not tapping out, you asshole. When did I say that?”

He holds up his hands. “My bad, sweetheart. Must’ve misread that look on your face.”

“You’re insufferable,” is all you can say back to him, rolling your eyes.

“Maybe,” he admits, before a shit-eating grin curves his mouth upwards. “But you want to fuck me anyway.”

God help you, you really do.

You look down at him instead, and tug on the hem of his t-shirt. “Take this off.”

“Bossy,” he intones playfully, but pulls it off anyway, revealing the torso you’re guilty of having admired on several occasions, all powerful muscle and tanned skin. A thick pattern of hair trails down from his belly button into where his pyjama pants hang low on his hips, and you think maybe you’ve come on the spot again just at the sight of it, pressing your legs tight together.

He snorts above you, but says nothing, letting you push yourself up onto your knees, pressing a hand to his chest. He’s warm under you and just like last night, the beat of his heart is fast. You do what you’d longed to last night, sliding your hand up from his chest to his neck, tugging him down to press your lips against his. He inhales sharply through his nose, as if surprised, and you smile against his lips. You remain like that for a few moments, mouths slanted against each other and panting.

When you pull away, it’s with a fire burning in your gut, flames high and setting your skin alight.

“Those too,” you breathe out, nodding to his pants and not a moment wasted, they join your shirt on the floor. The both of you left in your underwear, you pout at him, brushing a hand over where he strains against the confines of it.

“I want you in me,” you tell him and he swears, screwing his eyes shut. You lower yourself back down, kneeling, to mouth over his hipbone. Tilting your chin up, you watch him shudder when your fingers ghost over the band of his underwear. “Can I?”

“Fuck. Yeah – yeah you can,” he grits out and you grin, pulling them down greedily. You move backwards as he kicks them off, and your mouth dries when you take in the size of him.

He’s bigger than any of your hookups, and your lust is dashed by the worry that suddenly overtakes you.

“Jason,” you say nervously and he hums. “I don’t think that’s going to fit.”

You try to appreciate that he attempts to muffle his laugh but immediately you’re looking back up at him, indignant. “Don’t laugh at me, I’m being serious.”

“Sweetheart, it’ll fit,” he reassures, smoothing a hand over your cheek, uncharacteristically tender. You find yourself leaning into it, a silent you promise? in your eyes. You believe him, though, you realise. “C’mon, let me take that off you.”

You sink back down into the sheets, pushing up your hips as he finally pulls off your underwear. And even though he’d been nose deep between your lips only a few minutes ago, he lets out a low breath at the sight of you, fully bared to him, a curse that skitters over your skin, stomach tightening as he shuffles closer.

He tightens a fist over his cock, smearing his pre over it as he gives it a few strokes before settling in the cradle of your hips. You shiver when he rests himself against you, sliding his cock over your cunt. Your mess clings to him, and the both of you groan when the tip of him catches against you, taking a sharp breath when he bumps against your clit.

“Don’t tease,” you murmur, reaching out to tug him down. He meets your mouth in a messy kiss, supporting himself on an elbow beside you, his free hand pushing your leg apart before guiding himself to your entrance.

You tense at the intrusion before he mutters at you to fucking breathe, baby. Inch by inch, with a thumb guiding tight circles over your clit, Jason pushes inside. The stretch of him is one you’ve not ever experienced, and you feel winded when he bottoms out, fully seating himself within you.

“Fuck,” you whisper. He grins, leaning down to kiss your jaw.

“Told you it’d fit,” he muses smugly, and you let out a dazed breath, pinching his arm. “Ow!”

“Don’t be a dick with your dick in me,” you mutter crossly and he lets out a laugh.

“Sorry. You okay?”

You blink a few times, wiggling your hips – Jason lets out a hiss – before nodding. His fingers haven’t stopped on your clit and slowly, the stretch has begun to feel a little pleasurable. When he pulls out a little before thrusting, you sigh, bringing your arms up to loop around his neck.

“Feels good?” he asks and you hum. Pleased, he begins to move.

Your senses dissolve quickly. The room slips into a cacophony of moans, the air thickening with urgency with every second that passes. Jason had kissed you like it was life or death; it had only been a precursor. Every nerve in your body feels like a live-wire, thrumming with electricity and so utterly sensitive to his every thrust, and touch, and kiss. His hands are bruising on your waist, your hips, your thigh, when he lifts your leg to sling it around his hip. His mouth seeks yours, all teeth and tongue, exchanging panted breaths and moans, mumbled swears spilling from his lips like a broken dam –

So fucking perfect.

Been waiting so – fuck, so long.

So good for me.

Yeah, just like that.

You can’t keep up with it, sinking your head back into the pillows beneath you. He takes advantage to lave his tongue against the exposed skin there, too, teeth working at you until you’re sure he’s left a mark to accompany the others.

Time passes thickly, your sense of it obscured by the man over you. He fucks you right through your first – technically second – orgasm, and works you up all over again, coaxing you through the next one with breathy laughs and a mean smile when you shake your head, tears budding at the corners of your eyes. You fall apart though, you couldn’t not, with the way he touches you as he angles his hips. Absently, you think, if your sheets weren’t already ruined from your makeup last night, they will be now.

“Thought you couldn’t,” he goads you, rolling the both of you over so you’re slumped on his chest and pushing back in you. You curl your nails into his chest and he gasps, “–Fuck!”

Jason doesn’t seem to mind that he’s worn you out too much to do anything beyond lay on his chest. He holds you easily, thrusting upwards. The change in position makes you cry out, tightening around him once more.

He lets out a startled laugh. “You have one more in you, sweetheart?”

You shake your head once more and he pouts, a hand taking your chin and directing your gaze to him. He’s pouting mockingly at you. “No? Are you sure?”

“You’re–” you stumble out, face screwing up under the weight of your building orgasm, “such a bastard.”

He just grins at you, but it’s strained, too, starting to slip around the edges. He tips his throat back, and you can feel his thrusts beginning to stutter. You take the chance to lean down and latch your mouth to his neck, tired hips rolling against his as you return his favour. His hands tighten around your hips and he groans. “Fuck, baby, ‘m gonna come, where do you want me?”

And because he’s stolen away with him your ability to reason, you whine out needily, “Inside. Need you, fuck, please, I need it inside.”

He swears loudly, hips bucking frantically. You keen as you feel your fourth orgasm of the morning roll over you, and not a moment later Jason follows suit. You feel the warmth of it slide down your thigh and his grip around you tightens as he rides out his high, face buried in your hair. His breathing is ragged, and you close your eyes for a moment against his neck, resting. The room falls silent for several moments, only your breathing to be heard as it evens out.

“Gonna have to get you the pill,” Jason mumbles into your neck and you hum. “Fuck, I should’ve gone to the store or something.”

You hug him a little tighter, shaking your head. “It was perfect.”

He laughs wearily, but his arms tighten around you briefly, too. “Not gonna be so perfect if I accidentally knock you up, baby. ‘M smarter about this, usually.”

You grumble, biting his neck gently. “I don’t wanna talk about your hookups with your dick still in me.”

“Should I pull out, so we can discuss them?” he offers, laughing when you try to pinch him.

“You’re so not funny,” you tell him, and he scrunches his nose playfully.

“Yeah, but you need me so bad,” he repeats, leaning in to steal a kiss before you can snap at him. It doesn’t save him; once you recover, you’re reaching to squish his face between your palms.

“You’re the biggest dweeb on the planet, I really hope you know that,” you tell him matter-of-fact-ly. To your annoyance, he doesn’t seem too chastised, beaming up at you when you let him go. You slump back down onto his chest, sighing loudly. “I’m so tired. How do you have that much energy? You slept less than me.”

He shrugs underneath you, a hand settling on your back and trailing up and down. The movement is soothing, and you find your eyelids growing heavier. “Think I’m kind of used to running on no sleep.”

“Freak,” you mumble, and he snickers. “You know, I really wasn’t teasing you when I came out.”

“Hm?”

“No pants. Just forgot,” you slur.

“Go to sleep,” is all he says, but you’re sure you hear a muffled laugh before sleep overtakes you.

You don’t know what you expect to happen from sleeping with Jason. When you wake up, you find that he’d dozed off around the same time as you, but not before cleaning you up and pulling your blanket over the both of you. It makes something in your heart twinge, and you have to avert your eyes when he wakes up not longer after you do. The both of you order an early dinner, having slept through most of the morning and afternoon – “Work tomorrow, too,” Jason had grumbled when you drew the blinds open to a late afternoon sun hanging low in the sky.

“Classes tomorrow,” you pout, as you strip the sheets in your bed. “And I slept through the whole day.”

“Your fault for not sleeping in this morning,” Jason mutters, still in your bed with his face pressed unhelpfully into a pillow. You swat his leg and when he lifts it to shoot you a beleaguered scowl, you gesture to the pillow. He grumbles, sitting up and taking off the pillowcase, throwing it at you. It unfolds halfway through and the both of you stare as it sadly flutters on top of the duvet between you.

“Sad,” you tell him. When the bed’s been stripped, you make him take it down to the laundry – “You have better luck with the machines, they’re always full when I go.”

“That’s such bullshit,” he grumbles, but he takes the basket anyway and heads downstairs to the laundry unit in your apartment building. He’s back five minutes later and unwilling to admit that you’d been right, mumbling a whatever when you let him in because he’d forgotten his keys.

“You wanna watch something tonight?” you ask him as he’s wrangling a fitted sheet over your mattress. The pillowcases and duvet cover replaced, you sit on a chair waiting for your sheet to be changed.

Jason mumbles out a, “Yeah, sure.” and you nod decisively.

Neither of you end up being able to choose a movie. The both of you take turns showering and by the time the clothes have been washed and the food comes, you can’t think of anything you want to watch. You resign to put on a few episodes of your show and call it a night. Though, you worry over your noodles – are you meant to sleep in his bed tonight? Is he going to sleep in yours?

Jason saves you the awkwardness by standing up at the end of your Gilmore Girls episode and heading to his bedroom. There’s no difference in his departure either. He doesn’t kiss you, or hug you or do anything out of the ordinary – he knocks the side of your head with his knuckle and heads off, calling over his shoulder, “Night.”

You’re left there to ponder over it.

You’ve made a disastrous mistake by sleeping with Jason.

You decide this upon waking the next morning and shuffling out into the kitchen to make yourself something to eat before your classes and finding a box of pastries waiting on the counter. You hadn’t expected to have much for breakfast – you were due to go grocery shopping with Jason soon, the fridge growing ever emptier by the day. The sight of it makes you stop short, and you feel that twinge in your heart again, only it’s immediately followed by horror – because you know what it is.

You like him.

You have no time to contemplate this bitter pill, forced to swallow it alongside a few bites of the unforgivably good pastries before getting ready to leave the house – you curse that he’d chosen your favourites, too. You like your roommate. The world goes on. You sit on the bus feeling shell-shocked, sure it must show on your face that you’ve come to terms with a life-changing revelation.

How long have you felt this way, how long have these feelings been blooming inside you, you wonder – feelings that go beyond the basic attraction you’re sure Jason is used to dealing with in his every day life. This isn’t lust, you realise miserably. That would be much too easy.

You like him. You want to strangle him most days, but you like Jason. You like his company, like his stupid sense of humour and despite your better judgement, like his attention. You like that he nags you about pulling your weight, like that he doesn’t care when you mouth off to him, like that he likes you with no pretenses.

Fuck.

There is nothing to suggest in Jason’s behaviour that what’s happened between the both of you actually happened. You feel like a bit of a creep for watching him the way you do, sneaking glances at him over the counter when it’s his turn to make dinner and reading into every syllable of every word he says to you – it begins to feel like you’ve slowly started to go mad. There’s no sign of anything.

Stephanie looks at you oddly when a few days later you both meet up with your mutual friends, pushing a few tables together and ordering nearly everything off the menu – it’s on her, tonight, thanks to the promotion you’re all getting together to celebrate. She drags you into the bathroom before your food arrives and you find yourself spilling the details to her, unable to keep it a secret any longer and almost regretting it when her face screws up into disgust.

“I mean, I knew it was bound to happen but gross,” she squeals, pretending to gag and you glare at her.

“What do you mean? You knew?”

She tucks a blonde curl behind her ear and leans against the bathroom counter, giving you a pointed look. “Are you serious? You had to have known. It was so obvious.”

What you suspect to be an incoming rant is interrupted by the swing of the bathroom door and the call of your names – “The guys told me to come get you before everything’s gone.”

The apparent inevitability of your getting together with your roommate is filed away for later as you exit the bathroom. No sooner than you approach the table do you notice your seat has been claimed, and you look over at Steph when the culprit – a friend she’d brought– smiles at you and apologises, gesturing between her and Jason.

“Do you mind switching with me?” she asks and you blink at her. She tilts her head and you can’t help but notice the shine of her hair, water-like in its movements as it sways. Next to her, Jason eyes you curiously and you smile tightly.

Logic reasons that you have no reason to say no. Jealousy sinks your fingernails into your palm behind your back as you shove your hands into your back pockets.

“Sure,” you tell her, and shove yourself into the seat next to Steph, waving a hand at Roy when he returns from the pool table across the bar and complains about you stealing his seat.

“I don’t see your name on it,” you tell him archly and turn firmly back to the conversation at hand – something about a coworker and someone’s boss that you’re guilty of not paying any attention to. Try as you might, you can’t focus on anything but the laughs from across the table, Steph’s friend leaning in and joking around with Jason.

Stephanie looks over at one point and pinches you under the table, ignoring your hiss to lean in and whisper, “What’s wrong with you?”

You pinch her back, but she simply raises her eyebrows, waiting. You glance over at your roommate, catching his eye before you mutter into her ear – and really, you’re thankful for the ruckus that your table and the dinner crowd provides, otherwise you’d never hear the end of it for ‘keeping secrets’–

“Why’d you invite her?”

She looks back and forth between the two before she raises an eyebrow at you. “You’re seriously pissy because you’re jealous? If you wanted to sit next to him, you should’ve just said.”

You frown at her. “Why would I do that? We haven’t even talked about it, I can’t just tell her to fuck off. He’s not my boyfriend.”

“Do you want him to be?” she asks, reaching for the untouched slice of pizza on your plate.

You sneak a look at Jason, who’s bringing a glass of beer to his mouth, smiling over the rim at not you. The answer is too humiliating to say out loud.

Envy clings to you long after everyone parts ways, waiting on the sidewalk and staring down hard at a piece of gum that’s lodged itself between the cracks in the pavement while Jason says goodbye. You don’t like how thankful you are that neither of them exchange numbers – or the possibility that it will come later.

The routine after a night out is usually like this – Jason tends to linger close by as you wash your face and get changed, sitting over the ledge of the closed toilet lid while you run through the events of the night. Normally, you don’t mind it so much. You’ve even found yourself mirroring him when it’s his turn to come home after a night out, standing outside his bedroom door while he changes and talking through the wall. You like the company, and the mutual dissection of your shared gatherings. It feels domestic.

Tonight, you close the bathroom door on him once you both get home and you can tell from the surprised sputter that he hadn’t been expecting it. But the drive home has given your jealousy time to fester, your blood running hot at the thought of all the shared glances and attention paid to someone that wasn’t you. It’s irrational, and mean, and completely crazy, but you find yourself angry with him for letting it happen and angrier still at yourself for feeling this way.

Jason, unaware that he’s back on your shit list, knocks on the door, demanding to be let in. You liken him to a cat, yowling at your doorstep. There’s a shit eating grin on his face when you open the door that drops the moment he catches sight of the look on your face.

“What.”

“Are you mad at me?” he asks, voice lilting in uncertainty and you huff.

“No, I just want to go to bed. I’m tired.” Lying through your teeth, you look away from where he’s trying to meet your eyes.

“Did something happen tonight?”

You hate the way his voice turns a little soft, truly, earnestly worried. His hands come up, hovering by your sides as if to turn you over and make sure you haven’t been hurt. It should make you melt, but all it does it make you madder.

“Nothing happened, don’t worry about it,” you tell him curtly, and his brow furrows for a moment, thoughtful.

“Is this about Steph’s friend?” he says and your face grows hotter when he says her name.

“No,” you say baldly, turning around and reaching for your cleanser. You work it between your palms with more force than necessary and the words come out of your mouth before you can stop them. “But you know what? I hate her. You shouldn’t talk to her.”

There’s a silence before he replies, and you hate the way he’s somehow found amusement in all of this. Amused, always amused when it comes to you. You wonder if he ever takes anything you say seriously. “You can’t tell me who I can talk to.”

You come up from the sink, water dripping from your lashes and chin and he pauses, meeting your eyes in the mirror.

“Fine, whatever. Go talk to little miss–” Your jaw closes with a clack and you purse your lips, reaching for your face towel. “Whatever. It doesn’t matter.”

He stops you from reaching for the next product in your long routine, a hand circling around your wrist and tugging you a little closer. When you refuse to look up, his other hand tilts your chin up, and you hate him once more for ducking his head to meet your eyes.

“You mad ‘cos I didn’t sit next to you?” he asks, quiet and you scoff, pushing him away.

“No, have you lost your mind? Why would you think that?”

He doesn’t let you go very far, hands settling on your hips and holding you in place. You lift your chin stubbornly, glaring at the cracks in the tile over his shoulder. At the edges of your vision, Jason shuffles closer, bending his head to press his nose into your cheek.

“You know you can’t lie to me, right?” he murmurs, affection colouring his words. Then, voice dipping, he says softly, “You’re cute when you’re jealous.”

“I’m not jealous,” you protest weakly but his resounding laugh skitters over the line of your neck and you sag against the counter.

“Yeah you are,” he says brightly, and you’re surprised when his lips press chastely into the swell of your cheek. “It’s okay.”

The frustration that’s been simmering in your veins all night boils over when he tilts his head to kiss your jaw. You reach for Jason, guiding his mouth to yours.

He kisses you sweetly tonight, and you squeeze your eyes tightly shut as his lips slide against yours, knuckles bumping against your jaw. There’s this feeling in your chest, champagne fizz-like, a cacophony of bursts, ever rising and rendering you giddy in his arms. It lasts only for a second before you’re pressing further into him, fingers tangling into the thick of his hair and tugging him closer, harried.

The sound of surprise he lets out is muffled, settling against your tongue and swallowed greedily while you press your hips into his. Jason quickly sets you against the edge of the counter, half-hard in his jeans where he stands between your parted legs. Desperation and anger line your movements, pressing closer, closer, impossibly closer to him until every inch of you is near flush against him, separated only by layers of clothing. There’s an urgency to your actions, mapping out his mouth and squeezing your legs around his hips in a bid to relieve the growing pressure.

He pants against your mouth, the hands at your waist kneading your skin through the fabric of your top, fisting it tight and rocking you closer against him.

“Want you,” you demand, breathy and shameless and he groans, eyes screwing shut before he’s nodding fervently, moving away slightly to help you tug your pants off until you’re left only in your underwear. Your hands reach for his belt as his slide down your waistband, spit-slicked fingers sliding against you with ease. You keen under his touch, fingers closing around his length and pulling him out.

You lean over, spitting onto his cock and the curse he bites out echoes in the bathroom. He’s warm in your hand and you delight in the moan he lets out when you pass your fist over his length, echoing it not a moment later when he circles your clit.

Half-dressed and pawing at each other, you rock against his fingers with one hand gripping his shoulder for dear life and the other passing broad, firm strokes over his cock. His hips buck into your fist and you catch his laboured breaths in a messy kiss once more, feeling pleasure coil tighter and tighter in your stomach. A well timed twist of his fingers draws a high-pitched gasp out of you.

“I’m–” you cry and he nods, face twisting.

“Me too.”

Only a few more strokes and the two of you cry out in unison, moans muffled in each other’s mouths as you come. Jason spills over your wrist, his own slowing to a stop beneath the band of your underwear as you let out a ragged breath, pressing your sweaty forehead to his.

His eyelashes flutter against your cheek and you let out a breath through your nose at the tickling sensation. Blue-green eyes meet yours, so close you think you can count the stars in his pupils, and Jason grins, leaning in to kiss the corner of your mouth.

Moments pass as he slowly dots kisses to your face, trailing over the corners of your mouth to your jaw and chin, sweet once more. You sigh, letting your eyes shut under his touch and leaning into press of his mouth, your limbs loosening under every baby-soft touch until you’re pliant in his arms.

“C’mon,” he tells you quietly, nosing at your jaw. “We gotta clean up.”

You tip your head tiredly, letting him maneuver you around to wash your hands in the sink while he takes care of himself. By the time he comes up behind you again, you’re watching the soap bubbles wash away down the drain.

“You still mad at me?” he mutters into your temple, and you look up to meet his eyes in the mirror. His arm hangs loosely around your shoulder, drawing you back into his chest. He’s shucked his jeans, left in only his t-shirt and underwear. You can feel the press of his skin against the back of your bare legs, the heat of him through his t-shirt.

You shrug, feeling oddly vulnerable. His lips seem to turn down for the slightest moment before he’s turning you to face him, a hand coming to rest against your jaw.

“Tell me,” he asks. The bite of tiramisu he’d had at dinner still lingers on your tongue and you can smell the lingering notes of his cologne. You press up on your toes to kiss him once more, a gentle brush of lips that carries with it the weight of your entire heart before you’re pulling away.

“Don’t talk to her,” you say quietly, too cowardly to say what you really feel. He regards you with a stare that feels too scrutinising for your liking, before he finally nods.

“Okay.” His thumbs sweeps across your cheek. “I won’t.”

You bite the inside of your cheek, averting your gaze as you nod. “Okay. Good.”

You fear you might have revealed more of yourself than you’d intended when, following the events of that night, Jason softens a little. Only infinitesimally, but you notice it – the way he begins to seek you out a little more, the ease with which he settles by your side in the kitchen when it’s your turn to make dinner, taking advantage of the proximity to steal bites of the food from the pan over your shoulder. Still, amongst the feelings that that particular thought evokes, you don’t find regret.

You dare to think that maybe, even, it was for the better when, twenty minutes into a gathering for one of your friend’s birthdays, Jason drags you out to the car under the pretense of going on an ice run and you find yourself making out with him at a red light, his thigh squeezing at the flesh of your thigh as he whispers filthy promises into your mouth. When you return, it’s with a bruise sucked into the hollow of your throat, hidden in the shadowed collar of your hoodie and kiss swollen lips that you can only hope goes unnoticed.

It gives you something of a thrill, kissing in darkened corners and returning to your friends with the taste of each other on your tongue, a secret shared only between you and Jason. You find yourself biting back grins when he meets your eye from across a room, tamping down the excitement of following him into the bathroom and letting him coax you into just one more kiss.

At home, the air is charged with an undercurrent of electricity, thick with the weight of all that has, and could happen. Your movie nights hang on a razor’s edge, the threat of devolving into something else looming between you at all times. Tonight, you give in, sinking to your knees twenty minutes into the movie and taking Jason’s length in your mouth.

He sinks his head back into the couch as you suck his cock, a hand wrapped around the back of your neck. You hum around him, half lidded eyes gazing up at him.

“Fuck...”

His voice is hoarse, a husky groan spilling from reddened lips, and he runs his other hand through his already messy hair, tousled from where you’d run your fingers through it only moments ago.

“Just like that,” he moans, head tipping back down to look at you, blue-green eyes swallowed by the dark of his pupils. “So fucking good, baby.”

You drag a fist up the end of his length, spit and pre-cum smearing over your fingers. It’s messy, quickened movements and wrecked sighs, Jason’s hips taut as he tries not to buck into your mouth. His grasp on his control slips a little when you dig your fingernails into the skin of his hip, nails scratching over where you know him to be sensitive. Startled, he lifts off the couch, hitting the back of your throat and drawing tears to your eyes.

“Shit,” he says, a half moan as he runs a hand down your face. “Sorry, you okay?”

You blink up at him, tears sticking your lashes together, and hum. The concern in his expression bleeds into realisation and he shakes his head, pulling his bottom lip between his teeth to stifle a smirk.

“Fuck,” he breathes out, dropping back into the couch cushions. “You’re gonna be the death of me.”

You pull off him to give him a smile, letting out a little laugh. “Yeah? Feels good?”

The hand on your face presses into your cheeks in warning when he lifts his head to glare at you tiredly, and you snicker once more before wrapping your lips around him.

He comes soon afterwards, pulling out of your mouth and making a mess on your face, spend smearing over your lips and chin. You squeeze your eyes shut as he finishes, the sound of his ragged breathing and the salt on your lips coaxing out your own need, wetness quickly growing between your legs. You think it must be obvious on your face. Jason, after carefully wiping your face, pulls you onto his lap, settling a muscled thigh between your legs and gazing up at you with blazing eyes as if to say, well? Your turn now.

The movie remains long forgotten.

“You okay?”

You purse your lips, fiddling with the straw in your drink. The cafe you’ve met at for lunch is one of your favourites, but you find it hard to focus on your food when you keep meeting someone’s eyes over Jason’s shoulder. The man grins at you when you look back, and your frown deepens.

Sat in front of you, Jason taps your foot under the table. “Hey. What’s wrong?”

“There’s some guy behind you that keeps looking over here.”

His brows furrow and he leans in over the small table. “You don’t know him?”

You shake your head. “He doesn’t look familiar.”

He considers your answer and nods, before rising from the table. Startled, your hand flies out to clutch his sleeve, already imagining the blood on his knuckles. “What are you doing? Sit down!”

He looks at you like you’re crazy, and you feel your face grow hot. “Would you chill? I was going to tell you to switch seats with me.”

Your rehearsal of the explanation you’re going to have to give to his older brother that you were partially the reason Jason was in a police station comes to a screeching halt. “Oh.”

Flustered, you awkwardly slide out of your seat and into his. Jason passes your things over as he settles into your previous seat comfortably, and you watch his eyes scan over your shoulder, lingering only once, briefly, on something before he’s meeting your gaze with a small grin. His face doesn’t betray his annoyance, features set in a pleasant, neutral expression – except for the minute tightening of the skin around his eyes.

You squirm in your seat, still feeling the phantom sensation of eyes on the back of your head. “Is he still looking?”

He doesn’t take his eyes off you, shaking his head before, as casually as he would if he were brushing a leaf out of your hair, he extends a hand to curl around the back of your neck and pull you into a kiss over the table. Your sound of surprise is lost to his mouth, and Jason lets out a quiet laugh against your lips. When he pulls away, he lingers for a moment, a hair’s breadth away and bright eyed. “If he was still staring, he won’t be anymore.”

“Oh. Okay,” you murmur, dazed, settling back into the metal of your chair. The feel of his lips on yours lingers for the rest of lunch, and long after you part ways, you for your next class and Jason to work.

“See you at home,” you tell him quietly, as the crossing light turns green at the corner where you’re due to part. He grins down at you, reaching out to pinch your cheek. You half-heartedly bat his hand away, and he laughs, dropping it back to his side. You have the urge then, looking up at him, to hug him, but the seconds are counting down and bravery evades you, still.

“Yeah. See you.”

You wait there at the intersection, long after he’s crossed the street and disappeared around another corner. You aren’t quite sure what you’re waiting for. You aren’t sure how to explain your resulting tardiness to your teacher, either.

How do you explain the twist of your heart when you think of tourmaline eyes, the phantom brush of tender fingers over your cheek? You can only smile apologetically and hurry to your seat, face warming in both embarrassment and longing.

Jason lingers even when he isn’t there, the ghost of him stood in the doorway of your mind, a constant companion to your thoughts. You’d often thought of love as hues of rose, but you feel as though your vision has been wrapped in a sea-glass film, the world around you now cast in glittering jewel tones.

He draws out a different part of you now, you find. Still teasing, he’s the same Jason he’s ever been. And yet...

There’s a softness to your interactions that you wonder if you only see because you want it to be there. Silence between you now settles with a weight behind it, but it feels like the comfort of a down blanket, soft, and grounding, it feels like contentment. There’s a quality to his voice, to the way his mouth forms your name, something wrapped around every letter that makes you burn, hope flickering dangerously in your heart. You dare to let yourself wonder in the darkness of your room, hidden under the blanket – could he?

Hope, dangerous hope. It does away with any sense you have left. Hope turns you sweeter, displays your love-sickness for all to see across your face, eyes always searching for his in a room, smiles turned shyer. You don’t know who you’ve become, gentle and yearning, the cutting remarks you reserve for him now dulled. Hope pulls the words from your lips when you’re watching Jason make to rise from your bed, moonlight spilling across the floor of your bed through a crack in the blinds.

“Do you -” you falter, and he looks back.

“What?”

Your fingers twist in the bed sheets, nervous and you feel a little sick as you say, “Do you want to just sleep here, tonight?”

And you think you’re going to die, then, when he says nothing for a very long moment. It stretches out into the vast nothingness, and you feel shame heat your face, the weight of what you’ve just asked pressing down on your chest. You wish it would be quicker about finishing you off, you wish you could turn back time, you wish –

“Are you -” he falters. “Really?”

It isn’t a no. “Only if you want to,” you say quietly and the silence returns, before you hear the rustle of your sheets.

“Okay,” Jason whispers, and in the dark you think you hear him exhale shakily but you’re too relieved to pay attention, hope’s flickering flame roaring brightly once more.

It isn’t the first time you’ve slept in the same bed. You’ve fallen asleep next to each other on movie nights, and when you’d been too stubborn to call it a night while nodding off watching your show. You know the softness of Jason’s bed, know the warmth of his shoulder against yours. And still, your heart races when he returns from the bathroom and climbs into bed beside you.

This isn’t a first. And yet it feels entirely novel.

His arm finds you in the darkness and he draws you closer to his chest, but he pauses. “Is – is this okay?”

He’s warm, heat bleeding through the thin shirt you’d pulled on. You settle a shaky hand over the one on your stomach, squeezing it briefly. Your throat feels dry as you rasp out, “Yeah. Yeah it’s okay.”

“Okay.” A silence, and you feel the ghost of a kiss being pressed into your hair. “Night.”

“Night.”

You wake first in the morning, turning over and blinking open bleary eyes to the sight of him still in your bed. Your heart stutters at the sight of him, and you feel shame wrap you in its grasp once more as you take him in.

He’s beautiful, you think mournfully. There’s a white hair hidden in the depths of his temple, you notice, and a freckle below his left eye, thick lashes fanning over it. You trace the line of the scar in his eyebrow once more, the subtle cleft in his chin, the shape of his mouth.

He shifts a little in his sleep and it makes you tense, but all he does is curl closer to you, the arm beneath your head flexing as he presses his nose to your temple. His other arm comes to sling over your hip. Affection comes in thick waves to you then, rising in your throat like the tide and threatening to drag you beneath its depths forever. Overwhelmed and in love, you press your face to his chest and hope he doesn’t feel the tear that slips down the side of your face, sliding against the skin of his wrist.

Jason wakes not long after you do, mouth curving into a tired grin when he opens his eyes and Hope, dangerous and fickle thing that it is, burns bright through the morning.

Your name makes you look up from the covert game of not-quite-footsie you’ve been playing with Jason on the couch, trying to keep your giggles to a minimum as you kick his feet away from yours while the others linger in the kitchen, arguing about pizza toppings. Jia bounds over to the adjacent armchair and you get one last kick in before you straighten your expression.

“I haven’t seen you in ages!”

You grin at that, pointing teasingly at her. “That’s because you’ve been flaking on us! When was the last time I saw you?”

Her mouth pulls up into a grin and you’re drawn into a conversation with her, but it’s difficult to pay her your full attention. The press of Jason’s thigh against yours makes your head spin a little, even though he’s busying himself with something on his phone.

Hope has left the both of you teetering on the precipice of something the last week or so, and you’ve started to wonder whether it isn’t entirely implausible that you’re not reading into it. Jason had kept his arm around your shoulder when you’d gone grocery shopping the other day, snickering and leaning in over the console in his car to steal a kiss before you carried the shopping in. He’s been stealing bites of your food off the plate you’d balanced on your knees only a few minutes ago, now empty and set on the coffee table, your drink in his hand as he texts back his brother.

It takes only a few words from Jia for you to lose your footing. You feel Jason stiffen next to you and you pause, registering her words.

“How’s that guy you were seeing? Are you guys still together?”

“What?” you ask and she grins at you, oblivious.

“C’mon, you remember. It wasn’t that long ago. I thought you liked him.”

The precipice of something does not overlook what you had thought it had – you fall, fall, fall, and hope, delicate thing that it is, gutters out before your eyes. You feel Jason draw away from you in the seconds it takes you to reply, only shifting in his seat and already an abyss yawns between the both of you.

Jia, ignorant to the upheaval her words have caused, directs her attention to Jason.

“Did they not tell you?” she laughs, and you want to shake her, but you’re silent. “Oh my gosh, didn’t he show up after your class with flowers?”

Jason looks at you in surprise and you can tell he’s remembering the flowers you’d brought home months ago, bright and red, they’d taken up a spot on your dining table for a week before they’d wilted. You hadn’t bought any flowers home since then – it’d been months ago. Months before you’d ever even come close to touching him, an age before you’d reached whatever weird middle you two were in, playing house like you’d been. Months ago. You want to scream at Jia for even bringing it up but you know she doesn’t mean any harm and really – more than anything, you’re mad at yourself.

It’s your fault, you think, grief and panic curling tight in your chest as Jason mumbles an excuse about having to use the bathroom and rises from the couch. You’re the one who hasn’t made it clear to him, cowardly and comfortable in the in between. All the things you should’ve said slam against the roof of your mouth. You like him, he’s the only one you want to cuddle with on the couch and bring flowers.

The smile on your face feels like a painted grimace for the rest of the night, and you don’t ever seem to get within a few feet of Jason before something comes up and he’s whisked away into conversation. You’ve never seen him so social.

“Oh, by the way, man-” Alex says, when you’re gathered in the living room, swallowing a mouthful of the cruiser that only he can stand to drink. “Steph’s friend, what’s her name – she asked me for your number.”

You can’t help yourself from turning your head, stomach twisting itself into knots, and you meet Jason’s gaze for the briefest moments as he looks over, biting the inside of his cheek contemplatively before nodding his head. “Yeah, whatever. That’s fine, I guess.”

Well.

You remain rooted in your seat for what feels like the longest five minutes of your life, watching the movie with unseeing eyes before getting up with a half-hearted excuse to Jia.

“I’m gonna head home,” you whisper, pulling up a ride app. She turns to you with a pout.

“What? Noo.”

“I just remembered I’ve got a paper I have to turn in,” you grimace at her. “I’ll see you later.”

You whisper a bye to the host, crouching to your knees beside their chair and squeezing their arm with a promise to catch up later before you retreat, toeing your shoes on hastily and shutting the door behind you as softly as you can before rushing to the elevator.

In the car on the way home, you listen to the radio with the blood roaring in your ears. There’s a different kind of burning in your chest now, and by the time you reach your apartment, it threatens to leave only ash in its wake.

You lock your bedroom door when you storm inside, slumping onto your bed face down dramatically until it becomes hard to breathe, at which point you roll over. Staring at the ceiling, you feel the tears you’ve been holding back all night crowd your eyes, angry and leaving burning trails in their wake. You slam a fist against your mattress, letting out an aggravated sigh.

“Whatever,” you muse out loud stubbornly, ignoring the tremble in your voice, the lump in your throat that makes it difficult to swallow. “What the fuck ever. I don’t care.”

It’s a difficult thing to convince yourself of. When you hear the sound of the front door, nearing an hour or so later, your chest tightens in anxiety – far from uncaring, you sit up and watch the shadows in the hall move.

Footsteps pass outside your door, pausing only for a moment before you hear Jason’s door open and close. Your eyes burn once more.

You find it uncomfortable how quickly things turn grey in your home. There are no movie nights after that, no Jason peeking his head through the door of your room to ask you if you want to come with him to run errands, or to try the sauce he’s making for dinner, or if you have any clothes you need to throw in the wash because he’s got room in his basket and he needs to do a round. There isn’t much of anything, actually. Silence, thick and tense, hangs over the apartment and makes every noise all the louder.

You make your own meals, and Jason doesn’t look at you when you take your plate into your room. The groceries dwindle down and you go to the store after your class, only to come home and find bread already in the pantry when you go to put it away. The sight of it makes you grit your teeth, but you have no time to stare at it when you hear the click of Jason’s door opening, hurriedly stuffing the bread away before storming to your room.

There are times when you think Jason might break first on the cold war between the both of you out of pure frustration. It comes in the form of disapproving frowns when you return home late from classes, taking the bus instead of calling him – spite keeps you warm enough to make the short walk home as the weather cools – or leaving your dishes in the sink for the morning because you know he’s too stubborn to break first to yell at you about it. Still, he remains silent as you pass him in the hall.

“You guys need to kiss and make up about it,” is all that Steph has to say about it when you tell her, wrinkling her nose at the thought. “Seriously. He’s been so insufferable, I’m begging you. When he gets in a mood, I have to listen to Tim complain about it and I just don’t have the time to listen to him right now.”

“He can do whatever he wants,” you tell her frankly, curling into the corner of her couch. You pull at the sleeves of your hoodie, scowling at a thread that’s come loose. “I don’t care. He’s the one being childish.”

“Wrong.” She shakes her head, making a buzzing noise, as though the subject of your failed love life is as serious as a game show.

“He is,” you insist, nudging her thigh with a foot.

She shrugs, rolling her eyes skyward. “I never said he wasn’t. I just said you were wrong.”

It clicks for you, then, and you frown. “I’m not being childish, I’m just returning his energy.”

Steph’s face contorts into an expression of disbelief and you falter. “Why would you ever do that? Have you ever considered that just ‘cause he’s book smart doesn’t mean he’s love smart?”

It doesn’t make sense to you. Jason is whip-smart – it’s how he landed his job after graduation in the first place. You didn’t get to work at a leading firm without the credentials, and you’d been to his childhood home enough times to see the various certificates and medals filling a trophy case. Half the space in his room and your living room was taken up by the sheer amount of books in his collection, the spines worn and aged, spanning from romance to philosophy. You think he might be the smartest person you know – it doesn’t occur to you that he’s capable of occasionally making a mistake.

You tell Steph as much and she looks weary as she gears up to explain it once more to you.

“Does it feel right that things are like this between you?” You open your mouth to reply and she shoots you a piercing glare. “Be honest.”

Your shoulders slump. “No,” you admit, meekly.

“Then it doesn’t matter how he’s dealt with this,” she says, slapping her hands over your shoulders to give you a little shake. “You might as well try to fix it. And soon, please. I don’t think I can deal with the fallout from your lover’s spat again in this lifetime let alone this week.”

You apologise mentally to Steph when, going on a week later, you haven’t found the courage to approach Jason. Your temper wavers, constantly, as if unable to make its mind up. You go from shyness, hesitant to even leave your room for fear of bumping into him outside, to indignant, your pride demanding that he be the one to lay his armour down first. He’d accepted the other girl’s number to spite you.

Jealousy curls around your throat, tight, unforgiving, and fills your mind with thoughts of Jason, taking her out, looking at her in the way you want to steal all for yourself, eyes half-lidded and sweet; you imagine his fingers curling around hers, his shoulder brushing against hers on the couch. It makes you feel like you’re going insane, pressing your face into your pillow to let out silent screams, thrashing around on your mattress in the world’s quietest temper tantrum.

Spite drives you to sit in the living room on your day off and put on Gilmore Girls after Jason leaves for work, parking yourself on the couch and starting from the beginning of the series. You reason, despite the kernel of guilt that sits in the pit of your stomach, that even if you were watching the show without him, you a) had watched the show long before the two of you ever had officially started watching it together and b) hadn’t continued without him. The excuses feel pale to you, but you’re stubborn and it’s a harmless slight – one he won’t even know about.

Except, as it happens, you fall asleep in the afternoon and Jason happens to return home just as a new episode begins. You blame it on the tension of the last few days – you’d never slept better than when the two of you had been toeing the line of something more, but fighting with Jason steals sleep from you and you find it difficult to close your eyes without being met with the urge to stand at his door and make him hear you out. Pride and shame war within you at night in place of dreams, and you leave for your classes poorly rested.

You wake at the slam of the front door – you really need to speak to your landlord about replacing it, too heavy to close normally, but you’ve got your hands full being mad – and come face to face with a fuming Jason. He looks between you and the T.V, mouth dropping open.

“Are you serious?” he spits. It’s the first words he’s spoken to you in a week and you draw yourself to your full height, rising off the couch and planting your hands on your hips. His tone lights a fire within you, and you’re itching to let him have it.

“Excuse me?”

He narrows his eyes at you, scoffing. “You’re so...”

“I’m so what,” you sneer and he blusters for a moment, almost apoplectic.

“You’re so childish. What, we don’t talk for a few days and you’re gonna watch it without me?”

You stare at him, incredulous. “You’re the one that started ignoring me!”

“I didn’t see you trying to talk to me, either,” he retorts and your lip curls in anger.

“Why would I talk to -”

“Oh, I knew you would-” Jason cuts you off, but you’re unwilling to back down, raising your voice higher until the both of you are arguing over each other.

“Yeah, because you know everything – you’re so annoying -”

“I’m annoying-” he sputters, lifting a hand to point at the dishes. “I’m not the one leaving my dirty dishes in the sink. You’re disgusting.”

“Whatever, I don’t care. You wash them if they bother you so much! I’m not the one who forgets to wipe the counter in the bathroom after I use it!”

“That’s because you’re too busy leaving your clothes everywhere!”

On and on it goes, every petty grievance met with a complaint in turn. You argue until you’re heaving breaths and Jason is blue in the face, but none of it means a single thing to you, carrying the anger of a far bigger, unvoiced slight. And then, you don’t know how or why, but in a matter of seconds it is no longer unsaid. You’ve spilled it into the air between the both of you and Jason’s staring at you with a glint in his eye as if to say, finally.

“I can’t believe you took her number!”

And you hate the way your voice hitches on the last word, throat constricting as you stare at him reproachfully. You don’t let him reply, stepping closer angrily with your nails pressing into the palms of your hands, upset and hurt. “I told you not to talk to her and you just took it like-”

“Like what?” he challenges, and you can feel your eyes beginning to sting, humiliation washing hot over you. “Tell me.”

But you don’t know what to tell him. All you can do is stare, chest heaving and eyes wet. A muscle in his jaw jumps, and he nods.

“Yeah. That’s what I thought.” He lets out a breath, wiping a hand over his face wearily. “Whatever, I’ll talk. Do you have any idea how stupid I felt, playing like I’m your boyfriend and thinking maybe that’s what you want too–”

Your mouth opens helplessly, heart gripped in a tight vice at the hurt in his voice, his nose screwing up in upset.

“–and then I get the biggest reality check of my life, because I guess it isn’t what you want, but I just figured–” his voice cuts off then, and his eyes are ultramarine as he stares at you. “I just thought you’d be straight up with me.”

Panic engulfs you then, at the resignation in his face and you see it then, the profile of his back as he leaves, the packed boxes and the silence of an apartment too big for just one, the emptiness of the room next door, an ever clear mirror – you’re lurching forward before you can lose him.

“It is what I want!”

He doesn’t leave – yet. Your fingers grasp the sleeve of his hoodie tightly, and you can feel a few errant tears in the hollow beneath your eyes, marking a trail down the curve of your cheek as you stare at him.

“It is what I want,” you repeat yourself. Jason exhales shakily, but doesn’t make to remove your hand.

“Then – the guy?”

“I’m not seeing him,” you tell him, shaking your head fervently. “I haven’t -” Face warming, you duck your head. “For a long time...It’s only been you.”

He blinks slowly, lashes heavy as they flutter, eyes rimmed red. The tip of his nose is pink, too, you notice. Jason sniffs, looking away for a moment.

“Then why didn’t you say anything?” his voice is rough, and you take a step closer. Your heart hangs heavy in your chest, and you blink back your grief.

“I don’t know,” you admit. “I was scared. I guess I thought maybe I’d explain at home, but then...”

You trail off and above you, you can hear him kiss his teeth, face contorting into a grimace.

“I–” he blows out a breath. “I shouldn’t have done that. I’m sorry. I should’ve asked you, ‘stead of assuming.”

“Yeah, you should’ve,” you tell him sullenly. He grimaces, and you sigh, squeezing his wrist gently. “I should’ve told you, earlier, though – I was too chicken to talk to you, I didn’t wanna ruin it.”

“You should’ve,” he echoes you, lightly, a hesitant grin on his lips. “It wouldn’t have ruined it.”

“I know that now. I thought..” you trail off, embarrassed. He turns his wrist over in yours, your palms kissing, and squeezes your hand encouragingly.

“What?”

“I thought you just wanted no-strings, I thought maybe I was just reading too much into it. You never said anything, either, I thought I’d just be wrecking it if I brought it up,” you admit, averting your eyes. When you chance a look back at him, he looks dismayed.

“I did want it,” he says, lips curving downwards into a frown. “I thought you wanted no-strings, ‘n I was the one being selfish, wanting you to myself.”

The both of you stay there like that, in the middle of your living room, hands linked and an abject feeling of disappointment weighing your hearts down.

“It’s not what I want,” you whisper, desperation lining your voice. “I – I feel crazy, that’s how much it isn’t what I want.”

“What do you want?” he asks, a tremor in his voice.

There’s that feeling again, that choking fear that closes your throat up and roots you to the floor. There’s terror at the thought of being known – but stronger still is the fear of walking away from him at the end of this and it being forever. You struggle, forcing the words out.

“You.” You feel your eyes water once more. “I want you. For me, only. I want you to look at me and steal food from my plate and want me and – and be mine. I don’t care that you nag me about the dishes and I don’t care that you never put your shoes away properly–”

At this, he lets out a choked laugh.

“– and I know we argue all the time, I know I get on your nerves, but I want you to be mine. I want to be yours. Properly, with all the strings attached,” you finish, letting out a shaky breath.

Seconds pass.

“Say something,” you whisper, hand still in his.

Jason offers you a wobbly smile. “I want you to be mine, too,” he says, voice wrought with longing. “It’s all I ever wanted. God, I thought I was going to lose it when Jia started talking about that guy, I kept thinking about him getting to see that side of you, make you smile – bringing you flowers, I want to be the one to do that.”

“You’re the only one I want that from,” you murmur and his lips curve downwards into a rueful smile.

“We’re both pretty stupid, huh?” he remarks. Then, looking away, he clears his throat. “Look, I’m not – I don’t like her like that. I told Alex later not to, uh, y’know. I don’t – I didn’t get her number. I shouldn’t have done it in the first place, but – yeah.”

You stare at him, feeling pressure behind your eyes. Your voice comes out wobbly when you reply, a congested, “Good.” that has his face dropping, moving to curl his arms around you.

“I’m sorry,” he sighs, and you shake your head, pressing your face into his chest. The smell of coffee clings to his shirt, and you breathe it in, comforted by the feeling of his arms holding you tightly to his chest. You cling to him, unwilling to part too soon after the ugliness of the last week, and it’s only when he laughs your name against your temple, curling inwards to meet your height, tall as he is, do you pull away to look up at him.

“Can you-” your face grows warm. “Will you..kiss me?”

The expression on his face is immeasurably soft. You think, a week ago, if you had asked him this way, he might’ve laughed at the tone of your voice, needled you a bit about being so shy. You understand his gentleness now, though, as he murmurs a,

“Yeah, sweetheart. Come here.”

Your wounds remain tender, and Jason kisses you as though you’re something delicate, something to be treasured, lips slanting over yours, feather light, before he presses closer. He’s syrupy sweet, kissing you slow. There’s a newness in every touch, every shared breath and sigh. Hands that have trailed your waist and hips so many times before now squeeze your palms, fingers intertwined like a promise. He breathes your name against your lips, nose pressing into your cheek, still sticky with tears.

“I love you,” you tell him, and he kisses you once more.

In the middle of your living room, you begin anew.

fin.

author's note: holy fuck. here is 17.6k words of what i thought was going to be 80% smut 20% emotion and ended up being whatever this is. i said i wasn't going to start a longfic during the semester and then this would NOT stop bothering me so. here we are...that content warning looks like an ingredients list for real.

anyway i'll post an author's note on ao3 that doesn't sound like brainrot. probably. idk this fic isn't that deep. reader and jason r extremely unserious and also probably a little shitty but it's okay. it's the roomie verse! we didn't come here for innocent angel characters. let's be serious! also i tried to fit in every single roomieverse hc that i could sorry they r something like easter eggs to me. swifties have t@ylor swift you have ME! i was gonna say something about that woman but let me not speak ab her too much with a folklore inspired username LMAO

[ssahotchnerr]

ALSO ALSO ALSO, Aaron keeping a pair of readers fuzzy socks in his go-bag for reader when a case is rough/they’re in a super cold area/just because 🤭🤭🤭

perfect pair

SCREAMING i'm setting this in the alaska episode it's the first thing my mind went to <33 cw; bau!reader, established relationship, fluff!!!!!

even with the burning fire going, countless chills continuously rushed through your body; you were shaking in place.

upon receiving word the case was in alaska, the customary temperature had been an afterthought. sure, you had packed (some of) your winter trappings; long sleeves, a heavy lined coat, boots. but you hadn't thought to layer, pack a set of gloves or a hat, wool socks rather than your usual cotton ones. rather, the excitement of purely being able to say you're going to alaska, of all places, had taken priority.

even today as you were getting dressed, you managed to talk aaron into lending you one of his favored quarter-zips. 'talk into' was a loose term, he hadn't needed the persuasion; you asked, he immediately accepted - never the one to deny you wearing his clothing, or the extra, provided warmth.

on the bright side, however, you had been hunkered down at the inn with penelope, researching the residents of the small town and not needing to brace the cold. but you might as well been, the heat coming through the air vents wasn't nearly enough, especially when the door frequently opened and the cold air drifted in. the fire was slowly weakening, and just thinking about the cold, made you freezing. the lingering frigidness was numbing your feet within your shoes, your fingers were just as biting - the bitterness was painful.

you were counting down the minutes until the day ended, eager to be warm in the comfort of bed, curled up with aaron 'the furnace' hotchner - the best perk of minimal rooms available and having to double-up. the two of you didn't typically share quarters while on the job, wanting to uphold professionalism, so this was a welcomed treat.

but when aaron had entered (and brought yet another rush of crisp air with him) to regroup with you and penelope, to discuss findings that would contribute to the profile, and hopefully narrow your search down, all he had to do was take one look of you shivering.

aaron walked behind the couch you were seated at, his hand finding your shoulder and giving it a squeeze hello, before heading up the stairs. at the gesture, you were quick to look up and acknowledge him, giving him a soft smile before your attention returned to penelope's screen.

aaron came back down a minute or two later, lightly tossing something onto your lap. it landed softly, but you still jumped a smidge, taking you by surprise.

you were met with your polka-dot fuzzy socks, a pair you hadn't seen in your drawer quite in a while, actually. your eyebrows furrowed in perplexity, grabbing the soft sherpa material and turning the pair over, analyzing as if you've never seen them before.

"you had these?" your eyes shot back up to aaron, arching an eyebrow in an accusatory, but playful, manner. the ends of your lips tugged upwards in a smile, your heart warming.

"given the circumstances, i'm sure you're glad i did." aaron's face matched your cheeky expression, a light smirk on his face. but he dropped the teasing demeanor, his gentleness returning, "i packed them into my go-bag a while ago. i figured they come in handy in one way or another, at some point. for comfort, warmth, when your ice cold feet touch my leg at night." his eyes smiled at you, and you couldn't help but grin.

aaron's immense, loving look was enough to melt everything in you, physically warming you. the sensation started in the middle of your chest, fanning out to the rest of your body, leaving you toasty and almost giddy.

forget the socks, layers, fireplace - all you needed was aaron.

"god that's adorable." penelope chimed in, who had been listening so quietly you'd forgotten she was there, a slight whine present in her voice, "never thought i'd be crying over a pair of socks, but here we are."

she turned back to her laptop, but her fingers paused above the keyboard, as thought came to her. her gaze drifted back towards you and aaron, a tickled glint in her eyes. "wait, i take that back. you two are the most, adorable pair."

[brunchable]

Secret Santa | S. R.

Pairings: Steve Rogers x F!Reader Themes: Ex-lovers. Petty Revenge but Steve is just sweet ;_; Summary: You and Steve are forced to participate in your friend group Secret Santa gift exchange, and of course, you end up assigned to each other. You're determined to give him the worst gift possible, but his surprisingly thoughtful present throws you off—and leaves you questioning your assumptions about him. A/N: This oneshot is a part of my 4K follower Christmas Celebration. Also this one will be connected to Santa Baby that will be released next week. dividers by @saradika-graphics

It wasn’t your idea to do Secret Santa. You’d never suggest something so contrived, so obviously destined for disaster. No, this brilliant plan came courtesy of Nat, whose mischievous smirk while handing out the hat of names told you she knew exactly what she was doing.

The moment you unfolded the slip of paper and saw his name, you felt the universe mocking you. Steve Rogers. Captain Perfect. Your ex.

You stared at the paper as though sheer willpower might summon a new name. It didn’t. Across the room, Steve raised his eyebrows as he read his own slip, the corner of his mouth twitching. You had a sinking suspicion the universe had played a cruel joke on him, too.

“What are the odds?” Nat said, sidling up next to you with a glass of wine.

“Oh, I don’t know. Rigged?” you hissed back, crumpling the paper in your fist.

Steve Rogers had a habit of ruining things. Like relationships. Or, in this case, your plans to breeze through the gift exchange with a generic mug or a gift card. No, this was war. You were going to find the most obnoxious, useless gift imaginable. The kind of thing that screamed, I know exactly what you hate, and I’m leaning into it.

You weren’t just shopping for a gift. You were shopping for revenge.

The mall was an absolute hellscape of holiday cheer—children screaming, Mariah Carey’s All I Want for Christmas Is You blasting on loop, and couples holding hands like it wasn’t a battlefield. You were on a mission, weaving through the chaos, hunting for something so heinous that it would make Steve Rogers cringe.

The first store you entered was a pop-culture knick-knack shop. It was overflowing with mugs that said, “Live, Laugh, Love,” and socks decorated with pizza slices. You rolled your eyes. Too tame. Too basic. No, you needed something with bite. Something so wrong that Steve would open it and instantly regret ever existing.

That’s when you saw it. A coffee mug. But not just any coffee mug.

It was massive, comically oversized, the kind of mug that could double as a soup bowl. Bright red, with bold, white text plastered across the front:

“WORLD’S OKAYEST LOVER.”

You snorted so loudly a nearby teenager gave you a dirty look. But it wasn’t enough. Oh no. You needed more.

Two hours later, you stumbled into the most chaotic store in the mall: an unhinged combination of novelty items, offensive gag gifts, and borderline illegal paraphernalia. The walls were lined with things like glow-in-the-dark shot glasses shaped like butts and calendars full of “inspirational” quotes… all of which were expletives. And there, under a flashing neon sign that screamed, BEST GIFT IDEAS EVER, you found it.

The pièce de résistance.

A calendar. Not just any calendar, though. It was titled:

“12 Months of Aggressive Affirmations.”

The cover featured a cartoon bunny flipping the bird. Each month was worse than the last—January read: “GET UP AND FUCKING WIN,” February shouted, “STOP BEING A SAD LITTLE BITCH,” and March simply screamed, “YOU’RE NOT THE PROBLEM, EVERYONE ELSE IS JUST DUMB AS SHIT.”

You couldn’t breathe. You were doubled over, tears streaming down your face as you clutched the calendar. It was perfect. Aggressive. Vulgar. Completely unnecessary. And most importantly? It would absolutely short-circuit Steve Rogers’ clean-cut, wholesome brain.

You slapped it down on the counter, ignoring the cashier’s judgmental look as they scanned it.

“You okay?” they asked, clearly unnerved by the manic grin plastered across your face.

“Oh, I’m great,” you said, pulling out your card. “This is going to make someone very uncomfortable.”

————

On the day of the exchange, you could hardly contain your excitement. The calendar was wrapped in gaudy, glittery paper that shed sparkles everywhere—another little insult aimed directly at Steve. When he finally picked it up, his brow furrowed at the excessive tape you’d used to ensure he’d struggle opening it.

Everyone watched as he peeled away the layers, muttering something about how you always made things difficult. But when the calendar came into view, his face went completely blank.

“‘Aggressive Affirmations,’” he read aloud, flipping to January. “‘GET UP AND FUCKING WIN.’” His lips twitched, but he refused to give you the satisfaction of a laugh. Instead, he held it up, deadpan. “Wow. You really went for it.”

“You’re welcome,” you said, smirking.

Nat practically fell off the couch laughing. “This is… incredible.”

“Yeah, this’ll look great in his bedroom,” Bucky added, snatching it to flip through the months. “Oh, man, look at June. ‘YOU’RE HOTTER THAN A FUCKING FOREST FIRE.’ Steve, this is the kind of energy you need.”

Steve pinched the bridge of his nose, muttering something under his breath that sounded suspiciously like, “I hate all of you.”

But when you caught his eye, you saw it—a flicker of amusement, quickly smothered by exasperation.

“This is going in my gym. Where no one else can see it.” He put the calendar down carefully, shaking his head. 

“Oh no,” you said, grinning wickedly. “It’s going on your fridge. Front and center. So every morning, you can start your day with a dose of aggressive self-love.”

Steve sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. “I don’t know whether to be mad or impressed.”

“Oh, be impressed,” you said, raising your glass. “It’s the best gift you’ll ever get.”

And when he smiled—small, reluctant, but genuine.

Steve wasn’t good at gifts. Not because he didn’t try, but because he overthought everything. For him, giving a gift wasn’t just about handing someone an object; it was a gesture, a piece of himself. And when it came to you—well, he hadn’t earned the right to give you anything, had he?

The relationship ended because of him. That much was clear. He’d been the one who pulled away, too overwhelmed by his own insecurities and the shadow of the life he thought he couldn’t offer you. And yet, here he was, standing in front of a boutique window, staring at the dress he knew you’d wanted for months.

He remembered the first time he saw you touch it. You weren’t even shopping for yourself. You’d dragged him into the boutique while looking for a birthday gift for Natasha, weaving through the racks with easy confidence. But then, you stopped.

Just for a moment.

The dress was simple—red silk, with delicate straps and a neckline that dipped just enough to make you bite your lip in that nervous way he loved. Your fingers brushed over the fabric, and you sighed, soft and wistful.

“Beautiful,” you’d murmured, almost to yourself.

Steve had stood a few steps behind, pretending to check his phone. He remembered how quickly you moved on, like you didn’t want to linger too long. You probably thought he hadn’t noticed. But he did. He always noticed.

Now, months later, Steve stood in the same boutique, heart pounding like he was about to charge into battle. The sales associate greeted him with a warm smile, clearly trying not to gawk at the former Captain America standing awkwardly among racks of designer dresses.

“I’m looking for a gift,” he said, clearing his throat.

“For someone special?”

He hesitated, the words catching in his throat. “Yeah. She’s, uh... she’s special.”

The associate nodded knowingly and led him straight to the dress. “This one’s a favorite. Classic, elegant.”

Steve reached out, fingers grazing the fabric just as yours had. It felt like silk against his calloused palms—soft, delicate, everything he wasn’t sure he deserved to touch.

“She looked at this one,” he said quietly, almost to himself. “A while ago. I don’t think she thought I noticed.”

The associate smiled gently. “Well, you noticed. That’s what matters.”

He bought it without hesitation, ignoring the price tag. The dress came in a sleek black box tied with a ribbon, and Steve carried it home like it was the most precious thing in the world.

————

That night, Steve sat at his kitchen table with the box in front of him, a pen poised over a blank card. Words had never been his strong suit, but he needed you to know this wasn’t just a gift—it was an apology, a hope, a quiet confession.

After a long moment, he began to write:

Y/N,

I’m not great at words, but you always told me it’s the thought that counts. I saw you look at this dress once, and I don’t know if you even remember, but I do. You should have something beautiful because you deserve everything beautiful in the world. I know I’m the last person who should be saying that. But maybe this can say what I haven’t been able to.

—Steve

He stared at the card for a long time before tucking it into the box.

On the day of the gift exchange, Steve handed you the box without a word. Your name was scrawled on the tag in his careful handwriting. You hesitated, eyeing him warily, but curiosity got the better of you.

As you untied the ribbon and opened the lid, your breath caught.

The dress.

The room felt smaller somehow, the chatter of your friends fading into the background. You didn’t know what to say, and Steve didn’t push. He just stood there, watching you with that quiet, earnest expression that used to make your heart ache.

Your fingers brushed over the fabric, just as they had that day in the boutique. For a moment, you couldn’t speak.

“You remembered?” you finally whispered, looking up at him.

Steve shrugged, his hands shoved deep into his pockets. “I always remember.”

You froze at his words, the weight of them pressing down on your chest. It wasn’t just the dress—it was everything. All the times he’d been paying attention when you thought he wasn’t. All the moments you’d convinced yourself he didn’t care.

Your throat tightened as guilt began to creep in, sharp and relentless.

“I—” You stopped, fingers curling into the fabric. The silk felt too soft, too expensive, too meaningful in your hands. “Steve, I don’t... I don’t deserve this.”

His brow furrowed, and he took a small step closer. “Why would you say that?”

You laughed weakly, a bitter sound. 

“Because I’ve spent weeks trying to think of the worst gift to give you. Something obnoxious. Something petty. And you...” You gestured at the dress, your voice breaking slightly. “You did this.”

His gaze softened, but there was something unreadable in his eyes.

“Y/N,” he said quietly, his voice steady. “You don’t have to feel guilty about that. I get it. You’re angry at me. You have every right to be.”

You shook your head, the lump in your throat growing. “But I shouldn’t still be mad. It’s been months. You tried, Steve. You really tried, and I—”

“You have nothing to apologize for,” he interrupted gently.

But that only made it worse. Because you did—not for being angry, but for the way you’d handled it. For not seeing how hard he was trying now.

“I just—” You exhaled shakily, holding the dress tighter against you. “I thought you weren’t paying attention. That I didn’t matter to you like that. And now... this.”

Steve’s jaw tensed, his hands fidgeting in his pockets. 

“You mattered,” he said simply, the rawness in his tone cutting straight through you. “You always mattered. I just... didn’t know how to show it before.”

The room was suddenly too warm, too loud. You felt exposed, vulnerable under his gaze. His words clung to you like static, leaving no room to breathe.

You lowered your eyes, staring down at the dress in your hands. “This... it’s beautiful, Steve. It’s too much. I don’t deserve it after—”

“You do,” he interrupted, his voice firm this time. “You deserve something beautiful. Even if you hate me, Y/N.”

You glanced up sharply at that, seeing the way his eyes flickered with something like regret—or maybe hope.

“I'm sorry. I don’t—” You stopped yourself. Lying felt crueller than the truth. “I don’t hate you, Steve. I just... I don’t know what to do with all of this.”

He smiled faintly, though it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “You don’t have to do anything. It’s a gift. No strings attached.”

And somehow, that made the guilt worse. Because he meant it. You could tell. And it left you wondering if maybe he’d always meant it, even when he didn’t know how to show it.

“Thank you,” you said softly, clutching the dress like a lifeline.

Steve nodded, his hands still buried in his pockets as he stepped back, giving you space. But his eyes lingered, and for the first time in months, you felt like you really saw him. Not the perfect soldier, not your ex—but the man who’d been paying attention all along.

Tags: @disneyprincessbuffyannesummers @strawberrybisou @alyana-luvs-u @rogersbarber @veronicapaula

@fynnwolff @bmyva1entine @thereoncewasagirlnamedjane @awaywithtime

[stevieschrodinger]

Part One ThirtyEight

“Hey baby what are you...doing?”

There’s a tree in the lounge. A live one. It’s not that big, maybe four feet tall but...it’s in a bucket filled with dirt.

“Decorating the Christmas tree.”

“Right,” Steve can clearly see the trail of loose soil across the lounge carpet, where Eddie has had to wriggle the bucket back and forth to get it in. It looks like it was probably heavy. It’s also not a Christmas tree, which Steve figures is usually a...fir tree. Or a pine, something like that, anyway. But this tree...it’s just a regular tree.

“I thought we were going to go and pick one up?”

“I found a nice one here,” Eddie tells him, “and I don’t like that they cut them down.”

“Oh...so you’re just going to take that one back out, after?”

“Yeap,” Eddie’s concentrating really hard on getting the decorations on the tree, a task made even more difficult by the narrow, wispy looking branches. Eddie doesn’t actually have any decorations since they’re in the attic, but he’s doing a sound job of improvising; Steve’s pretty sure half his mother’s jewelry box is on there. Steve’s not one hundred percent sure about the sock Eddie has limply draped over one of the branches, though, “Baby, what’s with the sock?”

Eddie tilts his head, frowning, “we put socks on the mantle,” Eddie points to where their stocking hang, Steve took the blue one with the stars, and he likes to think he managed to be tasteful and understated with his decorations. Eddie’s looks like Christmas vomited on it.

“Those are stockings baby, that’s different.”

Eddie shrugs, “I really like socks, they keep my feet warm.”

“I have...no argument against that.”

“I couldn’t find the lights,” Eddie tells him, moving on to more important matters.

“Yeah, they’re in the attic, you want them?”

Eddie’s nose wrinkles as he finally looks over at Steve, “what’s the attic?”

“Uhm. There’s a ladder, it’s the space in the roof, we store stuff up there.”

Eddie blinks, then frowns, “inside the roof? The house roof?” He points up.

“Yeah, want to come and look?”

Eddie nods, getting up to follow Steve, eyes wide and then grinning when Steve pulls the ladder down, “hidden secret,” he says, suitably awed.

Steve laughs, following Eddie up the ladder. It’s dark up there, but when Steve finds the pull for the light, Eddie lets out an impressed, ‘ooooh’. The attic is kind of cluttered, lots of...stuff. Boxes of forgotten things that have been stored up here, some old pieces of furniture, long term storage of his mom’s clothes protected by plastic covers...just all sorts of dusty stuff. “The Christmas stuff is over here,” Steve pretty sure he hasn’t been up here since last Christmas, and he remembers coming up for the lights and decorations...Steve swallows thickly, Eddie was sick, and Steve decorated the tree to try and cheer him up, even though part of him knew it might be useless.

“Okay Stevie love?” Eddie asks as he opens a box.

“Yeah...yeah I’m fine. We can take whatever you want downstairs baby.”

They hunt for a little while, Eddie getting a little tangled in some lights, and Steve having to perform a very small rescue. Eddie keeps hunting through boxes, and Steve lets him, taking the box with the lights down, and then the box with the ornaments in case Eddie wants any of them for his tree.

“Stevie!” Eddie calls, “come and look at this!”

“What you found?” Steve ambles over, Eddie sitting criss cross apple sauce on the dusty floor. He has a thick book open on his lap, a photo album, “holy shit, I haven’t seen that stuff for years.”

“Photographs?”

“Yeah...that’s me,” Steve points. It’s summer, he’s wearing a floppy white hat, a yellow shirt and blue dungarees. Steve figures he might be two or so in the picture, he’s barefoot on the grass and his bare legs are chubby baby legs.

Eddie turns the page, “this you too?”

“Yeah, it’s probably mostly me.” There are a couple of staged family photos in there, but largely it’s just random toddler pictures of Steve.

Eddie sits, staring, and when he gets to the end of the book he flips it and goes right back to the start again, “can we take this with us?” he asks when he’s about half way through his second pass through the photos, “you’re just a little guy,” he adds absently.

Steve snorts a laugh, “sure baby, of course.”

They don’t add very many decorations to the tree, it just can’t hold them. They end up improvising and wrapping the bucket in lights, since the tree can’t handle many of those, either. It looks...charming, by the time they’re finished. Steve struggles vaguely for positive descriptors, but chooses to avoid them entirely and simply tells Eddie, “I really like it. I am absolutely sure no one has a tree like ours.”

Eddie grins, and they head into the kitchen to make dinner together.

They settle in for a film, some inane made for TV movie about the magic of Christmas and the little kids get their puppy at the end or something equally saccharine and painfully acted. Steve doesn’t remember nodding off, but he wakes up slumped over on the couch. Eddie’s not paying attention to him, he’s still looking through the box of photos and albums he chose to bring down from the attic, half watching the movie.

Steve blinks the rest of the way awake just as the children save the magic of Christmas, or whatever it is that’s happening. Steve yawns, joints cracking. Eddie sniffles.

Steve scooches the length of the couch immediately, “baby?”

“I’m okay.”

Eddie isn’t crying, but there’s a tell tale mark on his cheek; Eddie’s tears are a bit of an off color, even now, “what is it?”

Eddie’s attention is drawn back to the books in his lap, he’s found a picture of Steve, maybe eight years old? Grinning proudly, sitting on his new bike. It wasn’t that long after that that his parents lost interest, or at least, it doesn’t feel like it was. The next picture he’s on the couch with his mom, Steve has no idea what the photo was in aid of, they’re both just sat there, but they’re sitting close enough that it’s a bitter reminder of when his relationship with his mom was a good one. He’s never been that close with his dad, not really, the man has always been disinterested...but his mom, that was different. Steve thinks she really loved him, once upon a time.

Eddie has a loose picture in one of those card frames, another staged one, his mom holding baby Steve, swaddled all in white, dads hand resting carefully on her shoulder as he stands behind them. “This is a proper family, right?”

Steve shrugs, “I think family is...not a set thing. As long as you care for each other, then that’s family.”

“But you want kids?”

“I…” Steve considers lying, briefly, but doesn’t see what it’ll achieve. A lie won’t explain to Eddie how he feels, or why he’s changed his mind. A lie won’t tell Eddie how much he loves him. “I thought I did, at one time. But only because it feels like what I should do, find a nice girl, get married, have kids it...felt like something I had to do just because everyone's doing it. But I chose you Eddie, and everything that means, you know?”

Steve closes the book in Eddie’s lap, taking Eddie’s hand instead, they link fingers, the last little bit of Eddie’s webbing is really obvious when their hands are pressed together like this. His collection of rings kind of hide it though, or at least camouflage it, “don’t feel bad, okay? I love you,” Steve tells him.

“I love you too,” Steve senses a ‘but’. Eddie opens his mouth, closes it again. Sighs a little, like he’s thinking. Steve just plays with his rings a little while he waits for Eddie to arrive wherever it is he’s going. Eventually, finally, he just asks, “are you sure? I don’t want you to be sad you chose wrong. You know, later.”

“Nah. I’m sure. No regrets; I'm not choosing wrong."

“Okay,” Eddie leans over for a soft kiss, but Steve senses his melancholy, and doesn’t really know how to dispel it. The only way he can show Eddie he means it is to keep meaning it, and Steve intends too.

Eddie stands, looking out of the window, as Steve gets ready for bed. It's uncharacteristically clear out, so Steve’s fully prepared for everything to be frozen in the morning, “Stevie?”

“Yeah?”

“Santa...isn’t real. Like, he’s a bunch of stories right? Like...Santa’s been around a long time, but he’s not real? Right?”

“Yeah, pretty much. I mean I think there’s like...a saint or something, like historical figures that might be...might have kind of caused the story of Santa but, yeah, Santa’s not real,” Steve climbs into bed, but Eddie’s still there, looking at the sky.

“But reindeer are real. They’re in my book.”

“Yeah,” Steve snuggles into bed, “reindeer are absolutely real.”

Eddie hums, but doesn’t move from the window, watching the sky, “are there any reindeer in Indiana?”

“I...I mean maybe? In like, petting zoos maybe a few? I think they live in cold places though, normally," Steve yawns, "like Canada and stuff I guess."

“Oh...so I won’t see any?”

Finally, it clicks, “Eddie...reindeer can’t fly.”

“What?”

Steve laughs, “come to bed baby. Reindeer are real...but they don’t fly.”

“Oh for fucks sake. I’ve been looking every night all week!” Eddie comes to bed, grumbling, “how am I supposed to know?!”

Part Forty

[jezabelle9299]

Secret Santa S.R x FEM!reader

Overture- You brought stockings to put on everyone's desk, with a small surprise inside your boyfriends. But of course you can just tell him it was you. That's no fun

CWs-Spencer is NOT athletic

A/N- I simply could not work on homework or finals today. It was snowing outside so my most pressing matter was looking at that for 20 minutes that turned out to actually be well over an hour. If it doesn't make any sense then just pretend it does, ok? This was like 4 different plots before I landed on this-- But if you want to read the other things I'm doing this month you could do that HERE

In order to beat everyone to the office you had to leave before the sun was up, normally making it an impossible task, but today it was worth it. The team was getting almost a week of holiday leave, and you wanted to perform a little surprise. You bought some simple stockings, adding little felt and glitter letters to personalize them. You spent almost an hour last night filling them for each person with candy and little trinkets you thought each of them might like. Of course, you wanted to stay anonymous– hence the early hour. 

You ran the file room on their floor, keeping up the digitizing of records, and finding paper files for the agents when needed. Almost no one needed, so you got close with Spencer very quickly. Close turned into a huge crush, which turned into a now 7 month long relationship. That 7 month long relationship led to you now, borrowing a cart from the mailroom to transport all of these stockings to your boyfriend and all of his wonderful colleagues’ desks. 

You had a plan– you were going to see just how good of a profiler he really was. There would be no note on them, and you knew his team would never suspect you as the bearer of gifts. They rarely needed something, and when they did Spencer was the first to jump up and grab it for them. They all figured he had a little crush on you, which while true– it was much more than that. 

When the team showed up, all around the same time– they immediately noticed the stockings hanging from the side of their desks. They looked around, seeing if anyone was lurking around waiting for their reaction, but you were already tucked away in your small office. You waited, almost expectantly for Spencer to figure out who it was, but as the day went on, he was stumped. Accusations were thrown around among the team, the glitter on some of the stockings leading straight to Penelope, then to JJ, even some people saying it was Spencer. But yet was anyone to suspect you– even Spencer. 

It wasn’t until around 4 o’clock, you were getting ready to go home early, and as the team had just about finished all of their paperwork they were saying their goodbyes. Derek put on his Santa hat, and decided to tease Spencer about his ‘little crush’ on you.

“Hey, maybe that filing girl you’re obsessed with made them– she could be your secret admirer.” 

Derek laughed, but Spencer didn’t. He knew everything about you by this point– you told him everything about your day, most days. You couldn’t keep a secret even this small– but the idea stuck somewhere in the back of Spencer’s brain. 

And there it stayed, until he was packing up for the day. When he was grabbing his stocking off of its little hook, supporting the bottom while he pulled on the top, he felt something on the inside– snug against the fabric. not something that could come from a manufacturer, either. He unpacked the entire thing, right on his desk, and hand sewn into the bottom of the sock was a little pocket. He folded the whole thing inside out so he could open it, finding a folded up post-it note that only said “Come find me when you figure it out” with a little star next to it. He knew then that Morgan was right, that you were his secret admirer— Well secret to everyone else at least. 

He quickly packed his belongings, including his new little gift, moving even faster when he saw the time– it was almost 7. He hopped on the train, and bounded up the stairs to your apartment. Once he got to your door he was a certifiable mess– his cardigan was hanging off one of his shoulders, his hands full and he was crouching trying to catch his breath. Adorable.

Just as you were wondering if he’d actually notice the small pocket, a hasty knock on your door caught your attention– it was definitely Spencer.

“Hi Spence, how was work?” You were stifling the giggle threatening to come out. He kept trying to catch his breath, not looking up at you when he held up your small yellow note.

“You found me!” He finally looked up at you when he got back fully standing, still visibly exhausted. You were wearing your little pajamas, and Spencer could hardly think of words to describe you right now. 

“You look really pretty.”

“Thank you– are you ok?”

“Yeah, just– I ran here from the train station.” Again you had to stifle a laugh because why on Earth would he run when it was only a 15 minute walk.

“Can I ask why?”

“You were waiting on me– it took me so long to figure it out, I didn’t want to waste another second.”

“You’re so sweet– and you’re just in time. I was about to put on a movie, and I have one more surprise for you.” You opened the door the rest of the way, motioning for him to come inside your apartment. He set his things down, and– finally being able to take a full breath, asked the question that was on his mind the whole train ride– I mean when did you have the time?” 

“How did you plan all of this?”

“I have a lot of time at work. Now the last surprise.” You grabbed a pair of pajama pants off your dining room table, matching in print to the ones you had on now. 

“Matching?”

“Yeah– but only if you want to wear them, you don’t have to of course, and I promise I won’t be upset– I mean I know I kind of just sprung this whole thing on you and–” Spencer grabbed your face gently with both of his hands and that finally got you to pause to breathe.

“I love them. And– and I love you.” He’d never said that to you, or anyone, before. But it felt right. 

“I love you too Spencer.”

“How about you get situated, I have an outfit change to get to.” He held up the pajamas you got him as he gave you one more kiss on the cheek.

[russo-woso]

For a Christmas type of fic could u do kcc x reader where they have their first kiss on Christmas/Christmas Eve

First kisses || Kyra Cooney-Cross x reader

A/N Just a small fluffy one 🫶🏻

Summary You and Kyra share your first kiss on Christmas Eve

When Kyra had originally asked you on a date, you hadn’t expected her to say Christmas Eve.

You’d gone on a few dates now. They started off as friendly dates, just as friends.

But then the lingering touches started, her hand resting on yours on the table, Your legs brushing under neath.

You figured that the date on Christmas Eve was going to be similar to the ones you’d had before, dinner and maybe a movie at the cinema.

But when Kyra messaged you the day before, telling you to wear your big coat and fluffy socks, you somehow knew it wasn’t going to be inside.

After hours of debating what to wear, you finally decided, laying it out, ready for your date.

The day finally came, not only was it Christmas Eve but it was the day of your surprise date.

You were still puzzled on what Kyra had planned.

“Ky, where are we going? Please tell me.” You begged, looking at Kyra as she grinned.

You were on the way there, no satnav on or anything, Kyra clearly knowing the way or having memorised it.

“There’s no way I’m telling you now. I’ve done good so far not telling you.”

“Please…” you pleaded

“Nope. Anyway, we’re in five minutes away. You’re too impatient you are.” Kyra said, you playfully rolling your eyes, knowing she was right.

—

Just like Kyra said, within five minutes, you were parked and ready to go.

You got out the car, Kyra covering your eyes so you couldn’t see.

“Kyra! Is this really necessary?”

“Yes, it is. It’s a surprise.”

You couldn’t make out where you were.

You could faintly hear the tune of last Christmas playing but you mainly focused on not tripping over as Kyra led you to the mysterious place.

As you got closer, the sound of music and laughter became louder.

“Are you ready?” Kyra asked, you nodding desperately as she took her hands away from your eyes.

In front of you was winter wonderland. The lights were blinding as you looked around.

Fair ground rides were everywhere, food stalls selling the most delicious sounding foods were scattered around.

It was just like you imagined.

“I knew you wanted to come here. I kind of overheard your conversation to Steph about winter wonderland so I thought this would be nice.” Kyra explained, your heart melting as you pulled her into a hug.

“That’s so sweet of you, Ky. thank you.”

You had moved to England from Australia in the summer and had never really experienced a ‘proper’ Christmas, hence why you wanted to come here and experience the best Christmas landmark, winter wonderland.

“Everything’s on me tonight as well. My treat.” Kyra told you, you pressing your lips to her cheek as a thank you.

—

The rest of the night was incredible.

You went on the fair ground rides together, played a few games, had amazing food.

There was one thing left to do, the ferris wheel.

It took a bit of persuasion to get Kyra to go on the ferris wheel but all it took was a pleading smile from you for her to say yes.

You were nearing the top when you shivered slightly, the temperature dropping as the moon rose.

“Here, have my hat.” Kyra said, noticing you shivering.

She took her hat off, placing it on your head before placing a soft kiss to your cheek.

Your cheeks reddened, your eyes catching Kyra’s as you watching her own flicker down to your lips.

Small snowflakes fell around you both, the first fall of the year.

The snow glistened as it fell, you and Kyra still not looking away from each other.

Slowly but surely, you both began to lean in.

It felt like a lifetime before your lips finally met in a sweet but passionate kiss.

You both pulled away when it felt right, the two of you having rosy cheeks and smiles on your faces.

“I’ve been wanting to do that for weeks.” Kyra admitted, a small chuckle leaving her lips.

“Me too. I really like you, Ky.”

“Will you be my girlfriend, Y/N?”

“Of course I will.”

You rested your head on Kyra’s shoulder, staring out at the city lights that lay before you both.

“Merry Christmas, Kyra.”

“Merry Christmas, Y/N.”

[keerysfreckles]

lando not being able to be with reader!bestfriend during her birthday because its right after a race weekend and hes got media commitments. so when he gets back he surprises her by throwing her a second birthday party for just the two of them and she just gets all mushy and sappy and all she wants to do is hug him all night -🍒anon

happier — LN4

pairing: lando norris x fem!reader

warnings: just a bit rushed :/

a/n: i. love. lando. so. bad.

masterlist !

⋆ ˚ ｡ ⋆ ୨୧ ˚

y/n knew how much dedication it took to be in formula one. she knew when kando signed his first contract with mclaren that his schedule would be packed week to week. so the girl felt selfish for wanting her best friend to be home for her birthday.

she called him that morning, unsure of the time since he was almost always in a different time zone than her.

"i'll try and be there next week, i promise," he rushed out before hanging up.

y/n let her day go on normally, but her mind would often wander to the curly headed brunette. three of her closest friends surprised her with a birthday dinner, insusting that no one should be alone on their birthday.

they got her a miniature cake, with two bright pink candles, and there were probably a hundred different pictures of y/n wearing the hot pink birthday tiara somewhere in one of her friend's phone.

once again, as she and her friends were enjoying the cake, she couldn't help but want lando there beside her.

she hugged her friends goodbye, and started cleaning up. she threw paper plates, wrapping paper and confetti away.

y/n sighed, while placing the ridiculous birthday tiara down on her living room table. she was aware of it being a busy weekend for lando, considering he was in singapore for a race. so calling him was out of the question.

she debated on texting him, asking how the weekend was going, but refrained.

the birthday girl turned off her living room light, before humming the birthday tune her friends sang to her moments ago, as she made her way down the hallway towards her bedroom.

the next morning, y/n was woken up by her front door closing (quite loudly she might add). at seven in the morning, she wasn't sure if her brain was comprehending anything. so she wasn't sure if it was real, or just her mind playing tricks.

she chose the ladder as she rolled over to face the opposite way.

four and a half minutes later she heard the door open and close again.

not a coincidence, she thought. certainly a burglar wouldn't close the door so loudly, so y/n threw her blanket off before opening her bedroom door. she was met with an empty hallway, only provoking her curiosity.

her sock covered feet tred through the hallway, not entirely sure what she'd meet on the other end.

she turned the corner carefully, and her eyes widened at the scene in front of her.

lando norris was in front of her. there was a decently wrapped present in his hands, and the same birthday tiara from last night still on the table. she looked around the room, noticing the few streamers taped to the walls.

"lando!" she can't help but laugh in shock.

"happy birthday y/n!" lando holds his arms open, after filling her apartment with the sound of an obnoxious party blower.

"what are you doing here?" she asks while running into his arms.

he's quick to hold her against him, spinning her in two circles. "i hoped on the first flight i could as soon as the last media conference was done," he spoke into her neck, his smile never leaving his face.

after a few minutes — yes a few minutes, y/n did not want to let go of the brit — the pair now sat on the couch. lando handed the gift to the day-late birthday girl before putting the pink tiara on her head.

y/n laughed as she peeled back the wrapping paper, revealing two new pieces of mclaren merchandise to add to her collection.

"of course," she laughs again, holding up the shirt with lando's number on the back.

the other item in the box is a light pink mclaren hat. y/n simply puts it on her best friend's head, with him adjusting it as soon as her hands leave the material.

"thank you lan," y/n's eyes are filled with adoration as she looks at the boy in front of her.

"i could never miss your birthday," his warm smile appears on his face once more.

"technically you were a day late," y/n jokes.

"i'm here now aren't i?" lando playfully states. y/n leans forward to press a kiss on his cheek, a motion both have grown accustomed to over the years.