squirming outta my skin (i'm in love with you) ch.1 - prologue: one helluva first meeting
AKA, the cheerleading fic. Also on Ao3
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The team hasn’t even gotten through their first set of ladders before Albert sidles up to him, scowling darkly.
“Heads up,” he says, jerking his chin over towards the sidelines. “DeLancey’s fucking with the cheer team again.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Jack groans, turning away from the field to look.
Sure enough, Oscar’s making a complete ass of himself as usual, leering creepily at the cheer squad while they try to warm up. Even as Jack watches, he lets out an obnoxious wolf whistle, reaching out to tug at one girl’s skirt, then laughing meanly when she darts away.
“Where’s Coach?” Jack asks, already exhausted.
“Hell if I know,” Albert grunts. “Enrichment meeting or some shit, probably.”
“Of course he is,” Jack sighs. He tears off his helmet, wiping the sweat from his brow. “Keep an eye on everyone, will ya?” he tells Albert. “I’ll handle Oscar.”
“Yeah, sure,” Albert says, clapping him on the back. “Good fucking luck, man.”
One of the other cheerleaders—a male cheerleader, who ushers his teammate behind him with a protective arm—is already chewing DeLancey out before Jack’s even made it halfway across the field, clearly furious.
“—picking on freshman now?” Jack hears as he jogs over, the cheerleader’s tone utterly frigid. “That’s pretty pathetic, even for you, DeLancey.”
“Aw, don’t get your panties in such a twist, Jacobs. It’s just a joke, no harm done—“
“Oh, there’s gonna be some harm done when I kick your fucking teeth in you piece of shit—”
“Hey!” Jack shouts as he approaches. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, DeLancey? You’re supposed to be running drills, not harassing the cheer team. Get back on the field.”
“This is your last warning, DeLancey,” the cheerleader—Jacobs—continues, not paying Jack a single whit of attention. “Keep your filthy hands to yourself and leave us alone.”
“Or, what, Jacobs?” DeLancey sneers, the prick, crossing his arms over his chest. “You gonna shake your pom poms at me?”
“Hey!” Jack cuts in firmly, because if he doesn’t, this Jacobs guy might actually tear DeLancey a new asshole. “Oscar, get back on the field. Now.”
Jacobs glances towards him then, and for a split second, all Jack can think is blue. He’s got eyes like the summer sky, vivid and vibrant and vicious, made all the more striking by the dark curls that fall across his forehead and the angry flush blooming high in his cheeks. But his gaze only lingers for a moment, those piercing eyes swinging back towards DeLancey, who’s proving that he’s just as stupid as he looks by lingering instead of beating a hasty retreat.
“I’m not going to tell you again,” Jacobs says, his voice hard. “Because I can and will kick your ass up and down the fifty yard line if I have to, but I’d hate to embarrass you in front of your teammates.” He pins DeLancey with a look of incredible disdain, then amends, “Not that you need any help in that department.”
“Oh, yeah?” DeLancey says, taking an angry step forward, his face starting to turn an ugly shade of red. “I’d like to see you try.”
“No,” Jacobs says, with a smile that’s all teeth. “You really wouldn’t.”
“DeLancey!” Jack barks, absolutely fed up with Oscar’s bullshit. “I swear ta god, if you aren’t back on the field in the next twenty seconds, you’re gonna be warmin’ the bench during tomorrow’s game!”
It’s this threat that finally lands.
“What? You can’t do that!” DeLancey blusters. “You need me!”
“Because who doesn’t need a wide receiver that couldn’t catch a pass if it literally hit him in the back of the head,” Jacobs mutters pointedly.
“Shut the fuck up, Jacobs!” DeLancey snarls at him. “Prissy fucking bitch, getting all huffy over nothing! Why don’t you go back to your cartwheels and toe touches before I have to teach you a lesson—“
Jacobs’ expression goes flat. Then he hauls his arm back and drives his fist directly into DeLancey’s face.
Oscar never even sees the hit coming—he falls flat on his ass, eyes watering as he cradles his nose.
“What was that, DeLancey?” Jacobs asks cooly, shaking out his hand. “The prissy fucking bitch didn’t quite hear you.”
“Holy shit,” Jack breathes, mouth agape.
“You—! You stupid fucking—!” DeLancey can’t even get the words out. Blood is trickling out one of his nostrils, the skin around it already starting to turn splotchy. “I’m gonna—”
He staggers to his feet, fists up, ready to charge.
“DeLancey.” Jack’s between the two of them in an instant, stopping Oscar in his tracks with a single, scathing look. “I said to get back on the fucking field.”
DeLancey gapes at him stupidly for a few seconds—Jacobs has clearly knocked a few brain cells out of him with that punch, and it’s not like he had that many to spare to begin with.
“You can’t just let him do this to me!” he finally sputters, like he ain’t the one that started all this shit in the first place. “What, just ‘cause some skirts got pissy over nothing? He’s just a cheerleader and I’m—“
“—already on thin fucking ice,” Jack says, voice hard. “I’m getting pretty tired of puttin’ up with your bullshit, Oscar, and once I tell him ‘bout this latest stunt, I’m pretty sure Coach will agree with me. So, you’re gonna wipe your face, stow the attitude, and get back on the green or I’m gonna drag you out there by the roots of your fuckin’ hair. Go.”
DeLancey throws him a sour, mutinous look, but finally, finally, does as he’s told, stomping off to locker rooms like the overgrown toddler he is.
“Asshole,” he mutters under his breath.
He turns to Jacobs, who stares back at him steadily, chin lifted. He’s still flexing his hand a little, the skin around his knuckles split in a couple places.
“So, uh,” Jack starts, hesitant in the face of Jacobs’ stony expression. “I’m real sorry ‘bout all that.”
“Uh huh,” Jacobs says, arching an unimpressed eyebrow. “Sure.”
“No, honest,” Jack insists. “It was about time someone knocked that smug look off his face… but it shouldn’t’ve had to come to that. Do you, uh,” he shifts his weight from one foot to the other, not sure what to do with himself. “Do you want some ice for your hand? That was one helluva left hook— or, I could, um—”
“I am just fine,” Jacobs interrupts, his tone biting. “So, please feel free to save the All-American, Boy Scout routine for someone who cares. If you really want to help—” the look on his face makes his opinion on the quality of Jack’s help crystal clear, “—then you can make sure shitheads like Oscar DeLancey stay the hell away from my squad. And if he comes within spitting distance of one of my girls again, I’ll have his fucking dick in a vice.”
A razor sharp smile. “So glad we had this talk.”
And with that, he marches away.
“Oh, fuck me,” Jack murmurs to himself, utterly enraptured as he watches him go. He’s real, real pretty and he’s real, real mean: Jack’s heart is already doing loop-de-loops around his chest, his skin buzzing with static. “‘M so fucked.”
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Prompt fill for @astreamofstars for this ask meme: Sickfic Prompts - Jaheira/Rasaad - [ 🛒 ] - going out at an absurd hour to grab supplies for them.
Set about a month before Rion's birth. c:
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"Who in the hells can that be at this hour?" Sleepily, Miriam Hummel treads across the floor of her shop in slippered feet, holding a candle before her to keep from accidentally walking into the shelves of dried meat and produce. She shoots a cautious look at the dagger kept unobtrusively beside the door, then pulls it open to look outside.
The thoroughfare of the Lower City market district is utterly silent, the moon hanging heavy and low between the rooftops. There is, in fact, not a single other soul to be seen besides the old man standing on the doorstep.
She recognizes him, just barely; he's come a handful of times through the shop before. Bashir - the monk, one of the couple who bought Elerrathin's Home a year or so back. He's a bit of a strange one, or so he's always struck her - very quiet, but gentle when he does speak, and remarkably quick on his feet. It's hard to guess his age; by the lines in his face, he is old indeed, but his dark eyes are bright and he has a square, stocky, muscular body that would do credit to a man half his years at least.
"Good evening," he says earnestly, as soon as the door has opened.
"Saer..." Miriam looks the man up and down with a mildly bewildered expression. Then, after a long pause and with heavy irony, she says, "We're closed."
Rasaad winces. "I realize this is not an ideal hour--"
"It's near midnight, Saer Bashir!"
"--but it would be a great kindness to me if you would give me a moment of your time." Rasaad hesitates, then reaches into his pocket and pulls out two heavy platinum coins. "This will cover all I need, thrice over and more. I beg of you, I will be here and gone in no more than a moment."
Miriam's eyebrows shoot up. "Well," she says, coming a little more awake out of pure perplexity. "That's fair generous of you, Saer, but what call you can have for any of my goods that is worth twenty gold pieces at midnight is--"
"Please," he says. "I need pickles."
She blinks slowly at him once. Then twice. "...Pickles?"
"Yes." He nods very seriously. "The largest container you have."
A long, long pause. "Are you having me on, Saer?" she asks suspiciously. "This some sort of joke?"
Now it's his turn to look puzzled. "A joke?"
Either he has the finest deadpan in the Realms or he’s being completely serious, and she’s starting to think it’s the latter. “...If it’s pickles you want for twenty gold, then pickles you shall have,” she says, quirking one eyebrow up. “Though I still can’t fathom the need.”
For the first time, his placid expression shifts, and a hint of something else pokes through the facade - worry, and a sort of pleading strain. His weight fidgets almost imperceptibly, left to right and back again.
“It is for my wife,” he says quietly. “She is… quite far along. I have told her that she shall lack for nothing, but she asks for little; it is not her way. But tonight, she is…” A pause; he is choosing his words carefully. “Low. It is a low night. And she has a craving, as I am told women in her state often have - for pickles, so pickles she shall have, if it takes me all the night to find them.”
Miriam’s wary scowl softens. “Ah,” she says. “Well. That is a cause I can’t fault, certainly.” Her mouth turns up a little at one corner. “She is a lucky one, your wife, I should think. There are not many as would find their man willing to hunt up such a thing at such an hour.”
He tips his head to the side. “Whyever not?” he asks, sounding legitimately bewildered.
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The door of the house creaks open on its hinges. Jaheira turns sharply from where she is standing at the window, and relief surges unrestrained across her face to see Rasaad framed by the moonlight in the doorway.
“You are back,” she says, the words like a sigh, an outrush of held tension. “I began to know my foolishness the moment you left - to see you out at this hour. The streets are not safe…”
“There was no danger,” he says gently. “Though I do believe the shopkeeper was greatly surprised to see me.” With a heave, he lifts the heavy jar in both his hands and sets it with a clunk on the table.
She stares at it and, to her own astonishment, feels tears fill her eyes. Her emotions have been a maelstrom all day - for weeks, really, but today has been particularly bad. She feels restless and fidgety, crawling around inside her own skin, a prisoner in her body weighed down by the life growing inside it. Earlier, it manifested in anger, a lashing-out argument buffeting against Rasaad’s infuriating calm, which was what sent him out into the darkness in search of a foolish whim.
Now it whiplashes back the other way into a gratitude so intense it is almost painful, interwoven with the pinpricks of pre-emptive grief that are always now in the back of her mind. She should not have sent him out; she feels so acutely aware, as she carries his child, of the finite weeks and months remaining to them, draining inexorably into the past. No minute should be wasted, no second taken for granted.
But she asked him for pickles instead, and he found them for her in the dead of night, and suddenly she wants to sob.
She isn’t sure how much of this shows on her face - but he must understand at least some of it, because he steps forward and gently rests one palm against her cheek, the other against the curve of her belly. “My sun…” he murmurs.
“I am sorry…” she mutters, her voice thick.
“There is no need.” He draws her forward, kisses her.
“I love you.” She whispers it against his mouth, then grunts softly as the child kicks in her womb, as if aware of its father’s nearness.
“And I you.” She feels him smile into the kiss before drawing back. “Now… please, sit. For these were dearly bought and I will not have them go to waste.”
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🔀 + stonathan
hi nic!! i’ve never written stonathan before, so please bear with me 🫶
again, this is longer than i was anticipating!! so it’s hiding under the cut hehe >:)
Steve wasn’t used to being high.
Sure, he’d been drunk before, but never once stoned — despite what people seemed to think about him, he wasn’t the total party boy everyone seemed to think he was. He liked to have a good time, but sometimes people took it too far.
This logic — and all of his logic, really — went out the window when Jonathan was around. They’d decided to camp out in his room, hiding from the rest of the party, soles of their shoes touching as Steve sat against his door and Jonathan sat across from him, head leaning back against Steve’s bed, neck dangerously exposed.
“Wanna get high?” Jonathan asked, looking at Steve, catching his unabashed staring. His face, if Steve wasn’t mistaking, turned a shade pinker than it had been a few seconds ago. When Steve didn’t respond immediately, Jonathan cleared his throat and tried again. “Steve?”
“Sure,” Steve said, finally, throat growing dry at the endless possibilities that were laying out in front of him, mapping out different trajectories of how the night could go. Maybe…maybe he’d finally get the guts to say how he felt, or press his lips to Jonathan’s, or even —
“Okay,” Jonathan breathed, pulling the weed out of his pocket, like he’d expected Steve to answer that way the whole time.
Except…something wasn’t right, here.
“Um,” Steve said nervously, scrambling into a standing position. “We should probably go outside.”
Jonathan’s lips turned into a frown, and it was — it was distracting. “Why?” He asked, suspicious.
“Parents,” Steve lied — as if his parents would care what he got up to in his room. No, he was more worried about someone from the party below stumbling in to find them…together.
He offered a hand to Jonathan, who took it slowly, his slim fingers warm against Steve’s skin. “Let’s go to the roof?” Steve asked, pulling the other boy up until they were nearly eye to eye.
Jonathan smiled at him. “Okay,” he said again, always agreeing with him, and — hell, if Steve got to enjoy two of his favorite views tonight, then maybe…maybe the party wouldn’t be so bad after all.
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