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bratbarzal · 2 months ago

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The Secret of Us (LH43) 3/3

aka the sequel to let it happen

Pairing: Luke Hughes x Fem!Reader

>PART ONE< / >PART TWO<

the pain of, the reign of, the flame of us

WC: 31k (I need therapy atp)

General Warnings: angst!!! did we expect any less for the final instalment of the epic highs and lows of this criminal situationship? (god bless the anon who sent me that line I think of it daily) cursing probably, inaccurate timeline of events regarding hockey and all but it's fiction just play along lmao, mentions of jack's injury, meddling friends, miscommunication final boss, hypocrisy final boss, jealousy and avoidance final boss and an ending 🙂

A/N: guys I wish I could put into words just how much joy writing this fic has given me, I have so much love and gratitude for the way you all responded to it. writing fic can sometimes be such a lonely and stressful experience in a weird way, especially something as long as this, and you guys turned it into this giant team effort and I felt like you were pushing me along the whole way!! this is such a corny a/n but I really love you all so much - thank you for being so kind to me, thank you for discussing every single element of this fic with me, thank you for loving (or hating lmao) the characters, and making them real enough in my head that they just flew onto the page. thank you to everyone who recommended this fic to anybody else, or who loved it so much that they went through everything else I've written and liked that too!! THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!! I hope this final part is loved as much as the rest, and I can't wait to talk to you guys about it!! my ask is always open for lih/tsou discourse!! these two will live with me for the rest of time lmao but I do now feel the need to run and hide because I'm terrified to post this actually so hope you like it lol

You can’t remember the last time you ever felt so lost in your life.

You’ve always been someone that finds your way - lands on your feet, figures things out - because you’ve had no other choice, before. Forced to be independent before you ever needed to be, you can usually work your way out of sticky situations with minimal scarring.

But Luke Hughes has somehow managed to crush you beyond recognition.

You thought things were finally going well, you were taking this monumental leap into something more, kissing him like you’ve been denying yourself for too long, and then all of a sudden you’re struggling to get your words out, letting him assume the worst of you and running with it, because what other option do you have now, knowing that he doesn’t want you back?

You’re a little caught of guard at the initial rejection, but the words that follow make you speechless, entirely, gaping open-mouthed like some dumb-struck idiot as he tells you that he’s moving on, and you only want him because you don’t want to lose him.

And you’re so consumed by this wave of renunciation that you can’t even fight him on it.

And then he’s gone.

The silence that follows Luke’s departure from the porch almost makes your ears pop - pressure building and building to the point of eruption inside your head, and you’re so caught up in your mind that you’re barely functioning otherwise.

It’s below freezing out, a cold wind whipping at your cheeks, and every breath you take feels rough and textured like you’re rubbing coarse sandpaper at your chest cavity - you really shouldn’t be out here, exposed to such harsh conditions, but what does that matter when you would be hurting anyway, no matter where you are.

You don’t even know how you got here.

One second you were running through the house with the best news of your life and only one person in mind to share it with, and the next you were out in the cold - key moments from the night playing in your head like some horror movie sequence.

Ellie’s warning of, he’s gonna crush you when he starts seeing someone and you get left behind.

The way she’s been keeping it to herself that he already is seeing someone, or speaking to her, at least, whatever that entails - because, the two of you speak. You speak every day.

Seeing Victoria with her hands on Luke, sinking her claws into him while he gave her one of those cute, toothy grins - the kind that made his eyes gleam and crinkle in the corners.

And then, I don’t want to be with anybody but you tonight, I promise.

How can anybody possibly hear that and not want to kiss him?

Sure, it was some weird, territorial spur of jealousy that consumed you and forced you to take that final leap, but it’s not like you haven’t thought about doing it before. Sat on your bed watching Wall-E on your birthday, the plush he had bought you tucked into the crook of your elbow and your hand brushing repeatedly against his in the bowl of popcorn. Or when he’d snuck out of your house the morning after, only just managing to evade being caught by your sorority regime and holding you against him with a kiss to the side of your head as the two of you said your goodbyes on the porch.

Does it really matter what the final catalyst was if the finished result was what you’ve both been wanting this entire time? Plus, it’s not like he hasn’t encouraged those feelings before - Mr Tell me that the thought of me even talking to another girl makes your skin crawl.

But that’s the problem. You’re probably too used to acting impulsively with Luke - doing first, thinking later - and he’s starting to realise it, too, growing tired of your stretched out resistance and finally throwing in the towel.

We both have to find a way to move on.

Maybe it’s not what you’ve both wanted the entire time.

Maybe Luke hasn’t wanted it for a while - has wanted to move on and find someone new. See someone else - speak to her, or whatever.

God, you feel pathetic.

A feeling that worsens when Ethan finds you, teary eyed and shaking - too consumed by your own humiliation to feel just how cold it is outside until he shrugs a jacket over you, holds it closed in front of your torso and peers down at you with nothing but concern in his chocolate eyes.

His mouth moves, but all you hear is muffled noise alongside the sound of your racing heartbeat, and you try to read his lips, but it’s hard to see through the blur of tears. His hands start rubbing at your arms, and the friction brings everything back into focus, a little. The cold night air, the cologne rubbed into the collar of the jacket, the voice of the caring boy in front of you.

“You’re shaking like a leaf,” he mutters, “Let’s get you home.”

You nod wordlessly as you accept his help, a guiding arm around you that ushers you off the porch, helps you down the steps and pushes you gently to the edge of the yard until you’re walking side by side down the street. You sniffle, not even realising that you’re crying until you try to remedy the dryness in the corner of your lips and taste the salty tears that have fallen there, and you end up crying the whole walk, trying not to be obvious about it - arms wrapped around yourself and head dipped to watch your feet as they move along the sidewalk.

Ethan doesn’t try to talk it out of you, for once, which you’re grateful for, and he walks you all the way up to the front door, turning away without any prompt so you can fetch the key you hid under one of the plants before you left

“Thanks,” you mutter, once you’ve retrieved it, standing back up and watching as he spins back around. “For walking me back, sorry that I got upset and weird.”

“It’s alright,” he shrugs, hands buried in the pockets of his jeans to maintain some semblance of blood flow, the below freezing temperatures making it almost painful to breathe. “Lot of tears for a guy you’re not into, though.”

“Yeah,” you sigh, because what’s the use in denying it anymore. It hasn’t done you any favours this far. You fumble your key into the lock and shoulder the door open, leading him into the house with a silent invitation, thankful that he follows without any hesitation and seals the heat back in behind him. “Can I ask you something?”

“As long as it’s quick, I got a beer pong championship I need to retain, I’m on for a three-peat, kids in this town will be talking about it for years.”

“Well I wouldn’t want to hold you back from greatness,” you scoff, offering a lighthearted chuckle as you shrug off the jacket he had slung over your shoulders before. Luke’s jacket, you’re pretty sure, that in any other circumstances, you’d keep, but the smell of him is probably going to suffocate you if you inhale it any longer. You hold it out to Ethan, quirking a brow when he frowns down at the garment. “You’re off the hook, it was stupid anyway.”

“No, come on,” he prompts, “I was kidding.”

He blinks slowly at you, dark eyes warm and encouraging as he steps a little further into the foyer, leaning against one of the pillars by the door. He’s settled in, and he’s giving the kind of energy that it’s hard not to reciprocate - open and receptive to whatever it is that you want to talk about.

“Do you guys talk about, like, girls and stuff?” You ask, brows creasing almost immediately at how dumb it sounds to even bring it up. God, you’re starting to hate what he’s turning you into. “I mean, like, if he was into somebody, would he tell you?”

His eyes go darker, somehow, amusement flashing through them as his lips quirk, and he can try all he wants, but it’s so obvious he’s biting back a smile. “He doesn’t have the track record for it since he moved away, no, but Luke’s a pretty private guy. Even when he was here, he was never really big on talking about that kind of stuff.”

“Oh.” You sigh, because great, you’ve just made an idiot out of yourself for no good reason - to Ethan, of all people, who’s been trying to eke information out of you all year.

“Awful poker face, though,” he adds, “Like anybody could see from a mile off that he is into somebody.”

That doesn’t make you feel any better. If he isn’t talking to the boys about any girl he potentially is interested in, why would he tell you? Maybe you had been wrong, when Ellie brought up him speaking to somebody back in Jersey, maybe he wouldn’t have told you. Maybe he’s a pretty private guy, like Ethan said, and that privacy extends to you in the same way it does to the guys - where Luke keeps his cards close to his chest, just like he had back in summer, when the two of you were a thing.

“Ellie told me that he was,” you lament, leaning on the pillar closest to Ethan’s, crossing your arms over your chest, “I didn’t believe her, I thought he’d tell me, but now I don’t know.”

“Is that what you’re upset about?” Ethan’s eyes narrow, “That he didn’t tell you?”

“I guess maybe he did,” You sigh, replaying his words over and over in your head. We both have to find a way to move on. I don’t know how long I’m supposed to wait for you to figure it out. It hadn’t been explicit, but the sentiment was there - like he was laying the foundations of something he’d be more ready to build onto at a later date.

Maybe this thing with Yasmin is early days, still. Maybe you put him so far off the idea of letting anyone else in on what could be a good thing - through fear of it all coming crumbling down, just like his relationship with you had done - that he won’t tell anybody until he knows for sure.

“I feel like an idiot.”

The idea of him letting go of his feelings just as you started to come to terms with your own hurts, but you can hardly be mad at him. He had been right - you’d told him in no uncertain terms that you weren’t willing to take things further again, and even though that was almost 6 months ago, now, it doesn’t change the fact that you’ve withheld your feelings, since. You don’t even remember what you were trying to protect yourself from, because it can’t have been as bad as this.

“Maybe you should talk to him before he leaves again, tomorrow,” Ethan suggests, “I can try talk some sense into him if you want?”

“You’re good,” you decline, figuring you’ve done enough invading his privacy for the time being. You need to let him figure things out on his own, you think, instead of acting out of impulse and making everything explode in your face. “I’ll call him in the morning, thanks though.”

Ethan straightens up as he starts to get ready to leave, but just before you can say goodbye, he turns at the door. “He really cares about you, you know.” He tells you, “In case he didn’t tell you that, either. He can be an idiot, but he cares.”

“I know,” you breathe, smiling softly to try and reassure him - because if you do know one thing about Luke in this whole fiasco, it’s that he cares. Whether it’s too much, or not enough, you’re not sure, but it’s there, nonetheless.

You thank him again, because you really are grateful that he walked you back, and that he was so willing to lend an ear to your stupid questions without making you feel entirely stupid for them, and grins back, boyish and sweet, before he leaves.

The house is unsettlingly quiet - the rest of the girls either in bed or at the party - and you just want to go to bed, yourself to shut out the unbearable silence, but your room doesn’t provide the kind of escape you thought it might.

One of Luke’s sweatshirts is slung over the back of your desk chair, and even without it being there, you think you’d see him in every corner. He’s in your reflection in the bathroom, brushing his teeth by your side and nudging you out the way to spit the residue into the sink. He’s poking and prodding at your skincare on your vanity, reading the bottles and asking what they do. He’s sat at your desk, looking at your little calendar and telling you that you really need to take a break for yourself when he realises just how many spaces are filled in. And he’s in your bed, his scent in the sheets you’re yet to wash since he slept in here on your birthday - and even that isn’t giving you reprieve like it had the night before.

You can’t get to sleep at all.

And it’s probably morbid curiosity that will be the end of you, because as you lay in your bed, tossing and turning and trying to drown out your thoughts so that you can finally drift off - there’s some stupid, sabotaging part of you that thinks it’s a good idea to open up instagram. And then it seems reasonable to check Luke’s profile, knowing that he hardly ever posts, but heading straight to the accounts that he’s following.

You type her name before you can convince yourself how bad the idea is, watching as the results narrow down to just one with only a few letters, and you click straight through to the profile that remains.

It’s unassuming, initially. Her name is Yasmin Keating. Her bio suggests she’s a student, her location says North Carolina, and most of her feed is dedicated to her time spent decked in blue and white playing basketball at UNC. And she’s gorgeous. She’s athletic, and would probably understand all of his weird sports references more than you do, would probably understand his lifestyle, and the stress he’s under. She’s sociable, probably wouldn’t hide him away and make him feel like some dirty secret.

And one of her latest posts is tagged in New York, from a couple weeks ago. A carousel of photos, each as pretty as the last, and you hold your breath as you swipe through them for any sort of sighting of the curly brown hair you know too well.

The sighting doesn’t come, but as you scroll down a little, you find something just as bad.

Liked by lhughes_06.

If you were hesitant to accept Ellie’s word for it, confused by Luke’s own reluctance to let you in, and Ethan’s shifty explanation of his best friend’s privacy, then this is the confirmation you need to finally accept the truth.

Luke is moving on.

And maybe you need to let him.

When Luke wakes up the morning after, his head is pounding. There’s a relentless thud between his ears, and he swears his brain feels loose, like it’s rattling around his skull at even the slightest shake of his head.

He doesn’t think it’s a hangover - he’d had a few drinks, but not that many, and had ended up coming home a lot earlier than anticipated, his party spirit dampening as soon as you left, anyway. He’d fallen asleep with his phone in hand, staring at your message thread and trying to figure out if texting you would be a good idea, so maybe it’s staring at a screen for almost an hour that gave him such a headache, he thinks.

But all his usual remedies aren’t working.

He drinks a full bottle of water straight from the refrigerator, chugging the contents down until the plastic is squeezed to within an inch of its life in his hand, and manages to swallow down some Tylenol with it. He showers, letting the water spray directly onto his neck and shoulders to try and relieve the tension there, and spends a little longer than usual to try and wash the pain away. He even makes himself a decent breakfast to try line his stomach, but by the time 10am rolls around, he still feels like crap.

He is supposed to fly back to Jersey in the late afternoon, and as the hours tick on, there’s a panic that stirs within him - a feeling like he’s forgotten something, already, even though he doesn’t have to leave for a while. His bags were packed yesterday - he had figured he’d get ahead so that he isn’t stressing - and he doesn’t have to worry about returning a rental car, because he’s been driving his dad’s while they’re out of town and is supposed to leave it at the airport, anyway. He’s checked all the windows around the house, and the settings on the heater - there are no dishes in the sink, no clothes left in the washer or dryer, and it’s about as tidy as it was when he arrived last week.

And it’s only when he checks his phone for what is probably the 20th time that he even realises he keeps doing it - realises what he thinks he’s missing.

You.

He probably would have been with you, if things didn’t blow up last night.

He’d have been at your house, or you’d have been at his, and you’d have kept him busy all the way up until the point he needs to leave. He’d have slept by your side, like he’s pathetically getting so used to doing, now, and would have woken up to your pretty eyes slowly blinking back at him. And he figures that’s why he felt off as soon as he opened his own, with the sun peering into his bedroom through the thin curtains, and the slight chill that wracked through his body without yours to keep him warm.

You haven’t even text him - the last message on his phone being from Ethan, last night, after he’d dropped you off, one Luke had seen as he sat in the back of his Uber home, all desire to be around anybody swiftly drained as soon as you were gone.

His hands start to shake the longer he thinks about it, and the more he remembers - pushing you away and watching you leave - and he can’t even rationalise it all, anymore.

Summer might feel like a lifetime ago, but if that’s the case, then it’s a lifetime of Luke still wanting you. It’s months of trying to fan the flames of your affections, trying to keep the spark alive, despite all the ways you had told him it was long blown out.

He knows. He’s always known that there was something left.

But he’s tired of being the only one who believes in it, anymore.

Jack doesn’t support him, his parents are none the wiser, his teammates barely have time for their own relationship dramas, let alone his, and the only person who had ever encouraged him to pursue more with you lives on the other side of the continent.

But right now, the last remedy that comes to mind is a call with his oldest brother - one last ditch attempt to clear his mind before he flies back to Jersey and throws himself back into hockey for the last few months.

He’s found himself calling Quinn much more while he’s been home alone for the past 10 days, with Jack busy with the tournament, and his parents busy watching them - he thinks there’s a common ground there, with Quinn, where he’s sort of detached to the point of novelty when it comes to Luke’s life.

He offers a fresh perspective, gives unbiased advice - helps him make pancakes over FaceTime for the girl in his bed who isn’t his girlfriend, and doesn’t make snarky comments or push him to talk about it.

And so he’s pressing on his contact before he can think better of it - waiting until Quinn’s face pops up on his screen, seemingly propped up while he makes himself a breakfast smoothie all the way over in Vancouver.

“Lukey, what’s up?”

“Hey man, you got a minute?”

“Sure, let me just back away from the blender before I try to multitask and blitz my kitchen.”

He watches with a grateful smile as Quinn makes his way through his apartment, walking into the living room himself and throwing himself down onto the seat in the bay window.

“Surprised you found the time to call me, thought you’d be spending your morning at a certain sorority or something.” His older brother laughs as he lowers himself down onto the couch in his apartment, the view behind him that of a misty Vancouver, the sun barely seeping through the clouds.

It makes him feel a little closer, to see it - peering through the glass at the front of their parent’s house, himself, and looking up at familiar grey skies.

“That’s kind of what I wanted to talk to you about.” Luke frowns, hating the way his gut twists guiltily at the vague memory of last night - of your elation turning into evasion, and the way he still thinks he can taste you if he swipes his tongue across his bottom lip. “I don’t think she wants to see me right now.”

“What did you do?”

“Why do you assume I’m the problem?”

“Are you not?”

“I don’t even know.” He groans, looking back on the evening with a lot more clarity than his beer-goggles had allowed him, before. “I sort of blew up at her last night about something, I had a couple drinks, and I think I was pretty harsh. She left the party early and we’d usually text by now, but I think she’s probably avoiding me.”

“You’re gonna have to quit being so vague if you want me to help you out, man.”

The look Quinn is giving is like the virtual version of a brotherly swat, a blank but bold stare at the screen that’s his own silent way of telling his little brother to just spit it out, already.

And Luke takes little convincing - despite all the months he’s held back from doing so. This is technically a boiling point, and keeping this whole thing between the two of you such a secret has done absolutely nothing to serve him, so far. He could really use the help, he thinks.

“We’re supposed to be friends.” Luke sighs, “Back in summer, we had a thing, like we were sort of, almost together,” he cringes as he says it, unable to think of a better way to lay it out. Sure, he’d spoken to Quinn a little about you, back then - had admitted to having a crush, at least, but he hadn’t shared much past that. And it’s different with his older brother, he thinks, on the other side of the continent, oblivious somewhat to Luke’s day to day, and just how much it probably involved you by now. He needs to explain it for it all to make any kind of sense. “Like we were hanging out together all the time, and sleeping together, and it sounds like a mess but it was perfect when it was just us.”

“Are you waiting for me to be shocked or something?” Quinn queries after a moment’s pause, quirking a brow with narrowed eyes pointed straight at the camera. “Because we all knew you were sort of, almost together, you couldn’t have been any more obvious about it if you tried. Was it supposed to be a secret?”

“I don’t even know anymore,” Luke huffs out an elongated breath, the whole thing feeling like a waste of time, right about now. Keeping you hidden, abiding by your rules of saying nothing about whatever was going on between the two of you. What was the point in kissing you behind closed doors and rushing you back to your bedroom in the mornings if everybody knew, anyway? What could the two of you be, now, if you hadn’t held yourselves back? “I really fell for her, though. Hard. Like the worst hit I’ve ever taken in my life. And I fucked it all up by being stupid, and I said some pretty awful stuff about her that she overheard,” he winces, hating even looking back on that stupid conversation with Cole, not wanting to slip and indulge too much to his oldest brother about it through fear of valid judgement. “And it took her a while to let me back in, and she said that we’d only ever be friends, and obviously I want to be more, obviously I’m still in love with her, but she made it pretty clear we’d never cross that line again, and I can’t spend the rest of my life standing at the wrong end of a bridge I can’t cross, do you know what I mean?”

“No,” Quinn deadpans, “I’ve never heard anything so dumb in my life.”

“She kissed me, last night, Quinn,”

“Sounds horrific.”

“And I pushed her away,”

“Sounds idiotic.”

“You don’t get it,” Luke’s jaw tenses, glaring at his brother through the screen. “She only kissed me ‘cause she didn’t want me to kiss somebody else. She saw me with this girl she hates and I found her after, she was pretty upset.”

“Lukey boy,” Quinn chuckles, giving an amused, crooked smile on the other end of the call, “You’re so full of shit, the hot girl that you like kissed you, it’s hardly the end of the world.”

“Don’t be a dick, Q,” Luke scowls, trying to push past the flare of agitation that lights within him at his brother referring to you as the hot girl. Even he can see how hypocritical it is, but it’s instinct - he can’t exactly fight it.

“No, come on,” his older brother starts, straightening up where he’s seemingly reclining on the couch, a surefire sign that he’s about to give some sort of lecture. “You spend your whole summer obsessed with her, and God-knows how long before that, and you fuck up so monumentally that the girl doesn’t talk to you for like 6 weeks, and then by some miracle she lets you back in and you fuck it up again.”

“Jack said I should move on,” Luke huffs in response, some attempt at trying to rationalise how stupid he had been to push her away last night.

“Jack’s an idiot.”

“He said that she’s probably moving on, and he made out that it was all sort of one-sided, and you know how much him and Ellie talk, I figured it had to have come from somewhere-,”

“It came from him being an idiot,” He repeats, “And it must be contagious, because why would you not just talk to her instead of letting it all blow up like that?”

“I tried,” Luke whines, “We went to a game together last week, I asked her about dating and stuff,”

“And?”

Luke frowns as he tries to remember the crux of the conversation - you’d joked that you wouldn’t go to a hockey game on a date, that you hadn’t been going to games on dates, and it never really expanded further than that, his attempt too specific to the situation and not the wider issue.

“I guess she said she wasn’t, but I probably wasn’t asking the right question.” He admits, blinking slowly as he tries to come up with any other reason why he had acted so irrationally the night before.

“So let me get this straight,” Quinn’s voice brings him back a little, shoulders stiffening in preparation of the verbal lashing he’s no-doubt about to receive. “You two spend a whole week together, like every waking second in her company when she’s not in class or with her friends, she spends valentines and her birthday with you, she tells you that she isn’t dating anybody else, she gets so upset about seeing you with somebody else that you find her almost in tears, and you somehow ignore all of the evidence that she is, in fact, into you, only to push her away because Jack implied she might have moved on?”

Well that sounds fucking stupid, Luke thinks.

“But she-,”

“She what?” Quinn asks, raising an expectant brow. “She snuck you into her house all week, despite the fact we both know how strict those girls can be about having guys over? She spent every day doing things that were important to you, trying to learn about the things you like, hanging around your friends, coming to you when she was upset?”

“You don’t get it,” Luke huffs, regretting all the information he’d been sharing with his brother throughout the last week right about now - not realising the little parts would be pieced together and used against him like this. “She told me she only wanted to be friends, she told me multiple times, and she only ever wants more when she is upset, like I’m just there to comfort her, or something.”

It had been the same back in summer, initially - you only ever sought him out when you were agitated or emotional over something you wouldn’t talk to him about. You followed him up to his bathroom after seeing him with Victoria, you brought him upstairs to his room in the middle of a party after an argument with Jack - and he had been fine with it, at the time - encouraged it, even, trying to flare up your jealousy to prompt you to give in to him, taking whatever scraps of your affections you were willing to give - but this feels different.

He can’t keep carrying on like this.

“Don’t you want to comfort her?”

“Of course I fucking want to comfort her,” he scoffs, because it isn’t about that. He loves you, he’ll always want to comfort you if you’re hurting or upset, but he can’t keep himself on stand by to be available to your methods of avoiding your problems only for you to keep pushing him away, otherwise. “But, I don’t know, there has to be a line, you know?” He sighs, “I have to put a line there before I fall any further and she pulls the rug from under me when she does start dating. Like she just saw me speaking to some girl she doesn’t like, and then she said she doesn’t want to see me with anyone else, but she still wants to be friends! I told her that we both need to move on, I don’t even know why, I don’t even think I want her to.”

“You need to talk to her, man,” Quinn frowns, “You need to tell her that.”

“That’s what last night was-,”

“No, last night was impulse,” he sighs back, “It was you after a few drinks, and both of your emotions at a high, and you blew up at her out of nowhere. Sure, she probably shouldn’t have kissed you, but you’ve got to give her a chance for her to think about what she wants instead of just telling her she needs to move on because she didn’t give you the right answer in the moment, Luke.”

You weren’t there, Luke wants to say, you don’t understand.

But maybe that’s the point. Maybe an outsider’s perspective - someone like Quinn, who is fair and reasonable, who doesn’t let his loyalty to or protectiveness over his little brother cloud his judgement, who always understood the depths of his relationship with you before Luke could ever admit it to anybody - sees more than Luke could, himself.

“Go over, before you head to the airport,” Quinn says, his tone suggestive, but classically authoritative, “You don’t wanna leave it like that, trust me.”

“Yeah,” Luke breathes, “Thanks, man, sorry for dumping all of this on you.”

“It’s fine,” Quinn smiles back, crooked and familiar, bringing the kind of comfort Luke finds himself craving, sometimes, when his other brother is being a dick. “I’d rather you come to me than Jack, he just ends up making a bigger mess that I have to clean.”

Luke gives some attempt at a laugh that doesn’t quite seem right with how heavy everything else feels, and lets his brother carry on with his own morning routine with no more whining from him.

He gets himself ready, loads his bag into the trunk, and makes sure everything is locked up and secure before setting off across town on a route he now knows like the back of his hand. He sits in the car, parked up across the street from your house, for 10 minutes - trying to think of how he can possibly clear everything up before he leaves - when he sees something that makes his breath catch.

You come out of the house, bundled in what looks like a bunch of layers and his sweatshirt on top, your backpack slung over your shoulder, and you’re smiling as you turn back to speak to someone following you out of the house. Even from as far away as Luke is, the sight of your smile calms something within him, but that calm quickly turns frigid as he takes notice of who is coming through the door behind you.

Ethan is wearing the same clothes as last night, his hair is shaggy and unkempt, and Luke recognises the kind of wry grin he’s flashing your way from back when the two of them lived together when he was in college. It’s the kind of smile that follows a phrase Luke can still hear in the back of his mind, as if it were last uttered to him yesterday, and not almost 2 years ago. I don’t kiss and tell.

And that swirl of panic comes back tenfold - fingers clenching against the wheel as he starts the car back up and drives off as quick as he can, not wanting to watch anymore of whatever scene that was between the two of you unfold.

If he hadn’t regretted last night before, he sure does, now - because he understands you more than ever - 8 familiar words ringing around his skull like a siren sound.

I don’t want to watch you move on, you had told him, pupils blown and lips swollen as you spoke, the surface of them still slick and pink from his bruising kiss. And being the idiot he is, he had encouraged you to do just that - had thought it would be what’s best for you both, what’s healthy and right.

But he doesn’t want to watch you move on, either.

And now it seems like he has no choice.

Trying to distract yourself from the fact that Luke is actively avoiding you is harder than you ever thought it would be.

You lived so much of your life before him that it really shouldn’t take a lot of effort to try and reignite some form of your old routine, but as the days pass by - and the conversation lulls, the texts dwindle into short responses, and the FaceTimes cease entirely - you think you might have forgotten what your world was ever like without him.

You throw yourself back into your school work for a couple weeks, but it doesn’t really work the same as it used to, and you find yourself thinking about your future too much - about your grades, about NYU, about all the plans that involved him and now don’t seem as certain as they once did. You get back into the groove with your sorority responsibilities, spend a lot more time with your sisters, helping to plan the activities and events like you did a lot more last year, but you find yourself checking Luke’s game schedule more often than you should, trying to make sure nothing clashes even though he probably doesn’t care by now and he no doubt has Yasmin to support him instead of you.

And then you try to do things for yourself. You get back into your routine at the gym, you pick up swimming again and even volunteer on your one day off a week to teach a few lessons at the rec centre, thankful for those few hours you spend with a bunch of kids who just want to splash around and dive for the random items you throw into the deep end for them.

You manage to find some semblance of balance, but he’s always in the back of your mind, and before you know it, weeks have passed - whatever spark you had left with Luke fading as they do - and the last text you have from him is from 5 days ago. You’d tried to lure him into a movie night, asking about his availability, and he’d said he would let you know. He never did. And that is what led you to tonight - going out to the movies instead of sitting on your bed and thinking Luke should be beside you, and you figured it was the safer option, going somewhere that you never went with him.

You even ran into Ethan while you were out - and where the initial sight of him might have previously made you a little nauseous just from the connection to Luke, the last few weeks have alleviated that, somewhat.

After Ethan had dropped you home that night of the party, you’d left your bedroom to find him hiding behind a corner at the top of the stairs while the rest of your sisters lingered around at the bottom. He had been wearing the same clothes from the night before, and was close enough to your friend Megan’s room to understand that he had spent the night there. And you know Megan well enough to know she probably kicked him out and left him to his own devices, too exhausted to try and sneak him out of the house, herself.

So you did the honours - you figure you’d gotten good at it with the amount of times you had snuck Luke in and out the week prior - and helped him navigate his way out without getting caught, leaving the house with him on your way to class. He’d offered to drive you as repayment, and you’d gladly accepted, and the two of you ended up speaking more often - finding comfort in the way you didn’t really have to hide from him, anymore. He’d seen a vulnerable part of you that you no longer had to cover up, and it had been nice to have someone else that you didn’t really have to pretend around.

The local IMAX was playing The Martian, one of your favourites - so what if it was something you watched with Luke all the way back in summer? And you’d just planned on watching the movie and going home, but bumping into Ethan had stretched out your plans a little.

You’d both been hungry after the movie, despite the copious amounts of popcorn you ate and the giant soda you drank, and he suggested grabbing burgers. And then the burger place he drove out to was right beside an arcade, and he’d wandered in there first, really - you just followed - but you don’t regret it.

You ended up having a lot of fun - the weightless kind, where Luke sort of slipped from the back of your mind. And it wasn’t even just Luke that slipped - it was the stress of school, of your finals coming up, of finding out your dad was going to be on vacation again when you were due to graduate, and you’d gotten into a fight with your mom about NYU and turning down the job you had lined up back in Chicago. It was all the things that you’d been bottling up now that you didn’t really have Luke to talk to, and forgetting them for even just one night was nice.

Ethan had dropped you home after the arcade, and left you at the side of the street in front of the sorority house with the stuffed animal you had won just for Ellie, because she’d seen the little duck in the back of the picture you sent to her of your whereabouts.

And you’re just about to knock on her door when it swings open - Ellie’s eyes red and her cheeks puffy with fresh tears, alarm and panic in her features that immediately elicited the same in your own.

“What’s wrong?” You ask, heart seeming to thud to a dramatic stop as you watch her lips tremble and she ushers you into her bedroom.

“It’s Jack,” Ellie sniffles, “He got hurt, it’s pretty bad.”

“Oh, El,” you reach out to take her into your embrace, rubbing at her back as sobs wrack straight through her spine. “What happened?”

“He took a hit and went straight into the boards, I can’t bring myself to watch the replay, they’re saying on twitter that he passed out, and I can’t get a hold of anybody. Could you watch it for me? Could you tell me if he looks alright?” You hadn’t even realised there was a game on tonight - too consumed in your plans and your determination to have a night off from thinking about Luke to even check.

“Oh, I don’t-,” You break away, trying to think of how best to get out of it. You’re really not the best with injuries, and if it’s bad enough for her to be this upset, you have a feeling it’s going to make you feel sick. “Maybe I should ask Ethan to come over and watch it for you, I-,”

“Please?” She pleads, eyes round and welling with tears, a surefire way to get you to agree. “I just need someone to be honest with me.”

“Yeah,” You resign, holding out your hand for Ellie to give you her phone, seeing the video is already loaded once she’s unlocked it. “Yeah, alright.”

Ellie turns away with her hands covering her ears as you press play, and you watch as Jack skates toward the net, readying himself for the puck to be played towards him, not expecting the way he’s being approached from behind all of a sudden, and can’t bring himself to a stop before he’s colliding straight into the boards, the opposition player bumping straight into the back of him.

You try not to wince at the impact, at the way Jack’s body goes limp and he has to be turned over by the other player. You try to focus on the positives before you assemble your thoughts - he gets up, he can skate on his own, he isn’t bleeding anywhere - but it’s hard when you know him.

It’s hard when, as much as you and Jack don’t really get along, you’re similar in more ways than you’d like to admit, and you know that seeing him express even the slightest bit of pain must mean he’s in absolute agony.

She said that she wants honesty, but you know Ellie - she doesn’t want to worry, you don’t want her to worry, not until she knows all the facts.

“He’s up, he’s skating off,” you tell her, glancing up and offering what you hope is a comforting smile, a slight twist of your lips that does little, probably, to hide your own concern. “I don’t think it’s the same shoulder he hurt last year.” You remember how much she stressed about that at the time - about his surgery, and the aftermath, and you’d been living with him back at the beginning of summer, enough to know which side he previously had in a sling, or which side he avoided doing much activity with in the earlier weeks. “It doesn’t look great, but at least he can take himself off the ice, right?”

Even from clips of the incident, you can tell how much it worries the people around him - players on the ice, fans in the stands, and you wonder for a second about Luke, about how it must feel to watch from the bench and have to carry on without knowing what’s happening.

And now you’re worried about him.

You hand Ellie’s phone back over, watching as she chews nervously at the inside of her cheek, spinning the device in her hand and fidgeting erratically.

“I’ll wait with you until we hear something,” you promise, placing a hand gently on her lap to try and stop her knee from bouncing. You hand the stuffed animal you’re still holding out to her, and she takes it with a limp smile that comes nowhere close to reaching her eyes. “I’ll get you a drink, do you want something warm to calm you down? I can make you a sleepy tea, if you want?”

Ellie nods, eyes glistening as she maintains that weak effort of a smile, and you smile back, an attempt at reassurance before you hand her phone back and head downstairs to the kitchen. You’re thankful it’s empty when you finally walk in, able to wait around while the water boils and try to calm yourself down.

You know it’s selfish as soon as you start to think it - your best friend in pieces upstairs about her boyfriend being hurt - but all that flashes through your mind is Luke. That could have been Luke. How would you feel if Luke was hurt? How do you feel that he’s potentially, probably hurting now, even thought it isn’t him? How are you supposed to help him through this from so far away, with everything going on, afraid to even text him first, anymore? Would he even want you to?

Your cellphone burns a hole in your back pocket, the urge to reach out is practically making your fingers itch, and you cast a glance to the clock that flashes on the little screen on the range. He’s probably back in his hotel, by now. Or he’s with Jack and the medical team.

You could call him. Just so you’ve at least tried. Just so he knows you’re there if he needs you, and that the last few weeks of minimal contact mean nothing if there’s any potential of something happening to him.

Sitting around and dwelling on the fact that he hasn’t tried to call you is pathetic, you think. It’s self-centred and petty, and you need to be better than that. He deserves better than that.

So, as Ellie’s tea is brewing, you reach into your pocket, swipe at your phone with muscle memory and bring it up to your ear, waiting for the beep of his voicemail so that you can leave some sort of message, even if he probably won’t listen.

“Hey,” his voice cuts at your spiralling thoughts, low and tired, more like a sigh than anything else, and your body straightens against the counter as you rush to respond.

“Hi,” you say, a weird flutter in your chest at the mere sound of his voice after so long. “I didn’t think you’d pick up.”

He doesn’t reply other than a little huff, and you’re sort of thankful for it - if he doesn’t reply, he can’t say something you don’t want to hear, like how he doesn’t want to hear from you.

“I just got back to the house and Ellie told me about Jack, I wanted to check on you.”

“Pretty late to be just getting back,” he murmurs, and you hear a little shuffling, like he’s moving around, before you hear the soft clasp of a door in the background. “You overstay your welcome at the library again?”

“No,” you breathe out a little laugh, leaning against the counter as you watch steam rise from the mug of tea sat on top. “I finally followed your advice, actually,” you tell him in the hopes that hearing that might perk him up just a little. “Ditched the books for a day, did a whole lot of not studying.”

For as long as you’ve been stressing about school, Luke has been trying to guide you towards some sort of balance - giving yourself a little grace to actually have a breather - and maybe your main stressor hadn’t been studying, this time, but he doesn’t need to hear that, right now.

“Oh, really?” You can hear his smile through the phone, small but sure, and the sound of it eases a little of the anxiety swelling in the pits of your stomach. “You get up to anything cool?”

“Yeah, actually,” you stir at Ellie’s tea absentmindedly, hoping you’re offering some sort of distraction. “They were playing The Martian at the IMAX, I got all up close and personal with Matt Damon and his shitty potatoes.”

“Sounds like you had fun,” he snorts, and you’d like to think you can hear the soft semblance of a smile, even if his heart isn’t entirely in it.

“It was great, we went to go get burgers and play pinball after, which is why I’m so late home.” You sigh, only just starting to feel the exhaustion from it, hoping this sleepy tea does its wonders on Ellie so that you can both go to bed pretty quick. “I feel like I haven’t done anything fun like that all year.”

“Who’d you go with?”

“Just Ethan,” you scoop the teabag from the water and dispose of it, frowning as you realised you’ve somehow made this whole call about yourself, guilt seeping into your subconscious. “But enough about me, how’s everything with you? How’s Jack? Ellie said she hasn’t been able to reach him, which is why I thought you wouldn’t pick up.”

“Uh, they think they’re gonna send him back to Jersey,” Luke laments, “He’s gonna miss the game in Dallas, he’s convinced his season is over, so he’s pretty down right now. I think he’s about to give El a call and tell her.”

“What about you?” You bite your lip, hoping Ellie is occupied upstairs and you can stay on with Luke a little longer. This feels less charged than the last few times you’ve spoken - easier, despite the heavy topic - and you just want him to know that this sort of stuff is still on the cards. At least, you hope it is. “Can’t have been easy, watching him go down like that.”

“I’m fine.” The way he says it is short, obviously a lie, and you try to tell yourself not to take it personally. Luke never usually lies to you. Sometimes he doesn’t really talk about stuff, but he’s never hidden his feelings from you. But this isn’t the kind of thing the two of you have really had to navigate, before. Maybe it’s even the kind of thing he doesn’t want to navigate with you - maybe it’s something friends don’t navigate together.

“You know you can talk to me if you’re not,” you assure him, in the hopes that he won’t shut you out. “I told Ellie I’d stay with her for a bit, but I can always call you after, even if you don’t want to talk, it’s been a while, I-,”

“I’m fine,” he repeats, even shorter this time, his tone clipped, and the silence that follows feels like it goes on forever.

“Okay,” You croak after a moment, hesitance creeping up on you, again, all joviality from the previous conversation drained.

“I gotta go,”

“Luke, I-,” you don’t even know what you want to say, but there’s this voice inside that’s screaming to say something. To put up some sort of fight, to make sure he knows you want to be there for him. But this sudden reluctance is all consuming. It’s debilitating, even, and it overpowers that meek, unsure voice in a booming, unavoidable roar, that tells you he doesn’t want your help. He wants to move on, and you’re not letting him. And so all you can bring yourself to say, again, is “Okay,” like a whispered resignation.

He mutters out some form of goodbye before he hangs, up, and you find yourself staring at the billowing steam rising from the mug of sleepy tea until a hand on your shoulder shakes you from your reverie.

“Was starting to think you’d knocked yourself out with this stuff,” Ellie huffs out a weak laugh as she steps up to the counter beside you, taking the mug by the handle and bringing it to her lips. You watch as she takes a sip, as the line of frustration between her brows smooths itself out, and her shoulders slump a little, relaxed and soothed. “Just spoke to Jack, he’s flying out to Jersey in the morning for further evaluation, said he’ll update me after.”

“Oh,” you shake yourself out of your own head, feigning ignorance as you cross your arms over your chest. You can’t tell her about your call with Luke, partly because you don’t know what Jack has told her to try and ease her worries, and partly because talking about Luke with Ellie fills you with unyielding dread every time, and it’s the last thing you need. “Does he have any idea what’s wrong?”

“Won’t know until tomorrow,” she sighs, “He thinks he’s gonna need surgery, though.”

“Shit,” you mutter.

“I think if that’s the case, I might ditch spring break and go spend it with him. Help him out while I can, you know?”

You nod, pressing your lips together. The two of you were booked on a trip to Cabo, your last spring break together as seniors, and a few of your sisters were going, too, so you won’t be on your own if she does have to ditch you. You can’t hold any resentment about it.

You’d do the same, if it happened to Luke, you think. Not that he probably would want you to, anymore.

Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe he’s right about boundaries, and blurred lines. Maybe you’re taking things too far.

“Of course,” you try to offer comfort, a reassuring smile that doesn’t feel as authentic as you’d like and a gentle pat to her shoulder, hoping you don’t reek of condescension.

Ellie chews at the corner of her bottom lip, like she wants to say something else, but nods, instead, diverting her gaze as she sips at her tea. “I’m here for you too, you know,” she says, after a few seconds, eyes peering up carefully to meet yours. “If you need me.”

“I’m not the one with the broken boyfriend,” you chuckle softly, thankful for the smile she gives back, a little of the tension eased from your shoulders.

The fact that you’re the one with the breaking bond goes unspoken, but you can tell Ellie is thinking it - it’s why she offered, in the first place, more perceptive of your situation with Luke than you probably give her credit for.

But you don’t want her pity - you don’t deserve it. You made your own bed with Luke, and all you can really do now is lie in it. He doesn’t want you anymore - not in the same capacity he used to, not like summer, whenever he cast a heated glance your way, and you’d feel it all the way through to your bones. You don’t think you’ll ever go back to that, it’s too late to get that back. You need to give him the space he so clearly desires, and maybe the two of you can find your way back to something resembling the friendship you had before you monumentally fucked it all up.

And maybe Ellie can give you the perfect distraction to do just that - focusing on fixing your relationship with her instead of investing all your efforts on a guy that no longer wants you back.

Luke knows it’s a selfish thing to say, but Jack’s injury has been hard on him.

For the second year in a row, his brother has had to end his season early, at the most crucial, cut-throat point as the team battle to make it to the playoffs, and Luke has had to shoulder a lot of the aftermath on his own.

There’s media, who are constantly asking him about it, waiting to trip him up, make him share something he’s not supposed to, or say something he doesn’t want to, and every time there’s a camera or a microphone shoved into his face, he dreads the social media discourse that follows.

There’s commentators and people in the league themselves, providing a constant reminder that the Devils are at some sort of disadvantage, and have to work twice as hard to make up for everyone that’s slowly succumbing to the brutality of the sport as they finally near the peak.

There’s coming home to an empty apartment while Jack’s away getting his surgery, and trying not to worry or overthink what he’s going through.

And then there’s Jack himself, when he returns - a grouchy, bitter mess of a person who can’t see the wood for the trees, can’t focus on anything other than where he’s stuck, watching his team persist in his absence and wishing more than anything in the world he can take someone’s place - that the misfortunes that keep finding him lose track, just once - even though he would never want anyone else to hurt like that.

And trying to juggle accommodating his brother's situation with his own is rough. Back to back losses following Jack’s departure, increased pressure on Luke as he takes on more responsibility within the team, and if you throw all of that in with the loss of his own coping mechanisms, Luke has found himself in a rut.

He isn’t sleeping the best, and he’s distanced from everyone - too in his head about seeing you and Ethan together to reach out to either one of you where he usually would - and he’s losing himself as the weeks blur by, and it isn’t until Jack mentions that Ellie is around that he lets himself think about you - about everything that happened in his bye-week, about how he’s been a pretty shitty friend to you, since.

“It’s spring break,” Jack says as Luke comes home to find him up and dressed for what seems like the first time since he got back from his surgery - struggling to shrug into a jacket while he only really has use of one arm. “She came out to spend it with me, gonna go over to her rental and watch a movie, you’re coming too.”

“Dude, I’m exhausted,” Luke huffs, throwing his keys into the bowl by the door as he watches his brother glare back at him, “I just want to go to bed, you don’t need me around when you’re hanging out with your girlfriend, I really don’t want to be seeing all that.”

“Lucky for you, there’s nothing to see,” Jack scowls back, “Ellie brought hell-spawn over with her, that’s why she isn’t staying here. Need you to work your magic as you seem to be the only one of us she can tolerate and I’m not in the mood for her bullshit.”

You’re in Jersey?

“I thought they were going to Cabo?” Luke frowns, too in his head about the fact that you’re in Jersey without telling him that he doesn’t call Jack out on how stupid he sounds, stopping in place as he watches his brother shrug in response.

“Ellie wanted to come out and see me, I guess she followed.”

And before Luke knows it, he’s driving the two of them over to the condo the two of you have rented for the week, and Ellie is answering the door with a giant grin on her face, cooing at Jack as she ushers them inside.

He’s looking around like a madman until she tells him you’re in the kitchen, and that you’re gonna need some help getting the snacks and drinks together - and despite it only being a few feet away, Luke feels breathless as he barges through the door, like he can’t calm down until he sees you in person.

Your back is to him when he enters, but the commotion he makes is enough to draw your attention, and your eyes are wide when they land on him, and not in the way that he usually likes.

Something about this whole situation makes him uneasy - the weeks of minimal contact, the lack of closure, the way you’re looking at him like you don’t know what to say.

You’ve never not known what to say, not when it comes to him.

“Hi,” he offers, because it’s the easiest thing for you to respond to, and the rest of the problems between the two of you are his own fault, so he may as well be the one to start to fix them.

“Hey,” you give back, the microwave pinging behind you, and you turn back to retrieve the bags from in there before you transfer them to the side. “I didn’t realise you were coming.”

“I didn’t realise you’d be in town,” he frowns, “Last you told me you guys were going to Mexico, your big senior spring break trip.”

That had been last month, and he has been a little distant since he left Michigan, but if you’re around, he would want to know about it. He can’t fathom why you’d be in the same city and not even tell him that you’re around.

He also can’t fathom why you’d give up something you’ve been looking forward to all year.

“Yeah, well, Ellie wanted to be here for Jack,” you shrug, busying yourself by emptying the popcorn out of the bag and into a few bigger bowls. He can’t remember ever having a conversation where you didn’t give him your full attention, and he feels a little nervous as he watches you focus on anything but him. “And I want to be here for Ellie, she shouldn’t have to miss out on her last spring break.”

“You couldn’t have told me?”

“Thought you’d be busy,” you reply, still not looking his way, “You’ve been busy most times I’ve tried to reach out the past few weeks.”

He wants to tell you that’s different, but it isn’t. He’s been avoiding you, and it’s obvious to the both of you that he’s been using the distance as the perfect excuse. He technically has been busy, but it’s no more than he was before that night in Michigan, and he managed to make time for you then. Sure, he’s been on the road, and there’s been a string of some pretty shitty games, but he’d had the same in January, too, and the two of you still kept up texting, at least.

“I mean, I’m playing like every other day this week,” he pouts, “But I’d still want to see you.”

He watches as your brows knit together, your movements coming to a halt as you stand in front of the counter, still not sparing him a glance. You pull your bottom lip between your teeth as you contemplate a response, and he wants to give you the time to think of one - doesn’t want to rush you again into saying something you don’t entirely mean.

He might have ignored Quinn’s instruction to clear up this entire mess before he left Michigan, but the rest of that conversation has still been weighing on his mind - about how he had been impulsive, and unfair, and he hadn’t considered all the ways you showed him things, without necessarily telling him.

“There is this art installation I wanted to visit,” you tell him, hesitantly meeting his eye, “We could go together, if you’re free at all?”

“As friends?” He asks, because he can’t help himself, watching as your eyebrows raise a little, like you’ve just been hit by an unexpected impact.

“Yeah,” you nod, although you don’t look entirely sure. “As friends.”

And he hates how he can’t even withhold the disappointed sigh he gives, your own shoulders slumping as you notice the reaction, and you retreat a little into your previous distance, eyes darting down until he can no longer see your irises.

“Maybe we should do something else,” he mutters, trying to push down the immediate need to backtrack when you don’t even respond, “You could come to a game, or something? An installation sounds cool and all, but that’s the kind of thing you do on a date, and we’re supposed to be moving on, right?”

“Are you?” You ask, peering up at him, again, “Moving on?”

He nods before he even realises he’s doing it, but it’s too late to stop before you notice, and all he can think about is the day he came back to Jersey, when he’d seen you leave your house with Ethan. All he can think about is losing you, and for some stupid reason, he thinks this is the only way to stop that. “I’m trying,” he shrugs, like he isn’t actively saying the most insanely stupid lie he’s ever told, “It’s what we said we’d do.” And he only says that to make himself feel better, he thinks - that you were only ever following the rules that he laid out for you, because it helps him to be delusional like that.

“Oh, okay,” you breathe, stepping back with a pained attempt at a smile and dodging his gaze, again, even quieter in your acceptance of his rejection, and it sort of makes him panic. “Yeah, it was stupid, this was stupid, I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to be sorry,” he frowns, the way he so quickly needs to correct you when you try to shrug him off coming by instinct, now. And he doesn’t like where this is going, now - misses the way you used to just roll your eyes and call him an idiot when he’d act like this, choosing the wrong path at every turn. He doesn’t think he’s ever heard you call yourself stupid, and he has to try to reassure you. “It’s not stupid, it’s cool, it sounds like it would be fun, it’s just-,”

“Not together,” you bite back, “I get it.”

He sighs out your name, regretful and apologetic, “That’s not-,”

“Are you guys almost done in here?” Ellie huffs as she shoulders her way into the kitchen, features curled into a soft scowl as she stomps toward the counter, and Luke bites down on his tongue, fighting the sudden urge to tell her to go away. Her and his brother both have the single worst timing he’s ever known in his life. ��Jack won’t shut up about how hungry he is."

“Yeah, sorry,” you mutter, “We’re ready.”

And Luke steps back to let the two of you carry some drinks and snacks through to the living room, holding the door open for the two of you and trying to meet your eye as you slip past, his chest aching all over when you don’t. He grabs whatever’s left and follows the two of you out, watching as you sink down into one of the smaller loveseats,

Jack and Ellie are taking up most of the couch, so he walks straight over to the seat opposite yours, an entire coffee table separating the two of you where you’d usually sit together, and he tries not to think about the last time you watched a movie - your birthday, when you’d been squished up against his side in your bed, the Wall-E plush he got you smushed between you as you watched the film, itself.

The last time things had felt easy - the last time any of it had felt right.

And then he’d gone and ruined it.

Jack tees up Good Will Hunting, huffing and puffing when the remote isn’t working like he wants it to but refusing to accept anyone’s help on the matter, and Luke busies himself with his phone while it starts, trying to sort some tickets for his next game so he doesn’t let you down on that front, either, and every time he peers over at you, he thinks the tension grows, somehow, your jaw set and your eyes focusing only on the screen.

He dips in and out of the movie, waiting for an update so that he can hopefully set about bridging the gap between the two of you tonight, and he only tunes back in at random intervals.

He’s seen it before, it’s one of his favourites, and he probably could quote it back to front without assistance, but certain parts have a new meaning when he really hears them, this time.

Especially when it comes to a certain monologue, the comforting voice of Robin Williams ringing throughout the room as his character sits beside Will in the park, watching the swans and realising just how short Will’s perspective on life is.

“If I ask you about women, you'd probably give me a syllabus about your personal favourites. You may have even been laid a few times. But you can't tell me what it feels like to wake up next to a woman and feel truly happy.”

He tries not to glance your way, his jaw tight as he blinks slow, recollections of waking up by your side flashing in his mind like something out of a dream. A blissful peace he hasn’t quite experienced elsewhere, his eyes flitting around your features as you slept, trying to study every inch of your face to commit it to his memory, never knowing if each time he got to experience it that it might be the last.

“I'd ask you about love, you'd probably quote me a sonnet. But you've never looked at a woman and been totally vulnerable. Known someone that could level you with her eyes, feeling like God put an angel on earth just for you. Who could rescue you from the depths of hell.”

He thinks of all those times he sought you out for his own personal comfort - after back to back games that drained every ounce of his energy, long stretches away from the comfort of his own bed, the constant comparisons to his brothers, and how he’d always come up short - but he was always first, to you.

Even when the two of you were caught up in the in-between, whatever you were before - friends, or something more - he always felt like a priority to you. Always wanted you to feel like a priority to him.

“And you wouldn't know what it's like to be her angel, to have that love for her be there forever, through anything.”

The night of your birthday, the light in your eyes when he gave you those gifts, the soft but beautiful curve of your lips as you told him he was your best friend. The way you were worried he’d get tired of you, and he had promised that he wouldn’t.

“You don't know about real loss, 'cause it only occurs when you've loved something more than you love yourself. And I doubt you've ever dared to love anybody that much.”

He hopes with everything in him that this isn’t the same - that he isn’t losing you. That his own immaturity and impatience hasn’t ruined the best thing he ever had in his life.

Because he does love you. He’s loved you for a long time, now.

Since the night of his cousin’s wedding, he thinks, when you’d opened up to him for the first time. Back when you laid in his arms in the dead of the night, your head on his chest and his arms around your body, and it finally felt like you were equals. Like he could stop chasing you, like you’d stop running.

He’s never felt the way he feels with you about anybody else. He doesn’t want to, doesn’t think he possibly could.

He doesn’t know why he ever made out like he could move on.

But he’s too familiar with saying things he regrets, now. It just keeps happening. Mouthing off to Cole back in summer, agreeing to be just friends in the fall, telling you that he can’t wait around for you at the end of winter, that he’s trying to move on.

Quinn was right, that morning when he called - he keeps doing stupid stuff out of impulse. Keeps letting his emotions get the better of him, and not giving you a chance to figure things out for yourself.

When he finds the courage to glance your way again, he just about catches you before you look away - a blink and you’ll miss it moment where he’s not even sure if he imagined it, but he keeps trying for the rest of the movie, a lot more focused on the ending than he previously was on his phone.

He thinks when it ends, and the credits start to roll, he’ll be able to find a way to ease the tension - to get you alone and talk it out, but his stupid brother opens his stupid mouth, and things escalate before he can even make sense of what’s happening.

“Stuff like that just doesn’t happen in real life,” Jack huffs, giving his thoughts on how Will chose to leave and go after Skylar, despite their mess of a relationship and how much he hurt her before, “These big love confessions, this whole corny, I gotta see about a girl, thing, why wouldn’t he just be honest about his feelings in the first place instead of trying to sabotage himself? Would save them a lot of trouble.”

You scoff from your own corner of the couch, and Luke’s eyes dart over just in time to catch the distinct roll of your eyes, barely even sparing a glance to Jack as you say, “That’s rich coming from you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Jack winces as he straightens up, Ellie frowning from under his good arm as she follows suit, and Luke feels his own shoulders stiffen in anticipation of an argument - Jack’s been riled up to have one since he got injured, and you’re walking straight into a trap without knowing it.

But you can handle yourself, he thinks, especially when it comes to Jack.

Only something in you deflates when he looks again, the usual tenacity dissolving right before his eyes, and he watches as your gaze softens, flicking between the couple at the opposite end of the couch. “Forget it, doesn’t matter,” you mutter, your jaw set and your attention diverted back to the screen as the credits roll.

“That’s what I thought,” Jack grumbles back, accepting the swat Ellie gives to his good side to tell him to reign it in.

Luke doesn’t know why he stays silent, the urge to speak up for you is so strong it’s making his fingers twitch, but you sink into your place against the arm of the seat and fold your arms over yourself, like you’re giving up entirely.

“I was just saying, he’s a smartass, he’s hard work and she isn’t cut out for it, it shouldn’t be such a struggle to get somebody to open up, their relationship probably wouldn’t last a month once the movie’s over, if she even lets him back in when he goes to California, that is.”

Luke can see as clear as anything that Jack’s only using the film to vent his own frustrations - that he’s angry, and he’s exhausted, and he’s upset at everybody and everything - but he only understands that because it’s his brother. Because he’s known him his whole life. Because he gets where he’s coming from as a player - and Luke thinks he would be the same, if his season came to an abrupt end when he was on such a high, and all he’d known for the past month was loss and pain. He’d be angry, he’d snap at people, try to get them to hurt just a little bit so that it means he’s not alone. And it’s shitty, but he gets it - if his words were spoken to hurt Luke, he’d probably just shoulder the blow.

But they aren’t.

They’re meant to hurt you.

And when Luke looks over, and you’re staring at the wall with a distant, glassy look in your eyes, your lips twisted to stop them trembling, and your arms wrapped around yourself so tight that your shoulders are all hunched up, he can’t really bite his tongue anymore.

“You’re such a hypocrite,” he spits, eyes narrowing as they focus in on his brother, “You’re hard work, and you’re lucky Ellie isn’t running for the hills,”

“Whoa,” Jack frowns back, lips pouting as he diverts his attention across the room, “Chill out, man, it’s just a movie, I’m just saying my thoughts on it.”

“No one asked for your thoughts on it,” Luke scowls, “You’re being a dick for no reason, you don’t always have to spout your opinion on every little thing like it’s fact and shut down anyone who tries to argue with it.”

He expects to have caught your attention, seeing you move out of the corner of his eye, but he doesn’t expect for you to push yourself up and leave the room entirely, your feet padding softly against the carpet until the sound of them disappears completely, and the door to the kitchen swings closed behind you.

“Clearly touched a nerve,” Jack mumbles, and even Ellie pushes herself off of him, rolling her eyes until she storms off after you.

Luke almost wishes she hadn’t - wishes that he could be the one to go and comfort you, but after your conversation in the kitchen, before, he’s not sure if that’s what you would want.

And he knows it’s his fault for this wedge that’s between the two of you, after pushing you away and telling you to move on and getting all in his feelings about you potentially doing so, leaving Michigan before the two of you could actually talk about it and neglecting to patch up the now gaping hole in your relationship - but he doesn’t know how to fix it.

He doesn’t know how he can sit around and pretend like everything’s fine.

“You really can be an asshole, you know,” Luke snaps at his brother, using the situation as a cover for the way he wants someone to tell him the same - wants you to say it, for you to tell him that he’s dumb, and an idiot, and that he’s hurting you. He doesn’t want you avoiding eye contact and sitting on the other side of the room and coming to Jersey without even telling him.

“It’s not that deep, Luke-,”

“Seriously?” He scoffs, standing from his own seat and glaring down at Jack, his good arm sprawled across the back of the couch like he’s trying his best to make himself bigger, like Luke can’t see straight through the facade. “I get that you’re having a shitty time of it right now, but you don’t have to take it out on everybody else. You asked me to come with you to try and keep things from blowing up, but all you do is make digs at her for no good reason. I don’t get why you can’t just be nice.”

“I asked you to come with me because I thought you two were friends,” Jack lowers his voice, mindful of the fact that there’s only a wall that separates you and Ellie from the two of them, and he’s obviously on the verge of being in his girlfriend’s bad books after his behaviour. “She was annoyed about something before we even started the movie, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out what when she won’t even look your way, Luke. I’m sick of you blaming me for her pissy attitude and not just having it out with her.”

God, he wishes Jack would just butt out of his business, for once.

Why can’t there be a middle ground between his unrelenting cynicism and Quinn’s blind hope?

If there was just one distinct voice for him to listen to, one clear instruction for him to follow, then he’d be able to make sense of everything swirling around his brain.

He thinks that voice would probably be yours, and he’s going to fall apart if you keep it from him much longer.

“I think you two should go,” Ellie’s voice carries softly over from where she’s come back out of the kitchen, “You have that appointment in the morning, Jack, and you have a game tomorrow,” her eyes are cautious as she casts her gaze toward Luke, raising a brow as if pleading for his help in getting his brother out of the way.

“Yeah,” he mutters, cursing himself for not being the one to go straight after you, instead.

Jack doesn’t put up much of a fight other than his usual huffing and puffing as Ellie helps him into his coat, and Luke gives the two of them a second to say their goodbyes as he stands to the side, keeping an eye on the door you’re yet to reappear through. He wants to give you space - knows that he shouldn’t follow you in there to corner you again, but if you peek your head out, maybe he’ll feel a little less anxious. Maybe then there’s hope.

“Could you let her know I got her a ticket for the game tomorrow?” He asks Ellie before he leaves, “I can get you one, too, a couple of the guys from Michigan are gonna be there, I’d love it if she came.”

“I’ll let her know, Luke,” Ellie’s smile is apologetic, but it just makes him feel worse, and he drives him and Jack back to their apartment in the most uncomfortable silence of his life, his jaw set so hard it aches when he’s home, and he storms straight to his room with a dramatic slam of his door.

He opens up your text thread as he lays awake for what feels like an hour, staring at the keyboard and willing some sort of explanation to come to his head as to why he’s such an idiot.

And that’s how he ends up falling asleep, phone still clutched on his hand, and no further clarification on what the hell is going to happen with the two of you.

When Ellie had told you last night about Luke’s invitation to his game, it had felt like a no brainer at the time that you’d skip this one out.

You don’t really know how many more knock backs you can take from him after telling him about the installation - an exhibit you’d seen online months ago, that would only be in town for a limited time following its success in Europe, and Luke had been the only person in mind you’d have ever wanted to go with.

But he doesn’t want to go with you.

He wants you at a safe distance, with distinct boundaries, and while you’re grateful for his attempt to try and lessen the blow of his rejection, you think foregoing the game entirely is the safest distance you could possibly wedge between the two of you.

As friends? He’d asked, almost immediately, like he was rubbing your face in it - like the mere thought of you wanting to go as anything more wasn’t even worth entertaining, anymore. And agreeing had been your last attempt to save face, because the last thing you were gonna do was put your heart on the line with his dickhead brother only one room away. You’re not that much of an idiot.

Plus, Ellie has taken your place - and she said some of the guys from college would be there, anyway. He probably won’t even notice you’re not there, just like how he’s managed to pretty much ignore your existence since he left Michigan.

And you can enjoy your first night of peace during your spring break, the others so far consumed by Ellie - not that you mind, all that much, it’s been kind of nice for the two of you to be away from everything, even though you’re within dangerous proximity to her demon boyfriend.

The rental she found is nice, too - the kind of place you could see yourself living in when you move over this way - spacious but cozy, with a giant TV that you can’t wait to watch your heart-shredding movie marathon on.

You set the space up as soon as Ellie left for the game, blankets thrown onto the couch, an array of snacks on the table, My Best Friend’s Wedding on the screen, and you’re about to settle in when there’s a harsh knock at the door, shattering your illusion of peace in an instant.

You grumble the whole way to the door, making sure the chain is on before you open it - all too aware you’re on your own in a city you aren’t entirely familiar with, and it would be just your luck to be murdered, probably.

But when you open the door, you almost wish it was a masked killer.

Jack Hughes stands on the porch, eyes narrowing as you peer at him through the crack in the door, his hip popped impatiently and foot tapping against the floor.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

“Are you gonna let me in?” he asks, raising a brow as he huffs out an irritable sigh, “Considering I’m paying for the place, I really shouldn’t have to ask.”

You frown as you move, unlatching the door and giving him enough room to pass you without the risk of bumping your shoulder and agitating his. “I didn’t know that,” you mumble, annoyed even more so now that Ellie had chosen not to tell you that. You suppose it’s your own fault for not asking, but she of all people knows how you are about others paying your way. “That you were paying, I’ll pay you back if it’s a problem.”

“It isn’t.” He rolls his eyes as he stands in the room you thought was actually nice before he arrived, and now you sort of hate it.

“Alright, well you didn’t answer my question,” you glare, “Why are you here?”

“I’m supposed to be checking up on you,” he says, rounding the couch before he throws himself down onto it, kicking off his shoes before he swings his legs up. “Usually when I have a headache so bad I can’t leave the house, watching the TV is the last thing I’d be doing.”

“Yeah, well, some of us are built different,” you scowl, “I’m fine, you can go ahead and crawl back to whatever pit you came from, I’ll let Ellie know you fulfilled your supportive boyfriend duties for the month.”

“Can’t actually,” he shrugs his good shoulder, reaching forward and grabbing the remote from where you left it. “Game’s starting in ten minutes, I won’t make it back to my place in time so you’re stuck with me for the next few hours.”

“Great.”

“Plus, Ellie didn’t send me, Luke did.”

You don’t exactly know how to feel about that. Jack couldn’t be more obvious in his distain for you, and you couldn’t have made it any clearer that you aren’t his biggest fan either, so why Luke would send him of all people instead of just texting you and asking if you’re alright, you don’t know. Especially after the movie last night - Jack is the last person on Earth you would want checking up on you.

“Sorry he wasted your time, then,” you sigh, “I’m gonna go to bed.”

“We both know you don’t have a headache,” Jack calls over his shoulder, “So you can give up the act. You’d really leave a guy in a sling on his own for hours? What if I need a drink?”

“That’s what your good arm’s for,” you smile, sardonically, a quick flash of sarcasm that drops as soon as Jack rolls his eyes, “So lucky that you have two.”

“Please?” He asks, uncharacteristically, the sudden shock of him actually being polite instead of demanding causing you to still, “I don’t like watching the games on my own, it makes me all tense, which makes everything hurt a whole lot more.”

And the sudden vulnerability from him seems to hypnotise you, huffing out a petulant fine and sitting as far away from him on the couch as you possibly can.

You’re leaning against one arm, and he’s leaning against the other, and the two of you sit through the build up and the first ten minutes in complete silence until he notices that you’re actually watching, unable to help himself from being a dick, apparently, and asking, “Do you even know what’s going on?”

“No, I just watch for the hot guys,” you scoff, “Thank god you’re not there to lower the average anymore.”

The genuine laugh he snorts out in response in unexpected, and you side eye him until you can feel his attention is completely diverted, the two of you settling back into the quiet until a play towards the end of the first period stuns the two of you.

Luke has the puck, and he’s going so fast you can barely focus, gliding in between the opposition seamlessly until he’s advancing on the net, and just as he’s about to shoot, a much bigger body slams into him, knocking him back until he collides with the boards and crumples over, and a sickening sense of deja vu creeps up on you so quick it makes you dizzy.

You watch the aftermath wide eyed, the whole thing blurring together as Luke takes himself off the ice, and disappears down the tunnel.

The game carries on, but you can’t move - you don’t even think you’ve blinked in a minute - and your mouth is still gaped open like an idiot, the inside of it drying so much that you feel it all the way down your throat.

“He’ll be alright,” you hear from the side of you, a hesitant, reassuring tone that you don’t think you’ve heard come from Jack, before. You turn your head to meet his eye, and his body is fully angled towards you, his gaze scrutinising and intense. “It’s just a knock, he’ll be back on after the intermission probably.”

“Reassuring coming from the guy who just had to have surgery after a knock.” You can’t help but snap back, little bite in your own inflection, but you ache from the tip of your tongue all the way down to your stomach. It didn’t look like just a knock - you’ve seen Luke take knocks before and never have to go off for medical attention - it looked way worse. And all they’re gonna do for the next 15 minutes is replay it over and over.

You feel sick.

“Lukey’s made of harder stuff,” Jack responds, the same relaxed lull to his voice. “That’s what my dad’s always said, anyway. Quinn would tell you the same, there’s something about him that always just bounces straight back, pisses me off a little sometimes, if I’m honest.”

You should probably know that better than anyone - for all the times you’ve pushed him away. But you’re starting to lose faith in that fact, a little.

“I just don’t want him to be hurt.” You mutter, trying to swallow past the stinging at the back of your throat, gulp down the growing insecurity that maybe you’ve made him weaker, maybe, somehow, this too is your fault.

“My phone’ll probably go off during the break” Jack sits up a little straighter, gesturing out to his cell that sits on the coffee table in front of the couch. “They’ll text me as soon as they’re done taking a look at him. I promise they’d know by now already if it was anything serious. I’d have gotten a call, our medical team are seriously good, they can tell stuff like that in an instant.”

It might be the fact that you’re relying on Jack Hughes of all people for reassurance that forces the tears to start welling in your eyes, your view of him blurring a little - or maybe the fact that he’s actually wilfully giving the reassurance, but either way, you don’t really want him to see you cry.

You sit in an uncomfortable silence as you watch the rest of the period, fidgeting in your place on the couch and picking painfully at the skin beside your fingernails, and it’s only when the last few seconds tick down that you can see Jack shuffle himself in your peripheral, turning until he’s properly facing you again.

“You really care about him, huh?”

You try to blink away the remaining threat of tears before you turn, yourself, meeting Jack’s eye across the couch and trying to muster up some sort of strength to shrug off this awful feeling that you can’t shake. “I’m not the heartless bitch you think I am, Jack,” you denounce, “Of course I care about him.”

He narrows his eyes in a glare, and you can tell he’s biting his tongue, careful not to goad you into some disastrous argument that neither of you really want. Last night had no doubt scratched his itch to lash out at somebody, and you don’t really think you’ll manage a round two.

The two of you stay locked in a heated, silent exchange for a few extended seconds, his jaw tense and your teeth chewing at the corner of your mouth in anticipation.

“Do you love him?”

“It doesn’t matter,” you sigh, like it’s instinctual at this point, and you wince, even, once the words come out. They feel wrong. They feel like a bare-faced lie. Like some foreign language you have no business even attempting to speak. “I’m hard work, you know that, he knows that, and I think I’m all out of chances to try and convince him otherwise.”

“He doesn’t think you’re hard work,” Jack replies, “Trust me, I’ve been trying to convince him of as much since last summer, and he refuses to listen.”

“He said it himself to Cole,” you huff, hating how quick the memory comes to the forefront of your mind, hearing him say those things about you like it was nothing, replaying them over and over in your head like they were everything. “I heard it, Ellie heard it, he said that I wasn’t the kind of girl that he would date, and that I wasn’t worth the hassle.”

“And I’m sure he told you after that he didn’t mean any of that,” Jack tries to defend, brows furrowing as he thinks of any way to get his point across. “People say stupid things in the heat of the moment, we know that better than anybody, you can’t seriously think he actually believes that stuff,”

“He had to have been thinking it for it to have been said in the heat of the moment, Jack, he didn’t pull all that stuff out of his ass. He always knew it wasn’t gonna work out.”

Jack sighs your name, his free hand rising to rub at his temple in exasperation, and you wait as he winces, your eyes darting to check for any uncomfortable movements with his shoulder - but it’s something else that’s bothering him.

“I put those thoughts into his head.”

The concept isn’t surprising - you’ve always known Jack hadn’t liked you, always knew he was badmouthing you to whoever would listen, and snarking at you for the entire house to see. It’s what he’d done last night, using the movie as some sort of metaphor for just how fucked up you are, and everybody in the room could see it.

“I told him every opportunity I could get that you weren’t gonna work out, and that you were bad news, and you’d just mess him around until you got bored.” Jack admits, and again, you’re not shocked. He’d said as much to your face. You even thought you’d resolved this whole thing with him last summer, before everything went to shit, but he’s been off with you since then, so you have no doubt his sentiments have picked straight back up where they left off all those months ago. “And every time I did, he’d just tell me to go fuck myself. Still does. I tell him all the time you’re not good for him, and he just tells me I don’t know you. You’re like the only thing we fight about, and we live together for God’s sake, he’s messy as all hell and I don’t give him half as much grief about that as he gives me about being a dick to you.”

“You’re just proving my point,” you huff, “If I’m causing arguments between the two of you, I’m hardly the kind of person he should be keeping around.”

“He loves you too, you know,” Jack offers as rebuttal, raising a brow as if pushing you to fight back on the fact when you zero in on him. “He told Quinn when he was in Michigan. I got this huge lecture off of him about butting in on your business where I’m not wanted.”

You chew a little at the corner of your mouth, the sudden, inappropriate urge to laugh rising within you at the thought of Jack getting a telling off from his big brother.

“I’ve been angry this whole time that he doesn’t talk to me about stuff when it comes to you, but I guess I’ve been giving him a good reason not to.”

And as much as you don’t get along with Jack, the thought of driving a wedge between them - between all of them - makes you feel like crap, so all you can do is carry on fighting him.

“He wants to move on,” you shrug, “And he said some pretty shitty stuff about me back in summer when Cole said he wanted to take me out, he doesn’t think as highly of me as he makes out.”

“You’re gonna sit there and tell me that if a girl came up to you and said they were gonna ask him out, you wouldn’t try and talk them out of it?” Like you didn’t storm off at the mere sight of him with Victoria at that party. Like you haven’t been spiralling for weeks over him liking some girl’s post on instagram. “That you wouldn’t feel like someone was trying to take something from you?”

Of course you’d feel that way, you think.

Luke Hughes might be the only person you’ve ever let all the way in, and if someone were to swoop in and snatch him from your clutches, you’d probably go insane.

You’d do anything you could to deter them - including using Luke’s flaws and self-doubts against him. You’d even stretch them to fit your agenda, exaggerating the depth of them to make sure you really put them off.

You’d tell them he can be really insecure - that he gets in his head about stuff, especially anything that can be considered a comparison to his brothers - and that sometimes it brings out something avoidant and petty within him. You’d tell them that he isn’t serious when he needs to be, and that, 9 times out of 10, he’s going to crack some awkward joke that doesn’t land and he doesn’t really know how to properly resolve tension. You’d tell them that he craves validation, and it can be a minefield sometimes to navigate his need for attention.

You wouldn’t tell them that you love all those things - that he gives you this look when you stroke his ego that makes your heart stop, and that your sense of humour matches his like two perfectly placed pieces of a puzzle, and that he somehow manages to creep under your thick skin when you’re trying to stay mad or upset for no reason other than you think you need to. You wouldn’t tell them that he fills the exact same validation-void in yourself, and that the two of you balance each other out like two sides of the same coin.

And as much as the things he had said last summer crushed you - and for as many times as you’ve replayed them in your head over and over for the past several months since hearing them - you think you finally get it.

Jack Hughes is going to be the last person that you admit that to, though.

“We’re not each other’s property,” you protest weakly, instead.

“Oh don’t come at me with that bullshit,” he exasperates, rolling his eyes and shaking his head, “I’m not saying he owned you, or that you own him, I’m saying the two of you put in way too much fucking work for someone else to reap the benefits of it.”

“You have a lot to say, all of a sudden, for someone who’s been trying to put him off of me for God-knows how long.”

“Yeah, well, maybe I was wrong about you.” He huffs, like it pains him to say it, “And maybe last night I was angry about something else entirely, and I took it out on you because I didn’t want to feel that way on my own.”

Oh.

If that’s as close to an apology as you’re gonna get, you don’t think you entirely mind it.

It makes sense, after all, you think. The two of you have always had this incessant need to rile the other up, and you were the easiest bait he had to make himself feel better.

If you’d had a month like Jack just had, you’d probably do the same.

“Why didn’t you go to the game?” He asks, and just as your lips part to respond, he adds, “And don’t insult me with the whole headache thing,” forcing you to press them back together.

You sigh, weighing up in your mind if it’s even worth it to open up to Jack at this point. Sure, he’s making out like he finally sees your true intentions, but does it really matter anymore?

“He doesn’t want me there.”

“Of course he wants you there,” Jack frowns, features curling in confusion. “He got you a ticket, he invited you.”

“It was like a consolation thing,” You huff, thinking back on that conversation in the kitchen, where you’d mustered up the courage to cross some unspoken boundary, and he’d shut you down. “I wanted to do something else together, and he said it was too much, said we should be moving on. Blurring me into a crowd of thousands is the only alternative, apparently.”

Jack snorts out some muffled noise, somewhere between a chuckle and a scoff, and you glare at him as you wait for him to clarify whatever the hell sort of response that was. “You’re both as annoying as each other, you know.”

“Whatever,” you pout, shuffling your body to turn away from him again as you fold your arms over your chest like a petulant child, “He wants to move on, so I’m giving him the space to do that. I’m done with it.”

You don’t know who you’re trying to convince, but you should know better than to think that would ever work on him.

“Right,” Jack snickers, “So done with it that you’re sat here almost crying at the thought of something happening to him.” You scowl, then, because what’s the point in trying to soften your reactions if he’s just going to be an asshole about it. “He’s fine, by the way,” he shakes his phone, then, giving a blurry glimpse of a message thread you can’t even read.

And you thought good news would have lessened the pressure in your chest, this pulsing, swelling feeling that grips at your heart like a vice at the thought of him being hurt - but it doesn’t really go down, at all.

Luke said he wanted to move on. He said he wanted to be friends, and that the two of you should stop blurring the lines.

So why is he sending one brother across the city to check up on you? And why is he telling the other that he loves you?

You weren’t entirely lying, before.

You are done.

And the only way you think you can ease this pain now is to talk it out, with him, once and for all.

Trying to talk to Luke is harder than you ever thought it could be.

Texting him seems out of the question, as stupid as that sounds, but when you open up your messages to try, you’re faced with weeks worth of one-word responses that put you straight off - the thought of him shutting you down one more time almost toppling you over the edge of insanity.

And you could call, but it fills you with the same sort of dread. The last time the two of you spoke on the phone had been when Jack was injured - when you’d offered to be there for him if he needed you and he’d sort of snapped at you.

And sure, emotions were high, but things haven’t really been the same since that conversation. They haven’t been the same since the kiss, but there’s a part of you that doesn’t really want the burden of all the blame on your shoulders for once.

There have been countless opportunities for the you to clear everything up, but there have been chances for him, too, and you’re starting to think that maybe the two of you are far too content to let each other suffer instead of actually communicating your feelings like adults.

And after you spend the whole day after the game you missed dwelling on that fact, you’re grateful for a little reprieve when you get a text from Ethan, in town to talk about his own career, who wants to go out for drinks to toast to everything - to spring break, to your NYU acceptance, his devils contract.

He drops a pin for a bar in Hoboken, and you and Ellie make your way down together, meeting up with him and a few of the other guys to celebrate, and it’s the first night in a while that you feel like you don’t need to stress about anything.

You manage to push Luke to the back of your mind for a while, sat in a booth beside Ethan as he shows you pictures of the apartment he went to look at a couple days ago, his plans to move over here coming a lot sooner than yours, but apparently the building have vacancies coming up in the fall, and the two of you talk about how weird it is that you’re gonna be close, again.

You’re joking with him about his hookup with your sorority sister Megan, threatening to bring her over as your roommate and giggling into your hand through a drunken buzz, when the one person you’re trying to forget for a second appears out of nowhere, standing beside the booth as he looks down at the two of you with an unfamiliar sadness in his eyes. He looks a little run down, dressed in a hoody that stretches across his shoulders, and donning a baseball cap that’s probably supposed to keep his presence lowkey.

“Lukey boy!” Ethan exclaims as he stands to greet him, the two of them doing that brotherly fist bump and hug that all guys do, “Thought you were too beat to come out!”

“Changed my mind,” he shrugs, eyes glancing back at you. “You mind if I sit?”

“Nope,” you shrug, nodding to the opposite side, where he slides in, and his knees knock against yours under the table.

“I’ll get you a drink,” Ethan tells him, winking over at you as he backs away, your eyes wide as you watch him retreat before you look back at Luke, the silence around you almost visible in animated ellipses that dot in the space between the two of you.

“Since when are the two of you so friendly?” He asks, tone surprisingly bitter as his eyes darken, and you feel your defences build despite them usually being so weak in his presence.

“We’ve always been friendly,” you frown, “Since when are you so rude? What happened to hello, how are you?”

“I don’t know, probably since you started avoiding me,” he juts out his bottom lip, leaning into the back of the booth and stretching his hands out on the surface, “Hard to stay nice when you come to town without telling me and send Ellie to a game I specifically invited you to.”

“You told me you didn’t want to hang out with me,” you scoff, uneasy with how quick this entire conversation is escalating. You’re a little tipsy, but there’s no excuse for how he’s so quick to snap at you.

“That’s not what I said and you know it,” he huffs.

“No, I don’t know it, because you’ve been avoiding me too,” you bite back, “Why are you being such a dick all of a sudden?”

“You kissed me,” he leans forward onto his elbows, eyes dark under the shadow of the bill of his cap, and you feel a shudder run through you at the intensity behind his gaze, at the memory the mere mention of it invokes - combined with the rasp in his voice, it’s taking everything in you to fight the urge to do it again. “It was barely 3 weeks ago, and now you’re here, without telling me, and you won’t talk to me, and you’re all buddy-buddy with Ethan all of a sudden-,”

“You pushed me away,” you snap back, eyes narrowing to mirror his, “You told me I was making things harder for you, and that I should move on, and then you started avoiding my calls and sending one word responses to my texts, you don’t get to sit there and be an asshole to me just because I’m hanging out with somebody else.”

“So that’s what this is,” He points over to where Ethan is lingering at the bar, no doubt flashing those puppy-dog eyes to the girl behind it, a charming grin cast her way as you can see her blush from all the way across the room. ”This is you moving on?”

“Ethan and I are just friends,” you frown, watching as Luke’s jaw tenses in response, clenching at either side of his face in a way that would usually turn your mouth dry. “I’m not moving on, we aren’t dating.”

Luke’s eyes are stormy when they meet yours - strained and serious as he weighs up your response. “Neither were we.”

The next breath you take is sharp and jittery, gaze still fixed on his from across the table - and despite the proximity of your bodies, him leaning forward, and you just about doing the same, and the urge you had mere seconds ago to close the gap between you, you couldn’t feel any further apart.

You see his hands shift in your peripheral, long fingers picking at the label on Ethan’s empty beer bottle before his gaze shifts down - guilty and withdrawn. You can’t look away, though - you need to properly look at him, you need to try and see some lifeline you can cling to, here.

He’d pushed you away back in Michigan. He’s been distant, since - too busy for calls, too avoidant for any attempt at a lengthy text conversation. He’s irritated, now - even if he won’t say as much - you can tell by the heavy set of his jaw, and the way his eyes narrow whenever Ethan is too close.

“What were we, then?” You ask before you can think better of it, before some internal part of you convinces yourself that his answer will only serve to hurt you. You’re not going to get anywhere by holding back, anymore.

He’d drank from that cup all those months ago back at that party. Never have I ever been in love. He’d looked you in the eyes as his lips pressed to the red plastic, and he’d watched and waited for you to respond.

And everything that happened after that will never erase the memory of that heated look in his eyes - piercing straight through the flames in the middle of your circle of friends, burning into the very depths of your being and warming you just enough for the months that followed.

All the talk about being only friends, of getting any other feelings out of your systems one last time and pretending to rinse them away - it was that night out in the yard of the hockey house that kept things alive, you think.

Knowing that somewhere down the line, despite everything you put each other through - despite the insecurity, and the jealousy, and the pain - he loved you, and he might possibly be the only guy who ever has. The only guy you ever want to.

“Friends,” He frowns as he continues to pick at the sticky paper, tearing the corner until it starts to peel, briefly glancing up to meet your eye as he asks, “That’s all we’ll ever be, right?”

You gulp, your own gaze dropping to the surface between you, eyes tracing the rings of condensation on the table left behind from the chilled bottles.

“I don’t know if I’m good at being friends,” comes out somewhat instinctively, your brows furrowing as the circles your eyes were mapping seem to hypnotise you into unprompted vulnerability. “I’m having a hard time moving past what happened last summer, I think,” you admit, a rattling breath following, hesitant to do so but needing to get it out, to make him understand that none of this is easy for you - letting him go and moving on isn’t some minor thing he can simply suggest to make things better. It’s not possible. “I feel like it’s always in the back of my mind when I’m with you, like I can’t let it go.”

Spilling secrets by the fountain at the country club, kissing in his car when he’d pick you up from work, pulling over on some deserted side road where no one could see, splashing at him in the lake, the sun rays bouncing off the water and bringing out the sea-glass shade of his irises. Trying on stupid disguises in the thrift store at the mall together, his hands on your waist as you danced together at his cousin’s wedding, defending you to his brother whenever Jack tried to pick some stupid fight with you.

It all plays like flashes from a movie at every given opportunity - the second you give your mind a chance to wander, it travels straight back to those weeks spent in his company, to a time where you’d shared a connection so intense that it permanently altered some deep, previously untouchable part of you.

“I thought that I could just push it down,” you sniffle, “I thought that being friends might help me forget, but I can’t, it just feels harder.”

He mutters your name, softer and quieter than before, but the intention is there to say something as a rebuttal, you can tell by his tone.

You don’t really have much fight left in you, though, not anymore.

“And you were right, back in Ann Arbor, it’s not fair to you.”

“That’s not what I meant-,”

“It is,” you resign, “I don’t know how to be your friend, I don’t know what I want anymore, and I can’t keep pretending and making everything worse for you when it would just be easier if we,”

“If we what?”

“Stopped.” You croak, every muscle in your throat working to resist the words from actually working their way up and coming out. “Whatever it is that we’re trying to be, or trying not to be. So that you can move on, like you want.”

You chance a quick glance up, vision blurred by a thick wall of tears, and meet his startled gaze.

“Is that what you want?” His voice shakes a little as he asks, breathy and reluctant - like he’s bracing himself for your own response to hurt.

It doesn’t really matter what you want, you think. You’ve long lost any right to fight for it - not when it comes to him. You had your chance in summer, to open up about all the things you were starting to feel, and you chose to push them down. You don’t even know why, anymore.

You really thought there would be something left to salvage of your relationship with Luke - something to cling to so that he couldn’t push you away, something that got the two of you back on track, especially after talking to his brother, last night - but now that you’re here, everything just feels wrong. It all feels like a stab in the dark, like you’re no longer familiar with the boundaries of what is or isn’t okay with him, and that leaves you feeling lost, again. Like even the slightest attempt to bridge the gap is one giant wasted effort.

And you know all too well where this feeling gets you - too afraid to put your heart on the line, you hide it away, lock it up and throw away the key so that no one can even attempt to get to it again.

He doesn’t want to hang out one-on-one, away from the safety of using Ellie and Jack as a buffer. He doesn’t want to watch movies like you used to, or talk on the phone, or even be within 5 feet of you, it seems. He’s annoyed that you’re close to his other friends, he’s annoyed that you’re around at all, you think.

He doesn’t want you anymore - he shuts down every thought of being anything more, and he can talk all he wants about blurring lines and still being friends, but you know how this plays out.

He wants to move on, he’s said so too many times now for you to discount it or try and find a work around. And when he moves on, and he finds some other girl, like Yasmin, or even Victoria, who doesn’t push him away, or make his life hard, or knows how to express her feelings without saying or doing the wrong thing, he’ll have no use for you.

His brothers will like her, and he’ll show her off to his teammates, and their relationship will expand beyond a phone screen and the distant, foggy memory of something more. And it will be easy.

And he deserves that.

He deserves so much more than you’ve ever been able to give him. Maybe if you saw that sooner this whole thing wouldn’t be such a mess. Maybe if you’d been more accepting of your blossoming feelings in the summer, and you hadn’t been so insistent on maintaining control, everything wouldn’t have spiralled so far out of reach.

Ellie might have seen your interest, Cole might have turned his attentions elsewhere, and Luke would never have said those things about you to try and deter him. And then these last few months would have been easier, too. Your walls would have long been knocked down, your defences weakened, and you’d have just let him in like you’ve always wanted to.

And Luke wouldn’t have gotten tired of trying, just like you predicted all those months ago.

“I think your brother was right, the other day, about the movie, and people being hard work. I want you be happy, Luke, and you said it yourself, I can’t make you wait around for me to figure shit out, you have enough going on without me making you feel like this.”

You feel a shift when you look at him again, a slump of his shoulders as he leans back into the booth - something like resigned acceptance - and you can’t help but be reminded of the exchange that started this whole ordeal.

Him on the other side of a booth in the restaurant at the country club, a hopeful gleam in his earthy irises and his chest puffed out in what you remember thinking seemed like a facade of arrogance, with something much gentler beneath the surface. Things had been much lighter then. Playful and easy. And you don’t think it’s been like that for a long time.

You did that, you think.

You sank into the dark, murky waters of your own insecurities and you dragged him straight down with you - and now it’s time to set him free.

The silence that follows your words is awkward, maybe for the first time ever with him, in a way that makes your skin itch with a prickly heat. You had been so intent on speaking to him, before, and now all you want to do is leave so that he can’t stretch this out, or leave so you don’t have to sit here and watch him not even try. You want to run. Scream. Cry, even. Do anything but wait around for him to agree.

“I’m sorry,” comes out croaky, and broken, and you blink out the tears that blur your vision, feeling them run their course the whole way down your cheeks until you swipe them away from your jaw.

“Me too.”

You want to tell him he doesn’t have anything to apologise for. You want to tell him that you’re the problem, and that you shouldn’t have led him on for as long as you did - but you don’t really want to keep going in circles with this conversation.

You just want to go.

And you couldn’t be more thankful when Ethan comes back, oblivious to the tension between you and his best friend, pushing another bottle across the table and sliding into the opposite side of the booth, right next to Luke.

“So, Lukey, are you gonna let us in on all your favourite spots around here for when we’re both back in the fall?” He slings an arm over the back of the booth, falling naturally above Luke’s slumped figure, and you straighten up in your own seat.

“I’m gonna go find Ellie,” you say, shuffling out from your own side, smiling meekly when Ethan frowns at you, not even daring to look Luke’s way. “I’ll leave you two to it.”

And then you walk away, because that’s all that’s left to do - and when you find Ellie, she takes one look at you, and she knows.

Eyes welling with tears, lips trembling - a mirror image of the girl she found back in your shared room that afternoon of her party, back in the summer - and she ushers you out of the bar and holds your hand the whole way back to your rental, your head on her shoulder as you try not to sob in the back of a taxi.

For all the times people in his life have called him an idiot, Luke has never felt as stupid as he feels right now.

Watching your teary eyes from across the table, able to do nothing but stare back at them, speechless and spineless as you finally throw in the towel, as you finally admit what you’ve been holding back this entire time.

That you can’t move past what happened in summer.

That this whole time, you’ve been trying to distract yourself from how much he hurt you, how much he fucked up, and all he’s ended up doing is hurting you again.

I feel like it’s always in the back of my mind when I’m with you, you had said, like I can’t let it go.

Like he can never take back all the stupid shit he said to Cole when he was jealous and immature - like he still can’t handle those sort of emotions when he’s around you, and he lashes out when you don’t even deserve it, all because he can’t handle seeing you with anybody else.

He doesn’t even know why he came at you so quick.

All he remembers is seeing a photo on an instagram story of the guys at the bar, of seeing you and Ellie crouched in the front, carefree, giant grins etched into your faces, and all of a sudden he was walking in.

And you were smiling so sweet, your nose scrunching up and your body shaking with laughter as you sat beside Ethan, absolutely no space between you in the booth, and he had felt something ugly consume him before he even had a chance to realise what was happening.

And now you’re gone, and his heart is pounding in his chest, and the sound of your soft voice uttering one final apology is echoing around his head.

“Are you okay?” Ethan asks from beside him, leaning forward until he appears out the corner of his eye, and Luke shakes himself out of the trance you put him under.

He mutters your name, and Ethan’s head tilts in confusion until Luke asks, “Are you into her?”

“Into her?” Ethan’s eyes widen in alarm as he almost chokes on a sip of his beer. “Why would you ask me that?”

“I don’t know,” he shrugs, a pathetic attempt at nonchalance that he can tell doesn’t land as soon as he does it, “You looked close when I came in, and she said you went to the movies together the other week. Got food after, sounded like a date to me.”

“Interesting observation,” he scoffs, “Considering all you two do together is watch movies and eat.”

Luke frowns, especially when he looks over properly, and Ethan is smirking at him. He feels like he could throw up. “She’s my friend,” he says, although he supposes that’s not really true, anymore, but he’s sick of having to explain it to everybody. “I’ve told you like a million times.”

“Mine too,” he snickers, and Luke can feel his blood start to boil a little at the implication that your relationship with Ethan might at all be similar to your relationship with him. “She’s a cool girl.”

“Yeah,” Luke agrees, a nauseating sense of deja vu washing over him, soaking him to the bone in remorse.

She’s a really cool girl, Cole had said, back toward the end of summer, really funny.

He feels the same swirls of panic stirring in his chest, a stutter to his heart rate that has him holding his breath to try and correct it, somehow.

“We’ve just been hanging out a little more the last few weeks, ever since I took her home,” and the mention of that night back in Michigan makes him feel worse - that swirling feeling evolving into something sinister, catastrophic, even. He’d upset you and you’d turned to Ethan for comfort - you’ve continued to turn to him, since. And Luke had really left you no choice but to do so, so upset at the thought of the two of you together that he shut you out, entirely. “I guess we got closer throughout this year, but it’s mostly been in a group, like at parties or whatever. She’s a lot different to how I thought she’d be, especially when it’s just her, we get along.”

“Yeah,” Luke breathes, monotonous and slow, because he can’t really muster much else.

He could probably cry, if he thinks too hard about it. Could probably break out in a sweat and hyperventilate, and all that’s stopping him is the nails digging into his palm to keep him grounded to reality.

He had you, he thinks, back on that porch outside the hockey house, and he let his own fragile ego get in the way, once again. Just like back in the summer, when he had you, and let this panic and jealousy consume him, turn him into something ugly and cruel, saying things he never meant, or never had any right to divulge.

“I think uhh,” his jaw feels tense as he speaks, like something in him doesn’t want to carry on, but he fights past it, “I think a lot of people have the wrong idea about her.”

“How do you mean?”

“People judge her based on what they think she’s like, but they don’t really get to know her.” He relaxes back into his seat, a little, trying to alleviate the growing tension in his spine. “I’d say she doesn’t really let them, but people don’t try hard enough. It’s like you said, she’s really cool.”

“Funny, too.” Ethan smiles a little, and the look in his eyes brings the essence of tears to Luke’s, almost.

“Really funny,” he agrees, pushing through the way his throat feels like it’s closing up, lips twisting up into some attempt at a smile. “Really quick, not even just telling jokes but like, she can just read every situation as it’s happening. I don’t think I’ve ever had a conversation where she hasn’t made me laugh, even if she’s trying to bite my head off or something or I’m not really in the mood to be laughing.”

Ethan nods along, like he could possibly understand what Luke means - but maybe he can, Luke worries. Maybe that’s what you’ve opened his eyes to, while the two of you have been growing closer this year with him being none-the-wiser to your budding relationship.

“And sure, she’s snappy, but she’s like,” he pauses, a breathy chuckle as he fights the swelling of his chest, now, too, “the most caring person I’ve ever met. You feel it, too, even when she is biting your head off or whatever, she’s doing it because she thinks it’s just as much fun for you as it is for her, and she just wants to keep you hooked. And sure, it takes a while for her to warm up, but when she does it’s like, I don’t even know, man, like her smile,” another pause, and Luke smiles a little more, himself, the upturn of his lips coming so naturally that he can’t tell he’s doing it until his field of vision narrows a little, “She has this smile that’s all slow and cute, and I swear it could thaw ice or something corny like that.”

“She’s got a cute smile,” Ethan agrees, but the way he’s looking at Luke makes him feel a little too seen, and so he straightens back up in his seat before he can sink any further. “Not sure it’s worth losing one of my closest friends over, though.”

“You wouldn’t,” Luke gulps, trying to swallow past the growing lump in his throat at the mere thought of you and Ethan together, a feeling that’s achingly reminiscent of how he felt about you and Cole - sick to his stomach. But this had been the problem before - thinking he has any sort of say over how you move forward with anyone that isn’t him. “I just want her to be happy, I know you’d look after her.”

He’d told you to move on. He’d told you he couldn’t wait around for you to figure things out. He’d shut you out, forced you to close yourself off to him, accused you of only wanting him when you think you’re losing him to someone else - and here he is, falling apart from the inside out, once again, at the mere thought of you with anybody else.

He’s a hypocrite, and he hates himself for it - he’s going to lose you because of it. Maybe he already has.

“You’re an idiot,” Ethan scoffs, mouth curving up at one side in amusement. “You’re seriously gonna sit there and say you want me to ask her out? You want me to date the girl you’re very clearly in love with because at least I’d look after her?”

“C’mon, E-,”

“Like she needs looking after?” Ethan’s dark eyes narrow as he levels Luke with an incredulous glare. “You know if she heard you, she’d beat your ass, right? Trying to auction her off like some sort of prize, are you insane? I swear to God, the two of you are borderline painful, you’re as bad as each other.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I honestly thought you were both just being oblivious, or something, but it’s like you’re actively trying to sabotage yourselves, you need to talk to each other, you need to tell each other how you feel.”

“I know that you slept with her,” Luke blurts out, eyes wide as Ethan’s face curls up in horror, “I saw you come out of the house with her the morning after the party,”

“Whoa-,”

“And it’s fine. Not that either of you need my permission,” Luke scoffs, “But I’m not blind, E, she was with you the night Jack got injured, too, she was smiling at you tonight like she hasn’t smiled at me in forever, I just want her to be happy, and if that’s not with me-,”

“I slept with Megan,” Ethan interrupts, “The night of that party, I dropped her off like you asked, I went back to the house, and I hit up Megan because we were hooking up for a while before she got all crazy on me. You remember her, right? The girl with the tattoo of her cat?”

“You were hooking up with a girl who had a tattoo of her cat?” Luke frowns, distracted momentarily until he realises what’s happening.

“She’s in the same sorority,” Ethan scoffs, “What you saw was her sneaking me out of the house because I got stuck upstairs and Megan wouldn’t help me.”

“But the movie, and the pinball,” Luke fades a little, brows furrowing as he tries to piece together whatever the hell he’s managed to fabricate between you and Ethen this entire time - weeks of avoiding you for nothing.

“We just bumped into each other at the IMAX, she seemed a little down, so we hung out after. Like friends do. Like you’d probably know, if you talked to her. You really thought that either of us would do that to you? That girl is crazy about you, Luke, she pretty much cried the whole walk home because you didn’t tell her you liked her.”

“She what?”

“Kept asking me if you’d said anything about being into anyone, she was being all cryptic and weird, I tried to imply you were into her, but clearly it didn’t help.”

“No, no, no,” he shakes his head, muttering repeatedly as he remembers that night, remembers what Quinn had tried to tell him, remembers everything from the past 6 months, all at once. He runs two shaky hands through his hair, trying to squeeze at his skull to stop the influx of regret that’s starting to vibrate in there, incessant and relentless, like it will never go away. “I need to go after her.”

Luke pushes gently at his best friend, frowning when he doesn’t budge.

“E, I need to apologise to her, I need to talk to her,”

“Tomorrow.” Ethan advises, “Her and Ellie knocked back like a whole margarita pitcher together, you don’t want to do this when she isn’t in the right state of mind.”

Wrong.

He wants to do it as soon as he physically can.

And he’ll do it on the hour every hour until you’re sober, he thinks.

“Trust me,” Ethan pats at Luke’s leg, a brotherly gesture that does little to calm his nerves. “Take tonight to think about what you want to say, and say it tomorrow.”

Luke hates that he’s right - just like Quinn had been right all those weeks ago.

He can’t do this out of impulse.

He needs to do it right.

When Ellie knocks on your bedroom door the next morning, she’s merely a fuzzy blur through your puffy eyes, and you can barely muster a smile as she walks in with a cup of green tea and a slice of toast for you.

“Thanks, El,” you croak, voice thick with sleep, and maybe dry from the salty rim of the many cups you drank from last night - or the way you cried for maybe an hour until you eventually drifted off.

Ellie had been your literal shoulder to cry on when you got home, letting you sob and finally release months worth of pent-up frustrations as she listened, taking it all in while she stroked a gentle hand through your hair.

You told her everything - about halloween, and christmas, watching movies over FaceTime and spiralling over them alone in your room after he hung up. You told her about texts that made your knees go weak, and calls that lasted until the early hours of the morning, and sleeping in Luke’s arms when you finally saw him in person. You told her about the gifts, and opening up to Luke about your family, and kissing him on the porch back at the hockey house.

Then you told her about the aftermath. About distancing yourself from him to let him move on, about him distancing himself from you because you’re too much of a mess for him to make sense of, and then about that conversation in the bar - about finally letting him go.

She just let you air it all out until it exhausted you - tucked you into your bed where you sobbed into your pillow for a little longer, and promised to talk more in the morning.

And you suppose that’s what this is - breakfast in bed, a soft smile sent your way as she lowers the tray onto the sheets in front of you, muttering a short, you’re welcome, as she perches herself on the end of the bed.

The two of you make a little small talk as she watches you eat, concern in her eyes and hesitance in her posture, and you figure you must have freaked her out a little too much last night - probably still freaking her out, now your face still swollen from all the crying.

“I’m sorry about last night, El,” you sigh once you’ve swallowed your last bite of toast, pushing the plate away. “I feel like such an idiot, you get a free pass to say I told you so, or whatever.”

“I wouldn’t do that,” her lips twist, unsure and uncomfortable, as she shuffles against the footboard. “It wouldn’t be right after what I did.”

“What you did?” You frown, “What do you mean?”

“Please don’t be mad at me,” Ellie shrinks away a little, face scrunching in anticipation of some poor reaction, and all you can hear is the persistent thudding of your heartbeat - still reeling from last night, a little. “I was just trying to help.”

“Help with what?” You blink slow as you watch her, eyes drawn to the way her lips twist and turn, tugged between her teeth as she tries to work through whatever it is she wants to tell you.

“It was sort of Jack’s idea, initially,” she starts, “I mean, I guess I took it a little too far, but he’s the one who brought it up-,”

“Ellie-,” you warn, the anticipation of it all only making things worse.

“He thought if the two of you felt like you were losing each other to somebody else, you’d realise you actually wanted to be together, and you’d stop forcing the whole friend thing and make the next move.”

“I don’t understand-,”

“He said he tried doing the same thing last summer, when he was being an idiot about asking me out. He took some girl from the club on a date, picked someone that he knew you’d find out about, but I guess you never did, ‘cause you’d have told me about it and I’d still have a dent in my head from where it would have hit the roof.” The nervous chuckle she gives does very little to lighten the mood.

“Right,” you nod along, muttering out the affirmation despite the fact that you’d done the complete opposite.

You never told her about Jack and Jessica, the girl from the club last summer - who you and Luke had spied on in the earlier days of your scheming. It was for her own good, though. You didn’t want to hurt her over something that clearly wasn’t worth her time. Jack was being an idiot, that much was obvious at the time - even without the context you now have that he was trying to get caught - and so you feel less bad about lying about the whole thing.

Although, your eye starts to twitch a little at just how ridiculous this whole thing has started to become.

“So he pushed Luke to date this Yasmin girl for the same reason?”

“Not exactly,” Ellie winces, “I think he tried to get him out of the house one time just to test the waters, but nothing ever came of it. And then Jack got busy with the tournament, and Luke came out to Michigan, and I felt like I had to take the reins a little.”

“Take the reins on what?”

Your tone must unintentionally reflect just how tired you are of this whole thing, because Ellie cowers a little, eyes glassy as she skirts around what it is that she wants to say.

“I need you to understand that I felt really bad about the whole Cole thing, okay?” She says, “And then ever since summer, you haven’t really been yourself, you know? Like you don’t wanna come out anymore, and you’re letting school get to you, and you don’t talk to me about stuff, even when I know that it’s bothering you,”

You look down, your own lips pressing together to try and ease the tension elsewhere in your jaw.

You have been a little more reserved, but it’s not entirely because of how your summer ended. And it’s not like you weren’t coping, entirely - you just weren’t running to Ellie like you normally might have.

Maybe it was unintentional, the way you had shut her out, even since the start of summer, but that doesn’t mean it would have affected her any less. Guilt starts to nip away at you from the inside out, her meek response heightened when you lifted your gaze back to watch her.

“And I just thought maybe you needed someone to look out for you, to give you a little nudge in the right direction, I didn’t realise it would have made things worse.”

A nudge - just like the kind of nudge you and Luke were supposed to be giving her and Jack last year.

You’re starting to get a headache with it all, the way you seem to have come full circle in the worst possible way - where the universe throws you Ellie and Jack of all people to try and gain some semblance of order to your life.

It’s tragic.

“What are you even saying?”

“There is no Yasmin,” she blurts out, “I made her up.”

You blink slow, feeling as your face slowly contorts with confusion - lips turning down, brows scrunching together, little creases forming in the side of your nose. “No,” you mumble, shaking your head as she stares, wide-eyed and panicked, back at you. “I saw her instagram. He liked her pictures.”

“I’d imagine that was just some random girl he follows,” she shakes her head with a grimace, “Dumbass likes every post he sees on his feed, I think.”

You gape back at her, your eyes widened in shock and your heart racing in your chest, because what the fuck?

You’ve been pushing him away this whole time to move onto a girl who doesn’t even exist?

“And I know I should have told you sooner, but I got swept up with all of the Jack stuff, and I,” her lips tremble as she stares back at you, apologetic and regretful. “I didn’t realise how bad it got between the two of you. I didn’t know it would end up like this, I was just trying to make things better again.”

You stare down at the empty plate at the bottom of your bed, and all of a sudden you can feel every swallowed bite swirling around in the pit of your stomach. “I feel sick.” You slur out, pushing yourself up off the bed and stumbling towards the bathroom, slamming the door behind you as you fall down against it, and you can hear the soft patter of feet as Ellie follows behind.

“I’m sorry,” she cries through the wood, “I know that I should have known better than to interfere, but I just-,” she hiccups then, and you resent just how much it affects you, guilt and shame swirling around with the nausea. “I wanted my best friend back. You haven’t been the same since summer.”

And you sob, yourself, because you know that’s true.

You’d admitted it to Luke, last night, when you had told him you didn’t think you could ever get over it.

And now you’ve lost him.

You can’t even blame Ellie, either.

She had planted the seed, but you’d been the one to water it - constantly avoiding having to have a difficult conversation with him until everything boiled over, until it was too late.

You could have talked to him at the party, the night you kissed him. You could have told him there and then that you loved him, because you knew it as sure as anything, but you didn’t. You could have told him at any point since then, and you never did. Because you were scared, and insecure, and weak.

Ellie calls your name from inches behind you, soft and shaky, and the thought of ruining everything with her too is too much for you to handle.

You need to get out of the bathroom, need to get out of the house, need to get away period.

You just need space, and you know exactly where you’re going to find it.

Luke has never been more thankful for a day off in his life.

And he’s never been more proactive in one, either.

One of the biggest joys usually comes from turning off his alarm the night before. No morning skate, no practice, no training, no meetings, no game to prep for.

There’s just you, across town, thinking he doesn’t care enough about you to stop you giving everything the two of you have up.

So his alarm had stayed on, shrilling beside his head at 7am, and he shoots right out of bed, not even putting it on snooze for four times before he gets himself up.

He makes breakfast, eggs and avocados on toast, brain food as his mom might say, and starts to think about what he’s going to say to you - making notes on his phone like it’s some dumb presentation - until he feels satisfied that there’s enough of his heart in it to actually make an impact.

He’s done letting his emotions control him.

The two of you are going to figure this out, and it’s going to work out - he’s sure of it. He has to be.

And just as he’s about to leave, Jack appears from his room, also dressed and ready to face the day, quirking his brow at the abnormal pep in his little brother’s step.

“What the hell’s got you so jumpy this early in the morning?” He asks.

“If I tell you, I don’t want to hear a lecture about it.” Luke huffs, because this is the last parade he would ever let his brother rain on, and he’s kind of worked himself up to the point of delusion. Jack just nods in response, and Luke can’t help the giddy smile that breaks out right before he says, “I gotta go see about a girl.”

Jack’s eyes widen, and Luke feels like he’s been punched in the gut when his lips quirk up, preparing himself for the blow of being laughed at by his own brother.

But what Jack says, instead, is even weirder.

“Let’s go then.”

And Luke practically stumbles over himself to get the two of them to his car, the weight of his brother’s approval pushing him further than he ever wanted to admit that it could, his entire body buzzing as he drives them over to the rental you and Ellie are staying in, and he tells Jack about his plan on the way.

He tells him how he’s gonna get you out of the house, gonna take you on a walk, somewhere, where the two of you can finally talk things out, and he’s gonna tell you how he feels. He’s gonna let you speak, gonna give you the time you need to figure things out - he’s gonna lay his heart on the line, and he’s gonna be a man and let you decide whatever it is you want to do with it.

You say you can’t get over the summer, but you don’t understand how much he regrets it, how much he loves you, how he’d never hurt you like that again. And if you turn around, and you don’t feel the same, then he can do whatever you want, but at least he’ll know he tried - at least you’ll know what you mean to him.

Jack gives him pointers, like he’s ever gonna take love advice from a guy who took like 3 years to ask his girlfriend out, but Luke just nods along with a smile on his face, too in his head with the hope that this could finally be it.

And that hope carries him all the way from one side of Jersey City to the other, airy and light, until he’s knocking on your door and waiting for you to finally open up for him - and all of it drains from him the second he sees Ellie’s teary fave on the other side. He’s too confused by the situation to notice when Jack brushes past him to comfort her, and he finds himself looking around for you again, that light, airy feeling growing heavier by the second.

“Calm down,” he hears Jack coo, “It’s alright, what happened?”

“We got into a fight,” she sniffles, “Or I don’t know, a disagreement, I guess. I was gonna give her a little room to breathe, so I went to my room, and then she left, and she’s not picking up her phone.”

Luke feels the colour drain from his face, a dizzying wash of panic flooding his system that causes his chest to swell. He reaches for his phone before he even realises what he’s doing, fingers knowing the way straight to your contact and pressing on it within seconds, the call reaching voicemail before he even lifts the device to his ear.

“It must be off,” he frowns, the swelling worsening with every second that passes. “She just left? She didn’t say where she was going?”

“She was pretty upset,” Ellie tells him, tears welling in her eyes as her face twists with guilt, “I really, uhm,” she runs a hand through her hair as she turns away from him, taking a few pacing steps to distance herself, “I really fucked things up, I think.”

“Fucked what up?” Luke asks, following by instinct to close the gap, trying to get her to look at him just to get a read on the severity of the situation. He’s witnessed a couple of your arguments with Ellie - mostly minor irritations that you come to him to talk you through, and it’s never been bad enough for you to get seriously upset over it. Not like this. And Luke has known Ellie for a long time, too - had seen all the ups and downs of her relationship with Jack before they ever got together. He’s never seen her like this, and dread pools in the pit of his stomach. “What happened?”

“I uh,” she takes in a trembling breath, staggered and shaky and doing little to make him feel any better as he hears it. “I thought I was helping. I thought she just needed a push, or something, like someone to guide her-,”

Luke can’t imagine a world where you would need guidance on anything. Headstrong and self-assured, he can’t picture what on Earth would make Ellie assume you would need her to push you.

“I swear, I thought I was doing the right thing. I wouldn’t have gotten involved, especially after summer, you know, I felt really bad, and I just wanted to try and fix it somehow, but she never tells me anything, so I didn’t realise she was kind of getting there on her own and I think I just made everything worse.”

The mention of summer makes him wince, Ellie’s words all merging together into one long, confusing blur of excuses that don’t quite make sense, but this has to be about him, somehow, he thinks - because you would have told him about anything else happening in your life, something else that might have happened in the summer.

Ellie felt bad about the whole Cole thing - that much seems obvious. Lending her efforts to him asking you out, being the catalyst to the whole thing blowing apart from the inside, out. But how could she ever possibly fix that? Especially considering he was the master of his own downfall, in the end.

“What did you do?”

When Ellie’s eyes meet his, they’re flooded with remorse, round and watery and it does little to quell the panic continuing to rise within him.

“I told her you were seeing somebody else.”

Luke feels time stop, his heart coming to a screeching halt, and all thoughts wiped from his brain until all he can hear is your voice, soft and small and vulnerable as you tell him, “I don’t want to watch you move on.”

“I just thought she needed a wake up call, or something, like if she thought that there was the potential that you were moving on she might have finally realised that holding back this whole time was doing more harm than good, but I don’t know what happened, she just shut down, after-,”

“After what?” Luke asks, although he doesn’t know why, he’s pretty sure he knows the answer to both questions he poses Ellie’s way. “When did you tell her that?”

“Before the party back in Michigan,” she gulps, “Before you left.”

Luke stumbles back a little, hands finding purchase on the back of the couch, needing something to steady him, to ground him before he spirals out of control.

“Jack told me that he’d been trying to get you to move on, that he took you out with the guys, that you were just flat out rejecting the idea of even speaking to somebody else, and I just thought-,”

“You knew about this?”

“No,” Ellie is quick to defend him, quick to take responsibility, for once, “Well, sort of, but he told me not to do it, and I didn’t tell him that I did, so he’s not to blame, here. I thought if I just said that you were moving on then she wouldn’t have believed me, so I made somebody up, but I guess you’re following some girl with the same name on instagram, and you liked a couple of her pictures, and last night she kept saying that you don’t want her anymore, that all she can think about is how much she loved you back then, but you don’t feel the same,”

I’m having a hard time moving past what happened last summer, I think

He thought you meant the Cole thing. He thought you meant you couldn’t look past his mistake.

I feel like it’s always in the back of my mind when I’m with you, like I can’t let it go.

You weren’t talking about the bad stuff.

You were talking about the rest of it.

And now all Luke can hear in his head is little snippets of conversations from the past few weeks. I want to, which he now sees as an admission of your feelings when he had asked you to let him in. Are you moving on? After he had turned you down for that art installation, wedging an insurmountable gap between the two of you while you assumed he was seeing some other girl. He’s hard work and she isn’t cut out for it, and the way you so quickly gave up when it came to Jack’s stupid outburst.

All of that had been with idea of him already having moved on.

All of that, and you still refused to do so, yourself.

Oh no.

“I was just trying to help, Luke, I swear, I just wanted to help her. She just lets things pass her all the time, for as long as I’ve known her, she gets all in her head, and she doesn’t let people in, and she was doing the same with you, and I just wanted her to take something for herself, I wanted her to win, I didn’t realise it would become this huge mess-,”

“Stop,” he huffs, because he can’t let her blame herself, not entirely - he made a mess of this, too. He’d jumped to conclusions, after the kiss. He hadn’t let you speak, hadn’t let you come to terms with what you were feeling. He’d misunderstood your intentions and jumped down your throat, and let his own hurt in the situation stomp all over yours. He hadn’t talked to you, despite all the times he had been urged to.

“Where would she go?” He asks, trying to shake himself into action. “Does she have any other friends around here, did she mention anywhere to you that she might escape to?”

“No,” Ellie whines, “She only came here for the first time in October, the only places we mentioned were lunch spots, I don’t think she ran off in tears for a bagel. The only person I could think of was you, but you’re here.”

Luke wracks his brain through the last few conversations the two of you had - and all he hears is the multiple opportunities he had to clear everything up. The multiple attempts you made to bring things back to normal - to bridge the gap he had forced between the two of you.

Movie nights, coffee shops, the game the other night, the art installation.

The art installation.

“Did she bring her laptop?”

You can’t really pinpoint where your obsession with space started.

It’s probably somewhere between laying awake at night, staring at the glow-in-the-dark stars your dad had stuck to your ceiling, and a field trip to the Henry Crown Space Center - and the two memories are probably a lot more linked than you care to think about, both providing distractions when you needed them the most in life, but you’ve never experienced anything like this.

You’d found out about this exhibit on TikTok of all places, putting the you in for you page to work when you first started seeing it on your feed, saving every video that came up. Destination Cosmos originated in Amsterdam from what you could find, and you’ve wanted to go for years. It feels like fate, almost, that it would be in New York for one week only while you’re just across the river for spring break, and missing out on it would have been your biggest regret since coming out here - which considering the events you’re actively trying to escape from, is probably saying a lot.

Maybe if you’d have sold it a little better to Luke than just being an art installation, he might have come with you. Maybe if you’d done a lot of things differently, he might have come with you.

As you stand in the centre of the universe, projections of everything you’ve spent your whole life admiring only from afar, chasing something you still don’t understand, you feel smaller than you’ve ever felt in your life.

It’s overwhelming, almost, how lost you feel now.

On your own, in the middle of an exhibit you’ve been dreaming about for years, in a city you don’t really know, but are going to be moving to before you know it, with all other aspects of your life imploding in calamitous fashion around you. The way the images flash across the walls - stars, planets, nebulae, supernovae - make you feel like you barely even exist, and you hate it.

You’ve never felt so alone, so afraid of what comes next, and all you want is for someone to reach out and shake you until you don’t feel it anymore.

And when somebody actually does, when the soft but familiar mutter of your name brings you out of your reverie, and a gentle grip forms around your wrist, you gasp, yanking your hand away like the touch burns.

You have to be dreaming, you think.

There’s no way you haven’t slipped into some sort of coma, or something.

Maybe you missed a low ceiling somewhere on your way into the exhibit, hit your head and knocked yourself out.

Because there’s no other explanation for how Luke Hughes could possibly be standing before you, in front of the most beautiful backdrop of glistening constellations, other than you imagining the whole thing.

“What are you doing here?” You ask, taking in his frantic form - chest heaving with rushed breaths and his baseball cap askew, probably from where he keeps taking it off to run his hands through his hair.

“I uh-,” he pants, blinking slow as if you’re just about coming into focus. “I came to see about a girl.”

You blink back, brows pushing together as he takes another step, “What?”

“Good Will Hunting,” he clarifies, “Declarations of love, I know you hate them but I uhm-,” he frowns, cringes, even, like he’s thinking better of doing this already, and you wait with bated breath for him to string his thoughts together. “I’m doing this wrong, I think.”

“Luke-,”

“I was trying to think the whole way here of some sort of speech, like one giant combination of all the soppy, cheesy movie quotes you love so much. Y’know, like, uhh,” his bottom lip juts out as he takes a second, and all you can do is watch, “Like a megamix or something.”

“A megamix?”

“Yeah, like a little How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days, a pinch of Notting Hill, just this huge shit show of the corniest garbage you’ve ever heard in your life.”

“Sounds great.” You frown, a little lost on how he went from declarations of love to corny garbage in a matter of seconds.

“Probably would be,” he nods as he takes another step, and you fight the urge to retreat, your feet staying firmly in place and your arms wrapping around yourself in some twisted protective stance. “But all I can think about is that one scene in When Harry Met Sally, y’know, when she’s all frizzy and crying on her bed, and he’s there to comfort her?”

“I don’t really remember,” you mutter, although you have a vague recollection. “I only watched it that one time and I was a little distracted.”

“I watched it 8 times.” He tells you, “Could probably talk you through the whole thing.”

“You don’t have to-,”

“So Sally’s just found out her ex is engaged,” he starts, anyway, and you don’t even have time to question why the hell he watched that movie 8 times. Once was enough to scar you for life. “And she’s like sobbing to Harry, and saying all these things about how she was just a transitional person, and she thinks something’s the matter with her, ‘cause her ex never wanted to marry her.”

“Where are you going with this?”

“She says, I’m difficult,” he mimics her voice, somewhat, a soft smile curving at his lips as he recalls the scene, “And Harry tells her, you’re challenging, and every time I watch it, I think of you.”

Ouch.

He must see the way your face drops, because he takes another step, and the distance between the two of you is so small now that you could conceivably touch without reaching - if he stopped making out like you’re a problem, that is.

“‘Cause that’s when they kiss, right?” He asks, and you nod, hesitantly, because you sort of remember it a little better, now. “That’s when he realises how deep he’s into this thing with her, and how right he was that they could never be friends.”

“I guess so,” you pout, your chest clenching at the mere mention of your friendship - the one you had denounced only a day ago, and are still very freshly mourning the loss of.

“And then I think about the other night, about what Jack said.”

You’ve already gone through this whole thing with Jack, you really don’t want to do it, again. Not here, not now, especially. “Luke-,”

“He shouldn’t have said any of that stuff to you, and he was being a world class dick, but he was sort of right,” he tells you, a crooked smile cementing itself into his features as he reaches out to tuck your hair behind your ear as it falls forward, leaving you to watch in confused silence as amusement flashes across his irises, despite the fact that it’s not remotely funny. “You are hard work.”

“Did you seriously come all the way out here and hunt me down just to tell me that?” You scoff, something within you switching as you unfold your arms and reach up to push his hand away. “That all I do is make your life hard, you don’t think I already know that?”

He grabs yours, instead, intertwining your fingers despite your resistance, and smiling even deeper. “When did I ever say I want things to be easy?” He challenges, his other hand rising to the opposite side of your face, cupping at your jaw and lifting your face until your eyes meet, “I love that you’re hard work.” And just as you scoff, just as you try to argue such a ridiculous statement, he continues. “It makes being with you and you letting me in all the more rewarding, like I earned it. I’d like to think that I did, too. I’d like to think we’ve come really far from where we started.”

You gulp down the urge to tell him you agree, still a little confused by this whole speech, where one second he’s comparing you to a sobbing emotional wreck, and the next he’s suggesting you’re sort of a nightmare. Still confused by how he found you in the first place, but it feels too late to ask, now.

“Ellie told me about Yasmin,” he says, and you swear the way your heart skips a beat is wishful thinking, your mind praying that the ground will just swallow you up. You were embarrassed enough without him knowing about it, too - that you got all in your feelings about some girl that never even existed, enough to end up ruining everything with him over what turned out to be nothing. “And Ethan told me about Michigan, about how you were upset that I didn’t tell you how I felt.”

What? You’d been upset he hadn’t told you about Yasmin, who you now know doesn’t exist, not-

Oh, Jesus Christ, you think, too embarrassed to even react. Ethan had been talking about you.

Anybody could see from a mile off that he is into somebody.

“It doesn’t even matter-,”

“Don’t do that,” he pleads, desperation flashing across his eyes, stunning you a little into submission. “Please don’t do that, not about this.”

“Luke-,”

“I love you.” He says, voice sure and steady, a little louder than he’d been speaking before but you can’t really find it in yourself to care. “I’m in love with you. I don’t think I’ll ever not be in love with you. And there’s no Yasmin, there’s no Victoria, there is nobody else and there never will be. That’s what I came all the way out here to say.”

That’s a little better than whatever the hell he was saying about a megamix, you think.

“That there’s only you.” He’s still sure, but quieter now, like a whisper that’s only meant for you to hear. “That I love you, and it matters.”

He’s giving you this heated look, like he can see every single cell of you - like he loves every single cell of you - eyes dark and intense, and you can’t look away, too entranced by whatever hold he now has over you - barely able to even form a cognitive thought, let alone voice one.

“I love that you’re weirdly nerdy about space,” he maintains a hold on your cheek, his touch soft but his presence solid, and uses his other hand to gesture around you, to the spectacle around you - to the vibrant projections of planets on walls that seem to extend light years right around of the two of you. “And that of all the places in New York you’d even want to go during your last spring break, this was the only place on your list. And despite that, somehow I’m the dorky loser out of the two of us.”

You feel your lips quirk up, still gazing up into his eyes, your own wide and watering as you watch him continue.

“I love that you never mind spending time with me, even if it’s just watching movies, or watching hockey, or eating, and you always know what food I like, even though you complain that I eat more than any human should. I love that I never feel too much for you, or too little, or too loud, or like I’m not saying enough. You call me an idiot all the time, sure, but you never make me feel like one.”

Everything around you turns into a blur, now, beyond trying to blink away your tears as they slowly start to trickle from your lower lashes, Luke’s thumb coming to swipe at your lip when one settles there, offering a soft smile that makes your heart melt in place - this warm, sticky sensation spreading between your ribs.

“And I love the way you look at me,” his voice is so soft that it makes you feel boneless, and you think if he didn’t have a hold on your face you might just dissolve into nothing, “Sometimes I feel like you’re the only person who actually sees me.”

You love that about him too, you think - the first tangible thought you can muster as he does his best to turn you into complete mush in the palm of his hand.

“I love that you make the 600 miles between here and Michigan feel like nothing. Like I miss you all the time, but you always make it seem like you’re here, even when you’re not, as stupid as that sounds.”

It doesn’t sound stupid. Not at all. It’s crazy how much comfort Luke has given to you just through a phone screen for the past 5 months, like he’s been with you the whole time, all those worries about your relationship being too weak to withstand the distance that you had at the end of summer dissipating almost instantaneously.

“And I’m sorry I keep giving you reasons to think otherwise, but I’ve never felt this way about anybody before. I love you so much it makes me crazy, and it makes me do stupid things, and say shit that I don’t mean, but I mean this, I need you to know that, as insane as this whole thing is I’ll say it all again and louder if you need me to.”

Your heart is pounding against your ribcage, the trembling breaths you take to try and alleviate it providing very little relief, and Luke watches you with bated breath of his own, wincing a little in anticipation as he waits out some sort of response.

You reach up to the hand that rests on your cheek and peel it from your skin, fingers clasped around his palm and tugging it away carefully until you can bring it down. You step just a little closer - close enough that you’re looking up, close enough that you can place his hand against the rampant thudding in your chest, and hope that the proximity of him now helps calm you - helps build the kind of courage it takes to stand in front of the person you love and lay your heart on the line, like he just had.

“I love that your version of a declaration of love starts out as you calling it a corny garbage megamix,” you tell him, hesitant but hopeful, like you’re testing the waters, watching as his eyes start to well up too and relief wracks through him in a visible shudder. “And that you watch some movie 8 times on your own because it makes you think of me.”

He huffs out a breathy chuckle, the smile that takes over his face is unwavering and it spurs something courageous within you, fingers intertwining with those on his free hand and smiling straight back.

“I love that every text you send me is a triple text,” you snort, “Like you couldn’t possibly just type out a paragraph, you have to send me every single thought as it passes through your brain. Like I’m the first person you want to come to about anything and everything, it makes me feel like you value me, it makes me feel good. And I love that you make everything lighter, and easier, and you never let me sit in my feelings, or let anybody make me feel bad.” You think of all the times he has defended you - to Jack, to yourself, even. He’d been so sure of you getting into your graduate program, more than you had ever been, and the stress around the whole thing seemed to dissolve whenever he was around. He’d backed you up when Jack went on his weird tirade at movie night, and has apparently been doing so the whole time Jack’s tried to sabotage things between the two of you. “Even if you do agree that I’m hard work.” Your lips twist in amusement as he dips his head a little, but you understand what he meant - where he was going with what he said.

“I love that you make me second guess myself,” you tighten your hold on him a little, “And you make me think differently, think better. I don’t feel afraid or unsure when I’m with you, not about the real stuff.”

He tightens his hold, too, readjusts his fingers where you’re clutching at them until he can move your hands to your sides, pulling back until you’re touching, almost, chest to chest.

“And if you asked me a year ago if I ever thought I’d want the boy I love to hunt me down in a dorky space exhibit, I’d have probably curled up and died from embarrassment at the thought,” you snort, “But I wanted to be here because it reminded me of you. Because you call me a dork, but you never make me feel like one, either. And because I used to want to feel like nothing when I thought of this stuff, but now I know that I don’t want to feel small, or insignificant, or unimportant,” you’re so close now that your voice is like a soft hum, stretching up on your toes and untangling your fingers from his for them to find purchase on his chest, helping you balance better. “I want to feel like I matter, and you’re the one who taught me that I do.”

You break eye contact only to watch the slow roll of a tear down his cheek, one he doesn’t even bother to wipe away, not afraid to show just how much it means to him for you to say all of that stuff back.

“I love you, Luke,” you almost-whisper, but the lack of volume does little to lessen the meaning behind the words, and your eyes drift back up to meet his, “I’m sorry it took me so long to tell you.”

“Can’t believe you just outdid my own corny declaration of love.”

“Consider yourself megamixed.”

“Shut up,” he laughs, the sound rumbling all the way from the depths of his chest and into your lips as he presses his own into them, fingers curling around the back of your waist as he pulls your body flush to his, and you think you see the swirling stars even when you close your eyes, a bright burst of colour consuming your brain until it’s all that you feel.

You kiss him without a single care in the world, forgetting that you’re in the middle of an exhibit, and that people might see, or stare, or think that you’re crazy. You love him, and you’re done hiding just how much. He kisses you back the same, with intensity and intention, like he’s trying to cement all those wonderful words he said to you before into the core of your being.

When you pull apart, slow enough that you barely separate at all, you watch as he smiles, swollen lips curved all the way up, the slight flash of teeth, cheeks balling up and his eyes creasing in the corners, and you feel your face mirror his, your noses pressed together and your hands still clutching at the shirt on his chest.

“Y’know,” he breathes, a slight rasp to his voice, “I was kind of right about one other thing.”

“What’s that?” You ask, backing away to give the two of you the slightest bit of breathing room.

“This feels like the perfect place to take somebody on a date.”

Your smile deepens, somehow, big enough to ache a little, and when you rush and stumble out of sheer instinct to kiss him again, his hands are primed to catch you.

And they don’t let you go for the whole 90 minutes you spend exploring the exhibit, where the two of you learn all new things about the universe and everything beyond it, and for the first time in a long time - the first time maybe ever - you let yourself believe that everything is going to be okay from here on out.

School might be hard, but you’ve worked almost the whole way through it with an end in sight, and a you’re building a life for yourself that you’ve never been so excited to live.

Your parents might be shitty, and they might not show up when you need them, but you have other people who do.

You have Ellie, who, for all her faults, has always been there to fall back on. She lets you spend the summer with her, with all intentions to have you stay the whole time, even if the two of you ended up elsewhere, and lets you impose on the holidays - shares all her traditions and never makes you feel like you don’t belong there. She cares so much about you that she goes a little crazy, but you think you’d rather have it that way than not at all.

You have Ethan, and you have Quinn, who both refused to fall for everybody else’s misconceptions of you - who encouraged Luke to persist when you gave him a million reasons to give up, and who were both in your corner without you ever even knowing about it.

And you maybe even slightly have Jack, who was just trying to look out for his little brother, like he’s so used to doing in all other aspects of Luke’s life, and who was willing to admit he was wrong despite how much you know it pained him to do so.

Everything in your life leading up to now might have jaded you a little, might have skewed your perception on what it meant to be loved, but you have Luke, now, to clear it all up.

Luke, who is dorky, and unserious, and loud, and uncoordinated, and acts out of impulse sometimes in ways that hurt you, but cares about you too much to ever leave you behind. And that, yes, he’s someone who doesn’t leave, but he’s also someone who comes back - who keeps showing up for you despite you giving him a million reasons not to.

Luke, who persistently slips in through the cracks of your long-caged heart and cements himself a place so deep in there that you’ll never get him out - you won’t ever want to.

Luke, who you love, and who loves you back, and who tracks you down in the next state over with a bunch of ridiculous movie references and makes you regret ever telling him you were freaked out by declarations like that, because you’ve wasted far too much time now trying to convince yourself you were a cynic.

Luke, who told you all the way back at the beginning of summer exactly who he was - who he was always going to be, and you were just too stubborn to listen.

Luke, who is, and always has been, inevitable.

When spring turns to summer, you find yourself back where it all started, your eyes fluttering open at the familiar sound of tyres rolling across the gravel driveway of the lake house, sun beaming harsh enough through the windshield that you have to squint against it, and your heart hammering in your chest.

It’s been a few weeks since you last saw Luke - when he’d surprised you at your graduation, and had helped you box up all your stuff back at the sorority, and the anticipation of a promise he’d muttered into your lips on your last night together has been the only thing keeping you going while you were back in Chicago with your mom.

The whole summer, he had promised when he invited you to stay, and I’ll even be your chauffeur again.

The thought of coming back to the place you fell in love, with the boy you fell in love with, and getting to experience the beauty of it all through eyes that finally let you truly see it makes your heart do little somersaults in your chest - a feeling that’s only exacerbated when you climb out the car to see Luke sat on the stairs leading up to the front door, waiting for you.

You feel the weight of his crooked grin even from a short distance away, a warm, gooey sensation spreading throughout your entire body as you run straight for him, ditching Ellie to get out the car on her own time and leaping into his arms.

You press frantic kisses wherever you can reach, and he holds you up so that you don’t fall, your legs wrapping securely around him as his glorious laughter rings out into the air around the two of you - your lips against his cheek, and his jaw, and his forehead, his nose, his eyes, even, and finally his mouth, where he matches your enthusiasm like he’s been waiting the whole time to do so.

“You missed me, I take it.” He chuckles, lips moving against yours as the words fall between your lips, and you hum back, kissing him again as a response.

“Get a room, that’s disgusting,” you hear the bitter scoff of Jack as he brushes past the two of you and heads straight for Ellie.

“Don’t listen to him,” Luke mumbles as he carefully lowers you back down until your feet touch the ground, “I got us a room, I even put some things in there for you, do you wanna go see?“

“What about my bags?”

“Your bags can wait,” he smiles coyly as he grabs at your hand - tugging until you’re following him into the house, and up the stairs, a layout you could still follow with your eyes closed. The familiarity of it all makes your heart ache in the best way, a stupid, lovestruck grin taking over your face as he guides you towards his room - your room too, now, apparently, and holds the door open for you to walk in.

It’s pretty much exactly how you remember it, the big window looking out over the pool at the back, the lake in the distance, and a soft breeze causing the curtains to flutter gently.

There’s the bed in the centre of the room, where you slept for the first time beside him, the same navy sheets, and you bet they still have the same soft linen smell to them, the same detergent kept in the laundry room downstairs. There’s the dresser to the side, where he once kissed you so stupid you never thought you’d think straight again. And the en-suite, where you first taken things a little too far with him, not that you regret any of that now.

The summer you’d spent so long trying to squash down is here now, larger than life, impossible to suppress or forget. And the boy beside you is the same.

You can’t fight the smile as you turn to him, his eyes glinting back at you the same way they have ever since that day in the exhibit, a light in them that you don’t think will ever go out.

“What did you put in here for me?”

“Nothing, it was just an excuse to get you up here,” he chuckles, advancing on you before you even realise he’s doing it, hands sneaking around your waist until you’re pressed flush to his body, and he’s dipping his head to kiss you again. “But if you want to go shopping later, we can get you some stuff. Make it feel more like your room, too, add a feminine touch, or whatever.”

“A feminine touch?” You scoff, grabbing at his t-shirt and turning the two of you until you can push him down onto the bed. “You gonna let me paint the walls with rainbow sparkles?”

He scoffs, thighs tensing as you lower yourself onto them, straddling his hips and grabbing at his hands so that they can’t hold onto you like he wants. “If that’s what makes you happy,” he smiles up at you, dorky and adorable.

“I’m happy,” you tell him, leaning in and kissing him slow, and sweet, unable to help when your lips curve up where they are pressed to his. “I will put one feminine thing on the list, although I don’t know anywhere around here that might sell them.”

“What’s that?”

“Pink fuzzy handcuffs,” you smirk, leveraging your hold on his wrists to lift his arms and press them back down into the bed, heart racing at the way he looks up at you - like you’re the entire universe. “So I can tie my pretty boyfriend to our bed.”

And then you lean forward again, pressing the curve of your lips back to his, revelling in the way his laughter ripples out into your mouth - swallowing it down until it swirls like petals in the depths of your stomach, cinematically swept up by a soft breeze, dancing and falling in slow motion.

“You’re gonna make me regret this, aren’t you?”

“Definitely.”

A/N: guys I could hardly warn you above for the cheesiest ending you'll ever read in your life without spoiling the whole thing, but if a guy professed his love to me at destination cosmos, I'd melt into a pile of water slime or something. this is honestly so wild, and probably repetitive, and might feel rushed and insane towards the end, but I feel like it needs to be, because these two are insane.

I hope you guys are happy with this lmao, I've had a lot of fun torturing you the past few months!! a lot of LIH callbacks in this final chapter, if you can pick them out ily, it really feels full circle, and like the right ending for both of them, so I'm praying you guys enjoy it as much as the rest!!

Ending this series is bittersweet, because I truly do adore these two idiots, they have a place in my heart forever, and if they have a place in yours, I would welcome any asks/conversations about them in the future!!

Again, thank you. I don't really know how to end this without being a blubbering mess at how much I love you all for getting me here!!! Being able to finish something like this, and be genuinely proud of it, isn't something I've ever done before I came on this site, and your support of my writing, whether it be LIH or OYS or anything else, brings me so much happiness I can't even describe it.

#luke hughes #luke hughes x reader #luke hughes imagine #luke hughes fanfiction #nhl imagine #nhl fanfiction #luke hughes fluff #luke hughes angst #*writing #shoutout to megs dolls they’re gonna need a good 30 minutes of privacy #I dread to think what sort of shapes they’ve been smushed into

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takami-takami · 1 year ago

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UHHHH so like Keigo getting wholeheartedly distracted from his daddy issues on Father's Day because he has a single passing thought about making you a parent and now the baby fever + breeding kink combo are beating his ass

Thoughts?

- magpie anon ✦

Keigo's hell begins over coffee.

Coffee and a mindless, paltry comment.

Keigo has always been chipper in the morning, if not a little understimulated by the rest of the world taking its sweet time catching up to his trademark speed. Like most mornings, your boyfriend is a blur of red and gold, flitting about the kitchen to prepare the perfect breakfast for you two to start off the day.

Pots and dishes click and clatter around you, and you swear you see a dollop of pancake batter go flying as a stray feather does its work mixing the bowl to free Keigo’s hands to cook.

You, on the other hand, are perfectly content sulking by the coffee machine.

You take a sip. Your coffee is dark roast— a little reminiscent of the bags under your eyes, as you force yourself to keep them open long enough for the caffeine to hit your system. If they close for more than a second, you fear they won't open again.

Perhaps letting sleep take you would be preferable. You want nothing more than to crawl back under the quilted covers, to drag your boyfriend back in bed with you for ‘just five more minutes’ and bury yourself in his warmth; but judging by the way he’s bouncing off the walls today, you don’t suppose convincing Keigo is an option.

Breakfast looks practically gourmet as Keigo drizzles strawberry syrup in creative shapes. He arranges fruit slices in the shape of a heart for your plate.

You’re doing your part, though. You dunk sugar in Keigo’s coffee and rub the sleep from your eyes.

“I’m bored,” Keigo suddenly asserts.

“Mm,” you hum, warming your hands against the mug.

“We never do anything this time of year,” Keigo says.

“Do you want to,” you respond, with a raised brow.

Keigo hums. He gets it. You both do. Still, every year, something unknown itches and claws at the back of his throat.

“Tsukuyomi asked for the day off today,” Keigo continues, almost shyly. He stares into the crackling eggs that are about to char on the frying pan and pokes them with a spatula. “Wanted to spend it with his folks again.”

“Yeah? He deserves it, honestly,” you say. “Good kid. What, are you jealous or something? Want a day off too, huh?”

Keigo shrugs. You almost snort as you make your way to leave the kitchen and set the table.

As you pass Keigo by, you push his mug into his chest and plant a peck on his cheek.

“If you’re that bored on father’s day,” you yawn. “You could always just knock me up.”

Keigo forgets to flip the eggs.

He forgets a lot of things, actually.

You could always just knock me up.

Several of his interns ask Keigo to write letters of recommendation for them at work; and his handler reminds him today is the last day of the week, so he needs to look over the particulars in the database for his agency to be sent to the higher ups.

Thus, even as he dons the visage of the hero Hawks, Keigo is confined to the torture chamber that is solitary confinement in his office with his thoughts.

He could always just knock you up.

Several chewed pen caps litter the expanse of his mahogany desk, another falling with a thunk to join its brethren among the pen cap graveyard.

I could always just knock them up.

Keigo decides to take the train ride home, opting to give his wings time to recover from a recent fight against a particularly tricky villain. He watches the scenery blaze by in a fog, pensive as the raindrops plop against the window.

He should probably just knock you up.

#💌 asks #hi magpie!!!!#hawks x reader #keigo takami x reader #mha smut #bnha smut

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mykoreanlove · 3 months ago

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Mommyyyyyyy!! 😍😍😍

This is the same anon who last year requested the special birthday fic of hyunjin x chan x f reader.....

My birthday again...is coming on 14th March.....

I would really love if you make another birthday fic (you know my bias by now).....

Just surprise me by your writing.....because the fic you wrote last year.....has made me got off multiple times (TMI lol) and your writing us too good!! Please write a smut fic for my birthday 🎂.....I trust your creativity and vulgarity (lol)

Thank you again for last year 🥺😘☺️

BIRTHDAY BLUES

Birthdays are supposed to be special. They’re supposed to be filled with love, laughter, the warmth of friends who remind you that you matter. That you belong.

Mine is filled with silence.

I stare at my phone, the screen glowing mockingly. The group chat is filled with messages—reminders of the party I never intended to attend, my friends begging me to “come out and have fun” because “twenty-something is the prime of your life!”

What a joke.

I toss my phone onto the bed, staring at the ceiling. My stomach twists—not from hunger, but from something heavier.

It’s been months since I walked in on him—my last mistake, my last heartbreak, tangled up in sheets with another girl. And the worst part? I didn’t even cry. I didn’t scream. I just stood there, staring at the person I’d once imagined a future with, realizing that love—real love—might not exist for me at all.

Because this wasn’t the first time.

No, my heart has been a revolving door, an open invitation for disappointment. Every time, I give. Every time, I try. And every time, I end up alone.

So why celebrate? Why pretend? I’m sick of it.

Tonight, instead of fake smiles and forced happiness, I choose solitude. I slip into something comfortable, grab my keys, and leave my apartment without a word.

The spa isn’t even my idea. It’s a last-minute impulse, something to fill the empty space inside me, even if just for a little while. Maybe the salt water will wash away my sorrows, if not I can drown in them.

The woman at the front desk greets me with a warm smile, her eyes twinkling. “It’s your birthday, isn’t it?”

I blink. “How did you—?” She winks. “Lucky guess.” Before I can respond, she taps on her screen. “We have a special package tonight—highly recommended.”

I almost say no. But then I remember the silence waiting for me at home. The empty bed. The thoughts I don’t want to be alone with.

“…Fine,” I mutter. She hands me a robe, her smile never faltering. “Enjoy.” Little do I know, the night is about to take a turn I never saw coming.

The air is thick with the scent of sandalwood and something faintly floral, a fragrance that settles into my lungs as I lower myself onto the massage table. The linen beneath me is warm, almost cocooning, but my skin prickles from something else entirely. Anticipation, irritation—hell, I don’t even know anymore. I came here to drown out the noise in my head, to escape, even if just for a little while.

I hear the door click open. Soft footsteps pad across the wooden floor. I keep my face nestled in the cradle, seeing nothing but the polished planks below, but then I catch a glimpse—bare feet, strong, the kind that belong to a dancer, not a massage therapist. Then the voice comes.

"First time here?"

Low, rich, like warm honey melting over my skin. I don't answer right away, too caught off guard by the way his voice alone sends a ripple down my spine.

"Something like that," I murmur.

I hear the faint clink of bottles, the whisper of oil being warmed between his palms. Then his hands find my shoulders, firm and unhurried, pressing down with a slow, deliberate force that makes me exhale a breath I didn’t realize I was holding.

His fingers move with precision, gliding over the knots in my shoulders, kneading them into submission. The metal rings on his fingers catch against my overheated skin, cool and solid, leaving a trail of contrast in their wake. It’s unexpected. Strange. I like it.

"You’re tense," he observes, voice tinged with amusement. I let out a breathy laugh. "Gee, I wonder why." He chuckles, the sound deep and velvety. "Well, you came to the right place."

His touch drifts lower, tracing along the dip of my spine, and I shudder. The air between us shifts, thickens. His hands are no longer just massaging—they're exploring, teasing, testing. My breath stutters when his thumbs press into the small of my back, his fingers spreading along the curve of my waist, holding me in place.

"Tell me if it’s too much," he says, voice softer now, rougher. It’s not. It’s nowhere near enough.

His hands slide down, thumbs grazing the dimples just above my hips, his fingertips digging into my body in a way that sends a sharp pulse of heat between my legs. My lips part, a small, unbidden sound escaping, and I swear I feel him still for half a second.

"Sensitive here, too?" he muses, his tone shifting, dipping into something darker. I swallow, pressing my cheek against the table, not trusting my voice. He doesn’t need an answer. He already knows.

His hands move with purpose now, sliding lower, teasing along the curves of my thighs, pushing boundaries neither of us seem willing to acknowledge. His breath is warm against my ear when he leans in.

"Let go," he murmurs, and when his fingers slip just a little further, I do.

His fingers press deeper, the metal of his rings biting against my skin in the most delicious contrast—heat and cold, firm and teasing. My body betrays me, hips shifting instinctively into his touch, a soft gasp slipping free before I can stop it.

Hyunjin hums, low and knowing. "There it is," he muses, his voice brushing against me like silk. "You’re holding back."

I bite my lip, my hands gripping the sides of the massage table. He knows exactly what he’s doing—pushing, testing, waiting for me to break. And I’m so close.

His touch drags up, slow, deliberate, gliding over the curve of my waist before slipping down again, fingers dancing along the inside of my thighs. My breath stutters. My pulse hammers against my ribs.

"You're so tense," he murmurs, and there’s a teasing lilt to his voice, like he already knows the reason why. His fingers knead into the plush of my thighs, a slow, rolling motion that sets every nerve alight.

I arch just slightly, chasing his touch without meaning to. The moment I do, his hands still, just for a fraction of a second. I hear his breath hitch—just barely—but it’s there.

"Relax," he says, but his voice is rougher now, less controlled. I don’t think either of us believe that’s possible anymore. Then his fingers move again, pushing higher, slipping beneath the plush towel barely covering me. A sharp inhale escapes me as he grips my hips, thumbs pressing into my skin with purpose.

"Hyunjin—" My voice is barely a whisper.

"Shhh," he soothes, but there’s nothing innocent about it. His breath is warm as it ghosts over my shoulder, his lips just barely brushing the heated skin there. "Just let me take care of you."

I shudder, my fingers curling into the table, trying to ground myself, but it’s useless. His hands move like they own me, coaxing, pressing, claiming. My world narrows down to this moment—his touch, his voice, the way my body melts under him.

And then his lips finally meet my skin, and I come undone.

Hyunjin’s breath is molten against my skin, each exhale igniting a fire beneath my flesh. His fingers knead into my hips, his grip tightening, possessive. I’m barely breathing, my body stretched out before him like an offering, every nerve ending strung taut, waiting—no, aching—for him to break me apart.

And then, finally, his lips meet my spine.

Soft at first, barely there, just the ghost of a kiss that sends a violent shiver down my back. Then another—open-mouthed, wetter, warmer. His tongue flicks against my skin, teasing, dragging down, down, until I’m trembling beneath him.

"You’re so tense," he murmurs, but there’s something dark in his voice now, something knowing. His teeth scrape lightly at my shoulder, and I gasp. "I think I know how to fix that."

His hands slide lower, trailing the curve of my waist, before slipping beneath the towel that barely covers me. The moment he tugs it away, cool air kisses my exposed skin—but it doesn’t last. His heat is there, following, consuming, and then his hands—God, his hands—are exploring freely now.

"You’re already so wet," he breathes, fingers teasing through my slick folds. He groans, like the discovery is too much for him to handle. "Did I do this to you?"

I whimper in response, pressing my forehead into the pillow, my fingers clutching uselessly at the massage table. His lips curve against my back. "I’ll take that as a yes."

He spreads me with his fingers, dragging his touch through my arousal, slow and deliberate. My thighs tremble as he teases my entrance, circling, pressing—but never giving me what I need.

"Hyunjin, please—"

"Patience, baby," he coos, but his own breathing is uneven now, his restraint barely hanging by a thread. "I want to feel you come apart first." His fingers find my clit, circling in slow, devastating strokes, his other hand gripping my hip to keep me still.

"Fuck," I gasp, my back arching. "That’s it," he praises, dragging his fingers lower, pressing one inside. My walls clench around him immediately, desperate, needy, and he groans at the sensation. "So fucking tight."

He moves, slow and deep, his fingers stretching, stroking, curling inside me with precision, finding that spot that has my body seizing up, my breath coming in broken gasps. His rings are cool against my burning heat, a contrast that only drives me higher.

"You’re close, aren’t you?" he whispers, pressing his body flush against mine, his lips tracing my jaw. "I can feel you squeezing me." I can’t answer—I can only feel. The pleasure is unbearable, an electric current coiling deep in my belly, winding tighter, tighter—

And then he flicks his wrist just right, and I break.

A sharp cry tears from my throat as pleasure floods through me, my body shuddering violently beneath him. Hyunjin curses, his lips finding my shoulder, his fingers working me through it, prolonging it until I’m a trembling, oversensitive mess.

I barely have time to recover before I feel it—him. Hot. Hard. Pressed against me. My eyes flutter open, my head turning just enough to see the hunger in his gaze, the way his chest rises and falls, the way he wants me. "Tell me you want this," he rasps, his voice wrecked.

I don’t hesitate. "I want everything." And then— Hyunjin’s control snaps. One moment, I’m breathless beneath him, trembling from his touch—the next, he’s flipping me onto my back, the cool air shocking against my heated skin. My pulse stutters when I finally take him in.

Disheveled. Chest rising and falling in sharp, uneven breaths. His dark eyes, once playful, are now hungry—like he’s been starving for this, for me. And then he’s on me.

His lips crash against mine, swallowing the gasp that escapes as he presses his weight down, pinning me against the massage table. His tongue slides against mine, hot and demanding, a dizzying mix of silk and sin. He tastes like need—like restraint finally breaking.

"Fuck," he groans against my mouth, his fingers tangling into my hair. "I knew you’d feel like this." I barely have time to respond before his hands are moving again—gripping, spreading, claiming. His fingers dig into my thighs, hitching one over his hip, and God—I can feel him. Heavy. Thick. Pressing against my entrance, teasing, testing.

"Look at you," he rasps, dragging himself through my slick folds, coating himself in my arousal. His forehead drops to mine, his breath ragged. "So fucking wet for me." I whimper, hips bucking, desperate for him to end this torment.

"Hyunjin, please," I gasp, nails digging into his back. His fingers grip my chin, forcing my gaze to meet his. "Say it. Tell me what you want." "You," I breathe, no hesitation. "Inside me." A curse spills from his lips—then, finally, finally, he pushes in.

A sharp moan escapes me as he stretches me open, slow but unrelenting, his cock sinking inch by inch into the heat of me. My body clenches around him instinctively, the sensation blinding—pleasure and pressure twisting into something unbearable.

"Fucking hell," he groans, his head dropping against my shoulder, his hands gripping my thighs so tight I know I’ll have bruises tomorrow. I don’t care. I want them.

He stills once he’s buried to the hilt, his entire body trembling with the effort of holding back. "You feel…" He exhales, his voice wrecked. "You feel so fucking perfect." My fingers tangle into his hair, tugging.

"Move." He obeys.

His first thrust is slow, deep—deliberate. The next is sharper, dragging a cry from my lips. Then he’s pounding into me, his hands gripping my hips, pulling me against each thrust, filling me so completely I can do nothing but take it.

The room is filled with the sound of our bodies colliding, the slick, obscene wetness of my arousal making everything filthy. "That’s it," he grits out, watching me through hooded eyes. "Take it. Be a good girl and take all of me."

My body is unraveling, the pleasure unbearable. "Hyunjin—I’m—"

"I know," he groans, thrusting deeper, angling just right—

And I shatter.

Pleasure detonates inside me, my body arching, my walls clenching around him as wave after wave crashes through me. My vision goes white, my cries echoing through the dimly lit spa room. Hyunjin curses, his rhythm faltering. Then, with a final thrust, he buries himself as deep as he can go, his body shuddering against mine as he loses himself inside me.

For a moment, there’s only the sound of our heavy breathing, the scent of sweat and desire thick in the air. Then Hyunjin chuckles—breathless, satisfied. He brushes a stray strand of hair from my face, his fingers gentle now, reverent.

"Best birthday ever?" he murmurs, smirking. I laugh, still dazed, still wrecked. "You have no idea." His lips curve against my temple. "Oh, I do."

And as he leans in to kiss me again, I know this night is far from over.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxHappy Birthday love 💖 Enjoy yourself lol 💦

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cineatros · 4 months ago

Text

･ ⟢ ⋮ last look ゛༝. ✦ daniela avanzini

"And then some days you wake up

pairing.ᐟ daniela avanzini x reader.

about.ᐟ Daniela never meant to let Y/N in, but from the moment they met, there was no stopping it. Their bond was fast, messy, and unbreakable—until one tragic night shattered everything. Now, drowning in loss and memories, Daniela must find a way to move forward, even when it feels impossible.

genre.ᐟ heavy angst. hurt no comfort.

cw.ᐟ established relationship, major character death, car accident, language.

wc.ᐟ 1159 words

a/n.ᐟ this is for anon who requested angst before valentines :D and i highly recommend to listen to the song while reading 'cause it'll hurt so good. Don't worry guys, I'll post fluff for after this (maybe)

and everything's perfect."

Daniela met Y/N.

It started at a college party, the kind neither of them wanted to be at. Daniela was nursing a drink, staring blankly at the crowd, and then Y/N was just there, somehow weaving herself into Daniela’s life with an ease that was both infuriating and magnetic. They became friends quickly, laughing too loudly in coffee shops, sneaking out of boring classes just to sit in the library together, talking about everything and nothing.

They had their ups and downs—fights that ended in slammed doors, silent treatments that stretched too long, reconciliations over shared cigarettes on apartment balconies, but through everything, they stayed.

They always stayed.

Tonight, Y/N had called her just minutes before, voice laced with urgency as she reassured Daniela that she had picked up the anniversary gift. Their car had broken down earlier that week, leaving Y/N no choice but to take the motorbike. Daniela had laughed, telling her to be careful, that they had all the time in the world.

“You should’ve just taken a cab,” Daniela muttered, gripping the umbrella tighter as she stood under it.

“I would have, but someone forgot her keys inside the apartment,” Y/N shot back, teasing. “It’s fine, Dani. Just a little rain.”

Daniela sighed, shaking her head even though Y/N couldn’t see it. “You always say that. Just get home, okay?”

“I’m almost there,” Y/N promised.

Then a sound—a sickening screech of tires against wet pavement, the sharp impact of metal against flesh and bone. The phone clattered to the ground, and Daniela’s heart dropped.

“Hello? Y/N?” Her voice was tight, frantic. “What happened? Why is there someone screaming?”

Silence.

“HELLO?”

Then the call disconnected.

The world didn’t shatter in an instant. It crumbled slowly, piece by piece, as Daniela stood frozen in the middle of their apartment, her fingers gripping the phone so tightly that her knuckles turned white. She redialed, over and over, her breath coming in short, panicked bursts. The minutes stretched, heavy and suffocating, until the call that ended her life came.

Y/N was gone.

In the days that followed, Daniela didn’t remember much of the funeral. Just hands on her back, voices murmuring words that meant nothing, and the crushing weight of absence. Everyone told her they were sorry, but sorry didn’t bring Y/N back.

Sorry didn’t make it hurt any less.

She couldn’t stay in the apartment anymore. Their home—once filled with laughter, warmth, and half-finished books—now felt like a mausoleum of memories she couldn’t escape. Every corner held a ghost, every room a whisper of Y/N’s laughter.

She moved out. She had to. Their apartment—no, her apartment now—was too much, too empty. Instead, she bought the house they had been saving for, the one Y/N had been so excited about. It felt like an insult to do it without her, to step into a dream they had built together alone, but she did it anyway.

Packing was the hardest part.

She wandered into Y/N’s office, surrounded by shelves coated in dust, boxes filled with remnants of a life they had planned. Her fingers traced the spines of books Y/N had promised to read, their framed pictures still clinging to the walls, the office chair still tucked neatly under the desk as if Y/N would come back at any moment and sit down.

She slid down the wall, a drink in hand, staring at nothing. The apartment was silent now, unbearably so.

Then, a voice.

“You know you can just get rid of it, right?”

She turned, and there she was. Y/N, sitting beside her, the same lopsided smile, the same teasing glint in her eyes. She wasn’t real—couldn’t be, but Daniela didn’t care. She just looked at her, eyes heavy with exhaustion.

“You know I can’t do that,” she murmured.

Y/N smiled softly. “But keep our photos, though. We looked happy there, and you looked too good in your twenties.”

Daniela let out a broken laugh, her chest tightening. “I know. You always tell me that.”

Y/N just gave her a soft smile. “It won’t always be like this.”

Daniela shook her head. “And why wouldn’t it? What’s going to change it?”

“Time.”

Y/N leaned her head on Daniela’s shoulder, her presence warm and familiar. “It wasn’t your fault, Dani,” she whispered.

“But why does it feel like it is? Why does it feel like I’m being eaten alive by this guilt?”

Y/N wiped away the tears that spilled down Daniela’s cheeks. “It’ll go on like that until it doesn’t.” She held Daniela’s face in her hands, pressing their foreheads together. Daniela broke, her sobs raw and unrestrained. Her mind kept replaying the doctor’s voice, the moment the world shattered around her.

“It was the drunk driver who was at fault, my love.” Y/N continued, her voice calm, even as tears traced silent paths down Daniela’s cheeks. “You’ll feel guilty and hungover and just... shit.”

Daniela choked on a sob. “I should’ve been there.”

Daniela shook her head violently. “How do I move on from this? What if I don’t want to? What if I just want you here, because I can’t—I can’t let you go?”

Y/N smiled sadly. “My love, you’ll just hurt yourself more if you do that. There are things that need to be let go.”

Y/N pressed a kiss to Daniela’s forehead, the ghost of a touch, the whisper of something slipping through her fingers. The two sat in silence, Y/N fading into the dim light of the room, until Daniela was alone again.

And she knew—truly knew—that she wasn’t coming back.

The house felt hollow.

The walls echoed with silence.

The bed was too big.

The books stayed unread.

Daniela tried. She really did. She went through the motions, unpacked, made coffee in the mornings, and went for walks, but there were still nights where she reached for her phone, muscle memory dialing Y/N’s number before she remembered. There were still days where she set out two plates instead of one, still moments where she turned to share a joke, only to be met with nothing but empty air.

She had known love. Had lived it. Had lost it.

And now, she had to figure out how to keep going without it.

It wasn’t a grand moment of healing. It was small things. Breathing. Moving. Letting time pass. It was placing a book on Y/N’s shelf instead of leaving it empty. It was standing in the kitchen without breaking down. It existed. Surviving. And sometimes, that had to be enough.

One day, it wouldn’t feel like this. One day, it wouldn’t hurt so much. One day, maybe—just maybe—she’d wake up, and it wouldn’t feel like the world had ended.

But not today.

'Cause Y/N was not just a chapter in her story. She was the whole damn book.

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fatkish · 1 year ago

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Hi!! 🐶 anon here. Was wondering if I could request a sort-of sequel to the last fic I requested? Like the reader after being rescued by him has separation anxiety from him and their therapist recommended for now reader stays close by him, so he’s taking a break from hero work, but for teaching he just brings reader along? So basically 1-a seeing reader being clingy and stuff with Aizawa. Maybe they experience a PTSD episode, idk. Just something like that! Take ur time with this request ^^;;

Aizawa x SA Victim Reader Part 2

After going to a therapist for a few months, the therapist decided that it would probably be best to slowly reintroduce you to social situations

Since Aizawa was the only person who you seemed to trust wholly and entirely, your therapist suggested that he work with you

The first few activities were simple enough

A walk in the park, literally, you both held hands or stuck together as you spent an hour in the public space

The next was a picnic in the park, Aizawa had made Bentos for the both of you. They had chicken Katsu on top of fried rice and for sides he put stir fired vegetables and some seaweed wrapped tamagoyaki. He brought a blanket with you guys as well as drinks and you both sat together and ate your lunches

Plenty of women would giggle seeing such a cute seen of a father and daughter

After a couple of these outages your therapist suggested slightly more densely populated areas

So your next adventure was grocery shopping with Aizawa. He promised you that you didn’t need to worry or feel paranoid because he’d be watching your back

You were slightly anxious when walking down aisles that other people were in but you simply held Aizawa’s hand and persevered

After each outing Aizawa would give you a soft smile and tell you how well you did and how he’s so proud of you

If you panic or freak out, he’ll pick you up and have you focus on him, and tell you that you’re safe because you’re with him and he won’t let anything hurt you

During one of the grocery trips, a kind old lady remarked about how cute it was seeing a little girl with her dad

After giving you a compliment the old lady offered you a candy to which you looked at Aizawa to see if it was okay. He smiled and gently nudged you forward and you accepted it and thanked the lady.

After a few more outings at places like grocery stores, restaurants, the mall basically just any place where people are closer together, and after having a few interactions with people, your therapist thought it was time to focus on social interactions

For this, Aizawa begrudgingly agreed to getting you a service/guard dog. Basically the dog would stay at your side and alert to any potential threats and lead you away. If you had a panic attack, the dog would sit or lay on you and help ground you. If someone tried to attack you, there were specific words in a foreign language that would tell the dog to attack

Now that you had this dog, Aizawa decided it was time he returned to teaching

The first thing he did was introduce you to the teachers. Coincidentally, Vlad King had brought his bulldog in that day. You immediately warmed up to his dog and was somewhat okay with him since he kinda looked like his dog

Later you met Nedzu who you immediately had the urge to pet. Aizawa thought Nedzu would be mad when you pet his head and asked if he was Mickey Mouse’s cousin

Nedzu laughed and smiled not bothered at all by your curiosity, infact, Nedzu was more than happy to help teach you and satisfy your curious mind

After a few days getting to know the school, Aizawa decided to introduce you to his class

This is when things went south

Despite having warned his students (particularly a certain grape head) about your past and to be careful with their words, some obviously didn’t get the memo

Upon entering the class, many had greeted you which spooked you a bit

The first students you were comfortable with were Asui, Momo, Koda and Todoroki

Asui and Momo seemed very mellow and almost motherly in their calm and relaxed demeanors. Todoroki was quite and greeted you once but then seemingly ignored you which actually made you feel good because you felt that it meant he wouldn’t come after you. Koda was quite but your dog seemed to like him which is why you trusted him

The students had tried not to scare you but Iida, Bakugou, Ashido, Uraraka, Kirishima and Kaminari had spooked you

Ashido had practically jumped on you telling you how cute you were which scared you, Uraraka, and Iida were really loud which scared you. Kirishima didn’t really understand personal space to which Kaminari tried to tell him off, albeit, a bit loudly, which them prompted Bakugou to use his quirk setting off explosions and yelling at everyone to shut up cause they’re obviously scaring you

When the class went quiet it allowed for you to hear what Mineta had said

Of couse, he had to make a comment about how hot you’d look in a few years as he imagined you with a curvaceous body whilst making a lewd face and drooling

This triggered you

Bakugou immediately slammed his hand down on Mineta’s desk setting of small explosions and yelling at him

You started to hyperventilate and ran away to Nedzu’s office since he made you feel calm

When Nedzu saw your upset state he made you some tea and offered you some cookies while he asked you yes or no questions

Whilst Nedzu calmed you down and talked with you, Aizawa yelled at his students and decided that something had to be done with Mineta. Once he managed to get his class back under control, he was about to deal out punishments when the door opened with Nedzu in front and you behind him

You ran to Aizawa and he immediately wrapped his arms around you. Nedzu then walked into the room and nodded at Aizawa, giving him permission (read as kindly ordered him) to leave the room

As Aizawa cradled you and walked you to the teacher’s lounge to settle you down, Nedzu asked the class what happened and after lecturing them for 2 hours, Nedzu finished his lecture by Expelling Mineta and blacklisting him from any hero courses

That night, Aizawa made sure to have your favorite food for dinner and made sure that you felt safe and gave you all the cuddles you could ask for

(Hope you enjoyed this puppy 🐶 anon. And I hope it helps)

#mha x reader #bnha x reader #aizawa x reader #aizawa shouta #mha aizawa #mha pro heroes #pro heroes x child reader #shouta aizawa x reader #aizawa shouta x reader #aizawa x reader platonic #aizawa x child reader #Aizawa x reader fluff #aizawa fluff #mha x child reader #x child reader

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hedwig221b · 6 months ago

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Kinda a two part question? Do you have supernatural Stiles recs? (really craving mermaid stuff but all kinds is very loved) and have you thought of writing supernatural Stiles?

and anon asked:

Do you by chance have any creature Stiles or mermaid recommendations? Thank you so much for helping us find stories to read and for writing such wonderful stories!

First of all, thank you! Secondly, to the first anon: I do have a supernatural!Stiles fic, it's called Predators and it's one of my best fics 🖤 I do plan on writing oracle!Stiles, but otherwise, no. Maybe, in the future, I am open to the idea!

So, here are the recs (including merman!Stiles 🧜🏽‍♂️)

Predators (creature!Stiles)

He was born for this. Nature itself whispered into his ear where he should put his hands, how to twirl his tongue just right and when to bite. Stiles knew well enough that his saliva was currently working its magic on this unfortunate man, making him hungry, lustful, and insatiable. Soon, all his thoughts would be consumed by Stiles. And, just this once, Stiles would allow Derek to consume him.

Sui Tollech Gwanna Tach Omen by jackgyeoms (mer!Stiles)

Mermaid AU. Stiles was five when he first realised that not everybody grew a tail when they entered water.

No Oceans Left by zoemathemata (mer!Stiles)

Stiles has always been a merman. He just never knew how to tell anyone. He hasn’t shifted since his mom died.

It’s A-Boat Time! by Fae_vorite, isthatbloodonhisshirt (mer!Stiles)

He could hear the others talking outside, Scott and Isaac freaking out over something and Stiles snapping at them to shut up and help him get inside. “Dude, how the fuck can you expect me to stay calm right now! Seriously, that’s a fucking tail!” “We can talk about it later, just get me inside before someone fucking sees me! I don’t want to end up in a fucking aquarium!” “Christ, you’re heavy!” Isaac grunted. “How much does this thing weigh?!” “Shut up and walk,” Stiles snapped.

The Shells at the bottom of the Sea (mer!Stiles)

The one where Stiles is a seal merman trying to fit in with the sharks.

Mermaider by nothing_left_sacred (mer!Stiles)

“So what you’re saying is; you’re a mermaid princess.” Erica concluded. “Yes, clearly. That is what I am saying. Thank you for putting it so concisely.” Stiles sassed, frowning at her. He wasn’t fucking Ariel; this was so far from being a Disney movie it wasn't even funny. Or the one where a perfectly normal Beach Vacation escalates way too quickly, because this is Stiles' life.

Somewhere to Start by Lissadiane (fae!Stiles)

Stiles has always known that he isn't quite human - the plant life that tends to sprout around him whenever he gets upset or excited gives it away. He's never really fit in among the regular people in Beacon Hills and is determined to wait it out, go to college, and find somewhere to belong. He's forced to abandon those plans, however, after he desperately agrees to enter into an arranged marriage to save his father's life. An arranged marriage with an angry, sometimes furry dude with trust issues. It's all very Beauty and the Beast, without the singing candlesticks.

The Last Chills of Winter by LeeHan (fae!Stiles)

“He didn’t magically charm me,” Derek shot back in his defense. “Oh, so he just regular charmed you?” Laura said with a smirk. “What? No,” Derek growled. “Was he hot?” “No! He just—“ He just had a laugh like a sun shower. Fuck.

Faith, Trust, And Pixie Dust by Val_Brown (fae!Stiles)

Since he was a baby he had kept it a secret. Something that he shared with his mom. But when something comes after him and attacks his pack, he has to share his secret with them. He knows they won't judge him, hello, they sprout claws, fangs and some wicked sideburns. But he changes to the size of a gerbil and has wings and pretty much farts pixies dust on everything. Using his new alliance with Peter, Stiles charges in, pixie dust flying to rescue his pack when they are captured by renegade hunters with a strange vendetta.

Bite the Moonlight & Bleed Gold by raisesomehale (creature!Stiles)

He waits until he and Allison are the only two left in the room. “This is a joke.” Allison says, “Have you ever known my grandpa to have a sense of humor?” “Really?” Derek’s eyebrows are halfway up his forehead, as he gestures to the word that has been printed under Creature Type on the paper. “‘A Merman’? They’re a myth. No one has ever seen one, let alone caught one.” Allison leans forward to skim through a few pages and draws out a photo that she sets back down on the paragraph he’d been reading. In it, a marble white ribcage crests the dark, prussian blue of a midnight ocean, the only part of the body visible besides a thrashing, predominantly red tail, curved jaggedly through the waves. “This image was lifted from Deucalion’s personal channels,” Allison tells him. “His people are keeping the discovery all hush hush, which means they managed the photo, but probably haven’t captured the thing itself yet.” She gives Derek a significant look, “Gerard wants us to get our hands on it first.”

a dying breed that still believes by paxlux (wingfic)

He thinks, Mom, we can do this, we’ll fly.

Hot Pocket Ratio by ShippersList (incubus!Stiles)

At the threat of the alpha pack, all Derek wants is to keep his pack safe and alive. As the last resort, he tries summoning a demon to help with fighting the alpha pack. He gets a bit more than he bargained for. Or, the story where the classic demon deal of "Will you pledge your firstborn to me?" takes some unexpected turns.

There’s A Beast In My Heart (He’ll Only Bow To You) by RayShippouUchiha (creature!Stiles)

“Stiles.” Derek fucking whimpers and if Stiles wasn’t already dying he’d kill himself for making Derek sound so hurt. Stiles just wants to protect him so much sometimes because no one else ever seems to realize that Derek is so goddamn fragile and Stiles hates them all a little bit for not being able to see that. Or In an effort to expel the Nogitsune Stiles is given the bite but it all goes horribly wrong.

A Most Unusual Hoard by churkey (dragon!Stiles)

Stiles turns into a dragon and no one can figure out what he's hoarding…

My Childhood Spat Back Out The Monster That You See by rightsidethru (demon!Stiles)

Appearances can be deceiving. Caught by hunters, Derek immediately dismisses his gangly, fellow prisoner as a pressing concern. After all, the amber-eyed teenager couldn't be more than one hundred and forty-seven pounds soaking wet. What type of threat could he possibly be? (The answer: a large one.)

9/10ths of the Law by tsukinofaerii (demon!Stiles)

Stiles discovers the hazards of growing up a real boy when, at heart, he's not a real boy at all.

You Were Never Meant to Know by Mooneye (demon!Stiles)

“Not a fan of exorcisms, Stiles?” the figure asked as though he were enquiring about the rain. “Not really. I could spew black bile if you’d like more authenticity,” Stiles answered. “Stiles, what’s going on?” Scott demanded, unease growing. Stiles is a demon, always has been, and never intended for anyone to know. Unfortunately, his secret is forcefully revealed and he has nowhere to hide.

Blodrød by Onlymystory (demon!Stiles)

A demon possessing Alpha werewolves leads a crazed pack to Beacon Hills. He's been stuck inside werewolf minds, when all he wants is a nice human meatsuit. Humans in packs are rare these days and the demon is practically salivating at the thought of possessing Stiles. It's strong, and the pack was taken off guard, unable to protect Stiles before the demon takes control. But like the demon says…humans in packs are rare.

Blackbird by skoosiepants (shapeshifter!Stiles)

Stiles groans and drops his face into his hands. “I’m seventeen, I can kind of use mountain ash and I can explode houses when I’m mad enough. How am I gonna win any kind of magic fight?” “We’ll work on it,” Deaton says, as infuriatingly calm as ever. “The important thing to remember, Stiles, is that when everything else is chaos, you’re the port in the storm.” Or- Laura Hale never died, and Stiles is magic.

[masterlist link]

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embersofhope-if · 1 year ago

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What interactive fiction would you recommend (besides this one)?

oh anon i follow over 150 if blogs let me get you some of my favorites😊 This is very long so all of them are under the cut🫶

some of these you'll probably already have heard of bc of how popular they are, but trust me, they're popular for a reason, lmao

these ones all have demos (if i messed up and some dont uh ignore that)

@infamous-if - "You're going to be a superstar, no matter what it takes." genuinely one of my favorites ifs (seven lawless my beloved please come back home the kids are asking whats taking so long)

@coeluvr - "You play as the only remaining member of the royal family of Vesphire; living in the home of the man who took away everything from you." another ive been obsessed with recently. i will forever love revenge stories (and my pookie helios)

@merrycrisis-if - "As a late 20-something year-old fresh from a recent break-up and struggling to pay rent in New York, life throws up more questions than answers."

@ramonag-if - "When your village is razed to the ground, you're left fleeing with an exiled prince. You can trust no one but each other. Your father's dying wish was to protect the prince, but can you really trust a man who was exiled from his kingdom?"

@nyehilismwriting / Project Hadea - "Set in a distant future, you play the role of an elite operative of Scytha Industries, a private contracting firm. ‘Contracting’, in this case, refers to anything from political assassinations, to private security, to bodyguard services."

@vapolis - "You’re a mercenary, gun for hire, assassin, information extractor, delivery person – call it what you want, because the people that hire you for your services don’t give much of a shit what you call yourself as long as you actually get them what they want."

@godsandvillains-if - "As the only metahuman with the ability to wield the powerful Chaos Magic, your very blood holds the answers to unlocking the secrets behind the control of time and space, but it has the drawback of being almost completely volatile."

@hvllowheart - "LAMB TO THE SLAUGHTER is a spy game where you take on the role of an agent under the codename Wraith, who up until two years ago was one of the best agents TERRA has ever made. now the agency returns into your life and pulls you back into the field as agents go missing by the dozens."

@eyesofshan-if - "Years ago, you were uprooted from the only home you had ever known and captured to be sold as a slave. Now, war is at your doorstep once more while you are left in a delicate position — as a commander of the country that invaded your homeland. While investigating a case of illegal human trafficking, you come across a plot that threatens to rip this tentative peace apart."

@apt502-if - "Moving from your small home to New York City was supposed to be a dream. You were supposed to start your new life with your long-distance partner and dive headfirst into full-on adulthood. Everything was supposed to be perfect. How can you not love being in your mid-twenties in the Big Apple?That is until your put-together, white collar partner dumps you the same day you arrive. Fun."

@acourtofserpents - "As the only human in the Kingdom of Faerie, you're no stranger to shining eyes that hold looks filled with hatred, lips painted in the color of forest fruits whispering your name, heads with pointed ears turning at your every step. Though you long for their approval, for a place amongst the wicked immortals, they remind you with every breath you take that as you came from dirt, to dirt you will return."

@softlyopulent-if - "All of King Adder’s children are a mystery to the common folk, but you—you are nothing but a ghost. A ghost, that spends eighteen years locked away in the deepest part of the palace, so that no eyes may lay upon you.And those that do—they do not treat you kindly.And when you are finally of age, at last, you are betrothed to the child of the King of a far away kingdom, to secure an alliance that your father has been seeking for years.And you are swept away to a place even more foreign than your own land, to be wed to a stranger that looks at you with contempt. To live in a kingdom of citizens that despise you. And perhaps, just perhaps, fight a war."

@heromaker-if - "Stories of heroes, legends and chosen ones are commonplace. But you'd never thought it was your child who would have to save the world from the Demon Lord's clutches."

@theabyssal - "In The Abyssal, you assume the control of a powerful deity that was betrayed by their fellow gods. Imprisoned against your will for all eternity, you had a long time to plan your revenge."

@milaswriting - "By birth, and association, you are one of the most famous people in the big city of Lehsa. Your father's the mayor, and you're from a bright, vibrant, bustling city... and yet, until recently, you didn't realise all the secrets yourself and the city held."

@zico-if - "You were supposed to be a sacrifice in order to bring an eldritch god to your realm, a sacrifice that was never supposed to live. Instead of dying and summoning the god intended, you find yourself face to face with an ancient being that was chained and locked away for the horrors they once committed."

@collegetennisoriginstory - "Experience the ups-and-downs of life as a freshman on the Cargill University varsity tennis team amongst a colorful cast of characters."

@disenchantedif - "You used to be a beacon of hope. Now they only know you as the failure, the Unchosen. Will you rise above them? Will you become better or far worse than they could ever imagine?"

@bouncyballcitadel - "Play as a first-year surgery intern at Citadel Health. Will you become the star intern and curry the favor of the chief? Or will you uncover Citadel Health’s secrets and break a story or two? This will be the best and worst year of your life. Don’t forget to save lives and break some hearts along the way."

@leoneliterary - "You play as a thief pressed into the employ of a mysterious nobleman. With the your life, the fate of your guild, and your honor on the line, you'll have to navigate the perils of the royal court and combat a more mystical threat. The story is set in Cusmo, the naturally fortified, desert capital of Hashind, and will showcase the much praised Upper Cusmo, the crime ridden Lower Cusmo, and much more."

@doriana-gray-games - "Play as your version of Sherlock Holmes in this romance detective game!"

@fallenlightsif - "You are the half-sibling of High General Ezrah Rhys and have lived the past twelve years of your life in Kesdon, the capital of Ebia. You've spent most of your time training and honing your skills for the future that awaits you. A future that is entirely your own."

@shai-manahan - "They call you Ripper. It’s a horrendous name to give to a detective like you, and definitely not one you chose for yourself, but you suppose it’s to be expected given your reputation for putting powerful people behind bars. Businesses feared you. The other cops hated you. Local gangs despised your entire existence. Yet, despite all of that, you remained untouched. Until that day, when all the lies and the deception and the foolish mistakes turned your life upside down."

@larkingame - "someone is after you. for over a decade and a half now, you’ve traveled up, down and across the country--running schemes and hunting fiends with your mentor, con-man-by-day, vampire-hunter-by-night, Wyatt Abrams--the prolific vampire slayer and the living descendant of Gregory Abrams, founder and prophet of the Abrams Family, the nomadic vampire-hunting cult that raised you--and was wiped out years ago. carrying the abrams name means also means carrying on it's enemies--but that isn't to say you haven't forged a couple of your own along the way. now, it seems someone is trying to make good on old threats and promises. they've placed a bounty on your head. so you and wyatt do what you do best: you run away. to some little town, out nevada ways, where the title of town preacher is unexpectedly thrust upon you--bringing back years of trauma you thought long tucked away."

@evertidings - "you are a bounty hunter. responsible for taking in rogue supernaturals, you work for IAOS—the international agency of supernaturals—where, alongside your best friend and partner, you two have quickly become the best hunting duo of the branch. after a particularly tricky hunt, you brief your boss, Caine Atheron, and come back to work the next day to find that he has mysteriously disappeared overnight, the company is now in the hands of his best friend, Sebastian Mai. and though no one else seems to question it, something tells you that there's more to the story."

@rotten-games - Regrets Of The Traitor: "You are the Ruler of Hadaria after killing the previous Queens and betraying all who once trusted you. Sat upon the throne with all the power available to you, one would be forgiven for believing you finished with your quest. With a strange figure in your dreams speaking vague prophecies of magical artifacts, a mysterious cult moving into the city, and a group intent on unseating you from your place, perhaps you’re way in over your head for a farmer’s kid. City of Immortals: "You follow a pair of siblings worlds apart as they get accustomed to their new realities in two very different worlds. One trapped in an unnatural desert wasteland where every resource has a scarcity, not knowing if they’ll be the only one left when everything turns to dust, the other working as a private investigator in a sprawling underground metropolis of the undying. Each not knowing the other is alive, will they unravel the mysteries that somehow connect their two new homes?"

@shepherds-of-haven - "Shepherds of Haven is a dark fantasy interactive fiction game. In it, you play as a Mage living in a world where magic is outlawed and your people—those possessing supernatural powers—are oppressed and reviled. The world is ruled by humans who believe in science, technology, and industry: at best, you and your kind are nothing more than a fairytale, and at worst you are the state’s greatest threat."

@someoneverypretty-world - "As a child, growing up in the slums of Hvinir without any guardians, you believed you would not live to see 30. Until Haven, a thief guild, took you in and taught you how to survive. Facing hardships, the guild leader tasks you to sneak into the castle with the mission to take."

@northern-passage - "The Northern Passage is an 18+ horror fantasy CYOA, where you play as a hunter sent up north to investigate a series of missing people along the border of your home country and in the port cities of the Blackwater. Working with your handler, Lea, you will travel north and discover that things are far worse than you ever could have imagined, and that there is something powerful lurking out in the deep, dark sea…"

@thedecoy-if - "♔ The Decoy is a dark fantasy that follows you, a 21st century normal human, kidnapped to an alternate magical universe to play the part of the missing heir to a powerful throne...who also happens to be your doppelgänger. ♔"

@ripperplague - "You are a doctor, a prodigy in hiding. Deep in the underbelly of Valeris, you hide among the shadows. You work hard to wring the blood stains off your palms, your face...your soul. Redemption and revenge are parallel goals, the flames of rage and disgust mingling. How could anyone ever love you?"

These ones dont have a demo yet, but im still absolutely obsessed

@pavedinashes-if - "You're only 20 when suddenly your life goes bam! Throwing you into a whole new city, a different country even. Wasn't part of the plan, but you know how life loves to mess with plans. People happened, stuff happened, and suddenly you're on the move. The new chapter ahead? Buckle up, 'cause it's not gonna be all sunshine and rainbows. And guess what? Your step-mom? Yeah, she's right there in the same city. She's always had this knack for trying to steer your ship, like every decision's a GPS checkpoint. But hey, there's this one thing that's never let you down—your skateboard. It's like the buddy that's been with you through thick and thin, the one that never bails. Among all this craziness it's like your anchor. So, the big question is—can you break out of the loop you got in? Find your place in the world and restart or lose yourself in temptation? Time to find out."

@riptide-if - "Your dad has always said you swim as if your were born to be in the water; the rest of your family has always said that he is the whole reason you turned out like that. So, it's not really a surprise when you had used all the money you got for your 7th birthday to buy a surfboard. And even less of a surprise when you started joining small surf competitions by the time you were 10, later followed by bigger competitions. It seems you are the only one surprised when it turns out you're able to compete in the World Surfer's League's Ultimate Tournament Tour*. Thrown into a mix of fellow surfing prodigies, rookies, and pros, do you really have what it takes to win?"

@weepinwriter - "You are inmate No. 1441, incarcerated in Tartarus, the most notorious prison on the continent. You find yourself imprisoned for a crime that you do not remember committing, leaving you in a state of uncertainty about your own identity and purpose. The first memory you have is awakening to the sensation of a gun being shoved into your mouth."

@whatawaitsus - "Despite being one of the most expensive schools in the nation, nothing particularly interesting has happened at the school in the nine years you've been here— aside from the occasional accidental possession caused by a ghost or the common room getting flooded after a nixie gets too frustrated over their homework. That is until students start to go missing."

@evermount - "Blue-suited guards stand in every corner, but they're no threat—you're under threat. And this is how you keep safe. It's necessary; the council said so themselves. Under no circumstances shall Evermount be left, ever. So, no one has, and no one intends to. Why would you? It's peaceful—you're at peace. You have your spouse, and you have your house; everyone's happy. This is all you've ever known."

@forsakensword-if - "When the Deathless, an Ancient Evil that hasn’t been seen in over two million years, returns to Earth, it threatens the extremely precarious peace that has settled between the warring factions of Heaven and Hell. God, in an effort to protect Humanity from the consequences of a war between the Angels and Demons, sends Heaven’s best warriors to banish the Deathless once more. When that ultimately fails, it is declared that God’s Sworn Sword and Heaven’s Chief Angel will be charged with finding a way to destroy the Deathless once and for all. That Angel is you. The Archangel Michael."

@velena-if - "You wake up in a dark, cold place with no memories of yourself, save for one: the memory of your death. It becomes clear soon enough that you are in the Nav, the domain of the goddess of death, Morana, and the sanctuary of all the evil spirits and monsters. For you, Nav will be the place where your life changes forever."

@countdown-if - "Three months ago, life took a sharp turn. Your mother found herself entangled in a situation so bad, she couldn't dig her way out of it, like usual. This time, the hole was way too deep. She needed help, and the only people capable of aiding her were the same ones she had vowed never to allow back into her life, let alone introduce to you and your younger sibling. Who were they? Your grandparents—a powerful and well-established duo. In short, they did manage to help your mother back on her feet, but not without strings attached—never without strings. Now, you're facing a senior year in a private school, fully funded by none other than grandma and grandpa, dearest. The only task at hand: do what your mother couldn't—graduate."

@dropout-if - "This is your first summer home since you began studying in Stanford. That is what everyone thinks. This is your first summer home since you dropped out of college, thus becoming the biggest disappointment in your neighborhood. That is what only you know. "

@stonewall-if - "Stonewall Military Academy: the most brutal, merciless, and unforgiving boarding school in the country. Most recruits either desert or die by the end of their first year. It is where the fiercest and deadliest killers are trained and molded to be the military's steel fist. And it is not for the faint of heart."

@viperdove-if - "You are the Dove, the heir to one of the most powerful crime families in your country. The grip your family--your father--has on their side of the land is tight, and now that you've reached adulthood it's time for you to be fully absorbed into the machinations of gang warfare. That means opium, mercenaries, assassinations. In this ancient world, blood moves people just as much as money does."

@fallen-if - "You are an individual that has been known by many aliases over the years. Child of the dawn, the original sinner, star of the morning. But no matter the name, your identity remains the same. You are the one that defied the heavens, the one that cast aside the shackles of tradition and broke free from the constraints of the divine. You are Lucifer Morningstar - The Fallen Angel. "

@maboroshi-if - "Maboroshi is an Interactive Fiction Game based in the world of Naruto, however, all events within the story span during the end of the First Shinobi War and the beginning of the Second Shinobi War."

@greatprotector-if - "Forced out of your family's farm against your will, you are now an ocean away from home, and you have somehow been chosen to be the main protector of the heir to some kingdom you’ve hardly even heard of. The spot's only open because the former protector died of old age, so that's probably a good indicator that it won't be as strenuous as it sounds. But despite that, you pour yourself into your work. You can't help it. You feel safer decked out in armour, and you like having something you're trusted to look after. Protect some royalty, cover all your blind spots, and try not to worry about all you've left behind."

@retribution-if - "Retribution, He Cries is a revenge story set in the Dark Ages of the fictional world of [REDACTED] and other realms."

@thescarsilivewith-if - "You were a kind monarch once. After your mother’s brutal reign, you thought your people needed respite. Evidently, they didn’t think the same since their bloodthirst only increased. Three years after your coronation, your mother’s favourite consort dethroned you with the army and the clergy’s support. As you fled from the palace together with your spouse, from an arranged marriage celebrated only three months earlier, you were found by slavers. You managed to save your spouse but not yourself. Four years later, your spouse finds you, though you’re not the same person they knew. You are not changed in spirit alone, however, for your magic grew in your captivity and now you’re unbound. When the crown chose you as its owner, you wanted peace for your kingdom. Now the only thing you crave is revenge."

#thanks anon!#this took me way too long lmao #i was gonna add more but u can only @ 50 blogs in one post🙁#anyways! enjoy🫶#rec list #other ifs.

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simp-ly-writes · 7 months ago

Text

Gentle-Fellow's

─────── · · A Smosh Fanfic

Pairing: Spencer Agnew x gn!Reader

─ · · SUMMARY: You, Spencer and your fellow cast mates Angela and Shayne all star in yet another Don't Win Mario Party, Gentlemen addition!

─ · · TAGS: gender-neutral pronouns, part social media au, use of dated terms as comedy, swearing, smoking, fluff, attempt at humour, cute.

─ · · MASTERLIST | TAGLIST REQUEST | WORDCOUNT: 1,463

─ · · A/N: thank you so much for the ask, anon! sorry it took so long, had to brainstorm some jokes and scenarios but it was a load of fun! 😄

─────── · ·

"Oi! 'ello Chaps, I'm here with my fellow gentle-lads and t'day we'll be playing some good old fashion mario party, just how I like my liquor-" you began to intro to the camera before Spencer was slapping you gently on the shoulder, his body acting out more impact than you actually received but you still fell off the couch for comedic benefit as he put his shoes up on your supposed 'corpse' in good taste.

"Well enough with what that fellow was going on about, I must say we shall play. This game is better suited for a trio rather than a quartet- the same philosophy can also be said for working in the navy. Was much better to night-watch with a trio-"

"Ah yes, I do believe three-and-some is an adequate amount. I have yet to try four but it sounds you would not recommend?" Shayne leans forwards on the couch to fully face Spencer who adjusts his tophat while looking down at you, silently asking if you were okay while laying down off camera. You shot him a smile upwards, rolling over and returning back to the couch.

"Yes, I would not recommend such activities. Too many men with not enough places to go and scope out. Much better to have three, did you not serve to learn this?" Spencer asks with a tilt to his head, his top hat already falling off again as you hold back a chuckle to his playful glare in your direction.

"I in fact did serve! I was a leader, and I good one at that too. Took my whole group to one of the colonies, we had to strip ourselves of layers from how humid the climate was," Shayne clarified, pretending to light his cigar as Spencer lit his own, passing his lighter towards you.

"Thank you, gentleman," you responded, lighting your two cigarettes, wearing them like vampire fangs that had Angela near tears at the end of the couch. "I do remember being down to my undergarments at multiple points with my men, I'll have you know we were all in position within the ama-zone. Quite the discoveries we made there, so uncivilized."

"AYE!" Angela corrected, pointing a finger, her moustache slipping down her face, "I'll have you know my third mistress is from those parts, and she is the best. You mustn't make such hastily claims gentlemen, it is unbecoming of you!"

You nod your head, "yes, yes, very unbecoming. What are we? Boys like our sons? I can't remember the last time I had ashes in my lungs with that child's work," you continue as Angela agrees with a huff, the game seemingly long forgotten as you all carry through conversation, trying your darnedest not to break character.

"Ah yes, I think I have a son or two, I can't quite remember. I think to name them all William, a strong English name," Shanye comments once you all get... gently reminded to play the game you intro-ed over half an hour ago, you hoped that the editors would be able to find something distinguishable in these files.

─────── · ·

"I do believe it is your turn, gentleman," Spencer comments, casting you a wink. "My, I have seen to misplaced that powered-device. Does anyone see it?" Everyone starts to feel around the dips in the couch, Spencer was the first to stand, walking closer to the cameras from where you rolled to during the introduction bit and comes back with your controller, dipping it towards you with a bow.

"Thank you, my, you must be quite the bachelor, charming a fellow like me, oh my," you add with heated cheeks as Spencer returns to your side, his leg nocking against your own as you shout out in disbelief to obtaining a star you DID NOT want. "This is outrageous, I demand a re-play of my turn! I did not intend-"

"We must play by the rules," Shayne cuts you off, tilting his hat down as you stick out your tongue. Angela is focused on not winning the next mini game as you and Shayne continue your staring contest in the following two rounds before you claim victory. "Haha! I have trained with only the best, you can read a lot about another man through his eyes. Have you been hunting before? I love that wild look." Spencer jumps to respond.

"Yes, I must say, you really can tell a lot..." and in that moment you both look at one another. Shayne and Angela are both screaming over something on the screen but you both sound it out, lost in this little moment before realizing your both won... or well lost.

"It appear we have lost," Spencer says, emitting a sigh. "No, I would say we have won," you tease loving the way his cheeks heat up to his ears before you both return to the game more driven then ever to not win.

─────── · ·

Jokes have you all toppling the couch at some point from your rambunctious laughter, Angela is struggling to breathe through her sentence much similar to you over just how funny Spencer manages to be wearing sweatpants and a cheap half tux.

Spencer immediately went to protect your head with his arm as you all fell backwards with a large crash, the crew all gasped out in shock before your laughter only grew more boisterous. "I think I hear a little man again," Shayne comments, forcing himself upright to look over the couch as stars begun to be distributed.

Like snipers at position you all kneeled, your eyes only visible from the turned over couch. Top hats giving away your cover and you had placed second, falling back to the ground in fake shock and relief. Spencer teased mouth to mouth that had you pressing a hand to his mouth and narrowed your eyes at his large ones filled with glee and adoration.

─────── · ·

Angela had lost in the end in first place. you second place. Shayne in third and Spencer being the ultimate winner in fourth.

"FUCK!" and the video ended abruptly to quickly cute to her wearing a dog cone while trying to light a cigarette, only for them to keep collecting down by her neck.

"Thank you all for viewing our game time today, I have had the most splendid time today with you chaps, as I hope you all have ventured the same?" Shayne asks the now upright couch and cast.

"Yes, I was quite filled with delight," you replied, nodding your head and tipping your hat to everyone on the sofa.

"I do agree with my fellow gentleman, here" Spencer replies, clapping you on the wrist this time, very much close to holding your hand, your fingers interlacing while watching Angelas 'winning' speech.

"I hate you all-"

"Why that id not very gentlemanly of you, do you wish to handle these matters outside in more space for our thoughts?" Shayne rebuttles.

"Yes, I rather have a few thoughts to show you," Angela challenged, brow raised as she begins to roll up her sleeves, Shayne doing the same. Alex closes the video by panning upwards and the screen fades to black.

─────── · ·

🔔 Smosh Games just posted! watch now?

─────── · ·

Gentleman's Rules: Don't Win Mario Party (Again!)

Smosh Games ✓ [Subscribed] 👍 67k | 👎 7.78M subscribers 300k views 1 week ago only the politest of games... click to read more

1,110 Comments

username01 (name) and Spencer out here being the cutest even while cosplaying as colonizers, iconic behaviour you two!

username88 09:45 "Ah yes, I do believe three-and-some is an adequate amount" - Shayne Topp 2024

↳ username70 OMG why did I not catch this earlier LMAO 🤣 ↳ username91 or what about 20:01 " What are we? Boys like our sons? I can't remember the last time I had ashes in my lungs with that child's work..." - (name) was UNREAL for sayin' this XD ↳ username70 OMG YES! 🙌😂

username22 I don't know about you but I'm feeling like I'm ready for a whole series of just this cast and just this game. I have had this video and repeat since it's come out! Please. Make. More. 🙏

username14 Literally so in love with how gentle Spencer was being with (name), dropping the persona to held them find their controller and even making sure they didn't fall hard?? 😭

↳ username91 and did anyone notice those little winks? UGH 😩

username40 this is not good material to be eating to, almost choked from laughing so hard, would not recommend.

userame66 That little exchange about seeing into one another's eyes was so poetic, like that bit did not need to go that hard 💗

─────── · ·

─ · · SPENCER AGNEW TAGLIST: @lisiliely @missflufffanfics @little-stitious-studios @thejourneyneverendsx @sibsteria @lizzylynch1 @babble2 @delaneyburghardt @thevintagefangirl @uniquely-haunting @maricarorp

#fanfic #fanfiction #simp-ly #simp-ly-writes #x reader #fluff #spencer agnew fanfiction #spencer agnew imagine #spencer x reader #spencer agnew x reader #spencer agnew #smosh x reader #smosh #smosh games

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honest-moth-of-silver-grove · 1 year ago

Note

Could I ask for some yandere alucard post season 3 with a s/o that isn't human or only part human? Like being half fae, nymph or siren. I just think the dynamics of that relationship would be quite different then say if the object of his obsession was human given his lack of faith in humanity in season 3s aftermath

A/N: I LOVE this question! It was so interesting to think about all the different ways the MC could be half-human and have that connection with Alucard. I did end up going with a mermaid/siren sort of creature as the original asker did send in an additional ask clarifying how they could picture this abused mermaid girl feeling kinship with Alucard because of his current distrust of humans, and I liked that element. I also chose a siren / mer create as they have abilities to manipulate/hypnotize their prey, an ability Alucard probably has as well with him being half-vampire. I ended up writing a very long outline in bullet points but felt that it didn't quite flow for HC, so I instead broke it up into smaller scenes below. I hope that’s ok. Sorry, it took so long. I was sick with some weird virus for weeks (lowkey feel like it’s mono or something), and could only handle work and family crap, like I barely had any motivation to live. And then when I started writing this, it sort of took on a life of its own lol. (What can I say? I love me some Alucard.)

Anon also suggested I check out this manga- it’s called Becoming the Villain's Family and it’s about a siren who goes back in time and makes a marriage pact with a devil to prevent their untimely fates. I’m not a huge manga reader, but my sister is, so I’m going to recommend it to her and maybe we can read it together.

Yandere! Alucard (Post-S3) w/ A Half-Siren S/O

The fair creature did not see quite how it happened, for it had all transpired too fast. A deep guttural growl echoed from past the tree line, well beyond the corners of her vision as the very ground beneath the wagon’s feet began to shake violently. As swiftly and silently as a flash of lightning, the wagon she resided in was sliced in half, the metal cage that kept her prisoner acting as her only guard against an elongated talon from some sort of monster. The cage was tossed sideways, skittering along the dirt ground as the poor mer creature inside flipped over violently, her dehydrated human form and lack of clothing sending her soft, nearly translucent skin into the square welds hard enough to form bruises.

“Retrieve the asset!”

“Don’t let her escape!”

“Are you crazy?! Fuck the asset!”

Around her, a flurry of mixed male voices shouted out contradictory directions. With only the setting sun for light, it was difficult to make out who had yelled what.

Then came more growls in addition to all the shouting. Then the shouting turned into screaming. And a handful of those screams turned into cut-off cries followed by loud squelching. A flurry of slices and swings from blades and swords interrupted what must have been the creature's onslaught, but it would certainly not last long. There would be more torn flesh, and more final yells- a final symphony of bloodshed to follow.

Kneeling into an upright position, the fair mer creature pushed and pulled frantically against the metal door of her cage. The hinges had warped in the fall, bending just so, that if enough force was applied…

With a metallic screech, the young water maiden could kick her cage door from its battered hinges. Fortunately enough for her, none of her captors seemed to notice her imminent freedom, the lot of them busy battling hideous creatures beyond any comprehensible amalgam or imagination.

Unfortunately for her, her sudden movement did not go unnoticed by one such creature.

A smaller, fiendish-looking thing, with the body of a lizard, but the head of a vulture, and the tail of a scorpion mawed loudly at her, its stinger striking warningly at the ground.

Not needing to be told twice, the young maiden leaped up and made a mad dash for the treeline on the other side of the clearing, opposite the line of creatures.

As she made it past the treeline she watched as one of her imprisoners struck successfully at the rear of the small fiendish creature with the sharp end of a spear. It cut roughly into the monster’s backside, turning the horrid thing’s attention away from her back onto her captors.

Pausing for a mere second, she took one last look at the few men still alive, fighting for their lives against the horrible creatures. Even if they were to win the fight, she swore it would be the last time she saw them. Beasts or no beasts, she was never losing her freedom again.

✧ ✧ ✧

The bottoms of her feet stung with every step, and her calves burned worse every time she jumped over branches, landing on uneven ground. Her thighs were practically numb from the midseason cold, and her time forced to rest on the cold metal bars of her prison certainly did not help. But she refused to stop running. Even if she was unfamiliar with the practice of traveling upright on two extremities, she perished the thought that her inexperience might slow her down. She could not fail. She could not yet rest. Whoever won the fight between her captors and the creatures was certain to follow after her once the battle was done. She could not waste precious time. So despite pain and exhaustion, she pushed onward.

After what felt like an eternity, although, if she were to judge by the moon, it must have only been a few hours, she found her legs could no longer support her weight, as her knees buckled beneath her, slipping on the soft embankment ground.

‘Embankment?’ The maiden, feeling a final surge of hope, strained her neck to get a better look. It did appear that she had made it to a river bank, although it was a rather small one at that. Still, the sight felt like a miracle. It had been too long since her body was submerged, snug, within her element’s embrace. And given the choice between breathing her last breaths on the cold dry forest ground, or under a river’s soft current, she’d choose the river, any day.

Using her arms to pull herself into the cold water, she breathed one final breath of chilled night air before slinking into the river water. Closing her eyes, the young maiden had but one thought:

‘If this is to be my final resting place, then so be it.’

✧ ✧ ✧

The next morning started the same way all mornings do: the sun rose in the sky, the birds and bugs began their daily chirps, and a very forlorn-looking Adrian Tepes, known currently as Alucard, son of Dracula exited his castle in search for food, his usual basket in hand. Unusual however were the two corpses that greeted him as he passed the castle steps.

Alucard paid the bodies no mind, he didn’t once glance in either of their directions. He kept his eyes forward, locked onto the foliage and wildlife hidden within the forest line choosing to pretend the bodies were no longer there. Yes, he knew they were there. Of course, he knew. He was the one to string them up after all. But if he were to acknowledge the corpses' presence, then he would also be required to acknowledge the circumstances that led them to be staked there, and that was something not even the great slayer of Dracula could do. So instead Alucard did what he could: he adjusted the basket in his arms and began mentally preparing the meal he would make.

Coming to the river bank, Alucard felt something was off. He sensed another presence nearby. Kneeling down to the water, he kept his ears open for any movement within the trees but did not hear any.

‘Odd.’ The dhampir waited for a spell before resuming his usual activities. He methodically removed his boots, before rolling up the ends of his pants, as he prepared to wade into the river. He had found a comfortable position, balanced on the river rocks below his feet when he noticed another oddity.

“Where have all the fish gone?”

The river, once teeming with fish, ones even brave enough to stick around as he waded into the water, were nowhere to be seen. Besides the rushing of water over the river bank, Alucard could not hear them swimming around within the water below.

Turning his head, he found a single glint of scales reflecting the morning’s rays a few meters from where he had been standing. But just one fish? Or perhaps, a damn of some kind was preventing them from moving freely. Alucard made a move to investigate closer. But then, just as he turned to do so, what appeared to be an incredibly large fish leaped out of the river, and flopped onto the bank. It writhed around, flopping this way and that before rolling over to face him. It was at that moment Alucard realized why all the other fish had disappeared. There was no damn, no net. It was because of this… this creature.

✧ ✧ ✧

The young mermaid awoke with a start, the deep echo of footsteps underwater had vibrated her awake. From where she lay, her vision was obscured, but she could make it out that the being was human in nature, standing on two legs, with only two arms to boot. It did not possess any claws or animal characteristics like any of the night creatures from the night before, nor did it appear to resemble any of the men who had taken her.

The maiden stayed as still as stone, hoping this new strange human would grow bored of waiting for a meal to catch, turn around, and go home. But luck, as it had proven time and time again as of late, was not on her side.

The man made a move towards her position, and she found she could not help the fear that bubbled up from inside her chest. The river was too small for her to swim through. More so, moving within the water would only create splashes to further catch this stranger’s attention. If she wanted to get away, she’d need to shift back to her human form and make yet another run for it on foot.

Using the strength her long waterlogged rest had given her, she propelled her body out of the water, onto the river bank. As soon as her full body was on land, she writhed and wriggled, doing all she could to shake the excess water from her body.

Her earlier set of legs had once again merged into a fishtail, strong and thick, with grooved fins to match. Her abdomen and chest were plated with scales all up the sides. And as she shook herself dry, several of those scales slid off her body into the dirt. Her ears, previously flesh and pointed more like an elf’s, had pulled back, with loose tentacle-like fins spouting out around their outer shell. In the daylight, she knew there was no mistaking what she was. But if she was to change her form quickly, it was a risk she needed to take.

Despite the morning's warm sun, her body did not dry as fast as she had hoped. The maiden used her arms, and her now-clawed fingers to pull herself up further, finally gaining purchase on one bark of a tree, as she did her best to twist around and face this stranger head-on.

Letting out a hiss, she bore her fangs at the strange blonde man standing before her. Only the man did not seem intimidated, nor shocked to see a creature such as herself. If anything, he appeared, at ease. Was this perhaps a trap? She hissed again but found herself on the side of surprise when the seemingly human man bared his own set of fangs and hissed back.

✧ ✧ ✧

‘A mermaid?’ Alucard watched, amused, as the young creature did her best to appear menacing to him. If only she knew, how instead of fear, Alucard felt a rush of reassurance at the sight of her inhuman features.

‘Humans,’ he thought bitterly. It was two humans who had hurt him most of all. Not even his own father’s war on humanity had harmed him the way those two did. His father left him for dead paled in comparison to the shame and torment he carried with him from that one night.

Had a human shown their face on his property, he’d… Well, Alucard was not certain what he would do should they refuse his order to leave. But whatever he decided, it would not be a fate any would enjoy, that’s for certain.

Thankfully, with the very distinct mer-features of this individual, that point was moot. He did not need to threaten disembowelment or an eternity of torture as a spawn, Alucard felt no such need to.

He took a step closer, taking in her unique features. Her eyes were large and dark, almost pure pools of black. He could feel the pull luring him in closer the longer he looked into them. Her skin was almost opaque, despite its color. At certain angles, rays of the morning sun seemed to shine through her body, as opposed to around it. And her tail, no doubt the most impressive of her peculiarities, glinted impressively, making her an almost otherworldly mirage against the browns and greens of the surrounding greenery.

Of course, no sooner than Alucard could admire such an ethereal sight, her tail began to lose some of its luminescence, growing duller by the second. The previously shiny scales that overlapped each other began to flake off, one by one. Down the middle of her tail, from where her belly button would have been on her abdomen had she been a human, what scaled skin remained began to crack, viscously, like a deep fissure that would not heal. The fissure continued to grow in depth and width as Alucard came within feet of her.

She hissed for a second time at his forward movement, but Alucurd was undeterred. Smiling a sort of melancholy smile, he paused before opening up his maw, revealing his impressive fangs with a hiss of his own.

At his revelation, the creature’s demeanor changed abruptly. Gone was the fear and hatred in her eyes, instead replaced by a much more benevolent wonder.

She opened her mouth, the tentacles around her ears shriveling into themselves, her ears changing to a more elven point as they came to rest flatter against her head. Alucard watched as her fangs dissipated too, the sharp canine points rounding themselves down into very simple humanoid-looking teeth. The back of her throat opened and closed, but very little sound came out. If she was trying to communicate, it seemed a verbal conversation was currently off the table.

“I am Alucard Tepes, son of Dracula and Lisa Tepes.” Alucard spoke, taking the lead for her. “And I am not human.”

The mermaid closed her eyes as she leaned back against the tree bark, wincing once or twice as a very slime-covered, human-looking bottom half cracked free from the dried shell of her former tail. She used her hands to pull the husks away from her body, leaving every bit of her person on display.

Alucard cleared his throat before deciding to remove his shirt and give it to her. He tossed the white shirt to the maiden who caught it in one hand. Bringing it in to smell, she sniffed it before looking back at him curiously.

“If you wish to spend the walk back to my castle naked, I won’t stop you. But as I’m sure you’ve learned, people up here spend most of their life clothed.”

She turned her head in the opposite direction as if to say, ‘So?’ before ultimately relenting, pulling the white top over her head.

Making a move to stand, her legs wobbled, giving out underneath her. But before she could fall, by the grace of his vampiric speed, Alucard managed to catch her, one of his arms looping under hers around her shoulder. Upon noticing the sudden conflict, the mermaiden hissed again but made no move to shove him off. Making another choked-off sound, from the back of her throat, she tried speaking again.

“Ghhank hou.” Frowning, she cleared her throat before trying again. “Thgank cou,” her voice was quiet, and yet deep and guttural at the same time as if she was holding back.

“So you can speak,” Alucard commented as he helped her walk a distance, finding her balance.

The young maiden nodded, before shaking her head. “Youg may naught want mee too.” She blinked her large, dark eyes at him, pointing to them, them down to her throat as she did so. “Sssighh-rhen.”

Alucard paused his walking, staring his golden orbs back at her. In the light, the mermaid watched as they glittered and shined, an almost metallic color, reminiscent of pirates’ gold, lulling her into a sense of security. She gave off a warning growl, having caught on to the fact that she was not the only one with influential abilities. Alucard blinked twice, breaking off the trance.

“As I said before,” he reiterated, leading the way back to his castle, “I am not human.”

The mermaiden watched him, as an almost smirk graced her inhumanely beautiful face. “Gooodd,” she hissed out.

✧ ✧ ✧

“That is how the castle came to be in my possession.”

Alucard led the young mermaiden down the many hallways and corridors of the castle, telling her the story of how he, along with Belmont and Sypha, were tasked with defeating Dracula. He stopped to point out various rooms along the way, the ones he was the most familiar with, anyway. There was still much of the castle that felt foreign to him. It was as if he walked the rows of a graveyard, rarely stopping to notice yet another name on a tombstone. How many hands had helped build this place? How much of their blood was shed to gather all the infinite knowledge and wealth that was kept here? Alucard did not know. Nor was he certain he wanted to know.

Walking past the various debris and carnage still left from their battle with Dracula, Alucard ushered her into his father’s former study, now his study. In the middle of the room sat one large rather ornate chair, placed before a cracked fireplace. In the chair was a crumbled blanket and pillow. On the small table next to it, a cold long-forgotten cup of tea. The items together suggested this chair was used in recent days for sleeping, not for sitting and reading or studying of any sort.

The mermaiden narrowed her eyes at that. Surely, even with this battle, Alucard claimed had taken place within his home, there were bedrooms and living quarters left unbothered. Why would someone in possession of such a grand and luxurious home sleep sitting up in a chair? Or perhaps, was it a question of biology, not psychology? Did a being like Alucard require sleep at all?

As the mermaiden contemplated, Alucard kneeled down to start a fire, but not before vaguely gesturing at the crack that ran up the front brick of the fireplace. “As you can see, the fight was not limited to one area or room.”

“Bprokeghn,” the mermaid nodded before gesturing herself to the chair and blanket set-up. “Behd?”

Alucard cleared his throat, as he stoked the beginning flames of the fire. “My room was… damaged, yes.”

Seemingly content with that answer, the mermaiden turned her attention to other parts of the room.

Off to the right there were various bookshelves and texts. And on the left? A modest oak desk sat under a large painting of a beautiful woman. Her hair was golden, almost appearing to glow under the warm hue of the fire’s dancing light. Her eyes were large and hopeful, and her size petite but strong. In her hand, she held a white flower, although its beauty paled in comparison to hers, it was a lovely touch against the dark maroon dress she was wearing.

“Prehty,” she said, stopping to admire the woman in the painting.

Upon hearing her words, Alucard looked up, a soft smile having formed on his face. “Yes,” he said. “She was beautiful.”

Glancing back at the man, the mer creature noticed his hair was blonde and rather lovely as well. Not as gorgeous as her own siren’s locks of course, but that was understandable. She pointed to the hair of the woman in the painting before pointing to her own, and then finally, to his. “Prehty too.”

✧ ✧ ✧

From where he stood in the kitchen, Alucard watched amusedly as the young woman tried taking a bite of her grossly undercooked fish using a knife and fork, stifling a laugh every time she would manage to grip one utensil only to drop the other. Her less-than-human approach to everyday things made Alucard feel at ease. She was not a lying, conniving human he had to watch out for, she was not biding her time waiting to stab him in the back. Quite the contrary: she was blunt and rather oblivious to human social conventions.

She had very little reservations when it came to nudity, Alucard had come to discover. If it wasn’t for his polite, insistence, she would have continued to roam the castle naked. Dwelling deep underwater made her rather immune to things like catching a chill. Alucard was similar, he did not feel the cold the way humans did, although he was not entirely immune to it. He would surely suffer frostbite should he choose to venture outside in the dead of winter without any clothes on his back. However, unlike a human, and more like a vampire, it would take more than freezing exposure to do him in.

It was almost comforting in a way, to share the castle with someone who’s biology was surprisingly close to his. She was more unhuman than human most days, her residual scales and sharp claw-like nails coming back once her body had returned to full-health. Her teeth had also increased in length, although Alucard suspected she could control their sharpness at will to some degree, her opting to keep her incisors short and squared, more human-like, whenever the two would talk walks around outside the castle.

The mermaiden also had an interesting diet. She preferred her food cold, if not raw. Even things like fish and other meats, she refused to eat properly cooked. Alucard briefly recalled the first time he had tried to offer her dinner. He steamed her fish the same way he steamed his, and presented it to her, expecting gratitude. It was humourous now, but back then he recalled being rather dissatisfied with her indignant reaction. She hissed, and berated him for serving her something ‘burnt’, or ‘burrrnt’ as she had called it.

Alucard discovered it was less of a preference and more of a requirement when he found her eagerly licking the blood from a freshly killed and skinned hare he had fetched for dinner. It seemed that she, like him, and like the many other supernatural creatures, had a penchant for blood that was born out of a necessity, and not mere cruelty. With her diet of raw and bloody food, her skin appeared healthier- still as shiny and translucent, but less gray. Her human form’s skin was less cakey and dry, and when she did change back into her tailed form, which was rather often given how much she enjoyed lounging in one of the castle’s large communal baths, her scales shed much less than they had when they first met. Upon her initial arrival at the castle, Alucard found she’d leave scales behind her wherever she walked, the same way a lover might lay out a trail of rose petals. Of course in this case, there was no intimate surprise waiting for him behind closed doors (not that he’d want one given his past circumstances, anyway), but a very brash and temperamental half-siren, usually impatiently awaiting yet another “useless” lesson in human conventions.

“Naught fun-ie,” she hissed, under her breath, well aware of Alucard’s amusement. “No need for toools underwater.” She dropped both her knife and fork unceremoniously onto her plate before crossing her arms, looking like a wilful toddler.

“There’s no one to impress here,” Alucard assured her. “Besides, even without a fork and knife I’m sure you eat like a magistrate compared to Belmont. The rodents outside have more manners.”

“Belmonnt,” the fair maiden repeated, picking up her fish with her bare hands. “Frrend.”

“Yes. Although, I haven’t seen him or Sypha for quite some time.” Alucard answered, just a hint of loneliness creeping into his voice.

“Hadd frend wonss.” Biting into her fish, she tore a chunk of flesh off with her teeth, a satisfied groan leaving her body as some of the excess moisture dribbled down her chin. “Huumann too.” She swallowed her bite of fish down, not bothering to chew much at all. “Dyed.” She licked her lips in satisfaction. “Beectraaid.”

“Wherever humans are concerned, such possibilities are never in short supply.” Alucard agreed, handing her a cloth napkin to wipe her chin. “It is their nature.”

Choking down the rest of her fish, the mermaiden swallowed harshly again before asking, “Owtsighed?” Of course, the two giant stakes housing decayed corpses had not escaped her notice on their way inside.

Alucard retrieved her empty plate, moving to place it in the sink. Closing his eyes, he desperately tried not to remember the feel of the silver cords burning his skin, the way he suffocating under Taka and Sumi’s gaze, how if it were not for his sword and the magical component of it, it’d be his body flayed and strung up outside instead of theirs. Despite not having had anything to chew or eat, Alucard swallowed hard as well.

“Yes,” he finally said.

✧ ✧ ✧

“Where are wee going?” The mermaiden asked, her vocabulary and annunciation having improved much over the last couple of weeks.

Dressed in a relatively sheer nightgown and robe, the young woman begrudgingly followed Alucard, already dressed for the day, as he led her over to the remains of the Belmont hold. Upon reaching the cleverly designed pulley system, Alucard lifted the safety bar of the lift and gestured for her to get in.

The young mer woman bared her teeth but did not hiss, a vast improvement of manners and trust on her part.

“You may recall in the past, I’ve mentioned a man named Belmont, Trevor Belmont.” Alucard set the bar back down, clicking it into place, before pulling one of the levers to begin their descent.

She nodded. “Friend. Miss him.”

Alucard furrowed his brow. “I do not believe I’ve once said I missed his company.”

The young woman shrugged her shoulders, a form of nonverbal human communication she had recently picked up on. “Still,” she wagged a finger, disapprovingly. “Can tell. No want to be alone.”

Having reached the bottom of the lift, Alucard secured the platform before exiting, seemingly eager to remove himself from their current conversation. “I speak his name frequently because he has gifted me a rather large piece of his family’s inheritance for safekeeping. Without my permission, I might add.”

Flicking a large switch on the wall, the mermaiden watched in awe as hundreds of blue flames suddenly sparked alight, illuminating an expansive cavern of towered rows and rows of books and other meticulously organized collections.

“This,” Alucard extended his arm out, showcasing the vastness of the space before them, “Is the Belmont Hold. It possesses all the knowledge the Belmonts learned on creatures of the night, the collection starting generations ago. Everything any Belmont learned has been recorded onto paper, and stored somewhere within these tomes.”

Temporarily blindsided by excitement, the mermaiden found herself quickly making her way down several sets of stairs, her balance thankfully having improved tenfold, as she ignored the darker implications of Alucard’s words.

“So much boooks!” She cried out, settling on entering a random upper row of tomes, pulling one out of the shelf. “So much papper!”

Alucard nodded, coming to join her. “I take it your people do not have much use for such records underwater?”

The young mer woman nodded, running her clawed fingers delicately over the inked pages. “Runes. Maghik. No paper.”

Carefully, Alucard took the book from her hands and placed it back onto the shelf where it belonged. Before the mermaiden could bare her teeth or hiss at him in irritation he had already begun climbing down a nearby ladder, calling for her to follow. “Come. The books are impressive, but they are not what I wish to show you.”

Reaching the lowest level before her, Alucard smiled softly as his eyes were met with the familiar scene of a magic mirror, and open chest. How strange to think he and his friends stood on this very ground when Sypha successfully managed to summon the castle. How strange to think right there, under his feet, was where Adrian Tepes died and Alucard of Wallachia truly began.

There was a time when Alucard believed he and he alone would be the one to ever stand upon this, practically hallowed ground. Belmont was not yet sure if he wished to resume the responsibilities of his namesake. And Sypha, well, Sypha had chosen to follow Belmont in whatever trouble he managed to get himself into. Who knows if they would be back, if they ever intended on coming back? At the end of their journey, there was Alucard, left alone to shoulder the burden of both their families’ legacies.

Trevor had told him not to make the castle his grave, but to use it and the hold to… help people. Such a task seemed near impossible when you were one dhampir, isolated far away from the rest of the world. But then, Alucard reflected, along came Taka and Sumi, and perhaps, he had once thought, he would no longer have to be alone.

They were so eager to learn, but they were also so eager to leave. They did not come intending to stay, Alucard knew this, and yet, he could not help the way he drew their lessons out, making sure to be as detailed as possible. If they must go, he supposed, he could make it so they did not leave for a while. It was foolish to think his desires would go unnoticed by the two humans. More foolish perhaps, to expect them to understand. Alucard had been wrong.

They sensed he was less than forthcoming, Alucard could not deny that was true. But he never lied, not once to them. But in their humanity, in their hurt and in their pain and guilt and anger they felt they were deceived. Perhaps deception was so readily on their mind because they had arrived with a plan to play him for a fool all along.

Either way, it was fatal on their part. Alucard may have wanted them to stay, but he did not need them. They alleviated his loneliness, but they were not necessary companions, not like Trevor or Sypha. They were far too different, far too divested from the line of existence Alucard walked to ever truly understand him. Being human, they ignorantly believed themselves to possess so many options of their own, but as fate had proven: they too were wrong.

But this young woman, this siren, this mermaid, she was different. She did not come seeking him, rather their meeting was entirely accidental. And this time, the playing field was even: she needed him just as much, if not more, than Alucard wanted her. It was different this time. Here, within the Belmont hold and his castle, she was the outsider. And no matter how long she stayed with him, no matter how hard she tried, she would remain less human than Alucard. Next to her, he was not a monster or a beast, no.

At her side, he appeared solely as Wallachia’s savior, Alucard, and he was neither human nor monster.

Coming back to the present moment, Alucard watched silently as the mermaiden approached the glass display case of vampire skulls. He watched as her eyes widened, and her fists clenched, before she spun around, her fangs bared. “Exsplain, now!”

“The Belmonts hunted creatures of the night for centuries. They came to Wallachia hunting Dracula and his army of vampires.”

“You said Belmont friend!”

“He is- was. As I have said to you before, he aided me in my journey to defeat my Father Dracula, to prevent him from securing the extinction of the human race.”

The mermaiden tilted her head to the side. “Buut why? You vampire.”

“Not entirely,” Alucard countered.

The mermaiden’s eyes squinted. “What?”

“The woman in portraits you’ve so admired within the castle, she was my mother, Lisa Tepes, and she was human.”

Enraged, the mermaiden’s face contorted into an expression of anger, her nostrils flaring with every huff of air she took. “Liar!” She accused him, making her way around the side of the cabinet, trying to move past the dhampir without encountering him directly. “You said humans betrayed! You said not like them! You lie!”

“I did not lie. I never told you I was wholly vampire, nor did I once say I was not part human.” Alucard mirrored her movement, cutting her off before she could reach the stairs. “I aided humanity only to be betrayed by humans. I do not belong in their world, nor do they belong in mine.”

“Nor in minesss!” She snarled. “You human. Not friend. Not anymoresss.” Shoving past Alucard she began up the stairs before she felt a hand on her wrist yank her back. Whipping around, she found herself face to face with Alucard, his expression angry, his fangs elongated and on clear display.

“And where will you go? Your human charade may not disturb me but it is bound to alert others. There is no city, no town where you could travel that they would believe you to be one of their own.” His voice was deep, dark, and full of disdain.

“Then I go home,” she retorted. “With othersss like mee.”

“Do you think they will accept you now you’ve lived with a human, lain with a human?”

“Half,” she spit into his face before sneering: “Half huumannn.”

Alucard did not even flinch, entirely unphased by her vulgar action. “Human nonetheless,” he said, the ice in his veins offset only by the golden fire in his eyes. “Not even they would welcome you back now. There is nowhere you can go, no one who would welcome you. I,” he spoke, baring his fangs, “am all you have left. I am the only one who understands.”

The mermaiden opened her mouth to speak, but could not find the words. She closed her mouth before opening it again, still hesitant on how to respond. If it was not as serious of a moment, Alucard would have laughed: she truly looked like a fish out of water.

Careful as not to spook her, he slowly raised one hand, using it to wipe away a stray tear that had fallen from her eyes. How strange a sight to see a siren crying, awful yet beautiful at the same time. Like him, Alucard thought.

“You are the only one who could possibly understand me. You need not ever leave.” Alucard used his other hand to take one of her own, and guide it, resting it atop his chest. “I do not wish to be alone anymore.”

The maiden choked back more tears, shocked she was shedding them in the first place in Alucard’s presence.

Prior to those horrible humans taking her, tears were not something the mermaiden had ever experienced. Living underwater, she was surrounded by saltwater. Even on the occasions she was consumed by great emotion, her eyes behaved no different, felt no different than they did being in their usual full-contact with water as they were everyday. But after she was taken, she found the ability to cry, something she despised. It burned the skin of her cheeks with hot shame, her throat felt too tight for air: the process of crying was foreign, and undeniably painful. She prayed it would not become a normal occurrence for her. She swore the moment she was free of her captors, she would never shed a tear again. And then she met Alucard. And he was…

Sweet. He was kind. He was not an ignorant, vengeful human. Surely, he would not give her reason to cry. They were of the same kind, she and him. He would harbor no hate for her in his heart.

How foolish of the girl to think hatred was the only feeling capable of creating pain, of making remorse. Afterall, ‘love’ was just as powerful. ‘Love’ was just as dangerous.

Deep down, the young siren knew the dhampir’s words were true: there was nowhere else she could go, there was no one else who would understand her, and care for her the way he did.

In fairness, he was not fully human, he was half vampire, and his father was the great Lord Dracula to boot. He was not simple in the way other humans were. He was not stupid in the way people were. He was educated and well-aware of the fragility of egos, the slow passing of time… He did not look at the world through a mortal lens. The mermaiden knew she could do worse, in choosing someone to trust, in picking someone to rely on.

Then again, he was half-human. She was wise to fear him, to doubt him. He may have meant what he said, when he told her she need not leave, but that did not mean she needn’t want to. But she was so far from home, so far from more of her own kind. Who else left in this region ravaged by night creatures and monsters would open their home to her the way he had? Perhaps it was wiser to stay.

Did she even possess a choice in the matter?

Even withIn the arms of that former stranger, she felt more forsaken than she had when those evil traders first captured her. She felt so alone… Gods…

She, too, wished not to be alone anymore.

“Ssstay.”

“What?” Alucard’s head snapped up at the sound of her words. “Truly?” He could not help the hope that seeped into his voice. “You wish to stay with me?”

Before him, the mermaiden nodded, yet another human expression she had come to love over the past few weeks. “Yessss,” she hissed out, her voice still nasally from her earlier tears. “I ssstay.”

A/N: Holy shit! Almost 8,000 words here. And to think I did it all while fighting the worst virus of my life! (See, THAT just goes to show you how strong my love for Alucard is.

EDIT: To read the additional installments in this series, use the 'yandere-alucard-siren-reader'.

Don’t forget to Like & REBLOG!!!

And if you enjoyed it, feel free to Tip Me on Kofi!

#alucard x reader #alucard castlevania #adrian tepes x reader #alucard tepes x reader #yandere alucard x reader #yandere alucard #alucard imagine #adrian fahrenheit tepes #adrian tepes #tw yandere #tw: yandere #yandere #os #castlevania #yandere alucard siren reader

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tidescaller · 1 month ago

Note

this a gorgeous gifset for wicked 💗

https://www.tumblr.com/tidescaller/781106467228073984/glinda-in-wicked-part-i-happy-birthday?source=share

I would appreciate a tutorial for the first gif blending and colouring

Hi anon! thank youuu, i'll leave the tutorial under the cut ૮(˶˃ᆺ˂˶)

As always, basic knowledge on making gifs is required to do this type of edits. I linked some useful guides on my previous tutorial here.

PART I: BLENDING

STEP 1, BASE GIF

I recommend getting ready the gifs you're going to use before any try on blending them. And which ones are right to blend? That's just depends on the scenes you're working on. On this gifset, I made two previous blends that didn't make it to the final version cause I didn't like how it turned out. It's all about trial and error.

For this specific blending, as I'm working with only 2 gifs, I'll start editing first the base and then the one "blended". Adjust your BASE GIF in your canvas as you want.

I sized mine like this cause I imagined the second scene of Glinda behind this one.

STEP 2: BACKGROUND

i followed becca's coloring tutorial for this part, except I didn't add any adjustments yet. only coloring the background for a later gradient blending.

STEP 3: BLENDING

Duplicate your other gif into the canvas and change its blending to screen

Now add a layer mask (the button marked with red in the picture) and, with a soft brush at 200px/300px, start erasing whatever you don't want. Remember black is 0% opacity and white is 100%.

STEP 4: THE BLENDED GIF

The problem I noticed by this point is that my background coloring on the BASE GIF was kinda irrelevant cause now the BLENDED GIF completely covered it (｡•́︿•̀｡) and I also wanted this one to be pink. In order to do this, I created a gradient map layer and made it as a clipping mask so it wouldn't affect my main gif.

PART II: COLORING

STEP 5: BASE

For the base coloring, I always follow this tutorial cause it's literally how I learned how to do it. Honestly, check all maziekeen's tutorials (she made A TON) cause they are so good and your learn a lot. However, I tend to give my personal touches like adding another vibrance layer if i feel like it, cause I like the colors to pop; or skipping steps if I don't think they fit my gif/style. Anyways, this is the result for now:

and these are my settings

i tried to translate as much as possible (,,>﹏<,,)

STEP 6: SMALL TOUCHES

Could leave the gif as it is, but when I was working on it, I felt like something was missing. So the last step is to apply/paint some small touches of pink (or whichever color you're working on). This trick I learned it from this beautiful and very detailed tutorial from dani (she is awesome!! and her tutorials and gifs are flawless!!)

Create a new layer, use the soft brush tool at 1000px, zoom out your gif and start painting out of the canvas (you can totally paint inside if you feel like it) Play with different opacities and blending modes of the layer, this is literally how I created all these gifs. I know it sounds stupid ajskjas but it's true!! Try what best fits the structure of the gif. The first one I made is with multiply at 60% and you can see how much the gif changed already.

The second being color at 100% and the third one hard light at 30%

STEP 7: THE CHERRY ON TOP

Finally I added an animated overlay from this post. Changed the blend mode to screen and erased a bit of it on glinda's face creating a layer mask and with a soft brush. Added my texts... and that's a wrap! :D

I used the same process on gifs 3 and 5 ⸜(｡˃ ᵕ ˂ )⸝♡

#*tutorial #gif tutorial #photoshop tutorial #blending #coloring #allresources #completeresources #dreamcreations #dailyresources #gifmakerresource

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ms-demeanor · 1 month ago

Note

So these computers will be mostly be used for CAD but also video editing. The time we are looking for is in the next few months. It will be running autodesk fusion which at minimum needs 2 cores, recommends 8 for cpu, needs 8gb of ram recommends 32gb, and needs aleast some sort of gpu and something like a nvidia quadro is recommended though I am mostly sure we would do fine with a 40s or 50s series GPU.

This is very funny to me because this is actually quite similar to the conundrum I had buying computers earlier today. Workstations are currently a bitch to get (and also that means that $1500 per device is somewhat unrealistic in the opposite direction of what I was initially thinking, especially given the graphics card)

------------------------------------

Hi Anon!

Thanks for the details! We're beginning to see some stock availability issues with hardware so I'm not finding anything that's a perfect match out-of-box for your needs but I believe I've found a solution that should be comfortably within budget as long as you've got in-house IT or an affordable contractor to help with the build.

What I've found is a Lenovo ThinkStation P3 Tiny that comes with a 20-Core, 14th gen i7 processor, 16GB DDR5 5600 MHz RAM (SoDIMM), and an Nvidia T400 4GB graphics card. The workstation includes an upgraded Lenovo Premiere warranty with next-day onsite service. The ThinkStation has one RAM module soldered to the motherboard but two free slots and can handle a max of 96GB, so I'd recommend purchasing this device and adding 16GB Crucial modules.

Just to be sure, I did verify that the graphics card with this device is on the list of compatible cards from Autodesk.

I'm finding the workstation available from a number of vendors at about $1200, and the RAM is available for around $50. With tax, that brings your per-unit cost to around $1400, leaving just under $100 per machine to account for the labor cost of installing the RAM.

Let me know if this sounds like a solution that works for you, or if you have any further questions.

Given your timeline, you could choose to place orders from vendors who are not carrying the full 30 machines right now, but considering the possibility of scarcity I'd recommend making a decision sooner rather than later.

Thanks! Ms-D

--------------------------------

Part of what I was struggling with on my quote today is that my employer doesn't want our techs mucking around with desktop hardware; we're not supposed to be ordering and upgrading before we send things out the door but that is not a limitation that an end purchaser has to live with so you (reader or anon) have more options and more flexibility when looking for computers than I do *IF* you make sure to check that you can do upgrades. It's not hard to add RAM to a desktop unless the RAM is soldered to the motherboard with no free slots, in which case it's impossible.

You can save a ridiculous amount of money on buying machines and have a LOT of options for dealing with scarcity if you know what kind of hardware is easy to fuck with.

In this instance, I wouldn't upgrade the GPU or by a card separate from the workstation (this computer has a 300W power supply and the computer itself is the size of most power supplies, so I wouldn't want to try to find something teeny tiny to work together), especially because there's a budget-friendly option that will allow the necessary programs to run available pre-built, but literally it would cost like five hundred dollars more to get something with more RAM. So save yourself a few hundred dollars by getting a fifty dollar RAM module and paying someone to install that in the machine or doing it yourself.

I don't think we're going to get to a point of completely empty shelves, but I do think we're likely to see fewer options that exactly match what we're looking for without doing some extra work. Large Bastard has been vaguely making noises about getting a new computer for the last two or three years and he's still on the fence and my comment to him was that I'm sure there's always going to be something available at a high enough cost, but there are going to be fewer choices if he has to replace a computer quickly (which, given the age of his desktop, he might have to at some point).

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theseh00perscanh00p · 6 days ago

Text

Par for the Heart: Part 10

paige x azzi

a/n: So HUGE shout to the anon with that one idea, I hope I did it justice. Definately recommend everyone listen to the songs I mention to give a full vibe. Anyways please please give me reactions/feedback in my inbox (don't make me beg...) and yeah includes explicit sexual content.

word count: 10.3k

"Fall Apart to Come Together"

Over the next month, Azzi took recovery one stubborn day at a time.

The surgery date loomed in the background like a shadow she couldn’t quite shake, but she tried—through physical therapy appointments, early mornings iced on the couch, and pretending the brace didn’t make her want to scream. Still, she insisted Paige keep her rhythm, keep playing.

“You already missed one tournament for me,” Azzi had said firmly, her tone gentle but resolute. “You can’t miss two.”

So Paige went. But luckily, this time the next one wasn’t across the country—it was in La Quinta, just a couple hours away from LA. Paige had barely finished telling Azzi where the tournament was before Azzi cut her off.

“I’m coming,” she said. “I need a change of view.”

And Paige didn’t question it. She just rearranged the hotel reservation.

The resort was sprawling and sun-soaked, tucked between palm trees and slow, jagged mountains. Paige had tournament prep to do—practice rounds, interviews, early tee times—but between all of that, Azzi got what she needed too.

A new routine. A softer headspace. A place that didn’t look like her living room ceiling or taste like cabin fever.

In the mornings, Paige would leave quietly while Azzi was still curled up in bed, her knee propped on a pillow, the soft hum of hotel room AC buzzing low. Sometimes she’d wake briefly when Paige kissed her forehead before slipping out the door—sometimes not.

By late morning, Azzi would venture to the patio outside their room, crutching her way to a shaded chair where she could sip coffee and people-watch or scroll in peace.

They weren’t doing anything extraordinary, really. But that was kind of the point.

In the evenings, Paige would come back sunburnt and drained, her muscles aching and her cap hair wild. Azzi would tease her for the raccoon tan forming around her sunglasses. Paige would act offended. And then Azzi would reward her with soft fingers massaging her forearms while she debriefed every hole of the day.

The days blurred into something warm. Not perfect—but steady.

And for the first time in weeks, Azzi felt like maybe she wasn’t just waiting around for her body to get fixed. Maybe she was healing a little elsewhere too.

The sky above La Quinta burned gold and pink as the sun dipped behind the mountains, the last light tracing a soft glow over the resort’s quiet terrace.

Paige and Azzi sat tucked into a private corner of the restaurant, a candle flickering between them, shadows dancing gently across their faces. Azzi leaned back against the cushions, her leg stretched out on the seat beside her, the crutches propped against the table. Paige was curled forward, elbows resting near their half-finished plates, looking across at her like no one else in the world existed.

Dinner had been slow and easy. Azzi had barely touched her wine, but Paige had kept the jokes flowing—just enough to keep Azzi smiling without overstepping. Now, with dessert on the table between them—some caramel-drizzled chocolate mousse that Paige insisted they split—there was a lull. A comfortable one.

Paige dipped her spoon in and handed the first bite across the table.

“You’re spoiling me,” Azzi said, accepting the bite with a smirk. “I could get used to this.”

“You already have,” Paige replied, leaning her chin into her hand. “You just won’t admit it.”

Azzi rolled her eyes but grinned. “Only a little. Maybe like… eighty-five percent.”

Paige tilted her head. “Only eighty-five? Rude.”

Azzi pretended to ponder. “Eighty-seven. But that’s my final offer.”

Paige snorted, then grew quiet for a beat. She glanced down at her spoon, nudging the mousse around the plate, before finally saying, “Hey… I’ve been thinking.”

Azzi’s brows lifted. “Always a dangerous start.”

“I’m being serious,” Paige said, smiling but soft. “After the surgery, I want to take some time off. Like—really be there. I don’t want to be on a plane the day after you go under, hoping someone else is icing your knee right.”

Azzi blinked, the playful edge in her expression faltering just slightly. “You want to miss tournaments? For me?”

Paige nodded. “Just a couple weeks. I already checked the schedule. I can make it work.”

Azzi looked away for a moment, her jaw working like she wanted to say no, like she should. Instead, she let out a sigh and traced her fingertip along the rim of her water glass.

“I hate how much I want you to,” she admitted quietly. “I don’t want to be the reason you lose focus.”

“You’re not,” Paige said firmly. “You’re the reason I have focus. But you’ve shown up for me in every way that counts—and now it’s my turn. I’ll get back on the course after, I promise.”

Azzi tilted her head, studying her.

“Two weeks. Max,” she said finally. “Then I want you back out there doing what you do. No holding back on my account.”

Paige gave her a playful salute. “Yes, Coach.”

Azzi narrowed her eyes. “Don’t test me. I’ll make you run stairs.”

“I like stairs,” Paige deadpanned.

Azzi cracked a grin. “No, you don’t.”

They shared another laugh, the tension slowly ebbing. Paige reached across the table and took Azzi’s hand in hers, thumb brushing over the soft spot between her knuckles.

“I just want to take care of you for a bit,” she said quietly. “Let me do that.”

Azzi squeezed her hand. “Okay,” she whispered. “But you better bring snacks. And I’m picking the TV shows.”

Paige leaned forward, placing a soft kiss to the back of Azzi’s hand. “Deal.”

And for the rest of the evening, they didn’t talk about surgery or schedules or time off. Just shared bites of dessert, stolen kisses, and the kind of quiet that only comes when you know, no matter what tomorrow brings, you’re already exactly where you’re meant to be.

—-

The California sun hung high and golden above the palm-lined fairways, the desert air warm but still. Paige stood on the 15th tee, fingers flexing around her driver, her breath even. Focused.

The crowd had grown throughout the weekend—golf fans, locals, and even a few bold Azzi stan accounts that somehow caught wind she was in the area. But Paige barely heard them. Not because she was tuning them out—because all she could hear was her own pulse. Steady. Sure.

She was in it.

Her caddie handed her the club with a nod. “You know where we’re at?”

Paige nodded. “Four strokes ahead. Three holes left.”

“And?”

“And I’m two under the record if I birdie out.”

The caddie gave her a look that was part disbelief, part reverence. “You’ve been unconscious this weekend.”

Paige cracked the smallest grin. “Let’s keep dreaming, then.”

She stepped up to the ball and swung—smooth, clean, easy. It soared.

Gallery applause erupted behind her.

Back at the resort, Azzi was in bed, leg elevated, a plate of untouched room service pancakes at her side and the TV turned up just loud enough for her to hear the commentators try not to lose their minds.

“She’s on pace to absolutely obliterate the tournament record.”

“Hasn’t missed a fairway in 31 holes. I don’t even have the words anymore.”

Azzi just watched in stunned silence, heart thudding.

It wasn’t just pride. It was love. It was awe. It was Paige, dialed in and locked on—playing like she had no fear, like the only thing in her head was the next shot, and maybe, just maybe… the quiet promise that someone was waiting for her at the end of it all.

Azzi snapped a picture of the screen—Paige lining up her next shot, calm as ever—and captioned it on her story:

“In the zone doesn’t even begin to cover it. My girl is making history today. 🏌️‍♀️⛳️💫”

Back on the 17th, Paige sunk a long birdie putt that drew gasps from the crowd before they even remembered to cheer.

She glanced up—no reaction beyond a quiet nod to her caddie. No fist pump. No grin.

But her eyes flickered to the horizon, just for a second.

By the time she stepped up to the 18th tee, Paige was seven shots clear of second place. All she needed was par to not just win—but rewrite the record books.

She took her time.

The wind was still. The sun kissed her shoulders. And somewhere, not too far, she knew Azzi was watching.

She exhaled slowly and swung.

The final putt dropped to thunderous applause and a camera shutter storm. Paige didn’t leap. She didn’t yell.

She just closed her eyes.

And smiled.

Because she felt it—not the pressure. Not the weight.

Just the peace.

—-

MEDIA ROOM – 45 MINUTES POST-ROUND

The press conference backdrop was splashed with logos and tournament sponsors, but all eyes were fixed on one person.

Paige sat behind the mic, still in her tournament polo, hair pulled back, flushed cheeks still cooling down from the heat and the weight of everything she’d just accomplished. Her eyes were sharp but calm, her voice steady.

“—so yeah,” she was saying, trying not to fidget with the bottle of water in front of her, “it was one of those rare days where every shot felt honest. I just trusted my swing.”

“Paige,” a reporter near the front called, “you didn’t just win—you shattered a decade-long record. Did you know what you were doing out there or did it hit you later?”

She gave a modest shrug, lips tugging into the faintest smirk. “I mean, I knew. But I wasn’t thinking about the record. I was just playing my game. One shot at a time.”

A reporter near the front cleared their throat. “What was different this weekend? Your last tournament was a bit of a struggle, and now you’re here rewriting history. Was there something that clicked?”

Paige hesitated for just a beat.

There was something. Or rather, someone—watching from a hotel room, leg propped up, recovering from a torn ACL, but still showing up in every way that mattered.

She smiled softly. “Let’s just say I had some… extra motivation.”

A ripple of interest moved through the room.

“Would that motivation happen to be a certain basketball star who’s been making headlines with you lately?” someone asked.

Paige leaned in, her voice warm but steady. “Even injured, she finds a way to light a fire under me. She couldn’t be out there in the crowd, but knowing she was watching—supporting me from our hotel—it meant everything.”

Another reporter followed up: “So, will we be seeing her with you at your next event?”

“She’s got her own healing to focus on right now,” Paige said, voice a touch more serious. “But even when she’s not next to me… she’s with me.”

BACKSTAGE – 10 MINUTES LATER

The moment she stepped off the podium, her phone buzzed wildly in her pocket. She didn’t even have to check to know who it was.

She opened the message anyway.

AZZI 🏀

Okay poet. I see you on that mic making me cry in my hotel bed 😭

Also you looked fine as hell today I almost passed out at hole 17

Please come back. Immediately.

Paige smiled and typed back:

PAIGE ⛳️

Already packing my trophy and my golf shoes. Yours and yours.

On my way.

—-

The door clicked shut behind Paige as she stepped into the hotel room, still a little stunned from the whirlwind of press and cameras that followed her record-breaking round. Her clubs were slung over her shoulder, her hat in her hand—until she paused mid-step, brow furrowing at the sight in front of her.

There were post-it notes.

Everywhere.

They were scattered across the walls, the lamp, the TV, the dresser—even the mini fridge. Dozens of them, in Azzi’s familiar handwriting, each one holding something sweet or silly or quietly intimate:

“You’re a monster on the green.”

“I’d let you win every argument if you kissed me like that again.”

“You balance me. And your scorecards.”

“Your swing is sexy but not as sexy as the way you looked at me this morning.”

“Proud doesn’t even scratch the surface.”

Paige dropped her bag and moved closer, fingers brushing over each note like they were fragile relics. Her throat tightened.

Azzi was curled up on the bed, leg propped up, a half-smile playing on her lips. She was wearing one of Paige’s oversized tees again, champagne resting in the ice bucket beside her, along with two glasses and a CVS bag half-hiding in plain sight.

“I couldn’t exactly decorate with balloons or streamers,” Azzi said shyly, a hand flitting toward her crutches leaned against the nightstand. “So… post-its and delivery champagne it was.”

Paige turned, eyes glassy but smiling. “You did all this?”

Azzi nodded, cheeks pink.

Paige crossed the room slowly, touched each one again. “You’re going to make me cry.”

“You deserve to feel celebrated,” Azzi said gently. “I’ve never seen someone give so much to everything—and still make someone like me feel like I’m their whole world.”

Paige took a breath, like she needed to steady herself from the weight of Azzi’s words. “You are my whole world.”

Azzi’s smile deepened, then turned playful. “Well, then. There’s actually one more post-it note you haven’t read yet.”

Paige blinked, glancing around the room. “Where?”

Azzi gave a wicked little smirk. “Might have to dig a little deeper. Maybe… someone a little deeper.”

Paige tilted her head, grin slowly stretching across her lips. “That so?”

Azzi just looked at her, unbothered and smug in the best way.

Paige stepped forward, hands gentle as she knelt beside the bed. “Permission to explore, Ms. Fudd?”

Azzi hummed. “Granted. Proceed with caution—injured athlete in recovery.”

Paige chuckled low in her throat, lifting the hem of Azzi’s oversized tee with the softest touch, trailing kisses along her abdomen with reverence and delight. Her fingers dipped just beneath the waistband of Azzi’s shorts, and sure enough, a tiny corner of a post-it was peeking out.

She pulled it slowly, laughing under her breath as she read it aloud:

“You may have won the tournament and broken a record… but I won the real prize—getting you.”

Paige looked up, eyes gleaming. “Okay, that’s not fair. You’re actually trying to break me.”

Azzi gave a half-shrug, all innocent. “Blame the CVS post-it aisle. They didn’t carry restraint.”

Paige leaned up, pressing her lips gently to Azzi’s, letting the kiss speak all the thank-yous she didn’t know how to say yet.

When they finally pulled apart, Paige whispered, “You are the best part of every win.”

Azzi ran her fingers along the side of Paige’s face. “You’re my favorite headline.”

They didn’t need confetti. They didn’t need a crowd. Just this—just them.

A love story written in post-it notes, cheeky kisses, and the quiet awe of knowing… they’d both already won.

Paige let the post-it flutter to the floor.

“You know,” she murmured, voice low as her lips brushed Azzi’s collarbone, “for someone on crutches, you’re really out here making power moves.”

Azzi smirked, breath hitching as Paige’s hands moved with deliberate care, palms gliding just above her waistband. “Guess I’ve still got some game left in me.”

Paige chuckled softly against her skin. “Baby, you’ve got me wrapped around your finger without even trying.”

Azzi’s hand threaded into Paige’s hair, tugging gently until their mouths met again—this time hungrier, deeper, with a kind of urgency that had been simmering between them for days. The tension of the week, the win, the distance—all of it collapsed in the space between their lips.

Paige moved slow but sure, easing herself onto the bed, careful to keep pressure off Azzi’s injured leg. Her hands never stopped touching—soft over ribs, thumbs tracing the outline of her waist, lips trailing lower with reverence and need.

Azzi’s breathing grew ragged, one hand clutching Paige’s shoulder, the other fisting into the sheets. “P,” she whispered, voice cracking open like a secret. “You don’t have to—”

“I want to,” Paige cut in, her voice hot and unwavering. “Let me.”

She shifted lower, peppering kisses along Azzi’s inner thigh, her touch featherlight, teasing, like she had all the time in the world to worship every inch of her.

Azzi exhaled a broken sound, caught between a laugh and a moan. “You’re killing me…”

Paige’s eyes flicked up, dark and full of something that made Azzi’s chest ache. “No. I’m showing you.”

“Showing me what?”

“That you’re still the strongest, sexiest woman I’ve ever met. Injury or not. That I missed you in every way. That I plan on making up for lost time… very thoroughly.”

Azzi’s head fell back against the pillows with a groan. “God, I love when you talk like that.”

“Then stay still,” Paige murmured. “And let me love you exactly how you deserve.”

And she did—slow and attentive, patient and thorough. She moved like someone unwrapping a gift, learning her all over again, every gasp and tremble stored in memory like a favorite melody.

Azzi’s body responded with a kind of desperate softness, clinging to Paige, grounding herself in the only thing that made sense through the haze of pain and recovery and quiet fears she hadn’t spoken aloud.

And when it was over—when Paige finally collapsed beside her, kissed-out and glowing, foreheads pressed together and hearts beating wild—they didn’t speak for a long while.

Because they didn’t need to.

Every touch had already said it all.

—-

The patio was dimly lit by the soft glow of string lights Paige had lazily strung up one night, claiming ambiance but secretly loving the way they made everything feel like a safe little world just for the two of them.

Azzi sat with her arms crossed against her chest, her gaze fixed on the basketball hoop in the far corner of the yard. She hadn’t said more than a handful of words since lunch. Paige noticed—of course she noticed—but she hadn’t pushed. Not yet.

Now, with the kitchen quiet and the last of the dishes drying in the rack, Paige stepped out onto the patio. The air was cool, tinged with the faint smell of jasmine from the garden Azzi had once teased her about being “too suburban athlete-core.”

Without a word, Paige leaned down, pressed a gentle kiss to the top of Azzi’s curls, and slid onto the seat beside her. For a moment, she just sat there, mirroring her posture, letting the silence stretch and settle.

Then, softly: “Is it the surgery… or something else?”

Azzi didn’t blink. Didn’t look at her. Just kept staring out at the hoop like it held all the answers she’d been too afraid to ask.

And then, barely above a whisper, she said, “What if I’m never able to play the same again?”

The words hung there for a beat, suspended in the stillness. And then they broke her.

Her shoulders trembled first, and Paige barely had time to register the shift before Azzi buried her face in her hands, the first sob already shaking loose the carefully built dam she’d been holding for weeks.

All of it—the fear, the anger, the helplessness—rushed out in a raw, quiet wreck of a breakdown. Paige instinctively moved closer, wrapping both arms around her from behind, pulling her in like she could anchor her against the storm.

“It’s okay,” Paige whispered, over and over, pressing her cheek to Azzi’s shoulder. “You don’t have to be strong right now. You don’t.”

Azzi didn’t respond—couldn’t. She just cried, body curling toward Paige’s as the truth she’d been choking on finally spilled free.

When her breaths finally began to even out, when the tears slowed and she was left hollowed and exhausted, Paige turned her gently to face her.

“You’re scared,” Paige said softly. “I get it. You’ve had the world at your fingertips your whole life, and now it feels like it’s slipping through them.”

Azzi nodded, her bottom lip trembling again.

“But Az,” Paige said, brushing her fingers across Azzi’s cheek, “you are not just a basketball player. You’re not just what your body can do. You’re brilliant. You’re resilient. You’re you—and you are the reason people believe. Not just the jump shot. Not just the highlight reels. You.”

Azzi blinked, tears threatening again.

“And look,” Paige continued, voice steadier now, “maybe you come back different. Maybe not everything feels the same right away. But different doesn’t mean worse. And no matter what—no matter what—I’ll be right here. We all will. Fighting with you.”

Azzi looked at her then, really looked at her, eyes glassy but clearer somehow. “I just… I don’t want to let anyone down.”

“You won’t,” Paige said without hesitation. “Because you never have.”

She leaned in, kissed her forehead, then her temple, then her lips—slow, soft, grounding.

Azzi exhaled shakily. “I’m still scared.”

“I know,” Paige whispered. “But you don’t have to be scared alone.”

And for the first time that night, Azzi let herself believe that maybe—just maybe—that would be enough to carry her through.

Azzi leaned her head against Paige’s shoulder again, breathing a little slower now, though her fingers were still curled into the fabric of Paige’s hoodie like she was scared the moment would drift if she didn’t hold on.

“You know,” she said quietly, her voice rasped from crying, “I used to think… that the only way I was worth anything was through the game. Like… people only cared if I was performing. Winning. Contributing.”

Paige didn’t say anything right away. She just listened. Let Azzi unravel it in her own time.

“I know it’s not true. I know that,” Azzi said, as if trying to convince herself. “But now that I’m here—not playing, not practicing, just… stuck—I feel like I don’t know who I am without it.”

Her voice cracked again.

“I hate that I feel like that.”

Paige slowly reached for Azzi’s hand, threading their fingers together.

“You’re not stuck,” she said gently. “You’re healing. That’s still a version of showing up. Just… in a different way.”

Azzi let out a bitter laugh. “Yeah, well, it doesn’t feel like showing up. It feels like everyone’s still moving and I’m… paused. Watching it all happen without me.”

“I know that feeling,” Paige murmured. “I’ve been there, Az. When I tore my ankle in college, everything stopped for me, too. But everyone else’s lives just kept going. And I felt useless. Disconnected. Like I was falling behind.”

Azzi glanced up at her, surprised. Paige didn’t talk about that time often.

Paige smiled, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes. “I had a lot of the same thoughts you’re having. Like… who am I if I’m not competing? If I’m not producing?”

Azzi gave a quiet nod.

“I hated it,” Paige said, softly. “But the truth is… I learned a lot about myself when I wasn’t on the course. I learned how to rest. How to let people take care of me. I learned how to not measure my worth by my stats.”

She turned, brushing a thumb beneath Azzi’s eye, gently wiping away what was left of her tears.

“And Azzi… you’re not disappointing anyone. You don’t have to hustle through this to prove anything. We love you because you’re you—not because you drop 30 on a random Tuesday.”

Azzi laughed, then hiccuped from the last remnants of her crying. “I mean… the 30 doesn’t hurt though.”

Paige grinned. “No. Definitely not. But I’d still be wildly in love with you even if you missed every shot for the rest of time.”

Azzi raised an eyebrow, playful again. “Okay let’s not say things we can’t take back.”

They both laughed, soft and warm, the kind of laugh that only comes after surviving a storm together.

Paige reached over and gently guided Azzi to lie back on the couch, her head in Paige’s lap again.

“I don’t need you to be perfect,” Paige said, brushing her hand through her curls again. “I just need you to be real. And here. With me.”

Azzi closed her eyes, exhaling.

“I can do that,” she whispered. “For you, I can do that.”

And that night, under the hush of string lights and the steady heartbeat of reassurance, they didn’t fix the fear. But they made room for it. Together.

—-

The morning light wasn’t as soft as usual. It crept in sharp through the windows, casting long lines across the hardwood as Paige moved through the kitchen, half-dressed and overly focused on her task of packing Azzi’s go-bag. She was on her second triple-check, hands running over the hoodie folded just right, the mini speaker Azzi liked for background noise, the backup charger, the lotion that didn’t smell like a hospital.

“Okay,” Paige muttered mostly to herself. “Snacks. Pillow. Phone cord. Book. Headphones. Socks—the fuzzy ones. Chapstick. The dumb tiny fan you use for no reason—”

Azzi leaned against the doorframe behind her, arms crossed over her chest, a sweatshirt drowning her frame. “P?”

Paige didn’t hear her.

Azzi tried again, a little louder. “Paige.”

Paige spun around, her face alert. “What? Did I forget something? Was it the fan? I knew I forgot the fan—”

Azzi hobbled forward and gently reached for Paige’s hands, stilling them. “Babe.”

The word alone made Paige’s breath hitch.

“You need to relax.”

“I am relaxed,” Paige replied far too quickly. Her voice pitched a little high. “Totally calm. I’m Zen Master 3000 over here.”

Azzi smiled, slow and knowing. “You’ve folded that same hoodie three times.”

Paige opened her mouth, then closed it, then looked down at the hoodie.

“Oh.”

Azzi squeezed her fingers gently. “It’s okay to be nervous.”

Paige’s jaw clenched slightly as she glanced at the clock. “I just… want to do everything right. I want today to be smooth. And easy. And painless. I want it to be over and you to already be recovering and—”

“Shh.” Azzi reached up and cupped Paige’s cheek, her thumb brushing just under her eye. “I’ve got you.”

Paige let out a breath like she’d been holding it for hours.

“You’re the one having surgery,” she said with a soft laugh. “You’re supposed to be the one getting comforted.”

Azzi grinned. “Yeah, well. You’re not the only one who gets to be the strong one. We take turns, remember?”

Paige melted a little under her touch, eyes softening. “I love you so much it makes me feel crazy.”

Azzi leaned forward and kissed her gently—soft and slow, but steady. “I know,” she whispered against her lips. “I feel the same.”

They stood like that for a beat longer, letting the quiet hold them in place.

“Okay,” Paige finally said, voice low. “If I stop folding things obsessively, will you let me hold your hand all the way to check-in?”

Azzi smiled. “Wasn’t planning on letting go.”

—-

The post-op recovery room smelled like sterile gauze and vanilla lotion. The hum of machines buzzed gently in the background, and Azzi blinked slowly, eyelids heavy but heart finally beginning to settle now that the worst was over. Her knee was wrapped and elevated, the pain managed, the anesthesia still tugging her under in waves.

And then—commotion.

A rustle at the door. Shuffling. Something thudded softly against the frame.

Azzi blinked again, and all she could see were two sneakers… then calves… then the hem of a hoodie she recognized as Paige’s favorite. But the rest? Completely obscured.

Towering teddy bears. A dozen different vases of flowers—sunflowers, dahlias, roses, lilacs. Mylar balloons that said YOU ROCK and SURGERY? NAILED IT. A little unicorn balloon bobbed at the top, its horn tangled in a string of ribbon.

Azzi let out a hoarse laugh, her voice still gravelly from the breathing tube. “Are you delivering for a parade float or…?”

A muffled grunt came from behind the chaos. “These are all strategically important healing materials, thank you very much.”

“Uh-huh.” Azzi smiled, wider now, sitting up slightly in bed as Paige finally managed to dump everything onto the guest chair and nearby windowsill with a dramatic exhale.

“Okay,” Paige panted. “That was heavier than it looked. Also, I might’ve overdone it with the balloons, but the unicorn felt like a non-negotiable.”

Azzi gave her a long look—tired but completely, blissfully happy to see her. “Come here.”

Paige immediately crossed the room and leaned down to kiss her gently on the forehead, then her cheek. She hovered for a beat, eyes scanning Azzi’s face like she was mentally taking stock of every detail.

“You good?” Paige asked, brushing a curl off her forehead.

“I am now,” Azzi murmured, her voice catching slightly. “Surgery sucked. You? Top-tier recovery room material.”

Paige pulled the tiny unicorn balloon off the bundle and tucked it next to Azzi on the bed like it was sacred.

“You get to keep this one bedside,” she whispered. “Emotional support unicorn.”

Azzi laughed again—softer this time—and reached out for her hand.

“Thank you,” she said.

“For what?”

“For not being normal about this. For being so you. For making even this—” she gestured to the hospital room, “—feel like I’m still winning something.”

Paige sat gently on the edge of the bed, careful not to jostle her, and kissed her temple. “You did win something. A girlfriend with a balloon addiction and zero chill.”

“And excellent taste in unicorns.”

“That too.”

They stayed like that a while longer, hands clasped, surrounded by chaotic joy and the hum of healing.

—-

Later that week, Paige was sitting on the edge of the hospital bed, gently helping Azzi ease her foot into a sneaker with the careful patience of someone trying not to wake a sleeping dragon.

“You sure you’re good with these?” Paige asked, glancing up. “I brought the cloud ones and the ones with the Velcro just in case.”

Azzi smirked, sleepy-eyed but amused. “I’m not eighty, P. I’ll survive laces.”

Paige rolled her eyes but smiled, tugging the shoe gently into place before standing and brushing her hands on her joggers. “Alright,” she said, glancing at the discharge papers, then at Azzi. “Now the big question—do you wanna go back to your place or mine?”

She kept her voice light, casual. She assumed Azzi would want her own space, her own bed, the comfort of her own routines while she healed. Paige would still be there, of course, as often as she could—hovering with ice packs and soup and way too many Netflix suggestions. But she knew there was a difference between visiting and inviting someone in.

Azzi didn’t answer right away. She just looked at her, quiet. Then:

“Yours,” she said softly.

Paige blinked. “Wait—really? I figured you’d want to be somewhere you felt most comfortable.”

Azzi’s expression didn’t waver. “I am.”

Paige tilted her head, confused.

“I mean,” Azzi continued, reaching out to gently take Paige’s hand in hers, “I’m choosing to believe that comfort isn’t about the bed or the bathroom setup or the number of ice packs in the freezer. It’s about you. If you’re there… that’s where I want to be.”

Paige just stared at her for a moment, heart doing that slow, stunned flip it always seemed to do around Azzi. “You really wanna be stuck with me 24/7 while you’re on crutches and cranky and hopped up on Tylenol?”

Azzi squeezed her hand, a tired smile blooming on her face. “I can’t imagine anything better.”

Paige leaned in and kissed her—soft, full of quiet awe—and whispered against her cheek, “Good. Because I already set up a ridiculous snack station and reorganized my whole guest room to make it more ‘injury-chic.’ So.”

Azzi laughed. “You really do love me, huh?”

“I’m afraid it’s terminal,” Paige whispered.

And with that, she helped her girl into the wheelchair and started rolling her toward home. Their home—for now. For however long Azzi needed.

Maybe even longer than that.

The guest room had never looked like this before.

Paige had turned it into a soft fortress of recovery. There were freshly laundered sheets on the bed, an adjustable tray table stocked with snacks, water bottles, tissues, and—yes—a mini bell (which Azzi immediately promised to abuse). A streaming remote rested neatly beside a stack of books and magazines Paige had picked based on Azzi’s taste. Soft lighting pooled from a new lamp she definitely ordered last-minute, and a fuzzy throw blanket with little basketballs woven into the pattern was folded at the foot of the bed.

Azzi slowly looked around from the doorway, crutch under one arm, the other clutching Paige’s hand.

“You did all this?” she asked, voice caught between amused and emotional.

Paige tried to shrug it off, but her ears were already turning pink. “I just wanted you to feel at home. Like… really home. Even if it’s not technically yours.”

Azzi squeezed her hand tighter. “It feels like mine. It does.”

Paige helped her get settled, fluffing the pillows way too many times and rearranging things just so until Azzi told her to sit down before she started stress-decorating.

Later, after Azzi had eaten half a grilled cheese and Paige had curled up in the chair beside the bed with her legs tucked underneath her, they flipped on a movie. Something funny. Something light. Azzi’s foot was propped up on a pillow tower, a heating pad tucked under her good knee. Paige kept glancing over every few minutes like she was trying to memorize how to take care of her even better tomorrow.

As the credits started to roll, Azzi looked toward the door and then at Paige. “Okay. I have to ask. You mentioned surprises. Was the snack cart the surprise? Or… is there more?”

Paige’s eyes glinted. “Oh, I was hoping you’d ask.”

She stood up, disappearing into the hallway, and returned moments later carrying a gift bag and what looked like a… framed print?

Azzi raised a brow. “I swear if you framed that photo of my knee mid-buckle—”

“God, no,” Paige snorted. “I deleted every version of that from my phone. This—” she held it up— “is better.”

She flipped the frame around to show a candid snapshot of the fan poster from Paige’s last tournament. The one with Azzi’s face on it and the message “Go PB. Win it for your girl.” It had been printed, matted, and framed in white wood, with a tiny gold plaque at the bottom that read: “We always show up for each other.”

Azzi’s face crumpled into the softest disbelief. She pressed a hand to her mouth, eyes watering.

“And this,” Paige said, offering the gift bag next, “is my real surprise. For surgery recovery.”

Inside was a custom-made hoodie. Black, oversized, with a stitched patch over the heart that read: “Property of PB.”

Azzi laughed through her tears. “You’re kidding.”

Paige grinned. “Only half. The other half is just very territorial.”

Azzi didn’t even bother with the hoodie at first—she tugged Paige onto the bed with her instead, careful of her leg, and tucked herself into Paige’s arms like it was second nature.

“You’re ridiculous,” she whispered, nose brushing against Paige’s neck.

“And you’re stuck with me,” Paige whispered back, voice brushing against her skin like a promise.

And in that soft cocoon of fleece blankets, framed memories, and a heart still sore but healing, Azzi closed her eyes and thought—this is the kind of peace you don’t give up.

Not now. Not ever.

—-

The sun had started to dip just slightly behind the trees by the time Paige made it back home, paper bag in one hand, her phone still open to Azzi’s text in the other.

Azzi 🏀

“Can you pick it up? I need an hour.”

She hadn’t asked why. She didn’t need to. Sometimes grief came in waves, and Paige had learned to honor the tides.

But when she stepped through the sliding glass door and spotted Azzi lying flat on her back in the middle of the backyard court—still, eyes open, arm across her stomach—it knocked the breath out of her chest. The bag of food hit the patio chair without a second thought.

Paige walked quietly, no questions, no dramatics. Just slow steps across the concrete until she reached her. Without a word, she eased herself down beside Azzi—not too close, not too far—and mirrored her pose, shoulder blades flush to the ground, eyes toward the sky.

A minute passed.

Then five.

Then thirty.

Nothing was said. The silence wasn’t awkward—it just was.

The breeze shifted slightly, tugging at the edge of Paige’s shirt. The sky above them was brilliant blue. Too bright for the heaviness lying between them. Eventually, Paige broke the stillness with a low, dry mutter:

“I don’t mean to break the mood, but I am a very fair-skinned individual and I’m genuinely about ten minutes away from becoming a human sun-dried tomato.”

Azzi let out a sharp, unexpected laugh—short and real. It was enough to make her turn her head and glance sideways at Paige, who was still laying there dramatically squinting into the sky.

“That bad, huh?” Azzi asked, voice raspier than usual.

Paige turned to meet her eyes. “Bad enough I’d risk looking ridiculous if it meant you’d laugh again.”

Azzi’s gaze softened. She sat up slowly, crutches still nearby but not within arm’s reach. Paige followed, brushing dirt from her palms and sitting cross-legged beside her.

“I’m not sad,” Azzi said finally, looking forward, not at Paige. “Not angry. Not scared anymore.”

Paige stayed quiet, waiting.

“I just… feel nothing. Like, I’m watching my own life through a window. Like it’s happening to me, and I’m not really in it.” Azzi’s voice was steady, but the hollowness in it made it hit harder. “That’s scarier than anything I’ve felt since the injury.”

Paige didn’t speak right away. She reached over, gently resting a hand on Azzi’s knee—her good one.

“You don’t have to explain it. I get it. When the noise quiets, and you’re just left alone with it all? That’s when it hits different.” Paige exhaled. “But numb doesn’t mean broken, Az. It just means your brain is trying to give your heart a break. You’ve carried so much.”

Azzi looked at her then. Really looked.

Paige continued, softer, “You don’t owe anyone a perfect bounce back. Not your teammates. Not the press. Not even me. Just… let yourself feel this. Even if it’s nothing. I’ll be right here when it turns into something again.”

Azzi nodded, eyes glassy but not crying.

“Thanks for not trying to fix it,” she whispered.

Paige smirked. “I mean, technically, I did bring food. That counts as a soft attempt.”

Azzi cracked a smile. “I requested that chicken specifically. It better be still warm.”

“I carried it like it was a newborn child,” Paige grinned. “Come on, let’s get you inside before I burst into flames.”

She stood, offering Azzi a hand. Azzi took it—not just for balance, but because she needed to feel something real.

And Paige? She just held her tighter. No pressure. No expectations. Just steady hands, steady heart.

They walked back toward the house, side by side. No rush.

Because healing doesn’t happen in the spotlight—it happens in moments like these.

Quiet. Present. Together.

—-

The days after the court-floor moment passed slower than Azzi was used to—but they were filled with more clarity than before.

Her physical therapy sessions had started again. Still early. Still stiff. But movement, however small, felt like hope. Each time she got her leg just a little straighter, a little stronger, the fire in her chest flickered again.

Paige had done everything she could to stay by her side—meals, mobility help, movie nights—but the calendar was creeping up on the next leg of her tournament season. Three back-to-back weekends across the country.

They both knew it was coming. That didn’t make it easier.

The night before Paige was set to leave, Azzi sat at the kitchen island, watching her fold her final pair of golf pants and tuck them into her suitcase.

“You sure you’re good with this?” Paige asked, for maybe the fourth time that hour.

Azzi nodded. “You’ve been here for everything. I want you to go. You need to go.”

Paige looked unconvinced, chewing the inside of her cheek. “Still feels weird leaving you like this.”

“I’m not being left,” Azzi said firmly. “You’re chasing your dream. And I’ll still be right here. With a front-row livestream seat.”

They smiled. Kissed slow. And promised to call every night, even if it was just for ten minutes.

Two days later, Azzi’s mom, Katie, arrived from Virginia, tote bag in one hand and a Tupperware of homemade stew in the other.

“You’ve lost weight,” she said before anything else, stepping into Paige’s house like it was her own. “And you look tired. But still cute.”

Azzi rolled her eyes, laughing for the first time that day. “Hi to you too, Ma.”

Having her around was like exhaling something Azzi didn’t know she’d been holding in. Her mom had always been her calm during the storm—even when she didn’t want it. She cooked, cleaned, organized Azzi’s pill schedule, and somehow still had energy to learn every lyric of whatever playlist Azzi had looping that week.

But more than that, she made Azzi talk. Really talk.

“You’re scared,” Katie said one night, sitting on the edge of the bed while Azzi iced her knee.

Azzi stared at the TV. “I’m fine.”

“You’re not. But that’s okay.”

Azzi swallowed thickly. “I just want to get back. I want to play again. I miss being me.”

Katie reached over, brushed a curl away from her daughter’s face. “You are still you. Even here. Even now. Paige sees it. I see it. You’ll play again—but even if it takes longer than you want, you’ll get there.”

Azzi didn’t reply. She didn’t need to.

Her mom being there—cooking, hovering, reminding her that strength wasn’t always physical—was the softest kind of medicine.

Meanwhile, Paige was making her own kind of magic on the road.

First stop: Phoenix.

She birdied the final three holes to finish tied for second. The broadcast flashed to her post-round interview, and she gave the smallest grin.

“Any motivation behind the strong finish today?”

“Yeah,” she said, not even hesitating. “Someone very important is watching.”

Cut to Azzi back home, watching on her laptop in the living room. Her mom threw a pillow at her lovingly.

“That girl loves you,” she said.

Azzi just grinned at the screen and whispered, “I know.”

The next few weeks were a blur of FaceTimes, PT appointments, and short but sweet updates:

Paige sending goofy videos of hotel room dance moves when Azzi had a rough morning.

Azzi sending progress clips from physical therapy—her first stair without crutches, her trainer yelling “LET’S GO!” in the background.

Katie being the constant glue, always making sure her daughter didn’t spiral too far into her own head.

Every night, Paige would call, exhausted but buzzing from the day. And Azzi would prop her phone against her water bottle, listening from bed with her leg still elevated.

“Still us,” Paige would whisper.

“Always,” Azzi would whisper back.

They weren’t in the same city. But they were no longer new to this.

This time, distance didn’t shake the foundation—it reminded them what they’d already built.

And they were just getting started.

—-

It had been twenty-two days, a tournament win, three different cities, and one emotionally loaded FaceTime call since Paige had last seen Azzi in person.

When she finally landed in LA, she didn’t go home to unpack. She went straight to Azzi’s place.

Azzi opened the door with a smile that looked like relief. Her curls were a little wilder, her eyes a little softer. Paige kissed her the moment they were close enough—slow, deep, steady. Like she was trying to make up for every second apart.

“I missed you,” Azzi mumbled, breath ghosting across Paige’s cheek.

Paige smiled into her neck. “I missed you more.”

They spent the rest of the afternoon wrapped in easy quiet—Azzi icing her knee while Paige unpacked takeout and stories. They lay side by side on the couch, trading updates, teasing each other about who texted more, and letting the simple joy of being in the same room again settle over them like sunlight.

Later that evening, Ice and KK met them for dinner at a cozy spot in West Hollywood.

It started innocent enough—laughter, inside jokes, Azzi trying to keep her composure every time Paige’s hand found her thigh under the table. But KK noticed it first, nudging Ice and cocking her head at Paige’s expression: composed, charming, but with eyes that said I’m two seconds from dragging her out of here.

Azzi, for her part, wasn’t doing any better. Paige's fingers kept grazing the inside of Azzi’s knee, inching higher with every refill of water, every shared smirk across the table.

KK raised her eyebrows. “Y’all need a minute or what?”

Azzi bit her lip. “Nope. All good here.”

Ice wasn’t convinced. “Pretty sure Paige has been undressing you in her head since the appetizer.”

Paige didn’t deny it—just gave a lazy shrug and a not-so-innocent smile as she reached for her glass. “She started it the second she walked in wearing those tight shorts.”

Azzi choked on her drink. “They’re compression shorts. Medical-grade.”

Paige leaned over, low in her voice. “They’re hot.”

KK groaned. “Okay. Yep. We’re wrapping up. Ice, ask for the check.”

Minutes later, as they all stood outside the restaurant saying goodbye, Paige and Azzi couldn’t keep their hands to themselves—Azzi clutching the lapel of Paige’s shirt collar, Paige pressing a lingering kiss just below Azzi’s ear.

“Okay!” Ice called, mock-covering her eyes. “This is a public sidewalk.”

“Barely,” Paige whispered back, hands slipping to Azzi’s hips. “Let’s go.”

Azzi didn’t argue.

And when Paige opened the passenger door for her, brushing a hand down Azzi’s thigh as she helped her in, Azzi’s breath hitched.

The car pulled away from the curb.

The city lights blurred past in streaks of amber and red, reflections chasing across the windshield like fireflies. Paige’s car moved smoothly through the night, low hum of the engine steady beneath the softer pulse of “Deep In Your Soul” by Alan Vuong vibrating through the speakers. The bass rolled under Azzi’s skin, syncing with her racing pulse, each beat a reminder of the way Paige’s fingers had haunted her thigh under the dinner table all night.

Three weeks apart. Three weeks of press, travel, late nights alone. It had all built to this slow-burning ache, and Paige had spent dinner feeding it—eyes lingering too long, hand inching higher beneath the tablecloth, lips brushing Azzi’s ear during a joke no one else even heard. All while laughing and nodding through stories with Ice and KK like she wasn’t setting Azzi on fire from the inside out.

By the time they pulled away from the restaurant and the city swallowed them whole again, Azzi was vibrating with restraint.

The beat in the car slowed, spacey and seductive. Streetlights painted across the dashboard in waves, gold fading into crimson. Paige’s hand rested innocently on the gearshift, and it was that—that fake innocence—that broke Azzi.

She reached across the center console, her fingers sliding beneath Paige’s wrist, guiding her hand down and over her lap. No hesitation.

Paige glanced sideways, eyes narrowing slightly. “Az…”

“I can’t wait,” Azzi whispered, breath hot and shallow. “You don’t get to tease me like that and expect me to just sit here.”

Paige smirked, eyes flicking between the road and her. “So you want to make a mess in my passenger seat?”

Azzi’s grip tightened. “I need to.”

She pressed Paige’s palm between her thighs, right over the heat building beneath the soft fabric of her shorts. Paige exhaled slowly, letting her fingers move—just enough pressure to make Azzi’s hips twitch, not enough to satisfy.

The song deepened, slow chords swelling like a heartbeat. The city flickered outside—neon signs, traffic lights, windows glowing in passing buildings—all of it washed across Azzi’s face like a dream. But she was too focused on the way Paige’s hand moved now, her fingers rubbing slow circles just where she needed.

“You’re soaked,” Paige said under her breath, the car dark around them, voice turned velvet. “You’ve been wet since the second course, haven’t you?”

Azzi whimpered. “Yes. Please…”

Paige slid her hand beneath the waistband, slipping into the heat with a curse under her breath. Her fingers were inside Azzi a heartbeat later, slow and deep.

Outside, the city kept rushing past them, colors strobing through the windshield like a silent film, like they were speeding through something they couldn’t name. Azzi’s head dropped back against the seat, mouth parted, breath fogging the window.

Paige kept one hand on the wheel, the other buried between Azzi’s legs, fucking her with steady, relentless strokes. The music pulsed around them—dreamy, sensual, echoing in the cabin like a soundtrack to something secret and sacred.

Azzi’s moans were quiet but desperate, her hips rolling up into Paige’s hand with every thrust.

“I missed you so much,” she gasped. “It’s been driving me insane.”

“I know,” Paige whispered. “I felt it every night.”

Her fingers curled, hitting the perfect spot, her thumb dragging tight circles over Azzi’s clit until Azzi was trembling beside her, thighs clenched, eyes shut tight.

“Come for me,” Paige said, her voice low, commanding. “Come right here, while I drive you home. Let the whole city see you falling apart for me.”

And Azzi did—a quiet cry breaking in her throat as her body clenched around Paige’s fingers, her orgasm crashing through her in time with the rise of the song, city lights spinning across her skin as if the whole world moved with her.

The car kept moving, slower now, coasting through the streets like nothing had happened—except Azzi sat flushed and panting in the passenger seat, Paige’s fingers slipping slowly from her, wet and glistening in the glow of a passing traffic light.

Paige brought them to her lips, eyes still on the road, and sucked one clean.

Azzi stared at her, ruined and in awe. “You’re a menace.”

Paige just grinned. “You started it the second you walked into dinner looking like that.”

The song faded into something softer, a low instrumental lull. The house was still ten minutes away, but the hard part—the waiting—was over.

And Azzi was already unbuckling her seatbelt. “Drive faster.”

The door had barely clicked shut behind them when Paige pushed Azzi gently against it, hands braced on either side of her head, their bodies colliding like magnets finally given permission.

Azzi’s lips were already parted, breath coming short. “I’m still not over the car.”

Paige’s grin was slow, dangerous. “Then don’t be. I’m not done yet.”

She kissed her—deep, full of tongue and teeth and three weeks of desperate ache. Then she pulled away, just enough to whisper, “Go to the bed. Strip. I’ll be right there.”

Azzi swallowed hard and obeyed, backing toward the bedroom like her body moved on instinct. The room welcomed her with warm shadows and the soft hum of Paige’s surround sound system clicking on.

A moment later, “Darlin’” by Jean Dawson began to pour through the speakers—heavy, distorted, sensual. A heartbeat made of bass. Vocals like a fever dream.

She didn’t have time to catch her breath before Paige appeared in the doorway.

Strap on. No shirt. Just flushed skin, toned arms, and eyes that looked like they could consume her whole.

Azzi sat at the edge of the bed, naked, legs slightly parted, chest rising and falling fast.

Paige’s gaze dropped between her thighs. “Lie back.”

Azzi’s back hit the mattress in seconds, her knees instinctively drawing up.

Paige climbed over her, kneeling between her legs. She leaned down first—kissing her collarbone, her chest, dragging her teeth across a nipple and sucking until Azzi moaned and arched up to meet her.

“Spread wider for me,” Paige said, voice rough with want.

Azzi obeyed. Paige lined up the strap, the silicone pressing hot and slick where Azzi was already soaked.

“I’ve been thinking about this for weeks,” Paige murmured. “You, under me. Needing it slow. Needing it deep.”

Azzi whined. “Please.”

Paige pushed in slowly—inch by inch, watching every twitch in Azzi’s face as the toy stretched her open. Azzi’s fingers clenched the sheets. Her lips parted around a gasp as Paige bottomed out and held still, grounding them both in the sensation.

“Oh my God, Paige—”

“I know,” Paige whispered, leaning in to kiss her. “I know, baby. Let me take care of you.”

She began to move, steady and deep, hips rolling with control that made Azzi cry out softly each time she filled her again. The music echoed around them—distorted guitar riffs and moaning vocals syncing with the rhythm of Paige’s thrusts.

Azzi couldn’t think. Couldn’t breathe.

Paige’s hands were everywhere—holding her hips, sliding up her ribs, gripping her wrists gently as her pace deepened.

“You feel that?” Paige asked, voice almost reverent. “The way you open for me. The way you need this.”

Azzi nodded, tears threatening behind her eyes from the sheer force of being wanted like this.

“I missed you,” she gasped. “Fuck, I missed you so much.”

Paige kissed her like that hurt to hear—urgent and soft and full of love. Then she pulled back again, angling her hips just right. The strap hit deeper now, dragging across the spot that made Azzi’s whole body jolt.

She let out a broken moan.

“There it is,” Paige breathed. “Let me hear it, baby.”

Azzi didn’t hold back. She gave Paige everything—moans, gasps, every twitch and tremble. Her legs locked around Paige’s waist as she fucked her harder now, the music pulsing around them like it was scoring the rise of something holy.

Paige reached between them, her fingers finding Azzi’s clit, rubbing tight circles with the same rhythm of her hips.

“You’re close,” she said, panting. “I can feel it.”

Azzi could only nod, her voice caught in her throat.

“I want you to come with me inside you,” Paige whispered. “So deep you still feel me tomorrow.”

It only took a few more thrusts—Paige hitting that perfect angle, her fingers never relenting—before Azzi came apart beneath her with a cry, her whole body convulsing, back arching into Paige’s chest, thighs shaking around her hips.

Paige slowed, fucking her through it, whispering praises against her temple, kissing her forehead as Azzi clung to her.

They stayed connected, chests heaving together, bodies still trembling from the high.

“Jesus Christ,” Azzi finally whispered.

Paige smiled, brushing damp curls from her face. “You good?”

Azzi laughed weakly. “I’m wrecked.”

“Good.” Paige leaned down, pressed her lips to Azzi’s jaw. “Because next time, I want you riding me.”

Azzi groaned, still catching her breath. “You’re gonna kill me.”

Paige pulled out slowly, with care, then laid beside her and pulled Azzi onto her chest. “Darlin’” was still playing, soft and echoing now, fading into the air like the night was tucking them in.

Azzi closed her eyes against the skin of Paige’s neck. “Don’t make me wait three weeks next time.”

Paige kissed the top of her head. “Never again.”

—-

Morning sunlight filtered lazily through the curtains, painting long golden lines across the bed, across skin. Azzi was still sprawled over Paige, one leg thrown across her hips, face nuzzled somewhere in her neck, lips barely brushing the skin there with every exhale.

Paige blinked awake slowly. Her body ached in the best way—sore thighs, used muscles, a delicious throb at the base of her spine that reminded her exactly what they’d gotten up to last night.

Azzi made a small noise and tightened her hold like Paige was a body pillow she refused to let go of.

“You alive?” Paige asked, voice scratchy with sleep.

Azzi mumbled something completely incoherent into her neck.

“Didn’t catch that,” Paige teased, shifting just slightly, trying to sit up.

Azzi groaned and flopped dramatically onto her back. “I said: I can’t feel my legs. And also, I hate you.”

Paige smirked, stretching like a cat. “Mmm, weird. Didn’t sound like hate last night.”

Azzi flung a pillow in her direction without opening her eyes.

Paige caught it with one hand and tossed it right back, letting it land gently on Azzi’s face. “You’re grumpy when you’re ruined.”

Azzi peeled the pillow off with a groan. “Ruined? Ruined? Paige, I’m like… emotionally concussed.”

“Emotionally concussed,” Paige repeated, deadpan. “Do I need to file a report?”

“Yeah. Report this pussy to HR. Because it’s still shaking.”

They both dissolved into laughter, the kind that left Azzi’s stomach sore and Paige clutching her sides.

Eventually, they quieted again. Paige rolled onto her side, brushing Azzi’s curls back from her face.

“Hey,” she said softly. “You really okay?”

Azzi met her eyes. “I’m more than okay.”

Paige leaned in and kissed her gently—no urgency, no heat, just lips meeting in the stillness of morning.

“I mean,” Azzi added after a moment, “you did say you wanted me to ride you to that song next time…”

Paige raised an eyebrow. “You volunteering now?”

Azzi groaned. “God no. I need three to five business days.”

“Noted. I’ll submit a PTO request on your behalf.”

Azzi snorted, reaching up to pull Paige back into her arms. “You’re annoying.”

“You love it.”

“Unfortunately.”

They laid there a little longer, tangled and lazy, the kind of quiet that didn’t ask for anything more. Somewhere down the hall, a phone buzzed. The real world was waiting.

But not yet.

Right now, there was only soft kisses, sore bodies, and a shared smile that said last night was everything.

And maybe—just maybe—this was everything too.

They finally made it out of bed just past noon—Azzi in one of Paige’s massive hoodies, her legs bare and warm from the sheets, and Paige in loose black shorts, hair a beautiful disaster, carrying two mugs of coffee like a peace offering.

Azzi was curled into the corner of the couch, blanket draped over her lap, when Paige returned from the kitchen with a plate of cinnamon toast that was technically burned on one side. She dropped it between them proudly.

“Gourmet brunch,” Paige said, clinking their mugs together.

Azzi bit into a corner. “You know, for someone who ran a full game on me last night, this is wildly unimpressive.”

Paige smirked, nudging her shoulder. “I blew your back out and made breakfast. That’s a full-service experience.”

Azzi snorted. “Barely breakfast. These toasts are fighting for their lives.”

They sat in the soft glow of late morning, the apartment still dim except for the light spilling through the blinds, a warm hush hanging between them. Outside, the faint hum of the street drifted in. Familiar. Comfortable.

Azzi let out a sigh. “You know… I don’t really wanna go back to my place later.”

Paige looked over at her. “Then don’t.”

Azzi raised an eyebrow. “You kicking me out in reverse now?”

Paige shook her head. “I’m saying… stay. For the night. The weekend. However long you want.”

Azzi toyed with her mug. “You mean that?”

“I mean,” Paige said slowly, “you’ve got, like, three pairs of your sneakers by the front door, a rotation of hoodies in my closet, and your face wash has permanent residence in my bathroom. At some point, we’ve stopped playing house and started just… living in it.”

Azzi looked around, like she was really seeing the space again. Her jean jacket was hanging on the back of a chair. Her phone charger was already plugged in by Paige’s nightstand. Her favorite cereal was in the cabinet.

“It’s weird,” she said softly. “How at home I feel here. Like my stuff just… made sense here.”

Paige nudged her knee. “It does make sense here.”

Azzi glanced at her. “So you’d want me here? All the time?”

Paige nodded once. “Yeah. I would.”

Azzi hesitated—just for a moment—then smiled. “You sure you can handle that much chaos in your daily routine?”

“I think I already am,” Paige said, grinning. “And I kind of like it.”

There was a pause. Nothing heavy. Just the gentle settling of something new and inevitable.

Azzi tilted her head. “So if I did move in… what’s the first thing you’d let me take over?”

Paige grinned. “Not the thermostat. You run hotter than the sun.”

“Okay, rude. But fair.” Azzi sipped her coffee, then added, “Can I at least reorganize your kitchen? Because whatever’s going on in that spice cabinet is a cry for help.”

Paige narrowed her eyes. “You’re lucky I’m in love with you.”

Azzi beamed. “I’ll label everything.”

They both laughed, the kind of laugh that made the whole morning feel a little brighter.

No official move-in date. No boxes packed. Just the start of something new, wrapped in cinnamon toast and soft sunlight.

And Paige didn’t say it out loud—but as she watched Azzi curl deeper into the corner of her couch, sipping coffee like it had always been hers too, she knew:

This house wasn’t hers anymore.

It was theirs.

Or… it would be. Soon.

#paige x azzi #pazzi fics #pazzi

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