#youre the one who said I had to pay for my own plane ticket

[dumb-coward]

Not my mother asking me if I wanna go to japan with her. Like?? I said no. I just told you I cant afford it.

[ottogatto]

I would like to submit two ideas because I think I'm poking something but not going in fully, so I would very much like your opinions and additions about it (of course, as long as they remain in good faith *side eyes possible antis viewing my post*).

Marauders and surface-level rebellion

I've finally put to words something that really bothered me with the Marauders, though I don't know the name for it.

It started when I read a reblog that said:

I remember Brennan saying “laws are just structured threats made by the ruling socioeconomic class” during an episode of D20 and we truly just had to stan immediately

This is something dear privileged white woman Rowling didn't realize/understand well, since she held a high socioeconomical status even during her """poverty""" stage. It's known that, despite seeming to be defending ideas of fighting against fascism and "pureblood" supremacy in favor of acceptance of the other, her books reek of colonialism/imperalism. The story of the Marauders, a gang of privileged boys like her, is an in-world replica of that problem where Rowling betrays yet again her actual mindset.

The Marauders adopt the "bad boys who break rules" to get style, while completely losing/staining the moral sense in it.

Let's take piracy.

Some people pirate stuff because they consider that the stuff they'd like to get comes from unethical companies that abuse their employees or use modern slavery, or people who spread harm against certain minorities (like Rowling against trans people and thus the LGBT+ community), so while they may want to access the content, they don't want to give them money and might even encourage pirating their stuff to make them lose money.

Some pirate stuff because otherwise it's lost due to unfortunate "terms of use" -- see video games companies like Ubisoft (deletes gaming account after a while), Nintendo (does not bring back old games), etc.

Others pirate stuff because they just don't have the money but they still want to try the stuff that might make them happy and forget that they're poor -- reasoning that the company isn't losing any money anyway, or not much, since they wouldn't have been able to pay for it in any case.

Others pirate stuff because they consider the price ridiculously high or they consider it shouldn't be something to pay for at all. (Like education stuff -- isn't education supposed to be free for all, so that it can actually uphold everyone's fundamental and unconditional ( = not conditioned by wealth...) right to have an education? Oh and before anyone asks: I've DEFINITELY bought the ~15 expensive books that's roughly worth 500€ in total and that my uni asked I buy to study and get my degree...)

Rowling's Marauders is a group that would pirate stuff just because they'd think it would give them an edge, because they'd think it would make them cool to be seen as "talented" hackers who "defy" companies. Companies... that their own friends and families would own, and as such, would find that kind of behavior funny and entertaining (while they would trash other people around for considering it).

Another example. In society, in history, it's been proven time and again that breaking rules -- going against the law -- is an eventuality that's important for everyone to consider, if they want to defend their rights. Anti-racism, feminism, LGBT Pride, etc, advanced because people broke rules. In USA states where abortion is currently being banned, women and minors (+ their close ones) must now consider breaking the rules to get an abortion. (Privileged people don't give a fuck about those people, and if they suddenly decide that (moral) rules don't apply to them and they will get an abortion, they will just take a plane ticket to a country where abortion is legal, fiddling with legal stuff if necessary thanks to the lawyers their fortunes can afford and the lobbies that they're instituting.)

Revolutions happened because people broke rules too. I particularly like the 1793 Constitution in France Because it asserts that the people have the right to break rules and riot if the power in place threatens their fundamental rights:

Article 35. - Quand le gouvernement viole les droits du peuple, l'insurrection est, pour le peuple et pour chaque portion du peuple, le plus sacré des droits et le plus indispensable des devoirs. Article 35. - When the government violates the people's rights, insurrection is, for the people and for each portion of the people, the most sacred of rights and the most essential of duties.

(Of course the power in place would state and enforce and make use of propaganda to say that it's completely illegal and illegetimate and that those who riot for legitimate rights are terrorists!)

Breaking rules is at the core of anti-fascism, anti-dictatorship, anti-totalitarianism. Breaking rules is essential when those rules are abusive. Too often, those who put those rules in place really are only setting their rules of the game to establish their power over the others. Or as the reblog says: "laws are just structured threats made by the ruling socioeconomic class".

Rowling's Marauders break rules because they are the socioeconomical class in power. As such, no one can do anything about it, no one will really tell them down for it. They get excused and justified and romanticized by their peers, just like billionaires & politicians are excused by their peers and notably mainstream media (which is owned... by other billionaires). They break rules -- not because they think it's necessary and the morally right thing to do despite the dangers it puts them in -- but because it makes them feel powerful, important, invincible, which for them is very fun. As Snape says: James and his cronies broke rules because they thought themselves above them:

“Your father didn’t set much store by rules either,” Snape went on, pressing his advantage, his thin face full of malice. “Rules were for lesser mortals, not Quidditch Cup-winners. [...]”

They break rules because they're allowed to.

Which is why, in reality, the Marauders aren't really breaking rules or defying anything or opposing an actual big threat. They're a bunch of jocks who are having fun in the playground that's been attributed to them thanks to their status and family heritage (others wouldn't get the same indulgence because they don't get that privilege).

They break rules because they want to look cool, to be the "bad boys". The message has been compleyely botched. Especially with Lily actually finding this hot.

Because Rowling finds this hot:

[...] I shook hands with a woman who leaned forward and whispered conspiratorially, 'Sirius Black is sexy, right?' And yes, of course she was right, as the Immeritus club know. The best-looking, most rebellious, most dangerous of the four marauders... and to answer one burning question on the discussion boards, his eyes are grey.

(Anyone has an eyes washing station?)

Another quote:

"Sirius was too busy being a big rebel to get married."

(Nevermind the eyes washing, anyone's got some bleach instead?)

Stanning James Potter for being the leader of a gang that prides itself on breaking rules and always getting away with it -- it feels like stanning Elon Musk for being "innovative" and "a daring entrepreneur" despite being a manchild who exploits workers and modern-world slavery to play with his billions while always getting away with it.

They're not being "rebels" -- they're being bullies and flexing the fact they can get away with it thanks to abundance of privilege. Those are the tastes of a posh British white woman. She wanted the facade -- not the substance (that is, if she ever understood it).

You might say that they did oppose a big threat, the Death Eaters, but again, it's botched because:

they target a lonely, unpopular boy who's best friends with a Muggleborn Gryffindor, rather than baby Death Eaters like Mulciber, Lucius, Rosier, Avery, Regulus, etc.

The leader sexually harasses the Muggleborn Gryffindor because he's sexually jealous of the unpopular boy who dared not take the insult about his chosen House and shut up. Lily is treated as an object, they don't listen to her, and they barely speak about her later. (Lots to say to show that, which I won't do here because this is not the main subject.)

When the Marauders do join the Order, they do it... because they primarily want to adopt a rock-n-roll style and play the "bad boys" again. Or at least that's the message that's given to the reader:

They seemed to be in their late teens. The one who had been driving had long black hair; his insolent good looks reminded Fisher unpleasantly of his daughter's guitar-playing, layabout boyfriend. The second boy also had black hair, though his was short and stuck up in all directions; he wore glasses and a broad grin. Both were dressed in T-shirts emblazoned with a large golden bird; the emblem, no doubt, of some deafening, tuneless rock band.

(God, the Prequel is so cringy.)

They don't choose Dumbledore as the Secret Keeper, they don't tell him they changed to Pettigrew -- even though he literally was their war leader -- James uses the Cape to fuck around even though he was supposed to be hiding with Lily and then Harry (until Dumbledore takes the Cape from him)... and eventually, their group exploded, with James killed off, Sirius thrown to Azkaban, Peter (the traitor) hiding as a rat and Lupin going off to find jobs to survive.

Why did that happen? Because they thought of playing their part in the Order like going on a teenage adventure rather than engaging in a resistance organization. It was, first and foremost, about playing "the bad boys" and having fun.

(Harry half-inherits this. While he doesn't break rules just to look cool, and actually has several moments where he does break rules because it's the right thing to do -- like under Umbridge or, of course, when Voldemort takes power -- he does often get pampered when he breaks them in his earlier years. By Dumbledore, but also McGonagall, however much Rowling tries to sell her as a "strict but fair" teacher. Or by Slughorn, now that I think about it. That's something that enraged Snape, as it brought up memories of Harry's father -- Snape's own bully -- getting the same treatment.)

It's not a coincidence that Rowling not only failed to properly convey through the Marauders the true value of breaking rules, but also lusted over them for adopting that "bad boys" trope. It speaks to her own privilege -- she who never had to put herself in danger and go against the law in a risky attempt to protect herself or other less privileged people.

(Here's a useful read to expand on those worldbuilding issues.)

2. Dark Magic, obscurantism and conservatism

For context: Opinion: The Dark Magic/Light Magic Dichotomy is Nonsense (by pet_genius).

The idea of "Dark Magic" as something that's repeatedly told to be "evil" magic and where you cross the line of the forbidden, while hardly putting in question that notion that was (for some reason) enforced by wizard society, is another blatant example of Rowling betraying her mindset of privileged British white woman.

Rowling couldn't put herself in the minds of a society of "outcasts (witches & wizards) deeply enough to consider they would not see any magic as "Dark" at all (being a ""Muggle"" concept), or that Dark magic is only magic that requires something unvaluable to be traded off -- like one's soul or health or life or sanity. Instead, she has Dark Magic defined as "evil" magic, even though her own books show that you can do evil stuff with normal magic, and that you can do morally good stuff with Dark magic. This thing happened because Rowling could not think past her own little world and instead she poured a conservatist mentality (+ typical "Muggle", anti-witch prejudice) into the HP (wizard society) worldbuilding without considering that there could, in fact, be fundamental differences between the two worlds that include thinking of magic differently. (This has a lot to do with Rowling's wizard world being a pro-imperalism fest.)

"Dark Magic" feels like a lazy, badly-executed plot device to tell the reader who's a good guy and who is not. Because of course, that's how things work in real-life, huh… (Did she ever hear of "don't tell, show"?) It's used as an excuse to define who's evil (teen Severus) or not (James), who's worthy or not -- not how their magic was used. Which is a BIG problem:

“I’m just trying to show you they’re not as wonderful as everyone seems to think they are.” The intensity of his gaze made her blush. “They don’t use Dark Magic, though.” / “Scourgify!” Pink soap bubbles streamed from Snape’s mouth at once; the froth was covering his lips, making him gag, choking him —

Even worse, Rowling doesn't follow her own in-world moral framework. Dark magic is acceptable for some people (Rowling's partial self-inserts: Dumbledore, Harry, Hermione to Marietta...) but not for those that Rowling hates (Snape, who ironically represents the closest thing to rebelling by unapologetically obsessing over the Dark Arts). Again, this is at best unadressed in-world hypocrisy, at worst an expression of in-world and out-universe privilege (I get to do this and stay a good guy, but you don't).

There could have easily been rightful criticism of whatever could be defined as "Dark Magic". What if Dark magic was just something defined as "Dark" usually because the power in place doesn't want the people to touch it? Is abortion or contraception or a sex-altering or a goverment-threatening spell, Dark Magic? Is foreign or ethnicity-specific or female-centered or queer-centered magic, "Dark"? How about showing why (Muggle-raised but also neurodivergent) Severus thought Dark magic was so great, showing his point of view, while also establishing where the true limits are? If Lily can't be the one who sees past the "fear-mongering anti-intellectualism/propaganda", how about Harry being the one who does, thanks to him relating to Snape on a personal level? How about making Hermione go from someone who condems Dark Magic, to someone who entirely changes her point of view and understands that this is all bullshit -- effectively showing the dangers of only following what the books say, without putting them into question or thinking by yourself? How about a nuanced view of Dark magic as something that requires a significant sacrifice, which is conceivable for something they see as equally or even more important [Lily's life for Harry; Snape's soul integrity for Dumbledore]? How about making the Death Eaters, people who deviate that legitimate interest, rather than just evil guys who thrive in Dark magic for its supposed added evilness? How about showing that Dark magic was just a notion invented by Muggles to throw "witches" (real or not) to the burning stakes -- later taken by the witches and wizards in power to define, in the magical community, what was okay or definitely forbidden because it's the trademark of those who represent a threat to the magical community (understand: people who riot or strike or protest against the ruling socioeconomical class' politics)?

But there was none of that.

"Dark" magic in HP merely seems to be a weird concept that at best accidentally takes the form of an in-world obscurantism, at worst is just the trademark of someone who cannot imagine a "hunted, ostracized" community with a different culture and mindset than her own. Aggravating is the fact that she used "Dark magic" as a plot device to magically cast some people as good and others as never bad – again, probably reflecting her own questionable mentality.

The fact Rowlnig invented the notion of Dark Magic and had her world consider it seriously as an evil thing instead of being open-minded seems to be less telling of her wishes to show a wizard society that can be as prejudiced as the muggle one, and more of her own bizarre world where you must be evil if you are knowledgeable in or interested in certain "taboo" things (RIP neurodivergents).

Rowling glorifies the Trio and the Marauders for breaking rules. Yet when it comes to actually breaking expectations and norms, notably in the wizarding society -- like the use of another magical species as slaves, or the blatant anti-Muggle prejudice held by everyone including "good guys" (or anti-centaur while we're at it), or stupid anti-knowledge prejudice like "Dark magic is evil" -- there is none of that. At best, it's surface-level opposition that comes out as white savior syndrome. At worst, the protagonists make it their noble code to enforce those norms, and "sinful" characters (Snape, for one) are punished for not conforming. Too often, those sinful characters are punished by the "good guys" with the very thing that they apparently oppose so fervently.

Without ever adressing the fact that those characters were ("morally") allowed to do that because it was just, in the end, a matter of who gets the privilege to do that, and who does not.

There.

Do you have anything to say to develop on those ideas? I feel like I'm reaching my knowledge limit and I'd like to see if those ideas can be expanded.

[avaetin]

"All it took was one impulsive kiss. But that's another story."

@haiseiscute333 @sunshines-child

“Wait. Is this serious?” Nico asked, those beautiful brown eyes looking up at Aeon with a hopeful and excited expression.

“It’s not for their local show though. It’s for their performance in Melbourne, Australia. If you’re fine with that, I already have flight tickets and a hotel booked. I also checked with your manager to make sure that it doesn’t have any conflict with your schedule,” Aeon explained, passing to him printed documents of all that he booked.

As if it were possible, Nico’s eyes widened further in shock as he looked through them. VIP tickets to the concert, first class seats on the plane and an executive suite? Holy-! Nico didn’t need to see any receipts to know how much all of these cost.

“I’ll pay you back,” Nico said.

Aeon shook his head, reaching forward to gently push Nico’s hair back. “This is my gift to you. The concert is happening on your birthday week.”

It was? Nico looked down at the concert ticket details. It was! And… Aeon wanted to celebrate it with him.

“Breathe, sweetheart,” Aeon murmured, genuinely concerned as Nico suddenly stopped breathing, looking overwhelmed suddenly.

Nico wasn’t sure what came over him, his body moving before his mind could process his actions. By the time his rationality caught up with him, he had already leaned over, his lips firmly pressed against Aeon’s. His hands that were cupping Aeon’s cheeks at that moment could feel the man trembling slightly in his arms, prompting Nico to let him go with a flustered look.

“You… You didn’t have to do that,” Aeon said slowly, one of his arms slipping around Nico’s waist, preventing him from completely pulling away. “I wasn’t expecting anything when I gifted these to you. I just wanted to make you happy.”

“And I am,” Nico said.

With a shuddered breath, he pressed himself closer to the older male, Aeon’s arm reflexively tightening around him. He looked directly into those gorgeous emerald green eyes, and shuddered at what he saw. They had always been filled with affection and adoration when they looked at him, but at that moment, there was hunger in their depths. Raw desire. Warmth pooled in his stomach as he saw his own desire being reflected in them.

“I just wanted to kiss you too,” Nico admitted, ripping out a guttural moan from Aeon’s throat at the admission. “I still want to. Real bad. Can-”

Soft lips captured Nico’s lips in a searing kiss before he could finish his statement. For the record, Nico was by no means a virgin. He had been intimate with his partners in the past, so he knew what to do with his mouth. Or so he thought. For a virgin, Aeon didn’t kiss like one. He devoured Nico’s lips like he was on a mission to mark it as his. He took away Nico’s breath, as if it was his own. As if he was a dying man and the breath from Nico’s lips were his only salvation. He kissed… with the raw desire of a man who was finally being granted to act on his innermost desire.

“I’ve wanted this for years,” Aeon breathed raggedly against his lips, out of breath. Nico was surprised to find out that he was too. “Wanted you for years.”

Nico gulped. “Then why did you stop?” He asked.

Before Aeon could reply, he connected their lips once more, matching the other’s earlier passion. One of his hands slipped to the back of his partner’s head, clutching onto a fistful of hair while his free hand cupped the back of Aeon’s neck, pulling him closer. His lips parted open, his tongue slipping out to tentatively caress Aeon’s plush lips, coaxing them to part for him. He didn’t even register Aeon pulling him close, or himself straddling Aeon on the couch, his attention entirely on the movement of their lips, of the tentative caresses of their tongues that was becoming bolder by the second. Nico didn’t think he had ever wanted anyone so much as he wanted the man before him right now. He wanted Aeon. Entirely.

“Stop pulling away,” Nico complained when Aeon pulled back a second time. He chased after him, lightly biting down on his lower lip.

“We have to stop.” Nico shuddered at the tone of Aeon’s voice. “You’re… provoking me.”

Nico blinked, opening his eyes that he didn’t even realize he closed at some point. The desire in Aeon’s eyes were much prominent now, his hands gripping Nico’s thin waist to the point of bruising. Nico flushed slightly as he realized what Aeon meant as, when he leaned back, he felt something against his thighs.

With a playful smile, he shifted slightly in his lap, pressing their bodies closer together.

“I’m doing it with that intention in mind,” Nico whispered, brushing his lips gently against Aeon’s. “Please. Can I have you? Will you have me?”

“You don’t know what you’re asking, Nico,” Aeon replied, taking his lower lip between his teeth, tugging lightly. “Once I have you, I have no intention to let you go.”

“Then don’t.” Nico himself was tired of letting go. He wanted to keep. He wanted to be kept. “Have me.”

A low growl was his only response before Aeon swept him into his arms, carrying him towards the man’s - their shared - bedroom.

[starwarsmum]

Chapter 2 is up!

Dick sighed and leaned back into the first class plane seat. Jason had been bugging him to come to Paris with him since the end of the year, and had even bought him plane tickets as part of his Christmas present. He had also insisted on accompanying him, which was…suspicious. He was confident it wasn't a matter for their alter egos or they would have just taken the tubes over.

He glanced over at Jason, trying to scrutinise him in the dim light of the cabin. They had begun their flight in the early hours of the evening in Gotham which meant that the sky was only just beginning to lighten in the early morning of Paris. The broad man was snoring comfortably in the seat next to his, the white tuft in his hair almost glowing in the darkness.

As the plane landed, Jason stretched and bolted upright, practically springing to collect his luggage. Dick was concerned - Jason never got excited over a holiday, unless it was a cover for one of their ‘nightly activities’. But Jason had promised him that there would be no need for Nightwing or Red Hood to make an appearance. 

“Hell, Paris apparently has its own heroes, I'd hate to tread on their toes, ya know?” Jason said, apparently in good humour as they waited for their car to be available. Ever since the…disagreement, Dick and Jason had avoided using any of Bruce's resources. “Besides, it's all magical bullshit around here. Way above my pay grade.”

“You really did your research before we came, huh,” Dick marveled, sliding into the passenger seat as Jason took charge. He had apparently made an itinerary, starting with a trip to a famous pastry shop. “Are you sure I can't just look at what you have planned?”

“Nope,” Jason grinned, the car smoothly moving away from the lot. “I hope you've been brushing up on your French, Dickie. You're gonna need it.”

As they approached the corner that housed that patisserie, Dick saw a bustle of activity. Checking the time, he saw that it was just before 8:30, meaning that the school across the street was a hive of activity. There was less of a queue in the bakery thanks to the time and they waited patiently, eyeing up the various goods.

“Bonjour, ” came the jaunty welcome from the petite Asian woman. She was older and had a motherly look, smiling pleasantly as she waited for their order. Dick smiled back at her before ordering.

“Bonjour, madame, nous voudrions deux croissants chocolats et douze macarons, s'il vous plaît.” The woman smiled and rang them up before moving around to collect their order. As she did, Jason stepped forward as well.

“Pardonnez-moi, vous êtes Sabine?” Dick looked at Jason, bewildered, even as the woman - Sabine, apparently - responded cautiously yes. “Awesome, uh, nous sommes ici pour visiter Marinette, ou est elle?” Sabine nodded in understanding, brightening as she handed over their goods. She let them know that Marinette was over at the park nearby. Thanking her for the baked goods and her time, the pair made their way out of the bakery.

“Jason, what on earth was that about?” Dick demanded, as soon as they were out of earshot of the woman. He let out a noise of frustration at Jason's shrug and secretive smile. “Seriously, is Marinette a new girlfriend or something? Is that why you insisted on coming and dragging me all the way to Paris?”

“Listen, all good things come to those who wait, Dickie-bird. Look, there she is now. Marinette!” He hollered the last part, waving and grinning broadly at a small woman, similar but younger to the woman at the bakery. Dick saw her look up and smile, balancing something on her lap. Something that looked suspiciously like a small child, with dark hair

“Jason, why do you know a French woman with a baby ?” Dick was panicking, he could feel it. Had Jason somehow fathered a child in France? Was this a trip so that Dick could meet his new niece or nephew? “Jason, I swear to God, if you had a kid and didn't tell any of us, I will disown you .”

“Bonjour, vous êtes Monsieur Grayson, non?” Dick's eyes were huge as the woman approached, and they were glued to the bundle in her arms. When he didn't say anything, she cleared her throat and tried again. “ Pardon, I am Marinette, and this is Penélope. It is a pleasure, Monsieur Grayson. ”

“I- I think I'm going to pass out,” he whispered, feeling overwhelmed. “Jay, seriously, how could you not tell us? I'm not sure I can actually disown you, but this is big.”

“Penny's not my kid, Dick,” he said, but he did reach out for the wriggly bundle when Marinette held her out. “Marinette is more like…a little sister. Don't worry, little one,” he cooed down at the baby girl, eyes full of wonder. “Uncle Jason is here now.”

“ Oui, par mariage, ” Marinette snorted, rolling her eyes at the man. “Sorry, Monsieur Grayson, I'm sure you are very confused but I had to meet you before we could discuss anything in more detail. Mon mari , he is just being cautious.”

“Someone is being cautious…by sending you to meet me with your kid?”

“Because, I am not the one in danger of being hurt, oiseau, ” she said firmly. At his look of further confusion, she sighed and stepped towards him. “My husband, he has come very far in the years I have known him but he is worried that you will be angry with him. Il est fragile, and I will not allow you to hurt him if it can be avoided.”

“Pfft, fragile, sure,” Jason snorted, although he looked apologetic when Marinette glared at him. “Sorry Mari, but he hasn't changed enough for me to say he's fragile . Look, Dick's getting riled up and he is supposed to be here on holiday, I promise that he's not going to hurt him. He is the very last person in the world that Dick would hurt.”

Dick's eyes snapped up at that, widening as he gazed at Penélope, noting her slightly darker skin and just how dark her hair was. “No,” he whispered, looking up hopefully at Jason. “You found him?”

“Yes, Grayson, he did,” came a deep voice from behind him and Dick span so fast he almost pirouetted. He drank in the sight of his brother, tears springing to his eyes before he stepped forward and grabbed him into a hug. Damian sighed and patted his back, eyes suspiciously bright. 

“ Mon dieu, you brothers are so emotional,” Marinette said cheekily, taking Penélope back from Jason. Damian gave her a mock glare before pulling back from Dick and giving him a smile. “ Parfait, maintenant, can we go back to our home? I am sure Penny would like to have her breakfast and a nap.” 

Damian relieved Marinette of the job of carrying Penélope and she fell into step beside Jason, chattering about their Christmases. Dick felt his nerves come back with a vengeance. Damian seemed at ease, bouncing his daughter as he stepped.

“I am sorry for the cloak and dagger, Grayson. Marinette is, understandably, wary of our family. She only knows what I have told her, and what she has gathered during our time together. She also knows that nobody has come to see us in that time, and it makes her nervous that you have now come.”

“We didn't know where you were, lil D,” Dick said softly. He had always been gentle with Damian and it stayed true, even now. “I swear to you, we looked. We spent a solid month trying to find you, and even after that we kept trying. You didn't take the…usual transport for going abroad, none of your aliases were in use, and Jon said he didn't know where you had gone, only that you had told him you needed to go. I didn't even know you were gone until I returned from my case, and I'd lost 3 weeks alone to that.”

“Tt, Jason told us. He has assured us that it was a random piece of luck that led to him finding us, and has promised that we may reconnect with whom we choose at our own pace. But he did ask that he be able to tell you first. Now, let us go inside and we can settle Penny. Marinette, mon amour, will you start the coffee?”

“Bien sûr, tu veux un thé, mon chéri? ” She replied, setting up a highchair at a dining table towards the back of the room. He confirmed and she twisted her way into the kitchen, humming softly. They could hear her clattering in the kitchen, making Penélope gurgle and clap. Damian smiled at the child indulgently and placed her in the chair. “ Son petit déjeuner, Damian, elle a très faim. Tu en veux?"

Dick was in awe. The little family was clearly practiced in their morning routine, Damian taking charge of feeding his daughter - his daughter, Dick's baby brother had a kid - whilst Marinette made coffee and tea. When had his brother become so domestic? Just how much had changed when he had left home? He wanted to know everything.

“Dames, I'm so happy for you,” Dick burst out, brimming with pride, tempered by his sadness at having missed it. “You have a beautiful family but how…when did you meet? Where did you go after everything with…I just wish I had been there for you.”

Damian shrugged, although his shoulders tightened slightly. “I cannot say what would have been better, but I am happy with my life here, Grayson. Marinette has been a blessing, in many ways. She has helped me heal from things I did not know were hurting me, and she has blessed me with my own family. I would not change where I have come to.”

“Such a serious talk,” Marinette said, bustling into the room with a tea tray, weighed down with coffee, tea, milk sugar and some baked confectionaries. Jason whooped and took a seat at the table, leaving both the seat next to Damian, and the one next to Penny, free. “ Monsieur Grayson, you cannot change what Damian has been through and I would not want you to have stopped him coming to me. It is natural to want him to have never been hurt, mais if he had never left, I would never have found l’amour de ma vie. ”

“ Un conversation serieux, elle a dit, ” Damian said mockingly, making Marinette flush prettily. “Marinette, my love, you cannot say that and then follow up with an even more serious conversation.”

“ Silence, mon coeur,” she said severely. “Anyway, you wanted to know how we met, non ? Would you like to tell the story, or shall I?” Damian snorted and waved a hand to indicate that she should continue. “ D’accord , so I met Damian perhaps a month after he arrived in Paris…”

* Flashback 

It was getting dark, the summer day bleeding into a warm summer night. Marinette had been walking down a side street after meeting with Adrien. She had been prepared for the day to run longer than he had promised but it was still later than she had hoped to be walking home. She kept her head down and scurried across the next alley.

She heard a sound, a fleshy thud and a grunt, and she automatically turned towards it, hand coming up to touch her earrings. She saw the shapes of 2 men grappling and sprinted towards them, calling out as she did. As she reached them, she forced her way between them, shoving back the larger of the two as she stood over the prone form of the second.

“ Arrêtez, quoi tu fais? ” She demanded, meeting the man's eye. He let out an impatient noise before gesturing to a woman who was cowering behind a large bin. Her eyes widened and she looked back at the man on the floor, who was groaning and trying to get up. “ Merde, un voleur? Désolée, je ne savais pas. Ca va? ”

“Tt, je suis bien ,” the man said, his voice deep and annoyed. “ Il ne m’a pas vu avant je lui ai frappé. Il n’a pas utilisé son couteau .”

Marinette gave the man a long look, wondering whether she could turn her back on him long enough to use the restraints she carried with her. She decided that he had already helped one woman, she might as well put a little trust his way. She pulled out her phone and called the police, securing the other man's hands as she did so, speaking in rapid fire French. 

And then she went to the woman and spoke softly, reassuring her that all was well and that she could relax. The man continued to watch her, eyes sharp.

*End flashback

“...and after that, we exchanged numbers. He clearly knew what he was doing, the man had hardly a scratch other than being passed out. He seemed surprised by how I handled the problem, but not unhappy. Running into that alley was the best choice I have made, pour ma vie entier ” she beamed, turning her bright eyes back towards her husband.

“Tt, I think you could have done slightly better than a man who had scarcely a penny to his name and none to call a friend. And I know many of your friends agree,” Damian added grumpily, beginning to clean Penélope as she had finished her meal. 

“Well, I cannot help you, and other people, being wrong, Damian,” Marinette shrugged, standing and taking hold of Penélope. “ Maintenant, please excuse me, I must try to get her to sleep. She is unbearable sans her nap.”

“She will be several minutes, Penny struggles to sleep when we have guests,” Damian mused, the corners of his lips turning up slightly as he watched her go. His finger began turning one of his rings before he stilled and turned back to Jason and Dick.

“She's wonderful, baby bird,” Dick said softly, seeing the love she had for his brother. He ached to have missed so much - his first real relationship, how he had grown, his wedding - but he was relieved that Damian had had the chance to experience it all. He was grateful that someone as loving as Marinette had seen something in Damian and then stayed with him. “I can tell you love her very much, and she loves you too.”

“Oh, yeah, these two are disgustingly sappy. Even just through video chat they could rot teeth,” Jason joked, looking around instead of at either of his brothers. They passed more of the time, catching up on the changes in Dick and Damian's lives. They talked about Mar’i and Kor’i, Damian's job, their weddings…Dick had squealed when Damian pulled out his wedding album to show them.

“Holy shit, is that Jagged Stone?” Jason's voice was hushed but undeniably excited. “No way no way no way , you did not have Jagged Stone at your wedding .”

“He was not my guest, Todd. My wife has many connections, and Jagged insisted on providing the entertainment for the evening portion of the celebration.” At Dick and Jason's slack jaws, he snorted. “Marinette is a world acclaimed fashion designer, she is notable for making pieces for the eccentric musician, and when he heard that his ‘niece’ would be married, he insisted.”

“Hold up, Jagged Stone’s niece…famous designer…are you saying that you married MDC?! But…but Timmy has a contract with you! He is forever rubbing it in our faces that he gets to commission MDC originals, I'm pretty sure it's his only joy at this point, and you're telling me that your wife is the reason he gets to do that? That's so unfair! We've been in touch for nearly 2 months and you didn't think to tell me?”

“This is why he couldn't get you to relocate, isn't it?” Dick said to Marinette as she stepped lightly back into the room. “He's been so upset that he couldn't get you to move to Gotham but you wouldn't, because Damian would never.”

“Non , it was not Damian's decision. I think that he would go anywhere with me if I thought it would be good for us, but I would never wish to hurt him like that. Besides,” she added, in an attempt to lighten the mood, “I have the feeling that Monsieur Drake would monopolise my time if I was that close, and oncle Jagged would never forgive me.”

It was many hours later, and several giant yawns from Dick, that they admitted they needed to get to their hotel. Marinette said goodbye warmly, promising that Damian and Penélope would be available for the rest of their trip, even though she had work to do.

“There will be other visits where I can spend time with you all, but I think it best that Damian be allowed time with ses frères without me worrying over you all. I only ask, Dick, that you respect our decision not to involve Monsieur Wayne . I would never ask you to lie to him, but I must insist that you only give him information that he specifically asks for.”

Dick swore that he would keep the information to himself, although he begged to be able to tell Kor’i, which Marinette readily agreed to. 

“Thank you, Jay,” Dick said, on the drive to their hotel. “No, seriously, this is the best Christmas present I have ever received.”

“So you're not mad that I didn't tell you sooner? Good,” he sighed when Dick shook his head, “because Mari straight up terrifies me.”

[dckweed]

Idea 3: Being in a relationship with Rooster but you didnt have much time together recently. So he decides to prepare something for you. A fancy dinner, candles and the night ends up with him giving you a massage where you both get really turned on, so also some sexy times are about to happen as well and a lot of cuddles afterwards 🥰

okay guys im back from my mini hiatus, i love a good ole rooster fic so much and im kinda enjoying the spoiling of reader w fancy things rn (probably bc today is my birthday, happy 24th to me :) ) anyway how are we doing today? are we hydrated? are we nourished with all the major nutrients? (carbs, proteins and fats?)

p.s. this is your sign to go get a one pound bag of jelly beans because you deserve it :)

p.s. again. it was my birthday when i wrote this last saturday (the 2nd)

THE NOT SO LITTLE THING, bradley 'rooster' bradshaw x reader

You and Bradley had been married for a couple of years now, however, the two of you had had a whirlwind romance in the empty space between his last deployment and his next one, you had dated for a good three months, both completely smitten with each other to the point of co-dependency in some ways, and when Bradley asked the question, a week before he was due to be deployed you didn't even hesitate to say yes.

The wedding was quick, you wore a beautifully simple white sun dress that you were able to pick up cheaply second hand, not having time to pick out a fancier one, you didn't mind (although you were certain your groom to be did), and were glowing with happiness when you met him at the courthouse the day of, your sister behind you with a camera and the ring that he had been saving for you, the one that his mom had left him.

Bradley kept a smaller print out of your official wedding photo in his wallet, he looked at it every day, showed it off to anyone who would listen (especially on that first deployment right after you guys had said 'i do'), you were beautiful, a smile on your face so radiant that he could feel the happiness through it every time he looked at it, on top of his own happiness. It was one of the best days of his life, right after the day that he had met you.

It was your third anniversary, and Bradley sat in the drivers seat of the Bronco looking down at that photo in his wallet, a smile on his face. The pair of you had been so busy lately, he had just gotten home from the Uranium mission, completely worn out, when he wasn't resting he was spending time with Mav, or working on his honey do list that you left him, and when you weren't busy at work (you were a school teacher), you were usually sleeping or cooking.

You guys hadn't had much time for each other lately, and he knew it was bothering you. Bradley, the good husband that he was, was going to fix it for you. He was on his way into the store, a list of ingredients in his hand for what he hoped was a simple enough recipe for shrimp fettucine, and he was going to pick up a bottle of your favorite wine as well.

Bradley was so proud to call you his wife, and couldn't believe it had already been three years together. He wanted to give you all of the things he knew you wanted, even if you never asked for them or complained about wanting them. He had been planning a honeymoon for the two of you since he had left on deployment a few months ago, and had just finished paying for the plane tickets when you had left for work this morning, giving him as long of a goodbye kiss as you possibly could before he sent you on your way with a smack to your ass that made you squeal with the laughter that he loved to hear. He hoped you didn't check the credit card statements any time soon though, you would probably cry.

Your day had been terribly long, you worked at a school for troubled kids, teaching high schoolers who were court mandated to attend schooling, and normally you loved your job, and you loved making an impact on your kids when they finally warmed up to you, but today had felt like a nightmare. One of the new students in your class had started an all out brawl in the middle of one of your fourth period lesson, resulting in them stabbing someone. You spent a majority of the rest of your school day and afternoon in the principals office, apologizing profusely to the victims parents and giving multiple statements to the police. You were shaken sure, but it wasn't your first time experiencing violence like this.

Needles to say, by the time you got home and dragged yourself over the threshold of the front door of the home you and Bradley had recently bought together you were exhausted and stressed, ready to throw yourself face first into bed.

The house was dark when you first walked in, and you hadn't seen his bronco in the driveway either, assuming you were alone you kicked off your shoes and undid the buttons on your blouse, muttering to under your breath the snarky pissed off response that you had wanted to give to your boss when he questioned you why this had happened, (as if it had been your fault) not expecting to find your husband standing behind you with two glasses of wine in his waiting hands.

"Rough day, honey?" He asks, eyeing you in the dim light of the entry way. He could tell from the way that your eyebrows were creased together in the middle of your forehead that something was wrong, that was typically a tell tale sign that you were overly worried or overly stressed about something.

You just look at him, shoulders slumping in relief as you rush to him, burying your face in his muscular chest. You breathe in his cologne and sigh happily as you wrap your arms around his middle, squeezing him as tight as you could. Bradley was a thick man through and through and hugging him properly was usually an issue for you as you were never able to get your arms all the way around him. You didn't mind too much though, it still brought you all the calming comfort you could ever need or want in the world.

"What are you doing home?" You ask after a moment, a small smile on your lips as you realize that your husband is awkwardly trying to hug you back with two wine glasses in his beefy hands. You take one from him, gulping down an appreciative sip before humming contentedly. "What smells so good?" You give the air a sniff, completely blowing off his question, not wanting to get into your nasty work day when he had so obviously done something special for you on your guys' anniversary.

Bradley knows what you're doing, he's not an easily distractible man and he knows that you know that, so he figures you must just not want to talk about it right now. "Well, my love, i figured that the two of us could have a quiet evening in to celebrate our love.." He says, grabbing your free hand and gently leading you through the kitchen and into the dining room.

You gasp when he moves from in front of you, set on the table was a a full meal surrounded by lit candles and your favorite flowers, a few petals scattered around the table. He had even remembered to put on a white table cloth too. It might have been the stress but the sight of it brought a tear to your eyes, and your husband noticed it almost immediately, his gaze never leaving your face. "Oh, Bradley!" You gush, setting your already half empty glass down on the table before your place your hands on his cheeks and bring him in for a kiss, his mustache tickling against your face as he pulls you flush against him with his free hand.

You moan as his tongue slips into your mouth, before whining pathetically when he pulls away from you with a groan.

"Not now baby, there's plenty of time for that later, okay?" He says smiling as you pout at him. It wasn't very often that he turned down a passionate kiss like that from you, so you figured you'd play along with his evening. "Want you nice and nourished tonight, you'll need the energy." He winks at you and you can't help but giggle, a happy smile making its way to his face as he pulls your chair out for you.

"Roo, did you do all of this yourself?" You ask, looking at your plate in awe. It was no secret that your husband was terrible in the kitchen (though he could grill a mean steak when he wanted to), and the fact that he put in the effort to do this for you made it all the more special to you.

His lips quirk at the use of his callsign as he sits across from you, the tips of his ears turning red from slight embarrassment as he tells you the truth; "I tried okay?" He sighs and you start laughing immediately, three years together and you knew just how badly things went in the kitchen for him. The man burnt toast every single time, it was no surprise to you that this wasn't made by his own hands. "I went to the store, i got all of the ingredients..I had a list, Y/N, a list!"

"Oh gosh, you really were prepared!" You chuckle, grinning from ear to ear at him through the candlelight. You can see the amusement on his face as well, a laugh coming from deep within his chest. You felt all of the stress of the day melt away from your mind as you basked in this sweet moment with your husband. "What happened when you got home?"

"The shrimp happened!" He exclaims and you cackle in laughter, the sound bringing him nothing but joy. "I wound up at Red Lobster last minute," He sees your eyes widen at the words, and knows exactly what you're thinking. He grins at you, slowly lifting a basket of rolls for you and handing them to you over the table.

"I would suck your dick so hard under the table right now, but i think im too in love with the cheddar bay biscuits.." You moan as you bite into one, still warm as if it had just freshly come out of the kitchen at your favorite restaurant. In the back of your mind you wondered just how last minute his trip to red lobster actually was.

Bradley rolls his eyes at your comment, but he basked in the glory of knowing that he knew his spouse well enough to know that would be your reaction, especially after it had clearly been such a stressful day for you.

The pair of you eat your food, your moans and giggles were the only sounds heard as he held your hand over the table, rubbing your knuckles with his thumb as he watched you eat. God, he thought, I wonder if this is how mom and dad felt..

After nearly an hour you both finish, and you finish off your third glass of wine, your body feeling warm and fuzzy as you lean towards him over the table. "What's for dessert, pretty boy?" Your voice is suggestive and so is your mouth as you bite your lip in the way that drove him crazy.

"Oh, sweet thing, you are." He says, standing from his seat, voice husky. He knows your thighs clench together from the way you shift in your seat, his words going straight to your pussy. He knew how to get his girl going, always had. "But first," He comes around the table, still holding your hand as he helps you stand up, pulling you flush against him. "But first, i have plans.."

"Oh?" You ask, letting your lips brush against his as he dips his head down towards yours, gasping when the hand that wasn't holding yours squeezes your ass cheek. A low growls rumbles in your husbands chest, a gleam in his brown eyes.

"Go strip and lay face down on the bed." He squeezes your ass again, rougher than before and sends you on your way out of the dining room, listening as you make your way quickly down the hallway with a 'yes sir' that makes his cock stiffen in his jeans.

You strip down quickly, kicking your wide legged slacks to the side, and your camisole drops down next to it. You take your bra off, but leave your panties on, hoping he would partially be able to enjoy the new lace thong and bra set you had bought for tonight as you lay face down in the middle of the bed, as he had requested.

After a few quiet moments you hear his heavy footfalls coming down the hallway and you bite your lip in anticipation, wondering what exactly your husband had in store for you tonight. "Such an obedient wife," You hear him say, the strong scent of lavender reaching your senses as you feel the bed dip. "This for me?" His voice his husky, his lips soft. His mustache tickles the skin of your tailbone as he places a kiss to the bit of your thong that rests against your back. You hum in response as his lips move up to the dip of your spine, trailing slowly up your back as his large thighs find themselves on either side of your body, the rest of him hovering over you. "So beautiful, baby..always so beautiful."

You sigh in bliss as you feel his hands come up to your shoulders, kneading them as he rubs oil into the skin. You hadn't expected this from him, he was usually the type who could hardly ever focus long enough to give you a massage like this, but you could tell that he had put thought into this as well by the oil he was using, and the pressure he was putting on the space between your shoulders, all of the days tension leaving them almost instantly.

"So good baby.." You moan, feeling his weight start to shift down your back, his hands following with it.

"You've been working so hard baby," His voice is still gruff, but it's sincere as his fingers keep working your skin, the strong digits digging in deeper the farther down he goes. "been taking care of me so good since ive been back, of those kids at school.." You feel one of his hands slip down the small of your back, right past the waist band of your panties, and before you know it, one of his large fingers his pushing into your already soaking hole, curling as he does. "..it's time for me to take care of my wife, huh? whatever you need from me tonight baby, it's all yours pretty girl.."

His words go straight to your pussy, your heat clenching down around his finger and he sighs at the feeling, something that only turns you on farther. It had been so long since the two of you had been able to have a night like this, from the deployment he was on, and then straight to the uranium mission..you'd barely seen each other, let alone fucked each other like the mindless savages you two could be together in the bedroom. To say you were depraved by this point would be an understatement, you were down right starving for you husband, and his cock too.

"..roo, please baby.." You honestly don't even know what you're asking for, to keep fucking you with his fingers? to keep massaging you (because it did feel oh so fucking good to have his magical hands do things like that to you)? to fuck you so cockdrunk stupid that you would have to call into work tomorrow morning? fuck, maybe you wanted all of it, maybe you were so fucking needy for the man that had two of his fingers buried up to his knuckle in your cunt that you didn't give two shits what he did to you, as long as he did something.

He seems to know the answers for you because with a grunt he's shifted down your back, his legs on either side of your own now. Before you know it his large hands are spreading your supple ass cheeks apart and his tongue is on your dripping hole in no time, greedily eating you with your lacey panties (if they could honestly even be called panties with how tiny they were) still on.

"Oh god..." You shudder, your head dropping down into the comforter of your perfectly made bed, your hands fisting the crisp linens, wrinkling them all to hell.

"Not god, sweet thing, just me.." His voice is so thick with lust that he could probably talk you into your first orgasm of the night if he wanted to, but judging from the way that you could feel his hard as a rock cock pressing against the back of your legs you knew that he didn't want to waste time on such trivial foreplay, and, you decided that you didn't want to either, not when you could do it later..not when you needed to feel him in you right that very second stuffing you so full you'd feel him for days afterwards.

"..Need you b-ahh shit.." Bradley must have had the exact same thought pattern as you, that or he could read your damn mind, because the thin material of your thong is pushed unceremoniously to the side as his cock slides into your already sopping pussy. Not only is your husband long, but just like the rest of his body, is cock is also incredibly fucking thick and you feel every glorious bit of his beautiful member stretching your gummy walls out as he slides all the way in, a low groan escaping his throat as he does.

One of his hands goes to your shoulder, gripping it for leverage as he moves long and slow in a few thrusts, testing the waters for a moment. "Feels like fucking home, baby.." He whispers, his mustache tickling the skin of your neck as he places a soft, gentle kiss to the back of it, the total opposite to what he does next. You hear the smack before you register the sting, your ass cheek smarting from the force of the blow he had delt it as he starts fucking you harshly, using the abusing hand to go down to your hips and lift them up just the slightest, giving him a whole different depth within you that you swear you didn't know was even possible.

You squeal a high pitched groan, praising your husband as he pumps his cock in and out of you at an almost brutal pace, you feel him hitting that spongey part of you with every beautiful roll of his hips, rearranging your guts in the most delicious of ways.

It's not long before he has you seeing stars, your eyes rolled into the back of your head as your pussy clamps down so tightly that he cums instantly at the feel of it. "Holy fucking shit..pussy s'fuckin' good can't even control m'self..luckiest son of a bitch in the world aren't I?" He babbles, only slightly pussy drunk as he continues to piston into you, pace unwavering as he pushes his cum deep into your soaking cunt as you try to recover from the orgasm he'd just given you within merely a couple of minutes of fucking you.

"m'so good baby," You mewl, legs trembling beneath you. "Please, please, please, please.." You chant, completely unknowing what you're begging him for, but you know you want something. His cock and his hands all over your body have you so warm and tingly that you can't even form coherent thoughts let alone words and you know that he's just fine with doing all the thinking for you right now.

And like the dutiful husband he is, he does just that. His weight shifts, and with a sad whine you realize that his cock is no longer in your, his cum free to fall out of your hole as he shifts your bodies, laying in the middle of your guys' bed as he pulls you on top of him, one hand holding his still stiff cock as the other guides you down onto it, his large hand splayed across your back, just above your ass as you start bouncing on him, hands on his chest to support you.

"Bradley, baby, so fucking deep.." You whine, head thrown back as your tits bounce with every movement. He grunts beneath you, his fingers digging into your back as he starts pistons up into you, meeting your every bounce with one of his own. The sound of skin slapping skin fills the room and the sinfulness of that alone makes your pussy clamp down onto him again, his cock hitting the places that make you feral.

After a while your thighs start to burn from the effort, but it doesn't seem to affect Bradley so much, he continues fucking up into your hot, wet cunt, and uses his hands on your hips (squeezing so hard that you know for certain his fingerprints are going to be left for day on your skin), you look down at him, unable to form any words other than his name, the sound rolling off of your tongue in a chant so high that you worry the neighbors might call the police (lord knows it wouldn't be the first time), you watch his biceps flex with every movement made to lift your body up with such ease its as if you weigh nothing to him, the sinewy muscle supporting you like you were the weight of air.

Your fingers claw into the skin of your chest and your husband groans, words leaving his mouth that you cant quite make out as your ears rings with the force of your second orgasm rolling through you, hitting you like a hurricane hits the land. Your head lolls forward, slack jawed as you cum harder than you think you ever have before. The sight of you must do something to Rooster because within seconds you feel his cum painting your walls once more, and his thrusts slow to a stop.

You collapse onto him, both of your chests heaving as you His hands move from your hips, ghosting along your spine and you damn near purr as they land in your hair, grasping the back of your head to lift you up into a sloppy, heated kiss, tongues and teeth clashing together as he presses you against his still heaving body. His mustache tickles your skin and you pull away from him with a delirious giggle. "I fucking love you, Rooster."

"I fucking love you too, sweet thing.." He chuckles, tucking a strand of hair behind your sweaty ear as he smiles up at you with the same loving look he had given you on your guys' wedding day, the same one that made the feeling of love spread from the top of your head to the bottoms of your toes. "Which is why, as a present for both of us, i booked us that honeymoon trip you always talked about.."

Your body snaps up, brain on full alert now. He looks up at you with a shit eating grin, and you can't keep the shock off of your face. "Virgin Islands?" You ask, he nods once, proud smirk still adorning that handsome fucking face of his. "Bradley oh my god..are you sure we can afford it? We just bought the house.."

His hand cups your cheek, thumb slipping into your mouth to shut you up. "Don't worry your pretty little head baby, we both deserve it, i already got approved for leave from work, and..i might have already told your boss about it as well.." He says, his tone telling you that you shouldn't argue with it, or even worry one bit about it. He wanted you to enjoy yourself. He wanted you to be carefree and happy. "Besides, what better way to celebrate three perfect years together than by taking our hard earned honeymoon?"

You quirk an eyebrow at him as he takes his thumb out of your mouth. "I dont know," You say, grinding down onto his miraculously still hard cock. "I think i could think of something just a little bit better.."

"Oh, you're in for it now babygirl.." He growls, throwing you onto your back as you giggle wildly, knowing damn well you were about to call into work in the morning.

[goddess-of-all-creation]

Chapter 2: Crossing paths

(Chapter list / Read on ao3)

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He wasn’t a creep, he knew he wasn’t trying to be, he was just too enthusiastic. He kept looking at her, watching her order coffee, not pay and sit to drink it. That girl, she was one of the special ones. After quickly getting his own ticket, he searched for her. He just had this impulse, to be near her, to get to know more about what she could do. He couldn’t help it. He followed and sat right in front of her, startling her in the process.

“That’s an amazing gift you have.”

“Excuse me?” She looked up from her coffee mug and stared at him with a raised eyebrow before taking another sip.

“I saw what you did there, it was quite impressive.”

“I don’t know what you think you saw” She said after choking on the liquid a little, provoking a drop to fall down her chin. She reached her hand to grab a napkin, but the metal napkin holder flew to the man’s hand instead. He took one and offered it to her. Her eyes went wide as she took it. “You… you can do what I do?”

“Oh no, not at all.” The napkin holder flew back to the table. “My abilities are a little bit different. It is nice to meet a fellow mutant, though.”

“Mutant? Is that what you call us?”

“Yes, what would you call us?”

“I don’t know, I never really put a name to it.” She seemed lost in thought for a second, before returning to sit comfortably. “Can I put a name to you?”

He chuckled. Making sure to check if no one was around him to hear, he said his name in almost a whisper. “Erik, Erik Lensherr.”

“I’m Kay, just Kay.”

She extended her gloved hand expecting him to shake it, but he took it and brought it to his lips instead, making her smile at the gest.

“Pleased to meet you. Looks like we’re both heading to Poland”

“Oh, is that so? Looks like I might have a stalker.”

“Pardon miss” He recovered his posture. Making the woman uncomfortable was the last thing he wanted, and it suddenly hit him how blunt he had been. “I didn’t mean to come off that way, I was simply impressed with what you could do, that’s all. But I’ll leave you alone if that’s what you’d prefer.” He started to get up until she stopped him.

“No, I was kidding. I think… I wouldn’t mind having you as a stalker.” She said with a smirk. “Tell me, Erik, would you like an upgrade on your seat?”

The two mutants sat on the most comfortable plane seats Erik had ever been on. He had never cared much for first class before, in all the traveling he had done -and it had been quite a lot. Excessive luxury felt…well, excessive for him. Yet, the taste wasn’t lost to him, and he enjoyed the good things in life. Plus, the comfort made sense being in such good company as Kay was proving to be.

“And what is in Poland for you, if I may...?” He felt compelled to ask.

“Actually, it’s just a first stop. I’m heading to my home country, but I need to make a stop there. What’s in there for you?”

“A new start, you could say.” He was about to ask about her home country, but before he could have the chance to speak she interrupted his train of thought to ask if he liked champagne. Not a second after the words left her mouth a flight attendant was next to him, purple sparks on her eyes, handing him a champagne flute before filling another one for her.

“To new starts.”

“To new starts.” He repeated, raising his hand for the toast. Such a showoff she was. Deep in his mind, he couldn’t not think of Charles. His old friend, who always strived for anonymity. He would have never approved of this sort of thing, let alone do it himself. He very well could, but he wouldn’t. Not in public, not like this. “So, you just use it on people? Whenever you like?” It wasn’t a judgment, he was genuinely intrigued, fascinated even. And she saw it.

“What are they gonna do about it?” she shrugged and finished her glass. And again, all he could do was smile.

As he relaxed in his seat, his drowsiness mixing with the alcohol, he drifted off to sleep. Only several hours later he felt the strange warmth on his arm and opened his eyes to find the dark hair of the girl next to him all over his chest, her head laying on his shoulder. The bed-sized seats were big enough for them to sleep comfortably, and yet she had managed to sprawl on it so much that she ended up using him as a pillow. He tried to feel bothered by it but failed. Soon after, though, she was the one waking up. Blinking and stretching she said “Sorry.” And the warmth she left on him spread.

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When they arrived at the Warsaw Chopin Airport Erik didn’t feel any different than he did in the United States, or anywhere else for that matter. But to be fair, what had he expected? Peace? A sense of belonging? He knew such things weren’t meant to be for him. Kay was beside him taking in the sights as they went to get the luggage -it was then that he found out she didn’t have any.

“Is it your first time here?” Her looking around had prompted him to ask.

“No, it’s just… not how I remembered. Uhm, so where are you heading from here?”

“I was thinking about getting a hotel room for now, how about you?” She opened her mouth to speak, but something seemed to catch her eye in the distance. She walked to it, completely ignoring him for a moment. A map located on a nearby wall showed the flight connections with the neighboring countries. She placed her hand on it, right in the middle of the border line. “Is there something wrong?” He asked when he reached her.

“Erik, can you tell me what's between Poland and Ukraine?”

“There isn’t anything between…”

“Exactly.” She removed her hand but didn’t turn to look at him, fixated on the wall. “Would you believe me if I told you I was from the future?”

Erik rolled his eyes. “Surprisingly it’s not the first time I hear that.”

“What if I told you I was from another world?.”

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for wanting to meet my QPP and going out of my way to try to do so after they’ve said no?

Okay, so. This is a very complicated situation, I’ll try to offer as much details as I can, but I am currently running off a fresh four hours of sleep and I am dead on my feet.

Me (18 genderfluid) and my partner, X (17 nb) have met almost three years ago on Tumblr. We have become really close in that time, and I asked them to be my QPP last year.

We’ve never met irl, because of the simple fact that we live on different continents and were both until this summer.

Well, as it happens, X’s parents decided to take him on a trip overseas in august. As soon as they learned this, they told me and we both freaked out.

Because the trip would put him and me only a two hour flight away. I immediately asked my parents if it would be possible to do something about this, fully expecting to be denied.

However, my parents not only Agreed, they helped me devise a full timeplan and schedule and find plane tickets and a hotel.

I told this to my partner excitedly and they were obviously excited, I was, too. Since it was a family trip, they had to ask his parents, though. One of them was completely fine with it, but the other just said no.

It was made worse by the fact that it was a step-parent to X.

Usually, I am a very calm person, and am able to accept a logical argument. But there was no apparent reasoning behind the step-parent saying no. At least not one that me or X could see.

I cried for the entire day after learning of this and I just couldn’t calm down. I was so close to meeting the most important person in my life and it slipped out of my fingers right before it became a reality.

Anyways, it pissed me off beyond reason and I booked the tickets, hotel and invited my mom for an impromptu three day holiday. Obviously, she knew why I was going, since she helped with the planning, so she agreed.

My partner learned of this, obviously. I told him as soon as I decided to do it, but because of timezones, they were already unavailible when I told them.

So I flew out yesterday. I should probably mention that I will be paying everything back to my Dad, who bought the tickets, which will be almost the entirety of my savings.

I gave an option to X. If he wants to meet, I’ll meet with them, if not, I’ll leave it. Yesterday, he wasn’t sure. We discussed it for a long time, I cried again.

I was emotional, sleep deprived and in a completely different country, so I was mean. I tried not to be, but I did say some things that I regret. I apologised immediately, but still.

Mostly, I was asking about why he’s scared to meet. I won’t elaborate on the reasoning, since it’s his own bussiness, but Basicaly, it was his parents. Because they hadn’t Agreed to the meeting.

Well, I begged him to at least try asking again and went to sleep.

X texted me whilst I was sleeping, saying he discussed it with his step-parent and tried to convince them to let us meet.

However, this is where their step-parent finaly revealed their reasoning.

The trip they are on is meant as a sort of ‘goodbye’ trip for X, since he’s turning 18 next year and for whatever reason, they don’t expect him to be very happy to spend holidays with them again.

Yea, I know, I’m being sarcastic and salty, but I think it’s deserved. Why Oh why would your child want to cut contact with you once they turn 18, you shall never know.

In any case, I learned of X’s family’s plans for the following day and it was a thing that I Also really wanted to do (since I did give him the option to tell me yes/no for the meeting I turned the trip into a holiday with my own mom). I have been super excited to do this during the trip and it just so happened that the weather was perfect for the activity as well, so I just decided to go Anyways, much like with the trip.

My main motive was absolutely the trip itself, but the possibility of running into X Also influenced my decision.

We didn’t end up meeting, but if we did, it would’ve Caused trouble for him and they already said no to meeting me.

I understand that everyone’s boundaries and fears are different and I try and respect them, but I’m so frustrated with this situation, because were our situations reversed, I would’ve met with X, whatever the consequences.

So. AITA?

What are these acronyms?

[cherrylng]

Matt Bellamy Interview - Muse [INROCK (May 2000)]

A future superstar born between a medium and a former star musician!?

INTERVIEW: YUKO KATO

I've collected a lot of articles about you guys, and the interview with Melody Maker magazine was particularly interesting. Matthew Bellamy (vo., g.): The guy who wrote that article, Mark Beaumont, wants to write a rock 'n' roll story centred around sex and drugs. He doesn't give a shit about music. I only talked about the music and all he wrote was stupid jokes and stuff like that.

So you didn't say, "It's going to be a muse millennium"? Matthew: No, I didn't. I never said that. It's just an ordinary article, you know, you read it. But it's incredibly over the top. It's just terrible.

It says you guys won a newcomer award, what kind of award did you win? Matthew: Newcomer… Oh, the Newcomer of the Year award. Yeah, we won the NME Readers' Choice for Best Newcomer. (chuckles) We were on tour in Germany the day of the awards. So we had a gig the day before the ceremony, and then another gig in the evening on the day of the ceremony. But the NME still offered to pay for a small plane ticket, like a private one, so we could come. That's when I realised we must have won an award, because the NME rarely pays. So we decided that if they were going to pay for our flights, then fine, we'd go to the awards ceremony. We won the award, but we had to leave as soon as we were done. So we couldn't watch the rest of the awards ceremony. So we got on the plane and it took off and then landed again right afterwards. One of the engines was on fire. But it wasn't anything serious. It just started to catch fire a little bit. First of all, we were so happy about winning the award that we weren't afraid of the accident at all.

It says in Melody Maker that at the moment you guys are in all sorts of trouble, or you've had some near-death experiences. And it also says that your mother is a medium. Matthew: Yeah, my mum was a medium.

Is that why things tend to get so weird around you? Matthew: …Hmmm… I don't know. Maybe… I mean, I don't know. When you're alive and you're living your life in your own way, you don't really know what's normal and what's not, you know? I don't feel different from other people. Of course there are times when I don't, but most of the time I feel fine.

Does your mother influence you to see anything special? Do you believe in things that other people don't? Matthew: When I was a kid… You know what I mean by mediumship, contacting dead people, don't you? You know how you put your finger on a board with a bunch of letters on it and the spirits start talking? But mediums don't need such a board (so called "kokkuri-san"). Mediums can talk directly to the spirits. That's what my mother did. When I was a kid I used to see my mum talking to spirits every week. But as I grew up… I think when I was about 11 or 12, me and my brother got into mediumship. We didn't do the things that normal kids do, we only got mediumship. That's why my mother stopped her mediumship. She was worried that it would have too much of a bad influence on me.

What were you doing yourself? Matthew: Me? Me and my brother used to try to copy what our mother was doing. We wanted to try mediumship too. But you need special powers to be a medium. My mum had that, though. You have to understand something special. I'm an adult now and I don't think so much about the past. I don't even know if I believe it's really possible to talk to spirits now. Maybe it's possible subconsciously. It's an interesting thing, though.

I don't have the ability to see that kind of thing. Matthew: I don't either. I used to feel things when I was a kid, but as an adult I don't feel anything anymore. I've never even seen a spirit.

But I think it's good for an artist to have that experience. In short, you have sensitive senses, don't you? When I listen to your music, the melodies are very dramatic, which I like a lot, but I also feel that some of the songs have a very mysterious atmosphere to them. Do you think you can express that kind of spirituality in your music? Matthew: I never thought of it that way myself, but I guess so. My mum had a very spiritual life and so did her parents. But I've never really thought about that aspect of myself. I didn't think about it until you just told me (laughs). Maybe it's possible. That's interesting.

If you know that spirits exist, doesn't that make you less afraid of death? Matthew: Yes, it does. I've never been afraid of death. I'm not afraid of dying and leaving everything behind in this world, and I'm not afraid of forgetting all the memories I have in this world and moving on to another. I think fear is dangerous.

Dangerous? Matthew: If you're afraid of dying, you can't leave this world and go somewhere else, can you? People often say that when you're close to death, your whole life goes through your head in a flash, but sometimes I wonder if we all live the same life over and over again. It seems to me that the scene I'm living right now might be part of the running lights I see just before my death, when I'm living at another time. After death, we may have a different sense of time than we did when we were alive. When I'm afraid of death, I think that maybe I'll end up living over and over again, experiencing the running lights over and over again, and then I'll finally be ready to leave this world with a fixed mind and I'll finally be able to truly die. As long as you're afraid of death, you're probably in a circle that keeps turning over and over again like that. I'm sure that one day your fear will disappear and you will realise that death is not something to be afraid of and you will be ready to leave this world.

Do you think there is any underlying reason for being a rock star in this world? Being alive in this world right now is part of a cycle, isn't it? Matthew: Yeah. Yeah, maybe (laughs). Maybe we've been rocking over and over and over again. … I don't know what criteria you use to decide what's good enough to do what you're doing, and sometimes you pick something specific and it doesn't make any difference, you know? But you keep doing those things and when you finally get somewhere, I'm sure you'll be happy.

How was your last show in Tokyo? Matthew: It was a great show. The crowd was very quiet at first, but then it got more and more lively, and by the middle of the show everyone was jumping to the songs. It was a very lively show. I was a bit surprised. I thought it was going to be a quiet show. But it was a good audience, very energetic. I was a bit shy for the first couple of songs… I don't mean I was shy, but I was just concentrating on playing, and then I started looking at the audience instead of looking down. Then I started having more and more fun, and I started telling jokes and the audience started laughing and enjoying it. And the whole place got into a really positive mood. People reacted really well. When I look at the audience or go to the front with my guitar in my hand, people react really well.

Did you talk to the fans after the show? Matthew: Yeah. There were a couple of kids who followed us. They followed us into the restaurant. And when we went outside a couple of hours after dinner, they were still waiting for us. So I signed autographs and talked to them.

But you guys are used to that by now, aren't you? You have a lot of fans in France who are crazy about you. Matthew: It's definitely been an unusual experience, but it's not easy to get used to. Sometimes it's nice, but sometimes it's a bit difficult. I don't really know how to behave towards the fans. I want to be friendly and talk to them, but depending on who I'm talking to, I might be cold to them and let them down.

I've heard that the fan girl you talked to thought you were totally into her and broke up with her boyfriend. Did that really happen? Or are you just making that up? Matthew: It only happened to one person, but it really happened. There's a girl from Germany who comes to all our shows and follows us. When she first came, we spoke to her in a friendly way. She came to see our show and we had a few drinks together, and she was a very normal girl at that time. Then she started coming to all our concerts. When I didn't speak to her, she got very angry. I asked her why she was so angry. She said weird things like she had to break up with her boyfriend to come to see me. That's none of my business, right? But she expects to be treated specially.

I think some Germans are terribly obsessive. Matthew: Hmmm, maybe… That's true for that fan girl, but in general I don't think you can say that all Germans are clingy. I don't know Germans that well, but I've certainly had some weird experiences with fans like that.

Do you remember a band called Take That? When Robbie Williams left, some German fans killed themselves. Isn't that strange? Matthew: Yeah, it's very strange. Actually, the girl I was telling you about used to be a big Robbie Williams fan (laughs). When I heard that, I thought, "Hmm, maybe I should keep my distance from this girl…" (laughs).

Can you talk about the other band members? They're more like band mates, but they're really close, aren't they? How do you see yourselves in this kind of relationship? Matthew: Sometimes we get on like that, and sometimes we don't talk at all for a couple of weeks. But we're part of each other's lives. It's an interesting time with a lot of things happening and we have to talk about a lot of things. I think it's important for us to grow together as a band. Things are changing and I hope we can grow together. But of course it doesn't always work out that well. There are times when I'm really tired and everyone is quiet and I don't want to make a fuss.

You met Dominic when you were in your mid-teens, when your parents were divorced and you started thinking about who your real friends were. So I thought maybe your friendship was a bit different to a normal friendship. Matthew: Maybe it is. Maybe because we came from similar backgrounds. Of course we're different people, but the three of us are from the north of England and when we were teenagers, our respective parents all did the same thing. We all moved to the same part of Devon and changed schools. Of course we didn't know each other then, but coming from different parts of the UK to one place, we've had very similar experiences. The three of us had the same experience of changing schools, being separated from our friends and moving to a new place at the same time.

Are you wary of people approaching you? Matthew: Not really. I mean, sometimes I am, but who wouldn't be?

I heard about your father. He used to be a successful musician. You didn't tell me that before, did you? Matthew: (laughs) I didn't think I needed to… He was in the first British band to go number one in America… He was in a band. It's very different now, but my father used to work on a ship for the army or something, and he lived on the ship for years, and he got off the ship when he was about 19 or 20 years old. He saw an advert in Melody Maker for a guitarist at the time and joined a band, and two months later they had a number one hit. It was a band that had been there since the beginning, and they only needed a guitarist, so my dad got in.

And after that? Matthew: He was in it for three or four years and then it was over and he quit the band and started a normal job. Things were a lot different then than they are now. It was the end of the fifties, about 1959 or 1960, just before the Beatles and stuff came out.

So they couldn't become like the Beatles. Matthew: My dad's band was instrumental and didn't have a singer. The band was experimental and did music that was out of the ordinary for the time.

"I think it's important to avoid playing it safe all the time."

So it was quite natural for you to walk the path your father walked? Matthew: I knew my dad did that from a young age, and I'm sure he never felt uncomfortable with the idea of performing. So I've never been anxious about doing this kind of work.

But you're critical of showbiz and record labels because of what happened to your dad, aren't you? Matthew: Yeah. Because of that, my father lost a lot of money financially. Back then, bands were paid like a normal job, and even if you were number one, you still got paid the same. But that was the way it was then. It was a very different time in the '50s and the industry was just starting to come into being, and things are very different now.

Now, would you like to work with John Leckie (producer) again? There are a lot of people who compare you guys to Radiohead because of the John Leckie connection? Matthew: He's a great producer. But I want to work with a lot of different people. I want to do a lot of different things, I want to have new experiences, I want to take risks. I don't think it's important to avoid playing it safe. If we do another one with John Leckie, it might sound exactly the same as the first album, you know? I think it's good to try new stuff, to take the next step and do something a bit different from before. But of course I'd love to work with John Leckie again sometime in the future. But I just want to do something a bit different on the next album.

Don't you always hate being compared to Radiohead? Matthew: I don't really care that much about what the press says anymore. In the beginning, it was a huge shock when I read all the bullshit about us in magazines like Melody Maker. I was worried that my friends would read it and get the wrong idea about me.

Plus, that Melody Maker article makes you seem like a very pompous person. Matthew: Yeah, I know. Even though I'm not really. But now I don't really care what anyone says anymore. I just let them say whatever they want.

This is an interesting question. I laughed a lot when I read this article, but I agree with the journalist who wrote it. When I saw your concert in Lyon, I also felt that you showed many different characters on stage. I thought you showed a different aura, a different side to each song. Do you deliberately play a different character for each song? Matthew: I've only started doing that recently. Last year I was playing every song in the same way, but since January this year I've been more positive on stage, or I've been creating atmosphere with my movements. I think it's because after you play a song over and over again, the way you play it, the whole performance, the way you think about the song changes. I don't know if you can call it character, but it definitely makes a difference. Each song has its own theme, so it's a different vibe. Some songs are very personal and I just can't open up to the audience. In those cases, I close my eyes. I don't want to think about the fact that there are so many people in front of me. So there are songs that are very personal, and there are songs that I share with the audience. But I think everyone has more than one character.

Maybe people don't realise that. Matthew: I think when you're 21, or when you're my age, you're probably going back and forth between those two selves all the time. But I think as you get older and more mature, you find a balance between both of them. If not, then maybe I'll just be one self in a way. But I think you usually learn to balance it out. I think in order to be happy as you get older, you have to strike the right balance.

(Recorded on March 2nd in Tokyo)

Translator's Note: Believe it or not, even though this was published in May 2000, this isn't even the earliest Muse interview done by a Japanese magazine. There's one even earlier still that I'll scan it later on.

Also... "So I thought maybe your friendship was a bit different to a normal friendship." So did we, Journalist-san. So did we... ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

[invisibleraven]

I'ma go with kissing on a plane. Let's go with rukebox.

"Why can't we take a tour bus like a normal band?" Luke asked as they waited to board their plane.

"Well for one we'd kill each other after a few days stuck in a bus," Alex answered.

"For two we're going to Europe," Julie added. "We can't drive to Europe."

"We could if we were the Muppets," Reggie pointed out, then shrunk when the rest of his bandmates glared at him. "Well we could."

"Look, we're doing a European tour," Julie said with a sigh, massaging her temples. "The label is being nice enough to pay for first class tickets there and back, so suck it up and let me enjoy this."

"Yes boss."

However as they boarded the plane, Luke looked paler and paler, going mindlessly to his seat, not really paying attention to Alex immediately settling in for a nap, Reggie exclaiming over all the free stuff, and Julie actually following along with the safety demonstration.

All Luke knew was that he was in a tiny metal tube, soaring thousands of feet in the air with no escape.

"Lu?"

He glanced over to see Reggie, looking concerned. "Y-yeah?' God his throat felt parched, he could barely get the words out.

"You okay babe?" Reggie leaned over, laying a hand on his forehead. "You don't look good."

"Turbulence."

"There hasn't been any turbulence."

"Mi vida...have you ever flown before?" Julie asked, easing his white knuckled grip from the arm of the seat.

Luke shook his head, whimpering as the plane shook for a moment. "We never had the money to fly anywhere, it was all road trips for me."

"Why didn't you tell us?" Reggie asked kindly, offering Luke a juice box so that he could keep his sugars up, because he honestly felt (and probably looked like) he was going to faint.

"Seems kinda lame, being a grown adult who's afraid of flying," Luke admitted.

"Lots of people are scared of flying," Julie stated. "My aunt hates it. But she's worse with boats."

Luke giggled at that, remembering the time the whole Molina family had taken them on a lake house vacation and Victoria screamed and shook during the five minute boat ride to the house.

"We're all scared of stupid stuff," Reggie assured him. "You know I hate thunderstorms, and Julie is petrified of mice."

"They have rabies!"

Luke giggled again, and Julie's ire melted at the sound. She leaned in, pressing a quick kiss to his lips. "You'll be okay."

"And if you're not, we're right here," Reggie assured him, planting his own kiss to Luke's mouth.

"No joining the mile high club," Alex intoned without opening his eyes.

"You're just jealous cuz Willie couldn't come with us," Luke replied.

"Be nice," Julie chided.

"Yes boss."

"How about we see what movies there are until we get the free nuts and hot towels?" Reggie suggested.

"You think we'll get champagne?" Luke asked.

"Not with us being underage," Julie replied.

"The drinking age is lower in Europe," Luke replied.

"Let's get through the first show first," Reggie replied. "Before Andi catches wind of your plans."

Luke whined playfully, but let himself settle back into his seat, finally able to enjoy the flight-even if he did demand kisses for every bout of turbulence they encountered.

Thankfully Julie and Reggie didn't mind, even if the flight was a fairly smooth one, they granted his every request, and Luke wondered exactly how much room there was in those bathrooms for the flight back.

[skylarmoon71]

Harry Wells Earth 2 (Flash) -Oneshot

To be honest you should have suspected something was wrong from the beginning.

You worked for a security company. When you were requested for a job, it wasn’t that strange. Your boss however said the company that asked for your assistance wanted you specifically by name. Which was a little weird. You weren’t a terrible employee. But you weren’t great enough for someone to request you by name. 

Nevertheless, you took the gig. The pay was pretty good. After finding out it was at Star Labs, it sort of made sense. 

The explosion that happened years ago left a lot of people on edge. So of course they would have to raise the price if they wanted anyone even stepping foot in that building. Getting there was easy. While Cisco Ramon was giving you the tour, you kept your eyes open for just about anything. 

By the time you made it to the cortex, you waited patiently to figure out why exactly they needed your services. The lab looked pretty high tech already. So security really didn’t seem necessary.

“Thank you for taking the job. I’m Barry Allen. I own Star Labs now. This is Caitlin, and Iris. “ Barry introduced . They all greeted you with smiles. However, there was another man in the room behind the glass that looked like a medical area. His back was to you, a cap on his head. He was pacing back and forth. 

“It’s nice to meet you all. I’d like to get right to it.” 

Barry suddenly looked a bit unsure. He rubbed the back of his neck. Cisco’s eyes shifted and Caitlin offered a smile. 

“Can we get you anything, a glass of water?” 

You narrow your eyes. 

“I’m alright.” 

The man in the other room finally came walking out and he looked annoyed. 

“Would you all just stop beating around the bush!” He moved his hat, and you took a step back. You couldn’t believe what you were seeing. Even for Central City this was crazy.

“H-Harrison Wells..” 

This didn’t make sense. He was supposed to be dead. Better yet, didn’t he confess to murdering Barry Allen’s mother?

“What’s going on!”

This was not what you expected at all. You were ready to hightail it out of there. 

“Okay, I know this is going to sound crazy but you’re..well you are..” Barry was fumbling over his words. 

“Damn it Allen!” Harrison moves over to you lifting his watch and when the red light begins to blink, you’re weary. 

“You’re a meta human.” The information hits you like a ton of bricks. 

“T-That’s impossible..” 

Barry lets out a sigh. 

“We didn’t hire you for your expertise in security. I need you to help me with my speed.” Barry pleads. 

“Your speed?” 

He nods, and you feel the wind smack you in the face. He’s right in front of you again, this time wearing the red and golden suit that you’ve seen around the city saving lives. This was a lot to process.

From that one action, Barry looked exhausted. He braced his hand on a table and Iris moved to his side. 

“I know this seems crazy. It probably doesn’t make sense, but right now you’re the only one who can help me. We’ve tried just about everything. Please.” You shake your head. 

“I’m sorry but I can’t help you. I’m not a meta, you have the wrong person.” 

They can’t fight the disappointment on their faces. You don’t stick around. You’re practically running out of there. 

Learning the truth was a bit painful. But you knew what you had to do.

 You need to leave Central City.

Most of your family had already left. After the incident your parents practically pleaded that you go with them, but you declined. You wanted to figure this all out on your own. But now, everything is different. 

Being a meta human in this city was a curse. 

In the last four hours, you’ve quit your job, texted your landlord about your lease and bought a plane ticket to New York. 

It’s possible because of the impromptu plans that you might get stuck at an airport for the night, but you could live with that. 

Shoving your clothes into your suitcase, you only pause when you hear the knocking at your door. Your brows furrow as you move over, opening it. The sight of Harrison Wells makes you uneasy. 

“How did you even find me?” 

“That’s simple, on Earth 55 you come from a family of speedsters. Basically I  tracked the address from that universe and made an educated guess.” 

You frown. The more he speaks the less you seem to understand. 

“What do you want?” 

“I was nominated to give you a pep talk.” 

“Are you being sarcastic?” 

“No, I’m serious.” 

You didn’t have time for this. You shut the door in his face. Turning the lock, you head back to packing. At least you try. A portal opens right in front of you, and you want to scream, but you just freeze up. Harry jumps through the portal and it closes right after.

“That was very rude.” 

“W-Wha- Get the hell out of my house!!” 

“Not until you listen. It’s not just the faith of this city that’s in danger. The world needs the Flash.” 

“That has nothing to do with me!” 

“It does and you know it.” 

You swallow. 

“When Allen changed the timeline a few years ago he altered a lot of events. You were one of them. When the accelerator exploded, you were affected, am I right?” Harry’s stare is firmly planted on you. 

It’s crazy that he knows that. 

You look at your feet.

“I was actually running.” You mumble. 

It’s a little unnerving how much knowledge he has on your life. He’s reading you like a book. 

“I didn’t even know about that stupid science opening. I heard it. It felt so close. But when the screams started, it could not have been good. Barely made it two feet away when I was hit. I was in a coma. My brother was the one there when I woke up. He looked at me as if I were a ghost. Doctors didn’t think I would ever come back.” 

Your situation sounds very similar to what Barry experienced.

“I don’t have powers. I’m normal. I’m telling you I can’t help. “ You sound defeated. Harry can understand why. The feeling that you’re letting someone down. He can relate. 

Harry removes his glasses. 

“This isn’t easy, it may even seem crazy. But you have the ability to help. Like Allen this wasn't just by chance. Regardless of what he did, it’s no coincidence that in other universes, you’re a speedster. You have a gift, and you can help Barry with it. You can help this city. You just have to be willing to try.” 

He hopes that this will help you make the decision that you need to. He’d always felt that time after time he kept making the wrong choices. He wanted to spare you from doing the same thing. He can see the contemplative look on your face. He only hopes he’s gotten through to you. Putting on his glasses, he turns, reopening another one of those portals. Just as he’s about to jump through, you take his wrist. Harry pauses. 

“Okay.” 

It’s said so softly. He notices how unsure you still look, and he can’t help but smile. It’s obvious that you’re still terribly scared. It makes sense. You release his wrist, and he takes your hand softly in his. It’s a hold of comfort, one that you actually appreciate at that moment. He takes a step, and you follow, both stepping into the portal.

“I’m just saying, maybe Harry wasn’t the best choice. I know we drew straws but he’s the least emotionally in tune out of all of us. “ You can hear Cisco’s voice from around the corner and you send a smile in Harry’s direction. 

“I appreciate the vote of confidence Ramon.” Comes Harry’s snarky tone. They all turn when they see you. 

“You came back.” Iris says with a smile. 

Doubt seems to creep back in, and Harry gives you another comforting squeeze before he lets go. It gives you the bit of confidence you need to face this. 

“I would like to help in any way that I can.”

Barry’s smile is wide and they all begin to guide you over to the speed lab. 

The Team takes a step back and you stand at the center with Barry, awaiting instructions. 

“Our abilities, they come from the speedforce. The last meta I fought did something to disrupt my electrical connection to it. I can’t access it right now. But it’s still there. I still have my speed, I just can’t use it properly.”

“If that’s the case, couldn’t you have called one of those other speedsters. There’s been like three others that I’ve seen on tv.” 

“Trust me, we tried. Even ones from other dimensions. Nothing works.” Cisco explains. 

“So what makes you think that my speed will help? I-I don’t even know if I really am a speedster. I’ve never been able to use any powers.” 

“Your speed hasn’t been accessed at all yet. So it’s the purest out of all of us. Because your meta gene is still new, it contains the electrical patterns I need to jumpstart my own.” Barry hopes that will make it clear, but even when he explains it, it doesn’t make sense. He can tell you’re confused by the look on your face. 

So maybe he needs another approach.

“Take my hands.” He holds them out. You’re skeptical, but you take his hands. 

“I need you to close your eyes.” 

You follow each instruction. Closing your eyes, you exhale softly, doing your best to level your breathing. 

“Picture the lightning, running through your veins. Like you’re weightless. That feeling you get when you’re moving and everything just slows down. But your heart, it’s still going, still moving.” 

Harry and the others look on. At first nothing happens, there is no change. But his eyes catch a minor spark at your feet. Barry grins when he sees it. Cisco looks very excited. 

“Time is just an object that you have control over. You can slow it down, speed it up. You have the power. The speed.” 

The specs of lightning are becoming more prominent. 

“Is that..” Cisco nods at Caitlin’s question.

“It’s working!!” He’s practically bouncing on his feet. Harry looks proud. 

“I knew she could do it.” 

Barry is wearing a similar look. He can see the energy surging through your hands, all the way to his. 

“Now you’re one with the speedforce. You’re a speedster (Y/N).” 

He doesn’t say those words aloud, and your eyes pop open. You gasp at the electricity that is present in Barry’s eyes. As you look around, your bodies are covered by a ball of golden streaks. 

“Thank you (Y/N).” 

“No problem…” You whisper in awe. 

There might be more to life than what you initially thought.

[garbinge]

Circles

Steve Murphy x Murphy!F!Reader Javier Peña x F!Reader (just flirting) From these August Prompts:  “I think the map is leading us in circles.”

A/N: There's just something about these monthly prompt challenges that I really get such enjoyment out of while also putting myself through the ringer. It's balanced. Enjoy the ride my friends! Word Count: 1.4k

Warnings: Flirting, cursing, and banter. 

Narcos Taglist: @drabbles-mc @narcolini​ @justreblogginfics

“I think the map is leading us in circles.” You twisted the map around in your hands as you and Steve traveled throughout Miami. 

“You sure it’s the map and not the person reading it?” Steve joked as he casually drove.

The map was crumbling against your lap as you frustratingly stared over at him. “First of all, you fucking live here, shouldn’t you know where we’re going.” 

“Yea that’s why we’re here.” Steve was pulling up to the recreation center that had a bowling alley, bar, and arcade all combined into one. “What’s second of all?” He asked you as he placed the car in park and sent a smirk your way. 

“Second of all, calling me stupid means you’re calling yourself stupid.” Your eyebrows raised before you leaned over to grab your stuff that was on the floor of the car. 

“First of all,” he mocked you slightly before getting to his point. “I didn’t call you stupid.” His finger pointed at you. “Second of all, what the hell are you saying?” 

You laughed at him, “I’m saying that you’re my older brother and since you’re practically the one who raised me, my ability to read a map kind of falls to your responsibility and that means you’re shitting on yourself not just me.” 

He stared at you for a minute, trying to wrap his brain around the jumble of words you just said. 

“Who's stupid now?” You smirked and made your way out of the car. 

Steve was quick to follow you and call out to you as he lightly jogged to catch up. “I didn’t call you stupid!!” 

“So why are we here again?” You were leaning to open the door when Steve reached over your head and grabbed it to hold it open for you. 

“Some guys from work are here.” He answered like that was supposed to mean something to you. 

“Wasn’t the whole point of coming back to Miami for a week to take a break from work?” You turned to look up at him, a frown filling your face. 

“Yea, but now when Mom and Dad call me and I don’t answer and then they call you, you can tell them that you’ve met my coworkers and that I’m in safe hands.” 

It was such a Steve comment. Something he would have said when you were kids and he needed you to cover for him. 

“This is who I’m supposed to think has you in safe keeping in Colombia?” You pointed to the table that had one single man leaning slouched against the wall with a glass of some amber liquid resting against his head with his eyes closed. “If I’m going to be lying to mom and dad you’re paying for drinks tonight,” you began to walk over to the table, “and you’re paying for my flight back home.” You were quick to think of things to get out of this deal. 

“Javi.” Steve kicked the chair waking the man up. Not a single drop of alcohol spilled from his glass as he woke up, either luck or the man knew how to hold his alcohol, literally. “And I’ll pay for your drinks but not your flight home.” Steve was staring at you from across the table. 

As Javi came to it, he stared between you and Steve, putting two and two together with the help of knowing he was going to be bringing his sister out. “I’ll buy you a drink.” Javi sat up and offered that up before even saying hi. 

“Beautiful. Javi will buy my drinks and you will buy my plane ticket.” You smirked at Steve, opting to use what you assumed was the man's name to really irck him. 

Steve looked at Javi, he expected the behavior from you, your job as his little sister was to annoy him but he didn’t expect it out of Javi, which, honestly was his own mistake. Steve contemplated telling Javi you were trouble and to be careful but knew he’d make some twisted comment out of it so he opted to tell you Javi was trouble and tell Peña something else. 

“He’s trouble. You watch yourself.” Steve pointed at you again, his job as an older brother was telling you what to do. 

“And you,” Steve turned to Javi and patted his shoulder. “She’s going to run you broke.” 

Javi ignored Steve completely and turned to you as you situated yourself across the table from him. “I’m Javi.” He stuck his hand out for you to shake. 

You introduced yourself back to him, sharing your name as your hand met his for a handshake. “I like my old fashioned poured over ice with a lemon twist, extra sweet.” 

He smirked at that, you giving him your order immediately after introducing yourself. 

“Fitting.” He stared you right in the eyes for a moment before Steve cleared his throat getting both of yours attention. 

“How about I buy the first round and whatever it is y’all are doing, stops.” 

“No promises, but I’ll try.” Javi said with his hands up in surrender. 

Steve glared at you not expecting a reply, his eyes saying enough to you before retreating to the bar.

Javi changed gears, he was still flirty, but it was less in your face. Now it was just genuine conversation that ensued between the both of you. 

“So how long are you here in Miami for?” He asked you as he poured a glass full of water from the table’s pitcher for you. 

“Well, I haven’t exactly bought my flight home yet,” you tilted your head as you explained, “but probably a couple more days. Only came out here to see Steve, it’s been a while since I’ve seen him and I’ve been going through it back home.” 

“Boyfriend?” Javi asked as he brought a cigarette to his mouth. 

You leaned over and grabbed a cigarette from the carton he was holding. 

“Girlfriend.” 

Javi froze and stared at you. “You serious?” 

“No but I had you for a minute didn’t I?” You smirked and grabbed the matches that were on the table and lit your cigarette as he did the same with a chuckle. “I lost my job.” You shared the real reason with Javi, “kind of going through an identity crisis.” 

Javi nodded and exhaled his cigarette before looking back over at you. “That’s rough, I’m sorry. Change of scenery probably will do ya some good.” 

You nodded not really having anything more to say on the topic which allowed Javi to follow up his statement with a question. 

“You and Steve were close growing up?” 

The corners of your mouth turned and a smirk filled your face as you recollected on your childhood. “Inseparable. And he hated every second of it.” You let out a small chuckle before continuing. “Our parents weren’t exactly around too much,” you shrugged, “Steve was.” 

Javi nodded, “You move with him when he left Tennessee?” 

“Fuck no.” The water you had just drank practically being spit out at the thought of that. “I went to New York when he left. I love him, to death, owe him everything but, Miami wasn’t–isn’t really my scene. But he got the DEA gig, couldn’t hold him back from that. I couldn’t stay without him that was for sure, things weren’t that great in Tennessee, country girl like me wanted to see the big apple.” 

“Change of scenery.” Javi nodded as he took in what you said. 

“No, that time was a boyfriend.” You knew Javi would have appreciated that response. 

He did. A small laugh was let out along with the last of his cigarette smoke as he crushed the bud of it into the ashtray as Steve came back with 3 drinks. 

“What boyfriend? Not that asshole from New York?” Steve asked as he placed the drinks down on the table. 

Javi’s head snapped up, “So there is a boy.” 

“Isn’t there always?” You winked at him and went to grab your drink before quickly correcting him. “Was.” Your hand extended up to get his attention. “Not is, was.” 

Javi nodded and brought his drink up to cheers you. 

The three of you now were raising your glasses. Steve spoke up to toast to something, “Fuck assholes.” 

“The one who was and the one that is.” Javi’s glance landed on you as he spoke. 

You smiled right back at him, “And the ones who will be.”

[mearcatsreturns]

i am deeply regretting agreeing to take time off work to go to texas for my aunt’s and uncle’s 50th anniversary celebration/family reunion that i leave for in two days. 

my extended family on my paternal side is. how do i say this. not great. maybe i’m being unfair--it certainly isn’t all of them. maybe i’m autistic and don’t understand unspoken rules, but to me the last few days have been unhinged behavior?

i decided to try to go, because it’s been 3 years since i’ve seen most of them (ie the length of my grad program). for background, when i go, i typically stay at my aunt’s and uncle’s and sleep on a couch in the boathouse or in one of the bunks in the bunk room. i usually help do dishes and things like that since i don’t pay anything. i am not wealthy (especially a couple months out from finishing grad school...i work two part-time jobs and still scrounge), and about half of my family is. going to this was a stretch for me, but i thought it would be good. one of my cousins sent me a text when planning started for the celebration, which said: 

please note that nothing about that mentioned payment or fees, especially since she owns that house. none of our subsequent texts mentioned it. we’re family, i figured i would just help out around keeping things clean, and i bought two nice bottles of wine from my one job that i was going to give her as a guest gift. 

then yesterday, i got a text from one of my other aunts, K (not the one whose anniversary it is...my dad’s parents were catholic. it’s a big family), to me and a couple of other numbers i didn’t know. basically, a “hey, you don’t have anywhere to stay, i found this airbnb nearby. it will costs $2000 for 4 days, and split between 4, that’s $500 each!” i. uh. i was about to throw up. i texted my cousin and was like “just wanted to touch base, i’m staying at your place, right?” 

she replied and said “hey, sorry, we filled the place up! you can probably stay with K!” like??? i told her i’d heard from K, but i couldn’t afford the option she sent me (genuinely, I am taking off unpaid time from work to go here, after buying a plane ticket. I cannot do half my rent for 4 days in Texas in July. that is crazy.) at this point I panicked and called my dad, because truly, I was going to need to cancel if I had to pay something like that. i talked to my dad, and he basically said, “don’t worry about it, we’ll figure something out, but yeah, this is usually why we stay on host aunt and uncle’s trailer across the street...it’s free.” so I texted my aunt K, politely thanking her for finding that place but that I can’t afford it, but my dad was going to help me find somewhere, and said I was looking forward to seeing her (she is not the problem, this is none of her business, and she was doing her best). i was upset, but willing to be like “okay, right, i’m related to a bunch of rich people who want to charge family to stay with them over a holiday weekend,” so i was already less excited, but still ok. i played some video games about it, and i figured i’ll just accept that i’m going to be in some uncomfortable hole for the time i’m there. 

then this morning, I had another text from my cousin. 

I did the heart thing because I genuinely didn’t know how to respond, and I still don’t know where to start. (a) this is so unnecessary, since I’m not staying with her anymore. why did you feel like you had to send this? (b) uh. you should maybe consider mentioning expectations like that when you invite people to stay with you. I did, as I previously mentioned, get some nice wine (and I work at a wine room) as a gift--that, in my experience, has been a pretty decent host gift in the past. (c) putting a vacation on a credit card when you don’t have the money or a pay bump coming to know you’ll be able to pay it off? UNHINGED. poor financial advice, and i’m sure if I’d done that, I’d get “hmm, is that fiscally responsible :/” bullshit. It’s not. I refuse to buy things I can’t afford? like? she then tried to make it better being like “I also have weed :D” and ngl, my first instinctual response (that I kept inside) was “oh, how much were you going to charge me for that? is it by puff or mg?” 

anyway. I don’t know if it’s undiagnosed autism to expect things like financial expectations to be discussed and communicated, or if they’re just being some kind of White Person Way. this isn’t the first time money-related things have happened, but the last time was a decade ago and with an entirely different person (who I have since had a strained relationship with). I have genuinely lost so much desire to interact with most of my family? if this is familial love, I’ll pass and find my own family, thanks. I can’t imagine inviting someone, then charging them for a couch or bed? this is insane, right?

[jeanearhart]

Situation-Ship

Short story following the inner dialogue of a young man in his first (and last) gay relationship.

6086 words

JUNE

Love. We love to love. It’s inescapable, the media is polluted with love, our literature, every social event. First ten minutes at a party and your friend is asking, still seeing that girl? Turn on spotify, hit shuffle, you’ll hear a song about finding love followed by a song about losing it, wanting it, hating it.

We all have been through the ringer in love, love troubles are as common as spring allergies. Sneeze, they say bless you, break up they say I’m so sorry.

I’m a good looking guy, I’ve had plenty of girlfriends; theater girls, sporty girls, an emo chick who drew her eyeliner all the way to her hairline and pierced her own ears with a hot sewing needle.

I’ve had one boyfriend.

My one and only, I met him at a house show in Portland.

Ex-boyfriend, as of now.

Newly graduated from high school, I had no clue what my plans were for the next year. I could take a gap or enroll late, sure I’d be doomed to the nearest community college or trade school, I’d lead a mediocre life, marry an orange skinned blonde and have insufferably Kentuckian children. I’d had this delusion as a kid that I’d be famous when I was older, it lasted up until my sophomore year when despite my pretty face not a single casting audition I sent in received a callback. Sure, I was still in high school, my chances at success were higher if I auditioned as an adult with a real education in acting. It was a shame I wouldn’t be caught dead in drama school, surrounded by wannabes in desperate need of a shower, already so drenched in self-entitlement they miss the point of it.

The house was small, three rooms on the first floor, three on the second. The living room had been converted into a 10 by 10 concert hall, the only indicator of a stage being a thick red rope that separated the band from the mosh pit. As I made my way through the sweaty sea of stoned teenagers and drugstore James Hetfields, I asked myself again and again why I had decided to attend the show.

I hadn’t been since last summer when my ex, the emo chick, dragged me to some abandoned warehouse where the ‘Dickswatters’ abused instruments for three hours while a swarm of underaged kids took acid and mindlessly rammed into one another. I was no different than the others, in fact I got so shitfaced that when I stumbled upon said emo chick blowing a guy in the forest out back I said;

“Wow dude, your lay looks just like my girlfriend, that’s some insane shit,” In complete, honest awe and disbelief. It wasn’t until she pulled off and faced my way, still on her knees might I add, that I realized she was the real deal.

We broke up after that, but stayed friends. She was the only person in Louisville I didn’t find insufferable and her life was always interesting enough that I didn’t need to bother to have one of my own. She never saw it as an issue that I had no friends outside of her, if anything I think she liked it, all of my attention and focus was spent on her problems and her priorities. I was the guy best friend girl’s dream about, laid-back, non-judgmental, and completely uninterested in her sexually.

She was out of town the first few weeks of that summer, she had decided to celebrate her freedom from highschool with a trip to Italy. She took a few friends of hers, paying for all of their plane tickets and hotel rooms with her parent’s money. The first time I’d seen her parents' three-story estate I’d understood her completely. Rich and bored, pretty and neglected.

I think I missed her.

I recognized some of the punks at the show from her instagram posts and the last show I’d been to. They seemed nice enough and no doubt would have let me join them if I’d made an effort, however, I was intimidated by their crowns of hair and heavy jackets. I found a corner to press myself against in the kitchen. Unlike other parties the only way to get a drink at a show was to buy it, make friends, or bring it. I had forgotten this fact, expecting the usual array of intoxicants to be sitting out in the kitchen, perspiring in anticipation of my arrival. Painfully sober and visibly out of place, I kept stiff and pretended to scroll through my phone. Without any intoxicants in my system the music was intolerable, the kitchen was stuffy and hot, I doubted the house had a working ac, an accurate assumption given the trashy state of the kitchen I was standing in. This was where I met him, the beginning and the end of everything I ever believed about myself.

He owned the house.

“Hey, polo shirt,” His voice was just deep enough. I've always found high pitched voices grating, but bass tones were worse. They unsettle me, sound way too out of place. I’ve never seen a man I truly believe looked the part of a bass, so anytime I’ve met a man who’s Adam apple drops that low I’ve been petrified, effectively frozen in fear. I must have given him a stupid look, something torn between awe and fear because the man laughed and pointed at the fridge behind me. “I’m trying to get a drink,”

“Oh sorry,” I peeled away from my spot and stood awkwardly to the side as he opened the fridge and got a beer. He offered one to me as well, which I took, despite the fact I’d never really enjoyed the taste. Too bitter.

“I don’t think I’ve seen you here before,” He commented, not so much as making eye contact. It wasn’t an obvious thing, first he was looking at the fridge, then his drink, and now the crowd that filled his property. It made sense for him not to be looking at me, he had plenty of other things to look at. “I’m Caesar, the host.” He took a long gulp of his beer and I watched as his Adam's apple bobbed at the action. I still hadn’t moved back to my spot against the fridge, I was suspended in time, lagging. “And you are?”

I barely registered the words. “What?”

“And you are?” He repeated, this time with heat. “I’m asking you your fucking name,”

I tensed at the harsh words, still reeling from being approached at all when I’d been completely prepared to spend the whole night standing in the back of the venue with my arms crossed and my head dully nodding to the music. I was going to take some pictures, bathe in the online validation and praise, you’re so hot, then fall asleep to a cult classic so I was only half-lying when I would later tell smart girls I’d seen it.

“John,” I finally replied.

His laugh had a roughness to it, years of smoking tearing up his throat. “You’re kidding, your parents couldn’t think of anything better?”

“My dad’s a christian, I’m named after John the Baptist,”

“I didn’t ask,”

I opened my mouth to retort, pausing when I noticed the slight tilt to his lips. Oh, he was fucking with me. I was so caught up in my own head I forgot this was simply how these kinda men spoke to each other.

“At least I make good pizza,”

He made a face, took a sip of his beer, his Adam's apple bobbed. “What?”

“Get it, uh,” I shrugged, I still hadn’t drunk any of my own beer. I probably would be throwing away a full bottle at the end of the night. “Little Caesar’s Pizza, and Papa John’s, Papa John’s is better,”

Caesar snorted into his drink, averting his eyes from the crowd to peer at me from the corner of his eye. “Really?”

He pronounced his words so clearly that despite the clamor of yelling and cymbal crashing echoing around us I could understand every word he said perfectly. Either he’d won the genetic lottery, or he spent many years in speech therapy. Given his sharp eyes, height, and broad shoulders, I concluded it was the former.

“C’mon,” He motioned toward the living room with his drink and under the kitchen strobe lights his silver rings shone. A snake, a skull, and a die on one hand. A singular dark band on the other. I followed after him into the other room, let him slide an arm around my waist whilst we listened to the music, and protested only once as he dragged me into the mosh pit.

We saw each other often after that, every day of the next two weeks in fact. Caesar was a hurricane, assertive, intelligent, and impossibly stubborn. He insisted on doing everything himself, cooking, cleaning, fixing, paying. Caesar didn’t owe anyone anything, even the government.

“College is a scam,” He told me one day while we were sitting in his driveway, Caesar’s hands black with grease. He’d just changed the oil in his car, I watched his back muscles flex, sweaty and shiny in the glaring sun. His shoulders were freckled with acne that gathered at his chin, obscured mostly by the scruff he’d allowed to grow. “There are plenty of jobs that don’t require a college education, and anything really important you can just teach yourself, everything you’ll learn at an institution will be capitalist propaganda,”

“How do you make money?” I prodded. I used to admire Caesar’s ability to support himself without answering to anybody, but looking back it was actually quite pathetic. Constantly his wifi or power would be out, turned off due to unpaid fees.

“Renting out the house, fixing shit,” Caesar leaned back and tilted his head toward the sun. “It’s really easy, no one knows how much fixing a car should cost, they pay whatever you tell em’ to,”

“Awesome.”

Pathetic.

One of the best things about going out with Caesar was his cooking. He didn’t believe in following recipes, but knew how to make a damn good dish. I left his house early late one Thursday with a tupperware of fried tortellini smothered in marinara. I took it down to my dad’s apartment, a studio situated unbearably close to the train tracks. He couldn’t hear me knock over the wheels slamming into splintered tracks, long overdue for repair, so I took the extra key from his mailbox and let myself in. I’d be worried about someone robbing my father if there was anything to steal.

I found him lying, passed out on his bed, a single mattress on the floor, surrounded by Dorito crumbs and empty bourbon bottles.

“Dad, I brought food,” I sat at the end of the mattress and tapped his foot. He peeled open a crusty eye, looking over the pregnant bump of his beer belly.

“Ah, John, good boy John, it’s so good to see you,”

“Eat,” I nudged his foot again, prompting the man to sit up. He took the tupperware and peeled it open. "Caesar made it,"

"It looks good, is Caesar Italian?"

"No dad," I picked up his empty bottles of bourbon and took them to the kitchen. Vines of rusted cracks branched out beneath my feet, overhead a broken strobe light flickered. The cheap bulb gave everything in the kitchen a yellowish appearance, as if it were molded.

“Itailians are such wonderful cooks,” I could hear the food in his mouth as he spoke. I opened his pantry and tossed the bottles into his trash can, they sounded like wind chimes as they clinked against each other on the way down. “Where is her family from?”

“His,” I corrected. I closed the pantry door behind me and opened his fridge, it was mostly empty besides a few unlabeled takeout boxes and lines of beer cans. “Do you have any water?” I asked.

“Take from the tap, Louisville water is real clean, don’t gotta pay for overpriced plastic,”

The water from his tap always tasted like iron, and occasionally had a faint brown tint to it. “I’m alright,” I replied, leaving his kitchen empty handed. I came back to him already half-way finished with his pasta, he had smudges of marinara across his bulging cheeks that I assume he’d felt around his lips and attempted to wipe away. I studied the ombre lines of spotted red as I continued talking. “I don’t know where Caesar’s family is from, I haven’t asked,”

“Should soon, he could be illegal, you don’t want to be caught up with someone like that,”

I don’t think I would have cared if he was. “He’s not,”

“We have really good genetics you and I, blue eyes, strong enamel, don’t impregnate someone with bad genes, your kids will miss out,”

“He’s a man dad,”

My father’s face pinched. “A real one? Not one of those weird pussy boys you bring around,”

I wasn’t sure how to reply to that one. I wasn’t even sure who he was talking about.

“Your generation is doomed, boys are girls, girls or boys, back in my day we just called em dykes and moved on with it,” He shoveled more of the food into his mouth, little pieces spewing as he preached. “Nothing wrong with being a bull dyke, nothing wrong with dating one either, your mom looked a little like a bull dyke when I met her, real angry,”

I just nodded dully. He took that as a sign to keep talking.

“This boy have a penis?”

“Yes dad, he has a penis,”

“Do you take it up the ass?”

Years of similarly uncomfortable sexual questions had made me immune to the embarrassment of answering them. “We haven’t had sex,”

“But you want to,”

I considered it. Caesar was tall and broad, he had a nice face, nice hands. I’d never slept with a man before, but as far as relationships go we already did everything else associated. We went out to dinner, saw movies, we held hands, shared a bed, held each other while we slept. “I think I do,”

“I think you should, trying new things is good for you, teaches you things about yourself,” My dad finished the last of his tortellini and set the tupperware on the floor beside his mattress. “I’ve participated in sodomy with a woman, it was okay, no better than the usual penetration,”

“I don’t think I needed to know that,”

He laughed, raspy and wet. “You’re a grown man now, you can take it, you’re what, 19?”

“18,”

“18, I remember being 18, best years of my life,” I sat down on the end of his mattress and listened as my father began to recall the tales of his youth. He spent his later teen years working in a factory, he told me, a factory that belonged to the company he later became a higher up in. He told me that was where he met my mother, she was a receptionist, impossibly pretty with a strong attitude. She took her coffee black and didn’t tolerate any disrespect. He told me to stay away from women like that, that if I’m going to marry a woman, marry a real one.

As I walked back out to my car I stopped at the headlights and lifted my chin up to stare into the full moon. The moon has always looked fake to me, too round and picturesque. The lines of its craters are so vivid that as a child I had once tried to climb a ladder and grab it. At 18, I was still just as much of a child, silently I lifted my arm up into the air and hovered my hand over where I could see the moon. As I closed my hand I imagined it crushing and turning to dust between my fingers.

JULY - AUGUST

Caesar and I started hanging out less, he got a new job at some warehouse that had him on from six in the morning to eight in the afternoon every weekday. I still worked at the same grocery store I’d started working at freshman year. I felt a little emasculated when Caesar would talk about his job, lifting wooden panels, crates, and gas tanks seemed a lot manlier than checking out housewives in an apron. I didn’t know what it was about being with another man that made me so determined to reassure myself I was still one as well, maybe I’d spent too many years picturing gay men as skinny twinks in booty shorts and wearing glittering lip gloss. One day while in the bathroom at work I practiced saying gay slang in the mirror. When I cocked my hip and limped my wrist with the work apron on I did look like a real fag. It was a strange concept to comprehend. Did I want his dick up my ass? I didn’t think so, I’d never been interested in a thing like that before. Plenty of other guys seemed to like it, girls even.

I decided to text my ex about it. She told me to meet her at Barnes and Noble that weekend, I agreed.

The ex’s name was Singe, she stood at an unimpressive five feet four inches that she overcompensated for with obnoxious platforms and tall updos. Her hair was 'singed' at the ends, as she liked to say, fading from black at the roots into a crimson red at her ends. I found her perusing the psychology section, carefully looking over each book with narrowed eyes and a manicured finger.

“We don’t take well to shoplifters,” I said behind her, holding my voice an octave lower. She rolled her eyes and slid the book she’d been holding back into its spot on the shelf before turning to face me.

“Hey John, took you long enough,”

“Traffic,”

“I’m sure,” She motioned with her hand for me to follow, an array of beaded crystal bracelets sliding down her wrist at the action. “So you think you’re gay?” She inquired, non-accusatory. In Singe’s circles everyone was gay, genderqueer, polyamorous, it might as well have been a prerequisite to being punk. I knew she’d be the last person to judge me, but I still hesitated to answer, as if a camera crew were going to walk out from behind the bookshelves and expose me for my perverted attraction.

“I still like women, or at least I think I do, I liked having sex with you,”

“Did you? You never seemed as into it as I was,” She replied.

“I was into it, just, I don’t know,” I tapped my fingers against my pantleg. “Wasn’t as into as you in the ‘frequency’’ sense,”

“You’re the first guy I’ve known who was put off by a girl who wants to bone 24/7,”

“There’s other more interesting things to do,”

“Like what?” She led me into Barnes n’ Nobles adjourning Starbucks, sitting us down at a table by the window so we’d get to enjoy the beautiful view of an outlet mall parking lot.

“Movies,”

“Movies are boring, why would I care about fictional lives when I could be living my own?”

I frowned. “There’s a lot more to them than that,”

“For you, I actually get out of house and live my life,”

She had a point.

“So you’re what, bisexual?” She followed up.

“I guess,”

She tapped her long nails against the tabletop, considering. “Who’s the guy?”

“Caesar,”

“The guy who owns the PotStop?”

I didn’t know it had a name. “Yeah, him,”

“He’s really standoffish,” Singe commented. “I don’t see him actually talk to people much. Do you know who he normally hangs out with? Everyone I know knows him but no one I know hangs out with him. Have you met any of his friends?”

“Not yet, why’s it matter?”

She gave me a look, a deadpan ‘are you serious’? “Number one red flag is no friends, either they’re a narcissist too obsessed with themselves to put time into other people or they’re such a dick no one wants to be around them,”

I opted to ignore the implications that had on myself, seeing as my own personal circle consisted only of Singe, my dad, and now Caesar.

“Have you ever done anal?” I asked her.

“A few times, why?”

“Did you like it?”

“Yeah, it’s okay, I wouldn’t say it’s my favorite but I enjoyed it,”

“Do you think I’d enjoy it?”

She laughed. “I can’t tell you whether or not you’d enjoy it John, you have to figure that out for yourself,”

“I don’t want to do it if I’m not going to like it,”

“So don’t do it,” Signe clapped her hands together. “Problem solved,”

I didn’t end up doing it, not anal at least. Caesar and I rarely got each other off and when we did it was strictly hand stuff. He thought doing anything else would make it weird, too gay. I should have realized early on that a guy who doesn’t want to be ‘too gay’ is not a guy you should be in a gay relationship with. For the first time in my life I worried that I was unattractive. Even if I wasn’t super interested in having sex with Caesar, it felt weird that he wasn’t at all interested in doing it with me. I wished at times I was more feminine looking, another first, I thought eventually he’d meet a girl he wanted to penetrate and either cheat or leave. I couldn’t stand the thought that Caesar would leave me.

We only dated three months.

I think back on those three months quite often and I find myself standing in front of two Caesars; the man I fell in love with and the man I dated. The man I fell in love with knew me and understood me in ways no one ever had before, and in ways no one ever would again. He saw through every lie I told, every fake smile and charade. This Caesar loved the parts of me only he saw and took no offense to the many idiosyncrasies I have that were exposed during our while short lived, intimate relationship. This Caesar is deep and intelligent, with good intuition and a drive to be better, do better, that I could respect.

This Caesar, funny enough, didn't exist, and would never exist. Even if one day he grew out of all of his immature habits and actually tried to make something of himself, maybe went to therapy and self-reflected on the way he treated me, the man I dated would never be the man I fell in love with.

The man I dated left me stoned and strung out downtown Louisville with no car and no wallet to hook up with a chick because I, just as I had dreaded, was not fulfilling his needs. His very real, manly needs to get off inside of something. I will admit, he was not completely to blame, he asked for my permission to swing and I, ever eager to please, had said 'batter up'! I had hardly expected him to find a girl that same night, nor did I expect him to abandon me for her on the dirty concrete of the city sidewalk. Too many drinks and a 10mg edible in, I could barely walk. Luckily enough, my tall frame and the bulge in my jeans saved me from being kidnapped or date raped. No, the worst outcome of the night was a thirty dollar bullet to my bank account. Initially the uber was only twenty, but I left a ten dollar tip after he'd been so kind as to even walk my crossfaded ass up to my apartment door.

I fell asleep as soon as I hit my bed, the cheap mattress I’d thrifted had never felt firmer, my decade old sheets softer. I almost didn’t want to get out of bed the next morning, if the source of my tribulations hadn’t let himself inside I would’ve stayed buried in those soft sheets all day.

“Rise and shine beautiful, I brought a hangover cure,” Caesar placed a strange drink concoction on my kitchen island, along with a tupperware of breakfast food.

“You make that or her?” I asked him, my voice was raspy from drunk singing and it added an extra edge to the sharp tone of my inquiry.

“I did,” He opened the tupperware and grabbed a fork from my cabinets. “I didn’t spend the night at her place, just hit it and went home, I hope you like meat in your scrambled eggs,”

“Meat?”

“Chicken,”

“Normally people use pork,”

“I’m not a normal person,” Caesar came around to the side of my bed and nudged my shoulder with the tupperware. “Eat,”

I felt sick to my bones. It’s a much different feeling than feeling sick to your stomach, you feel it through your whole body. It’s a cold feeling, on the edge of nausea, it makes you tense and void. Not sad, not angry, not jealous, sick.

I sat up and took the food from Caesar, it smelled delicious. I wasn’t sure if I could stomach it.

“How was it?” I prodded. He shrugged.

“Okay, sex is sex,”

Sex is sex.

The eggs looked like clay, mushy, impenetrable. I grit my teeth.

Sex is sex.

“I’m not hungry,” I gave the tupperware back to Caesar, who leveled me with an odd look. “Too hungover?”

“Yeah, sorry, thank you for the thought,”

“Of course,”

I thought about that for days. Sex is sex. I’d had sex very few times in my life, strangely enough. You’d think, wow John you’ve dated so many girls, and you’re so hot, you’ve probably done it a million times, but I haven’t. The very few times I did have sex it was awkward and weird, I hardly enjoyed it. Hand stuff with Caesar was good, really good, I genuinely enjoyed it and it made me feel connected to him. It was like him and I were in on this secret, we knew each other's bodies in ways others didn't.

Sex is sex. I began to question if he saw our hand stuff the same way. I began to question if he saw any of our relationship the same way. Was I so delusional as to believe this man and I had this insane, unfathomable bond, unlike anything I've ever felt before, when in reality I was nothing more than an experiment? Not even that, if I was an experiment I'd know, he'd be more curious, want to try more things, no Caesar enjoyed my company, he liked my personality.

He liked me.

I'll never know if he loved me. I loved him, I know that much. I was obsessed with him, the way he wore his hair, the rings on his fingers, the shark tooth necklace that hung over face when we roughhoused and the forgotten skateboard in his garage. I loved his tenacity and when he'd act stubborn, scrunching his face to convey his silent protest. I loved his sharp eyes and soft cheeks, I loved his worn out Doc Martens and his wall of stolen street signs. I loved Caesar. I loved him so much that when he looked at me, really looked at me, I felt like I couldn't breathe.

I was sure during the time we were together that he was my endgame. That we had some connection no one else could understand, that my allowance of his misdeeds was a test of my love for him. I realize now that kind of thinking is idiotic. Real life isn’t a romcom, there is no fate, no destiny. Caesar and I weren’t meant to be, we weren’t soulmates, we were two losers without friends who just happened to be at the same place at the same time.

I’ve never been a good sleeper. It doesn’t help that my dad likes to stay up most nights watching conspiracy theory documentaries and listening to ‘underground’ podcasts. I could hear them from my room, the apartment walls thin enough that even the heavy breathing of dad’s neckbearded idols reached my ears as I searched desperately for sleep.

I started calling Caesar anytime I couldn’t sleep, and soon enough every night ended with the two of us deep in conversation over the glitchy speakers of our androids.

“Would you step on a bird to put it out of its misery?” Caesar asked me one night during an exceedingly more abstruse game of 21 questions.

“No,” I replied. “I couldn’t,”

“I could,”

“I’m not surprised,”

He laughed. “The bird is better off dead than suffering,”

“Did you ask me this just to sound edgy,”

“No no,” Caesar sounded earnest. “I wanted to know your thoughts, why wouldn’t you?”

“I’d feel bad,”

“You should feel worse about letting it suffer, if you really felt bad you’d kill it,”

I shifted uncomfortably in my bed. It wasn’t my fault that the bird was suffering, but it would be my fault the bird was dead if I killed it. There was no certainty that the bird would suffer forever unless I killed it. Why was the first option to step on it rather than to rescue it? In all honesty, the apartment might benefit from having something bright and energetic like a bird. I thought to myself that if the next morning I found a bird with a broken wing or legs that couldn’t care for itself, I wouldn’t step on it, I’d take care of it.

“If you had a pet bird what would you name it Caesar?”

“I don’t know, I’ve never wanted a pet bird,”

“But if you did,”

“Bladee,”

“Like the artist?”

“Yes,”

Naturally. “You’re obnoxious,”

“I’d be boring if I wasn’t,” I rotated onto my side so my hand rested in the palm of my hand and I faced the side of my phone. “Would you rather I named it something like Tweety?”

“No,” I said through a yawn. “But maybe something like Carl,”

“Carl?”

“Or Steve, Miles-”

“John,”

“Yes?”

“A name like John,” Caesar reiterated. “What’s with you and lameass names?”

I didn’t respond to that comment, it was true, I had a lame name. It wasn’t my fault, I didn’t pick it.

“Have you ever considered renaming yourself?” Caesar continued to dig. “Like Singe did,”

“I’m not alternative like Singe is,” I flipped back onto my back. “I don’t see the point, John fits me,”

Caesar grunted in agreement, then began on a tangent about the latest homicide he’d heard about in the news. He echoed the same sentiments I’d heard from other proud anti-fascists our age, not spouting a drop of his own thought out opinion. The line of reasoning he followed wasn’t wrong, it wasn’t stupid, just vague and overused, empty showy protest against a system he didn’t understand but pretended to know better than. I suppose his name fits him as well, if taken ironically. He was the personification of misquoted Caesar, a buzzword finding itself quite often in the wrong place; a politician's shitty speech, a school wall, a teenagers social media bio.

SEPTEMBER

I’ve recently started college, my major is still undecided but for my electives I’m taking Introduction to Film Studies and Spanish.

I enjoy Film Studies, it's easy. You don't have to learn how to feel, just the words to describe it.

The scene before you is dark, a single light flickers, the pole it stands upon is rusted. Beneath the actors feet the ground is moist from the morning's rain and one man awkwardly regards his partner's back pressed against the alley's brick wall with hesitation.

He can feel the ghost of wet brick on his back.

In class he'd describe these details as ominous, foreboding, and dreadful.

The man against the wall lifts his head and laughs, his voice is smoother than is normal; he is drunk.

"I don't like when you drink," Now that the man has spoken it becomes aware to the viewer that he's not a man, no not nearly, he's just a boy.

An eighteen year old boy.

"You're seriously no fun," Caesar mocks. "Weren't you just drinking with me? Fucking hypocrite,"

I looked anywhere but at him. The night was alive, the beating blood of Louisville's punk scene pumping around us, but never touching. "I had one shot, you've had six,"

He didn't digest my comment well, looking as though he might puke up five months worth of built up grievances onto my adidas. "So judgy," He settled on.

"I'm calling us an uber,"

"You're not,"

I didn't reply.

"You know what your problem is?" He lifted his head up, hair askew. "You think you're so much better than everyone else, you're so caught up in your own head you've convinced yourself that you're the only person that matters,"

I struggled to push my phone up and out of the pocket of my skinny jeans. I couldn't be sure if my hands were shaking, not when the light barely reached them.

"Do you even feel anything?"

"Of course I feel things," I pressed hard against the outline of my phone. The corner was caught on my pocket seam.

"You never show it," Caesar shook his head, hair beads rattling against one another. They were new, silver to match his rings.

A skull.

A snake.

A die.

All rusted on the inside.

I finally got my phone out of my pocket and it was heavy. A lead weight in my hand. Beneath the street light shone a glare on the screen that made it difficult to find my uber app.

"Do you love me John?"

I ignored him. Requested two stops.

"Do you love anyone?"

"Would you stop."

Caesar laughed. "Predictable,"

I grit my teeth. "What, what's predictable?"

"You," He pushed away from the wall so that he towered over me. "You're just like every other entitled, emotionally constipated, middle class white boy, it upsets you that I actually want us to feel something,"

"Want us," I echoed.

"Us, I want to feel something together, collectively, connected," He took my free hand, interlocking our fingers. "Don't you want that too?"

"Our uber will be here any minute now," I pulled my hand away from his and stepped back. His dark eyes remained trained on mine, locked into my irises.

"I can see why everyone leaves you, John," I stifled. "You never gave them a place to stay to begin with,"

In a movie scene you can see the ground is wet but you can't feel that the air is humid. You can infer from the blue hues and the main character's shivers that it was cold, but you'll not always be right. There was no shiver, just a violent twitch, as though someone hooked up spark plugs around my big toes. Caesar's pretentiousness was painful, and his snobby, accusatory attitude extremely off-putting. I hated dramatic assholes who pretend they can see right through you, that they understand the world in ways you're incapable.

I put him in the uber when it came and ordered a separate one for myself, let the driver know the second stop was unneeded, but could keep whatever pay they gave him for it.

My ride took me to my dad's, where I didn't bother to peel off my wet shoes, instead just stumbled into his bedroom and sat on the edge of that stained, crusted, rickety old mattress. I crumpled like a paper wad, head in my hands and joints stiff. I stayed there until the sun came up and my father's alarm rang.

He slid his glasses onto his face with sweaty, wrinkled hands, almost dropping them as they journeyed from the bedside table to his bed.

"John," He coughed out. "What are you doing here,"

"I'm breaking up with Caesar,"

"Who?"

"Caesar," I repeated. "The real boy,"

"Ah," My father slapped his lips together, kissing away his morning mouth gunk. "Never quite liked the kid anyways, give it just a few years and they'll have him locked up for one thing or another."

"Yeah," I kept my head in my hands, embarrassed that my dad might see the puddles that had begun to form in my palms if I dropped them. "He wasn't really my type anyways."

[legolasghosty]

Okay I was going to put this in the tags where it belongs... But then I ran out of space. Sorry!!! First off I love this idea so much, your MIND!!!! I would read 50k of this EASY!!! But here are some of my thoughts on a conclusion...

So like a week or two after they've left, (and Julie has definitely not been stalking social media, both to see if they say anything about the song, but also cause... well Luke was really cool before he turned out to be a jerk. And while she's rightfully MAD, she kinda hopes he's doing okay), Julie gets a letter.

It contains a long note, plus a couple of plane tickets and backstage passes to one of their shows for her and a friend cause Alex pointed out that this could be a really scary and potentially unsafe situation for her to walk into alone.

The letter (from Luke and handwritten by Reggie) contains an apology for miscommunication (which Julie scoffs at cause dude you stole the song) and then an explanation that he never planned to use it without her permission and that she would totally be credited even if she was just writing it. He also says that he definitely screwed up and he was so so sorry. But pleasepleaseplease come to this show and he can explain everything.

Plus notes from Alex and Reggie promising that they're not going to try and pressure her and that they'll pay for everything if she does decide to come. But being stupid boys they don't leave contact info, and the return address is to a city they've already left. (Which Julie definitely only knows because of overhearing some execs talking about it while she was working and not because she's been spending a bit too much time on the SC and Luke's social media accounts.)

She debates over it for like a full week, cause like... 1, this could definitely be a bad idea safety wise, and 2, she isn't sure if she wants to give Luke another chance. But Tia and Flynn (her best friend) point out that the week or so when she was writing with Luke was like the happiest she'd seemed all summer. Or maybe longer than that. And how upset she's been since she overheard them working on the song. So she owes it to herself to at least get some closure.

So she and Flynn get on the plane to somewhere in Canada. They're both very startled to see a taxi with Julie's name when they get out of the airport. Cause they hadn't called it and they hadn't managed to contact the guys directly to tell them they were coming. But the cabby has a note from Alex promising the girls that it's safe and they covered it and it'll take them to their hotel. (Because yes, Luke fully did pay for a cab to go pick them up even if he had no clue if they were on the plane or not.)

Insert hotel debacle because Julie had booked a room at this small economy hotel but the driver seems to think they're going to one of the nicer places in town, cause that's what the guy who paid for it said. And they kinda argue about it for a minute, but eventually Julie and Flynn get out cause the guy won't move. (Both cause the person who paid said this was the destination but also probably a bit cause racism and sexism unfortunately, he won't listen to the girls.)

But then Dante, who is one of the guys' handlers, is waiting for them in the lobby and checks them into a room and explains that it's all covered by the band. Julie is like, "Just out of pocket?" and Dante is like, "What no, we have a whole thing for bringing in collaborators. Actually getting you squared away has been a lot easier than most of the collab people I have to deal with cause you don't also have your own private security detail and all that jazz."

Julie: *Confusion*

But their room is really nice and Flynn is like, "well it's not like they can actually force you to sign anything or whatever so might as well take it." And it's late so they crash.

Julie gets up before Flynn the next morning and heads down to the continental breakfast (which is wayyyy more elaborate than she was expecting cause she's not used to staying in fancy hotels) and is still like half asleep, and ends up running into an also half asleep Luke. And then they have a very awkward half conversation cause neither of them expected this.

Both are fully stumbling over everything before Reggie appears(being wayyy more awake cause he's the only morning person there), and is like, "Sorry, what Luke is trying to say is that we're glad you came, and maybe join us for breakfast? That was we can explain what's going on?"

Julie is like, "Fine, but no serious talk until I get through at least half a cup of this coffee." Reggie laughs and agrees, along with a comment that she sounds like Alex, who is currently huddled at a table in the corner with his own caffeine. They sorta chitchat for a bit, and then Luke is like, "Okay, so here's the deal..."

Comes out that while yes, he totally should have asked her before showing it to the guys, he wasn't thinking at all about releasing it or officially recording it. And it kept driving them all nuts anyways because it sounded like it was missing something. But also their manager heard it and loved it and had started hinting that it should be not only on their next album but that it should be one of the singles released ahead of it.

They'd all been like, "No way, not unless Julie is okay with it," but then she was avoiding Luke and they had to leave for Australia and it just got into a whole mess. At which point Alex jumps in cause Luke is starting to ramble and not make sense. He says that hands down, they're never recording it without her express spoken and written permission, and that she would get writer's credit(and payment) if it did get released.

Reggie then adds that they're pretty sure what the song is missing is her though. And if she was okay with it, then they reallyyyyy wanted to have her record it with them (with a hint that maybe it wouldn't just be a one time thing). And then Luke jumps back in and adds that the gig they're playing that night is a venue that is known for being a spot where bands try stuff out. A new song that hasn't been released/recorded yet or a new instrument or... a new person.

Insert more serious conversation and stuff and Flynn comes in at some point, but Julie ends up being like, "Okay let's find a studio space or something and see if this works at all." And they do and it's AWESOME!!! And semi turns into a lil jam session and they're all loving the vibe. So Julie ends up performing it with them that night (anonymously though cause she isn't really in the mood to have her entire life suddenly thrown up on social media). And the crowd goes WILD.

After the show there is definitely a massive band hug and Luke frigging gets down on one knee and asks Julie to be his writing partner, at least sometimes. She says yes! More group hugging!!!!

And by the time the song drops as the last single before SC's next album comes out, Luke is ECSTATIC to be able to introduce her as both his writing partner and his girlfriend. And she has some kind of credit on like half the songs on the album.

Those are just my thoughtsssss, feel free to ignore meeee!!! Sorry this got so long!!! But I love this idea so much!!!

just thinking about an au where Julie works for her Tia's housekeeping company. they have contracts with one of the prominent labels in LA

it's a summer job maybe?

but she's getting the hang of dusting, cleaning glass, collecting trash and recycling, restroom maintenance, breakroom scrubbing, the works

when one day, one of the higher ups at the company seeks out her Tia for an unorthodox tasking

They need someone to go to an apartment and clean it up ASAP

Tia selects Julie because she knows she can trust her to work unsupervised as well as she can get the T-E-A later after the workday is over.

Once inside, it's got the musty smell of a place that hasn't been entered in a while and there is a light layer of dust on everything, including a very nice sound system connected to a high-end combination cd/tape/turntable with impressive library of cds, records, and the occasional tapes

Deciding that she doesn't have to work in silence, and whoever lives here won't be back before she's gone. she picks out a record to jam out to while she cleans, then throws open the windows she can and gets to work. She washes the linens, dusts, scrubs the bathroom, dusts, wipes down the kitchen, dusts, and when she finishes with all of that she can vacuum!

As she dusts in the living room, there are guitars on the wall and she can't help but notice 2 are missing

when one record ends, she switches it to something new, excited by the selection whoever lives here has curated

it's honestly hard to pick what's next but then in the CDs, down in the S's, she notices a rare gem from the music world!

They have Sunset Curve's first ever EP

It's a no brainer, she puts the CD into the tray and hits play as she picks up the rag she was using to wipe out the refrigerator. The guitars sound out the beginning of Now or Never and she's leaning inside the fridge, the french doors splayed open as she sings along to the song when a loud THUD startles her out and THERE IS A MAN and she is YELLING, and then he is yelling

and that is how she met Luke Patterson of Sunset Curve, freshly returned from their european summer circuit, as she explains to Flynn later

Once they'd stopped yelling, she had apologized, rushed to turn the music off and explained that she was almost done and to "please, settle in and pretend i'm not here. I will be gone in 10 minutes"

and he had, looking dead on his feet, probably from the time change (also very stunned from hearing a wrecking ball of a voice singing his lyrics from inside his fridge, but she doesn't know that) and then she was gone.

time passes and she keeps working the normal duties from the contracts at the company, only once did she see Sunset Curve and she did an about face and took an alternate route to the task she was doing.

but then Toby gets tendonitis or something and now Tia needs someone to cover the part of the building that features all the studios for the different bands in LA that are signed to the label and it has to be someone trustworthy because they might see or hear music that CANNOT be leaked or the whole cleaning service loses the contract. So trustworthy niece gets picked

Given a schedule each week of what bands will be in and when (ish) she is able to clean unobtrusively for the most part

It's the end of the day and she just needs to gather trash from the rooms that were used that day when she gets a bit thrown off by the set up in SC's studio. Everything is pushed to the edges of the small room and a keyboard is set up front and center.

Looking for where they'd moved the trash can, her eyes keep flicking back to the keyboard and she can't help brushing her fingers over the keys gently before she leaves. Only for someone to be in the doorway, making her jump!

It's luke and he apologizes for startling her but she is in "oh crap oh crap don't bother the clients" mode and so she apologizes and skidaddles out of there

and then and then

Suddenly on the schedule of when bands will be in, there is a request for her to clean SC's room at a specific time during the lunch hour that day. and when she arrives, the rooms is well, not spotless, but cleaner than it should be and there is a note on the keyboard saying to have fun for an hour maybe

and it keeps happening?

julie starts taking luke up on the opportunity to play around on the piano

and then suddenly luke is there but like "don't mind me, keep doing your thing!" and she very much does her own thing but that is grilling him about what is happening annnnnnnnnnnnd

they get closer as time passes

and eventually it becomes helping luke with a song which then becomes working on a new song together

and then excited about the song, luke shares it with the guys and they begin workshopping their instruments into it and Julie happens to hear it happening and thinks that Luke just used her for the music and stole the song they'd been working on for his band

so she stops showing up during that hour, instead working in a room somewhere else where he can't find her

annd she avoids him in the hallways, always turning and going the opposite direction if she sees him or the band

and finally Toby's arm is doing better and can come back to work so she is quick to relent the studio section back to them

Tia notices she doesn't even hum while working anymore and then one day she is cleaning a conference room, and

The door opens behind her. Reggie and Alex walk in. She can't run out, so she just keeps wiping down the windows.

"Did Luke do something wrong?" It could be just his friends trying to help a guy out but there is steel in alex's voice that lets Julie know that they will 100% be on her side if she told them Luke did anything royally stupid and offensive.

"No."

"Oh...okay. Do you think you'd want to write with him again?" the question is unsure. like alex doesn't know if he should even ask it.

Now Julie is mad. "I'm not paid to write songs. I'm paid to clean. I don't have time for this."

"a shame. That was a killer song you two wrote" Reggie hesitantly says.

"yeah. I heard you guys playing it. Hope it does well on your next album" she fails to keep any of her anger out of her voice. and since she doesn't want to get fired for fighting the labels talent, she grabs her supplies and leaves out the secondary door.

and then the guys realize that Julie may have a misunderstanding about what's going on with the song she wrote with Luke

but before luke can fix it, SC has to travel again, this time to Australia and then Canada.

so it's at least 3 weeks before they are back in LA

I don't know how this ends. How does Luke make things right with Julie? Any ideas? Would love to see your thoughts.

[hookingminor]

isn’t it strange? - nico hischier

a/n: this took so long to finish and once again not sure if I even like it but I will perhaps make a bonus epilogue to post later if I get inspired <3 if some things seem vague (re: family dynamics and details like siblings and parents) it’s because I wanted to make it as ambiguous and universal as possible, though this does center around a relatively close-knit family on the reader's side

word count: 12.7k (good god y’all)

warnings (18+): smut (unprotected), minor alcohol mentions, wedding antics, close family dynamics

teaser / part one

-

Things were awkward to say the least when you arrived at the large house your family had rented for the week.

It was awkward when Nico picked you up to take you to the airport, your favorite coffee and breakfast sandwich in hand when he greeted you at the door. As always, he turned up earlier than expected, leaving you to invite him in while you scrambled to collect the rest of your things.

The drive had eased some of the tension since you had nearly half an hour to chat on the ride over. A portion of the time was spent catching up on the last month though you both kept details vague, but most of the conversation centered on your family and the itinerary for the week ahead of you since you wanted Nico to be prepared.

Nico had met your immediate family many times before over the course of your relationship since he chose to spend holidays during the season with you and your family because he couldn’t make trips back to Switzerland with hockey going on all the time, but this was the first time he would be meeting your whole family: all the nieces and nephews, aunts and uncles, grandparents and cousins, everyone extended. It was a week sure to be filled with intrusive questions about your relationship and future together.

By the time you had your bags checked, Nico surprised you with upgraded first class seats from the coach ones you had purchased all those months ago.

“I asked you on this trip as a favor,” you quipped when he flashed the tickets before you with an amused smile that you did not return. “You shouldn’t be spending any money on this. Or me.”

“Who said this was for you?” He smirked. “I’m used to a life of luxury on private team planes. I don’t want to spend the next four hours with a kid kicking the back of my seat and you hogging the armrest.”

The tone of his voice let you know he was joking, but you half believed the excuse.

“Plus, you’re going to have to deal with your family for the next five days. I think you deserve to have at least a few hours of comfort before all this goes down,” he added after a moment.

“You’re too kind for your own good, Nico, you know that?” You replied with an agitated huff, taking the ticket with your name from his hands. Who were you to refuse a first class ticket you knew was nonrefundable?

“You did say that was one of my most lovable qualities.”

“And sometimes most infuriating,” you grumbled. “I’m paying you back for this later.”

“Yeah, yeah. Sure.” Both of you knew full well Nico would never accept a repayment.

The flight got delayed an hour due to air traffic, and you hated to admit you were extra thankful for the first class seats as you sat and waited for the runways to clear when suddenly Nico grabbed your right headphone to pop it into his own ear.

“What are you listening to?” He asked when the podcast started back up.

You waited a few moments and allowed the audio to play where the hosts where in the middle of describing a gruesome murder. “True crime,” you stated when they finished their story.

Nico never had the stomach for all the horror and gore you were fascinated with, though he tried valiantly to get into the same interests as you. More times than not it led to terrifying nightmares or unwanted paranoia or tenuous nausea.

“I always hated these,” Nico said, but he made no move to remove the headphone while the story continued on.

“That’s because you scare easily and get nightmares,” you chuckled. After the third time Nico woke up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night after watching a horror movie with you, you declared him unfit to watch any more (something Nico was eternally grateful for.) He would do anything for you, and if that meant sitting through awful movies and documentaries that scarred him, he would do it, but he was glad he didn’t have to.

“Nightmares were never so bad when I woke up next to you.” Nico let his eyes fall shut after the plane settled into a cruising altitude.

“Speak for yourself.” The corner of your mouth tugged into a smile. “You were always sweaty and clung to me like a koala.”

Nico’s own lips quirked up at the mention of his clingy bedroom tendencies but said nothing more, and within a few short minutes he was fast asleep, which was another quality you envied him for: his ability to pass out whenever and wherever.

-

You were grateful it was well into the evening by the time you made it to the rental home. The hour-long taxi ride gave you some time to unwind from the plane ride and figure out some last minute logistics before launching yourselves into a busy week. And it helped that you weren’t bombarded at the dinner you expected to be at but sadly had to miss.

Your parents greeted you at the front door, tackling you both in hugs before your father went to handle the luggage while your mother squished Nico’s cheeks and made comments about how he needed to eat more.

Nico wooed her with that dazzling smile of his that had her heart melting every time, complimenting her on her new hairstyle and giving her a big hug. Your dad clapped him on the shoulder in one of those fatherly squeezes, commending him on the past Devils season. Before you brought Nico home, your father never dared to follow New Jersey Devils hockey like any respected person would, but Nico easily converted not only your dad, but your entire family into Devils fans.

They traded some commentary on the playoffs currently going on as you entered the home before your mom showed you to the room you’d be staying in and updated you with the arrival times of your siblings the next day.

The conversation didn’t last long considering it was almost ten in the evening and they wanted to give you time to settle in. Plus, it was past their bedtimes as middle-aged adults and they were more interested in getting some sleep themselves than catching up with you right now.

“Are you sure you’re okay with being here?” You asked after your parents left, lounging on the bed while you waited for Nico to finish up in the bathroom.

“Of course I am,” he replied, flicking off the light switch before slipping under the covers. “I like your family. They always make me feel welcome.”

“That’s because everyone’s in love with you,” you chuckled. “You’re, like, every parent’s wet dream.”

Nico laughed, having heard you say some iteration of that same phrase multiple times over the years you dated. It was insane how much your parents loved Nico. Every time you brought him home, he stole the show. Your little cousins flocked to him like moths to a flame, and all the guys loved being able to discuss sports with a professional athlete even if your family wasn’t a hockey one. He had a stomach the size of an elephant and could eat his weight in food that your aunties made, and he was an even better complimenter and flirt. Your older brother adored him and your younger sister fawned over him. Hell, even the grocer at the local supermarket asked you periodically how Nico was doing when you came home to visit.

There wasn’t a single person he couldn’t win over. Both in your family and in life. He was just that perfect.

“Besides, having your mom’s cooking at least once this weekend will be worth all of this,” he added after a moment.

“You say that when you’re so clearly the favorite here.” You slid under the covers and pulled them up to your chest.

“What can I say? Moms love me.”

Everyone loves you, you thought.

“Goodnight, Nico,” was what you said instead, rolling onto your side and away from Nico. You hoped that if you didn’t have to look at him, your mind could forget that he was right next to you, but it was a fruitless attempt. Not when his body was denting the mattress just a few inches away and you could practically feel his heat radiating across the distance.

“Goodnight, Y/N,” he replied while settling himself deeper into the sheets.

The situation gave you flashbacks of the end of your relationship when you were still sharing a bed but acted like you were strangers. A pit settled in your stomach at the memories of Nico coming home late and crawling into bed without so much as a goodnight kiss and where you pretended to be asleep so you didn’t have to ask him about his day.

You pushed the thoughts aside and burrowed yourself deeper into the bed. If anything, maybe you could come out of this weekend as friends. You could only hope for the best.

-

“What’s for breakfast?” You asked, entering the kitchen where your mom and dad were already bustling around cooking.

Nico followed in behind you while you peered over your mom’s shoulder at the stove where she was flipping chocolate chip pancakes. Your lips turned down in a frown, but you didn’t say anything.

Turning around, you spotted freshly cut strawberries in a bowl on the counter, and another glance in a different direction showed turkey bacon slices resting on a plate. All of the dishes were Nico’s favorites.

“Is there anything for me here?” You scoffed teasingly when you saw your dad poaching eggs in a pot just how Nico liked.

“You’re not the guest here,” your mother replied with an eye roll. “We have to be good hosts.”

“Right. It’s not like Nico’s stayed with us multiple times and knows what to expect.”

“Oh hush, you know you’ll eat it anyway,” your mom said.

“Would’ve preferred waffles,” you mutter under your breath, which earned you a light hit with the nearby dish towel.

“This is all wonderful. Thank you so much. You guys didn’t have to go to all this work,” Nico stepped behind you, pulling you back into his body before you started arguing with your mom.

“And that’s why he’s my favorite,” your mom gushed with an affectionate pat to Nico’s cheek. “Help yourself.”

You rolled your eyes at your mom’s blatant favoritism, but Nico only smiled down at you and wiggled his eyebrows in amusement. He knew your parents loved him, arguably more than they loved you, and he was by far the favorite significant other between you and your siblings.

Your mom smacked your hand when you tried to plate your food first, reprimanding you to let Nico go first, who stood grinning and on the verge of laughter at your put-out face as you waited for him to finish.

“Now you’re just being an ass,” you said, snatching some bacon from Nico’s plate because he thought it would be funny to take them all.

“Careful,” Nico whispered as he leaned in closer, “or I’ll tell your mom you’re being mean to me.”

It was too early in the morning for your stomach to be filled with butterflies at Nico’s close proximity, so you teasingly shoved him to the side to put some space between your bodies. You were only given a short reprieve before Nico joined you at the table and pressed his thighs flush against yours underneath the table.

You tried not to think about his thigh against yours or the jokes and stories he shared with your father or the way he helped himself to all the extra leftovers your mom insisted on giving him because he didn’t want to hurt her feelings. And you especially tried not to think about how your heart rate sped up when Nico reached up to wipe a smudge of jam at the corner of your mouth.

Yeah, it was going to be a long day and an even longer week.

-

When you first agreed on Nico accompanying you back home, you both decided that the less time you spent lying to your family, the better. It was hard to avoid spending any time with them due to the fact that it was a family wedding, so when the opportunity came up to run some last minute wedding errands, you jumped to volunteer yours and Nico’s time.

While you loved your family, the day had been full of a lot of interacting, and tomorrow would be even more taxing when the rest of your extended family arrived. And then your brother and sister stopped by to catch up with everyone, and you were faced with another onslaught of questions about when you and Nico were finally going to settle down.

“If you’re waiting for permission, you know you already have it,” your brother had joked, clapping Nico on the shoulder with a laugh.

It didn’t help that Nico was absolutely incredible with your brother’s kids, tossing them in the air and letting them hang from his back like he was a human jungle gym. His ever-lasting energy devoted to playing with your niece and nephews only had your sister-in-law nudging you with her elbow and commenting on just how good Nico was with kids.

“He’ll be a great dad in a few years, huh?” She smirked. Laura loved Nico because she thought he was good for you and also because every time you brought him around, she always got a few hours of peace while he entertained them. “You don’t even know how excited they were in the car that they got to hang out with Uncle Nico today.”

You laughed at her comment though it lacked genuine feeling. You weren’t sure you even wanted kids in the future, but the remarks about how everyone loved Nico only stung more when you knew you didn’t have him anymore and that he wasn’t yours.

You practically had to drag him out of the house after a hectic lunch when your father asked if anyone wanted to check in on the vendors in town to make sure everything was still in order. Your family was great at asking too many questions and insinuating that they were waiting for Nico and you to get engaged yourselves, and the atmosphere was starting to become stifling.

“You okay?” Nico asked the second you stepped out the front door to take a deep breath.

A hand raised to cup your cheek before you could reply, and Nico met your eyes with a worried look.

“Yeah, sorry,” you sighed. “I just didn’t think I’d feel this bad about lying to everyone. I’m sorry you have to deal with all their dumb comments.”

“I’m okay, I promise.” Nico engulfed your face with both hands now and scanned your eyes for reassurance. “Why don’t we take our time in town? We can say something went wrong so we needed extra time to handle it and we can get dinner or something after so you can have some time to breathe.”

Nico honestly didn’t mind the inquisition from your family. Over the years, he’d become used to their fun-loving and sometimes invasive nature, but he knew they meant it all with love. They cared about both of you deeply, and it was endearing to hear that they still did. It warmed his heart and filled his body with such an intense longing that, for brief moments, Nico would forget you were actually broken up.

Those moments were usually when he caught you laughing with your sister at something and you’d glance over at him for a split second before turning away. Or when your niece would quietly whisper to him to ask if he could braid her hair, to which Laura would reprimand her for bothering Nico but he gladly entertained her anyway. Or when your mother took him to the side to ask about when they’d be flying back for Thanksgiving, and Nico’s initial reaction was to give her an answer instead of deflecting.

He especially felt it now with his hands warming your face as he watched your brows draw together in anxiousness, and Nico knew he needed to get you away from the house as quickly as possible.

“Yeah, okay, let’s do that please.” Your shoulders release some tension on your next breath to calm yourself down.

The drive into town settled your nerves the further you got from the home, and you were feeling more at ease when you rolled up to the flower shop your cousin enlisted for the wedding.

The florist was a lovely elderly woman who gushed over Nico immediately.

“The girls in your family have some real luck with gorgeous men, huh?” She blushed when Nico shook her hand, instantly feeling the charm of a handsome young man.

She ushered you to the back where she had started assembling the table pieces, blue iris and white hyacinth bundles scattered across her workspace. “My daughter will be in tomorrow to help me finish the rest, and we will be there early Saturday morning to drop them off and help set up if you need it.”

“They’re gorgeous,” you complimented, taking one complete bundle in your hands to inspect it. “Really, they’re incredible.”

“Oh, thank you, sweetheart,” the woman smiled, evidently proud of her own work.

She showed you around the rest of her shop after you were sufficiently confident that the flowers were taken care of, delving into the history of the store that she opened thirty years ago with her husband.

A phone call from the dress store had you excusing yourself and stepping outside while Nico finished up inside, and you thanked the lady again for her help.

Nico joined you on the sidewalk after a few minutes, the bell above the door alerting you of his presence as he bid farewell to the florist with a bright smile. A singular red tulip stem was between his fingers, and he held it out for you to take like it was a precious present.

“Ruth thought red seemed like your color,” Nico said. “I agreed.”

“Ruth knows me well.” You took the flower from Nico and brought it to your nose to sniff it.

Nico cleared his throat. “So what’s next on the list?”

“The tailor said the dress would be another hour before we can pick it up, so we should probably check on the cake and catering.”

You ran all over town with Nico, popping from shop to shop and checking on all the orders on your list.

The caterer ran through the list with you three times when you arrived, double and triple checking the vegetarian and special diet options and numbers while simultaneously having you try a few samplers to make sure everything was how it should be: a task that Nico was all too willing to participate in.

The cake decorator had barely begun baking the cake by the time you got there, so there wasn’t much to check in with, though she also had no concerns at the time and even sent you home with a complimentary slice for making the trip out there.

“Last thing on the list is picking up the dress. Emily said she had her final fitting earlier this week, so it should all be good to go.”

It was still early in the day by the time your cousin’s dress was tucked safely in the backseat of the car, and Nico could feel your hesitation behind the wheel when you realized it was time to head back.

“Hey, are you hungry? I’m starving,” Nico said. “We should get something to eat before we go home.”

“My mom is probably making dinner as we speak,” you chuckled, not opposed to the idea of skipping out on family time.

“She’s got the grandkids and your siblings. We’ll just say it was my idea and that we wanted some alone time. You know she’ll never get mad at me.” His lips pulled into a smirk. It was true. Nico walked on water in your mother’s eyes.

“Well, when you put it like that…” A smile slowly spread across your face. “Should we play a round of restaurant roulette?”

“You know me so well,” Nico laughed, already pulling up the list of nearby restaurants into his google search.

Restaurant roulette was something you often played when you were dating and couldn’t decide on a place to eat. It was your own way of discovering new restaurants and also how you made decisions when you were both too stubborn to agree.

Back in New Jersey, you had a list of all local restaurants and would randomly shuffle them and draw a number to decide which one you’d be going to, but in a town you weren’t familiar with, a random google search would have to do.

Nico didn’t show you the phone, viewing the list of places on his own and counting the total number of restaurants before asking you to pick a number.

“One through eleven, which will it be?” He asked.

“Four,” you answered.

Nico smiled wickedly before punching in the address.

The surprised restaurant turned out to be a Western country bar like one straight out of the movies. It was an odd choice of restaurant to be in a town that was most certainly not a small country town, but like every restaurant roulette choice, you embraced it with open arms.

You embraced the grizzly men sitting at the bar drinking glasses of dark liquor and the old, bearded bar owner serving the drinks. You even embraced the sticky booth table with the flickering light above.

The waitress was definitely a high schooler who would rather be doing anything than serving the two of you on a Thursday evening, but you figured she had no choice but to be there if you were going by the way she called the bar owner ‘grandpa’.

The menu, which was surprisingly long given the small establishment, had everything from fried appetizers to salads to steak. “There’s no way they can be doing all of this right,” you commented as you perused. It was nearly two full pages just of food and another full page of drink options.

“What do you think are the safest options?” Nico asked.

“Not the grilled salmon… or any fish option for that matter,” you replied.

When the teenager came back, you stuck to a simple burger while Nico chose a chicken sandwich, hoping that the bar at least had good classic bar food and handed the menus back.

Nico took your mind off your family while you waited for your meals, delving into updates on his family and his plans to go back home in the next couple of weeks.

“Is everyone doing okay? Your mom and dad? Siblings?” You asked.

It dawned on you then that you hadn’t spent much, if any, of your time together this week asking Nico about his life and his family. You’d been so worried and focused on your own issues that you neglected to check in with him.

Whereas Nico had met your family multiple times, you only had the privilege of meeting his when you traveled to Switzerland with him in the summer, and even then it was difficult for everyone to be together with his siblings both involved in sports. There was the rare event of his parents spending a week in New Jersey just last year, and that was the last time you’d heard news about them now that you thought about it.

“Everyone is good,” he answered. “They ask about you sometimes.”

Nico’s family liked you just fine from what you could tell and from what he would tell you. They weren’t given as many opportunities to hover and ask questions like your family did with Nico, but they were always welcoming when you visited. You had a good enough relationship where you would talk to his sister and mother separately on your own every now and then, though that had slowly fizzled out along with yours and Nico’s relationship.

For the most part, though, they only had Nico’s word to go off of when they developed their opinions on you, and Nico never had anything bad to say about you. Even when you were fighting or didn’t see eye to eye, Nico would never bad mouth you behind your back.

The waitress arrived with your dishes in record speed—a perk in ordering in a place that rarely seemed busy—and you were pleasantly surprised by the quality of them.

“I take back every bad thing I said about this place. I would definitely get this burger again,” you announced, polishing off the crisp fries on the side.

“I think this might be the best chicken I’ve ever had in my life.” Nico all but moaned around his sandwich, sending zings through your body at the melodious sound.

“How long are you going to be back home for?” You coughed awkwardly, trying your best to ignore the heat flooding your body by turning the conversation to something mundane.

“Till practice starts up again, hopefully,” he replies, dousing his own fries in an abundance of ketchup. “I already postponed going back because of this new trainer I’m seeing, so I want to stay there as long as possible.”

“You make me feel like a bad daughter because I’m here wishing this weekend was over so I can get back to Jersey,” you chuckled.

“Yeah, but your parents are coming to visit you in a couple months anyway.” His remembrance of your parents annual NJ trip just to see you stirred something inside you. “I get tired of my family when I’m home too. I think everyone does. Too much of a good thing sometimes, you know?”

Boy, did you. There was always a pang of guilt every time you thought about how you didn’t want to be around your family that made you feel like a disgrace or unworthy, so it was nice to hear you weren’t the only one who felt that way.

“Thanks for saying I’m not a bad person,” you said after a moment. “Even though this entire week has been based on lies.”

“But you’re lying because you care about them, so the pros outweigh the cons here.” You weren’t quite sure if you believed that, but Nico always said everything with conviction that you couldn’t help but mooch off his confidence.

“Yeah, maybe.” Perhaps the pros did outweigh the cons in this case, not to mention the lying saved you from unnecessary pity and coddling which was fun for no one, but that small bit of guilt still lingered in your chest despite all your attempts to settle it.

-

With a terrible turn of events, you woke up the next morning with a painful migraine. The few rays of light coming in through the blinds had you turning your face into the pillow and squeezing your eyes shut.

It was a rare occasion that you were overcome with debilitating migraines like this, but when they happened you knew you wouldn’t be moving for the next few hours at the very least. At most, you’d be out the entire day if you didn’t follow the very specific ritual and medications that you finally figured out to cure the headache.

The only bad part about following your migraine ritual is that it was hard to get yourself up to get the things you needed when your head was in splitting pain.

Curling the pillow around your head to block out the sounds of clanging pots in the kitchen, presumably your mother making breakfast, you let out a muffled moan at the overstimulation.

The moan had Nico stirring awake beside you.

Your migraines weren’t so rare an occurrence that Nico couldn’t immediately pick up on what was going on, but it had been months since your last migraine as far as Nico could remember.

“Oh no,” Nico said quietly, rubbing a hand across your back. “Is it your head?”

You let out another pained moan as an affirmation.

Your body was curled into a fetal position and burrowed under the sheets with the pillow wrapped around your head, and Nico kept his hand running softly over the fabric of your shirt in gentle circles for a few moments while he woke himself up and threw himself into mom mode.

“Wait here a minute, I’ll get you a towel for your eyes.”

The sound of curtains rattling against the rod let you know Nico was trying his best to close them despite the fact they wouldn’t completely block out the light. Then he shuffled off to the bathroom to find a washcloth to soak in ice cold water before coming back to you.

“Roll over, honey,” Nico instructed quietly, making sure to keep his voice as low as possible so as to not irritate your migraine further.

With your eyes still pinched shut, you rolled onto your back, and Nico placed the cold towel over your eyes.

“You don’t have any of your pills or stuff here, do you?” He asked, stroking your leg through the blankets.

“No,” you croaked out. “I need my ginger ale.”

“I’ll make a run to the store and get your things, okay? Think you can hang out for an hour?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“I guess not.”

“Then drive fast, please.”

Your mother didn’t blink twice when Nico asked if he could borrow a car to drive to the nearest pharmacy to gather your migraine medication and items you needed. She was mildly worried about your condition since you planned on having family over for a barbecue in the afternoon, but she also knew the best way to cure your migraines was to get you the ingredients you needed.

“Would you mind making her a cup of coffee while I’m gone? Be sure to give it to her with a glass of water too, and she’ll ask for cream and sugar but don’t give her any because she needs black coffee for it to actually help her.” The instructions fell from Nico’s mouth in a hurry, and he shocked himself when he realized that he still knew this small tidbit of you. Knowing you was like riding a bike, Nico thought. He didn’t think he’d be able to forget you if he tried.

Your mom’s eyes sparkled with adoration at Nico’s order. “Should I make her any food?” She was half asking because she did want to help you if she could, but the other half of her just wanted to see what Nico would reply.

He didn’t disappoint. “Not now, no. She always takes some buttered toast with her pills and ginger ale, but I have to go and get that stuff first. I don’t need to get any bread, do I?”

Your mother shook her head, and suddenly Nico felt sheepish. Which he shouldn’t have since your family still believed you were dating, but in all the family events you took him to, he didn’t think he’d ever shown so much affection for you then than he did just now.

“You better get going,” your mother said, smiling at the blush slowly creeping across Nico’s cheeks.

The trip into town and back took forty-five minutes since Nico sped as much as he could without raising suspicion and enlisted the help of a teenage clerk to show him where everything was so he didn’t waste any time looking.

He had everything you needed: cold pack for your head, pills for the migraine, eye mask to block out the light, ginger ale for whatever magical purpose it worked on you when you were sick, and the few obscure snacks you absolutely needed to eat when the headaches hit. Some of your rituals were weird and Nico didn’t think they really helped in any medical sense, but he also knew that if you skipped even one step you’d be out for the entire day.

You hadn’t moved an inch since Nico left, and he found you in the same position with your cold towel no longer cold. The coffee cup was nearly empty on the nightstand, which was the best Nico could usually get out of you since you detested plain black coffee.

“You didn’t drink any water,” Nico noticed and tutted his disapproval while he unloaded the rations from the grocery bag.

You grunted your own disapproval as Nico divided up the proper amount of pills for you to take. He placed the pills in one hand and the glass of water in the other hand, and you took them gingerly, moving as little as possible to swallow them.

“Toast time,” you whimpered.

“I’ll go make it in a minute,” Nico said. He eased the towel from your face and patted your skin dry before sliding the eye mask over your head and then the cold pack on your forehead.

Things started to look up after you blindly ate your toast that you washed down with a glass of ginger ale when Nico gently maneuvered your body until your head was in his lap so he could massage your throbbing temples.

“You don’t have to stay here. You should go help my parents get ready for the barbecue later,” you said. “I’ll probably end up taking a nap soon anyway.” As good as the massage felt, it wasn’t Nico’s responsibility to care for you anymore, and you already felt bad enough for everything he’s done for you this trip.

“Are you sure? I don’t mind,” Nico replied, sending a flurry of butterflies through your stomach.

“Yes, I feel bad enough already. Please go do something more fun than this,” you groaned and attempted to push him off the bed, though with your depleted strength it was a gentle nudge at best.

Nico didn’t put up much of a fight after that, knowing you well enough to understand that you meant what you said and also needed to be alone to recover. It only took a few minutes after that for you to fall back into a dreamless sleep, hoping that when you woke up that this migraine from hell would be gone.

-

Even after years of bringing Nico around, it still baffled you how well he fit into your family. It baffled you in general just how well-liked he was by everyone.

After sleeping off the migraine and chugging another glass of water with pills, you managed to peel yourself from bed to join your family out back. You kept on a pair of dark sunglasses as an extra precaution, and even with the shades shielding your face, you still managed to lock eyes with Nico the minute you stepped outside to greet your mother.

In a motherly fashion, she patted your cheeks in her hands and checked for any sign of distress on your face before declaring you were well enough to fetch more fruit from the kitchen. Across the yard stood Nico, who was currently playing goalie for your tiny cousins’ soccer game, and he flashed you a bright smile at the eye roll intended for your mother.

After grabbing another bowl of strawberries for the patio table, you strode across the grass to check in with your ‘boyfriend.’

“Auntie!” Your niece crashed into your legs before you got within ten feet of Nico.

“Hey, bug.” You scooped her up in your arms and continued on your path.

“Are you going to play with us?” She asked hopefully, batting those long lashes she got from her mother.

“Oh, I wouldn’t want to embarrass Nico by scoring too many goals on him,” you replied, causing her to erupt in a fit of giggles.

“I’ve already scored five on him!” She held up all five fingers right in front of your face.

“She’s on the way to the Women’s National Team, I’m telling you,” Nico confirmed from the goalpost. “You sure you don’t wanna take a shot?” He asked. Then he dove dramatically to the side on a shot by another cousin of yours, easily letting the ball through his side.

There was a cocky smirk on his face, put there to intentionally rile you up as he added an extra eyebrow wiggle. And if it weren’t for the cheers and screams of six kids under the age of ten yelling for you to do it, you would’ve passed. But you were nothing if not competitive and easily swayed.

You set your niece back on the ground and one of the kids kicked the ball over to you. You’d played these silly backyard games with your family in the past and with Nico, and you knew enough about how he played hockey to know he preferred his left side over his right.

By no means were you a soccer superstar, especially compared to Nico who played two-touch with the team before every game, so you banked on him acting predictably.

“I’m not going easy on you,” he said as you dribbled the ball in front of the goal.

“When have you ever?” You quipped with a smirk of your own.

He bent his knees and got into position, which was a funny image considering the goal wasn’t all that big to begin with. You kicked the ball between your feet a few times to get a feel for it before you took off towards him.

His eyes zeroed in on the ball, intently tracking its movements as you went in on the right side. Your foot reared back to kick before you passed it to the left, a move Nico expected and followed easily. At the last second, right when he committed for the dive as your leg swung back, you spun around and kicked the ball back to the right.

With Nico on the ground, you let out a victorious laugh, taking your sweet time in squaring yourself up to take the shot into the open goal.

Choruses of cheers sounded behind you, both the kids and adults from the patio chiming in as you raised your arms in celebration. Nico laughed from his position on the grass, sitting on his ass with arms resting on bent knees.

“You thought I’d go for your weak side, huh?” You asked, strolling over to his hunched figure.

“Nice shot,” he said, rubbing his hands off of dirt.

You extended a hand towards Nico to pull him up, but you underestimated Nico’s pettiness and sore loser attitude because the next thing you knew you were on the grass too and half rolled under Nico’s body.

“Sore loser,” you laughed underneath him.

Nico’s smile was almost as bright as the sun shining above him, illuminating him in a golden halo that had your breath catching in your throat. “You’re a sore winner,” he remarked, poking your side.

The sweet moment only lasted a second longer before your nephew was jumping on both of you, inserting himself in the middle and effectively starting a dogpile of tiny children. One by one they tackled you until Nico was completely blocked from your view, replaced by cherub cheeks and sweat.

“Okay, okay, I think that’s enough for now,” Nico’s voice sounded from above you somewhere, and you got a brief peek of your cousin hanging from his back like a monkey.

Gently, he moved the kids to the side and off of you all while balancing the kid clinging to his shoulders until he could extend a hand to you.

Your cousin jumped off when Nico bent down to help you up, steadying you with both hands while you pushed to your feet. Fingers picked at pieces of grass and leaves sticking out your hair, and you brushed off the dirt dusting Nico’s shirt.

“Are you feeling better?” He asked, removing a smudge from your cheek with his thumb.

Summer always looked good on Nico. The sun did wonders to tan Nico’s skin and always made his brown hair look lighter, and when the light caught his eyes they resembled melted honey.

You cleared your throat and stepped out of his hold. “Much better. Thanks again for everything this morning,” you said. “I’m going to get some water.”

It had been so long since you had Nico’s hands on you, or his attention for that matter, and you momentarily forgot how intoxicating it was to be near him: to have his scent surrounding you, to have his arms around you, to have his eyes on you and looking at you like that. It messed with your head.

“You and Nico are so adorable,” an aunt commented while you helped yourself to a glass of water.

“Thanks,” you replied with a tight smile.

“And he’s so good with kids,” another aunt chimed in.

Nico had started a game of keep away with the kids, acting as the monkey in the middle that they were trying to keep the ball from. “Yeah, he is,” you said, your tone genuine.

More comments about Nico’s suitability came into the conversation, but you pushed them out. It was getting easier with the passing days to ignore them and all their comments because even if you weren’t together anymore, they were all true. Nico was a good person and he did treat you well before everything fell apart. He was good with kids and caring and compassionate. Hell, he’d agreed to this weekend knowing the stress it would put on him, but he did it because he was inherently good.

But damn was it going to suck breaking the news to them in a few months.

-

Emily held the latter still while you stood on the highest rung, hooking the string lights along the wooden beams across the ceiling and looping them intricately per your cousin’s instructions.

“You can do this yourself, you know,” you huffed after her third ‘no, not like that’ order.

“I’m the bride. What I say goes, remember?” She smiled sweetly below you. “Besides, you’ll be the one calling the shots soon enough when it’s your turn. You can get your revenge then.”

The ladder step slips out from underneath your right foot, and you go stumbling downwards. Emily gasps below you while you scramble to find purchase on the metal rungs, clinging your arms around the side and catching yourself on the third step.

“Oh god. Are you okay?” Emily asked, coming to steady you with her hands after you stopped moving.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” you grunted. There was probably going to be a bruise on your thigh after this ordeal.

“What’s wrong? Did I say something?” Emily questioned. She paused for a moment then gasped. “Oh my god. Did Nico bring up marriage or something?”

You couldn’t help but laugh. “No. Not exactly.”

Confusion settled over her face. “What does that mean?”

“Nothing,” you said quickly and pulled yourself up slowly. “Do you wanna hand me the other end of the string lights?”

“What’s going on, Y/N?” Emily held the lights firmly. “Is something wrong with you and Nico?”

You hesitated, biting your lip in contemplation while she waited for a response.

“You know you can talk to me, right?”

And maybe it was the soft tone of her voice or the concerned look in her eyes, or maybe it was the combination of an exhausting week of lies and deceit taking its toll on you, but you broke at her words.

“Nico and I broke up,” you replied, slowly climbing back down until you were on solid ground.

“Broke up when? When did you guys get back together?” She asked.

“Broke up almost two months ago,” you answered. “We didn’t get back together.”

It took Emily a minute to process your words, her mouth opening to respond before shutting again. Her eyebrows drew further together and she crossed her arms. “What do you mean you didn’t get back together? What’s he doing here then?”

“I asked him to come back with me as a favor,” you said sheepishly, averting her gaze.

“Oh, honey,” she cooed softly. Grabbing your hands, she led you over to one of the dinner tables set up for the wedding and sat you down. “Why didn’t you tell us?”

“Everyone loves him,” you scoffed. “I already told everyone he was coming, and it’s not like I can fake a hockey emergency in the middle of the summer. I didn’t want to take any attention away from you with everyone pitying me.”

“Why’d you break up? Did he do something stupid?” Her eyes turned sharp. “Do I need to kill him for you? What did he do?”

“Nothing,” you said. Her eyes narrowed in challenge. “Promise.”

“If it was nothing then why’d you break up?”

“Honestly? I don’t know,” you sighed. “It was like we fell apart, I guess. I don’t know. We just stopped caring about each other’s lives. He stopped calling when he was away from home, and I stopped waiting up for him at night. We stopped going on dates and making time for us. It was like the spark died and we didn’t know what we were doing together anymore.”

“And he still came back? It doesn’t sound like he stopped caring about you if he did that.”

“He’s a good guy. You know him.”

“I do know Nico, and I know he’s a terrible liar. I haven’t seen him upset or uncomfortable once this week being with you. I wouldn’t have even been able to tell you two weren’t still in love.”

“Well, he loves you guys.”

“He loves us because we’re your family,” she pointed out. “What about you? Do you still care about him?”

“Of course I do.” There was no hesitation in your answer. “It’s just—”

“Weird.” You both said at the same time.

“You know, when David and I took a break, I thought we would never get back together. I was twenty and thought I had my whole life ahead of me. And looking back, the space was good for us. I don’t think we would still be together now if we hadn’t taken that year apart and figured some stuff out about ourselves,” she confessed. “You’re young, and sometimes you need time apart from someone to discover what you truly want.”

“This week with Nico has been so confusing,” you admitted. “It’s like he’s the perfect boyfriend from when we first started dating. He took care of me the other day when I got a migraine and helps my mom cook dinner and remembers small things about me. He even went to town with me to run all your dumb wedding errands and didn’t complain. The way he’s been acting this week makes me question why we even broke up in the first place.”

She hummed quietly beside you.

“What’s that look for?” You asked.

“What look?” She smirked.

“Just say what you’re thinking, Em.” You rolled your eyes. “I know you’re dying to give advice.”

“It’s not my place to tell you what to do,” Emily started cautiously, “but I do think he still cares about you.”

“But do you think Nico’s it for me?” You played with the hem of your shirt, pulling at a loose thread.

She shrugged. “Who’s to say? I’d like to think so because I love him, but I also love him for you. I’ve never seen you light up like you do when you’re around him, and he’s always looking at you like you’re the North Star; always somehow knowing exactly where you’re at in a crowded room and always gravitating towards you whether or not he realizes it. Even now he still looks at you like that,” she remarked. “If you guys find your way back to each other, it was meant to be. And if you don’t, he’s not the end of your world. Either way you’re going to be okay. I’m sorry you felt like you had to lie to everyone this week.”

It was your turn to shrug. “It hasn’t been the worst, I guess. Definitely better than dodging everyone’s ‘so what happened?’ questions. Knowing dad, he’d probably lie and say he never liked Nico to make me feel better even though I’m sure he would date Nico himself if he could.”

Emily laughed at that, nodding along to agree with your statement. “If it gets too much, feel free to dip out tomorrow whenever you want. I know everyone can be a lot sometimes.”

You squeezed her hand in acknowledgement. “Thanks, Em. We’ll be fine though. Just two more days, right?”

-

Later that evening everyone had gathered in the barn reserved for the reception, the one you helped set up earlier that day with your family. Save for the tablecloths and centerpieces, everything was in place and ready for the big day tomorrow.

The rehearsal dinner consisted of just your close family for tonight and gave both David and Emily’s side time to mingle and get to know each other before the eventual ceremony while also thanking everyone for their help in planning and setting up for the wedding.

Once the best man and maid of honor speeches were done and everyone had eaten and the rehearsal dinner was finished, more drinks started flowing and a few more impromptu speeches were given. They were nothing scripted or long, mostly just family members extending their congratulations to the happy couple, but you still weren’t prepared by the time the microphone made its way to you.

Nico patted your thigh encouragingly as you stood up.

“Emily was my best friend growing up. She snuck me desserts from the kitchen when I was a kid and taught me how to tie my shoes. She even took me shopping for my first thong when I was in high school and was too scared to ask my mother.” Everyone chuckled while your mom shook her head at you. “She was always someone I looked up to and aspired to be: a successful career woman and a loving partner.”

“I’ve known David since the first time I caught them kissing in the driveway when he dropped her off at Thanksgiving, and Emily gave me five dollars to promise not to mention anything to the family. I was thirteen,” you said. “And throughout the years, I got to watch them grow as individuals and as a couple, and I couldn’t imagine a better man for my cousin. Even when they broke up in college, Emily always told me she’d marry him, and she was right.”

“I’ve been so blessed to grow up with incredible role models and literal couple goals, and everything I could hope to have in a relationship one day is what they have. So congratulations guys, I love you both.”

You felt unexpectedly uncomfortable when your speech concluded, heat rising to every surface of your body as you collapsed back into your seat. Nico’s hand immediately reached out for yours, squeezing reassuringly as the next person took the mic from you. You were scared to meet Nico’s eyes, opting to take a large drink of your champagne before casting him a sidelong glance.

His eyes were soft and full of emotion, a tight smile on his lips as he squeezed your hand again. You okay? His face asked silently, concern etched across his features.

Not in the slightest, you thought, but you managed to send him a tight nod anyway.

“Nice season this year, by the way, Nico,” your aunt gushed after the final speech ended.

You knew it was only a matter of time before someone brought up hockey as it was a popular topic around your professional athlete boyfriend. As far as you knew growing up, your family didn’t even like hockey and two years later they were experts in all things Devils. Well, all things Devils past 2015. Your parents had even called Nico when he was promoted to captain to tell him congratulations.

“You guys are definitely heading in the right direction,” your uncle chimed in.

“Thanks.” Nico nodded his appreciation. “We still have a long way to go, but we just take it one day at a time.”

“Heartbreaking way to end the season, though. Sorry about that,” your aunt sympathized with a frown.

She was referring to all his injuries, which had remedied themselves just in time for the end of the season to roll around, but sadly it wasn’t enough for them to get into a playoff position.

“Not as heartbreaking as Y/N’s year though,” your mom said, causing you to straighten your  spine in defense.

“Damned West Coasters,” your dad huffed. “If they didn’t want my baby, they don’t deserve her.”

Nico sent you a sideways glance, a question in his eyes that he didn’t voice because if there was anything Nico learned in the last few years, it was how to read your social cues. So he played along with the family until he could corner you later.

“Yeah, it was a shame.” He took your hand comfortingly, giving it a reassuring squeeze before bringing it to his own lap.

Thankfully, the conversation didn’t linger on you much longer before your uncle was launching into a different story about something completely unrelated like the annoying neighbor he had that didn’t know how to properly trim hedges or understand property lines.

Nico’s gaze shot back to you briefly, one that you met with a sheepish expression and you understood what he was saying immediately.

We’re not done discussing this.

-

“You should’ve told me.” Nico’s soft voice jolted you back to reality, disturbing the silent night you were taking comfort in.

You escaped the party as quickly as you could to take a breather outside, finding solace in the empty patio porch out back while the party continued on inside.

“What difference would it have made?” You chuckled humorlessly.

A glance over your shoulder revealed Nico standing in the side exit, the door shut behind him and secluding you from the party. His hands were in his pockets as he leaned casually against the wood, tie undone around his neck and hair disheveled.

“It wouldn’t have changed anything either way.” You mindlessly drummed your fingertips on the railing.

The back porch overlooked nothing but vast, empty land, but the real sight you were here for were the stars. In the city, the stars were so hard to see sometimes, but out here in the country they lit up the sky like a million tiny fireflies.

“Maybe not,” he shrugged, pushing off the side to walk over to you. “That doesn’t mean you should’ve gone through it alone.”

He came to a stop next to you at the rail, mimicking your stance identically. “I didn’t even know you wanted to do all that, and I’m not even sure I fully know now what it is you wanted. You never mentioned it to me.”

It was your turn to shrug now. “I didn’t know either,” you said quietly. By the end of your relationship, it wasn’t like you and Nico talked much about what was going on in your personal lives. “Besides, I didn’t think I’d get into the program, and I didn’t. It was some respected company in California that would’ve taken up six months of my time. There was no point in getting anyone’s hopes up. I only told my mom because she always bothers me for information and telling her about the partnership seemed safer than talking about our failing relationship.”

“When did you find out?”

“Mid-April.”

“Why didn’t you tell me? Even when we had all our shit going on I still cared,” he questioned.

“Honestly?”

“Always.”

“I didn’t want to bother you,” you admitted. “I knew you had your own shit going on with the team and injuries, and I didn’t want to add to your stress. It’s not like we were close at the end. It didn’t seem fair to dump my shit on you too.”

You fiddled with a piece of some chipped paint. “And I was embarrassed,” you added. “I put in all that hard work in my application for nothing. They didn’t want me. I was disappointed in myself.”

“Oh, honey,” Nico said. With one movement he took your fidgeting hand within yours.

You still refused to meet his eyes, ashamed of the tears that began welling there. It had been three months since the rejection email came in, and you thought you were over it. You really did.

Nico shifted your body to face his, bracketing you in between him and the railing. One hand tilted your chin up to meet his gaze while the other held your waist comfortingly. Those butter soft eyes of his only made the tears threaten to spill over. This is exactly why you didn’t tell him. You couldn’t handle the pity.

“And now you feel sorry for me.” You let your head fall forward to his chest in defeat.

“I feel sorry you went through that all alone.” He stroked your neck gently. “Had you told me, I would’ve said you’re not a disappointment and you shouldn’t feel embarrassed. From what I heard it was highly prestigious and selective. To be in the final round is an achievement itself. And there’s always next year, right? Other programs? You’re not a disappointment.”

They were words you needed to hear but hated to admit it. It’s one thing when your parents told you ‘oh, well you did your best sweetheart’ because they were obligated to support you, but it was another thing entirely when the love of your life was comforting you.

“Thanks,” you croaked, lifting your head slowly. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”

“I’m sorry I was a shitty boyfriend and that you felt like you couldn’t tell me,” he apologized.

“I’m sorry I was a shitty girlfriend,” you said. “I should’ve put in more effort to fix us.”

“Hey, we were both to blame.” His thumb ran over your cheek in soothing circles. “I miss you though, you know?”

“Yeah,” you sighed wistfully, knowing the feeling well. “I do know.”

“We weren’t so bad together though, were we?”

“No, but we weren’t great either, Nico,” you chuckled. “Remember all the late nights and unread texts and missed dates?”

“I try to remember all the vacations and post-game celebrations and midday movie marathons.” He smiled weakly.

“It wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows.”

“Yeah, but it wasn’t all clouds and thunderstorms either.” His index finger tilted your chin up just the slightest. “Would it be bad of me to say I wanted to kiss you right now? You looked really pretty tonight, and I don’t know if I told you that.”

“Yes.” It came out breathy and didn’t help your case in trying to dissuade him, but you made no indication to move away from him either way.

The telling smirk on his face said he knew what you were thinking. You wanted to kiss him as much as he wanted to kiss you. So you did.

Damn the consequences that would come from kissing your ex that was pretending to still be your boyfriend, he looked too good in his dress pants and baby blue button up with the top two buttons undone, giving you the slightest peek of his chain underneath. You grabbed the back of his neck with your hand and crushed your lips to his.

It was full of passion and urgency, both of you making up for the two months apart and overcome with the emotions the wedding atmosphere brought out.

Nico deepened the kiss with a slide of his tongue into your mouth, claiming you with the force of a man possessed by need. Hands dropped to squeeze your ass. “It’s probably even worse if I suggested we get out of here, huh?”

“Terrible idea,” you confirmed, taking a moment to catch your breath before going in for another kiss. “Let’s go now before someone comes looking for us.”

The short drive back to the rental house was a blur with Nico speeding along the back roads to get home as quickly as possible just in case any of your family members decided to check out of the party early.

You shuffled to your shared room in the dark, bumping into the wall nearly three times on the way there, and locked the door with a click behind you. Walking Nico backwards, you knocked him onto the bed and clambered on top of him in a frenzy while working your fingers on the rest of his buttons.

His hand guided your mouth back to his as you worked on his shirt, shoving it down his arms after untucking it from his pants and throwing it to the side carelessly. The hem of your dress rode up your thighs as you straddled Nico’s lap, shamelessly grinding yourself along the bulge of his pants to pull a pained groan from him.

“We should probably talk about this,” Nico managed to grit out, eyes casting upwards towards the ceiling in agony.

“We can talk later,” you said, tugging the rest of your dress up over your hips to give you unrestricted access to rub your barely covered pussy against him. “I need you so bad.”

Nico was hard as granite under you, and you watched him visibly gulp as he considered his options. The more logical part of his brain knew you should discuss sleeping together before doing it and the repercussions it would have on your relationship, but the reckless part of his brain couldn’t get over how beautiful you looked above him and how good you felt on him.

Future Nico could deal with the fallout. Present Nico needed to be inside you before he combusted.

You raised an eyebrow in question, waiting for his go-ahead.

“Fuck, okay. We’ll talk later.” Your hands immediately went to his belt buckle and zipper. “You’re still on birth control, right?”

You nodded your response, taking his cock out of his pants and giving it a couple tentative squeezes. Nico gripped your hips tightly as he released a loud moan, and you gave him another leisurely pump before rising above him, shoving your panties to the side, and lining him up with your entrance.

Nico guided you onto his length until he was seated to the hilt and your thighs made contact with his. You palmed his shoulders as pleasure rang through your body.

Fingertips dug into your ass when you tried to move. “Give me a second.” His voice was raspy and breathless. “It’s been a couple months, and fuck, you’re tight.”

You tried not to think about him not having sex in a couple of months and the implication that he probably hadn’t fucked anyone since you, but your walls reflexively clenched around him at his words.

Instead, you busied yourself with another kiss, tangling your fingers in his soft locks and taking his slack mouth in yours.

You waited for Nico to shift beneath you to let you know he was ready before rolling your hips forward and off his cock just to sink back down when you rocked back. Synchronous moans left both of you at the drag of Nico’s cock along your walls, and his hands found their home on your hips to help move you the way he wanted.

It’d been so long for you, since you and Nico broke up, that every slide of his cock into you had you spiraling towards that edge in record time; especially when one hand grasped your tit and worked your nipple between two fingers and the other hand fell to stroke your clit in determined circles.

“You close?” He asked, lips brushing against your ear when you leaned down for another kiss.

You gave him a tight nod, eyes falling shut while you focused on the exquisite feeling of him filling you up. Picking up your pace, you bounced harder atop him to bring yourself closer to the edge. A few more thrusts had you cresting that hill, an unrestrained whine mixed with a moan leaving you as you came on Nico’s cock, your walls fluttering and pulsating around him while the thumb on your clit strummed you perfectly.

After your grip on his chest loosened, Nico was flipping you onto your back in a smooth movement, and he hitched a leg over his hip while he pounded you this way. His breath was heavy in your ear as he chased his high, taking only a few more thrusts before he halted and then came inside you.

His moans always sounded so pretty when he came, and mixed with the way he lightly bit your shoulder as he finished, it sparked a second, smaller orgasm to wash over you.

Once Nico came back down, he captured your lips in another kiss; this one softer and slower than your previous ones. Then he slid out of your dripping cunt and rolled to the side in a boneless heap.

You both laid in silence, catching your breaths while you each waited for the other to say something first—to burst the euphoric sex bubble and have reality set back in, but it never came. Wordlessly, you got up from bed and used the bathroom to dress for bed. Nico followed in your steps when you climbed back under the covers and came back shirtless and in a pair of clean boxers before tucking himself in beside you.

Neither of you said a thing as Nico folded himself around your back, nestling himself nice and cozy against you and wrapping an arm around your middle to pull you in deep.

“Goodnight, Y/N,” he whispered with a kiss on your shoulder.

“Goodnight, Nico,” you repeated back, making yourself comfortable in his hold.

‘We’ll talk tomorrow’ was the unsaid conclusion you both came to that neither of you minded. But for tonight, you’d enjoy what you had.

-

Emily stole your breath walking down the aisle, the long white train of her wedding dress catching the red rose petals as she drew closer to the altar. You all raised out of your seats when the music started playing, standing with Nico in a row near the front with your brother and his family on your other side.

The weather was perfect for an outdoor July wedding, the clouds providing just enough cover to keep the heat from becoming sweltering. A long white carpet extended through the aisle that led to a beautiful floral altar overlooking a large expanse of fields.

Nico stood on the edge of the row, giving him a view of everything: the bride, the altar, David tearing up underneath it, but the most important view for Nico was you.

Your skin glowed in the afternoon rays, which also illuminated the pale yellow dress you wore, transforming you into sunlight itself. He couldn’t help but let his eyes flicker back to you despite his efforts to watch Emily walk down the aisle, but nothing compared to how pretty you looked beside him.

He was even more grateful when you were finally seated and you took his hand in yours, resting them both on your thigh. Your intertwined fingers rested comfortably throughout the ceremony, and at one point you even allowed your head to fall on Nico’s shoulder as your eyes filled with tears at their sentimental vows.

Nico produced a tissue he had tucked away for this specific purpose, handing it to you and watching adoringly as you blotted your eyes carefully. Maybe he even took a risk and kissed your temple softly when you were too busy cheering at their walk back down the aisle.

There were a lot of questions unanswered and more problems that needed to be resolved after last night’s slip-up, but Nico was just thankful you didn’t run screaming from him when you woke up in his arms this morning. In fact, you indulged him in a few minutes of conscious cuddling before pulling away to get ready for the day.

And maybe he was seeing things, but Nico swore your stare lingered on him for longer than normal over breakfast pancakes and that you nudged his foot with yours under the table, but he could’ve also been delirious and shamelessly hopeful.

Even at the reception, you sat closer to him at the table than you did the night before, occasionally letting your elbows knock together or letting your thighs brush momentarily. You didn’t shy away from his grasp like you normally did when you mingled with other guests, seamlessly introducing him as your boyfriend to strangers and leaning in closer to his touch. And when Nico pulled you onto the dancefloor, you twirled happily in his arms for three whole songs, whatever awkwardness that had been surrounding you all week was gone for those ten glorious minutes.

“Stop staring at my cake.” Nico laughed. “Just go get another piece.”

After burning off all the calories from dinner, you settled back down for dessert and easily tore through your own slice of cake. And Nico knew you had your sights set on his slice now.

“You took the largest piece. I’m not hungry enough for a whole slice. I just want one more bite.” You batted your eyelashes at him. “Please.”

Nico rolled his eyes but scooped up a chunk of cake on his fork and held it in front of your face. You gladly opened your mouth to take the bite. He watched with heated eyes as you licked the remaining frosting off your lips, and without overthinking his next move, he leaned forward and captured your lips in a kiss.

It was chaste and sweet and only lasted a second before Nico pulled back, the sweet taste of icing now coating his mouth.

“Nico…” Your voice was strained, your eyes downcast.

“Let’s take a walk,” he said, standing up abruptly.

The night was winding down already, a couple people had already left the reception and those who remained were well on the way to getting drunk. You looked around hesitantly.

“Come on.” Nico held his hand out for you to take. “No one will mind us leading a little early. Besides, we have some stuff to talk about.”

“I guess we do, don’t we?” You took his hand and let him lead you away.

Nico gave you the opportunity to say goodbye to Emily and David, but you skipped on telling the rest of your family lest they try to convince you to stay.

The July air had chilled significantly since the afternoon, but it was a welcome cool compared to the stifling air in the barn.

Nico’s hand still held yours as he steered you towards the backyard area, leading you down a cobblestone trail that continued into a thick copse of trees.

“I don’t think this is the way back to the house,” you commented as you traveled further into the woods, the trail illuminated by the occasional lamppost stuck in the ground.

“I figured this would be easier than trying to talk it out at the house with your parents and family there. And I found this cool spot when I was helping your dad set up yesterday.”

The destination came into view just a few short minutes later, a small wooden gazebo in a garden clearing, completely vacant and adorned in hanging lanterns. In the middle rested a large bench.

You both sat on the old bench, close enough to still hold hands but not nearly as close as you were back at the reception. The chirping of cicadas engulfed you from all sides while you sat in silence, internally debating how to address the situation.

“So I was—”

“We should—”

You nodded for Nico to go first.

“Last night was incredible,” he started, glancing down to your intertwined fingers. “For me, at least. This whole week with you has been great, really. Your family, the wedding, you, everything. I wanted to know if it was as good for you as it was for me.”

“Yeah. It was,” you admitted with a sigh. “It has me all different kinds of confused if I’m being honest.”

Nico’s chin tilted down in agreement. “Yeah. I know.”

Another silence filled the air between you.

“I think this week made me realize how much I missed you. How much I missed us,” you said. “And not us at the end where we didn’t even want to be around each other but us before everything went to shit.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever missed anyone as much as I’ve missed you these past months,” he confessed. “What do we do? What do you want to do?”

“I don’t know. We can’t go on like it is now, and we certainly can’t go back to how it was. I don’t know what other option is left.”

“Then we’ll start over.”

“Nico…” you scoffed. “We already know everything about each other. We can’t just start over.”

“Who says we can’t? You said it yourself we can’t exist like this and we can’t go back. The only other option is to start over. It’ll be our version of a do-over,” he said.

“And how would that even work?”

He shrugged. “We start from square one. Start with the dates and weekly phone calls and go on from there. I’ll give it some time before I ask you to be my girlfriend and then you’ll start spending the night. Slowly you’ll infiltrate my apartment like you did the first time by leaving some extra clothes around and bringing your own throw blankets.” He grinned as he reminisced. “We’ll do it all over and do it right this time. We’ll talk when shit gets hard and not let other obligations monopolize all our time.”

Nico lifted his arm to sling it around your shoulder, all the while keeping your hands connected. You leaned into his embrace and rested your head on his shoulder.

“What happens if I want to apply to another program that takes me away from New Jersey?”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we get there, but now that I know that’s something you want, we can work out a plan. God knows I have enough money to fly you back whenever you want, and we’ll always have the summer. It’ll be a temporary problem that’ll require a temporary solution. Past that? Who knows, but we can figure it out.”

“You sound pretty confident for a guy who ignored my text messages for days on end just a few months ago,” you chuckled.

He laughed at your joke and pressed a kiss to your temple. “I’ve done a lot of growing up,” he teased. “But it’s like you said with David and Emily. They needed their time apart, but you always knew they were meant for each other. I think you’re meant for me and maybe that was supposed to be our time apart.”

“How philosophical and romantic of you,” you remarked with a smirk.

“It’s the wedding vibes,” he replied. “And don’t act like you weren’t crying earlier at the vows.”

“Only if you admit they made you tear up as well.” You had seen the slight sheen of tears in his eyes after the ceremony.

Nico elected to ignore your comment. “So what do you say?”

“To starting over?” He hummed in acknowledgement. “You really think we can do it?”

“I don’t know, to be honest, but I think we have a much better chance than last time. And we’ll never know until we try, and I really want to try with you.”

You gave it a moment to ruminate. There was no doubt it wouldn’t be easy, especially since you knew that you did want to leave New Jersey at some point, but somehow even that fact didn’t bring you down. Maybe knowing everything you knew from last time would set you on a better path this time around. And there was no way to know unless you tried.

“Okay,” you said softly. “Let’s give it another try.”

“Really? You want to?”

“Yeah. I do. I want this with you.”

You looked up at him then, gazes connecting and a mutual compromise was reached. One more try.

“Should we get back to the party?” You asked, after a considerable pause of longing stares.

“Not yet,” Nico answered, and then he leaned forward to peck you sweetly. “I wanna spend a little more time here with you. We can count this as our first date.”

[rommahh]

{this show was off the walls. He looked so good. And the energy was just??}

You stood uncomfortably at your flights gate with Harry. After being with Harry for five shows, your anxiety had reached a peak leaving you to be faced with one of your worst panic attacks before the St. Louis show. Harry didn’t want you to feel so much mental pressure so he suggested that you go home, he even bought you a ticket without consulting with you.

Your shoulders were tense as you stood rigid next to Harry. You were beyond upset and sad. You felt like a burden who being sent away to make everyone else feel better.

“Love, it will be ok. I’ll see you in two weeks for the Nashville show.” Harry comments watching your face scrunch up withholding the tears. “I just want you to see your therapist for a few days.”

“I don’t wanna go. It was one panic attack. Ive done fine every other night and on the bus.” You huff not making eye contact with Harry. “You’re just sending me away.”

Harry feels his heart break in two. “That’s not-“

“We are now welcoming our first class passengers.” He was cut off by the attendant. You grab your duffle on the ground, opening your phone to the electronic ticket. You moved to get in the line but Harry was quick to grab your arm to stop you. You couldn’t stop the tears from welling in your eyes at the look of hurt on his face.

“You’re not even gonna say goodbye?” He whispers.

“Why should I? You said it for me when you purchased the ticket without even talking to me about it. I’ll call you when I land, I love you and goodbye.” You snatched your arm away, rushing to the slowly growing line of passengers.

Harry watched in defeat as you trudged onto the bridge that boarded onto the plane. You felt those traitorous tears push past the surface, your feet feeling like they were dragging behind you- wanting you to go back to your heart.

The entire flight home was painful. All hours spent on the flight looking lifelessly out of the window. Harry put you in first class but none of the comfortable perks could make you happy.

It was weird to walk back into your home with no one there walking in with you or even waiting for you. The house was dark and quiet and you felt scared to even be in the stupid beach side mansion all alone. Times like this made you regret moving in with Harry. This house only felt like home when he was there, any other time felt like your own personal solitary confinement.

Hey lovie, hope you’re flight went well. Having groceries delivered to the house for you. I love you and miss you. Xxx H.

You scoffed. That anger from before bubbling within you. He misses you? You left him on read, the pettiness easing the anger.

Harry’s eyebrows shot up at the small read notification under his sent message. He waited a few moments thinking maybe you just forgot to press send. Minutes turned to hours and hours turned into the next day.

You sat at the dining room table watching the waves eat up the sand and pull granules away at a time. Your laptop sat in front of you after you finished a telehealth therapy appointment. A ring sounded from the laptop signaling that someone was FaceTiming you.

Harry’s icon popped up in the corner of the screen. You hesitated before answering. You couldn’t bare to look at yourself in the camera knowing you looked a mess. Your eyes swollen from the sobbing during therapy. Harry thought you looked beautiful nonetheless.

“Good morning baby.” He broke the silence.

“Hi.” Was all you could muster. This wasn’t the two of you. You both would normally fill a space with sound and giggles and now it was just silence.

“How did you sleep?” He asks. He looked as disheveled as you. Hair messy, face red and puffy.

“Fine.” You didn’t look at him, playing with the frayed edges of your Live on Tour hoodie. Harry huffed in frustration.

“Is this how it will be from now on?” He snapped. Your head snapped up out of shock.

“You’re getting at me like somethings my fault!” You snapped back.

“Well, we didn’t leave on the right foot.”

“You sent me away!” You retaliate.

“No, I did not. You had a panic attack before I went on stage. I had to come on stage late because I was consoling you.”

You flinched at his comment and tone of voice.

“So it’s my fault? I can’t control the panic attacks. It wasn’t like I conjured one up for attention.” His lack of response broke you. “Really?”

“No, I don’t think you did it for attention but it’s a lot Y/N. I want to take you on tour with me but it’s a lot for me and you know it’s a lot for you.” He tries. His words hurt though. You’ve felt like a burden your entire life and to feel that way because of the love of your life hurts even more.

“Ok. Um, I have to go.” You choke out. Harry shakes his head, the weight of his words catching up with you.

“I didn’t mean it in that way. I love you and I only want to protect you.”

“Yeah, protect me by sending me away when things get tough. I’m sorry for being a burden Harry.” You hang up before he could get the last word in.

Harry sat on his hotel bed shocked. He doesn’t know how things escalated the way they did. He made her feel like a burden. His body racks with sobs as he thinks of how his love must be feeling.

The day of Harry’s Philly show you felt uneasy. You didn’t like not being with Harry. You got so used to your preshow rituals with him. It hurt to be left out after being so involved.

Harry felt the same way. His regret evident in the way that he couldn’t stop blowing up your phone with short apologies and messages. He woke up alone in the hotel room on the day of a show feeling like utter crap.

His stomach was in knots and his heart couldn’t stop pounding. Normally before a show you both would share a light meal and have small discussions about nothing. You both would take silly selfies together or watch tiktoks. But now it was just Harry.

He pulled his phone out of his pocket, impulsively clicking your contact to face time.

“Pick up, pick up, pick up…” He mutters. He lets out a sigh of relief when your face reveals.

“Hi, Harry.” You murmur, your face squished into a pillow, his pillow because it smells good.

“Hi-hi baby.” He stutters fidgeting in his seat.

“What do you need?”

“I need you. You’re not a burden. I want you here, not there but here. I have a show in a few hours and all I can think about is how you’re not here with me.” He cries. You sit up in the bed, tearing up watching your boyfriend cry. His shoulders shook with the sobs that wracked through his chest.

“Harry, please breathe. Your gonna hurt yourself.” You try to calm him down but can tell it’s not working.

“Come back.” He whimpers.

“I-I think I’m going to stay home until Nashville. We both need a breather from each other and I know I need to see my psychiatrist and probably get some new anxiety medication. Which will take the two weeks to kick in you know?” You reason. Harry wiped his face of tears nodding understandingly.

“Ok. I miss you though. I fucked up horribly by making you feel less than. I know you’re not a burden and I’d do anything for you. The stress of tour is starting to weigh on me and I took it out in you when I shouldnt have. I also thought I was keeping you safe by sending you home, but I shouldn’t have done that. Because we are a team, I shouldn’t be making choices for you.”

“Thank you for apologizing. I understand why you did what you did. You were trying to protect me, I know. I love you Bubby.” Harry felt his world come back together at the nickname, a signal that you two would be alright. “You have a show in like three hours, you need to get ready. Eat some food, drink water please, and I’ll go and scroll through TikTok and send you all of my faves ok?”

“Ok. Thank you for being everything to me. I couldn’t do what I do today if I didn’t have you in my life.” Harry’s sincerity made your heart swell.

“You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me. We will be alright. Now go!” You urged him to hang up the phone. He gave you one last smile before hanging up.

Watching Harry through some Instagram live wasn’t what you had planned for but it felt good to see him. He even wore the outfit you picked out with Harry lambert, the blue and pink paying homage to fine line. You’re heart gushes when he tells the crowd that he’s feeling really happy.

The next day you have another therapy appointment with your regular therapist, you even phone in Harry to join the call. You felt warm on the inside as your therapist reassured that you and Harry’s relationship was on the right path. She even said that you and Harry were meant to be together.

She didn’t have to tell Harry that for him to already know that information. I mean he had the ring sitting in his pocket to prove it.