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pixiemunsons · 2 years

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la petite mort (em)

you have two deep, dark secrets; you've never had an orgasm, and you're in love with your best friend. eddie thinks he can rectify them both.

la petite mort; the sensation of post orgasm as likened to death

(3.7 k words) soft sex, f!receiving oral, reader has nipple piercings and a praise kink, first orgasm, best friends to lovers, protected sex, reader really likes eddie’s rings and tattoos (same girl), no use of y/n or reader descriptions, weed and alcohol use, eddie and reader are in love w each other but also share a single braincell, reader is eighteen eddie is nineteen, no spoilers

this is a combo of two requests which i loved so thank u anons!!

there was absolutely nothing to do in hawkins, indiana.

as you got older, you might reflect on your childhood and teen years and everything you overlooked while you were too busy hating your hometown. the woods that offered endless hours of exploring, the lake in which you swam most summers. the video shop. the arcade. even the shitty roller rink that played nothing but cheesy 70s love songs.

before then, though, right now, your free time was best spent doing exactly what you were doing right at that moment; smoking weed with your best friend.

and listening to him bitch about a girl who didn’t wanna fuck him.

‘i just don’t get what she doesn’t see in me! like, she said i was weird looking.’ his head was laying in your lap as you buried your fingers in his hair, playing with the surprisingly soft strands and weaving tiny braids.

‘i mean, i think i’m pretty hot!’ you looked down to his chocolate brown eyes, and shivered slightly at the way he was already looking up at you. your crush on eddie had been building for years, nurtured by the loving nature of your relationship, and by the time you realised you thought he was cute at sixteen you were already halfway in love with him. and yet, for some reason, here you were. eighteen years old, still pining after the one guy you wanted but couldn’t have whilst he complained that other girls didn’t like him. great.

‘i don’t think you’re the problem, eddie, i think she’s a stuck up bitch.’ you explained, reaching over to grasp the joint from his fingers. you’d both smoked two each already and were pretty high, but he’d insisted on finishing off what he’d skimmed from his supply and well, who were you to say no to some of rick’s primo shit?

’i think she needs to have a orgasm.’ your eyes widened as you choked on the smoke in your lungs, drawing half-breaths. eddie seemed totally nonplussed, as if he’d mentioned the weather or asked about a class of yours. bringing his left hand up to play with the sleeve of your t-shirt, the cold silver of his rings brushed against your arm, and you shivered once more. when eddie had started wearing rings the year before, it had pushed your crush into a whole new realm. they featured in every single fantasy you had; cold rings brushing your lips as he stuck his fingers into your mouth, imprints left behind after he smacked your ass, pushing up against you as he thrust his fingers deep into your-

‘you’re probably right. ‘m sure she’d benefit greatly from one.’ you laughed it off, stubbing the joint out in the ashtray by his bed and trying to play off just how horny you felt. talking about sex was something you had always avoided; the few boys you’d slept with had gotten you nowhere but disappointed, and admitting that you were eighteen and had yet to make yourself cum, let alone anyone else make you, was not a fact you were all too willing to give up. you looked down and let out a shaky breath as your mind ran away; eddie’s shirt had ridden down as he’d turned his face in your lap, and you could see the very edges of ink inside his collar. it made you feel hot under yours. eddie suited this new look so well, and you indulged in staring at him for a little while. you wondered what he looked like without his shirt, when all of his tattoos were exposed. you could feel your mind going hazy, the weed finally taking effect, and you couldn’t help but giggle softly at your own thoughts.

‘what’s s’ funny, peaches?’ he was peering up at you with an eyebrow arched, playing with the skin at the edge of your shirt sleeve, fingertips dangerously close to the curve of your chest.

‘nothin’, just thinking about what you said about her needing an orgasm.’

‘we could all benefit from one every now and again,’ he shrugged, and when you muttered an almost indecipherable ‘i bet,’ against your better judgement, you hoped he wouldn’t hear. but years of listening to shitty cassettes and teaching himself to play guitar from scratched records had given eddie an irritating superpower; he had fucking fantastic hearing.

‘what’d’you mean, “i bet?”,’ he sat up, making quote marks with his fingers around the last two words.

your skin erupted in goosebumps, and you suddenly became very interested in the hangnail on your left thumb, pulling the skin between your teeth. eddie was transfixed on the way your teeth pulled, how your tongue darted out to swipe against the skin there, and he almost forgot that you’d been talking about until you spoke up again.

‘’s not a big deal,’ you whispered. ‘just never happened for me, ya know?’ you were looking hopefully up at him, and then it clicked.

‘you’re fuckin' kidding? no one’s ever made you cum?!’ he almost shouted the last words, and you buried your face in your hands. you could feel your skin getting hot and you knew you couldn’t look him in the eye as you spoke.

‘i-i’ve never done it with someone. or on my own, really, either. i just can’t let go enough to get there, it’s not a big deal.’

eddie wanted to reach out and take you in his hands, smooth your hair back and soothe your embarrassment.

‘it’s nothing to be ashamed of babe, but wow. i thought everyone had had an orgasm.’ you scowled up at his words.

‘way to make me feel better, eds.’ his eyes widened, apologising instantly.

‘i’m sorry babe, i didn’t mean it like that. look, i’m sorry, i’m just surprised is all. you’ve like… been with people, right?’

you frowned again. ‘yeah, a couple, but they’ve never got me there. they think they have, course, but i dunno… never seemed that important. i enjoy sex without it.’

eddie could feel himself going bright red, and he didn’t know what it was; the weed? talking about how much you enjoy sex? the knowledge you’d never had an orgasm? or the fact that you’d had enough sex with other people to know what you liked? he shook his head. of course you’d had sex, you were fucking gorgeous. anyone who you wanted to fuck was lucky. so lucky. so how had they had the audacity to not make you cum? that should be, like, a fucking crime. the more he thought about it, the more irritated he got, until finally, he snapped.

‘how about i make you cum?’

you had reached to take a sip of eddie’s beer, and at his words had spat it out all over yourself. your black shirt was soaked through and he really wished he hadn’t noticed how clingy it was, because it was making this a lot harder.

‘what- what the fuck did you just say?’ you sputtered, and eddie steeled himself, wiping his sweaty hands on his ripped jeans.

‘i mean, we don’t have to fuck. you don’t gotta do anything to me, you don’t even gotta do this. i just think we all deserve to have a really fucking good orgasm, and you said you can’t let loose enough to do it, and i thought maybe because we’re so close you’d trust me to-‘

you flung your arms around him, chests pressed together, and nuzzled your face into his chest. looking up at him with those doe eyes eddie couldn’t resist (he always said yes to you very quickly when you flashed them, mostly because they gave him a hard-on every time without fail) you fluttered your eyelashes, pulling your bottom lip between your teeth (it made him even harder whenever you did that) and sighing.

‘you’d really do that for me, eds?’ you spoke quietly, nervously. really, it was very sweet of him to offer. he wasn’t going to get much out of this - at least, he didn’t expect anything from it - and he’d asked so kindly, so sweetly…

‘of course i’d do that for you, baby,’ he brushed a piece of hair out of your eyes, cupping your face. a new tension had swept the room; you were both so excited the air was crackling. ‘are you gonna let me? need you to tell me you want this. also, i’ve caught you staring at the rings, i know you wanna know what they feel like.’

you hit his arm as he laughed, then leant forward to press your forehead to him. you heard him gulp, and you were glad for the weed you’d smoked, or you knew the two of you would’ve been too nervous to move on each other like this.

‘i’d like that very much, eds,’ you breathed, and that was enough for him.

he pushed you down gently by the shoulders, laying on top of you propped up on his elbows with his legs between yours.

‘you’re so goddamn beautiful,’ he whispered, and then his lips were on yours.

his lips were chapped but he tasted vaguely of the strawberry chapstick he had stolen borrowed from you months back. one of his hands was resting on your lower back, the other on your face as he guided you in the kiss. it was unlike any other kiss you’d had before; they’d always been rushed, tongue down your throat, sloppy. but eddie was taking his time with you, his lips moving languidly over yours, being careful to relax you into it. you almost wished he’d go faster, harder, but your mind was already cloudy from the weed and the feeling of his mouth on yours, and you wondered if it was always meant to feel like this with boys. his tongue probed at your lips carefully, not pushing, and when you finally let it in you felt the hand on your back slip to your hip, squeezing gently. you nipped gently at his bottom lip, and the moan that he pushed into your mouth in response sent you dizzy. suddenly, there was more; he was hitching your left thigh over his hip, creating delicious friction between you and he was tugging at your lip, tongue flicking over the back of your teeth. you couldn’t help the way your hips were moving of their own accord against him, it felt like you were floating above your own body.

eddie’s lips left yours to press against your neck, nipping and teasing down your throat, and you were sure you’d have marks tomorrow.

‘y’can leave marks, eds,’ you whimpered, tugging on his hair in response to a particularly hard bite, ‘can wear a turtleneck to school tomorrow, s’okay.’ he chuckled against your neck, moving his mouth up to a spot just below your ear.

‘don’t want you to hide ‘em, babe.’ before you could ask what he meant, he was sinking his teeth into the spot where his lips sat, a place you knew no jumper or jacket would hide, and you felt almost delirious at the idea of people seeing it tomorrow.

‘can i take your shirt off, baby?’ he asked, bringing you back to earth.

‘god, yeah,’ you sat up slightly to wriggle out of it, ‘take the bra too, shit,’ you moaned, and eddie started to laugh before he got your bra off and the laugh turned to a choke, then a cough, and he felt like he couldn’t get enough air in his lungs.

because you, his beautiful, kind, goody-two-shoes to everyone else, grade-a student best friend had your nipples pierced. and he was looking right at them.

‘fuckin’ hell babe, where’ve you been hiding these?’ he was practically drooling imagining how the silver bars would feel in his mouth, and if he hadn’t been fully hard before he was rock solid now.

‘got ‘em done a year ago, thought they’d look pretty.’ you were whimpering, squirming in the firm grasp he now held on your waist, and you cried out when he reached up to pinch one. ‘they’re real sensitive, fuck, feels like so much.’ eddie flicked out his tongue, bathing your left nipple in his spit before blowing cold air over it, making you tremble and moan out his name.

‘they’re very pretty, baby. i mean, i knew your tits were like, wow, but jesus christ i could spend every day the rest of my life playing with these.’ you laughed shakily, head thrown back for him to scatter kisses down your neck and chest.

‘anyone seen them before?’ he muttered, and you almost thought he didn’t want you to hear him.

‘no, just - shit eddie, i can’t concentrate when you’re playin’ with ‘em like that - just you, no one else.’ you swore you could see his eyes darken as he looked up at you, then latched onto your left nipple with a renewed vigour that had you arching your back, desperate for some friction. one big hand pushed your hips back down, sending a spark of electricity down your back as he manhandled you.

‘stop it, babe, gonna need you to wait there a minute, be a good girl f’me.’

what the fuck

what the FUCK

you couldn’t help the moan that escaped your lips, and your eyes widened instantly, clapping a hand over your mouth. eddie stilled his movements, raising his head so he was eye level with you, a mischievous glint in his eyes. he pulled your hand from your mouth, observing the way your eyes had widened and how your cheek felt hot under his hand.

‘did you like it when i called you a good girl?’ he cocked his head to the side, and from the way you looked up at him, with such desperation in your eyes, he knew he had his answer.

‘no one’s ever told you what a good job you do for them, have they?’ he cooed, smiling down at you as you shook your head.

‘tsk. well that just won’t do, will it baby? i think you deserve to be shown what a fantastic job you’re doing for me, how good you feel in my hands. want me to show you what a good girl you’re being, give you a present?’

you had died and gone to heaven. that’s the only answer to this. eddie was on top of you, feeding into your most desperate of fantasies, telling you he was about to reward you for being a good girl for him. either that or you were dreaming. because he was pulling your jeans down, kissing down your thighs and telling you how cute your panties were, how wet you were for him and oh-

well, you definitely weren’t imagining that. because you hadn’t known what it felt like when someone put their tongue on you, when they licked a stripe from your hole up to your clit and lapped at you so messily you could hear it, but you did now, so surely you couldn’t be imagining that-

‘baby, you okay? you with me?’ eddie’s voice snapped you back to reality, and you looked down to see your best friend, cheeks pink and led between your legs with his shirt off and a slick on his face; you on his face, and you couldn’t help but reach down, wind your fingers into his hair and tug him back to where he had been.

‘eager, are we?’ you could almost hear the smile on his face, and you knew he was trying so hard to keep up the cocky act, but you could see the way his hips were making minuscule movements against the bed and his fingers were going to leave bruises on your thighs with how hard he was gripping them.

‘shut up, you’re loving it too,’ you gasped, and in retaliation he seemed to ramp it up. suddenly, he was two fingers deep in your sopping wet pussy, head thrown back once more as he pressed them into the plush of your inner walls, right against a spot that made your mouth dry and your thoughts spin.

‘eddie, fuck,’ you cried out, and his other hand rubbed your thigh reassuringly. you imagined he would’ve spoken to you in reassurance had his teeth not been wrapped around your clit, tugging just the right way.

‘eddie, think it’s comin’, you were slurring now, and to eddie’s delight, when he looked up at you, you were toying with one of your puffy nipples, bucking yourself up towards him. his fingers were cramping up and his jaw hurt but he wouldn’t, couldn’t stop now, not when you were half riding his face. he lifted up, using his left hand to rub circles on your clit as his other hand fucked into you.

‘relax, sweetheart, you’re doing so good for me, y’can do it baby, just need to let go for me, eddie’s got you, such a beautiful good girl f’me…’ eddie was talking away, bringing you closer and closer to the precipice until you fell over the edge of it, body turning to jelly. you couldn’t believe you’d been so happy to miss out on this all this time, so willing to do this to boys and not have them do it back. eddie was working you through it, kissing your cheeks and your nose and your eyelids and your mouth, letting you ride the aftershocks on his hand.

if you’d been more with it you’d have noticed how he was looking at you; like you were the only woman on earth, like he could never get enough of this, like he’d never leave this bed if it meant he could make you do that over and over and over until you were crying, begging, putty in his hands. you felt like it was lasting forever, riding wave after wave, until finally your whole body relaxed, flopping down against eddie’s bed.

‘so, sweetheart, how was it?’ eddie asked, almost nervous now that the energy in the room had dissipated a little. you were still naked and panting, making no effort to cover yourself up, which he supposed was a good thing; you still felt comfortable around him, didn’t regret what you’d let him do to you. he had half-expected you to leave after, too much for you to do that with him, so when you rolled over and kissed him like your life depended on it? a welcome surprise. even more so when you reached for his painfully hard cock.

‘whoa, baby, you don’t gotta just because i did,’ he sputtered, and you brushed him off, leaning up so you were on all fours above him. you were pouting. fucking pouting.

‘but i wanna. don’t wanna suck you off, not this time at least, ‘m too tired,’ he almost asked what you meant by this time before you interrupted him once more.

‘want you to fuck me, though, eds. please.’

he really hadn’t been expecting to get anything out of tonight other than spank bank material. he was more than happy to get you off then never speak about it again, if that was what you wanted. of course, what he really wanted was to marry you and fuck at least two kids into you, buy a house and live in the suburbs. but for now he’d settle for making you cum on his tongue and maybe, when you weren’t looking, steal your panties. but eddie munson was never one to say no to you, especially not when you were naked and begging, so he pulled his pants and boxers down in one movement before rolling himself on top of you.

your hand went to his cock instantly, rubbing a thumb over the leaking tip.

‘christ, eds, were you just gonna deal with this later?’ you asked, eyebrows pulling together in a concerned expression. ‘you’d have exploded.’

he let out a laugh, kissing your neck as he fumbled about in his bedside drawer. he was naked except for the guitar pick necklace resting on his chest, and you leant up to kiss it, hand still sliding up and down his cock.

‘fuck babe, i was just gonna beat it when you’d gone home,’ he gasped, batting your hand away so that he could roll the condom he’d fished up on himself. he looked down into your eyes, kissing you gently. ‘i’m not gonna last long.’

‘don’t care, just need you.’ you mumbled back, pulling him down into another kiss as he slid into you.

it felt like he was made for you. no painful stretch, no disappointment. he fit in you so perfectly you could’ve sworn this was exactly how it was always supposed to be; you and eddie, eddie and you. every other time with every other boy felt so totally redundant you had no idea why you’d even bothered when you could’ve been doing this the whole time. and when eddie moved, it was more like lovemaking than fucking. his left hand was intertwined with your right on the pillow, his other holding your face as he looked into your eyes. yours was pressed against his hip, guiding him into you gently as you writhed under him.

‘i’ve wanted this a really long time, sweetheart,’ he spoke quietly, honestly, and it was a far cry from the cocky eddie you’d come to know over the years. he seemed genuine. vulnerable. you kissed him again then, trying to pour everything you wanted to say into it as his hips rocked faster against yours.

‘shh, i know eddie, i know,’ you kissed his chest again, his necklace dangling in your face, and you used it as leverage to pull his face back to yours.

‘come for me, baby, c’mon,’ you were whispering against his lips, pressing your hips up against him for the new angle, and he came with a gasp of your name, gripping the back of your neck and kissing you.

when he pulled out, snapping off the condom, he pulled you onto his chest without a word. he was red and sweaty, hair frizzy and lips swollen, and you had never been so in love in your whole life. you traced the tattoo on his chest, new to your eyes, and you hoped you’d get to see it every day.

‘you didn’t get to come again.’

‘that’s okay, sweetheart. you’ll get as many chances as you want.’

‘you mean it?’

‘always, when it comes to you.’

#eddie stranger things #eddie munson oneshot #eddie munson x female reader #eddie munson #Eddie munson smut #Eddie munson x reader #Eddie munson fanfiction #Eddie munson fluff #Eddie munson x you #Eddie munson fanfic #eddiemunson #stranger things s4 #stranger things fanfiction #stranger things smut #stranger things imagine #stranger things season 4

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corroded-chrissy · 2 years

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Invisible String

steve harrington x fem!reader

summary: steve has known you nearly all his life—you’ve been attached at the hip from day one. although falling in love may not have seemed inevitable to the two of you, it definitely was to everyone else.

prompt: can you write a request where steve and his girlfriend are childhood friends to lovers so they reminisce about what cute things the other did when they were kids that fueled their crush?

word count: 4.3k

trope: childhood friends to lovers, memories made in the rain

warnings: swearing, mentions of underage drinking, mutual pining, mild angst but mostly pure fluff, kind of a fix it fic, reader has cherry lip gloss, steve being an adorable child

a/n: @gloryofroses19 sorry this request took me so long to finish! i just moved back to college this week so i’ve been writing here and there where i can, but i hope you enjoy it! hopefully i did it justice.

[requests are open!]

It was a rainy day the first time you met Steve Harrington.

You were just eight years old, the walls of the new house towering and wallpapered, unfamiliar and daunting. Your family had moved to Hawkins a couple short months ago, and you hadn’t been too happy about it. Leaving all your friends behind had been hard, and with school out for a couple more months, you were feeling more than a little lonely.

A summer rainstorm had picked up this particular afternoon, drops drumming rhythmically as you gazed out the window at the rows and rows of carefully manicured lawns and white picket fences. It was shaping up to be another perfectly boring day.

That is, until you saw him.

You squinted out of the window, breath fogging up the glass as you peered out into the street. You almost couldn’t believe what you were seeing. There in the downpour was a pair of blue overalls, yellow rain boots, and a head of the messiest hair you’d ever seen.

A… boy?

To this day, you still don’t know what possessed you to fling open your front door, leaning over the safety of your porch railing to gawk at him.

“Hey! What are you doing out in the rain?!”

“Finding worms!” The boy looked up at you with a triumphant gap-toothed grin, something pink and wriggling in his fist. “You should try it, s’a lot of fun!”

“Aren’t you cold?!”

“No!” He sounded indignant, like your question was the least likely outcome to ever exist. “I’ve never seen you before! What’s your name?!”

You shouted your name across the lawn, and suddenly the gap-toothed smile was back. “That’s a pretty name! Do you wanna come out and play with me?!”

“But you haven’t told me your name!”

“It’s Steve! Steve Harrington!”

“Well I think you’re an idiot, Steve Harrington!” Maybe it wasn’t very nice, but you couldn’t fathom why he’d want to be soaked to the bone, out in the rain by himself.

He didn’t seem to take it to heart. “Don’t knock it til you try it! Pleeeease?“

“Why should I?”

“Because… because if you don’t, you’re a prissy little princess!”

You opened your mouth in shock, too indignant to speak for a moment. “I am not!”

“Then why don’t you prove it, Princess?”

The taunt was there, but you could tell the name wasn’t meant to be mean-spirited. You sigh, take a deep breath, half-punctuated by a nervous laugh. “Okay, okay, fine! Here goes.”

Holding your breath, you step off the safety of the front porch, instantly feeling your clothes get drenched.

You found you didn’t care, at least not really.

It’s incredibly vivid, the way you remember playing outside with Steve for hours that day—jumping in puddles, chasing after frogs, getting muddier than either of your mothers would approve of—long after the afternoon thunderstorm had ceased to a harmless evening drizzle. The sunset had broken through the clouds as you chased each other around his dewy yard, painting a rainbow across the once-gloomy sky.

After a long while, you both sat on Steve’s porch, giggling and out of breath. You remember being so excited to learn you would both be in Mrs. Thompson’s class at Hawkins Elementary. You remember the way his eyes shone as you swapped stories, dreams, and favorite slushy flavors (“Nuh-uh, blue raspberry is way better!”)

Most of all, though, you remember his blue overalls, his yellow rain boots, and his slightly cheeky gap-toothed smile as he asked, “So… still think I’m an idiot, Princess?”

You let out a very undignified snort, elbowing him good-naturedly in the side. “Just a little bit, Harrington. Our parents might actually kill us, but… I had a lot of fun.”

Somehow, his smile got even wider. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Me too.”

At that moment, Steve’s mother swung the screen door open, lips pursed, arms crossed, the perfect picture of displeasure at the sight of how messy you both were. “Steven Harrington. Get inside. Now.”

Steve looked like he wanted to protest, but thought better of it, instead offering you the tiniest smile. “I’ll call you tomorrow?”

You knew this meant he’d probably be grounded. You mirrored his apologetic expression, stepping forward for a quick hug. “Okay. G’night, Stevie.”

It might have been the light. It might have been the embarrassment from his mother’s sudden reprimanding. It could have been a lot of things, but for a moment as you pulled back, you could have sworn you saw him blush.

“G’night, Princess,” you heard him mumble, and with that you were left alone on the front porch.

You had made a friend. Warmth bloomed quietly in your chest as your mother ushered you hurriedly inside, scolding you with a voice laced with exasperation and concern. Maybe Steve had been right, though. Despite how soaked you were, you didn’t feel cold at all.

Of course, you’d both developed nasty colds the next day. Even that didn’t stop him from wanting to talk to you as promised—your mother overheard you giggling into the receiver for most of the day, listening as he complained and cracked jokes through sniffles and sneezes.

After all this time, you still gave him crap for making you go out in the rain with him, even though he insists he “didn’t make you do anything”.

Looking back at it, though, you wouldn’t change a thing.

Steve’s favorite memory of you was a bit different.

It was May, and he’d just turned sixteen. You were getting ready to go to Tammy Thompson’s birthday party. He was up in your room with you, like most evenings, blasting Blondie’s newest hit from your record player.

It was your way of rebelling against your mother, Steve noticed, who had very loudly told you there were to be no shut doors in her house when a boy was over. You had just rolled your eyes at her. “It’s just Steve, mom!”

Over the past several years, Steve had become a part of your family. He knew your mom adored him. It was evident in the way she spoke with him, invited him over for dinner or gave him soft, lingering hugs she knew he needed.

But it was May, he’d just turned sixteen, and she knew better than anyone that you’d both grown up since your first meeting.

Steve, in particular, had shot up like a weed, his arms and shoulders filling out ever so slightly. His voice dropped a good octave or so, and you still managed to give him plenty of shit whenever it squeaked or cracked. Gone were his days of missing baby teeth and wild, messy hair (and he made sure you were the only one who knew about the magic behind Farrah Fawcett spray).

And you—well, you’d become something else. Steve couldn’t remember when exactly you’d gotten so—

“How do I look?”

He turned toward the sound of your voice, about to tease you about taking so long, but whatever he had been about to say died in his throat.

—beautiful.

The dress you were wearing brought out your eyes and emphasized the curve of your waist. The sleeves were ever so slightly puffy, and as he took in the swoop of your hair and the gentle curl of your eyelashes, he found himself at an utter loss for words.

“Hello? Earth to Steve?” You waved your hand in front of his face. “Ugh, is there something in my teeth? Does the dress look that bad? I knew this wasn’t a good color on me—”

“Hey, that’s not it at all,” Steve cut in, trying not to appear as flustered as he felt. “Quit putting words in my mouth, dummy. You look… like a princess, Princess.”

“You could have just lead with that, idiot,” you mumbled, but you were smiling, the gloss on your lips catching Steve’s attention. He found himself wondering what it would be like to—

No. No no no. You were his childhood best friend, for Christ’s sake, and friends didn’t imagine what other friends’ lipgloss might taste like.

“Can’t let your head inflate too much,” he teased. “You might get a boyfriend and forget I exist.”

“Oh, please,” you scoffed, spritzing on perfume, “even if that did happen, you can’t hog all my attention, Harrington.”

I wish I could.

“Are you ready to go yet? I swear, girls take five million years to get ready—”

“Shut it or I’ll tell everyone at the party your hair secrets.”

“You wouldn’t!”

“Oh, I would.” You grab his hand to help him up. “Let’s go!”

…

You'd only shown up half an hour ago, and Steve could tell you already hated this party.

To be fair, as parties went, he wasn’t having the best time either.

Everyone was clustered in Tammy’s dark basement, a flask of something was being passed around, and to top it all off, every girl in the immediate vicinity had their eyes on him. Whispers and giggles were traded behind carefully manicured hands, and Steve couldn’t help but smile as he observed a hint of a scowl come over your face.

Unfortunately, things took a turn for the worse when Tammy decided on a game. “Let’s play spin the bottle!”

Steve would find out later that both of you wanted to go home right then and there. Stomach in knots as he shot a glance at you, he cautiously went to sit by your side.

Tammy grabbed his arm. “Stevie! You have to go sit with the boys, silly. You gotta give some of the other girls a chance, you know,” she simpered, batting her eyelashes.

Steve had never had a particular problem with Tammy Thompson, but right now she was working his last nerve. He settled for shooting her a tight-lipped smile and pulling his arm from her grasp. “Yep, got it. Thanks.”

The moment her back was turned he met your eyes, making an exaggerated gagging motion. His stomach twisted further as you erupted in silent laughter. Fuck, it was unfair how pretty you were.

Two circles were slowly formed, and the game commenced.

Years later, Steve still remembered how wildly his heart was thumping in his chest. You periodically exchanged glances with him, but as he surveyed the group of girls, he found his eyes returning to you again and again.

The empty coke bottle Tammy had chosen suddenly spun to a stop—pointed at him. He looked at you, wider-eyed than a deer caught in the headlights. He felt his hands began to sweat, and he had to wipe them against his jeans. The girls’ side was suddenly a wild flutter of activity.

Yep, he was definitely fucked.

Tammy reached out and spun the bottle again, time seeming to slow as he saw your eyes dart from the bottle to him. He had no idea what you were thinking. For the first time he wondered how he could kiss a girl that wasn’t—

“Oh, shit! It’s King Steve and the princess!”

—You.

The room erupted into chaos, and for a moment Steve just sat there dumbly. For what seemed like the first time in his life, he couldn’t read your expression as the other partygoers circled around you, cheering you on.

“Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!”

He watched as you hesitantly scooted in his direction, forcing yourself to look up at him.

“We don’t have to do this,” he blurted out before he could stop himself. “Say the word and we can go back to your house instead. Or literally anywhere else.”

Why, then, did something in him hope you wouldn’t listen?

He was surprised to look in your eyes and find a light, a spark that burned so brightly they practically glowed in the dark. “I…” you hesitated for a second, biting your lip in a way that made Steve want to come even closer.

Turns out, he didn’t have to.

After a second or two more, you took his face in your hands, closing the gap and urgently pressing your lips to his.

Steve practically melted into a puddle, and it was all he could do to keep himself upright. Obviously, he wasn’t completely inexperienced when it came to kissing—after all, he’d told you about the few awkward fumblings under the bleachers or in the school locker rooms—but he was absolutely sure that he’d never felt anything like this.

Your lips were soft, warm against his, and—cherries. He didn't have to wonder about that anymore. Your lipgloss tasted of cherries. He could smell the perfume you’d put on earlier, and something sweet, something entirely unique to you. Something about this—kissing you—felt so natural, so right to him, like he should have been all this time.

He was left in a daze as you pulled back, but his reverie was short-lived as he watched you turn and push past the other partygoers, running out of the basement.

“Princess—wait!”

He was up on his feet in an instant, taking off after you. He was up the stairs out onto the porch in a matter of seconds, Tammy’s screen door slamming shut behind him.

…

At some point during the party, the heavens had opened up above Hawkins. The torrential downpour was at once mesmerizing and terrifying, water running in rivulets down the street. Steve figured you couldn’t have gone far in a party dress while soaked to the bone.

Turns out, after eight years he knew you pretty well.

He found you in the treehouse you’d built in your backyard together one summer, all scattered nails, wooden planks, and blue raspberry slushies. You were both getting a bit too tall for it now, but it still held his weight as he climbed up.

The first thing he caught sight of was your dress, absolutely drenched. Your hair was wet and tangled, and you were curled up in a ball, face hidden, shoulders shaking. Steve couldn’t tell if you were shivering or crying, but either way the sight of this side of you was a painful squeeze to his heart. “Hey… you okay? You ran off there pretty suddenly—”

“Go away, Steve,” you’d managed to hiccup. You’d definitely been crying, then. Steve resisted the urge to reach out for you, instead settling for a position on your other side, knees bunched up in a way that normally would have looked hilarious.

“I’m not going anywhere. Tell me what’s wrong.”

You’d dared to tilt your head up enough to meet his eyes. “What’s wrong is I ruined everything, Steve. You’re supposed to be my best friend, and I kissed you. You probably hate me, and you never want to speak to me again and—”

“Hey, hey. None of that,” Steve murmured, reaching out to wipe your cheek despite himself. “You didn’t ruin anything. I’m still your best friend, and it’s going to take a hell of a lot more than a kiss to get rid of me. Pinky promises to be friends forever are binding contracts, I’ll have you know,” he added, relief washing over him as the smallest twitch of a smile appeared at your lips.

“You could never do anything to make me hate you. I mean—I know you better than anyone. I’ll never forget that day you came out on the front porch and yelled at me for being an idiot. That was all you had to do for me to know I needed you in my life. I knew I’d end up caring about you more than anyone or anything. And I still do now.”

He’d swallowed carefully, raking a hand through his damp hair. “And hey, if it helps… you never have to kiss me again. Since, you know, apparently it sucked so bad that you decided to run away.”

“Hey, shut up. You weren’t bad,” you’d chuckled, elbowing him gently, but your worryingly dull eyes had grown a little brighter. There’s my girl, Steve couldn’t help but think.

“That was sort of the problem, actually," you continued, thinking out loud. "I kind of got lost in the moment, but I snapped out of it and freaked out because I remembered it was you I was kissing and I just... didn’t wanna fuck things up, because you mean a lot to me. You were the first person who ever made me feel like I belonged in Hawkins, and I don’t think I could stand it if I lost you over something as stupid as spin the bottle.”

You glanced away from Steve, looking like you were building up the courage to say something more. “And, for what it’s worth, I… enjoyed kissing you. A lot.”

It was all Steve could do to look at you, hope and disbelief clashing in his mind. “You… you did?”

“Yeah.”

You smiled, a real smile this time, and Steve thought it might have been the most radiant thing he’d ever seen. “And I think I want to do it again.”

That was all Steve needed to hear before he closed the space between you once more, his lips soft and gentle on yours but always, always wanting. He kissed you like he’d never get to kiss you again, like he was starving for you, burning your taste, your touch into his memory. His hands came to rest behind your back as the rain fell harder outside, but at this moment he knew nothing but bliss, your treehouse a quiet sanctuary from the storm.

It was with reluctance that you finally came up for air, foreheads touching and giddy smiles on both of your faces.

"If I'd known that this was how your first high school party was gonna go, I would have dragged you to one a lot sooner," Steve remarked, and your beautiful, slightly wild laugh was music to his ears.

"I'd've let you drag me to one sooner, I think. So..." you trailed off, looking a little embarrassed. "What does this... mean?"

"What does—oh. Oh." He hadn't really thought about that yet. He was on the threshold of something with you, he realized, something new and exciting and utterly terrifying. But for you, he would take any risk.

"I'd love for us to be more than friends. Obviously, I'll still be your friend, but..." he took your hand in his, impossibly warm despite the chill from outside. "The thing is, I like this. I like you. Just promise me we'll still be friends no matter what happens."

"I promise." There was no hesitation from you now. "No matter what happens, I'm not going anywhere. Not now, not ever. To be honest, this kind of scares the shit outta me, but... I'd love for us to give this a shot."

Steve felt as if his heart might burst, and he pulled you close to his chest, planting a gentle kiss on your head. "As long as it's with you, there's nothing I'd want more, Princess."

Despite the warmth emanating from him, he still felt it when you shivered against him. "Except getting you somewhere warm. C'mon, let's get inside before you freeze to death."

You merely chuckled, rolling your eyes at him. "M'not cold, Stevie. But fine, if you insist." He regretted saying anything when you pushed yourself up off of him, but he knew it was probably for the best.

"Well, I can't exactly risk my new girlfriend getting hypothermia on me," he quipped, heading down the ladder and extending a hand up to help you.

"I didn't realize my new boyfriend was such a mom," you teased as you took his hand, but despite everything feeling somewhat normal again, Steve's face flushed at that word. Boyfriend. He was going to have to get used to that.

"Yeah, yeah, that's Mama Steve to you. If we go inside now, I'll let you pick the movie tonight."

"Deal."

Steve's arm was slung over your shoulder as you headed into the comforting warmth of the house, the rain finally subsiding to a soft mist.

As many wonderful memories as you and Steve have made together since then, this one might be your new favorite.

It’s a warm, cloudy June night. Hopper and Joyce finally decided on a small backyard wedding a few months ago, and it’s a much-needed celebration after everything your little town of Hawkins has been through.

As you gaze at the colorful string lights lining the party, watching Hopper twirl a laughing Joyce during their first dance, you can’t help but think about how lucky you are. Vecna was finally dead. Eddie’s name, after a lot of convincing, had finally been cleared, thanks to Hopper being reinstated as chief of police. Max, although she wasn’t able to be here, had finally woken up a few days ago and was recovering in the hospital.

It’s an utter miracle you all survived, after the sheer number of near-death experiences you'd had over the last few years. At this point, you’d bandaged Steve’s wounds more times than you could count. But you're so, so grateful everyone you love is alive and well.

You know Steve’s still healing from the bat attack in the upside down, but tonight he’s practically shining in a groomsmen’s tux, hair coiffed to perfection in usual Steve fashion.

For formality’s sake, you’re on the bridal party’s side with the other bridesmaids until the first dance is over, but somehow your boyfriend senses your staring and grins, shooting you a wink that’s borderline indecent.

You have to stifle a giggle when you notice Dustin elbow him in the side and mouth “gross”, although there’s no real venom behind it. You know how much the kids look up to both of you.

There’s a smattering of cheers and applause as the first dance concludes and Hopper spontaneously dips Joyce for a kiss. You make sure to give Eleven a little side hug when she wrinkles her nose at the sight. “Don’t worry, kid. You’ll get used to it.”

“It feels like revenge for me and Mike,” she grumbles, but you know she’s just as happy to see her two adoptive parents together as the rest of you are.

Eventually, more people start to trickle onto the green to dance, and Eleven squeezes your hand before running off to dance with Mike, who looks a little disgruntled to be pulled out of his conversation with Will.

You slowly saunter over to Steve, a little smile on your face. “Hey there, handsome. Want to dance with me?”

You always relish in the way Steve blushes at your compliments. “You’re killing me over here. Who said you could get all dolled up and flirt with me? You look so damn good; I might have a heart attack before I can get you on the floor.”

“I said I could, babe,” you chuckle, rolling your eyes. “Such a dramatic. Now, are you coming or are you just gonna stand there and gawk at me?”

He laughs, taking your hand and pressing a kiss to the back of it. “Of course, pretty girl. I’d love to dance with you.”

You make sure to stick your tongue out at Lucas and Dustin over Steve’s shoulder, the former miming kissing the air and the latter making an unflattering gagging noise.

Steve leads you out into the grass with the other dancers, one hand in yours and the other on your waist, gently swaying to the beat. It’s a slow song, tranquil and romantic, and you can’t help but think there’s nowhere else you’d rather be.

“Whatcha thinking about, Princess?” Steve whispers in your ear.

“Just… how happy I am that I’m here. That I've got the kids, and Robin, and Eddie, and Nancy, and you. I kind of owe all of that to you,” you murmur back. Maybe it’s a bit schmaltzy, a bit hopeless romantic of you, but with Steve it’s all too easy to be that way, even after nearly four years together.

“What do you mean? You're the one who barged into my life if I remember correctly, little miss I-think-you’re-an-idiot-Steve-Harrington.”

“That’s a mouthful,” you giggle, “and still true, by the way. But you’re my idiot.”

Steve’s trying to find a clever retort when thunder rolls across the sky, impossibly loud and far too close. That’s all the warning the wedding party gets before the clouds open up, first a shower, then a drizzle.

Everyone else scrambles for cover, hiding under the white tents that have been hastily set up, or making a beeline for the Byers-Hopper house.

You and Steve, however, stand there incredulously, his perfect hair and suit now soaked. Your dress and shoes aren’t faring much better, and you know if you stay out here, you’ll be ankle-deep in mud.

All that it takes is for the two of you to make eye contact before you’re both laughing hysterically, clutching each other for support so you don’t slip and fall in the wet grass. You’re sure that, to the rest of the wedding party, you must look insane right now, but you don’t think you could care any less.

“Always the rain,” Steve gasps, out of breath, grinning so much it looks like his cheeks must hurt. “Always the goddamn rain.”

“I don’t know about you, but right now I’ve got some serious deja vu,” you agree, your arms around his neck as you catch your breath. “So... should we cut to the chase this time? Any more pressing secrets that need to come out?”

Steve's mind immediately jumps to the dresser in his room, in which there is currently a small black box—the perfect size and place for a ring. “Can I tell you later? I promise it’s just one more secret.”

“Aw, you’re no fun,” you groan, but you press a kiss to his lips anyway because there’s something about him in the rain that’s just so goddamn pretty. “Tell me tomorrow?”

“We’ll see,” Steve chuckles, hands on your waist as he presses a kiss to your forehead. “For now… keep dancing with me?”

“You’re lucky I love you,” you reply as he spins you around, your soaked skirt flinging droplets in all directions. “I wouldn’t come out in the rain for anyone else.”

“I know.” Steve brings you back towards him and dips you, and for the millionth time you thank your lucky stars you found your best friend and your soulmate in one person. “There’s no one else I’d rather coerce out into the rain with me.”

“Just say it back, dingus.”

“I love you too.”

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lizard-on-a-window-pane · 1 year

Text

In more ways than I’ve ever been able to tell you

summary: You and Sirius are best friends and flatmates. You’re also in love with each other. Too bad neither of you has admitted that to the other. When you decide to move out because you can’t take the unrequited love anymore, feelings come up and come out.

tags: friends to lovers, mutual pining, fluff, angst, reader gender not specified, implied marauder!reader

Pairing: Sirius Black x Reader word count: 2.6k

“There’s something you’re not telling me,” Sirius said as you avoided his gaze while you tidied up your shared kitchen just after dinner. You’d been off all evening, for a few days in fact, and it was driving him mad. You told each other everything. You had since you were eleven and had become best friends during your first year at Hogwarts and still did so now that you were flatmates in your post-school days.

“It’s nothing really. Not a big deal.” “Nothing? or nothing big? C’mon, just tell me what’s giving you wrinkles.”

“I do not have wrinkles!” “Well you don’t now, but you will soon with how scrunched up your pretty face has been all night,” he laughed as he reached over to you and smoothed the skin in between your furrowed brow with the pads of his fingers.

You glared at him, but the coldness was lost in how quickly you melted into his touch. In one smooth motion, he moved his fingers across your eyebrow, running a strand of hair behind your ear, then letting his hand rest easily where your shoulder and neck met. His thumb lightly caressed your jawline.

“So? You gonna tell me what it is or…” “Like I said, Pads, it won’t be a big deal for you… It’s just… Well… The thing is, Siri… I’m kind of… moving out.”

He froze instantly, hand going stiff mid-caress. After a beat of silence, he let out a single disbelieving scoff.

“Ok, well, at least now I know this is some kind of ridiculous joke.” “What?” you asked, voice softer than it had been mere moments ago when you had finally confessed what you hadn’t had the heart to tell him all week since you’d made your decision. It’d been spurred by a conversation with Remus. You had been crying softly on his shoulder after a session of his comforting you about your unrequited feelings toward one infuriatingly charming, unfailingly kind, grey-eyed flatmate / best friend. Nothing new there. Remus had been your rock since your early school days when you gradually realized you loved Sirius a bit differently than you loved Remus or James. Remus, being the annoyingly observant, empathetic boy he was realized it too. Though you were initially mortified when one evening in the library he looked up at you from his book and casually asked, “Are you in love with Padfoot?,” you soon came to be eternally grateful to have such a wonderful friend to confide in. You knew that you would have never told him, or James, about your feelings had he not guessed them himself — not because you were afraid to admit them as much as because you didn’t want to put them in a difficult position given he was one of their best mates as well.

Last week, when you’d decided to move out of yours and Sirius’s flat, Remus had kindly but firmly told you things would never get any easier if you never gave yourself space to be you without being you and Sirius. You knew it was true, had known it for years, but being without Sirius always seemed like an unthinkable proposition. It would have been almost funny had it not been so disturbing.

Sure, it hurt like hell every time you saw him with someone else, or every time either of you said “I love you” and your heart broke a little bit at how differently two people could mean the same three words. But even still, that came with all the good things about being Sirius Black’s best friend. It came with the nights of so much laughter you both ended up crying and clutching your sides, creating inside jokes that would become staples of your interactions for years to come. It came with the nights of holding each other after Sirius had had a nightmare about his childhood and come tiptoeing into your room, reduced to the boy you had first fallen in love with. It came with the nights of you holding on to him for dear life, a life you felt more intensely than ever in those moments, as he sped through the skies on the flying motorbike you had helped him perfect the charms for during countless days and nights. But, at some point, the moments of hurt had started catching up to the moments of joy, and recently, there were even times when they surpassed them.

Now, here you stood in your little kitchen, waiting for him to explain how the hell the hardest decision of your life so far was a ridiculous joke.

“Well, you can’t be serious.” You waited for him to make his overplayed, yet somehow still charming quip about how you couldn’t be Sirius because he was Sirius, but it didn’t come. Instead, he went on, mouth in a smile but eyes mirthless, “You can’t be serious because saying that my best friend in the entire world leaving would be ‘no big deal to me’ is probably the most outrageous thing I’ve ever heard… and I spent seven years rooming with Prongs, so I’ve heard plenty.”

“I didn’t mean… I just thought that… I’ll still come over…”

“Oh? You’ll visit every now and again? Alright, then, how silly of me! You were right! I probably won’t even notice you’re gone!” he sarcastically interrupted your rambling, arms flailing about.

“Sirius…”

Your voice broke on the single word, and you had to swallow quickly to keep the lump down in your throat. You felt the first tear make its way down your burning cheek.

The frantic look that had come into his eyes dissipated at the sight of you. His next breath was slow, the exhale particularly loud.

“Darling, I’m sorry… I… I didn’t mean to be such a prick, I’m just confused.” He stepped closer to you again, hands coming up to your shoulders, eyes searching yours. “Why do you want to go? Did I do something? If it’s something I did, I can change it, really, I can, I know I can be a pain to live with sometimes, but I’ll put in more effort.” Silly suggestions about cleanliness and noise levels and cooking started racing out of his mouth as he looked at you pleadingly. You were desperate to comfort him. To tell him the truth.

“No,” you’d say, “No, Sirius, you didn’t do anything wrong, and you’re not a pain to live with. I’m just absolutely madly in love with you, and I have no chance of getting over it if I stay so close. So close to you, so close to everything I want with you, the life we have together but just that little bit more…” Instead, you opted for a pathetic, “No, Pads, it’s not your fault. It’s me,” and you cringed immediately at hearing the words come out in a voice you were struggling to recognize as your own.

“What about you?” he asked, his voice impossible not to recognize as so completely and entirely his — musical almost, even in its sadness, strained yet still gentle.

The question had his mind reeling, everything about you he loved, everything about you that annoyed him but that he wouldn’t trade for the world if it meant having you close. He had finally come to accept your place in his life — a slow process especially in his younger days. His family life had made him wary of dependency, wary of love… but you had taught him how to love — how to give it, how to accept it. James and Remus, too, certainly had played their part in giving him what he previously never thought he’d have: a family. But you, you were his air. He’d be lying if he said he never wondered what it would be like to be romantic with you. But in his school days, he was much too afraid he’d royally fuck things up and quickly proceeded to push those feelings so far down that he could (usually) pretend they weren’t there. You were too good for him anyway, he thought, you deserved someone better. And yet, even the thought of you with someone else had gotten more and more unbearable with each passing year. And the thoughts of you with him in ways you hadn’t been before… well, it was a good thing you weren’t a Legilimens…. especially late at night when you’d lay your legs across his lap as you read on the sofa, his hands coming down to slowly stroke up and down your thighs… or when he felt those same thighs tight on either side of him as you held on behind him on his motorbike, the wind rushing past you, your screams and laughter in his ears even more invigorating than the sharp drop below.

The idea that he could be losing you now terrified him in a way he never had been before in his life.

“I need a change,” you whispered.

“Then we’ll both move,” he said immediately, “Where do you want to go? I’ll go anywhere with you. You want a house? How about a cottage on a beach somewhere? That’s a change from a city flat, right? Or, we could get a dog? That’ll definitely be different. I won’t lie; I’ll probably have to work on not being jealous of not being the only pup in the house, but I can make it work, love, if that’s what you want.” You had started laughing in spite of yourself, in spite of the tension of the situation. Sirius had a way of doing that, of making even the worst moments better, of making moments you dreaded moments you wouldn’t trade for anything after he put his mark on them.

“Siri, I don’t want a dog,” you giggled. “…another dog,” you amended cheekily, and he smiled his first real smile in response. “A beachside cottage does sounds lovely, but I think the isolation would be quite the opposite of what I need unfortunately.”

“Then what do you need, darling?” he implored, expression solemn again.

You didn’t know how to tell him. You didn’t know what to tell him. You couldn’t tell him the truth, but you couldn’t think of a lie that would account for the fact that what needed changing involved him so intimately.

Because you were coming up absolutely blank, your mouth resorted to clichés again without bothering to ask your brain’s permission. “I need space,” you said. “Space?” Sirius looked thoughtful, like he was exhausting himself with the effort of finding a solution for you. “Space from what?” After you didn’t say anything for a long, horrible moment, he continued, his tone begging you to correct him, “Space from me?”

“No, not from you.” You paused. “From us, I suppose.” “Us?”

“Yeah…” “Somehow I think that’s worse, love. At least if it was just that I was a twat, I could work on it, but here you are telling me it’s the best thing in my life that’s the problem in yours.” He attempted a little laugh at the end to lighten the sentiment but failed miserably, the utter dejection apparent in his face, his voice, his demeanor.

You were gutted. You couldn’t handle hurting him like this. Being the cause of that look on his face was one of the worst feelings you’d ever experienced and perhaps the only thing that could have pushed you to finally be as brave as you should have been from the beginning. If your feelings for him made him angry or made things weird, at least you could get through it. You trusted him enough to know that. The fear of rejection was nothing compared to the fear of letting him go on believing your relationship was a problem, wasn’t the best part of your life as well.

You flung your arms around his neck, buried your face in the crook of his neck, clinging to him with a viselike grip and breathing him in as you gathered the courage to plunge past the point of no return. He returned your embrace, confused but comforted, and equally as desperate as you.

“I love you,” you said, trying to explain. “I love you, too,” he replied, unsure what something so thoroughly obvious, so utterly true had to do with what was going on, what was threatening to upend him.

“In more ways than I’ve ever been able to tell you… deeper ways than I’ve ever been able to admit to you…” you went on, pulling back from your hug only enough to look him in the eyes as you said this. “And it hurts so much sometimes, Siri, I don’t think I can take it forever — being in love with you, I mean. At this point, I’m pretty sure I will be, because Godric knows I’ve tried long and hard not to, but I’ll have no chance of moving on if I stay completely immersed in you.”

“Don’t.” He said it firm, certain.

“Don’t what?” “Don’t move on. Don’t move out. Stay here, with me, because as much as you could possibly love me, trust me, y/n, I’ll match you every bit of it. And forever sounds pretty good to me then, don’t you think?”

The brightness in his eyes was blinding and yours had started crying again without your noticing when exactly, but it didn’t matter as you nodded your head madly.

He laughed, holding you tighter, pressing his forehead to yours. “Yeah?” he took a tiny break in his enormous smile to ask.

“Yeah,” you responded, “yeah, yes, definitely.”

“Alright, good then,” he said, giddy. “So you’re staying. Glad that’s settled. Really had me worried there for a moment. Not very nice of you, really, messing with my emotions like that. I think maybe we should get a dog. I’m sure it’d be nicer to me than you — a proper best friend, not all of this ‘I’m leaving’ business.”

You were laughing, hard, but still managed to let out, “Pads, please, for the love of Godric, shut up now.”

“You see? This is the kind of treatment I’m talking about. You’re cruel, y/n, very cruel.” “Oh, I’m cruel?” “Wicked. Utterly wicked.” “Hm. I guess I should make it up to you then, shouldn’t I?” “Yes, I think you most certainly should.”

You giggled. You brought your hand to his nape, your fingers running through his hair. You were already incredibly close, your lips just the smallest decision away from each other. You bumped his nose with yours, and though the playful mood remained, the intensity of the atmosphere increased dramatically, the sliver of air between you heavy with anticipation.

Then Sirius did something you didn’t quite expect in that moment. He smiled. Simple, yes, but it said everything: how much he loved you, how much you trusted each other, that even though you were about to do something you’d never done before, it was still him and you, and that was everything.

You smiled back for just a fraction of a moment because then your lips were too busy kissing him to smile. You could hear him laughing, feel his chest rising and falling where it was flush with yours, as he kissed you back ardently. You shouldn’t have expected anything else from Sirius. You were already best friends; you knew how to laugh together, now you were just adding a bit more to it… and that bit was beyond imagination. His laugh finally died down as his tongue made its way between your parted lips, and in its wake, a groan rose from his chest to where your mouths were connected.

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iichaeyj · 2 years

Note

omg can you please do it for enhypen too? i saw your moot game and it was really cute

enhypen as kdrama cliches . . . ♡

PAIRING: enhypen x gn!reader

GENRE: fluff

WARNINGS: not proof read at all lol

WORD COUNT: 1.8k

A/N: tysm for requesting this!! hopefully you like it!

HEESEUNG: past life lovers

i love this trope omg

the one where the two leads were in love in their past lives (and it ended tragically)

maybe you two were in danger and he was killed trying to protect you

or he was the one who had to kill you to protect you from something

classic kdrama stuff, yk?

this concept just suits heeseung so well imo

smth about randomly meeting heeseung somewhere

maybe you saw him at a party or you passed by him on the street

and you just feel this weird connection and he feels it, too

so you both sorta freeze as you make eye contact, the world moving around you as you two stare at each other

and you eventually have to move on and go about your day, but the image of the stranger who feels so familiar to you doesn't leave your mind

and you meet him somewhere else the next day

maybe he's your boss at your new job

but everytime you see him, you feel this weird sensation in your heart

the feeling that the thing you've been looking for your whole life has been found

that's how heeseung makes you feel

and it's the same feeling you had when you loved him in the past <3

examples of kdramas that include this trope: extraordinary you, hotel del luna (sorta), and goblin

JAY: demon/fantasy

okay just hear me out

tbh i didn't think this suited jay that well when i first thought of it

but the more i thought about it, and my bad boy!jay agenda, it sorta makes sense

in fantasy kdramas, there are often ones where the male lead is a demon

and he typically comes off as this tough, brooding figure who has never experienced love (and claims he can't feel such things)

but it all changes when he meets the protagonist who is kind and can understand him

as they spend more time together, their feelings for each other grow stronger

and just think about this but with jay

demon!jay (or any other mystical being) who only comes to meet you because maybe you accidentally summoned him or smth

and he's sorta kept around bc you don't know what you even want from him

and although he seems cold and rude in the beginning, he begins reaching out for you more and more as time goes on

and soon enough, he's falling in love with you

also, this trope just produces the most soft-hearted men (most of the time) who only love their lover and that is so <3

just picture jay, a literal demon, pining for you like #@*$&#$!$!

and ofc there's the dilemma of whether you two will be able to even be together

but he's a demon, he'll figure it out

and you two are now together, whether you two are both human or demon or whatever <3

examples of kdramas that include this trope: doom at your service, goblin, and my roommate is a gumiho

JAKE: love at first sight

this suits jake so well :(

imagine accidentally running into jake at a cafe or smth

and your drink spills on him

and you're apologizing profusely and such

and you look up at him and make eye contact

and he's just staring back at you with such lovestruck eyes????

like you're just trying to apologize, but jake can't even hear anything cause he's so focused on taking you in

you're just so stunning and attractive and you make him feel so ??? in a way he can't explain

and this is even better if he's the popular, confident type

he, who is normally very confident and poised, just stuttering after meeting your eyes

so basically, you're all like ??? trying to say sorry, while he's staring at you like <3_<3

and just imagine him chasing after you??

like you sorta run away after that, embarrassed to have spilled your drink all over him

and he's so enamored by you that he just begins searching for you

he goes to the cafe everyday at the same time, hoping you'll come in

or if you two meet at a cafe in a university, he asks his friends if they've seen anyone like you around

im basically spreading my puppy bf!jake agenda atp but idec

and when he does find you, he goes all <3_<3 again while trying to ask for your number

so cute im throwing up

examples of kdramas that include this trope: business proposal, descendants of the sun, and strong woman do bong soon

SUNGHOON: opposites attract

we all know how i feel about sunghoon and enemies to lovers <3

but this trope could be enemies to lovers, or it could just be ppl who are very different from one another falling in love

this could also suit sunghoon as a ceo tbh

he's known as this cold, rich ceo who's attractive but apparently not very nice

and you're his new secretary who's been told that you shouldn't try and approach him in a friendly manner

but you're friendly and bold, so you do it anyway

and sunghoon is sorta cold at first, dismissing you as strange and telling you to go away

but as you keep persisting, you manage to become a daily sight for him

when you greet him in the morning, he begins greeting you back and making conversation

he knows you're different from the other people in his life, and he enjoys having you around

it's sort of like he's cold to everyone but you

i also see a lot of angst potential in this trope omg

you two have very different backgrounds (regarding your wealth and reputation and such), and that could pose as a problem

idk but this trope w/ ceo!sunghoon ??? in love tbh

examples of kdramas that include this trope: run on, business proposal, and it's okay to not be okay

SUNOO: love triangle

idk but i just see it

sunoo's your best friend who's had your attention all his life

you two had something special and it was obvious to everyone

the way you two looked at each other said enough about how you both felt

but bc you two were so precious to each other, he was afraid of making the first move

he had just figured that it was all going to work out

after all, you two only had eyes for each other

but then someone else comes in

the company you work at just employed your new coworker

and he seemed into you at first sight

the new guy just kept approaching you both in and out of the office

and ofc, sunoo saw all of this

he saw the way the guy was practically chasing after you everytime sunoo came to pick you up after work

and he was feeling something that he hadn't felt before

he was scared of losing you

and he was jealous that someone was taking your attention away from him

and tbh, i feel like he'd just sorta snap at that point

even though you two had previously been very cautious about your feelings, he was suddenly crossing over the line you two had been too afraid of jumping over

he was suddenly being affectionate with you in public and began asking for your attention anywhere you two went

and ofc, the other guy stood no chance

not when sunoo was yours and you were his since the beginning <3

examples of kdramas that include this trope: cheese in the trap, nevertheless, and love alarm

JUNGWON: business partners/working together

to be specific, i'm talking about the classic kdrama trope where the leads are forced to come together because they have a mutual goal and/or just work beside one another

just think about jungwon and you who work together in the same company

you two are the heads of two different groups (like maybe you're head of the designing team and he's the head of the marketing team or whatever)

so you two have never really interacted with each other personally

but one day, you two are tasked to work together on a big project

and i just picture a lot of arguing at first

you two have totally different ideas on how you want your project to turn out

but you two have to spend time together (or else you two might get fired)

so you collaborate using all your ideas

and you two gain mutual respect for one another

but as you two spend more time together, your friendly relationship begins to turn into a romantic one

i imagine a lot of mutual pining and small accidents that make you two like each other even more

like think about you and jungwon working late together one night

and all the lingering stares and the gentle brushing of hands against each other

or him moving closer to take a look at your work, coming up from behind you and leaning down so that his head is right next to yours

the tension is insane

and it's all up to one of you two to confess (if your pride allows it)

examples of kdramas that include this trope: run on, start up, and itaewon class

NIKI: hopelessly pining

i've said it before, but niki and the best friends to lovers trope <3

he's been your best friend since you two were in middle school

and now you two were going to the same university

you've only ever seen him as your best friend

you've talked to him about love before, but he's never been the main subject

but he's actually been in love with you for years now

he hadn't realized it until the last year of high school, but he was completely head over heels for you

i can imagine all the angst omg

just niki trying to control his new feelings for you while you're totally oblivious to them

and imagine jealous niki omg

him getting jealous over every guy that tries to get your number, sometimes pretending to be your bf or just casually slipping an arm around your shoulder

and you're just totally oblivious

you two have been affectionate with each other since you were little

it was no different now than it had been in the past (at least that's what you think)

but as you two try and navigate your first year of university, weird things begin happening

niki becomes more open about his feelings in a way you can't understand

you don't understand why he glares at any guy that comes near you

you don't understand why he begins getting more cautious of hugging you or holding your hand

you don't understand why he can't look you in the eye anymore

but maybe with a heated argument and an angry confession, you'll realize why

examples of kdramas that include this trope: dear m, fight for my way, and weightlifting fairy kim bok joo

taglist: @wccycc @bibinnieposts @velvet-chuu @luv4vernon @blushlin @acciomylove @hyukabean @kaislovergirl @vatterie @boowoohoo @luv4dream @strwberrydinosaur @coffeewon @nvertheless @erodemyedges @jwitaro @ssa-bloosoobs @flavourlesswinxclub @spiderlilyfics @aloosefangirl @xoxoloserluvr @minty3sunoo @raikea10

to be added to my permanent taglist, please fill out the form in my pinned <3

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creativepawsworld · 1 year

Text

The Christmas Bauble

Pairing = Cillian Murphy x Reader

Summary = Y/N has been dating Cillian for a year and is celebrating Christmas for the first time with him and his sons.

Warnings = Extreme fluff

Word Count = 1645

Cillian had arrived home yesterday evening after a long 6-month period of filming season 4 of the Peaky Blinders. To say he was exhausted both mentally and physically would be an understatement.

Playing the role of Thomas Shelby took its toll on Cillian so he needed a few days, sometimes a week or two to completely distance himself from the cold, egotistical narcissist that is the main character of the hit show Peaky Blinders.

Today however was December 13th, the twelfth day before Christmas and the time of year Cillian always put up his Christmas tree. His two sons from his previous marriage grew up with the tradition and had arrived this morning to see it through.

“Do you think dad will be back to help with the tree?” His youngest son Cian had asked. Smiling softly at him, you brushed his brown hair, unsure of the answer but not wanting to break the young boys heart you opted for a cheery answer.

“Of course, he will, it’s his favourite time of year” You tell him placing an arm around his shoulders. “He would never miss this time with you”

You had been dating Cillian almost 12 months now having met at a New Year's Eve party last year thrown by his best friend Dermott. When first introduce to his sons, they didn’t like you. They wanted their mum and dad together. It was a reaction you expected being a child of divorce yourself.

It had taken you years to get over the idea that your parents would never be together again, and you fear the same for his sons. But they were much more mature, after a sit down with both their parents they welcomed me with opened arms into their family.

“He is different when he comes back from Manchester, grumpier” Connor the eldest huffed, arms folded across his chest. He was becoming more and more like his father every day. “He was supposed to be back days ago to destress and be ready for today.”

“Your dad is ready for today, he is just taking a few more hours to be really ready. I promise he will be here with the tree.” You assure both boys with a hearty smile while walking over to one of the boxes you had taken from the attic and pulling out a large Santa decoration.

“Come on, we can decorate the room and then we will get your dad for the tree what do you think?” You ask holding out the large Santa towards Connor who pursed his lips together to hide a smile.

Nodding, he stood to his feet taking the Santa from your hands and placing it next to the fireplace. Cian running forward to empty the rest of the box out onto the floor. The two boys happily placing the decorations where they belonged, correcting you when you had placed one wrong.

“All finished can we call dad now. Tell him to come home?” Cian asked raising his eyebrows, trying his best to give me the biggest puppy dog eyes I had ever seen.

“No need, dad’s right here” Cillian’s voice sounded from behind us. He was just in time. “And he’s got the tree” He chuckled pulling a fresh green pine tree in from the hall and into the living room. He really was a doting dad when it came to his boys. Watching him interact with them had me falling deeper and deeper in love with him every day.

“YESS” The boys cheered running over to help their father, fine pine needles falling all over the floor as the three boys dragged the tree to the corner.

“Alright, alright stand back” Cillian laughed taking a blade from his back jean pocket and cutting the red rope holding the tree together. Once each line was cut the tree fell out, taking up the entire space, Cillian barely managing to get out of its way when it popped out.

“Oh Cillian, it’s perfect” you grinned rushing towards him, resting your hands on his upper arm as you both admire the tree for all its beauty. Feeling his eyes on you, you turn with a smile his beautiful blue eyes looking down into yours.

This was your first official Christmas together.

“Dad, come on the lights” Cian whined pulling on his father’s hand breaking his eye contact with you. Laughing you tell the boys you were going to make some hot chocolate while they fought with the small fairy lights on the tree.

Walking into the kitchen you noticed the family dog, Scout sleeping in her basket. “Avoiding the chaos in the living room?" You asked the black dog, bending down to pat her head and scratch behind her ear.

Choosing to ignore the banging noises coming from the living room. Everything seemed to be in hand considering the boys were laughing and cheering at something that had been said.

“Y/N can you come here a minute” You heard Cillian shout, you didn’t even have time to boil the kettle for the hot chocolates before being needed. Shaking your head with a laugh, you patted the dog one last time, standing to you feet and walking into the living room.

“What’s going on?” You ask looking between all three boys, each one looking less suspicious and more nervous as your eyes landed on Cillian. You couldn’t help but think that they had broken something and didn’t want you to find out so you decided to play along. They would come clean eventually.

“Nothing we just wanted you to help us decorate the tree” Connor grinned widely pointing of at the large box of red and gold baubles they had put next to the tree. “The hot chocolate can wait. We don’t need it yet.”

“Are you sure? Your dad tells me you love drinking it while you decorate the tree?” I asked a grin growing on my face when Cian handed me a red bauble.

“Yeah, I’m sure, come on” Connor nodded taking a gold bauble for himself. Looking back at Cillian who simply shrugged at his sons' words, chuckling as he took a bauble for himself, placing it near the top of the tree where it was more difficult for us to reach.

With the four of you working together we managed to get every bauble, every candy cane and nutcracker onto the tree in record time. The Christmas music played softly in the background as we danced around one another, placing each ornament on an awaiting branch.

The boy stood back first admiring their work, fixing one last branch you walked to stand next to them. Connor had placed his arm as best he could around your waist while Cian came and hugged at your legs. They were definitely acting weird you thought but didn’t want to ruin the moment.

“You forgot one Y/N” Connor grinned walking away from you, grabbing a brown paper bag and holding up a bauble you hadn’t seen before. He was holding it up by its white satin loop, perfect for hanging on the tree. The bauble itself was clear with a white feather resting on the bottom. Hanging from the top inside were two little wooden hearts, engraved with writing.

Cian moved to stand next to his brother, a wide smile on his face. He stood hands behind his back, rocking back and forth on his heels, Connor looked between the bauble and you before occasionally glancing behind you to his father.

Slowly taking the new ornament from Connor’s hand, a weird feeling taking over you as you took the glass, clearly handmade bauble into your hand. Bringing it closer to you face your jaw dropped, tears forming in your hands as you read the words delicately painted on the front.

‘You will always have a piece of my heart Y/N’ One heart read already making you emotional.

‘Will you do me the honour of becoming Mrs Murphy?’ The second heart read.

Turning around to face Cillian, he was now down on one knee a nervous but bright smile on his face as he held out a navy-blue box with white padding. Inside, just catching the light was the most beautiful ring you had ever seen. On the cushion sat a white gold ring with a diamond rose solitaire in the middle and smaller diamonds woven into a Celtic art design either side working its way down the ring.

The tears began to fall from your eyes, your hand came up to cover your shocked mouth. Aware that all three were waiting on your answer, you started nodding your head afraid your voice wouldn’t work.

“Yeah?” Cillian asked nervously, an unsure look on his face as he started getting up. “I know it’s only been a year, but it’s been an amazing year. I love you so much, you are so good with the boys I couldn’t wait any longer”

“Yes Cillian, of course I will marry you.” You answered almost dropping the glass ornament to wrap your arms around his neck once he stopped talking.

“So, does that mean we have a new mum now? Do we call you mum?” Cian asked a confused expression on his face.

“Oh honey, you don’t have to no.” You smile down at him still unable to detangle yourself from Cillian. “Nothing is going to change; except I will have a different name. I’m can still be Y/N to you”

“Come on Cian, let’s let Scout out to pee” Connor nodded to his younger brother. Once the two boys left the room, Cillian leans forward capturing you lips in his for a short, sweet but passionate kiss.

“I love you Cill” You grin against his lips, the overwhelming feeling of giddiness running through your veins as you stare into one another’s eyes.

“I love you Mrs Murphy"

#cillian #cillian murphy imagine #cillian murphy #cillian murphy fanfic #christmas #engagement #engaged #Christmas bauble

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phanfictioncatalogue · 5 months

Text

Holding Hands Masterlist

A Hot Tolkien Fanfic (ao3) - adorkablephil (kimberly_a)

Summary: Phil compares his hand to Dan's

Baby, It's Cold Outside (ao3) - TodayWe_Are_Infinite

Summary: Dan is freezing cold on Christmas Eve, and Phil is always warm.

being with you (ao3) - orphan_account

Summary: Dan and Phil have just released their DVD; after chatting with their audience, they spend the night alone.

cold fingers, warm hearts (ao3) - pottedphilip

Summary: As Phil begins to slowly come to terms with being stood up by a cute boy once again, the one he had been wishing for comes bounding toward him

Edit that part out (ao3) - super_phan_natural

Summary: In 2013, Dan realized that he was in love with Phil Lester. In 2016, we find out. Reader goes on their laptop and finds Dan and Phil's new video, which is titled "Edit that part out". Cuteness ensues.

Getting To Know You (Again) (ao3) - rainbowchristy

Summary: Anonymous Tumblr Prompt: an amnesia fic in which both of them loose their memories and don't remember each other and other people try to make them understand how important they are to each other which results in a "getting to know you all over again" kind of thing.

Got it (ao3) - klaineQmuke

Summary: Phil asks Dan to go to a party with him and Dan can't turn down his offer. What will happen when Dan feels pushed out by other people?

Hand Holding Is Not Cool - jilliancares

Summary: Dan and Phil are supposed to hold hands when going to the shop alone, but Phil doesn’t want to.

Hold my hand, honey (ao3) - natigail

Summary: Dan likes the minimalism of being on tour and he doesn't really get homesick, as long as he has Phil by his side. Phil, however, misses home at times, he clutches onto his pillow and scatters his various little knickknacks all over the tour bus. But he might also need to hold onto Dan when it gets really bad.

I'm Proud of You (ao3) - FluffyCastiel

Summary: What takes place after Phil wins creator at Boncas.

in the violet hour. (ao3) - commonemergency

Summary: Dan and Phil are at the Creator's Summit, there's glitter, roller blading, neon lights, and even some pinky holding.

Like I Do (ao3) - phan_stole_my_heart

Summary: Dan gets upset when a girl kisses Phil and Phil doesn't understand why.

Midnight Fluff (ao3) - Misha_with_wings

Summary: Phil wants to sleep but Dan wants to cuddle. Therefore he must poke and pester Phil until he wakes up.

Old Habits, Young Love, and Other Things That Just Won't Die (ao3) - blueberryphancakes

Summary: Despite their branding, Dan and Phil haven’t actually been friends for all of the seven years that they’ve known each other. For almost two of those years, ‘best friend’ was just a label they used on the internet, a clever disguise used to keep people from knowing what they really were. Because from the day they met until the day they broke up, Dan and Phil were something else entirely. Not something more. Just something else.

Pining in Love (ao3) - RosePetalsAndRain

Summary: Dan and Phil have been together for two months, but have done nothing more than hugging or snuggling on the couch. Both want to take it a step further, but neither want to mess it up. They're both scared to make the first move- who will it be? Fluffy, short and sweet. Enjoy!

Summer Nights (ao3) - orphan_account

Summary: When they first started living together, Dan was always worried that his sleep schedule, or lack thereof, would bother his Flatmate. He would always spend hours a night wondering his room, running his fingers over the small nick-nacks that settled on his dresser, thinking of the future, of how pointless it was and the darkness that would curl in his heart and scream at him how meaningless it all was. When he first brought it up to Phil after a week of staying together it seemed as if the other viewed his night pacing not as a bothersome habit but comforting.

The color grey (ao3) - Misha_with_wings

Summary: The color grey wasn't a forever thing, it sucked while it was there but eventually sunshine yellow and pops of sky blue would come along and help push it away.

Or, Dan was sad and grey but Phil shared his color.

We aren't a commercial (ao3) - Misha_with_wings

Summary: Dan was getting too wrapped up in the platonic-best-friend branding of 'Dan and Phil' that he almost forgot about how much he loved Phil.

He had let their relationship suffer as he denied, denied, denied- but after a long talk with Phil they knew what they had to do.

Staying hidden behind a brand hurt a lot more than it helped, they were done with it.

...

Truth turns to freedom, freedom turns to happiness.

what they don’t see (ao3) - darkesthorizon

Summary: The moments that occur behind the scenes aren’t always perfect ones, and touring certainly doesn’t make things easier, but Phil still appreciates the ones that he gets.

Or, a series of moments that happen once the spotlight goes out.

You are everything I adore (ao3) - Misha_with_wings

Summary: Phil started by writing one little sentence, it was small but held more power than anything else he could ever begin to say:

'Dan, I love you.'

#phanfictioncatalogue #phanfiction #phanfic #phan #masterlists #holdinghands #holdinghands masterlist

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random-mailbox · 1 year

Text

Random-Mailbox's Favorite Sailor Moon Fics - Week 21 - Huddle for Warmth

This week’s post has a very loose interpretation of the theme of “Huddle for Warmth”, in actuality this is more of a “It is cold, there is snow, so this counts!” type of collection of stories - both multi-chapters and one-shots. Since it is the last week of January and it is below freezing where I am, this seemed fitting.

As always, my apologies in advance for spoiling some of these for you (Fic Titles are linked to either FFN or AO3 entries).

Icebreaker - @linlamont

Minako, being Minako, decides to “help” and sends Usagi and Mamoru to a secluded cabin in the mountains by themselves to try and figure out what they mean to each other, now that they have recovered their memories of the past life. As they work together to cook and keep warm, they try to find a new precarious balance, while dealing with their anxieties and insecurities.

Chills - Secrets10

Serena can’t seem to warm up after getting hit with a Youma attack. This is compounded by her leaving her keys at home while her family is out. Darien finds her bawling outside the arcade and offers to take her to his place to help warm up.

Quality Time in the Cold - Prince_Endymion (Star_Bun)

In this cute one-shot, Usagi and Mamoru enjoy a walk in the first snow of the season in companionable silence.

Snow Bunny - @shnuggletea

In this non-senshi AU short story, a trip out to a ski resort orchestrated by Minako and Motoki forces Mamoru to confront his feelings for Usagi, with Seyia and Beryl acting as foils.

A Magical Boy in Maine - @caelenath

Disclaimer - this story is not complete (but a new chapter went up last week!) and I am making an exception in including it in the series for two reasons: the "huddle together for warmth" part is already published and the way @caelenath writes psychometry is probably one of my favorite interpretations across the fandom.

Mamoru gets invited to spend American Thanksgiving with his friend's family up in Maine. This leads to a weekend of food, cultural immersion, and letting people see glimpses of his alter-ego by being way too good at snowball fights. Except he keeps getting flashes of something, and he can't figure out if they are premonitions or visions of his past life.

---

This is the last post for January, and when it came time to decide on themes for February, trying to sort it out by committee did not work as well as I had hoped. There are too many cute possible posts that could be done for the "month of love". After narrowing down the 2 weeks I wanted to do for sure, @caelenath suggested I put the rest of the possibilities that were discussed into a top hat and draw them at random (which I thought was super fitting for a Sailor Moon related fic rec list!). The only snag? I did not own a top hat. Cue googling, searching Amazon to see if I can get it delivered in time, going to multiple party / costume stores and making employees check the warehouse and tops of racks because the system said they have 23! (with my husband rolling his eyes at me the entire time but fully supporting my endeavor). Without further ado, here is what we are doing in February:

Here are the links to the previous Tumblr posts in these series to explore more amazing works based on different themes - make sure to check them out if you haven't had a chance! (Click on title name to go to the post) - I will keep updating the list every week as new posts come up:

Week 1 - Groundhog Day

Week 2 - Established Relationships

Week 3 - Sex Positivity

Week 4 - Unfinished Stories

Week 5 - Darker Stories

Week 6 - Potions 🧪

Week 7 - Reveals

Week 8 - 👻Halloween🎃

Week 9 - Wrong Perceptions

Week 10 - Non-Senshi AU

Week 11 - In-Progress Fics

Week 12 - Mutual Pining

Week 13 - Enemies to Lovers

Week 14 - Slow Burn

Week 15 - Christmas Part 1 - Ugly Christmas Sweaters and Santa!

Week 16 - Christmas Part 2

Week 17 - New Years

Week 18 - High School AU

Week 19 - Slice of Life

Week 20 - Coffeeshop AU

#sailor moon #fic rec #fic list #usagi x mamoru #huddling for warmth #snow #top hat #my penmanship sucks

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steph-oe · 2 years

Note

Ahehehehe sorry last, I'm new to the steph/klay community, is it alright to ask for fic recs regarding these two? :D

omg why did I get so excited about this ask ok omg

im gonna share a lil bit of my thoughts about these too bc this is what i live for!! this might be long so please read under the cut! 🤍

1. Can't Bring Myself to Light This Fuse - bones_2_be - Steph and Klay want the same thing, they just haven't figured it out yet. In which Steph and Klay get together, but it's not quite that simple.

I’ve reread this like 100000 times already and I wish I was kidding but it’s true! If there is one thing one should know about me is that I like angst but it has to be resolved at the end because im gonna die otherwise. This is just perfect. 100/10 will make you FEEL things and how vulnerable they both are with the way they feel about each other and their situation and all. God.

2. you're such a heavenly view - Taegookie1132 - Pain. That was the only thing that resonated through his mind. He was cold and everything hurt. Someone was screaming and it took a while before he realized it was him. It also took a while before he realized he was suddenly alone. He knows pain and he knows he shouldn’t be feeling it. Not like this. Not by this much.

Another fic that I am emotionally fixated with, like reread this for a gazillion time kind of fixated. Got me in my feelings in my bed at 3am because I don’t really know the reason but it happened and it happens every time I read it. Another angsty but resolved fic. Hurt/Comfort. I AM LIVING. I need more actually! Vulnerable KLAY! Sign me up.

3. you fallin' head over (right outta the sky) - blonde - steph and klay get into a bit of a (big) misunderstanding

Well I think there’s an on-going theme here already and I know you did not ask for recs of hurt/comfort, angst but resolved in the end fic rec but lol yes i seem to have a favorite i am so sorry. but this one! The scenarios made me feel like im watching a short movie scene PLEASE

4. the moments make up the life - timefortakeoff - Steph and Klay through the years as told through moments, or the popcorn fic.

I lost all my words really but please read this! You’ve mentioned that you have been a fan of the boys since 2014 and therefore I think you will definitely love this one! How it started and all that! Love love love this. Also, make sure to read the part 2/extra scene for this one that is so adorable and just aww.

5. take me to your holy places - penelopes - Steph never thought he'd find himself here, kneeling at the end of Klay's bed, being held in place by Klay as he fucks his mouth. But that's what happens when you fall into bed with your best friend and then fall in love with them.

Hot. Light Angst. Resolved. Hot. What more could you ask for? I feel like im losing words to describe how I feel about these fics but believe me it’s all right here inside my mind. I just don’t know how to express anymore! But, the PINING! the feelings that can’t help but show! Jealousy! Everything!

Sadly, I typed all this while waiting for my meeting to start and it’s about to start already so I can only do five for now but there is a LOT of great steph/klay fics that I have read that I failed to mention here. If you go through the steph/klay tags in ao3, that’s a whole world out there! I hope you enjoy these omg im excited for you. Happy reading! 💙

#asks #fic rec #steph/klay #i know im forgetting something but im rushing rn hakjs #maybe i will get back to this!

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hellsitesonlybookclub · 2 months

Text

It Can't Happen Here, Sinclair Lewis

Chapter 32-33

CHAPTER XXXI

AS the open prison van approached the concentration camp at Trianon, the last light of afternoon caressed the thick birch and maples and poplars up the pyramid of Mount Faithful. But the grayness swiftly climbed the slope, and all the valley was left in cold shadow. In his seat the sick Doremus drooped again in listlessness.

The prim Georgian buildings of the girls' school which had been turned into a concentration camp at Trianon, nine miles north of Fort Beulah, had been worse used than Dartmouth, where whole buildings were reserved for the luxuries of the Corpos and their female cousins, all very snotty and parvenu. The Trianon school seemed to have been gouged by a flood. Marble doorsteps had been taken away. (One of them now graced the residence of the wife of the Superintendent, Mrs. Cowlick, a woman fat, irate, jeweled, religious, and given to announcing that all opponents of the Chief were Communists and ought to be shot offhand.) Windows were smashed. "Hurrah for the Chief" had been chalked on brick walls and other chalked words, each of four letters, had been rubbed out, not very thoroughly. The lawns and hollyhock beds were a mess of weeds.

The buildings stood on three sides of a square; the fourth side and the gaps between buildings were closed with unpainted pine fences topped with strands of barbed wire.

Every room except the office of Captain Cowlick, the Superintendent (he was as near nothing at all as any man can be who has attained to such honors as being a captain in the Quartermaster Corps and the head of a prison) was smeared with filth. His office was merely dreary, and scented with whisky, not, like the other rooms, with ammonia.

Cowlick was not too ill-natured. He wished that the camp guards, all M.M.'s, would not treat the prisoners viciously, except when they tried to escape. But he was a mild man; much too mild to hurt the feelings of the M.M.'s and perhaps set up inhibitions in their psyches by interfering with their methods of discipline. The poor fellows probably meant well when they lashed noisy inmates for insisting they had committed no crime. And the good Cowlick saved Doremus's life for a while; let him lie for a month in the stuffy hospital and have actual beef in his daily beef stew. The prison doctor, a decayed old drunkard who had had his medical training in the late 'eighties and who had been somewhat close to trouble in civil life for having performed too many abortions, was also good-natured enough, when sober, and at last he permitted Doremus to have Dr. Marcus Olmsted in from Fort Beulah, and for the first time in four weeks Doremus had news, any news whatsoever, of the world beyond prison.

Where in normal life it would have been agony to wait for one hour to know what might be happening to his friends, his family, now for one month he had not known whether they were alive or dead.

Dr. Olmsted—as guilty as Doremus himself of what the Corpos called treason—dared speak to him only a moment, because the prison doctor stayed in the hospital ward all the while, drooling over whip-scarred patients and daubing iodine more or less near their wounds. Olmsted sat on the edge of his cot, with its foul blankets, unwashed for months, and muttered rapidly:

"Quick! Listen! Don't talk! Mrs. Jessup and your two girls are all right—they're scared, but no signs of their being arrested. Hear Lorinda Pike is all right. Your grandson, David, looks fine— though I'm afraid he'll grow up a Corpo, like all the youngsters. Buck Titus is alive—at another concentration camp—the one near Woodstock. Our N.U. cell at Fort Beulah is doing what it can—no publishing, but we forward information—get a lot from Julian Falck—great joke: he's been promoted, M.M. Squad-Leader now! Mary and Sissy and Father Perefixe keep distributing pamphlets from Boston; they help the Quinn boy (my driver) and me to forward refugees to Canada.... Yes, we carry on.... About like an oxygen tent for a patient that's dying of pneumonia!... It hurts to see you looking like a ghost, Doremus. But you'll pull through. You've got pretty good nerves for a little cuss! That aged-in-the-keg prison doctor is looking this way. Bye!"

He was not permitted to see Dr. Olmsted again, but it was probably Olmsted's influence that got him, when he was dismissed from the hospital, still shaky but well enough to stumble about, a vastly desirable job as sweeper of cells and corridors, cleaner of lavatories and scrubber of toilets, instead of working in the woods gang, up Mount Faithful, where old men who sank under the weight of logs were said to be hammered to death by guards under the sadistic Ensign Stoyt, when Captain Cowlick wasn't looking. It was better, too, than the undesirable idleness of being disciplined in the "dog house" where you lay naked, in darkness, and where "bad cases" were reformed by being kept awake for forty-eight or even ninety-six hours. Doremus was a conscientious toilet-cleaner. He didn't like the work very much, but he had pride in being able to scrub as skillfully as any professional pearl-diver in a Greek lunch room, and satisfaction in lessening a little the wretchedness of his imprisoned comrades by giving them clean floors.

For, he told himself, they were his comrades. He saw that he, who had thought of himself as a capitalist because he could hire and fire, and because theoretically he "owned his business," had been as helpless as the most itinerant janitor, once it seemed worth while to the Big Business which Corpoism represented to get rid of him. Yet he still told himself stoutly that he did not believe in a dictatorship of the proletariat any more than he believed in a dictatorship of the bankers and utility-owners; he still insisted that any doctor or preacher, though economically he might be as insecure as the humblest of his flock, who did not feel that he was a little better than they, and privileged to enjoy working a little harder, was a rotten doctor or a preacher without grace. He felt that he himself had been a better and more honorable reporter than Doc Itchitt, and a thundering sight better student of politics than most of his shopkeeper and farmer and factory-worker readers.

Yet bourgeois pride was so gone out of him that he was flattered, a little thrilled, when he was universally called "Doremus" and not "Mr. Jessup" by farmer and workman and truck-driver and plain hobo; when they thought enough of his courage under beating and his good-temper under being crowded with others in a narrow cell to regard him as almost as good as their own virile selves.

Karl Pascal mocked him. "I told you so, Doremus! You'll be a Communist yet!"

"Yes, maybe I will, Karl—after you Communists kick out all your false prophets and bellyachers and power drunkards, and all your press-agents for the Moscow subway."

"Well, all right, why don't you join Max Eastman? I hear he's escaped to Mexico and has a whole big pure Trotzkyite Communist party of seventeen members there!"

"Seventeen? Too many. What I want is mass action by just one member, alone on a hilltop. I'm a great optimist, Karl. I still hope America may some day rise to the standards of Kit Carson!"

As sweeper and scrubber, Doremus had unusual chances for gossip with other prisoners. He chuckled when he thought of how many of his fellow criminals were acquaintances: Karl Pascal, Henry Veeder, his own cousin, Louis Rotenstern, who looked now like a corpse, unforgettingly wounded in his old pride of having become a "real American," Clif Little, the jeweler, who was dying of consumption, Ben Tripper, who had been the jolliest workman in Medary Cole's gristmill, Professor Victor Loveland, of the defunct Isaiah College, and Raymond Pridewell, that old Tory who was still so contemptuous of flattery, so clean amid dirt, so hawk-eyed, that the guards were uncomfortable when they beat him.... Pascal, the Communist, Pridewell, the squirearchy Republican, and Henry Veeder, who had never cared a hang about politics, and who had recovered from the first shocks of imprisonment, these three had become intimates, because they had more arrogance of utter courage than anyone else in the prison.

For home Doremus shared with five other men a cell twelve feet by ten and eight feet high, which a finishing-school girl had once considered outrageously confined for one lone young woman. Here they slept, in two tiers of three bunks each; here they ate, washed, played cards, read, and enjoyed the leisurely contemplation which, as Captain Cowlick preached to them every Sunday morning, was to reform their black souls and turn them into loyal Corpos.

None of them, certainly not Doremus, complained much. They got used to sleeping in a jelly of tobacco smoke and human stench, to eating stews that always left them nervously hungry, to having no more dignity or freedom than monkeys in a cage, as a man gets used to the indignity of having to endure cancer. Only it left in them a murderous hatred of their oppressors so that they, men of peace all of them, would gladly have hanged every Corpo, mild or vicious. Doremus understood John Brown much better.

His cell mates were Karl Pascal, Henry Veeder, and three men whom he had not known: a Boston architect, a farm hand, and a dope fiend who had once kept questionable restaurants. They had good talk— especially from the dope fiend, who placidly defended crime in a world where the only real crime had been poverty.

The worst torture to Doremus, aside from the agony of actual floggings, was the waiting.

The Waiting. It became a distinct, tangible thing, as individual and real as Bread or Water. How long would he be in? How long would he be in? Night and day, asleep and waking, he worried it, and by his bunk saw waiting the figure of Waiting, a gray, foul ghost.

It was like waiting in a filthy station for a late train, not for hours but for months.

Would Swan amuse himself by having Doremus taken out and shot? He could not care much, now; he could not picture it, any more than he could picture kissing Lorinda, walking through the woods with Buck, playing with David and Foolish, or anything less sensual than the ever derisive visions of roast beef with gravy, of a hot bath, last and richest of luxuries where their only way of washing, except for a fortnightly shower, was with a dirty shirt dipped in the one basin of cold water for six men.

Besides Waiting, one other ghost hung about them—the notion of Escaping. It was of that (far more than of the beastliness and idiocy of the Corpos) that they whispered in the cell at night. When to escape. How to escape. To sneak off through the bushes when they were out with the woods gang? By some magic to cut through the bars on their cell window and drop out and blessedly not be seen by the patrols? To manage to hang on underneath one of the prison trucks and be driven away? (A childish fantasy!) They longed for escape as hysterically and as often as a politician longs for votes. But they had to discuss it cautiously, for there were stool pigeons all over the prison.

This was hard for Doremus to believe. He could not understand a man's betraying his companions, and he did not believe it till, two months after Doremus had gone to concentration camp, Clifford Little betrayed to the guards Henry Veeder's plan to escape in a hay wagon. Henry was properly dealt with. Little was released. And Doremus, it may be, suffered over it nearly as much as either of them, sturdily though he tried to argue that Little had tuberculosis and that the often beatings had bled out his soul.

Each prisoner was permitted one visitor a fortnight and, in sequence, Doremus saw Emma, Mary, Sissy, David. But always an M.M. was standing two feet away, listening, and Doremus had from them nothing more than a fluttering, "We're all fine—we hear Buck is all right—we hear Lorinda is doing fine in her new tea room— Philip writes he is all right." And once came Philip himself, his pompous son, more pompous than ever now as a Corpo judge, and very hurt about his father's insane radicalism—considerably more hurt when Doremus tartly observed that he would much rather have had the dog Foolish for visitor.

And there were letters—all censored—worse than useless to a man who had been so glad to hear the living voices of his friends.

In the long run, these frustrate visits, these empty letters, made his waiting the more dismal, because they suggested that perhaps he was wrong in his nightly visions; perhaps the world outside was not so loving and eager and adventurous as he remembered it, but only dreary as his cell.

He had little known Karl Pascal, yet now the argumentative Marxian was his nearest friend, his one amusing consolation. Karl could and did prove that the trouble with leaky valves, sour cow pastures, the teaching of calculus, and all novels was their failure to be guided by the writings of Lenin.

In his new friendship, Doremus was old-maidishly agitated lest Karl be taken out and shot, the recognition usually given to Communists. He discovered that he need not worry. Karl had been in jail before. He was the trained agitator for whom Doremus had longed in New Underground days. He had ferreted out so many scandals about the financial and sexual shenanigans of every one of the guards that they were afraid that even while he was being shot, he might tattle to the firing-squad. They were much more anxious for his good opinion than for that of Captain Cowlick, and they timidly brought him little presents of chewing tobacco and Canadian newspapers, as though they were schoolchildren honeying up to teacher.

When Aras Dilley was transferred from night patrols in Fort Beulah to the position of guard at Trianon—a reward for having given to Shad Ledue certain information about R. C. Crowley which cost that banker hundreds of dollars—Aras, that slinker, that able snooper, jumped at the sight of Karl and began to look pious and kind. He had known Karl before!

Despite the presence of Stoyt, Ensign of guards, an ex-cashier who had once enjoyed shooting dogs and who now, in the blessed escape of Corpoism, enjoyed lashing human beings, the camp at Trianon was not so cruel as the district prison at Hanover. But from the dirty window of his cell Doremus saw horrors enough.

One mid-morning, a radiant September morning with the air already savoring the peace of autumn, he saw the firing-squad marching out his cousin, Henry Veeder, who had recently tried to escape. Henry had been a granite monolith of a man. He had walked like a soldier. He had, in his cell, been proud of shaving every morning, as once he had done, with a tin basin of water heated on the stove, in the kitchen of his old white house up on Mount Terror. Now he stooped, and toward death he walked with dragging feet. His face of a Roman senator was smeared from the cow dung into which they had flung him for his last slumber.

As they tramped out through the quadrangle gate, Ensign Stoyt, commanding the squad, halted Henry, laughed at him, and calmly kicked him in the groin.

They lifted him up. Three minutes later Doremus heard a ripple of shots. Three minutes after that the squad came back bearing on an old door a twisted clay figure with vacant open eyes. Then Doremus cried aloud. As the bearers slanted the stretcher, the figure rolled to the ground.

But one thing worse he was to see through the accursed window. The guards drove in, as new prisoners, Julian Falck, in torn uniform, and Julian's grandfather, so fragile, so silvery, so bewildered and terrified in his muddied clericals.

He saw them kicked across the quadrangle into a building once devoted to instruction in dancing and the more delicate airs for the piano; devoted now to the torture room and the solitary cells.

Not for two weeks, two weeks of waiting that was like ceaseless ache, did he have a chance, at exercise hour, to speak for a moment to Julian, who muttered, "They caught me writing some inside dope about M.M. graft. It was to have gone to Sissy. Thank God, nothing on it to show who it was for!" Julian had passed on. But Doremus had had time to see that his eyes were hopeless, and that his neat, smallish, clerical face was blue-black with bruises.

The administration (or so Doremus guessed) decided that Julian, the first spy among the M.M.'s who had been caught in the Fort Beulah region, was too good a subject of sport to be wastefully shot at once. He should be kept for an example. Often Doremus saw the guards kick him across the quadrangle to the whipping room and imagined that he could hear Julian's shrieks afterward. He wasn't even kept in a punishment cell, but in an open barred den on an ordinary corridor, so that passing inmates could peep in and see him, welts across his naked back, huddled on the floor, whimpering like a beaten dog.

And Doremus had sight of Julian's grandfather sneaking across the quadrangle, stealing a soggy hunk of bread from a garbage can, and fiercely chewing at it.

All through September Doremus worried lest Sissy, with Julian now gone from Fort Beulah, be raped by Shad Ledue.... Shad would leer the while, and gloat over his ascent from hired man to irresistible master.

Despite his anguish over the Falcks and Henry Veeder and every uncouthest comrade in prison, Doremus was almost recovered from his beatings by late September. He began delightedly to believe that he would live for another ten years; was slightly ashamed of his delight, in the presence of so much agony, but he felt like a young man and—And straightway Ensign Stoyt was there (two or three o'clock at night it must have been), yanking Doremus out of his bunk, pulling him to his feet, knocking him down again with so violent a crack in his mouth that Doremus instantly sank again into all his trembling fear, all his inhuman groveling.

He was dragged into Captain Cowlick's office.

The Captain was courtly:

"Mr. Jessup, we have information that you were connected with Squad-Leader Julian Falck's treachery. He has, uh, well, to be frank, he's broken down and confessed. Now you yourself are in no danger, no danger whatever, of further punishment, if you will just help us. But we really must make a warning of young Mr. Falck, and so if you will tell us all you know about the boy's shocking infidelity to the colors, we shall hold it in your favor. How would you like to have a nice bedroom to sleep in, all by yourself?"

A quarter hour later Doremus was still swearing that he knew nothing whatever of any "subversive activities" on the part of Julian.

Captain Cowlick said, rather testily, "Well, since you refuse to respond to our generosity, I must leave you to Ensign Stoyt, I'm afraid.... Be gentle with him, Ensign."

"Yessr," said the Ensign.

The Captain wearily trotted out of the room and Stoyt did indeed speak with gentleness, which was a surprise to Doremus, because in the room were two of the guards to whom Stoyt liked to show off:

"Jessup, you're a man of intelligence. No use your trying to protect this boy, Falck, because we've got enough on him to execute him anyway. So it won't be hurting him any if you give us a few more details about his treason. And you'll be doing yourself a good turn."

Doremus said nothing.

"Going to talk?"

Doremus shook his head.

"All right, then.... Tillett!"

"Yessr."

"Bring in the guy that squealed on Jessup!"

Doremus expected the guard to fetch Julian, but it was Julian's grandfather who wavered into the room. In the camp quadrangle Doremus had often seen him trying to preserve the dignity of his frock coat by rubbing at the spots with a wet rag, but in the cells there were no hooks for clothes, and the priestly garment—Mr. Falck was a poor man and it had not been very expensive at best— was grotesquely wrinkled now. He was blinking with sleepiness, and his silver hair was a hurrah's nest.

Stoyt (he was thirty or so) said cheerfully to the two elders, "Well, now, you boys better stop being naughty and try to get some sense into your mildewed old brains, and then we can all have some decent sleep. Why don't you two try to be honest, now that you've each confessed that the other was a traitor?"

"What?" marveled Doremus.

"Sure! Old Falck here says you carried his grandson's pieces to the Vermont Vigilance. Come on, now, if you'll tell us who published that rag—"

"I have confessed nothing. I have nothing to confess," said Mr. Falck.

Stoyt screamed, "Will you shut up? You old hypocrite!" Stoyt knocked him to the floor, and as Mr. Falck weaved dizzily on hands and knees, kicked him in the side with a heavy boot. The other two guards were holding back the sputtering Doremus. Stoyt jeered at Mr. Falck, "Well, you old bastard, you're on your knees, so let's hear you pray!"

"I shall!"

In agony Mr. Falck raised his head, dust-smeared from the floor, straightened his shoulders, held up trembling hands, and with such sweetness in his voice as Doremus had once heard in it when men were human, he cried, "Father, Thou hast forgiven so long! Forgive them not but curse them, for they know what they do!" He tumbled forward, and Doremus knew that he would never hear that voice again.

In La Voix littéraire of Paris, the celebrated and genial professor of belles-lettres, Guillaume Semit, wrote with his accustomed sympathy:

I do not pretend to any knowledge of politics, and probably what I saw on my fourth journey to the States United this summer of 1938 was mostly on the surface and cannot be considered a profound analysis of the effects of Corpoism, but I assure you that I have never before seen that nation so great, our young and gigantic cousin in the West, in such bounding health and good spirits. I leave it to my economic confrères to explain such dull phenomena as wage-scales, and tell only what I saw, which is that the innumerable parades and vast athletic conferences of the Minute Men and the lads and lassies of the Corpo Youth Movement exhibited such rosy, contented faces, such undeviating enthusiasm for their hero, the Chief, M. Windrip, that involuntarily I exclaimed, "Here is a whole nation dipped in the River of Youth."

Everywhere in the country was such feverish rebuilding of public edifices and apartment houses for the poor as has never hitherto been known. In Washington, my old colleague, M. le Secretary Macgoblin, was so good as to cry, in that virile yet cultivated manner of his which is so well known, "Our enemies maintain that our labor camps are virtual slavery. Come, my old one! You shall see for yourself." He conducted me by one of the marvelously speedy American automobiles to such a camp, near Washington, and having the workers assembled, he put to them frankly: "Are you low in the heart?" As one man they chorused, "No," with a spirit like our own brave soldiers on the ramparts of Verdun.

During the full hour we spent there, I was permitted to roam at will, asking such questions as I cared to, through the offices of the interpreter kindly furnished by His Excellency, M. le Dr. Macgoblin, and every worker whom I thus approached assured me that never has he been so well fed, so tenderly treated, and so assisted to find an almost poetic interest in his chosen work as in this labor camp—this scientific cooperation for the well-being of all.

With a certain temerity I ventured to demand of M. Macgoblin what truth was there in the reports so shamefully circulated (especially, alas, in our beloved France) that in the concentration camps the opponents of Corpoism are ill fed and harshly treated. M. Macgoblin explained to me that there are no such things as "concentration camps," if that term is to carry any penological significance. They are, actually, schools, in which adults who have unfortunately been misled by the glib prophets of that milk-and-water religion, "Liberalism," are reconditioned to comprehend the new day of authoritative economic control. In such camps, he assured me, there are actually no guards, but only patient teachers, and men who were once utterly uncomprehending of Corpoism, and therefore opposed to it, are now daily going forth as the most enthusiastic disciples of the Chief.

Alas that France and Great Britain should still be thrashing about in the slough of Parliamentarianism and so-called Democracy, daily sinking deeper into debt and paralysis of industry, because of the cowardice and traditionalism of our Liberal leaders, feeble and outmoded men who are afraid to plump for either Fascism or Communism; who dare not—or who are too power hungry—to cast off outmoded techniques, like the Germans, Americans, Italians, Turks, and other really courageous peoples, and place the sane and scientific control of the all-powerful Totalitarian State in the hands of Men of Resolution!

In October, John Pollikop, arrested on suspicion of having just possibly helped a refugee to escape, arrived in the Trianon camp, and the first words between him and his friend Karl Pascal were no inquiries about health, but a derisive interchange, as though they were continuing a conversation broken only half an hour before:

"Well, you old Bolshevik, I told you so! If you Communists had joined with me and Norman Thomas to back Frank Roosevelt, we wouldn't be here now!"

"Rats! Why, it's Thomas and Roosevelt that started Fascism! I ask you! Now shut up, John, and listen: What was the New Deal but pure Fascism? Whadthey do to the worker? Look here! No, wait now, listen—"

Doremus felt at home again, and comforted—though he did also feel that Foolish probably had more constructive economic wisdom than John Pollikop, Karl Pascal, Herbert Hoover, Buzz Windrip, Lee Sarason, and himself put together; or if not, Foolish had the sense to conceal his lack of wisdom by pretending that he could not speak English.

Shad Ledue, back in his hotel suite, reflected that he was getting a dirty deal. He had been responsible for sending more traitors to concentration camps than any other county commissioner in the province, yet he had not been promoted.

It was late; he was just back from a dinner given by Francis Tasbrough in honor of Provincial Commissioner Swan and a board consisting of Judge Philip Jessup, Director of Education Owen J. Peaseley, and Brigadier Kippersly, who were investigating the ability of Vermont to pay more taxes.

Shad felt discontented. All those damned snobs trying to show off! Talking at dinner about this bum show in New York—this first Corpo revue, Callin' Stalin, written by Lee Sarason and Hector Macgoblin. How those nuts had put on the agony about "Corpo art," and "drama freed from Jewish suggestiveness" and "the pure line of Anglo-Saxon sculpture" and even, by God, about "Corporate physics"! Simply trying to show off! And they had paid no attention to Shad when he had told his funny story about the stuck-up preacher in Fort Beulah, one Falck, who had been so jealous because the M.M.'s drilled on Sunday morning instead of going to his gospel shop that he had tried to get his grandson to make up lies about the M.M.'s, and whom Shad had amusingly arrested right in his own church! Not paid one bit of attention to him, even though he had carefully read all through the Chief's Zero Hour so he could quote it, and though he had been careful to be refined in his table manners and to stick out his little finger when he drank from a glass.

He was lonely.

The fellows he had once best known, in pool room and barber shop, seemed frightened of him, now, and the dirty snobs like Tasbrough still ignored him.

He was lonely for Sissy Jessup.

Since her dad had been sent to Trianon, Shad didn't seem able to get her to come around to his rooms, even though he was the County Commissioner and she was nothing now but the busted daughter of a criminal.

And he was crazy about her. Why, he'd be almost willing to marry her, if he couldn't get her any other way! But when he had hinted as much—or almost as much—she had just laughed at him, the dirty little snob!

He had thought, when he was a hired man, that there was a lot more fun in being rich and famous. He didn't feel one bit different than he had then! Funny!

CHAPTER XXXII

DR. LIONEL ADAMS, B.A. of Yale, Ph.D. of Chicago, Negro, had been a journalist, American consul in Africa and, at the time of Berzelius Windrip's election, professor of anthropology in Howard University. As with all his colleagues, his professorship was taken over by a most worthy and needy white man, whose training in anthropology had been as photographer on one expedition to Yucatan. In the dissension between the Booker Washington school of Negroes who counseled patience in the new subjection of the Negroes to slavery, and the radicals who demanded that they join the Communists and struggle for the economic freedom of all, white or black, Professor Adams took the mild, Fabian former position.

He went over the country preaching to his people that they must be "realistic," and make what future they could; not in some Utopian fantasy but on the inescapable basis of the ban against them.

Near Burlington, Vermont, there is a small colony of Negroes, truck farmers, gardeners, houseworkers, mostly descended from slaves who, before the Civil War, escaped to Canada by the "Underground Railway" conducted by such zealots as Truman Webb's grandfather, but who sufficiently loved the land of their forcible adoption to return to America after the war. From the colony had gone to the great cities young colored people who (before the Corpo emancipation) had been nurses, doctors, merchants, officials.

This colony Professor Adams addressed, bidding the young colored rebels to seek improvement within their own souls rather than in mere social superiority.

As he was in person unknown to this Burlington colony, Captain Oscar Ledue, nicknamed "Shad," was summoned to censor the lecture. He sat hulked down in a chair at the back of the hall. Aside from addresses by M.M. officers, and moral inspiration by his teachers in grammar school, it was the first lecture he had ever heard in his life, and he didn't think much of it. He was irritated that this stuck-up nigger didn't spiel like the characters of Octavus Roy Cohen, one of Shad's favorite authors, but had the nerve to try to sling English just as good as Shad himself. It was more irritating that the loud-mouthed pup should look so much like a bronze statue, and finally, it was simply more than a guy could stand that the big bum should be wearing a Tuxedo!

So when Adams, as he called himself, claimed that there were good poets and teachers and even doctors and engineers among the niggers, which was plainly an effort to incite folks to rebellion against the government, Shad signaled his squad and arrested Adams in the midst of his lecture, addressing him, "You God-damn dirty, ignorant, stinking nigger! I'm going to shut your big mouth for you, for keeps!"

Dr. Adams was taken to the Trianon concentration camp. Ensign Stoyt thought it would be a good joke on those fresh beggars (almost Communists, you might say) Jessup and Pascal to lodge the nigger right in the same cell with them. But they actually seemed to like Adams; talked to him as though he were white and educated! So Stoyt placed him in a solitary cell, where he could think over his crime in having bitten the hand that had fed him.

The greatest single shock that ever came to the Trianon camp was in November, 1938, when there appeared among them, as the newest prisoner, Shad Ledue.

It was he who was responsible for nearly half of them being there.

The prisoners whispered that he had been arrested on charges by Francis Tasbrough; officially, for having grafted on shopkeepers; unofficially, for having failed to share enough of the graft with Tasbrough. But such cloudy causes were less discussed than the question of how they would murder Shad now they had him safe.

All Minute Men who were under discipline, except only such Reds as Julian Falck, were privileged prisoners in the concentration camps; they were safeguarded against the common, i.e., criminal, i.e., political inmates; and most of them, once reformed, were returned to the M.M. ranks, with a greatly improved knowledge of how to flog malcontents. Shad was housed by himself in a single cell like a not-too-bad hall-bedroom, and every evening he was permitted to spend two hours in the officers' mess room. The scum could not get at him, because his exercise hour was at a time different from theirs.

Doremus begged the plotters against Shad to restrain themselves.

"Good Lord, Doremus, do you mean that after the sure-enough battles we've gone through you're still a bourgeois pacifist—that you still believe in the sanctity of a lump of hog meat like Ledue?" demanded Karl Pascal.

"Well, yes, I do—a little. I know that Shad came from a family of twelve underfed brats up on Mount Terror. Not much chance. But more important than that, I don't believe in individual assassination as an effective means of fighting despotism. The blood of the tyrants is the seed of the massacre and—"

"Are you taking a cue from me and quoting sound doctrine when it's the time for a little liquidation?" said Karl. "This one tyrant's going to lose a lot of blood!"

The Pascal whom Doremus had considered as, at his most violent, only a gas bag, looked at him with a stare in which all friendliness was frozen. Karl demanded of his cell mates, a different set now than at Doremus's arrival, "Shall we get rid of this typhus germ, Ledue?"

John Pollikop, Truman Webb, the surgeon, the carpenter, each of them nodded, slowly, without feeling.

At exercise hour, the discipline of the men marching out to the quadrangle was broken when one prisoner stumbled, with a cry, knocked over another man, and loudly apologized—just at the barred entrance of Shad Ledue's cell. The accident made a knot collect before the cell. Doremus, on the edge of it, saw Shad looking out, his wide face blank with fear.

Someone, somehow, had lighted and thrown into Shad's cell a large wad of waste, soaked with gasoline. It caught the thin wallboard which divided Shad's cell from the next. The whole room looked presently like the fire box of a furnace. Shad was screaming, as he beat at his sleeves, his shoulders. Doremus remembered the scream of a horse clawed by wolves in the Far North.

When they got Shad out, he was dead. He had no face at all.

Captain Cowlick was deposed as superintendent of the camp, and vanished to the insignificance whence he had come. He was succeeded by Shad's friend, the belligerent Snake Tizra, now a battalion-leader. His first executive act was to have all the two hundred inmates drawn up in the quadrangle and to announce, "I'm not going to tell you guys anything about how I'm going to feed you or sleep you till I've finished putting the fear of God into every one of you murderers!"

There were offers of complete pardon for anyone who would betray the man who had thrown the burning waste into Shad's cell. It was followed by enthusiastic private offers from the prisoners that anyone who did thus tattle would not live to get out. So, as Doremus had guessed, they all suffered more than Shad's death had been worth—and to him, thinking of Sissy, thinking of Shad's testimony at Hanover, it had been worth a great deal; it had been very precious and lovely.

A court of special inquiry was convened, with Provincial Commissioner Effingham Swan himself presiding (he was very busy with all bad works; he used aeroplanes to be about them). Ten prisoners, one out of every twenty in the camp, were chosen by lot and shot summarily. Among them was Professor Victor Loveland, who, for all his rags and scars, was neatly academic to the last, with his eyeglasses and his slick tow-colored hair parted in the middle as he looked at the firing-squad.

Suspects like Julian Falck were beaten more often, kept longer in those cells in which one could not stand, sit, nor lie.

Then, for two weeks in December, all visitors and all letters were forbidden, and newly arrived prisoners were shut off by themselves; and the cell mates, like boys in a dormitory, would sit up till midnight in whispered discussion as to whether this was more vengeance by Snake Tizra, or whether something was happening in the World Outside that was too disturbing for the prisoners to know.

#hellsitesonlybookclub #bookblr #sinclair lewis

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rachelkaser · 1 year

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Stay Golden Sunday: Golden Moments, Part 1

Sophia announces her intentions of moving in with her son Phil and his family. The Girls reminisce about the good times while trying to convince her to stay.

Picture It...

Blanche and Dorothy are in the kitchen when Rose enters with a tin of cat food behind her back. She’s been feeding the strays outside. Sophia enters and casually announces that she’s moving out. The Girls demand she explain herself, and she says she got off the phone with her son, Phil. His wife left him and took four of his six kids with her. Sophia intends to go live with Phil and help him raise the remaining two. Dorothy criticizes Sophia for trying to solve Phil’s problems and, when Sophia tries to counter about Dorothy’s problems, Dorothy reminds her why she moved there...

SOPHIA: Boy, something smells good in here! What’s for lunch? BLANCHE: It’s cat food, Sophia. SOPHIA: Is that seafood medley? ROSE: Yes it is! SOPHIA: They used to feed that to us every Sunday at the home. DOROTHY: Man, they did not make you eat cat food at Shady Pines. SOPHIA: I didn’t say they made us eat it . . . you had the option to go hungry.

Clip from “The Engagement”: [The] doorbell rings, and Dorothy answers to see her mother Sophia Petrillo, who says that her nursing home burned down. As Blanche has to explain to Rose, Sophia’s cutting words are the result of her stroke destroying her inhibitions . . . Harry arrives and schmoozes all of the ladies, though Sophia is not impressed.

The Girls ask why Sophia can’t just visit Phil, and tell her she won’t have any privacy or rest as she, Phil, and his two sons will be living in a trailer. Sophia says she doesn’t get any sleep or privacy anyway thanks to the Girls invading each other’s rooms all the time. | Clip from “On Golden Girls”: [Dorothy is staying in Sophia’s room.] They argue over the amount of topical ointments Sophia’s wearing, and the hacking sounds she makes as she’s sleeping.

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Clip from “Isn’t It Romantic”: In her room that night, Dorothy consults with Sophia about her feelings on gay people. Sophia says she wouldn’t love her children any less if they were gay. Dorothy eventually confides that Jean thinks she’s in love with Rose. Sophia immediately starts cracking up at the thought of someone falling for “Little Miss Muffet,” which attracts the attention of Blanche. Sophia tells her Jean is a lesbian. It takes a while for Blanche to catch on, but eventually she does. She’s confused by the idea that anyone wouldn’t be attracted to men, but she says she only cares that Jean is happy. Then they hit her with the other news about Rose. Blanche is indignant … that Jean would prefer Rose over her.

Clip from “Bedtime Story”: Sophia’s the only one in the house with an electric blanket to get them through the night . . . They all cuddle up in bed together. Sophia silences their complaining about which side of the bed they’re on and Dorothy agrees that she needs to go to work early. Rose suddenly remembers that she needs to say her prayers, to the rest of the Girls’ disbelief. She kneels down and thanks God for the other Girls and how they keep her warm on a cold night. When the prayer starts getting too lengthy, a deep voice suddenly tells Rose to get into bed. Blanche leans over and congratulates Dorothy, who mutters back to a terrified Blanche that it wasn’t her.

BLANCHE: Well, maybe we have all dated our share of losers, but I, personally, have had my share of winners, too. SOPHIA: Please, you’ve ridden more winners than Willie Shoemaker.

Sophia again says she’s certain about moving in with Phil, criticizing his wife for not appreciating him. Dorothy says Phil has always had terrible taste, but Sophia reminds them they’ve all dated some losers. | Clip from “Blanche and the Younger Man”: Blanche arrives home with her aerobics instructor, a young Harry Hamlin-circa-Clash of the Titans-lookalike named Dirk. He asks if they can go out to dinner, and Blanche is flattered.

Clip from “Forgive Me, Father”: Frank quickly realizes that Dorothy didn’t know he was a priest . . . the other Girls hustle out to let her talk to Frank, who says he assumed Dorothy knew that he was a priest. They’re both embarrassed, despite the assertion that they can still be friends, and make awkward conversation. Clip from “‘Twas the Nightmare Before Christmas”: Blanche made them all a calendar called The Men of Blanche’s Boudoir, featuring naughty images of some of her more special paramours.

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Clip from “A Little Romance”: Blanche and Dorothy want to know who [Rose’s] new squeeze is, and she says he’s a psychiatrist at her grief center named Jonathan Newman. She’s strangely evasive when the other Girls ask when they can meet him. . . The bell rings again, and Dorothy answers this time. Now the caller gets to introduce himself: Dr. Jonathan Newman. Dorothy’s initially disconcerted to see he’s a little person, but quickly composes herself.

Blanche, however, thoroughly embarrasses herself by accusing Rose of hiring a little person to “teach her a lesson.” (Apparently not one in sensitivity.) Dorothy takes Blanche away to collect herself, and Blanche is determined to be a good hostess from then, but flubs it when offering Jonathan shrimp. | Back in the kitchen, the Girls ask Sophia if there’s anything they can do to convince her to stay. She says her mind is made up and she’s leaving the next day.

SOPHIA: My baby needs me. DOROTHY: What about me, Ma? SOPHIA: You’ve always been able to take care of yourself. You don’t need me. BLANCHE: Alright, what about me? SOPHIA: You were always strong and independent even before I got here. You don’t need me. ROSE: What about me? SOPHIA: You? You need the Wizard of Oz.

“With the right woman behind him, he could’ve had a real diamond in his front tooth.”

We’re almost to the end of Season 3, and we’ve finally gotten our first clip show. Just to be clear, episodes that feature newly filmed footage of past events are flashback episodes, while episodes that feature previously filmed stuff are clip shows. Presumably these episodes were made so that the show’s cast and crew could get a couple of weeks of minimal work, and in that spirit I’ve decided that, when we cover clip shows, I will copy-paste my own analysis of the clips from past Stay Golden Sunday posts. I’ll also include links. I’ve already summarized the scenes in question, so I might as well use those.

These clip shows are all two-parters, and each of the next three seasons will have them -- Season 4 & 5 end with clip shows, and they comprise the penultimate episodes of Season 6 (which ends with the Henny Penny episode instead). I suspect that the crew discovered that the shorter filming days these episodes afforded them made for a good way to end a season. This episode’s framing device takes place entirely within the kitchen over the course of maybe an hour of conversation. Not to diminish the challenges of television work, but that’s gotta be one of the easier things they’ve filmed for this show.

BLANCHE: Whatcha hiding behind your back? ROSE: Nothing. DOROTHY: What smells so awful? ROSE: It’s a new fragrance I’m wearing. DOROTHY: I’m almost sure I don’t have to ask this, but you are aware that toilet water comes in a bottle?

This is not the first time they’ve tried to use one of the Girls moving out to try and give the episode some stakes. This is the first time they’ve ended an “episode” without resolving the matter. These clip shows usually aired as a single, hour-long episode, but the first half usually ends on a mini-cliffhanger to be resolved in the second half. It gives us a glimpse of what the GG writers can do with a little more space -- these glimpses are usually better served in two parters like “Sick and Tired” and “Home Again Rose,” which we’ll get to in later seasons.

First, let’s tackle the framing device. Sophia once again reminds the audience that, while she lives with Dorothy, she has two other children who sometimes need her attention. However, unlike Gloria, who invited Sophia to live with her to give her a luxurious lifestyle, Phil apparently wants Sophia to live with him to help him take care of two of his teenage children. I know Sophia’s a devoted mother, but if she didn’t take the former up on her offer, I think she’d be kidding herself to think she’d go live with the latter.

DOROTHY: Ma, the four of us have lived together for a long time. Now how can you just walk in her and announce that you’re leaving? SOPHIA: Well, Warden, I could make a break for it. But I’m afraid you’d shoot me going over the wall.

Also, I hate to be negative towards Phil, but the things they’ve mentioned about his family thus far paint a weird picture. He and his wife Angela (or “Big Sally” as Sophia calls her) have at least six kids -- though Sophia said ten in an earlier episode -- and live in a trailer despite his wife being a welder who works all day. And Sophia estimates that two of her grandchildren will take at least another ten years to graduate high school, despite them being 14 (and apparently both are on parole and can’t cross state lines), and one of her other grandsons already failed animal grooming school. Though one of her granddaughters did get married earlier in the season, so I suppose it’s not all bad. But seriously, what is going on with Phil and his family?

Moving on to the clips themselves, they appear to be divided up in to three segments ordered by length. The first “segment” is just a clip from the pilot that shows how Sophia came to live at the house following Shady Pines burning down. I realize that, in the macro sense the show doesn’t change much over its seven-year length, as someone who’s looked very closely at every fiber of it, the difference between the pilot and this third-season episode is striking. It also shows how Estelle has progressed from a side character in the show’s earliest iterations to one of the headliners.

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The second segment is about how the Girls spend an inordinate amount of time sharing each other’s rooms for various reasons. These include several bedroom skits, including the four of them huddling under Sophia’s electric blanket and Dorothy telling Sophia and Blanche about Jean and Rose. Like the segments themselves, the clips are ordered from shortest to longest, with almost the entire clip from “Bedtime Story” playing out with minimal cuts. I think this is the first time the show has ever gotten “meta,” in the sense that it’s addressing the inordinate amount of musical bedrooms the characters play. It feels like the writers poking fun at themselves for using the device so often.

The third segment is about the kinds of men the Girls have dated . . . or failed to date, as the clip includes two former beaus -- Dirk from “Blanche and the Younger Man” and Frank from “Forgive Me, Father” -- who very notably do not date Blanche and Dorothy respectively. This clip also includes the Men of Blanche’s Boudoir segment, despite that not featuring any of the actual men in the flesh. Actually, now that I think of it, the only clip that features one of the Girls’ boyfriends is from “A Little Romance,” with Dr. Jonathan Newman. And he’s probably one of the only men any of the Girls have dated who I would not call a yutz, though he would fit Blanche’s stated recounting of “a variety of men in our lives.”

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I think these clips aren’t necessarily selected for narrative coherence or consistency -- or at least I hope they weren’t because if they were then whoever it was who compiled them failed. I think they were selected for popularity and laugh factor more than anything else. These are likely the moments the studio audience laughed the loudest. I’m fine with that, I just wish they’d strung them together with a little more grace. The “yutz parade” segment could definitely have added a few of the Girls more yutz-y lovers, and it’s not like those were in short supply up to this point. But as far as clip compilations go, it’s fun and a good way to get new viewers caught up on some of the bigger laughs.

Episode rating: 🍰🍰🍰 (three cheesecake slices out of five)

Favorite part of the episode

My favorite line of the framing device:

BLANCHE: Aw, cat food. DOROTHY: Oh Rose, have you been feeding those strays again? ROSE: I can’t help it, Dorothy. I heard them howling and moaning all night. How do you ignore something like that? DOROTHY: I’m getting used to it. You know, my room’s next to Blanche’s.

#golden girls #stay golden #stay golden sunday #s03e18 #blanche devereaux #golden moments part one #picture it #rose nylund #sophia petrillo #dorothy zbornak

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iwritesickfic · 3 years

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"i kinda have a crush"

synopsis: Henry has a crush on his roommate's best friend Tom. When he gets sick, he's not sure whether Tom's concern means he feels the same.

Henry doesn't have time for a cold. Especially not now. Finals start next week, and between studying for exams, finishing final projects, and going to class, pretty much all his time is going to be occupied. Today, he woke up with a headache and a sore throat, which he's trying to convince himself is just a product of poor sleep, but deep down he knows is just the beginning of something worse to come.

Now, he's in his room, wrapped in his comforter and highlighting passages in his bio textbook, hearing his roommate Sam and his loud friends watching something equally loud in the living room. It's useless trying to ask them to quiet down - he learned after the sixth or seventh time asking that even though they all seem accommodating, they forget pretty quickly. Normally he'd be able to tune them out, but his steadily worsening headache is making it near impossible.

He gets up and starts pulling on clothes - the walk to the library may be freezing, but at least he'll get some quiet. Leaving his room, he's aware of how pissed off he must look, but he doesn't care enough to feign politeness to Sam and his friends.

He heads to the kitchen and grabs his travel mug - he's going to need coffee if he's going to last at the library. He's just filling it up when he hears a voice behind him.

"Hey! Henry! I didn't know you were home!" It's Tom. He's probably Sam's best friend - at the very least, he's the friend who's over more than anyone else. Henry suppresses a sigh. Tom is the exact kind of guy he doesn't like. Bro-y, athletic, always overly friendly to everyone - it just comes off as phony. It also just so happens that guys like this are always very attractive, and Tom is no exception. He turns around to grab milk from the fridge.

"Hey," he says, trying not to sound as annoyed as he feels.

"If I knew you were here I would've been a little quieter - you have finals coming up too, right?" Tom asks, leaning against the door frame in that way he always does.

"Mmhmm. It's fine. I'm going to the library." Talking to Tom is not helping the throbbing in his head. He starts to add the sugar and milk to his coffee.

"Are you sure? I can ask the guys to quiet down."

"No, it's fine." He snaps the cover onto his coffee and starts toward the door.

"Alright, well have a good day!"

"Thanks, you too." When he closes the front door he sighs, rubbing his eyes. He starts down the stairs. Being around people like that is exhausting on a normal day - Henry's always been quiet. Reserved. With the beginnings of a cold it's almost aggravating.

The frigid air outside makes his throat burn and his eyes water. His nose starts to run too, and he hopes it's just the temperature and not a new symptom. Knowing his luck he's going to be the one annoying person in the library constantly sniffling.

His time at the library is mostly uneventful, apart from going through a pack of travel tissues and getting dirty looks from other students. By the time they're ready to close, he feels significantly worse than he did this morning, but he's finished his biology review and is almost done with a paper for Transformative Design.

The trudge home feels like it takes forever - it's only about a 15 minute walk, but between the cold and feeling like crap it seems neverending. He can hear from the hallway outside the apartment that Sam's friends are still here, which makes him want to tear his hair out.

It's almost midnight when they leave, so it's only about that time he can get to sleep. He has class the next morning at 8, and when he wakes up with his alarm, he knows he's in for a full blown cold. His head still aches, and his sinuses feel sore and swollen. His throat kills too, and he feels shivery, despite the heavy comforter.

He lets himself lie in bed for a while, sniffling and trying to absorb as much warmth as he can from the comforter, before he drags himself up. He immediately pulls on his warmest sweater, even though he's just going to the bathroom. It doesn't help the shivering much, but it's something. He probably looks ridiculous, in just a pair of boxers and his oversized sweater, but he feels so shitty he doesn't really care.

Walking by the couch, he sees Tom asleep, shirtless. His heart flutters - he knew Tom was fit but it was something else to see it. The butterflies are almost annoying. There a million guys on campus, why does he have to get so worked up over this one?

In the shower, he cranks up the heat and lets the steam ease the aching in his sinuses. He's in there for too long, but the thought of having to actually walk to class in the cold makes him reluctant to get out.

He arrives to class a few minutes late - nose still dripping from the cold. Luckily today is just a lecture, but it's a five hour class, and he didn't have time to make any coffee this morning. He brought another little travel pack of tissues, but he's definitely going to have to ration them.

He's still shivering. It's worse after being out in the cold, and even though it should get better over time, nothing changes. He just sits there, achy and shivering and congested and miserable until 10:30, when the professor calls for a 10 minute break. Thank god. He needs coffee. There's a small shop in the building, so he forces himself up and out of his seat - which leads to a few seconds of particularly bad throbbing in his head - and out into the hall.

He almost groans when he sees who's working. Tom. Of course he's been to this little coffee spot a million times and he knows it's where Tom works, but he didn't think he'd have to see him this morning. Part of him is annoyed - he definitely does not have the energy to deal with him at the moment - but another part is a little embarrassed at how awful he must look. Not that he should care what Tom thinks of him, he reminds himself. Regardless, he walks up the counter, half occupied rubbing at his nose with a tissue.

"Hey," he says, and is surprised how congested he sounds. Tom turns, eyes lighting up.

"Hey!" He dims a little when he takes in his full appearance. "You ok?" Henry sniffles.

"Yeah. Fine. Can I get-"

"Large hot coffee, oat milk and sugar, right?" Henry's taken aback.

"Uh, yeah. You know my order?"

"Of course. It's an easy order." He goes about starting to make the drink. "Hope we didn't keep you up last night. I kept telling Sam to shut the fuck up but he doesn't listen to me."

"It's fine. I'm used to it." He sniffles again.

"You sound like you're coming down with something."

"And you sound like my mom." That makes Tom laugh, and again, Henry feels a stirring in his chest. Tom puts the lid on the drink and hands it to him, and Henry tries to hand him the money. Tom shakes his head.

"That's ok - on the house." That draws a little smile out of Henry. Tom smiles back, and for a minute he forgets how shitty he feels. "I hope you feel better."

"Thanks."

He heads back to class and sits down, taking a sip of the coffee. It tastes great, as always when Tom makes it, and the warmth helps to ease the chills at least somewhat. The rest of the lecture is spent half paying attention, and half worrying his sniffling and nose blowing is annoying. When it's finally over, he wants nothing more than to just go home and take a nap, but he has a problem set for calculus due tomorrow that he hasn't even started. So, reluctantly, he makes the trek to the library. He's able to work for most of the day uninterrupted - he's not very hungry, which maybe should be concerning but is convenient nonetheless.

By the time he's done, it's already dark out, and the walk home is brutal. The wind is whipping, and his scarf and hat aren't doing much to keep the cold out. His nose is running like a faucet and the cough he developed over the course of the day drags the cold air even further into his lungs. The coughs hurt, like they come from somewhere deep in his chest, and by the time he gets home his throat is destroyed.

When he gets home, he's glad to see Sam isn't making a racket for once. Still, he knows he's in for a restless night anyway. He puts a can of soup on the stove to heat up while he changes into sweatpants and a hoodie. His reflection in the mirror is definitely a sight - he's flushed from the cold, his hair a mess, and his eyes red rimmed.

He knows he should really fit in some more studying before he calls it a night, but after he picks at his soup and does the dishes, he's ready to fall over, so he just curls up in bed, coughing and shivery, and goes to sleep.

He wakes up a few times in the night coughing, and the soreness in his throat makes his eyes water. He's barely able to drag himself out of bed the next morning. His shivers have become more like shakes, and his cough feels like it never stops. He got a decent amount of sleep, but he still feels totally exhausted - even his muscles are sore.

His classes are a blur - he's too preoccupied with feeling awful to focus, and by the time he's done at 6, all he wants to do is go home and sleep until tomorrow morning. But, he knows he has to get at least one assignment done. After tomorrow, he'll have the whole weekend to relax. Not totally, but still.

Just the assignment tonight, classes tomorrow, then he can finally get some rest. The library probably isn't a good choice - his cough is too distracting, and he knows the walk home later will be torture. So instead, he goes back to the apartment. The cold air always exacerbates the cough, so the whole way home he's hacking, his nose running like a faucet. His ribs have started to hurt from all the coughing.

He almost wants to cry when he gets home and hears the sound of Sam and his friends in the living room. Why tonight of all nights? He trudges into his bedroom and changes - he's started to feel warm, which is a relief after feeling so cold all the time, but now it's becoming a both too warm and too cold feeling, so he tugs on his sweater and a fresh pair of boxers.

He starts to work on the physics problem set - there are only three problems total, but each of them usually take an hour at least, and that's when he's not feeling like death. He works for a while, but it's only when he starts to feel lightheaded he realizes he hasn't eaten yet today.

So, he heads into the kitchen and rummages around for a can of chicken noodle. He finds it, but he's too weak and shaky to work the can open right. He tries for a good three minutes before he feels a lump form in his throat.

"Hey, do you want some help with that?" He turns to see Tom standing in the doorway. Self consciously, he sniffles and clears his throat.

"Uh, y-yeah, that would be great." Tom smiles softly and walks over, making quick work of the can. Henry expects him to just go back into the living room, but he grabs the pot from the cabinet and turns on the stove.

"You've got quite a cough there." Henry feels himself blush. They all must be able to hear him from his room.

“Sorry, I-”

“Hey, no, no don’t be sorry. We make enough noise, you’re allowed to be sick.” He pours the soup into the pot and starts to grab spices from the shelf.

“I’m not sick.” Henry isn’t sure why he’s being so defensive, but Tom doesn’t challenge him, just smirks.

“Well whatever it is, it sounds brutal.” He shakes a few of the spices into the soup, stirring slowly.

“I’m ok. Really.” There’s a bit of an awkward silence before someone calls Tom from the other room. He looks a little dismayed, but puts on a smile.

“Feel better, ok?” He rests his arm on Henry’s upper arm, giving him a soft smile, before heading back into the living room. And there’s that fluttering in his chest again.

On his way back to his room, he catches a bit of a conversation.

“I think we should go out.” That’s Tom’s voice.

“Nah dude, it’s freezing.” That’s Sam.

“C’mon, let’s go. It’ll be fine.”

“Alright, whatever.”

Henry smiles to himself. Maybe it’s reaching to think Tom did that specifically for him, but part of him really hopes he did.

The rest of the night is blissfully quiet, apart from his incessant cough. By the time he’s finished with the last problem, it’s midnight, and the world is swimming. He’s never been happier to lie down. But, it’s short lived. Despite being exhausted, his cough and what he suspects is a fever are making it all but impossible to sleep. He drifts in and out of half-sleep, sometimes too hot, sometimes too cold. Luckily his class isn’t until the afternoon, but he spends the whole morning much like the night before. When he finally gets up, he feels truly ready to fall over. His headache is horrendous, throbbing and pounding at the slightest provocation. His sinuses are still swollen, along with his poor throat that makes him wince with every swallow. The cough is the same if not a little worse, except now it sends cramping pain through his ribs.

On the walk to class, he just keeps repeating the same idea in his head. Just three hours, then you can rest. The class is truly a blur, but the walk home is too unpleasant to tune out. Once again, the freezing temperature isn’t any help, and forcing his aching body to walk through the snow gets harder with every step.

He turns the corner for the front door of his building, and a wave of relief washes over him. But, he’s confused when he sees someone standing near the buzzer. He’s even more confused when he realizes it’s Tom.

“Hey, uh, Sam isn’t here. He’s gone for the weekend.” He says, embarrassed at how thready and weak his voice sounds. Tom turns, looking confused.

“Why are you out here? It’s freezing.” He says, and Henry isn’t sure whether it’s the fever that’s keeping him from putting the dots together or this just doesn’t make sense.

“Sam isn’t upstairs,” he repeats, and Tom sighs gently.

“I’m not here to see Sam.” It still isn’t clicking. “C’mon, let’s go inside.”

“Ok…” He unlocks the door and clumsily shakes the snow off his boots before getting into the elevator. Tom follows, and Henry figures someone else must be in the building that Tom wants to see, but Tom follows him right to the door. Henry sighs and rubs his eyes. “Tom, what do you want?”

For the first time, it looks like Tom might actually be nervous.

“I came to check up on you.” Henry suddenly feels a strange bundle of emotions unfurl in his stomach.

“Oh,” is all he can manage to get out. Tom bites his lip.

“Is that ok?”

“Yeah! Yeah, it’s fine, uh…” He takes a deep breath, but breaks into a fit of coughs before he can speak. He feels a steady hand on his back. After he’s done with the fit the world swims, and there’s a hand on his shoulder.

“Let’s go inside so you can sit down, ok?” Henry just nods, and after a few moments of struggling to fit the key into the lock, Tom does it for him. Immediately, he strips off his scarf and coat and practically collapses onto the couch, pulling off his boots. He leans back into the cushions, closing his eyes.

“Fuck…” he breathes, and he hears Tom laugh quietly. When he opens his eyes, he sees Tom sitting in front of him on the coffee table, still looking nervous. “Why would you wanna check on me?”

“Well you didn’t seem so good last night, and I wanted to make sure you were ok. Even though you hate my guts,” he says with a smile. He starts to rummage through his backpack, and pulls out a bottle of tylenol and a thermometer, as well as a quart container of soup.

“I don’t hate your guts,” Henry says quietly, and Tom gives him another smile.

“Well that’s good to hear.” He leans forward and starts to move his palm toward his forehead, but hesitates. “Is this ok?” Henry nods, and sighs when he feels the cool palm on his overheated skin. He moves his hand to his cheek. “Jesus, you’re really burning up.”

He lets out another volley of coughs, and Tom rubs his back again. It feels nice, but it doesn’t make the confusion go away. For now though, he’s happy to just be looked after.

“Here.” Tom slips the thermometer under his tongue, brushing some of his hair away from his face. When it beeps, he takes it out. “102. Not so bad.” Henry has a feeling he’s saying that more for his benefit than his own. “You want me to grab you some more comfortable clothes?” Henry just nods, and Tom smiles in return. “Alright.”

He gets up and walks into the bedroom, leaving Henry alone on the couch, finally giving him a moment to process all of this. Why on earth would Tom care about him? They’re not really friends, are they? And Tom was straight, wasn’t he? And even if he wasn’t, there’s no way he’d actually like Henry of all people. And did Henry even like him? Sure, he’s sweet and funny and impossibly hot, but he’s friends with Sam. And he’s on the soccer team. And he’s so outgoing and friendly all the time, wouldn’t that get annoying?

He almost doesn’t notice when Tom gets back.

“Here you go. You want me to go in the kitchen while you change?” He hands him the clothes, and Henry bites his lip.

“If you want to.” Is that a weird answer? Tom smirks.

“I’m fine if you’re fine.”

Henry starts to take off his shirt, but he’s so shaky and uncoordinated, Tom has to help him, which probably killed any romance the situation offered, he thinks. The clean fabric feels nice against his feverish skin. The pants go the same way, and he didn’t realize how uncomfortable he was until now.

“Here, lean your head back,” Tom says, and he does. Tom presses a cool, damp cloth to his forehead, and he sighs softly. “That feels good?” He nods. There’s a few moments of silence while he just relaxes into the feeling. Then, he sits up straight.

“Why are you doing all this?” Tom looks nervous again.

“You’re my...friend. And I care about you,” he says, and Henry feels his heart sink a little.

“Oh. Ok.” He must sound disappointed, because Tom smiles.

“Hoping for a different answer?” Henry shrugs, and Tom rubs his jaw.

“I mean, it’s a little embarrassing but I used to...have a crush on you. But I think you made it kind of clear you weren’t interested.” Henry can’t hide his confusion.

“I made it clear?” He’s genuinely not sure what Tom is talking about. Sure, he’s never out right flirted with him, but he always thought he was straight anyway.

“Just...one word answers to everything, always seeming like you had somewhere else to be - it’s fine. I don’t know why I even brought it up. You want some soup?” Henry just nods, and Tom smiles. “Ok, sounds good.”

He heads into the kitchen, and Henry’s mind runs a mile a minute. There’s no way he’s telling the truth right? But why would he lie? He comes back through the doorway and leans against the frame.

“It’s on the stove, just have to wait a few minutes. You feeling ok?”

“Yeah, uh...I wanna tell you something.” Henry doesn’t know how he can make leaning against a doorframe look so good.

“Shoot.”

“I kinda had a crush on you too. Or...have.” He can feel himself blushing. Tom laughs.

“You have a really funny way of showing it.” He’s beaming, and it makes Henry smile too.

“Well it’s not my fault you’re so annoying,” he says, and Tom walks back over to the coffee table and sits down. Tom’s hand rests on his forehead, then makes its way down to his cheek. It feels so steady. Stable.

“I’m not the one that got themself sick with pneumonia because I wouldn’t miss a class, am I?” Without thinking, Henry wraps his arms around him as tight as he can - which isn’t very tight, but still. He buries his face in the crook of his neck and takes a deep breath. Tom rubs his back gently.

“Thank you, for doing all this,” he whispers, and Tom squeezes him a little bit tighter.

“Anytime.”

#my writing #oc henry #oc tom #two more boys pining for each while one has a cold what's new?

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iwadori · 3 years

Note

So I'm reading your works and I love them !! I was thinking of requesting some kind of drabble or whatever you like, about a female reader who has thick thighs and is somewhat plump and is in love with Tsukishima but he makes a comment about the food and she feels bad and when she meets Bokuto in the boot camp Bokuto is too cute and attentive to her asking for her number and a date. If you don't feel comfortable with this, just ignore it and good luck with your blog. Sorry my english is bad<3

When they make you insecure PT 5 (tsukishima,bokuto)

Part One Part Two Part Three Part Four Part Five Part 6

Word Count: 2.6K

Genre: Angst to Fluff

masterlist

Tsukishima

You and Tsukishima have been dating in your first year (as you both went to the same middle school together.)

You were in love with Tsukishima, you always have been to be honest, but once you became officially boyfriend and girlfriend your feelings amplified.

But recently, Tsukishima hasn’t been so nice.

“Y/N we’re going on another training camp at Nekoma” Hinata exclaimed running up to you, as you leaning against Tsukishima “and you get to come too this time!”

You recently became the new trainee manager as the third-year manager, Kikyoko, is going to graduate. Tsukishima acted as if you being around all the time in practice was the worst thing in the world, but Yamagucchi always assured you that ‘Tsukki’ was just joking.

“Oh well that’s fun...” you say entertaining Hinata’s excitement. You were kind of excited to go to the training camp too, as it was in Tokyo after all. You were always a big fan of volleyball as your dad used to play for the national team and you were planning to play on the girls team this year but you felt that you didn’t have the body for it (which was obviously not true.)

Hinata kept on rambling on before Tsukishima insulted him. “Gosh Kei, you don’t have to be so rude.” you complained, he slightly nudged you off of him and put on his headphones showing you that he was not in a good mood.

You let the rest of the practice continue, making notes of things and basically being Kiyoko’s shadow. As it ended, you waited outside for Tsukishima to walk home with you, but one of the guys told you he left 5 minutes ago. You knew there was no point of chasing after him so you just walked on your own, making you sigh in defeat.

Tsukishima was what you would describe as hot and cold. Some days he was fine a ‘perfect gentlemen’ but other days, days like this Tsukishima was just Tsukishima.

When you got home, you decided to watch matches of all the other schools just to get some insight. You were watching a Fukarodani V Nekoma match from a few years ago and something caught your eye, well someone did to be more specific. A beefy, bicolour haired boy who was hooting like an owl was mesmerizing to watch.

You saw that his name was Bokuto Koutarou which triggered your next actions, which were to internet stalk him. You learned that he was the captain of the team and the team’s ace and the 5th ace in the country which piqued your interest in the boy even more.

‘This is going to be an exciting training camp’ you think to yourself before going to sleep.

`Kiyoko gave you an itinerary of all the things you should bring, since you weren’t going to be joining in any of the matches you were reminded to bring things that would keep entertained.

You get to the bus at the crack of dawn, ready to be driven to Tokyo. Hinata and Kageyama were already arguing (let’s pretend that they didn’t have to do the retakes in the test) Tanaka and Nishinoya were being loud, and the rest of the members were already asleep. You wanted to sit next to Tsukishima but when you were about to sit down, he put his carryon bag in the seat next to him.

The bus ride was around 4-5 hours, and you spent your time reading and sleeping. Daichi got the loudmouths to calm down making the bus ride more tolerable. You suffered from slight motion sickness but you powered through.

When you arrived there, you saw all the other teams and their buses too. You felt a bit overwhelmed, seeing these tall boys just crowd around an entrance way. But too your surprise, noticing your slight anxiousness, Tsukishima grabbed your hand in a hand-hold.

The Nekoma coach, explained how the day would pan out and where each team would be residing for the week. There was a lot of commotion getting everyone settled, Hinata and Nishinoya were basically bouncing off of the wall commenting on all the people and the place and how they’re going to ‘crush the competition.’

You could tell that when the other teams were looking at Karasuno they were all staring at Kiyoko. Inquisitive about how there wasn’t only one girl manager but there was two. As you were walking your eyes locked with Bokuto Koutarou’s making yours widen, you blush and turn your head quickly.

What you didn’t know was, after your small interaction, Bokuto elbowed Akaashi and said “Akaaashi AKKAAASHI, did ya see that? did ya?” he was flying with happiness “That girl from Karasuno smiled at me. She’s really pretty.”

“I think she’s from Karasuno” Akaashi said “So maybe you’ll see her around”

Bokuto stared off in the direction you were walking in “Yeah, hopefully.”

The first day, everyone got settled in and then the teams went straight into games. There were two different gyms and today, in gym 1, you were watching Karasuno V Nekoma. (By the way I literally don’t remember the teams at the training camp besides Nekoma, Karasuno and Fukarodani.) The game was very back a point each team making point after point, you already knew of Nekoma’s captain, Kuroo Testurou and the setter Kenma, you’ve actually played games with Kenma online before so you were fairly acquainted with him already.

The games ended and it was now dinner time, the canteen was packed with all the boys rushing to line up for the food. You waited at the back of the line, not really caring about when you got your food. Suddenly, you felt a tap on your shoulder and you looked over to see Boktuo,

“Hi.” he said “I’m Bok-”

“Bokuto Koutarou!” You finished “I'm a big fan..” you cringed immediately at your excitement ‘pull it together Y/N’ you scold yourself.

“Oh well hi, I’m glad you know who I am” he said “and may I ask for your name?”

“Oh I’m Y/N L/N” you say with a slight blush “I'm the trainee manager from Karasuno.”

“Cool! Well I hope to see you aro-” he starts

“Y/N, I’ve been looking all over for you, I already got your food for you.” Tsukishima said pulling at your arm a bit harshly, dragging you over to a table with the Karasuno team.

“Gosh Tsukki, no need to be so harsh” you say rubbing at your wrist, he didn’t apologize and just started eating his food.

You look down at your plate and see the small portion that Tsukki got for you. The Karasuno bunch was being loud, as they usually are, so when you whisper “Tsukki what the fuck is this” whilst nudging him in the side, he didn’t hear you (or atleast he pretended he didn’t.) You tried again but a little louder saying, “Tsukishima what the fuck is this.” you realised you said it a bit too loud as the whole Karasuno table stopped their conversations to look over at the slight commontion you caused.

“What do you mean Y/N?” he said with a slight smirk on his face.

“I mean what’s with the portion size of a bird that you gave me?” you ask getting upset “Do you really think im that big?”

“Well, you could start eating less that’s for sure.” he said earning gasps from you and some of the people sitting at the table “Y/N let's face it, you eat like a pig and you look like an elephant, me making your food portion smaller is the least I could do.”

By now you had tears in your eyes, Tsukishima was a dick. You knew this, everybody knew this to be honest, yet you still loved him. He wasn’t like this in middle school, yes he was a bit snarky and rude (but wasn’t every middle schooler?) High school Tsukishima was like a completely different person. As much as you wanted to run away and hide, you knew you couldn’t.

So you stood up and said “Tsukishima, I’ve spent 3 years loving and pining after you, because I thought you were this great guy, but turns out you’re a huge asshole” you start making some of the people listening in smile in laughter “Tsukishima, I’ve hated this past year dating you, you’ve been such a huge dick and I’m finally stopping you. I can’t do this anymore. I won’t.” You start making your way to exit before finally saying “Oh and by the way I’m not the pig here, you are... oh and I’m breaking up with you.” You left, hearing a few laughs and some claps behind you.

You felt relieved, like the massive cloud that’s been over your head is finally gone. You went to the gym since you knew it was empty and picked up a ball to just throw it around a bit. After a while of ‘de-stressing,’ you hear someone else enter the gym.

“Oh I didn’t know you’d be here.” said Bokuto

“Well here I am,” you say awkwardly “I can leave if you want me too, I know this is for actual volleyball players.”

“No no it’s fine you can definitely stay, in fact do you mind setting for me?” he asks

“Sure, of course I don’t mind” you reply, excited you get to play with someone. You haven’t played in ages, you always begged Tsukishima to just throw a ball around with you but he never did.

You set to Boktuo a lot, with him always asking for ‘another one’ everytime he spiked the ball. Eventually, you were tired of setting and wanted to spike. You originally was a spiker to begin with taking after your dad. Thats why you took a liking to Bokuto in the first place cause he reminded you of the joys you had when watching your father play.

Bokuto set a ball to you and you spiked it with great strength and accuracy smiling at the burning feeling you felt in your palm.

“Woahh” Bokuto shouted going towards you in amazement “Where did you learn how to spike like that?”

“From my dad, I don’t know if you heard of him before but my dad’s name is D/N L/N...?” you say

“D/N L/N, Y/N he is my idol!” he shouted again “I want to be just like him.”

“I think you can, I see a lot of similarites in the way you both play.” you say

“Really! And you’ve seen me play before..?” he asks

“Yeah, I watched some of your games before coming here... you’re really good” you shyly admit.

“Wow.”

You and Bokuto spend the rest of your time, talking about volleyball you’re interests, things you have in common, your likes and dislikes. Talking to Bokuto was refreshing, he didn’t randomly insult you or make snide comments about your weight or your looks. He just genuinely looked happy to be there talking to you, unlike Tsukishima.

Seeing your change in mood, Bokuto stops talking and asks “are you alright? I forgot to ask earlier, but I saw what happened in the canteen and I hope you’re okay.”

“Yeah I’m fine, it’s just things with me and Tsukishima reached a breaking point, I guess...” you say sniffling a bit talking about it “But it’s fine now I’ve broken up with him and I feel better already.”

“So you’re saying your single...?” he asked blushing a bit

“Yeah I guess I am...” you smile blushing also.

“Okay great...well I hope this isn’t too forward after everything happened with Tsukki and all but...” he starts “but would you like to go on a date with me?”

“Who me?” you ask as if you weren’t the only other person in the room

“No the volleyball” he responds sarcastically “Of course you Y/N.”

“Are you sure, cause to be honest Bokuto you’re a really good-looking guy” you say making him smile widely “so I think you need someone to match your level in attractiveness” you look down and his smile drops.

“What do you mean?” he asks before realising all the stuff Tsukishima said about you “Y/N you’re beautiful, your face, your body just you.” you blush at his words “when I first saw you when you were walking past us in the entrance way the first thing I thought and said about you was “Akaashi who is that girl she’s beautiful.””

“Really?” you ask with disbelief

“Mhm” he nods excitedly “So will you go on a date with me?”

“I guess so...” you say a bit unsure

“HEY HEY HEY!” he exclaims “I gotta go tell akaashi!” he runs out of the gym in a hurry making you laugh, but he comes back to give you a quick unexpected kiss on the cheek making you smile.

You checked your phone for the time realising that you’ve been with Bokuto for 3 hours and you knew that everyone would be going to sleep now. As you are the manager you slept seperately from the rest of the team but before you went to your sleeping quaters you went to Karasunos.

“Y/N where have you been? We’ve been worried about you.” asked yammagucchi

“It’s fine yams don’t worry about it, guys” you say catching everyones attention “I just wanted to apologise to you for my outburst at dinner, it wasn’t my intention to cause a scence.”

“It’s fine Y/N” said sugawara “He definitely deserved it.”

“Yeah as your marvellous senpai we gave him a good telling off” said Tanaka and Nishinoya making you chuckle.

“Okay well thanks guys, I’m going to sleep goodnight.”

“Wait Y/N can I speak with you.” asked Tsukishima gesturing to outside the room

“Umm sure” you respond following him into the corridor.

“I just want to say I’m sorry for the things I’ve said and done over the past year and how I’ve been a terrible boyfriend, you don’t deserve that. So, I’m sorry.”

“I can’t say I can forgive you yet.” you say making Tsukishima look sad “but maybe with effort from you we can become friends possibly?”

“Just friends?” he said with hope in voice thinking that you could be something more.

“Just friends.” you repeated and confirmed “Besides I have been asked on a date”

“With who?”

“None of your business stingyshima” you mock the nickname that Hinata calls him making him scowl and you smile “Goodnight.”

After Bokuto’s confession and Tsukishima’s apology, the rest of the training camp went off without a hitch. In your breaks and lunchtimes, you got to know more about Bokuto and with Kuroo’s help you even got to sneak out to actually go on your date. You sometimes even went to practice with them getting to show off your skills, with Bokuto cheering you on and complimenting you every single time.

Tsukishima kept his distance for the most part, and kept the snarky comments about you and Bokuto to himself (even though he was dying to say them.) You eventually fully forgave Tsukishima in your 3rd year but you definitely weren’t as close as you used to be. Tsukishima’s comments and actions did affect you for a while however with the help of your loving boyfriend, you were reminded how beautiful you are no matter what weight, shape or height you were.

You and Bokuto stayed together, you made sure to come to every one of his games and when you introduced him to your dad he fainted on sight. Your dad and Bokuto got along, and became very close friends, Bokuto always came to him for advice (especially volleyball advice.) You loved Bokuto and he definitely loved you too.

AN: I hope you liked it, since I didn’t want to make it too similar too the Atsumu insecure one. And I feel like it dragged out a bit but got rushed in the endd....but oh well...

#haikyuu x reader comfort #haikyu angst #haikyu x reader #haikyu scenarios #haikyuu fluff #haikyu #tsukishima angst #tsukishima x reader #tsukishima x y/n #tsukishima headcanons #bokuto scenarios #bokuto angst #bokuto x reader #signedwithane😌

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chimcess · 2 years

Text

Painted Wolves Masterlist

Welcome to the Painted Wolves Universe Masterlist! I will be posting them in the order they should be read as they are chronological. I had so much fun coming up with this universe and cannot wait for all of you to watch how the series plays out! These will all be posted sometime after The Spork so it will be a while before you get to meet our boys, however, The Culling will be out this year for sure! Again, I highly recommend reading each story in order as well as listening to their respective playlists (Will be posted as they come out) as they are what helped me move each story along.

Chapter One: Black Mamba

The Culling Yoongi x Reader Release Date: TBD Word Count: TBD Other tags: Assassin! Yoongi, Assassin! Reader, Gang Member! Yoongi, Gang Member! Reader, Gang Member! BTS Genre: Gang! AU, Enemies to lovers! AU, Rival Gang! AU, Angst, Slow Burn, Eventual Fluff, Mutual Pining Synopsis: Yoongi and Y/N are the most infamous assassins in Seoul. While both work for unspoken rival gangs Bangtan and The Painted Wolves, the two meet under different circumstances and cannot seem to stay away from one another despite the implications of what would happen if either of their bosses found out. However, once rival gang EXO starts to push into Bangtan territory and brings Painted Wolves into their feud, the gang end up coming together to take them down, and old feelings, new feelings, and the unknown are uncovered along the way.

Chapter Two: Fox

Saint Venus Jimin x Reader Release Date: TBD Word Count: TBD Other tags: Inventor! Jimin, Stripper! Reader, Gang Member! Jimin, Genius! Jimin, Ex Sugar Baby! Reader, Single mom! Reader, Gang Member! BTS Genre: Gang! AU, Strangers to Friends to lovers! AU, Rival Gang! AU, Single mom! AU Angst, Slow Burn, Eventual Fluff, Mutual Pining Synopsis: It has been a year since Bangtan and The Wolves have joined forces and trouble is brewing on the horizons. Y/N is a stripper at Bangtan owned club Saint Venus, a troubled girl from a troubled world, and barely making ends meet to support her and her daughter, Deji. She meets Jimin at her day job at a diner and while she enjoys the attention, she also knows who he is and refuses to allow things to go further. That is until she gets a shocking visit from the past late one night and gets thrown into a world she thought she had left behind in Busan.

Chapter Three: Death Adder

Paparazzi Hoseok x Reader Release Date: TBD Word Count: TBD Other tags: Hitman! Hoseok, Jewel Thief! Reader, Gang Member! Hoseok, Ex illegal boxer! Reader, Rich! Reader, Gang Member! BTS Genre: Gang! AU, Exes to lovers! AU, Gang! AU, Money Heist! AU, Angst, Slow Burn, Eventual Fluff, Mutual Pining, Lots of love-hate at beginning Synopsis: No one really knows much about Jung Hoseok, he has always been an enigma and the thought of knowing more has always been off of the table unless you wanted to lose your life. All except for Yoongi who came to warn him about a whirlwind making her way back to Seoul. Y/N disappeared a few years ago, at the time she had been the most formidable fighter in the underground fighting scene, and Hoseok had been her number one fan, but things are different now. Gone is the dirty, hungry, and unapologetic girl from The Complex who fought tooth and nail for rent. Now, Y/L/N Y/N is a cold chameleon soul playing the role of a rich socialite and robbing jewels along the way. No one really knows what happened in the years she was gone, but Hoseok is determined to find out, even if that means opening a can of worms he is not prepared for.

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barzzal · 3 years

Note

Okay but the fanfic trope where the couple is like “I could totally go without sex longer than you could” and then they’re so miserable until they finally cave?? Mat is so competitive and stubborn he’d absolutely take that challenge

warnings: pg (18+), fluff, sexual and suggestive themes, slightest hint of pining i guess you might miss it, (a/n: i lowkey want this for myself ngl thank u nonnie)

Seven days. That’s how long Mat has been keeping himself from touching you - and frankly, himself too.

It was stupid and foolish just like the time he’s agreed to do the ‘No Nut’ with Beau last November. Clearly, he just can’t think straight when his winning is at stake.

If you had only asked him, the entire week was torture. Mind-numbing torture. Not to mention how the two of you are just casually throwing your subtle moves onto each other hoping the other would finally cave and just give in.

But Mat has had to break the habit of underestimating you. Let alone letting you partake in a challenge that he knows you’re eventually gonna win. Hell, you’ve punished him enough just by how you’re constantly hinting on how much you needed him. He knows well enough that you’re just playing with him but Mat, as bad as he wants to win every fight, is beginning to lose his sanity.

You, on the other hand, weren’t doing as good as Mathew thinks either. You know you’d be able to make him cave just by perking your ass and pressing it against his groin when cuddling, but boy, that man is all about winning more than he’s all about that ass.

His teasing doesn’t help either. Not that he was the best at it but you’re just so unbelievably attracted to the man that he can literally lift and play with a metal spoon and that would drive you crazy all throughout the day. In deed, torture is an understatement when you’re up against the face of the New York Islanders.

“I don’t really see the point why we’re even doing this.” you sigh, taking a spoonful of cookie dough ice cream into your mouth in the most unlady-like fashion.

Mat rolls his eyes and scoffs, “I’m doing this to escape two weeks of laundry and doing the dishes. I have a lot at stake.” he lies, averting his gaze away from how you’re licking off your spoon like a neanderthal. Mat swears that you can be the nastiest person in the room and he would still have his neck broken by you just because he can’t stop looking.

“I’m just saying,” you stop to swallow, “I’m never gonna admit that I’m a bad driver. That alone is a lot at stake for me as well and I’m not about letting you win either.”

“But…” Mat looks at you with an arched brow.

“How’d you even know there’s gonna be a ‘but’?” you question.

“I just know, baby.” he winks and chuckles. “Go on.”

“But- just so you know, should you let me win, tapping anytime of the week will be back on the table.” you tell him innocently as you dig into the cold treat yet again.

Mathew takes a while to answer but resorts to shaking his head shamelessly, “Hah. Hell no. You’re not getting me that way.” he refuses.

You shrug, so sure of yourself. “Wanna bet?”

𖥸

That night, sleep eludes Mathew as he waits for you to turn in for bed. You had to answer an important business call and you have been stuck in front of your computer for the last two hours.

Mat gets up and leaves the bedroom only to find you with your blazer and glasses on, too occupied to even notice him walk into the living room.

He carefully treads his way to you so as to let his presence be known. You give him a quick glance and decide to turn off your camera and microphone for a while, “I’m so sorry I didn’t think this would take hours.”

Mat says nothing other than smile and lean towards you to plant a small kiss on top of your head.

He lovingly rubs your back and says, “Go, do your thing, babe.”

You give him a smile and mouth him a ‘thank you’ when he returns to place a hot cup of coffee on the table. He sits on the armchair in the living room so as to keep distance from you for he didn’t want to become a distraction. He watches you talk in your work language whilst he sips on his decaf. It’ll be a while before you finish up that he might as well wait and go to bed at the same time as you will.

It was almost two in the morning by the time you’ve finally wrapped up the meeting. Your boss was stuck in Asia so you had to do some adjustments - most of it tailored to her time. You love your job so you didn’t feel the need to complain. On the more important note, however, was the man you love sleeping in your living room.

You sigh and run your fingers through his hair softly, not wanting to wake him up.

But of course, being that he’s a light sleeper, you end up doing the opposite.

Mat shifts to see you clearly, fighting himself from closing his eyes due to fatigue, causing your hand to fall and take rest caressing his warm cheek.

“Why didn’t you sleep in the bedroom?” you quietly ask.

“I was waiting for you.” he smiles weakly, admittedly enjoying how your voice sounded in his ears. “Are you finished?” he asks, voice a bit raspy.

You only nod, leaning to kiss the tip of his nose, but Mat is fast regardless of his groggy state and catches you with his lips instead.

The kiss is slow and tender. One that’s meant to catch you off guard before you eventually sink into it.

By the time the two of you break away, your hand was already wrapped around his jaw and a part of his neck, whilst he held you by your waist as you sat on his lap with his other hand already caressing your thigh.

“I miss you.” he confesses, his voice nearly coming off as a growl.

“What about the bet?” you ask him, almost whispering. “I know you hate losing.”

He kisses you yet again, the sound waking you even more than the amount of caffeine coursing through your veins ever did. “I fold,” he declares. “you win.”

Your kisses begin to grow deeper once you answer Mat’s invitation. Your legs, just like the other times, miraculously find its way to dangle itself around Mathew. His hands mirrored your body language as it wrapped fittingly around your waist. Neither of you dared to break the kiss even when Mat pulled you closer to enclose himself in between your legs. He stands, a hand in support of your back, the other weaving through your hair as he carefully maneuvered around the coffee table towards your bedroom door.

When the night’s over, you wake up to his empty side of the bed, only to see him in the kitchen at 7 in the morning — putting away the dishes you left in the dishwasher the night you finally gotten laid after a good seven-day dry streak.

it’s wet weekends!

#mat barzal imagine #mat barzal smut #mat barzal fanfiction #mat barzal x reader #nhl smut #hockey smut #wet weekends

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noctumbra · 3 years

Text

𝘰𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘢 𝘭𝘪𝘧𝘦𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦

summary ─ “it’ll be okay. i’m gonna make sure of it.” you sniffed as you buried your face into his tank top. his arms were an anchor around you, a cage that made you feel safe.

pairing ─ mickey henry x reader

warnings ─ exes to lovers, language, angst, fluff, kissing, no freaky things in this one, in the upcoming part however...... hmm

a/n ─ this is my first time writing a character other than bucky in this blog *sniffs* be easy on me? 👉🏻👈🏻🥺 hope you like it! please leave a comment if you do! thank youuu <333

𝙿𝙰𝚁𝚃 𝙸

You were at your friend’s wedding. A wedding that they decided to plan it like it was a regular beach party. It was crowded. You probably knew only two─ three people. Four. You knew four people here, and he was the least person you expected to see. Especially what happened between you two, but it somehow made sense for him to be here. He was a DJ at the end, and he was obviously hired for the party.

Mickey was standing by the DJ booth with his headphones hanging on his neck. He was solely focused on the board in front of him, sometimes turning his attention to the laptop on his left. He was bobbing his head to the song, frowning a little when he focused even more to the changing beat.

He looked good.

His skin was shining with gorgeous tan he got throughout the whole summer, it was a nice, warm golden color. His hair’s gotten longer since the last time you saw him. It looked fluffy and soft, and suddenly you were burning with the urge to run your fingers through it. He had a light scruff going on; some whites were shining through the dark ones. He looked really good. You wanted to cry.

All the emotions you have denied yourself to let out were there, wanting to get out, but you couldn’t. You couldn’t cry at the first time you saw him after years. It would be too… pathetic. You took deep breaths, desperately trying to calm down and to send the tears back. When you felt you weren’t going to cry, you made your way to the bar to get yourself a drink as a reward.

“Can I get a gin tonic? Thanks,” you said, smiling at the bartender. The guy nodded politely. His hands worked fast as he prepared your order. In under a minute, you were sipping your gin tonic.

You were sitting at the very end of the bar counter when he came, all smiling. “Hey man,” he greeted the bartender. “Vodka? You know what I like.” The guy nodded like he did to you, but he was all smiley this time. It was obvious that they knew each other; probably from other wedding or party gigs, you thought. You watched him as he waited for his order.

He kept looking at his phone like he was expecting a call or a text. His eyes were wandering around, too. You felt a pang in your chest when the possibility of him having a girlfriend came to mind. Not that he wasn’t allowed to move on, it just hurt to see him move on this quick and that he looked like it wasn’t affecting him. You sighed. Taking a sip, you continued to watch him.

He was still wearing the rings you bought to him as a birthday gift. You knew he loved rings, so you thought it could make a great birthday gift, you were right. Mickey loved them so much so that he only took them off when he was showering. You smiled at the memory. Your fingers were tracing the small tattoo on your wrist. A matching one was winking at you from Mickey’s own wrist.

“Are you gonna pine after him all night?” You shrieked when you heard your friend’s, Rose, voice right next to your ear, making a couple heads turn.

“Fuck’s sake, Rose!” You frowned. “You scared me!” She rolled her eyes.

“You can’t pine after him,” she said, ignoring the stinky eyes you were giving her. You shrugged and returned to your drink. “He has a girlfriend, Y/N. Tell me you’re not gonna do anything.” You felt another pang in your chest, stronger than before.

“Girlfriend?” You murmured and heard Rose’s approving hum. “I wasn’t going to do anything, but thanks for telling me anyway.” You swore you could hear Rose’s taunting ‘huh’ in your mind, but in reality, she stayed silent.

“Whatever,” she said, waving her hand. “I’m gonna go see if Lara needs help with anything.” You nodded absently and watched her disappear in the crowd.

Girlfriend. He did move on. You swallowed the bitter laughter crawling its way out of your throat with the last of your gin tonic.

Your break-up wasn’t exactly messy, but it was expected. You saw it coming and tried to save it many times, but the effort was one-sided so, it didn’t work. You tried damn hard to make it work, though. You wished he’d make some efforts, too, sometimes. It wasn’t a secret that you haven’t moved on from Mickey; a small part of you would always be in love with him in a way, you knew it. You were only thankful that he didn’t go and cheat on you or something while you were still together. You grew apart, that was what happened, and then you had to move away from Greece, and he didn’t stop you…

Sighing again, you signaled the bartender for another gin tonic. You weren’t going to drink your emotions away and get drunk, that’d be absolutely the worst thing you could ever do. This second glass was your last, and then you were going to make up an excuse and walk away.

You thanked the bartender when he brought you your drink. You started sipping it while you searched for Rose so that you could excuse yourself. The wedding part of this party had happened already, so there was no reason for you to stay. Quickly finishing your drink, you looked for Rose only to find her by the altar, talking to a guy you didn’t know.

“Hey, Rose,” you called out to her. “I’m leaving,” you said when she turned to you. A frown sat between her brows immediately. “Alone, fuck’s sake. I had two drinks and I wanna go home before it’s too late. Alright?” The frown didn’t disappear, but she nodded.

“Alright,” she said. “Let me know when you’re home, though,” she added.

“Sure,” you agreed. You could do that. “See ya later.”

─

You decided to walk home through the beach. The sound of the waves and the smell of the sea always calmed you down right away. Tonight wasn’t so different. You hugged yourself. It wasn’t cold although there was a breeze. You didn’t mind, though. It was a nice change after the burning heat of the day.

Walking slowly, you closed your eyes and breathed in deeply. It was peaceful. You forgot how nice this walking-on-the-beach-at-nights thing felt. A smile made your lips twitch. You exhaled slowly, shivering pleasantly when the breeze licked your skin. You were away from the party now, and with the music gone, it got quiet and, like it was possible, even more peaceful.

You smiled.

“Wait!” You froze. “Y/N!”

No, you thought. You didn’t want to deal with him. No, please. I’ll cry, no.

“Hey,” Mickey said when he caught you. “I, uh, didn’t know you were going to come to the party,” he added. His fingers were already playing the short hairs of his nape. You gave him a forced smile and nodded.

“Last minute decision,” you murmured, not bothering to go into detail. Mickey nodded, too. He looked like he wanted to say something but couldn’t, or didn’t know how to. You didn’t pressure him. You just wanted him to go because you didn’t want to cry when he was with you. He didn’t deserve to see you vulnerable anymore.

“Well,” he started. “I’m actually glad you came,” he said, chuckling lightly. You frowned. He’s glad? That’s new, you thought. Mickey hummed softly, seeing the slight frown appearing between your eyebrows. “I wanted to talk to for a while, but you changed your numbed and moved away, so I couldn’t,” he explained. You stopped in your tracks. Taking a deep breath, you tried to swallow your tears away.

“What do you possibly want to talk about, Mickey?” You asked. Your voice was angry and a little shaky. You could feel the lump in your throat. Mickey sighed.

“I wanted to apologize, Y/N,” he murmured. He played with his fingers, pulled on his bracelet and sniffed lightly. He was nervous. You clenched your jaw. “The way we ended was… bad. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it to end that way.” Then, he rolled his eyes. “I didn’t even want it to end, actually. It just happened.”

“What?” Your frowned deepened. “You didn’t want it to end? What the hell are you talking about, Mickey?”

“It was a misunderstanding!” He exclaimed. “Look, we got distant, yes. It was…” He exhaled harshly. He suddenly looked tired, like he was about to cry. “I have a kid,” he murmured. “A son. He’s six, and I’ve been trying to get his mother to let him see me. There were some legal shit I had to do, and then I learned that he got sick. I didn’t mean to get distant, but I did, I know my mistake.” Mickey lifted his head; his baby blue eyes were teary, and they looked earnest, soft and sad. You bit your lip. “I’m sorry for not telling you that I have a kid. I’m sorry for closing in and for getting distant.” He took a deep breath and stepped into your personal space. His fingers brushed your knuckles. “I’m sorry for letting you go. I should have stopped you, should’ve been honest to you. I’m so sorry, Y/N.”

You looked down at your hand where he was still brushing your knuckles with his fingers softly. Your chin was trembling, and there was no stopping your tears: They were running down freely. “Why…” You started but had to cut yourself and clear your throat. “Why would I believe you?”

Mickey nodded slowly. “You have every right to not believe me,” he agreed. “I can show you his pictures. The paperwork? I’ll do anything to get you to believe me, Y/N. I’ve never wanted what we had to end like this.” You sniffed.

“Picture,” you whispered. Mickey immediately reached for his phone and opened the gallery. He scrolled down a little and clicked on a picture, and then turned the screen to you.

“His name is Hector,” he said. You grabbed the phone, eyes already taking in the details.

The little boy had his hair. It was chestnut brown, fluffy and slightly curly. He had brown eyes, a cute nose and a chin dimple like Mickey’s. He was smiling in the picture, and you could see the resemblance. You smiled when you saw him wearing a Scooby-Doo t-shirt.

“He’s cute,” you murmured, handing him the phone. You watched his lips stretch wide for a smile as he, too, looked at the picture briefly. The love and adoration were obvious on his face, and fatherhood would look great on him, you thought. “Looks like you.” His smile widened.

“Yeah, his mother isn’t happy about it,” he grumbled and then rolled his eyes. You hummed. Mickey locked his phone and stuffed it into his pocket. “I’m sorry for not telling you about Hector earlier.” You shrugged. It had been years, you didn’t have the right to get mad.

“It’s fine,” you whispered. Sniffing, you looked around. “Go back to the party,” you told him. “Your girlfriend might be looking for you.” You ignored the slight venom your voice was carrying.

“Girlfriend?” Mickey said, grimacing. “I’m single.” You looked at him.

“No need to lie, Mick,” you murmured. “It’s fine if you have one.”

“But I don’t?” Mickey muttered something to himself. “Who told you that? Was it Rose?” Your eyes snapped at his, giving him the answer he was looking for. He laughed bitterly. “Your friend is into me. So, she’s keeping everyone away from me.” He shook his head like he couldn’t believe this was happening. “I rejected her a couple months ago, and since then she’s been a bitch to me.” Then, he gave you a side eye. “Sorry.” Shrugging again, you continued to look at him.

“Rose?” You asked. He nodded. You frowned for a couple seconds, and then rolled your eyes. “Fuck’s sake.” Mickey gave you a questioning look. “She was way too happy when I told her that we broke up.” He snorted. When you started walking slowly again, Mickey was quick to adapt your pace.

You walked on the beach for a while like that: Mutual and peaceful silence, calmness on the air now that each other’s presences’ were soothing you both in a way. You took deep breaths. You didn’t know what you were supposed to do with this new information that was dumped on you. You didn’t care that he had a son although you would have appreciated if he were to tell you while you were dating, but it was okay. You sighed.

“I wanna try again properly,” Mickey said, abruptly. “If that’s what you want, too, of course.” He gave you a small smile when you turned your head to look at him, shock etched on your features. “I never wanted it to end, I told you. I’m willing to try again and willing to make up all the pain I’ve caused unknowingly.” You turned to him.

“I’m scared,” you said, and you were. You were scared that you’d get hurt. The first months after your break up were the worst, and you didn’t want to go through those times ever again. With shaky hands, you held his ring clad ones. “Mickey, I’m scared.” He cooed at you.

“Ssshh,” he whispered. His arms were wrapped around you in a blink. “It’ll be okay. I’m gonna make sure of it.” You sniffed as you buried your face into his tank top. His arms were an anchor around you, a cage that made you feel safe. You took a deep breath, filling your lungs with his faint cologne. “I’m gonna make everything right this time. I promise.”

After a short while of silence, you heard him taking a deep breath.

“While we’re at being honest thing,” he murmured softly and slowly, like he didn’t want to ruin this moment. You frowned lightly, pulling back to look at his eyes. “There is someone else that I think you should meet.”

──

#mickey henry x reader #mickey henry imagines #mickey henry smut #mickey henry x you #mickey monday #mickey henry fanfiction #mickey henry fluff #mickey henry angst #mickey henry drabbles #once in a lifetime

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roniscloud · 3 years

Text

lhs - runnin’

lee heeseung [a. + f. 4700 words] runnin’

to you

you came up on some new

i know i shouldn’t feel blue

‘cause i was runnin’ out of time for you

synopsis: you met heeseung in your freshman year of college and immediately hit it off. you’ve made it to your third year and when everyone including yourselves thought that you were each other’s endgame, the devastation when you two split was immeasurable. you both know there’s still love between you. this break allows you both to realize new things. can you two find your ways back to each other? will this be the final goodbye?

genre + tropes: angst. fluff. comedy. college!au. establishedrelationship!au. exes!au.

warnings: fem reader. swearing. arguing. nosy friends. cold heeseung and cold reader. drifting relationship. interventions. slight suggestive themes but it’s only mentioned like once. they both pine over each other. mentions of alcohol and binge drinking. maybe not a happy ending. if you choose to see it that way. whoops. appearances of the rest of enha plus txt yeonjun and soobin.

i. the break

“so this is how it’s gonna end? i thought we were doing fine.”

heeseung erupts into an even angrier fit, “are you kidding me? we are not fucking fine. in what world is this fine? tell me!”

you scoff from where you stand cross-armed on the other side of the bedroom. “well, can you really blame me? it’s hard to see if there’s something wrong if we never see each other.”

“exactly my point! we don’t see each other.”

the two of you have been at each other’s throats since heeseung showed up at your apartment. you have no idea how long ago that was or when the argument started. all you remember is coming up to him when he arrived, wanting to actually spend some time with him. instead he shrugged you off and ignored you, blaming the fatigue. the rest has been a blur. one of you made an offhand comment and now here you are: frustrated and in another fight.

a quick recap: you two met at a mutual friend’s party. you thought that each other was attractive and he ended up asking you out. from there you kept going out, fell in love, dated, and everyone thought you were perfect together. three years later and it’s getting tiring. life has been draining trying to balance it all.

“and who’s fault is that?”

annoyed, he snaps back, “oh please, you can not put the blame solely on me.”

“bullshit. i sure can when i’m the only one making an effort here. i’ve actually been trying to save us. you, on the other hand…” you pause again, rolling your eyes, “well, we both know just how much you care.”

his jaw drops, defensively he spits back, “are you genuinely implying that i don’t care about you? about us? that’s rich.”

you move to sit on the edge of the bed, staring at a single spot on the floor. you can see the shadow of heeseing pacing back and forth. you sit there, not looking at each other. the only sounds to be heard are his footsteps and the heavy sighs from you. you think back to the last several weeks. you recall each of the times you have been able to see each other. there’s no substance, nothing memorable. the only thing that comes to mind is that you always end up not talking at all or arguing.

just like right now.

“be real, heesung. when was the last time we went on a date? when was the last time you stayed the night without it ending up with you just knocking out? when was the last time we actually sat down and had a conversation? be honest because i will. i can’t remember.”

“and yet you thought we were fine?”

“well it’s better to believe a good lie than face the hurtful truth. i’m trying to save this relationship. i’m trying all the fucking time and you don’t do shit.”

he spits back frustrated, “well maybe that’s because there’s nothing to be saved.”

“are you kidding me right now? am i supposed to be scared? you tell me that there’s nothing to be saved and expect me to just give up?”

“sorry but i’m not running from this anymore.”

“you’re not sorry and we both know it.” you push yourself back up to stand, resting your hands on your hips, “you can’t say you’re sorry and expect me to forgive you. that’s not how this works.”

“this isn’t what i wanted to happen. this isn’t how it was supposed to go.”

“then make it work.”

“i- i can’t,” he holds his hands over his face, running one through his hair, “it’s too much.”

“so what? what do you mean?”

he finally stops. he takes a deep breath and lets it all out, “i just can’t see this working anymore, at least not like this.”

ii. week one

you thought this would be more difficult. that this would be the hardest pill to swallow. the first week apart may actually be the easiest. nothing has really changed. that’s probably because you haven’t told anyone that you two are no longer together. perhaps the time that you didn’t spend with each other before the break up had trained you for this.

life goes on, with or without heeseung. that’s what you keep telling yourself. you choose to get caught up with your life. you have other priorities. it’s not a crime to focus on yourself for the first time in three years.

heeseung feels the same. he doesn’t see any point on dwelling on the breakup. sure, he was the one who made the decision. he’s the one who put it out there. he’s the one who ended it and the one who is taking responsibility.

lucky for both of you, you don’t have any courses together and your schedules don’t really coincide. there’s no chance at any awkward run-ins. there is this weird, tiny feeling though. there’s this small inkling of something missing. you both suppress it. i mean, hell, the breakup just happened.

iii. scheming

meanwhile, your friends have all seemed to notice that the two of you are off. they aren’t sure what it is. they get that you two have had some time apart, but you’re both adults with lives. you have your own classes, jobs, other friends, and such. no one mentions it because they don’t think it’s their business.

but come on… there’s no way they won’t get to the bottom of it. our resident gossips, sunoo and sunghoon, team up and make it their mission to snoop around. of course, they take precautions to not get caught. the scheming duo find out nothing, to no avail.

now the gang of the scheming duo plus jay, jake, and niki have convened in the common room of jungwon’s dorm building. the 02z are all playing billiards in one corner. sunoo battles jungwon in a game of ping pong. the youngest of the group sits by himself on one of the couches, contemplating if he should speak up. they’ve been in a heated discussion as they try to figure out what exactly has been irking them.

riki, against his own conscience, speaks up to the five. he has this gut feeling and innocently wants to voice his opinion. “what if,” the young boy start out while gauging the faces of the others, “now don’t get mad and just hear me out.” he stops again, taking his time to make eye contact with each of the older boys, waiting until they all nod, “what if… they broke up?”

the group of friends all exchange glances with each other before breaking out into laughter. jay composes himself a bit, still chuckling when he says, “seriously? you think they broke up? heeseung and y/n? yeah, no way.”

sunoo leans onto the ping pong table and eggs him on, “they are literally soulmates.”

jungwon sets his racket down and goes to plop himself next to riki on the couch, “there is no way in hell the two of them split.”

iv. breaking news

“yeah, we split.” plain and simple. three words that crushed the poor hearts of jake and jungwon. he broke the news over brunch. he sensed their curiosity when they deliberately never brought you up.

“good joke there, dude. almost had me for a second.” jake says, awkwardly with a forced laugh.

the youngest of the three chiming in and agreeing, “yeah, that’s really funny.” a silence hits the booth. “you are joking… right?”

the oldest then looks back and forth between the two, tilting his head to one side like a confused pup. he doesn’t see why they think he would joke and simply replies, “nope. you guys haven’t asked so i’m guessing you tried to snoop around and pick up on my cues. i’m also guessing sunoo’s behind this whole operation.”

“ok wait,” jake interjects, “what do you mean you broke up? you can’t just break up.”

jungwon agrees, “he’s right. you two are just playing a prank on us.”

“guys, i’m serious. y/n and i are no longer together.” the two just freeze, jaws dropped, eyes wide. “besides, it’s better this way.”

v. bad timing

meanwhile the remaining four members of their friend group have met up in the campus library in an attempted study session. so far, they’ve just gone back to gossiping and slacking off. the boys all find themselves teetering on the verge of sleep. that is until sunghoon catches you walking in. immediately going to softly pat the others back awake, they all look up confused. trying to stay subtle, hoon jerks his head to the side in your direction.

you make your way to one of the shelves, searching high and low for a book you need for your literature class. sneaking up behind you comes choi yeonjun, the library aid and a friend of yours.

“need any help?”

“no thanks, i’m good jun.” you give him a polite smile.

unbeknownst to both of you, the failure of a study group has creeped to a closer table. they knew that you two were friends but they still can’t help but eavesdrop. “will you two please shut up so we can hear them?” the annoyed face evident on sunghoon’s face at the bickering of sunoo and niki. he turns to see jay, snacking and not paying attention. he rolls his eyes at the group, his gaze then catching yeonjun leading you out of the shelves. quickly shushing the three and nodding his head in your direction again, they finally get the hint.

yeonjun steps in front of you, “so you know my friend soobin, right?”

“soobin… as in choi soobin?”

yeonjun flashes his bright smile, “that’s the one.”

“yeah i know him. we had a stats class together a while back. he definitely taught me a few tricks around a calculator.” you laugh with him, “he’s super sweet, and needless to say cute too.”

“well, am i glad to hear that! long story short, he’s kinda been crushing on you lately and wants to know if you’re free. he mentioned your shared class before but he said he never got your number.”

“since you have mine already, go ahead and give it to him. tell him i’m free whenever he is.”

yeonjun raises his eyebrows at your boldness, “will do. i just wanted to ask you first before i gave it to him because… y’know…”

“no worries, i completely understand.”

he gives a quick goodbye before going back to his desk. storming quickly, four faces appear in front of you, all a combination of confusion, shock, and anger.

sunoo starts, “um… y/n. why are you telling yeonjun to give your number to another guy?”

“yeah, are you cheating on heeseung?” his partner in crime, sunghoon, joins in.

you pause and scan their faces. your face dawns an equally as confused expression. “how can i cheat on someone who isn’t my boyfriend?”

four jaws simultaneously drop. riki’s being the first to close and answer a bit hushed, “i knew it.”

jay turns to him in disbelief, “not the time, niki!”

“did heeseung not tell you guys?” you ask them slowly. “i assumed he would be the one to let you all know.”

“that you two broke up?!” sunoo asks angrily, being shushed by yeonjun from the counter. giving an apologetic smile then tuning back into your conversation, “what do you mean you two broke up?”

“we just… broke up. that’s it. end of story. now if you’ll excuse me, i have to actually study.”

they watch you check out the book you came in for originally and walk out the doors, unsure of what to do next.

vi. the intervention

arranging your monthly movie night was not exactly the easiest task given the tensions surrounding two people in your group. so the only logical solution that they all could think of was to simply not to tell one of you that the other was coming over. a fool-proof plan.

in the dorm of the 02z, you did not expect to see heeseung when you walked in.

he gets up from his spot on the couch, “what the hell is going on here?”

“yeah, an explanation would be nice.” you cross your arms as you glare at the younger boys.

niki, trying to act as mediator gestures for both of you two sit on the loveseat—the same loveseat that was always reserved for the two of you before. “this is an intervention.”

after the confession of their intentions, everyone goes quiet. not a single word is spoken for several minutes, no one knowing how to start. after much internal contemplation, jungwon finally attempts to start. “we brought you two here today because- you know what, i can’t do this.” he stops and cuts himself off, burying his face in his hands.

sunoo sits next to him with his arms crossed. “how dare you two? our parents gets divorced and we don’t even get a notice.” it was common for them to refer to you and heeseung as the parents of the group, being the oldest. although something about sunoo still calling you by that nickname stings, him shaking his head to display his disappointment making you feel guilty.

you see heeseung out of the corner of your eye avoiding looking up to your friends. “look, i don’t see the big deal. we broke up. that happens when relationships don’t work out.”

sunghoon quickly intervenes, “how can you say it isn’t a big deal? you’re letting three years go to waste and that’s all you can say? that’s what happens.” he scoffs at how shameless you come off.

“well, would you rather us stay together even when we were unhappy?” their reactions were a mix of shouts, the words yes, of course not, and duh all blending into each other.

that’s what brought your ex boyfriend out of his daze. “y/n has a point. we broke up and it’s over. we were no longer happy and i don’t see the point in bringing it up again either. it’s in the past. let it go.” he says rather coldly and sternly. him actually saying it and acknowledging it caused that weird feeling to come back. his body language is off, too. your years together has taught you enough about heeseung to know when he’s upset, especially with himself.

jake takes his turn, looking down at his fidgeting hands and muttering sadly, “but you promised each other forever.”

that prompts you and heeseung to glance at each other quickly, making eye contact and it lingering for a couple of seconds. you look away first, not noticing that his stare doesn’t leave you.”some promises just can’t be kept.” your response then making him turn away.

“bullshit.” it’s the first word uttered by jay this entire time. “neither of you are the type to break promises.”

“some things can’t be helped,” heeseung defends.

jay, getting angrier, asks his friend, “did you know that she’s already going on a date? yeah, that guy, soobin. i’m pretty sure you know who he is. your ex,” he makes sure to stress the last word with a certain degree of annoyance, “thinks he’s cute.”

emotionless, heeseung answers back, “good for her, then.”

you were sure that you were over him, that’s why you said yes to the date. but something about him not caring leaves you feeling odd.

jungwon stops your train of thought, “no, you’re supposed to be upset. you’re supposed to get jealous and confess you still want to be with her. you’re supposed to fight for her and be together.”

another quick glance between the two of you, lasting longer than the previous one. no words are said on his end, but you know exactly what he’s trying to say. “he doesn’t have to fight when i’m the one who ended it.” you knew him. you knew he couldn’t admit to the others his decision. after all, he wants to be a good role model even in his darkest times. he couldn’t crush their idea of love and you did what you had to do. you lied for his sake—and maybe even yours.

vii. him

two months have passed since the breakup. there’s tension amongst the friend group, the six not wanting to pick sides between you and heeseung. they’re constantly going back and forth, like they’re walking on eggshells as to not bring up something that only happened with the other.

to get your mind off everything, you’ve found comfort in soobin. well, more accurately you’ve found comfort in between his sheets, or wherever you two decide for it to go down. that’s not to say the dates aren’t great. you’re not official and you both know that. your latest date, however, couldn’t help but feel weird.

the date was going pretty well. don’t get me wrong—soobin is a great guy. he’s sweet, caring, funny, and handsome. you have a lot in common like your taste in drinks and movies. maybe if you had met him first, you would’ve dated him… but you didn’t meet him first. you met heeseung first, and soobin isn’t heeseung.

you found yourself drifting from the conversation now and then, thinking about how heeseung would’ve been at that moment. you think back to his habits, particularly the way he raises his eyebrows whenever he’s excited or talking about something he’s passionate about. you always found it endearing. over the course of dinner, you are able to notice that soobin has some cute habits too, like him covering his face when he gets shy or puffing out his cheeks. but it still isn’t the same.

“you two deserve each other.”

soobin catches your attention again with that comment. “what?”

“you and heeseung. i know that look. don’t try to lie to me.”

“look, heeseung is my past, and i want it to stay that way.”

“do you really want it to stay that way, or are you just afraid of what could happen if you let him back into your present?”

you give him a teasing glare, “don’t get all philosophical with me. i just don’t think he and i can go back to how we were before.”

“what’s so bad about you two changing? obviously if it didn’t work out, you shouldn’t try to be what you were before.”

“can’t i just try with you?”

“as much as i would love for you to give me that chance, i can’t do that to you or to myself. it’s not fair.”

you hesitantly ask him, “but is it worth it?”

“that’s not my decision to make.”

viii. her

now that you’re virtually not in his life, he seems to be looking for you everywhere. actually… rather than going out of his way to look for you, everything just reminds him of you. the jingles of the commercials you always sang along to, your favorite songs on the radio, the reruns of 90’s shows you always binged. hell, even when he was making ramen, he was reminded of how you would make his favorite for him every time he was stressed over an exam. he was sitting in the back of the lecture hall, trying so hard to stay awake for his 3 hour long class with the most boring professor on campus. he fought the urge to text you since it felt like second nature to rely on you to help cheer him up.

there was a particular night when it really hit him. reality smacked him in the face late one evening. heeseung was bored out of his mind, laying alone in bed, aimlessly browsing netflix to find something to watch. he thinks to himself y/n would’ve slammed this laptop closed and talked all night about random and obscure topics. he laughs to himself, reliving the memories. right then, it’s obvious. he misses her.

ix. promises

the rain hitting your bedroom window had no help on your already gloomy mood. what did help was the bottle of soju- well more realistically, four bottles of soju. it was all the liquid courage you needed to call heeseung at three in the morning.

you sat drowsily on the rug of your living room, your phone on speaker and placed in front of you as you stared out the dewy glass. you heard the phone ring seven times, ready to hang up until you heard his groggy voice come out from the other end. “hello? y/n, why are you up?”

you laugh softly and ask him, sounding loopy, “why are you up?”

“because you’re calling me. would you like to give me a reason why, and are you drunk?”

“maybe. anyways, you know… i was thinking. we broke a lot of promises and it hurts. i have to know that we’re not bad people. i have to keep at least one, right?”

heeseung groans but lets you ramble, knowing that you won’t stop until you’ve said it all, “go on…”

“we made a promise that if something was going on, if we were in a dark place, that we would talk to someone. well, if you couldn’t tell by now, i’m not in the best place. the first person i thought to talk to was you.”

“why me?”

“shhh… don’t ask questions. i know you’re tired so just stay on the phone and let me talk. ok?”

he goes quiet for a bit, sighing, “ok.”

“i miss you. i do. i don’t expect you to miss me but i just want to say it,” pausing to hiccup, “soobin helped me realize some things, saying some crap like we deserve each other.” you chuckle as you recall his words, “maybe he said it because bad people deserve bad people. maybe he said it because in our own fucked up lives, we’re the only ones who can understand each other. i did a lot of thinking and i’ve come to the conclusion that we don’t. because if we stay together, we can’t move on. we can’t grow. we can’t become good people, no matter how much we want it. that’s life. sometimes, no matter how much we want something, no matter how much we wish on stars or pray, some things just aren’t meant to be.”

“y/n, get some rest…”

“wait, i’m not done. you already can tell i’ve been drinking and to be honest i have been, for a while. i do it,” starting to choke up and sniffle, “because it helps me forget. even if it’s just for a minute that i can forget what happened, i’ll drink as much as it takes. i’ll grow out of it, eventually. i know i will, but for now… i have to do what i have to do. i’m sure you can relate.” you laugh again, getting more drowsy. you bring your legs up, hugging your knees. faintly, the sounds of heeseung’s snores play from your phone. you smile to yourself, “i wish you were here, singing me a lullaby. i don’t know when you fell asleep but goodnight. take care of yourself.”

cuddled up in his bed, heeseung hears you hang up. he lets you believe he didn’t hear what you said. he knows the reality of it all and the weight that you both are carrying. knowing that you won’t check your phone for the rest of the night, he sends you a quick text: bookstore, saturday, noon. goodnight.

as he turns off his phone to try to fall back asleep, he sees his reflection in the black screen. he sees his puffy, red eyes and his tear-stained cheeks. the end of it all is coming and finally, you two are ready for it.

x. love song

seeing him in person is a good idea. clearing the air, letting it all out, getting closure. all good ideas, you hope. walking into the bookstore was a weird feeling. when you spot him sitting by the window, you quietly make your way over. he looks up at your new presence, his feet shuffling out of nervousness. you notice the glass of pear juice on the small coffee table in front of him, already half empty.

“hi,” he says like a whisper.

“hi,” you awkwardly respond. it’s unlike the two of you to not know how to start a conversation. you make your way onto the cushioned seat, letting yourself get comfortable to help ease the tension. you each avoid the other’s gaze, not knowing how to begin. you sigh and finally ask, “how have you been?”

“busy,” he says as he nods, “finally took up actual music lessons. thought it would be better to have someone who’s played piano and guitar professionally instead of trying to teach myself.”

you softly giggle, “that’s good. you’ve always loved music.”

“yeah… how about you?”

“same, busy. i got the t.a position i applied for like forever ago.”

“congrats! you still looking to become a teacher?”

“well, generally yeah. i was having my doubts before but i just fell back into it. finally being able to be there, present, and guiding others… that’s what i want.” you sit there across from him, watching him and taking it all in. the man in front of you is heeseung, but not the heeseung you knew. no, this is the better version of him. the version of him where he can focus on himself. the version of heeseung that’s glowing and happy and ready to take on the world. “so, look. there’s no easy or delicate way to put it but i think there are things we both need to get off our chests.”

“agreed. since it all happened—the fights, the breakups, the ambush interventions—we haven’t actually talked.”

“those interventions… they were silly but the guys did help me realize some things. we’re growing up. sure, i thought we had this plan of us graduating, getting married, having a family, settling down, growing old. we both wanted that type of life. sadly, it’s not what happened and we have to live with it.”

he lets out a chuckle, “heeseung and y/n: meant for each other and meant to be.”

“but not meant to last. what a bittersweet and poetic ending."

“it’s like people always say: right person, wrong time.”

“you know… you used to tell me that our love song was the soundtrack to the best life you could live.” you reach out and take his hand in yours, “i just,” pausing to take a deep breath and compose yourself, “i just want you to know… that if anything happens-”

he cuts you off with a quiet gasp, whispering your name with a shaky voice, “don’t.”

you shake your head and gently squeeze his hand, “if anything happens… if in the end, we don’t find our way back and it isn’t us, don’t think we ended on a bad note.” you drop your head as you chuckle lightly before continuing, “cause you were always on key.” you give him a small grin, trying your hardest to not make things worse by crying. “we were just playing different tunes.”

he pulls you in closer to him, placing his hands softly on your cheeks. “i always hated seeing you cry,” he says as he wipes away the tears on your face, not bothering about his own. he wraps his arms around you, holding you close for the last time.

you stay there in his warmth, hearing him sniffle as he tries to hold back the falling tears. when you pull away, you tell him “i will always love you. maybe not in the way i thought i would but it’s still there.”

“maybe in our next life, it’ll be the right time.” with that, he leaves a kiss on your forehead, leaves the bookstore, and leaves your life. your duet that worked in perfect harmony now playing a beautiful cadence—two wandering artists, free to fill your own wretched worlds with new melodies, the bliss and tranquility of it all. the hope that maybe one day, you’ll be in each other’s lives again is enough.

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