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maddiwrites · 3 years

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Precious Life

Pairing: JJ x reader

REQUEST (From anon): could you write a jj maybank imagine where he and the reader are together, but she pushes him away due to her mental health. she has insecurity issues after her last boyfriend and her bestfriend passed a few months ago leaving her horribly depressed. finally, she opens up to him and its just super fluffy and he showers her in love and support.

Note: Thank you so much for the request and I’m so sorry it took me a while to write, but hopefully you like it. I kinda suck at fluff, so I’m sorry if it’s not enough fluff. Let me know what you think!

Word Count: 5k

Warnings: mentions of death of a friend, mental trauma from a past relationship, depression

You don’t know when it happened - whether it was overnight or throughout the past few weeks. Unlike everyone else who was excited about the summer finally beginning after what felt like the longest school year of your life, your days felt darker as you dreaded the upcoming season. You use to love summer - hell, you thrived during the hottest months of the year. You loved outdoor dining, surfing, beach parties, going out on the boat in the marsh with your friends. But now the thought of doing those activities made you want to vomit.

After your best friend passed away only a few months ago, you lost interest in all those activities. Because they all reminded you of her. She was the one who brought you out of you shell and pulled you out of your dark place when the world felt too unbearable to live in anymore. And now she was gone. Just like that. Life is so precious, you remember people telling you that at her funeral. They weren’t wrong. But you never thought your life could compare to the one of your beautifully made best friend.

Her birthday is next month in the early weeks of July. Her mother wants to hold a small party as if she was still there to celebrate. Of course she wants you there, but you don’t know if you’d be able to handle it. A birthday party for a dead girl? What an obvious reminder that she’s not there. It’s going to be the first birthday you spend without her. The tradition of getting smoothie bowls and going to the local zoo and finishing the night off with a bonfire and beer cans you stole out of your parents fridge is completely destroyed. Gone just like she is.

The only person making your miserable life a little more bearable is your wonderful boyfriend, JJ Maybank. Despite only being together for about two months, he became your closest friend. Your best friend would have loved him and would even be impressed that you went for such a bad boy. Your type usually consisted of stuck up boys with egos bigger than their daddy’s bank account. Sometimes you picture a life where your best friend and JJ knew each other. They’d probably be best of friends. Your friend would be weary of him at first, but JJ would work his usual charm and win her over in seconds. It’s what he did with you.

You met him after getting really close with Kiara when her dad hired you as another waitress at the Wreck. You remembered the day he first walked into the restaurant with his friends. You felt his eyes on you the entire time. Feeling bold, you walked over to his table and asked to borrow his phone. You opened his snap chat app and took a selfie with the two of you and said, “Here’s a picture if you want it to last longer.” And that was how the love story of JJ Maybank and Y/N Y/L/N started. JJ still has the picture saved as his Lock Screen. It makes you smile every time you see it.

Your life with JJ was nearly perfect. What started as a flirty banter became something serious. Kie knew JJ was in deep because he never complained about how slow you wanted to take the relationship. Aka sex. Usually JJ is the kind of guy who will go get what he wants. And if that’s a quick lay, that’s what he’ll go searching for. Someone that won’t make him work too hard for it. But with you? It was different. Sure he wanted to explore that part of the relationship with you, but only when you were ready. It was hard for him some days, especially when you wore his hoodies or kissed him so deeply that he swore his skin was on fire.

Although JJ has been nothing but a respectful KING about your decision to wait, you can’t help but feel guilty about keeping him waiting. It’s not that you didn’t want to - because god did you want to. But it was hard for you to give someone all of you like that. Part of you blames that on your own insecurities and the other part knows it’s trauma due to your past relationship. You never told anyone the kind of vile and disgusting things your ex boyfriend would say to your face. Well, you confessed to your best friend on the night he broke up with you. You physically had to hold her back by her hair to keep her from setting his house on fire. She tried to make you see that everything he said about you was wrong. Dumb, fat, whore, useless, poor, ugly. You wanted to believe her, but it was like your ex had physically tattooed the words onto your skin and it was hard to see anything else. When things were getting heated between you and JJ and you felt his hand dip under the thin material of your t shirt, you would pull away, afraid that he would feel the rolls on your stomach. You never let him see you without makeup on. And even wore baggy clothing so you wouldn’t have to worry about showing too much skin. You didn’t want him getting the wrong impression.

JJ tried asking Kie about it. JJ is smarter than people give him credit for. He had a feeling that your choosing to not have sex ran deeper than just not being ready. Which is totally fine but he wanted to be there for you if you needed help. Of course Kie had no idea. But just like JJ, she noticed you pulling away from the group slowly. She thought maybe it was the stress of finals as the end of the school year wrapped up, but then summer came around and the less you did.

“She’s been off, right?” JJ asks Kie. His legs bounces up and down anxiously and he chews on the nub of his thumb nail. “Do you notice it too?”

Kie doesn’t know how to answer. Of course she wants to be honest with her best friend, but she also doesn’t want to hurt him. “I mean, she’s been kind of distant with us. Maybe she’s been busy. I mean she’s gotten a few of her shifts covered in the last two weeks.”

JJ shakes his head. “I don’t know. I can’t shake off this feeling that it’s something more than that. Something I’m missing. I mean...” he sighs and takes his fingers through his hair. “Do you think it’s me? Did I do something? Maybe she feels pressured by this whole sex thing-“

“No. Of course not.” Kie says. She knows JJ would never make you do anything you don’t want to do, and he would never make you feel guilty about it. “You should talk to her about it next time you see her. I mean, I could bring it up too but I think it would be best coming from you.”

JJ nods and accepts this answer from Kie. It doesn’t make him feel any less anxious about the state of your relationship but at least he’s not crazy for thinking you’re pulling away.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

He doesn’t see you for another week. You claimed that you’ve been busy with work and college prep. JJ didn’t buy it but he also didn’t push it. He saw you when you showed up at his window at the Chateau.

You’d come after having one of your episodes - one where you can’t sleep or eat or even focus on one thought. You don’t know why you came to the Chateau. You knew JJ would be here but you didn’t think he’d be able to help you. No one ever can.

“Hey,” JJ flicks on the lamp from the bedside table as he watches your figure squeeze through the window. “What are you doing here?”

You shrug. “I - uh. I don’t know, exactly. Just wanted to see you, I guess.”

JJ tilts his head and narrows his eyes at you. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah,” You lie.

JJ nods, but he doesn’t believe you. “Then come here.” He opens up his arms for you to fall into. When you do, he pulls you in close with your head laying on his bare chest. You focus on his steady heartbeat and his warm arms around your body. You miss this. Being with JJ whole heartedly - mind and body. Recently it’s only been your body - your mind off somewhere else.

“Did I wake you?” You ask softy.

JJ kisses the top of your head. “No.”

When you close your eyes, you picture your friend again. Her smile and laugh. Things that should have made you happy. But they don’t. Not anymore.

You don’t remember when or how it happened - how you ended up being below a hovering JJ as his lips peppered your skin. You remember starting the heavy make out session, hoping to distract yourself from the depressing thoughts of your dead best friend.

However, the deeper you got into it, the deeper you got in your own thoughts. First about your friend and then about your ex. What he would say if he were the one above you - “I thought you were going to the gym?” “You didn’t shave?” “You could use some sun.” - His voice rang in your head like a screeching record and you couldn’t do it anymore.

“Stop,” you mumble softly enough that JJ doesn’t hear it until you physically push him off of you and say more loudly. “J, stop!”

As his back hits the mattress again, he holds his hands up in surrender. He didn’t realize he was doing anything wrong and his heart races with the thought that maybe he hurt you or had gone too far.

You quickly pick up your tossed shirt and bag while avoiding all kinds of eye contact with him. You felt embarrassed. It’s not his fault that you can physically feel every skin roll on your body or think you can smell every bad odor radiating off your skin. JJ has never been anything but a prince to you since you started dating. You felt bad that you couldn’t give him what he wanted. Sex should be a normal part of your relationship yet you couldn’t seem to give him your all just yet.

“I’m sorry. Did I-“ JJ starts to apologize but you cut him off.

“No. I’m sorry. I should go. I should have never come -“

“Hey,” JJ sits up and tries to reach for you, but you yank your hand closer to your body when his fingers graze your skin. JJ frowns. “You don’t have to go. We can just go to sleep. Or I can sleep on the couch.”

You pause at the bedroom door with your back to him. You squeeze your eyes tight to stop the tears from cascading down your cheeks. You hate this. Feeling like another burden to someone else. Not being able to give the one you love everything they want. It’s not fair. It feels like everyday your days just keeping getting darker and darker as if the sun never rises. And you don’t know how long you’ll be able to take it.

“Y/N...” JJ softly calls out for you. He can see the tension in your shoulders and your knuckles turning white as you clench around the door knob. He knows something isn’t right. That there’s more than meets the eye when it comes to what you’re going through. He’d never force you to tell him anything. But he wants you to feel comfortable enough that you know you have the option to talk if you wanted to.

“I’m sorry, J...” your voice cracks which makes JJ’s heart break a little more. Still with your back to him, you shake your head. “I can’t be what you want me to be.”

“Y/N -“

You finally turn to look at him. “You deserve someone who will give you everything you want. Someone who makes you happy - someone who is happy.” You sniffle back the tears. “I’m sorry. That’s just not me.”

Tears prick at JJ’s eyes. He wishes he can say he is surprised, but he honestly saw this coming. You’ve been distant and hard to read. He thought you were falling out of love with him for weeks. But that doesn’t make this any less hard to hear.

“Don’t do this,” JJ shakes his head. “We can work this out -“

“I can’t do it anymore,” you shake your head as one lone tear falls down your cheek. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

You rip the door open and stumble through John B’s house before JJ could say anything else. You throat feels on fire as you bite back a heart wrenching scream from what you’ve just done. You probably ruined the best thing that’s ever happened to you. No surprise there, you think. Nothing in your life seems to ever go as planned.

You run home until your legs feel like they’re literally on fire. By the time your back hits the mattress of your own bed, your muscles feel like jello, and you wonder if you’ll ever be able to walk again.

You cry into your pillow until the world around you fades to darkness.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Its been about two weeks since you last saw JJ and the Pogues. You didn’t think it was possible, but without them, your life somehow felt even emptier. Days feel like years. Your body feels so heavy, it’s hard to get out of bed most days. You can’t remember the last time you showered. Your skin on your face feels dry from all tears that have been shed. Some days you want to pick up the phone and call JJ or Kie, just to hear their voice. But you don’t. Because you don’t want to feel like a burden to either one of them. You broke up with JJ. You’re not their problem anymore.

With your head tucked deep into your pillow, you feel the corner of your bed dip as if someone had just sat down. You figured it was just your mom checking in on you again for the hundredth time. She doesn’t say anything and you don’t acknowledge her either.

Your phone beeps with another text message from JJ. You peek your eye open at your phone and slowly reach for it. You hesitate opening the message, afraid that whatever he has to say will only break your heart and make you feel like an even worse human being.

“You’re seriously not going to answer that?” The person sitting on your bed says, making you snap around to face the girl who is for sure not your mother, but your best friend. The same best friend who’s buried in a cemetery fifteen minutes away from your house.

She looks exactly how you remember her. Long beautiful hair that frames her perfect jawline. Tan almost glistening skin that radiates off the sunlight that shines through your window. Eyes sparkling with life and mischief.

You look at her with wide eyes and an open mouth. You were truly at a loss for words. Confused was an understatement. It didn’t make sense.

She laughs at your reaction and shakes her head. “Do you need a minute?”

“I don’t - how - am I - am I dreaming?” You stutter.

“No I’m just the prettiest zombie you’ve ever seen,” She says sarcastically and holds her grin. You blink at her. “Yes, you’re dreaming. Well, kinda.” She stands up and faces you. “You’re definitely dreaming but I’m in control of visiting you in your sleep. Kinda cool, right? It’s a ghost trick I recently learned.”

“I’m officially going crazy,” You say.

“You’re right. You are going crazy,” Your friend rounds to the other side of the bed to come face to face with you as you sit up and rub your eyes. “But not because you’re seeing me. Because you’re not seeing JJ.”

You drop your hands at your side and glare at her. “You don’t even know him.”

“I know of him,” She says. “He’s a Pogue. A hot one too. And he’s head over heels in love with you. What else do I need to know?”

You shake your head. “It’s complicated.”

“Why? He loves you and you love him.”

You flip your comforter off you body and walk past the girl who loves sticking her nose in other people’s business. You always told her it would get her in trouble one day. But you secretly loved that she was so nosy. Because she cared and always gave the best advice.

You walk towards your dresser and stare at yourself in the mirror above it. The bags under your eyes are dark and your skin pale. Your hair is greasy from your lack of washing it and you’re starting to realize you’re beginning to smell.

Your friend sighs and sits back on your bed. “He’s in your head,” She says glumly.

You scoff, “I think if anyone’s in my head, it’s you.”

She glares back at you. “You know what I mean. Y/Ex’s/N. He’s still tormenting you after almost a year of not seeing him.”

You shake your head. “No I’m -”

“Come on, Y/N. You can’t lie to me. You’re still hiding your laugh behind your hand because he called it obnoxious. You hide yourself under baggy clothing and you won’t have sex with JJ because Y/Ex’s/N said you were bad at it -”

“Stop.”

“Clearly you weren’t bad at it since he got to come every single time. If anyone was bad at it, it was him.”

“Y/BFF’s/N.”

“What? It’s true,” She shrugs. That’s what you always loved about her. She was unapologetic. She meant what she said every time no matter what. You wished you had her confidence. She sighs and moves over on the bed so she’s closer to you. “Y/N, you deserve to be happy,” she says more softly. “And JJ makes you happy. Why are you pushing him away? Why can’t you let yourself be happy?”

“Because you’re not here!” You finally kick down the wall that’s been building in your head since your friend’s death. You never talked about her with anyone. Not even with her own family. She was your person - the girl who was going to stand by your side at your wedding, be the god mother to your children, your shoulder to cry on, and your therapist when you needed to rant. And now she’s not here and it feels wrong living the life you were supposed to live together. “How can I be happy when you’re not here?”

“Y/N...”

“No,” You cry. “It’s not fair. You’re supposed to be here. I can’t pretend like everything’s normal when it’s not. This was supposed to be the best summer of our lives and then you just left.” You snap your fingers. “Just like that. Out of nowhere. And if that can happen to you then it can happen to -”

You cut yourself off, afraid to say what you really were thinking. You didn’t want to put that kind of energy into the atmosphere because the thought haunted you every night when you were alone with your thoughts. You never thought you could lose someone like you lost your best friend. You didn’t think that would ever happen to you. But it did. And it put life in perspective for you. You don’t think you’d be able to live through another loss like that so falling for JJ was scary to you. Because if something ever happened to him, you wouldn’t know what to do.

“Hey,” She stands up to embrace you in a hug. You sob into her shoulder and squeeze her tightly against you. You don’t want to let her go. She feels so real. You’re actually touching her. “Look at me.” She eventually pulls away to look at you. She offers a sad grin and pushes your hair out of your eyes. “I’m sorry I died. But you get to live! You know how jealous I am that you have the ability to eat smoothie bowls every day and go surfing and date cute boys and go on road trips with your friends and family? You don’t even know how good you have it. And on top of that, you have the hottest guy on the island fawning over you and you’re too sad about me to even realize it. I don’t want you to live this way -” she motions to your messy room. “I want you to take advantage of the life you have. If I can’t live it, then you have to live it for me.”

“I don’t want to do it without you,” You cry.

She shakes her head. “You’ll never be without me, chick. I’m always going to be with you. Besides, I like JJ. You’d be stupid to let him go.”

You bite your bottom lip and feel a rush of heat climb up your neck to your cheeks. “He is really good to me.” You knew your friend was right. She was always right. “I miss you.”

“I miss you too,” She says. You both turn when you hear someone knock on your door. She looks back at you and smirks. “That’s my cue.”

“Wait -”

“Don’t worry, chick. Remember what I said. I’m not far away.”

You gasp awake wrapped in your sheets with dried drool stuck to your chin. You sit up and look around frantically for any sign of your best friend. But she’s gone. So is any sign that she might have been here. You rub the dried saliva off your chin with your fingers and sigh up at the ceiling. It felt so real.

Your mom lets herself into your room and smiles at you. “Oh, good. You’re awake.”

“Yeah...” You say slowly. You think back to everything your best friend said to you in your dream. How lucky you are to live a life that she can’t. For the first time ever, she was jealous of you. For a life you’re taking for granted. Although it was hard to be happy without her by your side, you knew she didn’t want you sulking around for her. Some days are going to be hard. That’s just the inevitable. But you have the ability to make it easier. It all starts with you. “I think I’m going to take a shower.”

“Really?” Your mom says, surprised by the effort you’re making so early in the morning.

“Yeah,” You grin and walk past her to get to your bathroom. Today is going to be a new day, you say to yourself as you let the warm water rain over you.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Two days later was your best friend’s birthday. A day you’ve been dreading for weeks. Your heart felt heavy and your mind clouded as you moved around your room getting ready for the day. As much as you wanted to stay in bed, you knew it wouldn’t be what she wanted. You haven’t spoken to her since that night, but you knew she was quietly watching over you.

You throw on a pair of sports shorts and a long sleeve t shirt. The day is cold and foggy so you knew the cemetery would be cold. Your parents offer you a small smile as you walk out the door with a bouquet of flowers and a blanket.

You slowly come to a stop as you’re walking to your car parked on the street in front of your house when you recognize a familiar truck parked behind it. JJ steps out of the driver’s seat and approaches you with his hands tucked in his short pockets. He smiles sheepishly at you and glances down at the flowers.

“Hey,” He says.

“Hey,” You shuffle awkwardly on your feet. Why did he have to look so good? He’s dressed in a Coors Light tank and cargo shorts. His golden hair is perfectly quaffed and his skin perfectly sun kissed. “How are you?”

“Good, good,” He nods. He hates that your relationship has resulted to this. Awkward small talk. “I’m sorry. Am I catching you at a bad time?” He motions to the flowers.

“Um,” You glance between the flowers and him and shrug. “No. I was actually just going to see a friend. Would you like to come?” You remember all the things your friend had to say about JJ. How he loves you, you love him, and he makes you happy. You messed up by breaking up with him, but maybe you can make it right by explaining everything to him.

“Oh,” JJ looks surprised that you’re offering time to hang out. He was afraid you were going to push him away and shut your front door in his face. He didn’t know what was going to happen. He just wanted to see you. “Yeah. Definitely.”

You smile. “Great. But we have to stop for smoothie bowls on the way.”

JJ laughs. “No problem.”

Surprisingly, it wasn’t awkward being alone with JJ after all this time. The two of you spent the car ride talking about the other Pogues and what they’ve been up to in the past couple of weeks. It was bittersweet talking about them because of how much you missed them, but you hoped that they would accept you back into their friend group after you explained to JJ why you’ve been so distant.

“Uh, Y/N.” JJ says when he parks the car.

“Yeah?”

“This is a cemetery.”

You can’t help but giggle at his apprehension. “I know. Come on.”

JJ carries the flowers and you carry the brown paper bag that holds your three smoothie bowls and a blanket. You lead him through the wet grass, past dozens of tomb stones until you find where your best friend peacefully lays.

JJ stays silent as he looks between you and the tombstone. The years etched onto the tombstone indicate that someone your age is buried here. He quickly puts the puzzle pieces together and tries to read your facial expression. Your sadly grinning at the tomb stone when you feel JJ’s eyes on the side of your face.

You lay the blanket down and offer half of it for him to sit next to you. He does but stays quiet, waiting for you to explain whenever you’re ready.

“This is Y/BFF’s/N,” You introduce her. “She was my best friend.” JJ nods and lets you continue as you stare at the tombstone. “She died a few weeks before we met.” You pull out the smoothie bowls and pass one to JJ and place the other one in front of the flowers placed by the grave. “Today’s her birthday and we had this tradition that we would get smoothie bowls every morning of our birthday.” You pop open the lid of your bowl and push around the berries laying on top with your spoon. “I know I owe you an explanation.”

“It’s okay. You don’t have to...”

“Trust me,” You smile at him, “I do. She would kill me if I didn’t.”

You told JJ about the mental toll her death had on your life. Even with JJ by your side, you felt her missing presence heavily all day every day. It wasn’t that you weren’t happy in your relationship with JJ, it was just that something was missing and it was something you couldn’t bring back to your life. Because of her loss, you fell back into a depression you once experienced towards the end of your last relationship. You told JJ about the mental anguish your ex left you with and why you don’t feel comfortable opening yourself up to him, both physically and mentally. You promised it wasn’t because of JJ but because of your ex and the things he said to you. With your friend’s birthday coming up, everything was weighing you down mentally and you didn’t want to hinder JJ’s life any longer. You told him you thought breaking up with him was best for him so he didn’t have to deal with your problems and he can find a girl that makes him happy. You regret ever walking away from him that night. Your friend was your person, but now so is JJ. You want him to know everything about you. Good and bad. He deserves to know the truth.

“She would’ve liked you,” You brush your fallen tears away with the back of your hand. “You guys are alike in a lot of ways.”

“Yeah?” JJ smiles at you. “How?”

“She made me laugh and always pushed me past my comfort zone. She challenged me to do more with my life. And she never gave up on me,” You grin up at him. “I’m sorry for pushing you away.”

“You don’t have to be,” JJ says. “I get it. No one deserve to lose a friend like this. I don’t know what I would do if this happened to John B or Pope or even Kie.”

“I still love you, J. And I want to give you every part of me. I just...need some help opening up.”

JJ sets down his smoothie bowl and turns to face you. His hand caresses the side of your face and pushes your hair back behind your ear. “Hey....we can take it as slow as you want. I’m not going anywhere.”

You smile at him. “So, you wanna try this again?”

“Abso-fucking-lutely.”

JJ leans in to kiss you on your lips. Butterflies erupt from your stomach and fireworks shoot across every nerve in your body. When you eventually pull away, you’re smiling because even when your best friend isn’t here to physically push you, she has her own way of getting into your head and making sure you don’t take the life you have in front of you for granted. And you couldn’t be more grateful for that.

Unbeknownst to you, your friend watches from a far with her arms crossed and a smirk on her face. Slightly shaking her head, she says to you, “You’re gonna be just fine, chick.”

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connordavidscamera · 2 years

Text

Love Will Remember | Connor Brashier x OC

Crumble to Pieces Part 2

A/n: this took a lot longer than I expected, but my vision for it kept changing

Summary: Luca and Connor meet up for the first time since the breakup

Warnings: I think it’s a tiny bit angsty

Word count: 5.8k

***

Pop Singer Luca Has Moved On… To Her Ex's Best Friend?

Has Luca moved "onto the next one?" Recent sightings in LA with a fellow celebrity are telling us yes.

Written by: Another Know-it-all reporter

It's no secret that Luca and Shawn Mendes have been close friends for years. Luca opened for Mendes on his 2019, self-titled tour and since then the two have been closer than ever.

But are they just friends or are they more?

With recent news of Luca's breakup from ex-boyfriend, Connor Brashier, fans are speculating that Shawn Mendes might be the reason. The two have been spotted all over LA together in the past few weeks. Sources say that they've even been caught holding hands.

"Shawn and Luca have always been close," a source close to the pair tells us. But if that's the case, is Shawn really the reason for Luca's breakup? The "Summer of Love" singer has said on numerous occasions that he wants love that is built on a friendship, and what closer friendship than the one that these two share.

About Mendes, pop singer Luca says, "He's one of the greatest people I know. I am very lucky to have him in my life."

We're not saying it's true, but signs point to yes. These two are the new hottest couple in the industry and we couldn't be happier for them.

"Are they serious?" I shake my head. "They take one out of context sentence from an old interview and that's confirmation that we're dating?" I throw my head back in frustration, "I haven't even come out and said hey everyone the love of my life and I are broken up, and they’re pulling shit like this."

Shawn shrugs, "Well, I mean… it has been over six months. People just put two and two together."

"How are you okay with this?" I hand him his phone back. “The whole world thinks we’re dating.”

"No one said I was okay with it. I especially don’t want Connor reading this and thinking we're together. I would never do that to him."

I cross my arms and lean against the arm of the couch. "Yeah, me neither. That's why it's maddening. I mean, fuck. I don't even get to cope with my breakup. I'm still finding things around the house that remind me of him. im. And these tabloids just love to add fuel to the fire.”

“You still have some of his stuff?”

I scoff and look down, picking at my chipped nail polish. “I never gave anything back. I was holding out hope that we’d be back together by now. I just, I had my friend collect all of his stuff and put it in a box, hide it in a closet so I didn’t see it right when I got home.”

Shawn sighs, “Luc, I’m sorry this is happening.”

I suck in a breath, “It’s fine. I just thought I’d be over it by now. And I’m not, but I guess this is just how it’s gonna be until I am. Every news outlet will assume that any guy I hang out with is my new boyfriend until I confirm something. But I’m not confirming anything.”

“I know.” He reaches over and pats the back of my hand. “Come on, get your cute butt back in the studio. Let’s record this and get our minds off it.”

I nod, “Alright, sure.”

—

“Con, we’re best friends, right?”

I sit up straight. “I don’t like that question, Sam. What is it? What do you need to tell me?”

He clears his throat, “Well, you know Luca.”

I suck in a breath at the sound of her name. It still hasn’t gotten that much better when I hear about her. I know it’s been more than enough time to get over it, but I can’t. I made a huge mistake and I have to live with that. “Yes. I do.”

“Well, she texted me the other day. Actually we’ve been texting quite a bit the past few weeks and-”

“Get to the point, Sammy boy.”

“She asked me to shoot her cover photo for her new single.”

“New single, huh? Okay,” I nod. “That’s nice. When?”

“On Friday.”

“Okay,” I grab my phone and start scrolling through my email. I don’t actually have anything to look for, I just need something to do so I seem like this doesn’t affect me. Which it doesn’t. It shouldn’t. I don’t know.

“Do you… do you maybe want to go? You can help me out?”

I clear my throat. I want to go. God, I want to see her so badly. “I don’t think she wants me there,” I tell him.

“I could ask her.”

I shake my head, “No. Don’t. I can… I can show up for a little bit, I guess. Maybe toward the end just so I don’t make her uncomfortable, you know.”

“I think she’d want to see you.”

I shrug, “Maybe. I just… I think I need to see her.”

“Maybe it will help you out. Give you that closure you’ve been looking for.”

Or it will torment me even further, reminding me that, yes, I did make the biggest mistake of my life letting her go. And while I don’t need a reminder, I 100% need to see her in person. If I don’t, I might just lose my mind.

“Yeah, it might,” I agree anyway. I don’t believe it because I’m not trying to get closure, I’m trying to get Luca. I don’t really know how you get back the girl whose heart you broke, but guys do it all the time, maybe I can too.

I change my shirt a total of eight times before settling on the shirt I began with. I don’t think I’ve ever been more nervous in my life. Not even on our first date. I wore a white button up that night, but it wasn’t buttoned all the way - she loved it, lazily traced my collar bones while we waited for our Uber, hiding in the back of the restaurant so no one saw us.

Today I wear that same shirt, in hopes that she’ll see me in it and… what? Immediately fall into my arms and take me back? Well, in a dream world, yes. In this world, I just hope she doesn’t leave immediately after seeing me. That would be a win in itself.

I check my phone to see that Sam’s assistant texted me three minutes ago, telling me that they’re eating now and are about to set up for the last shoot.

I send them back a thumbs up emoji and grab my keys from the counter. “I’m heading out!” I call out to Will, who’s sprawled out on the couch, watching a baseball game.

He doesn’t say anything back, not that I really expect him to. The whole drive there I’m nervous. It’s a drive I’ve taken a million times before, but today is different. Today I’m going there with the sole intention of seeing my ex-girlfriend. Huh, I don’t know if I’ve actually ever said that. I don’t really refer to her much anymore, I guess. In my mind she’s still Luca. My Luca. But I guess, she’s not that anymore either. At least not right now. That doesn’t mean she won’t be again.

I’m sitting outside Sam’s place for ten minutes, maybe when I get another text from his assistant.

Starting the last shoot now.

I sigh. I have to do this. I don’t have to stay long, I just have to see her, even if it’s only for a second. I wait five minutes after reading that text to finally get out of the car. I walk right in. Sam always leaves his door unlocked, especially when he’s doing a shoot because there’s a lot of back and forth, it’s just easier for everyone. That’s why no one even bats an eye when I walk through the door.

The first person I see is Luca’s hair stylist and makeup artist, Gwen. She’s just a few years older than us and she’s been with Luca since the very beginning. When I see her,I feign surprise and offer a small wave but she gasps and immediately comes over, wrapping me in a hug. “Oh my god!” she whispers. “What are you doing here? I haven’t seen you in forever. How are you doing?”

I force a tight lipped smile, “I’m okay. How are you?”

“I’m good. I’m good. But, what are you doing here? I thought you two -”

“We did. I just… Sam asked me to stop by. I didn’t even know you were here.” And for good measure. “Why are you here actually?”

Her smile falters just a smidge. “Sam’s doing Luca’s cover shoot,” she says slowly, as if trying to break the news to me softly.

“Oh,” I nod. “Oh, so she’s here?”

Gwen nods, “Oh, honey, this must be so hard for you.”

I clear my throat, “It’s good to see you Gwen. I’m gonna see what Sam needed and I’ll get out of here.”

She nods, that look still on her face. I’m familiar with the look. It’s the one that everyone has been giving me since the breakup, that look that says “Oh, you poor thing.”

I’m sick of that look.

I leave her with one last smile and head toward the back of the house where Sam has set up his studio. I pass by a couple other people on Luca’s team, but I’m so grateful when I don’t see Derek there. I’m sure he’d tell me to leave, which he has every right to because I know I messed up. I know that this breakup has been hell for him to try to spin, especially because I know Luca told him to not confirm or deny anything. And when she sets her mind to something, there’s no going back. So he’s probably having a hell of a time not doing anything about the dating rumors.

They’re rumors. I know they are. Shawn’s told me a hundred times that they’re rumors. And he’s told me a hundred more that they’re just working on music together. I wonder if he helped with the song she’s putting out.

Sam is busy, obviously, when I come into his studio, so I say quiet hellos to a couple of our friends that are there helping with the shoot. I’ve just walked to the far side of the room, opposite of where I just walked in when I see her for the first time. She’s laying down on her back, on the mattress that Sam’s assistant had most likely pulled in here. She has one of Sam’s vintage polaroids in her hands, another one is laying beside her head. She looks beautiful, as always. Her hair is fanned out around her head. I don’t see much makeup on her face, although she’s never really been one to wear a lot unless she was going on a red carpet.

Everytime she had a new eyeshadow look, I would stare at her in awe because it wasn’t normal for her, but it looked great on her. I mean, she always looks great, but the heavier eyeshadow gave her a certain confidence that she didn’t carry with her on a day to day basis. It was like a suit of armor, meant to shield her from whatever was to come that night - I think it worked. She wasn’t wearing it the night we broke up, I wonder if it would have made a difference.

She hasn’t spotted me yet, but everyone’s eyes are on me now as mine are on her. Her eyes finally catch me when Sam has her change positions. And when they do, I feel like all the air in my lungs has been knocked out of me. Because yes, she looks beautiful, but holy shit, this is the woman that I love. The woman I haven’t seen for over six months. The woman I completely broke when I walked out on her like a coward. And the woman who still holds my heart in those delicate hands of hers.

“Connor,” she says softly, almost like she’s scared of speaking too loudly, or she’s scared that someone might hear her. But everyone does, because everyone is watching us.

“Hey, superstar,” I say back just as quietly, my hands in my pockets.

“Uh,” she sits up, her eyes still on me as she does so. I wonder if she’s thinking the same thing as me, that if she blinks I might disappear. I don’t think I’ve blinked since I stepped in the room. “Sam, can you help me up?”

“Yeah, you got it,” he says, holding his hand out to Luca, helping her stand.

I’m watching her every move as she comes closer. She stops about two feet in front of me. “Hi,” she says gently.

I smile at her, “Hi.”

“Um,” she takes a final step forward and holds her arms open.

I immediately reciprocate, wrapping my arms around her. Neither of us say anything while in each other’s arms, but the hug alone says so much. It’s like making up for lost time. She smells the same. Coconut shampoo with that hint of vanilla from her perfume she always wears. She was never one for floral scents. She associates them with the old ladies that used to work in the front office of her school.

I squeeze her a little tighter before we let go. “You, you look good. You cut your hair,” she says.

Instinctively my hand reaches up for it. “Oh, yeah. A couple weeks ago, actually. It was getting a little shaggy.”

She nods, “I like it.”

“Thanks,” I clear my throat. “And, you dyed your hair,” I say, referring to the lighter ends of her hair.

“Yeah,” she nods, playing with the tips of it. “I figured it was time for something new,” she shrugs. “Was considering bangs.”

“Bangs?” I hum, “Bangs would look good on you. You have the face for it. I mean, you have the face for anything.”

She nods, “That’s what you’ve always told me.” She looks down, tangling her fingers together like she always does when she’s nervous. “What - what are you doing here?” she asks.

“Uh,” I look around to see everyone still staring at us. “Can we,” I tilt my head toward the glass door beside us and she nods. I send a threatening glare to everyone in the room when I shut the door behind us, but it doesn’t deter them from keeping a close eye on us. “Don’t be mad, but Sam told me that you would be here. And I,” I shrug. “I know I don’t really have any right, but I had to see you. If you’re uncomfortable, I’ll leave. I just had to see you in person.”

“I’ve been wanting to call,” she tells me.

“Me too. I just wasn’t sure if you wanted to talk to me.”

“I didn’t for a while. I - I was hurt and I knew that talking to you would only make it hurt more. It was a double edged sword because while I was hurting the only person I wanted to talk to was you and I couldn’t do that.”

I nod solemnly. “I know. Same here.”

Neither of us say anything for a couple minutes, but I have to break the silence.

“I miss you.”

She sighs, shaking her head, “Brash, you can’t just say that to me. You broke up with me.”

“I know, and I’ve regretted it every second of every day since.”

“Then why did you do it? Why couldn’t you wait six more weeks so we could be back home and we could work on fixing the problem rather than causing a much bigger one?”

“Because I thought giving us time apart would help. We were fighting all the time and I knew that was stressful for you, so I thought if we took a break for that last stretch of the tour, we could come back home and we could sit down and work it out. But then I got too scared to call, and at that point it felt like it was too late to. Then Shawn hit me up with the whole It’ll be Okay song and… you used that piano melody that you told me you were holding onto for a love song.” I shake my head, “I left because I was a coward, Luc. And I’m not gonna stand here and act like I wasn’t. Or stand here and pretend that I haven’t thought of you every single day since that night.”

She furrows her brows, “You knew that the fighting was stressing me out so you broke up with me instead? How does that make sense in your mind? I was fucking devastated those last few weeks of tow. I could barely get out of bed in the morning, let alone get out there on stage and perform as if nothing happened. I cried during my performance almost every single night.”

“I know - well, I mean, I didn’t know that. But I know that what I did is inexcusable. I can’t even tell you that the reason I did it was good because we know it wasn’t. And I had every intention of calling you -”

“But you didn’t. Meaning to do something and doing them are totally different, Connor. You, of all people, should know that.”

I sigh, “You’re right,” I nod. “I’m sorry. I am so sorry. For everything that’s happened. For everything that I’ve put you through. I’m sorry I left. I’m sorry I pushed you away when really all I wanted to do was hold on for dear life. You didn’t deserve any of that.”

Luca crosses her arms, “No, I really didn’t.”

We are once again engulfed in silence, and I know we’re both painfully aware of the people in the room behind us watching our every move, trying like hell to read our lips.

“I wanted to hate you,” she says quietly, shaking her head. It stings a bit. “I wanted so badly to hate you for what you did. And for a split second, I was almost able to convince myself that I did. But,” she looks out at the trees that occupy most of Sam’s property. “I could literally never hate you. No matter how angry I was with you, I couldn’t.”

“I want to fix things,” I tell her, turning my body to face hers.

She turns her head to look at me. “What if we can’t?”

“I want to try. I want to get back to how things were. I don’t know if we can get there, but that doesn’t mean I won’t try my hardest to get us there. We were happy once. I believe we can be again.”

She nods slowly, “I want to try. But it’ll take me a while to trust you again. We can’t - you can’t just run at the first sign of trouble.”

I nod quickly, “I know. And I’ll work on it. If you let me, I want to work on this with you because I can’t see myself with anyone else but you. I need - I need to at least try to salvage what we had.”

Luca exhales deeply, pushing her hair out of her face before crossing her arms again, her body now facing the large window looking into the room of our friends and her team. “Okay, so let’s say we do this. We start over. We have to start from the beginning. Relearning how to be with each other. It’s not something we can just jump back into. I want to get to know you again.”

I nod. “Okay, sure. That’s not a problem. We can do that.”

“And… if this works and we are able to make our way back to each other. If it feels right for us then you have to ask me out again. We can’t celebrate three years in a couple months because we’ve spent so much time apart.”

“That makes sense,” I breathe deeply. “Anything else?”

“Yeah, one thing. And this one is really important.”

“Anything,” I tell her, and I mean it. I will give her anything that she wants, anything that she needs.

“When things get hard, don’t run away from me.”

I nod vigorously. “I won’t. I won’t, I promise.”

“Okay.”

Another silence. “Well, then I guess I should go. Let you finish up here.”

“No,” she shakes her head, reaching for my hand. “Please don’t. Stay. We can… talk more after. And I want to show you the new song. It’s, well it’s about you.”

“Okay,” I nod. I feel like I’ve been doing a lot of that, but I don’t know what else to do. From inside, I probably look like a fucking bobblehead. “Then let’s go back in so you can finish up.”

I thought I heard his voice when he walked in, but I told myself that I was just imagining it. I didn’t think that when I looked up he'd actually be there, looking as good as ever. Well, for the most part. He had deep dark circles, which makes me wonder how much sleep he’s actually getting. He’s always been a hard worker, but sometimes that meant he was working himself too hard and well into the night. There were many instances in our relationship that I ended up sleeping with him on the couch because that’s where he fell asleep.

He’s wearing the shirt he wore on our first date. I know it’s just a plain white button up to anyone else, but that was the shirt he wore the night I realized that I was going to fall in love with him. And the second I saw him, I knew that when I got close enough, I would see that tiny stain of my red lipstick on the collar from one of the times he wore it to an award show with me.

And when I hug him, it’s confirmed. He’s also wearing my favorite cologne, the one that has the undertones of sea salt. It was kind of like a dupe for some YSL cologne he had owned once. We bought it together on one of our outings while we were touring with Shawn. It was on one of those days between shows where we could go out and do whatever. He, Shawn, Brian, Mae, and I had all gone out together. We found this tiny shop that made a scent for you, like right in front of you. I thought it was so cool and we both got scents made.

I wanted to cry when I hugged him. His hugs still felt the same. Like coming home. I don’t know what stopped me from wrapping my entire body around him and never letting go. Maybe it was the nine other people in the room staring at us, watching our every last move. I hated being watched. And I was bitterly aware of them still staring while Connor and I stood outside to talk.

I held it together a lot better than I thought I would. In all those nights I had spent imagining what I would do when I did finally see him again (because let’s face it, it was inevitable. We have mutual friends. I mean, one of my best friends in the world is literally his boss. And his best friend is one of my go to photographers. We’re bound to cross paths despite how much we’ve both been actively avoiding it.) I didn’t think that my first instinctual feeling would be longing.

I thought it would be anger. I wanted to be mad at him. Since that night I have wanted to be mad at him, and sometimes I was. But the feeling never lasted like I’m sure it was supposed to.

And maybe I gave in too easily outside. And people might call me crazy, and maybe they’re right. All I know is that the moment I saw him, my world no longer felt like it was tilted a little too hard to the left. We locked eyes and I swear I felt my broken heart start to mend instantly. Because no matter what’s happened. He’s still Connor. My Connor.

He’s still the man who stayed up with me all night when I had the stomach flu and I couldn’t stop vomiting. He’s the man who emptied out a drawer for me when I came to visit him for a week when we were doing long distance after Shawn’s tour. He’s the man who uprooted most of his life to live in Toronto with me before my tour started (not permanently, but we were discussing that before the fallout). And he’s the man standing in front of me now who is making me nervous like he did the first time I met him three years ago.

I remember just about every detail of that day. It was early March and it was uncharacteristically cold for the time of day, about two in the afternoon. Shawn and his team were leaving from LA to Amsterdam, where our tour would start. My team was leaving from Toronto and we’d make it there around the same time. When we met at the airport, Connor was the first person that I saw after Shawn. Not because he was standing close, but because he was cute. I was always a sucker for that kind of dirty blond hair and the way his kind of stuck up from all the gel he had in it was adorable.

He looked so much younger then, I thought he was younger than me. Come to find out, he was actually two months older. I won’t say it was love at first sight, I will say though, that the moment I met him, I knew he would be important in my life. I just didn’t know in what way. His laugh, in the span of only a couple of hours, quickly became my favorite sound in the world. I wanted to hear it all day, see that big toothy grin that he didn’t give so freely, but he did when we were introduced.

Honestly, when I look back to that day, I wonder just how smitten I must have looked. Because while I don’t believe in love at first sight, I think that was about as close to it as it could have been.

It’s easy to think about those things when he’s standing there in the corner of the room, looking at me in the same way he always has. I’ve never seen that look given to anyone else but me and that warms my heart a bit, knowing that even after all this time apart, he can still somehow look at me like that. And I’m sure I’m looking at him just the same, and the photos that Sam’s taking will definitely prove it too.

“Alright, last frame,” Sam says, and I look up at where he’s standing above me. I know before he’s even taken the photo that this one will be the cover art for the single. “Perfect! That’s a wrap,” he tells his team, holding a hand out to me to once again help me up. “Here, let’s see what we got. I think we have some really good ones.”

I nod, but I’m not really looking at the photos, my senses are taken over by the proximity of Connor. He’s moved closer now, also looking over the photos, even going as far as to point out some of the things that he likes.

We both point at the last frame though, “That one,” we say at the same time.

“You like it for the cover art?” Sam asks, looking between both of us.

I nod, “Yes. It’s perfect.”

“Well alright, I’ll do a little bit of editing for it and have it for you tomorrow at the latest.”

“Yeah? Perfect! Thanks, Sammy!” I wrap him in a hug, kissing his cheek quickly.

“Yeah, yeah. Get your cute ass out of here. Or don’t. I don’t care.”

I laugh at that and pat his shoulder. “Let me buy you dinner tonight.”

“Oh please, like I’m gonna let you pay for anything.”

“Come on! Please! Please, please, please, please, please, please.”

“She’ll keep going if you don’t say yes,” Connor tells him.

Sam groans dramatically, “Fine. I’ll let you buy me dinner.”

“Yay!” I look back to Connor. “You’re coming too.”

“You want me there?”

I nod, “Yes. That’s why I’m inviting you. I mean… if you want to go. You don’t have to if you don’t want-”

“No, no, no. I want to go. I do.” he nods frantically. “Thank you.”

I busy myself with helping my team pack up their stuff, but tell them I’ll be staying a while. When all of their things are packed up and in the van, I thank them and go back inside. Sam and Connor are standing in the kitchen, like any normal day - like it had been a million times before. Of course, it’s difficult to not address the elephant in the room. The elephant being me and our breakup.

If it were any normal day with Sam, I would go over to stand with Connor and maybe (definitely) wrap my arms around his torso, plant soft kisses on the side of his jaw and cheeks. I’d be close. But I can’t do that now, so I go over and stand by Sam. He instinctively wraps an arm around me and kisses the top of my head. “I’m gonna leave you two to talk. I’m gonna edit your photos. We’ll leave to get dinner in, like an hour-ish?”

I nod, “Sure, sounds good.”

And once again, Connor and I are left alone. Except this time we’re actually alone. Most everyone has left, and those who haven’t are in Sam’s studio - which I’m pretty sure it’s just his assistant and his friend Ella. I rock back and forth on my heels, looking down at our feet.

“So…” he starts. “You wanna, maybe want to show me that song?”

“Oh, yes.” I nod. “Yeah,” I pull my phone from my back pocket. “I uh, I only have the demo on my phone,” I tell him, moving to stand next to him. I hoist myself up onto the counter. “I don’t want to risk my phone getting hacked and the real thing getting leaked.”

He smiles, turning his body to face mine. “I know. You’ve never put the finished version on your phone.”

I clear my throat, looking at the screen. “Uh, do you have your airpods? They should still be connected to my phone. You’ve always listened to it alone first, unless you just want to play it out loud. I mean, Sam’s already heard it, so.”

He pulls his airpods case out of his pocket. “I got ‘em. May I?” he holds his hand out, silently asking for my phone. I give it to him. He puts one earphone in and holds the other one out to me. “Listen with me?”

I suck in a breath but nod. “Yeah.”

Once we’re both situated, he looks at me for confirmation before pressing play.

Now’s all we’ve got / and time can’t be bought / I know it inside my heart / forever will forever be ours / even if we try to forget / love will remember

I watch his face while we listen, trying to decipher his expression, but it’s blank. Even more so when the next line starts.

You said you loved me / I said I loved you back / what happened to that? What happened to that? / all your promises, and all those plans we had / what happened to that? What happened to that?

Boom, gone / yeah, we move on / even if we try to forget / love will remember you / and love will remember me / I know it inside my heart / forever will forever be ours / even if we try to forget / love will remember

I hate not knowing what he’s thinking. He’s nodding his head to the beat as the second verse kicks in, but his face still holds no emotion. I don’t know if he’s upset, hurt, what? Usually I can tell. But then again, I did tell him I wrote this about him, and it’s a breakup song. I’ve never written one about him before (well, “It’ll be Okay” but that one doesn’t fully count because Shawn co-wrote it. This one was all me.)

I take a deep breath as the second chorus starts to come to an end. This last verse was the hardest for me to write, but it’s also my favorite thing I’ve written.

Break down the walls / let heaven in / somewhere in forever we’ll dance again / we used to be inseparable / I used to think that I was irreplaceable / we lit the whole world up before we blew it up / I still don’t know just how we screwed it up / forever, forever, forever

That’s the first time his face breaks that blank stare. He sucks in a breath and closes his eyes, but not before I catch something in his eyes - it somehow looks like a mix between hurt and pride? I don’t know how those two go together, but that’s what it looks like, but when he opens his eyes again as the song comes to an end, the look is gone. And he’s back to being blank and expressionless. He stops the track and takes out his earbud. I do the same.

“Well?”

He sighs, “You write one hell of a breakup song.”

I look down at my hands. “If you totally hate it, I won't release it. I have a few others that I can choose from to put out instead -”

“Release it,” he says, causing me to look back at him.

“What?”

“It’s a great song, Luc. The lyrics are - they’re real, and that’s what makes it great. Do I wish they weren’t real? Yes, but that’s on me, not you.You wrote what you felt, I’ve always been proud of you for that. So, don’t not put it out because of me.”

“Okay,” I sigh. “Are you - are we okay?”

He nods, taking my hand in his and my breath hitches at the contact. I forgot how such a simple touch always made my heart flutter when it happened. “We’re okay. But I do have to tell you one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“Right now, I know we’re just trying to be friends and work on being around each other. But, I want my intentions to be clear. Okay? I want to be with you again. And I’m going to regain your trust. I want you to fall in love with me again.”

I never fell out. “I want that too,” I mutter.

“I’m gonna fix things for us. I will.”

“We’ll take it day by day?”

“Yeah. Day by day.”

---

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Lucaofficial My NEW SINGLE “Love Will Remember” comes out next week. Click the link in my bio to PRESAVE

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royivia · 3 years

Text

The Neighborhood

Sibyl Campbell wasn’t even mad when she woke up on a hot ass May morning in her room, drenched in sweat. Instead, she bypassed anger and went straight to resignation because the HVAC system in the Robert Moses Houses was broken — again — and she didn’t have the time or the energy to bitch about it. In fact, the heating and cooling stayed shutting off across Groundview Gardens. It had become a predictable kind of disappointment in the neighborhood, more so than flooding during superstorms or the fact that no matter which part of the neighborhood you were in, you could feel the rumbling of the shuttle every seven minutes.

Sibyl had spent all night coughing and turning in her bed from the claustrophobic heat that agitated her asthma. Her mother had already gone to work, otherwise, she would have heard Mildred Campbell yelling in indignant patwa over the phone at an Arcadian Realty & Management representative “to fix the damn AC” before she threatened to call 311 on their ass, and report them to the city. Both Mildred and the AR&M rep knew it was an empty threat, but to shut her up, they’d call someone who’d tinker with the system and the air would come back on for a couple of days or so, before it chipped out. And then, the routine would start again.

Sibyl checked the weather. It was already ninety-five degrees. She took a puff from her inhaler and scrolled through her timeline. The same picture of a little girl with a big bright smile captioned with different variations of “RIP Destiny’’ and prayers for her family flooded her feed. Sibyl forced herself out of bed. The sweat on her body made her feel uncomfortable. She hauled a clunky, old portable air conditioner out from her closet and plugged it into the wall. Management would fine them for the spike in their energy use, but she didn’t care. She pushed the power button on, and waited for the box to cough out some hot air before it eventually cooled the room down from a humid haze to a lackluster lukewarm.

SOIL had been trying to meet with AR&M, the neighborhood’s collective management company, about the HVAC problem with little to no success for close to three years. They had circulated petitions. Tried shaming them in the local news. They even considered organizing a rent strike, which would have done nothing because everybody who lived in Groundview Gardens received subsidies from the city that made rent practically free. And as much as people were pissed about freezing their asses off in the winter or not being able to breathe during the summer, nobody was tryna fight free rent. So, SOIL decided to annoy the shit out of their landlords instead. On their way into their coolly ventilated corporate office buildings, occupying their lobbies, picketing in front of their luxury condos, and most effectively, managing to damage one, or two, of their solar-powered generators in the hottest month New York City had ever seen. A few arrests and some pissed off rich people later, management finally agreed to hold a town hall to hear from their tenants, which meant SOIL’s next plan of action was to convince as many people as possible to show up. Nefi Ramos saw it as a challenge that they could surely accomplish. Her neighbors were like camels to water in a desert. They were thirsty, and had learned to go without for as long as they needed to, but lead them to a watering hole, and they would drink.

“It’s too fucking hot,” she shouted into her megaphone. She was standing in front of one of the many large screens around Groundview that cycled between ads for things they couldn’t afford and AR&M’s infamous “neighborhoods of tomorrow” promotional video. Most people just used the screens to check train arrival times and the air quality. The next shuttle was two minutes away, and the air was currently “unsafe for vulnerable groups.”

“Are we just supposed to take this shit?” Nefi asked. “We don’t deserve to live like this.”

Around her, the rest of SOIL handed out cold bottles of water, popsicles, and fruit cups from coolers filled with melting ice, along with flyers to people walking towards the train platform. They walked past the demonstration uninterestedly, only stopping long enough to take a bottle of water. Everyone had gotten used to Nefi shouting at them to care about things beyond their control, and learned to tune her and the rest of her angry SOILders out, taking their flyers every now and then only to chuck them into the nearest trash can. This morning, a few people did stop to listen for a second or two, the heat getting the better of them, before they saw the time flicker on the screen behind her, and realized that they’d be late for work.

Sibyl, her camera always strapped to her body, snapped a few shots of her neighbor. Nefi was like a loud older cousin who wasn’t afraid of a little trouble, or frankly anything. She both awed and terrified Sibyl.

“It’s time for these slumlords to sweat,” Nefi went on. “We need to organize. Our voices are stronger together — ”

“What makes you think anyone gives a shit about what happens to us down here?”

Mr. Solomon had been on his way to the bodega to buy his morning loosie, but stopped to sit in his walker, taking a moment to catch his breath.

“That’s exactly what they want us to think, vecino.” Nefi softened her voice in that way she did when she was trying not to shout. “The more we believe that we can’t make them pay attention to us, the longer they get away with treating us like shit.”

“I remember when they first moved people into Groundview.” In the midst of reminiscing, Mr. Solomon started coughing aggressively, prompting someone to hand him a bottle of water which he drank quickly before continuing. “We were protesting and shouting in the streets, but they didn’t care then. They’re not gonna care now.” The history lesson quickly turned into yet another heated debate about neighborhood politics between him and some of the other SOILders trying to convince him to take one of their flyers. Sibyl used the opportunity to catch Nefi’s attention, who waved her over enthusiastically.

“Yo, did you hear?” Nefi handed her a fruit cup. “We finally got a meeting with the overlords! Are you gonna come?”

“Nahhh, Nefi. You know that’s not really my thing…I’m not an activist.” Nefi was always trying to recruit her for some radical ass shit that just never seemed worth the trouble of explaining to Sibyl’s very Jamaican mother.

“Nobody said you had to be. You live in this neighborhood, and have just as much say about what happens in it as the suits who own it.” Nefi sensed Sibyl’s hesitation. “Please Sib! Come so we have more people in the room. You don’t have to say anything. We just want those dicks to see that we have power. People power!”

Nefi was very proud of the fact that she had an uncle, or it might have been a second cousin, who had been a member of the Young Lords and, drawing on their legacy of fighting for the liberation of Puerto Ricans, was always going on about the oppressive nature of renting, and self-determination for poor people, and community empowerment, and, and…

“Aight — I’ll go,” Sibyl assured her, trying to cut her sermon short. Nefi hugged her and thanked her a million times before shoving a stack of flyers into her arms to pass out and post up around the neighborhood.

The singular garden in Groundview Gardens was usually ten degrees cooler than anywhere else in the neighborhood. It was created — not by the architects who had designed New York City’s newest development, but instead — by the community out of desperation as an escape from their cramped apartments. During the days, the older folks used it to grow their herbs, medicines, and flowers for their healing practices. The local farmers grew produce that fed the community. After school and on the weekends, all the kids hung out at the community center at the heart of the garden where they learned to dance, make art, and play music.

By the time Sybil got there later that night, Groundview’s collective of artists had already transformed the greenspace into their Saturday night hangout. One of the DJs was spinning records. People were dancing, drinking, smoking, having a good time. Dante, Sage, and Felix had bottles in their hands when Sibyl joined them at their usual spot. Their clothes were covered in colorful patches of spray paint.

“Did you finish it? When do I get to see it?,” she asked them excitedly. She hadn’t seen her friends in about a week, which meant they were either done with their latest mural or were taking a break before they disappeared for another few days. “Soon.” Dante looked tired, but excitement danced in his eyes. “Shoot anything good lately?” He leaned in reaching for her camera, but she quickly pulled back from him.

He laughed at her and took a sip of beer. Dante was her oldest friend out of the trio. There was a quiet protectiveness between the two of them Sibyl hoped they could always maintain.

“It’s been a minute since I last checked.”

“How come?” Dante asked.

Sibyl usually couldn’t wait to hold herself up in the darkroom at the community center to develop her film, but she had been putting off her latest batch. She’d fallen in love with photography while taking classes at the center as a kid. So much so that one day, her mother came home with an old film camera and Sibyl never put it down. That first summer, she ran around the neighborhood asking to take people’s photos. It felt so natural to her, though it had taken a while to gain people’s trust. Take their pictures for what? What was she going to do with them? Skeptics, but curious, they eventually agreed. They’d uncomfortably pose or force a smile, and then immediately ask her to see it because if they didn’t look good, she’d have to delete it. Then she’d explain how film photography worked, and they’d cuss her out for wasting their time.

Weeks later, she’d find them again — at the corner store, or at the People’s Garden, and give them the glossy prints she’d developed. Through her lens she could see they were secretly afraid she’d see the things they’d all spent so much time and concern trying to hide. But those things would all melt away when they’d see themselves — some for the first time — with the same worth and value she saw in them. After that Sibyl didn’t have to ask. They booked her for quinces and graduation parties and engagement photos. People would stop her when they saw her around. “So you not gonna take my picture? Girl, you know I look good today. Quit playing and snap something quick,” and they’d pose with more pride than before, as if to officially celebrate the triumph of living, something they didn’t know they had accomplished until they saw proof.

After seeing so many of her neighbors’ pictures, some of which she took, circulate in online memorials, something lodged itself in the pit of Sibyl’s gut. She couldn’t fully identify what it was, but it left her with little energy to feel or do anything else outside of going to school and work. But she didn’t know how to explain that to her friends without being weird or bringing down the mood, so she just said, “Been busy with school.” She quickly changed the subject before anyone tried to press her on it.

“Are ya gonna go to the town hall?”

“What town hall?” Sage asked.

“The one with management. About the HVACs.” Sibyl handed them flyers from her bag. “I promised Nefi I’d go, but I don’t want to go by myself. Someone come with me?”

“Pass,” Felix snorted.

“I’ll go. Should be fun,” Sage said with a smirk on their face. “I wanna hear what those assholes say their excuse is for not fixing shit.”

“I’ll save ya the trip. Sorry, you’re too poor for us to care,” Felix mocked. “It’s not like they’re all of a sudden gonna have a conscience ya know.”

“You mad negative bro,” Dante said.

“What?” Felix asked animatedly. “You really trying to spend the rest of your life down here? We all need to focus on getting the fuck up outta here instead of asking them to fix some janky ass vents.”

It’s not like anybody was trying to spend any part of their lives in Groundview, but lately it seemed like the rest of their lives wouldn’t take so long. The sound of the shuttle, more muffled than anywhere else, reverberated throughout the garden.

“I’m out the first chance I get,” Dante admitted. His answer wasn’t surprising to any of them, but this was the first time Sibyl heard him say it out loud. Dante was one of the more talented and disciplined artists in the collective. It would only be a matter of time before he blew up and left.

“What happens when ya leave though?” Sage was upset. “You get out, but what about the rest of us? Not everybody can up and leave right? Shouldn’t we try and make shit better for everyone.”

“That’s a trap, Sage. Shit’s not gonna get better,” Felix said harshly. “Does it ever hit ya, like really hit ya that there’s no future for us here? Everybody’s so busy working to get by, we don’t even have time to realize how fucked up everything is.”

“I’m not saying it’s perfect.” Sage shot back. “I just don’t think we have to turn our back on our community. That’s fucked up.”

“Don’t take it so personally, Sage,” Dante cut in. “Nobody’s turning their backs on anyone.”

“Besides, no offense to Nefi n ‘em,” Felix said, “but everybody’s wasting their time if they think those suits are gonna fix anything.”

Sibyl listened quietly. Groundview was all they ever knew. She had never considered leaving it, and yet she also was afraid to admit that she thought Felix might be right.

The middle school auditorium only had like fifteen people — half were members of SOIL — in there that Tuesday night, which was more than Nefi had expected. The handful of people who told her they wanted to go to the town hall, but couldn’t, were either working, or would get home too late from work and would have to cook dinner or iron school uniforms for the next day. Everyone else couldn’t be bothered; like Felix, they thought it was a waste of time. That nothing would come from it. Sibyl didn’t show. No one who attended the town hall actually thought anything would come from it either. If AR&M had wanted to do something, they would have done it a long ass time ago. The people who did show up were mostly Nefi’s elderly neighbors who were always ready to spit their anger into a mic because if they weren’t going to get a solution, they would at least get to cuss someone out, and have an audience to witness it.

Nefi worked her way around the room to thank people for coming. These things always felt like family reunions to her. Old friends hugging and catching up because they hadn’t seen each other in a minute, with work and family and life moving everybody in this or that direction, even though they all still lived in the same neighborhood. She finished up her greetings and joined the rest of SOIL, huddled at the front of the room. They went over the order of speakers, before Benjy, the group’s designated peacemaker for the evening, asked everyone to quiet down and get seated so they could start. He reminded everyone to keep it civil. Then one by one, people got up to the mic to direct their anger at the empty faces in tailored suits, sitting at the table in front of them, who could all care less about the people shouting at them. There was a lot of finger snapping, and “that’s right” and “tell-em’s” from the crowd throughout.

Finally about half an hour in, a young woman, with a little girl clutching on to the left side of her body, got up to the mic.

“My name is Mercy Brooks, and this is my daughter Angelique.” Her voice was shaking, in that soft, angry, pissed off kinda way that warranted attention. Nefi hushed the crowd down so that she could speak her peace without interruption. “My daughter’s asthma acts up almost every day. She can’t breathe. Ya should be fucking ashamed of yaselves. Our babies are dying down here. Is that what we deserve because we can’t do better? We just supposed to take that shit. You ever thought about what it’s like to live down here, huh? I’m sure ya don’t cause if you did, you wouldn’t think it was right to keep people living like this. Or do ya not care cause it’s not your kids?”

There was silence from the table, which was worse than feigning any sympathy or remorse. It set the room off into chants, which meant it was over from there. AR&M security shut that shit down quick right on cue, and if you weren’t arrested that night, you were brusquely escorted out. Management promised to set up some vague kind of task force with representatives from the neighborhood, but it led to nothing. A fucking disappointment, that’s what that shit was. And it wasn’t a surprise to Nefi or anyone else, but it hurt all the same. A few weeks later, that same woman who got up and spoke, her daughter Angelique died because they couldn’t get her to the hospital in time after she had an asthma attack. AR&M still hadn’t fixed the vents in their housing complex. And they still didn’t change the filters or fix the ducts in the other housing complexes so that it wouldn’t happen again after that. SOIL kept trying to drum up some kind of anger. Anything to get people to feel something. To do something.

Murals of Destiny, Angelique, and every other person who had died that year quietly popped up around the neighborhood. Vigils and altars with flowers and prayer candles accompanied them. But as much as people were upset or sad, no one knew what else to do except mourn and move on because it was clear to everyone that no one gave a damn about them. And so, what was the point?

They called it the Subterranean Housing and Inner-City Tunnels project, or S.H.I.T. for short. A plan to provide affordable housing for everyone who had experienced the worst housing crisis New York City had ever seen. People were evicted left and right. Families were priced out of their homes and neighborhoods. The shelter system, swelled beyond its limits for decades, finally collapsed. The streets and subway were overrun with people in sleeping bags and blankets. So nothing new, but it finally annoyed enough people to warrant action.

Naturally, the city contracted its most blood thirsty developers, AR&M, to help solve the problem, which was kinda like asking an arsonist to put out a fire they had proudly started. To no one’s surprise, they didn’t want to forfeit any of their luxury condos that sat empty while people slept on the streets. Instead, they struck a deal to create the largest scale of public housing of its kind, in exchange for absolute, unregulated freedom. The only problem was there was literally no land left for them to develop because they had already bought it all. And then one day, the chief architect of S.H.I.T. had an epiphany when he felt the uptown 6 train rumbling beneath his feet. There was an entire part of the city he had yet to consider. Where a majority of the people who needed housing were already living. Sprawling housing complexes with multi-unit apartments appeared overnight 150 feet underground, with the pilot site in the South Bronx. A new subway station and miles and miles of foot tunnels connected New York’s newest neighborhood to the world above it.

There were protests, anger, outrage! That the country’s most progressive city could so blatantly, and quickly!, shove all of its poor people out of sight only seemed to bother the poor people because everyone else praised S.H.I.T. as the most innovative solution of the 21st century. New York City had done the impossible, and housed every single person. That was grounds for celebration and federal funding. Plans were quickly announced to roll S.H.I.T. out across every major city in the country. To ease people’s concerns, the mayor at the time, eyeing a presidential run, promised that his own city’s underground neighborhood would just be temporary — transitional housing at best. Transitional to what, no one could answer. Temporary until when? Until they could think of something else. One year became five, became ten, etc., etc.

In time, AR&M and the city eventually added a couple schools, a hospital, a library, and a sad excuse for a park that residents eventually turned into the People’s Garden. Folks opened up bodegas, 99 cent and liquor stores, and made themselves at home. It didn’t take long to accept living where they did as another fact of life because they had no other choice. Over time, the plan to move everyone back aboveground disappeared from the city’s housing briefings. Then, the briefings disappeared altogether. The high rates of asthma and chronic bronchitis that seemed to come from living in Groundview occasionally made the nightly news, but not enough to cause major concern or stop neighborhoods like Groundview from popping up across the country.

There were still those who remembered life before Groundview, and vowed to move out of the neighborhood as soon as the opportunity arrived. They kept the dream close to their hearts. And if it didn’t happen during their lifetimes, they’d make sure it would happen during their children’s. More realized it was a fool’s dream and moved on. Eventually though, everyone adapted to the vibrations of the shuttle inside their kitchens. The white, fluorescent lighting that lit every corner of their world like a harsh, artificial sun. The damp, muggy air that arrested their chests if they tried to breathe too freely. And the humming of the massive ventilation systems that heated and cooled their cramped, windowless apartments — when they decided to work.

An Artist’s Treatise on Survival

I don’t know how we do it sometimes. That is, put up with all the shit that life throws at us. Work jobs that exhaust us with little in return. Take care of our families with little to no support. Do so much with so little. And still be able to smile or laugh in the midst of it all. Then, I remember: it’s because we have to. No one else is gonna pay our bills if we don’t. No one else is gonna put food on our tables for us. No one’s gonna bail us out. Naturally, you learn to hustle. To channel your frustrations into working around the way things are because trying to fix things that were built broken takes time you don’t have when you’re just trying to get by.

What gets me even more is how we’ve perfected survival itself as an artform, and created whole new types of living from abject desperation. We wasn’t supposed to, much less find reasons to enjoy life, but we did anyway. Some even take on the added challenge of trying to make life more bearable, more enjoyable, for the rest of us. For example, sometimes when it felt like there wasn’t much to appreciate. That you were resigned to the fate of being alive and not living and didn’t deserve any better. You’d see a mural. On the way to the laundromat. Or the corner store. While you were running errands. Or walking home, bone tired, from the train after another long, shitty day at work. And like all good, beautiful things, it reminded you to breathe. You didn’t always know who created it. Or couldn’t remember if it was there the day before even though you’ve walked that way millions of times. You just knew that it was, in its own way, encouraging you to make it to tomorrow. Bright bursts of color and story interrupting the mundane, tiresome every day you’d come to accept with no protest. After a while, it becomes easier to accept a simple truth about living. That we can still manage to find a reason to laugh, to enjoy life, despite it all, and that we can be the source of our own power. It’s kind of audacious of us to still try and find joy even if it means creating it for ourselves. Maybe that’s why we do it.

At first, it started off as harmless tagging, and they kept it up chasing the thrill of not getting caught. Then they tried to outdo each other. It became a sport: who could paint the better mural. Get the most buzz around the neighborhood before they got painted over. But the better they got, and the more the murals looked legit, the longer they stayed up. Until they stopped painting over them altogether because people loved them so much. They didn’t belong to the creators anymore. They belonged to the neighborhood. And before they knew it, they’d created something much bigger than any of them could have imagined.

The tunnels just seemed like the next natural step for the graffiti artists in Groundview. Miles and miles of blank walls? Dante, especially, saw something to keep him busy after his brother died. Besides, painting murals felt like the only thing he could do. He’d stopped going to school. He’d just paint. When he ran out of ideas to paint, he asked Sibyl to see her portraits, and he started replicating them across the neighborhood. He was relentless — portrait after portrait. Sage and Felix started helping him out because they worried he would lose it, spending all that time in the tunnels by himself. He was grasping for something, but he didn’t know what it was. Until he saw it, lying on the ground near a garbage can.

The Groundview Residents’ List of Demands

The People of Groundview Gardens demand financial and social restitution for all residents, especially those who developed chronic health issues from living underground and/or have lost loved ones because of it.

The People demand New York City move all Groundview residents back above ground into rent subsidized apartments.

The People demand New York City disband all underground housing policies so that no one else has to live in Groundview Gardens or any other housing project like it.

Until the first three demands are met, The People demand Arcadian Realty & Management fix the HVAC systems in every single housing complex it owns and regularly maintain them.

Once Groundview Gardens is fully evacuated, The People demand New York City turn the entire neighborhood into a public memorial to commemorate the loss of life, preserving the art and The People’s Garden.

After the town hall, and the supposed task force, proved to be a bust, SOIL had created the demands to deliver to the city. They circulated leaflets with the five bullet points, but no one would take them seriously. Dante himself, admittedly, had checked out, and had ignored SOIL’s literature, up until that point. The demands appeared overnight on the walls of the tunnels in bold white paint for everyone to see. They were the last thing everyone saw coming into Groundview and the first thing they saw from the shuttle on their commutes leaving the neighborhood.

Nefi kept waiting for the moment when her neighbors would suddenly realize that they were angry — very angry. They’d decide they were fed up once and for all and refuse to settle for less anymore. They’d riot in the streets. They’d protest in front of AR&M’s offices. They’d refuse to go into work until something changed. Their anger would get everyone’s attention. Her own rage had burned intensely inside her for as long as she knew herself. She learned to channel it through SOIL trying to make Groundview a better place, even though everyone told her it wasn’t worth it; it wasn’t possible; it was a waste of time. But it was either that or literally set some shit on fire. But, it didn’t matter how many rallies, tenant meetings, town halls, or demonstrations SOIL organized. Nefi learned that she couldn’t have a revolution without people. And the people? They were tired and overworked. They didn’t have time to overthrow anything. And, even though no one would admit it, they were also afraid — afraid of change, of what they could lose, of realizing that something greater than what they had come to know was possible. So to save themselves, and Nefi, further disappointment, they rebuffed her again, and again: Nefi you need to chill. Girl you’re doing too much. Don’t waste your time. Nothing’s gonna change. After the town hall, and years and years of holding hope, the fire inside Nefi dulled until she couldn’t recognize herself anymore. She conceded her rage for high-functioning hopelessness. She withdrew from her friends, from her neighbors, from SOIL, only tapping into enough energy to wake up, go to work, and make her way back home. The days bled into each other, so much so that when the night Nefi had been waiting for eventually came later that August, it caught her completely off guard. It caught everyone off guard because it wasn’t the HVACs or the deaths of toddlers, or even the wrath towards AR&M that finally set people off. But it shouldn’t have been a surprise to anyone who’s lived in New York City long enough because it was the one thing that could incite the level of large-scale anarchic rage Nefi had been holding out for — and that was the MTA.

The night in question, the air was hot, muggy, and heavy with potential. Like any other evening, people were heading home from work, the collective exhaustion weighing down on their bodies, stamped into their faces. They waited together, huddled in a sweaty mass on the sweltering Third Ave-138th St. platform for a train that felt like it would never come. When an empty shuttle finally did arrive in the station, the doors opened to the grating sound of a man’s voice coming through the train’s speaker system:

“Attention passengers. This is your conductor speaking. Due to unplanned construction up ahead, we are disbanding all trains to Groundview Gardens at this time. I repeat, we are disbanding all trains to Groundview. Sorry for the inconvenience.”

This shit had happened plenty of times before. A disruption of service that made it difficult to get home. Everybody was so used to it and had even come to expect it. The inconvenience of being poor and powerless consistently working against them. It too had become a predictable kind of disappointment. Even the audible, collective disapproval was muted and slightly rehearsed, nothing more than a reflex. They would have to find their way home, some two-odd miles on foot, through the tunnels. But that night, Ms. Claudette, who had been on her feet all day at work taking care of her elderly patient and still had to go home and iron her scrubs for the next day, was fucking tired. She had paid her fare. And, she had paid her taxes. She had also paid her dues in this country — twenty-seven years worth of struggle and debasement — for what? This could not be it. Life could not just be disappointment. The least she expected was that the train would get her home like it was supposed to. She decided that she was going to let the conductor have a piece of her mind.

“This is nonsense. Tell me, just tell me, how am I supposed to get home?” Her boisterous St. Lucian accent traveled well beyond her.

Folks who heard her echoed in agreement, hyping her up. “They have the nerve to raise prices for this shitty ass service,” someone said loudly. They all collectively decided to board the empty train. The construction workers in their hard hats and massive boots, the women with their large tote bags and their tiredness neatly folded away into themselves. They were all going to sit on the train, until it started up again. It was going to take them home.

The conductor was tired too. Nothing as deep-seated as his passengers, but something not too far removed. He had no skin in this game though, and his job didn’t pay him enough to care. He was annoyed; they were keeping him from clocking out. And so, after listening to a bunch of people passionately curse him out, he told them to, and I quote:

“Write a letter.”

It happened so fast. I mean, when I say shit popped off before anyone could swallow their spit. Someone knocked over the trash cans on the platform. Someone else, set them on fire, with what to this day no one really knows, but their latent anger seemed to have ignited what they didn’t know was inside them.

The riots lasted for weeks. People boycotted the MTA and didn’t go to work.

The restaurants aboveground shuttered because they were understaffed. Construction on all the new developments stopped because the workers, a lot of whom lived in Groundview, refused to show up. People aboveground had to stay home because their nannies and house cleaners weren’t able to come and relieve them like they had come to rely on. Groundview had forced the city to come to a complete stop. The mayor held a press conference saying she didn’t condone the behavior of the vandals at the train station. SOIL led protests and demonstrations in front of city hall until she had to hold a second press conference to apologize for her statements at the first press conference. She promised she was going to make sure that it would never happen again — not just the riots, but the unnecessary deaths in Groundview, the resentment the residents felt towards the city. They were going to fix the HVACs, and the MTA! They were going to heal the great divide the city had long thrived on once and for all, if, and only if, the workers called off the strike and went back to work. It sounded so sincere, everyone wanted to believe it. Tired of holding all the power, they asked SOIL to represent them at the bargaining table. Deals were made. Hands were shaken. And things went back to a semblance of normal with a few slight adjustments.

Sibyl was heading out of her apartment when she saw a piece of yellow paper on her front door.

60 DAYS NOTICE TO INCREASE RENT

Mildred Campbell 207 167th St. (GG), Unit 10E

Beginning September 1, 2041, the monthly rent will go up an additional 5% for all units located in the Robert Moses Houses. Please make the appropriate adjustments within the AR&M digital payment system.

We appreciate your continued tenancy.

Sincerely, Arcadian Realty & Management

Pieces of yellow paper were taped to every single door she passed on her way to the train. It had been a year since the last time the heating or cooling had stopped working. Everyone held their breath celebrating, just in case that was when the heat would shut off or the air would decide to stop working again, but it never did. The number of deaths and hospitalizations went down, and everyone seemed content enough after the strikes and boycott ended, to go back to work. The trains even went back to running as efficiently as possible for the MTA, always teetering on the edge of collapse, but never actually approaching it for fear of recreating another opportunity for mass rebellion.

On her way to the shuttle, Sibyl saw a group of people congregating near one of the murals. She clutched her camera in her hand, ready to raise it to her face, when she heard a voice she didn’t recognize shouting through a megaphone. It belonged to a man she had never seen around the neighborhood before, and he was walking backwards while talking to a group of people Sibyl also didn’t recognize.

“Groundview is the latest up and coming neighborhood in the city,” his voice echoed. “Some of the most promising young artists have gotten their start in this urban — ”

She didn’t stick around to hear more.

After the riots, small groups of tourists descended regularly on Groundview like vultures to see the murals they had seen in viral photographs. They’d rudely block the paths from the train platform, or take up way too much space on the footpaths of the tunnels posing in front of the murals for pictures. Not long after that came the opportunistic hacks who had never stepped foot in Groundview before, running “culture tours’’ around the neighborhood. The residents felt like they were stuck in some sick and twisted museum. Out of annoyance, they banned the tours and non-residents from the People’s Garden, preserving their one last sanctuary in the community.

Sibyl had been in the middle of it all the first night of the riots. She was on the subway platform on her way home from classes and started snapping pictures once she realized what was going on, catching the fervent energy better than anyone could describe to everyone else who wasn’t there. She had no idea her photos would end up everywhere. But they did, and they not only helped draw attention to the plight of her neighborhood. They also drew attention to the wealth of talent germinating underneath the city. Her photos of her friends, their murals, and the other members of her neighborhood, had also attracted a lot of attention that felt good to the young artists who all of a sudden saw opportunities previously unavailable to them right at their doorsteps.

The shuttle arrived on the platform before her. Sibyl boarded the cool air-conditioned cart; the beads of sweat on her skin quickly evaporated. Nefi had warned them to be careful early on. “These things always end up having you exploit your own people for a cheap come up, and it’s never worth it.” Everyone thought she was trippin’. There Nefi was again just looking for another cause to fight now that her crusade against A&RM had seemed to come to an end. Even Sibyl thought she was overreacting at first. People were finally paying attention to Groundview. If she and the rest of the artists could help show the world how important the lives of the people who lived there were, maybe things could change for the better.

The train disappeared into the tunnel towards the 138th St. station. A lot of things had quietly changed over the last year and a half. Many of the families who had lost loved ones, including Dante’s, received settlements from the city and moved out of the neighborhood, leaving a sizable number of the apartments empty. Leading to perhaps the most visible addition to the neighborhood. AR&M had a couple of the younger artists looking for their own big break paint over SOIL’s list of demands and replaced it with a more “aesthetically inviting” message for the new visitors to the neighborhood: Welcome to the Mural District. Sibyl had only heard the tour guides call it that, in an unveiled attempt to rebrand Groundview. It didn’t take too long to find out where they got it from. The name and the welcome sign led to intense debates between the artists in the collective, including her friends, about people selling out and what they owed to each other as artists and their neighbors, which led to a few people splitting off and doing their own thing. The mural made Sibyl sick to her stomach, and she tried her best to avoid seeing it on her commutes. Then one day, someone started covering it up with black graffiti making the message unreadable.

No one knew who it was because they never got caught, but it didn’t matter to AR&M. Like clockwork the next morning, they had cleaners paint a fresh welcome message over it in time for the daily tours at noon. When the welcome message started appearing on the AR&M screens, the screens started getting covered in graffiti too. After a few months, Sibyl expected the guerilla painters to give up and move on, but they didn’t. Fresh graffiti kept appearing over the mural and on the screens, prompting AR&M to deploy their clean up crews, and then the routine would start again. Sibyl looked out the window in anticipation. “OURS.” The word, written over and over again across the mural, quickly came into view and then vanished out of sight.

#short story #original fiction #creative writing #writers of tumblr #fiction

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sweetsubharry · 4 years

Note

hi! can you give me your hottest, dirtiest, filthiest bottom harry fics?

Hiya!! Yes I can! ^-^

Now there are 41 different fics under this list, so it’s quite long! Obviously what people find dirty/filthy can be a large range, so if you ever want to narrow it down just send another message like ‘no plot’ for example :) and then I can make it more suited to your taste if this one isn’t! I hope you enjoy this though love ❤

In case no one gets to the bottom of the page I’ll say it again here too! Please make sure to stay safe and read the tags!! ❤ ❤

you're my favorite ride by louislovesharry

no summary

At Least As Deep As the Pacific Ocean (I wanna be yours) by babylouis

Louis can’t help but stop and watch him for a moment, how beautiful he looks, sprawled out on the bed, his cock red and hard against his tummy, collar snug against his neck and the bow still placed neatly in his curls to keep them back from Harry’s face.

His boy may be the most beautiful creature on the planet.

Especially tied up like this, body begging to be fucked. Begging to be destoryed.

Louis likes to push boundaries, and Harry takes what he gets. Lots of subspace Harry and fonding Louis ensues.

redder than the devil by mercutionotromeo

It's half past 9, and all Harry wants is for Louis to touch him. Preferably after a good spanking.

If you combine a lazy Saturday afternoon with a distracting, pouty Harry, you'll end up with Louis spanking his baby over his knee in the middle of a paused FIFA match.

Pretty please, take care of me ? by kurtcobain

Louis is stressed. Harry wants to help.

Step into the Light by Smolbeanandhisqween

Harry is on the set of his new music video "Lights Up". His husband, Louis, is watching him film the video. He gets jealous of all of the people touching Harry and teaches him a lesson.

Destroy Me, King by stylinsexualxo

After SNL, jealous Louis has a little surprise for Harry when he arrives home.

Can We Pretend (honestly reality bores me) by SadaVeniren

He felt Louis chuckle. “Dreaming of being my supportive, no-name boyfriend again?”

“Always,” Harry whispered. It was true. After all this time together there was no point in hiding any of his fantasies from Louis, no matter how innocent they were. So Louis was well aware of Harry’s desire to be anonymous sometimes - the “no-name” as Louis called him - loyal, a constant presence at Louis’ side.

aka Harry comes and supports Louis at his Scala concert

Let Me Be Good For You by onlyhuman for haroldtbh

His distress over the bun is nothing compared to the thrill Louis feels shoot up his spine at the outfit Harry’s donned. He’s changed into leather jeans that cling to his legs, hugging his thighs snugly. On top of it, a floaty, black sheer shirt is contouring his frame, doing absolutely nothing to hide his puffy nipples or the endless array of tattoos scattered across his torso. It’s Louis’ favourite outfit in the entire world.

Or, Niall's only birthday wish is to go clubbing with his boys in Vegas. Harry ruins it all by wearing that god forsaken black sheer shirt.

You Like Playing Games by orphan_account

Louis knows Harry likes to flirt and tease. Louis knows that he doesn’t particularly like when Harry flirts and teases. Louis knows that Harry knows that Louis doesn’t particularly like it.

But what Louis doesn’t quite know is why, despite that, Harry’s decided to grind against 5 Seconds of Summer’s Luke Hemmings during “Teenage Dirtbag” in the last show in Melbourne.

Basically pure smut.

Do Not Disturb (kiss me beneath the milky twilight) by SadaVeniren

“I was talking with Nick a couple months back and he was saying how our sex life seemed boring and we’d need to keep doing new and interesting things to keep it exciting or else we’d become boring and heterosexual and I defended us of course but then work picked up and we started living off of studio handjobs and missionary position sex in the dark and so I panicked. I googled BDSM and after looking into it I really want to try some of it because I think we’d enjoy it but we just don’t have the time.”

aka Harry doesn't want to become a boring old married couple a year into their relationship and tries to spice up their sex life.

Forgetting Frisco by iwillpaintasongforlou

Harry probably knew when he decided to wear that goddamn sheer shirt onstage in Toronto that it was going to drive Louis absolutely insane with want. He probably didn't know that Louis was going to proceed to fuck him so good he had flashbacks for years to come just like Frisco, but then again, you won't hear him complaining.

(Basically 6k of Louis worshipping Harry's body and doing it all in front of a mirror so Harry can worship, too.)

Mon Petit by coffinofachimera

Harry wears the 'Mon Petit' sweater while Louis records them on their private

falling for you, i can't keep away by hegotthedagger plane

Harry wants Louis really bad and Louis might want him just as much.

Always In My Heart by sweaterpawstyles

The tweet itself was not startling at all. Harry saw people retweet it nearly every day for years now. It always made him smile to see how many people had retweeting Louis showing his love for Harry on that day.

What was startling was underneath where the fan had retweeted it, Harry saw the small number 1M written on it.

Harry froze, completely unable to move anything in his body. He knew Louis had the second most retweeted tweet of all time, but it reached a million retweets. One million people believed in Louis' love for Harry. Or AIMH hits 1 million & facetime sex ensues

You and Me by louisgrindsonharry

Harry and Louis have dabbled in the idea of BDSM but Harry finally wants to take it farther and Louis has to figure out how to take care of his boy.

they shake, you conquer (and I'm left to their devices) by butidontreallycare

smut. a little love for Harry's thighs, but mostly just smut. I am not ashamed

Daddy Came Home by RuinedBy5Guys

“You got yourself off.” He says quietly, his eyes locked on Harry’s. Harry’s face flushes and he tries to cover it, shoving himself towards Louis. He drops to his knees, leaning close between his husbands spread thighs. He puts his hands on his dress pants, carefully feeling the material at his knees.

“How did you know?” He asks quietly. Louis drops his face, grabbing over Harry’s hands with his own. Harry lowers his gaze, staring at the carpet underneath him.

“You were asleep. You always get tired after an orgasm. Not to mention how flushed you are.” He says quietly, raking his eyes over Harry’s body. Harry glances up at him, his actions becoming more clear to him now that Louis was home.

“I’m sorry.” He whispers, dropping his eyes again.

“What was that?” Louis snaps, reaching to bring Harry’s face up again. Harry gulps, shuffling closer on his knees, the joints aching already.

“I’m sorry, Daddy.” Harry says, his green eyes locked on Louis’ blue ones. Louis smiles slightly, stroking his fingers over his husbands cheeks softly.

“Just gonna have to spank you now, aren’t I?”

OR... Harry teases and Daddy punishes him in the best ways possible

take me into your loving arms by blankiehxrry

twas the night of the brit awards

I Wanna Do What Bunnies Do With You by MoreThanTonight

“Lou.. Not here?” Harry pulled off with a gasp. “There are people in the next room. What if they hear us?“

“Then I guess you’ll just have to be quiet, won’t you, love?” Louis winked.

It's Harry's birthday and Louis wants to make it a birthday he won't forget. Louis is an art student, Harry is his boyfriend and muse.

if they find out, will it all go wrong? by blankiehxrry

madison square garden shenanigans

Happy Birthday by sleepingalone

“You wanna use that right now?” he asked incredulously, wondering how horny Louis must be. They had just fucked a few hours ago, before falling asleep. Surely he didn’t want to use it already.

“You said we had to wait till my birthday, and it’s my birthday,” Louis said cheekily, throwing Harry a small grin. Harry groaned into the pillow, burying his head in it.

“But I’m tired, Lou. I need my beauty rest.”

“I already undid the packaging,” Louis whined. “Please, can we just do it real quick? It would really make my day. My birthday,” he added. “You can go to sleep afterwards, Sleeping Beauty.”

Louis just really wants to use his new vibrating butt plug on Harry and turn him into a broken mess.

I Knew Right From the Beginning That You Would End Up Winning by aalexandravictoriaa

"I remember the first day I met you," Louis says, using his thumbs to make Harry open up to him even more. "I remember wanting to take you right there on the fucking street. I wanted to bend you over and bury myself in you over and over again. I couldn't then, but I'm going to now, baby. First with my tongue, then with my cock."

Harry is Louis' favorite camboy and Louis becomes his Daddy.

In Motion by FictitiousFanatisch (orphan_account)

They'd only talked about it once a few weeks ago. Harry always liked it when Louis was in control and he said there was something about being denied constantly that made him even more turned on.

It's a lazy day and Harry wants Louis to edge him. (That's literally it.)

I'm Gonna Love You (Until You Hate me) by sweaterpawstyles

As if reading his mind, Louis glanced over his glasses at Harry, presumably because Harry didn't reply to his statement earlier.

"I decided to get my glasses out again," he chuckled, winking at Harry. "Do you like them?"

Harry felt his face heat up. No, he didn't just like them. He fucking loved them and wanted to ride Louis and call him daddy while he wore them. But he didn't want to just tell Louis this.

Louis wears glasses and Harry doesn't like to be teased

I have often prayed for an angel by orphan_account

“Daddy,” he whines, voice already growing high in pitch. “Can I? Please?” “Of course angel,” Louis whispers fondly, hand tangling in Harry’s hair as he brushes it back. He loves Harry’s long strands, maybe even more than Harry does himself. “You look so beautiful on your knees like that, so eager to suck my cock.” “Mhm,” Harry hums, already licking at Louis’ slit. He begins to suckle softly at the head, peering up at Louis with wide eyes. The angel wings stretch on either side of him, and it’s so obscene, how filthy the act they’re doing is in contrast to the white feathers adorning Harry’s back. “Love your cock Daddy.” Or, the one in which Louis fucks Harry in the VS wings after he wears them onstage.

down and dirty, you're loving me so loud by orphan_account

Harry's finally twenty and there's a few things he wants.

feels so good getting what i want. by stylescantstop

Harry is a slutty yoga teacher with his sights set on Louis and Louis wants to pull that long hair of his while he fucks him really hard from behind.

Empyrean, You Fool by becauseitrhymes

Louis only realized it was actually happening once the reality of getting to carry boxes to his new flat settled in. He’d moved out of his parent’s just two days prior, with a stomach full of butterflies and no knowledge of how to do anything remotely adult, like, at all.

He’s only twenty-three years old, too, and he thinks he’s done pretty well for such a young age, considering he’s bought a flat with his money and had driven his car to get there and hadn’t cried (much) when leaving his parents. All in all, Louis thinks it’s pretty cool.

And then he’s sitting on his couch watching football in his lounge in his flat and hell yeah, it’s pretty cool.

AU where Louis moves next door to Harry, Louis falls in love with Harry, sex ensues.

Love Me Like You Do by sweaterpawstyles

Of all of the things Louis had imagined, never did he expect to become a chief editor for a magazine and to date the world-famous model Harry Styles. But he certainly never imagined one day that he would be anxiously awaiting a phone call from the top floor of an office building to tell the Harry Styles to get himself dolled up and ready to wait for his Daddy to come home before he got fucked into the mattress.

Harry is a famous model and Louis is a quiet writer who may or may not be his Dom

A Hard Day's Work by louisruinedlife (orphan_account)

A bad day at work for Harry usually means turning in early. A bad day at work for Louis leads to something else entirely.

*Can be read as a stand alone.

the big idea by orphan_account

University students Harry and Zayn are filming a prank for YouTube that requires Harry to walk around campus asking random men if he could suck their dick. One of the guys, Louis, who agrees to such offer is too attractive for Harry to pass down.

He doesn't think its much of a prank anymore after that.

throw me in the deep end, watch me drown by orphan_account

“That's why you were late, eh?” he teases as Harry frantically tries to hide the dildos and the collar in the drawer. “Having too much fun to think about good ole Louis?”

“You were having fun too,” Harry replies weakly. Louis honestly has never seen a person be in such a shade of red.

“Yeah, but my fun didn't involve colourful dildos and nipple clamps.”

or the one where louis really needs to pass his a-levels and harry is his tutor who doesn’t really own a dog.

Give It To Me (I'm Worth It) by sweaterpawstyles

"Who the hell puts lube packets in their sock?"

"A boy who wanted to get fucked in the locker room by his daddy," Harry said innocently. "I have my good intentions, Lou."

Louis can't resist Harry in the red shorts that he wore during the James Corden skit. Featuring locker room sex.

don't let nobody touch it (unless that somebody's me) by stylescantstop

written for this prompt:

"louis knows Harry gets handsy when he's drunk, but that doesn't stop him from showing harry who he belongs to."

or the one where harry dances with other men and a jealous louis reminds him he's the only one who can make him come completely apart.

causing trouble up in hotel rooms (baby, I'm perfect) by felixandtae

A fan threw a Green Bay Packers crop top on stage and Harry kept it. We all know what happened after that.

sweet like cinnamon by brainwaves for SuburbanWarrior

It all started with bumping into Louis at Gemma’s mate’s wedding. Well, maybe it really started with Harry making heart eyes at the boy in jersey number 17 all those years ago. Now all he can think about is getting into Louis’ pants and maybe staying there for a really, really long time.

Or the one where Harry calls Louis daddy and it all spirals out of control from there.

Fulfilling Your Needs by unmeshed

“You want to be messy, baby? Filled with Daddy’s come? So much that you can barely hold it all in?"

Harry nods softly and Louis leans in to kiss him on the lips with a smile. “Want Daddy to plug you up after? Keep it inside of you all day?"

“Lou,” Harry whines, softly rubbing himself against his boyfriend, biting down on Louis’ bottom lip before he deepens the kiss, sneaking his tongue inside.

Louis’ll be damned if he can’t make Harry’s dreams come true.

Louis buys Harry an ejaculating dildo because Harry wants to feel full.

Like a Kitten by peaceloveandlarry

"Erm, I, uh, well, I think... I think you're really pretty, and I, um, I want to fuck you- I mean! Oh god. I- I want to go out? Yea! I want to go out."

Or Harry likes to wear kitten ears, and Louis happens to think Harry looks nice with them.

into another serotonin overflow by mercutionotromeo

Harry's the yearbook photographer who's been assigned to take pictures of Louis, the new captain of the football team. Harry's got a massive, obvious crush on Louis and somehow, Louis feels the same way.

Sweet first time sex wherein Harry's adorably awkward, Louis is achingly cool, and Harry rides Louis wearing his jersey.

need a little sweetness in my life by mercutionotromeo

Harry's always liked feeling desperate and small when Louis touches him, but when he sucks Harry off...it’s fucking otherworldly. Desperate’s not really the word at that point - it’s helpless. Like… like the fucking world could stop spinning and Harry wouldn’t be able to do anything about it until Louis finished him off with his lips and his tongue.

Or, Harry and Louis go to university together. Harry really likes it when Louis sucks him off, and Louis really likes it when Harry calls him Daddy.

(Sequel to "into another serotonin overflow")

Cheeky Princess by Noelle1224

Harry and panties. What more is there to explain?

I'm Tired Of Using Technology, I Need You Right In Front Of Me by Phillipa19

Louis goes away on yet another business trip, but when he stops calling Harry to check in, Harry decides to take matters into his own hands.

OR- Louis is Harry's sugardaddy who has gone away on business and Harry feels neglected. Louis is possessive and gets a camera installed in their bedroom so he can check up on Harry, so Harry decides to use the camera to his advantage.

Got A Lot You Wanna Show Off Baby by Phillipa19

Louis had been in meetings all day, he should have known that Harry wouldn't be ignored for much longer.

-OR-

Louis is Harry's sugardaddy and his younger boyfriend is definitely not happy being ignored whilst Louis holds meetings in his home office. There may also be Harry in lacy knickers involved.

As always please make sure to stay safe and read the tags!! ❤ ❤

#Larry Stylinson #fic rec #fanfiction #fanfic #larry fanfiction #larry stylinson fanfiction #larry fic #larry fic rec #larry fanfic rec #larry stylinson fic rec #bottom harry #top louis #sub harry #dom louis #smut #I'm probably going to hell for some of these #ask lots #Lottie fic rec

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scandeniall · 4 years

Text

Dear Diary

song 1: dear diary | good & bad masterlist | prev | next

Pairing: sakusa x reader

Summary/warnings: life has been kicking your ass yet you don’t want to tell sakusa/profanity

WC: 1.5K

“How’ve you been,” you paused debating on answering honestly or not. Switching your phone to speaker, you fiddled with the covers resting beneath your fingers before sighing out. “I miss you Yoomi.” A silence comes settled through the phone line. “How are you doing?” The insistence of your well being causes another sigh to escape your lips. Of course he could tell that something was off even through the phone and a part of you curses his observational skills. “Im just--really fucking stressed,” you mutter out reluctantly.

“Have you been taking care of yourself? Eating real meals and getting proper sleep?” The questions being rattled off on the other side of the phone causes you to crack a small smile at his concern. You could only imagine the furrow in his brows at the thought of a lack of concern for your own health. You almost miss the ending of the questions as he tells you not to lie to him. Your silence causes Sakusa to sigh on the line.

“Sometimes I hate how much you really know me.” You voice the thoughts that had previously been in your head. Sakusa could hear the slightest of background noise as you maneuver yourself under the warm comforter and shifted to get comfortable. “Do you need me to come home.” The words aren’t phrased as a question, and that causes you to quickly shake your head despite the fact that he couldn't see that.

“No-no. Yoomi, it's fine. I just- I just need to get my mind right and relax. I just needed to hear your voice tonight, that's all.” You tell him, despite wanting nothing more than for him to be back with you.He’d been on the road for the last month, a series of away games and such. And right before he left, you’d been out of town on a major business trip. It seemed as if time nor luck were your friend. It’d been at least a month and a half since the two of you were anywhere near one another. He’d still be gone another month and all either of you could do was wait it out.

The silence that followed your response was telling. You could already imagine the way Sakusa has his eyes narrowed in thought. Thinking about whether he should push for your well being or let it go for now. The quietest sigh escaped his mouth from the other side of the phone. He’d made his decision. “I miss you too. I’ll be home soon.”

Life after that phone call seemed to grow progressively worse. Not only had you and Sakusa not been able to squeeze in another talk in the following week, but life sucked. Your job has been giving you more and more responsibility, and allowing you more freedom. On one hand that was great, a celebratory text sent to your boyfriend at the talks of you in for a promotion, however it was tiring. You were coming home later and later, exhausted and starting to neglect your own health.

It’s not you were intentional in the neglect. It just felt too damn hard to come home after a long day and cook a healthy and fulfilling meal. When you were home you were suddenly reminded of just how empty the apartment was without Sakusa. Dust that was normally absent due to his cleanliness began to appear. Dishes piled up more than he would have liked. Whenever you did bother to straighten up at least for his sake, it drained you.

Adulthood was really kicking your ass and it came to a head one night when you woke up sweating. As if life couldn’t drag you down even more, your AC had gone out right during the hottest part of the summer. Come morning you found out that your landlord had gone on vacation and could not and would not be able to fix the unit for at least a week.

So you’d done what you usually did. Sucked it up and forced yourself to push through. Not a word of your woes to Sakusa who had more important matters to attend to other than your slump. You went to work, exhausted yourself there and dragged your feet into the dreaded heat of your apartment.

Upon entering you were automatically hit with a wave of heat, making your already sluggish steps heavier. Kicking your shoes off you offhandedly waved hello to the person seated on the couch before dragging yourself towards the kitchen like it was completely normal. A moment later you stopped in your tracks. “Yoomi?”

The slightest nod from your boyfriend caused you to blink in surprise before launching yourself into his arms. “What are you doing here,” you muttered as his hands ran up and down your back. Pulling away slightly you eyed him. He looked tired. Eyes unusually sunken and you noticed the tiniest sheen of sweat across his forehead. You went to pull away knowing the touch paired with the heat would likely make him uncomfortable. To your surprise, the hands wrapped around your middle didn’t make any moves to release you. “You needed me so I came home.”

You felt a squeeze in your heart as your arms tightened wrapped around his shoulders. “But I didn't say anything—“

“Your voice. On the other week. And then your texts were different.” Of course he noticed. The conversation had already signaled to him that you weren’t the best. Your shaky exhales as you insisted that you were fine and that he didn’t need to come home. Then he noticed the jokes within your texts began to slowly subside. You’d also found yourself saying that you missed him more than usual. “So you came back?”

“I have a 3 day weekend this week. Then I’m back to practicing.” You nodded in understanding the two of you releasing one another and you noticed Sakusa frown. “Why’s it hot?” You explained about the broken AC and about the suffering you’ve endured for the past 2 days. “Did you get any more fans?” He looked annoyed once you denied purchasing any additional appliances knowing he’d had to get that done for you. “You know you’re more susceptible to nosebleeds in the heat right?”

“Thank you Dr. Omi,” you teased, laughing at his scowl from the nickname. The two of you settled onto the couch, your head coming to rest on his shoulder. “It’s common knowledge.” His replies allow a lightness to settle in your heart. One you hadn’t felt in weeks. The two of you settle into a silence for a little while his hand rubbing soft circles on your knee. “You need to take better care of yourself. And tell me when you need me.”

“I didn't want to take you away from your busy schedule,” you hum out. You feel the movement against your knee stop, a former grip replacing it. “I don't care how busy I am, I’m here. Now stop being annoying and tell me things.” You feel yourself jokingly roll your eyes before agreeing. However that wasn’t enough as you heard the scoff from next to you.

“I’m serious. You remember what you told me back in college”

“Pretty sure I told you a lot of things back then,” you tease, taking his closest hand and interlocking your fingers. “You believed in me,” he started catching your eyes. “Told me you always knew there was no limit to me. That means I can handle it. Don’t feel like you’re annoying me.” Your eyes widened at how he remembered that very specific moment.

It was around 4 years ago. He’d just told you that he signed to MSBY, something everyone around him was dying to know. Yet you were the first person he told. He remembered how your eyes beamed as you sat on his lap, your phone camera in his face recording the moment for memories sake. He didn’t even bother swatting it away like he usually did. He’d allowed you to place messy kisses all across his face despite the feel of your tacky chapstick. “Why do you remember that,” you questioned a soft smile gracing your own features.

You notice the shrug of his shoulders as he helped to to sit you sideways into his lap. “Doesn’t matter. Now tell me what’s wrong. And then we’re going to get some fans.” You nodded leaning so that your lips met his for a soft kiss. “I really missed you,” you murmured into the kiss. And while he was only there for the weekend it was enough. He came home for you. The one who has loved and supported him with open arms for the past 5 years. He’d be damned if he didn’t try to make up for it.

So you told him everything on your mind. Laughing every time he scolded you for the little things. “Don’t let the dust build up by the time I get back next month.” To “You need to sleep more.” And in return you got the same. You got the story from the exhaustion laced in his eyes. The hours it took to get to you, and the germs he forced himself to sit through to make it happen. And despite the annoying heat in the apartment, neither of you have felt that good in a while.

a/n: wow i FINALLY got at least 2 consective songs in a row done so now my prev/next is relevant for at least 2 parts. This took a different route than I initially planned for, nor is it exact in its storytelling. It was also started 2 months ago and finished now bc it was kinda hard for me. Anyways hi um did you catch the no limit to you ref? bc yeah i love that and to date still my fav piece ive ever written. you dont have to read that to understand this but its 5.4k words if you have some spare time.

anyways: im about to be on an 8hr car ride so feel free to request stuff. rules

#haikyuu x reader #hq x reader #sakusa x reader #haikyuu imagines #haikyuu imagine #hq imagine #hq imagines #sakusa imagines

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janiedean · 3 years

Note

Hi hello! So happy to be able to offer you something 😊

Redfish, Blame it on the love of Rock-'n'-roll

*RUBS HANDS* THANK YOU VERY VERY MUCH *cracks knuckles*

[leave me bon jovi inspired prompts!]

blame it on the love of rock n’ roll (jonc/brynden, past one sided jonc/rhaegar, jaime, oberyn, jon s.;, pg13)

“He can’t have - he can’t just have done that,” Jaime Lannister says for the umpteenth time in the last thirty minutes, and - in any other case, Jon would have told him yes, I know, I’m entirely fucking aware, I have the offspring to show for it currently sleeping in my spare room right behind us, but all things considered... he can’t blame him. He really can’t.

“Well,” Oberyn says, shrugging, sitting across Jon’s sofa in a way that honestly should be reserved for R-rated movies, but he’ll leave it at that, it’s too hot and he’s too tired to tell him to do any different, “he has, and while I suppose that for him this entire exercise was a past time, but I think it doesn’t solve our main problem here, which is that next week we should audition for a record deal, and we can’t exactly do it without the lead singer, so how does anyone here suggest to proceed? Because as resourceful as I usually am, I have zilch here, and we’re never going to find anyone who’s going to learn all the songs in a week.”

Jon wants to scream.

Fact is: when he and Rhaegar and Oberyn stared playing together in Oberyn’s father’s basement in high school, it was for shits and giggles and because they wanted to play Nirvana covers and impress girls, or better, Rhaegar wanted to impress girls, he wanted to impress Rhaegar (and maybe guys, but mainly Rhaegar) and Oberyn wanted to impress everyone regardless of gender, but then... they had fun, and it stuck, and they started actually writing their own songs, and then Rhaegar said that he was tired of playing guitar if he had to concentrate on singing and while they were in uni they searched for a guitarist, and -

Well, Jaime Lannister had showed up, and he had been a tad younger than them and obviously had a lot of family trauma to share looking at his lyrics, but he was fucking good, and so they took him, and -

And after some five years of grueling sets in pubs they did manage to land a meeting with this guy Mance Ryder from an indie label who apparently liked them very much, and it would be a damned record deal, and that’s when Rhaegar decides that he’s going to... elope with his girlfriend and leave their six-month old with Jon himself and they’re going to find themselves in India or whatever and that’s not going into the fact that the six-month old was born after a bad split from Oberyn’s sister and it’s a miracle Oberyn hadn’t murdered him in the spirit of friendship and being in the goddamned same band.

Fucking hell.

And now both Lannister and Oberyn are looking at him because they’re apparently in the only band in existence where the decision-maker is the fucking bassist, that’d be him.

Fucking hell.

“Okay,” he says, “well. No, we can’t find another singer, not at short notice. Especially since they didn’t say what songs they want to hear so what if they just ask out of the blue, but.” He closes his eyes, tries to think about it. There has to be a way to get out of this mess, and certainly he isn’t good enough of a singer to take Rhaegar’s place -

Wait a fucking second.

“Okay,” he says, “Jaime.”

“... Yes?”

“From this moment on you’re on vocals.”

“What the hell? Jon, I’m -”

“You wrote more than half of the lyrics, you know them and you can sing worth a damn, which is way more than me and him can say for ourselves, and while finding a new singer is impossible, a new guitarist - well, someone good can learn most of the songs and improvise in case. Sure as fuck it’s less of a long shot.”

“But -”

“But nothing, Jaime. I know you liked it better if someone else sang about how shitty your sister is, but if we want this deal it’s either you or no one else. And now - now let’s just get online and send the word out. It’s Wednesday, we have to audition Friday next week, we can fucking hope it’s long enough for someone to show up.”

Two hours later, he’s sent Oberyn and Jaime off with a bunch of flyers and he has put online ads too - he also knows that it’s highly fucking unlikely that a skilled guitarist enough to improvise like that will walk into his house in the fucking middle of July being a good fit. Sure, there’s the possible record deal thing up that might sweeten the pot, but.

But he’s nowhere near sure that it’d be enough.

Still.

They’ll see. And Oberyn and Jaime better be there every single afternoon until Friday next week.

The next Wednesday, the heat is unbearable, his namesake is crying desperately because it’s too hot, Jaime and Oberyn are failing to calm him and Jon has just sent away the umpteenth college kid who tried to audition and was a shit fit and just cared for the record deal.

“We’re fucked, aren’t we,” Oberyn says, matter of fact, as Jaime finally manages to get the younger Jon to calm down.

Considering that Rhaegar hasn’t answered a single message -

Fuck, Jon had been trying to get over him for ages.

He’s sure this might be what actually makes sure he does.

“Probably,” Jon says, “unless some miracle happens right the fuck now, but -”

His phone starts ringing.

It’s an unknown number.

Jon takes it.

“Yes?” He asks, tentatively.

“Jon Connington?” A deep male voice asks, slightly gruff, but Jon can’t help thinking it’s nice. It has a lovely warm baritone to it, for sure.

“That’d be me.”

“My name is Brynden Tully. I’m calling for the Kingsguard audition.”

Jon doesn’t want to say that this guy sounds competent, but.

But.

“If you haven’t filled that position already, of course.”

“Oh, no. Not at all. You’re welcome to come even now - the place isn’t ideal, but... we don’t have the studio, this week.”

“Not a problem at all. Should I come to the address that was on the ad?”

“Yes,” Jon says, “it’s - it’s my house. We’ll meet you outside, I have all the gear in the garage.”

“Very well. I could be there in half an hour - or two, if I have to go back home and get my own guitar -”

“No,” Jon says, “it’s all right, I have more than one that you can use. Thank you, I -”

“You haven’t tried me yet,” the man replies, and he sounds like he’s smiling, and the call closes.

“Well,” he says, “let’s get to the garage and let’s hope this one guy is the miracle.”

“Did it sound like he could be?” Oberyn asks while Jaime says he’ll go get something to put the poor kid in while he has to listen to them, at least Rhaegar left him with the fucking supplies to care for him.

“He sounded more competent than any of the other guys who showed up.” The whole fifteen of them, but never mind that.

Jon walks down to the garage, already sweating the moment he sets foot out of the house. Fucking hell. This is the hottest summer he can remember in years, he just hopes he doesn’t end up fainting while they rehearse. Now that wouldn’t convince anyone to join his band, right?

They manage to get settled fairly soon - sure, Oberyn hasn’t played with that drum kit in years and Jaime is grumbling that not playing will be fucking weird, and the younger Jon at least doesn’t seem too bothered by their tuning, and then -

“I imagine these are the Kingsguard’s quarters?”

Jon raises his head from his bass, staring at the man who just came inside the garage, and -

Well, fuck.

Having been into Rhaegar for all of his life, he has always found people older than him hot on a general notion, but he never looked into it. But this guy - fuck. He has to have at least fifteen years on him, never mind Lannister, that would make it at least twenty, but he’s hot, with auburn hair with just the slightest hint of silver here and there, a short beard and bright blue eyes on a face with tanned skin and a few lines here and there. He’s also wearing jeans, dark boots and a fucking black leather jacket in the middle of this heat, and how does anyone do that without fainting, but - but honestly, Jon kind of never was so instantly attracted to anyone in his entire life bar Rhaegar, and - yeah.

Let’s not just discuss that now.

“Yes,” he says. “Brynden Tully, right?”

“In the flesh. I see that you are... somehow in trouble?”

“What gave that out?” Jaime smirks. “The garage, the fact that we had a week to audition before a record deal or that we’re looking after a kid that doesn’t belong to either of us?”

“All of that, honestly,” Brynden replies, “but the kid would be the most glaring one. The rest... happens. Also, the ad said you looked for a guitarist and if someone knows anything about the scene, I’d have thought golden boy here had quit.”

Jon decides that it’s the case to be upfront.

“Yeah, well.” He sighs. “The kid belongs to our former singer. Who has eloped with his girlfriend in the middle of the night last week because of family disagreements and shit and he left us like this. Fact is, auditioning a singer is a whole goddamned mess, and golden boy there writes most of the lyrics anyway and can carry a tune, so I have not democratically decided to put him on that and audition for the guitarist instead.”

“Thanks for recognizing it was not democratic,” Jaime mutters.

“Well, I’d have voted with him,” Oberyn replies, rolling a drumstick in his hand.

“So,” Jon sighs, “we actually need the guitarist instead. I understand that learning an entire repertoire in a day if you’re a fit might be a problem, but -”

“I think that shouldn’t be a problem.”

“Wait, how?”

The man smiles ever so slightly. “First thing, I didn’t read that ad from the internet. I learned about this because my niece is engaged to your singer’s girlfriend’s brother and she called me up telling me about it.”

“Wait, you’re - oh, shit, Catelyn Tully, I didn’t even -”

“So,” Brynden smirks wider, “my niece, who’s known me for years, knows that the only reason I never was in a band that actually got a record deal was that I got kicked out of the house back in the day because the relatives didn’t like my sentimental preferences.” A wink. Oh. “And thing is, I’m good. Improvising type good. But at that point I couldn’t survive on it and so I found a more boring job, but I never stopped playing and I go to gigs and I know the circuit and I actually did listen to most of your songs, that demo you were selling last year was really good. So... I actually do know most of them. And I made enough money now to afford actually playing full time.”

“Then,” Jon says, not believing his luck, “I think we should just try you already. Just pick any guitar from the stands. We can do one of our usual covers to start with and then a few of ours.”

“Sounds good. I’ll go serve myself, then.”

He goes to where Jon keeps the guitar stands, chooses a red Stratocaster and goes to join them while Jaime seems to try and find a decent position, for someone that outwardly charming you’d think he would want to be a lead singer, and yet.

Never mind.

Please let him be the right one, Jon thinks, and if maybe he wasn’t just thinking about it in band terms, well, no one has to know.

“You’re hired,” he says to Brynden five songs later. “And you,” he tells Jaime, “you can sing, just - please try to not be awkward as hell tomorrow. You can do it, I swear.”

“That’s what you say,” Jaime scoffs, “but yeah. What - you’re good. Enough that I almost don’t hate the idea of not playing those solos anymore.”

“I say that if Rhaegar ever wants to come back we tell him to fuck off,” Oberyn proclaims. “And I’d say welcome to the club. If we fail the audition please don’t leave.”

Brynden laughs, putting the guitar away. “Oh, I had missed doing this regularly. Don’t think I won’t.”

“Well,” Jaime says, “it’s late and I need to - psych myself up. I’ll - I’ll go get a drink. And be in touch.”

He stalks out of the garage, looking like he’ll faint.

“I’ll go after him,” Oberyn says. “Don’t worry, I’ll get him to relax one way or the other.”

“You know he’s straight!” Jon calls after him, but they both already disappeared beyond his driveway.

Whatever. Maybe Oberyn is gonna find him a decent lay. Anything as long as he projects some confidence the day after tomorrow.

“You know,” Brynden says, “I was going to ask if you wanted to come out for a drink to celebrate, but I understand that if you have to mind the kid -”

Jon stops dead in his tracks, turning to look up at Brynden, who - who is half-grinning at him in the way people do when asking to buy someone a drink because they’re interested and fuck Jon really wants to kiss him, and he has a feeling he’s going to hang around in the band a lot, and -

“Tell you what,” he says, “I do, but I also have alcohol upstairs. Fancy it if I make you that drink?”

“Oh,” Brynden says, “excellent compromise, I say. Lead on.”

He smiles.

Jon smiles back.

Ten years later

“You’re not saying that the first time you two smooched I was watching,” Jon Stark groans from his seat in Jaime’s cramped living room where they’re celebrating having come back from their last UK tour during which Brynden not-so-incidentally asked Jon if he would want to make things official in the backstage after the last show, a question to Jon enthusiastically answered yes just before frenching him in front of each single roadie still moving around the place.

“No,” Brynden says, “you were actually dead to the world after having cried your eyes out for one hour, and we didn’t do anything else, but you were in the same room.”

“Gross,” the kid snorts, and Jon is just thankful that he eventually ended up with Ned and Cat because he certainly wasn’t going to raise a kid properly and that he’s not visibly traumatized by how shitty his biological parents have been to him. Never mind that Rhaegar never apologized for bailing but eventually said well you sound a lot better like this, and - Jon will always love him in a way, but he was truly over him romantically at that point.

“I’d say,” Jon says, “that you should be honored that you were not-watching-but-there the day I smooched the love of my life, but what have you.”

“Oh,” Jaime snorts, “you are writing the love ballads now.”

“Forget it,” Jon replies, “wouldn’t Brienne be sad about it?”

“Please,” the girl in question says from the kitchen where she forbade any of them to enter while she got dinner ready, all of you except Oberyn can’t cook for shit, I’m not risking it, “I think you all can stand some variety from me. And congratulations.”

"Gross,” the other Jon replies, and - he lets that go, he’s ten, everything in that sense is probably gross to him, and then rough, calloused fingers hold his and -

“The love of my life now? Maybe you should write me a ballad.”

“Hm,” Jon replies, “maybe I will, but just if you do the same. Maybe Lannister deserves a break from songwriting.”

“Think I can handle it,” Brynden says, and so what if he can hear Jaime in the background telling them that if they don’t go down at it too hard they can use their bed while they kiss?

Who cares.

Maybe they’ll even take him up on the offer. What he knows is that he can’t wait to make things official and to write that damned ballad.

Oh, yes, he thinks, life is good, and then he kisses Brynden harder and tunes out anything else going on in the room.

End.

#redfish #jon connington #brynden tully #cowt fic for ts #my fic #I FINISHED SOMETHING HALLELUJAH #let me go fill the rest after dinner #jksdgljk #thank you!!!! i loved writing this #jaime x brienne for ts #ulspi #ask post

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emy-loves-you · 4 years

Text

Wrong Numbers and Useless Gays Chapter 6

Who the F*ck’s Rebecca? OR How the 3 Gays got Together

Virgil learns about Roman’s childhood, specifically his sister and how he ended up dating Patton and Logan.

Warning: Misgendering of a character (but no one knows that the character is trans)

Yes, Roman and Remus are brothers. Explanations are listed at the bottom

Chapter 5 | Masterlist | Chapter 7

V- (2:07 PM) Let it Go was the best song in Frozen and you cannot convince me otherwise

R- (2:07 PM) I respect your opinion, but hear me out: Love is an Open Door

V- (2:08 PM) No

R- (2:08 PM) What about Fixer Upper?

V- (2:09 PM) Still no.

P- (2:09 PM) I really liked Olaf’s song about Summer!

L- (2:10 PM) I personally enjoyed the reprise of First Time in Forever.

R- (2:10 PM) You like almost any song with a reprise

L- (2:10 PM)I will not argue that, as successfully executed reprises are “lit.”

R- (2:11 PM) Ah, and who among us could forget the absolute BOP that is… that weird ice-cutting song.

P- (2:11 PM) I don’t know, Roman. I think that song is, pretty COOL

R- (2:11 PM) Oh, lookout

V- (2:12 PM) What? He’s just saying it’s a CHILLED out groove.

R- (2:12 PM) Ugh

L- (2:12 PM) We might need you two to leave this chat if you don’t stop.

Virgil laughed, throwing his phone on the bed and stripping out of his clothes. He just finished jogging home from Janus’ (he didn’t own a car right now, preferring to walk or have Janus pick him up). It was a lazy afternoon in late September, and all Virgil wanted to do was get out of these sweaty clothes and maybe take a nap. He heard his phone go off multiple times as he got dressed, probably Patton and Logan arguing about the purpose of puns. He flopped down onto his bed and grabbed his phone, checking the new messages.

P- (2:14 PM) Lo, the Princes are calling.

L- (2:14 PM) Tell Roman not to answer, Patton. We’ve been over this.

P- (2:14 PM) They’re asking about us, Lo.

L- (2:14 PM) Tell Roman to hang up. They’re not worth it.

P- (2:15 PM) They’re yelling now, L. They brought up Rebecca. What do I do?

L- (2:15 PM) Just walk into another room, Patton. Ignore them. Do you want me to call you?

P- (2:15 PM) No, I’m good. Just keep texting me. I need a distraction.

Now, Virgil had no idea about what the fuck was going on. But he knew how to distract someone. He’d just have to trust them to tell him later.

V- (2:16 PM) Did you know that octopi have 3 hearts?

L- (2:16 PM) What

P- (2:16 PM) That just means they have more love to give!

V- (2:17 PM) The longest recorded flight of a chicken is 13 seconds

P- (2:17 PM) Such a good bird!

V- (2:17 PM) Babies do not regularly produce tears until they are 1-3 months old

L- (2:18 PM) Ah, I think I understand now

V- (2:18 PM) A ‘jiffy’ is an actual unit of time. It stands for 1/1000th of a second

L- (2:18 PM) Falsehood. A jiffy is 1/100th of a second

V- (2:19 PM) Sorry, my hand must’ve slipped.

L- (2:19 PM) You would be unable to walk on Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus or Neptune because they have no solid surface.

L- (2:20 PM) An asteroid about the size of a car enters Earth’s atmosphere roughly once a year. However, it burns up before it can reach us.

L- (2:20 PM) The highest mountain known to man is on an asteroid called Vesta. It is approximately three times the height of Mount Everest.

P- (2:21 PM) I think they hung up. Thanks for keeping me company, Kiddos!

L- (2:21 PM) It was not an issue, Patton.

V- (2:21 PM) Yeah, no problem Pat. Now can someone explain what just happened?

L- (2:23 PM) As you can probably tell, I am not home at the moment. Apparently, Roman’s parents decided to call him and an argument broke out. The rest is not my place to say.

Virgil bit his lip, refusing to look at his phone screen. Did Virgil have the right to ask about that. It was obviously a very sensitive topic, and Virgil had only known Roman for about 3 months now. Virgil felt like he knew a lot about his 3 crushes (their quirks, their favorite sweets, their goals in life), but he knew very little about their lives before Virgil had met them. Which was fine; they knew very little about Virgil’s life, too. But he desperately wanted to help Roman; to make him feel happy and safe and loved. Virgil sighed, setting his phone on his nightstand. If Princey wants to tell me what’s going on, I’ll listen. If not, I’ll just have to deal with it.

Virgil woke up from his nap to the sound of his phone going off. He blindly felt around for it, his face still firmly planted in his pillow. He finally found it, turning it on before he lifted his head to read the text. It was a private message from Princey.

R- (3:02 PM) You’re probably wondering what happened today.

V- (3:02 PM) I am, but you don’t have to tell me if you’re not comfortable. I’ll respect your privacy.

R- (3:02 PM) As much as I appreciate that, you still deserve to know.

R- (3:03 PM) Do you mind if I call you? This doesn’t feel like a conversation to have over text.

Virgil thought about it for a moment. He originally never wanted to call Roman, simply because he might recognize Virgil’s voice as Anxiety’s. However, not only was Virgil 99% confident that Roman had never even heard of The Dark Sides, Virgil’s head was still foggy after his nap. Before he knew it, he was already calling Princey’s phone.

“Virgil?” Roman didn’t sound as… grand as Virgil expected. His voice was subdued and slightly hoarse, probably from the screaming match with his parents.

“Heya, Princey.” Virgil cringed at how gravelly his voice sounded. He’ll need to get some water after this conversation is over.

“You sound so tired. Oh my stars, did I wake you up? I’m so sorry. I’ll let you get back to sleep-”

“Princey, it’s okay. Just finished my nap. Might not talk much, but ‘m all ears.”

“Alright. Where do I even begin?”

“Take your time. ‘m not pressurin’ you or anythin’.”

“(sigh) You’re right. I guess I should start at the beginning. I grew up in a very... conservative household. My parents expected me and my sister, Rebecca, to be perfect. ReeRee was my partner in crime. We did everything together up until highschool. My parents expected me to get a football scholarship and date the hottest girl in school. I did those things, not because I wanted to, but because they wanted me to. ReeRee was a different story. When my parents signed her up for cheerleading, she tried to join the football team instead. When they told her she should wear her hair in a ponytail, she cut it off to match mine. I didn’t understand, and it made me angry. It was like looking in a funhouse mirror; she was starting to look more and more like me, and yet each change made my parents angrier. Why was looking and acting like me a problem? I thought they liked this version of me! One night in the summer before junior year I was really frustrated and I took it out on her. I told her to stop acting like me. I knew she didn’t deserve my anger, so I went to Patton’s place to cool down. By the time I came home, my parents refused to acknowledge that I even had a sister. I pushed her away, and now I’ll never get her back.

After that, things changed. I was so angry, and everything I saw reminded me of her. I quit the football team, because every time I went down to the field I expected to see her. I dyed my hair, because every time I looked in the mirror I saw her staring back. I stopped caring about what my parents thought, ‘cause it was their opinions that dragged me into this mess!

I had already been friends with Patton since Freshman year, but me and Logan had been at each other’s throats . We were always bickering about something, and sometimes I used our arguments to vent out my anger at whatever was wrong at the time. I didn’t even realize how much I had cared about Patton and Logan until I learned about the LGBTQ+ community. My parents were super strict, and Patton and Logan didn’t exactly flaunt their relationship. I had no idea that liking guys was even an option . Once I learned about it, my parents quickly tried to shut it down. Everyday, they’d start their day telling me that ‘homosexuality is a sin’ and ‘God made you to be the gender you were born with!’ If they had told me that before ReeRee left, I might’ve believed them. But by this point, I didn’t care about a single thing they told me.

So one day, I’m arguing with Logan about who knows what, and suddenly we’re inches apart, and I remember pa saying ‘ a boy should never kiss another boy.’ And just think, ‘Fuck it.’ And now me and Pocket Protector are suddenly making out behind the school building. Microsoft Nerd asks why the hell I decided to make out with him of all people, and I break down right there. He agreed to keep it a secret, but he refused to do anything more than a simple make-out session until he had Padre’s consent to do so. Which I understood, consent is important, cheating is bad.

Now we’re having these ‘sessions’ at least once a week for almost 4 months. Patton eventually walked in on us and he was understandably upset. I explained what had happened and that I’ve had a crush on both of them for a while. And they’re like ‘cool, we’re polyam.’ And now I’m starting senior year dating two men, which mom and pa were not okay with. I told ‘em to fuck off and we moved away as soon as we graduated. They still call occasionally, asking when I’m gonna get my life together and get over losing ReeRee. I haven’t blocked ‘em yet in case they find her or change their minds.”

Roman finally took a deep breath. “Sorry about the rant. Didn’t realise how badly I needed to get that off my chest.”

Virgil snorted. “Don’t worry ‘bout it. Told ya I’d be a good ear. And Princey?”

“Yeah?”

“You don’t gotta do anything to impress someone else. You bein’ you is good enough. And if Rebecca could see you, I’m sure she’d be proud as hell. And don’t be ‘fraid to hit me up if you need someone other than your SOs to rant to; I’ll always be here for ya, Princey.”

“... Thank you, Virgil. I didn’t realize how much I needed to hear that until you said it.” He sighed, and Virgil could hear the sound of running water. “I’m gonna go drink some water. My throat burns like a bitch right now.”

“Same. Catch you later?”

He could hear Roman chuckle to himself. “I guess you shall. Farewell, Storm Cloud. And pleasant dreams!”

Virgil blushed. The way Roman said his nickname… it made Virgil’s gay heart nearly explode. He quickly hung up and buried his face back into his pillow. I’ll get water later. AFTER my heart stops racing.

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Now, for those of you wondering about why Virgil doesn't realize that Roman and Remus are brothers, I'm gonna put a quick explanation here, 'cause I don't know how to casually fit this into the story. 1.) Remus has never told Virgil his deadname or his last name. He's probably told Janus (since their pretty close) but Virgil doesn't know. 2.) Remus has never told Virgil that his brother's name is Roman. Additionally, when Virgil is talking about the 3 gays, he only calls them "Pat, Lo and Princey." 3.) Roman's parents didn't tell him that Remus transitioned, so he doesn't know that Rebecca now goes by Remus. Also, none of the characters have actually sent pictures of their faces, so none of them have any idea what the other looks like. 4.) It is a total coincidence that both twins moved to the same town. Remus believes that Roman still lives in their hometown, and Remus could be dead for all that Roman knows. There is no logical reason for them to think "maybe Virgil's friends with my long-lost sibling" 5.) Virgil would NEVER out his friends like that. He tells Janus and Remus everything, but he would NEVER betray Roman's trust like that. Same thing for telling Roman about Remus. Roman might know that Remus is trans, but he doesn't know about Remus' background. ONE LAST THING: Roman and Virgil will eventually see each other face-to-face but WON'T recognize each other's voices. This is because during the phone call Virgil is still groggy from waking up and Roman is still hoarse from screaming.

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Taglist: @bisexualdisaster106 @self-taught-mess @itawalrus @arodynamic-enby @sanderssides-angst

#useless gays #sanders sides fic #LAMP fic #virgil sanders #roman sanders #patton sanders #logan sanders

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brideofcthulhu10 · 4 years

Note

Could you write about a girl getting harrassed by max or surfer nazis for a weeks by then and the boys taking notice help her out of a possible dangerous or taboo situation and let her join their lil coven? I know you could write something really awesome!

I goofed and forgot this was an answer to an ask haha! Okay so I'm gonna give fair warning, this is gonna get a bit graphic. I mean you wanted a traumatic taboo, and, well, wish granted!

Initiation's Over, Time to Join the Club

Poly!Lost Boys × Fem! S/O

+18 CONTENT WARNING: Sexual Themes, Sexual Assault, Potential Triggers, Violence, Gore, Offensive Language! READER'S DISCRETION IS ADVISED!

It had only been a few days since you tried to break free of the Santa Carla gang known as the Surf Nazis. Doing so proved far more difficult than you could have imagined. You couldn’t even be on the boardwalk anymore. They were everywhere, as soon as you were spotted former friends would crowd around you. They weren’t stupid enough to do anything physical, but they’d harass you to the point of running back home. There was one reason that you kept coming back.

The boys.

You started talking to them earlier this summer. Purely by accident. You had gone on your own to get a quick food run at the Kung Pao Lotus, and somehow got your order mixed up with the smallest of the group, Marko. You managed to catch him as he was leaving the restaurant and somehow that was all you needed. They took to you so quickly. Polyamory was such a foreign concept, especially when it comes to romantic relationships. But as your feelings developed over these past few months, you found yourself falling victim to each of their charms. There was just something so other worldly about the bikers. It was an unspoken mystery that only drew you in further. WHenever they had to leave for the night you’d ask them if you could join, but they all seemed particularly against the suggestion. There was always an air of discomfort, like they had something they didn’t want you to see. Regardless, Marko, Dwayne, Paul and David had swept you off your feet into the dark Santa Carla nightlife, and soon you found yourself making the choice between them, or your old gang.

But when you tried to back out of their so called “rivals”- honestly only the SN’s thought of themselves that way, things got nasty. A few of them started showing up around your neighborhood. You could see them in busted down trucks or rumbling motorcycles just strolling through your neighborhood. Your mom’s car was trashed, absolutely covered in spray paint, your garage was vandalized, trash bins were dumped out all over your yard- you were starting to get scared.

Even still you avoided bringing up the subject to the boys. You didn’t need them worrying about something like this. After all, you were a big kid, you could handle yourself. Whenever your ex-friends walked by on the boardwalk David would raise his brow when you ducked behind them, quickly covered by an excuse.

“Sorry I thought I saw a quarter on the ground,” you’d throw out, nervously standing up.

Even Paul was beginning to notice your uneasiness whenever Surf Nazi’s circled your path.

“Listen, kitten,” Paul assured, sitting on the steps beside you while you picked at your cotton candy. “If those assholes are giving you shit.. We can protect you, babes. You just say the word and I’ll rip their heads off.”

“Me too babes,” Marko would chime in, wrapping an arm over your shoulder. “All it takes is one word.”

The suggestion of mass slaughter just didn’t sit well with you and you shook your head. “No, guys don’t worry it’s just a bunch of petty pranks. They haven’t done anything that bad. I promise.”

You were so certain that in a few days they’d grow bored. After all, it had been a week and a half by now! Things couldn’t escalate more than they already were. While they weren’t your friends anymore, they still wouldn’t do anything to hurt you, right?

It was a late August afternoon, maybe an hour before sunset. Today was a record breaking heat wave, the hottest it had been today was almost one hundred and eleven degrees. It was your mom’s idea to send you to the beach instead of sulking at the house. Truthfully you were a little glad you did.

The ocean was just beautiful, cradling the slowly setting sun leaving streaks of pink and blue stained with the slowly encroaching touch of night. Stars speckled the darkest corners. Pulling out your polaroid you couldn’t resist snapping a few pictures for Marko. He loved it whenever you brought him any day time photos. They never came out before sunset, you just assumed maybe they were busy elsewhere until late afternoon. If you tried to invite them out during the day they’d each give you a disappointed response.

“Shhiiiiit, kitten,” Paul would sigh, rubbing the back of his neck.

“I mean, we would if we could,” Marko would try to assured you, holding your hands in his. Dwayne would nod along.

“Daytime just isn’t our time.”

David would tilt your chin up with a calm smile. Somehow you just knew whatever it was, he’d tell you when you were ready. “I’m sure you understand, doll. I hope you aren’t too disappointed?”

“Oh! N-No, of course not. It’s just a trip to the museum, I doubt you guys would like it anyway.”

Oh well… Instead of fretting, you tried to savor your peaceful moments,

This week had already been such a pain. It was a welcome change to just walk through the rolling shores, wading past clumps of bubbly sea foam. Closer to the caves you could spot surfacing tide pools where little sand crabs shuffled just beneath the surface. Greenish anemones shuddered at your tender touch and would retreat within themselves. If you were lucky you spotted a few whole mussel shells! You kept an old bag slung over your shoulder with a towel and a change of clothes, planning to change out of your (print/color) bikini and wrap skirt once the sun had fully gone down. Maybe then you could meet up with the boys for another night out. As you began to approach the rocky coast lines skirted across the abandoned hotel you could hear muffled snickers just barely audible above the ocean’s song.

At first you assumed them to just be maybe a group of tourists, probably drunk off their butts. When you tried to continue walking towards the hotel they grew closer. Footsteps kicked up into a pursuit. When they turned over the outstretched caves you easily recognized the greased up surfers sporting frosted tips, skunk striped hair and shredded up clothing. They continued to chase after you until you had managed to duck into a cave off the edge, but even still they followed. Now you were cornered.

“This isn’t funny anymore, Ricky,” you hissed, trying to cover yourself with your arms. “Look I left alright! I don’t wanna be a part of whatever it is you guys have going on!”

“What, can’t old friends just say hi?” You could see he brought Tank and Munk with him, both sporting grins that you knew meant nothing good. Every time they took a step forward that made you take two more back.

“Yeah right,” Munk tried to agree, shrugging. “Aren’t we friends anymore, Y/N?”

“Don’t you wanna play? We came all this way so we could hang out.” Tank circled next to Ricky. Your heart raced so loud it made your ears hurt. They were cornering you! With rapid head movements you tried to find any alternate pathway that could get you out, but all of them were too high up! Any access to the further cave systems had been smashed to pieces! Your best bet was trying to wedge yourself between the three thugs.

You had to wait. Holding out just until that golden opportunity revealed itself to you. Just as Tank moved slightly further than Munk you found a thin opening. With everything you had, you bottled forward trying to push past. Success!

Two steps in and you felt yourself torn back by your hair. The sharp sting caused you to shriek, grasping at the base of your scalp in an attempt to provide yourself any semblance of relief. Day light was grown thin. At this point you did everything to fight out of their grasp. Kick, thrash, punch! At one point you swear you caught a good chunk of Ricky’s skin under your nails. He hissed, throwing you against the drenched cave walls. The cold, damp sand beneath your feet felt solid while you tried to pry yourself up. Not this time. Munk pinned you by your arms, snickering at your terror.

“No! Stop it! Get away from me,” You cried, tyring to kick at Ricky. His fingers quickly tore your skirt off, looking down at the wet bikini still clinging to your body.

“Nooo, stop it, get away,” he mocked in a shrill tone. He forced your face up to look at him, his thumb and pointer finger squeezing your chin tightly. “You fuckin’ asked for this, walkin’ around like miss high and mighty!”

“She's just too good for the Surf Nazi’s now, eh Ricky?” Tank chuckled at the suggestion, arms crossed.

“Nah, I don’t think she’s good enough for us, that’s why little miss Y/N left,” Munk added, licking your cheek. The wet appendage dragged across your jawline to your cheek. It was enough to raise the bile in your stomach as you wrenched your face away.

“Well,” Ricky added, just as the sun went down sapping up any lingering light and leaving you in utter darkness. Your sobs echoed in the cave. There was nothing in the darkness, a pair of calloused hands grasping at your legs. When you tried to kick a swift sting crashed into your mouth. The blunt force made your ears ring, a bitter copper taste staining your mouth. Worst of all, you could feel unwelcome fingers prodding at the flesh kept beneath your bikini bottoms. “I bet you she’s good enough for one thing, don’t you think, Y/N? What’s say we give that cute little pussy of yours some play time, hm?”

There was sheer and utter panic. You continued to scream until your throat was shredded. The uncontrollable urge to vomit tempted your stomach when he tried to tease you from over the fabric. You must’ve wiggled out of someone’s grasp because you managed to lift your leg into the air sending a solid kick his way. “You fuck bitch! I’m gonna- wha-? Ahhh! What the fu- AHHHHHHH!”

There was a massive gust of air just past you that swept across. Ricky’s blood curdling screams dissolved into a hideous cacophony of squelching splatters. Munk still had a grasp on your arms, rapidly trying to search for his accomplice. “Ricky? Ricky man, what the fuck happened?! Tank where is he?”

Again another burst of air, but this time an echoing cackle followed. Low, rumbling. It delighted in their panic, or rather, he did. Whatever hidden male lurked in the shadows made quick work of another. Tank’s screams echoed through the cave. Again more sickly sounds of torn flesh followed by an eerie silence. “Tank? Tank answer me, man! What the fuck is this, what's going on?!”

Your own eyes began adjusting to the darkness. You could see a form walking your way, another higher pitched snicker eager to drag you into the same jaws of presumably horrid fates that had taken Ricky and Tank. You tightly shut your eyes, anticipating your inevitable demise.

There was no such occurrence. Finally your arms were released by Munk and his terror swept through the caves. You clung tightly to yourself in the darkness, trembling at the enclosing footsteps you could hear just over his screams.

“Looks like we made it just in time, kitten,” a voice asked clearly. You froze in place. It couldn’t be.

You still couldn’t make out much, but that heavy scent of aftershave coupled by an ancient musk, like the aged pages of a beloved book told you all you needed to know. Tears stung your eyes. It was almost impossible to breathe through it, blubbering into the arms of a familiar comfort that were already spread to grasp you.

“David! Oh god, David,” You sobbed, crashing into his torso trying to muddle the sickening stench Ricky had left on you.

“Shhh, it’s alright now,” he softly coaxed, the soothing sensation of him petting your hair putting you at ease. “It’s all over.”

You could hear the other boys approaching you, even still you couldn’t see them.

“I told you we’d protect you, kitty-cat,” a laid back tone assured you, placing a hidden hand on your shoulder. Paul.

“I think it’s becoming too dangerous for you out here.” The firm, tender voice of Dwayne spoke up. The sand beneath your body sunk to accommodate his weight. His calloused fingers brushed away loose hair you didn’t even realize was in your face. Another hopped down from… above?

But.. there were no overhead platforms, just cave ceilings caked in stalactites. What had even happened? The jingles of jewelry over leather were followed by a tender face laying atop your shoulder nestled in the crook of your neck. Curls tickled your cheek, Marko’s lips sending chills over your flesh as he spoke beside your ear.

“If you want, Y/N, you could be with us all the time. If you were one of us, we’d never let things like this happen to you.”

One… One of them?

“What-,” you tried to ask, still tightly held in David’s arms. You tried to look up, but there was only a thick blackness barely outlined by an ever darker form. “One of- of you? What… are you guys?”

Now you knew why that rolling chuckle earlier sounded so familiar. David’s chest rumbled against you as he couldn’t help but laugh. You could feel the worn leather of his gloves caress your face. His hand traced your features and cradled them tenderly in his palm.

“Would you like to find out?”

The suggestion raised your flesh, chills tricking down the base of your spine as if you were frozen in the grasp of a predator. The darkness, the way they avoided sunlight! The way… the way they came to your rescue. When you needed them most.

“Y-...,” you halted your answer. This time you really pondered it all. But even still there was a certainty to your thoughts. Your body and soul knew what they wanted. All it took was one little word.

“Yes”

Now you could see him. Well, not all of him. Just a pair of bright, luminescent white eyes wrapped in hellish spirals of red. Then there was another set. And another. Four sets of eyes all ready for you. A sharp pain surged through your neck, but you didn’t dare scream. For each set of eyes there was a following sting. Neck, shoulder, wrist, arm… and then you saw them all perfectly within the dark. The unyielding pain had brought a perfect clarity, and an unexpected stillness within your ribs. You couldn’t help but giggle, wiping away the puddles of blood smeared across David’s face. His grin spread wide, fangs still dripping with freshly drawn rubies that had stained your body red. Now it was your turn to grin, a fresh pair of fangs bared for your new dearest mates to admire in this dank, dark cave.

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recentanimenews · 3 years

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IN-DEPTH: How Did Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Become Japan’s Hottest Domestic Franchise?

At this point, it’s safe to say that Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba is one of the biggest franchises this decade. The manga series sold more than double what One Piece did at its peak in 2020, the Mugen Train anime film has outgrossed Hayao Miyazaki’s Academy Award-winning Spirited Away to become the king of the Japanese box office, and the franchise is estimated to bring in 270 billion yen to the Japanese economy by itself this year.

Looking at all of that, there is no question that Demon Slayer is the hottest domestic property in Japan right now. But how did it get here? Let’s examine how the little manga series from new author Koyoharu Gotouge became a cultural phenomenon in Japan.

Demon Slayer’s History with Jump

Before the Demon Slayer anime started, the series was running in Weekly Shonen Jump, one of Japan’s top manga magazines. The series started in Jump on February 15, 2016, and had modest success, with around 3.5 million copies of the manga series printed and sold as of February 2019, just a few months before the anime premiered in April 2019.

During Jump Festa 2017 — an annual exhibition for series being released by Shueisha in Weekly Shonen Jump and their other manga magazines — the first chapter of Demon Slayer was given out in a sample booklet alongside other new series that had started in 2016, such as THE PROMISED NEVERLAND. Outside that sample booklet though, Demon Slayer barely existed in the mind’s eyes of attendees, with gazes glued to NEVERLAND and BORUTO as the new hot series.

It wasn’t until Jump Festa 2020 (held in December 2019) that Demon Slayer got some time in the spotlight, with the Aniplex booth doing its best at showing off the series that had become such a hit over the previous summer.

Demon Slayer at the Aniplex booth during Jump Festa 2020 (photo: Daryl Harding)

Even though the collected manga volumes weren’t selling as much as one might expect from the now behemoth of a series, Demon Slayer was slowly gaining traction among fans, but wouldn’t really break out until just before the first episode of the TV anime aired on television in Japan.

The Outside Influences Brought into Demon Slayer

When the Demon Slayer TV anime was announced in June 2018, it was revealed that the studio Ufotable would be adapting the series. The Aniplex-affiliated studio is widely praised for their work on the Fate franchise, which has culminated with the Fate/stay night [Heaven’s Feel] film series. Ufotable-produced works are known to already be event-type series, and with Demon Slayer being their first Weekly Shonen Jump adaptation, it was a series to look forward to on that point alone.

First Demon Slayer TV anime key visual (source: Anime Eiga)

Just before the series premiered in April 2019, it was also revealed that popular singer LiSA — who was then mostly known for her work on the Sword Art Online openings, including the wildly popular theme to the Ordinal Scale anime film “Catch the Moment” — would be singing the opening theme for the series, with the first preview of the song at Anime Japan that year. LiSA went on to have a solo concert at the Yokohama Arena on the last days of the Heisei era in April 2019, selling out the 17,000 capacity hall.

youtube

AnimeJapan 2019 Trailer

Music can be a huge element in propelling the popularity of a series in Japan. Some of the biggest anime over the last decade was supported by their opening and ending themes, which kept the anime in people's minds. Demon Slayer’s opening theme “Gurenge” became such a hit in its own right that it dragged the rest of the series along with it. This formula worked to bring Your Name to the forefront of Japanese pop culture in 2016 — you couldn’t go anywhere in Tokyo without hearing Radwimps. And the double whammy of “Gurenge” and “Homura” (the theme for Demon Slayer: Mugen Train) has helped the series achieve even more success.

Rounding out the series was the star-studded voice cast who all have their own fan bases. Voicing Tanjiro is Natsuki Hanae, who was best known at the time for Ken Kaneki in Tokyo Ghoul; Zenitsu is voiced by Hiro Shimono, who voices Connie in Attack on Titan, and the boar himself Inosuke is voiced by Yoshitsugu Matsuoka, who voices Kirito in Sword Art Online. Nezuko's voice actor Akari Kito, who largely played side characters up until her casting in Demon Slayer, would become a well-known name and go on to play many more lead roles after the series became popular.

On paper, the breadth of talent involved in Demon Slayer far exceeded that of just any TV anime series. The production committee, led by Aniplex, was banking hard on people giving the series a try before the first episode had even aired. And it worked.

Topping the Film Charts before the First Episode Even Aired

Demon Slayer: Mugen Train has topped the film charts since it first premiered on October 18, 2020, but it’s not the first time the series has been in theaters. Prior to the TV airing of the first episode on April 6, 2019, the first five episodes were shown in eleven theaters across Japan starting on March 29. The screenings were dubbed “The Bonds Between Brother and Sister” and topped the mini-theater rankings, with over 10,000 people going in just the first three days.

Ironically the press release from Aniplex announcing that the screenings were being extended in early 2019 said the “excitement for Demon Slayer is at its peak!” If those screenings were anything on the mountain of the popularity of Demon Slayer, they’d be right near the start of the trek.

“The Bonds Between Brother and Sister” Visual

Due to the immense popularity, the two-week special screenings were then extended for another week at all eleven cinemas, which were coming in at Number 1 on the mini-theater rankings (for screenings in less than 30) for the two weeks it was originally scheduled for.

It’s no surprise then that just after these screenings had finished, and during the early broadcast of the anime on TV, that the production committee ordered the Mugen Train arc — which directly follows after the ending of the first season — to be produced as a film, according to industry sources.

Demon Slayer’s Evolving Popularity Throughout Its Airing

Hiroyuki Nakano, the editor-in-chief of Weekly Shonen Jump, spoke to Nikkei Entertainment in the March 2020 issue of the magazine on the slow success of the manga series, explaining that “normally the number of sales of a series increases gradually during the broadcast, but the number of copies sold of Demon Slayer exploded when the broadcast ended.” Nakano alluded to streaming services helping the anime series escalate the popularity of the original series by giving people the accessibility of being able to catch up on the show the next day via services like Amazon Prime and Netflix, who streamed the show weekly in Japan.

Gone are the days where an anime fan would have to record an episode of a late-night anime series because it aired early in the morning. With streaming services on the rise within Japan, that night’s episode of Demon Slayer could be watched the next day on the way to work or school, on the train, or on the toilet.

“I felt that the way people interacted with anime had changed and that we had entered a new phase,” Nakano explained, discussing how Demon Slayer’s rise in popularity was due to the evolving ways of media consumption.

This helped the series when the famous Episode 19 aired, blowing away all expectations of what an anime could do in animation. If Demon Slayer wasn’t already part of the modern anime zeitgeist, that one episode — which trended worldwide on Twitter after airing — propelled the series to the forefront by word-of-mouth. Inside Japan, people couldn’t help but talk about the latest episode of the series, treating it like prime-time event television in the same vein as Game of Thrones would have been in the west.

Demon Slayer’s success has also been well documented since the anime finished airing on September 28, 2019. The manga series has broken all records to become the most-sold series for a year, the Mugen Train sequel film is now the highest-grossing film of all time in Japan, and has given Japan the honor of being the third country to have a film reach US $300 million in a single market during its initial run.

Why Does Demon Slayer Resonate With Japanese Audiences?

How Demon Slayer became popular is one thing, but why did this one series, when many others have the same level of talent behind them, become the cultural phenomenon it is today? In December, Oricon released the results of a survey given to Japanese people on how well they know the series, and if so, why did they like it so much.

An astonishing 97.6 percent of the 3,848 respondents, who ranged from teens to the elderly, said they knew of the series, with 40.5 percent of people saying they knew it well. Of those who knew the series, they described how they liked the world setting and had sympathy for the characters. A male teenager said that he “was fascinated by the story of the main character growing up while struggling with various difficulties,” while a woman in her sixties enjoyed “the storytelling and LiSA's powerful voice.” A woman in her thirties remarked that she “never thought I'd be talking about anime at my age with my 60-something mother.”

All through the responses, Demon Slayer is bridging the divide between generations, with each generation taking something out of the story that Gotouge has crafted.

The top-notch action scenes and relatable characters draw in the younger crowd, while more middle-aged people get a kick out of the family bonds that weave throughout the story, and the aesthetic of the entire series gives older people a sense of nostalgia, also known as “Taisho romance,” but without it being overly melodramatic about the era. Even kids are going to the schoolyard to reproduce the breathing techniques seen in the series. Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga joined them when he made a cheeky reference to Demon Slayer’s breathing techniques while speaking to the DIET in November.

The accumulation of these points has made Demon Slayer a cultural touchstone, one that could only be born out of Japan. Even if the world wasn’t in the current state it is in, the Shonen Jump series would be just as big in its homeland, if not bigger, with more people going to the theaters and traveling to the areas that influenced the series.

Living in Japan at the moment means living in a world surrounded by Demon Slayer. From billboards promoting the film to masks people wear, you can’t go outside (not that people should be!) without having the series in your eyesight. And with how good the series is, and how many people are enjoying it, Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba deserves its time in the sun.

Demon Slayer masks being sold in Harajuku in December 2020 (photo: Daryl Harding)

Daryl Harding is a Japan Correspondent for Crunchyroll News. He also runs a YouTube channel about Japan stuff called TheDoctorDazza, tweets at @DoctorDazza, and posts photos of his travels on Instagram.

Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features.

By: Daryl Harding

#Anime #News #Latest in Anime News by Crunchyroll!

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subarubi · 4 years

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Desert Days

Pairing: Sam Wilson x Reader

Summary: “If this war ever ends-- and he assured you that it will eventually-- you’ll tell Sam Wilson you love him.”

Warnings: 18+, profanity, angst for days, extreme injury and death (blood), mentions of PTSD, implied smut

A/N: 9.6k word count, goddamn. This is a very Sam heavy one-shot. Also, I tried to make the reader as gender neutral as possible!

2001.

A colossal mountain of mutilated steel and concrete rubble sits, smoking, in the center of the world. Lower Manhattan. Financial District. Eight blocks that make up ‘Wall Street’, some elusive playpen for the invisible but potent power of ‘stock’. Destroyed. And with it, lives, hopes and dreams. 2,606 bodies buried there in the debris. An illusion of invincibility crushed in too. In the flames that lick at ruins of the Twin Towers, an Indian summer. The warm September haze forcefully burrows itself in the guts of New Yorkers, Americans, the world. It’s fear, not flush. It’s anger.

How could this happen? To us?

The news outlets evoke the memory of a vastly different war. They call it a day that will live in infamy. Which, it will. Undoubtedly. Yet, it’s hardly the same as Pearl Harbor. Perhaps, the only thing comparable, but dissimilar all the same. Since the greatest generation created generations of their own, the pastime of waging war happened elsewhere. On other lands. In other homes. To other people.

September 11th, 2001 burst the bubble of willful ignorance. War is happening. And there is a debt to be paid for crimes. All crimes. Even American.

Sam Wilson is only twenty when it happens--

--waking up next to a girl from English class that he’d been playing footsie with in the library the day before. Her cellphone, pink and bejeweled, rings at 7 am drawing them both from slumber. Sam rubs the hangover from his temple as she unwinds her limbs from his, both sticky with sweat. Through tears she turns and tells him.

Four planes hijacked. Two crashed into the World Trade Center. One at the Pentagon. Another in a Pennsylvania field.

Sam’s from New York City. Harlem. He’s stood at the bottom of those towers before-- a kid with a skateboard carving lines over all five boroughs. But he hasn’t been back to the East Coast in years. No reason to. Mom was laid to rest next to Pops and Sam ran away to the other side of the country not long after. The news isn’t any less devastating.

He’s at UCLA, majoring in philosophy of all things. It all seems so pointless then. Studying knowledge, reality, existence, when the rest of the world is bleeding.

Everyone is in pain.

Soldiers. Doctors. Accountants. Car Salesmen. Kindergarten Teachers. They demand their pain be spread. They want revenge. They want blood. War is now felt by all.

In October, the US invades Afghanistan.

Sam enlists in November.

2003.

“Superman School” is what it’s called. Sam thinks it should rather be called simply, “Hell”.

Indoc is easy. Sam has always liked the water and it’s just nine weeks of basically swimming. But what follows is two grueling years of vicious emotional and physical exertion. The events, the ache inside that led him there, are practically forgotten when the training starts. In Combat Dive School, he’d panicked the first few times an oxygen tank was strapped to his back and a regulator shoved in his mouth. In Paramedic training, he’d slipped and stabbed his fingers practicing sutures so much that he lost feeling there for a week. During SERE, Sam lost a toe nail; that hurt like a motherfucker. It was probably the most physical pain he’d ever been in at the point of his life. The guys, other PJs in training, don’t let that one go for a couple of months. At least.

The best part, perhaps the only remotely good part, is Army Airborne and Military Free-fall Parachutist training.

“It’s not exactly flying, but it feels like it,” Sam speaks animatedly into the receiver after chow on a Tuesday night, “It feels like fucking flying and you always imagine that flying is cool but then you do it and, I swear--”

He spends the next fifteen minutes going on and on and when his girlfriend, Lisa from English class with the pink bejeweled phone, finally hangs up, Sam feels like there’s so much he still hasn’t gotten to say about it.

In a different life, I might’ve been a bird, he says during a poker game later that night.

They're all chasing their own highs after the first jump, but no one’s as dumb with it, as corny about it as Wilson. They give him shit for it. Sam is too hopped up on finding his first love to care.

It’s easy to forget why they’re there and what they’re working toward. Graduating. Deployment. War.

Afghanistan is a long way from Lackland Air Force Base, Texas. But with every day, every training course completed, Sam Wilson closes that gap with flying colors. And eventually, in May of that year, he found himself in Nevada with the 58th Rescue Squadron. Impossibly, closer now to Afghanistan.

There, he’s given a maroon beret and dubbed a “Guardian Angel”. Small consolation prizes for the news he’s being deployed.

2004.

It’s hot in Afghanistan, he’s heard. Sam had never expected it to be so bad; it’s summer, everywhere’s hot in the summer. The hottest place on earth is the Lut Desert in Iran. Barren, sparsely vegetated, open scrub. 70.7 Celsius recorded. That’s about 160 Fahrenheit. But nowhere, not even the hottest place on earth, is as sweltering as Bagram Airfield in July. With fatigues stuck to his back with sweat, stomach coming up on ‘E’, split red knuckles being bandaged: 40 Celsius feels like 5,000 Kelvin. Dry heat with nowhere to go but through him. It adds ten pounds at least to the weight in his shoulders.

Sam made one comment. Just one. But a scathing reply from his least favorite Squadron member was enough to unravel him.

This is the land of your peoples, Wilson, stop bitchin’.

Sam flexes his fingers on his bouncing knees, sitting and waiting stoically; internally, he’s burning.

When he enlisted just three years ago in a fervent bout of passion and patriotism, he didn’t anticipate the racist pieces of trailer park trash he’s supposed to call brothers. The amount of self-control it would take to not punch the asshole square in the jaw. The fucking heat.

Three years after waking up that fateful morning, turning on the news with Lisa taking calls non-stop, flames and smoke reflected in his brown eyes and he’s stuck waiting in a tent for disciplinary action. At least it’s reprieve from the merciless Afghanistan sun.

The tent flaps rustle softly, heavy boots command Sam reflexively to stand at attention. It gets his knee to stop bouncing. It’s in his face when he sees you. The faltering expression in his eyes that he tries to hide behind a stone slate. You’re not his CO there to NJP him, he’s never seen you on the base and he’s sure he would’ve remembered your face had he, but the patch on your chest dominates him anyway. A stray bead of sweat tickles Sam’s temple underneath your blank stare. You’re not, but you look ten feet tall over him. He’s never been someone so easily intimidated, but you? You are formidable.

He wonders which part of you gets to him the most.

It might be your impossibly straight posture, one that he could never fully get right much to the ire of his commanding officers. Or maybe it’s the sharpness to your eyes, dissecting him piece by piece before he even hears your voice. Or, it could be, that you’re really fucking hot.

Christ, are you.

But that last one might be skewed by the fact that he’s been on tour now for a couple of months and his girlfriend, not Lisa, now Kerry, has been giving him blue balls. Sending letters so salacious, they’ve found home in the john for everyone’s personal use.

He’d remember you if he saw you. He’d never be able to forget.

Another body entering the tent brings a breeze to save him from the downright oppressive warmth of your stare. A man, another Sam has never seen around, stands much more relaxed and close to your side. He’s tall and blonde and somehow pale even after hours spent in the sun.

You look at him and smile. So nice and pretty without any trace of your previous hardness.

“So, you’re Sam Wilson?” he asks with a hint of a smirk in his voice, “Heard a lot about you.” There’s laughter playing at both of your smiles and Sam’s fists instinctively clench. Are you making fun? He’s not in the mood. It’s hot and sticky, and he might be fighting down an embarrassing and painful semi.

“Yes, sir.”

The man at your side laughs, digging his elbow into your side, “You hear that? He called me sir!”

“Fuck off,” you roll your eyes, flicking his ear so hard it draws a hiss. The first words he hears spill from those lips, twisted now in a smirk, don’t match your silvery voice.

Fuck off, so rough and yet said in dulcet tones with affection.

Sam’s hot again when you step forward, away from your partner-- the breeze was only fleeting. Nowhere is as hot as in that tent on Bagram AFB, you, just five feet from him, hand held out with a soft smile to introduce yourself. Warm and sweet, but somehow it burns.

God, he needs to get laid, like, yesterday.

He didn’t even realize he shook your offered hand until he misses the feel of it as it slips from his own. “And this is Riley, he got dropped on his head as a baby,” straightening beside the man in question, Sam catches an all too short flash of white as you laugh.

“So, what did he say?” Riley asks. At the quirk of Sam’s head to the side, he gestures to the wrapped right hand, “I mean everyone’s talking about it. You’re gonna be on latrine duty for weeks!”

“Riley,” you sigh, smacking his chest that shakes in laughter with the back of your hand. A comforting smile when you turn back to Sam, “We have business to do.” The file you hand him, which he had not noticed was in your hand until it was heavy in his, it changes everything.

Why me? Sam doesn’t let the question slip past his tongue, but it’s there.

You shrug, as if you’d heard him, “You’ve made quite the reputation for yourself, Sam Wilson.” A soothing smile, big and easy. Like the one you sent Riley. He’d like to see it his way again.

And you’re not lying.

9 months in Afghanistan and word carries of a PJ falling from the sky like some vengeful archangel of salvation, laying suppressing fire steady as breathing, healing hands flipping the bird at death. Sam Wilson, orphan boy from Harlem, amateur philosopher, provider of quality spank bank material, was made for this.

The first time he sees it, Sam doesn’t know what the hell he’s looking at.

Like a big black horseshoe crab, washed up dead on the shore, metal back shining slick with sea water. Three of them, laid out on a table in a hangar removed from the rest of the air base. Engineers rattle off all sorts of specs, some Sam understands, some he hasn’t the slightest idea the meaning of. He looks to his right, at you, then Riley. The pair of you, grinning at each other, bouncing on the balls of your feet like children. Always so lively with each other. Always overflowing with enthusiasm-- in each other, something you now extend to him.

All happening so fast. Too fast. Sam’s queasy from the whiplash.

A month ago, he’d only just gotten used to the cycle: Jump. Find cover. Fire back if need be. Don’t mind the blood. Do what he can. And if he can’t, say a prayer. Swallow his vomit. Back to camp. Brush his teeth. One. Twice. Rinse. Repeat.

How did the saying go? ‘These Things We Do, That Others May Live’. Sam’s swallowed enough of his own vomit that the taste doesn’t even phase him anymore. Partially because he’s scrubbed his tongue raw and numb with toothpaste.

Then, you and Riley ripped him from it.

Bought him dinner in Kabul. Offered him a cold beer. Which, he hadn’t had one in a year and fuck if it wasn’t orgasmic on his tongue. You two wined and dined him, told him he was special, he was meant for more. Made him feel good. Reminded him he wasn’t just some cog, some tool in a war that was quickly losing support. That he had a chance to do something important. Christ, he was surprised there wasn’t a good old fashioned fuck at the end of it. He’d put out on the first date.

EXO-7 Falcon. In a different life, I might’ve been a bird. He maintained a year out that jumps were everything.

But wings? Actual wings?

It’s unbelievable. No. Fucking insane. He can’t fathom it. Not free-falling and convincing himself its as close to flying he’ll ever get, but actually flying without the disappointing fact that eventually he’ll have to pull the chord.

It’s just a prototype, don’t blow your load too soon, you laugh, hand on his bicep, for now, we just get to ogle them looking all nice and pretty.

He doesn’t have the balls to tell you he already has. In the showers. Numerous times. Your smile flashing behind his eyelids.

It’s just a waiting game now for the prototypes to be approved.

Sam finds his stride again, much quicker than the last, in this new routine. He suspects his easy adjustment has everything to do with you and Riley. PT at 0600. Showers at 0800. An emergency non Falcon rescue mission about two, three times a week. Chow together in the mess at 1730. Sometimes, the three of you eat MREs outside instead, watching the sunset like a bunch of cornballs.

You guys talk a lot, typically always over a meal. And Sam, who usually speaks a mile a minute, is slowed and forced to take a breath. Between the three of you, the fight for air time is intense.

Everything is learned and shared in that small circle of three, sometimes too much.

In some sleepy Georgia town, five houses away from each other, you and Riley spent your entire childhoods not meeting until basic.

Kismet, Riley grinned between mouthfuls of a macaroni and chili MRE that he traded for. That green sucker had no idea what he was getting into with Riley’s chicken a la death.

The pair of you, southern belles, you’d joked. Attended the same Sunday service, learned how to ride a bike on the same stretch of asphalt, enrolled in the same high school but different years. Riley lost his virginity to your older sister in the back of his dad’s wood paneled station wagon. You remember she complained about a cum stain on her favorite skirt around that same time.

Too much? you ask with a widening smirk at Sam’s grimace.

The two of you are so close, Sam can only be grateful for how easily you’ve let him fall into place by your sides. As welcoming, as kind and as warm as you are, in those early years, Sam can’t help feel an outsider sometimes.

You and Riley are so so close.

He’s sure he’s only seen you guys separated by bathroom breaks and sleep. An inordinate amount of time side by side. Fond smiles come often and effortlessly. Only ever fully at-ease in each other’s vicinity. You’re left handed and Riley’s right handed and your elbows always knock when eating. Which seems purposeful because once, when Sam suggested you just switch your normal places at the table, he was met only with blank stares and shrugs. And when the three of you walk across the airfield together, Sam naturally has to fall back slightly because he’s pretty sure you and Riley are tethered together with an invisible string, footfalls in sync. Your right leg in time with his, strides equal.

He’s not sure he’s met a pair of friends ever more suited to each other.

So, are you guys, like, together? Sam asks Riley hesitantly one night when you’ve gone to speak with some other officers. The pair of them lay on their backs on the rocky ground, gazing up at the clear expanse of stars. The new addition to your little merry band of friends tries to appear casual when asking. But really, it’s been nagging at him for months now.

It’s a valid question.

You and Riley are almost abnormally close for two people that have only known each other for a couple of years. Sam’s never seen anyone, not even his disgustingly in love for 30 years parents, so attached. If he were honest, sometimes it’s scary. Uncomfortable.

Mostly, because it’s never been defined. And Sam is, by nature, curious.

Partly, because the things he thinks about you... well, he doubts Riley would appreciate him thinking about his significant other that way. Especially a friend thinking that way.

Riley’s bellowing laugh draws angry hushes from surrounding PJs trying to sleep. He cackles so hard with hands clutching at his abdomen, he practically rolls.

You’ve got it bad, Wilson, is his only reply before getting up to go take a leak.

2005.

Euphoria. That’s the only word Sam can use to describe it. Like sex. Maybe, even better. Up there, in the clouds, where everyone below are just little black dots, his stomach lurches and flips and folds itself over and under. Actually flying, not free-falling and biding his time until he eventually must pull the chord. He’s shaky with it at first. Like a baby on fresh legs, wobbly and awkward. Even still, he’s fucking flying.

Back on the ground, him and Riley gush with it. Joy. Freedom. Ecstasy.

They talk a mile a minute, even though their burning lungs are screaming for them to just breathe. They brush off the medical staff urging them to put on oxygen masks for a few minutes. Can’t, Riley rejects it, too fucking wired.

You’re up next, burning with the need to get yours too.

It all moves so fast. Sam and Riley each in one of your ears, telling you how amazing it feels. How much you’re gonna love it. They watch, chests heaving, hands on hips, as you’re strapped in, take your place 50ft away and nod along to all of the instructions given. Giving you pointers like they’ve been doing this for years. You roll your eyes. The pricks only have an hour of experience each. Though, that’s an hour more than you have, so you listen despite your pride.

You fail. And just as everything you do is, you fail brilliantly.

Sam and Riley watch helplessly as you crumble in the clouds, tumbling in the wind, barreling towards the hard rock and sand beneath their boots. The limp wings thrash in the wind, punching sharp welts into your sides. Your blood curdling scream rips out above, echoing in the valley. They can see you scrambling, panicked brain searching for a fight or flight response. But you can’t do either.

Can’t fly.

Can’t fight the merciless pull of gravity.

You get ahold of yourself long enough to pull the emergency chute at the lowest possible altitude. A heap of nylon lines and cloth on the ground, your impact striking up a cloud of dust.

Their feet can’t move fast enough, rushing to your side, hearts in their stomachs and stomachs in their asses.

Don’t fucking touch me!

Riley’s hand that gently grabs your bicep swiftly retracts as if you’d burned him. You won’t let them help. You just lie there, forehead pressed into the sand, body shaking with adrenaline, pained wails vibrating behind your grit teeth.

Silence except for the sick sound of your brokenness.

More than the acid cuts on your palms and cheek. More than a cracked rib. More than the ugly smattering of red and purple that will appear on your torso later. You mourn what is lost in your failure.

Back on the ground, you gush with it. Wrath. Anguish. Woe.

Sam feels sick beside Riley. Watching you there is the hardest thing he’s ever done. He reminds himself of the careful routine. Don’t mind the blood. Do what he can. And if he can’t, say a prayer. Swallow his vomit. He remembers the taste now.

The prognosis is: you are a no-fly zone.

You barely hear the flurry of words thrown at you, in front of you, around corners when you’re not supposed to hear. Cracked rib. Major contusions to the trunk. Sprained wrist. Can’t handle it. Right side too weak. Six weeks recovery, then return to regular duty. Maybe, you can work on it in PT and try again in 6 months. Not likely. Third prototype destroyed. Only two Falcons.

Weren’t supposed to hear that.

The next few days are eerily quiet. Filled with silent tension, Sam and Riley sending worried glances your way, forcing down winces at your every labored movement. You’ve abruptly walked off at seemingly random points of conversation. You’ve lashed out at Riley when he tries to help a little too much, pushes back against your attitude a little too hard. You’ve retreated. No joking around, no smiling. They have, at least, the clemency to avoid any mention of the Falcon jetpacks in your presence.

When they train, you avoid it like the plague.

The crowds they draw. The hooting and hollering cheers of the other PJs as Sam and Riley defy all odds in the air. The time will come soon, for them to employ the EXO-7 Falcons in an actual rescue. You pray that you aren’t healed by the time the first mission comes.

God, whomever, hears your pleas whispered into the tough canvas of your cot.

Four weeks after your failed flight test, an Apache helicopter goes down in Taliban infested territory. You haven’t been cleared.

Sam walks up on the Chinook, dressed for the first time in his full suit. It would feel so gratifying, had you not been standing there with Riley, heads bowed lowly in short whispers underneath the raucous whirring of the engine.

You haven’t talked to Sam in more than a few words. Only Riley. You only really talk to Riley. Sam has walked in on an abruptly cut off conversation a few times now. Shut out. It burns at him in the middle of the night, keeps him from drifting off in much needed slumber. You and Riley are his people now. Confidants. Friends. Comrades. Family. He wants to be there for you both, but you don’t let him. Just, give her time, she’s upset, Riley had supplied a dejected looking Sam when you stormed away at his advance for the third time.

Now, at his careful approach, you look up and force a tight smile across those lips he sees in his dreams. An awkward, heavy hand on his shoulder that makes his heart clench, Good luck, Wilson.

He’ll still feel it burning through his fatigues hours later.

When they successfully return with the entire crew safe and sound, the base is alive with celebration. A friendly football scrimmage is thrown together by Riley in amber skies of late afternoon, their focused play-calling set behind 50 cent blaring on the boombox.

You’re noticeably absent.

Sam stands outside of your barracks with his hands stuffed in his pockets, uncertain if you’ll even speak to him. You haven’t before. Why would you now? When everyone is happily relishing in something you can no longer be a part of. His boots scuff in the sand as he debates leaving. Letting you alone for the night to surely lament in your loss.

“Shouldn’t you be out there kicking ass, superstar?”

Your face, a familiar smile there that he’s been desperate to see for weeks, evokes an overwhelming sense of guilt in his gut. It was you and Riley from the start. Always you and Riley. The two of you had recruited him. And now he’s taken your place and they’ve left you in the dust.

His return smile comes out more like a grimace without his permission.

The large tent, usually filled to the brim with airmen stacked atop of each other, is empty. Everyone’s either getting chow or at the makeshift field spectating or playing. It’s just you sitting on a makeshift bed on the ground, softly closing the book you were reading when he entered. Sam doesn’t think the two of you have actually ever been alone together. Not like this. No Riley, no one milling about in the background, no rescue mission. The closest thing might’ve been the first time you met. And even then, you hadn’t said anything to each other until Riley joined.

“Honestly,” Sam swallows hard, shaking his head in what looks like a humorous gesture, but really, he’s trying to find his footing again. “How does Riley have so much energy?”

You smile wider and his heart, it fucking aches. For you.

Knees pulled up tightly to your chest, ignoring the sharp pangs in your ribs at the action, you tilt your head softly up at him, “It’s all sugar and tai chi.”

Sam nods, a ghost of a chuckle humming from his throat. He sits on the ground next to you, knees bent, forearms hung over them. Tries not to make the hitch in his breath known when your thighs brush against each other ever so lightly.

“I’m sorry,” he croaks.

You shake your head at the ground, sighing deeply in defeat-- as if it would magically ease the pressure in your temples. “I think I forgot, it’s so easy to forget. But I dunno, all this self-pity and for what? Because I don’t get a cool pair of wings?”

“You’re allowed to be upset,” his hand hovers over your back. Half afraid of hurting you, half afraid of you rejecting him.

Eyes like the cosmos lift to his and you lean back to close the distance for him. The press of his palm over your shoulder is warm, his fingers flexing slightly in the contours of your back. Gooseflesh fanning out from where they indent your skin, hidden beneath the fabric of your shirt.

“My last rescue op, that kid whose lower half was blown to shit?” Sam nods solemnly, he remembers. How could he not? “He couldn’t stop crying about how his girlfriend was gonna break up with his dickless ass. And then he broke into a whole other fit because he didn’t have an ass either,” you laugh humorlessly, “I’m alive and in one peice. I’ve got a sweet ass and a fucking elephant trunk of a dick swinging between my legs.” Sam snorts, can’t help the gap-toothed grin that makes his cheeks ache.

You pause, licking your lips. Sam’s got a smile is like the sun. All warm and bright. The way it feels to bask in it’s glow, a personal beach day, you don’t think you’ve ever been so content to just be looked at.

“I guess, I just-,” brows furrow, struggling to find the words. “You spend months preparing for something, with your best friends, you’re all excited about it, mostly because you’re doing it together. Me. Riley. You. Demented three musketeers,” you smile sadly, a cracking phantom of a thing Sam has come to love. “And then it all goes to shit. So easily slips through your fingers.”

There are tears that you’ll never let fall, but you trust Sam enough to let him see the way your eyes shine with it. The glossy finish of your glum and how it paints you blue.

“I’ve been with Riley since basic. Never been an op where I haven’t had his back and him mine.”

You know. You know you’ll never fly again. No one’s said it outright, but they look at you like a kicked puppy enough for you to get it.

“Will you promise me something, Sam?”

Sam. Sam. Sam. He’s heard his name said a million times in a thousand different cadences, but never like that. Never so soft and honeyed and certain. All at the same fucking time.

“Anything.”

“There are going to be ops for just the two of you that the rest of the unit, that I can’t go on. Will you look after Riley?” You’re so close, practically whispering. Sam could count your lashes if he wanted to. “I love him, but he’s a fucking idiot. Just doesn’t think sometimes.”

Without question. Fervently. For you, “Absolutely.”

And you just listen to each other breathe. In and out. So steady and sure. Content in just the sweet sound of each other, living.

2007.

Hands, calloused from fast-roping down from a helo, splayed out on the contours of his shoulders. Hot and urgent, everywhere and nowhere at once. The emotion in them permeates through his skin-- flooding him, filling him to the brim. Had he always been so empty before? Or had that space always been carved out for your touch? Your eyes are above him, searching, pleading. Lashes fluttering down at his face. Lips falling open in soundless utterances, mouthpiece of the gods. Breathless. His ears are ringing, eyes blinking away that white hot blindness licking at the edges of his consciousness. You’re so beautiful there, rays of sun peeking out behind you, he might pass out.

Wilson, can you hear me?

And then a laugh. Loud and boisterous and Holy shit! You just got your world rocked! Riley beside you, his face a picture of delight, buzzing with adrenaline.

Along with the rapid pops of gunfire and cracks of an AK returning, gentle jingling of hot casings hitting the ground, steady lines of communication running down the line of airmen, Wilson, I need you to confirm that you are okay.

He nods dumbly at your insistence. Remembering suddenly how to breathe when you grab him by the vest and yank him up off the ground. He’d been blown on his back by the sheer force of a screaming mortar impacting the earth nearby. Your smack on his helmet is enough to refocus him, and all attention is back on the vic, packing the wound, applying pressure. You radio in controlled and calm-- GSW to the leg and shoulder, hoist out exfil necessary, popping green smoke on our location.

Helmand is hell. But you grin and bear it so well.

Things have levelled out. The three of you adjust to yet another new routine; much remains the same. The months are filled with morning PT, showers, any and every conversation under the sun shared over chow, a game of Slapjack or Bullshit after the sun’s gone down. Standard combat search-and-rescue, thankfully, for your sake is unchanged. But you have to get used to watching Sam and Riley soar through the sky like it’s what they were born to do. You stick to field medicine when they become something altogether different than PJs. Though, they were never just PJs. And you pretend it doesn’t just ache the tiniest beat when they leave you behind for some confidential mission.

Being the failure is hell. You grin and bear it to keep the pain from spreading to them.

Hours later he finds you pelting the metal floor of the HH-60 Pave Hawk with an unwavering jet stream of water, diluted blood dripping from the sides.

“Any special plans for when you get home?” Sam watches your face as it remains focused on lazily hosing down any memory of a bleeding young Corporal laying slack in your helping hands from the bird.

Six weeks. His tour ends in six weeks. He plans on sleeping-- sleeping hard, sleeping in, sleeping around. Riley joked about Sam burying himself in alcohol and puss, ‘it’s a toss up which addicts anonymous circle he’ll end up in’. Sam laughed and cheered in good fun, but the scent of JP-8 stung his nostrils. You and Riley have three more months left in this tour. Sam doesn’t like to think about the fact that he’ll be home, smelling apple pie and boob sweat, and you’ll be stuck here, sniffing jet fuel; that’s the smell of freedom, airmen say.

“Might take up yoga,” he quips.

Your eyebrows raise slightly, lips spreading into an easy and knowing smile, “Bet you would, you horndog.” Yoga pants, nylon and lycra second skins that hold everything just so, are all the rage all of the sudden.

Sam laughs, leaning against the side of the helicopter with a cheeky smirk. That smirk you know so well now after three years. You count on that smirk. Pray on it. How something so small can bring you so much comfort, impossible to say.

“If you come to LA, I can take you to all the studios. You’d love it.”

Sam Wilson’s always been a social butterfly. The lifeblood of every party. The guy that gets along with everyone. The funny, effortlessly cool guy. He thrives on meeting new people and cracking jokes.

But really, if Sam could do anything when he gets home, it would just be to see you. And Riley, of course. He wants you to come to LA, go to a bar, hide in some corner and just talk. Like you always do. Except, in civvies and heavily lubricated. He’d wait that excruciating month and a half before you’re back stateside too. He’d wait, not so much as think about alcohol, if it meant the three of you could share that first cold one together. You and Riley, you’re family. The first he’s had in a long while.

He can’t help himself. “Will you? Come to LA?”

You smile, so nice and pretty, big and easy, like the one you’d once reserved only for Riley.

2008.

Hands, softened with shea and two months R&R, fisting the back of his shirt so tightly he fears the fabric might disintegrate. Feverish and needy, fingernails digging into his warm skin, leaving ardor shaped crescents in wake of their campaign to conquer his back. Scorched in the spots first touched, soothed by the soft sound of sliding skin.

Panting. Clenching. Burning.

Your eyes squeezed shut, tears pricking at the edges. Lashes, all 359 of them -- he’d counted -- fanning his cheeks. Sweet wetness. Trembling fire. Mouths, hot and urgent, moving against one another. Whiskey tongues, sliding together, worshipping every inch. Lips numb. Teeth clanging. Both chests heaving, humming with moans too gentle and too desperate. You’re so beautiful there, in a bar’s dark and dirty bathroom stall pressing chest, groin, thigh, and leg against him.

Gushing with it: joy, freedom, ecstasy. Overwhelmed by what he swallows from that heavenly spout: wrath, anguish, woe.

You’re so beautiful he might die-- without question, fervently, for you.

2009.

The world works in strange ways. People will pay a 1,000 USD for a mattress that perfectly shapes to the curves of their spines. Commercials demonstrate you can balance a wine glass and simultaneously jump like a giddy kid in a hotel room without any risk of stain-- and for good measure, in the event it does stain, some special formula ensures it’ll come right out. Such strange desires of men. Sam sighs into his pillow-- zero cost, no secret formula. Sand, his mattress covered in 1500 thread count egyptian cotton; rock, his feather pillow that corrects his posture; a heavy coat of dry heat, his comforting New Zealand sheep wool blanket. Riley snores soundly beside, drool dribbling from the right corner of his mouth, chest spluttering in his exhales-- his white noise machine.

He’s never been more comfortable. And in strange ways, he’s glad to be back, just starting his second tour at twenty-seven now, another successful Falcon mission recorded with the capture of Khalid Khandil.

Sam’s almost disgusted with himself. He’s so stupidly content to be there, in the middle of the Afghani desert, sleeping on the ground. As if it’s not a fucking war.

Well, as the world turns.

Do you ever think it’ll be over? you’ll ask one night, a whisper on his lips as soft as the dripping beside you. Never defined, never talked about, but most nights, when sleep evades you, you’ll slip from the barracks to the empty showers. And you’ll sigh in pleasure in time with the echoing splash of leaky faucets.

And Sam has to bite his lips from saying the words ‘God, I hope not’ into your neck.

Stateside, he has a joke of a life. The year in between tours was almost unbearable. He’s supposed to call that land home? It feels more foreign to him now than Afghanistan. A place where people create mattresses with different settings on two sides for maximum comfort.

Strangers see him in uniform and either say ‘thank you for your service’-- which always feels hollow-- or looking like they want to spit on him. Suffocating. He could only breathe the three times you visited him in Los Angeles and the five times he came to Virginia for you. Only felt comfortable there with his face in your thighs, heart and breast in his hand, lips in his teeth.

Here, he has structure. Purpose. Brotherhood. You. In war, he’s important. He’s helping people, not in any misguided, easily skewed fight for freedom and self-righteousness. He’s actually helping people. ‘These Things We Do, That Others May Live’. It’s what PJs do.

In Afghanistan, he gets to fucking fly.

In the US, his wings are clipped and everything feels so dull in comparison.

Eventually, it has to, he’ll murmur back to spare you from his terrible thoughts. You’re so soft and sweet under him, and Sam knows just how much this war tears you apart.

The guilt that plagues you because not everyone can be saved, but everyone should be. You’ve said before that the PJ credo implies death yourself. ‘That Others May Live’. But you’re alive and so many have died beneath your palms despite best efforts. Those trained fingers that sometimes feel useless apart from bringing Sam to bliss.

If you knew how he truly felt, how even if he’s a good man he harbors such selfish thoughts, it would only hurt you more.

So he keeps it to himself and kisses your worries away. Soft pecks at your eyes that never cry but are always on the brink; the tip of your nose that’s become immune to the overwhelming metallic scent of blood; the crease between your brows that screw together in torment; lips, that despite all of the above, smile for Riley and for him.

He’ll hold you so tenderly with strong steady hands, that it’s easy to forget the two of you are pressed together in a shower stall. You seem to have a habit of getting into compromising positions in bathrooms with Sam.

A soft moan of appreciation escapes your lips, just to see that charming gap-tooth grin it draws from him. A taste of his light. So wanting, so desperate for that warm glow that emanates from Sam Wilson, you peel the shirt from his back sticky with sweat. Fingers scrambling to run across the smooth, hot skin there, chasing that tranquil day at the beach that is him even in the middle of a goddamned war. Greedy hands draw silken lines down the length of Sam’s spine, smiling in his mouth at his shuddering. How he leans into your touch reflexively.

You’re drawn tight against him, his arms snaking around the base of your back, your hips flush against his, heels digging into his hamstrings. So close you become almost indistinguishable from him, simply a heap of warm skin and desert camo bracing the shower walls.

A single kiss, languid and saccharine, suddenly turned quick. Sam is urgent in unfastening your top, splaying it open to lay you bare and panting before him. Each snap undone, a breath more labored. Your own hands, fumbling for the belt at his waist, mourning the loss of kissed raw lips against you. Hurried, as if at any moment one of you will perish. And the other, having tasted a body so divine, would simply crumble into dust-- there could never be another that they craved the same. Disappear forever in this desert, to perhaps be stamped down by another set of lovers’ boots. Here, in the sand soaked with your blood, Sam’s sweat, Riley’s tears

A vow taken in the sighs of pleasure quieted by amorous mouths.

If this war ever ends-- and he assured you that it will eventually-- you’ll tell Sam Wilson you love him.

2010.

He’d wished for this, hadn’t he?

To live in War. This ungodly, disorienting flurry of chaos that feigns a sense of order. Mayhem, no matter how many hours ripping apart his muscles to put them back in place in accordance with military regulation, how much firepower there is to decimate enemies. A messy, merciless machine, endless. Running on the energy expelled from eating-- young men chewed up and spat out, shoved back into the hungry mouth, and chewed and spat again. And again. An emulsified puddle of blood and sweat leaking from the bottom.

This, is war. Not fucking in the showers, watching the sunset while playing cards, and trading MREs like it’s elementary school.

Structure. Purpose. Brotherhood -- all of the things Sam craved. It all means jack shit once someone steps on an IED, the distinct crisp sound of AKs firing off, or staring an RPG straight in the eye.

Sam can’t stop looking at the way the blood squeezes through his shaking fingers. Thick and scarlet and slippery, bubbling through the cracks, seeping into the lines of his skin. Unyielding to Sam’s hands desperately clasping at the ripped flesh, trying and failing to apply pressure to the wound. No matter how much pressure he applies, the blood persists. Gushing, oozing, turning black under his palms. Because it’s everywhere and he only has two hands. Why did God make man with only two hands? Why?

Come on, man!

It’s a pathetic sound, the way it rips from his throat, raw and pleading. His arms, trembling so hard they shake the body beneath him too.

Sam removes one hand to pop a yellow smoke outside of the ditch he’d pulled them into, using his teeth to pull the pin from the canister.

He’s whimpering, choking down the sobs he so desperately wants to let out, communicating in broken sentences through the radio. Deaf to the return chatter.

His eyes refuse to leave his bloodstained hands when the Pave Hawk is hovering above, his team of six fast-roping down, quick and methodical in employing care under fire protocol. Four of them stationing themselves at a pole just outside of the ditch, laying suppressing fire.

You’re there, he can feel you rushing forward with your pack already slung over and onto the ground at their sides. But Sam won’t look at you, can’t-- if he sees your face, he’ll lose it.

Moving, but nothing feels like it’s by your own volition. Rather, muscle memory. Flipping up your NVG, your eyes flit over the scene fast, thinking, but not feeling. And somehow, you’re thankful you’re numb at the sight.

You’ve never seen it quite so... he doesn’t look human.

It was just supposed to be a standard op. A marine stepped on an IED, and no one had metal detectors so the normal PJ unit couldn’t land. They were supposed to fly in and out, barely even touch the ground.

And it all got fucked. How had it gotten so fucked?

Helpless. Nothing he could do. Like he was up there just to watch. Squint in the dark night for a body barreling towards the ground. So much like your first flight test. That sickness churning his gut.

Sam. Sam. Sam!

His eyes flit to meet yours wide and white in the dark and just can’t bear it. He careens over to the side, retching this morning’s powdered eggs ugly and loud. Emptied, body too spent, the sobs finally overtake him.

Quickly, you cut open his top, pulling the tattered fabric from where it tangled up with his body. Your hands take up the spot where Sam’s once pressed, pulling out combat gauze with your teeth. Deperately packing until you run out of gauze. It does nothing. The white is quickly stained so red that it just resembles more mutilated strings of flesh.

“Okay,” you breathe, but it does nothing to return the oxygen to your lungs, “okay we need to stabilize the wound, tourniquets”-- the wound, he’s more wound than whole-- “and I need someone on chest compressions.”

You’re met with stares. Seven red-rimmed eyes, just staring as the very fluid of his life drains from him, body going cold under your hands warm, soaked in his blood. The only thing holding him, all mangled chunks of burnt tissue, together is you.

“But-”

“But what?”

But, it was an RPG. So what? We’re fucking PJs, aren’t we? But, he’s lost too much blood. We’ll do a transfusion. But, he’s dead.

“Just do it!”

No one has the heart to stop you.

You work over Riley’s corpse for the entire ride to the hospital. They have to rip you from him on arrival. Because he’s dead. And you’ve just spent an hour elbow deep in a mess of blood and guts that feel like your own, exhausting yourself-- keeping nothing alive but your own sanity.

Riley’s a pair of boots, an M16, a helmet, and two shiny dog tags clenched in your fists.

That’s it.

The rest of him was put back together as best they could, shoved in a pine box shrouded in stars and stripes, and sent off to Georgia. He’ll be received by his parents, two little brothers, three nieces, and his dog. They’ll write about him in the paper, a hero he’ll be called-- when really, he was a dumbass that got dinked by a rocket.

He’d enjoy the fame in your small town.

Idiot.

Dropped on his head as a baby.

As you squeeze the dog tags hanging from his M16, so do you squeeze a tear from your eye. A warm thing running down your left cheek that feels just like Riley’s blood in your palm.

Sam’s behind you, head bowed low, maroon beret in his hands. The amount of times he’s said sorry, some blubbery, some frustrated, some murmured in your hair, some screamed at you.

You’re both raw.

Hands scrubbed with soap, but stained Riley red.

Those showers have been tainted now with the fresh memory of pink streams circling the drain. Where once you found yourself lost in lust, now, in misery. Riley in your hands disappearing into the pipes, into nothing forever.

“My tour’s up in three months,” Sam watches you carefully as you release the silver tags imprinted with Riley’s information. You stand and face him, wiping away that traitorous tear. “I’m going to leave active duty.”

When he was twenty, and the world was bleeding fresh scarlet, he’d hardly imagined he’d be retiring at thirty. But twenty seems so far now, just as the aftermath of 9/11. Now, the blood has caked into a mountain of pain, dried brown. Revenge, and then some.

He enlisted for patriotism, duty, selflessness. He stayed for you and Riley, for flying.

He can’t stay anymore-- can’t see you die too.

"You’re retiring?” your cloudy stare, brows pulled together, eat at him, “Okay.”

Okay. Sam never tried to guess what you’d say, but ‘okay’ somehow seems like the only thing that would ever make sense on your lips. So soft and simple. You. Always supportive, always sure.

You nod with a gentle smile, and while he doesn’t know where you’re headed-- somewhere that’s not Riley’s makeshift shrine-- Sam trails closely behind. Partially because he has more to say, but mostly, because he’s bound to you now. His chest is tethered to yours, feet instinctively falling in line. He heels, like a dog. For you.

The barracks are empty for chow again. Neither of you are hungry. Meals are different without Riley.

So familiar, the two of you sitting side by side on the ground, knees bent, forearms resting on them, thighs brushing. Alone together.

Sam has ocean eyes. Warm brown eyes that look like the ocean. They’re still on you but they move. You’ve never noticed. How they swell and glimmer, so constant yet always in motion-- pure in how he allows himself to live so freely. Going with whatever flow his heart takes him: dropping out of college and enlisting; punching ignorant airmen; and giggling like a girl at the feeling of flying. Making promises you both know he has no control over. Kissing you in a bar because he can’t take the longing for a second more. Leaving the Air Force because it’s getting in the way of his light. Even if it means giving up flying.

Sam slips his hand in yours, so warm and soft, his squeeze, a plea.

“Come with me.”

You’ve never met a person who lives like him.

You laugh, fondly. Sam Wilson is so earnest in almost everything he does.

“Can’t.”

So tempting. You remember now, how close those words once were to falling from your tongue. I love you. It seems pointless to say now, he’s leaving, you’re staying.

“Come on, don’t be a martyr.”

Like Riley, he says without ever needing to flex his vocal chords that way.

Morbid as it may be, you’d be glad to die like Riley. He always believed in the cause more than either of you. He was dumb and goofy, but he truly believed in it. All of it. You’ve never been so bound by an unearthly force like that-- religion, ideology, patriotism.

Must be nice, Riley mused, not having to answer to God. No, it really isn’t. It’s... lonely. You want to try your hand at it now. Might do you some good. You’re looking at another two years, or whenever your tour is up, alone now. Why not fuck around and find some higher power? God, the PJ creed, macaroni and chili MREs. You’ll figure it out.

“Eventually, it has to end. Right?” It’s his own words. You knew he never believed them. And neither do you now, really. “So I’ll see you then.”

Or in a pine box.

Ocean eyes are wet with his sorrow. You are so lovely. Love. He loves you. He thinks he might’ve loved you from the moment he first heard your velvet voice. Fuck off. So lovely. Sam kisses you, and the waves have come to drag you out to sea. If he could, he’d beg you to come home in his riptide.

Wherever that is.

2012.

A Goliath building with tall glass windows that turn sunbeams into rainbows with rows upon rows of fresh tulips surrounding. Brilliant yellows and oranges-- like poppy field sunsets in Afghanistan. In the center of the free world. So much meaning there now behind what it means to fight for freedom. No place knows it quite like this house of warriors. This is a place of healing. Of mending brains put in a blender, frozen in some eagle shaped mold, and then thawed out with guns in their hands and a burning vendetta to satisfy.

Sam Wilson is thirty-one now, and remains a man of routine.

He wakes to darkness. Unfolds himself from the tight ball he’d curled into at some point. On the floor. Again. Sam gives himself just five minutes to lay blinking at white walls painted 5 am blue, bleary eyed birds just starting up their morning songs.

And then he’s up. His teeth are brushed, sneakers laced up, keys thrown into the pocket of his shorts. Sam runs along the Potomac with the familiar soft pink aura of dawn crawling along the horizon. Around the Washington Monument, past the Lincoln Memorial, down Pennsylvania Ave.

He feels so small among those giant monoliths of the land of the free. Not purple mountain majesties, but the marble Hill.

Sometimes, he feels you and Riley running beside him, like all those years ago bright and early for 6 A.M. PT-- wearing ankle high socks, grey t-shirts with white wings splayed across the chest and those little navy shorts Riley complained crushed his balls.

God, he misses Riley.

He misses you too.

In college, Sam was a philosophy major of all things. He studied questions of human nature while picking up ‘cerebral chicks’.

A decade later, the questions he once pushed away have all come up again. It all seems so important now.

When he closes his eyes he sees your smile, yes, but he sees fire and smoke too. Like the rubble of the Twin Towers, his memories of war are shrouded in destruction.

Sartre said, Once you hear the details of victory, it is hard to distinguish it from defeat.

So much cost, tangible and not. Cities riddled with bullet holes and missile craters, conquered and hailed as a successful operation so long as it forces the Taliban back. Beautiful landscapes marred with IEDs and shrapnel which will make the Americans wish they never step foot in Afghanistan. Invisible things too, like a mass grave of men, women, and children-- some military, some civilian. Glass shards of minds, not broken, but cracked.

Sam is bleeding. Veterans are bleeding. Everyone is bleeding.

The puddle of blood and sweat at the bottom of that machine, fathomless.

He ends up in D.C., staring up at that Goliath building with the scent of fresh spring tulips in his nostrils-- Department of Veterans Affairs. He needs help and he needs to help. Post-traumatic stress disorder is such a big name, and he never fully understands his meeting. What he does know: sleeplessness, irritability, paranoia, numbness, waking nightmares.

Healing is a process, but Sam’s doing it now. Himself, through others.

Things are getting better.

He’ll never be completely whole, but the circle helps. ‘It’s a toss up which addicts anonymous circle he’ll end up in’, Riley joked. Sam laughs up at the sky, his dumbass friend was probably sporting a smug smirk wherever he is.

This morning Sam is chipper, today is a good day. He smiles wide at the girl at the front desk; she’s pretty and shy and always tucks her hair behind her ear when he’s flirting. Sam snags a classic glazed from the box of free donuts from Astro and it hangs from his mouth as he goes about setting up for a meeting. Unfolding chairs, he arranges them in a comforting position. In a circle, everyone is equal-- no one is alone or an outsider.

And then he waits with a welcoming smile as everyone filters in. Some are regulars and he’ll exchange ‘how are you’s. Some are new and uncomfortable so he gestures to an open chair and says ‘Welcome’ with that beach day grin. Soothing, calm, comforting.

Sam listens so well.

For as much as he likes to talk, listening is sometimes better. He only speaks when he’s sure they’re done and comfortable, offering what has helped him best.

Adjusting to civilian life is hard. No one expects how hard it truly is, because it’s never talked about it. They’re supposed to push themselves to the extremes of human experience and then come back as if any of that was normal. As if they didn’t just come from a war, that still persists. Even if by a different name, in a different place, against a different group, it persists. And no one ever tells them how hard it is to just sit there, surrounded by friends and family where you’re supposed to be happiest, and act like it’s not burning you from the inside out.

But it’s important to remember the good things too, he’ll tell them. When the dark shadow threatens to swallow them up whole, there is always light. It’s important to know that and make sure they stay separate.

Like Astro donuts and playing soul music all the time and showering without a dozen people next to you. And the freedom of getting to do whatever the hell they want.

Sam tells them, if it makes them happy: do it.

“You’ve made quite the reputation for yourself, Sam Wilson.”

He’s seeing you, looking just the same as the last. With that smile, that’s only his now-- nice and pretty, big and easy. You are beautiful, so beautiful Sam wonders how he’s survived so long without seeing it.

His own smile falters when his ocean eyes travel from your face.

You are exactly the same, except, you’re missing a few pieces.

Your left arm, which he expects to lead down to those calloused hands somehow impossibly soft, is cut off abruptly, cruelly, above the ghost of your elbow. The left hand, your dominant one, that he had known the comforting feel of on his shoulder, burning through the cloth of his uniform, gone. The hand that breathlessly trailed down his torso, tickling and seducing, leaving goosebumps in its wake, missing.

He’ll ask another time. You’ll tell him of more casualties of war, this one visible, and of others invisible.

But for now, he’s rushing at you, and it’s still not fast enough to quiet his screaming heart. He grabs you, doesn’t care if there are still people lingering from the end of the meeting, and really kisses you. And your right hand still finds its way to his torso.

I love you, breathless. It was never pointless to say.

No, the war is not over, maybe not even eventually, but you’re here in D.C. wrapped in his waves, alive.

He’ll never be completely whole, but you get him damn near close to it.

#sam wilson #the falcon x reader #sam wilson x reader #falcon #marvel #fanfiction #reader insert #one shot

51 notes · View notes

harryandmolly · 5 years

Text

Complicit // 12

summary: Shawn is under more pressure than he’s ever known. He craves release and comfort, the simplicity of sex. He gets more than he bargained for.

warnings: language, NSFW (unprotected sex), the girl from Ipanema

WC: 8.2k

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Shawn bobs his head and chews at his lip. His smile is anxious, despite the elated, conspiratorial expressions on everyone else in the room. They know very well they have a hit on their hands. They’re too distracted by their own excitement to notice that the man who gave it to them isn’t all there.

Shawn finished Mia’s song when he got home from the premiere that night. The next day, without having slept a wink, he called the team to the studio. They didn’t change a single word or note before recording it. Teddy told him it’s the best song he’s ever written. Shawn thinks, for once, he didn’t need to hear it from someone else.

Shawn plows ahead, fixated on the idea of using the single as a surprise pre-album drop to boost even more interest. It has radio hit written all over it. He wants it out before the end of the summer. His label and Andrew came back to him with a new idea.

The song would make a gorgeous duet, they tell him. Bex is riding high on her album sales; featuring her on the single would be great for them both, the perfect crescendo. They could push back their breakup, originally planned for the end of August, to after Shawn’s album releases in September to capitalize on the public interest.

He readily agrees. Honestly, it’s a great idea. Bex’s vocals would be the perfect addition to the track. Releasing a single together now after going official for the first time on a red carpet at the premiere makes sense. It’s a solid strategy.

Shawn is vibrating in place as he listens to Bex’s isolated vocals that she recorded while rehearsing for her fall tour in London. They’re ready to be mixed with his. He knows he should be excited. This is going to work. It’s going to be the thing that pushes this summer over the top and makes every awkwardly photographed kiss, every instance of sneaking out of a hotel room in a cab so it looks like they stayed the night together, every night spent away from the woman he loves, all worth it.

But it doesn’t completely overshadow the fact that he’s releasing the song he wrote for said woman with his fake PR girlfriend.

Shawn drops his head into his hands and closes his eyes to focus. After a few minor tweaks, her vocals are perfect. To be fair, if he had to share this song with anyone, he would choose Bex. She’s an incredible artist and vocalist and he’s honored to share a track with her. But when he thinks about Mia turning on the radio in her Passat on the way to pilates with Silver, hearing it for the first time stuck in traffic on La Brea, he feels a little sick.

When the track ends, he sits up and pastes on a proud smile. Teddy glances at him. The rest of the eyes in the room follow. After a moment, he nods.

“It’s ready to cut. When can I hear a mix?”

Since the single would debut too close to the voting deadline for the MTV VMAs to qualify for awards, they decided to premiere the song live as the show opener instead. It’s a bold idea and probably would fall flat if not for all the “Shex” shippers that ravenously await any documentation of their relationship, but since they’re still the hottest couple of the summer, it’s just crazy enough to work.

At least, this is what Mia infers based on her knowledge of the situation and the fact that Shawn never mentioned he was working on something new. She figures compartmentalizing around her made sense.

Mia watches the VMAs with Peter on FaceTime. He took the night off from FaceTiming with Xander the TA and generously offered to bash the hell out of Bex’s red carpet and show looks if it would help, even though he knew it wouldn’t. Mia turned him down. He’s glad she did. Bex looks incredible and it would be hard to pretend she didn’t come to slay.

Shawn glows in a sharp white suit that Peter jokes must’ve been nicked from Silver’s closet. He looks tan and healthy and excited and he’s still doing his prayer hands and peace signs on the red carpet so for all that’s changed in the past few months, at least that hasn’t. Bex is in a gold minidress to complement him. They look like modern Greek deities. Peter mercifully decides not to comment.

She and Peter talk over the rest of the red carpet coverage with the exception of the stunned silence they fall into when Sophie Turner and Joe Jonas arrive.

“I still can’t believe you’ve had sex with her. She’s the one woman on the planet I’d bone,” Peter whispers reverently into the phone.

Mia relives the night in a welcome flash and hums through a smug grin. “I’m a lucky girl.”

She feels lucky right up until the spotlight falls on Shawn at the piano and he starts singing a song about a woman who makes him feel free, joined by the woman that represents everything that traps him.

The headlines haunt her. “So in love,” they extol, “You can see it in every moment of their performance.”

Song of the Summer! Shawn Mendes and Bex Debut New Duet Single at the VMAs

Bex and Shawn Mendes STUN With New Single in VMAs Show Opener

“Fuck off!” Mia shouts at her phone, not safe even from her Instagram explore page these days. She flings it on the bed and watches it bounce, hoping for a rash moment that it’ll take a dive off her mountain of pillows that still smell like him if she squints, and smash against the floor. It would save her from herself.

It’s not like she believes the headlines, obviously. It’s the mix of everything that’s come along with the song and her self-imposed exile from him that’s getting at her.

It’s been a few weeks since she ditched her secret identity and only hours later asked him to leave. She’s been feeling twitchy. She’d love to blame it on the lack of dates she’s had recently, contributing to the lack of sufficient orgasms, but even she can’t kid herself on that front.

But the quiet hasn’t helped. August is always slow. Clients go on family vacations, not the kind they invite their domme to. She usually spends August in Italy with Peter, but he’s taking classes over the summer semester and is cozied up to his TA, so she and Pammy stare at each other for most of the day and eat Rice Krispies.

Despite her twitchiness, the idea of reaching out to Shawn still feels too much, too soon. She doesn’t want to call him again until she’s decided definitively how to move forward. Or if there’s anywhere to go at all.

Thank god she has Julia.

While many of her clients get busier in the summer with families or trips, Julia’s hefty international travel slows down in the summer, allowing her to hole up like she likes in her $50 million Bel Air mansion.

Tonight, she’s coming out of her extremely luxurious cave and is inviting Mia with her for a rare outing. Despite the fact that Julia is openly gay, the media still doesn’t take an interest in any women she’s publicly photographed with, merely captioning them as Julia Granger and “female friend.”

The event in question is the LA Children Foundation’s annual silent auction. Julia knows Mia also appreciates the work LACF does and supports it financially, and so she invited her along. Mia, eager for company without a tail to wag, spends a full two hours thumbing through her outrageously large closet until she decides on a sky blue off-the-shoulder cocktail dress.

She forgoes the Frank and Ava necklace, just for now. She decides it’s too heavy for the occasion (in more than one way).

Strangers in the Night plays on vinyl. She swipes on Julia’s favorite deeply burgundy lipstick, knowing it’ll have her staring at her lips all night, which happens to be exactly what the doctor ordered on a night like this when Mia is so scattered she can barely pick out her shoes.

Gus stands in the doorway of the bathroom tonight, watching her with an odd sort of guarded affection, like he’s afraid if he doesn’t share his fatherly smile with her at all times, she’ll break down. She must look about as fragile as she feels. She resolves to buck up in the car so as not to let it affect her night with Julia. Gus plays a Dean Martin Spotify playlist and sings along to “That’s Amore.” She giggles and tries to harmonize.

Julia’s assistant Gracie is neat as a pin, waiting for her in the valet lane. Her legs are locked at the ankle and lengthened by a pair of Manolos Mia is sure Julia got her the last time they went to visit the flagship store in Chelsea. Her grin is wide and looks stuck on her face. Maybe her stranglingly tight ponytail is holding it in place. Mia dips her head and airkisses her cheek.

Gracie rattles on, prepping Mia for her boss’s mood. She had an irritating call from partners in Milan that had her on edge. Gracie’s been plying her with champagne for the last half hour since the start of cocktails. Mia nods patiently, wondering when and if Julia will realize how madly in love Gracie is with her. Maybe if Gracie ever decides to let the ponytail down and make Julia obey her for once, they can get somewhere.

Julia stands surrounded by a group of men in dark suits at the top of the stairs. Her hair is crimson and lying in soft waves down her back rather than up in the French twist she usually sports. It’s set off by her emerald cocktail dress and stunningly high black patent leather Brian Atwoods.

Mia squares her shoulders and waits patiently, with Gracie standing just behind, arms meekly crossed over her front. Julia seems to feel her presence. She turns her head, the chandelier of the hotel ballroom backlighting her aristocratic profile. Her voice trails off and her smile spreads slow and sweet.

“Gentlemen, that’s enough shop talk. My guest has arrived.”

They fall away. Their curious glances are quickly forgotten. Julia turns to face Mia as she strolls toward her, looking her up and down a little hungrily.

“You look lovely,” Julia breathes. They don’t touch, but the moment is charged and intimate even without a brush of fingers or lips.

“Thank you,” Mia replies, a little hollow in its smoothness. Behind her, Gracie falls away with a sad smile.

Julia guides Mia around the perimeter of the pre-auction cocktail hour. They drink champagne with strawberries and whisper-giggle gossip updates about the characters they see at these events. Julia tells her about the affairs, the divorces, the bankruptcies and scandals that get trampled beneath the expensive footwear of the well-to-do, never to make it to the gossip columns. Some secrets are worth the price it takes to bury them.

The ballroom is sumptuously decorated, hung with lavish velvet drapings and glittering with dozens of chandeliers. Under her breath, Julia quietly mutters her distaste for the opulence of it, the tired tradition of spending as much on a fundraiser as what ends up being made from it. She voices her pledge to donate at least half as much as was spent on the elegant trappings, but is interrupted by a sparkling, loud laugh from beside one of the auction tables. Julia’s and Mia’s heads lift at the same time.

Bex appears taller in person, like she’s all leg. She’s in a glamorous red halter dress with a high bejeweled neckline and an alluring but still somehow appropriate slit up her thigh. Her hair is pinned up to show off her smooth back and the swallow-emblazoned hand that rests at the base of it.

He’s grinning at Bex as genuinely as Mia’s ever seen him. He’s in a dark green suit that makes his eyes look lighter, chestnutty even from fifteen feet away. His hand rests against her skin, unmoving but comfortably low. Mia studies it, waiting to see if his thumb caresses her in a silent, private hello. It remains there until he can feel her gaze. He looks up. His smile drops. Mia turns away.

She can see Julia is speaking to her, watches her smooth, rosy lips as they move, but she can’t hear. She tries to tuck hair behind her ear and lean in, blindly searching for focus, but it doesn’t help. She’s gone fucking numb.

Julia smiles a little nervously and tucks a hand around the side of Mia’s neck in a rarely public tender gesture. Mia blinks quickly and steps closer, pressing her hand into Julia’s hip.

“I’m here, I’m sorry,” Mia murmurs, dropping her eyes guiltily.

Julia doesn’t speak, just thumbs at the Van Cleef sapphire drop earring hanging from Mia’s ear and guides them through the loop of auction tables.

Shawn feels dazed. He can’t imagine how he even walked into a room without feeling her there. He feels like a once carefully tuned sensor in him is broken. Maybe it’s because even as he watches her from afar, he can see she’s not fully there.

Bex subs in for the rest of their inane conversation after he checks out to stare at her. She’s with Julia Granger, undoubtedly the second-most powerful woman in the room. To Shawn, Mia still ranks above her.

She looks a little… lost. Shawn’s never seen her look so out of place. Physically, of course, she blends right in the way a good courtesan should -- not overdressed, not under, not too loud, not too quiet, the perfect date. There’s something radiating anxiety from inside her. He wants nothing more than to cup her pretty face in his hands and make it go away.

He holds on to Bex a little tighter and laughs politely when he’s supposed to. He tries not to look at the escort formerly known as Penny for the rest of the night.

The driver doesn’t open the door for Mia right away when they park under the entryway of Julia’s palatial home. Mia glances at Julia, who’s smiling back warmly. She takes Mia’s hand and holds it in her lap.

“Was bound to happen sometime, I think,” Julia muses in a voice that sounds so much like Silver’s, Mia almost shivers.

“Hmm?” she croaks.

“I imagine your job to be one of the most dangerous I can think of. The truth is, you’re always operating right on the edge of love with every client. I’ve been with you long enough to feel it. It’s what makes you so excellent at what you do.”

She doesn’t look or sound remotely upset or disappointed, just resigned and, somehow, hopeful. She traces the lines of Mia’s palm, watching her muscles flutter with a wistful smile.

Mia’s lips are parted. It’s not often she’s blindsided by a client, especially Julia. She can read Julia like a fucking book; it’s the reason Julia’s always valued her so highly.

“So it makes sense, I think, that you fell over the edge with someone. Honestly, it’s amazing it’s never happened before. But that’s what makes you so fucking good at this job. You were able to put in so much of yourself, but never too much. Not until you met him.”

Mia squirms uncomfortably. Julia looks up from her palm and closes her hands around it. She lifts it to her lips.

“You must be so scared,” Julia breathes, shaking her head, “This changes everything for you.”

Mia’s eyes prick with tears, seemingly out of nowhere. She balks. Flight instincts flare hard in her gut and pump through her weary veins.

“Julia, I--”

“I don’t demand an explanation. That’s never how this was going to work with us. You may be one of my closest friends, but I was never one of yours. That’s ok. That’s what this is supposed to be. You’ve given me everything I needed when I needed it, and I’ll always love you for that, Penny. You’re a marvel of a human being and I’m honored to have experienced you. I hope you know I’d do anything for you at any time. I also hope, maybe someday, that we can be friends.”

Mia breathes through a sob. She claps her free hand over her mouth and struggles to regain some kind of footing. It’s a free fall and Julia is watching and waving.

Julia releases her hand at the exact moment her driver opens her door. She pauses for a moment, watching Mia scramble in a way she’s never seen.

“Can I kiss you?” she murmurs. Mia hesitates, then nods.

The kiss is soft and lingering, one of a million, but one in a million. When they pull away, Mia can breathe again.

“Aleksandr will take you home, he just needs your address. I meant what I said, Penny. Anything you need, ever.”

With one last heartbreakingly beautiful smile, Julia lets Aleksandr help her out of the car. Mia watches her walk away. She cries all the way home.

It’s just past dawn. All of Los Angeles is a shade of blue. The Studio City hills are a deep, earthy teal against the powder sky. The simmering palms tickled by the morning breeze around Mia’s back patio are cobalt. Even the wind itself is blue. To complement it all, she’s in an ice blue satin slip, padding around barefoot, counting her steps while she waits for an appropriate time to call.

5:43 AM is hardly an appropriate time to be doing anything but sleeping, but she’s almost sick with anticipation, so she hits the call button and waits. She knows she won’t get his voicemail. She just knows.

“Hey,” he pants groggily.

“Are you alone?”

She hears herself ask and frowns, unsure where it came from. He makes an aggravated chuckling sound.

“Yes, yeah, I’m alone.”

“Ok,” she whispers, propping herself up against the pollen-coated patio table. The silty feeling of it beneath her fingers is somehow calming, or maybe it’s the sound of his breathing as it slows.

“Mia?” he murmurs after a few moments.

Her brow furrows. She’s not used to the name anymore, and definitely not from him. If she were a shred more desperate, she’d ask him to say it again and again until she could play it in her head the way she can play “It Was A Very Good Year.”

“I’m here.”

He goes quiet. She doesn’t mind. Knowing he’s there is enough.

“Did… you bid on anything at that auction?”

His question takes her by surprise. She snorts and shakes her head.

“No. Julia did, she won a week at a spa in the Berkshires. She’s giving it to her assistant Gracie as a perk.”

She can hear him smile gracefully when he says, “That’s nice.”

The silence is as dense as the blue at the bottom of the canyon below her. She’d gladly swim in it if it meant more time. She’s beginning to think this phone call was unfair. She still has nothing to say to him. She can barely form words.

He sighs. “I miss you so fucking much.”

Mia squeezes her eyes shut. He always gives her what she needs.

“We can fix that.”

His pause is charged and hopeful. His voice sounds a little brighter, more awake when he speaks again.

“I have… kind of a crazy idea if you’re up for it.”

“Those are usually my favorite kind.”

After all that blue, Mia embraces the color.

It seems all of Rio de Janeiro is color. It’s vibrant even from several thousand feet as she descends through the clouds in her first class cabin after a 16 hour journey from Los Angeles.

She got on the plane only a few hours after she accepted Shawn’s invitation to join him for his final festival of the summer. He’s set to headline the third night of Rock in Rio in front of some 80,000 people. It’s the biggest show of his career so far. And he wants her there for him. She didn’t even hesitate.

She speed-packed every sundress, bikini and pair of sandals she could find in fifteen minutes and frantically called Gus for a ride to the airport. Pammy came along in the car, destined for another visit with Gus and his family for a few days while Mia jetsets.

Shawn sends a car to pick her up. She cruises along the crystalline blue water, past craggy mountain peaks and through bright pastel favelas filled with life and food and music. The violent swing from her quiet Mia life to Penny’s vibrant one is more jarring than usual. She blames the long flight hangover for her unsettled state. But there’s no time to settle. She’s being whisked straight to the team’s rented villa in São Conrado to freshen up before heading to the venue.

It’s sunset as they wind up the mountains of Joatinga and Mia wonders how they’ll ever reach the top. They ascend through a sparsely populated neighborhood of chic, modern villas until they reach a cobblestone drive spiked with weeds that leads to the top of the hill. The villa at first glance is modest, flat-roofed and lined with lush tropical plants. The inside is sprawling, 8 bedrooms, eclectically furnished and decorated, with an infinity pool that seems to spill over the cliff and down onto Pepino Beach. She wants to wander, but the driver tells her they need to leave for the venue in 45 minutes.

Loud is the language of Brazilian nightlife, so she appears back in the foyer in a gauzy mustard yellow minidress and her clunky red platforms, shimmering as she walks with bangles up her arm and strings of beads around her neck.

Back down the mountain they go, descending from the balancing quiet to the screech of chaos that is Rock in Rio. Shawn has been at the Cidade do Rock since early afternoon. She can only imagine that he’s a spiky bundle of nerves sitting in the dressing room now. Her heart rate quickens as they draw closer through the maze of traffic to the artist and guest entrance. She recognizes all of a sudden that she might be as nervous as he is.

She’s escorted through security and the waves of people milling around deep in the bowels of the venue. She can feel the many, many thousands of people outside at the stage. The walls vibrate with their energy and their noise. The show is between acts -- another artist is next before Shawn’s headlining set. Mia doesn’t know who. She doesn’t even know if she’ll see him before he goes on.

Her escort pauses to take a phone call. She stands behind him, towering over him in her tall shoes, feeling more like a first time prostitute than when she was one. She tucks her arms behind her to hide her fiddling fingers. Her stomach swoops hard when the unthinkably large crowd cheers for something she can’t see. Mia swears her brain is about to short circuit when her guide leads her to a door, knocks, and positions her in front of it. He starts to walk away. She struggles with her Portuguese to protest, but the door swings open.

“Thank god,” Shawn breathes, yanking her inside by her awkwardly outstretched hand. When the door shuts behind them, the sound of festival chaos is mercifully muffled.

His eyes are darting, his hair is bouncy and free of paste, he’s sweating through a white t-shirt and wetting his lips. The piece of her she needs right now falls into place. She steps into him and tucks her warm hands around his clammy neck.

“There he is,” she whispers, resting her forehead against his. The breath he shakily releases against her lips smells like wintergreen. He drops his hands to her hips, his thumbs rubbing into the light floss of her dress’s material.

Mia’s eyes are closed. Her smile is perfectly tranquil as her heartbeat finally slows to normal. She plucks at some curls against his neck with her fingers.

“Are you bricking it?”

He chuckles and she likes the way his throat vibrates against her palms and through her whole body. His nose bumps hers.

“Completely.”

She nods, not enough to dislodge where they’re connected. She brushes the tip of her freckled nose against his until she can hear him smile. She pulls away to look at him.

He already looks slightly less manic than he did when she walked in. She’s helping. It’s as calming to her as it is to him. To Mia, there’s no drug like being able to relax someone.

“What are you doing in here all by yourself?” she murmurs, guiding him by the hand to the overstuffed couch. They sit together easily, like their last few encounters are a distant memory, like it’s late June again. Shawn curls an arm around her, she slips a leg over his and lets his hand wander up and down her slightly stubbly calf.

“I’m supposed to be meditating,” he grunts, “And… I wanted time with you when you got here. Alone. Not-- like, I mean, you know, just to see you, not-- I mean, not to just--”

“Hey, I know,” Mia soothes with a gentle smile. She read on him when she walked in that he doesn’t want to be fucked right now, he wants to be held. So that’s what she’ll do.

His shoulders relax a little when he sees the understanding on her face. She massages the guitar tattoo on his forearm and lets him press his nose into her hair.

“Also, I didn’t exactly tell anyone I invited you.”

Mia’s brows raise. Shawn slowly raises his head to look at her sheepishly.

“Interesting choice,” Mia hums, waiting for an explanation.

He wets his lips. “It happened really fast. I had the idea when we got out here but I didn’t know if you were going to call, but then you did and I just said it because I wanted you here, I need you here with me so badly, especially tonight. And I know all the stuff with Bex is still happening, with the single and everything it’s an even bigger deal than before and I knew Andrew wasn’t going to like it even if I just said you’re my friend, he’s really conscious of the image shit right now so I just decided to keep you… a surprise.”

Mia decides for now not to comment on the single and the “Bex stuff.” Instead she nods gamely and tucks her face into his neck for a kiss. The goosebumps she missed on him flare hot. He hums and cuddles her a little closer.

“Thank you so much, Mia,” he breathes, tangling his fingers in the ends of her salt-sprayed hair. She lifts her head to regard him. His sincerity makes her ache.

Mia sighs, like it’s all just inevitable, and she supposes it is, at least tonight. She pulls one hand up from the back of his neck into his silky hair and holds him fast for a kiss.

She starts slow, relearning the curve of his soft mouth and the way his pulse quickens under her fingers when she touches him like this. She listens for the little throaty noise of pleasure from his chest and continues a little deeper, massaging his scalp as she explores well-documented territory with her mouth and hands until they’re both gasping and grasping, high on it.

A knock at the door interrupts them. Mia sits back with her eyes wide and her lips swollen. Shawn wipes his mouth and clears his throat.

“Yeah?”

Andrew pops his head in. His expression changes from neutral to utter bafflement so fast Mia almost laughs.

“Wh--”

“Andrew, you remember Mia, right? You met at the 4th of July party.”

Shawn says it with such confidence that Mia and Andrew both stare at him in shock. Shawn doesn’t seem to care at all that Mia was introduced under a different name then, and left the party under disreputable circumstances after leaving him with a litter of hickeys up his neck, to Andrew’s horror.

Andrew blinks. “What’s… going on?”

Shawn stands and takes Mia’s hand. She gapes, but rises and follows as he heads for the door Andrew’s standing in.

“Don’t worry, we’ll stay out of sight. This doesn’t have to be a huge deal.”

Andrew’s face says otherwise. Mia schools her expression to what she hopes is a casual one and follows Shawn out the door.

The rest of the team is clearly confused by her appearance but no one bothers to question it, especially given how much calmer their leader seems in her presence. Zubin offers Mia a caipirinha while Tiff gets Shawn into his chelsea boots, black jeans and silky crimson sleeveless button-up.

Mia is energized by the big group send off to the stage. Shawn keeps her close as they make their way through the maze of doors and corridors to the side of the stage, past curious gazes and busy stagehands. It’s the first time Mia actually gets a look at it. She gapes at the size of the crowd.

It’s what can only be described as a sea of people. Hell, it’s a sea of people that probably extends right out to the sea. She presses a hand to her chest in astonishment. Shawn takes the other in his.

“Hey,” he nearly yells, “About the song. You… you know I wrote it for you, right?”

Mia hesitates, then nods.

“I know it’s probably weird that I had Bex sing on the track,” he calls back. Mia winces. This is such an odd time for this conversation. He seems to see the thought on her face.

“No, listen. I just need you to know just because I sang it with her doesn’t make it any less yours. It’s for you, Mia. Every time, it’s always just for you.”

A guitar tech hands off the Stratocaster. He strings it over his shoulder and scoops her in by the side of her neck for a bruising kiss, hidden from the world but blatant and obvious in front of his whole dumbstruck team.

He pulls away with a smirk like she’s never seen before. For a moment, she’s paralyzed with the certainty of the notion that she’s about to see something unlike anything she’s ever seen before.

He climbs up from the bottom of the stage. The sea of people releases a volcanic noise. Mia covers her nose and mouth, watching him stride up to the microphone and cry a greeting into it. Somehow, the crowd noise gets even fucking louder. She stares in awe as he reaches for a guitar pick off the mic stand and starts playing her song.

She thinks she knows why she’s felt so off her own feet and out of her own head now. It makes sense in that weird, nonsensical, cosmic vibrational way. The uncertainty and the dazedness of the last few days has been leading her to a truth she can’t avoid anymore, the ultimate imbalance.

Mia is so fucking in love with Shawn.

Maybe it was spending an evening watching him be the purest, most distilled version of himself in front of 80,000 ravenous fans that made her realize they could only hope to love him as much as she does. Because it feels so obvious now. Irreversible, even. This is it.

This is the end.

He comes off stage grinning wildly, all gleaming teeth and glistening sweat as he takes her willing body into his arms and swings her into another all-consuming kiss. She laughs into his mouth. He revels in it.

The reveling continues into the cars. There’s a whole line of SUVs queued up outside the venue, most of which are heading into the city in search of nightlife. One, however, per Shawn’s request, is taking them back up into the mountains to the villa. Andrew shades them with a wary look but otherwise drops it. Better that they tuck themselves away in their private nest than be seen “canoodling” in a Brazilian nightclub anyway.

The reveling ends in the car. Mia and Shawn are the only ones heading back early, even though it’s nearly 2am. It’s almost eerily quiet. They cling to each other like there’s some kind of invisible threat nearby looking to drag them apart. Shawn keeps a hand running through Mia’s sweaty hair while she sits practically in his lap, trailing single wet kisses along his cheek and jaw, tastes of what they can have more of when they’re finally really alone.

The driver stays in the driveway until Shawn locks the front door behind them. Mia stares out through the open floor plan to the infinity pool, lit from within. The city glows beneath them, far below until it meets the ocean. Mia thinks it’s appropriate that they’re on the edge of something.

Shawn wanders up behind her, the clack of his boots deafening against the hardwood in the silent villa. His hands are gentle on her hips. His nose skims her jugular. He holds his breath.

“What do you want, baby?” she murmurs, glancing around them, “The pool? Or maybe the window?”

This house is insane -- she has no shortage of ideas for locations.

Shawn releases the breath low and slow against her neck. Her entire body goes stiff and goosebumped. He plants a kiss at the juncture of her neck and shoulder.

“Want you in the bed. Please.”

Mia mashes her lips together and sighs through her nose. She supposes if she’s going to let herself have this with him, it may as well be all the way. She lifts her hand to cradle his head as he nuzzles her.

“Ok. Take me.”

Shawn smiles into her neck. He turns her by the hips and slowly lowers to one knee. Mia is about to question him when she realizes he’s working the buckle on her left shoe and kissing the inside of her thigh. She smiles and combs through his sweet smelling post-show shower hair. He switches legs and muffles a little groan into her skin when she tugs at him impatiently. He leaves her shoes sitting by the sofa and stands, lifting her legs around his hips as he does. She goes easily, swinging her arms around him with a whimper as he leads her toward his bedroom.

It’s vast and mostly empty with one long floor to ceiling window against the far wall opening up over the cliff. The enormous bed sits in the center of the room. Shawn takes her there, bracing himself on a knee as he lowers her into its cushiony softness without letting up on her lips. Mia holds him down with her, but it doesn’t matter, he wasn’t going anywhere anyway.

There’s something in the way they move together tonight. It’s as hot and slow and lazy as the humidity in the tropical trees outside the window. Instead of tugging at the straps of her dress, Shawn plants kisses over them, teases the skin beneath before reaching back up for another taste of her mouth. Instead of pushing at his jeans, Mia slides her hands up the back of his shirt, enjoying the way he gasps into her mouth.

They’re taking what they’ve always wanted but been afraid to ask for. They’re reaching past comfortability and familiarity into true intimacy. It makes Mia’s arm hair stand on end like from a static charge. She dives deeper, deciding she may as well drown in it.

She slows the kiss he’s working on, pointing her toes and dragging them up the back of his leg. He whines sweetly into her mouth, making her smile.

“You taste good, Shawn,” she tells him, voice all warm gravel. He smiles into her lips and kisses the corner of her mouth.

“What do I taste like?”

Mia sucks him back in with a hum to decide. “Wintergreen.” She takes another taste. “Honey.” And another. “And a little bit of bourbon.” She nips at his lower lip. He laughs and lifts his hand to cradle her jaw, running his thumb against her lower lip.

He bites his lip, watching her press kisses to the bad of his finger when a few weeks ago she would’ve sucked on it until she demanded he drop his pants so she could suck on something else. But it’s different tonight. He molds his mouth back against hers so he doesn’t say something fucking stupid like you taste like forever.

Slowly, Shawn works Mia’s dress up her stubbly thighs, letting his fingers stretch and wander the patterns of freckles and stretchmarks in her skin. He admires the soft cushion around her hips and tummy and the swell of her ass. He gives it a teasing squeeze and she bites his lip.

“Take it off, Shawn.”

He doesn’t need to be told twice. He rolls her on top of him and shimmies her out of her pretty dress. He doesn’t have time to look her over before she descends on his neck, running her nose and mouth over all the places she likes to leave marks.

“Please, honey. Wanna see it. How much you want me,” he croaks.

Mia breathes him in slowly, savoring. She reaches for one of his hands off her hip and intertwines their fingers against the bed. Watching his fingers caress hers, she swipes her tongue just below his ear, where his skin is the very softest, like velvet. At his intake of breath, she nips and sucks, easing into a rhythm that she matches with the slow grinding of her hips.

“Jesus, Mia. Baby, you’re incredible.”

The name. She still can’t get used to him using her real name. She bites him a little too hard and winces when he stiffens. She apologizes with a hum and wet kiss until he tilts his head needily to find her lips again.

“Fucking love kissing you,” he breathes, snagging her lower lip between his teeth again with a little smile, groaning as her hips find his again.

Mia knows she has to get him naked soon or she’ll have them both coming in their damn underwear. She doesn’t want that rushed foolishness tonight. Not tonight, not like this. She wraps an arm around him, wriggling it between his broad back and the mattress, and pulls him over her. He hovers on a knee, still lost in kissing her. She slides a hand up his chest and pushes him up gently, sitting up with him as he straddles her thighs.

Mia lifts the hem of his shirt up until he takes over, stretching his enormous arms over his head as he sheds his shirt behind them. His arms drop and start to reach for her. She leans in with a soft moan, eyes fluttering shut as she buries her face in his chest. Shawn pauses, cupping the back of her head.

“Mi--”

He cuts himself off when she starts to plant kisses all over his chest, her hands wandering his sides and back as she pleases. He loves it when she takes what she wants, especially when it’s his to give. His big fingers massage her scalp softly, marveling at the way she mewls against his skin like she missed it. He tilts his cheek against the top of her head. He knows the feeling.

Mia doesn’t want to let go. He’s perched in her lap, holding her as she clings to him, patiently enjoying her tender exploration of his chest despite how hard she can feel he is in his jeans. With a shuddering breath, she pulls back to look at him. He smiles warmly and tucks some hair behind her ear.

“Wasn’t sure I’d get this with you again.”

Her eyes drift shut. She noses at his chin. He sighs happily, helping lower her beneath him again so she’s beautifully surrounded by him. He presses his lips to her cheek and breathes with her, watching her fingers trail up and down his arms.

“About tonight,” she rasps, clearing her throat and licking her lips, avoiding his big, pleading eyes, “You… I’ve never seen anything like that before. I’ve never experienced a performance like that. I don’t know if you know how good you are, but I need you to know that I think you’re fucking incredible.”

Her eyes are wide and earnest. Shawn wants to freeze this moment and bathe in its easy perfection.

She thinks he’s incredible.

“I think I was better for you,” he tells her honestly. Mia keens, pulling him down by his hips. He’s still wearing too many clothes.

With difficulty, they shuck him out of his jeans horizontally and with their lips mostly attached. He slips a hand behind her back to unclasp her strapless bra so it falls away with the rest. Her panties and his briefs follow.

Their nakedness is familiar but their closeness is new and sweet and scary. He lets himself kiss her until his head feels close to bursting from oxygen deprivation, she traces little patterns against the broadness of his back that make him smile against her mouth.

Mia thinks, maybe, they might be making love. She’s not sure, she’s never tried it. She hopes it’s this good.

His cock brushes her thigh and he huffs, squirming against her. She runs the hand down his back to his ass, giving it a squeeze.

“You’re still my good boy, right?” she pants, breathless. Shawn groans, nodding weakly.

“Always.”

He releases her swollen lips with a pop. His eyes are bright, free of the glaze she often sees in them when they’re fucking. They’re fixed on her like if he watches long enough maybe he’ll get to see inside. Mia resists the harsh tang of panic in the back of her throat and breathes through it, letting him look at her.

The mood shifts palpably. Where there was lightness and teasing there’s now this gaze between them that feels so charged and vital, it’s like they’ve never seen each other before. Shawn is the first to break it, looking down at her body worshipfully, eyes going heavy as he drops onto his elbows to pray.

The tip of his nose is warm against her collarbone. His lips follow, just a brush at first, followed by wet, almost pleading kisses. He sweeps out toward her shoulder, then back down. He leans on to one arm, not content to worship only with his mouth. His fingers skate down to the curve of her hip, dipping in around the cut of her hip bone to toy with the tender skin just above the soft patch of hair between her thighs.

Mia is awestruck. Her body has been many things -- whipping post, object of desire, receptacle, but never an altar. He’s careful with her now in a way that doesn’t express his fear or curiosity, but rather deep respect and admiration. He knows what her body can do, maybe better than anyone. And he knows exactly how to venerate it.

He lowers his head further, focusing on the velvety insides of her breasts. He mouths at them, tasting, not devouring. His fingers, still occupied exploring undervalued territory, fall a little further down and right into the juncture of her thigh and pelvis. The skin is thin and sensitive, making her gasp with each light brush of his thumb.

The next time he travels down it’s to the skin just below her navel and his fingers are brushing her swollen wet lips and she can’t fucking breathe and --

“Shawn,” she hears herself gasp. He looks up, startled.

“Please,” she pleads, “Please, I can’t-- I need you. I need to feel you, please, I need you inside me. I can’t wait anymore.”

Her voice is pitchy and strained, unfamiliar. Shawn leaves one final tender kiss on her abdomen and crawls back up her body. His hands are on either side of her head, her hair splayed out around them. She already has her hands all over him, occupying her nervous energy while he takes time watching her again.

“Ok,” he breathes, nodding slightly, “Yeah, honey. I’ll give you whatever you need.”

Without thinking, he drops his lips to her forehead. Her busy hands pause on his body. Her harried breathing softens. The desperation isn’t so desperate anymore. They both slow, becoming present.

When Shawn looks down at her again, she’s smiling warmly, spreading her thighs for him to settle between. He matches her expression, cupping the back of her head while his other hand wanders up and down her thigh.

“Are you ready for me?” he asks. It feels heavier than it shoulder.

Mia nods, draping her arms around his neck. She waits for him to come to her rather than pinning him down and taking. Shawn reaches down between them and lines up the head of his cock with her entrance. His forehead falls to hers. He presses in.

Mia squirms slightly with the comfortable stretch, getting used to the feel of him again, the fullness and total satisfaction of it. Shawn hums, gloved in her gorgeous wet warmth. Neither of them moves for a good full minute, instead breathing and kissing whatever they can reach. When Shawn shifts his hips, Mia’s responding mewl has his whole body on fire.

Her arms hang weak for once around him, letting him give and take. He starts deliciously slow, rolling his hips to grind into her, avoiding the angle that gets her mouthy and desperate, at least for now. Mia thinks in all the time they’ve been sleeping together this might actually be their first time in true missionary position. She thinks she really likes it.

His breath starts to come harder as his hips move faster. Mia’s syncs up with it, eyes snapping shut when she hears the slick squelch of her body’s reaction to his ministrations. She feels a brush of fingers against her cheek. When she opens her eyes, Shawn is there.

He’s fucking beautiful. His cheeks are ruddy with the effort, his curls drying soft and frizzy as they bounce. His lips are red and swollen from all her attention. She’s never seen him look quite as gorgeous as he does right now. A noise from her throat has him groaning and lifting her leg up to hitch over his hip, reaching deeper.

“Oh Jesus, Shawn,” Mia whines, her back arching slightly. He pants, nodding as he holds her even closer, enthralled by the way her arms tighten around his shoulders.

She trembles hard in his arms, clinging to this plane, the one that has her so deep in this with him she’ll never find her way out again. She scrabbles at his shoulders, nearly feral. Her toes curl, her body riots. She needs to come.

“I don’t… I’m not ready to let go,” she squeaks, all vulnerability. Shawn lifts his head from her neck. His jaw is set but his eyes are wide open and soft.

“Doesn’t have to be over yet. C’mon, sweetheart. Please come for me.”

Tangled in his sheets with the humid South American air coming in through the window, Mia lets go in spectacular fashion, thrashing beneath his able, willing body, nails digging into his back and neck, lips nipping and pressing all over his firm jaw as he groans through it.

When her body relaxes, Shawn inhales sharply and lifts her. Mia gasps, clinging to his shoulders as he settles on his knees, keeping her in his lap, still rocking his hips evenly. Slowly, she joins him, looping an arm around his neck and the other under his arm. She lays her cheek against his and lets his staggering heartbeat dictate the rhythm of their hips. From this angle, his pelvis bumps her clit with every precious rock of their hips.

“Yes, yes,” she chants wetly into his damp skin, eagerly pressing back into his hands on her ass as they keep her pace. They rock tighter, faster.

“Look at me,” he begs, nudging her with his cheek, pulling back slightly.

“I love watching you come,” he tells her, knowing from the cadence of her strokes and the pulsing of her pussy that she’s about to come again.

“Come with me,” she insists, fisting a hand in his hair. The tug is almost enough to make him lose it early.

Shawn grinds his hips harder, giving her everything he has left. With her eyes locked on his, she falls. He stumbles after with a shout, quickly muffled by her lips on his. Mouth to mouth, skin to skin, they rock in place until they can’t. Shawn tips them forward, still connected in every place they can be, cradling her between him and the bed. At her urging, he stays inside her until he’s hard again. Mia and Shawn make love until the birds get loud in the trees and the cool morning wind lulls them to sleep.

----------

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gins-potter · 4 years

Text

ummm so i did a thing and wrote some hp next gen hc’s fuck you j.k the order they’re written is the age order (idk if there is a canonical age order for all the weasley cousins but this is my take anyway) under the cut because this is long

Teddy Remus Lupin.

hufflepuff

pansexual

soft boy who can and will make friends with absolutely everyone

his family use he/him pronouns out of habit but he’s open to any pronouns

has 5 parents in his mind, remus, tonks, andromeda, harry, and ginny

calls ginny and harry, mum and dad, and lives with them for a while after he graduates hogwarts

making head boy is one of his proudest moments and he never saw it coming because he’s a bit of a troublemaker

but his troublemaking is usually limited to sneaking out of bed to get food from the kitchen, and changing into teachers to scare students

is one of those people that is genuinely liked by everyone, teachers and students

even filch can’t bring himself to yell at that cheerful smile

doesn’t play quidditch, but watches because so many of his family members play

but watching also makes him nervous because he’s scared someone will get hurt

his feelings for victoire kind of come out of nowhere the year after he graduates hogwarts and she’s no longer there teasing him

they don’t get together until victoire is of age though because although he’ll never admit it, bill scares the hell out of him

wants to be a healer after hogwarts

Victoire Weasley.

ravenclaw

the sorting hat almost put her in slytherin

considered going to beauxbatons, but didn’t want to move away

hates the dumb blonde trope and works her ass off to get at least an E in all her subjects

despite hating being mistaken for just a pretty face, she does have an impeccable fashion sense, and her makeup is always on point

wishes she and her sister were closer, and it takes until they’re in their seventh and fifth years respectively to realise how similar they are

lives to intimidate people

and loves seeing the looks on boys faces when they realise how smart she is

and she really is scary smart

has this witty, banter going with teddy but is in denial about what it means until she’s in her sixth year and realises oh crap she’s in love with him

has a ridiculously complicated coffee order, which teddy knows off by heart

incidentally the first time he orders for her, getting it perfect, of course, is also the moment she realises she’s in love with him

is the eldest official weasley/potter child and finds it s t r e s s f u l

thinks her siblings/cousins are crazy

ends up teaming up with James and Molly to keep them all in line

James Sirius Potter.

gryffindor

jock™

joins the gryffindor team in his second year, plays chaser, and is good enough to give both his mother and his grandfather a run for their money

shameless flirt and acts so much like his two name-sakes that it sometimes makes mcgonagall catch her breath when he winks brazenly at her in the middle of transfiguration

becomes the first half of a brother duo to play for the english national team

feels a lot of pressure to keep up good grades, keep the gryffindor team winning (especially after he’s made captain in his sixth year), look after all his siblings and cousins, and maintain the happy-go-lucky attitude that he’s come to be known for

is diagnosed with anxiety during his seventh year

harry cries when james tells him how dark he’d been feeling

lily researches plants that are proven to lift spirits and brings them to him until he feels like smiling again

has his father’s crazy hair (though his are auburn curls) and his grandfather’s hazel eyes

unlike his brother he likes hearing how much he looks like his family

Dominique Weasley.

slytherin

feels like the night to victoire’s day

takes her coffee black

likes to wear ripped jeans and old band shirts

dyes her hair

would never admit it but lily luna is her favourite cousin

gets a tattoo of a snake down her spine when she’s fifteen and her parents hit the roof and ground her for the entire summer

she expected her dad at least to be cool about it

likes boys and girls, but thinks most of them are idiots

has the best eyeliner game in the school

is fiercely protective of her little brother

never even considered going to beauxbatons

even though they annoy her most of the time she could never be away from her family that long

also loves to intimidate people

wishes her sister wasn’t so perfect all the time because she thinks it puts more pressure on her to be better

Molly Weasley II.

gryffindor

is dyslexic but it took everyone a long time to realise it

thought for a long time that she was just too dumb to get above an acceptable in any of her classes

rose eventually works it out, and it gets better after that

or at least her teachers are a bit more considerate

is a whiz at classes where she doesn’t have to write a lot of essays

loves care of magical creatures and helps Hagrid teach Grawp English

her uncle charlie is her favourite uncle and considers running away to live with him in her fourth year

has a very strained relationship with her father because he tends to be very impatient with her and used to say she wasn’t trying hard enough in school

really good at sewing and cooking (much like her namesake) and can usually be found in the kitchen of the weasley house experimenting on a new recipe

gives the best presents

is the best at wrangling the weasley/potter brood

is that person who remembers every single birthday, anniversary, favourite colour, pet’s names and so on

shameless romantic

Rose Granger-Weasley.

gryffindor

everyone is surprised af when she gets sorted into gryffindor, including rose, but she grows to love the crazy, loud house

is in love with scorpius for about 3 months in third year but gets over it pretty quickly when she sees the way scorpius looks at her cousin

so she just settles back and waits for them to figure it out

pretends like she hates quidditch but has a secret love for it that only her dad knows about

and she of course supports the chudley cannons

is one of those annoying ‘gets perfect marks without studying’ type of people

likes to rock the space buns look with her cousin roxanne

thinks she might be ace/aro but really isn’t sure

her mum is her hero

goes through a rebellious phase in the summer between her fifth and sixth years, and lives with her aunt ginny and uncle harry for a few weeks

is the first person to realise her cousin molly is dyslexic

Scorpius Malfoy.

ravenclaw

is the first malfoy in history to not be in slytherin

thinks albus potter in glasses is the hottest thing

thought his father would hate him for being sorted into ravenclaw

he doesn’t

thought his father would hate him for being gay

he doesn’t

his father tells him once that raising him is the best thing he’s ever done and it’s one of the most important things anyone has ever said to him

professional piner

is in love with al since almost the first time he ever saw him

plays chaser in his 4th and 5th years but is really glad when they find a replacement for him

he prefers watching his boyfriend play

loves his mother

kinda hates his grandparents and hates himself for that

when he’s in The Zone™ good luck getting his attention

has a tendency to hyperfixate

hates parties but goes because al and rose like them

has a touch of social anxiety

Albus Severus Potter.

slytherin

tries out for the slytherin team in his first year, but isn’t selected

is called in to play for the grand final against gryffindor that year when the other seeker is injured, they lose but it’s still one of the best moments of his life and makes him the second youngest person to play for a hogwarts team after his father

goes on to play on the english national team with his brother

is best friends with rose and scorpius

is constantly being told by teachers how much the three of them remind them of his father, uncle ron, and aunt hermione

likes boys

knows he likes boys pretty much from birth (his parents are also unsurprised when he tells them)

doesn’t work out that he’s in love with scorpius until they’re in their fifth year, and it still takes them most of the year to get their shit together

needs glasses but hates wearing them, so he usually wears contacts

is always down for a nap

Louis Weasley.

hufflepuff

came the closest to studying abroad, but just before he was set to start he had a minor panic attack and realised he couldn’t do it

he was worried for a long time that his mum was secretly disappointed that he went to hogwarts just like his siblings, but she told him she could never be disappointed in him

he knew from a young age that he had been born into the wrong body but wasn’t able to tell his family until he was around 10,

he didn’t want to go to hogwarts with no one knowing who he really was

his parents didn’t pretend like they had always known, but they accepted him nonetheless

always harboured a hero-worship-lowkey-crush on teddy which eventually developed into a mutual friendship, despite the almost 10 year age gap

plays seeker on the hufflepuff team only because they desperately need a seeker and lucy begs him

loves his older sisters but wishes they weren’t so protective

sometimes wishes he was closer to fred, lucy, and roxanne who are all in his year and are very close but then remembers that they’re all crazy and if he hung with them more he’d probably be in detention every week

loves muggle studies and wants to work with muggles after hogwarts

collects muggle coins

Roxanne Weasley.

gryffindor

practically invented the space buns look

holographic aesthetic

friends with everyone

headgirl

is friendly with absolutely everyone but also plays beater so people are very ???

likes being a twin and usually gets pulled into fred and lucy’s crazy schemes

has the highest detention record of any head girl ever, but most of those are fred and lucy’s fault

the one detention that actually is her fault is when she throws her beaters bat at her brother because he let slip who she had a crush on in the middle of commentating a quidditch match

it worked out pretty well in the end because the girl found her after the quidditch match to ask her out

one third of the unholy trinity (lucy came up with the name)

she’s the third who tries to keep them out of trouble

has the chillest nature and can’t stand to see any of her family hurt

wishes uncle percy wasn’t so hard on molly

is one soft lesbian

physically incapable of holding a grudge

Fred Weasley II.

gryffindor

doesn’t play quidditch but takes after his godfather and commentates

likes to try and throw his sister off her game when she’s playing quidditch

second third of the unholy trinity

honestly does not know how he gets in so much trouble all the time

seriously wonders if he was born without impulse control

like it’s not his fault that he’s curious about absolutely everything and has the patience of an excited puppy

is really good at charms

always knows the most obscure spells

has no idea what he wants to do after he leaves school but isn’t worried about that

Lucy Weasley.

hufflepuff

plays chaser

troublemaker ™

last third of the unholy trinity (the name was her idea)

her and lily are either the best of friends or the worst of enemies (there is no inbetween)

god help you when they’re at each other's throat because their arguments could wipe out city blocks

you can imagine how much worse they are when they’re teaming up

thinks she maybe wants to be an auror after leaving school

her dad hates the idea

which of course makes her want to do it even more

loves mystery novels and can always guess the ending by about halfway

thinks her uncle harry is the coolest

invites herself along on lorcan’s world travels after he finishes hogwarts

loves to smack him over the back of the head when he gets too obnoxious

but secretly loves it when he starts ranting about the topics he’s studying

Lorcan Scamander.

ravenclaw

smart boy

thinks his mum is kinda nuts but loves her anyway

thinks his brother is kinda nuts but loves him anyway

doesn’t know how he got basically adopted into the weasley/potter family but can’t bring himself to be mad about it

loves arithmancy and nerding out with hermione about it

wants to do too many things after he leaves hogwarts

ends up taking some time off to travel for a bit and learn more about the different wizarding cultures

lucy surprises everyone and invites herself along as a break after she finishes her auror training

no one can work out if they hate each other or are secretly dating

lysander can’t work out if he hates her or wants to kiss her

Lysander Scamander.

hufflepuff

eptimosises the dumb blonde stereotype

too pretty for his own good

gets shoved into keeper position on the hufflepuff team because no one else can/wants to play, and is The Worst

gets distracted by cool clouds and pretty butterflies during quidditch games

finds that he actually really likes quidditch because it turns out he loves flying

he still sucks at keeping of course

but at least he’s having fun now

thinks his mum is a genius

pansexual

knows that hugo is the one for him as soon as they start dating

favourite thing is the way hugo’s ears go red when he’s flustered

thinks ron is hilarious

Lily Luna Potter.

slytherin

smol, smol, smol child

is five feet of pure rage, sass, and protectiveness

will fuck up anyone who messes with her family

parents started her in quidditch to help vent her frustrations but quickly grows to love the game, or at least being able to hit the fuck out bludgers

plant nerd

starts a herbology club with her uncle neville (who she refuses to call professor longbottom no matter how many times he reminds her)

she is one smol lesbian

hates it when james is going through his anxiety because for the first time kicking someone’s ass won’t fix it

less than zero impulse control

she finds an old photograph of her mum rocking an undercut and immediately goes for the electric razor

the end result is horrible, and she ends up calling victoire and dominique to fix it for her

did i mention she’s super smol?

thinks that her dad doesn’t understand her very much but cries a little when uncle neville let’s slip that he’s been borrowing herbology books to learn more about her favourite subject

works with troubled teens after she leaves hogwarts

works out at age eight that is she arranges her cousins a certain way in family photos they can spell out bad words with the letters on their sweaters

her parents don’t know if they should be angry or impressed.

Hugo Granger-Weasley

ravenclaw

is the quieter kind of smart compared to his sister, who is always correcting people

surprises the fuck out of people when he’s put in ravenclaw and gets near perfect grades at hogwarts

studies a lot

is the only person who can beat his dad at chess

has a bad habit of falling asleep while reading

is jealous of how good all his cousins are at quidditch, and thinks for a long time that his dad is disappointed because he’s too scared of heights to play

is a self-confessed morosexual and is shamelessly in love with lysander scamander

almost gets stuck on the hogwarts express one time because he was too busy reading to realise they’d arrived

prefect

always has ink stains on his hands

usually gets said ink in lysander’s hair when they kiss

has a thing for lysander’s blonde curls

#hp #harry potter #hp headcanons #mywriting #hp next gen

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