#nothing worked and nothing felt like it was GONNA work unless it was exe stuff which

[beast-feast]

What am I doing being all depressed and shit c'mon I got kids. Boom problems solved. Crops flourishing. MILF era reached.

#gotta lay down now though because initially I tried making selfship art right? #nothing worked and nothing felt like it was GONNA work unless it was exe stuff which #hoo. sure was a feeling #and then I had to go the extra mile like 'hm yeah Xenophanes would be nice to do that with but he wouldn't let me' like bro HUH 😭??? #I'm gonna try and expand my borders a little so I can have the robots back in circulation. that makes two anthro fixes (sonic #wtf was the other one oh it was TMNT I'm fucking slow tonight LORD. #uh uh and then Doors. obvs. and hopefully 9 again for a smidge maybe possibly. #Hazel's so fucking homophobic she almost threw up on my bed as I was getting to talking about the robots. love loses #sunky.mpeg #roblox doors #screech doors

[livingbrother]

LO and it's portrayal of S/A

A rant by someone who just finished EP. 98 and is incredibly furious

Cw: Mentions of S/A, it's effects, too much swearing, ED mention, personal stuff that happened to yours truly, lots of other stuff too, just no idea what to tag it as

Don't read this if you're not mentally doing well, I don't want you getting hurt because of my post, I love you, feel better soon

Boy. Oh fucking boy. I just got through episode 98 of this shit show and, I'll just say, I am beyond furious. Livid, in fact.

For context, I am a survivor or sexual abuse and mental abuse, I have dealt with those who act sort of like Apollo, I was never raped, but I was molested as a child. I, as a survivor, feel nothing but rage at how Rachel portrayed Apollo being a rapist. The way he acts is incredibly unrealistic for an abuser, as somebody who dealt with two abusers with Narcissistic Personality Disorder (I'm not saying everyone who has NPD are villains, I'm just saying what I went through), I see what Rachel was trying, but oh so tragically failed, to do. He tried to control, manipulate, and gaslight Persephone. Only for none of it to work, that's not how ANY of it fucking works!

Where is the fucking control, other than just fucking raping her? I get he wants to take the power away from her and be the one to control her, but I've seen none of that! I get she has PTSD over it (I'LL GET TO THIS POINT AGAIN). I NEVER GOT THE SENSE THAT SHE WAS POWERLESS EXCEPT FOR THAT ONE SCENE. I HAVE NEVER SEEN HER QUESTION IF THAT WAS HIS INFLUENCE PICKING HER DRESSES, OR FUCKING EVEN HER FOOD! WHEN I WAS LIVING WITH ONE OF MY ABUSERS, SHE'D PICK OUT MY OUTFITS, ONE'S I HATED, AND I STILL CHOOSE SOME OF THOSE OUTFITS, TO THIS DAY! WHERE WAS HER LOSS OF CONTROL? SHE NEVER FELT ISOLATED, SHE NEVER FELT LIKE SHE WAS TRAPPED. YES. SHE WAS TRAPPED IN THAT ONE ROOM WITH HIM, BUT EVEN THEN! SHE HAD LEVERAGE OVER HIM WITH THE FUCKING LYRE. Ugh.

About her realizing she was raped, um. Excuse me? A lot of victims don't realize they were raped or abused until like, months or years later. I'm glad for the ones who instantly realized it, good for them. Given Persephone's personality and experience with the world, she wouldn't have known it was rape because she's not accustomed to dating and sexual culture. On top of that, she isn't really seen actually distressed when she remembers, oh, and lets not forget that she WAS FUCKING FINE WITH TOUCH AND PHYSICAL FLIRTING DAYS AFTER HER ASSAULT. Let me remind you that I have been through this thing myself, you do not just omg I was just assaulted! time to go let someone touch me! Nonono, you spend years jumping when people touch you, years of moving when someone tries to grab your shoulder, years of pushing someone's hand off your arm, years screaming when you get a hug. And then, maybe from flashbacks, maybe from googling things, you discover you were molested! And then it alllllll makes sense. I understand if she became hypersexual, cause same, but that usually doesn't set in until a good long while.

I also hate how Apollo is written, he should have stayed as a shitty ex boyfriend or whatever the fuck Rachel was gonna make him, he just comes across as a cartoonish villain than an abuser. The man just fucking rubs his hands together and fucking goes I'll get you next time my pretty! I fucking HATE his writing so goddamn much. I understand wanting to make him pushy, egotistical, and insecure, they're some of the hallmarks of the pushy nice guy she was going for. But when it comes to him being abusive, it's like watching a bad joke. Rapists don't usually, you know, CATCH FEELINGS FOR THEIR VICTIM (correct me if I'm wrong), unless it's to lure them back in to hurt them again. She made him so obviously evil it hurts, abusers don't usually act that way, they put on a pretty smile, act kind, and behind closed doors, act shitty. I respect 97-98 for getting that part right, but too many times, too many fucking times Rachel has gotten that wrong. I have dealt with this myself, my mother did this exact thing, she even put on the pretty smile for me so even I, somebody who knew he was being tormented, questioned whether or not I was being abused! We never see this with Persephone! We never see her getting gaslit with this, she never questions her reality! She knows everything that's going on for sure! I know what Rachel was aiming for, and she failed miserably!

God, on top of this, we never really get to see Persephone's PTSD unless the story fuckin says Apollo's here! She's never really fucking affected by her rape, we don't see her jump from touches, refuse sexual advanced from Hades, yeah, sure, we see her afraid of camera flashes, but that's about it!!!!!!!! She never really experiences the effects of s/a! I developed an ED and agoraphobia from my abuse! Where the fuck is that?! That would have been a lot more fucking interesting than the slop we fucking got!

I know I've missed some things, but I need to calm down before I pop a blood vessel. I might revisit this post when I'm less angry, I just needed to rant.

#lo critical #anti lore olympus #anti lo #rant post #rant #cw s/a #cw: ed #huge ass content warning

[gainingfiction]

Lifetime Supply: Chapter 1

That’s right: gainerstories and I are back at it again with another big, fat collaboration. Hope you enjoy!

Summary: Ryan, a svelte computer science major, thinks he’s hit the jackpot when he wins a lifetime supply of snacks. Turns out there’s no such thing as a free lunch... or free snacks, for that matter.

~

“You’re not gonna eat all those, are you?”

“I will unless you plan on helping,” Ryan said. He turned to face his roommate, who was still sweaty from his trip to the gym. Ahmed just shook his head and stepped into the bathroom. When Ryan heard the shower running, he unfolded the letter at the top of the box.

We take our commitments to customers seriously. So when we promise you a “lifetime supply”, we really mean it. How much we send will depend on your feedback, and our customer service team is happy to listen. Adesco is passionate about….

Ryan smirked and put the letter aside. They must have spent a lot on marketing. When he entered the stupid competition advertised on the inside of a candy wrapper, he hadn’t expected anything to come of it. So when he won a lifetime supply of the company’s snack foods he was more than a little surprised. He was even more surprised when he returned home two weeks after the win to find a large cardboard box on his doorstep.

Inside were products he knew (chocolate bars, pretzels, popular snack cookies) but also products he had never bought before, like mini donuts and snack cakes with fruit fillings. With a shrug, he opened one of the lemon cakes and took a bite. Pleased with the result, he grabbed another pack and put his feet up on the coffee table.

Ryan opened his laptop. He mostly did freelance jobs, which he preferred to a more traditional set-up. He decided to work on a few projects he had been meaning to finish up. By the end of the afternoon, he realized that his stomach was hurting. Looking around, he saw that the couch was strewn with wrappers. Once he had gotten into a groove, he just kept eating snacks out of the box without even thinking. Realizing the mess he had made, he gathered up the wrappers and tried to toss them in the trash before Ahmed could see.

Except his roommate was already waiting in the kitchen as Ryan approached garbage with handfuls of plastic. “Wow, you weren’t kidding about eating all those,” Ahmed said, arching an eyebrow. “I was just about to head to the library. I have a bunch of school stuff due way too soon.”

Ryan saw Ahmed off, and then thought about what to do with himself. He had been wondering that a lot since his ex, Jason, had broken things off a few weeks earlier. Jason hated being at home, and so the two were always out getting coffee, jogging, or shopping downtown. Before they had met in college, Ryan had felt at ease doing nothing, but that was a side of himself he had pushed aside for a couple of years now. Since Jason fled to Europe with his “yoga buddy”, Ryan had a lot more downtime on his hands.

Where in the past he might have gone for a jog, Ryan decided to say “fuck it” and fire up some porn. Since he had the place to himself, he decided to really go for it, stripping off his clothes in the middle of the living room. After finishing, Ryan cleaned himself up, realizing he had room for another snack cake. Sighing contentedly, he opened up a fresh box.

Two weeks later, when Ryan returned from a cafe where he had been working, he was surprised to see another large cardboard box sitting in front of his house. He brought it inside and placed it on the floor of his bedroom. He was still only about halfway through the last box, and he already felt like he was snacking more than he should have been. He usually couldn’t afford to have so much food just lying around.

Ryan took out a pair of scissors and opened the new box. Amid new and familiar snack packages, he removed another letter. This one was a survey, listing products and asking him to rank them based on his preference. There were other questions about his usual snack choices, flavours he liked most, and his satisfaction with the quantity and variety in the boxes. At the bottom, there was a phone number with a note: If you have any questions, please contact your Adesco customer service representative, Luke!

Sighing, Ryan decided to crack open a bag of pretzels. Who knew that winning a contest could be so much work?

#weight gain #male weight gain #gay #weight gain story #wg story #realistic gain #gaining fiction #belly #bhm #lifetime supply

[findafight]

(Okay, gonna try and send this again)

I had a whole spiel about how R0nance has the potential to be very interesting and stimulate character growth on both sides in a similar way to Steve and Eddie. Not to say that Nance needed “ego death”, but she has built too much of her identity around being the smartest person there/the only person who can find the answers, and having Robin challenge her in that way (at times without even needing to) would provide some much needed growth. Because at the moment she’s giving “gifted student who didn’t struggle in school and is going to be eaten alive at college”.

Or, if you wanted to lean into the “Bad R0nance” side of things, they have the potential for a lot of interesting dynamics, scenes and conversations that they couldn’t have with other characters. Like, Barb is already such a charged subject with Nancy - add to that the fact that Barb ditched Robin to become Nancy’s best friend. To say nothing of Steve, who is such a big part of Robin’s life, he’s going to be part of Nancy’s what her she likes it or not.

Hell, assuming that that argument prompt wasn’t meant to be cute or funny, that’s a dynamic that could be interesting to explore. Honestly, I find Nancy’s difficulty with admitting that she’s in the wrong/having to have things done her way interesting, especially in contrast with a lot of the guilt she carries being over things that weren’t really her fault (if a bit too close to how certain loved ones of mine act sometimes). And I already see enough of her sticking to her guns despite common sense going unexplored in the show (quite literally; I love surprise gun-toting badass Nancy as much as the next person, and her and Max sawing down the shotgun was a cool visual. That being said; WHEN have guns ever worked against the Upside Down?).

Anyway - my point is that it’s not that I dislike R0nance, I just find a lot of the stuff written to be OOC, that it ignores many of the elements that I think would make them interesting together, or that it downplays Steve’s importance in Robin’s life/ignores it in favour of treating him more as Nancy’s ex-turned-kinda-friend.

haha yeah I got the first one and was like hm. that's not finished...hope they continue!

yeah Nancy doesn't need the same kind of ego death as Eddie did, but she's in desperate need of the realization she doesn't need to form her identity around her academics and journalism and her ability to Solve the Mystery etc, she can be something other than that. The tidbit from rebel Robin that if Robin tried a bit more, she could be valedictorian or something is so juicy for this! I don't think this is exclusive to romo rnce tbh i think them getting a kind of friendship could be really interesting and change them.

The Barb of it all would be so good and neat to explore. God. the hurt and guilt on both sides? I want them to have a conversation about Barb!! How robin mourned her even before she died, and maybe felt like a fraud for crying herslef to sleep when Barb went missing, because they weren't really friends anymore. How Nancy feels guilt for letting Barb leave, how she wishes she could take it back. How Robin resented Nancy for "stealing" barb away, about her insecurities in her friendships because of that. I want to see it! They could have such a rich friendship!

I want to see them argue! yell! scream and cry! There's so much potential here! their personalities would clash in glorious ways even in a friendship, let alone a romo relationship! hoo hoo!

Poor Steve is just. He's there too. He can't not be, because he might be an ex Nancy didn't talk to unless the world was ending, but Robin would see him everyday? and that's awkward. idk I think people also miss that for Nancy, dating the best friend of an ex she broke up with in....not the best circumstances and tried to avoid since then would be majorly awkward! idk like Nancy has warmed again to Steve in s4, but clearly didn't interact with him a lot between seasons, but she was also flirting with him and then went back to Jonathan, so it's probably not a situation she wants to be in! Besides the whole mess it would be for Robin considering if she actually wanted to date a friend's (best friend's) ex, the ex, Nancy would probably have to consider spending time with an ex like that. (because you're correct! for robin Steve is non negotiable)

(the prompt was absolutely supposed to be cute it blew my mind) But it's such an interesting dynamic, and absolutely something that I can see Nancy doing. It's been haunting me for weeks! Her feeling guilty over things she had no control over, but then not taking accounatbility for things she did and could change, that's so neat! With her relying on body language, and not adequately communicating to partners what she actually wants/needs/is thinking, Combined with Robin not being good at reading people and generally nervous about that inability to read more subtleties, it would be brutal. They would both dig their heels in, but robin wouldn't know why. FASCINATING.

Common sense doesn't exist in Stranger Things <3 Also I know next to nothing about guns but for some reason I know (am pretty sure of?) that sawed off shotguns have worse accuracy. I was like "nooo nancy you don't need to do that! It will also not help at all!" please let Nancy get a meelee weapon please let her beat the shit out of a demogorgon please let her actually inflict damage!

Uhg yes agree. I think it's one of the few ships I dislike more because of the shippers and how they interact with the characters, and that I see it as sort of a relationship that wouldn't last, and the shippers wouldn't like that and also want it canon. So much stuff I find ooc, and also for some reason a number of steve haters (super uncharitable ones that really, idk why they like robin, a character who loves steve so much she wants to combine with him, if they hate everything about Steve). Big turn offs. Not a lot of nuance happening! (which is NOT rnce exclusive!! I exit out of fics with ships I like because I find them ooc etc.) It could be a really interesting ship that would be messy and possibly implode but oof it'd be neat to explore. I've said before that I can see them liking each other and just not working out in an au where Steve and Nancy never had that history, because honestly another part of it is that I just don't see them as compatible (and included it in one of my not at all canon adjacent aus!).

I am with you on a lot of the content fumbles how Steve fits into it. The complexities his relationships both past and present to both Nancy and Robin would bring up between them could be explored more. Like yeah maybe steve's fine with his bff dating his ex whatever. but how would they feel about it? how would Nancy feel about steve being Robin's ride or die? how does Robin's friendship with steve effect that relationship? there's interesting bones here but alas. He's often shoved to the side as Robins friend and nancy's ex-turned friend. WHERES THE JUICE THERE? c'mon! i get some folks want non-conflict romance but maybe the ship that has potential to be so so SO messy that isn't going to be the most incharacter interactions.

#findaanswers #anti ronance #and I think we can make this tag: #fail ronance #like my beloved fail st4ncy and fail st0ncy (censoring so not to turn up in tags) #robin buckley #nancy wheeler #also sometimes for no reason robin is mean to steve and i'm like why? oh..it's going to be rnce isn't it. even tho he is her sweet cheese #ahk fuck it #fandom wank #listen I'm trying to be fair and not mean. #tbh I think they'd end up having like a tentative friendship that isn't super close but more than nothing #added a read more it seemed long

[bunny-hoodlum]

For the ask game! 3. Are there any specific themes you enjoy exploring in your fics? 10. What's your favorite part about the fic writing process? 29. Are there any characters, relationships, or general character dynamics you've never written about but would like to try?

Heyyy! Thank you for the ask @wickermayne! I pushed this answer back because I felt like I needed more time to think about my answers. 😅 Which, I didn't exactly do either tbh. 👉👈😓 I lowkey hated I didn't have anything controversial that I could 'get arrested for' if I wrote it or that my readers would hate, that actually bothered me so much, like how boring am I? 😂😂😂

[Yet Another] 'Questions for Fic Writers'

Are there any specific themes you enjoy exploring in your fics?

Yes, I love these kind of vibes in Seinen manga and character drama movies, and maybe some of my own existential feels is worked in there, too. Self-sabotage, alienation, regret, and loss of time/chances, oh and things you want but can't have, I suppose. On the fun side of things, I like to explore taboo as a whole. I can't quite describe the cocktail of inner conflict that I makes a fic sing for me when I write it, but Asynchronous With You has it and I think most of my fics do too, but AWY is the easiest to explain. Hinata wants to be with Naruto romantically or for the rest of her life but she can't have both, unless something changes. Naruto wants to be with Hinata for the rest of his life but not romantically (as far as he knows). Both want the same thing but for different reasons and if they're honest with each other, they might lose each other forever. It's stuff like that I loooooove. I feel like my DILF fic has it to some extent as well, like, even if Naruto sleeps with jailbait!Hinata, he can separate the sex from his stronger desire to be a parent, so intent and actions are going to be at odds at all times until something changes, and Hinata is going to be attaching herself to this rollercoaster whether she regrets it or not, because it's either pain or nothing at all. And, at least the pain can bring her some excitement in her life. I guess whenever I get to my Idle Hands rewrite, this theme is gonna play out similarly with Hinata too, that the pain Naruto and Sasuke put her through at least is interesting. 😅

What's you favorite part of the fic writing process?

The writing itself, but the annoying thing is I need be totally relaxed, not sleepy in the slightest, words actually make sense in my head and I'm totally immersed in the work. Then it's like I'm experiencing it live as it's happening. I wish headspace was more accessible, like sometimes editing can take me there because the thing exists and I'm refining it. But what I mean is, if I could just write bad to begin with or let myself and then clean it up, clean it up, clean it up once last time, that'd be great. I could be more methodical instead of waiting to get possessed by brain chemicals or some touch of inspo from another dimension. 😅

Are there any characters, relationships, or general character dynamics you've never written about but would like to try?

Very, very casually, I think, yes? I told you about IruHina, but it's gonna be one of those things that I need to have totally solid interest in so that way I don't care if it's such a rarepair that nobody is interested in it, that I still write it anyways. 😂 Right now, I'm trying to write NaruKurostuchi but for the DILF fic, not sure if that counts, but I am trying to flesh it out, so I'm trying to explore it in good faith for the sake of the story. I might need to build up his backstory at some point here, figure out who his other exes are. 🤭 As for general character dynamics... Enemies to Lovers is probably the one thing I've never touched, be it in fiction, fanfiction or in my own daydreams. 🤔 Which might seem ironic, considering the amount of hate sex-adjacent fics I've pumped out recently. 😂 But I would like to try, of course I need a story for this that catches my interest. 😅 Other character dynamics, think those would be the other age gap WIPs I haven't gotten around to yet. Can't think of anything else. 🤔

#writer ask game #wickermayne

[fairy-cxndy]

Fake Psychology <3

pt 2! read part 1 first!

reader x hyunjin

exes to lovers, fluff, angst-ish

a/n hi! i'm back! to be honest I was surprised that people actually read pt 1, so here's pt 2~

"Hey," Hyunjin said, jogging over. He looked tentatively at you and Felix for a bit. You doubt Felix noticed the look on his face, but you did. His miniscule expressions never changed and you could read right through them no matter how well he thought he was hiding them.

There was a beat of silence before Felix walked back to join Jisung now eating Hyunjin's muffin.

"What happened, are you okay?"

"Yeah," you gripped your canned coffee harder, "I'm doing okay, why?"

Hyunjin's eyes widened, again a miniscule action, "oh, you just seemed... distressed? I don't know." He fiddles with his hand sheepishly.

You smile, cheeks heating up, "let's go back, I just needed a caffeine fix. Unless you needed something?"

"Nope!"

While his concern made your heart beat faster, it also made you sad in a way. Here you were; nearly breaking down from the smallest reminder of your relationship and he was being so friendly. Like nothing happened.

"She's back!", exclaimed Felix

"Yo, Hyunjin didn't you say you were gonna buy me a soda with yours?" Jisung asked.

"shit"

-

"So,"

You stared at Felix inquisitively. "So... What?"

He shrugged, "You and Hyunjin"

You watched as Chan leaned forward, choking on juice. "Y/N? And Hyunjin?"

"Shh keep working on your project," you wave your hand at him dismissively, simultaneously trying to play off the glances from other customers at the cafe, no doubt thanks to Chan's yelling and choking, "Also, there's no 'me and Hyunjin'. I have no idea what you're talking about"

"Your face is red."

"My coffee's hot"

"That's an iced americano," Chan pipes up.

"Keep working," you say, raising your textbook threateningly.

Felix rolled his eyes, "she has a problem though. The other day, she had an actual crisis. He was literally right there sitting at our table"

"you two were a cute couple" says Chan.

"Yeah, we worked pretty well didn't we?"

"Remind me why you two broke up?"

"I don't know... I get insecure easily and my brain says weird stuff. I wasn't as invested in the relationship aspect as he was and felt like a burden for ranting to him about all my issues. I got nervous and ended things"

Felix stared at you for a bit, "were you invested in him?"

You stir around your coffee with you straw before letting out a defeated chuckle, "I still am."

-

"Y/N!"

You cursed a bit inside knowing exactly who the voice was. Your lovesick heart did a quick series of somersaults while your cynical brain congratulated you on your misfortune. Taking a deep breath, you steady your voice before turning around.

"Hyunjin? What's up?" what's up? When have you ever said 'what's up'?

"Me? Oh, nothing" he giggled, his eyes crinkling up the corners, "I come here everyday on my way back to the dorms after class"

Ah right, parks are public places.

"Hey ," he started, caution evident in his tone, "are we good?"

"What do you mean?"

"You've been so jittery lately and judging by what the others told me about you, you've only been behaving like this in front of me."

You awkwardly chuckle, "You talk to them about me?"

"Yeah", his eyes held this new intensity. "I ask them about you because I miss you."

"I see you almost everyday"

"You see me everyday. And you avoid me, you don't talk to me, you're always nervous." His voice was steadily getting louder, "I thought you said we'd be fine after we broke up. I'm the one that got dumped so why are you acting like this?"

"I'm not fine"

"What? Did something happen? Did someone do something to you?"

"No. We broke up because I'm not fine. I'm insecure. My own brain got to me and I ruined our relationship over that."

You felt a soft hand brush your cheek, wiping away tears you just realized were falling.

"Can I hug you?" he softly whispered

You nod, not trusting your voice to not betray you by choking.

Hyunjin worked quickly, long arms surrounded you and your senses were distracted by how familiar he felt.

"Can we please try again?" he asked, with a tone you could only identify as pleading.

Your arms wrapped around him. All you could do was nod and hold him closer.

#hyunjin #hyunjin ex #hyunjin angst #hyunjin fanfic #hyunjin fluff #skz angst #skz fluff #skz

[thesavagemuffin]

WIP (NOT) WEDNESDAY

got tagged by @onlymeandlife thank you :>!

I've been mostly preoccupied with a bunch of other stuff that's currently going on in my life but that just gives me more of a reason for escapism so I actually got some stuff I can share fhjgasf

Games Started a new playthrough of CP77. Haven't played a full blunt melee build yet so that's what I'm going for. Also since I always struggle with playing an asshole character in RPGs (unless it's SWTOR) I decided I'd go for that as well and the natural lifepath to pick for that was of course corpo. So far I've already upset Judy and I'm not proud of it. I've also been playing a bit of Palia and Avatar Frontiers. Otherwise when I feel like playing something but I can't decide what, I always enjoy playing on a private classic WoW server.

Character Creation Been working on a new character for a D&D campaign that might start around the end of this month. Felt like playing something very different to what I usually go for, so I made an old Loxodon lady with a straw hat that grew up as a hermit in the middle of the forest and is about to explore a whole new world she hasn't seen yet. She's very excited about that and ready to collect a bunch of leaves and cook some nice stews for her soon to be companions. She's also a druid so obviously I'm gonna use my powers to talk to any plants and animals I come in contact with.

Writing Got two CP77 pieces in the works but so far I mostly just got an outline written down. One is about my OC Oslo that'll be about a moment in his past right before some shit went down. I kinda want to explore his relationship to his old friends in it, especially his ex partner, and just write a bit about the home he grew up in since he's originally from London and not NC. The other one ties into some events that happened in RP but also explores one of my characters backgrounds. It's about a character that deals with amnesia due to a traumatic event (and a rogue AI) and a situation happens that triggers some memories - some of them good but plenty of them not so much. It's nothing I'll post online but there you go :>.

Art I've been mostly sticking to fooling around with the symmetry tool. It's nice and fun and great for character sheets, which is also something I'm working on for some of my OC's. WIP of Rad, Alfan, and Lochlainn. With Locky I'm still figuring out his design and I'm not entirely happy with what I got right now. I also got some commissions I'm working on but I'll post those when they're done. Whenever I find some motivation and energy I want to work on some full body poses as well.

Gonna tag a couple of people but if you've already been tagged or don't feel like it, no pressure :3! @brammariek @sicc-nasti @scrumptioussynths @wraithsoutlaws @rindemption @mth3gr34t @noirapocalypto @fourtyfaregates @scarecrowshindig

#tag game #again thanks for the tag :>

[sadgrlsclbb]

So my bf met my family🤦🏾‍♀️

It was an issue for me bc my family be doing too much🙄 I have a large immediate family and there’s a lot of personalities…BIG personalities.

It honestly couldn’t be avoided if he wanted to come over…since I live w my family.

He ended up staying the night cause he smoked w my brother and was too zooted to drive. So we slept on my tiny ass twin sized bed w my cat.

We diiiiiiid fuck😬 was kinda nervous bc the walls aren’t that thick. Like I can literally hear my siblings playing the game and every word their saying if I listen good enough. And their room is right in front of mine.

So anyways, my mom was kinda aggressive w him. And saying shit like, “you better treat my daughter right” and “we don’t play abt her…like at all.” And I already gave him the run down. …my family jump niggas. And we don’t play abt each other. …he knows this.

Then my father was kinda aggressive. Asking how is he gonna sleep in his house w/o saying a word to him. WHICH I GET. But also, my dad literally didn’t come home until late and we were sleep.

All in all, I already told him what was up and how my family gets down, and how IIIIIIII gets down. …I don’t play abt myself and I’ll never let a nigga play w me either. So there’s no need to jump the gun like that, unless I’m giving niggas a heads up. …which I doubt, bc I leave niggas right where they stand w/o a word before it can even get to that.

Then there’s the problem w my friend🙄

My bf wants to have a Friendsgiving and suggested that I invite my guy friend(MY ONLY FRIEND, WHO IS LITERALLY 18)

I can’t really say for some reason, but my friend doesn’t like my bf. And I think it’s mainly bc of all of the stuff I told him abt before we started dating. W the whole ex thingy(reads my other rants of you don’t know the tea)

And also bc me and my bf have talks abt my friend. Nothing bad cause ion even play like that😒 I check niggas, and I’ll never let a nigga shit talk my right hand/brother.

But my bfs been saying that he doesn’t think that mr guy friend likes him. And also how he feels like when whenever they talk, my guy friend HAS to dominate the convo. And I explained to him that, my friend is a very charismatic, loud, social utterly, w a bright and big personality. …he’s also gay.

And he was understood that w no issue.

But later on he tells me that in the beginning he was side eyeing me bc he’s 6yrs younger than me and he thought we were a thing. W the way that my friend is alwayssssss blowing up my phone, texting and calling me.

We always do this though. We talk before a shower. Right we we get out. While we’re watching anime or doing hw. While we walk to the store. While we’re at work. We’re just always otp talking shit.

But I cleared it up that, that’s just the homie. But the topic keeps coming up…

My bf told me the other day that he felt a type of way towards my friend. And I asked why. He said it was bc he took me out on a sushi “date” and HE wanted to take me out on a sushi date.

Had to let him know…it wasn’t a date, and we just went out to eat since we were already out there anyways. And he was saying how he guess he’s just gonna have to be ok w sharing and having 2 niggas taking care of me.

I let him know that wasn’t it. I just let it be known that ion have money like that to spend and I always ask, are they paying. Since they know my money situation. And they always tell me not to worry abt it🤷🏾‍♀️

So last night my bf was telling me how he’s a very jealous person. And I asked what was he talking abt. Considering the fact that he told me to go fuck women and he’s be happy for me if I did.

He said when it comes to guys he’d be really upset if there was another guy that I was fucking around w. I quickly let him know, there’s no one else.

But he brought up my friend, saying that he was jealous of him. And I asked him why. He said bc the relationship between up two, is very intimate. And I asked what does he mean. Cause 1st, there’s a 6yr age difference. 2nd, HES GAY. And 3rd, even if he wasn’t, ik how to separate my friends from the person I’m romantically involved w.

He says, he thinks us watching shows together and shit like that is very intimate. And he doesn’t do that w his girl friends, and even if he did, he doesn’t think I’ll like that.

Then I had to bring it up to him ONCE AGAIN, the difference between my guy friend and your girl friends, is the fact that you’ve either FUCKED THEM ALREADY, OR WANTED TO. And not only that, most of the. ARE YOUR EXES…yk the one where y’all already planned out a future together?? Talked abt having kids and already said “I love you” to each other in a romantic way…yeah that’s the difference.

Never have I ever had a relationship like that w my guy friend. And never WILL I ever.

If anything I need to be jealous of YOU. But I’m not. It’s up to you to decide how you wanna move when it comes to them. I don’t HAVE to think abt anything like that, bc I know how to draw lines and set boundaries. Not that I really needed to anyways…bc that’s my FRIEND.

But I set that straight w my bf. But my friend is saying like, idc idc idc, brushing me off and saying how he doesn’t like the guy and how he doesn’t wanna be around him. Which is like ok, but also like, what did he do to make you so hostile?

And tbh k think it’s bc, my friend is so used to being able to pick up the phone and calling and texting me whenever, and I pick up the phone no matter what. But NOW, I answer but I don’t stay for very long. Or I tell him imma call him later.

But my bday is coming up and I wanna have a dinner w my friend and his friend, my bf, and my sister. And my friend is saying how he doesn’t wanna be around him. And IM saying, w.e the issue is, you can suck it up, just for my bday.

And my bf isn’t a loud ass rough nigga. He’s kinda a nerd w adhd that makes music. So he’s not even they type of nigga to like be mean for no reason. But my friend is…bc he’s very judge mental.

Honestly I don’t see what the problem is. And I told my friend that I think it’s dumb and fucking stupid to try and do two diff activities for my bad when we could all just go get dinner. Especially since imma be at my bfs place for the week anyway. And my friend works until 5…we wouldn’t be able to do anything during the day anyways, since I won’t be home and my friend will be at work.

He’s just doing too much🤦🏾‍♀️

#k rantss #2 rants in oneeee

[dontcrybecauseitsoverr]

update

Im about to graduate omggg, as usual, no one knows about this tumblr in my life, so that’s cool. Kaylee can know idc lol. But, somethings in  my life just don’t add up. I have a gf who I do love, and adore and all of this, but man our communication sucks, on her end, she just doesn’t text me or snap me for hours sometimes… for no reason lol, but snap score goes up but she doesn’t reply? Hurts a bit, I don’t feel like a priority in her life, she isn’t open with me about things, I have to fight to get answers out of her, and she just doesn’t tell me stuff. We’ve been dating for 5 months! Like what! Lol! I just don’t get it.so like what do i do...were not going to see each other for the entire summer. this is my longest relationship, as yall know they dont go too hot lololol. so many posts on here about gf’s and shit, i would be ruined if anyone found this, but this name is not associated to anything else of mine, unless someone like reverse searched the image, who knows. this is just my thoughts as they are thought of on paper, im sitting here listening to taylor swift, deciding about big things in my life. im going to maine for the summer month and a half or so, either i can have all the sex up there with my ex, a threesome, my bff cas who ive all fucked before lol, so thats funny. BUT, 3 months without her :L i wont even be able to see her at allll her dads a dick. i swear to god if we aren’t able to FT like 1-2 times a week, that is really gonna take a hit. theres no reason to not be able to ft me with airpods in, and all this shit, like come onnnnn do u really not want to talk to me. i just feel like this is going to end up in a text break up, i really dont want it. but shes stuck with me and my quirks and issues for 5 months! thats a long time! so who knows, i want it to work but it just may get so unberable at some point, im gona talk with her tho at least. also i just was reading up about how the brain processes near death experiences, and how wack the gamma rays are or something. and i recalled the time in senior year, when my friend was driving and making a turn into school across a busy road. (two years later a family of 4 got killed in the crash, actually by someone i knew in the dmv auto club, he went to jail, my friends and i did the math on the car crash - guy was going 125 mph when he hit them. 1 girl survived out of the family of 4. terrible) but, a car was really going fast coming towards us, and i thought it was gonna clip us, and i was in the backseat, i swear i had a marvel intro style play in front of my eyes, just flashing through life events, i couldnt even see the car coming per say, just the images that i cared about most in my life. and then we passed...and it was like nothing happened. this got off topic, but so do all my other posts. i just dont know what to do. she failed out of her student teaching this semester, and i felt i was at cause, but i dont think so. she said her mom was very upset with her, after the school stuff, and failing the driving test. but all she does all day is sit and watch tvvvvvv mannnnnn, ive tried so hard to get her to do things, and be productive and get her out of the dorm because i know what that life is like, failing out, and having no prospect, because ive been there so many times. ive been to 4 colleges! and she just doesn’t want to involve me, or just seems like she cares about me. i want it to work, i mean god, what breaking up for a month and a half just for a crazy sex summer? seems like an issue to meee lolol. not really looking forward to maine, but gotta do whatcha gotta do. fucking hell i graduate in 10 days what the hell its taken so many years im just numb to it i feel, everyone else cares way more than i do, and its gonna be a shame to try and express happiness and joy when im more just like thank god lol. anyway thats my late night talk i guess, lol goodnight?

[chateautae]

Hi Sammy…I get really good and comforting vibes from you so even tho we don’t know each other, so I feel like I really would love to hear your advice on this🥺 I moved across the world recently and found an internship and I’m crushing so SO badly on one of my colleagues. He’s kind of my superior in the sense that he has a higher position in the firm but he’s only a few years older than me and isn’t my boss. At first I was extremely intimidated by him and never spoke but as weeks passed by we got more comfortable around each other and he’s actually so helpful and nice to me. My other colleague told me that he usually always works solo and is very introverted and doesn’t like to help or be bothered but I feel like he’s the opposite with me? He includes me in stuff he does and isn’t cold at all when I ask for help, in fact he often asks me if everything is ok. When we’re out for drinks with my other colleagues I also felt like he was lowkey flirting but in a soft manner? As in teasing me? Also, I’m home for the holidays now but before I left he told me he would get me on board his work once I get back so that I could be more involved and I know he doesn’t do this normally. He also tries his best to include me in the firm’s activities and remembers basically everything I tell him. I was so happy with the way everything was evolving but my boy best friend told me that he’s only like this because he wants to sleep with me and that I should give up this crush immediately because there’s no positive outcome to this situation since we’re colleagues and nothing can ever happen between us. And that made me feel really sad and shitty about myself, like it’s impossible for a guy to just like me? I feel like girls know when a guy just wants to sleep with us and that’s not the vibe I’m getting from him, I feel like he genuinely wants to help me evolve and is genuinely nice to me. So I wanted to ask, what would you advise me to do? Do I just give up since it’s anyways doomed like my friend said or do I let it evolve naturally all while subtly letting him know that I like him? What is your opinion on relationships within a working environment? I just don’t know what to do because I haven’t felt this way towards someone in a long LONG time and I know I am going to spend more time with him once I get back because we’re gonna work together more often…Sammy help me please😔

AWH BUBS PLEASEE THIS IS SO CUTE THANK YOU!! Ofc I can give you some advice babes, but just remember that I could also be wrong so take this advice however you like! Tbh I'm not getting a vibe that your colleague just wants to sleep with you either. There's surely a certain behaviour men exhibit when they simply want to sleep with you (leering, sleazy comments, blatant flirting, constantly asking you out/pursing you even if you're hesitant), and I'm totally not getting it from this guy, I think he honestly likes you because yes!! ofc a guy can like you!! But then again some men do use the method of first befriending you, making you feel comfortable, and then kinda just using you :/ unfortunately it's happened to me so you can never truly be safe. But personally, I think you should just assess how he interacts with you, you know? Detect the genuineness in his words and actions. If he genuinely cares about you and tries to make you a better person in the workplace and overall is just a kind person, I think you can honestly judge when things like that come from a man's heart.

As for pursuing someone in the workplace, unless there's a policy against dating then I don't think you guys are doomed!! I'm unsure why your guy best friend said that, but I've dated a co-worker before and it was totally fine. I think the only harm that comes from dating a co-worker is that if your relationship ends badly then that can really impact the environment of your workplace and may backfire on your own mental health (cough cough what happened to me, my relationship ended badly and seeing my ex at work just made me feel meh). In that situation only either of you leaving the workplace or switching departments would put you at ease (for example, I quit but my ex still works there). So generally people avoid dating co-workers for that reason, but if you vibe with someone and feel a genuine connection, I'd say it's worth the risk!

#you're so cute anon #i'm getting a nice vibe from this guys so definitely try! #but also just assess as things go #i hope things work out well 🥺 #anon #sammy's inbox

[insanus-caput-poeta]

Can i request carl gallagher angst where reader and him used to date but she was like the only person fighting for their relationship so they break up and she moves on and he realizes his mistake but it may be to late?

Hiii, of course u can, this is the first angst i have written in a long time so idk if it’s good or not but i hope u like it, also sorry for taking so long to answer i had to read a lot of angst to remember how to write it lol

—---- One week ago —--- 

You called for the fifty time and Carl still did not answer, you were growing tired of his behavior. You’ve been dating for two years now but it didn't felt like it, it felt like an eternity, all the fights were making you tired of the relationship, it didn't help that Carl didn't seem to care about your feelings, always showing up late from work, answering messages after a long period of time and ignoring your wishes. 

It felt like the purest lack of gratitude you've ever seen, during the relationship you tried to do everything for Carl, talked to him when he fought with his brothers, tried to get along with everyone in the Gallagher family, which led to a ritual from shopping every month with Debbie and playing games on Fridays with Liam, cooking for him, helping to tidy up his apartment and cleaning his car.

Y/n did everything but nothing seemed to be enough for Carl, you were the only one who was fighting for the relationship unfortunately, because what came from Carl's side was just the desire to have sex. 

While waiting hopelessly for Carl to show up, you started to think about the future.

"Do I want to keep doing this? Being a doormat for a guy who apparently only uses me for sex. I do everything and he doesn't even thank me"

After a long period of waiting you got tired and decided that you would call him one last time, and this time would be the last of all, you had decided, it was time to break up with Carl. 

Before you could scream the name of your future ex-boyfriend, you heard footsteps coming from the hallway of the tiny apartment, Carl was stomping the soles of his feet,

"He’s angry" you thought, Carl didn't usually get angry with you so easily, unless you complained about something about the two of you dating.

“I was getting ready, what the fuck y/n you keep rushing me, I'm coming to you, fuck” he said. 

“Okay, sorry to rush you, but we're over an hour late.” you said trying not to cry by the sound of anger in his voice. “Can we go now?”

"For the last time we're already leaving, let me just get my phone"

"Ok" you say "it will be the last time"

After the date you were heading back to the apartment when Carl said "You need to be a little more patient, I always take time to get ready you know that things won't work out right if you rush me every time"

When the car parked you said, in a high tone almost screaming, almost as if you were letting out a long-kept secret "I do not want it anymore".

Carl looked at you confused, but you didn't bother to look at him, you were tired, tired of everything. 

"I don't want to keep up with this anymore, i'm tired,i don't want to be the only one who cares about our relationship, the only one who actually gives a fuck about the other" 

Carl looked at you with an astonished face. "What are you talking about? Do you want to break up with me just because I'm late?"

"It's not just that, it's because of everything, I can't take our relationship anymore, I can hardly call what we have a relationship and you know it"

You got out of the car, being followed by Carl and before you could enter the apartment you said "i will be leaving this week, im gonna grab my staff and head back to my own house"

Carl didn’t say anything, in fact, he helped you grab your stuff the entire week, it seemed like he was just acting like a robot, doing things on automatic, it almost felt like he was kicking you out of the apartment, or so it seemed.

—--- Present time —---

She was there again, Carl thought to himself while he saw you walking down the street. It wasn't the first time Carl followed you, you guys had ended your relationship with great regret after all the fights, and a double-edged sword seemed stuck in his throat with all the things he wanted to say, should have said, but got stuck in the pit of his stomach and stored away in his chest.

Y/n seemed to be fine, was wearing a big blouse, which Carl remembered how you dressed when you first started dating, just a big blouse, a pair of sneakers and a headdress. You didn't really care about the way you dressed, but when you started dating Carl realized that your boyfriend always gave a little bit about what you wanted to wear, he was always like that, he didn't care about the important things about your relationship and interfered when they were banal things.

When you broke up, it didn't take long for Carl to realize that things in his life didn't fit together anymore, but it was already too late for him, for you, he should have paid more attention this two years and not now, and certainly not just one week ago. You moved on, but Carl didn’t. You were happy, but Carl wasn't.

He only realized his mistakes when you showed up in this little coffee shop smiling like you hadn't smiled in a long time.

He lost you, but you didn’t lose anything. 

#carl gallagher x reader #carl gallagher #shameless us #ask

[ticketstomydaydreams]

5:3666

(All We Have: Part Two)

Part One

Colson x Female Reader

Summary: You and Colson fall into a night time studio routine when he starts keeping you company through your insomnia and you decide to work though some past demons

Word count: 3,200 (ish, I lost count editing)

Feels: Fluff with a dash of past trauma

Warnings: Drug & alcohol consumption, domestic violence, cursing, Colson being so sweet it almost makes your teeth hurt

Companion playlist:

Machine Gun Kelly - 5:3666

Warren Zevon - I'll Sleep When I'm Dead

The Vamps - All Night

Halsey - You Should Be Sad

A/N: If you've been affected by anything in this story, please know you're not alone. My inbox is always open and I'm all ears 🖤

______

During the first couple of weeks of moving in, you’d been partying A LOT. The guys wanted to show you just how mad it got, breaking you into their chaotic household, blending the days together. Everyone was hyper and the house was buzzing with energy. You'd been so exhausted from all of it that you'd been all but passing out each night, but you couldn’t lie, it was great fun.

You’d tried to pass on a few nights but Colson would never hear of it, often forcing you out of your room to get involved as the house was filled with people, jam sessions taking place in between drinking games. It was a far cry from your usual homelife, your last housemate mainly kept to themselves so your place was normally pretty chilled. Colson had used your place as a quiet escape over the years, but it seemed you wouldn’t have the same set up extended to you here with this lot.

With the pandemic unfolding, the house had started getting quieter, less people in and out every night and everyone was settling into a lazier way of life. The gang were mooching around the house throughout the day and while the house was still lively at night, it wasn’t quite the party central you’d almost started getting used to. Your normal working routine went out the window as everyone had started working from home mainly and without your daily routine, followed by nights out partying, your insomnia was back with full force.

______

You were lying in your bed, trying to force sleep on yourself but after trying to nod off for a couple of hours, you accepted defeat and got back up. Throwing some sweats on and one of Colson’s huge hoodies (you’d been slowly sneaking them out of his closet, finding that the masses of material drowning your small frame were super comforting), you headed down to the kitchen, turned the stove on and filled the kettle up. You were scrolling through your phone when you heard footsteps on the tiled floor. Colson strolled into the kitchen looking disheveled in a white tank top and boxer shorts, hair ruffled and looking sleepy

“Dude, it’s 3am how come you’re up?”

“Couldn’t sleep, living that oh so fun insomnia life again” you sighed “Did I wake you?”

“Nah, I was already awake. Couldn’t sleep either and heard someone moving about so thought I’d come down” He replied, climbing onto one of the breakfast stools

“Yeah, I think it’s not having much of a routine. Hate lying in bed staring at the ceiling so just got up. You want a cup?” you offered, pointing to the chamomile tea you were brewing

“Sure, thanks” he says, taking the steaming mug from you

You sit down at the breakfast bar with him and start chatting, scrolling through instagram as you do. After about an hour, as you’re talking about an article you’re reading, you notice Colson doesn’t respond and you look to your right and see he’s fallen asleep, leaning on his hand, his mouth slightly ajar.

“Hey, sleeping beauty” you whisper, rubbing his back with your hand “Go to bed”

He slightly jolts at your touch, opening his eyes “Nah man, I’m keeping you company”

“Some company” you laugh softly “pretty sure you just slept through all my rambling there”

He leans against your shoulder, closing his eyes again “Hey, at least you’re not sitting here alone. That’s something right?”

“That’s true” you smile, leaning your head against his “You’re very appreciated, do you know that”

You gently push him upright and stand up “Come on, let’s go to bed. I’m pretty tired myself, so you’ve definitely helped”

He’s laid his head down on his arm on the counter, his breathing getting heavy immediately so you pull his other hand making him stand up. He stands up and puts his arm around your shoulder as you walk towards the stairs, your legs feeling heavy as you climb each step, carrying some of Colson’s weight as he sleepily walks with you

Once you’re standing outside your bedroom doors, he pulls you in for a hug

“Night kid, don’t be wandering around bored if you can’t sleep yeah? Just come get me. Nothing worse than sitting up alone at night…”

“Will do. Thanks Col” You squeeze him a bit tighter as he kisses the top of your head

“Night” you smile, as he let’s you go and turns and heads into his room, waving his hand up behind him

Undressing and crawling into bed, your eyes feel heavy as your head hits the pillow. Colson was right, insomnia was a much less lonely experience with a friend.

______

Of course, as is always the way after your sleepless nights, you sleep in super late the following day meaning the cycle continues and you find yourself wide awake as the witching hour approaches. Feeling restless in your bedroom, you get up, and decide to head downstairs and out into the studio because you figure you might as well put this time to good use. You settle into a chair with your acoustic guitar and started playing, stopping and starting as you figure out a melody, working your latest lyrics in with it

“I wanna start this out and say, I gotta get it off my chest. Got no anger, got no malice…”

“I thought I told you to come get me if you couldn’t sleep”

You almost drop your guitar as you hear Colson’s voice behind you, “Jesus, how are you such an enormous human but you still manage to creep up on me all the time?”

“Just a stealthy motherfucker I guess” He laughs, flopping into the chair next to you

“Whatcha working on? That sounded sweet, keep playing…”

Colson knows you sometimes get a bit self-conscious with people watching you sing, so he lights his joint, rests his head on his hand and closes his eyes. You smile as you see what he's doing, thankful he always understands what you're like.

You turn back to your notepad, reading over your lyric outline quickly before repositioning the guitar in your lap and resetting the metronome

___

‘I wanna start this out and say, I gotta get it off my chest

Got no anger, got no malice, Just a little bit of regret

No, nobody else will tell you, so there's some things I gotta say

Gonna jot it down and then get it out and then I'll be on my way

No, you're not half the man you think that you are

And you can't fill the hole inside of you with money, drugs, and cars

I'm so glad I never ever had a baby with you

'Cause you can't love nothing unless there's something in it for you

Oh, I feel so sorry, I feel so sad

I tried to help you, it just made you mad

And I had no warning about who you are

I'm just glad I made it out without breaking down

And then ran so fuckin' far, that you would never ever touch me again

Won't see your alligator tears

'Cause, no, I've had enough of them’

___

“Man, that was beautiful Y/N. I got some chills right there…You just wrote that?”

“Nah, it’s something I dug up from ‘back then’. Been going through some old lyrics and samples while we’ve got all this time on our hands. It’s kinda cathartic to go over some of that stuff now there’s a bit more distance you know”

______

A couple of years ago, you’d been stuck in a really toxic relationship with your ex, Stevie. Your time with him had been a tornado of arguments, drugs and the constant heartache of him cheating on you. Every time you’d get close to having the strength to leave, you’d always cave in and the mess would continue with you losing a bit of yourself each time you stayed. You’d become pretty used to his violent outbursts, he had always been controlling and short tempered, often pushing you and throwing stuff around your apartment. Despite his own frequent infidelity, he flew into a jealous rage with you constantly.

He’d always hated Colson, despite him being one of your best friends, and while he’d play nice to his face you’d always get it in the neck once you were alone about how you and Colson were ‘too close’ and he ‘didn’t trust him’. Before that final night you’d spent with him, things had been pretty good with the two of you for a few weeks, there hadn’t been much drama and so you hadn’t thought too much of inviting him out with you and the gang for a night out clubbing. Your good run had clearly come to an end, when you felt his hand grab your arm tightly and drag you off the dancefloor where you’d been dancing with Colson. You’d been bundled into an uber so quickly, you hadn’t even managed to get your handbag from inside. You saw Colson running out of the club, followed by Rook and Slim who was holding your bag, as the cab pulled away.

Once you were back at the apartment, he flew into a rage. You’d never seen him this bad before, his eyes were dark and when you tried to argue back, calling his jealousy ‘pathetic’ he snapped. He’d grabbed you by the throat and slammed you against the wall, “Don’t you ever disrespect me like that again” he’d spat in your face, before striking you so hard with his fist that the skin across your cheek split open. It was as if his actions had knocked him back to reality, he’d let go of you and you ran to your bedroom, locked the door behind you and started packing a bag. He hammered on the door, begging you to open it and you could hear that he was crying. You looked around for your phone before you remembered you’d left it at the club. Desperate to get away, you opened your laptop and brought up instagram, managing to send Colson a message asking him to send you an uber to his house straight away. You’d thrown your laptop and a few more bits in your bag, the battery dying before you had a chance to wait for a reply, before pulling the bedroom door open and barging past Stevie. He’d tried to grab you, but you’d finally had enough “Never fucking touch me again” you spat, pushing him off you. The hatred in your voice rooted him to the spot and he said nothing as you walked out, the door slamming behind you.

Once you were outside the apartment building, the reality of what had just happened and the situation you were in started to wash over you. You had no phone, no wallet, your laptop was dead. Just as you were starting to seriously panic, an uber pulled up and Colson had leapt out of the backseat. You’d been in total shock and had just let Colson guide you into the cab and then out into his house, up to his room. He didn’t say anything as he led you to his bathroom and lifted you up onto the counter. He grabbed a flannel and soaked it with warm water, rinsing it out before pressing it softly against the cut on your cheek, gently wiping away the blood that had mixed with your mascara laced tears. The tenderness of his actions was almost too much and you started to sob again.

“Hey, hey. Y/N, look at me” he said softly, lifting your chin so you looked at him, his blue eyes misty themselves “It’s okay, you’re safe here. Don’t move, I’ll be back in a sec”

He left the bathroom and returned with a pair of boxers and a t-shirt. Putting them on the counter next to you, he crouched down and undid the straps on your heels, slipping them off your feet and then helping you down from the counter. “I’ll leave you to change”

When you came out of the bathroom, Colson was lying in his bed “Come here” he said, holding his arm and beckoning into his side. You crawled under the covers next to him and snuggled into him, his long arms wrapping around you.

“Col…” you said quietly

“Yeah?” he whispered back, stroking your hair off your forehead

“Thank you…”

“You don’t need to thank me. I’ve always got you Y/N”

______

“I hated that fucking guy. That night...I wanted to kill him after what he’d done to you”

You see him tense up at the memory and you lean over and squeeze his knee “You’re such an amazing friend, do you know that. I don’t know what I would’ve done that night without you”

"You're a fucking warrior Y/N, you'd have handled your shit. I was just happy you trusted me enough to let me be there for you. You deserve so much better than that" he says, covering the hand you'd placed on his knee with his, staring you in the eyes and returning the smile that's crept across your face

"You know there's been a few punches I've wanted to dole out on behalf of you over the years, but you've never let me" you tell him

"Too right I'd never let you. I never want you in the drama, you're too good for getting caught up in that shit" he replies, pointing at you with mock sternness

"Hey" he says, seeing your expression wash over with a tint of sadness "At least the sleepless nights aren't what they were then…

… If we're gonna work through some old demons this lockdown, I'm sure I've got some songs and lyrics that have never seen the light of day" He reaches over the desk and pulls his laptop towards him "You've inspired me… "

"Oh no, are we gonna fuck our heads up with this?" you joke nervously, worrying that Colson's going to delve into something that's going to upset him

"Nah, I got you covered and you got me, right?"

"True dat" you say, as he holds his fist out so you can fistbump, his eyes now focused on his laptop screen

______

You felt kinda bad, having kept Colson up all night with you the last two nights, especially as you'd got him reminiscing about some tough memories, so tonight you tried to sneak past his room when your restlessness got the better of you.

"Nice try kid!" Colson says as he throws his bedroom door open, causing you to yelp in fright. standing there topless with his sweatpants hung low in his hips, he lights the joint hanging from his mouth "I told you we were in this together now"

"I felt bad, making you stay up with me"

"You didn't make me do shit…Wait a sec, let me find a hoodie. If I have any left in here…" he says, giving a pointed look towards the huge blue hoodie you were wrapped in before walking back into his room and rummaging through his drawers

"Oh shush, you have like a hundred…"

"Right come on" he says, pulling a pink hoodie over his head and flipping the hood up over his messy hair "Let's see what we get into tonight…"

______

And so the nights went on like this, the two of you falling into an easygoing studio routine. If there wasn't anything else going on in the house, you'd eat dinner together then head to the studio and work through the night into the small hours, skipping out the pretense of trying to sleep. You were both pretty productive at this time it seemed, both being proclaimed night owls, and keeping busy during these uncertain times was keeping your minds off the unfolding pandemic.

Considering he’d referred to his home studio in the past as the ‘rage cage’ (and it certainly could still be party central when the entire crew got involved), it was actually a place you drifted towards to relax these days. You’d always worked well together in a studio, but over the weeks spending so much time just the two of you, you became more in tune with each other, noticing when one of you had hit a wall and it was time for bed. Sometimes you'd work in comfortable silence, side by side, engrossed in your own seperate tasks. Sometimes barely any work would get done as you put the world to rights talking about anything and everything in a late night impromptu therapy session.

This evening, you'd been sitting cross legged in your chair for hours now, focusing so hard on editing a song which was driving you mad, you hadn't realised your feet had gone numb. As you try to move, your knees crack and pins and needles shoot through your legs. Colson looks up from the screen he'd been engrossed in after hearing you groan and sees you rubbing your feet trying to bring back the feeling to them

‘C’mere’ he said, before turning his chair towards you and leaning down to grab your legs, bringing your feet up onto his lap. He pulls your socks off and begins massaging your feet. You lean your head back, eyes closed and let out a long ‘hmmm’. You don’t see Colson glancing over at you and shifting in his seat as he lets out slow breath before turning back to his screen

“Now this is the kind of work session I could get used to”, you sighed "You being my studio bitch on hand for foot rubs. Although, I imagine this enjoyment goes both ways Mr Foot Lover” you tease, throwing him an exaggerated wink

Colson throws his head back with a hearty chuckle, and light heartedly slaps your calf

"Keep it in your pants Y/N"

You laugh and wiggle your toes, Colson letting out a dramatic, throaty groan in response. "Those are some sexy little toes though" he states, sticking his tongue out.

Still laughing, you put your hand to your chest, and gasp as you feign prudishness and try to pull your feet away. He grabs both your feet in one of his hands, keeping them in place then leans over the desk and pulls your laptop towards you

"Get on with some work you, this is supposed to be keeping you motivated, not distracted"

He scolds affectionately, with a smile on his face

“Okay, okay, spoilsport” you grumble as you pull your computer onto your lap

Half an hour passes, your legs still on Colson’s lap with him still massaging your feet absentmindedly with one hand while he works, and your eyes begin to feel heavy. You don’t realise you’ve fallen asleep, until you’re awoken by a “woah” from Colson as he catches your laptop which is about to fall. Taking it from your lap, he states “Right, time for bed you”

You check your phone and see it’s already 5:36am.

You stand up and stretch then walk over behind Colson, putting your arms around his shoulders, and resting your chin on his head. Looking at his screen, you yawn “You got much left to do?”

He leans back into you, bringing his hand up to rest on your arm, “Making some good progress so just gonna finish a couple of bits”

“Okay dude” you gently kiss the top of his head and squeeze the back of his neck a couple of times as you turn to leave “Try and get some rest, we’ve got a long day of sweet fuck all to do tomorrow” you say through another big yawn

“Heh yeah, Night Kid” he says softly, letting out a yawn himself. Colson turns and watches you head out of the studio and lets out a big sigh. Feeling the back of his neck still tingle from where you’d squeezed it, he’s suddenly aware of how empty the room feels without you in it....

______

Taglist: @triplexdoublex @thisshitisfuckingdifficult @brightblaqkkheaven

Lace Up! ❌❌

#colson baker imagine #colson baker x reader #fanfic #fanfiction #machine gun kelly imagine #machine gun kelly x reader #mgk imagine #mgk x reader #mgk fluff #mgk smut #Colson Baker #colson baker smut #Mgk #machine gun kelly #mgk fanfiction #Mgk fic #Colson fic #Colson imagine

[baepsaesbae]

Masked Windfall

Pairing— Park Jimin x reader x Jeon Jungkook

Genre— SMUT, strangers to lovers au

Warnings— Switch!Jimin, Dom!Jungkook, Switch!reader, threesome, explicit unprotected and somewhat rough sex (stay safe my friends), double penetration (but like a bj and in your business at the same time? I’m bad with terminology I’m sorry), brief handjob, fingering, multiple orgasms, a booty slap, praise kink, slight derogatory kink, brief guy on guy action, nipple play, hair pulling, lots of kissing, teasing, swearing, PHEW I think that’s all? Please let me know if I forgot something

Word Count— 6k                                                                                         

Win(d)fôl: a piece of unexpected good fortune || After a bad breakup, you’ve given up on the prospect of a relationship, and on romance in general. Things take a turn once you get dragged to a mysterious party an encounter an alluring stranger. 

A/N— Happy 2021~ I hope you guys enjoy this sinful fic! This was the first fic I ever wrote a threesome scene for and I was quite happy with how it turned out. Reviews and reblogs are greatly appreciated <3

Ever since your breakup, it was as if love was in the air for everyone but you. Seeing happy couples everywhere served as a constant reminder of your bitter split with your longtime boyfriend. Your jerk ex-boyfriend dumped you right before the holiday season, even after you had planned to spend Christmas and New Years’ with him. Left dejected and inconsolable, you gave up on the idea of romance.

“You gotta stop moping around,” your friend, Chungha, tried to cheer you up.

Chungha was single too, but by choice. Boys (and girls) were constantly flinging themselves at her. She didn’t care for a relationship at this time, and would rather opt for meaningless one night stands.

“Come with me tonight!” she excitedly shoved a flyer in your face.

“Love is Out, Lust is In! An exciting one night event dedicated to adventurous singles who just want to have fun…” you read the flyer aloud, “Yeah, I don’t know about that.”

“Girl, you gotta stop feeling sorry for yourself! It’s not your fault that that idiot dumped you. To be honest, I always thought you could do so much better,” Chungha rubbed your back, “I’m not gonna force you to meet anyone new, but one night out can’t hurt. You might even have a serendipitous encounter!”

“Fine, I’ll go. But just to watch over you, I don’t want some creep to follow you around all night,” you caved in.

“I love my little knight in shining armor! This’ll be so fun,” she excitedly clung onto your arm, “I’ll pick you up tonight. Wear something sexy! I think the motif is black? Something appropriate for an anti-lovey dovey stuff.”

It was nearly time for Chungha to pick you up. You concluded that dressing up for the first time in ages was the right move. Maybe it was about damn time to move on from your past.

“Ohhh girl you look amazing!” Chungha praised as you stepped outside, “There’s no way you WON’T be getting dicked down tonight.”

“Oh hush, before I change my mind. I haven’t worn anything this revealing in forever,” you tried to hide your embarrassment.

You were wearing a black mesh top that revealed your bra (the one that makes your boobs look the best of course) paired with a flattering skirt. You felt sexy, but you didn’t have the confidence that you used to. Chungha also looked amazing, but that was a given.

“Where did you learn about this event?” you asked as she drove.

“My friends in the cabaret club told me about it,” she answered.

“You have friends who work in a cabaret club? That’s cool,” you mused as you gazed out the window.

“Not exactly. It’s just called that; it’s really just a group of girls who like to brunch on the weekends. The place we’re going to is known for being a bit secretive,” she smiled.

“What does that mean?” you start to get anxious.

“You’ll see!” she said gleefully.

The venue looked more like some millionaire’s mansion. The property was stowed away at the end of a sketchy road that was more akin to a beaten up dirt path. However, you saw that the lot in front of the house was littered with fancy cars; from G Wagons to Bugattis. The guests emerging from the vehicles all looked like celebrities.

“Where the hell are we?” you asked Chungha.

“Not quite sure, but I can’t wait to find out,” she was also awestruck.

Upon arrival, a gentleman stationed at the entrance requested for your invitation. Chungha pulled out a fancy envelope and casually handed it to him. It looked far more formal than the flyer she showed you earlier.

“Is this your plus one?” he gruffly asked.

“Yep,” Chungha linked her arm in yours.

“Very well. Here are your masks. Enjoy your stay,” he responded curtly.

“Masks? Chungha, seriously. Where the hell are we? I was picturing some dingy club based off of the flyer you showed me. Not to mention that I am drastically underdressed,” you admitted as you helped her put on her mask.

Chungha took the sparkly white mask that was adorned with feathers, which was fitting since it made her look even more angelic. Your mask was matte black accented with gold trimmings. It was far more elegant than the outfit you were wearing.

“Okay, I confess. I made the flyer. I knew you’d decline if I told you it was actually a swanky invite only shindig. I’m sorry for lying! I just really wanted to take you out,” she pouted.

Her puppy dog eyes worked on you every time.

“I forgive you. I don’t know if I’d ever get to experience something like this without you anyway,” you pulled her in for a hug.

“Aw yay! Alright, we’re gonna have a bunch of fun tonight! Also, you look hot. Don’t worry about what you look like. Plus, I have a feeling that people aren’t gonna care,” she says as soon as you both enter the foyer.

Your jaw dropped as soon as you saw the most sumptuous house imaginable. The foyer opened the house up to two grand staircases. The baroque decor screamed nothing but lavish expectations for the rest of the house. Chungha led the way into the large room past the staircases. The room was even more magnificent than the entrance, with white marble pillars creating the doorways.

The place was bustling with activity. Once you finished admiring the place, your attention turned to the guests. Some women were wearing seductive gowns, while others were only wearing beautiful (and probably extremely expensive) lingerie. All of the men were wearing suits or tuxedos. With the motley of outfits you observed, you figured what you were wearing really wasn’t that strange.

“Drinks ladies?” a waitress materialized from thin air.

“Yes please! Thanks,” Chungha quickly grabbed two glasses.

Your eyes widened as the waitress walked away. She was wearing a thin white sheet that was completely see through, and she wasn’t wearing anything underneath.

You realized that this must have been their uniform, as the rest of the servers were dressed the same way. Both males and females.

“CHUNGHA!” a shrill voice cut through the air.

“Ah hey! Thank you so much for inviting me!” Chungha greeted the girl who called out to her.

“Of course! I live for these parties! I’ve never seen hotter men anywhere else,” the girl winked, “My uncle wants the guests to know that all of the servers are available. All the rooms upstairs are unlocked, unless they’re being used of course. I hope you ladies get a good catch tonight!” the girl quickly hugged both of you before scampering away.

“The servers are all available…? For what?” you shot a confused look to Chungha.

“I think you can figure that out,” she smiled sheepishly.

“Chungha, did you invite me to a freaking orgy!?” you cried out.

“You said you wanted to watch over me!” she playfully argued, “You’re already here, ___. You might as well try to enjoy yourself.”

“I guess I’ll settle for people watching,” you sighed.

“Oh! I see someone I know, I’ll be right back,” Chungha squeezed your arm before disappearing into the crowd.

After snatching another drink from a scandalously clad waiter, you retreated to an empty corner. You hoped to observe the guests unnoticed and unbothered. After about half an hour, you noticed an odd pattern. People would woo their target, disappear for a bit, and then return to continue the hunt. Their clothing was often disheveled once they resurfaced, but it didn’t really matter when they were bound to be torn off again.

“Bored?” an unfamiliar voice asked.

“I’m thoroughly entertained,” you answered without taking your eyes off of the party.

“I think I could bring you more entertainment,” the man suggested as he gripped your hips.

“Get your hands off of me!” you push him off.

The assailant was an older man, at least 30 years older than you, and he seemed bewildered that you turned him down. His breath reeked of alcohol, and the dilation of his eyes alluded to his other indulgences of the night.

“I was promised that everyone at this party wanted to have some fun,” he angrily grasped your arm.

You cried out in pain. You were about to punch him in the face until someone else beat you to it. The man crumpled to the ground clutching his bloody nose.

“You little shit! I’ll find out who you are and ruin your life!” the man threatened.

“Mind your tone, worm. Or do I need to beat you senseless to remind you of your place?” your savior shot a baleful glare at the pathetic man who now cowered in fear.

“Are you okay?” your rescuer asked in a soft tone after the man was out of sight.

“Much better now, thank you. That guy was crazy. I’m ___,” you raised your hand for a handshake.

“I’m Jimin. Pleasure to meet you,” he delicately kissed your hand.

His intricate silver mask matched his hair. Even with his face half covered, you could tell that he was remarkably handsome. His dark suit made him look professional yet charming. You felt out of place standing beside him.

“Have you found a partner yet?” he asked bluntly.

“I’m not looking for one; I’m just here to take care of my friend. I don’t think I belong here,” you admitted.

“Why not? I know half of your face is hidden, but I’m willing to bet that you’re more gorgeous than half the people here. I like your style, it shows that you don’t really care for the norm,” Jimin gave you a thumbs up.

Even though it was meant as a compliment, it was off putting to know that you really did stick out like a sore thumb.

“Thanks,” you replied softly, “Have you found yours?”

“Nah, I hate big parties like this. Especially this one,” he shrugged.

“Then why are you here?” you figured that he’d have a line of women begging to sleep with him.

“Much like you, I’m watching over a friend. However, I have lost track of him. Where’s your friend?”

“I lost track of her too,” you laughed.

“If you don’t mind, could we go somewhere quieter? I’d love to get to know you better. Wait, not like that. I genuinely mean I’d like to have a conversation with you,” his flushed cheeks made him even cuter.

“Sure, lead the way, my noble hero,” you took his hand in yours.

It was a bold move, and you usually preferred to play it safe. Tonight was different. You’ll probably never see this guy again. Where’s the harm in flirting a little?

“Of course, my lady,” he played along.

He led you outside to the gardens. Fairy lights were strung up everywhere, giving the gardens an inviting aura. Tall shrubbery caught your eye. Jimin’s eyes followed your gaze.

“It’s a maze,” he said, observing your curiosity.

“This place has an actual labyrinth?” your eyes widened in disbelief.

“Wanna go explore it? I can’t guarantee you that we won’t get lost,” he offered.

“Yes please!” your eyes lit up.

Jimin couldn’t help but smile at your ebullience. How did someone so sweet end up in a twisted place like this?

“Can we take off these silly masks now? I hate wearing mine,” Jimin squeezed your hand.

“Sure, I don’t care. I apologize in advance if you go blind after seeing my face,” you jested.

You both took a moment to soak in each other’s true appearances. Jimin was more handsome than you could’ve dreamt. His individually delicate features attributed to an overall godly image that you had a hard time believing was real.

“Even more beautiful than I imagined,” Jimin acknowledged you with an approving smile, “Let’s ditch this stupid soiree,” he held out his arm for you.

Abandoning the masks on the ground, you practically dragged Jimin into the labyrinth. Corn mazes at Fall Festivals were fun, but this was the real deal. The hedges were at least 3 meters tall. No one would be able to find you if you actually got lost here.

“I think I heard that the trick is to keep to the right wall,” Jimin explained.

“Why don’t we take turns choosing which way to go? Unless you’re scared of getting lost,” you teased.

“Don’t get mad at me when we’ve been stuck in here for days,” he laughed.

You traversed the maze hand in hand with Jimin. The conversation began to flow naturally. Jimin listened to you intently and replied thoughtfully.

The night darkened as the party was left further behind. Normally, this eerie setting would frighten you, but your company made it bearable. Nothing but the moonlight lit your path now. You were too busy enjoying yourself to realize that you both were hopelessly lost.

“I hope you don’t mind me pointing out that this is the third dead end we’ve encountered in the past two minutes,” Jimin elucidated once you found yourselves staring at a green barrier yet again.

“Do you think someone will come to rescue us?” you started to panic.

“Definitely not tonight. Probably not tomorrow either,” Jimin answered brusquely.

“Let’s retrace our steps again. I might end up eating you if we really do get stuck out here,” you tried to joke.

“Eat me?” Jimin chuckled, “My dear, what if I end up eating you?”

“Sorry pretty boy, but I feel like I could easily beat your ass in hand to hand combat,” you laugh as you turn to leave.

Suddenly, your back was being pinned against a hedge. Jimin placed one of his hands on your shoulder and the other one on your waist.

“Let me rephrase that. What if I end up eating you out?” he raised an eyebrow suggestively.

“I might enjoy that. However,” you quickly hook your leg around his knee to dead leg him.

Jimin’s surprise gave you the opportunity to knock him to the ground. You wrapped your right arm around his left arm, effectively pinning him down. You firmly gripped his left wrist with the same arm, rendering both of his arms useless.

“I don’t think you’re capable of doing that right now,” you fake a pout as your free hand wanders from his chest down to his crotch.

He was already somewhat hard when you began to palm him through his pants. You planted a soft kiss on his neck, sucking slightly before breaking contact. Jimin moaned at the sensation, his hips bucking up into your hand.

“What do you want, pretty boy?” you whispered in his ear as you cupped his length in your hand.

“Oh my god I want to fuck you,” he pleaded.

“You’re in no position to fuck anyone,” you reminded him, tightening your grip on his arms.

“I want you to fuck me, ___,” Jimin’s whines grew desperate.

“Is that so?” you say as you unzip his pants, “Here outside? On the ground? That’s a bit improper for a prince like you, don’t you think?”

His erection was fully exposed now. You slowly pumped him, pleased with his length. It took every bit of self-control to not immediately pounce on his dick. You traced your thumb around the soft tip, causing him to moan again.

“I don’t care. I just need my cock buried in you,” Jimin replied between moans.

“You’re so needy. I guess I could help you out,” you release him from your clutches.

Jimin instantly knocked you onto your back as soon as he was freed. He pinned you the same way you pinned him. You were both impressed and shocked that he learned how to do it already.

“That was a cheeky display. Very hot. I admit that I’ve never begged for pussy before, so props to you,” Jimin awarded you plaudits.

His free hand snaked its way down to your clothed pussy, pleased to find that you were already wet. He toyed with your clit through the fabric of your panties. He relished watching your squirm beneath him.

“It’s not so fun being pinned down, huh?” he kissed your neck in a similar fashion, except he ended his kiss with forceful suckling that was sure to leave a mark.

“I don’t know, it’s kind of fun,” you tried to keep your cool, but were failing miserably.

“Do you want me to touch you, my dear ___?” Jimin asked sweetly.

“Please do,” you exhaled with exasperation.

“You can beg better than that,” he admonished.

“Jimin, fuck me until I forget my own name,” you begged.

“You’ll only know my name by the end of tonight,” Jimin promised as he pulled your panties aside.

He slid in a finger to test how wet you were. You squealed with delight as he easily stuck in two fingers. He expertly curled them in you, grazing your g-spot. Your body tried to move to cope with the pleasure, but Jimin refused to let you go.

“You’re staying right here until I say so. I enjoyed going along with your power play, but you have to learn that I’m the one in charge,” he smirked.

His thumb circled your clit as he mercilessly fingered you. Your legs spasmed as your orgasm led a wave of euphoria across your body.

“Jimin, I’m--oh fuck, I’m cumming,” you cried out.

Jimin helped you ride it out, not slowing down his pace. However, he still didn’t slow down afterward. Your clit was oversensitive and tears began to well in your eyes.

“You’re beautiful when you cum, I want to see it again,” he praised as his pace quickened yet again.

It wasn’t long before your second orgasm hit. The bliss was more intense this time, causing you to cry out even louder. Jimin finally pulled his fingers out of you, then promptly popped them into his mouth.

“You taste like a delicacy,” he said after licking his lips, “You ready to take this cock?”

You nodded silently, as you were attempting to catch your breath.

Jimin aligned his hips with yours. He tantalizingly ran his dick along your wet folds. His tip eventually teased your entrance by barely entering before he took it out again. He loved watching your body beg to be fucked; your hips seemed to move by themselves as they tried to buck into him.

“Jimin, I can’t take this anymore. Stick it in already!” you yelled.

“So impatient,” Jimin chuckled, “Ready?”

“Yes!”

Jimin slowly inserted himself in you. You groaned at the feeling of finally being stretched out by his cock. His tip was fully inside you when a commotion interrupted him.

“We’re fucking lost bro,” a guy said.

“We wouldn’t be in this mess if you listened to me in the first place!” his companion retorted.

Jimin immediately pulled out and helped you up. He shoved his erection into his pants before leaning against a hedge to blend into the shadow.

“You’re the one who said you wanted to go in!” the first man bickered back.

“I said ‘I bet no one else is in there, let’s check it out’”, his companion explained.

“Okay, well now we’re lost. We haven’t even seen a single person since we’ve entered.”

Jimin took you by the hand and quietly led you out of the dead end. He didn’t know where the interrupters were, but he simply went in the opposite direction of their voices.

“We’re all alone now. Pull down your pants, Hobi,” you heard one of the guys say.

“Make me, Yoongi,” the other guy challenged.

“You won’t be so cheeky when my balls are in your mouth,” Yoongi replied, his voice suddenly lower and domineering.

The sound of clothes being ripped off mixed with passionate groans and wet noises grew further away as Jimin navigated through the maze.

“They sound like they’re having fun,” you broke the silence.

“That should have been us,” Jimin was obviously annoyed, “I’m gonna get us the fuck out of this goddamn maze. I swear to god, I’m going to dick you down properly tonight.”

You didn’t know which was more impressive: sheer luck or Jimin’s determination. Either way, one of those things (or maybe some of both) allowed both of you to finally emerge from the maze’s clutches.

Jimin dragged you back to the mansion while completely ignoring everyone who called out to him. You’re not surprised by his popularity; this man looks like he was carved by God himself.

The party had only escalated inside the mansion. Guests had started to forgo public decency altogether. You saw at least three explicit acts of fornication on your way up to the private rooms.

Once upstairs, you heard nothing but people deep in the throes of passion on the other side of just about every door. Jimin led you past them all, not even stopping in front of the ones indicated as ‘vacant’. At the end of the neverending hall was a large ornate wooden door. Its style clashed with the sleek marble that decorated the rest of the mansion.

Jimin whipped out a key from his pocket and unlocked the door. You weren’t prepared for what was on the other side. Unlike the modern style that fitted the rest of the house, this room was decorated with wood.

The carved wooden furniture gleamed brightly due to their polish. The room itself was huge. A king sized bed awaited you at the opposite wall. Elegant curtains draped around the bed, reminding you of the beds royalty would use in movies. Even though the room gave off a cozy aura, it still boasted opulence.

“You like it?” Jimin asked once he saw you gazing around the room in awe.

“It’s beautiful. It feels like I’m in some Elvish Woodland King’s room or something,” you spoke honestly.

“That’s high praise,” he chuckled, “C’mon. I believe we have some unfinished business,” he pulled you onto the bed.

Jimin kissed your neck, peppering in nibbles that made you shudder. You slipped off your skirt and panties as he fondled your breasts. You helped him undress as you threw off his suit jacket and unbuttoned his shirt. You held back a gasp when his abs and toned chest were revealed. You figured he was fit, but you didn’t realize how fit.

His fingers found their way back into your pussy. Jimin sucked on your neck as his nimble fingers made you wetter by the second. Your back arched as your moaned in pleasure when his thumb played with your clit.

“I’m so fucking wet, Jimin,” you breathed into his ear.

“All for me, baby?” he cooed.

“Who else? Honestly, I’ve never been this aroused in my life,” you admitted.

“I’m happy I could change that for you. If you liked my fingers that much, let’s see what my cock can do for you,” he winked as he tugged off his pants.

Jimin spread your legs open as far as they could go. He didn’t have the patience to tease you this time. He filled your pussy up with the entirety of his cock. You relished the stretch; you’ve been waiting all night for this the moment you laid eyes on him.

Jimin began vigorously thrusting into you. The sound of his hips slamming into you coupled with the wet noises of your sopping pussy were drowned out by moans from both parties. Hearing Jimin’s grunts only turned you on more, and the same could be said whenever Jimin heard your melodic moans.

Jimin leaned over to makeout with you, his tongue dipping between your parted lips. You clawed at his back while you kissed him back with ferocious reciprocity. You were getting close to climaxing yet again.

“Jimin, I’m so--”

“Missionary? I know you can do better than that,” an unfamiliar voice interrupted you.

“Fuck off, can’t you see that I’m busy?” Jimin replied angrily, yet he never stopped fucking you.

You were so embarrassed that you grabbed a pillow to hide your face. One person seeing you like this was already flustering enough, but two? Although your mind immediately went to shaming you for being in such a compromising position, it was also kind of a turn on.

“Aw, is she shy? That’s cute,” the unfamiliar boy said.

“What do you want?” Jimin finally pulled out to actually hold a conversation with the intruder.

“I got bored. I figured I’d come in here and jack off or something. I didn’t think you’d be using it,” the voice got closer.

“Well, I am. So get lost,” Jimin growled.

Suddenly, the pillow that covered your face was yanked off. Looking down at you was a man whose beauty rivaled Jimin’s (though you didn’t think that was possible). The man had more of a boyish devil-may-care look. His long dark hair framed his face perfectly, as it showed off his sharp jawline. He traced a finger from your cheek down to your chin.

“She’s cute,” he gave Jimin an approving nod.

“Yeah, and she’s mine. Go away, Jungkook,” Jimin was getting more frustrated by the second.

“Yours? Are you guys dating already?” Jungkook raised his eyebrows in amusement.

“No, but--”

“Then it should be fine if I did this,” Jungkook cupped your face with one hand as he bent down to kiss you.

“Jungkook!” Jimin threw a pillow at him.

Jungkook chuckled as the pillow harmlessly bounced off of him. He deepened the kiss, and soon your tongues were swirling over each other. One of his hands wandered over to your breasts. He pinched your nipple, causing you to gasp into his mouth.

“Oh, she’s so sensitive,” Jungkook smirked, “Let me play with her after you.”

“She’s not a toy,” Jimin defended you.

“It’s okay,” you said softly.

“What?” both of the boys asked in unison.

“You can both use me...however you like,” you looked away shyly, bewildered at what you had just said.

“Fuck, that’s hot,” Jungkook grinned.

“You’re too sweet for your own good, ___. Are you sure?” Jimin asked.

You simply nodded, not able to make eye contact with either of them.

“Alright, baby. Let me take care of you first. Jungkook, you can watch how a man properly fucks a lady,” Jimin glared at Jungkook.

Jungkook stripped down to his underwear as Jimin flipped you onto your knees. You moaned loudly as he started hitting it from the back. This position allowed him to penetrate you even deeper. You buried your face in the sheets in an attempt to muffle your whines.

“Nuh uh,” Jimin tsked as he grabbed a fistful of your hair.

He pulled your head up, exposing your lustful moans. He thrusted harder when he heard you. You opened your eyes to find Jungkook intently staring at you. Feeling cheeky, you made a ‘come here’ motion with one of your pointer fingers.

Jungkook happily obliged. Instead of directly kissing you, he licked up your neck, causing you to shudder. He sucked lightly on your neck as he once again played with your boobs.

“You’re not mad, Jimin?” he was surprised.

“She got wetter. Keep doing whatever you’re doing,” Jimin was lost in pure bliss.

Jungkook pulled you into another heated makeout session. You periodically moaned into his mouth whenever he tugged at your nipples. You whined as he broke the kiss.

“Such a good girl,” Jungkook stroked your cheek, “Wanna try something?” he asked.

You eagerly nodded. It was hard to think when one gorgeous man was making out with you and pinching your nipples, while another gorgeous man was roughly fucking you from behind.

“Open your mouth and stick your tongue out,” Jungkook ordered.

You complied, opening as wide as you could. You watched Jungkook reveal his hard cock, which made your mouth water. His dick was bigger than Jimin’s, but less girthy. It had a little curve that made it look prettier for some reason.

“Want me to put it in? I’d love to see how deep you can take it,” Jungkook stroked his cock.

“I’ll take it all,” you said confidently.

Jungkook smiled at your determination. He lightly placed the tip onto your tongue. You twirled your tongue around it, making Jungkook moan with surprise.

“Maybe she’s not as shy as I thought,” he said to Jimin.

Jimin harshly spanked your ass, causing you to jerk forward. You heard him chuckle behind you.

“I love it when good girls go bad. They’re always the most fun,” Jimin reached his hand around you to play with your clit.

You almost lost control in your arms and fell forward when Jungkook grabbed you.

“You have to be a good girl and hold yourself up. We can fuck you from both sides if you do that, babygirl,” Jungkook ran his thumb along your drooly lips.

You propped yourself back up on your arms and opened your mouth again for Jungkook. He patted your head in approval before placing his dick back onto your tongue. He began pushing himself into your mouth, his eyes never leaving yours.

“Blink twice if it’s too much,” Jungkook instructed.

To his surprise, you managed to take in his full length. You kept gagging since Jimin was thrusting you forward, but that just made it feel better for Jungkook. Jungkook let you know that he was going to start face fucking you, to which you nodded in response. Well, as much as you could nod while his penis was in your mouth.

It didn’t take long for both of the both to boys to fuck you in unison. They rhythmically pulled out and thrusted into you at the exact same time. The intensity of everything turned you on so much, you could feel your juices running down your legs.

Your climax hit you like a truck. Your legs spasmed under you as you cried and gagged on Jungkook’s dick. The feeling of you cumming on Jimin’s cock brought him to the edge. Almost immediately after, Jimin pulled out and came all over your ass.

“Switch places with me,” Jungkook instructed Jimin, “You didn’t think you were done yet, did you?” he winked at you before pulling his dick out of your mouth.

Your sensitivity was through the roof. Jungkook didn’t give you any warning before he inserted himself in you. Jungkook went even deeper than Jimin, and your legs were on the verge of giving out.

“It looks like she can’t hold herself anymore,” Jimin observed with a sly smile.

“I guess I have to do all the work. Stupid slut,” Jungkook groaned, abruptly snatching your arms.

He chuckled when you momentarily fell forward onto your face, but he easily lifted you back up by pulling back on your wrists. You’ve never been roughly restrained like that before, but you wouldn’t complain. Jungkook’s powerful thighs slammed into you repeatedly.

You couldn’t begin to comprehend how sinful you looked: titties bouncing, messy hair, and a lustful expression that rivaled that of succubi themselves. Not to mention you were practically glowing from the film of sweat that developed over the night.

“I’m jealous that he’s kissed you more than I have,” Jimin pouted before he cupped your face.

Wriggling underneath you, Jimin made it easier for you to kiss him. His pillowy lips felt heavenly as he playfully fondled your breasts. He didn’t twist or pinch your nipples like Jungkook did. Instead, he massaged them in a way that still felt delightful.

“Dude, your junk is really close to mine,” Jungkook complained.

“I don’t give a fuck,” Jimin responded between your kisses.

Jungkook’s pace started getting sloppy. You could tell he was close just by his irregular breaths. The room was filled with lewd sounds. Jungkook’s grunts, Jimin’s moans, and your mewls all blended into a chorus of carnal pleasure.

“Fuck, you’re so hot,” Jungkook stuttered before pulling out.

You felt his hot juices splatter across your backside. You toppled onto Jimin when Jungkook let go of your wrists. Jimin just chuckled and held you in a warm embrace.

“You did so well, ___,” he praised before kissing your forehead.

“Was that your first threesome? If so, I’m impressed,” Jungkook cleaned you up with a warm washcloth.

“Mhm,” was all you could muster up to answer his question.

“She’s pretty out of it. Should she stay here for the night?” Jimin asked Jungkook.

“You’re offering to house her? You must have really loved her pussy,” Jungkook laughed.

“Shut up, I’m being serious. I don’t want to let her go back out there to those animals,” Jimin disclosed.

“Did she come alone?” Jungkook sat at the foot of the bed.

“She said she was watching a friend...I don’t think she mentioned who though. Hey, ___, darling, who did you come with?” Jimin gently questioned.

“Chungha,” you said meekly.

“Holy shit. Everyone has been trying to get with her all night,” Jungkook was shocked, “Yeah, I think her friend will be fine on her own. I can watch after her if you want.”

“By watch you mean fuck?” Jimin rolled his eyes.

“Who’s to say I haven’t already?” Jungkook replied cheekily, “You’ve been the most fun I’ve had in a while though,” Jungkook affectionately began scratching your back.

Your eyelids were getting heavier with each passing moment. You instinctively clutched onto Jimin tighter. You’ve always been a cuddler when it was time to sleep.

“I’m gonna go, want me to lock the door?” you heard Jungkook say.

“Yes please. I’ll see you tomorrow,” Jimin sent him off.

“Are you sleepy?” he asked while stroking your hair.

“Mhm. And hungry,” you said half asleep.

“What would you like to eat?” Jimin inquired.

“Grilled cheese,” you said without skipping a beat.

“Just grilled cheese? I could get you anything you want. Lobster, caviar, takoyaki, or maybe even steak?” Jimin was eager to take care of you.

“What time is it?” you asked groggily.

“Uh, a little past 1am.”

“It’s time for a midnight snack. And grilled cheese is the perfect midnight snack,” you nodded your head to confirm your reasoning.

“God, you’re adorable. Alright, a grilled cheese will be here soon,” he kissed your forehead again.

“You go make it?” you pouted, not wanting him to leave your side.

“No, I just texted one of the chefs,” he answered.

“Oh, you’re friends with a chef? That’s nice.”

“Somewhat? They work for my father.”

“Is your father the head chef?”

“No, he’s a businessman,” Jimin chuckled.

“Do you like business? Like your father?”

“No, I actually detest it. My father’s riches mean nothing if he can’t even love his family. He does ridiculous things to showcase his ‘love’ but I don’t buy it. Like this stupid fucking party that he throws every year. His excuse is that he’s providing any luxury money can buy. It’s all just bullshit,” Jimin sounded upset.

“This party? Your dad hosted it?” intrigue stirred you from your sleepy state.

“Yeah, this is the house I grew up in. This is my room,” Jimin admitted.

You were silent for a bit before responding, “I’m sorry your dad is a dick.”

“Don’t worry about it, it’s not your fault. At least one good thing came out of tonight,” he squeezed you tighter.

A knock at the door interrupted your thoughts. Jimin retrieved the delivery. Never in a million years would you have thought that you’d be eating grilled cheese off of a silver platter. Jimin ate quietly beside you.

“I don’t know if this is too forward, but would you like to go on a date with me sometime?” he finally piped up.

“I literally can’t think of anyone that has seen me more intimately than you. Well, besides Jungkook. Of course, I’ll go on a date with you,” you leaned over to kiss Jimin’s nose.

“I guess the dating timeline is a little off since you’re spending the night here too,” Jimin laughed before stopping himself, “Wait, you are spending the night, right?”

“I have no idea where Chungha is, and she’s my ride,” you shrugged.

“You’re welcome to say here if you’d like,” he offered.

“I suppose I can clear my schedule for you,” you teased.

With a tummy full of grilled cheese, it didn’t take long for you to fall sound asleep in Jimin’s arms.

[9:24am from Chungha] BITCH! I heard rumors you slept with THE Park Jimin?! A different rumor said you slept with Jeon Jungkook??? Explain please???

[10:19am] What if I slept with both?

[10:20am from Chungha] NO WAY! Tell me all about it asap

“You good?” Jimin nuzzled your neck.

“Never better,” you smiled.

Published January 7, 2021. No editing, copying, translating, or reposting allowed. All Rights Reserved © 2020-2021 Baepsaesbae

#bts smut #jeon jungkook smut #park jimin smut #bangtanarmynet #btswritingcafe #bts fluff #park jimin fluff #bts fanfic #kpop smut #kpop fanfic #clubjimin #ksmutclub #jimin smut #jungkook smut #jimin fanfic #jungkook fanfic #jimin x reader #jungkook x reader #jimin fic #jungkook fic

[kyotarou]

say “i love you”

characters: kei tsukishima

warnings: angst with a happy ending

word count: 1.5k+

a/n: never thought i’d get emotional over my own work but here we go :’)

     Four months. It’s been four months, three weeks, and six days since you stormed out of Tsukishima’s home with tears and a broken heart. Four months, three weeks, and six days since you ended your five-month-long relationship and uttered the words he never thought he’d hear.

     “Goodbye, Tsukki. I hope your life is better without me.”

     You’d come back for sure, that’s what you always did, because you depended on him, and he depended on you. But four long months passed and you hadn’t come back. No calls, no texts, and your scent was fading from his bed and clothes. The closest he got was when you came to his house while he had practice and cleared the separate drawer he kept for your clothes, then left the spare key on the dinner table along with the keychain of a picture of you and him in the trash. Tsukishima picked it out, cleaned it, and kept it on his desk. No matter how much it broke his heart to look at it, it hurt more to throw it away. It was the rare proof Tsukki had the ability to smile, though it took your whining and begging for him to do so, and he now wished he did it more often.

     At school, you walked past him without a glance in his direction like he didn’t exist. In a way, he didn’t—with the little effort he put into your relationship, it wasn’t worth your time to consider his existence, because he blended into the background like the other nameless students you saw at school. It was unfair. You could avoid him, but he couldn’t avoid you. Your friends were his teammates and it felt like you purposely came by after practice to torture him, laughing and chatting with Tanaka, Kiyoko, and even feeble little Yamaguchi while he stood to the side watching.

     Why did you have to come by? Couldn’t you wait until he wasn’t around to fraternize? Or were you trying to punish him by showing him how happy you were now that he was gone, because it worked, and every time he saw you he regretted not giving you the love you deserved? There you were, getting more love from your friends than your lover—well, ex-lover now. But they didn’t know you like he did; all your fears, your aspirations, what made you break. He knew everything about yet you knew nothing about him.

     Tsukishima kept his feelings hidden well, but now they began to seep into his daily life. His blocks weakened, mind hazy, grades slipping. Did you know the effect you had on him, how he fell apart in those months? Did you know he laid in bed, staring at the ceiling, whimpering your name, sobbing into the empty darkness? Did you know he clutched his pillow to his chest every night, dreaming it was you, wishing death would come so he wouldn’t feel this pain?

     But it wasn’t your fault. It was him who made you leave, who was the last straw, all because he couldn’t say those three stupid words. The day you left played on loop in his head; if he told you he loved you that night, would you have stayed? Would these four months never have happened? Too late, they already have, and unless someone made a time machine, he couldn’t go back. Tsukishima brought this pain on himself and whatever you felt during your relationship must’ve been worse.

     Five months. Five months since you’ve been gone but still there. Tsukishima missed his block once again, the ball flying over the net and barely grazing his fingertips before landing on the floor with a sad bounce. While his teammates and Coach Ukai scowled in annoyance, he stared at the empty bleachers where you once sat. You used to watch him with glowing eyes and a bright smile, keeping your lips sealed since he told you your voice distracted him. Little did you know your presence itself was a distraction because all Tsukishima could focus on was making you happy. Even if Karasuno lost, your boyfriend’s passion was enough to make you cheer until your lungs hurt.

     “Tsukishima! What the hell was that?” Coach Ukai snapped.

     “Keep up the good work. We’re totally gonna go to nationals,” Kageyama muttered as he took his position by the net.

     Tsukishima kept his hands up to hide the way his lip quivered and hoped his glasses blocked the tears forming, but the shaking in his legs gave it away.

     “Tsukki, what’s wrong?” Yamaguchi asked. “Are you feeling alright? Did you get sick?”

     “I’m-” Tsukishima’s voice cracked. “No, I’m not okay. I’m an idiot.”

     “Wha-? What are you talking about? It was one block.”

     “I’m an idiot. Idiot, idiot, idiot.” His face burned with shame as the hot tears flowed like water from a broken dam. Tsukishima stormed out of the gym, wiping at his eyes while his body succumbed to the strongest, most painful sob he’d ever felt. His feet carried him further from the gym, the calls from his teammates falling on deaf ears until he bumped into a wall. He wailed, he wailed like the world was empty because it was. The world was so empty without you. He didn’t care if the whole school heard him if they were going to make fun of him for it after.

     “Are you done moping?”

     Kageyama stomped towards the tall blond who had his head pressed against the wall, body trembling with each gasp and cry.

     “Go away.”

     “You’re upset about (Y/N), aren’t you?”

     “What would you know about them?”

     “I know they’re not as happy as they look.”

     Tsukishima turned his head. Kageyama stood with his hands on his hips, a tired look on his face. He rolled his eyes.

     “I know they’re really breaking inside, because they miss you, Tsukki. I don’t know if they’re hurting as much as you, but it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. What I do know is that they’re starting to get over you, Tsukki. So if you want them back, just say it. Say what you want them to know, because if you don’t, you’re gonna lose them forever, and you’re gonna beat yourself up over it for the rest of your life. So go. Do it, you idiot!”

     Tsukishima ran faster than he thought was possible. He ran through the halls, up the stairs, around the corner, not stopping even though his lungs hurt and his legs burned. He ran until he landed where he was sure you’d be, in the empty classroom where you had club meetings. Although they were finished, you stayed behind to revel in the peacefulness of the room, a stark contrast from how it buzzed during the school day.

     He burst through the door like a madman and collapsed over a desk, sucking in as much air as he could.

     You jumped from your seat. “Ah! What the hell are you doing here?”

     “I-” Tsukishima gasped. Hearing your voice clearly for the first time in months was enough to fuel the fire in his veins. “I need to tell you something.”

     “What could you possibly want?” you snarled and began to pack your stuff. “I don’t want to see you ever again.”

     Tsukishima picked himself up and trudged to your desk before falling to his knees. His heart threatened to burst from his chest as his hands tentatively reached for yours. Relief washed over him when you didn’t pull away.

     “I love you.”

     You stiffened. “What did you say?”

     “I love you.”

     You stared down in shock, then your open mouth turned into a scowl. “You think you can fix this, fix us? No, you ruined it. It’s too late.”

     His arms slipped around your waist, forehead pressed against your stomach. “I know. I messed up, big time. I’m not asking for forgiveness, but I miss you, and it’s killing me. I love you, (Y/N). I’m sorry I never told you, but I really did, and I still do.”

     Your eyes narrowed in fury.

     “N-No! You think you can come in here and win me back just as I was getting over you? You think you have the right to do that, to break my heart again?” No matter how hard you pushed, Tsukishima clung to you with an iron grip.

     “I love you.”

     “Liar!”

     “I love you.”

     “Liar.”

     “I love you.”

     “Liar…” You, too, began to cry. You pounded on his shoulders in rage, wishing he would let go and disappear, but your heart swelled after hearing the words you never thought you would. “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you! I hate that I love you, too.”

     Tsukishima stood and cradled your face in his hands, wiping the tears away. His gentle kiss, lips hot and soft, took you by surprise. Out of instinct, you kissed him back, his warm breath meddling with yours. “I love you, (Y/N),” he whispered once you parted. “I’ll always be angry at myself for hurting you, but I want to try again if you’ll let me. I’m sorry.”

     You closed your eyes. “Say ‘I love you’ and I’ll think about it.”

     “I love you, forever and always. I love you.”

#tsukishima kei #kei tsukishima #tsukishima kei x reader #tsukishima x reader #kei tsukishima x reader #hq tsukishima #haikyuu tsukishima #tsukishima angst #kei tsukishima x you #kei tsukishima x y/n #tsukishima x you #tsukishima x y/n #tsukishima kei fanfic #tsukishima fanfic #tsukishima imagine #tsukishima fanfiction #haikyuu fanfic #hq fanfic #hq fanfiction #hq fanfics #hq imagine #haikyuu imagine #haikyuu imagines #tsukishima kei x you #kei tsukishima fanfiction #kei tsukishima fanfics #tsukishima scenarios #tsukishima kei imagine #haikyuu x reader

[hockeyboysiguess]

sunflowers | m. tkachuk

a/n: today, i offer a humble too long matthew tkachuk fic, full of angst and thoughts about love.

i would like to thank @nolypats​, for having a dream that i wrote a fic about? that dream looks nothing like this fic, but that was the og inspiration, and for being so supportive during the writing of this monster. also, @jasondickinsons​ and @slapshot-to-the-heart​ for freaking out every time i sent you a preview. never would’ve finished it without these three. 

word count: 20K

warnings: swearing, and a ton of angst.

wine pairing recommendation: a full bodied cabernet sauvignon, because this fic is full bodied.

You ran a hand through your hair as you looked at Matthew across your apartment. The mug in your hands felt heavy and the tea inside had gone cold. The look on Matthew’s face when he walked in the front door had made you set it aside and forget about it entirely. He had been nervous, hesitant, his movements almost delayed, like there was too many thoughts swimming in his head for the signals to get down to his muscles at the correct timing. You drummed your nails on the cool ceramic, your fingertips tracing the outline of the sunflower on the mug, as you let out a long breath. 

“We literally just-”

“I know,” Matthew cut you off. He stumbled through the next six words, but they stung all the same. “I think this was a mistake.” 

It was as if he picked the words right out of your deepest vault of insecurities, sharpened them, then tossed them in your general direction careless, but still wasn’t surprised when they hit their mark. Your shoulders caved in, your body reacting to the weight of the insecurities you had tied to those words in your mind hitting you in the chest. You set your mug on the counter with shaky hands. 

“Matthew,” you tried to start, but he just set his blue eyes to the ceiling instead of trying to look at you.

You pressed harder, this time, irritation in his inability to communicate with you boiling over, “You can’t just say something like that then not look at me.” 

“Fine.” 

His eyes were dead when they rolled back to yours, lifeless, emotionless, almost completely devoid of the person you knew so well that was usually behind them. He looked nothing like the friend you had for the past two years, nothing like the boy who you kissing on his birthday a few months before this terrible moment you were being forced to inhabit, and nothing like the boyfriend you had since that night. He was unrecognizable from the boy you loved, the set in his jaw unsettling you. Matthew had not come over to have a discussion. You could see that now. He was resolved to end this relationship when he walked through your front door. When Matthew Tkachuk’s mind was made up, you had yet to find anything that could redirect his course. You knew you wouldn’t be the first tonight. 

“I think we can work on this, if you’ll just talk to me about it.” 

The laugh that comes out of his mouth in response to your words made you instantly wish you had never tried. The part of you that had told you to just swallow the breakup he clearly wanted was screaming, “I told you so,” at the top of its lungs. There was no resolution to be had. This relationship was over before he walked in the door, before he walked in the building, before he had gotten in his car. It was over the minute he texted you, curtly informing you he was coming over. Now that your mind was ruminating, the tone of his text felt rough and succinct, like he just wanted to get through it to get to this. 

“I think that there’s nothing to work on,” Matthew told you, his tone flat. “I think we were friends, are friends, good friends, and we just starting having feelings because we thought we couldn’t have each other. That whole forbidden fruit thing, right? And we got all mixed up. Sex was great, is great, don’t get me wrong, that kind of chemistry isn’t the problem, but I just don’t think we’re supposed to be together. I think we just got our wires crossed and mixed the chemistry and the friendship up to mean that we’re in love when I just don’t think we are. At best, I think we just had middle school crushes gone off the rails. I don’t think I really have feelings for you and I don’t think you have them for me either. I think that’s why we fight a lot. There’s nothing really here, in all reality, and I think we can both sense it. You know I’m right. You just don’t want to admit it.”

“Get. Out.” 

You spat the words out with all the venom and anger you felt. It wasn’t until the door shut behind him, not another word spoken in the tense moments it took to cross your kitchen to it, that you felt the pain in your chest. The anger, and the adrenaline that came with it, had disguised it while he was still here. Now, it was just you, in your empty apartment, realizing you not only had to deal with the pieces of yourself left over after Matthew just shattered you, underneath that was the agony of losing a friend. A friend you had come to know so well over coffees and sheet pizzas and margarita pitchers, in parties and houses and parks and arenas. He left with your now ex-boyfriend, because they were one and the same. 

All you had was the now tainted memories of him and an even colder cup of tea.

------

You shuffled around your kitchen island, skipping the tea kettle in favor of your trusty slightly rusty coffee pot. This wasn’t a morning tea could handle. None of the mornings since Matthew told you that, in essence, your entire relationship was built on false pretenses and was doomed to fail from the start, had been tea mornings. They’d all be coffee caliber mornings. 

Just as the coffee started to drip into the pot, your phone lit up on the counter. It was either your mom or another friend checking on you for what had to be the hundredth time. Your friends had be rotating who would check on you and who would bring you food. They were genuinely worried this break up was making you a bit of a recluse. The problem was, the person that had gotten you out of ever breakup funk you had over the past two years, every bad date, every ghosted text, was the person that caused this one. Your mind unwillingly brought you back to a memory you had been trying to avoid for the last four weeks.

There was a knock on your door. You pulled your sweatshirt sleeves over your hands to wipe your nose and eyes. You would have thought that after two weeks, a whole fourteen days, you would have cried everything out by now. Your body apparently had other ideas and was content to continue to produce tears until you felt better. When that would be? Who could say. 

Matthew Tkachuk was trying to have a say about it when he was on the other side of the door you opened. You sighed. You weren’t in the mood for him and his persistence in getting his way.

“I brought donuts, Legally Blonde because my sister said to, and my sparkling personality and I’m not leaving until you smile, eat at least two donuts, and take a shower.” 

He pushed his way into your apartment effortlessly. You didn’t consider yourself particularly weak, but there really wasn’t much you could do against Matthew Tkachuk with his mind made up on his side. He kicked his shoes off on the way to your coffee table, dropping the donuts on it before grabbing the TV remote. 

“I said I brought Legally Blonde. I meant that I brought my intent to watch it with you. We both know I’m just gonna rent it on your TV for you. I don’t own a DVD player and neither do you,” Matthew said to you as he started pulling up the movie. “Also, I have no idea how to log in to my stuff on this thing because you have a Fire TV instead of an Apple TV like a loser, so I’m just going to Venmo you $3.99 for the rental.” 

“Matthew,” you sighed, running a hand through your unwashed hair.

“Yeah, you can’t physically remove me from your couch, so I will not be leaving this apartment,” he informed you. “Watching Legally Blonde on your couch without you and stuffing my face with donuts I’m not supposed to have feels like it would be a pretty low point in my life. Unless you come watch with me and save me from half of these donuts.”

You saved him from half the donuts. He saved your hair from a record eighth day without washing it. You saved him from actually watching the sequel. He saved you from your torturous thought spirals and your tendency to look entirely for mistakes you made and flaws within yourself in lieu of acknowledging that relationships always take two people. He saved you from becoming a recluse that time, pulling you out of your apartment for dinner with him the next day. It was just Chipotle. He said he chose the environment for low social stress, high food volume ratio. You had hit him in the chest and he’d squeezed your hand softly, bringing it up to his mouth to kiss the back of it softly. 

“You know he didn’t deserve you, right?” he told you as you waiting in line. “You can and will do a hell of a lot better than him someday, probably sooner than you think.”

“Thanks, Matty.” 

Looking back on that memory, you couldn’t find any fondness for it. It just made the dull ache in your chest that had become a permanent resident over the last month transform temporarily in a sharp, stabbing one, before returning to its original form. You poured your coffee, each movement it required felt exhausting. You felt absolutely spent constantly because you were spending all of your energy trying to figure out what had gone wrong. Relationships were a two way street, but you could never drive down the other side, only your own. Matthew’s side, his view of it all, would always be foreign to you, but you could analyze every word, every movement, and every piece of Matthew’s reaction to all of your actions to find what you had done, what you had done to contribute to the car wreck that had caused the pain in your chest. Did you veer too close to him? Did you veer too far? What did you do? 

When you get together with a friend, after years of mutual pinning, it’s supposed to work out. Every book, movie, and hell, every other couple you had ever seen that had been great friends first, then started dating, worked out. It always had a happy, romantic comedy kind of ending to it all. Everything was supposed to fall into place the second Matthew kissed you for the first time because friends falling in love felt inevitable in the kind of way that made you believe in predestination, in fated futures. You had come to the conclusion that fate either didn’t exist, or she was a fucking bitch. 

“Come here!” Matthew shouted to you across the party when you were less than two steps into his front door. “I want a birthday hug!”

“I literally just got here!” you shouted back, your voice dropping in volume as you got closer to him, bumping your way through the party to get to him in the kitchen. “You couldn’t wait two minutes for me to like, put your gift down and take off my coat? Needy.” 

“Ah!” Matthew raised a finger to you and shook it slightly. “It’s not needy when I’m the birthday boy. Hug. Now.” 

You rolled your eyes, but tucking yourself willingly into Matthew’s broad chest. He was so warm all the time, but particularly now that he was definitely a few drinks deep and very much enjoying himself here at his party. Matthew always smelled the same, like the slightly too strong laundry detergent scent boosters his mom made him use and spearmint toothpaste. You couldn’t stand the combination at first, but now, pressed into his chest, you felt calm, the stress of the day washing away when you enveloped in him. He pressed a sloppy kiss to the top of your head and gave you an extra squeeze before letting you go. 

“Also, you’re late,” he pointed out as he grabbed you a beer from the sink he’d filled with ice in lieu of people going in his fridge.

You took the beer from him after he slammed the top off on the edge of the counter. You chugged about a quarter of it before scrunching your face up and stopping. The first few sips were always the worst, before any of the wondrous affects of alcohol actually kicked in. 

“Work,” you told him with a shrug.

Matthew rolled his eyes at you, a common occurrence, and you rolled yours back, and even more common occurrence. He laughed a little at your routine, before he tapped his beer suddenly on the top of yours, making foam rise rapidly, overflowing the bottle. You cursed and shifted your hand over the sink so the foam covered his makeshift cooler instead of the counter, but your hand was a lost cause. 

“Matthew,” you groaned, your displeasure heavy in your voice as you shook your hand free of the foam. 

Matthew threw his head back and laughed as you rinsed off your hand. When his head lifted, eyes finding yours again, he was met with a glare and the displeased shaking of your head. He smiled lazily, his blue eyes crossing your face to take in your expression. 

“You’re cute when you’re pretending to be mad.” His words were a little more connected than they should be, his faint lisp expressing itself more, endearing in a way that cut through your annoyance at him. “I would like to request a birthday, ‘One of my best friend isn’t mad at me anymore,’ pass.” 

You rolled your eyes again at him for the second time in minutes, “You’re going to get real annoying with this birthday thing, aren’t you?” 

Matthew smiled wryly at you, “Comes once a year. Feel like I should get my money’s worth for the twenty-four hours I can, no?” 

You shook your head at him, then took a sip of your beer. You were pretty sure you knew how this night was going to go and after a long day at work, it wasn’t exactly what you had been looking for. But the smile on his face, the curls falling down his forehead, and the fact that you were head over heels for him, meant that even though you hadn’t been looking to get on a rollercoaster today, damn it all to hell if you weren’t going to throw your hands in the air, scream your head off, and enjoy the ride. 

“How about,” Matthew slurred slowly at you, “a birthday dance?” 

“You could just ask me to dance. I’m used to you stepping on my toes and elbowing me in the face,” you threw back at him.

He faked pain, like you shot him in the chest, a large hand clapped over his heart as he winced. You giggled at his expression, before your laugh made him laugh. Matthew extended the hand on his chest out to you. You sighed before clapping your hand into his open one and letting him pull you toward where a few people were dancing. He spun you into his chest with a tug on your hand, purposefully putting your hands on the back of his neck. 

“Odds you step on my toes tonight?” 

Your beer bottle tapped between Matthew’s broad shoulders as he slowly started to sway with you, using his hands on your hips, one hand still with two fingers wrapped around his beer, to guide you. He smiled down at you knowingly. You knew the answer to your question before you’d even asked, but Matthew knew you were just teasing him. 

“Oh, one-hundred percent,” Matthew told you with a smirk pulling up the corner of his lips. “I should get you steel toes for your birthday.” 

“If you can remember when it is,” you laughed as Matthew spun you by your hips, your hands breaking from his neck to allow the spin. 

“Don’t doubt me,” Matthew grabbed your wrists with one hand and pulled them against his chest. “I might have had to make it my phone passcode to be sure I don’t forget, but I definitely am not going to forget it.” 

“That might just be the cutest thing you’ve ever done in your life, Tkachuk.” 

He rolled his eyes and freed your hands, only to wrap his arm around your neck and yank you into his chest where your hands had been moments before. You squealed at the action, which only made him laugh. Matthew was a touchy drunk, but it was the closest you could be to him. These were the moments you could touch him, dance with him, and let yourself feel like the world you lived in was also the world in which he had feelings for you too. But you knew those worlds weren’t the same. The would you lived in was a world full of stolen drunken moments like these and unrequited love. 

“Birthday beer?” he asked you, presenting you with the empty bottle you hadn’t realized he’d finished.

“You are really pushing your luck,” you told him. 

The smile that came across his face when you grabbed the empty bottle made your heart beat heavier in your chest. You smiled back up at him and you could have sworn you saw his eyes glance down at your lips, but you shook off the idea like the intrusive thought it was. It was a self-indulgent misreading of him, your mind projecting a motion you wished Matthew had done, instead of accurately reading the moment for what it was. It might have been a false creation of your mind, but it made your chest hurt all the same. 

You grabbed Matthew his beer. Then you birthday grabbed him a slice of his birthday cake. Then you had to birthday dance with him again. Another birthday hug. It started to wear heavy on your shoulders because tonight all Matthew seemed to want was you glued to his side. Your mind was twisting and turning, running down dark, unlit roads you had blocked off in your mind for your own good, but the combination of alcohol and Matthew’s hand on your hip was allowing your mind to blast through barricades you’d built to protect yourself and you were imagining this being real. Worse, you were wondering if maybe he felt like you did, which was as dangerous as driving down a twisty, forest road in the middle of the night, with your highlights out, and faulty breaks. 

As the last guests trickled out of the party, Matthew said you didn’t count as a guest, he collapsed onto his couch, throwing his arm over the back. He motioned over to you as he polished off his remaining beer. He sighed when you had yet to move, letting his head roll back, curling bouncing at the movement. 

“Come on, birthday cuddle,” he whined softly, gesturing you over to him again.

You groaned and hoped off the counter where you had posted up as everyone else left. Matthew smiled and lifted his head up when he saw you coming, adjusting on the couch to give you a clear spot, right under his arm, right against his side. You climbed onto the couch and slid in, dropping your head onto his chest as his arm dropped around your upper back instead of remaining on the couch. You sighed as you snuggled into his broad chest and Matthew’s chest suddenly rattled beneath you as he laughed.

“Well, make yourself comfortable then,” he laughed softly. 

“You’re comfy and I’m tired,” you mumbled, tucking your face down to try and hide the flush rising in your cheeks.

Yes, you were tired. Yes, Matthew was pretty comfortable. Neither one of those things had anything to do with why you were thrilled to be snuggled into his chest. The smell of spearmint and laundry detergent was mixed with cheap beer, but you found yourself falling more into him, your shoulders relaxing, your mind slowly, but your heart racing. You might be pushing your luck, tipping your hand with how you were openly enjoying this, but Matthew’s hand playing with the ends of your hair and the steadiness of his breathing plus the sheer volume of alcohol he had consumed tonight was giving you hope that even if you were tipping your hand, he wouldn’t be able to recognize the cards. 

“Come here. Birthday hug.” 

“I’m literally snuggling you. Why do you want a hug? Snuggling is an extended hug,” you muttered to him. 

“Hug,” Matthew repeated, a hand patting his thigh. 

You groaned as you lifted your head from your comfortable spot, twisting awkwardly to get your arms around Matthew’s neck. He huffed, clearly not thrilled with your position. His hands found your waist, fingers sliding into your belt loops to pull you onto his lap, situating your legs on either side of his. He wrapped his arms around your waist and pulled you tight against him, hugging you to his chest. His face was tucked into your neck, his hot breath fanning out over your skin, leaving goosebumps in their wake. 

He mumbled something you couldn’t entirely hear, but you caught the word birthday again and rolled your eyes. You sighed as you pulled back, his arms giving way to let you sit up on his thighs. 

“What did you say?” you asked him softly. 

Matthew swallowed hard, his eyes darting away from your attempted eye contact. His jaw clenched, nerves getting the better of him. You just didn’t know what he had to be particularly nervous about. 

“I want a birthday kiss.”

His words were soft, vulnerability keeping his voice tense, but his volume low. His eyes lifted up, scanning over your face, looking for some sign as to how you received his words. Matthew moved a hand to the back of your neck and gently pulled, ever so slightly, to bring your mouth closer to his. His eyes continued to take in your face, trying to read your expression, but he was clueless, his own feelings clouding his judgment. His tongue darted out, swiping across his bottom lip. 

“You don’t have to, obviously, but fuck, I really hope you want to, ” he breathed out, eyes still trying to find some sign, something to hang onto in your face.

It was clumsy with excitement, but you dipped your head forward and pressed your lips against his. Your heart was beating loudly in your ears as he started to kiss you back, the sound blocking out everything except how you were finally doing this, you were finally kissing Matthew. All you could feel was him, his hands on your body, his lips on yours, his tongue working yours softly. Just him. You pulled back and resting your forehead against his as his fingers tangled themselves in your hair at the back of your neck. 

“Thank god,” Matthew mumbled. “I thought I ruined us for a second there.” 

You shook your head softly and smiled down at him, pressing a quick kiss to his lips again. He was smiling before you even pulled away this time. 

“Fastest my birthday wish has ever come true in my life,” Matthew told you softly, a smile wide on his face as he spoke. “Also, my best birthday wish ever, if I do say so myself.” 

“Wait, what did you wish for?” you laughed, letting a hand run down his chest lightly. 

“You,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “I wished for you.”

Everything after that was easy, for a little while. You both had dreamed, fantasized about having each other, so you were both in absolute bliss when everything came together. It felt like two pieces in a puzzle, finally finding each other after being separated by the expanse of the unfinished masterpiece in between if the masterpiece was the world as far as both of you knew. But you never found your place in it together, never locked into the bigger picture. Two pieces floating out in space can’t stay connected forever when hands start trying to smash them into place, hands that wonder if those pieces even belong together at all. 

The hands that ripped you and Matthew apart weren’t from the outside looking in though. They were the same hands that held your hips so tightly on nights between the sheets. The same hands that held yours where you walked through the city after a few too many drinks at the bar together. The same hands that ran through your hair softly when you came over crying about something you couldn’t even remember anymore. 

They were the same hands currently wrapped around a glass at a bar across town. The boy, not man, whose hands they were was running one through his hair hurriedly now. He couldn’t get you out of his mind and he just couldn’t figure out why. 

“Okay, why did you break up with her again?” Johnny pressed Matthew for what had to have been the twentieth time over the last month. “Because you’re fucking miserable all the time. She’s fucking miserable. None of us can get her out of her apartment. So I’m just not getting this one, man. Why aren’t you at her place right now? Why weren’t you there a month ago really, begging for her to take you back?”

Matthew groaned and screwed his eyes shut hard. He had explained this so many times, the words and memories were starting to blur together for him. If you say the same word too many times in a row, your brain begins to question if what you’re saying if even real anymore. Matthew felt the same type of confusion and disassociation with recounting his reasons for breaking up with you. The version of him that had original thought those thoughts, felt those feelings, wasn’t here anymore. It was replaced with a shell of a boy who realized he’d made a terrible mistake. 

“Wait, have you seen her?” 

Johnny rolled his eyes at Matthew, but he answered anyway. 

“No, I didn’t,” he sighed, motioning to the bartender for another beer. “A couple of the girlfriends stopped by, brought her some casseroles or something.” 

“Don’t you bring casseroles when someone dies?” 

Matthew forced the terrible joke and his own laugh in response out, in a poor attempt to disguise the ache in his chest at the thought of you. He could see you so clearly in his mind, pacing holes in the floorboards of your apartment, wearing out your favorite mug, but there was no way on God’s green earth you were wearing your Flames sweatshirt you usually did when you were upset. Hell, Matthew would be amazed if you hadn’t burned it after what he done. He knew you had to hate the casseroles, both based on the fact that you barely considered them an edible type of food, and the fact that they seemed to be an homage to the funeral of your love life. You would’ve made a better joke than him too and he wished he could’ve heard it, but you probably hadn’t made one. Matthew was the person who helped you out of the negative thought spirals that sent you spinning around your apartment. He caused this one instead and he was here, sitting in a bar, doing nothing about it because there was no way you’d even talk to him again, not with what he said.

“I just,” Matthew sighed again and fussed with his beer, lining and unlining it up with the condensation ring on the coaster as he talked, “I got too into my head. We were fighting. It just, it wasn’t good, Johnny.”

“It wasn’t good or you weren’t good?” Johnny pressed, watching carefully as Matthew’s body froze in response to the question, glass frozen mid-movement, eyes fixed on a broken neon sign in front of him. “Chucky, you don’t do anything unless you already know you can do it. You’ve never been in a relationship as an, I don’t want to say adult because that’s not entirely true, but as an adult, so you probably sucked at it.” 

Matthew rolled his eyes before throwing back verbally at him, “Thanks, Johnny. Loving this pep talk. I’ll make sure when Gio retires, you get my recommendation for the C.”

“We both know exactly,” Johnny tapped Matthew on the forearm, “where that C is going next and don’t even lie. But that’s neither here or there right now. The point is that she was your girlfriend. You were supposed to talk to her about being a shitty boyfriend.” 

“I am not in the mood for this,” Matthew groaned, dropping his head to the bar, recoiling when his skin stuck to it, his face scrunching up in disgust. 

“I mean, Johnny’s right,” said Monahan as he slipped up next to Matthew’s other side, making a second groan slide from Matthew’s throat. “You were supposed to talk to her, not break up with her like a dumbass. She was your friend first. She knew you weren’t perfect and that she’s have to put up with some shit because you definitely don’t know the first thing about being someone’s partner. She went all in with you anyway,” 

“Decided the person you could be and the person she could be with you was worth it,” Johnny jumped back in. 

“Good one, Johnny,” Sean nodded appreciatively, tapping his beer bottle against Johnny’s across the bar in front of Matthew. “She gave you a chance, a hell of a good chance. And you decided to throw it all away? Because you fought?”

“Who the fuck are you right now?” Matthew cursed at Sean. “Where did you find all this girl advice, huh? If I wanted this, I would’ve asked your girlfriend.” 

“Fianceé excuse you,” Sean reminded him, a smile pulling at his lips. “She relayed all of this back to me. She saw her a few days ago. This is all straight from the source, man.” 

“Wait, she said that stuff?” Matthew choked a little on his beer. 

“Yeah, she did. Wanna know what else she said?” Sean didn’t give Matthew time, much like Matthew gave you no time during that conversation a month ago, no regard to if Matthew could handle what he was about to say. “She said you weren’t good at communicating or being a boyfriend, but she was okay with it because she loved you. All she wanted was effort. Just a little effort from you, man. And you just left instead of trying.” 

Your words, albeit coming through the probably clumsy filter of Sean, stung in Matthew’s chest. He felt like a coward, a fraud. He tried so hard to be tough, to be the guy that kept pushing, kept grinding, kept giving a shit even when his team was down three goals with five to play. He was the guy everyone counted on to try, even when everything else was screaming to just give up and accept defeat. That’s what he’d done with you. He gave up when the waves of trials started coming, when a storm kicked up. Matthew had taken one look at a swell coming that looked to be the type that could swallow ships whole, took the lifeboat, and ran without a second thought. He left you on a battered boat, full of holes, without even a bucket to bail yourself out. 

To make matters worse, the wave he had been so scared of was either entirely a fabrication of his own mind and he had run from his own twisted imagination. Or worse, he had created the wave himself and ran before it could catch up to him. 

It was catching up to him now though, sitting at a dive bar in Calgary, a warm beer in his hand, and the weight of what he had done sitting heavy on his shoulders. 

“Fuck,” was all he could say.

“Your dream girl, really.” Johnny was twisting the knife now, but Matthew knew he deserved it when Johnny added, “And you fucked it.” 

“Yeah,” Matthew laughed softly, but the sound didn’t reach his eyes that were still staring at a broken and sputtering neon sign, but really seeing something that wasn’t there. 

He was seeing you, in that pretty sundress, the one with the sunflowers on it that Matthew loved on you because you always looked so happy whenever you wore it. Countless memories of you in that dress. You wore it out with friends, the second time Matthew had ever met you. That’s the first time he remembered thinking just how pretty you were, the way your hair fell down on your shoulders, the way your smile formed, the way your nose crinkled when you laughed. Matthew was used to thinking girls where hot, but you? You were beautiful, standing there, laughing at something Johnny had said, in that sunflower sundress. 

He remembered that dress from the first time he almost kissed you, a month later, walking down the street together after dinner, his hoodie around your shoulders because you had gotten cold and Matthew was always warm. It was the first time you wore his clothes and it made Matthew’s heart beat loudly in his ears, so loud he couldn’t hear anything else, couldn’t think about anything else, but kissing you. He almost went for it, but then you pulled him back to reality, actually pulled him out of the street he hadn’t noticed he stepped into because he couldn’t hear the cars over his heartbeat. 

That dress starred in his memories of your first date that occurred a week after his birthday, the one where he finally kissed you for the first time, over two years after the first time he almost kissed you. It might have been January in Calgary, but there was that dress again, with tights and a thick coat and knee high boots and socks and a little hole at the bottom hem and it made Matthew want to die. If he died staring at you in that dress, kissing you in that dress, he was pretty sure he would be fine with whatever his obituary looked like. 

Except that dress and all the memories of it were tainted because you had been wearing it when he broke your heart, when he watched you break apart and shatter, all of his own doing. Hell, he probably tainted sunflowers as a whole for you. He’d gotten you so many over the few months you’d been together, even though they had cost far too much money since sunflowers in Calgary in the winter weren’t exactly commonplace. The necklace for your birthday, a sunflower and his number in delicate gold, his sister’s idea. 

Matthew wondered if people could hate certain types of flowers for the same type of reasons people loved them. People loved them because of how they looked and smelled, but also the memories associated with them. His mom loved pink tulips, but was it more because she always had or because his father always bought them for her and now she couldn’t look at them without thinking of his dad and all the times he has surprised her with them? Was the existing love or the associated love the more powerful factor in her love of them? 

Either way, Matthew was just hoping you didn’t hate sunflowers anymore because of him. 

“How do I fix it?”

Matthew’s voice was soft, barely above a whisper now, his hand tense around his glass. Matthew had too many thoughts running through his head, but he needed to make sure you didn’t hate sunflowers now. He just didn’t know how to even get you to talk to him to find out if you did. 

Johnny and Sean looked at each other and Johnny sighed when the silent communication resulted in him being the one to answer. “I don’t think you can, Chucky.”

“No, I have to, I have to fix it, Johnny,” Matthew’s voice cracked. “I just, I have to make sure...”

He didn’t finish the thought because it wouldn’t make sense and they would both probably send him home, thinking he was either too drunk or having a breakdown, more likely both, if he started ranting about sunflowers. 

“I think all you can do is reach out,” Johnny told him softly. “Just let her know that you now realize you made a massive mistake, that you want to be a team this time and work on it, I guess. From there, it’s up to her.”

“Should I bring flowers?” Matthew was asking the universe more than either of the two not so romantics next to him. “Chocolates? Something? Is there anything I can bring or do to fix it?” 

“I don’t think you can fix it, dude,” Sean cut in with a sigh. “You can’t force it. if she even talks to you, she’s going to have to decide you’re worth a second shot and knowing her, she’s not going to just give it to you tonight or tomorrow or whatever. She’s going to want to see real change first. You just tell her that you’re going to try and then fucking try, even if she doesn’t ask you to try. Start working on yourself anyway. Start acting like she’ll give you a second shot.”

“Do you think she will?” 

Matthew’s voice echoed how it sounded earlier, timid, small, a whispered prayer from a boy who knew his only hope was if fate heard him and decided to twist the world in his favor, if fate wasn’t a fucking bitch after all. 

“I mean,” Sean sighed, thinking about himself now, trying to shove his feet into Matthew’s water-logged shoes for a moment to find an answer, “if I was her, I wouldn’t. But she’s a better person than all of us put together, so maybe she will, but I know I wouldn’t.” 

Matthew let out a long, shaky breath, eyes fluttering closed for a moment before opening them to pick his phone off the bar. He knew you wouldn’t answer a phone call. He also knew your voicemail was definitely full at this point. He was always the person who had to tell you to delete the old ones whenever he tried to leave you one and couldn’t, but he wasn’t there to do it, so it would be full by now. He had to settle for a text, which felt like a much shittier version of a handwritten letter, but he had terrible handwriting and spelling, but at least it ranked well above an email in the power ranking of methods of communication. 

Please tell me you don’t hate sunflowers because of me. I really hope I didn’t ruin them for you.

Matthew placed his phone face down on the bar, then nervously flipped it face up even though he knew you wouldn’t have even been able to read his text in the millisecond his phone was face down. He didn’t know if you would answer, or if you would even read it. You would read it, Matthew assured himself. He knew you. You never got a text or a message you didn’t read. Would you say anything to him about it though? Would it be on your phone, nested among texts from people who didn’t break your heart until one day, probably a year from now, you would meet someone else and have no need to remember him anymore, so only then would you finally delete it?

Matthew tried not to think about it, but his eyes glanced down at the screen every thirty seconds even though he was willing them to just give you time. He didn’t even realize it was past one in the morning. You were definitely up, he knew you better than to think you would be asleep, but awake and awake and answering texts were different. He just hoped if you were awake, that you didn’t hate sunflowers, maybe that you didn’t hate him, and that you weren’t crying. 

You were awake though, holding that godforsaken necklace that you had ripped from your neck the morning after he ended it and thrown into the back of your jewelry box. The necklace was in one hand and your phone with Matthew’s text pulled up in the other. You were crying, something Matthew desperately wished you weren’t doing as he drank the last dregs of his beer and headed home with his head hung low, his phone alight in his hand as he ritually checked for a reply from you. You sighed, looking between his text and the necklace, wondering if you hated your favorite flower now. That question hung on another one though, one domino relying on the other to fall. Did you hate Matthew Tkachuk? 

Yes, you did. That was decided the moment the door closed behind him and he left you to deal with the crashing waves of grief all by yourself, without even a bucket to bail you out.  

Did you hate him more than you loved him though? 

You stared at the necklace, the one you hadn’t been able to throw away, and you knew the answer. The delicate golden necklace would be buried deep in a landfill if you really hated him more than you loved him, not in the palm of your hand now. But here you were, staring at it until your eyes went cloudy with tears, before you had to put it back in the box. You couldn’t put it back on, not now, maybe not ever, but you also couldn’t bear getting rid of it, the idea making your heart twist in your chest in a way that made you physically wince. 

You put your phone on your nightstand at the same moment Matthew did across town, both with your minds racing over the unanswered text. Matthew went to bed thinking you would never answer it, forever leaving the question hanging in the wind. You went to bed knowing your answer, but unsure if you were ever going to share it with him. 

------

Matthew groaned when he heard his doorbell ring, followed by cautious knocking. He hated that doorbell. The noise was absolutely piercing, especially to his hungover brain. He hadn’t even drank that much last night, but he was so incredibly hungover. Matthew could only guess that the alcohol had worked in tandem with the ache in his chest after deciding he needed to feel worse to create a hangover this bad from five beers over three hours. He shuffled to the front door, not even caring he hadn’t bothered to find any clothes other than sweats on his way to it. Whoever it was was too goddamn early and they would need to come back another time. 

When Matthew ripped open his front door, a groan falling from his mouth at the effort it took, he was looking at the ceiling, head thrown back in hatred of the exhaustion he was now feeling due to having to actually do something other than lay in bed and be hungover.

“Look, this building better be on fire or-”

Everything stopped when he saw it was you. You looked so small to him, standing there, a tray with two coffees in hand and a brown bag in your other hand. Your sweatshirt was swallowing you up and you looked like you were strongly debating making a break for the stairwell with the way your eyes were shifting to the right. There were dark circles under your reddened, swollen eyes, eyes that only looked like that when you had been doing a lot of crying recently. 

Matthew thought you would have a lot of possible reactions to his text. He never once let himself think you would show up at his front door. 

“I brought bagels,” you finally said, after far too long of both of you assessing the other. 

Matthew looked almost as bad as you did. His hair was unkempt beyond normal, the curls broken and haphazard across his head, hanging into his forehead. His eyes were sunken and absent, vacant like a forgotten home on the outskirts of town. Days old stubble patchily covered his jawline, razor clearly lost among his things again. If you weren’t at his apartment, if you had just passed him on the street instead, you might not have recognized him. There was always a lightness to Matthew, an inability to keep his feet on the ground as he searched for the next adventure he could have, but he seemed rooted in place, held down by some outside force. He was complying with it, the force, but it was clearly under duress and it was exhausting him. The force was absolute agony and it was written all over his face, in his posture, in his every labored movement. 

“And coffee,” you added after no words left Matthew’s mouth long enough for an uncomfortable silence to stretch between you both. 

“You’re here,” Matthew breathed out, words spoke so softly as if he feared if he said them too loudly, you would disappear. 

Matthew’s head was pounding. His mouth tasted awful since he went straight to bed when he got home, not even stopping to brush his teeth. He knew he looked like an absolute mess because there wasn’t a way a person could feel like he did and not look like a mess. He didn’t care about any of it. You were here. You were actually here, with coffee, and bagels, at his front door. 

He didn’t think. He knew it was a mistake after the fact, really as soon as he did it, but he also knew there was a chance you were here just for personal closure, that this might be the last time he ever got to see you again. He reached out and grabbed you by your waist, crushing you into his bare chest. His face pressed into your hair, which always smelled like strawberries to him even though you swore your shampoo wasn’t supposed to smell like strawberries. If you never talked to him again after today, he just wanted to hold you one more time. 

You hugged him back, hesitation evident in your loose arms and your tense shoulders. It was barely a hug, but it almost made Matthew cry. Even just the small response, no matter how cautious it was, made him feel better than he had felt in a month. 

“Go brush your teeth and like, actually wake up,” you told him as you pulled away from him. “I’ll, um, toast the bagels, I guess.” 

Matthew was on autopilot as he walked into his en suite and grabbed his toothbrush. His movements were slow, robotic as he brushed his teeth. There was only one thing on his mind, replaying over and over incessantly, persistently. Why did you show up at his place? Matthew was desperately trying to turn the broken record playing his mind over to the other side, hoping to find the answer, but it was only more of the same. There was no reason, no reason he could understand, why you had shown up at his front door. Why you had shown up with coffee and breakfast for him was so far outside of the realm of things Matthew could understand, he had to eliminate it from his mind. 

Until it all suddenly clicked in place, Sean’s words from last night flowing back into his mind. 

You were here because you were a better person than he was, a far better person. Sean had said you were better than all of them, very much including Matthew, put together and it was true. You were bright and beautiful and good, so incredibly good. You loved people with an honesty and a bravery that made Matthew’s heart ache due to the effort it had to put in to keep up with you when he’d been smart enough to accept your love. You were so much better than he was four months ago when you kissed at his birthday party, so much better than the bedraggled boy looking back at him in the mirror today, and somehow infinitely better than the person he was going to be in fifty years, already. Who you would be in fifty years? You were going to be the kind of person that needed a designated overflow zone at your funeral because too many people were going to want to acknowledge they’d felt your love in front of hundreds of others. 

Matthew never deserved the piece of you he’d gotten. He knew that now as he heard you humming softly to yourself as you dropped the bagels in his toaster. Matthew had never deserved you and it’s why he had ended it because he’d known all along. He knew you were fighting because he wasn’t good enough for you and that he never would be. He would have spent his life running at top speed behind you, trying not to slow you down, trying not to be a drag on your life, trying not to lessen the impact for good you could have on the world. You would have never let him go, slowing yourself, stunting yourself in order to accommodate him.

But here you were, looping the train of your life to run back through the temporary station of your relationship with him that was in complete shambles, and Matthew let himself dream it was because you were ready to hold his hand and fix it up brick by brick, piece by piece because you were so good it hurt. Matthew knew the right thing to do would be to make sure your train left the station today, unencumbered by any damage from him, and more importantly, without him. But Matthew Tkachuk was three things that made that impossible. He was competitive, problematically so, always wanting to get better, always wanting to win. Damn it all to hell if he couldn’t spend the rest of his life running to keep up with you because one day, he just might actually catch up if he could figure out how to run fast enough. Matthew Tkachuk was also incredibly selfish and incredibly in love with you, one a personality flaw and the other the purest part of him that had ever existed. He had to figure out how to catch up because he couldn’t let you go.

Matthew stepped out of the bathroom with resolve settling into his clenched jaw. He knew asking you to take him back without any proof he could improve was a hopeless avenue. He couldn’t ask you for that; him asking for anything was already unfair, he needed to try to at least ask for the least he could. Any plan he had formed was tossed out the window of his high rise the second he saw you, sweatshirt hanging off your shoulder, hair piled on top of your head, humming softly to yourself as you spread cream cheese on his and your bagels, barefoot in his kitchen. For a moment, that moment Matthew held his breath so you wouldn’t hear him standing in the kitchen doorway, it was like the last month hadn’t happened and you were still his. Matthew hung in the moment as long as his lungs would allow, soaking it in case he never got to see it again. 

“You going to keep staring or are you going to come get your bagel?” 

Your words pulled him out of his thoughts violently, head shaking off the ideas that had been swirling, pulling him down that whirlpool of you and him that might just kill him. He yanked the nearest bar stool out, dropping down into it unceremoniously, before graciously taking the bagel and the coffee you’d brought for him. 

“Why did you ask me that?” you finally said, words slicing like knives through the palpable tension in the air. “The sunflowers. Why that? After a whole month? That?” 

You said a few extra words then you’d meant to say. You were trying to keep everything short and brief, just here in a quest for the peace you needed and nothing more. More words meant more feelings and more feelings meant the idea of peace slipped further away with each expressed word. 

“I just,” Matthew ran a hand aggressively through his curls before starting over, “I just wanted to make sure that after everything I did, I didn’t ruin one of your favorite things for you.” 

You sighed, debating if you wanted get into this or not with him. What could it hurt? It was just a story.

“I like them because my mom does,” you told him softly. “She always had them growing by our house when I was little. She always had them in a vase by the front door, and she had these sunflower earrings, these little golden ones. They’d kind of like the necklace-” 

Your fingers touched the bare skin where the necklace he gave you had sat until a month ago, fingers finding nothing to touch to. Matthew’s eyes had followed your movement, saddening when he saw you weren’t wearing it even though he hadn’t expected you to be. 

You cleared your throat before continuing, “Anyway, she lost them a while ago. But I guess they just remind me of home. That’s why I got that dress. I got it when I first moved here. I saw it walking around downtown in a window and just took it as a sign that everything was going to be alright, you know?”

Matthew nodded softly as he continued to listen and mindless pick at his bagel. 

“And then when we started dating and you figured out they were my favorite flowers and started getting me dozens of them all the time, I guess you and us started creeping in as part of those reasons I love them. It kind of sucks because they make me sad now and I can’t wear that dress anymore.”

The words were tumbling out of your mouth now, practically on top of each other. You weren’t sure where you’re going, but more words meant more expressed and acknowledged feelings and you were saying a lot of words. Matthew was trying to keep up, trying to take time to process and read between the lines. You always said so much whenever you spoke, half of it jammed in between sentences in pregnant pauses and shifting eyes. He was trying to take it all in, trying to figure out how you were actually feeling, but you weren’t resting in any one emotion long enough for Matthew to identify it. 

“But no,” you sighed. “I don’t hate sunflowers. They’re sadder now. It used to just be missing home, but now they make me miss us. But I don’t hate them. I don’t think you can fully hate something that reminds you of so many people and places and times that you loved. I don’t hate them because I don’t hate you, Matty.” 

He didn’t ruin one of your favorite things for you and you didn’t hate him. In full honesty, Matthew didn’t think you hated him. He knew one of your flaws, but also your best quality, the one that made Matthew feel so lucky to have been with you, was your capacity for love. It got you in trouble sometimes, kept you with people you shouldn’t have been, made you believe in fake friends’ false pretenses, but it also the only reason you didn’t hate him now and the only possible reason you would ever accept any sort of olive branch Matthew could clumsily extend. 

“I fucked up,” Matthew said suddenly. He wasn’t thinking, wasn’t filtering. He should have taken his time, picked his words carefully, but it was you and you didn’t hate him and Matthew was painfully awful at this sort of thing and he was overwhelmed with the idea he might just have an opening back into the warmth that was you. “I’m so fucking sorry. I totally get if you can’t trust me again. I know I’m a shit boyfriend. But fuck, I love you. I know I do. I’m just so bad at showing it. I want to fix that. I want to fix it with you. I want you and I want to show you I’m not a fuck up and that I do love you. I won’t need a second chance ever again, just some patience. Please.”

Matthew let out a long, shaky breath when the final begging word left his lips. He knew he’d been pleading with you with each and every word, hoping something he could say might hit you in just the right away, might have just the right effect to get the result he so desperately craved. You. Back in his arms. Back in his bed. Back in his jersey at his games. Back with him, where he wanted you more than he had wanted anything in an embarrassingly long time. 

“Is any of that even true?”

Your question stopped Matthew in his tracks. It felt like a punch to his chest, right over his already aching heart. How could you doubt that? No, Matthew knew how you could doubt it. You could doubt it because you could doubt every single thing about him if you damn well pleased. He deserved every bit of doubt and caution you presented. He had broken you because he refused to take his seat at the adults’ table and talk about how he felt, how he was feeling insecure, how he felt like a bad partner, and how he felt worse about all of that because he felt like he couldn’t fix any of it. He attributed the two of you not working out to you two not being a match, instead of acknowledging his own flaws and what they were doing to both of you. In retrospect, all of that probably would have been far better to say to you than what he had actually said, but words couldn’t be stuffed back in his mouth. They were now in your mind, in your memory, and Matthew would just have to live with another mistake on the laundry list of things he had done wrong regarding you.

“Every single word is true,” Matthew told you softly. “I have so many other ones too, if you want to hear them.” 

You breathed out hard, shoving the air forcefully out of your lungs as you ran a hand through your hair, “You don’t get to say those kinds of things to me, Matthew. You don’t have the right to that.” 

“I know,” Matthew grimaced in reaction to your words.

He should’ve held his tongue, but he had so much he needed to say to you. But there he was again. Thinking about himself, only himself. He wasn’t considering you, wasn’t communicating with you. He just vomited all of his thoughts and feelings up without even bothering to see if you were actually open to receiving them. Saying you didn’t hate him didn’t even correlate to being open to the conversation Matthew had forced into your hands, unaware he had even pried your fists open to put it there. 

“I shouldn’t have forced that all on you,” Matthew admitted softly. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. I just, I have so much I want to say to you.” 

“Matthew,” you sighed. You had been doing a lot of sighing lately. “I don’t think-”

“I don’t want you to take me back,” Matthew cut you off. “At least, not right away. I don’t deserve that. I know that. I’m not asking for that.” 

You crossed your arms over your chest, eyes scanning over his face to try and figured out where he was going. You thought he would ask you to take him back, something you weren’t going to do without a sign from him that it would actually be different this time instead of exactly the same, with a shorter honeymoon period. Another two months with him, only to suffer the same heartbreak wasn’t enough time to make you take a blind chance it would be different. You needed something to hang your hat on, something to make you feel like he wanted to be your partner this time around. You needed to see him try, try in the long nights apart, try in the close nights together, try in the afternoon dates, and try in the stolen morning moments. You needed to see Matthew try and be your partner, and not just some emotional, freeloading friend with benefits version of a boyfriend who would spin you around a dance floor, then into his bed, then leave whenever you asked for more.

“Then what are you asking for?” 

Your words were quieter than you expected, confusion ringing heavy in each syllable. Matthew ran a hand through his hair, frustration evident in how his fingers tugged on his curls at the end. He didn’t really know what he wanted. He just wanted a shot to prove to you he was worth your time, that he could be the partner you deserved. He wasn’t even sure he could be, which was part of the reason he was struggling to speak to you now, feeling like he was trying to row up a rushing creek made of his current feelings and his past failures without any sort of paddle or even a life vest, about to drown at any possible second.

“I just, I want to show you that I’m worth a real shot again.” Matthew was begging now, figuring that if you said no, at least you would know how badly he wanted you. He couldn’t get more pathetic than asking you if he’d ruined your favorite flowers because it had somehow said everything without saying anything at all. “Just, let me be around, let me earn a second chance. Let me show you I’m trying, trying to get better, trying to communicate better, trying to be someone who is good enough to deserve half of you. Let me show you I can try and that I’ll keep on trying forever, if that’s what you want from me. If you want to watch me try for five fucking years before giving me another shot, that’s fine. If you want to watch me try to five fucking years and then not give me another shot, that’s fine, at least I spent five years trying for someone who is so goddamn worth it, it hurts.” 

“So, you want what exactly?” you pressed, a defensive laugh edging at your voice. “You want to just, what? To be around all the time? To be together all of the time? That’s just being friends, Matthew, and you were always a great friend, but you were a shitty fucking boyfriend. You want to spend all day with me, showing me that you’re trying to be better, then do whatever you want when you’re not around me?” 

“No, I, fuck,” Matthew groaned, hands digging into his hair, head dropping to the cold granite counter in dismay at the mess he had made. 

“Here’s your first communication test then,” you told him, letting the passive aggressive biting words you held at the back of your tongue roll off the front of it instead. “Tell me what you mean.”

“I don’t want anyone else.” Matthew banged his forehead on the counter with each word, frustration getting the better of him now. “I don’t even think this is going to make sense, but let me be your boyfriend even though you won’t be my girlfriend. That sounds so fucking stupid now that I said it out loud, but I guess I’m just trying to say I’m going to be one hundred-percent, all gas no brakes, full throttle about you and trying to actually change for you and show you I’m changing, but you can do whatever you damn well please because even letting me try is a fuck load more than I deserve.” 

Matthew let out a breath to try and steady himself before continuing, “I know I’m still asking for a lot, both of your time and of your ability to at least sort of try to look at me not like the guy who said all of that shit a month ago. But I promise, I’ll be worth it. You do whatever you want, no strings, no jealousy, nothing. Let me be around and prove I’m worth a real second shot, please. You can send me packing whenever you want and I won’t bother you. You’re just too fucking incredible for me not to ask to try, even though I don’t have any right to ask.” 

You breathed out hard, forcing all of the air out of your lungs. Matthew was asking, begging, for an opportunity to prove himself, to prove he could do what you wanted all along, just for him to try. Standing in his kitchen, bare feet cold on his hard wood floor, the idea of giving him that opportunity made your heart pick up in your chest, but made pain radiate through it at the same time. The romantic in you, the part of you that wondered if maybe Matthew Tkachuk was actually worth it, the part of you that loved sunflowers even though the memories attached to them were so incredibly mixed now, wanted to give him a chance. The other part of you, an equal part of you, was screaming, demanding that you be protective of yourself, of your happiness, from the people you let into your life, especially ones who had already proven then had no problem burning the life you were building for yourself and leaving before the ashes started to fall. 

But did you even have a happiness you needed to protect? If you didn’t, then the answer was simple. If there was nothing to protect, there was extremely limited risk. You were already in a variation of hell of his own creation, sponsored by the feeling of someone you love deciding you weren’t worth an ounce of effort. What could it do to you if he failed? It would just affirm what you already experienced as a perennial fact instead of a potentially annual moment. 

But the romantic inside pushed back, hard. Would you always wonder what would have happened if you gave him a chance? Would you always carry a torch for him? Would there always be an empty room, with a light left on, for him, in the house of the life you ended up making for yourself? 

Romanticism versus realism. That was the question at hand. You knew both sides of the argument, the angel and devil on your shoulder both just facets of you, screaming at each other, both trying to decide what was best for you. They were just extensions of you though, so if you didn’t know, they didn’t know. But you did know two things though. 

You knew you still loved sunflowers and you still loved Matthew Tkachuk. 

And that was enough to convince you punch him a round-trip, one month ticket on the train of your every moving, ever developing life. You would be directing the path, choosing which tracks you would take, making all the moves, and he would have to figure out how to be your co-director. You weren’t going to stop or simplify anything for him. You were just going to continue on. In a month, the train would loop back to the station and you would decide to punch him another ticket, offer him the seat next to you, or leave him stranded there, alone at a run down train station probably in the pouring rain like in all the movies, before he would leave and watch as the station crumbled to dust upon his exit along with the idea of you and him. 

“Okay.” 

You settled into your answer as you gave it, trying to get it to settle over your body in a way that made you feel warmer rather than colder. Matthew’s eyes were staring into yours and he looked like he was teetering on the edge of crying, like he wanted to tell you everything that single thing that word made him feel, but he bit his lip and held his tongue. He was listening instead of talking, a welcome change, a welcome first attempt. 

“You get one month,” you told him, your voice shaking as you tried to force it to be level. “One month of being around, I guess we can call it that. You figure out how you want to prove it to me. I’m not here to help you out. You hurt me. This is me, unlocking the front door for you. You have to figure out how to open it all on your own, okay? After a month, I guess we can talk and see where we’re at.” 

“Thank you,” is all Matthew can figure out how to say for a moment. One month to try and show you he was worth another maybe, or if he let himself dream for a second, one month until you might want to be with him again. “I’d take anything, so thank you.” 

“Take your fucking breakfast,” you smiled softly, trying to break the tension as much as one joke can. “And your coffee is cold now but that’s going to be a you problem.” 

“Is your coffee cold?” Matthew asked you. He just wanted to fix something, even something as small as a too cold cup of coffee. “I can fix it.” 

“Well, it’s iced coffee,” you informed him, a genuine laugh in your voice this time as you reached behind you to grab your drink on the opposite counter, giving the cup a little shake, ice rattling, as you showed it to him. “So, I sure hope you’re not going to try and warm it up.” 

“No, no,” Matthew laughed softly, hands fiddling with the collar on his now room temperature at best coffee. “Probably should’ve asked what you were drinking first.” 

You nodded softly, “Your heart was in the right place.” 

Matthew smiled softly as you and your heart picked up in your chest again. God, that smile. It cut through everything, through the dull ache in your chest, through the deafening noise in your head of your own thoughts, and hit you right in the room in your heart that was reserved for him. It was vacant now, but the lights shone brighter for a moment and the furniture in the basement that used to be in there for him rattled, drawers and cabinet doors smashing, a reminder that everything you felt for him was still there. It might be covered in drop clothes and an inch of dust, but it was there. Part of you was already ready for him, but it wasn’t most of you. Maybe one day it would be. Or maybe this was one of the worst things you’d allowed in a long time under the impression that he simply couldn’t make things worse for you, which was almost a challenge to that fucking bitch fate at this point. Your insecurity and shaky foundation got the best of you for a moment and a sentence like a child’s prayer slipped out of your mouth. 

“Matthew, please don’t waste my time.” 

“I won’t,” Matthew’s words followed yours without a second of hesitation. “I promise. I won’t.” 

The romantic in you hoped he was right, that this would be worth how difficult it would be, how difficult it would be to look at him over and over again with his past words playing like a broken record stuck on a broken record player in your mind. If he truly did try, then enduring the torturous reminder of the past would be more than worth it because you were pretty certain that if Matthew Tkachuk could figure out how to be everything you knew he could be, he would be the most beautiful thing you’d ever seen. But could he get there? You didn’t know, but sometimes people take risks, people bend until they almost break in search of love, like sunflowers bend towards the sunlight, in search of a new and brighter day.

------

You woke up the next day after breakfast at Matthew’s, after ducking out for a planned series of activities, lunch with a friend, and errands to run. You had tried to fill your day after Matthew’s to give yourself an out if it went poorly and a break from Matthew to process everything if it turned out positive. Part of you was wondering if what had happened was really positive or not, but you felt better today than you had over the last month, able to get out of bed and get the coffee pot started with too much extra effort. The bags under your eyes looked better than they had in weeks.

A knock on your front door, eerily reminiscent of the one you’d delivered on Matthew’s door the day before, brought you and your freshly poured cup of coffee in hand to the door. You opened the door and were greeted with an unfamiliar face with a very familiar expression, one far too cheery for the hour in the day. The smile plastered on her face didn’t falter as she read your name and address off her list to confirm who you were and that she was in the right place. You nodded as confirmation, which just made her smile impossibly wider. 

“Great! These are for you then!” 

Her voice was somehow worse than the fact that she was downright euphoric before nine in the morning. No one who could be this excited about life before nine could be trusted. She practically shoved a bouquet into your hands, turned on her heels, then seemed to skip down the hallway and out of your building. You shook your head as if to shake off the memory of the world’s cheeriest delivery person from your mind, before turning back into your apartment, kicking the door closed on your way to the kitchen table. 

Of course, they were sunflowers. Matthew’s consistency with flowers was never in doubt. You grabbed the card, smiling at the words printed on the small card.

If you don’t hate sunflowers yet, give me a month. You’re going to get so many, you’ll be sick of them. Lunch today? - Matty

You tapped the card in your hand, taking deep steady breathes as you walked over to the counter where your phone was. You were really doing this. You were really giving him a chance to show you he could be better than your downright awful four months full of casual disagreements, fights, and near constant miscommunication had shown you. There were people in your life you didn’t think would approve. No, you knew they wouldn’t approve. That’s why you hadn’t told a single soul about yesterday, but this wasn’t about anyone else. It wasn’t about the opinions they would be bound to have. It wasn’t about what they thought was best. This was you and Matthew and everything that was still there. It wasn’t for other people; relationships never were. 

You texted him, accepting his invitation for lunch. He texted back immediately even though it was way too early for him usually. If Matthew had practice at ten, he wasn’t out of bed until a quarter past nine and he lived fifteen minutes from the arena. Your mind wondered if he had been awake, just waiting for your text, but you pushed the thought of side as you headed to take a shower. He wouldn’t get up before nine unless his building was on fire. 

Across town, a curly-haired boy who had woken up two hours earlier than he usually did, just to see if the girl he loved had gotten her sunflowers, smiled when he saw her text.

She had gotten them, thankfully. Matthew got to go to practice with a smile on his face, wondering how she’d smiled when she had seen the flowers arrive, and with the knowledge he’d get to see her smile in person after practice. Well, if he played his cards right, he’d probably be able to con a smile or two out of her. He felt damn near giddy, like a kid at a county fair who had too much cotton candy and who has just accidentally won the biggest prize the fair had to offer, even though he hadn’t even come close to winning you back yet. Getting to be around you again was his win, and it was so much more than he thought he would ever get, he could feel like a little kid for the morning if he wanted to.

He could and did feel like a little kid the entire time he waived for you at the restaurant. Matthew arrived fifteen minutes early. Being late had been his specialty the first time around, not necessarily a problem often within itself, but compounded upon everything else Matthew didn’t do then, a list that seemed to grow longer the more he picked apart the past from your point of view, showing up early carried more weight. The shock on your face when you saw him already waiting at the table when the hostess brought you around was proof enough that every effort Matthew made, every single thing he took notice of from the past and changed, would make a difference. 

“Hey, how was practice?” you said as you dropped down into the seat opposite him. 

Matthew had the smallest sliver of hope that the sunflower dress would have reappeared, but he knew he didn’t deserve that. He didn’t deserve to see you look like you had when he had gotten the opportunity to take you out the first time, to do this right the first time. If he hadn’t screwed everything up with his stubbornness and his general inability to be a boyfriend, he wouldn’t be wishing for that dress right now. He could be in your apartment, holding you, face in your neck, arms around your waist, decompressing from practice and life in general. But he was here, sitting four feet apart, in the middle of a restaurant, knowing he wouldn’t even get to hold your hand on the walk to his car later because you hadn’t even driven together. 

“Um, practice was good,” Matthew told you, his mind still running through a seemingly endless list of things he could be doing with you right now if he hadn’t given up before ever really getting in the game. “How was your morning?”

“Good. Didn’t do much since I didn’t have work.” 

Matthew nodded, taking a sip of his water before doing what he would need to do over and over again, if he really did want to get the chance to love you to you again. He tried again.

“So, um, how’s your mom doing?” Matthew asked, hands trying to find a resting spot on the table, his lap, somewhere.

“Fine.”

The distance across the table felt wider with each passing second to Matthew, like you were somehow slipping further away from him with each clipped answer you gave. It was painfully obvious that the sunflowers had only gotten you to show up. The magic of them had worn off the second you sat face to face with him and had to claw through all of the emotional shrapnel that was heavy in your chest and in your mind that Matthew had caused to sit across a table from him. Just sitting across the table from him, all you had was your past with him on your mind. You had too much time to think, to remember. Matthew needed to find some way to overcome it, to make you see the him from the present and not the past when you looked at him. It wasn’t going to happen in this restaurant with nothing but time for you to get hopelessly lost in the past.

“Okay, nope,” Matthew sighed, tossing his napkin and menu onto the table. “We’re not doing lunch here.”

“You picked it,” your brows furrowed down in confusion as Matthew stood from the table. “Do you not like see anything you like?” 

“I see you,” Matthew slid in with a playful smile on his face and just for a moment, you remembered why it had been so easy to fall for him what felt like a lifetime ago. “But no, this just isn’t working. Let’s get out of here.” 

Matthew threw far too much money on the table considering the only thing you had ordered was water, but he felt bad for wasting the wait staff’s time, and started putting on his coat. You slowly rose from your seat to do the same, confusion pulling your brows together. A patented Matthew Tkachuk date was a meal and that was pretty much it. A change of venue mid-date? Multi part dates? Definitely not in his wheelhouse. Especially when you considered you hadn’t even ordered an appetizer yet.

“Where are we going?” you asked him as he gestured for you to lead the two of you out of the restaurant. 

“Honestly,” Matthew sighed as he pulled the door open for you, waiting for both of you to exit before continuing, “I don’t really have a plan. That just felt stuffy? Weird? I don’t know. It didn’t feel like us.” 

“What does us feel like, Matthew?” you sighed, tucking your hair behind your ear, a nervous habit that would never die and never stop making Matthew want to die since he thought it was the cutest thing he’d ever seen, every single time. 

“I know what it used to feel like when it was good,” he told you. “We could talk for hours about anything. We used to be able to anyway. I know it might be awhile before we can do that again, but that wasn’t like the good parts of us and you know it.”

You sighed again, something you knew you would probably be doing a lot as you tried to give Matthew the space to just try, but the part of you, a large part of you, the part couldn’t stand not being the line leader in kindergarten, was screaming at you to do something, anything. Kiss him, which would have been the worst idea you might have ever had, slap him, also not advisable, get in your car and leave, not a great suggestion either. Just something, anything other than just standing in the street, looking at him and remembering how much it all hurt, how much it hurt to love someone who always seemed to have one foot firmly planted somewhere that wasn’t with you.

“Come on. I know a better place,” Matthew told you, pulling you out of your spiraling thoughts before you could fall too deep into them.

It took everything in him not to offer you his hand. He was pretty sure holding your hand might make him cry, which wouldn’t be the best look for him, but he was pretty sure it would feel like heaven. But no pearly gates were going to open for him today. He’d have to settle for standing next to you with the knowledge that maybe heaven did exist after all.

You walked side by side with him as he weaved through the streets of downtown, staying close, but far enough apart so you couldn’t accidentally brush his hand with yours. You stayed in step with him into a nearby coffee shop, the warmer more comfortable atmosphere already sinking into you and Matthew, loosening your shoulders, the tension softening. The restaurant had been cold somehow, harsh, and considering your love for him was pretty frozen in permafrost, this was much better. 

“They supposedly, according to Benny, have the best blueberry scones in the city,” Matthew said softly.

“You know me,” you smiled softly. 

“Love a good baked good.” 

You and Matthew spoke in unison, bringing a laugh over both of you, tension continuing to loosen with each passing moment. Matthew asked you what you wanted and ordered for you, mostly so he could pay without hearing a fight from you about how you didn’t need him to pay for you. You sat down with your scone and your coffee at a table Matthew dwarfed, but he didn’t seem to mind too much as he looked at you. 

“So, take two,” he joked. “Is this better by the way? You just didn’t seem happy at all there. It seems like this is more your speed.” 

To say you were stunned that he was actually checking on you, trying to tune into your emotions, would be an understatement. He had showed up early and was asking about how you felt, genuinely. His blue eyes, long standing one of your favorite features of his, bounced across your face, trying to take in every micro expression before you could even answer the question.

“Yeah, Matty,” the older nickname sliding out, “this is better.” 

“Okay, good,” he smiled softly and this one made its way to his eyes, crinkling them at the corners. 

He asked you about work, desperate to catch up on the office drama he had missed. You asked for updates on the team, the things the media would never and could never find out about. He asked about your mom again and you actually told him. Sliding back into old ways, it didn’t feel like your relationship in the coffee shop. It felt like your old friendship. The world felt like it felt when you fell in love with him in secret originally. Matthew was actively listening to you the entire time, something he deeply struggled with because did he ever have the tendency to talk too much, but he was trying. He apologized for cutting you off once to tell his own story and you almost got whiplash when he sank back into his chair and verbally gave you the floor. He was making space for you, fully and honestly, and trying to appreciate you inhabiting the space he was making for you in the conversation and in his life. He talked too much, but there was a peace he found in listening to the best person he had ever had the privilege of knowing tell him stories, tell him about her life like she wanted to give him part of it and god, did he ever want part of your life. 

Matthew went home that day and was damn near clinical about the whole thing, breaking apart everything he could remember about how you reacted to what he said, what you seemed to appreciate and what you didn’t. He treated his memories of it all like game tape, reviewing what he considered to be a win after a rough first period showing, looking to areas of success and areas of possible improvement and man, he was finding a lot of areas to improve. He kept getting stuck on your smile, the few true ones in the coffee shop, where you looked like the girl he fell in love with instead of the hollow one he created with his own words. Matthew let himself sit with those moments for a couple of steady breaths. You were worth the effort, he reminded himself again. You were. 

The next morning you were thankfully already milling about, halfway through your coffee and halfway through getting dressed when the knock came to your front door. You had a suspicion based on the knock which somehow itself was cheery that you were going to open the door to the same delivery person as yesterday. There she was when your door swung open, ponytail swinging, smile tattooed on her face, unable to fall. This time though, she shoved a bouquet of a dozen red roses into your hands, much to your confusion. You almost asked her if she’d given you the wrong flowers, but she had already vanished who you looked up from the flowers, off to curse the next person with her cheeriness. 

When you placed them on your side table next to your sofa, the spot on the kitchen table still inhabited by the sunflowers from the day before, you at least knew she’d given you the right bouquet. 

Can’t always get you sunflowers, sweetheart. Got to keep you on your toes. :) - Matty

You immediately pulled your phone out of your pajamas pants pocket and shot off the first thing that crossed your mind to him. 

Variety is NOT the spice of life, Tkachuk. Stick to the status quo.

You got a text back shortly after exchanging your comfortable pajama bottoms for the confines of work appropriate pants. You checked your phone seven times on your walk to your car, feeling like a version of yourself you thought you left behind in middle school. You had dealt with unrequited feelings for Matthew so long, fell in love with him in secret, that when you had the chance to love him out loud, you jumped at it and so did he. It might have been the only time you had ever been completely on the same page together. Before that, you had been fast friends, falling into friendship without any effort really by either of you. This was something else. Matthew Tkachuk was putting in more effort than you saw him put into anything besides his career. The effort was making you feel like you should be back in a plaid skirt, shoving a binder into your locker, and whispering about the cute curly-haired boy from your science class, a kid with a crush who had no idea what was yet to come.

But you could only wish you had no idea of what was to come. It had already come, running you over faster than you could ask, your heart shattering under Matthew’s feet due to his carelessness. One sentence from the speech he so carelessly used to break your heart felt like this moment. At best, I think we just had middle school crushes gone off the rails. The amount of times you had fallen in and out of crushes in middle school was too high to even attempt to count. Was what you were feeling just a recurrence, a temporary realignment of the train on the tracks? Was Matthew putting in all this effort for fleeting feelings? Was he right this whole time? 

------

Matthew Tkachuk was working against himself with you, fighting the mess he’d made of you and him a month ago. He created the situation that made you build the walls he was trying to surmount with an army of sunflowers and his poor excuse for love. Matthew was good at a few things, hockey, being a pest, and creating chaos. Righting the chaos he made had never been a task that was asked of him before and now, three days after that first day in the coffee shop, he was struggling to figure out where to go from here. He wanted to make the right decision, systematically work through the heartbreak he’d caused, taking leaps each time he saw you until maybe he’d be close enough to wrap you up in his arms and never let you go again. He might have to settle for a baby step today though since you were at work, slammed with a new project from your boss, with no time to see him

He sent you lunch at work instead, from your favorite burger place you always went together. You swore you could have cried when you realized he included both sweet potato fries and regular fries, your mind pulled back to the first time you went together, back when you were just friends. 

“Should I get the sweet potato fries or regular?” you asked him. 

“Get the sweet potato ones,” Matthew told you, running a hand to push his curls out of his face. “You always get regular fries and complain about how you should’ve gotten sweet potato whenever we all go out to eat together.” 

You agreed with his suggestion, letting the conversation fall comfortably back over the two of you as you waited for your food. You hadn’t even realized time had passed when the waitress dropped off your food. Spending time with Matthew melted away stress and your perception of the passage of time, letting you live in the moment, unencumbered by the stressful comings and goings of your day to day life. 

The sweet potato fries had been a good choice. They had a honey drizzle on them and you were more than pleased with your selection. But Matthew’s regular potato fries appeared to have some sort of special seasoning on them and you were itching to try one, but Matthew wasn’t big on sharing in general, let alone when it came to food. He saw you staring at them and groaned. 

“You’re the worst,” but he flipped his plate around so the fries faced you anyway. “Don’t say I never do things for you.”

“You’re the best friend I’ve ever had, Tkachuk.” 

You frequented that same burger joint with him throughout the years of your friendship that came after, and during your short relationship. The burgers you ordered changed, but never the fries. You got sweet potato. Matthew got regular. He let you steal as many of his as you wanted without a single complaint sliding between his lips despite dozens of repeat visits to the restaurant.

In your office, holding a container of sweet potato fries and a container of regular in opposite hands, you thought it was a little ridiculous that french fries were making tears well up in your eyes. He hadn’t forgotten. You shook your head to shake off the desperate thoughts that were swirling, the ones that were tying emotional weight to french fries of all things, and shot him off a quick text to thank him for lunch before getting wrapped back up in your day. You didn’t see his reply text until you had already kicked your heels off at home too many hours later. 

Would never forget to get my girl her whole meal :) 

Sometimes, love wasn’t big gestures. Oftentimes, it wasn’t even gestures that would make much sense to relay to other people. Two kinds of french fries wasn’t something you could explain to anyone else because it would just seem childish, but you felt cared for. Above all, you felt remembered when you’d opened that bag. You felt like Matthew Tkachuk had seen you almost two years ago in a restaurant and remembered exactly who you were in that moment and still knew who you were today. The french fries would go untold to anyone else, but they made you smile more than the roses on your coffee table when you fell asleep that night. 

The next month felt like it happened all at once. There were enough sunflowers to create your own you-pick patch of them, rose and tulips and whatever other kinds of flowers Matthew knew the names of interspersed, just to keep you on your toes. Movies nights at his place, complete with half-burnt, half-unpopped popcorn courtesy of Matthew’s non-existent culinary skills. Nights out, full of laughter and storytelling that made you feel like nothing had ever changed, like you had flipped over an extra month in the calendar, skipping one entirely, the month you’d been apart, and moved on without it. He felt like your friend again, something that had lapsed when you’d started dating. You both tried so hard, arguably too hard, to change your relationship into a romantic one that you didn’t leave space for friendship, booting it out without anything solid to fulfill its previously occupied space. The relationship collapsed without a solid core, the frail coverings of romance too heavy for the hollow center to bear. 

Matthew wasn’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination. He still talked over you, parts of his brain running faster than others. He still forgot to talk to you on road trips sometimes. He still forgot your sister’s birthday. He still resisted emotional responses from you, physically pulling back and trying to dodge conversations that would bring discomfort. The gestures were there, hundreds of them in the form of your favorite flowers, but was it enough? Did you truly believe you two were hand in hand, putting the train station of your relationship back together, or was this just an attractive paint job hiding the cracks for a few months until they became exposed again because of time? Was the effort a permanent fixture? Or was it just a passing small town station that Matthew had created to attract you, pulling you into town with the promise of nice accommodations and restaurants always being available, only to abandon them as soon as the train left the station and your life got on without you, leaving you stranded, trapped in a small forgotten town forever?

As you walked into your favorite coffee shop, you cut the line, heading right to the front like you had become accustomed to doing. Matthew had called your order in and paid for it over the phone every work day before you got there since that first day after he sent you lunch. He knew what time you usually got to your favorite shop, and worked it out with the staff that they had your order ready for you now like clockwork every day. You had been able to gain twenty minutes of sleep from it, but you were wondering now if this would all stop if you took him back or not. Really, the coffee order ceasing would be more than fine. Love wasn’t in monetary gestures like this one technically was, but what else would disappear with it? Would Matthew trying to verbally and physically make space for you in his life disappear too? Would him genuinely trying to, even if it’s hard and he’s pretty shitty at it, understand your emotions fade away? Would all the effort fragment into sporadic moments, slowly growing further and further apart until they stopped happening all together and you wasted years of your life giving Matthew Tkachuk your love and not getting enough back? 

You didn’t know the answer, which is why you were thrilled you were having dinner with some of your closest, non-Matthew related friends after work. You had been keeping Matthew a bit of a secret. Actually, a complete secret. You knew your friends wouldn’t approve at the start, so you hadn’t told them a thing. They would have told you he didn’t deserve any semblance of a second shot, that the things he had said in the past could never be overwritten by future good actions, that you weren’t supposed to give people who break your heart second chances. But now, you were at a crossroads. 

You could give Matthew more time, maintain the status quo until inevitably your heart gave out. You could open your arms to love him again, knowing full well that you would never be one hundred percent sure or not. You could brush him aside, thanking him for his temporary effort that would never be enough for you. Three clear options left you further from a solution than you thought possible. You needed advice. You needed opinions from people who only had stake in you in this relationship. You needed to be more selfish than you knew how to be, so you were passing the task off to your friends. 

While they were usually quick to pass judgment, they were silent as you went through every painstaking detail of your past month, starting with that fated text about sunflowers, through every dinner, every movie, every moment until the text you got before you sat down in this chair at dinner with them. You were exhausted by the time you got through everything, emotionally and verbally spent, feeling no closer to your answer. You had hoped retelling everything would pull you in one direction or the other, with no such luck. Your friends, however, weren’t undecided in the slightest. 

“So, you’re ending this experiment, right?” 

You were shocked, almost spitting out your drink at the harshness of the words that spilled out of your best friend’s mouth. She shrugged off your shocked expression. 

“I mean, it was a nice experiment, I guess, but a total waste of your time,” another friend added. “There isn’t any way to prove this is a permanent change and I, for one, will never tell you to take that kind of a risk. You’re too good to put up with a guy who very well could end up not being worth it.” 

Your friends were talking a mile a minute, all at you, but really at each other in their bubble of agreement, agreement that Matthew Tkachuk was not worth your time. He could buy you flowers, coffee, as many lunches as he wanted to. He could make promises about listening and trying and making an effort, but he was on trial during it all. He was under a performance review. It was a manufactured situation as far as they were all concerned, entirely unrepresentative of who he would be outside of it. When there wasn’t a close date, a date he could begin to slack off again according to your friends, and you demanded engagement and effort from him every single day without any relief from that pressure, he would fail. He would fail every single time. 

How had you not seen that? You created a situation with a time limit, a window in time he would have to be a different person than he was, with a definitive end date. Was anything he had done representative of actual change, or was it just a temporary side step towards being closer to what you needed, only to return back to his original spot when you took him back? There was no way to know if anything he had done over the last month was real or some elaborate farce.

The farce, this charade of a month, it swept the both of you up with returning feelings of seemingly endless longing from when you loved each other in secret. You were pretty sure Matthew had gotten swept up right along with you by the fantasy of fate and love being something unbreakable that would always pull people back together. This effort wasn’t real, even if Matthew believed it was. It was all part of some twisted game fate was playing by telling the both of you that you were meant to be. Two puzzle pieces that aren’t supposed to go together don’t go together, even if one tries to bend their corners until they can. Matthew thought he was cutting corners off, not just bending them, making permanent changes to fit with you, but it would never matter. The picture the two pieces that were you and Matthew created together would never be correct. You were shades of blue, like the sky on a Sunday morning as you remembered it as a child full of wonder, like the ocean, powerful and unstoppable. Matthew was red, like the deepest tones of a fading sunset, like the feeling of sitting by a fireplace on Christmas morning. Both pieces individually were beautiful and important to the larger picture, but they didn’t belong anywhere near each other. There were no transition colors. It was blue and red, black and white. They couldn’t mix. They just had to fit. And you two just didn’t fit. You didn't create a picture together. It was just two pieces trying desperately to create something you couldn't because red was your favorite color and blue was Matthew's and fate was a fucking bitch.

You were crying as you walked into your apartment building and pulled out your phone. You typed out a text that echoed one you’d received two months ago without even meaning to do it. 

We need to talk. Come over? 

It was identical to the one Matthew had sent before he set all of this in motion and you were about to mirror him even more closely. Before he came over, you had to have your words collected. You knew he would push back, try and argue that your friends didn’t know the two of you, that they didn’t know what you both felt. But feelings were fickle and often told lies and it was telling you and Matthew the same one right now, that this would work if you tried hard enough even though it would just hurt a thousand times worse when the lie became undeniable six months down the road. 

You almost didn’t notice the small package on your doorstep, eyes too clouded with tears to successfully unlock your door on the first three tries. You snatched it off the doorstep, a sob breaking through your chest when you realized it was from Matthew, no address on the package, just your name scribbled on the top in his horrendous handwriting. He had dropped this off himself and somehow that made it all feel more heartbreaking in your chest. You shuffled inside, the fourth attempt being the charm today, and tore into the package as you kicked the door shut behind you. The wrapping was even his handiwork, too much tape, not enough but somehow too much paper, and you were ruining it with tears dripping on and staining the paper. 

You sat down on the floor, back against your front door. The lid of the box slid off easily and you tossed it aside. You were greeted with a picture of your mother, one you had framed on your front table, mere feet from where you had collapsed on the floor. It was your favorite picture of her, something you had definitely told and retold to Matthew one too many times. You flipped it over in search of some reason for it’s inclusion, finding more of Matthew’s handwriting on the back. 

Hey sunflower, 

Hope work was good today :) If it wasn’t, I’m sorry and call me and we’ll talk about it. They switched our flights around for this roadie so I’m on a plane right now, but I wanted you to have these before I left. 

You told me your mom was a big part of the reason you loved sunflowers and that she had these sunflower earrings you loved growing up, but that they were lost. I saw your mom was wearing them in this picture, so I took it to a jeweler and well, they aren’t the ones your mom wore, but I hope you like them anyway. 

I know you probably aren’t ready to hear it from me, feel free to skip to the end if you aren’t, but I love you and the past month has made me realize just how much I do and how stupid I was in the past. I’m going to keep trying to get a little better every single day and maybe, if I try hard enough, I might become someone who deserves you. 

- Matty  

Your hands shook as you slowly set the picture on the ground next to you and pulled back the tissue paper. Nestled safely in the box were two golden sunflower earrings, delicate golden wire bending to make up their shape. They were identical to the pair your mother had worn almost every single day of every summer of your childhood. Except these were yours. And they were made for you by a boy who loved you who was trying really hard to become a man who loved you and deserved to be loved back by you.

Suddenly, it didn’t matter. Your judgmental friends didn’t matter. Your negative thought spirals that tried to ruin everything good you ever had that was risky because the best things in life were always inherently risky didn’t matter. Fate and whether or not she was on your side or not didn’t matter. Matthew Tkachuk mattered. His effort was real and raw and pure and the most beautiful thing anyone had ever done for you and it mattered. And all Matthew needed for all of his effort to matter was exactly one single act of effort from you. It would have to be a continuous act, a constantly, daily task, but all he needed was your patience with him. And as you sat on the floor, tears staining your cheeks, holding a pair of sunflower earrings you knew Matthew Tkachuk was worth your patience, that he was worth your love, and that you didn’t hate sunflowers at all, not even a little bit.

People weren’t puzzle pieces. You and Matthew Tkachuk didn’t fit together seamlessly to create one image because that’s not how people work. Puzzle pieces are stagnant, fixed, unchangeable. People are supposed to flex and grow and change, be mutable over time, with contact from others. You were blue now, but there was no reason to say throughout your life, from touching other people and their beautiful lives, that you would always be the same shade of blue you were now. Tomorrow, maybe you’d meet the most yellow person you had ever met in your life, and you’d be a little more green for it. Matthew Tkachuk was red and just maybe, purple was supposed to be your favorite color. 

You pulled out your phone and deleted six words and two punctuation marks you had typed walking into your apartment building, but never sent. You replaced that text with a picture of the earrings in your lap, and simple red heart emoji because you knew words would fail you and any words that came to you, you wanted to say to his face when he got back from his trip. He texted you back almost instantly, just a simple red heart emoji. Matthew had started the red hearts. When you were friends, he’d send every other color except red. But when when you started dating, he would send a red heart whenever he wanted to kiss you but couldn’t, when he was on the road and wouldn’t see you for a while, when he was across the table from you at dinner with his parents. It was one of your little quirks, little things that neither of you had forgotten, an old habit that never worked its way out of your behavior. You didn’t send red hearts to anyone else anymore, and neither did he. But you sent one to him now. 

Matthew Tkachuk sat on a plane that night, wishing he could driven across town fast enough to deserve to get pulled over and kissed you instead of sending you a stupid fucking emoji. He fell asleep that night, letting himself remember what it felt like to kiss you, something he had kept in the back of his mind for the last month because the thought of never being able to do it again made his knees pull up into his chest to try and block off pain that was unfortunately coming from inside himself. But tonight, tonight he let himself remember it, let himself pretend that you were thinking of the same thing, let himself remember what it was all like with you because you wanted to kiss him too. He fell asleep with a smile on his face for the first time in months and woke up the next morning with it too, still thinking about you and getting back home to you to finally get to kiss you again. 

------

Matthew didn’t even think twice when his feet touched the tarmac a few days and two road wins later. He knew where he needed to go. He got to his car and tossed his tie into the passenger seat before starting to drive way too fast to your apartment. He didn’t hit a single red light, which made him think about fate again for a brief moment, but then he remembered this wasn’t about her or anyone else. Everything was just about you, you and your love affair with big yellow flowers and hopefully, him again. He took the stairs two at a time after parking incredibly poorly in front of your apartment, but he didn’t care. He just wanted to kiss his best friend, the girl whose heart he broke, the girl that somehow didn’t hate him or sunflowers, the girl that just might love his undeserving self in spite of it all. 

He barely got two knocks on your front door before you yanked it open and Matthew could swear he wanted to die. There you were, a lightness in your eyes he hadn’t seen for months returned to you. Your hair was pulled back, the earrings he had made for you on display. His eyes drifted down, taking in the familiar golden chain around your neck, the one that had been missing for two months now, the one that held a small sunflower and the number nineteen at its base. But Matthew Tkachuk swore his heart almost gave out when he saw the familiar white neckline of that damn sunflower dress. You hadn’t worn it in the past two months, unable to take it out of your closet without crying, but you put it on today and it made you smile. 

“Hi,” he breathed out. 

Driving over with the intent to kiss you was as far as he’d gotten and you in that sunflower dress was making it impossible to think of anything other than that one word he had managed to say.

“Hi,” you breathed back, a genuine smile pulling up the corners of your mouth.

Matthew cleared his throat, letting his eyes close for a second so maybe he could try and think about something other than how you looked right now. He let his head fall back, taking in a deep breath, giving his head a shake in a vain attempt to shake off some nervousness from his mind to clear his thoughts. It worked well enough so one thought could slip through as he let his head fall forward and opened his eyes into your gaze again.

“Do I, um, get another month?” Matthew asked you, his voice timid and frail, on the edge of breaking. “Today is a month.” 

You looked up at him, eyes taking him in. The parting of his lips, the happiness that finally reached his beautiful blue eyes, the curls falling on his forehead, the wrinkled game day suit sans tie that you knew was probably crumpled in the passenger seat of his car. He was on a tightrope, ready to fall to either side with your answer. One side was absolute heartbreak, the kind he was pretty sure would taint the concept of love for him for most of this life, and the other was joy and love and happiness and everything he ever wanted. He was ready to fall with your words, giving you all the control to push him to one side or the other. 

“No, Matthew,” you told him softly.

Matthew’s face started to fall instantly and he felt like his heart dropped into his stomach where his own body started to eat away at it immediately. The dress, the earrings, the red heart, everything, he thought he had finally broken through to you. More than that, he had thought he finally was loving you in a way you wanted, in a way that you deserved. He thought he finally had enough of the pieces of what you needed, wanted, and liked together in himself to be someone you wanted to give your love to. He knew a month wasn’t a lot of time, but he’d loved for over two years now. He loved you as a friend. He loved you when he thought there were only unrequited feelings. He loved you when he was your lover. He loved you when he broke your heart out of sheer stupidity, when he thought fighting meant you would never work together, that somehow he was wrong to love you. He loved you the entire month he didn’t see you. He loved you this past month he spent desperately trying to show you he could love you through actions, not just in his own head and chest, that he could love you like a partner, like you deserved to be loved. 

“You don’t get another month,” you continued, each syllable twisting the knife deeper into Matthew’s chest. “You don’t get another month because you don’t have anything else to prove to me, Matthew.” 

Matthew willed his eyes to find yours again, hoping the hope that had just alit itself in his chest wasn’t misguided. You were calm, your eyes steady, keeping contact with his. Matthew almost dared to feel reassured for a moment, like maybe the hope he felt when you said he had nothing left to prove was correct. But if he was wrong, which he so often was in general, but especially with emotions, yours in particular, it would just serve as an additional twist of the knife. When it was already in so deep, did it really matter anymore? 

“You’re not on trial. No more tests,” you said to him, letting your love for him you had tried to store away pour out. “I want you, Matthew. I want you and me. I want to see if purple is my favorite color.” 

The purple part was beyond Matthew and he made a mental note to ask you about it in a minute, but he needed to kiss you right now. He reached out and you leaned into his touch for the first time in a long time. His hands cupped your face and you rocked up on your toes as he pressed his lips to yours. Your hands came up to rest on his chest as he kissed you so softly, tenderly. He wanted to crush you into him, but that wasn’t what this moment was. This was hopefully the end of the longest period of his life he’d ever have to go without kissing you again. He wasn’t going to rush this, his second chance with the girl who loved him for some reason and sunflowers for much more obvious reasons. 

Matthew was slow as he pulled away and tilted his head down to rest his forehead against yours. One of his thumbs shifted to ghost over your lips, his blue eyes staring into yours, but really past your eyes, and into you, seeing you better than anyone else did. He loved you without the rose colored glasses. He saw you and loved you, it had just taken him almost too long to figure out how to show it. It had almost taken him too long to figure out that love wasn’t just something you could feel and ride the feelings to bliss. Love was daily effort, trying and retrying and sometimes he would fail, but it was constantly showing up anyway. Love was hard, but holding your face in his hands, he knew you were worth the effort he planned on putting in every single day for the rest of his life. 

“I love you, sunflower,” Matthew whispered, the words left raw and unpolished by how real the feelings he injected into them were. 

“I love you too.”

#Matthew Tkachuk #matthew tkachuk imagine #matthew tkachuk fanfic #nhl fanfic #nhl fanfiction #nhl fic #nhl imagine #Hockey Fanfiction #hockey writing #hockey imagine

[levi-ish]

Little Talks | 5

Pairing: Bartender!Levi X Reader

Genre: [+18] Slice of life, drama, romance, fluff, smut

Words: 3k

Warnings: Alcohol, cheating mentions, drugs, cussing

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

Masterlist

“Your taste in tea is shit” Levi scanned through the old teabags you had lingering in your cabinets.

“Sorry if I don’t have enough money to buy those fancy blends you like” you rolled your eyes as you leaned further into the throw pillows you had on top of your old couch.

“Tch.”

You turned around and watched the man tumble around with your mugs and you knew that he hated your unmatching sets, always making small comments about them. He then set for the most common ones you had and brought them to you after quickly making your drinks.

It had been a few weeks since the night when Levi comforted you after your ex-beloved’s visit. You two held hands and pretended that it was nothing while watching random cooking shows, then after you fell asleep he left but not before making you another cup of tea that you woke up to find inside your microwave, sitting there waiting for you.

You thanked him in person two days after and exchanged numbers because he claimed that he didn’t ‘trust’ your building’s security. Even when you told him that Zeke only got up because your concierge knew him.

But now things were better than you could expect. Levi would drive you home almost every night and wait for your ‘ok’ text when you took the elevator, to be sure you were safe and sound. He mostly made you tea at 4AM when the bar was closing and you had no classes the day after, and you two hung around at your apartment quite a lot, watching shitty movies and listening to him complain about how you were doing your laundry all wrong.

Whoever saw you two together would think you were a couple of elderlies married.

“I can’t believe he didn’t like how she plated it” you pointed at the TV, quite angry at the cooking show passing on. “She even put those fancy herbs.”

“It’s shit”

“Everything is ‘shit’ to you” you rolled your eyes.

“Only the things that are shit” Levi replied as he sipped on his tea.

You rolled eyes once more as you felt the shift on the sofa, not noticing his movements if it weren’t for it. Levi held his phone to his eyes and a sheer of light illuminated his strong features, highlighting that glorious jawline and the thin lips you—

What?

Shaking your head, you quickly got rid of those thoughts, adjusting your own position and making your back fall more comfortably on the cushions. Levi let a small sigh and brought the teacup back to his mouth, drinking slowly.

“Hange again?” You asked, giving him the side of your eye as you stirred your own drink.

“Kirstein this time” Levi replied, letting out his signature ‘tch’. “I should’ve been there. Those idiots can’t do their jobs properly without supervision.”

“Hange forcing people to listen to their theories again?”

“No. Jean broke the sink and is trying to blame it on the weather somehow.”

“How…”

“No fucking idea.” Levi put his phone back inside his pocket and drank the last of his tea, sighing after. It was a heavenly vision to see, you weren’t gonna lie.

With a small yawn, you stretched your legs and downed the tea in one gulp, earning a side eye from the man who wasn’t pleased you were appreciating one of his fancy blends. The minty taste lingered on your tongue as you licked your lips, and you could smell the hint of cinnamon wandering in the room, mixing with Levi’s cologne that you so much adored.

“I’m bored” you let out, pouting as you rested your face on the pillow closer to his shoulder.

“You wouldn’t be if you stayed quiet and watched the show.”

“Do you hate me or what” you scoffed, pouting even more.

Levi turned to you, watching your expression and that’s when you noticed how close you were to him. His breath fanned over your face and you swore you could see his lips twitching and him inching closer, clearing your throat, you looked down, completely breaking eye contact.

“Do you really wanna know?” He replied and you pushed him. “At least clean your hands before touching me.”

“You wish I was touching you” you bit your lip and rose your brows teasingly.

He turned to your face once more, eyes dead serious focusing on you and he licked his lips slowly, posture completely changing.

“Maybe.”

He caught you off guard with that comment, making a small shiver go down your spine, but you decided that brushing it off would be better than acknowledging new reasons to make the relationship you two had more uncomfortable. You knew Levi wasn’t very pushy about things and probably would forget about it as soon as you would, without giving it another thought.

Oh well.

“Uh…” you tried to say, licking your lips again after your mouth went full dry “… are you hungry?”

“No” he said, eyes still on you as you tried to get his attention away from you.

“Uhm… then do you wanna do something else or…?”

Levi inched closer now, his nose brushing against yours and breath warming your chin as you rubbed skin together, feeling each other scents and every little movement was big enough to make both bodies swarm under the tension in the room.

“Levi… what…”

But before you could continue, he closed the distance, lips colliding as you felt the dry specs of his chapped skin brushing against yours. Is this really happening? What…? It was, and he was still going, hand now holding your nape to have your face closer to his than before, as if he never wanted to let go. You turned to the side to allow his tongue inside, feeling it dancing with yours in a difficult and shy but intense tango that seemed too familiar but strange at the same time.

It was a sensation you never wanted to end.

But as soon as it started, it stopped; his hand left your neck and went back to his side, and his usually unfazed look now seemed more panicked, as if he was already regretting it.

Please, god, don’t regret it. Please…

“I—”

You were abruptly cut off by him standing from the couch and grabbing his coat by the rack, quickly opening the door and leaving your apartment, leaving you by yourself and with empty lips but a full heart that felt too heavy for your shallow chest.

Things changed since that.

Levi completely disappeared. Hange and Jean would say that he would leave the key to them and only showed up in the mornings to rearrange things the way he liked them but left very quickly each time. He didn’t text and you didn’t try to, knowing it would be useless since we are talking about him, most emotionally unavailable person to exist. You still went to the bar every night, trying to catch him around and maybe clear things up, but failed miserably.

You didn’t regret it, not at all. In fact, you wished it would last longer, even though it was enough material for your mind to wander around the floor full of eggshells that were your memories from that night. You wanted more, you wanted him, and now you weren’t ashamed of admitting it to yourself.

And you were almost giving up seeing him again, if it weren’t for Sasha, who was livid over how he had reacted and insisted on dragging you back to the bar.

So there you were, Mikasa holding one of your arms and Sasha holding the other, both giving you pep talks on how you should go there and confront him. You knew he was working tonight for sure, that’s because Mikasa told you she’d texted him about it before and learned he was taking some weird shifts and closing on weirder times. Annie was busy with her two-year anniversary with Armin, so she couldn’t come, but she did text you to be brave. The way Annie would, I mean, sending a small “punch him” and a smiley face.

“C’mon (y/n), you look hot and he will regret leaving when you show up” Sasha’s grip on your arm tightened as she tried to drag you inside. “Tell her, Mikasa”

“You look hot” the other woman said, and you knew that she wasn’t putting much effort in because it made you uncomfortable, otherwise you’d have been inside already since Mikasa was stronger than you two combined. “Levi’s an idiot.”

“I don’t wanna go” you said, whining as they let go of you for a moment. “He did what he did and I was pretty much rejected. I don’t wanna push harder.”

“What’s even his problem?!” Sasha crossed her arms, her expression turning into a mad one. “Was he always an idiot, Mikasa?”

“He changed a lot since he was left at the altar.”

“What” you and Sasha said in unison, shocked by the new piece of information.

“Did I never mention it?”

“No?” You frowned, coming closer to her face. “What do you mean by ‘left at the altar’?”

“Exactly that.”

“Mikasa” Sasha pushed her lightly.

“I don’t know exactly, I was 15, but he was getting married to this girl and she left him the day of the wedding.” Mikasa said as if it was nothing. “Everyone was there to see, and he was devastated.”

That left you wondering… a lot. Why’d Levi never tell you about that? You two went into some deep discussions at times, talking about stuff that you never dared to share with others, and he did open up a little about some of his things, but this? You thought that would be something to tell someone you would think of kissing. Unless he wasn’t really thinking those things about you, then it would be a whole other topic that you were too much of a coward to consider.

Did anyone else know? You had so many questions and you really wish you had the answers because of the anxiety now growing in the pit of your stomach.

“You didn’t think that was important information to share?” You questioned and Mikasa shook her head.

“Not really.”

“Okay, we are getting in. You can deal with that later” Sasha pushed you through the door and now you couldn’t say anything else because your feet already touched the wooden floor.

It was a full house, everyone was dancing and singing along with the old jukebox and there were girls leaning on the counter flirting with Jean as your eyes wandered. Hange was mixing drinks and Levi was nowhere to see, what made you feel a lot more comfortable being there. Sasha and Mikasa pushed through the crowd and found you a place on the counter, sitting on stools and leaving you to sit in between them, so you did, and the blonde bartender was the first one to notice you there.

“Ah!” He chirped loudly, leaving the girls behind to come to you. “My favorite girl… and company, hi, hello.”

You noticed he was now flirting with Mikasa, but she just ignored his presence.

“Hot wings!” Sasha punched the counter and grabbed you by side shoulder, pointing at the shelves. “And shots, keep them coming, my friend here needs them.”

“I’m sure she does” Jean kept his gaze on Mikasa, trying to be subtle about it as you rolled your eyes at him. “Our short friend has been pretty hard to deal with lately, so without you around I already knew something went down.”

“They kissed” Mikasa let out.

“ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT LEVI?” Screamed Hange from where they were, coming right away and pushing Jean with their hip. “Also, hi, but answer me!”

“They kissed” Mikasa repeated, and you gave up on trying to stop them.

Hange’s hand fell on your shoulder as they approached the group further, inserting the ponytail-head in the middle and readjusting the glasses above their nose, “You and shorty? Are you kidding me?! Tell me everything!”

“I’ll leave you to deal with Hange now” Jean said as they leaned a little more into Mikasa’s side. “So… are you in college?”

She only gave him a side glance and ignored his question, making the man confused.

“Focus!” Hange slammed their fist, now sitting on your side. “You have to tell me about it!”

“Oh gosh, please let me breath!” You rose your hands and they all moved their attention to you, making you feel a little overwhelmed and guilty — they were simply curious creatures. A deep sigh left your mouth as you put your palms back on the wooden surface of the table, opening your eyes slowly. “We kissed… and he left.”

“Without saying anything?” Jean asked and you nodded. “Damn… he ghosted you.”

“He might just be too busy?” Hange suggested and you gave them the harsh glare. “Maybe not?”

“Can anyone bring me—us some wings?” Sasha pleaded, leaning onto the table.

“You two need to talk” Hange added, bumping onto you jokingly. “Kiss and make up.”

“That’s not happening.”

“C’mon, he’s in the back. I’m sure he’ll be happy to see you.”

You just lowered your head and that was enough for them to understand.

“Well, I’ll leave you be” they just gave you a slight nod and stood from the booth. “Good luck.”

You felt some warmth crawl into your belly and smiled at them, following by another glance onto the other two in front of you.

“Mikasa is such an exotic name, where did it come from?” Jean leaned further, trying his best to sound smooth but the girl’s reaction was too bothered to be working.

“We’ll leave you be” Hange said as they grabbed Jean by the nape and dragged him back to the bar.

[…]

Sasha was on her third plate of hot wings when caught the first glance of Levi.

He came from the back for a moment to grab the electric kettle from under the counter, turning around quickly as if he already knew you were around and was avoiding any type of contact. Being treated like a disease like that made you feel angry, it wasn’t like you’d done anything wrong, you just kissed him back — he was the one to initiate it! The nerve of him.

You gulped down the rest of your beer and threw yourself back on the cushions of the booth, earning a look from Mikasa, but she decided to ignore it knowing you were procrastinating the inevitable, now focusing on Sasha who was unbuttoning her pants to eat more.

“Hey, you’re (y/n), right?” Someone approached your table, hands filling the pockets of their letterman jacket and blonde hair neatly sitting on top of his head. A thin goatee painted his chin and a gentle look sat around his clear eyes.

“Yea” you shook your head, looking at his face, frowning slightly. “Sorry, I—”

“It’s fine, we have Latin together” you now recognized him as the boy who sat in front of you and occasionally borrowed a pen.

“Oh! Reiner, right? You want some hot wings?” Sasha was not pleased you offered, but you just ignored her growl.

“No, I’m fine, just came to say ‘hi’” he gave you a small smile. “See you around.”

You reciprocated the smile and watched as he left, and your eyes collided with cold, grey ones across the room, behind the wooden counter as you felt your heart rush again, as if it was the first time once more. Levi had his muscular arms crossed as he stared right into your soul, making cold chills run all over your spine, holding your body to make it stop.

He turned around to leave and as if a lightning had just struck in you, your body involuntarily stood from its place and rushed to the counter, running around it and pushing the backdoor open, revealing an annoyed short man holding a cup of tea.

“What the f—”

And before he could even complete his thoughts, you grabbed the cup and placed it on the table right next to you, all that before pining him roughly against the wall, staring quickly into his eyes, searching for the same flame you could see inside you now burning around grey specs. A small smile grew on your lips and you kissed him hard.

He hesitated though, leaning back quickly as if something had snapped in his mind, making him realize what was really happening there. But before you could react again, he turned you around, pining your hands above your head as he kissed you feverously, the other hand feeling the skin of your hips from under your shirt, making the chills go harder around your bloodstream.

Levi moved positions once more, taking the back of your thighs and sitting you on top of the same table, making the teacup fall to the floor, but he seemed unbothered by it. His tongue now made advances on your mouth, playing with yours in soft movements even when his own lips made harsh movements, combining everything like sugar and cinnamon, and the pine scent of his cologne invaded your clothes that were now too hot for your needy skin.

His hands clenched around the fat of your legs, holding it as if his life depended on it and he started to lower his lips to your neck, giving it open-mouthed kisses that made a small moan fall from your throat. Ashamed, you didn’t realize that your grip on his shoulders was a little too hard and he put a hand from under your chin, holding your face as he stared deeply into your soul. A satisfied scoff fell from his own plump lips and he came back to what he was doing.

That was somewhat a dream, something you had fantasized about too many times to count, and now that it was happening, you refused to pinch yourself in fear of waking up alone. But when his slim fingers rose your skirt to your hips, things felt too real for it to be just your mind playing tricks. Small whimpers escaped your mouth as Levi decided to explore around your navel, playing softly with the hem of the lacy panties you were wearing, and you thanked whatever god was up there for not wearing those comfortable ones you almost wore tonight.

He removed your panties and lowered himself now, a small breath fanned over your naked parts, making you shiver slightly, only to be held still by his own hands. He gave you a small glance before you nodded in consent, and it was all it took for him to devour you in the most amazing ways you had never experienced before.

Levi had experience — you could tell — and the passion he exhaled was enough for you to moan without caring about anything in the world. His fingers joined his tongue and played with your entrance, teasing slowly as his mouth did wonders around your sensitive bud, movements going from harsh hands to slow kisses that left you whimpering, needing everything, anything more from him, legs hooping around his shoulders while trying to make him come closer to your heat.

You whimpered, moaned, cried under his spell, and everything felt 1000x more sensitive against his touch. His fingers entered you and played around all the right places, hitting every beat to the song that played muffled inside the bar, making a small giggle fall from you and he noticed it, now fastening his pace as if he wanted to go back to shutting you up with his own mouth.

Repeatedly he hit your most sensitive spot, licking, and tasting all he could as he did his best to make you cum. It didn’t take long for you to feel the heat pooling around your stomach, throwing your head backwards and fisting his hair between your fingers as you felt his rush against your orgasm, taking everything from you simply with his mouth. You moaned loudly as you rode his face quickly, hips moving without your consent and he pulled your lips apart to clean the remnants of your pleasure, not leaving one spot untouched.

Your chest heaved from the rush as your eyes made contact with grey seas that now leveled with your height, watching you under spells of lust while he sucked slowly from his fingers, tasting every last bit of you, like you were mead for his tastebuds, and you could swear you saw his lips curl a little upwards.

“You surely know how to make a mess” he noted, a ‘tch’ leaving his mouth.

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@zeickv @thirstyforsometea​ @nalu-trashytrash​ @umheyasf​​

#levi #levi smut #levi ackerman #aot #levi x reader #zeke jaeger #jean kirstein