#prosecco o’clock

[cdyssey]

Drill Day

Summary: After Abbott Elementary's now traditional Drill Day—which requires the teachers and students to practice four mandated emergency drills over the course of a single day—Barbara checks on her own: Gregory, Jacob, Janine, and, of course, Melissa.

TW: Mentions of emergency school drills: earthquake/fire/tornado/lockdown.

AO3 Link

—

It’s been an extraordinarily long day.

Specifically, it is what is infamously known to Abbott teachers as Drill Day. The school is mandated to run at least four drills each semester, one of each type—fire, earthquake, tornado, and lockdown. Any competent administrator would carefully space them out over the course of five months, so as to minimize disturbance to the rhythms of a normal school day…

But, well, Abbott has Ava, and since last year, they’ve had Drill Day, where the school runs every God-blessed emergency procedure over the course of a single day, one after another after another. Melissa thinks it’s because she just forgets when they’re supposed to do them and overcorrects when a higher up tells her to get ‘em all done before the break. Barbara is less generous and suspects that Ava is too unbothered to properly schedule any of them out in the first place.

“God,” Melissa had smirked at this, her green eyes twinkling, “I love it when you’re cattier than I am.”

“Meow, meow,” she had only drawled against the rim of her coffee mug in response, unable to prevent herself from smiling at the sound of Mel’s deep belly laughter, warm and vibrant and loud.

Barbara is a proud Christian woman—sure, absolutely, irrefutably—but she has to admit, on Drill Days, she perhaps inappropriately prays that someone keys the principal’s shiny red car.

Lord, grant her prayer and forgive her for making it.

Amen.

Barbara and Melissa handle the demands of the day better than most of their younger colleagues. With over fifty years of experience between them, they know how to order their classes in single-file lines, distribute textbooks for students to place over their tiny heads, and usher their kids into dark supply closets. Relatedly, they’re well-versed in soothing those very same scared children, wiping away the tears that form at the corners of their eyes, and taking verbal lashings from parents who are rightfully concerned that their kids shouldn’t have to simulate four different traumatic situations over the span of an eight-to-three day.

But still.

It’s hard work.

Exhausting work. 

And after Barbara calmly explains to a fourth indignant parent that they should take it up with Ava, she wants nothing more than to get in her tan sedan, go home, and pop the cork on the Prosecco that she had been saving for the winter break. Perhaps she’ll even down the whole ten-dollar bottle, one chilled glass at a time. Sitting at her desk, fingers templed beneath her chin, she stares off into the middle distance and thinks about it, daydreams about how easy it would be to let Mrs. Howard take the night off before it’s even six o’clock.

Prosecco.

Jeopardy!

An perhaps a singular melatonin gummy—(only five milligrams, of course)—if she’s feeling a little frisky. Something to assist her into the velvet comforts of sleep.

Mm.

But the positively sinful fantasy evaporates when she glances at her door, which still has a black piece of construction paper neatly taped over the plexiglas window. It haunts her, that damn paper. It bruises her, every time she has to explain to a student that it’s to keep the bad guys out. And it simply excavates her—ruins her all over—that she has to prepare them for this precaution at all. They are children, no more than five and six years old.

Babies.

They are children, and she wants to protect them from learning that there’s such a thing as evil in this world, that it lurks just around the corner every day.

She inexplicably thinks of Janine and Gregory and Jacob then, young things, children themselves, just starting out in their careers and all very unsure of themselves in a lot of ways, like little fawns on ice, skittering around on their hooves. She thinks of herself—a young thing once too—and how drills had occasionally kept her up at night, imagining all the different ways that real disasters could go sideways in a maddening instant. What if a child was left behind during an actual fire? What if a book fell on a kid’s head during an earthquake? What if a tornado blew the roof off of the school? What if the cheesesteak stand on the corner was robbed at gunpoint and the miscreant ran into Abbott? What if there was a fire during an earthquake, while an approaching tornado forced an escaping robber to—

It was hard to leave the classroom behind on drill days, to shut the proverbial door on all the little faces that were in her care.

She knows this unsavory truth intimately, and she has an inkling that there are at least three teachers in Abbott Elementary who are just starting to learn it for themselves.

So Barbara will enjoy her well-deserved indulgences later.

She has babies to care for.

Before she leaves her classroom, though, she snatches the black strip of paper down from her door like it has personally offended her.

(But she meticulously replaces it in the topmost drawer of her desk in case she needs it later.)

—

She makes her rounds on the junior teachers, starting with Jacob and Gregory first since she finds both of them in the teacher’s lounge, trying to finish the drill logs they’re required to do. Completing one of them is tedious enough; doing four of them in a row once is just downright cruel.

“Nope,” she says, looming over both of them like a well-dressed monolith. “Close up shop, boys, and go on home.”

“But—!” Jacob tries to protest, gesturing helplessly at his unfinished forms. He hasn’t gotten past writing out his name on the first one, and there are stark lines beneath his eyes.

“No buts, young man,” she purses her lips sternly, appropriating her best teacher voice. (It's a very good teacher voice.) “It’s been a tough day, and these forms can wait until tomorrow.”

Gregory gives up the pretense and the ghost much faster than Jacob, placing his pen on top of his neat pile of papers. Still, when he looks up at Barbara, his dark brow is troubled.

“How do you do it, Mrs. Howard?” He asks, strain in his quiet voice, subtle but undoubtedly there. His uncharacteristically loose tie adds to the effect and the implication that this day has unraveled him. It's hard to be completely unflappable in crisis, even simulated ones. “How do you keep it all together? By the tornado drill, all of my kids were upset. I had to promise to bring them candy tomorrow to get them to shuffle into the hallway with their books.”

“Lucky,” Jacob mutters somewhat petulantly, idly fiddling with his pen. “We didn’t make it past the fire drill. When we got out into the parking lot, half of my students ran to the ice cream truck and didn’t even ask if I wanted something!”

“That’s cold, dude,” Gregory snorts tiredly.

“Tell me about it,” Mr. Hill laments dramatically, sinking further into his hardback chair.

Barbara offers both of them a rare and sad smile. 

Young things.

Children.

Babies even.

(Yes, they are thirty-something-year old adult men, but that doesn’t really mean anything, not on Drill Day. Not to her.)

“The simplest answer, of course, is time and practice,” she tells them gently. “I’ve had thirty years to perfect the art of corralling students into a line, and I’ve needed each of them to weather this ridiculous Drill Day.” 

She frowns quite magnificently into one of the omnipresent cameras at this, as though to say to the documentarians, Do you see this nonsense we have to put up with?

And to her immense satisfaction, one of the camera persons rewards her with a vigorous, affirming nod.

“With each successive year," she continues, turning her attention to the boys again, "you’ll have learned new techniques, new strategies to deal with what feels like the impossible, and that’s simply what being a teacher is all about—constantly growing. Adjusting and readjusting for stressful situations.”

“And it’ll get easier?” Jacob quickly asks, a pleading note in his voice, his blank drill logs splayed all over the break room table with their mocking, white faces.

After a traumatic day, there is always bureaucracy to follow.

“Well, not exactly easier,” Barbara returns softly, not wanting to paint a false picture of upcoming years. “These drills will always be exhausting—both physically and emotionally—but you’ll be more equipped to deal with individual challenges that occur, at least. You will be practiced, and that is what counts. Progress and the pragmatic implementation of what you have learned.”

Easier is not the adjective.

But maybe familiar is.

Granted, the longer she thinks on that particular conclusion, the more sad she is about it.

One day, these fine, young men in front of her will be as proficient at running these drills as she is; they will be familiar with crisis.

It's necessary in their line of work.

Still, it's rather sad all the same.

“Yeah, okay,” Gregory half-smiles, shrugging a hand across the back of his neck. “I can get behind that. Pragmatic is my thing.”

“Truth,” Jacob agrees zealously, though he doesn't pull it off half as coolly as his counterpart does.

Barbara steps out of the teacher’s lounge with a satisfied smile, contented by the sight of the boys packing up their satchels… She’ll just make sure Janine’s gone home—(probably not)—and then she’ll mosey on to her car herself. 

While she’s walking that way, though, she can’t help but notice that Melissa hasn’t gone home yet. Her black rectangle is still up, but Barbara can see the lights fanning from the cracks beneath the door. She briefly thinks about going in and giving her friend the same mama hen spiel she’s clucking at all the rest of the little chicks… but ultimately decides against it.

Mel will get going soon. 

She’s probably just finishing up some grading.

—

“Janine Teagues,” she says, closing the younger teacher’s sticker-covered laptop with a firm snap. “It is high time for you to go home and rest, little lady.”

The school’s resident optimist looks up at her with wide eyes, and there is nothing, not even the remotest trace, of her ever perpetual smile. In fact, Barbara would wager that Janine has only recently been crying. Her mascara is smudged, and the tissue box is within arm’s reach on her desk.

“I will,” she replies in a would-be-normal-voice. “Just have to finish a reply to a parent’s email. And then another one. And, um, maybe one more after that.”

And with a small sigh, she re-opens the laptop, and the white light skates harshly across her face, making her wince.

“Ah,” Barbara smiles knowingly, folding her arms across her chest, “let me guess—they’re all to the effect of how dare you subject my child to the horrors of this world? This is supremely unfair. Four drills in one day? What kind of teacher are you? And so on and et cetera forevermore?”

“Add in a few remarkably chosen expletives and you’ve got it,” Janine mumbles, limply clicking a few letters on the keyboard. “I didn’t know you could put the ‘f’ word in so many compound phrases.”

“Oh, they do get creative, sweetheart,” she laughs painfully and places a hand on Janine’s shoulder. The verbal abuse and degradation that teachers receive on a nigh daily basis is no laughing matter, but sometimes, they simply have to make it into one just to get through the day. “And to be completely fair, perhaps it’s their… mmm… dubious prerogative. Drill Day is horrifying, and our kids don’t deserve it. None of us do. Yourself included.”

She lets her hand fall away as Janine takes a moment to digest this crucial fact. She rubs her eyes tiredly, and for a second there, tenderly cradles her temples between her slender fingers.

Young thing.

Child.

Baby even.

And Barbara has had ample reasons to suspect that the young woman in front of her hasn’t had the chance to be most of those things—always responsible, perhaps from the time that she was a small and clearly neglected girl.

“I had one kid, little Tegan S., start crying on me during the earthquake drill, saying that she didn’t want to die,” Janine murmurs, her voice so low that Barbara has to lean forward to really hear her. “Her dog ran away during last year’s 3.2 earthquake—you know, the one right before the Eagles lost—and didn’t come back, so earthquakes are a little traumatizing for her anyway…”

Barbara knows exactly who and what she’s talking about. Tegan was in her class two years ago. Good family. Her dad is an optometrist, and so even when she was in kindergarten, Tegan always had a vaguely age-inappropriate array of interesting eye facts to share with her classmates. But she was sweet and kind. When she was five and there was a gap between her two front teeth, she’d always called her “Mrs. Oward.”

As for the Eagles game, goodness, she remembers the whole city being in an uproar after the loss—Melissa included.

“That damn earthquake jinxed us,” she cursed, banging her hand on the break room table.

“From what Gerald says, the team has been ailing this season anyway…” Barbara had playfully teased, earning a baleful glare in response. 

“The earthquake, Barb! Threw off our kicker's mojo.”

“I couldn’t get her to calm down,” Janine continues dully, looking down at her (unfortunately) mustard-colored pants, “but we were in the gym with Melissa’s class, and Melissa came over in an instant. She took Tegan into her arms and soothed her and comforted her… told her that today was make believe, and no earthquake wasn’t going to hurt her today. Not on her watch.”

Janine smiles weakly at the memory, and Barbara smiles proudly at the thought, something pleasant coiling in her chest as though she had personally witnessed the exchange herself.

“Yes, that’s very Melissa,” she hums softly, conjuring her scarlet-haired friend easily in her mind’s eye: intimidating in her black-leather jacket, but beneath the toughness, behind the big and brassy facade, a genuine teddy bear at heart—so warm, so kind, and so good. “She’s excellent at those sorts of moments.” 

“Sooooo, so good,” Janine agrees vehemently, like she doesn’t want to be mistaken as thinking otherwise. “And I just… you know… really wish I could have been like her in the moment. Or like you!”

She gestures upwards to Barbara somewhat frantically.

“Both of you carried yourself so well today, and I just kept thinking to myself, what happens when there’s a real emergency, huh? How can I help my students if an earthquake really happens, and I can’t even console one crying student? If I can't help them when it really matters?” Janine finishes nearly in hysteria, sounding like she’s out of breath—as she so often does.

(The girl really needs to get that seen about.)

“Now, shush, hon,” Barbara says, not unkindly, “and take a step back to look at the bigger picture. You say that you only had trouble with one student, which means that you were able to effectively calm your twenty others, yes?”

“Yeah, but—!” She tries to interrupt, but Barbara cuts her short with her famous I’m talking hand signal.

It works with all her babies.

“But nothing, Janine,” she continues, a little more loudly, but warm. Always warm. “You were yourself today, and that was more than enough. So you needed a little help from Melissa? Lord knows we all do. That’s what friends are for.”

Her words have their intended effect, she supposes, because Janine sniffs once and reaches for the tissue box. Barbara nudges it closer to her as surreptitiously as possible.

“And in the event of a real emergency,” she concludes gently, smiling down at the younger woman and seeing an echo of her own self so many years upon years ago, “you will be a leader, and that is never the same thing as being perfect, sweetheart.”

“What is it then?” Janine asks, after having blown her nose rather noisily.

“It’s about showing up for the people whom you care about,” Barbara answers, and it is the easiest and truest thing she has said all day. 

“Just like Melissa did for me,” the younger woman says, eyes widening it like it’s revelatory.

Melissa is a good leader.

Melissa cares for her.

The two are one and the same.

“Indeed, indeed,” she agrees emphatically and quietly hopes that her dear friend is home by now, kicking back with a nice bottle of wine.

—

She most certainly is not!

This is clear enough to Barbara when she and Janine walk out to the parking lot together and see that Melissa’s Aztec is still in the lot right next to her own car. The sun is starting to set, the peach-colored sky weighing upon Abbott’s rooftop like a gilded crown.

“Oh, that stubborn woman,” Barbara mutters mutinously, her brow pinching somewhere in the middle.

“Huh?” Janine exhales next to her, audibly startled. “What?”

But the kindergarten teacher doesn’t have time to respond, already power marching through the small parking lot and back to the bricked building across the way.

—

The hallway is silent and only dimly lit when Barbara re-enters the school, her two-inch heels heels clacking noisily against the tiled floor as she passes her own classroom, Janine’s, and Gregory’s until she arrives at Ms. Schemmenti’s second grade door. 

The black rectangle is still up, and the lights are still on—the same set-up that she had seen when she had left the break room nearly an hour earlier.

She glances at her watch.

It’s nearly five now.

Traffic is going to be of the Devil.

“Melissa, honey, it’s time to go home now.” Barbara gently taps on the door with her knuckles. She’ll give her friend approximately thirty seconds to answer of her own accord before she bursts in there without mercy. “We need to get on the road soon before some fool gets into a fender bender, and the roads become more congested than an clogged artery...”

It’s an inelegant metaphor, but Lord, it’s been a long day, and she’s all out of pretty aphorisms after consoling her kids—both of the adult and non-adult variety. Besides, she doesn’t need pretty aphorisms here.

Not with her.

Not with Melissa.

After nearly three decades of friendship, they have a secret language, just the two of them, and part of the intricate grammar is just the profound and mutual understanding that they can be themselves around each other. For Barbara, that occasionally means not having to be so polished all the time, not always having the prettiest things to say.

People have come to expect that of her, she thinks, and not by accidental design.

She's cultivated an unimpeachable motherliness about herself: saintlike, perfect... and not entirely easy to perpetually maintain.

Melissa gets that—perhaps a little better than most.

She does a damn fine job of putting on her chosen mask too.

Thirty unbearable seconds pass and there’s no response, not even the telltale squeaking of a chair, and unfounded anxiety coils in Barbara’s stomach like a tightly wound spring. In a day solely revolved around preparing for the horrific, she is already anticipating the worst: Melissa on the floor, injured and bleeding. Or Melissa sick, maybe, fevered and unconscious. It’s always been difficult for her to admit to any suffering.

Case in point, her marriage with Joe.

Barbara hadn’t known how much pain her friend was in until the divorce papers had already been signed. Melissa had called out of work for an entire week afterwards, citing personal issues, and she had come back to school the next Monday simply broken.

She didn’t laugh for an entire year.

She didn’t smile.

And Barbara had prayed for her on her hands and knees every night; sometimes, when her fervor for her colleague became a little too intense, she felt the strangest need to ask for forgiveness too.

“I’m coming in,” Barbara says resolutely, already plunging the silver door handle downwards. “Alone.”

She glares at the camera crew pointedly, and the sweet gal holding a boom mic—she thinks her name is Audrey—eagerly nods in camaraderie and taps her nose. 

This is a private moment.

A stolen one.

Barbara mouths a quiet ‘thank you’ and slips inside the room, thoroughly unprepared for what is on the other side of the door.

Her first impression is one of unspeakable relief at the familiar sight of Melissa simply sitting at her desk at the front of the room, readers perched on the end of her nose, her leather-clad body slightly angled towards the door. But familiarity is just a well-worn facade, and Barbara can almost as immediately intuit that something is deeply wrong from the way that the younger woman is holding herself, her usually slumped posture impeccable, all of her joints stiff, from the folded arms over her chest to her painfully crossed legs. She is is less flesh than immutable stone, less stone than she is a trauma reaction.

And even though she’s looking directly at Barbara, it's clear that she’s not really seeing her, her pupils blown, the horror of them framed by dark lashes. 

Pale tear tracks shimmer on the planes of her cheeks.

“Melissa, baby.” Barbara drops everything on the floor—her purse, her dignity, any lingering hesitations—and goes straight to Melissa, placing her hands on both sides of the woman’s sharply hewn face. Her skin is clammy, her own hands warm, and the chemical reaction between the two polarized charges must be enough to startle her friend back from the depths. Melissa immediately recoils at the touch, bucking and thrashing, panicked and clearly confused, but Barbara just holds her, firmly cupping that beautiful jaw. She holds her and tells her—in the softest intonation that she can, in so many alphabetically diverse ways—that she is here.

“It’s just me,” she whispers soothingly against that mass of auburn hair. "Breathe. In and out. That's it, sweetheart."

Her racing mind immediately jumps to the threatening possibilities of strokes and seizures and cardiac episodes, but she inhales deeply—reels herself and all her worst fears inwards.

She’s seen this before.

Helped students through one a time or two.

An anxiety attack.

Melissa is having an anxiety attack.

“You’re safe now, Melissa,” she hums as the second grade teacher starts to still beneath her touch, even though she continues to breathe heavily, her entire frame shaking. But her pale eyes have re-focused, at least, awareness having seemingly returned in increments. “I’m here.”

“Wha—? Fuck?!” Melissa eventually chokes out, reaching up to curl her hands around Barbara’s wrists. Her nails are a vivid red, perfectly manicured. “I-I mean, uh, I’m fine. I’m fine, Barb. Just got lost in thought. L-long day.”

And even though she had just grabbed on to Barbara, even though she had consciously reached out, she just as quickly and violently pulls away, rolling her chair backwards until she’s out of range from the older woman's touch. It’s only through distance and space that she can compose herself, glue herself together one purposeful gesticulation at a time.

She wipes discreetly at her face.

She crosses her arms over her chest again.

Oh, and this impossible woman even tries a wobbly smile.

Barbara frowns softly because she knows this vicious tango well, how desperately Melissa Ann Schemmenti wants to fool the world into believing that she is perfectly okay.

She's good at it, she'll give her that.

Proficient even.

But not entirely.

Not to Barbara, at least.

“Now don’t attempt that nonsense with me, Melissa,” she shakes her head sternly, though she remains at a respectful distance, allowing the woman her little rituals of becoming. “I know you. I know when you’re hurting.”

“I’m not hurting!” Comes an immediate reply—petulant, defensive, blatantly untrue. “I’m perfectly—“

“If you say fine one more time, I’m going to come over there and slap you senseless,” Barbara warns, settling her hands on her hips in the way she learned from the very woman sitting in front of her. Though she supposes her own posturing is hardly as intimidating because Melissa immediately abandons her own indignation, cracking a half-smile that looks rather wane in her drawn face. 

“Yeah, okay, and the Jacksonville Jaguars are actually goin’ to the Super Bowl this year.”

“You don’t believe me?”

Melissa shakes her head thoughtfully.

“Nah," she says seriously, the smile trickling from her red lips like sand. "You wouldn’t know how to hurt me if you tried…” It’s remarkably high praise—the kind of unadulterated veneration that places her on a looming pedestal—and Barbara is incredibly sure that she doesn't deserve it. Hurting someone is not just a matter of fighting and force, the application of a well-timed fist.

She’s said some careless things to Melissa before.

(People like you...)

She’s hurt her.

And she’s been forgiven every time, her sins mercifully forgotten. Who knew such grace could coexist in a soul who knows enough curse words to make a sailor blush? Who knew that redemption could unspool from the lips of fifty-something, Italian woman who wears leather jackets and knows her way around an excellent right-hook?

Her own personal Jesus.

“That’s rather maudlin of you, Melissa,” she says softly, noting that her friend’s eyes are still rather bright in a way that clearly suggests that she's trying not to cry.

“Well, maybe I’m getting soft in old age,” she snorts humorlessly, glancing away somewhat self-consciously, clearly aware that she's on the dangerous precipice of almost crying. 

Melissa doesn't often cry in front of people often—if at all.

Something, something about not wanting to be vulnerable around others.

Terrified that they may weaponize her openness into a knife.

“Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing," Barbara reminds her.

“It isn’t?” Melissa asks uncertainly, sounding less like her usual self than a small child.

A young thing.

A baby even.

It’s a funny thing, how even a nearly sixty-year old woman can seem so young.

“Not at all,” Barbara murmurs, and always a consummate leader, takes the moment for what it is, an opportunity to practice what she’s been preaching all along. She closes the gap between herself and Melissa in a few tottering steps, makes the cavernous space that had existed between them negligible, and she slowly leans down—

“Huh?” Melissa immediately flinches, swallowing hard, so unused to receiving acts of care these days. Does she think she doesn’t deserve them? Has she convinced herself that no one cares? Barbara has turned these sad and cyclical questions over and over in her head for years now, ever since the younger woman’s divorce and the consumptive sadness that shortly followed. “Barb, what are you—?” 

And Barbara wraps her arms around Melissa’s neck, firmly resting her chin on the crown of her gleaming head. 

“Showing up for you,” she finishes quietly, feeling the moment when Melissa goes limp beneath her, the fight and the bravado and all the incredible pretense leaving her body and slumping pathetically against the floor. Barbara cradles her gently and runs fingers through her thick tresses. Her hair smells like something wild and simultaneously sweet, like strawberries and raw honey.

“I held it together all day,” Melissa rasps in admission, the sounds muffled against Barbara’s sweater. “Got through the drills and made sure all my kids were okay... but I don’t like being hyper vigilant for so long. Does somethin’ to my nervous system, always looking for a threat over my shoulder—even if it’s just make believe.”

Make believe.

If Janine wasn’t paraphrasing, then Melissa used the same wording when she was comforting Tegan.

It was all make believe.

No earthquake was going to hurt her today.

Not on her watch.

“Even the make believe can haunt and hurt us,” Barbara muses sagely, now twining a red curl around her finger, now pushing that same strand behind Melissa’s beautiful ear, now idly memorizing the exposed column of her neck, the smooth, rosy, and slightly freckled skin. “Hypotheticals are just possible realities, and sometimes, our bodies don’t know how to differentiate between the two. You were looking out for you kids with every part of your being, hon… and now—“

“Now?” Melissa interrupts, always a little impatient to jump to the ending, but Barbara doesn’t take offense, only smiling fondly against her companion’s vivid head.

“Now, sweet girl,” she chuckles, “you’re going to go home and rest. You’ve earned it.”

And she’s a little impulsive then.

Before she lets Melissa go—before propriety demands that she has to—she presses a kiss to the other woman’s forehead and doesn’t give herself time enough to wonder why her stomach twists into impossible knots at the simple gesture, leaning back and firmly stepping away.

It’s just a forehead kiss, the kind she freely gives out to her children and students.

Chaste.

Friendly.

(Holy.)

“You too,” Melissa says hoarsely, her pale cheeks stained red—whether from flushing or having buried her face into Barbara’s knit cardigan, she isn’t sure. “You should go home and rest too, Barb.”

“Oh, and is that right, Ms. Schemmenti?” She delicately arches a brow and tries to ignore the riot of feeling surging through her entire body, all her nerves electric with the sensation. 

Adrenaline, she hurriedly rationalizes.

Just leftover adrenaline from this entire damned day.

Yes.

That is surely it. 

Adrenaline.

“You look tired yourself,” Melissa says gently, smiling up at her crookedly. “Let’s get you home, Grandma.”

"Who're you calling Grandma, you old hag?" She chortles, briefly forgetting herself, and she is rewarded—blessed even—with one of Melissa's beautiful laughs: warm and vibrant and loud.

It reaches down into her bones and does something to them.

It reconfigures her atoms and makes them want to sing.

"Touché."

And Barbara offers her upturned hand—(perhaps ignoring the vague feeling that she probably shouldn't)—her palm inexplicably tingling when Melissa slips her fingers perfectly between her own.

#barbara howard #melissa schemmenti #work wives #abbott elementary #janine teagues #jacob hill #gregory eddie #s: abbott elementary #reginianwrites #this was supposed to be a short one-shot and then it became a 5k word thing!!!!! #how!!!

[arctosv]

Hauntober Prompt 19: Potions

Potent Potions

“Gays know how to make good cocktails, it’s just a fact of life. Just like how a great pair of jeans never go out of style.” Texas stated as he positioned himself behind a bar. Various liquors and mixers lined the countertop, each one hand picked by him for several recipes.

“Let’s get this taste test started, it’s five o’clock somewhere!” Mariel quipped as she took a seat across him on a barstool. “So was there some sort of theme for these drinks or are we just doing regular drinks like cosmopolitans and such?”

Texas rolled his eyes with a grin, “do you honestly think any old boring cocktail would suffice for a Halloween party? I don’t think so.” He remarked as he started mixing several liquids in a glass.

“I didn’t think you’d go for the usual cocktails, but I just wanted to make sure weren’t doing something boring.” Mariel teased as she watched him work. “So tell me what’s the one you’re making right now?”

“This one is inspired by a classic fall treat, first you add green apple soda, then some caramel vodka and voila! You have a caramel apple beverage!” Texas explained as he mixed the drink.

“Isn’t that just a regular vodka soda, can’t you add dry ice or something to make it pop?” Mariel asked, not totally impressed yet.

“Oh come on, I thought you’d know me better than that, of course I have something up my sleeve.” Texas fake pouted as he poured a tiny bit of green dust into the glass, using a spoon he began to stir. The dust mixed in and created a green glimmering swirl as the carbonation helped it look very much like a witches potion.

“Oh damn, alright that’s pretty fucking cool.” Mariel conceded as she was handed the beverage and took a sip. “The fact it even tastes like a caramel apple is impressive and not even like the artificial flavoring kind, nice work!”

“Luster dust is my go to for spicing up the appearance of a cocktail, plus I wouldn’t be caught dead using dry ice for my drinks. For one you can’t even drink it safely until the ice has melted and some people are too stupid to understand that. Second of all, it's just too basic for my taste.” Texas spoke half jokingly as he took a sip of his own creation before moving it to the side and starting on a new drink.

“Alright what beverage is next on Texas’s Halloween Cocktail Menu?” Mariel asked, watching as he opened a few different bottles and mixed their contents together.

“This one is more of a cranberry and blackberry punch. I’ll admit it’s a little more basic, but it’s always a hit.” Texas explained as he sliced an orange into thin slivers and placed them in a pitcher. “You use cranberry juice, blackberry ginger ale, sliced oranges, and then for the final ingredient some prosecco. Add in a little purple luster dust and stir it all together and you have some punch.”

“So what I’m learning is that luster dust just makes all your drinks look like potions and that’s why people like them?” Mariel asked.

Texas shrugged before answering, “that and there’s plenty of alcohol, so yeah pretty much.”

AO3 Link

#hauntober #rooster teeth #mariel salcedo #texas dela rosa #ragehappy #fanfic

[bronva]

I didn’t realise I was an alcoholic because of ‘Mummy’s wine o’clock’ memes

I didn’t realise I was an alcoholic because of ‘Mummy’s wine o’clock’ memes

I arranged my birthday cards on the mantelpiece and looked at the words on the front. Mummy’s wine o’clock! Prosecco time! Professional drinker! Every single card referenced alcohol. When I was given these cards, I’d laughed and smiled. But looking at them now, with a hangover the day after, I just felt sad. I knew I’d had a drink problem for years. Even as a teenager, when I’d first started, I’d…

View On WordPress

[lilfashionlovermichelle]

Prosecco O’Clock 🥂 https://www.instagram.com/p/ClCV2eHqjII/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[peachymee]

Wine o’clock

https://peachymee.blogspot.com/2022/08/wine-oclock.html

#wineglasslove #prosecco #cheers

[sirthisisa-wendys]

The Enforcers Part 2: Geto Suguru x Fem!Reader

synopsis: there's no forgiveness for the sinful.

wc: 1.3k

tw: none

masterlist

Your eyes are glued to the man in front of you as he taps his pen on the table, waiting for the assignment from the Grand Council.

“Can you stop that?” you quip, and he pauses his tapping, glancing at you before setting his pen down.

You sit back in your chair, sighing, wishing your parents could have done anything to fix the issue in front of you. But when you called, they sympathized with you before admitting there was nothing they could do.

“Think of it this way,” your father murmured. “Now you have even more of an opportunity to show how strong and capable you are. This is a gift to you, y/n. You can make the best out of this situation.” The inspirational chatter didn’t cut through the fact that this Leviathan could very well get you killed, and there was nothing to be done about it.

“Sorry about the wait,” Gojo grumbles, entering the room and taking his sunglasses off. “I had to bring Yuji and Choso down from their overexcitement. Okay,” Satoru closes the door to your shared living space, tossing a file onto the table. “First task. There’s an exclusive club downtown named ‘Sinful’. I need you, y/n, to go in and infiltrate the club for one week. Doesn’t matter what you pose as, but I need some information about the club owner.” You flip open the manilla folder and look at the pale face of your target, who only goes by ‘Mahito’. Get in, dig up some dirt, get out. Geto, I need you to pose as a bouncer and bring his second-in-command to the warehouse uptown.” Geto takes the picture of his second in command, Uraume, and nods. “And make sure you watch y/n’s back. If she gets into a sticky situation--”

“Get her out,” Geto affirms, and Gojo stands.

“Good. Gather intel today, y/n, and go in tomorrow. I expect to see a report on my desk next week at seven o’clock.” You get up and leave the room without Geto, making your way back to your barrack and going straight to the computer in your room.

“Y/n, can I talk to you?” you hear behind you, and you turn to face the man in the doorway.

“Sure,” you chirp, pretending to be civil for a moment.

“You have an issue with me,” Suguru states, walking into your space. “I want to know what it is.”

“You literally got your Kitsune killed last year, and they won’t reassign me. I don’t have any respect for you.” You turn back to your computer and roll your eyes, typing in names and pulling data.

“You don’t know the whole story, do you?”

“Should I?” you ask, not looking back at the man.

“You should.” You hear the creak of your bed dipping, and you turn away from the computer, mouth open to yell at him for sitting on your bed. But when you see him bite his lip and look at his hands, you stop, waiting to hear him out. “Let me start off by saying that it wasn’t on purpose. I would have never…” Suguru gulps hard. “I would have never sent Yu into that mission if I knew he would have died.”

“But he did.”

“It wasn’t my fault. It was a trap from the start, and Yu didn’t know… we were set up. And I couldn’t get to him fast enough, which is why he died. He was long gone when I arrived.”

“So, why didn’t they say that you were set up?” you question, but he shakes his head, looking at his trembling fingers.

“Because why would they give a Leviathan an excuse when they need someone to blame? And now, I’m supposed to be guarding a child of a Kitsune legacy, and--”

“You’re terrified of a tragedy happening again,” you finish for him, and Geto nods slowly.

“I know I won’t make it out alive if you die on my watch. The Grand Council will exile me… or worse. And the price I paid for letting Yu’s life slip through my fingers was enough to scar me for life.” You eye him carefully, assessing whether he’s telling you a sob story or the truth.

“I don’t believe you,” you quip, and Suguru’s eyes lift up to meet yours in surprise. “Listen, once we finish this mission and get back, I’m not going on another with you even if they kick me out of the CSB. I’ll tell them you redeemed yourself and can go back to being someone else’s Leviathan.”

“Y/n, I--”

“I’m done talking about it.” You turn back to your computer and continue your data search, letting a sigh out when the door to your room closes behind him.

_____________________________________________________________

The exclusive club’s bass pulses loud enough to potentially blow your eardrums out. You’re standing at the bar, mixing a drink while patrons mill about, conversing and watching the show on stage. Geto is standing inside the door, arms crossed over his chest as if he were a big-shot bouncer, but you both know he could handle whatever comes through that door with ease. Your eyes meet briefly, and he nods, but you look away, focusing on your target.

As you turn away, you notice the owner of the club - Mahito - sitting in the VIP section, fiddling with his cash in the open. Showoff, you think, disgusted with his demeanor. Uraume sits next to him, eyes glazed over as he watches the dancers on the pole.

You’d been at this for six nights and gathered enough intel to pack a file full of pictures, fingerprints, and even a dollar bill he gave you as a measly tip for serving him drinks all last night. You grumble internally about the show of disrespect, still heated from the exchange, but you remember the CSB pays you - and your partner for that matter - handsomely for each mission completed, so it’s really not about the cash at all.

“Hey, sweetheart,” Mahito calls out over the music. “Bring me and my friend some vodka.”

“I don’t want to drink,” Uraume replies, but you bring two glasses of the house’s best vodka anyway, setting it in front of them.

“Thank you.” As you lift up, Mahito grabs your wrist, pulling you down to meet his eyes. “You know, my friend here is a bit of a prude. How about you loosen him up with a little show, hmm?” You want to recoil at the way Mahito licks his lips, but you plaster on a sickly sweet smile as he lets you go.

“What would you like?” you wonder, placing your hands on your legs as you show off your cleavage that spills over your bra. Uraume grimaces, leaning away from you, only muttering,

“I want you to go away.” You place a pout on your lips and throw a glance at Mahito, who shoos you away. Thankful for the dismissal, you go back to the bar when Kyoko, the head bartender, joins you.

“Hey, y/n, we’re going to need three bottles of prosecco.” She tosses you the keys to the storage room and you catch them, confused.

“But you’re the only person that has permission to go back the--”

“I’m occupied with Mr. Friday,” she thumbs back to the roped-off area where two men in suits chug alcohol. “Just don’t get lost in there.” You nod your understanding and walk to the storage room, where all of the alcohol is kept. As you look around for a prosecco, your mind wanders off, trying to memorize the years stored inside. But as you lift a bottle off the shelf and step back, your ankle twists, and you fall backward, hitting the wooden floor with the prosecco.

“Fuck!”

The shattered glass goes everywhere, and you’re left nursing your bloody hand as you attempt to get off your back.

And that’s when you notice it.

A pair of eyes looks at you from under the shelves, their green pupils winking out, then coming back into view as they open again.

“Help me…”

#geto suguru #jujutsu kaisen getou #geto x reader #jjk geto #getou suguru #getou x reader #gojo satoru #jjk gojo #jujutsu kaisen

[mymedicine]

Stardust

~7k of sweet fluff & painful angst w jazz singer harry

moodboard

sum - y/n reflects on her own insecurities, the nuances of her shitty job, and her past relationship with the most popular vocalist at the club while watching him perform.

warnings - alcohol, angst, swearing, self-deprecation, misogyny/workplace sexual harassment (it’s pretty light, relatively speaking, but I don’t want to undermine how wrong any and all harassment is, not matter how seemingly minor), excessive use of italics and the word “belong”

notes - this is inspired in part by the several years i spent singing in a jazz group, wherein i had to learn about 382404 jazz standards. Stardust is one of my all time favorites! anyways this is maybe a little different than a typical one shot, but i hope you like it anyways as i worked very hard on her :’)

/

“Didn’t you have a thing with him a while back?”

“What?” Taken aback, Y/N snapped her eyes open wide. Just the words brought a shiver down her spine and a nagging twist in her heart. “No…we uh…we almost…” She stammered hastily, herself not even knowing where the sentence was going. How could she even begin to explain their relationship?

“Almost..?”

“Yeah,” Y/N sighed, trying in vain to hide the longing in her voice. “Almost.”

The club was busy tonight, as it always was when its star vocalist was performing. The Fine Line had hosted hundreds of local artists in the seven years since its opening, but only one had managed to bring his show anywhere outside its four brick walls. Harry Styles had gone above and beyond, in fact. And now that he’d been picked up by a renowned pianist and the pair had and toured around the country together, his presence in the tiny club was rare delight. Never one to forget his roots, Harry was fulfilling his vow to return to the club that kickstarted his rise to stardom every year.

“Well, lots of people would be very happy to have ‘almost’…” she gave Y/N a pointed look, “…that beautiful man.”

Y/N knew Sarah meant well, but the words tightened the soreness she was feeling in her chest. Of course he was beautiful. It was blatantly obvious to everyone who laid eyes on his delicate chocolate curls, charming green eyes, and bright crinkly smile. But Y/N didn’t just see him; she knew him. And she knew he was just as beautiful on the inside.

“It was complicated.”

An understatement. Not a lie. No more lies.

Y/N moved her arm away from the bar as Sarah swiped a wet rag on the counter where she’d been leaning. It hardly mattered, Y/N reckoned. The bar would be stained with watered-down scotch and lukewarm Prosecco spilled by the hands of rich and poor alike mere minutes after the club opened for the night, and Sarah’d have to clean it all over again. Still, Y/N kind of envied the bartender. Sarah had a safe place behind the bar to stay busy in all night, away from too many hungry, unwanted gazes. Not only that, but it would be so much easier to avoid the stage (or rather, the man performing on it) if she didn’t have to deal with the rowdy patrons seated in the front row.

“Complicated?” Sarah repeated with a mischievous tone and that same pointed stare.

“Are you single?” she’d asked when a jolt of confidence suddenly hit her. Alcohol-induced confidence, of course. Her shift had been over for a half hour and John had yet to declare last call.

“Yes, well…it’s sort of complicated.” he’d replied, whiskey coursing through his own veins.

“Complicated how?”

“I just…” He trailed off and looked away from her as if searching for the right words, eyes gazing thoughtfully at the few patrons who were still lingering after his set “…consider myself married to my job…”

“In that case, I consider myself twice divorced and scorned.”

He chuckled, returning his eyes to meet hers from where he was perched on the barstool beside her. “That bad being a waitress? At least you got a show from an outstanding vocalist.”

“What vocalist is tha? I’m only here for the pianist,” she teased, nodding her head in the direction of where Mitch was chatting with a group of immaculately dressed, heavily made up women. Too made up, Y/N thought. The Fine Line was a humble hole in the wall jazz club where anyone could get cheap drinks and decent entertainment, not the goddamn opera house. She refused to consider that the reason for her hostility toward their appearances could be anything other than that. She wasn’t jealous—they were pretentious, overly obsessed rich girls who fawned over anyone with talent or wealth. Harry and Mitch, of course, had both.

Her irritation melted away as Harry laughed again, the sound somehow even sweeter to her than the dulcet singing for which he’d become famous.

“Yes, Sar.” Y/N crossed her arms, subconsciously moving her body away from the stools in front of the bar and the memories they held. How could she explain their relationship?—Well, it seems she couldn’t.

Sensing her friend’s unease, Sarah let the issue go. “Well, at least you’ll be getting nice tips tonight,” she said diplomatically. “You look extra pretty and ’s gonna be packed.”

Yes, one reason Y/N had meticulously ironed her black tea-length skirt and cream blouse (even though they’d both be covered by her apron), applied a smooth, thin line of eyeliner, and stuffed an emergency tube of glossy lipstick in her brassiere was in anticipation of the club being crowded with plenty of older men whose generosity depended upon her appearance as much as the quality of her service. An omission. Not a lie.

“Thanks.” Y/N smiled stiffly, “Hope it’s worth it.”

Complicated indeed.

Despite her mild annoyance and the growing ache in her heart, Y/N felt a surge of gratitude for Sarah. Before she took over for John a few months ago, Y/N had struggled to befriend any of the other staff at the club. The other waitresses were nice enough, but Y/N just didn’t have the energy to initiate any sort of friendship. The weight of her lost lover, her financial struggles, her personal unhappiness…it was too much to unload on a meaningless workplace friendship.

With Sarah, it was easy. Her alliance didn’t require any work or thought or feeling. She was easy to talk to and even easier to absently listen to as she talked Y/N’s ear off. Whether intended to take Y/N’s mind off her inevitable confrontation with her past or not, Sarah’s rambling was a welcome distraction. She prattled about the poor quality of the alcohol, her disbelief at the outrageous prices they charged, how “fucking freezing” it was outside, how she was excited to gush over the women’s outfits for the night, how insufferable their manager was, and how she hoped Harry’s pianist was as amiable as he was talented and handsome (and that she’d even be able to speak to him in order to find out).

Y/N eyed the clock above the bar as Sarah continued chattering and swiping a rag over each pint glass. The hands seemed to move faster than usual—far too fast for comfort. They were less than fifteen minutes shy of opening, which meant there was more than likely a line forming outside and that the man of the hour had already arrived.

He’d have come through the back door and sat himself in the makeshift dressing room back there, probably having some tea with honey and trying to stop himself from babbling to Mitch, knowing it killed his voice. Y/N wondered absently what he was wearing. She pictured him in a flashy suit with his hair tousled and messy, maybe some of his favorite clunky rings adorning his fingers. Her heart squeezed impossibly and though she knew he wouldn’t be in the dining room just yet, she shivered at the thought of his eyes on her, his hands on her, his voice in her ears.

She tried to busy herself with watching Sarah clean, but she couldn’t help her eyes from glancing at the clock. She fidgeted in her barstool, drumming her fingers on the counter as the minute hand completed yet another rotation.

At six fifty-three Y/N couldn’t take it anymore so she bid Sarah farewell and made deliberately slow work of walking to the ladies room. But of course, she couldn’t help but notice that there was a clock in there too. She fished out her lipstick, desperate for something to do. Still, her eyes flicked up to where it hung above the mirror and her unsteady fingers stained her chin with the pink gloss. She begged the clock to slow down—no where near ready for work. Would she ever be ready to return to the club knowing she’d be sharing the space with her past lover?

Six fifty-seven… She wiped her chin with the pad of her thumb…Fifty-eight…She smoothed the non-existent wrinkles on her apron…fifty-nine…

Time.

Seven o’clock. The Fine Line’s doors opened and hostesses ushered the eager guests inside. A warm din quickly filled the room as patrons flooded in, greeting the staff and chatting to each other. Y/N merely watched from the side of the bar as the happy, well-dressed people sat at bar tables, corner booths, and even couches near the stage where it was cozy and intimate. Behind the bar, Sarah was already serving the more eager customers and chatting with them effortlessly about their outfits and the weather. Y/N felt a surge of disappointment—no, anger at herself for being so useless. He wasn’t even in the room and yet, he affected her every move.

Finally at seven oh seven, Y/N plucked up the courage to pell herself away from safety and actually do her job. Encouraged by the icy glare her manager, Robert, was sending her, she plastered a fake smile on her cheeks and sauntered over to the back corner of the room to greet her tables before taking their drink orders. Prosecco, house cabernet, whiskey neat, water with lemon—all so predictable and bland.

At seven twelve, Harry took the stage.

She caught sight of him just as she was setting down the glass of iced water with lemon. The older woman who’d ordered the drink thanked her kindly, but her attention was elsewhere. Harry was anything but bland—this she of course already knew, but the sight of his handsome figure after so long nearly made her drop the glass.

Needing no introduction, he and his pianist sauntered into the spotlight seemingly from out of nowhere. Y/N watched helplessly from the back of the room as cheers erupted from the crowd almost immediately. She could only see glimpses of him through the shadowy backs of her patrons’ heads, and still, he was an absolute wonder to behold. He was shimmering head to toe in a glittery black and gold blazer with tight pants and shiny black shoes. Y/N couldn’t tell from where she was frozen whether he was wearing rings or any other jewelry, but she wouldn’t doubt it—even his hair seemed to be dancing with sparkle.

Y/N managed to escape her daze as Harry effortlessly took his place in front of the piano—center stage, right where he belonged. He stood behind the microphone, his bright smile partially concealed by the mouth of it. Even before he said a word, his confident stature and striking outfit accompanied by Mitch’s smooth fluttering of the ivory keys captivated the room. The cheers from the crowd roared louder, the sounds of clinking glasses and high-pitched whistles making his smile grow impossibly bigger.

Meanwhile, Y/N retreated back to the corner of the bar to…hide? To sulk? She wasn’t sure, but she leaned on the counter anyways and surveyed the room. Was this where she belonged?

“Good evening, my friends,” He murmured into the microphone, immediately silencing the room with his low voice and thick, alluring accent. Wide eyes and glowing smiles greeted him from every corner. He glanced around the room, taking in the dark faces and familiar cozy atmosphere of the club he’d grown up singing in—looking for something (or rather, someone).

“I’m Harry Styles…” He paused, smiling wide and shutting his eyes to let the soft piano chords wash over himself and the dining room. Mitch looked up from the keys at his friend and returned the relaxed grin. “And this is the incredibly talented Mitch Rowland…” Harry continued, “We’re gonna play some jazz tunes for you tonight. Please sit back, relax, have a drink or two. We’re all here for a good time.”

He gave Mitch a slow, confident nod, and so began their set.

Even with a narrow, partially obstructed view of him, it was exceedingly obvious to Y/N that Harry had outgrown The Fine Line. His voice cascaded off the stage, flooding the room and engulfing everyone in it. He improvised effortlessly, as if music was his native language rather than English. It was evident that he understood the difference between art and artistry. Art existed for sake of the audience, but the latter existed within the creator himself. He was a vessel through which artistry flowed and pictures were sketched without any paint, stories told without any words. It was a gift granted upon people like Harry, whose purpose on Earth was to share it.

He was smooth jazz personified, the epitome of serenity with a touch of spunk evident in his glittery outfit and playful tone. He managed to strike the perfect balance between traditional jazz and contemporary funk, booming forte and soft pianissimo, bubbly disposition and mellow temperament, relaxed and chaotic, carefree and attentive—it was precisely why the world loved him so much.

Y/N watched fondly as he reached up to hold the mouth of the microphone, and there it was—a glint of metal catching the light. His H ring was big and clunky around his finger, but still strikingly beautiful against the dim spotlight and his painted nails.

“My hands are cold.”

“Yeah? Should I warm ‘em up f’you?”

Suddenly his hand had engulfed hers. Just like that, they were holding hands. Y/N felt her heart threatening to leap out of her chest. His calloused, ring-clad fingers around hers sent waves of warmth through her palm, her forearm, her chest, the feeling so physically overwhelming that she stopped walking.

He followed her lead, turning to face her and take her other hand in his free one.

She couldn’t see much of his face in the darkness, but the stars cast a delicate glow on his prominent features. She could make out the outline of his crooked nose, his sharp cheekbones, his bunny teeth toying with his bottom lip.

“Hah,” he mused. “Knew you just wanted ta hold my hand.”

An icy wind ripped through her. She squeezed his hands a little tighter, ignoring the slight pain his rings gave her. She instantly felt warmer.

Being with Harry had been a fantasy—a lie, even. He was simply too good to be true. Just three weeks of diner dates and flower bouquets and jazzy serenades and whispered pillowtalk, and she was in love. Three weeks was all it took for Y/N to fall absolutely head over heels for him. Over a year had passed and she still wasn’t over a love that was built in three weeks.

As heavenly music pervaded the room and alcohol continued to flow, the patrons grew rowdier. Y/N was already on edge with the constant ringing of her ex lover’s voice in her ears and all the repressed love resurfacing, and each wandering hand and lingering touch pushed her a little closer to her breaking point. She was swamped with two tables both choosing to order hors d’oeuvres for the evening, which irritated her to no end (Who orders food at a jazz club? Especially this jazz club, where even the simplest drinks were barely palatable. The Fine Line would surely find away to fuck up charcuterie, and then she’d have to go and deal with their complaints about it).

“Excuse me, love. Aren’t you the waitress?” The man’s meaty hand stopped her in her journey to the back to fetch the food, snaking its way to the small of her back. Y/N shivered at the feeling of his sweaty palm through the cotton material of her apron.

Instinct told her to steal a glance at the stage. Did he notice her discomfort? Did he care? Do I care if he cares? She was no stranger to these kinds of interactions with inebriated men and he was still performing like he didn’t have a care in the world. She didn’t need him to save her from this drunkard or any of the club-goers hounding her.

Y/N put on a fake smile and looked up at his face, “Yes, sir.”

“Can you make me anotha drink?” He slurred.

“I can put it in with the bartender, just give me one moment—“

“That bitch over there?…” He make a sweeping gesture toward the general area where Sarah, too, was swamped. “Where’s the actual bartender?”

“Uhm, sir…Sarah makes all the drinks—“

“Bullshit, she’s just a girl—”

“Sir—“

An exaggerated eye roll, “—good for nothing little bitches, both of you—“

“If we’re all so worthless to you, why don’t you get the goddamn drink yourself!”

The man looked appalled, mouth wide open in a shocked silence. Y/N felt a tinge of satisfaction knowing she’d wounded him. But the tiny flame was quickly extinguished.

“Y/N!” It was Robert’s angry voice smashing through her joy like broken glass. He thundered over to her, coming out of nowhere just in the nick of time.

“Yes, sir?” She sighed, eyes trained on her feet. They were aching in her tight heels—just another affliction she’d grown accustomed too.

“That’s not how you talk to paying customers here! It’s barely eight o clock and you’re already on strike two for tonight. You’re lucky I’m feeling nice enough to giving you one more chance.”

Robert’s raised voice caught the attention of a few guests in the near vicinity. Y/N felt a wave of shame wash over her, like she was a child being reprimanded by her parents. For a moment, she absently wished that she was nine or ten years old again, with no responsibilities, no heartache, no problems. But she wasn’t a child; she was a grown woman and she needed this job to survive.

Y/N bit her tongue and uttered, “My apologies, sir,” through clenched teeth.

The scene seemed to have caught the singer’s attention from across the room. He finally caught a glimpse of her from the stage and Y/N could practically see his heart somersaulting in his chest. He paused for a beat, halting his languid swaying to focus on the glimpse he caught of her profile in the crowd. He could only see her face very faintly in the dark, crowded club, but it was more than enough. Y/N felt as if his gaze was stretching time…stretching until she felt the sting of a hand slapping her wrist at her side.

She snapped her eyes away from the stage and turned toward the source of the strike. Unlike Y/N, who couldn’t even seem do her job when he was in the same room as her, Harry recovered quickly once her gaze left his, blinking his own eyes as to escape the reverie.

Robert sent Y/N another dirty glare, seething, “Get back to work before I send you out for good.”

Y/N nodded meekly, taking a deep breath and forcing herself to carry on. She rubbed her sore wrist and bruised pride. It definitely wasn’t the first time Robert had given her a harsh censure, but that didn’t make it sting any less.

Meanwhile, Harry returned his attention to his performance. “This last song is called ‘Stardust,’” he mused into the microphone, effortlessly holding the attention of every patron in the club. “’S one of my favorites. ’S about love…and lost.” He paused, sending the crowd a charming smile. “Big thanks to Mitchy…” he gestured grandiosely toward the pianist, who played an impressive jazzy riff in response, “…and of course, each of you. You made me the man I am today, and I’m forever grateful.”

Y/N swore he looked right at her as a melodiously chanted those words. He knew where to find her now and his gaze was purposeful, intense, and unwavering. Not for the first time tonight, her heart felt like it’d stopped beating in her chest.

Harry hesitated to continue, happy green eyes lingering on hers while Y/N wondered absently if it was only his lover—only herself, that could see the longing hidden in them. She smeared on her best blank expression, no longer having the energy for even a fake smile, and focused on keeping her tray steady. She plucked four more full glasses from the bar and balanced them precariously on her tray before meandering around the dining room to the rhythm of Harry’s song. A year ago, the sound of his voice would have made her own heart sing. Today, each note twisted the knife in her heart a little more, torturing her with what she couldn’t have.

“Mitchy’s been teaching me a couple things…”

He had a beautiful baby grand in the middle of his living room. It was clear from the way the piano took up nearly the entire room that he invested in things he loved—not spaces.

“Oh yeah?” She wrapped her arms lazily across his chest, embracing him from behind while he sat at the bench.

Harry’s fingers glided across the keys and played a few random chords and licks before finally producing a soft, familiar melody. Y/N absently recognized the tune and smiled fondly, hoping he could feel her grin in his hair.

“Heaven…I’m in heaven…” he sang gently, easily falling into the swinging rhythm. Y/N felt the vibrations of his voice in her own chest, heart beating wildly.

His fingers continued floating over the piano, fumbling here and there, but nonetheless impressing her with his skill. “And my heart beats so that I can hardly speak…”

“…And I seem to find the happiness I seek…” Y/N clumsily joined him in the lyrics she vaguely knew. Her voice wasn’t nearly as effortlessly harmonious as Harry’s, but was equally as joyful.

“When we're out together dancing, cheek to cheek…” They finished in unison, a final resolving chord echoing between them. Only fitting, Y/N squeezed her arms around his chest impossibly tighter and pressed her cheek to his. Warmth surged through her from where their skin met, joy following close behind.

As he sang his final piece of the night, his voice glimmered throughout the room like, well, like stardust, Y/N thought. He was a star in every sense of the word, eyes gleaming, teeth shining white, and heavenly voice brightening up the darkness of the club. His blazer glittered in the light and cast bright refractions on all the walls as he swayed to the rhythm, while the heavenly sounds of his artful scatting convinced Y/N that she was indeed in the presence of an angel.

She felt his eyes on her all the way from the stage, even in the throng of drunk patrons and busy waitresses. It was impossible not to. The weight of his gaze and the rasp of his voice surrounded her.

“Though I dream in vain...In my heart it always will remain…the stardust melody, the memory of love’s refrain.”

The memory of love’s refrain? The last chorus was overwhelming. A strident ringing overshadowed Harry’s voice in her ears. Her vision blurred, the lights and the people and the glasses blending together and fading. The stardust melody...the memory of love’s refrain...in my heart...

Suddenly, as if all her limbs had disconnected from her brain, Y/N’s hands slipped from under the tray. Prosecco spilled all over her apron in the next instant, staining the once white fabric champagne. His song, his voice, his gaze…he’d rendered her useless.

She heard Robert’s booming footsteps before she saw him. “Y/N! How many times do I have to tell you off tonight?!” His voice sounded distant in her ears. Loud and angry, but far-away...as if he were calling to her from another world.

This time, the clamor didn’t go unheard by the guests, nor by Harry. He frowned visibly and stuttered. He began to rush his goodbye speech, quickly thanking the crowd.

“That’s strike fucking three,” Robert continued shouting and flailing his hands dramatically. “Get out. I don’t want to see your face here until next week!” His harsh words drowned out Harry’s final, hasty farewell reminder to ‘treat people with kindness.’

Y/N said nothing and remained frozen in response. She stood exhausted in a puddle of alcohol and broken glass, physically unable to carry on the facade any longer. She turned on her heel, desperate to be out from under both Robert’s furious gaze and Harry’s musical spell. As she stumbled toward the exit, she felt like her legs would give out at any moment and finally crumble against the insurmountable pressure. Harry’s were just one of hundreds of pairs of eyes that lingered on her as she struggled. She paused near the door and grabbed onto the coatrack for support, blinking away tears and choking back sobs.

Harry raced over to her, swiftly maneuvering his body through the crowd confused club-goers. When he reached her, he instinctively caught her wrist in his grasp. His rings were cold and sharp against her sore skin—the contrast between the cold metal and his hot palm familiar and comforting and painful all at once.

“Are you okay?”

She replied immediately, “Yes.” Not a lie. She still had a job for now, she had a decent coat wrapped around her, she had a bed to sleep on tonight, and she was breathing. She was okay.

He was panting, voice sounding raspy and strained from overuse. A drop of sweat trickled down his forehead and he flicked it away with the back of his hand. “Are you…are you sure?”

“I want you to have this.”

“It’ll never fit me, H. Your hands are even bigger than y’head.”

He reeled back, feigning offense with a furrowed brow, but he could only move a few inches away from her on his tiny bed they were sharing.

“Fine then, meanie. I won’ give yeh the pretty little chain I got for it,” he said tauntingly.

Y/N’s heart soared as she took in his impish smirk and dopey eyes dancing with a glint of happiness. She ignored his teasing tone, choosing instead to melt over his words. Of course he’d gotten her a chain, she thought—he always thought of everything.

He stretched his arm over her, shoving his bare chest in her face. Playfully, she poked her tongue out to lick his nipple, to which he exclaimed a melodramatic “Oi! Quit tha!” And laughter fell from both their lips as he reached for the drawer in his nightstand.

He pulled back but kept her tucked close to him, leaving just enough space to dangle the chain he produced from the drawer in between them. Y/N studied his pale, nimble fingers as they worked, opening the clasp and slipping his S ring onto it. As he finished, her eyes met his once again. His hair was in his face and the early morning sunlight cast a soft shadow of a single curl over his eyelid. Still, she could make out every detail of his eyes, every vision into his thoughts and shimmering fleck of emotion.

“Are you sure you want me to wear this?” She hummed pensively, not having to look away from his eyes to know that her fingers were tracing the swallows on his collar.

“Yes, but only if you apologize for bein’ mean ta me.”

She giggled again, the sound pure and lovely—like music to his ears. “I’m very sorry,” she humored him, “I love your big head.”

“Shut up, you absolute pest.” He gently pinched the skin at her hip with one hand, and with the other, slipped the chain over her head. She beamed at him, hearts in her eyes and love in her heart.

“Now I’m with you. Always.” And with that, he hauled her into the circle of his arms—right where she belonged, the sounds of her gentle laughter muffled in his chest as the sun rose to illuminate the morning.

Of course she wasn’t okay! She hated her life and she loved Harry. How could she not? He was brilliantly talented, funny, thoughtful, and charming—but in her eyes, oblivious to her internal struggle. She didn’t belong with him. She could never belong with him! A tired, talentless, immature woman destined only to wait tables and lie for the rest of her existence. Maybe she’d marry one of the Fine Line’s patrons whose hungry eyes lingered long enough, whose hands grabbed her waist tight enough. She’d bear his children and go on hating her life and craving something more. That was her truth. No more lies.

His expensive shoes thumped on the stone behind her as he ran to follow after her outside. The lights from the sign outside the club were making his jacket glimmer and shine as he moved, even in the darkness of midnight. She turned to face him, reluctantly meeting his eyes from where he stopped a few feet away from her.

Y/N waited for him to say something else. He’d run after her, after all. And yet, he was silent aside from heavy panting echoing his exhaustion and frustration. He was opening his mouth and frantically shutting it again, desperate to say the right thing but terrified of failing—again.

She felt her heart squeeze in her chest with every second passing in tense silence. Y/N had a hundred things she wanted to say to him, but all she could come up with was: “Thanks for the show, Harry. You were brilliant.”

He furrowed his brows and shook his head, “Y/N, wait…I—”

“Good night.” Her hands trembled by her side—for more reasons that just the bitter cold, as she turned to leave. He let her go, again.

It was a long walk home.

The cobblestone streets felt achingly familiar, yet entirely foreign underneath her. The gentle click, clack of her heels against the stones, the bitter chill and the whooshing sounds of harsh wind, even the glow cast by pale moonlight against the walls of alleyways was all the same. All the same, every goddamn day.

The only difference tonight was the sticky remnants of spilled Prosecco on her skin and the agonizing force of her emotions. The words of his song lingered in her brain, invading her thoughts and inevitably slowing her pace as she stumbled over her feet. She felt heavy and wearied with the cumbersome weight of her regrets and mistakes and shortcomings and insecurities returning with her former lover. It took everything out of her to leave him again. To break her own heart again.

Y/N knew she was lucky to live alone. She didn’t have to rely on a man to support her. She had a job, she had friends, she had a comparatively good life. But she’d never be good enough for him. Without the sight of him and the feeling of his skin on hers fresh in her mind, it might’ve been possible to force the thought out of her mind.

She stepped through the door and immediately noticed how her apartment somehow felt even colder than the bitter chill outside. She shut the door, ignoring the stinging draft and peeling off her heavy coat. Even with the physical weight gone from her shoulders, her muscles still felt tense, achy, and forlorn.

She hadn’t felt this kind of pain since…since she’d left the first time.

Y/N dug around her coat pockets and her medicine cabinet for aspirin or peppermint oil or something to numb the pain. Coming up empty, she retreated to her bedroom, where her eyes fixated immediately on her nightstand.

She paused as a tear strolled down her cheek as visions of what was inside the drawer invaded her mind. She’d blocked out his memory, thrown away his t-shirts, forgotten the sound of his voice and unlearned his habits. But she couldn’t throw away this tiny piece of him. To her, it was anything but tiny. Every one of her billions of neurons told her to get rid of the damn thing, but her one aching heart wouldn’t let her. It was the one thing keeping her chained to him.

Her hand hesitated at the knob of the drawer. She felt weak, jaded, and at the mercy of her agonizing memories.

The chain lay face up at the bottom of the drawer, the S as big and clunky as its counterpart, as shiny and beautiful as its owner. The sight of it sent a tidal wave of memories through her head and a fresh stream of tears down her cheeks. God, she thought, I want him so bad.

Clutching the ring and chain to her chest, she collapsed onto her cold sheets and finally let the sobs wrack her body. His raspy voice rang in her ears, the sweet melody of Stardust sounding dissonant amid her own voice, amid her worst lie of all—the lie that haunted her memory. I don’t want you.

A harsh knock knock knock interrupted the cacophony in her mind.

Y/N’s heart skipped a beat. She leapt out of bed and furiously swiped the tears off her cheeks. She debated running to the bathroom to rinse her face, but another set of harsh knocks shooed away the thought. There’s really only one person it could be—one person who knows where she lives and knows she’d fall at his feet every single time. Her aching feet dragged her body across the cold floor to foyer. With a trembling hand, she turned the handle to her front door.

And there he was, at her doorstep in all his shining glory, as if he’d come to sweep her off her feet once again. His hair was frizzy and longer up close than it had looked onstage. The happy glint he had while in his element was absent from his eyes, now watery and pained but as big and beautiful as ever. She swore the moonlight had grown brighter as it shone on his figure, as if whatever higher power out there refused to let him exist for even a moment without a spotlight.

“Y/N, please hear me out.”

At that moment when the words fell off his lips, she’d never felt further from him—not even when he was hundreds of miles away in a city she’d never heard of singing for strangers she’d never meet. Even then, they’d be sleeping under the same stars. But with Harry right in front of her, standing at her door still clad in his glittery blazer, they were worlds apart.

“I don’t have to hear you out, H,” she whispered, the nickname slipping out before she could stop it. It tasted sweet on her tongue, but the sound of his name in her voice made her chest ache. “You don’t have anything to be sorry for.”

“I do, though. I- I…” He trailed off, looking down at his shiny black shoes as if hoping to find the words he was looking for in his reflection. “I didn’t make you feel wanted. I didn’t do enough to make you happy…to make you feel like, you belonged—belong with me.”

His speech sounded broken and clumsy. Y/N absently posited that for him, English really was a second language to music. Scatting came so easy to him. It was infinite—each note and syllable holding meaning, a line of his story, a feeling in his soul, a piece of his heart—not limited by the constraints of speech. How could he possibly find words in the English language to express how he felt about her? How he felt about himself? He sounded like he was suffocating, like he was drowning, like the stone floor was slipping out from under his feet.

Y/N could see his anguish. She recognized it. She lived it.

“You belong on the stage, Harry.” Keep your voice even, she chanted to herself, don’t let it show. That was her life. Chin up, lipstick on, hair slick, mouth shut. A constant battle between don’t lie and don’t let it show. She’d perfected the balance in the year since her relationship. But Harry, of course, managed to make all of that resolve crumble to ruins without even trying.

“I belong with you,” He told her desperately, himself not hiding any of his agony.

“No. I belong to the club. You belong to the music.”

Harry threw his head into his hands, rubbing his glossy eyes furiously. “Is it selfish of me to want both of you?!” He cried, shoving his ring-clad fingers through his curls.

Y/N’s breath hitched and she paused, not quite knowing what to say. Yes, she thought, it is selfish. You want the music, the fans, the money, the fame, and the girl. All I’ve ever wanted is you.

“Come with me,” he continued when Y/N didn’t speak. He reached both hands out as if to touch her, but seemed to think better of it and clenched his fingers into fists between them. “Come with me on tour and we can…we can—“

“I can’t.” She said evenly, desperately willing the tear in her eye to stay put, but she was exhausted.

“Why not?”

“Because you’re a superstar Harry! You’re America’s shining sweetheart! And one day you’re gonna realize that I’m not like you. I’ll only hold you back. I’m not enough for you. And I never will be.” She raised at voice at him. She knew it wasn’t fair to shout at him when she was angry with society, with herself. The metal S still clutched in her palm suddenly felt colder and heavier than before. The chain tangled in between her fingers, refusing to release its hold on her. Perhaps it was actually the other way around. Maybe all she had to do was let it go… Is this what I want? To let go again? To lie again?

“Don’t you get it Y/N! The way you see me, like…like some kind of perfect sparkling star…” He abandoned the invisible barrier between them and grabbed her cheeks between his palms, forcing her to look at him, “that’s exactly how I see you.”

The feeling of hands hot against her skin and the words leaping from his mouth like memorized lyrics ignited a supernova inside her—a familiar blazing fire of joy and guilt and love. She felt paralyzed in his grasp, unable to look away from his eyes where she swore she could see specks of gold dancing around the pools of green.

He continued after a beat, “To me, you’re the brightest goddamn thing in that shitty club! Your heart, Y/N—it’s made of gold! I love the music and I love Mitchy and I love the fame but I’d give it all up in a millisecond for you and regret absolutely nothing.”

His words strummed her heartstrings, the vibrations echoing through her chest, her lungs, her shoulders, and finally, her head. She inhaled a heavy breath, putting all her strength into staying upright and squeezing the ring to her palm. No more lies.

“I know you don’t believe me. I know you. I know you hate yourself, you lie to yourself, you think you’re not…you’re not enough…” “I know everything about you and I still love you…”

Y/N reached up and gingerly placed her hands on top of his, holding his palms against her cheeks. He silenced himself as she held the backs of his hands and moved them behind her head. She tore her eyes away from his, and stepped into him. With a strained exhale, she wrapped her own arms around his waist, the sequins on his jacket rough against her clenched fists which held his ring. The blazing symphony crescendoed inside her as she felt his arms squeeze her into his chest.

There were still so many words left unsaid, so many notes still unplayed. As Y/N cautiously stepped over the line between their worlds, she knew her insecurities would catch up with her. And Harry knew their struggle was far from over. They’d both left each other with uncertainty and guilt and longing and life like neither had never known before.

Their love was the stardust of yesterday, but the sun would rise tomorrow.

happy endings are for weenies. yes i am a weenie.

thank you for reading <3

please kindly reblog & let me know if you enjoyed!

#harry styles one shot #harry styles x reader #harry styles writing #harry styles fluff #harry styles angst #harry styles fanfiction #harry styles x y/n #harry styles #jazz harry #my writing

[2018shawn]

prosecco courage

warnings: unprotected sex bc they’ve had the discussion in my head prior to this night so if you haven’t wrap before you tap folks. smut obvs, swearing, light choking and a boy giving into a girls persistent ways

a/n: asbfjasds I feel like I'm so bad at smut I'm so sorry but nevertheless, here is 5k of it bc the live tonight finally got me to finish it. @shawnsmoose​ sent me an smol request about 20 years ago, so here it is n I'm sorry I don’t feel like I captured the choking very well sooooo big laughs 🥵👀 we’re here for a good time not a long time peace out x

Tom looked at the picture on his phone for probably the 176th time since you’d sent him it earlier this evening. Your phone was held in one of your hands, pointing towards the mirror to take the picture, a glass of prosecco in the other. Your body was covered in nothing but a matching, red lace underwear set, clinging to and showing off each asset of yours. He’d seen you in it once before and lost his shit back then and as it turns out – nothing has changed. Groaning and throwing his head back against his headboard, he tossed his phone aside, trying to get back to concentrating on writing the script in front of him. Deadlines were a bitch.

You, on the other hand, were in the corner of a club downtown, the red lace underwear covered by your sexiest black dress and topped off with patent, nude heels and matching bag. It was fun; the amount of alcohol you’d consumed soaking into your veins made it more fun that what you’d anticipated. You wanted nothing more than to go about your usual Saturday routine – face mask, bubble bath and your comfiest pyjamas. Or you most recent routine – face mask, bubble bath, your sexiest pyjamas and fucking the living daylights out of Tom.

The music was booming, the group of your girlfriends enjoying their time as they huddled around their booth, topping up their drinks from the ice-cold bucket in the middle of the table. You pulled your phone out your bag, feeling more annoyed as you clicked on your conversation with Tom seeing he hadn't sent anymore messages. After you’d sent the picture, he’d simply replied, be careful, let me know if you need picking up 💙

What a way to make you feel stupid, for not replying to the picture you’d sent to him. It had taken you almost half a bottle of prosecco before you’d even headed out the door to pluck up the courage to press send. It only spurred you on to drink more, to forget about embarrassing yourself to someone who wasn’t even your boyfriend yet. The more you drank, the more you thought he probably had girls throwing themselves at him; as much as he says he’s only seeing you, who’s to say he’s not the same as every other man you’ve dated?

It was getting to almost 1 o’clock, which you were proud of as a very rare clubber, but your drinking was slowing down, your stomach feeling full of fizz. Normally, you’d be straight on the phone to Tom, asking him to come get you but what was the point if he didn’t even want to see a picture of you. You gulped the rest of your drink in one go, picking up your bag and leather jacket – because London was cold in the winter – giving the girls the heads up you were leaving.

Several pleads to stay and hugs from your closest friends later, you were heading out of the packed club, heading to the taxi rank just metres away from the club entrance. Tom picked his phone up after another thirty minutes of working some more, his brain coming to a halt with words, only being able to think of you and that damn picture. He knew if he replied and gave you the response you wanted, you’d cancel your night out and turn up at his place, which he didn’t want you to do. He wanted you to go and have a good time, you needed it after how much you’d been working and grafting, so he’d finally persuaded you to go with them, telling you he’d be here plenty of other nights for you casual date night. He told himself he awake this late on a Saturday night, working, because he wanted to get the script finished. The reality was, he was awake this late on a Saturday because you still hadn’t replied and he needed to know you were okay. 

The taxi driver smiled at you as you sunk into the back seat of the black cab, “where to, miss?”-

A loud knock on Tom’s door at just gone 1:30am was the happy interruption he wanted for him to be able to close his finally close his laptop. He trudged to the door, wiping his eyes in an attempt to wipe away the heavy, sleepy feeling. He pulled off the chain, twisting the lock before tugging the door open, only hoping it was you the other side. And there you stood, your arms wrapped around your body to protect yourself from the cold and tom could understand why, the cold air hitting his bare top half, making him tense up. “Y/N?” He asked, blinking his eyes as if he was imagining.

“You’re an arse,” you spat, storming past him into the familiar warmth of his home. Despite your clear annoyance, he smiled at your presence, closing the door swiftly behind you to stop anymore heat from escaping.

“Excuse me?” He watched as you headed straight for the staircase, you high heels clicking over the hardwood floor before you kicked them off, tossing them to the side. Your hips swayed a little more than normal as you started your journey up his stairs, not caring that your dress rode up a little more than it had all evening. “And where are you going?”

“I need to pee,” you simply shouted, not bothering the turn around and look at him before disappearing out of his view.

He supposed he was meant to follow you, not very often dealing with the stubborn side of you thus far into your (not official) relationship. So he did just that. Locking up downstairs and switching all the lights off because he assumed you’d soon be crashed out on his bed, if the smell of alcohol as you drifted past him was anything to go by. The sound of the toilet flushing filled the empty silence before you reappeared, head leaning around his bedroom door to see where he was. On the bed, tom let his legs dangle of the foot of the bed, laying backwards with his arms flung across his face. You cleared you throat, and he removed his arms from over his eyes, sitting up and leaning on his forearms. The sweatpants that hung low on his hips, displaying the band of his boxers, were a total distraction from you being mad at him and he knew it.

“I’m an arse?” He asked, repeating your previous phrase with a hint of confusion in his tone.

You leaned against the door frame, still yet to enter his room as your arms crossed in front of you, body language telling him that you meant what you said, “Yeah.”

“And why is that?” He questioned, raising an eyebrow as you put all your body weight onto one side, your other leg bending at the knee. His eyes couldn’t help but wander over your body and admire the way the dress clung to your frame so perfectly and normally, he’d be ripping it off you, but he wasn’t sure you wanted that from him right now.

“You ignored my picture.” Oh so this is what it’s about he thought to himself, a smirk subconsciously appearing on his lips. He got up from where he was sprawled on the bed and walked over to you, his hand snaking around your waist, all the time keeping the cocky smile on his lips. “Don’t smile, you jerk. I felt stupid! I felt… like you didn’t want the picture. Like I was just some other stupid girl that had fallen head over heels for you and was trying to woo you. It was humiliating…” you hiccupped, your hand coming up to cover your mouth, “… and now I’m really drunk because some guy bought everyone at the table drinks and I wasn’t gonna but I though hey, if Tom doesn’t want the attention then someone else sure as hell…” His lips crashed on to yours, stopping you before you let anything else leave you mouth. He hated to hear that he made you feel stupid. He hated even more that you felt like you needed to get the attention from another guy, but he couldn’t say too much because, technically, you weren’t officially his.

He pulled his lips away, licking off the taste of jägerbombs and vodka, letting his forehead rest against yours. “You know, I had to stop myself from looking at that picture and being a horny teenager all night. If I replied what I really want to reply, you wouldn’t have gone out and had a good time.”

“I need to sit down.” You demanded, and you didn’t know if it was the alcohol that was making you dizzy or if it was just the way he just won you over every single time. He laughed softly, pulling your arm and sitting you on the bed.

“I’ll be right back,” he told you before disappearing out of the room, returning minutes later with two bottles of water and some medicine in his hand, “take these.” He handed you two small pills, opening the bottle for you as you popped them into your mouth. He helped you in drinking some water, his spare hand resting under your chin and tilting it back as you let the ice-cold liquid wash down the medication.

For the first time of the evening, your lips curled up into a smile as a way of saying thank you as he put the bottles of water on the bedside table, your stubborn personality restricting you from saying it out loud. “He asked for my number...” you don’t know why you were saying it, because at the time you turned your back to the creepy stranger and pulled a sicky face, and you most definitely were not interested. The only thing you was interested in was getting some form of reaction from Tom. But it was as if you’d forgotten the words he’d spoken to you before you felt like you was about to throw up everywhere.

“Pardon?” You words stopped him dead in his tracks as he was about to walk past you, stopping striaght in front of you instead. He didn’t say it aggressively, he didn’t say it like he was annoyed, but you knew he was saying it just to make you repeat yourself for the sake of it.

“He... I’m...” suddenly you felt nervous and gulped as Tom hovered over you, looking down as you sat on the bed, staring into his torso because you were too scared to make eye contact. His body was insane, even more so when he’s stood directly in front of you and your eyes can’t even manage to look away. Each pair of abdominal muscles felt warm against your cold finger tips, the feeling of him tense underneath you sending a flush of heat to your core. His hand wrapped around your wrist, putting a pause on any gentle touches you were giving him. Your eyes finally pulled away from his chiseled feautures, slowly drifting up until they connected with his. “He asked for my number.”

“And what did you say, darling?” His voice was soft, again, not like he was annoyed. You kind of wanted him to be annoyed though, you wanted him to want you as much as you wanted him.

“I… I said I was seeing somebody else.” You couldn’t help but rebel against his grasp, wriggling your hand out of his firm grip and returning it to his lower stomach. Fingers traced the waistband of his sweats, and you thought the outline of his dick was more prominent that is was before. You wanted to show him that you wanted to be his because rejecting one other guy was just not enough.

“Love…” he started, grabbing your wrist again, “not whilst you’re this drunk.” You rolled your eyes and threw yourself back to the bed, landing with a thud against the feathery duvet. “I’m gonna get you some clothes.”

In all honesty, he couldn’t look at you for a minute longer because he wanted to rip the stupid, perfect dress off and have you underneath – or on top, whatever, he wasn’t fussy – him all night long. He knew he was bad with words; he knew he never let on his true feelings and that’s probably why he’s had so many failed attempts in the past. But you were different, he was closer to telling you how he felt more than he ever had been with anyone else. His shadow disappeared from over you, and you sat back up, watching the way his back tensed as he walked over to his wardrobe. Sifting through several drawers, he picked up a couple of options, assessing a few items to see if they were too big for you. He’d liked the fact you told the other guy you were seeing somebody. In fact, he loved it.

You sighed, wishing he’d put on a stupid top if he didn’t want you to pounce on him anytime soon. The black dress that covered your body, was being tugged over your head messily by your arms, almost getting yourself stuck in the mesh material. He still had his back to you as you threw it to the floor, smoothing your fingers over your body whilst assessing the presentation of that red lace underwear.

“You know, I really did have to stop myself, with that picture. You looked fucking incredible, Y/N.” He said the words whilst he had the courage to say them, usually defeated by his inside voice when it came to discussing how he felt. “I think I picked my phone up about…” He turned around, sweats and a t-shirt in his hands and his jaw clenched. His eyes widened at the sight before him; you lay on his bed, on your stomach, with your legs crossed in the air and head resting in the palm of your hands. You can imagine cringing at yourself in the morning, because being sexy didn’t come naturally to you.

“Babe, please don’t make this harder than it already is” he laughed, placing the comfy outfit on the corner of the bed.

“Make what harder?” You looked up innocently, through your fluttery lashes, putting on the most delicate voice you could muster. He admired your body, tanned and smooth. The freckles on your back he’d once spent all afternoon counting – around 57, if you’re wondering – were only partially covered by the strap of your bra, which stood out immensely against your skin. The matching bright red panties adorned your hips perfectly, sculpting around your curvy hips and peachy derriere.

“Come here, let’s get you dressed,” he held out his hand, which although you didn’t want to, you took, shuffling yourself up to sit on your knees at the end of the bed.

“But I don’t wannaaaaaaa” you whined, quivering your lower lip.

“But you gottaaaaaa” he mimicked you, sticking his tongue out. That damn tongue. Could be put to better use somewhere else, you thought, giggling to yourself like a little lovestruck teenager as he just shot you a look at you amusing yourself.

If god was real, he was stood in front of you, attempting to get you to bed.

When you reached over to the short pile of clothes he’d placed on the end of the bed for you and pushed them off the edge, so they landed in a pile on the floor, he rolled his eyes. “Oops.” You shrugged. Your fingers found the waistband of his sweats again and he was getting tired of fighting you off. It not that he didn’t want you, because he’d be crazy not to, but he just didn’t want to take advantage of your current tipsy state, he’d been brought up better than that. You pulled at his joggers, making him tumble forwards towards you, already cringing at your desperate and needy voice. “Why don’t you want me… Tommy?”

The nickname was all it took to leap on top of you, pinning you down. His hand held around your neck, holding your head still as you flopped back against the bed sheets yet again. If you’d have known, you’d have said it sooner. You couldn’t help but smirk, your constant nagging finally getting you somewhere. His other hand kept him from crushing your body, holding up his weight above you. His eyes were lustful, like he’d switched personalities in a matter of seconds.

“You don’t think I want you?” He asked, voice quiet but rough. His breath felt hot against your skin, and you wriggled underneath him for a brief moment, until he moved his hand from your neck and snaked it down your body, making sure to take his time until he got to your wetting centre. He cupped whatever of you he could, his warm hands meeting your warm core creating the most uncontrollable heat between you.

“No. I don’t.” you spoke, with a hint of bratiness portraying in your words even though you felt like melted butter beneath him. A quiet tut left his mouth and you think it was followed by a dark chuckle, but you couldn’t be sure because you’d zoned into a world of desperation. Your hips bucked up against his hand, only briefly getting more pressure from him.

“Fuck this,” he spat, crashing down onto your lips, his thumb tracing the outline of your swollen folds through the material of your damp panties. He didn’t want to give in, he thought he could be better than that, but you made it too damn impossible for him to going about a normal nightly routine without being so irresistible.

A whimper fell from your plump lips as he pulled away, instantly attaching to the skin on your neck where a faint red mark had formed from where he had grabbed you. He soothed the area with his lips, tongue lapping across the sensitive area. The strain against his sweatpants was getting intense, digging into the inner of your thighs the further down your body his lips travelled. You muttered a string of words, squirming beneath him.

His hand came from your aching middle, fiercely reaching up and cupping your breast like he was holding onto it for dear life. Beneath the lace covering, your nipple hardened as he caressed you through the fabric, teasing it in between his nimble fingers. He got off on seeing you pleased, he knew that, you knew that, hell, even Sandra next door fucking knew that. So when his lips didn’t stop at your stomach and continued further south, you knew you could count your blessings and say goodbye to your bratty attitude. With one hand, he tugged your underwear to the side, tracing your damp folds with his fingers. “Tom…” You breathed, desperate for his touch. He smirked, not that you could see, as his head bowed further into the valley of your legs.

Replacing where his fingers had been, his tongue followed suit of his digits, tracing your dripping folds and circling your throbbing clit. That was the first squeal of pleasure you let out, mouth dropping wide and hands coming up to his freshly shaved hair. You were annoyed he had to shave it off, wanting nothing more to run your fingers through his floppy brown hair and tug away at it. Grabbing the next best thing, your fingers bunched up as much of the duvet as they could grab as he continued to tease your entrance, the roughness of his buzzcut brushing against your inner thighs. Reapplying pressure from his fingers caused your second squeal, your chest showing your heavy breathing and back arching into him. He squeezed your breast intensely in an attempt to communicate with you whilst his mouth was busy elsewhere. If this is where being drunk got you, you thought you’d start drinking every day, because never before has he loved and performed with such hungry passion like this.

The sound of his lips working against your cunt was the only thing filling the room, other than the sounds of your whimpers and whines. The vibrations shuddered through your body as he hummed into you, his hand trying to reach further up and find a place back on your neck. He noted your heavier breathing and the way your legs wrapped around his shoulders, getting tighter by the second. He knew you well enough to know that he could make you cum, just from using his mouth, but he didn’t want that. He wanted to push you, like you had pushed him.

When he was unsuccessful in reaching to your collar, he pulled away from your ridiculously wet core, sucking on your clit and pulling away with a pop, regaining his breath and wiping his mouth on the sheets beneath him. “You really do want me, huh?” He smirked, crawling up until he was face to face with you, admiring your flushed and rosy cheeks. Your teeth captured your bottom lip, nodding silently to his question, feeling unsatisfied with the lack of touch. He sat up on his knees, in between your legs, and tugged at the waistband of his sweats and boxers, pulling them down his legs, for what felt like the longest time, until his member popped free and you’re suddenly aware of how wet you are for him, feeling your panties stick to you.

“P-please, Tom” you breathe, hands releasing the ball of material in your hands and reaching up for him. He snaps your hands away, still annoyed by your persistent plan to get him to this point and he pushes them above your head, your arms stretched out as much as can be.

“Get up.” He demanded, moving back away from you to give you enough room to slide out. You remained stuck to the bed, however, confused by his sudden instructions. Was he kicking you out? Had you literally been that desperate he didn’t wanna do it?

“Huh?” You questioned as he shuffled back on his knees until his legs could slide off the foot of the bed, landing on the floor with his sweat’s puddled around his ankles.

“Get up.” He repeated, same tone but slightly higher volume. You sat up, wiggling your bum until your legs also fell over the edge of the bed. Your legs were wide, his body inbetween them as he traced his hand up your skin, starting at the valley of your breasts and finishing at your neck. His large hand cupped your jaw, and it the most delicately forceful way possible, he put pressure onto you, forcing your body to stand upright as you followed the direction of his touch. As soon as you were stood, legs threatening to buckle beneath you any minute, he once again soothed over the red mark around your jaw, relaxing his tongue against your skin.

Your arms bent around to your back, fingers clasping at the buckle of your bra, until he he caught you, pulling his head sharply away from your neck and capturing your wrists in his hands. “No,” he said, voice gentle this time, as if you were about to walk out the door and never come back.

“No?” You asked, relaxing your shoulder and letting your arms drop to your side.

“No.” He repeated, more definite with his tone of voice this time. “You wanted me to see this little ensemble...” His hands pointed over your body before they found your hips, twisting your body round 180° so you were facing the bed, your back facing his front. You got his gist, mentally cursing yourself as you was reminded of the picture. You were thankful for the alcohol, though. You wern’t sure you’d be so confident in it without the help of your little friend, prosecco.

You bent forewords, walking your hands across the bed until you were happy you were bent over far enough, your ass higher in the air than the rest of your body. Blonde curls slinked over your shoulder as you turned your head, and what you saw was nothing but a beautiful sight. 

Toms arm tensed as his hand wrapped around his hardened length, a groan of pleasure leaving his lips from the anticipated touch. He pumped himself a few times as he admired the way the lace decorated the curves of your ass; the Brazilian fitting showed off the creases of your hips and the soft natural stretch marks which he could spend hours kissing. His bottom lip was sucked in by his teeth and you reciprocated the action, staring up lustfully at him.

You wanted to beg. You wanted to push your ass back so you could feel his cock against you. But before you had time to decide if that was a wise idea, he took two small steps foreword, lining himself up with the centre of your body. You sucked in air, stomach knotting with butterflies as you waited for him where you most needed him. At tap from his hand on your ass jolted your body forwards, falling onto your forearms and chest flush against the bed.

You didn’t dare look back, not knowing how much more of him you could look at before you jumped ship and ended up getting yourself off. The feel of him pushing your pants to the side made you jump, a gasp escaping you as he ran his index finger up your folds, making sure you were wet enough. Satisfied with how he’d made you dripping with juices, he nudged the tip of his cock against you. Simultaneously, you both let out a moan, both needing it as much as each other. When he pushed into you, at the slowest pace possible to let you adjust around him, he gripped his right hand around your hip to hold you in place.

He began slow, grunting behind you each time you pushed back onto him. A string of unforgivable words left your mouth as you kept a straight posture, noting how the headboard smashed against the back wall as his thrusts grew deeper, the sound synchronised with the sound of his hips smashing against your ass. He released your hip, reaching forward and grabbing a fistful of your bouncy hair. Tugging your hair towards his body, you squealed as your head followed, back arching in the most flexible manner. Whilst keeping hold of your hair, he reached further round, grabbing the front of your neck to keep you from falling foreward to the bed.

The feeling of him clutching onto your neck sent your mind into overdrive although you struggled to spit out an approving moan, your throat being restricted by the pressure of his hand. Your legs began to quiver, bucking beneath you. Tom flipped you over in one swift movement, hand remaining on your neck the entire time as he thrusted back into you, hating the feeling of being out of you; even 2 seconds was too long. He held you there, by your throat, reminding himself that you were here, with him, and not that stupid guy at the club. He wanted you to know he was holding onto you because he never wanted you think about another guy again. He wanted you to know that he felt utterly awful for not making you feel as good as you should about that picture. He wanted you to know, that he wanted you. 

He felt himself getting close, more so now he was face to face with you, adoring how your mouth fell open, lustful eyes meeting his. When you bit your lip and giggled, he couldn’t understand how he was on top of, choking you and fucking you until you forgot about the sleazy guy at the bar, yet you could be the cutest human on the planet. He relaxed his hand, swiping his thumb over your lip in what you found to be more of a delicate moment compared to the ones he’d been showing you all night. His head bobbed down, lips hovering over yours as he spoke quietly. “I want you.” He breathed, tensing and twitching as you wrapped your legs around him, “so fucking much.”

His words were genuine, but you couldn’t understand. He had you. Underneath him. In his bedroom. At 2am on a Sunday morning. “You’ve got me.” You breathed, fingers playing with the hair -or lack of - at the nape of his neck as he rested his forehead on yours. He felt sticky, but you were sure that you did too. 

“All the time?” He asked with a quiver in his voice, but you put it down the the fact you were both on the edge of a climax. You just nodded, biting your lip to stifle a squeal at both your orgasm and excitement of his words. His hips didn’t stop or slow down like you expected them and you knew you were on the brink of finishing, fingers clutching and digging into his back at an attempt to hold on longer. 

“Tom... I- I’m-” You struggled to talk, cutting your sentence short and interrupting yourself with a scream, your eyes rolling back and squeezing shut. He breathed into the crook of your neck, a small mmhmm humming through hip lips in agreement. When his rhythm slowed as hips jolted fewer times, but with more deep and powerful thrusts, he nudged your spot, leaving you crumbling beneath him whilst a string of ohmygod’s and fuck-tom’s left you, your voice shaking in tune with your legs. 

Your hips jolted upwards as your came around from your climax, pushing into him as he experienced his own. His arm snaked round your back, pulling you into him as if you lifting up to meet his thrusts wasn’t enough, before he was moaning in your ear, sending shivers through your body like nothing you’ve ever known.

Neither of you knew how long you’d been there; him on top and still inside you and you catching your breath beneath him. But you both did know, is that you wanted to be there for forever more. It was maybe minutes until he rolled out of you, flopping back onto the bed with a satisfied groan. He still had an arm underneath you, and he tugged it, rolling you onto your side and further into his body. You aching centre felt sore, but very well loved and you couldn’t help but smile. “So... about that guy at the bar?”

“What about him?” Your eyebrows furrowed, not expecting that to be the first thing to come up after having mind blowing sex. 

“I’m gonna fuck him up for speaking to my girl.”

------

taglist: @imaginashawnns​ @fallinallincurls​

#tom holland #tom holland smut #tom holland blurb #tom holland one shot #tom holland fanfic #tom holland x reader

[artificialqueens]

Modern Love, 1/12 (Branjie/Scyvie/Ninex) - Ortega

fic summary: Brooke Lynn is a 23 year old graduate writing boring, uninspired pieces for the fashion department of a newspaper and living in a city all her friends have moved away from. Silky is living at her parents’ house and spends her days applying for jobs she’s promptly rejected for. Nina and Monet are struggling through their first year as teachers whilst being sickeningly adorable girlfriends. Akeria is pursuing her dream of being a badass lawyer, even if her master’s degree is slowly crushing her soul. Plastique is acting like the second coming of Paris Hilton, so nothing there has changed. Scarlet is overworked and Yvie is underpaid and their relationship isn’t all it appears from the outside.

And Vanessa? Vanessa is nowhere to be seen.

(A story about a holiday, a breakup, friendships and relationships in a post-graduate world, careers, navigating life after university, figuring out what it means to be an adult, and coming to terms with the fact that we really are not nineteen forever.)

a/n: welcome to the sequel to Not Nineteen Forever!!! i should say it’s not *~ mandatory ~* to have read the original before this but it’s encouraged huehue xo hope u enjoy and please feel free to reblog, like and send love!!

***

Brooke felt the all-encompassing sense of dread wash over her as her alarm went off, the sounds of the radio that were gradually fading in doing nothing to make the experience of waking up for another day of work any more palatable. She groaned loudly as she stretched, her arms flying out to the side and hitting the edge of the double bed. Brooke starfished a little, stretching her legs out as long as they would go and trying to put off getting up and showered for as long as she could.

Rolling over in bed she reached for her phone and stopped when she saw the rose-gold rectangular frame beside her on the bedside table. It caught her by surprise every day, almost a sort of routine in itself. A picture of her and Vanessa from when they first moved in, standing at the doorway having just popped a bottle of champagne. Brooke’s face was in a funny contorted sort of smile as she yanked the cork out of the bottle and Vanessa was clapping her hands in excitement, a brilliant white moonbeam painted across her face. Brooke remembered the day well. Monet had taken the photo with Nina beside her, both of them still in their work clothes after they’d visited straight from a hard day full of teaching. Akeria, Silky, Plastique, Scarlet and Yvie had all been inside, shuffling through the huge variety of Domino’s pizza boxes that had just arrived at their door like a deck of cards. That night had been so special. Whatever had happened since then, Brooke would probably treasure that memory forever.

In spite of herself she smiled as she looked at the photograph, then turned her attention to her phone screen.

No notifications. She didn’t know why she expected anything more.

With a cloud over her head that matched the ones in the uncharacteristically grey June sky, Brooke brushed her teeth and peeled her pyjamas off before stepping into the shower and adjusting the dial to somewhere between tepid and warm. Vanessa’s shower gel sat in the corner, the tropical fruit and mint one with little tiny sloths all over the front. Brooke found herself hurting as she looked at it, still loath to use it as she took her own from the opposite side and splatted a huge dollop into her shower puff. Sometimes she used it indulgently, like a secret she shared with herself. She didn’t know whether she’d buy more when it ran out. That was something she still needed to think about.

Once she was clean Brooke briskly dried herself with a towel, sitting on the edge of the bed wrapped in it as she carefully blow-dried out her hair. She picked out her outfit: smart black work trousers with a fabric belt that pulled her in at the waist, a black and white patterned shirt, black stiletto heels. As she painted some minimal makeup on her face in the hope it would make her look less like a sleep-deprived zombie and more like she had her life together in some way, Brooke checked the clock and cursed as she realised she was running behind.

Leaving lipstick for the moment, she grabbed her bag, shoved her feet in a pair of black pumps, and left hurriedly for the train. Breakfast wasn’t a priority; she knew she could grab an iced coffee and a croissant from the cafe in the station in between changing trains, as it took her two to get into work. It was times such as these that she wished she knew how to drive like Monet, Plastique and Akeria, or had learned since uni like Nina or Scarlet. But then again, cafe food for breakfast was one of the very few perks of public transport.

Brooke eventually arrived at the huge concrete block with windows that held her offices, taking the elevator up to the fifth floor, clocking in, shooting a lacklustre “hi” to the girls she sometimes chatted to and settling herself in at her desk. As office positions went, Brooke supposed it wasn’t awful- it was beside the window looking out onto the streets of the city below and it provided some much-needed light to her day. Logging on to her work laptop, she checked her emails (one from her boss about the article due for Friday, and one from Cheryl about money for flowers for somebody going on maternity leave that she’d never met or heard of and might not even have worked there).

Her working day had started.

University hadn’t prepared Brooke for graduate life. It hadn’t prepared her for the fact that friends moved away for jobs and houses and flats, internships and apprenticeships and postgrads and masters. It hadn’t prepared her for the fact that her group chat, once flooded with about a hundred messages if she so much as left it for five minutes, gathered dust as everyone’s lives took over. It hadn’t prepared Brooke for the feeling of missing out on something…Christ knows what. Perhaps living, making memories instead of simply swiping through ones already made on a Saturday night spent alone in bed with a bottle of wine to herself. It hadn’t prepared her for the yearning, the regret at having taken those days for granted when they were the happiest of her life and she hadn’t even realised it. If Brooke had known how soul-crushingly boring her life would be once she got that rolled-up piece of paper in a little tube she would’ve been dragging the girls out every single night. The all-encompassing sadness and longing for something better hit her harder on days like these, sepia ones with big clouds that hung ominously in the sky but never gave her the satisfaction of raining. She supposed that feeling had only been exacerbated by…

She didn’t need to remind herself of that.

It was ten o’clock in the morning and Brooke was staring out of the small office window stupefied with boredom when her phone vibrated. She jumped, pouncing on it as she always did whenever a notification went off. Her phone hadn’t been on silent for a full month. It hadn’t been the person she’d wanted or expected, but it was a pleasant surprise nonetheless.

Silk: HEY GIRL LONG TIME NO SPEAK! I’M GONNA BE IN TOWN THIS AFTERNOON FOR AN INTERVIEW BUT I’LL BE FREE AFTER AND I’VE GOT A COUPLE HOURS TO KICK ABOUT UNTIL MY TRAIN. YOU WANNA GRAB DINNER? XXXXXXXXX

Brooke frantically made plans as if she was under a time limit, as if the moment would slip through her fingers like sand in an hourglass. She suggested some restaurants that she knew wouldn’t eat into either of their fragile graduate salaries and they settled on an Italian in the city centre, where the portions were big and the meals were tasty.

Brooke spent the rest of the day looking forward to meeting her friend. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen Silky. Maybe it had been as long ago as New Year. Brooke smiled as she remembered the occasion; all of them cramming into Scarlet and Yvie’s flat to see in the year. Silky and Akeria had got too drunk off prosecco and screamed along to JLS, Scarlet and Yvie had both made a buffet to rival a hotel’s, and Nina, Monet, Vanessa and Brooke had all been tangled up in an almost relationship-ruining game of Articulate. Plastique had brought her new girlfriend Naomi to introduce to everyone and the girl had looked ever so slightly alarmed by the sheer chaos of everyone put together, but she’d laughed and joined in all the same.

That had been another happy memory. Those seemed to be hard to come by these days.

Work dragged. It always did. Brooke managed to write three sub-par articles that she sent to her editor at the end of the day anyway because hell, it was their job to turn carbon into diamonds. So when she hopped on the train back into the city, Brooke felt a little buzz in her veins that she hadn’t felt in a while.

It took her until she saw Silky standing outside the restaurant- hair in a bun full of flyaways, eyebrows still Sharpied on, in a pair of smart trousers and a floaty top- that Brooke realised that part of the reason she was so excited was because she’d been so lonely for such a long time. Well, only really a month, but it felt like a year. It had taken her living on her own to realise just how boring her life was without all her friends so constantly part of it, and now they all had their own lives and schedules it only served to show Brooke how empty her own was without…

Well. Without her.

As soon as Silky looked up from her phone and spotted Brooke her face lit up, and she fixed her with a smile and a screech that Brooke never thought she would have missed hearing but by God, she had.

“BROOKE LYNN!” she screamed, followed by lots of squealing and babbling as she wrapped the taller girl in a tight hug and refused to let go for at least twenty seconds. Brooke didn’t mind and she found herself clinging back, Silky suddenly the loudest anchor she’d never known she needed. When Silky finally pulled away she grabbed Brooke by both wrists, shaking her back and forth a little. “Oh my God, BITCH! Oh my God. FUCK! It’s so good to see you. How the fuck are you?”

Brooke appreciated that- Silky asking how she was. Yvie tiptoed around Brooke’s feelings when they texted and Brooke tiptoed around her and Scarlet’s perfect domestic bliss, both of the subjects too touchy for Brooke and the pair of them instead choosing to communicate via meme. Nina barely had time to breathe these days let alone text back, and Plastique…well, Plastique wouldn’t get it.

None of them would, she supposed.

“I’m…I’m surviving! I’m being an adult, I guess, and this is what life is now. How’re you?” Brooke swiftly moved the conversation on, and Silky took the hint and dropped both her wrists, pushing open the door.

“I’m on cloud fuckin’ nine girl. C’mon, let’s get some vino an’ I’ll catch you up on the world of Ms. Ganache! Think of it as a free episode of the reality TV show that is my life.”

“Let’s be real, Silk. If anyone’s life’s like a reality TV show right now, it’s mine,” Brooke raised her eyebrows, not quite committing to her own attempt at being lighthearted and instead couldn’t have sounded more bitter if she’d eaten an entire lemon with its rind on.

Silky, for her part, shrugged and let out a small sigh. “You ain’t wrong, girl, you ain’t wrong. But the offer of wine still stands, so let’s get sat. Where the damn hell is a waiter?”

They eventually got shown to their table and the conversation flowed frantically and excitedly, mirroring the wine. Silky filled Brooke in on every last detail of her life- most importantly, Brooke thought, was that Silky’s parents who she was back living with had adopted a cocker spaniel puppy called Pooch. Graduate life had been tough on Silky; she still hadn’t managed to get a job and so therefore couldn’t afford to rent a flat, so she’d moved back to her sleepy and uninspiring hometown. Living with her parents, she’d groaned, was beginning to chip away at her; the constant pressure they put on Silky to find a job, move out, get a boyfriend, and lose weight was beginning to grow wearing in the extreme, and Brooke didn’t blame her for being fed up.

“You know you’re always welcome to come chill at mine, you know. If it’s getting particularly rough,” Brooke suggested not-quite-casually, glad of the fact that loneliness didn’t have a scent because if it did she’d be reeking of it.

Silky gave a bashful smile, looking down at her half-eaten plate of spaghetti bolognaise in front of her. “You’re a doll, B, but you know I can’t do an hour on the train any time my Mama tuts at me buying a size XL of anything. In fact therapy’s probably cheaper than a train ticket here but realistically I don’t got the money for either, so…thanks, but in the words of Simon Cowell, issa no from me.”

“That’s okay. I get it, Mums are simultaneously the worst and the best people,” Brooke pulled a face. Thinking about her Mum made her wonder when the last time she texted her was. She felt a little ashamed for not knowing off the top of her head. “But hey, at least you got that interview, right? How did it go?”

“Alright,” Silky muttered in a non-committal way. It was the most un-Silky response Brooke thought she’d ever seen her friend give. It was weird and unpleasant; the Silky from uni would’ve yelled the place down about how she’d aced it, how they’d make her the chief editor right there and then, how she could write an article for them entirely in Wingdings and it’d still be the best thing they’d read all day.

Seemingly picking up on Brooke’s discomfort, Silky gave a small laugh. “I don’ know, boo…I used to be so sure of myself, I used to be so set in the fact that writing was somethin’ I was good at. When I was a kid I used to write these fuckin’ huge stories…pages an’ pages long that my teachers would pull big overexaggerated smiley faces at an’ squeal over an’ put big glittery star stickers on. I thought I was somethin’ special. An’ then uni, y’know…I was a small fish in a big pond- hell, a big fish in a big pond- but I still thought I was the shit even when I got bad grades. I thought my markers just didn’t get it, that they were the ones that were wrong. But now it’s like…”

Silky heaved a sigh and put her fork and spoon together neatly on top of her half-full plate. “…I can’t even get a job at a fuckin’ local rag, so why the hell am I even tryin’ with the big city offices?”

There was something about it all that made Brooke’s heart break all over again, the way that life after uni had worn Silky down to the extent where she didn’t even know if she was good at anything any more, didn’t have much visible self-worth left. Silky had always been the heart and soul of their group; she, Akeria and Vanessa, and in the time it had taken between now and graduation Akeria had become the polar opposite of Silky- so completely embroiled in her quest to become a barrister that she barely had time to reply to any of them any more.

And Vanessa…well. She knew where Vanessa was. Or rather, she didn’t.

Greece was a big country.

“You’re trying because you’re Big Silky Nutmeg Motherfucking Ganache,” Brooke said with a determination she’d not felt in a while. “Come on Silk, you’re you. If grad life has broken you then what the fuck hope is there for any of us?”

( Any of us sounded better than me , Brooke thought.)

“Kiki’s doin’ okay for herself,” Silky shrugged, her downtrodden tone counteracted by the way she picked up her fork again and twirled a single strand of spaghetti around it, eating it once she was finished speaking.

“Kiki’s vagina-deep in a hellish and all-consuming masters degree that’s probably eating her up from the inside out just as much as everybody else’s jobs are. I mean, are any of us doing anything we actually like?”

“Nina an’ Monet? They’da quit by now if they hated teaching so much.”

“Nina West would join the fucking scientologists and stick it out just so she could say she didn’t give up. She’s the final boss of the term mama didn’t raise a quitter . They’re having a hard time, Silk. We all are. It’s just tough because we’re all so busy and shit at keeping in touch that everybody thinks each others’ lives are perfect but…they’re really not.”

“Yvie and Scarlet seem pretty happy.”

Brooke’s face took on an involuntary look of distaste, so irritated and bitter was she at the image of them and their perfect flat and their perfect jobs and their perfect coupley life. “They’ll have something up, nobody’s life is that perfect. Maybe their relationship’s secretly falling apart or…something, fuck, I don’t know.”

There was a beat of silence in which Brooke finished the last little pocket of tortellini she’d ordered and Silky twirled another mouthful of spaghetti around her fork. She chewed, then shrugged thoughtfully, her head tilting a little. “Y’know we should go on holiday. Fuck all this shit off for a week, get away from it all.”

Brooke’s eyebrows raised in appreciation of the idea. She and the girls had never been away together before and the prospect of lying on a beach doing absolutely nothing under the blazing sun was an inviting one. “What, a girls’ trip? Like in Sex and The City?”

“Mhm. ‘Cept we go on an all-inclusive to the Med ‘stead of Mexico ‘cause ain’t none of us can afford that shit.”

“Except Plastique.”

“True. Fuck that bitch. She could prolly buy Mexico.”

Brooke laughed and for the first time in a good few months she felt a little flicker of excitement lick at her heart, so much so that she could see her pulse race at her wrist. She couldn’t stop the smile that spread across her face. “Oh my God. I’m so in. Let’s do it.”

“We have to get all the girls on board, though. Otherwise there ain’t no point.”

“Definitely. Where should we go? Spain’s always good.”

Silky had her phone out and was typing furiously. She paused as something presumably loaded, then her face lit up. “If we go the week after Nina an’ Monet finish up school for Summer we can get flights to Crete for £20 return.”

“Twenty, what the fuck? That can’t be right,” Brooke screwed up her face in disbelief, and Silky cocked an eyebrow at her as she showed her the proof on her screen. Conceding, Brooke shrugged. “That’s so good. I don’t want to know what that plane’s like though. They probably just stuff you all into a tin can and ping you into the air with a giant rubber band.”

Silky howled with laughter and thumped the table so hard that the wine sloshed about in their glasses, little tiny red tsunamis. As Brooke snorted in response purely to Silky’s own mirth, a small thought set off a little drip of dread that threatened to put out the excitement that had only just begun to burn in her chest.

“Where is Crete again?”

Silky let out an unimpressed breath from her nose. “Bitch, you got all the geography skills of a Love Island contestant. It’s just off the Greek coast. Kinda near Turkey too, but it’s Greece.”

Brooke felt her heart drop, Alton Towers Oblivion all over again. She blinked quickly, tried to hide her discomfort. “Well, we’re not going there.”

Silky gave a small sigh, a little hint of resignation or long-suffering to it that Brooke didn’t appreciate. But when she reached over the table and patted her hand on top of Brooke’s, she felt a little bit more understood, a little bit more validated.

“B, Greece is a big place.”

It was the exact same thing Brooke herself had thought earlier, except now it didn’t seem true. Now, with the prospect of going there, it seemed like the tiniest microcosm of society. The world was simultaneously too big and too small, and Brooke felt the cold drip in her heart get worse. “Silky…”

“Look. We ain’t exactly gonna pick the same place she’s at, are we?”

Brooke put her head in her hands and sighed. “She’s not there anymore.”

“What?”

“I phoned the hotel a week ago to try and speak to her. I was going to fly out, try and talk to her and fix things. They said she didn’t work there anymore. So I don’t even know where she is at all.”

Silky huffed, frowning and concerned. “I’m sorry, Brooke, this shit must’ve been hell.”

“You’ve got no idea.”

There was a pause as Silky pushed her food around her plate. “Crete’s small, but it ain’t that small. We still got a one in a million chance of bumpin’ into her if we go.”

“That’s still too small for my liking. Both the island and the chances.”

“Aight, one in a billion. Trillion. Point is, it ain’t gonna happen. An’ besides…” Silky waggled her eyebrows, flashing her phone screen at Brooke again. “Twenty pounds for the first week of the school holidays. This shit’s like gold dust.”

Brooke smiled slowly in spite of herself. Maybe Silky was right. And maybe it would be fun to swan around Greece, eat seafood and pretend to be in some knockoff version of Mamma Mia. Scratch that, it would be fun. She’d get to spend a week surrounded by her friends in the sun, which was what she badly needed at the moment.

Brooke was nodding before she knew it. “Okay, fine. Crete it is.”

“YES, bitch!” Silky cheered, loud enough to be heard by the entire restaurant and possibly the chefs in the kitchen too. “Now let’s get dessert. All this wine needs soaked up by a big slice of sticky toffee puddin’.”

It was easy to feel optimistic with Silky back being her loud and just-the-right-side-of-obnoxious self, and with a plate of tiramisu in front of her. But after they’d finished up, paid their bill and she’d hugged Silky goodbye at the train station, Brooke found the endorphins wearing off as she got back to her dark flat and into her cold bed. Maybe it was because she was finally coming down from the high of meeting up with a beloved friend, maybe it was because she knew she had another monotonous, greyscale day of work to get through tomorrow.

Or perhaps, Brooke thought as she turned over in bed, caught sight of the familiar rose-gold frame and blew it a kiss, she was simply missing her girlfriend.

If she could even call Vanessa that any more.

#rpdr fanfiction #s11 #modern love #ortega #n19f #branjie #background scyvie #background ninex #lesbian au #angst #brooke lynn hytes #vanessa vanjie mateo #silky nutmeg ganache

[justkeeptrekkin]

Prompt if you wanna: Some fake!dating maybe they have to go undercover for hero work?

anon do you know how hard it was to not write a 80+k slow burn friends to lovers fic here? I’m such a ho for fake!dating. THANK you for this blessed ask. 

“We definitely, absolutely should not make-out in plain sight in the corridor of a villian’s penthouse apartment.”

Hizashi says it, but he very much does not mean it. He grabs Shouta’s face and kisses him again like his life depends on it. 

Which it sort of does.

Twenty minutes earlier.

The piano music sounds distant and strained in Hizashi’s earpiece. The laptop screen shows a sea of people who, for anyone who wouldn’t know any better, seem upstanding- if not also unnecessarily rich. The charity-event pretence is a clever disguise, but it didn’t fool everyone.

It had been Nezu’s idea to organise an undercover infiltration; with a little research, Hizashi discovered that several suspects for one of Tsugauchi’s biggest cases would be attending this party. Not that he should know about such things, but it’s hard not to pick up the facts when the police leave them around so lazily. Now, Hizashi sits in a storage room downstairs, Nemuri perched beside him on an upturned mop bucket. They both listen, watch the party roll ahead with all the glitz and glamour that would be expected for its absurdly wealthy guests. Prosecco, fancy looking finger-food, music, all set in a penthouse apartment in uptown Mustafu.

It looks like way too much fun.

“Why the hell is Shouta the one who gets to undercover?” Hizashi whines, leaning his chin heavily on his hand and watching his best-friend-who-he-most-certainly-doesn’t-have-feelings-for stand awkwardly amidst the crowd. “He’s literally the last person to ever appreciate this sort of thing, man, it’s so un- ooh, look, they have vol-au-vents-”

Nemuri shoves him in the shoulder, a reminder to concentrate. “I don’t need to tell you why, you know the answer.”

She folds her arms across her chest. She’s wearing a dress that is entirely too revealing for it to be a convincing disguise; even with the blonde wig, Hizashi reckons she’d be recognisable anywhere for her chosen style. Hizashi, meanwhile, is wearing red contacts, has temporarily dyed his hair black, and has been forced against his will to shave off his moustache.

He’s still bitter about that.

He sighs and drums his hands rhythmically against the bucket he’s sat on. It turns into a tuneless rendition of Down Under by Men At Work and Nemuri nudges him again.

“Can’t hear.”“Sorry.”

Shouta sighs into his earpiece. He’s always the one to go undercover since he’s still not that recognisable, despite his brief foray on national television. Hizashi and Nemuri, however, are. The only reason they’re dressed to the nines is for if  back up is needed.

Truthfully, Hizashi thinks the only reason they didn’t send him down is because they think his acting is too good.

“Eraser. Shou. There are crab cakes going by. Put one in your pocket for me.”Nemuri unsuccessfully muffles her laughter, and Hizashi thinks he can see the entire camera on Shouta’s lapel move with the extreme-sighing that he’s displaying.

“Shouta- the crab cakes! The crab ca- goddamn, why do you hate me so much, dude? No free food for your handler?”

“Stop distracting him,” Nemuri says, but there’s no sincerity and she’s laughing through the words. “Oh, we’ve got Suzuki at two o’clock, Eraser.”

The man of the hour; Tsukauchi’s prime suspect. A multi-millionaire bordering on billionaire with an intelligence quirk- a man who handles complex mathematics and probability as easily as ABC. Unsurprisingly, suspected of using his abilities for embezzlement and fraud. Worse, believed to be funding several underground villain organisations. He’s dressed in a fine black suit, so simple and understated that it screams this cost more than you’ll ever earn in your lifetime.

Shouta makes his way over.

Hizashi’s leg starts to bounce up and down nervously, making the adjacent shelf of cleaning products rattle. Shouta is able to remain deadpan in almost any situation, making him ideal for undercover cases- and he can be surprisingly good at improvisation. But there’s also something about his reserved exterior that makes villains suspicious of him. Now, as he winds through the party towards one of the most intelligent suspected villains that they know of, Hizashi can only watch and advise into his ear-piece with a growing sense of anxiety.

“He’s already drunk,” Hizashi observes for Shouta’s benefit, examining the slight dribble of prosecco down the collar of Suzuki’s priceless suit. “This guy isn’t usually the messy type. And he’s talking to people he doesn’t know, judging by his phone contacts, so he won’t push you away.”

Shouta hasn’t even arrived at the small cluster of people yet before Suzuki’s eyes fall on him, double take, and settle there. And there’s something in the way the shallow smile and calculating look melts, the way it shifts into something possessive. It makes Hizashi growl angrily down Shouta’s earpiece. Hizashi is painfully aware that Shouta cleans up very nicely, it’s unsurprising for others to notice this too, but-

“Reel it in, Mic,” Nemuri says in a low, teasing voice that makes him shoot her a hurt look. Shouta doesn’t know anything about his feelings, and she’s certainly not meant to be making it even more obvious than it already is.

The fact that Suzuki’s attention has changed so suddenly to the approaching stranger isn’t lost on the other guests, and they move their conversation elsewhere. Suzuki leers, starts making small-talk with Shouta and Hizashi feels immediately sympathetic. He’s always struggled with such things.

When the conversation shifts onto Suzuki’s quirk, and thus, complex mathematics, Hizashi starts to worry.

When he laughs and lays a friendly hand on Shouta’s forearm, he gets pissed.

Removing his mouth piece, he says to Nemuri, “I told you I should have been the one to go in.”“Hizashi, you’re our linguist, you’re only ever the one to go undercover when-”

Hizashi stands up abruptly, knocking over his bucket-seat and smoothing down his incredibly dull grey suit. He wishes they’d let him go with the purple. “I’m going upstairs.”

Nemuri grabs him by the arm. “Hizashi this does not qualify as an emergency, if you think he needs advising, advise. From a distance. That’s why you’re his handler-”

“Yo my dude, my pal, you’ve gotta chill.” Hizashi spins round, rests his hands on Nemuri’s shoulders, and tries to convey as much confidence as possible. “I’m going whether you like it or not. I’ll try not to scream at him, but I can’t promise anything.”

He leaves the storage room and ignores the sound of Nemuri calling after him.

Five short minutes later he finds himself winding through the crowd, offering smiles here and there. He manages to swipe a crab cake and stuff it in his mouth, expertly swallowing it before plastering on a grin and taking Shouta’s side.

Shouta’s eyes zip over to Hizashi, assessing his presence and staring perhaps a little longer than is wise. He can see the question in his eyes even if no one else can. Hizashi doesn’t give him the chance to come up with a story; he was always better at that.

No matter what Nemuri says about his acting.

“Sweetie, aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend?”

Shouta doesn’t react. In fact, his entire lack of response and the following, gaping pause is pretty suspicious. Hizashi bursts into an unfamiliar laughter- it’s his posh-party laugh that he and Nemuri have always enjoyed practising, head thrown back, hand on chest. He clings onto Shouta’s arm. “I thought I’d lost you at the drinks table, I turned around and suddenly you’d disappeared!”

Shouta’s chest rises as he takes a steadying breath, mouth falling open to speak, but nothing comes out. 

The smile Suzuki gives Hizashi is courteous. “It seems he’s lost for words. Suzuki Reo.”

Hizashi takes the hand that’s extended and shakes it with a lot less enthusiasm than he ordinarily would. “Oh, charmed, I’m sure,” he says smoothly.

“Charmed I’m sure,” Nemuri repeats mockingly into his ear piece.

“And who do I have the pleasure of speaking to?”

Hizashi’s brain falters. He hadn’t come up with a name for himself.

“Regina Falange.”

There’s a surprised snort at the other end of Hizashi’s earpiece, followed by uproarious cackles. And: “Mic please, honey, oh my god you might be smart but you’re a shit actor, you’re going to get all of us killed-”

“What an interesting name.”“It’s European.” He tries to fight off the temptation to end that with a questioning inflection: Is that believable?

“Fascinating.” He doesn’t sound all that fascinated.”We were just discussing my quirk, how awfully self-centered that sounds.”“Suzuki-san has a mathematics quirk.” Shouta supplies this quietly, almost conspiratorially, leaning towards Hizashi as he says it. He’s wrapping his arm around his waist. Hizashi’s heart stops, before he remembers that he started this we’re-a-couple charade and he really shouldn’t be acting so flustered by it.

“I was just telling your partner about Zeno’s arrow paradox, but I’m afraid I may have lost him.”

Hizashi looks down at Shouta. Shouta returns the look.

“Oh, that sounds very complicated,” Hizashi says sweetly. “I’m sure I wouldn’t understand.”

Shouta narrows his eyes. He knows this game and he’s never liked it. Hizashi, on the other hand, lives for it.

“Ah, it’s simple really,” Suzuki says, his smile apparently genuine now. This is a man who enjoys to show off. And a man who enjoys to show off is a man who lets information slip. “Imagine an arrow at point A, and the target at point B, and in the course of reaching B the arrow must travel at least half that distance, which we can call point C. In getting from C to B, the arrow must travel half that distance, which is point D, and so on. But once you realise that you can keep dividing space forever, paring it down into smaller and smaller fractions, you come to see that the arrow, in fact, can never reach point B. Mathematically speaking, therefore, there is no smallest number- and no limit to greatness. Infinite everything.”

He concludes this unnecessary exhibition of his intelligence with an almost disappointed look in his eye, staring over Shouta’s shoulder.

“‘You must therefore confess that all that exists is not unique, but rather of number numberless’.”

Hizashi rattles off the quote with an air of nonchalance. Shouta glares at him.

Suzuki blinks drunkenly at Hizashi, clears his throat in surprise. “Lucretius said that, if I’m not mistaken?”“Yes.”“You speak Latin.”“I read it from time to time.”

“Hah! You almost had me take you for just another party goer. I’m not often tricked.”

“Well, we have to have our fun somehow, right? You must get so bored with a mind like yours, in a world like this.”

“Oh, it can get me into quite a lot of trouble.”The rapid fire interaction reaches an abrupt pause as both men silently assess each other. Hizashi feels Shouta tug on his suit jacket with a little more force than is necessary.

“Excuse us.”And Hizashi finds himself, without the opportunity to press any further, being directed by the small of the back out of the main reception area and into a quiet corridor. A waiter leans against the wall on his phone, registers their presence, and scurries back into the kitchen.

Shouta rounds on Hizashi, standing close so he can whisper and be heard.

“What are you doing?”Hizashi hesitates, the right words filtering to his mouth too slowly. “I came to help! He was rattling off all this crap about mathematics, man-”

“You’re my handler, you’re meant to stay out of sight and feed me information from a safe distance.”“Is this wh- you’re angry at me? Are you really pissed at me because you think that I’m not safe right now?”“I had it covered. We have a system, you broke it and I want to know why.”

“I-” Hizashi doesn’t want to answer that question. “Why did you pull me away? He was opening up-”

“No, he was getting suspicious. The ingénue act works fine, but only if you don’t prove them wrong. Now he doesn’t trust us and he knows he’s been tricked by you before.”

“OK, but, that’s not. It’s not just that, I mean-” God this is so frustrating. He shoves a hand through his hair. “Fine, listen, I was freaked out because he was being all handsy with you and I didn’t like the idea of you being at the receiving end of some creep trying to flirt with you and he’s a villain so that’s even worse and-”

“Wait-”

He’s vaguely aware that Shouta’s trying to interrupt him, but the word vomit is virtually unstoppable now. “And maybe I just felt like I should be here to mediate or maybe it’s something more, I dunno-”

“There’s someone coming-”

“Maybe I just felt like something was- wait what-?”

Before Hizashi is aware of what’s going on, he feels Shouta grab his lapel and drag him into an abrupt kiss. It lasts only a few seconds, and during the entire experience the inside of Hizashi’s head is screaming. When Shouta pulls away, Hizashi collapses against the corridor wall.

“Whuh,” is all he manages.

“Don’t freak out.” Shouta says it so evenly, like it’s that simple.

“I’m not freaking out.”

“You are freaking out. Someone was coming and you were talking about the mission.”

“Ah- yeah, right, sorry.”“Don’t apologise,” Shouta adds. “I’m sorry. That I didn’t warn you.”

And despite having broken apart from their kiss, they’re only inches away from each other. And Shouta is still holding onto Hizashi’s lapel. He’s staring at Hizashi’s lips.

There’s the sound of footsteps approaching.

“We definitely, absolutely should not make-out in plain sight in the corridor of a villian’s penthouse apartment,” Hizashi says reasonably. Before pulling him into a sloppy, desperate kiss, breathing into each other’s mouths and Shouta crowding him against the wall.

Oh god. This is happening. Wait, this is actually happening, isn’t it?

“Boys, as much as I’ve been rooting for you for the past fifteen years,” Nemuri’s voice slips into their ears, sounding quietly amused, “this could not have come at a worse time.”

Shouta pulls back immediately at the sound of her voice and bristles at the reminder that they’re being watched. Hizashi slouches against the wall, feels like he might melt into a puddle on the floor. He watches the way Shouta stares at the ground with a thoughtful crease between his brow. 

“Can we talk about this when we get home?” he whispers.

Shouta opens his mouth speechlessly. Gives a shaky nod.

They regard each other for a long moment, hands still on each other.

“Let’s get back in there,” Shouta says, at last. He looks a little off-centre, which is as ruffled as Shouta gets. Hizashi feels a hell of a lot more than a little off-centre.

Hizashi responds with a grin, and holds up his hand for a high-five. Shouta surveys his raised hand with a weary smile, and obliges.

“Let’s do this.”

#bnha #mha #fic prompt #my writing #ask #erasermic #maizawa #yamada hizashi #aizawa shouta #eraserhead #present mic #midnight #kayama nemuri

[fayeba]

✨Spritz O’clock ✨ . . . #aroundbcn #ChicasinBarcelona #rooftop #junglebar #afterlight #naturalandstuff #blurry #fade #colours #tshirtandjeans #kindaday #prosecco #spritz#brandymelville #subduedgirls #streetstyle #traveler #mytravelgram (presso Iberostar Paseo de Gracia) https://www.instagram.com/p/Bv7U71oHM86/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=eqczqolyd3kq

#aroundbcn #chicasinbarcelona #rooftop #junglebar #afterlight #naturalandstuff #blurry #fade #colours #tshirtandjeans #kindaday #prosecco #spritz #brandymelville #subduedgirls #streetstyle #traveler #mytravelgram

[blinder-s]

Wedding Day / Tom Holland

i had major love rosie feels today so:) here is a short thing for u i hope u enjoy !!!

warnings: swearing, underaged drinking (im british so like this is just standard but don’t drink underage but this warning isn't coming from a good source)

words: 1,434

masterlist!

gif creds to the owner

You and Tom had grown up together, and your first memories always involved him. Whether it was at school or at home, playing in the garden or eating popcorn at midnight whilst watching a scary film. The two of you were inseparable, and even as puberty hit you were as thick as thieves.

“So, like, what’s the deal with you and Tom?” Your other friends would always ask him in gym, “are you two dating?” And you’d would always laugh and act repulsed like always, telling whoever it was that you were like siblings.

It wasn’t until you were seventeen that you realised he was quite possibly the love of your life. And, of course, he was dating the most popular girl in high school at this point. 

“She’s a bitch,” You would say as you walked back home together. She was a bitch, but that wasn’t going to stop him from kissing her behind the bike sheds during lunch period. 

“Yeah, but she got us both invited to that house party on Saturday.” Tom looked at you knowingly, and you shrugged in defeat. You still felt is was wrong to call your own girlfriend a bitch, but what did you know about relationships? 

And, as you put on your dress for this afternoon, you couldn’t help but think back to the night of Adam Williams’ house party. You couldn’t help but smile at how you got drunk for the first time and Tom having to carry you home at 2am the next morning. 

It was pink silk, and had white material flowers sewed on the bodice, and you did truly think it was beautiful. The bride to be, Molly, chose it for you, and to be truly honest, you couldn't have picked a dress more perfect for Tom’s wedding, unless it was a wedding dress. And as bad as it sounded, you’d pictured yours and Tom’s wedding day at least one hundred times; and not once did you think of having a strapless top with a corset at the back.

Molly’s dress was gorgeous, the way it hugged her body and complimented her skin so well. But you had always thought of something more traditional, maybe made of satin and a mermaid skirt. The train would be long enough, and there’d be embroidery and lace on it which would sparkle as you walked down the aisle. 

The whole ceremony was beautiful; his, now, wife looked as pretty as a picture and it took everything in you not to cry at how badly you wanted to be in her shoes. The vows were spoken crystal clear, and each time Tom smiled at her you could feel part of yourself break a little more. 

“I do!” 17 year-old-you screamed at the top of your lungs as someone shouted if anyone wanted to do shots. It was Saturday night, and Adam Williams was making some moves onto you, and you were sure that even more tequila shots would do the trick. 

“(Y/N), don’t you think that’s enough?” Tom pulled you aside. It was nearly two o’clock and you were convinced that this was the best night of your life; even if Tom did keep sneaking off to Adam’s bedroom to make out. You shook your head and waltzed over to the kitchen where a group of people were doing shots simultaneously.

“Come on Tom! Do one with me!” You shouted, grabbing two shot glasses, filled with some unknown clear spirit. He complied, downing the shot after you did. 

“That’s enough,” he slapped you hand away as you went to reach for a second, “I think it’s time for you to go home.”

“You’re not my dad.” You protested as he physically dragged you out of the house. You heard him whisper ‘thank god’ under his breath, “I heard that!” And you stopped, digging your heels into the road, and stared him down as he turned around to look at your drunken state.

Your hair had fallen out of its ponytail and your eyeliner was nearly all rubbed off. Tom still thought you looked as you always did; beautiful.

It was time for your speech and you drew a big breath. Of course, unconventionally you were Tom’s best man, and had to provide the entire guest list with an amusing speech. Tom nudged your leg from beside you in encouragement, but you could feel your skin start to crawl and your eyes prick with tears.

“I need to get you home before you pass out, or get alcohol poisoning or need your stomach pumped.” Tom pulled on your hand so hard that you thought it’d fall off, and you moved forward against your will.

You smiled at everyone, “well, where do I start?” You started, looking down at your crumpled piece of paper. It had come in handy to fiddle with as you wound yourself up to do your speech, “we grew up together, and I can’t remember a time without Tom. He has always been like a brother to me.”

“Stop treating me like your little sister!” You pulled away from his grip, “I’m fine Tom,” you slurred your words, and nearly tripped over but you stood your ground and looked at him. You were hurting now; your feet ached and you could feel something drilling into the left side of your head. 

“I think it’s safe to say that we’ve shared quite a few memories. I’m sure my dad remembers the first night I came home drunk; and that was definitely your fault.” Everyone laughed, and Tom looked at you, “I’ll always remember that night, even if we swore never to speak about it again.” His eyes clouded over in confusion as you looked at him, smiling sadly, “your mother always called me a bad influence, and I guess maybe she was right.”

“(Y/N), you’re my best friend!” He was pulling you harder and harder and you could see the street that lead to your house from here. 

“But I think, perhaps it’s time for you to make your decisions with Molly now.” You could feel the tears welling up in your eyes, and your vision became blurry, “when Tom said he was going to marry her, I was the happiest I could ever be. And if you’re happy, then I’m happy,” they were threatening to spill from your eyes and flood down your perfectly made up face.

“Maybe I don’t want to be just your best friend, Tom.” You screamed, crying on the side of the road, “maybe I’ll be sober tomorrow and regret all of this, but I love you, Tom! And there’s nothing I can do about it.”

“So, wherever life takes you, Tom,” you held up your flute of champagne up, “I wish you and Molly the happiest life together. And whatever you’re doing, at whatever time, just know that I will always, truly, incandescently love you,” you paused, looking down at him, “like a brother.”

He stood there motionless. “What?” He choked out. 

The rest of the ceremony went smoothly, and you downed a few too many glasses of white wine spritzers and had a couple more flutes of champagne or prosecco than you were supposed to. But Tom’s family all knew; they could see it in your eyes. It wasn’t until you were going to the loo, and Molly came in and commented on how pretty you were that the tears fell.

“Forget it!” Tears were streaming down you face now, and you couldn’t do anything to stop it. It was far beyond your control, as you sped away from Tom to your home. You slammed the door, and swore never to speak of what happened on the night Adam Williams’ house party.

“(Y/N), what’s the matter? Molly said she couldn’t stop you from crying.” Tom came rushing into the ladies bathroom, which was luckily empty except for you. 

You looked at him through long damp lashes, and smiled, “do you remember Adam Williams’ party?” He nodded, “I said I was in love with you.” He gulped, “well, I still am.” 

“(Y/N),” Tom tried to protest but you put your hand up to stop him.

“I’m not trying to be selfish. But Tom I have been in love with you since we were seventeen and were cycling along the beach in the summer.” You tried to keep your composure, letting the tears roll down your rouged cheeks. “I’m i love with you and maybe tomorrow morning you’ll be starting a new chapter of your life, and I’ll be sober. But I’ll always be in love with you.”

#tom holland #tom holland imagine #tom holland fanfic #tom holland fanfiction #spiderman #spiderman fanfiction #spiderman imagine #Spider-Man: Homecoming #love rosie

[livingnotesfromnyc]

It’s a “me-time” o’clock! And as far as I am concerned, any time is a perfect time for some R&R, especially when you are a working professional, particularly, when you are a mom. Right? Right. So! Bookmark some of my favorite mix recipes that are fun and easy to do: Raspberry Cosmopolitan 2 oz vodka 1 oz lemon juice .5 oz honey syrup or simple syrup 5 raspberries Prosecco Shake all ingredients and double strain in a coupe glass. Top with prosecco. Old Glory 8-10 blueberries 2 oz Vodka 1 oz fresh lemon juice 1 oz simple syrup 1-2 oz Pinot Noir Muddle fresh blueberries at the bottom of a double old fashioned glass and top with ice. Add vodka, lemon, and simple syrup to a mixing glass and shake vigorously. Strain over ice and blueberries. Pour wine over a spoon to create a red wine "float." Pumpkin Spice Lebowski 2 oz Vodka 1 oz coffee liqueur 1 oz heavy cream .5 tsp pumpkin pie spice Combine all ingredients in shaker over ice. Shake and serve in a rocks glass. Should I share more? Tell me your favorite mix recipes! What do you order for yourself? Or maybe even mix for others? I’m all ears! . PS: thank you, @katehudson and @kingstvodka for making our day! ❤️ . 🤍РУССКИЙ⬇️ . 📷: @theframed.photography . #happyhour #kingstvodka #mixrecipes #funtime #hosting #livingnotes #holidays #storytelling (at Venice Beach) https://www.instagram.com/p/CVgv93YvpeD/?utm_medium=tumblr

#happyhour #kingstvodka #mixrecipes #funtime #hosting #livingnotes #holidays #storytelling

[aamaziing]

Prosecco o’clock 🥂 @peggyporschenofficial #prosecco #peggyporschen #london #england #me #travelgram #travelblogger #globetrotter #wanderlust #traveler #travelphotography #travel (på/i Peggy Porschen Cakes)

#traveler #england #travelphotography #peggyporschen #travel #wanderlust #globetrotter #london #me #prosecco #travelgram #travelblogger

[econtenttv]

Prosecco o’clock https://www.instagram.com/p/CHwMcIcj9RauHfAp0gDC2Zpq6oLQo-4CQFHV-g0/?igshid=o2ijxbdc4qyw

[hermionefae]

Smile Tony Stark- Fem!Reader

Warnings: Some swearing, just a lot of fluff.

Christmas time at the Avengers compound, you and Vision had decorated the place so it looked like a classy North Pole. You knew you should love this time of year but it also reminded you of your parents who had died together in a car crash a week before Christmas Eve, something you had in common with Tony as he had lost his own father in a similar way. So this time of year made you feel a little gloomy. 

Tony had decided to throw a little party to take your mind off your parents and the thought of seeing a drunk Thor challenge Steve to a press up competition always cheered you up. You had emptied your wardrobe and still couldn’t find a thing to wear. You sat on the edge of your bed and stared at your clothes hoping to find inspiration when Tony walked through the door.

“Shit what happened here? Did a Hulk tornado rip through or something?”

“I can’t decide what to wear” you said crossing your arms and huffing like a little child. Tony smiled and walked over to his own wardrobe that had been left untouched. 

“I was going to save this until Christmas Day but I think you may want it now.” He slid open the white door, reached  in and brought out a black dress bag. You stood up and stepped over the piles of clothes towards Tony, you reached up and unzipped the bag and gasped. Inside was a beautiful dark blue dress, sleeveless with stars all over it. The stars shimmered in the lamplight and a silver chain with your initial on it hung from the hanger.

“It’s beautiful Tony!” You exclaimed. 

“Try it on” he whispered in your ear. You kissed him briefly on the lips and dashed off with the dress to the other side of the bedroom. Tony left to give you some privacy and before long you called out for him to come back. He was speechless when he saw you. The dress fitted perfectly, open backed exposing your shoulder blades and when you turned around he could see the top of the tattoo on the small of your back that you got as a memory to your parents. The dress flowed freely downwards and ended in a little pool at the bottom of your feet, it wouldn’t be quite as long once you hand put on your heels. “Thank you my love” you said holding out your hands. 

“You look stunning” Tony replied taking them and kissing you.

Later that evening in fact it was almost three o’clock in the morning, the party was winding down. All the Avengers had complimented you on your dress which made Tony’s ego grown even bigger which was an achievement in itself. You swayed slightly as you polished off another bottle of Prosecco. Natasha and Bruce had fallen asleep, Thor and Vision were playing on the Playstation and Steve and Tony were having a heart to heart on the balcony. 

Peter, who was still too young to drink but had snuck a few beers past Tony anyway was the DJ and was currently playing a slow Christmas song. Tony looked over at you and saw that you were up again and left Steve outside, he spoke in Peter’s ear who nodded. Your boyfriend then made his way over to you. “Dance with me?” You said to him, Tony grinned at you, took your hand and pulled you into him as the song began. 

‘Smile tho’ your heart is aching, smile even tho’ it’s breaking. When, there are clouds in the sky, you’ll get by’.  

You both swayed to the music and Tony sung along to the lyrics, you loved his voice but he only  sung for you as none of the other Avengers knew he had such an amazing voice.

“I love it when you sing” you muttered putting your head on his shoulder as Tony lead you around in a circle. 

‘Smile, what’s the use of crying, you’ll find that life is still worth-while if you just smile.’  

Tony stopped you dancing and looked deep into your eyes. “I’ve been waiting for the right moment to do this, I was going to take you to Paris but with everything going a bit mad right now I haven’t had a chance so I’ll have to do it here.”

Tony got down on one knee and you gasped, you were equally aware that Peter and Steve were watching your every move “Y/n I love you with all my heart, will you marry me?” Tony asked producing a small velvet box from his jacket pocket, he opened it and inside was a beautiful silver band with a dark blue sapphire in the middle and three smaller diamonds either side. 

You nodded, choking back tears “was that a yes?” Tony asked still on his knee.

“Yes! Yes, Yes!” You exclaimed tears flowing freely. 

“Fuck y/n you worried me there!” Tony joked getting up, putting the ring on your finger and kissing you passionately then he yelled “wake up you lot! Y/n and I are engaged” 

A/N: The song is Smile by Nat King Cole          

#tony stark x reader #iron man #fluff #christmas #engament