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primatechnosynthpop · 8 months

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If You Push Them Too Hard, They're Going To Break

Part 4

[Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3]

The next few weeks were surreal to say the least. By day, Jemaine and Bret carried on with their regular lives. By night they performed to moderate success at bars, clubs, auditoriums, corporate events-- not public libraries or elevators. None of their gigs drew in huge numbers, but the numbers they drew went beyond single digits. And they always got paid.

Mel was never in the crowd, of course. Neither was Doug, which Jemaine felt a bit betrayed by whereas Bret didn't really notice or care. He could have showed up to support them, Jemaine thought, to pay tribute to his wife's legacy. People applauded, but never with the volume or enthusiasm Mel used to, nor did fans approach them with anywhere near her level of zeal. In fact, hardly anyone approached them at all. People just showed up, watched them play, and left. It was disconcerting. They'd always thought if they ever succeeded, their loyal fan would be there to cheer them on, gushing about how proud she was that her guys had finally made it.

"It's too bad," Jemaine remarked once while they were backstage, tuning his bass in preparation to perform. "I could've included her in my wish if I'd remembered."

"Maybe Doug can make a contract," Bret suggested. "If he wants to bring her back."

Jemaine grimaced and shook his head. "No, Doug would make a terrible magical girl."

There was still a familiar face who cropped up amidst the crowds, though. Dave usually sat near the back, hoping to come off as aloof and not make it seem like he was overly invested in the band's performance. They may have been moving up in the world, but he still had a reputation to uphold. But by the end of the night he'd be pointing up at the stage and proclaiming to anyone in earshot, "Hey, I knew these guys before they were famous. If you wanna hear any stories about 'em, just ask me-- although, fair warning, they're boring as hell except the parts where I show up."

They weren't famous even now, really-- nobody talked about them on the street or on social media, and there was still no sign of a record deal. But if Dave wanted to call them famous, they weren't going to correct him.

"I always knew you guys would hit the big time someday," he told them one night after a performance that was successful but not too successful as always. He poured each of them a drink and slid the glasses across the bar counter toward them. The drink in question was just water, but Bret and Jemaine took it without complaint because they didn't really feel like alcohol anyway. "I guess some of my advice must have finally paid off."

"Oh, uh, I don't know about that," Bret admitted. "It was mostly because Jemaine did something you told us not to do."

"Bret, we don't need to tell him that."

"What? Did you guys get your big break by going on a date with each other's exes or... shit, what else have I told you not to do?" Dave scratched his head, pushing his bandana askew. "Or, wait, is this about the whole gay thing? Listen, I never actually said you couldn't be gay. It's just that if you were, chicks wouldn't be--"

"It's not a gay thing," Jemaine cut him off. He took a sip of water, shooting Bret a dirty look over the rim of the glass, which Bret was oblivious to because he was also sipping water and doing it with his eyes closed for some reason. "It has to do with magical girls. And one of us becoming one."

"Yeah, no shit, you already told me Bret's a magical girl."

"No, I mean... another one of us. Both of us, now, we're magical girls."

"Oh." Dave squinted at Jemaine's hand, and sure enough, there was one of those rings just like Bret had. "Well, fuck, man."

Jemaine, sensing how much the mood had immediately soured, tried weakly to steer it back to cheerful. "It's not so bad. Better than I thought it would be. I like my costume."

Dave didn't say anything to that. He didn't know what to say. So two of his friends had basically thrown their lives away? After all the bullshit advice he made up on the spot to impress them, this was the time they decided not to listen. The one time he actually had a real, serious warning, and they ignored it. Well, shit. What could you say to that?

Instead of responding, he chugged his own drink (not water) and let his gaze stray around the bar. There were people dancing, a couple hot chicks, but none that got him too excited. He thought he spotted Murray in a corner trying to chat up a couple guys in suits, but the suits didn't look interested in whatever he was saying. People had been singing along when Jemaine and Bret got up there and played their lame nerd-ass songs, but nobody was approaching them now. That was weird. Didn't there used to be someone who was always on their dicks?

"What happened to that psycho chick, anyway?" he muttered. "The one who wants to fuck you guys so bad it makes her look stupid."

Jemaine and Bret exchanged a glance, their faces jarringly solemn. Bret looked more pensive, while Jemaine seemed resigned. Now it was Dave's turn to realize he'd asked the wrong question. But, to their credit, they answered him anyway.

"Mel's not around anymore," said Jemaine.

Bret sighed, staring down into the cup of water in his hands. "She turned into a witch and we had to kill her."

Jemaine turned to Bret with as much incredulity as Dave did. Both said "What?" almost in unison, though with Jemaine's much flatter delivery you'd never know he was equally taken aback.

"You didn't mention she became a witch," said Jemaine.

"Didn't I?"

"No, you didn't. When did that happen?"

"Oh, sorry, I thought I mentioned it. It was the time Murray died."

"What?"

"Murray fucking died?" Dave interjected. "But he's standing right over there."

"Yeah, but then-- you know, your wish, Jemaine..." Bret gestured vaguely, cheeks colouring with embarrassment as he realized how poorly he was explaining himself. He really thought he'd been over this, but obviously it had slipped his mind. "Anyway, he is alive now, but Mel's not because she became a witch."

"I don't believe this," Jemaine muttered.

"Sorry, man, I just--"

"Not you," he clarified. "Kyubey. It didn't say anything about people turning into witches. We might have wanted to know that before making contracts with it."

"See, that's why-- I fucking told you New Guinea morons not to be magical girls!" Dave snapped, slamming his glass down on the bar. The drinks had gone to his head a little, and he knew he wasn't being cool and he'd regret blowing up like this later, but fuck, he was pretty sure he was allowed to be mad about this right now. "Rule number one of making a deal, you wanna know shit about what you're getting into. That means you ask questions before giving anything up, because if you get scammed, nobody's gonna give you a refund."

"...Sorry, Dave."

"We're from New Zealand. But yeah, sorry, Dave."

"Yeah, whatever." He took one last swig of his drink even though it tasted like shit now. "Just don't die, okay? And if you do, don't say I didn't warn you."

On the nights they didn't have gigs, they fought witches, which was only a slightly bigger change of pace than the gigs.

Bret ran through a twisting Parisian street, occasionally shooting at the witch towering above him. The familiars, fancy woman-shaped dolls dressed up in scarves and berets, had Jemaine surrounded. They were speaking in some garbled language he couldn't understand. It made his head ache. He beat them back with a nunchuck in each hand, one wood and one metal.

The ground shook as one of the witch's giant metal legs came crashing down inches from where Bret had been a moment ago. The witch was dressed the same as its familiars, but instead of a doll body it had the body of a full-size eiffel tower. Bret, tired of running, ducked into the closest building that had a working door-- a library. He ducked between two bookshelves, where he hid until the thundering steps from outside faded away and he could relax with the knowledge that the witch had passed him by.

<Jemaine,> he called out telepathically. <Where are you? I'm in a library.>

It took a moment for Jemaine to respond, and Bret briefly wondered if his friend might have been hurt or worse. But luckily his response came through eventually. <I think I'm in a dance hall. Are you sure you're in the same labyrinth as me?>

<Pretty sure,> Bret replied. He stepped out of his library shelter and looked across the ravaged street. Through a window on the opposite side of the street, he could see Jemaine standing in a discotheque with his back turned, one hand on his hip and the other near his ear like he was making a phone call. Bret's lips quirked in amusement. <Yeah, I can see you from here. Turn around.>

It was bad timing, however, as just then the witch turned around and came charging down the road at Bret again. He ducked inside another building, this time a swimming pool, just as Jemaine turned around.

<I don't see you,> Jemaine said with a frown. <Are you messing with me?>

<I'm not messing with you.>

Bret just rolled his eyes without responding to that remark and lined up a shot through a window. He wanted to see if he could knock the beret right off that witch's head.

They'd been in this city-themed labyrinth for what felt like hours now and hadn't found the witch. Neon signs pulsed, the buildings seemed to press in tighter every minute, and a periodically shifting landscape kept them running back and forth across the same streets with no sense of direction. Bret fired arrows wildly into the air, while Jemaine slumped against a cold concrete wall to catch his breath.

There was a shifting sound, and they turned in unison to see a familiar shuffling toward them. It was a humanoid figure dressed like a store clerk, but its body was cobbled together out of muesli. Jemaine cocked an eyebrow at it. His stomach grumbled despite himself-- he hadn't eaten yet-- and Bret gave him an incredulous look.

"What?" he said defensively. "Witches eat humans. Maybe we could start eating their familiars. Even things out a little."

Bret just shook his head. He drew back an arrow and fired it off, but it sailed right through the familiar and didn't even slow it down. Jemaine glanced behind them to see a second one coming up a hill. He tightened his grip on his own weapon and stood behind Bret facing the opposite way so their backs were almost touching.

"What are you doing that for?" Bret asked.

"It's a cool pose," Jemaine explained. "We're like a battle couple."

"We're not a couple."

"I know, that's why I said 'like'. We're just a couple of... battlers."

Bret shrugged. "Alright. Whatever, man."

While Bret's arrows proved ineffective against the familiars, a few whacks from Jemaine's nunchucks made them crumble away. Soon Bret ducked out of the battle altogether and sat down on a fire escape to watch while Jemaine finished them off. Jemaine wasn't pleased with that. He was about to hassle Bret about abandoning him when he felt something shift underfoot.

"Augh, what's that?"

"What's what?" Bret asked, but then he felt it too a moment later. The streets were moving again-- but not just moving. The pavement was contracting and expanding like a beating heart. "Oh, wow. That's freaky."

There was a theory forming in his mind, and he motioned for Jemaine to move out of the way so he could test it. Jemaine didn't need any prompting to take several steps back when he saw Bret lining up a shot. His confidence in his friend's skills had improved drastically since they started fighting together, but he still wasn't keen on taking risks.

Bret fired straight down, and a thick oily substance spurted up from the crack that his arrow split in the pavement. The ground shook and they heard a bellowing sound from below. Jemaine stumbled, momentarily losing his footing, while Bret smirked at the confirmation of his suspicion: the witch had been right under their feet all along.

While Bret leapt from rocky crag to rocky crag dodging crashing waves and picking off familiars, Jemaine grappled with a witch in the form of a giant mutated seagull. After a lot of hard work and struggle he'd managed to get up on its back and now he had his nunchucks around its throat, strangling it. Things were looking good until Jemaine felt a sudden chill and looked up to see a piano falling at him from the sky.

"Bret," he yelped, jerking back and letting go of the witch in shock. Now free, it shook him off and took to the sky again with a flap of its wings and a screech. "There's a piano...!"

Bret either didn't hear him over the crash of the waves or ignored him. He just kept studiously shooting down the feathery hands that periodically shot up from the water. Now that the witch was free it took a dive for him too, but he scared it away with a couple arrows that missed by a wide margin but made for good warning shots.

The piano was too big to dodge in time, so Jemaine raised his nunchucks to block it. The corner of the piano balanced precariously on the slim metal chain between the two wooden sticks, which groaned and threatened to buckle under the weight.

<Bret,> Jemaine called with more insistence, using telepathy this time despite his misgivings about the mode of communication. <I could use a little help.>

Bret paused, lowering his bow, and looked over. "What is it?"

"This piano is going to crush me," Jemaine explained tersely. His arms and legs were already wobbling from having to keep it balanced above his head, and something deeper in his core ached from the concentrated magic power required to keep his nunchucks intact while committing this implausible feat. "You need to move it out of the way."

"Ohh, yeah," Bret said, nodding. "Yeah, I can do that, hold on."

He raised a hand, which glowed the colour of his magic, and the same glow spread to the piano as it gently lifted into the air. As soon as the weight vanished from Jemaine's arms, he wasted no time getting well out from under the piano.

"You could've done that sooner," Jemaine remarked as he jumped up on a rocky ledge to join Bret.

"I was busy."

"I almost died. Would you have been busy then?"

Bret shrugged, unbothered, because he hadn't been paying attention and thought Jemaine was exaggerating. One corner of his mouth pulled up in a smirk. "I guess I'd be busy finding a replacement roommate."

Jemaine grumbled about how impossible it was to work with Bret as the two of them worked in tandem to bring down the witch. He caught the witch's leg in his nunchucks, Bret shot a few arrows through each of its wings to bring it down, and it was finished in less than a minute.

Jemaine couldn't get used to the sensation of sleeping in jewelry, so he took to keeping his soul gem on the nightstand beside his glasses overnight. One evening when they were getting ready for bed, he was struck with an odd sort of ticklish sensation and looked over to see Bret sitting up in bed inspecting his soul gem.

"What are you doing with that, Bret?"

"Oh, I was just trying to figure out the shape of your soul gem," Bret said. "Like how mine's an animal. I can never tell its shape when you're transformed because it's stuck inside that flower. The petals get in the way."

"Does it matter?"

He shrugged. "It's interesting. Says something about a person, I think."

Jemaine sat down on the edge of his own bed and leaned forward, cupping his chin in his hand. It wasn't something he paid attention to himself, but that assertion had him curious. "Oh yeah? What's Murray's, then?"

Bret pursed his lips, rocking back and forth in his cross-legged position. "A pen or pencil, I think. It's got that, you know, sort of shape..."

He indicated the shape he meant by gesturing with his hands.

"Are you sure that's not a phallic symbol?" Jemaine asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Mm..." Bret narrowed his eyes, lips screwing to the side, and shook his head. "No, I don't think it's that."

"Right, I guess it wouldn't be. I don't know if Murray even has a dick."

"He has one."

"Oh yeah?" Jemaine challenged. "Have you seen it?"

Bret gave him an odd look. "No. Have you?"

"No, but with the way you ran up and hugged him that time, I thought maybe there was something you weren't telling me."

Bret rolled his eyes. He couldn't believe Jemaine was still hung up on that. Rather than dignify that comment with a response, he flopped over onto his back and resumed inspecting the soul gem and the little symbol on top. Out of nowhere it hit him.

"Oh, I know. It's a pair of lips."

"...Pardon?"

"Your soul gem," he explained, holding it out for Jemaine to see. "It's shaped like a pair of lips. Your lips, I'd imagine."

"Aw, is that really it?" Jemaine looked skeptical and vaguely disappointed as Bret handed the soul gem over to him. He transformed in a flash of light, then plucked the gem out of his flower accessory and examined it. In that form it was much easier to tell... and yes, it looked like Bret was right. "That's probably because I kiss so many people," he said unconvincingly. "Especially women. Entirely women, actually."

"Or it could be because you've got a big mouth," Bret suggested with a smirk.

Jemaine scoffed and gave Bret a gentle shove. It was supposed to be gentle, anyway. He forgot he had the strength of a magical girl now. Bret went rolling off the bed, and upon climbing back up, transformed into his magical girl costume just to shove Jemaine back.

It quickly escalated into a lighthearted war, the two both ending up on Bret's bed rolling around and pushing each other. Jemaine won out in the end. He was the physically stronger of the two, and not even Bret's fancy agility would let him wriggle out from under a pair of large hands that had each of his arms firmly pinned down. Jemaine panted to catch his breath, a sheen of sweat coating his brow as he stared down into Bret's wide eyes...

Bret let out a startled yelp at the sound of their bedroom door swinging open. He drew his legs up and threw his arms around himself like he was naked despite being fully clothed. The reaction made Jemaine jump too as the way the situation looked caught up to him. Kyubey stood calmly in the doorway, staring at them.

"Agh! Did you see all that just now? That wasn't... we weren't..."

<I was under no false pretenses about your activities,> Kyubey replied levelly. <As a species driven by calculations rather than emotion, I do not make unreasonable assumptions as humans often do.>

"Even if we had been doing anything," Jemaine said against his best interests, "Bret's a magical girl, so..."

"No, I'm a magical man," Bret corrected him. "You're a magical girl."

"Yes, either way it's like one of us is a girl, sort of... like we're both girls, really... so if we were to do anything, it wouldn't be gay," Jemaine flawlessly concluded his thought. "Not that we were. But if we did."

Kyubey found that logic deeply questionable, as it did with the complexities of many human emotions, but said nothing as it glanced back and forth between the musicians. Bret had shuffled to one end of his bed and was sitting hunched over, staring at the floor. Jemaine was at the opposite end of the bed but had yet to retreat to his own, in a simulacrum of a casual pose but with his neck twisted at an uncomfortable angle so he could look as far away from Bret as possible. Both their faces had turned a deep red.

"Kyubey," Bret said slowly, "Could you please leave the room? I'd like to talk with Jemaine alone for a bit."

That got Jemaine's attention. He looked back at Bret, blinking in surprise. "You... you would?"

His eyes asked more questions than he was willing to voice aloud, and Bret gave him a shy smile and dip of his head that answered them. Kyubey nodded its assent and politely trotted out of the room. Of course it could still listen in on them from any distance, but they didn't need to know that.

And whatever happened once that door was closed was confidential business that could only be disclosed in a private magical girl meeting.

[Part 5]

#hey did you know that i write stuff sometimes?#a bit of a lighter one this time before things get sad in the next and final couple installments

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ranvwoop · 3 years

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re: the tags on my last post, because I want to talk about it actually and don't have anyone to talk about it to atm, I've prrrobably eaten the same meal about 4/7 days a week every week for the last six years of my life just because that's when I earliest remember the routine my memory sucks. and like it! it is french fries. I like fries. there are other things I will eat. sometimes I have things on the side. and other specific meals when we have to have proper meals. but. epic samefood routine moments am I right gamers. to the dismay of literally everyone around me I adore being neurodivergent actually and have no desire to learn how to eat normal people meals, and I also enjoy talking about being neurodivergent :]

[pls don't rb]

#vwoop.noises #my family hates me because of all of the Specific Meals i need prepared bc everything must meet strict criteria. as plain as possible.#and just forget eating at a restaurant.#usually most places let you order fries tho i have a fry hierarchy. a friarchy if you will #and if theyre seasoned forget it. except this one place but i spend half the meal being eeeehhhh abt it.#this uh. this does mean im probably severely deficient in many things. because i have a thing where i cant take pills #so no supplements #i eat my mandated vegetable meal along with some fruit n hope its enough #(i havent died yet so)#also i just say im nd because i cant get a diagnosis! though im 99% sure im autistic! becuase. My Entire Life. i was just the kind that-#does decent in school so nobody went wait. that's one funny kid. they were just alright cool whatever #this kinda feels like it deserves a cw because i dont want to inspire anyone else to eat worse I guess but i dont know what it would be #i put the no rb disclaimer for this is literally just personal anecdote and also by the time i thought of it id already written all these #tags. you cant reorder em on mobile.#wait bonus points because if im eating a proper meal it probably has potato because thats also my favourite vegetable.#my internal makeup is 80% potato.

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thewayshedreamed · 3 years

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Nessian prompt:

We’re playing truth or dare and I just got dared to sit on your lap for the next two rounds but now I’m sitting on your hard-on and I’m kinda getting turned on cuz the ✨positioning✨. We’re both tryna fix the situation without drawing attention to us but the fidgeting definitely isn’t helping 👀

Thanks for the prompt, Bby! I know you sent it as part of my follower celebration, but it worked so well for @nessianweek Day 4: Rivalry that I couldn't pass it up.

Enjoy!

Warnings for strong language and mature themes. Slightly nsfw.

Nesta didn't know the last time she played Truth or Dare. She thought those days had left her at some point during undergrad, but apparently not. There she was, her last semester of graduate school, somewhat invested in a round of the game. The group had been playing for almost an hour, the drinks they poured becoming more and more stout as the night went on.

Gwyn and Emerie had convinced her to join them for a night out with the others, and to be fair, it had been quite some time since she'd allowed herself a carefree night out. Her sisters and Mor were there, as well as Rhys, Azriel, Cassian, and Lucien. Amren mentioned she would "see how things went", which meant she and Varian were staying in to fulfill their own agenda. There was no doubt that was for the best since their activities would likely scar them all.

It was Mor's turn, and her mischievous smile turned on her girlfriend. "Truth or Dare, Em?"

Emerie considered it for a moment, making a show of staring at the ceiling. One of the guys made a sound similar to a ticking clock, but she paid them no mind.

"Truth."

"Okay," Mor drawled, taking a long sip of wine. "Fuck, Marry, Kill; for Rhys, Azriel, Cassian."

Emerie's eyes grew wide, snapping to Feyre and back to Mor. Nesta dared to chuckle at her friend's tight position, earning a pointed glare reserved for the worst of traitors.

"Don't hesitate on my account," Feyre giggled, resting her head on Rhys' shoulder. "I'm curious."

"That's not a fair one!" Emerie argued, gesturing with her hands. "The answer is none of the above, on all counts. For more than one reason."

The three men had the audacity to look miffed at her rejection, even though none of them had any interest in Emerie. They'd all known each other too long for any blurred lines. Mor leaned heavily against her, a look of apology in her rounded, brown eyes.

"Fair enough," she conceded, pressing a kiss to Emerie's cheek.

"That's not how it works!" Cassian challenged. It was unclear whether his ego or strict principles motivated his outburst.

Nesta fought the urge to roll her eyes, to rise to the challenge in his voice like she usually did. But Emerie was her friend, and she wasn't going to take him pushing her lying down. The words left her with more snark than usual.

"Oh, would you come off it?"

His eyes snapped in her direction, locking in on her face like a predator circling prey. "Let me guess. You have an opinion."

Nesta's blood boiled, despite the fact that she told herself Cassian wouldn't get under her skin the next time they were around each other. She was 0 for... hundreds at that point.

"She answered it truthfully, so I don't see the problem."

"It's the way the question was framed, though. It's a game within the question. There were three options. 'None of the above' wasn't one of them."

Nesta loosened the reins on her eye rolling. Cassian was good for that. "No one made that rule."

"Sweetheart, the rules are pretty clear. But if you want to make sure they stay nice and loose so you can back out later, I get that."

Emerie cleared her throat, eager to redirect his challenge before the two of them escalated. "Show us how it's done, then. Truth or Dare, Cassian?"

His attention lingered on Nesta a moment longer, a familiar glint in his eyes. Her blood heated for an entirely different reason, and she was sure to berate it for doing so.

"Dare."

"I dare you to kiss Azriel," she said, grinning around the rim of her glass. "On the mouth."

Azriel pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger, resigned to his fate. He knew Cassian better than anyone, and it was only a matter of time.

Without hesitation, Cassian said, "Oh, done. Tongue?"

A chorus of laughter drowned out Azriel incredulous curse in Cassian's direction. When she finally recovered, Emerie took mercy on Azriel and excused any tongue. Cassian didn't hesitate to lean toward Azriel, cupping him roughly by the back of the neck and planting a full kiss to his mouth. There were catcalls all around; not at all needed in the encouragement department.

Azriel turned his attention to Feyre, fully succumbing to his soft spot for her and letting her off on the easiest Truth ever. It was something to do with who she would most like to draw or paint of the lot of them, excluding Rhys. No surprises on her choice of Azriel himself, but to his credit, he didn’t preen at the compliment. He humbly nodded as if anyone alive wouldn’t want to catch those angles on canvas.

“Nesta,” Feyre called, interrupting another quip she had been prepared to launch Cassian’s way. She couldn’t remember why. “Truth or Dare?”

She took a long pull of her drink and licked her bottom lip. “Dare.”

“Hmm,” Feyre considered, and Nesta had to admit to being slightly terrified of how diabolical sibling could be in a game such as the one she played. It didn’t take long for her to realize she’d been right to feel that way. “I think you two need to learn to get along. I dare you to sit on Cass' lap. Minimum of two full turns.”

Nesta’s nostrils flared. Cassian’s red hot challenge bore a hole into the side of her head, and all she could hear was his taunt from before.

Sweetheart, the rules are pretty clear. But if you want to make sure they stay nice and loose so you can back out later, I get that.

She snapped her attention to his face, suppressing the urge to throttle him for the narrow-eyed smirk he offered. Angling his large body backward, he draped a muscled arm across the back of the couch and eased his thighs open. Cassian wouldn't be the one to back down, she realized.

"Fine." Nesta threw back the rest of her drink and set it roughly on the nearby table.

Cassian's eyes were sparkling, his smile feline. He tapped his thigh with his free hand to goad her, and she wondered if he— if they— would ever tire of the constant challenges. Nesta sauntered over and dropped heavily into the center of his lap, earning a loud oof.

"Fuck, Sweetheart," he fussed, gripped her waist in his large hands to rearrange their position.

The heat of his hands, the scrape of his calluses; they came together to monopolize her focus. She was almost sure that others were amused by their display, but her world was singularly focused.

Cassian cleared his throat while he eased her into a position that better balanced her weight. The tension eased from her thighs as she settled, only for him to shift her again. Nesta let out an exaggerated sigh at his constant fidgeting. The only silver lining to the near motion sickness she'd no doubt endure as a result was the steadiness of his grip against her.

The reason for all his maneuvering revealed itself seconds later. Nesta had been initially impressed with the muscle tone in his thighs, how firm the muscles felt beneath her. They were nothing in comparison to the very obvious hardness pressing against the swell of her ass.

Animated conversation continued around them, and Nesta took the opportunity to turn and offer an accusatory glare. He hissed against the pressure of her movement, sending her eyebrows into her hairline.

"Are you really h—"

"Shh!" Cassian ordered, clamping a hand over her mouth. "Can you not announce that shit to the entire room?"

Nesta blinked incredulously and dragged her tongue against his palm. He grimaced, rubbing his palm against his jeans as if she'd poured acid onto his skin.

"It's not my fault you can't... control that," she hissed.

"Well, shit, Nesta. When's the last time you had a beautiful woman on your lap and had to keep your boner in check?" His whisper was low, frantic. There were words that latched onto her nerves and left goosebumps in their wake, even when she barely heard them.

"It's only two turns," she managed, swallowing against the dryness in her throat. "Then, it'll be a non-issue."

Cassian's hands clung to her hips once more, the delicious grip of them even firmer than before. "You can't get up now; not in front of them." He gestured with a jerk of his chin to the rest of the room. "They're savages."

A laugh bubbled out of Nesta's chest, and surprisingly, it was more due to the unlikely alliance forged by biology than her pleasure in his panic. The irony wasn't lost on her, but she didn't get to dwell on it for long before Cassian started strategizing.

"We're supposed to get along, right?" He paused, waiting for the excessive noise level to settle around them. Someone must have performed a solid dare, and Nesta was mildly concerned that it hadn't managed to be a blip on their radar. "You're gonna have to keep fighting with me."

A smirk tugged at the corner of her mouth. "To be clear, you want me to argue with you so that we can hide this?" She rocked back into him for emphasis, and a pained sound left him. Nesta was grateful for the small silver lining that was her private arousal, otherwise she and Cassian would be in the same boat. The way his eyelids fluttered didn't help.

"I'm asking your for a small favor. When I get my shit together, you're free to go. I'm not exactly happy about it either."

Another smile teased her lips. "Small?"

"Mother's tits. Just turned around."

Nesta complied, if for no other reason than to hide the chuckle she'd been trying to choke down throughout the conversation. They engaged with the others as nonchalantly as possible, ignoring each other completely until opportunities arose to take opposing stances on anything at all. The rules of the game. Who brought the best drinks. If someone had successfully completed their dare or answered their question. Cassian had been correct in assuming the group would advocate for their continued canoodling since they weren't yet cooperating with one another.

"Nesta," he almost growled, sometime after a dozen turns of their faux discord. "This isn't helping."

She whipped around, noting the pained expression on his face. "Wait, is this working for you?"

Cassian squeezed his temples between his thumb and middle finger, looking as if he was in as much disbelief as her. The tragic part was that the arguing hadn't curbed her own body's reactions to him, either.

"That's what it looks like."

Nesta didn't cage it then, the full and melodic laughter that shook her shoulders and made her eyes water. He continued bracing his head in his hand while she delighted in his torture.

"That's awfully kinky of you."

"Alright, enough out of you," he grumbled, situating her for the hundredth time. "You have any better ideas?"

Tears pooled in her eyes, and she flicked them away. "I guess your only choice is to wait until the game ends, or someone causes enough commotion for you to adjust and take a break for a few minutes."

Cassian huffed, clearly unimpressed with her tactics.

"You'll just have to trust me, of all people, to keep your secret in the meantime," she stated, turning her attention back to the room.

His only response was a muttered curse before she felt his forehead drop between her shoulder blades.

#nessian #nessian au #nessianweek2021 #nessian week day 4 #day 4: rivalry #nesta x cassian #twsd writes #twsd fics #800 followers celebration

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thefanficmonster · 3 years

Text

Few Too Many

Corpse Husband x Reader (Female)

Warnings: Swearing, In-game violence and death, Suggestive comments

Genre: Protective fluff, Humor, RPF (Real Person Fic)

Summary: Jealousy is a dangerous thing, especially when the jealous person is armed with a gun....in a game of Counter Strike. At least Y/N’s friend will now know not to mess around and flirt with her, especially not with Corpse around.

Requested by 🐐 Anon. Hi dear! Thank you so much for your request! Sorry it’s taken me so long to complete and post your request but here it finally is! I didn’t want to make it IRL violence to avoid triggering anyone while I also felt it’d be very ooc for Corpse to beat someone up but I still hope you enjoy the fic if you come across it and read it! Love, Vy ❤

“Hey everyone!“ Y/N greets her squad as they all customize their characters while I sit there, observing and unknowing of what I’m supposed to do. “I invited Corpse to play with us today, hope y’all don’t mind.”

“Of course not! Nice to finally meet you, Corpse. We’ve heard a ton about you from Y/N, thanks for making our girl the happiest she’s ever been.“ One of her friends says, the tone of his voice suggesting he’s only half-joking with the dad like comment he made.

“Nice to meet you too, man. Glad I’m the one she gave the chance of making her happy. That’s all I ever wanna do.“ Though it may sound cheesy, as guys, her friends can probably read into how genuinely I mean what I’ve said.

Dating a girl with only guy friends has it’s pros and cons. Which outweigh which is still up for debate since I’m still researching, but so far so good in my opinion. This is the first time I’m interacting with them directly so I’ve still got a long way to go in terms of getting to know them and the details of their relationship with Y/N better. Regardless, I at least know they can easily understand me and put themselves in my shoes if I ever ‘mess things up’ with Y/N and she goes to complain to them - something that will most likely never happen. I’d never dare make this girl upset. Chances are, if I do, her friends won’t get to me on time - I would deliver my own punishment just the way I think I deserve it. However, there’s also the chance of them getting super protective of her and ganging up on me over something as small as a fight. By the many things and stories Y/N’s shared with me about them, I believe they wouldn’t think twice about kicking someone’s ass for her. They’re not massive dudes - I’ve seen pictures of them - but I for one don’t ever wanna see em angry.

“Ay bro, what’d you do to score our best girl? You must know what she likes. If so please, by all means, do tell.“ One of them, not the one who was previously talking, speaks up, his words making me furrow my brows in both confusion and irritation.

I open my mouth to complain as I slowly start cracking my knuckles when Y/N and her friends beat me to it. Thing is, Y/N’s friend group consists of three guys and her and yet four voices scolded the guy that made that suggestive comment. That being said, this guy probably isn’t considered to be one of her friends, at least not one that’s a permanent part of her friend group.

“Seth, cut it out!“ The guy I was previously speaking to says sharply before softening his tone to refer to me, “Sorry about my brother, excuse his lack of brain cells, please.“

Just then, I also receive a message from someone. Checking my phone, turns out it’s Y/N who by the way is currently in the living room while I’m in the recording room. Her text reads:

Y/N ~ Ignore Seth. I told Leo to not invite him but he’s still here somehow

I send her back a quick reassuring text before answering the guy I now know is named Leo, “No worries, it’s fine.”

“See? The guy can take a joke, you’re all just freaking out over nothing!“ Seth laughs, reminding me and the others of how loud he is compared to us.

Despite acting like it’s no big deal, I can’t help but admit to myself that this behavior of Seth’s has awoken a deeply buried suspicion of mine that’s not only mine but also arises in every guy whose girlfriend hangs out with a lot of guys. It’s not that I don’t trust Y/N - she could literally blindfold me and tell me to walk through a pool of lava, promising it wouldn’t hurt and I’d do it - but we all know about that saying that every guy in a group with one girl has liked said girl at least once.

Disturbing to think these four, including Seth five, dudes could’ve possibly been my competition at some point. It’s nice that they’re all super chill about it, mostly cause some of them have girlfriends as I was told.

Nevertheless, we get over that hiccup and carry on with the small talk and preparations for the game. Since it’s my first time playing CSGO, Y/N, Leo and her other friend Clancy explain the mechanics to me in detail to avoid me getting confused mid-game and getting myself killed. When they finish, we start the round and wait for the game’s algorithm to separate us into two teams which Y/N jokingly refers to as cops and robbers. Unfortunately, the end result of that separation ends up being me getting put in the terrorists’ force with Leo and Clancy while Y/N’s with the FBI, partnered with Seth and her other friend Evan.

“Alright, team, we shall now disperse. Corpse, remember, if you see more than one of them, radio in and lay low, we’ll be with you as soon as possible.“ Leo informs me as he runs off in one direction, Clancy going in the opposite. I confirm I understand and go along my way too, heading for this ancient looking structure that looks like it could belong in an old-timey movie.

Walking in, I realize the place is way bigger than it appeared on the outside. A quick look up confirms that there are three fucking floors above, not to mention that the ground floor is huge. Luckily, there are many crates and barrels to hide behind if I come across an FBI agent. I sure as hell hope it’s Y/N, I could maybe even try talking her into giving me a second chance at life and pretend she never saw me. Come to think of it though, I’d probably prefer getting killed by her rather than her friends - especially Seth.

Given that we’re in a Discord call, I can hear all the conversation going on. They are all quiet though, I can just periodically hear the mumbles of someone muttering to themselves as they navigate the map cautiously out of fear of running into their opponent unprepared. The silence is put to an end though when Seth speaks up, addressing Y/N.

“Yo, your boyfriend’s with the terrorists, ain’t he? That’s like the universe giving you a sign that y’all shouldn’t be together.“ The fucker laughs at his own joke while I can literally hear Y/N rolling her eyes.

“Have you heard of Romeo and Juliet, Seth?“ She asks sarcastically, almost getting a chuckle out of me but I suppress it to avoid getting caught listening in.

“Yeah, they both die at the end. Fucking boooriiinngg.“ Just then, I spot two silhouettes entering the building. Aiming my gun at them reveals their names - just the people I’m currently involuntarily eavesdropping on. Seth and Y/N don’t notice me though so I quickly duck behind a crate and prepare to radio in when Seth continues verbally torturing Y/N and dancing on my last nerves, “I personally think the friends-to-lovers trope is far more interesting...“

Did this guy just- no, he’s gotta be fucking kidding me

I’m left with my jaw hanging in disbelief at this guy’s audacity. I have no doubt Y/N’s about to put him in his place herself but I just gotta have my own chat with this guy. And by ‘chat’ I mean I mindlessly rush out from behind the crate towards where I saw him and Y/N and open fire on him. I hear his startled and upset screams with Y/N’s laughter in the background. She doesn’t try to stop me as a teammate of his should and would, instead she just observes the scene unfold, laughing her ass off.

“Yo man what the fuck was that for?!“ I hear Seth’s yell but only faintly since the sound of gunshots is still echoing through my headphones. Yeah, I’m not done shooting this fucker.

“Corpse...Corpse, buddy...“ Y/N manages through fits of laughter she cannot tame, “That’s a few too many bullets, he’s already dead.”

“And that was a few too many comments for him to be let off the hook.” I answer as sharply as I can with the new-formed smile on my face. What can I say, her happiness is contagious.

“Well, you got your first kill in CSGO. Good job, babe! I’m super proud of you!” She cheers for me, clapping her hands excitedly.

“Nah that was my first overkill.“ I quickly add, with a more threatening tone: “And it won’t be my last.”

“Let’s just hope there aren’t few too many of these overkills either.“ She snickers.

“That doesn’t depend on me, babe.“ I say smugly, suggestively enough for Seth to pick up the dropped hint. Mother fucker’s officially been put in his place and I couldn’t possibly be happier - with the added bonus of getting a ton of laughter out of Y/N who also decides to walk away, leaving me unharmed but promising to shoot to kill next time she sees me.

I’m ok with that. She could kill me anyday.

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smells-like-mettaton · 3 years

Link

Rating: T (for inherent neutral ending angst)

Summary: Toriel's old house feels like a mausoleum. She will gladly ignore chisp crumbs and lumpy mattresses for a place that feels more like home. (Queen Toriel ending fic for Soriel Week 2021.)

Word Count: 5211

XXX

The bedroom was exactly how she left it. Her bed pushed up against the gray wall. A book about snails on the wooden desk. A knit sweater with the embroidered words "Mrs. Mom Lady" in the wardrobe.

Even after all this time, she could barely look at it without her soul splitting in two.

She'd known this wouldn't be easy. She hadn't seen this house in over a century. Still, she wasn't prepared for how Asgore had sealed up her old room like a tomb, a photograph of the day that everything went terribly, horribly wrong.

At least the last child was safe. They should not have had to take a life to save their own, but she doubted Asgore had given them a choice. Her own soul felt more numb than anything. To her, Asgore had died a century ago.

What was done, was done. And as usual, she was too late to do anything but sweep up the dust.

She backed through the doorframe, shutting the door with a quiet click. She would have to return eventually, but for now, she yearned for a place with fewer painful memories.

"Hey, Your Majesty." A voice startled her as she attempted to escape the foyer. Luckily it was a voice she would always recognize.

"Hello, old friend." She turned and smiled at the monster leaning against the stair railing.

He was smaller than she expected, with that deep voice. Not that that was a bad thing. As for him being a skeleton, that had been apparent from the abundance of bone puns.

"You know the formality is unnecessary," she told him softly.

"Is it?" He shuffled from foot to slippered foot.

In all her time of joking with him through the door, she had never expected him to be so cute.

"Didn't want to assume, old lady."

He winked, and she felt a weight lift from her chest. At least one monster would still treat her like a person, and not like a mythical figure returned to save them.

"Toriel," she introduced herself for the first time. He had to have heard already, but between rushing to the palace, scattering Asgore's dust, comforting their—her people… she hadn't had time to seek out her friend.

He seemed to feel comfortable walking right into her home, though. Did he ever visit Asgore when he was here? Her friend seemed like the type of monster who went wherever he felt like, and Asgore, for all his flaws, had never turned a monster away from his home.

"Sans." He held out a bony hand. "Sans the skeleton."

"Nice to meet you, Sans," she tested out the name and clasped his hand with her paw.

A loud pthbbbbbt echoed through the empty hall. Her eyes widened.

"Wow, Toriel. That's, uh, some way to make an introduction." He winked.

She squinted down at the inflatable object in his hand, the source of the farting noise. Then she pretended to ignore it.

"It certainly is. I was not aware that skeletons were capable of flatulence."

His eyelights gutted for a moment before he burst out laughing.

"Your jokes are even better in person," he said once he composed himself.

His laugh set her soul fluttering. In all their conversations through the door, he'd never laughed like that. Maybe she should have tried fart jokes sooner.

"I am always happy to tickle your funny bone." She smiled, and his face tinged blue.

"Happy to be tickled. But, uh. I guess that's not all I'm here for?"

Her breath caught in her lungs. Of course he would not visit without a reason.

"I suppose not. Would you like to have a seat?"

"It's nothing that serious," he assured her quickly. "I just thought you'd want an update on the kid."

"You've spoken with them? They are still here?" She tried to keep the hysteria from her voice.

How could they have taken Asgore’s soul and not returned home? Had the Barrier proven too powerful?

"No—geez, I'm making this sound worse." He ran a bony palm down his face. "They’re definitely gone. Papyrus tried to call them nonstop. Besides that, you know the big stuff. The king's dead."

Her lips drew to a thin line, pulling tight across her fangs.

"I can hardly fault them for that."

"Right." He stuck his hands back in his pockets. "I gotta be honest. The way the kid looked when I last saw them… I don't think they did it."

Her brow furrowed. She was inclined to hope that the child had not chosen violence. They had been so sweet, so eager to talk and joke with the monsters of the Ruins, so quick to hug her even after she’d fought them. It was hard to imagine them striking down Asgore.

"But… then what do you think happened?"

Sans shrugged. "Wish I knew. I kept watch best I could, but…"

"I could not expect you to come between them and your king." As much as she wished he could have. She had hardly expected him to agree to watch over the human at all.

“Couldn’t have even if I wanted to. These bones aren’t as sturdy as they look. Maybe I shoulda listened to my bro and drank more milk...” He grimaced and glanced away. “Anyway. Like I said, I don’t know what happened. Just. Be careful, okay?”

“Careful?” She blinked.

“Yeah. You never know.” His gaze flickered to a potted golden flower on the end table next to the stairs.

“Sans. If I did not know better, that would sound like a threat.” She crouched down, so she could better meet his eyesockets. “Is there something you are trying to tell me?”

“Man. First I rip one in front of a lady, then I threaten her. I’m makin’ a great first impression.” He rocked back and forth on his slippers. “Look. Toriel. I don’t wanna scare you, ‘specially since today must’ve been hard. Real hard.”

His eyelights bored into her irises. She found herself needing to look away.

“It has certainly been… interesting. Moreso than any day since I last saw this place.” She suppressed a shudder.

Change. Her life had been constant for so long. There would be no more of that, now. Hopefully that would be for the better, but only time would tell.

“Yeah. Being flung away from everything you’re used to… don’t imagine that’s a cakewalk. Don’t want you to worry about freaks hiding in the shadows on top of that.”

Somehow, she felt he made more sense when he was on the other side of a door. Knock-knock jokes had a formula. Just another normalcy she had forfeited, she supposed.

“Please, Sans. If you believe I am in danger, you may say so.”

“Fine. So.” He grinned, and she couldn’t help a snort.

“Alright, I suppose I walked into that one.” She smiled, despite his warning. “Under normal circumstances, I would say I could handle myself. But I must admit you are more updated on the state of the kingdom than I. Do you have any information that could help?”

“...Not really?” His grin turned sheepish. “You look like a tough lady. I bet my bones are rattling over nothing.”

“I would still humer-us you.”

He gave her a funny look. “You’re actually taking me seriously?”

“Why would I not? You are my friend. Perhaps… my only friend, at this point,” she admitted. It would be foolish to ignore a warning, even if it was based on gut feeling. Or, whatever skeletons had in place of a gut.

“Well. Uh. If someone, something, was behind the king’s… yeah. If it wasn’t the kid, whoever else it was might still be around. So.” He coughed. “Sounds stupid when I say it like that, huh.”

“It does not. I think it is sweet that you are worried.” He wouldn’t be able to see her blush, thankfully. It had been a long time since anyone had looked out for her.

“Geez, Toriel.” He rubbed the back of his skull. “You’re gonna ruin my reputation.”

“What reputation? Are you typically a monster with a heart of bone?” she teased.

“Nah. I just don’t worry. Too much work.” It was difficult to tell if he was joking. “Guess I can make an exception this once, though.”

“Why, thank you, my friend.” She had the sudden urge to reach out and squeeze his hand. It would be more for her own comfort than his, so she did not act on it. “To be honest, your words are a relief. I do not mind the excuse to avoid this place.”

“Oh.” He sounded surprised. “You got somewhere else you’d rather be?”

She both did, and did not. How could she explain without sounding like a clinging child?

...Perhaps that was the wrong metaphor. She would have preferred her children to be a little clingier.

“‘Cause, uh, if you don’t mind a bit of mess… my door’s always open.”

She blinked at the offer. Had he felt the thoughts stirring in her soul?

She didn’t want to be alone. Not again. And she had told him the truth: there were unlikely to be any other monsters she knew still around. Perhaps Gerson; she and Asgore had always joked that he would outlive them.

That joke seemed awfully morbid now.

“Sorry. Was that too forward? Our friendship’s built off closed doors; guess we should just take 'em one at a—"

"No," she interjected too forcefully. “No. I would love to visit your home.”

Though she had never set foot there, she already suspected it would feel more like a home than this place.

“You really—? Great.” His skull tinged the faintest blue. “Just, uh, know that it’s nothing fancy.”

Toriel smiled. “‘Nothing fancy’ sounds wonderful at the moment.”

Perhaps wherever he lived would be out of the way enough that news of her return would be delayed. If she could be lucky enough to pass for an ordinary monster… well, that was likely too much to wish for. It certainly wasn’t becoming of a queen to hide from her subjects.

Stars, there was so much to get used to. So many formalities to reacquaint herself with. She hoped such things would wait until tomorrow.

Sans returned her smile.

“In that case, I know a shortcut.”

XXX

She handled the shortcut well for a first-timer. No stumbling on the other end, no complaints of nausea or dizziness. Of course, she was a Queen. A Boss Monster. Why would a magic trick ruin her composure?

Sans wanted to laugh. All this time, he'd been joking with the Queen. She didn't seem to mind, but she could just be “humerus”ing him.

...Nah. She had every excuse to ignore him if she really wanted to. Instead she'd actually taken him up on his offer.

He almost forgot to drop her hand once their feet landed in the soft snow. Heh. Who was he kidding? It was just nice to feel her fur under his fingers. To touch her, and know that she was real.

"Oh!" Her eyes lit up, reflecting the gyftmas lights strung haphazardly around the house's columns. "I remember this place!"

"You do?" Sans's browbone furrowed.

"I saw it while travelling from the Ruins to…" she trailed off. To stop the kid from fighting Asgore.

Sans felt stupid for not trying to stop them himself. Not that a kid that determined would’ve listened, anyway. Still… he’d believed in them. Hoped that by some miracle, they’d get ‘em out of this mess.

Heh. That was too much pressure to put on a kid, even a determined one.

"Yeah." He coughed quietly. "Guess we're hard to miss. Papyrus did something to the Gyftmas lights—even when the CORE lights go out for the night, ours stay on. Never figured out how he pulled that off."

Toriel laughed before seeming to realize something.

"I will get to meet your brother!" She clasped her hands together. "I wish it had not come about for such an unhappy reason, but I am excited nonetheless."

He chuckled. Her excitement was contagious. That was something she and Papyrus had in common already.

He pushed the door open, called out for his brother—and noticed the monster sprawled out on his couch.

"Oh." Sans blinked at Undyne, who was snoring so loudly, he should've heard it from outside. Guess he'd been a little distracted. "Uh. This is awkward."

"What is it?" Toriel hung back, her head ducking through the doorframe. "Is your brother sleeping? I would not wish to wake him. You said he rarely sleeps, did you not?"

"Nah, it's not him. Forgot his pal's house burned down. Actually, I'm sure you met her. Undyne? Captain of the Royal Guard?"

"I… yes, we met." Toriel edged inside, closing the door behind her with a soft click. "She looks far more peaceful now than she did this morning. From what I understand, my ex-husband was something of a father to her."

"Something like that." Sans nodded in agreement. There hadn't even been a Royal Guard until Asgore created the position for her. Sans wondered if Toriel would keep it around now that Asgore was gone.

Welp. It wouldn't hurt, what with his suspicions about Papyrus's friend "Flowery."

(Maybe Sans should let Toriel sleep on the top floor rather than the couch anyway. No dirt for stray flowers to get into up there.)

"Should we be staring?" Toriel said with a soft chuckle.

Sans shook his thoughts away. "Sorry. Just thinking. I, uh…"

There wasn't room on the top floor. Sans's lumpy, crumb-dusted mattress was out of the question. That left only Papyrus's bed, which while rarely in use, had too much sentimental value to give to Toriel without asking. Where was Papyrus, anyway?

"Undyne!" His brother practically kicked in the door. "I have returned with nutritious—oh!"

Papyrus's sockets blinked at Toriel. Then at Sans. Then at Toriel again.

(Undyne let out another loud snore.)

"Sans?” Papyrus dropped his groceries on the table next to the pet rock. “Why didn't you tell me we had another guest??"

Because he was an idiot who hadn't planned past one impulsive offer. His face went a little blue.

"I guest you would figure it out," he managed to joke.

Toriel let out a bleating laugh at that. The suddenness of it was enough to jolt Undyne awake.

"NGAHH!!" She tried to leap off the couch, but ended up rolling onto the floor. "I'm here, Asgore! I won't—oh."

Her single eye blinked up at Toriel.

"Papyrus?" Undyne hissed through her teeth. "Why didn't you tell me the Queen was coming??"

"Because I didn't know!" Papyrus replied brightly.

"I, uh, promise I'm usually more professional than this." Undyne summoned an energy spear and used it to push herself to her feet. The attack left a small char mark on the carpet. "I am at your service, Your Majesty."

Sans thought she looked real professional in a pair of Papyrus's MTT-brand crop top pajamas. Toriel didn't comment on that though, instead opting for a matronly smile.

"There is no need for that, Captain. I am not here on business, but as a friend."

That smile turned towards Sans, and he fought back a blush.

"Yeah. I was just gonna, uh, make some dinner. Y'know, welcome our queen back with some Snowdin hospitality."

"Dinner?" Papyrus squinted suspiciously. "You don't cook dinner. I cook dinner."

"First time for everything, right?" Sans winked to hide his embarrassment.

Of course Papyrus wouldn't buy his excuse. But he really didn't want his brother and Undyne worrying on top of Toriel. Granted, it was Undyne's job to worry about security threats… but she'd tear up the house's foundation if she thought an enemy might be hiding anywhere in a five-mile radius.

"Sans," Toriel chided him. "You do not owe me that."

"Wowie! You must be a great influence on him, Bald Asgore!"

Toriel blinked before bursting out laughing. Sans's grin widened.

"Her name is Toriel, bro."

"Of course!! Where are my manners?" Papyrus bustled past him to shake Toriel's paws. "I am the Great Papyrus! It's an honor to meet you, Queen Toriel!"

"The honor is mine. Sans has told me so much about you," she said, and Papyrus blushed pink.

"You? Know the new queen?" Undyne whispered to Sans while Papyrus and Toriel got acquainted.

"You know me. I know everyone." He winked.

"She came out of nowhere."

"Yeah. My bro and I know what that's like."

Undyne huffed, but Sans didn't offer a more thorough explanation.

Papyrus's affronted shout signalled that Toriel had dropped her first pun.

"I take it back! This is the worst day of my life!!"

Sans met Toriel's eyes, and they both laughed.

"I suppose I will have to help Sans in the kitchen as my pun-ishment," she said with a coy wink.

"Normally I would object to a guest cooking, but in this case I will make an exception!" Papyrus turned on his heel and grabbed Undyne's arm. "We will clean up the living room in the meantime! Try not to corrupt the queen any further, Sans!!"

"Wouldn't dream of it, bro."

He gave a quick wink to Toriel behind Papyrus's back, and they moved to the kitchen.

"Did I actually upset him…?" She asked once they were out of earshot.

"Nah. He's just dramatic like that. He'll drop three puns per sentence when he thinks I'm not listening."

He turned away, rummaging through the fridge for something edible they could cook. Discreetly, he tucked his empty chisp bag behind Papyrus’s spaghetti-filled tupperware.

“Oh, good. I would not want to make a bad first impression.”

“Pfft. You’d have to try real hard to do that, Tori. My bro sees the best in everyone.” He smiled and pulled a “pupperoni” pizza out of the freezer. It wasn’t anything fancy, but at least it would be edible.

He turned around, pizza in hand, and found Toriel staring at him oddly.

“What?” His sockets widened. “Uh, you’re not vegetarian, are you?”

She shook her head quickly, her gaze skimming off of his like oil from water.

“Pizza sounds lovely. It has been quite some time since I had one.”

Sans didn’t pry, but he couldn’t help wondering what her expression had meant. Had he said something weird?

...Oh. He’d called her Tori, hadn’t he? He should know better than to use nicknames without asking. Papyrus hated them.

“Please, allow me.” She held out her paws, so she couldn’t be too upset.

He handed over the pizza, and he jumped when fire flared to life in her palms. For a moment he thought the fire would scorch the pizza beyond recognition, but the flames were just pleasantly warm. He’d never known a monster other than Grillby to have such careful control of fire magic.

“Heh. I didn’t know you were so hot, Toriel.”

As soon as he said it, he clamped his jaw shut. Geez, how stupid could he be? Making bad jokes was one thing, but flirting with bad jokes?

The fire went out. She looked up abruptly—er, looked away from the pizza. He was still a good two feet shorter than her.

“Tori was fine,” she said, her voice soft.

“Uh,” he replied intelligently.

She suppressed a giggle, and he was pretty sure his face burned hotter than her fire had. He could stand to take notes from Alphys and throw himself in the trash.

“Or not. Whatever is comfortable for you,” she reassured him. “Now, should we eat dinner before it gets cold?”

Eating was hardly something he could screw up at.

“Sure,” then after a pause, he tested, “Tori.”

Forget her fire magic. Her smile could’ve heated the pizza all on its own.

XXX

For once in a hundred years, dinner was a warm and energetic affair. In addition to the pizza, Papyrus had tossed together a salad from his fresh groceries, and Sans had briefly stepped out to grab a few orders of wings and fries. In the end there was plenty of food for four hungry monsters.

Papyrus apologized for the lack of seating, but Toriel didn’t mind sitting on the couch squeezed between Sans and Undyne, eating off of paper plates. She couldn’t imagine anywhere she would have felt more comfortable.

Before long, though, the day’s fatigue caught up with her. She supposed it was to be expected—she wouldn’t regain her social stamina all at once.

Sans caught her eye, and he nodded towards the stairs as Undyne and Papyrus “owned” each other in an MTT-Brand fighting game.

“Sorry. I know they can be a bit much.” Sans rubbed the back of his skull.

“They’re lovely. I wish I had the energy to keep up with them.” She smiled.

He leaned against the banister, smiling down at them. Papyrus had gotten the upper hand this time, and was punching the air with joy.

“Me too,” Sans said, still looking away. “I was thinking. If you want a place to rest for the night, my bed’s open.”

She blinked. Her face seemed to catch fire. That was rather more… forward than she was expecting. Sure, she had enjoyed his lighthearted flirting, and much as she tried to deny it, feelings had been growing in her for a long time. But to have him return those feelings? And so boldly? It was as unfathomable as it was unlikely.

“I can get ya some fresh sheets, and I’ll crash in the shed. My bro set up an, uh, guest room there when the human was in town.”

Oh. She rubbed the heat from her face while he wasn’t looking. How foolish could she be, to think he would be implying…? Well.

“I would not force you out of your room,” she said. “If your brother prepared a guest room, I am sure that would be adequate.”

He let out a quick laugh. “Uh, you’re not used to my brother’s… decorating. Seriously, I don’t mind.”

She sighed. If he insisted, she supposed it would be rude to deny his hospitality.

“Alright. Thank you very much, Sans.”

“Great.” He smiled back at her, then went into his brother’s room. She waited patiently, and only jumped a little when he suddenly reappeared from the right hand door. Perhaps the two rooms were connected in the back by a bathroom.

“Hotel Sans, one vacancy.” He winked while holding the door open.

She chuckled behind her hand. “You really did not have to resort to this.”

“Heh, I wouldn’t call it much of a resort. The bed’s not even queen sized.” He rubbed the back of his skull.

The bed was smaller than she was used to, but it did have fresh sheets. That was the only fresh thing about the room. Chisp crumbs had been brushed under the dresser, and… that was a tornado. A self-sustaining trash tornado. Though at least there was a pine-scented air freshener suspended in it.

“Sorry, it’s… really not much. Uh. Probably kinda insulting, expecting the Queen to sleep—”

“It’s perfect.”

He blinked. “Huh?”

“I am no stranger to a few crumbs, Sans.”

She remembered days that bled into weeks that bled into months. Months where she couldn’t bring herself to clean, could hardly bring herself to care at all. Months that had grown fewer and farther between since she’d met a friendly voice behind a door.

“I would’ve vacuumed,” he said sheepishly, “but I suck at it.”

More embarrassingly loud laughter burst from her. In front of Sans, though, she didn’t feel the need to curtail her joy.

“Thank you.” She poured as much sincerity as she could into her voice.

“‘S no problem, Tori.” A light blue tinge warmed his cheekbones. How could he possibly look so adorable? “Bathroom’s down the hall if you wanna wash up or anything. And Undyne’ll be on the couch, so this is probably the safest place in the Underground right now.”

Her brow furrowed. Sure enough, there was no bathroom door inside the room—he must have used one of his “shortcuts” to move from his brother’s room to here.

“So, uh. I’ll be in the shed—uh, guest room if you need me.” He flashed one more tense grin before turning to leave.

“Wait.” She stepped towards him without thinking.

He looked up, one brow ridge raised. She found herself biting her lip, wondering if she dared ask what her soul wanted. It was silly, really. She’d been on her own for years, decades.

Maybe that was why she was so hesitant to lose this one taste of companionship.

“I would feel… safer, if you would stay too.” Her face burned beneath her fur, but she projected her usual composure.

“...Welp. Can’t say no to that, huh?”

She was about to reassure him that he could say no—that she was asking as his friend, not as his queen—but the soft smile on his face told her he already knew.

He briefly left to grab a few things, then returned with a few pillows and, for some reason, a dog bed.

“You are not going to sleep on that,” she said in disbelief.

He flopped the dog bed in the middle of the floor and started fluffing it. “Why not? Gotta throw a dog bed a bone, right?”

“Sans.”

The outdoor lights dimmed, as if at her command. Only the colored Gyftmas lights outside and one dim indoor bulb lit the room.

Her confidence waned with the light. What had she expected him to do? She’d asked him to stay. Unless she wanted to…

Oh, to hell with it. She was too old to be so shy about these things.

“If you are not opposed,” she swallowed, “we could… share this mattress.”

When he looked up, she couldn’t make out his eyelights at all. Their glow returned slowly, like the rising of the sun from her memories.

“Heh… you sure? You don’t even know if I snore.”

She laughed and sat on the bed, patting the space beside her. “You do not know if I snore, either.”

“Fair enough, Tori.”

They took turns cleaning up in the bathroom—she was imposing on Sans enough without adding the smell of dirty fur to his bed. Then she did her best to ignore the flutterings in her soul as he slipped off his hoodie and climbed up onto the mattress. She insisted he stay under the sheets; her fur would keep her warm enough with just the light blanket on top.

The sheets were a barrier in name only. There was only so much space on the mattress, so no matter how he adjusted and apologized, she could still feel the curve of his spine against hers.

It felt amazing. It felt terrifying. It felt like a mistake. It felt like the only thing she’d ever done right.

The one saving grace of the whole situation was that it didn’t stir memories of Asgore. Her royal beds had been triple the size of Sans’s lumpy mattress. She and her ex-husband had rarely slept back to back, and if they had, the feeling would have much different.

“...Tori?�� Sans’s voice was just above a whisper. “You, uh, still awake?”

As if she could sleep while enduring the wonderful agony of friendly touch for the first time in a century.

“Yes,” she replied softly. “Am I taking up too much space?”

“No, ‘course not. I was just, uh… geez.” He sounded embarrassed.

Risking their precarious balance, she rolled over to face him. Or to face the back of his skull, at least.

“Are you alright?” she asked.

“Doin’ sans-sational.” He chuckled to himself. “Sorry. Never got to use that one with you before.”

She would have laughed, had she not worried about shaking the whole mattress.

“It was sans-tastic,” she joked back, and he laughed again.

Then abruptly, his laughter cut off.

“Thanks, Tori,” he said in a quiet but firm voice.

“What for?” She wished she could take his hand, see his face, learn what thoughts were passing through his skull. Instead she gave him as much space as physically possible… which still was not much.

A long, silent moment passed. Had he fallen asleep?

“I know it’s not how you wanted,” he finally said, “but I’m glad I got to meet you. So. Thanks.”

Warmth spread outward from her soul to fill her whole body. Sans could probably feel it radiating from her.

“Thank you, Sans. If I had to return, knowing no one…”

He rolled to face her. His eyelights were mere inches from her pupils.

“You would’ve been fine. All you had to do was tell a few of your amazing jokes, and the whole Underground would’ve been linin’ up to be your pals.”

She suppressed a laugh. “I hardly think that would be appropriate, under the circumstances.”

“Eh.” He shrugged. “Plenty of monsters in town cope with jokes. You’d just be relating to the common folk.”

She stared into his sockets a little too intently. At this distance, it easily made her dizzy.

“Would you be included in that demographic?” she couldn’t help asking.

“When I first met you? For sure.” His gaze darted away. “But it’s crazy. Between you and the kid… I’m startin’ to think there’s more to life than good food and bad laughs.”

“Really?” She and the child had made such an impact on him?

“I know. Don’t tell Papyrus. He wouldn’t believe you, anyway.” He winked.

“My lips are sealed.” She smiled.

Silence hung between them. It should have felt awkward, but she couldn’t bring herself to turn away. In the end it was Sans who yawned in her face and then hurriedly flipped back onto his other side.

She laughed, and clearly she was exhausted too, because she pressed a kiss to the back of his skull without thinking.

He froze. She froze. There was no way to play that off gracefully. And there was no way she could fall asleep and pretend that it had not happened.

“Heh… those didn’t feel very sealed to me,” he finally rasped out.

It took her a moment to process what he meant. Meanwhile her embarrassment only burned hotter.

“I am so sorry—”

“I’m not.” When he rolled back to face her, his face was bright blue. “You’ll still be here when I wake up, right?”

His question was tinged with desperation.

“Of course,” she answered automatically, despite the many responsibilities that she would have to attend to in the morning. She was the Queen once more. If she had to, she could adjust the schedule of meetings and speeches to accommodate… this.

Whatever this was to be.

“Remind me in the morning,” he squeezed her hand, “that this is real.”

His hand quickly went limp. She was worried for a moment, before she heard the faint snore escape his nasal cavity.

She gave him a fond smile, and allowed her own eyes to close. She did not know if sleep would come or not. She did not know what challenges the new day would bring, or what old challenges would continue to rear their heads.

But she did know that she was not alone. For tonight, that was enough.

#soriel #sans #toriel #fic tag #tali writes #soriel week 2021 #soriel week #really glad to finally share this one!

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makeste · 3 years

Text

BnHA Chapter 299: No Chains Left

Previously on BnHA: Horikoshi was all “and then AFO broke out all of the inmates from six other prisons and took a nap. well anyways, here’s the hospital angst.” Kacchan woke up two days later and was all, “WAIT BUT HOW ARE DEKU AND TODOROKI AND ALL OF THE OTHER CHARACTERS EXCEPT IIDA DOING” and then we cut to Shouto’s room where the other U.A. kids were sitting around being Mutually Traumatized and giving each other moral support and such. Everyone was alll, “...”, and then the rest of the Todofam showed up, INCLUDING POSSIBLY REI?! which, omg. The chapter ended with Kacchan STOMPING THROUGH THE HALLS all “WHADDYA MEAN DEKU HASN’T WOKEN UP YET”, dragging along Satou and Mineta behind him, fueled by the power of ALL OF THE FUCKS HE NOW GIVES. He gives so many fucks now you guys. This boy cares so much he can probably deduct it on his taxes.

Today on BnHA: SPEAKING OF PEOPLE WHO GIVE A LOT OF FUCKS, the story cuts abruptly to Hawks, freshly recovering from his near-death experience, and pondering the threads that have weaved the tapestry of his life and led him to this moment. Basically he grew up in poverty with his Jerk Dad and Jerk Mom until his dad got arrested one day and his mom sent him off to go Find Money Or Something, and so he rescued a busload of people and found himself a new career. Back in the present day, Hawks and Jeanist ride around town in Jeanist’s Jamborghini having awkward encounters with civilians in a country on the brink of social collapse, and visiting Hawks’s mother’s home. Hawks is all “I know from an outsider’s perspective it must look like my life currently sucks, but now that the HPSC is gone, my public image is shot, and my parents are finally out of my life, I’m actually feeling SURPRISINGLY GOOD.” Anyway so he’s gonna go meet up with Endeavor now, and p.s. this chapter was fucking fantastic though, damn.

oh my god?? is this Hawks narration?? something about him growing up watching the heroes on TV and thinking of them as fictional characters

okay I scrolled down a little bit more to see the rest of that “Keigo” panel, and wow

this is basically a shed. poor boy definitely grew up rough. let me tell you guys, I came in here ready for some BakuDeku shenanigans; I was not prepared for Hawks Flashback Angst. I AM HERE FOR IT, but also wow I gotta brace myself now lol

HELLO MISTER HAWKS’S JERK DAD, SIR

BnHA sure does have an array of Jerk Dads, doesn’t it. makes me appreciate characters like Masaru and JirouDad all the more for bucking the trend

anyway. so Horikoshi, you really thought that one itty bitty chapter of hospital catharsis would be enough to calm us all before you went right back to showing us child abuse huh. my god man can we rest

BABY HAWKS

swear to god this kid can’t be more than five or six, and yet he has this completely blank look on his face even with his dad looming over him being all threatening and shit. like he’s shut down his emotions to protect himself. imagine what has to happen to a child for him to have learned this at such a young age. fuck

AND MEANWHILE THIS GUY

don’t mingle with humans?? not “other” humans, just humans?? what is this implying here?? and also holy shit Hawks definitely didn’t inherit his looks from his dad orz

then again he doesn’t really bear much of a resemblance to his strung-out mom here either

omg omg omg. and this child is basically trapped here in this environment with these two people. this explains a SHITLOAD about Hawks’s personality though you guys. his ability to completely separate his real thoughts from the face he presents to the outside world. his pragmatic approach to analyzing and solving problems. his layers of emotional walls. turns out almost none of that came from the HPSC training -- that was all learned hands-on in his own personal do-or-die survival nightmare childhood!! oh, boy

and small wonder then that he latched on to Endeavor so strongly if he really is the one who brought down his dad and inadvertently saved him from this. also, just putting this out there, I know people are always talking about him and Dabi being foils, and I think it’s very interesting how Touya grew up in a household where he saw firsthand the dark side of hero society, and so ended up becoming a villain in order to bring it down. whereas young Keigo had almost the exact opposite experience, growing up experiencing the dark side of villain society and becoming a hero in order to bring about a world where no one else has to experience that. just. both of them are so determined not to become their fathers. some interesting parallels there

so Hawks was sort of an accident after his parents had “thanks for helping me not get caught after I killed that guy” sex, and now this little boy is growing up in squalor and being beaten by his father for things like Sitting In The Wrong Out-Of-The-Way Corner Trying Not To Be A Bother To Anybody. holy fuck. this is so rough to read through you guys

wait so does Jerk Dad have a an eyeball manipulation quirk?? because he doesn’t have the wings like his son, but wth are these things??

this presumably also means that Keigo has never been to school or anything either. he basically doesn’t exist. he thinks heroes are fictional characters, he doesn’t realize that they’re real people. these are people who could help him if he could escape and find them, but he doesn’t know, and they don’t know about him

OH MY GOD HE’S JUST SITTING IN HIS CORNER HUGGLING HIS ENDEAVOR PLUSH OH MY GOD

how could this child possibly have an anti-fandom when he’s done NOTHING WRONG HIS ENTIRE LIFE. huh. just explain that to me. lol I mean I’m not looking to pick a fight with anyone, but also, MAYBE I AM, idk?? this kid has gotten me all riled up lmao

anyways, Protect Keigo 2021, and thank you Horikoshi for these three very terrible pages. I am pleased to inform you that you’ve effectively gotten your point across and you may now commence saving this kid already

YAY

oh no, Keigo’s dumbass jerk dad tried to steal a car and the popo nabbed his ass and now his mom can’t just sit around neglecting her VERY YOUNG SON all day long, oh horrors. sorry lady my tiny violin is on backorder. just imagine that I’m playing a very sarcastic song on it for you

anyway so what are you gonna do now, abandon him? I can hardly imagine he’d be worse off, if anything it might be a near-instant improvement

LMAO HE’S ALL “WAIT WHAT ENDEAVOR’S A REAL FUCKING DUDE?!”

AND THEY SAY THAT A HERO CAN SAVE US~~~~ I’M NOT GONNA STAND HERE AND WAAAAAIT~~~~~ I’LL HOLD ONTO THE WINGS OF THE EAGLES, WATCH AS WE ALL FLY AWAAAAAAY~~~~

lol what a randomly pivotal moment in his young life. TIME TO GO MAKE THESE MEMES INTO DREAMS YOUNG ONE

anyway so his mom freaked out and grabbed him and they wound up at a train station with her TELLING HIM TO GO GET HER SOME MONEY, oh my god. SURE MOM LEMME JUST WALTZ RIGHT ON DOWN TO THE “JOBS FOR FIVE-YEAR-OLDS” STORE AND TELL THEM I NEED SOME CASH. ffff manifesting someone to come help him in 3... 2...

...

SIGH, JUST GO RESCUE THE PEOPLE FROM THE BUS, KEIGO. is this the outfit he was wearing when that happened?? it must be, right?? I can’t imagine them surviving more than a couple days out here unless this starts getting REALLY dark in a way I know that even Horikoshi won’t explore, so yeah. cut to the HPSC now please. never thought we’d be glad to see them. I mean sure, it may be an “out of the frying pan...” case, but good god

THANK YOU!!

and I guess it was his mom’s eyeball quirk then. anyway, whatever, see you again never, hopefully. lol oh man. thaaaat, was upsetting. need to center myself here for a sec. NAMASTE

OH YAY THE PRESENT

so we cut from Baby Hawks Angst straight to Present Day Hawks Angst, huh. not that this exhausted and traumatized lil lad isn’t still a baby to me too, I’ll have you know

BEST JEANIST, ALWAYS WITH THE JOKES

“WHEW, THOUGHT YOU DIED ON ME FOR A SEC THERE KID.” lmao. Caleb will no doubt ruin this by making his word choice all stiffly formal as usual, so I’m just going to treasure this “WOULD YOU LOOK AT THAT, I’M FRESH OUT OF FUCKS” version of Jeanist while I can

look at him, driving his Jeanistmobile

again, is it any wonder Kacchan was bitching about Endeavor’s dinky little car when he was used to riding around town in style like this. anyone else staring at this panel trying to figure out how this car is somehow secretly made of jeans

NOOOOO

FUCK YOU DABI LMAO. PUTTING THESE VOICE ACTORS OUT OF A JOB ONE BY ONE

anyway so Jeanist is all “GOOD THING IT’S THE FUTURE AND WE’RE SO GOOD AT MEDICAL SCIENCE” to handwave how Hawks went from one step shy of being a very handsome corpse, to sitting around texting Jeanist in a car all of two days later

OH MY GOD, AND FINALLY AN EXPLANATION FOR THIS

wait a minute. I’m so confused lmfao. soooo, was Hawks all “anyway, here’s Jeanist’s dead body, you can examine it but please don’t look at him too closely and also I’m gonna need that back unharmed.” how tf did you pull that off lmao

(ETA: also isn’t this technically confirmation of the ol’ Noumu Jeanist theory lol. I’m gonna go ahead and say it is.)

NO BUT PLEASE, CONTINUE. I unironically love reading Horikoshi’s overly convoluted “SEE IT’S NOT A PLOT HOLE” explanations

lkldslfk so wait, you’re telling me Hawks convinced Dabi and the League to put Jeanist’s body in storage, and basically just hoped they wouldn’t use him for any experiments until he could put his plan into action and have the HPSC’s people break in and find and revive him?? WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG. A FOOLPROOF PLAN IF I’VE EVER HEARD ONE

fff this man really asked Jeanist to risk it all to prop up his little cover story, and Jeanist was all “sure why not” omfg. anyways, thanks for recapping all of this out loud for no particular reason in your car conversation you two

LMAO NOW WHAT

TROUBLE YOU SAY? GOOD THING THE NEW NUMBER ONE HERO IS ON THE JOB THEN

okay no it’s just some random thugs strolling around terrorizing the downtown. fuck ‘em. so Jeanist is making short work of them now

uh oh

won’t come? not can’t, but won’t?? what???

WOW

well I guess that makes the local heroes A BUNCH OF SHITHEADS now doesn’t it?? jesus

and okay, serious question, if the cops are spread too thin and the heroes have literally walked out on the job, what exactly is stopping everyone from deciding to use their quirks to defend themselves, legal or not? nothing, as far as I can tell. society just got a hell of a lot more chaotic

anyway so this is an interesting panel here

man, Dabi really did pull it off, didn’t he. well anyway so here’s that better world all of the villains were wanting, you guys! isn’t it so great?? everyone’s terrified and angry and losing hope and society is inches away from collapsing into total anarchy! but hey, at least we exposed the number one hero as a hypocrite

anyway so what are these guys up to

fucking hell, he’s visiting his mom. I really wasn’t prepared to commit this much emotional energy towards reading this chapter today. BUT VERY WELL, WE PRESS ON

?? wait she’s not there?

is this supposed to explain how Dabi knew who Hawks really was? except that there’s the little matter of how he even know where to find his mother in the first place. feels like we’re still missing something there, but oh well

OH MY GOD

RHA I TAKE BACK EVERY WORD I EVER SPOKE AGAINST YOU. YOU ARE A SCANLATION GROUP FILLED WITH ANGELS LMAO. I WILL TAKE THIS PANEL IN MY HANDS, AND TREASURE IT AND KEEP IT SAFE

ANYWAY, BECAUSE MY TIRED BIRD SON’S LIFE SUCKED SO MUCH ALREADY, IT TURNS OUT HE’S ACTUALLY PLEASED WITH THIS NEW TURN OF EVENTS LOL HOW ABOUT THAT

GOOD FOR YOU BBY. YOU GO OUT THERE AND BE YOUR OWN PERSON

and in all seriousness, I love that identity he chooses -- chooses, because it actually is him making a choice now, possibly for the very first time in his life -- is “guy who helps people”, though. it really is nothing short of miraculous that he held on to that kind of optimism and desire to do good even with everything he’s been through. there were so many times he could have chosen to turn his back on the world in retaliation for the way it treated him. but he didn’t!! and here he is now, finally free, and what he wants to do with the rest of his life now is simply to help others. anyway please excuse me for a moment, I need to go find some sort of basket or a big vase to put all of my fresh new Hawks Feels in, pardonne-moi

YEAH BOIIIIII

“FIRST ORDER OF BUSINESS, MISTER JEANIST, WHERE DID YOU FIND YOUSELF THAT SWEETASS CAR.” hey, all I’m saying is if this boy’s wings really aren’t growing back, he’s gonna need to find himself a new means of transportation y’know?

oh my god you guys it’s a flashback to his mom buying him the Endeavor plushie when he was like two because, and I quote, ALL MIGHT WAS TOO EXPENSIVE

oh my god oh my god. my boy out here with a new lease on life finding hope in the darkest of times

wasn’t your throat supposed to be all fucked up lmao. Horikoshi was suddenly all “oh shit the VAs are gonna be pissed at me if I keep this up huh”

“that’s why Bubaigawara was such a great guy” motherfucker IT IS A TERRIBLE DAY FOR RAIN. FORECAST SAID NOTHING ABOUT THIS

:’)

yes ma’am. yes indeed. confirmed, I really will straight up fight some motherfuckers for this child. well not really, but YOU KEEP YOUR DISCOURSE OFF MY LAWN AND OUT OF MY BLOG YOU HEAR. THIS IS A HAWKS-FRIENDLY SPACE. WE RESPECT TAKAMI KEIGO IN THESE STREETS

and he’s saying (or is he thinking?? what a weirdly shaped speech bubble this is) that even if what Dabi said about the Todoroki household is true, “I’m not sure it’s the same now.” which happens to be ABSOLUTELY CORRECT. man this whole chapter really is all about saying “fuck the past” and moving forward and I am living for it

SON!!!!

“the first step is at my beginning” fklkjlk. what an iconic fucking line??

AND HIS WINGS!!!! THEY ACTUALLY ARE GROWING BACK AHHHHHHH. “PUT A RAINCHECK ON THAT CAR, JEANIST-SAN.” THE HAWKSMOBILE CAN WAIT, RIGHT NOW HE HAS TO GO INSERT HIMSELF BACK INTO THE TODODRAMA WHETHER THEY LIKE IT OR NOT

you guys. I came here ready for some BAKUDEKU HOSPITAL ANGST, and I got DIDDLY SHIT of that, and none of my other kids were even in this chapter, but!!! ASK ME IF I CARE LMAO omg. because bird son is hanging with his new best friend, and he’s out here Finding Himself and picking up the pieces and putting them back together stronger than ever because RESILIENCE HAS A NAME, AND IT’S SPELLED H-A-W-K-S, and you guys. profound, my love for this child. holy shit. hey google, play Silence by Marshmello

#bnha 299 #takami keigo #hawks (bnha)#best jeanist #bnha #boku no hero academia #bnha spoilers #mha spoilers #bnha manga spoilers #makeste reads bnha #I found peace in your violence #can't tell me there's no point in trying #I'm at one #and I've been quiet for too long

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wienerbarnes · 3 years

Text

Italian Heart

Pairing: Bucky x Italian!MobBoss!Reader

Word Count: 4,867

Warnings: canon level violence, possible inaccurate italian slang lol

A/N: ive been watching a lot of the sopranos lately and i feel like ive never seen a bucky x mob boss reader au (ive only rlly seen em where buckys the mob boss. if there are ones where reader is the mob boss PLS SEND EM TO ME I BEG) a lot of the slang and mob stuff here is from sopranos bc... im not in the fucking mafia so forgive me anyway enjoy :)<3

MAIN MASTERLIST

Bucky’s never seen a woman quite like yourself.

Dressed in expensive satin and jewelry that hangs between your breasts, an angry look on your face at the fact you’re sitting before him and Sam in an interrogation room in the tower. Freshly done nails, clean and crisp lipstick, spicy perfume, and an expression of annoyance.

As put together as you look, you don’t look like someone to be fucked with. Which, he supposes is good for a mobster; the Boss of Newark.

Looking at you, though, he’d never thought you to be such a figure of intimidation. While the mafia is still alive, despite how the media tries to deny this, he always pictured an old Italian man that chain smokes cigars. He doesn’t think he’s too far off, to his credit; he can smell the remnants of smoke on you.

“Mind if we make this fast? My cousin’s comin’ for dinner and I was gonna make ziti.” You huff, crossing your legs under the table.

“Sounds delicious. Sorry for dragging you all the way out here.” Sam says, a calm look on his face even though he’s well aware of what you’re capable of.

When hunting down the last traces of the super soldier serum, he never thought Nick Fury himself would suggest getting in touch with you. He didn’t think it was worth the time to question how the two of you knew each other.

Theft. Drugs. Murder. Bribery. The list goes on, and there’s not a single thing that ties you to any of it.

A shrug of your shoulders, “So, what exactly is this about?” You ask.

“What is it that you do for a living?” Sam asks.

“I work in waste management.” You respond, a rehearsed answer.

Not exactly a lie, the environmental facility you manage is one of hundreds of covers used by your crew for your crimes. Environmental facilities, deli shops, strip clubs, auto shops. There isn’t a business in Jersey you aren’t tied to.

“Waste management? Like, garbage disposal?” Bucky asks, knowing exactly what it is you do for work.

You smirk, “Yeah, we dispose of garbage sometimes. What’s that got to do with me being here?”

“It’s to my understanding that you’re in the business of… buying and selling things. You and… the people you hang around got a real knack for it.” Sam tells you.

Bucky holds back a roll of his eyes. More like stealing and selling. Expensive Italian suits, antique watches, cars, electronics, illegal cigars. Who knows what else.

“I don’t know where you heard that… but I’m a popular gal, maybe I know a guy who might know a guy. What are you lookin’ for?” You ask.

You know this game, after being in the mob for so long. After being a part of your own crew for years, your patience and hard work paid off, working your way up to a captain and finally a boss. It didn’t take you long to learn in this business that government officials are jokes. Always wanting to bust my balls and then come crying to my corner for help, it’s a bunch of ugatz.

“Serums.” Bucky finally speaks.

A laugh escapes you, “What, like vitamin C?” You teasingly smirk at him.

His chair makes a loud sound in the small room as he pushes it back harshly and stands, resting his hands on the table in between the two of you. You don’t flinch.

“Enough with the bullshit. Super serums. To create super soldiers. We need to get them before they end up in the wrong hands and make a big ass mess.” He snaps at you, but you don’t seem phased in the slightest. In fact, you seem rather amused.

“You must have a lot of agita with all that anger, Sergeant Barnes.”

He doesn’t hold back this time and rolls his eyes before you speak up again, “Your first name is James, isn’t it? Ain’t that Italian?”

“No, it’s English. Or Scottish. Or Jewish - I don’t know, who cares? Are you gonna help us or not?” Bucky takes his seat again, crossing his thick arms over his broad chest.

“What’s in it for me?” You ask, leaning back in your chair.

“Not being arrested for all the shit we know you’re caught up in.” Sam offers.

You roll your own eyes this time, “I’ll take my chances. Thanks for wasting my time, boys, don’t let it happen again.” You stand, prepared to make your way back to the train station to go back to Jersey.

“Wait,” Sam stops you, “What is it that you want?”

You smile innocently and take your seat again, taking a minute to think before answering, “My little sister’s a big fan of yours. I’m sure she and all her friends would think it’s cool if you showed up to her prom as her date.” You wink at Sam.

Silence fills the room as the men think about your request.

“You’re gonna do it, right?” Bucky looks over at him and sees Sam rubbing the crease in between his eyes. He was expecting you to ask for immunity, protection, money, guns. But after hearing your request, he supposes you have enough of all that stuff anyway.

“Man -” Sam begins to refuse.

“Sam, it’s a fucking school dance in exchange for some of the most powerful and sought after serums on the planet - go to the fucking prom.” He tells him, eyebrows scrunching in confusion as to how he would hesitate on something so simple.

“She’s eighteen, so you won’t have any problems with the media or none of that.” You add, the information not really making Sam feel any better.

“Alright, alright, fine. I’ll go to the dance with your sister if you help us get these serums.”

You smile, happy to have done business with the two men, “What information do ya got for me?”

…

Bucky and Sam wait outside a back room in the facility you own. They passed the garbage trucks parked neatly outside, but could hear your screaming and the smell of Cuban cigars as soon as they entered the building.

She’s with a customer, they were told, by someone in your crew, them meeting Bucky’s expectations for mobsters more than you did. None of them ask any questions, but Bucky and Sam aren’t stupid, they’re sure your crew is aware of what’s going on and know the exact reason they’re there.

“You’re a fuckin’ asshole, you know that? The Bible says, Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit -”

“You listen to me, you take your Bible and your quotations book and shove it up your fat fucking ass! Now get the fuck out of my face!”

Bucky can’t help but scoff listening to you scream at whoever’s inside. Sam elbows him, silently telling him that now isn’t the time to find your work funny, especially not in front of the rest of your crew.

Bucky knows he’s old-fashioned, and while things that were taboo such as body modifications or certain fashion styles don’t phase him anymore, he doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to hearing a woman talk like that. He doesn’t think he’s ever even heard anybody talk like you do.

Suddenly a man bursts out of the room, huffing and puffing, and you walk slowly behind him, as if to make sure he makes it outside okay.

“Grab his plate for me, will you?” You say not to anyone in particular, voice smooth and calm as if you hadn’t been yelling and threatening that man’s life for the past twenty minutes.

One of the men from your crew follows outside, seemingly to collect the license plate of the man who just left.

“Nothing’s gonna happen to that guy, right?” Sam asks as he and Bucky enter the room, taking a seat in front of the desk you have in there. He knows there’s no point in asking, that you’ll do whatever you want regardless because it’s obvious you’re passionate about receiving respect, but it was worth a shot.

“Is that what you came all the way to Jersey to ask me? Christ, I’m fuckin’ starving, you boys want anything to eat?” You ask, accent heavy as you reach into the side drawer of your desk and pull out what seems to be some kind of meat wrapped in paper.

“Gabagool?” You offer to them, picking out a slice for yourself and placing it in your mouth.

“Gesundheit.” Sam responds.

“It’s pork, you asshole.”

Bucky silently reaches over and picks off a slice of the cured cold cut, putting the meat in his mouth and savoring the flavor. While he can’t stand the way you make a living or the sailor’s mouth you have, he loves Italian food, and actually chose a neighborhood in New York that has plenty of traditional cold cut markets and restaurants to live in in order to fulfill his cravings.

“There’s a big party staged downtown this weekend, we think that’s when the drop is going to happen.” Sam tells you, bringing the focus to their reason for coming here in the first place.

“I’ll send one of my boys.” You reply in between your chews.

“That wasn’t the deal. The deal was you get the serums.” Bucky speaks up.

“Buck, you know how many people want her dead?” Sam tries to reason.

“What the fuck do I have a crew for then? - No, if pretty boy wants me to do it myself, then I will. The same people that want my head are the same fucks who are terrified to be within twenty feet of me in fear they’ll make eye contact. I’m not scared of nothin’.” You say, narrowing your eyes at Bucky.

“What did you guys come here to talk about?” You ask.

Sam looks confused at your expression, “...To go over the plan? Hash out details? So you know how everything’s gonna go?”

“I’ll be fine; I’ve seen The Godfather once or twice,” You tell him, wrapping up the cappo, after Bucky picks off one last slice, and replacing it in the drawer, “Don’t worry Captain, this ain’t my first rodeo. I’ll get the serums for you.” You open a different drawer and pull out a cigar and a lighter.

Bucky watches as you place the large cigar in between your red-painted lips, bringing the flame of your lighter to the end and hollowing your cheeks until smoke exits from the corner of your mouth. Bucky feels blood travel south as his eyes glaze over your hand grab the cigar out of your mouth and blow out a long string of smoke.

“I guess we’ll be in touch then,” Sam stands and Bucky follows after.

“My sister’s wearing blue, so find yourself a nice tie.” You call out, lifting your feet up to cross them on the desk, dress rising and showing your legs.

Bucky blushes, and then laughs as he exits when he hears you, in a deep and more exaggerated accent than your own, “Just when I thought I was out… they pull me back in!”

…

The morning of the party, Sam and Bucky pick you up from your house, planning to take you into New York to discuss final details before tonight.

You get in the passenger seat, Sam offering it to you and climbing in the backseat. As Bucky begins to drive off, your phone rings.

“I told you to leave that.” Bucky says, telling you explicitly to leave electronics here to prevent anyone finding out where you are, and also to avoid any distractions.

“Wanted to see what you’d about it, Sarge,” You wink at him, pulling out a flip phone and answering the call.

“Yeah… Uh huh… He what? Are you fucking kidding me?... Alright… Tell him not to move a fucking muscle.” You hang up, slamming the phone closed.

“Stop at the facility for a sec, I gotta take care of something.” Bucky sighs and turns away from the route to head to your facility.

“Bucky’s going to be going with you tonight, by the way, he’ll be in disguise. Just in case anything goes wrong.” Sam tells you, not really caring anymore about having to make a stop for you to take care of whatever business you need to take care of.

Your only response is a hum as Bucky can feel the anger radiating off your now tense body.

You slam the car door shut as Bucky parks behind a garbage truck outside, not even waiting for him to fully put the car in park before you exit.

Him and Sam follow quickly behind you to see what’s going on. You enter through a side door that leads to a large room, a garage for the trucks, Bucky assumes.

There’s a large truck inside, and racks of suits wrapped in plastic scattered around. A younger man stands near the truck as your crew peruses around the racks, he couldn’t be older than twenty-five years old. Your heels click on the ground as you approach, slowing down as you glance between the suits and the young man. Bucky and Sam hang around a few feet behind your trail.

You stop, fuming, staring at the man before you speak, “You wanna tell me what the fuck happened?”

“I -” He begins, but you cut him off, raising an open hand at him.

“Actually, I don’t even want to hear your fucking voice right now. Because if what I heard you did is true; if what you did to Vinny’s guy is true, you’re gonna be a fuck load of trouble.”

“Can I -”

“Shut the fuck up.”

“But -”

“I said shut the fuck up, Christopher! What part of that don’t you understand?” You yell, and even Bucky feels intimidated.

You turn to your crew, “What the fuck happened.” You demand, more than ask.

“Kid says he tried to take the truck, Vinny’s guy had a gun that fell outta the seat, went off, shot him.” One of the men summarizes, not looking up from the rack of suits.

You raise a manicured hand to pinch between your eyes, “You keep me skinny, Christopher, with all the fucking stress you cause me.”

“Would you let me explain?” He tries.

“If you don’t do as I told you and shut your fucking mouth, you’re gonna be buried with two assholes,” You threaten before continuing.

“They were fuckin’ suits! All you had to do was take the truck! How did you fuck that up -” You stop yourself and sigh, attempting to calm yourself down.

“Here’s what’s gonna happen. You’re gonna take all this shit, you’re gonna take it back to Vinny, and you’re gonna tell him what happened yourself.” You finish.

“Marone!” He exclaims, rubbing his face with his hands.

“Enough with the theatrics! You’re lucky I don’t put a bullet in your ass! Now, I don’t see you grabbing that rack and that rack and that rack and putting it back in the truck!” You wave your arms around the room.

The kid sighs and begins grabbing the racks one by one and rolling them back in the truck.

“Would it be such a shame if they all went back?” An older man from your crew asks, already wearing one of the expensive suits. You scoff and laugh.

“Bucky, pick yourself somethin’ nice for tonight,'' You turn to face him, and he jumps at the sound of your now calmer voice being directed at him, as opposed to the harsh one used on Christopher, “On me.” You wink.

...

Sam and Bucky sit on the bed and watch as you get ready. A small apartment near the party that’s already been swept for bugs. A favor, you called it, from someone you know.

They don’t question it.

“You and Bucky will go in together and I’ll be waiting at a secondary location watching and listening to everything.”

Bucky can’t tear his eyes away from your dress. A mermaid dress, he thinks it is, black and tight and hugging you in all the right places, curving around your ass and sleeveless at the top, allowing you to show off a nice necklace and your cleavage. It’s an understatement to say that he’ll enjoy accompanying you tonight, even if it’s in a costume.

His mother probably would’ve loved it if he would’ve gotten with someone like you. Someone who loves their family, a spitfire that wouldn’t take any of his shit, and whose god damn gorgeous. She might’ve had to wash your mouth out with soap, though.

“So, why is Bucky goin’ again?”

“Safety.” Bucky answers.

“Is he going for my safety or am I going for his?” You tease, finishing the last few curls of your hair, smoke coming from the iron after each time you pull your hair away from it.

“Once you find our guy, get talking with him and see if you can get him to make you an offer,” He begins.

“One I can’t refuse?”

“Then, you’ll try and get him alone, see if he’ll show you the serums, and once you do, we’ll be taking care of the rest.” Sam finishes explaining.

Bucky plucks a box from his pocket and opens it to reveal a pair of diamond earrings. One, a camera, and the other, a microphone. You’re also given a comm to hide in your ear so both him and Sam can hear everything and you can hear them.

“Easy - peasy.” You respond.

The ballroom is lively, loud music and people everywhere, and Bucky attunes all the action overwhelming him to a sweat and not that fact that you’re pressed up against him, his arm wrapped around your waist.

About a hundred different people come up to greet you, asking about your family, offering you drinks and food. Bucky can see right through all of them though; they’re all putting on the act out of fear. Everyone’s attention is on you, and Bucky’s sure if he wasn’t in disguise right now, no one would even notice.

You bring him to the middle of the crowd and he can’t be surprised when you start to dance with him, pulling at his arms to get him to loosen up. He complies, wrapping his arms around your waist and pulling you close as the two of you move together.

“I’ll let you know when I spot him.” He tells you, voice causing goosebumps to rise on your neck; goosebumps that he notices but doesn’t point out.

It only takes a song or two before he spots who he’s looking for and sends you over, making sure your com is on, and choosing to stick by the bar, giving him a good view of you and allowing himself a break of having your body pressed against his.

He’s impressed listening to you talk to this guy, voice smooth and sultry, yet still commanding.

He knows there was a lot of talk when you took position as boss; not a lot of people in the mob took you seriously and didn’t think you or a woman in general would be good in that kind of position in power. So, you use that to your advantage to get shit done, and Bucky applauds you for that.

It’s not long before the guy offers to go somewhere more private to discuss business and Bucky follows far behind, Sam praising you through the coms from where he waits in the car outside, watching through the camera in your earring.

Bucky waits outside of a closed office door upstairs, listening to the conversation through the coms but hearing your exclamation through the door when the guys give you his asking price.

“5 mil each?! What do you take me for, some kinda stunad?”

“Take it or leave it.”

“Take it or leave it, yeah, I can put a bullet between your eyes and take it, alright.”

“Stop messing around and take the offer, it’s not real anyway!” Sam tells you, not wanting to lose their chance on the serums.

You ignore him prioritizing your need for respect over the stupid mission, “How do I know these aren’t Kool-Aid pouches poured in glass bottles?”

“Well, I’m certainly not going to test ‘em out for you.” The guy scoffs.

“Stronzo. You’re outta your fucking mind offering me that.”

“I’ll lower the price for you if you give me a little dance, how ‘bout that?”

“Vaffanculo.” You curse at him.

“Up yours, lady!” He yells back, and Sam sees through the camera, he grabs at you.

“Buck, get in there.” Sam tells him, and it only takes Bucky a second to kick open the door.

He’s a bit taken aback when he not only sees the case of serums out on the table, but you holding the man bent over the small table in the middle of the room next to the serums, gun held to the back of his head.

He very quickly decides that you’re fine and moves to grab the serums, closing the case and holding it securely in his left hand.

“Don’t kill the guy.”

You stay silent and Bucky looks at you again. He can almost see the steam coming out of your ears and he notices a small cut on your cheek bone. He looks down to the man’s cowering figure and notices a large ring on his hand.

You mumble something in Italian to the man, a threat of some kind that Bucky can guess given how the man shuts his eyes and shakes a bit under your hold. Sam finally enters the room, military grade handcuffs in hand.

“Feds are on their way, get her out of here.” He tells Bucky.

You slowly lift the gun off the man’s head and stand up straighter, walking over to brush past Bucky in the direction of the back door.

He makes eye contact with Sam and gives him a nod before following after you, watching as you scrunch up the bottom of your dress to replace the gun in an ankle holster. Once outside, he stops you under a street light near the car and raises his hand to look at your cheek.

“We gotta get going,” You swat at his hand.

“You’re still bleeding.” He says, using his thumb to brush away the line of blood, smearing a red tinge on your skin.

He looks into your eyes and for a second he sees the tough exterior drop. The face of someone who got smacked across the cheek all for mouthing off at some asshole.

Your vulnerability doesn’t last long, though, as you sniff and walk towards the car, opening the passenger door and sitting inside before Bucky can make it over there to open the door for you.

The drive back to the apartment is silent, and Bucky doesn’t know what to do or say to fill the silence. Stepping into the apartment, you immediately go to change and collect your things. Bucky moves to the bathroom to look for a first aid kit of some kind.

He meets you in the room and you’re now in cotton pants and a large t-shirt, sandals on your feet showing the bright red color of your toenails and the lines indented in your skin from how tight your heels were. You’re hanging up the dress and zipping it back in the cover when Bucky drops the first aid kit on the bed.

“Christ, it’s only a small cut.” You mumble.

“Just - Let me, would you?”

He takes out the liquid of disinfectant and soaks a cotton pad, cleaning off your cheek bone with it before covering it with healing ointment and a bandaid.

You don’t thank him when he finishes and he huffs as he closes the kit, “When do you drop the act, huh?”

“I don’t.”

“Really?” Bucky asks in annoyed disbelief.

“No. People tend to try and have me whacked when I drop the act.”

He sighs, “So, what, nobody ever takes care of you? Treats you? You don’t have any days off? Time to be yourself?”

“This lifestyle doesn’t really allow me to have days off, Sergeant Barnes.” You snap, gathering the dress in your hands and turning to face him completely.

“Take me home, I’m tired and my feet hurt.”

You leave him in the room and he waits an extra few seconds before dropping the conversation and following you out.

...

Bucky opens the back door to the environmental facility with his right hand and sees the door to your office open, you and your crew sitting together surrounded by cigar smoke and he can hear a TV on.

“Sir, please step into the vehicle.”

“Like the cop would be callin’ this asshole Sir if the fuckin’ cameras weren’t around!” You wave a hand at the TV, not yet seeing Bucky standing there.

He finds it funny that the gnarliest criminals - the literal Mafia - spend their time watching shitty, scripted cop shows.

It’s been about two weeks since the mission with you where you retrieved the serums. Sam went to prom with your sister five days ago, which was hilarious for him, especially when he got photo prints of different sizes in the mail at his apartment. He didn’t bother thinking about how you found his address.

One of the men sitting next to you glances his way and sees him standing there, smirking at the vision of him; hair combed slightly back and to the side, and a large bouquet of flowers in his right hand and a small paper box in his left.

“You got company, Boss.” He says.

You look over to the doorway and your jaw drops in an open-mouthed smile.

“Look at googootz! Now this is a man that knows how to treat a lady, are you boys paying attention?” You tease, scurrying over to him and pinching one of his cheeks, resting your free hand on his large bicep to guide him into the room, the rest of your crew ushering out to give the two of you privacy.

“What’s in the box?”

“Cannoli.”

You throw your head back with an exaggerated moan, “You know the way to an Italian woman’s heart, Sergeant Barnes. What’s with all the gifts?”

“Thought I’d treat you.” Is all his response is.

You narrow your eyes at him and stand up a little straighter, crossing your arms over your chest.

The last conversation before he dropped you off that night hasn’t escaped his mind. He understands the difficulties of life - how it’s hard to find time for yourself among the busy schedule that is existing. He catches himself sometimes, too, forcing his body to run with no sleep, burning through all of his energy until he’s completely drained and blaming it on life.

But life’s not always like that. Life allows for days off. For treats. For a bit of kindness. And Bucky’s come to show you just that.

“What, a beautiful woman like you never received flowers and pastries before?” He says, taking a half-step forward to be close enough to look you closer in the eyes.

“Are you flirting with me?” You whisper in amusement.

His eyes glance away from yours to look down at your red-painted lips. He gives you a shy smirk, really turning up the charm. For a big, bad, boss, you’re pretty easy to break down.

“Let me take you out tonight.”

“Maybe I’ve got plans.”

“Cancel ‘em.”

“What makes you think you’re worth canceling plans for?”

“Why don’t you trust me and find out?”

“You should know by now, Sergeant Barnes, that I don’t trust.”

He doesn’t respond for a moment, setting the box of cannoli on your desk before reaching his now free hand up to your face, using his finger to brush away a stray hair and push it behind your ear.

He then takes a hold of one of your hands, turning it over to place a kiss on the top of it, before wrapping your fingers around the flowers in his other hand, forcing you to take them.

“No restaurant you’ve been to a hundred times over, no drama, no business. Just a man trying to treat a lady.” You look down at the flowers before meeting his eyes again.

“I get to pick the place.”

“No.”

“The kind of food.”

“No.”

“The -”

“No. Let me take care of everything.” Bucky insists, determined to get you to give up control for the first time in what he can only imagine has been a very long time.

Bucky knows better than anyone how terrifying it is to give up control. It was terrifying when he was forced to give up control, his free will taken away from him in the war for decades upon decades, but it’s terrifying even now when he has to do it as a free man. It makes a person vulnerable. When was the last time you were allowed to be vulnerable for somebody?

“I’m gonna pick you up here at six. Wear something nice and leave the executive attitude at home.” He finishes, leaving you with the flowers and cannoli before returning back outside, ignoring the stares he receives from you crew who wait patiently outside your office.

He feels your eyes follow him at the door, and he can’t wait to sweep you off your feet tonight.

#bucky barnes #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes mob au #bucky barnes x mobboss!reader #mob au #marvel #bucky barnes au #bucky barnes oneshot #even tho bucky wants her to give up control we all know he prob likes being yelled atin italian #and that the real reason he wants to take you out

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somerpmemes · 3 years

Text

Amphibia S1 Starters

Change as needed

“Okay, so yesterday was a bad day.”

“Wish there was a way to prove I’m not such a goof-up.”

“Bribe accepted!”

“You’re a hero! An ugly, ugly, ugly hero!”

“Oh boy, that’s gross.”

“That was pretty cool, ___. Also really dumb.”

“So is punching part of friendship?”

“Hey, sorry I almost got us killed today.”

“Just one of Mother Nature’s horrible mistakes.”

“This world is messed up.”

“That’s kinda messed up, man.”

“The moment has passed, hasn’t it?”

“You set ‘em up, and I’ll knock ‘em down.”

“No telling what creepy critters are swimming around.”

“It’s fun cause it doesn’t hurt! ….ow.”

“They’re gonna eat each other alive.”

“How is it still so hot in here!?”

“Old things are dumb!”

“I don’t know what it is but I love it!”

“Don’t you dare talk about pineapple on my pizza.”

“I’ve seen your death in my mind.”

“Please don’t tell me where it comes from.”

“Who knew ultimate flavor could be so painful?”

“___, there’s a big difference between courage and stupidity.”

“Must be painful to make so little sense all the time.”

“Yeah, deep down we’re just a couple of softies, ain’t we?”

“Always gotta make it about you, don’t you?”

“Okay, that was the smartest thing I ever said.”

“This a cult thing?”

“...sensing something is wrong.”

“I don’t wanna die in a basement!”

“What is this demonic nonsense?”

“___, this show has beautiful people doing dumb things while stuff explodes. It’s literally perfect.”

“Pretty sure I just got played.”

“That woman is everything I wanna be.”

“Impressive. Kinda scary, but impressive.”

“Finally, the luxury I deserve.”

“I don’t wanna live on this planet anymore.”

“I’m here for the drama.”

“These are horrifying.”

“I’m sure this’ll make sense in a minute.”

“It’s dumb, but fun to watch.”

“Where was I? Oh right, crippling sadness.”

“That sounds bad.”

“___, there’s more to life than spitting and hitting stuff.”

“That hurt my soul.”

“You are really not selling me on this place.”

“You’re really easy to trick.”

“Do you like being randomly attacked?”

“That’s, uhh… that’s pretty dark.”

“You’re soft, ___, like a baby.”

“Could you, like, turn down the creep? Just a bit?”

“Man, all I wanted to do today is get muddy and eat people.”

“Wow, that’s uncharacteristically generous of you.”

“Just find a nice tree to leave me under.”

“Uh, anyone dead yet?”

“Oh wow this looks unsafe. We HAVE to go down there!”

“Uh, did we just get locked in here?”

“Who wouldn’t wanna steal this stuff?”

“Looks like my day just got a lot more challenging.”

“There, there, you beautiful, disgusting thing.”

“Love is the cruelest weapon.”

“___, no pressure but we’re gonna die.”

“Well, it looks like this meal’s a bust. Who wants to eat out?”

“Harsh, but on point.”

“Assassinating your critics, I love it!”

“Now it’s like nothing happened.”

“Make promises you can’t keep and junk.”

“I’ve been here too long.”

“Nothing like cracking your neck after a long drive.”

“Give me that ding dang thing!”

“If it was respect you were looking for, you sure lost mine.”

“Whoa, this is serious.”

“Get them to love you and they’ll do anything for you.”

“Don’t stare into the abyss, ___.”

“To the VIP seats!”

“This… this is pretty sad.”

“Been a long time since I danced with someone.”

“That reference means nothing to me.”

“Is it safe to look yet?”

“The acting troupe had to cancel on account of, well, being eaten on the way here.”

“We ain’t backing down!”

“What matters is that I’m here to take care of you.”

“All you gotta do is smile and be friendly.”

“Am I crazy or is he making sense?”

“If anyone needs me, I’ll be in the bathroom practicing my distinguished expression.”

“That’s, uhh, hard to say no to.”

“Just let it happen, ___.”

“C’mon, help me break the door down.”

“Okay, okay, okay. Enough death already.”

“Wouldn’t we be better off preparing by diving into deadly situations?”

“Research is overrated.”

“That is some steampunky nonsense right there.”

“Don’t fall, I won’t catch you!”

“Is this a ‘we gotta go now’ thing or can I finish eating?”

“This is totally different. This is about me!”

“Well, I’ve got a house to break into, so…”

“That’s gonna be hard to forget.”

“Uhh, yeah, you need help, bud. This is deranged.”

“I don’t want your pity cookies.”

“So, turns out tonight’s events were a tad traumatic…”

“That’s kinda personal and you’re kinda basically an unstable stranger.”

“Wow, flying? What a great way to spy on my enemies.”

“Ehh, we’ll fix it when we get back.”

“Well, that was a waste of time.”

“Don’t put your hand in there!”

“There’s absolutely nothing familiar here.”

“Well, that didn’t feel balanced.”

“Now we’re both cowards!”

“Well, you do give off a creepy vibe.”

“I may look nice, but I’m petty and vengeful on the inside.”

“Not only am I petty, but I’m very unforgiving.”

“Hey, can’t you see I’m trying to pass on!?”

“Well, this is horrible.”

“Ehh, who am I kidding? I’ll eat it.”

“I don’t usually do ‘team sports’, I do ‘me sports’.”

“Well, shoot, I’m crying ‘cause that was beautiful.”

“She may be gigantic but she’s also a child.”

“___, you seem oddly invested.”

“I have all this anger and I don’t know what to do with it!”

“I’m looking forward to seeing this thing go down in flames.”

“I can’t wait to abuse this power!”

“___, this isn’t cute anymore.”

“Oh, she’s totally freaking out.”

“Ooh! I wanna riot too!”

“Oh, if you gonna bring it, then bring it.”

“Do you ever stop talking!?”

“Oh, come on, a dagger!?”

“Look at me, look at me. Everything’s gonna be totally fine, alright?”

“Maybe you’re better off without me.”

#amphibia #rp #rp starters #rp meme #starters #sentence starters #sentence starter meme #ask meme

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pretoriafics · 3 years

Text

Therapy Sessions with the Devil - Part II

You guys requested me about this one so much! I'm glad all of you liked part one. Now, prepare yourself for your worst nightmare being Homelander's therapist.

Word count: 1.683 Contain: Therapist!Reader x Homelander Warnings: Mental disorders, sexual harassment, stalking and regurgitation. +16 only Versão em português aqui PART 1 THE BOYS MASTERLIST

If hell really exists, for you, it sure would be Friday mornings. Of course, that was a very contradictory thought for most people. Friday was usually associated with a fun day where, after work, you could go out with your friends in the evening and return home whenever you wanted. That was the advantage of Fridays: The fact that you know you don't have to wake up early the next day to go to work. Knowing that the week was coming to an end was like a cool breeze, as well as knowing that the next day would be pure rest. That didn't exactly apply to you. Okay, it was great to know that you wouldn't have to work the other day. That was the only good point on Fridays for you because on that specific day of the week you have Homelander as a patient. Your attempt to get rid of him on leaving Vought had been successfully thwarted because you were apparently a good professional. And you've never hated yourself so much for being good at what you did as a job. It turns out that, lately, things had started to get a little strange in the consultations with him. Homelander always mentioned a girl, whom he said he was starting to see differently. He filled her with compliments when he spoke of her, always reinforcing how much he loved the color of her eyes, her calm voice, and the way her hair moved with her graceful walk. Of course, according to him, if she were a Supe she would be perfect. But that's okay because he said he really accepted her "with that imperfection". You started to suspect that he was talking about you but avoided thinking about it. It not only made you sick with dread, but it completely perturbs you. A Homelander in love with you would be a great way to make it even worse than it was going. That morning on a Friday the 13th, when you arrived at the office, you saw that on your table was a sumptuous bouquet with the most beautiful reddish roses you had seen. Despite the beauty of those flowers, you took that as confirmation of your worst nightmare. Terrified, you let your bag hit the floor and ran to the bathroom. There, you knelt in front of the toilet and put all your breakfast out. Tears were wetting your face, your hands were shaking in pure fear. And then, you felt a hand touch your shoulder. “Yes, put everything out. Everything will be fine, it will be over… ” It was him. Homelander's voice flooded your ears, and you had to take a deep breath to try to take some control over yourself. “Okay, I'm already better. It must have been something I ate for breakfast. Can you excuse me and wait for me on the couch, please? ” He nodded, his blue eyes filled with concern. "Sure." As soon as he left, you closed the door. You took the toothbrush and the paste you kept there, brushed your teeth, and wiped away your tears. Then, you left the bathroom ready to get it over with. So, you sat in your chair while Homelander directed his worried blue eyes to you. You have started the query. "Well, let's get started then." “Don't feel pressured to make our session today. We can do it tomorrow, you are not feeling well. ” You forced a slight smile. “I'm better, thanks. And I don't work on weekends. ” Not least because you weren't willing to let Homelander ruin your Saturday. "I bought these flowers for you when I was coming here." He got up from the couch and took the bouquet from the table, handing it to you with a tender look. Homelander was beaming and even looked so anxious as a teenager in front of their crush. You, however, froze. You clenched your jaw and forced another smile, holding the flowers. “I appreciate it, John. I'm flattered, but I need you to know that we need to keep our relationship strictly professional and impersonal. I can have my therapist register canceled with this type of relationship with a patient because it is unethical, and I don't want to end up harming myself. ” Those words made you realize how brave you were. You had fought an internal battle to say that. "But I will put the flowers in a vase after the consultation." His expression became austere and you froze with it. Homelander nodded and lay down on the couch while you put the flowers back on your table. Fortunately, at that meeting, he hadn't mentioned you or anything you might suspect was about you. The subjects of that consultation were merely concerned with the Seven, about their suspicions about Starlight, and how angry he was with the team. You were with your head on the clouds. You couldn't stop thinking about what you would do now that your worst nightmare had become real. You were so disturbed, you didn't even see that appointment go by. It seemed to have passed in the blink of an eye, unlike the others that seemed to be an eternity. And then you were finally able to rest. Being Homelander's therapist also brought other burdens: No therapist could maintain consultations with you, because it was too heavy for anyone to hear you talk about Homelander. Until then, you hadn't been able to find anyone who could help you support the weight you carried on your shoulders. You even thought of writing everything you felt in a diary as a way to try to get out and put out what you felt. However, the fear that Homelander might read outweighed everything. That was another point: You felt, at times, that you were being followed and observed. The curtains in your house always remained closed, although you knew that if Homelander was really stalking you, curtains would not help. That was enough for you to start developing a little paranoia. But that Saturday had been unlike anything. As usual, you woke up with the feeling of being watched. However, it looked different that time. It was almost as if you were feeling that Homelander was also on the sumptuous penthouse where you lived. Knowing that hiding in any room in the house could be worse, you simply chose to go out with a friend. Your circle of friends didn't recognize you anymore, and they even seemed to be concerned about you. While you and your friend were walking through Central Park, while she was telling some random gossip from someone in your social circle, you couldn't stop looking around. Homelander was there, somewhere, watching you. You were quite sure of that! Night soon came, and that feeling of being watched did not go away. You had the impression that Homelander, when he came to watch you, never stayed that long. His maximum was three hours. But on that Saturday, he seemed to be on your heels all day. You chose to wear your worst pajamas that night, the one that best hid your body, since you never had the feeling of being watched at that time. You were certain that you would not be able to sleep, and you could already feel that your emotions were extremely drained. Trying to act as naturally as you could, you lay down in your King Size bed. You covered yourself with the blankets and turned off the lights. You were lying in a sideways so that you could see the door that went into your corridor. It was like you were waiting to hear Homelander's footsteps there. But then you saw, through the reflection of the mirror, the door to your closet - the only door you were facing away from. You saw the reason for all your dread. The mirror reflected the image of a Homelander with slightly red eyes, watching you through the crack in the door. His uniform pants were slumped under his feet, and despite the low light, you could see what he was doing - explained mainly by the movement of one of his arms. His eyes were on you as he touched himself, and that seemed to be the main reason he didn't notice that you saw him. Your heart sped up, and you had to contain a weeping of fear and the nausea you felt when you noticed that grotesque scene. Tears flooded your face so that your vision was completely blurred, and panic made your entire body stop functioning. Homelander was completely obsessed with you, and that would bring you to complete ruin. You didn't sleep the rest of the night - even when you noticed that Homelander was no longer in the apartment. Still, on Sunday morning, you only managed to get out of bed at seven. You had been crying all night, completely stunned by the surreal situation that had happened. Apathetic, there were no more tears, no energy to cry or be afraid. You were just an empty shell, an inanimate object - the Homelander's favorite one. So you walked slowly to the closet to change clothes. And there was proof that what had happened last night was real. It was everywhere. The pearly liquid present on the door, on the floor, and at some points on the wall proved that he had not touched himself just once that night. You staggered backward, feeling that sudden wave of nausea again. That scene was enough for you to stride to the bathroom, kneeling in front of the toilet while your body tried to expel something through your mouth, without success. Suddenly, you felt your heart racing. Panic enveloped you, and you leaned against the bathroom wall, your breathing as fast as your heart. Sweeping heat shot through your body, and you started to feel sweaty. The air seemed to start to drain from your lungs and you thought you were about to die. And if your time to die had indeed come, fine. Homelander would no longer torment you anymore.

#The boys x Reader #the boys x you #the boys x y/n #the boys imagine #the boys imagines #homelander x you #homelander x y/n #homelander x reader #homelander imagine #homelander imagines

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atlafan · 4 years

Text

It’s Electric - One Shot

a/n: I have no idea what this is or why I thought of it, but enjoy CEO!Harry with a blue collar!Y/N

Warnings: Smut (slow burn, I’m so sorry.) Not proofread, sorry!

Words: 15.2K

Being a female, blue collar worker was interesting to say the least. Most of the guys you worked with were either fresh out of college and starting their apprenticeship, or they were in their mid-forties, married with kids. You did the college thing, and got a degree in mathematics, but you didn’t want to be a teacher, and you sure as hell didn’t want to go into computer science. Your father was an electrician, and you asked him for help getting into his union. Electrical work involved a lot of math, especially trigonometry.

You were in your mid-twenties, able to live alone, and working a job that had good benefits. A lot of your friends didn’t quite understand it because you sometimes had to work traditional holidays, and you really couldn’t take time off. But the overtime pay was incredible, and when you were able to take a vacation, you had plenty of money for a good time. The one thing you were sort of missing was companionship.

Most of the guys on the job just assumed you were gay. It was a stupid stereotype. To be fair, you did have to wear a lot of flannel and you never wore makeup, and you constantly had hat hair from your hardhat. Again, a lot of stupid stereotypes.

Your union had gotten a contract together to do maintenance on a specific building in the city. It happened to also be where one of your best friends works so you’d be able to go on lunch together.

“Y/N!” She squeals. “Look at you, I’ve never seen you on the job before.” She tugs at your flannel. “I think you’re the reason mom jeans came back into style, you look so cute.” She was the best hype man there was.

“Thanks, Stacey.” You chuckle. “I don’t wanna get in trouble, I’ll see you at lunch, okay?”

You had never changed so many lightbulbs in one sitting. You hated maintenance work, but it beat being on unemployment. Next on the list was to run some tests on the electrical outlets. You make your way through specific people’s offices. You see your friend again, her desk was outside the CEO’s. She was his executive assistant.

“Let me just make sure he’s not on a call.” She says and you nod. She knocks on the door and opens it. “Mr. Styles? The maintenance crew is here to run inspections in your office.”

“Thanks, send ‘em in.”

She smiles and gestures for you to go in. She grabs you first, pulling you back.

“Remember, he’s British, and very hot.”

“Stacey…you have a boyfriend.”

“I’m well aware, I’m just preparing you.”

You roll your eyes and walk in.

“I’ll try to keep it brief.” You tell him and he nods. You click your pen and make a few notes on your clip board. You grab your outlet tester from your tool belt and get to work. He tries to continue typing at his desk, but curiosity gets the better of him.

“This might sound rude, but I was expecting some old guy to come here for this.”

“Sorry to disappoint.” You smirk at him and continue around the room. “This office is huge.”

“Well…it should be. Worked hard enough for it.”

“Right, you’re the CEO?”

“That’s right, darlin’.”

“Don’t call me that.” You make a disgusted face.

“Sorry, it’s just something I say.” He blushes.

“I need to get under there.”

“Excuse me?”

“Under your desk, I need to check the floor outlets.”

“Oh.” He stands up and moves his chair out of the way. He looks away as you get on your hands and knees, but he’s a man, so his eyes flicker down to your ass. He looks away immediately. You stand back up and make some notes.

“Alright, all set. Have a good one.”

“That’s it?”

“Pretty routine inspection. You all take good care of your offices. Nothing to worry about. We replaced all the lightbulbs that needed it, made them all LED.”

“Thanks.” He smiles.

You walk out and confirm with Stacey where you’ll be meeting her for lunch. Harry notices this. After you’re gone, Harry goes out to Stacey’s desk.

“Stacey, you’re friends with that woman?”

“Yeah! We go way back, Mr. Styles. She’s my best friend, actually. We’re having lunch in a bit, would you like to join us?”

“No.” He chuckles. “No, that’s alright. Um…so she’s an electrician?”

“Mhm, she’s really smart. She was top of her apprenticeship program a few years ago. She’s part of some union now that he dad was in. She likes it.”

“Ah…” He looks away for a moment. “You and I know each other pretty well at this point, right?”

“I’d say so. I mean, my boyfriend and I have been to your house for parties.” You giggle. “Why?”

“Is she single?”

‘Y/N? Yeah! Totally single.” She beams. “Not that she can’t get a date, she can. She’s just been busy lately.” She bites her bottom lip. “Do you…want me to give you her number?”

“Only if she wants to. See what she thought of me on your lunch, would you?”

“I’m on it.”

You and Stacey meet up at a Panera Bread not too far from the office building. You’d be doing inspections there all week, on every floor.

“Alright, I’m just going to come right out and say it. Harry wants your number!” She squeals.

You nearly choke on your salad.

“Who?!”

“Harry! Mr. Styles, my boss. The CEO of-“

“Okay, okay. What the fuck, I talked to him for like two seconds. He also called me darling, I didn’t like that.”

“He calls everyone darling, or love. He’s British, remember.”

“What does that have to…? Never mind.” You shake your head.

“He must think you’re cute. He hasn’t dated in a while, as far as I know. He’s super sweet, Y/N. Can I give him your number, please? He could really sweep you off your feet.”

“I’m not looking to be swept, I’m looking for a partner, someone to spend time with. Not someone who flashes cash around.”

“You’re making excuses.”

“Fine.” You shrug. “Give him my number.”

Stacey can’t wait to get back up to her office to give Harry your number. She knocks on his door and enters. He’s just finishing his lunch.

“Here.” She slaps a piece of paper on his desk. “That’s her number. I’ll warn you, she’s stubborn, so…play it cool.”

“Don’t I always?”

“I said cool, not suave. She hates that shit.”

“When should I call? I don’t wanna seem too eager…”

“She might think you’re playing around if you don’t call her tonight. Call her after work.”

You were hanging out on your couch, fresh out of the shower in a tank top and shorts, digging into a pint of ice cream. Your phone goes off, and you see it’s not anyone you know. You swipe to answer and stick your phone between your cheek and shoulder.

“Hello?”

“Hi, uh, is this Y/N?”

“This is she.”

“It’s Harry.”

“Who? Oh! Mr. Styles from the office building.”

“Yeah.” He chuckles. “That’s me.”

“Stacey gave you my number?”

“She did. I hope it’s alright that I asked her for it.”

“Hey, however your relationship works is none of my business.” You take a bite of your ice cream. “So, why’d you want my number anyways?”

“So I could ask you out.”

For the second time today you choke on your food.

“Excuse me, one second.”

He hears you coughing and he tries not to laugh. You get a glass of water, and sit back down.

“Sorry about that.”

“No worries.”

“Why do you want to ask me out?”

“I, well, to be blunt I’m attracted to you.”

“Why?” You scoff. “Got a thing for girls in loose jeans?”

“They weren’t that loose.”

“What?”

“Nothing, listen, I think you’re pretty and I just thought-“

“Pretty? Wow.” You scoff.

“You’re really going to make me work for this, aren’t you?” He sighs.

“Hard work doesn’t seem foreign to you. It’s how you got that nice office of yours isn’t it?”

“Y/N?”

“Yes?”

“Would you like to go out for dinner with me some time?”

“I’m free Saturday if you are.”

“I’m free.”

“Pick me up at seven, I’ll text you my address when the time comes.” You hang up before he has a second to say anything else.

You text Stacey to let her know you’d be going out with Harry on Saturday. You were actually sort of excited.

On Saturday, you go to your hairdresser for a blow out, and to have your nails done. It was a very nice treat. You get your make up on and pick out one of the dresses you never get to wear. It was black and simple, but you were exited to wear it. You get a call from Harry right at seven.

“Hello?”

“Just pulled up, I’m downstairs.”

“Be down in a second.” You grab your purse and head down.

Harry had a suit on and was standing outside a black car. His jaw nearly drops when he sees you. All he had to go on was that day in his office. You looked like a completely different person.

“You look…lovely.”

“Thanks.” You smile. “I don’t get to dress up very often.” You blush slightly.

He opens the back door of the car for you and you raise an eyebrow.

“I have a driver.”

“Oh…fancy.”

You slide into the car, and Harry comes around on the other side. He taps on the partition, and the car moves.

“I hope you like Asian food.”

“Love it.” You say. “Oh! Are we going to that hibachi place?”

“No, but it’ll sort of be like that.”

“Do you always use a driver?”

“For city stuff, yeah. When I’m out at the beach or upstate I drive myself. Sometimes I get my picture taken when I’m out, learned a long time ago it’s best to just have a driver.”

“Like…paparazzi?”

“Yeah…sometimes. Not that often anymore. There was this, uh, model that I dated a few years ago-“

“Tell me again, why were you so attracted to me?”

“You caught my attention. Not a lot of people do.”

Your cheeks grow slightly red. You feel the car come to a full stop. The driver gets out and opens the door for you. Harry slides out after you. You watch as he tells the driver how long you’ll roughly be. As you walk into the restaurant, the hostess greets Harry almost immediately. You follow her past the main dining area, and are brought into a private dining room. There was a table for two set up already. You give him a confused look.

“I like my privacy.” He pulls your chair out for your and you sit down.

“Is there any particular reason we’re sitting next to each other.”

“The chef is going to make our food for us in a few minutes. Told you it was sort of like hibachi.” He grabs the bottle of wine on the table and opens it. “Would you like some? It’s plum wine, it’s delicious.”

“Um…sure.” He pours you some and you take a small sip. “Hm, different.”

“So, how does one become an electrician?”

“How does one become a CEO?” You smirk. “Lots of hard work, school, and luck.”

Before Harry can speak again the chef walks in, and a few other follow him in with a cart. There was a flat top where he’d be able to make whatever you wanted. One of the waiters brings over a tray of sushi to start with. You grab your chopsticks and take a piece.

“Oh, that’s good. I love sashimi.” You say.

“Good evening, folks.” The chef smiles. “Tonight I’ll be preparing a delicious steak, kale salad, and for dessert fried banana ice cream.”

“That all work for you? I sorta had to tell them ahead of time.”

“Sounds amazing.”

You watch as the chef prepares the steak and the kale. It smelled delicious already, and it was cool to watch as it was done. You and Harry continue to enjoy the sushi in the meantime.

“Are you going to answer my question?”

“About what?”

“Becoming an electrician.”

“Oh…well, my dad was one, and he was in a union. I have a B.S. in Mathematics, but I didn’t really know what I wanted to do with it, so I asked my dad for some help getting into the union, and the rest was history. I get to use my degree every day. Not a lot of people can say that.” You smile and take a sip of the wine. “Do you always do this?”

“Do what?”

“Schmooze on a first date.”

“I’m not schmoozing.” He gasps.

“I’m just saying…this is, like, really fancy. You could have taken me to a burger joint, I’m not picky. I just don’t want you thinking you to need to flash your cash around. I get it, you’re reach and do well for yourself, you know? I wanna know what’s underneath all that.”

Two plates are put in front of you.

“Thank you.” Harry says to the chef and everyone else leaves the room. “I wasn’t trying to flash my cash.” He cuts his steak and takes a bite. “I just wanted to show you a good time.”

“By booking a private room at a really nice restaurant?” You smirk and take a bite of your steak. “Although, this food is delicious.” You use your napkin to pat the corners of your mouth gently. “How’d you get into the business that you’re in?”

“Well, I always wanted to be in sales, do a little bit of traveling, that kind of stuff. When I was in uni, the idea of property management sort of intrigued me, so I looked a little more into that. I started off in the mail room while I was getting my MBA, and then just sort of worked my way up. I bet my company has provided a lot of work to your union, other than just maintenance.”

“It definitely does, I recognized the name. You guys have put up buildings all over the place. You’re kind of like Richard Gere’s character in Pretty Woman.”

“I suppose I am! I love that movie.” He clears his throat. “So, you didn’t want to become an engineer or anything?”

“Nope, I like working with my hands.” You shrug and take a sip of your wine.

“Is it hard being in a male dominated profession?”

“Isn’t it pretty male dominated up in your office?” You raise an eyebrow at him. “Most of the women up there were either assistants or other low ranking positions.”

“Are you saying your friend works a low ranking position as my executive assistant?”

“Stacey likes what she does, she feels fulfilled and needed, at least that’s what she tells me. I’m just saying, anywhere I would have gone, it would probably look the same. Besides, I’m not the only woman on the job, I’m just one of few, and I’m one of the younger ones. The guys are all nice enough.”

A few moments later a waiter comes in to clear the plates and someone else brings out the fried ice cream.

“I’ve never had this before.” You smile. “I’m excited to try it.”

“Fried ice cream is delicious, especially after eating a steak with so many spices in it.”

You both dig in. You lick your lips after taking a bite.

“Mm, that is so good.”

“I’m glad you like it.”

Harry squared up the bill, and out the two of you went. You thanked him over and over for paying. He wanted to ask if you felt like grabbing another drink anywhere, but he wasn’t so sure if you’d be into it. Maybe that could be saved for a second date. His driver brings you home and Harry gets out to walk you up the steps of your building.

“I had a great time.” He blushes. “I’m glad we could do this.” All you do is smile and nod. “Um, well, so I have your number, I’ll give you another call sometime?”

“Okay.” You get your keys out of your purse. “Thanks again for dinner.”

You key into your building and he watches you disappear inside. He was stunned. Not even a goodnight kiss, hell, even a hug would have sufficed. Usually when Harry took a woman out on a date at the very least he got a kiss on the cheek, if not that most of the time he would get invited up. Did he do something wrong? Were you not as attracted to him as he was to you?

“Tell me everything! I wanna know what to expect tomorrow morning and if I need to add a caramel swirl to his coffee.” Stacey giggles over the phone with you the next morning.

“It was…okay.”

“Just okay?! Didn’t he take you to that nice Japanese place?”

“Yeah, the food was excellent, but the atmosphere was weird.”

“What do you mean?”

“He had us seated in a private room and we basically had this personal chef. It was awkward when things got a little quiet. There was a little music in the background, but I would have felt more at ease in the main dining area.”

“He likes his privacy.”

“So he said. Apparently sometimes paparazzi follow him?”

“Yeah, about a year ago he was dating this Italian model. He started getting photographed. They followed him around a bit after they broke up, but we haven’t seen too many in a while.”

“I don’t know why he’d want to go from a model to me…”

“Oh, stop it. You’re gorgeous! So…are you saying you won’t see him again?”

“I don’t see why I would. I didn’t feel any sparks flying between us. He seems sort of hollow, Stace.”

“No! He’s so sweet! He can just be sort of…I don’t know…awkward. He’s amazing when he’s making a deal, but outside of work I know he can be a little social awkward.”

“I don’t think I wanna be with someone as rich as he is.”

“He was just trying to impress you, I’m sure. You didn’t have any fun?”

“I had a little…but not enough to go on a second date.”

Stacey swallowed hard. Harry was a very sweet man, and extremely respectful…but he wanted something he worked for it. There was no way he was going to let this, or you, go.

“Morning, Stacey.” He says to her with a smile. He grabs his coffee from her desk.

“Morning, Mr. Styles.”

“Have a good weekend?” He asks as she follows her in. He looks at the mail she’s already put on his desk.

“Yeah, Dan and I visited his parents out at the lake. It was nice.”

“Good for you guys.” He looks at her and smiles. “Been together a few years now, right? When’s he popping the question?”

“Oh, Harry.” She swats a hand at him as he chuckles. “Soon. Anyways, you’ve got a meeting at nine, and then this afternoon you’re to go to that new property we just bought. The construction workers will be there, it’ll be good for you to meet the crew.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know the drill. I’m dying to see the place again. Haven’t been since we saw it last.” He sits down at his desk. “Hate wearing those hard hats though, they always mess up my hair.” He smirks.

“I don’t think anything could mess up your hair.” She laughs and turns to leave to go back to his desk.

“Wait, uh, did you happen to speak with Y/N at all?”

“Oh! Um, was this past Saturday the big date?”

“You know it was, quit playing.”

“We spoke, yeah.”

“Did she mention me at all? Trying to gauge when I should call her next.”

“Oh, so you wanna see her again?”

“I do.” He smiles. “So, she say anything?”

“Yeah…um, she said she had a nice time.”

“Was that it?”

“Pretty much, but to be fair, we talked more about my weekend. Barely let her get a word in, you know how I can be sometimes.”

Stacey walks awkwardly back to her desk. She prayed that if he did reach out to you, you’d at least let him down easy.

Harry leaves around one in the afternoon to head to the property. He and the COO go together in a car. When they get there they both shake the foreman’s hand and walk around the property.

“The electrician’s showed up this morning. They’ve certainly got their work cut out for them.” The foreman says. “Great workers though, union contract just how you like.”

Harry nods and continues walking. He notices the electricians on their afternoon coffee break.

“Check out the suits.” Frank says to you. You smirk and look over your shoulder. You immediately look back at Frank. “What?”

“I know that guy…the one in the blue suit.”

“No shit, how?”

“He, uh, took me to dinner on Saturday.”

“What?!”

“My friend is his executive assistant, she gave him my number after we met last week doing those inspections.”

“No offense, but I thought you were gay.” He rubs the back of his neck.

“Frank.” You pinch the bridge of your nose.

“So…some big wig took you out? How was it?”

“I don’t wanna talk about it, and I certainly don’t want to-“

“Y/N?”

You turn around slowly to look at him.

“Hi Harry.”

“Y/N, you should address him as Mr. Styles.” Your foreman says.

“That’s quite alright, we know each other.” He smiles at you.

“We sure do, excuse me.” You grab your hard hat, stick it on, and head inside with Frank.

“How do you know her?” The foreman asks Harry.

“She’s good friends with my assistant.”

The foreman brings Harry and the COO inside to show them the bit of progress that’s been made on the interior thus far. Harry sees you up on a ladder helping a wire get fed through a hole.

“Got it!” You yell up, and secure it.

Harry and the COO stick around for quite some time making sure everything was to their liking. He’s there until the end of the work day and sees you walking with your toolbox to your car. You wave goodbye to Frank as you get everything in your trunk. It was a nice size SUV. He watches as you unclip your tool belt and slightly rub at your hip bones. He decides to come over to you.

“Hi again.” He smiles and you nearly jump.

“Jesus, you’re just everywhere.”

“Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you, darling.” You scrunch your face at the word. “Sorry.”

“You apologize a lot.” You shake your head and throw your hard hat into your trunk. You take your hair out of its bun, and shake your hair out. “Can I help you with something?” You close your trunk and lean against your car, crossing your arms.

“I just, um, well, I was wondering when I could see you again.”

“You’re seeing me now.”

He chuckles and shakes his head.

“I mean, when can I take you on another date?”

“Harry…” You look down, then back up to him. “I…”

“I should have texted you afterwards, right?” He sucks his teeth. “I didn’t wanna seem too eager.”

“You really had that good a time with me that you wanna take me out again?”

“Well, yeah. Didn’t you?”

You had two choices. You could either crush the man in front of you and walk away, or you could cut the guy a break and give it another go. Would it be so bad to let him take you out again? Maybe this time you could call the shots.

“I did.” You swallow. “I’d like to go out again.”

“Great!” He beams at you. “I was thinking we could-“

“I’d like to plan it.”

“Oh…well, alright. What did you have in mind?”

“You’ll find out Friday night. You’re free then?”

“I can definitely make myself available.”

“Perfect.” You turn on your heel and get into your car. Once again you leave him standing there, stunned.

“You’re giving it another shot?!” Stacey practically screams through the phone.

“Mhm.”

“What made you decide?”

“Well, he was just standing right in front of me. I felt sort of bad. I figured maybe I was being too harsh before. It can’t hurt to go out again.”

“Where are you going to take him?”

“I haven’t decided yet. I was thinking of going to that bar I’ve been to with Frank. I’ve taken you a couple of times.”

“Oh! That place with the darts and the live music?”

“Yeah! I think he needs a night to be a little less fancy, don’t you?”

“Definitely! He won’t know what hit him.”

Harry was on cloud nine all week. He couldn’t wait to see you again. He even had flowers sent to your job site. You were thoroughly embarrassed. The guys all gave you shit for it. He was a little surprised when you didn’t even text him to thank him for them, but he just brushed it off and kept his cool. When you did finally text him Thursday evening, he nearly squealed.

You: what’s your address? I’ll be picking you up around eight tomorrow

Harry: late start to the evening, where we headed?

You: that’s for me to know ;)

His stomach filled with butterflies all because you sent a winky face. He was having a few doubts that maybe you didn’t like him that much, but you were being playful with him now. This was good.

Your hair was down and wavy, you had a white tank top on with a dangly necklace, and some jeans. You drive to Harry’s building. It was much nicer than yours, naturally. You text him and let him know you’re on the street. He comes walking out moments later in a black silk shirt and a pair of yellow patterned dress pants. You squinted through the window and noticed they were sort of tight around his thighs. He waves at you and you wave back.

“This is fun already.” He says as he buckles up. He looks down at you. “I’m overdressed.”

“Not at all. You’re dressed like you, that’s good. This is how I like to dress.”

“You look cute.” He says.

“Thanks.” You start to drive off towards the bar.

“So, now will you tell me where we’re going?”

“To a bar, hope you’re thirsty.” You smirk at him.

As you continue to drive Harry takes note of the music on the radio and even the way you drive the car. You were only using one hand, on the bottom of the wheel. You were so easy going.

“This is a nice car.”

“Thanks, bought it last year. I used have a dinged up old truck.”

“Do you miss having a truck?”

“Not really.” You shrug. “I wanted something more like this. When you have a truck everyone always wants your help with stuff. It’s bad enough that I’m the handy friend.” You chuckle. “I’m always being asked to help repair stuff or whatever. I don’t mind, but sometimes it’s a lot.”

You get over to the bar and find a place to park.

“Can’t remember the last time I was on this side of town.” He comments as you walk inside.

There were a lot people around, and the bar itself was packed. There was some sports game playing, but it wouldn’t be on long once the live band would start. There were people playing darts and munching on popcorn.

“Go snag a booth, I’ll get us some beers.”

“Oh, uh…”

“What’s a matter?”

“I don’t really like beer.” He takes his wallet out. “I can grab the drinks, tell me what you want.”

“I want you to go grab us a booth. I’ll get you something other than beer.”

You turn and go up to the bar. You greet the bartender who knows you pretty well. You decide that if Harry didn’t want beer, then you wouldn’t get one either.

“Two long islands.” You grin.

You get your drinks and find Harry at a booth. He stuck out like a sore thumb, he wasn’t hard to find. You place the glasses on the table.

“I’ll grab us some popcorn. We’ll grab some real food later.”

You go up to the popcorn machine and grab a bowl to fill up. You say hello to some people you recognize and head back to the booth.

“What made you decide on a long island ice tea?” He raises an eyebrow at you.

“Thought it would be fun to just get drunk.” You smile. “What sort of mixed drinks do you usually get?”

“I don’t. I usually just get a scotch or something.”

“Ew.” You grimace and then take a sip of your drink. “This is much more fun.”

“You could have gotten a beer still.”

You toss a piece of popcorn into your mouth and take another sip. Harry takes a sip as well and coughs when he’s done.

“Bit heavy handed.”

“I can get you something else…”

“No, it’s fine.” He smiles. “Do you come here a lot?”

“Sometimes. Some buddies from work brought me here, and I liked it. They have free darts, and live music. The band should be starting soon.”

You were two drinks in, and you both were giggling messes. The band was loud, but fun. You had gotten into a little game of getting popcorn into the other’s mouth. Maybe Harry could let his hair down a little and act like a normal person.

By the time you each were on your third drink, you definitely knew you were drunk, and so did Harry. He was having a great time.

“I’m hungry, are you hungry?!” You had yell over the music.

“Starved!”

“Come on!”

You grab his wrist as you walk out of the place. It’s a bit chilly outside, and without thinking, Harry wraps his arm around your shoulders as you walk. You wrap yours around his waist, and he feels butterflies again. You lead him to a McDonald’s and walk in.

“Two medium big mac meals, please.” You slur as you walk up to the counter.

“I’m paying.” Harry insists.

“Nope, I got it.” You slap your credit card down. “Go fill up our drinks, I’ll wait for the food.”

Harry shuffles over to the drink station and fills the paper cups up with coke. You come over to the table he found and you both dive into the greasy food.

“Mm, I can’t remember the last time I had McDonald’s.” He grunts as he eats the food.

“Right?! It’s like, the perfect drunk food.” You suck down the coke. “I would have gotten us some flurries but the machine’s broken.”

“I have ice cream back at my place…got stuff to make sundaes actually.”

“Are you kidding?!”

“Nope, always keep that stuff around. Never know when you’re gonna need some hot fudge.”

“Well, I know where we’re going next.”

“What about your car? We’re both way too fucked up to drive.”

“It’s called uber.”

“Nonsense, I’ll call my-“

“He’ll be here in two minutes, finish up your fries.” You say, looking at your phone.

“You’re very impulsive.” He chuckles and throws some fries into his mouth.

“Live a little.” You yank him out of the booth and go outside.

You both crawl into the uber, and giggle during the ride. Harry hadn’t had this much fun in a long time. When you get to Harry’s building, he says hello to the doorman, and you just smile and wave. He keeps his hand on the small of your back as he leads you into the elevator. It was a beautiful lobby. You watch, through your foggy eyes, as Harry presses the button for the top floor where all of the pent house suites were. He leads you down a hall and keys into his place. You jaw nearly hits the floor.

“I didn’t know they made apartments this big. It’s like…a house in here!” You walk around. “Is this a staircase?!”

“Yeah, it’s two stories. There’s four bedrooms total. My main guest room is down here, and then upstairs are the rest. Got an office down that way, nice big balcony.”

“What’s a single guy need all this space for?”

“Got family and friends that come to visit. I end up hosting functions quite a bit too. Catered events, and all that.” He grabs your hand to lead you into his massive kitchen. “Can I get you some water?”

“Nope, got any alcohol?”

“You want more to drink?!”

“We’re going to have ice cream right? How about some kalua?”

“You know, I do have some. I could put it into some shot glasses.”

“Works for me.” You smile.

Harry get everything out for the sundaes. His kitchen looked like it belonged in a restaurant, but it made sense since he did say he had catered events. If he had cooks come they’d need state of the art equipment. He runs the scoop under some warm water, rolls up one of his sleeves and scoops the ice cream into two bowls. Your eyes widen as you see the veins in his hand and forearm peek out. He adds the warmed up fudge, sprinkles some nuts, and then adds some whip cream.

“Why do you have all this stuff?” You ask as you make up the shots.

“We had an ice cream social here a week or so ago. I like having themed parties.” He bites into his ice cream and moans. “I hate throwing out leftovers.”

“This fudge is really rich.” You lick your lips after taking a bite.

“Shoulda made milk shakes with this.” He takes his shot of kalua and so do you.

“Next time.” You spoon my ice cream into your mouth.

“Next time, eh?”

“Sure.” You smile. “I’m having a good time.”

“Better than last time?”

“Harry.” You put your bowl down and put a hand on his shoulder. “I’ll admit, I was pretty skeptical, but when you let your hair down, you’re a lot of fun.”

“So…you didn’t have any fun last time?”

“It’s not that I didn’t.” You say, shoveling more ice cream into your mouth. “But I feel like I got to know you better tonight.” You hop up on his counter and sit there comfortably as you finish your ice cream. A little bit of hot fudge lingers on the corner of your mouth.

“You have a little, uh…” He taps the corner of his mouth to show you. He moves to stand between your legs and you look up at him.

“Did I get it?”

“Not exactly.” He cups your cheeks and leans in. You can feel his breath on you. He runs his thumb over the spot. “Got it.” He sucks his thumb into his mouth and smirks at you.

Just as he’s about to turn to grab the bowls you grab at the collar of his shirt, and pull him to you, crashing your lips to his. He sinks into it, only for a second before backing away. He presses his forehead to yours.

“What’s wrong?” You breathe.

“I don’t want this to happen like this.”

“Like what?”

He steps away and looks at you.

“We’re both pretty out of sorts, Y/N.”

“It was just a kiss…”

“But it could lead to more, and I don’t feel comfortable with that.”

“Are you really going to tell me you’ve never hooked up drunk?”

“I have.”

“So…I’m sorry, I’m just really confused.” You hop down so you can stand on your feet.

“Y/N.” He cups your cheeks so you’ll look at him. “I want to be completely sober so I can fully enjoy you.”

“You’re…such a weirdo, Harry. Who says shit like that?” You step away from him.

“You know, most people find me charming.”

“Well, then I guess I’m not most people.” You roll your eyes at yourself. “Ugh, I didn’t mean for that to sound like I’m not like other girls, that would be a weird thing to say. I feel like you say things you think I’d wanna hear.”

“No, I really feel that way. I don’t want…look, if we decided to do it, I’d wanna remember it, that’s all I was trying to say.”

“So just say it like that!” You start laughing. “That I can understand.”

“I don’t know what to say around you. It’s like everything I do is wrong.”

“Not true.” You grab the whip cream can and spray some into your mouth. “You make a mean sundae.”

“Don’t hog it.” He opens his mouth and you spray some whip cream into his mouth. You both giggle.

“So…you don’t even want to keep kissing?”

“I do, but I don’t think that would be a good idea.”

“What do you wanna do instead? My car’s all the way back at the bar, I’m way too fucked to drive…”

“You could stay here if you want. I could give you some pj’s and-“

“No, I’d rather sleep in my own bed.”

“I could call my driver.”

“This late?!”

“He’s on call.” Harry takes out his phone and sends a text. “It’s his job.”

“You’ll come for the ride?”

“Of course!” He smiles. “I have a question for you…”

“Alright.”

“Did you get the flowers I sent you earlier this week?”

“I did.” You move some hair from your face. “I’m sure you meant well, but you shouldn’t do that while I’m working again.”

“Why?” He frowns.

“It was embarrassing. Some of the guys gave me shit for it. Just…if you do it again, I mean, I like getting flowers, just have them sent to my apartment. I don’t need gifts at work. I didn’t even know where to put them.”

“So, we’re definitely seeing each other again?”

“I’d like to.” You smile.

“Great.” He smiles back. “Sorry…I didn’t mean to embarrass you. Do you want me to have someone fired? Cause I can do that.”

“No.” You laugh. “But thanks.”

Harry leads you down to the car and you both get in the back seat. You sit really close to him. You were incredibly riled up and horny. It was the alcohol, but you were sort of disappointed that you wouldn’t be getting laid, and it sort of turned you on that Harry was being such a gentleman. You look up at him.

“Harry?”

“Yeah?” He looks down at you.

You move his arm to put it around you, and you look up at him with big eyes. He sighs and leans in to kiss you. His lips were so soft, and he still tasted like the hot fudge. Your hands slide up to his hair and tug on his curls. You just wanted his tongue in your mouth, but he was being so timid. His other hand goes down to your thigh, and he squeezes it, his thumb digging in to your inner thigh. You whimper slightly and then he lets go of you. The car comes to a stop, and your door is opened by the driver. Harry gets out to walk you up to your door.

“I’m going to be out of town for the next ten days.” He says, tucking some hair behind your ear. “But when I get back, I’d love to see you again.”

“Me too.”

“Good.” He gives you one last kiss before getting back into the car. He makes sure you’re inside the building before he lets the driver go. He presses the button for the partition to go down. “Charlie, I had my doubts, I really did, but she likes me, mate.”

“That’s great, sir. I’m glad she agreed to see you again.”

“Me too. She’s so…different! She’s sort of blunt too. I like that. I feel like women always just like me for my money, but she could care less! This could really be something, I can feel it.”

You told Stacey all about your date with Harry, and how good of a kisser he was. You weren’t sure how’d you last the next ten days without his lips on yours again, but you’d find ways to manage. Work was a great distraction. However, your friends continued to shit on you. One of them snuck a magazine that had Harry on the cover into your toolbox.

“Very funny.” You roll your eyes as they laugh. “What’s so funny that he likes me?”

“It’s not funny, think they’re just jealous.” Frank smirks and looks at the magazine. “It’s just odd that you’re into him.”

“He’s not exactly the type of guy I’d usually be interested in, but he means well. He’s sweet…in his own weird way. He’s quirky. I took him to that bar we’ve been to on Friday, we had a great time.”

“Look at you, trying something for a second time. When do you see him next?”

“I don’t know. He’s out of town for a couple of weeks.”

“Doing what?”

“How the fuck should I know? I didn’t ask.”

“Why not?”

“It’s none of my business. It’s not like he’s my boyfriend.”

“Yeah, but he is the guy you’re seeing.”

“I’ve been on two dates with him, nothing’s set in stone.” Your morning coffee break ends you sigh. “Great, time to go into this stupid basement.” You put your hardhat on and a mask and head in with Frank.

On Thursday evening, you were just hanging out, watching TV after a long day of work. Your phone goes off and you see it’s a call from Harry.

“Hello?”

“Hi, beautiful!”

You’re sitting there with your hair up in a messy bun, pimple patches on your blemishes, and a raggedy t-shirt with stains all over it. You roll your eyes.

“What’s up?”

“Well, I finally got a free moment, and I wanted to call you. Are you busy? Should be about eight o’clock, right?”

“Yeah it is…where are you?”

“I’m in London.”

You think for a moment and you gasp.

“Harry, it’s like two in the morning over there!”

“Like I said, I finally got a free moment. I’m just getting into my flat, getting cozy.”

“What did you go to London for?”

“Business of course…and to see some family. Killing two birds with one stone.”

“Do you travel a lot?”

“Sometimes. There were some buildings I wanted to look at out here.”

“How come you didn’t bring Stacey?”

“She doesn’t always need to travel with me. We’ve connected, don’t worry. I’m not one of those helpless idiots who can’t survive without their assistant. Besides, need her there to hold down the fort.” You hear some shuffling and then the creaking of a bed, and a big sigh from him.

“So…what kept you out so late?”

“Business.”

“What Business could you possibly need to conduct at two in the morning?”

“Things operate differently over here. People like to go out late. I actually left early because I was tired.”

“That’s wild.”

“Very.” He chuckles. “What are you up to?”

“I was just watching some TV before I hit the sack.”

“Anything good on?”

“Not really.” You laugh and turn the TV off. “Kinda like hearing your voice.” You slap your forehead because you literally don’t know what possessed you to say that.

“Like hearing yours too. Sorry I haven’t been able to text much.”

“It’s okay.”

“It’s not, really. I wouldn’t want you to think I wasn’t interested or something.”

“I didn’t.”

“Good, because I’m still really interested.”

“When do you come back?”

“Monday evening, then it’s back to the office Tuesday.”

“You never stop, do you…”

“It’s hard not to, but I like what I do.”

“I would hope so.”

“How’s your week been?”

“You should get some sleep.”

“Can’t, too awake now. Tell me how your week was, how’s the building coming along?”

“I’ve been in a dimly lit crawl space in the basement feeding wires all week. Tomorrow’s the last day of doing that. Then next week my group of people will move up to the regular basement, and then after that we’ll move on to the lobby. Other people are working on the outside as well, and then once all that’s done we’ll be able to move on to the individual offices inside.”

“Wow, that’s a lot.”

“Mhm, but it’s honest work. I can take a step back at the end of the day and see what I’ve done. I like that.”

“You’re a visual person, then.”

“I am.”

“So am I.”

“Nice to know we have one thing in common.”

“We have other things in common.” He sounds offended.

“Like what?” You giggle and sit with your knees hugged to your chest. His voice over the phone was oddly soothing to you.

“Well…I’d say we both enjoy a good joke. We both like food, although, I have to say, my stomach was pretty angry with me after I had that bic mac.”

You burst out laughing.

“So was mine. It’s always good going in.”

“Mhm, and we like each other.”

“Oh, we do?” You ask sarcastically. “Teasing. I like you.”

“You didn’t at first though.”

“You didn’t make a great impression by calling me darling in your office.”

“If I knew how derogatory it was going to come off, I never would have said it. It’s just…part of my vocabulary.”

“It’s okay, I know you didn’t mean anything by it.”

“When I get back, I’d love to see you again. Maybe we could have lunch or something.”

“On my jobsite? I don’t think so.”

“We could go out for dinner, then? I mean, I’ll be coming by the site next week to check out the progress.”

“Please, don’t even acknowledge me if you see me. I want things to be professional.”

“Reputation to uphold?”

“Sort of. I have a couple good friends, but not all of the guys are so accepting of women on the job. I don’t want any of them thinking I’m getting special treatment or anything because I know you. Someone put a magazine that had you on the cover in my tool box as a prank.”

“I’m sorry…I don’t really know what the big deal is though.”

“It’s like I’m in elementary school and everyone found out about my cruck. Boys never really grow up, so I’ve come to find out.”

“Can’t say I can argue with that. We’re an immature lot.” He chuckles and then yawns.

“You should really go to sleep.”

“But I like talking to you.”

“You can call me this weekend.”

“Oh, that sounds nice.”

“Goodnight, Harry.”

“Goodnight…sweet dreams, Y/N.”

You sigh as you hang up. Your stomach felt weird. Did you have butterflies? You never had butterflies. Harry was definitely growing on you.

Wednesday morning, Harry came to the jobsite to check things out. He stayed in the trailer with the foreman with quite some time before going inside the building. He didn’t see you, and he was sort of sad about it. He hears a whistling noise and sees a bunch of people filing out and taking their hard hats off.

“Morning coffee break.” The foreman explains. Harry nods and squints at everyone. His eyes widen when he spots you.

He watches as you grab your thermos and pour your coffee into the little cap that works as a cup. He desperately wants to go over and say hi, but he also wanted to respect what you asked of him.

“Hey, Y/N, isn’t that your boyfriend?” One of the guys says and makes kissy noises. “Go say hi, give him a big wet one for us. Show him some appreciation for giving the union so much work.”

“Very funny.” You roll your eyes. “He’s not my boyfriend. We’ve been out two times.”

“That guy’s dated models, what’s so great about you?”

“Bob.” Frank says, warningly. “Don’t be a prick.”

Harry watches as the group laughs, and Frank puts a hand on your shoulder.

“Everything alright over there?” He asks the foreman.

“Yeah, they’re just giving her a tough time. They seem to think you’re her boyfriend.”

“And what if I was? Is that supposed to be funny?”

“No, sir, of course not…it’s just…up until a couple weeks ago everyone thought she was gay, or at least, just not into dudes.”

“Why? Because she didn’t try to fuck one of the other guys? She’s a beautiful woman, and-“ Harry stops himself. He can feel his blood boiling. He wasn’t your boyfriend, and he knew that, but he still wanted to defend you.

“What’s it like fucking a dude with so much money? Surprised you haven’t quit yet to become his live in lady.”

“Bob, I’m about two seconds away from ripping your balls off.”

“Not a very nice thing to say.”

“You’re being a dick, Bob.” Frank says. “Why do you wanna know what it’s like to fuck Mr. Styles for? You like him too?” He smirks.

“Frank.” You pinch the bridge of your nose. “What’s happening here, you’re going to turn this around to make some gay joke to defend me? Not cool. You all need to grow the fuck up.” You finish your coffee, put your hardhat back on and storm off.

Harry watches the scene and goes over to the group of men since you now left.

“Everything alright over here?” He asks them. The foreman was shaking behind him.

“Just fine, sir.” Bob says.

“Are we sure? Because that worker seemed a bit upset. I hope you’re all working as a team, I hate to see people not being team players. It makes getting a job done well very difficult.”

“The guys have been ragging on her because of you.” Frank says. “Apparently they think it’s funny that you’ve been out a couple of times.” He turns to all of them. “I think you all forget that she works with us and has fun just like the rest of us, but she’s still a woman. She’s allowed to go out on dates with people not like us. Just because she doesn’t want any of you doesn’t mean she doesn’t deserve to find someone.”

Frank huffs and storms off himself. Harry was impressed by him.

“I don’t have much to add to that other than that her personal life is just that, personal. Please remember that, and keep things professional. Then, none of his will have a problem.” He says sternly and walks away. The foremen glares at all of them and follows Harry.

He just wanted to make sure you were okay. He saw you inside, back to work, as if nothing had happened. Frank was holding the latter you were on. He still wanted to respect what you had asked, so he turns and walks back out of the building.

Stacey had her phone out when Harry got back to the office. She was texting furiously with someone. Her eyebrows were furrowed and she had a frown on her face.

“Everything alright, love?” Harry asks, concerned.

“With me, yeah.” She looks up at him and smiles. “I’m proud of you.”

“For what?”

“For not stepping in to defend her. She’s good at taking care of herself.”

“So that’s who you’re texting?”

“Mhm. I’m gonna meet her after work for some drinks. When do you see her next?”

“Friday.”

“Good, that’ll be nice.”

“So I shouldn’t show up while you’re having drinks?”

“No! She needs girl time. You mean well, but keep doing what you’re doing. Don’t suffocate her.”

“It was so hard to not run over to her earlier. We chatted a bit over the phone while I was gone. It was so nice.” He sighs and leans against her desk.

“You’re a romantic, Harry, and I love that about you. But…Y/N…well, she prefers to save that for the movies.”

Harry’s eyes widen and he gasps.

“I just figured out what I’m gonna take her to do Friday!” He hugs Stacey quick. “Thanks, Stace!” He rushes into his office and closes the door.

By the time Friday rolled around, you were exhausted. You really didn’t want to do anything crazy, and Harry assured you that you’d just be hanging out at his place which put you at ease. His car comes for you around seven. You come out in a pair of jeans, a nice shirt, and your hair down. He gets out and practically runs over to you. He takes you in his arms and kisses you.

“Missed you.” He says against your lips before kissing you again.

“I guess I missed you too.” You smile. “Thanks for being so cool at the site the other day.”

“No worries, I just hope those guys have cooled it.”

“They have.”

“Good.” He smiles and leads you into the car.

“One of these days I’m going to see what you look like behind the wheel.”

“That just means you’ll have to come out to my beach house.”

“That doesn’t sound too terrible. It’s getting warmer out by the day.”

“I hope you’re hungry, I’ve got something good prepared.”

“Did you cook?”

“God, no. I’d burn the house down if I made something other than a frozen pizza.” He chuckles. “No, I had someone come and make everything I wanted.” You make a face at him. “Oh, stop it. You’ll be thankful once you see it, trust me.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

Once you’re at Harry’s place, he leads you inside. You take note on how he always says hi to all of the workers. You liked that he was so kind to them. When he gets you inside your jaw drops. There was a popcorn machine full of popcorn, hot dogs on a rotisserie, and all of the fixings on a table next to it, a nacho station, and homemade candies and chocolates.

“So, this is, like, the concessions area, and then down the hall is my home theater. Thought I’d bring the movies to us. Do you like it?”

“This is so…extravagant.” You walk up to where all of the sweets are.

“I had my chef make up those chocolate covered cookie dough bites, I thought you might like them.”

“I love those…thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” He kisses you cheek. “Well, let’s make up what we want and then we can go find our seats.” He chuckles at his own joke and it makes you giggle.

You each make up a tray of snacks, and head down the hall. You gasp when you see a movie poster on the wall outside of the door.

“Pretty Woman?”

“I remember you mentioning it on our first date. Would you like to watch it?”

“Sure!”

You walk inside the room. He wasn’t kidding, it really was a home theater. Three rows of luxurious recliner seats, a large screen and a projector in the back.

“Where would you like to sit?”

“Middle row?”

“Works for me.” He smiles and follows you up. He sets his food down on the chair next to him and takes his phone out. “There’s an app linked to the projector so I can just it play from here and even dim the lights.”

“Pretty cool.”

“Very cool. Makes things so much easier.”

The lights dim, and previews start playing.

“Previews from when the film first came out, makes it more immersive.”

“Nice touch.” You saw, biting into your hot dog. “Oh, wow. This is delicious.”

“All freshly made with a natural casing. Still not the best for you, but at least it’s made with good ingredients.”

You sip on your soda and toss some popcorn into your mouth as well. Once you both finish up some of the cookie dough bites, you set your trays aside, recline the chairs, and get comfortable. Harry lifts the armrest between you and puts his arm around you.

“This alright?”

“Mhm.” You cozy up to him and sigh as you watch the film.

Even though you thought he was flashing his cash again, you knew he wasn’t doing it for bad reasons. He wanted to give you a nice evening, and this was how he knew to do it. You appreciated him putting all this effort in just for you. It made you rethink your first date completely. He was just trying to show you a good time, and you felt bad for being sort of rude. You’re happy you gave him another chance.

You sling your arm over his lower stomach, and put one of your ankles over his. His cologne smelled so good, you just wanted to have him closer to you. Harry was swooning. He hadn’t felt this happy in so long. His hand strokes your arm and shoulder mindlessly as the movie goes on. You both laugh and giggle at the funnier parts. When it gets to the part of the film where Vivian goes down to where Edward is playing the piano, and she sits on top of it and they start having sex.

You bite your bottom lip and look up at Harry whose eyes are glues to the screen, but you could feel his heart beating rapidly. He notices you looking up at him and he looks down at you with a slight smile. You reach one of your hands up to the back of his neck to pull him down to you. His lips brush over yours, and then you both sink into it. You tug him by the collar of his shirt so he’s hovering over you on the large seats. You wrap your legs around his waist to have him as close as possible. You swipe your tongue along his bottom lip and he opens up for you. You both groan into the open mouthed kiss, happy to feel the other’s tongue.

He kisses down your jaw and makes his way to your neck. Your hips buck up towards his when he starts to suck on your skin. You crane your neck to give him more access, and you practically push his head further into you. You whimper and bite your bottom lip as your hips move up towards his again. He sits up and pulls you on top of him so you can straddle him. Your lips find his again as you roll your hips down on his growing bulge. You tug at his hair as you suck on his bottom lip. His hands were press on your back to keep you close.

“Y/N?” He breathes.

“Mm?” You mumble as you kiss on his neck.

“Do you wanna take a break so we can finish the movie?”

“What, why?” You pout with your now swollen lips.

“Well, it’s just, that scene where Jason Alexander tries to…um…you know, is coming up and I’d feel weird making out while that happens.”

“Oh.” You chuckle and move off of him. “Makes sense.” He puts his arm back around you as you both catch your breaths.

Eventually the movie ends and the lights come back on. You have to blink a few times to get used to it. You and Harry grab your trays and go out the kitchen to clean everything up.

“Did you enjoy that?” He asks as he loads up the dishwasher.

“Yeah! I mean, I love that movie, and it was cool to watch it privately like that.”

“That room used to be another bedroom, I had it renovated shortly after I moved in. I’m glad I did. It got difficult to go out once the paparazzi started following my every move. Plus, it’s fun for parties. My family loves it when they come to visit.” He dries his hands on a towel and tosses it on a counter.

“Do they still follow you around?”

“Not as much anymore, thank god. At least, not to see who I’m dating. Sometimes after I do an interview for a magazine they follow me to see if I’m going out to get drunk or something.” He scoffs and shakes his head.

“You end up on a lot of thirty under thirty type magazines.”

“Yeah…I’ve done those, made it onto Forbes too, that was pretty cool. Then in a couple of years when I do turn thirty, it’ll be forty under forty. It never ends.” He shakes his head.

“How’d you end up dating some Italian model?”

He steps closer to you and tucks some hair behind your ear.

“Is that something you really wanna talk about?” He asks, just above a whisper as he starts to kiss on your neck again.

“No.” You gasp as his hands squeeze your hips. “Can we go to your bedroom?” You hear him sigh against you and he leans back against the counter.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Not ready for that yet?”

“You make zero sense!”

It’s true. Harry wasn’t making much sense. He was used to moving too fast with women, and it always went wrong. He really liked you, and he didn’t want it blowing up in his face.

“It’s not that I don’t want to.” He squeezes your hand. “I just think we should go out on a few more dates before we get to know each other like that…don’t you?”

“No, I’d like you to take me to your room and fuck me.” You cross your arms.

“Y/N.” He chuckles. “I promise, it’ll be worth the wait.”

You knew he was right. You felt his fully erect dick when you were grinding on him earlier.

“I just want us on the same page, make sure we both want the same things before diving into all that.”

“God, of course you’re, like, a good person.” You roll your eyes. “Fine, let’s go out a few more times.”

“Great.” He smiles. “I want you to know, too, I’m not seeing anyone else.”

“Neither am I.”

“And you won’t start, right?”

“Why would I?”

“I don’t know.” He shrugs.

“Harry, I barely have the time to juggle one guy, I don’t think I’d have the energy to entertain more than one.” You laugh.

“Alright.” He blushes slightly. You step closer to him and wrap your arms around his neck.

“I’m surprised there isn’t a line of women knocking at your door.”

“Oh, there is, I just ignore it.” He smirks and you roll your eyes. “Kidding.”

“Mhm.”

You both smile and stand there kissing for a little while. Harry makes sure you get home, giving you a ride in his car. Just like last time, you spent most of the ride making out in the back seat. You really didn’t want to leave, but it was late and you needed to sleep. You say goodnight to each other, and he makes sure you’re inside before letting Charlie drive away.

“Mr. Styles, don’t forget you’ve got that gala this weekend.” Stacey says to him Monday morning.

“Shit, I’ve completely forgot about that.” He sighs. “Do I have to go?”

“Unfortunately, yes. I saw the guest list and…Carina’s going to be there.”

“Of course she is!” He groans and slumps into his chair. “Fuck, and I don’t have a date.”

“You could ask Y/N.”

“Do you think that’s something she’d wanna go to? She’d need a ball gown and-“

“She’s an electrician, but she’s still a woman. She has a lot of pretty clothes. I actually borrow a lot from her when I have events to go to.”

“She’s having me over for dinner tonight…I suppose I could ask her then.”

“Wait, she’s having you over?!”

“Yeah…” He raises an eyebrow of confusion at her.

“Wow.” She smirks. “She must really like you. She never invites guys over.” She winks at him and leaves his office.

After work, Harry has Charlie drive him over to your place. He rings your buzzer and you let him up. Your door was open a crack for him already, so he goes tight in, loosening his tie.

“Hi, Harry!” You smile.

Your hair was up in a messy bun, and you still had all your work clothes on, but your flannel was unbuttoned, revealing your white tank top and plenty of cleavage. You go over to him and give him a kiss on the cheek.

“Not as big as your place, but it has what I need.”

“It’s lovely. One bedroom?”

“Mhm, and two bathrooms.” You say proudly. “I hope you like food from the crockpot. I set up some chili this morning before I left.”

“Chili sounds amazing, I love spicy food.” He takes his suit jacket off and throws on your couch.

“Great.” You smile and grab some sour cream and cheese from your fridge. You grab a couple of bowls and some spoons and you both serve yourselves. You both sit down at the small table you have in your kitchen.

“This is delicious, thank you.” He smiles.

“Oh, I’m so glad you like it.”

“I’m happy we could get together tonight.”

“Me too.” You smile.

You had fully warmed up to Harry at this point. You’d been seeing each other for a few weeks, and you had let many walls down. You liked him, you really liked him. You two also hadn’t done more than make out, and it was absolutely killing you.

“Do you have plans Saturday evening?”

“I don’t believe so, why? Another movie night?” You ask sort of excitedly and he chuckles.

“No, I wish. I have this charity gala to go to that I actually forgot all about until Stacey reminded me this morning. I’d love for you to join me.”

“Oh…a little fancier than I thought, but, sure.” You shrug. “I could do that. I’ll have to call my hairdresser to see if she can squeeze me in, I’m assuming I’ll probably want my hair done?”

“Only if you feel comfortable…”

“Will I need a gown?”

“Yeah.”

“Alright, I have a couple to choose from in my closet. Do you know what suit you’re wearing?”

“Uh, yeah, here.” He takes his phone out to show you. It was pink with a design on the front. It was beautiful.

“Hm, I think I have a green dress that would look good with this. Pink and green look so nice together.” You use your napkin to wipe your mouth and stand up. “Come on.” You nod towards the hallway.

“Come on what?”

“I wanna show you the gown I have.”

“Oh, alright.”

He follows you into your room, but he stands in the doorway as you go into your closet. It was much smaller than his, but he liked the way you decorated. You utilized a lot of space. You can always tell when a tradesperson lives somewhere because everything always looked really nice. Here were built in shelves and storage units.

“You make those?”

“Mhm, and I made this closet twice as big.” You find the gown you’re thinking of and hold it up in front of your body to show him. “What do you think? Will it do the trick?”

“It’s beautiful, Y/N. Why do you have it?”

“When I was younger I used to participate in pageants. The scholarships were super helpful for college. Anyways, past winners get invited back pretty often and you’re supposed to dress really nice when you go, so I have a couple of formal gowns for when I get those calls.”

“I never would have taken you for a pageant girl.”

“I’m not really…but I needed the money, and I figured out how to play the game. I came in first twice in two different competitions. However, the girls I participated with weren’t very nice, so I wasn’t exactly sad when I got too old for it.” You hang the dress back up. “Don’t worry, I’ll be able to look the part with all your fancy friends.” You smirk and walk out of your room. You sit on your couch and he sits next to you.

“A lot of them aren’t really friends. Acquaintances really. Um, Stacey showed me the guest list today and my ex is apparently going to be there.”

“The model?”

“Yeah.”

“Wonderful.” You scoff. “So are we finally going to have the conversation?”

“What do you mean?”

“She was your last relationship right? Tell me what happened.”

“Not much to tell. We met at a dinner party for a mutual friend. We met in London, actually, but we both had places here in the city, so we kept seeing each other. I didn’t realize how well known she was, so that’s when the paparazzi started. We were together almost a year before it just got to be too much. She wanted me to basically give it all up for her so I could travel with her, but I thought it was selfish of her to ask me to do that, so we broke up.”

“Did you love her?”

“I did.” He says bluntly. “But it wasn’t the type of love I wanted. I don’t have any feelings for her whatsoever, I want you to know that.” He places his hand on your knee. “I just know she’s going to come over to me and look you up and down, and she’s going to be really snotty. She’s…well, she’s a bitch, to put it simply.”

“And you dated her for a year because?”

“Vanity. On paper, we were the perfect match, but I realized it felt like I wasn’t living my own life anymore. I’m much happier now.” He gives your knee a squeeze.

“Alright, well, I’m sure we’ll have a good time. Is it a sit down dinner?”

“It is.”

“Open bar?”

“Yup.”

“Dancing?”

“A little.”

“Sounds like a good time to me.” You smile.

“You’re amazing, thank you.” He leans to kiss you and that was that.

The day of the gala, your hairdresser was able to squeeze you in for an updo. You showed her the dress you’d be wearing, so she gave you an elegant bun. You had your nails done as well. You were glad you did because you had a nasty bruise on your thumb. That’ll be the last time you use a regular hammer and not just a nail gun.

When you get home you take out an old pearl necklace that was your great-grandmother’s that would go perfectly with the green dress. It was strapless and fit to your form, with a nice slit starting at one of your thighs. You found a pair of heels that went perfectly with it, and a white shall. You apply your makeup, and take a step back to take yourself in. You looked perfect. You take a selfie to send to Stacey.

Stacey: omfg!!! You’re gonna give Carina a run for her money, have fun!

You smile at the text and find your clutch that goes with the dress. Harry picks you up around seven. You gasp when you see a limo, and not just the regular car he usually picks you up in.

“All this for the two of us?” You ask as he gets out of the car. His suit looked so good. His jaw drops when he sees you.

“You look stunning, Y/N.” He gives you a gentle kiss on the cheek, and help you into the limo. “The limo’s just to keep up appearances. We’re essentially walking down a red carpet into the building. Know how to pose?”

“Oh, I can give face when I need to.” You smirk. “It was fun getting all dressed up since I don’t get to often.”

“I like your flannels too, I hope you know how sexy you look in your work clothes.”

Your cheeks heat up. Harry didn’t really talk like that to you often.

“I’ll have to wear my tool belt for you sometime…just my tool belt.” You whisper in his ear and then face forward. You send a shiver up his spine. He couldn’t wait for that.

When you pull up to the event, Harry gets out first. Cameras start flashing, and he extends his hand out to you. You stand up and nearly feel blinded, but you get through it. You walk with him, his hand on the small of your back. You’d stop occasionally to be photographed. There were reports asking Harry what your name was and other questions, but he didn’t answer a single one. Once you were inside you took a deep breath.

“You did amazing, thank you.”

“No problem. How come they wanted to know who I was?”

“So they can print some story about us. I don’t wanna give up your privacy, so my lips are staying sealed for now.”

You’re brought into a large ball room. There were silent auction items all around the perimeter that Harry would need to put some money down for.

“I hate these things. I’d be happy to just donate without having to get anything in return, you know?”

You walk around with him to look at the items.

“How come you’re not writing anything down?”

“I’m waiting for other people so I can put a larger amount down. They deduct the value of the item from the actual donation, so I wanna make sure enough money gets put down.”

“That’s…really philanthropic of you, Harry.”

“All the proceeds tonight go to inner city schools to get them new computers and other technology they’re in desperate need of.”

You weren’t sure if you’d ever meet Harry’s mother, but you hoped you would just so you could thank her for raising such a kind man. You both mingle with a few people, and eventually Harry puts his bids down for a few different items.

“If I win I’ll just donate this shit. I don’t need anything else.” He shrugs.

Waiters come around with h'orderves and drinks. You snatch a flute of champagne and a shrimp puff.

“Good, babe?” He smiles at you as you lick your lips.

“Very.” You giggle.

His smile fades when he sees Carina from across the room. She had a lovely blue gown on, and some man’s arm was snaked around her waist. She sees Harry and she sends him a small wave. He clutches your hip a little tighter. You look up at him.

“Are you alright?”

“Yeah, uh, wanna find our table?”

“Sure.”

You find your table and you both take your seat. You chat with the woman sitting next to you, and other people begin finding their seats. As the event gets started, waiters come around with food. Someone on a stage comes out and announces who has won what items. People clap. Harry won a couple of the items he bid on. He stands as people clap, and you clap as well. You kiss him on the cheek as he sits back down. Once dinner is through, some people start going out to the dance floor, and others stand around to mingle.

“Well if it isn’t the CEO himself.” Harry turns around the second he hears the accent. “Hi, Harry.”

“Hi, Carina.”

She takes him in for a gentle hug, and kisses him on both cheeks. You want to gag, but you know it’s just a cultural thing.

“And who might this be?” She looks you up and down.

“I’m Y/N.” You extend your hand and she shakes it. “Nice to meet you.”

“Same to you.” She smiles and looks at Harry. “I’m surprised to see you here with someone.”

“Could say the same to you.” He nods over to the man she came with. He was over talking with some other people.

“Oh, that’s Richard. He’s lovely. We met a few months back. He works remotely so he’s able to travel with me. It’s perfect.”

“Good for you.”

“What do you do?” She asks you.

“I’m a union electrician.” You say with a bright smile. “I got a degree in Mathematics and then I joined the trades world.”

“Oh my…I never would have guessed.” She smiles nervously. “Harry, may I borrow you for just a moment? Andrew is here too, and he misses you so much.”

“Um…sure.” He looks at you.

“Go ahead, I need to use the ladies room as it is.”

He watches you walk away and turns back to Carina.

“Andrew’s not here.” Harry says to her.

“I know, I just said that so we could chat. She’s not for you, and you know it.”

“What makes you think you have the right to say that to me?”

“Harry, you can’t be with some blue collar worker.”

“And why not?” He scoffs. “I’ll have you know she’s lovely and elegant, but she’s also not afraid to go to McDonald’s and stuff her face. In fact, she’s not afraid of food at all.”

“I’m on a very strict diet and you know it.” She huffs.

“Why don’t you worry about yourself and Richard?”

Harry turns on his heel and walks towards the restrooms. You were just coming out when you see him waiting.

“Are you alright?” You ask him.

“Yeah, feel like having a dance?”

“Definitely.”

You take his hand as he leads you back into the ballroom and onto the dance floor. The band was only playing slower songs, but that was just fine. Harry was really light on his feet. It made you smile as he led you around.

“You about ready to get out of here?” He whispers in your ear.

“Mhm.”

He smiles at you and leads you out. He says goodbye to a few people, and gets you outside. There were still reporters, but he gets you into the limo quickly.

“So…your ex…was she civil with you?”

“Yeah, nothing to worry about.” He throws his arm around you and kisses your hairline. “Okay to come back to mine?”

“Definitely.”

He gets you up into his place and gets you a glass of water.

“I had a lot of fun tonight.” You tell him.

“Me too, you definitely made it more fun. Those things can be so dreadful.”

“I just look at it as a free dinner.” You laugh.

“Oh, is that all it takes with you?” He smirks.

“Pretty much. I’ll go to a party like that with you anytime.”

“Good to know.” He wraps his arms around your waist and pulls you close to him. Yours go around his neck and you start kissing. You giggle when you let go of him and see your red lipstick all over his mouth.

“Sorry.” You try to rub it off with your thumb.

“No worries.” He chuckles. “Would you like to come upstairs?”

“I would.” You take your heels off, and follow him up.

He leads you into his large bedroom. You gaze at the beautiful furniture.

“I’ve got a walk in closet too.” He says. “You’d probably appreciate the craftsmanship.”

He opens the door for you and you step inside.

“It’s beautiful. I love built ins. Whoever did this did a great job.”

“I only hire the best, but you knew that.” You grip at his suit jacket and push him up against the doorframe of the closet. You slot your lips over his and he welcomes it.

“I want you, Harry.” You say against his lips.

“I want you too.” He kisses on your neck and bites down on your shoulder.

He walks you over to his bed until your legs his the frame. He keeps you steads as his hands find the zipper on the back of dress. You push his suit jacket off his shoulders and let it fall to the ground. He unzips your dress, but holds it up.

“Are you okay with all this?” He asks.

“God, yes.”

Your dress falls to the ground and pools at your feet. Your fingers work to unbutton his shirt. His eyes widen as he looks at the underwear set you’re wearing. You were wearing a strapless black bra with a black lace thong to match. Of course you still needed to wear a bra, your breasts were too large to without. You get his shirt off and you take a step back to admire his tattoos.

“I didn’t know you had so many.” Your hands trace off the ones on his collar bones, his torso, and his hips. “Even your arms.”

‘Got a few on my legs too.” He loves the way your hands felt on his body.

“I thought you just had the cross and the anchor. These are so cool.”

“Thanks.”

Your hands move to his belt buckle and get it undone, his pants drop to the floor moments later. You lick your lips when you see his tight boxers.

“Fuck, Harry, I want you so badly.”

You push him down on the bed and straddle him. His hands go to your hips, rubbing circles into your skin with his thumbs. He reaches up to unhook your bra, and tosses it to the floor. You switch positions so you’re lying on your back. He caresses your breasts and kisses on each of them. He puts his face between them and just enjoys the way your skin feels on him. You start giggling and he looks up at you.

“Breast man, huh?”

“Sorry, was that weird? You just have such a beautiful body.”

“Not weird at all, they’re yours to play with.” You grin.

“Oh, I like the sound of that a lot.”

He takes one of your nipples into his mouth and sucks harshly. You gasp as your hips buck up towards him. He does the same thing to the other before kissing down your body. His hands tug your thong below your hips.

“Can I take this off?”

“Please.”

You lift your hips to help him. He looks down at you and then up to your eyes.

“Can I?”

“Can you what?”

“Make you feel good.”

“Sure, but I wanna hear you say what exactly is going to make me feel good.”

His eyes darken as he looks at you.

“Y/N, I’m going to lick into your cunt until you’re screaming that you can’t take it anymore.”

Your mouth falls open as he parts your legs. He kisses from your knee to your inner thigh. Sucking on where he pleases. He uses his forearm to hold your hips down when he finally gets his tongue on you. He licks a flat stripe from your center up to your clit. You clutch at the soft blankets on his bed as you watch him. He makes eye contact with you when he starts to suck on your clit.

“Oh my god.” You moan as your head falls back. You feel him smirk against you. You start to tug at his curls when he swirls his tongue around you and then flicks it quickly on the nub. “Christ.” You say through gritted teeth.

His tongue moves back to your center where he licks into you. He groans at the taste of you. His middle and index finger move to rub your clit in circles while he uses his tongue to essentially fuck you. Your body was starting to feel hot all over, and you could feel a familiar knot tightening in your lower stomach. He assumes you’re starting to get close because you were starting to tighten around his tongue. He licks back up to your clit, and plunges his fingers inside you.

“Oh, fuck!” You cry out as his fingers work your insides. Your eyes roll into the back of your head when you feel him knuckle deep. “Harry, it’s so good, don’t stop!”

He groans his response as he sucks on your clit again. He curls his fingers up against your front wall where he knew you needed it. He feels you pulsating around him. He could hear you panting and it was music to his ears.

“Shit, oh, fuck, oh my god!” You scream as your orgasm washes over you. He continues to pump his fingers slowly to help you ride it out.

He sits up on his knees and wipes the slick away from his chin with the back of his hand. He licks his lips and smirks at you. You catch your breath and look up at him. You sit up slightly and grab at the band of his boxers.

“Do you want me to-“

“Next time, I really just want to fuck you.”

You bite your lip and nod at him. He takes his boxers off and your eyes grow wide when you see his full length. You spread your legs back apart for him, and he lines himself up.

“Shit, uh…condom.” He backs away from you and rummages through his night table for one.

“I’m on the pill…”

“Found one!” He looks at you. “What did you say?”

“I’m on the pill…if you didn’t feel like using one.” Your cheeks were starting to grow red. “I’m clean. Wouldn’t have let you go down on me if I wasn’t.”

“I’m clean too. So…you don’t want me to use one?”

“Nah, I kind of want you to come inside me if I’m being honest.”

“Jesus.” He grunts and tosses the condom aside. He gets back between your legs and rubs his tip along your slick folds and clit. “You’re positive?”

“Yes.”

He leans down to kiss you as he slowly pushes inside. He swallows you gasp and moan once he bottoms out. You tighten around him involuntarily. He gives you a moment to relax and adjust to him. You hadn’t been stretched out like this since god knows when.

“Go on.” You whisper.

He smiles into your neck as he starts to rock in and out of you. Your arch up into him. Your hands search for a nearby pillow.

“Hold on.” You tell him and lift your hips up, sliding a pillow under you. “Okay.”

“You’re killing me.” He breathes.

He sucks your bottom lip into his mouth as his thrusts pick up the pace. You wrap your legs around him and move along with him. Your hands slide down to his ass so your nails can sink into the fleshy area. He bites down on your collar bone as you keep moving along with him. He was used to women just starfishing under him, this was so nice. He felt really connected to you.

“Oh, shit.” You press your forehead into his chest. “Harry.” You moan.

“Gonna come again?”

“Mhm.”

He snakes a hand between the two of you so he can rub your clit, and that pushes you over the edge. Your nails rake up from his ass to his back as you come, making him moan out at the overwhelming feeling of being marked up by you.

“Can I bend you over the bed?”

You moan out your response. He pulls out of you and gets you on your feet, bending you over. He grips your hips and slips back inside you. All you can hear is his skin slapping against yours. You prop yourself up on your elbows and arch your back. He was hitting so fucking deep, and his tip was brushing against your g-spot. One of his hands goes back to your clit while the other grips the back of your neck while he pounds into you.

“Taking it so well, Y/N.” He grunts.

“Feels so good, fuck!”

He watches as your back arches more and sweat slides down your spine.

“I’m, I’m close.” He says.

“Yeah? You wanna come?”

“Yes, fuck.” He moans out and fills you up while you come again with him.

He had you screaming just like he said he would. He hold you close to him for a moment, his chest flush with your back. He kisses your back before pulling out. You clamp your legs together before anything has a chance to make a mess.

“Let me get you a rag.”

“S’okay, I’ll just use the bathroom.” He helps you stand up and you turn to face him. You grab him by the back of his neck to kiss him. “That was really nice.” You giggle.

You waddle to his bathroom while he grabs a fresh pair of boxers. You clean yourself up and come back out.

“Can I give you something to wear?”

“Please.” You smile. You couldn’t stop smiling, really.

He hands you one of his bed shirts. It had his initials embroidered on the chest pocket. He watches as you button it up.

“Comfortable?”

“Very.” You crawl onto the bed with him. You throw a leg over his and rest your head on his chest. He looks down at you and cups your cheek, pulling you in for a kiss.

“You make me really happy, Y/N.”

“You make me happy too, Harry. I may even let you stay over at my place sometime.” You chuckle.

“I’d like that.” He kisses your forehead. “But only if I’m staying over there as your boyfriend.” He grins.

“I think I’d feel comfortable with that.” You kiss his soft, swollen lips.

“Really? You’re into all this, you’re not just saying that because we had some hot sex?”

“Harry.” You giggle. “The sex was really hot, and I may have had my reservations about you, but we’ve gotten to know each other well, I’d like to be your girlfriend. Let’s make it official.”

“I have to warn you, I’m gonna want to spoil you rotten. You may get annoyed with me.”

“You can’t buy my affection, just remember that.”

“I know, I just can’t help wanting to just give you everything you want.”

“You’re what I want. I don’t care about all this.” You gesture to his extravagant bedroom.

“I know you don’t, I think that’s why I like you so much. You could care less!” He laughs. “It’s amazing. You’re totally not shallow. It’s refreshing.” He settles down further into the bed and you kiss him a few times on the cheek.

“I get busy a lot. When there’s over time I take it. I may have to break dates once in a while.”

“Same here.”

“If you’re traveling, I won’t be able to just drop everything to go with you.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to. I like that you work hard and that you actually want to work. You have an honest job, and I really admire that.”

“Thanks.” You kiss on his chest. He liked that you were a kisser. Harry loved being loved on. “However, if you want to plan a trip to that beach house of yours…I certainly could put in for some vacation time.”

“You’d love it out there. It’s nice and private, we’d have our own beach. I have a boat too with a kitchen and bedroom below deck. It’s great.”

“This will definitely take some getting used to.” You laugh. “I’ll have to keep bringing you to dive bars so to knock you down a peg.” You joke.

“Whatever you need to do.” He smirks.

“I’m also going to teach you how to cook. We don’t need to have a catered meal every time we hang out here.”

“That seems fair. Could we start with that chili you made? It was so fucking good.”

“Sounds like a plan to me.”

You sigh happily and snuggle into his chest as he holds you. You both slept really well that night. You weren’t sure what exactly being a girlfriend to a CEO would entail, but as long as the both of you stayed on the same page about your values, you saw this relationship lasting for a very long time.

#harry styles #harry styles one shot #harry styles imagine #harry styles fic #harry styles fanfic #harry styles x reader #harry styles slow burn #harry styles x y/n #harry styles y/n #harry styles fluff #harry styles fluff fic #harry styles smut #harry styles smut fic #ceo!Harry #harry styles au #pls tag if you reblog #feedback is always appreciated!!

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y0itsbri · 3 years

Note

you should do hcs abt gallavich around season two-threelike just hanging out in the abandon buildings and Ian training and Mickey just hanging out

ahhh yes i love s2-3 besties era

mickey thought that ian having to study to get accepted into west point was bullshit. wasn't it enough that the kid is literally volunteering himself to go die in a stupid war? but seeing how much effort ian was putting into this, mickey decided he better get on board if he had any hopes of stealing ian's attention.

mickey quizzed ian on the geometry theorems while they worked at the store, wanting to fill the silence. ian asked how mickey was so good at math. mickey tried to shrug it off like the compliment hadn't affected him with a simple 'had to be' but his blush betrayed his brain and gave it away.

their friendship expanded beyond work and the dugouts and sneaking into sox games. they managed to sneak into a movie theater to watch the amazing spider man. they left the theater giddy, pushing and teasing each other.

one morning, ian mentioned how he needed to start training for real for real. mickey was like ??? 'you look great though, man -- i mean like aren't you always working out and shit?' ian gave mick a knowing stare for awhile but caved and just admitted that at home workouts weren't cutting it anymore. mickey was like 'i know a place. wait for me after work.' and then refused to elaborate.

ian didn't know what he expected, but it definitely was not some crumbling old building whose current occupants looked like it consisted of junkie paraphernalia, rodent droppings, and broken glass. mickey sensed his confusion and was like 'nah, man, over here.' he led him to a small clearing behind the building filled with things that looked like they came out of a junkyard.

mickey explained that he found a lot of the old shit when he was out with his brothers and thought they would be good for ian to play pretend army with an obstacle course. he had paid off his brothers' curiosity for moving the materials with free joints, but ian didn't need to know that.

mickey seemed so at ease at this place. like he didn't have to hide. ian realized the weight of the notion that mickey had invited him to his place. he didn't want to disrupt the peace or startle mickey by bringing up feelings, but his heart was full.

it was hot as fuck, but they spent the rest of the afternoon rearranging shit into a feasible course. mickey had come prepared with a six-pack of beer, which they had downed like water by the end of the day.

it became a habit for mickey to trail ian to the course whenever he could. mickey would lazily soak up the sun, loading and unloading his gun, while poking fun at ian. 'ay go get 'em, army, maybe this time you'll actually clear it.' he liked getting ian all worked up and irritated and if he just wanted to watch his not-boyfriend sweatily work out, what about it?

after one training session, ian reached over at mickey to pass over his smoke. mickey's like 'nah i got something better' and leads him upstairs to a room where there was an old blanket sprawled out in front of a window. they sat and passed a blunt back and forth. ian liked city views. ian liked mickey. and ian was pretty sure mickey liked ian, too.

one evening, they had brought up a stash of candy to eat while hanging out. ian had taken his shirt off, the summer heat having gotten to him... kinda. it was mostly for mickey. ian leaned his head back and closed his eyes. after a moment, he heard a scuffling and something that sounded like a pencil moving against paper. he peeked one eye open to see mickey gripping a tiny pad of paper with a determined look on his face. ian let mickey believe he was asleep. later, ian asked to see the sketch and mickey just punched him in the arm 'you fucker.' 'okay but i must at least be a beautiful fucker for you to draw me.'

they talked about a lot of stupid shit: what it's like in juvie, which family members to avoid, bitchy teachers at school, the latest mandy drama and how ian was going to take her to the school dance, favorite tv shows when they were kids, what kind of animal they would own if they could, first kisses, how they got some of their scars. some secrets were spilled. overall, they found that they enjoyed each others' company more than anyone else's.

there was a level of trust and comfort between them, even if it was just confined to this abandoned building. the walls crumbling around them being more than just literal. their own walls were coming down for each other and they only fell harder.

#ask #anon #shameless #gallavich #shameless s2 #shameless s3 #ian gallagher #mickey milkovich #ian x mickey #my posts

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buchananbarnes1991 · 3 years

Text

Unus Annus Sentence Meme Starter

“Hey buddy buddy buddy buddy!”

“Our long time colleagues are 419 hours a day deny you here!”

“Peoples dream, must first be full of blood!”

“When we arrived in my backyard, we stopped the fire.”

“We quickly eliminated the enemy, and the fight was depressing.”

“Boy am I hungry!”

“Zip zap zop!”

“I don’t know if this was your idea, but we’ll roll with it.”

“This wouldn’t be the first time like, ‘hey I’ve got an idea.’ when we told you it weeks ago.”

“With the guidance of a guardian angel, you can do anything.”

“What am I teaching you how to do?”

“You don’t need to make it! I’m making it!”

“Have you washed your hands? You should wash your hands.”

“You can have the knife when you need the knife.”

“Close the door and never go back!”

“I want you to do something for me. Take a balloon, stretch it out..nice and wide.”

“Some of us are more gifted than others.”

“Okay, so what are we doing here? What is this?”

“I think that the way that I’d kill you is..’take you by the hands. come this way. I’ve got something to show you. just something you HAVE TO SEE.’ “

“In highschool. I dated a girl...her name was, Abigail. Very smart and driven. I was a stupid boy.”

“I still hadn’t let go, but they called me to tell me. She’d let go.”

“She looked down at the ground and then looked back up me. She giggled a bit and then said ‘Oh, don’t you know? I have feelings for Troy.’ “

“When you’re a late bloomer and you spend most of your time alone in a dark room with various ‘websites’, it turns out that feeding my entire adolescences with perverted thoughts from various unsavory sources makes a distorted impression of the act of making love.”

“After about thirty minutes of dry thrusting, I found myself incapable of completion.”

“The first time I ever had sex, I had to fake my own orgasm..just to get it over with.”

“I too was a late bloomer. I didn’t know anything about intercourse or foreplay or anything.”

“We heard the tent unzip, her thirteen year old brother came through the tent! He didn’t see us. But, we were there. He said ‘Dinner’s ready.’ Under the protection of the sleeping bag we were replied ‘OKAY!’, He exited and I-- *giggles* exited.”

“I think that’s enough therapy for one day. Remember, it’s okay to talk about embarrassing of your life.”

“You stand here..I’m gonna take my shoes off.”

“I need to climb around you.”

“Using teamwork and trust and...t-t-t....team work, you get one person from one end of the body, all the way around to the same end.”

“You think you know us, but we only show you what we want you to see.”

“Let’s get climbing.”

“I thought we were gonna watch a movie.”

“And then I PILE DRIVE YOU’RE SPINE...paralyzed for life.”

“I AM ALWAYS STABLE. Don’t even try to unstablize me.”

“Felt like an emotional burden unloaded.”

“Death comes for all of us and we’ve gotta prepare.”

“It’s a beautiful world, with a lot of caskets.”

“I’m just thinking about America...it’s not a great time to think about America.”

“Can we see some different caskets? Can you show us some metal ones, some wood ones?”

“Let’s start with the highest! And then we’ll work down to where we’re comfortable.”

“Why is Mahogany like the universally known wood? It’s used in all the movies, everyone talks about it. If they want quality, they want a Mahogany.”

“Obviously it’s a beautiful wood, but what makes Mahogany so special?”

“With Mahogany if you look at it. If you pass your eyes to the side, it changes. It goes with you.”

“You are supposed to be buried in dirt. From dust to dust.”

“I don’t want it to be too comfortable. I’d like to stay alert.”

“I don’t know, what does it mean to be afraid? I’m not afraid of death.”

“I don’t like the feel of velvet. I mean, I’ll touch it.”

“Mmh....velvet...”

“That’s the thing! Like old production stuff was built to last, FOREVER!”

“For now you can kneel.”

“They’re Nigerian dwarf goats. They’re gonna be your yoga partners today.”

“I twisted a man into a pretzel. I could do the same to you.”

“I twisted myself into a pretzel.”

“It’s so much more fun to do a plank with a goat on your back.”

“The goats come to you. The motto that we like to have it ‘trust the goats.’ “

“Oh, wait. Wait! I didn’t know we were competing.”

“When I did hot yoga. I kicked everyone’s ass.”

“There’s a lot goatin’ on.”

“You flinchy bastard.”

“Alright, there’s a goat there.”

“I always tell people that they will fire their massage therapists because goat massages are way better.”

“Yeah, it’s real firm.”

“Ow, oh god. Your tallons!”

“Oh, tight pants..tight pants!”

“Those are quitters who think that you have to have the perfect conditions to do things but if you can do things in times of adversity that’s when you know you’re really committed to a cause!”

“Anyone want kisses?”

“It’s okay to show emotions.”

“CRY LITTLE BITCH, CRY!”

“No one’s crazy enough to do it!”

“We knew this year was going to be hell.”

“Hey! Seven days..”

“There’s always still time for things to go wrong.”

“We’ll save them for the future.”

“No, there’s no future.”

“I hope I die in a hilarious way. I hope my death can be told as a joke, like it’s so funny how I died. People can get one last joy. One last laugh.”

“I’m not afraid of death, but I am afraid of dying.”

“Okay, we only have our sixth sense to see with. Okay? Much like Bruce Willis in the show Sixth Sense, spoiler, I know it’s new. He sees dead eggs everywhere.”

“You can do it with dominoes too, but be careful with that one cause once to get a hundred or more dominoes and you spill ‘em all over, it’s gonna take all afternoon to set ‘em back up.”

“So you better fucking see with your brain or else you won’t be able to have a good time.”

“Ouch ouch ouch! That’s not an egg.”

“I think you need to go a little slower.”

“Oh...Puppies!”

“Should we turn on the emergency camper light?”

“I’m just such a neat freak.” “You know we need to try and escape.”

“What a profound man, that shot out the load that is Tony Stark.”

“This is a literal don’t show it. Oh god, all of his nudes are right there!”

“Gone gone, forever.”

“Two idiots cause ten care pile up from buttplug dropedge.”

“Hook car batteries up to my nipples? I’ll say yes every time!”

“I’m not a masochist. I’m really not. I’m glad I have this uninterrupted moment to talk about this. I’m not a masochist. I’m just curious.”

“I’ve never been hit by a car, outside of my car? What’s that like? I DON’T KNOW!”

“Sometimes, I am an idiot and..I match your intelligence level. THAT’S NOT WHAT I MEANT!”

“We’ve been edging father time for a year.”

“Recognize my face, thank you.”

“Oh it was terrible. You didn’t tell me about all the bears along the way.”

“Nice camel toe.

“Do you want me to get nurse Tracy?”

“When we tried to crush those melons, SHE TOOK TWO!”

“I was thinking the other night, what if the next melon is [insert muses’s name here] skull?”

“I just like doing what I’m told.”

“A man of few words, a man of action.”

“Are our faces being used as Capchas’ now?”

“Thank you god, thats’s a good idea.”

“God said we could!”

“Doesn’t matter what you do, to keep it from ending. Once it ends. It’s gone forever.”

“I don’t know you but you’re here, a lot. I guess you’re fine.”

“I couldn’t get it off, I felt like I was gonna rip your skin off.”

“YOU WERE GONNA RIP MY SKIN OFF.”

“We got all this time that we can relax! We’ve got like a week to relax...”

“Neither of us have ever been pepper sprayed. Let’s get pepper sprayed!”

“It’s burning as if there’s some hot oil.. on my eyes.”

“My eyes are okay now.”

“This fucking sucks so bad.”

“I would not recommend getting pepper sprayed.”

“When I was a young lad. All I had was my imagination and the woodland creatures.”

“You shot me twice! I get to shoot you with a paintball at some point in the future.”

“There is no easy!”

“Math wasn’t my strong suit, nor was anything.”

“He’s an idiot but he can read well.”

“Look at me in the eyes boy, you’ll never be stronger than me.”

“How do you have time for anything, do you not sleep?”

“Your shirt needs to be off.”

“I think you just want me to take my shirt off.”

“Ugh...I’m fine.”

“I need gloves, I need gloves, hang on, I gotta get gloves!”

“I don’t wanna do anything with drainage.”

“What bone would you say hurts?”

“That’s what the picture said to do, breast feed your patient.”

“Your bed’s not very comfortable.”

“THE GONGOOZLER!”

“It not over, it’s close.”

“In six hours, we’re done.”

“It’s hard to say goodbye, but it’s important.”

“Beautiful, a sailor’s dream to come across the mermer.”

“DELETE ME!! CUT ME OUTTA HERE!!”

“I’m being an asshole now.”

“It’s not hope, it’s delusion.”

“You can’t speed your way into heaven!”

“Have you ever looked at your tongue too long in the mirror and it no longer looks like it belongs to you?”

“Biology is just a constant nightmare.”

#Unus Annus #Sentence Starter

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smells-like-mettaton · 3 years

Note

soriel, 1 (chocolate) for the ask game?

Like a Box of Chocolates

Rating: G Word Count: 2734 Read on AO3: here

---

"Ok. I brought a few choices," Sans said while sitting with his back to the door. He pulled a plastic sack full of chocolate and chocolate-adjacent treats out from under his shirt.

"Oh, you did not have to do that." The voice behind the door sounded embarrassed.

"It's no big deal." He shrugged instinctively, though she wouldn't be able to see it. "Not like I candy things like this for you very often."

The lady laughed, even though the pun was a stretch. She was a great audience like that.

"I cannot argue with that. After all, it is the choco-thought that counts."

Sans let out a wheeze. Man, she had him beat in the bad jokes department. He needed to up his game.

"What can I say, I'm a sweet guy." That joke would work better if she could see his wink.

"You certainly are, my friend."

Sans blinked. He hadn't been prepared for the genuine warmth in her voice. Now he felt something like a melted chocolate himself.

"Uh. You'd better wait and make sure I didn't pick out garbage before you say that." He chuckled nervously and spread out the chocolates in the snow.

"Alright. Hit me with your best choco-shot."

He laughed out loud at that one too. She could really squeeze some mileage out of chocolate puns.

"First off we have the MTT-Brand Chocolate Mettaton. Which is exactly what it sounds like. Chocolate in the shape of everyone's favorite robot superstar." He scanned the back of the wrapper. "Contains sequins and glitter, but it's still monster food, so probably won't cause any more indigestion than Temmie Flakes. Still, wouldn't blame ya if you passed on that."

The lady laughed. "I do not know this 'Mettaton,' but he sounds like someone…"

Her voice trailed off, the way it always did when she neared a personal topic. It seemed to be happening more and more often lately. Sans didn't know if that was a good sign, or if he needed to do a better job of distracting her.

"Someone I know would have liked that," she finished clumsily.

"Welp. It's yours, then." He attempted to slide it under the door.

Attempted. The thick block of chocolate wouldn't fit through the narrow space.

"What are my other options?" The lady asked, not seeming to hear his failure.

(Or just ignoring it. The way they always ignored things they didn't want to acknowledge.)

Oh well. He'd deal with that later, if she wanted to.

He picked up the next box and rattled it. It looked thin enough to fit under the door.

"I think this one's called, uh, pocket?” He couldn’t tell for sure, since the box was labeled in a language he didn’t recognize. Where did Alphys get this stuff? “A pal gave it to me. They’re like chocolate-covered sticks, I think."

"Not precisely what I was looking for, but I would love to try it regardless," she said. "If I am allowed to have both options, I mean. If not, I should probably stick with the Em-Tee-Tee."

Sans bit back a snort. So she hadn't heard after all. That made this a lot more awkward.

"Do you wanna hear the other options first? Wouldn't want ya to have any regrets."

"Oh! There are more?"

She sounded as surprised as a kid finding an extra fry in the bottom of their Grillby's bag. He couldn't help grinning.

"Yup. Next up is a chocolate spider donut—”

“Made by spiders, for spiders, of spiders?” The voice seemed on the verge of laughter again.

His eyesockets widened. “Uh… welp. Guess you don’t need the whole spiel, huh?”

“There is a spider bakesale right around the corner from my home,” the lady explained. “I believe they are saving for a… ‘heated limo’? To travel safely through Snowdin. I wish I could help them, but I did not think to take much gold when I…”

Another dead end. That was fine, Sans could piece together enough. Not that her personal life was any of his business, anyway.

“If it makes ya feel any better, they really raked me over the coals for this one.”

“It does not!” came her quick reply. “I only asked for a chocolate bar. Not for you to spend money that you need on me.”

Geez, this lady was too good for him. As if Sans ever really went out of his way for anyone.

Except Papyrus, but he was family. And sometimes Grillby, if he felt bad about failing to pay his tab for too long. And Alphys, but he owed her for screwing off after space-time blew up in their faces.

And now, the lady behind the door. The lady he didn’t owe anything to, except a few good laughs.

Who was he kidding? Those laughs were more important to him than anything.

“Eh, it just cost me one day of selling ‘dogs. Donut worry about it.”

“Very well. Since it was for a good cause, I will not grill you any further. But please tell me that was the last chocolate you purchased for me.”

“It’s the last one I purchased.” He grinned. While she couldn’t see his expression, she must have heard the but in his voice.

“Please tell me you did not steal any chocolate for me.”

“Geez, lady, what do you take me for? I’d never commit petty thievery.”

“Well, that is reassuring.”

“Yep. Gotta save room for the real high-dollar crimes. Like the illegal hot dog stand.”

The voice behind the door went silent. He wished he could see her face now more than ever. His own grin slowly slid from his skull.

“Everyone knows about it,” he reassured her. “If the King really wanted to shut me down, he’d have done it a long time ago.”

“Oh, I am not judging you for that. I am sure the law is rigged against you if the King has any say in it.” Her voice was surprisingly bitter.

His real problem was that he couldn’t ever find the necessary documents to get licensed in food preparation. His birth certificate was presumably in whatever alternate dimension his old man had blasted them out of.

“You are judging me for something, though,” he realized. The chill of the snow seeped into his bones, but he didn’t dare adjust his position. Somehow he felt that if he moved, she would disappear.

“I am not. I was only thinking about…” She sighed. “It is complicated. There was a time when I could have helped you, but it is long past.”

“Help me? Look, lady, the ‘dog stand is fine. Promise. Better than fine, since I don’t gotta pay taxes on it.”

She chuckled at that.

“Very well. Forgive a silly old lady for worrying.”

“Done.” He smiled, settling back against the door more comfortably.

He should’ve known she’d have a problem with his illegal activities, though. She was a classy lady, and he was… him. Why had he even brought it up? It wasn’t a great joke. Did he really just want her to know?

Eh, whatever. She wasn’t mad, so no harm done, right?

“I would like to know how you acquired this other chocolate, if it was not through your sticky fingers.” She sounded like she was grinning.

“Huh? Oh.” He blinked and dug out the last chocolate of the bunch. Blue dusted his cheeks. “QC—that’s the lady who runs the shop in town—gave ‘em to me for free. They’re called, uh, kisses.”

QC had a knowing look in her eyes when she’d offered the bag of chocolates to him. It was his own fault for implying they were for a girl. Everyone already thought he screwed around in the woods on his shifts, and with the way gossip travelled in a small town, everyone at Grillby’s would be asking about his girlfriend tonight.

“Kisses,” the lady behind the door echoed. “This is not one of your jokes, is it?”

“Not this time. Sorry to disappoint.” His grin felt too tight. “They’re, uh, tiny chocolates. Kinda cone-shaped? QC makes ‘em herself, so they’ve gotta be good.”

“Oh.” Oddly, the voice did sound disappointed. Sans couldn’t imagine why. Not like he could kiss her through the door, even if he had lips. And even if there was some unlikely timeline where she wanted a kiss from him.

He wanted to thump his skull back against the door, but there was no point in worrying her like that.

“In that case, I will take the kisses. They will be perfect for…”

He was sure she would leave it at that. Cover up with some non sequitur.

So his eyesockets went wide when she said, “for the anniversary of my child’s passing.”

“Oh.” He let out a strangled little laugh. “I—geez, I’m sorry. If I’d known—”

“You would have what? Spent even more money on this silly old lady, who cannot even leave to buy her child’s favorite chocolate?” Her voice was firm. “No. I thought you deserved to know, after the trouble you went to, and because you shared your own secret with me today.”

“My ‘dog stand is hardly a secret,” he said, still feeling a little shaky. She had a kid? A dead kid?

Well, who in the Underground didn’t have skeletons in their closet? Metaphorically or literally. She was still his best friend. If she wanted his pity, she would’ve said something sooner.

“Regardless,” she said. “It is in the past. Forget it, if you wish. But please do not treat me any differently.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” he said sincerely. If there was one thing he was good at, it was maintaining the status quo. “So, uh. These chocolates. I kind of wanted you to have all of ‘em, if that’s alright with you.”

“It would be rude to refuse a gift, would it not?” She sounded like she was smiling again, to his relief.

“There’s just one problem. Uh. Don’t think they’re all gonna fit under the door.” He rapped on the stone surface with his knuckle for emphasis.

“I did not assume they would. The recipe I gave you before hardly passed through.”

Sans blinked. “Then you—huh?”

“I will open the door just a fraction. It can only be done from the inside.” She paused, like she was gathering a breath. “I would ask that you do not look. I promise I will not peek, either.”

Sans’s ribcage tightened. She was going to open the door. She would be right there, with no stone between them.

The thought opened a desperate floodgate within him. He hadn’t realized just how badly he wanted to see her, to know her, to live off of more than just scraps and unfinished sentences.

She once had a child. She had some kind of beef against the King. She wanted to give charity to spiders, but didn’t have enough money. All these facts he filed away, tucking them into the grooves in his ribcage.

It would be enough. He’d duct tape those gates shut again, if he had to. He wasn’t going to betray the trust she’d shown him.

“Got it. You don’t wanna be smitten by my good looks, I understand,” he joked.

(He had a feeling it would be the other way around, if anything. Not that quality of jokes translated to quality of appearance—he would know. If it did, he’d have biceps like his brother.)

“It would be tragic. Much too high a price for you to handsome chocolate to me.”

“Heh, I’m sure you’re a door-able too. But I’ll keep my sockets shut, since our friendship hinges on it.”

That got a raucous laugh out of her, the kind that started off high-pitched and quickly became something of a snorting bleat. That sound was sweeter than chocolate to him.

...Man, his pals at Grilby’s would be right to dunk on him. He was a massive dork.

“Alright,” she said once she caught her breath, “if you are ready, my friend…”

“Yeah.” He nodded. “Better choco-late than never, huh?”

That one only got a snort, but he wasn’t sure if that was because the pun fell flat, or because she was nervous. As far as he knew, she hadn’t been outside of the Ruins in years. And here she was, trusting a sentry—someone whose job it was to keep a look out—to turn a blind eye.

It was a good thing he’d never been good at his job.

Stone ground against stone with a dramatic rumble. His eyesockets stayed shut. Warmth emanated from somewhere near his shoulder, and he lifted the bag of chocolates.

His small hand brushed a large fur-covered one. A shiver trailed down his spine. One small touch shouldn’t have done so much to him, but—but she was real. She was more than just a voice behind a door. Which he knew, but knowing and feeling could be worlds apart at times.

She took the bag, and the moment was over. But the door didn’t close.

“My dear friend,” she whispered, her voice sounding closer than ever. “Would it be presumptuous to ask another favor of you?”

“‘Course not. Glad to do a favor for my favor-ite person.” He kept his tone light, unaffected by the swirling emotions inside him.

“If I could… oh, dear, this is embarrassing.”

He resisted the urge to open his eyes, to see what look might be on her face.

“It has simply been so long… may I hold your hand a moment longer?”

He felt the marrow heating within his bones.

“That all? I gotta hand it to ya, you made me think you needed an arm and a leg.”

She chuckled before awkwardly fumbling to grasp his hand again.

Heat poured from her palm into his phalanges. Aside from the fur, there were several spots of soft skin—probably paw pads. Was she a dog monster, like the Canine Unit in town? She didn’t make nearly enough dog jokes for that to be the case. Her laugh sounded more like a goat’s, but she obviously didn’t have hooves. Maybe she was some kind of chimera? You didn’t see those often nowadays, but then again, no one saw monsters from the Ruins, either.

“Thank you,” she said, her voice as soft as the snow that began to drift around him.

“Not disappointed?” He asked, only half-joking. “My hand can’t be as comfy as yours.”

“Ah, but it is all your bone. And that is wonderful to me.”

“Geez, old lady.” He was grateful she couldn’t see his blush. “You’re pretty fur-fect yourself.”

When she laughed, her body shook all the way down to her hand. The feeling more than made up for all the G he’d spent on chocolate and donuts.

Suddenly his hand was being lifted up, and then something soft pressed against his knuckles. His soul flared erratically, and his eyes nearly flew open. If they had, he was sure his left eyelight would have been blue from shock.

“A kiss for a kiss,” she said slyly. “It is only fair.”

“Heh heh…” His voice shook with more than laughter. “Technically, that was one kiss for a bag of kisses. Pretty sure that math doesn’t square up.”

“Oh, you are quite right! One day we will have to circle back and rectify that.”

He practically had to cast gravity magic on himself to keep his eyes from flying open.

“You—huh?” He said intelligently.

“Perhaps not soon,” she clarified. “This has all been… a lot, for me. But thanks to you, my dear friend, this day has not been so bitter as I am used to.”

“Uh, no problem, then. With all that chocolate, I hope it’s sweet.”

Sweet as the anniversary of a death could be, anyway. He grimaced. Maybe that joke was too soon, but she just squeezed his hand before finally letting go.

“I do think it will be,” she said softly. “I will look forward to hearing more of your punny jokes tomorrow.”

The door scraped shut, and he hesitantly opened his eyes. He couldn't help inspecting the door to see if anything changed. Pressing his still-warm hand against the smooth stone.

“Heh. Good luck getting rid of me now.” He grinned.

Then he tucked his hands in his pockets, where her kiss remained like a tattoo on his bone.

#tali writes #safeutdr #soriel #sans #toriel #fic tag #very happy with how this one turned out :D #hope you like it and thanks for the request!#prompt requests

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my-writings-and-musings · 3 years

Note

Could you do TFP bots (or just a few of them if you have charcater limit or just don't feel like doing them all, as long as Wheeljack is ingluded I'm good) with a human they just recued and they're like "I'm gonna call my dad hold on" and if they protest they're like "nah you'll like him I promise, just give him a minute" and her dads their old bot friend who went MIA (you can decide who the dad is, or go with Ironhide if you're as indeciceve as me lol)

I miiiiight just have to do this as a short story I hope that's okay! Got my Wrecker boys Wheeljack, Bulkhead, Smokescreen and Ultra Magnus.

Dust was still settling as you realized the threat was over, the collection of vehicons having scattered long before the cave had finished it's partial collapse and leaving you under the gathered team of bots who'd come together to shield you from falling debris. Rubbing off the powdered rocks covering your face, as well as coughing up the taste of dirt, you took a moment to gather yourself as your new giant allies did the same. It wasn't worth thinking about what would have happened if they hadn't come along when they had... In your defense, that ambush had come out of nowhere.

"You okay there?" A deep voice above you rumbled with concern, encouraging you to tilt your head upwards at the big green bot looking down at you. His optics were friendly, and despite his absolutely massive size and hands that transformed into wrecking balls, you immediately trusted him.

"Yeah, I'm okay. Thanks to you guys." You said gratefully, looking to each of the gathered team as they brushed the dust off themselves.

"Protecting organic life is the primary responsibility of Autobots, think nothing of it." The largest of them said, somewhat gruff as he meticulously picked off the worst of the rubble that had showered down upon them. Immediately, you knew he was the one in charge. Towering above the others and with shoulder pauldrons thicker than two of you, he gave off the energy of someone who took no nonsense and had the firepower to back up his authority, yet his gaze was mostly just annoyed as he looked down to you again. "Our second responsibility, however, is remaining hidden from the denizens of this planet. Saving you required us to break cover."

"Give the kid a break, sir. They managed to escape a whole squadron by themselves before running into us. I think we can cut them some slack." A far gruffer voice said, cutting in as the battle scarred mech in question took a protective step your way. Quite immediately the colors on his unique build were familiar to you, but you decided to stay quiet on that fact, reaching for the cellphone thankfully still secure in your pocket. While you hadn't found what you'd been looking for in this mine, at least you had something far more interesting to report.

The big blue bot looked to the other with an impressive frown, unintentionally cementing your thesis as to the scarred mech's identity. The back and forth continued more or less without an acknowledgement of your presence. "They've been seen in our company, Wheeljack. By the procedure Optimus established, we must now secure their wellbeing, and that will be quite the undertaking."

The only one who had not yet spoken, a smaller but solidly built blue bot who seemed the youngest of the group, chose that moment to jump in with a quip. "Doubt docbot will be too happy about another human in the bunker."

"He's all talk. Ratchet wants these little guys as safe as the big guy does, he won't put up a fight." The gruff one, who you were starting to like more by the moment, said with an amused but reassuring smile in your direction. Unable to help smiling back, you suddenly felt that this turn of events might have been more than you could have ever hoped for. If only you could get a word in edgewise...

"You're purposefully missing the point, soldier. We-"

"If it's gonna be such a hassle for you, I'll take 'em myself."

"Jackie..." Once more, the gentle green giant spoke up, looking quite concerned at his friend's purposeful egging on of the bot in charge. You got the sense that this kind of thing happened often by his tone, but personally, you were getting a little tired of being ignored. None of what they were discussing was necessary, and if anyone would have bothered to ask you they'd know that? Finally fed up, you took a breath and raised your arms to draw attention to your tiny self.

"Um, hello? Excuse me!" You shouted, mercifully ending the bickering and securing four pairs of optics on yourself. Relieved for the silence, you pulled out your phone and held it up, projecting your voice to ensure you were heard. The shocked expressions didn't cease when you started to explain, but you didn't let that stop you. Sorting this out would make everything easier for everyone. "I think there's a bit more going on than any of you know. Let me call my dad really quick, he'll set this straight."

The first to reply was the one you knew had to be the rookie of the group, who awkwardly cleared his vents and broke the silence only hesitantly. "Uh, bringing more humans into this really isn't our goal-"

"Who said anything about him being human?" You cut in, grinning from ear to ear at the looks they all gave you. Now that you had their unbroken attention, it was only a matter of summoning your dad and waiting for him to arrive. Dialing his frequency into your phone, you prepared to share just as much information as it took to get him here fastest, wanting to see the look on his face when he arrived and saw who you'd found. This was going to be fun...

----------------------------------------------------

The roar of a familiar engine had thankfully silenced the second round of bickering to break out amongst the two argumentative bots, who had gone back and forth between listening to you and calling for their superior. It had been entertaining at first, but by the time that roar had echoed down the tunnel you'd been relieved to hear it, and had hopped to your feet from your seat on a convenient rock. The bots had reflexively drawn their weapons, but there hadn't even been any need for you to stop them. A worn red paint job skidding around the corner had made them all hold fire.

In a rush, you'd run out to greet the massive off road vehicle just as it began to transform, and in moments had been embracing the offered hand of a hulking bot who kneeled before you with an expression of happy relief.

"Ironhide!"

"Wheeljack!" Your adopted dad cried out in absolute joy, letting you move safely to the side before approaching the bot who's identity you'd properly guessed. Ironhide had told you so many stories about the Wrecker, it made sense that you'd been able to tell who he was by appearance and mannerisms despite having never met. The two bots greeted one another with an earth trembling chest bump, after which your beaming father turned to the green bot with just as much enthusiasm, shaking hands and crashing their fists together with overwhelming power. "Bulkhead too? Where have you guys been?"

"We might ask you the same thing, soldier." The big blue bot said, cutting in with the same serious look that appeared to be his only expression. On a closer inspection, however, you could see a certain light in his optics. He wasn't altogether displeased to see a new arrival. Standing somewhat awkwardly to the side, the young blue bot appeared delighted if not quite confused.

"Uh, long story, Ultra Magnus sir. I've been on this planet for some time. Found this little troublemaker when they were half their current size, and I've been raising 'em to help with our cause." Ironhide said affectionately, stepping back and dropping to one knee to be more on your level. Before you could puff up proudly at the praise, a single digit tussled your hair as he often did to tease, and you sputtered before playfully pushing him away and undoing the damage. Chuckling, he turned back to his comrades. "Never figured I'd bump into you all here! Jackie, Bulk, and uh..."

The attention turned to the young bot, who only smiled with a wave and a not offended clarification on his name.

"Smokescreen."

Wheeljack gave your dad a playful punch, still buzzing at seeing his old friend alive. The friendship you'd so frequently heard about was clear as day before you. "Glad to see you in one piece, old Rusthide."

"We've been here for years, Ironhide. How come we didn't detect you?" Bulkhead said, looking just as happy but burdened by the question at hand. Ironhide tapped his audial with a somewhat glum smile.

"Communicator's been busted for ages, all I've got is an earth link for cellphones." He said, recalling an injury he'd endured long before meeting you. The line he'd built relied on earth technology, and you still remembered how many tries it had taken to get it right. It was impossible to imagine a whole other team of beings like himself had been out there the whole time... Yet he didn't look at all regretful as he glanced down at you. "If I'd known I wasn't alone, I would have introduced myself and the kid ages ago. Looks like we've got my little one to thank for bringing us together."

You pouted and crossed your arms at the comment. "I'm not little anymore, dad."

"They did alright in a scrap, but how about we get you two back to base? I'm sure the other's will want to hear the story." Wheeljack said, easing your damaged pride with the compliment. You had indeed evaded those Vehicons for a good long while before being rescued... speaking of which, you could use a bit of rest somewhere secure.

Once more, Ultra Magnus stepped in to halt the festivities. "First; I shall communicate with Optimus and let him know what has transpired. He will likely want to meet you in person before we make any rash decisions."

"Seriously? Come on, Mags! Let's get this bot in an actual base!" Wheeljack replied in a huff, bringing back the arguing from before as if it had never stopped. Looking quite amused, Ironhide merely chuckled and offered you his hand, allowing you to get a lift onto his shoulders as was your custom. Clearly not phased by what he was seeing, the only parent you'd ever known let you get comfortable before following the group out of the partially collapsed cave. Who could have thought your simple little scouting mission would end like this?

"Come on kiddo." He said softly, watching the bickering with an expression of nostalgia. "I have a feeling things are about to get pretty interesting."

#transformers #maccadam #transformers prime #tfp #tf:p #prime #bulkhead #wheeljack #smokescreen #ultra magnus #ironhide #my writing #my asks #anon #human reader #self insert #requests

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lady-literature · 3 years

Text

for us to collide (part 4)

anyway who actually expected me to end this thing in 4 chapters lol

rip me ig

After the not-so-impromptu interrogation courtesy of her friends (because there was no way they hadn’t planned that, it was too coordinated) Robin doesn’t stop by for two weeks.

Which is… fine. Marinette is plenty busy anyways. The extra time she has free now that she isn’t entertaining a bratty vigilante, goes to more productive uses of her time. Like watching bad horror movies with her friends and jeering at the horrible acting and special effects.

(Red Hood stops by in the middle of watching Grizzly Rage and proceeds to rant for twenty minutes about ‘shitty, unrealistic blood splatters’. Marinette has long since passed the point of being worried about it.)

So, yeah. She doesn’t see Robin.

But Damian, oddly enough, seeks her out.

It’s early, and there isn’t anyone else in the studio right now which means Marinette has her music blasting and she’s humming along as she hand paints silk for Clara’s dress. It’s loud and she’s in her zone, so it’s only by Tikki warning her that she realizes someone entered her sanctuary.

Her eyebrows raise when she sees who it is.

“Uh, bonjour Damian," she greets confusedly, reaching over to lower the volume on her speakers. "I hadn’t expected to see you here. Is there something you need?”

He stops before her workstation, only slightly bigger than the ones the rest of her staff use due to the sheer amount of open commissions she normally has. She has an actual office on this floor, but Chloé uses it more than she does. Marinette likes the open space and being around her designers more than she likes the privacy.

His eyes catch on the two bouquets of flowers she’s yet to take home, neither of which have even begun to wilt—and likely won’t. (She’ll have to take them home soon before people start asking questions.)

“I was called here by Father, but he’s currently indisposed. I’ve been told to wait.”

She waits a moment for him to continue, and when he doesn’t, she asks, “So you came to visit me?”

“Yours is the only tolerable presence to be found.” His lips purse, and he crosses his arms. “And that includes that imbecile Drake who is no doubt still in his office like the pitiful insomniac he is.”

Her tongue is already halfway around a joke about excuses—she didn’t befriend Felix for nothing, okay? She knows how people like Damian work—when she realizes what he just said.

“Wait. Tim’s been here all night?”

Damian snorts. “He certainly didn’t return to the manor.”

She’s out of her seat in an instant, frowning and muttering up a storm as she rummages through the storage cubes pushed up against the far wall. She has a blanket, pillow and plain cotton shirt in her hands before Damian registers that she even moved.

“I’m going to kill your brother,” she says simply. “Would you like to come with?”

She’s gotten closer to Tim since working in Wayne Tower. He’s a notorious recluse and rarely leaves his office when he’s in the building, but Marinette makes it a point to visit him during lunch and before she leaves for the night.

He isn’t one of her Waynes, but he is a Wayne and her Waynes love and care for him so there’s not much of a difference really. She does like to think they might be something close to friends at this point though. And if the way Tim comes down to visit whenever he ventures out of his office means something, she might even be right.

Another thing that should be noted, is that Marinette is very much a ‘ride or die’ kind of person when it comes to the people she cares about. She will ruthlessly bully her loved ones into taking better care of themselves on threat of death because she is the semi-hypocritical mom friend and damn proud of it.

Damian looks her up and down, eyes lingering on the items in her hands and the determined set to her jaw and says, “Of course.” Then he’s plucking her things from her hands, offering her his arm and saying, “Shall we?”

Marinette laughs as she loops her arm with his. “We shall.”

***

She spends ten minutes scolding Tim before wrangling him onto the couch in his office and wrapping him up in the blanket so tightly he’d need to be an escape artist to get out of it. He tries to struggle anyway, but Marinette has too much practice at this and he doesn’t stand a chance in hell.

Damian stands at her shoulder and smirks the entire time, eyes dancing with amusement as she forces the CEO of Wayne Enterprises to take a fucking nap. Then, she’s treated to the sound of his surprised laughter as she begins switching out all of Tim’s regular coffee for magic-decaf—not that Damian knows it’s magic.

(By the devilish smirk playing at his lips, she’s starting to think that maybe Damian really is just as sadistic as Duke and Jason say he is.)

***

Damian starts dropping by more often after that (read: starts dropping by at all). Not that Marinette minds. She quite likes his company, actually.

He normally stops by first thing in the morning when Marinette is the only one in the workshop, walking in like he owns the place. For the first couple days, he asks about Ladybug and the rest of Paris’ Court, claiming that he’s curious about them.

She answers them, but only as far as she’d answer them for any reporter and is careful not to give away any sensitive information not known to the public. He gets a bit frustrated at one point, complaining that she must know more, but she stays stubbornly silent about it and, sometimes, steers the conversation deftly to the Great Bat and his Flock instead.

He eventually stops asking about the Parisian superheroes and instead their morning conversations turn to a thousand random things. Complaints and anecdotes and a silly back and forth between the two.

Marinette’s never been much of a morning person but having Damian there to keep her company is… nice.

She almost finds herself looking forward to mornings now.

***

When her Waynes learn that she’s started a food kitchen and makes a habit of spending her weekend there, they immediately insist on joining her, despite her protests.

“You guys really don’t have to do this,” she says even though the three of them are already in their aprons and Cass is eyeing the boucher, Vivian, and her collection of knives with glittering interest.

Duke grins at her, “We know, M. But we want to.”

Jason finally turns back to her from where he’s been staring at the kitchen with something just shy of awe on his face. “You’re downright incredible, you know that?” he waves a hand out at the seating area, and then at the people in the kitchen assembling the healthiest and cost-efficient meals she and Felix could find after days spent researching. “I would’ve killed for something like this when I was on the streets.”

“It’s not just me who’s got this up and running-” she tries protesting but then Fiona, the woman Marinette actually put in charge of this place, is at her side and all but shoving the four of them into stations.

Marinette ends up by the pastries, like always, and she can see Jason making sandwiches. Duke's been roped into making eggs and bean casseroles and Cass, by some grace, actually ended up by Vivian and is having a blast cutting up all the meats as fast as she can.

They don’t stop until lunch, all four of them helping prepare meals for the upcoming week in bulk. After, they all go out for ice cream by the pier and Jason smears chocolate on her nose and Duke carries her around on his back when she complains about being tired.

Cass takes pictures of it all and later, Marinette gets them all printed out.

It ends up being a really good day.

***

The buzz from the charity gala and all the press regarding her and Damian’s non-existent relationship had calmed down weeks ago. There was still the odd article about Marinette being seen with her odd assortment of Waynes and the newspapers still called her ridiculous names when they got a picture, but it was about as close to normal as she gets.

The quiet lulled her into a false sense of security.

Ice Prince and Sweetheart Finally Seen on Date: Fairy Tale Romance or Publicity Stunt?

The ‘date’ in question was a coffee and lunch run for her designers and also Tim (because kwami knew he'd work through lunch if allowed).

Damian normally didn’t stay past Lilliane arriving in the morning (the poor dear was chronically late and always the last to arrive) but he hadn’t shown up until after she came that day and overcompensated by hours—which she hadn't minded. He kept to the fringes of her workspace and didn't distract her, instead focusing on his own thing. She wasn’t quite sure what he was up to, but she knew he was switching between his computer and sketchpad every so often.

(She's pretty sure he was hiding from Dick for some reason. He’s the only Wayne brother who doesn’t visit her at work, seeing as they have their bi-weekly gymnastic sessions; recently, with the addition of Mar’i, who still calls her ‘twin’ and whom Marinette still adores.)

And then lunch had rolled around, and it was Marinette’s turn to go out so she brought Damian with since he was still there.

They were out together for forty-five minutes. Tops.

“Why me?” she whines into the surface of her desk.

Damian, the asshole, just laughs at her and she can’t even be mad about it because he’s only just started laughing around her and not hiding behind so many of his walls. He laughs and Marinette knows it's precious so instead of shooting him the glower he deserves, she finds herself having to hide the smile slowly creeping on her face.

***

They’re splashed across the papers again less than a week later, only this time she has her Waynes there too.

Marinette's wearing her bright red sundress and she's somehow convinced Damian to wear a jacket with elaborate crowns and snowflakes embroidered up the sides. Because, as Chloé says: if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.

They see the camera this time and the photo splashed across the page the next day is of Marinette laughing with Jason’s arm slung across her shoulders as both he and Damian flip off the camera. Meanwhile, Duke and Cass stand just far enough in frame to capture their expressions of pain and amusement respectively.

(Marinette makes a mental note to order apology gift baskets for the PR department.)

There are a lot of headlines the next day about Marinette’s ‘harem of Waynes’ and how she’s a ‘horrible influence on such bright children’. She spends about ten minutes trying to decide whether she should be horrified or laugh at the sheer ridiculousness of it and eventually decides on both.

Adrien, the little shit, sees the headline and immediately prints it out to hang in her kitchen.

It reappears every time she tries to take it down.

***

Gotham does not smile upon daytime heroes.

Not to say that Gotham really smiles on anyone, but it’s especially vicious to those that think they’re owed anything. She’s heard the way Gothamites talk about Superman and The Flash—it’s not exactly what one would call adoring.

But Ladybug's been a daytime hero her entire career and it is not difficult to see that there's something distinctly different about the way daytime heroes and Gotham’s vigilantes operate.

Something more vicious, maybe; something more restrained.

Without the light of day and without the people’s eyes watching them at every moment, the Gotham Bats have become something else entirely.

Signal, their Daytime Protector, is especially strange.

A bat who's meta, straddling the line between day and night. The Day Patrol, trained by the night.

Sometimes, when she and Signal talk about heroing, there is such an odd type of disconnect that it throws her. Nothing horrible or major, but little things she’s sure she wouldn’t notice if she wasn’t so intimately familiar with it all herself.

They don’t always talk about heroing though. After two months, Ladybug is proud to say she seems to be worming her way past his outer shell nicely. He tried so hard to keep his distance from her, but Ladybug’s always liked a challenge, and it isn’t long before she has him relaxing around her.

Well, for a definition of relax anyway. He's still a bat after all.

But then, it’s pretty easy to get past Signal’s barriers when she’s already had practice breaking through the more stubborn bats like Robin and, to an extent, Hood. Not that Signal, or any of the bats, know that.

Which, speaking of the bats, isn’t it a bit weird she’s only met three spread across two of her alter egos? As Ladybug, she’d expect to be hounded by a few of them but the only one she’s met is Signal. She can’t decide if it’s because he’s the only one that operates in the daylight, or if they just don’t want to spook her into running or something.

Either way, they’re going to start giving her a complex. She’s heard so much about the rest of the Batfamily, and not one of them even wants to meet her? Either her?

(Maybe Marinette should ask Robin and Hood what’s up with that? The way they talk about how nosy Red Robin is, she’s surprised he didn’t drop by months ago and- is it weird that she’s offended by vigilantes not prying into her private life?

…Probably.)

***

Marinette blinks, stopping dead in her tracks.

Damian's on her fainting couch, sketchpad in his lap as he waits for her.

“Why are you wearing a beanie?” she blurts out instead of greeting him like a normal person. "You never wear beanies."

Luckily, Damian scowls at her question rather than at her. It’s a subtle but very important difference.

“Sorry,” she apologizes anyway, putting her bag down. “I haven't had coffee yet.”

He hums, then nods to her desk where she finds a steaming to-go mug. Her face lights up and she quickly snatches it, breathing deeply the lovely aroma. “You’re a godsend.”

That brings a quirk to his lips, closer to a smirk than a smile, but progress nonetheless.

After a moment, where she sips at her overly sugary monstrosity—just the way she likes it, when had Damian even noticed that?—and he continues sketching she asks again. “Okay but, I actually am kinda curious. What’s up with the hat?”

He sighs heavily, closing his pad. “It’s… better than the alternative.”

Marinette snorts. “Alternative to what? A top hat?” But instead of snapping back like she expects, he just continues to frown. Immediately, her lips turn down into a concerned frown. “Is there something wrong?”

“Yes,” he grounds out and Marinette puts her coffee down. She’s just about to open her mouth and say something else when he reaches up and rips the beanie off his head.

For the second time in less than five minutes, she stops dead.

Marinette opens her mouth. Closes it. Blinks, but the scene doesn't change.

His hair is still blue.

Damian Wayne's hair is blue.

Damian Wayne’s hair is vibrantly electric blue.

Her hand shoots up to cover her mouth as she tries to stifle her giggles.

Damian’s scowl deepens. He moves to shove his ridiculous beanie back on his head but her hand snaps out before he can.

“No! No, I’m sorry I just-” she giggles again. “You looked so upset by it and you took me by surprise. I like it!”

He glares up at her, still sat on the fainting couch so it’s her who has the height advantage for once.

“Don’t patronize me.”

She rolls her eyes, the hand that wasn’t settled on his arm reaching up to touch the bright strands. It's slow enough that he can stop her, but he, surprisingly, makes no move to.

His hair is a lot softer than she expects it to be. But she supposes he didn’t use that gel stuff today, planning on keeping his hair under a hat the whole time.

“It looks good on you,” she says softly.

He snorts disbelievingly and she smacks his shoulder lightly. “It’s true! I swear you could look good in any color.” She clicks her tongue longingly. “I wish I had your skin tone. I’m too pale to wear pastels like I want.”

He wrinkles his nose at her. “Pastels?”

“Oh you hush,” she quips, finally pulling her hand from his hair. “Anyway, if you don’t like it, why’d you dye it blue in the first place?”

“I… lost a wager with Todd.”

She laughs, starting to move around and get ready for the day. She doesn’t have any meetings scheduled, which means she gets the whole day to create. She’s pretty excited about it.

“I should’ve guessed it was Jason’s doing.”

Damian shrugs, settling back into the cushions. He drapes himself across them in a way that’s effortlessly elegant and like he’s ready to be photographed for a magazine cover or something. Must all her friends be so pretty? It’s playing hell on her self-esteem.

“But blue is your favorite color, right? So there’s that at least.”

Damian hums. “Todd had threatened to dye it pink or some other equally garish color.”

“Hey!” she exclaims in mock outrage. “What’s wrong with pink? I’ve been wanting to dye my hair pink for ages.”

“Nothing. It’s just simply not a color I appreciate.” He makes a face. “Like orange.”

Marinette huffs, but there’s a smile on her lips. It's quiet for a moment, for long enough that she thinks the conversation's been dropped. But then-

“Why don’t you?”

“Huh?”

“Why haven’t you dyed your hair?” he repeats. “Your friends—Couffaine and… Kubdel? They both have colored hair.”

Marinette shrugs. “I dunno. Never got around to it I guess. I suppose I could do it now. Dye mine in solidarity,” she jokes. “Oh! We could match even! Wouldn’t that be fun?”

“I thought you wanted pink?”

“Well, yeah. But blue is nice too. Besides,” she smiles wryly over her shoulder, “you just said pink was ‘garish’.”

Damian frowns slightly, shaking his head, “On me, perhaps. But I think you’d look very fetching in pink.”

“Oh,” Marinette pauses, feeling her face grow warm at the sudden compliment. “Well- Uh, pink it is, then.”

***

(Damian watches the blush rise on her cheeks as she turns away to try and hide it. Yes, he can’t help but think, fetching in pink, indeed.)

***

Luka insists on being the one to dye her hair, citing that he’s the one who had dibs all these years, but Alix and Jason both all but demand to be there too.

Her bathroom is not big enough for all four of them to sit in.

Not a single one of them cares.

Cass and Duke ask for progress pics along with Uncle Jay, and all her Parisian friends cycle through standing at the bathroom door to see how it's going.

The constant stream of people looking at her makes her feel not unlike an animal at a zoo. (When she wryly tells this to Alix, all she gets is her friend cackling on the ground.)

But, after all the bleaching and conditioning and waiting, she stares into the mirror with soft pink hair the color of bubblegum and thinks, yeah, it was worth it.

She thinks it again when Damian walks in the next day and almost trips over his own feet.

(She’s also wearing her Robin themed sundress, complete with hood, matching boots and personal touches not found on the mass-produced version—but Marinette doesn’t know why that would be relevant.)

Her favorite reaction to her new hair color though is, by far, Mar’i’s.

Marinette doesn’t see the young Grayson until a week later when she’s invited to the monthly family dinner Alfred insists all the Waynes attend—which includes her now, apparently (she tries not to show how pleased she is by that).

She arrived with Damian, who was kind enough to pick Tim and her up from work, and Mar’i takes one look at Damian and her standing next to one another before she starts babbling excitedly about Lilo and Stitch and Angel. A character who is—apparently—Stitch’s girlfriend and the complimentary pink to his blue.

Marinette is momentarily surprised, but Mar’i’s enthusiasm is contagious and it isn’t long before the rest of the Waynes are teasingly calling them Angel and Stitch. Marinette thinks it’s all very funny and adorable.

Damian, on the other hand, most certainly does not and threatens everyone who calls him that ‘ridiculous nickname’ with graphic depictions of bodily harm.

‘Angel’, oddly enough, sticks for Marinette. She finds she kind of likes it.

***

Later, Damian asks her about nicknames.

Well, he calls them ‘asinine titles’ and doesn’t so much ask as demand she explain why she allows anyone to call her by them seeing as she has a ‘perfectly serviceable name,’ in his opinion.

Ignoring the fact that she’s heard Dick call him multiple nicknames he hadn’t protested to, she says, “Well, I guess it’s that everyone uses Marinette. A nickname is something… special. A little more personal, I guess. And, I dunno. My parents named me Marinette, but it’s nice to share something between other people. And it shows they care.”

Damian looks confused after she’s done, but also thoughtful. He doesn’t say anything to that and Marinette doesn’t really expect anything to come of it.

She's proven wrong when, a week later, Damian calls her Starling instead of Marinette.

(And the transition from Dupain-Cheng to Marinette had been enough to make her beam—this is just ridiculous.)

***

When Robin disappears a second time, Marinette doesn’t get the chance to notice his absence on her own. He’s only stopped showing up four days ago—which is longer than normal, but not unheard of—when she hears unfamiliar voices on her balcony.

Looking out, she finds three semi-familiar individuals clustered around the plate of treats she leaves out for Robin and Hood.

Nightwing and Red Robin are both stuffing their faces full of the fruit tarts she had made while Spoiler glares at them and seems to be cursing the fact that her mask covers her mouth the same way Hood always does when she makes those raspberry scones he likes.

The scene is… odd. For many reasons but most pressingly that their arrival has come out of nowhere.

“Well,” Nightwing explains when she asks, “We wanted to visit ages ago, but baby bird threatened to stab us all if we tried.”

“He’s very… particular about you,” Red Robin tacks on while Spoiler nods sagely like she hasn’t crafted some strange straw monstrosity just so she can drink tea while still wearing her mask. Red Robin has one too, but his for the aesthetic rather than out of necessity.

Marinette stares at the three of them. “That… does not explain why you are here now.”

“Robin can’t stop us now, obviously,” Red Robin says casually, like he hasn't just kicked her heart into high gear with a few words.

“What? Why?” she demands, trying very hard not to sound panicked. “Is he okay? Was he hurt?”

Red Robin blinks, going quiet in that way Hood and Robin do when they’re judging her just a bit. She hates this family.

“No, he’s… fine.”

“B’s just benched him for the time being,” Nightwing helpfully supplies, amusement flickering at the edges of his lips. “He’s a little too… conspicuous at the moment.”

Marinette’s shoulders relax even as her brows furrow. Conspicuous? What in the world is that supposed to mean?

“Does that mean he won’t be coming around for a while?” she asks before she can think better of it.

The three vigilantes in front of her share a look before Spoiler says, “Probably. But the gremlin’s never been one to sit still so who knows?” she smiles, eyes crinkling at the corners as she leans toward Marinette conspiratorially. “But don’t worry. We can keep you company in the meantime!”

“We’re much better company than the demon anyway. Certainly less insulting.”

“Oh, he’s not that bad. He’s an ass, for sure, but you can tell when he means it and when he’s just stumbling over himself.” Marinette smiles fondly, “For someone so dignified, he trips over his tongue quite often.”

Now the vigilantes are really staring at her. She’s starting to feel pretty uncomfortable about it all when Nightwing beams at her, jumping up from his seat to sweep her into a hug. It startles her, but she doesn’t push him away, instead laughing at the sudden affection.

“Oh you really are perfect!” he exclaims, setting her down and still grinning like an absolute lunatic.

She’s smiling, because Nightwing’s joy is infectious, but she's even more confused than before. And then, before she can ask what he means, Red Robin’s wrist computer lights up—and damn, isn’t that cool? Marinette wonders if Tikki could do something like that for the Ladybug suit—and the three are moving to swing back out into the night.

She waves them off and they all promise to visit again.

Marinette shakes her head before going back inside with the empty pastry plate and four empty mugs.

***

Damian knows of Marinette’s friends of course. It'd take more effort not to when she talks about them every chance she gets and tells him all the wild stories about their escapades and misadventures.

(They also all came up in the background check he ran on her when they first met.)

Most of her friends are exceedingly normal oddly enough. Well, they’re all mildly famous and the leaders of their various fields, but they’re just civilians.

The only exceptions being, Bourgeois, Agreste, and Graham de Vanily.

Bourgeois is a former hero like Marinette, only she doesn't seem to still be in contact with the Parisian Court. All the articles he could find spoke about how Queen Bee was deemed unfit for her mantle and later replaced by the new bee hero, Ambrosia. Agreste was caught up in the scandal of his father being Hawkmoth, but he was found innocent and ignorant of his father's crimes (something Damian made sure to confirm). He now works at and is being groomed to own the bakery Marinette's parents run, seeing as their daughter has little interest to do it herself.

And finally, Graham de Vanily, Agreste's cousin, has a history of causing trouble wherever he goes. Nothing villainous, and rarely even malicious, but there's something about him that makes the hair on the back of his neck stand up. Not everything is as it seems with the Graham de Vanily heir.

Besides those three outliers, Marinette's friends seem to be untouched by the vigilante life. Which means he thinks they must be utterly boring.

Only, when her friends start coming around to visit and drag her out for lunch or some other random outing, Damian keeps finding himself baffled by each of them.

They act strangely and with a dangerous air none of them should possess, except for Tsurugi. The questions they ask him are strange and the jokes they make have no sense. He's been warned about how he better treat Marinette so many times, he's started to lose count. (Which is ridiculous. He treats her just fine and would never intentionally harm her. What are they trying to insinuate?)

But, by far, his most memorable encounter is with Lahiffe. A veritable wolf in sheep's clothing.

Marinette is excitedly babbling about her newest idea for her summer collection, pressed up against him on the chaise and practically shoving her sketches in his face as she demands his critique and thoughts.

Her hands are waving every which way and, on more than one occasion, he has to quickly lean back so she doesn't hit him in the face.

He’s focusing on what she’s saying so much—because she has a habit of forgetting things if she doesn’t write them down and needs someone to remind her of the ideas she had at a later time—that he doesn’t even realize Lahiffe is there until he clears his throat.

Marinette jumps, almost elbowing him in the stomach. “Nino!” she shouts, springing up and flinging herself at the other man who catches her like this is something she does often.

“Heya, Nettie.”

“Wait- what are you doing here? You’re not-” she jolts back to look at Lahiffe’s amused expression. “Oh kwami, is it time already? Shit. I wasn’t paying attention. I’m so sorry! I have to give this one thing to Publishing but then I promise we can go, okay? Like, just five minutes!”

She's already moving before she finishes speaking, sweeping up papers and rearranging files and putting things away with all the swiftness and agility of a speedster. Damian watches her go about her routine, occasionally handing her something she’s dropped or pointing out a thing she’s missed, weaving around her chaos with practiced ease.

Then she’s sweeping out of the office with a distracted “be right back!” and he’s alone with Lahiffe.

The second Marinette leaves, the man’s attention swings onto him with a strange weight. For a long moment, he doesn’t say anything and Damian’s hackles raise with every passing second.

He doesn’t snap at him though, because he’s one of Marinette’s friends. Insulting him would only serve to make her upset and that’s something Damian's been trying to avoid causing as of late.

“Man,” Lahiffe says at last. “Alix wasn’t kidding about the whole besotted thing, huh?”

Damian rears back, straightening up to his full height. “I beg your pardon?”

Lahiffe laughs and waves his hand about like that’s supposed to mean something. “Ah, no need to be embarrassed about it, dude. You’re far from the first of us to fall for her charms.”

“What.”

“Yeah, we've all been there. I think over half of the Paris crew crushed on her at some point, including myself. None of us are into her like that anymore, so as long as you treat her right, you got nothing to worry about."

“I’m not- I'm not interested in Marinette,” Damian tries to protest but Lahiffe just calmly steamrolls over him.

“Nah. Everyone loves Nettie. It’s universal law or something. First, there was me and Adrien, then Luka—who she actually liked back for a while there but are now practically siblings. Chloé liked her in collége, but she hadn’t really come to terms with that at the time. Alix might’ve, but she’s pretty grey-ace and fluctuates on the romance points, so who knows.

“Oh! And Nath. He also snagged a date with her, but he was an Akuma at the time so I’m not technically sure that it counts. And he’s with Marc now anyway. Thinking of adopting a kid, last I heard. Anyway- my point was: everyone loves Nettie. And don’t bother trying to fight it, because it only makes her pull of gravity worse.”

Lahiffe then claps him on the shoulder like their talk amiable and not the most confusing speech Damian’s ever heard.

And then he doesn’t even get to say anything to that because Marinette is sprinting back through the door, grabbing her jacket and bag, telling him goodbye, and dragging Lahiffe out to who knows where.

Damian stands there longer than he cares to admit trying to make the world make sense again.

***

A week and a half after she learned Robin was benched, Damian catches her staring off into space as she doodles tiny robins in the margins of her sketchbook.

He gives her an odd look when she scrambles to hide them, blushing hotly and babbling about how she’s “Just fine! Nothing to worry about! I’m just, maybe, perhaps, a little worried for a friend even though I shouldn’t be, because his family says he’s just fine and-”

He looks contemplative when he leaves that day, but he didn’t ask about her outburst, so she extends the same courtesy to him.

***

That night, Robin returns.

“What,” she says around the laughter threatening to bubble out of her throat, “are you wearing?”

Robin scowls from behind the full cowl he has on that she’s pretty sure belongs to Red Robin. It makes him look a whole ten years older and she can’t get over how ridiculous he looks. If he keeps doing stupid things with his face while wearing that monstrosity, she is definitely going to laugh at him.

“What are you wearing?” he shoots back petulantly.

She blinks in confusion, then realizes she’s still wearing her Red Hood inspired jacket right now. Tan colored fake leather with fuzzy, red inner lining, done with all the same pockets, buttons, and zippers Red Hood has on his own jacket. It looks almost exactly like the jacket she fixed for him all that time ago, except she's also added a soft, crimson hood and his own personal bat symbol stitched across her shoulder blades.

As far as things she's designed goes, this is one of her simpler ones. It's nothing like the elaborate creations she makes for the Ambrosia or Ryuko themed items.

But Red Hood was a simple kind of person, and she likes that it’s reflected in her work.

Robin doesn't seem to agree if the poorly concealed disdain on his face means anything.

“What?” she asks teasingly, “You jealous?”

He scoffs and looks off to the side. “Of course not. I simply do not understand why you’d want anything to do with that simpleton. Especially not when I know you have clothing articles referencing far superior individuals.”

She snorts good-naturedly, "What 'individuals'? You mean you?"

The way he raises his nose self importantly is answer enough, and she can't stop herself from rolling his eyes. "Well, it's certainly a start. But I'm not the only one."

"Oh, yeah? And who else is marvelous enough to stand on the same level as you?"

"Multimouse."

Her mouth goes dry, and she can tell Robin is pointedly not looking at her.

“Come inside,” she blurts in lieu of all the things she really wants to say—which are mostly just embarrassing variations of I missed you. “I can, uh, make us tea. If you want.”

It's the first time she’s ever invited him inside and she can see the small bit of shock on his face—well, what she can see of it anyway—before he schools it.

“Yes,” he says in a tone of voice that implies it was his idea in the first place. “That sounds… good.”

She steps aside, allowing him to pass her by into the flat. Only instead of just walking past her, he stops halfway through the doorway and stares at her. She’s about to ask what’s wrong when he reaches out with his hand to gently grab a lock of her hair.

“Pink suits you, by the way.”

She quirks her lips, “Yeah? You don’t think it’s… too much?”

The corners of his mouth turn down, “Absolutely not. You look…” he trails off, mouth flattening into a line and dropping his hand.

She blinks at the odd behavior. “Nice?” she offers tentatively.

He nods, but it’s a little jerky and strange. But before she can ask about it, he’s already turning to enter her flat like he owns the place, remarking about her choices of tea and if she’s finally acquired an ‘adequate teapot’.

She shakes off the moment and goes in to follow him before he wrecks her kitchen in his careless search for tea supplies.

***

MinnieMouse: COME GET YALL JUICE

and by juice i mean me

I still do not have an american license

JaneAustenStanAccount: what do we get out of it?

MinnieMouse: ???

the pleasure of my company??

also youre literally the one that invited me to watch megamind

JaneAustenStanAccount: and??

daisyduke: shut up jay

we all know youre soft for M stop tryin to play tough

MinnieMouse: this is why duke is my favorite

he’s a living callout post

swanlake: :(

MinnieMouse: second favorite

im so sorry cass ily

swanlake: :)

daisyduke: i aint even mad

JaneAustenStanAccount: I AM

guys wtf

MinnieMouse: you brought this on yourself

maybe you should be nicer to me

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

daisyduke: ‘get fucked jason’ -marinette 2k20

btw im omw for you now

MinnieMouse: thnx ur the best

also im bringing scones as movie snack

daisyduke: noice

swanlake: !!!

JaneAustenStanAccount: FUCK YEAH!!!

MinnieMouse: you dont get any Jay

JaneAustenStanAccount: >:(

i hate it here

***

Marinette doesn’t know a lot about Robin’s past, which she assumes is by design. Secret identities don’t lead well to handing out details and concrete information about one’s personal life.

But, she thinks, one would have to be blind, deaf, and dumb to not see that whatever facsimile of a childhood Robin had was about eight different levels of fucked up.

It’s in the vague allusions to ‘training’ and the scorn filled way he says the word ‘mother’. It’s in the not-quite-confusion—because whatever family he has is better now, at least—of Marinette telling him about her own parents. About the happy memories she’s shared with them, of learning to bake bread and croissants and macaroons under the loving guidance of her father and practicing delicate designs and frosting techniques with her mother.

So, yeah. She knows he’s kind of messed up and definitely checks off the childhood trauma box that’s apparently one of the requirements for being her friend.

So when Robin suddenly decides to go against everything she’s learned about him up until this point and actually share something about himself—and when that thing he shares just so happens to be a story from his childhood—well… Marinette wouldn’t say she’s prepared, but she’s not- prepared.

He’s in her kitchen, because Marinette has learned her lesson about bleeding vigilantes on her couch, and she’s pretty sure he could’ve gone back to the Cave for this, but he came here for whatever reason. (Was closer, he said. Marinette doesn’t know if she believes him.)

She’s cleaning the knife wound on his arm, and she has his cape laid out across her island. There’s a hole in it she plans on sewing back up after she finishes sewing the hole in her reckless vigilante back up.

“You need to be more careful,” she scolds. “You’re lucky this didn’t nick something important.”

“It's hardly the worst wound I’ve ever acquired,” he tells her in a tone of voice that he probably thinks is reasonable. “At seven years old I had to dig a bullet out of my side in the middle of a Himilayan snowstorm while still making it back to base with time to spare after having successfully assassinated a Russian ambassador.”

Marinette pauses where she’s smoothing the gauze onto his bicep. Her eyes flick up to his, and she sees the exact moment he seems to realize what he just told her. He’s gone utterly still beneath her hands, with terror or worry or the effort it takes not to bolt out the window immediately, she doesn’t know.

“That’s horrifying,” she tells him as she finishes securing the obnoxiously bright bandage, “Never tell me that story again.”

She then drops a kiss onto his bicep, subtly imbuing it with enough luck that it will keep off any infection—the wound was filthy when he came in, seriously, was he in a sewer?—and pats his cheek warmly before moving to clean up all her supplies.

She feels his eyes on her the rest of the night, but every time she turns to him, she can’t tell what he’s thinking. All she knows is that he seems… softer, in a way.

***

Three days after Marinette’s unexpected look into Robin’s past, she finds a box on her desk. It’s a jewelry box, and the only reason she doesn’t immediately freak out is the fact that it lacks any of the miracle box markings.

Still, she opens it hesitantly, and inside, she finds a necklace. A completely normal, non-magical necklace that’s simple and pretty and very much shaped like a tiny toy mouse.

There is no note.

***

(Lahiffe was right.

The Earth spins around the sun. The sky is blue.

Everyone loves Marinette.)

***

The necklace is obviously supposed to be a reference to her Multimouse days, but that doesn’t exactly narrow down who could have left it for her.

Or well, it does, but all the people it narrows down to don’t make any sense.

Multimouse is a badly kept secret, but it’s still a secret. Most people outside Paris don’t know about her and the people in Paris didn’t exactly recognize her off the street either.

Her Court knows, obviously, and so do the Waynes and the bats. But her Court wouldn’t leave her mouse themed gifts, they tend toward ladybugs or their own animal motif as a gift (the amount of cat and bee themed items she owns is ludicrous).

Which leaves the Waynes and the bats.

But her Waynes wouldn’t leave the gift on her desk, and they certainly wouldn’t forget to put a note, so Duke, Jason, and Cass are out.

She must stand there thinking about it too long, because then Jeremy's walking in, just as bright and early as ever.

He sees her holding the box and his face turns a strange mix of curious and outraged. “Is it your birthday? I swear, Boss if you didn't tell us it was your birthday-”

“No, Jeremy,” she says, amused despite her confusion. “That’s not for a while yet. I found this when I walked in,” she shakes the box slightly for emphasis, “but there wasn’t a note.”

“Oh.” A smile slowly spreads across Jeremy’s face. “Oh?” he purrs, waggling his eyebrows at her. “Does the boss have a secret admirer?”

Marinette blinks and- what?

“What? No. I can’t- That doesn’t-” she splutters but Jeremy just laughs and walks over to his station to start setting up for the day, leaving Marinette to her breakdown.

Because this can’t have been left by a secret admirer. That’s just crazy.

There are exactly two people who could’ve left this for her and neither of them would be an admirer of any kind. And she wouldn’t want them to be anyway because that would be stupid and ridiculous and weird.

She doesn’t like Robin or Damian like that…

Right?

***

(It’s impossible not to love her, he realizes, mostly by accident.

She loves, wholeheartedly and unafraid and so much more than Damian had ever thought one person could. She loves with a ferocity and passion no person deserves or can match.

And Damian, foolishly, loves and wishes to be loved by her anyway.)

***

There are roses on her desk the next day, potted and still healthy.

The day after that, there’s a box of expensive chocolates. Like, the kind only Adrien, Felix, and Chloé buy without a second thought. The gossip has spread far enough that all of her designers know about the gifts and probably-admirer.

On the fourth day, there is a box full of high-quality pencils and a new sketchbook, one with nice thick drafting paper, but small enough to fit in her favored bag. Her name is embossed across the front, along with her personal motif of delicate apple blossoms.

On the fifth day, she shows up to find there is only a drawing, which should point to it being Damian, but drawing-her is holding a robin in her cupped palms which cannot be a coincidence. Drawing-her also looks serene and beautiful with her mouth curved slightly and her eyes gentle and soft and Marinette is as touched by the image as she is frustrated by it.

There are hair sticks on the sixth, and delicate pins shaped like flowers on the seventh. Another stunning drawing of her on the eighth, a bottle of wine older than Master Fu on the ninth, the softest cashmere blanket on the tenth, a basket of sweet floral lotions, a glass statue of a bird in flight—she gets so many gifts, Marinette has to stop keeping count.

It’s somewhere around day six that her designers must’ve ratted on her to either Felix or Chloé because it’s not long after that, that all of her friends learn about the gifts and start being terrifically unhelpful about the whole situation.

They each try to give her advice, which would be sweet if it wasn’t all equally terrible and conflicting.

They’re also placing bets on who they think her admirer is, Damian or Robin. They’re trying to be discreet about it—which means they’re failing miserably.

Marinette, admittedly, never expected any different from them.

***

Marinette begins watching Damian in the mornings with a newfound interest.

The gifts are always there before she arrives, which means they're also there before Damian arrives, so she’s in a prime position to catch his reaction.

Or, she would be, if he ever reacted. He barely glances at them and never says anything unless the gift is particularly obnoxious, like the giant stuffed mouse she found sitting in her chair last week. (It was almost as big as she was. Adrien, Nino, and Alix had ended up on the floor from laughing so hard when they’d seen it.)

Damian almost never comments on the gift she received that day, but whenever she uses or wears something that her mysterious admirer had gotten for her, he makes sure to compliment her. Which would be very suspicious except that Robin does the same thing.

It’s just- they’re both so frustratingly silent about it all! Marinette is this close to just grabbing one or both of them by the shoulders and just shaking until they tell the truth.

It’s driving her insane! Before the necklace appeared on her desk, she didn’t even know that she liked Robin and Damian.

And now she’s overanalyzing their nonreactions. She hates it.

It feels too much like she’s back in collège, trying to sort out her feelings for Adrien and Chat. (Who ended up being the same person—which was just very inconsiderate of him, really. The least he could do is let her angst have meaning dammit!)

And- ugh. What if she doesn't even like either of them? What if her mind is just making her think she does because the idea of them liking her was presented? What then? Or what about the fact that the two boys are also ridiculously similar when she thinks about it. What if she only likes one and is just projecting her feelings onto the other because her mind associates the two?

Oh, she doesn’t like that thought. That thought makes her feel upset and like she wants to cry into a tub of ice cream.

Nino happily indulges her and doesn't even complain when she eats her way through his stash of mint chip as she dramatically complains about stupidly confusing boys.

Honestly, she may as well be back in lycée.

***

(What Marinette does not realize in the midst of all her careful analysis of his reactions, is that it’s not the gifts he’s focused on.

When she wears the necklace and hair sticks, she misses the way his eyes linger on the slope of her neck. As she cares for her roses, she doesn’t notice the way he follows the easy nimbleness of her fingers. She uses her sketchbook and eats the expensive chocolates and doesn’t pay attention to the way he steals glances at her lips. She doesn't see the way his hands twitch when she ventures just near enough to touch.

(She exists next to him, in any form or light, and he is captivated by her very presence.)

Marinette looks, but it is in all the wrong places.)

***

Strangely enough, it’s Signal who helps her with her internal crisis—completely unintentionally and in a very roundabout way—but he helps all the same.

He’s taken an… interest, she supposes, in her magic. One that is entirely his own and has very little to do with that Bat from what she can tell.

His abilities and hers stem from different origins, but she would be lying if she said his weren’t oddly complementary to her own. His precognition abilities stemming from his photokinesis has been useful on more than one occasion regarding the experimental spell matrices she, Tikki, and Nooroo have been testing out.

The magic is normally invisible to people without a Miraculous, but Signal seems to have little trouble seeing what she’s doing, even if he can’t interact with it the way she can.

(There is also the fact that she seems… more when he is around. Days that he spends watching her do her work go by faster and smoother than when he is away. Her magic is easier, and her mind spins with ideas and creations faster.

It’s an odd phenomenon and Ladybug is looking into it.)

There has been more than one occasion where Signal had warned her of the matrix’s imminent collapse with enough time for her to prepare herself for its blowback.

The version she’s working on today is their fifth iteration. It’s supposed to pull the miasma out of the building, filter it through her and Tikki’s own magical energy, before flowing back into the brickwork. Marinette had thought of the idea while talking with Nooroo.

If she can get it to work, it will shift the misfortune into good luck and order and release it back into the environment. Then she’ll only need to cleanse strategic portions of the city in a lattice network, and the creative and destructive energies will mix from there, balancing themselves without much input from her at all.

Of course, that’s only if she can actually get it to work. It’s been almost a month and this is the fifth version and it’s already collapsed on her three times in the last hour. Signal must see the frustration on her face and has taken to trying to distract her with small talk.

She’s very thankful for it, actually. If he wasn’t doing that, she would probably start screaming right here and now, on this random rooftop in the residential district. Which would just be very startling and embarrassing for everyone involved, so. You know. Glad she doesn’t have to do that.

Eventually, she asks him, apropos of nothing, “You’re a detective right?”

He pauses, and blinks at her, likely trying to follow the train of thought that led her to that question. She assumes he did not find it because when he speaks, he still sounds confused.

“Yes? I guess that’s technically what I am.”

“So you’re good at figuring out who’s behind a crime?”

Signal only looks more confused. “Yeah? But Ladybug, what-”

“Great, so. Hypothetically, if you had two suspects for a—well it’s not a crime. A… thing? Situation. How would you figure out which one of them is actually behind the… situation?”

Signal’s lips quirk, just a bit despite his confusion. “I think I’m gonna need a little more to go on than just ‘a situation,’ LB.”

Ladybug purses her lips and stares down at the light weaving intricate patterns in the space between her palms. Slowly, carefully, she tells him, “There are items being left where a person can find them. But the identity of the person leaving them and their intentions are unknown.”

“Are the items dangerous?” he asks worriedly.

Ladybug shakes her head. “No. They're more like gifts.”

“Are the gifts unwanted or creepy? Unsettling? Threatening?”

Another head shake. “Just confusing and… thoughtful.”

“Someone is leaving you thoughtful gifts and you're worried about that… why?” Signal asks, slowly and disbelievingly.

“It’s because I- wait! I’m not the person!” she panics, causing the magic to spark dangerously in her hands but she barely notices. “The person doesn’t even exist. It was a hypothetical question!”

Signal stares at her. She can’t see his eyes or the top half of his face, but she just knows he’s raising his eyebrow judgingly at her.

“Stop that!” she snaps. “Stop being perceptive! I have enough perceptive people in my life so knock it off!”

Signal laughs like the horrible person he is. “But don’t you need me to be perceptive? That’s like, a requirement to be a detective.”

“Stop it,” she says again, mulishly and very childish.

And isn’t that an odd thought to have? Ladybug being childish.

How novel. Ladybug has never once been childish. She can’t afford to be, because when she is behind the mask, she is all the most important parts of herself. She is the Grand Guardian, is the one who must be in control at all times because she has an entire team to keep safe and alive.

Behind the mask, she’s all of her greatest responsibilities.

But here, in Gotham and with Signal, she is none of those things to him. She is simply another hero, that is his age and very much like him in ways so few are. Ladybug, in the moments she spends with Signal, is probably the closest she has ever been to carefree while in the mask.

It’s as comforting a thought as it is terrifying.

Signal raises his hands in surrender, but his lips are still quirked in amusement.

Ladybug regrets starting this conversation.

She regrets it even more when, five minutes later, Signal manages to pull the rest of the story from her… along with a name.

She realizes her mistake a second too late to stop herself, and then all she can do is watch.

She watches, with ever-growing horror, as Signal slowly puts the pieces together. She watches, as her whole secret identity starts unraveling around her for the first time ever. She watches, stricken, as Signal opens his mouth to speak.

And then she grabs both sides of his head and Orders him to sleep.

***

The second Marinette bespells him, she regrets it.

She was panicking, okay? And Marinette panicking is very different from Ladybug panicking and truly, she creates messes just by existing.

Nooroo flies out of his hiding place to make distressed noises at the now unconscious Signal with her, which is… actually kinda soothing, if not exactly helpful.

At least she knows she’s not the only one upset right now.

“Oh no, oh no, oh no!” Nooroo frets, flitting around her head with agitated wings. Hers aren’t much better, if she’s being honest. “What are we going to do, Guardian? He knows who you are! This is bad.”

Marinette worries her thumb between her teeth, shifting her weight from foot to foot. With a thought, she's back in her civvies and Tikki is perched on her shoulder, blinking at the scene she’s suddenly a part of.

“Well,” Tikki says, sounding far too calm for the situation. “This isn’t ideal.”

The laugh that escapes Marinette is on the edge of hysterical. “You think?”

“It’s not ideal,” Tikki repeats firmly, “But neither is it a disaster.”

Nooroo lands on her other shoulder as she kneels down beside Signal to rearrange his limbs to not be so uncomfortable. “But he's unpredictable!” he argues, curling into the side of her neck like she will hide him from the world. “We don’t know what he’ll do with this information!”

Tikki hums thoughtfully. “Then we will have to ask. There are far worse people we could have been revealed to. We're lucky it was a friend rather than foe.”

“You think so?” Marinette asks softly, voice barely louder than a whisper.

She knows the Bat’s flock are good people. Many of them are her friends, or people she hopes to call friends soon.

But she doesn't know if these people Marinette calls friends could be Ladybug’s allies.

The bats hoard secrets like black holes, and perhaps they would keep hers just as well, but they could just as easily use it against her. Batman barely tolerates her presence, she can tell by the way Signal talks sometimes, and it is no small stretch of the imagination that he would use this to try and kick her out of Gotham.

Marinette cannot, as a Guardian, leave Gotham.

But more importantly, she doesn’t want to leave Gotham. It’s… her home now. Her friends are here. Her family is here. Robin and Hood and the other bats are here. Damian and all her Waynes are here.

Leaving Gotham would not only make her sick and jittery at the imbalance, but it would break her heart.

If, when Signal tells Batman, he reacts poorly, there is so much that Marinette is set up to lose. And that terrifies her.

Some of that thought process must show on her face—or perhaps Nooroo has just picked up on the turmoil in her chest—because the two Kwami are pressed on either side of her face, nuzzling and hugging as much of her as they can reach.

“We’ll make it through this, Marinette,” Tikki says firmly, no room for argument. “Don’t worry so much. Both of you. Everything will turn out just fine, you’ll see.”

***

@bluesimani @how-to-fuction-properly @chocolatecatstheron @mystery-5-5 @nickristus-dreamer @mochegato @thenillabean @animegirlweeb @novaloptr @darkdaysandfakesmiles @optimistically-pessimistic0524 @clumsy-owl-4178 @g-arya @undecisioned @smolplantmum @blackmagicforever @i-wanna-be-a-ninja @wannajointhecrabcult @paintedhope7 @redscarlet95 @roselynfey @ira-sairain @lozzybowe @tumbling-down-hills-and-stuff @2confused-2doanything @pepelachanel @too0bsessedformyowngood @miraculouspenta @itsmeevie01 @corabeth11 @jalaluvsu

#maribat #daminette #ml x dc #my typewriter #for us to collide

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