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#‘I’m waiting to live and waiting to love. oh it’ll be over and I’ll still be asking ‘when?’’ 👀

loveinhawkins · 1 month

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”How do you do it?” Eddie asks.

The question slips out far too late at night, anxiety thrumming in his chest—he’s not escaped the feeling ever since the boathouse, when he simply couldn’t sleep, felt like a fox just waiting for hound dogs to get his scent, ready to run—

Steve doesn’t need him to explain further, as if he can somehow hear a whole lot of what Eddie’s not saying: like when he picked up the phone an hour ago and hadn’t even let Eddie tie himself in knots, had just said, so easily, “I’ll come get you,” like it wasn’t a huge inconvenience, like he’d been the one to call Eddie instead.

He’s considering Eddie from where he lies in bed, leaning on his elbow, and he’s still got the covers off pointedly—and that’s a big thing, Eddie thinks, a big thing he doesn’t know what to do with, because they’ve not talked, not really, not got much beyond the dizzying relief of still being alive.

But even fraught with profound lack of sleep, Eddie doesn’t think he’s misreading the look in Steve’s eyes.

I know, those eyes say, illuminated by the warm light of the bedside lamp. It’s okay, there’s no rush. I’m right here.

Eddie’s never seen that kind of look before. Not towards him.

“Sometimes Robin sleeps over,” Steve says thoughtfully. “And sometimes the kids are around, and they’re so annoying and I get, like, three hours, tops.” He says it with all the fondness in the world. “And sometimes I’m alone, and it’s fine.”

“What about the other times?” Eddie can’t help but whisper.

If it were a reasonable hour maybe he wouldn’t dare to ask at all, but exhaustion’s worn down the filter in his head—at this point it’s practically see-through.

Steve shrugs. “Yeah, they’re shit,” he says with such honesty that Eddie nearly asks it again, how do you do it?

“But then it’s, like, a new day,” Steve says slowly, like he’s carefully weighing up what to say, “and I can… drive.” The pause tells Eddie he means go to someone. “Or, like… call, if it’s really bad.”

Hey, I’m glad you called, man, Steve had said when Eddie got into his car earlier, like they were just going to the movies or something normal—like Eddie wasn’t shaking, forehead pressed against the passenger window.

Eddie feels his throat close up a little. Tries to sniff as quietly as possible.

“Eddie,” Steve says patiently. He moves back in the bed. Gives Eddie space. “C’mere.”

Steve keeps the lamp on which helps; this isn’t the boathouse, Eddie thinks, and the slightest bit of tension leaves his body. Even that feels like a miracle.

He’s just resigning himself to lying there, staring up at the ceiling so at least Steve can get some rest, when Steve turns and catches his eye, still wide awake.

“Tell me about The Lord of the Rings,” Steve says.

The tightness in Eddie’s chest loosens; he laughs in surprise. “What?”

“You heard me.”

Eddie turns so he’s facing Steve properly, attempts a casual shrug, knowing already that it’ll be too rigid. “I don’t know, man. We, uh. We kinda lived through Mordor already.”

His hand twists in the bedsheets, knuckles turning white.

I don’t know how to do this. I’ve never had…

Steve’s hand reaches across, eases Eddie’s grip on the sheets, like he’s saying, neither did I. Just give it a shot.

“The shire, then,” Steve says.

Eddie smiles. “Steve Harrington,” he says, suddenly finding enough lightness to tease; he’s missed it. “Are you asking me for a bedtime story?”

“Nope,” Steve says. “We’re just gonna lie here and talk.”

And they do.

Steve asks questions which works out for the best—Eddie can’t quite remember the last time he read the books. To tell the truth, anything that happened before March often has a kind of fog over it.

He’s sure he’s dropped at least a couple of plot points somewhere along the way, but Steve never once complains that he’s not making sense, just gently prompts Eddie until… until…

“Mm, I know what you’re doing,” Eddie mumbles through a yawn that catches him unawares.

“Oh, do you now?” Steve says, sounding smug. God, Eddie loves him. “Is it working?”

“Maybe.” Eddie says. His eyelids are heavy. “Um.” He yawns again. “Where… where was I?”

“Don’t worry about it, man,” Steve says. It sounds like he’s smiling—Eddie would check, but it’s suddenly impossible to keep his eyes open.

It’s okay, he thinks hazily, melting into sleep without even thinking about it. He can ask Steve in the morning.

There’s no rush.

#on struggling with the aftermath #the trust in falling asleep in front of someone ❤️#this may have a second part #a lil anxiety soothing stuff ❤️#pre steddie #steddie fic #steddie ficlet #steddie #steve x eddie #steve harrington #eddie munson

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fields-of-grimes · 11 months

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Under The Sheets | Carl Grimes

Carl Grimes x fem!reader

CW: pussy eating, getting caught

Request: hiii! I’m not sure if this is the place where you submit requests, but i guess i’ll find out! I was wondering if you could write a Carl Grimes x female reader where Rick walks in on Carl eating out the reader but carl is under the sheets so rick doesn’t know what’s going on and he asks the reader where he is and she says something like “Carl, ricks wondering where you are” and carl comes out from under the blankets and says something like “what’s up dad?” Rick catches on and is just disappointed and says something along the lines of “Jesus Christ carl” that follows in a very awkward talk from rick to the reader and carl. I’m not sure if that made sense sorry. Also, thank you, i love love love your work <3 <3

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You moaned softly as Carl’s tongue flicked over your clit, you reached your hand under the blanket to grip his hair, you gasped as the door opened slightly, you looked over to see Rick in the doorway. “Jesus Rick you scared me.” You said silently thanking Carl for putting a blanket over him.

“Sorry Y/N have you seen Carl anywhere? I need his help and i can’t find him anywhere.” Rick said as Carl slowly started rubbing your clit, you choked back a moan before speaking.

“Carl, Rick is wondering where you are.” You said looking at the blanket moving as Carl was slowly climbing over you, he poked his head out from under the blanket looking at his dad.

“Yeah, what’s up dad?” Carl asked calmly like he wasn’t eating you out moments before. Rick looked at Carl confused before his eyes widened as he figured out what his son was doing.

“Jesus Christ Carl, you know what. Both of you get dressed and meet me downstairs we need to have a talk.” Rick said before slamming the door shut before walking downstairs.

You and Carl looked at each other before laughing. “You asshole! Do you know how hard it is to have a conversation with your dad when you’re doing that!?” You slapped him upside the head playfully before climbing out from underneath him and grabbing your clothes. Carl just laughed “Hey you seemed to be doing just fine.” He said before getting off the bed and grabbing your hand after you got dressed, you both walked downstairs to find a very pissed off Rick in the living room. “Sit.” Rick demanded pointing to the couch, you and Carl sat on the couch, you looking down at your lap while Carl avoided eye contact with his dad.

“Listen, i get it you’re both teenagers, you both have hormones, but you need to know the..the risks of doing what you’re doing.” Rick said as Carl groaned. “Dad you already gave me the talk at the farm.” Carl stated finally making eye contact with his dad. “I understand Carl but after..after mom i want you to know what the risks are. I don’t want to have this conversation either but I’ll make it short and simple.” Rick said pinching the bridge of his nose. You finally looked up at Rick before sighing.

“Rick we haven’t done it yet, the most we’ve done is..well what you walked in on, Glenn has already given Carl plenty of condoms, but we’re waiting until we’re both ready.” You said releasing a breath you didn’t realize you were holding in. Carl grabbed your hand smiling at you softly.

Rick sighed before nodding “Okay that’s good but it’s still not getting you two out of this. I get that we are in a safer location with more doctors and more equipment but that does not mean i want to be a grandpa just yet okay.” Rick said looking between the two of you. You and Carl both nodded as you both blushed. “Good.” Rick said standing up “Now Carl lets go we need to go work on the wall.” He said grabbing Carl’s arm and dragging him out of the house.

—————————————————————————————————

Thank you to the anon that requested this! For those of you asking for the oh hell no part 2 give me a few days and it’ll be out! <3

#carl grimes #carl grimes x reader #carl grimes x y/n #twd #twd imagine #twd imagines #carl grimes smut

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miley1442111 · 2 months

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the problem with arguing

a/n: Hi, this is my first story, any constructive criticism is welcomed. This had not been properly edited nor read through because icba lmao :) also I wrote it for a fem!reader but I don't think there's much mention other than Jack calling reader 'mom' so... yeah :)

pairings: aaron hotchner x reader, platonic BAUteam x reader, motherly(If that's a word?)reader x teen!jack hotchner

summary: aaron and you are in a fight, but what happens when a meeting with a witness goes south?

warnings: criminal minds levels of violence, angst, fluff, couple fighting, reader in distress, reader getting injured, mentions of knives, mentions of being stabbed, mentions of being tied up, mentions of hospitals, mentions of killing, mentions of general injury, mentions of guns/shooting, minimal use of y/n.

1.6k + words.

“We’re here, we’ll update you if anything comes of it,” Morgan promises Hotch over the phone as we walk to the front porch of one of our witnesses. Something about his story is messed up and we were the unlucky ones who had to go talk to him. It’s a pretty house I guess, a little expensive for what a 26 year old man could afford, and what he would want to buy. It’s all fifties style, the entire estate is. Big-enough bungalows with pastel walls and inviting doors with a small porch, just enough for the entry-way and a chair. I knock on the door, exhausted from the past 72 hours. Aaron and I got in a fight before we got to Ohio, it was unnecessary, but we fought all the same. He was mad at me for giving Jack advice that led to a fight between them. I just wanted to kiss and make up 3 days ago but he won’t budge. Maybe it’s because he knows I’m right and doesn’t want to confront it or maybe it’s because I took it too far and overstepped. Jack calls me ‘mom’, I live with him, and Jack came to me for support, he wanted guidance and I gave him it. He was mad at his dad because he missed meeting his girlfriend. His girlfriend, Ava, was a lovely girl, I had been the one there when Jack brought her over for dinner, I was the one trying to suss out if they actually liked each other, and I was the one Jack sat down with for 2 hours after and told everything about her to. All because Aaron was too busy with paperwork in his study. Jack was hurt, which is difficult to do because he’s such an understanding 16 year-old boy. It was also hard because I saw both sides. I’ll be the first to admit that what Aaron did was wrong, but our job is hard and demanding, especially his since he’s the leader of our team… But Jack just wanted 2 hours of his time, not even, just a dinner. A dinner to meet his girlfriend, and Aaron still couldn’t make it.

I knock again as I huff.

“Everything alright?” Morgan asks, the regular playful glint in his eye.

“Tired, mad, over this job. You?” I sigh.

“Sounds about right,” He chuckles. “How’s Jack doing?”

A smile spreads across my face. “He has a girlfriend,” Morgan’s face lights up in a smile.

“My man,” He smirks and I chuckle. “You two met her yet?”

My face drops again. “I have, Aaron… couldn’t make it to the dinner though. She’s lovely, perfect for Jack. It's so funny, it’s just opposites attract. Jack is so sporty and outspoken and she’s one of the quieter, more into her studies kind of person.”

The door swings open and we’re met with David, our witness.

“You two know what time it is?” He yawns.

“Oh trust us, we know,” Morgan sighs. “Can we ask you a few more questions?”

“It’s 10pm at night? Can’t this wait ‘till the morning?”

“It’ll only take a few minutes,” I reassure.

He looks between us for a moment, then sighs. “Quickly.”

We walk inside and are immediately hit with an awful smell. I know that smell. That’s when I see it, a body.

And that’s when it all goes black.

I wake up in a new room, tied to a chair. I don’t see Derrick anywhere. I don’t see David anywhere. I’m all alone in this grey room. I don’t see a door but I notice a camera, and a screen in front of me. I see Penelope on the screen, then a sign above it with “Don’t make noise” scribbled. I look to my left and see a plastic window, I see Morgan through it, tied up too. He sees me.

“Y/n? Y/n?! Where are you?” Penelope squeals. I shake my head and she picks up her phone and tries calling mine, it rings and I feel something go into my side. I scream out in pain as I see the blood start trickling out of me. Penelope drops her phone, then picks it up, dialling someone else’s number.

I get switched to a joint call with Penelope, and the rest of the team, excluding Aaron.

“Y/n?” Spencer asks and I nod, sobbing in pain. Spencer runs off-screen, leaving Jj and Emily to stare in horror at me.

Spencer comes back with Aaron and we make eye-contact through the screen, and he starts breaking. He’s shouting orders at the policemen in the precinct, he’s shouting orders at the team, and he’s trying not to cry. I know that. I also know I’m the only one who knows that. He hides it pretty well but not from me, not after all of our years together. His eyes squint, his eyebrows furrow more than usual, he starts biting at the skin around his nails.

“We’re coming to find you. We will find you,” he promises me. I nod slowly as the pain in my side becomes unbearable as the knife is pulled out.

“Is Morgan with you?” Emily asks and I nod as I bite my lip until it bleeds to stop myself from making too much noise.

“Is he in the room with you?” Spencer asks.

I shake my head no. After what feels like an eternity of yes or no questions, they think they’ve located us.I hear banging on the door and then it opens. Spencer is standing there with an entire Swat team behind him. I shake my head to tell them to not make noise but they talk anyway and another knife is put into my leg, I don’t have the strength to stay quiet this time and another finds its way into my arm. I pass out.

I wake up in a hospital bed, an IV in my arm, Aaron on one side and Jack on the other. Aaron’s asleep in a chair on my left, I grimace, knowing his back will hurt.

“Mom?!” Jack exclaims as he sees me open my eyes. “Mom!” His eyes fill with tears as he gets up and wraps his arms around me on the bed.

“Jack,” I sigh in relief.

“You’re okay! You’re awake!” He smiles brightly, happy that I’m alive.

Aaron wakes up from the commotion and rushes to my side. “Honey?” He takes my hand and squeezes. “You’re okay.”

I smile at both of them.

“I’ll go get the doctor,” Jack smiles and he rushes off to find a doctor.

“Honey I’m so sorry I shouldn’t have-” He starts but I cut him off.

“I love you.”

“I love you too,” he sighs, tears welling up in his eyes.

“Don’t go all soft now Aaron,” I joke.

“You make me soft,” He smiles and presses a soft kiss to my cheek.

Jack comes back in with a doctor. She tells me that I lost a lot of blood and that I will be out of the field for a few months, with 2 weeks of mandatory bedrest, then 4 weeks of physical therapy.

The next day, the team come in to visit.

“Hey,” Spencer smiles, walking in first. I’ve always been close to Spencer, he’s always felt like a little brother to me.

“Hey,” I smile and wince when I hug him, but I know it’s worth it. The rest of the team filter in, smiles on their faces.“So what happened after I went out?”

“Well, they got me, no injuries apart from a concussion,” Morgan says.

“We got the guy-” Emily starts.

“Aaron got the guy,” Spencer interrupts. “He saw him and just shot him-”

“And then he beat the crap out of him,” Jj says. “It was pretty intense.”

I nod along as they tell me the story, and then we just talk about whatever until Aaron comes in and says visiting hours are over. Spencer leaves me a few more books to read and Jj brings Jack to Ava’s house for the night. Aaron walks in with my dinner on a tray.

“Hungry?” He smiles.

“You shot someone for me?” I ask as he places my tray down.

“Yes.”

I roll my eyes and smile at him. “Is he alive?”

“No.”

My face drops. “Oh.”

“It was the combined bleeding and head trauma that killed him.”

“You shouldn’t have done that.”

“I did.”

I look at my food. “I understand you wanted to protect me-”

“I did that because he doesn’t get to live after doing this to you. Honey, you and Jack are the most important people in my life and I would do anything if it meant that you were safe and sound. Do you want to know how it felt to have what could’ve been my last words to you be ‘stop bothering me’? I was an asshole to you over the Jack situation because I knew you were right. I knew it wasn’t fair to not go to dinner when I was in the house. I knew it was important and it just felt too real. It felt like he was growing up and I just couldn’t take it because I missed so much of his childhood! So I’m sorry, I’m so so sorry that I said everything I said and did what I did, but I am not sorry about hurting that fucking monster,” He takes a deep breath. “Now eat up, it’ll go cold.”

“I love you Aaron, it’s ok. It wasn’t your fault, being a parents is hard.”

His eyes fill with tears and he looks at me like an injured puppy.

“Come here,” I smile and move over, allowing room for him to sit with me. He climbs into bed beside me and wraps his arms around me, being careful of my wounds.

“I love you,” he whispers as I slowly eat my food.

“I love you too.”

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inuyashaluver · 6 months

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jacket kisses - leah williamson

leah williamson x reader

description: in which your girlfriend always shares her jacket with you - insisting it’s the only way you can get warm

warnings: swearing, suggestive media post teehee

⋆ ★ ⋆ ★ ⋆ ★ ⋆ ★ ⋆

your girlfriend, leah williamson loved the cold weather. the only reason why she loves the cold weather is because she dedicated herself to being your personal heater.

whether it was at training, during games or just in general, leah HAD to have her body enveloping yours, she couldn’t let her baby get cold she claims.

“do you think i’ll need a jacket?” you question, looking over at leah, she was perched against the doorframe, arms folded over her chest as she watched you get ready for your date.

“nah, baby, we’ve got our jacket right here” she pats her chest, referencing the jacket she was wearing.

you roll your eyes and shake your head lightly at her with a giggle.

“when i die of hypothermia, will you speak at my funeral?” you pout at her, moving across the room to stand directly in front of her, grabbing her hands and swinging them side to side.

she smiles down at you, rubbing her thumbs lightly over your knuckles, “baby girl, if anyone dies of hypothermia, it’ll be me” she scoffs, “would i really let my girlfriend go cold?”

you laugh at her again, “my silly girl” you coo, lightly pinching her cheek, “off we go then, williamson chop chop!” she laughs and pulls you out of the door, giving your tangled hands a kiss.

as soon as you step outside. it’s cold. it’s really fucking cold - she knew straight away and moved to take off her jacket and holding it above your shoulders, waiting for you to slip in each of your arms. when your arms are in the jacket, she squeezes your biceps and places a sweet kiss on your cheek.

“now you’ll be cold lee, baby”

“this is a thermal shirt, i’m all good, baby” you give her a peck in appreciation. leah felt so accomplished in this moment, she knew she needed to keep this up.

—

both of you were extremely talented football players, hence why you both play for england as well as arsenal. you loved playing together - it strengthens your relationship as a whole and you just loved to watch each other do what you do best.

unfortunately, leah wasn’t able to get back to the pitch just yet, her acl preventing her to do so. however, this didn’t stop her coming to every game to watch her teammates and her lovely girlfriend.

it was game day for arsenal. a home game - leah could not be more excited to live out her wag life, wearing your jersey under her giant puffer jacket. the game had gone exceptionally well, you had managed to get two goals amongst the 5 from your teammates. an easy 5-0 win.

when the final whistle blew, you and your teammates hugged each other with exhaustion. staying in the middle of the pitch before doing your lap of photos and signatures.

“our little superstar!” katie yells as she picks you up over her shoulder, running around the girls as they laughed at both of you. “oh, here’s your missus, off you go!” she places you on the ground and spins you towards your favourite girl.

there stood your beautiful girlfriend, looking so warm and snuggly in her puffer jacket and tracksuit pants while you suffer in your kit. she outstretched her arms to you and you jog over to her, pulling her into a tight hug. she immediately placed her face in the crook of your neck, placing numerous kisses there. she moves her hand to scrunch the back of your head and faces you.

“i know i told you to score me a goal but two? i’m so spoilt” she boops your nose with her finger. your arms were still tightly wrapped around her waist, the cold breeze starting to pick up when your post match body heat goes down.

“gotta show off to my wag, baby” you wink up at her and she grins at you brightly.

“i’ll never get over you in this kit, arsenal suits you well” she unwraps your arms from her waist in order to hold your hand and twirl you around, taking in your appearance.

“baby, i’ve played at arsenal all my life”

“woah, show off! let me compliment my girlfriend please” she scoffs,

“baby, you’ve played with me, at arsenal, for majority of our lives, you’ve seen me in this kit more than regular clothes”

“you’re no fun” she pouts at you, you give her a kiss on the lips in apology. before you could pull away, she grabs the base of your neck, making the kiss longer but still keeping it tame as you were in public.

you pull away for a moment, both of you looking at each other with wide pupils and cheesy grins.

“is this appropriate baby?, i think we’re traumatising the children” you point over your shoulder, referencing victoria and alessia who was looking at you guys and grinning. she laughs loudly at that, bringing you close to her again.

“oh no, can’t have that, love, can we?” she places her hands on your hips, pulling you closer. she quickly unzips her jacket, grabbing your arms and wrapping them around her waist.

“baby, what’re you-”

“hush” she tutts with fake annoyance on her face

you hug her waist tightly and she pulls the jacket around you, holding it in place with her arms. hugging you tightly. she quickly lets go of you and puts the big hood over her head. you’re now in your own little cocoon. everyone knowing to leave you alone in this moment.

she moves down to place a passionate kiss on your lips, both of you moving completely in sync with each other. there’s so much love in the kiss, it honestly felt like the both of you had been away from each other for weeks instead of 90 minutes.

she pulls away from you. giving you a kiss on both of your cheeks, your forehead, your nose and a quick peck on your lips for good measure. you grin up at her and return the kisses in the same spots, both of you giggling with each other, still wrapped up in the puffer jacket.

“okay williamson, duty calls, baby, gotta sign some shirts and cheese for pics” you let go of her.

“hey! me first!” she grabs out her phone from her pocket, holding it out for a selfie. you both immediately share cheesy grins at the camera, leah spamming the photo button. before you move to run away, she pulls you back by your wrist,

“one more” she pouts, you pose again, this time grabbing her cheek at giving her a kiss on the cheek.

“okay, i’ve really got to go!” you quickly run away before she pulls you back. little did you know, leah was too busy staring at the picture and making it her wallpaper and profile picture on every social media platform that she had

⋆ ★ ⋆ ★ ⋆ ★ ⋆ ★ ⋆

just pretend it’s youuuu - sorry jordy ily x

liked by alessiarusso99 and 44,232 others

leahwilliamsonn: wag life couldn’t be better

view all comments

yourname: so nice meeting such a big fan today!

↳ leahwilliamsonn: oh fuck you

↳ yourname: oh fuck me yourself, gorgeous

↳ leahwilliamsonn: is this a challenge or something?

↳ alessiarusso99: THIS IS PUBLIC! DIGITAL FOOTPRINT, PARENTS, PLEASE

↳ yourname: whoops

↳ leahwilliamsonn: whoops

#woso #woso community #woso fanfics #woso one shot #woso x reader #woso imagine #leah williamson #leah williamson x reader

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a-dauntless-daffodil · 7 days

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Charlie: “So this is what a full hotel looks like…”

Vaggie: “Think it’ll survive until Extermination day?”

Charlie: “I don’t know if I’LL survive to Extermination day.”

Vaggie: “Aww, babe.”

Charlie: “Seriously, who keeps ordering pizza??? We all already KNOW the cannibals will just skip it and try chewing on the poor delivery person!”

Vaggie: “My bet’s on Angel Dust. He’s not exactly thrilled the place got filled up with ‘shit smiling judgmental prudes.’”

Charlie: “Whyyy didn’t I remember the cannibals have a whole dress-code thingy?”

Vaggie: “They are being polite about it though.”

Charlie: “They keep eyeing Angel Dust’s exposed thighs like they’re chicken wings.”

Vaggie: “And if they wanted to eat him up in any other way, he’d be thrilled.”

Charlie: (growling) “Some of them keep looking at YOUR thighs as if they were-”

Vaggie: “Anything other than property of Charlie Morningstar?”

Charlie: “-Vaggie they want to TEAR YOU APART!”

Vaggie: “And they’re not actually trying it, which is polite, even if they’re still talking about how angels might taste whenever I’m in the room.”

Charlie: (pout) “You taste good.”

Vaggie: “Not like that, babe.”

Charlie: “How could the rest of you not taste good too??”

Vaggie: “Ask the cannibals. Meat flavors based on where the meat thing lived and what it ate, something something- What if angel steaks taste like artificial food coloring?”

Charlie: “I like those-!”

Vaggie: "I know." (laughing) “Maybe that’s another reason why you’re the woman of my dreams.”

Charlie: “Am I?”

Vaggie: “The one and only.”

Charlie: “You’d never… think about leaving me for someone else?”

Vaggie: “NO?”

Charlie: “Someone a little more badass maybe?”

Vaggie: “Not possible. You called heaven out for being total bullshit. In a song.”

Charlie: “Maybe someone you had an instant and deep connection with?”

Vaggie: “Like the woman that bandaged my eye socket and took me home with her and nursed me through physical and emotional hell all because she also thought sinners might be people worth caring about?”

Charlie: “Well what about someone who… is just better? At the whole. Everything.”

Vaggie: “Literally who. Who the fuck-”

Charlie: “Carmilla?”

Vaggie: “Car-hhhhHHH." (chokes)

Vaggie: "AHAHAHAHAH! Charlie! WHAT!?”

Charlie: “She’s cool. She’s one of those, those muffin things right? Angel Dust said-”

Vaggie: “A milf, sweetie. It’s milf and PLEASE also listen to Husk’s reality checks whenever Angel Dust opens his well meaning but dumb as shit whore mouth.”

Angel Dust: (distantly) “My HOT and SEXY whore mouth heard that, toots!”

Vaggie: (yelling back) “Then go stick a dick in it!”

Angel Dust: “I’m tryin’~”

Charlie: (used to this) (ignoring them) “So the whole private training battle song thing was, not a turn on for you? At all?”

Vaggie: “If I ever call Carmilla Carmine ‘mommy’ it’ll be because she just signed my adoption papers.”

Charlie: “Oh! Okay! Juuuust wanted to check.”

Charlie: “…..”

Charlie: “Are you gonna ask about me and the head-to-heart I had with-”

Vaggie: “No.”

Charlie: “-because I was literally thinking about you the whole time-“

Vaggie: (smile) “That just took a perfectly non-worrying thing and made it sound bad.”

Charlie: “Is there a thing like a- an elf??”

Vaggie: “Aunt you’d like to fuck?”

Charlie: “Well not ME personally. But Rosie is very impressive.”

Vaggie: “You looked more impressed up in heaven.”

Charlie: “Huh? Heaven??”

Vaggie: “Nothing- never mind. I do actually have a lady-related question for you though.”

Charlie: “What does heaven have to do with- what?”

Vaggie: “I think I’m in love.”

Charlie: “WHAT!?”

Vaggie: “She’s ripped out my heart and I want to thank her for it.”

Charlie: “Th-thh that’s wait how when-?”

Vaggie: “Charlie.”

Charlie: “-y, yes?”

Vaggie: “Can we keep inviting Susan over, even after Extermination day?”

Charlie: “…”

Charlie: “Susan.”

Vaggie: “Charlie please? Please? She's the granny I don't deserve and desperately need in my life. Please please please please-”

Charlie: “But, Vaggie- She HATES everyone!”

Vaggie: “I know!”

Charlie: “And she SAYS it!?”

Vaggie: “And it’s so fucking cool.”

Charlie: “She said you dress like a hooker!”

Vaggie: “Angel Dust was furious. I think he would’ve thrown a punch at her, in defense of hookers everywhere, if Husk hasn’t grabbed him.”

Charlie: “A LAZY hooker!”

Vaggie: “That one hit home and I’ll cherish it’s sting forever.”

Charlie: “She’s not NICE. She doesn’t even PRETEND to be nice like the other cannibals do!”

Vaggie: “Isn’t that great?” (grinning) “She’s like, the anti-Alastor….”

Charlie: (sigh)

Charlie: “I guess… being brutally, painfully, rudely honestly about your feelings is… not the worst thing someone can be.”

Vaggie: “YES! Can we adopt the creepy old mean lady?”

Charlie: “She can visit. We are NOT inviting her to LIVE here.”

Vaggie: (smiling)

Charlie: “….”

Charlie: (drooping) “…not unless she wants to.”

Vaggie: “Thanks, sweetie.” (kiss) “She never would. She hates us all and especially the hotel. Ask her and she’ll tell you, in detail, how all our decorating ideas are terrible and she’s only here to grab the free snacks, shove some angel leftovers in her basket, and then fuck off to her own perfect home back in Cannibal Town.”

Charlie: “So why scare me like that by asking? SUSAN in the attic! Ughghgh…”

Vaggie: “’cause it’s nice hearing you’d be open to it anyway.”

Charlie: “Mmrmph.”

Vaggie: “I like remembering that you’re like this.”

Charlie: “Whipped marshmallow.”

Vaggie: "That Angel Dust again?"

Charlie: "Maybe."

Vaggie: "I've got a better word for you."

Charlie: "Like 'girlfriend?"

Vaggie: “Like amazing.”

Charlie: (snorts) (smiles) "Heh. Alright, flattery accepted."

Vaggie: "My wonderfully, adorably dramatic, heart stopping and breathtakingly passionate girlfriend, the most incredible person I've ever met, who-"

Charlie: (laughing) “Now who’s being a sweetie?”

Vaggie: “Charlie, I’m seri- whoah!”

Niffty: (lifting up floor board vaggie was standing on and peeking up at them) “Hey guys!”

Charlie: “Niffty!” (hug lifting vaggie to safety) “W- hi! Um! What is it?”

Niffty: “A bad day not to wear underwear!”

Vaggie: “And a good day to Die.”

Niffty: "I WISH!" (GIGGLES) “News from the hotel gossip line! S.O.S from Husk- he says Angel Dust and some cannibals are fighting over who gets to put the new pizza delivery in their mouths while Cherri’s taking bets and also shots.”

Charlie: "Shots of alcohol?"

Niffty: "Laser gun!"

Charlie: "Nooooo I thought we'd cleaned up everything after Pen's last inventing spree!"

Niffty: "Missed one. She keeps missing too. She fried the pizza."

Vaggie: "Instead of?"

Niffty: (GRINS) "The pizza delivery person!"

Vaggie: “Ugh. We look away for Ten. Minutes.”

Charlie: “Well that’s not- that’s not TOO bad! At least Sir Pentious isn’t-”

Niffty: “His corpse is in the lobby.”

Charlie: “-right. Okay.”

Vaggie: “Why is he a corpse in the hotel lobby this time?”

Niffty: “The cannibals accidentally ate his tongue while he was trying to show Cherri how long it was and then he choked while proving he has no gag reflect and can unhinge his jaws.”

Charlie: “Oh.”

Niffty: “The cannibals want to snack on him again but Susan keeps yelling at them about ‘crumbling standards’ and ‘back in HER day-‘”

Vaggie: “I love her.”

Charlie: “I’m right here.”

Vaggie: “You kinda love her too right now.”

Charlie: (pulls face) “She can come to dinner every other week. If we live. For now though, let’s just, um.”

Vaggie: “Go save the snake man?”

Niffty: “That man is DEAD!”

Charlie: “Resuscitate. We should go resuscitate the snake m- Sir Pentious.”

Niffty: (giggles) “And I’m gonna go order another pizza boy~” (scurries back under floor board)

Vaggie: “Wait, Niffty-”

Charlie: “Niffty! Are YOU the one who’s been-? Vaggie NO-”

Vaggie: (spear out) (in pursuit) “GET OUT OF THE CRAWL SPACES RIGHT NOW AND COME BACK HERE, YOU LITTLE-”

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pb524830 · 4 days

Text

right where you left me

part: 2 pairing: paige bueckers x oc word count: 2.7k c/w: mention of blood, language a/n: hey guyssss here is part two enjoy it i love you ALL!! live reactions in my inbox => ALWAYS welcome!

I wait a beat, processing. “What… did you want to talk about?”

“Us.”

My eyebrows shoot to my hairline. “Us?” I demand. “Who is us?”

Paige moves her hands between the two of us exasperatedly. “Bro. You and me. Us.”

“We haven’t been an us in three years, Bueckers.”

“I know that. I know that. I just-” She lets out a huge sigh. “I miss you, bro.”

I truly can’t help the laugh that escapes me. Not that I try. But still.

“What is funny?” She demands.

I bend over, bracing my hands on my knees. And I cackle.

“You miss me?!” I howl, clutching my sides. “Oh, that’s good. Now you miss me, okay.”

“Good to know you’re still a crazy bitch.”

“Good to know you’re still fucking stupid,” I shoot back, wiping at my eyes. Her eyes widen and I can feel a retort on the tip of her tongue, because despite everything - I know her. I cut her off before she can say a word.

“What did you think was gonna happen, Paige? You were gonna come knock on my door in the middle of the night like a fucking Taylor Swift song, and tell me you miss me, and then what? Huh? I was gonna- what, kiss you under the stars? Tell you you’re the love of my life and of course I’ll take you back?” I sneer.

She clicks her tongue irritatedly, not unaccustomed to my rants. “It’s not even like that, dude.”

My eyebrows raise again. “Oh? What is it like, then, Paige? Do tell,” I snark, crossing my arms.

“I just miss… I don’t know, being around you? Like, I hate how awkward things are between us now.”

“That’s your own damn fault.”

“Yes! Okay! It’s my fault, I get it, and I’m sorry-”

“Which part are you sorry for, Paige?” I demand. “The part where you convinced me to not only cheat on my girlfriend, but also break up with her to be with you? Or maybe it’s the part where you swore we’d be together and we’d make long distance work because, really, Michigan and Connecticut aren’t that far. No, maybe it was the part where you dumped me after I came out to my family for you because you wanted to fuck other people?” My voice is rising, and I’m stepping closer to her. We’re nearly chest to chest when I finish speaking

She searches my eyes. I don’t miss the way her gaze lingers on my lips, and suddenly there’s goosebumps all down my arms and I’m conscious of the tank top I’m wearing. “All of it. Everything. I’m sorry for hurting you. I never wanted to,” she says quietly.

I search her eyes back, my lip curling. “Cop out. Fucking cop out. You’re a coward. You were a coward then, and you’re a coward now. Go home, Paige.” I turn to walk away from her, but her hand lands in the crook of my elbow.

My knees nearly buckle. It had always been like this. Her touch had always had the power to make me crumble, and it shudders through me even now.

“Maya-” she starts.

I shake her off. “I said fuck off.”

***************

“It’s Juilliard.”

“Well, open it.”

“I can’t”

Paige sighs, coming to crouch down next to me at my desk, lacing her fingers with mine. “Mai. I’m right here. No matter what happens, it will be fine.” I scoff at her. “That’s so easy for you to say. You’ve been committed to your dream school for almost a year.” Her face softens, blue eyes trained on mine. “You’re fucking incredible, dude. Any school who doesn’t see that doesn’t deserve you. No matter what happens when you open that letter, you’re still a badass. It’ll be okay.”

I squeeze her hand, nodding. “Yeah. You’re right. You’re right,” I say, mostly trying to convince myself. Paige places a kiss against our clasped hands and I ignore the shudder it sends through me. It’s too domestic, too intimate, and this is probably a moment I should be sharing with my actual girlfriend. “Come on. You can do it.”

I login to my admissions portal, click to view my decision and shut my eyes tight, waiting for it to load.

I hear Paige breathe next to sharply, and I open my eyes, blinking.

Dear Ms. Jacobs,

We regret to inform you…

I can’t read the rest of it. My eyes blur with tears, and sob claws its way up my throat.

I wasn’t good enough. All that work, the sweat, the tears, the hours spent in the studio - fuck all of it, because I wasn’t good enough.

“Maya,” Paige whispers. My bottom lip quivers, and the tears slip down my face. They land on the back of Paige’s hand in my lap. “Maya, baby,” she tries again, and I shake my head. My breath shudders out, and the tears are falling faster and faster now. I shake my head more indignantly, slamming my laptop shut.

A sob forces itself out of my mouth, and I bring a shaking hand to my mouth. Then the tears are really falling, streaming down my face, my whole body shaking with sobs, and I’m collapsing out of my chair into Paige’s arms. I sink into her on the floor, letting her strength support me, because God knows I have none. Her arms are firm around me, and I cry and cry and cry into her shirt, the blue of it darkening with my tears.

She presses her lips to my hairline, whispering words of reassurance against my forehead.

And though my whole world is crashing down around me, Paige is there. My Paige.

So, really - how bad could it be?

**********

“Mom!”

“Yes, honey?”

“What the hell is Paige doing here again?”

“Oh, she said she’d take Matthew to the park to play some basketball. You know how much he used to love watching her play-”

“Oh, my God!” I exclaim, stomping out of the kitchen and throwing my arms up. When the hell did she even manage to do that?

I storm out of the house, to where Paige is waiting near her car. “You better not be using my little brother to get to me, you asshole,” I warn menacingly, poking a finger into her chest. She narrows her eyes at me, and it startles me a-fucking-gain just how blue they are. She’s in a white cropped tank and mid-length blue shorts that hang off of her hips. Slowly, she pulls my finger down, wrapping her hand around it.

“Chill, Jacobs. Not everything is about you,” she says. I glare at the snark in her tone. “Ew, Maya, go change if you’re gonna come with us,” I hear my brother Matthew’s voice from behind me, a pair of Kyries hanging from his hand. I turn around to gape at him, and Paige guffaws. “Excuse you? I will take those shoes right to the store and return them-”

“Yap, yap, yap,” my brother complains, and my mouth drops open further, Paige’s laughter increasing in volume behind me.

I turn around and smack her on the stomach. “Shut up,” I hiss.

“Get in the car, kid!” Paige calls.

“Now, hang on. Where the fuck are you taking him?” I demand.

Matthew grins, running up to us. “I’m telling Mom you cussed,” he says slyly.

I make a face at him. “You’re such a little shit.”

Paige’s eyes trace over my face. “You’re sister’s a little brat, huh?” She notes, and Matthew groans in agreement. My eyes shoot to hers in shock. Brat?

She smirks at me. “You all ready?” She asks Matthew, but her eyes don’t leave mine. “You’re not taking my brother anywhere without me,” I blurt out stubbornly. What the hell? I don’t care that much. “And you’re not coming anywhere with me looking like that. Maya, you look ugly,” my brother says bluntly. “Matthew,” I warn. His attitude has really gotten worse since I’d gone to school.

“Go change,” he whines, and I look down at my old pajama pants and sleep tank, then back up to Paige. Her eyes trail up my body the same way, jaw tensing, and her tongue darts out to lick her lips. “Yeah,” she intones hoarsely. “Go change.”

I hold her gaze for a few more seconds, the heat of it addicting. When she jerks her chin back towards my house, I listen. I run inside, up to my room, changing my clothes quickly.

I run back out in an all blue workout set, a pair of leggings and tank top that are the same royal blue as Paige and my high school colors. I fling open the door to Paige’s car, hopping in. I gather my hair to clip it up into a bun but she doesn’t move. “Hello? Go?” I say sarcastically, looking at her curiously. Her eyes are trained on me already, and it makes my chest warm.

“You’re wearing that?” She asks quietly, her knuckles white as her fingers grip the steering wheel. I crinkle my nose at her. “Sorry, did you wanna pick out my outfit?”

“Do you actually just exist to make my life difficult?” She snaps.

“Just drive,” I say, rolling my eyes.

The car is quiet for the first five seconds of the drive.

Then Matthew pipes up. “You guys fight a lot.”

Paige laughs drily. “You have no idea.”

We reached the park Paige and I had stumbled into each other at last week. Paige opens her trunk, resting her hand against the trunk door up in the air as she surveys her trunk. “You should clean your car,” I say matter-of-factly. “And you should mind your own business,” she quips back, but there’s no malice to her tone. She picks a pair of shoes out of the pile building in her car, slipping out of her driving slides to lace them up.

“Matt, you got the ball?!” She calls back to my brother. He yelps in response, already running to the court.

That’s the other thing that really pissed me off about all of it. He used to worship her. It’s not like he had a dad to teach him all the things he was supposed to know. But ever since we were kids, Paige had been there.

When he was four, he scraped his knee, and she cleaned the blood up that trailed down his leg because she knew it made me squeamish. She’d cleaned it with alcohol, holding his hand through the sting, and kissed the bandage she’d placed on top of it.

When he was six, he picked up a basketball for the first time. Paige was his hero. He wanted to be just like her, and she’d spent hours with him and Drew teaching them all the fundamentals. He dragged me to her high school games, starry-eyed at watching his idol run up and down the court.

When he was eight, my mom couldn’t make it to his 3rd grade talent show. She had an emergency shift at work, and I still only had my permit. Paige had sped through perhaps three different stop signs trying to get me there on time, and she’d taken us out for milkshakes afterwards.

My jaw clenches at the memories.

I watch them together, watch her let him blatantly foul her over and over again, purposefully missing layups while he laughs that she’s going easy on him. A tear tracks down my face, and I wipe at it stubbornly.

“Hey, you good?” Paige pants, running up to me, her brows furrowed. I hope she hasn’t seen me crying. “What? Yeah. So good.” Matthew is close behind her, his water bottle in hand. I blink. “Damn. Y’all already done?”

Matthew frowns. “Are you dumb? It’s been an hour and a half.” I open my mouth to spit a retort back at him, when Paige interjects. “Hey, take it easy on your sister,” she chides, clapping him on the back. “Thank you,” I sniff. She grins at him slyly. “She’s already shit at basketball, no need to make her feel worse,” Paige smirks. I roll my eyes.

Matthew howls with laughter, high fiving her. She takes his head in the crook of her arm, ruffling his hair. “Ah, I missed you, kid,” she laughs. “Now, hang on,” I splutter. “I’m not that bad.” Paige quirks an eyebrow. “Oh, yeah? Play me then.” I scoff. “No!”

Paige backs up, dribbling the ball between her legs, and starts clucking like a chicken.

“Oh, that’s really mature,” I say loudly, crossing my arms. She doesn’t stop, and my stupid little brother joins in. “Play me!” She calls over his noises. I roll my eyes again, and she laughs. “They gon’ get stuck up there!”

“Okay, check up,” I snap finally.

I’m not awful - I played as a kid and in high school before committing to dance full time - but I’m no Paige Bueckers. I meet her at the 3-point line, gesturing for the ball. She grins, her eyebrows raised. “You sure?” I flick my wrist, gesturing for the ball again. “Don’t get all pussy on me now, Bueckers,” I tease.

It’s natural. Too natural, too instinctual, to be going back and forth with her like this.

Paige tosses me the ball, and I toss it back to her, before it lands in my hands again. I back up, dribble it out, then make a quick drive to the basket. I lay it in easily, catching it under the net, and turning to frown at her. “You’re taking it easy on purpose,�� I complain, thudding the ball into her chest. She grasps onto the ball, staring down at me, her eyes searching mine. “How do you know that?” She murmurs.

I shake my head, biting back a smile. I can’t tell if the rapid beating of my heart is from the drive or from the fact that she’s this close to me, smelling clean and fresh and so Paige. “Cut the shit. Play for real,” I tell her, dropping my hands from the ball. Neither of us move, the ball the only thing between us. Then she breaks the thread connecting us, dribbling back to the perimeter.

On her drive, I grasp at her shirt, and she yelps, completing the play anyway, the ball falling deftly through the net. “Foul!” She yells at me. “You have like seven inches on me, how the fuck else am I supposed to defend you?!” I demand. Paige stares at me. Then she cracks her neck, tongue in her cheek.

When she blocks my next shot viciously, I know she’s playing for real.

As much as I hate to admit it, she’s incredibly attractive when she’s so competitive. Possession after possession, she absolutely dominates the game. It doesn’t help that my idiot brother is cheering for her the whole time, spurring her confidence on. She knocks me to the ground on the last play, yelling triumphantly in my face as she stands over me, feet on either side of my body. Her body glistens with sweat, but her smile is fucking blinding. She leans down, her chain dangling in my face. “Still not shit, huh, Jacobs?”

I grab her shirt, pulling her to the floor, and her knees land on the concrete on either side of my torso so that she’s almost straddling my body. She lurches forward with the momentum, her hands on either side of my head. Her ponytail falls down, brushing my nose. “Shut up, Bueckers,” I mumble, but I’m smiling, my eyes moving between her lips and her eyes, my hand still fisted in her shirt.

“Are you guys gonna kiss?!” Matthew calls, breaking me out of my trance. I shove her off of me and she squawks, falling to the side. “Shut up, Matthew,” I grumble, stalking past my brother and smacking him on the back of the head. Paige is on her feet now, dusting off her hands. “So sensitive,” she says mockingly, eliciting a withering look from me. She sighs, turning to my brother and holding her hands out helplessly. “Can’t take a joke,” he says, shaking his head. Paige laughs loudly, looping an arm around his shoulder and walking with him to her car.

“How do milkshakes sound?” I hear her ask him.

#paige bueckers #paige bueckers fic #wcbb #fic #uconn wbb #✂️ anon #ncaaw #paige bueckers x oc #fic talk

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gracieheartspedro · 10 months

Text

I Can See You

fem!reader x dbf!joel miller

Hi friends! It's been awhile (:

I am back to writing! This time, I'm planning on having many parts to this story. It's a DBF Joel Miller story, which I love to read, which means I had to write it, right?

I wrote this with no Y/N, instead each character gives her a nickname/pet name.

So here's Part 1, I really hope you enjoy!

Word count: 2.7k

Warnings: DBF! Joel, age gap-ish (reader is 25, Joel is 39), eventual smut, joel being a little bit of a perv, reader not having a filter, alcohol consumption

“Mornin’,” His Southern accent was even deeper than usual. My head peaks up from behind my computer, noticing his very tired eyes. The bags under his eyes still somehow did him justice.

“Mornin’ Joel,” I mutter before taking a sip of my coffee. I watch as he finds his way towards my bosses office. He was only my boss at work, but at home he was just Dad.

I watch his ass move in his jeans, shamelessly.

Finding your coworker hot is one thing, it’s another when it’s also your dad’s friend and he was about 20 years older than you.

I’ve thought Joel Miller was quite the looker since I was about 18. I had just started working for my dad. I was mainly just scheduling and doing work orders. Joel took me out to a work site one day, on my father’s request. He wanted me to get know some of the people who would be scheduling work from us. I got to sit around with the property manager of an apartment complex in a tight black dress in the dead of summer, watching guys replace windows. While outside that day, Joel worked alongside some of the laborers, his tanned skin and shaggy dark hair glistening with sweat. Something about him doing manual labor turned me on. Something awoke in me that day, and ever since then, I thirst over him in silence.

I catch myself looking a bit too long, quickly averting my eyes to my computer screen. I act like I am typing something, glancing over to Joel and my dad walking out of his office together. They are discussing another project that Joel was overseeing that would keep him very busy in the upcoming months.

“My girl here will be starting back at college in the fall, so she will only be part time for awhile,” My dad says, drawing attention to me.

“Oh really, where ya going?”

I blank out completely for a moment.

“UT Austin,” I finally answer.

“Smart girl, you living on campus?”

“Nope, just getting my master’s in Engineering so living from home makes the most sense.”

Joel shakes his head, “Master’s. Didn’t you just graduate high school?”

“I’m 25, Joel.”

His eyes scan me for a moment, realizing I’m much older than he remembers.

“Ha,” He grumbles, “Time flies huh, Steve?”

“Sure does, you just wait for that Sarah of yours is off to college,” My dad laughs, slapping Joel’s shoulder. I wince, realizing again he has a young daughter. It wasn’t ideal, to say the least.

“We got about 5 years on that,” Joel says, his eyes returning to mine, “Well it’ll be nice havin’ you around during our busy season.”

“Happy to help,” I reply, not really meaning it.

“Hey, Joel, you and Sarah making an appearance at our BBQ this weekend? We invited the whole neighborhood and I can’t remember if you told me you’d be there.”

His eyes are still on me, “Yeah, I’ll be there,” his eyes return to my dad’s, “Just me and Tommy though, Sarah is goin’ over to a friend’s house.”

“Can’t wait!” My dad cheers, “Baby girl, can you make sure my schedule is cleared Friday evening so I don’t have to worry about when I can get the meat?”

“Of course, dad,” I grit my teeth, “I’m on it.”

“Hey baby girl, can you go grab me some extra plates?”

My dad was over the top with his BBQs to say the very least. The whole neighborhood was in on it. Steaks, burgers, hot dogs, chicken, the whole thing. I spent all morning getting the huge backyard and cabana ready for all our visitors. We usually had someone come over to do all the setting up, but Dad made sure to remind me that I was living rent free and being paid on his payroll, so setting up was the least I could do.

People littered the pool and backyard. I weave between people, giving smiles and welcomes where I could.

I walk in to the kitchen, the cold AC air hitting my bare arms. Luckily, I was wearing shorts over my bikini shorts, or else the goose bumps would be up and down my legs, too. I begin searching the cabinets for the large serving plates you always used for big gatherings. Leaning down, my triangle bikini top almost lets my boobs loose. I sit up straight, messing with the knots on my back. I knew tightening it could only help so much.

“Need help?” I almost jump out of my skin. I turn quickly, spotting Joel Miller standing in the kitchen with me.

“Shit, you fucking scared me,” I breathe loudly, patting my chest to make my heart stop racing, “I think I can get it.”

“Mhm,” He sticks a tooth pick between his teeth, “Lemme help, girl.”

God he was so fine. I hated myself for having a crush on him. But the domestic and simple gray t-shirt that hugged his arms so well and the blue jeans? I simply could not resist staring.

No chance in hell. But I got to look at him every day and imagine it.

I turn on my heels, holding the ties out to him so he could tie them.

“I need them tighter,” I mutter, “Don’t want these puppies falling out in front of the Adlers.”

“Don’t want to excite Mr. Adler too much, he may have himself a heart attack.”

I smile to myself, biting my lip. He ties it, his fingers grazing my bare back slightly.

“All good now, girl,” I turn to face him, looking up at him through my eyelashes, “Now what were you lookin’ for?”

“Serving plates,” I explain, “Dad is finishing up those steaks, needs more space.”

“Well let’s get ‘em and head out to all the fun,” He says, ducking down to the cabinet I was looking in originally. He finds them, handing them up to me. He looks so good looking up at me from this angle.

“You want to grab us some beers,” I suggest, “I’ll meet you out there?”

“Your dad runnin’ low?”

“Probably, so grab three.”

–

“So, you going to be here all summer?”

I had no interest in talking to Tommy, but he was keeping me from toeing the line with Joel in my drunken state, so here I am. I sit in my lounger chair, wanting so bad to take off my jean shorts. I knew if I did, Tommy would take it as I’m making a pass, so I sweat extra.

“I’m starting college in August, so yeah I’ll be around the office and staying home.”

He smiles, “Good to hear, love seeing you around.”

I smile back faking a cheery laugh, “Thanks, Tommy… care to grab me another beer?”

“No problem, sweetheart.”

I watch him walk away before searching the crowd for Joel. I spot him across the yard, talking to one of the newer neighbors. A single mom who moved in two months ago. My dad kept joking the other night that he’d be making her my stepmom, which only made me gag. She was beautiful, younger than my dad, but just about Joel’s age.

A pang of jealousy rises within me.

Joel finally catches my wandering eyes. He smiles gently, giving me a nod.

“Here, darling,” Tommy says sweetly, “Need anything else?”

“Yeah, actually,” Your brother, “Can you help me with something?”

“Sure, ‘s up?”

I sit up, leaning over making my boobs hang right in his eye line.

If I couldn’t keep one Miller’s attention, maybe I could snag second best. My beer filled brain thinks about how they are cut from the same cloth, so they both are probably good at this.

“Do you want to help me change a lightbulb?”

He raises his eyebrows, “I guess, where at?”

I smirk, “My bedroom.”

We sneak away, my eyes scanning the area. It didn’t appear as anyone was following us. My room was the last room on the left upstairs, so the anticipation as I guided him down the hallway was killing me.

Ever since Joel grazed my back earlier, I’ve been ready. So fucking ready.

“Are we actually changing a lightbulb?”

I open my door for him, gesturing to him to follow me in.

In the dim light, Tommy was very cute. He was a sweet guy and I knew he’d be the first to jump on my idea.

“You tell me,” I say, starting to untie the knot Joel tied. In my moment of trying to be sexy, I realize Joel tied the stupidest and hardest knot ever. Tommy notices my struggle, reaching around me, frantically trying to get the top off.

As it gets loose, I reach up to grab his neck.

“What the fuck is going on ‘ere?”

His voice freezes me. Tommy looks towards the door in horror.

“Joel-“

“Tommy, you fucking know better,” His voice is so intimidating and scary, I cant even muster the courage to turn around, “Git.”

Tommy gives me eyes saying I’m so sorry, and I just stare blankly at my wall. I hear Tommy’s foot steps run down the stairs. I realize how drunk I am because my wall paper begins to move on it’s own. It doesn’t usually do that.

“Now you,” His stride towards me is quick, “I’m not your Dad, but don’t think he’d like you fucking his employees.”

Maybe it was the liquid courage, “Who said I was trying to fuck him?”

I snap my head towards his stern and impossible to read face.

“Bullshit,” He spits, “He got through my knot, he assumed somethin’ was about to happen.”

“Well, even if that’s where it went, why are you putting your nose in our business?”

He chuckles darkly, “So now it’s ours, huh? I have you know, girl, Tommy’s business is my business. And you’re just makin’ my job hard.”

I tiptoe closer to him, “And what’s your job, again, Mr. Miller?”

“Make sure people are behavin’ themselves.”

I realize what he’s doing. My tipsy mind took a second to search his face for more, but I can't read him at all.

“I’m behaving, Mr. Miller. I promise,” I reach up, touching his jaw, “No more funny business.”

It was the closest I had ever got to him. I felt a rush just touching him.

“Good, get your top back on and come down to the party. Your dad is looking for you.”

I look down at myself as he leaves the room. My fucking tits are out, and he didn’t even look down.

The game he was playing was not the same one I was playing.

–

The next morning, I have a pounding headache and no drive to leave my room. I was embarrassed and horrified. I knew I would have to face Joel and Tommy on Monday morning, so I had to make amends beforehand. I really didn’t want them to tell my dad and I was pretty out of line for trying to fuck Tommy when Joel wasn't giving me the attention my drunk ass thought I deserved.

After spending hours in bed, rolling back and forth thinking of a script to say, I figured that honesty is the best policy.

Well, honesty with a little bend in the truth.

I get showered and dressed. My usual summer time outfit was a crop top and short shorts, but today I needed to be more… conservative.

I find a nice summery dress, that went to midthigh. It was yellow, not a lot cleavage, floral. Innocent.

When I get downstairs, my dad sits in the living room, his feet propped up watching the news.

“Where ya going, baby girl?”

“I’m going for a walk,” I lie.

“Wearing that?”

“Yes,” I nod quickly, “Do you need anything while I’m out?”

He shakes his head, “No, have fun, I guess.”

I could tell he was suspicious, but he wasn’t one to pester me too much. He had high expectations for me, but I always exceeded them. He never questioned me too much, unless it was about school. He didn’t even really care about my love life. He always got excited when I told him I was going on dates in college. I mean, I rather him be excited than bother me about the guys I was seeing.

I start my journey to Joel’s. I didn’t even know if he was home or not, I was going on blind faith.

It was hot as shit and I was not fully prepared to walk to his house in a dress and sandals.

I could’ve just driven there and back. But no, I decided to roast in the hot summer sun.

–

When I arrive to his house, I just kind of stand in his driveway, catching my breath. He was home, his truck was here.

I walk to the front door, knocking first then ringing the door bell.

It takes about minute, but he gets the door.

And he’s shirtless.

It was the worst and best moment of my entire life.

“What are you doing here?”

And it’s not quite the response I was anticipating when I arrived at his door.

“I uh-,” I hear some stirring inside the house, which causes me to peak my head past Joel’s shoulder.

I see movement, but my eyes find Joel’s again before I could focus in on it. He pushes me back a bit, coming outside and shutting the door behind him.

“I came to apologize, but you seem busy.”

He shakes his head, “Not busy, just woke up.”

“With someone?”

What the fuck? Why can’t I shut my mouth?

“Pardon me?”

“Well I walked this whole way to apologize about my inappropriate behavior yesterday,” I explain, “But yeah, that’s it.”

The door creaks open and I am wholeheartedly anticipating a hot MILF or something. But instead, it’s a little girl.

“Sarah, get inside!”

“Oh hi, I know you!”

I smile at the girl. She was cute, I had to admit. She looked a bit like Joel, mainly the smile. A smile I wasn’t too familiar with, because he wasn’t too keen on my jokes. Ever.

“Yeah, I work with your dad,” I explain, “Nice to see you, Sarah.”

“You too, do you want to have lunch with us?”

“Sarah she can’t st-”

“I’d love to, only if your dad says it’s okay.”

He got himself in a pickle, but I was aching to have a conversation that didn’t involve me putting my foot in my mouth like I almost did again. Plus, some food and water would help the heatstroke I felt coming on.

He stares at me, almost like he wished I’d disappear, “Of course, come in. Sarah is making sandwiches.”

“I hope you like turkey and cheese!”

—

“Thanks for the sandwich, Sarah,” I say, wiping my face making sure I didn’t have mustard left over.

She smiles with her mouth full, “You’re welcome!”

“Hey Sarah, why don’t you go get ready for swim practice,” He suggests, “Me and your new best friend need to have an adult conversation.”

She looks up at him annoyed, “I guess, but don’t scare her away. She has a cool pool I want to swim in.”

I laugh out loud, “Yeah, don’t scare me away, Joel.”

He doesn’t laugh, he just looks at me with his lazer eyes. I just wish Sarah a farewell and shut my mouth, waiting for the storm. He stirs, eating another bite of his sandwich.

“So you came to apologize, huh?”

I swallow, “Uh, yeah. I’m sorry for my inappropriate behavior. I had one too many yesterday.”

He nods, “Yeah you were practically falling out of that top of yours before you took Tommy upstairs. Surprised you didn’t have it off before then.”

My eyes widen, “Well that’s humiliating.”

“Don’t think anyone was particularly mad about it,” He says, “Maybe one of those neighborhood watch moms, but who cares about ‘em?”

I can’t help but smirk. Was he insinuating that he wasn’t mad about almost seeing my boobs?

“Yeah, they always give me the most disgusted looks when I’m out jogging.”

“Cause’ they miss bein’ young and beautiful,” He explains, “All their husbands stare, too.”

I can’t believe he’s talking to me like this, I find myself leaning in a bit to try to talk quieter. It seems like this is conversation we should be whispering to each other.

“Do you stare?”

Foot. In. Mouth.

He smirks, giggling a bit. I finally got to see him smile.

“Of course, I do.”

----

Hehehehe tell me what you think! I'll be back with part 2 soon!

#Joel Miller #Joel miller x reader #The last of us #Joel x reader #joel miller smut #dbf joel miller #age gap joel miller

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bellaireland1981 · 10 months

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Special Delivery for the Birthday Boy

Summary: You enlist Phoenix’s help to surprise your husband on his birthday. You’d been living on opposite coasts since he’d been called back to Top Gun and you were ready to reunite with him just in time to celebrate his birthday. An added bonus is you also get to surprise the rest of the Daggers who have no clue that Bradley is married.

Word Count: 3.9K

Pairings: Bradley “Rooster” Bradshaw x Female! Reader

Warnings: Fluff, mentions of birthday sex but no actual smut, mentions of pregnancy.

A/N: I do not own TGM characters, I DO NOT give permission to anyone to repost, copy or translate my work to any other platform or website. Don’t steal my work... it’s not cool. AS always thank you to @waywardodysseys and @beyondthesefourwalls for letting me bounce ideas off them and encouraging me!! Reblogs and comments always appreciated!

Masterlist

Side note: Meant to get this posted yesterday but wanted to redo a few things on it...still not 100% sure I love how it turned out but...here you go!

YOU: HAPPY BIRTHDAY BABY! I LOVE YOU! I’ll be in interviews all day but I’ll FaceTime you tonight. Fly Safe! 💋

HUBBY: Thank you, Dove. I miss you so much 🙁 Wish you were here. Love you 💗

“Are you sure he doesn’t know I’m coming?” You asked, putting your suitcase into the back and climbing into the passenger seat. “Thanks again for coming to get me!”

“Y/N, I promise, he’s absolutely clueless.” Phoenix assured you, smiling. “He’s been moping around all day because he can’t get a hold of you. And you’re welcome! I can’t wait to see his face!”

“I can’t wait to see his face either… I miss that face.” You said, leaning back in the seat. “I’ll be so happy when we’re living on the same damn coast again.”

“When will that be?” She asked, merging into the traffic leaving the San Diego International Airport. “Rooster mentioned you had some loose ends to tie up out East.”

“That’s part of his birthday present.” You said beaming, “I actually just accepted a teaching position for the fall. I had an interview over Zoom yesterday. Bradley thinks I’m in interviews all day today.”

“Y/N that’s awesome!” Phoenix exclaimed, “He’ll be so damn excited.”

“I’m excited.” You laughed, “I’ve had enough of being across the country from my husband. Especially after the last mission. How are things really going with him and Maverick?”

“Honestly?” She said, “Much better than when we got back to Top Gun. They’ve talked and are actively trying. It’s been really good for Rooster.”

“Good.” You replied, “I’ve been trying to get him to reach out for a few years. He just wasn’t ready. I’m glad he got this chance. It’ll be interesting to meet the man.”

“He’s a good guy.” She said, “Bob and I are the only ones that know about you, by the way.”

“I figured.” You laughed. “I’m kind of looking forward to that bombshell being dropped too. From everything I’ve heard about everyone, the reactions should be priceless. I’m especially looking forward to Hangman’s reaction.”

“Oh, this will be absolutely priceless.” Phoenix laughed, “For as much shit as he gives Rooster for never hitting on women at the Hard Deck and not having any game… he’s going to have to eat his words. He’ll most likely hit on you though if he meets you before knowing you’re married to Rooster.”

“Are things better between them though?” You asked, “I know Hangman wasn’t Bradley’s favorite person… and they’ve butted heads in the past. When it counted though, that man came through for my husband and it’s a debt I’ll never be able to repay.”

“They’ve formed a tentative friendship.” She said, “It’s new… but there is a strong mutual respect between them. They’ve flown better together in training since the mission…have become a pretty damn good team actually.”

“It makes me feel better knowing he’s got the best pilots in the Navy flying with him.” You said, “I always felt safer when I knew he was deployed with you.”

“Just because you know I’ll keep his ass out of trouble.” She laughed. “I get it though. You have to trust your wingman. This last mission showed us that we can really all trust one another to come through for each other.”

She pulled into the driveway of her apartment complex parking her car and the two of you got out. You grabbed your suitcase from the back and followed her up to her apartment.

“Ok I just need like a half hour to shower and get ready!” You said, “Then I’ll be ready to go!”

“Take your time.” She laughed, “I’ll grab a towel for you. While you shower, I’ll text the group. Jake is actually in charge of getting Bradley to the Hard Deck for birthday drinks.”

You opened your suitcase, pulling out a sundress you’d left on top for easy access. It was one of Bradley’s favorites on you so you made sure to pack it. You grabbed the strapless bra and matching lace panties you’d bought to wear with the dress and headed to the shower. You tied your hair up so it wouldn’t get wet and quickly jumped into the shower.

True to your word, thirty minutes later you were dressed and ready to go. You’d left your hair down, opted for light makeup and only wore a necklace Bradley had given you for your anniversary (a Dove pendant on a dainty silver chain). You slipped your feet into wedge sandals and grabbed your purse and the small gift bag with Bradley’s other birthday present in it and headed out to the living room where Phoenix was waiting.

“Ready!” You said, excited to finally be headed out to see your husband.

“Jake said he’s having a hard time getting Rooster to go to the bar. He asked him after work and he said he was just going to go home.” Phoenix said. “I can drop you off at the Hard Deck then go to the house and drag his ass out. He’ll listen to me.”

“Hold on.” You said, “He’s probably waiting for me to FaceTime him and doesn't want to miss that call… SHIT! He’ll recognize your apartment…. Ok…. no problem.. I’ve got this.”

You brought your husband’s name up on your phone, hitting the call button.

“Baby you said FaceTime.” Bradley complained, answering the phone on the second ring. “Where’s your beautiful face?”

“I know, Sweetie,” You replied, sighing, “I promise I’ll FaceTime you later tonight. I messed up the time difference and I got a call from another school to interview with. I just really want to find a job out there so I can get to you. How about you go get a birthday drink with Nix and then by the time you get home I’ll be free and we can FaceTime.”

“It’s OK, Dove.” He said, “Good luck in the interview, Baby. They’ll all want you and you’ll have your pick of jobs. I just miss you so damn much. I want to be able to come home to you at night. I love you.”

“I love you too, Bradley.” You said, your heart breaking at how sad he sounded, even knowing you were about to make him so happy. “I’ll be home there with you before you even know it and you’ll be coming home to me every single night. Promise you’ll go get a drink with your friends? Celebrate your birthday?”

“I promise.” He said, “I’ll talk to you later, Baby. Good Luck.”

“Thank you, Sweetie.” You replied, “I love you so so much.”

“Love you too.” He replied.

After hanging up you had Phoenix text the group chat again to let everyone know that drinks were happening at the Hard Deck in thirty minutes for Bradshaw’s birthday. Then she texted Bradley and let him know she wasn’t taking ‘No’ for an answer.

PHOENIX: Bradshaw, your ass better be at the Hard Deck in 30 minutes or I’ll be at your house to drag your ass out myself. 😡

ROOSTER: My wife already texted you? Lol 😂 I’m changing out of my flight suit now. Be there in 30.

“Alright, he’s changing now!” Phoenix said, smiling, “Let’s get you to your husband!”

You pulled your suitcase back down to her car, throwing it into the back again to be transferred to your husband’s Bronco once you were at the Hard Deck. Knowing you were going to be seeing him in 30 minutes caused excitement to flood your system. You’d been married for three years, together for five and gone through much longer deployments and separations that the one you’d just been through, but never before had he flown such a dangerous mission where it had been pretty much assumed someone wasn’t coming home.

“Not long now!” Phoenix said, smiling over at you, knowing where your head was going. “An added bonus to this new assignment is the deployments won’t be as often or as long. We will actually be getting to do more instructing of the new classes of Top Gun students in between missions. You won’t have to worry about long separations anymore.”

“I’ve done ok as long as I didn’t let myself think about it too much.” You said, “The minute I let myself think about how close he came to not coming home… I lose it.”

“You’ll feel much better once you see him and have him back in your arms.” She promised, “I know he’ll feel better once he’s got you in his arms too.”

“You’re right.” You said. “Just need him in my arms.”

She pulled into the parking lot of the bar a short time later and you made your way inside.

“Looks like everyone except Rooster is here.” Phoenix said, spotting everyone in their regular corner of the bar when they walked in. “Let’s go grab drinks from the bar and kill time until he gets here. I want him to be the one to introduce you.”

You followed her to the bar, sitting in one of the free seats.

“Hey, Phoenix.” Penny said, coming over, “What can I get for you two?”

“Hey, Penny.” She replied, “I’ll take a beer, Y/N?”

“Just a Ginger Ale or Sprite if you have it?” You asked, smiling. “I’m going to be DD tonight for my husband.”

“One of these aviators belong to you?” Penny asked, grabbing the beer for Phoenix and filling a glass with ice and pouring the amber soda for you.

“He’s not here yet.” You replied, smiling. “But yeah, I have to take claim for an aviator.”

“Penny, do you know if Mav is coming tonight?” Phoenix asked, winking at you. “Figured he might pop in for Rooster’s birthday.”

“I think he said he’s stopping in.” She replied, “I’m so glad those two are finally talking!”

“You and me both!” Phoenix replied, taking a drink of her beer.

“Phoenix, why are you sitting over here keeping your beautiful friend here from joining us?” A smooth voice sounded behind you both. You turned and smirked, knowing exactly who was standing behind you.

“Bagman, you’re not allowed to harass my friend.” Phoenix said, rolling her eyes. “She is definitely not your type.”

“I’m Hangman.” He said, flashing a megawatt smile, complete with dimples. You were sure that smile landed him plenty of ladies. You had to bite back a laugh when you glanced over at Phoenix who was rolling her eyes. “Or Jake, whichever you prefer.”

“I’m Y/N. It’s nice to meet you, Hangman.” You replied, glancing behind him as the door opened and a very familiar mustached aviator walked in wearing one of his million Hawaiian shirts. Thankfully he hadn’t seen you yet so you still had the element of surprise. “Phoenix is right though, you’re not my type. I only give my heart to 6 '1”, brown eyed,curly haired, aviators with mustaches and a penchant for Hawaiian shirts.”

“Oddly specific…” He said, confused, but turning to see where your eyes had landed. You hopped off the seat and moved past him, straight into Bradley’s line of sight.

“Lieutenant Bradshaw!” You called, catching his attention. His head shot up, his eyes locking in on you immediately, a shocked smile stretching across his face. “Surprise, Baby! Happy Birthday!”

“Dove!” He exclaimed, finally snapping out of his shock. He closed the distance between you two quickly, meeting him in the middle, and scooped you up into his arms. Your legs wrapped around him so he was holding you koala style, your lips locking against his own in a passionate kiss, neither of you caring that you were standing in the middle of a crowded bar. “Fuck, I’ve missed you so damn much, Y/N. I can’t believe you’re really here!”

“Forgive me for not FaceTiming now?” You asked, laughing “I was at Phoenix’s apartment when I called.”

“You’re a little minx.” He laughed. “I forgive you baby.”

“Bradshaw!” Jake said, “Care you’ve got some explaining to do.”

“Give me a minute, Hangman.” Bradley replied, setting you down, but not letting you go. “I haven’t seen my wife in a couple of months. Let me say ‘hello’.”

“WIFE?” Jake exclaimed, “Phoenix, you know about this?”

“Yup.” She smirked, leading Jake away from you and Bradley. “Give them a minute. They’ll join us shortly.”

You were still wrapped in Bradley’s arms and you finally felt like you were home.

“I can’t believe you’re really here, Dove.” He said, resting his forehead against your own. “You look so beautiful, Baby.”

“I’m really here, my love.” You promised, kissing him softly. “It’s so good to see your face and kiss you and to be in your arms. I love you so much. From now on, I will go where you go whenever humanly possible.”

“I love you too, Beautiful.” He replied, “I’m hoping this will be our permanent home base. How close are we to being a one coast family?”

“Actually, how likely is it that you can get leave to help me pack up our Virginia house?” You asked.

“Pretty likely.” He smiled, “Do you have a timeline?”

“Whenever you’re ready.” You said, “I accepted a job out here for the fall, officially resigned at the district in Virginia Beach and cleared out my classroom two days ago.”

“FUCK YES!” He exclaimed, picking you up and swinging you around, “I’ll put in for leave tomorrow. As soon as it’s granted we’ll book a flight back and pack it all up and list the house.”

“Bradshaws!” Jake yelled, “Join the party!”

“We’re being paged.” You laughed, “Come on, Baby. Introduce me to your friends.”

You and Bradley walked over to the corner where everyone had congregated and introductions were made.

“Everyone, this is my wife Y/N.” Bradley said, happy to finally get to introduce you to everyone, “Baby, this is the squad. You’ve met Hangman. That’s Payback, Fanboy, Coyote, and you already know Bob.”

“Hey Y/N” Bob said, coming over to hug you, “It’s good to see you again!”

“Hi, Bob!” You replied smiling, hugging him back, “It’s so good to see you too!” Then looking at the rest of the group you smiled and said, “It’s so nice to finally meet you all. Bradley’s told me all about you guys.”

“Wait a damn minute!” Jake said, turning to glare and Bradley, “Phoenix and Bob BOTH knew you had a wife? What the HELL, Rooster? I saved your life and I don’t get to be in the cool kids club knowing you have a WIFE? I thought we were friends, man.”

“Jake…”Bradley said, unsure what to say, “Come on man, it’s not like that…we are friends…”

You look over at Jake who’s doing all that he can to not smile, enjoying the fact that Bradley has no idea what to say.

“Baby, he’s playing you.” You told your husband, winking at Jake. “Jake, stop bullying my husband. It’s his birthday. Play nicely and you come over for home cooked meals.”

“Yes, Ma’am.” He replied, smiling, “Sorry, Rooster. Couldn’t resist. Congrats on the beautiful wife. She’s a firecracker. Definitely keep her.”

“I plan on it, Hangman.” Bradley said, shaking his head at the blonde aviator.

The night continues with the group playing pool, swapping stories, drinking and you filling them in on how you and Bradley met and ended up married. Eventually, Phoenix made her way to the Jukebox and pulled the plug, silencing the music, causing your husband to chuckle. There was a mixed reaction from the bar to the music being cut. Some booed, upset that whatever had been playing was cut off mid song, the rest cheered, clearly knowing something was about to happen.

“That’s my cue, Baby.” Bradley said, tapping your leg to signal he needed up. You stood up to let him get off the chair, but before you could sit back down, he grabbed your hand and pulled you along with him to an upright piano.

“They clearly know your party trick.” You teased, “Come on birthday boy, serenade your fans.” Bradley sat down on the bench, pulling you down next to him. His fingers moved over the keys, playing a random melody before launching into the familiar intro chords to Great Balls of Fire. You knew he could play a million other songs, but this one in particular held the most meaning to him as it was the one his dad had played and sang when he was little before he died.

You could tell Bradley had done this before here because everyone crowded around and were singing along with him while he played. You joined in, belting out the song alongside your husband. KISS ME BABY.. (you leaned in to kiss him quickly) OOOOO THAT FEELS GOOD, HOLD ME BABY….. WELL, I’LL STILL HOLD YOU LIKE A LOVER SHOULD….. YOU’RE FINE…. SO KIND… I GOT TO TELL THIS WORLD THAT YOU’RE MINE MINE MINE MINE!

When the song finished the bar erupted into loud cheers and chants yelling “ROOSTER”. You loved seeing your husband in his element like this. You quickly took advantage of being in front of the piano and scooted your husbands fingers off the keys, replacing them with your own and started to play Happy Birthday. You were happy when everyone around you immediately joined in and soon the entire bar was signing to your husband.

“Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you, Happy BIRTHDAY dear ROOSTER, HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU!”

“Make a wish, Baby”! You said, turning towards him.

“All my wishes have come true.” He replied, leaning in to kiss you.

“Hey Rooster,” Phoenix said, gently, not wanting to interrupt the moment. “Mav’s at the bar.”

“Ready to meet my Godfather?” He asked you.

“Definitely ready.” You replied. “Then I’ve got the rest of your birthday present.”

“Baby!” He exclaimed, “You’re here, you’re MOVING here, YOU are my present.”

“Ok, well, there’s more.” You shrugged laughing. “Introduce me to Mav.”

Bradley took your hand and led you to the bar where Mav was sitting sipping a beer. He looked up as you both approached and smiled, standing up.

“Happy Birthday, Kid.” Mav said, hugging Bradley tightly.

“Thanks, Mav.” He replied, hugging him back. “There’s someone I’d like you to meet.”

You stepped closer, smiling softly. You were nervous to meet the man that meant so much to Bradley and who had been like a father to him growing up before everything had exploded. You wanted to help your husband to build that relationship back up, knowing how important it was to have family. Your own parents adored Bradley and had immediately welcomed him into the family when you’d brought him home the first time.

“This is my wife, Y/N.” He said, his arm around your waist, “Baby, this Mav. He helped my mom raise me after my dad died.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Y/N.” Mav said, his voice thick with emotion.

“It’s great to finally meet you too.” You replied, smiling, stepping forward to pull him into a hug. “I’ve heard so much about you.”

“For the record, Y/N’s been trying to get me to reach out for a couple of years now.” Bradley admitted. “I’m just bullheaded.”

“At least he admits it.” You laughed. “We’d love to have you over for dinner though, Mav. I’d really love to get to know you.”

“I would love that, Y/N.” He replied, “I’d love to get to know the one making my Godson so happy.”

“He’s easy to love.” You said, looking over your shoulder at your husband. “He makes me pretty damn happy too.”

“I think I’m going to steal my wife now and take her home.” Bradley said, “She just flew in today and is still on East Coast time.”

“Sounds good.” Mav said, “Enjoy the rest of your birthday, Kid. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Thank you,” He replied, smiling, “See you tomorrow.”

After saying goodbye to the rest of the squad, you were finally able to escape out to the Bronco. Phoenix had already transferred your suitcase while you were inside.

“Do you need me to drive?” You asked, you hadn’t kept track of your husband’s drinks tonight.

“Nope. I’m good.” He said, smiling, opening the passenger door for you,“Only had 2 beers earlier, nothing since. Hop in, Dove.”

You leaned back in the seat, enjoying the air coming in from the open windows as Bradley drove you both home. He had found an apartment not far from base that did short term leases when he’d come back to San Diego for the mission. Now that you knew it would be permanent the two of you could start to look for a house together. You made a mental note to start looking at listings tomorrow while he was at work.

The apartment wasn’t too far from The Hard Deck either, so before long, Bradley was pulling the Bronco into the parking space and shutting it off. He came around to open your door for you before pulling your suitcase from the back of the Bronco.

“Ready to see our temporary home in person?” He asked

“More than ready.” You said, “Especially the bed… I really wanna see the bed.”

“I can’t wait to get you into bed either, Baby.” He smirked, “Birthday sex is the best.”

“Lead the way, Stud.” You winked, “I still have another birthday surprise for you.”

“Is it under your dress?” He asked, taking your hand and leading you to the front door, unlocking it and ushering you inside.

“It is…” You replied, “But I need something from my suitcase first.” You unzipped the suitcase and pulled out the small gift bag inside before handing it to Bradley. “Happy Birthday, Baby.”

He smiled, reaching to take the bag, leaning down to kiss you as he did, “Thank you, Dove.”

He opened the bag, taking out the tissue paper, and pulling out two onesies. Holding them up, you could see the moment it registered in his head what he was looking at. His eyes filled with tears as he read each one.

“Future Aviator, just like my Daddy,” He read, before holding up the other one to read, “Daddy’s Wingman”

He looked up at you, “Baby, you’re….we’re…really?” He was too choked up to get the words out. You smiled, tears of your own spilling over and running down your cheeks.

“Yes” You whispered, unable to get your own voice to work. He carefully set the onesies in the bag and pulled you into his arms, your own going around his neck. His lips connected with yours in a deep kiss, desperate to convey all of his love and feelings to you in that moment.

“We’re having a baby.” He whispered, when you’d both pulled back to breathe. “How far along?”

“I just hit 11 weeks.” You said, then reached for your purse to pull out the sonogram photo you had safely tucked inside, “And actually… let’s go sit on the couch and I’ll show you the sonogram…”

He took your hand leading you to the couch, sitting down with you tucked into his side. You handed him the envelope with the copies of the sonogram from the doctor. He carefully opened it up, pulling them out to look.

“Dove…” He said, shock once again covering his face “Are you serious right now?”

“Surprise!” You chuckled, “Turns out you're top 1% in more than just flying, Baby.”

“We’re having twins.” He smiled, looking at the sonogram, “I’m gonna be a daddy.”

“You’re gonna be the best daddy.” You confirmed, “Happy Birthday, Bradley.”

“This has been the best birthday ever, Dove.” He replied, leaning over to kiss you. “Thank you for making all of my wishes come true.”

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#bradley rooster bradshaw #bradley bradshaw x reader #top gun fanfiction #Miles Teller

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kiwanopie · 1 year

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Biggest Fan

boyfriend!kiyoomi part VI! one (1) instance of suggestion tooth rotting fluff. 1.3k

Belatedly, he realizes his request to have you move in with him may have been a little redundant.

You two traded keys within the twelve month mark in your relationship, by a year and a half were you coming back from your respective jobs to find the other somewhere cozied up in your respective flats. Fights didn’t really change much to the routine. Maybe a passive aggressive comment to clean your kitchen when he was too miffed at you to do it himself, a high protein lunch “Not!! made with love >:(!” But nothing could ever come between him and having his arms wrapped around you by nightfall. By year two, you were giving your clients the number to the fax at his place. Since ‘Why buy a new one when I’ve got a perfectly good one (that I just bought) at my apartment?”

Now, at year three - Full home office set up in his quaint little penthouse apartment, tenant parking spot, and a front office that signs his alerts with “To the recipients of…” He can’t really wrap his head around why you’re still paying rent at your old apartment? He knows you visit sometimes but hardly enough to keep paying for it. And even as he pads his socked feet around your modest living room, he finds it mostly bare save for a thrifted coffee table and a suede couch he’s fucked you on way too many times to count.

You push another box to him from the threshold of the hallway, another one that sounds a little glassy when he picks it up. “Seriously, what's in these?”

“Just two more of those, baby.” He hears you wheeze. “Then we’ll drop the keys off at the front desk.”

“Do you need any help?”

“Nu-uh.” You punctuate with a grunt.

Kiyoomi knits his brows at the box but turns his heel for the balcony anyway.

Although, maybe the decision to have you move in just yet was a little asinine. He’s been thinking of buying a house. One with a nice view of the stars and the city lights - right on the cusp of the rural area but not a full on road trip to the city; with a big lawn and grassy hedges, white picket fence, open windows, and a mailbox with your names on it.

Or name.

Kiyoomi almost drops the box when those October winds start to nip through his jacket. The falling sky promises something much colder as he tips his reddened nose to the clouds, and watches as they darken with rumbling rain.

It doesn’t take him but a few long strides to get back to the second level where you are, strenuously pushing the next much bigger box into the living room.

“Do you have a coat? It’s gonna start to rain soon.”

You sigh a little tiredly to yourself. “I’m already pretty heated up from all this moving, a little rain won’t hurt.”

“No, you’ll get sick.” Kiyoomi parries. “I’ll put you in my jacket then. I can just run to the car.”

“Nu-uh. I don’t want you to over exert yourself, Omi. You’ve got a game coming up, remember? If anyone shouldn’t be getting sick it’s you.”

You follow his movements as he bends for one of the boxes, avoiding the second much lighter one as you nudge it in his view. “Besides, I doubt it’ll start raining before we can drive back to Tokyo. Forecast says the storm will just miss us.”

Kiyoomi shorts you a glance that’s mostly concerned with the loaded box in front of him. “I- Angel, I still don’t want you to get sick. I can handle a little overwork. You, I very much doubt.”

“Ok, wow. What’s that supposed to- Oh wait, baby that one’s really heavy-“

He lifts it up like it’s nothing.

“Oh…” You gawp. “Right. Pro-athlete.”

Kiyoomi scoffs in favor of letting your astonished gape boost his ego. Though his eyes do catch on the little sliver of polished oak peeking through the box in his hands.

He tilts his head. “What’s this?”

- You break out in a full sweat.

“Uh- W-Wait, wait, baby don’t-“

He’s already swerving to the side to dodge you. Long muscled limbs suddenly too lithe to catch as he turns his shoulder to duck your attempts to stop him, and missing the way you moue at the realization that Christ, you forgot this guy was still somebody’s little brother.

Which means beside his usual indifferent candor, he evades your efforts to stop him from peaking inside with the kind of goading of someone used to slinking away with something he shouldn’t have. Even as you whine he half taunts at the way you try to get a hold of him. “What? What is-“

Kiyoomi nudges open the seal a little more. “Are these posters?”

“Omi-“

“Are these my posters?”

“Stop-“

“Have you been-“ He almost wants to laugh. You’re jumping. “Have you been collecting my posters? All this time?”

“Can you just-“

“Oh, you framed them too.”

“S-Stop it!”

Kiyoomi actually does laugh this time. Like, he actually laughs. And you know it’s supposed to be mean but it flutters out with such genuine mirth that it gives you butterflies. It makes you feel hot to the apples of your cheeks and punches you in the gut with the kind of love struck ardor that should’ve worn off over three years ago - but hasn’t. ~ He cards his eyes through the box. You watch him. But instead of horror or disgust, or worse the realization that his girlfriend might be a little lamer than he originally thought;

It’s pride. Honest to god delight that raises his lips over his teeth and turns his cheeks a little chubby. Zeal, and glee, and that kind of love struck ardor that should’ve worn off over three years ago -

But hasn’t. “Why have you been hiding these? We could’ve kept these next to all your stuff I keep.”

“All my…?”

“Your diploma, your board certificate, your license,” Kiyoomi absently taps his fingers against the box. Which as he does you all but stiffen at the realization. You figured he encouraged you to make copies because it was safer having a backup, and when you found them framed in his hallway later on you thought nothing of it. I mean, he has a lot of frames in his hallway. Family pictures, the Photo Booth reel from your first date, some miscellaneous pictures of his two siblings,

Your graduation picture, your first anniversary photo, the picture he made you take before your first day as a therapist-

Oh.

Kiyoomi gestures you forward as he starts the motion of walking to his car. “With the way you iced me out before we started dating I was worried you didn’t even like volleyball.”

“Of course I like volleyball?” If the little fan trinkets in the box you’re carrying should mean anything. “I’ve been to like all of your games?”

“Yeah, I know that now,”

He makes the motion of shimming his jacket down his shoulders as he carefully sits the box where the others are, easily lifting the final one out of your grasp as he passes it over; and the way his biceps pop out of his t-shirt makes you shudder when he lifts his arms to close the trunk.

His jacket is warm, it smells just like him. “But you were sure playing coy when we first got together.”

- You, again, break into a sweat.

The way your nose crinkles up in embarrassment is honestly enough to have him suppressing a smirk when he turns to you again. Albeit poorly. Seriously, this guy seems intent on teasing you into the mud today.

“Well!” You stammer. “Because-“

“Well, because!” Kiyoomi kisses you on the forehead as you gasp at the way he openly mocks you. “Shut up. You’re so cute it’s stupid.”

He pinches your cheeks when you rightfully pout at him. “And fix your face. It’ll get stuck like that.”

“When did you become such a bully?!”

“Somewhere between “Can you be my girlfriend?” and “I love you too.””

He titters a little as you grumble your way into the car.

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writingsfromhome · 5 months

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If you Love Something II

A/N: okayy I’m finally going to stop overthinking and just post this one. Please note the tw in part 1. Thank you all SO much for the comments and love on the original…hope this one meets ur expectations. It’s definitely more focused on the lost daughter relationship rather than you and Harry so p dense but...here it is 🫣

——————————————

Age 36:

“Dinner’s almost ready,” Harry informs me over the phone. “I went with chicken noodle soup.”

“Mmm,” I close my eyes. “I could use something hot and hearty right now. I’m freezing my ass off.”

“I didn’t need to make dinner for that.”

“So come here, warm me up,” I crane my neck to the left again. “Stupid delays.”

“I can come get you."

I’d mapped it out before calling Harry, it would take him too long to get here. “That’s alright. Doesn’t make a difference.”

The screen on the platform showed 6 minutes…for the past 15 minutes.

“I’ve either been living in the longest minute of my fucking life,” I mutter. “Or this line is taking the piss out of all of us.”

Two dozen of us had gotten off the last train when it announced it was out of service. Now the number on the platform had tripled waiting for the next one.

“Patience,” Harry says. “Is a virtue.”

“Easy for you to say in the warm flat with the chicken noodle soup.”

“It’ll be yours soon.”

Soon. I sigh and try to release the anxious energy with it. “Thank you for taking care of dinner.”

“Of course.” He replies. Like it was that simple. But being with Harry was like that nowadays.

Despite all the catching up we had to do with the 17 years we had lived separate lives, emotionally it’s like we picked up where we last left off.

I’d be lying if I said it was smooth sailing the whole year we’d been together. There had been a hard few first months where both of us felt unnerved by the peacefulness of the relationship. We weren’t used to such an easy quiet.

I’d tried to self-sabotage first by going awol and working longer hours than I needed to. I think I was scared Harry would wake up one day and realize too much time had passed and he didn’t like who I’d become so I minimized our time together. Until Harry called me out for it.

But then he went off the rails, and for a few weeks I’d been an even bigger ball of anxiety. Ultimately I had to give him the hard truth even though the last thing I ever wanted was to convince someone to stay with an ultimatum. But I’d told him, he had to at least attempt sobriety if he wanted us to work.

There were a few sleepless nights, I didn’t know if we were going to make it. But one morning he asked me to go to an aa meeting with him.

Going together, being in the same boat as a group of people gathered in the back room of a dusty church finally gelled us together. For good. He’d been sober since.

We moved in together 7 months ago. Even though it doubled my commute time—tripled with delays, I had never been more sure that I was exactly where I needed to be.

We held space for each other. Even the heavier bits; we knew what they were. What it was like to hold them on our own. We always joked about how our loads had halved despite taking on half of the other’s. Because just like our venn diagram of love, our venn diagram of hurting was the same.

“Oh god, I better not be hallucinating.” I nearly jump up and down when the twin headlights of the next train peek in the distance. The platform board still says 6 minutes.

“You’re cutting up what?”

“Nothing! Train’s here!”

“I’ll pick you up from the station.” Harry says before I hang up.

I spend the remaining 15 minute ride going over the lecture I’d given tonight.

3 years ago when I applied to be a lecturer I didn’t actually think I’d get it. But in the 10 years of my career I had collected, I had done exceptionally well. It was ironic with all the bullshit life threw at me, I had somehow channeled it into a determined work ethic. After failing many math tests in high school I had found a love for it in uni—it made me work hard, get out of my head with its constant thoughts. Harry now took to calling me a masochist for teaching something mathematical.

In reality it wasn’t that mathematical. I taught Management Econ which was a snorefest on paper but I tried to be engaging and include a whole host of ways to teach—I knew not everyone excelled with a textbook.

It had made the course popular, it went from being offered once a semester to 3 times this year because the waitlist spoke for itself. It was one of my proudest accomplishment—getting students motivated and interested. And because it was mostly first and second year students, they were still eager and not jaded by the uni system.

That was how I spent my evenings on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. Otherwise I worked for the city the same hours Harry worked his creative exec job at a major firm in the city. Sometimes we met up for lunch. It was the little things like that, making time to see each other in the middle of the day even though we woke up and fell asleep to each other, that made this relationship feel so secure.

It felt like coming home each time I caught sight of his face, and knew his smile was just for me.

My thoughts drift to our daughter. She would have celebrated her 18th birthday a few weeks ago. I always lit a birthday candle for her, this year Harry and I bought a cake and a symbolic drink for her. Our baby was old enough to drink.

“Do you think she takes after her parents?” Harry had asked.

“I think she grew up alright.” I always imagined her to have. “I hope she has no reason to drink herself silly.”

“Being 18 is reason enough.”

We talk about her often. She slips into conversation as easily as inhaling. It keeps her with us.

When I spot Harry’s car at the station I nearly weep.

“Your cheeks are so cold,” Harry says after a peck hello. He holds them both in his heated hands and plants exaggerated kisses on each cheek.

“Please sir,” I kiss his mouth and continue in what Harry called my Oliver Twist accent. “Take me to the chicken noodle soup. I hunger.”

Harry responds in the same accent (although it wasn’t as good as mine) and pretty soon I’m forgetting the 20 minute delay, the lecture with 100 technical difficulties, and anything in between.

After dinner and completing my 20 step night time routine I crawl into bed beside a cozy-looking Harry.

“Whatcha reading?” I peek at his book. I can’t believe he was the reading-before-bed type. In a way it was so different from the 17 year old guy I knew. It was also a reminder that even though we knew each other through and through, there were still so many habits and stories and quirks to discover.

“It’s a boring as hell sci-fi novel, don’t ask.”

“Then why are you reading it?”

“I accidentally joined a book club at work!?”

He tells me the story of how he told some people he enjoyed reading, and then being unable to say no when they bought this month’s book for him and presented it to him a week later.

“I bet you that’s their ponze scheme. It’s like an MLM, the latest recruit has to guilt the next joinee. You’ll be doing it soon.”

Harry laughs and holds his book out to me. “That actually brings me to my next question with this very generous gift, do you like reading?”

“Nope.” I push the book away. “I also don’t like book clubs.”

He tosses the book down lightly. “Damnit!”

We laugh. I cuddle into his side and lay my head on his chest as he finishes his chapter. His heart beat is steady, like the life he’s helped me create as we committed to each other. I listen to it as it lulls me to a calmer place.

“So how was work? How’s your students this semester?”

“Work’s good. Same old right now. Teaching was interesting. It’s the second week of classes so still seeing a lot of people come and go. You start to see the regulars by week 3.”

“Full class?”

“Almost,” I tell him. “A few empty seats. There was one girl who was obviously watching tv the whole time, another guy that fell asleep halfway, and this other kid kept looking at the door like he was physically trying to decide whether he would stay. Weird lot.”

“They won’t be there next week.”

“Nope.”

“You think she’s starting uni? I wonder what she’s decided to study.”

“Mmm, I always think it’s something creative like you.”

Harry squeezes his arm around me. “I think she’s a masochist like you.”

We talk more about her, about the upcoming weekend, and as sleep visits we drift away still intertwined like most nights.

***

“Does anyone know why?” I ask the lecture hall. Just like I predicted, most of the people I knew wouldn’t make it were gone. Now there were just under 60 students in total. What had surprised me was the guy who looked nervous the second week stayed. He’d been joined by two friends who only showed up in week 4. He was probably the designated note taker.

A girl to the left puts her hand up and I point to her. “The growing gap between upper and middle classes?”

“Yes.” I give her a reassuring smile. Until I started teaching, I forgot that most answers they gave were questions. “Anyone else?”

The girl beside nervous guy puts her hand up. “The ageing population, it skews the demographic from what was initially projected?”

“Exactly,” I try not to show favourites but that was beautifully said. Maybe she didn’t need to come to all the classes.

“That would also affect the workforce,” a guy sitting in the front pipes in. I smile, pleased that a discussion was forming.

A few others join in and I nod at each point. I loved this job.

After class is over I always got a few stragglers asking questions. The nervous guy comes up to me.

“Um professor,” he hitches his backpack and glances back at his friends. “For the assignment due next week, can groups of 3 be okay?”

I glance at his friends, it was supposed to be in pairs but what the hell. “Sure. But I’ll need extra stuffing in the assignment to make up for it.”

I say it with a joking tone but he’s so wound up that he takes me seriously.

“Of course. We’ll increase the citations and make sure to include more research-“

“Philippe,” one of the girls is suddenly a few feet away.

“Thank you.” He says, finally meeting my eye. I smile and he relaxes. I turn to his friends, to acknowledge them but they stare at me like I’d grown a second head. One of the other students asks her questions and I turn my attention away—weird.

***

“Mid-terms?” Harry asks. I’m reading a textbook while I stand over the simmering pot. We had accidentally ordered 4 times the tomatoes on our online order last week and with three still left I’d decided to batch make spaghetti sauce. It had been a long time since I made it from scratch.

“Kind of.” I push the book aside. “Someone in the department wants to update the textbooks and they left notes in the old one for what needs updating. They asked me to take a look.”

“That’s cool,” Harry walks over to me. He smelled like cologne and outside, the way he usually did right after he came home on chillier days. “That he wants your opinion?”

“She actually,” I poke him. “And it is! I can’t believe I get paid to lecture about one of my passions.”

“Economics,” Harry makes a face like he smelled something bad.

“Makes the world go round,” I smile sweetly.

“Remember when you liked things that were cool like Harry Potter and Coldplay-“

“I still like them! If I recall you’re the one who motivated me to do well in maths.”

“I did?” Harry looks off into the distance but his slow smirk is evident that he was remembering. He tilts my chin up and brushes my lips. “You’re right. So how about now? Would that still work?”

“Do you want me to stroke your ego right now?”

“Amongst other things,” he muses, his hands drop down to my hips and then lower, giving my bum a squeeze.

“Cut it out,” I scold him but it’s cancelled by the smile on my face. I shake my head and go back to the simmering pot.

“Is that tomato soup?” Harry’s suddenly distracted by the pot. We’d been having a lot of it this week because…well tomatoes.

“Nope, I’m making spaghetti sauce. From scratch.”

“Hey, didn’t you make that one time? When we were kids.”

“Hm,” I think back. It felt like so long ago but something niggles at me. “I think? I used to help my mum—it’s her recipe. Maybe you had dinner on a night we made it?”

“Yes. Dinner at your place, around Easter.”

I remember that Easter clearly but not for dinner. It was a night Harry and I had talked our lives all out.

“Aw. We were so young then.” I wrap my arms around Harry.

“I’m still young,” Harry says. “I’m in my prime.”

I pat his cheek. “Of course you are love.”

***

“Taylor I can’t really do this right now!” I tell my sister as she whines to me. No matter how old we got we were always somehow 17 and 12.

“C’mon just call mom! Tell her you met him and he’s really awesome.”

“I’m not lying to mom so you can invite your newest loser boyfriend to dinner. Anyway I can’t talk. I have to get to class!”

“I know.” She says weirdly. And I understand why when I walk into class and see her sitting in the front row. Ugh she knew I would try to blow her off!

My sister had somehow taken up the bad habit ever since her mid-20s of having a string of shitty boyfriends. We all blamed it on her longterm bloke breaking it off around her 26th. I don’t think she ever fully let herself heal from that.

After two separate guys were invited to two separate family dinners and both ended in mum or dad exploding over something, they were banned. This new guy, as she insists, was different. Mature. He deserved an invite.

She holds up 9 fingers and mouths, 9 months! That’s a long time!

I shake my head and start setting up my laptop.

“Hiya,” one of the students, Kim, walks up to me as I do so. “Sorry I was just wondering when we’re getting our assignments back? Will it be before midterms?”

Midterms were in 2 weeks for this class. The assignments were in my bag, marked and ready. I tell her and watch the relief spread through her.

I spend the next hour teaching, and before we break at the hour I announce I’d return assignments. As I call them out student walks down to me and pick them up, leaving with a smile or a frown.

“Philippe?” He had stuck to his word and his group had gone above and beyond. It was a beautiful paper, albeit overly-sourced. But I appreciated it.

“He’s not in,” one of his friends comes down to get it. She looks at me in that same way again, with just as much fear as curiosity. It’s odd.

“C’mon then,” I shake the paper I was holding out. “I don’t bite.”

“Oh sorry,” she grabs it from me in a rush I nearly get a papercut. She doesn’t even look at the grade, turning quickly away before halting, pivoting halfway, changing her mind, and running back up the steps to her seat. That group of kids were weird. Maybe they were on drugs.

I catch eyes with Taylor and she raises her brow. I shrug and continue handing out the papers.

I don’t expect the girl to come up to me after class. Her friend stays hovering behind, close to my sister who I know must be desperate to have sat here the whole lecture.

“Um ‘scuse me. Professor?”

“Yes?” She was the last person in the small line that had formed after class.

“I had a question about the assignment? You um, you said we missed the equations for our answers but they’re um-“ her hands are shaking as she flips the pages to the last page. “They’re on the bottom here.”

“Oh,” I did remember they were missing it but my pen marks were all over the back of it. “I must have missed that, bloody hell sorry about that!”

“Yeah um, do we get the extra points?”

“Of course but I-“ I glance back at Taylor. She’s talking to the friend. I had to get her out of here before she said something ridiculous. “I have office hours after my Monday class. I’ll have it remarked by then and you can pick it up?”

“Um, okay?”

I quickly shut my things down and grab my sister, getting her out as quick as possible.

“I’m a professional,” she reminds me. “Jeez. Anyway Y/n listen it’s the longest I’ve been in a relationship since, well y’know. 9 months! It’s different with this guy. He works like you! A cushy office job. He’s serious. Please!?”

I hadn’t seen Taylor since last month’s dinner when she had tried to convince me to get on board with this guy. She’d been pleading for a month. “Fine.”

“Oh I love you!” She squeezes my arm. “Text me when mom gives the okay.”

I sigh. I’d really got myself in the middle again.

I retell this to Harry when I get home.

“She’s persistent. But 9 months is a new record.”

“I know!” Harry knew all about her string of boys, I’d caught him up months ago. “Anyway I can’t believe she sat through the whole lecture.”

“Maybe this is the guy. The One.”

“You don’t believe in that do you?”

“Yeah?” He squints at me. “Of course I do?”

“So I’m The One?”

“Baby do I even need to say yes? I knew it as soon as I saw you when we were 14. You confirmed it when you kissed me on the roof that day.”

“I can’t believe I did that. I had my first drink that day by the way so I might’ve been drunk.”

“You were not drunk when you kissed me,” Harry points his fork at me.

“Look at you getting all worked up,” I tease.

“I’ll get you all worked up,” he mutters into his plate. I grin as I stretch my leg out under the table and run it up his leg. He grips my ankle when it gets too high and the look he gives me across the table sends my heart racing.

“Oops,” I drop my foot and go back to eating.

We put on a movie after, something we can zone out to. It doesn’t take Harry long to get bored and nuzzle into me, and it doesn’t take much longer after that before the movie is just for show and we’re tangled in our sheets.

There were 17 years of experience Harry showed up with now, and it was another one of those things that made catching up on lost time all the better.

***

In the first half hour of my office hours, the girl walks in. I should remember her name but I just associated her group with Philippe. I was surprised he wasn’t here actually. He seemed to be their spokesperson.

“Hi come in!” I wave her into the tiny cubicle-like room I borrowed for a few hours every Monday. “I’ve got your assignment here all done.”

“Thank you,” she hovers over my desk and I hand it over. Her fingers fidget with the strings of her hoodie and I seriously consider the drug angle. Or maybe her and her friends had serious anxiety issues. I didn’t miss that part about being a teen.

“You wanna flip through one more time? I try not to make mistakes twice but…”

She sits down tentatively and buries her head in the paper as she flips through.

“It’s alright,” she says. Her expression is so serious it nearly makes me laugh. She had pretty hair—blunt cut bangs that I remember rocking in my early 20s, but on her they hide the expression in her eyebrows. Maybe that’s why she always looked so sullen. Her lips are painted a pretty mauve colour and it complimented her green eyes.

“I really um…your class is really interesting.”

Kids saying that was like injecting pure joy right into my veins.

“I’m so glad you’re enjoying it,” I smile at her. But it still doesn’t crack a smile on her end. “It’s dense material but that’s nice to hear.”

“Yeah, I didn’t know if I was gonna keep the class.” It’s subtle but she inches back in the seat. The more she talks the more she relaxes back. “But I heard it was worth taking. And people were right.”

“Are you in your first or second year?” I ask.

“First,” she tucks her hair behind her ear. It’s covered in piercings.

“How are you liking uni so far?”

She meets my eyes for a second before they shift away. “Yeah it’s nice? I’ve never lived away from home but I have some friends here that I’ve known since before so it helps. It’s really different, less structure but I like the freedom.”

Wow, she really spoke a lot more when she was comfortable. But I find it endearing.

“That’s really nice. It’s good to have a support system, especially with such big change.”

“Yeah,” she agrees. Her eyes dart around the desk as she goes silent. I wait for her to get up and go but a minute passes and the room starts to feel even smaller.

I could ask her if she needed anything else, or maybe continue the conversation? Did she want me to ask about her? No, that would be weird.

“So um, was that your sister in class last week?”

Okay, didn’t see that coming.

“It was! My baby sister, although she’s not really a baby. Did she tell your friend that?”

She nods again. “She was talking to her.”

“You have any siblings?”

“An older sister yeah.”

“So you get it,” I say. “You love them, they get under your skin, you’d do anything for them, and the cycle continues.”

For the first time she smiles and my breath catches. For a moment…no. No, I was imagining things.

“Yeah. My sister and I were close growing up, but she’s the one person that really knows how to get under my skin. I swear she does it on purpose sometimes.”

“Probably,” I want to say something funny again. I just want to see her smile.

Back off, my inner voice says. Don’t do this again.

Some years back, when I was still in the throes of alcohol, I had followed a girl at the mall for nearly an hour. She had looked so much like my sister but with brown curly hair. I could have sworn it was her—my daughter. But after an hour of drunk stalking she had met up with her mum, a direct clone of her.

I couldn’t be obsessive again. Nobody knew about that phase. Not even Harry.

“D’you have any kids?” She asks. I don’t expect the question and it throws me off what with the thoughts looping in my head. She watches me, waiting for an answer.

“Um,” I usually answered no. To anyone who had asked in the last 18 years. But for some reason I nod today. “Yeah. One.”

I imagine it, I must have. Her face draws in for a second before she looks down. “Does she ever come to your lectures?”

“Oh no,” I feel the prick of tears and try to blink them away without being too obvious. “I’m not sure she’d find them interesting.”

“Oh.” She finally stands. “Maybe when she’s older…but I’ll see you on Thursday I guess?”

“Yeah,” I watch her go and realize she’d forgotten something. “Don’t forget your paper hon!”

She stiffens by the door before coming to get it.

“Sorry, it probably makes me a bad prof but there were two female names on the paper. Which one’s yours?”

“Bridget,” her voice cracks.

“Bridget,” I try to match the name to her face. It fit. “That’s lovely.”

She scurries out and I hear someone say “well!?” Outside followed by a “shh!”

I shake my head and try to focus back on my work, my heart racing an unusual amount.

***

It takes a couple days but I confess to Harry. He’d decided to meet up with me after class on Wednesday to eat out. We didn’t go far from the uni, a pub a few roads down. I actually spotted a couple former students there and they’d waved at me warmly.

“You’re not crazy,” Harry holds my hand on the table. “A few years ago I realized the volunteer interns we took on from the nearby school? They were the same age as her, teens? And I used to check up on them all the time, make sure they were feeling comfortable, until one of the guys on the team told me to quit being so weird and find someone my own age. I don’t know if it came across that way but…I got lost in that.”

“Oh Harry,” I squeeze his hand. “I didn’t know that.”

“I’ve never told anyone.”

“Me too,” I pop another chip into my mouth. “But really I’d kind of pushed those memories out of my head until the other day. I can’t explain it, when she smiled it just felt like I knew her.”

“Yeah. Maybe she just looks like Taylor?”

We finish dinner while Harry tells me about a story about some friends of his I knew. We reminisce about our old friends as we wrap up and head out into the brisk November air.

We’re near the station when I gasp and clutch Harry’s arm. Standing outside one of the nearby pubs, smoking with her friends, was Bridget.

“Harry! That’s her!”

“What? Who?” He’s so oblivious as he whips his head around.

“Hushhh!” I nod towards the northwest side. His eyes scan the group. “Red beanie. We have to walk past just look at her okay? Tell me if you see it.”

Harry laughs to himself, “This feels like we’re in high school walking past a crush.”

“Is that how you walked past me?” I tease.

“I did.” He looks at me in that way that still gives me butterflies. It never got old.

“Stop making me want to jump your bones out here. I have a reputation to uphold!”

“Hey I’ll still have a job to support us,” he whispers as we near closer to the group. “Feel free to do whatever you feel.”

“You’re a bad influence.” I whisper back. By now we’re a few feet away and I sense Harry slow down beside me.

Bridget’s nodding to whatever her friend is saying. Philippe is waving his drink around as he responds. We almost pass by unnoticed when someone completely different calls my name.

“Hey professor! Can we buy you a drink?”

I turn and spot a group of students I taught last semester. They were all friends, always battling out their wits during group discussions. It made my class lively, even distracting at times. But I tried going with the flow of whatever group of students I got.

“Hey kids!” I say. Then I have no choice but to acknowledge Bridget and her friends. “And more kids! Is this the new spot to be at?”

I sounded so lame but shite! We weren’t supposed to get caught.

“It’s always been popular,” one of my old students says. “Can we pick your brain? Buy you a drink? We can buy one for your friend too.”

“I uh,” I glance at Harry but he’s frozen solid. I look to what he’s looking at and it’s Bridget. They’re locked in some silent conversation and her friends eye each other. “Harry?”

“Huh?” He focuses on me, flushed and just as confused as I had looked on Monday.

“We’ve gotta get him home,” I pat Harry’s arm. “Our alcohol metabolizes differently at our age.”

“You’re not that old,” Bridget says. She seems to be surprised she said it at all and her eyes widen. “I just mean you look younger than my parents.”

“We’ll take that as a compliment.” I smile up at Harry who still looks a little lost.

“Miss aren’t you going to introduce your male friend?” One of my old student goads.

“Don’t assume,” the other chides.

“Aren’t you a nosy lot after a few drinks.” I missed dishing it back in class with them.

“Oops!” They laugh.

“Anyway. This is Harry.”

“You can call me Mr. Professor,” Harry jokes and it’s a crowd pleaser. God they were drunk. Harry leans into me, “I can see why you like teaching. They’re an ego-booster.”

“Not in a 6pm lecture on a Thursday night.” I whisper back. He hides his laugh.

“Are you guys heading home?” Now it’s Philippe. I’m surprised he was getting involved in the conversation. He was usually the quiet nervous type.

“We are. Need a good night’s rest so I’m not falling asleep in your lecture tomorrow.”

“We wouldn’t mind,” Philippe goes for joker but his face flushes. It’s cute.

“Philippe you take way too many notes during class for me to believe that.”

His two friends, Bridget and the other girl, look at each other wide-eyed before losing it. And I watch Bridget’s face transform again and I get the same feeling. I look up at Harry and he’s transfixed.

I tug his sleeve and he looks at me, swallowing like he was parched.

“Weird right?”

“Yeah,” he whispers but his mouth turns down ever so slightly.

The girls are too busy cajoling Philippe to say goodbye to so we make our exit quietly. We don’t talk much on the train ride home but Harry simple holds his hand out on my thigh, palm up, and I lock my fingers into his. Even when we didn’t have words, we never stopped staying in touch.

***

It’s exam and holiday season before I know it.

I was actually looking forward to Christmas this year. It was the first that Harry was going to join with my family. Taylor’s bloke was also showing. He had been a hit with my parents and even I could admit he was the better of all the guys she’s every brought over.

It’s the last 30 minutes of the last exam I was facilitating this year. I announce the time left to the group. There were only about 15 kids left.

Bridget is one of them. I watch her tuck her hair behind her ear and bite her lip. She’d been pretty quiet the remainder of the semester, and I tried not to let my eyes wander to her too much.

After that night, bumping into her with Harry, we hadn’t spoken much about it. The hope that was initially so buoyant turned crushing as we faced the reality that the odds were slim to none. That our wishes were just pennies tossed in a fountain, sinking to the bottom of the pool.

Dreary winter days pass by and Harry and I try to keep the seasonal depression away with regular outdoor dates, cozy nights in bed, and seeing friends as often as we could.

On Christmas we go to my parents’. It’s a loud affair as my grandparents and a few cousins join us. After dinner I go up to my childhood bedroom, it’s now a guest room but some of my things still lay around. I open the window, it was cold so I drag a blanket out and sit outside. The street is quiet, I see families in a few open windows and I watch the festivities through them. I feel a mix of nostalgia and an ache that goes even beyond that, like I was missing something.

“Y/n?” Of course Harry would find me even though I’d left the door closed and the window tilted.

“Here,” I say.

“Ah,” he struggles to hoist himself out. “Some things never change.”

“You need help?” I watch him climb on all fours.

“I’m steady,” he grins as he crawls to me. I open the blanket and he gets in.

We sit in silence for a bit.

“It was getting really loud downstairs wasn’t it?” I ask.

“I think your grandma’s in love with Taylor’s guy.” Harry says so bluntly that I burst out laughing. He joins in.

“I feel like old people get to flirt with whoever they want because it’s always harmless.”

“Maybe that’s the case with older women,” Harry grimaces. “Can’t say the same thing about old men now can we?”

“Jesus!” I laugh and then laugh even harder when Harry says: “it is his day.”

By the time I wipe my tears Harry’s gazing down at me.

“Sorry,” I lean my head against his shoulder. “You have to stop being so funny.”

“Nah,” he kisses my head. “Have I never told you how much I like your laugh?”

He had. On a night many years ago on a roof like this.

I go to remind him but he’s pulling away. I watch as he shifts to face my slowly. He pulls something out from behind him and my brain only connects the dots as he starts talking.

“Y/N, this is something I wish I could have done 18 years ago but only feels incredibly right to do now. Especially out here.”

“Harry,” I gasp. When did he get the ring? When had he planned this?

“We somehow found our way back to each other again y/n, and you know I love you more than ever before.” He clears his throat as it clouds with emotion. “Some 18 years ago I told you I knew you, because the first time I ever laid eyes on you my heart knew. You were something special. And I never ever want to spend another moment apart again. So Y/N Y/L/N, will you do me the honour and finally be mine? Will you marry me?”

“Yes!” If I wasn’t sitting on a roof I would launch myself at Harry. I settle for pulling his face down to mine and kissing it. “I’ve always been yours Harry. But yes, of course yes!”

He slides the ring on and it fits perfectly.

It was perfect.

When we go back down my mum knows right away, and if it was loud before it’s absolute chaos as everyone descends on me and demands to know how he proposed and how the ring looks.

“On the roof? When there’s a perfectly pretty tree here?” My grandma asks. Harry and I exchange a look then, trying not to laugh all over again.

We ring in the New Year with friends, as fiancés. I can hardly believe it. Apparently most of our friends knew Harry was going to propose and they all toast to us and our happiness.

Somewhere in mid-January, I drop by my parents’ house to drop off some groceries. That’s when my dad hands me a letter that had been mailed home.

“It came for you, I dunno who thinks you still live here but it looks handwritten.”

I take it from my dad as I say one last goodbye. I barely make it to the tube with wobbly legs. Because somewhere inside I know.

It’s a long and agonizing 2 hours that I wait for Harry to come home. He finds me sitting in the dark; the sun had set while I waited, and I’d been too busy staring at the feminine scrawl on the front of the letter to turn on the lights.

“Hello-y/n, what are you doing in the dark?”

Harry drops his things where they are when I look at him. “Y/n are you alright? Say something.”

I open my mouth but nothing comes out. I just push the letter forward.

He walks towards it. It’s like he hits a brick wall when he puts the pieces together, he halts a foot away.

“What is that?”

“Is was…” I try to swallow so my voice doesn’t sound so hoarse. “My dad gave it to me. It was sent to the house.”

“Is it…”

“I was waiting for you.”

Suddenly he’s in motion. He puffs his cheeks out and lets out a noisy sigh. Then he paces the floor one, two, three, four times before standing in front of the couch.

“We should read it.” I say.

“Yeah,” he deflates into the couch. I want to join him but it feels like my arse has been glued to the chair.

I inch it towards me and Harry nods. He wanted me to read it.

My mouth is parched. I can barely make out any sounds as I open it up. It’s three pages folded in two, the paper itself isn’t anything very special, it’s typed up so it’s literally just ink on paper. And yet it’s worth a whole goldmine.

“Y/n and Harry,” I read before my voice breaks and I bury my face in my hands. Our baby girl had written to us. She had reached out.

“C’mon love,” Harry’s suddenly beside me and his hand squeezes my neck. The touch gives me enough strength to stand with him. He sets me down where he just sat and leaves again, returning with water and the letter.

“Can you read it?” I ask.

He settles in beside me, we touch along every edge of us. The letter sits in between us like our love, our hurting—it’s where it belongs. He begins to read in his soothing voice.

“Y/n and Harry,

I hope it’s okay I’m calling you that. I don’t know if it’s proper but ever since I found out about you two last year that’s what I’ve been calling you.”

Harry lets out a shaky breath and I intertwine my arm through his. He kisses my temple and continues.

“When I turned 15, I asked my mum about you. I started to wonder where I came from. I knew I was adopted for as long as I could remember but it didn’t mean much to me for a long time—I had a mother, a father, and a sister. I had a family so why did I need to know where I came from?

But over the last few years it’s been like an itch I couldn’t get to. See when I was 15, what set it off is that my sister decided to look into her birth parents. They were separated, her father lived in Tokyo and her mother lived in Wales. It took her a year to convince our parents to go to Wales. I went with and I found myself in the home of a woman who looked just like the girl I grew up with. The whole time it ate away at me. I wanted this ending too.

I asked my mum and dad when I turned 15 but they were weird and evasive. I turned my skills to the internet but I didn’t really know where to start.

I felt the missing part more and more as I turned 16. I used to fall asleep thinking about you two, if you were alive, what you looked like, where you were, what you did.

I love my parents. They’re wonderful and amazing, they are supportive and never made us feel like we were anything but theirs. But I wanted to know my background.

On my 17th birthday my parents gave me a letter like the one I write today.” Harry stops reading and takes in a deep shuddering breath. “She got the letter.”

His shoulder shake and he pinches the bridge of his nose. I clench my teeth so I wouldn’t cry too. I wanted to finish this letter. I wrap my arms around him and hold him.

This was unbelievable, what we’d dreamed of. Her words, in our hands.

“Here.” I take the letter from him and continue. “Let me read it.”

Harry stays hunched over, so with my hand on his back I continue, “in it you told me how much you loved me. How much you loved each other, your families, where I came from. And Why you had to give me up. For a better life. I saw the picture of you, and I felt broken and complete at the same time. I realized I was the same age as you in the photo, I had to meet you but I was terrified. And I didn’t know how.

I spent a year agonizing and looking through every google page I could find about you. I learned a lot! But I needed to meet you.

I don’t know how to do this. I’ve made decisions that may not have been the best but I’ve left my number and a picture of me when I was 5 in the envelope.

I hope you call.”

With shaking hands I turn to the third page that has one of those polaroids taped to it and a phone number in the same handwriting as the envelope.

“She’s beautiful,” Harry says while tears continue streaming down his face. I can’t even hide mine anymore.

She was beautiful indeed. She had his eyes, and her curly locks in a deep brown frame her chubby face. She had my nose, she looked a little like my sister as a baby. A scatter of freckles over her cheeks confirm it. She was ours. Our baby had reached out. We knew what she looked like.

“We need to call her,” I say. “We need to meet.”

“Yeah,” Harry wipes his face. “We…we need to do this carefully. It’s delicate right?”

I wanted to call her right now but what would I do but cry into the phone? No, I had to wrap my head around this. Harry was right. “Right.”

“She’s out there,” Harry turns to me. “She wants to know us. Y/n she wants to meet us! She saw the picture I-“

“I can’t believe it,” I whisper. “Our daughter wants to—did she leave her name?”

We open the letter and flip over every piece of it but her name is nowhere.

“Maybe she didn’t want us looking her up?” Harry offers.

“Maybe she has an awful digital footprint.”

Something about it makes us laugh and we can’t stop. But pretty soon it shifts back into tears and we’re left holding each other on the couch, tender and content and anxious.

Our daughter had made contact. Would she like us? Would she be mad at us? What did this mean for us?

The thoughts continue to spiral the rest of the evening. We don’t make much of an effort, we reread the letter and try to get dinner in us. We face each other as we try to fall asleep, whispering questions into the darkness. The darkness doesn’t answer, it grows heavier as does the night, and we fall asleep for the first time in our lives knowing the weight of a decision so long ago was a tiny bit lighter.

***

It’s a few days later. All I’d been thinking about was the letter, when I woke up, at work, during my commute, during breaks, when I went to bed.

It sits on our dining table, we glance at it as we pass by. It becomes part of the decor, three pieces of paper and an envelope. It’s so much weightier than that.

I come home from my lecture on Wednesday, a slight buzz of anxiety humming in the background. It wasn’t unusual for Harry and I to get busy at work and not talk the whole day but today Harry had been radio silent. He hadn’t answered my texts or phone calls in a very un-Harry way.

I walk in to Harry sitting on the couch in the dark, staring at the coffee table. On it sits the letter.

“Hey,” I don’t even take off my jacket. I slide next to him. “Is everything alright?”

“Hey,” he whispers. He stays frozen sitting forward, elbows on his knees, head cradled in his hand.

I wait for him to speak, to say something about what was going on. I rub my hand over his back and he glances up. I tip forward until our foreheads touch. “What’s going on in that brain of yours? Let me help you.”

“It’s a lot,” he whispers. It tears me in two.

“Hey,” I remind him. “Just one day at a time. Let’s just talk about today.”

“I want to call her so bad,” he leans away and buries his head in his hands. I wanted to call her too, I’d been waiting for Harry to give the cue since I knew I could be rash and impulsive about something like this. But something was going on with him.

“We will.”

“We gave her up. What if she hates us?”

“She wouldn’t have written us that beautiful letter, or sent a photo, or left her number if she did.”

Harry sniffles and then asks what he really wanted to, “what if she hates me.”

“Harry look at me,” He unfolds slowly and I make sure he’s looking at me. “You’re her father, you’ve carried her with you for the last 18 years. You love her. She wants to know you. Why would she hate you?”

“I’ve fucked up so much!”

“You’re not your mistakes.” I remind him. I get teary eyed as I feel the echoes of his insecurities. I’ve thought about it too: what if I didn’t meet her expectations? “She’s not going to see you and see every good and bad decisions you’ve ever made. She’s just going to see her father—her biological father, and see where she got her eyes from and her hair from and every other quirk she has.”

“You’re not worried?” He asks, looking at me with grief.

“Of course I am,” I confess, tears leaking out of my eyes damnit. “I’m so fucking worried. But my curiosity overtakes that, my love for her is what I’m focusing on.”

“I love her,” he says.

“That’s all that matters.” I cup his face and press a reassuring kiss to his lips. “That’s all she’ll care about.”

Harry untangles himself from me and my heart sinks. He paces the length of our living room a few times, running his hand through his hair.

“We really should talk about the letter,” he says.

“Yeah. I know. I want to call. Badly.”

He pauses. It’s like all the anxious energy drains out of him at once. He sits back down beside me.

“What do we do?” I ask

“How about Saturday? She’s probably going to be home then right? No school—if she’s in school.”

Two days. Two more days of agonizing over the letter.

At this point the letter is memorized, seared into my brain like I had an exam on it. I want to know the person behind it.

When we wake on Saturday it’s a cloudy day. I don’t take it as a bad omen.

We sit with our phones out after breakfast, just staring at everything before us.

“You should do the talking,” I tell Harry. “I’m too nervous.”

“I think you should.” Harry says. “She sent the letter to you.”

“Only because that’s the address my mum gave…gave her mum.”

It hits me again in another wave I try not to drown in. She was eighteen, she’d lived a whole life with a whole family. There was everything of her we’d missed out on.

“Please Harry?” I was already overwhelmed with the realization. I just couldn’t.

He watches me, must hear the desperation in my voice, and slowly pulls his phone forward.

It rings, and rings a few more times. When it goes to voicemail he turns it off.

“I didn’t think that was an option,” Harry says and we laugh. It feels good.

“It’s only 10 maybe she’s asleep. Try one more time?”

He pulls my phone and tries again but it still goes to voicemail.

We sit there, unsure of what to do. We agree to try again later, in the afternoon.

But around half past 12, while Harry’s working in our spare room and I’m scrolling through my phone, it rings. I don’t think much of it and pick it up automatically.

“Hello?” It’s silent on the other end. “Hello?”

I wait, but as I do it dawns on me. Who called me?

I check my phone screen and swipe through as I say hello again. I match the number. It was her.

I run to Harry but the phone is still silent. I wave the paper with the number saying hello again.

“Is this…well you never gave us your name. But we got your letter. We’re so gl-“

The line goes dead and so does my heart.

“You called her again?” Harry whispers, his brows furrowing as he stares at the phone.

“She called.” I think about calling her back but that was pushy. She was backing out of this.

All of a sudden I feel myself giving out. I catch myself against the wall and slide down.

“She’s backing out. It must be…too much for her.”

Harry stares at a spot on the ground, a million thoughts flickering through. Finally it settles on acceptance. He sighs.

“We can’t force her to talk to us,” he says softly what I already know. But his words are like a saw to my resolve and I just start crying. He gathers me in his arms but the grief feels endless. It felt like she was slipping away again; I’d lost so much and I lost her again. She had been so close. How could she do this? Why did she reach out if she wasn’t ready?

Questions without answers. More of them piled on top of the lifetime of questions I’d built for her.

I know Harry feels the weight of them too. We carry them together. That’s the only reason I hadn’t broken yet.

But I come close to it that day. We don’t hear back from her. And we don’t try to call her back. It didn’t feel right.

It killed me she was so close. And something changes inside.

For weeks I feel like I’m on autopilot. It’s like my first semester of uni all over again.

Harry tries his best to keep me together but he struggles too. It makes me feel worse I was taking the bigger hit, not being there for him as much as I wanted. But life feels like a a million blankets covering me.

I try to keep my usual momentum for my classes, but I’m always exhausted after. It pulls me deeper into my sadness, something I loved made me so tried.

It’s a Thursday at the end of the semester and I’m marking exams during my study hours when there’s a light knock on the door.

I’m surprised to see an old student.

“Bridget,” I wave her in. “Come in, what can I do you for?”

“Hi professor-“

“Call me y/n, I’m not teaching you anymore am I?”

“No,” she says with a stiff smile. The last time I saw her was in February, I’d spotted her with Philippe and a few other friends at a local coffee shop. She had been explaining something to one of her friends from a textbook.

Now her hair was short and more pronounced with waves. I wonder if she styled it, her longer hair had been pin straight.

“I had a question?”

You already asked it, I want to joke. But she was usually wound up so I knew it wouldn’t land well.

“What’s that?”

“Um, well.” She perches on the chair and I wait patiently for her to continue. “Are you taking any applications for TA next year?”

I wasn’t expecting that. She always found a way to take me by surprise. I stare at her for a few seconds, trying to remember what year she was in.

“Aren’t you in first year? If I do TAs they’re usually 3rd or above.”

“I know,” she tucks her hair behind her ear. “But seeing that one of my majors is in econ and my gpa is really high, and I did well in your class, I wondered if you would consider me?”

I hadn’t done TAs since my first year of teaching. I found I liked the work because it got me more familiar with the class.

“What’s your other major?” She had said one of them was econ.

“Sociology, I’m pre-law.”

Ambitious. “Why TA for my class?”

She balks as she meets my gaze. There’s something that flits through her face that I can’t quite read before she drops eye contact.

“Um, I really enjoyed it. I did really well. I think you’re super smart and would learn a lot by TA-ing for you.”

“I don’t give special lessons to my TA,” I let her know. “You’d typically attend some of the classes, mark assignments, and maybe teach exam tutorials, and have office hours of your own for students.”

“I’m okay with that.”

“Why should I pick you?”

She pushes her shoulders back, “I’m responsible, dependable, I submit all my assignments on time and have experience teaching.”

“Teaching?”

“I used to tutor when I was in high school. I didn’t really get an allowance so I found a way to support my hobbies.”

“What are your hobbies?”

She blushes a little, was she still nervous? “I love reading, books are expensive.”

I nod. For Harry’s birthday I’d told him he could get any books from Waterstones and it had been over £100 for 3 only.

“I also enjoy cooking. And um, it’s been a while but my friends and I sometimes go to like. Do you know comic con?”

“Yes,” I’d seen things online.

“Yeah we liked to dress up for that sort of thing. We used to make our own outfits and usually the cost varies depending on what you’re making and how realistic you want it and…” she trails off as I smile. She was really enthusiastic about it. I couldn’t help it.

“Tell you what. Leave your number with me and I’ll think about it. I haven’t had a TA for the last few semesters but I am going to take this into consideration.”

“Really?!”

I laugh. “Yes. Really.”

“Um…” she starts to fidget again. “Can I leave my email? I’m getting a new phone soon so I-“

“Sure. Anywhere I can reach you.”

I expect her to get out a pen but she says it verbally and I type it out.

“Um, are you alright?” She asks out of the blue after I type in the last letter.

“Alright?” I raise my brow.

“I mean, you seem…I just heard, um.” She tries to backtrack but I ask her again and she spills. “Some people just said your last few classes seem scattered. Not that people don’t like you. I just…that’s what they were saying. And I don’t know if having a TA would help? And I just wanted to ask if you’re okay sorry I shouldn’t…it’s none of my business.”

God, this girl was so awkward. But she was sweet for caring, I think. “You’re not applying for the role because you feel bad that I seem…scattered right?”

She blushes. “Sorry. I think I said too much.”

I want to laugh but it strikes me that my students had noticed. I’d let it affect their learning. It didn’t feel very good.

“Life’s hitting me hard recently,” I tell her simply. “But I’m alright. Thank you for reaching out Bridget.”

As I finish up the semester I think about her. It wouldn’t hurt to have her TA for one of my lectures, see how she does. I didn’t care for TAs as a lecturer but something about her is compelling and I find myself emailing her in the middle of the night in June. She responds back a few minutes later,

Thank you!!! You’re the best. I’ll do whatever you need just tell me I can do anythingggh

Sent from iphone.

I laugh to myself as I put my phone away and go back to bed. My guesses were she was drunk at a party.

Harry’s asleep beside me and I reach out to touch his back but think better of it. He’d been busy at work with a project nearing its deadline and I didn’t want to accidentally wake him.

I turn around and try to drift off, thinking about my daughter, about how Harry and I hadn’t really talked much in the last two weeks, about my teaching, and my new TA.

Age 38:

It’s a depressing summer. The air of dashed hopes still hangs around Harry and I. It’s less thunder clouds and more of a fog.

One weekend morning, it’s one of those mornings that start off heavy. I can’t get out of bed, but I hear Harry pattering about doing his weekend morning thing. I hear the dishwasher turn on, and soon after he walks in with our laundry folded in a basket. I feel awful as I normally do, but not awful enough to get up and do anything about it. I think I’d have to feel less awful, to do that.

I don’t expect him to get in beside me once he’s finished putting everything away. He smells like laundry and shampoo, I must smell like rot and decay.

“Y/n,” he says gingerly. I just look at him in response. I felt too heavy to even reply. He sits up and calls my name again.

“Mm,” I say.

He sighs. Despite months of this Harry’s been nothing but understanding but this morning seems different.

Suddenly I’m being pulled up by my shoulders and I find myself sitting up in bed.

“Y/N,” Harry says again. I fold my arms as the duvet slips down and the cool air raises goosebumps. “I love you, which is why it’s so hard seeing you like this. You have to get on, my love. We have to move forward. It’s been months.”

All I could remember after our daughter hung the phone up on us was when I almost got to hold her. Right after she was born, I almost got to hold her but they took her away. And that piece of me that followed after her was nearly returned. It was that almost that was a death blow.

“It’s hard,” I feel myself tear up. It was hard not to these days.

“I know baby,” Harry scoops me into him. “I know. It’s hard for me too but we have to get better. We have to live our lives. She’ll come back to us, I just know it. She’s scared, we’re hopeful. Fear’s gonna keep her away. Hope keeps us patient.”

I cry into his shirt and he rocks me.

“I’m sorry,” I say into his shirt.

“It’s alright,” he grips the back of my neck.

So for Harry, for us, I try to get back to myself. I start to pick up my outdoor hobbies, I try to keep conversations going with Harry, I reintroduce my multi-step night routine. I look forward and re-light the candle of hope, even though I ache to blow it out before it can burn down to its wick.

My wounds inside stay tender.

We had booked our wedding for November and as the days approach we find ourselves with one thing on our mind.

Harry and I finally talk about it.

“I always thought she’d be there at the wedding once she reached out.”

We’re sat in an outdoor space near King’s Cross, coffees in hand as we people watch. We’d just come back from a cake tasting and neither of us felt like going home with such a glorious August day. Kids splash in the water sprinklers and couples sit around arm in arm. I touch shoulders with Harry unconsciously.

“Me too. I think that’s what’s kept me from mentally committing to the fact that the date is coming closer.”

“It can’t be forever,” Harry says. “She reached out. She just needs time. She’ll call again one day and we’ll meet her.”

“I know.” I lean my head on his shoulder. This was a realization I’d also been slowly digesting. I’d waited 18 years, what was a few more months, another year? Her baby picture lived on our fridge, at least we were one step closer.

And the love, I had to remind myself in these moments. Hold onto the love.

***

“I can’t stay for this class,” Bridget tells me. It’s the second week of classes and there were still 10 minutes until it officially started.

“Is everything alright?”

“Not really,” that’s when I notice her nose is red and her eyes are too. “My um, my parents had to put my dog down. She…she wasn’t feeling well yesterday and the-they found cancer? And she was in a lot of pain but she never showed it? And-“

I put my hand on Briget’s shoulder and lead her to the exit. There was no reason for the whole class to see this.

“Sorry. I’m-“

“Don’t apologize.” I rub her shoulder. “I understand. Take the time you need I have this covered.”

True to her word, Bridget had been a loyal TA over the summer. I considered it a trial run not expecting much but she had shown up, aced marking, and I’d gotten good feedback from the students at the end of the semester.

I’d also taken to her. She’d join me during my 2 hours every Monday and when no students would come she would loosen up. She’d told me all about the dog she grew up with, she showed me costumes her friends and her made, I’d asked her about the books she was reading and the classes she was taking. It was like having a younger sister again, except I was mature enough to appreciate her.

“I didn’t even get to say goodbye,” Bridget says and this statements seems to be the breaking point. She curls in on herself, shoulders shaking. I don’t even think, I just pull her into me like I would for Harry, for Taylor, for any of my friends.

“You have a lifetime of memories with her,” I hold her. At first she stiffens up and I almost let her go but she only breaks down further and wraps her arms around me. Tighter than I expected.

“I wish I said goodbye,” she says into my shoulder.

“I know hon,” I squeeze her against me, something maternal washing over me. “I know.”

After a minute or so she regains her composure, wiping her face with her sleeve. When she looks at me she looks so much younger, her face grief-stricken and regretful.

“I’m sorry-“

“Don’t be.”

She seems to want to say something more but whatever it is, she swallows it and takes a step away.

I don’t see her for two weeks and I miss her.

When she walks into the lecture the first week of October I try not to rush her but I’m overjoyed seeing her face. It had become so familiar to me.

She smiles shyly when she walks up to me and I pull her into a hug. This time she doesn’t stiffen.

“How are you?” I whisper. Students were still trickling in so I use the time to catch up.

“Okay. Better than that day I cried all over you sorry again. I went home last week, thanks for letting me take it off.”

“Of course. You forget I’ve been doing this without a TA before you. I can hold down the fort.”

She cracks a smile, her dimple making a rare appearance.

“By the way, week 10’s lecture is supposed to be cancelled.” I tell her later during office hours. “But I wondered if you wanted to hold a tutorial that week for some of the material?”

“Really?” A light comes on in her eye. It’s fiery and bright with excitement.

“Yeah! You know the material! I’ll leave you with slides and you can go about teaching them.”

“I’d love to!” She grips her laptop close to her. “Wait why is it cancelled?”

“I’m getting married that week!”

The light dims. Or maybe I imagine it.

“Oh! I thought you were married already?”

“No,” I’d referred to Harry as my partner any time he was brought up. “We’re getting married in November. You’ve met him actually, kind of, that night we ran into you and some students at the pub. Last year?”

“Oh yeah I remember,” she says but her eyes are somewhere else. “So you’re getting married?”

“Yes Bridget,” I laugh. “Married. Tying the knot. You alright?”

“Yeah,” she blinks and she’s back. “You never mentioned the wedding. Do you have a dress?”

“Yeah! Just finalized the tailoring last week. Most things are ready, we’re just finalizing the rings!”

“Cool!” She fidgets with the hem of her shirt. “Is it in London?”

“Yeah, it’s not too big but we didn’t want people travelling too far. This is where Harry and I were born and raised so this is where we want to marry too.”

“Wow,” she seems lost in thought and she stays pretty quiet the rest of the time. I didn’t realize my news was that surprising.

Maybe I still didn’t have Bridget completely figured out.

***

“Harry I can’t pick them up! I need to get home and then head back out to class!”

“Y/n it’s on your way home!”

“Not really! It’s a 30 minute detour. Why can’t you do it?”

“Because you can still get to him right before he closes. I won’t be done here until after he closes. I’m sorry love!”

“Agh and why can’t he do tomorrow?”

“He’s off until Saturday! We need it today.”

It’s the Wednesday before we marry and our rings are still at the jeweller’s. He’d finished them last weekend but we’d been so busy with other things we hadn’t had time to pick it up. And now it was either today and be late for class, or the day of the wedding.

I had gotten delayed at work and missed Harry’s texts explaining the situation. I’d only responded while on the tube, but going out of my way for 30 minutes meant I’d be 30 minutes late to get back to class. And since I’d left marked assignments at home that the kids needed for next week’s tutorial, I had no choice but to head back.

The idea hits me at once.

I hang up on Harry and ring Bridget. She picks up right away.

“Bridget, I’m on a crazy tight schedule. I’m going to be late to class by half hour at least.”

“Oh no. Is everything alright?”

“Yeah it’s just wedding thing but can you do something crazy? And feel free to say no okay?”

“Okay?”

I explain to her that if she rode to my flat, Harry would be there by then and she could pick up marked assignment. She can delay class by taking them up.

She’s silent but eventually I get a yes. “Okay. Can you text me your address?”

“Yes! Yes. Thank you Bridget. I owe you your trip fare and lunch or something. I’ll text you now, leave as soon as you can!”

I call Harry again and confirm he’d be home by the time she arrived. Everything works out.

I get the rings, and have to head home so Harry can try his on. The jeweller was expecting both of us, and let me know he couldn’t do adjustments if I didn’t text him by today. Just my luck!

When I get to the flat I tell Harry not to read his inscription but to try it on and thankfully it fits.

“Hey,” Harry calls out as I try to rush back out the door.

“What?” I was out of breath and frantic.

“Slow down,” he pulls me into a lingering kiss and despite being breathless before, I get some air into my lungs when we part.

“Sorry, so hectic.”

“I know I’m sorry,” he strokes my cheek. “I would have gone if I could make it. Also don’t be mad.”

“Be mad?” I let go of the door handle. “What did you do?”

“Your TA stopped by, Bridget. I forgot she was coming so I didn’t have your papers ready. I invited her in and she was in the living room looking at our pictures and she stopped in front of the baby picture. Of our daughter.”

“Okay,” did Harry tell her our history? I get antsy. “And?”

“Well she asked if that was our daughter. And I didn’t know what to say, if you’ve said anything to her? I panicked?” Harry runs his hand through his hair. “I just changed the subject.”

“Okay, that’s not bad. What’s the bad part I don’t get it?”

“Well. I changed the subject and told her she should come to the wedding.”

My jaw drops. “Harry.”

“I know! I know I’m sorry! I know she technically works for you, she was a student, all that! You’re so fond of her though maybe it’s not a bad thing?”

“Harry that’s…she was my student! I’m a prof at that school I…is that even allowed?”

“Yes? I panicked and googled it.”

I groan, “I swear you’re getting worse the closer we get to the wedding.”

The other week he had tried to buy out a whole bakery in case there wasn’t enough cake for our guests.

“You can tell her we have a full guest list? I don’t know what came over me! She just looked at me with those puppy eyes and she asked about the picture and I tried to talk about something else but the only thing on my mind-“

I kiss him. Just to shut him up. I was getting really late.

“This is like that book club you were tricked into joining all over again-“

“Hey I really like that book club now! It might be a good thing!”

“We’ll talk later.” I shake my head at him. “It’s fine, it’s not a big deal. It’s weird but what’s one more guest?”

“I also said plus one.”

I let out a long exhale and then kiss Harry again. I didn’t want him spiralling while I was gone.

“Baby don’t worry, it’s okay. I’m fine with it. We’ll talk when I get home?”

I mull over it on the ride to uni. But I can’t find a way to uninvite her without it being awful. I text our wedding planner if we could squeeze in two more seats and she gives me the thumbs up.

I did have a soft spot for Bridget, and technically I’ve known her for over a year now.

During office hours, we get a few people in for the first half hour. Then we’re back to just the two of us.

“Thanks for taking over today,” I tell her. “I really appreciate it.”

“That’s alright. Happy to help out.”

An awkward silence slithers in.

“So my partner invited you to our wedding.”

“Yeah! I didn’t know if that was serious am I…?”

She looked so hopeful I couldn’t shoot her down. “Yes! I have a couple people from the faculty coming. And some colleagues from my day job. You’ll probably have to sit with them but?”

“That’s fine!” She’s chirpy Bridget again. “I’d love to. That would mean a lot.”

I watch her as the smile stays on and she gets out her phone, typing away. Maybe her friends, her plus one.

I realize I’m not entirely against it. It had happened, and I was okay.

***

I stare at myself in the mirror, smoothing down my dress in a nervous habit. I never thought I’d get married twice, I always thought after Tatum I was done with marriage, but Harry would always be the exception.

I feel a flutter of nerves thinking about him. Walking down the aisle to him. We started talking on a rooftop one day, we had just been two kids.

“You better not cry,” Taylor threatens as she walks into the room. She had gone to fetch lash glue after my teary eyes loosened an edge.

“I’m not,” I say weakly.

She stands beside me in the mirror, “They’re all waiting downstairs.”

Just 30 minutes ago this room had been a chaotic mess. From my mum, to my friends, to the wedding planner. I’m kind of glad my lash came loose, I’m able to ground myself in these few minutes of silence.

Taylor talks about our family downstairs as she fixes my face. I get up with her help and she beams, but her eyes look misty.

“What is it?” I ask.

“Nothing!”

“Why do you look sad what happened?”

“Oh my god calm down, I just can’t believe you and Harry are getting your happy ending! I’m just…emotional.”

“Aww,” I cup her face even though I want to squeeze my baby sister against me. But my white dress, although not entirely traditional, would be ruined for the ceremony.

A ping on her phone—mum. We rush out. It feels like getting caught when we were younger and quickly getting away from the scene of the crime. I grip my sister’s hand until I stand in front of the doors leading down the aisle.

I don’t remember walking, it felt more like floating. Even if there was a chimpanzee and a talking dog in the pews I wouldn’t have noticed. My eyes are locked on Harry’s teary ones, they anchor me as I glide towards the man I’ve never stopped loving. Who always saw all of me.

When he reaches for my hand I grasp it and I know I made the right decisions. Even the painful ones. After all, I wanted to be nowhere but here.

“Y/N,” Harry reads his vows to me and I try not to cry as he sweeps me away with his delicate words about our love story.

“To be so deeply known by another, without even saying a word, shouldn’t make sense and yet with us we have a language that goes beyond words. A brush of your hand or a look in my direction, it can be enough to unload whatever burden I’d just been carrying. I promise to do the same for you, and to never end this dialogue between us. To love you and to cherish you forever.”

Harry couldn’t keep the tears in and they slide down his cheeks as he reads his words out to me. I reach out instinctively and brush his tear away and he laughs because I was doing it again.

“You’re can’t make me cry in my makeup,” I tell him and our guests laugh.

I had sat and thought so hard about my own vows. In the end after 50 versions, I’d settled on short and sweet.

“Harry, when we first spoke on the rooftop of that party in high school,” I say at my turn. “You told me everything you wanted. One of them was to make the world a better place. And I don’t know if you still want those things as much now as you did then, but one thing is true. You’re made my world a better place. I can’t imagine doing life without you. I love you with all of my heart, there’s no equation that could calculate how much.”

Harry grins at me and my breath catches. My man, he was my Harry.

We finish our vows with a kiss and a lot of noise from the crowd. When we turn to everyone I’m struck by how lucky we were.

The absence of our daughter was tough but when it came to love we had an abundance of it. I see it in every smiling and shiny face in the crowd. It’s like photographing a sunny day with one of those old school films, the sun is covered by a dark spot but the rays still wash everything in gold.

Harry squeezes my hand and I look up to him. He’s already looking at me.

He holds his hand up and lets out a whoop before he pulls my face towards him again for an even longer and borderline inappropriate kiss. I feel myself start to blush in front of the crowd.

We start down the aisle and this time I beam at every guest I catch eyes with.

My mum and Harry’s wave with tear-streaked faces. My friends from high school shout out, always the biggest supporters of our relationship. I catch eyes with Bridget, forgetting for a second she was here. Philippe is beside her, but what’s surprising is her blotchy face. I didn’t take her for someone who got emotional at weddings. I throw her a wave and she smiles through the tears.

Whoever ordered weddings to have a small break between the ceremony and the reception deserved a billion dollars. Harry and I spend the quiet moment doing our outfit change but afterwards we hold each other and let the moment sink in. The day sink in.

“We’re married,” Harry whispers when I tell him we should get going so we weren’t late.

“We took the long way to get here didn’t we?”

“Yeah,” he tucks me under his chin again and even though we would be late we just sway together for a little while. Our own private first dance, before the one for our family and friends.

“We did it all quite backwards actually.” I look up to him.

“Yeah, but we were never ordinary.”

“No, and I don’t think anything we’ve ever done is either.”

“Including our kid. I really wish she were here.”

“We’ll tell her all about it one day,” I promise him. His face eases into a loving smile, the fact that we’d made it to a place again where I can comfort him about this said a lot. Said we’d make it through everything, despite.

“I don’t want to do life with anyone else y/n, I have everything I need right here.”

“Remember that day at Whole Foods?” I remind him. “The first time we bumped into each other.”

“It’s a core memory,” Harry remembers. “I feel like the sun never set on that day. Getting to see you after all those years…it’s cheesy but it felt like coming home.”

“Yeah,” I nod. “Me too. I recognized you by the back of your head did I ever tell you that?”

“Stared at it enough in maths, of course you did.”

“That’s probably why I did so poorly that year remember,” I laugh. “Just staring at the back of your head.”

“That’s why I never sat anywhere but in front of you.” He swipes lightly down my nose and I smile. “Now I get to see every angle of you whenever I want.”

“Oi,” I slap his chest. “Save it for tonight.”

He brushes my cheek. Under his gaze I’m stripped naked. There was nothing to hide with him, ever.

“I understand how long it took you to get ready,” he says in his deep silky voice. My stomach flips. “So I can’t do anything right now. But y/n, our wedding night will turn into a wedding dawn, and then to day again. I promise you.”

I tip-toe, even in my heels, and brush my lips along his cheek. In his ear I whisper, “I don’t expect anything less.”

I step away, feeling unravelled by the look of desire in his eyes. I’m sure I had the same look of want. But before we can give in to what we wanted to do, I open the door to our suite and embrace the gust of cool air.

“You should get some air too,” I say and he laughs, following me behind.

***

“Bitch!” Taylor comes up to me on the dance floor later that night. We had dinner, Harry and I had our first dance, there’d been toasts and tears in between. I was finally letting loose as the wedding party crowds the dance floor. We had been taking pictures all night, after this next glass of champagne I was going to call it quits on photos lest anyone captures anything that’s not an elegant bride.

“What?” I turn away from Harry to face Taylor. She’d been running around all day making sure my wedding day was perfect and seeing her just warms me with love. I squeeze her against me despite her protests. “I love you Taylor. Thank you for everything!”

“Ugh c’mon,” she wriggles out. She’d never been very affectionate.

“Where’s your bloke?” I look out for him.

“He taking a call. Anyway don’t change the fucking subject!”

“What subject!?” I ask as someone dances past me, fluttering their fingers in my direction. I blow them a kiss.

“C’mere,” she’s annoyed I’m distracted. She drags me off to the side and I hold a finger up to Harry as he watches us. “When the fuck were you going to tell us about her? And you invite her to your wedding and everything and nobody knows anything!?”

“What?” I was drunker than I thought or Taylor was making no sense. “Wha?”

“The girl you just took a photo with? Don’t act stupid Y/N jeez I can’t believe it. You hid it from me when it happened but why are you still hiding…”

My sister grows more upset as she talks, I realize it was serious. Taylor rarely allowed herself to get this worked up in public.

I put my hand on her shoulder but she shakes it off. I think hard about who she was talking about. Who had I just taken photos with?

Some of Harry’s friends took a picture lifting us up, then there was a photo with my cousin but that can’t be who Taylor was talking about. There was Andie, a few other friends and their partners, then Bridget and Bridget and Philippe.

Bridget.

“Wait what are…who do you think that is? Taylor I work-“

“Your daughter! Why are you still acting fucking clueless!”

“What’s happening?” Harry walks in mid-way into the conversation.

“God you too!” Taylor turns to him and hits the back of her hand on his chest. He rubs the spot and stares at her like she’d gone crazy.

“Me too what?”

“Harry?” His mum walks up to us, her brows pulled together the same way Harry’s does when he’s confused.

“Yeah?”

“Who’s that girl? With the brown hair? Purple dress?”

She’s eyeing Bridget who’s laughing with Philippe.

“Bridget?” Harry glances at me and Taylor grows more pink.

“Bridget? That’s her name?” Taylor blinks away tears. “Really y/n? I get when it happened I was a child, you and mom kept it from me. But she’s, you invite her to you-“

“Invite who?!” I shout. What the hell did Taylor think.

“Y/n,” Harry puts his hand on my lower back in warning.

“Your daughter?” Taylor says with teary eyes and a look of betrayal on her face. “That’s your daughter isn’t it? She looks just like…”

“Jesus I thought the same thing,” Anne looks at all of us. “Harry?”

“That’s not-“ he stops talking and we all look over at her. I had to say, right now she really could be. With her hair curled and wearing what she’s wearing. She could be family.

“She’s my TA. I’ve known her for a couple years guys I’ve bloody taught her. That’s not our daughter. She wasn’t even supposed to be here tonight? Harry invited her last minute.”

They all turn to look at me. Taylor looks miffed, she bites her lip as she looks at her one last time.

“That’s weird. Nevermind.”

She leaves like she didn’t just make a big scene. Anne covers her hand with her mouth and shakes her head. “I’m sorry loves, I didn’t mean to upset anyone-“

“You didn’t do anything,” I reassure her. Taylor did. And she couldn’t even say sorry.

“Don’t worry mum,” Harry pays her arm. She fades into the crowd and Harry stands in front of me so all I see is him. “She’ll get air, she’ll be fine.”

“But how could she just cause such a big scene like I’d hide something like that from her? On my wedding day! And then leave without even apologizing ugh! She is still such a brat sometimes!”

“I know, she’ll apologize later just let her be.” He knew Taylor enough. He knew her at 13 and he knew her now. That’s exactly what she would do. “We’re getting you a shot.”

“That’s the last thing I need! I’m already kinda tipsy Har.”

“This won’t tip you over c’mon. Shake it off.”

He leads me to the bar and we take a shot. I nearly spill half of it, it was awful whatever it was. I lose Harry as we get back to the dancing and end up behind Bridget instead. Philippe noticed me first and slows his dancing, which signals Bridget to turn around.

“Y/n!” Her smile is so bright it hurts to look at. It dims as I just stare at her.

It would be crazy. It was a big fat coincidence. She had a mum, a dad, a sister, she told me all about them. Her childhood dog and the time she twisted her ankle playing football in year 4. She wasn’t who we wanted her to be.

“Are you alright?” I read her lips. There’s only ringing in my ears. “Hey! Y/n!”

Philippe is suddenly on my other side and I’m being led to a chair. He disappears and Bridget pulls a chair beside me.

“What’s,” my voice sticks and I clear my throat. “What’s going on between you two? He’s your date?”

“Philippe?” Bridget’s brows draw together and I can’t stop looking at where they meet. I knew her. I didn’t know her. I was too afraid to ask. “No just friends.”

“That’s not the way he’s looking at you.”

“What?” She tucks her hair back. “No we’ve been friends since high school. It’s not like that?”

“What would you do if he got a girlfriend?” It was a random conversation to have, here and right now but it helps me from tumbling anywhere else. Especially into a pool of what-ifs.

“I’d,” she shrugs but a flicker passes through her face, for a second her jaw clenches. “Be happy for him.”

“Liar!”

“I’m not! Why are you asking?”

“You two like each other. I see the way he looks at you when you’re not looking. Why did you invite him tonight?”

She shrugs, picking at something on her arm. “I dunno. He’s good at being a plus one. He always supports me? He’s always been there for me.”

“Sorry,” he shows up with a glass of water. “I swear the guy behind the bar was ignoring me.”

“Thank you Philippe,” by now I didn’t really need the water but I hold the icy glass in my hands. “Let’s see the pictures you took. I want them in my inbox or something soon. We don’t get our official photos for months.”

“Oh yeah here,” Phillipe hands over his phone after opening the photo. There are a couple of all of us, and then a few with just Bridget standing between Harry and I smiling.

I look between all three of us and feel something in my gut. But it’s too scary and big to unpack right now. I shove it away. I couldn’t do this. Not today, not tonight.

“You look beautiful Bridget,” I touch a lock of her hair. “Did I already say that?”

“Yeah,” she smiles awkwardly. “You said that before the photo.”

“You do. And so do you Philippe. Thank you for attending my wedding.”

“Thanks for inviting us,” Bridget looks at me wide-eyed, like she’s about to say something but when Philippe’s hand lands on her shoulder she looks down.

“What?” I ask anyway. Her eyes dart like prey to me, to Philippe, and down to her hands. I grab her hand and force her to look at me, like I could read something in her eyes. Like I would know. “Bridget.”

She looks up and her eyes well with tears as we look into each other’s eyes. My throat feels tight like I was having an allergic reaction, it travels down to my chest, I inadvertently feel myself squeezing her hand.

“I’m so-“

“Bridget,” Philippe’s voice cuts through whatever Bridget was going to apologize for. I look up at him and he’s burning a hole staring at her that hard. Over his head I see Harry.

“Oh look I see my husband,” Harry’s spots me too, relief in his features. His eyes stay on my face as he walks towards me and his eyes keep my steady. I want to tell him something, but everything that just happened was so non-verbal and unreal that I think I made it all up. I must be because this was insane and there was no explanation other than I was drunk, and sadder than I realized. “Gotta go kids. Have fun. I think I need another shot.”

I remember the rest of the night in snapshots. I forget myself later, giving myself up to Harry after that. We actually make it to dawn in a mixture of love and declarations, filthy words and I love yous, laughter and deeper conversations. It’s everything we were. It’s just like he promised.

***

Life moves on and I don’t bring anything up to Harry. I couldn’t, either I’m wrong and get his hopes up, or he thinks I’d gone insane in my sadness.

I feel like Bridget avoids me the week after, I return to class and she sits there, even takes questions after class, but she makes an excuse of studying during office hours and I barely get a few words with her. The week after she has an exam and she skips out after class.

I’m antsy. I want to know more about her; from her. I’m tempted to find a way to access her profile, get more info via the school. But I wait.

Harry notices, as we prep for our honeymoon booked over the holidays, he continues to ask if I was alright. And I try to convince us both I was.

About 3 weeks after the wedding, it’s a Saturday afternoon. Harry’s making lunch and I’m sitting in a pile of our books trying to decide what can be donated.

“Can you get that?” Harry asks.

“Hm?”

“The door?” He says just as there’s another knock. I’d been so entranced in the book I’d randomly started reading a passage of I hadn’t even heard.

I scramble to get it before the next knock and nearly stumble back when I find Bridget at the door.

“Hiya,” she says with an awkward wave.

“Hi…Bridget. What…come in what’s going on?”

“Sorry? Now that I’m here I should have called first.” She comes in and I go further in, waiting for her to follow. She hesitates before peeling her wet boots off.

“Harry? We have a guest,” I announce as I take her further into the home. I guess she’d already been here once before. “Bridget what can we do you for? Did you need something?”

“Bridget!” Harry pops out of the kitchen into the adjoined living room when we get closer. “Nice to see you again! I’m nearly done lunch, did you want to stay?”

What was it with Harry randomly inviting Bridget to things that were not pre-discussed.

“Um, I no. I probably shouldn’t. I just, came by to talk?”

“Sure,” I lead her to our dining table. “Is it about school? Did something happen?”

I sit across from her and Harry mumbles something, turning the dials down on the stovetop before sitting beside me.

Bridget’s eyes dart everywhere, from me to Harry, to the pictures on the wall, the kitchen, the books all over the floor.

“I was just doing a clearout,” I say to fill the silence. “Hey you like books right? Look through that pile there later if you want any of ‘em.”

“Actually,” she tucks her hair behind her ear. I feel Harry tense beside me. “I have a book for you.”

She leans down to where her tote rests and pulls something out. She lays it on her lap first, where we can’t see it. When she looks up to us she has tears in her eyes and her chin quivers.

“Please,” she whispers before pausing. My stomach drops as I take her in. Her face is blotchy and her hair hangs around her face, hiding half of it. She’s definitely cried before coming here, and I almost feel like deja vu as she places the book on the table. “Please don’t hate me.”

She slides it across to us. It’s just a simple leather hardcover, about 30cm by 30cm. The thing in my gut, the suspicion or the intuition, it turns into a cackling ball of energy and moves up to my sternum. I put my hand over it, and then move it to Harry’s leg. He’s frozen like a statue, staring at the book.

“Please open it?” Bridget says with tears streaking her face.

When Harry doesn’t make a move I pull it the rest of the way towards us. I open the first page to a few baby pictures.

I’d never held her in my hands, never even saw her. I’d pushed her out into this world, into another’s arms. But somehow I know who this is.

“Bridget,” I don’t even look at her. I start to frantically flip through the pages. The baby grows, 2 months, 6 months, 1 years old. Another girl joins in some photos, she always has an arm around the other child. I flip and flip and flip and even though I’m expecting it the photo stops my breathing.

I stare at the clone, or the original, of the photo on my fridge.

I’m frozen until another photo is slid towards us. It comes into view: two teenagers on Halloween night. The guy is dressed like the girl, the girl is dressed like the guy.

I throw my chair back and in the time it takes to walk to Bridget she stands too.

“I’m so sorry,” she sobs but I just do what I wanted to do the second she was born.

I hug her. I hold her to my chest the way I never got to over 19 years ago. She belonged here. She never got to be here.

She was finally home. My daughter.

“Bridget,” I cry into her hair. Harry’s hair. She had Harry’s hair, his eyes. She got my nose and everything else. I was holding my daughter. She was in my arms, finally.

She really did look like Taylor as a baby.

“I’m sorry,” she cries again. “I was so scared and I screwed up and-“

“No.” I say fiercely. I push her out of the hug so I can grab her face. I wipe her tears and I nearly cry again. How many tears had I missed? Over skinned knees, playground taunts, first crushes and friendship breakups. How many tears had I missed? “Don’t say that. You’re here. You’re—Harry!”

I turn to him, why wasn’t he here?

He’s sat exactly where he was before. Frozen, staring at a spot between the picture of us and Bridget.

I let go of Bridget and move back to him.

“Baby,” I touch his arm and he springs up. Tears coat his lashes.

“‘Scuse me,” he brushes past me and heads out into the hall. Away from us. I want to go after him but I don’t want to leave Bridget—our daughter, alone.

“I’m sorry I knew I would ruin things I-“

“Please,” I want to go after him so bad but I go to Bridget and pull her into a gentler hug. When we part I keep hold of her shoulders. I never wanted to let her go. “He’s just processing it. He’s fine. He’s not mad at you I promise. Promise.”

She bites her lip, it reminds me of Taylor. She was a bit of everyone I knew and loved. She was the love that Harry and I always had. She was ours.

“I just got so scared when I tried to reach…I didn’t mean to deceive you. I didn’t. I felt terrible every day.”

“It’s okay,” I tuck her hair behind her ear. “There’s nothing to be sorry about-“

“But I saw you,” she cuts me off. “After I finally called you back and then just like, ghosted you. And every time I saw you at school it was like…I knew I was to blame. And it made me want to tell you even more but I got more scared any time I came close to it. I almost said it at your wedding—it would have been so stupid. Philippe stopped me.”

“I understand,” I did. I also didn’t care about any of it. She was here. That’s all I cared about. I wanted to know everything about her, I needed Harry here though. “Look Harry…your…Harry. I’m just going to check on him. You stay here and just…”

I trail off and leave. I had to be sure he was okay.

He’s not in the bedroom, or the office. I try the door to the toilet and it opens, he’s sitting on the edge of the tub with his head in his hands.

“She leave?” He asks in a hoarse voice.

“Oh baby,” I crouch in front of him. “No. She’s still here but I just wanted to check on you.”

“I’m pathetic,” he buries his hands in his hair. “I’ve been waiting my whole adult life for this and all I do is freeze. Her first impression is of her dad just freezing and then running away.”

I try not to laugh at his dramatic retelling. “Har you know that’s not true. She’s known you before this. It was a shock-“

“You were fine.”

“You know I…always suspected. Especially after the wedding.”

He looks up at that, finally. “You never said.”

“Harry, I felt crazy. Saying it out loud would have forced me to check myself into the psych ward. We all react differently, it doesn’t matter though. Our baby girl is here. The day we talked about!”

He takes a deep breath, and then another one. I guide him to stand and he looks so limp and sad that I squeeze him in a hug. “She doesn’t care how you reacted. She just wants to know you.”

Harry sighs again, he splashes his face with water and we walk out. I was nervous for him.

We walk back into the living room and my heart sinks when Bridget isn’t there. But her things are?

A few steps further and she’s at the stovetop, stirring a pot.

“Oh sorry,” she steps back and nearly throws the spatula into the pot. “It was boiling a lot and-“

“Bridget,” Harry ignores most of what she’s saying and she freezes at the sound of her name. He’s a foot away from her now. I watch him raise a hand to her face and then drop it. His face is a cross between heartbreak and awe as they drink each other in. I wait in anticipation.

“Hi,” she finally says shyly. But it breaks the ice. Harry pulls her into a hug and she returns it tenfold from the looks of it. I can’t tell who’s crying, but I give them their moment as I turn the dials off on the stovetop.

It was just a regular Saturday, except it wasn’t. Our worlds exploded with our past and was putting itself back together again, all the old broken pieces were being mended back together with love. My chest drowns in it, I can barely breathe. In Harry’s arms, there’s no denying she’s ours.

***

“Thank you,” Bridget says as we tuck into dinner. Harry’s lunch prep had gone cold as we’d all sat down and talked about how Bridget found us (looking me up, finding out I was teaching a course she was interested in, forcing her friend Philippe to take it to see if I was who she thought I was), and going through her album. I found out more about her sister Louisa and her parents. It was weird seeing pictures of them, in my mind they were the people that took my baby as their own and for Bridget they were mum and dad.

We finally decide to do something about food when our stomachs rumble. Harry goes back to cooking, showing Bridget what he’s doing until she leaves to take a call. I recognize Philippe on the caller ID.

I take Bridget’s place but I’m more of an extra weight tied to Harry’s back as I hug hun from behind. We don’t even have words on what this all means to us. For now, just touching each other keeps us grounded, it keeps is in what was happening together.

Bridget comes back from the call when we’re nearly done.

“I just want to say I am sorry—and I know you said not to be,” Bridget says quickly before I can get a word in. “But I never meant to deceive the both of you. My plan was to take your class, leave the letter and then talk. I Googled you so much it felt like I knew you. Yet when we spoke in your office that day, you felt familiar but In a different way than the person I studied. I just liked you so much, and I wanted you to like me. I was scared maybe you wouldn’t. So I just screwed the plan and messed up everything.”

“Hey,” Harry hands her a tissue and she takes it. Under the table he squeezes my hand. “It’s in the past.”

“I know. Still made me feel awful. And I couldn’t tell you but I also couldn’t stay away. I applied for TA and, it felt like having a friend and a sister and a mentor all in one. And I…I screwed up. I took it too far. And then you invited me to your wedding—I got to attend my parents’ wedding! It was so absurd. I couldn’t stop crying.”

Sounded like me. But I don’t say anything. We listen to her attentively.

“I only told my sister. I wanted to tell you two before I told my parents.”

I think about my parents. Harry’s. I didn’t want to overwhelm her but I couldn’t wait to introduce her to everyone that already loved her.

“I just hope…no, I know I hurt you two a lot. I didn’t mean to. I am really sorry about it all.”

“Bridget,” Harry’s hand comes down on hers. “What’s done is over. There are so many things we wish we did differently but ultimately it’s all done. All that matters is you’re here, now. You’re our daughter we never got to meet and you’re finally here.”

Harry’s voice cracks on the last word and he sits back and laughs away the tears. “Sorry. I’m a mess today aren’t I? Your first impression of me is a crying mess.”

“That’s not my first impression,” Bridget laughs but her eyes also fill with tears. “That night at the pub. When I saw you two together I nearly bloody fainted! When I looked you up y/n, there’d been an old wedding registry with another bloke. But then seeing you two together?! I just couldn’t believe it—I thought I dreamed it. And then I nearly cried because my bio parents were somehow together?? And the way you just stared into my soul it felt like you knew who I was.”

I laugh, remembering but also knowing exactly what look Bridget was talking about. “He does have a piercing look doesn’t he?”

“Yeah. It could gut someone!”

“That makes it sound awful!” Harry laughs. “Don’t say that.”

“It nearly gutted me! I really thought oh shite—“ Bridget freezes and looks between us like we were gonna scold her for swearing and I nearly leap across the table to hug her again then. “I uhm, I thought you knew who I was.”

“We thought it then,” I let my eyes roam over her. I realize I’d always been a mother, despite not having my daughter. Holding her earlier had awoken an instinct in me and now every time I look at her I feel a rush of love and something fierce. I wonder if Harry felt it too. “But we thought we were mental!”

Her phone chimes as we laugh. She flips it around and then tucks it into her purse.

“You need to take that?” Harry asks.

“No it’s just Philippe. He was at the wedding? I was just talking to him, I hadn’t texted him in a while he wanted to know how it went.”

“Philippe,” I say with a knowing smile. Bridget blushes and Harry asks what he’s missing out on so I fill him in.

“He sounds like a good lad,” Harry comments.

“A good lad?” I repeat. “Are you hearing him?”

Bridget laughs behind her hand and I can’t stop staring at her. I have to force myself to go back to eating.

“He is. I might have told him about how I felt?”

“Wow,” I put my fork down. “You’re confessing an awful lot lately.”

She blushes even deeper. And suddenly I’m grateful of the weird and layered way she’d come into our lives. Despite hiding the truth, it had allowed us to get to know each other as people first. Without any baggage or give me any inclination to fit who I thought she should be onto who was in front of me.

I got to know her for the young woman she was first, so did Harry in a way. And I would be forever grateful for that despite all the pain in between.

“Sorry,” I get up. The affection was overflowing from my cup. “I’m going to give you another hug because I just can’t believe all this.”

“Ohh,” Bridget stands to meet me and we wrap our arms around each other. Here was a girl I already knew, here was my daughter waiting to be known.

“God, she really is our daughter.” Harry quips from his side of the table. He explains when Bridget looks over at him, “y/n is known to be a big touchy person, I’m kinda like that too.”

“Oh my god,” she smiles at us. “I’m like that too! My sister hates hugs. My dad’s 2 pats on the back man, 3 if he’s feeling a lot. I always wondered if…”

She trails off. It seems to hit all of us all over again every so often. For me it’s when she talks about her mum and dad and it’s not Harry and I. The reminder that she went 19 years becoming her own person that we now were catching up on.

For her, it seems it was realizing all the parts of us that were in her.

“You got Harry’s hair, and eyes.” I comment.

“I did! I realized that as soon as I saw a photo online. But I do look a bit like you.”

“You do! I should show you some younger pictures of us and our families. You’ll see more similarities.”

“Wow. So you have a younger sister. How about you Harry?”

“Older sister. Seems we all have sisters.”

Bridget and I make eye contact, remembering a conversation we had what feels like ages ago about having sisters.

We continue our dinner, swapping stories and filling her in on anything she wants to know. She leaves after, claiming to have to get back home, she had an exam on Monday to study for.

When she leaves Harry and I can’t stop talking about her. Or gushing would be more accurate.

“Did you see the way she laughs?” I’d tell him. “Pure you!”

“The way she tucks her hair back,” he would retaliate. “Just like you. You did that especially back in secondary.”

We talk until we’re exhausted, crawling into bed just staring in wonder. There were still so many details to figure out, so many things to cover, it could drown a person thinking of it all.

But like an anchor in the sea, Harry and I fall asleep with hand clasped together. We keep each other buoyed amidst it all.

It was going to take time for this all to sink in but all I’ve ever had was time, and questions. I think I was finally getting time and answers.

Age 39:

Harry’s pov: Having our daughter in our lives is simple and complicated at the same time. At first there were a lot of things to untangle but as time went on, the knots loosened until our lives became their own knots, tangled into each other.

Meeting her parents, the people I met once many years ago, was likely the strangest part. They already felt so familiar as soon as they greeted us in a warm embrace, as if we were there own children. I guess the last time they saw us we were.

“Oh look at you,” Bridget’s mum had squeezed us tight. Her dad had pat us three times and we took it to mean as much as a hug.

In my mind they were always the age they had been then. They were probably around the age we are now. Seeing them sport greys and fine lines, it was like stepping into a time portal.

Lou, Bridget’s sister, eyes us for the first little while before warming up and sharing all kinds of stories—especially the embarrassing kind with us.

When Bridget meets Y/n’s family, I can tell they’re loud and overwhelming at first but we’re all surprised when Taylor embraces Bridget and takes to her immediately.

She brings out old pictures they had of Y/N and I, but every time she says, “your mum and dad…” when she talks about us through the pictures, I notice y/n protesting less and less.

It makes me feel funny, I keep thinking I was going to wake up and find out it had all been a dream.

“This feels very full circle to me,” y/n’s mum says. She’s watching Taylor talk about her baby bump—she was 3 months along. “I saw Bridget as a wee baby when they handed her over to her parents. I remember running late to hospital and making it to the room just in time to see it. I blinked and now she’s in my living room!”

“Sometimes I feel the same way,” I confess.

My family is slightly quietier but they all fuss over our daughter. They ask a million questions and when it’s all over we take Bridget for ice cream. It’s a pseudo-recreation of a life we never had.

Bridget eases into it too. At first she had bouts of disappearing on us. No more than a couple days. But we give her space, understanding it was overwhelming.

Every time I see her, I see her mum—y/n. I was never there when y/n gave birth. We had to drive up from London when we got the news and by the time I got there the dust had settled.

I never even had the potential of seeing her. I’d always been more sympathetic of y/n; her loss had been physical, mine was slightly more abstract.

Even though I’d spent every year since regretting that I wasn’t there to at least glimpse her, I’m glad now I hadn’t been there to see her. If I had to live the last 18 years with this feeling in my chest I don’t think I could have lasted that long. I don’t know how y/n did it. It’s a concoction of deep unconditional love, and tenderness, and recognition, wrapped in a shell of protectiveness. It took me a while to sort through it all but I had a conversation with my parents one night at dinner Y/n and I had visited. And they’d laughed because they had told me that was simply what being a parent was.

“Maybe she regrets it,” I had said the second time she ghosted us. Really it had just been over a day where she hadn’t gotten back to us. But I couldn’t help the overthinking, being tuned into any potential of loss with our daughter.

Somehow, y/n was the cool headed between us two in these moments. Maybe it was being a mum, maybe it was knowing Bridget beforehand, but she was very in sync with her.

“She needs space. The last thing we want her to be is overwhelmed too. Now don’t overwhelm yourself love, at least she’s in our lives.” She’d say.

It takes us the start of the summer and all those meets later for Bridget to finally feel at ease.

We invite her on a road trip, we were renting a place in the Cotswold for a few days and told her to bring Philippe. When she doesn’t even hesitate to say yes Y/n tells me we’d done it: she was finally more comfortable than overwhelmed.

“Y/N made me a better man,” I say after a couple drinks. We’re all sat around a fire outside the house. Despite it being a warm day of hiking the night had cooled significantly and we’d decided that boozy hot cocoas was the way to go. “I’ve lost my ways a lot of times as an adult. But she’s always been my north star. Even when we got back together she led me to being sober and getting my shite together.”

“Oh…” Philippe looks down at his drink. “Are you…”

“No,” I laugh, Philippe was the most-conscientious teen I’d ever met. “I got sober to get my life in order. But…it’s in order now. I haven’t done anything crazy for over a year now.”

A little before our wedding I decided I wanted to end my sobriety. It had been a thought for months, and I had waited before giving in. But I really felt more in control of my life. I faced my life decisions head on, I confronted my past with y/n’s help, and I didn’t think I’d lose control again. It had been a shaky first week but I was right. It was a proud moment for me.

“You two really have something special,” Bridget comments.

“They do,” Philippe adds. “I can’t believe you got your happy ending after so many years!”

“Yeah,” y/n says as I lay my hand on her thigh, palm up. “Y’know what they say about loving someone and letting them go.”

“I guess you did that with me,” Bridget says so quietly we almost don’t hear her. But out here in the countryside we do.

“We didn’t want to,” I remind her.

“No I know.” She smiles, it’s a bit sad. Philippe tugs her closer. I could see how much he cared for her in that small gesture. “I’m not saying it like that. I hear your story and I just imagine how different my life would have been if I was raised by my, by you two. I wouldn’t have this life. And I really like this life.”

She looks at Philippe and I feel y/n squeeze my hand. She often said they reminded her of us when we were younger; the kind of love you’d do anything for.

“But you two loved me enough to let me go. To let each other go. It’s fucking sad but it’s beautiful. Life’s weird.”

“Here here,” Y/N raises her nearly empty cup of hot cocoa. “Life’s weird, sad, beautiful, but lately my life’s been full of so much love. I wish I could sell all the excess, I think I could solve a lot of world problems with it.”

“Wow,” I lean over and kiss the top of her head. “That’s one hell of a speech.”

“I have a speech,” Philippe stands, a little tipsy, and clears his throat. Bridget rolls her eyes but they shine for him. “Bridget you’re the love of my life. Since we were 13. But Harry and Y/N, I think I love you too. Ever since we were 15, I’ve watched Bridge struggle for answers about her past. And you two have given her all the answers, welcomed her—and me actually, into your lovely life. I’ve watched her become old Bridge but even more confident. I’m falling harder for her these days. And I can’t thank you guys enough.”

“Aw Philippe come here,” y/n lets of my hand to walk around and give him a hug. How quickly strangers became family.

Bridget grumbles about being left out and joins the hug. Soon I join in too. I want to create a mold of this moment, I think as I squeeze them against me, I’d make it out of plaster and let it dry. Any time we wanted, we could always find our way back to this moment here.

Age 40:

Y/N and I watch our daughter cross the stage. Beside us are our parents and in front of us sits Bridget’s parents and her sister. She has a whole army cheering for her. This was the first milestone event we could all really show up for, and show up we did.

“I can’t believe this,” I was so proud of her. I know the kudos went to her parents, and herself, but I beam with pride. Honestly Bridget could spin in a circle in front of me and I would be a proud dad.

“We need to get photos,” mum leans over and says so seriously, as if we hadn’t planned on getting a million already.

We have a framed picture in our hall, Y/N and I on our wedding day, our daughter in between us. Her graduation photo is definitely making it. She makes fun of this wall, calls it the Styles hall of fame, and I never mention it but she always lingers a few second longer in front of the photo of the three of us.

I do too.

“It makes me so sad you won’t be so close to me anymore,” my mum tells Bridget later. We’re all piled in our flat, drinks and celebratory cake in everyone’s hands.

It reminds me of mine and y/n’s 40th birthday, we had gathered our family and friends here and it was some of their first times meeting our daughter. Today is more intimate, and focused on Bridget.

“I know it makes me sad too, but I’ll be here often, visiting Philippe.”

“Only visiting Philippe?” I raise a brow.

“Is there someone else I’m supposed to be visiting?” She mirrors my raised brow.

As Bridget’s gotten more comfortable, me and her could banter for hours if you let us, it’s one of those things that brought us closer together—having the same sense of humour. It’s allowed us to have just as deep heart-to-hearts, a handy joke always close to the surface.

Y/N always says seeing me like that, thoughtful and silly, reminds her of the boy she fell for. I can’t deny that I’ve been feeling closer to my 20 year old self than my 40 year old self lately.

“She’s too cheeky,” Bridget’s mum says. “But I have to say I’ll be glad to have her back.”

Lou, Bridget’s sister, was moving to Wales. Apparently she wanted to know more about her background, and take a trip with her bio mum to visit her bio dad.

I think Bridget was moving back to Coventry to keep her parents’ loneliness away; she said she would commute to Birmingham for school. Even though she got accepted into law schools in London, going to a uni close to her parents just showed me how close she was to her parents. It was a bittersweet feeling.

“I’ll have somebody to watch cricket with again,” her dad says.

“Ohh,” Bridget throws her sister a side-eye. “I love cricket…”

We all laugh at her complete lack of concealing her true feelings.

Later that night, it’s just Bridget’s parents and us. The kids are on the balcony talking.

“I know we’ve said it before,” I say after a long silence. We’d just been watching the kids talk and laugh outside. “But I want to say thank you again.”

Bridget’s dad shakes his head. “It was the greatest pleasure of our lives getting to raise those two girls.”

He looks over at his wife and they smile at one another. Seeing them interact, I’m grateful that somehow fate had led us to them. While Y/N and I were figuring life out, while I fucked up a lot of things, she was raised on a steady and stable foundation.

“She’s incredible,” I murmur. “She’s gonna be a lawyer. She’s going to change the world.”

“She sure will,” her mum says. “We should be thanking you two. For giving us Bridget. I know it wasn’t easy, you told me you thought about her nearly every day. But we can’t imagine our lives without her.”

We sit in a comfortable silence, looking out at the kids until they notice and start to ask questions through the glass.

“She’s happier,” her mum says smiling at Bridget and Lou exaggerating their words through the glass. “She stopped being like this before she left for uni. We thought we lost her but…I think everything worked out for the best.”

Y/N glances at me. Her eyes crinkle when she finds me looking at her first, her eyes steady me as she says what I was thinking, “I think so too.”

Age 45

Your pov: “When did she say she would be here?”

“6?” Harry says for the tenth time.

“It’s 6:20 do you think something happened? She hasn’t texted has she?”

“My love,” Harry puts down the cutlery he was arranging on the table and holds my face in his hands. “They’re driving from Coventry, they probably hit some traffic.”

“Maybe I should call her?”

Harry sighs and squishes my face.

“Don’t! You’ll make more wrinkles.” I warn.

“I love your wrinkles,” Harry kisses my forehead right where the pesky wrinkles had been growing deeper over the last few years despite the additions to my night routine.

Harry always said our wrinkles were just the stories of our lives showing through. I told him to get himself undereye cream.

“You don’t think I’m aging handsomely?” He strokes the moustache he started growing last year. At this age, even I couldn’t deny it made him even more attractive.

“Well it’s no good if you’re ageing handsomely and I age like a troll.”

“I will love you if you age into a troll.”

“But will you love me if I turn into a worm?”

“Do you even have to ask? I’d buy you the best soil and keep you in a beautiful pot.”

“You wouldn’t take me fishing?” I ask. He sighs. Last year while we were taking a trip up north for Lou’s wedding, we’d gotten into a fight and when I asked him the question while he was still stewing he said he’d take me fishing. It had, ironically, broken the iciness of his anger and we’d laughed about it so hard he’d nearly had to pull over.

“I wouldn’t do that to you,” he wraps me into his chest nearly suffocating me.

I’d spent half my life with a lot of difficulties, but life now felt easy compared to it. I had the privilege of getting older with the man I adored, got to watch my daughter flourish as an adult and a lawyer, watch her get married to the love of her life, and all the while live comfortably in the heart of this city I called home.

When Bruno starts barking though, I gasp and push myself off of Harry, “that’s them!”

Bruno continues to bark as I rush to the door. We’d got him a couple years ago as a pup and I can’t believe it had taken us that long to get a dog. He filled our lives with laughter and long walks. We loved him.

“Down.” I say to him. I open the door and hold my hands out while Bruno runs in circles beside me.

“Ahhh sorry we’re late!” Bridget steps into my hug and I tug Philippe’s hood so he can join. Bruno goes for Philippe when they walk in, he’d gotten obsessed with him after Philippe took care of him while Harry and I took an anniversary trip last year.

“Where are my hellos!?” Bridget says to Bruno and he barks, standing on his back legs to paw at her leg.

I hadn’t seen the two of them since March, that was 6 months ago. It had been their wedding, and they’d gone on a month long honeymoon after that, after which Harry and I had taken time off to road trip around Europe with Bruno, and then time had just zipped by.

After a hearty dinner, Harry and I carry out the birthday cake we’d been hiding.

“You didn’t have to do this!” Bridget fans her face but we treat it like we do any special occasion, plus making up for all the ones we’d missed. We get photos and exchange presents, she cries reading the cards and the whole time she says she had a present for us.

It’s a small bag, Harry and I guess that it was something for Bruno but when we take out a box it doesn’t sound like much when we shake it.

“Is this a prank gift? There’s nothing in it?” Harry asks.

“Open it!” He was making me antsy.

“You open it,” he hands me the box. Bridget and Philippe stare intently at my hands.

I undo the bow and slowly open the box. There’s a small square of tissue paper, and then a piece of paper. I remove both but something catches my eye.

I flip the paper over and stop breathing.

“Is that-“ Harry stops talking too. We stare at the piece of paper in our hands. It looks so much like one I had held 28 years ago. But it’s not.

“Bridge,” I look up at the couple. The parents-to-be.

“We’re having a baby,” Bridget says. Philippe and her are gripping hands and I throw everything off of me to launch myself at her.

“A baby!” I hear Harry say and joining us. “You’re having a baby! Y/n!”

“I never thought we’d be grandparents,” I look up at Harry.

“Those wrinkles were coming in for a reason,” he teases.

We never did have any other kids. Quite frankly, neither of us wanted any. When we first got together we were just starting to get comfortable with the reminder that we had a daughter out there and we could talk about her freely with each other. It felt like having a third person in our little family.

After Harry proposed, while we planned our wedding, we talked about it but we never thought it felt right. We both had first marriages where a lack of conceiving had just put a strain on the relationship we didn’t think we needed. We’d also felt like it was betraying something, before we met our first child.

When Bridget did reach out, it became about catching up on lost time. And then with her in our lives we knew what we suspected all along. We had each other, and that was enough. Bridge was our bonus. And getting to be aunt and uncle to our nieces and nephews it was enough. It was a full enough life.

We never even dreamed in our 20s we’d get to be parents and now we would get to be grandparents! I never realized until this moment that I wanted this. Really wanted it.

“Do you know the gender?” Harry asks.

“No,” Philippe answers. “We were thinking of doing one of those reveal parties? But not for a couple months.”

“Wow,” my hands drift down to Bridget’s belly and I remember I had something. I leap away from the group and find the box in my closet, it’s painted pink with random collages from old magazines. It hosts old diaries, photos, a hospital bracelet, and an ultrasound.

“This was you once,” I show her the picture when I get back. “I carried you like that once upon a time.”

She takes it with teary eyes, holding it close to her face to make out the shape of her. She hands it to Philippe and grabs my hands.

“I’ve thought about it before, but when I got pregnant I couldn’t wait to tell you-“

“She kept telling me I had to make a trip out to London just so she could give you the news.” Philippe interrupts, eyes scanning the ultrasound still.

“No really,” Bridget laughs. “I did. It’s like I got this new perspective.”

She puts my hands on her belly and covers mine with hers. I feel everything at once then, all the heartbreak I ever went through to get here.

“I can’t imagine giving this baby up. And it’s barely 3 months. What you were willing to do to give me a better life-“

She breaks off and Philippe squeezes her shoulder. I watch my daughter try to gain control of her emotions. I remember when I was pregnant with her, anything would set me off.

“It must not have been easy. After carrying me like this for 9 whole months. Thank you-“ she looks up to where Harry’s standing. I barely register his hand on my shoulder. “Thank you as my mum and dad, for making the hardest decision I can imagine ever making, so I could have something you knew you couldn’t provide.”

I reel my tears in, save them for later that night in bed while Harry holds me tight against him.

Right now I kiss my daughter and tell her what a good mother she will make. I tell her and Philippe how proud I was of them, how excited, how wonderful this was.

Age 46

The day we meet our granddaughter is seared into my brain. We get the call at 8:35pm, Harry and I were staying in a B&B in Coventry despite Bridget’s mum insisting we stay with her. We’d been here all weekend, booked it all week, not wanting to miss Bridget’s delivery date.

“Y/N she’s here,” her mum whispers into the phone. Her voice is filled with joy and giddiness. “She’s here.”

“We’re coming,” I say. Harry’s already at the door and we rush out into the night to see our granddaughter.

She has the perfect little face, and when she finally wakes up I gasp when I see Harry’s eyes looking back at me. I turn to him, to see if he noticed, but he’s teary-eyed and gazing at the baby in awe. I soak it in for a second, imagining this exact look if we’d kept our baby so many years ago.

Bridget’s parents had given us the room, to give us a moment alone, and I can’t be more grateful. Bridget encourages us to hold her and as her soft body is pressed into my body I let out a sob and hand her over to Harry. I excuse myself and step outside the room.

Lou’s kids sit on the floor outside, playing with whatever toys are spilling out of a miniature backpack. I focus on the flashy colours, trying to calm down, counting the number of toys falling out.

My life was a 180 from 10 years ago. This moment would go down in our history books as one of the best days of our lives.

But I can’t deny the bittersweet. The experience threatens to push me into the bitter past of not even getting to hold Baby Bridget. But with it comes an undeniable sweetness of getting to experience this now.

I take a deep breath and walk back in. Harry and Bridget stop mid-sentence and turn to me. Bridget’s face is streaked with tears, Harry’s looks concerned but I smile. He sits with the pink bundle to his chest and I ache.

“Don’t look so obvious you were talking about me,” I try a joke.

“Are you alright?” Bridget asks.

“May I hold her?” I ask in return.

I sit on the edge of the bed and she’s placed in my arms; she’s perfect. Just as perfect as Bridget must have been.

“She’s got Philippe’s hair,” I gently stroke the wispy blonde strands.

“She’s got my eyes, her grandpa’s eyes.”

I look at Harry. And he catches the stricken look on my face when Bridget tips forward and whispers to her baby.

“Look baby, this is your mumma’s mum, and your mumma’s dad. You’ve got his beautiful eyes. Say hi to grandma!”

My throat tightens. “Bridge.”

She leans away, her eyes dart between us. “I know I call you Y/N and Harry. It made it easier at first but…you are my mum and dad. Even though I have another pair. You are my mum and dad. And I want her to know you like that.”

“Oh love,” Harry leans down and kisses the top of our daughter’s head. She keeps her green eyes trained on me, grasping my hand that’s wrapped under her baby’s.

I mouth a thank you, my voice couldn’t pass through the block in my throat. She squeezes my hand and it sets the baby off. Remembering when my nephews were this young, I just hand her back to Bridget knowing she only wanted her mum.

Harry and I stay in the waiting room. We couldn’t go home, even though we had spent our allotted time we had inside the room, we stay there.

We watch Lou’s kids as Bridget’s family gathers in her room. We stay as they fall asleep, draped over us. I remember when Taylor’s kids were this small, they would fall asleep anywhere.

We talk in whispers, I don’t remember what about exactly. Mostly how excited we were. How there was so much to look forward to. How different our lives looked a decade ago.

“One day we’ll tell our grandkids,” I remember Harry saying. “We’ll tell them all about us, how we met, how our love burned so bright it shone in the sky. We lost each other but our love was always there to guide us back home.”

“We’ll see them grow up, all the memories we missed.”

“We’ll change diapers.”

“We’ll change diapers,” I giggle, half-delirious by the lack of sleep. It was probably 2am and I was tired.

When I gaze up at Harry I remember him holding our granddaughter. I replace her with Bridget. For a minute I allow myself to imagine how that would have been.

“I think you would have made an amazing mum if we did things differently,” Harry whispers into my hair.

“You too.” I whisper back.

“An amazing mum? You think?” The edge of his lips tug upwards.

“Harry,” I warn. We had kids sleeping on us we were trying not to wake.

“I love you.” He says in response. “To the stars and back.”

On our drive home I can’t stop looking at him. I always wondered how it would be like to grow old with someone; when I was younger and watch my own parents celebrate anniversaries. And then when I was older and my first marriage was so rocky.

But thinking about it now is like a simple mathematical equation. You take two lives, two individuals, and you bracket them in love. You add an exponent—the decision to continue choosing each other. And you get a lifelong commitment. No matter the situation, no matter the challenges or the changes, you choose to choose each other.

His side profile lights up by an oncoming car. For a second he’s the same boy I feel in love with, a few more gray hairs, a few more wrinkles, and a moustache. But he’d always be the boy I followed out to the roof, who held my hand in our high school hallway, the one who turned an I into a we when I got pregnant, I see the man I had coffee with after a run-in at the Whole Foods, I see the broken heart from a harsh life sitting on the steps of a church, I see a bookworm, I see a father, a husband, and now a grandfather. I see the one person who knows me like the back of his hand. The one I am home with always.

“What is it?” Harry asks as we pull into our b&b. “Have you been asleep this whole ride or have you been staring at me?”

“Staring at you?” I ask. “You think I was staring at you the whole ride?”

“Well you were really silent. And facing me

“I was thinking.”

“About me?”

“Why are you so desparate!? Do I not show you enough love regularly?”

“I could always use more,” Harry looks half asleep as we reach our door.

“The people are right: you give someone a hand and watch as they take the whole arm,” I tease.

“When you gave me your hand, I made you a wife.” Harry retorts.

“Ooh,” I poke him. “I have to say that’s a good comeback for being half-asleep.”

Harry grins back. “You keep me sharp.”

“And you keep me happy. Now open the door so I can stop freezing out here!”

We walk into the warmth of our b&b.

For so much of our lives, our past decisions haunted us. We let so much go. Now life was repaying us, returning it all back, with interest.

***

In a small b&b in the middle of a town called Coventry, two lovers crawl into bed. They’d just become grandparents and they carry an exhausted buzz about them as they try to fall asleep. They’re both thinking of the other, of their daughter, of the tiny bundle they held in their arms today.

Some 20 minutes away their daughter lays in a hospital bed, an exhausted buzz putting her to sleep. She dreams of her mother who gave her up, how she had found her parents in the end, and dreams about the kind of mother she’ll be.

A few doors down lay her newborn daughter, she doesn’t dream of much, not yet, but she’s in for a lifetime of love.

Most of life is what we made it. Y/N and Harry loved deeply enough to make it.

———————————————

TAGLIST: @quinnwritezz @unknownnbihh @dilfhrrys @umadirectioner @hermionelove @anonymous-91 @meganxfddf

#harry styles fic #harry styles x reader #writingsfromhome #harry styles #harry styles fanfic #harry styles imagine #fic #harry styles angst #harry styles fluff #harry styles series #if you love something #dad!harry #its not my fave but I was getting tired of tweaking it #to shorten it #theres just so much to catch up on #kinda nervous #but also kinda done

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absgay · 11 months

Text

⋇⋆✦⋆⋇ “You love to play hard to get. Get you like it was an accident. You like me more when I just don’t give a shit. You’re hard to get, hard to get.” ⋇⋆✦⋆⋇

words count: 1.8k

“You want me to want you, want me to watch you and need you."

warnings: 18+ minors dni, grammar, f*buddy!abby, college!abby, some jealousy, abby is an asshole and idk, i’m not good at this, smut.

first part here: fetish.

Abby was miserable. It’s been twelve days, twelve fuckin’ days. You haven’t talked to her in almost two weeks, dammit. No texts, no nudes, no calls, nothing. But, you guys weren’t together, which means it shouldn’t even bother her, right?

She looked at you from across the room as you walked in class and sat down by the window, distancing yourself from the blond.

“Hey!” It was some girl named Nancy or Nathalie, Abby wasn’t even sure. She glanced at the redhead as she sat down next to her and frowned. “You don’t mind? I don’t wanna be alone.” Abby shrugged.

She regretted it as the redhead talked, talked, talked and talked, the entire time. Abby wasn’t listening to be honest, humming and nodding from time to time as she remained focused on the only thing that truly mattered to her: you. But, the redhead was clearly interested in Abby. She was touchy and very flirty, which caught your attention as you stared at them with an annoyed face. You looked back at the teacher as soon as Abby caught you in the act, the blond smirking as she pulled out her cellphone.

“what are you doing tonight, do you have any plans?” she texted. Abby waited and looked back at you as you clicked on the notification and started typing. God, she was anxious. Is this how people usually feels whenever they text someone? It sucked. “party at jessica’s.” you sent. “who the fuck is jessica?” Abby texted back, staring at the screen with disappointment as you didn’t respond.

She sighed and laid back against the chair. “Yeah— Sorry to interrupt but do you know anyone named Jessica?” Abby asked the redhead.

Nathalie or something nodded. “I do.” she responded. “We’re both Kappa members and there’s a party at our house tonight.” Abby hummed, intrigued. “Do you wanna be my date?”

She shouldn’t use this random woman, but it’s such a nice coincidence, and she’s an asshole after all. “Sure.” she responded. “Here’s my phone, you should add your number, it’ll be easier.” A great way to get somebody’s actual name.

Turns out the redhead’s name was, in fact, Nancy. And she was nice, enthusiastic and still too talkative. Abby felt uncomfortable, she didn’t even know what to say, they didn’t have much in common. A few months back, she would've skipped the whole conversation and dragged the redhead straight to bed. Anyway, she doesn’t wanna do that anymore, for some reason. She could tell the redhead wanted more than a conversation though: commenting on her athletic skills, appearance and obsessing over the blond’s arms.

“Do you want something to drink?” Nancy asked. “I’m thirsty.” Abby hummed, embarrassed as Nancy winked at her. “I’ll get us something, wait here.”

It’s been two hours and you weren’t anywhere to be seen, not in the living room, not in the kitchen, not in the garden, not upstairs and definitely not in Nancy’s bedroom. Abby had looked everywhere, you weren’t at the party. She decided it was time to leave after an embarrassing altercation with the redhead.

Abby walked back to the dorms, defeated. She looked at your room from down the hallway as she stepped in the building and decided to try it. She stopped at the door and knocked once, twice, an anxious bubble overwhelming her stomach.

“Oh— Hey, Abby!” your roommate said, all smiles and energetic. The room smelled like alcohol and weed. Abby glanced at the man sitting on the brunette’s bed and chuckled. “What’s up? We were about to rock the boat in there.”

Abby laughed at your roommate’s honesty. “Yeah— I can see that. I’m looking for someone, stubborn, annoying, cute. I think she lives with you.”

The brunette nodded. “She offered to leave, since we needed the room. She’s supposed to be at the library.” Abby thanked her and headed back outside.

Of course the library was dead silent at this hour. And there you were, seated at some random table by yourself, studying under the dim lighting. You heard the blond’s footsteps as she approached and smirked.

“So— Jessica’s party.” Abby started. “Well— I’m not an expert when it comes to addresses around the campus but I’m pretty sure this isn’t the Kappa’s house, sweetheart.”

You hummed and looked back at your notes. “I never said I’d be there. You wanted plans, I gave you some.” Abby scoffed as she sat down next to you. “Shit— I’m really, really sorry." you said with an exaggerated tone. "Did you expect to see me at this party?”

Abby chuckled softly. “Wow— Someone’s in a silly mood.” She looked at you attentively as you read, then sighed. “We haven’t talked in days. Come on—” Abby leaned in towards you, elbows resting on her knees and hands clasped as she continued. “You wanna tell me what happened since our last conversation?”

You hadn’t expected the blond woman to be so direct. You cleared your throat and shrugged. “I told you, I’m seeing someone.”

“Yeah, right— Is someone here? In the room, with us?” Abby asked with an amused tone. “If you were actually seeing someone, you wouldn’t be alone at the library on a Friday night.” she continued. "Listen, I know you wanted to piss me off the other night with this story and congratulations, it fuckin’ worked.”

Well, technically you weren’t lying and deep down, Abby knew it. But it couldn’t be serious though, not after what happened the other night, right? She hoped so.

“How was your date with Nancy?” you asked. “She seemed very interested in you. I mean— She was all over you in class and wouldn’t stopped talking about you at lunch.” Abby smirked. “Did something happen?”

“Let me think…” Abby said. “There were so many women all over me tonight I— I need a minute to collect my thoughts.” She hummed as you rolled your eyes. “Actually— Now that I’m thinking about it, it’s none of your business.”

You snorted and threw your pen at the blond as she used your own words against you. “You’re a dick.”

“You know— You don’t have to stay here. It’s late, you could come with me and sleep at mine.” Abby offered. “I’m just saying— Your room is gonna be messy, it smelled like the 80s in there.”

“You’re so generous.” Abby winked. “God— That’s not what I meant!” you whined as she laughed. “I can’t believe she told you about the library. So, what? You’re stalking me now? That’s your new thing?”

“Yes.” Abby confirmed. “I’m obsessed with you.” you blushed as the words left the blond’s mouth innocently. “Does it turn you on?” You laughed and slapped her arm. “Come on— Don’t be shy. It’d be understandable, I’d be a really hot stalker.”

Abby’s frustration was highly noticeable as she stared at you deeply, waiting for something, anything to happen. She looked so good, it wasn’t fair. She was magnificent, a temptation, your own forbidden fruit. And yet you still managed to stay away from her for twelve days, almost two weeks, an eternity. It was pretty impressive. You couldn’t fuck it all up now, no matter how bad you wanted to.

“Abby.” you said. “We are not gonna have sex tonight.”

She frowned. “Excuse me— Sex? Dammit. Who said anything about sex? What makes you think I wanna have sex with you?” Abby asked. “Pervert.”

“Bitch.” you snapped back. The woman’s eyebrows raised as she grabbed your chair and pulled it closer to hers, effortlessly. “Come on— Abby. You’re distracting me.”

You blinked and swallowed hard, the blond’s head leaning dangerously close to yours as she smiled. God, she wanted you so much it was ridiculous.

“We’re just having a conversation.” Abby said as she looked at your mouth with desperation. “A nice conversation.”

The room remained quiet as your own heartbeat got too loud. You felt self-conscious and wondered if Abby could hear it and feel it too. Fuck, someone could’ve grabbed and touched the tension between you two; an invisible strength, vibrations between bodies and souls, created by intense glances and unspoken thoughts.

“I have an important test on monday.” you murmured which wasn’t even true, an attempt to run away. Possessed by impatience and lust, Abby impulsively grabbed the papers off your hands and threw them away.

You were meant to fall into each other’s arms. It needed to happen somehow, you both believed it was written at this point. One, two, three… Time stopped as your inner voice encouraged it and silenced your heart’s complaints: do it.

You sighed and grabbed the blond’s neck. Mouth collapsed and moans were shared as you both dived into the heat, letting it consume you entirely. Happily, Abby guided you as you moved and sat down in her lap throughout the kiss, chest heavy and cheeks warm. The woman’s rough hands wandered across your body, one sliding under your skirt to hold your thigh, the other travelling from your back to your neck as she deepened the kiss.

Abby pulled away breathless then cursed quietly. She hummed in delight, head falling backwards as you grinded against the blond’s clothed crotch in the nastiest way possible. You yelped as she suddenly slammed your body against the table, eyes filled with desire.

“Wait, Abby." you breathed as she stood between your legs. “We could get caught—”

She interrupted you with another kiss as she bent over the table. “Which is why you’re gonna have to be quiet.” She stepped back and stared at you, pulling your underwear down your legs.

You sighed in anticipation as she kneeled between your thighs and lifted your skirt outrageously slowly. Abby’s hands went to your hips and held them firmly as your legs were hanging over her broad shoulders. You hummed in satisfaction, the blond’s nose pressed against your clit, mouth wandering along your crotch with an undeniable eagerness. She listened carefully to each one of your short breaths, moans, whines, murmurs and almost came as you bucked against her mouth, shouting her name in pure bliss.

You looked down at the gorgeous woman between your legs and sat down on the wooden table as she breathed heavily, eyes bright and lips swollen. She stood and looked at you with admiration, all sweaty and breathless, all hers.

You didn’t think twice before grabbing the blond’s collar. “Abby— I need you.” you admitted. She groaned at your words, forehead pressed against yours and mouth dropping as you unzipped her pants.

(twelves days, huh?)

⋇⋆✦⋆⋇

next part: heaven.

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mint-yooxgi · 8 months

Text

Valiant - Yandere!Centaur!Yunho

Yandere AU & Centaur AU - First Person POV

Genre: Mature, Smutty Themes, Internal Monologue

Pairing: Yunho X Implied Chubby!Fem!Reader

Words: 1,939

Warnings: Princess as both a title and petname. Implied kidnapping. This is a Yandere story, it will contain themes such as stalking, violence, obsession, possessive natures, and just general overall creepiness and swearing. You have been warned.

A/n: Centaur!Yunho is a clumsy dork. That's it. That's the note. Also, this one is meant to be read like the Hyunjin drabble, where he's speaking at you the whole time! Anyways, Feedback is greatly appreciated! Enjoy!~

The Eleventh of The Feral Drabbles

“Don’t worry Princess, you’re safe with me. I won’t let those others hurt you any more. You’ll never feel trapped. You’ll never be lost. Just let me take care of you.

Hey, hey, it’s okay. I’ve got you now. Don’t be frightened. I’m still the same Yunho you love and know.

I’ll admit, showing myself to you like this wasn’t my original intention, but desperate times call for desperate measures. I couldn’t stand to see the way they were treating you, keeping you trapped-

Sorry, I know I probably shouldn’t bring up such traumatic events so soon after they happened. I just had to steal you away- I mean… save you. Yes, save you.

They were going to lock you up and throw away the key! They were going to keep you away from me!

I didn’t want that, either, Princess. The thought of never being able to see you again… well, it’s far too great to bear. Not only that, but the idea that they could keep someone as precious as you like a prisoner in your own home…

You see now why I had to step in?

Like I said before, you don’t have to be scared. I’m here to rescue you, of course! It’s probably a little weird for you right now, you’ve only ever seen my upper torso over the garden wall… You can just think of me as a talking horse! Well, it’s a bit literal, but-

There’s that laugh I love so much.

Hey, even if it’s only for a moment, bringing you joy sets my heart ablaze. I don’t want you to be scared anymore. With me, you never have to be.

Think of it this way, it’ll be like we always talked about: we’re running away together! They were going to force you to marry that- that- other creature for diplomatic purposes. Now, we can be free! You can be free. With me!

Oh, I know it’s quite jarring, but I’ve been living in the wilderness for some time now. It’ll definitely be different than what you’re used to, but fear not! I’m here to watch over and care for the both of us. So, don’t you worry, Princess, your valiant steed is here!

I can’t wait to show you our new home. If I’m being honest, I’ve already started preparing for your arrival a long time ago. I added some decor, I cleaned the whole place, I adjusted the bed…

Of course you’ll have your own separate room, don’t be silly!

No, no, I just tripped, don’t worry. I’m usually very steady on my feet. A stable ride, if you know what I mean.

I mean… What were we talking about again?

Oh! Right! Our- your new home.

Like I said, everything’s already in place. They won’t be able to find you out here, so you don’t have to worry about anyone coming to look for us. Besides, I’d fight them off for trying to steal you back, only to throw you right back into that dungeon they call a room.

Don’t worry, Princess, there’s a separate bathroom, a study, and I even made you a library. I know how much you like to read, and I could spend hours just watching you do anything and everything your heart desires. I already do, so it’s not like that will be too much of a difference.

What I meant to say was: I enjoy spending time with you.

There, not so creepy now! I promise, I only want what’s best for you, and I swear your privacy is at the forefront of my mind. Of course, we’ll have to figure out the sleeping situation, there’s only the one bed-

No, no! I swear you have your own room!

No, Princess, I don’t sleep in hay. It’s actually quite itchy. I have a hollow for myself right beside-

You know what, I’ll just show you when we get there. I bet you’re tired. Why don’t you just try to relax, and I’ll wake you when we get home. Get some rest, I promise to never let you fall.

That’s it, My Beauty. Lay your head on my shoulder and wrap your arms around me. I’ve got you.

Oh, why thank you! My kind usually runs a little warmer than normal, and I always do my best to maintain my coat as best as I can. I won’t bore you with the intricate details, but you don’t have to be shy when you want to touch me, Princess. In fact, I will always welcome your touch.

It’s not like I dream about it constantly, or anything…

What was that? Oh, I was just saying how the forest is quite dreamy today. Perfect for a stroll through the bush. There’s actually this little clearing that I’d love to bring you to, sometime. It has so many of your favourite flowers, and I think the view might just take your breath away.

You’d be correct! That clearing is where all the wildflowers I bring you come from. There’s always so many, and in your favourite colours, too. I can’t wait to show you all the spots I’ve chosen for us to live together in, and to finally be able to experience one another to our fullest extent.

Emotionally, of course. What did you think I meant, Princess?

May I incur from the way your arms just tightened around me that your thoughts were not so pure for a moment there? And now, you’re burying your face into the side of my neck… Therefore, I must be right.

You don’t have to be embarrassed, Princess. Thoughts of any kind are always welcome here. Well, unless they’re self-deprecating, or of self-doubt, or you thinking of leaving me, or you not thinking you’re pretty enough, or you thinking of someone else other than me, or you thinking of returning home, or- Kidding!

But seriously, Princess, I don’t want you thinking anything negative about yourself, or doubting your decision to run away with me. As soon as you have any whispers of those kinds of thoughts, you let me know, and I will ease them from your mind, in any and every way possible. I’m here for you, always.

Just rely on me; I’m all that you need. All that you’ll ever need.

Why don’t you take that nap, now, Princess? There’s still a bit of a ways to go until we reach home.

It’s not that far from where you used to be held captive- I mean… your old home. Really, it’s much faster when I’m running, but no distance is too great for me to traverse in order to get to you. You’re worth it. You make it worth it. Every. Single. Time.

The risk of getting caught by traders, or poachers, or even by the guards was worth all the time we spent together. I got to know the wonderful person that is you, and you got to learn about me, too! I’m just sorry I kept my true self from you until today. I didn’t want to scare you.

You’re smart, though, Princess. I’m sure you figured it out a long time ago. Seeing is always more difficult that believing sometimes.

Really? You never wondered how my torso could so easily clear the garden wall?

…You always thought I was standing on something? Well, I suppose I was! My love for you!

There’s that giggle again. See, you’ll be just fine. Absolutely nothing to worry about when you’re with me. After all, I’m a big, strong breed of man, capable of pleasing My Princess in whatever ways she desires! Anything you want, anything at all, I will provide for you. We’re life partners, now!

Oh, well, I suppose that will mean something a bit different to you than it does to me. Fear not! I’ll have plenty of time to explain later. For now, rest.

Yes. That’s it. I’ve got you, My Princess. Just close your eyes, and let all your worries melt away. I’ll hold you close, guarding you with my very life.

I’ll have you know I take protecting you and making you the happiest person ever very seriously. There is nothing I desire more than seeing you smile, and knowing it’s because of me is simply the greatest feeling in the world. Other than you calling me yours.

Princess! Oh, how my heart flutters! Did you seriously fulfill one of my greatest wishes with such ease on a whim?

Nope, I don’t care if you were teasing me. No take backs!

You’re mine, and I’m yours. That’s all there is to it.

Well, I’m glad to hear you like the sound of that, for I speak nothing but the truth. I will always be yours, Princess, and you will always be mine. No doubt about it.

I’m serious though, you should get some rest. There’s still quite a ways to go.

You can try and hide it, but I know the sound of your voice when it’s heavy with exhaustion, Princess. Just close your eyes and let the sounds of the forest, and my own voice lull you to sleep. I’ll make sure to hold you tight; I won’t let you fall.

There you go… That’s it…

You never have to worry about a single thing while I’m around…

Just close your eyes, and rest…

Out like a light, just like I thought…

You know, Princess, you’re so pretty, even when you sleep. It’s such a different feeling having you in my arms rather than simply fantasizing about it all the time. The press of your body against my own… oh, how I’ve longed for this.

My desire for you is the greatest thing I’ve ever know. You’ve consumed me in the best of ways, and now, I’ll get to consume you. Never shall we be parted again. Those imbeciles will never have a chance to reclaim you. Not after we cross back into my own territory. Bet you didn’t know you’ve been talking with a Prince this whole time.

Your Prince.

Has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it? I certainly think so…

You and I, we’ll lead a peaceful life. I promise you that. You will never know pain, you will never know hardship. I will always look after you, and our home. I swear to you that I will do everything in my power to make you happy, to please you to the best of my abilities.

We’ll make it work. It may take some time, but I promise to have you screaming my name to the stars in no time. I’ve heard my tongue can work wonders, and not to mention my fingers… There are so many ways in which I’ve longed to please you, My Princess, that countless nights have been spent thinking about all the ways in which I can. You’ll be pleasantly surprised with the ideas I’ve come up with. At least, I think so.

I hope so.

Oh, how these hands have longed to hold you, to grip you tight and never let you go. My lips have longed to caress your body, singing you praises during every hour of the day. My body is yours, and I hope you will come to cherish me just as I have always cherished you.

No more watching and waiting from the sidelines. No more pining from behind a wall. No more barriers. Only you, me, and our happily ever after.

I will never let anything come between us. I swear to you I won’t, because now that I have you… I’m never letting you go again.”

#cultofdionysusnet #yandere yunho #yandere ateez #yandere kpop #yunho scenario #yunho smut #ateez scenario #ateez smut #kpop au #kpop smut #kpop scenario #centaur au #fantasy au #chubby reader

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darkficsyouneveraskedfor · 6 months

Text

Carpe Noctem 23

Warnings: dark elements, noncon, age gap, gaslighting, manipulation, violence, blood, other dark elements. Proceed with caution. (short!reader)

Note: Please let me know what you think as it helps me a lot with ideas and I love interacting with you all.

Part of The Club AU

You set out your ingredients, trying to strategize what to do first. You have ideas, lots of ideas, and that sort of anxious motivation that keeps you from sitting still. Maybe it’s a need for distraction from the sudden swerve your life has taken, or your incessant urge to do everything for everyone, or maybe it’s just easier to lie when you look busy.

You don’t owe Lloyd the truth. The more you think about it, you barely really know him. And he said it himself, it’s just sex. Good sex. The best sex you’ve had, not that you have much to compare it to. So fuck your feelings, as he’d so eloquently proclaim.

Scones first. You’ve settled on a white chocolate and cranberry, but think that might be better kept until the festive season. You’re still in the throes of fall so the pumpkin walnut squares will like be the bigger hit. Oh, and the maple croissants. If you have time, you might experiment with some apple caramel creation too.

You prop your phone against the wall at the back of the counter. You put your music on a low din, keeping a base recipe open as you begin your first bowl of batter. The flour puffs out of the bake and dusts your shirt. Too late to remember the apron.

You add the rest of the dry ingredients and carefully stir. You bought a whole set of mixing bowls after you noticed Lloyd’s lack of essentials. You’ll see if you can expense that out with the ingredients. Your surprise might not go over well for your wallet.

You add the butter and carefully mix it in until crumbly. You put that in the fridge and start on the wet ingredients, humming as you focus on the little tasks. It’s easier than thinking of anything else.

Your fatigue nips at your eyelids. It’s been a long day and with all this ahead of you, it’ll be a longer night. You yawn and flick your wrist, whisking the cream and eggs diligently. You feel something tickle up your back before two hands settle on your hips.

You lurch in fright and still the whisk as Lloyd leans into you, peeking over your head. He drones and rubs his crotch against your ass. He clicks his tongue as he brings his hands up to fondle your chest.

“You’re making another mess,” he says as he flicks the bag of sugar, “Really living up to the whole sugar tits thing.”

“Oh, I’ll clean it up,” you try to ignore how he kneads your tits.

“Hope this isn’t all for me,” he growls.

“Actually, no,” your pulse piques as you summon your preconceived lie, “it’s for the kids. At the daycare. Just doing something nice.”

“Mmm, you’re so nice, Mimi,” he lilts his tone mockingly, “you wanna be nice to me, mommy?”

“Lloyd,” you push your elbow back into his side, “please. Later.”

He exhales, ot breath fanning over your scalp. He bends to nuzzle your head, gritting in his throat. “I’m not asking.”

You stiffen and grip the whisk, putting it back into motion.

“I’ll be done in a bit, I really can’t let this rest–”

“Something’s up. You’re not telling me something…” he brings his hand back to your waist.

“I’m baking. What would I lie about?”

“Come on,” he grinds into you, “you know our deal.”

“It can’t wait?” You clang the whisk off the side of the bowl.

“No,” he says firmly. “I’m tired of waiting and lately, you’ve been making me do a lot of that.”

He pulls you back and you let go of the whisk as it clinks against the metal. He leads you back as you latch onto his wrists, trying not to lose your balance. He spins you to face the island and crushes you against it.

“Lloyd,” you squeeze his forearms, “you’re being… pushy. Please, let me at least put everything away–”

“No,” he snarls and twists free of your grasp.

He grabs your wrists and brings your hands up to the marble countertop. He presses your palms flat under his large and leans his weight on you, a warning. Suddenly, you’re all too aware of his strength and size.

He nuzzles behind your ear as he growls again, “don’t move, mimi.”

“Lloyd,” you push your fingertips into the marble and try to shove yourself back.

He keeps you penned in as he trails a hand up your arm. You reach up to follow his touch, brushing your fingers along his bicep as he curls it around your neck. You raise your chin to keep from being strangled. What the hell is he doing?

“Please, give me some space,” you feel the panic surge in your veins, so hot it beads over your brow, “I’m a bit claustro–”

He hushes you as he flexes his bicep against your neck. You gulp as your eyes round and you stare at the pristine walls. You shudder in horror as your powerlessness sets in. Not only in that moment. This man holds your life in his closed fist.

“I won’t be long, sugar tits,” his other hand creeps back and he feels along your side and hip. He curls his fingers beneath the back of your pants and tugs, yanking harshly until the button pops loose. “Something about the whole mother hen shit gets me going.”

“Lloyd,” you eke out, eyes wetting as you quiver, “please, I don’t want this right now.”

“That’s too fucking bad. That’s not our deal.”

“Wha– No–”

“Shhh,” he forces your pants down roughly as he kicks your feet apart, “if you’re not screaming my name, keep your mouth shut.”

Your body locks up in terror. You can’t make a noise, you can’t move as he peels down your panties. You’re trapped in the heat of his body and the crush of his weight. This can’t be happening.

You close your eyes, blocking out the kitchen, trying to tune out your reality. Your ears zero in on the low drone of music still buzzing from your phone.

Go on and be a big girl You asked for this now Go on and be a big girl Well, everybody's gonna drown you out

#lloyd hansen #dark lloyd hansen #dark!lloyd hansen #lloyd hansen x reader #drabble #au #series #the club #carpe noctem #the gray man

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novasintheroom · 6 months

Text

A home for you and me

Combining these two asks since they both ask for the same line! Hope you don't mind <3

♡ Pairing - Vash x Reader

♡ Word count - 0.9k

♡ Warnings - none

♡ Description: It's a new chapter in your lives.

Now part of the 150 Bullets drabble series on AO3

It’s a hot day. Most people are avoiding the worst of it by staying indoors, where some have cooling vents from the Plant, and others just have shade.

Vash feels sweat drip down his back, his knuckles lightly cramping around the cloth handles for bags laden with food stuffs. He’s happy with the haul from the market. Fresh fruit and vegetables, with synthetic meat that didn’t look too grey. This town really was a good place to settle down. He’ll have to tell you again when he gets home.

Home.

What a strange concept. Over one-hundred and fifty years on No Man’s Land, and Vash could hardly call any place truly home. Sure, there’s the ship, Home. Luida and Brad are wonderful. But he never wanted to overstay his welcome there, always leaving within a few days to hoof it once again across the deserts and try to repent for his wrongs. And always being on the run as either an outlaw or just an unwanted or unwelcome stranger made it impossible to settle down anywhere.

Until now.

Home comes into view as he rounds a corner. Sitting along a row of similar houses, it’s small, built of metal and rock and precious few beams of wood to bend in the desert winds. Three painted pots sit near the door – a craft you’d insisted on doing to help brighten the outside with more than oranges and browns. The string lights sway in the slight breeze over the doorway, waiting to turn on once the suns dip lower and the shadows come.

Someone might say it’s not much. But give them a century of travel, and it’ll become the best thing a man has seen.

His left hand turns the handle of the door – unlocked, you probably saw him coming through the window – and goes inside.

He only has a moment to hear your squeal and drop the groceries before you launch yourself at him. He catches you, feels your legs wrap around his waist to keep yourself locked in place. He is pummeled by your lips on his jaw, his neck, his cheeks. “Mayfly – !” He’s already overheated, but this is making it worse. “What are you – “

“I’m so happy we have a house!” You exclaim, planting a big kiss on the corner of his mouth. “I’m so happy you get to get groceries!”

Ah, zoomies. You’d been doing this lately, just too happy to have a house to do anything but run around or kiss him. He lets out a laugh, pulling you into a hug to stop your onslaught. “Can I at least shut the door before you decide to pounce on me the moment I come home?” He walks into the hallway, gently kicking the door closed behind.

You snort and pull back with a look. “You know you love it.”

He hums. “I’m sure the neighbors love it too,” he says. Still, he leans forward and catches your lips in a full kiss.

When you pull back, you finally put your feet back to the floor and stoop down to gather the grocery bags. “C’mon, I’ve been rearranging the furniture and I need to get your opinion. Oh, also, one of the neighbors came by and gave us a casserole! Isn’t that weird? She was super nice, though. I think she said she lives a few doors down, but I’ll have to check again. I think she has those two teenage boys that we saw walking earlier. Looked a lot like her!”

You wander down the hall, expecting him to follow at your heels, just like when you travelled. But Vash has to take a moment. You’re carrying groceries instead of supplies for camp. There’s food in the house, a place to safely lay your heads. You cut a beautiful figure, knocking into the corner as you go to the kitchen with what he brought home. Already trusting he got the right supplies, that this is going to work. You want him to look at the furniture.

You pop your head back in the hall when he doesn’t immediately show up. Your face falls, and you’re rushing to him. “Birdie, what’s wrong? Are you alright?” You reach up, and Vash is surprised to feel tears being wiped away. He hadn’t known he was crying. “Did something happen at the market?”

Vash takes a moment to rein it in. Then he pulls you into a tight hug, a watery laugh spilling out. “I’m just…really glad we have a home.”

You coo and rub his back. It still has all the scars and metal plates under the shirt. All the reminders of where he’s been, what he’s gone through. You feel your own tears prick in your eyes. What you would give to make that go away. But it’s what made him the man he is today, and you wouldn’t have him any other way. Your sweet man. You rock him side to side with your feet and whisper, “Me too, sweetheart.”

Vash sniffles into your shoulder, glasses pressed into the crook of your neck. Then he pulls away, sighing and wiping his eyes. “Alright, alright, I’m done.” He laughs. Then, looking down, he asks, “One more kiss? Please?”

With a smile, you say, “See? I knew you loved it.” You go to your tiptoes and press your lips to his.

#trigun #trigun stampede #vash the stampede #tristamp #writing #vash the stampede x reader #vash x reader #self insert #reader insert #nova writes #150 Bullets

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