#THEY NEVER HAD THEIR EXTREMELY ALCOHOLIC BREAKFAST.

[vidavalor]

Hello! Would you like a chocolate chip cookie? And if you have an opinion on it can you share why you think that Aziraphale never calls Crowley by his first name when it's really romantic? Thank you!

Thank you for the cookie and the ask. *noms* They're both delicious.

Aziraphale explained in 1941 in what situations he'd be willing to deviate from his normal, fond use of "Crowley" and give Crowley's (very romantic-- Aziraphale loved it) first name a go:

To get used to something is to grow accustomed to it. That's the surface layer of Aziraphale's response to Crowley in 1941 but the innuendo is that he's telling Crowley he's willing to "get used to" Crowley's new first name-- meaning, that Aziraphale is willing to call Crowley "Anthony" in bed.

It's also a bit more romantic a line if you factor in some of the etymology of 'use'/'used' as well as look at how Aziraphale's use of it also connects to wordplay with several other words (brook and bad) and in other scenes in the series (1827 and 2008) as well. More on that under the cut.

Used: from the Latin usus (yes, 2x us-- cute, huh? ) and the Old French us (the French just kinda decided one 'us' was enough to describe what 'us' is, apparently.) It developed from there, predominantly through Old French, into user and the concept of to use. So, long story short, the idea of using something is derived from the concept of 'us' as being a group of more than one person, which adds a bit more of a sense of romance to using the word 'use' in a sexually euphemistic sort of way (at least it does in the context of 'use' being used by two word nerds lol).

To use: original meanings, many of which are still, well, used... to frequent, to practice, to make use of, to enjoy, to apply, to consume. The word replaced the Old English verb brucan in this way. Brucan meant to brook something, which is an old-fashioned way of meaning all of these: to eat with someone; to use; to possess; to endure (to last); to cohabit with; to need; to enjoy.

We heard Aziraphale throw 'brook' into a sentence to Crowley in S2 in 1827, still thinking he had enough time to be flirting with Crowley while discussing the morally right position to take but Crowley felt Wee Morag dying in the process. Maybe not the most cheery example of Ineffable Husbands flirt but it ties linguistically to 'used' and shows a history of Aziraphale using the two words as innuendo:

Used might seem on the surface to be a slightly vulgar way to refer to sex but its etymology, as we can see here, is more romantic and also ties to the food theme of Crowley and Aziraphale's language as well.

The words-within-words of Ineffable Husbands Speak is the first rule of it-- and also the (pardon the bird pun) cardinal rule of language in the show, in general. This is off of the first shot of the show being the word 'war' being shown to us as within the word 'warning'. The word that lives inside used is us.

Crowley is using (ha, unintentional pun, sorry) us/used as recently as in 2.06, even if Muriel has no idea what it means. Crowley doesn't trust that the Inspector Constable isn't going to report to Heaven what they see in the bookshop once they leave so he is actually speaking aloud an intention to take Aziraphale to boozy breakfast in an effort to hide the fact that he's actually thinks they're in massive trouble and need to work out a plan. Everything he's saying, though, as with a lot of what he says to Muriel in general, is in his and Aziraphale's language, mostly for Crowley's own amusement, so this bit below is as much Ineffable Husbands Speak as "extremely alcoholic breakfast at The Ritz" is:

"When Aziraphale does come back, I think we need a little us time."

Us Time = Muriel, that's when all house guests need to get gone because Antony and Cleopatra need to use the fuck out of each other...

...but going back to brook for a second?

We looked at brook as a verb, right? What it means to brook? But the common way we use the word brook now is in its other meaning as a noun-- a brook is a stream. It's a body of water and it houses fish. If you've seen any other post I've made about Ineffable Husbands Speak, you've probably seen that we can see that fish and everything nautical/the sea/ships/etc. is rooted in Aziraphale's oysters innuendo in Rome when they started sleeping together. They use references to fish as euphemistic for the sexual experience and, in particular, orgasm. The sea as sexual metaphor isn't exactly new (those "crashing waves" are in many a book lol) but Crowley & Aziraphale have turned basically anything related to the sea into sexual innuendo across several scenes.

If there's a pun to be had, Crowley & Aziraphale have found it, and one of the more amusing ones is a word where fish/the sea crosses into Heaven/Hell-related words-- and that's in damned. To be damned is to have been cast to Hell but within damned is the word dam. A dam is a natural or manmade barrier that exists to stop or redirect the movement of a body of water. As Ineffable Husbands Speak innuendo, being damned would then seem to be at least one of, if not both of the following: to be to be restrained in bed (something which several different scenes suggest Crowley periodically enjoys) and/or a reference to repeatedly stopping prior to an orgasm aka edging (also something which the language in several scenes suggest is an Ineffable Husbands favorite past time.) More than likely, it's probably the two combined.

From here, go to the innuendo that ends the 2008 minisode in 1.01, when Aziraphale says: "Well, I'll be damned" and Crowley replies, with a wink:

😂😉 Bonus etymology because it adds something to Crowley's above flirt:

Bad: From the Old German baeddel, which meant hermaphroditic, a word that's a bit outdated in our modern use of language but which is of historical relevance to being intersex and is rooted in the Greek god Hermaphroditus-- the intersex child of Hermes and Aphrodite, the goddess of erotic love. (It's Aphrodite who is the root of the word aphrodisiac and who was frequently depicted in art on the shell of a scallop or an oyster.)

Hermaphroditus was one of the Erotes, which were the ancient Greek gods of love and sex. When they're referred to in Roman art and literature, the Erotes are called "Cupids." In the 18th century, a French novelist popularized a rebranding of sort of Asmodeus as a Cupid-like figure and Crowley didn't exactly deny that he's Asmodeus when Aziraphale suggested so in the Golgotha scene. There is also the Cupid statue in the bookshop-- seen in the same scene in S1 where Crowley flirts with Aziraphale by using "bad" and "used." (It's visible in the earlier part of the scene, when Crowley is still drunk and walking around.) The Cupid sculpture is angled so that it is aiming its arrow at Aziraphale's desk. 💘

There is also that, in 'Demon's Guide to Angelic Beings Who Walk the Earth' (the book Furfur has in 1941), Furfur has written a note to remind himself not to trust Crowley because, among other reasons: "his hair is bad!" The joke is that Furfur doesn't know just how true that is (or see the irony because Furfur's hair is also a pompadour of sorts lol.) Crowley's hair is always in a variation on the pompadour-- a hairstyle throughout history, worn by everyone from society ladies to Elvis. Crowley is bad, indeed, and it adds a bit of self-referential-ness to the "it's not so bad when you get used to it" wordplay that suggests Aziraphale's own history with being damned-- even though he's still an angel in 2008. 😉

#ineffable husbands #aziracrow #good omens #crowley #aziraphale #good omens 2 #good omens meta #crowley x aziraphale #ineffable husbands speak #etymology

[crowleyinaturtleneck]

Saw a book this morning and opened it to a random page...

I hate my brain. I'm so not over Episode 6.

#good omens #ineffable husbands #crowley #aziraphale #aziraphale x crowley #crowley x arizaphale #The Ritz #just have a cup of tea together you gay idiots #and #AND. #THEY NEVER HAD THEIR EXTREMELY ALCOHOLIC BREAKFAST. #(this is not a fiction book guys it's a random book I found in a shop lol)

[syddsatyrn]

⛧Devotion is Love with Wings⛧ Chapter 2

(Click here to read chapter 1)

⛧Pairing: - Lucifer Morningstar x Reader

⛧Warnings: Alcohol, fluff, angst, hurt/comfort, king x servant, panic attack, heartbreak, happy ending.

⛧Words: 2.5K

⛧Summary: As Lucifer's advisor you are required to assist him with a number of things. That includes his schedule, many chores, and the occasional middle of the night panic attack.

⛧Notes: Ask and you shall receive, my dears! You all asked me for a part two so here we go! Keep an eye out for my next fic because its time for some Alastor content! My beta reader is @hellfiremunsonn and she deserve all the rainbows and cupcakes.

⛧Tag list: @loslox @tiedyedghoulette @naiadic

------------------

As the soft rays of the morning sun seeped through the velvet curtains, you slowly opened your eyes, blinking a few times, adjusting to the gentle light. Despite the room still cloaked in soothing darkness, you knew you were in Lucifer's room. It takes you a moment to recall last night's events. You feel his breath on the back of your neck and his arm around your midsection. You can feel your face get hotter with every detail you take in. He is comfortably curled up behind you sound asleep. He needs rest, you’re afraid to move a muscle and wake him. You look over at the clock on the wall, you both are extremely late for breakfast.

“...Shit.” You say under your breath. Lucifer begins to move slightly, he lets out a soft hum and holds you just a bit closer. You can’t tell if he’s awake or not, even though you truly did not want to get out of bed, it had to be done. You slowly sit up and turn around, you almost place your hand on his shoulder but you take a moment to admire his sweet sleeping face. Instead, you gently place your hand on his cheek. Lucifer’s eyes flutter open, he meets your gaze and gives you a sleepy smile.

“Good morning…” He says softly while holding your wrist, keeping your hand on his cheek. You wanted to pull away, but his eyes made you want to just crawl back into his arms and go back to sleep.

“G-Good Morning, sir.” You stutter a little, Lucifer’s smile turns into a small smirk, he is amused by how flustered you are. He finally lets go and you try to compose yourself, but it's hard to do so when he looks so cute.

“I’ll go get some coffee, it looks like we slept in.” You finally break the spell he had on you and crawl out of his bed. When you leave, Lucifer immediately misses your presence close to him, having you next to him made a significant difference in his mood and sleep. It was the first time he’d felt the warmth of another person in a long time, and now that he’s had a taste, he wants more.

You head down the hall to your room, when you enter you quickly shut the door, thankful no one saw you. You get dressed in your uniform and head downstairs to the kitchen. While you made coffee, the staff were surprised to see you so late into the morning. You make up a quick excuse, stating you were not feeling well but you’re doing much better now so it's nothing to worry about.

You take two cups of coffee upstairs on a silver tray, and you do your best to mentally shift into work mode, but you can't stop thinking about last night. You return to his room, the king is still in bed, sporting a satisfied look on his face. You hand him his coffee and place the tray on the bedside table. 

“Thank you, my dear.” He says and gestures for you to sit on the bed, so you take your cup from the tray and have a seat.

“I want to apologize.” You start, and he looks at you with a raised brow. “I shouldn't have fallen asleep in your quarters. That was inappropriate of me.”

“I’m gonna stop you there, you do exactly what is asked of you. Everything you do is for my benefit. I could never be upset with you for something like that.” He says with a gentle voice. His gold eyes soften as he realizes you’re being serious.

“Thank you…” You reply, just barely above a whisper. His words made you feel a little better, you only want to do what's best for your king…but sometimes you can get carried away. You would do anything for him, that includes bending the rules.

“Now stop sulking.” He says and crawls over to you, sitting beside you on the bed. He is seated rather close, you look away trying to hide your red face. He turns your face back towards him using his index finger and thumb. “You’re too pretty to be so sad.”

“Y-You forget yourself, sir.” You stutter, barely keeping it together. You finish your coffee and return the cup to the tray. When you stand up and walk towards the wardrobe, Lucifer chuckles at your attempt to remain dignified. He is knocking down walls with the way he speaks to you. Breaking down each professional boundary one at a time. His touch was setting you on fire and you were running out of ways to extinguish it.

You sort through his clothes and pull out a black suit with red and white embellishments. You set it on the corner of the bed like you always do. “I’ll make sure I have your lunch ready for you in your study, sir” You say quickly, with a red blush spread across your face, you take the tray and quickly excuse yourself.

You rush down the hall and back to your room. Your chest heaves and you're out of breath. What in the devil's name happened there?! He looked like he was going to kiss you, his face was so close and he called you pretty! What is this idiot doing? You cover your face with your sleeves and pace back and forth in your room.

You always prided yourself on your composure. You navigate life’s twists and turns with a steady hand and a level head. At first, you brushed off these fluttering feelings as a mere passing fancy. You find yourself in front of a mental crossroads, on one hand, there is the exhilarating rush of new emotions. On the other was fear of rejection, an unconventional relationship, and possible heartbreak. If you ruin what you have with Lucifer, you will end up with nothing. All your years climbing the hierarchy would be null and void.

But what if it was possible? No, it couldn't be, there was just no way. As far as you are aware, you’ve never heard of such a situation that ended well. This can’t possibly be happening, you need some time to sort yourself out. But at some point, you are going to see him again today and you’re not sure how you’ll handle it. You always buried your feelings deep within your heart, locking them away like a precious treasure hidden from prying eyes. You’d like to think you're capable of continuing this facade, but this time you are not so sure.

-----------------

Lucifer sighs as you leave the room, your reactions are rather fascinating though. He gets up and takes his clothes to the bathroom to dress himself. Lucifer is well aware of the power dynamic here, and he has a habit of pushing things as far as he can. It comes with the territory of normally having anything he wants. He buttons his vest and looks at himself in the mirror. So what if he had a thing for his advisor? He wonders if he’s just lonely and that’s why he’s acting this way…even if that was true, it wouldn’t explain the relief he feels every time you enter a room. He puts on his coat, straightens his hat, and leaves his room to spend time in his study. 

He opens the door and notices his lunch is sitting on his desk along with some invoices to sign and an overview of yesterday's meeting. This is unusual, you normally bring him his meal and check in on his daily progress at this time. This is cause for concern, indeed. Was Y/N avoiding him? Surely that can't be true, they would never just ignore him like that. He slumps into his chair, wondering if he messed up somehow. 

Did he ruin the years of trust they had built? He still wants her around, he would hate the idea of anyone else taking your place. The more he thought about it the more the pit in his stomach grew. He attempts to eat but can’t put down much food, his nerves are making it difficult to eat. He needs to find you and apologize, he has to make this right somehow. 

-----------------

Hours go by and you’ve done your best to avoid Lucifer at all costs, but you can't keep this up forever. You are standing on a large balcony in the dining room wearing your pajamas. The sun has set and the stars are visible in the sky, there is a chill in the air. You let out a defeated sigh, you’re going to have to tell him or forget about your feelings completely. You fear that if you confessed your love, the delicate threads that bind you both together would fray and snap. If you forget and try to move on, how bad is it going to hurt when he finds a new love? It would ache so bad you might have to leave his manor entirely, you knew that if that were to happen, it would shatter Lucifer's heart.

You feel a few drops of rain fall on your skin, and as each minute passes the rain becomes heavier and heavier. You look out into the courtyard, it’s getting late and you should be heading inside but you stand there, tears in your eyes. How could you be so foolish and self-centered? You knew the rules and you chose to defy them, it's your own fault you feel so awful.

Suddenly the rain is no longer hitting you, you don't feel the cold drops on your face anymore. You turn around and Lucifer is standing in the doorway, his large wing covers you, shielding you from the rain.

“Hey…Can we talk?” He says with a soft look of concern on his face. You nod while wiping your face with your sleeves, he motions for you to come back inside. He walks slightly ahead of you, leading you upstairs to his bedroom. He opens the door for you and gives you a small half-smile. Lucifer walks over to his desk and pours you both a glass of bourbon. He hands you a glass and you take a seat at the small table next to the window. He sits across from you, you can tell he's a bit anxious because he keeps looking away. You take a sip from your drink, hoping the alcohol will settle your nerves. 

The ambiance of the dimly lit room, the soft glow of candlelight danced upon his face. With a hesitant breath, Lucifer cleared his throat. 

“I need to apologize to you,” Lucifer says with a despairing look on his face. “I’m sure you’ve felt confused and in distress all day.” He takes a sip of his drink while trying to find the right words. “Before I begin, let me just say that I think so highly of you. Y/N, you’ve been there for me during every awful situation I’ve faced and I am so grateful for you.”

He grabs your hand and his expression changes to a more serious one. “I don't want you to leave my side. I couldn’t bear it if I did something to make you leave.”

“Sir, I–” You try to speak but Lucifer interrupts you.

“Y/N. I need you to drop the formalities for ten minutes, please.” He cuts you off and rubs the bridge of his nose. “Is there something going on between us or am I just a lonely, divorced, delusional, man making it all up in my head so I don't feel so shitty about my life?”

You are shocked by his words, you had no idea he felt that way about himself. 

“You’re not delusional, Lucifer.” You answer, it takes you a moment to gather your thoughts and put them in order. “It's all my fault, really. I guess after all this time I’ve developed some feelings.”

Lucifer’s eyes widen, his face softens and he squeezes your hand and you look back into his eyes with a small smile. “I think I just got carried away, I know nothing can happen between us. It would be unacceptable and irredeemable. I’m the delusional one, to think you could ever love someone like me.” You reply while looking down at your drink, your finger toying with the rim of the glass.

Without a word, without warning, Lucifer leaned over the table and grabbed ahold of your shirt. He pulls you close so that you are face to face, leaning over the table. You could feel his breath on your lips as he said, “Love doesn't adhere to rules or expectations, darling. I will choose to defy every convention, every decree if it means I get to spend the rest of my life devoted to someone I love.”

Tears started to well up in your eyes, he slowly closed the gap between you both. His lips softly pressed against yours. Time stopped in that moment, amidst the chaos of entangled emotions. The taste was bittersweet, you’ve only ever dreamed of this. His hand lets go of your shirt and caresses your face. You kiss him back with fervor, a silent confession that speaks volumes. Both of you daring to defy the boundaries of monarchy and courtier.

You lace your fingers with his, he stands up and pulls you out of your seat. You practically fell into his arms, Lucifer held the back of your head, the other arm wrapped around your waist.

Your tears flowed freely as you hid your face in his chest. He holds you tight, offering you silent comfort as you let out quiet sobs. Lucifer strokes your hair and kisses the top of your head.

“I’m sorry it took so long for me to realize…” He says, barely above a whisper. “Just let me take care of you for once, my love.” Before you can protest, Lucifer scoops you up and gently places you on his bed. He climbs in and pulls the covers over you both. He wipes your tear-stained cheeks with his sleeve and smiles at you while you take the time you need to calm down. 

“C’mon, babe say something…You’re killing me.” He says, waiting for you to speak with bated breath.

“I love you…” You say between staggered breaths. Your eyes are locked on his, somehow Lucifer blows through the many walls you’ve put up to prevent this and you are left bare and vulnerable. It is terrifying, being this helplessly in love. Bearing the fragments of your heart to the person who held it entirely.

“I love you too, dummy.” His smile is sweet like saccharine, his voice is smooth like silk. Your lips met his once more while your fingers card through his hair. He kept you as close as possible, and in the hush of the night amidst the whispered confessions, you and your king curled up together and fell asleep once again in each other's arms. No sovereign, demon or angel could pull you two apart even if they tried. 

#hazbin hotel #lucifer morningstar x you #lucifer morningstar x reader #hazbin hotel lucifer #lucifer x reader #hazbin hotel x reader #hazbin hotel alastor #hazbin hotel fanfiction #hazbin hotel fandom #lucifer morningstar #lucifer hazbin hotel #hazbin lucifer #lucifer x y/n #hazbin hotel x you

[throneofsapphics]

I figured I should ask before requesting but here goes nothing, again, ‼️TW‼️;

Can I request more angst with Az? Like uhmm.... Maybe the reader has extreme trust issues and she finally has opened up to Az but now that Elaine is here, she finds Ax drifting (not much but they don't do their normal dinners together as much as they used to, they don't bathe together as much, etc, small things she needs to that stability) and it starts to eat away at her but she doesn't want to tell Az about her feelings because she feels like a burden but then maybe Mor or someone convinces her to talk to him but he's had a long day so he snaps at her and leaves and she ends up... Offing herself..... Uhm.. and then Az's finding her body the next morning and his reaction and everyone else's too...... 👁️👁️

It only takes three 

Azriel x Reader

Summary: “There were three words you came to say, three little syllables, and it only took three to shatter you.”

Warnings: suicide, pills & alcohol, suicidal ideation, angst

A/N: I appreciate you asking, thank you for the request! & what’s a little more trauma for the inner circle? know your triggers y'all, this is heavy

Azriel dedicated himself to gaining your trust. The one person who managed to knock those walls down, and it took decades before you’d opened up to him. Mor was a close second. Maybe it was a cliche, but he understood you, more than anyone else. He’d listened through everything, listened as you broke, and helped you put the pieces back together. 

All these years, you’d been waiting and hoping he’d see it, hoping he’d feel the same bond you did. You were somewhere between friends and lovers, nothing ever clear or defined. But, you knew he was the one person you could rely on. 

Resentment was ugly, and so was jealousy, but you couldn’t help those emotions as you watched his infatuation with the middle Archeron sister grow. It was nothing against her, she truly was a lovely person, and you could see why Azriel took an interest in her. The nasty little voice told you he’d grown tired of you, that you were too much, that he’d found someone less burdensome - as you’d always feared. 

At first, you wrote it off as him being busy. That’s what he said - and he’d never lied to you. After the war with Hybern, things hadn’t quite settled and his workload was high. You tried to be understanding, to be respectful of the boundaries he’d subtly set. But you craved your old routine. Wednesday morning breakfasts, him slipping into your bed when he couldn’t sleep, bringing him tea when you knew he was working a late night. He used to always leave his door cracked, but recently it had been locked. Any knocks went unanswered, even though you could hear him inside. Instead, you’d leave the cup outside of his door, only to find it there in the mornings - untouched. 

It really began to fall apart, to you, when you went to visit Feyre at the River House. Azriel said he had some kind of work mission, that he’d be out for the day, and as Feyre led you around, he was in the gardens, with Elain. You didn’t let him see you, instead you stuck out the rest of the tour with a smile, saving your tears for home. 

It was a different type of torture, watching the one person destined for you fall in love with someone else. You tortured yourself too, holding on to hope he’d realize and he’d come back to you. 

Finally, you built the courage to tell Mor. You needed a sounding board, someone to give some advice, someone outside of your head. 

“Tell him,” Mor encouraged you, “he’ll understand.”

“He’s been pulling away, I don’t want him to think I’m trying to … I don't know, trap him.” 

“Az,” she sighed, “he’s wanted to find his mate for … well maybe even for centuries. For a shadowsinger, he’s too stubborn to see what’s right in front of him,” her mouth curved up at one corner. “If you don’t tell him, he might never know. I imagine you’re tired of waiting.” 

“You have no idea,” you laughed, but stood. Brave. Three words; I’m your mate, and at least the weight would be off your chest. Whatever happened next, whatever his reaction was, you could figure that out as it came. Despite the growing distance, he was still the person you trusted above all, and you knew he wouldn’t hurt you. 

For once, his door was open. This felt like a good sign. 

“Az,” you called, peeking your head inside the room. “Can I talk to you about something?” 

“Tomorrow,” a clipped one word answer, not even bothering to look up from his desk. 

“It really is important.” 

“It can wait.” there was such a finality in his tone. Almost like he thought nothing regarding you could be important. But you wanted to give it one more shot. 

“Please-” 

“I don’t care, whatever it is, I. Don’t. Care.” 

Well, he’d finally looked up at you, like you were some obnoxious fly he was trying to get rid of. Swallowing your tears, you nodded and turned away. Part of you knew you couldn’t promise tomorrow. 

There were three words you came to say, three little syllables, and it only took three to shatter you. To shatter the fragile self he’d helped you build. 

-

Maybe it was intentional. You knew exactly what this cocktail could do to you, and you wanted that sweet release to drag you under. When every breath felt like a chore, every word like an ache tearing out of you, it felt like the only option. 

One hand clutched the bottle of pills, the other the bottle of wine. 

Pills from a friend, who warned you taking too many could kill you. That warning was a siren call now. 

You were already drunk when you poured the entire bottle into your hands, throwing them back without a second thought, wine washing them down. It would take you into sweet, sweet oblivion, and only the mother knew whether you’d wake up on this earth or not. 

Maybe your soul could become one of those pretty little spirits, migrating on starfall. Or maybe you’d end up in another universe, like the ones you studied in the library. You giggled to yourself. Anywhere else felt like a better option now. 

You were definitely hallucinating, because three little butterflies floated in front of you, reaching out you felt them touch your fingers. Was it welcoming? Or an omen? The butterflies faded, bursting into dust, and the tears began. A few minutes later, you knew nothing.

-

“Where’s y/n?” Mor asked Azriel as he stalked into the room. He was still in a piss-poor mood, and this was the last thing he wanted to do this morning. Going to a court meeting. 

“Do I look like her keeper?” 

Mor seemed a bit confused by his response. “Can you get her?” 

He wanted to ask; why not you, but it felt a bit too childish. Besides, he needed to talk about last night anyway. Too late, a shadow whispered in his ear. It’s never too late, he could fix this. Taking the stairs two at a time, he headed for your bedroom. Shadows swirled around him, in front of him, searching and … storming the room. They unlocked the door before he could, gone, gone, gone, they whispered to him. Had you left in the middle of the night? He couldn’t hear you in there, but your scent was still fresh. 

And alcohol. A pit settled in his stomach. Gone. Too late. 

Azriel pushed the door open. Not in your room. A small click and his shadows opened the door to your bathing room. There were sweet and tender memories from that room. Him washing your hair, delicately working through the strands that always seemed tangled, you washing his wings. 

He didn’t think this would be one of those memories. 

Pushing the door open, he fell to his knees. 

-

Mor heard the guttural scream, one of pain and sorrow. Something she’d never heard from Az. Mor didn’t bother taking the stairs, and winnowed to your door. Directly across from her, another door was swung open, offering her a clear view. Azriel on his knees in front of … your body. Lips blue, skin white. His hands pressed down on your chest, up and down, up and down. 

“You’re late,” Rhys said, echoing through her mind. She only cast the image to him. Within a minute, more voices and footsteps sounded inside the house. Mor had already crossed the room, kneeling next to Azriel, her magic searching desperately for a sign of life. 

Minutes later, Madja was there, crowding in behind her. Cassian pulled a thrashing Azriel away from your body. 

Mor could only stand by the door, mouth parted and body still in shock. 

An empty pill bottle, one blue pill laying next to your hand, as if it had fallen out. An empty bottle of wine on the floor, dregs of red liquid still gathering in the bottle. 

Today was supposed to be good. Last night, you’d told Azriel you were his mate. She was prepared for the two of you to miss today entirely. 

Something had gone terribly wrong. Whirling around, she took one step closer to the shadowsinger, each movement laced with fury, entire body trembling. 

“Did you reject her?” Mor had skipped the earthly and deadly quiet, and screamed at Az, power rumbling through the room. 

“What do you mean reject?” 

“She is - was - your mate.” 

-

Azriel felt like his world stopped. Each word sliced into his chest. Mate. 

That’s what you wanted to tell him, and he told you, unequivocally, that he didn’t care. He was the person you trusted above all others, at one point. The one who spent decades breaking down those walls, slowly and carefully gaining your trust. Decades working towards that goal, and a year to throw it away. 

This was his fault. 

He could imagine the hopeful look on your face as you peeked into his door. If he’d seen that … if he’d just looked. 

“Az, can I talk to you about something?” Fuck, he’d forgotten to lock his door. Papers obscured his entire vision. Today had been too damn much, and he didn’t want to talk to anyone. It wasn’t specifically you.

“Tomorrow,”

“It really is important.” Desperation, but he knew there wasn’t much going on in your life. A shadow swirled angrily at the callous thoughts. 

“It can wait.” 

“Please-” 

He looked at you, your face had fallen. The beginnings of tears gathering in the corners of your eyes. Listen, listen, listen, his shadows were nearly begging. Tomorrow, he told them. 

“I don’t care, whatever it is, I. Don’t. Care.” 

You finally left. A small tinge of guilt, but he’d make it up to you tomorrow, or maybe the next day - that would be Wednesday, and he’d get up early to bring you breakfast, the old tradition you’d fallen out of habit with. Something easily revived. 

Tomorrow, however, would be chock full of meetings. Meetings you’d be at too, and he’d make the time to hear you out, to apologize. 

Now, a shadow curled next to his ear, pleading. He ignored it. They’d always favored you, and now he’d even say they were fussing. You were strong enough. 

Azriel had ignored everything. Ignored each warning sign, ignored the desperate pleas of his shadows and the tears on your face. You cried, but it was never often. 

“It’s my fault,” he said - more to himself. “My fault.” 

He felt himself crumble, felt everything he used to keep himself in check slip away, his magic threatening to burst from him, to turn this house to rubble. He didn’t fight as Rhys grabbed him, as he winnowed him out to somewhere far out in the mountains. His brother released him as soon as they landed, but didn’t leave, he didn’t abandon him. Rhys should’ve, should’ve left him out here to bury himself. That’s what he deserved. 

The ground shook, parts of the mountains surrounding him faded into dust, snow flooded down the sides, birds squawked as they fled. He spent hours, hours and hours up there - until his siphons dulled, until he felt his magic start to protest, until Rhys had to knock him unconscious before he let it tear him apart.

#azriel x y/n #azriel x reader #acotar drabble #acotar x reader

[brodieland]

.˚ 𓈒 ࣪.𝝑𝝔 Can we finally call a Truce? ´ˎ˗

Percy Jackson x Fem!Hades!Reader Synopsis: After hanging out, they are now calling each other friends. But now Percy's lonely at his dorm !!! Warning(s): some swearing Word Count: 3160

╰➤ MASTERLIST pt2

After you kicked Percy out, you went to bed and crashed. And by crashed, you plopped on your stomach without changing and fell asleep till 9AM. Never have you been happier to not have a class today. When you finally woke up, you grabbed your phone to check your messages and saw Annabeth texted you five minutes ago.

'I'll be there in 15 minutes for breakfast :P'

Alright so you had ten minutes to get ready. As you got up to brush your teeth you kept going through your messages and saw one from.. Percy? Forgot you had his number honestly.

'yo Y/N, I had fun last night. u still suck tho LMAOO'

Oh okay.

'Ur a ball of sunshine yk that'

And with that you put your phone down and finished getting ready to meet Annabeth. While getting ready you were debating on whether or not you would've told her of last night. It's not like anything happened, but getting drunk till 1am with a boy might be seen a little.. you know. You also were debating on not telling her because it was actually kind of fun, to be fair you were insulting each other the whole time but it was funny.

'Knock, knock'

Gosh, pounding noises. You rushed over to the door and opened it to see the amazing Annabeth in all her glory. As she handed you a glorious treat, coffee, you guys headed to get some actual food.

"Thought I'd grab you a coffee since you missed the party to do homework, god knows how long you stayed up. Freakin scholar" Annabeth said. What a scholar I am, instead of finishing my late work, I got hammered with the one guy who absolutely turns my gears.

"Yeah about that, um, I didn't really do that much studying that night" you said. "I ended up drinking half a bottle of vodka till like, almost 2AM." You took the chance to take a big sip of your drink while Annabeth gave you such a perplexed look.

"Who the hell would spend the night drinking alone when there's a party going on with all your friends" Annabeth asked.

"Well I wasn't alone" you said, now Annabeth was really confused. "I was with Percy." As Annabeth screamed you took the chance to take another long sip of your coffee.

"What. You spent the night drinking with PERCY. What happened to" and here she goes with her air quotes "we hate each other?"

"We still do, we just put it a side for the night and got drunk, we were still insulting each other the whole time. Nothings changed" you stated calmly.

"Yeah okay. Clueless" Annabeth rolled her eyes.

"If you keep doing that, they're gonna get stuck like that" you both started laughing. Finally you made it to the cafeteria, where you saw Percy getting a donut. You decided to walk up to him.

"Wow, a donut already? Are you just big or hungover" you made yourself laugh as Annabeth caught up behind you her the banana she snagged.

"Well, the ladies like to say I'm big and hung if that's what your asking." Wow, just wow.

"Why do I even bother sometimes" you said while rubbing your temples.

"Because of how awesome and beautiful everyone says I am" Percy gloated.

"Oh right, then you woke up right" you smile and tilted your head while pointing at him.

"Are you only nice to me if I have alcohol" Percy asked while smiling.

"Perhaps, why? Do you have more" you joked.

"At 9AM? You know your a Hades kid, not a Dionysus kid right" Percy asked.

"Did you know you're supposed to be a half-blood, not a walking pain in my ass, right? I guess we're all multi-talented like that" You said. You and Annabeth started laughing as he gave you a side-eye, laughing just a little bit. That's when you and Annabeth walked off to go get some pancakes.

"You sure nothing happened last night" Annabeth asked as you both took a seat in front of each other.

"Extremely sure, why do you ask" you said.

"Well, I know you guys were insulting each other, but that felt.. different." Annabeth thought was truly on to something when she said that. Almost felt like swiping the tray straight from her.

"Literally nothing has changed" you said.

"Um no. You don't seem upset about having had a conversation with him." Oh she really thought she hit the nail on the head with that one.

"Okay Ms. Detective, let's enjoy our breakfast and meet up with Silena when we're done okay?" And with that you both kept eating. After you guys finished, you both got off and walked with your arms interlocked towards Selena's class. When you got there the bell rang revealing the gorgeous Silena.

"Hey guys" greeted Silena.

"Guess who Y/N got drunk with last night" Annabeth was jumping up and down waiting for Silena to answer. Not even a hello or good morning.

"What, who!!" Silena screeched.

"PERCY" Annabeth is so excited over nothing it's crazy.

"Finally they-" you cut Silena off.

"They nothing! Nothing happened! We got drunk and acted like we always do. Now, let's move on shall we" You said with a psycho looking grin on your face. The pair muttered an agreement and reluctantly moved on. As you guys walked around campus, just hanging out you got a text on your phone from.. Percy.

'hey styx girl, you busy?'

You giggled at the underworld nickname. This sadly caught your friends attention.

"Oh? Giggling at your phone?" Silena leaned over.

"Whose texting you hm" Annabeth was also now leaning over.

"Oh, um, Its nothing. Percys just asking if I'm busy right now." Great they're screaming now. Oh my gods.

"YOUR NOT BUSY" they yelled simultaneously.

"Honestly I might go just to get away from you crazy people" you said.

"Fine with us" said Annabeth.

"Oh" you said, "so you guys hate me is what your saying"

"So, so much. Now tell Percy you're not busy." You, reluctantly, listened to Silena.

'No I'm not busy what's up'

And he responded instantly? Lets calm down now.

'alright then, grab a bathing suit and meet at my dorm'

"So, um, I gotta go guys. I'll catch up with you later kay" The two girls quickly waved you off knowing exactly where you were going, and who you were finding.

As you ran off to your dorm to change, you continued to wonder what your friends were seeing between you and Percy. What kind of relationship consist of two people constantly poking fun at each other.

And finally you made it to your dorm. You quickly changed to the first bathing suit you found, a dark red two piece. You threw on some shorts and a black tube top, and headed out. Not before being stopped by Nico.

"Where are you going" Nico questioned.

"Out" you said.

"With who, Percy?" Nico interrogated.

You hit a quick 180 and looked at Nico. "Hm? What?"

"Yeah, Percy? The same guy you stuffed in your closet last night? And the same guy you threw out that very door thinking I wouldn't notice?" Oh wow, this might be the true detective here.

"I'm not even gonna ask how you put that all together, but yeah I'm gonna go see Percy" you admitted.

"So what, are you taking my advice now?" Nico smirked up at you.

"What? What ad-" you trailed off, then you remembered. The library. "What no! Gods no, can't we just hang out?"

"Whatever you want Y/N, love ya, bye" Nico waved you off.

"Yeah, yeah love you too Nico, bye" you waved and walked off the door.

That kid got a WHOLE lotta nerve. Whatever. You then made your way to the Poseidon dorms. When you finally got there, you walked up to Percy's room. And just as you were about to knock, the door swung open.

"Wow, were you waiting by the peephole? Obsessed much" you joked.

"No I just felt your strange presence infecting my home" Percy said.

"Remember you invited ME over" you said as you pointed his finger in his chest.

"Yeah okay" Percy grabbed your hand, swatting it away. His hand lingering for an extra few seconds. "Let's go, shall we!"

He lead you out his doorway. As you guys entered the Poseidon common area, you walked toward the back door. It had a walk way that stretched over to the beach.

"I forgot you got a whole beach to yourself" you said.

"Meaning, we have a whole beach to ourselves" Percy said as he looked at the ocean. "Sorry I didn't supply-" he turned to look at you, but you already through down your clothes and were halfway to the ocean. Percy took after your example and threw down his shirt as he ran after you. You both collapsed into the ocean. Laughing at all the salt water you got into your mouth.

"Wanna see something cool" Percy asked.

"How cool is it" you asked.

"Extremely" Percy gloated.

"I've caught you watching paint dry, so the bar is very low" you retorted.

"No but this is actually cool follow me." And with that Percy grabbed your wrist and pulled you close. "Hold on tight." You guys were close. So you said something smart.

"Have you ever heard of something called a breathe mint, preferably spearmint?" Wow.

"Every chance you get huh." Without letting you answer, Percy dove the both of you underwater and quickly sped forward 100 feet into somewhat deeper water, and sprung you both above the surface.

"Gods, that's how you swim" you said dazed.

"What, you don't do that" Percy said stupidly. Then he went quiet for a few seconds. 'whats happening.' And before you had the chance to speak up, these two sea horse looking things popped out the water. Wait, these are hippocampi. Holy shit, you'd never seen one before, and they were really cute. Your mouth was agape while Percy spoke to them.

"Told you they were cool" Percy said. You just shook your head. Nobody moved for a split second. "So you gonna hop on one, or are gonna stay close to me?"

"I can ride one?!" You turned to Percy wide-eyed. He shook his head. You quickly hopped off of Percy and hopped on the hippocampi while Percy did the same.

"Hold on tight" Percy said. You decided you'd, for once, just listen to Percy. And with that, the sea creatures sped off into the ocean. This might've been the coolest thing you've ever done. Sure summoning ghosts are cool but, this is really fun. You guys were riding around, laughing and racing each other till the sun went down.

"Yo Y/N, are you getting kinda hungry" Percy asked. As you opened your mouth to answer him, you stomach let out a loud rumble. You both laughed. "Let's go to the cafeteria and get some food." You happily agreed.

You guys got dressed and walked down to get some food together. You two were joking together and going back and forth with each other till you got to the cafeteria. You both then walked up and grabbed some pizza then sat together. Munching.

"You know what Percy" you started as you took a bite from your pizza "your actually not that bad."

"Wow, is that a compliment" Percy said, jokingly shocked.

"Take it however you want" you said.

"I'll take it as you declaring your love for me" Percy laughed and you just rolled your eyes.

"Haha, in your dreams" you said, taking another bite of your pizza. "But seriously, hippocampi are adorable. Sure Hades creatures are cool, but there not as fun to look at you know."

"Poseidon knows what it is" He's talking about himself by the way.

"Someones a little confident aren't they" you joked.

"Insulting me after I gave you the chance to meet one of the creatures you've always wanted to see since we were like 13 is actually crazy" Percy said. Wow, that's so long ago. Sometimes you forget how long you've known Percy.

"Wait, you actually remembered that, how sweet of you" you playfully pouted at him. He smiled and threw a napkin at you, making you laugh.

"Of course, you didn't shut up about it for like a month" he said.

"Yeah like five years ago, in our prime pranking age. I didn't think you listened to anything I ever said" you said.

"Just because I was putting Nair in your shampoo doesn't mean I was deaf" Percy said in a matter-a-fact tone.

"Yeah okay, fair enough. But hey, at least are pranking days are behind us, right?" you questioned.

"Right, they are." You both smiled. "Does this make us friends now or something?"

"Ugh, I mean if you want to be. No need to twist my arm about it" Percy dragged. This guy.

"You know I may just take it back, if I may" you gave him a side eye.

"You may not, but I love the enthusiasm" you both started laughing. After you guys finished your pizza, it was dark out and you remembered you still needed to finish the project you had due tomorrow. So, you both walked back to your dorm.

"Today was actually fun, thanks seaweed brain" you said approaching your door.

"No problem styx girl" Percy said. You both stood there in front of each other. No one was moving. Were you supposed to hug him, fist bump him, what is this silence. Then, the door opened, both of you whipping your heads toward it. And of course, the lovely Nico di Angelo was standing right there with his shit eating grin.

"Hey Y/N, you're back. Oh was Percy coming in too? Were you gonna have a sleep over or something" Nico rambled. This man needs to calm it down.

"Your sisters a nerd who needs to finish homework, so I'm getting banished to my dorm" Percy said, jokingly rolling his eyes.

"Let's remembered who ruined my homework to begin with" you pointed your finger in his face. "And banished is a strong word calm down."

"Okay you two break it up" Nico joked as he pulled you inside.

"Bye Percy"

"Bye Y/N"

And Nico shuts the door. Hand still on the doorknob as he turns to look at you. With his stupid grin never leaving his face. "Interesting, interesting."

"Whats so interesting" his grinning was contagious. You were now smiling too.

"You could at least admit that you think he's hot." Nico pleaded.

"I'm so tireddd" you playfully dragged making you both laugh as you two made your ways to your room.

"Why are you like this sometimes, you know I'm right." Damn Nico. You sat at your desk not even bothering to change before starting.

"Fine, whatever you're right. Are you proud of yourself, would you like a medal to go along with that" you taunted causing him to roll his eyes as he plopped down on your bed.

"I hope it shiny, now tell me what happened" Nico insisted.

"Percy introduced me to some hippocampi, and they might've been the coolest things I've ever seen, and we've taken trips to the underworld." You gloated.

"Interesting, he took you to see the creatures you didn't shut up about at camp" Nico asked.

"Yeah, he actually said that. How I never shut up about them for a month when we were 13" you remembered. "I didn't think he actually remembered that."

"Of course he did" Nico said.

"Whats that supposed to mean" you asked.

"Oh nothing, nothing. I'm gonna go take a shower" Nico got up and started walking out.

"Alright, don't slip" you chuckled to yourself.

"That happened" Nico whipped around, "ONCE." This caused you to cackled as he turned back out and shut the door on his way out. You turned back to your computer and started to get to work.

[10:47] PM

Finally, you were done with your homework and showered yourself from all that salt water.You thought about going to sleep but you just weren't tired. So you got a brilliant idea and texted a certain someone.

'Percy can I come over'

You put your phone down and waited. Two minuted went by before your phone went off.

'Miss me already?'

This made you roll your eyes. He sent another message

'come over'

You hopped out of bed ad threw on the first hoodie you found. You rushed out your room and as you headed out, you heard a special someone clear his throat behind you.

"Going out to see Percy again?" Nico said. You turned around to look at him.

"Wow Nico, we gotta stop meeting like this" you hoked, throwing your arms in the arm.

"Haha very funny, so you going to see Percy" Nico said.

"Yeah, um, I am. I don't even know why" you said.

"We all know why. Stay safe though" Nico said.

"Safe from what, your acting like a monsters gonna attack me" you said as you turned around to go toward the door.

"That's not what I meant, bye" Nico said.

"Bye Nico." you said as you shut the door behind you, now standing in the hallway. "Wait, then what did he mean.." you said to yourself. Then it hit you.

'I just got what u meant, ur weird'

You texted Nico and continued your way back to the Poseidon dorms. 'What were you doing.' Finally you got there and knocked on the door. After waiting a moment, the door opened revealing Percy. Maybe Nico was right, maybe that's why you're here. But that's no ones business but your own.

"Hey Y/N, good to see you again" Percy moved to the side letting you in.

"Hey Percy, did I wake you" you asked.

"Nope, couldn't sleep" he admitted.

"Darn, I was hoping I caused an inconvenience" you snapped your fingers. Percy laughed at your antics. You followed him to his room. You guys sat on his bed, just chatting away like it now wasn't almost midnight. You yawned, making Percy also yawn.

"Hey, I should start heading back" you said. You stared standing when Percy pulled you back down. You looked at him a little confused.

"Cmon, it's late. Just stay here and keep me company" Percy suggested. It sounded like a good suggestion you were tired, but you were thinking of what Nico would say if you went to Percy's dorm for the night and didn't come back. So you made a sound decision.

"Alright, if you insist" you said, falling back onto the pillow.

"Oh, I insist" Percy got up and turned off the light before laying down next to you. Both of you laid next to each facing each other, laying very close not saying anything. Both of you to tired to move, you just drifted off to sleep.

..............................................................................................................................Pt. 3?🫡

#percy jackon and the olympians #percy jackson #percy jackson pjo #percy pjo #percy series #percy jackson fluff #percy jackson x reader #percy jackson x y/n #percy jackson x you #nico di angelo #silena beauregard #annabeth chase #pjo #pjo series #pjo tv show

[thyme-in-a-bubble]

the murder at evergreen university

a/n: asdfghjkl I have been writing this since january...... wow. it's never taken me that long to write a story before... also I made a quick student bio about the majority of the people in this story, so if you wanna start off by looking at that, then here is the link ♡

summary:  just a slutty murder mystery

warnings: reader x various CEvans characters (Ransom Drysdale, Curtis Everett, Ari Levinson, Steve Rogers, Frank Adler, Jake Jensen, Lloyd Hansen), DARK content, noncon, smut, violence, university AU, murder mystery, detective!Ari, family friend!Ari, mma!Curtis (I just couldn't resist), surely extremely inaccurate on all levels (the college stuff, the investigation, everything, but this is just for fun so it's okay. lol I got the frat name from fantasynamegenerators.com hehe), polyamory, kissing, alcohol consumption, crying, drugging, murder, somno, daddy kink, dirty talk, choking, penetrative sex, size kink, vomiting, flashback sequences are written in all cursive

word count: 11.100

∼ gentle reminder that feedback, but especially reblogs are the way you support writers on here ∽

masterlist | join my taglist | evergreen university masterlist

Walking up the steps of the Kappa Zeta Nu building, you pulled your humming ear pods out of your ears and popped them in the jacket pocket where your phone rested. If it hadn’t been for the big Greek letters above and its proximity to the college, the fraternity house could almost fool someone into thinking it was just any other regular suburban home. 

Giving the front door a rhythmic knock, it quickly swung open to reveal a scruffy-looking mathematics major, still groggy from sleep. 

“Morning Frank,” you couldn’t help but notice the spark in his eye that your presence generated. 

“Angel,” your nickname sounded so good on his sleepy lips, making you smile as he gave you a quick glance up and down, “how do you look like that this early in the morning?” 

Walking past him, further into the house, you chuckled, “8:30 is not that early.”

“Um, on a Saturday it is.” 

Thanks to the open floor plan, you quickly caught sight of Jake sitting by the kitchen island, scarfing down a bowl of cereal. 

“Hey!” the blonde smiled, mouth still full of his breakfast, “I’m guessing by the gorgeous look on your face that you made it through last night?”

“Yep,” you exhaled, thinking back on the major cram session you had to power through in order to meet the paper’s deadline. The lengthy assignment for your cognitive psychology class had been so extensive that it probably hadn’t been that smart of you to keep procrastinating it the way that you had, but somehow you got it done, “turned it in just in time.” 

“Atta girl,” the computer whiz reached over the counter to give you a high five, “I knew you could do it!”

“Speaking of yesterday,” yours and Jake’s fingers lingered a moment before parting ways, “how’s our boy doing? Did he make it through last night?”

Appearing behind you, still sweaty and panting from his morning run, Steve answered your question, evidently catching the tail end of the conversation just as he came in through the door, “Curtis is doing just fine,” he leaned against one of the counters, catching his breath, “better than fine actually, he won.” 

“He did?” a bright smile bloomed on your face, “man, I wish I could have been there…” you were usually so strict about being there for important things, such as Curtis’ occasional MMA fights, but because of your procrastinated schoolwork, you hadn’t been able to tag along. “It’s all Lloyd’s fault, you know. He did the whole oh yeah, we can have a little study date, get that paper done, no sweat, and then distracted me, leaving me with all of the work to get through yesterday.”  

“You wanna turn the faucets on down here, give his shower an icy turn as revenge?” Jake suggested, fiddling with his spoon playfully. 

“Nah, I’ll just give him the cold shoulder for a bit,” you settled your forearms against the countertop, unintentionally giving the guys a better view down your top, “he hates it when I ignore him.”

“He sure does,” Jakes drawled, nearly dropping his utensil into the milky bowl as he unabashedly stared down your cleavage. 

Biting your bottom lip a second, you returned to the matter at hand, “is he up yet?”

“Curtis?” Steve clarified, opening the fridge and plucking out a cold bottle of water. 

“Yeah.”

“Nope,” Frank shook his head behind you, “he’s still sleeping.”

Only pushing yourself halfway up, you asked “can I go see him?” slightly taking the others by surprise. 

“When have you even needed permission to go barge into his room?” Frank questioned.

“I don’t know…” you muttered, glancing down at the speckled pattern of the counter's surface, “maybe he’s got company or something…”

“Angel,” Steve leaned over the opposite side of the table, craning his neck so that he could catch your timid eyes, “he is not gonna go pick up some random girl just because you miss one of his fights.”

Bowing your head, you opted not to answer, instead just attempted to shake the doubt off you entirely. 

In a bouncy rocking motion, you straitened back up and moved towards the stairs, two of the guys tagging along as they too needed to head upstairs. 

“So,” you glanced over your shoulder at Frank and Steve, “how’s Ransom settling in?”

“The new guy?” Steve spoke, “fine, I think. I don’t know, I don’t speak trust fund kid, so how would I know.”

“I don’t think he’s that bad… Shouldn’t we at least try to include him in our little group? It just seems kinda mean not to since we’re so tight and you all live with him,” reaching the top of the stairs, you heard, from the bathroom directly in front of you, the trickling clues of Lloyd’s luxurious shower, and briefly glanced down at the far end of the hall where the new guy’s closed door was, his vast room mirroring Steve’s at the opposite side, though his was much more secluded from the rest, being closed in by the injection of both the broad staircase and the bathroom before the cluster of rooms came. “Like you said, you don’t know him yet, he might be super sweet and just takes a bit of time to warm up to people.”

“Maybe,” was all Frank cagily, not giving it any more thought. 

Coming to a stop in front of Curtis’ door, you slowly creaked it open, revealing the sleeping display of a bruised buzzcut, still lightly snoring on his back.

“Jesus christ,” you breathed and leaned your shoulder against the doorframe, taking in the beaten form of your friend, “you sure he won?” you asked the men still lingering a second longer, peeking over your shoulder into the room.

“Yeah, you don’t wanna see the other guy,” Frank gave your behind a quick tap before ducking into his own room. 

Turning your head to look at Steve, himself leisurely making his way down towards the room at the end of the hall, “you sure he’s fine?” 

Stopping in his step, he offered you an earnest glance, “he’s fine, Y/n. Go wake him up.”

After shutting the door behind you, you peeled off your jacket and let it drop down onto the desk chair you passed on your way towards the small mattress. Kicking off your shoes, you climbed the twin bed, kneeling beside your resting friend.

“Wake up,” you sang, dipping your smile down low to rouse Curtis. Receiving a less than lively reaction, only getting a soft inhale of breath as an indication that he’d woken, you tried again, swinging one of your legs over his form to straddle his hips, “hey, tough guy,” you felt his palms slide up the curve of your ass and come to rest around your waist, “you alive?”

Just barely fluttering his bruised eyelids open, a bright smile bloomed on his lips, “hi angel,” he sighed contently at your presence, blinking up at your softly illuminated form as the gentle morning light streamed in through his open window, the family of birds living in the tree just outside aiding in the gentle ambience. 

“A little birdy told me that you won last night,” you let your upper body sink down against his, resting your chin on top of your folded palms, right underneath his chin.

“I did,” you saw as the sting of his various injuries woke him up even further, “although I still would have preferred if my good luck charm had been there instead of doing boring homework.” 

“Oh, please don’t make me feel any worse,” you hid your face in his chest, “I already feel like I have too much making up to do.”

“Oh yeah?” he picked your head up for you to see the sly smirk now adorning his face, “what did you have in mind?”

“I don’t know,” you spoke shyly, feeling your cheeks flush as the position the two of you had found yourself in dawned on you, “I just really wanted to have been there,” and you sat back up, wary of where you placed your hands for support on his beaten frame. 

“Ah,” he waved a reassuring hand, “you’ll be at the next one.”

“Oh, I will,” you grinned promisingly, scooting down to the foot of the bed as you watched him sit up, the duvet falling off his body to relieve the rest of the colourful aftermath, “a simple assignment won’t be able to stop me,” your enthusiasm made him smile through the wince he let out as he got up off the mattress.

Tailing after Curtis as he moved out into the hall and made his way down towards the lavatory, you suggested as you followed him into the bathroom, “we should totally do something to celebrate your win! It’s the weekend, we should do something fun!”

Standing by one of the sinks, Lloyd, fresh out of the shower, didn’t take his eyes off his hair in the reflection as you sauntered in. As Curtis grabbed his toothbrush, he leaned down and whispered cheekily in your ear, “I know a way we can celebrate, just the two of us,” flashing you a glance that caused your breath to get caught in your throat. 

Cutting off your flustered giggle, Lloyd spoke, “there’s supposed to be a party tonight down on the other side of campus. Me and a few of the others were talking about going.” 

“Oh, the one Delta Phi is throwing? Nat’s going to that! Said something this morning about meeting the guy she’s been seeing there.”

“What-, guy?” Lloyd finally ripped his eyes away from the mirror, “what happened to that yoga chick?”

“I don’t know, I think she was moving a little bit too fast for Natasha’s speed,” you spoke of your commitment-phobe of a roommate. Saddling up beside the fighter now brushing his teeth, you said, “so, what do you say?” bumping your hip gently against his as you saw him look back at you in the mirror, “it could be fun.”

Pretending to ponder the proposal, Curtis answered, “if you put on a pretty little dress, then I might be convinced to go,” the foaming toothpaste lightly murmuring his flirting.

“…It’s always the innocent-looking ones you’ve gotta look out for,” Ransom spoke over the loud, bassy music to the moustachioed man next to him on the couch, “and this little charade you’ve all got going on must be a hell of a good time,” he elbowed him suggestively, though didn’t conjure the desired reaction from him, “oh, come on, you can tell me, dude. Just help a brother out with a few details.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Lloyd shrugged with a smirk and took a sip of his beer. 

“What do you mean?”

Huffing out a soft sigh, he answered, “she’s an amazing girl, don’t get me wrong, but she just has a few rules.”

“What, like some bdsm kinda rules?” Ransom’s eyebrows wiggled excitedly. 

“No, man,” he tried not to chuckle at the yearned-for images his inappropriate guess provoked, “back when we met her she-… her heart was fucking broken and there wasn’t a lot of stuff that she wanted to do anymore, that she felt comfortable with, but over time, I guess when she started getting over whomever that fucker was, she began to relax and let us in.”

“So, you’re really saying you haven’t hit that yet?” the prying man furrowed his brows, unmoved by the sob story. 

“None of us have.”

“Then are those stories about you banging her last week just rumours?”

“No, no, well not exactly, we did have fun, trust me,” he chuckled, poking his cheek playfully with his tongue, “but I didn’t exactly bang her.”

“So, let me get this right, you’re all mad for her and she hasn’t given out? To any of you? What, is she still a virgin or something? Waiting for marriage?”

“I don’t think so,” Llyod thought for a moment, “but it kinda wouldn’t surprise me either if she was… I don’t know… it’s kinda complicated, but damn if she isn’t worth it.”

Letting out a low exhale, he shook his head, “I don’t know how you stand it, dude. If she was mine, she wouldn’t be able to walk. Hell, how do you even share someone like her?” 

“Well, I don’t know if she’s mine per se, we all just have fun, you know? Why not share?”

“Hey,” your chipper voice interrupted their lewd convocation as you finally caught sight of them on the dark leather couch in the corner of the party, “there you are,” and immediately grabbed each of their hands in yours, “come on,” you leaned your weight back, ushering them to get up, “we’re doing shots in the kitchen!”

“Seriously, Barnes? Watch where you’re going!” Ransom exclaimed as the host of the party had rowdily bumped into the rich boy on his way through the narrow kitchen, causing the bright pink shot in his hand to spill all down the front of his white sweater, “this is cashmere, dude!” he yelled after Bucky’s quickly disappearing form, clearly not haven noticed the interaction himself over the deafening music and his drunken haze.

“Oh my god,” you gasped, noticing the huge stain now blooming on the man beside you, “are you okay?” the sharp alcohol still stung in your throat causing your words to come out ragged. 

“Yeah, I’m fine,” he stared down at himself, then over his shoulder in contemplation of whether or not he should run after the guy in pursuit of revenge, “this sweater however is not.”

As your eyes washed over the ivory knit, watching it soak up the colourful cocktail, you thought out loud as an idea struck you, “well, maybe…” and acted quickly, grabbing the man’s hand, “come with me,” you yanked him past the rest of your jovial friends and down the hallway towards the small bathroom.

Catching on to where your head was at, Ransom spoke after crossing the threshold, “Y/n, this is very sweet, but I don’t know if it will work.”

“Just shut up and take it off,” you held out your hand, too blind by your inebriated problem-solving instincts to consider any other outcome.

Gazing back at you a moment, he then chuckled and tugged the sweater over his head with one hand, your eyes widening as he placed the item in your waiting palm, it haven apparently been the only layer he had on.

“Thank you,” you breathed, dumbfounded for a second as you stared at his bare chest, briefly admiring his toned form before shaking it off and spinning around to turn on the sink. Holding the stained material against the slowly trickling cold water, you pressed and pinched the spot gently in an effort to not agitate the delicate fibres. “I swear, I’m always the worst at spilling stuff on myself, I’m like a child, plus the fact that I’m a knitter, so not to promise anything, but I’d say you’re in pretty good hands.”

He didn’t say anything, simply settled in beside you, leaning against the edge of the sink as he watched your face contort in adorable concentration. 

“Oh, dammit…” you gave up after a few minutes of gentle scrubbing. Turning the faucet off, you held the sweater up and looked at the, although lighter, still very much visible pink stain, “well at least it’s a little bit better than before,” you tried, flashing the half-naked man an apologetic look, “maybe if I soak it a bit it’ll get better, but-”

“Hey,” Ransom placed his fingers atop yours still clutching the wool, “it’s fine,” he lowered your hands as he leaned in and closed the gap between you two, his alcoholic breath fanning across your flush cheeks as he uttered a quiet, “thank you,” before unexpectedly pressing a greedy kiss against your lips. 

Feeling his grip tug the sweater out of your hands, you instinctively pressed your palms against his chest for support as the whole move had made your intoxicated body lose its balance. His lips were soft, but his kisses were hungry, determinedly letting it build far faster than you were ready for.

You let out a soft giggle of surprise as he suddenly scooped you up and planted you on the edge of the sink, nestling himself in between your parted thighs, your short dress haven ridden up from the movement.

“So, is this why they all call you angel?” he asked as his heated pecks fluttered down your neck, “because you swoop in and save the day?”

“I don’t know if I do that…” you breathed timidly, the reality of what he was doing just catching up to you now. 

“Oh, but you do. You saved mine,” he smirked, “you’re my hero,” you felt the tickle of his fingers as they snuck further up under your dress, “however can I repay you?” 

“I, um,” you giggled nervously, catching his wrists before they could get any further, pressing your lips against his in an effort to soften the blow as you thought of a gentle way to let him down, “I think that kiss by itself was a pretty good thank you,” you hopped down from the sink even though he made no effort in providing you room to do so.

Enclosing his arms around you as you giggly stumbled further towards the still-ajar door, he uttered, pressing the obvious tent in his pants up against your softness, “but why stop there? I can do a lot better than that if you just give me five more minutes,” but the door conveniently swung open a bit more just as two familiar figures passed it.

“Angel!” Jake, completely blind to the man still clawing at you to stay inside the bathroom, hooked an arm around your waist and yanked you along as he and Frank jovially strolled past, “there you are! It’s almost 11 o'clock, please don’t tell me that you’re bailing on Curtis and truly dooming him to lose to us.”

“I think Curtis would lose to you two in beer pong whether I am on his team or not,” you smiled, thankful of their timing, “you guys are the reigning champions after all.”

“Damn right,” Frank roared, excitedly lifting his fist, “J and F! F and J! Ain’t nothing this duo can’t accomplish.”

“Well, not everything,” you giggled, hooking your arms around their forms as they strolled on either side of you, their arms draped over you in return, “for instance, you’re both terrible cooks.”

“Shut up, angel,” Jake said playfully, “we’re unstoppable and you know it,” he stopped you in your tracks and trapped you against the wall, “say it,” he smirked down at you as Frank, not missing a beat, slipped in as well, enclosing you completely, “say that we’re unstoppable.”

Sucking in a sharp breath, you uttered, “you’re unstoppable,” the sudden proximity awakening memories that made your heart flutter. 

“Good girl,” he purred purposely, and a shiver ran down your spine as you recalled just how hot they both sounded cumming for you, a while back, when they had managed to talk you into playing with them both. 

“You guys are so mean,” you said light-heartedly. 

“Yeah,” Frank scrunched his nose through his warm smile, “but you like it.”

Twirling you around the dancefloor, Lloyd had been the only one in the mood to satisfy your surge of energy when you came pouting, begging the boys to dance with you. Holding you close, his hands roamed as you rocked to the music, causing you to close your eyes and drift away.

“Hey,” a different hand suddenly tapped you on the shoulder and tore you out of your dream, “I need to talk to you a sec.” 

Eyes fluttering open to look back at your redheaded roommate, you gave her a quick, “okay,” before raising yourself up onto your toes to speak into your dance partner’s ear, “hey, I’ll be right back!”

“Okay,” he shouted back over the loud music, “I’ll just go grab a drink, you want any?”

“Please,” you reluctantly let go of his hand and yelled after him as you followed your friend through the swarm of partying people, “a beer, thanks!” 

Rounding the corner to settle into a comparatively quieter nook, you tugged your wild hair behind your ears as you looked back at Natasha, “what’s up?”

Biting her lip, she spoke, “you love me, right?”

“Well, obviously, I’m about to get down on one knee and everything,” you joked, “what is it?”

“Can I have the room tonight?” she asked with a small winch, knowing damn well how frequent this request was. 

“Seriously?” your eyebrows shot up, “again?”

“Please?” she folded her hands dramatically in front of her and begged. 

Letting out a soft sigh, you said slowly, “if you buy me that super good chocolate with the blue wrapper that they sell down on the corner, then-”

“Oh my god,” she cut you off and threw her arms around you, “thank you, thank you, thank you!”

“You’re the worst roommate ever, you know that?” you smiled, patting her back. 

“And you are the best, a true saint! Me and my sex life pray at your altar.”

“Yeah, yeah,” you chuckled, playfully pushing her away, “go on then, get laid.”

Returning to find that Lloyd had settled in with the rest of the guys, taking up all of the clustered couches, you put on your best miserable expression as he handed you your beer, “guys,” you dramatically caught their attention, “I have some really devastating news to tell you…” faking the need to suck in a self-soothing breath before uttering, “tonight, on this very night, I am homeless!”

“Oh no!” they played along, giggling as you pressed the back of your hand up against your forehead. 

“I know! Whatever am I to do? If only some big, strong, handsome boys would let me crash at their frat…”

Clutching onto Curtis’ broad shoulders as he gave you a piggyback ride back to the frat, you all laughed at Jake and Frank’s terrible, lewd rendition of the school’s fight song. If Lloyd had been here, if his stamina hadn’t forced him to stay out and enjoy the night a little longer, he would have probably not only joined in, but led the tune, waking up everyone in the dorms you passed. 

“So,” Ransom smirked as you all tumbled in through the destinated front door, “who will have the pleasure of bunking with you tonight?”

“I, uh,” you giggled as Curtis sat you down, your shoes clutched in your hand, “I don’t know…”

“You can sleep in my room if you want,” Steve offered generously, “I’ll just sleep down here on the couch.”

“Really? Are you sure? Because I can just sleep down here on the couch, it’s fine.”

“No, no,” he waved a hand reassuringly, “you’ve had way more to drink tonight than I have, so you should really take the room closest to the bathroom, just in case.”

Smiling widely, you stumbled over and wrapped your arms around his bulky form, “thank you, Steve,” breathing in his scent as you smooshed your face into his t-shirt, “you’re the best.”

“You wanna borrow a shirt to sleep in?” Curtis asked, reaching out a quick arm to steady you as you lost your balance on your way towards the wide staircase.  

“Oh, yeah,” you offered him a fuzzy smile, both the alcohol and the hour causing your eyelids to feel like they weighed a ton, “that would be great.” 

Getting settled into the comparatively more private bedroom located next to the stairs, the bathroom too separating it from the rest of the doors clustered down the narrow hallway, you lazily changed into the t-shirt Curtis soon handed off to you, tugging it over your dress before sliding your party outfit off underneath the grey cotton, keeping yourself somewhat covered purely because you didn’t wanna end the conversation you and the rest of the boys were trying to wrap up.

“Alright, we should probably let the lady sleep,” Steve spoke, watching closely as every time you blinked, your eyes gradually stayed closed just a little longer, nearly falling asleep against Curtis’ broad shoulder.

“No, no,” you protested, inhaling sharply in an effort to wake up more, “I’m just resting my eyes…”

“Right,” Frank chuckled as they all got up from their comfy seat on the mattress, being too tired to fight it, Curtis gently helped you lay down, tugging the duvet over your curled-up form.

“Hey,” Ransom poked his head into the room as the rest began to filter out, “I thought you might like this,” you were surprised to see him have a small glass of water in his hand for you. Not simply placing it on the bedside table by your head, he kneeled down next to you and held it out, “here,” expecting for you to take it, “I swear, chugging a glass of water helps with the hangover,” sliding his free palm under your head to raise it up.

“Thank you,” you smiled wearily as you slowly accepted it and raised it up towards your lips. 

Noticing that you were only taking a small sip, his fingers found the bottom of the glass and pressed it up further, “all of it,” he tilted it for you to down it all, “or else it doesn’t work.” 

Coughing lightly as you lowed the now empty glass, it left an odd taste in your mouth, though you just summed it up to be the handiwork of some of the strong beverages you had consumed during the night working its way up again. 

“Thanks, Ransom,” you groggily patted his cheek, “you’re so sweet.” 

His eyes flickering over your tired face, smooshed against the pillow, he smirked, “goodnight,” got back up and strolled out past Curtis still lingering in the doorway, arms crossed and watching over you like a guard dog. 

“Night,” you quietly called out after him as you saw his frame disappear towards the furthest room down the hallway. Redirecting your attention back to your friend, you hummed, “go to bed, Curt. You gotta still be super sore from last night.”

“It’s not that bad.”

“Oh, so you’re just gonna stand there all night, fall asleep on your feet and act as my sleep paralysis demon for the night?” you joked with half-closed eyes. 

A small laugh bubbled out of him as he finally moved, “sleep well, angel,” he uncrossed his arms and reached out for the doorknob to tug it closed. 

“Goodnight, Curtis,” you snuggled further into the pillow as you felt sleep overtake you like a wave crashing the shore, adding absentmindedly under your breath, “love you.”

“Hmm…” you hazily blinked your heavy lids open, roused by the pinching pressure between your thighs. Looking up at the dimly lit figure, you mumbled fuzzily, “w-what?” unsure if this was real life or a dream as the whole bed spun beneath you and you felt like you were floating. 

“Shh, go back to sleep, angel,” Ransom’s grunt pierced your ears as his palm pressed over the bottom half of your face, silencing any words you might speak, “It’s alright, daddy’s got you,” a shy cry vibrated against his hand as you felt him rock against you, finally noticing fully the unexpected sensation of his thick girth stretching you out, “just be a good girl and lay right there, let me have a little slice of heaven.”

Keeping your exhausted legs spread wide apart, his determined hips acting as a door stop, he moaned quietly, “fuck, it really did do the trick,” he looked down at your dazed form, awake enough to be present for him, but unknowingly sedated enough for you not to fight back, “almost a shame you won’t be able to remember any of this in the morning,” he slid his hand down to squeeze your throat, pinching your rapid pulse and making the world even more blurry, “look at you, fucking out like a perfect little doll. You wanna be doll, huh? My own personal little fucktoy?”

Fighting to keep your eyes open, your whole body rocked at his movements as he frantically picked up his pace, selfishly pounding into you, melting on top of you and pressing your sedated body further into the bed. 

“You know, I barely needed to touch you a second before you soaked my fingers, you clearly want this as much as I do,” he tightened his grip on your throat, “you need this, you need me,” stifled moans flowed from his lips as he unmercifully pounded into you, scratching his own vile itch, “poor you, none of your boyfriends ever touch you properly. That’s just what you need, isn’t it?” he mocked as your fluttering cunt tried to squeeze him out, expelling him from your body, “you just need your tight little pussy to be stretched out? Just need some good dick? Don’t worry, angel,” you vaguely felt his tongue flicker against your slightly numbed skin, “as long as I am here to help, I’ll keep your pussy sore, keep it filled up,” you just managed to catch him growl before you lost the forlorn battle and your body dozed off again. 

Waking up with a low groan, you quickly sprung up, feeling the contents of your stomach fighting their way out. With no time to entertain the surprising presents of Curtis already curled up at the foot of the mattress, you bolted out of bed and ran out the door, thankful for the close proximity to the bathroom as you soon found yourself kneeling in front of the toilet, regretting every sip you had indulged in as they burned your entire chest on their way out again. 

Feeling as your loose hair suddenly got picked up and gently held back, you heard the warm rumble of Curtis’ voice as he said, “wow, okay, alright,” his large palm found your spine, soothingly caressing it as you hurled your guts out, “it’s alright, angel. Just get it all out.”

“Urgh,” you groaned, clutching the cold porcelain as you spat out the fowl tang, “I am never drinking again,” keeping your head over the bowl till you were sure you had gotten it all out. With a heavy sigh, you slumped back, colliding softly with the mass of your friend. 

“You okay?” he asked, lightly running his hands over your goosebump-ridden form. 

“I think so,” you blinked up into his steely eyes, the reddened look to them flying over your exhausted head, “at least I made it to the bathroom this time,” you tried to joke with a half-hearted smile. 

Letting your body weakly droop down, sighing in relief as you felt the cold tile hug your form, you heard Curtis notice, “no, no, you can’t fall asleep out here,” feeling his fingers already slide beneath your body. 

“But it’s so comfortable,” you let out a small winch as he scooped you up into his arms, your frame draping over his strong limbs, and a dull pain stung your core. “Hey, what date is it?” you suddenly asked, trying to make sense of the uncomfortable tingle.

“I-, uh, why?” he thought, carrying you back into Steve’s room, your eyes noticing the other doors down the dark hallway were all open wide, even though it was the middle of the night. 

“No reason, I just think I might be getting my period or something…”

“Miss Y/l/n?” a voice called, though you were a million miles away, “Miss Y/l/n?” 

“Huh?” you blinked, shaking your head slightly as you unsteadily glanced up at the figure, “sorry, yes,” you reluctantly let go of your friend’s hand and rose from the seat you had been waiting in. 

“You’re gonna be fine,” Curtis gave your hand one last squeeze, “I’ll wait right here for when you’re done, okay?” 

He and the other guys hadn’t let you out of their sight since the terrifying news had spread like wildfire yesterday morning and rocked the entire campus to its core. 

“Okay,” you nodded weakly, not truly present as you followed the stranger inside. 

Pulling out a chair at the cold table, you sat down and averted your gaze from the walls of the bare conference room provided by the school for the law enforcements to use for their investigation. 

“The detective will be right in, you just sit tight,” the figure spoke before they closed the door behind them, leaving you alone in the makeshift interrogation room. 

You didn’t know how long you were in there, maybe a minute, maybe ten, but soon you heard the door creak open once more and a voice, long forgotten, found your ears, “hello, I’m detective Levinson, I will be conducting this-”

“Ari?” you blinked up at your elder childhood friend in amazement, the nauseating feeling of grief momentarily washing away at his unexpected presence as he sat down opposite to you, “what are you doing here?” your eyes drifted over his informal suit, the jacket missing and the sleeves sloppily rolled up passed his burly forearms, “and when did you stop being a beat cop?” 

“Uh,” he blinked, a solemn expression washing over his stern face, softening it significantly, “around a year ago,” he then sighed deeply and said, “I really hoped there had just been another Y/n Y/l/n here at this school…”

Effectively bringing you back down to earth, “oh, yeah… will this be a problem? Can you not do this if you already know me?”

“No, no, it’s not that. I just-,” his head tilted gently to the side, “this isn’t something I ever wanted you to go through.” 

Sucking in a sharp breath, you nodded shyly, “yeah, well, I am.”

Looking over you a moment, taking in the small changes you had adapted in the years since you had last seen each other, he offered a genuine, “I’m sorry,” and attempted to catch your weary gaze. 

“It’s not your fault,” you glanced down at your hands as your fingers once again began to dig nervously into your skin, leaving angry little half-crescent marks in its wake, “you’re not the one running around murdering students,” you awkwardly attempted to joke.  

Exhaling lowly, he then opened the file in front of him and laid out a small tape recorder in the middle of the table, “are you ready to begin?” 

“Yeah.”

Pressing on one of the side buttons on the recorder, Ari then announced methodically, “can you please state your name for the record?” 

“Y/n Y/l/n.” 

“And for the record, are you speaking to me voluntarily?”

“I am.”

Glancing over the open folder sprawled out in front of him, he asked, “what was your relationship with the victim?” 

“Ransom, he-, um… he was a friend. I honestly didn’t really know him for too long, but he lived with some of my best friends, so it just seemed pretty natural for him to also become a part of our little group, if you’d call it that.” 

“And you last saw Mr Drysdale when?” 

“At the party Saturday night. I crashed at their flat after that, so it was probably early Sunday morning that I saw him last, when he was on his way to bed, I think.” 

“Did anything happen to him that night? Anything unusual? His behaviour? Someone he interacted with? Anything you can think of that stands out?” 

“Uhm,” you thought back, remembering the heated kiss you had shared in the bathroom, though looking back into Ari’s studying eyes, you couldn’t help but lie and say, “no, I don’t think so. It was just a party, you know,” the thought of telling your childhood crush that you drunkenly made out with a guy sent your stomach turning, crushing the truth before it could crawl out. 

“Alright,” he nodded, “well, if you do remember anything, please reach out, we’re running the bulk of the investigation from here, so you know where I’ll be.”

“Still have your number,” you forced an awkward laugh.

“Right,” he sucked in a breath and averted his piercing gaze, “so, uhm, I don’t think I have anything else to ask you right now. Thank you for your cooperation with the investigation.”

“Of course,” you watched as his fingers wrap around the tape recorder, clicking the protruding button and making it stop, “it-, um,” you felt a shiver run down your spine as his eyes fell upon you once more, making the polite words seem that much harder to muster, “it really is good to see you again. Nice to see that you’re doing good,” then added jokingly, “that your mom still hasn’t talked you into cutting your hair,” a sincere smile tickled your lips at the mention of the warm woman living next door to your own parents. 

Even though it was clearly forced, your words still conjured a genuine reaction from the guy who used to babysit you, “yeah, no, you know she’s never winning that battle,” he chuckled, shaking his head lightly, “it’s, uh, it’s great to see you as well. You-, um… yeah…” he dropped whatever compliment was on the tip of his tongue and averted his gaze, “I don’t wanna keep you any longer, you can go, you probably have classes to get to.”  

“I actually don’t,” you informed him, though still slowly got up from your seat, “our professors have given us all some time off to-, uh, you know…”

“Yeah…” he nodded understandingly, his vision following your form as you made your way towards the door. 

Pausing just before your fingertips grazed the doorknob, you looked back, timidly chewing on your bottom lip, “hey, Ari?” 

“Yes?” he responded quickly, clearly still completely captivated. 

Finding it difficult to even breathe properly in his presence, especially when those soulful eyes were locked upon yours, you found that your words crumbled before they even got to see the light of day, “I-, um…” then hastily scrambled your brain for a makeshift, “good luck.”

Breathing out a soft smile as he watched you nervously fiddle with the door handle, he said, “thanks, Y/n.” 

It had been Monday morning that a garbage man had found Ransom’s body in a dumpster on the far side of campus. Even though they had tried to contain the news, it still spread like a wildfire, and come lunch that day, it was the only thing any student could talk about. 

The frat quickly got sealed off as an active crime scene as it had been the last place witnesses had seen him alive, forcing the rest of the guys to temporarily bunk up with friends in their dorms. You felt a bit ashamed about the immense relief you felt at that small detail, the comfort of having each one of them fight over who got to stay with you being something you welcomed with open arms. In the end, it was both Curtis and Steve who stayed with you, Natasha giving you the room and staying with her newfound beau in the meantime, giving you the entire space for a while.  

The guys had always been protective of you, but it almost seemed to have grown over the past few gloomy days. Not a second passed by where at least one of them wasn’t at your side, holding you as you cried, walking with you through the crowded campus or just keeping you company, making sure you weren’t alone. You just added it up to be their version of freaking out and buying into the whole conspiracy that it hadn’t been a drug deal gone wrong as so many had assumed of the recently deceased playboy with a penchant for illicit substances, but actually someone on campus, a stone-cold killer masking as just the person next to you in your lit class. 

“Why don’t you go ask him?” 

“Me?” your brows furrowed in Lloyd’s direction, “why me? If you wanna know so bad, why don’t you just go ask him yourself?”

Chiming in, Jake tilted his head, “well, you did say you know the guy.” 

Exhaling lowly, you averted your gaze, your crossed arms tightening over your chest, “yeah, you could certainly say that…”

“So just go, bat your eyelashes at him for a bit and figure out how much he knows,” Lloyd tried to persuade you, though even his ever-present cocky charm couldn’t sway you this time.

Previously assuming that the whole conversation had just gone over Curtis’ head, as he had just quickly sat beside you and stared out the window, he suddenly perked up, “we just-…” he struggled to vocalise, “if it really is someone here on campus… just the thought you sitting in class with them or-, fuck, anything, it just-…” like a magnet, your fingers naturally found his own in a comforting squeeze, “angel, we just wanna keep you safe and the thought of someone like that running around terrorising the school-… just please go figure out if he has a suspect yet. See if he has got any leads.”

From the moment you had said goodbye to the familiar detective, shame about not telling him the whole truth had nearly eaten you alive. You had lied to not only a person you had known your whole life, but also a law enforcer. It was insufferable, like a snowball rolling down a hill and growing bigger and bigger with each accumulated snowflake. 

“Fine,” you cracked, the shameful storm inside your body becoming too much to bear, “I’ll do it.”

“Knock, knock,” you said with a small smile as you pushed the ajar door open completely. 

“Y/n,” Ari’s spine straightened in surprise, his eyes no longer glued to the computer screen before him, “what are you doing here?”

“Thought you might be hungry,” you held up your alibi for coming in the form of a takeout bag, “it’s from this little Indian place downtown,” you shut the door behind you before plopping the crinkly bag down on the table, the warm light from the desk lamp illuminating the brimming containers of curry stacked inside, “you like Indian, right?”

“I-, I do,” he said, still taken aback by the kind gesture, “thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Thought it was the least I could do as a thanks for what you’re doing,” you waved a hand in the direction of the cluttered corkboard on the wall. 

“It’s just my job, you don’t need to thank me,” he said modestly, leaning back in his chair and lending you to spot the silver pen his fingers fiddled with. 

Lowering your gaze to stare at your shoes, you exhaled, “right…”

“So, um,” he filled out the awkward silence, “was there anything else you needed?”

“Oh, sorry,” you mumbled, keeping your eyes averted, “you’re obviously super busy and here I am just barging in,” your vision finally flickered up to lock with his, already steadfast on you, “I just, uh…” your breaths became more jagged as his sky-like eyes captivated your own, “there was actually something else I wanted to talk to you about, something I wanted to tell you.”

“Alright…” he nodded, listening intently. 

Blowing out a shaky breath, you revealed, “I lied, something did happen that night.”

“Okay,” his brows furrowed, though not as much as you had feared, “what was it?” your anxious brain haven already thought of a million different dramatic punishments he could penalise you with.

“I, uh…” you squeezed your eyes shut nervously, “I kissed him,” your pained voice rushed to force out, “at that party. It was in the bathroom and almost became something else, but, um yeah… we kissed… me and Ransom…” you peaked just one of your eyes open, your tense shoulders nearly pressing against your ears at this point, “I’m really sorry, I just felt like couldn’t tell you something like that, not you. I won’t be arrested for hiding this information, will I?”

“No, no,” Ari quickly rose from his seat, “Y/n, you’re okay,” he stepped closer to you as he attempted to calm your uncalled-for panic, “you won’t be arrested.”

“Oh,” you breathed, “good,” feeling your shoulders begin to drop back down again, “you know how my mind tends to freak out.”

“Yeah,” he nodded softly, “I do…” his words genuine as memories conjured the whisper of a smile to appear upon his lips, “thank you for telling me.”

Awkwardly, you flashed him a tight-lipped smile, grateful that uncomfortable moment had passed, you recalled the other reason for why you had come, “so…”

“So…” he echoed.

“Do you have any leads, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“That’s classified information, you know I can’t tell you that.”

“I know…” you averted your gaze and scrabbled your brain for what you could do or say to get him to tell you, “it’s just, I’m so scared all the time. The school was always a place that made me feel safe, till now…” although your intentions behind those words weren’t completely truthful, the statement wasn’t that far off, “it was just worth a try asking you.”

Holding your gaze, you could almost see his heartstrings get tugged as his brows quivered in compassion, “I-… I do have something. If you didn’t know, we just finished sweeping the victim’s living quarters, so if they haven’t already been notified, your friends should be able to move back in by tomorrow, but we also found something, not there, but in proximity to the dump site, there was a knife with traces of the victim’s blood on it. It’s in the lab right now as we speak, trying to decipher if there are any identifiable prints on it.” 

“Oh my god…” you felt goosebumps sting at every inch of your skin. 

“You haven’t heard any details about what state his body was found in, have you?” 

“No…” both from avoiding the papers and keeping to your dorm, you might be the only student on campus not aware of how your late friend had died, “he was stabbed?”

“That was decisively what killed him, yeah, but he was brutally beaten before that.”

“Holy shit, that’s-…” you shuttered, your eyes just now noticing the nauseating photos pinned on the board beside you, “fuck… I don’t know how you do this all day, deal with these kinds of things.” 

“It gets easier over time,” he shared, his worried eyes scanning your face a moment before apprehensively uttering, “this might be a really stupid question, but how are you holding up?”

“I-…” you toyed with the thought of lying to him yet again, but then opted to share the truth, “I am not doing so good, to be honest. I could probably count the number of hours I’ve slept in the last few days on one hand, or so I’ve been told. I don’t think it feels like I’ve slept at all, but apparently I have, just a little bit.”

Sucking in a pained breath, he murmured, “I’m sorry. I can help find someone you can talk to, if you want.”

“No, it’s alright,” his kind offer made it easier for you to look away from the horror plastered all over the office walls, “I mean, I’m not alone, that fact has become crystal clear throughout all of this.”

“Yeah, I kinda pieced that together,” he spoke in a much different manner than before, causing your brows to crinkle, “I conducted all the other interviews. It’s nice that you’ve made friends, making the most out of your college experience,” he said in a tone, almost reminiscent of jealousy.  

Averting your eyes, memories you so desperately tried to keep at bay pried their way in and snuffed out the fuming flicker his resentment had ignited, “hey Ari?”

“Yeah?”

“Did you know?” you asked wearily. 

“Know what?”

“Did you know all of those years, growing up together?” you lifted your vision once more as he offered you a questioning hum, “did you know that I was in love with you?”

Taken aback, it took a bit before he managed to answer, “no, I didn’t.”

“Why didn’t you ever call me? You just left.” 

“I was getting married, Y/n. What was I supposed to do?” 

“Not fuck the girl you used to babysit,” you shot back coldly, “what even was I to you?”

“I-… I don’t know,” his frustrated words came out breathy, “do you think I planned for any of that to have happened? To sleep with you of all people? I didn’t. But when I came home that summer and saw you again, saw who you had become, I don’t know, everything just changed, you changed. I fully thought that you’d to still be that same little annoying brat you used to be, but you really weren’t. I didn’t expect it to happen, I didn’t expect you to suddenly do something like that to me, have that kind of power over me!”

“So, you just decided to break my heart instead? I was mad for you, for as long as I could remember. That summer was the happiest I’d ever been and then you just up and left in the middle of the night without a word. Did you even think to imagine what it was like for me to run around that morning looking for you and instead finding an invitation for your wedding? I had to hear from your fucking parents that you had just come home to prepare things before the big day. You hadn’t even mentioned to me once that you were engaged, or even as much as just in a relationship. Was any of it even real to you or was I just your last bit of fun before you got tied down?”

“It was, Y/n,” he insisted sincerely, “it was the realest thing I’ve ever felt.”

“Then why did you go without as much as a goodbye? You know how much that broke me?”

“Yeah, well you seem to be doing just fine now,” he said pettily. 

“Excuse me? You don’t get to say something like that to me. You were the one who broke my heart, you don’t get to judge how I glued it back together. Just go back home to your wife, why don’t you.”

Suddenly looking back at you in confusion, Ari then illuminated carefully, “Y/n, I’m not married.”

“What?” you blinked. 

“I mean, I know you weren’t there that day, but I thought my mom at least had told you,” the gears turning inside of him were nearly visible to the naked eye, “I couldn’t go through with it.”

“What? Why?”

Biting his tongue as he held your eye, he then exhaled, “because I didn’t think I should get married if I was in love with someone else.”

Sucking in a stunned breath, you saw tears cloud your vision, “b-but… you never even called…”

“I know I didn’t,” he concurred heavily, his eyes unable to look away from your glossy ones. Feeling as if you might faint, you saw his woeful vision flicker down towards your lips, “I’m sorry, Y/n.” 

But just as you saw him slowly inch his face closer and closer to yours, a sharp intake of air stung your lungs as you raised a hand up as a barricade, “I can’t…” too scared of history repeating itself, “we can’t…”

Sighing deeply, his eyes traced the tear that rolled down your cheek, “I know…”

You had just been helping the guys move back into the frat. That was all you had been doing. One moment you were all laughing, actually having a normal and pleasant moment for once, and the next, two officers were barging down the door and reading Lloyd his rights. 

You’d nearly lost it completely and Curtis had to hold you back so that you didn’t go scratch one of the officer’s eyes out. The man in the cuffs however took it with style, only trying to break through your hazy to let you know that he would be fine and for the others to take care of you, after all, this wasn’t his first rodeo down to the station, although those times it had only been for petty crimes like bar room brawls and such. 

“But I mean, how did it even happen?” you thought out loud a while later, the miranda rights still ringing in your ears like a triggering song you just couldn’t get out of your head, “that’s what my mind keeps going back to,” you had finally calmed down after what felt like forever of the guys talking out of marching down to the station to do something, anything to get Lloyd out. Completely powerless, you sat curled up at the end of the couch as words flowed from your exhausted lips, “how could someone like him be killed? He was such a nice guy.” 

Not being able to stand it any longer, Curtis pipped up from the armchair on the other side of the living room, “no, he really wasn’t,” your bolstering words about the deceased being too much for him to take without cracking, “he was a rich creep and everyone knew it,” frustratingly, he gesticulated, “with everything that he did to you, how can you just sit there and say that he was a nice person? The guy drugged you and violated you in your sleep for fuck sake!” 

The room went dead quiet as soon as those words left his lips. 

“…what are you talking about?” your voice no higher than a whisper as you watched your burly friend shrink in regret. “Curtis,” you repeated more sternly this time as he didn’t offer an explanation, “what do you mean? What did you do?” your voice broke as thoughts about if Lloyd’s arrest hadn’t been a misunderstanding after all entered your mind. 

“You can’t tell her,” Frank shot a glare at the fighter, “we had a deal.” 

“Yeah, well that was before Lloyd got fucking arrested!” Jake chimed in, panic shining clear through in his tone, “she’s a part of this, has been since the very beginning. She has a right to know.” 

Finding your wide eyes in the crowd, Curtis asked you wearily, “you really wanna know what happened that night?” hugging your knees tighter to your chest, you gave him a small nod in confirmation, “fine, I’ll tell you.”

…

“Is she okay?” Curtis pushed the ajar door open further to ask, haven, on his way to the bathroom,  caught sight of an out of breath Ransom tugging the covers back over your passed out form. 

The head of the cashmere-clad man snapped up at the sign of company, the sudden alarm that began to bloom on his features was quickly drowned out by his usual arrogant air, “yeah, man,” he shot back defensively, rushing to get out of the room, “she’s fine,” sounding like it had been a completely crazy question to ask. 

Furrowed brow staying put, Curtis uttered slowly, “alright, but I think I’m just gonna check myself, if you don’t mind.”

“I said she’s fine!” Ransom slammed the door shut behind him, prohibiting the man now only inches from him from entering, “just go back to your own room!”

Worry and suspicion only growing at the obvious fibs, Curtis demanded, “what were you doing in there? What did you do?”

“What are you talking about?” he scoffed back. 

“What did you do to her?” Curtis took a looming step closer just as their raised voices began to stir some of the other slumbering residents.

“I didn’t do a thing,” he cockily dared a chuckle, “calm down.”

“I will not fucking calm down,” Curtis barked back before attempting to call to you through the closed door, “angel, you okay?”

Leaning against the wall beside his own room, Jake rubbed the sleep out of his eyes as he groaned, “guys, can you not yell in the middle of the night? Some of us are kinda trying to sleep here.”

Frank, as well haven appeared, seemed a little more alert at the sudden commotion in the hallway, “hey, what’s going on?”

“Nothing’s going on,” their suspicious friend waved a hand, “Curtis is just being a little bitch and freaking out for no reason,” the ostentatious gesture granted the opposing man an opportunity to slip past and enter the room.

Nearly kicking the door down, Curtis rushed to your side, examining your unconscious form with worried eyes, “angel?” the dim lights streaming in from the hallway just barely letting him notice how wrinkled and haphazard the t-shirt he’d lent you just a few hours before was on you. 

“Jesus, just let her sleep, dude.”

Ignoring Ransom’s words of warning, Curtis tried once more, “Y/n?” touching your skin lightly before giving you a gentle shake, “come on, wake up for me, baby,” his heart nearly beat out of his chest as he unsuccessfully tried to stir you, the shallow rise and fall of your abdomen not granting him as much comfort as it should have. 

Nearing the end of the hall, Frank asked once more, “what’s going on?” side-eyeing Ransom warily, “is she okay?”

“Of course she’s okay,” the trust fund kid scoffed.

“The fuck she is,” Curtis’ head whipped back in the direction of Ransom’s silhouette in the doorway. Getting back up on his feet, his sharp intakes of air causing his shoulders to rise, he stormed back out and demanded, “what did you do? Why were you in here and why the fuck is she not waking up?”

“Did you not see how much she had to drink tonight?” Ransom defensively gestured to your passed-out form on the narrow bed, “I was just checking up on her,” and with a heavy sigh abandoned the argument entirely and descended the stairs. 

Catching Curtis’ arm just in time to stop him from storming down after the man at the centre of the quarrel, Frank tried to catch the darting eyes of his friend as he asked firmly, “Curtis, what’s going on?”

“I saw him in there, hovering above her like a creep.”

Already worried eyes suddenly growing in alarm, “he was in there?” Frank quickly shared a panicked look with Jake, both now sharing the same inkling of what horrible thing had occurred, “alone with her?”

“Yes.”

“Wait,” Frank gasped, “did you say she’s not waking up? She is still breathing though, isn’t she?”

“Yeah, she’s just out cold. Why?”

“Oh my god…” Jake shuttered, his interrupted slumber now long forgotten.

“What? What is it? What aren’t you guys telling me?”

Exhaling lowly, Frank carefully began to explain, “Curtis, you know that my sister goes to Bayshore, right?”

“Um, sure, yeah?” unsure as to why that fact was significant.

“Well, she told me about this student who overdosed after being drugged and raped. The guy was apparently caught and everything but just came from a wealthy enough family to not only never be convicted, but also keep the news out of the papers. Curtis, that’s where Ransom transferred from.”

Seeing nothing but red, Curtis stormed down the stairs. On his determined path to the kitchen where the object for his bubbling rage now stood, leisurely sipping from a glass of water. Curtis narrowly caught sight of Lloyd as he finally stumbled through the entrance from his drawn-out merriment, uttering a hushed apology to the bulky frame of Steve on the couch for the way he had carelessly slammed the front door shut behind him.

Only rolling his eyes at the sight of Curtis, Ransom didn’t even lower his glass as the fuming figure neared, “dude, I already told you, I didn’t do a thing-” though the rest of his provoking words got squashed as Curtis’ fist suddenly collided with his jaw, swiftly grabbing onto his soft sweater before he could crumble like the shattered glass now scattered across the cool tile, “what the fuck!”  water splashing onto both of their feet. 

“What did you give her?” Curtis barked, his fingers digging into the intricate, stained knit so hard that they threatened to poke through to the other side. 

“Give who what?” appalled glare piercing as he fought against the hold. 

“Y/n!” he shook him heatedly, “what did you give her?”

“I didn’t give her shit, man,” Ransom just managed to spit out before white knuckles collided with his face once more. 

“Did you touch her? Because I swear to fuck, if you laid even as much as one finger on her, I’m gonna-”

“Oh, I see,” he actually dared to chuckle, a bit of crimson already staining the pearly whites he flashed, “you’re jealous that you didn’t get with her tonight.”

Landing another raging blow, Curtis yanked him in close and growled, “you shut up and answer my question! Did you touch her?”

Scoffing through his laboured groans of agony, Ransom finally disclosed smugly, “of course, I did, man. She’s been all over me all night long, begging for me to give it to her good.”

The rest of the frat haven now clustered in the kitchen as well, staying in the periphery, Frank accused, “what did you give her? Was it the same as the girl you killed back at Bayshore?”

The deep-pocketed man’s eyes flickered over Curtis’ shoulder, bruises blooming and swelling up his vision, “excuse me?” 

“The rape victim that overdosed at your old school?” the bridge of Frank’s nose twitched in fury, “it was you that killed her, wasn’t it?”

“I didn’t do anything of the sort, all I did was show those girls a good time, it’s not my fault some can’t keep up.”

“Is that what you think happened tonight?” Curtis hauled him against the fridge, gaining the man’s attention once more, “you call assaulting Y/n a good fucking time?”

Keeping his head held high, Ransom slurred, “what are you ashamed you’re not man enough to rough your girl up a bit and give her what she really likes?”

Huffing like a bull, he uttered, “she does not like it like that.”

“Oh yeah? Then tell me why I had her moaning the way I did, dripping down on ol’ Steve’s bed like a cheap whore. Kind of a shame that she won’t remember any of it in the morning, just hope I fucked her good enough that at least some part of her won’t forget…”

…

“Oh my god…” you shuttered, unable to look any of them in the eye, “oh my god,” your palm shot up to clasp over your lips to choke the shaky cry that forced its way out, “I thought-…” vision darting everywhere and nowhere at the same time, “I thought it had been a dream,” tears streamed down your ghostly face as the hazy nightmare suddenly came into focus, “oh my god! I-… I knew him,” you jaggedly tried to piece it all together as vile stung in the back of your throat, “he was-, he was my friend. I hadn’t known him that long, but he was my friend. I-… he wasn’t just some dangerous stranger in the back of an ally threatening to kill me, he was my friend.”

…

The incoherent screams of Curtis slowly subsisted as his rampant blows finally slowed down. Slowly backing up, chest heaving, horror took over his eyes as he saw how far he had been pushed, watching as blood bubbled out of Ransom’s mouth, guggling his words.

“Just you fucking wait till my family finds out,” he weakly continued his threats from his wrecked position on the tiled floor, “do you have any idea how much power money gives you? I can squash you all like little bugs, ruin any chance you might have of a pathetic future and keep angel all to myself.”

Unable to look away, Steve suddenly uttered as Curtis shakily retreated into the shadows, “…guys, we have to call an ambulance.”

Whipping his head around, Jake protested, “no, don’t!” ready to swat away any phone that might be raised, “he’s right. He has the upper hand no matter if we get him to a hospital or not.”

“So, what do we do? Look at him,” Steve woefully gestured to the beaten playboy crumbled on the floor, “he’s dying. We can’t just leave him here!”

“No…” Lloyd sighed, his demeanour seeming surprisingly calm and level-headed under the circumstance, “but we can use what little time we have left before the sun comes up to our advantage…” 

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Frank’s brows furrowed frightfully. 

In a wide arc around Ransom’s broken form, Lloyd made his way over to one of the kitchen counters and pulled open a drawer, “he said it himself,” he exhaled lowly as he accepted his fate, “he is more than capable of making not only angel’s life hell, but also all of ours,” his tone cold, he riffled through the utensils, “from where I’m standing, there’s only one way for us to get out of this with minimal casualties,” and fished out a knife, the steel reflecting in the low light seeping in through the other room. 

“You can’t be fucking serious,” Steve gasped, “we’re not murdering him!” 

“So you’d rather try and explain his corpse just lying here in our kitchen? This way we get the upper hand, we speed up the process and use the remainder of the night to our advantage till the rest of campus wakes up, hide him somewhere else, somewhere he won’t be found,” Lloyd stressed, “we have to kill him, it’s the only way.” 

“Shit dude…” Frank breathed, he and the rest realizing that he was right, “where would we even hide him?”

After only pondering it a second, Jake pipped up, “it’s trash day tomorrow,” tensely sharing glances with the rest, “if we get him to one of the big dumpsters on the other side of campus, drop him in there, no one will know! And even if they do eventually discover parts of him out on some dump, they won’t be able to get anything off of him anyways at that point.” 

“I-…” Curtis’ shaky voice finally filled the room, guilt seeping through in his brassy timbre as he asked what no one else would, “…who’s gonna do it?” 

Not letting the others even consider that weight, Lloyd swiftly declared, “I’ll do it.”

“What?” the trembling fighter’s eyes finally lifted.

“If they actually do somehow manage to nail us for this, it should be me that goes down for it,” he stated deliberately, “always knew I’d go to prison at some point just like my old man, this way it wouldn’t be for anything stupid.” 

© 2023 thyme-in-a-bubble 

#lea’s writing #evergreen university #curtis everett smut #steve rogers smut #ransom drysdale smut #chris evans smut #lloyd hansen smut #steve rogers x reader #ari levinson smut #jake jensen smut #frank adler smut #ransom drysdale x reader #ari levinson x reader #curtis everett x reader #frank adler x reader #jake jensen x reader #ari levinson imagine #steve rogers imagine #ransom drysdale imagine #curtis everett imagine #frank adler imagine #jake jensen imagine #lloyd hansen imagine #ransom drysdale au #lloyd hansen x reader #chris evans x reader #steve rogers au #steve rogers fanfic

[69dias]

baby don’t go (i’m bad at being alone)

genre: bff2l, idiots to lovers

warnings: as slowburn as it gets for 25k words, jk is an idiot and oc is so mean to herself AND to others occasionally. religious themes [Bible verses], mentions of alcoholism, unrequited love (not between jk and oc), mentions and themes of death, resolving trauma, bad childhoods. smut: vaginal fingering, marking kink, ily kink, kinda breeding kink, unprotected sex which is BAD

wc: 25k (this is hefty IM SAWRY)

listen to a playlist for this here!

When Jungkook was seven years old, his mother had asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up. He'd answered, way too confident and much too quickly, that his ultimate passion in life was to be a ninja. His mother had laughed fondly, serving him a plate of fruit that she’d cut up for him, and ruffled his hair 

He’s positive that she had convinced herself that he'd figure it out eventually; that she’d probably taken it in stride considering the fact that he was seven, but the memory remains clear as day in Jungkook's head in his senior year of college.

Computer Science. That had turned out to be his actual ‘ultimate passion’ in life, though Jungkook always finds himself hesitating when he says it out loud. Perhaps his younger self had thought that he would figure it out eventually too, shoving the concept of a future deep into his mind until he was nearing the end of his gap year and had to choose something tangible to study, and perhaps he’d made the right decision considering his knack for coding and the outrageous starting salary for his major, but his voice always waivers when someone asks what he’s studying.

After all, Jungkook is nothing like you. 

Enter character: his childhood best friend, whose umbilical cord had only freshly been cut when they met, much too young to comprehend what he was even looking at. You were a year younger than him, but always a few grades ahead, thanks to your insane amount of academic aptitude (that came with the burden of being afraid to fail at all, but only Jungkook truly knows that), and you’d always, always, known what you wanted to be when you grew up.

You’d answer, voice too strong and vocabulary too poise for an elementary school kid; “My passion is to study law, like my mother.” 

You stayed true to it, as well, and if Jungkook wasn’t too absorbed in being impressed by you, he would’ve been sad that you never had a true, silly dream — a princess, or a ballerina, or an astronaut, or anything that didn’t require you to be so stringent at such a young age. But you’d skipped 3rd grade, skipped senior year, went straight to Columbia, and then to Columbia Law; by the time you had graduated college, Jungkook was about halfway done with his gap year. Simply put, being impressed by you wasn’t difficult. 

But back to the point he was making, Jungkook is nothing like you, but he misses seeing your face at the frequency he did when you lived next door. And he misses getting you your ridiculously overpriced  iced white mochas from a very specific New York-based small business. And he misses you. 

The thought of you makes the aforementioned memory with his mother run through his head a bit more persistently than usual, and it’s hard to ignore on an otherwise quiet Wednesday morning. That is, however, until his roommate pops his head into the bathroom. 

Enter character: Jungkook’s roomie, Kim Mingyu. Ripped, tall, extremely attractive, and at any given point, either drunk off his ass, or high off his ass, or hungover as shit.

Today, it’s the latter, if the exhausted lily in his voice is any indication.

“Hey, JK.” 

He blinks, and the man in question nods from the edge of the bathtub. 

“How the hell do I kick this girl out.”

Jungkook’s toothpaste drips onto his wrist, and leans across the commode to spit it out.

“I don’t know, man. Ask her to leave, and give her breakfast money.”

He is not speaking from experience, but Mingyu nods as though he’s been given profound philosophical advice. Jungkook turns the tap on, and wonders how much his friend has had to drink when he visibly grimaces at the rush of the water.

“Thanks man. See you around.”

We live together, I’ll see you in literally one minute. 

Jungkook nods, and lets Mingyu shut the door before he’s rinsing his mouth and tending to the very strict AM skincare regime he’s curated. The memory he was stuck on has taken another path to the back of his brain, and he’s thankful that he doesn’t have to think of it, think of you, or think of how much he misses his mother any longer.

He doesn’t, however, exit the bathroom immediately. The girl Mingyu had over is causing a ruckus in their living room, demanding to know why she’s being kicked out and simultaneously letting Jungkook know that his advice was definitely not taken into account; he’d be a bit offended if he couldn’t practically hear Mingyu’s head pounding as she steadily gets louder. 

He decides Comp.Sci is a good option; he’s definitely going to get paid enough to not have to deal with this roommate bullshit once he’s out of this college, but he can’t help but feel bad for the girl, and feel worse for Mingyu. 

Jungkook walks out when he hears the front door finally lock, and looks up a sobriety program on his phone as his roommate walks past him to his own room. 

“Hey JK?”

He turns around, sheepishly hiding his phone without considering the fact that Mingyu is definitely seeing double and definitely didn’t make out his search.

“Yeah?”

“Do not do this one-night stand thing.”

Hey Mingyu? Do not do this alcohol thing. 

Both pieces of advice are a bit too little too late, considering that the two of them are in their final years and are confidently past the stage of needing such freshman-esque tips, but Jungkook chooses to stay quiet so as to not rub salt into Mingyu’s wound, though he’s positive the latter is barely aware of this metaphorical wound.

“Yeah, thanks man.”

Mingyu nods again, this time affirmatively, as though he’s given some profound Kantean counseling before shutting his door. Jungkook copies the cheapest and closest sobriety program he finds, and pastes the link in his notes app for future reference.

—

When you were 17, late in your first year of college, your boyfriend had died. 

It’s a horrible note to start off on, and it’s worse to have to think about it on a Wednesday, seeing as you reserve these deep delves into trauma for long weekends and bank holidays, but the thing about grief is that it presents itself in weird ways.

Today, you remember the wake. Specifically, you remember the coffee you’d drank afterwards, and how you’ve ended up with the same drink today. It wasn’t your fault, no, a shaken espresso is a common drink at the coffee shop next to campus, and there’s no way AJ would’ve known, seeing as it’s a detail you’ve quite literally never mentioned.

Enter character: AJ, or Alex Jacob Lee, your closest friend at law school, and barista of another overpriced coffee shop you frequent, not to be mistaken with the one further into the city from where you buy those sinfully good white mochas. He has a game going on with you, where he’ll conjure up a different drink for you every Wednesday after your last class, which aligns with his shifts there.

And today, he’s chosen a shaken espresso. Again, not his fault. Again, not a bad drink. It’s the way the bitterness sits on your tongue, and the first greetings of summer in the evening air that have you thinking of your boyfriend — ex-boyfriend, that is. You think of his smile, the closed casket he was laid to rest in because his body was pretty wrecked from the car crash, and you think of Jeon Jungkook. 

You remember his arms around you, and you remember refusing to cry. You remember him buying you the drink, and you remember breaking down in front of him, showing any semblance of weakness for the first time in all your 17 years of knowing each other. You think of how much you miss him, how it’s been a good few weeks since you’ve seen him in person, you think of how you never actually fell in love with your boyfriend, and how broken you’d been after he passed.

You still feel the ebbing pain in the left side of your chest, but that’s not something you’re willing to admit. After all, it’s been a good 6 years since then, and you laid him to rest in the tresses of your mind the second you had left the cemetery after his wake.

When you’re done with the drink, you’re done with the memory, and you decide to return to the shop; that way, you can convince yourself that you’re fine, and you can convince AJ to get dinner with you. The coffee lingers in your mouth, though, and take a quick detour to the vending machine to the left of the shop to pick up a bottle of water and think about how horrible the placement of this machine is.

“Hey, you. What’s wrong? Drink not good enough today?”

AJ’s right next to you when you pick up the water from the slot at the bottom, and you find yourself smiling up at him instinctively.

“I think you’ve lost your touch, honestly.” 

He laughs, you laugh with him, and your heart feels just a bit lighter after the thought you’ve just had to throttle out of your brain physically, which reminds you of why you returned to the shop in the first place. He looks down at you, gaze so fixed that you look away for a moment before you even open your mouth to speak.

“Wanna grab some dinner? I’m kinda winded, we can get pizza.” 

He looks back at the shop, and then at you. The silence is comfortable, and you can hear the music from within the business as someone opens the door to enter. AJ’s expression is a bit hard to read, but the little furrow of his brow, and the way he’s avoiding eye contact tells you that he’s about to say no. 

“Can I take a rain check? I’ve gotta finish up at the shop, and I have an early morning tomorrow.”

I’ll wait, and we won’t take long. We can just take it out, we don’t have to sit and eat.

Your mouth feels dry, tastes little like you’ve just thrown up bile, and your eyes shake just a bit as you think of what to say, think of where to look.

“Oh, yeah? No prob, Jakey.”

The nickname slips out, and his mouth droops into a lopsided grin. You don’t notice the twinkle of his eyes, because you’re too busy unscrewing the bottle of water, eager to finally get the tinge of coffee out of your mouth.

He doesn’t say much more, just tells you that he’ll see you around, and takes a quick jog back to work. Pulling your phone out of your pocket is a bit hard because of how hard your hands are shaking, and you clench your fingers together to stop them from doing so, though you’re not sure why you’re acting like this in the first place. Maybe it’s because you’ve just remembered one of the worst days of your life, maybe it’s because you needed company, maybe it’s because you know AJ doesn’t have classes early tomorrow, and maybe it’s because you miss your old best friend. 

You decide it’s the latter, and when you finally, finally unlock your phone, you decide to call Jungkook.

The phone rings, and you can’t stand to hear the way AJ’s voice travels outside the coffee shop occasionally, so you walk onto the pavement, trying to focus on the obnoxious rings of the phone. You let it go to voicemail when he doesn’t pick up, and decide that you won’t deal with rejection today, so text him to get dinner with you instead 

[to JayKayz] hey, you down to get some pizza tonight?

[to JayKayz] i’ll take the train to NYU and you can meet me at 2 bros?

You figure he’s either in, or finishing his last class, hence the lack of response for the first ten minutes or so, which severely dampens your mood on the way to the train station, but he replies soon after, and you’d be lying if you said your mood didn’t do an entire 180. 

[from JayKayz] this is fucking insane cuz I was literally just thinking about you this morning

[from JayKayz] yes to pizza btw. 

[from JayKayz] sorry I didn’t pick up I was dealing with Mingyu who’s fucking drunk again. 

[from JayKayz] text me when ur on campus and I’ll pick you up.

You have to physically fight yourself from smiling like a psychopath, which is awkward since you don’t really know why you’re smiling. Maybe it’s because he was thinking of you, maybe it’s because he said he’s, or maybe it’s because it’s funny how fed up he is with his roommate who definitely needs to attend a sobriety program. You decide it’s the latter, and your heart isn’t on edge the whole time you make your way to Jeon Jungkook’s university.

—

The thing about you and Jungkook is that there’s nothing awkward about the silences that tend to ensue between the two of you. It’s not uncommon for there to be no words spoken, especially in the past few years — Jungkook has always been an introvert, and school tends to tire you out of being able to carry the conversation. It’s okay, it’s normal, and it’s happened a lot since you moved out to be nearer to campus, but you’re different today.

Jungkook notices the shift almost as soon as you sit down across from him and slide him his coke, hands otherwise empty, saying absolutely nothing else. Typically (read: every single time the two of you eat at 2Bros Pizza, which is not rare), you make fun of him for ordering the Meat Supreme slice, and you always get a coke float for yourself, which reminds him of the time there was a new employee working the Night Shift, and you, in your drunken stupor, almost jumped the counter when he didn’t know how to make one for you. He tucks the memory aside to ask you what’s wrong:

“No float today? Finally saw the light?”

It comes out wrong, less empathetic than he’d like to be, seeing as you’re visibly struggling with something, but it seems to break you out of your own head, and you look up at him. Your eyes shine under the streetlight just a couple inches away from the table the two of you sit at, and the way a smile breaks across your face sends something akin to a shiver down his spine.

“Yeah, I had a coffee earlier. AJ and I have a game going, so - uh, yeah, I’m not that thirsty right now.l 

Jungkook remembers this guy, but he also notices the way you’ve started to chew on the right side of your lip as you think about him. He hums quietly, opening his mouth to speak when you beat him to it.

“How’s Mingyu by the way? Day drinking again?”

He laughs out loud, taking a bite out of his pizza. You do the same, eyes a bit less dazed as you listen intently to whatever he’s about to say, but he doesn’t speak for a while again, and the silence that ensues this time is more comfortable than before.

It’s something about Jungkook that’s routinely, and you don’t hate it at all. You’ve been a stickler for organization, for schedules, for routine for as long as you can remember, and while you and him are quite different, you can tell that Jungkook appreciates the stability you bring. 

You remember being a child and coming here with your family, Jungkook with his. Your mom would share a cheese slice with you, and his mom would share the abominable Meat Premium slice with him. You’d get a coke float, and his eyebrows would furrow as he animatedly talked about how good everything tasted, almost looking upset because it was delicious. You’d stay quiet, sharing an exasperatedly fond look with the two women who sat across from each other, and then you’d look at Jungkook.

And then, you look at Jungkook.

He has the same pinch in his eyebrows, but he’s been eating here for over a decade so the comments about how good the food is have dwindled, and he just slurps obscenely at the cheese, occasionally stopping to take an equally obscene swig of his drink. You’d be disgusted if AJ ate that way, but it’s Jungkook, so you just laugh, and the question you asked about his roommate dissipates from where it was hanging in the air.

“So this AJ guy, what’s his deal?”

You pause mid-bite, looking a bit confused; the timing is scary, and it’s almost like Jungkook's managed to read your mind in the past minute. You answer with a question of your own.

“So this Mingyu guy, what’s his deal?”

“Touché.” 

“No like, actually, though,” you let out a laugh at the way Jungkook goes back to devouring his food. “He needs to get to a sobriety program.”

“Dude, for real. I was literally looking one up for him this morning, like it’s an actual fucking problem and he refuses to acknowledge it.” 

“Have you actually tried to get him to acknowledge it?”

Jungkook is many things; he’s smart, capable, strong, his eyes are bright under the streetlights, and he’s compassionate, but he’s never been confrontational. Though you don’t doubt he’s concerned for his friend, you also don’t doubt that he’s never brought it up in front of Mingyu, at least directly; you reckon there’s been a lot of beating around the bush, a lot of surreptitious monologues about ‘seeking help when you need’, etcetera. The thought makes you laugh, and Jungkook looks at you quizzically.

“I mean, I made him watch a TED talk about sobriety last week, and he seemed intrigued…”

You raise a brow. Jungkook would bully you relentlessly for watching those videos, and you doubt he’d watch them even with someone’s best interest in mind.

“We were both high.”

The two of you laugh, looking away so as to not break entirely, and then accidentally making eye contact, breaking almost immediately after. 

His laughter is loud, bright, and it brings you back to when you were kids. 

You laugh silently, taking in large gasps of air whenever you feel the need to, and Jungkook can’t help but think of how you’ve had this habit since you were a toddler.

When a few tears slip inevitably, Jungkook doesn’t let you use the collar of your shirt to wipe them like AJ typically does, using the pads of his fingers to gently flick them off of your cheeks. (It’s another thing he’s done for years now, but you don’t think about it in the afterglow of laughing so hard that your ribs sting a bit.)

Thinking of AJ reminds you of the question Jungkook asked you before you grilled him about Mingyu. You wonder why you avoided it so desperately, and you wonder why you’re thinking so much about AJ today, when Jungkook is right in front of you.

He’s pretty like this, the pizza parlor’s sign lights up a little after 21:30, and the green and red hues make the dewy skin of his face look softer. He’s chewing at his straw, and has a lazy grin on his face, occasionally giggling when he undoubtedly remembers the outburst the two of you just had.

It’s simple, routinely, laughing with Jungkook, being with Jungkook, and your mind is no longer clouded with the wake, with how much your Tort Law professor hates your whole class, with how AJ lied to you, but you don’t suppose it’d be the worst thing to not leave Jungkook hanging.

“What about AJ, by the way?”

He looks up, and his eyes are just as big as they used to be when he was a toddler. 

“You asked what his deal was, what’d you mean?”

Jungkook’s lazy grin is back as he stares at you, reaching across the table to push back a strand of hair that you hadn’t even noticed fall into your face. His touch is warm, and you hope the bright red light of the sign masks the soft blush that warms your face when he strokes the underside of your jaw before pulling away.

“I meant, like, you know,” he pauses, but you shake your head, still confused. Jungkook breathes to regroup, and continues. “The Wednesday drink thing, and how he’s the homescreen of your phone, and how you’re blushing right now after bringing him up? I know dating’s a bit tough but like, maybe there’s something there?”

The realization dawns upon you; Jungkook thinks you’re into AJ, and vice versa. You don’t know why it makes your stomach turn, so you attribute it to the pizza you’ve just had and the coffee from earlier. 

The ridiculous urge to defend yourself like Jungkook’s accused you of something fights it’s way up your throat, accompanied by bile. You swallow it down, clearing your throat before you start your rebuttal statement. (You don’t think about how you’re thinking of this like a case, when it’s quite literally just your best friend talking about who you’re dating).

“The Wednesday drink thing’s only because he has a shift there after I’m done with classes, and it’s not like he gives them to me for free.”

Jungkook can’t tell why you look so serious now, back straight and face cold, voice icy. It’s a sharp contrast to the way you were speaking only a mere 10 minutes prior, and he wants to tell you that it’s nothing serious; that he wasn’t accusing you.

“He’s the homescreen of my phone because I look good in the picture, and also because it’s from my 21st birthday, which was just a good day in my life —“

“I think y-you misunderstood me?”

He doesn’t sound confident, but you stop speaking, unable to tell him that you weren’t, in fact, blushing because of AJ.

“There’s nothing there, Jungkook.”

He looks down, and then back up at you, the prickly feeling of discomfort crawling across his chest. Jungkook isn’t sure why he feels cornered, why he feels upset at the way you responded to something innocent he said.

It makes him think of another time, back in your first year of law school when he’d asked you why you hadn’t called him for a week; you’d straightened up, basically recounted every assignment you had due, every other engagement you had, went to hell and back to justify yourself when he was just asking a question.

It makes him think of countless other times, when you’d dissect questions like he was a prosecutor in a courtroom, when you’d pounce at him at the slightest indication of being cornered, when you’d feel the need to justify and self-assess even if he wasn't even in a 100 mile radius of asking you to do that.

He wants to tell you that you don’t have to feel like he’s forcing an answer out of you, that you have a life and you could’ve just laughed it off, that you don’t have to be afraid to have human instincts and relationships and that you’re his best friend.

Instead, he ignores the way your eyes look glossy, ignores the clear indication that you’ve had a stupidly hard day, ignores the screaming cries for someone to tell you that it’s okay, for someone to just ask what’s wrong — something he’s been on the fence of doing for the whole evening. He ignores it all, and gets up to throw his plate away.

“I’m sorry —“

“Need me to walk you to the train station?”

“Uh, no. I got it. Thanks.”

You follow with your own plate, picking your bag up from the seat beside you, and wave at Jungkook a bit awkwardly. He waves back, still not making eye contact with you, and lets  you walk away without saying a word more.

Jungkook tries not to think about how pretty you are, tries not to think about how you’re going to cry in the solitude of your room which is how you’ve always dealt with emotions, tries not to think about whatever you could’ve been thinking of that had you on the edge the entire evening. He tries to think about Mingyu, sobriety, and a fraternity party he has to go to tomorrow. He tries to think about skipping his last class, and ends up thinking about how lovely your smile is.

You text AJ to pick you up from campus despite the fake excuse he’d thrown at you earlier even though you don’t really want to think of him, and you hope the person sitting across from you on the train doesn’t notice how you’re crying.  It’s your boyfriend, it’s Jungkook and how you lashed out at him for no reason, it’s fucking AJ, and how Jungkook thinks you’re dating him when he’s just lied to you — it’s how AJ lied to you about a morning class — it’s Tort Law, and it’s the shaken espresso you had that seems to still linger on your tongue.  You try to think about a party you’ve been invited to tomorrow, try to think about how badly you need to get laid, and end up thinking about Jungkook’s pretty eyes.

—

AJ ends up picking you up from outside the train station, and if he notices your red-rimmed eyes, he doesn’t say anything.

Jungkook’s words, the cause of you snapping him, his insinuations all come to mind when AJ’s this close to you. You can smell his deodorant, you can feel the thin hoodie he dons on your sleeve, you can hear the small breaths he takes; I know dating’s a bit tough but like, maybe there’s something there?”

Is there? You wished you would’ve asked Jungkook to elaborate on this theory of his; he’s observant, and as aforementioned, not one for confrontation of any kind — the thought makes your head hurt with guilt because you’ve just shown him that he shouldn’t, in fact, confront people lest they give him a reaction anywhere similar to yours — and it’s apparent that he was probably sitting on the thought for a while.

Is there? AJ looks at you warmly, the Wednesday drink thing is a bit intimate, he knows your schedule, knows your professors and how you feel about them, knows your apartment even when he's drunk and it’s dark, and you know all of these things when it comes to him. You think about it for a moment, and when you look up at him, he’s already staring down at you. It’s kind, a bit far away like he was doing some thinking of his own, too, and you’re grateful he doesn’t look away immediately. 

AJ and you make sense together, if you were to put it logistically. Met in Law School, were friends for years before potentially getting together, and you’d be lying if you said it didn’t feel like a puzzle piece fitting into place. But logistics aren’t the game you play, and the longer you look at him, the more it settles in that there isn’t really much there. With Jungkook, for example, you’d notice the pretty doe shape in his eyes, the scar above his cheek, the slope of his nose and how when he blushes, the pink spreads from the tips of his ears inwards — with AJ, all you see is a handsome face. 

Jungkook is your best friend, though, and again, it makes more sense to notice these nuances with him than with AJ and fuck, why are you even thinking about this?

AJ continues to look at you, and you’re thankful, not for his eerie silence as much as for the fact that he’s walking you home at night after you’ve had such a rough day. If being with Jungkook is routine, AJ is the soft of your sheets after a long day — he’s always there, always with you, even if he doesn’t really say anything to you. 

(You fight this thought from appearing in your head, but evidently fail.) 

Even today, he didn’t question where you were coming from, didn’t say that he couldn’t come get you because he had this supposed ‘early morning’ (which he didn’t, which you could not get over), didn’t say a single word, at least it until you did. 

It’s a quiet question, one that has lingered in the back of your mind for the whole evening: “Why’d you lie, Alex?”

He looks startled, both at the rare use of his first name, and by the question itself. 

“What… what do you mean, exactly?” His laugh is a bit forced, and he steps away from you, looking away.

“You said you have an early morning, but I know your Crim. Justice class starts at 2. You could’ve just said you didn’t wanna have dinner with me —“ you laugh at the end, hoping to lighten the atmosphere but it doesn’t work. 

There is seriously something wrong with you today, but AJ breaks through that thought with a laugh.

“Early morning for work, ___. Internships don’t start till June, but doesn’t Cravath ask you to come in sometimes? It’s that. Some petty admin work.”

Your heart stops trying to commit suicide, and your shoulders relax for the first time since AJ handed you that damn drink this morning. You’d both landed top internships; you with Cravath, AJ with Watchell Lipton, and he was right, because you have gone in to do ‘petty admin work’ for them in the past month since you were accepted.

It’s a happy reminder of how well you’re doing, a happy reminder that your friend didn’t just lie to you, and you can’t help but laugh. It’s a sheepish one that turns genuine when you realize how accusatory you’d been, and you’re grateful again that he starts laughing along with you.

(You don’t notice his laugh the same way you did with Jungkook, but you also don’t dwell on that too much.) 

“Fuck, man. I’m sorry, I’m really sorry.”

He throws an arm around your shoulder, pulling you into his upper body so he can plant a loud kiss on the crown of your head. It’s something he does with everyone, but the conversation you had over dinner remains at the forefront of your mind and you close your eyes to really take in the proximity, the ease with which he just touches you, the way it feels natural, and the way you don’t mind.

“Maybe you should ask questions on the spot instead of working yourself into a frenzy about them, huh?”

“Maybe I should. No yeah, I definitely should. I don't know why I’m being slick about it —“

He laughs at that, taking your hand to spin you in front of him, and then around. 

If AJ notices the way your hair frames your face when he stops puppeteering you, if he notices the way your laugh echoes in his mind after you’ve stopped, if he notices the way you’ve remembered his classes, he doesn’t do anything about it. He had, however, noticed the way you were so obviously crying, and though he refuses to pry lest he invade your privacy, lest he finds out that he might’ve been the reason. 

He stays quiet about it, though, all the way till he reaches the lobby of your apartment complex, which is when he repeats what Jungkook had done just about an hour prior, fixing a strand of your messy hair. 

(You don’t blush like you had when Jungkook had done it, but AJ also doesn’t touch the underside of your jaw as gingerly as Jungkook had, so you convince yourself that it’s nothing)

“If it was hayfever, I know a great remedy, but if not, you should know that whatever you had to cry about, that it’s okay. If you can do Tort Law with Henderson, you can do anything.”

His assurance, paired with the fact that he hadn’t lied, paired with the fact that he’d kissed your head, paired with the way he’d spun you around like he was starring in some Glen Powell rom-com, paired with the way that he’d come and pick you up in the first place — all of it settles your heart fully, and you don’t even really remember why you’d cried in the first place. 

“Thank you. For picking me up, and I’m sorry that I was so, you know —“

“Don’t worry about it, it’s literally going to be your job to be ‘so, you know’ okay?”

You nod, chuckling lightly, and watch him wave you goodbye. If you pronounce your own wave a little extra so he laughs at it and isn’t even slightly worried about you being upset, nobody has to know. And if you still can’t stop thinking about Jungkook and how you need to apologize to him, nobody has to know.

—

Jungkook despises his schedule on Thursdays. It’s class after class, a shift at his job, another class, and another class — typically, by the end of the day, his brain is nothing but mush, he’s frazzled; exhausted, and passes out for a much simpler Friday, but as it is, there’s been a lot more unconventional breaks in routine than he’s used to, and he ends up going to a party after his final class on this particular Thursday. 

Mingyu invited him, but he’s not thinking about that, because thinking of his roommate makes him think of his conversation with you, which makes him think of how abruptly your manner had changed, which makes him feel bad for you, and also a little upset that you spoke to him that way, which makes him think of the notifications on his phone that he’s definitely not ignoring right now.

[from Elle Woods] jeongguk

[from Elle Woods] im sorry, i don’t know what that was or why I got so defensive about aj, and you didn’t deserve it 

[from Elle Woods] i really missed you, it’s been weeks since we’ve talked

[from Elle Woods] actually, can i just call you? 

[2 missed calls from Elle Woods]

He’d feel a little bad, because he knows that if you owe each other something, anything, it’s communication — you’ve been friends since you were literal infants, and he should know that there’s probably a very reasonable explanation for yesterday but he shuts his phone off, and recites the excuse for whenever he decides to get back to you.

___ie, I’m sorry, I was just busy — you know how Thursdays are, right?

He’s sure you’ll understand, and he can’t bring himself to continue thinking about it lest he breaks and gets himself into a longer-than-necessary phone call with you when he could be getting shitfaced to forget about the day he’s had; either that, or protecting Mingyu from throwing himself into premature liver failure as best as he possibly can.

Jungkook finds himself shoveling any remaining thoughts of you to the back of his head, another thing he’s being doing unconventionally often, and his short commute to the fraternity house Mingyu’s typo-filled message points him towards — another thing that should debase him, but the promise of alcohol (with a borderline frightening amount of emojis) keeps him going.

He realizes soon, that senior year is an absolute bitch, because it’s been months since he’s seen half of these people and it’s like nostalgia’s kicked him in the mouth, followed by the pungence of miscellaneous alcoholic drinks that you can only drink half a cup of before blacking out, followed by the familiar twinge of the fraternity party patented sweat. 

He’s broken out of this haze, watching people pass by him as he slumps against the doorframe of the kitchen by the vaguely familiar voice of somebody he used to know very well —

“Jungkookie? At a party? As I live and breathe!”

Enter character: Lim Nayoung, Jungkook’s ex-fuckbuddy, ex-situationship, near ex-girlfriend. Though the first two are terms exclusively used by high school students, there’s really no other way to describe the relation he has (had) with her, and even as he hears her voice, there’s a rush of emotion that he had to swallow down before he gets a good look at her.

She’s, well, a sight to see; though Jungkook told her he liked her long hair a lot (especially when she styled it like yours, which isn’t something he’s willing to say out loud), she has it cut short. He thinks it suits her, and he makes a mental note to let her know as he tries his best to take a once-over of her subtly, but gives up shortly when he notices her gaze on him; expectant.

“It’s been a while, huh?” A soft grin makes its way up his face, and he fights the urge to pull her into a hug. “I love the hair.”

“What happened to liking it long? In that weird 90s blowout?”

(Your ‘weird 90s blowout’. The same hair you’ve been wearing since junior year of high school, but Nayoung doesn’t have to know, and Jungkook doesn’t want to tell her.)

“I actually still like that look, but this is working for you, baby,” the pet name slips from his lips, force of habit, and he’d be lying if he said he didn’t notice the way her eyes lit up for a second. “Where’s everyone else?” It’s a quick attempt to salvage his slip-up, but it doesn’t seem like Nayoung notices the deflection. She doesn’t point him to the group of friends he’s so familiar with, though, instead dragging him by the forearm into the kitchen.

He catches sight of Mingyu by the drinks as Nayoung pours him something from a punch bowl, bright red with fruits strewn about the top, and Jungkook’s sure just a smell of it would kill a medieval peasant. He does, in fact have an incentive for being here, and is reminded of that by his aforementioned roommate’s loud shriek of his name. 

Nayoung gets to him before Mingyu, passing him a solo cup that she so graciously garnished with an orange slice, and he strokes her hair as a silent thanks, and a preemptive apology for what’s about to hit her, vis-à-vis Hurricane Mingyu;

“Yo, JK? You came, man!” The side hug he gets is sloppy, and Mingyu’s voice is so slurred that Jungkook can’t help but assume he’s been pre-gaming this for a while. The thought is cut off violently when his jaw is grabbed, forehead pressing against Mingyu’s in a manner too intimate for Jungkook to deal with without alcohol in his system. “You’re the man, I can’t believe we haven’t partied at all this year!” He shoves Jungkook away, while the latter looks dazed (read: disgusted) at how strongly Mingyu’s breath smelled of alcohol. 

He takes a sip of the concoction in his cup, wincing just a bit as the gasoline-y aftertaste fully settles in, right before the realization that it has, indeed, been way too long since he's last been to a party at all. He downs the drink, trying not to let his aversion show immediately before he looks down at Nayoung, nodding towards the drinks again. 

“Down like water, huh? What happened to my whiskey addict?” Nayoung’s voice is bleary over the terrible EDM drop that’s just played over the speakers, but Jungkook laughs anyways — whiskey’s been his drink of choice ever since you managed to get away with buying a bottle at 17, and he thinks about  you every single time he drinks it; more specifically, the way you’d all but hurled it in front of a bodega, and then the way the two of you had drunkenly ran off. 

Whatever was in the drink is working, apparently, because Jungkook can feel the buzz of the drink in his veins, and as he pushes aside the memory of the two of you, there’s a burst of confidence that pulses through him. It isn’t anything forward, just the personality so many of his friends were well acquainted with — cocky, a little egotistical, a little too hot for his own good — fighting it’s way out of the somber senior he’s been playing for a good few months now.

He leans against the punch table so he’s eye-level with Nayoung, who shies away from the sudden proximity, and if she’s blushing just a bit, he pretends like he doesn’t notice in favor of grabbing the drink out of her hand and drinking it all in one go. It stings on its way down, and she stares at him, mouth agape at what she’s just seen him do twice in a row.

“There’s like, an entire bottle of vodka in that.”

Jungkook smiles, a little lazy and a little lopsided.

“Is there another full bottle somewhere?”

/

The catastrophic thing about Jungkook isn’t that he makes bad decisions, it’s just that he refuses to admit when he’s made a bad decision. 

To set the scene, think of Jungkook, on the lawn of the insanely big glorified fraternity mansion, 7 shots of vodka in and drunk enough that his equilibrium is fully askew and he’s slurring his words in the dialect only you’re familiar with, one he’s grown out of years ago.

Nayoung is still by his side, reasonably sober compared to him, and a couple of his friends — both close and those who he all but neglected in favor of computer science senior year — surround him. They’ve chosen the surprisingly well kempt area because EDM and copious amounts of alcohol stop making sense when you hit your twenties, and as it is, Jungkook’s previous attempts to keep you out of his brain are failing horrifically.

They talk about the time Nayoung and Jungkook got drunk, called Namjoon and told him the only identifiable landmark was the moon, talk about Seokjin throwing up at the foot of the Statue of Liberty, talk about their lives, Mingyu talks about his endeavors in bed (which is weird because he definitely doesn’t know half the people in this vicinity) and Jungkook thinks about you.

He thinks about feeling bad that he’s not replying, thinks about how you don’t drink a lot because drunk driving killed your boyfriend, thinks about how smart you are and how he wishes you had an easier childhood, how he wishes you weren’t so hard on yourself, wishes you were here and that you hadn’t moved out, wishes he could see you everyday, and wishes that he could just get you out of his head. 

He thinks about you, uncharacteristically quiet until Nayoung calls him on it —

“What’s got you all worked up?” Her question is really just a figure of speech, but he wants to tell her everything because if anyone knows Jungkook even a smidge close to the way you know him, it’s Nayoung. 

“N’thin, nothing,” he takes a pause to breathe out, regroup and look down at Nayoung. It takes him a while to really gather that the group has split up, all going their separate ways after getting shitfaced, presumably to find themselves another drink or a hookup. He wonders if you’ve ever hooked up with someone at a party, wonders if you’d say yes if he were to ask —

“Wanna go upstairs? I hate this fucking music.”

[In retrospect, he should’ve known, at that point, that he was making a horrible mistake, but again, he’d never admit it]

“Yeah. Not because I wanna sit in a fraternity kid’s bed, but because I wanna shoot Avicii right about now.” It takes Nayoung a while to comprehend his slurred words, but she laughs at the sentiment before telling him that Avicii’s very much not alive. It makes Jungkook grin morbidly, and he finds himself grabbing her hand to pull her back into the house.

In the essence of wanting to be a good friend, he looks around to catch a glimpse of Mingyu anywhere, and finds him near the kitchen. He’s, surprisingly so, not drunk outwardly, but Jungkook figures that’s bound to change soon; the party is nowhere near being over. His roommate catches Nayoung’s hand in his, and shoots him a horrifically confused look, which Jungkook pays no mind to.

It doesn’t take long for them to make their way upstairs and into the only bedroom on the floor that isn’t locked or mysteriously producing obscene pornstar-esque sex sounds, and even though the bed is horribly unkempt in a way that would become the butt of your jokes for months on end, they settle. 

Fuck, Jungkook has got to stop thinking about you. It’s becoming dangerously apparent that you’re becoming the forefront of his thoughts this evening, and he just can’t figure out why. It’s happened before, too, every time he’d go out to get lunch or dinner with you, every time you’d force him to come with you to The Met or every time he’d force you to come with him to a Yankees game, you’d just plague his brain for the next couple of days. He thinks it because you’re his best friend, that it’s normal to think about someone who’s entire childhood has been riddled with yours, but he can’t exactly focus on that thought when Nayoung pulls her jacket off.

It’s one she bought when they used to… be involved, and Jungkook smiles ever so lightly when he remembers the day.

“That from our little detour to Jersey?”

She looks up at him, and the light of the room is a bit too dim to properly make out her features, but it reflects off of her collarbones, gets his mind all fuzzy when she reciprocates the dopey smile he has on.

“Yeah, yep. I always keep the memorabilia.”

“I mean, the other memorabilias,” he quotes the word, still feeling really fucking buzzed, “were just tattoos. Bit hard to get rid of those, huh?”

Nayoung laughs, and Jungkook feels the claws of past intimacy scratch down his back. It’s familiar, being like this with her, and he values that. Values her, even if she never really gave him an actual reason for breaking it off — ‘we’re in different places, clearly’ she’d told him, and if he sat down to really think about it, he might be able to decipher her words in the context of their relationship but Jungkook literally cannot think of more than three things at once right now.

She lies down flat on the bed, and he has half a mind to tell her off about frat boys and their abysmal hygiene, but he thinks it’s a good idea, and readjusts himself so he’s laying right next to her. She tilts her head to look at him, and he finds the ceiling to be the most interesting thing in the world as soon as it registers in his mind what might be happening. 

“What happened with you?”

“Huh?”

“Just… how you disappeared after senior year, how you were dozing off even when you’re definitely drunk. It’s so unlike you to not be like, the one keeping the conversation going.”

I can’t stop thinking about my best friend. I’m worried about her, and senior year is ruining my life because I’m not sure I even want to do computer science and my roommate needs to be put in a sobriety program and I need to talk to my best friend right now but I’m ignoring her.

“Yeah, it’s just — work stuff, ya know? ‘S been crazy this year. You know.” 

Though his intentions aren’t to give her the wrong idea about this ordeal, he can’t help himself from turning his head to look at her. He laughs, and she doesn’t wince even when his (presumably) vodka-smelling breath hits her face. Nayoung’s giggle is quiet, and she lifts a hand to his head to push back his hair.

If Jungkook keens just a bit, nobody has to know.

“I don’t know, really. I mean, I don’t have a sick internship, so work’s not that bad for me.”

Jungkook’s pupils are blown out, and when Nayoung’s eyes meet his, he sobers up enough for him to realize just how close they are. With a portion of his brain suddenly not inebriated, he should realize what’s happening, he should pull away, but he also realizes that you haven’t crossed his head for a good couple of minutes, which is good enough of a sign for him to stay put.

“Your thing with ___ not work out?”

He’s confused at why you’re being brought up, but he shakes his head as best as he can manage; there’s no way she remembers you, and there’s no way she thought there was a ‘thing’ between you and him. That would be weird, but he can’t help but think of what she’d said — we’re in different places, clearly. 

Different places.

“There was… no thing.”

“So there’s nothing with her and you?”

“No, Nayoung-ie. Never was.”

Different places? Was there a thing? 

When she kisses him, he doesn’t stop her.

(And when she asks him to fuck her; delirious, eyes wide, skin dewy, he doesn’t stop himself.)

It’s messy, limbs tangled as he’s basically bent her over in half to plow his cock into her, more drunk off the pretty sounds she makes — familiarly, intimacy — than the copious amounts of drinks he’s had. She’s moaning his name out like a prayer, and he’s leaning over her like a god, and Jungkook’s stopped being religious, but he thinks it’s sin, the way she envelopes him and gives herself to him. The way he doesn’t have to ask, the way she’s meeting his hips halfway.

Exodus 20:14, Proverbs 6:32, Hebrews 13:4 — You shall not commit adultery, But a man who commits adultery has no sense; whoever does so destroys himself, Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral.

He remembers these verses, and he remembers your pretty eyes, and you’re all he can think about when he looks down at Nayoung. Does that make him an adulterer? Does that make him a cheater, dirty, sinful? He fucks into her deeper, inevitably hits the spot — familiarity, intimacy — and drinks her moans in. He remembers the slope of your nose, and how you’d laughed together over dinner a day ago, how your eyes had looked under the streetlights. Nayoung tears up, tells him it feels so fucking good, and he thinks of the tears in your eyes. His hips stutter, and it makes her dig her blunt nails into the clothes expanse of his shoulders, but he welcomes the pain better than he welcomes the guilt of having let you walk away.

Exodus 20:14, Proverbs 6:32, Hebrews 13:4 — You shall not commit adultery, But a man who commits adultery has no sense; whoever does so destroys himself, Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral.

He feels wretched, feels horribly for Nayoung and feels the vodka in his system crawl its way up his throat but he keeps it down. He’s close, she’s close, and if this was a bad decision, nobody has to know. 

Jungkook feels her lose herself over him, and he lets his mind drift to you one last time, biting his lip so he doesn’t groan out your name as his hips lose their rhythm. When he pulls out, one hand lazily pumping his cock, he tries to picture Nayoung, her tits bouncing pretty under her shirt, how she’s trying to regroup all because of him, how she laughed and how it felt when she touched his hair but all his brain can manage is you. 

Fuck, he feels wretched. Disgusting, like it’s incestual to think about you the way he is but he welcomes it, let’s you into his mind after fighting it for hours, and when he spills all over Nayoung’s stomach, there’s some sick gratification that coats him.

And that’s the thing about Jungkook. This was a horrible decision, down to every last detail. Fucking your ex-fuckbuddy in a random frat boy’s room after getting shitfaced because you haven’t drank that much in months, and ending up thinking about your best friend even if the goal was to not do that? Bad, bad decision.

But he takes it in stride. Thinks of this as a silver lining, a distraction from you as though you haven’t clouded his head like a stupid wet dream while he fucked somebody else. 

And that’s the thing about Jungkook. He refuses to admit that he’s messed up. 

/

Jungkook doesn’t take much time to recuperate from sex. He has incredible stamina coming from the insane workout regime he absolutely has to keep up with, and he can definitely go multiple times in one night, thank you very much, but he can’t bring himself to even think of agreeing to fuck Nayoung again.

He hopes she’s on the same page when he looks at her, the pacing of her breath slowing down as she sits up slowly. He reaches out, stroking her arm right above her elbow where the matching tattoo she got with him sits. Jungkook distracts himself from deciding on what to say as he recalls how they’d gotten it together, how he’d called you right after to show —

Fuck, he hadn’t even thought about you. Granted, you don’t fit into the situation very well, but he doesn’t doubt that you’ll be impartial to telling him off about what he’s just done. He thinks about what to tell you, and remembers the unread messages on his phone, and remembers what he should be doing, which is somehow getting the idea of ever doing this again out of Nayoung’s head.

“Well, you’re never gonna be bad at sex.”

He laughs sheepishly, shuffling to pull his boxers over his still exposed dick. He has no idea what the hell to say to that, and it seems like it’s about to lead to a monologue about how since he’s never ‘gonna be bad at sex’, that they should continue — or return — to be fuckbuddies. 

Fuck.

“But we aren’t doing that again.” 

Jungkook’s neck snaps up and he lets out a breath of relief he had no idea he was even holding. Nayoung looks incredibly beautiful, and he would lay everything at her feet out of gratitude because she’s just made this whole ordeal inexplicably easy for him. Her face is bright, like it always used to get after they fucked, and Jungkook feels a bout of familiarity catch in his throat, this time accompanied with a sick rush of guilt. 

“Uh, w-why do you say that?” His voice is gentle, coaxing the answer out of her, though he can predict what she’s about to say.

We’re in different places, clearly. 

“I mean, you were shitfaced just half an hour ago. This was like, a drunken rebound,” Jungkook laughs at that, quiet and low, reaching up to rub at his nape. He doesn’t feel as drunk now, but Nayoung’s next words definitely do the job of sobering him up. “You’re fun, but I want a relationship before I graduate and I honestly don’t think you even like me.”

His world pauses for a split second, and his heart breaks for her; because he made her feel unloved. 

Jungkook thinks of Nayoung. Sitting in front of him, face tinged a bit pink from the incredible sex (Exodus 20:14, Proverbs 6:32, Hebrews 13:4), hair cut short and hair long in a blowout (the one you sport all the time) (he thinks your hair is the prettiest shade of brown, and he remembers running his fingers through it). He thinks of Nayoung, matching tattoos and drives to Jersey and how she kissed him with so much fervency and how he tried so hard to match it. 

“Your thing with ___ not work out?”

He thinks of calling you after getting tattoos, thinks of how your laugh echoed through his phone in the empty street. He thinks of texting you (shit, he has to text you) for ideas of things to give Nayoung. He thinks of Nayoung opening those gifts and throwing her arms around his neck. He thinks of getting drunk with Nayoung and telling her about childhood memories with you — he thinks of the house you grew up in and the one next to it, where he grew up. 

He thinks of you telling him how hard school was, how young you were in high school. He thinks of you crying when your boyfriend died. He thinks of your overpriced white mochas and 2Bros Pizza and fucking AJ. He thinks of how you told him to date Nayoung about two years ago, he thinks about how you’ve always been under this multitude of pressure to excel, and he thinks about how he loves you, and how he loves (fuck) Nayoung.

“Of course I like you, Nana.”

Jungkook remembers how she’d lay down on his bicep after he fucked her one night, telling him about the silly nickname. He remembers thinking then, about how you never had a silly nickname because your parents were too focused on getting you into the top ranking kindergarten in all of the Upper East Side. He remembers laughing at Nayoung’s story, and then making a note to give you a stupid nickname.

And then, Jungkook realizes she’s right. 

He doesn’t like her, at least not enough to date her. He thinks of his best friend more than he thinks of her, and Nayoung probably already knows this, hence her little comment earlier.

“Your thing with ___ not work out?”

“But I think I like you too much to fuck you and let myself leave it at that. So you’re wrong about that. But I also think that I can’t give you that relationship. I’m busy, and I think I need to figure out like, my future job and stuff and fuck, I’m sorry if I led you on.”

The look Nayoung gives him reaches down into his stomach and tugs at his gut. She looks pitiful, like he’s the one who’s being hurt in this situation. He looks equally as confused as she does woeful.

“I don’t think your job is all you need to figure out, Jungkook.”

“Your thing with ___ not work out?”

Exodus 20:14, Proverbs 6:32, Hebrews 13:4

He doesn’t ask her what she means, and she doesn’t elaborate.

Jungkook watches her redress, and he chooses to do the same as the reality of being butt naked on a random frat boy’s bed nearly gives him whiplash.

He feels the weight of his phone in the back pocket of his jeans, and realizes how desperately he needs to talk to you, to let you talk to him. To let you tell him what went wrong yesterday. He thinks he won’t tell you what just went down with Nayoung.

Nayoung.

She’s beautiful in her clothes again, a little messy, but Jungkook feels the urge to never let anyone hurt her, including himself. It’s love, he knows immediately, when the dim lamp hits the apples of her cheeks and he can see the flutter in her eyelashes when she blinks. But it’s not romantic, and he’s a bit relieved when he realizes this. (It feels nothing like how he does when he looks at you). This love is platonic, not brotherly but friendly, like he’d pick her up from a club and remember her restaurant orders and be the one to haze any of her boyfriends.

And he tells her just this.

“I love you, Nana. You know that, yeah?”

She looks over at him, and it must click in her head what he's implying, because her eyes brighten just a little.

(If they’re glossing over because she’s about to cry, Jungkook will pretend he doesn’t notice.)

“I love you too, Jungkook. You know that, yeah?”

He nods, and he feels the taste of his love for her heavy on his tongue. This love is platonic, not brotherly but friendly, like he’d pick her up from a club and remember her restaurant orders and be the one to haze any of her boyfriends.

(He thinks he loves you platonically as well.)

(If the love he feels when he looks at you is entirely different than the love he feels when he looks at Nayoung, even though he cites them both as being platonic, nobody has to know.)

—

[from JayKayz] im sorry baby, i didn’t check my phone all day.

[from JayKayz] you know how thursdays are.

[from JayKayz] dont apologize. i don’t wanna talk over call, twll me when you’re free

—

It’s about a month after the small reconciliation that Jungkook tells you about how he’d fucked Nayoung.

The last couple of weeks have been incredible; works dwindled down over the past couple of weeks for the both of you, finals are in their last bow before summer, and after a brunch at one of Manhattan’s finest rooftop bars where the two of you had drank a shit ton of margaritas, the guilt of potentially offending Jungkook no longer eats you alive.

It reminds Jungkook of, funnily enough, his freshman year of college  — going out as he came in — when the grief of losing your boyfriend wasn’t eating you alive any longer. The two of you had done every cheesy New York tourist thing; ice skating at Bryant Park down to lunch on top of the Empire State Building, and you’d laughed, learned to ballroom dance from YouTube videos only to botch it horribly in the streets; it was the first time Jungkook felt that rush down his throat, and he’s begun to feel it again recently.

It’s like the montage of a romantic comedy where the main characters get to really know each other: a part you savor, and a part Jungkook tends to skip so he can get to whatever conflict awaits. The two of you have done everything together, continued to get weekly pizzas at 2Bros, where you’ve openly made fun of him for his order choice, gotten white mochas at the small business you love too much (he thinks it’s not that great but spends $18 anyways), rewatched the first 5 seasons of Friends (he’s realized you can literally quote it), gone to every Yankees game you could get tickets to (you make him explain all the plays even if he’s done it a million times), spent too much time and too much money at the Statue of Liberty, gotten pictures together at random photo booths in the street, slept under the stars, slept tangled in each other’s arms, drunkenly made out once only to never talk about it —

It’s going better than it ever has, and Jungkook can count on one hand the memories he has that beat out any of the ones that he’s spent with you.

However, as a callback to the Glen Powell rom-com plot curve, there has to be a conflict. So when Jungkook tells you about that drunken memory that still is very much in his mind, you really think you should’ve seen it coming.

It happens over lunch, another sick foreshadow you should’ve seen barreling towards you, and it hits you in a way you can’t exactly explain. He doesn’t take it as seriously; doesn’t think you’d care because it’s not like any of this is inherently romantic. It’s not like he cheated on you; the two of you were just best friends who hadn’t even seen each other in a while when it happened. 

(If the Bible verses are at the tip of his tongue when Jungkook thinks of it, he leaves that part out of the recollection.)

He laughs when he tells you, and you savor the sweet sound, the one that’s low and tugs at your heart in an inexplicable manner. 

It starts off as a conversation about how he cannot drink vodka anymore, and you immediately wish you hadn’t asked when he speaks: “You know that time, when you got really pissed at me for saying that AJ shit to you?”

The memory sends something queasy down your stomach. It shoots down your legs for a split second before you remember his words from a month back.

You don’t have to explain yourself, I get it.

It must’ve been a hard day, huh? That fucker got you a shaken espresso, Jesus. 

Yeah I know he had no idea, but still. I do. And it makes me feel so shitty for you.

You don’t have to explain yourself.

“I’d say pissed is an overstatement.”

“Overstatement for you, you have the best attorneys in the country teaching you on random Tuesday. For me,” his hands reach to rest dramatically over his heart, and you laugh unironically, making a note to yourself to only order mocktails from this moment forward. “It was like getting bitchslapped.”

That genuinely makes you laugh.

“But whatever, the next day, I went to a party and got shitfaced to deal with the pain.”

That reminds you of how you’d dealt with snapping at him the day after — how you had hyperventilated in your room when he didn’t reply, how you had to skip a class because your heart wouldn’t stop beating at the prospect of losing him.

You don’t have to explain yourself.

“And I fucked Nayoung. So no more vodka for me.”

“Lim Nayoung?”

You don’t know why you ask, obviously it’s her.

Obviously it’s Lim Nayoung. The girl who has a matching tattoo with Jungkook on her arm. The girl who has gifts you told him to get for her decorating her shelves. The sweet girl who never stopped Jungkook from speaking to you even if the ‘girl best friend archetype made perfect sense. The girl who has a jacket from when Jungkook and her had almost had a Ross/Rachel wedding after getting drunk in Jersey. His ex-fuckbuddy, hell, his ex-girlfriend because who does all of that with someone who’s supposed to be strictly physical.

Obviously it’s Lim Nayoung.

Obviously you shouldn’t be this fucking surprised.

Obviously your heart shouldn’t sink to the tresses of your stomahc.

Obviously this wasn’t meant to be romantic.

“Yeah, her. It was fucking crazy, I don’t think I’ve ever drank that much.”

His voice is fuzzy in your ears, and you can’t look him in the eyes properly. You take a sip of the drink that’s next to you, willing yourself to suddenly get wasted so you never remember this moment.

Why does it make a sharp pain go through your left side? Why do you have to clench your palms into a fist to subside said pain. Why did you think this was going somewhere, why did you think Jungkook wasn’t still hung up on her.

You think of AJ, and how he doesn’t even know about your ex-boyfriend. You think of your ex-boyfriend, and shaken espressos, and wakes, and how Jungkook’s the only person who’s been through all of that with you.

You think of how you graduate in less than a month, and you think of how Jungkook will have attended six of your graduations by that point. You think of Nayoung, how pretty she is, and how much you think she deserves him.

You wonder why you think you would ever deserve him, and you wonder why you thought it would end in anything but an eternal friendship; beautiful, intimate, but forever bound by the jagged cuffs of platonicity. You wonder if he, even for a fleeting moment — when you were tangled in his sheets, when you laughed at his stupid king-kong jokes at the Empire State Building, when you reached for his hand during the climaxes of horror movies, when your lips were fervent on his in that back alley — thought that this would go anywhere.

“Maybe we need to get you in that sobriety program, huh?”

If your voice cracks, you pray he doesn’t notice. You pray the laugh you get out of him is genuine, and you pray that he didn’t look at Nayoung so warmly, only to feel just as guilty as you had a month prior.

/

AJ has no idea why you’re at his apartment, nor does he have any idea as to why you’re drunk. It’s way too early in the day for you to be wasted; in fact, he distinctly remembers you telling him that you and Jungkook were going out, which is why you couldn’t make it to the lunch he had proposed. 

Were you getting drunk at noon? He knows you like margaritas, but he also knows that you have an insane tolerance; how many did you drink to get you this —

“H- he doesn’t love me.”

You interrupt the tangent of his thoughts with a hiccuped, slurred out sentence, and his entire face contorts trying to decipher what you’re saying, and then why you’re saying it.

“Hey, hey — wait, come in, what are you saying? Who doesn’t love you?”

Your skin is warm under his touch as he gently tugs at your arm to pull you past the threshold of his door, and he tries not to look too hard at the way your lips glisten under the dim light of his entranceway. He tries not to notice the way your hair is a little messy, undoubtedly from the wind, and how pretty your collarbones look under the small top you’re wearing —

Jungkook.

You’re talking about Jungkook, and he knows this not because there’s literally nobody else you could be talking about, but because there’s nobody who could get you this upset by ‘not loving you’.

(Do you love him?) 

He sits you down on one of the barstools he keeps in front his kitchen countertop, and you slump your head down onto your arms, mumbling incoherently. 

(Do you love him?)

He pours out a glass of water for you, and pats your head gently, touch lingering for a second to give you even the slightest inkling of comfort in this outwardly distressed state.

You lift your head, eyes red-rimmed and glossy with tears. 

AJ doesn’t feel like this often. He jokes about how the two of you grew up, devoid of the privilege of showing normal emotions, bottling them up and spilling them over textbook pages and only ever being allowed to feel happy upon seeing numbers scribbled in red at the top of test pages. He jokes about the two of you ending up in Ivy Leagues at the cost of having normal human feelings; he knows that he’s perceptive and sharp and he likes to think that he has you all figured out, but when you look at him like that, he knows that he doesn’t.

He doesn’t know why you told him to never make you a shaken espresso again, he doesn’t know what relationship you and Jungkook even have, he doesn’t know why you’re this upset over him not loving you.

He does, however, know that even if Jungkook doesn’t love you, he might. 

AJ met you in your first year of law school, and he remembers thinking that you were the only person in the whole class who was fit to be his rival; you’d been only person other than him who’d gotten through the cold calls, the only person who’d read all the way to the end of the syllabus, the one person he would accept as a ‘rival’, like he was in a Viola Davis drama, if you may.

He’d spoken to you after class — a little cocky, a little smug — and you’d been nothing but sweet. Soft voice, pretty smile, quips that had him looking away to stop himself from laughing, he liked you immediately.

The two of you had really done everything together — studied at ungodly hours, called each other drunk to drive the other home, you had inside jokes and three years worth of memories, you’d helped him through breakups and he’d gotten you free coffee every week for a year now — the rapport he had with you was one he’d never ever expected, and the way he looked at you, felt about you, was something he’d never ever expected. 

He had his girlfriends, and he told you about them while you’d answer with a curt joke about never having dated anybody, but he’d never ever looked at them like he looked at you. Never noticed the furrow in their brows when they read something hard to understand, never noticed their lopsided smiles and the way they’d drink, but never enough to really get them wasted. And the thing is, AJ hadn’t cared that he saw all of these things, because perceptive as he was, all you’d ever been to him was a brilliant girl who he’d be sure to keep up with after law school.

Right now, though? He knows. He knows why he noticed, he knows why it bothers him that you might love Jungkook back, he knows that you graduate soon and that he doesn’t have much time, and even if he did, it wouldn’t matter because you might love Jungkook back —

“AJ, Jungkook doesn't love me.”

“Yikes.”

He wants to say more. Wants to tell you that it doesn’t matter what Jungkook thinks, because I love you, and I think you’re incredible and I’ve spent the past 3 years ignoring it but I’ve never ever ignored you and I love you.

“He fucked Nayoung.”

AJ has no idea who that is, but he wants to sock Jungkook in the face for having this girl, this amazing girl with him for his entire life and fucking somebody else.

“I’m sorry.”

I’m sorry he did that, and I’m sorry you don’t know that I would never do that.

“He —“ you pause to sob: a soft, strangled noise that makes AJ’s stomach turn. “He doesn’t love me.”

“Do you love him?”

Say no. Say no. Say no. Say no. Say no.

“Fuck, AJ. He doesn’t —“ you don’t again, shoving your head back into your arms. 

“Do you love him, though?”

AJ’s not sure why he’s asking, because he knows that there’s no way you’d be upset if he didn’t love you back. He thinks of it like a prosecution case; he’s gotten enough out of you on the stand that everybody can draw the conclusion but he has to get it out of you. 

A surefire kill.

“Hm?”

Your eyes are bleary when you look up, half from crying and half from being the drunkest you’ve ever been. Your hair is still messy, and your lips are bitten red from all the quiet crying you’ve been doing. He can’t cry in his kitchen, not when you’ve been here laughing, not when his granite countertops hold years of your touch, not when you’re unraveling a foot away from him.

“I think I do, AJ. I really think I do.”

“Fuck, baby. I’m sorry.”

I’m sorry that I thought I could have you, when Jungkook’s always been the one you wanted.

“He used to be like, the one person —“ pause to hiccup. “I never thought I’d love like that. But we got closer after the fucking, shaken espresso day last month. And I guess the proximity j-just set it in.”

He can’t tell if the reason your words are so mangled in his ears is because the sound of his own heart crashing into his stomach is so loud, or because you’re slurring your words that much.

“Drink some water, please.”

Say you’re lying, please.

—

Jungkook doesn’t exactly know why you ordered another 3 margaritas in the middle of your lunch detour, and he doesn’t know why you stopped looking him directly in the eyes right after he told you that he’d had sex with Nayoung. He doesn’t know why you insisted on drinking when you never get to a point where being wasted is even an option, and he doesn’t know why you so fervently denied him walking you home.

He doesn’t know why he stays awake at night thinking of you, either. 

Jungkook is surprisingly introspective for somebody who zones in and out of conversation so much, who is typically dazed and doesn’t have much to offer when it comes to picking up obvious hints thrown at him, but he knows himself quite well.

Better than you, he’d argue.

The sheets are warm around his waist, and he has one arm propped under his head as he stares at the ceiling, eyes wide without even a hint of sleep in the tresses of them, which is unusual for it being the middle of the night. He remembers how a month prior, all you’d ever been was his best friend. He remembers the little fall-out and how you’d gotten together for dinner, how pretty you’d looked and wonders why he’d focused on that when he simply never had done that before. 

He remembers the day after, and how he’d taken another girl to bed. Jungkook remembers faint Bible verses about adultery, how he couldn’t get you out of his head, and he remembers what Nayoung had told him that night, as long as what she’d told him when they broke it off.

“I don’t think your job is all you need to figure out, Jungkook.”

“Your thing with ___ not work out?”

“We’re in different places, clearly.”

He never thought about what she meant when they’d split; the pain of losing someone who’s memory he had literally etched into his skin was too imminent for him to even think about the ending scene. He also never thought about what she meant when she’d walked out of the fraternity room that day; he’d made up with you right after, and the following month was you, you, and more you. Focusing on Nayoung’s words and the small sliver of conversation they’d engaged in hadn’t even been an afterthought, at least until he’s brought her up today and you, like similar poles of a magnet, quite literally repelled him. 

But really, what was she even talking about? 

Why would there be a thing with you? Sure, the two of you were close, and sure, he’d probably talked about you and called you and FaceTimed you too much for her security, but he’d always thought the concept of him having a ‘girl best friend’ was what annoyed her, and not the notion that the two of you would have a ‘thing’. 

Why would there be a thing with you? Sure, he idolized you and told her how smart he thought you were, but him and Nayoung were never official, and he’d only ever assumed that she was confused as to why he was always talking about some other girl after literally sleeping with her -

Oh.

Oh.

It hits him like a shot to the heart, and he physically sits up to grab his phone because he has to confirm this sudden realization.

The look Mingyu had given him at the party shoots to the forefront of his brain, Nayoung’s words echo, and the way your resolve has crumbled when he told you about her suddenly makes a lot more sense.

In fact, it all makes sense.

I don’t think your job is all that you need to figure out. 

She was talking about you. About how he was hung up on you and never even realized it —

We’re clearly in different places.

She was talking about you. About how she was willing to be invested with him, but the place he was stuck at, was you. 

The ringing of his phone as he calls Nayoung seems louder than it usually is. It’s daunting, like he’s hoping she doesn’t pick up with each ring so he doesn’t have to face the reality he’s been unknowingly ignoring for… fuck, he doesn’t even know how long.

“Jungkook? It’s 2 in the morning. Are you okay?”

“Why did we break up, Nayoung?”

His voice is hoarse, and if he wasn’t so fucking stressed, he thinks about how proud you’d be for putting on the ‘interrogation voice’ you’d introduced him to in your second year of Law School.

“What?” Her laugh is quiet, laced with sleep, and Jungkook wonders if she should hang up and say sorry for waking her. “We weren’t really together, so I wouldn’t call it a break up —“

Her pause is long, and Jungkook doesn’t correct her, doesn’t bring up the tattoos and leather jackets and how they’d nearly eloped and the fact that they just had sex a month prior. She’s right, and he needs her to continue now.

“But I always assumed that you had something going on with __”

“You mean the time I called her after we got matching tattoos?” He can’t fight the urge to make the joke, even though it just dawned on him that you were, indeed, the straw on the camel’s back that broke him and Nayoung up. It just dawned on him that he might be in love with his best friend, and that he’d hurt Nayoung because of it, and that you might love him back.

Maybe.

He ignores that, and laughs wryly at the silly anecdote, thanking every religious figure he can think of when she also laughs.

“Yeah, that, but also just… your relationship. The way you obsessively talked about her and were literally always on call with her was one thing, but…” she pauses like she’s thinking about what to say next, how to describe the end of it all to him in a way that won’t flip his entire world around, not knowing that she’d already done that. Not knowing that you’d already done that.

“She came over once to pick us up when we got drunk. It was the same night I was talking about at the party, when we told Joon the closest thing to us was the moon? Yeah, ___ came and got us that night.”

“I knew right then, honestly. The way you looked at her was fucking insane. When you used to look at me, my friends would say that it was like I’d done every good thing in the world for you. But when you looked at her, it was like she’d saved you from every bad thing that could’ve ever happened to you. It was like, relief. Like you could let it all down in front of her. And I’d never been on the receiving end of that look; not ever when you were sober. Being like that and looking at her like that completely shitfaced? I knew I couldn’t stand in the way of the two of you, even if it literally killed me.”

He doesn’t process it immediately, choosing to focus on the last sentence, because feelings for you aside, he felt like the most massive douchebag in the world for making her feel that way.

“Nayoung, I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry. I honestly — I had no idea, I really didn’t —“

“Jungkook, I know. And I know you’re probably trying not to drive yourself insane thinking of whether she loves you back.”

He definitely is, but he doesn’t tell her this in fear that it’ll just hurt her more.

“No it’s not like that, I’m just, so incredibly sorry that I put you through that, you deserve so much more, you deserve the relationship you want and I feel like shit —“

“What do you mean it’s not like that, Jungkook? You’re not thinking about whether she likes you back?”

“Huh?”

“You don’t think she loves you back?”

Do you love him back? Do you look at him like he’s saved you from every bad thing that could’ve ever happened to you? Do you? Will you ever?”

“I don’t… know?”

“When you called her that night, you tripped over your own feet. She knew exactly where we were based off of that.”

Summer of 2006.

The field he’d gotten wasted with Nayoung, except he only remembers you.

Remembers how you’d just gotten promoted up to the fourth grade, remembers how you were licking down the side of your ice cream cone; vanilla with sprinkles, as always. He had his mint chocolate chip, and your mothers were on a bench a couple of feet away from you.

The sun had made your hair look golden, your eyes were bright, and your smile was so pretty that he couldn’t hold your gaze for longer than three seconds. He remembers this, because he’d physically tripped over his own feet when you looked at him just a couple of seconds too long.

The small ‘oof’ that he’d let out when he’d fallen, damp grass and soil under his tender palms, knees tickled by the summer green just seconds later, the way you’d gasped and abandoned your ice cream cone on the ground to come tend to him, and your mothers rushing over too, laughing at how much you cared for him.

He’d always, always tripped over his own feet at that spot, always fallen with that little ‘oof’ and soon realized that it wasn’t really because he couldn’t make eye contact with you, but because there was a little hump in the ground at the spot he’d been standing at.

And you remembered. 

You remembered even if the first time it happened was more than a decade and a half ago, you remembered even if you had grown out of visiting that field when you went to college.

“She remembered.”

“Yeah, Jungkook. Obviously she remembered. Because she loves you back, and it’s honestly making me more upset that the two of you haven’t worked it out yet.”

“Fuck, Nayoung. Fuck. Thank you. Thank you — I have to think about — fuck, I’m sorry it’s so fucking late and I’ve just called you and went on this weird self discovery path —“

Her laugh is bright when she cuts him off, and Jungkook feels part of his heart ease when he realizes that she’s not angry with him.

“Go to bed, talk to her tomorrow. I love you, Jungkook. And you love her and she loves you in a completely different way, but I love you. And don’t say sorry, I was up anyways.”

She hangs up after, not giving Jungkook space to even say goodbye, and simultaneously giving him a million different things to think about, but only one that he can really focus on: how he’s in love with you.

And how, apparently, you’re in love with him as well.

—

The beauty of New York City is the anonymity it provides, even amongst 8 million other people. Street bustle, skyscrapers kiss the clouds, floods of people drown you in the street, and even through all of that, you have the privilege of being alone. Solitude; a lighter flickering in a Brooklyn balcony, and the drip of water down in Harlem.

Tonight, you and Jungkook have the privilege of being alone, just 20 minutes away from each other, staring at the same film photograph of the both of you from the photobooth you’d stopped at a couple of weeks prior.

The grainy picture features four shots; your hair is damp, and Jungkook can still feel how it felt on his neck, your lips are a dark maroon, and Jungkook can still feel them hovering right above his. Jungkook’s in his leather jacket, and you feel the goosebumps on your arms from when the fabric brushed against your skin. His hair’s also wet from the rain, but the gel he still uses had kept it together surprisingly well; you remember the way you’d made fun of him for his incessant usage of the product.

The picture on the top right is a glamour shot, if anything. You’re smiling, and when he looks down at it, his chest blooms with a warmth akin to spring’s first bloom. He has a softer look; sporting the lopsided grin you’re so used to seeing, and it makes your stomach coil enough to make you physically look away and laugh. 

Top left is a lot less serious, you remember he’d made a joke about the two of you being mafioso heirs, and it hadn’t even been that funny, but the picture features bright, childish, innocent grins. Your eyes are shut, smile spreading all the way across your face as you lean forward. His head is thrown back, lip piercing caught between his bottom lip when he laughs. The both of you hear each other’s laughter, echoing in the photobooth and across the empty, rain stricken streets of New York.

You think of how much you miss this, about how this day had inevitably been when you fell face first, defenseless with your guard all the way down. You think of the bottom left picture, not having the courage to look at it fully; you remember how you’d leaned into his body, and how he’d let you do it, how your lips had been just millimeters from touching when the flash had caught you off guard and you’d looked up straight into his eyes like something out of a Glen Powell rom-com.

Jungkook thinks of how much he misses this, about how this day had been one of the ‘moments he knew’, a collection that grows the more he thinks about how irrevocably in love with you he is. He thinks about the bottom right picture, how he’s looking at you and you’re fixing your hair, how he got the picture developed and still didn’t see the stars in his eyes, still didn’t realize that you were always the one. 

The four photos are pressed to your heart. You haven’t had it in you to fall asleep, there’s still a full ache in your head from the alcohol and you make a note to thank AJ for getting you home safe today. A tinge of embarrassment shoots down your body when you think about the conversation you had with him today, the conclusion you’d reached, what you’d learned about Jungkook and Nayoung, what you’d learned about yourself; that you loved him, and he didn’t love you back, and how it made you want to die the more you thought of the month the two of you had.

The four photos are pressed to his heart. He wonders if they’ll soothe the ache or not knowing whether you love him, too. The phone he’s just put down should provide him with silence; fuck , he craves silence, but Nayoung’s words just echo in his head. Talk to her tomorrow, but he has no idea if you feel even remotely the same. He has no idea if he’s completely off base, he has no idea if he’s gotten the wrong ideas based off of the last month, and the guilt of potentially having taken your platonicity and genuine friendship as a lead eats him alive.

[But it can’t all be platonic, you think.]

[But it can’t all be platonic, he thinks. ]

No, you think. Because the alcohol might’ve made it easier, but you remember the way he tasted on your lips a little too well. The way his hands traveled down your shirt, sodden and soaked in the rain, caressing the curve of your waist. The way your own fingers had explored the figure of his shoulders, pressing into the hard plains of muscle as he moved his lips against yours too languidly to be a drunken detour.

No, he thinks. Because the drowsy haze of Sunday might’ve made it easier, but he remembers the way your leg was thrown over his thighs, the soft cotton of his own shirt hardly covering any of your legs, the rasp in your voice when you’d mumbled out his name, looking over you as he cooked. The way you’d laughed at his stupid dad jokes, and the way Mingyu had slapped his back after you’d gone, talking about the ‘way she looked at you’ — there’s no way it was just platonic.

There was nothing platonic about the way he’d held you in line at Liberty, the way he’d looked at you when you went up the fire escape when Mingyu had another girl over, the way you’d spoken, hushed into his skin the night you fell asleep at his place. Maybe falling in love, for the two of you, was like having your eyes closed while standing on the shore; maybe it was a wave that came crashing, rushing up your legs and soaking the two of you entirely before you even realized it. Maybe all the two of you had been doing, was enjoying the crashing of water ahead of you, ignorant to the receding waves and how dangerously close you were to being caught up in the mess your ignorance would inevitably bring.

And there you are —

Present day New York City, staring up at empty ceilings with full hearts, itching to reach for your phones with nothing but apprehension holding you back; what if he doesn’t love me, what if she doesn’t love me, what if I’m off-base, what if everything changes, 23 years down the drain, I have to tell her, I have to tell him. Alone, anonymous, lovers amidst millions others, feeling so much that you taste it on your tongues, feeling so much that you want to rip your beating hearts out; alone, anonymous, in love, in pain.

And there you are —

Begging the other not to go, because you’re so bad at being alone, but not being able to tell them why. 

—

Cravath asks you to work in their London office after you graduate. It’s one of the perks of

consistently being at the top of your class, one of the perks of having an internship at the best law firm in all of New York, and it’s an opportunity you can’t say no to.

You figure it’ll help you get over this Jungkook fiasco, considering the fact that it’s basically a dead-end for you; you wonder if Watchell Lipton can refer AJ to a firm in London so you won’t completely be alone in a new city, you start to think about how wonderful it’d be to get some time away, to get space away from where you’d suffered such a big loss just a couple of years back — away from where you’d been pushed beyond every limit of yours since the first grade.

There’s nothing loss has taught you other than to put up walls, to close people off and to shut them out at any waking moment that you even come close to vulnerability. It’s not healthy, nor is it a quality you’re proud of; your stricken body’s last attempt at cushioning any further blows, any further losses from even those you claim to be the closest to you. It’s the reason you never told your parents about the intense stress their expectations put onto you, it’s why AJ doesn’t know about your ex but you know about all of his, and it’s the reason you’ve been ignoring Jungkook for a week now.

The realization that you were, in fact, madly in love with him had might as well carved through your skin to make its way into your system judging by the pain you’ve gone through since it’s hit you. You’re a rational adult, and loving someone is human nature, but loving your best friend and knowing that he doesn’t love you back should be something God implements in hell as punishment. You haven’t been able to look at the photo booth picture, have turned every photograph that reminds you of him around to avoid seeing it, have turned to sticking your head in your ridiculously heavy textbooks so you have a way to save face should Jungkook ever text you, and you’re sure that this game of shutting him out is going to be successful when you accept the job in London.

But you don’t. 

For some reason, the drafted email accepting the position sits on your laptop, in a minimized tab that you open and contemplate hitting ‘send’ for hours on end, but never do. There’s a sliver of yearning — stupid, human yearning — that you wish you could just turn off, that tells you there’s a chance Jungkook might love you back. That tells you this situation will end with him running to you in the rain and kissing you under the stars, a grandiose recreation of the kiss you’d had almost a month ago now; the little voice in your head is your biggest vice, and you stare at the email over and over everyday, telling it to just shut up, telling you to get over yourself because he’s always loved Nayoung and you will never be her — never be that pretty, that put together, that kind or compassionate — and you tell yourself to just send the email.

Send it, burn this love you have with the littlest flicker of emotion you have left in your heart, move to London and start over. Reinvent yourself and learn to love properly, learn to love things that will love you back, learn to feel properly and not be so stringent on goals, learn to be human because it seems like you’d forgotten how to, until the realization that you love Jungkook barreled towards you like an avalanche of everything you never wanted to be.

Send it, and tell Jungkook. Take his little display of sadness and walk out of his life with the bitter taste of a confession that’ll never leave your lips still heavy on your tongue. Watch him in pictures like he’d watched you sleep, watch him fall in love with Nayoung eventually and move out because Computer Science has a killer starting salary, watch him pursue something he wants to do —

(“I think I really wanna do art. Sing, paint, do something that doesn’t involve binary code.”

“I think you should go for it. Stick it out till graduation and work for like a month because your starting salary is totally gonna support you even if you fail, and take the leap. Kierkegaard.”

“No idea what the fuck a ‘kira gard’ is.”

“Shut up.”

“You think I’ll be able to do it?”

“I think you’re the most talented person I know. If anyone can be an artist, it’s you.”)

If you love someone, let them go. And you want to do it so badly, a part of you craves the final sweet release of pain that New York City will give you before you escape it, but there’s another part that’s screaming in agony because you cannot do this to yourself, like your body fears that giving up someone you love so much that it physically hurts you to think about will be the final straw, that you’ll drop dead at JFK airport if Jungkook doesn’t tell you that he loves you, too.

If you love someone, let them go. Let them go, let them go. If you love yourself, let yourself go. Leave, and enjoy London and free yourself from a city that’s so beautiful that all you’ve done is loved it and the loneliness it’s handed you on a platter. If you love New York, let it go. If you let Jungkook, let him go.

/

You’re staring at the email again, and you can’t tell if you’re tearing up because of how long you haven’t been blinking, or if it’s because you know that when you finally click the send button, it’ll all be over.

You’ll be putting the fear of shaken espressos behind you, you’ll be putting Jungkook, New York, your parents, your entire life behind you; you’ll graduate in two weeks after finals, and you’ll grab nothing but your passport to go to London. It’ll be over, which is a thought that’s as daunting as it is relieving, but not because of your ex, not because of New York, or your parents —

It’s hard solely because you don’t want to put Jeon Jungkook behind you. The first person you’d ever talked to about how burnt out you were, the first person to sleep under the same sheets with you, the only person to eat a meat lovers pizza at 2Bros, the only person you let your guard down with, the only person who’d ever seen you cry, the only person you’d ever been in love with. The photographs you’ve turned around, the permanent imprint of his lips on yours, the way his hand found purchase on the small of your back, his heartbreaks and your biggest loss, the strum of his guitar back in middle school when you’d blushed under his gaze for the first time, the way he rubs at his nape when he’s embarrassed, his smile, the way he trusts you with his life — you’d sooner die than call it quits on those memories, but it’s even harder to imagine living with them, knowing that he’s never going to feel the same way about it.

Your heart is heavier than it's ever been, even if you’ve been carrying the weight of your own world for the past 17 years at least, without putting it down even for a second. You’re sure you’re crying, if the way the words on your screen blur is any indication. Your left side aches the same way it had a month ago when he told you about Nayoung, and you wonder if that pain will ever go away if you leave.

Your fingers tremble when they clasp the mouse, and you decide that the pain is something you’ll have to live with. It’s the melancholy it’ll leave in your eyes that’ll make strangers fall in love for you and never quite forget; it’s the edge of having to walk away from something, from the only thing, you’ve ever loved, that’ll make you a strong lawyer. Unattached, a bit desolate, and incredibly strong, but only when working. It’ll be this mistake that’ll prevent you from making others, it’ll be this mistake that’ll make you fall harder for whoever will come next; that’ll teach you to cherish those who love you back.

(You fall back onto your bed and break down.)

(You send the email minutes after you’re done crying.)

(You figure you’ll tell Jungkook the day after. That you’ll apologize. For everything.)

(You figure Jungkook’s going to cut you off for not telling him before sending the email.)

(You figure it’s for the best.)

—

Jungkook feels like his heart is being torn from his chest, inch by inch so he feels the surface of his skin ripping, so he feels the blood dripping down his chest and soaking his shirt, so he can feel the poison in his veins, can feel the thump of the organ when it’s pulled out of his body.

You’re leaving.

“You’re leaving?”

You’re leaving.

He loves you, and you’re leaving in two weeks and he’s trying so hard to not look like he’s in unfathomable, unspeakable, unrelentless pain that leaves him wanting to get on the floor of his apartment and claw at his chest so he can scrape some of the ache away.

He clenches his fingers into fists and refuses to look at you.

“I’m sorry, Jungkook, I thought I’d tell you but finals had me busy —“

You’re fucking lying to him, too. You’re leaving, and he loves you and you’re lying. You weren’t busy with finals, you were ignoring him for whatever godforsaken reason, you were cooped up in your apartment overthinking and fixating on whatever he’d told when the two of you had brunch, and you were doing it on purpose.

Fucking finals.

Your go-to excuse for shutting people out and putting up walls that nobody will ever be allowed to break down. He thought he’d be the first to, he thought he’d already broken them, plowed through the cement when he’d kissed you in a back alley, when he’d held you in his arms after the wake, when he’d bought you your coffee and gotten the order correct, when he had you in his bed. He thought he’d broken them, but he’d been wrong; he hadn’t done shit to stop you from holding yourself away from the world, he hadn’t done shit to help you face vulnerability instead of ignoring it in favor of not facing anyone at all, he hadn’t done shit to get you out of your stupid fucking law school shell, and he was in love with you despite this one tiny flaw, and he knew everything about you, so he knew you were lying.

“Stop that.”

“Stop what?”

“You’re fucking lying to me.”

Your scoff is incredulous and it makes Jungkook want to pull his hair out and drag his blunt fingernails down his face until he’s bleeding out to show you; I care, stop pushing me away, why are you leaving, you don’t know I’m in love with you, why, why, why, why —

“I’m not lying, you know I have finals — you have my planner!”

“No. No, you’re not fucking doing this again. In sophomore year, you were upset because of something your dad said and locked yourself in your room for three days straight. You said you had finals back then. After your fucking boyfriend died, you locked yourself in your room and said you had finals. Whenever you’ve been scared, or humiliated, or had any semblance of fucking human emotions, you’ve said you have —“

“Jungkook, you have no fucking right to bring that up now, what the fuck is wrong with you.”

“What’s wrong with me is you! You decide you’re leaving the only place you’ve ever lived in within the week I last saw you and didn’t even think to discuss it with me? Even after the month we’ve had — even after the life we’ve had?”

You stare at him, and he can see the redness in your eyes like he had seen before you broke down at the wake.

He wants to get down on his knees and put his forehead to your feet and apologize, hold you and never let you go.

You’re leaving. 

“It’s my life, not yours.”

“It’s my life, too. You know this.”

“No. I don’t fucking know this, because I’ve worked my ass off for the past 17 years to get to law school and graduate and work at the best fucking law firm in the country. It’s not your fucking life —“

“You’ve killed yourself for all this—”

You stand up from his couch, and turn away so he doesn’t see your tears fall.

“You’ve fucking killed yourself. You worked like a dog since middle school to get into that pretentious private school, and you worked even harder to get to Columbia. You never had a fucking dream, you never had a childhood because you killed yourself to get to this point. You never had time to have a fucking ‘life’ or whatever you call it because all you’ve ever done is work for some stupid fucking goal.”

You sob once, twice, and Jungkook has to put a hand to his heart so he doesn’t die on the spot.

“And you can’t tell me that I don’t know this because I’m the only one who knows this! I’m the only person you’ve ever told about this and it fucking hurts because I love you, and it fucking hurts because you’re leaving me —“

“Because my best friend is leaving me,” he backtracks. 

Best friend. Because you don’t know, and he doesn’t know how he’s going to have the heart to tell you.

“And it hurts because my best friend is leaving me and she didn’t even think to mention this before.”

“You didn’t think to mention Nayoung even once in this aforementioned ‘month’ we had,” the quotes you make with your fingers do nothing but show him how much you’re shaking. He wants to grab your hands and tell you that it’s okay; that you don’t need to cry and that he has you. 

That he’ll always have you.

(But he won’t, because you’re leaving.) 

You’re leaving, and you’re talking about Nayoung for some reason.

“Yeah, because we had sex one fucking time! I don’t even like her, why the fuck would I bring her up — and why are you bringing her up like fucking a girl is anywhere similar to moving halfway across the world.”

You sob once, twice, and when you turn around to face him, he feels like he’s holding his dead heart in his cold hands and watching it try to come to life.

“I’m bringing it up because you love her, and you didn’t even bother to tell me.”

“I don’t fucking love her.”

I love you. I love you, why do you think I love her —

Why do you think he loves Nayoung, and why does your face fall when you say it, and why did you start to ignore him the day he told you that he’d had sex with her?

“You do. She’s the one that got away, and she’ll be here so it doesn’t fucking matter —“

“Stop saying that it doesn’t matter. Stop saying that you don’t matter.”

“Because I don’t, Jungkook,” a sob breaks your sentence and it feels like his world has just come crashing down when he realizes how you feel about yourself. “I’ve lived here for 23 years and nobody knows shit about me and you’re right, it’s because I shut myself away, but nobody bothers anyways and I’ve worked so hard to get here so I’m gonna take the chance to leave, so I don’t have to not matter anymore, so I can like… change.”

“You don’t have to change, ___”

Your name on his lips is a prayer, a silent hope to the god he only remembered when he was fucking somebody, a plea and the final chance he gets to have you.

“Don’t change, __”

Don’t let her leave me, God. Don’t let her change, don’t let her go.

“How can you ask that of me?”

He hears his mothers laugh from when he told her he wanted to be a ninja. He decides that he doesn’t want to be a ninja, or a computer science major, or an artist.  He decides that he wants you to know how madly in love with you he is.

“Because I love you.”

“I love you too, Jungkook.”

“No — fuck, I’m in love with you.”

Your stare is dumbfounded, like he’s just told you that he’s a vampire hybrid or something else completely unorthodox. He would laugh at the look typically, but he feels empty, like the compression that had been a steady pressure on his chest for the past few days had lifted, only to be replaced with a pain unlike any other, because what if this messes it up more?

What if you would originally go to London and keep tabs with him and be in his life, and what if he’s told you this and turned you off the idea of ever even looking in his direction again.

What if you don’t love him back?

“You’re in love with me.”

He nods, silently swallowing as he tries to whisper a prayer to whatever god is listening that whatever you say won’t end in you leaving for good.

“You’re in love with me?”

“I am. I have been. I am. I’m in love with you, I’ve been in love with you, and I don’t even remember how long it’s been since it first happened.”

“Jungkook —“

You chuckle, and it should break his heart because it seems like you’re on the road to mocking him, but he feels his heart rejuvenate in his arms when he hears the sound of your laugh. It sounds like a metaphor he’s been trying to write down for ages. It sounds familiar, it sounds intimate, and his name rolling off your tongue is a balm he presses over the open wound of his chest to soothe it.

“Jungkook — you’re in love with me, and not Nayoung?”

He can’t speak, isn’t used to the lightness in his chest.

He shakes his head, and he swears he sees the world light up behind your eyes. He swears you’re the prettiest girl in the entire world, even when tears track down your face and even when you’re red-eyed and have a snotty nose from crying.

(Especially then.)

“Fuck.”

“Fuck, Jungkook, I’m in love with you too. I am. I have been. I’m in love with you, and I’ve been in love with you for as long as —“

You won’t finish that sentence, he decides, taking one long stride towards you to close the distance between your bodies. Your face in his hands is warm, a little sticky from the tears, and your lips are chapped. He doesn’t doubt that he’s in any better of a condition, but you look up at him through your wet eyelashes and he’s had enough.

He’s had enough of yearning, and pleading, and wondering if you love him back because you do. He’s had enough of waiting and wondering why he keeps thinking of you because he wants to think of you.

In fact, he thinks he’s open to thinking of you forever.

So he kisses you, and he thanks his lucky stars when you kiss back, for blessing him with the embodiment of them in the form of you, a girl who shone so brightly that he couldn’t see the love cooped up in her eyes until she cried, told him she was moving to London, and kissed him in his living room.

He thinks he could die happy, but he doesn’t want to die when he finally has you.

Finally has you. 

(Except, you could be leaving.)

Jungkook ignores this because you tilt your head so his lips slot against yours better, and he can barely focus on anything other than the way you feel and the fact that he’s kissing his best friend — kissing the love of his life.

He bared his heart and walked through hell for this, and if the way he feels right now is redemption, he’d do it all over again.

—

It starts with you on a table, umbilical cord freshly cut, wrapped up in a pretty pink fluffy blanket. Jungkook, just a one year old, stares blankly, and starts crying in his mothers arms.

It starts in the suburbs of New York City, where you lose yourself between textbook pages and Jungkook wonders what he’ll ever amount to being.

It starts with your boyfriend dying, and the way shaken espressos feel on your tongue. It starts with Jungkook seeing you cry for the first time, and it starts with you wondering if you can ever love someone. 

It starts with law school, and a three week gap in your final year during which you and Jungkook don’t talk. He finds himself thinking of you, and you text him, asking to meet up for dinner.

It starts with him asking you about a friend of yours, and you getting vigorously upset, uncalled for and downright appalling on Jungkook’s part. 

It starts with you calling him to apologize while he makes a drunken mistake. It starts with you meeting him to apologize and promising to do better; it starts with him telling you that he doesn’t need you to ‘do better’ like it’s a standardized test — that he just needs you to talk to him.

It starts with an amazing month, trailblazing and falling for each other, starts with drunken kisses and getting soaked in the rain and the ruse of being ‘best friends’ and drinking margaritas even though Jungkook doesn’t really like cocktails. It starts with the city of New York, and the anonymous back alleys where millions walk, but nobody lingers long enough to leave a mark.

It starts with him telling you about this drunken mistake, starts with the both of you realizing how madly in love you are with the other. It starts with you accepting a job in London, and it starts with Jungkook calling his ex and figuring out that it’s always been you.

It starts with an argument encased in the walls of his living room, where you empty your heart out and he empties his, starts with accusations that he loves somebody else and utter silence because he can’t tell you that he loves you. 

There’s a million beginnings to this story, thousands of waking moments that could’ve been the moment both of you knew, hundreds of little sparks that ignited into the brilliant flame of the love between the two of you, but there’s only one ending.

This is the end of yearning; his lips are on yours, and his warm hands are holding your body like if he lets go, you’ll really be gone. His hands find purchase on every inch of you like he’s trying to map your very existence out with his ten fingers, and you lose yourself when he licks into your mouth, your own hands flying to his face, tracing the little scar beneath his eye, scratching over his sideburns, on an excavation of your own; to discover him and to never let go.

He has you pushed up against the kitchen counter, large hands groping you through your jeans, soft squeezes at the flesh, quiet moans coloring the air when you move your tongue in tandem with his. 

Jungkook promises himself to take it slow, but he doesn’t know if he’ll be able to honor that thought when your manicured nails play with the hair at his nape, when he feels you pull away so you can get a better look at him —

Fuck, are you a sight to see. Red rimmed eyes, swollen lips, cheeks dusted with the slightest hues of pink; you wear a smile so pretty he thinks he could fall for you all over again, and your warm breath hits his face with every exhale.

You think he’s never looked better, either. His lips are bitten from kissing you, tear tracks down his soft skin, jaw tight and eyes dark when he looks at you as though he’s trying to drink you in like you’re a glass of fine scotch. You rub your thighs together, desperate for some friction to provide even a fraction of relief from this innate need Jungkook’s instilled in you with just one kiss, and he catches your lips in another, clearly wanting this to go the same way you do. 

Jungkook encases your face in his hands, he feels you keen against his lips and releases yours to curse lowly. Your hands travel down his chest, toned and warm from hours at the gym, and trace down the trail of hair you know leads down into his underwear. It has him bucking his hips against you lightly and you can barely hold back a moan, readjusting your focus so you can trace the denim of his waistband, letting two of your fingers slip beneath the fabric, rubbing at the elastic of his boxers —

You’re a fucking tease, and Jungkook should’ve known this about you after 23 years but he’d be lying if he said that it wasn’t thoroughly enjoyable. It’s barely been 5 minutes of you fervently making out with him, though, that he realizes how badly he wants you. The bulge in his pants is one indication, but he’s utterly surrounded by you — your cologne, your soft sounds, breathless whimpers, incredulous gaze like you can’t really fathom this; he gets it, he’s horrified that he’ll wake up in his bed and you won’t love him back and you won’t be kissing him and feeling him up like this, and he needs to feel you, needs the reaffirmation, needs you to fall apart between his sheets. He needs everything you have to offer, needs to smell your shampoo on his pillowcases and your perfume on his shirts and he might as well should just die if he’s waited this long to stall some more.

Two hands trail down your back, pads of his fingers pressing into the little dimples at the bottom of your spine before they land on the junction of your thighs. His eyes are stuck on yours, like he’s too afraid to even look away, and you smile against his jaw.

“Jump, baby,” it’s a whispered order, too silent for anybody but you to have heard it, and the thought makes your brain go numb for a second — it’s you and him now, your whispered secrets and hushed tales, it’s the two of you and this space you’ve curated, even if it was out of your own heartbreak. You can’t do anything but oblige; fuck, you might as well should just die if you don’t hang on to every word that leaves the tip of his tongue.

Your legs find home around his waist, and he carries you to his room, telling his high school self and college self and every single past existence of his that you’re his. He’s mapping out this floor with you in his arms, and though they’ve been around many women, he doesn’t think any one of them have fit like you do. It’s simple intimacy, you can see sunlight pouring into the living room as he carries you out, you see the art he has framed, and you see traces of his roommate strewn around the apartment. You wonder what his and your apartment will look like, wonder if he’ll like the interior design you do, and decide that if he doesn’t, you’ll let him choose whatever.

The door to his room shuts behind you, and you notice the only photo frame he has contains a picture of the two of you. 

Your eyes tear away from the glass frame in fear of breaking down again, and you choose to look at him. You choose to look at his eyes that hold all the stars in your skies, you choose to run your finger over the curve of his face and the slant of his nose and his Cupid’s bow. You choose to bask in his presence, feel all of his body pressed against you and feel him uncomfortably hard against your thighs — it’s a bit filthy, but you’ll take anything when it comes to Jungkook, and you let that thought linger when you lean forward to kiss him again.

Jungkook closes his eyes because he doesn’t think he can look into yours without going insane. He hasn’t shut his curtains, so the sunlight lands on your face and highlights all the angles and all the slopes and he thinks that he should memorize the planes of your face, that it’ll give him a reason to stay alive. Your lips smack softly, and he readjusts his hips so he can grind the clothed bulge in his jeans against your own, and his thighs stutter just a smidge when you let out the sweetest moan he’s ever heard in his life.

His fingers trail their way down from your waist, pulling gently at the hem of your shirt, a silent final exit just in case you want to back out, but you don’t let him even consider the thought of you leaving when you pull your own shirt off your head. It’s an aggressive jerk, one that catches him off guard and following you, abandoning the piece of clothing somewhere in the corners of his room.

Even when you’re just in your bra, he can’t stop looking at your eyes. He can’t stop thinking of you, how you’re in his bed and how he has you with him now and how he’ll have you with him forever if he has anything to do with it. Jungkook never doubted that you were attractive, not even for a slight second, but he doesn’t dare look at you, near naked and in all your glory in front of him — he wonders if this is what Icarus felt like, wanting to fly so close to the sun because he loved Helios too much, and he vows that he’ll be careful, he won’t look too quickly and that he’ll be gentle because he cannot stand even the idea of losing you, even if he’d be the one crashing and burning.

You pull him closer by the name, and his hands go to cradle your bare shoulders. Before he can even process the proximity, your lips are on his neck, and they’re soft, warm: they’re everything he’s ever wanted and he feels like he’s been set aflame because he’s lived his whole life not really knowing what he wanted, but he knows now. Your lips on his skin are the tantalizing fruit that's been dangling behind his head the whole time and he can see it, can feel it and he can feel it; all he’s ever wanted is you, and he lets himself go, voice breathy and untethered to his own self as he moans, incoherent pleas for you to keep going.

Jungkook prays he’ll see marks tomorrow, if this is even real. He prays that you leave a tangible sign, a purple bruise on his golden skin as a reminder that this was once real. If you leave after he’s made love to you, he doesn’t think he’ll be able to recover from it, but if you leave your mark; the indent of your teeth and the faded stain of your lipstick, he thinks it’ll be enough to satiate him.

You’re not one to waste time, apparently, fingers tracing down his abs agonizingly fast before Jungkook can process the touch, reaching for the button on his jeans so he can be free, get inside you, because it’s been way too fucking long and you need him sheathed within your body like you’re entwined, like you’re one entity. You reckon the thought is one of the filthiest ones you’ve ever had, but it doesn’t matter, because you can feel yourself soaking through your panties and you run cold like ice, wanting him to melt you — needing him to melt you.

This will be your new beginning; fuck London, you decide. Fuck London if it means you have him like this, the pads of his fingers running like feathers over your skin, leaving chills in their wake. This will be your new beginning, his lips grazing over your collarbones as he grinds his hips into yours just hard enough for you to feel through your jeans. This will be your new beginning, desperately bucking your hips up to meet him halfway, to gain some much needed friction until he decides to stop giving you the tantalizing guise of what you need, until he decides to unbutton your jeans with daft digits,, pulling them until you lay before him in all your glory.

Jungkook has never known religion until he sees you like this. The curves of your body and the slope of your waist and the way your bra just barely covers your breasts and the way your panties sit on your hips and your collarbones illuminated by the sun that desperately laps at your soft skin like it, too, wants to have you wholly. He has never known a God until he thanks Him for you, thanks his lucky stars that he has you in front of him, fights the urge to sink to his knees and pray that you don’t disappear into a brilliant beam of light like you were nothing but a figment of his imagination.

His cock strains, and he reaches out to stroke the lace of your panties so gently, almost like he’s afraid to leave a mark, though he yearns for yours on his skin. You want to ink the calluses of his fingers so they leave permanent imprints on your body, so you feel the rough drag forever, but it's only an afterthought when he begins to rub at your clit through the fabric. The added friction feels like heaven on your tongue, like you can taste the waning of yearning on the tip of your tongue –

“Fuck, Jungkook,” your voice sounds dazed in your own ears, and he shifts your panties aside to rub your wetness all over your sex, thumb rubbing slow circles over your clit as his fingers tease your entrance. If there was a way to put the bliss, the desperation into words, you’re sure that you could talk for hours. You hear his breathing, heavy like he’s incredulous, in utter disbelief, and you hear the unrecognizable keens of his name. 

“I know, baby. I know, I love you. Lemme have you.”

He repeats it like a prayer, those three words running like water off his tongue as he rubs tight eight-figures of your clit. Eyes raking your figure, he drinks in the tilt of your head backwards, a tattoo on your shoulder blade that he makes a note to ask you about, the bend of your elbows and the way your stomach tightens. Jungkook tries to take his time, but his fingers are drenched in your arousal and he deems you wet enough to slip his index finger in. 

You moan, high and unadulterated, and he moans, low and throaty; it feels like you’re complete, and he can’t help but wonder how your walls would feel on his cock. You suck him in, pussy greedy for something to fill it, and he does his best to affirm this when he bends down to catch your lips within his again –

“Shit, doll, you’re soaking me… look at your sweet cunt, look at how she’s taking me,” he uses his free hand to tilt your chin downwards, and the pink of your bitten lips distracts him for just a second before he pushes another finger in.

“Jungkook – ah, fuck, more please, more,” you let your mind go adrift, thinking about how good you feel and then thinking of nothing at all when he curls his fingers in an upwards motion, rendering you speechless and fucked silly. The thought of what his cock would do is lost among a myriad of unsullied pleasure, and you don’t know whether it's because you haven’t cum in so long, but you’re dangerously teetering over the edge of your release, continuing to beg him to just throw you over.

He tells you he has you, eases another finger in until the tears that prickle the corners of your eyes finally spill over. He licks them away, rutting his hips up into his free hand like it gets him off, seeing you cry for him, seeing you writhe under him. He knows it's too much, knows that you’re close like he’s done this a million times before, like your body is his own.

“I’m f– fuck, so fucking close,” you can feel the coil in your lower belly so close to snapping that it makes you want to run away from the feeling. It’s all too much, because his thumb feels rough on your clit and his fingers are jackhammering into you like he has a point to prove, because he’s calling you his and his voice is echoing somewhere in the back of your mind, because all you can do is squirm and push your hips up to get yourself over the precipice of pleasure –

“Fu- fu- uck, Jesus –”

“I gotchu honey, let go for me, just let go, ‘m always hare, let go for me –”

What you expect to be a wave, crashing into you like the realization that you loved him had, is nothing but a soft roll of ecstasy taking ahold of every inch of your skin. It starts in your head, numbing your senses and then heightening them, makes its way down to your arms until you’re clawing at Jungkook’s because it’s so fucking good, rolls down your legs until you clench your toes, grapples at your throat until your voice is choked out and all you can do is pant helplessly. What you expect to be a wave is a slow pulse that leaves you breathless and staring up at Jungkook who seems to be mesmerized by the expression you’re wearing, fingers slowing within you as he helps you ride it out.

“Fucking hell, baby. You’re stunning,”

You laugh, out of it and incredulous as he presses a kiss – too chaste for the mind-blowing orgasm he’s just given you – to your temple.

“Gonna make me do that everyday, Jeon?”

“You can count on it, angel. I’ll make you do that every single day.”

The two of you move in tandem, knowing that this wasn’t nearly enough to satiate you both; your hands fly to his jeans, pulling his zipper down and yanking the fabric off of his legs. Jungkook’s laugh is breathy, pupils still blown out as he watches you try to get him naked and he lets you. 

He lets you strip him until his skin is bare, watches you rake your eyes over his figure and pause at the ink of his arms. He vows to tell you about all the secret tattoos he’s gotten that remind him of you; that he got because of you, but all he can focus on is the way your eyes go dazed and glossy when you push down his boxers to pull his cock out.

You’re well aware that Jungkook is beautiful, and he’s never doubted his physical appearance for more than a split second since college, but he never thought that his dick would be the center of said attention. Fuck, he has a pretty cock; it’s thick and your mouth waters at the angry vein running down the underside of it, desperate to get your mouth on him and savor the weight of him on your tongue. It curves up, pretty mushroom tip having been rendered a dark red from when he was getting you off, the pearly beads of pre-cum that spill over the sides of it when you rub your hand over his length a stark contrast.

He buckles over, hand splaying over your stomach as he lets out a choked groan at the contact, and you can feel the wetness of the sheet underneath you as you see him lose himself underneath your touch. You could do this forever, and the inexplicable urge to just get him in your mouth takes over your body reflexively, but Jungkook doesn’t let you act on it; his warm fingers press down on your skin, and he lets his free hand replace yours on his cock. 

“Gonna fuck you real good, darling. You’re gonna feel it all the way — shit — all the way up to here,” he pumps his cock like he’s trying to deprave himself of your pussy on purpose and your eyes desperate search for his, no longer trusting your brain to form adequate words to explain just how badly you need him to fuck you.

He knows, he knows you like the back of his hand, and he knows how much you need and crave this. Just as quick as he’d gotten your hands off of him, he presses himself to your entrance, rubbing the head of his cock up and down your embarrassingly wet slit. The squelching would typically have you curl in on yourself, but it’s Jungkook, and you’ve let every wall down around him and it feels so fucking incredible when he rubs his dick against your sensitive clit that you just cannot bring yourself to care;

“Please, please Jungkook —“

“I know, I know baby, shhh… just relax for me and I’ll make this so good, ‘kay? That’s my girl,” the hand on your stomach goes lax when you exhale, letting him align himself with your entrance and ease himself in.

He gets his tip in with surprising deftness, rubbing over your torso when you tense your body. He knows you’re not a virgin, he’s done this before and so have you, but with each other? It feels holy, like you’re coming back to earth and coming back to the person each of you is meant to be with.

His inked hand goes to cradle your face, pushing your hair away from your tear-stricken skin, kissing away at the new tears that threaten to slip from your eyes. You breathe out at his touch, and he pulls out all the way to thrust back into you, slipping in and filling you all the way to the brim.

A choked moan leaves you, and your simultaneous gasps color the air, mingling and dissipating as the two of you mold into one entity. Jungkook forgets the Bible verses about adultery, things of new beginnings and redemption and how you’re the Holy Grail he tried so hard to find when you were right there. He curses himself for not doing this earlier, for realizing so late, but it’s all so worth it when you give an experimental roll of your hips, bucking upwards to get him to move.

Jungkook thinks he would give you anything, take chunks out of the moon if you so looked at it with desire, and he thinks that he’ll lay his body down for you if you even implied that you wanted him to. He thrusts into you, a gritty moan leaving his throat when he feels your walls, warm and wet and fluttering around his cock. Your pussy is greedy for him, milking his every drop and he knows you can feel him, knows you feel everything.

He’s right, too, because the veins of his cock, every ridge and every edge of it is fully sheathed within you. When his shallow thrusts get longer, deeper, when he bucks his hips upwards to fuck you just right, when you look down at his hand and see the bulge of his cock in your stomach — fuck, it’s exhilarating, and he seems to notice it too, following your gaze and letting his hips lose their well adjusted rhythm for just a split second.

“G-god Jungkook, so fucking full — shit.”

“Yeah, you are. Fuck, fuck, I told you. Told you I’d fill your greedy little cunt up.”

You think this is the only side of Jungkook you haven’t seen, so when he continues to talk, confidence and this natural allure of dominance absolutely dripping off of him, you thank whatever deity is up there for letting you have him.

“Look at you, tsk tsk. Baby, you kept this pretty pussy away from me for so fucking — shit — long?”

His moans are nothing compared to the high keens, pornographic breathy whimpers that leave your throat. It’s like he’s ripped off every barricade you put up in front of you, has you naked and bare and begging in his sheets like you were made for this, fucks you like your pussy was made for this.

“How’d you keep her satisfied without me, darling?”

He leans down, hands still playing with your hair and holding onto your face in a way that you know will leave pink fingerprints — in a way that makes you wonder if he even believes this is real, grasping onto you so he can reassure himself that you’re tangible. You see the knot in his brows, feel the murmur of his words against your jaw when he presses his lips to the bone, catch the tension in his abdomen as he tries to keep his rhythm.

You’re sure he won’t have to, though, because there’s something about the way he’s leaning down into you, the way he’s thrusting into you so deep, never slow but never too fast, the way he snakes one hand between your bodies to rub at your clit, knowing he won’t be able to last long inside of you. All of it has your head spinning, and you’re not sure if you’ll ever experience anything this riveting, this revitalizing before. It feels like you’re closer to being born again with every thrust, with every bit of the coil in your stomach tightening —

He presses his forehead to yours, thumb rubbing circles onto your clit, cock prodding against just the right spot like he’s practiced this only for you, only for you. Your eyes meet, and you see tears in the corner of his own eyes, you feel his hand trembling in your hair as he tries to leave traces of his prints on every inch of you — you lock your legs around his waist, and the new angle is like the straw on the camel’s back as you’re thrown so violently over the edge that it catches you off guard.

This one is a wave, drenching you and drenching his cock and the sheets and the miles of skin that connect the two of you. He lets out a deep groan, lips connecting to the column of your throat when you throw your head back, nails digging deep into the skin of his shoulders so as to lessen the blow.

Fuck, he wants you to leave his back scratched and bloody, needs a reminder of this rebirth; needs the sting of you permanently imprinted if it on his body, then in his brain.

You get the memo, clearly, running the sharp acrylics up and down the toned expanse of his back as you just barely catch your breath — it comes in pants, the achy pleasure of overstimulation creeping its way up your spine.

If he doesn’t come inside of you, it’ll be his biggest regret. You’re smart, he knows you’re on the pill and he knows you would’ve told him to pull out, wouldn’t have had your legs wrapped around his waist if you didn’t want this just as bad as he did, but he opens his mouth to ask anyways.

“Come inside, baby. I — fuck. I fucking love you, I’ll love you forever, come inside of me, please.”

The deliriosity of your orgasm, along with the continuous sensation of being fucked senseless as Jungkook loses his rhythm and resorts to jackhammering into you, chasing his high like you’re nothing but a toy to do it; all of it pushes you into overdrive and you babble, begging for him to finish inside like it’s the only thing you can think of.

He doesn’t dare look away from your face, mapping every second within his brain, feeling the familiar feeling of an orgasm washing its way up to shore. He’s sure you’re on the same page, too, recognizing the face he’s seen twice now etch itself back onto your features —

You cum for a third time when his hips stutter and he buckles over your body, hand never moving from your head, cradling it like the contact is keeping him grounded. You feel the warm ropes of his cum paint your insides, and the third orgasm is nowhere near as intense as the others, just a gentle pulsation of pleasure and a bout of love that you don’t think you’ve ever felt before blooming over your heart.

Jungkook collapses next to you, dirty sheets be damned when he throws his inked arms over your body. For a while, neither of you find it in yourselves to talk — it’s barely even the orgasms, more so the fact that the two of you are best friends who are madly in love with each other, the fact that you’ve just told each other this and then proceeded to have the most mindblowing sex the either of you could even imagine, all within the span of an hour or so.

He’s first to make a move, lifting your chin so you look at him, smiling down at you so gently that you feel every bit of insecurity — every worry that’s already clouding your mind about the future, London, all of it — disappear. 

You match his gaze, trying to read what is so clearly written in his eyes. I love you, they say, twinkling brighter than the golden rays of sunshine that pour through his poorly strewn curtains. It’s hard to speak so you don’t, opting to reach up and slot your mouth against his.

Jungkook swears he’s been given a second chance at life when you kiss him, and he decides to plan it out better this time. The thought goes away quicker than he’d like, though, because you slip your tongue into his mouth and his brain short circuits for the umpteenth time that day. It’s hard to imagine anything being difficult if you kiss him like this, it’s hard to imagine struggle, hard to imagine dissatisfaction, hard to imagine not being in love with every waking moment of his life when he’s this madly in love with you.

You pull away. 

“I’m not worried, by the way.”

He grins, leaning into your smaller frame to press a kiss against the junction of your shoulder.

“I know. I’m not either.”

“We‘re gonna make it work?”

“Yeah. Of course. It’s us, ___. We’ll make it work.”

—

Jungkook doesn’t like summer, but he thinks you make it better. You graduate law school a week after he graduates college, and he’s in the front row watching you give your high honors speech before getting your degree. You tell Cravath that you can’t work in London, and ask AJ if he’s willing to quit Wachtell Lipton and take your place.

He tells you that he thinks he’s in love with you, that he’s happy you’ve found love with Jungkook, and takes the job. 

You decide to give New York a second chance that summer; decide to give yourself a new beginning as you start to work and don’t immediately take immense bouts of stress upon yourself. Jungkook thinks about what he really wants to do, and though he takes a job that is gratuitously well paying – bless the Comp Sci starting salary – he thinks he wants to freelance art on the side. 

–

When fall rolls around, you stand in the kitchen with your mother. The two of you look out at Jungkook and your father turning pages of old photo albums, and she tells you that she’s proud of you. You wonder if this is what it feels like to be avenged. It gets colder, and Jungkook gets you all the white mochas you want to drink, especially when you drive up to the cemetery to see your ex in early October. The two of you lay down orange roses, and you tell him that you’ll always love him in a way nobody else knows – Jungkook is proud, you’re proud, and for the first time in years, your heart doesn’t feel heavy when he drives around that part of town.

Jungkook paints portraits of you in the living room of the apartment you share. The two of your extremely well-paying jobs had let you buy a penthouse in Greenwich Village, and you’re just grateful you can find someplace to call home. Speaking of living together, Mingyu had enrolled himself into a sobriety program when Jungkook had forced him to watch that TED Talk, only this time neither of them had been high. 

You tell Jungkook’s parents, too, and their excitement is nowhere near as gentle as your parents’ had been. His mom cries, and his dad tells you that he’s been rooting for you and Jungkook for ages.

(As it turns out, Jungkook had been rooting for him and yourself for ages as well.)

–

Winter follows, encasing New York in an icy chill but your heart has never been warmer. You have a classic NYC Christmas, doing all the insanely cliche tourist activities that are manageable. Nayoung moves out of state as well, and Jungkook cries into her shoulder at the airport. You’re there with him every second of every day – baking cookies, forcing him to take notes when the two of you watch Die Hard together for the first time, in his sweaters, in his sheets, in his heart.

Jungkook’s art sells well, he loves this city, and he still loves getting 2Bros with you – he even forces you to get the meat pizza he’s devoured for years, and you decide that while it’s not so bad, that you’ll continue to make fun of him for it. A tradition, just like the coke floats you still buy in sub-zero temperatures. 

He makes you a shaken espresso in February, and you tell him it tastes incredible.

You stop putting walls up, and he learns to actually talk about his feelings, and you’re still the same toddlers from two decades ago; a bit immature, bound to end up together, and totally susceptible to throwing your ice cream cones on the ground if the other shoes any semblance of an injury. 

–

New beginnings are for spring, though. Months after his birthday and yours have passed, months after new years, right when the first flowers bloom and the cold starts to whisper it's goodbyes, right when he realizes it’s nearly been a year since the day he’d randomly thought of you and set lose this insane chain of events – right in the middle of April, he decides he’s going to marry you.

It won’t be anytime soon, but seeing as how you’re steadily progressing in your career, and he’s earning more with his art than with his job? The budget for a wedding is definitely on the table, and he vows to officially make you his one day. 

Some day.

(He already has the ring in his cart on the Cartier website.)

(Mingyu comes out of the program a few weeks later, and Jungkook asks him to be the best man.)

(You’re on the same page, if the wedding themed Pinterest board he sees you shut with insane speed is any indication.)

–

You love infinitely, filled to the brim and overflowing with it; so much so that it gets overwhelming at times, but neither of you go. You choose him, and he chooses you, and seasons go by and Jungkook figures out the direction he wants to go in this new life, and you learn to be gentle with yourself, and neither of you go. 

And so it goes. 

You and Jungkook, two kids grow into two adults in the most marvelous city in the world. A million possible beginnings in the span of two decades, but one conclusion; one ending: the both of you aren’t flawless – it’s hard to be – you’re just bad at being alone.

—

a/n: U GUYS ITS HEREEEEE. I’m sorry for the incessant word vomit and unnecessarily long smut scene it was important for the plot development hehe. and if u feel bad for AJ and Nayoung… so do I! this is also a birthday fic for my love jungkook and I hope he has the bestest day in the entire universe I love U my little virgo sweet boy I should Kiss u a million times

taglist: @bumblerebbee @brownapsara @smolbitchwithcakes @allfryou @carmen-j @1316s @yoonjinsyy @bishuthot @ahundredtimesover @readingfavorites

#jungkook #jungkook smut #jungkook drabbles #bts #jungkook x reader #bts jungkook #jeon jungkook #jungkook/reader #jungkook blurbs #jungkook angst #happy birthday jungkook #jungkookday #bts smut #bts fics #jungkook fics #jungkook oneshot #jungkook oneshots #jungkook au #jungkook fic

[plentyoffandoms]

Hey gal, I hope you’re having a happy Tuesday! 🥳If you have the time and you’re taking requests, please could I get your take on Javi x fem.

She finds out she’s having a baby a couple of weeks before a huge raid and actively tries everything to avoid Javi. During the raid she gets cornered by one of Pablo’s guys and absolutely terrified screams “I’m pregnant, I’m pregnant” Javi and Steve hear over the radio, his head frantically snaps up and he takes off running to find her, Steve not far behind + the aftermath. Thank you 🥹

Javier Peña x f/Reader

Main Masterlist ♡ TV Shows Masterlist ♡ Miscellaneous TV Shows Masterlist ♡ Pedro Pascal Masterlist

Just like all my other stories, this has not been proofread, but please enjoy.

I do not speak Spanish nor I am going to try to. I have no urge to try and butcher another language. So Spanish will be in ITALICS.

Gifs & photos do not belong to me. 1st gif @pedrorascal 2nd gif @hunterschafer 3rd @nicolethered

Warnings: Swearing

WC: 2273

And a happy Saturday to you! I am sorry this has taken me so long to get out. I really hope you like it. This is my first time writing for Javier so I hope I do well. 💜

Summary: f/Reader & Javier have been sleeping together. At first, it started as stress relief from their jobs at the DEA, but f/Reader ends up pregnant & keeps it from him. Javier finds out during the worst possible time.

YN'S POV:

I have never been more thankful than I am right now to be one of the few women working in the DEA. I get to have the washroom all to myself as I am throwing up the very small breakfast I had.

I threw that up a few hours ago, at this point I have no idea what the hell I am throwing up.

I cleaned my face up and popped a piece of gum into my mouth, hoping that it will do the job of getting rid of my puke breath.

"You okay YN?" Steve asked me as I sat down at my desk, which was beside his.

"Yeah, I am good. I think I just had one too many last night." I told him as I lied through my teeth. He just smiled and shook his head at me, muttering "You never could handle your alcohol."

While Steve was making fun of me for being a lightweight, Javier was looking at me over the top of his newspaper.

I didn't bother to look at him. Not when it was just only a few days ago that he had me once again crying out his name as he used his sexual talents to bring me so much damn pleasure that I had no idea could happen before I met him.

He knows with one nod of his head, I would be meeting him in the washroom that the other DEA members refuse to use for some reason.

But only after a few hours of going through boring paperwork, I felt the urge to throw up again. Since this is the fourth time today, I knew I had to get looked at.

I decided to head out early and told my boss that I had to leave due to not feeling well. At first, he didn't want me to leave and refused, but I told him the next time I had to puke, I would make sure to do it all over his expensive shoes.

He let me go after that.

I got in my car and headed home when I was stopped at a red light. As I sat in my car, waiting for the light to change, a pregnant woman walked by.

It suddenly dawned on me.

My period is late. Extremely late.

The random puking happening at all hours.

Certain smells making me nauseous.

Oh, fuck me.

I'm pregnant.

A horn from the car behind me startled me. I noticed the light was green and I floored it. I had to find the nearest clinic and get proof.

It took me a bit to find one, but when I did, I felt like I was in a daze as I filled out the form.

That feeling never went away as I sat there, or when my name finally got called.

I did the test and told the Doctor my symptoms. I got sent home as they had to wait a couple of days to get the test results.

I was told to come back on Tuesday and I will find out then. I knew deep down inside I didn't have to wait until Tuesday to know whether I am or not.

I called out of work saying I came down with some stomach bug and that I will be back in a few days. I waited patiently at my place. Kept myself occupied with TV, catching up on some much-needed sleep and reading.

Then Tuesday finally rolled around and I made my way to the Clinic. I had my hands placed on my lap to stop myself from fidgeting.

"YN LN?"

I stood up and followed the nurse to the room. I waited in the warm room to find out if I was pregnant.

"YN?"

"Yes, Doctor."

"We have your results and you are pregnant. I would say you are about 6, 7 weeks along."

His voice faded into the background as this became all too real. I am pregnant with Javier Peña's baby.

The same man who doesn't want a relationship with anyone and who has announced more times than I can count that he doesn't want kids.

How the hell did this even happen? We always used protection.

Then it dawned on me, we didn't have anything twice and he swore to pull out, but the one night when we both had a bit too much to drink, he didn't pull out in time.

I left the clinic and went home, trying to decide what I should do. I already knew I couldn't give up this baby, but my dilemma was how I should tell Javier.

What the hell am I supposed to do?

Javier Peña's POV:

Three weeks.

Three fuckin' weeks since I have talked to YN. First, she went off sick due to some stomach bug and she was gone less than a week.

She came back and she was normal with Steve. Talking and catching up on what she has missed.

But me?

I say her name and she turns the other way or talks to someone else. She is ignoring my calls and when I have shown up at her place to try and talk to her, she doesn't answer the door.

What the hell did I do to her?

This has been eating away at me and has been pissing me off so much that I have taken it out on anyone who got in my way.

"What the hell crawled up your ass Javier?" Steve said as I slammed my mug down.

"None of your concern," I grumbled.

"Something is going on between YN and you. I have seen it these last couple of weeks. Work it out before we head out to this raid or get your head out of your ass."

I was going to say something smart when he walked away from me towards the debriefing room.

I took a few deep breaths and just tried to focus all my energy on this raid.

But then I saw YN out of the corner of my eye and she was talking with one of the new guys. I haven't learned his name because frankly, I didn't care to know it.

But I can see how he is flirting with her and I can feel myself getting angry. He placed his hand on her hand, which was sitting on the table in front of them.

But the anger slowly faded away when I saw her look down at his hand on top of hers, she smiled softly and moved her hand away.

"We are all here? Good, now listen."

I turned my attention towards the briefing, trying to take in the layout of the building we will be going into. How many men will be there, etc, etc.

~

Usually, YN would come with Murph and me, but not this time. I have no idea who she went with and it is making me sick to my stomach.

Even before started to sleep together, I always made sure to keep an eye on YN during our raids. I was drawn to her from the very beginning and I pushed my feelings aside for her and we became friends with benefits.

I haven't been with anyone else since we started and these last few weeks, not waking up beside her. Not spending our alone time together has been driving me crazy.

"You able to talk to her?"

"Nope." That was all he got out of me. I mean I tried, but she just pretended she didn't hear me.

We waited for our cue to go inside and I saw YN as she was running to get into position, also waiting for the cue.

We were all silent and then we got the go-ahead. There were shots fired and smoke in the air. There was so much commotion and noise that I could hardly focus on anyone else.

That was until I heard over the radio, YN screaming out in Spanish, "I'M PREGNANT, I'M PREGNANT!"

I snapped my head up and looked at Steve. I didn't wait for him as I went off to find YN.

YN'S POV:

I know he is hurting. Every single time I ignore him or turn my back away from him, I can feel his eyes staring at me. Like he is looking into my soul.

But I still have no idea how to tell him.

How am I supposed to let him know that I am pregnant with his baby? That I am going to keep it whether he wants me to or not? That after this raid I plan on going home to work some desk job and try to stay away from the danger.

To be away from him because I know he won't want to leave Columbia. Not until he feels like his work is done and it never will be.

But as I was checking the backrooms, making sure they were clear, I realised I wasn't alone. I heard the sound of a gun cocking and I was told to drop my gun.

I dropped my gun and turned around, but I must have been moving too fast for this henchman of Pablo's because he slapped my face with the handle of his gun. I covered my stomach as I screamed out, "I'M PREGNANT, I'M PREGNANT!"

But that didn't seem to matter to him. A sick smile came over his face and he told me he was going to have lots of fun with me.

I didn't hear the footsteps come running towards us, but I heard the gunshot. I felt the blood splatter across my face and the guy fell to the ground.

I looked up and saw Javi standing there and Steve came rushing into the room, to make sure the guy was dead and to see if there was any identification on him, but Javier's focus was on me.

I crumbled to the ground as this all became too much for me, but I wasn't alone for long.

Javier got on the ground next to me and pulled me into his lap. I couldn't stop crying and he just held me through the tears.

Steve left the two of us alone until it was time for us to go. He found Javi and me still in the same room, with me in his lap.

The three of us walked out of the building, past many of our coworkers who heard me shout out over the radio that I was pregnant.

The car ride back to HQ was quiet. I got out of the car before them and went to go to the washroom.

The same one where Javier and I used to meet up, I knew he wouldn't be that far behind me.

I was gripping the sink, with my head down as he barged into the room. I was waiting for him to scream at me. To yell at me. Anything really, but he didn't.

All he said to me was, "Why?" My head snapped up and I turned to face him. "Why what?" I asked him.

"Why did you put your life and our baby's lives at risk?"

"No one knew I was pregnant and this is my job, Peña."

"So it is Peña now? Look YN, you were foolish and downright stupid today." He was getting angrier and angrier as he walked towards me.

"Fuck you, Javier. Fuck you." How dare he?

"You have already done that sweetheart." The smirk that came across his face, I wanted to slap off and I raised my hand to slap it off of his face when he caught my hand in his.

"I could have lost you today YN. Fuck, hearing your terrified screams made my blood run cold. I could have lost you without actually telling you how I feel."

"And how do you feel?"

"That I can't stand to be without you by my side another day. That I love you and these last few weeks without hearing you say my name or waking up next to me has been killing me."

"Who knew Javier Peña was a romantic?" I joked.

"Had to find the right woman YN."

"And me being pregnant?"

"Hmm, well I haven't had sex with a pregnant woman before. That means your boobs are gonna get bigger." He said to me with a giddy smile as he wrapped his arms around me.

I jokingly pushed away from him for that comment but he just pulled me closer to him.

He brought his lips to mine and we finally kissed after almost a month or so.

"I love you YN." He said as he pulled his lips away and leaned his forward against mine.

"I love you too Javi."

"Oh and you are getting a desk job. No more fieldwork for you."

"I already planned on it. Well, I was gonna go home but I guess I can stay here and work."

"Starting tomorrow." He said to me with a serious look.

"I'll talk to the boss and get assigned desk duty." His shoulders relaxed.

"Good, now how far along are you?" He asked me as we left the washroom.

"About 10 weeks give or take."

"What?" He stopped.

"Yeah around two and a half months."

His mouth opened and closed.

"Did you break him?" Steve asked as he stepped next to me.

"I think so."

"Congratulations to the both of you. I am sure once he stops malfunctioning we can go out and celebrate."

I laughed with Steve as I looked at Javi. I think the two of us will be just fine.

#javier pena #javier peña #javier peña imagine #javier peña x reader #javier pena x you #javier peña x you #javier peña x y/n #javier peña x f!reader #javier peña x female reader #narcos #narcos imagine #narcos fic #narcos fanfiction #narcos x reader #narcos x female reader #pedro pascal #pedro pascal characters

[minispidey]

Hey - you said repeaters welcome so here I am 💅

If you’ve watched Scenes from a Marriage, I need ya thots /HC for Levy:

BEST FRIEND.

Jonathan Levy x f!reader.

Warnings: mentions toxic relationship, mentions cheating, does this count as cheating too?, angst, smut, fluff, swearing.

Requested by: @boredzillenial

Author's Note: bestie the gif u send is so MWAH cheeky beefy oscar isaac ass 🤭 if u dont mind, i added in a small story line because u swear this man deserves better. mira fucked him up smh (tbh i have no idea what im writing have mercy on me)

Summary: you're Jonathan Levy's best friend, always been in love with him even after he got married. But then it crumbles down and you proved that you treat him better.

MINORS DNI

My immediate thought is like: oh childhood besties with Jonathan instead of the usual teacher-student relationship. I think it adds more drama, you know?

Imagine being so in love with this man for years, but he's blind. He marries Mira and to add salt to the wound you were his best man, or rather best woman. Holding in tears because you thought to yourself 'Surely, I'd move on.'

You two grow up, still closer and you watched him make a family of his own while you work a decent job and end up drinking at the end of the day. Partners come and go, but none of them made you feel the same way Jonathan did. And Jonathan barely did shit.

You knew it was wrong pining for a married man, but you hoped some day Jonathan sees that Mira treats him like shit. You didn't want to upset him since you're his best friend. The one person who knew everything about him even after setting boundaries since he got married.

Were you surprised when Jonathan calls you over and tells you Mira cheated on him? Of course not. You called up a babysitter for Ava and went to hit up a bar, drowning in his sadness.

"What does she have that keeps you... I don't know... loving her? What's so different that you keep crawling back to her."

He couldn't reply. Jonathan stared at you, remembering all the times you two talked— the ones where he's always ranting about his married life, the struggles and the stress. You always just sat there and listened to him. You never straight out voiced your opinion about Mira.

"What else do you think of her?"

"She's a bitch. I mean seriously, you two have a daughter and she pulls this shit. Anyone— and I mean everyone can treat you better than she does."

You always did speak the truth when you're drunk. So this was different.

"You packed her shit too. If I were you, I would've burned everything she owned. Did I ever tell you of the ex boyfriend I had? Changed his shampoo to hair remover."

"That's a bit extreme."

"Your face is a bit extreme."

You always knew just how to make him laugh, even with childish insults. No words were exchanged between the two of you, Jonathan stared at you, scanning your features. Something about you was different. Maybe it was the alcohol, but he's just barely tipsy.

Next thing he knew, he kissed you. He realized that he loved you more than a best friend normally did. He was in love.

Even if it took your whole lives, you thanked whoever the fuck made him realize he loved you (me).

In the middle of your kissing session, he pulls away only to take off his glasses, even touching the lenses despite wanting to keep it fingerprint-free.

His daughter's asleep, baby sitter's gone. You two stumbled into his house, lips locked. Jonathan wasted no time getting you into his bedroom (well, him and Mira's bedroom) and taking your clothes off.

Not only was this the perfect revenge, this was a perfect moment. Your wildest dreams finally coming true.

Jonathan fucks— no, he makes love. He's slow, making you feel good. He's definitely a giver. He peppers you non-stop with kisses. You leave scratches and marks on his body. The pleasure is too much. You were happy that night.

The next morning, breakfast in bed and a kiss on your forehead. Clearly, he didn't regret anything from last night. Jonathan really realized he loved you and you loved him.

Let's just say that you practically lived in his house at this point. Mira comes home to find Jonathan fucking you on the kitchen counter.

"You slut-!"

"You can't say shit, you cheated on him you fucking cunt!"

You successfully landed a harsh slap across Mira's face before getting pulled away by Jonathan. He carries you back into his bedroom and he cups your face with a smile.

"Did it feel good?"

"Yeah. Been wanting to do that since she broke the mug I gave you if I'm being honest."

Jonathan kicked Mira out, and you two spent the night making love to each other. Jonathan was right— everything Mira hated about him, you loved. You were absolutely better than her.

Their divorced finalized, and Jonathan got full custody of Ava. You moved in and brought life to their dull house.

For your birthday, he bought you a piano... an expensive one at that. He loved hearing you play.

He's the type to pick you small flowers every day and you have an album filled with pressed flowers. Before you go to work, he would slip a sticky note in your bag and you would find it while working and can't help but smile.

You make his lunches. He's always liked your cooking. You were definitely levels up from pathetic dinner tupperware spaghetti.

You even pack Ava's lunch for school, making notes like

Have a good day, sweetie! I love you ❤️

For Jonathan, it's always confessions of love. Even if at this point you two should be married.

Love you for as long as the stars shine ❤️

He can't help but smile like a fool during lunch. Even brags about the food you make.

He was in the middle of a lesson when he realized he wanted to marry you. As soon as class ended, he sprinted to Tiffany & Co. and bought you a diamond ring that suited you.

He was just utterly in love with you. One day, playing your piano, you looked ethereal that he grabbed the ring and got down on one knee. He just loved you too much.

You two spent the rest of your days more and more in love than that day in the bar along with your children. He couldn't ask for anyone better. You were the one for him, no one else.

#jonathan levy #scenes from a marriage #jonathan levy smut #oscar isaac #minispidey requests

[cheynovak]

Crush Part 2  

Dean Winchester x Reader (Y/N) &  Sam Winchester (platonic)  

Warnings: Fluff, sexual tension, implied smut, alcohol, trauma, nothing too extreme,  

This story might not follow the SPN timeline.  

Side note: English isn’t my first language.  

Words: 4602 

Short recap of part 1: 

Y/N is a high school crush/friend of Sam, when they were 16 y/o they attended the same school for a while. Sam spends his entire time hanging out with her, trying to ask her to prom, only one problem, Y/N likes Dean. Now years later the brothers path crosses again with Y/N, unfortunately she got kidnapped and hurt by vampires.  

Dean and Y/N are falling for each other again. But how will they deal with the trauma in their lives.  

--

 

Please check out my masterlist for more stories.

-------------------------------------------------------

Y/N opened the blankets, gesturing him to lay down next to her, doubtfully he crawled into bed next to her. For a second, they were looking into each other’s eyes. If the circumstanced where different he would have kissed her now. But instead, she pulled herself closer to him, her face was snugged against his shirt, she could hear his steady heartbeat. Dean’s chin touching her hair, he tugged an arm around her pulling her close. She let go of a sigh “I had a bad dream.” She confessed. “I’m here, try to get some sleep.” he kissed her head. 

-- 

Sam woke up by the sunlight on his face. He lifted his head to see if Dean was still sleeping. Noticing he wasn’t on the couch anymore, he turned around finding Y/N and Dean in the bed next to him. Slowly he realised what happened the night before, Y/N the girl both he and his brother cared for, the one person he didn’t want to know about their life was attacked by vampires. All because they tracked down their sent to her.  

At first Sam thought it was a cute scene until he saw the tension. He noticed how Y/N was clinging on to Dean with the little strength she had, while the older brother had his arms wrapped around her, tight. Y/N must have woken up and got scared or had a bad dream. And Dean probably felt guilty for what had happened to her, wanting to make sure to protect her.  

The younger Winchester got up quietly, wrote a note that he went for breakfast and new clothing for Y/N, thinking she wouldn’t want to go out looking like a bloodbath.  

Even though Sam was very smooth in his movement the closing of the door woke Dean up. He glanced down seeing Y/N hadn’t moved since he crawled in the bed with her. His shirt still clenched in her hand, her face still as close as possible to his chest, like she was trying to hide. He turned slightly, to look at the clock behind him, trying not to wake Y/N, 9 a.m. 

“Don’t go.” he heard her mumble. “Don’t worry sweetheart, I’m not going anywhere.” He placed his head back on top of hers. “Dean?” - “hm?” - “I’m sorry, for yesterday. Seeing you, killing that... thing. It scared me.” He moved a little so he could look at her. “Oh no, you shouldn’t be sorry. I am, I should have stayed or even better, never went home with you. It’s my fault they found you.”  

“You regret meeting me?” He saw the tears building in her eyes. “No, no not at all, I just wish you didn’t have to know about all of this.” His hand moved to her cheek as he kissed her head. “Just because we were somewhat forced into it doesn’t mean you should have.” Y/N moved herself on to one arm looking down at Dean. “How do you mean forced?”  

“Our dad, this was, is the reason why we move around so much.” Y/N processed his words for a while. “So, when Sam and I were at school.” - “My dad and I killed monsters.” - “And Sam knew?” Dean nodded. “Why, how do you even start a life like that.” Dean took his time to explain everything to her. How they lost their mom, that his dad was keen on finding the demon, that they killed it but that he and Sam now kept doing the job.  

“You guys never thought of stopping, starting a normal life?” She asked while placing her hand very slowly on his shoulder, letting her fingertips glide over his skin. “Sam did, he went to college, thanks to your ‘you don’t need to be like your dad’ speech.” Y/N smirked while Dean could see the wheels spinning in her head. After a moment of silence, she asked him. “What about you?” Dean normally would laugh something like that off, pretend he loves what he is doing, but he felt like he had a chance to be honest with Y/N.  

“I never really thought about it, it felt like it was my duty. But it slipped in my mind, once or twice.” He grabbed her hand that was still drawing figures on his skin and brought it up to his lips. “That night when I dropped off your dress and last night.” - “Really?” Y/N looked shocked. “Yes. Why is that such a surprise?” - “I don’t know, I always thought I was a fling, for you passing your time.”  

Dean looked shocked, he moved himself, sitting with his back against the bed railing leaving his legs covered with the blankets. He opened his mouth, the second he wanted to tell her how he felt Sam walked in. “Hey you’re up, bought some new clothes and breakfast. Hope you’re hungry, Y/N. ” -”Eh, yeah, I could eat. But I’m going to change first. Don’t wait for me, dig in.”  

Y/N lifted herself of bed, feeling a little wonky on her legs, “Ow, I got you.” Sam rushed to hold her arms while Dean lifted himself to his knees on the bed, to hold her back. “Guys I’m fine, just a little dizzy, you can let go.” She said walking slow to the bathroom.  

“How is she?” Sam asked his brother, “I think she will process it.” Dean said, thinking about his next words wisely. “I don’t want to leave her like this Sam.” - “Ok, what do you suggest?” - “Taking her with us? Or do you want to stay?” Y/N overheard them talking. “I don’t want you guys to stop living your life because of me.”  

“We can’t leave you like this sweetheart.” - “Then I’ll come with you.” - “No, no way!” - “Dean, how much worse can it be?” She was determent. Dean and Sam exchanged a look, making Y/N’s shoulders sink. “That bad huh?” The brothers nodded in sync. “There is so much more than vampires out there.”  

After a few hours of discussing the future the three of them came to a solution. They would stay in town for a few months seeing how things will go, trying to give up hunting. Dean wanted to be with Y/N and Sam felt they at least needed to see if things could lead to a bright future. But one condition Sam had to stay in town, Dean wouldn’t be able to adjust without his brother. Sam himself didn’t mind that.  

-- 

After a few weeks of healing Y/N was physically fully recovered. Dean and Sam moved into her apartment, so they didn’t have to pay for motels anymore. Dean and Y/N shared a bed, while Sam took the spare room.  

One morning Y/N woke up from a bad dream, although the days went by smoothly without too much trauma and memories, the nights were a hell. Every night or early morning she would wake up drenched in sweat, clinging on to Dean’s shirt. This morning wasn’t different from the others.  

Usually she was able to sneak out to take a quick shower before Dean would notice she was gone. But today Dean felt the emptiness next to him.  He woke up immediately feeling worried, but then he heard the sound of the shower. By the time he got outside the bathroom door the water stopped.  

“Y/N? Are you ok?” Even though Y/N and Dean shared a bed together they were still very private when it came to the bathroom, part from that one night. Dean felt she needed time to get used to him being in her personal space, they didn’t even name the kind relationship they had yet. Where they friends, lovers, something you can’t name? 

 “Y/N?” he repeated “Please answer me sweetheart.” She still didn’t answer. Now he was really worried. “Y/N if you don’t answer I will kick this door in!” Silence.  

Dean took a step back and planted his foot against the door, forcing enough power to open the door. 

Y/N jumped up by the sound of the door breaking. Covering her body with her hands. Dean rushed in only to find her almost completely naked part from her panties. “What the fuck Dean!” she yelled. “Why didn’t you answer me?!” He matched her tone “I didn’t hear you!” - “Oh come on Y/N! I called for you three times!”  

“Can you please, I don’t know turn around.” Then the shyness came in, he looked at her realising she wasn’t dressed. “Oh eh, yeah I-I'm sorry.” He turned his back to her so she could grab a bathrobe. “I really didn’t hear you.” she said while wrapping the robe. “I was worried.” he answered secretly peaking at her. “Don’t be.”  

“What were you doing?” - “I was looking at my... scars.” she answered a little ashamed not being able to form a lie. She turned back to the large mirror, “I used to think that my body was mutilated with my stretchmarks but these bitemarks...” She took a deep breath. “How am I ever going to...” She stopped her sentence there. 

Dean walked up behind her, wrapped his arms around her waist, his face next to her looking in the mirror. “You want to know what I see?” - “Please don’t say beauty.” - “That too, but no, I see a survivor. A strong woman.” - “Strong...” she mumbled, “I wake up every morning in fear, I take a shower just to cry without anyone hearing it. Tell me Dean, how is that strong?”  

“You’re dealing with your emotions, that’s good.” He locked eyes with her via the mirror. “Am I? Ok, then why haven’t we talked about us yet?” - “What do you mean?” Dean wasn’t sure what she meant. “What are we?” - “Anything you want us to be Y/N. I told you I want to be with you.” - “No, you said you can’t leave me alone, that sounds like an obligation.”  

Dean tilted his head “What are you saying? I’m giving you time to, I don’t know, deal with your trauma.” Y/N pinched her nose. “What are you saying Y/N?” She could hear the desperation in his voice. “I don’t know what I want. I don’t know if I want something.”  

“Something or someone?” His hold on her loosened “Don’t turn my words against me Dean!” - “Ok, then be honest to me, to yourself... Do you want me?” - “I don’t know.” - “Do you want me to leave?” - “I don’t know.” Dean felt like he just got hit with a brick in his stomach. “What do you mean you don’t know?” He asked but his voice got louder.  “I just... I don’t know Dean!” She almost yelled.  

“I’m scared ok! I’m scared of my nightmares, memories of going outside, I’m scared someone, or something will come for us...” She started to ramble. “Of me?” He asked so quiet he thought she wouldn’t have heard it. “Yes!” Y/N answered before even realising what she had said. She could see Dean’s face change.  

He took a few steps back. “You are scared of me.” - “I don’t know if I'm scared of you or just scared of what you do.” She grabbed Dean’s hand. “Are you scared of Sam?” She shook her head. “I know it’s ridiculous since he has been killing the same monsters and all, but.” - “You didn’t see him killing anything.” he finished her sentence.  

“Is that why you flinch every time I initiate a hug or even touch?” She nodded. “But you hug me, you hold me at night. Christ you’re holding my hand right now.” A tear rolls over Y/N’s cheek. “I can bare it when I take the first move. My mind seems to be at peace with it, while when you touch me without me knowing you are going to, I cramp up.”  

There were so much more questions lingering in the air. So much more that need to be said and asked. But Sam as usual had the best timing ever. “Hey Dean... Bobby called, wow, what happened here?” He looked at the door before looking at Y/N and Dean.  

“Bobby called?" Dean repeated not wanting to answer his question. “Eh yeah, he needs us. He said it’s an emergency, he wouldn’t have called otherwise he said.” Dean turned back to Y/N, “You should go.” Was all she said.  

Dean was packing his bag when Y/N sat next to it on the bed. Dean slowed down for a second and looked at her. He opened his mouth and closed it again only to focus on getting his bag filled. He turned to the drawer she emptied months ago for him. Pulling out some shirts. “Dean?” - “Hm?” - “Saying you should go didn’t mean I want you gone.” - “Oh no sweetheart, this might be good for you. Us." He corrected.  

“It’s just, the way you and Sam talk about Bobby, it seems like he isn’t the kind of guy to call when it isn’t important.” - “You’re right again.” Dean said still not looking at her, trying to sound neutral. Y/N grabbed his arm. “Dean...” His eyes glided from where she was holding him over to her eyes.  

Y/N lifted herself on her toes to very slowly close the space between them. Closing her eyes. Her lips brushed against his, barely touching him. When she opened her eyes, she let out a soft shacky breath. “Be safe ok?”  

That was the first time since the attack they shared a kissed. But to Dean, instead of feeling like a step forward it felt too much like a goodbye kiss. He grabbed his bags and walked to the car, he sees Sam and Y/N hug, her almost squeezing him to dead. “Be careful ok, come back in one piece or I'll come for you Winchester!”  

Dean was never, not once in the time they lived with her jealous of their relationship, he knew she saw Sam as her best friend and vica versa. But her hugging Sam without restraining a shiver made him wish for a split second she saw Sam kill the monster and not him.  

--  

As months gone by Y/N had to learn to be alone again, she had to overcome her fears, go outside, going to the store for groceries. She learned to be confident again. Sam would call once a week, telling her, they were safe, not telling what they were doing. She would ask how Dean was, mostly she would hear him yell that he was fine, sometimes he would come on the phone, not saying much. 

One job turned into another one, and another one, and another...Sam’s weekly calls turned into two weeks, once a month... and him saying Dean is fine, he is sleeping or hunting. It had been a while since she heard from any of the boys. And when she called neither answered their phoned, which part from the rest was usual. 

Y/N figured her words had hurt Dean so much that he didn’t want to come back. But the truth is that he was in hell and that Sam didn’t want to tell Y/N. He forgot to call her because he was trying to find a way of getting him out of there. And unconsciously not wanting to lie to her. 

After 4 months Dean got out of the pit, he had trouble to adjust, so he did the one thing he thought could make him feel a little better. He drove miles and miles, hours on end to stand in front of Y/N apartment. It was late, he rang the doorbell, nervous for her reaction. He knew Sam didn’t said anything to her, and he was glad he didn’t.  

“Hello?” - “Y/N? It’s me.” silence on the other end. “Y/N?” He heard the door unlock he got in, by the time he got up the stairs she already stood in the door, wearing a bathrobe, hair pulled up in a high bun.  “Dean? Oh my god!” She wrapped her arms around him the second she could, hugging him tight, pulling herself close against him, her smell filled Dean's nostrils.  He let out a sigh before he found the strength to lift his arms around her, answering her hug. 

 

"I'm so glad to see you." He heard her saying, sound being muffed against his jacket. "I wasn't sure you wanted to see me." He admitted. "Are you crazy, I was worried sick. Even Sam stopped calling me." After a good minute of hugging they let go, she led him inside. Afraid to let go of his hand until they stood in the kitchen. "You look like you could use a drink."  His lip curled. "I do." - "Bad day?" “More like bad forty years.” She turned to him, looking confused. "Or so it feels like." He added. 

 

She turned back around, he saw how she had to get on her toes to grab the bottle. Seeing how her robe and dress lifted up. barely covering her behind, unable able to grab the bottle. 

Dean got up, his hand moved hers away "I got you." He whispered standing behind her grabbing the bottle for her. She turned to him, her eyes lighted up when he looked at her. "Thanks." 

 

Dean couldn't help but to lay his hand on her lowered back. Noticing how she didn't flinch at his touch anymore. "I'm glad I drove to see you." His voice sounded deeper than usual. 

Y/N felt the air shifting between them. Making her breath out a soft sigh. She handed him his glass, his hand touched hers while he locked eyes, taking a sip. 

Thinking there was no way he could tell her all the things he did in hell. But he was sure to tell her how he feels about her. Or at least trying to. 

 

"Y/N, I..." his words faded, feeling shy and embarrassed walking in her house at this time of the night, wanting to tell her, she was the one he thought about day and night. "It's ok. I know" She said while rubbing her hand over his shoulder. "You don't want to be alone tonight. You need someone to hold you until your sorrow goes away... Am I right?" 

 

Dean felt like he was nailed to the ground, of course she understood him, he nodded slow. "I don't know what happened, you don't need to tell me if you don't want to. Just know I'm here for you." Those words released his body. His hand gripped the back of her head, pulling her in while his lips found their way to hers. 

 

This kiss was different from all the others they had shared before. Y/N quickly felt breathless, she could feel the need Dean had to be close to her, to touch her. His hands moved hungry over her body, his lips glided over her cheek to her neck like a man on a mission. 

 

She felt his hand move under the silk of her nightdress, soft squeezing her flesh. He lifted her up on the counter, moving so he could stand in between her legs, while his hand moved up and down her thighs. Like a man possessed he let go of her, only touching her forehead with his. He kept his eyes closed. "Oh god, this wasn't my intention. This isn't the reason I'm here. I'm so sorry, Y/N." Her hands covered most of his face, holding him up. "Hey look at me." 

 

Their eyes meet again. "I know, but if this is what you need. It's ok. I don't mind." she kissed him, trying to prove to him that he didn't need to defend his actions. "You sure?" - "Yes, Dean, I'm sure. I want you too." she smiled softly. 

He lifted her up, carrying her to the bedroom where, for the first time in a very long time their love for each other finally blossomed into a night of passion. 

 

Even though they spend most of the night making love to each other, Dean felt unable to sleep. Feeling Y/N's body against his did miracles in a way that he hoped it would. He was more at ease, drawing circles on her back, playing with her hair, while he watched her sleeping. Noticing she didn't clench to him anymore, happy she found her inner peace while he was gone. 

By morning he did manage to fall asleep, unfortunately not for long. Her alarm went off, Dean startled awake, seeing Y/N rushing in the bedroom drenched, with nothing but a towel around her. “I’m so, so sorry, I thought I had it turned off this morning. Didn’t mean to wake you.” She said looking apologetic. She took a seat next to him in bed. “I made pancakes.” Her hand moving over his fluffy bed hair before giving a small peck on his lips.  

“That’s great. But I crave for something else.” - “Oh, ok what you do you wan... DEAN!” Dean pulled her over him to the other side, hovering over her, making her yelp his name. “Did last night not satisfy you mister Winchester?” Y/N joked while accepting his lips on her neck. “I think I might have a new addiction.” He mumbled against her skin. Y/N turned Dean back around, her towel loosened clearly to the satisfaction of Dean.  

Her lips closing in on his ear. “I’m afraid this will have to wait, I have to go to work.” She teased and jumped of the bed disappearing in the bathroom again. Letting Dean drop his head against the pillow. “Do you really need to work today?” - “I’m afraid so.” She walked out again, fully dressed, ”You showing up at my doorstep doesn’t make my world stop spinning Dean.” She saw the painful look on his face, realising what she just said might have sounded harsh. 

 “I-I mean, for all I know you’ll be gone by the time I get home.” Dean grabbed her arm and pressed his lips against her wrist. “Not this time, I promise.” She nodded believing him. “I’m home around five. Make yourself at home.”  

Dean did make himself at home, he made himself useful, the moments Y/N had to work he took care of her daily chores, like dishes, dinner, shopping. Living the semi normal life brought him peace in his mind.  

Weeks later.  

Y/N got in her car looking at her phone wanting to text Dean she’ll run a little late, seeing Sam had called her 3 times. Immediately dialling back. “Y/N? Please tell me Dean is with you?” -” Yeah, he is, for like 4 weeks now. Why what’s wrong Sam?” - “I’ve been trying to call him for days. I got worried.” - “He is staying at my place. But he is...” - “Off?” Sam asked. “You could say that.”  

“Y/N... Dean had a” he chose his words wisely, “horrible experience a few months back. I might have pushed him into talking about it, and he ran. Saying he needed time to heal or process I don’t know, but I haven’t heard from him since.” - “Sam, he has nightmares, not regular ones. He is terrified when he wakes up. And he pretends it’s nothing.” She took a deep breath, “I know he won’t talk to me, so please, Sam, what happened to him?” 

“There she is!” Dean yelled from the kitchen. “Made your favourite.” He could see there was something off about Y/N, she looked worried. “Something wrong?” - “Dean, I just heard from Sam.” The tension in the room changed. “Let me guess, he told you.” She nodded. “Great!” He threw the oven mitts in the sink, turning his back to Y/N while looking out the window. 

“The question is, why didn’t you?” She wrapped her arms around him kissing his shoulder. “I didn’t want to concern you.” - “I’m concerned since that night you stood at my door, I see you have not been sleeping well. You know you can thrust me right?” He looked at her over his shoulder. “I know I just, I don’t want to scare you again.” - “Dean, it’s hell we’re talking about. Of course, it’s scares me as much as it scares you. But that is why we need to talk.”  

“What did Sam say exactly?” He looked at his hands. “Well, that you were in the pit for 4 months but that it was different for you, like 40 years, right?” She took a pause. “And that you were forced to... torture souls the last 30 years of it.” She saw his jaw clench. “I didn’t want you to be afraid of me again, of what I do, what I did.” He turned around now, finally looking her in the eye. “I’m not. You did what you had to. I don’t believe that was you, the real you.”  

“Dean, I think you need to go back to bobby’s.” Y/N could see the shock in his eyes. “I think you need to keep hunting, I don’t believe being here, playing houseman is the right way to cope with all this. Not for you, maybe for now but long term, you need your brother.” He shook his head “I said I wouldn’t leave you again.” - “You won’t, I’m coming with you.” He shook his head again. “No argument Winchester. We’re leaving tomorrow.”  

Dean and Y/N arrived at Bobby’s place. Sam and Bobby heard the sound of the impala and came outside to greet them. “Sammy!” Y/N jumped out of the car to give him a big hug. “God I missed you big fella.” She laughed. “Missed you too, This is Bobby, Bobby meet Y/N.” They shook hands, “Heard a lot about you kid.” - “Likewise.”  

Both turned to face Sam and Dean, the brother hugged by the car. “Is he going to be ok?” Y/N asked the old man. “He needs time, loads of it, but he has you.” - “Us” she corrected him. He gave her his approval smile, he clearly liked her already. “Thanks for bringing him home.”  

As months went by, Y/N stopped renting her apartment, dropped her job and helped Bobby, making her some sort of an assistant whenever he wasn’t able to pick up the phone or multiple hunters needed intel, she would help him, learning about monsters and hunting. Dean wouldn’t want her to go on hunts, but Bobby taught her all about the research and handling the ‘FBI’ scams.  

And although the grumpy man was keen on his privacy, Y/N felt like a daughter he never had. Secretly liked that she was living with him, not being alone all the time anymore and thanks to her the boys would drop by more often, not just when they need him.  

--- 

Crush Part 3 out now

#fanfic #fluff #smut #spn #supernatural #dean winchester #sam and dean #sam winchester #dean #winchester bros #sammy #jensen ackles #jared padalecki #spnedit #spnfandom #spn fanart #female reader #x reader #y/n #x y/n #dean x reader #dean x y/n

[iamjustaholeforyousir]

While He's Touching Your Skin

part 7 of Look What We Became

summary: a harlot has been found! liars are punished, and love is in the air

warning: angst, kissing, cheating, alcohol, smut (like a bit).

word count: 4,003

minors DNI

part1 part2 part3 part4 part5 part6 part7 part8 part9

You both met again during breakfast, everybody had a smile on their faces, “good morning dear, did you two sleep well?” asked Queen Anne, she had an implying tone, and her smile was more of a smirk.

“Yes of course we did, it's the most comfortable bed i have ever slept in.” you say, not understanding what she was saying, harry on the other hand knew exactly what his mother was implying. “Mother please.” everyone looked at harry, “whatever do you mean son?” 

“You know what i mean, i will not talk about this with you or father.”

“Would you rather talk to Gemma?” 

“NO! Mother please stop, I don't want to think about this in the morning.” he says, closing his eyes in playful frustration.

The queen sighs and says “anyway, i wanted to say that tonight we will be hosting a dinner!” 

You look up from your food with a worried look on your face “tonight?” How were you supposed to put together a whole dinner in one day!?? 

“Yes dear, tonight! In celebration of the king’s birthday!” She looks at her husband, who gives her a shy smile. 

You were in love with their relationship, it was nothing like your parents, it was filled with love and respect for one another. They were always a team.  

“But his birthday is not till next week” said harry, confused 

“Excuse my extreme rudeness, but how am i to prepare for dinner in a day?” you ask, feeling horrible for letting them down

“Princess! Whoever said that you have to prepare for this?” the queen said, and you looked at her puzzled “the preparations have been done, only the decorations are left and will be done by the servants. You don't have to do anything child, just stop by my chambers in the afternoon, I would like to give you something.” she smiled at you.

You didn't know what to expect, you look at Harry who tries his best not to look back. Maybe you admitting the fact that you like him was not the best idea you have had. You excuse yourself from the table, you have lost your appetite. Going to your shared chamber, you saw her, sitting on your bed. 

She gave you a sharp look, and you gave her a smile, the best one you could possibly give to the woman your husband was in love with. 

“He told me what you said to him.” she said, and you just stood there not knowing what to do in this situation. “You can love him all you want, but he will always love me. Remember this, the next time you think about them, he never wanted to get married to you, in fact he thinks of you as a burden, he thinks of you as the most hideous princess ever!” she says, with malice 

“And has he expressed all of this to you?” you ask calmly, not believing what she was saying.

“Yes.” she says with a neutral expression.

“I would like it if you left the chamber.” you say, not wanting to look at her

“This was my chamber before you snatched it from me you harlot-”

“Well now it is mine. And when I tell you to leave I expect you to listen to me. And I needn't remind you of the consequences of not obeying the orders given to you.” you say, this was the strongest you had felt in a long time. And there was something about her that you absolutely hated, and it was not the fact that Harry loved her, it was the way she was. You had no intention to show Deborah your vulnerability, and you wanted her to leave. 

With a scowl on her face, she got up and left. You close the door behind her. You were convinced that god hated you, for he constantly played such horrible games with you. First he gave you a father like the one you had, then he gave you a husband, who did not love you, who thought of you as hideous, who knows what else he might have said to who knows who else, and now you had to deal with a chambermaid like this. 

Your will to live was deteriorating second by second. Yesterday had been a complete disaster, your wedding had been a complete disaster and you were to remember it for the rest of your life.  You were done being scared, you were just furious now, how dare she come to your chamber and say such things to you when you have been nothing but understanding of her relationship with your husband! And Harry had no reason to tell her what you had said, and it wasn't like you had something so incomprehensible, all you had requested of him was for her to not be your first women of the bedchamber! Your thoughts were interrupted by the doors of your room flying open and you see prince harry looking absolutely irate. 

“How dare you speak to her like that!”

“How dare i!? How dare she! I was nothing but kind to her!”

“You told her she is nothing but a servant!”

“I never said that-”

“She was crying! How could you do something like that!? I thought you’d be more kind!”

“Oh please! She is not a saint prince harry, if anything i should be the one crying a river! The things she said to me, if they were heard by anyone else, she wouldn't be in this castle for even a second more!” 

You both had moved a lot closer to each other by now.

“You will apologize to her!” he said pointing towards the door.

“I have nothing to apologize for! I will not do it! All I ever said to her was to leave me alone!” your voice was getting louder

“You made her cry!”

“Its is not my fault she can't handle simple instructions!”

“HOW DARE YOU SAY THAT!” he screamed, as his arms moved in exaggeration, but to you it looked all too familiar, and you took a step back, closing your eyes, and putting your own hands up in defense. 

There was a heavy silence in the room, you opened your eyes to see Harry with a surprised expression on his face, he had also seemed to take a few steps back. 

“I..you thought… you thought i was going to strike you?” he asked, much calmer yet shocked, You don't say anything,  taking in your surroundings, your chest is heaving and your heart is beating fast. You then looked up at him, you were at a loss of words. Tears were forming in your eyes. You hated being like this, whenever you got upset, you would start crying, you hated it. You take in a deep breath, and wipe the tears off your face, “I will not apologize to her, the sickly things that she said to me, she is lucky I have not said anything. You want to love her prince harry, go ahead, love her, you want to touch her? Touch her, do whatever you want with her, but don't you ever give me such dogshit about respecting our marriage, when you can't trust me when I say something. And don't expect me to love her just because you do. I have been understanding of your love for someone else since the day you came and told me, that too rudely, but I expect you and her to also be understanding of the fact that we are married, whether none of us like it or not.” you say, not looking at him at all “she must also understand that i am a princess, and there are certain things she cannot say to, certain things she cannot do. Judging my character is one of them. And for the sake of your own relationship with her, you must tell her that whatever you tell her in confinement, she better keep it between the two of you.” 

Harry did not know what to say as he watched you leave the room. Not even a day had gone by and he was back at your throat, but he just couldn't help himself when he saw her leave his room with tears flowing down her face. And when she told him the horrible things you had told her, that wasn't even true! He never called her hideous, he never called her a harlot, he never called her a burden, and he never told anything to you, then why would you say such a thing? He got furious at the thought of you saying that. He didn't understand why you had to lie. 

You found yourself in the library, walking around and looking for something to get your mind off of what just happened. Yes you got scared when he raised his hand, and you hated the fact that you did. It reminded you of everything your father had done to you, and you just wanted to forget it. 

The library was huge and you were sure you had gotten lost, when you saw an older lady trying to climb up the ladder to organize some books.

You rushed towards her, “what do you think you are doing?” you ask, which seems to frighten the lady, she turned around and you saw that it was Abigail, 

“Was just putting some books your highness, is all.” she said, looking scared.

“You were putting in books? Don't they have someone else to do that? You could fall down.” you ask, looking around for someone else

“They say that they don't want to do this, they find it boring.” she replies

“I will help you then, I will climb up and you just give me books, it's not your age to be doing such tasks.” you say, as you climb up. Abigail just gave you a smile and started handing out books. 

You both started working in sync and this helped you get your mind off of harry. 

You both were done in no time, as you started climbing down, you say “next time they pass this work on you, come find me, you could have fallen down, could have broken something, don't let the young bully you.” 

“They are just children, why must I punish them.”

“This is not punishing Abigail, they should be more willing to do tasks like this, and moreover they should know better than to pass it on to the old.” 

She smiled at you once more, “god bless prince harry, he got a wife like you. And god bless you child, you are so kind. I pray only good things come your way.” she says, as she bows and leaves.

You stand there, speechless at the irony, just now your husband told you how insolent you were, and now this woman had blessed you for being kind. 

Today was a strange day. 

You remembered then that you had to go meet the queen, so hurry and try to find her chambers.

You were assisted by the guards on the way. You knock on the door and wait for a response. 

The queen opened the door and smiled at you, “come in dear, i really hope you like this.” you walk in and see the most beautiful dress hanging on the mannequin. The corset was black with a gold pattern, the sleeves were a shiney mustard and so was the skirt. 

The sleeves were puffed and had two layers of frill, the neck of the dress was deep, if it were a few more inches deeper, the dress would be deemed unsophisticated. You looked at the dress in complete awe.

“I would like for you to wear this tonight.” said the queen, “my mother in law had given this dress to me, when i had gotten married to the king, and now i want to pass it onto you.” 

“Queen anne i couldn't possibly-”

“Dear, call me mother. And yes you can, it would look beautiful on you, I insist.” she says, with a kind smile. 

Then you did something that both of you didnt expect, you hugged the queen.

And after a few seconds she hugged you back.

“Thank you so much, I will take great care of this heirloom.”

The queen laughs a bit and says “I trust you will.” 

She calls in someone to tell them to take the dress into your chambers. You were really happy, this one thing had made your day a thousand times better. 

You decided to have a bath again, just rinse off the incident of the morning. You were taking a long bath, the water was warm on your skin, your hair was up in a bun, and muscles relaxed in the warmth of the water. 

You closed your eyes, it was just for a moment, when a loud boom was heard, and your eyes shot open. You see prince harry walking in with intent. Trying to cover yourself with foam, you ask “what are you-” but you are cut off by his lips on yours, you were worried that his suit was getting wet, but he didn't seem to care, removing his vest, and opening the buttons of his dress shirt, he came inside the tub, not breaking the kiss,your eyes were closed as you kissed him back, you could hear water splashing at the intensity of his jump, he lifted your bear legs up so you were straddling him. He pulled away a bit only to lick your lips, as if requesting you to give him way, you oblige, happily.  Your skin was getting hotter, as his hands roamed your back. He pulled you closer and your hands found his hair, tangling your finger into them and massaging his scalp, gently, your chest was squished against his, you could feel his leg between yours, and you subtle start moving, it felt right ot you, to move, and give you a feeling of burning that soon turned to one of pleasure.

The kiss never broke, you were surprised, since you could hold it at the altar. 

“Your highness,” you heard a voice, “it's almost time for the dinner.”

Your eyes snap open as you take in your surroundings. You, in the tub, alone, no sign of harry.

Had you imagined it?

You felt like crying, you were frustrated and you didn't even know why! 

But you don't let it show, you nod your head at the girl and she exits hurriedly. You get up and wipe

your body. 

You walk into your room and see the gorgeous dress hanging on your mannequin. Slowly walking towards it, you touch the material with your hand, the material is soft against your touch, like silk. 

You put the dress on, adoring yourself in the mirror, there were only a few times that you had looked good, reaching behind your back, you try to pull the zipper up, but were failing horribly. 

Too focused on the task you didn't realize that someone had entered the room, the first time you acknowledge the presence in the room was when soft knuckles touched the skin of your back, you pause your action and look up to see prince harry, standing behind you, aiding you with your impossible work.

Your husband was not looking at you, rather was focusing on your back, as he untangled a thread stopping the zipper to go up. You pinch yourself, just to see if you were dreaming again or not. 

You most certainly were not.

Harry finally looked at you thought the mirror, “princess-”

“The queen has requested both of your presence in the ballroom, she says guests will be arriving soon.” 

Harry completely ignores the maid, not moving his eyes off of your face, while you not curtly, and go out of the room.

The party was lively, as you observe people enjoying themselves. You had a smile on your face, though it was far from genuine, all you could think about was your dream. You were interrupted by a very handsome gentleman “hello, i believe we have not met, prince william.” he says, bowing down while asking for your hand. You smile again, and gently give him your gloved hand, as he places a soft kiss on it.

“Princess Y/n.”

“So you are Prince Harry's bride?” he asked, amused. 

“Yes. Yes I am.” 

“Well it is certainly a pleasure to meet you, though i wish i had met you sooner, then i could have had such a pretty lady all to myself.” he says, giving you a boyish smirk. 

You laugh at his awfully unfunny comment. 

“I am completely content with how we met Prince william.” you say, politely, this seemed to make that smirk drop off his face, 

“Well after what i tell you, you will most certainly wish you met me before princess.” 

You look up at him curious. He moves closer to you, and whispers in your ear “I believe prince Harry is swiping the floor with a certain girl named debbie.”

Your ears perked up at this. You look at this man, in disbelief, but he only nods. 

“Would you like to know where, princess?” he asks, as if talking to a child, you take a sharp intake of breath, not wanting to show signs of knowing anything about your husband's affair. 

“I will do you a favor, and let you know.” and then he leans in more and whispers something in your ear.

You had absolutely no intention of following this information, but for maintaining your innocence, you went anyway. “Excuse me for a moment.” you say and walk away. 

This whole encounter seemed to have an audience sitting far away, prince william only winking, and following you outside. 

You walk out to get some air, this frustration you were feeling was not helped by whatever prince willulu said, walking up to the balcony, you let the cold breeze hit your face, you would love to be here all the time, it was so peaceful and calm, not like the dinner being hosted down stairs. 

The peace was destroyed soon by angry footsteps nearing you. 

“Where is he?” you hear a very angry harry speak, you turn around calmly, “whoever are you talking about?”

“Oh you know who i am talking about!”

“I genuinely have no idea.” you say, turning your back on him.

“You came up to meet him! I know, he told you to meet here, so you both can do whatever it that we were planning on doing! I know it!” 

You had absolutely no idea what your husband was talking about. Due to your lack of response, Harry held onto your elbow, gently not to hurt you, and turned you around to face him. You could smell the wine on his breath as he looked into your eyes pleading you to tell him the truth. 

His face makes your heart melt. You take his face in your hand, and he seems to melt into your touch. “I dont know what you are talking about my lor..hmm…. prince harry.” you say, calmly

“You were talking to him just now, he whispered something into your ear.” he says and you lull him a bit, that is when the realization hits you

“Prince willulu?” you ask, “Prince willullu?” Harry askes, looking puzzled, “Prince william?” he looks at you with a questioning look.

“Oh yes, Prince william! Why would I come up to meet him?” you ask

“Because h e told you to?” harry asks

“No he didn't, he told me you were with deborah.” At that moment, reality had seeped in, you looked down from his face, and slowly started slipping your hand away from his face.

And at that moment, Harry seemed to realize something. “Deborah.” he says, he looks back at you, gives your lips a quick peck, before running down the stairs, leaving you there, you touch your lips, as the feeling of him never left your body.

Harry rushed down “debbie!? Debbie!?” he screamed, running around the halls, Harry was scared. He knew that prince william had done horrible, unthinkable things to women before, and his hate for harry, only made him more worried about deborah.

When Harry reached the end of the servant quarters, he could hear voices coming from inside, he could hear Deborah's pleasurable moans, the slapping of skin. Harry stopped altogether.

“Tell me you wrench, woh gives it to you better? Your pathetic prince, or me? Hm?” that was definitely william’s voice

“You god only you!” 

At that Harry kicks open the door, to see the woman he so dearly loved, bent over in front of the blonde man, as he thrusted into her. 

“Debbie?” Harry whispers, but they don't stop.

“Hello Harry, come here to enjoy the show?” says william. 

Ignoring William, Harry looks at her, “Why debbie?” he says, tears forming in his eyes “i loved you Debbie, with all my heart, i didn't touch my own wife! How could you do this to me!?”

Deborah only moans louder

“You didn't touch me either. God yes, right there!” Harry saw in pure horror, as the lewd scene in front him progressed “thought if you fall in love with, i will be queen, but Ah! No! That didn't happen, you got another bride all together, then i thought you could- god yes! Yes!yes! Ah! i thought you would at least touch me but Ahhh! But no, what was a girl to do?” 

Harry couldn't believe his eyes, and moreover couldn't believe his ears. All the times she has said that she will love him forever were all lies? The feeling of being betrayed mixed with the alcohol in his system made a concoction of anger in his body.

“You are nothing but a whore! I see through you now, you wrench!” he says as he slams the door shut, wiping his tears with his sleeves, he runs back to the ballroom, where he sees you. Kind, beautiful you, oh how wished he had seen this before, how he wished he had met you before, how he wished had fallen for you instead. He stared at you, as you talked to some random princess, pretending to be engaged in the conversation. 

He kept on observing you throughout the night, how you interacted with strangers, and how you interacted with known people, it was quite the same actually, until he saw his sister next to you, how face seemed to give the brightest smile of the evening as you approached gemma, you hugged her dearly, and started laughing at something she had said. 

God your laugh was so pretty. 

“I think I taught you very clearly, staring is bad manners.” he heard his mother’s voice, “and father always said ‘unless it's your own wife’.” hw turns around to face his mother. 

“What happened child?” she asked, sweetly, but Harry only shook his head, and that was enough for queen anne to understand, she pulled her boy in for a hug, as she looked at you too, talking to her daughter. To her you were the only person that could make her children happy, even if they didnt know it.

“Staring is bad manners, mother.” harry mumbles against her chest“Oh shush you.” she says, playfully patting his head. 

Harry had turned his head to the side, to look at you as well, what a fool he was to not show you the love you deserved, what an actual knob.he thought to himself, he would show you, exactly what you deserved, exactly what you want, he would give you the world,just like he had planned to give her. 

But only this time he would make it better, only for you. In fact, he will show you tonight, he will give you everything and anything you ask of him, and he will do better than any other man. 

A/N: Oof!! finally, some action in the love story!! i also i got sick yesterday, and my math test did not go well, and i didnt even get to do my spanish test. ugh life is sucking at the moment.

but back to the story, god i hate "debbie" so fucking much, even though i made her aaahahahahahha AHAAAHAHAHHAHAHAHAH

stay safe❤️❤️

@strwbrrydaydreams @remuslupinwifee @inlikea-coolway @mypolicemanharryyy @sunshinemoonsposts @stilesissaved @novalunosising @sleutherclaw @dear-mylove @kiy0hime @rafaaoli @st-ev-ie @urmomsksjdjdjsj

#arranged marriage #enemies to lovers #forced marriage #grumpy x sunshine #harry styles #harry x y/n #harry styles x you #harry styles x y/n #harry styles smut #harry styles x reader #smut #smut fanfiction #angst #light angst #harry styles angst #royal au #prince harry #perioddramacentral #fem reader #female reader #harry styles fluff #slow burn #hazza

[goomens]

I've had an idea but I won't get around to writing it think.. I imagine Crowley being drunk on wine, taking to Nina after *the event* and just word vomiting, telling her everything about who he is. And then Nina ist like "so when you said 'angel' you actually meant..." maybe you can do something with that? 😂

such a cute idea!!! fic under the cut <3

It’s nine in the morning and Nina is jolted from her sleepy reverie by the violent tinkle of the front door bell; a figure in black slithering into a nearby seat and thunking his head down onto the table. Crowley, she thinks, watching him carefully from behind the counter. Without Mr. Fell in tow, tense around the shoulders, and creating quite a sad display, she feels a pang of something like pity inside her chest.

“Gretel,” Nina calls quietly to one of her newer baristas after a moment of consideration, “Take over for a bit, please?” And she makes her way over to Crowley, not bothering to say hello as she pulls out the other chair and sits down in it. He doesn’t lift his head. By all means, he seems lifeless. Completely still. Eerie, like he isn’t breathing. Her heart stutters in fear for a second, thinking he’s just up and died in her coffee shop, but—

“Oh, calm down.” Crowley retracts his forehead from the cold plastic table with a grunt and glares at Nina—she thinks, at least—through the impenetrable black lenses of his sunglasses. “I would like a mug of coffee with four measures of vodka, please and thank you.”

“It’s not even half nine yet, you know,” She scolds him, not really meaning it, but not willing to serve him alcohol so early either. He’s a bit of an odd fella (or, whatever) but Nina draws the line at serving a customer four units before noon. “No boozy breakfasts here. You’ll have to wait ‘til later—on Saturdays we have a boozy brunch. There’ll be cocktails.”

Crowley doesn’t speak for a moment. Then, “Pity.” He sighs. Snaps his fingers for some reason. He reaches into his blazer, pulling out an entire litre bottle of ABSOLUT and uncapping it. Nina opens her mouth, ready to tell him off, but he holds a finger up and guzzles down half of it before she can get the words out. When he sets the bottle down, she raises a questioning eyebrow.

“Thirsty?”

He ignores her, choosing to scowl instead, and looks off out the window of the shop looking a bit lost. “Your advice was shit. You and that—that vinyl seller. Thought you should know. Don’t go trying to influence anyone else’s ‘love’ lives, eh?” His words are full of forced humour, but his voice shatters a bit at the end, and suddenly Nina feels like some kind of villain. She looks at Crowley and sees someone in mourning. He’s grieving. He’s heartbroken.

“Fuck,” She says with feeling, and motions for Gretel to bring over two mugs.

Hours later—in the midst of Give Me Coffee or Give Me Death’s boozy brunch—Crowley is drunkenly taking Nina step-by-step through his and Aziraphale’s extremely long history. They go back much, much further than she ever thought. Than she ever thought possible, actually. It’s all quite strange. And sweet, and sad, the way he talks about Aziraphale. “He’s so smart,” He says. “He’s good. He’s lovely. He’s the one I love. He’s only gone and returned to Heaven and left me on my own.” He also says, “I’m a Demon, I know I don’t deserve him,” and “He’s an Angel, he doesn’t want me. He could never want me.” And Nina is suddenly putting the pieces together, making sense of it all, her stomach—full of the buttered bagel she’d had for breakfast, half a bottle of vodka, and not much else—turns and swoops, threatening to expel its contents.

Crowley watches her then bursts into a startling laugh. It’s low and surprised. “There’s no way—no way—you’re just now realising what I am. What he is.” She just blinks and stares, and his laugh dies down but the lines of amusement remain etched on his face. “Oh, brilliant. You humans are brilliant. So bloody obtuse.”

“Oi!” She protests, reaching out to push at his shoulder. But she misses on account of being a bit more tipsy than she thought, and he laughs at her again. “I am not obtuse! ‘M quite clever, actually.”

There’s a smile on his—the Demon’s—face now, which is nice, much better than the frown he sported earlier, but when he gestures to his face and grins fiendeshly, she only stares confused for a second before realising that, ah, maybe she is a bit obtuse. His eyes are bright and a little bit playful, without the sunglasses. Big and yellow and snake-like, and oh, that’s what the Eden story had been about. It hadn’t been a metaphor or a weird figure of speech, but the truth. She’d been so busy listening to him she hadn’t noticed the moment he’d pocketed his sunglasses.

Instead of crippling fear or mortal terror, Nina just laughs and laughs. She orders them both a creamy coffee and some malt biscuits, even at his weak protests, and she lets him tell her all about the planets and the stars, Mesopotamia, the crucifixion, the Seven hills of ancient Rome, the burning of witches in the fifteenth century, the Armageddon-That-Wasn’t…

#hope this is cool i just typed it out in my notes app #thanks for the prompt cause like. i needed it lol #no inspiration to be FOUND #asks #good omens #go2 spoilers #crowley #aziraphale #goodomens #nina #aziraphale x crowley #crowley x aziraphale #ineffable husbands #fic #fanfic #good omens fanfiction #good omens fic #ficlet #short

[despicablebisexual]

Out of Touch by Hall & Oates

part 1, part 2, part 3

Jotaro Kujo x Ex-wife!Reader

You and Jotaro meet for the first time in six years. When you try to dodge the encounter, he convinces you to sit and drink, and have a nice talk.

warnings: alcoholic consumption

Spring of 2003, Tampa, Florida

“Mom~”

You turned on your side, hoping for another five minutes of sleep.

“Mom~”

You ignored Jolyne for another second or two. The girl quieted down for a second and you thought your prayers had been answered and she had retreated from your room. Just as you approached the edge of unconsciousness, a heavy form jumped onto your stomach and woke you.

“There you are mom!” Jolyne, your strong willed eleven-year-old said.

“Hi, Jojo,” you smiled weakly, a bit winded from her jumping on top of you.

“I’m hungry,” she declared. 

You looked over at your bedside table where the clock laid. 7:14 am. So much for sleeping in on a Sunday. 

“Okay,” you took a second to rub the sleep out of your eyes. “I’m up, I’m up.”

You shooed her off you so you could climb out of bed and make your way to the kitchen, her quickly running past you.

“Can we have pancakes? Ooo what about waffles though! Can we have both?!”

You laughed at her indecisiveness. “How about something a little healthier?”

“But mom,” she groaned.

“Hey! We gotta keep those muscles strong! You can’t do your best if you don’t eat well,” you reminded her.

When she was eight, Jolyne had come home from elementary school whining about how all the other girls in her class played softball and she wanted to too. You were hesitant at first, telling her that just because everyone else is doing something, doesn’t mean she has to do it. After a few weeks insisting she should be allowed to play, you finally agreed. Jolyne had always been a rambunctious and active kid, so you reasoned that sports would be a good outlet for her to let out that energy. After she had a few recurring disciplinary incidents, softball was sounding even better. 

To your satisfaction though, after most of the girls quit, Jolyne kept going. After one season, you became a full fledged softball mom, wanting to constantly show up to support Jolyne. She was currently in her third season on her travel team.

The only gripe you had about softball was that it never dwindled her energy, in fact, she seemed more lively. Considering she was up this early the day after she had an all day tournament, you could only sigh. At least she wasn’t getting into as much trouble.

A knock pulled you from your thoughts. “Jojo, can you go get the door?”

“On it mom!” she yelled over her shoulder. A few seconds later and you heard the familiar squeal Jolyne let out whenever your current boyfriend, Anthony, arrived. He liked to stop by in the mornings often.

“Oh shit,” you muttered, hurrying to grab the leftover wine bottle and glass you left out from last night. You did a quick breath test and attempted to fix your flyaways as Anthony came into the kitchen.

“Hey pretty lady,” he said, swooping in to steal a kiss.

“Gross!”

You laughed at Jolyne’s antics. “I was just getting ready to start breakfast, you hungry?”

“I would love to but I’ve got to get to the firehouse, lots of paperwork to do. I just wanted to stop by and say hi.”

You hummed as Anthony turned around to start play fighting with Jolyne. You turned back to contemplate what to cook. The longer you looked at the contents of the fridge and pantry, the better pancakes sounded. Looking over at Jolyne’s bright smile, you gave in and reached for the pancake mix. While you prepared the batter, you sent Jolyne and Anthony to run outside and retrieve yesterday’s mail. Anthony carried her outside on his back.

Alone, your thoughts wandered over your two year relationship. Anthony was a very attractive man: tall, dark, and extremely handsome. He worked as a fireman, which matched his heart of gold he seemed to have. You two had met when you and Jolyne moved from northern Florida to Tampa, him introducing himself at the bar your new neighbors had offered to take you to. After just sitting around and getting to know the local gossip, you had gotten up to order a drink from the bar. When some asshole bumped into you and spilled your drink all over the counter, Anthony, who had been friends with the culprit, offered to buy you a new one. 

Although back then it had been four years since you and Jolyne’s father, Jotaro, divorced, you were hesitant to accept Anthony’s invite to go out for coffee. After your close neighbor had incessantly annoyed you about it, she eventually convinced you to go out with him and the rest was history. Completely ignorant to the world of stands and evil, he was a nice place to take sanctuary in.

“Mom! You got an important letter from your job!”

“Hm?”

You turned back from pouring the batter into the pan to see Jolyne handing you a letter while still hanging from Anthony’s back. The letter was addressed to Y/n L/n from the Speedwagon Foundation. Worried about the contents, you tore it open and began reading.

“Well, what does it say?” Anthony asked.

You sighed a breath of relief. “They’re giving me an award for my recent research publication.”

“Woah, no way! Congrats babe!”

Anthony kissed your temple while you let the growing anxiety fade away. You honestly had been expecting it to be a letter detailing a new stand user issue. While you did work in the Speedwagon Foundation’s research sector, they also had you hunt down concerning stand users. Having been doing so since you were seventeen and went on the 50 day journey to Egypt.

“When are they giving it to you?”

“This Saturday, 7pm.”

“It’s a date then!”

**********

“Thank you so much for watching her. It’s not often I get invited to 21+ venues.”

“It’s no problem, y/n, really! We love Jolyne like one of our own.”

Your neighbors, the Williams’, bless their hearts, were about the only family that you had ever trusted to watch Jolyne. Being a stand user as well as working in a dangerous research field, you had a penchant for attracting all sorts of evil. When you gave birth to Jolyne, there had been complications with the delivery and you ended up having to be rushed to a nearby emergency room instead of going to the Speedwagon Foundation like you planned. Everything was going well until Jotaro ended up facing off with a stand user impersonating a night shift nurse. He ended up nearly beating the woman to death, and ever since that day, you had been living life constantly looking over your shoulder for Jolyne’s sake.

After divorcing and moving to a new area, you were hesitant to let then five year old Jolyne play with other children or go to their houses. After thoroughly observing and testing your neighbors by running background checks and consistently bringing out your stand at random intervals to see who would look, you concluded that the Williams’ were not stand users and that their daughter did just want to be friends with Jolyne. It worked out in your case because you soon had friends to rely on, and could find a babysitter with ease.

Now getting ready for the banquet tonight, you stood in front of the mirror doing your makeup just how you liked it. While adding finishing touches, your cell started ringing and Anthony’s contact ID popped up.

“Hey babe.”

“Hey, y/n! How are you beautiful?”

“I’m good, just getting ready for the ceremony.”

“That’s great… Hey listen babe, I don’t have much time to talk but I can’t come tonight. I’m sorry for the late notice but one of the guys’ wife is having their kid and he needed someone to take his shift. It’s gonna be overnight so I won’t get off until about 8am.”

You frowned as you looked down at your nails. You already didn’t want to be heading out anyway for a silly award, but now that Anthony wasn’t coming, the desire to stay home was sounding really appealing.

“Y/n?”

“Hey sorry, spaced out.”

“Are you mad?”

“No, no. Don’t even worry about it. I’m just gonna go, get the award, and come home. I’m not feeling staying out tonight.”

“Alright, well stay safe. Have fun and call a cab if you drink anything.”

“Okay, dad,” you teased him.

He laughed. “I love you.”

“Love you too.” 

The phone beeped when you hung up.

**********

“Right here is fine, thank you.”

You handed the cab driver some money before shouldering your purse. The foundation had rented a banquet hall for the ceremony. Along with you and your research team, a few other people were also receiving awards tonight. Consequently, the crowd was extremely large as people from all over the company (lots non-affiliated with the stand research division) were gathered for the big event. Dinner would be served at commencement, then some words from the current CEO, awards next, and finally happy hour. You planned to slink away immediately after you got your award.

“Y/n!”

You turned to look for the source of the voice and found a few of your colleagues from your research team standing around a table right up front and center waving at you. It seems like you all were the big honorees of the evening. 

“Hello, congratulations everyone.”

Lucas, a fellow from the team, came up with a waiter following him with a tray of champagne flutes. The drinks were quickly dished out. 

“Congratulations to you, our fearless leader, who without you, we would have never got the funding.”

You snorted. “Well it’s easy to bust balls when I know all the higher ups. That’s one thanks I can give to my ex-husband.”

A few chuckles could be heard before the emcee asked people to take their seats. You turned around to quickly down the champagne before sending a silent plea to the waiter for another. The drinks could at least help with your nervousness. 

**********

“Wow, no one told me I’d have to speak!” you nervously chuckled.

“Um, I’d like to thank my team. Everyone here did so much investigation, tests, wrote up reports. They seriously put in the overtime.”

Your eyes scanned over the large crowd watching you. Your team was the last to be awarded, so everyone was patiently waiting for you to wrap up so cocktail hour could start.

“I’d also like to thank my daughter, Jolyne. I can’t tell you how many times she made me coffee in the dead of night while I stayed up working.” That remark earned you a chuckle from the audience. You felt a little looser knowing you made them laugh. As you looked around, your eyes landed on a familiar pair of blue ones way in the back of the hall leaned against the wall, staring you down intently. You swallowed thickly, not believing it to be the last person you’d ever see here.

“Uh, thank you for the award.”

You briskly walked off stage and back to your table, already grabbing your purse and other belongings. The emcee got back up to announce the bar was once again open, and cocktail hour had begun.

“Y/n, wait!”

Lucas reached out a hand to stop you from rushing off. With a small amount of shame, you turned back to see your team staring at you rather quizzically. 

“Why don’t you enjoy a couple drinks with us?”

You silently prayed for whatever entity resides above to strike you down right there. While you really wanted a drink right now, you’d rather do it alone in your house where you could wallow in the silence between sips.

“I really need to-”

“Come on, one won’t hurt!”

Lucas and the rest of the team flagged down the waiter for a round of a stronger drink this time. By some sick and twisted fate, your evening was just beginning.

**********

“You’ve got to be kidding me! You’re not even drunk yet?”

You smiled at Melina, another girl from the team, as you nursed your beer. A few rounds of shots had been dealt and the rest of the team was pretty drunk. You on the other hand, better at pacing yourself than them, were just beginning to feel the buzz. The alcohol had done well to soothe your anxiety, but the nagging feeling of being watched remained.

“I’m going to grab another drink,” you announced.

Making your way through the throngs of people, you arrived at the bar and flagged the bartender down.

“I’ll take a shot of tequila, thanks.”

“Wanna start a tab?”

“I’m paying for her,” a booming voice said as a debit card was slapped down.

The bartender quickly disappeared to run the card, and you contemplated running when you realized who was standing beside you. 

Swallowing your anxiety, you refused to make eye contact with him. “You didn’t need to do that.”

“Call it a gift for your award.”

“The only gift I want from you is to leave me alone.”

Jotaro sighed next to you, leaning on the bar so he could stare down at you. You still refused to look at him.

“Don’t make this difficult, y/n.”

You snorted. “Where have I heard that line before?”

Distantly, you recalled the night he placed the divorce papers on the table and announced he would be staying at a hotel while things finalized. He had told you the exact same phrase while you ugly cried and interrogated him. The whole night was underscored by Jolyne sobbing away in her room.

The bartender arrived with the shot and set it down. You quickly picked it up and slammed it, setting the glass back down.

“Thanks. See you around.”

You set off to leave, but a strong arm pulled you back. 

“Jotaro,” you warned.

Jotaro dropped your arm before sighing. He took off his signature hat to run his hand through his hair. “Can we just talk?”

You stared at him in surprise. On the outside, he looked like the exact same Jotaro you once knew. Donned in his signature flashy style with a face that could kill. But his eyes held an emotion that wasn’t the normal fire in his soul. For a second, when he asked you to talk, he almost looked mournful, like he was trying to save something. In all the years you had known Jotaro, he was never once concerned with matters of the heart. If anything, he would rather get pummeled over and over again than admit he had feelings. You glared at him before sitting down on the barstool. 

“One drink. You have the time it takes me to drink one drink.”

**********

“What’s that supposed to be?”

“Tch. Don’t play dumb y/n.”

You looked down at the small black box Jotaro had placed in your hands. Never one for lots of words, Jotaro had just explained he had a gift for you before putting the case in your hands, a small engagement ring looking back at you.

“I’m asking you to marry me?” he said, his hands shoved in his pockets and eyes casted to the side.

“Why?” you blurted out.

Jotaro sighed and took his hat off. In a rare moment of vulnerability, he kneeled down in front of you while you sat on the bench in the park you two were at.

“Because you’re the only person in this fucked up world I could ever love; I could ever trust. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

“Jojo…” you started as you teared up.

He caught you as you practically fell into his arms while repeating yes. 

**********

What was supposed to be one drink, quickly turned into one drink and a shot. Then Jotaro ordered another shot for the two of you, then one more for good measure. You weren’t stupid, it was easy to tell when someone was building up liquid courage.

The conversation first began with him asking how you and Jolyne had been. You rolled your eyes and told him ‘fine,’ stating that she was making friends and a star on her softball team. Jotaro remained amicable in spite of your passive-aggressiveness. The more he got you talking about your daughter, the more you began to open up to him. It was nice to know he still wanted to know about her, even if it was the bare minimum. As the night went on, he somehow convinced you to show him a few pictures of her from your phone and you two quickly began reminiscing on the days when she was just a toddler and barely walking around. Eventually the conversation shifted to his life and search for the stand arrows. He told you about his uncle he discovered and you gasped at the revelation that Mr. Joestar had cheated on Suzi Q, the woman who became like another grandmother to you when you and Jotaro were married. When you two came home from your first semester away at college and announced you had gotten eloped, Suzi Q and Jotaro’s mother were the only people to support you initially. It hurt to know she had been emotionally backstabbed.

“He’s lucky he’s an old man now, or else I’d seriously kick his ass for doing that to her.”

For the first time in a long time, most definitely due to the fact that he had been drinking all night with you, Jotaro laughed. And when he laughed, the whole room shook with him. It was the first time you had heard it in years and it put a loopy smile on your face while you laughed with him. When he realized how loud he was, catching the eyes of a few others, he quickly quieted down, a twinge of embarrassment and anger easily seen on his face. Upset he stopped laughing and worried he might cause an uproar (being the hothead he is), you reached over and placed a hand on his. He looked at you with surprise, before turning up his hand and offering you his palm. He smiled as you giggled at the action. 

As the conversation progressed, it was clear that you were both exuberantly drunk, but it didn’t stop you from ordering one last drink.

“You sure can put them away now. You used to puke after two shots back in college.”

You snorted. “I’m well practiced now.”

You looked down at the time on your phone, not realizing it was soon approaching 11:45pm. Looking up and around, you noticed how the hall had seriously cleared out, most of the initial crowd gone.

“Shit, it’s late.”

You stood up and looked at him, a bit sad this night was coming to an end. The alcohol had opened up all the scars on your heart and reminded you of how much you missed him, but the small-voiced rational part of your brain was reminding you that things couldn’t stay like this.

“I’ve got to go. It was nice catching up, Jojo.”

Wanting to leave on a positive note, the drunken devil on your shoulder convinced you to lean in and give him a chaste kiss on the cheek. Completely normal, right? 

“Y/n, wait.” 

Jotaro grabbed your waist and pulled you further into him, your chests colliding. He was still sat on the barstool, so you were somewhat even in height for once, meaning your breaths mixed in the air. It was a familiar position that had both of your hearts pounding rapidly.

“I’ve missed you calling me that.”

His hand was heavy on your waist. Not wanting to lose balance in your stupor, your arm landed on his shoulder. 

“You used to tell me you hated being called Jojo,” you whispered teasingly.

He huffed and looked down. “I was lying.”

He looked back up to you with eyes as deep as oceans. “I don’t want to be anything except your Jojo.”

You softly gasped and he took it as his chance to pull you in for a soft kiss. Your lips barely moved against each other, just savoring the fact that they were once again reunited. 

Once upon a time, Jotaro would have handed you the world on a silver platter. It wasn’t by coincidence that you got married so young. You two were passionate, devoted, in love, but seasons change and people do as well, and Jotaro could no longer fill the superman-esque job he had been born into. At this point, it had been six years since you two divorced. Both twenty-six then and thirty-two now, he felt more like a stranger than someone you used to love. After having had so long to contemplate your relationship, you wondered how much of it would have happened if you two had never went on that journey. Seeing so much horror at seventeen scarred you two, and you definitely had a relationship built upon a trauma bond. You questioned often if it was ever love, or just comfort in shared pain. 

Now though, so many years later, with your lips pressed together, there was no mistaking the spark between you two. All the misery you’d experienced in the world of stand users was flushed away at his hot touch. Even if it was just momentary, you knew he could love you the same way again.

“Let me take you home,” he breathed over your lips.

One look into his pleading blue eyes and you knew without a doubt there was no coming back from this.

#jotaro kujo x reader #jotaro x reader #angst

[crowleysaziraphale2003]

Here's another fic I posted on AO3, about six months ago. I've fixed some errors I noticed were in the original, which I'll also fix on AO3 soon. Enjoy! :)

(CW for swearing).

A Four Letter Word

"You know, Crowley, I've always said, deep down, you really are quite a nice-"

Aziraphale didn't have any time to react before Crowley scowled and angrily slammed him against the wall. "Shut it! I'm a demon, I'm not nice! I'm never nice, nice is a four letter word. I will not have people thinking I'm nice!"

"Well, if you insist, Crowley," Aziraphale responded, quirking an eyebrow up at him. He was conscious of the way that Crowley had a death grip on the lapels of his jacket. And, just to think, he put the utmost care into keeping it in mint condition! In fact, he'd literally told Crowley that. "You wily old serpent, messing up my jacket," he half-scolded, his heart not really in it. He was too preoccupied with gazing longingly at Crowley's lips. Their bodies were pressed together, their noses were sinfully close.

All it would take was one movement and-no. He couldn't possibly let himself want what he was never allowed to have.

"Well," Crowley murmured, his voice low. "I can certainly mess up more than that for you, if you'd like."

Aziraphale couldn't tell whether Crowley was threatening him, flirting with him, or both.

"Whatever are you on about, Crowley?" he asked, confusion lacing his voice.

"You idiot," Crowley growled, leaning forward and pressing his lips to the angel's. Oh, Aziraphale thought. Fuck. It felt so good, admittedly almost too good, to feel the movement of the demon's surprisingly soft lips against his own, to trace his thumb along the nape of Crowley's neck, eliciting a very interesting noise from Crowley indeed. To feel Crowley's hands move from the lapels of his jacket to his hair, to move his hands so they were rubbing circles into the demon's back.

Alas, all good things have to come to an end, and therefore, so did their kiss.

"Excuse me, gentlemen, sorry to break up an intimate moment. Can I help you?"

With great reluctance, Crowley let go of Aziraphale and turned his head to the speaker that had so rudely interrupted them. Aziraphale's gaze lingered on Crowley's lips for just a few seconds longer, before he too turned his head.

Right. Armageddon. They had the end of the world to prevent. Best get to it, then.

"If this doesn't all burn down into rubble, after all of this is over, you and I are having an extremely alcoholic breakfast at the Ritz," was all Crowley had to say about the matter, once they'd walked away from Sister Mary Loquacious. Aziraphale allowed himself a small smile.

After all, the conversation they needed to have was many, many years overdue.

"I look forward to it, dear."

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[alastorsw1f3]

|| 𝑹𝑨𝑫𝑰𝑶'𝑺 𝑩𝑨𝑪𝑲 ||

THIS IS MY FIRST POST ON HERE

Contains;

Smut | Violence | Swearing | Drugs | Addictions | Alcohol | Non-Con/SA | Adult/Mature Themes

|| 𝑷𝑨𝑹𝑻 𝑶𝑵𝑬 ||

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You wake up, curtains shut and the bedroom a mess. you groan and roll over to look at your clock on your nightstand. You've slept in, and missed breakfast. So in a hurry, you get out of bed. No time to make it, your sheets and blankets are everywhere. You rush over to the corner of your room and pick up some clothes for you to wear.

Vaggie was upset you were always late for work (As in front desk at a shitty hotel no sinner in all of Hell could care for). Charlie's hotel is a place for sinners to be redeemed and have a spot in Heaven. The only person who supports and even encourages her fantasies is her girlfriend, Vaggie.

You put on a white button-up collared shirt, and some black leggings. You wiggled your feet into your socks and then popping some black heeled boots on. After dressing yourself, you made sure to brush your hair and teeth. Once done, you walked out of your room. To say it was a mess in the hotel would be an understatement, it was chaos. Angel Dust (The Porn Star) was walking around complaining about his job and how annoyed he was, or some crap like that. Charlie was having some intense thoughts about daily activities and trust exercises next to her bulletin board. Vaggie was comforting Charlie, of course.

But, there were some new guests. A winged cat with a top hat behind the bar, a small and fast girl cleaning up the hotel and killing any bugs around with red hair and a singular eyeball. The last guest that had caught your eye was an extremely tall man in all red, with a large smile plastered across his face. He was dressed way too properly for JUST a hotel in Hell, it made you suspicious. You made your way down the long and almost never ending staircase and right to where you should be, the front desk of the hotel. The man with the wide smile then came up to you.

"Hello there!" He said with a grin, tapping his cane against the floor.

You put a smile on your face as you said, "Hello, how can I help? Would you like a room here?" You asked.

With a radio-y laugh the man replied, "Haha! I suppose so. As I'm going to be managing the hotel I must have a place to stay, shouldn't I?"

That's when you frowned. You didn't like the look of this guy, something really seemed OFF. He's completely different from any other sinner in Hell, that much is obvious.

"Come now, Dear! You should be smiling! You know you're never fully dressed without one!" He sounded so cheerful, it irked you. Made your stomach feel like it was in a knot.

"Yeah." Your response wasn't formal or polite, and if Vaggie heard you, she would have been pissed. But you didn't care, this guy was bad news and you were certain that he would be the downfall of everyone in there. "Here's your key, your room number is on it." You said, rolling your eyes.

It seemed he didn't catch your eye roll or the 'tude' in your tone, "Thank you!" He cheered, grabbing the keys from you and walking off with a smile.

As soon as he walked off though, you marched right from behind the counter to where Charlie was.

"Hey, Charlie?" You asked, waiting for her to gather her thoughts as she was still at the bulletin board.

"Hey (Y/N)! What's up? And you've done a great job today, keep it up!" Charlie cheered you on, but it was funny. Charlie didn't even know you had slept in and just started your shift of the day. You had barely done any work. But she was too busy to know that.

"Who's the creeper with the large smile? He said he was gonna be managing the hotel." You questioned, hoping for her to ask who you're talking about. Of course you can only hope.

"Well... that's The Radio Demon. He would like to help us and our hotel." She sounded almost nervous saying that.

"Oh." You had nothing else to say so you just walked off.

It was hard to believe that ꓄ꃅꍟ ꋪꍏꀸꀤꂦ ꀸꍟꂵꂦꈤ was going to 'help us and our hotel'. You'd never seen what he'd look like before, you've heard that he was horrific and to be wary and careful around him. That he'd broadcast his victims screams on his radio show. But what you had seen was nothing more than a clown, a pathetic one. The place he wants to come to after 7 years of absence, is this hotel. The Radio Demon is going to fuck everyone over.

After a few boring hours of waiting at the front desk for anyone else to arrive, you decide it's time to head back to your room. As you begin to walk up the stairs, you hear static in both of you ears. To the point it's all you can hear, it's just now flooding your brain. You cover your ears in an instant and begin to rush up the stairs and down the hall to your room. You ran into your room, ripping the door open and slamming it shut. That's when the static began to die down, finally it was silent. You took a deep breath, sliding down and against the door, you just sat there.

An hour passes and you're knocked out, still propped up against the door. Suddenly, there's a knock at the door and then a long waited pause. Soon after, a black shadow comes up through your floor in front of you and stares at you with a wide smirk. It then signals someone to come in. The shadow sinks back through the floor as one of the dual doors is opened. Alastor, The Radio Demon peaks in and sees you against the opposite door. He nudges his way through, and with the snap of his finger you're in your bed and under your covers. He pauses, wondering if he should stay and wait or leave. Eventually, he turns around and leaves, making sure to be quiet when shutting the door.

You're now in a black abyss, standing in the middle of nowhere. It's empty and dark. You begin to walk until you see someone in front of you, with their hands crossed behind their back. You walk closer and closer, until you see Alastor. He turns around and grins. He stretches his arm out as a green chain appears in his hand. Chains are now wrapped around your neck as you fall to your knees and clutch at your neck. It feels bruised and tight, it's hard to breathe. Then suddenly your vision goes dark.

You wake up, gasping for air and clutching at your neck, your hands flinging to your throat as you sit up in a panic. It was just a nightmare, you hardly ever had any. When you calm yourself, your arms drop to your sides and your breathing slows. You were just sitting against your door and now you're in bed, why? Why is all of this happening to you, you think. Lifting your hand to your head as now you have a pounding headache. You wonder if somehow The Radio Demon was the cause of your nightmare, seeing as he was in it. You roll back over and lay down, curling into a ball and bringing the blankets more over yourself. Something has to be done about him.

#alastor x reader smut #alastor smut #hazbin hotel #alastor #angel dust #alastor hazbin hotel #x reader #reader x alastor #alastor x reader #romance #smut #slow burn #vaggie #vaggie hazbin hotel #charlie morningstar #charlie hazbin hotel #angel dust hazbin hotel #angst

[mimisempai]

The final step

Summary

Aziraphale and Crowley haven't accepted Metatron's offer and although they feel something has changed in their relationship, something is still missing. Will they be able to take the final step that will change their relationship for good?

Notes

Thank you @larien04 for your donation to Alzheimer's Research UK in exchange for this story.

The prompt :  Post S2, getting together, holding hands and T rated kiss… that was so delightful to write another fix-it. I hope you'll enjoy it!

What else can I be when I live in such a world of fools as this? Merry Christmas! Out with Merry Christmas!

What’s Christmas to you but a time for paying bills without money; a time for finding yourself a year older but not an hour richer. If I could work my will, every idiot who goes about with “Merry Christmas” on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding and buried with a stake of holly through his heart.

Aziraphale loved A Christmas Carol and even had an 1843 first edition in his bookshop. But right now, as passionate as he was, he couldn't concentrate on the theater stage, and the excellent acting didn't change anything.

It wasn't the first time he and Crowley had been to the theater together, but it was the first time since the day he'd said no to Metatron, severing his ties with Heaven for good.

"He said I could make you an angel. You could go back to heaven and... and everything, just like old times. Only nicer." 

Crowley replied in an almost hissing voice, "And you told him

where he could stick it?"

Aziraphale had wanted to be honest and had decided to talk about Metatron's offer without trying to influence Crowley, so he was relieved to see from the demon's reaction that there was really no chance of Crowley accepting the offer.

He replied to the demon with a half-smile, "Well, my dear, he's still my ex-superior, God's right-hand man, so I didn't take the liberty of telling him in those exact words, but the meaning is the same. I don't know what's going to happen, but since neither side is at their best, we'll have time to see what comes."

Crowley had lost his angry expression and slowly smiled at him as he said, "So it's off to an extremely alcoholic breakfast at the Ritz."

Which they had, though this time there had been something different in the air. 

An indefinable tension.

As if, now that they had this freedom, they didn't dare take it.

There had been small changes. 

Crowley, who had taken over his apartment now that Shax was gone, came to visit the angel more often.

Aziraphale didn't even need an excuse to call him anymore, because often it was the demon who called.

It was often succinct.

"Angel, can I come see you?"

No pretense, no false reasons.

In short, it was both different and the same as before.

Everything could have been perfect, but Aziraphale felt that something was missing. 

Aziraphale was jolted from his thoughts when he felt Crowley's hand move next to his on the armrest that separated them.

Then his attention was drawn to the narrator on the stage, who declaimed, “He was conscious of a thousand odours floating in the air, each one connected with a thousand thoughts, and hopes, and joys, and cares long, long, forgotten!”

Aziraphale chuckled inwardly, for there was only one thing he was aware of at the moment, and that was Crowley's presence. A presence that also connected him to thousands of thoughts, joys, events, so many things, so many emotions that would never, ever be forgotten.

What kept them from taking the final step? 

The last step they'd forbidden themselves for so long.

What was stopping them? 

Suddenly, for the first time, Aziraphale realized.

Nothing.

Nothing was stopping them. 

Nothing but them.

Each of them waiting for the other to make a gesture, something that would allow them to cross that invisible barrier between them.

Aziraphale decided that time was up.

He didn't want to wait any longer.

The angel gently moved his hand closer to the demon's, then, as if drawn to it, no longer holding on, he slid it over and intertwined their fingers, his heart beating wildly, not daring to turn to the demon.

He continued to watch the spectacle on the stage, but he couldn't see anything because the only thing that mattered to him at the moment was his hand on the demon's and his fingers intertwined with his own.

He was aware of the demon turning his head to look at him, and even without seeing him, he could feel his expression of bewilderment and surprise.

Trying to appear calm and confident, he smiled toward the stage and said softly, "Don't you like the show, my dear?"

He knew that his calm exterior was a far cry from his inner turmoil, but he refused to give in to fear. 

Those days were over.

Suddenly, he felt the demon lean toward him and whisper in his ear, "The show is excellent, Angel, it's just that something rather extraordinary has distracted me from it."

Aziraphale can't help but swallow.

Something extraordinary.

Crowley had said extraordinary.

That meant he was enjoying it, right?

He felt Crowley sink back into his seat and then his hand turn gently under his own. Palm against palm. His fingertips grazing his own before they intertwined further.

To say that Azirzaphale melted with relief on the spot would have been an understatement. 

So he also eased back into his seat before turning his head toward the demon and saying with a raised eyebrow, "Extraordinary, you say?"

Crowley chuckled softly as he looked at him and replied in a velvety voice, "That's what I said, Angel."

Aziraphale let his eyes slide over their intertwined hands and, looking back at Crowley, said softly, "I couldn't agree more."

Crowley pointed to the stage with his chin and murmured, "Come on, let's enjoy the show."

Aziraphale nodded and their eyes both turned to the stage. However, as much as they tried to pretend to be interested in what was going on, neither could concentrate, aware of the shift in their relationship.

Later, as they left the theater, they let go of each other's hands only to put on their coats or, even later, to get into the Bentley. 

Even as they walked through the door of the bookshop, they were still holding hands.

Now they stood in the middle of the shop, staring at each other in silence. 

Not sure what to do next.

"I..."

"You..."

After speaking at the same time, they stopped and looked at each other again in silence.

"Oh damn it!"

Crowley couldn't stand it any longer, so he placed his hand on the angel's cheek and, leaning over him, dropped a light kiss on the soft lips that had parted in surprise.

Pulling away, he murmured, "There's still time to refuse, Angel."

Aziraphale's lips curved into a gentle smile and he replied softly, "I have no intention of doing so."

That was all the answer the demon needed. 

Smiling back, he closed the distance between them and pressed his lips to the angel's, this time taking the time to taste what he had been denied for so long. Not to be outdone, Aziraphale returned the kiss, parting his inviting lips between which the demon's tongue slipped.

As their tongues touched, the angel couldn't hold back a small moan, and Crowley echoed it as the kiss deepened and they explored each other's mouths, finally giving in to what they had craved for so long.

They were like wanderers in the desert who, after days without water, could finally quench their thirst and could not stop drinking.

So the kiss went on and on.

Much later, still in the middle of the shop, when they parted to catch their breath, Azirapahle gently biting Crowley's lip before slowly releasing it, running his tongue over it to soothe the bite.

When they had kissed, their coats had fallen to the ground and their hands had wrapped around each other's bodies. So even when they broke the kiss, they barely parted, unable to put any distance between them. 

Aziraphale murmured softly between gasps, "Finally...finally..."

Crowley nodded and repeated, "Yes, Angel, finally..."

Seeing that both of them were unable to put into words the emotion that was overwhelming them at the moment, the demon pressed the angel against him and as Aziraphale snuggled against him, Crowley rested his chin on the angel's hair.

There would be time for words and explanations.

For now, they just had to feel. That was more than enough.

They stayed like that for a long time, enwrapped in each other, illuminated only by the warm light diffused by the Christmas lights that decorated the bookshop.

Finally, they had crossed the last invisible wall that had separated them.

Finally free, they could begin to live.

_________

Still not beta'd

Still not my native language

Still hoping you'll enjoy this story  🥰

Still thanking you for bearing with me 😝

Ineffable Growing Love series : (After season 2) 

Part 1 Story 1-99

Part 2 Story 100-?

Ineffable Husbands masterlist : here (Before season 2)

#good omens #aziracrow #ineffable husbands #ineffable boyfriends #aziraphale #crowley #good omens fanfiction #aziraphale x crowley #crowley x aziraphale #GOS2Spoilers #christmas #getting together