#anyways if this happened to you i'm sorry!! i hope things are better now

[adventuringblind]

Entitled To You (3.6K words)

Norstaptri x Reader

Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort

Summary: An incident with Lance sends the boys into a frenzy. She just wants to do what she loves.

Warnings: Explicit depictions of r@pe, injury descriptions, panic attacks, Oscar plots a murder, Lando throws hands, Car crashes, Author doesn't know legal stuff, Head trauma and blood.

Notes: This one is a request from @Lily234566 I know this wasn't the original pairing but I was struggling to fit the Ferrari boys in there so I had to scale it back... I'm sorry and I hope you still like it! T_T

Side Note: Sorry to the Lance girlies reading this. AND obligatory message of I don't know these people and this is purely FICTION! HEAD THE TAGS! DONT LIKE THEN DONT READ!

Masterlist // Request Form // My Website // buy me a Ko-Fi

“Max!” She peeks her head into his driver's room. The bright beaming smile she receives in return after their 1-2 nearly kills her. “They want me for a media thing, apparently.” HIs smile drops into a pout. The sad puppy eyes might convince her to stay. 

“Again? Don’t they know we have plans!

“No, and why would they care anyway?” She looks him up and down and whines because he’s standing in front of her with no shirt on. “Just - I’ll meet you guys back at the room. It’s something to do with being a female in F1… again.”

“I’m starting to think they have nothing else to talk about.” 

She shrugs as she walks out of the hospitality, waving to Christian on her way by. The goal is to get past the Mclaren garage without seeing Lando because otherwise she is not going to the interview. His pout is worse (better?) than Max’s. 

To her pleasant surprise, Laura is the one conducting the interview. “I’m sorry about this being last minute! They said they wanted you to do it with someone else next week and I offered to do it now.” 

The interview passes with ease and thankfully doesn’t take long at all. The banter in-between is also entertaining. 

She’s exhausted when they finish. Ready to go back to the hotel and fall into bed with her boys. Hopefully They’ve ordered food - and dessert. 

The paddock is nearly empty as she makes her way through. Maybe, had she been paying more attention and not focussed on her aching body, she would’ve caught on to the footsteps behind her. 

They are heavy, she assumes possibly a mechanic still packing up to continue on their way to the next circuit. That’s what she still thinks when the hand on her bicep yanks her around the corner. 

If she weren’t as exhausted, then fighting would’ve been a possibility. However, that seems out of the cards as he pins her against the nearest wall. Her forehead hitting the surface hard enough to make her dizzy. 

“Not so confident now, huh?” 

The fuck- “Lance? What are you?-” He slams her head again and cages her body against his own. She flails, only to be slammed again. “Would you stop doing that please?” 

“Not after that stupid stunt you pulled today on track.”

“You mean the one where you showed you don’t know what brakes are?-” Again, her head is sent into the hard surface. She can feel her nose starting to bleed. “Must you?!” She decided to shut up when he does it again and everything starts to go fuzzy. 

His fingers dip beneath the waistband of her fireproofs. The cold evening air hits her bare skin and she panics more than before. Her head is too cloudy to fully comprehend what’s happening. 

“I feel like I'm entitled to a bit of compensation after that stunt.” 

“You’re entitled to nothing. You took yourself out!” She hisses through gritted teeth. Still, Lance continues to get her clothes lower. And slams her head again harder - you know - because she wasn’t disoriented enough already.

“Would you shut up?” She doesn’t say anything this time. Her mouth feels numb and her ears are ringing. Her exposed lower half is met with the bare hands of someone she doesn't want touching her. 

It's - well - it hurts. He's groping at her thighs, ass, even her tits which she isn't sure how he's managing. His hands are everywhere they shouldn't be. 

And then nothing. 

A vague awareness of what's happening seeps through her veins and invades her senses. She tries to scream. Attempts despite the sheer pain of the snap of hips she didn't ask for. 

His finger beat her to it. A hand encloses around her throat and cuts off her oxygen. The black spots dance around her vision. She wants them to stop moving; they are making her dizzy. Or was she already dizzy? 

“See, it's not so bad. Don't you feel less guilty for ruining my race now?” No, she doesn't. She wasn't guilty before. 

She blacks out. 

~~~♡~~~

Waking up with sore limbs and a killer headache is not how she pictured this night going. She tries to yell for help, but a mere creaky rasp escapes. 

When did she lose her voice? The thought makes her panic more. The sob she lets out hurts more than there is sound. 

Her face and hair is sticky. At least Lance had done her the courtesy of not finishing inside of her. 

Still - what the fuck even happened? The fragmented memory is trying to come back to her slowly. Each small piece remembered is another broken cry. 

She can't move. 

It's dark again. 

~~~♡~~~

The anxiety between the three boys is certainly not something they are used to. Oscar can pinpoint the exact moment Lando started overthinking and Max had to bear hug him so he didn't pace a hole into the cement of the parking lot. 

The fourth seat in their car remains empty and their messages have gone unanswered. It's getting more concerning with each passing minute. 

“Max, she always responds.” 

“I know Lando.” 

“She always calls if she's going to be longer.” 

“Lando?”

“Yes?”

“Would you feel better if we went and looked around for her?” 

The Brit nods his head in a fashion that might give him whiplash. It's better seeing him feel helpful then sit helplessly. Though Oscar can't help but agree with Max's original point. that they should wait there at the car just in case since that's where they were supposed to meet. 

Granted, it's only been twenty minutes. It's still long enough to be murdered. 

They Methodically peer around corners and wave at the mechanics who give them skeptical looks. They were supposed to be out for post race celebrations by now. 

Oscar freezes when he sees it. The human shaped lump lying on the ground. He rushes over with long strides. The closer he gets, the more familiar the person on the ground becomes. 

“Max! Lando! I found her!” The other two boys come sprinting in his direction. He's on the ground trying to clear her hair from her face only for it to get stuck in the sticky substance coating her features. 

“What the fuck?” 

Her fireproofs are still on, but it's obvious what happened. The handprints on her neck, the blood trickling down the sides of her face. “We need to bring her to a hospital.” 

Max hoists her up in his arms. Mainly because Lando is on the brink of tears and struggling to breathe through his panic. He loves deeply and with his heart on his sleeve. Oscar just hopes he can keep the Brit calm until they find more help. 

“Can we at least clean her up?” Lando pleads with him. Big Hazel eyes brimming with tears. 

It's always a struggle to tell him no. “We can't, not if it can help us figure out who did it.” The tears start right after that. 

“So that’s what happened then? Someone really-” Oscar has to maneuver the puddle of tears that is his boyfriend into the passenger seat of their rental car. Max tosses him the keys, opting to be with her in the back and keep her comfortable. 

The tricky drive to emergency is more because Oscar is too far in his own thoughts to pay attention to the traffic lights. He can hear Max moving her around, attempting to put pressure where blood still flows freely. 

Oscar doesn’t bother with parking. He pulls off into some empty area and helps Max shoulder her weight inside the doors while Lando runs ahead to find help. 

It’s fast after that. They take her away and start patching her up while the three of them are forced to sit in the waiting room. Oscar and Lando are left to their own devices while Max paces about on the phone with Christian. 

He feels like a knife is being driven through his chest each time his mind tries to come up with what could’ve happened. Who would do something like this? Unfortunately, a lot of people. The question is more of who could’ve done it and gotten away. Someone with access to the paddock this late. Security, perhaps? Maybe even a sleazy mechanic? A driver wouldn’t make any sense… right?

“When will they let us see her?”

“When she wakes up, most likely.”

He’s not sure when he falls asleep. The exhaustion finally hit him like a truck despite his persistence. He’s awoken by Max’s constant shaking and aggressive whispering of his name. 

“-She’s asking for us.” 

He’s up faster than Lando when Jon threatens an ice bath. They follow the nurse down the halls with an uneasy anticipation. They creep inside the sterile room and find her staring at the wall. 

Lando doesn’t hesitate to move further into the room. Always having been more in touch with his emotions then the other two boys. “Hey love, can I come closer?” 

She looks at him. The bandages plastered over the sides of her head and around her face now visible to them. She returns Lando’s gaze with glassy eyes. It’s damn near shocking when she tries to pull things off her body in a desperate attempt to reach for Lando. 

Lando gets to her before she can get everything off, specifically the IV, and catch her arms. Oscar and Max finally pull themselves together and manage to get her to lay back down with some coaxing. 

She’s shaking violently. Her grip on Lando’s arm is sure to leave bruises. “Who - who f-found me?”  

“We did, schat. We got worried when you didn’t respond.” Max drags the two chairs in the room closer and pulls Oscar down into one.  Lando, against all odds, manages to wriggle his way into bed with her. 

“I know who it was. I - well - does anyone else know?” 

“Just Christian and us.” Oscar can feel the fight Max is putting up to not ask her more questions. The way he’s grounding himself with a hand on Oscars knee instead. 

“You don’t have to tell us.” He attempts to reassure. Maybe calm her mind by giving her an option. “Just know we’re here, alright?” 

“I don’t want it to be a big story. It’s already going to be since I can’t be in the car for the next four weeks. Oh fuck - everyone is gonna know-” Lando hushes her; gets her to somehow hold him tighter.

“Christian said it’s up to you, whatever happens.” Max nods at her encouragingly. “We go at your pace.” 

“They did a rape kit. They’ll know who it is. It was all over so it couldn’t have been hard to get DNA - oh fuck” 

Her heart rate picks up. The nurses rush in. They send her back to sleep. 

~~~♡~~~

Max wants to know who it was who touched her. The rage simmering underneath her skin is almost too much to keep contained. 

On the more fortunate side, they were allowed to stay since she wouldn’t let go of Lando. Then when he did have to get up, they rotated. 

The doctors and nurses learned to approach her like she’s a scared animal. The heavy footsteps seem to set her off and there is now a sticky note on the door saying to tiptoe when entering. It’s endearing to see her doctors and nurses trying so hard not to startle her. But seeing as they’ve now had several incidents where she’s panicked, they are taking more caution. 

Oscar and Lando have meandered away in search of food. Max opted to stay put and made the promise to bring him back cheat foods. He’s too stressed to not eat something of comfort. 

Her physio is supposed to come by today with the stuff she left at the track and get an update from the doctors themselves instead of Max’s botched attempts at repeating back. It will also be nice to see her comfortable, as the one blanket that travels with her everywhere will also be dropped off. 

“Max?” He tightens his hold to show he’s listening. “It’s not fair… You, Lando, and Oscar make a mistake on track and nobody does that to you. I - It wasn’t my fault.” 

The thing is, Max is smarter than people give him credit for. The only incident on track was with Lance. An incident that was his own fault. “He’s at fault, not you. None of this is your fault.”

“They are going to say I was asking for it or something.” 

“In those fireproofs? The only ones asking for it are me and Oscar… for obvious reasons.” He chuckles proudly at his little self compliment. 

It also manages to get her to crack something of a half smile. “Are you complimenting your own ass?” 

“And what if I am?” 

She doesn’t eat anything despite it being sat in front of her. Soft foods are the only thing she’ll be eating. Her throat, albeit not as bad as it could've been (thank you F1), is still damaged and needs to rest as much as possible. 

They had to keep her for observation due to where the head wounds had been. It’s been a rough thirty-six hours, but they are managing.

Despite the hectic situation, Max has come to learn that the female lying in the hospital bed is a better person then the rest of them. Oscar was detailing a full proof murder plan while she was telling him not to make it a bigger deal then it is. To which Oscar politely put his ten step plan with four contingencies down and told her that it’s ‘what he had coming to him’. 

Max has not had to stop someone from assassinating a rival before, but Oscar seems like a reasonable guy. “Death is too good for him.” 

“Mm, you’re right, I’ll just make sure he doesn’t die then and can’t see my face.” 

“Or, we make his life a series of inconveniences! I feel like daddy’s money could get him good therapy. It can’t solve every minor problem.” Lando has a gleam in his eyes. 

Him and Oscar start pouring over ideas once more. The girl simply shakes her head and goes back to eyeing her pudding like it’s assaulted her. “I don’t want to leave here, Max.”

“Why not? I’d assume you want to go home? Sleep in a comfortable bed?”

“Out there, they can get to us. Here is safe.” 

He considers how to reassure her. Only, there is nothing he can think of. The truth is that outside of this hospital room, there is no guarantee they won’t run into trouble. 

“I can’t promise that we'll never have something bad happen again. But-” He looks to the McLaren duo brainstorming ways to make the Aston Martin garage regret existing. “We’ll be there for each other. We’re here for you. When you want us and when you need us, yes?” 

“Pinky swear?” She extends her pink to him. 

Max accepts and curls his pinks around hers. “Pinky swear.” 

~~~♡~~~

It’s not fair really, that they had to leave to go do things. Lando would prefer he at least stayed with her so she isn’t alone. Alas, they are preparing for her discharge and he had to run around getting things together for their trip back to Monaco.

He comes back to a partially opened door and smiles at the other two boys being able to get back before him. Then again, as he gets closer he can hear the angry tone. One that Max uses when he’s pissed off about something. 

Lando panics and rushes inside. Only to be met with the sight of the last person he wants around right now. 

Now - he wouldn’t say he’s prone to violence. Lando prefers to keep the peace when it comes to conflict unless he’s trying to piss someone off on purpose to get a reaction. This is not one of those times. 

Lando’s knuckles collide with the Canadian’s jaw faster than he can fully become aware of what he’s doing. Lance stumbles backward and holds his jaw, glaring at Lando like he’s the one in the wrong here. 

“Get out!” 

“We were just talking-” 

“I said. Get. Out.” He’s seething. The thudding in his chest becoming louder with each second Lance remains in this room. 

He’s not prone to violence. 

Really, he’s not. 

Yet the second crack of knuckles into Lance's chin gives him some sick satisfaction. Isn’t there something about equilibrium? Can he pin this on restoring the balance or something? Regardless, he isn’t going to dent the fact that it feels good. 

The nurses come running and start asking questions. Max and Oscar have to drag Lando away kicking and screaming. 

Worse is when they try to tell him that there are pictures out on social media. Christian has been calling Max non-stop. Oscar has been dealing with Zak. Their relationship isn’t a secret and neither is their current location.  

“They're sending us a different car to see if we can’t get out discreetly.” 

“What happened with Lance, Lan? Are you alright?”

Everyone is panting. Their eyes trained on the door. “I punched him. I restored the equal-brey-um… thing.” 

“Equilibrium.” 

“Yeah that!” 

He’s not sure how they get on the plane. He’s still amped up about the whole punching thing and running purely off adrenaline. 

They’ve been sitting in silence, mulling over their options. Creating statements they can put out. It’s hectic and they keep trashing them because nothing fits. 

The female has been apathetic. The last thing she wanted was for this to get out and now it has. Seemingly everything is flashing before her eyes. Her career will be gone soon enough, so what’s even the point? 

“Don’t post anything. We don’t have an obligation to confirm or deny the rumors. If anything, we can say that you were just driving me to the hospital and being good friends or whatever.” She won’t look at them. Still - Lando can hear how upset she is, the waiver in her voice. “I’m going to be kicked out anyway.” 

“Christian said-”

“Damn what Christian said! He knows this isn’t going to get any better and if I say who it was then Daddy’s Money is just going to pay his way through.” She's hyperventilating now. Her body collapses against her seat and Oscar makes an effort to get her to lean against him. “It’s not fair!”

lando Can’t help but share her feelings.

~~~♡~~~

She stays holed up in the Redbull garage the next weekend. The appearance is hard, people want to ask her questions. Her boys had been caught in the middle of the riptide and haven’t come back to shore yet. 

At least she’s here. She’s trying her hardest to look stronger than she is. On the inside things are falling apart. 

The team knows to give her space and not ask about the ordeal. She takes refuge in Max’s room when things are too much and the other drivers keep their distance. 

They know it was one of them. She’d been adamant on not saying who it was, but it’s obvious there are sixteen who it could have been, given her partners insistence that none of them go near her garage for the time being.  

She just wants this whole thing to blow over. She wants to lay in bed with her lovers and not flinch when they go to touch her. 

She knows, however, that until she deals with things that healing can’t happen like it should. Or at least, that’s what her therapist says. The one she is now required to see. 

Things get worse when she’s back in the car. Her media duties are limited so she can focus on driving and ‘listening to her body’ as her physio likes to say. 

She can’t hear her body over the sound of her mind going staticy as Lance closes in on her. The catalyst for everything. She panics and ends up in the wall. Not the worst crash ever, but certainly hurts her pride more than it has already.

The thing is, it keeps happening. Even as she’s able to let her boys back in. As her podium finishes start to come back. Her fireproofs (which they’d gotten her all new ones) start to feel comfortable again and she doesn’t feel the need to be out of them the second the race is done. Still, Lance is using this to his advantage. 

Finally, after he almost killed her on track (again), she’s had enough.

The trial goes better than she thought it would. Despite the money differences, Lance won’t be able to race anymore. It’s not some grand spectacle either, just an announcement like usual. It’s more the closure she needed versus the publicized drama it could have been. 

She wins the next race. 

“If I ever see him again, it will be too soon.” 

“It’s been over a year now, Lan. I’m getting better.” There is a genuine smile on her face. The car awaits to take them back to the hotel. It was here that it happened. She almost considered not racing because of it.

“Lando got a taste of blood and now he’s feinding for it.” Max has a comforting hand around her waist. A grounding presence. 

“I mean, I never threw away my murder plot…” 

“You’re a genius Oscar!”

She shakes her head. It’s not like any of this has been easy. It never is. Still - her boys are here and they��ve been so patient. 

“There’s her smile.” They all beam at her. 

She smiles back.

#x reader #formula 1 #f1 fic #f1 fanfic #fanficion #max verstappen #lando norris #oscar piastri f1 #oscar piastri x reader #max verstappen x reader #max verstappen imagine #max verstappen x you #max verstappen f1 #max verstappen fanfic #max verstappen x lando norris #lando norris imagine #landoscar #lando norris x reader #ln4 #lando norris fanfic #lando norris x you #lando norris x y/n #lando norris x oscar piastri #oscar piastri #oscar piastri imagine #oscar piastri fanfic #oscar piastri x you #op81 fic #mv1 #mv33 x reader

[milfspiggy]

#polls #bullying #tumblr polls #poll #idk what the fuck to tags things as ever shrug #basically i was super super suspicious of anyone who ever asked me out by the time i got into high school #simply because it had happened so many times before #i just assumed no one would ever want to date me for real and that i was so comically disgusting that it was funny to pretend #anyways if this happened to you i'm sorry!! i hope things are better now

[elllteo]

Creators I love you but it's time to wake up

Among rumors about our tumblr user data being sold off to Midjourney/Generative AI, recent Extremely transphobic events (that have been ongoing) coming to a head, another extremely concerning internet censorship bill being pushed in upper levels of government, and a general air of frustration over how the site belongs to and is operated by perhaps the second stupidest CEO (second only to twitters own) of our age, I'm very done with the last few vestiges of what the old internet held for artists.

And if you're reading this, you probably are too.

I know we're tired. We are all tired. It is not always viable to pack up shop and move, again and again and again.

From tumblr to twitter to anywhere else we've ever grown up posting, things no longer work. Our audiences are kneecapped by aggressive and hostile algorithms, our reach is abysmal - if we aren't shadow-banned or silenced for one (transphobic) reason or another, we're thrust into an ever growing pit of hostility where the only thing that drives clicks is fighting and contention.

We're tired. We're so fucking tired. We aren't businesses, we aren't content mills, we cannot keep this pace that modern social media has set for us, to wring every ounce of creativity out of us to profit from and leave us rotting.

The key to staying afloat here, and I cannot stress this enough, is to stay connected to your peers.

Pack up and move as units if you must. Exodus from the sites that are killing us. Push your entire friend group of artists to move from one site to the next that promises you a kinder experience.

Art drives movements, it drives change, it is all that encompasses being human. If you take that away from the shitty places, they will be left with nothing but a cesspit of inhumanity and the people who follow you will be more incentivized than ever to move with you.

Yes, this is terrifying. There are no guarantees. There never was, and never are, and never will be.

But stay connected. Stay human.

Support each other and be willing to hold hands and jump when we all - as a group - need to jump from the flames we're all trying to convince ourselves wont kill us before rescue comes.

Rescue isn't coming, rescue will be found hand in hand with each other. I'm offering you my hand, please take it. There's always a new start, there are always helping hands reaching for you. You have to look up from the doom-scroll long enough to see and take them.

#art communities #art community #teo talks #sorry I have a Lot of opinions about posting art online I've been doing this since I was 14 and I'm 28 this year #I have watched the rise and fall of social media titans and you have to understand the ONLY thing that will keep you afloat #is keeping connected to your peers #we have to move as units and we have to stay together and we have to support each other #your following is not stability. your friendships are. #thats why you hear about networking. thats ceo talk for friendships. connections. #you have to have enough connections to build your own support web on the chance that everything goes to shit. yes its hard work. it sucks. #but it is a necessity. twitter isn't getting better. its not going back to how it was. neither is DA or tumblr. its not happening. #If you put all your eggs in one or two precarious baskets and both fall. you will be shit out of luck! thats reality #there is hope to be found but you have to be realistic and understand that you NEED to build up a presence elsewhere. even if its hard. #I want to help you if I can!!!! bluesky is a really solid twitter alternative!!! #ive heard good things about cohost as a tumblr alternative!!!! #sheezy and inkblot are both indie sites currently being developed by and for other creatives. support them! #they won't be perfect until - and UNLESS - you do! #anyways sorry I will step off my soapbox now Im just frustrated with the state of everything

[finexbright]

.

#as i said i'm only now catching up on what happened at red rocks and honestly i'm just so confused as to #why people are getting hate mail for being at a show???? like unless you were right there at the show you will NOT know what's going on #you can't just ''leave'' a venue because there's security measures ensuring that people don't run and cause a stampede #i get that the team there sucked and should've been much better equipped for an outdoor venue but why the fuck are we blaming the fans???? #and then being mad at louis??? yeah i get that his tweet wasn't the best but i'd imagine that he was trying to help out as much as he could #ensuring fans were safe and taken care of. pretty sure he is the one paying all hospital bills and stuff as well #yeah i know he's an artist and he has people doing things for him but also it's louis. he might not have been at ground zero #but i bet he was doing everything he could to help get fans to safety and he had to tweet something amidst all that #just to reassure fans a bit more and he did what he could #besides. i'm sorry but instead of being all ''louis/his team should've done more'' can we all just make sure that the fans #who were actually in that hail storm and who actually got horribly injured and who actually went through such a scary situation #are feeling okay? like why are we arguing about trivial things when what matters the most out of this situation is the fans and their safety #i honestly need people who were not at the venue and people who do not understand how traumatic things can be #to just shut up and log off #anyways to everyone present at red rocks i'm sending you so much love and i'm so sorry something so traumatic happened #i hope everyone is safe and is being treated for their injuries 💌

[cherrygorilla]

The Mixtape Mysteries: Chapter 1 (Part 2)

Crazy Train - Ozzy Osbourne - 4:53

Yes, it is a ridiculous amount of time since I last posted anything to do with this (or anything at all really), but I've been dying to write for this story again, so I thought it would be a good way to help me get my groove back. Plus, I wanted to wait until Camp Wanamaker was done before I went back to working on Acting School Drop Out (because I feel like I might be able to use some stuff that's been mentioned in the next part lol). So, after months and months of uni stress that's kept me away from my google doc, here's the next installment of the story that's kept me going through it all.

Listen along with the gang here. Enjoy!

Heavy eyelids dropped over a pair of umber eyes trying, and failing, to focus on the computer screen in front of them. Whilst the radio often felt like Butchy's only co-worker, today it just seemed to be functioning as a lullaby machine - and the smooth, fade-out ending of Electric Light Orchestra's 'Evil Woman' just proved the point further. One second he was staring blankly at a page of pixelated text on a fuzzy screen, and then the next thing he knew he was drooling into the palm of his hand and almost falling off his chair at the sound of a car racing past his window. 

It's not even that he was tired - it was barely even 11am for Christ's sake - he was just so bored his brain was shutting down from lack of stimulation. And considering the latest turn of events, his body wasn't far behind. The roaring engine disappeared as quickly as it had arrived, leaving the incessant ticking of the plastic wall clock in its place. It didn't matter what kind of car it was, or where the hell it was going; all Butchy knew was that he wanted to be in it. Hopefully travelling far, far away from this crappy, dead-end town, and this shoe box of an office, that was more dust than desk, and smelled like a wet rat. 

Begrudgingly, he gathered himself together and finished typing out the latest file he'd been working on - something about trespassing in the old steel mill, he didn't care enough to look into the details. Tipping his head back, he rubbed his palms across his eyes, trying to press as hard as he could to draw some sort of alertness to the forefront of his mind. If anything, it just made him more tired.

One glance across his desk let his gaze settle on the dorky Star Wars mug Royce and Bentley had gifted him on his last birthday, and for the first time since he'd slumped in the splitting leather swivel-chair that morning, a ghost of a smile graced his features. He took a swig and drained the mug of the last of its contents: bitter, room-temperature coffee. Wincing at the taste, he picked up the next file to work on, but swiftly dropped it in favour of refilling his mug. After all, the walk to the coffee pot in the main office was the only change of scenery he got all day. Sometimes he watered the dying yucca plant beside him with the rancid liquid just so that he had an excuse to get away from his desk.

The tapping of keyboards and mumblings of the same, tedious phone calls he overheard every day met Butchy's ears as he lumbered down the hall and pushed open the office door. Lurking behind the frosted panel, caked in as much dust as the rest of the building, was the rag-tag reception team, consisting of three women Butchy had absolutely no intention of even looking at, let alone speaking to. He'd given up trying to make conversation with his co-workers pretty quickly after every meagre attempt on his end had been ignored. Most shifts passed without him uttering a single word. However, Lela ditching his ride that morning must have thrown him off more than he realised, because this shift was about to become an anomaly. 

"So I said to him: If you know so much about the damn sausages, why don't you cook 'em yourself?" 

"I bet he knows a lot about one kind of sausage."

"Oh Jen, pull your mind out of the gutter, you sound like a teenager."

"She practically still is one."

"I'm right though, aren't I?"

A strained sigh slipped past Butchy's lips before he could stop it. The nasal drones from the women behind him were enough to make his eye twitch at the best of times, but the added scraping of Jennifer's nail file made it inevitable. Before he could short-circuit altogether though, one of the adjoining doors to the main office was pushed open, and the conversation unfolding behind it immediately caught his attention. 

Heaving a sigh that put the young trainee's to shame, the fourth, and final receptionist, led the charge into the room - two officers hot on her heels. "Well, you'll just have to go alone then, won't you, gentlemen?" 

"We can't just 'go alone', the chief's the only one that goes on solo investigations. What if it's dangerous? What if we need back-up?"

"And what, pray tell, Officer Reynolds, is so 'dangerous' about a broken store window?"

"Well from the sounds of things it's a pretty clear-cut robbery. What if the culprit's still on the scene? What if he's armed?"

"Why are you assumin' it's a 'he'?" Jennifer piped up with a smirk, punctuating her question by blowing the acrylic dust from the tip of her nail. 

As expected, neither officer batted an eyelid at her interruption. 

"We got the call last night. You've got a higher chance of him sticking the damn window back together."

"But what if it's like that time when Old Man McRoberts'-"

"Enough, boys. I don't want to hear it," she finally snapped, slamming the stack of paperwork down on her desk so hard it even made her glasses chain quiver. Turning to the pair with her hands planted firmly on her hips, she continued. "Callahan, you're on patrol with Officer Powell; Reynolds, you're investigating that store window. Alone."

"But Fran, that never-"

"No, I don't want to hear another word. You're going solo, Reynolds, and that's that." 

"...Uh, I could go with you."

The whole office fell silent. Even Jennifer's nail file seemed to pause for thought. But all too soon, six pairs of eyes fell on Butchy, whose grip on his mug instinctively tightened under their bemused glares. He couldn't exactly blame them; even he couldn't believe that he'd dared to speak - let alone suggest such a thing. But then again, this was a perfect opportunity - perhaps the only opportunity he'd get (at least for the foreseeable future) to prove himself a worthy member of the team. Being stuck behind a computer screen all day was getting him nowhere - in fact, he was pretty sure he had even less respect now than when he'd first set foot through the door over a month ago. But working on a case, a real case, meant he could put all the skills he'd learnt in his training to the test - show everyone that potential he'd promised in his interview. This could be the making of Officer Bandoni. This could be his ticket out of that godawful, stuffy office. This could be-

"Oh my god, look at his face; he's serious."

God, he hated Jennifer. But he hated that cackling laugh of hers even more. 

"Jennifer," Linda, the crotchety receptionist to her left, scolded. If Butchy hadn't known better, with her brusque, hushed tone and sharp glare from over the top of her tortoise shell glasses, he'd have thought the woman was her mother. 

"Yeah right," Officer Callahan snorted. But a pause, followed by a brief glance in the new recruit's direction soon had his confidence faltering. "I- Oh…" 

"Hey, cut him some slack, Jen; the kid's still learning the ropes," Officer Reynolds piped up, ignoring Officer Callahan's attempts to hide his smirk by smoothing out his moustache, and instead sending the smarmy receptionist a blasé, yet stern frown. "Of course he wasn't being serious."

"Actually, I was," Butchy corrected. He set his mug down and stood his ground opposite the two officers, gently nudging his chin up and puffing out his chest in an attempt to outwardly show some of the confidence he was so desperately trying to scrounge together. At least that would help to mask the stubborn rage bubbling away in the pit of his stomach. The staff's dismissiveness was frustrating enough on its own, but being reduced to a 'kid' was downright infuriating. 'Kids' did not single-handedly raise their little sister. 'Kids' did not give up their weekends to go and work in a shitty garage for two bucks an hour all throughout high school just so they could have food on the table. 'Kids' did not shoulder the responsibility of four adults after stepping up to parent, not only his own sister, but the three boys next door too. Butchy hadn't felt like a 'kid' in years. He had always been the oldest - the most mature, the most dependable, the most capable… So for these six adults, who had barely given him the time of day in the month he'd been working with them, to stand there and tell him he was nothing more than a 'kid'...it was insulting. And he was determined to prove them wrong. "If you need another officer for back-up, and no one else is free, then why can't I go with you?" 

"Well, for one, you're not an officer-"

All Reynolds had to do was hold up a hand for Callahan to snuff out his snickers. "Because you haven't finished your training yet, son," he plainly explained. At least his withering look was softened by a bored tone. 

"But I've aced every part of the course I've completed so far," Butchy argued. "And this could be a chance for me to learn on the job, out in the field-"

"Son, let it go."

"You said, yourself, that I've got potential. Why can't I just show you-?"

"Look, kid, you're not ready - you won't be for a long time. I admire the optimism but we've gotta look at the facts here. And truth is: the dirt on Callahan's shoe's got more experience walkin' 'round a crime scene than you do. I know you want to get out of the office and get a taste of the action, but I can't work the case and babysit you at the same time. It's just not realistic."

'Babysit'? Butchy could feel the word in the palm of his hand as he clenched his fingers into a fist around it, crushing it, along with all its juvenile connotations. "I'm not a 'kid', I'm eighteen years old," he insisted, choosing his words and tone very carefully as he fought not to lose his cool. 

"Yeah, and I'm not a chainsmoker neither," Jennifer sniggered, appearing to have swapped her nail file for a cigarette during the confrontation. She took a long drag as her, deep, carob eyes latched onto his, lashes sprawling across a rough sea of streaky kohl, before letting the smoke leak out through her crimson-painted smirk. 

Butchy didn't know what was more nauseating: her attitude or the stench of tobacco hanging in the air. 

Officer Reynolds let out an exasperated sigh that soon stole back the trainee's glare though. "That's all well and good, but it's not gonna change my mind. You need more experience before you go out in the field, Bandoni," he explained, with an expression that told Butchy he was well-weary of the conversation now. "You can't learn to run before you learn to walk. It's just not realistic - if anything, it's naïve."

"But how am I supposed to get more experience when I'm stuck behind a desk all day?" 

Butchy's question was shot down though as the pair of officers crossed the room to the office's main door, back to their usual routine of barely acknowledging his existence. "If I'm not back by two for your CPR training, Officer Powell will handle it, okay?" Reynolds said as he plucked his hat from the coat stand in the corner and secured it atop his head of thinning, taupe hair. Knowing the new recruit wouldn't be satisfied with any answer he could give him, he'd just decided to brush the question aside altogether. 

And knowing that defiance, and further provoking, would get him nowhere, Butchy finally relaxed his hand, and gave a stiff nod. He silently watched the officers announce their departure to the room and felt his shoulders slump in defeat, his chest aching with betrayal. Officer Reynolds was supposed to be his mentor, the one who would take him under his wing as he learned the ropes - and yet he'd kicked him to the curb and spat in his face the one time he'd tried to do the right thing. At least that's how it felt to him anyway. 

"Bye boys," Jennifer trilled with a flirty giggle as the office door closed behind them. Tapping the ash from the end of her cigarette, she turned her vampish smirk to Butchy. "Nice little show there, Bandoni. And there I was thinking today was gonna be boring." 

Butchy's frown deepened as her scornful laughter battered his ears. The thick-headed she-devil wasn't worth his breath though - even the sickened huff that escaped his throat felt like a waste. His fingers once again closed, although this time they at least found the warm ceramic of his mug beneath them. Letting the heat seep into his skin, he took a deep breath in through his nose and tried to focus on anything else other than the anger boiling in his chest. At least the Star Wars mug, and the memory of receiving it, gave him something to anchor himself to: a way to discharge all the bitter resentment that had been steadily building for weeks, but had finally come to an ugly head. One more snarky comment from Danielle and he'd have hurled the coffee at her sloppy up-do, he knew it - he could feel himself teetering on the brink. 

And yet, a friendly hand in the centre of his back was all it took to draw him back from the edge. "I should be thanking you," Fran said with a sympathetic chuckle, and roll of her eyes at the officers' expense. "I thought they'd never leave."

Managing a weak, but grateful smile to the receptionist, Butchy finally picked his mug up from the drink station and took his leave before he could draw any more unwanted attention to himself. Jennifer's squawking voice still rang in his ears as his footsteps pounded down the hall, desperate (for once) to shut himself away in his office. At least in there he knew he was safe from further embarrassment, even if the only thing waiting for him was a stack of files on petty traffic crimes. Apparently reading about speeding fines and parking tickets was all the excitement his life could afford him for the time being. But, for once, he actually found some comfort in that. 

"Well, Wuthering Heights, you were fun while you lasted, but I am not going to miss you," Vivien snorted, holding the worn paperback out in front of her, as if to address it like an old friend. 

The gentle chuckles that bounced the soft, chocolate brown curls beside her set her innocent little middle-school heart aflutter, and she caught herself clamping her lips shut in case it tried to escape. Craving the thrill of that sensation again, she snatched a shy glance in his direction before plastering the jovial grin back on her face. "Thank you for the 'A' though, Emily." 

"What are you thanking her for? We did all the hard work," Royce scoffed. "I wrote so many notes on the moors I'm pretty sure I almost gave myself Carpal Tunnel."

A snicker crinkled the brunette's nose. "Well you do have the neater handwriting."

"And you have all the good ideas," Royce chuckled, praying desperately that the prickling he felt across his cheeks wasn't what he thought it was. 

Stopping in front of a set of painted metal doors, Vivien turned to him with a disapproving frown. "Not all the good ideas." 

"Fine… most then."

Whilst Royce may have been able to keep his blush at bay, Vivien felt hers raging like a wildfire as she downplayed his compliment with an affectionate eye-roll and pushed her way out into the crisp autumn air of the Hawkins Middle parking lot. Hopefully a bracing breeze like the one that smacked her across the face the second she set foot onto the asphalt would help her systems stop running on overdrive, because right now she felt like a live wire about to catch light. One wrong move from Royce and he'd be fried to a crisp. 

Wrapping her free hand around the forearm that flanked him, protecting his arm from being barbecued should he decide to fondly bump her as they fell into stride once more, Vivien, composure regained, offered him a smile. "I guess that makes us a pretty good team then, huh?"

"Yeah, I guess it does," he agreed, holding her gaze for a beat and letting the sincerity of the moment swell alongside the tingly, warm feeling spreading through his chest. "...And we've got the A to prove it." Terrified by the sensation, he snorted out a laugh that shattered the tenderness of the moment just as awkwardly as how he almost tripped over his own feet because he was spending more time looking at Vivien and her freaking dimples than where he was walking. Damn his stupid hand-me-down sneakers from Miles and their stupidly long laces.

More awkward, cheerful chuckles tumbled from the middle schoolers' lips as Royce steadied himself again and they made their way over to the cluster of trees by the soccer field. It didn't take Vivien long to break the comfortable silence that had fallen over them though. "I don't know what we're going to do with ourselves now that project's finished; it completely took over our lives for like two whole weeks there."

"I'm sure we'll find something."

But Royce's laidback grin was the complete antithesis of Vivien's tense shoulders and skittish gaze. Then again, he had no idea what she was planning, or what her skating friends had been begging her to do for weeks. 

It couldn't be that hard, right? It was just one little question. She asked him questions all the time, this one didn't need to be any different. And besides, there wasn't really anything Vivien felt as though she couldn't talk to Royce about; he was her best friend, he was always her first port of call for anything that was bothering her - well, unless it was about something like her period; that was strictly for her mom…

But this was just a question: one that could very well have been asked without another thought had she not attached all the extra weight to it in her mind. And yet here she was, fighting her own tongue, trying to persuade it to recite the script she'd meticulously planned out in her head the night before, because for some reason it wasn't convinced by her promised ability to brush the sentiment off as 'just a friend thing' should Royce take it badly. And neither was her mind, really. 

Realistically though, what was the worst thing that could happen if he had a weird reaction? It's not like a meteor would crash out of the sky and strike them both down or anything, no matter how much she may want it to in the moment - she knew; she'd checked and it wasn't the right time of year for it. The worst that could happen is things might be a little awkward between them for a couple days, right? He wouldn't- 

-Actually, scratch that. Vivien didn't want to think about it. 

"Well, actually…" she began, before she could talk herself out of it any further. 

Vivien felt Royce's gaze land on her the second she stopped to clear her throat, which had become inexplicably scratchy ever since those last words had left it, clearly so reluctant to be said they'd dug their heels in the entire journey out into the cool, October air. And as soon as it did, it felt as though all her sweat glands released at once, adding a glistening sheen to her already crimson skin. Horrified, Vivien kept her gaze on the ground a few paces ahead of her to avoid having to find out if Royce had realised, and pushed her round, silver-rimmed glasses further up the bridge of her nose in an attempt to shield herself from further embarrassment as a result of her thirteen-year-old hormones wreaking havoc in her own body. 

Fearing that the longer she dragged this on, the more her subconscious would betray her, she swallowed her nerves and ploughed ahead. "Do you remember how you missed out on going to watch The NeverEnding Story this summer because you had to spend your ticket money on a new wheel for your bike?"

In her periphery, Vivien saw Royce's hand shift up to play with the fraying fabric of his backpack strap. He only ever did that when he felt uncomfortable. She didn't even have to look at him to confirm it either, the pause before he responded told her almost as much as his tone of voice did. 

"...Yeah, but what does that-?"

"Hey nerds!" 

Despite their disdain for the term, both Vivien and Royce's heads whipped around to try to locate the source of the voice, mentally cursing themselves for even acknowledging that the phrase could have been used to refer to them, let alone responding to it. But as green and brown eyes scanned a sparse sea of middle schoolers, searching for signs of anyone with ill-intent, they came up short. 

"Over here!"

The voice, carried on the wind, drew the pair's gazes to a figure, practically standing on the bench of a rotting, wooden picnic table to try to grab their attention and their disgruntled grumblings fell from their lips within seconds of one another, replaced by fond sighs. 

Bentley waved the duo towards him so spectacularly that, for all they knew, he could have been directing a plane to land. And whilst Vivien couldn't help but smile at the blond's boundless energy, she also couldn't help but feel a pang of disappointment with how easily Royce shelved their conversation by letting out an almost relieved: "Duty calls."

"Yeah," Vivien agreed with a forced smile and a breathy, awkward laugh to match his. Although it dropped from her face the second he turned his back to head over to the shaded seating area. 

Once he was a good few paces ahead of her, and she was sure he was out of earshot, Vivien let out a frustrated huff, so hot she was surprised it didn't steam up her glasses. "Goddammit, Bentley," she muttered, shoving her library copy of Wuthering Heights into her backpack as she started trudging along behind Royce. "I almost got through it all that time."

But Bentley was none the wiser to Vivien's grand plans; too excited by his own news to consider that the pair may have been busy. And besides, the easygoing grin his older brother shot him as he approached made him none the wiser. 

"You've gotta come up with something better to call us, Benny," Royce said, fondly shaking his head as he climbed the last few steps of the hill leading up to the picnic table, adorned by Bentley's friends, the contents of at least three up-turned pencil cases, and enough sheets of paper to paper mache a small child. Thankfully, the table was sheltered from the worst of the breeze, so the most that a stray gust could do was flutter the edges beneath the various, makeshift paperweights (dog-eared textbooks and unopened juice boxes) strewn across the splintering surface.

"Why? You are 'nerds'," the boy laughed as he bounced back down into his spot on the bench seat beside August. 

"We are not," Royce protested.

"It got you to come over here, didn't it?" Bentley replied with a cheesy smirk. 

Royce let out a slightly bitter sigh as he fumbled through a response. "Well- yeah, but it's… demeaning." 

"Then why'd you respond to it?" Kona snorted, apparently more focused on selecting the right shade of crayon than bothering to look Royce in the eye as she insulted him. 

The bluntness of the eleven-year-old's comment drew a snort of laughter from him before he could stop it, whether it was in amusement or incredulity though he'd never know. But the smile that threatened to envelop his disapproving frown stayed firmly in place as he said, "Because I'm so used to everyone else calling us it, that's why. And you shouldn't be contributing to the problem anyway; I thought we were all on the same side here."

"You calling us nerds, RJ?" Zack piped up with a challenging quirk of his eyebrow. 

"Pot calls the kettle black," Royce smirked.

"White boy says what now?" Zack retorted with a confused frown that soon gave way to a mischievous grin the second that Royce rolled his eyes and playfully ruffled his hair, insisting through shared laughter that the boy knew what he meant. 

"What are you guys doing up here?" Vivien asked with a breathy laugh of her own as she arrived at the picnic table and caught the end of the boys' friendly roughhousing.

"Having fun until you nerds showed up," Zack scoffed as he shoved Royce's chest in an attempt to get the older boy away from him. But the bubbling giggles that tumbled from his lips as Royce expressed his disdain for the name once more told everyone all they needed to know about how much he enjoyed the brunet's company - proved even further when he resorted to wrapping his arms around his torso and tackling him into a hug from his spot on the bench. 

"Looks like it," Vivien noted with a bemused chuckle. "What's all this then? You writing out your own comic book or something?" she continued, gesturing to the vast collection of paper spread out before the quartet. 

"We're designing our characters for this cool new game Gus brought in," Bentley raved, holding up his sheet of paper for Vivien to see. "Look at my guy, he's got a wand that's disguised as a paintbrush and this magic flute that lets him talk to animals." 

"Damn, Benny, that's so cool," she grinned, marvelling at the artwork with almost as much care as the blond put into creating it. 

"And look, here's the one I'm doing for Gus," Bentley continued, shuffling the papers around until he selected the right one. 

"You didn't want to draw out your own?" Vivien asked the boy, whose sandy blond eyebrows were furrowed in concentration. 

"Nah; Ben's better at art," August admitted, only glancing up from his work to shoot his oblivious friend a shy smile. "And I enjoy the planning part of it more anyway," he went on to explain. "So he's doing the drawing, and I'm filling out his character sheet for him." 

"Yeah, 'cause there was no way I was gonna be able to deal with all that," Bentley snorted.

"This looks like a lot of work for just one game," Vivien noted, inching another piece of paper towards her and finding it covered from top to bottom in meticulously written words, numbers, and the occasional, scribbled doodle. 

"Tell me about it," Kona scoffed. "I feel like we got extra math homework with this stupid number system we've got to work off of," she added with a huff that blew a straw strand of hair away from her eyes. Begrudgingly tapping the open, yellowing pages of an intricately illustrated book with the end of a pencil, she brought the thirteen-year-old's gaze to the table she was drawing from. 

"You guys are willingly doing math over lunch and you're calling us nerds?" Royce asked with a teasing incredulity that earned him further, playful bickering from Zack. 

"So what do you do with all this when you've created your characters then?" Vivien continued, feeling a fond smile tugging at her lips as Royce's unbridled laughter tickled her ears. Fighting the urge to swat the imagined sensation away, she focused her attention on the other children at the table. "What's this dorky wizard math game called?" 

"Dungeons and Dragons," Bentley explained.

Vivien’s ears perked up. “Dungeons and Dragons? That weird roleplaying game Riven plays with his sweaty high school friends?” 

“Who’s Riven?” Kona asked.

“My skating partner,” Vivien said, throwing the explanation away like a used napkin so that she could get back to the main point at hand. 

“Ew, so is he like your boyfriend then?” Kona teased with a devilish wiggle of her eyebrows. 

“No!” Vivien blurted, maybe a little too quickly if everyone turning to look at her was anything to go by. "No, not like… It's just- He's like my brother, ok?" she hurriedly tried to explain, trying to ignore the bile now creeping at the back of her throat the very thought alone had placed there. 

"Ok," Kona snorted, smirking to herself as she caught Royce's shoulders slump in relief in her periphery. Making the ninth-graders squirm was a favourite pastime of hers, and lately, all this girlfriend-boyfriend talk around them, despite making her want to hurl, had been a homerun every time. 

"I didn’t know Riven played DnD,” Bentley piped up, earning himself a grateful smile from Vivien for taking some of the heat off her. 

“Neither did I until he made us switch our practice days so that he could go play pretend with a bunch of dorks out the back of Eddie 'the freak' Munson's trailer."

"Riven's in that weird Hellraiser club?" Royce asked, bushy eyebrow raised in disbelief. 

"My sister says they're all devil worshippers," Zack mumbled.

"It's Hellfire," Vivien corrected. "And they're not devil worshippers - well, Riven's not anyway. As far as I know they're just losers in matching shirts who play make believe like they're still in first grade."

"It's more than just playing make believe," August dared to pipe up with a somewhat defensive frown, immediately toying with the corner of Bentley's character sheet the second the group's attention landed on him. A sideways glance in the blond's direction earned him a reassuring smile that breathed some much needed confidence into his lungs, and as he released it, he said, "There's this whole world you can build your own stories around with all these super detailed characters and a bunch of lore you can discover. I spent my whole weekend reading through the books my cousin gave me and that doesn't even cover half of it. It's like one big choose-your-own adventure story, but everyone gets a say in what happens, and gets to feel like they're a part of it."

A beaming grin and steel blue eyes, sparkling with excitement, found Royce with startling ease. "Doesn't that sound cool?!" Bentley enthused.

"...It actually does," Royce admitted, even surprising himself with his answer. 

"Hear that, Auggie? You didn't even have to mention dragons to convince someone that time," Kona snickered, firing the curly haired boy beside her a smirk. 

"Whatever," Zack scoffed, rolling his eyes. "You thought they sounded cool too," he added with an accusatory nudge of the blonde's elbow that had her cursing him under her breath for making her pencil skim across the page. 

Ignoring his friends' sibling-like arguing, so used to it by now that it honestly would have been stranger to acknowledge it, Bentley kept his attention, and his toothy grin, focused on his older brother. "I knew you'd like it! You're always borrowing those old fantasy books from the library and writing your own versions of them."

"Well- yeah, ok, but what does that have to do with this?" Royce stuttered, cheeks tinged pink with embarrassment despite Vivien's small, amused smile. 

"Well this is just like that! Gus wrote out our first campaign all by himself," Bentley gushed before leaning into the shying blond beside him. "That's like the story, right?" he checked in a hushed tone. And after receiving a confirmatory nod, he turned back to Royce with renewed enthusiasm. "The plot, the monsters, the bonus quests - he came up with it all!" 

Bentley pushed a stack of papers towards his brother, bound by treasury tags and bearing enough ink to have drained an entire pack of ballpoint pens. "Holy shit," Royce breathed as he picked it up and began flipping through the makeshift book, becoming more and more stunned with every turn of a page. "You wrote this whole thing by yourself?" he asked August, who timidly nodded. "In one weekend?" Again, the boy nodded, this time a little more eagerly. And Royce could see why. "...Wow," he marvelled, smiling as he watched the younger boy swell with pride. "This is really impressive, August."

"You put some serious work into this, huh?" Vivien noted.

"Yeah, I guess," August admitted as his steadily reddening cheeks were pulled aside by an appreciative grin. "It's not like I minded though," he went on to hurriedly explain. "It all came together pretty quickly once I got into it. Plus it gave me an excuse to shut myself up in my room away from my stuffy aunt and that stupid dog she carries around in her purse," he added, earning himself a bright laugh from Bentley that completely stalled his train of thought. Luckily, it was nothing that clearing his throat and refocusing his gaze on the blond's character sheet couldn't fix though. "I guess I just thought it would be something fun for us all to do together, you know?"

"Yeah, it sure sounds like it," Vivien said with a warm smile. But there was still a little, nagging thought hammering away at the back of her head, and she feared that if she didn't use this opportunity of an out as her last-ditch attempt at getting Royce alone before the end of the school day then that nagging thought would break right through her skull and puncture her brain with its pesky little pickaxe. And she needed all the brainpower she could muster to get through this, so she did not want to take any risks. "Anyway," she continued, snagging the attention of the table of eleven-year-olds as she clapped her hands together. "We'd better let you guys get back to planning. We wouldn't want to be the reason for you guys delaying your first adventure now, would we?" she asked rhetorically, firing a knowing look across at Royce that was not-so-subtly hidden behind a theatrical grin.

If Royce picked up on the intensity behind Vivien's gaze though, he didn't show it, instead remaining as blissfully oblivious as he always seemed to be when it came to her intentions as he took his turn to offer a fond smile to the table of his brother's friends. "You'll have to let us know how it goes," he said, before adding with a chuckle: "I'm invested now; it sounds awesome."

Breathing out a sigh of relief between her teeth as Royce rounded the picnic table to join her, Vivien kept her almost clown-like smile plastered to her face as she thanked whatever great powers were at work for making Royce ever so slightly more perceptive than the other, gormless teenage boys in their class. But just as she was inching her way back down the hill, and readying her opening line for the brunet once they were out of earshot of the eager little gremlins, one of them piped up with a perfectly pointed pin to burst her bubble. 

"Why don't you just play with us then?" 

Bentley's wide-eyed, hopeful grin was the only thing keeping Vivien from snatching up Kona's muddy jump rope and strangling him with it. Besides the years upon years of sibling-like friendship, obviously.

Forcing out a strained laugh, she managed a tight, "It's alright, Benny, we don't want to crash your fun." 

"You're not crashing anything; we want you to join in. Right, guys?" 

Ok, so Bentley can't read social cues… Good to know. 

It would have made things a hell of a lot easier if Vivien could have known about that before she set the wheels of her master plan into motion though, because right now she felt like they were so out of sync they were about to derail the handcar she'd strapped this grand idea of hers to. But even if she could have brought herself to get mad at Bentley, Zack jumped to the blond's defence before she even had the chance. 

"Yeah, we're gonna need all the help we can get because Kona can't add up for shit and I'm not about to let my guy Omar Scale Crusher die after I've spent all this time working out his stats."

"I can't add up for shit?! What the hell are you talking about? You're the one who got put in Math 2!"

"Only for a week! And I totally got a better grade than you on that test last week."

"No you didn't!"

"Did too!"

"Bite me!" 

As the pair energetically bickered about Zack's accusations, which Kona steadfastly claimed were built on entirely false foundations, Vivien found her frustration with the picnic table occupants crumbling away. After all, they weren't to know that she'd been practising for this lunchtime conversation with Royce for weeks. How could they? The only others she'd confided in were her three skating friends and the balding Big Bird stuffed animal from the end of her bed that had taken on the role of Royce during her many rehearsals. And she couldn't blame them for their excitement over the game either; even she had to admit that it sounded pretty cool. Plus, after hearing Riven rhapsodise about Hellfire's epic campaigns for weeks now, she was starting to get a little curious about the game and how it was played. 

"Omar Scale Crusher, huh?" she eventually chuckled, raising a quizzical eyebrow at Zack that soon ground his and Kona's squabbling to a halt. "How'd you come up with that?" 

"Isn't it sick? Auggie had this big list of names with cool meanings to help us decide."

After shuffling through the endless sheets of paper around him, August found the right one and went on to explain for a very enthusiastic Zack: "Omar means 'one who has a long life'."

"Yeah, so he'd better live up to his damn name! I'm not planning this whole thing out to have him die in the first round," he declared with a hearty laugh, before tagging on: "Plus my uncle's called Omar and he's awesome."

Vivien couldn't help her snort of laughter at the blunt innocence. "Very creative," she noted. "What is he then? Like a viking or something?"

"No, he's a wizard," Zack stated matter-of-factly. "'Cause why would I bother using a sword when I could just kill an enemy with magic?" 

"How come your guy's holding a sword then?" 

Royce's frank delivery, from over the younger boy's shoulder, had a laugh spurting from between Vivien's lips before she could stop it. And Bentley, August, and Kona were all quick to follow suit. 

However, as to be expected, the brash brunet soon scrambled a retaliation. "Well I'd still want one for backup."

"No duh," Kona chuckled as she finished shading in the metallic sheath of the dagger her character clutched in a leather clad fist. "Magic or not, you still need a weapon."

"Is your character a wizard too then?" Vivien asked Kona, but the incredulous snort the blonde let out could have told her all she needed to know on its own.

"No, Andromeda doesn't need to rely on magic to keep herself out of danger; her dexterity's off the charts." 

Before another argument could break out between Zack and Kona as a result of her roundabout dig at him, August decided to speak for the table. "Zack’s our mage, Kona's our thief, Ben's our Bard and my guy's a ranger."

"But you're the dungeon master too, right?" Bentley checked, mischievous blue eyes peeking out from beneath furrowed bows. 

August's own eyes were drawn to Bentley's the second that he'd opened his mouth, but the smirk tugging at his friend's lips was what captured his attention. "What's so funny?" he challenged through a chuckle that coaxed one out of Bentley too. "You don't think I could be a dungeon master?"

"I never said that," Bentley laughed. But the look the boys shared meant they both knew that's what his tone had implied.

"You didn't have to."

"Well can you blame me? It just sounds so menacing and scary. I know you read all those horror books and stuff, but come on, you're about as intimidating as Winnie the Pooh - who, last time I checked, was still tucked under your comforter next to your pillow and your old baby blanket."

Jaw dropped in incredulity, August lightly elbowed Bentley in the ribs. "I can so be intimidating," he retorted. But if he was pretending to be mad at the boy, his true feelings were soon revealed by the smile he couldn't seem to keep off his face.

"Yeah, well, we've yet to see it," Kona bluntly noted, which once again set Royce and Vivien off giggling at the sixth graders. 

"You sound like you've got a pretty well-rounded group then," Royce carried on, drawing the conversation back to August's point from earlier. "Are there even any roles left for us? Or are we going to have to start doubling up?"

"You can double up if you want, but there's still a bunch of classes that haven't been picked yet," August explained, flipping through the large book spread out before him until he got to the right page. "We've not got a druid, a cleric, or a fighter."

"What does a fighter do?" Royce asked.

"Fighters are weapons-oriented warriors, who fight using skill, strategy, and tactics," August recited from his handbook, bringing the group's attention to the detailed illustration of an armoured swordsman, wielding what looked to be an incredibly heavy shield with almost no effort at all.

The second Vivien's eyes met the page she knew it was game over; her imagination kicked into overdrive and tossed all other thoughts about how she could have been spending this lunchtime to the curb. Racing at a million miles an hour, her brain plucked ideas from seemingly thin air and began piecing together a muscular young woman, strong enough to knock an ox clean off its feet in one quick shove, although you'd never know it since her frame was cleverly disguised in roughened leather padding, tarnished silver armour, and rich, violet robes fashioned into a sort of cape. Her face was weathered, but kind, and her vibrant, emerald eyes sparkled with determination, and the promise of adventure. Like the picture in August's book, the woman carried a large, battle-scarred sword by its ornate handle, and kept a hefty shield vigilantly by her side, painted in, again, deep shades of indigo, violet, and the blood of her enemies, naturally. She also had a quiver of arrows slung over her shoulder though, nestled beside a crossbow, just peeking out from behind a head of flowing, chestnut locks. The heroine had no time for preening, so her hair was tousled with grease and grime from combatting the elements on her journeys, but as it fluttered in the wind, it was kept away from her face by intricate braids, weighed down by silver rings and stolen jewels of amethyst and topaz. She smiled at Vivien from the forefront of her mind, as if marking her territory there, and Vivien felt her heart skip a beat as she breathed out a quiet, and hopefully nonchalant: "Hmm…cool."

"That sounds like a good one for you, Viv. Strategy and tactics? You're great with planning stuff out," Royce noted. But one glance in her direction and his face broke into a knowing smile the second he clocked her eyes, glazed over in thought, and lips, parted in awe. 

"Yeah, and look, you'd make a great cleric," Bentley continued, pulling Royce's gaze away from Vivien, albeit reluctantly. Flipping the page of August's handbook, he excitedly tapped at a drawing of a tall man, draped in heavy, fur pelts and bronzed chainmail. A glowing staff was held in one hand, and a massive axe was thrown over his shoulder as though it weighed no more than a sack of flour. 

"Clerics are versatile figures, both capable in combat and skilled in the use of divine magic," August recited from the page after a light, nudge from Bentley. "They're also powerful healers."

"See? That's perfect for you! You're always helping patch us up if we fall off our bikes," Bentley enthused, undeterred by the amused chuckles that his brother unleashed as a result of what he thought was an adorably innocent explanation. 

"Yeah, and we could use a healer on our team, especially with those two and their lack of impulse control," August snorted as he gestured to Kona and Zack, who jumped at the chance to express their indignation. 

As the group of friends returned to jovially bickering amongst themselves, Royce and Vivien's minds were quietly whirring with ideas. Ideas which, upon glancing at one another, they soon realised were all too perfectly aligned. 

"What do you say then, losers?" Kona finally asked once she'd finished fighting her ground against the boys, snapping the eighth-graders out of their heads and bringing them back to reality with a knowing smirk. "Are you playing with us or not?"

Royce, as always, left the decision to Vivien. But the hopeful glimmer in his caramel eyes, paired with her own, itching curiosity made that decision all too easy. And besides, even if she wasn't spending time alone with Royce, she was still spending time with him. And that was good enough for her.

…For now. 

"Well… I guess one game couldn't hurt, right?" she said with a smirk that soon broke out into a grin as Bentley's face lit up like a firework display. And it only grew when she glanced across at Royce for one last confirmation that she'd made the right decision, only to find him beaming with almost as much enthusiasm as his brother. 

If this nerdy little game brought Royce this much joy, and was even half as much fun as it sounded, then Vivien knew it would be worth another few hours of crippling anxiety. Besides, she hoped that she could immerse herself in the story so much that she'd forget all about her predicament with the brunet anyway. But as they took their places at the picnic table, and Royce's sneaker brushing against her shin shot a jolt of adrenaline up her leg with such a force that she almost jumped straight back out of her seat, she knew that that was just wishful thinking. Covering up the brief waver in her cool, confident exterior with a quiet cough, she tried to refocus her mind on the endless streams of information August was unleashing on the pair of them.

"-and so the group our characters all belong to is called The Circle of the Emerald Torches, but part of the first campaign is about how we get our name, so I'll explain more about that later. Before you start, and before I give you your character sheets though, if you want to be in our party then you'll need to recite the Oath of Noble Heroes so that we know you're serious about this."

"Don't worry, we had to do it too. But it's so cool, you'll love it! And then there's a declaration of loyalty for you to sign somewhere too," Bentley tagged on before the boys started animatedly babbling amongst themselves about the ins and outs of their party's rules again. 

Shaking his head at the pair, Royce took the opportunity of them being distracted to lean over to Vivien and teasingly chuckle, "What the hell have you just gotten us into?"

Fighting the urge to roll her eyes at the boy, knowing that his enthusiasm for the game was a major driving factor in her decision to play, and that he was also well-aware of that fact, she looked him square in the face and hid her smirk behind a deadly serious, blank expression, "I'm pretty sure we just joined a cult." 

American History, Volume 2, lay open on page 38. And it had laid there like that for the past 45 minutes, having been abandoned by its current owner almost as soon as it had been removed from their backpack. Because instead of completing the assigned history homework, the desk's occupant was using their study hall period much more wisely: by shredding a solo, courtesy of Ozzy Osbourne, on possibly the most prestigious instrument of all: the air guitar.

Ethan's eyes slid shut, and a blissful smile curled his lips as he mashed the volume button on his Walkman with practised ease. Bar after bar of 'Crazy Train' pounded through his skull at a staggering volume, rattling what little of his brain was left in the mostly vacant space between his ears, helped along by the bopping of his head in time with the song's beat. When his fingers weren't plucking out riffs on imaginary strings, they were banging out the drumline on a drum kit that was just as real as his Gibson SG. And all the while, he was passionately miming the lyrics for his audience of the pencil shavings and dust mites that hugged the wall beside his desk. 

He felt the music in his bones. The bass line pumped through his veins. Every note that was played resonated through the chambers of his heart until it felt like the song was as much a part of him as his left arm. And the deeper he let himself sink into the music, the less aware of his surroundings he became - or the less he cared to remember them anyway. Until a sharp elbow to the ribs shattered his rockstar illusions, that is. 

Bleary brown eyes met earnest, steel blue, and held nothing but confusion for the several seconds it took him to realise that Miles’ mouth was moving without making a sound. 

“What?” Ethan bellowed, prying a wailing headphone speaker away from his ears as he leaned closer to the exasperated brunet. 

“Jesus, man!” Miles exclaimed under his breath as he reached across to his friend’s Walkman to frantically turn the volume down. “Are you trying to blow your eardrums out or something?” 

“That would be pretty metal, so maybe,” Ethan chuckled, entirely unphased. But Miles’ disapproving frown soon had him rolling out an explanation. “You’ve got a front row seat for my biggest show yet and you’re choosing to lecture me about volume control? I can care about my hearing when I’m in the retirement home.”

“You’ll be lucky if you make it to a retirement home," Miles snorted. "You've got the survival skills of a two dollar house plant."

Instead of arguing back, or even rolling his eyes at his best friend's dig, Ethan just continued chuckling along in agreement as he slid his headphones down to rest around his neck - still blaring out Ozzy Osbourne's vocals, although they were only just audible over the hubbub of chatter and laughter that filled the rest of the classroom. "What were you saying before anyway?" he went on to ask. "Did you want something?"

"Yeah, the answer to number four."

"Pfft, you think I've even made it past one?" Ethan guffawed, astonished and highly amused that Miles thought highly enough of him to assume he hadn't been shirking his responsibilities all afternoon. "I've got no fucking clue. What chapter are we on again? Abraham Lincoln?"

The mix of despair and disbelief Ethan was faced with when he glanced back across at Miles told him his guess might not have been as accurate as he'd pitched it to be. "...Are we not on Abraham Lincoln?"

"We haven't done Abraham Lincoln since freshman year," Miles deadpanned before letting out a chuckle of his own. "When was the last time you actually paid attention in one of Mr Bishop's classes?"

"Probably freshman year," Ethan noted with a laugh, slumping back in his seat and starting to rock on the back two legs of the flimsy, plastic chair. "I think the only chance I've got at retaining any of the information in that textbook for this month's pop quiz is if I eat it."

The look of reproach Miles shot the carefree stoner could have fooled any passerby into thinking that he was the boy's father, but he blamed that on the past however many years of having to act as a sole parental figure for two young boys - who, on several occasions, had actually proved to be far more mature than the lank-haired brunet before him. More often than not, Ethan felt like a third child he had to keep alive. And somehow, his lack of height was not one of the driving factors behind that reasoning.

"Oh come on, don't give me that look," Ethan groaned, ever the resentful teenager in their relationship. "You've not exactly been Mr Studious yourself today."

"What are you talking about?" 

"Well you've been stuck on that same question for the last twenty minutes 'cause you keep making goo-goo eyes at you know who," Ethan smirked as Miles' eyes widened in horror and his forehead started to prickle with sweat. 

"No I don't," he indignantly tried.

"I thought you said you were over her," Ethan teased.

"I am! It's not like that anyway," Miles muttered, then added. "And it's not been twenty minutes."

"It totally has."

"How the hell would you know? You've been listening to Motorhead since we sat down."

"Yeah but my fuckin' eyes still work," Ethan snorted, hitting Miles with a loving grin that had him rolling his eyes before Ethan had even finished his sentence. And yet, the boy's frustration did nothing to deter him from probing further. "What's the stalking for this time then? You know, if you're not trying to get in her pants anymore." 

Miles was at as much of a loss as Ethan. His eyes found the head of bouncing, blonde curls with almost no effort at all (likely a result of an entire study hall period of practice), searching for some sort of answer. But all he found was a dull, fluttering in his chest. 

Even the giddy, lovestruck butterfly that had been trapped in there for months seemed to have admitted defeat. 

Still, his gaze never wavered. He watched airy laughter spill from her glossy lips, and her nose crinkle beneath brilliantly blue eyes, framed by thick, black lashes and copious amounts of mascara. Whilst before, Miles could have eaten through a movie theatre's entire popcorn supply and still want to look just a little longer, in that moment he just felt empty. And that’s when he realised it wasn't actually Carrie herself that was occupying his mind, it was everyone else around her, and how she was treating them. Plucking a proudly presented flyer for a house party from one, impishly teasing another, waving at Sharon Frye on her way out the door, firing a flirty wink in jest at Steve Harrington after giggling at one of his jokes…

Miles was certain she'd looked at every other person in that room at least once since their study hall period had begun, and yet the closest her eyes had ventured over to him was when she glanced at the clock on the wall. Every thought in his head was plagued by her smile, or her voice, or her laugh… Had he ever even crossed her mind? 

"Do you think she actually cares about us?"

Miles hadn't been able to bring himself to tear his forlorn gaze from the blonde in question, but that didn't stop Ethan from snorting out an answer. "Well yeah, I'd hope so; we spend enough time with her." 

"Not by choice," Miles huffed. 

“Well she talks to us now, and that’s more than we could have said before we worked with her, so that’s got to count for something,” Ethan chuckled. “But if this is about what I think it’s about, then she absolutely cares about you, dude. Like way more than the rest of us.”

“You really think so?” 

“Dude, it’s like you two are glued at the hip. I can’t get you away from each other for shit once we close every night,” Ethan replied. And when Miles still looked unsure, he added, “Why else do you think I always get stuck cleaning the kitchen with Mick? She hates my guts!”

“No she does not,” Miles softly chuckled.

“Well I definitely don’t think she likes me, not like Carrie likes you anyway,” he retorted with a smirk and a wiggle of his eyebrows. “I’m telling you, man. There’s something there. There’s no way she’d laugh at your crappy jokes like she does if she didn’t at least have a little interest in you - I don’t care if Mick thinks it’s bullshit, I know I’m right.”

Miles just rolled his eyes, but a hopeful smile desperately pulled at his lips, no matter how many times he tried to dismiss it. “I don’t know, I think she probably just does it to be nice,” he mused, watching as Carrie animatedly responded to Rachel Price before turning back to resume her conversation with the girl sat beside her - the very girl that Miles still had an irrepressible urge to swap lives with: Juliet Harmon. Now faced with nothing but the back of her head, he quickly lost interest in the view. “…She seems to act like that with most people.”

“She definitely does not, man. Why do you think the entire marching band is scared to look her in the eye? She’s like one of the biggest bitches in school,” Ethan scoffed. But he paused when he realised Miles wasn’t laughing along with him. “Why does it matter how she acts around other people anyway?” 

“It doesn’t,” Miles huffed. “…Not really.” 

But the second he dared to make eye contact with his oldest friend, the floodgates opened and the truth came tumbling out. 

“I just…feel stupid for letting her get in my head, and for actually thinking that we had something special - that I was somehow different to all the other idiots who throw themselves at her to get a second of her attention. But here I am, thinking about her constantly, hanging onto every interaction we have like my fucking life depends on it, only for her to… Ugh, I don't know. I just…don't want it all to not mean anything to her, when it means so much to me - no matter how much I try to convince myself it doesn't. I mean, yeah, she's nice to me at work - really nice - but she barely even acknowledges me outside of All Skate… It's like I don't even exist, like she doesn't even realise I'm there. And it makes me feel like shit."

"She barely acknowledges anyone," Ethan absentmindedly mused. "I wouldn't take it personally."

"That's a lot easier said than done," Miles huffed dejectedly. There was something freeing about Ethan's nonchalance over Miles' feelings though; it made them feel less suffocating. And whilst he still felt entirely hopeless about the situation, he did feel a little bit of the pressure ease off as he rested his chin on his hand and let his mind start to wander. "...You think she actually considers us friends?"

"Sure; she calls us her work friends all the time."

"No but like her actual friends," Miles clarified. 

"Dude, I don't fucking know; the female mind is a mystery to me at the best of times, but hers is on a whole other level," Ethan scoffed in incredulity. "Do you not remember that like thirty minute debate I had with her about diet sodas? Actual insanity.”

Miles' quiet chuckling as he reminisced about what had started as an innocent question, yet progressed to a full-blown screaming match, with each participant equally as confused and frustrated as the other, was soon silenced by Ethan's next prompt though. "I know a way you can find out though…"

"...No!" 

"Oh come on, man. Don't be a sissy. It'll be so easy. And then you can stop getting hung up on all these bogus hypotheticals."

Miles' initial horror slowly dissipated as Ethan's reasoning started to lure out a far greater force from its hiding place in the corner of his brain: his curiosity. "...You really think I can just go up and talk to her? In class?" he asked, as his eyes once again found that jumble of golden curls. 

"Sure, why not? It's only study hall." 

Again, Ethan's nonchalance, which was only heightened by the fact that he was trying to balance a pen on his curled upper lip as he responded, did far more for Miles' confidence than any pep talk of his own could have. And besides, maybe he was onto something - maybe it really was that simple; it always was in his world. 

"It wouldn't be weird?" Miles double-checked. 

"Why would it be weird? All you're gonna do is talk to her. And we already established you two are friends, so what could go wrong?" 

Miles shuddered at the very thought. "So much."

Ethan glanced across at him, ready to fire out further encouragement like a sixth grader with a penchant for making spitballs, but when he clocked his friend's nervous fidgeting, he reconsidered his situation and gained a little clarity. "Ok…yeah, fine, stuff could go wrong. But are you gonna die?" he proposed.

"No," Miles begrudgingly mumbled.

"Are you gonna break something?"

"No, but-"

"Then how bad can it be?" Ethan cut in with a lopsided, optimistic grin before Miles could tie himself up in any more self-conscious knots. "Just get over there and scratch that itch that's been bugging you for weeks; it's not gonna stop until you do. And you'll feel so much better after."

It took Miles by surprise every time it happened, but yet again, it seemed as though Ethan might actually be…right. This question of Carrie's loyalty had been eating away at him for weeks now. And, as he'd stressed earlier, it was making him feel shittier and shittier with every day he let it drag on. Asking her outright was a definite way to get his answer… It was just going to require him growing some balls, as anything to do with All Skate's resident disc jockey apparently made his own shrink to the size of peas.

"...Just walk over and talk to her?" Miles checked. Although, between us, he was just stalling to give himself more time to muster some courage.

"Yeah, as a friend," Ethan confirmed. 

"You really think I can pull that off?" Miles asked with a dubious, but hopeful quirk of his eyebrow that had Ethan melting like a bomb pop that had been left out in the 4th of July sun.

"Absolutely," he grinned, totally enamoured by his friend's giddy trepidation, and the promise of a relationship he so steadfastly defended. "She's got a major soft spot for you, man. I see it like every night," he went on to reassure. "There's no way she's gonna blow you off. You'll be fine."

And as a result of that dopey grin, complemented by the ratty, chestnut locks, and vacant, dark chocolate eyes… Miles believed him. 

"...Ok, I'm going in," he breathed through a determined smile. 

"Atta boy," Ethan chuckled, fist-bumping Miles before tipping his chair back onto all four of its legs again, as though to signal the resolution of their predicament. "Go scratch that itch," he added, finishing their little handshake with a bolstering point before lifting his headphones back over his ears and disappearing back into his wildest rock star fantasies - totally oblivious to the disaster about to unfold right behind him as Miles took a deep breath and waded into the wild, uncharted waters of the female mindset. 

"So now that we know that y=7, we plug that into this side of the function, that we've already simplified, to give us this…which then means that we can carry this over here, giving us x=3." 

…Silence.

"Right?" Juliet checked, although the satisfied smile that had settled on her carnation pink lips as soon as she finished the sum was beginning to falter into one of desperation as she turned to her tutee. "Did you follow along ok that time?"

But all Juliet was met with was a glassy stare and an infatuated grin, smushed between two fists as its owner rested their chin on their palms. "You're so smart, Julie," Carrie breathed. 

Juliet just rolled her eyes, although she did little to hide the bashful blush tickling her cheeks. “Never mind that, did you understand how I worked it out that time?” 

"...Kind of?" Carrie tried, offering a lopsided, hopeful grin to try to lessen the blow.

If Juliet's exasperated huff was anything to go by though: it didn't work. But her frustration dissolved the second that she met Carrie's gaze. "Where did I lose you?" she asked with a gentle, patient sigh. 

"The whole reversing the function bit," Carrie admitted as she bit her lip and braced herself for Juliet's reaction. Although the blonde's expression never wavered, the dismay that flashed in her eyes soon had Carrie barrelling through an explanation. "I swear I was getting it before that this time, but then it all started to sound like you were talking in another language, and then I got distracted by that pretty way you write out the 'x' again, and then I just…"

"...Stopped listening all together?" Juliet teasingly offered with a fond smirk.

Carrie scoffed in mock-defence. "No, I listened the whole time, I just stopped taking it in," she went on to clarify. But as soon as she drew a giggle from Juliet's lips she melted into that same infatuated grin from earlier as she admitted, "I'd never stop listening to you. You know I could listen to you talk for hours."

"Even about algebra?" Juliet teasingly tested with an affectionate smile of her own. 

"Of course about algebra," Carrie gushed with a glittering honesty that soon had Juliet giggling again. "Believe it or not, this is the most I've ever understood a math module," she carried on, straightening up in her seat to help give her point a little more credibility, before tagging on a jovial, "And it's all thanks to you, smarty pants."

"Would you stop calling me that? It's so lame," Juliet protested, hiding her smile behind a frank eye roll. "And besides, I'm not that smart." 

"You so are; you're like the smartest person I know," Carrie gushed, never one to let her friends downplay their successes, much to Juliet's disgruntlement. The blonde's frown didn't deter Carrie from continuing to lovingly babble straight through her stream of consciousness though. "That brain of yours has to be huge - no wonder you get headaches all the time, it's because it doesn't have enough space in there."

Carrie's knack for making herself giggle never failed to make Juliet smile, but yet again she found herself trying to cover it up with a bashful roll of her hazel irises as she let out a sigh and attempted to get their conversation back on track. "You wanna try another question then?" 

"Don't try to change the subject," Carrie fired back with a mischievous grin. 

"I'm not, you are!" Juliet retorted, biting back an incredulous laugh. "We're supposed to be doing algebra, not Juliet 101."

Carrie's mischievous grin only broadened. "Now that's a class I might actually get an A in."

Rolling her eyes for the third time at her best friend's antics, Juliet teasingly tried, "What? Not an A+?"

"Maybe," Carrie smirked. "But then again, I might get distracted by my teacher." Her wiggling eyebrows soon had Juliet reprimanding her and attempting to draw her focus back to her school work, but Carrie's mind was already wandering off too far down a different path altogether. "...Do you think you'd ever wanna be a doctor, Julie?" 

The comment, that fell slap-bang in the middle of Juliet's offer to rewrite the steps of the previous algebra equation, baffled her into silence - so taken aback by the suggestion that she almost thought she'd misheard the golden-haired girl. "What? No," she spluttered, looking at Carrie as though she'd just sprouted a third nose. "Where did that come from?"

Juliet's confusion didn't seem to faze Carrie though, because her dreamy smile stuck it out through her whole, rambling explanation. "I don't know, I just figured you should use your big brain for a job one day. You know, like one that actually actually makes you think instead of just like a working a cash register, or stacking books or something. And you need to be super smart to be a doctor, so…"

Juliet was quick to shoot down Carrie's optimistic grin. "I do not have what it takes to be a doctor, trust me."

"Sure you do," Carrie defended. "I'd let you be my doctor."

"Oh well then hand me my diploma," Juliet sarcastically replied, once more fondly rolling her eyes and chuckling at her best friend's enamoured stare and incessant bolstering. 

"I'm serious," Carrie pressed on though, determined to get through to Juliet despite her doubtful smirk. "I'd trust you with my life, you know I would. I'd let you save my life any day of the week," she grinned. But, after giggling to herself and absentmindedly twirling her pencil between her fingers, when she finally latched onto Juliet's hazel gaze again, only to find it significantly less jovial, it was her turn to express her confusion. "What? You don't believe me?" she teasingly challenged, with a quirk of an eyebrow. 

But Juliet still didn't seem to be in the mood to joke back, as her lips fell in line with the horizon and her gaze darted to Carrie's right before finding her again. 

Ok, now Carrie was really confused. 

"Huh?" she murmured, clearly not as in tune with her best friend's thoughts as she assumed she was. 

However, this time, Juliet flicked her eyes to Carrie's right with a touch more resolve, and paired it with a slight, but very purposeful nod of her head in the same direction. And finally, Carrie seemed to get the message. 

Following Juliet's line of sight, Carrie turned to look over her shoulder, only to find herself face to face with a person that almost caught her off guard as much as Juliet's sudden shift in dynamic had. "Oh," was the first word to jump from her lips, startling her back into what Juliet lovingly dubbed as 'show-mode' as she rolled her shoulders back and fixed a brilliant smile to her face. "Hey, Miles."

The second that Carrie acknowledged Miles, any confidence he'd managed to trick himself into conjuring fled. And whilst he had a Herculean urge to do the same, he too plastered what he hoped was a convincing smile to his face as he finished his approach to the blondes' shared desk. "Hey, Carrie," he said, breathing a sigh of relief for even managing to get the words out. And yet, he still pushed a little further to add, with a nod of acknowledgement too, "Juliet." 

The entertained smirk that started pulling at the corner of Juliet's lips in response caught him off guard, and he felt his stomach gently clench in defence. But he chose to ignore it, returning his gaze to Carrie's bright smile - its familiarity putting him back at ease and igniting that usual fire in his chest that sent warmth spreading throughout his- 

Wait, why was she turning back around? 

"Right, where were we?" Carrie said, dazzling Juliet with a grin as she readied her pencil on the page. "I've got a good feeling about this next one; I think if you just take it slow-."

"Ahem," Juliet interrupted. Her gaze caught Carrie's once again and held onto it for a beat before she tilted her head forwards, signalling with her eyes that there was still something - or rather, someone - behind her. The confusion, almost disbelief, swimming in Carrie's eyes made Juliet have to bite the inside of her cheek to stop herself from laughing, and locking onto Miles' look of bewildered dismay just made it even harder. But luckily, Carrie was quickly able to decipher her visual message once again, with little prompting this time.

Turning around to find that, to her surprise, Miles hadn't just been greeting her as he passed by her desk, he was, in fact, standing there - well, expectantly shuffling from foot to foot anyway - Carrie remounted her smile. Although now, Miles realised, it wasn't so welcoming. It felt almost…uncomfortable.  

"Oh, sorry. Did you want something?" she offered. 

He did - desperately so. And yet, he felt as though the sudden shift in tone had already started to write out his answer. 

The hairs on the back of his neck started to twitch as the walls of his stomach steadily closed in tighter. But, determined to stand by his heart, and prove to himself (and Mick) that his feelings weren't all built on fantasies he'd created in his head, he brushed the unease away and stood his ground. "No, not really. I just thought I'd…stop by…see how it's going."

Carrie's smile faltered again, giving way to further confusion. "...See how what's going?"

"...Study hall?" Miles said. But the response came out as more of a question than an answer, which he supposed was down to the fact that he wasn't even sure of it himself. And despite his hopeful grin, which he feared was now looking more like a grimace, he couldn't seem to stop trying to rub the growing discomfort from the back of his neck. 

God, he hoped that he didn't have any sweat stains. 

"Oh, uh, it's going fine," Carrie politely replied. Although her awkward fidgeting with her pencil's eraser told a different story. "We're just going through the algebra homework."

It was weird; it wasn't as though the conversation was making her seem 'off', it was like…the very fact he was talking to her was so distracting she couldn't settle. She was the centre of Miles' universe. And apparently he was just an asteroid in hers: a misshapen hunk of space rock, hurtling past in the blink of an eye, and completely blindsiding her with his very insignificant existence. 

A fellow asteroid must have collided with him at some point, because he could feel this weird twinge in his chest, by his heart, almost as though the impact had chipped a corner off. He swallowed thickly, pushing the creeping discomfort away. "The one for Mr Moreno's class?" 

"Mhm," Carrie confirmed with a nod. 

"Oh, nice…" Miles trailed off with an awkward chuckle and what he feared was now looking like a rather desperate smile. And he was sure his expression only got worse when his gaze was pulled off-course by Juliet, who gave him a look that made him want to give up altogether. How her hazel irises had managed to harness the ability to hiss 'you are totally blowing this' in his ear, he had no idea. And yet, the urge to prove her (and everyone else) wrong gave him the motivation to plough on. "Well, if you still need any help with it later, I don't mind going through some of the answers with you at wo-"

"It's alright," Carrie bluntly cut in, slicing out a chunk of Miles' self-esteem as she did so. "Julie's got it covered," she added, turning to dazzle the blonde with a brilliant grin. 

By the time that grin made its way around to Miles though, it felt cold. And it seemed suppressed, like she hadn't really wanted him to see it. What he feared was the beginnings of a smirk were tugging at the corners of her lips too. And whilst he wanted to believe that it wasn't at his expense - some cruel inside joke the pair of blondes had whispered with their oh-so talkative eyes in the second that Carrie's back was turned - something in the pit of his stomach told him otherwise. 

"Thanks though," Carrie lazily tacked on, with a brightness in her tone that just felt hollow to Miles now. 

"No problem," he breathed. But there was a problem, and he was staring right at her.

Miles tried to find it in him to mean the smile he sent her, but he just couldn't. Somehow, what was supposed to have been a simple conversation between 'friends' had left him feeling more insecure than ever. Why was she so difficult to talk to? And was she making it so difficult? If they'd been at All Skate, cleaning the rink after their shift, he'd have had no trouble talking to her - their conversations flowed like the Mississippi River when it was just the two of them. And yet here, he felt like he was trying to coax water out of a rusty garden tap in the peak of a summer drought. 

He couldn't find the words to piece together what he wanted to ask - he didn't think such a sentence existed, not one that he could construct anyway. Carrie seemed hellbent on getting rid of him, which did nothing for his creeping fear that she was only nice to him at work because she had no other option for company. And the damn heat radiating from Juliet's pitying smirk had so much sweat running down his back he contemplated running to the nearest bathroom to wring out his underwear. 

And somehow, those glittering, sky blue eyes of hers still threw him a line - a glimmer of hope to cling to. After all, she'd surprised him before - countless times - maybe she'd be able to do it again.

Just as Miles was moving to open his mouth to try one last time though, he was beaten to it. 

"Was there anything else you wanted? Or was that it?" 

Any hopes of a redemption for the blonde were snatched from Miles' grasp, and the reality of it felt like a punch to the gut. Thoroughly deflated, he accepted his fate with a heavy sigh. It may not have been the outcome he wanted, but at least he had an answer now, and there was a silver lining to that, he supposed. 

"...No," he breathed through a forlorn, but relieved smile. "That was…that was all."

Miles felt he must have imagined the concern that flickered in Carrie's gaze - wishful thinking, he supposed - because the airy giggle and laidback grin she flashed him certainly didn't marry up with it. "Oh, alright then. See you later!" she chirped with a wave as he started the walk of shame back to his desk. Again, just as he was turning back to offer a farewell of his own though, she managed to get her words in first. "Don't forget your thick socks."

Miles stopped in his tracks. Now he was more confused than ever. The cheeky glint in her eyes, the knowing smile, the reference to a throwaway joke from their closing shift last night… Everything he'd just come to terms with about her vehement disinterest in him had been called into question with those five, simple words, and a wink that just about made his heart stop.

…Maybe she did really care after all. 

With his heart leaping up from its dejected slumber, Miles shot her a grateful smile and chuckled an earnest, "I won't." Breathing out a contented sigh, mind already racing with ways to talk to her about this more that evening, Miles finally felt his shoulders relax as he raised the hand that had been rubbing the back of his neck his whole time. "See you la-"

Nevermind, she'd already turned around to talk to Juliet again. 

Again the brunet was flummoxed. The only thing he felt truly confident about as he slunk back to his desk was the very thing he'd been warned of before wading into that mess: the female mind was a mystery. And he had never felt further from figuring it out.

Turning back to Juliet, Carrie couldn't help but shake her head and chuckle under her breath. "That was weird," she noted, tilting her head in the direction of her retreating co-worker.

But Juliet's eyes had never left the bumbling brunet. "Mmm… He's kind of cute," she mused. Although her prompting smirk was lost on her tutee, since her sapphire gaze was immediately pulled to the back of Miles' head.  

"Yeah." Carrie's breathed response fell from her lips with startling ease, so much so that it even surprised herself. Hoping to catch it before it slipped into Juliet's ears though, she shook the starry-eyed gaze from her head and scrambled together a cover-up. "Uh, yeah? I can try to set the two of you up if you want. You know, put in a good word at work and stuff." 

If she expected Juliet to accept her optimistic offer with open arms though, she was soon proved wrong.

"Yeah something tells me he's not interested in me," she snorted.

Carrie looked at her, perplexed. "What are you talking about? Why wouldn't he be? You're like a total babe."

"Oh come on, Carrie. Please tell me you know that he's got a major crush on you," Juliet said with an almost disapproving frown. "Like major major."

Carrie scoffed at the accusation. "It's not major," she tried, rolling her eyes in a further attempt to downplay the gravity of what Juliet was implying. 

"Carrie," Juliet pressed as she knitted her brows. "The guy could barely speak."

Caving under the blonde's hardened gaze, Carrie let out a resentful huff. "Ok fine, so he's got a little crush," she finally conceded. "What's so bad about that? It's not like anything's gonna happen; he knows I've got a boyfriend."

"Mhm… And what does Eric have to say about Miles?"

Carrie rolled her eyes so hard Juliet thought for a second that they might never come back down again. "Why does it matter?" she groaned, her skin prickling with irritation. 

"Well he's not exactly got the best track record when it comes to being understanding about you hanging out with other guys," Juliet sighed, with a sneaking suspicion that her tutee's frustration had been triggered by the mention of her boyfriend's name alone: a welcome sign that their relationship was as healthy as ever. Not.

Carrie scoffed as a bitter scowl settled into place. "It's not like I'm 'hanging out with him', we just work together. I barely talk to him during my shift anyway, only when we're clearing stuff up at the end."

"Oh yeah?" Juliet started, curiosity piqued. "And what happens then?"

"Nothing!" Carrie insisted. "We just talk - you know me, I can't keep my mouth shut even when I want to, so of course I'm gonna talk to the guy." Letting out a sigh to try to blow off some steam, she softened under Juliet's gaze and allowed the blonde to lead her through her haze of thoughts. And if Juliet's gentle nudge in the right direction wasn't already enough to do the trick, one glance at Miles' retreating form completely burst the dam. "We've been talking for like the whole last hour of every shift since I started - about school, movies, whatever really - it's like the only thing in that dump that's worth sticking around for. I kind of just did it because I was bored out of my mind at the start, but turns out he's actually really fun, and sweet too - you wouldn't believe some of the stuff he does for his little brothers, Julie; I've literally gone and cried in the break room before after he was telling me about it. It's that cute." 

"You cry at everything," Juliet countered with a fond, teasing chuckle. 

"Oh come on, not everything," Carrie retorted. Naively hoping that their conversation on the matter had ended there, she let her eyes settle on Juliet's again, only for them to inch open the floodgates once more with a simple bat of her lashes and a tilt of her head. "We just talk and…goof around," she tentatively began - defensive, despite her nonchalance. "You know, make each other laugh about weird things customers have said, or stupid things we did. It's not like we're fooling around or anything. And before you say it, because I know that face: no, I am not leading him on. It's all totally platonic, I swear."

"Ok…" Juliet softly trailed off, taking a moment to choose her words before raising her next point. "Does Miles know it's all 'totally platonic'?"

Carrie let out a groan of despair, as she always did when her best friend lovingly lectured her. "I don't know, Jules. I'm not a mindreader. He's not grabbed my ass or spiked my water bottle, if that's what you're getting at," she grumbled, before promising, "I've got it all under control, I swear."

Somehow, Juliet didn't seem to be buying it; as impervious to Carrie's confident charm as ever. 

"So Eric's totally chill about this whole thing with Miles?" she tested, arching a perfectly plucked eyebrow.  

"He knows I work with him…" Carrie mumbled.

Juliet nodded understandingly - almost too understandingly - in Carrie's periphery. 

"...And does he know how he makes you feel?"

Daring to challenge Juliet's calculated point with ignorant defiance, Carrie whirled around to meet the blonde's smug expression with a gasp of indignation, and an argument that fell away the second she realised that she didn't have a single word in her head to back it up with. Admitting defeat, she sighed and let her body slump, along with her hopes of her vindication in her best friend's hazel eyes. "Ok, yeah, fine. I know Miles has a crush on me," she confessed. Although the guilt laced into her words steadily morphed into hurt the more she tried to defend herself. "And yeah, I do lean into it sometimes because it makes me feel good about myself. Is that really so bad? Is it such a bad thing to want someone to be extra nice to you for once? Or to give you some positive attention?" 

"No, of course not," Juliet assured, assuming a fierce determination of her own. "I just think your boyfriend should be able to do all those things and more, and clearly he's not."

Carrie sighed, exhausted by the very thought of him. "This isn't about Eric."

Juliet sighed back, exasperated by her best friend's submissiveness, especially when she was usually so domineering. "How can you still want to defend him, Carrie?"

"Because, I love him, Julie," Carrie replied, finally finding the contented smile the thought of him should have immediately slapped on her face. "And because he's a good guy."

"Really? Because he's been nothing but a dick to you lately," Juliet flatly countered, hoping that with a little pushing her friend would see sense. 

"We've just had a couple of arguments, it's not a big deal," Carrie casually defended. "And they're all resolved now, so I don't know what you still have to complain about."

"Just because you had make-up sex does not mean that the problems were resolved," Juliet rolled her eyes before fixing the golden-haired girl with a more earnest look. "Did he actually apologise this time?"

"We talked it out first-"

"Did he apologise?"

Carrie squirmed under Juliet's gaze before muttering a reluctant, "No."

"Ugh," Juliet groaned, rolling her eyes again as she wound up to unleash a rant she'd been working up to for weeks. But, to her dismay, Carrie's defences beat her to it.

"Neither of us did, really. We just agreed to forget it and move on."

"How is that resolving anything?" Juliet asked with an annoyed frown that Carrie was starting to take personally. 

"Well I hadn't thought about it until now, so it must have at least kind of worked," she attempted to justify. 

But Juliet's nettled scoff told her that her stance on the matter wasn't budging. "You and Eric might as well speak two different languages; I've seen a pig and a fly communicate better than you two." 

The comment drew a giggle from Carrie's lips before she could stop it. "Don't try to distract me with your cute, Southern lingo," she said as the amused smile settled on her face and she affectionately bumped her friend's arm - the act bringing both their tempers back down to Earth. Before Juliet could launch into another lecture though, Carrie hoped to diffuse the situation once and for all. "Anyway, we worked it all out and everything's back to normal," she said. Although Juliet's questioning glance made her correct herself, "Better than normal. In fact, we're going to go look for Halloween costumes together this weekend," she finished with an optimistic grin. 

Now that was an improvement. For the first time since they'd sat down, Juliet found herself pleasantly surprised. "The Barbie and Ken costume's back on? I'm impressed. You two really must be getting along." Knowing how excited Carrie had been about the idea, she couldn't help but smile at the prospect of it finally coming into fruition. 

"Oh no, the Ken idea's long gone. I think he's going as a firefighter or something now."

Juliet's optimism shattered in a split second, and yet she stayed frozen in place, mouth hanging open in disbelief. "...You're kidding, right?"

"No, but I don't really mind. I'll just find something else to go as," Carrie sighed through a small, indifferent smile. If she'd spotted the disgust hidden in Juliet's eyes after her last revelation, she chose to ignore it. "It'll be fun getting to plan out my own costume anyway; I've got so many more options now. And plus, the Barbie one was only gonna be a pain in the ass to-"

"You're not even doing a couples one?" Juliet asked, far too concerned with what she was learning to care about hearing out Carrie's excuses. 

"He thinks couples costumes are lame," she explained with a huff. "Or at least that's what Adam told him anyway. He said he wanted to just do his own thing."

"But Carrie, you've been excited about doing a joint costume with him for like a whole year."

"So?" Carrie asked, with an eyebrow quirk of her own, shoving the accusation aside as though she was kicking an ice cube under the refrigerator. "It's just a dumb Halloween party, it doesn't matter what we wear; everyone will probably be too drunk to even pay attention anyway."

"Yeah, but it matters that he doesn't care about stuff that's important to you. He never has, and it's selfish, Carrie - super selfish…" Juliet trailed off with a frustrated sigh, praying that she might finally get the ditzy DJ to see sense. "You need to stop defending his shitty behaviour."

"And do what?" Carrie mumbled, unknowingly giving Juliet just what she wanted: a chance to unleash her anger with the infantile blond bozo and the mockery of a relationship he had roped her best friend into.

"Hold him accountable," she urged, hazel eyes blazing with passion. "Relationships should not have to revolve around making excuses and placating your partner with blow jobs - it's a fucking joke. I don't care about all the 'good times' you guys have, or all the memories you've made; the way you've been treating each other lately is appalling, and you deserve way better," she said, pausing to let Carrie absorb everything she'd just thrown at her before delivering the finishing blow. "And I know you know that too, because you're already looking for it in someone else."

Carrie's blood stilled in her veins. Sometimes it scared her how deeply Juliet understood her, and other times it felt comforting. This was not one of those times. 

She took in a slow, shuddering breath as Juliet's words seeped into her skin, carrying a deep sense of guilt with them. As much as she wanted to denounce Juliet's observations and stand by her own, joyously declaring her undying love for her boyfriend at the top of her lungs…her mouth made no attempt to move from its crestfallen frown. It couldn't, because she knew she was wrong. 

The despondency in the blonde's vacant, blue eyes soon drew Juliet down from her soap box though. This time she approached with a gentle, almost apologetic, smile as she entwined their fingers and began rubbing circles into the back of her tanned hand with the pad of her thumb. "I just want what's best for you, Car," she quietly promised. 

"I know," Carrie murmured, mustering a grateful smile as she squeezed her hand back, as though to say a 'thank you' her mouth wasn't quite ready to commit to yet. "I'm fine, Julie, I swear," she went on to profess. But when she started to get a sneaking suspicion that the statement wasn't all that convincing, she decided to switch up her tactic. "Now can we please get back to algebra?" 

The genuine laughter that tumbled from Juliet's lips was music to Carrie's ears. "There's a sentence I never thought I'd hear you say," Juliet chuckled as she picked up her pencil again. 

"I'll do anything to get us talking about something else," Carrie admitted with a woeful chuckle of her own. "And besides, I think I've got a better chance of wrapping my head around this than anything to do with my love life at the moment."

"Boyfriends suck, huh?" Juliet snorted with a knowing smirk.

"Try all boys suck," Carrie countered with a smirk of her own, at last feeling as though some of her signature confidence was leaching back into her frame. Although the pair's giggles took a few seconds to die back down, a mischievous glint remained in Carrie's eyes before she let them glaze over in thought. Mind idly wandering down untrodden paths, a wistful sigh escaped alongside a rogue proposal. "Wouldn't it make life so much easier if we could take them out of the equation altogether?"

Carrie was too lost in thought to notice, but the words that left her mouth forced an entire systems reboot in Juliet's brain. She had to do a double take, certain that she must have misheard her, or had at least missed the joking undertone. But no, the glassy, pensive blue irises held nothing but sincerity. And that confused Juliet more than ever. Her mind whirred with possible explanations for the brainless musings that definitely didn't sound as though they came from a girl in a committed, heterosexual relationship, but before she dared to question her on any, a tanned hand, the size of a frying pan, pulled her prospective interview subject right out of her seat. 

Carrie's eyes widened as she was whisked into a pair of cotton-clad arms the size of tree trunks, hardly able to catch her breath before it was being exchanged for someone else's. A faintly stubbled smile pressed into hers several times before she fully regained her bearings and was able to catch the frying pan hand from travelling too far south of her waist. "Eric," she giggled once she finally managed to inch their lips far enough apart to mumble a greeting against his skin. A subsequent flurry of kisses kept her from elaborating any further though. It was a wonder they didn't pass out from lack of air. 

"Hi, beautiful," he eventually greeted with a smitten grin. But their lips didn't stay apart for long as the dopey quarterback seemed hellbent on keeping his coated in his girlfriend's saliva. "You have a good study hall?" he mumbled, nuzzling his nose against hers. His roaming fingers shattered any hope of his interest in her life being genuine though.

Even if Carrie had wanted to answer Eric's question, his tongue was shoved so far down her throat she couldn't get her words out. "Eric," she finally gasped, jerking her head back from his with a breathy laugh as she felt his thumb start to lift the hem of her cheerleading skirt. "You're gonna get us both detention." 

"I can't help it," he chuckled, pulling her back towards him for another seemingly endless stream of kisses. "I missed you." And whilst a stupefied grin played at his constantly interlocking lips, something didn't feel quite right with Carrie. Her kisses were lazy, almost reluctant, and whilst her body normally felt like putty between his palms, today it felt…stiff. She seemed distracted. And because Eric's head was only ever swimming with thoughts of her, this worried him. "Hey," he gently prompted, nudging her chin with his knuckle to bring her gaze up to meet his. "Everything ok?"

Carrie's breath stuck in her throat, too scared of getting caught in the crossfire of two sets of brown eyes to dare to leave. Eric's sat beneath a pair of thick, furrowed brows, marred with insecure concern, and she could feel Juliet's boring holes into the back of her skull, begging her to remember everything they’d just spoken about. Tensions were high in her usually spacious brain - thoughts flying back and forth too quickly for her to make sense of as she tried to let her conscience guide her in the right direction. And although she felt herself inching towards a blonde ponytail-bolstered confession, her conscience's valiant efforts were all for naught. Carrie's fingers found purchase in the bristly blond hairs at the nape of Eric's neck, her cheeks were dusted in the scent of spearmint and the sweaty must from his football helmet. The profound warmth of his embrace seeped into her bones, and she curled up into it like a cat in the glow of fireplace embers - helpless to resist. "Everything's great," she promised, drawn in by the comfort of familiarity. "I just missed you too."

Disappointed, but not surprised by her best friend's decision, Juliet sighed as she tore her gaze away from the stomach-churning couple and began gathering together her and Carrie's things. She'd get through to her eventually, she had faith in the pit of her steadily grumbling gut. She just needed to be patient…or to find something that could drive a wedge between them once and for all.

"Ethan!" 

The pint-size pothead almost jumped out of his skin at the barked greeting, which actually felt more like an accusation than a 'hello'. He didn't know what was more offensive, the girl's tone or the fact that she'd interrupted his concert-for-one. 

"Jesus, Mick! You scared the shit outta me!" he cried. 

Rolling her eyes, Mick let go of the headphone speaker she'd had to pry away from Ethan's ear after he'd blatantly ignored her fifth call of his name, letting it thwack the side of his head. The look on his face as he recoiled in bewilderment did have a faint smile tugging at her lips though. But it soon disappeared when he slumped back in his seat and readied himself to tune her out again. 

Moving to stand in front of his desk, Mick didn't give him a chance. "Where's Miles?" 

"What?" Ethan squeaked.

"Where's Miles?" she reiterated, crossing her arms across her chest and nodding at the empty seat beside him.

"He's talking to Carrie," he revealed with a blasé wave of his hand in the vague direction of the pair.

Even with AC/DC blasting through his headphones, Ethan swore he heard Mick's face crack.

"He's doing what now?" she demanded, flames roaring in the mahogany logs that made up her irises. 

"He's just asking her something, it's no big deal," Ethan said - although his attempts to reassure the brunette were ham-handed at best given his lazy grin and total lack of concern. 

This was further backed up by Mick's growing urge to strangle him. "Can I not trust you to do anything?" she hissed. 

"What did I do?" Ethan squawked in indignation.

"Nothing - that's the problem! All you had to do was keep his mind off her-" 

"I don't know what fucking mind-control powers you think I've got, Mick, but that was a bogus plan in the first place."

"Oh so what? You just weren't gonna go along with it at all?" Mick scoffed. "I just said to try to keep him distracted."

"And I tried, so I don't know what you're getting all pissy at me for," Ethan retorted. "What's so wrong with him talking to her anyway? I thought 'working through your feelings' was supposed to be a good thing."

Scowling at him for using her own advice against her, she snapped, "Talking to her is not helping him distance himself from her." But when her eyes scanned the room for that familiar mop of coffee brown hair, the sight it settled on made her heart drop to her collegiate green Campuses. "And neither is a run-in with Eric Brennan."

Trailing back to his seat, muttering to himself about the mystifying female mindset and what the hell all of that could have meant, Miles soon realised he wasn't looking where he was going when he collided with what felt like a wall of meat. 

"Shit, sorry," he muttered.

When he looked up and saw who it was that had almost knocked him off his feet though, he realised his assumption hadn't been too far off.

"Woah, watch it, man," Eric guffawed.

The amused twinkle in his eye, and the smirk that blossomed as soon as his gaze landed on him, made Miles' stomach twist. Something told him that this interaction wasn't going to be nearly as quick as he'd hoped. 

"Miles, right?" Eric went on to ask, eyebrow cocked in recognition. 

"Uh, yeah," Miles stammered, although he was more confused than concerned at this point. 

"Why you in such a hurry, bud? You got somewhere to be?" he continued, a charming smirk still sitting proudly on his chiselled jaw. 

"I'm just going back to my seat."

"Oh yeah?" Eric probed, steadily turning up the pressure. "And why were you out of it?"

Miles immediately regretted the exasperated huff that fell from his lips, but he couldn't help his frustration. "Why does it matter?" 

To Miles' surprise, the jock didn't snap back at his remark - there was no sign of meat-headed defensiveness at all. Instead, the guy just laughed. "It doesn't," he reassured with a jovial smile. "I just thought I'd ask 'cause, you know, from here it kind of looked like you were going over there to talk to my girlfriend." 

Any relief that jovial smile had filled Miles with steadily leaked out as Eric's words sunk in. "I was just asking her about our work schedule," he explained with a careful, albeit tight smile of his own. 

"Yeah?" Eric tested.

"...Yeah," Miles confirmed. Although he could feel his bravery slowly shrinking under the hulking weight of Eric's arched eyebrow, he stood his ground, hoping that a nonchalant tone and a set of squared shoulders was enough to convince the dopey blond.

"Oh well, that's a relief," he said with another booming guffaw. Miles' wishes were seemingly granted as the warning smirk slipped from Eric's face, replaced with a laidback grin. "There I was thinking you might have been trying to make a move on her or something."

Miles managed to eke out a chuckle, more at his own expense than anything. "I wouldn't do that, man," he promised through a freshly starched smile. "I know you're both very happy together."

Eric's shit-eating grin must have been powered by at least three AAs with the way it lit up his face. "That we are, my man," he proudly proclaimed. "And that's good to hear 'cause I know you spend a lot of time with her at the end of your shifts, and she says you two get along super well, so I'd hate to think that you were getting the wrong idea or-"

"Not at all," Miles assured, cutting the blond off before he could drive the knife any further into his chest. Fixing a plastic smile to his face to cover up the wistful sigh that escaped between his teeth, he delivered an admittedly painful, "We're just friends."

Eric's rich brown eyes seemed to scan every inch of Miles for any sign of a lie before he proceeded, and the brunet's lack of acting skills left him squirming like a worm on a hook as a result. But the satisfied grin that soon surfaced, dropping the tensed shoulders to help it rise, told Miles the quarterback probably needed an eye test. 

"Good," Eric said with a contented sigh. "'Cause you and I both know that it'd be stupid to think anything else, right?" he went on to cockily taunt. "Like, no offence, but she'd have to be fucking insane to choose you over me… Right, Miles?" 

Although his ego was severely bruised, to save his face from meeting the same fate, Miles forced himself to maintain a smile, albeit reluctantly. "Right," he confirmed.

"That's what I thought," Eric smirked, finally satisfied that Miles had taken enough of an emotional pounding if his lazy grin and affectionate arm bump was anything to go by. "Alright, nice talk, bro. I might catch you tonight if I drop by to see her, ok?"

"I'll be there," Miles verified with a strained sigh. Finally daring to drop his gaze from the sturdy blond, he made his escape without so much as a goodbye.  

Apparently Eric thought he could take a little advice on the road with him though. 

"Remember, watch yourself, Murphy," he hollered.

But the words didn't even register with Miles, because the swift shove between his shoulder blades was so jarring his entire focus was dragged to keeping himself upright. 

Miles kept his eyes trained on the scuffed linoleum as he hastily lumbered back over to his desk, cheeks burning with self-hatred as he tried to push Eric’s no doubt smirking face out of his mind. It wasn’t until he heard a familiar voice that he finally dared to lift his head again. 

“Are you ok?” Mick asked, expression overrun with an almost frantic concern. “What was that about?”

“I’m fine,” Miles brushed off, retrieving his threadbare backpack from its spot, slumped on the floor in one swoop. Haphazardly shoving the books from his desk into the main compartment, he mumbled a quick, “Can we just go?” 

But Ethan’s glassy-eyed intrigue held him firmly in place. “Yo, what happened, man? Did he bust you for flirting with her?” 

“No,” Miles sighed, wearily shaking his head at the stoner’s excitement. 

“Did you flirt with her?” he pressed. 

"No, I just- ugh," Miles huffed, quickly giving up on trying to explain the situation he didn't even fully understand himself. "It doesn't matter. Let's just go."

"I told you to just forget about her," Mick sighed. 

"Yeah, well, that's a lot easier said than done, Mick," Miles retorted, returning her disapproving frown with a defensive one of his own. 

"Did you at least get some closure?" Ethan offered as he rose from his desk - partly from curiosity, partly to try to prove a point to Mick. 

Whilst Miles' tongue instinctively prepared to shoot Ethan's optimism down, his brain jumped in to tell it to hold fire. And after a few, brief seconds recalling the interaction, his answer soon changed. "Actually, I kind of did," he admitted with a chuckle of incredulity. 

"You gonna try to talk about it more with her tonight then?" Ethan asked, smirking to himself at Mick's look of disbelief. 

"Fuck no," Miles snorted with a nonchalance that took both of his friends by surprise. "I just want to forget it ever happened- just…move on."

"From her?" Mick asked, trying to hide the hopeful edge in her tone with a gentle smile.

Sparing the blonde in question one last glance over his shoulder, only to catch the tail end of her and Eric getting pulled up for their excessive PDA by their (up until now) entirely uninterested study hall supervisor, he let out a wistful sigh. A chorus of voices swelled in his head - Mick's, Ethan's, Carrie's, Eric's - each one telling a different side to the same story. He couldn't have picked one to listen to if he'd tried. So, in the end, his own took over, steering his heart down a path that promised the least damage in the long term, and that Carrie's indifferent dismissal of him had already forged in his mind. "...That's the goal."

#I know this part may seem a little boring because there's so much talking and so little 'doing' #but i promise that these conversations are all setting important foundations for stuff further down the line #you'll just have to trust me for now though #plus a lot of *interesting* dynamics are established in this part #*wink wink* #and get excited because in the next part we're heading back to All Skate #and the *real* action's finally going to start kicking off... #also I'm super sorry about being so inconsistent with my posts #finding time to write over the past few months with my crazy schedule and pretty poor mental health has been virtually impossible #but I really want to be better about that by the time I go back to uni in september #so hopefully I can find more time for myself and get some real progress made on this story and ASDO #anyway i've rambled too much #i'll let you go but I hope you enjoyed the chapter #and i hope it was a nice surprise after all the chaos you've been going through lately <3 #p.s. i know the order of things gets a bit weird at the end but I didn't know how else to write it without it sounding super choppy #basically eric bumps into miles before he goes over to greet her after class #his whole chat with miles is happening whilst carrie's having her little heart to heart with juliet #just thought i'd mention it because I wasn't sure how clear it was and my 2am brain is not a trustworthy resource

[laenordeservedbetter]

Why?

Pairing: Clarisse La Rue x Fem!Reader (Daughter of Athena)

Synopsis: Percy sees something he never expected to see.

Warnings: Fluff, kissing, confused Percy, Clarisse slander (Percy), fear of spiders. lmk if I missed any.

This one-shot is based on this tweet.

A/N: Hello, lovely people. I'm back. I can't believe it's been almost a year since I last wrote on here. My writing skills got rusty, but I hope you enjoy reading anyway.

not my gif. || masterlist

Percy was walking with Luke as the latter continued showing him the camp facilities that they didn’t get to go over in the original tour when he sees a strange sight that makes him stop walking. He squints his eyes, wondering if his mind was playing tricks on him. When his visions do not change, his eyebrows raise, almost going to the top of his head by how surprised he was.

Luke stops talking when he notices that Percy’s attention was elsewhere. He tries to follow Percy’s line of sight and chuckles when he does. “Oh, yeah. That.” Luke smiles, amused. “That happens pretty much every once in a while.”

“Should we help her?” Percy asks, mortified, as he refers to you. He felt uneasy, seeing you with Clarisse. She is the camp bully, isn’t she? People shouldn’t be leaving you alone with her. Something about the predicament he saw the two of you in seemed off. It shouldn’t be happening, that’s for sure. He steps forward, wanting to free you from the torture when Luke places a hand on his shoulder, preventing him from doing so.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” Luke shakes his head, making sure Percy wasn’t going to make any more steps before he retracts his hand.

“Why are Clarisse and Y/n sitting with their backs to each other?” Percy looks up at Luke, knowing the older camper wasn’t going to let him interfere. The least Luke could do was answer his questions.

“They had a fight.” Luke explains simply, still with an amused smirk.

“Then why are they holding hands?”

“They get sad when they fight.” The raven-haired boy shrugs.

Percy doesn’t say anything, keeping up with his staring. It didn’t occur to him how creepy or weird it was, seeing how baffled he still is upon seeing you and Clarisse in the same room, and holding hands. It’s giving him the heebie-jeebies. What business did Clarisse have holding hands with one of the kindest people in camp? He didn’t like that idea, but there was nothing he could do about it. His only hope was that Clarisse doesn’t infect you with her bad attitude.

Meanwhile, inside the Athena cabin, you squeezed Clarisse’s hand three times, but you didn’t say a word. You were still pretty upset from the incident earlier.

Clarisse tried to look at you from her peripheral vision and even though you couldn’t see it, you knew that her face was ridden with guilt. She sighs, “Look, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have tossed that spider to you when we were in the woods, even if I was freaked out.”

You had been walking in the woods together, hand in hand, when a spider fell on Clarisse’s shoulder. Her natural instinct was to kill it, but she didn’t have any weapons with her and she was starting to panic, so she did the first thing her brain told her to do. She flung the spider over to you despite knowing full well that you were afraid of them.

You take a deep breath, staying silent for a few seconds before saying, “I forgive you and I’m sorry for yelling and cursing you.” Your head hung low in shame. That wasn’t your proudest moment either. The things you said would have made even Chiron blush.

Clarisse gives out a huge sigh of relief, momentarily letting go of your hand so she can stand up. She walks over so she can finally be face to face with you. “It’s okay, I forgive you. You were freaking out too.” She wraps her arms around you, meeting your gaze with a smile.

“I thought my soul left my body at that point.” You pouted, bits of distress still not wearing off.

She cups your face, leaning down to plant a soft kiss on your lips. “Do you feel better now?” She asks with a soft smile.

You can’t stop the smile from spreading to your face, too. You wrap your arms around her waist and hug her from your position on the chair, holding her tighter for maximum comfort. Clarisse laughs at how you didn’t want to let go, even after two minutes have passed.

“I love you so much. You know that, right?” Clarisse states, pressing a kiss to the top of your head.

“I know.” You murmur happily against her, wanting nothing more than to stay in this moment forever.

Outside the cabin, about ten feet away, Percy Jackson could be seen with his jaw dropped and eyes wider than before. “They’re dating?!” He exclaims, looking at Luke in a panic. It seems that he didn’t connect the dots until you and Clarisse kissed. And even then, it seemed like it wasn’t true. He wasn’t concerned anymore, just confused.

Luke’s brows furrowed. “Couldn’t you already tell by the way they were holding hands earlier?”

Percy stares at Luke, his mouth agape, then back to you and Clarisse, then back to Luke again, feeling like he was about to combust because of this new information. “What? No. Why would I even—”

Luke pulls Percy along, cutting his rambling short. “You have much to learn, Percy. So much.” He walks ahead, heading back to the Hermes cabin. “Come on. I’ll fill you in when we get back to the cabin.”

#clarisse la rue #clarisse pjo #clarisse x reader #clarisse la rue x reader #clarisse la rue x y/n #percy jackon and the olympians

[avatar-anna]

When You Fall In Love...

so i've been reading icebreaker and it's been putting me in the hockeyrry mood

part one, part two, bonus, bonus

Harry watched from the empty stands as Y/n ran through her routine for the fifth time. Her teammates had gone home, her coach asked Harry if he would lock up on the way out, and now it was just the two of them in the empty rink. There wasn't even any music playing anymore, Y/n was just skating and performing her tricks as if there was.

Every time she did it, it was flawless. Her routine was fast and intense and incredibly difficult, but Y/n performed with ease every time. She landed her tricks like they were nothing, tricks which Harry now knew the names of and could tell the difference between a lutz and an axel. She was incredible, and he was in awe of her every single time.

But even in her perfection, Y/n had yet to smile once.

Harry decided she'd had enough after she finished her fifth run-through, quickly jogging down to the edge of the rink before she could skate out to the middle again. He leaned over the barricade and kissed the top of her head. This close to her, he could see her rosy cheeks and heaving chest, a sign that her routine did wear her out, despite making it look so effortless.

"You were phenomenal as usual, baby," Harry said while he gathered her things.

"I bobbled a landing and my timing was off for a whole four counts," was her reply.

Harry frowned, not pleased by her recent negativity. Any athlete could be critical of their ability, but Y/n seemed uncharacteristically hard on herself lately, and he had no idea why. "Everything okay?" He asked, shouldering her duffle bag as they walked away from the rink.

"I'm fine."

She certainly didn't sound fine, but Harry decided not to push. Not now, anyway. Changing the subject, he said, "I got an email from the recruiter. I should be receiving my contract soon."

Excitement didn't even begin to cover how Harry had been feeling lately. Last week, he'd met with an agent of a minor league hockey team, one that was a feeder to an NHL team. He expressed their interest in Harry moving to the east coast after graduation and join them for spring training. And after giving it some thought, Harry accepted.

He was over the moon, thrilled that years of hard work was finally paying off. He'd made his passion into a career, and had the potential to really make a name for himself. Life couldn't have been better.

But where Harry seemed to be flying high, Y/n seemed stuck. She was happy for him when he told her the news, had gone out to celebrate with him that night. But something felt off between them. Harry couldn't put a name to it, but he just knew.

"That's great," Y/n said with no amount of enthusiasm in her voice. Harry tried not to take it to heart, she was clearly in a mood from her practice. She was under a lot of pressure too, he reminded himself, and sometimes had a knack for not knowing how to express herself with words.

"Is there something on your mind? You've been quiet recently," he said, hoping he wasn't overstepping her delicate boundary.

Y/n shook her head as she approached her car, sliding into the driver's seat without a word. Harry couldn't help but feel more and more like there was something on her mind, but he let it go again.

Before pulling the car out of the parking lot, Y/n rested her hand over his and leaned in to kiss him. "I'm sorry. I've just got a lot on my mind."

"It's okay. As long as you know you can talk to me about it."

Her throat bobbed, but she nodded, then turned her focus toward the road. Harry filled the silence with rambling. He talked mostly about the NHL, about his contract and where he wanted to live and how everything was happening so fast.

So caught up in trying to break the tension, he didn't notice Y/n's white-knuckle grip on the steering wheel.

*.*

"Styles! What the hell are you doing? Focus up! Let's go!"

Harry rested his hands on his knees, breathing heavily during the brief pause in the game. His eyes flicked up to the stands, searching the crowd for a familiar face, but he didn't see the one he needed the most.

Despite being recruited by a minor league hockey team, Harry was probably having the worst game of his life.

Not one pass connected, he was letting second-rate players get by him, and he'd spent more time in the penalty box than in the actual game. Nothing about this was right, and still all he could do was look for Y/n.

She wasn't there, and even though things had been weird between them recently, he was still surprised. When she wasn't at a competition of her own, Y/n came to every one of Harry's games. It had started out as Harry wanting to impress her, maybe show off a little, and then as time went on and they grew closer and their relationship became more than two people having sex in secret, he wanted her to be there just because it felt good knowing she was watching him play. All his nerves floated away when Y/n was sat in the stands, sometimes in his jersey, cheering him on.

And of course there were times when she couldn't come, but this wasn't one of those times. Y/n had purposely not shown up. He knew they'd fought before the game, but he didn't think she would abandon him just to be petty. They were past that now.

His sole focus should've been on the game he was playing, but instead his mind kept drifting to the fight.

Harry could feel Y/n pulling away from him. He finally felt like he was getting everything he wanted—a spot on a minor league hockey team on the east coast that would eventually lead him to the NHL, graduating with semi-decent grades thanks to Y/n, and of course being with his dream girl. At first, she'd seen him as some douchey athlete that was only good for one thing. He remembered seeing her for the first time their freshman year, performing tricks on the ice that he'd only ever seen on TV, and when he whistled and clapped loudly—perhaps a little obnoxiously—after she'd finished, she'd rolled her eyes at him and told him to fuck off.

It was love at first sight.

Harry had been so careful around Y/n. He played by her rules and followed her lead, trying not to let the comments about them not dating get to him too much. He liked their initial dynamic, finding it funny when he got under her skin because she made it so easy. It became a kind of game, this push and pull that was fun and exciting and eventually led to their arrangement.

He knew that she cared about him on some level, he just needed to bide his time and show her he wasn't who she thought he was. Not entirely, anyway. And when she finally did, and they became more than just people who screwed around, everything was perfect.

They'd been through so much together. Y/n pushed Harry to be better, and he worked with her to master new tricks and nail her routine. There wasn't anyone else who understood his level of commitment to hockey, but she did, and that just made him love her more.

So when he got the call offering him a spot on the minor league team, Y/n was the first person Harry told. She'd been happy for him, and he was over the moon, his mind already making a million plans—where they'd live, her coming to his games, him helping her find a new rink to train at. It felt like the doors to a new and exciting world had opened for them, but she then she started pulling back, and Harry practically watched as that door slammed shut.

Harry pushed himself to focus back on the game, on the hockey stick in his hand and the ice beneath his skates. He felt like it took more effort than it should've to get his head back in the game, but his team managed to pull out a win, and he managed not to get benched before it happened. That didn't stop his coach from ripping him a new one in the locker room, but Harry sat there and took it, shaking his head and promising his piss poor performance would never happen again.

Exhausted both physically and mentally, he trudged out of the locker room and toward the parking lot, debating whether to take the bus home or call an Uber. Even in his senior year, he still didn't have a car, but Y/n was usually there to give him a ride home. To their home. Moving in together for their last year of school seemed like a no-brainer, and it had been amazing so far, though the last week had been kind of a disaster. Harry could feel the tension between them growing, but every time he asked Y/n about it, she'd say she was fine even though they both knew everything was not fine, and the cycle continued. He wanted to be excited, he wanted to celebrate the success he'd managed to create for himself, but he felt rather deflated instead.

To Harry's surprise, Y/n was waiting for him in the parking lot. He didn't hesitate putting his gear in the trunk and coming around to sit in the passenger seat. Y/n leaned in to kiss him immediately holding onto the sides of his face fervently.

"I'm sorry," she breathed. "I'm sorry for not being here tonight and I'm sorry for acting strange, and I'm sorry for—"

"Y/n, what's going on with you?" Harry couldn't help but ask.

"Can we wait until we get home to talk?" She asked. I want to be able to talk to you properly, and I can't if I'm driving.

When Harry nodded, Y/n must've deemed it enough. She peeled away from the rink, silent tension filling the air between once again. It had been following them around all week.

That ended tonight, though. He didn't care how much Y/n hated confrontation or hard conversations. They couldn't move forward if they didn't move past this roadblock first. Harry loved Y/n more than he ever thought possible, and stubborn as she was, he knew she loved him just as much. He would get to the bottom of this, no matter how hard she tried to fight him on the way down.

*.*

"Y/n, you know I would be ecstatic if you'd told me you qualified for the Olympics. This is a huge step in my career! Why can't you be happy for me?"

"I am! God, Harry, I am."

"Then why are you pulling away from me? I feel like I can't be excited about this around you when you're the one person who should understand how this feels."

"I can't do this. I can't have this argument with you," you said, trying to step away from him.

Harry was quick to grab your hands in his, keeping you from walking away. "What aren't you telling me? Do you want to break up?"

"No!

"Do you not love me anymore? What? What is it, Y/n?"

"God, I didn't—I didn't ask for this," you cried, feeling like a damn had burst inside you. It was out now, and now you had to see it through to the end. "I didn't plan on falling in love with you. I wasn't prepared to love you this much. You're the one who wanted to take things further, and now you're—"

You're leaving me, you couldn't bring yourself to say. You really were happy for him. All of his dreams were coming true, and he had an ambition that matched yours, which made you love him more. And now that ambition was taking him far away from you, and you weren't handling it as well as you thought you would.

"Y/n—"

"I'm happy for you, H, I'm so happy for you that I could burst. And maybe even a little jealous," you joked, though there was some truth to what you said. "But I guess I just...I guess I didn't expect to love you this much. And I don't—I don't know what to do because you're going soon and I'm..."

You had no clue, and that alone was terrifying.

At the start of all this, you never imagined falling in love with Harry. He drove you absolutely insane, and despite your physical attraction to him, you kept your distance. But he kept doing these things that made you like him, and eventually care about him, and finally made you fall in love with him. It just wasn't something you saw coming. Love was definitely not on the brain when you met Harry.

Because you knew this moment was inevitable. The moment when one of you would be given an opportunity you couldn't refuse and would pull you away from each other. Once upon a time, you thought you would be given your dream job of a lifetime—competitive skating and hopefully the Olympics—but somewhere down the line, skating stopped bringing you joy, only pressure and anxiety. And now Harry had his dream job on the other side of the country, and you were left to flounder and wonder how you would survive waking up without him next to you.

"You're making it seem like it's a bad thing that you're in love with me," Harry said quietly, but the low tone of his voice didn't hide anything. You knew he was getting upset. After all the avoidance the last week—on your part—yours and his emotions were coming to a head.

"It's not! It's just that you're leaving!" you said, resisting the urge to run a frustrated hand through your hair. "And all week you've talked about how excited to get out of here and leave this all behind and start a new chapter in your life. I mean, would it kill you to act like you're a little torn up about leaving?"

It was so selfish, and you knew it was. It was why you'd been avoiding Harry, this conversation. Harry had every right to be proud and ecstatic for leaving to play in the professional league. He worked so hard, pushed himself farther than anyone you'd ever met, except for maybe you. Your pain was clouding your good sense, and now you'd shown just how horrible you could really be.

You couldn't look him in the eye after saying what you did. Even if it was how you felt, you still felt ashamed for raining on Harry's parade. "Y/n—" he tried to say when you hastily wiped a tear from your eye.

"I shouldn't have said anything. I'm sorry," you said, getting up from the couch and scurrying off to your bedroom.

Flopping on the bed, you pulled the covers over you, trying to hide from everything happening around you. It was too much. Your senior year was supposed to be fun and full of unforgettable memories, not arguments and heartache.

You weren't sure how much time had passed before the door opened and Harry slipped inside. He slid into bed next to you, and you didn't fight it when he rested his face in the crook of your neck. Because despite everything you were feeling, this was all you really needed.

"I'm not leaving you behind," he murmured gently. "You mean too much to me."

You sniffled, and Harry pulled you closer to his chest. "You're going to be thousands of miles away."

"Says who?" he said, kissing your cheek. "Who says you aren't coming with me?"

"And do what?" you huffed, even though the thought slightly lifted your spirits. "Be one of your...puck whatevers and follow you around like a puppy? I need a life of my own too."

You were being stubborn and argumentative and you both knew it. There was some relief in knowing Harry wanted you with him, but you also didn't want to just move because Harry was. You needed purpose, you needed to feel like your life had some sort of direction in it. But it was unfair to put all of that on Harry, and you didn't know how to express how you felt without sounding insane, so instead you said nothing, and that obviously went over brilliantly.

Harry chuckled. "See, because you just said how in love you are with me, I can tell that you're frosty attitude is just an act. Now turn over and look at me."

You reluctantly turned over, brow furrowed exaggeratedly because you couldn't cross your arms over your chest. It used to infuriate you how easily Harry could get under your skin because he knew you so well, that he knew just what to do or say to pull you out of a bad mood. In this moment, you were thankful. He could see past all the harsh words and see to the root of the problem. You'd said some things that were perhaps out of order, but Harry understood. Despite everything, he understood.

"You've worked just as hard as me, Y/n. I want to be there for you the way you've been for me. You can achieve your goals too."

"I just...I don't know if I want to achieve them anymore," you said quietly.

It was the first time you'd said it out loud. Since you'd learned to skate, there had only been one goal: the Olympics. Getting there wasn't just a matter of training, it was about devoting your life to your craft, it was barely having a life outside of training and competitions and giving all your time to winning. And after spending nearly your entire life doing it, you felt yourself slowly burning out. You'd go through your routines flawlessly, but your heart wasn't in it. All you could think about was the future—the next competition, the next training session, the next qualifier. It took seeing Harry so happy about being drafted to the minor leagues to realize the fire had gone out in you. Thinking of Olympic qualifiers and training and affording coaches and costumes and picking the right music only filled you with dread when you should've felt joy.

"Oh."

"But I don't know who I am if I don't have skating."

"You don't have to compete to skate, you know," Harry said. He rested his hand against your cheek, rubbing his thumb along your temple lightly. "You can c—"

"Oh God, don't say coach," you groaned. "It's perfect. You'll be a hockey superstar and I'll be the washed-up figure skater who couldn't handle the pressure of being an athlete and wound up coaching instead."

"I know you're being like this because you're scared, and that's okay," he said. "But I'll help you find a new dream, Y/n. I promise."

You had to blink away tears because your heart couldn't take how much he cared about you. "Even when I've been a complete bitch?"

"You haven't been. I'm sorry if you felt like I was leaving you behind. I guess in my mind we would always be together, no matter where we ended up."

"God I hate how much I love you sometimes," you grumbled while flinging yourself on top of Harry and holding him tight. "It's too much, you're too much, and I can't stand it—"

"There's a compliment in there somewhere, right?" Harry asked, but you could hear the grin in his voice.

Sitting up, you perched yourself on him, your legs straddling his waist. Dipping down, you made sure your noses were brushing, but you didn't close the distance. Not yet. Your heart was racing simply because Harry had been so kind to you, because he knew you so well and said exactly what you needed to hear. It felt ridiculous to know that there was a time when he pissed you off so much you saw red, that his teasing remarks and cocky grin grated on your nerves. Now you didn't want to imagine a life without him.

"I'm sorry for saying all of those things," you murmured. "I really am proud of you. No one deserves this more than you do."

Harry's hand reached up and threaded through your hair, his fingers gentle as they passed over your scalp. "I know you are. And I mean it, Y/n. I'll help you. I know you love to skate, we just have to find a way to channel that into something else. If not coaching, maybe performing?"

"What? Like Disney on Ice?" you asked skeptically, your nose wrinkling at the thought.

Harry shrugged as his hand dipped beneath your shirt to stroke your back. "You'd be a cute princess."

"With my luck, they'd make me a tree."

"Then you'd be the cutest tree there ever was."

Shaking your head, you nudged your nose against his again. "Can we hit pause on talking about the future? I just want to be with you here. Right now."

"Course," Harry said, one corner of his mouth turning up into a crooked grin. "And then maybe we can circle back to you being my puck whatever."

"Shut up."

"Make me!"

And that was something you knew how to do better than your skating routine.

#harry styles #hockey player!harry styles #ice skater!y/n #harry styles blurb #harry styles x reader #harry styles fanfic #harry styles oneshot #harry styles imagine #harry styles fanfiction #harry styles x you #harry styles fluff #harry styles writing #harry styles one shot #harry styles fic #hockeyrry

[sebscore]

gen-z driver chaotically taking over martin’s grid walk? thank you!!

KEEPING UP WITH THE GRID

pairings: f1 team principals, drivers and ex-driver x driver!reader (im too lazy to name everyone im sorry)

warnings: swearing. christian horner. mention of a nipple tweak.

author's note: anon, you are a legend for requesting this! I'm not too proud of the writing, since I wrote this in the middle of the night and my brain doesn't function normally then. but i hope you like it anyway, darling! let me know your thoughts!!

masterlist

• • • • • • •

Y/N was mindlessly scrolling through her phone when a sudden loud voice interrupted her peaceful time. ''How are we feeling about today, Y/N?'' Martin bent his knees, so he could hold the mic up to her face as she sat on the ground. 

''Oh my god, you scared the shit out of me.'' She cursed, quickly covering her mouth as she knows she isn't supposed to swear on Sky Sports. ''Uh, I'm feeling pretty good about it, I'm starting on the second row, so not too bad.'' The driver answered his question, smiling sheepishly. 

''You like having alone time before a race?'' He continued, a grin on his face. 

Y/N shrugged her shoulders. ''I just happen to be alone right now, sometimes I'm chatting with my team or with some of the other drivers.'' 

''Martin, you look a bit tired, you want to sit down?'' She patted the space next to her, feeling bad that he was crouching down while she comfortably sat on the grass. 

The former F1 driver held a look of surprise on his face. ''In all my years I've been doing this, no one has ever offered me to sit down.'' He gave the camera a glance before slowly letting himself sink to the ground. 

''You know, people always wonder 'Where is Martin?' But no one ever wonders 'How is Martin?' We need to take better care of you.'' The man seemed clueless about what she was saying, but he was amused either way. 

''I'm alright, all that walking takes a lot of energy.'' He responded, pretending to wipe sweat off his forehead. 

Y/N chuckled. ''Yeah, I mean, you've been doing this longer than I've been alive, so I understand that you're tired from all the walking.'' She never let the oppurtunity slip to make him aware of their age gap. 

''Well, let's not talk age,'' he sighed, making her laugh, ''anyway, I think I might just hang around here for the entire segment.'' Martin concluded. 

An idea popped into her head as she heard his words. ''Can I do it? I've always wanted to do it.'' 

Martin was surprised for a second time since joining the young woman. ''You mean I let you go around the grid and talk to people?'' 

She nodded. ''Yes, I love bothering people with my presence.'' Y/N said, matter-of-factly. 

The Brit looked at his cameraman, who adamantly nodded his head to the idea of letting the driver do her thing around the grid. 

Martin let out a deep breath, but handed his mic and headset over. ''Just don't get me fired,'' he said, trying to sound stern, ''and don't curse!'' He quickly added. 

''I won't, I promise! I'll see you later!'' She got up from the ground and put the headset on, slightly altering it so it fit her head perfectly. ''Alright, let's make some controversy.'' Y/N exclaimed, pulling the cameraman along. 

She glanced around the grid, trying to find some interesting people to talk to. ''So, I just need to find a person and ask them questions about whatever I want?'' The athlete asked the cameraman, who simply nodded his head, making the camera shake as well.

''Oh, I love this program!'' She giggled into the microphone, doing a small jump out of happiness. 

Y/N observed the grid, knowing her first ''guest'' needed to be a good one. ''Okay, I've found someone!'' She let the cameraman know, pointing in the direction she wanted to go. 

''Alright,'' she tapped the person's shoulder, having them turn to the camera in confusion, ''the first guest on Y/N's grid walk is the team principal of Mercedes… Petronas… Benz…,'' she tried remembering the full team name, ''Whatever, his name is Susie's husband! Welcome, Susie's husband.'' She introduced Toto. 

The Austrian man was incredibly entertained by the young woman's antics. ''Hello, Y/N.'' 

''I have to ask you- how does it feel to be married to the greatest woman alive?'' She asked him, glancing around to find the woman in question. 

Toto laughed at the question, but proceeded. ''It's great, Susie is an amazing person who has done countless amazing projects and campaigns- I'm a very lucky man.'' The sincere smile on Toto's face when talking about his wife brought a smile to Y/N's face. 

''That's so cute- where is she? I only came over here, because I thought she would be here.'' 

''Unfortunately, she's not here today,'' he told her in a sad tone, ''I know that upsets you, Y/N.'' The driver's girl crush on Susie had been an obvious thing for many years, amusing everyone involved. 

Y/N pouted at his words. ''Well, yeah… that upsets me a lot actuall-''

''What is going on here?'' A British accent interrupted her interview with the team principal. 

''Go away, Russell George! I don't want you on my show.'' Y/N teasingly dismissed George, slapping his arm to get him out of frame. 

The Mercedes driver feigned offense, placing his hand on his heart. ''Why not? I thought we were great friends, Y/L.'' 

''Crikey, crikey, crikey! Don't you have shirtless pictures to post somewhere? Bye bye!'' She quickly got away from the Mercedes team, practically running at one point. 

Y/N let out a big sigh into the mic. ''Martin was right, this is tiring,'' she momentarily stopped in her steps, her hand on her waist, ''OH! Look! It's Charles Lechair!'' Her tiredness from a few seconds before was long forgotten as she strided over to her Monégasque friend. 

''Charles, hello, Charles!'' She put her hand on his back, guiding him to the camera. ''How are you feeling about the race today? What are the strategies? Do they know that word at Ferrari?'' She teased the red team. 

''Uh, we're feeling optimistic today and yeah, I'm ready to give it my all.'' He smiled, putting up his tv-friendly facade, not wanting to trash talk his team on television. 

Y/N raised her eyebrow. ''You're so cute being all positive! Keep that attitude, Perceval!'' She patted his shoulder. ''Thanks for talking to me and good luck!'' She bid him goodbye. 

The young driver walked in all sorts of directions. There were many people present on the grid, yet Y/N had quite a hard time finding people to talk to. It was when she walked by the Red Bull team that she found her next victim. 

''Christian! Christian Horner, hello, welcome!'' She and the team principal didn't have the best history, but she knew the viewers would enjoy the interaction as they knew said history. 

''Everyone, I'm joined here today by Red Bull, uh, Orange, Racing or whatever, F1 Team's team principal, Christian Horner.'' She butchered the team name again, although it was one purpose this time. 

She turned towards the man. ''Christian, I won't hold you up too long, but there is one question that our viewers have been dying to ask you and I think this is the right time to finally do it.'' Y/N build the question up. 

''Yes?'' He seemed a bit nervous, attentively listening to her words. 

''Can you say one nice thing about Y/N Y/L?'' 

The Brit visibly looked relieved at the question, thinking it would be something controversial. ''Of course, she's, uh, a very talented race car driver.'' He nervously smiled at her. 

''You heard it here first, ladies and gentlemen, Christian Horner thinks Y/N Y/L is the most talented driver in the history of Formula One!'' She overdramatized his response. 

''You know what they say, keep your friends close, but keep your enemies even closer.'' She patted Christian's shoulder. ''Thanks for the talk, good luck and I hope you don't win.'' Y/N told him before walking off, hearing him laugh behind her. 

''So far, I've talked to Toto Wolff and Christian Horner,'' she said to the camera, ''enemies to, uh, even worser enemies, I guess.'' 

''Guys, we're here with Yuki's boyfriend, Pierre Gasly.'' Y/N stood next to the Alpha Tauri driver, shoving the microphone in his face. He took his airpods out of his ears, already chuckling at the girl's actions. 

''How are you doing?'' 

''I'm-''

''That's all the time we have for you, I'm sorry.'' She didn't let him finish his words and walked away from him, quickly giving him a smile so he knew she was entirely joking. 

She stepped further onto the grid, continuing to look for people. ''A bunch of green outfits, not very fashionable- oh, it's Aston Martin! Let's find Sebastian!'' Y/N mixed herself with the Aston Martin team, trying to catch the German driver. 

''Seb! Seb! Can I ask you a few questions?'' She eventually reached the man, greeting him with a kiss on the cheek. 

His signature bright smile covered his face. ''Yeah, but where's Martin?'' 

''Me and Martin made an agreement, I get to do the grid walk and he gets to drive my car later- although, he never won any races, so that might not have been a great decision on my part.'' She told Sebastian, who seemed confused and fascinated at the same time. 

''Well, I think you're doing a great job as reporter.'' He deflected her words, not wanting to get in trouble by saying anything about Brundle's lack of GP wins. 

She smiled. ''Thanks, anyway… I know qualifying didn't go too well for you, but are you optimistic about the race?'' 

''Yeah, quali wasn't what we were hoping for,'' he sighed, ''It's gonna be difficult today, but we're gonna try our best to get as much points as we can for the championship.'' Sebastian finished his answer with an encouraging nod. 

''That's great to hear! You've been- oh my god, is that your dad?'' Y/N had glanced away from Sebastian's face for one second and saw Norbert watching them, waving at her once he noticed her looking at him. ''Okay, bye Sebastian! I'm gonna talk to your dad now.'' 

She walked past the Aston Martin driver to approach his father. ''Can I ask you some questions? I swear it's very short.'' She didn't want to burden him for too long. 

Norbert gave her a thumbs up, not minding being interviewed for a short time by her. ''It's okay.'' 

''Amazing! I mean, you're a legend of the paddock, Norbert! The drivers love you, the fans love you, everyone just loves you! Do you feel the love every time you attend a GP?''

Y/N had a good relationship with him as he and Sebastian would sometimes attend her karting tournaments together. Norbert had given her parents advice on how to support the young girl as best as possible. In a nutshell, the Vettel family were some of the greatest people she had ever met. 

''I do feel it, it's a great feeling and everyone is so nice to me.'' He wasn't very confident in his English, so he kept it short. 

Y/N smiled at him, delighted she got the chance to talk to him. ''You're always super sweet to everyone, so it's only right that we reciprocate your kindness,'' she nodded, ''okay, last question! Apart from Seb, who is the driver you're rooting for today? Is it someone you know very well? Or someone who is standing next to you and is asking you amazing questions?'' She played with a strand of her hair, pretending like she wasn't talking about herself. 

He laughed at her words. ''I'm supporting you, of course!'' He exclaimed, his arm going around her shoulder. 

''Oh! You're the best, Norbert! You're my favorite Vettel for a reason!'' Y/N said extra loud, knowing Sebastian would hear it that way. 

''I'll leave you alone now, thank you so much and I'll see you after the race.'' She gave him a brief hug and he wished her good luck, which she thanked him for. 

The cameraman had difficulties keeping up with her, used to the slower pace of Martin. Y/N noticed this and slowed down, sending him an apologetic look. ''Alright, I've talked to Seb, so I feel obligated to talk to Lewis now.'' She commented, trying to look for the 7x World Champion. 

''Where is he? He shouldn't be this hard to find…'' The athlete always saw the Mercedes driver hanging around the grid, chatting with his celebrity friends or getting ready with Angela. 

Y/N frowned. ''I should lore him or something…,'' she thought for a moment, ''vegan food, I have vegan food! Uh, free skydiving session! Oh my god, is that Roscoe on the track?'' She tried making him appear, but the only thing she got was weird looks from bypassers. 

However, a certain blond man caught her attention instead. ''Okay, I can't find Lewis, but this person knows him very well… or used to at least.'' 

''Britney Spears! Can I interview you for the highly respected tv-show, Y/N's grid walk?'' She snuck up to the former Mercedes driver, catching him off guard, but he played it off. ''Sure, I'm very honored.'' His monotone voice almost made her cringe. 

''First question: is it alright if I call you Britney? I don't know how you feel about the nickname.'' 

Nico chuckled at her. ''You can call me that, Y/N.'' 

''Ooooh~ I'm getting special privileges! I like it!'' She was impressed by Nico's answer, not being sure if he would go along with her humor. 

''Next question! How does it feel to be a Monaco based Youtuber? Do you enjoy the influencer life?'' 

The former World Champion snickered at her question, not expecting her to bring up his Youtube channel. ''It feels great, I'm, uh, yeah, enjoying the influencer life.'' She could tell Nico was doing his best to come off as positive as possible. 

''Nice, good for you, dude! Anyway, this was Britney, the man who beat the 7x World Champion, Lewis Hamilton, in equal machinery in 2016!'' She quoted the meme that was often made online when people talked about Rosberg. 

Y/N didn't wait for Nico's reaction, a bit too scared if she was honest, and made a run for it again. ''I've talked to three German guys- wait, is Nico German? He said once that he doesn't drink beer, so I don't know if he's considered German.'' She rambled on, not even listening to the words that were leaving her own mouth. 

''There's Jenson.'' She caught the Brit talking to his Sky Sports colleagues. ''You know what? I've embarrassed myself enough already, I'm not making it any worse.'' Y/N went in another direction so as to not cross paths with him. 

''Too bad he doesn't drive anymore, I would have loved to give him a lucky nipple tweak.'' Martin and Jenson used to have this running gag of the older man giving him a nipple tweak for good luck before a race. 

Y/N didn't see where she was going and almost tripped over someone's foot. ''Oh, shit!'' She loudly exclaimed, balancing herself so she wouldn't fall. ''Oh, fuck I can't swear- wait, shit! Ugh!'' She pulled the microphone away from her face, that way her curses wouldn't be picked up. 

''This isn't live, right? Cause then I'm in trouble, I think.'' She glanced at the cameraman, who mumbled a small ''It is live.'' 

''THIS IS LIVE?'' Y/N gasped, looking absolutely horrified at the thought of thousands of people watching her at that moment. ''Let's find Martin then, I think I've done enough damage.'' 

She headed back to the place where the presenter had approached her. ''Martin! Where is Martin?'' The driver glimpsed around, but no Martin in sight. ''I have oatmeal!'' She yelled, before making eye contact with the camera. ''Old people love oatmeal, right?'' He simply chuckled, not wanting to shake the camera too much with his laughing. 

''Oh, there he is!'' Y/N spotted the man and made her way over to him as fast as she could. ''I definitely didn't say anything controversial or cursed throughout the entire thing.'' She greeted him. 

Martin looked relieved as she handed his microphone and headset back over to him. ''I was out of my element for a while,'' he joked, ''did you have fun, darling?'' 

Y/N nodded her head. ''Yes, I'm even considering changing career paths.'' She chuckled. 

''That's great,'' Martin smiled, confident she made some amazing television, ''well, I think you're gonna have to go, cause I can see your, uh, coach not looking too happy.'' He pointed towards her performance coach staring daggers at her. 

''Oh, fuck, yeah, bye Martin! Thank you so much!'' Y/N quickly thanked the man for letting her take over his segment and she dashed out of there, hoping her team wouldn't be too upset about her disappearing into the grid to ask everyone ridiculous questions. 

''She's a special one for sure.'' 

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#f1 fic #f1 fics #f1 x reader #formula 1 fic #f1 x oc #sebastian vettel x reader #charles leclerc x reader #toto wolff x reader #pierre gasly x reader #formula 1 oc #female f1 driver #f1 x y/n #f1 imagines

[sweatervest-obsessed]

okay so i'm thinking post!prison reid and reader break up bc he's not ready to be in a relationship after everything that happened in prison. they just don't get back together bc when spence is finally ready it's been a while and they both think it's too late and no one makes a move and they remain as friends UNTIL jj's love confession brings some feelings back onto the surface - reader finds out about it and (cue jeid and their weird, longing glances🥲) has a whole it's all really over moment and then there's distance between her and spencer until there's a confrontation about it and BAM a love confession and second chances😁😁

THIS IS SUCH A MESS but i hope you get my point</33

Um yeah so, absolutely. Some angst for you indeed. I love a convoluted and angsty fight, especially whenever someone is arguing in circles with someone else because they're both just so passionate but angry, anyways, heheh, enjoy!!

WC: 1.5k

TW: Arguing, mentions of violence, mentions of prison, mentions of guns, honestly if you watched CM then that is your TW.

“I just want to know why you’ve been so distant lately. I mean, this is the first time I’m speaking with you one on one in over a week, and it’s because I manage to catch you in the office at nine fucking pm Y/n.”

"So what do you want me to say, Spence? What could I possibly have to say to you? I'm pretty sure Jennifer said everything there is to say."

This caused Spencer to lose all of the oxygen in his body. It froze up. You weren’t supposed to know what JJ had said, no one was supposed to know what JJ had said. 

You and Spencer were in the bullpen of the BAU. Luckily for both of you, since it was so late, no one else was there. Neither of you were extremely public when it came to your relationship, which meant neither of you would have chosen to have this conversation fight in a public place, but no one else was around.

I want you to say something you're afraid to say. Something you'd never tell anybody. And you better make it good. Cause if it's not, it's going to be the last thing you ever say. What's it gonna be?

“How did you know about that?” He whispered. 

“JJ asked Garcia to go through the footage, apparently she wanted to make sure no one could ever access the audio from it.”

"Y/n I--" Spencer closed his eyes, his jaw set. He didn’t even know what to say at this point. You had both clearly made up your minds about this, yet neither of you wanted to see the carnage, the outcome of it all. So, instead, you chose to stand in the middle of the bullpen, fighting against one another.

Fighting for one another.

"I just don't understand why you're so upset about this."

“Spencer–you didn’t even tell me about it, I had to find out about it from Penelope, and who knows who else she told. You were afraid to tell me, yet that giant genius brain of yours can’t, oh I don't know, comprehend just a teeny tiny little bit why this makes me upset?" For the millionth time this evening, you scoffed. 

Something you would never say aloud, not even to your partner. Your deepest, darkest secret. Impress me, or I'll kill him.

"Y/n--"

Spence, I've always loved you. I was just too scared to say it before, and now things are really just too complicated to say it now. I'm sorry, but you should know.

"Fuck Spencer I have been in love with you since I first fucking joined this team." You gasped out. The air around your head got thinner and felt dizzying like you were floating through the air now that this was off your chest. "And I loved you when you asked me on a date. I loved you through Emily's death. I loved you when you asked me to move in with you. I loved you through when Morgan left the team. I loved you through Hotch leaving. I loved you through fucking Cat Adams. I loved you even after I came home one night and you were making out with her against our fucking door. I loved you through every single case and every single flaw. I loved you when you fucking relapsed a few years ago. I even loved you when you went MIA for weeks and then found out you were in a fucking Prison. And I still fucking love you now. But, instead of being together, you asked for a break."

"That's not fair..." He whispered.

"What? Respecting you and your boundaries? Knowing that you needed time to readjust after you had been released, and believing in your promise that once you felt ready to try a relationship again you'd come to me and talk to me about it? And then watching as you fall for JJ all fucking over again? With your stupid fucking glances. This isn't a goddamn tv show Reid, I can see when you both stare at one another across the room, I can see it."

"We don't.."

"You do. You both do. And then, you tell me that Jennifer fucking Jareau is willing to make her last words the fact that she has always loved you and has always been in love with you, and you---" Your voice froze, the sound cutting out. You looked straight at Spencer, not caring about the tears running down your cheeks. You watched as his hand twitched up. When the two of you were dating, Spencer used to wipe away every single of your tears. But now he wouldn't even lift his hand.

"I--what."

You took another breath, trying to calm down, and really think through your words. "This woman who has been your best friend for over a decade just fucking confessed her love for you, in a life-or-death situation, and you're telling me, that she just fucking made it up, pulled it out of her ass, or at least is telling you that she did and now the two of you are going to act like everything is normal and okay?"

"Y/n..."

"You were in love with her for years Spencer. And now, all of a sudden she confesses her love to you, and that changes nothing?"

"No, Y/n, it doesn't. It changes nothing. Does it hurt a bit? Yes. Does it change the fact that I love you? No." Spencer was trying to keep his voice level, hoping you'll continue to match his volume since he didn't want anyone to potentially stumble by and hear your argument. His hand reached for your wrist, but you couldn't bear to feel his skin against yours.

This caused you to let out a water laugh, tears sliding into your mouth, ugly but pouring down your cheeks. A waterfall of grief in all of its rawest forms.

"You still love me."

"Why-Why is that funny."

"I have been waiting to hear those words since you walked out of that fucking prison and the first time I hear it in years, it's because you're trying to justify loving someone else."

"That's not true."

Make it a million and one, you scoffed.

"I have loved you since the moment you first walked through those doors. You were in a pale blue pair of pants, and a black sweater--I remember it because Emily complimented the pants. I spend my whole life loving you and manage to never fully give you every single piece of love I have because there's simply not enough time in the world. I would kill for you. I would go to prison all over again if it meant you would be okay in this world." Spencer ran a hand through his hair, his voice strained. But his eyes never left yours. "Last week, when that unsub had his gun against your head, I fired before he even spoke, not because I assessed it was the right time or whatever fucking excuse I gave to Emily. I fired that bullet because if you died in front of me, I'd......The only thing I was thinking about the entire fucking time JJ and I were stuck in that room was how the fuck I was going to be able to tell you I love you one last time because I wasn't fucking smart enough to take my chance and say it to you every single day."

Your chest was heaving, but you didn't move towards him. It didn't feel right, it didn't feel real.

Spencer was able to take your hand in his, enclosing it between both of his, trying to get you to look at him. "I should have told you the moment I was ready to try a relationship again, but I thought you...I thought you had moved on because I wasn't worth waiting for."

This caused you to laugh again, eyes red from crying. "Don't fucking start with that shit Spencer.''

"I'm telling the god's honest truth."

"I waited for you throughout all of Prison. I waited for you through Maeve. I am still pathetically standing right fucking in front of you, waiting for you to hopefully realize that you still love me."

He kissed your hand. "And I don't deserve you at all for it."

"Do you still love her?"

"Y/n."

"Answer the question, Spencer. Or I'm done. I-I can't do this any longer, watching you....the way she looks at you just--"

Spencer pulled you into his arms, enclosing your body in his arms and kissing the side of your head. "I have always, and will always, love you Y/n Y/l/n. And I want to spend the rest of our lives proving to you that I would choose you, I want you, over and over again."

“That’s not an answer Spencer.” You whispered, rigid in his arms.

“I-I.” He closed his eyes. “I did. And I still do love her, but not like that. I haven’t been i-in love with her since the moment you walked through those doors.”

Spencer felt the weight of your head against his shoulder as you finally conceded and hugged him back, tightly. “Let's go home.” He muttered into your head, waiting patiently for you to hum in agreement. 

Neither of you moved though. You both stood there, locked eternally in the other’s embrace, enjoying the peace you felt for the moment, even though tomorrow was a new day, where you would have to sort through how you really felt about all of this. 

But tonight, you stood with your arms around your love, forever.

#x reader #spencer reid x fem!reader #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid x y/n #spencer reid fanfiction #spencer reid fanfic #spencer reid x you #spencer reid imagine #spencer reid angst #spencer reid x reader fluff #dr spencer reid x reader #spencer reid x self insert #spencer reid x gn!reader #spencer reid x reader angst #criminal minds fanfiction #spencer reid #spencer reid fluff #Spencer reid x y/n angst #Dr Spencer reid x dr!reader #spencer reid masterlist #criminal minds x reader #criminal minds fanfic #spencer reid x male reader

[neoarchipelago]

Just saw a TikTok where a kid send their favorite stuff animal to his dad who's deployed. Just imagine this happening with 141 🥺 (I'm actually sending this to my favorite writers hoping I can get a cute scenario 😅)

That sounds adorable... I melted at the thought. Sorry it got very angst with Ghost but I'm feral for this man and I'd give him babies any time he wants.

Warning: slight NSFW, f!reader, angst and comfort

Price:

Price would frown but have a little smirk, watching the recruit hand him a cardboard box. His smile spreads when he notices figures of who it is from.

He wouldn't mind opening it in front of the team. They'd be busy bickering anyway.

He swears his heart stops for a second and he sees the soft thing. He could recognize it in the middle of the battlefield, the awful thought putting a ping of anger in his heart.

He'd be silent for a moment, looking at the round pink thing, his mind instantly wandering home, to you and your daughter.

He took the tiny note, scribbled a bit. "Keep you company daddy. Love, mom and me"

He swears he could cry right now.

He keeps it in his barracks, hidden so well no one ever glanced at it until he left. He wouldn't dare taking it with him, not wanting to soil it with he horrors of the battlefield.

He hugs it at night, until the day he returns, his daughter running to him as he holds the stuffed animal who kept his sanity strong.

He makes sure to worship you that night, thanking you silently for making him the happiest man on earth. In the morning you're sore but oh so happy. He whispers sweet nothings as he helps prepare breakfast, thanking you for giving him a daughter and home to come to.

Soap:

Soap would be thrilled to see the box for him. He wouldn't even wait to open it, under the amused gazes of the team.

He'd smile brightly at the sight of the little shark, immediately taking the note to read it out loud "to help you fight daddy!"

He run around the room, holding it up in the air, voicing to his team how happy he was, how proud of his son and how he absolutely loved you for giving him such a gift .

He'd keep it at all times at base. The round thing on the table in front of him during meetings.

He calls it Sergeant Sharky, everyone starting referring it by the same name.

At night he hold it tight, it's more intimate. He can let himself feel the way he misses home, almost tearing up. He knows you're waiting for him at home, probably preparing for his arrival.

He swears he's the happiest man alive.

When he gets home he tells stories of Sergeant Sharky on the battlefield (never anything gory) his boy being in absolute amazement over how his favorite stuffed animal was a hero with his dad.

He absolutely ravages you that night, almost begging you for another kid, begging to make him a daddy again. He just praises you for being the best mama, the best wife. He has you limping by morning as he holds his son, running around with him as he winks at you, subtly hinting to his son to ask you for a sibling.

Gaz:

I feel like gaz would open it with the team too. Though he'd be much more hidden and private about it.

He immediately smiles when he sees the little white bear inside of the box. He can't help the sadness and yearning he feels almost immediately.

The images of you, laughing in the morning as his son jumps on the bed to wake him up makes his throat burn slightly.

He found the indulging gaze of Price who noticed the fluffy thing.

He'd read the note to himself, hiding it from anyone's gaze.

"to take care of you daddy" he has to blink away the blurriness.

He'd be more secret about it, but as soon as his in his tent the toy is with him at all times. He finds himself sometimes talking to it. "Yeah... I miss home too. We'll go back to them."

He finds himself with a new strength, the battle almost feeling less heavy on him. He's doing it for you. For his son. To try and make the world a better place.

He almost runs home from the airport, throwing the front door open, bags dropping to the floor as you see him. Your mouth opens slightly, shocked, but he sees the relief in your eyes. He kisses you deeply, the sound of tiny running footsteps from the hallway making his heart stammer in his chest.

He's home. That night he makes love to you, lovingly, sweetly and with such love that you find yourself crying and clinging to him. He finds himself absolutely loving the way your son runs into the room by morning, waking him up. He doesn't give a shit how tired he is.

Ghost:

Oh god... Here I go...

When he's handed the box, he frowns. He immediately retreats to his tent to open it. He freezes when he sees the white and brown bunny.

He's scared to touch it. His gloves feel disgusting and tainted with horrors. He rips them off his hands, putting the box down on his bed to rush to wash his hands. They're clean, albeit sweaty but he just can't seem to shake away the feeling of blood on them.

When he finally let's himself touch the soft thing he holds it like it's the most fragile thing he ever touched. It shouldn't be here. So close to him when he's a monster right now.

The note breaks him. "Come back to us" it's your writing, she's too small to write. But there's a tiny sun scribbled in pencil next to it.

He rips off his mask bringing the bunny to his forehead as his head bows down, closing his eyes. He's crying. He feels guilty from being away from you. From his daughter. From home. Home that you allowed him, after he had thought he'd never be worthy of it.

It stays in his things. Hidden. He very rarely takes it out. Tries to not look at it too much. He's almost protecting it from even witnessing the base. Keeping it away from Ghost. That he tried to keep at the front door every time he came home.

When he gets home he needs time. It's always the same. He calls you, announcing that he is back. He takes 24h to remain on base, letting himself split from the battlefield. He needs time. You know it. You understood it.

When he gets home you notice something else this time. His eyes look at you with such adoration that you catch yourself almost hyperventilating. He often looks at you with love and care. But right now he looks at you like you were his goddess, his air and life essence. The same look he gives your daughter, like she's the only thing that ever matters to him.

He sits on the couch later, handing the bunny to his daughter who beams at the sight of her bunny back. He softly thanked her for sending the bunny to him. Softly explains that she should keep it home, it'd get dirty with daddy. You noticed the subtle message underneath his words. You want to hug him. But of course she understands. Such a clever girl.

He fucks you passionately and hard. He marks you with hickeys and bites, he gets lost in you, lost in your scent, the soft sheets are freshly clean. Your moans anchor him to his new found paradise.

He's got a small need to breed you again. But he'd talk to you about it. Beg on his knees if necessary, hoping that you'd be merciful to grant him another miracle. (As if he needed to do anything else but simply ask. Like you weren't the one who'd kneel for him if he asked.)

If you were the one to start the conversation, about, perhaps, maybe, if there was a chance, at some point "just spill it out love" "I want a baby... Again"

Absolutely feral. Literally throws your pill to the trash. It's on.

Doesn't let go of his daughter for days. She's in heaven as daddy holds her whenever she wants, reads her stories and plays with her. He keeps bending you over the nearest surface if she's napping or playing at a family's house (extremely rare, he's a protective wolf over her)

Spoils her rotten, he feels so guilty for leaving for such long periods of time. Spoils you as well.

#fanfics #fanfiction #fanfic #simon ghost riley #simon riley #ghost cod #cod mw2 #captain price #john soap mactavish #simon ghost riley smut #kyle garrick x reader #kyle gaz garrick x reader #kyle gaz garrick #gaz garrick #gaz x reader #gaz mw2 #gaz cod #gaz #soap mactavish #soap #john soap mactavish x reader #john soap mctavish x reader #john soap mctavish x you #soap mactavish x reader #ghost simon riley #captain john price #john price #price mw2

[wlntrsldler]

ode to a conversation stuck in your throat | luke castellan

based on this post in luke's pov.

warnings: loser!luke a little bit, percabeth crumbs and teasing from them, swear words, luke being jealous

i. i used to call you my best friend, way back before you were my everything.

"beth, you need to drop it," luke groaned, toying with the armor on his body. the young girl had been stuck on this conversation for hours now. ever since luke showed up to the athena cabin to talk strategy (there was no strategy talk, it was a ploy to get luke alone so she could knock some sense into him), annabeth had been going on and on about you and luke and your relationship.

"i'm just saying, you need to make a move."

"you have been saying that," luke checked the watch around his wrist. he tapped on the glass, "for about an hour and seventeen minutes."

"i'm sorry, but we're tired of watching you guys give googly eyes to each other and not do a thing about it," she replied, trying to keep up with luke as he walked towards the woods. luke was using his height and long legs to his advantage, hoping that she'd finally give up. (he should've known better; annabeth never actually gave up on anything.) "even percy asked me what was going on between you guys and he just got here like ten minutes ago."

"we do not give each other the googly eyes," annabeth shot him a pointed look. luke paused, pursing his lips, "fine, i give her googly eyes but she doesn't reciprocate."

"i knew you were dumb, but i didn't think you were a fucking idiot."

"hey, language," he tutted, crossing his arms over his chest. he can see the crowds of campers gearing up for capture the flag. "who taught you that word?"

she rolled her eyes, "sorry, but 'freaking' didn't have the same oomph."

"we're done with this conversation, 'kay?" luke walked away, shaking his head. under his breath, he mumbled, "fucking kids, man."

from behind him, he heard annabeth call out to him, "and you wonder where i learned the word!"

luke chuckled, twirling his sword expertly as he approached the group. he spotted you a few feet back talking to percy. the kid looked scared out of his mind, but after you reassured him that he probably wouldn't sustain any life-altering injuries, his demeanor relaxed.

luke walked over to you, immediately placing an arm around your waist. you knew that it was luke before you even got a look at him. you nudged yourself closer to him as you ended your conversation with percy.

"you'll be alright kid," you said, offering him a genuine smile. "i know clar has been giving you a hard time, but she's just like that. she'll warm up to you."

luke could tell that percy didn't really believe you based on the look on his face, but he also saw percy's eyes flicker to the lack of space between you and luke and knew that it was his time to go.

percy rubbed the back of his neck and cleared his throat, "alright, thanks, y/n. i appreciate it."

"no problem, percy. i'm sure beth wouldn't let anything happen to you anyway."

as percy walked away to find annabeth, you twisted your body to face luke. you beamed at him in a way that luke could only describe as cute. whenever you talked to him, the crinkles by your eyes appeared and your cheeks pushed up on your face, a slight tint of pink dusted over them.

"hi, luke," you greeted, "ready to win?"

"yes, ma'am," he mirrored your smile. he adjusted the strap on your armor, lightly grazing his fingers over your exposed collarbone. "you gonna show off the skills i taught you?"

"of course," you paused, "i might even be better than you now. maybe i can teach you some things."

he softly pinched your hip, making you squeal. he laughed at your reaction. "don't get cocky, dove."

"i'm just saying," you slowly peeled yourself away from him, but held his hands in yours as you moved backward. "one day the student becomes the teacher, castellan."

"that day is not today, but i'm loving this confidence."

you sent him a wink before joining your siblings. luke felt his knees buckle at the simple gesture. his heart was hammering in his chest and he was half-sure that the people around him could hear his heart thumping against the armor, like a drumbeat. he was glad that his helmet was hiding his face because annabeth and percy were now looking at him, both of their hands in a "thumbs up" gesture in the air.

ii. and it may not mean much but your plates are in his sink and your sweater's on his bed.

your team won (of course you did), but the victory came second to the claiming of percy. percy didn't make it to dinner, no doubt stuck talking to chiron and mr. d about what it all meant, but he was back in time for the celebratory bonfire.

percy found annabeth and luke grabbing some cookies on the snack table when he finally gave up trying to understand the prophecy for the night. luke threw an arm over his shoulder, "forbidden child, how you holding up?"

"i don't really want to talk about it. i honestly don't even know how i feel right now."

"that's fair," annabeth said, outstretching her hand to reveal a handful of oreo cookies. "want some?"

"thanks," percy took a cookie, his eyes scanning the bonfire for any other familiar (and kind) faces. his eyes landed on you. "i do want to talk about that, though."

luke and annabeth's eyes followed percy's to find you talking to an ares kid. you were sitting far from the fire (luke knew you hated how the smell of smoke lingered on your clothes.) luke's eyes narrowed, head tilting in question because he'd never really paid attention to the kid before. james? jackson? j-something? he was racking his brain trying to remember the kid's name.

"they look cozy," annabeth stated through a mouthful of oreos. "he's cute."

"no he's not," luke argued, looking at his sister in disbelief. "he's like okay looking, i guess, but he's nothing like special. i don't know. do you think he's cute percy?"

"dude, you have issues."

whether luke chose to ignore percy's comment or genuinely didn't hear him, didn't matter, because luke was already riled up. he shouldn't go over there, right? you were just talking to the kid. gods, he really should know his name. "plus, he's an ares kid. he's like the enemy. y/n wouldn't do that."

the two kids shared a look, trying to hold in their laughter. luke was too preoccupied with looking at you to notice them anyway. his eyes were on you like a hawk. he watched as you moved over on the log you were sitting on to make room for him. luke's eyes widened when you locked eyes with him. you smiled at him, offering a little wave, before returning to your conversation.

"did she really just do that?"

"let someone sit next to her...?" annabeth asked, dusting her hands on her pants to rid of the crumbs. "yeah, it is allowed."

luke chewed on his bottom lip, "i don't like the look of this."

percy rolled his eyes, voiced laced with sarcasm. "really? what a surprise."

iii. my baby, spare me all the rest. please just tell me that nobody else touches you like i do.

luke was going crazy. he could count on one hand the amount of interactions he's had with you over the last two weeks. at first, he tried to tell himself that you were just busy. you had a lot of things to do, but then he started noticing that you didn't seem busy when jake asked to hang out. (luke scoffed when he found out the boy's name. of course, his name was jake. typical.)

it felt like luke was getting stabbed in the heart every time he saw you walking around with jake, his arm thrown over your shoulder while you laughed at his (probably unfunny) jokes. you called off your training sessions with him to go practice your archery with jake (he wasn't even that good) his usual seat next to you during meals were suddenly occupied by the ares boy. he even saw him walk you back to your cabin one night and he wrapped his arms around you in a hug like he wasn't going to see you the next day.

luke had grown grumpy and everyone noticed it, but nobody was willing to ask him why you and him stopped being attached to the hip all of a sudden. nobody was brave enough to.

the final nail to the coffin was when he wandered into the dining hall, making his way over to chris (because that's where he sat now) and he saw you in an unfamiliar hoodie. plastered over your chest was the insignia for the ares cabin.

enough was enough.

luke stood outside your cabin while everyone else was giving their offerings to the gods. he was trying to figure out what to say to you but his brain was going a million miles an hour. all the words blurred together into a gigantic mess. he was never good with words or explaining himself when it came to you. he never really had to tell you anything before, you always just knew.

sighing, luke mustered up the courage to knock on your door with his head hanging low. when you opened the door, luke could've died in embarrassment because he just started talking, like all of the lines he prepared just spilled out of his mouth.

"please dump him," luke pushed past you to pace around the floor of your cabin. "i don't know how serious your relationship is with him but i am begging you to dump him. you belong with me. i miss you and i haven't seen you really in weeks and it's killing me, dove. i don't know what to do because you keep canceling our plans to hang out with him and i feel like i'm losing you. and-and you're wearing his clothes now? if you were cold or something, you know you could always wear mine! i literally have a drawer under my bed of things that are reserved for you. i sprayed my cologne on them and everything because i know you like it, but you went to him? i just-"

luke stopped pacing and finally looked at you. you were hiding your giggles behind your fist. luke furrowed his eyebrows in confusion before his eyes trailed down your body. oh.

you were wearing his shirt. you walked over to him, reaching up to grab his face, "are you done?"

he was calmer now, "please dump him."

"i can't do that, luke."

"why not?"

you laughed at his whiny voice, "i can't dump him because i'm not dating him."

luke blinked, "you're not?"

"no," your rubbed his face with the pad of your thumb, "we're just friends. he's actually been helping me get over my crush on you."

luke's head was spinning. he definitely read the situation so wrong. "your what?"

"oh, castellan, please," you were blushing now. "it started out with jake wanting to ask me out but i told him about my crush on you and how i felt like nothing would ever happen between me and you. he suggested that maybe i should distance myself from you, at least until my crush went away, but the longer i was away from you, the clearer it became. i'm not getting over you any time soon."

"please don't ever get over me."

"you're a dork," you teased, but you smiled at him again. that special smile you reserved for him. "i can't believe you never noticed i liked you."

"i can't believe you didn't notice i liked you."

"will you shut up and kiss me, please?"

you didn't need to tell him twice. "yes, ma'am."

#luke castellan #luke castellan one shot #luke castellan x reader #luke castellan imagine #luke castellan fanfic #luke castellan x yn #luke catellan x y/n #pjo #pjo fanfic #pjo series #frances writes #frances song fics

[theminecraftbee]

alright, so, one more thing i've been thinking about during all of this, and apologies, because i normally try to keep my blog fairly discourse-free in the grand scheme of things. but.

there are hermitcraft fans who act irritatingly morally superior about this fandom. i think it's out of some impulse to try to distance yourselves from any other mcyt fandom. it needs to stop.

the worst behavior during the polls was from the hermitcraft fans.

period.

there were so many instances of hermitcraft fans accusing the other side of cheating, of hermitcraft fans making attacks on the character of their guy's opponents, i have heard what i HOPE are isolated reports of racism in the grian/quackity fight (it was genuinely impossible to keep up with the blog's notes that round without both going into a death spiral thanks to the horrible behavior of scar fans during techno/scar and also without losing track instantly of where we were due to the frankly insurmountable volume of notes, so i did not see it, but unfortunately i fully believe it). i have seen people receiving awful asks - saw people being accused of 'betraying' the hermitcraft side due to voting for quackity or techno, for example.

and for a fandom that likes to act like it's better than the other guys, well. the dsmp fans were generally very well behaved in comparison. (shoutout, for example, to quackblr - i saw maybe one or two possible instances of bad behavior, but for as intense as you all were, you all were normally mostly just retaliatory towards whatever energy was thrown at you.) it wasn't supposed "outsiders coming in" that was doing this bad behavior, either.

folks, you can't blame the dsmp when the problem is inside the house. you can't blame twitter users when you're doing it here. you can't blame the reddit when you're the ones throwing the first death threats.

get off your high horses. we're all mcyt fans. we're all having the same fun. get off your high horses. you can hardly claim we're entirely all "unproblematic" when keralis accepted a sponsorship from the wizard game and xisuma periodically gets another round of getting shouted down over something he said on xisumasays. get off your high horses. you can't claim we're the accepting, good behavior fandom, unlike those other guys, when you're the ones causing the problems.

now, as always, i'm sure this is a law of large numbers thing to some extent. as technoblade, wise as he is, said: sometimes when you get a large enough group, you're going to have a few serial killers. but for the amount that hermitblr likes to act better than Those Other Minecraft Fandoms, and those Other Fandom Websites, it wasn't those guys that made me cry.

to be clear, the majority of you have been well-behaved. but there's a persistent tendency in this fandom to act strangely morally superior to other fandoms. and, y'all? you aren't.

you just aren't.

and the sooner you acknowledge that, the less likely this is to happen again, because once you admit that yeah, we can be toxic too? that's when you can start actually looking at yourself and trying not to be.

anyway, sorry again to make this post. i don't want to be a downer, hence why, outside of the official mod statements of "chill the fuck out", i didn't make this until now. (it also helps that i wanted to wait until i was no longer furious, upset, and death spiraling.) i have seen a lot of the best of this fandom over the past two weeks! i've just also, unfortunately, seen some of the worst, and feel the need to make this statement because it's just... been eating at me.

i don't want this to continue to be a trend. i think we can do better. do so.

#discourse #hermitcraft #side note. please don't come into my inbox about this i WILL just delete it (even if you're agreeing with me) #i also don't need a 'sorry this happened' so much as a. idk. i'm making this post so maybe people realize that they're doing this at all #and stop doing it #anyway wanna reiterate: 90% of y'all were nice. the problem is everyone likes to pretend the 10% doesn't exist #and i'm just... tired of that. #so here i am! psa over

[alxtiny]

hi i hope your requests are open 😓😓😓 i was wondering if you could do an ot8 comfort fic thing for when the ateez members find out that reader used to selfharm because of the scars left behind. if you dw to do ot8 then just mingi is fine.

thank you sm!

I’m so sorry it took this long i got sidetracked 😭😭 but i hope you like it

Ateez reacting to their SO’s self harm scars

Synopsis: ateez comforts the reader after finding out about their self harm scars

Pairing: ateez x gn!reader, domestic au

Genre: fluff, comfort

Word count: 3k

Warnings: mentions of past struggles with self harm

masterlist

• Hongjoong

The soft hum of music filled the cozy studio as Hongjoong focused on the delicate dance of his fingers on the MIDI keyboard, his laptop screen glowing with various tracks and effects. Beside him, you were nestled in a comfortable chair, engrossed in a book, occasionally shifting to find a more comfortable position.

As you moved, your shorts rode up slightly, revealing faint scars on your thighs. Hongjoong's eyes flickered with concern as he noticed, surprised to have not seen them before. He paused his work, turning to you with a gentle furrow in his brow.

"Jagi, what happened to your thighs?" he asked, his eyes searching yours for answers.

You looked down at your scars, a small sigh escaping your lips. "Oh, those? Just old battle wounds," you replied casually, trying to not fall back into painful memories.

Hongjoong's heart sank at your casual response. "But... how did you get them?" he asked, his concern evident in his voice.

You inhaled sharply, setting your book aside. "It's... a long story. But really, it's all in the past. They don't bother me anymore."

Hongjoong's heart clenched at your stiff tone, but he chose not to pry further. He reached out to gently trace the scars with his fingertips, his touch hesitant, as if it might hurt you, but you found it comforting. "I wish I had noticed sooner," he murmured, his voice laced with regret.

You met his gaze, offering him a small smile. "It's okay, love. I got out of it. It not exactly pleasant to remember but I’ll be fine," you reassured him, squeezing his hand affectionately. "Besides, consider it character development."

Hongjoong pulled you into his arms, holding you close as if he could shield you from any pain. "Don’t make jokes now," he whispered, pressing a kiss to your forehead. "But remember, you don't have to bear it alone. I'm here for you, always."

"Thank you," you whispered, feeling With warmth spreading through your body, grateful for his presence and understanding.

• Seonghwa

Seonghwa sat comfortably on his bed, his back resting against the pillows as he played Animal Crossing on his Switch. You snuggled close beside him, the warmth of his body against yours, as you watched the screen together.

You continued watching with fascination, occasionally pointing out cute details or offering suggestions for his virtual paradise.

"Hwa, look! You should put a little picnic area by the beach," you suggested, your voice filled with excitement.

He glanced at you, a warm smile gracing his lips as he listened to your ideas. But then, as the light from the screen shifted, he noticed something on your forearm. Faint scars, barely visible except for when the light from the screen illuminated them but it was enough to catch his attention. He paused the game, concern flickering in his eyes as he gently traced his fingers over them.

"What are these?" he asked softly, his voice tinged with worry.

You hesitated for a moment, feeling a wave of vulnerability wash over you. But then, meeting his gaze, you offered a reassuring smile. "They're old scars," you explained gently. "I'm better now, Seonghwa. You don't need to worry."

He furrowed his brows, his concern evident. "But... how did I never notice them before?"

You shrugged lightly. "They're not something I like to talk about, anyways being with you makes me feel confident and content with myself and I don't dwell on the past when I'm with you."

Seonghwa's heart swelled with love and admiration for you. Leaning in, he pressed a soft kiss to your forehead. "You're so strong, Y/N," he murmured, his arms enveloping you in a comforting embrace. "And you're not alone. I'm here for you, always."

You smiled at him, feeling absolutely content as you relaxed further into his arms.

• Yunho

Yunho had always been passionate about his work, especially dancing. So when he dragged you along to the KQ dance studio one evening, you couldn't say no to his big puppy eyes, even if it meant sitting on the sidelines and watching him move with such grace that not even the best could replicate.

As he swayed and spun across the polished floor, you couldn't tear your eyes away from him. His dedication and talent were mesmerizing, filling the room with an energy that was infectious.

"That was amazing," you whispered as he finished a particularly intricate sequence.

He grinned, sweat glistening on his forehead. "Thanks, love. But you know what would make it even better?"

You raised an eyebrow, already anticipating his answer.

"If you joined me," he said, extending a hand towards you.

You shook your head, chuckling softly. "No way, Yunho. I'm not half as talented as you are."

But Yunho was persistent, and before you knew it, he had pulled you up from your seat and into the centre of the studio. You stumbled a bit, feeling a little self-conscious as you stood next to him.

"Don't worry," he reassured you, placing his hands on your waist. "Just follow my lead."

You moved together, following his lead as best you could. It wasn't long before you found yourself lost in the music, the worries of the day melting away with each step.

But then, as you spun around, your shirt shifted, revealing the faint marks on your shoulder. Yunho noticed immediately, his expression shifting from playful to concerned. He stopped dancing, his hands dropping to his sides. You froze at his sudden shift in demeanour and looked at him in confusion waiting for him to say something.

"What's this?" he asked, gently tracing the marks with his fingertips.

You bit your lip, feeling exposed under his scrutinizing gaze. "Oh, um, it's nothing. Probably just from a cat or something."

Yunho raised an eyebrow at your answer, he wasn't convinced. "You sure about that?"

You sighed, knowing you couldn't keep it from him any longer. "Fine, I used do it when I got frustrated or angry with myself. It's stupid, I know."

Yunho's eyes widened in horror, his fingers still lingering on your skin. "Why would you do that?"

You shrugged, feeling embarrassed. "I don't know. It's like a subconscious thing, I guess."

"You don't have to do that anymore," he murmured against your skin, kissing the scars lightly. "You have me now. Whenever you feel like that, come to me. Lean on me, use me however you like. I'll be here for you."

Tears welled up in your eyes as you buried your face in his chest, feeling a sense of relief wash over you.

• Yeosang

Yeosang had gone out for a while to run some errands, leaving you to enjoy a peaceful nap on his large bed. You decided to steal one of his shirts, the comfort of which immediately sent you to sleep. Unbeknownst to you,in your deep slumber as you shifted around, the shirt had slipped off your shoulder, exposing the healed scars that adorned your skin.

As Yeosang returned home, his heart swelled at the sight of you, peacefully sleeping. He couldn't help but smile fondly, thinking of how cute and tiny you looked in his clothes, quietly he approached to admire your peaceful face. Gently, he reached out, brushing a stray lock of hair from your face, as he did his gaze shifted to the scars that marred your skin. Concern flooded his features as he leaned in closer, his fingertips hovering over the healed marks.

You stirred at his touch, blinking awake with a soft smile as you recognized him. "Hey, Yeosang, you’re back, " you greeted smiling at him, your voice still laced with sleep.

But as your eyes met his, you noticed the concern etched in his expression, his eyes fixed on the scars. "Is everything alright?" you asked, furrowing your brows in confusion.

Yeosang's worry spilled out in a rush of questions. "What happened? Are you okay? Why didn't you tell me?"

Confusion flashed across your face before you realised what he was looking at, and you gently reached out to cup his cheek, soothing the furrow in his brow. "Yeosang, it's okay," you reassured him, your voice gentle yet firm. "Those scars are old. It's been nearly a decade since then."

You could see the relief wash over him, but he still looked troubled. "But... why? Why did you...?"

You placed a finger over his lips, silencing his questions. "I was going through a tough time back then," you explained softly. "But being with you... you make me so happy, Yeosang. I haven't had any bad thoughts since."

His eyes softened, and he pulled you into a comforting embrace, pressing a tender kiss to your forehead. "I'm just glad you're okay," he murmured against your skin.

You smiled up at him, feeling a wave of gratitude wash over you. "I'm more than okay," you whispered, leaning in to capture his lips in a gentle kiss. "I'm better than I've ever been, all because of you."

• San

After a warm evening shower you wanted nothing more but to get into your fluffy pyjamas and go to sleep. You stood in front of your mirror, carefully putting on your clothes, when the door unexpectedly swung open, revealing San on the other side. Startled, you instinctively grabbed a towel to cover yourself.

"Oh, sorry! I didn't realize you were in here," San stammered, his cheeks flushing with embarrassment.

"It's okay, San. Just give me a moment," you said, adjusting your shirt as you continued dressing. You had been with him long enough not to feel entirely uncomfortable with him seeing you like this.

As you finished, you noticed San's gaze lingering on a particular spot near your hips. Sensing his stare, you furrowed your brows and glanced down, suddenly feeling self-conscious.

"Is something wrong?" you asked, your voice laced with concern.

San blinked, seemingly snapping out of his trance. "Oh, no, it's nothing," he quickly replied, though his expression betrayed his curiosity.

You sighed softly, knowing he wouldn't let it go that easily. "They're just scars from my past," you explained, gesturing towards the faded marks on your upper thigh and hips. "Back then I struggled a lot with my confidence," you winced slightly at the painful memory.

San's eyes widened in realisation, and his features softened with empathy. "I had no idea," he murmured, stepping closer to you. "You're perfect, you know? I can't believe you would ever think otherwise."

A small, appreciative smile tugged at your lips, touched by his sincerity. "Thank you, San," you replied softly, feeling a warmth spread through your chest. "I'm in a much better place now."

Without hesitation, San reached out to cup your cheek, his thumb gently brushing against your skin. "I'm glad to hear that," he whispered, his gaze filled with adoration. "But just know, I'll always be here to remind you of how incredible you are."

His words melted away any lingering insecurities, and you couldn't help but lean in to press a tender kiss against his lips. "Thank you for always being so understanding," you murmured against his mouth.

"Of course," San replied, returning the kiss with equal fervor. "You don't ever have to worry about anything when you're with me.

• Mingi

After ages of going to the gym, lifting weights and what not, you had finally convinced Mingi to join you for a workout session at home. He was a bit hesitant about it at first, but eventually agreed, eager to spend more time with you. You chose something slow and peaceful, as opposed to the usual fast cardio routine.

You rolled out your yoga mats in a quiet corner of the living room, ready to start your session. "Alright, Mingi, let's begin with some simple stretches," you said, gesturing for him to follow your lead.

Mingi nodded, a determined look on his face as he mirrored your movements. You guided him through various yoga poses, explaining the significance behind each one with patience and encouragement. As you moved gracefully from one pose to another, you couldn't help but notice Mingi's intense focus on you.

Eventually, you transitioned into a seated position, stretching out your legs. That's when you saw Mingi's gaze flicker down to your thighs, his expression shifting slightly.

Sensing his sudden shift in mood, you paused, meeting his eyes with a soft smile. "Is everything okay, Mingi?"

Mingi hesitated for a moment before speaking up. "Y/N, I... I didn't realize..." His voice trailed off, his eyes fixated on the faint scars adorning your skin.

You followed his gaze and realized what he was looking at. You never made an effort to hide them, but you hadn't expected Mingi to notice them either.

You shifted closer to him and reached out, gently placing your hands on his. You took a deep breath, deciding to address it calmly. "Those are just old scars from before. I don't hide them, but I understand if it's a bit surprising."

Mingi blinked back tears, his emotions bubbling to the surface. "I... I never knew. I'm sorry, Y/N. I should've noticed sooner."

You shook your head, squeezing his shoulder gently. "You don't have to apologize, Mingi. You couldn't have known. What matters is that I'm here now, and I'm okay."

Mingi's eyes softened as he looked at you, his voice filled with sincerity. "Y/N, please... promise me you won't struggle alone anymore. I'm here for you, always."

You nodded, a warm smile spreading across your face, as you hugged him tightly and kissed his cheek, making him crack a smile too. "I promise, Mingi.”

• Wooyoung

It was one of those lazy afternoons when you and Wooyoung were both off from work and free from all worries, allowing just the two of you to enjoy each other's company. Of course the best way to spend it was by annoying each other and generally goofing around, engaging in your usual banter and playful teasing.

As you playfully jabbed at Wooyoung's side while he was attempting to pour himself some water, successfully making him spill it, he retaliated by attempting to tickle you. You squirmed and laughed, trying to evade his grasp and running around the apartment, but he managed to corner you and began tickling your sides mercilessly.

"Ah! Wooyoung, stop!" you squealed between giggles, your cheeks flushed from the laughter.

His hands slipped under your shirt, tickling up and down your sides with no mercy as tears escaped your eyes from laughing too much. Abruptly his movements stopped, and a concerned frown creased his forehead as his fingers brushed against thin ridges on the side of your ribs. Gingerly he lifted your shirt, his eyes widened to discover pale white scars strewn across your skin.

"Hey... what's this?" Wooyoung's voice softened as he traced the scars with his thumb, his playful demeanor instantly replaced by worry.

You glanced at him, puzzled by the sudden change in his demeanor, until you followed his gaze down to your ribs. Realization dawned on you, and you gently placed your hand over his, giving him a reassuring smile.

"Ahh those, it's okay, Wooyoung," you said softly. "I'm okay now. You don't need to worry."

He searched your eyes, silently asking for confirmation. Your reassuring words seemed to ease his concern, but he still couldn't shake off the worry completely.

Leaning in, he pressed a tender kiss against the scars, his lips warm against your skin. "I love you," he whispered softly, his voice filled with sincerity and affection.

Your heart swelled with warmth at his words, and a giggle bubbled up from within you. Wrapping your arms around him, you hugged him tightly.

• Jongho

As you walked through the door after a painfully long day at work, Jongho couldn't help but notice the weary expression etched on your face. His heart clenched at the sight, knowing all too well the burdens you carried. He had always known of the battles you fought within yourself and the scars they left behind. Yet, out of respect and understanding, he never broached the topic, letting you open up at your own pace.

Today, however, he felt compelled to reach out, to offer you the comfort you so often extended to him.

"Hey, love," he greeted softly, setting aside his book and rising to meet you.

You managed a faint smile, but it didn't quite reach your eyes. "Hey, Jongho."

He stepped closer, his gaze gentle yet searching. "Rough day?"

You sighed, nodding slightly. "Yeah, you could say that."

Taking your hand, he led you to the couch, where he enveloped you in a warm embrace. "I'm here for you, you know? You can always talk to me."

You tensed slightly at his words, your gaze flickering to the floor. But Jongho's reassuring touch grounded you, as he smoothed over the jagged lines on your arms, easing the knots of anxiety that tightened within you.

"I'm just... tired," you finally admit, your voice barely above a whisper.

Silence settled between you, but it was a comforting silence. Jongho pressed a gentle kiss to the top of your head, his arms secured around you.

Jongho nods, his hand finding yours, offering silent support. "You know you don't have to carry it all alone, right?" he says, his gaze meeting yours with unwavering sincerity.

Tears prick at the corners of your eyes, and you're grateful for the dim light that hides the vulnerability in your expression. "I know," you whisper, your voice thick with emotion.

© alxtiny . Do not steal, plagiarise, translate, repost, or use my works on any platform in any way.

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DISCLAIMER: THIS IS PURE FICTION AND NOT RELATED TO THE MEMBERS OF ATEEZ IN REAL LIFE PLEASE DO NOT TAKE IT SERIOUSLY

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[mj0702]

The other Bronze – Part 14

For Lunatic... I hope you're doing better and I hope you read this and find some comfort in it - mom and dad love you to the most and back Lunatic ♥️♥️

Sarina parked it just a little bit away from the hotel and turned in her seat to look at you

“We still need to talk Liefje” Sarina said sternly pulling you back into the car

“Don't worry – I found a weak link” you said happily

“Not what I was thinking about but.. good job” the dutch said “.. Leah said you tried to kill yourself – I want to know why”

“Seriously... I swear that was a one time thing and I'm better now” you said upset

“Not what I asked... I want to know WHY” the blonde stayed stricter

“I... I felt so alone... Lucy was gone... Keira just moved to Barcelona.... I mean the girls a great but... they're not Luce or Kei... somehow me stupid brain convinced me that they left and broke up because of me... and that they wouldn't care if I was around or not... so I got some pills from grandmas cabinet and just took them all...” you said not looking at the dutch

“... and then?” Sarina said lowly

“... I got scared... like... I suddenly knew that it was a mistake... so I wanted to call Hempo but I clicked the wrong number... got Leila on the phone.. I didn't knew her very well just in passing – but she came... she asked me where I am after I cried into the phone that I'm scared. I even called her Laurie... you know... she didn't KNOW me – but she came...and before I knew it I threw up... I'm basically still alive because of her... Lei then called Hempo... mills turned from that moment....” you recapped the night it all happened

“But why Liefje.... you know you could always come to me – or to one of us” Sarina tried again to understand you

“I can't tell you why Mama Rina.... I don't know... I just felt so alone... but I swear I never ever thought about it again” you stressed out

“If you EVER feel the need to do something like that again I want you to call me” the blonde took your hand strongly and with her second hand she made you look at her “Okay?”

“Okay... I promise...” you nodded lightly

“Good... so... that weak link....” Sarina smiled slightly

“Now or after dinner? Because I AM kind of hungry” you look embarrassed

Sarina laughed out loud but nodded anyway

“Of course Liefje... come on now” she laughed as the two of you exit the car

The dutch laid her arm around your shoulders pulling you into her side as the two of you walked the short distance to the Hotel. You laid your head on her shoulder enjoying the rare moment of peace you get with the head coach.

“Hey... hey y/n... we saved you a seat!!!!” you heard Tooney before you saw her

“Go” Sarina smiled lovingly as she released you from her hold

You sprinted over to the table quickly sliding into the chair between Less and Tooney before Keira or Leah could grab you. You sat opposite to your girlfriend sending her a small smile knowing Lucy was watching you two with hawk eyes. Suddenly you felt your chair being pulled back a little bit. You squeaked surprised as you felt the chair being lifted.

“You really think I would let you sit at the kids table??” you heard Keira as you looked up you saw Millie and Mary holding the sides of your chair about a foot in the air

“Sorry BB” Millie smiled apologetic “She has dirt on me”

“You can't be serious” you exclaimed trying to slip off the chair

“You will get the same food at my table” Keira said dry as she nodded her head and Millie and Mary started to carry you (chair included) over to the grown up table and dispose you next to your sister while Keira sat down to your other side

“I don't wanna sit here” you whined “This table is boring”

“Excuse me? Do I look like I care? The last time you three sat next to each other you got us kicked out of a restaurant” Keira said nonchalantly

“It was NOT our fault that the flame thingy fell over and set the table on fire” you said upset

“You prodded it the whole time even after I told you to leave it alone” Keira now growled

“I found it fascinating.. the flame was blue” you said ashamed

“Give up Bubs... you stuck with us for tonight” Lucy now sighed “She won't let you go back”

“You can overrule her... sister tops...” you said hopefully

“Oh Bitsy... your sister tops absolutely nothing” Keira smiled sweetly as she lightly slapped your cheek “Now eat”

You looked down on your plate and pulled a disgusted face

“What's that?” you prodded at your food

“Chicken” Keira said as she started to eat

“THAT is not chicken...” you pointed at the light hill on your plate

“That's the rice with sauce” Keira rolled her eyes “That is the chicken” she said as she pushed the rice a little aside

“And that green stuff... I don't do green stuff..” you argued again choosing the difficult route today – she wanted a kid. She'll get a kid.

“Spinach” Leah now answered as her best had her mouth full

“Ew no... not eating that” you huffed leaned back in your chair crossing your arms in front of your chest

“Suit yourself... go to bed hungry” Keira shrugged her shoulders “If you ever THINK of throwing a fit later because you're hungry you and I will have a private talk and you know these never end good for you”

“I want food... not... that” you pouted and whined

“Bitsy come on... you're not three... just eat” Keira said and you heard that she's about to lose her last nerve with you

Still you shake your head not moving towards the plate again

“Bubs come on... you haven't eaten since breakfast” Lucy now tried the nice approach – good cop, bad cop “You must be hungry”

“I AM... but I want something tasty” you whined

“It's very tasty... just try it... for me?” your sister spoke softly smiling hopefully.

“Hey Pumpkin... you interested in a deal?” now Beth interrupted the interaction knowing how important it was to get some food into you

“Listening” you answered and glanced at her

“Two forks equals one stroopwaffle... if you finish your plate – spinach included a whole extra pack” Meado smiled encouraging

“One fork one waffle” you shot back

“No can do... two for one...” Beth leaned back in her chair grinning

“Two extras at final whistle then” you tried your luck again

“I'll give you two extras if you eat your salad too” the brown haired woman smirked

“Okay now you're pushing it” you huffed out

“Two for one and an extra if you finish the plate” Meado leaned forward extending her hand.

“Two extras” you said seriously

“Nope... no deal” Beth said as she pulled her hand back

“Okay okay... two for one and one extra” you said quickly nearly jumping on the table to grab Beth hand “but from the good shop in Amsterdam”

“Deal” Meado grinned as she saw Keira mouthing a “thank you” towards her

You recutlanty started to pick up some rice and chicken with your fork. Everyone at the table knew you were a picky eater. Always have been and always will be – but if you had found something you liked you would eat like a harvester. But also you would go days without actual food if there was nothing you would find interesting. You carefully brought the fork to your lips just to feel the usual knot in your stomach putting the silverware down quickly

“No... sorry... can't do it” you said as you quickly stood up basically fleeing the table and the room.

Everyone looked after you confused. The first one who reacted was in fact Georgia as she pushed her chair back with such a force that it fell over backwards running after you. Lucy tried to run after the two of you but got stopped by Keiras hand on her arm

“Leave them...” the blonde said softly

“But what if...” Lucy tried

“If what...” Leah asked now

“If G takes advantage of her state – we know how fragile she is at the moment” your sister said a little stressed

“Excuse me?” Keira said shocked “That's G we're talking about – you know damn well this girl has a heart of gold and as big as five field... and she's not the brightest sometimes... she doesn't even know what it means to take advantage of someone”

“I'm just....” your sister defended herself

“I know... but you need to let her grow up... it's not easy for me either but let her be Luce” Keira said softly

You quickly sprinted outside the hotel actually jumping over some luggage which was standing around from guests just checking in. Once outside you looked around frantically as you saw the next best bush. You quickly got over there and just started to throw up. This was how your girlfriend found you. Hunched over a bush heaving loudly. Wordless she stood next to you rubbing small soothing circles on your back offering silent support. After a few minutes you got yourself up right again and leaned backwards against the wall

“What happened” G asked keeping her voice down

“Just got too much” you mumbled closing your eyes “Thank you”

“For what?” Georgia asked confused

“Coming after me...” you murmured suddenly feeling tired and exhausted

“I'll always come after you – and if I have to run to the end of the world” your girlfriend answered whispering as she both manoeuvred you into a sitting position

“Sap” you smiled with your eyes closed but leaning against her “We probably shouldn't be so close – what if fans see?”

“Let them... don't care” your girlfriend mumbled back “only care about you right now”

“You would...” you started

“Don't care... you're important to me, you know?” she interrupted you quickly knowing where this conversation would go if she'd let you go on

“You're important to me too G...” you said serious “... that's why we need to talk”

“Are you breaking up with me?” Georgia asked and you heard the panic in her voice

“No... no... but you might want to break up with me after that talk” you mumbled

“Did... did something happened... with someone... in Barcelona?” your girlfriend asked unsure

“Yes... that too... but not like you think” you sighed knowing you can't push that conversation further away anymore “But you need to promise me to let me finish and not interrupt me”

“Okay...” Georgia said carefully

You took a deep breath before you started to talk

“I'm telling you this because you are so SO important to me – not even Kei knows this... or god forbid Lucy... did I ever tell you why Leila and I are so close?” you looked at her and G shook her head before you continued “She saved me G... literally... she saved my life... two years ago, when Kei moved to Spain too... I felt so alone... I know Toons was there... and Less... and Leah... and all of them... but in the same time no one was there... it was bad enough to lose Lucy to Spain.. But I still had Keira... but when she moved too – it broke me G... I know she had to for her career... and I would never ever blame her for what happened but it broke me. I had no one to go to – I was still laborating on my ACL and I didn't know what to do. I fell G and I fell hard. I was rock bottom and I didn't know how to get back on top again...” you started to feel the tears threatening to fall “... so I got all the pills my mom had in her cabinet threw them all in a bag mixed them up and just took a handful... and suddenly I got so SO scared... the sensible part of my brain asked me if I'm bloody serious to choose the easy way out. Out of panic I wanted to call Hempo of all people – you know how she would react in a situation like that. She would panic herself. But she was the nearest to where I was. I pressed the wrong contact and Leila answered the call. Don't know why but she did. I didn't even realized my mistake and just started sobbing into the phone what I just did and that I'm scared and where I am and to please help me”

You were full on crying now. Not the loud outgoing cry, just silently as your tears run down your cheeks onto falling onto your shirt

“I don't know how much time went past but suddenly I got yanked up from the bench I was sitting on and the person just bend me over and made me throw up.... wasn't the nicest thing in the world. After I came by a little more I realized Leila was the one holding me bend over asking me if I think that it was all of it or if there's some left in my stomach because she WILL shove her fingers down my throat again if she had to... told her I think that everything is out and she basically carried me to her car. She told me she's going to get me into hospital and who she should call. Told her Hempo – I knew the chain would work its way to Leah. Leila got me to the Hospital told them what happened and they took care of me. When I woke up the next morning Leah and Meado were sitting next to my bed. Leah looked like death heated over twice. Meado wasn't far behind. I felt so guilty that I started crying . Woke them both up with my sobbing. Leah informed me that they'll take me back with them – already talked to my mom and dad about it. She also told me that they told them it's because she thinks a change of scenery would benefit me – dad agreed knowing how hard I took Lucys moving. Went back to London with them and god – Leah can be worse than a jail guard... I went to therapy... three times a week... it was always Leah or Beth picking me up afterwards... until it was Millie and somehow with Millie I just broke down. I held it together for Lee and Meado... but Millie with her calm persona and just being there – I think I cried for hours. Woke up in Meados guestroom... was the first time I met Viv officially as the girlfriend. It got better after that day – really better. Leah basically held me hostage for another six month – she even made me join her at the Arsefacility for light workouts. Let me tell you they have all that great stuff in their gym and still are shit” you smiled through your tears keeping your eyes fixed straight ahead staring into nothing so you didn't see your girlfriend crying too “ … and then a few days in Barcelona I had a full blown anxiety attack because Mapí played a ball wrong and it came at me. I got it under control played it back to Kei before even realizing what I was doing and then all of them were looking at me like I just scored a World cup winner... got to much and everyone of them saw.. I tell you because I know Sarina wants a friendly against Spain end to camp – when she announces it you act surprised – and they will ask if everything is okay... because that's how they are... It was weird at the begin...”

Suddenly your conversation got roughly interrupted by your sister who pulled G up by her shirt away from you already started yelling at her. You got scared for a second before you quickly jumped to your feet going after your sister who had your girlfriend pinned to the wall by now. Georgia was white her eyes wide as Lucy kept yelling at her

“What have you done Stanway??? I listened to Keira and let YOU go after her to find her crying her eyes out” your sister yelled in Georgias face pushing her harder against the wall

“Lucy please... it wasn't her” you begged your sister tugging on her arm “it wasn't her and it's not because of her... Luce please”

But it was no use since Lucy just saw red. She just came out to check on you knowing you always need air when you feel trapped. What she saw broke her heart and made her blood boil. She saw you crying and your girlfriend just sitting next to you doing nothing. It was irrational she knew but she swore to protect you and if it costed it the place on the national team than she would pay that price but she won't let anyone hurt you.

“Lucy.... please” you tried again as fresh tears sprung to your eyes and again your plea fell to deaf ears as your sister continued to ignore you in favor of yelling at your girlfriend

So you looked around for help and spotted Keira and Leah at the elevators on the other side of the lobby. You quickly ran over to the doors who opened and yelled through the hotel lobby

“Keira!!!” you hoped to get her attention. Your voice must have sounded so distressed that Keira turned around quickly – Leah following suit and she spotted you standing in the automatic door “Help” you said louder but not yelling level.

Keira took off towards you before you could turn around Leah hot on her heels as you went over and tried to get Lucy off Georgia again. Keira and Leah came exit the hotel and quickly saw what brought you to such distress. They immediately got into action mode pushing themselves between Lucy and Gs bodies. You were still trying to tug your sisters arm off Georgias shirt. Thank god Keira and Leah were much more successful (perks of knowing how to separate players from experience) and quickly got your sister and girlfriend separated. You immediately went over to your girlfriend who was still rooted in place shock and fright clear on her face.

“You okay?” you asked lowly “She didn't hurt you did she?”

“Just shaken up... didn't see that coming” Georgia said back lightly shaking

You let Keira and Leah deal with Lucy while you checked your girlfriend over once more needing to make sure she really was not injured. After you were satisfied with your check you turned around seeing Keira poking Lucys chest furiously on the other side of the entrance. Leah stood nearly in the middle of the two parties having an eye on both sides. She met your eye and you let her know that everything was okay and even tho G was shaken up she was not injured. At the way Keira was now waving her hands around and your sister looking ashamed and guilty you knew Kei was pissed and Lucy was at the receiving end. You saw Leah coming over to you and stepped into your field of vision

“Are you okay?” the captain asked concerned

“Yeah... just... got a little scared... don't know what got into her” you mumbled

“Keira is sorting it out right now” Leah said lowly “You okay G?”

“Yeah...” your girlfriend nodded slightly

“You want to report it to Sarina? Or want me to tell her?” Leah asked seriously “You're calling it G... I don't know what happened but I know you didn't provoke her so Lucy laying her hands on you...”

“No...” your girlfriend interrupted her friend “... I just want to talk to her... alone”

“Are you sure G?” Leah asked again

“Yes I'm sure...” Georgia nodded again “... I don't want her thrown of the team Lee... I just want to know why”

“Your call G...” Leah sighed and called over “Kei... lets go” before looking at you “You come with us”

“Da Fuck I will” you said stubborn

“Babe it's okay... let me sort this out okay...” your girlfriend said calmly

“I swear Lucy... if you even as much as look at her the wrong way I will end you” you sneered as you passed your sister getting pulled along by Leah

You don't know how much time passed as you watched through the big glass windows as your girlfriend and sister having a talk outside the hotel with you inside the lobby

“Calm down Bitsy...” Keira said as she pulled you into her side “... G's a big girl... she can handle it”

“I know... but Kei... Luce basically attacked her with no reason” you huffed but let Keira comfort you a little bit

“I know it sounds like a cheap excuse but... she just got scared about your well-being... I KNOW you are also a big girl Bitsy... but you'll always be her little girl... she's trying Bitsy... but seeing you cry made her snap” the blonde mumbled as she pulled you closer

“But it wasn't because of G... I told her what happened in Barcelona and I couldn't stop the tears... G had nothing to do with it” you said as fresh tears starting to form in your eyes “and she didn't listen... Lucy didn't listen to me... I can't do this Kei... I can't have my sister and my girlfriend fighting... or my sister fighting my girlfriend – she needs to stop”

“She will Bitsy... it just takes some time for her to come to terms with it... she's not good with change either – where do you think you got it from?” Keira smiled slightly

After what seemed like forever in your mind you got surprised as you saw your sister and girlfriend hugging. Not an awkward hug. It was a full on bear hug. Like the hugs you only accept from a few people in your life – full of love and unspoken promises. You watched as they parted again but Lucy kept her arm around Gs shoulders as they walked back into the lobby stopping right in front of Keira and you

“You two dating now?” you asked raising an eyebrow

“Yeah about that babe...” Georgia smirked playing along

“It's fine... I'll just take your best friend then...” you waved off starting to grin

“Does Leah know about this?” Keira now asked faking confusion

“Not talking about Leah” you smirked as you pressed yourself further into the blonde

“That... looks so wrong” Lucy looked horrified

“YOU asked me if it was Keira!!” you exclaimed accusingly

“and THAT was a genuine mistake...” your sister defended herself quickly “... but you made it looked like it was!”

“I was just wearing her shorts!!!” you bantered back

“What in our world means that you're basically engaged!!!” Luce fired back

“Where's my ring?” you turned to Keira expectantly raising your eyebrow again

“EXCUSE ME?!” Georgia exclaimed fake shocked “You're engaged and making moves on me?? Keira I swear I didn't know”

“Meeh... it's alright G... thought I give her the chance to get it out of her system before tying her down... because that's over then... and she was drooling over you for a long time” Keira waved off before all of you bursted out laughing

“Luce...” you said getting serious again “... you can't do that... you can't freak out like that again”

“I know... I'm sorry Bubs... It's just...” your sister tried to explain but couldn't find the right words so Keira helped her out

“It's not easy for us Bitsy... we love you so much and even if we KNOW that G would never ever hurt you – seeing you cry is hard for us” the blonde said as she started to scratch the back of your neck lightly “.... we went through so much together that we just want to protect you – and again... we know that that one wouldn't hurt you on purpose but still... seeing you crying and in distress just flips a switch... the difference is that I have WAY more self-control than your sister” Keira explained quietly

“I'll never hurt her I promise” G said quickly her eyes wide

“I know G... I know you'll never hurt her on purpose but there will be hurt... because that's how a relationship works – it's not always sunshine and rainbows... you both have to work for it and you have to communicate” Keira said serious “We'll always be there to support you and if you want give advice – you're both young and we know what it's like to be separated for some time...”

“Thanks Kei” you mumbled into her shoulder

“Always Bitsy...” she smiled as she pressed a kiss to your forehead “And G”

“Yeah?” your girlfriend asked weary

“For god sakes... grow some balls and defend your girl” Keira said sternly “Lucy can take some bollocking – because that will be something she has to deal with when we're back in Spain anyway”

“I have to what?” your sister asked horrified knowing Keira doesn't fuck about

“We'll have a talk when we're back... just you and me... in private” the blonde informed your sister who shrunk back a little under the intense stare of her ex-girlfriend

“Uuuuhhh... someone is in troooouuuble” you sing-songed snickering

“You want to be added to the list?” Keira raised her eyebrow looking down at you

“Yeah no thank you” you quickly said sheepishly

“Thought so... now off you go... it's late and it was an eventful day – I can see and feel the exhaustion from you” the blonde scoffed before pushing you off her slightly

“Luce” you whined and your sister immediately turned around to give you a piggy back ride

You unceremoniously climbed on her back letting her carry you to the elevator getting you to your room while Keira and G stayed behind

“I'm sorry for what happened G” Keira started

“It's okay Kei...” Georgia waved off

“No it's not G... it's not okay what Lucy did” the blonde interrupted her best friend quickly “... she shouldn't have reacted that way... and I promise you it'll never happen again I make sure of it... but I want you to understand that Bitsy is her everything – Lucy wouldn't think twice to jump in front of a truck for her... both of us wouldn't think twice but Lucy would be quicker. She went through so much and never actually talked about it or grieved you know – when she got the news of it being her ACL again and this time she's forced to stop playing... she just... sat there” Keira said remembering the day as if it happened yesterday “... she just sat there – 13 years old... blank face... shrugging her shoulders – Lucy and I kept it together until we were home and then first Lucy broke and then me... but her... she just – I don't want to say accepted it but she just bottled it up... she lost her spark that day – and slowly it's coming back... you are the reason for that G... you don't know it but you help her heal more than Lucy and I could in the last three years”

“I... didn't do anything” your girlfriend said confused

“You treat her right G... and that's enough for her” Keira smiled slightly

“I nearly didn't... you know... if it wasn't for her stubbornness” Georgia admitted shyly

“What do you mean? And yes... everyone with the name Bronze is stubborn as fuck” the blonde said rolling her eyes

“She kissed me you know... after the Euros... I was... drunk... but sober enough to kinda realize what’s happening... I pulled her outside the locker room and told her this can't happen..” your girlfriend explained to her best friend “... I told her she's too young and this isn't what she wants... she told me she may be young but she definitely knows what she wants... and that's me... she was so adamant... but I pushed her away a few time... until she showed up at me apartment in Munich – god only knows where she got the info from where I live – and just TOLD me that she won't accept me saying “no” anymore and she'll definitely won't let me run away and hide anymore... my whole self-control broke that moment....”

“So you did have sex with her before her birthday... because that's what she told Luce... that you waited till her birthday” Keira questioned

“No... god no... I didn't touch her that way before her birthday... I swear Kei... I mean there were some moments where it nearly got to that point but I stopped... I SWEAR K...” Georgia said quickly

“G... even if you did have sex with her before... it's in the past and nothing can change it... I know how the Bronze women can be... once they have something set their mind on it takes an army to get them to get them off the rails... it doesn't matter if it's Lucy or Bitsy or Sophie or Diane...” Keira smiled “... you will experience that in future a few times – and I wish you good luck and already feel sorry for you at the same time... but what Luce did earlier is still not okay”

“We talked it out K... I swear it's okay... she promised to hold back” your girlfriend assured

“You could talk to Sarina...” Keira said but this time Georgia interrupted her

“No... she apologized we talked it out... done and dusted... I understand her Kei... I really do... because if I see someone making me girlfriend cry I would snap too” your girlfriend waved off

“Great...” Keira mumbled “... another one I have to keep an eye on... the next time I get asked what I would do if I don't play professionally football anymore I say “zookeeper”... got plenty of experience in keeping wild animals under control”

Georgia burst out laughing and offered her best friend her hand to pull her off the couch. Keira accepted the hand gladly and let G pull her into a standing position.

“You're getting old Walsh” Georgia teased when Keira groaned getting pulled into an upright position

“No... I'm just over the whole shite” Keira grumbled as she turned around to leave

“Love you Walsh” G yelled after her

“Love you Stanway” Keira yelled back making Georgia smile

Lucy noticed you were asleep before you two even made it to your room. The way your head slowly sank deeper onto her shoulder was a clear indicator – as well as your light snoring and the occasional smacking of your lips. Your sister “knocked” on the door using her foot adjusting her hold on you. LJ opened annoyed but perked up immediately when she saw Lucy

“Yeah?” LJ asked

“Just here to deliver Bubs...” Lucy said being a little icy towards the younger player

“Oh... okay” LJ said stepping aside letting Lucy in

Your sister disposed you carefully and with practical ease on the bed and started to pull your socks and trousers off your legs

“She's 16... I think she's capable of undressing herself” LJ bit a little too harsh which caused Lucy to narrow her eyes at her teammate

“I am aware... but I also know her... look LJ... I don't know what your twos problem is but when it comes down to it – she's my baby sister... and whoever hurts her better makes his last will because I won't have it...” Lucy said seriously as she made sure your scars were covered quickly

“Lucy... I know that okay... and yes we're not really friends anymore” LJ started and Lucy snorted “... but I think we can be civil with each other.. I mean you and me know she swapped my cleats and I did nothing to her did I now”

“I really like you as a person and a player LJ...” Lucy sighed before pressing a kiss to your head “... but again.. she's my baby sister”

“We will figure it out” LJ said and if you weren't asleep you would've bursted out laughing – because from your side there was no “figuring it out”

“Morning” you greeted Meado at the elevators the next morning

“Morning pumpkin” Beth greeted back giving you a once over “You okay?”

“Gettin there... need coffee” you said slowly clearly still half asleep as you felt Meado putting her arm over your shoulders pulling you into her side

“Pumpkin I know you don't want to hear it but I need you to eat something too okay... I know you can go longer than 24 without food but it's not healthy” Beth said a little concern in her voice.

She as well haven't forgotten what happened two years ago. How Leah called her full on sobbing that she needs to get to Manchester as quick as possible but she can't go on her own because she probably would crash the car. Of course Beth immediately was on board picking Leah up not even 15 Minutes later. Leah was an emotional mess. Meado actually didn't find out what happened until there were about 30 Minutes out of Manchester. And when Leah finally told her – Beth nearly lost control over the car. So yes – your well-being also was important to her.

“Yeah I know... yesterday was just...” you started ashamed

“... emotional... I know...” Meado finished for you smiling slightly

“Morning” you heard suddenly as Keira stood behind the two of you

“Morning Kei” Meado said happily while you just grunt in response

“Come here Bitsy” Keira said lovingly opening her arms knowing you always need longer and more importantly physical contact in the mornings

The elevator arrived and all three of you entered it to go down to breakfast. One floor down Millie and Rach entered the elevator and you immediately whined for Millie to carry you. As usual you had everyone wrapped around your finger and so it happened that you got carried to the breakfast room where surprisingly Sarina waited for you with a coffee in your hand

“We need to talk, Liefje” the dutch said you still clutched to Millies back pushing the mug into your hands “So ex that and with me”

“What did you do to make the big boss angry?” Millie asked confused as she set you down looking after Sarina who was just leaving

“You're guess is as good as mine” you shrugged your shoulders downing the coffee shuffling after the dutch into an empty meeting room

“What can I do for you great masteress of lionesses?” you tried to lighten the mood

“What happened yesterday?” Sarina came straight to the point looking at you expectantly

“Huh?” you looked at her confused

“Why were two of my best players at each other throats AGAIN yesterday after dinner?” the dutch said and you knew not to fuck about

“There was a misunderstanding” you said carefully

“Elaborate” Sarina said seriously and you noticed she's getting angry

“I told G about what happened... two years ago... and in Barcelona... because I wanted to be honest with her... I started crying... I didn't even noticed I was crying... and suddenly Lucy was there having a go at G... but Kei and Leah took care of it” you spilled immediately trying to low the blow

“Okay... okay...” the dutch sighed out massaging her temples

“I didn't mean too” you said quickly feeling incredibly guilty

“It's not your fault... but I need to talk to both of them... this can't go on” Sarina said seriously “I can't have my squad fighting each other”

“I know” you sighed ashamed “... I don't know what's going on with Lucy... because G did nothing and Luce is constantly out for her...”

“Your sister is protective, Liefje” Sarina said softly “And it's hard for her to see you dating”

“But... I'm not a baby anymore” you said desperately

“Liefje... you were with her your whole life – there were rumours that you are her daughter instead of her sister” the dutch chuckled

“Ugh” you gagged slightly

“I want something else from you” Sarina now leaned against the big table

“Ehrm... I feel honoured but... Ehrm... you are a little to... experienced for me Mama Rina” you stuttered scratching the back of your neck

“Dear god kiddo... it's not all about sex in life...” the dutch rolled her eyes “... I want you to come up with a exercise for training – teamwork and communication”

“Why are you including me so much...” you asked a little confused

“Because I know how great you can be – you always sell yourself short... I want you to realize how amazing you are and live it” Sarina said softly “... and I want to inform you that we indeed have a friendly against Spain in 10 days”

“Yes... I really want to face them” you said happily “... I really want Less and Toons to meet Mapí”

“Liefje... I will put you on a leash you if you plan on doing something stupid” the dutch pointed her finger at you

“I just want to.... cultivate international relations...” you said carefully

“You want to cause trouble – I will talk to Lucy about your harness... what was the name?” Sarina waved off

“Bronzo” you murmured defeated

“Ah yes... now... I want you to come up with an exercise and a strategy for the game against Spain” the dutch said and you know your little “meeting” was over

“Yes Mama Rina” you sighed already thinking about different drills

“Oh and y/n?” Sarina held you back as you were about to leave

“Yes?” you looked up a little shocked

“Send your sister and girlfriend in” the dutch smirked and winked at you

“Will do” you smiled widely “With pleasure”

“BRONZE!!! STANWAY!!” you yelled when you entered the breakfast room and all heads snap towards you

“Big Bossies wants to talk to you” you nodded towards the meeting room

Both your sisters and your girlfriends face went white as they stood up walking slowly past you with Georgia stopping shortly

“Are we out?” G whispered lowly

“Don't think so... but I can't say for sure” you whispered back grabbing her hand and squeezing it encouraging

“If that's the case I'll still be around – we can invade Leahs apartment” Georgia smiled lightly but you saw right through it

“She won't kick you out.. she'll kick your ass and that's it... she knows it's not you who causes trouble... it's Luce” you leaned up quickly pressing a kiss to your girlfriends cheek

“STANWAY!!” now Sarina yelled down the corridor

Georgia quickly let go of your hand and ran down the corridor.

“They're in trouble?” Keira asked you as you plopped down in the chair next to her inspecting Keiras plate who immediately pushed it towards you

“Yeah.... somehow Sarina knows about yesterday” you mumbled “... hey Kei?”

“Yes Bitsy?” the blonde smiled at you

“Can I have eggs?” you asked embarrassed

“Of course Bitsy.. why do you ask?” Keira looked at you confused

“Don't know.... just feel like it” you shrugged your shoulders

“Come on Bits... let's get you some breeki hm?” the blonde smiled encouraging and pulled you out of your chair leading you over to the buffet

“Take whatever you want Bitsy.... just... don't load your plate Bronze style” Keira smiled as you went over all the option

“Eggs... bacon...” you mumbled to yourself

“Something healthy” Keira threw in

“Guac....” you mumbled deep in thoughts “Uuuuhhh.... donuts”

“No” Keira smiled sweetly

“But” you whined childish

“No Bitsy... take some fruit and we're good” the blonde grinned

“But you said whatever I want” you whined again

“No donuts... you didn't do anything today what would justify a donut” Keira said and you knew you lost the donut for good

You sighed heavy and took an apple from the fruit basket

“Uuuuhhh... mom put her foot down” Rachel laughed as you passed they're table

Keira pushed you to walk on when she noticed you wanted to start arguing with the blonde and lead you back to your table. After you sat down you looked down on your plate with the apple next to it. You picked up the apple looked at it for a second before throwing it towards Rachel hitting her straight in the back of the head which caused the whole table (especially Millie) to interrupt in loud laughter and Rachel to swear loudly. Keira scolded you lightly but smiled nonetheless

Lucy, Georgia and Sarina entered the room. The two players looked like drowned puppies while the Head coach smiled satisfied. Georgia immediately took a detour towards Tooneys and Less table which caused you to frown. Lucy sat down opposite to you and you watched her closely

“All good?” you asked

“All good” your sister answered before continuing to eat

“Okay Girls... this was a really good training so far” Sarina yelled over the field clapping her hands

“Our new addition here” she pulled you next to and in to a hug “will have the honour for the last exercise of the day”

All Lionesses looked at you expectantly and you suddenly felt a little shy

“I didn't agree to your offer” you mumbled shyly

“You will” Sarina smiled happily “I'm pretty positive about it – now go and show them what you got”

“Okay Ladies... and Lucy” you said loudly grinning after the little pep talk

“Hey!!” your sister exclaimed annoyed as the team began to chuckle

“Listen up... we're playing Hungry Hippo” you clapped your hands and Rachel “woohooed” loudly

“For everyone who doesn't know Hungry Hippo... it's simple... teams of three each... every team gets four balls... you have to defend your balls and also have to steal the balls of the other teams... team who is out of eggs first runs laps until the game is over” you explained quickly

“What's the goal of the game?” Niamh asked

“Goal of the game is to get all the balls in one “nest”... the goal of the exercise is teamwork and communication... you need to work together and communicate with each other” you explained “And before you ask... I put the teams together”

“Aaaawww maaaaan” you heard Less groan

“Walsh, Stanway, James” you rattled off ignoring one of your best friends

“Russo, Williamson, Toone” you smirked knowing you just got Leah back for the rooming incident

“WHAT??” the capitan exclaimed shocked

“YES!!” Tooney and Less high-fived

“Daly, Bright, Mearps” you continued and split all the players into teams

“Really?” Sarina asked under her breath but loud enough that you could hear her “Walsh, Stanway and James?”

“Kei and G are pissed at James – rightfully so but still need to learn to keep it off the pitch” you mumbled back

“Genius move – I need you in my team” Sarina smiled

“And you will.. I want Jill Scott as my guardian” you said off handy

“Done” the dutch answered quickly and smiled widely

“And we will talk about numbers... I want a good salary” you smirked at her

“You haven't even seen the contract and already start hackling?” Sarina laughed

“I saw Lucys contracts over the years... they were shit..” you pointed out

“We'll talk about it later... now let them run” the blonde dutch smiled and you grabbed her whistle successfully pulling the short woman closer to you and blew that whistle hard

Immediately there interrupted chaos on the field and you couldn't help but laugh loudly when Lucy rugby tackled Rachel to the ground who tried to steal a ball from your sisters nest. The little game continued for some while – for a hot second it looked like Keiras team was loosing since they did everything than communicating with each other but the recovered quickly and got some balls back. You also saw how different the teams approach their tactics to defend and retrieve. Team Bright for example had Mearps AND Bright on defending egg duty while Rach zipped around stealing balls. Lucys team had only Lucy for defence and Lotte and Meado for retrieval. It was honestly too funny and you turned around to the media team

“Oi edits.... get some footage of that... fans will love it” you laughed as they quickly scramble to get some of the chaos on video

“Hey.... hey you” you shouted over to a guy who stood there a little lost and when he turned towards you you waved him over

“What's your job here?” you asked but still keeping an eye on the field

“I'm... a trainee” the dirty blonde said shyly

“Okay... perfect... go get coffee for the big boss and myself.... she takes it black like her soul – strong... basically like oil... I want a latte” you said smiling

“Where do I find coffee?” the young bloke said getting even more shy

“In the meeting rooms should be coffee machines.... just... take some from there” you looked a little unsure yourself “Oh... and what's your name?”

“Finney... friends call me Finn” he now smiled getting a little more comfortable talking to you

“Yeah no.... I'll just call you Fren... we're Frens now” you waved off “everyone who brings me coffee is a Fren”

“Okay... I promise I bring the best coffee I can find” he smiled before sprinting off

“Already abusing your status I see” Sarina smirked next to you

“Don't tell me you had enough time this morning to actually fulfil your caffeine fix” you said rolling your eyes

“Of course I didn't... I had to put your sister and girlfriend through the wringer AND put them on probation.... I was THIS close to put them on the naughty step” the dutch mumbled annoyed

“I would have paid to see that” you bursted out laughing “OI STANWAY.... STOP PULLING LOTTES PANTS DOWN!!!!”

“JEALOUS???” Lotte yelled back holding onto her shorts for dear life with Georgia hanging on the hem of them shorts trying to pull them down once again

“Not at all” you yelled back laughing at their antics “She already knows how comfortable the couch is...”

You saw a few seconds later how team “Two best idiots + Leah” lost their last ball and you grabbed Sarinas whistle (and Sarina) again whistling loudly. All Lionesses froze in their place and you grinned

“I really enjoy this” you said loudly smirking evilly “... Capitan oh Capitan....” you said dramatically “... your team is the first loosing all their Hippo eggs... so... you and your mates.... off you scramble... laps until the game is over”

“You can't do that” Leah growled knowing fully well you actually can make her run

“Oh but I can... I said beforehand the first team without Hippo eggs will run laps, Williamson” you smirked enjoying having the upper hand for once extremly “... sooooo... run”

Less and Tooney already jogging away from you knowing they wouldn't get out of it anyway so they just accepted their fate. Leah on the other hand was adamant to prove a point now looking at Sarina

“She can't do that” Leah said sounding a little like a small child

“She can... I gave her the task of finding a exercise for teamwork and communication – which she did – and I authorized it.... she said before you all started what will happen and you lost.... get going Leah...” Sarina said calmly knowing when to back you up and when you can defend yourself

Leah started to jog away still mumbling and growling under her breath

“Thank you Mama Rina...” you mumbled as you accepted your coffee from Finn

“No need Liefje... you were in the right and just because Leah wants to pull the capitan card doesn't mean she can do that all the time” the dutch said softly also accepting her coffee from the young lad.

The leftover players on the field were still looking at you expectantly and you realized you didn't restart the game

“Sorry guys” you smiled embarrassed

“Wait...” Grace (Clinton) said quickly before you were able to blew the whistle again

“Yeah Hillary?” you looked at her smirking

“First... please don't....” she sighed “second... what does the winner get?”

“Oh... winner gets the afternoon off – and gets a cheat meal extra” you smiled shrugging your shoulders

“Excuse me?? I didn't agree to that” Sarina exclaimed surprised

“Yeah well... I just thought of that” you looked at her apologetic

“The things I let slide with you” the dutch rolled her eyes and waved her hand for you to continue

“Love you Mama Rina” you smiled pressing a soft kiss to her cheek

“Yeah yeah” the blonde murmured but a smile tugged on the edge of her lips

You blew the whistle again and immediately there interrupted chaos again – the game ended with a tie (you were made to stop it by Sarina) between Team Walsh and Team Bronze. Which surprised everyone – especially you but you did internally congratulate yourself for fulfilling the task of brining the team closer together.

The Bus ride was mostly quiet except for Georgia and Esme (who was on Lucys team) discussing rather loudly what they would have as their cheat meal with Rachel throwing in Gs direction

“Little Bronze doesn't count you know... you can eat her as much as you like” the blonde smirked and immediately got Lucys dirty sock thrown in her face while you bursted out laughing next to Mearps and Georgia turning fire red once again. Back at the Hotel everyone went to their rooms to shower and get ready for Lunch and eventual media assignments. Lunch went over without a hitch – if you ignore the fact that your sister shooed your girlfriend away again – and soon all of you got the plan for the rest of the day.

You entered the room which was officially dubbed the “common get together”-room finding Lucy, Keira, Mary, Less, Tooney, Niamh, Meado and LJ (who you honestly could do without) chilling around. Some of them were lounging on the couch while Tooney, Less and Niamh were placed at the table playing with some Legos. You made a beeline for your two bestest friends as Keira looked up from her book

“No” the blonde just said knowing letting you sit with them would end up in a Lego fight and you'd throw pieces at each other until one got either hurt or cried

“Keira cooooome ooooon” you whined which caused Tooney and Less to look up

“Yeah Keira... cooooome ooooon” Tooney whined too

“Come here Bubs” Lucy said from her place on the couch stretched her hand towards you trying to get you to come over to her “Wanna show you something”

“You can always show it to LJ” you pulled a face and your voice was laced with venom

“Huh?” your sister looked at you confused as you turned around now marching towards Tooney like you were on a mission

“Bitsy” Keira warned you raising her eyebrow in challenge

“I'm just gonna sit here” you said annoyed and the blonde noticed your grumpy mood

“No Lego fights!” the blonde looked at you threating

“Okay mom” the three of you answered simultaneously grinning

Soon after Less got called away by the media team for some... whatever, you didn't pay attention. Tooney and you continued to build on your Lego castle but as usual after like 30 minutes you both got bored

You just looked at each other communicating without words – like always. You both stood up at the same time looking around until your eyes fell on the dart board that was hung up on the other side of the room. Tooney and you tried to be as sneaky as possible as you slandered over to said piece of fun without noticing Keira watching every step you took. Just as you were about to pull the third dart out of the board so Toons and you could play a hand reached over your shoulder taking all darts away

“I told you... no sharp objects” you immediately reconized the voice of one Keira Walsh

“They're not sharp...” you pouted as you turned around to look at her with your best puppy eye look

“No pointy objects either” Keira smiled sweetly and you knew it was fake as fuck

“But... Tooney and I wanted to play” you pouted

“Tooney is banned from pointy objects too” the blonde just said hoping to end this topic

“Tooney is what?” Ella said confused

“The last time you whined for a WEEK that your finger nearly fell off” Keira rolled her eyes “So no darts for you either... find something else”

“Oh yeah.. I forgot about that... it was really close for me finger to fall off” Tooney said as she remembered her last interaction with darts

“Your bloody finger was fine” you exclaimed

“Bloody... that's the word you should emphasize... so much blood” Ella sighed

“Less nearly broke my nose.... THAT was bloody... your finger was just... trickling blood” you said upset

“If you don't stop to one up each other immediately I'm going to put you in different corners of the room” Keira interrupted your “fight”

“Sorry mom” both of you said

“Gosh... can't you two play nicely with each other for once?” the blonde rolled her eyes

“We tried... you wouldn't allow it” you tried to reason with her

“No sharp or pointy objects” Keira said again “Find something else”

You looked over at Tooney who just shrugged her shoulders

“Uh... there's a bowling thing in the basement... can we go bowling? Nothing sharp, nothing pointy” you said excited as Tooney started to beam

“Not without a responsible adult around” Keira said “And I'm not going down there with you”

“Millie and Rach are down there... I think” you said as you tried to convince Kei

“Lucy?” the blonde turned around to your sister

“Yeah?” Lucy looked up from her phone where she (most likely) texted with Ona

“I just spoke english did I?” Keira asked her ex

“Ehrm... yes? Why?” your sister asked confused

“Good... I just thought I switched to spanish without noticing it when I said them two nobbheads won't go bowling in the basement without a responsible adult and Bitsys answer was Millie and Rachel... I just wanted to double check that I in fact did use the english language” the blonde said and you groaned behind her knowing she just shut down your idea

“Oh no... you definitely spoke english” Lucy smirked

“Mary??” you asked hopefully looking at the keeper

“Yeah okay...” the tall brunette rolled her eyes but smiled noneless “I'll take you bowling”

“YES!!” you high fived Tooney “Mary counts as responsible, right?” you checked with Keira

“Yes... Mary counts as responsible” the blonde sighed actually hoping you'd find no body who would go with you so she could keep an eye on you

“Woohoo...” you cheered chasing after Tooney who already was sprinting towards the door

“No running” Mary yelled after you but it was no use as she stood up following the two of you

“I'll give them 20 Minutes” Keira said plopping down next to Lucy on the couch

“Naah... Mearps is good... Bubs respects Mearps.... 30” your sister grinned as she started a timer

32 Minutes later the door of the common room got kicked open and Mary carried you bridal style inside to cross the room with quick strides. Tooney was following after you apologizing profusely while you whined into Marys neck

“32 Minutes and 17 seconds” Lucy looked down on her phone grinning stopping the timer showing it to Keira

“Should we follow or just ignore that something went horribly wrong... as always when these two are left to their own?” the blonde sighed looking expectantly at Lucy

“Naah... she has Mearps with her...” your sister waved off smirking knowing you'll throw an absolute fit once one of the physios wants to touch whatever limp is hurting at the moment.

A minute later the door opens again and Mearps head appeared

“Luce... Kei.... Help... please? She bit the new physio already” the brown haired keeper pleaded with her teammates

“Rock paper scissors?” Lucy asked raising her eyebrow

“2 out of 3 or at first go?” Keira just asked back already getting ready

“First go... we don't have the time for 2 out of 3” your sister said getting ready as well.

“Okay Bubs... why are you causing trouble again?” your sister sighed as she entered the medic room “And what happened in the first place?”

“I want Keira” you sniffled

“Yeah well... Keira won rock paper scissors so here I am” Lucy shrugged sitting down on the exam table next to you

“Tooney threw the bowling ball on me foot” you whined and Lucy REALLY needed to bite her tongue to not burst out laughing – leave it to Tooney and you to actually get hurt by a bowling ball

“We just wanted to take a look but she wouldn't let us touch her foot” one of the Medics explained to your sister

“It's okay... I got it” your sister smiled as she sat down further down on the table putting your foot into her lap which caused you to whine and try to pull away

“No Bubs... let me look” Lucy said softly starting to undo your laces and carefully pulling your shoe off your sock following just after the shoe

“Okay... I'm no medic but it doesn't look broken...” your sister said looking up at you “We'll just let the pros have a look at it okay Bubs”

You knew it was a rhetorical question but that doesn't mean you couldn't answer anyway

“No no no no no” you shook your head quickly

“Yes... come on Bubs... just a quick once over and we're out of here again – I'll even get you some cookies” Lucy said softly knowing you needed reassurance right now

“Okay... but I want a donut... the chocolate one” you mumbled

“Of course” Lucy chuckled nodding to the medics

Just as she promised they just did a quick once over put some tape on your foot and told Lucy you should keep weight off it for at least 24 hours before sending you on your way again. Your sister knew you would be stubborn about letting her help you so she quickly grabbed you before you could slide down from the table and carried you down the hall

“Lucy let me down” you yelled annoyed as your sister carried you into the common room

“I will...” Lucy said calmly looking for a place to dispose you “Stop wriggling”

“Now...” you grunted trying to get out of your sisters hold

“No...” Lucy grunted back “Kei help”

“Just put her down on the beanbag” the blonde said already coming over

“Keira...” you whined loudly

“Oh Bitsy... what have you done now?” Keira sighed seeing your taped up foot

“Toons just doesn't know how to bowl” you huffed crossing your arms over your chest

“I TOLD you to be careful” the blonde scolded

“I WAS... I stood behind her... ball needs to go forward.. not my fault she doesn't understand the rules” you grumbled back

“I'm really sorry” Tooney said from the table where she got placed down by Mary “gently” (gently means death glare and pointed finger)

“I know you are Toons” you grinned “You got me donut”

“Excuse me??” Keira exclaimed looking at your sister annoyed

“She was good... she deserves one” Lucy defended herself knowing by Keiras look that the blonde didn't agree

“Just like always Lucia” Keira snarled “You don't have to deal with her when she gets all hyperactive because of the sugar – you just sleep or disappear”

“I'll be good Kei... I promise” you said quickly not wanting that Keira and Lucy fight

“I know you Bitsy... you won't... so you can have your donut... tomorrow... and in small pieces” the blonde said strictly

“But...” you started but got shut down immediately by Keiras killer glare “Can I play Lego with Tooney?” you asked instead sheepishly

“You hate Lego” the blonde answered as a matter of fact

“There's nothing else to do” you whined

“You can just leave your ass seated for a hot minute” Keira sighed loudly throwing her arms in the air annoyed

“That's boring” you whined making grabby hands towards Keira

“Seriously Bitsy.... you and Tooney are a guaranteed headache” the blonde said but helped you up nonetheless

“y/n... Tooney... you up for some media contend?” a voice suddenly asked from the door

“YES!!” you and Tooney exclaimed quickly as you tried to hobble away from Keiras prying hands as quick as possible

“Great... we have something fun planned...” the man you named “edit” (because he edits all the contend for the Lionesses social media) grinned widely

“You need my approval” Lucy yelled out just as you and Toons slipped through the door letting it fall shut loudly

“Okay guys... first you gonna introduce yourself and then we gonna explain what you have to do” edit says as if you two did media for the first time

“We know how this works Steve” Ella rolled her eyes

“Okay... then... go” the black haired man said

“Hi guys... I'm Ella Toone” Tooney smiled brightly

“.. and I'm the smarter and better looking Bronze” you grinned into the camera

“You have a name you twat” Ella said hitting your shoulder

“I know I do... but I AM the smarter and better looking Bronze” you huffed back shoving Ella so she nearly fell of the chair

“Okay... so here's what you two will do today” one of the media guys explained from the background “Ella we going to blindfold you and we play a little taste test”

“Why am I getting blindfolded??” Tooney whined loudly while you grinned

“Because you so ugly they don't want their lenses to crack” you laughed

“Shut up” Ella shoved you hard pushing you successfully off your chair and you took the table down with you.

Tooney looked down at you shocked but a second later both of you exploded laughing

“Oh god... we should've paired someone else” one of the media guys said desperately already seeing this go horribly wrong

The staff help you up again and set up the table again before giving you a Lionesses scarf and tell you to cover Ellas eyes with it. After you done your bit and actually tested that Toons really doesn't see anything by pretending to hit her multiple times you grinned happily back into the camera

“What now?” you asked excited as you got handed a take out box

“Now you just have to feed that to Tooney and she has to guess what it is” edit says pointing to the box

You opened the box looked inside and immediately gagged loudly before closing it again.

“What?? What is it??” Ella asked alarmed

You opened the box again and now even just the smell resulted in you gagging even louder (the gag that comes from way down) – you felt like you nearly need to vomit

“y/n... you can't do that... stop gagging” Tooney said seriously already feeling her stomach tighten

“Sorry... but... no... no” you said again pulling your shirt over your nose heaving again

“STOP IIIIIT” Ella whined

“This stuff is making me heave... I can't stop” you gagged again turning away from the take out box “I swear Toons... I would be livid if they made me eat that...”

“Stoooop” Ella now whined desperately “You can't say shit like that and expect me to eat whatever it is”

“Okay... okay...” you breathed deeply reassuring – not Ella but yourself “okay... this isn't gonna be nice okay Toons... just... swallow it... don't taste it just swallow it down... ready?” you asked having a little bit of the brown substance on a wooden spoon

“Fuck me” Toons looked unsure

“Trust me Toons... just... down” you said unsure as you lined up the spoon with roughly Ellas mouth

“But...” as soon as Ella opened her mouth you shoved the spoon into her mouth pulling it out a second later

“Get that away from me” you pushed the take out box harshly so it nearly tumbles off the table before looking at Ella again who actually started to chew a little bit

“Toons... just swallow it... you're not a fucking gourmet” you exclaimed disgusted

“What is it?” Ella asked trying to guess the right flavor

“It's dog food I swear... it looks like the stuff Lucy gives Narla... Caesars or something” you said starting to heave again

“It's not...” Tooney said convinced “It's pâté... or something”

“THAT'S Pâté?” you asked confused since you were sure it was dog food

“It's not Pâté” one of the guys said from behind the camera

“IT'S NOT???!!!” Ella screeched

“Told you... it's dog food” you said offhandly

“It's chicken paste” the guy said

“Oh... oh... it's not bad actually” Tooney said nodding

“No... if you ever bring that near me again I'll break you legs” you gagged loudly again

Half an hour later the two of you left the media room and Tooney helped you hobble down the hallway.

“I swear Toons... it look like dog food” you mumbled needing to concentrate on your good foot

“But it was tasty” the brown haired girl said softly as she held you upright

“Hey” suddenly someone stood in your way

You looked up to see your girlfriend leaning casually against the wall

“Need a lift?” she smiled at you softly

“I would take a ride too” you winked and this time it was Ella who gagged loudly

"You know... I'm just gonna call you Georgiaswifey from now on" Tooney huffed as she helped you onto your girlfriends back

(if you want to see the inspirational video to that media moment of bb and Tooney...

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C0M5xD0oapm/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==)

#lucy bronze x reader #keira walsh x reader #woso image #lucy bronze #lionesses x reader #georgia stanway x reader #sarina wiegman

[genshin-obsessed]

Abandon | Tighnari x Reader

𓆩⟡𓆪 Beware! This is angst with no comfort! Otherwise, please enjoy~

𓆩⟡𓆪 I made this a bit shorter than it was intended but I didn’t want to make it too long and I felt like the ending was better this way.

𓆩⟡𓆪 Word count: 1367

"Ah... sorry. I'm just not in a place where I'm looking for a relationship. Thank you for your feelings; thank you for loving me. But, I can't return that love... not yet anyway."

Those were the words Tighnari had for you when you first confessed to him almost two years ago. Of course it broke your heart, but it was probably the nicest let down you could think of. You were upset, of course, but who were you to question his feelings? Tighnari was always busy with work and his studies to be in a relationship.

Relationships never seemed like they were for him, but his words had given you some inkling of hope that fueled your own feelings. The longer you spent around Tighnari, the more you felt your love for him grow. It truly felt endless. You never felt as if Tighnari took you for granted, he was just as any good friend would be. He supported you, was kind to you, encouraged you, and never judged you. Yet, there was always a feeling of emptiness that invaded your chest when you were around him.

Discontent.

No matter what, you were never satisfied with Tighnari's kindness towards you. It was never something you ever mentioned or acted upon, but you always felt like it wasn't enough. Unsurprisingly, you wanted more. You were in love with him and the gentle shoulder pats always left you wanting more.

That's when you realized your feelings had gotten out of hand. At first, being around Tighnari was enough. Just being able to see him, hear his voice, and helping to contribute to his work was enough. You weren't sure when it stopped, but now you needed to do something about it.

So, over the course of a month, you slowly began to get busier with your work. Twice a week, you would spend time with Tighnari, Cyno, Kaveh, and Alhaitham, usually playing Genius Invocation TCG. But you stopped attending due to taking on more work. Unfortunately, this led to some adverse health effects, but that was expected.

Consequently, you were called out by all four of your friends, especially Tighnari, who demanded you take some time off to take care of yourself. You felt guilty, avoiding your close friends the way you did. One thing you knew you couldn’t do was go cold turkey on Tighnari. It was a thought you just couldn’t handle so that’s why you were taking it slowly.

See, this is where things fell apart. It was a weekend and you had a day off. You went out with a friend and as you were heading home, you happened to run into the group and Cyno invited you to play Genius Invocation TCG.

“Sorry, I’ve been here a while and I’m tired.” You lied, giving them a halfhearted wave.

“Oh come on, (y/n).” Kaveh said with a frown as he placed his cards face down. “It’s been a while since you spent time with us. It’ll be fun! Hey! You can pester Tighnari about his new girlfriend.”

“Kaveh!” Tighnari hissed at his words but his friend had already spoken. Your entire body went rigid at Kaveh’s words and for a moment, everything fell silent. Your heart sank, the pit of anxiety grew within you, and the emotions slowly began to bubble.

Tighnari’s eyes slowly shifted to you, seeing that heartbroken look in your eyes. He wasn’t ready to see that. To see just how much the idea would hurt you. The remorse he fell made him realize he wasn’t as innocent as he pretended to be.

There was a very awkward silence that fell upon the group as everyone looked between you and Tighnari. The forest ranger looked guilty and you looked hurt. Even Alhaitham started to feel a little bad when he saw your face. Yet, you forced a smile, blinked back the tears, and looked at Kaveh which made the architect flinch a little.

“Sorry, I don’t have time for gossip. I’ve got an early day tomorrow but have fun on my behalf. And Tighnari, congrats on the new relationship. Didn’t know you had it in you.” There was a way you spoke that added to the guilt Tighnari felt. He knew you didn't mean that as a compliment.

With a wave, you turned and left, making all eyes land on Tighnari. The awkward silence continued for a moment before Alhaitham finally broke it.

“What the hell was that?” As usual, he was straightforward, needing answers to why you reacted the way you did.

“N-nothing. I’m sure they’re fine.” Tighnari lied as he looked at his cards. Yet, even though his eyes scanned the faces of the cards, he wasn’t thinking about the game or any strategy. He was worried about you because he knew the hope he gave you had just come crashing down. Yet, he didn’t move. The uncomfortable atmosphere remained around the four, but Tighnari remained where he was seated. ⎯⎯ ୨ A Little Later ୧ ⎯⎯

Your walk home was dreadful. Some pathetic part of you wished Tighnari would chase after you but he never did. Your entire walk home was filled with sniffling as you tried to bury the sadness down, which ultimately failed. Yet almost every moment was just waiting for him to catch up and apologize or even explain what was going on.

The words just kept repeating over and over in your head. Tighnari was in a relationship? He never told you any such thing. You weren’t even aware he had been looking. A bitter laugh escaped your lips as you approached the hill that led up to your home. You were so desperate, weren’t you? Hell, maybe he was going to tell you but you stopped hanging around him a few weeks ago.

You fooled yourself into acting as if you were completely unaware. You wanted Tighnari to love you back but acted as if it fine that he didn’t. Even after he rejected you, you hoped he would just one day come to you and declare he changed his mind. You dreamt of that day so many times, yet out of all the scenarios you made up, this wasn’t one of them.

You saw the look in his eyes. He knew how you felt and there was some inkling of guilt within his gaze. Yet, knowing that he might have felt some form of realization brought you no solace. You didn’t care if he was understood- not right now anyway. Knowing him, he probably wasn't even sorry.

Who was this girl he was dating? Did she work with him? Work with one of the others? Did you know her?

So many questions filled your mind that would remain unanswered for the foreseeable future. Your hand rubbed your wet cheek as you pushed your door open and closed it behind you. Your other hand mindlessly slid against the door and finding the lock, and turning it.

Your home felt… dreary. There was that silence that made the loneliness settle within you. Dropping your bag at your feet, you just walked inside and laid down on your couch. Your eyes stare at the ceiling and you were acutely aware when your vision began to blur with tears.

Soft sobs escaped your lips no matter how hard you tried to choke them down. You were angry. Angry at yourself for feeling this way, angry at Tighnari for giving you hope the day you confessed, angry at that girl who had him or whatever. No matter what you did, the tears just wouldn't stop. So, you just let go- you let those emotions flow out of you instead of holding them back.

You officially had to move on. Tighnari really didn’t feel the same way and you needed to let go of these stupid feelings. He wasn’t obligated to love you and you weren’t obligated to be friends with him. Especially since it was so painful. But that dull ache returned and you looked around your living space for any form of comfort. Yet, there was none. You were all alone.

There was a lingering thought in your head which kept reminding you every few moments that… Tighnari never came after you.

#tighnari x reader #genshin tighnari #tighnari angst #genshin x reader #genshin impact x reader #angst #genshin angst #gender neutral reader #🖊─ pocky’s writings #angst no comfort

[yikesmary]

FAKE DATING ROOMMATES — choi seungcheol x reader

summary: in which choi seungcheol becomes your roommate and fake boyfriend in one fell swoop. and you still don't know how it happened.

note: fake dating college au with one of my faves, scoups! with a mix of roommate au because apprently i love mixing tropes. i might make this a series if people want to? i don't know yet

buy me a ko-fi?

next

"What were you thinking?"

"I was panicking!" You said, trying to walk away from your best friends, but Chan, Seungkwan, and Vernon followed you anyways.

"So you said Choi Seungcheol was your boyfriend?! I didn't even know you guys knew each other," Chan said.

"We don't, the closest interaction we had was when he bumped into me and said sorry," you said, miserably.

You were not having the greatest of days. First off, you had gone to class without knowing there was a test, therefore you didn't have time to study. Then, you missed your bus to go to the coffee shop where your friends worked so you decided to walk instead of waiting for the next bus which was going to take an hour to come.

And the cherry on top, the tip of the iceberg, the one thing that could possibly make you break down and not in a fun way, was encountering your ex.

Admittedly, you have made some bad decisions in your life. But the worst one of them all was your ex. Your friends tried warning you about him, how he was toxic and narcissistic, but you didn't listen.

Until he decides to dump you and leave you in the dust after you guys had just bought an apartment together. Yeah, wasn't your greatest moment.

Anyways, when you saw him, you practically froze.

"You're dating Seungcheol?" Your ex questioned.

You suddenly felt exposed, crossing your arms, shrugging then said, "Is it that so unbelievable I'm dating him?"

"I mean, I've seen the people he's dated, and you're not exactly his type," he tried explaining, but nothing he said could've made things better.

"So you're saying I'm not pretty enough to be dating him?" You asked.

"I'm not saying that, I'm sorry you're interpreting it that way. I'm saying—" he tried saying, but he was cut off.

"I'm dating him and honestly, I don't really care whether or not you believe me," You angrily said with a glare.

"I hope you're prepared," Vernon said, patting you on the shoulder after you finished recounting what happened with your ex.

"What? Why?" You asked.

The three of them looked at you as if you were crazy, and you were wondering the same thing about yourself.

"Your ex is probably the biggest gossip on campus. He'll probably tell people about your supposed relationship with Seungcheol and then it'll spread. Then Seungcheol will hear about his relationship with a girl he's barely interacted with!" Seungkwan explained.

"Shhhh! People will hear about Seungcheol and I's a relationship being fake!" You said, putting your finger in front of your mouth in a 'Sh!' gesture.

"YOU AREN'T—" Chan tried saying, but Vernon cut him off by putting his hand on his mouth to shut him up.

"Why didn't you say one of us was your boyfriend?" Vernon questioned, and you fought the urge to laugh hysterically.

"Kwan, you and I are more like brother and sister. Vernon, there has never been a moment where I've seen you beyond a best friend. And Chan, I barely even tolerate you half the time!" You replied. (You were not serious about Chans' (for the most part)).

"I didn't want to date you anyways," Chan grumpily said, crossing his arms which made you roll his eyes at his dramatics.

"What if Seungcheol wants to talk to you about the relationship he never knew about?" Seungkwan questioned.

"I guess I'm going to have to do the right thing," you said.

"Which is?"

"Pretend I don't know what he's talking about," you confidentially replied.

"I really hope this backfires in her face," Chan commented.

You tried lunging across the table to attack him, but Seungkwan held you back and Chan hid from behind Vernon, who looked like he'd be anywhere but where he was right now.

It was one of the rare times you were alone. Seungkwan had a class, Dino was in a Dance Club meeting, and Vernon was at his house, sleeping. So, as a result, you decided to go out on your own and eat.

You were in the middle of shoving a forkful of noodles when Choi Seungcheol decided to take the empty seat in front of you. "So, when did we become boyfriend and girlfriend?" He casually asked.

Your first instinct was to try and explain yourself, but in the heat of the moment you forgot that you were in the middle of eating, so when you tried speaking, you started choking on your noodles.

Seungcheol's calm manner turned panicky when he saw you were choking and it was because of him. "I shouldn't have interrupted you in the middle of your meal! I'm so fucking sorry! Shit!" he said, grabbing a bunch of napkins and giving them to you.

You struggled for a bit, grabbing the offered napkins and eventually, you were able to get the noodles down. "How did you find out?" you finally asked.

"Well, Jeonghan told Seokmin, who told Hoshi, who told Joshua, who told Jun, who told Minghao, who told Woozi, who told Mingyu, who told Wonwoo, who told me," Seungcheol said.

"What?" you asked, not following any of that.

"Jeonghan heard—"

"You know what, I don't need to hear it again because I won't be able to understand anyways," you said.

"But I can explain!" you said, and he looked at you to go on.

"Oh, you actually want me to explain? Uh, well, okay. Well my ex, who broke up with me and left me to pay for an apartment I have no idea how to pay for, said I wasn't pretty enough to be dating you! And honestly, I got kind of insecure when he said that because I know I'm not always supermodel ready, but I'm pretty and my personality brings people in! Anyways—"

"You need a roommate?" Seungcheol cut you off.

"Really? I just told you one of my deepest insecurities and you care about whether or not I have an empty room in my apartment?" You deadpanned.

"I have an idea and it might be both of your problems," Seungcheol ignored you.

"Really? What possible problem you might have that I could solve?" you asked, suspicious.

"If I fake date you, let me become your roommate," Seungcheol proposed.

"I'm sorry, but I need to make sense of it in my brain," you said, and he nodded as if giving you the floor.

"I just made up a complete lie and told my ex we were dating, and you want to fake date and live with me?" You said.

"I need a place to live and you have an empty room,"

"What's wrong with where you live right now?"

"I don't think I could live with Seokmin and Soonyoung always coming home drunk and somehow they've kidnapped a cat even if there are no stray cats around. Then Wonwoo adopts the cat and suddenly we have seven cats in the house," Seungcheol said, and the distressed face he was making made you want to laugh.

"Really? Seven?"

"Maybe not seven but I swear they multiply and our kitchen is filled with food for the cats," he said.

"We're getting distracted. I need a room and you need a boyfriend. Why not hit two birds with one stone?"

"How would this even work?"

"Well, you've done most of the work and most of the campus already knows about our relationship. Moving in would only solidify our relationship," Seungcheol said.

"What about when we inevitably break up? Would we still be roommates or..?"

"I never thought about that,"

"Really? But you thought of the rest of the plan so thoroughly it's nearly foolproof!" You sarcastically said.

"Hey, you need me just as much as I need you!" He said, and you sighed, knowing that it was true.

"This'll work?"

"Well... I don't know about that, but it'll be something," Seungcheol said.

"Maybe I should've said Chan was my boyfriend,"

"Who's Chan and why is he already stealing my girlfriend?"

#seventeen fluff #seungcheol fluff #choi seungcheol fluff #seventeen imagines #seventeen x reader #seungcheol x reader #scoups x reader #scoups fluff #choi seungchol x reader #seventeen scenarios #svt x reader #scoups fic #seungcheol fic #scoups scenario #scoups imagines #seventeen scoups