#coming back w/o doing any quarantine time

[freerangeeventing]

don’t just “its just allergies! don’t worry!” me You went to the plague factory. where the plague is. You’ve got the fucking plague

#not some idiot in my office going to disney world #coming back w/o doing any quarantine time #just fucking coughing and hacking w no mask on #and going I'm not sick :) #How fucking inconsiderate can you fucking be #I will never let this drop tbh #what a massively dick move

[tangarang]

So any word of Coupon Kids or are you unsure/trying to keep quiet about it for right now? I like quat's redesign. It's more visually distinct than the original.

tldr: I am trying to pick back up on Coupon Kids, reworking the story (yeah , the actual story) with a lot more intention! Idk how long it will take, but just know that I'm taking it seriously.

If you want the LONNGGG story of it, here it is!

Last time we left off in the comic, I was in quarantine with my niece and sister! I was helping to raise my niece so my sister could get out of a horribly abusive relationship. I was a full time nanny which was tough! Cause I had to still make rent from home on commissions, but no one was buying them because we all became RLY RLY poor all at once.... go figure.

I turned to Coupon Kids for support because umm I was kinda fucked tbh 6_6. I had run out of money and had no time to make more, but I SQUEEEZED out the last of the Halibut Jones arc! (which, even at the time of completion, I knew it was an underwhelming piece of work, but I finished it and I'm proud I did!) Thanks to everyone's support, I had enough financial padding that I could rely on Patreon's passive income and refocus on supporting my sister/niece as well as plan to make the move down south to continue my schooling once the quarantine let up. So thats where I had left the comic for the time being in terms of story, with a sprinkle of short strips here and there, but nothing plot related, because the plot was horribly fucked right from the get-go.

I had to take multiple severe hiatuses with Coupon Kids because I got my ass handed to me on several accounts through ought. Horrible breakup, friend break up, severe mental illness, best friend got cancer, best friend died, quarantine, unexpected parenthood, gallbladder disease, then school. All the while Coupon Kids was something I made in the deepest pits of my depression.

I absolutely hated my self, my work, and my art. That all looped back to being a strange source of peace for me to make stuff w/o fear of judgement. No one could hate Coupon Kids as much as I did. I was the #1 Coupon Kids hater and I ruined it by making it. (this is a retrospective pov obv... I dont think my work is worthless anymore thx wellbutrin lol)

Coupon Kids was very liberating to write in that I had no standards, but the lack of structure kinda eventually lead to its own downfall once I started to get better. I had a very loose idea of what I wanted the story to be, but I was so disoriented by chemical imbalance and weed (I smoked SOOO much weed) I didn't rly care about the ending because tbh I thought I was gonna be dead before I got anywhere near the ending. But then Kira died, So I officially abstained myself from death's sexy loins and committed myself to giving life another go.

Sorry for the autobio dump: its kinda hard to convey Coupon Kids development w/o getting into the nitty gritty of what I was going through at the time of making it. The point is this: I made Coupon Kids with the intention of it being a stain on my legacy- but then I ended up loving the stain and it's inhabitants. Its made coming back to it difficult, because I want to put genuine effort in it but that clashes with it's overall tone. Instead of creating in spite, I'd like to create it in celebration of my artistic short comings and to do that is to completely rework the entire moral of the story and all of the characters. If I'm gonna do it right, I'd like to take my time.

Not sure how many people made it to the end of this one! Sorry I'm so quiet about my process. tbh the last 4 years have been the best of my life despite holding a lot of dread. I'm doing a lot better now and am really excited to work on what I love and be grateful I have the power to do so ! So thank you for reading if you are still interested, it means a lot!

[stewpid-soup]

VENT CW!! STAY SAFE!!

anyone else find it exhausting to just enjoy things?

I don’t want to support people or companies that are actively doing things that are bad (racism, homophobia, defending SA, etc etc). but it’s so mentally draining to look through all of this terrible shit and not be able to enjoy things bc of their creators or ppl associated with it

i mean, i don’t support dream. i’ve said it before and i’ll say it again. I don’t support dream or the dteam as a whole - but the dsmp was such a big comfort to me through quarantine, and even now i still love the storyline and the characters.

HP, well that’s self explanatory. JKR is just a shit person and i’m not gonna give her my money bc i enjoy the plot of HP. I just take fanon on its own for the most part. I own the books and the films already (my family loves HP and has for a long time, since before JKR was outed as a transphobe) so i don’t need to buy anything from her. HP was a huge part of my childhood and the thought of not interacting with any content related to it makes me so sad, because i still love it even now.

and as controversial as it may be, i’ve enjoyed hazbin and helluva boss for years now. it was another comfort during quarantine, and i watched it with friends and got to bond over it. i do not like vivziepop or support her, and it’s exhausting to see all this back and forth about her online bc it’s so confusing. I love these shows and it makes me so happy that I get to see hazbin come together after waiting so long, and the same goes for helluva boss. of course there can be improvements to the way vivziepop writes some characters, but i still love these shows so much. it hurts my heart to feel like i can’t enjoy the content because the creator is such a bad person.

and then the number of musicians i’ve had to stop listening to because they turned out to be shitty people. or actors i avoided watching content of because they’re bad people (especially when the list of ppl who support Israel came out- of course im not supporting anyone on there, but some of the ppl on there just rlly hurt my heart because ive enjoyed their content for so long)

i know there’s not really any way to avoid this, as people are complex and can be an asshole w/o you knowing. funding people like this isn’t something i want or care to do, so of course i actively avoid it. but I just don’t know what to do when it comes to this.

a friend told me that it’s sort’ve about picking and choosing things, because you never know what people are really like. they said that with the state of the world, it’s important to stay educated but don’t let shitty people get in the way of things you enjoy. i’m just at the point where i feel like i can’t enjoy anything because anytime i get stuck in a rabbit hole of content, i see people going back and forth about who should be cancelled and who actually isn’t a bad person. cancel culture is one of the worst things about the internet, and it just makes interacting with fandoms even more toxic than it already is.

ig this is just a rant talking about comforts i have that i feel like i can’t enjoy anymore because of cancel culture and just like..people being people? i’m just so tired of finding something i enjoy and then learning out that they are or possibly could be doing/supporting something bad and just— it makes me feel so guilty because i don’t want to indirectly/directly hurt anyone. i know what i believe in and what i do and don’t support, at least for the most part (still learning everyday atp), but it doesn’t make it any easier to part with things i hold so dearly in my heart.

does anyone else feel similarly? if so, what have you found that helps or at least is a comfortable middle ground?

idk bro, my life is so exhausting with everything i deal with in real life- so to feel like i can’t even find comfort in my silly little shows anymore is really depressing. my mental health is not doing well lmfaooo

#vent post #tw vent #cancel culture #bad people? #tw dream mention #tw jkr mention #tw vivziepop mention #content warning #cw vent #hazbin hotel #helluva boss #dsmp #harry potter #fandom discussion #toxic fanbases #idk what to tag lmao #soup speaks #soupy thoughts #soup rants

[beetroot-merchant]

new ava oc in town folks!

info under cut ^w^ although warning i use Punctuation and it is Out Of Character for me JLDNFSKDNJNSDKS

also hella long. not smth u wanna misclick

So. Sticks can be programmed right

There's this guy. Programmer. Spends all their time creating paradoxical programs -or turning well known paradoxes into programs- to see what'll happen.

They tackle a couple famous ones. The omnipotent being paradox, the barber one, the Pinocchio one, etc. But they also make up their own- one of which is Prod.

Prod's paradox is, after an amount of time determined by RNG, to betray any trust the other side has with it in a relationship. "Trust" being anything they've grown to expect from bug, anything they can rely on bug to do. Removing it would make the whole thing collapse; annoyingly, several unrelated lines that allow exe to function reference the traitor code, and by the time you redefined everything so it would continue living normally, its memories and personality would be overwritten.

How is betrayal a paradox? When you betray someone, you create trust that you two are now opposed. There's a mutual agreement to be against each other now. More trust to betray, even if it is negative. And betraying it would come in the form of really, genuinely taking it back- just as earnest as your betrayal was- and then going back and forth in a kind of limbo.

It betrays itself too, but not often- since it hardly trusts itself to be able to carry something out without interrupting itself and doing the exact opposite, bugs Traitor Code(trademarked copyright pending) triggering while bug's alone is quite rare. However, if exe was to make any attempt to rid itself of the code, it's guaranteed to betray itself halfway through- instilled as a failsafe by the programmer in case it grew defiant fOr SoMe rEaSoN

Surely, you might think, that if exe warned people that it was made this way, a couple of them might understand?

This creates a trust in the other person that they will be betrayed. And so, betraying this trust would mean not doing anything at all, meaning they grow more and more anxious of the betrayal they've been warned against, all the while growing closer to Prod as time passes, which just gives them more anxiety because the closer they are to exe, the more bugs betrayal will hurt them. It never comes, and so, in fear, most quit while they're ahead and leave bug first.

Yeowch.

To observe this paradox in the wild, our asshole programmer guy puts Prod inside a little simulated mini-society, a small town of mindless, bland sticks with about as much realistic emotion as your average videogame NPC. They're used for small-scale social experiments and reset quite often as the programmer switches from experiment to experiment, and so their AI never has much time to develop.

Prod's life in the PC sucks. It's inevitably hurting everyone it tries to bond with, and when bug ends up trying to quarantine bugself for everyone else's sake, exes just forced back into public by the programmer. It's let out of the simulation every now and then for mental health breaks and to have some. ahem. pleasant conversation with exes creator, but they hardly last long.

What the programmer doesn't realise though, is a fatal flaw in its code. Exe is built to betray anyone they have any sort of relationship with- including exes creator, however bitter their relationship may be.

So, one fateful break, exe slips away and never comes back. It's what it was made to do.

Nowadays it lives on the outskirts of Some Town Somewhere, trying its best to appear dull and uninteresting so no one ever talks to it -since drawing the line between "person I've talked to" and "person I have a relationship with" is difficult, and experimenting to try to figure it out hurts more people than exe's comfortable with.

Bug's taken a liking to botany, since even animals are risky to interact with, and spends a majority of bugs time taking care of bugs plants and painting in bugs room.

Open to asks as always! ^^

#🐞 || beetle babbles #this took a fucking eternity to type out so u bet ur ass im tagging it #ava oc #avm oc #ummm uhhh #screw it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ #animator vs animation #alan becker #🐞 || beetle draws #🐞 || fandom: ava

[muggycuphead]

weird flex but ok i guess pt.9

8

War… Hold up, do we really need a warning for this one? Dunno, but however, watch out for slightly disturbing and kinda…disgusting imagery, trypophobic patterns, as well as ‘necrotic’ designs I made while having funky fever bc o h m y g o d do I get a little crazier every new quarantine day (and at this point it’s coming to be an usual thing for me, big sad). However, most are made no other than for the sole sake of satire, so y’know, no need to get your underwear in a twist

Friday Night Funkin’ BoyFriend’s Hood – AU fanconcept sketches [X]

EDIT 26/10/2023: Updated the drawing with a rescanned, more clean version

Ayooo- now you guys can see why I’m no longer pursuing this poor little thing anymore

…ow

THOUGH I did get inspired in some mods during the creation of these two (three if we do count the sad mop on the top*), mostly since I didn’t give that much of a damn about it at first sight, but now that I’ve gotten the emotional attach to it…yeah I sort of have regrets about it

Yee-haw I guess

…Imma just get into the info already lololol:

1.- Broddy

Big brother but cheap lol

…Nah jk I love this fellow

This guy was actually inspired in the whitty-boyfriend edited sprite (yeah the funny long boi) who casually seemed to appear in a picture alongside BF’s Mom and Dad, hence why he lookin so thin

BTW funny street sign logo design on his shirt, I’m so clever eeheheh- jk

Also the faded eyes were meant to give him a mysterious aura at the start, but now they’re basically something he inherited from his dad (you’ll see later how I designed him so you can tell)

Also also, you guys are allowed to make fun of me over the fact his hoodie’s design doesn’t make any sense. Like- the thing’s open like a jacket yet it has the strings to pull in and out the hoodie from behind, what?????? (this also happened with my FNFCE Leopold sprite, so double funny haha on my ass)

2.-Sissy

Big…no wait- she’s actually the middle woman in the siblinghood

…okay

Fun fact BTW: she was originally though off as a male, and casually enough, the memory I recall of her (or should I say him* for this case specifically) kinda resembles a little to Big Brother

…No I’m not kidding, the hairline I remember for her literally looks a lot like his, guess it was just coincidence

And yes, that tire mark on her arm is a tattoo…above a scar she actually got over an accident that happened at the repair shop

No it wasn’t BF’s fault...or Broddy’s even

Actually, I don’t even remember what happened, but it involved a badly braked bike and something that got in her way while she walkin’ on the shoop

3.-Past!BF / Lil B

aAAAA smol bean child bby

He so cute

…but he’s secretly a little shit

Don’t tell Sissy that tho, that might frickle her pickle

4.- Past!GF / Missy G

Another smol bean

This time it has sulphur in it wowowowow

I gave her a more awoken look bc ye, I don’t really have an actual reason for it besides haha funky demon child go wowza

5.-Bike Mechanic BF (Teenhood)

Boyfrendo got a jobbo

He a breadwinner y’all

He’s been in the business since he was a smol child, he got the good experience

…no we don’t do child exploitation innuendos here, you’ll see what was up there tho dw

6.- Biker GF (Teenhood…?)

Damn sis, lookin good right there

And yes she used to own a bikey back in her young days, don’t ask me how licenses work in BF’sH’s NG city, cuz I have no clue

…but hey, if kids can hav gun with no permissions, then who sayin they can’t drive bikeys w/ no loisense? (jk they might do have license systems but I guess the age limit is whatever, it’s been so long I can’t remember a-)

7.- Q-Zin (Beta Design / Prototype)

Sad mop

I just found out not too long ago about Older Brother, and Q-Zin does have some similarities with him personality-wise, but I haven’t seen the mod so I’m not sure, sorry

BTW he’s dead

…well, not dead  in actual terms, just…physically dead (and sort of emotionally, he’s gone through quite some stuff down there at the Graveyard)

8.- Lil B icon style

Bikey Child

9.- Missy G icon style

Cashey Child

10.- Daydreaming BikeMech!BF

When you reconcile with your (yet) platonic babe and she sneakie you her phone number in your pay so you can ring her up anytime

…yeah that

Classy GF, really classy

And yes they did know each other way longer before than canonically stated (FNF says they just met during tutorial, BF’sH says they know each other since childhood instead)

And the reason I said platonic was due to 1) they reunited after a long time of not seeing each other, ergo the relationship (frens) had just reemerged and 2) Pico and BF are pursuing a relationship here (secretly), though it’s between platonic and amorous (basically what you’d call a ‘meta-couple’)

So yeah

11.- GF’s note

I’m sure he will do hun, I’m sure he will do

12.- Hambarga

S’up bro, brought you lunch

It’s about that one time GF bought some food for BF during lunch hours

Though I don’t wanna stick with the original factor that it was because he barely does enough money to buy something good to eat (for real, it just sounds cruel), so I guess he just is so stuck into his work he sometimes lets lunchtime slide past him (I know it’s not better but at least it doesn’t sound like he’s forced to starve, like c’mon man)

10

#friday night funkin' #fnfau #bfsh #alternate universe #alt universe #alter #alternative timeline #au #at #bruh look at those #bruh moment #bruh #i slep now

[bukojuiice]

˗ˏˋ@bukojuiice’s BNHA masterlistˎˊ˗

REQUESTS: [CLOSED]

© bukojuiice - all rights reserved. please do not repost, distribute, copy, or plagiarize my work. please ask for permission if you wish to use my work for asmr or for voice overs. thank you!

➸ Headcanons

♡ ྀ  “midoriya, bakugo and todoroki cramming school works with their S/O”

♡ ྀ  “baby it’s cold outside.” (katsuki bakugo christmas hcs)

♡ ྀ  “going to Universal Studios Japan with them”  

♡ ྀ  “how you spend a virtual valentines date in quarantine w/ them” 

♡ ྀ   what happens when the bakusquad babysits Katsuki’s daughter? 

♡ ྀ     i like you a latte. (Coffee Shop AU! Headcanons)

♡ ྀ what they would be like as disney princes

♡ ྀ their wedding day with you

♡ ྀ the lovey-dovey things they do with you while you're both stuck at home during quarantine

♡ ྀ  the kinds of movies he’d watch with you.

♡ ྀ when he does the lip bite

♡ ྀ  when they read self-insert fanfiction of themselves

♡ ྀ cat ears or maid outfit?

♡ ྀ     how dekusquad + bakusquad comfort you after getting your heartbroken

♡ ྀ   mha boys accompanying you to buy lingerie

➸ Izuku Midoriya

Fics ↝

♡ ྀ  I will hold on to everything we got. A quitter, regretter and forgiver is everything I’m not.

(↳  unprompted and unexpected goodbyes are the worst. how are you going to be able to tell izuku the fact that you were moving away from the city that the two of you have lived in, grew up in, and soon became the place where the two of you fell in love with each other? how could you let this precious cinnamon roll go?)

♡ ྀ  she’s not afraid of scary movies, she likes the way we kiss in the dark.

( ↳  it is your weekly movie night with Izuku and co, but whilst waiting for your other friends, you and your boyfriend had the most wonderful idea of watching a gory horror movie.)

♡ ྀ as the world caves in

( ↳ no one else could ever carry the burden that Izuku holds in his hands. But when a girl from his past helps bring him to a realization, he begins to contemplate on whether or not sacrificing everything that you love to become a hero is worth it all.)

➸ Katsuki Bakugo

Cuddle Buddy! (Social Media AU)

Katsuki’s Convenience (Social Media AU)

Fics ↝

♡ ྀ  thank god for plot twists like you.

( ↳  Katsuki barges in your dorm room after class to see you crying in your bed with your phone in your hand… but why exactly?)

♡ ྀ  the s in studying stands for sexy times (implied smut!)

( ↳  katsuki is helping you study for your finals. but to no avail, none of the articles you were reviewing were processing inside your mind at all. until, katsuki had thought of a great idea to help you study. a spicy one at that.)

♡ ྀ  you fell from the sky into my lap (smut)

(  ↳  You and Katsuki become one as the two of you get in the mood with the music on his Spotify playlist.)

♡ ྀ  my world is changed and it’s cradled by the comfort that is you.

(  ↳  After receiving a quarterly report on the status of your hero internships and as a 3rd year student of UA Academy, your day is ruined as soon as you began to read it’s contents. Your explosive boyfriend does not want to see you like this. But how can he possibly cheer you up?)

♡ ྀ   like the soul of honey 

( ↳ Christmas finally approaches and your daughter, Hikari, can’t wait to spend it with the best parents ever.)

♡ ྀ  you got questions, i got answers tonight, babe. (smut!)

(  ↳ you and the bakusquad drag bakugo to a short vacation after such an intense week of hero work, much to his annoyance. however, his stress and pent up energy was more than you expected, so you knew exactly how to release all his frustrations.)

♡ ྀ  fix you. (studio ghibli au! princess mononoke au!)

(  ↳  Katsuki Bakugo is the righteous yet arrogant village prince of the east. The entire village relies on him for protection and for guidance, further inflating his ego. however, after a cursed boar attacks him and the curse is passed on to him as a poisonous mark on his arm, slowly consuming him until he becomes a demon himself. he is exiled without hesitance from his village and is to go on a journey to look for a cure, a journey he might never come back from. With the help of two of his most trusted allies, he embarks on a journey to look for the gods of the forest in where he meets a girl (just as striking as him) who brings him back down to earth, saves him and make him experience a true life worth living.)

♡ ྀ  25 lives (time traveler au!)

(  ↳  After losing the love of his life in a brutal villain incident, Katsuki Bakugo had lost a part of him. Nothing and no one could ever bring her back. He became the shell of a person he once was; fiery, bright, and the driven #2 Pro-hero in the country. He continues to live life with guilt, all hope still lost until he is gifted a time device that can transport him to parallel universes, dimensions and alternate worlds, where he begins his quest to find his lost love. Crossing a hundred of realities and living twenty-five lifetimes just to bring her back into his arms. )

♡ ྀ to the most explosive boy i’ve ever loved before

(  ↳  six letters. one for every boy you’ve ever loved. The letters for your eyes only, filled with all the words you could never say. until, one day, they start appearing out of nowhere into your life again, and your love life goes from imaginary to out of control.)

♡ ྀ  lovesick girl

(  ↳  your planned birthday surprise for katsuki takes a turn for the worst when you’re suddenly struck by a cold, prompting your dynamite boyfriend to take care of you and shower you with love and affection on his special day.)

♡ ྀ nicotine and faded dreams  (smut!)

(  ↳  Fame. Success. Glory. Bakugo’s had and seen it all, being a part of one of the biggest bands in the world. All he’s ever wanted was (Y/N), who comes back into his life just in time for the last leg of the band’s European tour. Bakugo thought that after making it big he wouldn’t have to face the muse for their most successful song any time soon. But a trip to Venice organized by scheming band mates has him stuck in a car with that very same muse. or Rock bands, a love Bakugo’s been trying to run away from and a cleverly schemed road trip: what could go wrong?)

♡ ྀ the morning afterglow

(  ↳ basking in the hues of wonderment that is the morning sun with your explosive boyfriend by your side was truly a dream. lingering in the bed much longer was an absolute must. these are one of those days.)

➸ Todoroki Shoto

Fics ↝

♡ ྀ  when you kiss me, heaven sighs.

( ↳  you and Shoto arrive in the city of love.  the day seems perfect until things go awry.)

♡ ྀ   a love like the movies

(  ↳    Shoto spends his only day of rest and relaxation by watching iconic tv shows and sitcoms with you.)

♡ ྀ   my youth is yours.

( ↳  shoto todoroki entered college with one thing in mind; be able to graduate and follow in his family’s footsteps. however, college had different plans for him. and meeting the one he would spend the rest of his life with was one of them.)

♡ ྀ merry go round of life (studio ghibli au, howl’s moving castle au)

( ↳ shoto todoroki is a magical prince who yearns for freedom. with the entire country against him, and the freedom he ever so wanted barely in his grasp- he seeks solace in a girl who works in a hat shop. she was his comfort in days full of disaster and war. and ever since then, he has finally found a reason to live.)

♡ ྀ something in the rain 

( ↳  you and shoto were once childhood best friends and sweethearts who had lost touch and communication. 12 years has passed since then, and on a fated summer day in june, there was something in the rain that brought two lost souls back to each other’s arms.)

  ♡ ྀ  are you feline what i’m feline? (smut!)

( ↳ blessed with a quirk that can temporarily transform any human being into any living thing they want through the means of potions and concoctions, you brew up a cat girl potion to surprise shoto for your second year anniversary. however, some accidents and mishaps happen, and you’re welcomed home by a handsome cat boy instead.

♡ ྀ  if i could tell her

( ↳  in where shoto todoroki is hit by a sudden realization that the love of his life was right in front of him all along and all it takes is for her to cross the crossroads for him to finally realize.)

♡ ྀ written in the stars

( ↳ shoto takes you out on a special date. a date that entailed love in all it’s bare simplicity. love in all it’s highs and lows, and love that is worth being written in the stars.)

➸ Eijiro Kirishima

Fics ↝

♡ ྀ  I take this magnetic force of a man to be my lover.

(  ↳ It is your 1st year anniversary with Kirishima. With no idea how celebrate it, Kirishima asks for the aid of Bakusquad and they have very interesting ideas and plans to say the least. Will he succeed and plan a perfect surprise for you?)

#juliannewrites #bakugo x reader #mha x reader #todoroki shoto x reader #katsuki bakugo x reader #bakugou katsuki x reader #bakugou x reader #bakugo katsuki x reader #shoto todoroki x reader #todoroki x reader #bnha x reader #kirishima x reader #deku x reader #izuku midoriya x reader #denki kaminari x reader #kaminari x reader #todoroki shoto x y/n #boku no hero academia x rader #my hero academia x reader

[chaneajoyyy]

Who’s writing new BP fics? It’s feeling kinda dry out here

Oh you gotta keep looking cause they out here!!!

NEW/NEW-ISH BP FICS

- winter wonderland series (25 days of christmas challenge), Chunk series (updated)- @ghostfacekill-monger

- you better watch out series (25 days of christmas challenge), baby daddy series- @teakturn

- couple’s getaway series, message therapist erik, erik and you have relationship issues that need to be resolved, incubus erik x reader series, gamer erik humiliates his girl, christmas wishes & mistletoe kisses series, all vampire eriks stories, drug dealer erik gets ino an entaglement with a married woman series, erik teaching his daughter how to love her dark skin, assassin erik and his girl london make up for lost time-   @nahimjustfeelingit-writes

- all i want series- @thadelightfulone

- the jabari that stole christmas, misfit wakandans, er*k in a box, t’challa’s 12 days of christmas, the jabari-cracker, christmas even will find erik, the coffee prince series (updated), song of stevens (not new but do read), will the bell ring? (updated)-  @eerythingisshaka

- chrismasing with you-  @ceeverse

- mama is wild, how he acts when he’s sick: m’baku “mama’s other baby’ jabari, peaches, how he acts whe he’s sick: erik “i can do it myself” stevens, how he acts when he’s sick: t’challa i’m fine” udaku, final decision, body pillow, the most dangerous game-  @akimi-youngblood

- his majesty, my king series; he chosen bride, a jabari wedding (not so new but do read), he wasn’t mad enough for me, clean-up woman, i wish you would, mistletoe series, dadmonger series- @snowbaku

- what if...?, without question, polaroids, the temple series, queen shuri, wh you are series-  @tchallasbabymama

- biggest puddle ever, crab legs, play fighting, the fight, let me tell you a story, stop, got it bad, what would you do series, sugar babe series, poetic justice, messing w/ erik while he’s playing the game, erik had a reputation of being a fuckboy. tha meant you had to be careful around him. guard your heart. it was a solid plan until he came in and ruined all your plans- @dreamingofmilk

- our christmas, how to feel, warm colors series (not so new but do read), thanksgiving w/ mr. stevens, valentine’s gumbo (sequel to thankgiving with mr. stevens)-  @mermaidchansons

- she likes me, huh? nuh uh, cute enough to eat, screams in the night series (updated), open up, autumn leave & cookie thieves, one way or another, mr. telephone series, you ain’t hear that?- @supersizemeplz (check masterlist)

- anniversary blues, the chosen one series (updated), the sweetest thing series, in the light series-  @devnicolee

- the arrival series, boxer!baku series (updated), fireflies and foot races, sessions-  @muse-of-mbaku

- 85 “you can’t cum unless i say so” & 89 “you’re drooling. you really don’t deserve it though, do you?”, seventy-three, “29, 75 & 82″, “5, 13, & 69″- @marvelmaree

- subconscious- @freddiefcknmercury

- shameful series- @iwrite4poc

- only forever series, what lies beneath series,bunme takes new york (part of space between series)- @dramaqueeenamby

- letters for my love series, just for this moment series, she’s mine series, abiona au series- @sarcastic-sunshines

- redemption series (updated), starlight series, dress up- @airis-paris14

- new start series (with “reader meets erik who is a single father”), round 2 series, reader sleeping over a erik’s, “erik and reader are opposites- like she’s so nice, calm and soft, and erik is mean... as always and his family is so confused on how they’re dating”, imagine where erik and the reader has heir firs date and when he get home he’s super excited and tell his friends how happy and in love he is?, erik with goofy reader on a mission, reader catching erik using her expensice skincare products afer she told him it’s off limit, hug time, erik ghosting after a fight with his gf & she hears he’s out acting single so she decide she’s single too. but he shows up & all like “who said we broke up?”,  reader is not answering her phone and erik is worried/irrirated because the day before he was mean to her and she left his house crying?, an imagine where erik finding out the reader is powerful (like a mutant), erik & mbaku fighting over the reader, found you series, erik helping his need tomboy bff get a makeover & he starts to get jealous of how much attention she starts to get from other guys,  vulnerable soft erik where he and the reader get into an argument and later that night he’s trying to sleep but can’t because she’s refusing to come to bed with him and he has to be vulnerable with her and tells her “you know i can’t sleep without you”?, “short imagine or headcanon ha erik finds out his girlfriend has more body’s then him or his a mafia leader, something between those lines. but instead of being upset for her not telling him he’s actually cool with it”, erik comforting the reader after finding out she lost a loved one and he had a good day, reader learns she’s pregnant and comes up with a creative way to tell erik , erik and the reader are set up on a blind date by mutual friends, “reader is studying for her upcoming test and she is frustrated with the amount of studying she has to do.  erik notices she has been studying for a long time, and tries to do everything to relax her mind”, erik takes reader to wakanda for the first time, erik sees his girl still sleep with a stuffed animal and by kinda makes fun of her but when she puts it up he sees she struggles withouth it?, “imagine with erik inspired by the somg caretaker by dram and sza, like maybe the reader is feeling a bit ill/nauseous and erik to take care of her”, diaper change, sofboi erik where he asks the reader to marry him, hc of erik being jealous of his girl is too close to t’challa? always texting/wanting to hang out when they visit, back to you series, readering driving erik nuts with cravings & mood swings. ex: interrupting his sleep for food runs only to say she doesn’t want that anymore when he returns & demand something else, “ whatever you’re trying to butter me up for, the answer is no”?, how did he meet his love?, life together, your first time, hurting, fears, sick day, jealous series, when you’re sick, night fights, two lines, opening up, newborn, comfort, some love, insecure, first steps, it’s time series, cool down time, first day back- @killmongerdrabbles

- back & forth-  @supremethunda

- baby mama series, again, move, guess, night, nsfw alphabet, bow- @woahitslucyylu

- reactions o their girl’s wap (with erik), erik and reader being petty in the house after an argument-  @tastingmellow

- next lifetime series, days off with erik, girls trip series (updated),the way you make me feel- @theficplug

-  only then am i human series,a little vacation- @opalsandlace

-faded series, waves series, concrete cowboys series, black boys bloom thors first series (volume 3)- @uzumaki-rebellion

- black tie event-  @laketaj24

- genuine, numb- @taterfics

- city boy and his country girl series, wake up, meet the furys- @blackmissfrizzle

- come thru, this lil’ game we play-  @writetimes

- in between the lines series- @melodyofmbaku

- him, her and us series; conversations and coffee trips series, dancing around each oher series, mrs., you again series, where are we now?, cold coffee, here we are again series, summer love (could be any of the marvel men including t’challa); love, apps, and attitudes series; give me a reason (search for t’challa x reader)-  @iliketowrite1996

- homewrecker series (updated), family reunion- @shaekingshitup

- unexpected things happen in the clucky’s drive-thru, where you going: a quarantine quickie, halloween, delicate series, the best man-  @majesticbrownjawn

- i like tha series (updated), shea butter (baby) series  @nachtaiwrites

- the spririt of christmas, dentist series (updated), waiting to get home, best friends series, line love series, hell loves satin: tales of a mascochist, tattoo party- @hearteyes-for-killmonger

- uncharted series (updated), metamorphasis series, the remodel series, the boy is mine series (collab with @dashhoney25), sweet heat, quarantine bae, throttle, sugar, toxic, fair is fair, work boo (updated)-  @soufcakmistress

- caught up series- @twistedcharismaaa

- homebody series- @truglori

- roadtrip series- @cecereads209

- lights out, a better man- @reelwriter19

- you mean it? series, haunted series- @heykillmongerluhme

- end in flames series, my health- @bvlckgirlmvgix (not so new but do check out!)

***PLEASE HIT ME UP TO ADD YOUR STORIES!!!***

#the bp plug #bp librarian at your service #let’s chat #sip tea #talk fanfiction #black panther fanfiction #marvel fanfiction #new/new-ish bp fics #anonny asks

[sneezefiction]

Caring for a Sore S/O after Working Out

Kuroo, Bokuto, Akaashi, & Tsukki x Reader - Sore S/O Headcanons

request: “can i request headcanons with the third gym squad when their s/o is sore from doing excercise? usually i don't excercise, the last week i just jump the rope, and my left leg is just aching as hell, Now I'm limping, sliding my hurt leg lmao thank u by the way!!!!!”

a/n: ok i felt this. i haven’t worked out since quarantine began and i am physically falling apart rn. so even if i did workout, i’d probably be in so much pain that i’d quit the next day oop. BUT here’s the 3rd gym squad, at your service bby <33 hope u enjoy!

warnings: slightly suggestive for Kuroo

total wc: 1020

---

Kuroo:

lately Kuroo has been pestering you to come to the gym w/ him

i mean you are dating an athlete and you gotta admit, he looks pretty damn good

but when you wake up at 4am to an unwelcome aching all over your body, the regret sets in

your arms, legs, thighs… everything is so sore. it hurts to even shift under the covers

you stifle several groans, trying not to wake up Kuroo, but he’s such a light sleeper that his eyes are open the second you make a noise

“You okay, babe?” he mumbles sleepily, rubbing his eyes

“Kuroo, I am in so much pain. The gym was a mistake.” you murmur, “What do I do? I don’t think I can go back to sleep.”

“I’ve gotcha, baby. What hurts?” he’s pulling the covers off of you

Your face flushes, skin exposed, unsure of what he’s planning to do

He smirks, “Relax, I’m just gonna give you a massage.”

he’ll start with your shoulders, pressing into them with firm hands, and you release a deep satisfied breath

Tetsurou will work his way down your body, savoring the contented hums you release, making sure to apply direct, but gentle pressure

when he finds his way to your legs, you let out a groan, and now Kuroo’s cheeks are tinged pink

but you’re already sore, so he spares you for tonight

when he’s finished, he leaves trails of kisses down your back and grabs you a heating pad

you thank him with a sleepy peck on the forehead and he responds by pulling you into his arms, ignoring the little “Ouch” you squeak out

Bokuto:

you’d worked out a couple of days ago and Bo was SO PROUD OF YOU

but the thing is, he forgot how sore people could get if they haven’t exercised in a while

so when he came over to your place and leapt into your arms for a hug, you both crashed to the floor, your legs unable to handle the strain of his sudden movements

now you’re not only sore, but there’s a sharp pain shooting up your arm

he’ll feel sO bad about it, apologizing profusely on his knees while grasping your hands

“Y/n, I am SO SORRY. PLEASE FORGIVE ME!”

like babe, he’s pleading, his eyes are so big

and you won’t have any time to respond to him because he’ll have already scooped you up in his arms

he’s holding you bridal style, his grip gentle and secure, eyes on you the whole time

“Were you really that sore, baby?”

“Bokuto, I literally collapsed. What do you think?”

“Please let me make it up to you!” he begs

be prepared for a netflix night and all kinds of takeout food

he’ll make sure your legs are laid over his lap and he’ll keep his warm hands on your thighs the whole time, stroking them softly

now every time you workout, you have to tell him beforehand, bc he’s scared of you collapsing under his crushing hugs

Akaashi:

he’ll see you limping and immediately assess the situation

you’ve clearly done something out of the ordinary, you’ve been complaining about how heavy your arms feel, and you’re unreasonably tired

so when you finally mention your workout the other day, everything clicks and he decides to pull out his full regimen for muscle soreness and strain

he starts randomly bringing you water bottles throughout the day

if it’s your abs that hurt, Akaashi will bring you a hot water bottle and a fuzzy, blanket

at night, before you both finish up some documentary series together, you’ll hear water running in your bathroom

you walk in to find Akaashi filling it up, clouds of bubbles sitting on the water’s surface

he’ll turn around and give you a soft smile

“Thought you might like something soothing, y/n.”

“Akaashi… you’re amazing.”

once you’re relaxed and out of your bath, he motions for you to sit with him, leaving a big space for you to lay out on the sofa

but you’re feeling cuddly and lean into his side

he’ll just run his fingers through your hair, not minding the dampness, lowkey giving you a scalp massage

and if your hair is long enough, Akaashi will move it to the side, lightly brushing the skin on your neck and trace the crevices on your shoulders and neck

you literally work out just so you get this treatment more often lmao

Tsukki:

he actually makes fun of you for trying to exercise in the first place

“You do realize you have to do this again to get results, right?” he snorts, “If you feel this awful, maybe just don’t do it at all.”

Tsukki says that, but the next day he’ll be helping you learn proper form for different exercises

he’ll position your arms and legs so you don’t put pressure on your back and he’ll keep you from overdoing it while on a run

ever wonder why he smells so fresh? this guy uses icy hot all. the. time.

it helps him release all kinds of tension in his muscles

he’ll absolutely convert you to it, you have no choice in this matter

but Tsukishima insists you’re putting it on wrong and definitely uses it as an opportunity to get his hands on you in a slightly more discreet way you’re not fooling anyone, sweetheart

when he’s rubbing it in on your back, you lean into the touch and he teases you by immediately dropping his hands to wash them off

you’ll be pouting around the house, but when he comes back, he’ll start massaging pressure points, rubbing your back and neck

Tsukki’s hands are literal magic yes, you may take this in any way you’d like to

“How’d you get so good at this?” you ask, the soreness slowly fading

“Wikihow.” he says monotonously 

“No, really babe. I have to know your secret.”

“...I literally read an article and just figured it out from there.”

he actually probably did learn it off the internet, but you refuse to believe it

Tsukki definitely threatens to charge you for his services, but he secretly relishes how much you seem to enjoy his touch

---

tags: @cherryonigiri

#haikyuu #kuroo x reader #bokuto x reader #akaashi x reader #tsukishima x reader #haikyuu imagines #haikyuu scenarios #haikyuu headcanons #hq #hq imagines #hq scenarios #hq headcanons #kuroo headcanons #bokuto headcanons #akaashi headcanons #tsukishima headcanons #kuroo #akaashi #bokuto #sneezefiction

[choco-mark]

20 May ♡ ★ bestfriend!donghyuck

part of the Quarantine Diaries!!

doesn’t take place after anything but i thought i would warn you guys since i got way too carried away and it’s longer than i expected so sorry but not really, anyway, enjoy!

Donghyuck squeezed his eyes shut again, opening them and staring at himself in the bathroom mirror. You were currently showering, literally right behind that flimsy curtain that fell down every now and then, and he was currently debating whether or not he should be bold and join you. But his brain was screaming at him that no, he shouldn’t strip naked and scare his best friend out of her wits in the shower, but there was still a deep gut feeling that told him that he should. Maybe if he did, something would happen.

You hadn’t even heard him come into the bathroom, and you were mindlessly humming to the tune of a song while letting the water soothe your skin. It was only when you saw the shower curtain rustle, you jumped from the movement, startling Donghyuck, who was one foot into the tub.

The two of you stared at each other for a moment, not trusting yourselves to look away or look at each other’s body but you eventually did, trying to cover yourself with glancing away. “What the fuck are you doing, Hyuck?” You asked in a short question, but it didn’t sound as angry as he expected it to.

“Showering,” he answered swiftly, his voice now in front of you. His hand rested on your shoulder, making you flinch at the same time as making your heart race unbearably fast. “I thought we could—shower together. If that’s okay with you?”

You didn’t respond, feeling yourself becoming too hot to even understand what was going on. You were naked, stark naked and dripping of water, right in front of your best friend of years. It didn’t even matter how many times you might’ve imagined a situation like this with him, you never thought that the day you would confess would be the same day that he would see you—like that.

“Y/N?” You turned around at the sound of your name, your back facing him as you finally opened your eyes, the whiteness bringing you back to reality. Your chest was rising and falling faster with every breath or movement you hear from him, and you really thought that you were going to explode at any moment. What really bothered you, was, why was he doing this? “I want to tell you something.”

Donghyuck was already regretting ever trying this, seeing that the only view he was getting was the back of your head right now. But you hummed softly, telling him to continue. “Oh, erm—I, well. I guess I’m kinda sorry for, uh, barging in on your shower. Without permission. And um, I promise, I-I’m not looking or anything. Uh, so. This took me a while to say, but, I—uh, like you? I mean, I like you. Yeah.”

You blinked. “You like—me?”

“Yeah.”

“Like...like me?”

“Erm—yeah. I get it if you don’t feel that way, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done this—” You whirled yourself around to grab onto his wrist, stopping him from drawing the curtains away again. You felt yourself inwardly scold yourself as you watched his eyes roam your body, but they widened along with his mouth, which shaped into a wide ‘o.’ “You’re gorgeous.”

You weren’t expecting that. He came forward, his eyes fixated on your breasts as he looked up at you with a glance, and then blinked as if asking for permission. “C-Can I...?” You felt yourself nod as if your mind wasn’t even working, and a hand cupped at your breasts, caressing the mounds softly. He rubbed a thumb over one of the nipples, watching at it hardened under his touch.

You pursed your lips, your eyes flitting to his that were now pouring into yours with caution. You weren’t expecting him to awe at your body, that was one thing, but the moment he leaned down and took a nipple into that mouth of his, that was when you lost it. Donghyuck flung out his arms to keep you steady as you nearly slipped from his actions, taking you aback when he pressed you against the cold tile of the wall. It was such a sight, seeing him lick at your hot skin with so much fever, his eyes focusing only on you the entire time.

He let it go with a pop, trailing his lips up with feathered kisses until they were brushing past your own. You took the chance, moving forward to mold your mouth against his, clearly taking him by surprise. It was the first kiss, and it was hot and desperate, clutching for something that you couldn’t get ahold of. A moan spilled from your mouth without you expecting it, and he paused, pulling away from you. “Oh, um,” you bit down on your lip, “Sorry...”

Donghyuck brought his thumb up to your lip, swiping it across the swollen flesh while shaking his head at the same time, leaning forward to catch it between his own teeth. “Don’t,” he hummed, moving to suck on your tongue. His hands ran up and down your sides, making you shiver involuntarily. “Your sounds are so pretty, baby.” You let out a gasp at both the name and him giving your ass a soft squeeze, allowing him more access to your mouth. His cock was now pressed against your stomach, hardening as your fingers pressed into the nape of his neck, making him groan.

There was a heat growing between your legs, growing with an unbearable throbbing when he pulled away from you again, licking your lips clean before placing his hands back onto your hips. The two of you were heavily breathing, completely exhausted even though nothing had even started yet. “Hyuck?” You said his name carefully, trying not to trip over it over your breathlessness. “I—like you too.” Your eyes scanned his, that widened so much that you thought they would burst. 

Suddenly, a large grin spread across his face, lighting him up so much to the point that he looked giddy with happiness. “Really?!” You nodded, smiling softly at his excited tone. It dropped at the same time he dropped to his knees, his hands smoothing down the sides of your legs as he parted them away from each other. You tried closing them, feeling awfully exposed, but he held them apart.

“W-What are you doing?”

“Watch me,” his lips met your inner thighs, leaving pecks over the sensitive skin as he got closer and closer to your core. “You’re going to like this,” his hands held you firmly, thankfully firmly as you were sure if he didn’t, you would’ve collapsed right on him when his swollen lips enclosed your clit. A breath escaped from your lungs, the sensation making your legs shake with his sucking. It was such a sight, the boy you had known and loved for years, looking up at you with huge eyes yet with his tongue buried between your folds, pulling you closer and closer to your release.

Donghyuck moved away for a second to ask, “Do you like it?” But your fingers that were now latched under his wet locks put him back to his original spot, letting a whine from the sudden loss of touch. You felt him giggle against you, sending vibration down your spine. “Yes or no, baby?”

“Fuck...yes,” your eyes squeezed shut, your mouth hanging open as muffled sounds continued to pour from it. “Hyuck, I-I think I’m gonna—” Yet, your warning wasn’t enough because you let out a cry, your hands tugging at his hair without a thought. His tongue lapped up your juices slowly, feeling you squirm from the sensitivity before rising back onto his feet.

You came down from your high slowly, your breathing calming down with your hands now clutching onto his arms. Donghyuck was watching you in awe, focusing on how fucked out you looked in that moment because of him, and he could’ve died right in that moment knowing he made you feel that way. A smile was plastered on his face when you opened your eyes, your juices still covering his mouth, yet he looked so beautiful when he let out a little laugh, pecking your lips quickly.

He moved to turn off the shower, his giddiness still evident as he washed himself off before latching an arm around your waist. “Why’re you laughing like that?” You asked, being taken aback when he pressed another kiss to your forehead.

“I’m happy, okay? Now get out, I don’t want our first time to be in the shower; I want to fuck you properly.”

Needless to say, you were out of there as quick as possible.

#quarantine diaries #donghyuck smut #minas smut work #haechan smut #nct smut #nct dream smut #nct 127 smut

[kurogiriis]

Ah! Hi I just found your blog and I’m so glad you posted your rules! I never want to cross boundaries! Could I request a Shinso, Denki, Todoroki, Iida, and Dabi reaction of their s/o in a shared apartment with the two of them but their s/o wears r e a l l y short shorts either while cooking, just chilling, or anything? It can be sfw or nsfw whichever you’re feeling is fine! And how are you doing with the whole quarantine thing? I hope you and your family are safe and healthy! Take care, love🥺❤️

A/N: I’m doing good!! Online school is annoying as heck but now I finally got the time to start this writing blog. I’m gonna stick for sfw headcanons but I guess they’re still slightly suggestive? Idk, I just suck at writing smut :P also, I just noticed I forgot to do Todoroki but this is already pretty late so (ノ*°▽°*)

How would they react if their S/O wears really short shorts at home?

Shinsou Hitoshi 

👾 As Shinsou prepared the popcorn, you were deciding what to wear. 

👾 You were going to have a movie night with your boyfriend after a long day of hero work. 

👾 You decided upon a pair of booty shorts and a tank top since you were probably going to fall asleep midway anyway. 

👾 You got changed and walked towards your shared living room. 

👾 “Can you choose the movie, y/n? I’m still frying the-” 

👾 He lost his train of thought when he looked at you and his expression changed slightly. 

👾 “Nice outfit,” he said with a smirk. 

👾 As you cuddled into him during the movie, you could feel his hand slowly moving south. 

👾 “So that’s why you like the outfit huh,” you teased, his face going red immediately. 

👾 He tried playing it off to no avail by making some excuse about the remote being under you. 

👾 “You’re lucky you’re cute.” 

👾 After that night, you made sure to wear shorts around him more often, gaining a smirk every time you did.

Iida Tenya 

🌀 Oh boy is he embarrassed. 

🌀 The first time you wore them you were baking a cake. 

🌀 You always got annoyed when your clothes got messy after baking so you threw on your shorts and an old shirt you had lying around. 

🌀 When he saw you, he didn’t notice at first. After all, you were wearing an apron.

🌀 But when you turned around… 

🌀 *anime nosebleed* 

🌀 “Y-y-y-y/n!” 

🌀 “Huh?”

🌀 His entire body was red, and he was frozen in place. 

🌀 After some seconds of trying to figure out what has gotten into him this time, you connect the dots. 

🌀 You face turns a light shade of pink. 

🌀 “Oh, do you like them?” 

🌀 His hands are shaking as he moves his arms in chopping motions. 

🌀 “I really do.” 

🌀 You come close to him and kiss him, letting him grab you wherever he wants. 

🌀 After that, you made sure to wear more shorts around him. 

🌀 He loves your booty, and always appreciates when you wear your shorts so that he can admire it. 

🌀 Still, he’s very respectful and makes sure not to cross any boundaries. He doesn’t want to make his favorite person uncomfortable.

Todoroki Touya Dabi

🖤 You and Dabi had moved in together not too long ago and you wanted to see his reaction to something new. 

🖤 You had bought them the week before and you knew this was the perfect moment. 

🖤 While wearing the shortest shorts you had ever owned, you walked over to Dabi, who was sitting on the couch playing animal crossing. 

🖤 You sat on his lap and he complained about you messing his game. 

🖤 “Y/n! I was about to place-” 

🖤 That’s when he noticed what you were wearing. 

🖤 game: forgotten. 

🖤 HE IS SO HANDSY! 

🖤 Literally can’t take his hands off of you. 

🖤 “Y/n, you can’t do stuff like this,” he says as you turn to face him and he gets a handful of you; “it drives me wild.” 

🖤 After that, wearing shorts around him became much more common. 

🖤 Whenever he sees you in short shorts around the house, his brain just goes: Grab 

🖤 Although he mostly does it on impulse, he always asks if it’s okay to do so. 

🖤 However, once you give him the green light, he goes rampant. 

🖤 Needless to say, there are times where his marks stay on your skin for weeks.

Kaminari Denki 

⚡ It was a hot summer afternoon the first time you did it. 

⚡ You were wearing extremely short shorts that shouldn’t even be allowed to be called shorts. 

⚡ Half of your butt was hanging out and, if you leaned forward just a bit, your underwear was visible. 

⚡ You were prepping dinner when Kaminari walked into the kitchen. 

⚡ You were looking away from him, concentrated on making sure you didn’t burn your apartment down. 

⚡ As he saw you, his eyes quickly diverged down your back until… 

⚡ He sees them. 

⚡ His brain short-circuits, and this song starts playing. 

⚡ “Y-y/n,” he stutters, “w-what are you wearing?” 

⚡ When you turn around and see him, his expression said it all. 

⚡ He was blushing hard and his eyes were devouring you. 

⚡ “Oh, these?” you asked pointing at your attire, “I was just hot and needed to wear something more breezy.” 

⚡ “I can see that,” he replied, his eyes never leaving your body. ⚡ “Hot temperature-wise” 

⚡ “Oh.” 

⚡ Let’s just say, things got heated pretty quickly after that, and it wasn’t because of your clothes.

#shinsou #shinsou hitoshi #shinsou x reader #shinso #shinso hitoshi #shinso x reader #shinsou imagine #dabi #dabix reader #dabi imagines #dabi bnha #kaminari #kaminari denki #kaminari x reader #denki x reader #kaminari bnha #shinsou bnha #iida tenya #iida x reader #iida imagine #iida tenya x reader #tenya x reader #iida bnha #bnha #mha #bnha x reader #mha x reader #mha fanfiction #mha imagines #bnha fanfiction

[saebyeog-i]

bitter brews (i) | syh

“Johnny laughed again, eyes crinkling at the sides. Your mind wandered briefly to a half formed thought about how endearing that was. “Maybe so, but despite your efforts to make me an enemy, I think you’re actually a really good person. You even guessed my favorite coffee drink, so that has to count for something.””

genre | not quite a coffeeshop!au, (mild)slow burn, this thought about being an adversaries to lovers fic for six minutes

rating/warnings | a stupid amount of exposition about coffee plants, catch me throwing in the random recipes that have been my go-to for cooking during quarantine, is this angsty?, discussions of mental health issues {see tags for details}, overall mature content/themes {foul language, alcohol consumption, references & discussion of masturbation, awkward boners, future smut}, some soft moments, and some good ol’ tooth rotting waxing poetic nonsense fluff. Don’t expect too much out of this I just got tired of editing this part so I’m finally posting it.

word count | 19.6k (I meant for this to be a super long one-shot but it’s turning into a story in parts for the sake of ratings w h o o p s)

pairing | Johnny Seo x fem reader

writing playlist | Egotistic - Mamamoo, Black Swan - BTS, Sober - HYO, I Blame On You - Taeyeon, Heartbeat - BTS, Close to Me (Red Velvet Remix) - Ellie Goulding feat. Red Velvet

—

“So, what you mean to say is… you’re not coming? Like, at all?”

The bright yellow plastic of the rotary phone was slightly cool against your overheating skin, which was constantly veiled in a thin layer of sweat whenever you stayed on the farm property instead of the main house on the opposite side of the island. It was the first week of May, which meant it was already humid again. If it wasn’t the time for the daily afternoon rain showers, it might as well have felt like it was raining with how saturated the air was.

“I’m sorry, Bean, I just can’t get on a plane right now. I thought it would be fine it we stretched out the time between flights, but all my doctors are saying I need to just stay here between now and the birth, so…”

Your sister’s voice trailed off and you had to wait for a moment to be sure it wasn’t the poor reception for the phone call running across the four thousand miles that separated you— the four thousand miles that would continue to separate you for the rest of the summer.

You exhaled and twirled the aged spiral phone cord that could barely hold its shape around your index finger, staring at the concrete floor and scrunching your toes. “Well, I’m already here, obviously… do you… you want me to stay here then? Take care of stuff?” You asked hesitantly, already having a feeling of what the answer would be.

A crackly sigh of relief came through the other line. “Little Bean, you are the best, Yunho was worried about asking you to stay and man the farm for the summer harvest but I knew you would just offer! You’re the best like that, you know?” You gritted your teeth and forced a smile through, even though no one was there to witness it. “Okay, so we’ll ship out the supplies in the next few days. Yunho is gonna email you a list of delivery dates of materials for the projects he had planned for the summer and a few contractor contacts…”

Her voice warbled on, and you could only nod your head and vocalize an ‘mhmm’ every so often, listening to her rattle off instructions and information that you knew would be sent in an email too. You’d been looking forward to spending the summer with her— you hadn’t gotten a proper chance to visit for more than a weekend since she and Yunho had gotten married about two years ago— but it turned out this wouldn’t be it. You couldn’t blame her though; she was approaching the third trimester of her pregnancy. You’d do anything for her, even this, even isolating yourself on a farm for four months. Alone.

Not exactly the leave of absence you’d been hoping for from work, but it would have to do.

✧ ✧ ✧

This was supposed to be a vacation. A break. Some much needed time off, away from your job, your career, and your “normal” life. You told yourself over and over again you were looking forward to it. And besides, it would all be worth it, because of all the time you’d get to spend with your sister after so long.

And then she had to betray you by going and getting fucking knocked up, with twins no less.

Fucking happily married couples with their god damn healthy ass sex lives and family planning and wanting to raise children. What the fuck was that all about?

It had been so long since your last vacation. Years, in fact. So long, you had over two months of paid time off accrued at work, and back at New Years you’d made the preliminary plans to spend a month on the farm in Hawaii with her, bonding and just relaxing. Sure, it would require some manual labor for the business here and there, but mostly just to rest.

What a joke that turned out to be.

The farm in Hawaii. You know, the coffee farm your brother in law bought four years ago on a dare from your sister, because he said he could totally pull it off as a side hustle, and she said he wouldn’t be able to? Yeah, that one. Fast forward to today and the side hustle became a full fledged passion that roped in a good amount of the family into the business. Siblings, cousins, parents, all involved in different aspects of package design, social media marketing, distribution and wholesale— everyone except you, who stuck with your soul sucking job in advertising, the same industry your brother in law had since left behind.

The farm and roasting wasn’t an overnight success by any means, but in the last year the brand had really taken off in the craft coffee scene. After all, Kona coffee was well sought after, and one could only claim the name ‘Kona’ if it was grown on the same two thousand or so acres of land on Hawaii’s big island. You know, the same area of land you were living on for the remainder of the summer?

Right. The whole summer.

It was just supposed to be the month of May. And then it turned into May and some of June, when you’d asked your sister to make more concrete plans, and she kept brushing it off. And then the week before you actually got off the plane, you hadn’t booked the return ticket, because you were still waiting for her answer. And then the phone call, and now, this was… indefinite? No, that was being too dramatic; if anything, it would be up through the birth. Based on the number of projects Yunho had planned for the farm, through the remainder of the summer was how long everything would take. Just you and a little over five acres of land and the summer heat. The thought of an extended isolation had your breath catching in your throat, but the last thing you wanted to do was complain or call for help. Stubborn and proud, you wouldn’t have made the offer to stay if you didn’t mean it, if you didn’t think you could handle it. There was no way you were backing out now.

When Yunho had first bought the farm, it had been a rough first few years of refining the coffee plants that had been on the land and uncared for for a number of years, but the last two summers had provided a steady increase in the harvest yield. There was a small farmhouse on the property, with two small bedrooms, a shower, and a small kitchen and living area. A few miles down the coast was the nicer, newer condo that the business had bought, a multi-bedroom unit with some better amenities for when more of your family wanted to visit. It felt weird spending time there— it was too nice, too clean, and quite frankly you had enough to keep yourself busy with on the farm property, you’d rather not have to spend time driving back and forth every day. So you opted to spend most of your nights sleeping here, even though it meant only ceiling fans and no air conditioning.

The farmhouse had very shitty, very limited wifi and a grand total of three electrical outlets outside of what was used to power the oven and refrigerator. One of those outlets was, of course, dedicated to an espresso machine on the kitchen counter, which you had gotten acquainted with over the last two weeks. It was an older model and a little temperamental (the one at the condo was much nicer), but it was still from a decent manufacturer, and you could still use it to pulled a decent shot.

Most of the time you worked in silence, and most of the time you were never too aware of how much time had passed, other than when the sun went down and it was suddenly dark out. You weren’t always this absent minded, you swore— maybe it was a byproduct of being alone for so long—

A loud, high pitched whine filled your ears, followed by some scratching at the door that lead to the lanai outside. You sighed, standing up from the kitchen table and walking over to face the monster that had made it.

“What? What do you want now?”

Staring back at you from the the other side of the screen door was what you’d affectionally referred to as The Thirty-Three Pound Menace— the medium sized stray dog that your brother-in-law so conveniently forgot to mention had been living on the farm for the last few months. It had been waiting outside the farmhouse when you first arrived, and you’d learned from the neighbors that Yunho had taken a liking to the stray and had arranged for them to feed it in his absence. But now that you were here, taking care of the dog was added to your list of daily chores. It seemed to not want to leave the farm property unless actively accompanied by you, with the assurance that you’d be bringing it back with you.

With a roll of your eyes you hip checked the door open just enough to let the dog inside the house. It circled you several times, sniffing at your knees before sitting and panting, staring up at you expectantly. In the two weeks you’d been here, the majority of your conversations were between you and this, a being that couldn’t talk back. Maybe you liked it that way. “What, dinner? Fine, fine,” you grumbled, shuffling to the cabinet and pulling out a can of wet food.

Your meals had consisted of relatively simple dishes, but today you were cranky at the confirmation that your summer was not going to go as planned. Tonight’s dinner featured a bowl of cereal and a coffee mug full of cold white wine.

You ate in silence. You drank in silence. The only noise came from the hum of the ceiling fan overhead, and the occasional sound of the dog, cleaning its paws and laying by your feet protectively. Why it seemed so determined to win over your affection, you had no idea.

After sitting in silence with only your thoughts and the now sleeping dog to keep you company for what felt like hours and downing a second mug full of wine, you found yourself letting out a loud yell, startling the dog and waking it. In a fury, you pulled out the laptop you had for the sole purpose of checking once a day for emails from Yunho and connected it to the shitty, sub-par wifi with just enough patience to navigate to an airline’s website and search flights back to the states. You were looking for the cheapest, most reasonable one you could find. After all of five minutes of research and a quick round on mental math, you clicked on a date and hit the ‘book now’ button before you could second guess yourself, slamming the computer shut once the payment went through and shoving it away from you across the table.

“September 10th,” you grumbled out loud for only you and the dog to hear. Standing from the chair, the legs scraping loudly against the floor, you crossed the room and stopped in front of the wall calendar your sister had put up the last time she’d visited the farm just after New Years. You lifted a few pages and flipped forward to the month of September. Red marker in hand, you found the date and circled it rather aggressively, several times over. You looked down at the dog, watching you patiently with its head tilted. “You got that? I’m getting off this fucking island on September 10th.”

✧ ✧ ✧

The day your life fell apart came twelve days later just before nine in the morning.

Mondays were the delivery day, that’s what Yunho had laid out in his instructional emails to you. Your only source of personal transportation was an older jeep, one you didn’t enjoy driving, given that it had no top and needed some mechanical work done. So you’d made arrangements and had your groceries delivered on Monday mornings, buying mostly direct from another farm on the other side of the island, and they were always kind enough to act as the courier for whatever additional miscellaneous supplies you’d request, regardless of where they’d have to go to procure them.

There was a winding driveway that lead up to the house from the main road, and a larger, wider drive up a less steep hillside for larger vehicles for delivery. You were fully expecting the truck that lumbered up the delivery road and came to a stop just outside the barn which housed the massive coffee roaster and stored most of the processed green beans from harvest. Even though it had only been three weeks, there was a routine that had slowly been settling into place: the sound of the truck coming to a stop riled up the dog, the dog came running from wherever and started barking, you’d get your groceries and any other assorted items, the dog would get a treat because your delivery boy had a soft spot for the creature, and you’d pay for your goods. “Hey Jin,” you called out over the barking from the front of the barn, hands currently full with a sack of processed coffee beans you’d hoisted over your shoulder. “You can just leave the groceries on the porch, I’ll put them inside in a few. Did you manage to get me the bags of fertilizer and some wood stakes?” A loud thud sounded as you dropped the bag to its resting place on the concrete floor.

“I mean, I can go put these inside if that’s easier. And yeah, there’s ten bags to get us started, we can have more delivered next week if you still need ‘em.”

You whipped around to face whoever had just spoken, because that voice was most certainly not Jin.

He was tall like Jin, had wide shoulders like Jin, and his hair was kept just a bit long and looked ridiculously shiny and soft and like you could run your fingers through it like Jin’s. It was a lighter brown with some honeyed highlights running through it, compared to the dark brown almost black of Jin’s. You tensed, seeing him carrying a brown paper bag with a loaf of bread and the leafy green tops of carrots sticking out the top. He wasn’t looking at you, rather, he was far too occupied with bending down slightly and scratching behind the ear of the dog who was currently whining and wagging its tail at his feet. Some guard dog it was.

Without a second thought, you reached for the first sharp object you could find, which happened to be the box cutter you used to cut open the burlap bags the beans came back from the processing plant in. “You’re not Jin,” you said tersely, holding the utility knife by your hip defensively.

“Chill out killer, he’s harmless,” a more familiar voice called. Seokjin, your regular delivery driver whose family owned the farm you bought directly from, came into view carrying another two bags of produce and a small pile of envelopes. “Picked up your mail on my way up, the box was practically overflowing. Do you ever check that thing?” You’d first met Jin two years ago when you’d come to visit your sister and Yunho for a long weekend. He’d become a good friend of Yunho’s and was one of the people who would take turns feeding the dog when no one else was here.

Ignoring the unknown man, you relaxed your shoulders slightly and placed the knife down on the table behind you. “Thanks,” you grumbled, taking the small pile of letters from him. Admittedly, you hadn’t checked the mailbox since the day after you’d arrived on the farm, mostly out of sloth and spite. You sifted through the letters— mostly junk mail, with a few bills and notices relating to the business. You put those in front so you could look through them later, when you’d finished the physical work for the day. You tore one envelope open in particular when you noticed it was addressed directly to you and had your sister and Yunho’s Illinois address in the upper corner. It was a letter postmarked from two weeks ago, which struck you as odd, because what the hell would he bother writing in a letter that he couldn’t just send you in an email or a text or a phone call? You started reading aloud softly to yourself.

“‘My Dearest Bean… First of all I want to apologize for the change in plans, but with your sister’s condition her doctors just don’t recommend her traveling,’ God, he’s so dramatic she’s not terminally ill she’s just pregnant. Blah blah blah, I don’t care, you’re full of absolute shite, Yunho,” you began skimming through his lengthy pre amble, looking for the purpose behind the note. Without reading the middle you flipped the stationary paper over to see his handwriting covered the entire back of the page, too. “God, he’s so long winded. Oh, here we go, the very end— ‘I promise we’ll make it up to you, thank you for running the farm and taking care of Puppy, please be nice to Johnny and treat him well, he seems like a good kid.” You stared at the words written on the paper and looked up at Jin. “Who the fuck is Johnny?”

The man next to him cleared his throat and held his hand up. “Johnny! I’m uh, that’s me. You must be _____— I’ve heard a lot about you from Yunho! I’m Johnny Seo, it’s nice to meet you,” he said with a smile, reaching a hand out.

You eyed it but made no move to reciprocate the action. “Cool. You know Yunho. Lots of people know Yunho, he’s a huge fucking flirt, social butterfly of the century, the man never shuts up. Why should I be nice to you?”

He shifted on his feet and his outstretched hand retreated. “Oh. Uh. I’m uh, here for the summer,” he explained, sounding almost confused. “Didn’t— didn’t Yunho tell you?”

Your eyes bugged out and you looked over to Jin. “Jin who the fuck is this and why is he on my farm?” You whispered.

Your friend laughed. “You read the end of Yunho’s letter. I’m sure if you read the whole thing it would explain more. This is Johnny, and he’s here for the summer. He’s gonna help you out! I know the list of all the projects you need to finish this summer is lengthy, and plus look at the guy, he’s jacked! You could use the muscle for manual labor. More work for him, less for you, right? And look, the poor dog you refuse to give a name to even likes him!” Jin gestured comically at Johnny. You looked over, sizing him up some— Jin wasn’t wrong. The stranger was muscular on top of being tall, and under the capped sleeves of his tee shirt you saw his arms that looked the size of your head. The dog was still circling him, sniffing and begging for attention.

Johnny tried smiling again. “Yunho mentioned there was a lot of construction type work to do. I uh, had nothing else planned so he said I could stay on the farm for the summer and work in exchange for food and a place to sleep. I take it he uh, didn’t run that by you first, did he?”

Your grip on the papers in hand tightened and you felt your jaw tense involuntarily. “No, he managed to not mention that once to me. How did you even get here?” You hissed back.

“I picked him up at the airport this morning,” Jin answered calmly, “Yunho gave me a buzz a few days ago to ask if I could bring him here with this week’s groceries.”

“So he managed to arrange for him to get on a plane and secure transportation to the farm but couldn’t be bothered to call me and let me know?”

Jin only laughed, his eyes crinkling. “I’m pretty sure he knows you well enough by now to know that this would have been your reaction whatever way he told you.” Despite the kinship you’d felt growing between the two of you, Jin was Yunho’s friend first, and it only made sense that his allegiance would be to him first. Of course he’d side with Yunho on this matter. “And yes, like Johnny said I did bring a bundle of plant stakes and ten bags of fertilizer— they’re in the back of the truck bed.”

“Oh, I could get those—” Johnny started, moving to step towards the truck.

You could barely think straight. First they bailed on you unexpectedly to spend the summer on the farm alone. That was fine— you’d gotten that through your head, and had come to terms with that. But suddenly springing a plus one on you, without your consent? Absolutely the fuck not.

“Yeah. Don’t need help. Thanks,” you spat, grabbing the bags of groceries from him and brushing past, stomping your way back to the farmhouse.

Johnny stood frozen for a moment before stammering, looking from Jin to your retreating figure and back again. “I should— I should talk to her, right? Or do I—”

“Whoa, don’t think too hard there handsome, I can smell wood burning. Don’t stress about it. She’s just a little… touchy. Let me talk to her,” Jin patted Johnny on the back before heading up the path to the farmhouse after you.

You’d stormed into the house and slammed the groceries down on the counter and let out a screech of rage before picking up the receiver of the yellow rotary phone and dialing. Tapping you foot incessantly, you waited as it rang.

“He-llo~?” The singsong voice that came through the other end was far too amused with itself, more so than usual, and that’s how you knew he knew why you were calling.

“Jung Yunho you better be thankful you knocked up my sister because if it weren’t for the babies in her womb I would fly myself across the Pacific and flay you alive,” you seethed through gritted teeth.

In true unbothered fashion, your brother in law only laughed at your threat. “Ah, so I take it your employee has arrived safely! I’ll have to thank Seokjin for getting him from the airport. Can you give the Kims a pound of the special medium roast as a token of my gratitude?”

“No!” You yelled back, “No! I will not! I’m already beyond frustrated that I’m on this island alone for the entire summer, I’m doing this as a favor because we’re family! I’m not your slave, Yunho! Where was my warning, huh? When were you going to ask if I was okay with you sending some stranger to live in the same house as me, huh?!”

The familiar ache in your chest started to swell, and breathing became difficult. ‘Not now,’ you thought bitterly, ‘Please not right now-’

You curled your free hand into a fist and pressed your nails into your palm, hard, grounding yourself. Yunho’s voice on the phone blurred out and by the time his words started making sense again, you’d already missed what he’d been saying. “I’m not saying you have to like the kid, just show him some hospitality, yeah? You just said it yourself, you didn’t want to be alone this summer, and now you won’t be. I know you’re a good cook so that’s why I told him food would be included. Don’t worry, I’ve already sent some pre-payments to the Kims, so your grocery orders are doubled for the rest of the summer.” His voice went quiet for a second. You rubbed at your temple in frustration, squinting your eyes shut and forcing the mere thought of tears deep back into the recesses of your brain. “Bean? You still there?”

“Don’t get all pretend concerned, Yunho. And stop using my childhood nickname any time you want something from me.” Your voice was quieter now, the intensity of your emotions subsiding, but the betrayal you felt still running strong. “Fine. I’ll tolerate him. But there better be a case of wine in next week’s groceries to make this bearable.”

“Done and done! You’re gonna love him Bean, he’s really great. He’ll be good company.” The continued use of your childhood nickname from anyone other than your sister always gave you pause.

“I said tolerate not befriend. There’s a difference,” you clarified quickly. A knock at the door startled you, and you jumped and looked to see Jin standing by the front door, a roll of wooden stakes under his arm. You rolled your eyes and waved your arm to shoo him away, pointing at the phone pressed to your ear. “Look, Yunho, I don’t know what you’re hoping to see me get out of this, but if he drives me insane I can’t promise that he’ll walk away from this unscathed.”

His laugh echoed through the receiver and reverberated against your skin. “I just think it would do you some good to have some human interaction, that’s all. Your sister too. She says hi, by the way,” he added softly, “And so do the little ones.”

You scoffed. Yunho always brought up your sister as a way of diffusing your temper. He knew it would always work. “They’re still in embryonic fluid, they can’t talk and they certainly don’t have cognitive function.” Sometimes you wondered if even Yunho had that with the wild ideas that went through his mind.

“Ever the romantic, you are. You know, soon they’ll be able to think! And they’ll be thinking of their favorite auntie, and how much they can’t wait to meet her! So she can’t be arrested for murder between now and when they’re born, because babies can’t go to prison!”

“I’m telling your sister you said that,” you challenged. With an exhale, you did your best to let go of the frustration and tension inside and politely ended the phone call. You were trying to clear your head and collect yourself before heading back outside when you heard a yell that sounded all too much like Jin’s voice.

“What fresh hell—” you started, shuffling back outside in the direction of the commotion where you saw Jin, somewhat struggling under the weight of two bags of fertilizer, and Johnny, now with a baseball cap turned backwards on his head, easily hoisting a stack of four bags without slouching.  

Your eyebrow ticked up upon the realization that it was almost seventy pounds that he was slinging around like it was nothing. “Anywhere specific you want these?” He asked innocently, looking up at where you stood on the lanai just outside the door. You almost cursed him out when he blinked at you twice.

You pointed your left arm down the hill, the opposite direction of the way to the barn. “Shed. Next to the vegetable garden.” You wrinkled your nose at him. “And lose the hat. Or at least don’t wear it backwards. Makes you look like an ass.”

Johnny’s mouth hung open for a moment before he hummed and winked. “You got it, Boss! Come on handsome, if you can carry those good looks you can carry some dirt,” he called back to Jin, who was currently grumbling about how manual labor wasn’t a part of his delivery arrangement.

The hairs on your arm stood up on edge as you watched Johnny laugh deeply as he ambled his way in the direction you’d pointed. The thirty three pound menace next to you whined and wagged its tail, panting as it went from watching you to watching Johnny’s retreating figure. You looked down and made eye contact. “If I survive this, I’m going to kill Yunho.”

✧ ✧ ✧

There was no case of wine in the grocery deliveries the following week. The reasoning Yunho gave was that per Jin’s investigation, the liquor stores were all out of your favorite wine, so there was no point in sending you a sub par alternative. It was absolute crap, but you had better things to do than chew out your brother in law over the phone. Took way more energy than it was worth.

So far, Johnny was making good on his word and earning his keep. At first, you’d tried avoiding him as much as possible, intentionally waking up hours ahead of him and starting your day when the sun rose. You never made much noise in the mornings, the loudest thing you did was make coffee, and lately you’d opted for a pour over versus pulling shots of espresso. You weren’t personally one for breakfast, choosing just coffee and maybe a piece of fruit instead. This morning you felt a little hungrier than usual, so you thought you’d get yourself a bowl of cereal. Peering into your pantry, you saw that on the shelf where there had been a stash of cereal boxes, there was now nothing.

“Where the fuck are my cocoa pebbles?” You swore in shock, not realizing you weren’t alone in the kitchen.

“Shit sorry, I ate the last of those yesterday.”

You whirled around to see Johnny, still seemingly half asleep and with some gnarly bedhead, yawning and rubbing at his eyes. His lips were so perfectly pouty, one small part of your brain almost thought he looked cute like this.

But no, he wasn’t cute, he was a thief— he’d stolen all of your cereal stash. “Did you seriously eat through four boxes in a week?” You asked incredulously.

“It was three and a quarter! And yeah I don’t know, I’m always hungry and just one bowl of cereal isn’t filling enough, so I usually have two, or three...” He mumbled, voice trailing off as he rubbed a hand behind his head sheepishly.

You snorted. And then a thought came across you. “Johnny,” you said calmly, the feeling of his name on your tongue foreign and strange. Was this the first time you’d addressed him by name since his arrival? You couldn’t remember. “Do you not know how to cook?”

He hummed thoughtfully for a second. “No-pe!” He popped the p sound in the word. How was he this cheerful, even first thing in the morning? “I mean, I can like, boil water and cook pasta and stuff like that. I think I successfully grilled pork belly once, though it was probably doused in too much oil and too many spices. My college experience was funded almost exclusively on instant dinners and takeout for two years, and then for the second half one of my roommates was an actual chef, so, no one was allowed in the kitchen ‘cept for him.”

“Honestly, I am shocked that you haven’t perished in some tragically strange idiotic accident yet,” you sighed and shuffled to the fridge, pulling out a carton of eggs and a pack of bacon. You grabbed a frying pan from the cabinet under the stove and clicked the burner on, reaching for the oil bottle that lived on the counter top and drizzling some in the pan.

Johnny shuffled closer to inspect what you were doing and let out a gasp of appreciation. “You’re making me eggs and bacon?”

“I’m making me eggs and bacon,” you corrected, “But I guess I’ll make enough for you too,” you said as you peeled the strips off the packaging and placed them into the pan with a sizzle. You reached for a few eggs and cracked four into the pan directly, cocked your head at the amount of food, and then grabbed two more eggs and added them in before taking a fork and scrambling them all together, adding salt and white pepper to the bubbling liquid. You glanced up at Johnny, still watching you, slightly curious. “I don’t trust you. You say you’re an adult but you eat like a teenage boy still. There’s never any leftovers.” After a few minutes you flipped the strips of bacon over and then quickly chopped up a green onion and scraped it onto the scramble just before the eggs finished cooking.

Johnny watched you the whole time, and you felt only slightly uneasy under his gaze. When you turned off the stove after plated your food and stepping away to pour yourself some coffee and he didn’t move, you gestured at the pan in a fashion as if to silently ask him ‘What?’

“Oh!” He gasped out lightly, springing into action and plating the food for himself. You hadn’t bothered to sit down at the table, instead holding the plate in front of you as you leaned against the counter and ate. Johnny followed your lead, taking a bite and groaning audibly in enjoyment at he chewed. He smiled and his eyes shone, almost sparkling. You watched him curiously for a moment before he mumbled out “Your cooking is really good! It uh, reminds me of my mom’s. She’s a great cook.”

You kept your lips tightly shut at the apparent compliment. “It’s just eggs, you weirdo. Finish up and do the dishes. When you’re done meet me by the shed. Today you’re stripping off the old paint and removing any of the rotting boards and disposing of them,” you instructed while placing your empty plate in the sink. His tasks for the day were the next phase in slowly rebuilding the dilapidated shed on the west side of the property to make it useful for storage of all the tools you used to tend to the fruit trees and vegetable garden nearby.

He flashed a smile at you and gave a mock salute. “Aye-aye, captain, I am at your service.”

“Oh shut up,” you grumbled, downing more of your coffee before trudging off.

It was going to be a long summer.

✧ ✧ ✧

“I’m telling you Wendy, I’m going to need an alibi, I really am going to murder my brother in law.”

“What, for giving you live-in eye candy for the summer and hinting that he thinks you need to get laid?”

“Ugh, no, that’s not— hold up, you don’t agree with him, do you?”

The sound of your best friend’s laughter through the phone had you dragging your hands over your face and pulling down at your eyelids dramatically, as if she could see your reaction.

On Thursdays, you finished up your work for the day around 4pm so you could pull up a chair next to the rotary phone and make time for the weekly scheduled phone call with Wendy. She’d insisted on the arrangement after you went six days without texting her, which you’d insisted was because service was spotty, but she’d accurately called you out on being cranky and stewing by yourself.

You and Wendy had met during your freshman year of college. By graduation, you’d lived together for three years, and made a vow to move to the same city together post grad, hence why she was still your roommate now— or was, seeing as you were on the island instead of back in the two bedroom apartment you shared. There was a five hour timezone difference between Hawaii and Chicago, so you’d figured out a schedule that worked for both of you. The calls had a tendency to last for several hours, and depending on how much wine you’d drink while on the phone with her would include bathroom breaks and you inevitably swearing at whatever you were cooking for dinner than night.

“Honey, please. I love you. Dearly, and against all other advice, you’re my best friend— but you need to get laid. You haven’t been this tense since our last finals week of senior year. And clearly you’re not opposed to the idea of Eye Candy banging your brains out, otherwise you wouldn’t have described him as, and I quote, ‘dumb hot and stupidly ripped’. When are you gonna send me a photo so I have something better to work with?”  

“Okay but are you sure you’re not the sexually frustrated one here and you’re just trying to live vicariously through me?”

Wendy’s hum sounded through the line. “I mean, can’t we both be desperately horny and in need of getting some? It’s not ideal but it is possible. Plus, I’m not the one that didn’t pack her vibrator—”

You let out a whine interrupting her as you leaned back in your chair, swirling the wine in your glass a few times as you held the phone to your ear with your shoulder. “Shut up stop reminding me! I regret it but no I’m not letting you send me a new one, especially not with a guy living with me. Come on, my stories are boring, it’s the same thing every day. I wake up, I feed the dog, I tell him what to do and then I hide away doing my own chores. When are you gonna tell me more about that girl you were seeing— what was her name, Joo-something?”

“Nice try, we’re not changing the subject with my dating life. Seriously, babe, you should just think about it.”

“And what, make it awkward for the rest of the summer? No thanks,” you shot her idea down quickly.

“I’m willing to bet money you’ll cave before the end of the summer. Plus, who doesn’t love a good ol’ summer fling? And who says you ever have to see him again once it’s all over?”

As much as you’d loathe to admit it, Wendy had a bit of a point there. “Cute, but you and I both know I’m too high strung for a temporary fling. Plus, I’m not in the mood to catch feelings right now.”

“If I find a way to replenish your wine supply, would that help?”

You groaned dramatically once more. “Not with the sexual frustration, but with my overall wellbeing, yes, yes it would.”

Wendy squealed on the other end of the phone. “Ha! So you admit it, you are sexually frustrated!”

“Woman, when in the years that you’ve known me have I not been at least some kind of frustrated?” You acknowledged.

Your best friend laughed in agreement, understanding she wasn’t going to get much more out of you about Johnny, and began a lengthy and detailed story about her last three dates with a girl she’d met through a friend of a friend. As you listened to how her voice held a dreamlike quality to it when she talked about her, you couldn’t help the pang of jealousy you felt and a sinking feeling in your gut that you’d been lying through your teeth earlier, and that maybe, subconsciously, you did want to catch feelings.

Maybe.

✧ ✧ ✧

“So… is there a story or a reason why you’re here instead of Yunho?”

You lifted your head from your focused task of sorting out the peaberry beans from the regular beans. It was tedious, time consuming, annoying as all hell, and made you want a drink stiffer than the coffee that you were certain made up more of your body fluids than blood or water did at this point. “Yes,” you said curtly after studying his face for a minute, not providing any further explanation. Johnny had his hands in his pockets and pursed his lips, nodding for a moment where he stood in the entrance to the barn.

You had set up your mad scientist level organization for the process all across the concrete floor of the refinished barn. Over the last week, Johnny had finished replacing the boards on the siding of the shed, stained the wood, and sealed it with a protective coat. He even managed to remove all the broken glass from the windows without sustaining any injuries, which you hadn’t thought possible for him. This morning you had him weed the vegetable garden, prune back the hedges along the back side of the house, and clean the deck of the lanai. How did he possibly still have any energy left? He was definitely a harder worker than you’d first given him credit for— you shook your head, not wanting to continue a spiral on Johnny and any detailed thoughts about him.

Back to your task at hand.

The harvest had been divided into several metal basins of five pounds of beans each, and in front of each basin you’d placed two dishes on either side. The point was to be able to weigh how many beans ended up being peaberry from each five pounds of harvest, and to see if you could leverage a steady average from the yield and better plan for how many pounds of the limited roast you could advertise for and set the price per pound accordingly. You wore a face mask and nylon disposable gloves while sorting, and despite being an annoying task, after a while it became a way for you to zone out and let the hours pass by. When the dishes were empty and you first started sorting them, there was a distinct echo of the small beans hitting the metal dish over and over again, until enough beans were lining the bottom that it started to dull the noise.

“Sigh.”

A slight puff of air washed over you. Did he just say the word ‘sigh’ out loud? And was he hovering over your shoulder?

“Can I help you?” You asked, pausing your sorting for only a moment.

“Isn’t it my job to ask you that question? I’m not some layabout, I am trying to earn my keep, you know,” Johnny said in response, rubbing his hands together and eyeing the basin of beans in front of him. You were almost inclined to hand it to him. Over the last four weeks, you’d gotten a lot of decent work out of him, even if you did feel somewhat micro-manage-y half the time with the tasks you did give him. “Okay, how does this work?”

You groaned exaggeratedly and excessively, rolling your eyes. When you didn’t answer, he reached forward and plucked a single coffee bean from the basin and examined it closely. “Hey, this one’s funny looking!”

“Don’t touch them with your bare hands, that’s just going to waste them.” You swatted the bean out of his hand and then looked at your own gloves and sighed. “If you’re insisting on helping, fine. But you need sanitary gear to handle them. Go wash your hands, there’s masks and gloves by the sink,” you grumbled, standing up and taking off your own gloves to dispose of them and replace them with a fresh pair.

Johnny followed obediently, trailing behind you a little too innocently for someone of his size. “Yes, the beans still need to be roasted and that’ll kill any bacteria, but I just like to be extra cautious, okay? Because it’s a mutation there’s no rule to how much of a yield I’ll get with each harvest so I don’t like wasting even a single bean,” you reasoned, settling back down and folding your legs back at the now half-sorted metal bowl.

“So, we’re just sorting the weird ones from the normal ones?” He asked while picking up another peaberry bean, this time with gloved hands and a mask over his mouth and nose.

You took a quick glance and nodded to confirm that yes, the bean in his hand was one of the weird ones he should be looking for. “They’re called peaberry. Normally, a coffee cherry has two seeds in it, or beans. Those two seeds mature in the center of the cherry and you get one flat side and one side touching it. Sometimes people call them ‘flat beans’ but those are the ‘normal’ beans, as you said,” you explained, sifting through your bowl rather quickly. “But the peaberry ones only have one bean inside. The bean is round, so that’s where the name ‘peaberry’ comes from, because—“

“Because it’s round so it looks like a pea, oh I get it! That’s funny,” he laughed, examining the rounded bean in front of him. “Okay, got it, so we’re sorting the peaberry from the flat beans?”

“You proud of your new vocab words?” You snorted, listening for the well known tink of a bean hitting the empty metal bowls. He giggled in acknowledgement.

You worked in relative silence, a small rhythm growing between the two of you. Johnny worked at about half the speed you did, but you couldn’t knock him for it, as it had taken you a while to pick up the pace when you first started hand sorting like this.

“How do you even know Yunho?” You finally asked. Four weeks since he’d arrived, and you’d never bothered to get to know him well enough to listen to the full story of how he’d ended up here.

Johnny shifted in his seated position, clearly a little taken aback that you’d bothered to ask him anything, given your track record. “Oh. Met him in Chicago when I was home visiting. At a local coffee shop, where my buddy Jaehyun is the manager. I went to go bother Jaehyun at work and he was just, shootin’ the shit with one of his coffee suppliers who was doing a visit. That supplier was Yunho. Started talking about how he owned the farm where the beans were grown, and that he wasn’t going to be able to spend the summer out there like he’d planned, so he was looking for some reliable help to uh, take care of things. Mentioned someone else would be on site and in charge, but offered the whole ‘room and board in exchange for copious amounts of physical labor’.”

“And you said yes? Just like that, no questions asked?” It seemed a little too easy, but then again, Johnny had proved to be a little too easygoing.

He shrugged. “Well, yeah. That’s kinda the point of my whole year. Just, go with the flow.” You glanced over, but Johnny was looking down, focused on the task at hand.

You nodded and hummed and turned back to your own basin to continue sorting. A few beats passed by before you couldn’t help yourself— “You’ve said that before. ‘Go with the flow’, or that you ‘had nothing else going on’. What do you mean by that?”

Out of the corner of your eye you saw Johnny’s ears perk up, followed by movement of his cheeks implying the curve of a slight smile. “I’m on a gap year, I guess is what the kids would say. Or maybe sabbatical? Though it’s not like I have any tenure enough to qualify for the real meaning of the term. But yeah, anyways— year off from work. Not getting paid or anything, but, when it’s over if I want it, my old job is waiting for me.”

“How come? That seems so—”

“Impulsive?”

You frowned. “Yeah, exactly.”

“Yeah, exactly,” he repeated, but not in a mocking manner— it was in agreement. “I guess the best way to explain it is this: I was a huge workaholic. I’ve only had my one job post grad after studying business, and I woke up one morning a month before my twenty-fifth birthday and realized it was sucking the soul out of me. It was all I ate, slept, breathed, and it wasn’t even what I wanted to be doing with my life, I realized.”

His pain started sounding all too familiar. “What is it you wanted to do instead, then?”

Even under the mask covering the lower half of his face, his smile reached his eyes. “Photography. I got into an art school when I was applying to colleges, but it just seemed so… risky. I would’ve had to take out loans and instead I got almost a full ride for a bigger university, so I went for that instead. Studied business, managed to grind through undergrad and grad school in four years and walked out with a combined BS and MBA. Took classes every summer to make it happen. I think after graduation, I went back to my parents house and passed out and slept for twenty-three hours straight,” he laughed, clearly recalling a specific memory. “I felt really accomplished when it was over, and even had the job offer already lined up. But I wish I had had more courage to study what I was truly passionate about.

“So after an almost three year long stint at the company and a vested 401k, I decided to take a year off to just, travel the world a bit. I grinded so hard through college I never got the chance to do study abroad, so I guess I wanted to make up for that? I never used to act on impulse or follow my heart, so, that was the goal for this year. To do only that.”

His words struck you differently. This was a whole new side to Johnny that you really weren’t expecting— not that you had a particularly three dimensional view of him to begin with. “And your heart lead you here… to my brother-in-law’s coffee farm?”

He laughed again, trying to hide just how thrilled he was that you were actually engaging in a full on conversation with him. “Well, sort of. My year off started back in February, day before my birthday. Got on a plane and did a few months backpack trip around Asia. I had no clue what would be next, thought maybe Australia, maybe Europe, but when I got off the plane in Chicago to see my mom and regroup on my packing, I decided to go straight from the airport to surprise and bother Jaehyun at his coffee shop. That day I met Yunho. That was a little over six weeks ago. And now I’m here, with you.”

There was something about the way he said that that didn’t sit well in your stomach— with you, like it was a good thing, like he liked it. You didn’t deign him with a response to the end of his story. Like an extension of the current state of your mind, your hands were reaching, feeling around for something, but you were only met with the flat surface of the bottom of the basin.

You looked down to see the last of the metal bowls was empty. Somehow, you’d managed to sort through all twenty pounds of coffee beans. You pulled the face mask down under your chin as you stared at the metal surface for a moment before standing abruptly and turning on your heels.

Confused, Johnny called your name out after you questioningly. “It’s getting late and I’m hungry. You uh, bag up the peaberry and set it aside and then wash out all the metal trays,” you gave him his next set of tasks quickly to make your escape back to the farmhouse to put some distance between the two of you.

A little over an hour later, you’d put together a curry on the stove with some stew meat and a base that included apples, carrots, potatoes, and melted dark chocolate for a more mellow sweet taste to balance it out. You thought about the first time Johnny complimented your cooking when it was just eggs, and how he’d continued to compliment it with every new meal you’d make. You wouldn’t call yourself a chef by any means, thinking that enjoying your go-to recipes would be a more acquired taste, and were in the midst of serving yourself when Johnny came inside with the dog trailing behind him. You didn’t bother saying much, you never did when you’d finished cooking a meal; just a grunt acknowledging his presence and a head nod at the food before you took your bowl and went through the door to go sit on the lanai by yourself. Absent-mindedly, you whistled for the dog to follow you.

Johnny kept to himself that night, eating at the kitchen table, content with looking up out the bay window to see you hand feeding small chunks of meat from your bowl to the dog, even going so far as to pet its head. He shook his head to himself thinking about how you pretended to be so opposed to the dog, and how you still hadn’t given it a name, and smiled as he took another bite.

✧ ✧ ✧

At five weeks, you stopped watching Johnny like a hawk, and started giving him more lengthy tasks that you, quite frankly, just didn’t want to do yourself. Though, if you were being honest, every task you gave him was one you didn’t want to do yourself.

Such as his current one, which was to prep the ground for a new row of sapling fruit trees. You’d walked down from the farmhouse over the hill to the open area next to a row of lemon and guava trees where you’d set him to the task of digging a row of four foot wide, four foot deep holes. The week after next, Jin’s delivery would be a much larger one, and include a number of sapling fruit trees from his family’s farm— rambutans, limes, and mangos, to name a few. You wanted to make sure the holes got dug and the irrigation system set in place properly well in advance.

When you came to a stop at the end of the row of freshly dug holes in the ground you blinked once. Twice. A third time. The sight before you was impossible to comprehend. Because not only was Johnny finishing digging the last of ten massive holes having taken less than three hours to do so, but he had been digging them shirtless.

“What. What?” You asked, staring, eyes wide and brow furrowed.

“Huh?” He asked, looking up from the bottom of the last hole and swishing his head to get his bangs, matted with sweat against his forehead, out of his face. The sun had crested over to this side of the hill now and it was blisteringly hot out. Standing in direct sunlight, doing physical labor, obviously he’d worked up a sweat.

You had to tear your eyes away from the shine on his torso and return them to just his face. “Where the fuck is your shirt?”

He pointed to where a lump of fabric was off to the side next to a water bottle. “It’s fucking hot out, I was dying,” he reasoned.

“You’re hot,” you mumbled under your breath, turning on your heel to give yourself reprieve from the onslaught that was Johnny’s unexpected number of defined abdominal muscles that were usually covered by cotton t shirts.

“What was that?” He called, squinting up into the sun from the bottom of the hole.

“I said, put a god damn shirt on before you come back in my house,” you called back, already wrapping your arms around yourself and heading back to the farmhouse. “And dinner’ll be ready in twenty, so finish up,” you added, trudging off before he could respond.

What you would have seen if you’d turned back around was an open mouthed smile curl across his face, as Johnny hummed to himself at the joy he felt for this, the first time you’d bothered to warn him when dinner would be ready.

✧ ✧ ✧

Ever since you’d seen Johnny shirtless, you’d be restless.

Well, restless was the polite word. The word to better describe what you’d been feeling was… frustrated?

Distracted? Peeved? Worked up?

Horny.

The word you were avoiding was horny.

Wendy had been the one to get you to admit it during your last weekly phone call. You told her about the shirtless incident and the first thing she asked was if you had plans to throw out the washing machine and instead start doing your laundry on Johnny’s abs, which did not help your predicament any further. It was also Wendy who had pointed out that you’d been alone on this farm for almost two months with a dog and a man too pretty for his own good, and despite how he represented everything you were annoyed at in life at the moment, after seeing his half naked figure, it would only be natural for you to have been a little turned on. And a little turned on was exactly where you were— for the last week, you had been going on runs every night to release the excess pent up energy you suddenly had.

The last time you exercised this much you were still in college. Back then you went on hour long runs through the city with your phone on ‘Do Not Disturb’ because it was the only way you weren’t constantly bombarded with an on onslaught of messages from classmates, friends, family, or your on campus job that took up way too much of your time. And now, you found yourself returning to old habits, this time because what, you were too proud to just rub one out like the rest of humanity? (That phrasing, too, was courtesy of your best friend, when she again reminded you of your failure to pack your vibrator.)

After another eight miles up and down the road outside the farm that ran along the island’s coast your legs felt like absolute jello when you finished, but your head was empty enough that you were able to return to the property and exist near Johnny in peace. You walked by the barn on your way up to the farmhouse, sticking your head inside briefly to look for him. You didn’t hear any noise, and didn’t find him at first glance, but didn’t think much of it as you went back inside.

The dog was already in the kitchen, so that should have been your first clue. You opened the fridge and peered inside, pulling out a number of assorted ingredients to make a lemon cream sauce for pasta with chicken.

You set a pot of water to boil, turned the oven on to preheat, and began melting butter, garlic, oil, and a variety of herbs in a sauce pan. That plus the low hum of the overhead fan meant just enough noise that you couldn’t hear the water running from the small shower on the other side of the house, and you didn’t think twice as the heat cast off by the appliances made you feel even stuffier post-run, and you peeled your shirt off your body and rolled the waistband of your shorts down an inch, pressing your bare feet flat against the hardwood flooring to try and get some semblance of cooling relief.

It was only a few moments later, with the water boiling and pasta cooking inside and the chicken already seasoned and in the oven, when you peered over the bubbling sauce pan and dipped the edge of your pinky into the mixture to bring just a taste up to your mouth. Just like you’d hoped, it was light and had a kick of citrus to it from the lemon, but not so much that it was overpowering. You closed your eyes and hummed in appreciation as you licked the sauce off, which, in retrospect, probably sounded far too much like a moan for your own good.

“Jesus fuck—”

And suddenly, you realized you weren’t alone inside the house.

You screamed at first from the shock of being startled by the noise, and then again when it registered in your brain that Johnny was standing in the kitchen, hair dripping wet, chest bare and abdominal muscles just as defined as the last time you’d seen them, face flushed in some sort of embarrassment with a bath towel wrapped around his hips.

Johnny was fresh out of the shower, nearly naked in your kitchen, clutching his clothes balled up in his left hand.

You scream again.

“What are you doing?!” You shrieked out, raising your voice over the dog’s excited barking at the commotion the two of you had begun making.

He stammered for a moment, clearly frozen in place. “I was just! You were gone, and I was done for the day, so I took a shower but I— I forgot my change of clothes in my room and these towels are small and just— Jesus why are you wearing so little clothing?!”

Your fury returned full force at the comment. “Why am I wearing so little clothing? You’re in a towel for fuck’s sake! This is my house, I live here! I should be the one asking you where your clothes are!”

“They’re here, in my hand!” He yelled back, waving the bundle around frantically. “I just said I forgot them when I went to shower!”

Your eyes bugged out of you head as your gaze traveled down, taking in the entirety of the figure before you and— oh.

“Are you… are you hard right now?” You asked in bewilderment.

The way the color drained out of Johnny’s face and the speed with which he moved the bundle of clothing to hold it over the space between his legs answered your question.

“Oh, my god.” Exasperated, you slammed your eyes shut and held your hands up by your sides. “What the fuck, John.”

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry, I didn’t mean— fuck, shit I made it weird— please don’t get mad, I can totally fix this,” he started spewing apologies, and you heard him take two steps closer to you. “Wait, were you looking at my dick?”

“Ah!” You spat out, turning away from him. His question was valid but you had no intention of acknowledging it. “Out! Get out of my house, go… somewhere else until that goes away or you can, I don’t know, take care of it!” You instantly thought of the implication of your words and then yelled again. “No— don’t— fuck, don’t do that! Jesus for the love of god don’t take care of it while I’m standing here—” you were stammering and beyond flustered. How the fuck were you supposed to talk to someone who had just gotten a fucking boner by looking at you, sweaty in a sports bra, while sucking a cream colored substance off the tip of your pinky?

You exhaled deeply, eyes still closed. “Here’s what’s going to happen. You are going to go to your room. I am going to finish cooking my dinner. You will be absolutely silent until you hear me leave. I will be staying at the condo for the next week. You will either ration the leftovers or fend for yourself, I do not care. Got it?” You signed out again, eyes flicking open. Johnny held his bundle of clothes in front of his legs and nodded his head once, not bothering with any comeback before he shuffled to the guest room and shut the door quietly.

It took another twenty minutes for the meat to finish cooking and the dish to be full prepared. How you managed to keep your head empty and shut off your internal monologue during that time, you’ll never know, but you were thankful for it nonetheless. You packed two servings into a Tupperware container for yourself before shoving some clothes in a duffle bag and grabbing the keys to the jeep you hated driving. It was only about ten minutes down the road to the condo, but it was almost fifteen miles, so you figured this was the lesser of two evils. You whistled for the dog to follow you, and it was all too excited to jump in the passenger seat of the car. The farmhouse was now dry of liquor, what with Yunho not making good on his promise a month ago and your weekly wine dates with Wendy, but you knew the condo definitely had some spirits stashed somewhere in a cabinet. You were going to need that and a nice hot bath to destress after that encounter.

Meanwhile, Johnny sunk down on to the floor inside the guest room, his back pressed against the door. When he heard the sound of the jeep’s engine turning over, he sighed in relief and ran a hand through his hair. There were no better words to describe it: he was truly and utterly fucked.

✧ ✧ ✧

You stayed at the condo only for three days, and did little other than sleep, binge watch some TV since there was better electricity and internet here, and eat your way through slightly stale bags of chips and frost bitten freezer dinners that were months old. Because you couldn’t just open the door and let the dog out to run through the property for whatever exercise or bathroom needs it had, you had to actually walk it with a leash and everything. You paid less attention to how domestic the action of clipping the leash on to the collar you’d found in an unopened delivery package on the kitchen table was, and thought more about how slothful you’d felt over the last 60-odd hours of self isolation, especially after two months of working outdoors every day.

It was childish to keep hiding from Johnny. It’s not like you could prove that he’d gotten hard looking at you, and really, shouldn’t you take it as sort of a compliment? (Well, maybe you wouldn’t go that far.)

It was Monday when you returned to the farm, parking the jeep back by the barn and hip checking the door shut after the dog went running off in search of Johnny. It found him carrying pruned branches of trees down to the area where you burned excess brush, and you could hear the excited sound of his voice at the return of the creature as you walked slowly down the hill towards him.

“I missed you! It’s been so lonely without you, but I guess I’m glad your mommy had you with her, huh?” He cooed at the dog, rubbing its face in his hands after dropping the bundle of branches and flopping its ears from side to side. Hearing Johnny refer to you as a mother, even of the animal, had you grimacing.

“Ew,” you said, making your presence known. He stood up suddenly, possibly just a little embarrassed.

“Oh! You’re uh, you’re back.” You nodded, lips pressed together in a flat line. Your hands were full, carrying two takeout coffees from a shop down near the condo you’d stopped at on the way back. You’d forgotten how much the farm felt like a different planet, a different space in time almost, because of how isolated it felt. The act of ordering a coffee to go rather than making it yourself in the morning was equal parts bewildering and soothing.

You had no idea what compelled you to order an iced americano along with the cortado you’d gotten for yourself. You didn’t really know much about Johnny beyond the one conversation you’d had about how he ended up meeting your brother in law and crashing on the farm with you in the first place. But somehow, ordering the drink had felt right, and you thought of it as a potential peace offering to cut the tension.

“This is yours,” you said plainly after some thought, trying to remove any and all emotion from your tone.

He blinked a few times before taking three steps towards you and reaching his hand out to take the drink. He mumbled a soft thank you and sipped without bothering to ask what was inside.

“You’re just going to take the drink a stranger offers you, no questions asked?”

“Ooh!” His eyes perked up when he tasted the coffee. “I mean, I’ve never questioned any of the food you’ve made me so far, why start now? Besides,” he shrugged, taking another sip, “I trust you.”

You snorted. “That’s a stupid thing to do.”

Johnny laughed again, eyes crinkling at the sides. Your mind wandered briefly to a half formed thought about how endearing that was. “Maybe so, but despite your efforts to make me an enemy, I think you’re actually a really good person. You even guessed my favorite coffee drink, so that has to count for something.” He nodded to the paper cup in your hand. “What’s your poison?”

“Cortado,” responded curtly, ignoring his comments that were cutting a bit too deep for ten in the morning.

“Ah, a strong espresso pull with a balance of steam milk and a touch of foam. Nice choice. I can definitely appreciate one, but I’m a little too impatient and drink them too quickly— I think that’s why I love americanos so much, because it lasts a little longer.”

You tilted you head to the side, puzzled. “Wait. You… actually know things about coffee?”

“I mean, yeah,” he laughed, “What do you think I spent three hours talking with Yunho about the day we met? I did my time as a barista in college. Free coffee every shift was hard to pass up when you’re doing almost a double course load every other semester. I’ve always been curious about the growing and roasting process, and I know a lot of people do home roasting as a hobby but I just never made the time to explore it.”

Well, duh, you thought, that actually made sense. “Oh god, and here I’ve been making my lame ass bitter pour over all summer— you know how to pull a shot of espresso then I take it? You’ve seen the La Marzocco on the counter, how come you’ve never used it?”

He pouted his lips out in a flat line and shrugged comically. “Dunno. I mean, I’m a guest and a worker first, and it’s not mine, so, I didn’t wanna make any assumptions. But if this is an open invitation to use it, I’m more than happy to accept.”

You chewed on the inside of your mouth for a moment. You could feel it in the air as the hairs on your arms stood up slightly, goosebumps running down your skin. You hoped in wasn’t too noticeable. Maybe this was it— maybe it really was time to extend an olive branch and have more than half a conversation with him every four days. “It’s a little older and sort of temperamental, but it’s still a good machine. I’ll… show you the quirks tomorrow morning, or whenever you want something to drink,” you offered.

It was then that you discovered this: Johnny was not a great actor. He wore his heart on his sleeve. You figured this to be true because he could barely contain the smile that spread across his face, and the energetic nod he gave, and the mild soft exhale (squeal?) of excitement. You rolled your eyes gently and turned away, drink in hand. “When it cools down later after dinner, I’m roasting tonight. You’re welcome to join.”

You gave him the benefit of not bearing witness to the fist pump he made as you walked away.

Dinner that night was stir fried ground pork with carrots and zucchini from the garden served over rice. It was one of your comfort dishes, easy to make and easy to clean up after, since it used only two pans. As soon as you’d finished eating, this time sitting at the table together with Johnny, he’d cleared the dishes and got to cleaning up right away. You stretched your arms overhead and leaned back in your chair far enough to crack your back slightly with a loud pop.

“Oof, that sounded like it felt good,” he laughed from the sink. You hummed in agreement. “So what’d you do before this? Desk job hunched over a computer like the rest of us?”

“Mmm something like that. You may have been bored out of your mind in business, but I sold my soul years ago to work in advertising.”

“Why does that like, fit?” He asked, turning the water off and drying the pan you’d used for cooking by hand.

“You saying I have no soul?” You challenged.

He shrugged. “Hey, you said it, not me. We’re both just cogs in the machine that is late stage capitalism, I guess.”

You didn’t know how deeply you wanted to get into it with Johnny just yet. Maybe eventually, but, not right now. “Yeah, well, I was just a Project Manager, not like a Copywriter or anything. Did you know Yunho was a staff Art Director before he switched to the coffee business full time? We used to work at the same agency a few years back.”

Johnny snapped his fingers and pointed at you. “Ah, that’s right! I remember him saying something about that, made the same jokes about having no soul. You two are a lot alike for not being related by blood.”

Well, he wasn’t wrong; sometimes you wondered if you’d become closer with Yunho that you were with your sister at this point. “Enough about that. If you’re done follow me, it’s probably cool enough to fire up the roaster. I just want to do a test batch of like, five pounds with the regular beans to see how this year’s harvest takes to our standard roast,” you explained, heading to the door and slipping on your sneakers. “Don’t let the dog out, it gets scared from the loud noises and I don’t need it freaking out.”

Johnny dried his hands and followed after you to the barn. You flicked on the lights and went straight for the sink to pull your hair out of your face, wash your hands, and put on a pair of gloves and a mask. Johnny followed your lead, even going so far as to tie up the top layer of his hair on top of his head. “Hey look! It’s like an apple,” he bobbed his head from side to side to make the tiny ponytail move back and forth, and you couldn’t help but snort as you tried to suppress your laughter.

“Dork,” was all you said. You went to the storage racks to pick up one of the sorted burlap bags of beans and hoisted it over your shoulder to carry it to a metal prep table where you carefully opened it and began scooping out the green beans and pouring them into a bowl on a metal scale that had been zeroed out. “So  obviously you know that coffee is counted by weight in pounds. That monstrosity,” you jerked your head in the direction of the massive eight foot tall machine in the corner of the room, “Can handle up to twenty-five pounds of beans in the barrel at a time. Because it’s so big, it’s best to not do super small batches, otherwise you risk burning the beans. Since I’m going for five pounds, it’ll be okay, but if I was doing any less I’d use one of the table top roasters, since they have a smaller barrel.” You finished weighing out five pounds and handed the container to him to carry.

You continued explaining the full process of roasting and science behind it as you flipped switches, checked that the exhaust was hooked up properly, and set the dials for the heat and time on the industrial roaster before pulling the door to the funnel open and having Johnny slowly pour the beans inside. “God you’re a fucking giant, I always need a step stool to reach that high,” you commented as he made the reach with ease.

You weren’t kidding when you said the roaster was loud when it was running. Thankfully with the size of the machine and this batch, it was only eleven minutes of the two of you standing just a few feet away in case anything went wrong and you had to hit the emergency stop, holding your hands over your ears to block the sound. Johnny began jokingly exaggerating mouthing something out, and you felt almost like friends as you laughed at his antics. You were never the best at reading lips. Especially not Johnny’s, they were too full and distracting on their own for you to make sense of the mouth shapes. When the machine came to a grinding halt and the noise suddenly stopped, he was still shouting words and his voice echoed around the space in the absence of the noise, “I said, I think you’re— oh, wow, that was fast,” he quickly diverted, catching himself from finishing whatever it was he was about to say.

Your heart skipped a beat at the thought of trying to pry out of him what he was in the process of saying under the protection of the loud noises. You shook it off mentally and showed him how to remove the beans from the roasting chamber. “So you take them out like this, and then they’re still going to be warm for a while, so it’s best to let them rest for a bit. If you were to brew them right away, the flavor might not be what you’re expecting, so if you wait for them to sit for a few days, you’ll notice a considerable difference in the flavor profile—”

You stopped suddenly, a sound in the distance suddenly registering to you. You left Johnny standing there with the roasted coffee in hand and trailed to the edge of the barn and then you heard it more clearly— the sound of the old rotary phone ringing. “Oh, shit,” you swore and took off running back up to the house. The only person who had the number for the landline other than Wendy were Yunho and your sister. Wendy didn’t call you outside of your Thursday night appointments. You did the math in your head— it was the end of June, your sister’s due date wasn’t til the end of August, but early labor was always something you’d heard about, especially with more than one baby.

Hands shaking, you got to the phone on what could have been the last ring and panted out a greeting of Yunho’s name, already knowing it was him.

“Oh thank god you answered, I’ve been calling for the last twenty minutes, where were you?” He chastised immediately. You felt uneasy at the tone in his voice.

You stammered in response. “I— we were in the barn, I was roasting so I couldn’t hear the phone— what’s wrong? Is she okay?”

Yunho sighed out heavily and was quiet. “She’s going to be okay, but there was a… scare,” you could tell he was choosing his words carefully. “I don’t want to freak you out, but I don’t want to not tell you either. She slipped getting out of the shower, landed on her hip. Started having lower abdominal pain right after. We thought maybe it was going to be now, but, she’s fine. The doctors think they were phantom contractions? Whatever they were they’re gone now. The babies are fine, but she’ll most likely be in the hospital until the due date. If she starts experiencing any kind of contractions between now and then, though, they’ll want to induce labor.” You could tell he was still stressed and worried, but you nodded and listened as he explained some of the medical details a bit further. “Anyways, all this to say, the next time I call, it could be to tell you that you’re an auntie.”

From the moment you heard the phone ringing this late at night and calculated that it was almost two in the morning in Chicago, the tightness in your chest had been building. Listening to Yunho speak delicately about your sister’s condition was one thing— you thought it was a sigh of relief when he said that everything was fine, but then it was most certainly not fine when the gravity of his last words really hit you.

“Little Bean are you listening? Is the signal bad? I know the connection isn’t always great—”

You inhaled sharply as the pressure inside came to a head. “Yunho I gotta go,” you gasped out, barely able to make sense of thoughts to get the words out.

Before you could hear his rebuttal you slammed the phone on to the receiver to end the call and covered your face with your hands still in their nylon gloves. Despite standing in an open space, you suddenly felt like the room was spinning and the walls were closing in on you. Out, out, you had to get out—

“Hey, everything okay in here?”

Fuck.

Johnny was standing in the door, a look of concern on his face. You heaved into your hands and choked out a sob, feeling the wetness in your eyes building. No no no, everything was most certainly not okay in here. You shouldn’t have made eye contact, you should have known better, because looking at his face, his stupid perfect face and his genuine care for your wellbeing, it set you free falling over the precipice.

You were spiraling, and hard, and needed to land. It was instinctual, the way you cried out and ran pushing past him before breaking into an all out sprint down the hill to the fruit trees. Your legs barely kept up with the velocity of running at a decline, stopping short of tumbling and falling forward. The only thing that you knew to help this, the thing that had worked for you in the past, and you raced through the grove of trees for the larger one at the very end. It was one of the older trees, well mature and established with its root system, so you could always expect it to produce fruit.

But you’d harvested a large amount of the fruit in the last few weeks from the lower branches, and the only remaining fruit that would be ripe enough for your purposes was on the higher branches just out of reach. Over the sound of your pained sobs, you couldn’t hear Johnny’s approach or him asking what was wrong, your one track mind just trying desperately to jump and reach, fingertips barely brushing on the fruit you were reaching for.

“Hey hey, calm down, what are you—” he started.

“Shut up! Just shut— don’t tell— don’t tell me calm— calm—” you couldn’t make the words make sense, in your head you were screaming don’t tell me to calm down, but the act of translating that into words on your tongue was downright Herculean right now, it just wasn’t happening. Your knees began wobbling and standing too started feeling impossible. The tightness in your chest had expanded to reach your back, and though you were clearly still getting air by the fact that you hadn’t passed out yet, you felt like you weren’t breathing at all. You were crying outright now, tears wet and hot and painful as the sobs escaped your throat.

It didn’t take a genius to figure that you were trying to reach a fruit on a branch just above your wingspan. Johnny placed one large hand against your back gently and reached all the way up, fingers wrapping around what he assumed was the object of your fixation, before twisting and pulling to release it from the tree. “Hey,” he said softly, “This what you need?”

As soon as you made sense of the object in front of you you seized it from his hands, biting directly through the rind of the lemon. A muffled sob came out as your knees buckled and you sank to the ground. The bitter rush of citrus did part of its job, and brought your consciousness back down to earth. But your breathing didn’t steady, and your heart was still pounding, and the tears were still falling.

It wasn’t working, your grounding technique; not like it had the previous times, like the night you’d first gotten the phone call from Yunho saying they weren’t coming, and not like the time you bit into a lemon in the kitchen at work after first getting the phone call that your sister was pregnant, and even the time before that when she told you she and Yunho were moving, or when Yunho had asked you if he could marry your sister. If you were more with it, you would have thought for a moment longer about how all of your largest panic attacks of the last several years seemed to be linked to things about Yunho and your sister. Biting into a whole lemon had been your go-to for years, and suddenly, it wasn’t working.

“Fuck!” You cried out, spitting the lemon into your palms, “Fuck fuck fuck! Why isn’t it— why isn’t it working?!” Your words were absolutely frantic, and you were yelling at yourself more than your companion who, quite frankly, you’d forgotten was even there.

Until you felt a shadow pass over you in the moonlight and a pair of arms enveloping you in an embrace.

The top of your head was pressed against his chest and his hands found their way to the planes of your back and began rubbing soft circles. Softly he tutted out a shushing noise, voice barely above a whisper, steady. “Come on, let it out, I’m right here. I’ve got you, you’re not alone,” he said calmly, “You’re gonna get through it. Try to take a deep breath, that’s good now hold it as long as you can— okay, that’s okay, try again, try to hold on to it and let it out slowly this time.”

You’d never had anyone physically with you and help you through a panic attack before. You’d had them around people in the past, but no one had ever made a move to help you through it— not like this, not like him, not like he was doing right now by attempting to guide your breathing. The one time you had one in front on Wendy, you’d locked yourself in the bathroom and refused to answer her while you came down, and she never pressed you about it afterwards.

You had no idea how much time passed as Johnny held you in his arms, keeping a steady rhythm of his palms on your back and letting you cry it out into the fabric of his shirt, your hands wringing the material so strongly you thought you’d tear holes where your nails were.

One hand traveled to the back of your head and he stroked that too. “I’ve got you, I’m right here,” he said again.

After a longer period of silence, your ears stopped ringing and you could finally make out the chirping of the crickets in the night. You sniffled and rubbed the last of the trails the tears had left on your cheeks into his shirt, mumbling an apology into it.

“Don’t do that,” he said softly, keeping his voice low, almost as if he was afraid he’d scare you off if he raised it any higher. “I mean— haha, don’t apologize. It’s okay, whatever it is, it’ll wash out. If it doesn’t, it’s just a tee shirt, I can always buy another.” His tone was even paced and calm, and in pressing your ear against his chest you could hear the reverberations as he spoke.

The humid summer air was heavy as usual, even this late at night. You don’t know how long you sat there in silence, wrapped in Johnny’s arms listening to his heartbeat, but eventually you acknowledged that your heart was beating in time with his. Whether you liked it or not, he had been the thing to ground you, and not a stupid fucking lemon.

You shifted slightly, making a move to stand, but Johnny stopped you. “Whoa whoa, hang on lemme get ready— okay, hold on to my shoulders, that’s it.” Your fingers dug into his arms as he adjusted his legs and hooked one arm under your knees and the other around your back and stood up, taking you with him.

“Shit,” you mumbled out, head rushing at the quick movement and the realization that your legs were still bent over his arm, and Johnny was now carrying you. “Hey, heavy,” your words were still soft.

“Mmm, nah, nothing I can’t handle,” his response was easy, dismissive of your complaint, but not in a bad way. “You don’t have to answer this if you don’t want to but— anxiety? Panic attack?” You sucked in a breath at the word. You hated that word. That word made you feel weak, even if it was exactly what this was. You dug your nails into his skin slightly on a reflex of bracing yourself, not with this intention of inflicting damage. “Got it. I get it,” he had approached the house and walked to the door, reaching for the handle with the hand under your knees. “I’ve had a few myself. Not recently, but back in college, maybe two or three? Don’t think they were ever as strong as that, though. I tried the lemon trick once, it actually worked pretty well for me. Didn’t make the next time I did a tequila shot all that fun though, couldn’t enjoy citrus for at least a month after that.” His soft laughter shook his chest and you leaned in further. Listening to his voice was comforting. It was keeping you steady. It made you feel safe, and in this moment, you were too tired to think about how you probably should have hated that. “Think you could swallow some water? Rehydrating is important.”

Your head nodded. “Okay, I’m gonna put you down now.” He used his foot to push one of the chairs away from the table and set you down on to the seat gently. The dog was immediately at your knees, whining lowly and attempting to give as many kisses as you’d accept. “Here,” he said gently, crouching down in front of you and holding a glass out. “Drink what can, but not too fast. There you go, that’s it,” his large hand clasped over your knee, thumb rubbing circles on the side. “Feeling any better?”

“Yeah,” you rasped out, voice raw from all the crying earlier.

Johnny smiled softly. “Good, that’s good. Okay, I think you need to get to bed, yeah? Or do you wanna take a shower or something first?” You shook your head. “Okay, just washed your face then?” You nodded. Your conscious monologue was returning, but bringing words from your mind to your mouth was still proving difficult. Johnny didn’t seem to mind. Instead, he offered you his hand. “Need help getting up?”

You answered by gripping on to his hand and using his shoulders to help you stand up. Johnny walked you to your room, holding his arm out for you as a guide. You were able to bear weight on your feet now, and though your steps were slow, you made it to the bathroom to wash your face and and change into sleepwear. Johnny waited by the door, averting his eyes for privacy for you, and returned to your side to help you into bed.

When he leaned over you to pull the sheets up, you reached for his wrist and asked, “Why are you being so nice to me?”

His face went blank before it softened into a smile. “Because. I told you earlier, didn’t I? You’re a good person. Should be simple as that, yeah?”

You didn’t have a response for him, only shifting deeper into the pillows. He turned off the light and retreated to the door frame. “Try and get some rest. Call me if you need me, okay?”

Your head managed a nod, and Johnny finally left, leaving the door to your room slightly ajar. You listened for the sounds of him milling about the house, his footsteps softly shuffling against the floorboards, a few mumbled words to the dog that followed at his heels, until you finally fell asleep.

When you dreamed that night, you dreamt of him, the sound of his voice, and the way your blood felt on fire whenever he looked at you and smiled.

✧ ✧ ✧

Johnny never asked you about the panic attack.

He didn’t bring it up, he didn’t ask what caused it, he didn’t even allude to it in any conversation over the next week. The next day he was just a little bit more gentle with you with the tone and volume of his speaking voice, but when you showed no signs of still be affected from the previous night, he let it go and didn’t bother you about it.

You couldn’t tell if you loved him or hated him for it.

Confusion on your feelings aside, as June came to a close and the morning of July 3rd came, you woke up to the sound of the espresso machine running. Johnny had very quickly proven that he was worth his salt as a barista, even though it had been several years, and had a very nice shot pull. He even figured out the steamer, which was the most finicky part of the machine, and had been making you cortados every morning. That’s what you were sipping now from a metal camper mug, as you walked with him to the shed.

“I think that all that’s left is nailing down that last sheet of roofing and then we’re done,” he hummed cheerfully, inspecting the building. It looked brand new, a marked improvement from the broken windows and bleached paint job it had sported two months ago.

Two months. Was that really how long he’d been here? You didn’t want to think too much about it, about how those two months gone meant you had reached the half way point, and that there were about two months left.

Two months…

“We should celebrate,” he said suddenly, and you looked up puzzled.

“We?”

“Sure!” He exclaimed, “I had no idea what I was doing. I just did what you told me to. This was one of the biggest projects for the summer, right? And plus, not that I care too much for the holiday, but won’t there be fireworks and stuff for the Fourth? Come on, this house has been dry for weeks, let’s go get some booze and live a little, huh?” He prodded your side with his elbow and began needling at you, saying huh, huh, huh over and over until you groaned and relented.

“Fiiiiiine, let’s go before the stores get crowded when everyone realizes everything’s gonna be closed tomorrow.”

The dog was less than pleased that you’d sent it back into the house when you picked up the keys to the jeep. Usually you took it with you, but this time you decided against it, since you weren’t sure how the liquor store would feel with you bringing the stray dog off leash into the store with you.

“All you, big guy,” you said to Johnny as you tossed the car keys at him.

“Aren’t you gonna ask if I know how to drive first?” He quipped back quickly while walking to the driver’s side.

“Nah,” you shrugged comically, hoisting yourself up by the frame of the car. You buckled yourself in and watched as he did the same and adjusted the mirrors for his height. “Besides,” you looked down to inspect your fingernails as if they were the most fascinating thing on the planet, “I trust you, or whatever.”

“Bit of a stupid thing to do, but alright,” he smiled, echoing your words back at you. “Kidding, I’m an excellent driver. Alright, co-pilot! You have the most sacred duty bestowed upon you—”

“Navigation?”

“No, music selection, duh,” he scoffed and handed you the aux cord and pulled out a cell phone you’d never seen him hold before. You stared at the device as he unlocked it and pulled up his music library. Johnny noticed your surprised expression out of the corner of his eye. “What, it’s not like I have a use for it out here. Your wifi sucks and I’m not about to rack up a huge cell phone bill, so it stays off in my duffle bag most of the time. Anyways, this is a test! Pick whatever your heart desires.” The smirk on his face was beyond mischievous as he handed it to you.

You sighed and settled into the seat and began scrolling. What to pick, what to pick…

Surprisingly, there was a decent number of songs you recognized, and one album in particular you were a fan of. You scrolled down the track listing to about the half way point and pressed play.

The sounds of The Killers and the familiar guitar chords that were practically sewn into your DNA began to filter through the speakers. Johnny smiled and started clapping as the car reached the bottom of the driveway and he flipped on the turn signal. “Oh my god, Mr. Brightside, excellent choice! Okay, you passed the first test. But do you know the words?” He teased.

You gasped in feigned offense as the lyrics came to the chorus, and as he accelerated up to speed you began to belt the words out as loud as you could manage. For once you weren’t thinking about how you hated that the jeep had no top while the wind whipped past you on all sides as Johnny sped down the highway. As the song played, the magic high of belting the words to something fifteen years old that were still imprinted in your brain didn’t seem to wear off like you’d expected it to.

“Alright, chop chop what’s next maestro!” He called over the sound of the wind as the song came to a close. You already had something queued up, something a little more recent, and you smiled as the words to the next song began filtering through the speakers, letting the music carry the drive and not belting along with it this time. You tried to not think too deeply about the lyrics of the chorus as it played.  

'Cause you're the last of a dying breed Write our names in the wet concrete I wonder if your therapist knows everything about me? I'm here in search of your glory There's been a million before me That ultra-kind of love You never walk away from You're just the last of the real ones

As the bridge played and you neared your destination, Johnny tilted his head towards you while keeping his eyes on the road. “Growing up, it was like, a badge of honor as a Chicago kid to have gone to a Fall Out Boy show when they still played the smaller clubs. I snuck into one when I was 16— it was an 18 and over show— felt like I was hot shit when I got away with it.”

“Don’t know why, but you don’t strike me as a Fall Out Boy fan,” you admitted. From your scroll through his music library, you saw most of their discography saved to his phone.

“Hey, I had my embarrassing wannabe emo phase too.”

“Had?” You couldn’t stop yourself from teasing. Johnny didn’t give a response to that one, and as another Fall Out Boy song played through the speakers you let yourself rest in a comfortable lack of conversation, instead sharing the music with him as he drove. It only took to the end of that third song to reach your destination and based on how he handled the drive and parking, true to his word Johnny was an excellent driver.

Johnny followed you closely once inside, his eyes scanning up and down the shelves of the tiny liquor store before he reaches and picks up a six pack of pilsner. “You ever try this one?”

Your nose wrinkles in disgust. “I don’t do beer.”

Johnny blinks twice in response and plops the six pack back down on the shelf. “Noted. What do you drink?”

“If I’m picking?” He nods. “I’m a slut for rosé or champagne. Any sparkling wine, really, it makes me feel fancy and you get to turn basic days into little celebrations.” You follow him as he walks down the aisle to where the selection of wine was shelved and starts looking through the options. “Hang on, you’re not gonna grill me about the beer thing?”

“You say that like your friends usually give you shit for it.”

You crossed your arms and shuffle your feet underneath you. “Well, yeah. Usually.”

“Then I would say,” he trails off for a moment, bending and squatting to see a label on a lower shelf before picking up two bottles of the same brand, “You need new friends. Or that your current ones need to learn boundaries, take your pick. How’s this look for one option? Since this is a celebration and all,” he says with a wink.

Leaning forward, you study the label on the bottle for a moment before nodding in approval. You agree to his point that since they were 15% off if you bought six or more bottles, it only made sense to buy more, and besides, “It’s not like you won’t drink them eventually when you’re on the phone with Wendy.”

Your eyebrows shot up at that. “How do you know her name?”

“I’m quiet not deaf, and you’re louder than you think you are,” he says matter-of-factly before heading to the cashier to pay for your selection. You bite your tongue then, hoping to whatever deity was watching you (and probably laughing) that he’d overheard one of the conversations that wasn’t about Wendy insisting you should bone him.

Johnny picks the music on the way back, opting for some Bleachers and Paramore now that he knew at least part of your music taste and how it aligned with his.

Your new selection of wine goes into the fridge as soon as you get home, and Johnny heads to the shed with a ladder in hand to climb on top and finish nailing down the roofing. You opt to help with this task, spotting from the ground and continuously yelling for him to ‘be careful’ and ‘you better not fall and break your neck while I’m watching’. It takes a little over an hour, and it’s late afternoon when he finishes, but when you climb the ladder yourself as he holds it steady from the ground to inspect his handiwork you have to say you’re impressed.

“You sure you never did construction work before? You’ve got shockingly good craftsmanship for a newbie.”

“My dad’s pretty self sufficient so he was always doing the handiwork around the house. Picked stuff up here and there from him growing up, but anything I didn’t know I could just look up on the internet.” You shoot him a pointed look. “What! I said your wifi was shitty not that I didn’t use it every now and again. There’s a YouTube tutorial for everything these days.”

Johnny insisted on cleaning up the last of the debris on his own while you worked on dinner— another pasta dish, orecchiette broccoli rabe, and while that was cooking you boil a pint of blackberries with water and sugar to make a flavored simple syrup. Since you were celebrating tonight, it only felt right to put in a little extra effort even to the drinks of choice. Kir Royales were typically made with a blackcurrant liquor, but it was a niche product you hadn’t found in the store, so the syrup and a slice of lemon for garnish would have to do.

While you waited for Johnny to finish up and take his shower (after the last time, you gave him plenty of space out of an abundance of caution whenever he showered), you started rummaging through the pantry cabinets and making sense of the dry ingredients you had on hand. You had time to kill, why not make a dessert with it?

You hadn’t talked about it much with Johnny, but you actually did enjoy cooking and baking. Something about spending time and energy making something and having someone consume it and tell you they liked made you feel good. You still remember the first time you made breakfast for a hungover Wendy in college and she raved about it for days, though you were pretty sure back then it was because the carbs soaked up the remaining alcohol in her system and stopped her from puking.

Dinner was finished when Johnny finally came out of the shower, this time fully clothed and his hair more dry. You explained that you’d gotten bored and made cookie dough but the oven hadn’t finished pre-heating yet so nothing was baked.

“Fuck it, cookie dough is always better than the cookies themselves,” he shrugged.

“But salmonella—”

Johnny held up a hand jokingly as he stopped your interjection and turned off the oven. “Still convinced that’s a myth parents made up to stop kids from actually enjoying childhood. Plus it’s hot as balls, chill the dough while we eat and then it’ll be even better after. Plus, you haven’t poisoned either of us yet, I think your track record is pretty good so far.” (There he went again, referring to you and him as an ‘us’.)

So you did just that, putting the cookie dough into the fridge and taking your dinner outside with the cocktails you’d made. You didn’t have any wine glasses here at the farm house— after breaking one stemmed glass during your first phone call with Wendy you’d moved the rest to the condo and replaced the drink ware with mason jars because the clean up was too annoying. Plus, you didn’t want to risk the dog stepping on stray shards of thin glass and getting them stuck in the pads of its paws. (You were still decidedly apathetic towards it, but that didn’t mean you were cruel).

So it was in the wide mouth Kerr jars that you poured your blackberry syrup and a half a bottle of champagne, after a comical exchange of Johnny insisting he wasn’t scared of the pop! that corks made coming out of pressurized bottles and the yelp he let out anyways when it happened as expected. The lemon slice garnish was more of an aesthetic touch than anything but you liked it nonetheless.When Johnny pulls out his phone for the second time that day and insists on playing music and making a dramatic toast before you could drink, you could only laugh and agree.

“To the best Boss I’ve ever had,” he said with a raised glass, “Even though you used me for cheap labor and to do all the hard shit.”

“Rude! I cook every day, look at all the chances I’ve had to poison you and how many times have I done it? Absolutely none because I am a saint and you know it.”

You weren’t sure if it was the alcohol, the music, the low hum of crickets, the starry night sky, or the summer heat that did it, but time flowed so easily, and so did the conversation and teasing banter. Over the course of one meal you’d exchanged more words with Johnny than you had in the whole two months you’d known each other. Two hours later and you’d finished all the dinner (of course there were no leftovers, Johnny was still Johnny, but the amount of manual labor he did in a day made sense of how much he usually ate, you’d come to realize). The bowl of cookie dough was now sitting on the step of the lanai and you and Johnny were side by side on the deck, looking out over the farm and taking the occasional spoonful of dough into your mouths. He was right— the dough did taste better than the baked cookies probably would have, especially after it had chilled for a bit. With the way the stars and moon were hung in the cloudless sky, you could see the soft glow of their reflection in the water beyond the highway and the cliff leading to the beach.

“You ever go down to the shore?” He asks suddenly, and it feels out of nowhere and like he’s inside your head because how else would he have known you were just thinking about the ocean? But then you register that Andrew McMahon’s voice has just crooned something about Venice Beach and the California summer in the music that had still been playing through the speakers of Johnny’s phone.

You hummed for a moment before answering. “Not really. I should make more time for it, but I rarely ever leave the farm, as you probably noticed. I know this place is paradise for so many people, the vacation destination on a lot of bucket lists, but I think my… circumstances made me bitter towards the island, conceptually speaking anyways.” You watched the water with a bit more focus as a few waves crested, but you couldn’t see enough of the shore to see them actually crash. “I know I don’t talk about it much but, I needed a break from my work too. That’s… part of the reason I’m here, why I was waiting for my sister and Yunho to come out. It’s a much less interesting story than yours, so I won’t bore you with the details,” you wanted to reroute the subject before any questions started getting asked, but deep down you knew Johnny wasn’t going to press you for anything you weren’t ready to share. He’d figured that much out about you anyways.

“Anyways, maybe you’re on to something, Seo. Maybe I should take some time to actually relax a bit, seeing as now that I’ve tricked you into finishing the most difficult and time consuming of the summer projects Yunho had planned,” you stuck your tongue out between your teeth jokingly in an effort to mask the vulnerability you’d briefly shown.

Johnny took the hint and changed the subject. “The Killers, Bleachers, Paramore, Fall Out Boy… not saying I don’t like your taste in music, but I’m surprised it’s your picks were so astoundingly pop-punk-rock. Woulda taken you for a—”

“If you finish that sentence by saying ‘country kinda girl’ I’m locking you out tonight and taking the cookie dough with me,” you warned.

He laughed and shook his head. “No, you strike me as too high strung to enjoy country. Like it’s typically too slow for your tastes, or something like that.”

“Oh I’m obnoxious about my taste in media, if you couldn’t already tell. I’ve listened to mostly the same artists for the last ten years. In high school I was that kid that thought making it known that I ‘didn’t listen to the radio pop main stream’ was a personality trait, whatever that meant.”

“Oooh, so edgy and mysterious, did she used to cut her own bangs too?” He giggled into his mason jar, taking another sip.

“Nooo, that was only one time and I swear it was on a dare and not because of a break up!” You jokingly wailed out, throwing your head back in exaggeration. “Although I do regularly trim Wendy’s bangs for her because she can’t be trusted with sharp objects. Knives, needles, scissors, none of it, girl’s a total klutz,” you took another sip and uncorked the bottle again to refill your jar. You held the remainder up for Johnny to see, silently asking if he wanted a top off to finish the last of the second bottle you’d opened.

Johnny was a big guy— tall and muscular, you were sure it would take him a bit more than a bottle or two of shared champagne to get him tipsy. That’s why you didn’t think too much of it as he stared into the reinvigorated fizzing bubbles as he quietly said, “I’d like to meet her someday. Wendy, I mean— you talk about her so fondly, she seems like a great person. Like she’s good for you in your life.”

Why did you feel a little uneasy at the way he spoke about Wendy? He had no idea what she looked like, it was only from the stories you’d been telling that he knew anything about her. And it wasn’t even the real her, it was just her as she existed to you, so what was there to be uneasy about? You were overthinking again, so you had to come up with an answer to fill the silence you’d created— “Yeah well, Wendy’s sick of dick, she’s very bisexual and I’m pretty sure she’s head over heels in love with this Joohyun she started seeing recently, she’s just too much of a chicken shit to tell her how she feels,” you hid behind you glass and drank deeply, not minding as the floating slice of alcohol soaked lemon rested against your nose.

“Sounds familiar,” Johnny said quietly. “I… can relate, I think,” he mumbled out, and you glanced over in time to see him place his now-empty cup on the wood beside him. “Sometimes you just feel the way you do and you don’t really have a reason for why, but you can’t even put it to words to the person it matters to.”

This time when your breath caught in your throat, it wasn’t because of a mounting attack, but in anticipation of what Johnny would do next. The space between you had slowly waned as you’d been drinking, your bodies inching closer to each other without you even realizing it, almost like the way the moon pulled the tide to the shore over and over again. When your eyes traveled from where his hand was pressed into the deck flooring up to meet his hooded gaze, you don’t really know what you were expecting, but Johnny’s parted lips shining slightly (probably from that last drink of wine) was not it.

You knew this feeling. This was when you were supposed to lean in, right? That’s how this usually went. Your hand shifted closer towards his for a moment and then pulled back, and the end joint of Johnny’s fingers flexed as he pressed his fingertips into the deck.

You didn’t lean in. Your heart was hammering in your chest far too loud for you to be able to do so; instead, you look away, his eye and his lips and his face and his everything suddenly too much, and your turned your cheek to him instead.

Instead, he leaned in, and for just a brief moment the crickets stopped chirping, the distant ocean stopped moving, the music stopped playing, and your heart stopped beating as Johnny’s perfectly pouty lips pressed against your cheek, and then your temple, and then your throat. And then his head tilted down and his nose brushed against your skin delicately, leaving a trial of burning in its wake, and time didn’t start turning again until the snort of his laughter broke the silence and he fell into your shoulder in a giggle fit.

It took all of your patience and self control to make your lungs continue to function as you listened to Johnny giggle so much he stopped making sounds until he was spewing out between fits of laughter ‘The bubbles make everything funny, why is everything funny with bubbles?’

‘Why indeed’, you wondered silently, letting the clearly tipsy Johnny rest his head on your shoulder as he continued his giggle fits, stroking the palm of your hand against his back as he’d first done for you under far different circumstances, trying to not think about how much faster your heart was beating while doing so, and how if your accelerated heart rate was from his proximity to you, you didn’t mind.

How long did you stay like that, in such a familiar embrace with Johnny? Long enough, it seemed, for the playlist on his phone to come to an end and for him to start dozing off while resting against you, his light snores the thing that finally made you disturb him so you could go back inside. It was late anyways, nearing midnight you said softly and you tried to wake him gently—

A surprisingly loud boom shook the sky followed by a burst of light and color. Immediately the dog inside woke up and started barking, and Johnny bolted upright, eyes darting around in search of the source of the noise that had disturbed his snoozing.

“Fireworks,” you breathed out, more to yourself than to him. “Guess it’s midnight already.” Johnny didn’t say much, but his eyes twinkled as he watched in earnest as a few more went off before you tugged on his sleeve and insisted that he needed to make his way to bed and sleep. There were sure to be more tomorrow, and he could watch them then.

You didn’t sleep for hours that night. After helping the mildly intoxicated Johnny to his bed, you sat on the floor of your room, knees pulled into your chest and a hand laying flat against your cheek where he’d planted his trail of kisses. “He was just drunk, he’s just a flirty drunk, that didn’t mean anything,” you repeated to yourself over and over again.

But something about the way Johnny’s lips felt against the apples of your cheek and the hollow of your throat when he’d been nuzzling against you stayed with you all night long, sending a shiver down your spine and igniting a flame where your heart lived. You pressed the heels of your palms into your eyes and inhaled deeply, breath shuddering on the exhale.

Against all your hopes and intensions, Johnny Seo had slowly chipped his way through your armor and into your heart.

You had to get him out. Fast.

tbc.

—

author’s note | Me: this first part is gonna be like, I dunno, 5k? 6k? Also me: writes 19,000 words. We call this ✨processing your own trauma through writing as an outlet✨ Originally this was going to be one really long one shot and then I decided to split it up for ratings purposes because I am a thirsty whore for Youngho. The ending is rushed but honestly I was so sick of editing and overthinking this lmaooo. No I have not spent a summer living in Kona working on a coffee farm. Most of my coffee knowledge is second hand from the time my brother in law bought a coffee farm and started a roasting business because my sister dared him to by saying “do it you won’t” (an exact quote I shit you not). There’s more to this story and uh I dunno I’ll maybe post it eventually if people don’t hate this one *shrugs*

#Johnny x Reader #Johnny Seo #Johnny Seo x Reader #Johnny Seo fanfic #NCT fanfic #NCT Fluff #NCT Angst #kinda lmao i dunno leave me alone #panic attack tw #mental health issues tw #anxiety tw #idk if i'm even happy with this or if I'm gonna go back and edit that last 5k i wrote tongiht w/e #shrugs this is fine #johnny: bitter brews #swamp witch writes

[harryswatermelonsegment]

Fire For You

Pairing: Reader/Harry Styles,Harry Styles/Omc x2

Rating : Strong R 100% porn w/o plot tbh

Warnings: *cracks knuckles* orgies,sex parties, anal sex, male oral sex, female oral sex, anal play, sub!dom play, drug use, vaginal penetration, squirting

A/N: Look, never posted fic. And I haven't checked anything 😳 Due to the heavily noted anon prompt fluttering around my dash that read: "My friend went to some weirdo eyes wide shut kind of party in the Hollywood Hills last year and overheard 'yeah you can't use that room, Harry Styles is high as fuck and getting railed by some dudes in there" plus that damn 🍉 video... well, I am at peak feral in quarantine and 3k of smut just popped right out. Title actually the Cannons song cos it's such a sex song innit? I'm doing this at 4.20am after starting this at 11pm my time so..good fucking night. ✌🏻🍉

—--------------------------------------------

You were petrified. 

You'd moved halfway across the world with your best friend after a shitty person broke your heart and your spirits. 

A circumstantial opportunity had arisen to become her PA,after her chance audition for a series had turned into cult viewing overnight.

She was everything you weren't. Confident, effortlessly cool and entirely comfortable in her own skin and sexuality. That's why, as she sauntered away with a tuxedo clad tall stranger, you stood frozen on the spot trying to remember it was okay to watch. 

It had been her idea for you to submit an application after you'd said you needed to take risks and feel good in your skin again. Your best friend had told you you were wasting your youth, after years wasted on the ex you were in this country trying to forget. That you should embrace you were young, hot, single and getting older by the second. So you'd rolled your eyes and submitted your video application. You wouldn't get a reply for such an elite thing. 

And yet, here you now were, in a millionaires mansion watching two men fuck a bunny masked stranger infront of you. She looks up at you through the velveteen eye holes and offers you to join with her finger come hithering you over. Your eyes widen. 

You immediately remember your stiff upper lip and bound up the right hand staircase as fast as your heels will allow. Hoping to find a cool place to catch your breath. 

Maybe you weren't as free spirited as you were in your head. Open to trying things theoretically, but now, as you see a flurry of naked bodies out of your peripheral vision and hear sounds you'd only heard in more private settings, you felt quite overwhelmed. 

You were no virgin but not to say you could count on two hands your conquests past kissing either. 

You came to the one shut door at the end of the long hallway, assuming it was a bathroom. Heels clicking against the pristine marble floor below as you approached. You put your hand to the cold metal handle, if you weren't prepared to see strangers fuck, you certainly weren't prepared for this. 

There were five people in the room. 

Three men on the bed and two women. The first woman sat open thighed across a low backed plush chair. Another on all fours on the floor licking into the others cunt as one guy stuck his fingers into her own folds from behind. He was then, with the rest of his olive skinned built body, sharply thrusting into the man on the bed at such a pace you could hear his balls slap against the sweat glistening flesh. He held his hip nearest to you so tightly, you could see the red marks appear from under his large hands. 

The slender man receiving all this action was being silenced in his pleasure by the guy kneeling up in front of him. He hummed loudly through his nose as his mouth was busy bobbing up and down the guys length. Eyes closed in the orange low light as he was thrust into still, with such force he deep throated the guy he was swallowing down. He suddenly gagged and the man moaned then pulled his head away and nodded to signal if he was okay to continue, he agreed then he got right back down to business. 

It was probably one of the more explicit scenes she'd seen. Making her feel hot and cold all at once. Not because of what was happening, no, it was who it was. 

His face was disguised by a navy blue, high winged, theatrical mask. As were those involved, or some variation at least. 

You heard a voice beside you at the door frame. A deep voice talking to a white bunny beside him

"Nah, that rooms got enough going on, Harry Styles is high as fuck getting railed by two dudes" 

And that's all the confirmation you damn well needed. You'd been in L.A three weeks. Three weeks was all it had taken for you to be stood watching Harry fucking Styles getting Eiffel towered by two guys in the Hollywood Hills whilst you watched, mouth agape in barely any underwear. 

No one had seemed to notice your intrusion, if the screaming of the red head  in the chair reaching her climax was anything to go by. She rode out her high on the blondes face before getting up, lighting a joint and pulling the blonde up by roots. No real concern that she hadn't climaxed from Mr. Powerthrusts fingers yet. Dragging the young white cat back towards the door with a glistening mouth and chin, you were still entranced at the boy on the bed pooling your sheer briefs and the sight before you. 

The redhead looked at you, to where your focus was on, then back to you. Giving one condescending chuckle. Still with the small blonde girls hair in a vice hold she spoke roughly into your ear as she passed. 

"He's soft and ready to go sugar, strike whilst he's still loose" with that, she kisses your cheek and her Loboutins clicked away from you. 

You stood there. Tits up to your chin from the force of the practically sheer black bra you were spilling out of, the suspender belt grasped your hourglass shape perfectly too. There was delicate, black designer underwear framed by the belt and thigh high stockings. You'd felt beyond confident at the beginning of the party. New eyes dragging over you in a way they didn't when you were in your regular get up of jeans and a t shirt. But behind the Japanese type kitsune half mask, you had felt invincible.

Right up until the point people actually started fucking. 

But this, this was different. 

You'd never been into guy on guy action, not even in porn. It didn't ignite any fire inside the pit of your stomach like it should. But seeing someone you'd casually ogled through the media like the other few million in the world had, well the chances of being in this position again were rare. Suddenly, the thrill of being able to possibly turn dream into reality spurred you on. He'd never know it was ever you if you met again right? 

The three of them were still going at it. Powerthruster behind, contorting his face as he placed smack after smack across the pale flesh of Harry's ass. Grabbing a fistful in each hand as he sped up even more to reach his climax, he cried out when he did pulling Harry's hips flush against his own, it was only now, amongst all the activity that you notice Harry's cock for the first time. 

The rumours online highly underestimate it. 

He's long and thick and his drippy head is causing a string of pre cum to trail from its opening onto the white silk sheets below. 

You clamp a hand between your thighs, the first time you feel your inhibitions falter that night. You had to relieve some of the friction your body needs. Watching the man remove himself, and toss the condom in the bin by the door frame you were still fixed to. 

Harry scrambles to the other muscular guy infront of him, kneeling back on his calves, hissing a little as his legs under each cheek spread his already tender hole a bit. He doesn't miss a beat though, the already close to orgasming guy looking down at green doe eyes as he pushes Harry's mouth from him. Harry knows where this is leading and opens his mouth for him spill his seed onto his waiting tongue. 

By this point you'd moved quietly from the door and across the wall so you were in prime position to watch Harry swallow all this man's cum whilst you just stood watching. 

Feeling like a pervert, feeling turned on, feeling fucking everything to be frank. You'd question it later. Right now you needed Harry to touch you. 

One leg kicked up behind you so you could slightly part your thighs and rub your middle finger down your folds beneath your knickers. You began to put on a show. The other hand is inside your bra cupping and squeezing your nipple between your index and forefinger sharply. Panting quietly as you see Harry's eye clock you in his peripheral vision. You're terrified of his reaction for a second before remembering the setting of the evening, but he smirks the best he can do with an open mouth and looks you up and down slowly. His dick twitches in his lap and that's all it takes for you to start rubbing two soaked fingers fast against your clit, your ego inflated that you could be the cause of his heightened arousal. You're going at such a pace on yourself that you almost don't catch the ropes of cum descending into Harry's mouth as he watches you trying to get the release his actions have caused. The guy stills, spent. Harry is still watching you pant faster as you take the hand on your breast away to steady a palm against the wall. He holds the guys cum in his mouth before tearing his eyes away from yours to kneel up and place an opened mouthed kiss onto the guys lips, transferring him back into his own mouth, forcefully. Switching the dominant role back in his favour to show you who was really in control in the room despite how it may have looked. He breaks the kiss, both men chuckle at each other before Harry taps the other guys cheek with his palm playfully. Like his just scored a goal at the Sunday football league, but definitely not like they'd both shared a mouthful of semen. 

Your pace has slowed down slightly but you see him whisper something into the man's ear before he hops off the bed, grabbing only his black briefs and closing the door behind him. But not before saying "have fun" to you with a knowing wink. 

It suddenly feels very intimate. When there were a few more people in the room it felt easier to blend into the festivities, but now you were essentially alone with a stranger who was watching the slow movements of your hands in your underwear. You decided to carry on, to keep up the pretence that this is the sort of thing you do all the time of course. 

It wasn't. 

So when he stands straight up off the bed, taking the few steps towards you, slightly pouting into the air as he keeps his eyes locked on yours and gently grabs your wrist that leads to the hand on your pussy  bringing the two digits that had been furiously rubbing your clit, up to his mouth. He never breaks his gaze as he sucks them fully, with the same technique you'd just seen on that man's dick minutes previous. Closing his eyes and humming approvingly at your sweet taste. 

Your insides are screaming but your present body moans and he drops the hand to grab your waist and pull you tight to his torso. He kisses you hungrily and you taste mostly of yourself and try not to think about the other taste from the strangers cum on your tongue. 

He kisses you like he's getting to know you through this alone, grazing his palms from your waist to your shoulder blades then back down slowly to your ass, gripping it tightly to his body as he hooks a thigh over his hip. His cock is sandwiched between you, droplets of pre cum on both your bellies. The crotch of your underwear is rubbing his length slightly as you rock your hips down onto his. 

His tongue is lapping and swirling languidly against yours, it's unexpected given the setting but, it's fucking glorious. You grab fistfuls of curls at the back of his head between your fingers and once you get to the nape and give a sharp tug on the baby hair there, his breathing hitches. 

"You're quite good at this" he says casually,taking a breath. You pant in response and chuckle slightly. Mostly at the contrast of moods he appears to have. 

"Not s'bad yourself" you smile. 

There's a heartbeat whilst he takes in your accent similar to his own he pulls back, brows furrowed causing his forehead to wrinkle down slightly at the top of the blue mask. This isn't the time to get to know one another though, you get that, and despite your reservations on this place you suddenly don't give a shit. You push your mouth into his neck suckling lightly and finding a sweet spot at his pulse that has him shaking. His nimble pianist fingers undo the flimsy material of your bra as he goes back to the weirdly passionate make out session, you let it fall off your shoulders, shaking it down your arms to the ground. 

He walks you both back to the bed and sits down pulling you to straddle his thighs. You both moan at the reconnection and don't miss a beat rolling your hips over his slowly. Giving him a taste of what's to come. He grunts through his teeth out of frustration, pulling away from you both once more to reach blindly for the fishbowl of condoms, provided by the host, on the nightstand. 

"Fucked anyone else tonight?" he asks matter of factly. 

Your eyes looked shocked, even though they probably shouldn't be. You furiously shake your head. 

"Hm" he chuckles as you lay your hands in your lap submissively, he clearly notices and you see an eyebrow raise over the mask. "that mean you're a good girl?" 

Cottoning on to the game he's starting, and that you're more than willing to take part in, you take one side of your bottom lip between your teeth and nod quickly. 

This is an absolute fantasy. But you're aware you could get interrupted at any moment so you'll take what you can get before being pushed out, and no doubt off, this absolute wet dream of a man. 

He tears the packet open with his fingers, sitting back, a little hunched over to roll the rubber down his length. He hisses at the brief contact after being edged so much the last hour or so. You start to wonder how he's keeping up his stamina before he sits back up, taking your chin between his thumb and forefinger and interrupts. 

"Gonna be a good girl f'me then love?" he leans forward places wet opened mouth kisses at each of your breasts in between his words, looking you straight in the eye. "Gonna slip those pants to the side and get on me then?" 

No sooner had he spoke, you were grabbing his cock in your palm with one hand, and pulling the crotch of your soaked fabric to one side with the other. You hadn't done this in a fair few months and definitely never taken a cock as big as his, but your arousal was so high that you were desperate for the sweet pain of being stretched around him. You pumped him barely as to not roll up the condom, just grazing him and feeling him twitch in your fist as he watched you briefly stick two fingers into your cunt. The wetness being heard as you opened your mouth and gasped at the sensation. You didn't want to waste anymore time checking you were prepared so you scooted forwards on his lap. Brushing his swollen head against your clit, before tapping it a few time as you sunk down onto his length. It burned so good as you got to about halfway before lifting yourself up and sinking down again further. It took three times of doing that to be completely seated and drowning his cock in your juices as your pelvises locked together. You both took a second to pant out curses against each others necks. 

"Jesusfuck. You're so fuckin' tight. Can you move? Fuck! Please move" he strained into your throat. 

You sat back a bit so you were facing one another and with fingers pulling at those nape hairs you reconnected your mouths before rolling your hips experimentally against his. 

"Oh fuuuuck" you shot out, the feeling of him so deep inside you and him pressing against your clit was other worldly. The friction of the underwear you still had on, gathered between your folds and caused the sweetest friction. He grunted once as your jaw lay slack at the contact, before getting impatient and guiding your hips to slam into him harder as he thrust up at the same time. 

Your head was spinning. 

His strong hands pulled you close to him he smeared your lips together as he flipped you so he was on top, manoeuvring you up the bed and slightly diagonal so his feet didn't dangle off the edge. 

It became a power battle then. You knew he was on the edge and holding back. He pulled a leg to hitch around his waist and thrust into you at speed. Enough to leave you sore tomorrow. You smirked into his mouth, pulling both up further to lock behind his neck, knowing the angle would make it so much tighter and so much easier to reach that sweet spot inside you. With your head thrown back at the new angle he began leaving marks around your neck and breasts, trying so hard not to cum before you. 

Then you had a brilliant, foolproof idea of how to win this game. As he was preoccupied leaving a red mark against your clavicle, you sucked your middle finger into your mouth for your planned attack. Before you could do anymore though, he moved two of his digits against your soaked clit at speed, tapping every now and then and making you writhe and grip the sheets with overstimulation. You held off best you can but he was hitting that spot that few had taken much longer to find before. You knew what was coming but it was too late to warn him. 

Your orgasm took over your body from the middle down to your toes and up until your eyes practically rolled back in your head. You heard the lewd, wet sounds his thrusts were still making and wanting to even things up you made a quick recovery enough to part your mouth and make your middle finger drip with saliva as you gripped his ass to guide him into you. You could tell by his speed he was almost there so you went between his cheeks with your slick finger and suddenly buried it inside him to the hilt. He was still stretched from the previous guy so you sink to the knuckle easily. It only took two movements to feel him spill inside you. Long drawn out moans left his lips like a dirty drawl from his throat. You took out your finger and went slack onto the mattress. 

He was spent but he wasn't done. 

As he pulled out of you carefully, gushes of your cum cascaded down onto the expensive sheets. If he didn't know you were a squirter, he did now. He stared watching it fall from your weepy hole blind removing the condom and tossing it into the bin behind. 

"Holy fuck. I.. I've never managed that before. You're a fucking dream….so fucking sexy. Fuck" he looked at you like a feast. Your saturated underwear stretched out beyond repair now. Laying against your thigh and the material dripping. He pulled the stockings from their clips quickly, not taking them off but so he could peel the knickers from your sticky thighs. You noticed he threw them down near what you assumed to be his tux. 

And that was it, he pushed your thighs up and back to your body so your knees were flush against your chest. You felt some of your cum still seeping out if you and he growled watching the last few drops drip down your bum and onto the bed. 

He dove into you like he'd not eaten in weeks. Lapping every bit of fluid from your pussy, clit, thighs and ass. He licked around your puckered hole as he sink two fingers into your cunt at pace. 

"You got one more in there for me hmm?"

He said huskily, keeping one arm across your thighs as he sat up on his haunches to look down on you falling apart. You nodded frantically, feeling the bubbles in your stomach growing again. You felt the pressure build between your thighs. Completely living in this moment with this beautiful man you got to see so desperate for you to cum. He dived back in to trace figure eights across your clit with the tip of his tongue before laying it flat and going up over it again and again. He alternating the two before you were ready to burst. He felt it on his fingers so he stilled them inside you still lapping at clit but using his whole arm to move at speed up and down to keep pushing at that one ridge inside you. When he felt the first wave of your climax hit he quickly put his face infront of your cunt and let the force of your squirt hit him the face. He caught a good amount in his mouth before repeating the signature move of crawling back up to your face and getting your soft, limp body to open up so he could spit your cum back into your mouth. It was tart but sweet probably due to the pina coladas you'd sipped downstairs to get you loosened up a bit. 

"Good girl. Swallow, show me y've swallowed it all up" he panted kneeling at your side. 

You gulp and meekly open your mouth to prove it was all gone and he smirks and gives you a slow, lazy Sunday kind of kiss that sends its shivers down your spine. You stare at each other as he sweeps your sweet drenched hair from the front of your face. You're not sure what suddenly changed in the room but you've created your own bubble. Your own bubble where a millionaire pop star a Jenner has shagged, whispers praises against the shell of your ear in some sort of awe and kisses your neck and face tenderly. What even is life? 

It's stupid but you don't want to go. Well, it's not stupid as this boy is a hurricane in the sheets and why would you not want more!

But you know the deal. This isn't a date. This is an elite fuck party. A. Fuck. Party. 

The realisation dawns on you like a thorn to the side. You can't just lay here in a post orgasmic comatose state. There's people waiting, people he's waiting on too. He sees your eyes widen and watches in confusion as you take a white robe from the hook behind the door, still in your heels you pick up your bra. You smile briefly before closing the door behind you and practically sprinting to your car. 

Not before seeing the guy Harry had been deepthoating earlier, now standing fully clothed with a headset at the door you'd just come out of with a suit and headset on. Like nothing had ever happened. Of course you weren't interrupted. Of course he had security. You rush back down the staircase before you have a panic attack in plain sight. Your thoughts scrambled beyond what you thought was capable. Did that really just happen? With him? Is this who you are now?

It's only when you get to the end of the street after texting a quick "sorry wasn't my scene, call me when you need picking up" to your mate before leaving that you're suddenly aware you're missing your underwear...

#harry styles smut #Solo 1d fic #harry styles fanfiction

[mypimpademia]

Bakugo, Todoroki, and Shinso quarantining w black s/o

Bakugo x Todoroki x black!reader x Shinso

TW: Swearing, refers to sexual activities at the end of each of them

Note: Yes, I did do most of this stuff in quarantine. [And they're aged up as always]

BAKUGO

He honestly feels like he's losing his shit

And he probably would if he did have you with him

You guys are staying up all night and watching Wild n Out, Basic to Bougie, 90 Day Fiance, all that shit

And of course Bad Girls Club

He claims he hates 90 Day Fiance and BGC, but he stays watching that shit, even if he has the remote or youre on his phone

His sleep schedule is fucked up

And by fucked up, I mean its a few hours past the old man's bed time

He goes to bed at 1 am now instead of 9 pm

But still wakes up at 9 am

He took a leave on hero work because of covid

He loves his job almost as much as he loves you (aw💖)

But hes not gonna risk his health for it

"Fuck all that bullshit, as much as I love my job, I'm staying my ass in this house. And you are too. I'll be damned if you catch it, especially if its from me."

Yall only go out once a week

He could minimize it to once every other week, but he tried that and it almost drove him crazy

There aren't any exceptions unless there's an emergency

Makes you wear gloves and use a reusable mask that he washes as soon as yall get home

And you get mostly essentials but he'll ask you if you want candy or anything and he'll buy a big box of brownie mix if you like brownies just to hold you over for a while

Also stocks up on meds like pain killers and allergy pills

No fucks given, he will hit up different stores for toilet paper

"WHY ARE ALL THESE FUCKIN IDIOTS TAKING THE TOILET PAPER?? I KNOW DAMN FUCKIN WELL YALL DONT SHIT THAT MUCH, AND HALF OF YALL PROBABLY DONT EVEN WIPE."

Hes gonna experiment with cooking more now that he has time

Writes down all the recipes that work out

Youre his taste tester so you best believe you bouta be eatin good 😌

If you want your hair done he'll order it online unless yall are already out

Hes gonna make sure that you're eating good and feeling okay because these are tough times 🥺

But hes gonna do it in his own way and act like he's not concerned

"Hey idiot, do you wanna pass out? You haven't been drinking water today, I can tell. I'm getting you a full cup, you better drink it all."

"You haven't eaten anything today, I'm making you dinner."

"Your hair is dry, come here so I can help you put oil on it. I keep telling you to take care of it, ill laught at you if you go bald." He wont

Also has you work out with him do you can stay in shape

Libido?

Yessir

Every other day, anywhere (except in public because hes not about to get sick), at anytime

It goes 50/50

Sometimes its just because hes in the mood

Other times hes feeling really soft and wants to show you that he loves you

All in all its a mixture of Bakugo losing his shit and loving you all in one

TODOROKI

He's pretty chill about it

Just super bored

Starts watching BGC, binges Basic to Bougie and 90 Day Fiance

Oddly enough he really enjoys watching Love & Hip Hop????

He finds it interesting

Especially likes Cardis season because its funny and hella memes came out of it

Don't get me wrong tho I aint a Cardi stan but you gotta admit that she's mad funny im a barb at heart tho

His crackhead really comes out over quarantine

He'll start referencing random ass memes

Hes mostly on leave for hero work unless they really need him

In that case he wears a mask and gloves out

When he gets home the first thing he does is reference BGC

"WHATS UP BAD BITCHES"

And thats how you know he's home

Goes to bed at like 1:30 - 2 am

Only because he doesn't want to be passed out if he's needed for hero duties

Goes out every other week

Mainly for basic essentials, but if you want a little extra he'll buy it

Anything else he'll buy online

Also goes to other stores to buy more toilet paper

Figured out that hes really good at crochets

So if you want your hair done he'll order any crochets you want off Amazon and do them for you

Takes care of you and makes sure your doing well all together

"Did you eat today baby?"

"How much water have you had today?"

"Have you been putting oil on your hair?"

Lotsss of cold soba

But he cooks a few other things so that its not the same thing 24/7

Asks Fuyumi for help when he doesn't know how to cook something super well

If you're the type to go to bed hella late, he'll make sure you sleep a full 8 hours

Even if you wake up after 5 he'll ask you to take a nap with him

Has you work out with him every now and then so you can both stay healthy

Not too much libido

He didn't get in the mood like that even before quarantine

Its not every other day like Bakugo though

More like twice a week

Anymore than that and it'll probably be because you needed it rather than him

If its after a mission it'll be slower just so he can show you how much he loves and appreciates you for being someone he can come home to and just being you

If its more spontaneous he'll be slightly rough but still a pretty slow

But it's a lot of crackhead Todoroki and soft Todoroki

SHINSO

He's doing fine

Just more bored than usual

I feel like Shinso likes cartoons so hes rewatching a bunch of childhood cartoons

Steven Universe, Adventure Time, Regular Show, all that good shit

Lotsss of cartoon quotes

Yall are having a pillow fight and he grabs 2 pillows and claps you?

"Cheatin ass bitch."

"Street rules, man." (Regular Show quote for those who don't know)

Please sing the bacon pancake song (Adventure Time) with him while yall make breakfast

He'll be so happy

If you do something stupid hes gonna do a lemon grab (Adventure time) quote

"UNACCEPTABLE"

On leave for hero work

Really doesn't care about getting himself sick unless he gets super sick or dies

But hes not about to get you sick

He'd genuinely rather get himself sick and die than get you sick

Yall go out twice a week

Once to get essentials and another just to get out

I feel like shinso is a decent cook so he'll cook for you

Write down recipes that you like

Also gets some off the internet

Works better with natural hair than braids and crochets

So he'll do slick backs for you and maybe give you a ponytail or something if you ask but he'd rather do 100% natural just because hes better at it and he likes natural black hair

Can also do half wigs

Takes care of you more than himself

So you have to take care of each other

"Did you drink water today, Doll?"

"I did, did you?"

"Did you eat today?"

"No, and you haven't either. What should we eat for lunch?"

"You havent been putting oil on you hair. Do you want me to help you, kitty?"

Small work out sessions

Maybe like 15 min a day

Full body tho because hes too lazy to split up days

Does to bed at like 4 - 6 am

Mostly just watching YouTube and binging cartoons and eating

Insomnia Cookies? (If you dont know, its a cookie place that delivers till 3 am and theyre so good-)

YESSIRRR

Yall gain back any weight you burned off from exercising earlier that day

Pizza, cookies, chicken nuggets, fries, fried chicken, etc.

Basically just a constant sleep over

Libido to the max

Once or twice a day

Nothing public because germs

Normally rough

But every now and then he'll get soft and just tell you how much he loves you and appreciates you

His aftercare for times like that consists of a bubble bath, lots of hugs, food and cartoons😌

#hitoshi shinso x reader #shinsou headcanons #bnha shinso x reader #bnha shinsou #bnha shinso hitoshi #hitoshi x reader #shinsou hitoshi #shinso fluff #hitoshi fluff #shinso x poc #shinso x poc! reader #hitoshi x poc #hitoshi x poc!reader #bnha #bakugo headcanons #bakugou katsuki #bnha bakugo katsuki #bnha headcanons #bnha hcs #katsuki bakugo headcanons #katsuki bakugo x reader #bakugo fluff #mha #mha x poc #mha x poc!reader #shoto x poc #shoto x reader #todoroki x reader #todoroki shouto

[vtforpedro]

medical update and stuff. trigger warnings in tags I’m extremely frustrated. it’s been 15 months of frustration lol so so so sick of doctors, so sick of living through this. I am tired and getting no relief you might remember, but I was given a ‘possible’ IIH diagnosis in October. we’ve been treating it like it is IIH, which means everything has always been real etc etc and the treatment is weight loss. started my ‘better eating habits’ on nov 1st. then I immediately had the thing with my chemo pill packing on a ton of excess fluid, worsening my head to the point of ER and calling my neurosurgeon, getting taken off my chemo pill, and it wasn’t until mid-december that I actually started to see any fucking weight loss cause of that my pcp told me 5lbs a month. so I’ve been right on track with that despite wishing I could lose 10 a month but that’d be starving myself so lol I’ve lost 15lbs but now something exciting is happening again!! I am retaining fluid and I have NO idea why. which means my head is now as bad as it was last summer when everything was at its worse. constant all day long, pills barely doing anything for me, vision issues, pain issues. it feels like something broke in the base of my skull/neck because I get the scariest sensations there. it’s horrible. no human being should have to live this way and I do it every single day, numerous times a day anyway I had to go to the ER last thursday A G A I N because a doctor sent me. my pupils were noticeably two different sizes. I’d noticed three days beforehand and convinced myself I was imagining it cause it wasn’t a huge difference. finally took a picture and no, def not the same size and my eye looked like it was going inward? anyway, called my pcp, they had me come in that day, he saw it from a foot and a half away, sat back, and said I need you to go to the ER, you need your brain looked at. so again, I’ve been seeing this for three days while my head has been 10/10 extreme due to pressure in it. I get there and have to wait a while but less than two hours later when they finally looked at me? gone. pupils back to normal. doctor talking down to me like I was just an anxious mess and not that another dr sent me cause he saw what I did lol and his notes were in my chart. so, wasted visit and they put a covid patient 15ft from me and intubated them, so get to remember what that sounds like forever and ever (covid patients are supposed to be separated from other ER patients). now I’m doing a 10 day quarantine while I am so severely disabled I cannot bend over to take care of my cats food/litter/etc and it’s why my mom half lives with me but she can’t right now :) getting a covid test in three hours and it’s been eight days with nothing but head issues + fluid retention so hoping it’s negative the fluid retention I had before was a side effect of my chemo pill. I don’t know why this is happening. I should be 17lbs down now and I’ve actually gained weight despite being on the same diet that lost me the 15. I’m back to 13lbs down. this makes me feel like I might be carrying 4lbs of water weight. let me break this down because yesterday a PA told me my symptoms were too ‘ambiguous’ to say if fluid retention is happening or not - fluid retention from the chemo pill was ALL felt in my stomach. it was distended and bloated like I’d eaten at a buffet every single day - head got massively worse, enough to go to the er, doc and I agreed the fluid retention causing me to fluctuate between 15lbs was making the IIH worse - not urinating often despite drinking a normal amount - got on a diuretic, seven days later the weight was gone, head was better, started losing weight this is what I’m experiencing now - fluid retention that is causing my stomach to feel very bloated and look/feel distended - head has gotten massively worse, enough to send me to the ER - should be losing weight, have actually gained weight on a low fat, low calorie diet - the only difference this time is that I am dehydrating myself (yes I know, bad, but it is literally saving my life) because I experimented one day with half my water intake and my head was miles better. still experiencing a terrible head episode once or twice a day but it’s not 10/10 constantly - and the second difference is despite not drinking enough water, I am actually urinating more often and it’s a lot more clear than it should be, the color I expect when I’m hydrating well I consider this ^^^^^ to be a good case of why I think I have fluid retention but being told my symptoms were ‘ambiguous’ and throwing me to my neurosurgeon instead is HNNNNG (esp because diuretics are known to help IIH symptoms FOR THIS EXACT REASON) I have VERY recently had my sugars checked a few times, glucose is normal. VERY recently had an abdominal CT, also normal. it’s not diabetes, it’s not something happening in my abdomen. they hear abdomen vs legs swelling and think it’s GI because doctors never fucking listen and actively put their patients in danger but o h w e l l, I guess anyway as it’s been for 15 months, I am stuck between a rock and a hard place. I go this way and experience agony, I go that way and experience agony I need extra hydration for weight loss, leukemia, being obese. I need less hydration because it worsens IIH to the point of 10/10 I want to die (which makes me heavily and actively suicidal. doctors see I take anti-depressants and assume idk I’m being dramatic but no, it’s really this fucking bad. I would rather die that moment than keep feeling what’s happening in my head) there’s like no middle ground and my body and these doctors are making it impossible to figure this shit out. my mom had to come over at 1:45 AM last night (hasn’t had to rush here since april 2020 cause that’s just how bad it is) because I lost my balance twice and was lucky I had something to catch onto or I would’ve been on the ground (neuro symptoms which could be IIH, could be chiari, could be stroke) and my speech got SUPER bad almost immediately. scared the hell out of me, I have never in my life lost balance that badly before things are going downhill and I would’ve thought losing weight they’d start improving but when has my body ever made this easy lol meeting a new neurologist on monday who works in the same building with my neurosurgeon. I’ve been avoiding them cause every single one of them told me I was just anxious despite specific physical movements causing an episode lmao but hopefully this guy is better and he has access to all of my neurosurgeon’s notes and stuff. I can’t keep dehydrating myself but at the same time I can’t let my head get so bad I make a farewell note for my mom, you know? it’s just been really bad and I don’t know how to get people to listen to me. I have a 99% diagnosis and they still don’t take me as seriously as they should. this has ruined my quality of life and they would have you believe that doctors take that seriously but they do not neurosurgeon wants me to see an ophthalmologist again cause of my vision issues and to check for specific things that relate to IIH. he wants another MRI done in early may cause it’s been a year since my last one by then (actually a month later, my last one was in april, but I’m curious if the neurologist will order one sooner) to check to see if anything has worsened so yeah living in absolute hell again and don’t know if I can just get a simple one week diuretic to get this fluid out of my body. what the FUCK else can it be when I’ve experienced this exact thing twice!! before. it happened to a much, much lesser degree the first time I got on the chemo pill. but the same shit :) hanging on by the thinnest thread guys and 15 months of feeling like I’m going to die almost every single day through that has destroyed my psyche. destroyed me as a person. I don’t know what to do anymore sorry this is all a lot of Bad™ but it’s been a lot of bad for 15 months. if I can keep going, I hope one day to be able to give an update of improvement love you all

#medical #medical trauma #tw suicidal thoughts #personal #long post

[magpiemorality]

alright. i have to get it asked. “roommates who never see each other because they work opposite shifts, but now they’re stuck in quarantine and w h o o p s you’re kind cute but also a lil bit of an asshole how long do we have to be quarantined?? oh nooooooo “ w any couple u want!! even a throuple!!!

It’s been a long time coming but here we go! With misunderstandings, pining, denial and a happy ending :D I considered splitting this into parts but it works best as a whole so here you go! 

Love In The Time Of Quarantine

3900 words on the dot. 

AO3

***

The quarantine was a bit of a bummer. It could’ve been worse, Logan reasoned, because he at least could work from home and keep busy, and he had never worried too much about getting out and being social. He was extraordinarily lucky to be exactly where he would have wanted to be for such an event, well-stocked, well-paid and comfortable.

Unfortunately the same could not be said for his housemates. There were three of them sharing the place, a three-bedroom apartment at the top of a tall block on the outskirts of the city centre. It was nice enough, paid for by three reasonable wages, and had trees and a little park visible from the windows. Logan mostly worked freelance as an IT specialist of all kinds; Patton was apparently a nanny who worked out of home a lot, he knew thanks to the single swift conversation they’d had when the guy had first moved in, caring for his charges at their own home a few blocks away; and Remus was… Logan actually wasn’t sure about him. He was out overnight, coming back early morning to sleep through the day, and didn’t seem to have any specific equipment or work clothing that gave any clues about his job.

In any case, with their contrasting hours and jobs the three of them hadn’t had much of a chance to chat at any point since moving in, and no one had been the first to take the first step in initiating contact. Everyone just cohabited peacefully and that was perfectly fine, suiting them all well enough. But with the quarantine? Things were already changing fast, and the previously calm, quiet and spacious apartment wasn’t going to remain all those things for much longer.

“Oh good morning, Logan!” Patton chirped at 6:00AM on the first Monday morning stuck at home, as Logan dragged himself into the kitchen for his wake up coffee. Logan blinked, staring at what seemed to be most of their food supplies laid out in an enormous breakfast on the kitchen table, everything very neatly arranged and cut into small, bite-sized pieces. “I made breakfast!”

“You, certainly did…” Logan agreed, a little weak with shock. “Aren’t we supposed to be conserving food, however?”

Patton blinked at him, his eyes going wide behind his glasses. He clapped a hand over his mouth with a gasp. Logan was surprised his eyes didn’t fill with glittery tears, honestly, with the drama of the rest of the display. “Oh gosh, you’re right! How could I forget?! Oh I’m so sorry, Logan, I’ll go out and replace everything right away, oh no-”

“N-no,” Logan said slowly. “No, Patton you’re not allowed out. That’s the whole point.”

“Not allowed out at all?!” Patton replied, aghast, incidentally summoning their third roommate with the commotion. As Logan tried to placate the inconsolable nanny, promising him that that was an exaggeration and he absolutely could go out but it really was better not to unless there was no other option; the mysterious Remus appeared in the kitchen doorway, rumpled from sleep and not wearing anything but a shirt and some novelty Thanksgiving turkey underwear. Boxers, thank goodness, but still covering no way near enough for what was almost appearing in public, considering how little they all knew each other.

At least the intrusion stopped Patton’s panic, Logan thought, clearing his throat loudly as Patton stared and turned darker and darker pink in the cheeks. Remus was already piling food into his arms (oh okay, they were quite nice arms actually, maybe Patton had the right idea) and mouth, and he didn’t react to Logan’s attempt to politely indicate to him that his behaviour was a little inappropriate. He just nodded and winked at a brightly blushing Patton, and carried his hoard away back to his room. Patton just quietly and heavily sat down at the kitchen table and started absentmindedly smearing cream cheese onto a bagel, and after a moment Logan joined him, silently reaching for the toast.

Well. That was. Hopefully not an indication of how things were going to be from now on. Hopefully. Please?

Unfortunately (or fortunately from some angles) Remus continued to not wear many clothes. It was a terrible problem that both Patton and Logan had strangely and somewhat awkwardly bonded over. The first time the nanny had muttered something profane under his breath as their partial-nudist housemate wandered away back to his room after another appearance in search of food, Logan had stared at him with his mouth hanging open, trying to process those words coming from that mouth. Patton had just sighed and rolled his eyes, folding his arms defensively. “Just because I work with children doesn’t mean I can’t have a good swear now and then, Logan. I mean, you’ve seen that man’s ass!”

Logan had, indeed, seen that man’s ass. It just so happened to be one of those more fortunate angles, and Remus still apparently had something against wearing pants.

Bonding over Remus’s (admittedly very nice) body notwithstanding; the two of them actually got along pretty well. Perhaps it was being used to not having much of a social life that meant they were very comfortable and happy to just hang out quietly together, with Patton sat down at the coffee table embroidering or working on some fan art he apparently had quite the talent for, and Logan reading on one of the couches nearby. He would’ve gone so far as to work out in the living area because Patton was fantastic company and great for his motivation, but the effort involved in moving his entire workstation and cables was beyond reason, and the constant risk of being utterly derailed in whatever he was doing by Remus sashaying past sort of outweighed the benefits of having Patton there. Logan still had to actually get his work done in order to earn a living, after all.

And Remus sashayed a lot. At first it had just been once in the morning and evening as he ended and started his day respectively, probably as a result of the long-term night shift pattern, Logan reckoned. But then as Remus continued to be unable to go back into work he evidently started moving his daily pattern around somewhat. Logan would hear him moving around longer after breakfast, and his music or the sound of whatever he was watching on his laptop (Logan didn’t particularly want to listen too closely but sometimes it was hard not to, having the room that shared a wall), would stop earlier in the night.

He started to strut around more and more often while they were up and out in the living areas, grabbing snacks or wandering around for a stretch, coming to ask Patton what he was doing and leaning far closer than was necessary as Patton blushed his way through an explanation, stammering whenever Remus complimented his work effusively. He was quite the flirt, was Remus, Logan could tell. The guy full on preened at the way Patton’s eyes followed him, and he seemed to take great delight in making the nanny sigh by stretching in just the right way. More than once Patton had pricked his finger with his needle by letting his gaze linger a second too long, or cursed under his breath as he messed up a line on his tablet.

Logan was unaffected of course. Except for the times he had ended up rereading the same page of his book over and over again until Remus was long gone and his brain came back into focus. But those didn’t count! They didn’t count, Patton, stop laughing.

But there was another issue with Remus; he was increasingly messy the more time he spent at home. Patton was pretty clean, used to tidying up after a pair of rambunctious under-tens, and Logan barely made any mess in the first place, eating what Patton cooked and helping clean the dishes afterwards, sticking to his carefully planned laundry routine and rarely deviating. But Remus was just made of mess. He dropped clothing around the bathroom; he left dishes and mugs around; he seemed to order stuff a lot despite the whole quarantine situation (Logan frequently tutted when yet another poor delivery person showed up) and there were piles of cardboard boxes building up in the entrance to their apartment.

When Remus peeled his sock off and scratched at his foot, one afternoon, Logan narrowed his eyes. When Remus got up, leaving it on the arm of the couch when he left to go to his bedroom, Logan finally decided he’d had enough.

“Remus!” He snapped, striding to his room and standing in the doorway before the door could close. Remus turned around with an innocent blink, opening his mouth to say something with a smirk, but Logan got there first. “Do you mind. We’re all having to live in this apartment together and keeping it tidy is important to both me and Patton!”

Remus tilted his head, his eyebrows rising swiftly at the lecture and his smirk dropping in surprise. Patton appeared behind Logan in the hallway, hovering uncertainly. “I reckon Patton can speak for himself, actually,” Remus muttered, folding his arms over his chest with what appeared to Logan to be an actual pout. On a grown man, who was clearly in the wrong. Honestly.

“Oh well, yes. I would like it if you could perhaps… just keep your clothes to your room?” Patton asked weakly. “After all, a tidy house is a tidy mind! We’ll feel a lot better in a clean environment. And… it is a little icky.”

“Fine,” Remus sighed. “I’ll keep it tidy, no more ‘icky’.” Logan nodded in satisfaction and turned to leave but Remus, damn him, had to have the last word, voice dripping with innocent earnestness. “You should’ve said something before if it meant so much to you, guys!”

Patton made a quick excuse Logan away before he could explode, and they both missed the soft sigh behind the door to Remus’s room as it closed.

To be fair to Remus, he was very tidy after that. Remarkably so, in fact, just like he had been before the quarantine had taken effect. Not so much in his room, from the glimpses Logan got inside, but certainly in the rest of the apartment. Annoyingly he’d also apparently taken the confrontation as a good enough first interaction to invite himself into hang out time, somehow not sensing the animosity that radiated from Logan anytime they were in the same room.

Sure, it was his apartment too, and he was equally stuck in it, and when he helped out with the cooking it often resulted in exciting and fun recipes, and he had great taste in movies, and he also brought his something or other console out to hook up to the TV so they could play multiplayer games (after another delivery of extra controllers, of course), but. But! Logan was still never not on edge around him. Remus just… rubbed him the wrong way.

Oh god, wrong word choice there.

Patton of course got on famously with their troublemaker within the space of a few days, and started up a fierce and ongoing online Monopoly game that it seemed no one could win. Perhaps it was his experience with children, Logan thought snidely to himself on more than one occasion. He would hear them laughing together and watch Remus’s hands creeping lower and lower on Patton’s back day by day as they playfully pushed and sat near to each other, until Logan decided to just start spending more time on his work to avoid the inevitable heart attack from how high his blood pressure must be getting. And anyway he’d really let work go, what with spending so much time with Patton instead of on his projects. Just because there was a world crisis going on didn’t mean he didn’t have rent to pay. If only!

But of course Patton didn’t get the memo that this was the best course of action, and quickly grew concerned for Logan’s well-being. He instated a nightly dinner for the three of them, that he deviously used his best pleading expression to get Logan to attend, where Remus was just insufferably flirty and Logan ended up increasingly annoyed at being constantly teased. It just wasn’t very nice of Remus to taunt him with false flattery and it didn’t help that Patton had apparently moved from being equally as flustered as Logan by their hot housemate to being sort of fondly amused, in a way that spoke of… a new intimacy.

It only added to Logan’s dislike of his housemate when he walked past Remus’s bedroom to see them standing close together in the centre of the room, heads tilted so he couldn’t see their faces. He could see other things though, like the way Patton’s hands gripped at Remus’s waist, and Remus’s hand in Patton’s hair.

So that just added the cherry on top of the whole perfect box of proof of why Remus sucked, basically. He had not only stolen Logan’s precious peaceful friendship with Patton, and lured away all of Patton’s soft and warming smiles, but apparently didn’t even value them enough to not openly flirt with Logan whenever they were in the same room. Logan wished desperately that he didn’t still feel that irritating modicum of attraction to the man, because he really was stellar at flirting and could be incredibly charming, but he resigned himself to burying those feelings along with the hurt at how Patton had chosen Remus over him. Burying them deep, and trying to go back to how things were, before the quarantine.

And if anyone could play polite and distant, it was Logan, poster boy for IT nerds everywhere. Antisocial was basically his speciality.

He hadn’t bet on Patton.

Patton was the type of person who really took 'mom friend’ to a whole new level, and only partly because his actual literal paid job was to essentially be a stand in parent. When Logan started to pull away again he yanked back, pouting and wheedling and playing really dirty until Logan started coming back out into the living room for reading breaks again, just to stop Patton from bringing him cups of water and snacks every half an hour 'to make sure he was feeling okay’. They both knew well enough that the ulterior motive was to stop Logan from isolating himself and playing the wounded martyr, and damn it if it didn’t work. Patton was a master of this game.

“Logan, what do you think of this flower?” Patton would ask if Logan ended up in the kitchen for coffee, drawing him into a conversation about his latest embroidery project.

“Logan! Could you pop the kettle on?” Patton would smile sweetly if Logan got up from the couch, intending to go back to his room at last, easily conning him into bringing two mugs back to the couch and then distracting him again until an hour had gone by and Logan was still sat with them.

“Oh there you are Logan, settle this for me, do these stars look realistic?” Patton would bat his eyelashes if Logan finished a bathroom break, and Logan would just sigh and give in, and Remus would stifle a snicker from his own spot on the couch. Remus had also evidently been coached by Patton because he was noticeably quieter and more reserved whenever Logan had finally tentatively settled in the living room with them. Which was a real improvement, if you asked Logan.

But he still wasn’t friends with Remus, and he refused to let that last barrier be breached, even when Remus sneakily tried to join his conversations or get him to pass something at dinner, or tease him about his hair, his clothes, his work… Remus was the worst and Logan could not be convinced otherwise. His plan of hiding away from his housemates had failed because he liked Patton enough to give in just to make him happy, not because Remus was reasonably good company when he was just lounging on the couch and playing some video game with the sound considerately turned down, chipping in here and there and laughing softly at something either Logan or Patton said but not getting in the way. Even so! Logan still heard the sound of footsteps sneaking from Remus’s room to Patton’s late at night, and Remus still insisted on giving him winks and stupid seductive looks whenever he could, telling him he 'liked his company’ and he was 'actually pretty funny who knew’ and 'there’s no one to dress up for here Logan, why don’t you lose the tie?’

“I just don’t like him!” Logan hissed to his reflection one day in the bathroom. “He’s clearly dating Patton, not that either of them have said a word, and he keeps just flirting all over the place! Patton deserves better! And he’s a jerk. I like my tie! I like to maintain professional standards even if he’s decided clothes are the first to go in this time of chaos. Ugh!” He glared, yanking the tie in question off angrily and glaring at it. Maybe he’d thought he looked nice dressed up sharply with his tie and hair neatly combed each day, maybe he’d been thinking of the time Patton had complimented the little stars on the navy fabric. Maybe it was none of Remus’s business how he dressed!

“Hey, you done?” The very man in question’s voice came from the other side of the bathroom door. “I need to pee!”

Logan raised an eyebrow at his reflection, considering it. He was almost petty enough to refuse, but as always was unable not to give in, settling for yanking the door open slightly too hard. Remus, who had apparently been leaning on it for some stupid reason, stumbled inwards a bit, catching his balance on Logan’s hips. They blinked at each other, and Logan knew the moment Remus decided to say something cheeky because his eyes glinted and his mouth turned up at the corners. But not today, Satan!

“You say a word and I will tell Patton what a disrespectful boyfriend you are! I mean it!” Logan hissed, shoving Remus’s hands off with a glare and waggin a finger in his face.

“I- what the f-”

“Don’t you dare flirt with me!”

“Did you say boyfriend?!” Remus said, voice strangled, holding his hands up in the air out of the way.

“Boyfriend?” Patton said from behind them in the hall. “What boyfriend?”

Logan spluttered. “Yours! He’s trying to, to seduce me!”

All of their voices rose at once, Logan protesting his disappointment in Remus’s inability to be attentive to Patton; Patton trying to weakly protest the label and situation; and Remus protesting his accused infidelity. Louder and louder they got, stood awkwardly half in, half out of the bathroom, until Remus growled and grabbed Logan by the shoulders.

“You’re a fucking idiot, Logan!” He snapped. “So I’m going to kiss you now, unless you tell me not to.”

What.

Logan’s mouth opened and closed, cheeks on fire, like flames on the side of his face. He didn’t manage say a word, and Remus nodded decisively to himself, hauling the flustered Logan in for a strangely sweet kiss considering the tension in the air.

It didn’t last long, but Logan felt like he’d awoken into a different universe when Remus pulled back again, looking at him carefully. “Well?” He asked. Logan wondered why Remus would sound like he couldn’t breathe when clearly he’d stolen all of Logan’s air. “Does that compute, I, Lo-bot?”

Logan frowned a little at the nickname, but Remus’s expression was slightly nervous and mostly hopeful, not cruel or mean looking. And Patton, when Logan glanced over Remus’s shoulder, was holding his hands clasped in front of his mouth, eyes huge and round, bouncing a little with what looked like excited anticipation. “Um. That- Excuse me, I seem to have misunderstood a few things.”

“Yeah no kidding,” Remus muttered. “Alright, ask your questions science dude.”

“You aren’t with Patton?”

“Ah well, sort of?” Patton stepped a little closer, lowering his hands to smile at them, hooking his chin over Remus’s shoulder. “It’s not like, exclusive, that’s not really the point. And not your thing, right?” He murmured to Remus, who shook his head, eyes still on Logan.

Okay, add that to the 'known facts’ memory banks to add to the equation then. “So you aren’t cheating on Patton by flirting with me?”

“No!” Patton and Remus replied at the same time, sounding equally offended.

“Okay! Sorry. But you were actually flirting with me?” Logan checked.

The question received a snort and an eye roll. “I mean, yeah. I thought you were just playing hard to get, you kept ogling me so I figured you were definitely interested. But then you got all huffy, so I tried to cool it a bit and Patton said you might be jealous of us a little bit, but then you kept giving me all these like, looks, so I went back to like, trying to be nice and everything but you still just…” Remus shrugged helplessly.

Right, yes. The glances, the blushing… In his own defence he had mostly written it all off as just anger, but it was fair enough that Remus had interpreted the attention a little differently based on the whole fact that he was unaware Logan thought he was cheating.“And… you would like to develop some form of… alternative relationship with myself as well?”

“Yeah!” Patton interrupted, grinning his sweet, bright grin. He slipped a hand past Remus’s waist to take Logan’s hand and squeeze it. “All three of us, doesn’t that sound cool?! I mean, uh, if you want me too, that’s okay if not, I can just share this gu-”

“Oh god yes,” Logan nearly burst with the words. “I mean, yes! I would- yes. Hm. That would be very pleasing. And intriguing. I wonder how-”

Remus tugged him back in close, cupping his face right there in the bathroom doorway with a grin that turned wry. “Oh Logan. I can show you pleasing. But first I gotta pee guys, genuinely!”

They let Remus escape and close the door, and Patton gently led Logan out to the living room, sitting close beside him and turning to face him.

He cleared his throat softly, and Logan thought the nanny looked really beautiful with his cheeks all softly pink, giving him one of those treasured smiles that wiped all thoughts of logistics and practicalities and regrets away. “So. Not a bad way to pass the quarantine then, you reckon?” Patton murmured, brushing some of Logan’s hair back behind his ear and resettling his glasses neatly on his nose for him, before leaning in to steal a kiss of his own.

No, Logan thought a few nights later; sandwiched between his two housemates on the floor, lounging on the cushions they’d laid out for a movie night and warm from their body heat, the way Remus stroked his hair and made constant amusing comments on the movie, and how Patton was cuddling his arm and playing with his fingers, occasionally burying his face into Logan’s shoulder to smother his giggles.

Not a bad way at all.

–

The End

#writepie #intrulogical #logicality #intruality #moduke #intrulogicality #ts remus #ts patton #ts logan #ts writing #ts sanders sides #ts sanders sides aus #ts sanders sides fic #sanders sides #pining #coronavirus #quarantine

[stevelovbot]

modern gang during quarantine

darry

cooks sooo much more than usual

he’ll literally take out cookbooks from like 3 generations back

chloe ting workouts if he’s bored

grocery shopping a lot because he’s the only one w/o a retarded ass who can do it responsibly

dally

low-key the same

sneaks out a lot

darry knows but does not have any shits left to give bc this boy is so stubborn

hates cops a lil bit extra

drags poor johnny to protests w him

johnny

watches a lot of tv

and listens to music a lot

sometimes he’ll try to cook as well

comes to protests bc dal drags him and he shows up literally protected as hell with like 478657832 layers

scared as hell of getting rona

sodapop

tbh? doesn’t really do much

just invites steve over and they get on everyone’s nerves

nothing new there

sometimes when he’s really lonely he’ll try on clothes he doesn’t wear much and low-key pose in front of his mirror

steve

he tries to be helpful

because he knows darry isn’t just gonna keep the cakes coming

so he tries to learn how to bake

almost burns down the whole kitchen oops

apart from that he just fucks around w steve

they’re experts in that field, yk?

ponyboy

also scared as hell of getting rona

refuses to go outside

hoards hugeee stacks of books and dvds

reads every single book in existence omg

shut in his room most of the time bc “everyone else is a distraction to his peaceful environment”

two-bit

very very ecstatic because he can actually just watch mickey the whole day

sneaks out sometimes to get beer and cigs

if mickey isn’t on he’ll watch reruns of old tv shows

eats like a goddamn pig but it’s fine because don’t we all

#the outsiders #the outsiders hcs #the outsiders headcanons #corona #dallas winston #dally winston #dallas winston hcs #dally winston hcs #johnny cade #johnny cade hcs #steve randle #steve randle hcs #ponyboy curtis #pony curtis #ponyboy curtis hcs #pony curtis hcs #darry curtis #darrel curtis #darry curtis hcs #darrel curtis hcs #sodapop curtis #soda curtis #sodapop curtis hcs #soda curtis hcs #two-bit mathews #two-bit #keith mathews #two-bit headcanons #rona sucks can it go away