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macfrog · 8 days

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sweet child o' mine | pt. iv

to @mrsmando - without whom this insane story would never have happened in the first place. i love you i love you i love you thank you all so much for coming on this journey with me - it has been a blast. i hope you like where we turn out! love you guys always n forever x

pairing: neighbor!joel x fem!reader

summary: you're a mom. it's time to get your shit together.

warnings: bon jovi mention straight out the gate, labor/delivery [i have never given birth. those of you who have are nothing short of remarkable. please forgive if some of this is a little inaccurate or vague], use of pain medication during birth, description of pain and post-birth recovery, super emotional reader, unprotected piv, oral, alcohol consumption. DISCLAIMER: this series covers some issues which i know may be sensitive and possibly triggering to some. warnings will always be as thorough as possible, but if there’s ever anything you feel i’ve missed, please let me know. feel free to drop by my inbox anytime.

word count: 12k

pt. i / series masterlist | main masterlist | playlist | follow @macfroglets w notifs on to be the first to hear when i post 🩵

It’s September twenty-third.

Well, by now, it’s probably the twenty-fourth. You’ve been a little distracted, rolling between the sheets with your next-door neighbor for the last couple hours.

The wedding’s still going strong downstairs. The same Bon Jovi song has played three times over. Tommy has called Joel to ask where he is so much that Joel’s phone is now switched off and shoved to the bottom of his bag.

You’re slouched on the toilet in a sliver of moonlight. A fistful of tissue, panties loose around your ankles. Rolling your forehead side to side along the cool tile, heartbeat hammering between your temples.

Joel Miller – Joel fucking Miller – is in your bed. Naked, sweating, cock probably still half-hard.

This morning, the very idea of the man was an eyeroll. Stood in your mirror, promising yourself that this time tomorrow, it’ll all be over with.

This time in a month, it’ll be a foggy memory.

This time in a year, it –

His voice is muffled through the bathroom door. “Did you fall in, or somethin’?”

You snort. The milky moon blurs across your vision when you pull yourself upright. You swipe between your legs and stand, flushing the toilet.

“I needed a fucking breather,” you tease, tiptoeing back across the room.

Joel’s stretched out; a worked arm draped along the headboard. Sun-kissed to the middle of his bicep, paler across his shoulder. One leg bare on the mattress, the other under the sheets. They only just cover his modesty – dark hair trailing beneath light silk just in time.

He’s so big. It’s like you never really noticed until now. He takes up half the bed, laying like this. And sure, you’re halfway to fucked, but – has he always been so handsome?

You flop down beside him with a sigh, curling up in the burrow of sheets at his side. Your eyes trail up his body – the sheen of sweat up his side, the dark, damp hair under his arm. All the parts of him you’ve never seen before, will never see again.

You gulp. Quit fucking staring.

He doesn’t notice, anyway. He’s rubbing circles into his temples, grumbling. “How many goddamn times are they gonna play It’s My Life?”

“…for Tommy and Gina…” you nudge him, “…who never backed down…”

Joel chuckles, pulling his hand down his beard. “Twenty bucks says he’s changing that to Maria.”

“Oh, for sure. I ain’t going back down to listen to it, though.”

He hums in agreement, reaching over for his beer. His Adam’s apple bobs as he drinks.

“You owe me, by the way. This is my room, remember? My fucking minibar.”

He pauses, the bottle against his bottom lip. His eyes linger south of your chin before he answers, “I’m paying for the damn room.”

“Then I want a drink from yours. Make it even.”

He clicks his teeth and drinks again. “It’s one beer. Call it an early birthday gift.”

You frown. “When the hell’s your birthday?”

“Tuesday.”

“Bullshit.”

“Serious. The twenty-sixth.”

You push yourself up onto your elbows; chest bare and on display. And it’s a strange feeling, how little you care. Twelve hours ago, you didn’t know how close to sit next to him at the ceremony. How many times you could accidentally bump knees or brush elbows and it not be weird.

But in the last two hours, he’s made you come more times than you can count. More times than anyone you’ve ever been with before – that’s for sure. And you’ve repaid the favor: the proof is still dribbling out of you. Still dripping between your legs, all pearlescent and warm. You’re soaked, swollen, still sore from the size of him.

It’s a fucking strange feeling, that you don’t mind at all.

“How old are you turning?” you ask.

Joel swallows. He settles the beer on his sternum, thumbing the corner of the label. Sucks in a deep breath and says, “Forty-eight.”

“Jesus,” you mutter, eyes wide.

He turns slowly, glaring at you. “Hilarious,” he drawls, bumping the bottle against your tummy.

You hiss at the sudden chill. Wiping cold droplets from your skin, you swipe it from his grasp.

Joel pushes himself from the bed with a quiet groan and pads across the room. His cock sways with each step, an arrowhead of thick hair at its base.

He doesn’t seem to mind, either.

You tip your chin back, taking a hefty swig.

The pulsing bass is heavier, guitar squeal sharper, when he cracks open the window. Cool air sweeps past the scent of sex and settles softly on your skin.

The mattress dips again as Joel settles back into bed. He pulls the sheet over himself, silk falling over the stubborn shape against his thigh.

“Well,” you pass him the bottle, “happy birthday, old man. Here’s to forty-eight.”

“Here’s to forty-eight,” Joel echoes, staring off into space, “and whatever the hell it has in store.”

1:29. 1:29. 1:30.

It’s blurring across your vision. The pain and the panic and the blinking of your fucking alarm clock.

Your stomach is still tensed in the aftermath of the contraction; an ache like the slow sway of the ocean, a wave rolling off into the distance. You’re hunched over the edge of the bed – knee bouncing, palms kneading your round belly.

“We’re okay,” you whisper, blowing into the still night. “We’re fine. Maybe it isn’t labor, right? Maybe it’s just those…Braxton…shit…Hicks.”

The cicadas laugh as your uterus swings again.

Another kick of pain; a bolt that winds you, piercing from your stomach down between your legs. So slow it feels fucking personal.

Your back curls, nails digging into the mattress. You grit your teeth until it passes, then push yourself to your feet, reaching for your phone.

You think of Joel: the flecks of gold in his eyes, the rough surface of his palms. The fresh, woodsy scent woven into every thread on his shirt, seeping from every pore on his skin.

The way he’d pull you under his arm and walk you to his truck. Play more Eagles or whatever shit he has to take your mind off the pain – tell you he knows, he knows as you whimper in agony. The way he’d hold your thigh the entire ride, loosening it only to weave his fingers through yours.

He’s in Houston, though. He’s something like three hours away. There’s nothing he could do, even if you did call – even if he did pick up. Even if he got in his truck right this second.

Shit. Shit fuck shit. How are you in labor right now, on this fucking night? All your teasing, all your taunting the universe. You really think that’s gonna happen? You think your kid’s that much of an asshole?

Yeah. They’re half you.

You’re on your own. It’s nothing new; you’ve been on your own for most of your life. You drove yourself to college, worked your ass off, and sold your graduation guest tickets to your roommate. You found a job by yourself, moved back to Austin and turned it into home by yourself.

You haven’t needed anyone or anything, since you were eighteen.

But – oh, Jesus, fuck it. This was a two-man job from the start. Some things you figure you can let slide – and having a kid seems like a pretty decent excuse.

Fuck it.

You move, hunched and hobbling, to the bathroom door. Slumped against the wooden frame, you cup a hand between your legs.

Sure enough, your underwear is soaked. The fluid trickles down the seam of your thigh, warm and thin. It glistens in the moonlight when you lift your fingers.

“Shit,” you whisper. “Goddamn it, Duck.”

Body tingling and almost numb with pain, you scroll through your contacts to J. You stumble into the bathroom, wet fingers slipping around the sink. A weight begins to pull low between your hips.

Two rings and the tone cuts, his voice instantly spilling a cool comfort down your spine.

There’s no hello, no double checking that you haven’t accidentally dialed him in your sleep. Only that trademark drawl, that flat tone you’d swear sounded bored, if it weren’t for the haste with which Joel asks, “You okay?” the second he answers.

As if he were awake anyway, just waiting for your call.

“Yeah,” you choke, rubbing the nape of your neck. “I just called at one in the morning to…to say hi.”

He sighs, the crackle of breath echoed by the tinkle of wind chimes. The creak of wood as he settles into a chair on Vanessa’s parents’ porch. “Alright, smartass. What is it?”

“I’m…I’m in labor.”

“Mhm. That sure is funny, baby. Good one.”

You groan. “No, Joel, I swear – I swear, I just went into labor.”

He pauses. The chimes titter in the background. “You’re…You ain’t kidding me?”

The sharp peak of pain swipes the air clean from your lungs. The phone hits the sink with a clatter, drowning out your cry.

This kid is beating the ever-loving shit out of you. You’d be embarrassed if you had the energy to think about it.

“Baby?” Joel yells, loud enough that the sound loops around the bowl. His voice lifts to an octave you didn’t know it could reach. “Talk to me. Please, talk to me.”

Your fingers clamp around the phone. “I’m f-fine. It’s fine. I just gotta…gotta change my fuckin’ sheets, Joel, my waters broke while I was sleeping –”

“Oh, Christ,” he growls. The door squeals as he storms back into Vanessa’s family home. “The sh…Change the goddamn sheets? You gotta get to a hospital, darlin’!”

You laugh, head tipping back. “It’s fine,” you tell him. “Feels like the kid’s trying to kill me, but I can – shit, I can take ‘em.”

There’s the jangle of keys, the ruffle of a shirt being thrown over his head. “Yeah?” Joel says.“You can take childbirth, all on your own? Do me a favor and call a damn ambulance, baby.”

“An ambulance,” you repeat, laughing again.

“Yes, an ambulance. Call 9-1-1 right now. You want me to call ‘em? Let me go grab the landline –”

“Joel, do not call an ambulance –”

And if you thought you’d heard him at breaking point before – plucking your underwear from his lawn, dragging you around Home Depot, paling in your room with a pregnancy test in his hands – you know you have, now.

“You gotta get to a goddamn hospital now, baby!”

His voice trembles at its end, quivers like the pluck of a guitar string. A high-pitched echo, a nervous vibration.

Joel’s panicking.

It’s the second thing in less than five minutes that you never knew he could do.

“I can’t afford a f-fucking ambulance, Joel,” you yelp, sitting back on the edge of the bathtub.

“I will pay for it,” he pleads, “I’ll pay. Just – you gotta call them. You gotta…” He sighs again, breath wavering. “You’re in labor, and you’re alone. If anything happened to you, I –”

A hushed voice interrupts him. Follows him through the house, knotting her nightgown around her waist and twisting her dark tresses into a ponytail.

“She’s in labor,” Joel tells her. “I can’t stay. I’m going back for her.”

The porch door slams shut before Vanessa can reply, and Joel’s back outside again. Gravel crunching beneath his boots, crickets screaming in the background. “Still with me?” he asks.

“Still here,” you breathe, tracing your nails along your leg. “Duckie says hi, I guess.”

He hums. “Hi, Duckie. You little shit.”

You rock back and forth, eyes closed. Breathing between contractions, your head low between your shoulders. “How long will you be?”

The truck door creaks open. “I’m leaving right now. I’ll be…Fuck, I’ll be a couple hours, at least. I’m on my way, alright?”

Tears drip onto your bare thighs, the salt spilling into your mouth. “Joel,” you shake your head, “I don’t think I can do this.”

“Yes, you can,” he says. “Are you kidding? Got us this far ‘n now you want to bail? That ain’t you, baby. Come on, now.”

“I wanna bail,” you insist. You slump to the floor, head lolling over the rim of the bathtub. Weeping like a little kid. “I’m scared, Joel. I’m so scared.”

“I know you are. Lord knows I’m scared, too – scared as hell. But –” the engine roars to life, “– I can’t wait to finally meet this kid. Our kid. Can’t wait to hold ‘em. Can’t wait to see you become a mom, and me become a dad.”

“Mom and Dad,” you whisper, sniffling.

“Mom and Dad, right? Yeah. You can do this. I know you can.”

The bathroom blurs behind your tears. You close your eyes, replacing the pale night with warmer dawn. Replacing it with images of tiny hands and feet; missing front teeth and a love-worn teddy tucked safely into bed.

Joel’s voice is softer, kinder. Calmer, now that he’s closing the hundred and fifty miles between the two of you.

“Just – don’t let the kid give you any shit, alright?”

The fear boils into determination. Something more irritating than it is terrifying. You inhale, blowing a heavy, shuddered breath to the ceiling. “Whatever, Miller.”

“Attagirl,” he says. “That’s the spirit. Now, call a damn ambulance.”

With a scoff, you push yourself to your feet, waddling towards the foot of your bed. You sway back and forth, holding your bump and listening to the hum of Joel’s truck.

And then you hear it.

Three sharp raps, from downstairs.

You wander to the hallway, squinting in the dark. “Joel?”

“Hm?”

“Are you…?”

The sound grows louder the nearer you draw. Quick knuckles against your front door.

“Am I what, darlin’?”

You lower yourself down the stairs, fist tight around the rail.

It’s August again. Sun’s encore blazing through your kitchen windows, bleeding golden through your living room. Everything shining, everything new and untouched.

Knock knock knock.

Light satin, duck egg blue; string lights and a diamond-encrusted necklace. The bones of your wardrobe propped against your porch. A rattling toolbox hanging from his fist, a positive pregnancy test in yours.

The knocking halts when you flick the porch light on. She calls your name once, old voice quivering.

Your phone is still glued to your ear as you pull the door open. “Al…?”

She squints at you and lifts a hand to shield from the light. She’s still in her pajamas – green dressing gown loose and lifting in the breeze.

Her eyes drop to the tee draped over your bump, the silver stream of fluid down the inside of your thigh. As she opens her mouth to speak, your hand slams into the doorpost.

“Oh, fuck,” you groan, and Alice Brown steps straight over the threshold.

“Are you in labor? Oh, sweetie. Sit down, sit.”

She backs you towards the stairs. One bony, trembling hand around yours – squeezing as tight as you are. She rubs up and down your spine, shushing until the pain subsides.

You blink up at her glowing figure, haloed by the porch light outside. “How did you…?”

She hushes you with a finger in the air. “I’m up most nights. I heard you from the window. Have you called 9-1-1?”

You shake your head, beginning to cry again.

Alice just nods, dismissing your bullshit. “Where’s your overnight bag, sweetheart?”

You toss a thumb over your shoulder. “It’s up in the nursery. I can go grab it –”

She holds you still with a hand on your shoulder. “Stay.” Another curt nod, then, “Get your shoes, get yourself over to my car. Do you need pants? You need pants. My car, right now.”

“Alice, you really don’t have to –”

“Get in the car,” she insists, climbing past you. “I’m right behind you!”

You watch her figure dissolve into the dim upstairs, and lift the phone back to your ear. “Did you…hear all that?”

“Alice Brown,” Joel replies, and you can hear the smirk in his voice. “What’d I tell ya? That woman doesn’t miss a goddamn thing in this neighborhood.”

“Three centimeters,” the obstetrician says, covering your legs with the sheet. “Still a little ways to go.”

The suite is hushed and still. Walls an unoffending shade of oatmeal; decorated only with oak paneling and a framed painting of some lilies.

A nurse tilts the shades, averting the twinkling city lights in the distance. She turns and smiles – the same fucking smile everyone’s been giving you since you set foot in the place. Head tilted, brows arched.

Sympathy that you want to chew up and spit back out at their feet.

You force yourself to smile in return, and she floats back out to the bustling reception.

“Will he make it?” Alice asks. She’s still in her pajamas; the floral print goes well with the interior of the room. “The father, I mean. Joel.”

The obstetrician peels the gloves from her hands. She shrugs as she drops them into a wastebin. “I don’t see why not,” she says. “Things are moving a little quickly, but I don’t see you having your baby in the next couple hours.”

“You don’t know this kid like I do,” you groan, shifting in the bed.

She lifts the cardiotocograph reading, scanning the jagged lines. “You’re doing great,” she says. “I’ll be back in a little while. Just holler if you need anything.” She strolls off, letting the door sweep shut behind her.

Alice adjusts your pillow and squeezes your shoulder. She holds out a cup of water, guiding the straw to your lips. “He’ll be here,” she whispers.

You take a sip and settle back. “I don’t think I’m that lucky. I told him I hoped he’d get a flat on the ride there. This feels like karma.”

“Well, if it’s anyone’s karma –” she wiggles her fingers, “– it’s his. Going to Houston was ridiculous in the first place. Hell, you two not being together is ridiculous.”

You scoff, shaking your head. “Just because we’re having a kid doesn’t mean we should be together. You shouldn’t be with someone for the sake of a baby who won’t even know any different.”

“Right, right,” Alice agrees, turning away. “You should only be with someone if you love them.”

“Exactly. And me and Joel – we’re not in love.”

She murmurs to herself. She lowers into a chair by the window, crossing her arms. “I’m seventy-three,” she says. “I’m not a damn fool.”

Something twists awkwardly between your hips. You wince, clutching your bump.

Duckie’s heartbeat pulses through the room. Muffled little bubbles of noise, popping one after the other. Strong and steady as hell – a determined little thing, the doctor said.

Don’t I fucking know it, you thought.

You reach for the silicone mask and cup it over your mouth. The gas is cold and funny when you inhale, feeling it shoot straight for the back of your skull. It does little more than dull the spiking pain, but still – you tip your head back, eyes rolling closed.

You let yourself fade from the suite – its yellow lamplight and hushed chatter outside – to somewhere warmer. Somewhere brighter.

Birdsong high overhead, and the whispering leaves on the oak trees in your yard. The sweet breeze on your skin, soothing the sting of the sun. Prickling wood on your fingertips, the gentle strum of a guitar somewhere beyond the fence.

Peering between the slats, catching glimpses of him like watching a film reel. His head nodding, his foot tapping. The concentration tight on his face; the perfect pick and pluck of his fingers on each string.

Half-hoping that he’ll spot you, scold you for spying and storm back into his house. That he might bring it up later – And another thing, while he whips his newspaper from your grasp, ignoring your cackling.

Half-hoping that he won’t. That he’ll sit there at his back door, bottle of beer at his feet, playing to his audience of sparrows.

And you’ll stand here, wishing you could ask the name of each song he hums.

The contraction splits your daydream in two.

In two hours, you dilate almost three centimeters.

You pace back and forth across the suite, pausing only when your womb clenches like a fist. The contractions are lasting longer, swinging lower, and punching harder. They’re giving you less recovery time; less of a chance to get back on your feet.

It’s a fucking nightmare.

Joel’s still not here. Last you heard, he’d just hit Travis County. Twenty minutes, baby, I promise. That was half an hour ago.

It might be for the better that he hasn’t gotten here. You’ve warned Alice three times already that you might just beat the shit out of him, whenever he walks through that door.

And you know what, sweetheart? She chuckled. I bet you could beat the shit out of him, sore as you are.

“Fuck,” you cry out, collapsing onto the bed. You stretch out forward, head hanging between your shoulders, and gulp back more of the laughing gas. The ache barrels from your stomach to your hips, peaking in the very center.

Alice rubs circles into the small of your back. It’s not helping, but you let her do it anyways. Gives her something to tell the neighbors that isn’t damaging to your reputation.

“That’s it,” she coos. “A little longer, just a little…”

The door clicks open just as the tense band begins to loosen.

Your head is spinning. The mask slips from your fingers.

Alice’s hand pauses. “…a little longer…” she repeats, voice drifting. Her weight leaves your back, replaced by something heavier, stronger.

Safer.

Someone grounding, someone smelling of pine and sweet spice.

He sits on the bed at your back and curves around your body. Lips to your shoulder like the sun in your backyard. His beard scratches against your hot skin.

You blink your eyes open.

Joel’s watch face winks back at you. His hands are over yours – bigger, wider. His fists swallow yours whole. They turn, slipping beneath your palms, and your fingers lace together.

“Joel…” you breathe, face turning in to his neck.

“Hi, sweet girl,” he says, wiping sweat from your brow.

You fall limp against his chest. “Holy shit.”

He looks exhausted. Gray, almost translucent. Looks like he’s just driven a couple hundred miles, half asleep and wholly panicked.

But – he’s here. He made it.

The sight of him, the feel of him holding you upright, melts away any anger or resolve to fight back. For now, at least. Picking an argument can wait until there isn’t a human splitting you in two.

He’s here. You’re not doing this alone.

“Holy shit,” Joel repeats. “You okay?”

“How did you get here so –?”

“Ninety-five the entire way.”

You frown. “Only ninety-five?”

“Trunk’s a hunk a’ shit,” he admits. “Couldn’t break a hundred.”

Alice scoffs, somewhere across the room.

He cradles you, his lips to your forehead. “Where we at?” he asks, staring at the paper churning from the cardiotocograph.

“Five, almost s–shit – six centimeters.” You clamp down on his hands, your uterus winding again.

Joel holds the mask back to your lips and you suck another chemical breath in. “Six? Jesus,” he gapes at Alice, “ain’t that…ain’t that real fast? For – for your first?”

Your fingers are weak and shaky, resting on his knuckles. “Your kid has a sick sense of humor,” you mutter into the silicone.

“That ain’t from me,” he says. “That’s all you, maestro.”

You turn closer into his shirt with a groan. He’s solid as a rock, swaying you through it. He’s here.

Alice swipes her coat from a hook by the door. She shakes her head, pulling it over her shoulders. “Ninety-five, Joel? Sweet Lord.”

He rolls his eyes. His hand curves around your bump. “Had a little bit of an emergency, Alice,” he says, watching your face twist with pain.

“And what if you’d had an accident?”

“I didn’t, Alice.”

“You could’ve, goin’ that damn fast. You’re lucky you’re even here.”

Joel finally looks up. “It’s four in the mornin’,” he protests, like a teenager. “Lucky if I passed five cars.”

You give him a weak smile, lowering the mask. You won’t win, you mouth.

He presses his lips to your head. “’s too much fun,” he murmurs, and you snort.

“Oh!” Alice throws a hand up. “I’m glad you find it funny!” She buttons her coat and glares back at both of you, hands on her hips.

She’s a busybody – has been since before you even moved in. She showed up on your doorstep on your first night with a casserole in hand, and made sure to get a good look at your living room before she shuffled back to her own place.

Always watching, always listening.

You never thought you’d see the day when you’d actually be thankful for her snoopiness.

“Thank you, Alice,” you say, head tilting. “For getting me here, for holding my hand…Thank you.”

Her expression thaws, eyes gleaming. With a sniff, she composes herself – and then points to Joel. “You call me as soon as that baby arrives. I won’t sleep, Joel, until you call.”

“I’ll call,” he assures.

She looks back at you. Balls her crepe paper fists, gives them a hearty shake. “Good luck, Mom,” she says, and with one last glance, slips out of the room.

Joel turns back to you, an eyebrow raised. “Take it she was out tendin’ to her tulips again?”

“Yeah,” you snicker, “one in the morning, those fuckers had to be watered.”

He chuckles. “You feelin’ okay?”

“Better now,” you tell him.

“I’m so sorry, darlin’,” he says, shaking his head. “I should’ve been here. A goddamn idiot, headin’ off like that. So damn stupid.”

“Shh, you’re here now.” You wipe the tears from the corners of his eyes. “I just needed you to be here.”

He nods. “I’m here, whatever you need. Tell me what I can do.”

You take a deep breath. “I need…”

Joel straightens – bracing, ready to jump at your first request.

“…I need a fucking break, Joel. I’m so tired, and this fucking kid –”

“Alright,” he sighs, shifting from behind you. “You and your goddamn jokes.”

You smirk, looking over your shoulder. “You missed me.”

“Hm,” he fixes the neckline of your gown, “I missed you. I really did.”

Born at 07:43. It’s a girl.

It’s like being broken open. Like splitting at the seams; your old self falling from you like shards of fruit. Separating, rolling apart; making way for someone older, wiser. Someone with all of the answers in the palm of her hand.

Mom.

You finally get it. She turns to you, finally glances over her shoulder. And she’s no stranger – no one you haven’t known your entire life. I know you, you whisper, nail trailing her smile lines and the pimples along her jaw.

I see you every time I look in the mirror.

Duckie is pulled from your body with a scream like bloody murder – a scream which matches the whimper you let out in shock, if not in volume.

The kid can scream. Jesus Christ, she can scream. It pierces the dull room; deafens you for a couple seconds the first time you hear it.

You’ve never heard a sound so fucking beautiful.

She wails as they lift her from your body. All curled-up, wriggling in the midwife’s arms. She wails as they slot her beneath your chin, as they wipe the blood and amniotic fluid from her.

She wails until the moment her skin meets yours, and as though it’s all you’ve ever known, you begin shushing her cries. Your arms close around her body, rocking her until she settles.

Her tiny hand grabs for something, for someone, for –

You.

Her mom.

“Joel,” you gasp, watching her tiny, pruned fingers clasp tight around just one of yours. “She’s…she’s so small…”

He sniffs in reply, lifting his hand from your shoulder to wipe his face.

You turn to look up at him.

He looks as broken open as you feel. Eyes bloodshot and soaking, tears streaming into his thick beard. A sob in his throat which chokes and silences him, until he catches your eye and he can’t help but laugh with elation.

“Look at her,” he weeps, all torn up by the little girl in your arms. He presses his lips to your forehead in a crash of a kiss: wet, soaking wet on your skin.

You beam up at him when he pulls away. “We did it,” you whisper.

Joel shakes his head. He runs a thumb across the damp print left on your head. “You did it, honey,” he mutters. “I was nothin’ but a spectator.”

“You almost missed the game,” you quip, and he laughs again.

Your body throbs; nearly numb with pain, heavy with fatigue and emotion. But as long as she’s here, this tiny tornado of a girl, you don’t feel a thing.

Clenching and then unclenching her fist around your finger – so delicate compared to the punches she was throwing at your ribs just six hours ago. She’s worth every fucking second of it.

You finally fucking get it.

She fits so perfectly in the crook of your arm. It feels as though your body was made just to hold her – the very shape of you, designed especially for the very shape of her.

You wonder whether it was the same for your mom. Whether you came along and made her feel whole, for the first time in her life.

Duckie’s eyes open – all glossy and brand new, blinking up at the both of you like she needed no introduction. She already knows you, from the inside out. Her dad’s graying beard, the threads of silver around his temples. Her mom’s tear-stained cheeks, eyes red and bleary with sleeplessness and pure love.

You’re Mom, you’re Dad.

It’s all she’s ever known.

The pillow sighs as you lean back into it. The doctor begins repairing the damage done between your legs; threading and knitting your body back together.

You’re caught between a state of bliss and shock. Your brain is doing much the same work to itself as the woman between your knees is. Patching over all the bloody parts: the screams which tore your skin, the pain which cracked your teeth.

None of it holds a candle to the weight of her in your arms. No matter how tired you are, you can’t take your eyes off her. Her puffy cheeks, the little creases between her brows. No matter how sore, you never want to let go of her.

Joel runs a finger down Duckie’s cheek. “Ain’t she the most beautiful thing in the world?”

“I love her,” you say, bubbling again. “I love her more than anything.”

An hour old, and she’s already a daddy’s girl.

Joel ambles back and forth at the foot of your bed in the recovery suite, bouncing Duck in his arms. He’s never looked so relaxed, so natural at something. He’s never seemed so content, so peaceful.

Everything he’s ever made with his hands – structures and framework and your goddamn closet – and yet this, this tiny accident, this baby girl you were so sure you’d dreamt up right up until an hour ago –

This is the thing he’s proudest of.

Morning lifts through the windows, all soft and vanilla. It floats around him, sunlight spilling across his skin and breathing life and color into him.

Sunlight – or his daughter. They’re the same thing, anyway.

You pull apart a slice of toast, watching. Just watching. Sweet strawberry jam on your tongue, the flavor of everything sharper, fresher. The colors brighter, more vivid.

The world makes more sense like this, you think. Painted in shades of honey and ochre; a room in a corner of the world where time slows to a halt. A soft lullaby from his lips, and the little coos from hers.

The ache of love and labor lingers deep inside you, and nothing has ever made more sense.

You suck the sticky sweet from your fingertips.

Joel looks up, toying with Duckie’s hand. “You want her back?” he asks, a dumb grin on his face.

You shake your head. “I like watching you.”

He scrunches his nose, nuzzling it against his daughter’s, and whispers, “I wasn’t gonna give you back, anyways.” He sways in the early light, staring down at her. “Jesus,” he mutters, swiping at his eyes again, “I didn’t…I didn’t know I could love somethin’ this much.”

“Me, either.”

He drifts over, lowering himself slowly onto the edge of the bed. He extends his elbow, still cradling the baby, and helps you pull yourself upright.

You hiss, a not-so-subtle sting between your legs.

“You, uh…you think of a name yet?” Joel asks.

“Not yet,” you reply, hooked onto his shoulder. Duck blows a bubble and you wipe it with your knuckle. “I thought we were sticking with Duckie?”

His cheeks swell. The sun kisses the edges of his beard. “I thought of one,” he says softly. “Maybe. It’s your call.”

You yawn into his shirt, the warmth of him calm and soothing. “Alright, Miller. Hit me.”

He looks down at the baby nestled in his safe hands. The smallest thing either of you have ever seen.

The name must roll around his head a few times, the way he tilts to-and-fro – looking at her from one angle, then the next. Deciding, when he pulls back, that she suits it from every direction. Like it was her name long before he or even you knew it.

You watch his lips shape the name before you hear it.

Sarah.

And for what feels like forever, you just stare at him. The syllables lingering in the air like glistening specks of dust in a sunbeam. Your eyes follow them down to your daughter, now sleeping peacefully with two hands around one of her dad’s thumbs.

“Sarah,” you repeat, remembering whose name it was, whose name it is – whose name it has always been. “Sarah Miller.”

Joel’s shoulders lift. “What do you think? She look worthy of bein’ a Sarah?”

The rustle of tissue paper. Blue and green and purple tearing between your fingers. The funny fuzz of pom poms as your hands rummaged through the bag. Her hand swimming towards you, an orange foam fish riding the waves between her fingers. Bubbly sounds erupting from her lips.

Your girlish giggle. Her silly grin. Hopscotch along the sidewalk; stopping to look for cars before she’d walk you across the street. How much do I love you, baby girl?

More than the whole world, Mama.

“I love it,” you breathe, tears running to the corners of your mouth. “Sarah fucking Miller.”

“Sarah fuckin’ Miller,” Joel echoes; two wet lines the same as yours, curving down his cheeks. He shifts her into the crook of his arm.

You’re impossibly close. Your chin rests on his shoulder, foreheads brushing when you lean in to each other. His breath is hot on your lips, closer and closer and closer until –

He tastes like salt, rich with emotion. Salt, and then sweet when your tongue meets his. He lifts his free hand to cup your cheek, and your fingers link around his wrist.

And you know you shouldn’t be doing it – know this isn’t your man to be kissing. But in this room, where no one else can see – where it’s just you, him, and all the best parts of yourselves shaped into someone better – he feels like yours.

Just for a moment.

Joel takes the first week of Sarah’s life off work.

He spends a good twenty minutes on the phone to the contractor, talking more about the kid than he does the job. Her eyelashes, her fingernails, the way her legs scrunch anytime he lifts her up.

He’s besotted with the entire thing. And he tells everybody so.

He moves in with you both, stays in your guestroom. It’s a week of no sleep, no peace, and a total of three showers between you. Wearing the same clothes covered in spit-up and drool until one of you has the time or energy to do laundry.

It’s hard. It’s the hardest thing you’ve ever done. By your count, you’ve already cried three times to Joel – terrified you’re getting it all wrong.

But you’re doing it. Jesus God, you’re doing it.

You order takeout most nights. You can’t stand long enough to cook just yet, and you don’t trust Joel not to burn your fucking kitchen down – despite his protests. And it feels like, after everything your body’s given you, it deserves a greasy pizza and some chicken wings.

You rot on the couch together, watching shitty TV and arguing over reruns of Jeopardy! – until Sarah wakes and the whole thing begins again.

Joel loses the game of rock, paper, scissors tonight.

“Shh, baby girl. ‘s alright now, I gotcha,” he lulls, tucking her back in to her bassinet.

She fusses and stretches out; arms over her head, legs curled up. Her onesie is still a little too big – the socked feet all baggy, the sleeves rolled up her wrists.

He lingers for a moment as she drifts off, a hand stroking her tummy. Watching, always watching her. The rise and fall of her stomach, the puffs of breath from her nostrils, her lips still suckling away in her sleep.

“I swear I have a baby photo that looks just like her,” you say. “Same nose and everything.”

Joel clicks his teeth. “Got her looks from her mom. Lucky thing.”

“Low-hanging fruit,” you snort.

He drifts back over, sinking into the couch at your side. “Doin’ okay?” he asks, and you nod.

Every muscle in your body still feels like a ton weight. Your stomach is still swollen; there are still stitches between your legs. There are moments you can’t tell if you’re crying because of hormones, exhaustion, or joy.

Every time, it’s a combination of all three.

Life before feels so long ago – and it hasn’t even been a fortnight. But then you held her for the first time, and now – your arm misses the weight of her when she’s not in it. Your house feels eerily quiet when she’s not laughing, or whimpering, or screaming the fucking roof down.

You can feel your daughter growing up already, and she’s only ten days old.

On the mantelpiece, safe in a stippled gold frame, your mom beams down over her. The photo at least twenty years old, the memory even older. Laughing, the way she always was; nothing quite so funny as a joke frozen in time.

Joel prods you with his elbow. “She’d be proud of you, you know. Your mom.”

“Oh,” you scoff, “no, she’d be like, Holy shit. This kid totally kicked your ass.”

He chuckles. “Sure she did,” he shrugs, “she’s your kid.”

The TV babbles to itself across the room. In its glow, Joel meets your eye. A tiny, pearly fleck swimming in deep honey.

It’s familiar – each shade of bronze in his eyes, each thread of silver through his hair. Like you’ve mapped each and every line on his skin, collecting them like the sleepless hours between you.

Everything about him feels so normal. Burnt toast in the morning, a spoon clinking around a mug of coffee. The rustle of the newspaper, the sizzle of eggs in the pan, the baby snoring on your chest.

Everything – and yet nothing you’ve ever known.

“I miss her,” you whisper. “I miss my mom.”

His hand finds yours instantly. “I know, baby. I know you do.”

You slouch down, leaning on his shoulder, and close your eyes. Joel presses his lips to the crown of your head, his thumb looping around your knuckles.

Sarah gurgles in her sleep. She sighs – a satisfied little sound. Nothing has ever made more sense.

His voice rumbles against your skull. “Who sent the lilies?”

Your eyes flutter open. “Hm?”

Joel flicks his finger towards the window, towards a sprawl of speckled, cream flowers. “The lilies? They weren’t there this morning.”

“Oh…” You turn to look up at him, cringing.

He sees the flicker of her behind your eyes. Her lustrous curtain of hair, her perfect almond nails.

“Really?” Joel asks, mirroring your expression.

You nod, trying not to laugh. “From her and Kate. You were upstairs with Sarah when she came by. I offered to call you down, but – she just wanted to drop ‘em and go.”

“What did she…? Did she say anything?”

Your head shakes. “She just…she said congratulations, said she hoped we were okay. Then she got in her car and she left. I kinda figured things weren’t sunshine and roses, anyway. You haven’t fuckin’ seen her since Houston.”

He snorts, fingers massaging his eyes. “I was goin’ to tell you,” he mumbles into his palms, “I just…Honey, I don’t even know what day of the week it is right now. I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to tell me anything,” you mutter.

“Yes, I do,” he insists. His eyes flit over to Sarah, then back to you. “We haven’t really talked it through yet, me ‘n her. I called her a few days ago, we agreed it’s time. It – it’s past time. I shoulda called it months ago.”

“I guess,” you sigh. “Are you okay?”

Joel’s brow furrows. “’course I am. I got the most beautiful baby girl in the world,” and then, rolling his eyes, “you’re here.”

“Oh, fuck you,” you clip, batting his arm. “Vanessa could do way better, anyways.”

“I don’t doubt it.”

You squeeze his fingers, softly adding, “I’m sorry it didn’t work out, Joel.”

He stares down at your clasped hands. He looks tired, worn out. You figure it’s not just from the newborn. But he takes a deep breath, something the color of relief dawning on his skin, and looks you dead in the eye.

“I’m not.”

“Hey, Duckie – can you say, Happy birthday, Daddy?”

A vinyl wobbles on the turntable – some acoustic record from when Joel was a teenager. There’s wrapping paper still crumpled beneath the coffee table; four plates with more crumbs than cake left, dotted around the room.

Tommy leans in, a lopsided party hat on his head, and tickles Sarah’s chin.

She blinks at him, unamused, then scrunches her little nose and turns back into your chest.

He sighs, straightening. “She don’t like her uncle Tommy all that much,” he grumbles, sulking back over to the couch. Maria puts a consoling arm around his shoulder.

You rest your lips on Sarah’s head, breathing in her sweet scent. Swaying back and forth, you tease, “She don’t like anyone all that much, not unless they’re her daddy.”

Joel’s head lifts and he smiles, eyes glistening. He watches you and Sarah dance; laughs when you twirl her around and she tips her head back, flashing a gummy grin.

“She’ll come around to ya,” he tells Tommy, wandering over to your side. “We all learned to, eventually.”

Tommy scoffs. “Very funny, old man. Jesus.”

Joel stoops down to let Sarah run her small hands through his beard. He catches her fingertips between his lips and pretends to nibble on them.

She giggles, squirming in your arms. Her fingers find the sweeps of hair on his forehead and, taking a fistful, she tugs.

“Christ,” Joel hisses, pulling back.

“That was on you this time,” you chuckle, pointing a finger. “You know she does that, and you still fall for it.”

Maria glances down at her watch. “Is that the time?” she asks, turning to Tommy. “We should really turn in.”

“Oh – right, right.” Tommy tips the last of his beer into his mouth. “We’re takin’ Mom to brunch tomorrow. Better get some goddamn rest.”

Joel hums, still massaging his hairline. “Hey,” he whispers, elbowing you. “Maybe I should take her over. She’s getting sleepy – ain’t you, little Duck?”

“Oh, yeah.”

Tommy stands and holds a hand out. “Why don’t you let Maria and I take her? We’ll tuck her in, keep an eye on her. We weren’t half bad the other day, while y’all were at work. And if she’s stayin’ at Joel’s tonight anyway…”

You glance to Joel, who shrugs. Something shaped like Sure.

“As long as you don’t mind,” you reply, bouncing the baby slowly. “Let me go grab her things.”

Joel’s hand slips across the small of your back as you pass, making for the stairs. He lingers at the bottom, watching until you turn into the nursery with Sarah in the crook of your arm.

You set her down in her crib and gather some of her favorites: a yellow blanket, a duck comforter, a rattle shaped like an elephant. She watches contentedly as you shuffle back and forth, staring when you lean over the wooden rail.

“You know how much I love you?” you whisper, curling a finger inside her fist. She squeezes, and you say, “More than the whole world.”

She grabs at the chain dangling from your neck, the letter S catching the light. Instead, she lifts your finger to her mouth. Her nails scratch light as a feather across your skin. Her gums are tiny and soft around your knuckle.

Everything about her is tiny and soft. Her sweeping eyelashes, her plushy cheeks. Her round tummy, and the squeals she lets free as you dot kisses and blow raspberries all over it. No matter how much she’s grown in three months, she’s still so tiny.

She’ll always be the smallest, sweetest thing you’ve ever known. And she’s all yours.

“Jesus, kid,” you sniff, swiping at your tears. You slip your hands around her back and prop her on your hip. “Alright, let’s go. Quit making your mom cry.”

The bag over your shoulder, you carry her out of the room and into the dark hallway. It’s quiet downstairs; nothing but the crackle of the record player, the distant chink of dishes in the kitchen.

That – and hushed voices in the living room.

“Joel,” Tommy says, over and over again. He’s trying to cut in between his brother’s rambling. Joel – listen to me. Just listen, for one second –”

You linger on the bottom step, trying to split Joel’s voice from Tommy’s. Trying to pluck the words out, over Maria’s humming from the next room.

“…and it ain’t that simple, Tommy it’s –”

“What ain’t simple about it? You have a –” Tommy says it through his teeth, “– you have a kid together, Joel. You really think she’s gonna –”

Sarah grabs the charm around your neck and shakes suddenly, rattling the chain.

You close your hand around hers, losing your balance. “Shhhhit, Duckie, you –”

Joel’s eyes snap to your figure as you step down. He clears his throat, leaning away from Tommy. “Hey – hey, darlin’.”

“Hey,” you reply. Bright. Chipper. Unclenching your fist to let your daughter shake your necklace some more.

She squeals with delight when she spots Joel across the room.

“She ready to go?” he asks, slinging a quick – telling – look at Tommy.

You look between the brothers, browns quirking. They look as guilty as each other: scratching their beards, staring at the furniture instead of you. “Uhuh,” you reply, tongue against your teeth. “Everything…everything okay?”

Tommy slaps his thighs as he stands. “Everything’s great, sweetheart. Sure as shit. Joel – you, uh…you got a key on ya?”

“Oh, yep.” Joel reaches into his pocket. He unhooks a silver key from the chain and drops it into his brother’s open palm.

Tommy calls for Maria. He sidesteps around you, face flushed and smiling.

She floats through from the kitchen, drying her palms on her jeans. “Where’s my baby duck?” she sings, reaching for Sarah.

You pass her over and she melts into her aunt’s arms, curling up into a little pink lump on her chest. “She just had a feed, like, twenty minutes ago, so – she should go down pretty well. And there are more bottles in Joel’s fridge, if you need ‘em.”

Maria nods, wrapping Sarah’s blanket around her. She lifts the bag strap from your shoulder and hands it to Tommy. “I’ll text you as soon as she’s down. Come on, Duckie, let’s get you to bed.”

Tommy leans over and squeezes your arm, winking as he follows his wife. He calls goodnight to Joel, lifting a pointed finger over his head, and closes the door behind them.

Things could not have gone smoother.

It’s suspicious as shit.

You turn when you hear Joel shifting.

“C’mon,” he utters, a pile of plates in one hand. “I ain’t leavin’ you with this mess.” He heads through to the kitchen, broad figure swaying.

The plates spill into the sink, water trickling over them. Joel hums to himself as he gets to work with a sponge in hand.

You linger in the living room.

Things have been good lately – peaceful. You’re in as much of a routine as Sarah will allow: a steady pattern of dropping her off and picking her back up, patchwork family dinners, daytrips whenever both of you can make them.

Your body is healing, pulling itself back together. You don’t have to think about being Mom anymore – she walks in stride with you. The world is painted a new shade of normal – one where you can do anything with a baby on your hip, one where love becomes your first language.

One where you swallow back the ache in your heart, for better or for worse. The only piece of you still fractured. The only wound left open.

Joel’s birthday cards lie flat on the coffee table. You pluck them up one by one – his parents’, Tommy and Maria’s, yours – and Sarah’s.

A messy splotch of a handprint, bright yellow paint smeared across half the fucking card (she hasn’t quite mastered self-control yet). A googly eye plastered to the bird’s chest; orange crayon for the beak and legs.

Sure, you took charge for most of the project – but when he opened it and saw his daughter’s little masterpiece, you caught him swiping his knuckle at the corner of his eye. He snuggled into her, perched on his lap, and whispered, Thank you, little Duckie.

You prop them along your mantelpiece, dotted around your mom’s photo. When you step back, looking from son to brother to…a good friend, you could almost pretend.

Almost pretend that they belong here, on this mantelpiece. There is no yours and his. Just one of everything; nothing doubled nor halved.

Almost pretend that he won’t collect them as he leaves, break into another teary laugh at the sight of the duck painting, and then kiss your cheek goodnight. Promise to have your daughter back in time to go swimming tomorrow morning.

Almost.

“Hey,” Joel calls, “did you, uh – did you hear Tommy talkin’ about Jackson?”

You slip into the kitchen, side by side with him at the sink. “Uh, yeah,” you reply, lifting a towel. “Moose, pine trees. Yep.”

“It sounds beautiful. You think we should take a trip up there sometime? Could be Sarah’s first vacation.”

“You mean the three of us?”

He shrugs, scrubbing a bowl in the water. “Sure. I don’t think Duckie would let one of us stay behind, do you? She’d scream the damn airport down,” he chuckles, looking back to the twinkling bubbles.

You hum. “Maybe.”

“You don’t feel like it?”

“No, I do. I just – I don’t know. Maybe someday.”

“Okay,” Joel says, nodding. “Put a pin in it.”

He passes you a dripping plate and you drag the towel over it, circling the pattern until the suds are wiped clean. And another, and another.

It feels awkward. It feels stiff. There’s something hanging between you, heavy on both your shoulders. A weight you haven’t felt around Joel in over a year.

You turn to him as he stacks the last plate on the draining board. “Is that what you were talking to Tommy about?”

Joel pauses. “You heard that, huh?”

“Only the part about having a kid. It’s none of my business, I know, I just –”

“Actually,” he clears his throat, “it’s plenty your business.”

He leans back against the counter and crosses his arms. A deep breath, cheeks puffing as he exhales. His grip on the dish towel whitens his knuckles.

He’s…nervous. The same shade of gray he wore the night you went into labor.

He takes another unsteady breath.

“Joel?” you ask, head tilting. “Whatever it is, you can say it. I got whiskey, if that’ll make it easier. Probably tastes like shit, but…”

His expression cracks. His eyes twinkle, and he smiles. Only a little, but enough. Enough to let the words slip through.

“You know, that night at Tommy’s wedding was one of the best nights of my life.”

Your heartbeat thuds a bassline in your ears; the rush of your blood the squealing guitar. Skin tacky, moans caught between teeth. Laughter and lust tangling together in the air.

“Yeah?” you ask.

Joel nods. “Yeah. Lying there – talking, laughing, messin’ around. I don’t think I’ve ever laughed that hard in all my life. I could’ve stayed in that room with you forever.”

Your eyes start to sting. You look away.

“I thought I would regret it. I thought I should regret it. And I never did. But then,” he takes a deep breath, “the next day, I look out front, and my newspaper’s sittin’ on my lawn. And for two weeks straight, I kept checking – and there it was. I thought, Sure as shit, she regrets the whole thing. I thought you never wanted to see me again.”

You shake your head. “I wanted to see you again. I missed – I missed you. Missed pissin’ you off.”

He laughs. “I missed you pissin’ me off. Missed that annoying as hell thud on my porch.”

“I didn’t know if you wanted me to – you know,” you admit, and Joel nods.

“We got pretty good at avoidin’ each other,” he grumbles. “And then – with Vanessa, I thought I’d be doin’ you a favor. Letting you off light.”

“You…you took her number to do me a favor?”

“Naw,” Joel says. “I took her number ‘cause her brother in-law has a lumber company, and I had a closet to build. I was drunk, I was an idiot, and I brought it up to her at the wedding. By the time I thought it through, you ‘n I weren’t speakin’.”

You stare at him, jaw slack. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

He shakes his head. He edges closer to you. Voice low, he says, “I shouldn’t’ve gone out on that first date with her. I shouldn’t’ve done any of it. I should’ve talked to you about what I was feeling.”

“Well, maybe we both should’ve,” you mutter, wringing your hands. “I wasn’t exactly the best at it, either.”

His head tips, considering. “Can I tell you now?”

You glance over to him. “Tell me what, Miller?”

“Tell you…tell you that I love you,” he whispers.

It steals the breath from your lungs. One clean swipe.

He nods to himself, then – certain of it – and says it again. “I do, darlin’. I love you.”

Your heart begins to hammer. Tears spill over onto your cheeks, dripping from your jaw.

“And, look –” Joel takes your wrists, “– I got no right to say any of that, I know. I put you through a hell of a lot, these last few months – and that kills me. But if you’ll let me, I swear to you – I’ll make it up to you. I’ll take care of you for the rest of my life.”

You look up. His cheeks are dappled, too – glistening with tears. “Joel…” you weep.

He cups your jaw. “Listen to me. What we’ve had, the last three months – I want it all the time. I want you, and I want Duck. I want the three of us under one roof. I want to sleep in the same bed as you.”

You breathe a shuddered laugh. Your hands fall over his wrists. Keep talking, you mouth, bottom lip trembling.

“I want to get married, or not,” Joel says. “I want to show up to Tommy and Maria’s anniversary party late, ‘cause Duck couldn’t pick which shoes she wanted to wear. I want to have more kids, take ‘em on vacation.”

“Wyoming?” you sniff.

“Wyoming,” he repeats. “I want…I want all of it, baby. You ‘n me. I want you ‘n me, more than anything in the world. And if I’m too late, then you can tell me. Tell me, and I swear on my life I will never mention it again.”

Your hands curve over his. His strong knuckles, worked and weathered and worn by his years. Down to his wrists – the tatty strap on his ages-old watch, the dark hair peppered along his arms.

“I love you so much, baby. So much that it drives me insane. You drive me…fuckin’ insane.”

“Oh, fuck you,” you whisper, balling your fists against his chest.

Joel laughs, nose brushing against yours. “Yeah,” he sniffs, “I figured you’d say som’ like that.”

“I love you, too,” you mumble, linking your arms around his neck. “Shit, I love you.”

“Ain’t that a thing?” he says, and his lips are on yours.

It’s been a year. A year since the first time you felt him – lips soft as velvet, sweet with alcohol and something stronger. His tongue and yours, his teeth and yours. Every part of you clashing with every part of him.

And goddamn, you’ve missed it.

Joel follows you upstairs, pinning you to the wall by your bedroom door. White heat flooding through your veins, he kneels before you and pulls you onto his tongue.

He’s hungry.

He laps at you as though you’ll be gone in the morning. As though he won’t wake up tangled in you, breathing in your scent, lips on your skin.

Dusk seeps in at the edges of your vision; daylight draining from the sky. It’s dark, too dark to see him clearly, but you feel him fucking everywhere.

His beard grazes the inside of your thigh. He kisses where he scratches your skin. He holds your hips steady, tongue dipping in and out.

“You know how fuckin’ sweet you taste?” he growls, slipping inside again.

He looks so good between your legs. Like he was made for it – made for you. All yours, in ways you never really understood until now.

He brings you to the edge with his tongue flat against your clit. Holding your hips firm against his mouth, groaning with you as you fall.

You come with a broken moan. Hips stutter to a halt, legs fall wide open. The warmth in your belly spills over and rushes to every corner of your body.

Joel moans, tongue still lapping as your cunt pulses all over him. “Good fuckin’ girl,” he slurs, watching you come undone.

He stands, a chaste kiss to your lips, and then parts them with his tongue. “Taste good?” he mumbles, kissing you gently.

Yeah, you think, moaning against him, it tastes fucking good.

He spreads you out on your mattress and kisses what feels like every square inch of your body. You giggle at the feeling of his lips behind your ear; moan when they close around your nipple.

Your back arches; little lightning bolts as he pulls the buds to a peak. Your fingers knot through his hair; hissing at the meeting of pain and pleasure between Joel’s lips.

“I love you,” you whisper, when he settles between your legs. You don’t know that you’ve felt something so true in all your life.

He smiles. Your fingers trace the lines at his eyes.

“Come here,” he says, and pulls your hips to meet his.

You curve a hand around his neck, glancing down at your open legs. “Looks a little different to the last time you saw her.”

Joel shakes his head, licking his lips. “Beautiful, baby. She looks so goddamn beautiful.”

Each movement is careful, deliberate. He notches his tip at your hole and pauses until you’re looking at him again.

And then he pushes in.

He slips an arm under your head; the other holding your thigh on his waist. He kisses you as you stretch around him. He still tastes like salt and slick.

You gasp, teeth gritting around a hiss. “Fuck,” you whimper, turning in to his chest.

“Easy, easy,” Joel coos, voice rumbling against your temple. “Catch your breath. Doin’ so good.”

“It’s not sore,” you tell him, nodding for him to move again. “It’s…it’s just…different.”

“Tighter,” he groans, eyes on your cunt as it draws his cock in.

You agree, “Tighter.”

He catches you in another kiss, his tongue slipping between your lips. “Feel so good, sweet girl. Breathe. ‘m right here.”

It’s never felt like this before. This gentle, this tender.

You have never felt like this before. Broken open, stitched back together. Your heart split into two – whole again each time his body meets yours.

Joel catches your moans on his tongue. He steadies his pace; rocking into you over and over. Laughing against your lips; your fingers intertwined with his.

“Feel good?” he pants.

Your head rolls back. “Mhm.”

“Take it, baby. Such a tight little thing.”

“Joel,” you cry, “I’m close.”

His teeth nip at your neck. “Shit,” his hips jump, “attagirl. Just like that.” He thrusts into you harder, bleeding the color from your vision.

You pull his lips to yours, foreheads tacky. Joel’s eyes gloss over.

I love you, he breathes.

And the world whitens.

He pulls you against his chest when you come back around. Shifts up the headboard, skin all sticky and warm. He kisses your temples, kisses your shoulders, kisses your knuckles.

You melt into his grasp, turning to look up at him. You run your fingers over his lips, through his damp hair. Just staring. Drinking him all in.

“You were right next door, the entire time,” you whisper.

He runs a thumb across your cheek. “Yep.”

“Do you think we wasted too much time?”

Joel’s lip turns. “Nah,” he says. “We found our way.”

“Needed a little help, though.”

He scoffs, tongue between his teeth. “I’m sure she’ll hold it against us forever.”

You think of that evening in August. The last bow of the sun before your world changed forever. Of deals struck and promises made. Of satin on your fingertips – newspaper ink and duck egg silk.

You think of that photograph on your mantelpiece. Bright eyes watching every second of it. A smile on her face the entire time.

You laugh to yourself. Joel looks down and kisses your swollen cheek.

“We should go,” he taps your thigh, “got a little duck who’ll be wonderin’ where her mama and daddy are.”

The church tower rings out twice as the truck purrs between graves.

Joel pulls up under the shade of a sycamore, tires rolling to a halt. Sarah kicks her feet, her heels thudding against her car seat.

“Mama,” she presses a sticky finger to the back window, “flowers.”

“Yeah, baby,” you call over your shoulder, hugging your own graveside gift a little tighter in your arms. “Lots of ‘em, huh?”

“Yeah,” your daughter quietly considers, then kicks her seat again.

Joel waits patiently for you to give him the go ahead. He slips a hand around your knee, looking ahead at the rows of headstones. So patient, so gentle.

Your chest swells, a deep breath filling your lungs, and you nod. “Alright.”

“Sure?” he asks. “Take as long as you want, darlin’.”

But if you wait any longer, you’ll never leave. The paper wrap crinkles in your arms. “You take Duck,” you reply, “I’ll take…”

Joel lifts your hand, placing a soft kiss between your knuckles. “You got it. We’ll walk on.”

He leaves you in the truck to collect yourself. He unbuckles Sarah and sets her loose, following her across the grass with his hands in his pockets.

Her light-up sneakers flash as she sprints; head tossed back, toothless smile pointed to the sun. She turns back to her dad, her little hand fitting perfectly into his.

Made for each other.

You hook your fingers around the handle and leave the truck.

Their grave is a short walk down a grassy slope, sheltered by another towering tree. Its leaves flutter down around you as you near the stone; stray petals which catch in the breeze and lead the way.

You kneel down, the grass dry and prickly through your jeans. “Hi, Mom,” you whisper, sweeping some dust from the base of the grave. “Hi, Dad.”

Your grandma picked this spot. She’s long gone – laid to rest elsewhere with a grandfather you never met – so you try to visit as often as you can. Freshen the flowers, brighten up the stone.

It fucking sucks, but someone’s gotta do it.

You peel the brown paper from the bouquet, exposing the soft colors Sarah picked back in the florist. They fit perfectly on the stone, right beneath the words Devoted parents.

Tears prick at the corners of your eyes, a feeling that wraps itself around your throat and steals any other words – until a flash of pink catches your attention.

“Duckie,” Joel calls, following her between graves. “Hey. This is a cem…Hey, Duck, listen – this is a cemetery, we gotta be – Sarah!”

You stifle a laugh, watching him jog after the hoodie tied around her waist. He swipes for her hand and she dodges him, ducking between graves faster than his mid-fifties joints can turn him.

There’s no one else here – it’s only you. And it’s a quiet enough place as it is, so – you let her laugh. Let him chase her, and let her sneakers light the place in pink. What else is there to do?

“Sorry it’s been a little while,” you tell your parents, eyes still on your man.

He’s kneeling now, Sarah on his thigh, in front of a tall, cross-shaped stone. They’re pointing at the words on the stone, her inquisitive eyes studying each one.

“I know I said I’d come visit for Dad’s birthday, but I guess things got busy – what with the move and all. We’re still living out of boxes. But the girls’ rooms are almost done – we just gotta paint ‘em.”

You look back down to the stone. Your mom’s name carved deep into spotted marble, your dad’s underneath. One awful date to tie them both together.

Dad probably heard Duck’s first squeal and turned away; gone back to whatever boring activity he might get up to in the afterlife. But your mom, you know for certain, is sat with her chin on the heel of her palm. Watching her mini-me trace the shapes of words, squirming when Joel presses his lips to her temple and whispers hints to her.

She’s probably smiling, making some comment about how big Sarah’s getting. How smart she is, how funny. How she must keep you and Joel on your toes – and goddamn, she’s right.

“Joel’s been working on the kitchen,” you continue. “I left my phone in the truck, but you should see it, Mom. He got these marble countertops, these little brushed-gold handles. He wrote our names on the wall before he tiled it, so whoever remodels after we’re gone will find that. The four of us.”

“M-meh-mem-orr-mem-or-ree?” Sarah tilts her head.

Joel nods. “Memory, yeah. Good job, Duck.”

“Duckie’s good,” you tell your mom. “She’s top of her class in – well, everything. Really wiping the floor with all the other first-graders. She’d have been your favorite – I know that much. And you’d have been hers.

“She’s gonna be some kind of lawyer, we think. Social justice and all that. She likes to be a woman of the people. Always talkin’ back to Joel – she hardly cuts him any slack, these days,” you laugh.

“He’s good, too – Joel. Working hard, as usual. Tommy and Maria visited last week – they brought Buckley, and now Duck won’t stop goin’ on about us getting a dog.”

You chance a glance over the stone, making sure the pair are out of earshot when you add, “Don’t tell her, but we called the pound last night. We’re heading there tomorrow while she’s at school to pick one out for her birthday. Joel’s giddier than I think Sarah’s gonna be.”

Joel’s carrying Duck now, wandering down a wobbly row of graves.

She halts him by pointing to one. “N-eh-v-eh-never…fff-or-g-for–”

He stares at her, a grin breaking across his lips. “Sound it out, that’s it. ‘s a big word, baby girl. You got it.”

The world seems to blur around them. The birds sing, a light melody from overhead. The green trees sway across the blue of the sky; the straight soar of cars on the highway. It all fades into the background, behind the two of them – wandering from shade into brilliant sun.

Your family. Your man, your blood – and everything in between. The little girl who brought it all together in the end – leading her dad by hand over knolls and broken stone, chasing butterflies, and asking what eh-teh-err-nal means.

“Means forever,” Joel says, kneeling beside her. “’s how long I’m gonna love you for.”

“And Nel?”

“And Nel.”

“And Mama?”

“And Mama.”

Sarah runs her hands through his beard, swaying side to side. “But me the most,” she concludes, nodding.

Joel hms, biting back a laugh. He lifts his chin, asks the little girl whether or not he’s going gray.

She has the same ridiculous laugh you do. The same snort you used to find so embarrassing, until you heard it come from her.

Just watching them stokes the already burning fire in your ribcage – the warmth flooding around your heart. He’s so good at it – being a dad.

Was he ever anything else, before he was a father? You can’t remember a time you didn’t wake up next to him, wrapped up in his arms, or with one of his kids burrowed between your bodies. It all feels so long ago, now.

He wanted to do everything. He’d lie with you between his legs, holding your half-sleeping form upright while you fed her. He’d race home after work specially to bathe her. He picked up any and every single duck-themed thing that he came across.

And what were you? Mom felt like such a fucking longshot. So out of your reach that you couldn’t understand the meaning of the word.

But there are days when she says it – Sarah, looking up at you with Joel’s twinkling eyes and a smirk which matches yours – and it’s like you’ve been waiting your whole life to hear it. Like you’ve been waiting your whole life for her.

Well. Her, and her little sister.

“And, uh – another thing,” you say, reaching for the plastic handle of a car seat. “I brought somebody for you to meet.”

A clumsy fist shoots up to shake a speckled dinosaur toy – the brown spheres of its eyes catching the sunlight. She squeals with delight when you unbuckle her, kicks her legs the same way her sister always did.

“She’s a little nervous, ain’t you, Nel?” you whisper, laughing at her gummy smile and tiny, socked feet. “She spit up on herself on the way here, but – I think you’re gonna love her.”

You perch the baby on your thigh, same as Joel did with Sarah, and she wraps her fingers around one of yours. You wiggle it – waving to your mom’s name, to the petals gently fluttering in the breeze.

“Mom,” you sniff, “this is Ellie.”

#joel miller #joel miller fic #joel miller x reader #joel miller smut #the last of us #tlou #macfrog #neighbor!joel miller #babydaddy!joel miller #tw pregnancy

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gh0stsp1d3r · 3 months

Note

Please please some dating luke as percys sister and him finding out about you two when he sees you both in cabin 3 🙏🏼🙏🏼

This is how I find out?

omg I love this.

𝐌𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭

Warnings: Brief making out, getting caught making out,, secret relationships, Luke never turned, reader and Luke are like 2 teenagers in love

“I don’t hate him- I just hate not having the place to myself anymore, you know?” You spoke to Luke. “He’s a good kid.”

He nodded, carrying his lunch tray. “At least it’s not like mine..” he shrugged, giving you a small smile.

“Yeah, I would run away.” You laughed, and you both sat down across from Percy.

“Hey, Percy.” You both said in unison, and Percy mumbled a hi. You noticed him staring at something behind you guys, rather someone.

Luke quirked an eyebrow and turned to who he was looking at Clarisse.

“You don’t think she still has something to do with it, do you?” Luke said, turning back to Percy.

“I don’t know.” He said, “That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”

You and Luke glanced at each other for a moment and then you sighed, looking at Percy. He looked at you back now.

“Don’t let it bother you so much. You finished the quest.”

“I know but-“

“Percy. Stop. Worrying. So. Much.” You’ve only known him for a few days, but he seemed to be anxious, a lot.

He didn’t say anything, and stared down at his food with melancholy etched on his face. Once lunch was over, you and Luke stood up, and Percy went over to Annabeth.

“You’re definitely his sister.” He said with a small laugh, you both walked into the forest and you intertwined your hand into his.

“Why do you say that?”

“Because, you just met him like what.. a few months ago and you’re very protective of him.”

“I am not…”

He gave you a knowing look and you rolled your eyes. “I’m like that with everyone.”

“I know. It’s part of why I love you.” He teased with a small smile on his face.

“Stop being corny.” You smiled.

“Can’t help myself.”

You both walked for some more time, before you had to go back for the bonfire. You let go of his hand, and found a seat in the back of everyone.

After a while, he leaned over and whispered to you.

“You wanna go to your cabin?”

You quickly nodded, you both ducked down and slowly made your way to the cabin.

“How do we get away with it every time?” You asked him, sitting down on the bed.

He shrugged. “We’re probably breaking about 4 rules right now.” He laid down, arm over his head, and you smiled, curling up to him and laying on his chest.

“You may not be in another God’s cabin.” You mocked Chiron.

“You must be at the bonfire at all times.” He mocked him, with a laugh.

“No dating.”

“What’s the fourth?” You asked.

He smirked, craning his head and capturing your lips in a kiss.

You both moved around and sat up now, you began to straddle his lap, you held his face in your hands, and his hands were on your hips.

You both were so caught up in the kiss, neither of you realized Percy standing in the doorway until he cleared his throat. You jumped off of him, standing up and dusting yourself off.

“Percy!” You laughed nervously. “Did the fire already end?”

“Seriously? This is how I find out?” He said, looking at you both back and fourth.

“We wanted to tell you, but we couldn’t. Dionysus would have our heads on a stick.” You said.

Percy sighed, moving to his bed.

“How long have you guys been dating?”

“Almost a year now.” Luke said.

“Jesus… just, don’t keep any more stuff from me, please?” He said after a little.

You both nodded, and Percy spoke up again “And don’t do any of that in front of me.”

#luke castellan x you #luke castellan x reader #luke castellan #pjo tv show #pjo #percy jackson #charlie bushnell x reader

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luvmila444 · 3 months

Text

Photo Booth - C.S

…………………………………………….. ☆ ★ ………………………………………………

Chris sturniolo x fmreader

summary: visiting the classic Photo Booth with you boyfriend chris and his brothers becomes a bit dirty while left alone in the booth together.

content warning: SMUT; dry humping; switch chris; praise kink; public (kinda?); no actual p in v

word count: 1.6k words

༶•┈┈୨♡୧┈┈•༶

“I can’t believe you guys are back here again, what is this the fourth time now?” You ask in a joking tone looking toward the three boys in-front of you.

“Fifth,” nick corrects in his usual smart, know-it-all tone that i love so much.

“Yeah, but hey, it’s not the same as the last time because this time we have you,” Chris grinned goofily at you as he started to walk closer to you. Chris has been your boyfriend for almost four months now and you guys couldn’t be happier. You didn’t just love being around him and all his stupid statements that make no sense, or his smell of familiar cologne that lingers in the air, or the way his large hands felt caressing you back soothingly while relaxing. No, you also love being with his family and friends and fans. Everything about you guys was perfect.

Chris slowly moved around you and snakes his hands around your waist before lowering his head down onto your shoulder. You still get butterflies from these small loving actions that he does toward you, but you just can’t help it, he just brings it out in you. Chris was a real touchy person and you loved it. It made you feel so comfortable. You loved that after a passionate night of rough crazy sex, he would then take care of you and envelope you into a tranquil sensual cuddle that would quickly send you both off into a very peaceful sleep.

After a few second, which felt like a lot longer as time had always seemed to slow down when you guys were together, you suddenly remember a familiar presence in the room…

“Woah, yeah thanks for that guys, i was going for the traumatised look while i was in that booth,”matt says with an eye roll while he steps backwards and begins to rub his eyes. The boys then begin to comically argue but i soon drown it out as i look up at chris standing above me. His hair floppy and falling in-front of his face looking so soft that i could just run my hands through it or tug at at it gently.

“Yeah, well I’m gonna go freshen up and check myself before taking any photos,” nick cuts everyone off with his assertive tone before beginning to turn around and in the direction of the bathroom, “anyone else coming?’ He asks not sparing a glance to turn as he heard the family footsteps of matt and the car keys that jingled from side to send on his belt loop, doing a short quick jog behind him to get to his side.

As matt and nick exited the room. Chris quickly whirled you around, so you were now facing each other. He was taller than you but that did not stop you from still seeing and admiring every detail of his perfect face, from the smiles lines that were now forever present on his face to the slower vanishing freckles that were once dotted on his nose but only really come out when the sun hits him just right.

“I have an idea,” he grins, a grin of mischief which you can only assume with get you in trouble latter with his brothers. You tilt my head to the side and squint my eyes and allowing him to finish what he was saying and tell you what this ‘idea’ he had was. “Do you want to do a practise run of the booth without them?” He asked excitedly, it is almost difficult to decline him.

“Chris, i think you’ve had enough practise runs with the a million times you’ve come here before,” you are almost scolding but seeing his face with his ever-present smirk plastered on their you just gave in to easily, “but i dont know how it works so show me,”you then exclaim excitedly before he grabs your hand and pulls you towards the booth, pulling back the curtain and sitting inside.

It was a lot smaller than you had originally thought, but then again it was quite old fashioned and there was never any harm in getting a little too close to your boyfriend while his brothers aren’t present. So, you decide to place yourself on his lap and close the curtain with one and as the other hand wraps itself around Chris’s neck for stability.

You hadn’t even noticed how much Chris had enjoyed the touch until you try and get yourself more comfortable on his lap, wriggling about making Chris go crazy behind you.

“Ma, I’m gonna go crazy if you keep doing that to me”.

You only giggle before sitting still again, however, still missing the small sensation that built up inside the pit of your stomach at the feeling of yourself grazing his crotch area while getting comfy. Chris felt it as well and couldn’t help but get.a little turned on by the action either. But when Chris got turned on, you noticed.

He rested is head on your shoulder and brings his hands to your waist much like before, but this isn’t as comforting as it once was, this was dirtier and needy. You attempted to ignore it as you turned to the screen of the booth that was going to take your photos and were selected the options for you to use. At that moment you could have sworn that you felt Chris lift his lap upwards into you.

You let out a gasp at the feel of the now prominent bulge that was now present under his dark cargos. Fuck just the graze of it on your thigh was making you wetter at the moment.

Chris lifted his head slightly from the crook of your neck and turned it as he began to kiss gently kisses below your ear and onto your neck. Fuck.

“Chris, we can’t do this right now? look where we are” you try to send Chris straight and attempted to use a stretcher voice that however ended as a quiet moan. Your noises only provoked chris more at this point. He didn’t respond to your question but instead planted more open-mouthed kisses onto you.

You were having a mental battle with yourself at that very moment as you knew if you voiced it, chris would not be much help. You then decided to give in and slowly begun to move your hips onto his crotch. You could feel him growing harder under you from my movements. He decided to grasp your hips firmer and guide then just how he had wanted onto his clothed cock and helping you to move.

What was once slow grinding became quickly paced, you couldn’t help but let out a moan that wasn’t loud enough to be heard by matt or nick but could be heard if you were close enough to the booth. Chris removed one of his hands from your waists and placed it onto your mouth, muffling you and ensuring you don’t make any more erotic sounds.

He pulled you even closer if that was possible and continued to move up into you at a crazy pace and you could now feel his pulsating dick beneath the fabric of his trousers making your eyes roll into the back of your head.

“That feel good, ma? You Like humping me when anyone could walk in?” He whispers close into your ear and all you can do is lean your head back onto his shoulder as a muffled whimper had escaped you.

He continued to rut up into you and a continuous pace and making sure that you felt everything, while sloppily placing open mouth kissed onto your shoulder. The sensation of his clothed dick still hitting your clit was now getting you so worked up that you felt the familiar tightness in you.

You could feel the knot in your stomach growing tighter as you moved faster and harder on his lap. Again, and again and again.

“Fuck you’re close already, ma?” he mocks you in your ear in a deep voice that almost send you over the edge. Embarrassment filling your body as you realise that Chris is aware of the power that he has over you.

You didn’t even realise that Chris had removed the hand that was once in his mouth to play around with the buttons on the machine and before you knew it, the booth was capturing yours and Chris’s pleasure in its old fashioned black and white photographs.

You began to circle your hip to get just the right pressure onto my clit before i released all over his lap and feeling the knot snap in your stomach as your orgasm washed over you still feeling Chris’s hands still guiding your hips, holding you still very close through your high. Which was captured perfectly on the photo booths camera.

Then you felt his dick twitch against your sensitive clit, which made you let ou a cry while he groaned into my ear. Chris had now taken complete control of your waist, using you to rub himself through his orgasm, which you happily allowed.

You felt super sensitive due to his fast motions, but it still felt unreal, so you just let him do his thing until he slowed his movements, leaving his hands on your hips while you leaned your head to the side to relax on his shoulder.

“Fuck, you make me feel so crazy, ma” he turns his head to you giving you a dopey grin ad his eyes are now blown out with lust.

“I could completely say the same for you, baby” you say before patting down his hair and kissing his lips in a quick passionate kiss. You lean away from each other and hold one another’s gaze while having your foreheads pressed together. You both were very much appreciating the moment until…

“I beg that you clean that seat before any of us sit on it, please,” you hear a disgusted whine coming from nick from further away outside the curtain.

༶•┈┈୨♡୧┈┈•༶

A/n: thank so much for reading!! I hope you enjoyed if i have made any mistakes please do not hesitate to let me know. I wrote this purely because im obsessed with the booth by Bryant era and i wanted it back… anyway

Love all my angels (especially @gamermattsgf) 💞

#chris sturniolo #sturniolo smut #sturniolo x reader #christopher sturniolo #matt sturniolo #nick sturniolo #sturniolo triplets #chris sturniolo smut #chris sturniolo imagine #chris sturniolo x you #chris sturniolo x reader #sturniolo #smut

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writingouthere · 4 months

Text

neighbor!Sukuna x singlemom!reader. In the aftermath of your apartment flooding, Sukuna makes you a deal that is too good to pass up. You don't fully know what you're agreeing to, but if you did would it have really changed anything? Reader POV

cw: Sukuna may seem like just a nice guy stepping up but really he's a red flag you're just too tired to see. It's hinted reader has not been treated well in the past but no specifics.

You hadn't known what to do when you woke up to the sound of rushing water. You had acted on instinct and grabbed your daughter from the room next to yours and stood in the kitchen, calling your landlord from the number on your lease to no avail. Your daughter was starting to get fussy and after the fourth attempt with no answer, you felt lost.

Your ex hadn't exactly been the reliable type and he probably would have just contributed by cursing and complaining about shitty landlords and even shittier affordable housing but that wouldn't have helped then and thinking about it wasn't helping you now. Single, alone with your daughter who was growing more disgruntled by the minute.

You hated to even consider but, there was someone who you kept coming back to that you thought could help.

Sukuna.

The tattooed man across the hallway hadn't struck you as the friendly type, but he had proved you wrong in the few months since you moved in. He looked like the type of guy you would cross the street to avoid, but he always had time to stop and talk to you when he saw you. He also always made it a point to say hello to your daughter and listen to her rambles, even when they didn't make sense to you.

Your other neighbors had warned you about him. Stories that included threats and assaults you just couldn't connect to the man who had taken you and your daughter to the aquarium when your piece of shit ex bailed on you both, again.

You had googled him afterwards and what you saw was pages and pages that included things like attempted, suspected and scarier words like murder, hospitalized and other things that just didn't fit with the man you were still getting to know.

The water was still falling and once your daughter started waking up, you called it and went over to the maybe scary man across the hall, who never scared you.

Within ten minutes, you found yourself in Sukuna's guest room while he stayed behind at your apartment to figure everything out. When was the last time someone told you, "I got it." You were always the responsible one. You were the mom friend, the girlfriend people liked to introduce to their parents. You had basically parented yourself!

But now, there was someone who told you that, "I got it."

So who could blame you for going along with what came next. When the next morning came and Sukuna told you that your super had come too late and the apartment was damage and you couldn't stop yourself from putting your head in your hands as your daughter happily munched on the pancakes he had made you both.

"What am I going to do," you groaned and you couldn't help but lean in when Sukuna placed his hand on your cheek.

"He said he would put you up in a hotel until it can be fixed," he said gently and you sighed. You envisioned the next several months in some shitty motel with no kitchen, sharing a lumpy bed with your two year-old, disrupting the routines you had been trying so hard to build as a single mom. No more afternoon trips to the park that was less than a block away. No more feeding the ducks with your leftover veggies or sharing pick up duties with the other moms at the daycare by your work.

"This sucks, I don't want to have to build my life all over again." And you really didn't. This was so frustrating and over what, a little water damage?

"Well," Sukuna started and he tilted your head so you were looking at him. "I do have the guest room. You could move some of your stuff over here and camp out until it's fixed. Pocket the hotel money, use it for something for the kid."

"Oh, I couldn't impose on you like that-"

"I wouldn't offer if it was an imposition," he said, his eyes glinting and for just a second you could see a little of the danger your neighbors had told you about, but then it was gone and he was leaning over you to take another pancake from the serving tray and putting it on your daughter's empty plate.

"It's not just for you, I would-I would feel a lot better knowing the both of you were taken care of. I doubt the hotel that-" he cut off looking over at your daughter, "you know is putting you up in is going to be the safest place for the two of you."

You couldn't believe you were considering it but you were so tired. You felt like life had just become a series of less than ideal circumstances you were forced to deal with just because you didn't want to settle for the wrong guy or give your daughter less than she deserved.

"I would pay rent," you said and he looked ready to argue but you held up your hand. He smiled, amused and gestured go on. "Just until they can fix the apartment and if we get to be too much tell me. We can tough it out in a hotel. We've dealt with worse," you added and he frowned before nodding.

"Deal." He turned to look at your daughter and smiled. "You hear that bug, you and mommy are moving in." Your daughter giggled and clapped her syrup covered hands.

"Temporarily," you reminded him and he smiled at you.

"Right, let's go grab the stuff you'll need while you're here temporarily." He went grabbed a towel and wiped your daughters hands while she kept laughing and chanting "move in, move in!"

Is it your fault that you didn't know that your circumstances were anything but temporary?

#jujutsu kaisen sukuna #sukuna x reader #sukuna ryomen #ryomen sukuna #jjk x reader #jjk sukuna #sukuna x singlemomreader #sukuna x y/n

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alonetimelover · 4 months

Text

pairing: Ginger Spice's daughter!reader x Max Verstappen (ex-Harry Styles)

fc: Sabrina Carpenter

summary: After getting over her fear of getting into a relationship, YN started to 'soft launch' her new partner. Of course everybody knew who it was, but she wanted her fun. Harry didn't like it and still was petty. Max had had enough.

warnings: swearing, some suggestive comments, talk about verbal assault and not-so-great fist fight

masterlist part 1

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maxverstappen1 and yourinstagram added to their IG story!

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formula1gossip

liked by formula1fan84 and 200 383 others

formula1gossip With the one week break between Italian and Singapore Grand Prix, the two-time World Champion - Max Verstappen - was seen cozing up with a mysterious woman on his yacht near the Amalfi Coast. Any ideas who could that be?

view all 10 394 comments

maxfan94 my man is gone

maxfan958 making out on a yacht in a bright day? who is this man?

landofan48 not to be bold but i think i know exactly who that is

ynsmymama GUYS GUYS GUYS Ma'x story from yesterday and YN's were definitely one photo!

⤷ maxfan67 how?

⤷ ynsmybestie YN's story was the cropped version of Max's

ynsmybestie this is YN YSN, no thank you, i don't need confirmation - I KNOW

landonorris interesting

⤷ landofan49 WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE ?!

⤷ landonorris I LIKE GOSSIP

⤷ danielricciardo he's gonna kill you! prepare to end up in the wall on sunday, lando! nice knowing you!

⤷ landonorris mclaren i need new insurance

⤷ mclaren Fight your wars, Lando. Fight your own wars.

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yourinstagram

liked by landonorris, maxverstappen1 and 3 011 393 others

yourinstagram life lately has been exciting 💛

view all 99 202 comments

landonorris you rehearsing???

⤷ yourinstagram shhh, im making new music

landonorris will you be my photographer forever??

⤷ yourinstagram you only like the photo cause it's a thirst trap

⤷ landonorris shhhh, don't tell people

danielricciardo was the restaurant worth it?

⤷ yourinstagram you know it, dan

maxverstappen1 💛💛

carlossainz55 i like the fourth photo

⤷ yourinstagram I LIKE YOUUUUUUU

ynsmybestie WHAT IS THIS

ynsmybestie lando thirst trap???????

⤷ user84 he's not without a shirt though?

⤷ ynsmybestie HE DOESN'T NEED TO, HE'S STILL HOT

ynsmymama not only showing us that she's making new music but SOFT LAUNCHING ??? like if we didn't know already who that is

⤷ ynshands let's just pretend and see what happens

comment liked by yourinstagram and maxverstappen1

ynxmax no way that my ship has sailed no way

ynupdates new music when???

⤷ yourinstagram sooner than you think 🫣

user92 she already has a new boyfriend?

⤷ ynsmybestie already? it's been 6 months since it was made public that yn and harry broke up. and considering all the interviews and songs, they'd been broken up longer than that

⤷ ynsmymama you can say that or just shut your mouth user92

ynshands i just know that the last photo was taken after Singapore... that man was furious

⤷ maxandyn don't even... i'm blushing

⤷ ynsmybestie they all said that lando would end up in the wall and here he was on the 2nd place

⤷ ynsmymama the way that YN was cheering for Lando, knowing that Max had no chance anymore. this is a true friendship. and her jumping up and down at the podium ceremony????? I LOVE HER

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yourinstagram

liked by maxverstappen1, landonorris, danielricciardo and 3 383 032 others

yourinstagram got a man and here's the aftermath... NONSENSE EP is all yours to listen right now!

view all 42 394 comments

landonorris no problem yn for contributing to your cover photo! i am very thankful for the credit!

⤷ yourinstagram you know damn well why that credit is not there

⤷ landonorris but he took the photo with MY camera!

⤷ yourinstagram so i guess it's not my album because my pen wrote down the words

⤷ landonorris well, when you put it like that...

maxverstappen1 💛💛

⤷ ynsmybestie love me some man that comments same thing under my posts

danielricciardo STREAMING IT RIGHT NOW - KEEP YOU UPDATED

⤷ danielricciardo call it what you want - fit like a daydream? build a fire? starry eyes? yeah, he has those. you already wear that necklace he got you, don't you?

⤷ danielricciardo slut! - tangerine? what were you doing in the mclaren paddock, hmm?

⤷ danielricciardo bad for business - you've gone crazy, that's right. i've never seen you this crazily happy.

⤷ danielricciardo you are in love - i'll never forget the look in his eyes when he said "you are my best friend". and the photo on the desk is absolutely adorable (i'm going to be sick)

⤷ danielricciardo i think he knows - boyish look??? did you hear his jokes? he IS a boy! 26 yo and still a child. you'll drive? if he trusts you with the car you might as well get married, no kidding.

⤷ danielricciardo nonsense - WHY WOULD YOU RELEASE IT? WHY WHY WHY... I NEED TO BLEACH MY EYES AND DO SOMETHING MY MEMORY AND FORGET THIS SONGS EXIST. I WON'T BE ABLE TO LOOK BOTH OF YOU IN THE EYES NOW.

⤷ yourinstagram have you consider a career in doing yt reaction videos? you'd be gold

ynupdates i can't wait for twitter to react to all of these...

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danielricciardo, landonorris and maxverstappen1 added to their IG story!

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www.dailymail.com/harry_styles_confronted_max_verstappen

Harry Styles confronted Max Verstappen

Just last night after YN YSN's secret concert in Las Vegas, her ex-boyfriend, Mr Treat People With Kindness (Harry Styles) decided to 'bump into' his ex-lover and 'talk'. According to the fans on scene - it was aggressive, blatant and simply sad how Harry supposedly treated YSN.

When the concert ended and the lights went out, fans started to exit the venue and making their way home. Some of them decided to move to the back and patiently wait for the VIP people leaving. VIP list for that concert consisted of two World Champions - Lewis Hamilton and apparent new boyfriend of YN's - Max Verstappen, plus some of other F1 drivers. In the attendance were also YN's mum - Geri Horner and step-dad - Christian Horner.

Finally, YN went out first, but no one could even start asking anything when from thin air appeared Harry Styles - drunk and rocky. The yelling match started, which caught the attention of more people, but especially the said VIPs.

"Max literally flew from the doors and stood between Harry and YN. By that time, YN was crying and shaking from all the insults and swears that were spoken to her. Harry tried to move past Max, but he held him in place, placing a hand on Harry's chest. The singer didn't like it and pushed the driver. Now, the other drivers had also gone out and surrounded the trio. Two of them took care of YN and others were in place to eventually stop the fight. They couldn't. Harry took the first swing, but considering that he was drunk, Max could easily duck and wait for his turn. At the end, Max just went up to Harry and said something - looking him directly in the eyes, knuckles white and all that. Finally, they all left, leaving Harry there, sitting by the door. Max was holding YN so she wouldn't fall from all the shaking," said one of the witnesses.

Do you think that YN or Max will report an assault?

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yourinstagram added to her IG story!

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daniel3.jpg

liked by yourinstagram, maxverstappen1 and 1 004 931 others

daniel3.jpg yn and her nonsense boy whenever they're within half a meter radius

view all 84 493 comments

yourinstagram DANIEL JOSEPH RICCIARDO

yourinstagram what in the hell are you doing??

⤷ danielricciardo i'm soft launching

⤷ yourinstagram my relationship?

⤷ danielricciardo YOU SAID YOURSELF THAT YOU WANTED TO DO IT

⤷ yourinstagram YEAH ME! and there's nothing 'soft' about it

⤷ danielricciardo maybe i chose some risky photos

⤷ yourinstagram too late. he just left to give you a visit :))

⤷ landonorris pray for daniel people! the man may have a boyish look but his a mad man!

⤷ yourinstagram and then he's visiting you, lan

ynupdates that is max verstappen. if i ever saw max verstappen that's him

ynsmymama nonsense making sense know

ynsmybestie I love that they still play the 'soft launching' game when just few days ago she was singing about Max's BDE

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yourinstagram added to her IG story!

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yourinstagram

liked by maxvertsappen1, danielricciardo and 5 003 238 others

yourinstagram win, party, afterparty

SCREW SOFT LAUNCHING - MY BOYFRIEND IS A 3 TIME WORLD CHAMPION, WHAT ABOUT YOURS??

view all 339 492 comments

maxvertsappen1 MY GIRLFRIEND IS A NATIONAL TRESSURE

⤷ maxverstappen1 Did I do it right, yourinstagram?

⤷ yourinstagram YES YOU DID MY LOVE

maxverstappen1 I love you

⤷ yourinstagram I LOVE YOU

danielricciardo who are you and what have you done with yn?

⤷ yourinstagram that's the thing - I'm finally me, unapologetically

⤷ danielricciardo I couldn't be happier for my best friend for finding someone that makes her the best version of herself

⤷ yourinstagram you sap! love you, riccy ric

danielricciardo I thank heavens that Geri or Christian are not looking at you account

⤷ yourinstagram oh she does "dad's rethinking the christmas dinner invitation" was her text

landonorris got (love)sick all over my bed from this content

landonorris congratulations Max, you champ! and congrats yn for making it through the night

⤷ maxverstappen1 Thanks, Lando. And she did really good.

⤷ landonorris keep it in you pants, will you?

⤷ yourinstagram I'm done.

charles_leclerc Congratulations!

ynupdates daddy max??? what in the hell

ynsmymama all those photos scream: I HAD A NIGHT TO REMMEBER

⤷ yourinstagram i did.

maxfan49 i've never seen him happier

maxfan93 rue when was this?

⤷ maxverstappen1 Last night / this morning?

⤷ maxfan98 what. in. the. hell.

ynsfan49 they really said: i'm in love, i have great nights and i'm gonna make that everybody problem

liked by yourinstagram and maxverstappen1

ynsfan95 my boyfriend is graduating tomorrow with an engineer degree!

⤷ yourinstagram SLAYYY

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maxverstappen1

liked by yourinstagram, landonorris, danielricciardo and 2 002 182 others

maxverstappen1 You're my best friend. 💛💛

view all 200 385 comments

landonorris say thank you to the third wheel of the year, max

⤷ maxverstappen1 stop flirting with my girlfriend then

⤷ landonorris i know you're thankful

⤷ danielricciardo leave him, max. it's the only thing that was left for him - hopeless flirting

⤷ landonorris do you know the sentence that starts with f and ends with u and has uck yo in the middle?

danielricciardo mama y papa

⤷ yourinstagram someone take that phone away from you

⤷ maxverstappen1 You're older than us

yourinstagram got my heartbeat skipping down 16th avenue

⤷ danielricciardo are you quoting your own song?

⤷ yourinstagram no, i'm quoting words i said to him last night before falling asleep in his arms

liked by maxverstappen1 and 502 392 others

⤷ danielricciardo damn

charles_leclerc finally! i wouldn't be able to keep it a secret anymore

⤷ yourinstagram you spilled the beans to your engineers twenty minutes after we had told you

⤷ charles_leclerc but i didn't tell anybody else

⤷ pierregasly you told me!

⤷ georgerussell63 me too!

ynupdates SHE IS MY ROMAN EMPIRE TOO. YOU'RE NOT SPECIAL MAXIMUS

⤷ maxverstappen1 That's not my name!

⤷ yourinstagram Maximus??? i love it

ynsmybestie screw soft launching, leave it for Max to HARD launch

⤷ yourinstagram I thought I "hard" launched???

⤷ ynsmymama double meaning queen

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a/n: do we move on from this pair or crave some more drama?

#f1 x reader #formula 1 x reader #max verstappen x reader #max verstappen x you #max verstappen imagine #max verstappen social media au #max verstappen one shot #max verstappen x singer!reader #max verstappen fic #harry styles x reader

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nouearth · 8 months

Text

blue current.

clark kent x male reader headcanons.

warnings: fluff, co-workers at the daily planet, maws!clark, soft!clark, intern!reader.

a/n: it's been a hot minute since i've written anything! i feel so bad because i've been swamped with school, so hopefully this will hold you guys over until i post my next fic! it's not much, but i've been feeling fluffy as of recent, and clark is the perfect candidate, HAHA. idk, i've been feeing low-key creatively stuck for writing, so hopefully this well get me out of the slump!

gif credits to: fukutomichi!

—clark was smitten from the moment he first laid eyes on you.

—it had only been the fourth month into his internship, but it was no secret that the higher-ups, and even his colleagues, have been impressed by clark's rapid growth.

—it was enough to ensure their trust in clark to train the new intern as the lead journalist had taken a month off for vacation. while he had his doubts if he would do a good job, clark always loved challenging himself.

—his mother had always reminded him: one who feared failure will never achieve greatness.

—sure, you weren't being mentored by the best journalist in the city. though, you had to admit that you felt defeated since miss lane was the only reason why you chose the daily planet over other internships.

—but bitterness turned to throat-drying, cheek-flushing, and hand-flexing sweetness when you came in your first day and met the man who would be training you.

—for clark, it was the drowsiness in your gaze that suddenly brightened when he met your eyes. if he could have seen his own face, clark would reckon that his eyes lit up the same way yours did upon meeting you for the first time.

—he's so... handsome. maybe training him wouldn't be so bad after all...

—his blue eyes sucked you in like heavy ocean current, but instead of fighting back the pull like any sane person would, you allowed him to drown you in the gorgeous wash his gaze doted on you with.

—god, are you toying with me right now? have you finally come around to my reckless behavior back in high school? i knew you always would!

—it began with a handshake. when clark's large hand cupped into yours, a current of sparks flickered from the bone of your knuckles to his own, and you both released with a gasp.

—"sorry! it must be my vest or something—has a lot of... cotton, i think—" clark assured with a laugh, but cursed his lame excuse in between breaths.

—"no, you're fine! i guess your sweater vest knew i was half-asleep, huh?" you laughed with him, and almost as if it was choreographed, you reached back to rub at your nape when he does, and the discomfort left the collective laughter in a fleeting dance.

—"well, lucky for you, our first stop is the break room! i'll show you how to make a poor man's mocha if you get sick of the coffee here!"

—from then on, you two had quickly become close friends.

—where clark would teach you more hacks to spice up an ordinary roast of coffee, you would return the favor by surprising him on random days with lunch that you prepared the night before.

—on nights where you were too tired to function, you simply settled for sandwiches and prepared an extra meal for clark.

—whether he claimed he forgot his lunch, or was too busy to even take a glance at his lunchbox; eating lunch had become a rarity for him.

—unless it was with you.

—even before opening the brown paper bag, clark knew it was going to be delicious.

—you always remembered what ingredients he liked and disliked since the first time you had lunch with him.

—clark smiled to himself as he ate the meal you didn't have to prepare for him in big bites.

—and then laughed when you watched in amazement and mirrored him like a parrot with messy bites.

—somehow, the thought of cared for was more filling than the actual meal.

—in moments where clark suddenly felt guilt for liking you as more than a friend, he sat silently, staring blankly ahead, with the tissue crumpled in his hands.

—and you sat beside him on the bench, compelled by his silence, while the birds watched from their home of oak and birch.

—it had been happening more frequently: clark's sudden mood shift. no matter how much he tried to deny it, how much he attempted to pacify your silent worries with his handsome smile, it was clear that something was bothering him.

—at first, you tried to break him with a joke.

—"geez, was my sandwich that bad?! i guess i shouldn't have used that expired mustard..."

—you've studied clark enough to anticipate a half-hearted chuckle from him; weak, but still had the intention to please. to masquerade his thoughts.

—instead, the birds chirped in his absence, and your frown only deepened as clark maintained a fixed gaze to the pavement.

—"clark?" you nudged him once on the arm, and he immediately dropped his head in between his legs with a heavy sigh.

—"what's wrong?"

—"there'ssomethingigottatellyou..." he muttered into the crook of his elbow, and your brows knitted together in worry, despite your amusement at the fact that he was behaving similarly to a puppy throwing a tantrum.

—"huh? didn't quite catch that when your mouth is full of linen." you gently nudged him once more to vacant the space between his legs, then another with a gentler squeeze to his arm when he doesn't.

—"clark, come on. talk to me." you squeezed harder to the sound of his groans. "people are staring—"

—then another squeeze.

—"there's something..."

—and another.

—"i gotta tell you..."

—and before you could alert him once more, clark returned the pressure into your own palm when he suddenly took your hand into his, and held it as if it was a pirate's lost treasure.

—the warmth of your skin compelled him to sit back up, but he refused to look at you. instead, he gazed every perimeter that didn't involve your eyes.

—the birds again, the sky, the trees, anything to drown out the sight of potential rejection.

—but how you wished he would turn to you right now, because you smiled. wide enough to sting the apple of your cheeks, and as much as you wanted to yell out his name for him to do so, you wanted to let clark do it for himself.

—to take upon the challenge of potentially meeting failure or success.

—heat crept onto his cheeks as he stared at a couple who were charmed by chubby ducks floating on the nearby lake. for a brief moment, he could see you two walking hand-in-hand, while the other free hand threw feed at the eager ducks.

—he was lost in his imagination. a blink turned into a dream, and a dream turned into a desperate paradise.

—it wasn't until the trail of your hand that looped your fingers into his, tightly sharing the warmth of anxiousness with a sticky clamp, that clark opened his eyes again and finally turned to you.

—wet eyes and shaking blues, they told a story that you didn't need to read into.

—silence filled the space between the two of you, then groaned in annoyance when you scooted closer until your knee was pressed to clark's. you folded his hand into yours, still clutching onto him tightly, and laid the joined affection on your lap.

—"i like you too, smallville." your thumb ran several laps over his knuckles to calm the tremors clark had possessed.

—he watched, open-mouthed as if he was about to respond, but the shock trapped the remainder of his words within his throat.

—you lounged back and squinted at the radiance of the sun, the brights of the sky.

—"(m/n)..."

—the sunlight faded into the background as the beauty of your best friend came into frame once again. he absorbed all the color and light of the world until your focus was on him.

—"i really like you."

—the sigh on his lips told a different tale compared to the previous exhales. it curled his lips upwards and finally pacified the shakes that had been bothering clark for months.

—when he pressed his palm back into yours, folding his fingers over your own, you braced for impact as you felt the electrical current from the first day you met him return in stronger pulses. it nipped at your skin, then at clark's, in its desperate escape.

—but clark held tighter, as did you, until the shockwaves melted in his skin, into his veins, then into his blood, and became one with the victorious cheer of his heart.

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virgosimagination · 1 year

Text

Things I Have Manifested Using the Law of Assumption

Desired face. I wanted to look like a mixture of Dua Lipa and Bella Hadid. This was my first "major" manifestation, and it took me about two months. At first, I affirmed and persisted, but I was doing so from a state of lack. Once I switched to embodying the state where I had my desired face, it manifested in a little over a week. Before I fell asleep at night, I would imagine myself waking up and looking in the mirror to see my desired face. I would do this a few times in order to feel the wish fulfilled, and then I would allow myself to daydream about other things until I fell asleep.

Desired body. After I manifested my desired face, I wanted my desired body to go along with it. I wanted to be 5'11 with long legs, about 10 lbs. lighter, and smaller breasts. I basically wanted a supermodel's body. I embodied the state of having my desired body for a few days, and then woke up one day about five inches taller. I kept banging my head on things! Lol

My desired apartment. I really wanted to move out of my parent's house. This one was a bit harder for me, because I was faced with reminders regularly that I didn't live on my own. It was hard for me to ignore my 3D fully at first. I was able to ignore some parts of my 3D, but other parts were harder. After meditating on it one night, I realized what I was "doing wrong" was that I wasn't fully living in my 4D, as I was allowing myself to be distracted by negative aspects of living with my family. Finally, I remembered Neville's story of when he manifested getting honorably discharged from the military. He said that night, he fell asleep imagining that he was in his bed back home. I did this for three nights: I imagined, when I was falling asleep at night, that I was in my new bed in my new apartment. I felt the cold air (my parents kept the heat high), I heard the city noises outside of my window. On the fourth morning, I woke up in my desired apartment.

My SP. My SP was a guy who was in one of my classes at university. We had never talked before, but we sat a few seats from one another in class. I embodied the state of being in a relationship with him. I stopped embodying the state of being single, the state of having a crush, and the state of being lonely. Every night, I imagined him falling asleep in bed next to me. It took me three days of embodying my new state for him to ask for my number. We went on a date and it went swimmingly. We have now been officially together for four months. We just spent a lovely Valentine's Day together!

These are my "biggest" manifestations. I got them all by applying states. My biggest tip is for to ignore your 3D, because as long as you are focused on having your desire already in your 4D, it has no choice but to manifest. Everything comes from imagination!

#success stories #law of assumption #loa advice #loa manifestation #loassumption #loa #manifesation #manifest #master manifestor #success story #neville goddard

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lovebugism · 9 months

Note

What about Eddie with shy!reader who still gets shy & flustered when he compliments/praises her even after being together for months now 🥺

hi love! this is such a sweet lil scenario! thanks sm for your request!! — the one where eddie is super good at making you feel pretty (but only because you make it so easy)

bug's summer fic fest ♡

“Does this look okay?” you ask for the hundredth time. Maybe millionth.

Eddie doesn’t shrug you off, though. He never does — not even when you’ve repeated the same question to him a thousand times.

The boy eyes your outfit like he’s really analyzing it, just like you wanted him to. In its fourth iteration, it looks only slightly different than the one before it, but he’ll take any opportunity to look at you that comes his way.

Most of the time, you can’t stand it when he stares at you for too long. Now he can do it all he wants because you’re asking him to. He feels a little like the luckiest guy on the planet.

“The skirt’s really pretty,” Eddie affirms with a nod. He’d argue that you’ve looked pretty in everything you’ve shown him, but he knows that’s not the answer you’re looking for. “I think I like it better than the jeans, actually.”

Even though you could wear almost anything and drive him insane, nothing beats seeing you in skirts. Something about your legs has always worked him wild — maybe because you keep them covered so often.

It isn’t every day he gets to see you in these shorter bottoms. Those are only reserved for real special occasions. And, for some strange reason, you’ve decided that’s what Steve’s party is.

You look over your shoulder at the boy sprawled out on the edge of your bed. His wild hair and all black get-up looks much more jarring than usual against your baby pink comforter.

He’s dreadfully out of place in your girlish bedroom. You never want him to leave.

“You think so?” you wonder aloud, toying nervously with the hem of your white skater skirt. It’s not super short, stopping just below mid-thigh, but you’re nervous that it might be anyway.

Eddie scoffs like the answer’s obvious. “Totally. You look killer, babe. I’m gonna have to walk behind you all night to keep everyone from staring at you.”

Your nose scrunches at the crude compliment. Sometimes you wonder if Eddie thinks you’re prettier than you really are — like one of those funky carnival mirrors, but with the opposite effect.

He’s under some sort of spell, you figure. He must be.

You don’t deserve to be loved on as much as he loves on you.

“I’m being serious, Eds,” you argue halfheartedly as you turn back to the mirror. You tug at the bottom of your snug crop top when a sliver of your stomach starts to show.

The bed squeaks under his weight when he rises from his lounged position. He laughs and it sounds like sunshine. “I am being serious. You look amazing.”

“You always think I look amazing,” you murmur, flashing him a weak glare from beneath your lashes through the mirror. You’re not as annoyed as you seem. Embarrassed and a little undeserving, sure — but not annoyed.

“How’s that my fault?” Eddie scoffs with a chuckle. His chunky sneakers thud, thud, thud against your carpeted floor as he walks over to you. “If you didn’t look so pretty all the time, I wouldn’t have to compliment you, so… Checkmate.”

“Stop it…” you protest, mousy and only half-joking.

Eddie’s almost certain that none of his words ever get through to you. Every time he tells you something nice, you think he’s joking. He doesn’t know if it’s because he’s never been serious about anything in his life — other than you, of course — or if you don’t think you’re worthy of praise.

Maybe it’s a healthy mixture of both.

It breaks his heart all the same.

Your back meets his chest when he stands behind you. His deep, musky cologne engulfs you like a fuzzy blanket. His ringed fingers are warm as they splay along your hips.

Even when he’s barely touching you, he makes you feel so held.

“I mean it,” Eddie assures. His voice is soft, quiet, and serious — a stern sort of coo. His button-eyed gaze pierces your own as he stares at you in the mirror. He squeezes softly at your sides. “You look really pretty, babe. I think you should go with this one.”

Grateful that the attention is less on you and more on your outfit, you get less sheepish. “You don’t think it’s too much for a party?”

“No,” he answers with a curt shake of his wild head. “’S perfect. Honestly.”

You huff and lean back against him — not relaxed, exactly, just wanting to feel more of him. Eddie’s chin rests on your shoulder as your arms cross over your stomach. You look almost like you’re hugging yourself.

“Do you think they’ll like me?” you wonder, so quietly it sounds like a bunch of mumbles.

Eddie’s practically developed super-hearing after being with you for so long.

He scoffs in response. “They’re gonna love you,” he promises, brows raised beneath his frizzy bangs. A pink smile tugs at his mouth. “Like, seriously. They’re gonna be obsessed with you. Henderson, especially. Him and Robin are gonna talk your ear off the whole night.”

You’re smiling before you realize it.

You love that he can imagine you so perfectly meshing with all the people he cares about. Your heart swells at the thought. You love fitting into his world.

“Really?”

“Really,” he nods with a scrunched nose. “And then I’m gonna have to share you with them and… You know what? Maybe this is a terrible idea.”

You exhale sharply through your nose in place of a laugh. You purse your lips to the side when you feel like you’re smiling too big. It takes over your whole mouth anyway.

Eddie watches your gaze duck towards the floor where his dirty sneakers stand alongside your shiny Mary Janes. He smiles at you like he’s just heard his favorite song on the radio — like he’s watching happiness incarnate and holding her in his hands.

“There it is,” he singsongs quietly. “I’ve been waiting to see you smile all night.”

Your face heats like a stove eye. You think you might actually burn him if he touched your cheeks just now.

“Stop,” you whine as if he’s hurt you in some way. You writhe in his arms to escape his grip, but he only holds you tighter.

“Sorry, babe,” Eddie apologizes, mostly insincere. He tucks his face into your shoulder and mumbles his words there. “You can’t escape me.”

He sprinkles tiny kisses on your neck. You raise your shoulders, not because you want him to stop, but because the softness of his touch tickles you there. You’d rather feel his lips against your own, anyway.

“You’re such a sap,” you tease as your head turns to peer up at him. The words leave your mouth so softly you might as well be telling him ‘I love you.’ In some ways, you are.

“I mean it, though,” he confesses. He seals his promise with a barely-there peck to the tip of your nose. His lips just barely brush your skin before he’s pulling away again. “You look pretty. Beautiful, even.”

You trap your smile between your teeth as you twist in his hold. Your arms stay pressed between your bodies while his arms embrace you wholly. “Beautiful, huh?” you echo with a sarcastic lilt.

“Uh-huh. Beautiful with a capital B.”

Despite how desperately you want to look away from his intent gaze — so full of love that they’re twinkling with it — you force yourself to keep his stare. “Well, I think you’re Beautiful with a capital B, too, Eds…”

Eddie beams at you, taking your compliment in stride. You wish you could do that, too.

“Thank you, baby,” he hums before smacking a kiss to your waiting mouth. He tastes like nicotine and spearmint and strawberry chapstick.

It’s over far quicker than you’d like it to be. He doesn’t seem as grieved by it as you do.

“Alright, babe. Let’s go,” he announces with a boyish grin when he parts from you. You smile as he heads out of your bedroom, picking up the purse on your desk as he goes. He knew you’d forget it otherwise.

His voice comes muffled from the hallway, “Your chariot awaits!”

#published by bug #eddie munson x reader #stranger things x reader #eddie munson x y/n #eddie munson x you #eddie munson fic #eddie munson fanfiction #stranger things imagine #stranger things fanfic #stranger things fanfiction #stranger things #eddie munson #eddie munson imagine #eddie munson fluff #st drabbles #eddie spaghetti drabble #bug's summer fic fest!

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personasintro · 7 months

Text

Mutual Help | #03

𝐛𝐚𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐫 𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐝𝐢𝐭: @kithtaehyung

↳ 𝐬𝐲𝐧𝐨𝐩𝐬𝐢𝐬; in order for you to pretend to be his girlfriend, he helps you with your sexual desires ⏤ he calls it mutual help

⇢ 𝐩𝐚𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠: jungkook x reader

⇢ 𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐫𝐞: fake dating au, fluff, angst, smut, slow burn

⇢ 𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬: explicit language

⇢ 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐝 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭: 2.1k+

⇠ 𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐯. | 𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐱 | 𝐧𝐞𝐱𝐭 ⇢

One week later and you're walking into the club, hands in hands, trying to act like a real couple. It feels weird, although it's not the first time you're holding Jungkook's hand. But this time, it's a different concept and his fingers are tightly laced with yours. On the other hand, it does feel nice. His hand is way bigger than yours, and it's almost ridiculous how much comfort and security you feel.

It happened too fast. You haven't got the chance to talk about basic rules or how this is going to work. But apparently, Mr. Mutual Help thought it's a great way to show yourselves off when Jimin asked you both to go clubbing. One thing is sure – they can't know your relationship is fake. Of course, at first you were against it. You can't lie to Jimin and Taehyung, they're your friends. Although, Jungkook made sure you knew he doesn't want to lie to them either, but it's the only way to make sure it's believable. Words spread fast, and it doesn't matter if you trust that person. It can slip out accidentally and the whole plan would be useless.

"It's only for a month. We'll say we just wanted to try it and that there was no spark." he told you before you got out of the cab, lacing your fingers together that made you jump in shock.

"Stop jumping whenever I touch you. This has to be believable." he even scolded you.

That audacity.

You've never liked clubs that much. Besides the smell and proximity of sweaty and horny bodies, you never got the thrill behind it either. There's no toilet paper in the restroom which is always annoying, especially when you spend the rest of the night drinking and having to use the restroom all the time. But this is your chance to show yourselves, as a couple.

Jungkook leads you through the crowd, holding your hand even more tightly while he glances over his shoulders at you from time to time. Two minutes later, he manages to find Jimin sitting in a booth with Taehyung and some woman you've never seen before.

"Hey guys!" Taehyung waves excitedly, his cheeks slightly flashed showing off his boxy grin that makes you grin at him.

"Finally!" Jimin yells over the rap music, waving at you before his eyes drop to your locked hands. It's only a matter of a split second, before he smiles back at you as the both of you greet them properly.

"Oh, this is Hattie," Jimin says, introducing the woman with beautiful dark skin and curly hair that's sitting beside him. "We just met her before you guys got here, she's visiting for a few days." he explains, letting her introduce herself more properly.

As you're sitting down, Taehyung goes to order some drinks while you listen to her. She seems to be super nice, explaining how this is her fourth time visiting Seoul before Jimin starts to talk about Busan, his hometown, trying to persuade her how she should visit it as well. You talk back and forth for a couple of minutes, or at least try to through the loud music, before Taehyung is back and you're sipping on your drink.

There's slightly more alcohol in it than you'd appreciate, but you don't mind it that much.

Jungkook's hand is outstretched behind you, something you haven't noticed, until he taps your shoulder causing you to glance at him. He's sitting so damn close that you can smell his cologne that you've always loved and see his soft skin illuminating in the gloom lightening.

"I don't think we're doing a good job." he leans, lips brushing against your ear as you hear his husky voice causing you to almost shiver.

"What do you mean?"

You know exactly what he means by that. You've been in the club for a few minutes, but nobody can tell that you're dating together. Fake dating, of course.

"I think," he says, fingers brushing over your exposed shoulder since your denim jacket slipped down. "You know exactly what I mean." he breathes into your ear, your eyes anxiously dancing between your friends.

Your breath gets caught in your throat when you notice Jimin's eyes on you, watching how close Jungkook is. From his angle, it might look like Jungkook is kissing your neck or whispering sweet things into your ear. You shudder, staring with widened eyes when Jungkook pulls away, satisfied smirk adoring his lips. And then you get it.

He knew Jimin was watching. He wanted him to watch.

"You're a better actor than I thought." you comment, making sure he's the only one who can hear you.

"You've no idea." he smirks, licking his lips before he reaches for his drink.

Jeon Jungkook is going to be the death of you.

It seems like Jungkook has it all planned out to the details. Considering Hoseok, Jungkook's and Kiko's mutual friend that introduced them to each other, is here as well. He walks up to the booth you're all sitting in, grinning at everyone with red cheeks that mimic Taehyung's. He's not drunk though, speaking perfectly fine as he's catching up with everyone. You almost forgot how social and happy he is all the time.

He talks with all of you for a few more minutes, before he checks the time on his watch causing his eyes to slightly widen.

"It was so good to see all of you again! But I'm supposed to bring drinks to friends I came here with, they're probably gonna kill me." he explains, glancing at everyone.

"Oh, with whom are you here with?" Taehyung asks cheerfully, back straightening in an almost cheerful manner of the thought of meeting new people. You know it's just a pure curiosity.

Hoseok says names you don't know, but when Jimin lets out an occasional Ah, you know he must know some of those people. It's that moment when Kiko's name leaves Hoseok's mouth, his own eyes cautiously glancing at Jungkook who seems to look unbothered. Although, you feel his shoulder tense against you. Still, he doesn't react to it verbally, calmly sipping his drink as Hoseok excuses himself.

"You wanna dance?" Jungkook asks loudly, leaning into you while you can smell vodka on his breath. It's not strong, nor uncomfortable. It's very faint.

"I can't dance," you almost whine, protesting at the idea of you dancing.

You're confident in a lot of things, but unfortunately, dancing between a bunch of bodies that can dance way better than you, is not one of them.

"I need more booze for that." you tell him, knowing he's aware of your drunken phase.

You don't care about dancing, as long as you're drunk enough not to care. It barely happens, but still.

"Oh, come on. I'll lead you." he insists, already standing up as he outstretches his arm for you.

Well, you can't say no now. So with a roll off your eyes and telling him how annoying he is, your hand clasps into his before he leads you into the crowd. Luckily, he stays at the edge, so no one's pushing into you as he grabs your hips. Your arms automatically wrap around his neck, trying to follow the way his hips move before he presses you closer. Your chests bump against each other, causing you to let out a surprised gasp while you're looking into Jungkook's eyes. He's grinning at you, leading your hips with his hands.

"You knew she's here?" you ask him, having an urge to say something.

You don't have to say her name, he knows exactly who you're talking about.

A soft sigh leaves his mouth, almost unnoticeable but you still notice it, before he nods curtly. "Yeah, Hoseok texted me over the week and he might have mentioned he's gonna be here tonight. Usually, where Hoseok is, Kiko is there as well." he explains.

For some reason, you just wished he'd tell you. You'd appreciate to be included in his small plans because now, you just feel like a figure in his own game. You're supposed to be in this together, whilst you're completely clueless about what's going on. It makes you more annoyed than it should have.

"Are you mad?" he asks, eyes watching you with worry, noticing the sour look on your face.

"I just wished you'd tell me, that's all." you tell him, voice almost inaudible because of the loud music that makes your whole body vibrate with each bass.

He turns you around, quickly catching you when you almost stumble from the sudden movement, your back pressed against his firm chest. Your naked back brushed against the material of his black dress shirt, his silver necklace cold against your skin. He leans down, lips brushing against your ear once again while you're trying to distract yourself from the way his belt digs into your lower back.

"I'm sorry," he apologizes quietly, but still loud enough for you to hear him. "I'll tell you everything from now on."

With a quick nod, that's all he needed for him to relax, intensifying his dance moves as he rolls his body into yours. He makes it feel easy, leading your body as if you were some doll, while you brush against him. You don't think you've ever danced with him this hard, especially when his belt brushes against your ass every now and then. He turns you around, your forehead almost bumping into his chin, while your eyes meet right away.

"Hi," you blurt out, blinking at him as he grins at you.

"Hello," he tells you back, reaching for your denim jacket that managed to slip off your shoulders as he puts it right back, covering your skin. He cups your face, while his other hand is placed securely on your hip. "I think it's time for me to find out what kind of kisser you are."

Wait, what--

Before you can react in any way, his head dips down as his lips softly brush against your own. You almost flinch back, but he holds your face close to his, nose brushing against your cheek before he pokes your nose with it. It's cute and you'd almost giggle at the soft touches, but he presses his lips more firmly now, moving them much more eagerly and harder. You gasp, feeling him to lick your bottom lip. You can't even react, standing there in pure shock at the way he's kissing you because fuck, this man can kiss really good. You've never been kissed this way. So passionately and impatiently, yet with elegance and no imposition.

He takes your moment of surprise to invite himself, tongue slightly brushing against your own. It's not uncomfortable and he's not forcing his way inside, letting himself to test waters with you. He's back with kissing you, biting into your lower lip before he tugs it, eyes boring into yours. Your whole body feels hot, insides quivering with anticipation mixed with lust. But he pulls away, catching a breath which you do as well, noticing you held your breath this whole time.

"Sometimes it's good to dominate your partner," he tells you, causing you to blink at him in confusion before it clicks. He's giving you advice, doing his part of the deal. "And stop staring at me so shockingly. We're supposed to be dating." he jokes, brushing his dark locks out of his eyes, that are currently crinkles in amusement.

"How can I not? My best friend just kissed me out of nowhere!" you exclaim, realizing what has just happened.

Your best friend just made out with you and it left you breathless, and not just because your air was cut off for a minute.

"You better get used to it," he tells you with a grin, his body moving against your own again. "We're dating now." you hear him say, his eyes moving somewhere behind you.

The slight shock is switched with dark eyes on the same spot, causing you to subtly turn around. You don't see it at first, eyes following his line of vision before you notice Kiko standing just a few meters away from you, her eyes boring into Jungkook's before one of her friends catches her attention.

"I didn't know she was there." Jungkook tells you as soon as you turn back to him, and you almost laugh at his sudden distressed face. He's really being honest with everything right now.

"I mean... It's a good thing that she saw, right?"

He lets your words sink in, eyes flickering between yours before his lips curl into a satisfied smirk. "Yeah."He's not sure whether she saw you two kissing, but he could recognize her shocked eyes from miles away. Bingo.

#networkbangtan #ksmutclub #ficswithluv #btswritingcafe #bts smut #jungkook x reader #bts angst #bts fluff #bts au #jungkook fic #jungkook au #mutual help #personasintro

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tzyuki · 10 months

Text

— (07.16.23) LOVE 2 HATE ME

IN WHICH ✶ Y/n and Gunwook have a secret thing for each other. Except the two are extremely embarrassed to be seen with one another. Gunwook being the soccer star player, class president, student council vice president, and having awesome grades it was almost impossible for her to not see him as a competitor. They didn’t wanna ruin their reputations, how stubborn could they be?

genre 𓏸 ͘ ࣭⸰ park gunwook x f!reader, academic rivals, fluff, lowk a slowburn

warnings 𓏸 ͘ ࣭⸰ swearing, kms jokes, gunwook has his driver license fr fr, theres like an insane amount of usage of the words “scoffed” and “shrugged”. unwanted touch.

release date 𓏸 ͘ ࣭⸰ 07.16.23

word count 𓏸 ͘ ࣭⸰ 19.6k

perm taglist (open) 𓏸 ͘ ࣭⸰ @jinkyu @jangwonie @cwsana @luvyrin @amara-mars @ineedaherosavemeenow @mintydayeon @love-4-keum @kpopx-xlover @abdiitcryy @beepjeongie @ox1-lovesick @ja4hyvn @shinsou-rii @winkura @ddeonudepressions @tnyhees @wannabeyn @kpoprhia @svnghoonsonly

ej note 𓏸 ͘ ࣭⸰ ahhh finally i am posting this! i’ve been working on this for about over three months going back and fourth to it. reblogs, likes and feedback are appreciated, I hope you guys enjoy this!

Everything Park Gunwook could do Jeon Y/n could do better.

That’s what Jeon Y/n thought at least.

The two were equally as smart and equally as devoted to school, but the two were just too damn competitive and one of them had to be a winner.

Y/n was a recommended tutor for all struggling students, she had perfect attendance, won many school awards, and is studying many languages.

Park Gunwook is the class president, vice principal for the student council, soccer star player, also won many awards, and has outstanding grades.

But what bothered Y/n the most was the fact that he was ranked top of the class and she was right behind him.

She despised him and he despised her.

Gunwook liked the competition and the rush feeling he got whenever he and Y/n were pitted against each other. Whether it was in class, love confessions, being favorited, or literally anything else.

He just enjoyed winning over her and the look on her face every time she lost.

“Soccer is probably the most attractive sport.” Huening Bahiyyih said as she and Y/n were sitting on the field bleachers, watching the soccer game go on. “Hiyyih-ah, what has gotten into you. Clearly badminton is the most attractive sport.” Y/n scoffed.

“You’re only saying that because Park Gunwook plays soccer. As much as you hate him you can’t deny how cute he is.” Hiyyih tried to argue.

“Park Gunwook is my enemy.”

Y/n said, Hiyyih shrugging her shoulders and turning her attention back to the game. Park Gunwook walking off of the field to get a sip of water.

Y/n was watching him with an expression of hatred on her face. Gunwook saw her and waved, being awfully polite just to piss her off.

“Ugh, I despise him.” Y/n looked away and tried to find another player to pay attention to.

—

“Y/n,” Mr. Shin called out before she was able to leave class like her pears. “I need to talk to you. Don’t worry, nothing bad.” Y/n sheepishly smiled as she walked up to his desk.

“I need you to tutor another student, Kim Danbi from class 1-3. You’ll meet up tomorrow after school in the library.”

“Tomorrow?” Y/n hesitated to ask. “Can’t I do it this weekend or something?”

“Y/n, we already scheduled it for tomorrow. It’s the only time she is free and she really needs your help so it’s settled.”

“Ah, okay. If she really needs it then.” Y/n laughed nervously. “Have a good day.” She bowed before leaving.

Shocked to see Park Gunwook waiting outside by the door. “What.” She said as he stared at her for a little. “Nothing.” He said before walking into the class she had just left.

Y/n couldn’t do a tutoring session tomorrow. She hated how her teachers would just schedule sessions for her without even asking if she was free or not. But she loved how good it’ll look in her record.

Everyone knew Jeon Y/n’s life was boring, they had just assumed she was always free.

“Hiyyih,” Y/n approached the girl in the lunch line. “Can you do me a favor tomorrow?” She asked as food was put on her tray. “Is it difficult?” Hiyyih asked as the two walked down the room of the cafeteria to go to the table the two always sat at.

“No, I just need you to pick Hayun and watch her tomorrow. Mr. Shin scheduled a session for me again. I asked if we could reschedule but we couldn't.”

“Sure, I love hanging with Hayun.” Hiyyih agreed. “He seriously needs to stop scheduling sessions for you without letting you know.”

“I know, but I feel so bad if I don’t tutor them. And they’ll look so good on my record. I need to get a scholarship before Gunwook does.”

“What’s up with you and Gunwooks rivalry, it’s so silly.” Hiyyih laughed at the ridiculous words coming out of Y/n’s mouth.

“It shouldn’t matter who gets a scholarship first or who tops the class.”

“It matters to me.” Y/n slightly glared at her best friend. “We’ve been in a rivalry since middle school ever since he decided to steal Kim Dayeon from me.”

“Yah, this is all because you and Gunwook both liked Kim Dayeon at the same time?” Hiyyih chuckled at the thought. “He would laugh in my face whenever Dayeon would choose to do something with him.” Y/n sulked.

“It’s my middle school trauma and my revenge is being better at anything he does.”

“Last time I checked you’re absolutely shit at soccer.”

“Okay so I can learn, soccer can’t be that hard?” She shrugged her shoulders. “I can sign up for that school fundraiser game and beat him in a couple matches.”

“Well that’s surely a goal.” Hiyyih mumbled. “I have months to practice, the fundraiser isn’t till may.” Y/n said.

“Hi, sunbaenim.” A junior of the girls bowed and put down a carton of milk on Y/n’s plate. “Thank you for agreeing to tutor me today! I’m so sorry I couldn’t get you a second milk carton.” She turned to Hiyyih and apologetically shook her head.

“It’s okay, I don’t mind.” Hiyyih smiled at the girl. “It’s no problem, it’s what I do.” Y/n responded to her Junior.

“Thank you again!” Kim Danbi said before making her leave.

“Why do our juniors seem scared of you?” Hiyyih asked. “What do you mean?” Y/n slightly tilted her head in confusion. “I mean, it was hard to not notice the tension.”

“How?” Y/n didn’t notice any tension between the two.

“She was looking down the whole time and I saw her hesitating on coming up to us earlier in the corner of my eye.”

“I’m not sure, she’s probably just shy.”

—

Y/n was waiting in the library for Kim Danbi. She hoped this session went by quickly so she could go home and to take care of her little sister.

“Hi, Sunbaenim.” Kim Danbi sat down in the seat across from Y/n. “Hi.” Y/n smiled and started to pull out books from her bag.

“What topic do you need help with?” Y/n, Danbi pulling her pencil case out. “Just english.”

“Good, It’s one of my best subjects. Hopefully I can teach you quickly, if we need a few more sessions that’ll be fine. It’ll just cost 20 each session.”

“Alright.” Danbi smiled, ready for the session to start.

“Okay, what do you mainly need help on?”

“I have a book assignment due this week. I read the book but I’m having trouble writing an essay for it. I heard you were really good at writing essays and you were recommended by a lot of teachers so I wanted to ask for your input and to help me improve.”

“Alright, it shouldn't be too hard. What book were you assigned?”

“All the bright places.” Danbi pulled the book out and Y/n’s eyes shined a little. “I love that book.” Y/n smiled.

“I remember doing that assignment last year, do you have the same essay assignment or a different one?”

—

“Gunwook-ah, do you have to take so long?” Gyuvin complained as Gunwook was picking out a couple books he needed for an assignment.

“If you wanna go to practice soon you can.” Gunwook hummed. “I’m not forcing you to stay.”

“Are you sure? I don’t want to leave you here alone.”

“I’ll be fine.” Gunwook chuckled. “Alright, I’ll see you.” Gyuvin patted his back before leaving the library.

“This is decent, you just need to focus on the emotion. Right now it’s like you’re half-assing it. I don’t mean that in a rude way, I mean it in a way where when somebody else reads this they’ll feel like you didn’t get your point across. Put more detail into it.”

Y/n and Danbi could be seen from the gap of books on the bookshelf. Gunwook listened for a little while. Y/n was good at english and knew how to express emotions with words, he’ll give that to her.

“Hey, actually. Captain is mad right now, so I don’t want to get yelled at.” Gyuvin pops up from behind, startling Gunwook. “You scared me.” Gunwook’s hand rested on his heart from shock.

“What are you looking at?” Gyuvin peeked into the book gap. “Oh, Y/n? That’s a little creepy.”

“It was for a second, I’m not a creep.”

“Oh yeah? Remember the times she was tutoring and you would—“ Gyuvin was trying to rest his hand on the bookshelf but misplaced his hand, knocking down books making themselves seen.

“You make it seem like I did something bad, I just left her juice cartons in her basket without her knowing.” Gunwook whispered and frantically fixed the books.

“I need to check these books out, wait outside for me.” Gunwook gently shoved Gyuvin in the direction of the exit.

“Fine.” Gyuvin put his hands up in defense, almost tripping over a book. “And please stop making noise.” Gunwook sighed.

—

“Unnie! Did you know Hiyyih-Unnie likes mint choco, she’s just like you! You guys have terrible taste.” Hayun spoke as soon as Y/n walked into the house. “Yah, mint choco is amazing.” Y/n scoffed as she hung her bag up.

“Did you eat already?” Y/n asked as she opened a snack cabinet. “Yeah, Hiyyih-Unnie made me a snack.” Hayun and Hiyyih were sitting on top of the island.

“Promise me it was a real snack and not just ice cream.” She glared. “Yes it was.” Hayun groaned.

“Okay, I trust you. Did you call mom and dad today?”

Y/n’s parents were on business trips all the time. They worked as Retail buyers and were always traveling for two weeks twice a month.

“Yes, they asked where you were and I told them you had a tutoring session. They want you to take a break from tutoring. They think you need time to yourself.”

“Believe me, I think so too.” Y/n groaned.

—

Kim Dayeon and Jeon Y/n used to be close friends. Nothing bad happened for the two to stop being close friends, they just drifted apart. Y/n likes to blame Park Gunwook for it because he was like a knife that split a piece of bread in the middle of their friendship.

He had gained an interest in Kim Dayeon and Y/n didn’t like that, no one would. Especially since Y/n’s only friend was Dayeon at the time and she had a secret thing for her, who wouldn’t?

Everyone thought Kim Dayeon was cool, she played basketball in her free time, her parents ran a popular sushi restaurant, and she was class president for a year.

She was funny and nice to everyone. There was just nothing you could dislike Kim Dayeon for.

Park Gunwook made it his goal to get close to Kim Dayeon and to do that he had to hangout with her any chance he got and that was hard since Y/n was with her all the time.

He swears he didn’t mean to make them completely drift apart—only for a little. He found Y/n funny when she would get mad so he would tease her about Dayeon wanting to hang out with Gunwook and not her behind Dayeons back.

Park Gunwook honestly doesn’t dislike Y/n as much as people make it out to be. He thinks they would actually be good friends if they tried, but the two were just equally as competitive. Y/n still had a grudge on him and Gunwook’s life got more interesting once their little rivalry started.

Actually, once he did become closer to Kim Dayeon he realized his interest in her were just pure lies. He actually didn’t like the girl that much, he just thought she was cool and thought he had a crush on her.

But once Y/n was out of the picture it was odd. Y/n wasn’t there to complain, sulk and pull that pouty face to Kim Dayeon that he would see every friday when they argued on who should hang out with Dayeon.

Jeon Y/n completely stopped talking to Kim Dayeon. Yes, it is partially her fault that she and Kim Dayeon don’t talk since she had dropped her out of nowhere but she still blames Park Gunwook since he was the reason Kim Dayeon rarely had time for her.

If he was being completely honest he had a tiny tiny interest in Jeon Y/n. But it would be embarrassing for him to admit to anyone, especially since the two have a known rivalry and “hatred” for each other.

“I wonder how Y/n handles all those tutoring sessions, she has at least three a week.” Dayeon wondered.

Her and Gunwook were hanging out outside by the soccer field.

“I don’t know. She probably has some super ability to teach struggling kids who don’t give a damn about their grades.” Gunwook was kicking around a soccer ball as Dayeon watched.

“Are you gonna sign up for the soccer game fundraiser this year? You should do it.” Gunwook suggested. Dayeon has always said she’d sign up for them but she always ends up not.

“You just want to beat me in a game of soccer.” Dayeon chuckled. “Which is unfair, considering the fact that you are literally our school's star player.” Dayeon rolled her eyes.

“I heard Y/n’s signing up.” Dayeon heard this from a random girl in the bathroom. Everyone was intrigued by her and Gunwook’s rivalry.

“Y/n’s trying so you should try.”

“As if, that’ll be so awkward.” Dayeon sighed. “We haven’t talked in like five years. I wonder if she’s different from back then.”

“Five years is a lot. She probably has changed. I don’t know, I really only talk to her when I wanna tease her about my test score or piss her off.”

“You’re an ass. As if you didn’t torture her enough in middle school.”

“I am not.” Gunwook gasped. “Her reactions are just so funny. When her eyebrows come closer to each other, her eyes shine with hatred and her pouty face she’s had since middle school.”

“That’s a very detailed description for someone who supposedly hates her.” Dayeon had a slight expression of concern on her face, she was shocked at how detailed Gunwook got.

“It’s just very memorable.”

“Sure.” Dayeon just agreed. She knew Park Gunwook could never have pure hatred for anyone.

When she found out about Gunwook’s intentions she was not surprised to say the least. It was obvious. She missed Y/n a lot but she knew it’d be hard to rebuild that friendship. One thing about Y/n is that she knows her worth and knows what’s bad and what’s good for her.

The feeling of jealousy she got with Dayeon and Gunwook was bad. So she stopped talking to Dayeon.

Dayeon stayed close with Gunwook and eventually learned a lot of stuff about him. About how he’s such a big baby despite his intimidating appearance.

—

“Did you hear about that new guy today? I heard he’s cute.” Zhang Hao asked as soon as he sat down in his seat next to Y/n. “It’s only 7 in the morning, how could I have heard of him?” Y/n yawned. “Did you not get sleep?” Hao asked. “You know that’s bad for you, I don’t care about what you were studying for. Sleep and your health is more important!”

“I was not studying.” Y/n pouted. “I was making tutoring notes actually.”

“Even worse.” Zhang Hao was about to speak again but the teacher walked in with a student beside her. The new guy.

“Quiet please. We have a new student.” Ms. Nam said as she pointed to the boy next to her. “Introduce yourself please!” Ms. Nam said joyfully.

“Hi, I’m Ricky Shen and I just recently moved from China.”

“You can sit right behind Y/n and Hao! Please raise your hands!” Ms. Nam said pointing to their direction as the two raised their hands.

“Hi.” Ricky said to the two as he sat right behind Y/n. “What region are you from?” Hao turned around in his seat and asked. “Shanghai.”

“Cool, I’m from Fujian!” Hao smiled. “If you need any help or a "guide ", come to us. Or maybe just me, Y/n is always busy.”

“Oh, are you like the class president? That’s a busy role.” Ricky asked. “I’m not.” Y/n turned to face him. “Park Gunwook is the class president.” Y/n scanned the room to find him staring at her. “The one staring at us.” Y/n pointed out.

“Oh, I see. Why are you so busy then? If you don’t mind me asking.”

“I just study a lot.” Y/n laughed nervously. “She’s downplaying herself, Y/n’s ranked number two in this class and she has this really good reputation with teachers so they send all the struggling kids to her so she can tutor them. Now she spends three days a week tutoring and stays up late at night making notes for them.” Hao just spoke like he told a whole life story.

“It’s kinda messed up in a way.” He shrugged his shoulders. “You could’ve just said I tutor kids. I think you broke Ricky.”

Ricky was confused and lost. Not actually, it just seemed like he was. It was just a lot of information to process.

“Why don’t you say something about not wanting to tutor them? Or that you’re already busy?”

“Oh she does, but she has this rivalry with the class president and she wants to get a college scholarship before him and tutoring looks good on her record so she suffers the pain and sucks it up.”

“At this point you're telling my life story to him.”

“At least he’ll be filled in and not confused. You and Gunwook’s rivalry is kind of the best part of this school. It’s so funny when you guys fight.” Hao teased.

“You guys are crazy.” Ricky laughed, but it wasn’t a loud chaotic laugh like most people. It was a quiet one. Y/n liked that. Ricky seemed like a quiet observer.

“If you think we’re crazy just wait till you meet the soccer team.” Hao hummed. “Are they bad?” Ricky asked. “No, they’re just kinda chaotic—more crazy off the field, y’know? The other day Kim Gyuvin literally knocked books off of the shelves by accident because he misplaced his hand. I don’t know how he’s one of their best players when he's usually so clumsy.”

“And the other day they almost caused a ruckus at the vending machines because it was jammed and Han Yujin was so determined to get his snack he held the line up.”

“And one time Kim Jiwoong flirted his way to get free snacks from the snack bar.”

“That sounds like something I’d do.” Ricky laughed. “They usually only do it to Kim Jiwoong. If it happens to anyone else they’re either really lucky or just extremely attractive.” Y/n explained.

“I think they’ll let you get free snacks. You’re handsome enough.” Y/n looked at Ricky. She found him attractive. He seems sweet as well so that’s a plus. “Hook us up if it works.” She joked.

—

Park Gunwook was upset. Like angry, upset. He wished he had lost all his hearing in his left ear cause all he could hear all class was Y/n laughing with Zhang Hao and Ricky.

He didn’t think Ricky was that funny, so why was Y/n laughing so hard.

“Why are you so upset? You don’t even like Y/n.” Dayeon asked. She was testing the waters, she wanted to know Gunwook’s response knowing in reality he does like the girl.

“Because—they were being distracting. She was laughing so much, they all were! What could’ve been so funny.” He made an excuse.

“I heard Ricky’s getting popular. I’ve heard he also plays basketball, maybe I’ll see him in the courtyard later. I’ll tell you if he’s funny.” Dayeon

“That’s not helpful. You laugh at anything, and since Ricky is mega attractive you’ll just laugh and giggle at everything.” Gunwook sighed. “Oh,” Dayeon laughed, “Are you just jealous that Ricky seems to be so funny and attractive that all the attention will be taken away from you.” Dayeon spoke.

More like the attention of Y/n would be taken from him although he never had it…

But he was also upset at the way she ignored him and didn’t even brag or flaunt her test score which was the best one in that class. The first thing she did was put it in her bag and walk away with Ricky.

“Why would I be upset that the attention isn’t on me?”

“Maybe because you’ve had the attention of others your whole life and this one time it isn’t so you’re upset. I don’t blame you, if I had gotten all the attention growing up and then suddenly someone took that away from me I’d be upset too.”

“Okay, way to take a dig at my heart.” Gunwook glared at Dayeon. “I’m okay with attention not being on me for a couple days.”

“Bullshit, it's a couple of hours not days.” Dayeon argued. “Besides, I heard Ricky’s nice, you’ll probably turn out to really like him.”

“We’ll see.”

—

“Hi,” Gunwook approached the lunch table Ricky was sitting at. Y/n, Hiyyih, and Hao were also sitting at the table. “I’m Park Gunwook, the class president. I didn’t get to introduce myself earlier.” Gunwook smiled as he held his hand out for a handshake.

“It’s okay, I’m Ricky.” Ricky smiled back and shook his hand. “Do you like it here? I hope Y/n hasn’t grown an attachment yet and sulks when someone else hangs out with you.” Gunwook jokes.

Ricky was confused.

“What’s your problem?” Y/n scoffed. “I’m just joking,” Gunwook said as he turned to Y/n. “Forget what I said.” He turned his head back to Ricky.

“I like it here, everyone’s welcoming.”

“That’s good. If you need anything I’m always here.” Gunwook said before walking back to his usual lunch table where his soccer team and more of his friends sat.

“What was that?” Dayeon asked. “Just introducing myself to Ricky.” Gunwook said. “Y/n looked mad. What did you say?” Taerae asked. “It’s nothing. I was just teasing her.”

“Give the girl a break.” Gyuvin suggested. “She already has so much on her plate with tutoring and her little sister, she does not need you teasing her.” He scolded Gunwook.

“We all know why Gunwook’s teasing her, he just wants her attention.” Dayeon spoke out. “Oh my god, are we still on this topic? I thought we were just joking?” Yujin gasped, the group had always joked about Gunwook and Y/n if they had been together.

“It’s still just a joke—it’s nothing.” Gunwook shushed at Dayeon. “Ignore what she said.”

“What are you guys doing after school?” Gunwook asked, trying to divert everyone’s attention to his question. “Well, we have practice and then after that I have my tutoring session.” Yujin answered.

“I’m free after practice.” Gyuvin said, and a couple of ‘Me too’s followed by.

“Dayeon?” Gunwook looked at the girl, in a questioning tone. “I’m free, what are we gonna do?”

“Let’s get something to eat.” Gunwook suggested. “Where to?”Gyuvin asked. “The usual convenience store, duh.” Gunwook scoffed. “Boring. Get money, stop being broke.” Taerae groaned.

“Unless you want to pay for all of us at a nice restaurant then shhh.” Gunwook nodded his head. “Yup. I can barely afford money for the vending machine.” Yujin agreed.

“Yujin, babes you can’t afford anything. You use your cuteness to get everything.” Dayeon called him out. “And I’m proud of it!” Yujin huffed.

—

“How was practice?” Dayeon asked as the group all walked into the convenience store they went to daily. “Hi, Yejun!” Dayeon said as the others waved to the cashier. “It’s like you guys live here, coming here everyday.” Yejun laughed to himself.

Yejun was a student that attended the same school as them, they didn’t have any classes with him but always saw him working at the store.

“It’s in our budget and just so good.” Gunwook placed his items on the counter and waited for the others to come to the front. “How are you?” Gunwook asked. “Good as always, it’s been a slow day.” Yejun sighed, “Did you guys just come back from practice?” He asked.

“Yeah,” Gunwook sighed. “Coach is getting tougher on us, I just hope we win our next game.”

“Hi.” Taerae dragged out as the rest of them placed their items on the counter. “Wow you guys are hungry.” Yejun said as he saw the amount of food on the counter.

“Coach is driving us crazy.” Yujin pouted. “He held us an hour later.” Yujin sulked. “Well, I can’t do much but wish you guys luck on your next game.” Yejun said.

“Oh—by the way, Y/n is here. Please don’t cause a ruckus, I don’t want to disturb the couple over there.”

“Got it.” Gunwook said as he grabbed his bag of his food. The group of friends went towards the seats they usually sat at. There was a couple sitting down a couple seats away from them as Yejun said, and then there was Y/n who was sitting down across from Gunwook’s eyesight. Her head propped up in the palm of her hand. There were books and papers scattered on the table, she was just staring down at the papers.

Y/n looked tired and drained. Gunwook grabbed a Choco Pie and walked over to her table. “Hi, you look tired.” Gunwook said as he dropped the snack on the table. Y/n slowly picked her head up. “It’s because I am.” Y/n rolled her eyes. “What is this?” Y/n asked, picking the snack up.

“A Choco Pie, duh.” Gunwook rolled his eyes. “I know what a Choco Pie—why are you giving me this?”

“You look like you need it.” Gunwook admitted. “Thanks…people have just been coming to get tutored consistently.” Y/n sighed. “It’s so tiring, like I have a life too.”

“Jeon Y/n having a life, something I’d never imagine.” Gunwook chuckled, Y/n looked up and stared at him. Gunwook could see that she hasn’t been in the joking mood due to the lack of comebacks towards him. “Uh—just ask to cancel them or ask for just one student.” Gunwook coughed, clearing his throat.

“You don’t think I’ve tried? Mr. Shin especially keeps sending his students to me for tutoring sessions. It’s so stupid and tiring, at this point I’d rather start selling my notes.” Y/n rambled on and on.

“I could help you.”

“Really?” Y/n’s body jolted up, she was now sitting with a good posture.

“No, I just wanted to tease you.” Gunwook grinned. “I’m also very busy.”

Y/n groaned and quickly shoved all her papers and books into her bag. While she was storming out books and pages fell out but she embarrassingly ran back in with pink rosy cheeks as she picked up her stuff.

—

Y/n was seen sleeping and slacking off in class recently. She had tutor sessions on top of tutor sessions every hour of the week. She could never catch a break.

The bell rang. “Have a good lunch.” Mr. Shin said. Y/n got up a little later than everyone else, shoving her books into her bag. “Y/n, I need to speak with you.” Mr. Shin spoke out, making her stop in her tracks.

Y/n closed her eyes and prayed she wouldn’t get into much trouble. “Yes?” She slowly turned around. “What’s wrong? You’re slacking, you barely passed this test.” Mr. Shin placed her graded test on his table.

“Nothings wrong…,” Y/n tried to find the right words. “Don’t lie to me, Y/n.” Mr. Shin asked firmly. “It’s nothing really—I’m just tired. I’ve been doing a lot.”

“You need to learn how to manage your schedule. Make some time for sleep and studies. No time for fun.” He scolded her. “I’d have time if I didn’t have so many tutoring sessions.” Y/n muttered under her breath. She was honestly hoping he’d hear her.

“Jeon Y/n-ah. Are you talking back? Say what you said out loud.”

“I said, I’d have time if I didn’t have so many tutoring sessions.” Y/n spoke proudly. “Y/n-ah, you tutor because it’ll look good on your applications. You asked me to send students that needed help to you. If you keep this up—.” He picked up her low test score and waved it around, “You’ll never get accepted.”

“Get yourself together, you’re a great and smart student. Don’t waste it.”

Y/n would be lying if she said she was fearless, because she’s not. The cold and confident persona she put out was mostly just an act.

Jeon Y/n was confident and did have a cold personality. She was confident in her ability to stay on top of the school's ranks and almost always had a cold and moody expression on her face.

But she wasn’t just all that. She had fears like everyone else. She feared not being accepted into a good school, she feared failing, she feared disappointing others, most of all she feared not being on top. She wanted to be the best, second place was not enough. Which was the reason her stupid rivalry with Park Gunwook lasted this long.

Park Gunwook didn’t mean to listen to their conversation, he had left his notebook in the room and needed to get it. Y/n and Mr. Shin just so happened to still be in there. He could’ve left but he was way too intrigued once he heard Shin yell at Y/n.

“What the hell!” Y/n jumped as she was met with Park Gunwooks face. “Why are you always here to witness bad moments?” Y/n groaned and stormed off.

“Y/n—wait.” Gunwook grabbed the fabric of her sweater, making her lose her balance a little. “Let me help you tutor.” He said with no hesitation. “Funny. I’m not falling for it again.”

“No seriously, let me help.”

“I don’t want your pity.” Y/n walked off before Gunwook could say another word.

Gunwook sighed.

—

“Hi, Y/n-sunbaenim.” Y/n’s junior bowed. “Hi. Are you ready for today?” Y/n asked. “Yes, I am! I think I’m starting to understand it better!”

“That’s good.” Y/n said, her attention turning to something else. One of the juniors she tutors just walked into the library. “Hyunki, what are you doing here? Our session is tomorrow.” Y/n told the girl as she sat down a seat away from her.

“Oh, Mr. Shin assigned me a new tutor!”

“Oh, is something wrong with my tutoring? Do you know who it is?” Y/n asked, she wondered why Shin suddenly decided to switch Hyunki’s tutor.

“There’s nothing wrong, I honestly don’t know why he switched my tutors. And no, I’m not sure who I got switched to.” Hyunki nodded her head. “I just hope he's good!”

“He?” There were currently no males who tutored at the school, it was all females who volunteered until now. “Yeah, it’s a guy.” Hyunki confirmed. “Oh, Okay. Then he must’ve just signed up to be a tutor.”

“Hi!” Park Gunwook said enthusiastically as he approached the table. “S-sunbaenim.” Hyunki stood up so fast she almost got whiplash. She bowed to him, bowing pretty low to hide her rosy cheeks. Most juniors admired Park Gunwook and thought he was handsome. Hyunki was one of those juniors.

“What are you doing here?” Y/n asked, her eyebrow slightly raised. “I’m tutoring Hyunki!” Y/n’s jaw almost dropped.

“You’re tutoring now? Can’t you just let me have my own thing.” Y/n groaned. “No.” Gunwook chuckled and had a teasing smile on his face.

Gunwook was helping Y/n without Y/n knowing he was helping her. She had just thought it was another attempt at trying to one up her.

—

“Hao, you won’t believe it.” Y/n said as soon as Hao picked the phone up. “Oh my god, really?!” Hao sarcastically gasped. “What happened?” He asked seriously now. “Gunwook started tutoring today. He’s literally coming for my neck. Especially since he saw my argument with Shin about it.”

“First he steals Dayeon, my top spot, and now my whole life!” Y/n said dramatically. “Your whole life?” Hao questioned. “Tutoring takes up all my time, it might as well be my life!”

“You’re overreacting. It’s not like he’ll steal your scholarship.”

“Why would you say that?” Y/n scoffed. “I’m being serious. Gunwook might be an ass to you but he wouldn’t purposely steal your scholarship.”

“Gunwook’s not that bad. He just teases a lot, especially you. He was definitely worse in middle school.” Hao huffed. “But he’s better now. Remember that short period of time where random juice boxes would show up in your bike basket after you tutored?”

“Yeah, what about it?” Y/n was wondering where Hao’s statement was going. “It was Gunwook doing it. I caught him one day. And then remember when it stopped? He probably got scared of getting caught.”

“That was him? Oh my god…no wonder the juices tasted so good! It was probably some expensive ass juice.” Y/n scoffed. “I can’t believe him. He’s so confusing, he teases me all the time but pulls this?”

“I think he actually doesn’t dislike you at all. I mean—he did start tutoring to help you.”

“To help me? That’s crazy, Hao. Why would it be helping me?” Y/n exclaimed, she was pacing around her room now. “Because you said that he always shows up at bad times, like when you and Shin are arguing. He for sure heard your complaints and wanted to help you without you knowing.”

“I mean, he did ask to help me but I said no.” Y/n thought for a second. “I thought he was just fucking with me.”

Hao scoffed. “God, your stupid rivalry is so pointless. You guys could be friends by now if you weren’t so stubborn.”

“Now, you’re blaming me?”

“Am I wrong?” Zhang Hao was not wrong at all. Y/n was stubborn, stupid stubborn. “You think everything is a competition and he just follows along with it looking for entertainment.”

“Even if he started tutoring not to help you and did it for himself you shouldn’t look at it as him trying to steal ‘your thing’. If he’s doing this to look better on applications, don’t be so hypocritical. Because you’re doing exactly that. You’re tutoring to look better on applications, are you not?”

Y/n sighed, “You’re right.” She really hated when Zhang Hao was right, and Zhang Hao is always right. She was glad he was there to bring her to her senses though, she appreciated it.

“I always am.” Hao teased, Y/n scoffed at this.

—

“Hi, Hiyyih.” Y/n said as the tall blonde approached her. “How was your grandparents' house?” Y/n asked. Hiyyih and her siblings spent the weekend at their grandparents house. “Fun, I ate well.”

“I bet you did.” Y/n chuckled. “I gotta go to the gym. Wanna come with?” Y/n shut her locker. “What for?”

“The soccer tournament, duh.” Y/n playfully rolled her eyes. “Oh—you were being serious about that.” Hiyyih’s eyes widened to surprise.

“Why would I lie about that?” Y/n asks seriously. “Because, last time anyone checked you are absolutely shit at soccer.” Hiyyih said with honesty. “If you're doing this simply because of your stupid rivalry with Park Gunwook then don’t do it.”

Y/n had been hearing that a lot recently. She even hears it from people she’s never talked to before.

“It’s not. It’ll look good on my applications. And besides, Jake is gonna help me out.” Y/n sighed.

“Jake? As in, puppy cute aussie jake?”

“Yes—puppy cute aussie jake—why do you call him that?” Y/n’s eyebrow furrowed.

“Because he’s like a cute puppy, and he’s australian.” Hiyyih shrugged her shoulders. “Jake is the only Jake at our school, who else would I be talking about?” Y/n shook her head.

“So—you’re still seriously doing this?” Hiyyih asked as they walked into the gym. A bit crowded from all the signups. “Yes, if Jake Sim said he’d teach me then I’m gonna accept.” Y/n whispered, not wanting anyone else to hear.

“He—he said that!” Hiyyih’s eyes widened. “Yes, Jake Sim would do anything to teach what he loves.” Y/n scoffed. “Oh god—is Kim Dayeon signing up.” Y/n wavered.

“She could be, or she could just be standing with Park Gunwook and Han Yujin.” Hiyyih put some serious thought into it. “Like I am with you.” She shrugged her shoulders. “We’ll see soon, c’mon.” Hiyyih dragged the two into a line.

Park Gunwook, Han Yujin, and Nishimura Riki always signed up for the fundraiser ever since it became a thing. You would think the whole soccer team would but that would just be a disadvantage.

Kim Jiwoong just had better things to do, Kim Gyuvin liked to watch the game rather than play in it once in a while, Jake Sim would actually help people practice since he wouldn’t sign up, Kim Hyunjin had better things to do like karaoke with her close friends, Lee Heeseung would rather do the basketball fundraiser than the soccer one, Hwang Intak also liked to watch rather than play more, Yang Jungwon would actually watch Heeseung play the basketball one, and Kim Sunwoo, the captain who’s in his last year was just far to competitive that he knew it was best not to sign up.

“Okay, Gunwook is taking a sheet of paper…and then Yujin…and now…”

“Okay you don’t have to narrate what’s happening.” Y/n interrupted her. “Okay, she isn’t signing up. You’re good!” Hiyyih gave her best friend a thumbs up.

“So, what team do you want to be on?” Hiyyih asked. There are four teams, red, blue, pink, and green. The sheet of paper they pick before signing up is the team they’ll get, then they’ll sign their name and grade onto the teams sheet.

“Whatever team Park Gunwook is not on.”

“Did Zhang Hao’s little speech not get through to you?” Hiyyih asked and Y/n groaned out loud. “He told you?” Y/n sighed. “Of course he did. Y/n, seriously the rivalry has to stop. What if you both end up getting into the same college and it lasts those four years as well? Your professors are not gonna put up with that shit.”

Y/n huffed. “I don’t know, I have to figure my own shit out first.”

“Hi.” Y/n said as it was her turn to pick up a small sheet of paper. “Red.” Y/n said as she turned her paper around to show Kim Hyunjin and Lee Heeseung. “Sign this sheet right here!” Hyunjin said as she handed Y/n the clipboard with the sign-up sheet.

Y/n scanned the paper to look for a specific name.

Kim MinJi | Grade 12

Moon JaeYun | Grade 12

Huh YunJin | Grade 12

Sim JaYoon/Yoon | Grade 12

Nishimura Riki/Ni-ki | Grade 11

Sohn YoungJae/Eric | Grade 12

Park GunWook | Grade 11

Kum JunHyeon | Grade 12

Naoi Rei | Grade 12

Hirota Riki/Maki | Grade 11

She wrote down her name and quietly sighed.

“Thank you so much.” Y/n smiled and placed the clipboard back down before walking off.

“So?” Hiyyih was waiting to know what made Y/n sigh. “We’re on the same team.” Y/n said bluntly. “I’ll have to be in his range of area for five hours a day for three weeks.”

—

“Hello, is everyone here? Looks like it.” Mrs. Jeo said as she quietly did a head count. “Perfect, all eleven of you are here!”

“I am Mrs. Jeo! I am the red team's coach and representative! Let’s have a safe and fun practice! Please grab a ball and pair up into four groups of two and one group of three!” Mrs. Jeo introduced herself.

Y/n was gonna walk over to Kim Minji and ask if she wanted to be partners but that was before she felt a tug on the sleeve of her shirt.

“Y/n, be my partner.” Park Gunwook said as the girl turned around. “Why?” Y/n asked, eyebrows furrowed. “Because I asked. And who wouldn’t want to be partners with the star player?” Gunwook gassed himself up.

“Me. I don’t want to.” Y/n scoffed.

“Too late. Everyone else already has a partner.” Gunwook hummed and gently grabbed her shoulders, turning the girl around to see everyone else paired up.

“Let’s grab a ball.” Gunwook gave her a taunting smile. “Oh! and these will be your partners for the three weeks! Pick someone you get along with!” Mrs. Jeo said cheerfully.

Everyone’s eyes went to Gunwook and Y/n. Gunwook who had a smile on his face and Y/n who had facepalmed.

“Kill me.” Y/n complained. “Not just yet!” Gunwook gently passed the ball to Y/n by kicking it.

“You don’t seem like a soccer girl? I remember hearing you don't do any sports actually.” Gunwook tried to make conversation with the girl as the two practiced simple passing.

“I’m not. I’m doing this for the hell of it.” Y/n excused. “For the hell of it or just to compete against me? Unfortunately we’re on the same team.” Gunwook teased.

“What made you think you could’ve beaten me anyway? No offense, but you don’t have any experience in soccer.”

“Jake Sim said he’d teach me.”

“Ah~The Jake Sim effect.” Gunwook laughed. “He always does this, instead of signing up he helps the students who absolutely suck at soccer.”

Y/n can’t even take offense to that because it’s true, she absolutely sucks at soccer.

“Tell you what, I’ll teach you if you tell Jake you don’t need to his help anymore.”

“And why would I do that?”

“Because I’m the star player, duh.” Gunwook rolled his eyes. “Yeah, but are you forgetting Jake Sim was a runner up for star player before you took the title?” Y/n reminded him.

“Yeah, but then again he isn’t star player, so.” Gunwook huffed. “Jake Hyung is good but c’mon.” Gunwook dragged the last word out.

“What do I get out of it?”

“Super awesome soccer skills, duh.”

“I could easily get that from Jake Sim.”

“Okay—then, super awesome soccer skills and more time with me.”

“More time with you? As if anyone would like that.” She scoffed. “Hyunki sure does.” Gunwook laughed. “Hyunki’s just got cute boys running in her mind, of course she’ll want to spend time with you.”

“Awh, you think I’m cute? You’re kind of cute too, Y/n.” Gunwook pinched her cheek. “You’re pushing it.” Y/n said sternly.

“Listen, I’m not so bad to be around. I’m sorry I gave you hell back in middle school and—the last three years.” He sheepishly chuckled. “Anyways, the point is that I’m only here to win so the money can go to the charity of the team's choice.”

“Just put some serious thought into it. I won’t force you to.”

—

Y/n put some serious thought into it. Maybe Gunwook coaching her could help them get along. But, would she really do that? No.

“Hi, Jake.” Y/n said as she walked up to the boy on the field. “Hi, Y/n. Are you ready?” He asked as he kicked the ball around and did a few tricks. “Okay, Showoff.” Y/n teased.

“What, you don’t wanna learn a few tricks?” Jake chuckled. “I only need to know the basics.” Y/n shrugged her shoulders.

“The basics? Please, anyone could teach you the basics. Why’d you ask me?”

“Because I know you would’ve said yes. And I know your teammates are busy doing other stuff.”

“I heard Gunwook offered to teach you, why didn’t you take the offer up.” Jake asked. “You know why.” Y/n squinted her eyes as the sun was in her way. “How’d you know anyway?” Y/n asked.

“Please, Park Gunwook and Jeon Y/n. You guys are practically a twitter hashtag trending every week.”

“I can’t stand Gunwook, why would I take his offer up if I can’t even stand him?” Y/n sighed. “Gunwook isn’t that bad. I understand you guys have a bad past but when you get to really know him he’s like a big baby.”

“Park Gunwook, a big baby?” Y/n laughed.

“You love exposing me, don’t you Hyung.” A voice was heard from behind. “Hi, Gunwookie.” Jake teased.

“Whatta’ doing here?” Jake asked. “I can’t watch you guys practice?” Gunwook responded. “Didn’t say that…just kind of…awkward…you’re just gonna watch?”

“I mean, yeah? Everyone’s busy so I’m just gonna watch you guys.” Gunwook shrugged his shoulders. “Help me teach Y/n.” Jake gestured to Gunwook to come closer. “You’re her partner anyway and on the same team.”

“I do end up teaching you after all.” Gunwook whispered as he walked past Y/n.

—

Instead of seeing Gunwook for five hours a day for the next three weeks it turned into six. It was gonna be a living hell for her.

She thought so at least.

The game was soon and they were almost three weeks into the practices plus Jake and Gunwook giving her extra help and it wasn’t so bad actually.

She started to see why people had been so obsessed over Park Gunwook. He was actually sweet and considerate. He would bring extra drinks for the three, towels to wipe sweat, and always brought an extra sweater just in case. He always offers it to Y/n when it gets colder later in the day.

She would be lying if she said that her heart didn’t beat twice as fast those couple of weeks they spent together. But she would never admit that publicly. It was too embarrassing for her and her reputation.

Gunwook pushed aside their rivalry and taught Y/n how to play soccer fairly without any arguments, or trying to start any.

“Y/n, how many times do I have to tell you. Kick harder. You’re not consistent with it.” Gunwook sighed. “I don’t care if you hit me.”

“Trust me I want to hit you.” Y/n groaned. “So why aren’t you doing so?” Gunwook scoffed. “If you get injured, our team is basically in jeopardy.” Y/n was reaching with this, there were plenty of decent Soccer players on their team.

“Please, like you’d even be able to injure me.”

“You’re really testing my patience, Park Gunwook.” Y/n stepped closer to the boy.

“Okay—that’s enough.” Jake pulled the two apart. He found it funny at first but had to stop before it got out of hand. “Take five.” Jake nervously laughed and pushed the two in the direction of the bleachers.

“You guys need to stop this shit. You can’t argue on the field during the game.” Jake scolded the two.

“We got it, Hyung.” Gunwook sighed. “Do you really? This shit has been going on for years, when is it gonna stop?” Jake rarely ever scolded the younger, and Gunwook hated it when he did.

“Yes, we do. We’ll try and get along.”

—

The two ‘got along’ you could say…?

They tried their best not to argue and stay civil with each other and it actually was kind of peaceful for a while.

It was the day of the games and Y/n’s heart was pounding with pressure and anxiety. Her leg shook up and down and her hands shaking and knuckles cracked consistently.

“You’ll do good. Don’t worry. Once you’re on the field you’ll get an adrenaline rush and do your best to keep up and win.” Gunwook assured the girl.

“How do you know that’ll happen?” Y/n asked. “We’re more alike than you think, Y/n.”

“We have the same desire to win and be the best. We get nervous and then a sudden adrenaline rush hits.”

Park Gunwook and Jeon Y/n had a lot more in common.

“Hi, Hyung! Hi, Y/n Noona.” Yujin said cheerfully as he skipped to the tent the red team was resting at.

“Hi, Yujinnie.” Gunwook ruffled the youngest hair. “Hi.” Y/n waved quietly.

“Did you see the lineup?” Yujin asked. “If you win against blue and I win against green we get to play a game against each other!”

“I did. Good luck, you should head back to your tent now. Games are starting soon!” Gunwook patted Yujin’s back.

“Good luck, Yujin.” Y/n said as well. “Thank you.” Yujin said with a big smile on his face.

Gunwook sighed. “I love that kid. A shame that he’ll lose.” Gunwook chuckled. “But he does have some rage on the field. Better watch out for him.” Gunwook warned Y/n.

“The real person you watch out for is Gyu Duho,” Ni-ki pointed out. “He plays dirty. When we had gym together he would break all the rules in the sports. He even sent a girl to the nurse’s office because he shoved her too roughly.”

“I heard he didn’t even apologize either.” Yunjin chimes in. “He’s a weirdo, and it’s drizzling so better be careful out there.”

The Pink and Green team match was up first.

It went smoothly and slid right by. It was a good match, Green (Yujin’s) team won.

Now it was time for the Red versus Blue match.

“Okay Red team! Huddle up before we go on the field!” Mrs Jeo clapped her hands and everyone huddled up.

“I want you all to do your best, have no worries and just have fun!” She exclaimed.

“Go! Go! Go!” She cheered as the team ran into the field.

“Y/n,” Gunwook said as the two were walking to their positions. “Just flow with it and don’t stress.” He patted her shoulder.

“Okay.” Y/n breathed out. “What if I do something horribly wrong and we lose?”

“I’ll bring the team to victory.” He shrugged his shoulders.

“Now we have the Red versus Blue! On the Red team they have Star Player Park Gunwook and Nishimura Riki of the soccer team! Do you think Red or Blue will win?” Danielle Marsh, the sports announcer said.

“Looks like Park Gunwook and Jeon Y/n are getting along? That’s a first.” Danielle’s little laugh could be heard on the mic.

“Is that Park Gunwook��s arm around Y/n’s shoulder? Looks like the two are getting close!”

“Let’s start the match!”

The start of the match went by smoothly as well. Y/n tried her best to keep up and actually didn’t do so bad. Y/n has only seen just a couple of clips of Gunwook on the field but actually being there next to him, playing the game with him, and passing the ball to him, felt different.

It was finally halftime and Y/n was so happy she survived the first half without being as bad as she expected herself to be.

“Y/n, you’re doing good. I don’t know why you were so worried.”

“This is all new to me.” Y/n gulped her water down. “Of course I’m nervous.” She huffed. “I understand why people are so obsessed with the star player now.” Y/n confessed.

“Yeah, and why’s that?” Gunwook smirked. “I can see your passion for soccer on the field. It’s—the realest version of you, y’know?”

Gunwook hesitated for a bit before nodding his head in agreement. “Yeah.”

—

The second half of the game went even smoother now that Y/n got the hang of it.

The Red team won against the Blue team and now the final match is happening soon.

She was nervous about this last match though, she’ll have to face Gyu Duho.

Going against Green was a little more difficult for Y/n. Especially since they had more experienced players.

“Guys, be careful out there. It’s raining a little harder now so the grass is gonna be slippery, Green has players who are more experienced and rough. Put your health first.” Mrs. Jeo patted all their backs before they ran to the field.

“Looks like we got Red and Green going against each other now! For the first time it looks like Park Gunwook and Han Yujin are going against each other! Will the rage of the youngest win or the star player pull through?!”

“Star Player, blah blah blah. All they talk about is Gunwook, does that not upset you?” Duho scoffed as he and Ni-ki were battling for the ball. “Why would it? Gunwook Hyung is good. They’re not lying.”

“Still, it doesn’t bother you that they never mention you or anyone else?”

“It doesn’t. Our team is good but he makes our team better. You’re not gonna get under my skin.” Ni-ki scoffed.

“Hyung!” Ni-ki shouted as he passed the ball to Gunwook.

Gunwook kicked the ball into the goal, scoring the first point.

“Park Gunwook scores the first point for team Red!”

“Hyung. Duho’s trying to get under our skin, watch out. I’ll try and let everyone know.” Ni-ki said quickly as he passed by Gunwook.

Y/n didn’t know what was happening but she could see Ni-ki spreading some sort of word.

“Y/n.” She felt her shoulder being touched. “Duho’s gonna try and get under your skin. Don’t fall for it.” Gunwook warned the girl. “What’s he gonna say?” She asked. “Probably some shit that’ll make you mad.”

“You’re doing good, don’t let him distract you.” Gunwook teased the girl by squeezing her right cheek. “Ugh.” Y/n wiped her cheek. “Be careful with the grass.” He said before running back.

It was like Y/n was cursed because right after that Gyu Duho and her were fighting for the ball.

“How does it feel to be Gunwook’s shadow? Always second while he’s first.” Duho chuckled. “He's a star player, you’re nothing. He’s top of class, your top two. He's the class president, and you're just the girl who lost to him.”

“He’s Kim Dayeon’s best friend and you used to be her best friend.”

Duho knew he struck a nerve, it was perfect timing for him to steal the ball and ‘accidentally’ kick the back of her leg making her slip.

Y/n didn’t move, it wasn’t like she was injured super bad she just needed to take a breather…on the grassy muddy ground.

“Looks like Jeon Y/n is down! Is she okay…do we need to get a medic? Omg.”

“We can’t tell if that was a foul or not. It could’ve been an accident.”

“Looks like she’s good! She’s up but I don’t think she’ll be able to continue, looks like she’s limping. Park Gunwook is running to the scene and…helping Y/n!? He’s got his arm around her shoulders helping her to the sidelines. I think this is the end of their rivalry.”

“Are you okay?” Gunwook asked in a panic tone. “I’m good, I think my ankles just sprained, I’ll be fine. Just—win the match and best Gyu Duho.”

“What’d he say to you?”

“Some shit that got under my skin.”

Yujin ran over to Duho. “Dude. What was that for? We play fair on the field.” Yujin scoffed. “Dude? Where’s your respect for your senior?”

“Respect? Respect my ass, bro.” Yujin scoffed before he ran to the sidelines to check on Y/n before the match began again.

“I’m so sorry about that, noona.” Yujin apologized frantically. “Don’t be sorry. It was Duho’s fault. He’s such an ass.”

“I can purposely be bad so you guys can win!? Or not pass the ball to him.” Yujin suggested. “Don’t do that, I want us to win fairly.” Gunwook said.

“Just play how you would usually play.”

—

Red team celebrated their win with pizza at a restaurant in the city.

“Gyu Duho sucks, like he can literally kiss my ass.” Y/n said out loud. “Y/n! Don’t speak so inappropriately.” Mrs. Jeo scolded the girl.

“But you are not wrong.” She muttered. “What he did tonight on the field was unfair and wrong! What he did to our Y/n should not have gone over everyone’s head!” Mrs. Jeo complained.

“Look at her.” Mrs. Jeo pointed to Y/n who was sitting with a straight face. “Oh—I’m like good actually, I can handle this pain, but thank you for the awesome speech.” Y/n nodded her head.

“Thank you, Y/n.” She put her hands on her chest like her heart was warmed. “Now excuse me, I have to go to the ladies room.”

“So like, what did he say to everyone on the field?” Huh Yunjin asked. “If he did—he was gonna say some shit to me but then I told him to shut up.”

“He was talking about Gunwook being the star player and how he overshines the soccer team but I said it didn’t bother me.” Ni-ki shrugged his shoulders. “Do I? I don’t mean too…” Gunwook asked and went quiet. “I mean—yeah but it’s good. Our team is good but you make it better. It’s not your fault you were gifted with awesome soccer skills.”

“I wasn’t gifted.” Gunwook awkwardly chuckled. “I just practiced a lot when I was younger.”

“Uh—what did he say to you Y/n? If you want to share it.” Gunwook made sure Y/n felt comfortable in the environment, knowing she rarely ever went out. “I’ll—I’ll tell you later. When I feel like it.”

—

Gunwook offered to give Y/n a ride and she accepted, who wouldn’t? It was cold out and Y/n could barely walk without a limp.

“About earlier, when I said I’ll tell you what Duho said to me.” Y/n broke the silence. “Yeah, what about it?” Gunwook’s head tilted slightly.

“Duho was comparing us. He asked how I felt about being in your shadow. He used every example he could, like how you’re ranked one and I’m ranked two, and how you’re a star player and I do nothing, how you’re class president and I was the girl that lost to you. The one that really hit a nerve was when he mentioned Kim Dayeon and how you’re her best friend now and I’m not.” Y/n wasn’t planning on telling him what he had said due to it actually being true.

“I tried to stop caring about what happened but I can’t. Especially since me and Dayeon used to be so close. To be honest, I had the fattest crush on her.” Y/n laughed out loud. “You did?” Gunwook gasped. “Was it not obvious?”

“I just thought you guys were really close and you didn’t want to lose her.” He shrugged his shoulders. “I’m sorry, again. For all that shit I did in middle school and for the other shit I did that may have hurt you.”

“You’re not a shadow of me. We’re both good at our own stuff. Like how you put so much time into tutoring others. I literally want to quit tutoring so bad right now.” He chuckled. “I don’t know how you deal with everyone. Hyunki literally keeps trying to flirt with me.”

Y/n scoffed. “Almost every one of my students is scared of me, I don’t know why.”

“Maybe it’s the straight face you’re pulling right now, it’s a little intimidating.” Gunwook waved his hand to her face.

“Can we settle this? I don’t want to have any more bad blood with you anymore.” Gunwook asked, looking at the girl as he stopped at a red light.

“Yes, oh my god I don’t know how long I could keep this stubbornness up. Like I’m so sick and tired of trying to one up you.” Y/n sighed. “I’ll admit it and say I just hated not being first and took that out on you, but after hearing—from literally everyone on how stupid our rivalry is I’m finally starting to see their point.”

“I never hated you Y/n. I liked to tease you back then because of how cute your little angry face was. It’s still cute now.” Gunwook confessed to the girl.

“Haha—Thanks.” She laughed awkwardly, she wasn’t used to compliments like this. Especially from someone she’s been feuding with for years.

—

Y/n and Gunwook didn’t talk during school, they would only wave to each other in the morning and that was it. They had settled their bad blood but that didn’t mean they were friends.

“So wait—you guys are cool now?” Hao asked. “Yeah, we settled the rivalry but we aren’t friends. It’s kind of embarrassing to me.”

“How is that embarrassing?” Hiyyih asked. “Because everyone knows how much I’ve slandered him over the years, I can’t be caught as a hypocrite!” Y/n spit out. “So now everyone will only think we wave to each other because he helped me on the field.”

“So, you guys are cool…but you guys aren’t friends? So you’re pretending like you guys didn’t have a heart to heart?” Ricky asked, confused with Y/n’s shenanigans as always.

“Yes! Exactly that!”

“And why again?” Ricky asked again. “Because I can’t be caught being a hypocrite all close to him when last week I was literally talking shit about him and his goofy ass highlighter jersey.” Y/n huffed. “But when we had practices he was actually so nice to me I can’t believe I slandered him so much in my lifetime.” Y/n sighed. “And I actually admire his passion for soccer after seeing him play on the field in real time.”

“So you’re hiding secret feelings for him because you don’t want to be caught as a hypocrite?”

“Yes.”

“Y/n that’s so stupid.”

“I’ve never heard something so dumb.”

“Are you for real?”

All three of her friends said to her.

“Yes, I am for real! My reputation is in jeopardy if this ever gets out!”

—

“So you guys are good now?” Kim Dayeon asked Park Gunwook. “Yeah, we’re good. But I don’t think she wants us to be friends.”

“Why?”

“Because all we do is wave to each other…that’s weird.” Gunwook looked around the room trying not to make eye contact with Dayeon. “Why are you looking around the room? I’m right here?” Dayeon asked.

“Okay, don’t tell anyone this but—we had a heart to heart but it was about some shit that Gyu Duho said and he mentioned you so you were in the conversation.”

“Okay…what did he say?”

“He said some shit about Y/n being my shadow and he even went as far as mentioning how I’m your best friend now and she’s not…that’s why she froze up and he took the opportunity to trip her.”

“He said that!? That’s so evil, oh my god.” Dayeon gasped. “I’ll beat his ass—why would he even say that.”

“Because he was trying to get under all our skins! It was such a jerk move.”

“Where is he right now?” Dayeon asked, standing up from her seat. “Woah—Dayeon you’re not seriously gonna beat him up—right?” Gunwook asked as the girl started walking out the classroom.

“No?” Dayeon’s eyebrow furrowed. “I’m just gonna beat him at basketball, duh.”

“What are you gonna do 1v1?”

“No, you’re crazy, I’m good at basketball but Duho’s better. That’d be setting me up for failure.” Dayeons eyes widened. “I’ll get a team of four.”

“Good idea.”

“I know. I get Heeseung and Kim Hyunjin, and you get Ricky.”

“Woah Woah—Ricky? I’m getting Ricky?” Gunwook stopped Dayeon before she could run off. “This is not a time to be jealous, Park Gunwook.”

Dayeon ran to find Heeseung and Hyunjin. Gunwook stood there for a while before deciding to go find Y/n. Because wherever Y/n was, Ricky was with her.

Ever since Ricky started school here he’s been attached to Y/n, Hao, and Hiyyih at the hip. Besides the times he’d go and play basketball with Dayeon or anyone else at the school court.

“Y/n.” Gunwook said, gasping as he reached the lunch table where Y/n, Hao, and Hiyyih were sitting. “Where’s Ricky?”

“He’s at the basketball court, why?” Y/n asked, confused. “Okay good—he’s already there.” Gunwook said in between breaths. “There is about to be an epic awesome amazing 4v4 game going on. Let’s go.” Gunwook grabbed the girl's arm and she grabbed Hao’s and Hiyyih’s.

“Guys—can we walk at least?” Hao shouted.

—

“So why do we need to be here?” Y/n asked, slightly squinting her eyes since the sun was in her way. Gunwook switched spots with her so the sun wouldn’t blind her. “Dayeon’s gonna 4v4 Gyu Duho and Ricky’s apart of her team.”

Hao’s eyes slightly widened and his head turned to look at Hiyyih. They were shocked at Gunwook’s kind gesture. “Let’s sit on the bleachers. I heard news about it is already spreading.” Gunwook said as he dragged the three to the first row of bleachers.

“Why is she having a basketball match with him?” Y/n asked. “I told her about what he did to you at the soccer game.” Y/n’s jaw slightly dropped. “She’s doing this all because of what he did?”

“Yeah, Dayeon still cares about you, y’know? She never stopped.” Y/n went quiet. “It’s about to start.” She was grateful that changed the subject.

“For reals though, who do you think is gonna win? Because everyone on Dayeon’s team is good but everyone on Duho’s team is also good.” Hiyyih asked. “C’mon, Dayeon got Ricky. Ricky’s so good.” Hao scoffed. “Yeah, did you hear how everyone wants to go against Ricky because they couldn’t believe how good he was.” Y/n said next.

“Is he that good? I’ve never seen him play.” Gunwook asked. “Really?” Y/n gasped. “He’s so good, he’s like your level of good but basketball.” Y/n nodded her head.

Gunwook did not like being compared to Ricky at all. Yeah the guy was probably really good, but Gunwook just didn’t like being compared to him. Especially since Y/n was over here gassing him up.

“Am I really that good, Jeon Y/n.” Gunwook teased. “Hmm…You wish.” Y/n flicked his forehead. “This is about Ricky, stop looking for attention.” She flicked his forehead again.

—

“Can’t believe they won.” Duho was complaining to his teammates. “They aren’t even that good, especially Dayeon, can’t believe we got beat by a girl.”

“Say that shit to my face. You wanna act all big and tough during the soccer game but won’t even talk shit to my face?” Dayeon spoke out, she heard them talking as she walked by.

“What’s the soccer game got to do with this?” He scoffed, walking closer to her. “Nothing, it’s just you played really unfairly and I thought you needed a loss in life.”

“That Y/n girl deserved it, she’s so annoying.”

“Don’t speak about her like that.” Dayeon scoffed in disbelief.

“Yeah? What are you gonna do about it if I do?” Duho pushed Dayeons shoulders. “Hit me I dare you.” Dayeon pushed him back.

“Woah! Woah!” Gunwook pulled the two apart. “Guys not here.” He held Dayeon back.

“Dayeon, not now.” Gunwook pulled the girl aside.

“Hello?? You never get into fights, what was that?” Gunwook asked. “It was nothing, he was just being an ass.”

“Let’s just—Let’s go cool off at the convenience store.”

—

The silence was loud and awkward as the six of them stared at each other.

“Thank you again, Dayeon. You didn’t have to.” Y/n thanked Dayeon for the third time this day. “Oh, I had to. Gyu Duho is an ass and deserved to lose. And can you believe he was being misogynistic?” Dayeon scoffed. “He really couldn’t believe he got beat by a girl.”

“Two girls, Kim Hyunjin’s insane.” Ricky chimed in. “Two! Two! and he was so baffled. What is so hard about believing girls can be good at basketball.”

“He’s just like every other jerk, it’s not surprising.” Hao shrugged his shoulders.

“My brother is here, Y/n are you sure you don’t need a ride?” Hiyyih asked as she clicked her phone off. “Yeah, I literally have a tutoring session in a couple minutes.” Y/n checked the time on her phone.

“Okay, get sleep tonight and please for the love of god do not overwork yourself.” Hiyyih blew a kiss to the girl before leaving the shop with Hao and Ricky behind.

“Bye, guys. We’ll see you whenever.” Ricky said as Hao waved bye.

“Y/n, I hope we’re cool now.” Dayeon said as she sat up. “We’ve always been ‘cool’, I never had a problem with you.” Y/n chuckled. “It’s you, I had a problem with.” Y/n pointed her finger towards Gunwook.

“You were just so fun to tease, Y/n-ah. If you saw your face and reactions, you would do the same.” Gunwook patted the girl's head. “I hope we’re cool too.” Gunwook smiled.

“Yeah, if you keep this shit up that chance is very low.”

—

Gunwook started a part time job at the convenience store to fill his time. Also because he would see Y/n fall asleep every Tuesday and Thursday when she tutored those two students after school and he could play hero and wake her up.

Seriously though, he wished the girl would stop falling asleep because something bad can happen to her.

Gunwook sighed as he walked in for his shift, pulling his uniform vest over his head before walking over to Y/n.

“Y/n.” He gently shook the girl awake. Y/n groaned as she awoke from her sleep. “Gunwook, you could’ve just let me sleep.” She sighed. “And what let some weird guy take advantage of you? Certainly not.” He scoffed.

“I know you would’ve beaten his ass for me.” She mumbled as she put her belongings on the table away in her bag.

“Eat something before you go, on the house. As always.” Gunwook offered. “Thanks, but my sister is at home waiting for me. I need to eat with her.”

“Bring her food then. Just pick anything.”

“Why are you being so nice?” Y/n asked. “Remember, I want us to be cool. Although I really do want to keep our top student rivalry still a thing…” He said hesitantly. “Don’t worry. I want to as well.” Y/n chuckled. “You know how embarrassing it’ll be when people start calling me a hypocrite. Especially since last week I called your stupid sweater ugly and everyone heard me.”

“You’re just a fucking hater it was not ugly.”

“You’re right, I am a hater. The sweater was kind of cute. I just wanted to insult you.”

“Awh, want to borrow it?”

“Yeah, so I can burn it!”

—

“Y/n.” One of Y/n’s classmates called her name out. “Hm?” Y/n looked up from her paper. “What’s going on with you and Gunwook? I feel like I haven’t seen you guys argue all week.”

“Oh—bad week? I don’t know.” Y/n awkwardly laughed. “Yeah, bad week! I just don’t feel like wasting my breath on him.”

“Oh, okay.” Her classmate just nodded her head before turning back to her paper.

Y/n stopped by the convenience store to talk to Gunwook. “Hiiii.” Y/n dragged out. “Hi, you’re in a good mood?” Gunwook’s eyebrow raised. “I am, because look!” Y/n pulled out her test paper. “I overheard you tell Yujin your test score on the english test and when I had his class and got mine that was when I found out I did better, hah!”

“Blah blah, we all know you’re better at English.” Gunwook shushed the girl. “Oh, and people are starting to get suspicious of us. We need to start arguing again.”

“We argue, like—all the time? We literally argued about milk earlier today.” Gunwook shrugged his shoulders. “Yeah, that’s not selling it.” Y/n huffed.

“What, you want me to go back to calling you out on everything? That was too mean of me, and I don’t want to upset you again.”

Y/n just stared at the boy and sighed. He was being so sweet it was hard for her not to fall for him.

“C’mon, I’m never losing the “i don’t give a fuck” war. I don’t care anymore. Let’s go back to arguing like we used to. People aren’t buying what we’re selling right now.”

“Okay, but if you get upset it’s on you.” He pointed at the girl. “Hi, welcome to GS25.” Gunwook said as he heard the bell of the door go off.

“Today’s kind of slow. My shift might end early, want to hang out after?” Gunwook asked as he was organizing the lip balms on the counter. “Just us two?” Y/n hesitantly asked. “If you want it to be,” Gunwook shrugged his shoulders. “You can invite Bahiyyih. I know guys are really close.”

“Sure then.” Y/n nodded her head. “Is it fine if I also invite Gyuvin?”

“Why wouldn’t it be? If i’m inviting Hiyyih you should be able to invite Gyuvin. But,” She dragged out the last word. “If it’s my house we’re hanging out at he better not trash it, you know how clumsy he is.”

—

Y/n shut her phone off and put it in her pocket. “Hiyyih is busy, she can’t make it. What about Gyuvin?” She asked as Gunwook took off his vest. “Gyuvin can’t make it either, he’s with some family right now. What about Hao? I know Ricky and Dayeon are playing ball right now.”

“He’s on a date with Sung Hanbin.” Y/n said. “It’s just us then, we don’t have to hangout…”

“Wait—he’s on a date with Sung Hanbin?” Gunwook’s eyes widened. “Like Sung Hanbin? Sung Hanbin, the one he’s been in a rivalry with since the beginning of the year?”

“Who else? Yeah, I was surprised too. Hao told me they were assigned as partners for bio and they started to get along and then they randomly kissed one night while researching.” Y/n shrugged her shoulders as she clutched into her tote bag that hung on her right shoulder.

“Do you still want to hang out?” Y/n watched as Gunwook was cleaning up for the next person's shift. “Yeah, we can. I’m good with hanging at your house, don’t you have to watch your sister anyway?” Gunwook said as he threw away the cleaning wipe and grabbed his bag.

“She’s fourteen, she can watch herself. I just get worried sometimes so I have Hiyyih hang out with her.” Y/n and Gunwook walked out of the store and walked to his car.

“It’s late, let’s hang out at your house.” Gunwook beeped his car and opened the door for Y/n then walked to the drivers side. “But it’s late, like you said. Don’t you have to be home too?” Y/n put her seatbelt on.

“My parents are out for dinner right now, I have time to kill.”

“Oh, okay.” Y/n nodded her head. “What are we gonna do? I hope it’s not awkward, I don’t really have anything fun at my house.”

“Talk? We can talk. I like talking.” Gunwook nodded his head. “Half of the time you tell me to shut the fuck up?? What do you mean you like to talk?” Y/n scoffed and her jaw dropped.

“I just like to get on your nerves.” Gunwook chuckled.

—

“Hi, Hayun.” Y/n said as she took her shoes off at the door, Gunwook as well. “How was school?” She asked as she hung her tote bag on the hooks on the wall, walking into the kitchen where her sister was at, with Gunwook behind her. “It was good. Who’s this?” Hayun asked as she looked up from her phone screen.

“Park Gunwook.”

“Park Gunwook? That guy you’re always shit talking about? Why is he here, don’t you hate him?” Hayun gasped. “It’s—complicated. We’ve squashed that beef.” Y/n’s head slightly tilted. “Mhm, because that’s totally something you’d do.” Hayun’s eyebrows furrowed. “Listen, I know. We’re cool but we still act all mean to each other around people.” Y/n sighed and slapped Gunwook’s shoulder.

“Gunwook, this is my little sister Hayun. She’s just like me so watch out.” Y/n cheekily smiled. “Wow, twice the torture for me.” Gunwook said sarcastically. “I’m not as bad as my Unnie. Don’t worry.” Hayun scoffed.

“Did you call mom and dad?” Y/n asked as she jumped to sit on top of the counter. “By the way, snack in this cabinet. You can take anything, just not my cookies.” Y/n hit the cabinet next to her. “Yeah, we talked about you.”

“Bad or good?” Y/n sucked in her breath. “Good, of course. But they’re seriously worried about you. When are you gonna stop doing these academic lessons?”

“Like—uh, never. Duh.” Y/n scoffed. “My teacher is on my ass bro, whenever I ask to get less sessions he talks about how I’m a good student and should keep this up in order to get into a good college.”

“Man, fuck college.”

“If mom heard you say that right now you’d get bitch snapped.” Y/n’s eyes widened. Hayun and Y/n were alike in many ways but Hayun didn’t have any big plans in life whilst Y/n did.

“But she isn’t.”

“Where are your parents? If you don’t mind me asking.” Gunwook cleared his throat. “They’re retail buyers. So they’re always out on business trips. Like all the time.” Y/n dragged out the last word. “At this point this is just me and Hayuns house.” She shrugged her shoulders.

“Don’t you guys ever miss them or something? I feel like I’d go insane if I didn’t have my mom with me, she helps me with everything.”

“We do. But this happens so often we got used to it.” Hayun nodded her head. “Don’t have that concerned look on your face. Really, it’s nothing.” Y/n ruffled Gunwook’s hair. “Did you just ruffle my hair?”

“Yeah even that was weird for me.” Hayun had a face of disgust on. “I was trying to be nice.” Y/n’s jaw dropped. “Yeah, maybe don’t be nice.” Hayun teasingly smiled at her.

“Unnie, we don’t have anything fun here. Why did you invite Gunwook over?” Hayun groaned. “Because, we just both happened to be free? And besides, I don’t want to leave you alone. Gunwook said his parents are out for dinner and he doesn’t wanna sit at home doing nothing.”

“So you invited him here? Why couldn’t you guys just go get something to eat?”

“Yah, you already want to get rid of me? Are you secretly inviting boys over? Or even girls? Or even throwing parties?”

“Who do you think I am?” Hayun dramatically leaned onto Y/n. “I just wanted some friends over. Can I?” Hayun put her best puppy face on. “It’s late, your friend's parents are gonna let them come? I don’t care, I just don’t want someone’s mom to come lecturing me.”

“It’s only eight! It’ll be a sleepover!”

“Just let her, my parents rarely let friends over when I was her age and I almost rioted against them.” Gunwook suggested. “I’m not her parent, if anything bad happens I’ll get blamed.” Y/n scoffed.

“Please.” Hayun begged. “Fine, just clean up after yourselves.” Y/n gently shoved Hayun away.

“I knew you’d say yes! I already invited them over…they’re almost here.” Hayun confessed. “I know you did. I smelled popcorn the minute I walked in here. Y/n got close to her face and teased her by pinching her cheek.

“Can you guys hangout in your room or something?” Hayun shoved her sister away. “My room?” Y/n gasped. “Are you embarrassed of us?” Y/n turned her head towards Gunwook. “Do you hear this girl?” She scoffed.

“I’m embarrassed of you, not Gunwook.” Hayun said. “Whatever. Just have fun.” Y/n squeezed Hayun’s right cheek for the last time before gesturing to Gunwook. “Let’s go find something to do.” She said as she grabbed her cookies from the cabinet and led the way to her room.

“This is my room. Nothing impressive.” Y/n shrugged as the two walked into the off white colored room. “Damn, you might have more awards than me.” Gunwook chuckled as he saw the amount of awards hung up on the wall and displayed on the girls bookshelf.”

“Best badminton player?” Gunwook’s head tilted slightly as he saw the award on her shelf. “I didn’t know you played badminton?”

“Only for a little.” Y/n was setting her bed up for the two to sit on. “For a year when I was fourteen. I won the award and then I quit.”

“You quit? Why waste talent?” Gunwook asked as he looked back at the girl. “I’m an overachiever. I quit badminton to join the debate club so I can win a medal.” Y/n said. “Damn, you’re worse than me.” Gunwook laughed.

“I blame my parents.” Y/n chuckled. “They’re both overachievers who are perfect for each other.” She patted the spot next to her on her bed, gesturing for him to sit.

“They practically push everything onto me.” Her face scrunched up slightly. “I don’t even want to go to college that bad. My parents want me in medical school.” Gunwook sat on the bed next to her.

“I’m just doing everything because I’m told to, and achieving all that is kind of worthless but feels nice.”

“What do you want to do?” Gunwook asked with pure curiosity. “I don’t know to be honest. If I live life tutoring students then so be it.” She shrugged her shoulders. “It’s almost like it’s all I know now.”

“That’s not true. There must be something you do like, right?” He asked. “You seem to have no control in your life…no offense. It’s just you’re almost graduating soon and you don’t know what you want to do for yourself?”

“You’re so competitive with me over every academic thing but you’re not getting anything out of it. What if you go to medical school, you're rich but not happy?”

Y/n went silent for a second. Processing what Gunwook was saying.

“No offense taken. You’re right, I don’t know what I’m doing with life.” Y/n sighed. “What do you want to do?” Y/n asked to switch the subject to him. “I want to do soccer professionally, if that doesn’t work out I’ll train to be an idol, and if not that then I’ll go to college for Music.”

“I didn’t know you wanted to do that.” Y/n hummed and nodded her head. “I think you’d be a good idol.”

“I’ve never told anyone but Dayeon that, you have to promise to not tell anyone else.” Gunwook panicked and told the girl. “Don’t worry, secrets are safe with me.” She chuckled. “Do you dance too?”

“Yeah, I dance at this studio near my house.”

“Cool. I hope it turns out well for you. You’d be a good professional soccer player as well, it’s your specialty.”

“Yeah, but I don’t want that to be what people only know me for.” He complained. “Like how people know you for being the school’s official tutor.” He teased the girl. “God, I need to quit, but I make a fair amount of money from it.” She groaned and fell back into her pillows.

The two heard a couple of shrieks from the living room. “If they’re watching a horror movie it better be a good one and not some corny one for them to be screaming like that.” Y/n stood up and peaked out her door to check on the girls.

“They’re fine.” She shut her door and went back to lay on her bed.

“That’s good, at least you’re making money. Seriously, when is Shin gonna get off your ass.” Gunwook sighed. “When I told him I wanted to tutor to help you he almost picked a fight with me.”

“Really? How?” Y/n held herself up with her elbow. “He said that you didn’t need help, and said that I was already super busy with being class president and soccer.”

“Well, he’s kind of right. You didn’t need to do that.” Y/n hummed. “I wanted to help you.” Gunwook shrugged his shoulders. “I never really had anything against you, we’re just both equally as competitive and equally as stubborn.”

“Y/n, I mean it when I want us to be cool.” Gunwook nodded his head. “I know.” Y/n said hesitantly. “I’m still getting used to being friends with you.”

“I get it. Just be yourself around me—but not the one where we argue all the time.” He corrected himself. “It gets tiring arguing all the time.” He confessed. “I know.” Y/n had a slight face of disgustment.

“Wanna watch a movie? Or even listen to some music? You like kpop, right?” Y/n asked as she flipped through her CD folder. “Yeah, what do you have?” Gunwook asked as he watched the girl flip through CD’s.

“Same dream, same mind, same night.” Y/n pulled the album CD and put it into her CD player. “By Seventeen, do you listen to them?”

“Who doesn’t?” Gunwook scoffed. “If you don’t then I’ll just assume you’re a loser.” He chuckled. “You’re right, Seventeen is for the cuties.” Y/n agreed as she laid back down on her stomach. “Did you just call me a cutie, Jeon Y/n?” He teased the girl. “Hm, I called myself a cutie. If the shoe fits though.” Y/n mumbled, getting a little reckless due to her tiredness.

“This song is so nice and dreamy, I love it.” Y/n mumbled some more. “Don’t fall asleep on me.” Gunwook laughed as he saw the girl close her eyes for a while. “You’re right. That’d be awkward.” She said as she sat back up.

“It’s getting really late, are your parents still not home yet?” Y/n asked as she checked the time on her watch. “They should be there soon. I should get going as well.” He sighed. “I’ll walk you out.” Y/n stands up and throws a sweater on to walk the boy out.

“I’ll see you tomorrow? At the park, let’s watch Dayeon and Ricky’s game.” Y/n said as she slid her slides on and Gunwook put his shoes on. “Yeah, do you not have any sessions tomorrow?” He asked as the two walked outside to his car.

“I canceled all of them.”

“Woah? All of them? What will Shin say?”

“Screw what he says. I’m sick of his shit.” Y/n groaned. “I’ll see you, okay? Drive safe.” Y/n said.

“I would give you a hug but I feel like we aren’t that cool with each other yet.” Y/n said hesitantly. “Who said that?” Gunwook unexpectedly grabbed the girl by her waist and hoisted her up over his shoulder. “We’re gonna be best friends, Jeon Y/n!” Gunwook spun around in a circle as Y/n laughed and pleaded to get put down.

“Best friends, my ass.” Y/n genuinely laughed, trying to catch her breath. “Goodnight, I’ll see you tomorrow morning.” Y/n chuckled and punched his shoulder.

“Okay, bye.” Gunwook chuckled and finally got into his car. Y/n waved bye until his car was at the end of the street.

She turned around to see Hayun and three of her friends watching her from the window. She walked back to the house and slipped her jacket and shoes off at the doorstep.

“Unnie, was that your boyfriend?” One of Hayun’s friends asked. “No, do you guys think we’re together?” Y/n asked. “Yes! He lifted you up, and even spun you!”

“Yeah, we’re just friends.” Y/n nodded her head. “Don’t stay up too late.” She gave a small smile to Hayun and her friends before walking back to her room.

—

“Hi.” Y/n said as she and Gunwook approached Dayeon who was already with Ricky and Hyunjin. “Hi, you guys seem unusually close lately.” Dayeon pointed out as she pointed to Gunwook’s arm resting on Y/n’s shoulder.

“Yeah, ever since we first started playing games at this park.” Ricky spoke out. “What? Me and Gunwookie are friends now.” Y/n slightly gasped and teased the boy by pinching his cheek.

“She even called him Gunwookie, oh my god we’ve lost her.” Ricky jokes. “This is nice, we’re just not used to it.” Dayeon smiled, talking about the two getting along without any problems. “Trust me, it wasn’t easy for me to get used to it either.” Y/n chuckled.

“When are you guys playing?” Gunwook asked, squinting slightly due to the sun being in his eyes. “Soon. Is hiyyih or hao coming?” Ricky asked. “Hiyyih has a family thing and Hao is on a date.”

“Is Hao still talking to Sung Hanbin?” Dayeon asked, curious on the two’s relationship status due to their known dynamic between the two. “Talking? They’re practically dating now.” Y/n scoffed.

“That’s so crazy. They used to have such a huge rivalry, and now they’re giggling and probably shit talking together.”

“Honestly could be you guys.” Dayeon gestured at Y/n and Gunwook who were standing next to each other almost hip to hip by now. “Pft, no.” Y/n laughed as she took a step away from the boy. “Gunwook’s cute, I’m busy, dating just isn’t in my schedule.”

“So you admit he’s cute?”

“Yeah, I have no shame.” Y/n shrugged her shoulders and looked at the boy who was slightly red. Y/n slowly stopped caring about keeping their rivalry image up. She started to admit things that would’ve made her die hearing it months ago.

“What, I can’t call friends cute.” Y/n said as she saw the stares her friends gave her. “Ouuu, she just friendzoned you.” Ricky teased Gunwook as he patted his shoulder. “You’re cute too, Y/n-ah.” Gunwook ruffled her hair.

“Ugh, I hate you guys.” Dayeon groaned and walked away to the bleachers, the rest following her behind. “Sometimes I miss when you guys used to argue 24/7. People at school are starting to talk.” Dayeon mentioned as she sat down next to Y/n.

“I don’t care anymore, people can talk.” Y/n sighed. “Shin is getting on my ass about me canceling these sessions.” Y/n ran her fingers between her hair, getting it out of her face due to the wind. “I still have good credits and a good GPA, I’m not gonna fail yet it’s like he still wants me to do all this shit.”

“He’s making you do all his dirty work. Just quit it all together.” Hyunjin suggested as she stretched. “But I feel bad for the kids, they actually need help with their studies and Shin isn’t gonna help them with shit.” Y/n sighed.

“I’ll beg him to take half of your students.” Gunwook suggested. “That’s too much, I have like twelve students.” Y/n sighed. “We can split it equally, I take six and you keep six.”

“No, really it’s okay.”

“Y/n, you’re so stubborn just let him help you.” Ricky spoke out. “And so is Gunwook, if you two keep this up you won’t get anywhere.” Dayeon said.

“Fine.” Y/n huffed. “I don’t know how you’ll convince Shin to let you take half of my students.”

—

“Mr. Shin.” Gunwook walked up to his desk. “I wanted to talk to you about something.” Mr. Shin turned his attention to the boy. “What is it?” He asked.

“Wait, Y/n. Can you wait at your seat? I need to talk to you after.” Mr. Shin stopped the girl before she could leave the classroom.

“I wanted to ask if I can tutor more of Y/n’s students? Just half, she has six and I’ll have six. Just to take some things off her back.” Gunwook spoke.

“Why? Y/n is doing fine. Aren’t you super busy with class president duties and soccer? Aren’t you in the debate club too?”

“I assure you I can do this.” Gunwook assured the older man. “Have you noticed how much she’s been canceling?” Gunwook turned his head to the girl behind him.

Mr. Shin sighed. “That’s what I wanted to talk to Y/n about.” He gestured to the girl to come over to his desk. “Y/n, I was told you were seen at the park the other day. You told me you were sick, did you lie to me?”

“Uh—Yes, Mr. Shin.” Y/n said hesitantly. Thinking it was better to tell the truth now than to get caught later. “Why? You have such a bright future ahead. These sessions will help your application look amazing.”

“To be completely honest…I hate doing these sessions. The only good thing that comes out of these is students' grades are improving.”

“What are you saying? You don’t want to go to college? What about medical school? Your parents have spoken very highly of you and how amazing your future will be.”

“Yeah, a future they want. I don’t want to do any of that.” Y/n sighed. “I’ll continue doing the tutor sessions. Only to help the students out. Let Gunwook take half of my students, I have a life of my own. I don’t want to spend my last years of high school spending it in books. I want to make time for myself.”

“I’m not gonna quit it completely, I just want you to understand that I do not have all the time in the world to help other kids while I can barely help myself.”

“You’re good at negotiating, Y/n. Fine, Gunwook can take half your students. Next time tell me the truth. You guys can go now.” He shooed the two out of his room.

“That last part was a little dramatic.” Gunwook mumbled, only for the girl to hear. “I know, I needed to really sell it.” Y/n mumbled back.

—

“I love driving in the spring.” Gunwook shouted as they had blasted music playing through his car. “I love the wind in my face and the warm weather!” He shouted yet again.

“We’re getting stares.” Y/n laughed as she slightly turned down the music. “We’re blasting Seventeen, it’d be weird if we didn’t get stares.” He shrugged his shoulders, pulling into the school parking lot.

“I think it’s because you just drove me to school, not the fact that we’re blasting Seventeen.” Y/n chuckled as she unbuckled her seatbelt.

“Let’s go.” Gunwook turned his car off and unlocked the doors. “Wow, you guys truly stopped giving a fuck.” Hao laughed as the two approached the group of friends that hung around a pillar in the school’s courtyard.

“It was like that one Twilight scene that happened, where all the siblings walk out of the car.” Hiyyih said. “Are we that cool, Hiyyih?.” Y/n smirked. “Cool? Sure, I guess. Big impact? Yes.” Hiyyih laughed.

“I can’t wait to hear what everyone thinks of this.” Dayeon chuckled. “This might be even bigger than me and Hanbin.” Hao raised his eyebrow as he spoke.

“Right, especially since Gunwook and Y/n have had this rivalry shit since middle school.” Hiyyih nodded her head. “I hope they don’t bring up the fact that I talked shit about his pants last week.” Y/n mumbled slightly.

“You’re my biggest hater, y’know that?” Gunwook looked at the girl with widened eyes.

—

All day Y/n heard whispers around her. Either bad or good ones, there was no inbetween.

“Wasn’t she talking shit about him like three days ago? Something about his pants.”

“Yeah, and what about the time she called his sweater ugly? And her huge ass problem of always wanting to beat him at anything?”

“Yeah, she’s just a big fake. I hope he realizes that soon.”

“Y/n, if I beat you to the cafeteria you have to buy me three chocolate bars from the store.” Gunwook spoke out as he sat down in the empty spot next to the girl. “What do I get if I beat you?” Y/n asked.

“You get to borrow my awesome sweater you love.” Gunwook teased. “I might as well then just walk.” Y/n scoffed. “Fine, then you decide what you want.”

The two were waiting for the bell to ring so they could start the bet.

As soon as it did, they sprinted out of the room, they made sure not to bump into anyone on the way out of the room or down the stairs.

Their laughs and giggles were so loud like it was out on the intercom. “You’re more athletic than me, give me a break!” Y/n giggled as she grabbed onto his arm to drag him back and got the chance to move in front of him.

“Was that Park Gunwook and Jeon Y/n?” A classmate said as they saw the pair run past them. “I heard they were friends now, I didn’t believe it. But I guess they’re cool now.” Another one said.

“As expected! I won.” Y/n said as she touched the glass doors of the cafeteria. “Fine, you win.” Gunwook tried to catch his breath. “What do you want?” He put his arm around the girl and walked her towards the cafeteria line.

“Hm, give me some time to think about it.” Y/n nodded her head. “How did you guys not get in trouble for running? I jog in the hallways one time and I get detention.” Ricky said, cutting the people in front of him to get to the two. “Because it’s almost the end of the year, teachers don’t care.” Y/n smirked.

“Have you heard the whispers Y/n?” Ricky asked. “Duh. People are calling me fake. It doesn’t bother me much. I know me and Gunwook are cool with each other so I don’t really care.” She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, these people need to get over it.”

“Y/n’s just my biggest hater, I don’t really mind. It’s kind of cute, she’s like obsessed with me.” Gunwook sneered. “I am not obsessed with you.” Y/n chuckled. “You wish I was.”

—

Everyone started to get used to the fact that Y/n and Gunwook we’re friends now. The two did often still argue about test grades and stuff but it was nothing to the extreme. It was all jokes now.

Sometimes they even would do tutor sessions together and it went by smoothly. The two also had gotten more comfortable with each other, everyone else had noticed this as well.

It started with the little things, like Gunwook resting his arm on her shoulder, Gunwook leaning his head a little too close to Y/n’s shoulder, then giving hugs before saying bye, Gunwook’s teasing got ‘worse’, he would tickle and throw her over his shoulders.

Y/n didn’t mind, she actually quite liked her friendship with Gunwook now. It’s cute and heartwarming especially when you consider their bad past.

The two hung out a lot, even when they didn’t have anything to do they would just listen to Seventeen and talk or study in silence even. That’s how comfortable they were now, they could sit in silence and study with no ounce of discomfort in the air.

The two endearingly tease each other. They unconsciously flirt and it goes over both of their heads. Calling each other cute, ruffling each other's hair, squeezing one’s cheek, and tickling each other.

People started to think they were a couple and not friends. It was hard to believe really, everyone at school was shocked to see how comfortable and touchy the two were with each other.

“Y/n.” Gunwook groaned as he dramatically leaned into the girl sitting next to him. “What.” Y/n dragged out her word. “Why did you give me your worst students ever?” He said with a pout. “They aren’t bad, they’re just so in love with you that they can’t focus.” She laughed out loud.

“Now, go, you have a shift and I have a session soon.” Y/n pushed the boy off of her. “Fine, I’ll see you later.” Gunwook sighed and walked over to the counter.

After Y/n's session she fell asleep. She usually does but doesn’t worry because Gunwook is around the corner.

Y/n was shaken awake. “Gunwook? Is your shift over?” She mumbled as she slowly lifted her head up. “Oh—Sorry, do you need to sit here?” Y/n asked, suddenly standing up as she saw a man a few years older than her.

“Sorry, miss. You were sleeping and something bad could’ve happened.” The man gently put his hand on her shoulder, caressing it. “Heh, yeah.” Y/n awkwardly laughed as she shifted around slightly. “Uhm—thank you for waking me—my boyfriend is almost here!” Y/n looked at her watch. She gently pushed the man’s hand away but he put it back on her, going up and down her arm, slowly.

She knew Gunwook’s shift was about to end and had really hoped he would be quick to get his things together.

“Baby!” Y/n shouted as Gunwook came from around the corner. He was shocked, but quickly understood the situation as he saw the uncomfortable expression on the girl's face.

“Sorry for taking too long, how was your session?” Gunwook said as he pulled the girl into his arms and kissed her forehead. “It was good! I accidentally fell asleep again.” Y/n said as she put one of her backpack straps on her shoulder and put her other arm around Gunwook’s.

The two walked out of the store still arm in arm.

“God, that guy was such a creep.” Y/n scoffed. “He tried to act like some savior, saying he woke me up because something bad could’ve happened, then he started caressing my arm.” Y/n got the shivers.

“Please stop falling asleep after your sessions, especially in public places.” Gunwook expressed his concern. “I don’t want anything bad happening to you.” Gunwook locked eyes with the girl.

“Thank you, for helping me.” Y/n nodded and gave him a small smile.

“I’ll always be there to help you.”

—

For the past couple weeks Y/n has started to feel different around Gunwook. Not a bad difference, just a difference she wasn’t used to…

She started to notice how long their hugs actually lasted, how long his hands lingered in her hair when he’d get it out of her face due to the wind, and how many hours the two actually spent together on a free day.

She liked all those things mentioned. She enjoyed spending time with Gunwook, she enjoyed his hugs, and she enjoyed his lingering touches when he’d tease her or play with her hair.

She also started to notice the swirly butterfly feeling that spread throughout her body around the boy.

She really didn’t want to admit it but deep down she knew. She had started to take a liking for Park Gunwook, in the way where she wanted him to hold her in his arms for as long as he could.

“Y/n-ah, stop staring so hard.” Hiyyih broke Y/n’s focus on the field. “What, I can’t stare at him? He’s the star player.” Y/n turned her head to look at the blonde. “What’s going on between you two?” Hiyyih asked.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean literally almost all of us can sense the odd tension between you and him.” Y/n sighed at that. “So—yes I’ve been feeling a little odd around him. So what?”

“So what? So what about fixing that odd tension? Something bad didn’t happen, right?” Hiyyih asked with concern. “No, nothing bad!” Y/n rushed to say. “Okay, listen. I think I might have feelings for Gunwook in more than a friend way.” Y/n confessed.

“Fina-fucking-ly.” Hiyyih bursted out laughing. “Why are you laughing so hard? What do you mean?” Y/n was confused and lost.

“You're so oblivious. Gunwook has had such a huge crush on you for like—ever!”

“How? Did he tell you guys something?”

“Not exactly. Dayeon told me how much he loved seeing your cute little pouty face you make when you get mad. Why do you think he teases you so much?” Hiyyih had a smug smile on her face. “What if he doesn’t and that’s just his personality?”

“Just take the chance.”

—

Y/n has started to observe Gunwook’s behavior around her. She was confused on how there could be a chance that Gunwook did like her like that. He was so normal and calm around the girl, there was no sign of shyness at all, so how could he see the girl in that way?

“Gunwook,” Y/n said. Interrupting silence that was there. “Yeah?” He lifted his head from his notebook.

The two were studying in Y/n’s room.

“I heard something about you, and I don’t know if it’s true or not. I just wanted to ask.” Y/n said hesitantly. “What is it?” The boy asked. “Do you have a big fat crush on me?” Y/n said in a teasing tone to make it less embarrassing to ask.

“You wish I did!” Gunwook jokes and started poking at her torso with his pen. “No seriously though. I heard you tease me because you like my mad pouty face.” Y/n said seriously this time.

“Yah! Did Dayeon rat me out to you?!” Gunwook panicked. “So it’s true!?” Y/n laughed. “Ugh—I don’t—I don’t even know!” Gunwook spit out. “What do you mean you don’t know?” Y/n asked.

“I don’t know if what I feel for you is THAT.” Gunwook emphasized on the ‘that’.

“Kiss me then.” Y/n suggested, cringing at what she had just said. “Oh my god, ew I can’t believe you just said that.” Gunwook almost gagged. “What? It’s just a kiss.”

“Where is all this confidence coming from, oh my god.” Gunwook’s ears turned red. “It’s a win-win, we kiss and you figure out if you like me or not.” Y/n said.

“Do you just want to kiss me?” Gunwook asked, eyes slightly widened. “Oh my god, a girl is suggesting you kiss her and you still haven’t?” Y/n scoffed. “You’re so clueless.” Y/n shook her head as she mumbled. “Let’s just—forget about this.” Y/n went back to her book.

—

Y/n had been even more odd and off around Park Gunwook ever since that situation between the two happened. She tried not to distance herself but it failed. She happened to take in two more students to tutor to fill in her time so she won’t have any to hang out with the boy.

“I’m sorry, Gunwook. I have to tutor after school.” Y/n said apologetically. “It’s Friday, you don’t have any on Friday’s.” Gunwook knew Y/n’s schedule in and out. “I took two more students in. I have one at four and another at five.” Y/n nodded her head.

“Why would you do that? Didn’t you give me half of your students so you can have more time?”

“I don’t know. They were Danielle’s students but I know she is going back to Australia so I told her I can take them.” Danielle Marsh was another girl who helped tutor students.

“Are you planning to tutor students the whole summer too?” Gunwook jokes. “If I have too.” Y/n sheepishly chuckled. “Seriously? You should drop all the sessions this summer.” Gunwook said.

“Why?” Y/n asked. “I’ve got nothing better to do.” Y/n said. “Because we’re gonna be hanging out all summer, duh? And the whole crew as well.”

“Well—I actually have a soccer camp the first two weeks of summer.” Gunwook interrupted his own thoughts. “But after that we can hang out all day everyday!” He said with excitement. “I don’t want to take you away from hanging with your other friends. I heard you barely hang out with them anymore.” Y/n glanced down at the floor, not wanting to look Gunwook in the eyes.

“What’s up with you? You’re being weird.” Gunwook’s eyebrows furrowed. “I’m not being weird, it’s the truth. What about your other friends?”

“They don’t really care, they have their own lives, they’re busy doing their own things.” Gunwook was starting to get a little frustrated with the girl. “Seriously what’s up with you.” He scoffed.

“Nothing’s up.” Her shoulders shrug. “Something’s definitely up. Why won’t you tell me?” Gunwook gently shoved the girl's shoulder. “Because it’s so stupid, you’ll probably laugh at me and then walk away.” Y/n spat out and walked away in the direction of Hiyyih’s brother’s car before the boy could get a chance to say anything else.

��

“Dayeon, Y/n has been acting weird, have you noticed?” Gunwook asked the girl. “No, she’s normal around me. Why, is something up with you two?” Dayeon asked, looking up from her phone.

“I don’t even know. She’s being weird around me, I don’t know if I did something or if I said something.”

“Did anything happen before she started acting like that?” Dayeon asked. “Just—ugh promise you won’t tell this to anyone.” Gunwook sighed. “Promise.” Dayeon’s face slightly scrunched up.

“A few weeks back Y/n asked me if I liked her in more than a friend way. I said I don’t even know and then she suggested I kiss her. I just said some random shit because I didn’t want to kiss her and turn all red. Then she said “A girl is suggesting you kiss her and you still haven’t.” and said to forget about it. I listened to her and haven't thought about it.”

“Oh my god! You’re so pathetic, I can’t believe you did that.” Dayeon let out a mixture of a scoff and a laugh. “I thought she was just fucking with me.” Gunwook said. “Clearly she wasn’t. She wants to kiss you bro. Clearly she likes you.”

“Y/n is the type to shut down and give up when it comes to shit like this. Take the chance before she loses feelings. I heard this junior likes her, so get her before he does.”

—

Gunwook realized how distanced Y/n had been now that Dayeon had put that thought into his head. She had been getting awfully close to this junior she was tutoring. They had been hanging out on different occasions that did not in fact involve studying.

“Y/n,” Gunwook called out to the girl in a whisper, who was currently tutoring the said junior in the library. “Y/n, can I talk to you real quick?” He asked, Y/n looked a little annoyed at the boy’s interruption.

“What is it?” Y/n said in a frustrated tone as the boy pulled her behind a bookshelf. “Nothing, I just wanted to talk to you.” Gunwook said with a cheesy smile. “Gunwook, seriously? I’m busy.” Y/n scoffed. “I just miss hanging and talking with you. You’re spending all your time with that junior.” Gunwook scoffed and slightly pointed in the direction of the junior.

“And what’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing—nothing is wrong with that. I just want to know what I did wrong and why you barely talk to me anymore.”

“You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Then why are you being like this right now.”

“Because—fuck it.” Y/n mumbled the swears that came out of her mouth. “Because, Gunwook I like you. More than a friend, and clearly you don’t. I was just distancing myself so I can get over you.” Y/n finally confessed.

Gunwook was left speechless at that. “See, you don’t even know what to say.” Y/n huffed and walked away but was stopped at the grip of a hand holding her back.

“Y/n, you didn’t even get to say anything.” Gunwook sighed. “I like you, I have for like—ever honestly. I only realized it just a couple weeks ago.”

“Are you just messing with me?”

“No, why would I? I do like you Y/n. I’m not messing with you, this is not a joke at all. I like to spend time with you, I like when you try and argue with me all the time, even when it’s unnecessary and pointless I still argue back because of that fucking face you make. You’re like the death of me!” Gunwook shouted a little too loud, getting a couple looks.

“I like the way you want to achieve things that aren’t even beneficial to you—like who the hell needs to be declared the best pancake maker? No one but you, you have that same competitive fire as me, I thought it’d be hell if I met someone exactly like me but I love to talk and challenge you to anything.”

“Everyone might hate when we argue because it’s annoying and a distraction but I love it, because of that stupid pout you put on.”

Y/n was silent. She didn’t know what to say, she did not expect Gunwook to be so heartfelt to her. Her head slightly dropped down to look at the floor, scared she’d start crying if she looked him in the eyes.

“And I’m so mad that I didn’t kiss you that day. I was so embarrassed that I’d start to stutter and become all red because of a little kiss.” Gunwook’s hands palmed each side of her cheek so the girl could lock eyes with him.

“If I can—If you’ll let me. Can I kiss you?” Gunwook asked boldly, not as shy as he was the day Y/n asked him too. Y/n slowly nodded her head as a few tears rolled down her eyes.

The kiss was short but sweet. Their hearts were racing so fast it could almost malfunction.

“I can’t believe I’m crying in the library.” Y/n said, embarrassed as her head slightly went down.

“It’s normal to cry.” Gunwook wiped the girl's tears with the pad of his thumbs. “Does this mean we’re dating now?” Gunwook said, muffed into the girls hair as they were hugging.

“Yeah, I honestly don’t do this dating shit so I think so.” Y/n said nonchalantly which made Gunwook laugh. “Okay—Jeon Y/n, will you be my girlfriend?” Gunwook said as he pulled himself away from the girl to get a good look at her.

“If I say yes that means you have to admit that I’m better academically than you.”

“You are academically better than me, Jeon Y/n.”

“Then, yes.” Y/n stood on her tippy toes and pecked the boy's cheek.

—

The two decided to keep their relationship hidden from everyone so they could just enjoy each other's time and company without any whispers, rumors, or teasing.

It was going really smoothly. They two had unexpectedly not been awkward about it. They had to make up random excuses on why they couldn’t hang out because they two had scheduled meet up’s and dates.

The only person that did know about the two was Hayun. Hayun didn’t even go to the same school as the two so they didn’t mind telling her.

Gunwook and Hayun got along well and Y/n really liked that. She liked that Hayun liked Gunwook and Gunwook liked Hayun. The two would sometimes gang up on Y/n, she didn’t like that but she liked that the two had gotten close and have a good relationship of their own. After all, her little sister and her boyfriend are probably the people she adores the most in life.

It was hard for her to hide it from Hiyyih, especially since that’s her best friend and she can notice when something is different. She noticed how Y/n had been much happier and was glowing with positivity.

Gunwook knew how hard that must’ve been for her so he agreed to not tell Gyuvin or Dayeon.

Either way the friends would figure out the truth themselves. Or they would catch them secretly kissing one day.

And that they did! They were not that surprised, they had started suspecting it when the two were not available at the same time.

The teasing lasted for about three weeks.

“I almost forgot they were together.” Gyuvin audibly gagged at the sight of the two sitting at a booth with their hands on each other. “Get used to it.” Gunwook threw a fry at his friend as he sat down next to Dayeon and Hiyyih who were squeezed into the seats in front of them.

“I think it’s kind of cute. How they used to despise and hate each other but now they’re all lovey dovey with each other.” Hiyyih said. “Lovey dovey? When Gunwook went to the bathroom she literally called his shirt ugly.” Dayeon said with a tone of disbelief.

“What—you said I looked cute today.” Gunwook gasped and looked at the girl on the side of him. “Because you are cute! The shirt just isn’t.” Y/n smiled cheekily.

“You’re such a hater. You love to hate me.”

2K notes · View notes

jeanbie · 1 month

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HIGHER THAN HEAVEN ★ masterlist.

pairing: levi x reader

genre: university au | warnings: sexual content, fem/afab!reader, masturbation, listening-to-the-other-fucking, sexual tension, slut/whore shaming (men being pigs), "slutty"!reader, mentions of spit | wc: 10.7k | ♬

note: why has this been a wip for like...a year? also i always like to try out new versions of levi and i feel like he'd actually be just a normal kinda grumpy guy in a modern setting so i hope u guys like my uni!levi interpretation ꒰* ॢꈍ◡ꈍ ॢ꒱.*˚

⏤ Levi wants to be mad that his neighbour keeps screwing guys really loudly. But how can he be mad when she's just so goddamn pretty?

It's the third time this week.

Levi knows what it means to let off steam, and he knows that exam season has just finished. For the last few days, the volume of noise where he lives has climbed exponentially; flats throwing parties, yelling in the hallways and laughter outside his window.

Levi's happy, too, that his exams are over, but he has to admit, he thought there might be moral standards from the people he called neighbours.

He sighs, momentarily tapping down the volume of his music as he hears what he thinks might be his neighbour against the shared wall. The sound is fleeting, and he almost thinks he's making it up, and then he hears her soft whimpers and two hard thuds against the thin separation between their bedrooms. Levi waits for a second, blinking, and then he closes his eyes.

He's never really met his neighbour. It's been around eight months of living next door to one another, and he doesn't think he's actually ever seen her. Once, he decided he'd try to confront her when she left her room, but just kept missing the opportunity.

Unlike his previous three years of university, Levi had decided to bunk alone for the final climb of his undergrad degree. His friends would all be upstairs somewhere, either in studios of their own or sharing six-bed flats amongst themselves, but God knew that Levi needed the space this time around.

In his first year, he'd shared with quite possibly the worst human beings he'd ever had the displeasure of knowing. He spent more time at Erwin's flat than his own, which is why he ended up moving in with him in his second year. Then, he took a spontaneous study abroad for his third year (spontaneous, as in all of his friends were doing the same thing, and there was no way he was staying here on his own when they were out having the greatest times in different countries), and now, in his fourth and final year, Levi just wants to know that being alone doesn't have to be a luxury.

He needs the space, and the quiet. Granted, his studio is spacious, although it would be perfect if he wasn't on the ground floor with little to work with for a view. Eight months down the line, and he's still waiting for that promised peace and quiet.

There are two other people in this hallway, but his next-room neighbour, Room A, is by far the most interesting. He knows that the people in Room D are party animals, and during freshers week, they made that fact glaringly obvious. Room C are ghostly, silent most of the time until they remember that they, too, have music to play to block out other people's noise.

Levi likes being in Room B because it's not too far from the exit. If he were to open his door, he'd be adjacent to Room A; the space is so tight that he's not even sure they would be able to leave or enter at the same time.

The list of what he thinks he knows about his next-room neighbour is longer than what he actually knows. He knows for certain that she's female, and that she cares about the cleanliness of her flat. If Levi's not listening to the sound of other people's mess, he can hear her vacuuming every other day, which he can respect.

Levi knows that her name is Y/N, because he's heard it being called a few times, both for business and pleasure. He also knows that she's in her final year, just like him, because once he overheard her on a phone call complaining about her dissertation. That's about all he knows confidently.

The rest is speculation, things he thinks he knows from listening: he thinks she sleeps with the radiator off, because he always hears the switch in the morning. He thinks she keeps her keys on her door because he hears them clink when it closes, and he thinks she mumbles to herself sometimes, because the walls are thin and if she's not on the phone, then who could she be talking to?

Finally, Levi thinks that she might be a bit of a whore, and he means it endearingly, because the amount of times Levi has heard her fucking somebody is becoming ridiculous.

At first, Levi tried to be understanding. After all, it wasn't like she was screwing guys in the hallway. She was in her room, in her own time, and he tried to come to terms with that simply being out of his hands. The noise was unfortunate, yeah, but he could always put his headphones on for an hour or so.

Then it just kept happening, like clockwork, like some sick joke.

After about the sixth time, he was fed up. He'd thrown his headphones down, scowling angrily as his eyes flickered to the time in the corner of his computer screen — 1:23am. It was bad enough that he was working all night on his stupid assignment, and now his neighbour was screwing some asshole so loudly that he may as well have had no headphones on in the first place?

At least she sounded good.

Levi had deliberately ignored that thought for a while, until he heard her having sex with some guy a few months ago. He'd sighed, like a routine at that point, and remained seated on his couch, the remote in his hand ready to raise the volume of the football game on TV.

The noise was faint — if Levi had to predict based on the floor plans of their rooms, she'd probably be on her bed — but if he strained enough, he'd be able to hear her mewling, the even fainter sounds of slapping skin.

He sat there, silently, listening in like a priest taking confessions in church. His silence was judgement and equal measures of fascination. Having never really listened to her before, Levi never knew she sounded like that. Submissive, but seductive, dirty and slutty. Hm.

He had learned to respect her sex life — even creating his own for a while, too, giving her a taste of her own medicine. If anything, that only made things more lively in Room A. Somehow he blames himself for it having got to this point, presently, where he sits listening to her for the third time in a week — and it's not even Friday yet.

16:34 Levi: she's at it again 16:35 Erwin: AGAIN???? 16:37 Hange: isnt this like the fifth time this week? 16:37 Levi: third

Levi turns his chair to face the other wall, looking up at the blank plaster. There's another thud against it, and he blinks, his brows raised slightly. Is she fucking someone against the wall?

16:39 Furlan: theres no way its that bad 16:40 Furlan: send vid

After skimming over the texts, Levi's eyes flicker back to the wall. Then, he rises up from his chair and walks towards it, angling his body with his ear to the noise. Now that he's close, he can't hear a thing, and he scoffs — typical — and prepares to move away.

"Mphf — damn, bitch. You're more of a slut than I thought."

Levi stops.

Bringing his phone to his legs, Levi slumps his shoulder against the wall casually and almost cranes to listen. Without seeing anything, he feels like a fly on the wall. He hears someone with a deep voice grunting — he doesn't care about them — followed by occasional gasps, much softer, honeyed, elusive.

"You thought I was a slut?"

Levi hears her voice quivering, but there's little hurt in her tone. It's all lust, and he can hear the smile in her words.

For a second, Levi hears her body thud against the wall again and he flinches backwards. She must be directly on the other side — if the bricks weren't there, her body would be up against his own.

"Dunno what I thought," the male voice says, strained. "Wasn't-expecting-this. Shit, that's tight."

"Mm. You like it?" There's a beat of silence, and the faint sounds of breathy moans, high in an octave that sends goosebumps pricking over Levi's arms. "You like me?"

"Like your pussy. Shit, girl."

With every imagined thrust, Levi can hear her moaning, her voice raising as the pace fastens. Levi stands there, his eyes zoning out on the crack under his door and eventually, he pulls back. There's a slight ringing in his ears, and blood rushes to the tips.

16:51 Levi: phone can't pick up the volume 16:51 Levi: just trust me

It happened two more times before the weekend rolled by, and Levi thought that she must be on a conquest of bedding every guy on campus. Half of him thought it was to spite him specifically, although he wasn't even sure that she knew what she was doing was bothering him so much.

Friday evening had been a strange eve of silence, but he still felt on edge, as if waiting for the sounds to emerge. The weekend soon enough rolled by with no more sexscapades, and he felt almost a sag of relief in his shoulders.

Levi had just gotten out of the shower when he heard a knock on his door.

"Oh. It's you."

When he pulls it open, inwards on his own room, Levi props his weight against the door and stares out at Reiner, who is holding a light board under his armpit. Reiner holds it out to him with a nonchalant shrug and holds the door open with his foot as Levi takes the board with a raised brow and plonks it onto his bed.

Reiner stands in the doorway until he comes back, not quite daring to enter.

"I need one of those," Reiner offers in conversation.

"Well, you've got a job, buy one,” Levi replies, making Reiner smirk. "If you've broke it, then you can pay for it."

Reiner throws up his hands, "Hey, they don't call me the gentle giant for nothing."

Levi's face drops into a disapproving frown, "Nobody calls you that."

"You're right," Reiner sighs with a charming grin and then folds his arms.

Reiner and Levi know one another from one of their elective classes, and by some magical fate — or a wild coincidence — Reiner had been a mutual friend of one of his closest friends since first year. He also lives upstairs on the third floor, alongside some other guys and a girl that Levi didn't know very well, but had met once at a party and had kissed. He'd considered bringing her back to his room just to torment his neighbour but passed up the temptation.

Thinking of his neighbour, Levi's eyes quickly dash to her door, wondering if she might be inside and listening to them. Reiner doesn’t catch the look — or maybe he does, prompting him to his next sentence.

"You should come out tonight," Reiner suggests.

"Where?"

"A few of us are getting some drinks at Sonny's," he says. "Feel like I haven't seen you properly since that party, like, what, three months ago? You should get out more, have fun." Then, Reiner's smile widens and he, too, glances to his left to Room A, "Escape your sex fiend of a neighbour."

Levi might have cringed at the thought of her listening in, but to his surprise, he found a thrill rush through his body. Maybe she was listening right now, curled up to the door.

"I don't like Sonny's," Levi replies.

"Oh, you've been there before?"

"No. But I saw it on Eren's Instagram once, and it looked awful, sorry."

Laughing, Reiner shrugs his shoulders. "I don't care. It's just nice to get out. Really — what if we changed bars, would you come then?"

Just as he says that a soft thud can be heard from behind him, beyond the walls of the thin hallway that houses Levi’s room and his neighbours'. Levi almost cranes to catch the sound, half expecting his party animal hall-mates from Room D to come bounding inside, dressed in flamboyant attire to listen to loud music whilst getting ready to hit the town for the Friday deals that bars boasted of to rowdy students.

Instead, the door just to the right of Reiner swings open and a young woman steps inside. Levi blinks — depending on which direction she goes in, Levi's life could get a little bit more interesting.

Levi knows that he’s seen her before in the common room, chatting to other friends around a pool table, or shaking a vending machine with a stranger to try and free an overpriced bottle of Dr Pepper from the machine's claws.

Levi blinks once again, and Reiner turns at the sound of the door creaking open, and the breath almost leaves Levi's body in one giant exhale when she steps in their direction, towards Room A.

Ah. So this is Y/N.

Reiner's eyes move up and down with intrigue as she — you — step closer towards them. Judging by your almost surprised gaze, and the flit of your eyes as you look between them and the door to Room A, even Reiner knows that you are the aforementioned sex fiend, the famous neighbour who screws guys all the time and makes Levi all hot and bothered.

Nothing is said — there is nothing to be said. For a split second, you pause, judging the space past Reiner to your door, to your sanctuary, meanwhile, the two men size you up, intrigued by your very existence. Levi feels his conversation skills run dry — what could he say now that you were here?

He has to confess, against his previous wishes, that you were pretty. Beautiful, even. He tries to downplay it by thinking about you pushed up against the wall with a cunt full of someone else's cock, but if anything the thought only makes things worse.

As you push through the awkward silence of the hallway, Reiner slightly inches closer to Levi, as if to give you space as you stride by. To their surprise, you do so with a lifted gaze, having the nerve to look shy, guilty, friendly.

Everything would be easier if you weren't his type, weren't Reiner's type. Levi thinks about that for a second as his friend devours the sight of you, and Levi feels his stomach dip. He's never even spoken to you before, but he feels like Reiner has just crossed a boundary somehow.

The fact of you being as pretty as you sound, as desirable as Levi imagined you had to be to bring so many people back to your den (either irresistible or slutty, but sometimes those went hand in hand and he knew it) just makes the dull ache in his abdomen worse, his heartbeat fluttering ever so out of pace.

As you pass, you peer over at the two men, gazing at Levi in particular. You even look around him, eyeing his room. Then, when you look back at Levi, it’s as if something clicks — it was as if you registered that this man had been enduring your fucks and flirts for weeks and weeks on end, and had been courteous with not complaining once.

You look at him, over him, sizing him up greedily. Levi moves from foot to foot in a way that looks impatient, although he isn’t sure he's fully convinced you of his indifference when you smile charmingly, your cheekbones full and round.

"Hello," you say — Levi almost buckles. He's only ever heard your voice through walls and doors, never face to face. He blinks dumbly, says nothing.

"Hey," is what Reiner offers with a wide grin, his gaze flickering to your body and then back to your face. But you don’t look back, only look over Reiner's shoulder to Levi, and then turn to your door and thrust the key into the hole.

Your door untwists, unlocks, and in you go. After it closes and clicks with the lock, Levi hears you shuffling in your room, and then he finally looks back at Reiner.

For once, Reiner says nothing. He raises his eyebrows and pulls a face, one that Levi rolls his eyes at, and then Reiner claps his hands together and announces his silent leave.

Levi watches as if frozen in place as Reiner leaves the hallway, and when his own door closes with a slight tick, he strains to hear you beyond the wall, but can hear nothing.

A whole day has passed since then, but Levi can’t stop thinking about it.

He hasn’t left his room all day, to the stressed displeasure of his friends. The hallway has been frozen in a quiet stillness, with nobody coming and going at any point. Levi hasn’t heard you stirring since you walked past him and Reiner the day before, but he supposes he’s just thankful that he has no fears of being bombarded with sex for hours on end, or minutes at a time depending on which loser you lure home.

Levi drops his plate into the sink, sighing with both hands flat on the side of the counter. To the left, he casts a dirty glance out the window, looking at the grey landscape beyond the glass. The car park to the hotel that is tucked neatly behind his building is virtually empty, and the giant lake-sized puddles ripple with rain. He felt like it always rained here.

Listening to the rain, Levi finishes his ritual of cleaning the dishes and then turns off the tap with another sigh. It has just been too quiet today — unnervingly quiet, in a way that makes Levi feel more on edge than at ease. He's been craving this taste of silence for so long, but now that it’s here, everything just feels off.

He pinches the bridge of his nose with an irritated exhale and moves through the thin archway to get to his bedroom, near the front door, when he hears something beyond the threshold of Room A next door. Levi stops in place.

The noise is so faint that he almost misses it. He leans his head closer in the direction of the wall, waiting for the next sound to give when he hears it again — a breathy whimper. The whimper transforms into a moan, one that Levi can hear as clearly as he would if he were in the room. There are no other voices, and Levi pulls away from the wall quickly like it's on fire.

No. It can’t be.

Levi finds it both annoying and amusing when he hears you entangled with some random guy every other day, but just the possibility of it being you, and you alone, in your room with nobody but your fingers, makes Levi’s throat tighten.

Before, it felt as though your sex life was a performance intended for Levi to listen to, but now that it’s just you, the moment feels private and intimate, and Levi doesn’t know what to do.

The moaning continues, staggered, stuttered, falling and rising in a tempo he knows only the hand of the moaner can create. By now, he’s somewhat of an expert on your noises, how you respond to whatever your partner is doing — the unfamiliarity of your pleasure tonight has thrown him off, and all Levi can do is apologise in his head and pull himself back against the wall.

He’s come this far listening to you play with others. It would just be unfair not to hear how you really like it when you’re alone.

Levi can’t be sure what it is you’re actually doing; he’ll have to leave it to his imagination to conjure up the perfect image of you on your bed, legs spread, fingers stuffed up your cunt. He closes his eyes as he leans his head against the plaster, quite literally straining to hear every gasp leaving your mouth.

The world seems to slow around him, the sounds of your one-man show all he can hear. All of a sudden, he’s thankful for the unnatural silence of the hallway outside so he can hear it all.

What he pictures is lewd and perfect; you’re biting your lip probably, trying to contain yourself as you plunge your fingers deeper inside your pussy, curling them in a way nobody else can. The lights are dimmed, but in his mind, the picture of your body is crystal clear; the shape of your body is outlined by light, shadows cast attractively around the perk of your breasts, the glisten of crystalline sweat on your skin.

With your chest rising, Levi watches in his mind as your thighs quiver, your knuckles pushing against your opening — if it was possible to get more of your finger in there, you’d do it.

Your fingers slide in and out covered in wetness, each plunge inside accompanied by another moan that makes him shudder. Levi’s ear is flat against the wall, his cock hardening uncomfortably beneath his joggers.

All of a sudden, the shame of eavesdropping washes over him and he pulls away, breathing heavily as he moves from the wall to the bathroom. For good measure, he slams the door behind him, immediately turning on the tap and washing his face. What was he thinking?

Thankfully, there’s nobody to greet his ashamed walk back into his bedroom. He rubs the side of his face with a groan and glances back at the wall. For a moment, he pauses, but he hears no more sound.

Levi’s been in a sour mood since the weekend, and nobody around him knows how to solve it.

At first, it had started with the dream he’d had; the dream where he’d shoved your head into a pillow and fucked your brains out, which woke him with a start and another guilty walk to the bathroom. Then, he’d turned up late to his class and simultaneously discovered that Reiner had, in fact, broken the light board he loaned him the other week.

After that, he received a bitchy email from the receptionist at his building about upcoming fire alarm inspections, and because he’d been too busy looking at his phone, Levi had slammed into a group of first-year girls in the library and caused one of them to drop all of her books and her coffee on the floor. Now, his wallet was five pounds lighter and his expression was sour, and no matter how hard his friends tried to coax him out of his foulness, it was no use.

“At least you bought her another coffee,” says Eren with a shrug as he watches the flustered first-year disappear out of the student café with her friend.

“Not the point, dipshit.”

“It’s probably ‘cause of the lack of sleep this man gets thanks to his harlot neighbour,” Hange suggests, their shoulders hunched as they finish up one of their handouts for their evening class.

At that, Reiner looks up from his phone and adds, “Hot harlot neighbour.”

“Is she actually?” asks Erwin. “I don’t know if I can trust your judgement in women, Reiner.”

“She is beautiful,” Levi mutters reluctantly, his face still drawn together with irritance. Admitting that fact only makes him feel worse, especially when the memory of his dream creeps back into his mind. He sighs and rubs his neck. “But she hasn’t really made any noise in a while.”

“Maybe she’s on her period,” says Eren unhelpfully.

“Whores are on the pill,” Porco adds, suddenly reminding Levi of his presence. The blond-haired guy sits to the right with a coffee in one hand and a bagel in the other.

“Don’t you think it’s kind of sexist to call her a whore when I know most of you probably have higher body counts?” replies Isabel. She’s crept up on the knit of friends, but contrary to normal, her being here doesn’t make Levi feel any better. Right now, there are simply too many witnesses to his misery.

Eren shrugs. “Fine. Then she’s a slut.”

“As if that’s any better,” Isabel says dumbly. “You guys are pigs.”

“But she is beautiful,” Reiner says again. “I’m telling you — it’s a miracle Levi hasn’t made his move yet. If I lived next door to someone who looked like that…” He trails off. Levi cringes. How did he end up being friends with the worst people in the world?

Reiner sells Levi as actually having enough confidence to get up and knock on her door, when the truth of the matter is that Levi is too afraid to even approach the wall when he hears a noise anymore. In the time between him listening to you finger-fucking yourself and him having such an out-of-pocket dream about you, Levi hasn’t even wanted to listen to anything he hears outside of his room, too afraid of what he might do or think if he hears you again.

Besides, what would he even do? It’s been almost eight months of sharing a wall, and he’s come no closer to knowing you or anything about you. You’re as familiar to him as any stranger in this café, but the only difference is that he’s heard the way you whimper when your cunt is stuffed with cock and you’re up against the wall, which most people would have trouble competing with.

When you know how someone sounds when they’re most likely cumming on someone else’s dick, it’s an unbeatable bond.

Levi looks up at Reiner as if to say something, but then his eyes are drawn to the doors to the café. They widen suddenly, and after watching his expression shift, Reiner follows his gaze and looks over his shoulder.

After a few seconds, he whips his head back to the group and hisses, “That’s her!”

The speed at which their heads turn is almost funny to Levi, and he might have laughed had he not been so full of mortified fear at the sight of you.

You look pretty today — really pretty. Pretty in a way that Levi can’t even begin to make sense of considering the only way he’s seen you so far is in glimpses, in the corridor dressed in comfy clothes, or stark naked with his dick up your snatch in his head. His whole body fills with a sticky heat as he narrows his gaze on you, hoping that by staring you might disappear like a mirage and spare him the embarrassment due to come.

But nothing ever goes the way Levi wants it to. He breathes in heavily when your gaze pans across the room as if you’re searching for someone, stopping with a comical wide-eyed look of surprise when you see a group of six or so people all watching you with strange intensity.

Levi is not at all prepared for the way your brows knit together in confusion as you assess the strangers, only to raise in acknowledgement when you finally look at him for a moment too long.

Words are not needed to convey the silent series of events that spiral after that look. Levi knows instantly what you’re thinking and what it means. He knows that you know he’s told everybody about you — and he knows that you know he knows who you are and how often you do what you do.

There’s no way of explaining how confident he is that you’ve cracked the code in your head — he doesn’t know anything at all, only that when your face brightens into a smile he knows he’s screwed.

So fucking screwed.

“Oh shit, you were right,” Porco says after a while of mutual silence, and Levi is strangely grateful for the distraction of his voice as he turns back to his friend. “She’s hot!”

“And you’re being fucking loud, shut up,” Levi grumbles, his face scrunched into such a tight frown that it hurts to hold it. “Yes, that’s her. So what.”

“She’s looking at you,” Hange says rather unhelpfully. They’re sitting with their elbows on their spread legs, head low as they glance at you over the top of their glasses. Their brows are so high they might as well become a part of their hairline as they say a few seconds later, “Still looking.” A beat, and then, “Still looking.”

Levi huffs quietly, trying to find something interesting on the low table in the middle of the group to latch onto. All he can find are some of Hange’s papers and Porco’s bagel wrapper — neither are particularly inspiring to stare at, but he stares anyway, acutely aware of the heavy weight of your gaze on the side of his face as you approach the coffee counter.

“Maybe it’s because you’re all fucking gawking at her,” Levi replies stiffly.

To their credit, the group does their best to mask their very obvious staring, but Levi already knows that their hanging mouths have caused irreparable damage. He makes it a point not to look back over at you, and based on how his friends try to busy themselves with random things, he guesses you’ve reluctantly looked away from them and are currently buying something.

After today, Levi will never come here again — he’s just suddenly remembered that you’re real, and the notion of seeing you out in public just became his next biggest worry.

“Maybe you should go and say hi,” Isabel suggests, her mouth full around a bite of brownie.

Levi looks at her with an incredulous look. “And why would I do that?”

“She’s your neighbour,” Isabel replies slowly. “It’s polite. And friendly.”

“I’ll go and say hi, if you want,” offers Reiner. When Levi throws him a dirty look, he says, “What? She smiled at me before. I might be her next conquest.”

“Not much of a challenge for her,” Levi mutters. Besides, you weren’t even looking at Reiner back then — but as soon as the thought comes to his head he immediately exiles it. He’s not going to stoop as low as to fight Reiner on it; it will only deepen the hole he’s dug himself now that he's opened his mouth and told people about you.

After around four minutes, Levi has exhausted all possible resorts of interest around the table and anxiously rubs the back of his neck. Reiner still has his head looking up towards the coffee counter, but the others have mercifully ceased their curious staring. He levels his breathing and takes a quick swig of his tea, all before absentmindedly turning his head to look over his shoulder.

Your back is facing everyone, your head thrown back in laughter at something someone next to you is saying. Levi represses the urge to bristle at his own thoughts of what you might be laughing at, what possibly makes you laugh and smile — what coffee did you order, or maybe you are a tea person? Hot chocolate? Levi’s face falls into a narrow look of horror — Jesus Christ, he’s in so deep and over what? The sound of you?

Levi decides that he’s possibly gone insane after a long four years in academia and rests his cheek on his shoulder for a minute, gaze low. His friends are right, to a fault; he could just talk to you, scratch the itch until it’s gone and he can relax and live like a normal human being again. But that would involve taking initiative and actually confronting you, which in the grand scheme of things seems like a terrible idea.

He’d rather just forget about the delusional display of heated fantasies he’s conjured up after getting just a peek at you.

“Oh, shit. She’s looking again.”

It’s embarrassing how quickly Levi looks back at you without even thinking about it.

Sure enough, you’re looking back at the group, a cup of something steaming in your hand as your friend leads the way through a cluster of tables towards the double doors leading out onto the wide front courtyard. The screaming voice in his head is commanding Levi to look away, but he just can’t.

He watches you as you look back at him, mapping out every detail he possibly can while he has the chance to just look without any consequence, and feels his breathing constrict when you smile, so softly that it knocks the literal wind from his lungs, and raise your free hand in a wave.

And he doesn’t even move.

Somewhere behind him, Levi hears Reiner snigger and the brawny guy lifts his own hand to wave back at you, a grin plastered on his face. Your eyes barely move to look at Reiner in acknowledgement before locking back onto Levi with an almost hopeful look, and now would be a great time for Levi to move or do something in response, but he doesn’t. And he doesn’t know how to respond when your smile deepens into a smirk, almost like that was exactly what you wanted him to do.

“Why does she look down bad?” Eren asks quietly, making Porco cackle with a laugh that makes you look away and slink after your friend. Levi affords himself the time to watch you go, watching the way your ass moves in your jeans, the way your breasts bounce in that shirt, the way your waist looks and the way your hair moves and the way your smile widens—

“You’re a lucky son of a bitch,” Porco says, shaking his head with an amused look on his face. “If I lived next to someone who looked like that, and looked at me like that—”

“Well, you don’t, so fuck off,” Levi snaps. Wrong answer: the boys in his group laugh even louder, and Levi wants to shrink to the size of an ant and drown in his tea.

God. Levi realises with a gigantic sigh that today has been a long ass day.

Levi rubs his hair with the towel and glares at his reflection in the mirror. He stares, long and hard, and frowns at what looks back. For a guy who is to be considered “grown”, he cannot believe how stupid he's being, how stupid his brain is.

He has never once had a crush on somebody he’s never even met before, and only actually seen properly about two times. In the long four years of being in this city, Levi has never entertained an interest in anybody, mostly because he felt he didn’t have the patience for a relationship nor the time, which is why the way he’s feeling now is all the more bothersome — and even worse when the person he’s having trouble understanding his feelings for is someone he’s barely met, never talked to, and knows likes cock more than the air they breathe.

It is simply outrageous that he likes you so much. And he’s not even sure if what he feels would qualify as liking you.

Levi has never spoken one word to you and has never made any effort to do so, but alongside the audible archive of moans he has of yours in his memory and the mapped-out beauty of your face, Levi can distinguish that the pooling pit of desire in his tummy is closer to a crush than it is just general appreciation. And this feeling sucks.

Suddenly, Levi thinks back to seeing you in the student café and physically cringes at his reflection. All that for what? A smile? He is pathetic — Levi cannot believe that he has become such a strange man, and it is entirely your fault for being so pretty. And sounding so fucking sexy.

Levi hangs his towel on the small heated towel rack and washes his hands, hoping that in a metaphorical sense, it will wash away all of the terrible thoughts he’s having. Then, he shakes them dry and flicks off the bathroom switch, striding back into his room with a sinking feeling of emptiness.

He makes his way to the kitchen and looks longingly at the kettle. A cup of tea would do wonders for the creeping headache forming in his skull, but like the idiot he’s suddenly turned out to be, Levi instead leans up on his toes to grab a bottle of whiskey from on top of the fridge and finds an accompanying glass to pour himself a drink.

It’s been a long day, and he needs something strong. Quite frankly, Levi thinks he also deserves it.

For most of the evening, Levi entertains himself with his whiskey bottle, a glass and whatever the hell his TV can pick up in the black spot he calls home. He’s not sure how many glasses he’s had by the time he hears the corridor door swing open with its alarmingly loud squeal, but judging by how the room seems to tilt on its axis, Levi would wager a guess as to believe he’s had at least more than six glasses.

He feels his heart in his ears, pounding like a war drum, and he immediately reaches for the remote and turns down the volume. Like a cat, he feels his ears prick at the slightest sounds, and quite quickly, it’s as though stones are weighing down his stomach when he hears a boyish kind of snigger in the hallway, followed by the sound of keys in Room A’s door.

Please no. Not right now.

Not when Levi’s trying to come to terms with the unnatural feelings he’s somehow garnered for you.

Levi hears you shush the guy of the night and push open your door, its hinges moaning with relief when both of you stumble inside and it closes with a click. It’s almost embarrassing how quiet Levi has gone in an effort to eavesdrop — as much as he dislikes the idea of you being fucked by some random guy, he has to admit that he’s come to find some enjoyment in the vision of you being destroyed, in the music made by your pleasure. It took a while to admit it, but now that he has, it’s like a weight being lifted.

Once again, he is left to wonder what you’re doing when he can no longer hear your moans or the guy’s stupid voice muttering: Levi’s imagined you stumbling through the narrow passage past the bathroom and towards your bed, arms snug around the guy’s chest. You’ve probably sat down, and the guy is between your legs holding your face with his hands.

Only you haven’t. Levi hears a familiar thump against the wall and his eyes widen excitedly.

“Get this shit off.” Levi hears the guy grunt unhappily, and, hey wait, when did Levi suddenly end up listening so close to the wall?

“You don’t like it?” you ask, your voice so quiet through the thin layer of brick separating you from Levi’s ear.

“Like it better when it's not on,” the guy groans, and a few more thumps against the wall sound along with a strange dragging noise that Levi presumes might be your back. “God, you’re so hot.”

Well, that they can both agree on.

Levi closes his eyes as your voice begins to rise, foolishly high and breathy and in a way that makes Levi’s dick harden under his clothes. He pictures your face in his head, thrown back in a twist of pleasure, and fights the urge to grip his cock with his hand — he loses the battle and curses as he grabs his dick and begins to pump his wrist.

Levi leans his back against the wall and dips his head low to his chest, his eyes unwillingly fixed on the sight of his own cock hardening in his hand. Levi acknowledges that jerking off to his neighbour having a shag is a bit weird, but it could be worse, and as long as you can’t see him, he doesn’t care.

He tightens his grip around his dick and drags his hand up and down, biting down on his lip to keep his satisfied groans from eliciting any unwanted attention.

On the other side of the wall, you feel the brick behind your head as the stranger lifts one of your legs up over his shoulder, falling to his knees like a beggar and lifting the bottom half of your skirt up over your hips. At some point during your ungracious entry into the bedroom, the man managed to slip down your panties and now has full, unrestricted access to your cunt, and wastes no time pushing his head between your thighs.

Feeling the man’s tongue running flat up your slit, you moan breathlessly and stare up at the ceiling. You’ve fucked so many men it’s impossible to remember all of them, but you never get bored of the feeling of someone’s tongue up your pussy. Your heart stammers in your chest as you peer down at the stranger; his face is pushed between your legs and hidden from view, leaving you with nothing but dark locks of hair to gaze at, hunched shoulders and a pale hand pressing into your leg.

Admittedly, the only reasons you picked this stranger to approach in the bar had been because of the way he looked, and you close your eyes and let your jaw hang open in pleasure, all while your thoughts linger on who you pretend is between your legs instead of him.

“You taste amazing,” the guy groans into you, and you smile pleasantly. Everybody likes being complimented, don’t they?

“Yeah?” you ask, smoothing one of your hands up around your tit, “It’s all yours.”

The guy groans, as does Levi, who’s listening so loyally that he might as well smash a hole in the wall and look through. Nothing is left to imagination anymore; it’s as if you’re narrating your night just for Levi’s sake.

“Yeah. You’re right. This pussy’s mine,” the guy laughs, nipping his teeth against your inner thigh and making you squeal unexpectedly.

“Come on,” you rasp, worming your fingers through his twirly locks of hair with a slight grip. He winces and looks up at you from over your stomach, eyes dark and wide with the pain of your fingers tightening around his curls. “Fuck me, big guy. I want your cock.”

Levi’s wrist quickens. He blames the whiskey for the strangled little pathetic sound that burns in his throat, but there’s no way you heard it. Although these walls are so thin that he can hear every sound you make, there’s no way you can hear any of his noises. The logic defies Levi at that moment.

“God damn, you really are a needy girl, aren't you?”

No, you’re not, Levi thinks. Only you are — you grin down at the handsome man removing himself from between your legs and shuffle closer to grab a taste of yourself from his lips. He groans into your mouth, one hand on your ass and the other around the back of your neck.

With his arms around you, the man guides you towards the end of your bed and ungracefully drops you down, groaning when you bite your bottom lip and stare up at him with an expectant look in your eyes. Levi could only dream of what makes the stranger growl like that as he strains to listen in. You open your legs to invite him in, watching as he pulls a condom from his back pocket and takes his jeans down to his ankles.

Levi’s cock is throbbing, the tip an angry shade of red as he swipes his thumb and smears a slip of pre-cum across the curved edge. Levi inhales deeply, feeling his whole body stiffen as he pulls his fist up and down, the fingers on his other hand grazing across his balls with a sensitive flush. He hears you moan outrageously loud and his wrist trembles — he must have slipped it in.

You tighten your legs around the stranger, pulling him and his dick further into your cunt, the wetness of it slippery and inviting and divinely powerful. Every man you’ve had up there has made a comment on how good it feels, and as the guy moans loudly and tells you it’s the best pussy he’s had, you think of your neighbour; his surprised expression when he saw you in the café, the way his friends threw him looks when you smiled.

You know he’s been listening (if he hasn’t, then he’s admirably unbothered or deaf), and the thought excites you wildly.

You look beyond the man and to the wall, imagining your neighbour staring at the brick with a blank expression. Maybe he’s angry that you have another man over. You hope he is.

Biting back a laugh, you moan for good measure and match every thrust with a sound. The guy stuffed inside of you mutters a string of curses, chest puffed with pride, oblivious to the vision you have in your head of your neighbour snug between your thighs, his face steeled into his usual displeasure.

“Mmf, yes,” you whine, a little louder than you usually would. “Right there.”

“Say my name,” the guy growls, slapping your thigh rather sharply, “like a good girl.”

You flush, knees practically bent over to your chest as he folds you in half. For a second, you can’t even think of his name, don’t know if he ever even told you. Instead of wounding his pride, you drop a few girly moans and hope it distracts him, which it does. You wonder what would happen if you were to moan out your neighbours name — if you even knew it, that is.

“Oh, god,” you moan genuinely and close your eyes as the man sinks his cock in further. Thank goodness this man’s dick is long, you think, feeling the tip brush against a weak spot inside of you. The mattress beneath your spine is shaking uncontrollably, and the man peers down at you with a glint in his eye.

Levi’s head leans back and a breathless groan escapes — fuck, he thinks, but there’s no time to take it back, and certainly no chance he’s been heard.

Unbeknownst to Levi, your ears prick up curiously. The man snug inside of you looks at your face with an equal amount of curiosity, his hands wide against your skin as he fucks you at an unmeasurably quick pace. It’s as if he has somewhere else to be than here, but the pressing wrinkle in his forehead deepens as he fucks you harder, nails digging into your skin, spit flying from his mouth to your breasts.

“My friend said your pussy was good, but I didn’t think it would be this good,” the guy says, his voice raspy. All you can currently focus on is the squelch between your legs, and for a hopeful sound of annoyance from your neighbour.

When nothing comes, you opt for staring up at the guy with wide eyes, as if the thought of being passed around a few friends shocks you. In actual fact, you could care less, just as long as you both feel good.

His next few thrusts knock the wind out of you, and Levi clings to those pitched sounds like they’re his new lifeline. Pumping the length of his cock with his hand, Levi clamps his eyes closed and tries not to become self-aware of what the fuck he’s doing, instead focusing all of his energy on the twisting ache in his stomach and the dull groan of his wrist bones.

What Levi does next horrifies him. His hips jerk suddenly, his breathing laboured as he imagines himself in your room between your legs. Just the thought of looming over you, chest bowed over yours, your legs over his shoulders as he sinks himself into your cunt. The look of pleasured joy on your face, that stupidly beautiful smile lifted so high.

In the swirling darkness of his closed eyes, Levi conjures up images of you flustered and naked, covered in sweat and cum and as your breasts bounce the shine on your body curves — fucking hell, he’s in so deep, he’s so fucked.

“Oh! Oh, there, yep, there — hmpf!”

Levi hears you so loudly that it’s as if you’re panting it in his ears. He fists his dick almost furiously, feeling the creeping heat move across his body like a wildfire. The phantom illusion of your body underneath him pulses, the feeling of your cunt wet and squishing around him feels so real he might believe it if he weren’t uncomfortably self-aware of how screwed up he is, fantasising about a girl he’s never even talked to before.

Even through the wall, Levi can hear your bed rattling against the opposite wall, each slap of skin as the stranger fucks himself into you; Levi zeros in on the sounds and produces the perfect scene in his head, one that makes his dick twitch in his hand and his feet slip slightly across the wooden floor.

His chest rises and falls heavily, his hands trembling, his balls so sensitive he’s resorted to clinging to the wall like a rock climber with one hand while he pumps his cock with the other. Listening to you being fucked stupid is going to make him cum all over himself, and for a split second, that seems fine. That would be okay.

“Goddamn. You’re tighter than I expected,” the guy says, which sends Levi over the edge.

He groans softly at the floor and feels his whole body trembling as the coil in his stomach suddenly releases, and a string of cum shoots from the end of his cock. Levi keeps pumping, cum falling down his hand and to the floor in a grossly filthy manner, one that he’s trying his best not to stress over as he focuses all of his energy and thoughts on the hand wrapped around his cock and how badly he wishes it was your pussy gripping him instead.

When he does open his eyes, Levi blinks away the blurry tunnel vision and tries to catch his breath, now uncomfortably aware of the sticky mess covering his hand and the floor around his feet. For a second, he feels complete bliss — until the ringing in his ears subsides and he hears you whining in that pretty fucking voice you have, and the shame washes over him like a bucket of cold water.

Levi forces himself up off the wall and stares back at it, almost as if it might transform into a window for you to gape at him, the dirty eavesdropper who just had an orgasm over a daydream and the sound of his neighbour fucking some random guy. He blinks in horror.

The guy screwing you groans like an animal — a dying animal, Levi thinks bitterly, until he realises that he’s the first person to have orgasmed in the strange threesome and he isn’t even in the room.

Although guilt is consuming him, Levi can’t commit to pulling away yet. He might as well see it through to the end now that he’s become a part of it all.

Your cunt clenches around the guy’s cock like a vice, coaxing whatever last reserves of self-restraint he has before he grunts out a loud, “Fuck!” and slams his hips into you one last time, filling the condom with cum.

You feel the warmth bulging inside of you — lucky for someone to have gotten off in this exchange. Your pussy throbs and you squirm unhappily, hoping he might keep going.

“More?” the guy asks, breathless and shocked. “For real?”

“Mm. More, I need more,” you tell him, your walls fluttering around him. “Please, please give me more—”

No, no, no, Levi thinks in a panic. Please no more! As if being subjected to listening to some guy cumming after being in your pussy was bad enough, Levi wants nothing more than for it all to be over so he doesn’t have to listen anymore. He knows he could easily put in earphones and tune you both out, but that’s not the point.

Still, he feels a sudden rush of bitter hatred when the guy slaps your skin and makes you whine, all before laughing and pulling out. Levi hears nothing for a moment until he hears a drawer pulling open and slamming shut, and he thinks in a hot flush that he’s about to have a terribly unhappy night listening to you getting screwed again.

You watch the stranger shake his cock for a moment once the old and used condom is off, and he quickly puts on a new one while he’s still hard and admirably shoves himself back inside. Your wet warmth welcomes him back encouragingly, and there’s no trouble keeping him hard once you’ve gripped him back inside. The man shifts himself inside of you and moves in and out, his eyes trained carefully on your face as if assessing your enjoyment.

He creeps a hand between your legs and thumbs the hood of your pussy, and your eyes flash open with surprise at the feeling of his thumb on your clit.

“My god, you’re fucking gorgeous,” he comments, and Levi curses.

This can’t go on! Levi feels his mind reeling and he refuses to take responsibility for what his body does next; he wipes his hand on his joggers and glares at the door. Taking a few strides towards it, Levi forgets the cum on the floor and grabs one of his jumpers, pulling it over his head as he grabs his five seconds of courage by the balls and swings his door open.

The sound of you being fucked is made even more pronounced in the hallway. Levi’s never admired his other hall-mates until now, because he knows they’re all either listening in the same horror as Levi used to or they’re out somewhere missing all of the drama. Still, Levi feels his heart thumping wildly in his chest as he raises his fist, and without thinking any of it through, he bangs his hand on your door three loud times.

The sounds cease.

Levi hears a flustered “fuck!” and a confused moan, each one from a different person, and now that he’s knocked, Levi knows if he does a runner, you’ll only know it was him when his door shuts in the now uncomfortable silence. Standing in the hallway, he knows he has to live out his embarrassment and see it through.

The stranger pulls out of you in a fluster, staring down at you with surprise. “Should we answer it?”

You crane to listen, half-hoping it was a knock on someone else’s door and not your own, but you reluctantly glance up at him in shock and pick yourself up off the bed.

“Um…” you start, flustered and scanning the floor for something to put on. You spot your dressing gown slung over the chair at your desk and reach for it, giving the guy a pointed look as he scrambles for his underwear. You hoped it wouldn’t have, but the vibe is killed rather cruelly by whoever is banging your door so loudly.

Tying the cord around your waist, you pass by the guy with a sheepish smile and smooth a hand across his chest. In a way, the stranger is surprisingly handsome, especially considering you only picked him out for the way his hair looked. He grins after a while and grabs his shirt, holding it in his hand as he leans to kiss your lips and slither past you.

“Lemme get it,” he suggests, already making his way to the door. You let him go without protest, simply standing to the side as he reaches the door, twists the handle and pulls it open. The map of muscles in his back tense when he sees Levi standing outside.

“Levi,” he says dumbly. Levi blinks in confusion. How does he know this guy, and more importantly, how does this guy know him? The stranger seems to pick up on his blatant confusion and shifts uncomfortably, “It’s Samuel. I live in Isabel’s flat.”

Levi visibly grimaces.

This city is just too small and he hates it so much. Why the fuck did the guy fucking you have to be someone in close connection to one of his closest friends, and why the fuck did it have to be the guy involved in the sex Levi has just jerked off to?

“We met?” Levi decides to ask.

“Not officially,” mutters Samuel.

Levi ignores him and glances back into the darkness, schooling his features into disinterest with all of his strength when he sees you standing in the shadows.

The revealing V of your dressing gown attracts his attention, his eyes trained on the curving line of your breasts pushed together by your folded arms. He looks up to your neck and face, shining with a thin sheen of sweat, and then finally acknowledges your face.

Your makeup is smudged in a way that makes Levi’s cock twitch again, but he refuses to feed in to the pleasure he so badly wants to seek at the sight of you, fucked-out and equally surprised to see him standing like a loser in your doorway. You take a single step forward in what looks like wonder.

“What…are you doing here?” Samuel asks hesitantly.

Levi remembers he’s there and glares at him. “I live next door.”

“Oh,” says Samuel.

“I don’t care that you’re fucking. Trust me, I don’t.” He’s lying. “But can you be quiet about it?”

His voice cuts deep, making Samuel flinch, but in Levi’s peripheral he sees your face twist into an amused smile, your feet shuffling across the wooden floor to arrive by Samuel’s side.

“She’s not that loud,” Samuel attempts to say, in a pathetically unenthusiastic voice. Even he must know to an extent that you’re actually extremely loud.

Levi’s brows raise. “It’s not her I’m bothered about.”

“Oh,” Samuel says again. He turns to look at you like a deer caught in the headlights, but when his face drops at the look of amusement on your face, something tells Levi that Samuel may have expected you to defend him the way he just tried to defend you.

Samuel’s eyes narrow and he snatches himself away from the door to find his shoes and phone. “Whatever man. She’s a slut anyway, you must be used to it by now.”

Levi hums, his eyes on you as you look back at him, unmoving, unbothered. Your eyes drop suddenly to his bottoms before pulling back up with your brows raised. After looking down with reluctance, Levi spots the cum he wiped on his joggers in a smudge across his thigh and he pauses.

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

He can’t think of any other words.

Samuel slips his shoes back on and levels a dirty look in your direction, but you just smile sympathetically and wish him goodnight. He mutters something rude under his breath and barges past Levi on his way out, and Levi makes a point of watching Samuel go whilst trying to pretend that neither of you has just spotted what is drying to a crusty stain on his joggers.

Levi continues to stare down the hallway even when the door has slammed shut and Samuel has disappeared, but the sound of your feet shuffling on the floor makes him look back. He must be a good actor, because your brows furrow for a moment when you lock eyes, as if you aren’t sure whether or not he’s angry.

Of course, Samuel had been right. You were a loud fuck, you were a bit of a slut, and Levi is very familiar with the guests coming and going from your bedroom. But none of that matters at all now he’s here, looking at you hidden underneath a dressing gown, your lips parted with hesitance.

Levi stares at you for a second, wondering what he could possibly say to you now that the chance is right there. He should have known he’d say something stupid — Levi copies your facial expression and clicks his tongue: “I know you can actually do better than that.”

His words take you by surprise, but he watches as your wide eyes soften and your smile twists — his stomach churns, thrilled, enamoured. If he was stupid, he’d push himself into your room and kiss you, but luckily, he’s exhausted his daily dose of stupidity and fallen back into his usual state of normalcy.

“Oh, really?” you ask sarcastically. This is the first time he’s heard you talking since your shy little hello a few days ago, and without a wall between you and some dude’s dick up your pussy.

Levi hums, weaker than before. “Him, of all people?”

“Well, I don’t pick them for their personality,” you tell him, and he blinks as he realises that you’re actually discussing the people you bring back to your room. Levi lets it sink in until it does, deep in his stomach, and he feels his neck burning.

Suddenly, Levi is uncomfortably aware of how aware you are; you know you’re loud, and you know Levi can hear every moan and cry and whimper, every thud against the wall, every gasp of breath, every boy. And something tells him that none of that is accidental.

“...Thank god for that,” he drawls finally, his gaze hardening on your own. This time, you hum, mockingly, and tilt your head while you look at him.

Levi doesn’t know how long he stands there for. All he knows is that the tension between you is so thick it’s almost choking him. He doesn’t even know if you can feel it too — the unimaginable jolt of sexual tension coiling around his body like a snake, his whole body vibrating excitedly.

It would be so easy to move forward towards you. Levi doesn’t even think you’d refuse him. The sultry look in your eyes is inviting, enticing, and he lets his gaze wander back to the slip of skin above your breasts before he snatches his gaze back.

“I’ll be more quiet, if that’s what you’d like,” you say after a while.

He doesn’t say anything at first. Just looks at you for a second, weighing his options. Then, his gaze softens and he grunts — no. Be as loud as you want.

You seem to understand, for the smile widens into a pleased grin. “Alright. Sorry, Levi.”

He prays that you didn’t just see his body flinch as you said his name. Levi grunts again and waves his hand dismissively, turning for his room before the excitement of everything makes him become stupid again. He’s done enough stupid things today, thank you!

“Night, Y/N,” he says through clenched teeth, and if he had looked back, he would have seen the smile widen to a degree he could have never even expected, the confirmation you needed being your name on his lips, a name he would have only heard had he been listening.

Levi refuses to give in to his dumb urges and leans his back against his door when it shuts closed, listening shamefully as you hesitate before closing your door behind him. Finally, he lets out an exhausted breath and closes his eyes again.

For fuck sake. He’s a moron.

A moron who wants to fuck his neighbour, and is pretty sure that you know it.

Would you let him?

Levi stops himself from groaning like a pathetic loser when he thinks of you again, this time opening your door and letting him in, slipping the gown down your arms so that your breasts fall out for him; his hands grabbing them, pushing you back on the bed you were just being fucked on; his dick slipping inside of you, your cunt clenched around him, lips on his hands, cum filling you up like a cake, pooling out of you—

Levi feels his cock twitch again. He sighs loudly.

He’s going to need another shower. Preferably a long cold one. Hopefully cold enough to send him into shock and kill him, just to spare him from the humiliating reality that Levi Ackerman has become an infatuated sad fuck with a raging hard crush on his stunningly sexy neighbour.

Levi groans again. Fuck.

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lumosandnoxwriting · 3 months

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look at you || Fred Weasley

Title: Look at you Pairing: Fred x Reader Summary: distance really does make the heart grow fonder. Warnings: NSFW - minors DNI! This contains, vaginal sex, female receiving oral, breeding kink, mentions of cum marking, dirty talk, praise, mentions of sex toys/sexting and pregnant sex. A/N: hockey!fred could hit me with his car and I would say thank you. Anyway as always this is dedicated to @darthwheezely b/c she always encourages my shenanigans.

The away games are always the hardest.

Fred is usually gone for a week, and between traveling, playing multiple games and the time differences they mainly communicate via text and maybe a phone call if they’re lucky. At first the lack of communication bothered Y/N. They moved across the country after Fred got drafted and it felt isolating to have the only person she knew in Washington unavailable most of the time. But now that Fred’s in the fourth year of his contract Y/N is a pro at handling the distance. Her and a bunch of the other WAGS always get together to watch the games at someone’s house, and usually do dinner or brunch on some of the days the guys are gone. And now that she’s working and more involved in the area she’s got plenty of friends and activities to keep her busy while Fred is away.

She figured this season would be just like the others, that it would suck while Fred is gone but she’d just keep busy until he was back home in their bed.

Until those two little pink lines stared up at her from the bathroom counter the night before training camp started. She wasn’t totally surprised at the result, considering her and Fred had been together for a decade, married for half of that and regularly relying on the pullout method as their main form of contraception. And of course they’d talked about having kids, but their general consensus had been that they would start trying once the season was underway, hoping to time it just right that their baby would be born at the beginning of the off season, so they could spend the first few months as a complete family unit before hockey took over Fred’s life again.

But of course life decided to say fuck their plans, and now Y/N is due to give birth just before playoffs begin in April.

Y/N had thought that having Fred gone during her first trimester would be the worst part of it, having to deal with morning sickness and those first few doctors appointments by herself. But the nausea and vomiting left her feeling so gross she was glad Fred didn’t have to see her like that, and they were able to work with her doctor so that Fred didn’t miss a single appointment.

It’s now, with Y/N into her second trimester that Fred’s absence seems to be hitting her the hardest. Her bump has finally popped, and she can barely keep her hands from stroking over the smooth skin at all hours of the day. The baby has started to move around too, starting off as gently flutters she assumed was gas that have now grown into distinctive pushes against her belly. Not to mention the nausea and vomiting that plagued her first few months of pregnancy have faded away, and Y/N finally understands what people say when they talk about pregnancy glow. Her skin is the clearest and softest it’s ever been, and her hair and nails look amazing thanks to her prenatal vitamins.

And just as she passed the five month mark her newest, and most annoying to deal with on her own, pregnancy symptom started.

She’s unbelievably horny every hour of the day.

Her newly filed out breasts constantly ache, and some days her nipples are so sensitive just the material of her bra sends a shiver down her spine. Her pussy is almost constantly slick, her clit throbbing and her cunt aching to be filled. Once the seam of her maternity jeans pulled so deliciously against her as she was driving that she nearly crashed the car as she came from that brush alone.

Everything seems to turn her on these days, no matter how inconvenient the time or place is.

Like right now, the guys are on the last leg of their longest away game stretch, the final game of a two and a half week trip, and her cunt is dripping as she watches Fred punch the other team’s center in the jaw. Not only is it inconvenient because she’s sitting on Melaine, the goalie’s girlfriend’s couch, but because Fred isn’t due back home until tomorrow afternoon and she passed out last night before she could put her vibrator back on the charger. And her own fingers will never live up to the memories of how worked up Fred gets after a fight, and how the only thing that seems to calm him down is taking Y/N from behind as he growls in her ear.

She tries to shift subtly as the ref throws Fred in the sin bin, his mouth still moving wildly as he throws insults at the other team, but when Rachel throws her a look Y/N knows she’s been caught. Rachel is the wife of one of the defensemen, and had been heavily pregnant for most of last year’s season, so Y/N figures she knows exactly how she’s feeling right now.

“Tomorrow afternoon can’t come soon enough,” Rachel teases, voice low enough so only the two of them can hear.

Y/N snorts in laughter, nodding in agreement. “You have no idea.”

Fred throws a middle finger over his shoulder as he rushes towards his truck, causing his teammates to laugh even harder. The bus had barely stopped before he was up out of his seat and making his way to the front, far too eager to get home to Y/N. Because the texts she’s been sending since he got off the ice last night have had him perpetually hard in his pants and the only thing on his mind is getting home to his wife.

He drives well over the speed limit on his way home, praying to whatever deity that exists out there he won’t get pulled over, since he’s pretty sure his urgent need to fuck his wife is not a good enough excuse to get out of a ticket. The car is barely in park as Fred throws the door open, hockey bag left behind in his haste to get inside. In a matter of a few seconds he’s barreling through the front door, taking the time to lock it behind him before he heads for the stairs.

“Baby?” he calls as he climbs, ripping his shirt off as he goes. He pauses to kick his shoes off, just letting them tumble back down as he continues up.

“Hi,” Y/N greets breathlessly when Fred appears in their doorway. Her eyes are immediately drawn to the way his jeans hang open, his cock clearly fighting against the material of his boxers.

Fred groans as he takes Y/N in, cock throbbing at the way she kneels on their bed in nothing but his jersey. The curve of her bump is visible even in the oversized garment, and Fred almost can’t believe that this is his life. He makes a living playing the sport he loves and every night he gets to come home to the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen who’s beauty has only grown as he watches his child grow inside of her.

“Fucking hell,” he practically growls as he steps into the room, his complete focus on Y/N. “Do you have any idea how fucking sexy you are, wife? That picture of your pretty pink pussy all wet and begging for my cock has been driving me crazy. I couldn’t sleep knowing you were all alone in our bed, desperate for my cock wearing nothing but my jersey.”

Y/N practically pants as Fred stalks toward her, hands clenched in fists at her sides to try and resist the urge to touch herself. She had to give herself a pep talk before taking the photo she sent, so to see Fred’s reaction to it here in the flesh makes her cunt throb with want. Before falling asleep Y/N had managed to work herself up to a few weak orgasms with her fingers, but those are nothing in comparison to what she knows Fred is about to give her.

“Sexy?” she asks teasingly. Fred has finally made it to the edge of the bed, and she runs her hands up his arms and over his shoulders, resting her palms against the sides of his neck. “Even with my big old bump in the way?”

“Especially with your big bump in the way,” Fred practically purrs. He finally gives in to his urge to touch his wife, one hand hooking around her thigh while the other fists the front of her jersey, yanking her closer to him. “Just knowing that you’re full of my baby, that I did that to you is enough to make me cum, something I know you’re well aware of.”

And she knows Fred isn’t lying. He’d always been possessive in the bedroom, and it only intensified when she got pregnant. Once her bump popped Fred was like a man possessed, needing to have one hand on it at all times. He’s finished on her bump more times than Y/N can count, rubbing his cum into her skin so he can claim her fully.

Instead of responding Y/N lets Fred pull her into a kiss, her fingers tangling in the hair at the base of his skull as he nibbles on her bottom lip. He claims her mouth with his, crawling up on the bed so he can get even closer. The hand he had on her jersey makes its way up to cup her jaw, angling Y/N’s face so he can kiss her deeper, while the one that was on her thigh starts to travel further up.

“Fuck,” Fred moans into her mouth as his hand brushes her bare hip. “No panties? Dirty girl.” He lets his hand cup the swell of her stomach, thumb slowly brushing back and forth in a sweet gesture that is the total opposite of the way he kisses his wife.

“Please,” Y/N pants as Fred’s mouth finally leaves her’s, starting to press kisses into her neck. “Need you to touch me, Freddie, only feels good when it’s you.”

“Well how can I deny my wife when she asks so nicely?”

Fred kisses the juncture of her throat one last time before pulling away just enough so he can pick her up under her thighs. He positions her back on the bed just how he wants, her back flat against the mattress with her legs spread wide, a hand on each thigh to keep them open for him.

“You’re fucking cunt,” he groans, his eyes drawn to her slick pussy as he bites his lip. He sinks down on the bed so he’s resting between her thighs, thumb and forefinger spreading her pussy apart to put her clit on display. “This pussy is going to be the death of me.”

Y/N gasps as Fred finally puts his mouth on her, hips nearly lifting off the bed as he sucks her clit between his lips. Her toes curl as his tongue flattens against her, thighs already quivering as Fred’s thumb presses against her entrance. “God, please, Fred.”

That’s all the encouragement he needs to fuck into her with his index finger, curling it to press against the front wall of her cunt, right against the spot that has her moaning his name. His cock twitches as Y/N’s hand tangles in his hair, curling his tongue around her clit as she tugs.

“Such a good girl,” Fred praises as he presses another finger into her slick cunt, letting his thumb rub small circles into her clit. “I love this pretty pussy so much, wife. Gonna eat it every fucking day of the week.”

He takes her clit back between his lips as he fucks her with his fingers, needing her to cum before he can give her what they both desperately need. His cock aches as Y/N grinds down against his face, the feel of her taking control of her pleasure only turning him on more. Fred’s tongue flicks at her clit as his lips suck, and he can tell by the way her cunt grips his fingers that she’s close.

“Cum for me, baby. Cum all over my hand so I can have you cumming all over my cock.”

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Y/N babbles as Fred licks her, fingers tugging him even closer into her as she grinds against him. Waves of pleasure are swirling in her core, electric shocks radiating all down her spine as Fred brings her closer and closer to the edge. He makes her feel like she’s on fire, completely erasing the few weak orgasms she had last night from her memory.

Fred wraps his arm around her thigh to keep Y/N in place as her orgasm takes over, his fingers and mouth still working her through the pleasure. Y/N’s toes curl as pleasure consumes her, thighs quivering as a cry of Fred’s name leaves her lips. Aftershocks of pleasure send shivers down her spine, and Y/N has to use her grip on Fred’s hair to separate his mouth from her cunt as she comes down.

He doesn’t say anything as he crawls back up the bed, letting Y/N catch her breath before he leans down to kiss her softly. Her legs wrap around his hips, the need for Fred to be close overwhelming her need to get off for a brief moment.

“Need you inside me,” Y/N murmurs against Fred’s mouth, her legs tightening around him.

“Needy girl,” Fred teases, nipping at her jaw. But with one final kiss to her lips he pulls back, climbing off the bed so he can rid himself of the rest of his clothes. Who is he to deny the needs of his wife, the woman growing his child?

Y/N makes a move to pull the jersey she’s wearing up over her head, and Fred grabs her wrist, shaking his head.

“No, the jersey stays on.”

Fred’s pretty sure he hears her mumble something about him being a possessive idiot, but he doesn’t even care. Settling on the bed, back against the headboard with his cock leaking against his stomach, he beckons Y/N closer. “Come sit on my lap and make yourself cum on my cock, baby.”

Under normal circumstances she’d make some joke about how he’s making her do all the work, but her cunt is already aching again and if she doesn’t get Fred’s cock in the next three minutes she may die. Y/N crawls up the bed, shivering at the look in Fred’s eyes. It’s full of nothing but pure desire, and she can feel her heartbeat pulsing in her clit. At one point she feared that pregnancy may change the way Fred looks at her, and now as she straddles his waist Y/N can’t believe what an idiot she had been.

One of Fred’s hands lands on her hip, the other on her bump and the contact sends a shiver down her spine. It takes a little bit of finesse with her bump in the way, but as soon as Y/N has Fred’s cock pressed against her cunt she’s sinking down. She’s slick enough from Fred’s mouth and her previous orgasm that she presses down until she’s fully seated in his lap, and her eyes flutter shut from the pleasure coursing through her veins.

Fred is so thick and full inside her, and Y/N just sits there in his lap, eyes closed and her head tilted back as she appreciates the feel of him inside her. Y/N’s cunt pulses around him, and with how desperate she’s been to feel her husband like this, she already feels embarrassingly close to her climax already.

“Fuck you are perfect,” Fred groans as her hips start to gently rock. He fixes her jersey so the hem rests on the top of her bump, wanting to see it in all of its glory. With one hand squeezing her thigh, Fred places the other on her stomach to help keep her balance. “So fucking full aren’t you, wife? So full of my cock and my baby, hm? Love being full of me, don’t you?”

“Yes,” she responds breathily, leaning back to brace herself against Fred’s thighs. The new angle lets him sink even deeper, and a sharp gasp falls from her mouth at the sensation. “Always wanna be full like this.”

“With my baby or my cock?” he teases.

“Both,” Y/N hits back truthfully.

“Fuck,” Fred growls, unable to keep his hips from thrusting. The moan that comes from Y/N spurs him on, and he continues to match her movements with his own. “Whatever my wife wants my wife gets. Gonna keep you nice and full with my cock and my cum and my babies until we’ve got a whole fucking hockey team, baby. And no one will ever doubt who you, who this fucking pussy, belongs too.”

Her cunt clenches even tighter at his words, encouraging Fred to keep talking.

“Look at you, my pretty little wife, fucking herself on my cock. Bet you thought about this the whole time I was gone, didn’t you, love?”

“Fuck, yes,” Y/N moans. She’s inching closer and closer to her orgasm with each of her movements, thighs quivering from a mixture of the pleasure swirling in her core and the effort it’s taking to fuck herself on Fred’s cock.

“Fuck you look so good like this, baby,” Fred praises. “Not gonna be able to take you like this much longer, am I? I swear everytime I look at you, your belly is bigger. It’s not long until you’ll be too big to ride me like this, isn’t that right, love? But that’s okay, because you look so fucking good all full of my baby. Seeing you like this, knowing I did this, makes me feel fucking feral, baby. You’re doing such a great job, growing our baby. Gonna be such a good Mama.”

The combination of Fred’s cock stretching Y/N to her limits and the constant stream of praise coming from Fred pushes Y/N over the edge, and her back arches as she comes. Shocks of pleasure jolt out from her cunt, her clit aching and her toes curling as her orgasm washes over her in waves.

The feel of Y/N’s walls pulsing around Fred’s cock as she moans his name pushes him to his own climax, his hips just barely pushing up into her as he empties himself into her eager cunt.

“Taking it so well, baby. Fuck.”

He places a hand on her lower back for support as they both come down, the hand he has on her bump rubbing soothing circles into the skin. When having her in his lap starts to get uncomfortable, Fred carefully lifts her off, maneuvering so he can lay Y/N next to him on the bed without jostling her too much.

Finally feeling satisfied, Y/N watches Fred move around their room through her barely open eyes, too tired to try and stay awake any longer. She lets him move her around too clean up, a soft whine coming from her lips when he pulls the jersey up and off over her head. But she’s immediately placated when Fred helps her into one of his old t-shirts, and she doesn’t even fight him as he pulls sleep shorts up her legs.

He disappears into their bathroom then, and Y/N is practically asleep by the time he reemerges and gets into bed beside her. But instead of Fred pulling her into his arms like she expected, her eyes open in surprise as Fred pushes up the hem of her shirt just enough to expose her bump.

“What are you doing?” she murmurs, tone laced with humor.

“What does it look like?” Fred responds as he pours lotion into his hands, rubbing them together to warm it up. He cradles her stomach carefully, slowly starting to massage her skin. “I’m taking care of both of my girls.”

#fred weasley #fred weasley smut #fred weasley fic #fred weasley fanfiction #fred weasley x reader #harry potter #fred weasley imagine #fw #golden

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sc0tters · 3 months

Text

Missing You | Nico Hischeir

summary: when you and Nico haven’t seen each other for a month his teammates pull off the surprise of a lifetime when you both needed it the most.

request: yes/no

warnings: sexual themes, p in v, swearing, slight exhibitionist kink?

word count: 2.68k

authors note: welcome to the fourth instalment of the 1000 celly, and what I think is our first one with a mclaren driver. I have missed writing for this boy so much! this is also the first smut of 2024 if I'm not mistaken! we also aren't going to acknowledge that this has taken me like four days to write this...

You knew you were in love with Nico.

It was hard not to be, he had been your boyfriend for the last four and a half years and you didn't want anything more. When you were with Mclaren you met him when he was on a trip to Belgium you two met during a party. You had just won the first race of your career but the moment you saw him, the world all of a sudden didn’t matter to you. But by the end of the night you couldn’t get enough of him.

Yet as your careers both got ahead of you and it meant that the only real time you found yourself together was a three week period where you were both off in the summer break. But after this year it felt awkward for you both. You were coming up to the Austin leg of the season and with that it meant that you were back in the states. It seemed that both of you let your careers take hold of your lives, so even though you had a week off you didn’t know if Nico wanted to spend the time with you.

That was compounded by the fact that you guys had a stupid argument, and when Nico ended the call with how he thought it would have been best if you didn’t come in your week off.

Nico had been having a rough week so when the video came up of you and Lando being interviewed by a child, it was the cherry on top of the shit cake. Not even your FaceTime call could have taken him out of it “there you are love!” You smiled as you saw the picture connect “finally found some time away from Lando?” Nico grumbled as he hadn’t even finished the video when you called.

Your face dropped as you furrowed your eyebrows “you okay?” You trailed off as it only seemed to piss him off further “why do you have to go get all flirty with your teammate?” The accusation made you freeze “okay back the fuck up hotshot.” You warned as you raised your hand signaling to him to stop.

It wasn’t often that you two fought but after months without sex - or any variation of it - you were both frustrated “I did not flirt with my teammate or anyone because I’m in love with you!” You were close to hanging up as you glared at him “you’ve got a funny way of showing that.” Nico laughed as he shook his head.

You were doing alright at the moment with your racing, many podiums and even a win in the season that could all but have been called Max’s. But with one DNF and one DNS coming right after each other, you were now stressed “look don’t make your team playing like shit right now my fault.” You grumbled not realizing that the comment had slipped out “if we’re so shit then maybe you shouldn’t come!” With that Nico hung up leaving you with the reflection of your shocked face.

As much as you wanted to apologize for what you had said, you were still upset that he could have ever questioned how you felt about him. It was clear the entire world noted how both of you were currently struggling not only in your sports but also how you just seemed to be out of it. You missed your boyfriend but as fans would have you sign random pieces of devils merch as the announcement of your relationship upon your win in Austria two years ago came with a whole new group of fans.

So when you were sat in the comfort of your hotel room and got the message from Jack asking if you wanted to come to a devs game before the race in Vegas, you knew you couldn’t say no. Not when this was attached.

Jacky Hughes: he misses you, even if he won’t say it

The text made your heart break especially after you watched Nico get injured. The Prudential Center was a place you found comfort in but this time as you sat amongst the crowd all you wanted was him. Nico’s name was proudly stapled on your back as you were in his jersey and a plain black cap as though it was going to be enough to hide your identity.

And it did until the final intermission just as the boys got back on the ice “she still not talking to you?” Nico had called you earlier that morning but as you were on your flight you had no way of answering it “I just miss her.” Timo couldn’t help but place his hand on the boys shoulder as he felt bad.

More than half of the team knew that you were here and Timo decided he could no longer leave Nico in his misery “look up there.” Six rows up sat next to Ellen and Jim Hughes, was you.

Nico felt his jaw drop as he locked eyes with you “hi.” You mouthed like he could even see what you were saying “love you.” Nico did the same thing as you as he placed his hand on his heart as you blew him a kiss.

That final period everyone swore that there was a rocket under Nico’s ass as he scored two different goals, both of which you knew were dedicated to you as the boy would smirk in your direction. It seemed that both of you were ready to finally see each other but as he got one of the stars of the game it left you waiting with Jack “thank you for getting me here.” You smiled at the boy finally taking your cap off as you realized you weren’t hiding anymore.

Jack brushed it off as it was more of a favour to the boys than something for you guys “just hope he behaves.” You had mentioned your apprehensions on coming because of how you two fought “have a feeing we both will.” You nodded as you watched Nico’s head stick out from the crowd “schatzi!” He called out acting as the cue that Jack needed to leave “have fun.” The boy patted your shoulder as he walked off to his parents.

It was only a few seconds until Nico was in front of you “hi.” He smiled noticing how you fidgeted with your rings just like you used to when you guys first started dating “you played well tonight cap.” The nickname had his mind fulling with thoughts, all as inappropriate as the previous.

His hand locked with yours as he clicked his tongue wanting you to stop “I’m sorry I called your team shit.” You were the first to apologize as your voice was soft not wanting his teammates to hear you “let’s go talk in the car.” Nico offered as he slid his arm over your shoulders letting your rest your head against him.

It had been a while since you were in New Jersey as your summer break was spent in Europe “how did you keep the boys quiet?” Nico asked as he locked his hand with yours over the center console “it was actually their idea.” You smiled revealing what the surprise was “Jack said you missed me.” You teased letting out a giggle as the boys cheeks turn red.

Nico couldn’t help but nod as he sighed “you and Lando are good friends and I know you love me.” The hockey player had found himself repeating the apology that he tried so many times to send you “I seriously think you’re on a great team.” You hated how badly you spoke about the team when Nico stood by your side through everything “can we agree we were both wrong?” The air finally felt light as the car came to a stop when the light turned red.

His eyes stared into yours as he swore that there was nowhere that he’d rather be “only if it means that I could kiss you.” Nico mumbled as it made you smile “never need to ask me that.” You shook your head as the boy dropped his head to the side as he let his lips touch yours.

A fire built up in your belly as his hand grazed your cheek finally stopping as he tugged on your hair “Neek.” You moaned feeling him smirk against your lips “I know baby.” Nico sighed having to pull away as the car behind them hooted as the light went green “so fucking happy to have you back my sweet girl.” He mumbled letting his hand rest on your thigh as he smiled.

Being captain of an NHL team came with a bunch of privileges. One that Nico never realized that he was meant to appreciate was an expensive apartment with a view that could have been worth a thousand bucks “this will never get old.” You gasped pressing your fingers against the glass as you watched New Jersey continue to move beneath you “feels great getting to watch you in it.” Nico’s breath fanned against your skin as the hairs on the back of your neck stood up.

It was as though your entire body melted as his hands gripped at your hips “even in all of this?” You joked looking down to the fact that you were fully clothed “would prefer if you were just in this.” His fingers tugged at the jersey on your shoulders.

All of a sudden an idea popped up in your mind “what’s stopping you pretty boy?” Your tongue darted out of your mouth as you turned to face him “you gonna let me?” Nico raised his eyebrows in surprise as he hooked his fingers in the belt hoops of your pants pulling you closer to him “you get whatever you want my little star.” You cooed pushing yourself onto your tippy toes as you wrapped your hands around his shoulders.

Nico grinned as he swayed your hips against his “fuck I need you schatzi.” His groan was caught as your teeth grazed his lower lip “don’t make me wait.” The fight was now long forgotten as he undid your belt “god you’re soaked.” His eyes blew up at the sight of the wet patch on your panties.

He helped you out of your pants “do something please.” You begged as his eyes had you feeling like he had you fully undressed “put your hands against the window then for me.” Nico moved your hair to the side of your neck.

As you listened to his command his pants grew tight around his boner “looking so good tonight in my jersey.” The boy cooed as he turned his attention to the flesh of your ass squeezing your skin between his fingers “just tonight?” You held back a moan as you wiggled your ass in front of him desperate to get a reaction from the boy.

That behavior was cut as he lay a quick slap to your skin that was quickly followed by a soothing motion “you’ve got such a pretty ass.” He mumbled to himself picking up the band of your panties only to let it snap again as it made you jump “I need you Nico.” You begged letting the cool glass hit your forehead “you have me here schatzi.” His hand palmed your ass.

It made you whimper as your jaw went slack “need you to touch me.” Your tone was sultry as your body tensed “you just a cock hungry girl tonight?” The boy was amused as he took the time to unbuckle his belt as you bit your lip in anticipation “asked you a question pretty girl.” His voice pulled you from your focus as you turned your head to face him “want you baby.” Was all he needed to hear as he dropped his suit pants letting them hit the floor.

Nico missed this view as you practically oozed with anticipation “god I’ve missed this cunt” His fingers traced on the lace on your underwear before he hooked his fingers into the waistband leaving you nude from the waist down “you don’t have to wait much longer pretty boy.” You smirked hearing the gasp that left his lips as you knew that he was palming his cock.

The boy dragged its swollen head over your slit spreading his precum over your clit “don’t tease me please.” You begged as your knuckles turned white as your fingers tensed against the window “how do you think they would feel seeing how needy you are for me?” Nico teased as he kissed your neck as he slid his cock into your cunt “so big.” You gasped as the boy gave you a moment to let your walls stretch as his cock throbbed inside you “moove p-please.” You moaned feeling his hands squeeze your hips.

He felt his head drop back as you whimpered “let yourself scream f’me baby.” Nico nipped at your earlobe as it made you squirm “they can’t hear you from up here.” He reminded you of where you both were “you want people to watch you fuck-me!” You yelled the last part as Nico hit your ass once more.

Nico growled from behind you as he had gotten carried away by the fact that that you were still in his jersey “deserve to see who you belong to.” His possessiveness made you clench your cunt around him “you like it when I call you mine huh?” You nodded as you cried out “belong to you cap.” If Nico didn’t have so much planned for you he would have came on the spot but he used everything in his power to not coat the walls of your cunt in that moment.

The sound of skin slapping echoed in your ears as the sight of you in his jersey made his mouth water “hated thinking about those boys so close to you.” He grunted in your ear as his hands trailed up the inside of the jersey “you just look so fucking good in this.” As your hair was pushed to the side it had his name proudly displayed on your back.

You moaned as you nodded “’s all for you neeks.” You no longer seemed to care that you were against the window as your legs began to shake “I’m so close.” You announced as your hand trailed down to your clit as you began to rub at the sensitive nub.

As the boy realized what you were doing he swatted your hand away as he continued the assault on your clit “be a good girl and hold it f’me.” He clicked his tongue as he wanted to push you just a little bit further “i-i can’t.” You swore that tears were filling up your eyes as you whimpered “just a little bit longer.” He practically pleaded wanting to push you as close to the edge as he could.

Sweat made your hair stick to your skin “I need to-” your plead was short lived as he cut you off “let go for me.” Nico mumbled as his cock throbbed your body shook as you came “fuck fuck fuck!” You chanted as you pressed your head against his shoulder as your cunt clenched around him “there it is pretty girl.” Nico cooed as he kissed your temple as his orgasm came shortly after yours.

Nico watched your chest heaved as he slid his cock out of you “you were so good.” You mumbled turning to face him as you smiled “the night doesn’t have to end schatzi.” Nico cupped your cheeks as he pecked your lips “take me to your room cap.” He didn’t need to hear anymore as he threw you over his shoulder making you squeal as he laughed.

The door to his room shut and with that the rest of the events planned for you two weren’t going to be seen by New Jersey. Because as fun as that was, being tangled in the sheets was far more favourable.

#amber writes fics #nico hischier oneshot #nico hischier imagine #ambers 1000 celly #nhl smut #hockey smut #hockey imagines #nhl imagines #hockey oneshots #nhl oneshots

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sil-te-plait-tue-moi · 3 months

Text

The idler wheel is wiser than the driver of the screw.

Quick summary: After one too many drinks, you find yourself unable to think of anything but a certain smart-mouth detective who is in desperate need of a release.

Word count: 11K (I'm sorry)

Warnings: This is basically just SMUTT with a lil feelings (if you squint) sprinkled in there; kind of angsty at points (mentions of canon-typical death and violence (hellooo they're homicide detectives); gets a bit existential at points, watch out; pretentious.

A/N: YAY! I had this obsession with True Detective S1 all throughout October (watched it at my nan's house lmao), so enjoy the lovechild of that. This is just for fun, so, please, nobody be angry at me if they don't agree with Rust's characterisation, or any of the weird philosophical chat, lalallalal, OKAY ENJOY!!

***

The night air is sluggish and humid with the remnants of a warm summer’s rain, pressing down thickly, close, clogging, simmering just below the surface.

A few times, I’ve interviewed people who live in these sorts of places: motel-types, the “in-between”, where folks stay when they’ve either got no money, no choice or nobody. Other residents include passers-by who’re looking to save money on accommodation, skipping on the fancier places. Not that Louisiana really has any “fancier places”. Places without the paint peeling off walls like dead skin, I guess. A bed and breakfast in the nicer suburbia, with a view overlooking a subpar daydream of a ghost town centre.

I’ve leaned up against the crooked, metal railing, felt the influence of my weight almost sending it and myself crashing down onto the faded parking lot beneath. I’ve leaned up there—after knocking—and waited, waited for a grey face to peer through a crack in the cracked door. I’ve smiled and remarked about how the beat-up, brass numbers up there are hanging by a thread. Sometimes, people are real stingy – they slink out and close the door behind them, or they remain in that little slit, just an eye visible, or they plain shut it in my face. Most let me in right away, maybe a little intimidated by the shiny badge clipped up in my jacket – I’ve sat across from ‘em, felt that mud in the room’s air seep into my pores, inviting me under its still swamp.

Seems like the sort of place for him.

Too many a fuckin’ time, Marty’s come grumbling and muttering into the office kitchen, rolling his eyes, scoffing, huffing, the whole lot. And when I ask him why the strop?—“Ancient fuckin’ philosopher fuckin’ Rust Cohle on it again. Birthday’s comin’ up: get me earplugs and a generous bit o’ duct tape for my dear partner over there, would you?”

Or somethin’ along those lines.

For all his apparent talk about us silly, little “biological puppets”, this seems like Rust’s sort of place. Temporary existence, temporary living. Purgatory?

Whatever.

If you ask me, Rust Cohle’s head is so far up his own ass that it’s no wonder his outlook on life is so dark.

If I was more sober, maybe I’d be thinking about it—about him—less—but this night out has had me so drunk I was maybe even hallucinating at some point. Rust?—sure, he’s been in the back of my mind for some part of the last few months – I have to see him most days I go to work, don’t I? – but, sometime in the space between my third and fourth shot of straight vodka, he was suddenly at the very front of it. I’d seen a guy who smoked like him: cigarette pinched between his thumb and forefinger, a simple, deep drag. I’d thought it was him, but then I realised his face was shrouded in the smoke that he’d exhaled, and I recalled that Rust never seems to do that. Never seems to exhale. All the tar and shit stays in.

With a twist of my keys, the engine rumbles off into more-or-less silence. Fuck, it’s a bad idea, yes, just being here. If he likes to keep his distance, well—he’s entitled to that choice.

I glance over my shoulder, out the window, out at the complex which is all yellow and shining, illuminated by buzzing halogen light bars and, of course, the occasional bug zapper. It’s clean enough. The lines of this parking space were white enough. Apartment 11A, said Marty. Second floor.

“Are you drunk?” he’d asked – Marty, not Rust.

I’d replied, “No,” pressing closer to the phone box in attempts to remove myself from the swarm and bustle of the ladies’ bathroom. And it was an honest reply. Sort of. Despite his scepticism, by that time, I’d long stopped drinking, and all that remained from it was a sort of numb tingle in my fingertips—as far as I was concerned.

I don’t think I’d be in this parking lot, stepping out of my car, if I wasn’t still a little bit gone.

Marty’s sigh had crackled through the receiver. “Don’t bring any o’ tha’ party-this-party-that attitude to ‘im, alright? He’ll hate it.” I’d told him okay, my stomach spiking up with excitement. “Fact is, I don’t think you should go at all. ‘f you do, should be a work matter. This a work matter, detective?”

I’d lied, said yes, perhaps with a slur to my voice.

He clicked his tongue. “Okay, buck, whatever you say.” Then, he’d hung up.

There was something disapproving in the manner of the conversation. I got the feeling that he was talking to me in the same voice he used to lecture his daughters. The only reason I’d called him was to get something from him, sure, so that I could basically get something from Rust, his partner. I could see how that sort of thing might’ve upset someone. Not that Marty Hart should have any right to judge, not when he’s coming into work in the same clothes as the day before, stinking of sweat and God knows what. The unsaid agreement of everyone in the office is to turn a blind eye. I’ve met his wife. Someone should cut off his damn dick.

Quiet, now. Hell, who am I to talk? Marty’s fun to chat with, makes a slow day at the office a little brighter. ‘Course, there’s rarely a slow day at the office.

And I’m at the top of the stairs, now. And I knock—one, two, three—on the pilling, forest-green door. Dulled down 11A. Blinds are determinedly shut, slats flat. For a second, I think maybe I’ll be waking him.

Then I remember Rust doesn’t sleep.

A grey face appears as the door swings just a little ways open, grave and sunken-tired. His expression isn’t so pissed-off as it is just his usual expression.

“Rusty,” I say to him with a small nod, words scraping out dryly.

He doesn’t respond right away – ‘stead, he leans his body out partway, eyes absent like he’s searching for some hooligan criminal in the night.

“Marty told you my address?” he asks lowly. It’s more a statement than anything, but I amuse him with a nod anyways. There’s a cigarette flaring up between his fingers. His hand twitches a little like he’s wanting to take a drag, but his eyes are fixed on my shoes, now, like he’s still coming to terms with the fact I’m a foreign body in his domain.

My toes curl up tight in my shoes – there’s that prick of anticipation again. Ice-cold, you could easily mistake it as dread.

Rust doesn’t exactly subject me to an imploring look—not really his style—but he bows his head down just slightly – that’s sign enough for me. He wants to know why I’m here, and he no doubt wants to know the quickest way to be rid of me.

I sigh. I ask him.

My body trembles, and he notices it, records it, stores it away for later reference, for some other time he’ll find that it and me will contribute to his purpose.

Rust has a face of stone. I get to know it well as I search for a sign there that might let me know what lies beneath. But, of course, a statue is solid through and through. Sharp angles and smooth planes carved hollow. If he’s cold to the touch, I’d like to reach out and be sure. Is he cold where a man ought to be warm? Christ, it makes my pulse jump just to think about it.

There is no greater purpose or cruel intention underlying my words, as far as I’m concerned. Rust, however, lingers there, with his arm up on the door, barricading the entrance, while he peels back and flits over every layer of possible meaning, his attention fixed absently on my left ear.

He then looks at me—briefly—in the eyes, with a sort of paralysing intensity. Even the tingling in my fingers ceases to be.

It takes a moment, pregnant with the chorus of cicadas, crickets and other night-creatures, before he steps back neatly to allow me in.

The door clicks softly behind me as I enter into a room that’s bare as bare can be.

Rust grunts, coming up around me and into the kitchen area. “Want anything?” he mumbles around his cigarette, other hand shoved in his pocket. He’s still half-dressed in his work clothes, his tie strewn on the counter, his blazer slumped over a rickety picnic chair perched up in front of a wall of crime scenes and dead bodies. My eyes linger there—how can they not?

“A beer,” I tell him, still looking at those photographs, then at the stacks upon stacks of books. Philosophy, ethics, religion. Names I’d expect only those with PhDs to know.

“Don’t think you’ve had ‘nuff to drink already?”

I shoot him a look. “I think I can handle it, Rust.” He straightens up, raises his brow. I snort, reasoning, “I’ll only have one.”

“One,” he agrees, opening up the fridge and having a rummage around.

White walls and all of them empty, like some sort of psych ward. Half-sure Rust actually did do some time in that type of care, though, so—shouldn’t make any quips about that. I don’t want him thinking I think he’s crazy – he gets enough of that, I’m sure.

Back at my place, though, I’ve got posters or drawings or paintings up around every corner. My niece’s drawing of a mermaid sits on my dresser, and photographs of my family are displayed in the hallway. One up by the TV, I painted myself when I was in high school. About two years after I graduated, they asked if I wanted my portfolio back, and I’d obviously said yes. And I love my stuff! Some ‘cause it’s pretty, others because of memories and whatnot. Guess some people don’t have that creative trait, or they lose it. Or maybe they detest the sentiments, those strings that have been, are and will be attached to things. When my cousin broke up with her boyfriend, she cut her hair and burned his clothes. “I just want to forget him,” she’d snarled. I’d sputtered a laugh into my tea.

Rust plants a Corona down on the counter, already cracked open.

There’s no mirror in here either – I can’t check whether I look as desperate as I feel. When I focus back on him, Rust is taking a swig from his own beer, turning to glance at the crucifix pinned above the messy mattress on the floor. Huh. Didn’t peg him as a Christian.

His honey-blond hair doesn’t look cold to the touch, that’s for sure ‘n’ certain. Wonder if he just wakes up like that or what. Once, Marty had been teasing him at work, even cracking a smile out of the old guy. “Ain’t them just the prettiest curls y’ever seen, buck?” he’d remarked, nudging into me, cooing at him. Silently, in my head, even then, I’d agreed: prettiest curls I’d ever seen. Rust hadn’t looked up to chart my reaction, but, if he had, he’d maybe have seen my fidgeting fingers or hitch of breath. Or maybe he felt it, heard it.

“Sorry to barge in on you like this,” I offer pathetically through a nervous smile.

He blinks, takes another swig, leaning over the counter that separates us. “No, y’aint.”

Jesus, I have to turn my head and shut my eyes for a second. I don’t particularly believe in God, but I ask Him to please give me the strength to resist my urges and act like a normal damn person for at least a few more minutes. And then I apologise for only praying out of convenience. In the face of temptation. This is why people shouldn’t drink – still, doesn’t stop me from downing a good part of my beer.

I turn to the wall and try to turn myself off a little bit. It’s not hard – Rust still has Dora Lange (rest her soul) pinned up on his wall, naked, blue, stiff. I don’t want to know why, so I don’t ask him.

His eyes are adamant on the side of my head. Funny how he never seems to look at me at the same time I’m looking at him. Pisses me off a lot of the time – not just him, but in general. A lot of people share this same fear of not being heard, not being listened to and not being cared about. Men in particular, I’ve noticed, have a tendency to raise their voice over others’, to yell or shout or hit things or push ‘n’ shove. Marty’s that way – a lot of men at the precinct are, too. Women who are raised to be the listeners sometimes act out in the same way, frustrated at all the things they have to care about that men don’t, burdened with manners and politeness. I used to hate having to listen, to wait for the man who interrupted me to finish speaking. Rust always lets people finish their point, for better and for worse. Pisses me off in a different type of way. I can feel his judgement seeping out of him, so potent that’s it’s tangible, lapping at my feet.

He doesn’t push and shove – he’s a listener, too. Of course, he has that male privilege where his silence has a gravity, a magnetic pull, where mine is simply as is. At least he pays attention. Sure, on the surface, it might look like he doesn’t care at all, hunched over a case file at his desk, back turned to me and the rest of the lot, but proximity has its power – assigned workspaces put with his personality, and he knows what’s like and unlike me better than my sister. He’s reading into my refusal to talk, to face him – unlike me.

“So, you’ve given this some thought, then,” Rust says matter-of-factly, and my tummy bubbles up.

I snicker nervously, heart racing. God, I’d expected surprise, disbelief, outright refusal, maybe even a little disgust, but, when I manage to turn around and look at his face again, it just seems to me like a calmness. Stoicism found in the affirmation, maybe, of his expectations. It’s like I’m walking right into one of those little theories of his: a proved hypothesis.

I take another sip from my beer, feeling too shy for my liking. “Well, yeah,” I drawl, slumping over the kitchen counter and propping my chin up to look right back at him in a surge of liquid confidence. “I always think ‘fore I do anything that’s anything, Rust.”

Almost immediately, he retreats, standing up straight and resting the small of his back against the lip of the sink behind him. He hums, glances away. “We both know that’s a lie,” he combats, hands tucked into his pockets, chin tilted up, eyes down. A mouthful of beer numbs the sting of rejection. “What you mean is you think you can justify all your decisions. You think you can justify why you knocked on my door and said what you said—” he elaborates quietly, eliciting a snort from me, “—but, at the end o’ the day, all your decisions boil down to what you feel is right, not what is right.”

“‘n' you think you ‘n’ you alone know what’s right?”

Slate-grey eyes flit up and down my face, like I’m a specimen on a slide.

“I think that the girl who’s stumbled up on a fella’s door asking him to fuck her is less inclined to know, without bias, what’s right, yes.”

I swallow thickly, sucking the remaining flavour of beer off of my tongue before going in for another swig.

Christ.

Not a single bat of his eyes. Not a quiver of his mouth, not a twitch to his nose, not a morsel of natural, human hesitation. Does he have to be so crass? I did the courtesy of making it palatable, at least to my own ears, with a euphemism. But when have I ever known Rust Cohle to water anything down? No drink I’ve ever consumed will match his body’s preference of alcohol content. He’s nursing his beer close to his chest, but who knows what poisons lay dormant in these cabinets?

“Rusty,” I say lowly, maybe asking for a break – I close my eyes for just a second, part because I couldn’t bear it if I caught some sort of disapproval on his face, and part because it’s just past two o’clock in the morning.

Late nights have consumed my life recently, what with that sicko rapist connected to a Christian fertility cult. Children of God – “go forth and multiply”. His confession had turned my blood cold. Johansson had offered to sit in the box instead, but I did it anyway. I went home and cried over it, then came into work the next day to talk to some press and then receive my new assignment.

He hums, taking a drag from his cigarette, swallowing the smoke down. Rust knows how it is. To be honest, I’m probably the one who doesn’t know the half of it. One night at the office, he’d casually confessed to his insomnia, like he was just commenting on the state of the weather ‘n’ nothin’ else. So, I guess I won’t pretend to get it.

I gnaw on the inside of my cheek. “Are you into that whole abstinence thing?”

The weak light above flickers gently as he pauses, turns the question over in his mind. Anyone else would’ve surely laughed.

“I believe that man is susceptible to desire, yes—but he can resist it and its consequences should his willpower be stronger than the false promises posed by that temptation.

I snort again, because, now, I really am tipsy, and I can’t hold in my attitude any longer. It’s not that I think he’s lost it or whatever. It’s just—he’s so—objectively—absurd. Well—“objectively”. He’s got points, but those points lose all meaning in the spiralling darkness of overthought and deep contemplation wherein he’ll explain that everything really means nothing—and he’ll be right about that, sure, but also unintentionally prove a point about himself. I’d ask him what it means when, in a world where everything means nothing, a child will give their friend a flower found on the way to school, but I feel like his answer would be too morbid for my liking. Does that make me an unreliable source? The fact that I want to live?

He's absurd. He’s also a little bit awry in the head. Don’t know what he’s lost or what he’s lookin’ for, but it’s not a good look on him. He’s honest, yes – that’s a good trait. But honesty without kindness is cruelty. And he is kind – underneath, he’s kind, and I know that because of how hard he works to weed out evil people in this world, most times at his own risk. That’s kindness, albeit unconventional, whether he realises it or not.

The kindness almost cancels out his arrogance.

“So, what?” I challenge under the guise of a teasing grin. “You can go mouthin’ off for hours on end about how up themselves religious people and all’at are, but you can’t draw the similarities between their philosophy and your philosophy? How does that work, Rust?”

While I was working that Children of God nightmare of a case, he just couldn’t seem to restrain himself – every bullshit word that left him revealed to me his hubris. Now, I’m not angry, and he’s not stupid – we’re not arguing. In fact, he seems intrigued, lean body shifted toward me. He sets his beer down on the counter, crosses his arms over his chest after securing his cigarette between his lips, and lowers his head as if to listen to me better.

I sigh, continue. “D’you know what I think? I think you oversimplify humanity. You’re a great detective—‘nd I guess you know it—and, within the confines of your job, it serves you well, makes you good in the box. But your assumptions are too general. People are who they are, sure, but they also decide to be those people. By their environment and those who surround ‘em, people make the decisions that define ‘em. A lot of the time, their circumstances ain’t fair. People born into badness are trapped by the badness—either physically, or up in their heads—and they have a tough time escapin’ it.”

Rust inhales the smoke again, the only evidence of it happening being the soft whisp that curls away from his nose. I wonder to myself how his lungs are still standing.

“‘s that how you explain that—homicide case you’re workin’ on?” Three-year-old boy died of neglect, his siblings found locked in cabinets, one in a dog cage, by their mother and stepfather. Rust’s eyes flash silver. “Killer had a tough time?”

Asshole.

I narrow my eyes dangerously. “Don’t be mean, Rusty,” I scold, and he blinks in concession. “I think evil exists. I think it’s complicated. I think you summarise things that ought not to be summarised.”

He’s silent for a heartbeat. Then, his hand comes up to pinch away his cigarette, and he waves it in a small flourish, explaining, “When I say “people”, I mean society. Human culture.”

“Last I checked, Rust, you don’t know everybody on the planet. You don’t know their “culture”, or experiences.” That seems to shut him up. My eyes wander to his broad shoulders, trail along the meat of his arms beneath the cheap, polyester shirt that hugs close to the muscle, and they linger there like the quiet that settles between us.

He nods slowly, once. “Our decisions define us?”

I bob my head, unabashedly staring at the elegant column of his throat, his neck, and the stretch of tan skin that is settled beneath the white undershirt revealed by the first one, two, three buttons which have recently been undone.

He’s quieter when he asks me, “Well, how does this decision define you, then?” There’s nothing malicious about the way he says it, or even lustful – just a calm curiosity.

“Ain’t it obvious?” I grin again, laugh a little, blush hotly. “I’m horny!” I hide my face in my shoulder, trying to compose the hiccups of laughter in my stomach. “I’m sorry,” I snicker, wiping my palm over my brow, my eyes. “This probably isn’t very attractive to you.”

“You’re a very pretty girl,” he replies. He mutters my name solemnly, like we’re in a formal meeting or something.

I glance up, check whether he’ll offer me eye contact again, but he doesn’t – he’s staring at the wall, lost.

I scoff. “You’re a very pretty guy, Rust.”

God willing, none of the boys at the precinct will ever find out about this. If Marty lets it slip that I even asked for Rust’s address, then I’ll never hear the end of it. Worse, everyone’ll think I’m dead-gone over him. Guess I don’t really fit the standards expected of women around here: “wife”, or “whore”. Or “dead”. It’s hard enough to be taken seriously going about pretending I’m not interested in sex at all. Once sex comes into the equation, I’ll be reduced to that and nothing else.

Anxious, I start flicking up under my fingernails. Is Rust already starting to think those things, too? I’m a great detective, but that’s the only capacity in which he’s really known me.

I wring the neck of my bottle. “I should explain—”

He holds his hand up, stating, “I don’t need you to. Do you feel the need to?”

Curious, wary, I watch his face, a blank slate. Still waters run deep. My eyes drift down, to where his hands are together in front of him, one relaxed beside him the other curled around his wrist with two fingers resting on the pulse.

“No,” I reply.

“You thought it over,” he says, eyes tilting up at the ceiling, aloof, bored, maybe. His words are sort of monotone, like he’s reciting a passage from a book that he’s just recently read: “You chose me because you know me. You haven’t been sleeping well. You’re stressed, you’re scared, you’re frustrated.” He blinks. “You’re attracted to me due to some—unfortunate trigger beyond your control in the reptilian part of your brain.” Brief as the flicker of a candle in a still room, he looks over me, brow raised slightly as if daring me to tell him that he’s wrong. He pauses again, takes a short puff. “It makes you think I can take care o’ your needs.”

Look at the state of him: sallow and wilting on the inside. Reducing me down to a sentence or two, and being right about it.

“Well, can you?” I ask weakly, feeling small. He looks over me, blinks blankly. “How do you take care of your needs?” No reply. “You do have needs, don’t you?” I remark, tapping the rim of my bottle to my warm temple. “Programming ‘n’ whatnot.”

He tilts his head away in dismissal.

I smile, more to myself than to him. “Beat off in the shower, is it?”

For a second, Rust is still. My eyes grow heavy, admiring the strong profile of his nose. He then nods helplessly, like there’s no point in trying to lie.

I hum, a soft, self-satisfied smirk edging its way onto my face. “Must feel like a sin,” I snicker.

He squints slightly, like he disagrees with my logic, but does not interrupt to protest.

“I remember takin’ baths as a teenager and double-checkin’, triple-checkin’ I locked the door,” I confess. “Couldn’t take my time. ‘S that how it is for you, Rust?” I probe, tilting my head to the side, losing his eyes as quickly as I catch them. “You ever let yourself enjoy it? Let yourself want it—?”

“I don’t want it,” he snaps quietly.

“But your programmin’ says you do, right?” I point out, scrambling to hold onto the flaw in his argument. I search his face, my own bright, eager.

He quirks up a miraculous smile, and I myself burst into a wide grin. Still smiling—though, you’d have to admit, it’s such a strange sight, sort of gratifying, almost patronising—he shifts his weight between his feet, scratches at his nose with his pinkie, sniffs, takes a long drag of his dying cigarette. I know he must feel disjointed, though he doesn’t show it: he’s misstepped, and I’ve caught him. And how often does Rust Cohle misstep? I should’ve checked the news for a blue moon tonight.

Interested, now, is he? Breathing quietly, rolling his jaw – he’s entertaining the competition I have goin’ up in my head. From the looks of the gentle smirk on his face, he’s enjoying it, too.

“No,” he corrects with a dry husk to his voice. “No, I know what I want, and, when I think those things are necessary or useful, I know how to get them.”

In this type of context, I’d like to see him try. Though, he is an undeniably attractive man. Thick, solid all the way through, like a rich wood. But he’s got these brittle eyes: fraying.

He continues: “Most of the time, though, what we want is born out of dangerous feelings, like rage or lust. Ruminating on the consequences of those potential actions seems to me the more sensible thing to do than to just leave it and find out.” I sniff. “Desire is inescapable for most, including the sexual kind. I feel it—“ he eyes how I wriggle beneath my skin, “—you feel it. But it can be resisted. You’re lettin’ it dictate what you do ‘n’ say. If I do to you what you want me to, have you thought about how it might affect things down the line? Tomorrow, next week, next month—?”

“Yes,” I hiss, a little too emotionally, such that a gleam of satisfaction crosses his grey eyes at the strain and stretch of my voice. Christ. Desperate much?

I take several seconds to think before allowing myself to speak again, all while staring at him straight on and refusing to look away: I’d just die if I let him catch me out. “Well, how can you be sure of the fallout? How do you know the good won’t outweigh the bad? Not “you” specifically, but, also, yeah, “you” specifically. I can think about something morally ambiguous, and I can evaluate the potential consequences, and, just as you are satisfied to observe, I will decide to follow through with this somethin’ and deal with what I gotta deal.”

He sighs. “Because decisions define a person?”

I tuck my hair tight behind my ears. “Yes.”

And he hums – that beautiful noise resonates in my stomach before sinking down there, low, its weight a comfort. “I agree with you in that respect,” he admits.

A laugh erupts out of me like the sputter of an engine. Luckily, I’m easy to laughter – it’s like me, as is my genuine grin. “Rust Cohle’s agreein’ with me on somethin’?—Call the police!”

“We are the police,” he replies smartly, watching me snort and smile and grow flushed in the face. I feel very grateful to that beer – at least my giddiness can be blamed on the effects of alcohol and save me from embarrassment.

As I simmer down, he looks away, adds, “I agree to an extent. People all think that they’re one-of-a-kind. That they make these—amazing decisions. They speak and do and walk and play and work and fuck and eventually die – all of ‘em.”

“You’re part of the people,” I argue.

He hums, nodding in acceptance. “Yes.”

“If a person acts due to their instinct, whether it’s succumbing to it or fighting against it, then isn’t man simply his programming?” He lowers his head. “You can be aware of it, and you can be a part of it, too. Who are you to deny yourself the good parts?”

He fiddles with his cigarette, svelte fingers nimble and acute. I cross my legs, flex my hips; he notices.

“Because of the consequences,” he replies, a soft whisper.

I thought that everything meant fuck-all?

For someone who sees no meaning in life, he sure seems to spend a lot of time contemplating it. Here, I thought I’d have hot hands sliding all over me, gripping, spreading, pushing, but instead find myself defence in an unprecedented debate.

Rust is breathing slower, deeper, almost unable, now, to look me in the eyes, even look at me in general, whereas, before, it had been a choice, whether that choice be conscious or unconscious. His cigarette burns weakly in his fingers, forgotten. The muscle in his jaw flexes, his expression hollow.

My body buzzes with want, leaves me scrambling for breath like I’ve just run a race. I want. I want, I want, I want. The rough pads of his fingertips, the surest and most confident I’ll have ever known. Sharp tongue, quick and precise. Something about how he smells. All my compliments to pheromones – even in the heavy musk of the bar, I’d smelled him, ashy, warm, alive, and now it’s wreathing all around. Or maybe that’s just me – it’s like when you try to take someone’s pulse with your thumb, and all you’re feeling is your own heartbeat.

I want – my breath trembles with it.

“Rust,” I say softly. He shakes his head a little, looking away still, vulnerable like a wild animal. I sigh, gnawing at my lip. “I really want it. I—I’ve—it’s not just a rash decision,” I explain. “I’ve wanted it for a while, now.”

He shudders – I notice. “Since when?”

I huff out a sheepish laugh, fix my eyes on my restless hands. “You won’t remember it—”

“I will.”

His voice sounds clogged. It sobers me right up.

“A year back,” I tell him. “You were working at the office—late, in the dark. You called me, and I asked you why, and you said—it was because you were tired and thinkin’.” I glance up to check if he’s maybe looking, but he’s not – he’s turned his head even further away. The soft, gentle curls of his hair tempt me.

Blindly reaching for the bottle, securing it almost immediately, he finishes the rest of his beer, then sets it back down.

“I—” he begins, scratching his nose, “—I was—tired.” He pauses to re-thicken his voice. “And—thinking—”

He doesn’t finish his sentence, but the both of us know what he said that night: Of you. Thinking of you—of me .

My stomach flips, leaving me almost nauseous, just like it did when I first heard those words. At first, I thought I’d misheard, that I was so tired my mind was playing tricks on me. Then, I thought he was being cruel, or maybe he was drunk. Those two instances weren’t—aren’t—unlike him, but he never, ever calls to be mean or to be stupid. He’d been quiet and warm through the phone after that, a presence so thick I could’ve sworn he had his arms around me right then. I hadn’t slept well for a time, then, of course, and that made it all the more vivid. His voice had made me shiver all the way through as he told me he had to get back to work.

When I saw him the next morning, I couldn’t look at him. It was the first time I couldn’t, not wouldn’t. It was also the first time I felt him paying attention to me.

I shift, ask the question I’d wondered since that call: “Why?”

A pause.

Then: “You brought me coffee that morning,” he explains softly, speaking to the wall opposite. “I was—looking at the mug on my desk – it was yours. Green one you like to use.” He sniffs. “And…” He teeters on the precipice of that word but does not finish the thought.

Hmm. That’s something to think about. Rust Cohle thinking about me and not picking apart why and why he shouldn’t be. It had been a mindless enough gesture – it’s not unheard of me to be makin’ coffee for other people in the office, not because I have to but because I like to. For the people I can stand, that is: Johansson always, and him for me; Cathleen; Marty, when I’m not pissed off at him; and Rust, from time to time. Everybody knows that green mug is mine, though – nobody touches it, not even the boss. Rust reads far too much into things. Most of the time, he’s dead-on. I should’ve known from the moment I placed that coffee on his desk, from the sharpening of his eyes (that did not spare me a glance) that lingered on my lingering hand on his table, that he knew. Figured out something I hadn’t even quite figured out myself. Not until later that night.

I wonder if he’s ever thought of me when fucking his own hand. I wonder if he thinks about me sometimes, when he can’t sleep, in between horror stories and brutal blows and uncovering the secret truths of the universe. I do, sometimes.

When I push myself back to my feet, stand up, Rust’s attention springs back, and he watches me, looks at me.

Quietly, I relish in the satisfaction of his stare, crossing on light feet to toss my empty beer bottle in the bin. He steps aside to let me open the cupboard under the sink, his hand curled in a loose fist by his side. I’m not trying to tease him – I grant him the space he so clearly needs, retreating about five paces back, leaning slightly myself against the counter.

I could say anything right now, no matter how insane, and he’d treat it with total and utter respect. I could reveal to him the reaction my body has to seeing his fingers fiddle like that with his cigarette, and he’d manage to identify the cogs and wheels in what, when you step back, actually turns out to be a hidden machine. Christ, I could probably remove all of my clothes, stand naked in front of him, and he’d look on as one would look on at a piece of evidence at work. Going over the details, once, twice, scribbling it all down in that big, leather ledger.

Here’s what I think: he needs it. For all his talk about how unoriginal, how predictable mammals are at the end of things, he probably knows that himself. The tension in his jaw, the perpetual tightness of breath. That clipped way of talking he has, wound so tight around himself, like a compressed spring fighting its natural urge to let go.

I could make him let go. Maybe. I wish he’d let me try. It’s nothing possessive, really: wanting to be the one to unravel his tightly coiled body. Just—the release of seeing him be. No thinking in particular – just being.

He is still, however, uncommonly mute, avoiding my eyes.

I sigh. I ask him tentatively, “You think I ought’a be ashamed o’ myself?” biting down on the fleshy inside of my cheek.

“No,” he contradicts.

“But—you think I should be findin’ my fun elsewhere, with—some other guy?”

He sort of pins his hands behind his back, pressing his weight against them there at the edge of the sink. He looks a lot taller from this angle. “I think there’s a lotta fellas stumblin’ over themselves to be with a girl like you.”

“Maybe,” I scoff, “but my reptilian brain don’t want none of ‘em.“ I blush warmly when I glance up and he’s there watching me, though there’s no bashfulness at all on his side of it.

I expect him to maybe dart his eyes away again, like he does, and then walk me to the door, maybe even to the car if I haven’t offended him too badly, and then call it a night. I could stuff it in; I can compartmentalise. Monday would carry on as it always does, except now without the wondering and the yearning and the delusion. Did he have to be so good-looking? His cheap, wrinkled shirt sleeves rolled up to his elbows—like they are now—and those lean forearms braced up on the table, caging in the neatly set-out notes scrawled up in his ledger, like they have mind to escape. And he’s—beautiful. He’s tall. Out-of-place sort of tall, where he has this bend to his neck, sometimes, as to not draw attention to himself. Other times, though, he stands to full height, regal, elegant, authoritative, like when he comes out o’ the box.

He sees into people. He feels it all so deeply.

And he’s looking at me, seeing into me, deeply. His eyes are brittle like china pieced back together with store-bought glue. The low light casts long shadows down his neck and harsh face.

“Come here to me, Rust,” I say to him, beckoning him over with a tilt of my head. To my surprise, he does. He does immediately, peeling himself off the counter, eyes drifting somewhere just behind me as if disinterested.

He stubs his cigarette out on an old plate, abandons it there officially, before stepping slowly towards me, feet never dragging, dodging my searching eyes like the plague.

Hmm. Maybe I made a good argument “for” to his “against”. Or maybe he was never “against” to begin with. I’ll watch him carefully tomorrow and see if there was anything I missed.

I reach up and touch his face gently. I used to do this with my husband before he passed, and he’d close his eyes and whisper my name and lean into the touch, tender, loving – my fingers shake slightly with the memory. Rust Cohle does none of that, because he is nothing like my husband. He’s perfectly rigid against my fingertips; his stare flits briefly up right into my soul, his mouth pressed in a hard line. Everything about him is so sharp. The ridge of his cheekbones, the defiant slant of his nose. The lean muscle of his arms and shoulders, slightly sinewy just beneath the skin.

But when I brush my thumbs up along his eyebrows, easing the sharp line between them, he sighs and closes his eyes, neck bowing down, still as stiff as before, just—different. A small gap, an opening, to that locked room of his upstairs.

“Rust,” I whisper, nose brushing his. He hums again, lowly, eyes shut. “What do you think of us havin’ sex?”

“Sex,“ he replies softly, “is the illusion of connection constituted by the release of a mess of happy hormones, simply by touching all the right places—and nothin’ more.”

I hum and watch the look on his face grow brittle as our breaths mingle closely. God, he’s so near to me that my head swings in a bout of lightheadedness, heady, vision centring in on him and only him, such that I wouldn’t know if this place was burning down all around, even if the flames started eating us alive.

“I think you’re full o’ shit, Rusty. Know how I know that?”

He sighs shakily. “How?” It’s like the word is dragged right from the pit of his chest, barely a breath to show for the effort of it.

“I can feel you against my leg.”

He swallows thickly, but he does not blush, and he does not open his eyes. And, contrary to what he might seem, Rust is not cold like stone. When my fingers grow more confident, when they trace and drag lightly along the line of his cheeks, he is warm there. His pulse, when I find it, exists and is hot and slightly erratic, a fact that leaves my mouth dry and open. I can feel the inflexion of his throat as he swallows again, the shift of the skin and the rhythm of his heartbeat, the gentle influence of his breathing.

I wait for him to say something, but he doesn’t. So, I ask him, “Can I kiss you?” ever so gently.

Softer still, he replies, “Yes,” with that slight Southern whistle of his, barely moving.

Give me strength. Give me strength.

That look on his face is filling me with a delicious, vibrating power. As I stretch my neck up to brush a kiss against the corner of his mouth, my eyes are open and watching him, charting him: Rust breathes strongly out of his nose, eyes still determinedly shut, like he’s absent and meditating. He is not tough as stone – parts of him are soft. He barely returns the kiss, but, as far as my brain processes, his lips are soft. Hesitant, maybe.

Then, these soft lips part, and he is sucking in a hot, shuddering breath, capturing me in a deep kiss, as if to breathe all of me in, a strong hand threading through my hair. It hurts a little at first – a small noise escapes my throat at the slight shoots of pain tugging at the roots – but Rust doesn’t seem to notice. Not at first. No, he’s still breathing me in. His lips are dry, rough, a push and tug, a twist, and he’s kissing like a punch, knocking the breath right out of my lungs. Whatever oxygen I manage to hold onto is sucked out of me promptly.

I whine, my body going all slack and tired as he smooths the hair out of my face, palms dragging clean back across my cheeks. Those hands cradle the back of my head, making it impossible to keep my eyes open.

Content, I sigh, eyes succumbing to the sensation and falling shut. The last thing I see is his own eyes slipping open to look at my face.

Boy, he’s a good kisser. Must be that lizard brain he has such a distaste for.

My fingers blindly reach and fumble at his belt, hooking into the waist, pulling him flush against me. Rust must forget what he’s doing for a moment, and he pauses where he is, in limbo, eyes far away. When I begin to unthread his belt from its quietly clinking buckle, he goes stiff again, blinks rapidly before perceiving me.

Holy shit, he’s gorgeous.

His hands hover over my shoulders, not quite committed to the contact.

He’s seeing me—really seeing me—as I unzip his trousers and spit crudely into my palm and curl around the length of him, warm, tight. I begin to understand the gentle throb and strain he feels, a delightful thrill running rapid all through my insides. He feels deliciously alive.

But then he turns his head away, neck straining up, breath choked back in his throat. His hands come away, raised, it looks like, as if trying to seem non-confrontational, trying to come away unscathed from a bad situation.

My stomach burns with desire. “Let yourself like it, Rust,” I mumble against his cheek. “Are you here with me?”

I can feel him swallow.

“Yes,” he responds. I guide his face to me, stroking his cock confidently once, twice, as encouragement, maybe. Temptation. Whatever you want to call it. My mouth waters, my head goes airy, when I feel his sex twitch in my embrace.

“Kiss me again, then.”

And he does. Brows furrowed as if in pain, he does, with the tip of his nose dragging and pressing into my cheek. He kisses me sweetly once, then again, and then pants down hotly into my mouth, hovering there before sliding his tongue deep inside, close, smooth.

I let myself love it. I let myself let go with every kiss he blesses me with, growing looser and easier and lighter each second.

The weight of him in my hand inspires a beautiful urge to have him lay down and let me feel every part of his body. Even though his hips stutter, he doesn’t buck up into my fist, doesn’t whine, doesn’t moan, doesn’t curse. Not yet. He just breathes and breathes, and kisses me and kisses me, like it’s all he was set on Earth to do. All he’s allowing himself to do.

Desperate, perhaps, my thighs are pressed against his, feeling unnaturally weak and warm. The throb between my legs coincides with my heart rushing in my ears, a steady ache, impatient. Part of me wants to drag this out as long as possible, because what if this never happens again?—and another part wants to push him inside me already, have him fill me up, fuck me stupid.

This thought stuffs me up to the brim, like cotton punched down into a pillowcase. I whine shallowly and try to slot his thigh between my own.

A switch in his brain must flick on.

It’s like he’s inside my head, like he’s in on my desperation, like he can see and feel every sinful image and thought circulating my alighted brain. He knows it all so well, such that he uses his hips to press us firmly against the counter, spreads my legs with the nudge of his foot between mine, and immediately pushes the rough pads of his fingers right where I need it, through the fabric of my skirt, letting me grind myself against him, hips and all. He circles there generously. I can feel my need dripping from me. He can too, no doubt.

I sigh, he breathes. I gasp, he breathes. My eyes flutter open and shut, but he looks on, eyes half-lidded but stare immovable.

He then lifts his knee to place against my cunt.

“That feels good, don’t it?” he says gently, rocking me over his knee up and down, back and forth, fingers digging into the soft skin of my hips.

My legs widen. When I gasp out weakly, he raises his brow and scans my face, like he had predicted the shaky, wordless nod that I offer to him too late in return.

“Did you want it like this, girl?” His voice is low, intimate, a hit of something just shy of addictive. “Or did you want somethin’ else, too?”

He kisses the hollow of my neck.

His other hand grips at my ass, up my skirt, kneading the flesh there, manipulating it, and his fingers ghost my slit, spreading me around his knee. He fucks up into my hand. I slide my fingers through his hair, which is soft and warm like butter.

Fuck him. Fuck him and his stupid, pretty curls. I’ve proved my point: regardless of whatever act he may try to put on afterwards, we’ll both know that Rust isn’t as numb as he wants to be, that I made him feel good, that I made him want me, and that he’s hot-blooded and thrumming with life. I can feel how alive he is . I hope he thinks of this again some time, whether by himself or surrounded by people. I hope it drives him a bit mad, remembering this.

A hot, sharp breath fans out across my cheek, his mouth slotting back over mine, open, daring me.

I rut against his knee, my fingers teasing the wet head of his cock. I look down between us, at my hand on him, with half a mind to drop onto my knees and make him cum down my throat.

Rust lets out a grunt and swallows hard again.

Then, he gently grabs my wrist and pulls my hand out of his pants, leaving me dazed and confused. With nimble fingers, he unzips my skirt, pushing it over my hips and dragging his hands over my bare skin. He asks me, “You want the bed?”

I step out of the pool of fabric around my feet, slide my shoes off. “‘s not a bed.”

I slide my fingers beneath his sweaty, white undershirt, feeling the taut muscle there, feeling the steady breaths that contradict his racing pulse. He holds my eyes, dipping slightly when I dip, tilting when I tilt. “Seems like one to me.”

How unlike him.

A smile spreads over my face, and his pupils blow wide, dark, imploring. “You wait ‘n’ see what happens when the dust-mites turn up.”

His eyes on me alone are enough to leave me breathless, chest caving in on itself. Of course, when he kisses me softly, it only makes things worse – his long fingers curl around the base of my throat, watching me watching him, and his other hand slides up under the hem of my blouse, palm spread over my bellybutton.

I sigh, try not to squirm.

“You want the bed?” he repeats, heavy, rough. I bite back a needy whine that sits at the back of my mouth. His fingertips press down slightly into my pulse, tightening my breathing.

I nod. “Yeah.”

Think of all the times I’ve sulked over his lack of eye contact with me. Was I annoying? Uninteresting? That, obviously, was an immature way of looking at things, definitely not improved by my distinct femininity undergoing some kind of unspoken disapproval by most I met on the job. This is the most present he has ever been in a moment with me around.

As he pulls himself away, steps back, his eyes are darting over my face, less like he’s judging me and more like he’s trying to find and memorise every detail. I do that, sometimes: if I pay well enough attention, it feels like I’m re-living the moment when remembering.

His hands slot sensibly into his pockets as if his cock isn’t blushing and poking out of his fly right now, belt undone, hanging low about his narrow hips.

Legs don’t fail me now. I slink out of the glowing kitchen and carry on to where the mattress lies in a dim, blue corner, the strange crucifix watching over, a long shadow cast over the empty wall upon which it hangs. He follows shortly behind me, his warmth radiating out onto my back.

I pause and look out onto the darkness revealed behind the half-open slats of the floor-to-ceiling blinds that shield the room from the window to the outside world.

Rust’s presence is intoxicating behind me. He smells like cigarette smoke, still, enticing. I’m trying to quit, but he makes it damn hard. His nose is just shy of my hair, his body so close to enveloping me into him – the prospect of it makes me shiver in delight. I must hallucinate his fingertips along my spine.

I unbutton my blouse with slow fingers, then slide it off and undo my bra.

His breathing is level and grounding by my ear as he comes close, sliding his strong, wide hand up my stomach, along my ribs, and cups under my soft breast. He rubs over my nipple in gentle circles before squeezing over me warmly. He then comes around to pinch the creamy tissue gentle between his fingers and thumb, closing his hot mouth over, drawing along his feverish tongue. I sigh, stroke his hair, let him press soft pecks and kisses to the curve of the soft flesh and to my sternum.

My fingers, cupped around the nape of his neck, dip under the collar, cool. This touch, for some reason, causes him to make some sort of breathless, pathetic noise against me. His eyes are half-shut.

“Anything else philosophical y’wanna get out before we fuck?” I quip smartly (though, not feeling so smart altogether), hand placed innocently on his hip.

He lifts his head, removes his hands from my body – he looks so tragically beautiful in this light. “You want me inside you?” he asks genuinely, seemingly aloof to the fact I’m naked in front of him, open and wanton and pressing my thighs together, his eyes never drifting from mine.

“What do you want, Rust?” I whisper.

He seems to really think about it – he’s always thinking. Briefly, his eyes flit down to my mouth. Then, he looks away, scratches at his forehead.

After a moment longer, he swallows thickly and tips his head down over to the bed, tells me, “Lie down on the mattress,” in a gentle, decisive tone. He’s so soft-spoken – it makes my toes curl.

I do as told, transfixed by the dark shadow in his eyes, and sink down to sit and then recline back on his coarse mattress, coarse bedsheets, with my weight on my forearms and chin tilted up towards him. He watches me, tucking his thick cock back into his underwear.

Still fully dressed in his work attire, he takes a step forward, looming over me, powerful, assertive. Saliva pools in my mouth—again—as I play with the thought of him sitting heavy on my tongue with his stomach tight, shaking, hands in my hair, fucking down my throat. I would let him. Hell, I’d probably let him do anything he wanted to me at this point.

Does he know that? Maybe. I don’t know.

As he reaches his hand out too smooth the hair out of my face, I try to figure it out, but I can’t – he seems too wrapped up in his own desire to be thinking anything at the moment. I feel a flicker of satisfaction jump up in the pit of my stomach. Or maybe that’s something else.

“Lie back, girl,” he tells me.

My cunt flexes.

I thump onto my back, breathless. “Take off your shirt, Rust.”

Without replying, he sinks down to his knees in front of me, my thighs. Instinctively, I prop myself up and watch him unbutton that wrinkled shirt all the way down, shrug it over his broad shoulders. I could fuck myself silly just over the thought of those shoulders, I remark inwardly. He tugs the wifebeater over his head, lean muscles catching the low light, strong, study, solid, and tosses the thing to the side thoughtlessly. My hands reach out to touch him, to feel him and know him. When my fingers press into his skin, glide up his neck and down over his chest, he sighs deeply. He then carefully removes my hands, urging me to sprawl down under him.

“Said lie back, didn’t I?”

Rust doesn’t say another word before placing his large hands on my knees and easing them apart, lowering himself to press pecks and slow, open-mouthed kisses to my thighs, closer, closer, stroking my sensitive skin gently. I almost flinch at his every touch, like it burns. His face is awful serious, like he’s concentrating. I wriggle in anticipation, eager.

“Rust,” I whisper purposelessly. He looks up, hums, searches my face for anything the matter.

I watch on desperately, on the brink of feral distress. A sob clogs my throat as he kisses my fluttering stomach, ducking his head down and curling his forearms, his hands, around my thighs. The dark stamp of his bone-bird tattoo curls over his arm. I realise he is waiting for my attention to return to him, his eyes patient but glazed over with something cardinal. Hungry.

“Can—?”

“Yes.”

He hums. And then he breathes hotly over my underwear before pressing his nose right there into the damp fabric, inhaling my scent there. I whimper at the pressure he applies with the strong bridge of his nose, at the wetness of his open mouth against me. He breathes heavily into me, groaning slightly beneath it all – I can’t tell past the thrumming of my heart in my ears.

“Rust,” I whisper again, my shoulder straining with the task of keeping me up and looking down at the sight of his sweet head buried between my glistening thighs.

“Lie back.”

He kisses me through my underwear, dutifully kneading the flesh of my hips, my inner thighs.

I thump back against the mattress, helpless, keening into his touch as this grey man roughly tugs my underwear down, down, all the way down, until they’re clean off my body, long gone, and then returns his nose to the cleft of my pussy, unseaming me with his tongue, opening me up, breathing me in. It’s enough to draw a shallow, hoarse cry from me. He doesn’t say anything, and I can’t say anything, biting down on my white knuckles.

Rust licks warm over my clit, sucking gently on the bud of nerves (then not so gently), before sliding down, down through my very centre.

Whining breathily, the twist in my stomach tightens and spasms as he presses my hips and thighs right down against the mattress, slow, strong, giving me time to notice it, realise it, give into it, deny the natural instinct to curl my limbs tight all over his face, his neck, his mouth.

Holy fuck. Rust Cohle has his face buried between my legs right now. I have Rust Cohle’s tongue pushing deep into my cunt – he sighs softly, a sound with its own powerful gravity a black hole to envelop me in, and grinds his hips against the edge of the mattress for a split second, just once. My mind pulses with the thought of making him cum. I wonder if he feels the same hunger.

Then, he’s sinking his long, elegant fingers into me, one, then two, and just the knowledge that those fingers belong to him makes my thighs quiver and shake, makes me sigh again. Thick, confident, they curl inside, slow like an experiment, right up to the knuckle. When he taps up against me, when I squeal and crimp up into his hold, he returns himself to mouth dutifully over my clit. My hand threads itself into his hair, holding him steady – I offer a breathless moan when his grip across my hips loosen, an invitation to begin rolling myself up over his pretty face. He pulls his fingers out of me, wet and hot, and encourages my thighs upon his beautiful shoulders, clinging onto them urgently. He shudders a little, I think, when I lock them firmly around his head and grind myself shamelessly against his mouth, his nose. He moves his jaw, his face, in tandem.

I cum after a while like that, because how can I not? The searing buzz reaches a roiling static.

I go loose, moaning softly, melted down flat, and stroke fuzzy fingers through Rust’s pretty hair as he sucks my clit still, as he inhales again and sighs again, reduced to something primitive and needy.

Thick, my heartbeat throbs and echoes like a drum in my skull, threatening. I feel so full that I could mistake the beat of pleasure for nausea pressing in my throat. It was silly to think that this could all be satisfied just from one time. My eyes closed, Rust’s light touch over my abdomen, up to my throat, is acute and heightened, like a million tiny, individual sparks. His fingers fumble over my jaw, then press lightly over my pulse.

He retreats just as I’m playing with the hairs at the nape of his neck, coming to stand to full height above me, unthreading his belt from his trousers with quiet, precise hands. I press my shaking thighs together, watching him breathe strongly through his nose, trying to remain somewhat respectable in the presence of the darkening look in his eyes that is locked down on my body.

He pauses, wipes some shine from his nose. Before he can continue with whatever, I find myself sitting up on my knees, grabbing his hips hard enough to bruise all pretty and purple, shoving the trousers down to his knees, and palming him through his boxers.

We don’t have to say anything. He just watches me passively, pushing my hair back again, behind my ears, my shoulders, rolling my earlobe softly between his fingertips.

I remove his underwear, take him into my mouth, thick and long and wanting; he sighs, holds my head with two steady hands.

When was the last time someone helped him like this? I honestly couldn’t have told you, even given a loose theory, prior to this moment: Rust is simultaneously the hottest and most non-sexual being I’ve ever come across in my life. He just happens to be beautiful; he just happens to inspire these sort of feelings choking up inside me. No overarching intention that he’ll ever admit to, no vanity, no preening. So strict to himself, so tight, like a piston, something that fights and pushes and hurts.

So, as I hold him firmly and suck at the head of his blushing cock, kissing him, I watch his face, savour the tart taste of him, and press my thighs together: he’s becoming warmer, looser.

Still, as much as I want him, I know he’s wanted me. However vague he tells it, he’s wanted me. Good Lord, he looks even more stressed now, somehow, than when we had just been talkin’. Hands gently cradling my skull, he tilts his head away, watches the cross on the wall, as he succumbs to it, maybe, and begins to gently, languidly fuck my face. I tuck a hand between my thighs, and I love him, my other with the fingers digging into his hip, his ass. If I’m lucky, maybe it’ll leave some sort of mark, just to remind him I was here, so that, when he’s being all indifferent again, with his eyes lowered to the floor as he shares a report with me at my prim, little desk, we’ll both know that we were once in this room together, here like this.

Rust breathes and breathes, almost mechanically, and slides his cock further into my mouth. The weight of him in there drives me half-insane. If I could consume him, envelop him, and we could be one and the same, I’d readily allow it. When he sinks deeper still down my throat, I sigh around him, rub myself the way I like.

His eyes are determinedly shut, like some part of him refuses to be here.

Before I can make him cum, he shakes his head and tugs my hair back a little bit, mumbling for me to stop and sit away.

For all his mouthiness just a half hour ago, would you look at him now?—Rust Cohle, plundered by the human sensation of speechlessness. I’ve never seen him out of his element before. When he comes down and cages me with his body, hot skin flush against hot skin, I don’t mean that in a bad sense. Shit, he’s far from it. But there’s nothing to say. Nothing of note, nothing to pick apart, no deeper meaning, no theory. Just an itch that has to be scratched. He wants, he is, and it’s heaven to see.

In the dark, he sinks in to me as he is, eliciting from me a soft moan that curls over the shell of his ear. I have to bite down on his shoulder when comes the push, the stretch, the sink, the comfort of him inside. I curl my legs around his waist and grab at his ass, willing him deeper still. He shudders silently over me, thick ripples of pleasure rolling through his lean body.

I curse, but I’m sure it barely registers with him.

His head lifts and his eyes clamp shut as he braces an arm against the wall, lifting one of my legs up over his hip and fucking into me deeper, slipping out and in, and again, and again. I know what I’d see if I took a look down, saw his cock pumping into me, but I can hardly do anything but buck my hips up to meet his effort, my stomach stuttering with that building pressure, hands gripping desperately around his neck and shoulders.

Though, I’m not even sure it is effort that’s driving him.

I mumble into his shoulder, dumb, focussing on the feel and press of him in my belly. I doubt he’s really aware of anything more than the sensation of it, evident from the small grunt that passes his lips as he fucks deep in me. His stomach presses heavier down onto mine, crushing a delicious pressure there, teasing out a long, breathy whimper. He snakes an arm around my hips, pushes his free hand to the back of my knee, tilting my legs back a little more, and then pulls me wider. Tight, he moves me how he wants me, my flesh dipping and carving, fucking himself raw with me, with my hot cunt. His mouth moves over mine, not kissing me, not speaking, just there, present, hot, panting. He doesn’t open his eyes, so I close mine, and I breathe.

Rust stutters and cums and spills over into me with a grunt. He pants sharply, harshly, rhythmically into my mouth, tense again, and then he collapses over my body, and he lays there. I lay there too, burning on the far inside.

I think he only really remembers I’m there when I shift under him.

His eyelashes brush against my cheek. “Sorry,” he murmurs, but the sound of his voice scrapes directly against my brain with the shock of a flesh-wound.

I assume he’s referring to the thick cum that I can feel leaking out of me now. He shifts his hips, adjusting himself in the grip of my cunt. My fingers wrap around his arms, squeeze as I feel him easing out.

“It’s okay,” I reply.

He glances down between us and guides himself out with a lewd noise, swallowing hard. I shiver.

Quiet, sedated, he shrugs his trousers, his underwear, off of his ankles, slipping the bedsheet over both our naked selves. His hand spreads and flattens warm over my abdomen, feeling the gentle swell and sink of the breaths I take and release.

#true detective #rust cohle #marty hart #rust cohle x reader #rust cohle x reader smut #okay cool this is a bit niche hope you liked it #this show made me question my life's purpose #the first season at least #thanks matthew mcconaughey #anybody else here like Fiona apple or what

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