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hyunluvbug · 10 months

Text

you are in love

pairing: hwang hyunjin x afab reader

premise: you have developed a crush on your best friend’s (seungmin) roomate, hyunjin.

content: 🔞NSFW! MDNI!!! university au!, fluffy, angst (school related), forced proximity (one bed), smut (cute love making), oral (f receiving), protected sex!

word count: 3.6k

maybe it's the way he looks at you. the way his hair just always frames his face so perfectly. the way his smile goes up into his eyes. how your name sounds coming from his lips. it's so many reasons. there are so many reasons why you like you him.

when seungmin invited you over to his apartment after studying in the library. you weren't expecting to see him there. seungmin mentions him occasionally but you never expected this. when you walked inside his apartment and made yourself comfortable on the couch. he walks out and you could barely process what you see.

"hi, i'm hyunjin. you must be y/n."

he smiles at you and you practically melt right there. how could someone this good looking be going to your college and this is your first time seeing him? he's beautiful. your face is hot. butterflies are swarming all around in your stomach.

"h-hi."

seungmin watches the encounter already realizing what is happening. he has never seen you so flustered and awkward around someone.

ever since that day, seungmin teases you constantly. he will always try to get you flustered by bringing up hyunjin. whether its about him coming over soon or "look he's right there!"

and you're all like "WHERE?!" and of course seungmin lies which earns him a slap on the arm.

but ever since you met him he continues to fill up your mind. when you at first never seen him before, he is now everywhere you look. going to go get lunch, he's right there in line waving at you. walking past a classroom on your way to your next class, he's sitting there writing down notes. he's literally everywhere.

even right now as you sit in class. your professor drones on and on about microorganisms and your looking down into your notebook. your eyes beginning to droop even when you try to keep them open.

"psst. y/n!" you hear someone whisper. you look to the right and hyunjin is standing by the door. he waves happily at you, your heart begins to race. you wave back to him and he walks away.

"y/n, did you have a question?" your professor catches you out of your daze. the whole class turns to look at you. your hand is still raised and you quickly put it down.

"uh no, sorry." you reply sheepishly.

when class ends, you get a text from seungmin who wants to meet at your favorite cafe. coffee is definitely something you need, your body is feeling super sluggish. being up late last night to study wasn't really your best move. but you needed to study or you would end up failing. the hard truth of being in college.

you practically look like a zombie as you walk to the cafe. he is sitting by himself, his favorite chosen coffee already on the table. you walk over to him and set your book bag on the floor. you place your head on the table and let out a heavy sigh.

"what's your problem?" seungmin asks and takes a sip from his coffee. his sips make a loud slurping sound as it goes through the straw.

"sleepy."

"ah i see, up all night thinking about hyunjin." he chuckles.

"no! stop being weird."

"well here he comes, i would get up if i were you."

"stop lying! he's not coming."

"hey." your head shoots straight up, knocking some breath out of your lungs. hyunjin is standing at the head of the table, looking between the two of you. you find yourself adjusting your clothes making sure you look put together. in hopes he can't tell how tired you are.

"can i sit?" he gestures to the seat next to you and you nod happily. he slides into the sit next to you, only a few inches of space separates you. his face up close is just as beautiful.

"did you order?"

"huh?" you feel your face become hot when he stares at you. realizing you were stuck staring at his face.

"did you order?" he reasks and you shook your head.

"not yet. i was hoping this idiot would order for me." you stick your tongue out to seungmin and he shrugs.

"i can order for you. what would you like?"

"just a vanilla latte please." you smile and he stands up. you go to grab your wallet for him to use and he grabs your wrist.

"it's okay i got it."

you stare up at him, his soft fingers still circle your wrist. the feeling sends sparks up your arm. seungmin practically gags from the moment happening before him. he ends up clearing his throat which makes hyunjin drop your wrist back onto the table.

"i'll be back." he walks away towards the counter to make the order.

seungmin looks at you, "you're so into him."

you just glare at him. "if you tell him, i will kill you."

hyunjin soon comes back over with two drinks. he places yours infront of you. when you take a sip, you feel the foam on your upper lip. hyunjin laughs at you and hands you a napkin. you wipe your upper lip and look over to seungmin. he has that look in his eye like he's up something and you don't like it.

----

of course just when you think everything is going great. you get hit with three essays from three different classes. each essay ranging from five to six pages respectively. just when you think you have a handle on a school workload everything comes crashing down.

school stress was like any other stress you experienced. feeling the need to always have the perfect grades. perfect attendance. just to be perfect. all of it is super overwhelming and right now you need seungmin. even though seungmin was always teasing and making fun of you he is still your closest friend. you didn't even think to call or text before you showed up. but it was too late anyways once you knocked on his door.

to your surprise you weren't met to see seungmin but hyunjin at the door. he looks at you and his heart almost breaks. trails of tears are rolling down your cheeks, your hands reaching up to wipe them away but they keep coming. your eyes are red which tells him that you have been crying for what could be hours.

"is seungmin here?" you say through a sob. hyunjin stands there not knowing whether to pull you into a hug or not.

"he isn't, do you need me to call him?" hyunjin asks softly, more sobs begin to rip through your body.

"n-no i- i-"

"hey shhh." hyunjin grabs your arm and pulls you into his chest. you sob into his chest, letting all the stress leave your body. your chest begins to ache from how hard you cry. hyunjin's hand rubs your back as you continue to cry in his arms.

"hey lets get inside." he reassures you and guides you inside. he shuts the door behind him and locks it.

you head over to the couch and plop down. you wipe all the wetness from your cheeks and feel it collect onto your fingertips. hyunjin goes into the nearby bathroom and brings back some kleenex.

you grab it from him and he sits on the couch beside you. tears still well up into your eyes but you hold them back. it feels stupid to be crying over something so stupid. why does college have to be so difficult.

"do you wanna talk about it?" hyunjin asks, his eyes softening as he stares into yours.

"it's nothing that important."

"it has to be if it made you cry like that."

hyunjin grabs your hand and holds it in his. your heart warms from the gesture.

"come on, you can tell me. i don't bite." he jokes and you chuckle a little. he rubs the back of your palm and it brings you more comfort.

"well, it really is just school. i feel super stressed out. all thee assignments are driving me insane. i don't get how professors expect so much from us."

"i understand."

"i just wish they would stop expecting so much. i wish i would stop worrying so much about it. of course i will get the papers done but knowing i have so many is too stressful."

"i can always help you if you want." you look up at him. "i would love to help you."

your cheeks warm from the nice gesture. "i appreciate that hyunjin, i really do."

----

hyunjin had helped you a lot by keeping you occupied from stress. he would spend time with you in the library when seungmin couldn't. he would make sure you weren't procrastinating and even proof read your essays for you. everything he did to help you just made your crush even more stronger than ever.

you thanked him endlessly all the time and would always bring him snacks in the library. the library was now considered your designated hangout spot. a place where you both could comfortably spend time in silence, passing smiles here and there and hyunjin staring at you without you knowing. you would type away on your laptop, feeling the inspiration flow. your lips curling up into a pout and he found the sight to be adorable.

once you had finally finished up the three essays, it was now nearing the time for spring break! spring break can be both fun and exhausting. as most professors find it to be the PERFECT time to assign even more assignments. even though it is supposed to be a break for students. at this point, you need the break, everyone does.

so, seungmin had the bright idea to rent out an air bnb. it was a nice cabin not that far from the university. it had multiple bedrooms and bathrooms. seungmin ended up inviting a few more of his own friends which included hyunjin and you. to be fair, you are quite excited to spend a holiday with hyunjin. you both never got time to just hang out outside of a school setting. besides the time when you cried in his apartment.

when you arrive at the cabin, you are in awe of how beautiful it is. the whole cabin is made of wood giving it that bonfire type scent. a scent that is cozy and a sense of warmth. you set your bags down by the door and seungmin walks in.

"wow, this place is super nice." he sighs as he begins to open all the cabinets. each cabinet was filled with its own pots and pans. as well as some basic cooking supplies.

"who all is coming?" you ask, looking at all the mountain and bear artwork that covers the walls.

"uh, hyunjin, chan, lee know, jeongin, changbin, jisung and felix."

"damn that's a lot of people."

"yeah haha. theres only 4 rooms, and three of us share one." seungmin mutters and you feel your face warm.

"wait, does that mean i have to share with someone?" you question and seungmin avoids your gaze. "i am sharing with you right?"

"not exactly. i was thinking you could room with hyunjin."

"are you serious?" you shout and he jumps startled. the sounds of car doors closing outside signals someone is coming.

"i already told him and he's fine with it." seungmin shrugs ad you look at him shocked.

"he agreed?"

suddenly, the door whips open and all of the other boys enter. all of them having car pooled together in two separate cars.

"yo! who's ready to have a great spring break?" jisung shouts into the house and the other boys hoop and holler with him.

"nice to see you y/n!" jisung says giving you a small wave, you wave back with a big smile.

everyone else greets you. each of them saying hello and then moving on to find their rooms. hyunjin stands off to the side, his hands nestled in his pockets. he is wearing a plain white tee with jeans and a navy blue beanie. how can he look so adorable in the simplest of outfits.

the boys continue to chatter amongst themselves, deciding if they should order takeout for dinner. everyone ends up deciding on chinese food and it arrives at the cabin 30 minutes later.

chan brings up the idea to watch a horror movie so of course everyone else agrees. jeongin goes with changbin to make a few bowls of popcorn for everyone to share. you sit on the couch beside seungmin and hyunjin sits on your left.

once the movie begins, jisung is screaming and yelling at the most simplest jump scares ever. causing everyone else to break out into laughter. you're practically all smushed up on the small couch. lee know and felix had to sit on the floor due to the lack of space.

the movie is about halfway through when you feel something warm touch your hand. you look down and hyunjin's pinky is poking you. when you look up at him, his eyes are still on the tv. you open up your palm and he place his hand in yours. intertwining his slender fingers with yours. you face becomes warm from the warmth that exudes into your palm. that warmth soon nestles into your heart, feeling immense comfort from his touch.

----

"hey, i heard we're rooming together." hyunjin says to you as he enters the bedroom. he places his bags on the chair in the corner, you are pulling out some clothes from your bag. getting ready to change into some pj's.

"yeah, i hope that's okay with you." the inevitable one bed trope is upon you. classic seungmin behavior for sure. you were going to kill him.

"it's fine with me." he reassures with the sweetest smile. to say you were nervous was an understatement. the idea of being in a bed under the covers with hyunjin had you scared shitless. how were you supposed to even sleep knowing he was laying next to you.

you head into the bathroom to put on your pjs. when you return, hyunjin has changed into some grey sweats. still wearing his plain white tee but his beanie is laid on the nightstand. you walk past him, not noticing his gaze. you pull the covers back and settle down into the covers. realizing you were more sleepy than you had realized once you feel the firm and soft mattress.

you feel his weight on the bed once he lays down. he turns off the lamp beside him and the room becomes dark. you lay on your back while he lays facing away from you. the room is silent. you thought sleep would take you away soon but it didn't. your mind was too busy running wild about how your crush is lying right next to you. when you turn to face him, he is already facing you. you both stare at each other, a few inches separated.

"i can't sleep." you reveal and he scoots closer to you. you feel yourself hold your breath as his hand reaches up to your cheek.

"did the movie scare you?" he asks, concerned that you're scared. his fingers caress your cheeks, you hope he can't feel how warm they are.

"no. i don't think so."

"then what is it?"

a pause. a deep sigh. silence.

"you."

"what about me?" he tease, his thumb still caresses the side of your face. his face soon comes closer to you.

"everything."

"everything about me?" he breathes out, his breath tickling your face. you nod shyly, now too embarrassed from his gaze. he licks his own lips and looks down at yours. his eyes flicker up to yours to ask for permission. your eyes invite him to kiss you.

his plump lips land on yours in a sweet kiss. and the butterflies return. they swarm and swarm your whole stomach. exploring every part of your body from his touch. he pulls away, letting his head rest on your forehead.

"do it again. please." you plead and he smirks.

he place his lips back on yours and this time it's desperate. his lips nibble down onto yours causing you to let out a soft whine. your hands run up to pull at his soft hair. he felt like pure love. the kind of love you never want to give up. he is intoxicating and you are addicted.

when he pulls away again, his eyes are half lidded. barely open as he stares at you.

"do you know how long i wanted to do that?"

"enlighten me." you chuckle and he smiles.

"since i saw you crying on my doorstep. i never wanted to see you hurt like that ever again. i want nothing more than to protect you."

you look into his eyes, every sign of sincerity in them.

"if you allow me, i can show you." his thumb runs over your lips and you practically die right there.

"please."

that was all he needed and he was on top of you.

"you're so beautiful." he leans down to reconnect his lips to yours. he runs his hands down his shirt and pulls it over his head. "i wanna show you how much i like you."

he pulls off your pajama pants and underwear in one go. he dips his head down, leaving kisses down your thighs. you squirm from how ticklish it feels. he put his hands on your hips to press them down into the mattress.

his tongue prods at your pussy lips and then lets his tongue lick up your slit. you let out a groan.

"don't be too loud baby. i don't want them to hear how pretty you sound."

his tongue comes back into contact with your pussy. he begins to lick and slurp up as messily as he can. letting you thrash above him while he holds you down. his tongue prods at your clit, his eyes look up to see your face screwed up in pleasure. you feel him smile and continue licking below. his tongue feels like heaven as it licks every part of your pussy. teasingly circling and entering your core is what sends you over the edge.

"hyunjin please."

"please what angel?"

"i need more."

hyunjin sits up, wiping his mouth where your wetness coated it. he scoots up closer to you and pulls off your top. you aren't wearing a bra and now you're fully exposed to him.

"so pretty." he smirks and you feel your face warm up.

"please please."

hyunjin pulls off his sweats and his boxers. his cock springing free in all its glory. your mouth waters from the sight.

"such a needy baby."

hyunjin grabs his wallet from the nightstand. pulling out a condom, he pumps himself a little. then slides the condom on himself.

he scoots back down, his cock now lines up to your entrance. he runs it over your slit before he slowly enters.

"shit." he mutters.

his eyes close a little from the feeling and he moves closer to you. your lips come into contact with his. both your moans are now muffled from the contact. his hips move slowly into you and you can feel his groans on your lips.

he pulls away from your lips and looks down into your eyes. his arms are by the sides of your head, his hips begin to go faster into you. you try to hide your moans so no one else can hear you.

"i knew you would look so pretty so like this." hyunjin smirks above you and you let out a soft moan.

"don't worry, you can moan more when we do this again."

again? god, he's going to make you go insane. the feeling of him inside you was intense. he felt so good going in and out of you. it didn't feel like he was fucking you. you are making love.

the quicker his hips went, the more moans left your lips. it was nearly impossible to hide them and it turned hyunjin on even more. knowing you couldn't hold back from how good you were feeling. all he wants is to make you feel good.

"good girl." hyunjin pants when he feels you begin to tigthen around him. your high soon approaching. "go ahead cum for me angel."

he place his lips on yours to hide the load moans falling from your lips. your high comes crashing down over you. his lips continue to move over yours and his hips still. he pulls out and moves away from you. you're panting below him, as pretty as ever.

"stay right there love."

hyunjin goes into the bathroom to throw away the condom. he pulls his shirt back over his head and hands you an extra one from his bag. he lays back down in bed and opens his arms for you.

once you put the shirt on, you nestle up into his chest. you hide your face away from him as he looks down at you.

"baby, look at me. don't hide."

you look up at him shyly, feeling flustered from what had just took place.

"you did so good for me." he coos into your ear before nibbling on it.

you break out into giggles from how ticklish it feels. "hyune stop it."

"hyune?" he questions looking down at you.

"oh s-sorry. is that not okay to call you that?"

"no its okay! i love it. i wanna be your hyune." he teases and you chuckle from how cute he's being.

"does this mean i am yours?"

"of course. you're mine now." hyunjin kisses your cheek and nuzzles your face with his nose. you feel content in knowing that you are his and that he is yours.

"you should thank seungmin." he mumbles into your skin.

"huh?"

"he's the one who told me you like me."

"HE DID WHAT?!"

#kpop imagines #stray kids imagine #stray kids x reader #stray kids #stray kids smut #skz imagine #kpop x reader #kpop smut #skz smut #hyunjin x reader #hyunjin smut #hyunjin imagine #hwang hyunjin imagine #hwang hyunjin smut

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azulock · 4 months

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this has been sitting in my drafts for sooooo loooong, it's mostly born from how mean people can be in this fandom about poor Oli looking the way he does. I love his messy 'I don't have my life together' look, it's very relatable, but today we putting him under tha razor!

summary. when Oliver finds himself forced to get a clean shave for some important club event he tries to rope you into doing the work for him. and you do it, cause he is too charming and you can't resist spoiling this man

pairing. Oliver Aiku x reader

wordcount. 2,6k

warnings. some slight mention of nsfw stuff but veeeery slight, it's mostly domestic fluff, just pure distilled domesticity shot straight into your veins, you've been warned

helping hand.

"Really Oliver, you pestering me during work hours to do that for you?"

Giving one last hard stare at your screen, you groaned and swiveled you chair around to face the man currently breaking the peace in your office. With hair still damp from his shower, Oliver stood bare foot before you - a trail of wet footsteps clear behind him. God, you'd lost count of how many times you'd told him he'd end up sick if he kept doing that.

"Oh come on, it's not that big of a deal," he insisted, cutting off your thoughts, pouting as you fitted him with a steely gaze. "I neeeeed you."

You roll your eyes at his whiny antics - and complete disregard for your work life. It was almost funny to see a grown man pout like this, especially when you contrasted the silly expression with this statuesque of a man. You couldn't help but let your eyes roam free for a moment, taking in the sight of him. Water droplets still rolled down his strong torso, taking your gaze to the short hair trailing down his lower abs, to the point where his sweatpants hung dangerously low on his hips. Shit, he was diverting your attention.

"Oliver," you sigh, rubbing your eyes to try and exorcise the images stealing your focus, "you've been doing that by yourself your entire adult life, you don't need me."

"That's not true, it goes way better when you do it for me," Oliver whined again, and even in his husky tone, you could hear it, the begging, so shameless.

At this moment he looked every bit like a dog, a ragged mutt pleading for attention at his owner's feet. Hell, he was even trying to shoot you the best puppy eyes he could muster, pout returning to those pretty lips. You'd say it was ridiculous, but maybe it was the smell of soap or maybe the warmth emanating from his skin, but something was making you want to give in.

"That's nonsense," you groaned, pinching the bridge of your nose as you tried to convince yourself to not let him sway you. "I'm not a barber, and you've been shaving your own damn self for years. I'm pretty sure you can keep your eternal stubble under control on your own."

"Well, I could," Oliver shrugged, remaining unfazed by the exasperation in your voice. "Though, this time I'm gonna have to shave it clean."

"What?" Suddenly, you were fully immersed in the topic, even though you felt like you'd fallen into a trap.

Oliver had to contain his smile when you suddenly went from nonchalant to interested. It was really cute. He knew you liked feeling the scruff around his face, which he always thought was absolutely endearing. Now, sadly, he'd have to part ways with it, albeit temporarily.

"You remember tomorrow's party? Well, the team's president is an old school kinda guy. He's gonna get pissed if he sees the team's captain shows up looking so unclean for an important event," he answers with a full body sigh, eyebrows arching high as he raises his shoulders.

"That's ridiculous," your words cut so dry that Oliver can't help but laugh at the barely contained disgust in your tone.

"Well, I think so too. But I like my position right now, if the old man wants me clean for the party, I can make the sacrifice," he answered with a wave of his hand, stepping closer to your chair before leaning in, using his hands to prop his body onto your armrests. "But it could be less painful if you helped me."

You sat in silence, staring him down for a long minute as he leaned in close, that charming smile never faltering. From this close, you could smell the conditioner on his hair and feel his breath on your skin. Shit, you could feel yourself falling for it. Rubbing a hand over your face, you slumped further down the chair, sighing as you went.

"Fine," you groaned, looking back up to his beaming face. "Go soak the soap and the brush, I'll be right there."

Closing the distance between you, Oliver met your lips with his in a short kiss before pulling back in a breath, his skin still damp and warm from the shower. "Already done that, I'll go get myself a chair."

You hummed as he got up, lifting your body heavily off of the chair after he'd disappeared into the hallway. You spoiled him too much, you were sure of it, but you guessed he had the same type of charm as a big dog who still believes they are lap sized. It was hard to say no to that.

Following the wet footsteps, you found yourself in your en suite bathroom, Oliver sitting on a high chair he'd taken from the kitchen counter. At least he'd left everything ready, so all you had left to do was commit the dismal crime of doing away with his stubble. A pity, you'd miss the feeling of it on your skin. For however many days the shave would last, that is.

Picking the plastic bowl of shaving soap, you started moving the barber brush in circular motions to begin lathering it up. Taking a step forward, you approached Oliver as your hands worked, shaking your head as he snaked an arm around your waist.

"You are spoiled," you mumbled, feeling him laugh as he looked at you both in the mirror, your gaze following his.

"Maybe," he hummed, "but I spoil you plenty too."

"Well, here we go I guess," you said with a chuckle, making him straighten to give you a better access to his face and neck.

When the soft brush touches his face Oliver hums, closing his eyes as you begin spreading the soap over his jaw. It felt nice, both the gentle smell of lemon grass and the feeling of having you taking care of him. Yeah, he was spoiled, he knew it, but could he really be blamed for liking being pampered?

Oliver was only human after all, and having to unwillingly part ways with his facial hair was not his favorite thing. So it only made sense that he'd try to squeeze whichever little joy he could from this situation. And having you do that for him was joy enough on his book. Between feeling the warmth coming from your body and the comfortable silence that had settled, he could almost forget he was being forced to do this.

Opening his eyes he found your face close to his, gaze set in concentration as you moved the brush around his neck, finishing lathering it up. It was beautiful, really, sometimes you'd focus on something so much you wouldn't even see the things around you. Cute, and he couldn't resist the urge to take advantage of that, lowering his lips to meet yours in a quick peck.

"Oliver," you exclaimed as he laughed, "you gotta cooperate, you bastard. Now I got soap on my face," you grunted, looking at the mirror and then back to him.

"Just a little bit," he chuckled, reaching out to clean your face with his hand as you sneered at him.

You shook your head and turned to put the brush back, watching from the mirror as he still chuckled at you. Pestering you when you were focused never seemed to stop amusing him. And to boot, you couldn't deny there was something infuriatingly endearing about it. Or maybe you were just blinded by the casual charm of his smile - again.

Picking up the safety razor, you turn back to him again. "Now, you better behave if you don't wanna have to clean your blood off of the white floor."

"So mean," Oliver pouts before smiling that heart shattering smile again. "Alright, I'm in your hands then."

You roll your eyes as he straightens up, hands gripping the sides of the chair. When the blade first meets his face you feel Oliver shiver at the cold touch of the metal, but as quick as it happens, it's gone. You move your wrist and the blade glides down his warm skin in short strokes, following the grain of the hair on his stubble. Oh, it's gonna be so sad to see it gone. Especially knowing how a good part of Oliver's appeal came from how he looked at least a little like a mess. You couldn't even recall the face of his club's president, but you now hated the old man.

There is ease in the silence that settles as you carefully work the sharp blade along his face and neck. Only the rough sound of metal scraping against the hair and skin fills the bathroom as an oddly well-behaved Oliver sits in stillness. It feels almost suspicious, even, but you guessed he had no interest in showing up to the party with a cut on his face. Not that you believed even that could do much harm to his good looks.

When that first pass is done you turn to the sink and wash the razor before picking up the brush start the cycle and lather his face again. Though, just as you turn back he catches you off guard, forward and capturing your lips in a quick kiss - but he almost topples his chair over in the process. Desperately you steady him up, pushing his large frame back by his shoulders.

For a moment there the scare takes the best of you, brows furrowing in a scowl, ready to chastise Oliver for the stupidy. But then he starts laughing, the warm and husky sound enveloping you as they echo off the walls, breaking your defenses. You laugh along, slapping his shoulder but leaning against him for a short moment. Sometimes he could be an idiot, but that too was part of the appeal.

Once you both recover you go back to your work, lathering his face, putting the brush back in place, picking up the razor, and bringing it to touch his face. This time you move it cross grain, once more enjoying the sound of the metal moving over his skin. It's all peaceful, for at least half of the process until Oliver grows bored, his large hand finding your bare leg, fingers traveling over the back of your thigh until they reach the hem of your shorts.

You grunt in warning and he only hums quietly in what sounded like a mocking acknowledgment. Oliver disregards your death glare completely, his palm touching your thigh, rough fingers massaging your skin as they move. Even then he doesn't stay put, hand traveling up and groping your ass, kneading the flesh under your shorts just as your reach his neck. For a moment you consider giving into the desire to leave just a little gash on his skin, but you manage to resist.

Just as you try to turn back again he he uses the hand on your ass to pull you closer in. You don't even have time to protest as his lips crash against yours - and you can already notice the strangeness of not feeling his stubble. Still, he doesn't give you much time to think on it, tongue slipping past your lips and exploring the wet insides of your mouth. He tastes like coffee, and you can't help but let the taste lure you in, the sensations enveloping you, warmth rising in your face until then it's gone.

His lips part from yours with a quick peck and you are already missing the kiss - what a bastard, teasing you like that. You huff and shake your head when Oliver winks at you, slapping your ass as you turn around and repeat your previous motions of washing the razor and grabbing the brush again.

You lather his face, then throw the brush in the sink before picking up the razor and letting it touch his skin for a final pass, this time against the grain. Oliver hums when you lean in and it sends shivers down your spine, his hand finding your leg again but this time he just let it dance over your thigh absentmindedly. You find comfort in the warmth of his palm and in the ritualistic nature of this whole thing - it's a soothing type of repetitive task.

This time the blade hugs close to his skin, and when you get to his neck you can feel his steady pulse. Sitting so still, so calm, the beating of his heart feels strangely slow, yet heavy and powerful. You know it's the telltale sign of that athletic resistance and ungodly endurance, but the slow rhythm never ceases to seem almost eerie.

When you finish you run a hand over his face, feeling the smooth, still damp skin. It's strange, but you take solace in knowing it's temporary. Soon enough it'll be gone, though not without leaving Oliver itchy for at least a day, and you always found it funny how bothered he was by that. He smiles at you and you can feel it go straight between your legs - fuck, you are sure he did that on purpose.

But you don't give the pleasure of attention, instead turning around to rest the razor on the stone sink. You hear Oliver yawn from behind you, and watch from the mirror as he stretches as you pick a towel from the rack. Turning back to him you pat his face dry, and as if he wasn't already being spoiled enough, you rub the aftershave lotion on his skin. When it's all done Oliver climbs down from the chair and pulls you in by the waist, placing a soft kiss on your lips before you both turn to the mirror.

"There you go," you say, resting your hip against the sink as Oliver leans in, "how you feeling?"

"Like I'm seven years younger," he responds, touching his face with his free hand. "Which is a nightmare, actually," he pouts.

"Oh, come on, it's only temporary. You gonna be back to having the stubble and looking great again in just a few days."

"Hey," he grunts, squinting his eyes at you, "what do you mean by that? You talk like I'm not handsome anymore," he almost growls in a joking threat, a smile playing at his lips as he cages you against the stone counter, hands on each side of your body. "What's up with that, huh?"

You chuckle as Oliver says the question low in your ear right before assaulting your face with soft kisses. You laugh, grabbing at his shoulders as he snakes a hand around your waist. He's rubbing his face against yours and you can't help but notice how odd it is not to feel the stubble you'd grown so used to.

"Oliver," you laugh, dual colored eyes looking up at you as he peppers kisses over your neck, "this is so strange, your face is so smooth."

"Ah, but you gonna have to deal with it," you laugh as he rubs his face against yours almost like a cat before taking his lips to yours and placing a quick peck. "You gotta make up to me for saying something so mean."

"I've just done your shaving for you, ain't that enough?"

"Nah, I can think of something better."

He pulls you in closer, rubbing his pelvis against yours, letting you feel the large bulge under the the fabric of his sweatpants. Of course, he was like that, it didn't surprise you at all. But you guessed you could spoil him just a little bit more, as a reward for behaving so well even under such difficult circumstances. Yeah, he deserved a bit more pampering, why not?

now for a word from our sponsors: @wishiknewwhatiwasdoingwithmylife

#oliver aiku x reader #aiku x reader #oliver aiku #bllk x reader #blue lock x reader

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mingtinys · 11 months

Text

A Thorn in the Side

pairing : joshua hong x gn!reader

light angst , fluff , humor

warnings : language , jealous joshy

word count : 1.0 k

requested? no

a/n : can't tell if i like this one or not yet , but i really wanted to get something seventeen related put out !!

Joshua has never liked to think of himself as a jealous person.

In fact, in his own humble opinion, Joshua finds he's secure enough to not let most things bother him.

Some guy wants to buy you a drink at the bar? You're very attractive, it's bound to happen. His members compliment how you look that day? Good, they should, you look amazing. Your coworker is leaving secret love notes on your desk? That's fine, you'll still be clocking out and coming home to Joshua at the end of the day.

For all the attention you receive in a day, it's only ever Joshua who has the privilege of receiving yours. So no, he really doesn't have much need to worry over trivial things.

That being said, every so often, he gets a teeny, little, thorn in his side. The thorn in question being no other than Kim Mingyu and his abnormally large muscles. More specifically, Kim Mingyu's abnormally large muscles in regards to how uncomfortably close they are to you.

You were supposed to be bringing Joshua his gym bag he left at home. Something that would have taken less than a minute to do. Unfortunately, Joshua forgot to take into account the other twelve boys who accompanied him to the gym and had a knack for making his life a living Hell.

Mingyu stopped you the moment you walked in the door. Engulfing you in a bone-crushing hug and radiating a puppy-like joy he always seems to have when greeting you. But that's not even what did Joshua in. Not by a long shot.

It wasn't until you started giggling about how gross and sweaty he was that Joshua felt something indignant crawl under his skin. Your palms flat against his chest as you tried to push away while Mingyu only held you tighter. Also, why on God's green earth does he feel the need to be shirtless right now!?

And judging from the smug glances Mingyu keeps shooting his way, the boy knows exactly what he's doing. Joshua Hong is a patient man. But the urge to throttle Mingyu is incredibly tempting at the moment.

He doesn't even realize just how long he's been just standing there seething until Jeonghan pokes his head out from behind a machine. "Hey, ‘Shua!" He whispers and it snaps Joshua back down to Earth like a brick to the head. He's twirling a singular earbud in his fingers. "I can hear you grinding your teeth over my music. How much longer are you gonna stand there sulking?"

"I'm not grinding my teeth." He grumbles, a pout set on his lips. Though his jaw is rather sore and he has to actually make an effort to unclench it.

Behind him, Seungkwan snorts. "There's actually visible clouds of steam shooting out of your ears."

Joshua whips his head around and gives the younger boy a look nothing short of homicidal. It only encourages him. "What? Worried Y/N might see something they like?"

"No." He grits out. "I just . . . really need my gym bag."

"Ohhh, okay okay." Seungkwan nods, that same smirk never leaving his face. "Well, it looks like someone might have beaten you to it." Another fit of middle-school-girl giggles erupts between Seungkwan and Jeonghan.

And sure enough, when Joshua returns his attention back to you, a second “thorn” has somehow also found its way over. Lee Chan. "Here, that looks heavy, let me help you," he says, taking the bag from your shoulder, chest puffed and smile toothy. He curls it the way one would a kettlebell, toned and sweaty arms glistening in all their nauseating glory. Seriously, who even flexes like that when picking up a bag? It's just tacky.

That's about all Joshua can stomach for much longer. He can feel the once tiny thorns morphing into jagged claws. Some awful green-eyed beast tearing at his stomach from the inside out. And while he knows he really shouldn't take the bait, he just can’t help it.

He beelines it across the room, walking to where you and his victims members are at a lightning-fast speed. Joshua musters up a sickeningly sweet smile and clears his throat. Mingyu and Chan look at him like they know they're in trouble.

But then your eyes light up at the mere sight of him, and all thoughts he had of ripping Mingyu and Chan a new one fizzle out all too easily. You push past the two boys without another glance in their direction, and a smile only he's capable of evoking plays at your lips.

"Hey, you." You greet him with a peck and the exaggerated gags that fill the room make his chest fill moreso with pride than embarrassment. Your hand slips just under the hem of his shirt, letting your palm lay against his stomach. There it is. That feeling of security. Of trust. Warmth. You lean back slightly and Joshua lets his impulsivity win when he chases your lips for one last reassuring kiss.

"Thank you for bringing my bag."

You hum, threading your fingers through his damp hair, combing it back. "I don't mind. I actually think you need to forget your bag more often."

Joshua tilts his head innocently. He's thrown off guard when you lean in, palm pressing harder against his stomach, and your lips ghost the shell of his ear. Voice low enough so that his members won't hear, which he's thankful for. "You're really hot when you're all sweaty and jealous."

Joshua cringes. "Was it that obvious?"

"Seungkwan's voice carries."

He feels a little stupid now for ever getting so worked up in the first place. His head drops with embarrassment, causing you to giggle. "Hey," you poke at his forehead so he'll look at you. "You know I only have eyes for you, right?" You sound a little more serious this time.

"Yeah, I know."

"Good."

"Hey, hyung," Chan calls, still behind you. "Can you take your bag now? It's actually kind of heavy."

#seventeen #svt #seventeen x reader #seventeen fanfic #svt x reader #svt fanfic #seventeen imagines #svt imagines #joshua hong #hong jisoo #seventeen x you #joshua hong x reader #joshua hong x you #joshua x reader #hong jisoo x reader #hong jisoo x you #hong jisoo imagines #joshua hong imagines #seventeen joshua

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doobea · 7 months

Text

DAYTIME SHOOTING STAR - REO MIKAGE

synopsis: Being a college student sucks. Having a crush on your best friend also sucks. Your best friend having a crush on your other best friend is . . . kinda the worst. In which, Reo is hopelessly in love with you but you’re hard crushing on Nagi.

-> MASTERLIST.

contents: reo centric, second lead syndrome feat. fem!reader & reo, heavy narration, also in an au where bluelock never happened LOL, starts from past -> present day, mentions of unrequited confessions, country farmgirl!reader -> stem major in college, insert anime cliche of riverbanks and convos about falling in love, kinda proofed word count: 4K (HUH??) a/n: i wrote this while listening to shoujo openings - lets try and find a song suited for these two (eventual) lovebirds, shall we? 'mini-series' my ass idk why the first chap came out so long??? whoops.

SUMMER TRIANGLE -> next.

Reo can’t pinpoint the exact moment he fell in love with you.

He thinks it starts all the way back when you first transferred to Hakuho during his second year.

You were a quiet country girl whose parents had just moved to the big city all due to your father’s new job. And it was painfully obvious that it was your first time experiencing anything remotely ‘fancy’ when you came to school the first day. At the time, you were still wearing your old high school uniform, saying something about shipping getting delayed. Your skirt came almost all the way down to your ankles, your sweater vest had loose threads sticking around the edges, and your shirt still carried its creased marks.

To anyone in that school, you looked like an eyesore. Whispers about your family’s net worth, your relationship with the school’s faculty, and whether or not you cheated your way through the entrance exam began circulating.

From the moment you stepped inside the class, Reo knew you would get hell from the nation’s young elites. Reo thought by the end of the first quarter you would’ve dropped out and transferred to another school.

The first few months were rough, from what he observed. No one wanted to partner up with you for group projects, students would try to misplace your assignments, harsh messages were marred onto your desk earlier mornings before you arrived, and your gym clothes always went missing. But you stayed awfully silent, didn’t complain much, and quickly made yourself known to be the “weird, quiet farm girl”. Reo thinks everyone left you alone after you managed to score top ten in the class during finals week, despite the harassment. Still, even after all of that, no one bothered talking to you like normal and moved on to the next hot topic as if you were a dying trend.

Reo didn’t get the chance to talk to you much that year but, safe to say, he was pleasantly surprised to see you again the following semester. Instead of sitting all the way in the back of the classroom, you were seated by the windows. And the empty desk next to you? It was his.

Carefully, Reo placed his bag down on his desk, trying his best not to disturb whatever book you’re currently nose-deep in, and cleared his throat.

“Hi, I’m Reo Mikage,” he introduced himself and was taken aback when you stared at him with wide eyes, mouth slightly agape. He figured it was because he was one of the first to genuinely say anything to you without any malicious intent behind his words.

As you softly mumbled back your name, the gentle cadence as it escaped your lips, coupled with the swift turn of your head towards the window, Reo couldn't help but be enthralled by how soft your features looked in the sunlight. You’ve always kept your appearances simple, trying to not shine too much otherwise the other students would start talking again but, for some reason, all of that made Reo drawn to you more.

While you were deskmates, the two of you didn’t talk much outside of classroom-related topics. And it was always him starting the conversations, not that he minded. Him being close friends with Nagi, who was also a social outcast, made Reo slightly more curious about you ever since the new semester started. But you kept your distance, for obvious reasons. So, after a while, he reached out to you only out of necessity.

Fast forward two months and Reo is found slipping a party invitation on your desk. Well, not specifically yours, but everyone’s desks. Word of his father’s business migration with another classmate’s family company spread like wildfire before journalists had the chance to write up a meaningless article and Reo was forcefully instructed to invite his entire class to celebrate for the occasion.

So he did.

And, of course, everyone and their parents decided to show up. There were a few students that he didn’t recognize, probably snuck in through bribery or faked the invitation — not that he ultimately cared. There were more than a handful of mothers who had proudly flaunted themselves at his father and more than a dozen other student’s fathers trying to network with Reo.

At seventeen, Reo told himself that this was something he should’ve gotten used to by now, but it honestly felt horribly embarrassing every time. Reo blocked out the comments about the lack of ‘fancier food’ and ‘decor’ in his own home and retreated upstairs to his bedroom with Nagi trailing not far from behind.

“How long do you think they’re staying for?”

“Hm?” Nagi briefly looked up from his phone, eyes focusing on Reo’s perplexed expressions as he lay in bed. The male shifts around in Reo’s office chair and taps away at his device with a shrug in response. “Dunno, when the food and drinks run out maybe?”

Reo ran a hand through his hair, brows furrowing more as sounds from outside gradually grew louder. “This always ends up happening and I don’t understand why can’t he find a reception hall to throw this.” He paused, listened closely to the voices and conversations, and scoffed. “Do you know what they’re saying right now, Nagi?”

“Ah,” Nagi frowned as a deflated noise emitted from his phone, indicating he lost a match. He went into another queue and bounced his leg against the floor in waiting. “No, what are they saying out there?”

“That they think I’ll be together with Rika by the end of this year.” Reo launched his body upright at the thought, lips pursed tightly.

Again, Nagi doesn’t bother looking up. He just landed in a new match. “That heiress? Doesn’t seem like your type.”

“Since when do you know anything about types, Nagi?” Reo was half expecting Nagi to say something dumb relating to those terrible romance novel games that he sometimes plays.

The other male shrugged again, eyes flicking up this time. “Just doesn’t seem like it, that’s all.”

“You—”

The conversation abruptly ended with a single swing of the door. The door frame nearly collided with Nagi's face, accompanied by a high-pitched yelp. Reo had invited the whole class, but this was one of the people he hadn’t really expected to show up.

You were almost unrecognizable. Hair straightened, over blushed cheeks, a lipstick color that was too mature on you. The dress you wore hugged awkwardly to your sides and the height from your heels seemed to be too tall for you to maneuver around. From one glance, he knew you were uncomfortable.

You clung to the door handle, attempting to steady yourself, evident signs of mortification settling in. “S-Sorry, I was looking for the bathroom.”

Those words almost sounded foreign to Reo. The only times you’ve spoken to him were in curt, stoic sentences either about math or science assignments. He’d never seen you this flustered or worked up before.

Reo snapped out of his inner thoughts when Nagi decided to roll out from behind the door frame with a hand over his nose. Nagi looked unphased, but the familiar dull sound from his phone proved otherwise.

“Made me lose another round,” Nagi said simply and Reo watched as you fidgetted around, almost appearing self-cautious now.

“I’m sorry?” Was all you said in response.

Reo was about to hop out of bed, the bathroom directions loaded on his tongue, until a herd of footsteps followed by loud giggles was ascending the stairs. “Wait, close the door; I don’t want anyone coming in here.” The last thing he wanted was his classmates messing around with his personal belongings.

You appeared even more bewildered. “Um, I still need to—”

“He has a bathroom in his room, don’t worry,” Nagi interjected.

You were quick to believed Nagi's words and shut the door before heads peeked from the staircase. Reo shot his friend a questioning look as you shuffle your way to his bathroom and Nagi merely shrugged once again. Reo found himself thinking, finding that his plan of hiding away had just gotten a whole lot more complicated and awkward with you being in the picture. They both stayed quiet until you walked out, eyes facing everywhere but the two of them.

Reo's voice jolted you back to reality. “Sorry if this sounds rude but why are you here?” Okay, no matter how he would've phrased it, it did sound rude.

You didn't seem to mind it, probably already used to the harsh treatment. “My parents saw the invitation and got excited. They bought all these things for me last minute and dropped me off. I only said yes to coming because they were worried I wasn’t making any friends.” You explained, your steady nonchalant tone masking a layer of vulnerability.

Reo felt vaguely guilty at the response. Maybe he should've skipped your desk altogether? No, that would've been borderline bullying, he thought. Still, you shouldn't have been pressured to go.

“Did you want to hang out here instead?” Nagi casually offered up as if it was his house too. “We’re avoiding everyone else.”

“Nagi—!”

“What?” Nagi blinked at Reo in confusion, cocking his head slightly. “It’s written all over your face.”

He doesn't even know what expression he's making right now. All that Reo hoped was that you don't end up saying anything weird the next day. Not that he assumed you would be the type but, judging from how his guests acted earlier, he felt safer keeping his guard up.

There was a momentary pause, and then you gave a small nod, eyes reflecting a mixture of gratitude and relief. “Only if you’re fine with it.”

"Shouldn't matter to us," Nagi answered.

Reo considers this particular moment to be the turning point in your close friendship. It was his party, but almost everyone attending seemed to have forgotten his whereabouts soon after he disappeared.

At first, he was hesitant to talk about his thoughts or just about anything really, but Nagi didn't seem to care. As you and Nagi engaged in a somewhat awkward conversation about video games – or rather, Nagi half-scolding you for making him lose – Reo, after finally getting tired of listening, spent the remainder of the time venting about the various students and teachers at school.

That was nearly two years ago.

As the first year of college draws to a close, the three of you, on a spontaneous whim, decided to host a modest celebration in Reo and Nagi's shared apartment, only sending out invites to a handful of your close classmates.

You arrive about two hours before everyone else with the cake and drinks in hand, letting the door shut behind you as you rush into the kitchen. Nagi’s sitting on the countertop in the corner, attempting his best to unravel some of the cheesy party decorations that you insisted on getting, and Reo is pouring a weird red jello shot mixture into tiny plastic cups in the living room.

The three of you haven’t realized just how busy everything would be after starting college. Hangouts would only be frequent maybe once or twice a week, but everyone’s schedule was all over the place. You had your three-hour labs, Reo signed up to become Treasurer and President for two student organizations, and Nagi pretty much slept all day as soon he came back from lectures. Now, with this year finally coming to an end, Reo is finally looking forward to spending more time with everyone with summer nearing.

“Do we really need this many streamers?” Nagi is sighing as he swings his legs back and forth.

He managed to string a couple of them into long-wrapped strands but gave up halfway. There’s a bag of animal headbands next to him, so he fiddles with them next, claiming a bear-themed one for himself.

You set down the items on the counter and waltz over to his side, immediately fishing through the bag for your own pair. “We do and—,” Reo watches your lips upturn right as you reach over to Nagi, adjusting his headband and fixing his hair in the process. “—the bear suits you well.”

Nagi hums in thought and leans into your touch, seemingly unaware of your flustered state. “Think so?”

“I—uh yeah, you’re like a big bear sometimes…”

He helps you dig through the bag and pulls out a headband with cat ears. Without hesitation, Nagi tucks your hair back slightly and carefully places it onto your head. A satisfied faint smile makes its way onto his face. “It looks cute on you.”

Reo almost spills the remanding liquid all over the coffee table from the scene and breaks away from the before it evolves into something more. He hears you trying to say something back, maybe a ‘thank you’ or a compliment, but it comes out as incoherent noises and soft mumbles. And, although tonight is supposed to be reserved for a well deserved celebration, Reo can’t help but to think he doesn’t even feel like he belongs in his own apartment right now.

“What do you think, Reo?” Nagi calls out.

“What do you mean?”

“Doesn’t she look cute in them?”

Reo pours the last bits of the liquid into the cups and glances over. It takes everything in him to not turn the slightest shade of red because you look do look ridiculously cute in that headband.

He sticks out his tongue and blows a raspberry. “Looks the same to me.”

You roll your eyes and blow one back. “I was gonna assign you the bunny eared one but now you’re getting the rat.”

Reo chooses to not say anything back, not that it really mattered. He gets up and places the empty pitcher into the sink and focuses his attention to the dining room. The table is a bit messy, cluttered with stacks of his business textbooks and your forgotten stationary supplies. He has food catered that’ll be arriving within the next hour, so he spends this time cleaning and setting up the area.

Their dining room goes vastly unused with how often Reo and Nagi eat out. Because of this, Reo settled with a small table tucked in the kitchen corner that’s mainly used as a storage area rather than eating—so it’s kind of nice seeing it finally being used for its intended purpose.

It’s you, him, Nagi, Chigiri, Isagi, and Bachira that eventually congregate around the area. Before the party, Reo tells his friends not to bring any gifts or extra food, but they show up with them anyway. Chigiri brings over a really good sushi bake while Isagi and Bachira gift Reo a shitty Ouija board for whatever reason and… well the party is actually pretty nice.

Way different from all the other stuffy parties Reo grew up with and he thinks this might be the only party where he’s surrounded by people he cares about. No serious conversations about the family business or his future plans, just really lame attempts to call out whatever spirits Bachira thinks lives in their outdated fireplace.

“That was fun,” You say quietly after everyone else leaves.

The apartment is a little bit messy, even though Isagi did most of the heavy-duty cleanup. There are still some dishes piled up in the sink and confetti peppered all over the living area but Reo will procrastinate on that for tonight.

He’s sprawled on the couch, head thrown back as he melts his entire body weight onto the furniture, tired and socially drained for the night. He only looks to the side when you plop down in the tiny empty space next to him, face deep in thought and cheeks warm. Reo knows that look. He’s seen it maybe over a hundred times at this point.

It’s about Nagi Seishiro.

“I think I’m gonna do it tonight.” You’re whispering into his ear and Reo picks up on the sweet, subtle perfume laced around your neck. It seems like you had just applied it moments before coming over.

He forces a smile and glosses over a fake veil of excitement. “Oh, finally? You’re not going to chicken out like the last couple of times?”

You smack his arm, cheeks puffed out. “I’m not! I’m taking your advice for once. Better now than never, you know?”

“Yeah,” Reo says, maybe a bit too fast.

His mind is racing, along with the drumming in his chest, because you’re not joking around this time. The look in your eyes tells him that you’re serious and he feels really confused. Reo has been encouraging you since high school to get with Nagi and, now that you’re actually following through, he doesn’t know what to make of it.

Maybe it’s his ego, pride, or just plain possessiveness that’s driving him mad. But he knows better than to wish anything but happiness for his two best friends. Nagi, although more introverted and aloof, has become more open whenever you’re around and you two do make a good couple—at least that’s what Reo convinces himself.

He finds himself dozing off against the balcony railing outside on the apartment’s porch while you go off to find Nagi in his room. Reo scans the area, taking in the dim orange lights from the street lamps on campus and the warm inviting late spring breeze. It’s a decent distraction.

The college campus is really nice, an old one, with lots of mature trees, and stretches of green between the buildings, all connected with little cobblestone walkways. It’s almost like stepping back in time because Tokyo is a large, sprawling city. Reo decides he likes it. It’s way different from his past life, very jarring from his lavish big, but empty, mansion with butlers and maids alike, his old home was so different than this new, slower-paced way of life.

Reo’s over himself when hears the porch door slide from behind him, he doesn’t need to turn around to know that it’s you. And, judging from the way your body flops against the railing, he concludes that it didn’t go well. It’s strange, he thought Nagi would’ve reciprocated the feelings back at least a little bit. Reo makes a mental note to privately ask his friend about it later.

He avoids your gaze and continues to stare at the city skyline in the distance, waiting for you to say the first word.

After a while, you sigh. “Do you… do you think he’ll be uncomfortable around me?”

Reo feels his heart stuttering in his chest. “Of course not,” He answers quickly and relaxes when he sees the frown on your features slowly disappearing. “Nagi’s not the type to easily throw away a good friendship.” Reo knows that by heart.

You groan and bury your face into your palms, shrinking more into your oversized campus hoodie. “I’m so dumb, Reo…” Your voice comes out muffled and strained. “I should’ve never said anything.”

Reo wrestles with the thought that he’s an asshole for thinking quite the opposite. On one hand, he's relieved that you got rejected, but on the other hand, witnessing your heart break doesn't make things any easier for him. He’s still your friend at the end of the day.

He refrains the urge to extend his arms, grab your shoulders, and draw you into the warmth of his chest. Suppressing the desire to run his fingers through your hair, tenderly massage your scalp, and whisper that everything will be okay—that he's by your side. Instead, Reo opts for a laugh, presenting you with his credit card. “Let’s set him aside for a moment and concentrate on you.”

You peer up from your sleeves, immediately widening your eyes in disbelief and then shooting him a half-glare. “I’m not gonna be spending your money, Reo. You can’t fix a broken heart with that.”

“Yeah,” Reo softly agrees, face crescent fallen briefly before recovering. He shuffles towards you, just close enough so that your shoulders touch. “But I know where we can go.”

Your eyes sparkle at the idea, already knowing the exact location Reo is mentioning. There’s a quaint riverbank not too far from the campus and high school, the one that you would always go to whenever you’re feeling overwhelmed or upset. Reo knows that it reminds you of home, the countryside, and listening to the steady streams helps calm your nerves.

With Nagi likely cooped up in his room, the two of you sneak out of the apartment, and the night air wraps around you both like a comforting blanket.

By the time you two arrive at the riverbank, you find a comfortable spot to lie down near the top of the hill. Reo joins next to you, the cool grass beneath him contrasting with the warmth of his body. Slowly, the heaviness that lingered from earlier begins to dissipate.

Reo lies on his side, the night enveloping the two of you in a cocoon of solitude. His voice, gentle and warm, breaks the silence, "Hey," he faintly calls out your name. Patiently, he waits until your body turns to mirror his, until you're just inches away, and the distant sounds of passing cars fade into the background.

It annoys him how clueless you are, how you’re able to be physically bold and unapologetically yourself when around him but, when it comes to Nagi, you turn into a stuttering, blushing mess. He selfishly wishes to have that all to himself. “Why don’t you fall in love with me instead?”

Reo watches your eyes widen, mirroring the same motions you did when he first introduced himself to you, and your body reacts first before you’re able to construct words. You kick him, admittedly harder than he would’ve liked, followed by an immediate apology.

“That was a joke, right? Like a really, really, really bad joke?”

Pretending not to feel the pang in his chest, Reo rubs his shin and forces a chuckle, his arm thrown over his face to conceal any hint of redness that might betray him in the night. “Yeah, thought it would cheer you up somehow,” he lamely replies.

The sound of your huff and shuffling suggests you turned away, likely out of annoyance. Reo senses a momentary pause, and he thinks you might be on the verge of tears again until you murmur, “Love is so complicated.”

A twitch courses through him and he swallows hard against a lump in his throat before joining the conversation, “People do a lot of things when they’re in love. You confessing to Nagi tonight was out of love.”

“Yeah, I just wished it was easy to… I guess, understand.”

“Love happens randomly and doesn’t need reasons. If love was easy to understand then most of our world’s problems would go away.”

“Have you ever been in love, Reo?”

"I have," he answers truthfully. As you shuffle some more, he peeks from under his arm to find your face wide, brimming with curiosity. Reo sets his arm aside and smirks. "What makes you think I’m gonna tell you?"

You’re toying with the hem of your hoodie, looking like you’re about to jump to your feet. “Because I just got my heart broken tonight and I feel like maybe the least you can do is tell me who you like?”

“Let me think,” Reo fake ponders for a few seconds and then shakes his head. “Nah, don’t think so.”

You kick him again, this time very softly. “You’re no fun,” you whine, but there’s something so sincere to it that Reo’s heart aches again. “Can you at least tell me when you fell in love?”

His laugh comes out weak and hoarse, feeling the sudden need to look away but he doesn’t. Reo stares straight into your eyes because he knows that no matter how hard he tries, you’ll never get it unless he spells it out for you. “I became aware of it when I was sitting next to them.”

You start laughing, as he expected, but it's lighthearted and innocent. Reo doesn't feel insulted—at least not yet. “It was love at first sight?”

He's definitely a tomato right now, he can feel it in his face. “More like first interaction...” Reo mumbles out, now facing the river.

“Well, whoever they are, they're lucky to have someone like you crushing over them.”

“Yeah, I guess they are lucky.”

TAGLIST - OPEN

@celestair @kitorin @popponn @yoisami @anurst @katsukiiishoe @yuzurins @vitaniangel-blog @kunikame @miwafei @astruoise @faeroow @wooasecret @limerence-lu @jaynawayna

#blue lock #bllk #blue lock imagines #blue lock x reader #bllk x reader #doobea writing #reo mikage x reader #reo mikage #DAYTIME SHOOTING STAR - REO MIKAGE

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yoongiseesawmp3 · 1 year

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made for this - wooyoung (m)

part of the church boy series.

summary: you’re volunteering for this year’s vacation bible school, and wooyoung’s little brother just so happens to be in your group. is it wrong of him to use kyungmin as his wing man? eh, who cares. wooyoung is just determined to get you to fall for him before the week is over, and he’ll do whatever it takes.

word count: 10.5k

warnings: light smut!!! afab reader. wooyoung is whipped.

“kyungmin, come here!” you shout, shortly followed by a sigh. he’s not a problem child, per se, but whenever he sees his older brother he goes running.

wooyoung, said older brother, is a vbs volunteer, like yourself. except he’s with the older kids, and you’re stuck with the younger group. you’re still dealing with some criers, some biters, and some brats, while wooyoung’s biggest issue is keeping his one fourth grader off her phone.

his brother, kyungmin, is one of your youngins. he’s sweet, and funny, and smart. all things he shares with his brother, but you’d pick kyungmin over wooyoung any day. wooyoung makes your blood boil only slightly, so you sigh again as you head his way so you can peel kyungmin off his leg.

“come on, bud, we gotta go outside for games,” you say politely, patting kyungmin on his back. you don’t make eye contact with wooyoung, trying to keep this interaction short.

“listen to your leader, kid,” wooyoung encourages, shaking his leg and jostling his brother. “y/n.”

“wooyoung,” you smile curtly. “kyungmin, seriously. i’m not even gonna count i’m just gonna leave you here.”

“no please, take him,” wooyoung begs, and you have to laugh. kyungmin looks up at you with the biggest puppy dog eyes and you tickle him under his chin. his giggle makes you and wooyoung smile, which warms wooyoung’s heart. you have a soft spot for the little one, even if you didn’t want to admit it. it made him happy seeing someone else dote on his brother the same way he does.

“ok,” you sigh. “guess i’ll have to eat your snack if you don’t come with me.”

“no!” kyungmin yelps, detaching himself from wooyoung’s leg finally. “i’ll come with you.”

“great choice,” you smile. “say goodbye to your brother.”

“bye,” kyungmin waves sadly, and you take his free hand and give it a squeeze.

“bye smelly,” wooyoung replies, and kyungmin shouts “hey!” to which wooyoung says, “i wasn’t talking to you, that was for y/n.”

“yeah, y/n stinks!” kyungmin laughs, and you groan. you shoot a glare at wooyoung and he waves sweetly.

“thanks,” you tell him. “that’s gonna be fun to deal with all day.”

“have fun!” wooyoung sing songs, finally following his class to their next station as you usher yours outside.

you really don’t like wooyoung, you think to yourself.

too bad though, because wooyoung really likes you.

your relationship with wooyoung is complicated. well, let’s not call it a relationship, because if he knew you even used that word in relation to him it would make him levitate. no, your, uh, friendship? with wooyoung is kinda weird. you grew up together at the church, but went to different schools and therefore had different friends and different lives. but you saw each other a few times every week for the past 20 or so years, and that constitutes some kind of situation based friendship at least. when you were kids, he’d swap snacks with you when he got animal crackers and you got pretzels. he’d save a seat for you at choir practice, and you’d make sure to find him during worship on youth nights. a couple times you even did joint costumes for the pg halloween parties the youth ministry held, so yeah, you were friends with wooyoung. but had you ever seen him outside of church? no, absolutely not.

that hasn’t stopped wooyoung from utterly falling in love with you, though. he was in denial for a few years, initially thinking his prepubescent feelings for you were just side effects of his changing body. but as he went through high school and now into college and adulthood, he’s realized there’s always been a part of him that hoped you’d be into him too. so far you’ve given him no reason to think you are, especially as of late. when you were younger your friendship was lazy, sure, mostly by proximity than anything else, but now you barely talk to him. it took an act of god for you to end up as kyungmin’s group leader for vbs (not really, wooyoung just learned you could request a certain leader and the kid would pretty much end up there). but it still made his heart leap when he got the email about volunteer assignments and he saw your name paired with his brother’s.

so why does wooyoung get the vibe that you don’t like him anymore? well, earlier this year he broke your best friend’s heart. she went off to another university while you stayed close to home, and she kept telling you about “the most amazing guy” who “might just be the one” and come to find out, it was wooyoung all along. he wasn’t aware that your friend even liked him, he thought they were just really good friends, and wooyoung just happens to be super touchy with the people he’s comfortable around. so what your friend construed as wooyoung being into her was just wooyoung being wooyoung. that went on for about a semester before wooyoung finally broke it to your friend that he had feelings for someone else, and it took you a while to help your friend repair that damage. that’s left a bad taste in your mouth toward wooyoung since, plus he just seems to be more annoying lately, too. you were thrilled to have kyungmin in your group for the week, but it irked you that you’d be around wooyoung so much against your will. everyone outgrows their childhood friends at some point, right? maybe this was your chance to leave mr. elmo laugh behind.

even though this is just the second day of vbs, you’re exhausted when your final kid is picked up at dismissal. well, technically your final kid. kyungmin is still in your care, and he’s excitedly kicking his feet trying to stay still while he waits for his brother to finish up with his group and take him home. your other volunteer already left, so you take a seat next to kyungmin and ask him about the day and what he liked most. he said he liked snack the best, because you traded with him so he could get pretzels and you’d get his animal crackers, just like you used to do with wooyoung. he hears this as he’s walking up, and his heart warms at the sight of you and his lil bro sharing stories and giggling over the day. wooyoung would stop and admire the scene in front of him longer, but you turn just slightly to settle in the chair and see wooyoung from the corner of your eye.

“oh, hey kyungmin, your ride’s here,” you say, nudging your little buddy, and instantly he’s out of his chair and in wooyoung’s arms.

“hi,” kyungmin smiles and wooyoung just laughs.

“where’s your stuff, kid? don’t leave anything behind,” wooyoung warns, and his brother hops down and gathers his goods from the day. wooyoung catches your eye and asks, “how was he?”

“i wanna say he was perfect, but that would just give him a big head,” you joke.

“yeah, and it’s massive already,” wooyoung joins in.

“just like his big bro,” you counter, and wooyoung feigns insult as kyungmin reappears at his side.

“ready!” he shouts, then looks up at his brother. “can we get mcdonald’s on the way home?”

“no, we have food at the house.”

“you sound just like mom,” kyungmin whines, and then he turns to you. “i bet y/n would let me go to mcdonald’s. y/n is more fun than you.”

“that’s true, i am more fun,” you agree, “and i would totally take him to mcdonald’s. you know they have adult happy meals right now?”

“then let’s go,” wooyoung says, catching you off guard.

“what?”

“let’s go to mcdonald’s,” wooyoung says again with a shrug. “my treat. consider it my thanks for holding min’s sticky hands all week.”

you try to protest but kyungmin is so excited you don’t think you can turn the offer down. you quickly grab your things (and one more thing kyungmin almost forgot) and follow wooyoung to his car. he’s got kyungmin on his back, so when you see wooyoung’s beat up hand-me-down car, you walk ahead so you can open the door and help get the little one into his car seat. wooyoung’s heart warms again, and you share a sweet smile as he slides kyungmin into the seat and you get him buckled.

“thanks for coming with us,” wooyoung says as he opens the passenger door for you.

“you said you were paying, so how could i turn it down?” you tease.

“oh, so you only want to spend time with me because i’m buying your lunch? low blow, y/n,” he whistles. “i thought our 20 plus years of friendship meant more to you than this.”

“but how much of that time were we actually friends?” you ask once wooyoung has made it to the driver’s side of the car. “we only ever hung out at church.”

“and you didn’t cherish every moment?” wooyoung asks, shocked.

“you guys are talking too much,” kyungmin pipes up from the backseat. “i want music.”

“hum to yourself, kid, the adults are talking,” wooyoung tells him.

“we can put some music on,” you offer.

“do you keep taking his side because he’s your favorite or is this payback for you still being mad at me?” wooyoung whines.

“both, actually. i’m a multitasker,” you tell him. “you want me to take the aux, or?”

“nothing with cuss words,” he sighs, handing you the cord.

“nothing with cuss words,” you mock as you plug your phone in, frantically turning the volume down just in case. you pick your babysitting playlist, which has plenty of kid-friendly songs from your favorite artists, and wooyoung chuckles when the first song plays.

“you still listen to them?” he asks, noticing the paramore song playing softly through the car.

“uh, yeah,” you reply. “they’re my favorite band, why wouldn’t i still listen to them?”

“they haven’t made an album in years!”

“they have one coming out next year-”

“y/n, turn it up!” that was kyungmin.

“not too loud or i can’t see,” wooyoung says.

“that makes no sense,” you respond, blasting the music only for wooyoung to turn it back down.

“no, seriously, there’s a weird turn to get into the parking lot so i need to focus,” wooyoung says as he checks his mirrors. “mom would kill me twice if i got in an accident with you and kyungmin in the car.”

“wooyoung is no fun, right little man?” you ask, craning your neck back to kyungmin. he nods in agreement and you start to say something else, but wooyoung flooring it to make the turn yoinks you back into your seat, and wooyoung can’t help but laugh at the pathetic sound you let out at the seatbelt holding you in place.

“you good?” he asks calmly, parking quickly so he can get out and help his brother before you have time to hit him for inadvertently choking you.

“you’re lucky your brother is here,” you grumble as you get out.

you all get your food, and kyungmin inhales it faster than you can even open the toy from your big kid meal. once he’s done, you both agree that he can play in the playplace if he washes his hands really good after, and then you’re alone with wooyoung. you pick at your fries for a minute, not realizing how awkward it would be without kyungmin as a buffer. you’re trying to still be mad at wooyoung, just a little bit, but he’s making it really hard. being away from him because of school made you forget how warm he made you feel, and how easy it is to be around him. he makes you want to be his friend, but you have to remind yourself that your actual best friend had her heart broken by the man sitting across from you. the man who’s currently putting fries into his mouth to make him look like a walrus. he gets your attention, hoping to make you laugh, and when you just stare back at him he sighs.

“tough crowd,” he mumbles, eating the fries quickly like that will make you forget that he just made a fool of himself. “so you are still mad at me.”

“just a little.”

“i’ll tell you the same thing i told her: i didn’t know she liked me. if i had, i wouldn’t have acted like that. i didn’t mean to lead her on, i swear,” he explains.

“yeah, but you still really hurt her,” you say. “i guess that’s what i’m still mad at. you’re not really recognizing that she got hurt because of what you did even if you didn’t mean to do it.”

“i really messed up, yeah,” he says. “i really liked being her friend, so i just got comfortable and didn’t think about how that would look. i just like being touchy with my friends.”

“yeah, but she told me you would like, hold her hand and walk her to class? kiss her forehead? like i know you’re a touchy but damn. and the whole time you were interested in someone else?”

“yeah, wonder who that could be,” wooyoung mumbles quietly, sipping his sprite as you go on. he notices that you’re using your hands a lot while you speak, and your elbow is dangerously close to the ketchup on your tray. he carefully pulls it to the middle of the table, and you stop midsentence.

“what are you doing?”

“you were about to dunk your arm in ketchup,” he explains, sneakily taking a fry as he speaks. “nothing else.”

“so not fair,” you reply, stealing a fry from his tray. this leads to a childish fight where one of you might have, maybe, thrown french fries across the table (it wasn’t wooyoung) but the mess was interrupted by a woman walking up to your table.

“um, excuse me,” she starts politely. “are you his parents?” she points toward the playplace, where you see kyungmin on the ground with his lip quivering. you don’t wait to hear what’s wrong from the woman before you’re springing up to help kyungmin, and wooyoung just watches on. he listens intently as the woman tells him kyungmin and her son were playing and min just lost his footing and fell, but it must have knocked the wind out of him because wooyoung sees you helping kyungmin breathe. he politely thanks the woman and joins you in the playplace, kneeling down to be at eye level with his brother.

“are you good, man? you fell pretty hard?” wooyoung asks, and kyungmin nods. “do you wanna go home?”

“yeah,” kyungmin nods, voice still shaky.

“ok, let’s go,” wooyoung says, picking min up easily while you grab his shoes. wooyoung takes him to wash his hands as you go back to the table and eat in silence. they come back as you finish your food, and you watch kyungmin not only eye your last chicken nugget but he seems very interested in the toy from your happy meal as well. you slide them both over to him, assuring him that he can have them, and then you start to clear the trays.

“i’ll go pull the car around,” wooyoung says as you help kyungmin throw away his things. you nod and grab kyungmin’s hand, trailing behind wooyoung. while you wait outside, you try to make kyungmin smile but the best you can get is a little giggle here and there.

“you need to eat lunch with us more,” kyungmin says. “you’re my favorite leader, and wooyoung really likes you too. so i think he had fun just like me.”

“you think so kid?” you ask as you ruffle his hair, and wooyoung pulls the car around. he smiles at you from the front seat as you help kyungmin into the car, his little words bouncing around your head. wooyoung really likes you too.

the next day at vbs is a rough one. you’ve got two kids that keep crying throughout the day (one periodically remembers her mom isn’t right next to her and the other keeps getting scared by his own hiccups) so you’re doing just about as well as you’d expect for this many kids of this age. but it’s a tough day for everyone, it seems. this morning wooyoung was made aware that one of his kids was bullying another older kids, and they made plans to go fight in the bathroom. at church! so on top of wooyoung needing to watch that one kid like a hawk, the rest of the group is afraid of this kid, and they also want to know every minute detail and therefore won’t shut the hell up. wooyoung looks frazzled, to say the least, and he doesn’t even pick on you when you pass by each other in the hallway. he gives a simple nod and waves to kyungmin before yoinking his line into the correct classroom. so you and kyungmin devise a plan.

you’re currently taking your kids to snack time, and that means you get to head to the volunteer snack room, which is perhaps what heaven actually looks like. people from the church donate all kinds of delicious food throughout the week, and it’s some of the best food you’ll eat all year. wooyoung’s group had snack first, which is decidedly the worst time to have snack because all that they set out for the volunteers is granola bars and maybe some fruit. you know that he needs a little pick me up, so you tell kyungmin that you’re going to make an extra plate and sneak it to wooyoung (food can’t leave the room because kids have allergies, lame) but you need kyungmin to fake a stomach ache so you have an excuse to go get wooyoung in the middle of a session.

“so you understand the plan?” you confirm with your mini-conspirator as you walk into the snack room.

“yep,” he says with a nod. “i’ll wait a few minutes-”

“how many exactly?”

“i’ll count to 300,” he informs you, and you do the math quickly.

“five minutes?”

“sure,” he shrugs. “i’ll count to that many and then tell one of the snack leaders i have a tummy ache. and then they’ll take me to you, and we can get my big brother.”

“perfect, kid,” you tell him, a smile on your face at how proud he looks. you lean down so you can whisper in his ear, “i’ll try to sneak a brownie just for you.”

“please!” he shouts out of excitement, and you have to shush him quickly. one of the snack room leaders looks at you funny and you assure her it’s nothing as you ruffle kyungmin’s hair before heading to snack paradise.

they’ve got a good spread today: sandwiches, cheese dip, those meatballs people only make for baby showers, and so many desserts. you try to quickly gather your plate without drawing attention, and just as you sit down there’s a knock at the door. everyone looks in that direction, and you see kyungmin hiding behind one of the snack volunteers. he’s putting on the show of his life, lip quivering, hand on his stomach, everything.

“y/n? sorry to bother you, but your friend here says his stomach hurts and he won’t let any of us help him,” she says sweetly.

“oh buddy,” you coo, heading toward the door then squatting in front of kyungmin. “what’s wrong sweet boy?”

“it’s my tummy,” he says in a shaky voice. “it hurts really bad.”

“like bathroom hurts or hurt hurts?” you ask, hoping kyungmin can continue playing along.

“i don’t know,” he says, and you nod before standing back up. you put your free hand on his shoulder and give it a squeeze.

“is it alright if i head out and find his brother? he may need to go home,” you tell one of the snack room volunteers. he immediately eyes the plate of food in your hands, and kyungmin chooses that exact moment to whine. somebody give this kid an oscar!

“just don’t bring the food around the other kids and you should be fine,” he says, and you thank him quickly. you usher kyungmin down the hall, stopping at the cooler to grab a sprite which you pass to kyungmin, and a coke for yourself.

“maybe this will help settle your stomach, bud,” you say as you walk off, and when you’re far enough down the hall you let out a laugh. kyungmin looks up at you proudly, and you smile back. “dude! you did great! where’d you learn to act like that?”

“wooyoung and i pretend like that sometimes so we don’t have to do things with mom and dad,” kyungmin says easily, and you laugh at the idea of wooyoung using his little brother to get him out of unwanted situations. as you near the big kid’s hallway, you find a quiet spot to deposit your little sidekick and place the food on an abandoned nursery chair.

“i’ll go get wooyoung really quick, you stay right here, ok?” you tell kyungmin, and he nods solemnly, playing his part through till the end. you head around the corner and slow down, peeking past doorways to see if you can spot your target. you finally find him, and lightly knock on the open door. wooyoung immediately catches your eye and you motion for him to come with you, and he’s on his feet in seconds.

“what’s wrong?” he asks, worry evident in his voice. “did he get hurt? is he sick? oh i hope he’s not throwing up, i couldn’t handle that right now-”

his rambling is cut short by the sight in front of him, his brother happily swinging his legs and sipping a sprite with brownie crumbs around his mouth. wooyoung looks at him and back to you, mouth unsure what to ask first.

“we thought you could use a break,” you say with a shrug. “plus today was meatball day and i remember those are your favorite.”

“i could kiss you right now,” wooyoung says, and kyungmin’s little “do it!” in the background makes you both laugh. you make a gagging noise and ignore the way wooyoung is looking at you to continue explaining what snacks you brought, mostly so you can tell him explicitly which are his and which are just for you. kyungmin also fills him in on the whole plan, and wooyoung looks on with a smile as his brother gets excited to let him in on the secret.

“yeah how’s that tummy doing now, min?” you ask once he’s done explaining everything. “we might need to head back.”

“no,” he whines. “a few more minutes?”

“just a couple,” you sigh, and wooyoung laughs. “what was that for?”

“he’s got you wrapped around his finger, you know,” he says matter of factly.

“no,” you scoff. “he’s a kid, i have the power here.”

“oh so you’re telling me you didn’t just cave at him whining once? and he didn’t convince you to come do this for me?”

“no he didn’t, actually.”

“what?”

“it was my idea,” you tell him. “you looked miserable last time i saw you so i wanted to do something nice. y’know, since you bought my lunch yesterday.”

“hm, sure, sure,” wooyoung nods. “kyungmin still has you in his pocket. he could ask you to bring him the moon and you’d do it.”

“wouldn’t you?” you say with a laugh.

“depends on who’s asking.”

“ok, we can go back now,” kyungmin says with finality, like he’s the one that makes decisions around here. which apparently he does, because you stand as soon as he says that. wooyoung catches your eye and he quirks an eyebrow, but you shut him up quickly.

“i was about to say the same thing!” you explain. “he and i are just on the same wavelength. we get each other. he’s my partner in crime.”

“crime is bad, y/n,” kyungmin pipes in.

“yeah, crime is bad, y/n,” wooyoung parrots, and you stick your tongue out at him. “but thanks for breaking the rules for me. i really needed this break.”

“anytime friend,” you tell him, grabbing your trash and beckoning kyungmin to follow you.

later that same day, you and wooyoung find yourselves being volun-told to stay longer and help prepare one of the big group activities for tomorrow, and this is another one of those rare moments nowadays where kyungmin isn’t there to wingman himself into the situation or act as a distraction if things get awkward. he’s spending the night with the oldest jung brother, and he seemed so excited about it that you could tell wooyoung was a little jealous. dare you say it was...cute? no, snap out of it. back to work.

you and wooyoung aren’t the only volunteers staying longer today, but you’re probably the only ones under the age of thirty so you’re sticking close together. because of your young, spry state, they’ve given the two of you the job of laying tape down on the gym floor because you can “get up and down faster than us” so currently you’re secluded in the corner with wooyoung as he opens a new roll of neon colored duct tape.

“so did your day get any easier?” you ask while wooyoung focuses on finding the start of the new roll.

“yeah,” he says, tongue between his teeth and concentration clear on his face. “gimme a second though. no distractions.”

“didn’t know i distracted you.”

he wants to say that you do more than distract him, but he literally bites his tongue to stop himself. instead he lets out an “aha!” and pulls the tape out before handing it to you. you bend down and add it to the mess on the floor, hoping you’re doing this the way the children’s minister explained.

“so my day. yeah, it got better,” wooyoung starts again as he watches you work. “i don’t know what happened while i was with you guys, but it’s like everyone’s attitude in my group just...disappeared.”

“weird,” you say, and wooyoung hums in agreement. “maybe they just needed a break from you as much as you needed a break from them.”

“hey, i’m a lotta fun, y/n,” wooyoung says sternly, finger pointed at you accusingly. “those kids love me.”

“not as much as mine love me though,” you say with a fake pout. “did you see my bestie started crying when her mom said they had to go? she didn’t want to leave her favorite leader.”

“since when is this a competition?” wooyoung laughs. “i’m sure your kids like you enough.”

“oh come on, you used to make everything a competition when we were kids,” you remind him. “we couldn’t even walk down the hallway without you asking me if i wanted to race.”

“that’s because i wanted to show off how fast i was.”

“too bad i never caved and saw it then.”

“we could race tomorrow with our kids,” wooyoung offers, and you laugh.

“yeah, and then neither of us would have an easy day. encouraging these kids to race each other indoors would be asking for trouble.”

“i think it’d be fun,” wooyoung says with a mischievous smile. “i say we just have one day where the kids need to figure it out on their own, lord of the rings style.”

“you mean lord of the flies, you dork?”

“whatever. i didn’t read either of them.”

“of course not.”

“hey, you messed that one up,” wooyoung points out, and you sigh. you move from a crouch to sit completely on the floor, and you start picking away at the strip of tape that doesn’t want to come off the floor.

“can you help me?” you whine, and wooyoung is down at your level in a heartbeat. he joins you in picking at the sides, hoping that you can get enough up to get a grip and yank it all in one go. there’s an unusual moment of silence as you work, but wooyoung has to break it.

“so,” he begins. “i think you being nice to me today proves that you don’t hate me anymore.”

“it may seem that way, yes,” you agree with a nod. “but i’m not all the way there yet.”

“and what’s stopping you?”

“i don’t know,” you sigh. “i guess i just have one more question about the whole thing, and then i’ll be okay.”

“shoot.”

“who was the other girl?”

what?

“huh?” wooyoung asks, so shocked by the question that he pulls the tape up on accident.

“hey, nice,” you grin, pulling at the last couple pieces. “didn’t expect that to shock you so much.”

“why? what do you mean?” he asks incredulously. “the other girl when?”

“the other girl you told my friend you liked all along,” you say. “the one you wouldn’t date her because of?”

“oh, that, right, um. well, i don’t know,” he rambles. “it was just-”

“if you don’t wanna tell me, that’s fine,” you shrug. “i can just keep not liking you until you tell me.”

“hey, at least you’re not saying hate anymore,” he points out.

“baby steps,” you tell him. “who knows, maybe one day i’ll get back to saying the big one.”

“that you like me? how very elementary of you, y/n.”

“no, the real big one. the love word. we loved each other when we were kids, right? we were close enough that we would say that to each other.”

“oh, haha, right,” wooyoung laughs. “probably didn’t know what it meant but yeah, i bet we did.”

little do you know, but wooyoung could still say it now and mean it more than he ever did before.

you kept talking to wooyoung as you worked, and after a while you finished taping up the gym floor. you started warming back up to wooyoung the more time you spent with him, and you forgot how bright his personality is. spending time with him is like sitting outside in the sun, you could do it all day and you definitely feel a difference when you’re done.

making small talk, wooyoung asked what you had planned for when you got home, and you told him all about the exciting world of online grad school. he didn’t even know you were taking classes. so he’s shocked to hear that you’re doing that on top of volunteering and work.

that being said, wooyoung knows you had a late night yesterday. and he knows you’re probably going to be super tired today, and since his older brother is dropping kyungmin off this morning, that means wooyoung has a little extra time to himself. he decides to use it wisely, and sets out early enough to get himself a little treat while he’s at it.

when you come into the church that day, you are exhausted. staying later yesterday meant you had less time to decompress after being around the kids, so you really had to jump right into coursework and it kept you up for a while. you’re mid yawn when you notice wooyoung standing with your other leader and the one kid that always seems to get there super early. it’s not out of the ordinary to see wooyoung mingling, but it’s what’s in his hands that has you confused.

“hey,” you call out, and he turns around with a sunny smile. “whatcha got?”

“breakfast,” he says proudly. “for me, you, and kyungmin.”

“none for your older brother?”

“nah, he’s a big boy, he can get it himself,” wooyoung scoffs. “here, sit.”

you do as he says and sit down, noticing wooyoung doesn’t just have a tray of drinks but there’s a bag of food, too. he hands you a drink that you hesitate to sip, still waking up honestly, and unsure of whether or not you can accept this kindness so early and so unwarranted.

“i couldn’t remember what kind of donuts you like, or if you even like donuts at all, so there’s a couple different ones plus a bagel and cream cheese in there,” wooyoung says, opening the bag and peeking in. “you can take what you want and me and min will have the rest, we can eat anything.”

“thank you,” you say meekly as he goes on.

“and then i got you coffee because you said you had an assignment due last night,” he begins, handing you the warm cardboard cup. “but i only got one because i remembered what you like.”

“latte with oatmilk?” you ask with a smile, and wooyoung nods.

“made them add some cinnamon too, you like that right?”

“love it,” you confirm before taking your first sip, and you sigh at the warmth it brings you. you glance over at wooyoung and he’s just smiling back at you. “thank you, really. this was too nice.”

“thought we could all use a little treat,” wooyoung says, brushing it off like he didn’t just make your entire day better with this gesture. “besides, you need your energy for our race later.”

“very funny.”

“i mean it, my kids are ready-”

“wooyoung! y/n!” a little voice shouts, and you share a look because you know who it belongs to. you wait while wooyoung grabs his little brother up and brings him over to you, waving goodbye to the oldest as he stands by the door to make sure kyungmin found the right people.

“welcome back best buddy,” you tell him, patting the seat next to you. “big bro got you a present.”

“a new car?”

“what? no, you don’t need a car,” wooyoung says sternly. “i got you breakfast.”

as wooyoung explains what he got for kyungmin, you take a moment to appreciate the man in front of you. you’ve always known wooyoung was caring and thoughtful, but you let a little scuffle take away all the good things you used to feel for him, and that’s not fair. you find yourself admiring him for too long, actually, noticing not just how sweet he is with his little brother, but also noticing how handsome his side profile is. wooyoung catches you off guard with a question, and when you ask him to repeat it there’s a blush on his cheeks. he knew what you were doing, but you don’t know that you just got caught.

“i asked how the donut was,” wooyoung repeats himself, and you assure him it was delicious. you watch as he splits one with his brother before heading over to his group area, but not without a final look in your direction and maybe a wink too, just to keep things fun.

you don’t know where this change has come from exactly, but you find yourself daydreaming about wooyoung all morning. your mind might just be clouded by the bribery in the form of the perfect coffee, but you’ve had plenty of time to think back on how sweet wooyoung has been to you all these years. you’re in the middle of the bible story session when it hits you: wooyoung has liked you all along. like, the big one liked you. like, you were probably the girl he rejected your friend for liked you. how could you not know this? he was so obvious. sure he was shy about it, but that doesn’t mean he was slick. the signs were there, you just didn’t notice them until now.

you’re also noticing just how..thrilled? excited? the thought of wooyoung liking you is making you feel. it might have taken all this time for you to admit, but you had a crush on him when you were kids, you just tried to make it go away once you both started getting involved with your friends at school. those childlike feelings are back now, butterflies flapping around in your guts as you make eye contact with wooyoung during a transition. he smiles at you like always, but you panic and look away. that’s not un-normal for you, but it does have wooyoung thinking for a minute that you may not be as warmed up to him as he thought. and you simply can’t have that.

during the next session, you find some time to slip away to the restroom and set up a game plan for yourself. how could you tell wooyoung you know he likes you? how do you tell him you think you might like him too?

all of this is swirling around your head when you crash straight on into a strong chest that steadies you immediately. wooyoung’s signature giggle lets you know your target is closer than you thought, and you look up at him innocently as he looks down with a smile in return.

“hi,” he says simply.

“hi,” you respond, and there’s a beat of silence while you process how close you are and the fact that wooyoung hasn’t let go of you yet. you look up at him and glance down at his lips, deciding in the moment this is what you need to do. you peck him quickly, just to see if you could, and when he looks at you with those big, surprised eyes of his, you lean back in and do it again, but this time you mean it. when you pull away the second time you detangle yourself from wooyoung as he’s left blabbering about what just happened. you give him a quick “bye!” in response, and then you’re gone.

after you kissed wooyoung, you half expected him to tell kyungmin since he’s been so involved in your friendship lately. but the little guy doesn’t say anything or act differently the last two days of vbs, so that’s good. wooyoung does, however. suddenly he’s not bothering you as much. in fact, he’s not bothering you at all, and that’s incredibly out of character. you realize the last two days are going by so slowly because you don’t have wooyoung breaking up the day by asking you a stupid question or blatantly flirting with you, and you miss it. the first day post kiss he was almost business like dropping kyungmin off and picking him up, and that was really weird. the last day was a little better, he at least joked with you this morning, but nothing since. you’re wondering how you can get a chance to talk to him before the day is over, but then you remember you have snack at the same time today. so that means you’ can ambush him on your way to the snack room in hopes that he’ll at least acknowledge you exist again.

when it nears the end of the day and you’re dropping your kids off at their snack area, you step to the side and wait in the hallway so you can see wooyoung coming. when you hear his boisterous voice coming closer, you act like you’re looking for something in the bag they give to each leader, and when wooyoung rounds the corner you look up and stop him.

“hey! do you have any extra bandaids?” you ask him. “i’ve got a kid with a paper cut and i’m fresh out.”

“uh, lemme check,” he says, patting his pockets quickly.

“you don’t have the bag?”

“if we were paired together, would you trust me to keep track of the bag all week?”

“valid point,” you reply. “so i’m guessing you don’t have one?”

“nope, i do,” he says, pulling the ziploc of bandages out of his back pocket. “just one?”

“yeah, i just need it to shut the kid up until his dad comes to get him,” you explain.

“he’s a whiner?” wooyoung asks, and you nod. he hands you the bag and you dip back into the snack room to find the kid (you really did need a bandaid) and you’re back outside in seconds. wooyoung is waiting for you, hands in his pockets and a sheepish smile on his face.

“thanks,” you say, handing him the bag as you start the walk to the volunteer snack room.

“sure,” he says, and you fall into an awkward silence. it’s not a long walk to the snack room, and you want to get something out of him before there’s a bunch of people around so you stop abruptly and wooyoung follows suit.

“sorry, but i have to ask,” you start. “did i kiss you wrong? i mean, wait, sorry. was me kissing you wrong? should i not have done that? because now you’re acting all weird.”

“so you noticed something was up?” wooyoung asks shyly. “sorry about that.”

“it’s ok,” you tell him. “just give me a clue as to whether or not i just messed up by doing that.”

“no, it was good,” he assures you. “very good. nice. it was nice. i liked it.”

“ok, good.”

“i’d like to do it again.”

“right now?” you ask. “the kids could see us, and you know we’d never live that down.”

“no, not now,” he laughs. “but later. eventually. if you want to.”

“definitely,” you nod. “but not at church?”

“not at church,” he confirms. “the lord is watching.”

“that’s pervy of him,” you say, making wooyoung let out an elmo pitched laugh. the sound lights you up, like the sun is shining just on you for that moment. you want to make him laugh a million more times just like that.

“remind me why i like you again?”

at the end of the day, kyungmin begs you to get lunch with him and wooyoung again. he’s sad that after today he’ll go back to not seeing you every day, but you assure him you’ll be around, sending a wink up to wooyoung as you say so.

“actually, i think i’m supposed to babysit you one day this weekend,” you tell kyungmin, and his face lights up.

“really?!”

“yeah, really. your mom asked me about it last night,” you say, and wooyoung looks confused but you don’t notice because kyungmin is literally jumping with glee.

“i can show you all my TOYS and we can watch my favorite MOVIE and can we get pizza? mom lets me get pizza when there’s a babysitter, i swear!”

“calm down, buckoo, we’ll see what happens,” you laugh. “but i’ll see you soon, i promise.”

“ok!” kyungmin shouts happily, and he runs off to say goodbye to his friends, leaving you with wooyoung.

“who knew my little brother would take you from me the weekend i wanted to ask you out,” he says with a smirk, pulling you in for a proper church side hug. he places his lips to your forehead ever so lightly as he whispers, “guess i’ll have to tell you about my undying love for you another time.”

and then he pulls away, waving over his shoulder as he walks off to find his brother. you’re left sputtering, much like wooyoung was the other day after you kissed him, and you have to reset before you remember how to act like a human again.

it doesn’t feel like long before saturday night comes around and you find yourself heading to the jung residence. vbs wore you out so bad that you cancelled plans with friends last night so you could just sleep the week off, and you barely feel rested enough to be around kyungmin for a few hours now, even if he is one of your favorite people.

it’s been ages since you’ve been to their house, too, so it feels a little weird walking up the path to their front door. it seems oddly quiet, but you pay no mind as you reach for the doorbell and...wooyoung? answers the door.

“what?” you ask, surprised. “sorry, where’s your mom? she said you were all going to a wedding tonight and...” you trail off, thinking back to what ms. jung really said. “the wedding is next weekend, isn’t it?”

“no, really?” wooyoung asks in fake shock. “that would explain why my family went to the beach for the weekend.”

“really?” you ask, and wooyoung nods. “why didn’t you go?”

“i wanted to see your face when you realized you had the weekends wrong.”

“no, seriously,” you laugh as you push his arm, and he shrugs.

“i needed to rest, honestly,” he says. “and spending most of the weekend in the car with my family is not my idea of rest. laying in my bed for 12 hours straight is, however.”

“that sounds nice,” you say wistfully, thinking about how warm your bed was before you had to leave to come here.

“it is,” wooyoung agrees. “wanna try it for yourself?”

“are you inviting me up to your room, jung wooyoung?” you ask in disbelief, and wooyoung simply quirks an eyebrow before disappearing into the house, giving you no choice but to follow him and close the door behind you.

the last time you were here, kyungmin was much younger, and wooyoung was still off at school, so his room was converted into min’s vacation home. seeing it in wooyoung’s style was a stark difference, but it made you smile to see this detail of his life. you note the movie posters plastered on the wall, laughing at the childish posters they’re obviously covering up.

“was that your toy story poster or kyungmin’s?” you tease.

“hey, that was a great franchise,” he scolds, finger pointing at you and hand on hip accordingly. “stop standing there so awkward, come inside.”

“sorry,” you laugh nervously. “what should we do?”

“wanna watch a movie?”

“how bout toy story?”

“okay, never mind, you can leave,” wooyoung says as he pushes you toward the door, and you push back. you both lose your footing, and you tumble into his chest, but thankfully wooyoung catches you. you brace yourself on his chest and look up at him with a smile.

“hi.”

“hi,” he smiles back. “deja vu.”

“yeah,” you laugh, holding his gaze for a moment before glancing down to his mouth. this time though, wooyoung makes the first move, cupping your cheek and bringing your lips to his. it’s tentative at first, but the more you lean into it the more you enjoy it. you catch wooyoung smiling into the kiss before you pull back to take a breath. you share a look with wooyoung before you both dive back in, this kiss different from the others. this one is hungry, wooyoung’s gripping your face with both hands, like he’s afraid you’ll slip away if he doesn’t keep you right here in his grasp. he licks at your lip, and you let him in, moaning softly when his tongue explores your mouth. you pull back briefly and ask, “still wanna watch that movie?”

“hell no,” he growls into your mouth, and then he separates from you for a moment, staring deep into your eyes. “let me make love to you.”

“wooyoung, i-”

“please,” he begs. “i’ve loved you for so long i don’t think i could put it into words. let me show you how i feel. please.”

“ok,” you nod, pecking his lips sweetly before connecting your forehead to his. “but when you’re ready i’d really like to hear about this whole you loving me thing. i’ll do my best to explain me loving you, too.”

“it’s a date,” he says with a smile that reaches his eyes, and it’s like the warmth radiating from that smile transfers to you through every spot where your bodies are connected. wooyoung is your little piece of sunshine here on earth, and he’s about to show you why you should never let him go.

he starts with a tender kiss, cupping the back of your head to angle you just right so he can pick up where he left off. his other hand slides down your arm and settles on your waist, giving it a squeeze before backing you up to his bed. the back of your knees hit the mattress and he helps you lay down gently, asking you to crawl up the bed while he takes off his shirt. when he settles above you, your hands graze his abdomen and he giggles as he leans in for another kiss.

“tickles,” he whispers, and you pull your hands from his waist to wrap around his neck as you deepen the kiss. wooyoung’s hands slide under your shirt, tracing lines over your hips and you gasp when they travel further and trace lines over your stomach. wooyoung pulls back to tug at your shirt and you nod, helping him slide it off your arms. he helps you out of your bra next, gluing his eyes to your chest and how delicate you look beneath him.

“i’m up here,” you tease, and wooyoung tears his eyes from your tits for a second to roll his eyes at you.

“yeah, but i’ve seen your face like a million times,” he scoffs. “let me look at your boobs a little bit more.”

“how romantic.”

“shut up,” he mumbles into your chest, kissing from your collarbone and further down. he stops to place a kiss around each breast, sucking on your nipples to get them hard before he continues down. he’s kissing across your stomach and you hope he can’t feel the butterflies in there threatening to break out. he keeps going, and you know where he’s going to end up. after placing a final kiss under your belly button, he looks up at you and you tell him to keep going. he’s barely done anything and you’re already breathless. he kisses along the waistband of your panties, and instead of taking them off like you expected, he continues down to place kisses over your covered core, drawing out whimpers from you the more he focuses on your pussy without making actual contact.

“wooyoung don’t tease,” you whine, and he shakes his head.

“nope, gotta take it slow or it won’t be right,” he tells you. he places one more kiss on your clothed clit before pulling your panties to the side. he ghosts his finger over your folds before rubbing lightly at your clit, and you gasp at the contact. he lets his hand go further, finding your entrance where he collects some of your arousal before finding your clit again. he looks up as you let out another breathless gasp and asks, “you doin okay up there?”

“mhm,” you squeak out. “want more though.”

“greedy baby,” he smirks, replacing his hand with his lips as he kisses at your nub. his hand trails back down and strokes into you softly, and your hips keen at the feeling. he pumps his finger a few times before adding another, mumbling against your pussy that you’re doing so well. he starts curling his fingers inside you, tearing a moan from deep within your chest. you realize you’re closer than you’d like to admit, because you don’t want him to stop. at the same time, you think you might die if wooyoung doesn’t make you come soon.

“faster please,” you whine, bucking your hips again to get a little more friction. wooyoung takes the hint and picks up the pace, pumping into you faster and lapping at your clit in a way that has your legs shaking. he keeps going, and just when you’re about to warn him of your release he adds a third finger, stretching you so well that you come with a silent scream, his name squeaking out at the end as he watches in awe.

“you’re beautiful,” he whispers, your chest rising and falling rapidly as you come down.

“come up here and say that to my face,” you challenge him, and he wastes no time climbing back up the bed and trapping your lips in another kiss. you moan at the taste of yourself on his lips, his tongue venturing past your lips in a heated kiss. he pulls away for a moment to whisper again.

“you’re beautiful,” he says, holding eye contact with you long enough for you to get shy from the attention. it’s like he’s looking straight into your soul and you’re a little afraid of what he might find in there.

“what happened to you making love to me?” you ask, breaking him out of his concentrated gaze. you watch as he snaps out of it in real time, and he gets up quickly to rid himself of his pants and his boxers. you didn’t notice how hard he was before now, but it must have been painful. his tip is so red, and the veins are so prominent that you catch yourself staring only to be interrupted by wooyoung’s own hand pumping himself a few times for relief. “hey, let me do that.”

“no, need to find a condom,” he says through gritted teeth. “need to be inside you like right now.”

“we don’t need one,” you tell him, and he stands completely still. his eyes find yours and he quirks an eyebrow.

“we don’t need one?”

“no,” you almost whine. “i’m clean. i trust you. i’ve got protection. please just have sex with me.”

“i love you so much,” wooyoung says in one breath, basically pouncing back on top of you to reconnect your lips. he mumbles in between rushed kisses “i’m clean too, by the way,” and you just nod and urge him to get to it.

you both watch as wooyoung pulls back and guides his tip to your core, rubbing against your clit so deliciously it has you moaning pathetically, begging him to fuck you already. he slides between your lips a few times before guiding himself to your dripping entrance, and he slides in with ease. he bottoms out completely before letting out a moan of his own, and he stills for a moment so you can adjust. you take a moment and nod, reaching down to squeeze his hip to let him know he can continue. he pulls back with a shaky breath and bottoms out once again, trying his best to hit your innermost wall with each thrust, it seems. he’s so deep, and he settles so that he’s holding himself above you in the perfect position to connect with your g-spot every time he pumps in. he spends plenty of time thrusting all the way in and pulling out as much as he can, but you’re clenching around him so well there’s no way he’s going to last. he pumps in one more time before he stills, making sure to take deep breaths to calm himself down.

“are you okay?” you ask, worried at his sudden change. “what’s wrong?”

“nothing’s wrong baby,” he assures you. “you’re just so warm. and tight. don’t think i can take it much longer.”

“come whenever you’re ready,” you tell him. “i wanna feel you.”

“you’re literally perfect, did you know that?” he asks before ducking down to bury his head in your neck. he lazily kisses at your skin as he fucks back into you, his thrusts a little shorter and sloppier but still perfect. you wrap a leg around his waist to keep him from going too far, and you grab for one of his hands to reconnect with your clit as you warn him that you’re close.

“i’m almost there,” you gasp, hips rising to chase every touch. “wanna come with you.”

“okay, shit. warn me before you do, i’ll pull out-”

“no.”

“no?”

“i said i wanna feel you,” you say sternly, pulling his chin up to look in his eyes. “give me everything you’ve got baby.”

“really?” he asks, hips picking up speed again until he’s fucking you so fast that you’re practically bouncing on his cock. “that’s so hot, y/n. gonna give you everything. gonna start a family with you one day, gonna come, fuck-”

“wooyoung, i’m coming,” you whine as he picks up speed rubbing your clit and his hips give you one final thrust that sends you over the edge. it feels like every ounce of you is on fire, and the warmth radiating off wooyoung and shooting into your core heightens your senses so you feel everything ten times more. wooyoung pumps into you slowly, riding out the end of his release. he’s pushing his come back into you as it falls out, and he groans at the sight, getting turned on again.

“how soon can you do that again?” he asks sheepishly, and you shake your head. he falls to your side as he waits for your response.

“gimme a few,” you reply. “you took my breath away.”

“okay,” he says, propping his head up on your shoulder. “i’ll be here.”

you lay still for a moment, eyes closed and focused on regulating your breathing. it’s in this silence that something wooyoung says passes through your mind again, and you decide you should address it now.

“wooyoung?”

“yeah?”

“did you say you wanna make a family with me?”

“oh.”

“yeah.”

“i didn’t think you’d remember that,” he says shyly, and you laugh at the blush gracing his cheeks.

“it just happened!” you shriek. “what, you thought your dick was so good i’d completely block out what you were saying?”

“a little?”

“so obviously you’ve thought about this a lot,” you say, getting back on topic. “about us?”

“yep.”

“and what will our kids be named?”

“i dunno.”

“yes you do,” you insist, rolling onto your side to look at him directly. “tell me.”

“later,” he says, pecking your lips sweetly. “i think there was mention of a round two?”

due to no fault of your own, you ended up spending the night at wooyoung’s house. you were honestly so tired you didn’t want to leave anyway, so when he offered to make you breakfast in the morning you couldn’t pass it up.

spending the night also gave you a chance to be intimate with wooyoung in another way. after the promised second round (and maybe a third in the shower) he helped you get ready for bed, offering up his comfiest clothes and insisting on helping you get dressed and into bed. he wrapped you up in the covers just to mess them up as he wormed his way under the blankets right next to you, immediately wrapping himself around you and burying his head in your chest. you absentmindedly played with his hair as you talked quietly, and the topic of feelings came up again.

you already knew how wooyoung felt, so it was really your turn to grab the mic, but wooyoung being ever the gentleman assured you he didn’t need a love confession just because you had slept together. he was okay with waiting for you to process as long as you’d agree to be with him while that happened.

you easily fell asleep, tired and at peace in wooyoung’s arms, but when you woke up the next day to an empty bed you panicked. almost as if he knew you were awake, wooyoung poked his head into the room a few minutes later and reminded you of the meal he promised you, asking how you wanted your coffee. he scoffed when you didn’t say cold and straight black (like him) but he still took extra care to make it just right for you. it takes you another minute to get the will to get out of bed, but when you make it downstairs to the kitchen you’re left speechless.

“you did all this for me?” you ask quietly, noticing the pancakes, eggs, sausage and the assortment of cereal boxes wooyoung laid out in case you wanted something really sweet. there was a bowl of fresh strawberries, your carefully crafted coffee, and a beautiful vase of flowers too.

“i was hungry too,” wooyoung shrugs. “so i thought i’d do it right.”

“you’re so concerned with doing things right around me,” you start, “you know you don’t need to do all of this to impress me.”

“but i want to,” he pouts. “i’m tinkerbell, i live off of attention.”

“that explains so much.”

“just shut up and eat.”

you do just that, forgetting that wooyoung is probably one of the best cooks you know. maybe he is tinkerbell because he did something magic to those pancakes.

“what did you put in these to make them so good?” you ask, pointing to your plate.

“love,” he replies with a dreamy sigh and you laugh, but wooyoung was being serious.

“oh come on, tell me,” you whine. “cinnamon? vanilla?”

“not everyone knows this but love is in fact cinnamon flavored,” wooyoung says matter of factly.

“you’re annoying.”

“you like it though, admit it!” he says, pushing your shoulder. “you wouldn’t have been my friend for so long if i annoyed you that bad, and you definitely wouldn’t be dating me if i annoyed you so much.”

“wait, so are we dating?” you ask, and he nods in confirmation. “we haven’t had a real date though.”

“um? i took you to mcdonald’s.”

“yeah, with your little brother,” you laugh. “that’s not a real date. that’s like a trial run.”

“for when we have kids.”

“sure, but that’s not a real date,” you say again. “you need to plan something.”

“why do i need to plan it?!”

“because i kissed you first, so it’s your move, jung.”

“that doesn’t make sense.”

“too bad,” you say as you pop a strawberry in your mouth. “think of something good, my little chef.”

wooyoung falls silent as he thinks about what he could plan, and this gives you a chance to look at the clock.

“oh shit, i need to go home,” you say quickly. “i have to meet my friends for lunch.”

“and leave me here all alone?” wooyoung pouts, and you kiss him to make it go away.

“yep, sorry sweets. it’ll give you more time to plan the perfect date,” you say with a wink as you head to the stairs to grab your things from wooyoung’s room.

“hey!” wooyoung calls out as you’re collecting your clothes (but conveniently keeping the hoodie he let you borrow). wooyoung appears at the door and leans against the frame as he continues. “you know what i just thought about?”

“hm?”

“kyungmin is gonna be so thrilled we’re finally together,” he says, and you smile.

“he sure put in work to get us here, didn’t he?”

“yeah, that little rascal,” wooyoung shakes his head. you stop, making sure you have everything before you walk to the door and put your hand on wooyoung’s cheek. he leans into your touch and you smile, giving him one last kiss.

“i’ll see you later?” you ask, and he nods.

“can we do what we did here but at your place?” wooyoung asks hopefully, and you pretend to think about it.

“if you tell me what you put in the pancakes, then yes.”

“it was brown sugar,” he says quickly, pulling you closer to him by your hips. “so i’ll see you tonight?”

“sure,” you laugh, kissing him one last time. “see you later, love.”

#ateez #ateez fic #ateez fanfic #ateez smut #ateez fluff #ateez imagine #ateez one shot #wooyoung #jung wooyoung #wooyoung smut #jung wooyoung smut #wooyoung fluff #jung wooyoung fluff #wooyoung fic #wooyoung fanfic #wooyoung x reader

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ofstoriesandstardust · 1 year

Text

quarter life crisis (j.h.s.)

a/n: this is wildly influenced by my own life so i have no idea if this is even relatable but you can have it anyways.

summary: Rejection from a potential grad school stings more than they realize.

inspired by taylor bickett’s “quarter life crisis” | part of the maroon universe

warnings: implied/referenced sex, swearing, age gap (reader is 22, Jake is 33), alcohol mentions, writing this was kind of cathartic,

word count: 5,757

Unfortunately, we are unable to offer you a place in our program at this time...

The bright screen wavers in front of you as you blink back the stinging of your tears. Your boyfriend’s hand rubs comfortably on your back as you shut the lid of the laptop, slumping down in your chair.

Your pretty, perfect boyfriend.

Your pretty, perfect boyfriend who was one of the best Naval aviators in the country.

“Hey, it’s okay. It’s just Stanford.”

Just Stanford, like it wasn’t one of the top schools in the country.

Aim for the skies, your Dad always said.

“Yeah.” You mutter, sliding off the chair at the counter of the kitchen island.

“You have like what, seven other programs?” He says, following you as you walk towards the fridge. “You’ll get into the program that’s meant for you. Besides, I selfishly didn’t want you going so far from me.”

You sigh, turning to face your boyfriend.

Your pretty, perfect boyfriend who wouldn’t ever know the sting of rejection.

Rejection and Jake Seresin were antonyms, words that would never go together, polar opposites.

Much like you and Jake.

Jake, a 33-year-old established Naval aviator with two confirmed kills who had his whole career right in front of him.

You, a 22-year-old college graduate with no direction and no idea what she was doing.

You and Jake were antonyms, people that would never go together, polar opposites.

“Yeah.” You say, realizing you’ve been quiet for too long as Jake’s eyebrows furrow.

“Sweetheart-” He says before cutting himself off, looking a bit at a loss. “What can I do to make it better?”

You shrug, giving him a small smile. “Nothing. Why don’t you go on to the Hard Deck without me? Think I’m gonna take a minute.”

He hesitates. “You sure?”

You breath out, crossing your arms as you nod. “Positive.”

He nods, still looking a bit skeptical as he leans down, pressing a quick kiss to your lips. “See you soon?”

“Yeah.”

You groan, rolling over as you blink awake. The TV is still on, the title screen for Treasure Planet pulled up as you search for your phone.

It’s a tough task, ensnared in a tangle of blankets and squinting from the too bright TV in a pitch black living room. You finally latch on to it, wedged between two cushions, quickly looking away as the bright screen lights up at you.

Your head pounds as you struggle to turn the brightness down on the phone, the cry you’d had earlier leaving your throat dry and head in need of a painkiller. You swallow, throat feeling like sandpaper as you struggle to sift through the 49 text messages, not to mention the 8 missed calls.

You don’t think you’d ever been so popular.

The texts are mostly from Jake, a handful from Brad and Nat and Reuben and even one from your Dad (Sorry to hear about Stanford kid).

The calls are all from Jake though.

Hey, it’s been a while, where are you? Call me back.

Hey, this is the fourth time I called you, why aren’t answering?

Hey, I’m starting to get worried. Shit, I knew I shouldn’t have left you alone. Please call me back.

I will drive to your house. I know where your Dad keeps the spare key. Please just call me back and tell me you’re okay.

Okay, okay, I get the hint. You want to be left alone. Just send a smoke signal that you’re alive or something? I’m just kind of worried about you. Okay, I- Okay, talk to you later.

You groan, a quick glance at the time telling you it’s almost midnight. You must’ve cried yourself to sleep for an unintended six hour nap. You shoot off a quick text to Jake, letting him know you just fell asleep. You respond to the meme Reuben sent you, confirming the two of you were still on for drinks with kids from your high school tomorrow, friends of his he still kept in touch with. You knew Max and Lauren and Joy and Tristan and Cody when you went to school, but you’d never been quite cool enough to hang out with them.

You pull the fridge open, searching for the leftover pizza best you can with the bright LED lights in the fridge.

“What are you doing?” You yelp, turning around as you see Maverick standing there in his pajamas, half-asleep.

“Getting food... sorry, did I wake you?”

He shakes his head, yawning. “Jake called, asked if we heard from you. You were asleep when we came in so I just wanted to make sure you were still here.”

You nod, glancing down at your phone. Jake still hadn’t texted you back. “Yeah, I just texted him.”

“Okay, well, I’m going back to bed. Sorry about the Stanford decision.”

You give a half-shrug. “Just Stanford.”

He blindly pats your shoulder before yawning again. “K, goodnight.” And then he’s shuffling back to the stairs to go to bed as you groan, shutting the fridge.

“You look pretty.” Penny comments as you walk into the Hard Deck.

“Thank you.”

“Got a hot date?” Amelia teases.

“Nope, just drinks with Reuben.”

“Let me go put this box in the back and then we’re good to go, yeah?” You nod as Reuben rounds the bar with the box in his hands. He pauses, turning back to you. “Do you remember Anna who went to high school with us?”

You blink, nodding slowly.

Of course you remembered her. She’d been your best friend for seven years.

“Yeah.”

“Did you hear she was engaged?”

You nod again as Jake’s arm slides around your waist. “I did hear that, yeah.”

“Well, her and her fiancé are in town, Tyler I think his name is, and so I invited them to go with us.”

You nod as Reuben turns, heading for the back.

“Hi sweetheart.” Jake whispers in your ear, pressing a kiss to your bare shoulder.

“Sorry I disappeared last night.” You whisper back, but Jake doesn’t get a chance to respond as Bradley cuts through the conversation.

“Weren’t you and Anna, like best friends?” Bradley asks, taking a sip of his beer. “I remember her because she had a huge crush on me, which was always kind of strange. She was like my second sister.”

“Yeah, well Anna decided to stop being friends with me a long time ago.” You say with a sigh.

“You and Anna were friends?” Reuben asks, coming back into the room.

You nod. “For like seven years.”

“I never knew that.” He said, eyebrows furrowing. “I never even saw you guys talk to each other at school.”

You huff out a laugh, feeling somewhat bitter. “Yeah, because I wasn’t cool enough to be seen with her. It would ruin her street cred.”

“That’s shitty.” Jake comments, tugging you between his legs to rest his chin on your shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

You give a half-shrug, blinking back the sting of tears yet again.

“It’s whatever.”

It’s not whatever.

You’d known Anna since you were eleven years old, since the two of you stood next to each other in line for your English class on the first day of the 6th grade, becoming friends because the two of you were wearing the same shirt but in different colors.

Anna was at your house more often than not. You’d been the first person she’d called when her brother got cancer. You’d walked to her house after your parents told you that they were getting a divorce. She used to come over whenever your Dad had cancer treatments and make pancakes with you and watch Glee so you didn’t have to think about it.

And then one day, at the start of your senior year, she’d cut you out. Blocked your number and stopped talking to you. She’d shown back up again before you started college but hadn’t stuck around very long that time either.

She’d disappeared for a few years and came back with a fiancé who was her soulmate and a successful job in a new city across the country.

And here you were, back in San Diego, with a shiny new grad school rejection and a dead end bartending job your Dad had hooked up for you and a boyfriend you hadn’t said I love you to yet.

Comparatively, one of you was doing better than the other and it wasn’t the one who had gotten screwed over.

It made your chest burn, thinking about how you had always thought you’d be there when she got engaged and had to find out from Instagram of all places.

Put a lot of things into perspective for you.

You blink, realizing you’ve been quiet for too long again as the group stares at you. “Sorry.”

Reuben watches you carefully. “You ready to go?”

You take a shaky breath, nodding. “Yep, let’s go.”

“Reuben!” Max yells as the two of you walk over. “Took you long enough!”

Reuben laughs, pulling Max into a hug before introducing you. Max nods, giving you a side hug as Lauren’s eyes light up at the sight of you.

“You were in our AP Literature class.” Max says, pulling away from you.

Lauren groans, leaning over the table to give you a hug. “Don’t bring that class up, Maxwell. I’m still not over the fact that we all failed the AP test.”

“Yeah, I’d like to not revisit the year Max and I dated.” Joy says, offering you a smile from across the table.

Max sticks out his tongue at her as your and Reuben sit at the table. “You remember Tristan, yeah?”

You nod as he raises his glass to you. “Good to see you again.”

“Glad to see we all survived that awful AP Lit class.”

“And then I don’t think you ever met my older brother Cody?”

“You got bumped up to my History class your freshman year, right?” Cody asks as he extends a hand over the table. You nod, confirming his words as you shake his hand.

“Hey Cody, I was in that class too!” Anna protests from the end of the table.

You offer the girl a small smile. “Hi Anna.”

“You know, I didn’t know the two of you were friends.” Reuben comments, gesturing between you and Anna.

“She was too busy pretending I didn’t exist.” You mutter under your breath, doing your best to disguise the words with a cough.

“Okay, why don’t you boys go get us drinks?” Lauren asks.

“So you can sit here and gossip and have girl talk?” Max says, raising his beer to his lips with a smirk.

“Yes. Get lost.” Joy deadpans. The boys grumble but follow her orders, even Anna’s fiancé following the group.

“So how have you been?” Lauren asks, a genuine small lighting up her face.

You shrug. “Pretty good.”

“Are you and Reuben dating?” Joy asks, earning a nudge from Lauren.

You chuckle, shaking your head. “No, God no. We’re just co-workers, pretty sure my Dad put him up to this, always saying I need to get out of the house. Besides, I have a boyfriend.”

“How is your Dad?” Anna asks, taking Max’s chair so she could scoot closer.

“Good. He’s good. He and Maverick just celebrated their anniversary and he’s in remission.”

“So... backtrack, boyfriend?” Lauren says, propping her head up on a closed fist. “Please, do tell.”

“Can I see a picture?” Anna asks. You nod, pulling your phone out from your back pocket, swiping through for an acceptable photo of the two of you. You land on a picture from a barbecue Penny had hosted recently, a picture Javy had taken of the two of you when neither of you were paying attention.

His smile was wide, hair messy from rolling around in the grass all afternoon as the team played football. Your arms were around his neck, his hands on your waist as the both of you smile, deep in conversation.

“His name is Jake. He’s a Navy pilot and works with Bradley and Maverick. It’s how we met.”

“Dating a flyboy, I’m sure your dad is thrilled.” Anna comments, raising her eyebrows. “Isn’t he- He’s kind of out of your league. No offense.”

And there it is.

Your pretty, perfect boyfriend, out of your league.

Of course it was something you knew, but not something you needed to hear, least of all from her.

“Oh, he’s cute.” Lauren coos, peering over at the phone. “How serious is it?”

You shrug. “Dunno, we’ve only been dating for a few months. Just kind of seeing where it goes.”

“Don’t be fooled, Jake’s hopelessly in love with her.” Reuben comments as the boys appear back at the table.

“I don’t know about that.” You say, taking a gulp of the drink Reuben has set down in front of you.

“Is the sex good?” Joy asks, causing you to choke.

“What?” You choke out, lungs burning.

“Well, is it?”

“Um-”

“You don’t have to answer that.” Max intervenes, tossing a look at Joy.

“No, I’m with Joy. He looks like he knows how to fuck, I’m curious if he’s good.”

“Lauren!” Reuben protests, crossing his arms. “Back off.”

“I second that.” Tristan says.

“Oh, please like you didn’t hear about Joy’s sex life when she dated Max.” Lauren says, narrowing her eyes.

“So?” Anna prompts. “Is he good in bed?”

You shrink back, suddenly aware that everyone’s looking at you.

You had told Jake that you hadn’t really been with any one else. Not any one meaningful, anyways. You doubted that the sex was as good for him as it was you, but you hardly had anything to compare to.

“I mean, he’s a six foot Navy aviator with an ego. What do you think?”

Joy raises an eyebrow. “And what about size?”

“Absolutely not, do not answer that. I still have to serve him at the Hard Deck, please do not give me intimate details about Seresin’s dick size.”

“I wasn’t going to...?” You say, offering him a curious look. “You picked me up after the first time we hooked up. If I was going to tell you any intimate details, I would’ve by now.”

“Wait, wait, wait, what?” Lauren says, waving her hands.

You sigh. “Jake and I hooked up as a one-night stand before we ever officially got together. I sort of fled the morning after and Reuben picked me up.”

“Man’s knows how to leave a hickey, that’s for sure.” Reuben mutters.

“Okay, let’s talk about literally anything else.” Max says, cutting the conversation off. “You applying to grad schools or anything?”

“Yeah. Just kind of vibing at the moment, though.”

“Didn’t-” Rueben start, but then cuts himself off, frowning. “Never mind.”

“Yeah, please don’t bring that up right now.” You mutter. “What about you Max? What’ve you been up to?”

“Bring up what?” Anna asks.

Reuben sighs, glancing at you. “Nothing.”

It’s too late, everyone looking at you now.

“I just- I just found out I got rejected from a grad school yesterday. That’s all.”

That fact that it was Stanford you got rejected from goes unspoken.

“What happened to the gifted kid we all knew in high school?” Anna laughs.

“Burned out in college trying to be good enough for her parents.” You snap, shooting Anna a look. “She’s currently having a quarter-life crisis and would like everyone to please stop asking her about it, so Max, what have you been up to?”

The boy just blinks.

“How was drinks?”

“Awful.” You groan, all but collapsing on to the couch next to Maverick.

Reuben sighs, sticking in his hands in his pockets. “I don’t remember Anna being such a bitch.”

“You don’t maybe. I do.” You say, sitting up to look at him.

“Anna who always spent a lot of time around here?” Maverick asks. You nod and he clicks his tongue. “I never liked her all that much.”

You sigh. “How she behaved tonight? That’s how she treated me for seven years and I just let her. And yet she’s still the one who’s doing better.”

Reuben nods, conceding to you. “Well, if Anna doesn’t come with us again, would you want to come back out with us?”

You shrug. “I guess.”

“You don’t like them?”

“No, I think they’re great people. I don’t think they like me very much.”

Reuben scoffs. “What’re you talking about? Lauren and Max adore you. As does Tristan, they want you to come back out with us. You should’ve seen Lauren’s face when I said you were coming tonight.”

You sigh, unsure of how to explain to him that you felt like you would never escape who you were in high school, like they’d look at you and still see that girl you had been.

It really hadn’t been that long since you’d been at the high school that had made you feel suffocated with a life that felt dead-end.

Rueben was great, he’d always been. The best thing about him was his heart.

And his friends were great too.

But in high school, the lines had been drawn in the sand. You knew where you stood with them and it was about several social status levels below them.

Just because you now had a pretty, perfect boyfriend didn’t change that.

Reuben says your name, making you realize you’ve once against fallen silent for too long. “Sorry, what?”

“We’ll do next time on your turf, okay? You can pick wherever and whatever.”

You sigh, standing up from the couch. “Reuben, just leave it, okay? We’re never gonna gel as friends.”

“You and them? Or us?” He asks, with a frown on his face.

You wince, internally cursing your slip. “Reuben-”

“You still think I care that you might've been, what? A little dorky in high school? I saw a girl who was bright and intelligent and passionate. What did it matter that she went on a few tangents about the State of Union address because her Dad was there? You were one of the smartest people I interacted with in high school.”

You want to snap and say, yeah that’s the problem. I was the smartest kid you knew and knew exactly what I wanted and now I struggle to get up in the morning because I don’t even know who I am anymore.

But all you can do is sigh and look at Reuben. He scoffs, shaking his head, stalking to the front door before slamming it shut. Maverick winces as you struggle not to cry again.

“What the fuck was that about?”

“Nothing, I’m just a drama queen.” You mutter. “I’m going to bed.”

“Hi.” You look up from where you’re cleaning glasses to see Lauren and Max.

“Hey, Reuben’s just in the back if you want me to go grab him for you.” You offer, sticking a thumb to the back where Reuben was helping Penny sort the new delivery you got today.

Lauren shakes her head. “No. I just-” She sighs, looking at Max. “We just wanted to come say that well, I think we got off on the wrong foot. I love you, I think you’re great, and I’d love for you to come back out with us sometime.”

You huff out a laugh, setting the glass down. “Reuben put you up to this?”

She frowns. “No?”

Max sighs. “Look, I don’t even like Anna. None of us liked Anna, the only one who was friends with her was Reuben.”

“That’s only because she was a part of a different friend group.” Reuben says, appearing from the back with another crate of clean glasses.

You snort, grabbing the crate from him. “Funny to me you had multiple friend groups, I didn’t even have one.”

“Oh, c’mon, you had a friend group.”

You raise an eyebrow. “Yeah? Who, Reuben?”

He falters, clearly struggling think of someone.

“Reuben, I didn’t even get asked to prom. Let’s call a spade a spade, I was a loser.”

“I think you had your head so far in a book no one ever got a chance to see how great you are.” Lauren amends, offering you a kind smile. “And I’d love if you came and hung out with us again. And we will stop asking about your sex life, I promise.”

“Why, she doesn’t want to brag?” Jake drawls, appearing next to Lauren.

“No!” Reuben exclaims. “No intimate details about his dick size! I can’t do it!″

Jake gives Reuben a confused look as you sigh, pinching the bridge of your nose.

“This is your boyfriend?” Max asks. You nod. He extends a hand to Max and then Lauren.

“Jake Seresin.”

“Nice to meet you.” Lauren says. “You like escape rooms, right? We could do one of those? Boys versus girls.”

“I don’t know, the last time I did one of those it was with my Mom and I have it on good authority I’m a bit bossy.”

“The prehistoric ages, when your Mom was around.” Bradley says, appearing next to Jake at the bar.

“Shut up Bradshaw.” Natasha mutters, wedging herself in between him and Jake.

“Aw, she’s making friends. It’s like kindergarten all over again, this is so cute.” Coyote teases, appearing behind the group.

“Reuben and I both have next Monday off. How about laser tag?” You ask, ignoring Coyote even as your cheeks warm.

Reuben coughs awkwardly. “I’m gonna bow out of this one, thanks.”

Max startles. “What? Why?”

Reuben shrugs, not sparing you glance. “Cody and I already have plans.”

“Since when?” Lauren asks incredulously.

“Since last night.” You mutter under your breath. “It’s okay, I think I’m supposed to get dinner with my Dad’s that night. You know, family thing.”

“We are?” Bradley asks.

“No, just me and them.” You lie, praying Bradley just accepts it and moves on.

Lauren nods unconvinced. “Well, our door is always open. Just give us a holler, we’ll be around.”

“What happened to dinner with your Dad’s?”

You grunt, picking up another rock and tossing it in the lake.

Lake Murray had become little more than a pond over the years, but with the park nearby and walking trails all around it, it became a great place to come to hide away when you needed to think.

“You know, you are one hard lady to find.”

“Shut up Jake.” You mutter.

Your pretty, perfect boyfriend was a liar. He’d had your location since the time you’d gotten too drunk and had just hit share indefinitely when he’d come to pick up from the bar.

“Is everything okay?”

“No.” You say honestly, not having been okay in months.

Still, it stung even more today, waking up to another rejection from a grad school program, this time from your alma mater.

Jake sighs. “What’s going on?”

“Don’t wanna talk about it.”

He huffs. “I’m worried about you.”

The Why? sits in your throat, crushed by the guilt that you’ve been making your pretty, perfect boyfriend worry about you.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to.” Is what you mumble out instead, kicking another rock, watching it tumble down the edge towards the lake.

“Would you please talk to me?” He all but begs, a hint of desperation in his voice. “You’ve been acting strange ever since you got the Stanford decision back and I want to know what’s up with my girlfriend.”

His girlfriend, who he hasn’t even said I love you to yet, making you wonder if he ever would.

Rationally, you knew it was early, especially if this relationship wasn’t going anywhere. It was unreasonable to expect Jake to return your feelings and it was unreasonable to expect Jake to commit to a girl who didn’t have her shit together.

“It’s nothing.” You say, keeping your eyes on the deep blue water, slowly lapping at the shore. If you strain your ears you could hear the screaming of kids at the park across the way.

You hear him shuffle behind you, moving closer, but he doesn’t sit down. “Sweetheart.” He says, but stops.

You sigh, your heart aching with want, begging you to turn around give him a hug. To let him pull you close and run his fingers through his hair, whispering that it’ll be okay and that he isn’t go anywhere.

Maybe it would be better if the two of you broke up.

Maybe he would be better off without you.

You’re quiet for too long because Jake is sighing and you can hear him take a few steps back. “You want to be alone?”

You nod.

He leaves.

You blink, the tears stinging at your eyes as Lauren posts a picture of her and Joy with a handful of other girls that had been friends with them in high school.

my girls xx is what she posts on the story of them out getting drinks and you have to close the app before the stories can continue on.

You sigh, letting the phone rest on your chest as you hear Maverick downstairs, crooning along to Voulez-Vous as he cooks dinner with your Dad. You should put your phone away, pull yourself together enough to go down there, and spend time with them. It’d probably do wonders for you to take a break from your phone, from social media, where it feels like everyone is living a better life than you would ever have.

Your phone buzzes on your chest but you don’t bother to check it, still just listening the commotion from downstairs. Maverick has set the fire alarm off again.

There’s a knock against your window, causing you to startle. With big windows that overlooked the ocean, birds would occasionally fly into the glass, but this was definitely more of a knock than a thud.

You lift your head, catching sight of your boyfriend’s blonde hair shining in the setting evening sun, casting a warm orange glow over the room.

“What the fuck?” You mutter to yourself, pulling yourself off the bed and over to window, pulling it open. He grins at you.

“Pizza delivery.”

You blink, staring at him. “How the fuck did you get up here? Why are you up here?”

He shrugs. “A magician never tells their secret and you weren’t answering your phone. C’mon, come have a picnic with me.” He nods his head down to the sandy area just off of your back porch. You know it’s conveniently just out of sight for either of your Dads if they were to walk past the sliding glass doors. You sigh, shaking your head. “Give me two minutes.”

He nods as you shut the window. You pad down the stairs, slipping into the kitchen for the bottle of champagne leftover from your grad party months ago. Maverick grins at you as you pull the bottle from the fridge.

“Doing some day drinking?” He asks.

“Something like that.” You say, grabbing two glasses from the cabinet. He eyes them. “In case, you know, I spill.” He nods, giving you an unconvinced look.

“Jake’s outside, isn’t he?” He whispers.

“Maybe.” You whisper back as your Dad emerges form the pantry.

“What’re we whispering about?” He asks and Maverick gives him a grin.

“About how I find you so sexy, baby-”

You groan, cutting the man off. “Gross, stop. I’m going outside to enjoy the sunset.”

Your Dad nods, too preoccupied with Maverick. You’d tell them they better be careful or the food will burn again but it’d distract your Dad and you know Maverick is giving you an opportunity to get outside unquestioned.

You slip out on to the patio, catching sight of Jake resting on the blankets he’s laid out, pizza boxes open in front of him.

You set the champagne down along with the glasses, catching sight of the white box. You open it as he pops open the champagne, revealing the chocolate-covered strawberries.

“Pizza and chocolate-covered strawberries? Thought you said the bar was in hell if this was romance.” You tease, sliding the box back across the blankets. He huffs out a laugh as you settle down on to the blankets.

“Well, maybe I could be learning a thing or two from Troy Bolton.”

Your head rests against Jake’s thigh, his head propped up near your feet. You feel warm, the alcohol and good food coursing through you as you watch the setting sun turns blood red at the horizon. Jake’s other hand is resting on your foot, thumb gently running over your ankle.

“Thanks for doing this.” You say and he gives you a smile. A genuine one, not the lazy grins he usually he puts on for the rest of the world.

“Anything for you darling.” He pauses for a moment, his movements on your ankle continuing. “But I do want to talk about why you’ve been so weird lately.”

You shrug, shifting. “I’m just feeling weird, I guess. Call it a quarter life crisis or whatever, but I’m just feeling a bit strange.”

“How so?”

“I don’t know. I’m not where I thought I’d be at 22, which is so stupid because I have my whole life laid in front of me and yet I- I always thought I’d have my life figured out. I’d know what I want to do and where I’m going. I’d have my forever relationship and my forever group of friends. But I’m getting rejected from grad schools left and right, I’ve got no solid group of friends. I hang out with my pseudo-brother’s friends most of the time and work a job my Daddy got for me. I live at home, for Christ’s sake. And it’s not that I don’t enjoy being with you because I l-” You pause, cutting yourself off, almost reeling at the fact that you'd almost let the words slip out.

You loved Jake Seresin but you were uncertain he loved you in return.

“I do like being with you. But all my friends from school, they’re engaged or married and have solid careers or amazing grad school offers and best friends they have game nights with and weekly drinks and I don’t know, they fucking meal prep together. And it’s added on to the fact that I’m like sort of friends with Reuben now, who I always thought was so cool in high school. You know, he had that life. He went to the football games and had dates to dances and surfed and had friends to hang out with. Still does. And I’m realizing I’m sort of starting to grieve a life I didn’t have in high school. You know, a life I could’ve had if my life had been just a bit more stable. My Dad had his cancer treatments and my parents were locked into this nasty court battle over child support. Not even over me but how much money I was worth. Maverick was never around, Bradley too, and I’m just-” You squeeze your eyes shut, taking a shuddering breath. “I’m upset because I could’ve had that life in high school if I wasn’t busy taking care of myself and making sure I stayed alive. If I wasn’t busy trying to make it into college because I knew it was the only way I’d make something of myself, the only way I’d be worth something in my parent’s eyes.”

You sit up, the tears slipping down your face. “I feel like a failure. And even more than I feel like a failure, I’m angry at losing out on all I could’ve had but didn't get because of my parents.” Your voice is raw and wet as Jake sits up too, pulling you close to his chest. “My whole identity for so long has been about my academic success and now that the academics don’t want me, I have no idea who the fuck I am.”

“I’m so proud of you.” He whispers into your hairline, pressing a soft kiss there.

You hiccup. “How? I’m a mess.”

He chuckles, pulling back slightly. “I’m proud of you because you did survive. I agree, it’s not fair to you that you had to raise yourself. I’m proud of you though because you got through all that and now you get this amazing opportunity to learn who you really are without all the books and smarts.”

You shrug, glancing away from him.

He sighs, cupping your chin. “Sweetheart, just because the academic success goes away doesn’t take away from how wonderfully brilliant you are. You are so intelligent, and I, for one, am so excited to see who you become in this next stage of your life. I think I’ve already gotten glimpses of her and I-” He swallows, pushing some of your hair away from your face. “I love her so fucking much.”

Your breath catches in your throat as you look back to him.

“I love you sweetheart.” He licks his lips nervously, eyes darting around your face as if trying to gauge your reaction. “I know this is probably bad timing but- but it sounds like you needed to hear it. And I know I don’t fix it or make it go away, but- I’m here.” A new wave of tears hits you and Jake pulls you back to his chest. “I know I’m not high school or prom or Stanford, but I-”

“Jake, shut up.” You say, wiping at your eyes as you try to push the tears back. He snaps his mouth shut, falling silent, even as he hand falls to your waist to rub circles into your side. “I love you. So much, you have no idea.”

He smiles. “Good to know.”

You groan, wiping at your eyes again. “God, I ruined our date. I’m sorry.”

“Sweetheart, no.” He says firmly, scooting back. “I’m glad you felt like you could talk to me about this. I get that it’s probably hard to voice and I’m happy to know you’re comfortable talking about these things with me.”

You sniff, giving him a half-shrug. “Still-”

“No. None of that. C’mere.” He says, pulling you to his chest and then laying down on the blankets. “I love you, darling.”

“I love you too.” You whisper back, nuzzling closer into him as he runs his fingers through your hair. You sit there for a while, the sun going from red hues to a dusky purple.

“I have a question.” He asks.

“Go for it.”

“Why did Reuben make that comment about not wanting to know my dick size?”

You groan.

#jake hangman seresin #jake hangman seresin x reader #jake hangman seresin fic #jake seresin #jake seresin x reader #jake seresin fic #top gun: maverick #top gun: maverick fic #maroon

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inthedayswhenlandswerefew · 9 months

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Comet Donati [Chapter 6: No Control]

Series Summary: Sex, drugs, boy bands. You are a kinda-therapist recruited (via nepotism) to help Comet Donati through a recent crisis. Things are casual with Aegon, very not-casual with Aemond. Loosely inspired by One Direction.

Chapter Warnings: Language, sexual content (18+), drugs, alcohol, smoking, mental health struggles, all-you-can-eat sushi, bodily injury, violence, hungry deer, Selena Gomez, angst!!!

Selected Chapter Quote: “He can’t see on that side, you fucking snake!”

Word count: 9k.

Link to chapter list (and all my writing): HERE.

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Your last day waking up in Singapore: lying in bed and watching the shadows of birds shoot across the ceiling like falling stars. Your wrist aches in its splint. The door to the balcony is wide open. The wind blows in hot and damp off the South China Sea. You hear him before you see him: the swipe of a keycard, the swinging of the door, the clop clop clop of undoubtedly neon Crocs against the hardwood floor.

You look over at him, not moving from the bed. “Hey.”

“Hey.” Then Aegon notices something in the tiny trashcan beside your nightstand that’s cluttered with souvenirs. Nestled between empty soda cans and Starburst wrappers is a mostly full pack of birth control pills. He stares at it for a while before he says, tentatively: “Trying for a little bundle of joy? With anyone I know?”

“Definitely not.” You sigh, turning back to the ceiling, morose. “Baela and I did 23AndMe like a month ago, and we just got our results back. She’s distantly related to royalty. I have a defective gene that makes me extra susceptible to blood clots. So if I take hormonal birth control I could have a stroke or something.”

“Damn, that sucks,” Aegon says.

“Yeah.”

“But it’s good you found out, you know? I wouldn’t want you dropping over dead.”

“Yeah,” you say again, flatly, ungenerously.

“Hey, no big deal, Stargirl. You know I’d use condoms anyway.”

“Well I might at some point in my life want to have sex with someone who’s not you, so.”

Aegon steps closer; he appears upside down as he studies you from above, sunburned forehead knit into thoughtful grooves, smelling like Tiger Beer and Axe body spray and…you think…chicken wings. His hair is in disarray, his aviator sunglasses tangled in blond knots. He’s wearing a lavender tank top, like dusk, like a bruise. “Ohhhh, I get it. This is an Aemond and Shelby thing.”

You hate that you’re so transparent, like a window wiped clean of fog and fingerprints. You hate that he’s right. “Why are they even together? What the hell do they have in common?”

“Now or before?”

“Both, I guess.”

“Well, before…” Aegon scratches at his cheek. There is a bug bite there, a tiny pink welt left by the venom of a mosquito or a spider. “It was a mutually beneficial arrangement. Aemond got the satisfaction of boning the kind of girl who would have screamed if he touched her back in high school. Shelby got a massive career boost. She had 900,000 Instagram followers when they met. Now she has over 20 million.”

That recurring, futile refrain: I hate her, I hate her, I hate her.

“And I won’t lie. They had some good times.” Aegon grins down at you. “Just like we did.”

“What about now?”

“Now…” Aegon ponders this. “Now I think they’re both lost. Neither of them knows what comes next. Aemond leaving Comet. Shelby hitting that age when people like her start checking off the husband and kids boxes. When you’re thrown off a ship, you cling to the life raft, even if it’s small or ripped up or half-deflated or whatever, right? You try to hold on to what you have left. You return to what’s familiar. And that doesn’t make it right, but it’s what people do.”

“It is,” you agree mournfully. “So Aemond was the one who broke it off.”

“Yeah.”

“And then he took her back.” She called and called and called, he finally answered.

“He had a moment of weakness. Now we all have to live with it.”

“I didn’t know that.” Then you sit up on the bed and look at Aegon. “When the label wanted to get rid of Aemond, why didn’t you fight for him?”

“That’s just the way of the world, Stargirl.” He shrugs, an inevitability, good weather, bad weather, sun and clouds and storms. “He couldn’t stay in the band the way he is now. And the problem isn’t what he looks like. The problem is in his soul. But I have no idea how to fix it.” Aegon smiles, warm like summer. “I thought maybe you would. That’s why I called you.”

“You didn’t even know me,” you tell him. “I was just some girl from a bar.”

“No,” Aegon says softly, and he does not elaborate. And then, bright and cheerful again: “You’re really going to earn your paycheck at our next stop.”

“Where are we going?” You recall the names you’ve heard bouncing around since Comet arrived in East Asia, the cities you’ve seen on banners and t-shirts and Instagram posts. “Bangkok? Kuala Lumpur? Manila? Jakarta? Seoul?”

“Tokyo.” Aegon is still smiling, though in an off-kilter way now, uneasily, his murky ocean-blue eyes somber. The scene of the crime. Where the accident happened. Where Aemond believes his life ended. “We’re performing at the Budokan.”

~~~~~~~~~~

White clouds turn to sapphire waves, then emerald green fields and forests, then buildings in a million different shades of grey that stretch on forever, steel and concrete and asphalt and glass. Tokyo is the largest city you’ve ever seen, the largest city imaginable. It is a labyrinth that makes you think of the hay mazes that farms back home set up each autumn; it beckons you in and then dares you to leave.

As the band hurries through Haneda Airport, you are pursued by paparazzi and hyperventilating fans. The usual suspects—Aegon, Daeron, and Jace—can be relied upon to high five, smile, flash peace signs and hand hearts, blow kisses, pass out crochet astronomical objects, and shout such endearments as (woefully mispronounced) “Konnichiwa!” and “We love you, Japan!” Shelby waves like she’s goddamn Princess Diana. Aemond bows his head, his eyes enigmatic behind his sunglasses, his steps swift. Luke holds Rhaena’s hand; Baela walks with them. You hide behind Cregan. He casts quite a large shadow.

“I look real rock and roll now,” you joke, gesturing with your splinted arm.

Cregan replies in his rumbly subterranean voice: “I think I have you beat.” He pulls up one of his sleeves—floral print, silk, Valentino—and shows you the underside of his right forearm. Bisecting the flesh from his wrist to the crook of his elbow is a long, faint, moon-white scar that you’ve never noticed before, never even heard anyone mention.

“Oh, ouch! You broke it?”

“Compound fracture.” He covers his forearm again with his sleeve.

“When? How?”

Cregan hesitates. Suddenly, he no longer wants to be having this conversation. “Years ago.”

Just outside the airport waits that trusty fleet of black, tinted-window Escalades; but Aemond has requested that his 1960 Gold Star be there too. He takes his keys, helmet, and jacket from one of Comet’s hulking security guards. Shelby’s detail is notably more subdued since that night in Singapore; the man who dislocated your wrist has been exiled from the tour. Aemond climbs onto his motorcycle and starts the engine. The sound takes you back to Rome: when your hopes and spirits were high, when you and Aemond were still living on the light side of the moon.

“You in the mood for a ride, Shelby?” Aegon asks, smirking unkindly, taunting, chomping loudly on cotton candy flavored Bubble Yum. “Don’t forget your helmet. We’d all be lost without you.”

Shelby combs out her beachy blond waves with her artful fingers, tan, reedy, nails turquoise and adorned with golden koi fish. “You’re psychotic if you think I’m getting on that bike.”

“Jesus,” Jace mutters. He is as shocked as anyone by his abrupt demotion to only the second most villainous person in Comet’s retinue.

Aemond doesn’t react, doesn’t say anything to Shelby, doesn’t even look at her. But he does glance over at you. And the words rise in your throat like a burning sun at dawn: I’ll go, I’d love to go, I trust you, I want you. But before you can say anything, Aemond has knocked the kickstand out of the way and is weaving through thick afternoon traffic towards the Mandarin Oriental Hotel. And as the Escalades roll and the band chats around you—indistinctly, abstractedly—you keep staring out the window and searching for glimpses of Aemond like the rare flash of a meteor in a city sky; but you can’t find him.

Criston knows he’s brought Comet to dangerous ground, peppered with quagmires and landmines. So he has planned a ruthlessly hectic itinerary. As soon as you’ve received your room key and unpacked, it’s time for dinner at an all-you-can-eat sushi restaurant down the street. Criston herds the band there like the rugged Australian cattle dogs that your parents have back in Kansas City nip at the heels of snorting, intractable Black Angus bulls. You sit between Baela and Aegon, who is wearing his neon green tank top, matching Crocs (per usual), and khaki cargo shorts. He’s also gulping sake bombs until they dribble down his sunburned face. Countless varieties of sushi and side dishes rotate by on a conveyer belt, colorful little plates waiting to be snatched up: salmon, tuna, eel, octopus, shrimp, miniature omelets, fried tofu, Wagyu beef, squid, yellowtail, veggie rolls, chicken and pork dumplings, seaweed salad.

“You okay over there?” Aegon asks, grinning as he watches you stab at your eel sushi, topped with some kind of mayo-like sauce and delicious but tragically challenging to eat.

“I didn’t know how to use chopsticks before my dominant hand was put out of commission.” You glare down the row at Shelby. She glowers back. Since that night in Singapore, you circle each other like snarling undomesticated animals, wolves or coyotes. Now you’re on her radar. Now she knows there is something—that mysterious, ever-shifting, worrying something—between you and Aemond. She just doesn’t know what it is. Neither do you, neither does he, neither does anyone.

“Want me to feed you?” Aegon slurs flirtatiously. He plucks up a piece of your eel sushi with his chopsticks and promptly drops it in your lap. “Oh. Fuck.”

Baela presses the button on the counter to summon the server. “I’ll get you a fork.”

“You are a saint,” you tell her. “Patron saint of initiative. Or drive, whichever you prefer the sound of.” Aegon is mayhem, Aemond is lost causes. What am I?

“And you are an uncultured hick from Kansas.”

You smile at her. “Missouri.”

Your fork soon arrives. A few seats down the row, you hear Shelby ask innocently, like it doesn’t mean anything: “How old is Louis Tomlinson’s son now?”

Aemond shrugs. He’s watching the conveyor belt for vegan options; he keeps missing them when they pass by. “I don’t know, five?”

“No, Freddie?!” Luke says. “He’s gotta be like seven now. We saw him last summer at Niall’s pool party.”

“He was so cute,” Shelby says. She’s sitting on Aemond’s good side, as always. She rubs his back and you fight the urge to break her fingers one by one, snapping them in half like dry autumn twigs, lifeless and hollow. “Wasn’t he cute, honeybunch?”

“Sure,” Aemond replies distractedly. And of course Shelby is the type of person who believes that becoming a father will heal a man, rather than just dooming his children to be collateral damage.

Aegon peeks over the conveyer belt at the chefs who are preparing plates in the middle. He lurches and wobbles. Criston covers his own face with his hands, mortified. “Hey, hey, can I get a Crab Rangoon please?”

A chef says something in Japanese, soft and polite but clearly imploring him to sit back down.

Aegon repeats slowly: “Crab! Rangooooooon!”

“Hey dumbass,” Jace says. “That’s Chinese. We’re in Japan.”

“Oh. Right.” Aegon sighs, retreats, and orders himself another sake bomb.

You grab a plate of veggie rolls and another of fried tofu sushi off the conveyer belt and pass them down the row to Aemond. Shelby sends you the most venomous of glares, but Aemond mouths when she’s not paying attention: Thank you.

~~~~~~~~~~

Two shows in Tokyo, two performances on the stage where Aemond was mutilated. Of course, you don’t see mutilation when you look at him. You never have. You see the way the light hits the angles of his jaw and nose and cheekbones and think of marble faces in museums, generals, kings, saints, angels. You see the crystalline blue of his right eye and think of rivers, cool and rushing and clean. You see the ethereal haze of his left eye and think of other planets. You don’t know why everyone else reads his scar and blindness as a tale of unspeakable ruin. You can’t imagine seeing Aemond that way. It would be easier, less painful, simpler for you if you could. Maybe you could stop wanting him. Maybe you could stop dreaming about him, wisps of longing and memory that escape you as soon as you wake.

Aemond does not attend Comet’s concerts at the Budokan. They’re the only ones you’ve ever known him to miss. He rides out on his Gold Star instead, and then reappears to join the band for their post-show ritual in Jace’s suite, grim and quiet and scribbling in his black-paged notebook, smoking his cigarettes, sipping his Brambles. You cannot blame Aemond. You weren’t here last December when a piece of rigging collapsed during soundcheck and nearly killed him, and yet you can’t stop thinking about it; you can’t stop yourself from glancing up at the rafters during shows, wondering exactly how it happened, picturing Aemond bloody and unconscious on the stage, half-blinded and robbed without knowing it yet.

Tomorrow night is Comet Donati’s final performance in Tokyo, but today Criston has a day trip planned. He has filled every spare second of this tour stop with distractions. The band travels by bullet train (or shinkansen) and then local railways to Nara, the city that served as Japan’s capital in the 700s. Criston hires a tour guide—an 80-year old man called Toru-san, who possesses an incalculable amount of knowledge and also a very, very thick accent—to lead you all around Nara Park to see Isuien Garden, the Kasuga Taisha Shrine, the Nara National Museum, and finally the Great Buddha. Nara Park is full of food and souvenir vendors, as well as 1,200 sika deer that you can pet and feed, albeit at risk of being trampled by overenthusiastic herbivores. There are signs posted with warnings to exercise caution, complete with cartoon illustrations of deer gone rogue.

It’s 95 degrees outside with 80% humidity. You are drenched with sweat and guzzling boba tea. The handle of your bag from a gift shop is slung over your splint. Toru-san, despite his long pants and cardigan sweater, is looking spry as ever and is deep in conversation with Luke and Rhaena; he is regaling them with a bottomless well of Nara trivia. Cregan and Daeron are still browsing through gift shops, mostly for the opportunity to escape the heat and hover, sighing with relief, in front of every electric fan they come across. Aegon, lobster-level red—you aren’t sure if he’s more sunburned or flushed—is snoring under a tree as deer nibble at his cyan tank top and white cargo shorts. Aemond purchased probably $200 worth of deer crackers and has attracted a sizeable crowd of furry new friends. He’s like he always is around animals: beaming, immersed, at peace. Shelby is capturing pictures and video clips of him from a distance.

Nearby where you stand under the shade of a black pine tree, Baela is dressed in a crop top and yoga pants and stretching in the middle of a patch of grass. She keeps having to stop to shove deer away from her as they tiptoe close, searching for snacks. Jace is using Google Translate to flirt with a crowd of Japanese fangirls who have recognized him. They are giggling so loudly you can hear them from across a field. Baela is trying to ignore this. She falls out of a pose and sighs irritably, then walks over to you. Together, you watch Jace for a while, you slurping on your boba tea, Baela frowning with her hands on her willowy waist.

At last, she says: “Sometimes we love people who we know don’t deserve it. But that doesn’t make us love them any less. We just hate ourselves for not being stronger.”

“I think you’re incredibly strong, Baela.”

“Do you?”

“Yes. Strong enough to leave him. Strong enough to begin living your own life again.”

Her expression is suddenly uncharacteristically vulnerable, fearful. “I don’t know if I can do it. I’ve never been an adult without him.”

“You’d figure it out. And you wouldn’t be alone. You’d have Rhaena, and Luke, and ballet, and all your friends and family—”

“And you too, right?” she asks. “You’ll still be my friend? Even after you go back home?”

You are stunned into a silence that Baela first mistakes for rejection. Her face falls. “No no no, I’m not hesitating, you just caught me by surprise. Of course I’ll still be your friend after the tour is over. I’ll be your friend forever.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“And you’ll visit me in prison if I snap one day and throw Jace into a meatgrinder?”

You laugh and hug her, your sweat dampening each other’s clothes: her orange crop top, your Backstreet Boys t-shirt. “Absolutely. For sure.”

“Okay. I gotta go practice some more.” She spends long hours down in the hotel gym while everyone else is sleeping or partying or preparing for shows, running and stretching and yoga and repeating the same dance routines over and over again. You applaud and whistle as she leaves. “Stop,” Baela complains, but she’s grinning.

You procure another boba tea. You find a nice shady spot on a bench. You check your phone; there’s maybe fifteen more minutes until the band is scheduled to leave for the train station to begin the journey back to Tokyo. Naturally, Criston has dinner already planned: kaiseki ryori, a traditional multi-course meal. You wonder if there will be vegan options for Aemond. Your eyes drift back to him. They always seem to. He’s dragging his palm down the face of a ten-point buck as he feeds him a crumbling brown cracker. There’s a fawn curled up in Aemond’s lap. His blond hair is slicked back off his forehead, his black shirt mostly unbuttoned. Sweat gleams on his chest. Your fingertips ache to draw sloping lines and lazy circles in it.

“I never worried about him,” Criston says. He’s appeared beside you, arms crossed guardedly. You move over so there’s room for Criston on the bench. He sits, distant and troubled. “I always worried about the others. Aegon and Jace especially. But not Aemond.”

“Because he never needed you,” you say quietly.

“He didn’t,” Criston agrees. “And so I wasn’t there to protect him that day.”

The day of the accident. “From what I understand, it wasn’t something you could have prevented.”

“No, I couldn’t have stopped that piece of rigging from falling. But I could have made it so he wasn’t standing under it.”

You wait for Criston to explain. That’s an element that people often underestimate: the power of waiting for someone to be ready.

“It was soundcheck,” Criston says. His voice is strained, hushed. He repeatedly touches the stubble of his beard, a nervous habit. “Aemond was on time, as always. Aemond was exactly where he was supposed to be. But no one else was. Aegon and Jace had gone off to a strip club or a burlesque show or something, I don’t remember. They came back to the hotel and were absolutely hammered, they were crawling around on the hallway floor and puking in corners, laughing hysterically, completely out of their minds. Cregan and Luke were there trying to get them cleaned up. I was on the phone with Cregan, he was pissed, probably the most angry I’ve ever heard him, he kept pausing to yell at Aegon. He’d dragged him into a cold shower, but Aegon was fighting, trying to bite and kick him and whatever the hell else. So eventually I decided to go to the hotel and deal with it. Aemond offered to go with me. I told him no, you stay here, I’ll bring the other four even if I have to get the security guys to toss Aegon and Jace over their shoulders and carry them. Then I left.”

“And that’s when it happened,” you realize. “While you were gone.”

“Yes,” Criston says. And he gazes across Nara Park, here in body but his mind trapped in the maze of the past.

“You had no way of knowing what would happen, Criston. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I should have told him to come with me back to the hotel. Or I should have stopped Aegon and Jace from getting wasted. If they’d been on time, if soundcheck had happened as scheduled, no one would have been standing where that piece of rigging fell. Aemond would still be the leader of Comet. He would still have his face, his sight, his life.”

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” you say again.

“Alicent blames me,” he confesses. And you only know who she is because you’ve asked Aegon: the wife of Viserys Targaryen, the mother of his three sons. “She’ll never forgive me.”

Is that really why she avoids you, Criston? Or is there another reason? “If that’s true, it’s only because she’s feeling a lot of horrible things—grief, pain, regret, guilt—and she’s directing them at you. You haven’t earned them. You’re just the person standing in the line of fire. They’re a reflection of Alicent’s inner turmoil, not of your own worth. I think you’ve done a phenomenal job trying to keep this band safe and happy. And I know it’s not easy. I know it’s damn near impossible.”

“I’m glad you’re here,” he says, looking at you with large, dark, truthful eyes like a dog’s.

And you imagine a world in which you’d never seen Aegon after that night in Kansas City, never met Aemond, Baela, Rhaena, Luke, Cregan, Daeron, Criston. “I’m glad I’m here too.”

Criston reaches over and—for a moment, so briefly you could have imagined it—rests his hand on your shoulder like he sometimes does to Aemond and Luke. Then he leaves to collect Cregan and Daeron from a shaved ice vendor. Shelby has strolled over to consult with Toru-san, presumably so she can add his trivia to her Instagram posts and TikTok videos. You go to Aemond.

“I have a confession to make,” he says solemnly as you approach.

The oxygen vanishes from your lungs; you try to hide this. “What is it?”

Aemond smiles up at you. “When the tour guide was leading us here, I thought he kept saying that the park was full of bears. And I didn’t want to kill the mood or anything, but I was definitely concerned about going on a field trip to feed over 1,000 uncaged bears. I am very, very relieved that he was in fact saying deer.”

You chuckle and sit next to Aemond on the grass, petting the fawn in his lap. It blinks sleepily at you, its fur soft and spotted, its ears pricked up and curious.

“What’s your souvenir for this stop of the tour?” Aemond asks.

You pull it out of your bag to show him: a small stuffed sika deer complete with floppy felt antlers. “Isn’t it adorable?”

“It is,” he says. “Are you going to have room for all these keepsakes in your apartment back home?”

“Already fantasizing about me leaving, huh?”

“No,” Aemond says, seriously now. Deadly serious. “No, I’m not.” And then Criston is shouting through cupped hands for everybody to huddle up so you can all head to the train station.

It’s not until the band is trekking out of Nara Park towards the blissful promise of air conditioning that you realize someone is missing. When you look around, you see Criston, Aemond, Shelby, Aegon (rubbing his eyes and yawning), Baela, Jace, Rhaena, Luke, Cregan, and a smattering of security guards dressed in black.

“Wait,” you say. “Where’s Daeron?”

A chorus of confusion: “What?” Huh?” “He’s not here?” At last, Criston spies him sitting alone on a wooden park bench, glumly eating through his mountain of shaved ice.

“What the hell is he doing?!” Jace says impatiently, swiping perspiration from his forehead.

Aegon massages your shoulders. “I think this might call for your particular area of expertise, Stargirl.” And when Aemond’s eye flicks to Aegon fleetingly, resentfully, you think for the first time: And where were you, Aegon, when Aemond was waiting all those months ago? Whoring, drinking, self-destructing in ways that take other people down with you? Then you leave him.

Through the heat that lays thick over the city like a tangle of vines, you trudge to the bench where the youngest Targaryen brother is lingering. “Daeron? What’s wrong?”

He stares gloomily down into his shaved ice: blood-colored, strawberry, ichigo. “Everyone thinks I’m always joking and optimistic, but I’m not.”

You ask gently: “What are you really, Daeron?”

“I don’t know what to be. That’s the problem. I worry about it all the time. I can’t win. If I’m sad, then I’m ungrateful for this tremendous opportunity. But if I’m happy, it’s like I’m dancing on Aemond’s grave.”

“He’s not dead, Daeron,” you say.

“Well, yeah, obviously.”

“But a lot of the time people talk about him like he is. You speak around him, over him, through him. Do you think he doesn’t notice?” Do you think he can’t feel the weight of that dark gravity that roots him to the earth? Do you think he can disentangle who he is from the wreckage that has buried its shrapnel in his bones?

Daeron isn’t insulted by what you’ve said. Instead, he seems fascinated. He seems grateful, like you’ve sat down to help him with an especially baffling puzzle. “What would he want from us, do you think?”

“I think he wants to know that his time in Comet wasn’t wasted. That even if he leaves, he will still be a part of this family. I think he wants to be acknowledged. He doesn’t want pity or awkward silences, he doesn’t want to pretend that the accident never happened. He wants to know that his life will go on in spite of it.”

Daeron ruminates on this, taking a bite of his towering mound of shaved ice. “If I said something about him at the last Tokyo show tomorrow, do you think he’d mind? I’ve had this idea for a while, but I didn’t know how he’d take it.”

“That depends on what you say.”

Daeron asks, peering up at you with large pale eyes: more translucent than Aegon’s, more harmless than Aemond’s. He has been shown more kindness than either of them; he is perhaps less deep, less singularly brilliant, but also less burdened. It is a trade many would happily agree to. It is a trade they would pay for in blood. “What should I say?”

You smile at Daeron. “The truth.”

~~~~~~~~~~

“I’d like to take a moment to share something with all of you,” Daeron says into his microphone as soon as Comet finishes The Worst Way To Be. The audience lowers their cheers to a reverent, intensely attentive murmur.

“Wait, what?” Baela whispers to you and Rhaena as you stand in the front row. Shelby, who had been looking rather bored, whips out her phone and begins a live stream. Aegon, Jace, Luke, and Cregan are upbeat and beaming—as is expected of them, as is required—but they pass each other nervous glances like folded paper notes in a high school classroom. This is not in the script.

“I just want to say thank you,” Daeron continues. His voice reverberates off the walls of the Budokan. “Thank you to all of you guys, of course. Our amazing, incredible fans. Thank you for letting us live this dream of a life.” There are claps and whistles, shrieked declarations of undying adoration. Daeron takes a deep breath. His hands are shaking; you can see the microphone tremble. “And thank you to my big brother Aemond.” Instantaneously, the crowd goes as close to silent as it is possible for a stadium at max capacity to be. The others are gawking at him openly now, unable to paper over it with masklike smiles. “I had been following Comet around for years before I got the offer to officially join. So I know how much work and talent Aemond poured into this band. I’m beyond honored to be up on this stage tonight performing for all of you, but I wish it could have happened a different way. I wish Aemond could be here too. And no matter where he goes in the world or what he does next, he will always be the person who made Comet Donati possible. And he will always be my greatest inspiration. I love you, man. We all love you.”

And the audience erupts into deafening cheers and applause, all for a soul who could not bring himself to attend the show. There are chants of We love you, Aemond! that go on for more than five minutes. Aegon is shouting as loudly as anyone; Jace, Luke, and Cregan are running around the stage and encouraging the crowd. They are a little shellshocked, but they are genuine.

Even Jace, you think, you marvel. Even Jace is honoring him. He doesn’t hate Aemond after all. He provokes and he taunts, sure, and he crosses lines on occasion, but Jace doesn’t hate Aemond. He might even miss him.

For their last night in Tokyo, Criston has grander aspirations for the band than the usual wind down in Jace’s suite. He gets everyone—Aemond included, fetched from the bar of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, already several Brambles deep—into the Escalades to drive to Club Camelot, where Criston has reserved one of the three floors for Comet. It swiftly fills like a flute of champagne: women in sparkling gowns, men with baiting smiles, security guards and label executives and friends and acquaintances and models. The tiles on the floor are black and white, but bathed in sapphire luminescence that covers everyone like rain. Empty hands are filled with frosty bottles and glasses clinking with ice. The song that thunders out of the speakers is a throwback: Butterfly by Crazy Town.

Cregan has acquired a harem of sorts; you look once and he’s flocked by three gazelle-like companions, you look again and there are five of them. Jace is mingling freely. Aemond is talking to Daeron—thanking him, it appears, offering heartfelt gratitude—while Shelby greets a pack of influencer-types as they arrive. They squeal and jump up and down with her in their clicking stilettos, then take turns snapping each other’s pictures. Criston actually appears to be somewhat relaxed. He sips on a Sapporo Premium and chats with one of the guys from the label, gesturing casually with his expressive hands. Aegon is curled up in a booth with Selena Gomez. Yes, Selena freaking Gomez. He keeps playing with her glossy dark tresses and making her giggle, propping his sunburned face up on his knuckles, glowing in that way that he does. It’s not just for you. It’s never been just for you. And sometimes he’s close to you and sometimes he’s not, and right now he’s on the other side of the solar system, he’s out in the Oort cloud, he’ll be back to visit earth in a few hundred years. Aegon disappears into the bathroom every few minutes. You see smudges of white powder on his hands, under his nose. If he tried to talk to you right now, you wouldn’t know what to say to him. He would feel like a stranger.

You’re watching Aemond. You wish you weren’t, but you are. He’s in all black, the top three buttons of his shirt undone. You nurse a Bramble and follow Baela, Rhaena, and Luke around the dancefloor, barely able to hear them over the music. Luke is lightheartedly making fun of Baela for something. Her earrings? Her shoes?

“I’ll have you know that I’m very important around here!” Baela cries over the music. “I’m the patron saint of drive!”

“Patron saint of driving herself to the Gucci store, maybe,” Luke says.

They’re all laughing. You feel like you’re observing them through a transparent wall, like you’re at the aquarium and they’re a dazzling rare species and you’re some grubby kid with your palms pressed to the glass. What am I still doing here? Why did I ever think I belonged here?

You break away from Baela, Rhaena, and Luke and drift by Shelby and her fellow influencers, not intending to eavesdrop but catching a few fragments of their conversation like Jupiter and Saturn capture moons. As Aemond talks to Daeron across the room, Shelby is lamenting her love life. She thinks she’s being discrete, but she’s had more than a few gin and tonics.

“No, he still…he probably doesn’t want me looking at him…he’ll let me blow him, but he won’t actually…you know…?”

And you remember what you told him on that balcony in Reykjavik: I think you haven’t fucked anyone since the accident, and you’re terrified to.

You were right. You’re still right. And here you are, like mirrors: Aemond not fucking Shelby, you not fucking Aegon, and there’s no especially good reason for either except that it just doesn’t feel right. After a while, Shelby and her entourage leave to check out another nightclub down the block. More photo opportunities, you suspect. A change of scenery.

“How’s your wrist?” Jace inquires. He’s found you loitering on the outskirts of the dancefloor. He’s wearing a black sequined blazer with nothing underneath except skin and ink. He’s unsteady on his feet, a Vesper sloshing in his glass. Now the song that’s playing is Ed Sheeran’s I Don’t Care, featuring Justin Bieber. In the booth she’s sharing with Aegon, Selena Gomez audibly groans.

“Great. It actually feels better when no one talks to me.”

Jace cackles, far too loudly. “You are hilarious. Hey, hey, listen.” His free hand skates around your waist. Instinctively, you jolt away from him.

“Nope.”

“Listen.” He grips you more adamantly. “Let’s do this.”

“No, no, that’s a very kind offer but I’d rather chew off my own limbs, thank you.”

“Look, I don’t care if you’ve hooked up with Aegon,” Jace purrs into your ear, sweating out vodka and gin, his curls brushing against your cheek. “Hell, I don’t care if you’re still hooking up with Aegon. I’m better than him. I have to be, right? That fat drunk. I’ll show you.”

You try to pull away from him again. You’re wearing the short sparkly dress you bought in Reykjavik, black velvet and silver stars. “Jace, don’t touch me.”

“Come on, Stargirl, give me a shot—”

“Jace,” you say harshly, your eyes blazing. “Do not touch me.”

“Okay,” he sighs; and, to his credit, he releases you. He holds up his palm in surrender. “Okay, fine, but when you change your mind—”

Aemond soars in out of nowhere, a comet, a meteor, the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs. His fist connects with Jace’s jaw. Jace’s Vesper goes flying; blood spurts from his mouth, split lips and lost teeth. “Don’t you fucking touch her!” Aemond is roaring. He has Jace pinned to the floor, black and white and sapphire and red. “When she says not to touch her, you don’t, you hear me?!”

People are screaming and descending upon them, trying to pull them apart. Your Bramble shatters against the tile floor. Criston is here, and security guards, and Baela and Rhaena and Luke and Aegon. Everyone is talking at the same time, so it’s almost like no one is. Jace is striking at Aemond from the ground. Aemond hits him again, and again, knuckles into defenseless flesh and bone, blood vessels bursting, nerves on fire. The music stops, the lights come on.

“Aemond, stop!” you shout. “Aemond, Aemond, you’re going to kill him!”

“Let him go, Aemond, please!” Baela is yelling, and there’s raw terror in her voice.

Then Jace lands a solid punch at last, a hook that comes in from Aemond’s left. Blood pours from Aemond’s nose, it’s on his face and his throat, it’s running down his chest. Cregan arrives, locks his arms around Aemond’s waist, and heaves him away. Before Jace has a second to recover, Aegon wrenches him up by the collar of his blazer and slaps him open-handed across the face.

“He can’t see on that side, you fucking snake!”

Criston bellows: “Aegon, back up, back up, back the fuck up!” He finally gets a good look at Jace: bleeding, bruised, teeth missing, blinking dazedly at the spectators, too stunned to feel the pain yet. “Oh my God!” Criston whirls to Aemond, who is struggling against Cregan’s grasp. “How’s he going to perform in five days, huh?! Jesus Christ, he looks like he’s been butchered! How am I going to cover that up?! How is he going to sing?!” Criston pulls Jace to his feet; he practically has to carry him. Baela follows after them, more distressed than you’ve ever seen her, flowing tears and strangled sobs. Rhaena and Luke go too.

You, Aegon, and Daeron rush to Aemond. He’s bent over and spitting blood onto the floor so he doesn’t choke on it. “Not broken,” Cregan pronounces after examining his nose. “Just gonna bleed real bad. Needs pressure on it.”

“Are you okay?” Aegon asks you, a hand careful and tender on your face. He’s back again, for a minute, an hour, a day.

Your voice quakes. “Yeah.”

“What did Jace do…?”

“Nothing, nothing that bad, I mean he grabbed my waist but—”

“Aegon?” Selena Gomez says tentatively, waiting nearby and hugging her arms around herself.

“Yeah, one second, love. Give me a second.” He appraises Aemond and whistles. “Man, you are wrecked.” And not just physically. He’s incensed, he’s in shock. You reach for Aemond’s hand and he lets you take it.

“You got him?” Cregan asks you.

“I’ll clean him up. I’ll take care of him.” And as blood continues to run down his face, you draw Aemond towards the bathrooms. You lead him inside the women’s room and lock the door, blue walls and white florescent light. Somewhat ungainly—relying mostly upon your non-dominant hand—you press a pile of paper towels against his nose and tell him to hold it there. Then you wet more paper towels and wipe down his knuckles, his face, his throat. The blood on his chest has run beneath his glossy black shirt. We match, you think randomly. “Can I…?”

He yanks the shirt over his head, then returns the mass of crimson-stained paper towels to his nose. Fortunately, the bleeding appears to be slowing. You erase the smudged trail of scarlet that runs all the way to the waistline of his dark jeans. When you reach the end of it, Aemond flinches away from you; not a pained flinch, but a fearful one. He turns his back on you and walks to the other end of the small and shadowless room. He braces one palm against the wall and sighs deeply. He throws the wad of paper towels in the trashcan and then covers his face with his hand, shaking his head.

“Aemond,” you say. And you wait for him to look you in the eye. It takes a long time. “What do you want?” Why were you watching me and Jace? Why did you lose control?

“Nothing,” he replies immediately.

“That’s a lie.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It does,” you insist, your voice fracturing. “It does matter. Just tell me what you want.”

“Why, so you can let me down easy? Or worse, pretend to be into it to make me feel better, to help piece me and my fragile little ego back together? I don’t beg for anything. You really think I’m going to beg you to want me?”

“No, you’re too fucking proud, you’d never even ask for it. You’ll beat people half to death for things you’re too much of a coward to say out loud, and I’m supposed to feel sorry for you?!”

“Then why are you even in here with me?! Just go back to Aegon, I know that’s what you want. I guess you’ll have to wait in line behind Selena Gomez, but he’ll work his way back around to you eventually.”

“Jace stole something from you, right?” you say. “You feel like he stole the band from you after you were kicked out, and then tonight you felt like he was stealing something else, and that’s why you freaked out and almost murdered him—”

“No. No, because you’re not mine.”

“What do you want, Aemond?” you ask him again, tears of exhaustion and desperation in your eyes.

“I don’t want anything from you,” he says, coming in closer. “So you’re absolved, you’re free to go, I don’t need your goddamn charity—”

Your good hand juts out, and what you plan to do is plant it against his bare chest and push him away. What you do instead—as if by muscle memory, a reflex, an instinct—is reach up to plunge your fingers into his hair. And then his palm is cradling the small of your back and his lips are on yours, moving seamlessly like how currents thread through the ocean. He helps lift you up onto the counter; there is just enough room between two of the sinks. Your legs link around Aemond as he presses himself to you, lips still tinged with coppery blood, bare chest, his waist, his hips. Your back hits the mirror—cool and unyielding, the ink of his lyrics flat against the glass—with enough force to make a thump.

“Are you okay—?”

“I’m more okay than I’ve been in years.”

He tilts up your chin and kisses you deeply, dizzyingly, his tongue darting between your lips. He tastes like his Brambles, sweetness cut with the bite of gin, and smoke, and something else too, something that’s just purely him, something you could drown in like the river of his clear right eye. Gently, you bring your fingertips to his face, to his scar. “Don’t,” he pleads softly, pained.

“There’s nothing wrong with you.”

“Don’t—”

“Aemond, look at me.” And you hold his face still so you know he hears you. “There’s nothing wrong with you. There has never been anything wrong with you.”

You watch it hit him like a stone into water, ripples that wash away everything he’s felt before. He knows you mean it, he can feel it, the same way you can feel the care with which he caresses you, not just lust but engulfing warmth, wordless veneration. He whispers between kisses: “Tell me what to do. Tell me what you want.”

Your lock your gaze with his, then reach down to unbutton his jeans. It’s difficult with the splint, but you manage. You think he might stop you, you prepare yourself for it, but he doesn’t. Instead, Aemond’s hands vanish beneath your dress and slip off your panties, black lace you hadn’t planned on anyone seeing tonight. As you kiss his face—jagged scar, flushed cheek, the slope of his jaw—his fingers slide into a pool of staggering heat and wetness.

He moans. “Oh fuck, that’s for me?”

“I’ve wanted this from the start.”

“Show me…show me how you like it…”

You guide his hand to exactly the right spot and give him a rhythm, a pressure, a pace that rolls a euphoric shudder down your spine. He’s barely touched you, and already you’re shaking all over; you’re throbbing, you’re dazed with that delicious needful aching, you’re gasping into the sweltering, salt-strewn dampness of his neck. His fingertips stroke you in commanding circles—only a few times—until you’re on the precipice, until you stop him. You’re ready, even though he’s huge: long and thick, revealed as he tugs down his jeans and boxers. He pins your uninjured hand against the mirror and kisses and bites at your throat as he eases himself inside you: a stretching that is intense but not unpleasant, hunger being satisfied. And when he thrusts—carefully at first, waiting for you to tell him he can be rougher—there are so many layers of pleasure that it stuns you, it leaves you speechless. Has it ever been like this before? Never, never, never, not once, not for a moment, not with anybody. His future was stolen from him, but he’s taken your past from you; he’s carved it out like a gemstone from the earth and locked it away in a vault no one remembers the passcode to.

“I’m so close,” you whisper, you beg. “Aemond, please, please, I want to come for you…” And you gasp as his fingers skim down your belly again, stroking you forcefully as his thrusts become deeper, quicker, impossibly powerful.

His voice is low and murmuring. His scent is everywhere; it’s all you know how to breathe. “You okay, baby? You alright?”

“Yes, yes, oh God, Aemond, don’t stop, please don’t stop…”

“I won’t stop, baby. You’re doing so well, you’re almost there.”

“Aemond…yes…I love this…”

“I love you.”

He what…? He WHAT…??

And it doesn’t just drag you over the edge; it pushes you, it propels you, you go plummeting off the cliffside and freefall for miles. There’s no disguising it. You have to bury your face in his chest to keep from crying out, clinging to him, your fingernails leaving indents like crescent moons. Aemond, fighting his own climax viciously, lasts just long enough to fuck you through the aftershocks and then empties himself not just physically but also of the shame and aimlessness of the past seven months, of his fears, of his suspicions.

“Wait,” you say as he pulls away from you. You yank a paper towel out of the dispenser and wet it with cold water. First you cool his forehead and the back of his neck with it, then you wipe his fingers and his cock. Still perched on the counter, you wet another paper towel for yourself.

“No,” Aemond tells you. “Let me.” He takes it from you, opens your thighs, and kisses your mouth—teasingly, biting and sucking your lower lip—as he spreads your folds and cleans them of his seed, abundant hot white fluid that you can feel dripping out of you. As he passes over where you are most sensitive—where you can already feel longing for him rebuilding brick by brick—you jump a little, and you both laugh. I could go again, you think. I could do this with him forever. And then, as Aemond descends from the chemical high like a plane gliding down towards a tarmac, you watch as those old familiar poisons—shame, aimlessness, fear, suspicion—begin to fill up in him again, slowly but unmistakably.

He throws out the paper towels and takes several steps back. He starts putting on his clothes, staring at the wall, then at the mirror, not at you but past you, at himself, his clear river-blue eye wide and vacant. He looks horrified by what he’s done; or perhaps, rather, by what he’s said.

You grab your panties off the counter and step into them, readjusting your dress. “Look, uh…if you didn’t mean what you said…that’s totally cool. I get it, sometimes people say things in the moment that aren’t real, there’s the oxytocin and the dopamine, and I don’t want you to feel…uh…you know…like you have to keep up a false pretense or anything…”

Aemond turns around and walks out of the bathroom, the door slamming behind him.

“Okay,” you say to yourself. “Okay. I can fix this.” You use the toilet quickly—UTIs are not welcome here—and then head out onto the dancefloor.

The lights are dim again, and thank God for that; your makeup is smudged, your hair unruly, your eyes glazed, your dress rumpled and stained. Cregan is the only person still waiting. “Hey,” he says flatly, then squints at you. You avoid his astute greyish eyes.

“Hey. Where is everyone?”

“Criston took Jace to the hospital. Baela is there too. Rhaena and Luke are back at the hotel. Aegon is presumably balls deep in Selena Gomez. Aemond just sprinted out of this club and I’d guess he’s headed back to the hotel too. Daeron went after him. I think that’s everybody.”

You shift your weight from foot to foot uneasily. “Shelby?”

“Oh, right. Haven’t seen her. Still out with her friends.” His eyes sweep over you. “On a scale of one to ten, how homicidal would she be if she found out about whatever happened in that bathroom?”

“Nothing happened.”

“Uh huh.” Cregan strides towards the stairwell that leads down to the front door. “Let’s go.”

Back at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, you swipe your keycard and flick the lights on in your suite. You stand there alone, feeling the evidence of what you’ve done: sore muscles and bruised skin and pooling wetness, both yours and his. You are absorbed with thoughts of what you’re going to say to Aemond when you confront him, how much of your truth you are willing to bare. And then your eyes catch on the small trashcan beside your bed, which reminds you of the one back in Singapore, which reminds you of your pack of birth control pills discarded on a pile of crumpled soda cans and snack wrappers.

I haven’t taken a pill in days. How many days? A week?

“Oh my God,” you breathe. And then, more frantically: “Oh no, oh no, no no no…”

What do I do? What the hell do I do?

You race out into the hallway and knock on Baela’s door. Nobody answers. You try Rhaena’s next. She appears in her pajamas, pink and dotted with tiny green Tyrannosaurus rexes. “Hi,” she says agreeably enough, but she’s rubbing her eyes drowsily.

“Hi. I’m really, really sorry to bother you, but it’s an emergency.”

She perks up considerably. “Okay, how can I help?”

“Where’s Luke?”

“In the shower.”

“So he can’t hear us right now?”

“No, he can’t.”

“Good. Do you know when Baela will be back from the hospital?”

“Not anytime soon,” Rhaena says. “She messaged me that Jace needs stitches and has a concussion. They’ll be there all night, at least.”

You exhale, a defeated little squeak. “Is Aegon around? With or without Selena Gomez?”

“No, they haven’t come back yet. I have no idea where they are.”

“Okay.” You swallow noisily.

“What’s going on with you?” Rhaena asks, concerned.

“This really is not a Rhaena situation. This is a Baela or Aegon situation.”

“Alright, but neither of them are here. So I’m who you’ve got.”

You stare at her. “I need Plan B. Do you happen to have any Plan B?”

“Plan B…? Like, you just had unprotected sex with someone Plan B?”

“Yes, exactly, that one.”

Rhaena gapes, scandalized. “With who?!”

“Confidential,” you say briskly. “Do you have any or not?”

“No, I definitely don’t have any Plan B lying around.”

“No,” you groan. Tears are welling up in your eyes. “What am I going to do? How do I get Plan B in Japan?!”

“We’ll figure this out,” Rhaena says. She dashes to her nightstand to grab her iPhone. “Don’t panic. It’ll be okay. Let’s Google 24-hour pharmacies in Tokyo…”

You don’t have Criston here to summon an Escalade—nor would you willingly risk him finding out about this—but Rhaena uses Google Translate to ask the hotel’s front desk to call a taxi. She shows the taxi driver an address, figures out how many yen you owe him, and then asks him very politely (if haltingly) in Japanese to wait ten minutes while you’re inside the pharmacy so you can take a return trip as well. He seems to agree.

Rhaena accompanies you into the pharmacy and repeats these steps: Google Translate, an exchange of yen, the receipt of a service. She tells you that based on her quick research, Plan B is usually by prescription only in Japan, but pharmacists will sometimes be willing to prescribe it on the spot to a patient in need. Rhaena spends a long time typing out a message for the middle-aged, bespectacled pharmacist, then points to you. This is my friend, the maybe-pregnant slut from Missouri, you imagine her saying. She needs emergency contraception. It’s really in all of humanity’s best interests for her not to continue her bloodline.

“You have to show him your ID,” Rhaena tells you.

You give your passport to the pharmacist, and then he hands you a small package. You and Rhaena purchase a bottle of Coke Zero as well. You gulp down the single tablet as the pharmacist watches with bushy raised eyebrows, amused. You are pleased to discover that the taxi driver has waited, and within fifteen minutes you and Rhaena are back at the hotel.

“You’ve talked to a lot of people tonight,” you tell Rhaena matter-of-factly as you ride the elevator back up to the band’s floor.

“Oh, yeah. I guess I did. I mean, I’ve been practicing. And you needed me.”

“I’m proud of you,” you say.

Rhaena smiles sheepishly. “Thanks.”

“And I’ll be even more proud of you when I get my period.”

She giggles, she trots off to her suite, you retreat into yours. You collapse onto the floor and gaze up at the ceiling, studying the specks and grooves in the tiles like constellations.

“It was only one time,” you say to the ceiling. “I was on the pill for years. That takes a while to leave my system, right? I mean, what are the odds? It’s fine. It’s totally fine. Nothing’s going to happen, right?”

Right?

#aemond targaryen #aemond one eye #aemond x you #aemond targaryen x reader #aemond x y/n #aemond x reader #Aegon Targaryen #aegon targaryen ii #Aegon II Targaryen #Aegon Targaryen II x reader #aegon ii #aegon targaryen x reader

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colectingstrz · 9 months

Text

THIS ONE IS FOR U

Soo's smol notey:📝: I saw this pic on Pinterest and I was immediately inspired to write a Jake related fic with some correlation to basketball ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ + plussss Jake is soo so the type to yell this is for you and miss 😭 hence the title 💀

“Unknowingly, when you call my name Heartbreakingly, my heart is pounding”

After a messy breakup things have been awkward especially as your the teams manger and have to interact with Jake on a daily basis or in which Jake is determined to win you over and get you back even embarrassing himself in the process

TO SAY THINGS ARE AWKWARD IS AN UNDERSTATEMENT. You and Jake’s breakup was as messy as it could be. Jake had cheated on you the whole thing drove you mad not only did you drag the girl by her hair you also dragged Jake and attempted to drown him in the pool in front of everyone. If it weren’t for your friends and his getting involved you would have gone to jail for murder that day.

Though time has gone past and you are no longer upset and have accepted reality, you are still slightly embarrassed about how you acted at the time as well as the status of your and Jake's relationship, especially as you are his basketball team’s manager. You pretend it's nothing, but you're bothered and find it difficult to be comfortable around him.

"So... do you have a prom date yet?" Jake inquires, gazing your way as he dribbles the ball. "Why should that worry you? It's none of your business who I'm with," he groans, "it's my business you're my ex," you smile " key word here is ex..my life should not concern you now, stop asking stupid questions and start shooting some hoops," you say one final time before leaving and heading to the back to collect additional basketballs, which Heeseung had requested earlier.

While looking for which set to pick you feel a presence behind you. So you turn around to be face to face with the last man you wanted to see. Go away Jake seriously “ dont make me report you for stalking ”Jake laughed holding his chest “ ahh im so hurt y/n” you roll your eyes turning back but Jake held your shoulder forcing you to turn to him “ who are you going with tho?” Why does he want to know so bad.. it’s weird “ since your begging for an answer I’ll let you know..honesty I have no idea yet I haven’t decided “ he hummed as a response but you could tell he was thinking

He had that I’m thinking of something stupid jake face on right now “ go on.. just say it I know you want to..” his face lit up before he took a deep breath “ well I have no one to go with and you seem to not have anyone to go with..soooo you and me prom! what do you think ?” Is he on drugs ? Or has he just genuinely lost the plot you blink your eyes aggressively perplexed as to what you were hearing.

“ what do I think? Why would I got to prom with my ex who cheated on me ? Do you seriously want to know what I think-because I have a bone to pick with you Jake don’t even get me started" you felt yourself getting worked up as you resurfaced locked memories you never wanted to remember “ i already told you I even showed you how sorry i was.. I even tried explained to you what actually happened but you would not listen! You know I would never hurt you” here he goes again with the lies

“ I don’t want to hear it.. I do not want to have this conversation with you.. I’m not going to be your prom date go ask some other girl” you shove past him and storm out of the hall forgetting the little side quest heeseung had set you on. A deep sigh was let out as you rested on a the wall of the hallway why can’t you just leave me alone Jake

JAKE’S 2ND ATTEMPT. The next day was simply no better jake was really pushing your buttons “ the answer is 45 btw” he whispered to you. At this point he had basically given you the answers to half of the paper he might as well have just sat the test for you instead. I don’t need your help leave me aloneeee “ jake piss off I don’t need you I can do this myself” you whispered back basically spitting out your words at him so he would get the point and leave you alone. He sighed, turning away from you , relieved to have some peace and quiet you attempt the to tackle the other half of the paper and realise you had no idea what any of the questions were or how to answer them.

You sighed, knowing you needed Jake's assistance. Kill me now pls You look to your side to already see Jake staring at you with his head resting on his Palm “ it seems you need me love ” you roll your eyes “ call me love again and I’ll drown you in the pool for real this time just give me the answers ” your response causes Jake to laugh slightly as he turns his paper in your direction so you can copy the rest.

" you owe me for basically giving you a free A " you sigh " you never asked anything back when we were together tho.." Jake flicked your forehead causing you to flinch in agony. What the hell jake " we’ll likeeee you said earlier, you're my ex, so this kind gesture comes at a cost, my love," he should stop calling me that. "So, what exactly do you want?" Jake grins “Be my prom date." You step back "Oh my Jake, you've turned into a comedian haven't you? “ You were laughing so hard you had to hold your stomach because it was starting to hurt. "I'm not going to be your prom date" get somebody else to do it You pat him on the back with a fake smile before walking away, or rather sprinting away, because you could see him following you again in the corner of your eye.

JAKE’S 3RD ATTEMPT. if it was not bad enough he tormented you at school he had the audacity to show up at your house and disturb you in the comfort of your own home. Your sitting down chilling while doing some sketches, when you hear a bang on your window, what the hell? You are on your knees, peering out, to get a peek only to find Jake waving down at you, holding a flower he had snatched from your mother's treasured garden. The more Jake kept going the more it gave you any tiny hint of hope..you were even willing to look past what he had done to you almost wanting to give in. Why can’t you just stay out of my life Jake stop making me feel things

Jake, as usual, got his way, and you ended up letting him in through your window and now sit on opposing sides of the bed. "you know... you could have just knocked and my sister would have opened the door for you... she's like the only one who likes you in this household," you said slyly, to which Jake sighed and looked down. " Can we not do this right now?" You raised your brow. "Do what argue? Are you afraid of being called out?" Standing up, Jake sighed once more.

“ stop this it’s so-so irritating ! I keep trying to explain myself to you and you never want to listen to me ! It’s like In your head you’ve already painted me as some Cheater when that’s not what happed ” I don’t have time for this “ well I don’t know how you expect me to believe you when I saw what I saw ! Even my friends told me that they saw you guys together before I even came down to see it for myself !” Jake sighed in irritation, approaching you and placed his hands on your shoulders “y/n.. can you just trust me for once and take my word.. you know how much you mean to me, I would never go out of my way to hurt or disrespect you." “She kissed me, and I didn't know what to do. I pulled her away, but you had already left."

You didn't want to believe it, yet you gave in so easily, especially when Jake sounded so serious and genuine that you couldn't detect a lie anywhere... Reality had hit you. You realise for some reason that you never really talked to Jake after that, and ghosted him because you had fixed your mind on your opinion of what had happened, never really wanting to hear his side of the story

You hated yourself for doing this and ignoring him all this time, you both had been hurting for no cause. If it went for yourself and your overthinking and actually had bothered to talk it out with Jake now you could have still been together. Gosh why am I so quick to always jump to conclusions this is my fault " Jake.. I'm so sorry..I-“ shhh it's ok it’s alright " Jake cut you off by pulling you into his chest, one hand resting on your head and the other on your waist as he pulled you into a hug. "All that matters is that you believe me now in this moment.. that's all I ever needed and wanted from you my love," similar to before before hearing him call you that made your heart flutter but in this circumstance you felt your heart just melt.

“Here is my heart out for you ”

JAKE’S FINAL AND LAST ATTEMPT WAS THE GRAND FINAL. Now that you and him were on talking terms the awkwardness eventually faded away and it was like freshman year all over again with the two of you locking gazes across the room and quickly looking away. Blushing at any compliment he would make. Cute exchange of love letters in class it was nostalgic. Jake was the happiest he had been in a long time, and his teammates noticed. Jake's performance had improved shooting many goals more than he had in the previous semester, and it was clear from the lovey dovey glances you two exchanged across the sports hall at every practise session that you and jake had patched it up. Though Jake, on the other hand still wanted to ask you to prom.

But now that you two are back on track, he wanted to make a huge proposal that would show you and Convey how how he truly felt and as well as a cool way to ask you out. Jake wanted to impress you with want he knew best aka basketball.

During practice you had arrived a bit late due to your teacher but you still rushed to the hall not wanting to keep the team waiting. As soon as you arrived you sat down on the front bench as you went on your phone to quickly reply to your friends message ." hey y/n" You look up to see Jake joyously waving at you, and you reciprocate one. He holds the ball up pointing in your direction " This one's for you! " He yells before shooting into the hoop. Jake had a vision of how this would play out, which included him taking a beautiful shot, you being amazed, and him asking you out to prom. But, unfortunately for you Jake and everyone else in the room, he absolutely missed it; he wasn't even close to getting it in.

The entire situation was humiliating. Afterwards to top it off Jake clumsily stood on one knee almost tripping while he whipped out a Harry Bow ring form his pocket , reaching out to you, "w-will you be my prom date?" No..way he can’t be serious You were resisting the urge to laugh, but you managed to let out a small "yes" as you ran into his arms for a big bear hug. The whole thing was amusing. Jake was clumsy, but it was adorable because you could see he tried his hardest for you even if it didn't work out.

Despite all that and happed between you two… you was happy to see he was still the awkward and cute boyfriend you had learned to adore.

@COPYRIGHTS SOOTREEPEAR 2023

𖤐 steal my work and I’ll come to your house and suck your blood 🧛‍♀️

𖤐authors notes and dat pt2.📝: broke off the sad ending streeak 😻 wrote tbis at 4am so if sometimg is spelt wrong erase it from your memory and act like u didn’t see it (ง'̀-'́)ง aniii ways i hope you liked it !! + if you already saw this it is a repost 😭 I privated it and made some changes

- peace and love ♡︎

𖤐 link to my other works !!

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telekineticseance · 1 year

Text

CIRCUMSTANCES

pairing: matt stone x f! assistant reader

summary: your friends leave you at a bar and you only have one number memorized

genre: fluff

word count: 2627

cw: legal age gap although nothing happens, drinking

author's note: this is like my first matt related fic so i hope y'all enjoy, may have more parts, may not idk i'm awful when it comes to updating

"Hm...Hello?" The voice rang through the other end of the phone that you held shakily in your hand. You didn't know why out of all people you decided to call Matt, but he was the only one with a phone number you seemed to remember. The only one who was sober enough to not leave you at a bar at least.

"Hello? Who is this?" He spoke again, his voice sounding raspier than usual, you definitely woke hi up which made you even more guilty about the situation. "Matt.." You mumbled against the phone as you heard a bunch of shuffling on the other side of the phone before Matt spoke again, "Y/N? Is that you? Are you okay? Where is your phone?"

He continued asking questions that your brain couldn't quite comprehend, as he was speaking so fast and the loud music from the bar was ringing in your other ear. "I-I'm okay. Just by myself." You slurred out, resulting in a sigh from the other end of the line.

You heard Matt take a deep breath before he spoke again, "Where's your phone?" You shrugged in response, as of he could see you before coming to the realization and responding, "I...lost it. I think. I don't know. But I didn't remember any other numbers and my friends all left with other guys and I don't know what to do." You spoke into the phone, tears welling in your eyes as they scanned the bar and you twirled the cord of the phone in your fingers nervously. This was a terrible idea, and extremely unprofessional.

"Hey. Hey. Take a few deep breaths." Matt's voice soothed across the line, him adding a few shushes in as he spoke, keeping himself calm. You nodded at his advice, taking in deep breaths as he continued to speak through the phone, "Now Y/N, where are you?"

You looked around, trying to remember which bar you ended up at. You had been bar hopping all night with your friends before they decided to leave with a group of random guys, despite your protests against it. "The Little Bar," you told him, once your eyes spotted a sign.

You hear more shuffling coming from the other side of the phone and the jingling of a belt followed by the sound of keys, "Okay I'll be there in a few minutes. Don't move. I'll come in and fin-" His voice was cut off before a loud beep rang through the phone and you let out a small groan, realizing it ran out of time before hanging the phone back on the hook.

You stood in your corner waiting for Matt to arrive, watching the blurry scene pass by. The music playing a recent pop hit loudly through the jukebox in the corner as people danced and drank while singing along off key. You tapped your foot to the beat before wincing from the pain shooting up your leg from your feet. Wearing your new heels that you hadn't broken in yet, probably wasn't the best idea but you wanted to look nice. You were trying to catch the attention of someone, whether it be a guy or whoever, just someone to give you the attention you craved.

You hadn't gone on a date since you started working for Matt as his assistant about a year ago. Since before you started you had a crush on Matt. You watched a lot of South Park in your younger years, practically being the same age as the show, you knew you had no chance with Matt. After all he was 51 and you were hardly 25, but the thoughts definitely crossed your mind every now and then. The first time you saw Matt was when you watched BASEketball in middle school with some friends, and immediately you had your eyes set on him from there, not knowing you'd eventually be the one he practically relies on for his day to day business.

You sighed, shaking the thoughts from your head again before leaning down and slipping off your heels, holding them in your hands as you continued to watch the night life. Suddenly, you felt the warm presence of a figure next to you before looking up and seeing a unfamiliar man there, drink in his hand as he looked down at you. "Hey there cutie, you look lonely over here, how about I buy you a drink and we can have some fun?"

You looked the guy up and down before giggling slightly, "Was that your best pickup line?" You looked up at the tall figure, he wasn't the most attractive guy around, then again nobody really is, although he did have nice eyes. He chuckled at your response before looking back at you, "Okay I admit it wasn't that good. But I wasn't lying, you are cute and I would like to buy you a drink."

You looked around, seeing if you could see Matt's tall figure through the crowd, but didn't. "I shouldn't my friend is coming to get me and told me to stay where I was." The guy nodded while smiling before looking where your eyes were scanning and turning his attention back to you, "Well I can always bring the drink to you if you'd prefer that."

You thought for a moment before shaking your head, "I'm okay," You tell him as he nods in response while taking another sip from his glass. The silence between you two is filled with the beats of the song playing before he turns back to you. He takes a pause before opening his mouth, "I know it's straight forward but do you wanna make out or something?"

Your eyes widen as you turn and look at him, face full of shock, "Excuse me?" He chuckled nervously at your response before speaking again, "Listen. You seem nice and we probably won't see each other again. Just a thought for living on the riskier side of life for once."

You took a moment before shrugging and nodding, who knew when Matt was actually going to show up, plus you came here for two things, to get fucked up, and to get fucked. And at this rate, only one of those things were coming true and it definitely wasn't the second one.

You wrapped your arms around the neck of this random bar guy before feeling him wrap his arms around your waist and the two of you began kissing with his back pressed up against the wall. The two tongues explored one another's mouths as your fingers tangled into his hair. Shortly afterwards you heard the loud clearing of a throat before pulling away and turning around to see Matt himself, standing there in slightly baggy jeans and a loose fitting tee. Although it was such a simple clothing choice, you couldn't help but find yourself staring in awe, before turning your eyes to meet his gaze where his eyebrows were slightly furrowed and his jaw clinched as he looked between the two of you.

Matt cleared his throat again before holding out his arm and giving you a "come here" motion with his hand, "Uh Y/N...I think we should leave. Unless you're too occupied." He said with a slight tilt to his head as he continued glancing between you and the guy. You pulled yourself out of the guy's grasp as he stared at Matt with a look of shock and confusion.

"Goodnight....dude." You tell him giving him a light pat on the chest before turning around and walking towards Matt. The guy just gave a small wave, still eyeing Matt with the same look as you two left the bar and Matt walked you to his car, opening the door for you and helping you as you stumbled getting in a little.

Matt walked around after shutting your door and climbed into the driver's side before turning and looking at you, "So was that before or after you woke me up and asked me to come get you?" Matt asked, a hint of annoyance in his tone, different than the tone he had previously on the phone with you.

You shrugged looking out the window, trying not to stare at him. "After I guess." You mumbled, resting your head against the glass and Matt sighed before leaning back into his seat and starting the car. You fiddled with the heels still in your hands as you glanced over at him driving. Circumstances by Rush played softly throughout the speakers as he tapped lightly on the steering wheel with the bass line, his fists slightly clenched along with his jaw.

His eyes shifted gaze from the road to look down at you and you quickly went back to looking away. He took a deep breath, "Where's your address again?" You told him softly, looking down at your shoes. You felt bad for dragging him out of bed and making him come get you. You glanced at the clock before seeing the dim light shine 3:23. "Fuck," you sighed out before turning your gaze to Matt, "I'm sorry I didn't realize it was so late."

He shrugged, keeping his eyes on the road, "It's fine. Couldn't sleep anyways." He was lying. You knew when he was lying as he was never really good at it. At least as long as you knew him. Despite only knowing him for a year, you practically knew everything about him as it was kind of your job to know. He also confided in you for a lot of things, whether it was stress about work or if he just needed a person to vent to, he knew he could rely on you, no matter the time or place, you were there for him.

After the awkward drive in partial silence, with only the sound of Matt's music playing through the speakers, Matt pulled into the parking lot of your apartment complex before turning to you, "You don't have to come in tomorrow, I'll be okay, just get some rest." He spoke softly, the clenching of his jaw wasn't there anymore, just a soft gaze from his eyes.

You shook your head, you hadn't missed a day since you started and you weren't gonna start now. "No I'm okay. I'll be okay." You opened the car door and began to get out before tripping over your own feet and falling. You heard Matt curse under his breath before shutting off the car and running out to get you. You shooed him away as you tried getting back up but everything around you was spinning, and it definitely wasn't helping. Matt placed his hands on your waist sending a shiver down your spine as he helped you up. He pulled his hands away, mumbling a soft, "Sorry", as he cleared his throat and looked back at you.

"It's okay," You muttered, as you looked back at him before trying to walk before stumbling slightly again. Matt let out a soft chuckle before placing a hand on your waist once more and putting the other on your arm, "Come on clumsy I'll help you get to bed."

You nodded as he helped you up the stairs to your apartment before you fumbled with you key and unlocked the door. The two of you walked down the hallway before Matt opened your bedroom door and flicked on the light switch.

You felt embarrassment wash over you as his eyes scanned your walls lined with random movie posters and pictures of random celebrities you found attractive, Matt not included. He chuckled as he looked back at you, "Quite the interior designer aren't you," he teased before helping you into your room and helping you sit on your bed.

"Now let's find you some better sleeping clothes," He said before walking over to your dresser and starting to open the top drawer. Your eyes widened as you gasped, "NO NOT THAT ONE!" Matt jumped slightly at your protest and threw his hands up defensively.

"I'm guessing the clothes aren't in that one?" He questioned before pointing to the second drawer hesitantly and you nodded in response. He gave you a nod back before opening the drawer and pulling out a tank top and a pair of shorts that were laying on top and handing them to you.

You took the clothes from him and set them on the bed next to you before standing up and reaching behind you to grab the zipper to your dress but finding it hard for yourself to reach. You let out a sigh before dropping your hands and turning to look at Matt with a pleading look in your eyes, "Can you help me unzip?"

His eyes widened ever so slightly before he cleared his throat, nodding in response. He walked over to behind you and you held your hair up as you felt his touch as he gripped the top of the dress and pulled down the zipper gently. You held up the straps and turned to look at him before thanking him. He nodded once more before excusing himself, "I'm gonna go grab you a water and such." He said before quickly scurrying out of the room, shutting the door behind him.

You took a deep breath before slipping off the dress and throwing it in the clothes hamper across the room. You did the same with your bra before putting on the pajamas that Matt had handed you and laid down in the bed.

After a few minutes, Matt knocked gently before he walked in with a bottle of water, a bottle of ibuprofen, and a small trash can with a fresh trash bag inside, looked to be your bathroom trash can to be exact. He also had some blankets and cushions from what seemed to be your couch. "I didn't want you to throw up on the floor."

You giggled slightly at his statement as he set the trash can on the ground next to your bed and set down the other items on the night stand, still holding the cushions and blankets under his arms and in his hand, "If it's alright with you I was just gonna crash on the floor, just to um keep an eye on you. Under other circumstances I wouldn't think of it but, I just uh, wanna make sure you're okay."

You felt your heart skip a beat and your stomach flip at his words. Matthew Richard Stone at your apartment, sleeping in the same room as you? Middle school version of you was punching the air at the thought. You nodded in response and he gave a small grin before setting the cushions and blankets down before flipping the light switch and laying down. You turned over on your bed, thinking about how he was only a few feet away from you, in a place outside of the work environment and it made you giggle a little inside. Maybe it was a side effect from the alcohol but the whole situation definitely made you feel a little giddy.

"Hey Matt?" You chirped, breaking the silence. He moved a little on the cushion, "Yes?"

"I like you....a lot." You confessed, eyes widening a little. He chuckled slightly his voice raising a little as if he was talking to a child, "I like you a lot too Y/N."

You sighed, knowing he didn't understand what you meant but chose to ignore it. "Now get some sleep. Okay?" He spoke softly, moving on the cushions once again.

You let out a soft sigh, "Okay..goodnight Matt."

"Goodnight Y/N," he returned before you felt yourself drift off into another world.

updated a/n: i made a part two.. enjoy :)

#writing #words #matt stone #fanfic #fanfiction #this isn't that good #i'm really sorry #i've been sitting on this for weeks though #hope you enjoyed

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whatsnewalycat · 1 year

Text

Designated Person | Chapter 5

Pairing: Francisco "Catfish" Morales x F!Reader

Chapter 5: Fever

Rating: Explicit (18+ only)

Series Summary: When posting bail for Frankie Morales, your former employer and former lover, you unwittingly designate yourself as his third party custodian during his pre-trial release. Your often tumultuous relationship with him is given a new set of rules and put to the test. Can the two of you co-exist peacefully, or will you crash and burn?

Word Count: 8.7k+

Content / Warnings: Reader POV, infidelity, past romantic & sexual relationship and related flashbacks, food, viral infection (influenza), respiratory infection, hospitalization, asthma, inhaler, bb girl gets sick, frankie gets to mother hen a little, fever dream, alcohol, bar, heavy angst, not a universe where covid-19 existed, manipulation

Notes: Hey, buddy. If there are any inaccuracies in the realm of medical science and hospitals and all that jazz, let's collectively ignore that, ok? Perfect. Thank you for reading!!!

[ Tag List ] [ AO3 ] [ Spotify Playlist ] [ Series Masterlist ]

Yesterday afternoon, after Emmaleigh returned from school, she complained that her whole body hurt. Alarm bells went off in your head. You studied her face and noticed that her cheeks were rosy and she looked dazed.

“Are you feeling ok?” you asked, pressing the back of your hand to her hot, sweaty forehead. A grimace rolled across your face, “You’re burning up, Em.”

She barely mumbled a response, then trudged over to the couch and laid down.

The boys were soon to join her, getting lethargic as their temperatures skyrocketed. All three Howard children took turns coughing their sickness into the air. You did your best to stay away from their germs while you accommodated them, but should have known that the future was already percolating in your immune system.

“I’ll work from home tomorrow,” Marla told you when she got home, “I just hope they didn’t get you sick.”

Well, guess what?

They got you fucking sick.

It started with small things: a tight soreness in your throat, aches shooting from deep within your muscles like you did a full body workout the day before.

When Frankie walked through the front door, he took one look at you in your blanket cocoon on the couch, then at the TV playing King of the Hill, and asked, “What’s wrong?”

“I think my kids got me sick,” you informed him. The words tickled. A coughing fit erupted in from your chest.

His boots clunked to the floor, one at a time, as he probed, “You ok?”

“I’m fine,” you shook your head, then swallowed the thickness in your throat.

“Are you sure?” he took a few steps towards you, narrowing his gaze, “You look like shit.”

“Aww, you’re so sweet,” you deadpanned.

He approached the couch, brought the back of his hand to your forehead, and grumbled, “You feel warm.”

“Oh my god. I’m fine,” you groaned, pulling the blanket over your head, “Go away before I get you sick.”

Frankie sighed and retreated into his bedroom.

When you woke up this morning, the sky outside was still dark. You were still on the couch, wrapped up in your blanket. A layer of sweat lined your skin, but you shivered from the perceived cold.

It felt like a fucking Mack truck hit you.

The first deep morning breath to stretch your lungs caused them to seize. A fit of coughs ripped your body in half. You sat up, struggling to draw breath between each new wave of coughing.

Frankie wobbled into the living room, wearing just a pair of navy blue boxers, his hair all sleep-mussed, as he sat down beside you and smoothed his palm against your back. His groggy morning voice rumbled from his throat, “You ok?”

Your entire respiratory tract felt constricted. The tempo of your heart hastened. You shook your head back and forth, shoulders jumping with each cough, and put one hand up in the shape of an L, curling your pointer finger down repeatedly.

“Do you need your inhaler?” he asked.

You nodded and managed to gasp out, “Purse—room—”

He jumped to his feet and rushed out of the room and returned a few moments later, elbow deep in your ratty canvas tote bag, muttering under his breath, “How the fuck do you find anything in here?”

Finally, he pulled the inhaler out and you snatched it from him, shaking it for a moment before popping the cap off and sealing your lips around the mouth piece. You inhaled a few puffs of albuterol and felt it start to take effect, lungs calming, shifting their violent spasms into smaller, more manageable hiccups.

Frankie sat down next to you and rubbed your back in slow, soothing motions. It should have felt good, but the gentle touch sent ripples of pain across your skin. You whimpered, “Everything hurts.”

“You’re not going to work today,” he declared.

“No,” you confirmed, “Marla is with them. Don’t have to go.”

“I’m staying with you,” he said then.

You pouted, shoulders slumping as you looked over at him, “Don’t—”

Sternness creased his forehead, “It’s not a question.”

“I can take care of myself,” you protested weakly.

He raised his eyebrows and blinked at you, as if to reaffirm that this was non-negotiable.

“Fine,” you murmured in defeat.

A small, victorious smile crossed his face, “Atta girl.”

> MARLA: > We all tested positive for Influenza B, FYI. How are you feeling?

< ME: < I think I caught it :(

“It’s the flu,” you inform Frankie in a croaky murmur.

His eyes don’t part from the TV when he says, “Told ya.”

You want to shoot a glare at him, but find your energy reserves depleted. The bones in your wrist cry out when you tuck the phone beneath your pillow. A whine squeaks from your raw, tight throat.

“Do you wanna lay down in your room? Might be comfier there,” he suggests.

“No TV,” you grumble.

His mouth folds into a thoughtful frown. He taps his fingers against his lips, then looks over at you, “I can set it up in there.”

You study his face, “Really?”

“Sure,” he shrugs, then rises to his feet, “Need help getting up?”

“No,” you insist, but when you sit upright, your head starts to spin and throb. With a pathetic whimper, you pinch the bridge of your nose.

Frankie stares down at you expectantly, but a spin cycle tumbles your brain in its centrifuge. You can’t stop it. He holds his hand out, a wordless offer of assistance.

You swat it away.

Frustration boils your blood. A wave of wet coughs bubbles up your throat.

I don’t want your fucking help. I can do this myself. I don’t fucking need you.

You try to stand, but your legs are wobbly and collapse under pressure. Your hands ball into fists and you hit the couch cushion on either side of you as hard as you can, which isn’t very hard, then choke out between coughs, “I—fucking—hate this—”

Frankie’s face sags with pity, “Do you need—”

“No!” you try to yell with authority, but it comes out this pitiable, gurgling, wheezy word that crushes your spirit.

Your shoulders shake from the force of your coughing. You slump over into yourself and bury your face in your hands.

Frankie returns to his seat beside you and hands you the inhaler from the coffee table. You grab it and take a few puffs, then try to calm down as the albuterol works at your inflamed airway.

“We should go see the doctor,” he says quietly.

You manage to meet his gaze and pout. His eyes are pleading, but you shake your head, “I’m fine.”

“You can barely breathe—”

“I’m fine,” you repeat.

His jaw cocks to the side and he grumbles, “You’re so fucking stubborn, you know that?”

“Never heard that before—” you take a gulp of air, “in my life.”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” he chuckles, then stands again, “Ready?”

You nod and get to your feet, the sweat-drenched throw blanket draped over your shoulders like a cape as you tiptoe through the house, to your bedroom, where you collapse on top of your covers.

Frankie talks to you while he gets everything set up, muttering things about fevers and breathing. Your eyes follow him as he does this, but you ignore his reminders to drink from the water bottle on your side table and take the Tylenol he set next to it, because you’re pretty sure he’s not even real.

After getting the TV set up, he turns it on and resumes your King of the Hill marathon. He makes you sit up to take the Tylenol and chase it with a half a bottle of water, then leaves for a few minutes. He returns holding your phone in one hand and a bowl of soup in the other.

You grimace at both items, but take your phone. Frankie sets the steaming bowl of soup on your nightstand and asks, “Do you want me to leave?”

“Aren’t you—” you yawn, cough, then finish your sentence, “worried you’ll get sick?”

He frowns and shakes his head, shoving his hands in the pockets of his sweatpants, “I got a flu shot.”

Your skepticism must be etched into your face, because shifts his weight to one leg and explains further, “Angie makes us get them every year.”

“She’s so responsible,” you admire.

He shifts his weight to the other leg and runs a hand through his messy hair. Your head swims, and again, you’re struck by the sense that this isn’t real. You’re flattened into 2D. A flipbook cartoon. Everything seems to be moving in slow motion and far away.

“I get it. Why you chose her,” you mumble breathlessly, snuggling in closer to your pillow and blanket, letting your eyelids flutter closed, “So pretty, and fun, and has her shit together,” a cough interrupts you, and when you regain your stamina, you hum, “She’s awesome. I get it.”

Frankie doesn’t say anything, but as you’re drifting to sleep, you feel him tug your covers out from underneath you and tuck you into bed.

When your eyes open again, the room is much darker. You sit upright and look around. Everything seems familiar, yet completely foreign. Your bedroom, but veiled. Hazy, almost.

And quiet.

So fucking quiet that your pulse echoes in your head.

“Frankie?” you call out into the darkness of your open doorway.

He doesn’t respond.

Unease settles in your gut, heavy and hard. A boulder lodged in your intestines. You swing your feet over the side of your bed and press the soles of your feet against the hardwood floor. The floorboards creak when you tiptoe across the dimly-lit room to the doorway.

Then you pause and study it.

It looks ominous for some reason. Bigger than it should be.

As you step through it, you move through a slick, shiny membrane, which gives way to your entry with little resistance. It leaves a gummy residue on your skin. You try to wipe the remnants from your arms, grimacing at how viscous the clear fluid feels against your hands.

This is when you notice your surroundings are no longer dark. You squint up and look around.

Sunlight pours in through a windowed dome that stretches high above you. Beyond it lies a long, glass tunnel. Moisture from the humid air settles on your skin atop the layer of doorway residue.

Trees and bushes of all shapes and sizes fill the space. Some with thick, waxy leaves. Some adorned with colorful, blooming flowers. Crowds of faceless people mull about on a terracotta path that winds through the enclosure. None of them seem to notice you standing there in your pajamas.

The butterflies notice you, though.

Monarchs, tiger-like stripes sectioning off orange, their wings tipped with a thick black outline and dots of white. Paper Kites, their chalky white wings appearing luminous in the sunshine, black spots and stripes contrasting the bright glow. Owl butterflies, huge by comparison, their wings decorated with circular patterns in many shades of brown.

Dozens of others flutter around you, a wide variety of species, each one breathtaking in their own right. A few land on your arm when you hold it up.

You smile, then the familiarity of this place dawns on you. The butterfly house.

Frankie took you here occasionally when you were still together. Sometimes with Sarah, sometimes without. Far enough away from Kissimmee and Orlando that he wouldn’t run into anyone he knew.

When the two of you were here, it felt like you were a normal couple. He held your hand while you walked the paths. Murmured sweet nothings into your ear as you marveled at the foliage and butterflies.

Your attention snags on something in the path ahead of you, yanking you from your bittersweet nostalgia.

A white t-shirt stretched across his broad, hunched-up shoulders. Dark curls poking out from beneath his ragged hat. His slightly off-kilter, halting gait as he pushes a stroller in the opposite direction.

“Frankie!” you call.

He doesn’t react. Nobody reacts.

You start after him, calling his name over and over again, but he doesn’t turn towards your voice. Your stomach starts to churn. Swollen, gray clouds roll across the sky and tone the conservatory a dim, moody gray.

“Frankie, what the fuck?!” you pant when you catch up to him, vocal chords wavering, giving away the state of your frayed nerves. You grab his arm and spin him around, then take a step back.

It’s not Frankie.

The older man before you has a thick white mustache brimming his frail, wrinkled lips. His shortly-trimmed white hair stands straight up from his scalp. You have to crane your neck up to meet his cold, gray eyes.

The smile that stretches across his face churns your stomach. Goosebumps prick your skin.

Your eyes flick from his to the stroller.

It’s empty.

You shake your head, taking another step back. Hot tears pool in your eyes and turn the world around you blurry.

When you look back to the man, he seems even taller. Your heart hammers in your chest. One message broadcasts through your brain: GET THE FUCK OUT.

You retreat backwards. Only a few slow steps at first, but your feet pick up the pace quickly when you see his arms.

His fucking arms.

They stretch after you, but his body doesn’t move.

Panic spikes your bloodstream.

You sprint in the opposite direction, away from him, your feet pounding against the empty pathway. Everything is dark now. Like the sun burnt out.

His slender fingers dig into your arms. He clenches down, pulling you back towards him, dragging you over the terracotta pathway as you struggle to escape, screaming, “No no no, No! NO! N—”

Your body starts to shake, then your eyes snap open and meet Frankie’s, all wide and glazed with distress. He’s hovering above you, hands on your shoulders, his voice hoarse as he whispers, “Hey, are you ok?”

When you meet his gaze and understand that he’s real, your face crumbles, and you try to sob with relief, but your breath catches in your throat. Your hands fly to your neck. The gasps that are able to pass through the constricted airway are shallow.

It feels like you’re a fish out of water.

He grabs your inhaler from the nightstand and shakes it, flinging the cap off with one hand as the other guides you to sit up. You take a few puffs, and it makes it easier, but your throat is still tight. Lungs still feel three times too small.

“We’re going to the hospital.”

It’s not a plea, or a question, or a request like it was earlier. He’s making a statement of fact.

He marches from the room and comes back with the straps of your purse held up in a stranglehold, “Is your insurance card in here?”

You nod and swallow hard. It hurts like your throat is an open wound. Tears burn behind your eyes and roll down your cheeks. Your breaths come in short little wheezes that unleash a flood of adrenaline into your heart.

“Ok,” he says, strides to the nightstand, throws your inhaler and cell phone inside, slings the cross-body strap over his shoulder, and looks at you.

His face droops momentarily and his eyes get all watery and red, then he hardens his features and tells you, “It’s gonna be ok, sweetheart, ok?”

You shake your head and open your mouth to let your worries spill from your lips, but nothing comes out except a gasp for oxygen.

“Right now I just need you to try and stay calm. I know it’s hard but you have to try, alright?”

His voice is low and quivering. You search his face and understand that he’s worried, too, so you nod.

“Ok, let’s go, mamacita,” he rumbles.

You want to tell him that he can’t drive. That he can’t risk going to fucking jail because of you. But you don’t. You can’t.

Frankie pulls the blankets back and the air feels like ice against your skin. Shivers shoot across your body, making your teeth chatter. He lifts you from the bed with a groan. You hook your arms around his neck and try your hardest to hold on.

When you get to the Emergency Room, you’re barely coherent, so Frankie fills out the intake paperwork for you. He talks to the triage nurse, who brings you back to be checked out.

Everything sort of blurs from there.

The nurses check your vitals, take some swabs, and ask a bunch of questions that, between your foggy mind and Frankie, are mostly answered. A doctor comes in and talks to the two of you, returning shortly thereafter to advise that you’re being admitted to the hospital for overnight treatment and observation.

You’re wheeled to another department and hooked up to an IV, an oxygen tank, and all kinds of different monitors. Your hospital room is like a revolving-door of medical personnel, but Frankie holds steadfast by your side throughout the chaos.

During a moment of quiet, when just the two of you remain in the room, you look at him.

He sits in a squeaky armchair he pulled up next to your bed, elbows resting on his knees, chin propped up in his palm, staring up at the TV as he flips through the limited channels on hospital cable.

You swallow, then clear your throat and croak out, “Frankie?”

His eyebrows shoot up and he turns to meet your eyes in question.

“Can you—hand me—my phone?”

“Yeah,” he leans over to grab your purse off the couch, sifting through it for a moment before fishing out your cell phone and handing it to you.

When you grab it from him, your hand drops to your side. You blink slowly at the sight, unable to comprehend why you can’t lift it. Your brow furrows and you frown at Frankie, whose features are all creased with concern.

“Do—do you need help?” he asks.

It’s like your bones are both weightless and infinitely dense. Your head is swimming but a deep fatigue keeps you pinned to the bed. You manage to nod.

He plucks the phone from your tenuous grasp and probes further, “Do you… want me to text people to let them know?”

You nod.

“Sisters, brother, Mom, Dad, all them?”

You nod.

“Marla?”

You nod.

“Rory?”

You scrunch up your nose and shrug.

“Anyone else? Friends?”

You pause to think about this, but mostly you’re just thinking about how sad it is that your only friends that aren’t family are him and Marla. You shake your head, then furrow your brow and rasp, “Ralph?”

“I told him what’s going on already,” he informs you, then inquires, “What’s—uh, what’s your passcode?”

Your shoulders slump and your guts twist when you realize you have to tell him this embarrassing information. Something you never thought he’d have an opportunity to discover. You swallow hard, wincing at the pain from your tight throat muscles, then admit, “07–25–19”

He searches your face as his brow creases, eyes softening into a pained expression, “Sarah’s birthday?”

All you can do is shrug. A testament to how pathetic you feel.

He holds your gaze for another beat, then drops it to your phone and starts tapping away. You let fatigue curl around your consciousness and drift off into sleep.

Occasionally you wake and hear him talking to someone, either to a person on the phone or to hospital staff in the room. Once, you wake and think he’s talking to himself, his forehead pressed against his clasped hands.

Later, you swear you hear a doctor tell Frankie, “Your wife seems to be stable, but we will have to keep her for a few days to continue treatment.”

Your eyes blink open and you see Frankie nod in acknowledgment, then ask, “Is she gonna be ok?”

“She’ll be just fine,” comes the response, and you watch tension melt from his shoulders.

You want to stay awake, to ask him questions like: A few days? and Did the doctor just call me your fucking wife?

More so, you desperately want to reach out and hold his hand. You want to tell him you’ll be ok, to thank him for taking care of you. To thank him for caring at all.

But your body holds you hostage. Your joints are all super glued in place. Muscles disconnected from your brain. A weight bears down on you, tugging at your eyelids, lulling you back to sleep.

The next time you wake, the room is dark and quiet.

First, you hear the equipment hooked up to your body. The faint beeping of monitors. Gears whizzing and turning, the buzz of machines at work.

Then, you hear a snore. You turn and see Frankie still sitting in the armchair at your bedside. Your heart jumps in your chest and your throat lets out a little yelp of surprise.

Frankie starts awake at the noise, his legs jerking upwards in reaction, falling from their place propped up on your hospital bed. A stiff beige blanket falls from his chest as he sits up straight. He takes a deep breath, which you envy, and looks around the room, then blinks sleepily at you.

“Hi,” you whisper. It comes out scratchy and dry. The tickle in your throat makes you start coughing. Every heaving, choked breath shoots a wave of pain across your body.

He grabs a hard plastic water bottle with the hospital’s logo printed across the center and holds it in front of you. You lean forward to seal your lips around the straw, take half a dozen big swallows of ice cold water, then lay back.

“That was fucking awesome,” you gasp. For the first time since you’ve been admitted, it doesn’t feel like something is actively squeezing the air from your lungs.

Frankie chuckles at this, then brings himself closer to meet your eyes in the darkness, asking you in a low, quiet voice, “How’re you feeling?”

“Like I could run a mile,” you joke.

He smiles wide and genuine, dimples pricking his cheeks, and shakes his head, “There she is.”

Warmth spreads across your chest and you hum, reaching out to him with your non-intubated hand. He takes it in his own, grazing his thumb across your knuckles as he sighs, “You scared the shit out of me today.”

“Sorry,” you murmur. Your eyes meet his and hold steady. There’s a spark of something in the space between you. It’s sweet and meaningful and makes your bones buzz. Like a battery clicks into place and completes the circuit.

He opens his mouth like he’s going to say something, then shuts it when a nurse toddles into the room. Your heart jumps like she caught you in the middle of doing something you weren’t supposed to be doing. On instinct, you drop Frankie’s hand and look at her with wide eyes.

The plump, middle-aged woman just gives you a cheery smile and says, “Oh, you’re up! Do you mind if I turn the lights on and check you out?”

You shrug, “Sure.”

Frankie excuses himself to go to the bathroom. The nurse takes your blood pressure and presses a stethoscope to your bare back through the parted hospital gown, humming and noting her findings in your chart. She checks all the readings on the machines you’re hooked up to and jots those down as well.

She leaves for a moment to get a new bag of IV fluid. You glance around the sterile, sad looking room. It holds an air of faux comfort. Mass-produced landscape artwork framed on the wall, furniture all upholstered in a shiny, pastel green fabric, countertops and floors as white and spotless as porcelain.

You squint at something on a tabletop in the corner. A vase of yellow roses. The nurse re-enters the room and hangs the bag of clear fluid on your IV pole.

You blink at the flowers a few times, just to make sure you’re not imagining them, then ask her, “Are those for me?”

The nurse’s face twists up in amusement at your question, and she snorts, “No, they’re for the other sick girl.”

Her sarcasm is justified.

Frankie walks back into the room then, and you ask, “Who sent those?”

“Rory,” he tells you, crossing paths with the nurse as she leaves.

Your lip curls, “Oh.”

“Christ, do you even like him?” he chuckles, but studies your face in a serious way that makes you think he genuinely wants to know.

The answer would require more breath than you’re able to give at the moment.

Rory.

You should like him. Hell, you should be falling head over heels for him. He’s dedicated, confident, loyal, respectful, and attractive. His dick is big and he knows how to use it. He takes you out on dates and performs chivalrous gestures, like holding doors open, pulling your chair out, and bringing you flowers.

He checks off so many boxes. But you don’t feel that spark, that thing, that Diane Barrows talked about in It Takes Two:

That can't eat, can't sleep, reach for the stars over the fence, world series kind of love.

That’s what you want.

And every time you see Rory, you think maybe it’ll change, that he’ll grow on you, but your discomfort in his presence only seems to get worse. You think you should probably dump him, but you’re not sure if it’s the right call or not.

Because what if you’re just so used to the exhilaration of your toxic relationship with Frankie, that you don’t yet understand how it feels to be treated right? What if you’re just in need of repair? What if you just need to learn to be in a normal relationship?

Because what if Rory is the last chance you have for someone to love you?

So, instead of answering Frankie’s question, you observe, “That chair looks uncomfortable.”

“Correct, it’s really fucking uncomfortable,” he nods and lets out a little chuckle.

Your teeth catch on your tongue and you clamp down on it a few times as you consider this, then release it and tell him quietly, “You don’t have to stay.”

“I know,” he leans forward, pressing his fingers to his lips, and shrugs, “I—I want to, though.”

Your heart skips a beat. Heat bubbles up the middle of you, creeping up your neck, onto your cheeks.

You reach out and take his hand in yours, then pull it closer. He lets you do this, and his brows knit together as he stares down at your interlaced fingers. Neither of you say anything. You wriggle onto your side and yawn. Fatigue sinks into your muscles and tugs at your eyelids.

“I don’t think I’d trust myself to be there while you're here,” he admits after a while.

You blink your eyes all the way open and study his face, “Why not?”

Frankie shrugs, “You’d be here alone. I’d have no idea what the hell is going on with you,” he scoffs and shakes his head, “Fuck that.”

A sleepy smile stretches across your face, “You’re sweet.”

He doesn’t say anything, just grins and holds your gaze. Your stomach flips and you ask, “Wanna sleep up here?”

“I’m good here,” he responds with a yawn, pulling the scratchy looking blanket up to his chin as he kicks his feet up onto your hospital bed, “Thanks, though.”

It sort of makes you sad, but your eyes flutter closed and you murmur, “You’d get tangled up anyway.”

“What?” he laughs.

“The tubes,” you explain, “Fuckin’ everywhere.”

He snorts and squeezes your hand. Silence settles over the room. Your mind wanders to the fragments of conversations you overheard between intervals of sleep.

“Frankie,” you murmur.

He grunts in response.

“Did you tell them—that we’re married?”

It’s quiet for a moment, and you’re not sure he’s still awake, until he says, “Yeah.”

“Why?”

“I didn’t want them to make me leave,” he says.

You hum in acknowledgment. Ignore your heart’s stuttering beat.

“Wha’d my family say?”

“Everyone said they hope you feel better soon. Asked us to keep them posted. Leah’s gonna call to see how you’re doing tomorrow.”

You yawn and nod, then ask, “Are you leaving tomorrow?”

“You tryin’ to get rid of me?” he chuckles softly.

“Mmm no,” you tug at your clasped hands and tuck them under your cheek, “But, Sarah—”

“It’s fine, mariposa. Just get some rest.”

The nickname twists your stomach like a dishrag. You haven’t heard it cross his lips in ages. The one he used in those tender moments where you felt him let you into his heart. Only to be shoved away at the next given opportunity.

Fuck, it was like clockwork.

There was one day you were laying next to him in his bed, in the spot his wife slept each night. He traced your naked body with his fingertips and rumbled, “You’re the only one who understands me, mariposa.”

His eyes were warm and glowing in the sunlight streaming through the window. When he met your gaze, you saw something there. Adoration etched into his features, radiating through his touch as it skated across your skin.

“Really?” you breathed.

He searched your face and nodded solemnly. Drew you closer and kissed your lips. Your chest ached deep and wide with love.

Not a crush. Not lust. Not infatuation.

Real, true, pure fucking love.

So you told him.

“I love you.”

His touch ceased. He pulled back, furrowing his brow. You watched his face shift from confusion, to surprise, to worry.

Then he shook his head and whispered, “I… can’t.”

It felt like you were dropped from a 10-story building and pancaked onto the sidewalk. Your nerves started to buzz and twist. You didn’t know what to do, how to convey the panic building in your chest. So you stared at him.

“You—you know we can’t be together like that,” he said, his tone warm and reassuring like the words he was saying weren’t ripping you apart, his wide eyes frantically scanning your face, “Right? I mean, I’m—I’m married, and Angie—I love her—”

The knife in your gut twisted.

“I know,” you nodded, flashing a reassuring smile, but rolled out of bed and started to get dressed, facing away from him so he couldn’t see the tears brimming your eyelids.

“Come on, you knew what you were getting into when this started.”

Salt in your wounds.

Obviously you knew he was married, and he never made you promises of running away together. But you really thought that this was more to him than sex.

You swore you felt it.

When it was just the two of you, he would joke with you, and cuddle with you, and kiss your forehead, and hold your hand, and tell you things… intimate things.

Things about his upbringing. About his absent, alcoholic father, and his mother who did her best but struggled desperately. How he was an only child split between households when his mom finally had enough and divorced his dad.

He told you about his time in the service, time he spent overseas fighting a war for his country, then for the highest bidder. How he took lives, destroyed communities, and sold years of his life to make the rich even richer.

He told you about how, just a year prior to that afternoon in his bed, he went on an independent mission to South America with his brothers in arms. It went tits up. He watched one of his best friends get shot in the fucking head. They had to drag his body through the Andes, along with millions of dollars seized from a drug kingpin. Most of the money was lost, and the residual earnings of this expedition were given to the deceased’s family.

He told you about how, he realized afterwards, the cost wasn’t worth it. The value of his friend’s life exceeded that of anything they would have brought home.

He told you this in a matter-of-fact way. His voice was calm, shoulders level, back straight. And his eyes… they were so far away. Like he was there again.

You recognized yourself in his detached gaze. In the subtle tensing of his body.

You thought his telling you these things meant he trusted you with them. You thought him telling you these things meant he was placing his heart in your hands.

And there were other things.

He held you like he was abandoned at sea and you were a life-preserver buoying him to the surface of choppy waves. He kissed you like he was starved for affection. Fucked you like it was his last day on Earth.

You thought it meant something to him.

This is it, you thought, this is love.

That can't eat, can't sleep, reach for the stars over the fence, world series kind of love.

You were astounded that you could have read him so wrong. Of all the things you’ve been uncertain of in life, you genuinely didn’t think this was one of them. It flipped your worldview upside down.

You felt naïve. Foolish.

Of course he can’t love you.

Of course he doesn’t love you.

“I know,” you managed to choke out while pulling your shirt over your head.

“Hey,” he said softly, trying to get you to look at him.

“It’s ok, Frankie, really,“ you shook your head and tucked your hair behind your ear, then tiptoed into the bathroom, where you allowed yourself to cry silently for five minutes.

When you emerged, he was sitting on the couch drinking whiskey. Sarah was still napping. You sequestered yourself in the kitchen, painfully aware of Frankie’s presence in the next room.

When Angie got home, he kissed her hello right in front of you. Made a big show of it.

And you hated her.

Envy is probably more accurate than hate, you think, in retrospect. At the time, all you knew was it seared your insides like hellfire when he touched her. You wanted to dig your fingernails into her cheeks and rip her pretty face right off of her skull.

You picked up your purse and plastered on a mask of neutrality, “Well, I’m off. Have a good weekend, guys.”

It almost slipped when your gaze caught on Frankie’s. He wore this pained expression like this hurt for him, too.

You broke eye contact and rushed out the door to your car. Once inside, you screamed at the top of your lungs into the steering wheel. Your throat burned raw with territorial rage, and rejection, and heartbreak.

You kept thinking of that fucking look on his face. That fucking nickname. His faux intimacy. Your stupidity in thinking he felt the same as you.

On your way home, you went to your favorite spot, Bubba’s.

The establishment’s owner and namesake, Bubba, was working, as he often was on Friday nights. You selected one of the many empty barstools and sat down, running your hands over your face, releasing a deep sigh.

Bubba nodded in your direction, “Whiskey coke?”

His voice was gravelly and carried bass from deep in his chest.

“Yeah,” you muttered and dug your phone from your purse, then sent a text to Leah, and another to Marlene, telling them about the recent turn of events in your pathetic life.

Bubba kept his sharp blue eyes on you as he made your drink, burning a hole into your profile. You noticed, and bunched your fist against your face, trying to conceal your puffy eyelids, your wet cheeks, your shaky breath.

“Do I needta kick someone’s ass, er what?” he asked as he placed your whiskey coke on a coaster in front of you. Bubba laced his wiry gray eyebrows together and leaned against the bar, beer belly pressing into the counter.

You snorted at him and shook your head, avoiding his gaze by looking up at the sports news show on the TV, “I’m fine.”

“Ok,” he shrugged in a disbelieving manner, “You just let me know if you need anythin’, darlin’.”

“Sure thing,” you murmured, raising the straw to your lips.

When your phone started ringing, you were three drinks deep. Your mind was starting to bend and blur, the booze supplying a much needed reprieve from reality.

Your heart stuttered when you saw his name populate your phone screen. Then your face flushed with indignation.

“What?” you answered in an icy tone.

“Where are you?” he asked. His words were all huddled together. Spoken too close to the speaker. He was drunk.

“Why do you care?” you scoffed.

“Needta talkta you about somethin’,” he mumbled, “Where are you?”

“You sound shitfaced, Frankie,” you frowned at your empty drink, stabbed the ice with your straw, then looked around and locked eyes with Bubba. He nodded in acknowledgement and started to make you a new drink.

“Jus—jus—jus, shut the fuck up and tell me where you are—”

“Hey, fuck you,” you yelled in return, unable to stop the rage from bubbling up inside you.

A big sigh crackled over the speaker, then he adjusted his tone to something less severe, “Sorry—soooo sorry, sweetheart. But I needta talk to you, please.”

“You’re talking to me now, Francisco.”

There was a long pause, then he mumbled, “I wanna see you.”

“You’re not driving.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You’re drunk.”

“I miss you.”

Tightness radiated across your chest. Heat tingled up your throat, into your sinuses. You swallowed hard.

“Please, baby,” he croaked, “Please.”

“Bubba’s,” you sighed, then hung up.

Frankie strode through the door ten minutes later. His movements were overly fluid, spilling over the edges of his body’s limits when he came to sit next to you, “Hey.”

Bubba eyed Frankie from afar, but didn’t approach him to ask if he wanted a drink.

“Please tell me you didn’t drive here,” you hissed, searching his face.

“I didn’t drive here,” he grinned, crossing his arms, leaning forward onto the bar.

“Frankie—” you protested.

“No, wait—wait, listen,” he grabbed your hand and kissed your palm.

You winced at the sharp pain that twisted your heart. He didn’t notice, just pressed your unresponsive hand against his cheek, against the grain of his patchy beard, and drew his eyebrows together, “I’m sorry.”

“You already said that,” you blinked.

“Don’t be mad at me, sweetheart,” his voice was raspy and low as he searched your face with those puppy dog eyes that tugged at your heart strings, “Please, I don’t want you to be mad at me.”

You released a heavy sigh, “I’m not mad at you, Frankie. I just—I don’t know, I thought…”

Your shoulders slumped as you dropped your gaze to your drink.

“Hey,” he squeezed your hand, kissed your palm, and pressed it against his cheek again, “What we have’s really special to me. But I—”

“Can’t, I know,” you mumbled and pulled your hand away.

He cocked his jaw back and forth, then leaned closer and asked, “So is this it then? Are you done with me?”

You knew that if you said yes and he’d accept it. This would be over and you could walk away with your dignity still intact. You could find a new job and gracefully bow out of the Morales household.

You knew that if you said yes you’d never have him again. Never again would you feel the heat of his desire, or hear the joy of his laughter, or taste the sweetness of his affection. You knew that you’d be forfeiting any chance to make him fall in love with you.

It was so desperate and raw, the way you wanted him to love you.

“I should be the one asking you that,” you rolled your head on your shoulders to look at him.

He held your gaze and furrowed his brow, “Why would I be done with you?”

You scoffed, “Because I’m apparently a fucking idiot.”

“Jesus Christ, you’re not an idiot,” he groaned, then draped his arm around the back of your barstool, leaning close, “You are clever, and—and beautiful, and—”

His compliments flipped your stomach upside down. You raised your eyebrows, “Ok—”

“Shhh,” he pressed a finger to your lips, “Let me finish.”

You swatted his hand away playfully, while he just grinned and leaned closer, “And sweet, and generous, and funny, and kind of a fucking brat, honestly—”

“Excuse me?!” you gasped.

“—But I like that about you! I do. You’re fucking amazing,” he told you, and by now his breath was hot against your cheek, and he murmured, “I don’t want you to go anywhere, sweetheart. I mean that.”

You met his gaze and held it. A palpable energy flowed between his body and yours. His eyes flicked down to your lips and a rumble sounded from the back of his throat.

Then he kissed you. It was this slow, lingering kind of kiss that only made you want more. You balled his shirt in your fist and tugged at it, kissing him deeper, harder, more urgent.

Kissing was like that with him. Hungry. Passionate. Thrilling.

He stood from the barstool to get closer to you, to get a better angle against your lips. His fingertips dug into your waist and filled you with a hot, gooey ache.

“Stay with me tonight,” you breathed against his mouth, “Please.”

He nodded, “I can do that.”

It would happen almost every time. You would misread his affection and lust for love, get too deep, pry yourself open. Only for him to remind you of your place in his life: a mistress.

That’s all you were.

And now… you’re friends.

These heated sparks of something more you think you feel from him, it’s wishful thinking.

You let go of his hand and roll over to face the opposite direction.

When you’re sure you hear his breathing slow to a pattern indicative of sleep, you release the hurt held hostage in your body. The way you allow yourself to cry is cautious and guarded. Quiet, metered sniffles as tears roll hot down your cheeks. Only once do you lose yourself, choking out an audible sob that thankfully doesn’t seem to wake him.

You’re not sure exactly when, but eventually, exhaustion wins over your agitated body and you drift into unconsciousness.

Leah calls you sometime after breakfast and your AM antiviral infusion, but before lunch. When she calls, the room is vacant. Frankie is out with Benny, who’s giving him a ride to your house so he can grab some things.

“Hey,” you answer.

“Hey, how are you?” Her voice is honeyed and sympathetic. It makes you crinkle your nose.

“Good,” you answer reflexively, then backtrack, “Well, not good. Y’know.” You laugh nervously and it catches in your throat, making you cough.

When it ceases, Leah asks, “Do you know when you’ll get discharged?”

“Probably tomorrow. If I keep getting better,” you tell her, looking up at the old game show playing on TV, then admit, “It was spooky.”

“It sounds like it. Frankie was freaking out when I talked to him.”

You frown, “He was?”

“Yeah,” she chuckles, then stops and says, “Sorry, it’s not funny.”

“No, it’s hilarious that I–couldn’t breathe,” you scoff and roll your eyes, then inquire further, “How was he freaking out?”

“Well, I told him I’m a nurse, right? And he just starts asking me all these questions about asthma, and the flu, and asking if he waited too long to take you, all that,” she stops and takes a sip of, what you’re assuming is, coffee, then continues, “It was kind of sweet.”

You hum and nod, even though she can’t see you.

“I was expecting him to be a total dick from what you’ve told me about him. He’s the married guy, right?”

“Yeah,” you confirm, glancing over to the armchair he slept in last night, “Since he stopped drinking, it’s… been different. I think. I don’t know,” you shake your head, then bring your attention back to the TV screen, “I can’t trust my judgment with him.”

“Are you guys—”

“No,” you interject.

“Did you tell him about the—”

“Nope,” you cut her off again.

She grumbles in frustration on her end, then sighs, “Are you bringing him to Rachel’s wedding?”

“Maybe. If he wants to,” you frown as you consider this, “I might have to, actually. With the… parole thing.”

“Since she wants us all there for the whole stinkin’ week, yeah, probably,” Leah scoffs, then adds, “I’m so ready for it to be over with. She’s being a total bridezilla. You know how she gets.”

“Do I ever,” you mutter.

The door opens, and your eyes flick towards it. Frankie walks in with a backpack slung around his shoulder and nods at you in greeting. His dark curls look damp under his hat, and his gray t-shirt clings to his body in a way that makes heat creep up onto your cheeks.

Then you notice a brown paper bag crinkled up in one of his hands. The scent of deep-fried food fills the room.

“Is that Leah?” he asks.

“Is that Frankie?” Leah asks.

“Yeah,” you respond to both of them, then ask Frankie, “Did you bring me food?”

“Yeah,” he grins, holding the bag up like a trophy. Your mouth starts to salivate.

“I can let you go,” Leah says, “Just wanted to check in with you and see how you’re holding up.”

“Thanks,” you look down at the IV implanted in your hand, “I’ll keep you posted, ok?”

“Tell Frankie I said hi.”

“I will. Love you.”

“Love you too.”

You hang up and toss the phone aside, “She says hi.”

“I like her, she’s nice,” he drops the backpack to the ground and hands you the bag of greasy food.

“Fuck yes,” you groan as you pull out flimsy containers of french fries and chicken strips.

“You did not look happy to have oatmeal for breakfast,” he chuckles, then sits in the armchair next to your bed and unzips the backpack, “I brought your book, your notebook, and, um…”

He pulls out a stuffed panda bear. You momentarily forget the fragile state of your lungs and gasp, which pulls a cluster of coughs up through your respiratory system. Through the fit, you reach out and snatch it from his hands.

It’s plush and squishy and fills you with joy when you hug it to your chest.

Frankie’s face simultaneously lights up and creases with concern. He leans forward and rubs your back, “Ok, ok, settle down.”

“It’s,” cough, “so,” cough, “cute—”

“I’m under strict orders to tell you Benny helped me pick it out,” Frankie reclines in the chair and crosses his arms over his chest.

Once you catch your breath, you smirk and waggle your eyebrows at him, teasing, “Oh, really? Benny did that—for me?”

“You’re hilarious,” he rolls his eyes and grabs the TV remote, then kicks his feet up onto the hospital bed. While you eat chicken strips and snuggle your new stuffed animal, he flips through channels, eventually settling on NASCAR, which lulls you back to sleep.

Tonight, family dinner is taking place in your bed.

Which sounds sexual, but it’s not.

You’re freshly discharged from the hospital, and Frankie spent the last two nights sleeping in an armchair, so you agreed that some intensive comfort time was needed. The TV has been playing movies back to back all day, and now the two of you lay under the covers, in your pajamas, with a big pizza box between your bodies.

When the credits for Fantastic Mr. Fox start, Frankie pauses it and rolls on his side to face you, “We’re still doing this part, right?”

“Yeah,” you yawn and follow his lead, wriggling onto your side, nuzzling against the stuffed panda bear. Your nose crinkles at the greasy pizza box and its remaining 3 slices.

“Hang on,” he mumbles, then sits up and moves the box onto the floor beside him.

When he returns, he settles closer to you. His dark irises flick about your features, then anchor onto your eyes with intensity. Your stomach flutters and heart swells.

His Adam’s apple bobs in his throat like he’s preparing it for the words he’s about to say. He takes a deep breath, then confesses, “I really thought I was gonna lose you,” he shakes his head, “And I was… so fucking terrified.”

The proof is in his voice, low and trembling and unsure. It occurs to you then that this man has faced critical situations, of which the overwhelming majority of people never dream of facing, with the kind of certainty and bravery that got him out alive. He’s not easily shaken.

But he was scared of losing you.

“You’re not gonna lose me,” you search his face and reach out to him.

He takes this offering, interweaving his fingers with yours, laying your clasped hands in space between you, “I know that now, but… fuck, I keep thinking about what would have happened if I wasn’t here. If I had gone to work, or—or if I didn’t live here, and things were still...”

His jaw clamps shut and gnashes from side to side as he averts his gaze, “I don’t know. If things were still… bad between us,” his eyes flick to yours and he shakes his head, “I don’t think I could live with that.”

Desperately, you want him to say more. You want him to deconstruct his carefully curated statement and lay it out for you. You want to ask: And what the fuck does that mean exactly? What are you trying to tell me without telling me?

But you’re still weighed down by the pull of fatigue’s gravity. Your throat is raw and lungs are cramped. Every muscle in your body still holds residual aches and pains.

Your lips part to speak, but you recant the words in your throat. Instead, you whisper, “Thank you for taking care of me, Frankie.”

“No problem,” he says, the corner of his mouth lifting in a sad kind of smirk, before folding down into a frown. His gaze is far away. Thoughtful. He runs his free hand through his mop of dark curls and releases a heavy sigh, “I guess what I’m trying to say is that I care about you a lot. And… these past few weeks, they’ve been really hard,” he furrows his brow, then meets your eyes, “But they’ve also been really good, because I’ve been able to spend them with you.”

All the air is sucked from your lungs. A cough surfaces from deep in your chest and you smother it in your stuffed panda bear. He watches you and waits patiently for you to recover.

When you do, you admit quietly, “Did you know that you’re like… my only friend?”

“I am, really?” he raises his eyebrows.

A self-deprecating smile stretches across your face as you nod, then shrug, “I mean, Marla and my siblings don’t really count. They pretty much have to tolerate me.”

“And I don’t?” he teases, flashing you a playful grin.

His comment pokes at a tender spot in your brain. Your lip sticks out in a very real pout and you whimper, “Ouch.”

“Oh, come on,” he chuckles and scoots closer, beckoning you into his arms. You take this olive branch and wriggle into his embrace, letting your forehead rest on his chest as he hugs you and murmurs into your hair, “You know I love you, right?”

Both of your bodies go rigid the second it leaves his mouth. You feel his heart start pounding rapidly against your skin and he stammers, “I—I mean—like a friend—”

You wince at the pang that shoots through your damaged heart. The words you’ve always wanted to hear him say. With a caveat.

So typical.

Maybe it’s because the flu still has you in its clutches and you’re fucking exhausted, or maybe you’re just becoming numb to it all, but you let out a little snort and say, “I know what you mean.”

He seems to relax at this.

Neither of you move from the comfort of this embrace. In fact, you nuzzle in closer to him, letting your heavy eyelids drift closed as you yawn, “I love you, too, Franklin.”

His tongue clicks against his teeth and you feel him shake his head in feigned annoyance. You just know he’s rolling his eyes, too. His irritation makes you grin with satisfaction.

A heavy fog settles over your bodies. When you start to succumb to it, and you’re right on the edge of sleep, Frankie presses a kiss into the top of your head, then mumbles something unintelligible.

But before you can respond, dreamland has consumed you.

[ Next Chapter ]

MORE NOTES: Big inspiration for this chapter from the songs "SEVEN" by Rainbow Kitten Surprise and "Nobody Gets Me" by SZA.

#designated person #frankie morales #francisco morales #frankie catfish morales #francisco catfish morales #triple frontier #frankie morales x reader #frankie morales x you #frankie morales x ofc #frankie morales angst #frankie morales fanfiction #triple frontier fanfic #pedro pascal character fanfic #pedro pascal characters #pedro pascal character

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saltsicklover · 8 months

Text

Part Nine

Title: Once an Asshole, Always an Asshole

Pairing: Robert "Bob" Floyd x Fem!Reader

Word Count: 4200+

Rating: R

Warnings: Swearing, Crying, Tobacco, Smoking, Argument, the mention of death, mention of SA, Bob being heartbroken and fucking angry

Second Chance Romance!

Disclaimer: I do not own Bob Floyd, or anything related to Top Gun Maverick within this piece. Not Proof Read or BETA'd. All mistakes are my own.

I do not consent for my work to be edited, reposted, or translated.

You are responsible for your own media consumption. This is a work of fiction that may contain mature themes. If you are sensitive to those subjects, please do not read.

---

Rooster and Phoenix sit in the Bronco silently and Sunny sleeps in the back seat. They both fidget in their seats. Natasha wiggles, adjusting her whole body. Rooster cracks his knuckles repeatedly. They only make it through the next stop sign before the quiet is broken.

"Did you know Bob smokes?"

"I have so much information on Bob,"

The pair speak at the same time, both of them shooting a glance in the rearview to see if Sunny is still asleep. She doesn't even stir.

"You first," Bradley speaks again, flicking on his blinker. The signal blinks blinks blinks. Natasha takes a deep breath, running a hand through her hair.

"Sunny has been talking about this guy who broke her heart, God, Rooster, she has been talking about him for years. I knew his name was Bobby, but fuck, I didn't even stop to think that her Bobby would be our Bob! Hell, Bob is a nickname, and do you even know how many Bobs there are in the world?!" Phoenix's voice is a bit exasperated. Sweat is settling around her hairline even though the windows of the Bronco are down. The breeze blows throughout the cab of the vehicle, prickling gooseflesh takes over her skin.

She chances a look at Rooster who doesn't pull his eyes from the road. He clears his throat quietly before running the tip of his tongue over his dry lips. He sighs.

"You can't blame yourself for that, Phoenix. It's not like Bob isn't a common name, or even Robert for that matter. Her Bobby could've been anyone," Bradley squeezes her hand before bringing his own back to the steering wheel.

"I know a lot about Bob, so much I didn't even know that I knew!" Phoenix's hands are on her head, fingers massaging circles into her temples. Her voice is higher than normal, like the stress it tweaking the octaves.

"So, you knew Bob smokes?" Bradley brings the conversation back around to his original thought. The vehicle slows for a red light. When they stop, everything is quiet for a beat.

"I didn't know that I did. As far as I knew, Bob was just Bob. Clean cut, quiet, damn good at his job. I didn't even think he dated, but, oh my god," The color all but drains from Phoenix's face.

"What is it?" The vehicle begins moving again with the change of the traffic light.

"Bob fucks," Her voice is so quiet she doesn't even hear herself say it.

"Phoenix?" Bradley prompts, chancing a glance in her direction.

"Bob fucks," She tries again, a little louder this time. She wouldn't have thought Bradley heard her if the car didn't swerve a bit as the words left her lips.

"What?"

"I guess when they were in school, back in Montana, Bob was some sort of huge player! He was captain of the swim team and broke girls hearts. That was his thing," Natasha works to recall stories from over the years, ones that came in few and far between. Sunny was never big on talking about her school life before they the pair started speaking. But, as time went on, Sunny told Natasha more and more.

"Sunshine said something about that earlier, too," Bradley nods, turning on his blinker once more. They make the turn into a driveway of a very nice house. It's in a neighborhood about fifteen minutes outside of Base. It seems completely unassuming in the dark, and really it is in the light too. It's in a neighborhood filled with Military members and their families. Their house being one of the only few where the small front yard isn't littered with children's toys.

"Do you think he is hiding anything else from us?" Natasha's voice is so small now.

"Hey, Nat," Rooster puts a hand over her own rested on her thigh, "Everyone has a past, that is just a part of life. We aren't going to know everything about each other just because we work together. Just remember, we know Bob, and he has never let us down, so that's gotta account for something, right?"

When Natasha finally exhales the breath she had trapped in her lungs, she all but deflates completely. "I guess you're right,"

"Let's get you two inside,"

"Should we wake her?" Natasha asks, turning to look at Sunny. She has barely changed positions, except her face is turned further into the backrest of the seat.

"Don't bother, I'll carry her," Bradley tells her with a curt nod. Once the passenger seat is folded forward, Bradley maneuvers Sunny's sleeping form from the backseat and into his embrace. He carries her up the front steps, following after Natasha.

There is a single light on inside where Bob is sitting, a glass of dark whiskey in his hand. He has changed out of his uniform, now in jeans and a t-shirt. It was rare for anyone to see him like this, so dressed down. His civilian clothes he wore to work were always more put together, khakis and a button down shirt. Bob's glasses sit on the side table, under the lamp. He grasps the bridge of his nose between his forefinger and thumb. He runs a finger over the lip of the glass that is balanced on his thigh.

Natasha and Bradley enter the house. They toe off their shoes, Sunny curled up in Bradley's arm.

Bob chances a quick glace up at them from below his eyebrows but doesn't say a word to the pair. There is a moment before they even realize he is sitting there. The group coming through the door are surprised to find Bob in this state, disheveled and sullen; they are even more surprised when he brings the glass of dark liquid to his lips. They all share glances, no one quite ready to make the first move. Then, Bradley clears his throat lightly as he adjusts Sunny in his arms.

"I am going to go put her in the guest room," Bradley dismisses himself before disappearing further into the house and up the stairs. He carries her like his father used to carry his mother, minding each of the corners that her body could come in contract with on the way to the bedroom. He twists his hips so her ankle won't catch the banister and he leans to keep her head from making contact with the door jamb.

Bradley lays her on the bed, her feet hanging off the end. Carefully, he grabs one of her calves, bringing her foot up just high enough to grasp the heel of her boot. He tugs the leather off of her foot before carefully laying her leg back down. He sets the boot at the foot of the bed, toes facing out, just in case she holds the same weird superstition that he does. Then, he grabs her other calf to repeat the process.

This time though, as he goes to set the boot down next to the other, the warn bit of leather at the opening of the boot catches his eye. He runs a calloused fingertip over the well warn grooves of the leather. He knows exactly what used to sit there, what caused that mark in the first place.

Something between anger and pity rises in his chest. God, he is angry at Bob for hurting her- but somewhere deep in his subconscious he knows that anger isn't going to get him anywhere. Bradley also pities Bob. He can tell how much the other man has lost from the short amount of time he has spent with Sunny. Bob threw away something that every man dreams of- a girl who is going to show up and love him, regardless of the circumstance. He saw that relationship with his parents, the way they loved each other and how the world stopped the moment his father was no longer there. Bradley can't imagine anyone throwing that away willingly.

He sets the other boot down before hoisting Sunny further up into the bed. He brings the sheet over her, leaving the comforter folded halfway down so she doesn't overheat. Then, he leans just above her to push open the window, letting the cool night air drift into the bedroom.

After, he disappears into the hallway, heading for the laundry closet. He opens the dryer, checking if they are Phoenix's clothes before pulling out a large t-shirt from inside, as well as a pair of shorts. He folds them haphazardly as walks back into Sunny's room. Bradley leaves the garments on the end of the bed before disappearing once again, this time closing the door behind him.

Bradley slips down the stairs, interrupting Bob and Phoenix's conversation as he enters the room.

"I got her shoes off and got her settled into bed. She didn't even wake up. I also threw some of your clothes from the dryer at the end of the bed for her. I'll leave you guys to it, goodnight," He crosses to the door, not chancing a look at Bob. He pulls his shoes on almost too quick.

"Thanks, Rooster," Natasha nods, a thankful expression crossing her features. He nods back with a tightlipped smile before disappearing out the front door. Natasha watches the closed door for a moment before turning back to Bob, her face expressionless.

The smell of tobacco is stuck to Bob now, from the smoke he had at the Hard Deck, and then the three he had on the way home. The two share a look for a moment, no words needing to be said. Nat moves to the couch across from him. She sits, her hands folded in her lap. Bob still plays with the edge of his glass, his nail running over the glass.

"Bob," Phoenix starts, "God, I don't even know what to say..."

"I know I fucked up, okay? I don't need to be reminded," He snaps at her, eyes glued to the contents of his glass.

"Hey, don't bite my head off! I just- I was-" Natasha fumbles over her words before taking a deep breath, starting herself over. "Are you doing alright?"

Bob's eyes snap up at her words. That was the last thing he was expecting her to ask. 'How could you?' 'What's wrong with you?' or anything else would have made for sense to him. He sputters a bit.

"Am I doing alright?" His eyes are glassy as they meet hers, "No, I think I'm the furthest thing from alright," He brings the glass up again, shooting the last finger of liquid. He doesn't even grimace and that fact surprises Natasha.

"Oh, Bob," He shakes his head at her, eyes coming back down to meet the floor.

"Don't, Phoenix. I dug this grave a decade ago, I guess it's about time I lie in it, huh?"

"Bob, it doesn't have to be like this," Natasha attempts, her eyebrows pulled together.

"You don't even know the half of it," Bob rolls his eyes. His tone is snappy and short, like he doesn't even want to entertain the subject. Hell, he doesn't even want to be sitting there with her right now, especially when Sunny is asleep just upstairs.

The only thing he wants is to walk upstairs and knock on her door. He wants to talk to her, at the point, she could yell at him, curse his unborn children and he would just be happy that he was on her mind.

As if he hadn't been on her mind for the last ten years.

"Then tell me!" The words come out as a shout, bristling over Bob as he clenches his empty glass. His throat is desert dry, his heart aching for whiskey and a whiff of Sunny's perfume.

Natasha doesn't know it, but in front of her sits a broken man. His eyes are bloodshot, the skin around them chapped and aching. He cried as many tears as his body would allow between the time he left the Hard Deck and the moment Natasha and Bradley walked through the door.

"You don't get it, do you?" He scoffs. The grip on his glass tightens, his heartbeat pulsing through his fingers. He wants to throw the glass at the wall; he wants to watch the glass shatter, to see the glittering shards sitting on the floor. He knows the slivers of glass would shine just the way the tiles on the bottom of the pool used to. Bob wants to see it because he longs for a moment when he was closer to Sunny, instead of a million miles and one flight of stairs away.

"I can't understand something that you won't explain to me!" There are tears threating to spill from Natasha's eyes. She is all but begging Bob to tell her what he is feeling. She wants nothing more than to fix this rift that has seemed to open up and swallow her two closest friends. Natasha feels like she is standing in the middle of a gun fight, armed with nothing but her goddamn will.

"I said things to her that I can never take back Phoenix, you know that. Did you see the way she looked at me? I could practically see her heart breaking through her eyes when I didn't recognize her, Nat. How am I supposed to recover from that?"

"Robert," Phoenix voice starts out confident, but the shaky inhale she takes as her hands come up to wipe at the fallen tears on her cheeks make Bob stutter out another thought before she can continue.

"Do you even know why I am the way I am Phoenix?" Bob stands, the rage building within him. It's all a large stack of tinder, ready and waiting for that right spark to set it all aflame.

"I am like this because I wanted to be a better man," He pinches the bridge of his nose so tight the skin around it turns red. "The last time I saw Duchenne, she had told me that-" He stutters out the words, tears building up in the back of his throat.

"That she thought I was different, that I was a 'good man' but I fucking left her Phoenix. I left her sitting there in the dirt with tears in her eyes all because I was afraid of hurting my chances at getting into the goddamn Navy! The Navy, Phoenix, what a fuckin' joke," He laughs out a sort of broken chuckle, one that is dripping with too much knowing.

"This isn't how it was supposed to be, Natasha. I thought the Navy, the flying, everything would keep me distracted. And maybe, deep down, I had this sick idea that she would've been in our home town, working the ranch and that one day I would hang up my flight suit and walk back into Florence as a good man, as the man she deserves,"

There is bile coating the back of his throat now, his stomach like a ship without a sail in the churning of his insides. He wants to be sick, he also wants another drink- either way his throat will burn and his stomach will continue churning.

"I am the furthest thing from a good man now Natasha, I always have been, but somehow I think I've fallen even further down. God, let this be rock bottom because I can't take another slip," He practically collapses back down into the seat he had been occupying before.

"Robert Floyd," Natasha's voice is stern now, thick with authority, "You are one of the best men that I know. You are kind, you are selfless, and you are brave. You get into that jet with me everyday and I know that you will get me home. Do you want to know why?"

All Bob can do is raise an eyebrow at her. He drags his eyes back down to the whiskey glass still in his grip. He tilts it in his hand, watching the way the lip catches the light, like the shimmering of pool water.

"Because we made a deal, and good men don't make deals they can't keep and they sure as hell don't back out of 'em either," She is so sure of the words that Bob almost believes her.

"It was supposed to be different, Natasha," He speaks after a moment, his voice hoarse.

"So many things in this world are supposed to be different, Bob. I wasn't supposed to lose my first wingman to a fucking false positive drug test causing him to get discharged, and Rooster wasn't supposed to lose his parents so tragically. Hell, even Hangman, he walked in on a sexual assault in progress during flight school and had to be the one to stop it. Life doesn't always go the way we think it will, but we are still here, Bob. We are still here, and we are stronger because of it,"

Bob looks sheepish at best. Completely defeated, like he was kicked while he was down, nursing broken ribs and an aching heart. The look in his eye is what really broke Natasha, because she was speaking before she even realized it.

"I need to tell you something, okay? So I'm going to need you to shut up and listen to me," Phoenix hits his foot with her own, making the man draw his gaze back up to her. Sunny is going to kill her, but Nat pushes that thought aside. She raises her eyebrows expectantly at Bob. He just nods.

"The whole time I have known Sunny, she has rarely talked about dating. Every guy she ever went out with never made it past the third date. At first, she told me it was because of some sort of bad habit of theirs or their inability to make conversation. I bought that at first, because I know first hand what it is like out in the dating pool. But then she met Mikael. He worked for the same company she does, but at the branch in Germany. They met in New York over a business trip. They hit it off and for all intents and purposes, he was perfect-"

"Would you quit telling me about some bastard who inevitably broke her heart? It's not going to make me feel better to know someone else fucked up with her too," Natasha kicks him again, her expression all over unpleasant.

"Would you just listen?" She grumbles, arms crossing over her chest. Natasha can't help but feel a bit of anger flame up in her chest at his disregard, so she kicks his foot again, this time with a little more force. She raises her eyebrows expectantly, he nods in return.

"They dated for a couple of months and I thought things were going great, then an email landed in my inbox. You want to know what it said?" Natasha pulls her phone from her pocket, unlocking it with a swipe of her finger. Bob hums, eyes watching her out of focus fingers dance across the screen. She clears her throat before beginning.

"Dear Nash, I broke up with Mikael today. He told me on our last video date that I seemed closed off, guarded. I think he is right. For so long I have been guarding my heart because the last time I let someone in, they shattered it. At least, I thought they did, considering I have been broken hearted ever sense. But, I think my problem is that my heart has been missing. That night, my senior year, Bobby didn't break my heart, he left with it. I guess that's fitting, considering it had belonged to him for so long anyway. Maybe it's self deprecation or maybe it's just stupid, but I think my heart will always belong to Bobby, even if he was the one who caused me so much pain. Actually, I love him in spite of that. I love him, Nash. I always have, and I think I always will, that's why it's never going to work out with anyone else. They aren't him. That's all for now, sending you my love,"

Natasha's voice wavers. Tears prick at the corner of her eyes again, keeping her from looking up to meet Bob's. He sits there, mouth slightly ajar. His fingers have stilled their motion over the glass. His eyes are glassy again, throat constricting in on itself.

"I don't-" He whispers, "I don't know what to say to that,"

"Bob, that email was from six months ago," Phoenix chances a look up at Bob, a tear escaping. It trails wet and hot down her cheek. "If you are asking me, I think you've got a chance to make things right with her. Now, I'm not saying that it will be easy, or that she will be ready to talk to you, but you've gotta try,"

"I can't hurt her again, Phoenix, I just can't" Tears are slipping quickly down his face.

"From where I stand, she is already hurt. I think you owe it to her to say what you need to say, hell, I think you owe it to yourself,"

Bob can't believe what he is hearing. Just hours ago, Phoenix was tearing him a new one for hurting Sunny, and now she thinks that he has a chance to fix it? No way in hell. He eyes the glass again in his hand, watching the light dance across it. He pushes himself from his seat, facing away from her. There is tension between the glass in his hand and the wall.

"You really think, after everything I've put her through, that she is going to want to listen to a single word I have to say?"

"I didn't say that," She corrects, "I just said I think you should try. You two might feel better just yelling at each other, who knows? But that's for you to figure out,"

"I don't know if I can, Phoenix, I mean, what's there even left to say?"

Phoenix stands, a small smile on her lips. "How about what you feel?"

Bob can only pull his lips into a thin, straight line. She pats his shoulder before heading to the stairs, ready to climb into bed herself.

"You are a good man, Bob," She hums, turning to walk up the stairs. Bob stands still, waiting for the click of her bedroom door. It's faint, but he hears it. Then, his attention is back on the glass in his hand, his eyes flickering up to the wall and back down. He could shatter the glass right now, but what would that fix? It would just be another mess to clean up.

He lets out a long held sigh before placing the glass down on the coffee table, the crystal hitting the wood with a gentle clink. The light goes out with a flick of a switch and then Bob is climbing the stairs. His joints creak along with the floorboards, both himself and the house too stiff for comfort.

He pushes open the door to his bedroom. He lets his eyes wander over the bedroom, the whole thing suddenly feeling too clean and kept.

There was a piece of himself that had been missing for years, that he found tonight as he smoked his first cigarillo in the Hard Deck. The part of himself that hadn't existed since he walked away from Sunny. The unkempt man who fell in love with her. There is an itching feeling in his palms, the need to get back to that man, as least in the most basic way he can, to the man who loved her before everything else got in the way.

So, Bob pulls his shirt over his head, letting it fall to the floor. Then he toes off his boots, leaving them wherever they fall. With a flick of his wrist, his belt is undone. He pulls it through the loops of his jeans before dropping it. The buckle hits the hardwood with a loud thud, the leather snaking after it. Once Bob pushes his jeans down and off, he feels like he can breathe for a moment, finally, even if it is just a moment. It's deep and full, the oxygen filling his chest. He shudders.

Bob pushes open his window, letting the chilled night breeze invade his room. The mess on the floor makes his heart feel a little more at ease, like he has some semblance of control. He dips down to grab his jeans, then pulls the silver cigarette case out of the back pocket.

He slips a cigarillo between his lips before igniting a match. He lights his smoke before shaking out the flame. The only light in the room is the burning ash at the end of his small cigar, the room quickly filling with the deep smell of tobacco.

Bob lets his eyes wander to the bathroom door as he takes a long drag. The smoke fills his lungs, grounding him to this moment, and this moment alone. He smokes this cigarillo, then another, letting his mind drift to thoughts of Sunny and how she must look, tangled up in the crisp white sheets, a thousand miles away, but one flight of stairs closer.

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