#this is a fever dream so it doesn’t have to make sense

[snowyquokka]

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jeongin x fem reader

cw: angst (😈), breakup, kissing, swearing, mutual pining, mentions of cheating, kinda toxic/asshole seungmin (FORGIVE ME), not proof read bc why tf would i do that (im too lazy so my apologies if some of it doesn’t make sense lmfao-)

wc: 3.1k

a.n - so this is not how it was originally supposed to be 😭 it started as a seungmin fic but spiraled into whatever monstrosity this is lmao. everyone thank @solisyeah for the request ily. anywho i hope it’s good <3

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Seungmin furrows his brows as he inspects the photo on his screen. A photo of you with another guy, in his lap with your face nuzzled into the crook of his neck.

Just like you do with Seungmin.

On the very couch he’s sitting on.

At first he thought it was edited, because there’s no way you’d cheat on him, right? But as he took a closer look he just knew it was real.

He was tired, sore, and downright miserable from a rough day at the studio; he had to take way too many breaks for his liking and this picture was just the thing he needed to send him right off the deep end.

He shot up from his spot on the couch so fast it made his head spin, but that didn’t deter him from storming into your bedroom where you were sitting on the bed, aimlessly scrolling through your phone. Once you see his face you can automatically sense something’s wrong.

“Seung?” You tilt your head as you watch him take your apartment key off of his key ring before placing it on your dresser with a clink.

“Seungmin what are you doing?” You jump off of your bed as he slides his shoes on. He runs his fingers through his hair with a frustrated huff.

“I don’t- I think we just need a break. I need a break.” These words were the last thing you imagined to ever come out of his mouth, in this context especially. Or lack there of.

“Wha- why?” Your eyes glaze over with unshed tears that threaten to spill at any given moment. You don’t want to cry in front of him, you’ve always hated having your raw emotions on display like that, especially in such a powerless situation. “Seungmin, talk to me. What the fuck is going on?”

“Don’t play dumb with me. I’m not stupid.” Seungmin shakes his head “Did you really think you could hide it from me?”

“Hide what, Seungmin?”

“You should’ve just fucking left me. Spared my feelings, maybe. But I guess you’re just too selfish for that.”

Without another word he rushes out of the room, leaving you in shambles with nothing else to do but slide to the floor, curl into yourself and let the sobs take over your body.

Seungmin can hear you crying before he even walks out of the front door, causing his heart to clench in his chest and his gut to twist. Standing with his hand just brushing the door handle, he has to physically force himself to press on, to let you go, to accept his reality. The door slams shut behind him and the noise only pushes you further towards the realization that this is actually happening. You aren’t hallucinating, this isn’t some fucked up fever dream or an even more fucked up prank.

You just wish you knew why. No matter how much you try to put the pieces together, you’re always missing something. You can’t think of anything that could’ve set him off. Everything was perfectly normal less than an hour ago, yet all it took was five minutes to trigger the downward spiral of what feels like the end of the world- the end of your world.

-

“What’re you doing back here?” Jeongin slides next to Seungmin - who is still eyeing up the picture on his screen - on the floor. Jeongin nods towards the phone, “What’s that?”

Seungmin huffs and leans his head against the wall behind him, “I honestly don’t fucking know, I don’t even really want to know, actually.”

Jeongin reaches for the phone, pulling it out of Seungmin’s grasp. His lips part in a silent ‘oh’ as he inspects the photo. He’s assuming Seungmin hadn’t even given you a chance to explain solely based on his reaction, in typical Seungmin fashion. Jeongin turns his body to face the other, his face set in an almost disappointed expression.

“I’m going to say this with the utmost respect and I need you to not cause me any bodily harm-” Jeongin sighs before continuing, “You’re a dumbass. Like the dumbest dumbass I think I’ve ever seen. Like paboracha level dumbass. I’m talking-”

“Are you done?” Seungmin groans and squeezes his eyes shut.

“Are you done? God- you just fucked yourself over. If I were you I’d start praying that she’ll still take you back after all this crazy shit.”

“How did I fuck myself oven when she’s the one cheating? Or am I supposed to just forget about that and take the blame for it all like usual? She brought another guy into the same place I spend almost all my time at, and probably fucked hi-” Jeongin slaps his hand over Seungmin’s mouth, effectively silencing him before he could carry on with his bullshit.

“Hyung. Shut up.” The maknae slowly pulls his hand away as Seungmin’s eyebrows shoot upward. “Look I get it, you’re tired, you’re upset, you’re angry bu-”

“Can you fucking blame me? I can’t unsee it. I mean, you see how comfortable she looked with him.” he clenches his fists.

“Will you keep your mouth closed already? You’re killing me here, got a massive migraine now.” Jeongin groans and rubs his temples as he speaks “That picture was taken over a year ago. Before you even knew she existed, hyung. Besides, I know her better than anyone ever will, other than you obviously, which is why I suggest that you get your ass up and go apologize for being such a dumb fuck. Beg for her forgiveness if you gotta. Maybe get on your knees while you’re at it.” he sighs and stands, holding his hand out to Seungmin before pulling him up.

“How do you know she isn’t lying to you? How do you know she isn’t lying about anything else?” Seungmin finally says.

“Because she loves you too much to do that to you. God, have you always been this dense? You seriously need to wake up and realize how stupid you sound.” Jeongin mocks, prompting Seungmin to glare at him one last time before walking out of the studio. All the while unbeknownst to the younger standing with a frown threatening to pull at the corners of his mouth.

“He’s a fucking idiot if he let’s her go over this,” he mutters begrudgingly while he listens to the soft pur of Seungmin’s car in the distance.

-

Almost a week later you’re still waking up with puffy eyes and tear stained cheeks. The first thing you notice is Seungmin’s apartment key still sitting on the dresser untouched. Well, it used to be his. You were really hoping that it was all just a shitty nightmare and that you’d still be tucked in his side with his soft snores being the only sound to fill the room even though it’s days.

You realize what had stirred you awake as another knock fills the almost suffocating silence. You’re half tempted to just ignore it, but something in your gut tells you to answer it.

“Oh, uhm- hi Innie.” you wipe your eyes with the sleeve of your hoodie. Or Seungmins hoodie, rather.

God you need to pull yourself together. How could you not even realize what you were wearing. Fuck.

“Hey,” Jeongin rocks back on his heels somewhat awkwardly, “Can I come in?”

You nod and mumble a soft ‘of course‘ as you move out of the way for him to slip past the threshold and into your apartment while you take a moment to collect yourself, and to put on the most convincing smile you can possibly muster.

“What’s up?” you find a spot on the couch next to him as he scans the room for a second, looking for any signs of whether or not Seungmin actually showed.

“He’s not here, is he?” Jeongin turns to you with sympathetic eyes, finding your own longing for comfort, seemingly pleading him for some sort of consolation.

“N-no but he’ll probably be back so-”

“He’s not coming back, y/n. If he was, it would’ve been days ago.”

Before you can open your mouth to protest, Jeongin has you pulled into his strong chest and tucks your head under his chin gently. “It’s okay, baby. I got you.” he sighs, rubbing small and slow circles on your back just the way he knows you like. He places a small, chaste kiss on the top of your head because he’s learned over the years that the action relaxes you and makes you feel secure.

Jeongin knows you like the back of his hand. Sometimes he thinks he knows you better than he knows himself. He knows your favorite food, your favorite season, your favorite movie. He knows how much you love to read, having periodically skimmed your shelves for books you may have and promptly buying you ones that you haven’t already buried your nose in.

Most importantly, he knows exactly what to say in order to subside your bad moods (he’s well seasoned in this field), and that sometimes you say things you don’t mean yet he never - and will never - hold that against you.

He knows just how much you loved Seungmin, not even wanting to imagine the amount of absolute heartbreak you’re feeling. Despite all this, he can’t help but feel somewhat relieved. You and Seungmin undoubtedly wouldn’t have worked in the long run and that’s exactly what you desire and deserve: a stable, long term relationship where you’d be taken care of and treated like the absolute goddess that Jeongin thinks you are.

He just wishes you give him a chance to treat you like his- more so than he already does now.

“Thank you, In,” you mumble into his chest.

“You don’t need thank me, baby. You know I’m always here.”

You did know that, you’ve always known that. Jeongin doesn’t let you doubt how much he cares for you, he’ll spend every waking moment reminding you if he has to.

You pull back slightly to look into his eyes. “I always end up burdening you with my problems.” Jeongin’s eyes soften at your apology and all he wants to do is hug and kiss and cuddle you until he thinks he’s convinced you enough of his adoration.

But for now all he can do is settle for words, though he can’t help but think it won’t be enough.

“Baby, please don’t be sorry for that. What kind of best friend would I be if I never listened to your complaints or rants?” Calling himself your best friend took more out of him than it should have and he tries to hide his hesitation. Thankfully you hadn’t noticed.

Hearing Jeongin say this makes you realize that he’s treated you better than any boyfriend you’ve ever had. Seungmin never reassured you like Jeongin does. Actually, now that you think about it, Seungmin didn’t do half of the things Jeongin does, even if it was the bare minimum.

He’s always like this, but why does it feel different now?

That’s just his personality, right? There isn’t any hidden meaning behind his words or gestures. Or the way he’s holding you and speaking to you like you’re the most precious thing he’s ever had contact with. The sudden urge to reach out and cup his face is unreal. You just want to make sure you aren’t hallucinating. You wonder how you managed to find such a perfect person who thinks the world of you just as much as you do them. Someone who loves you just as deeply and truly as you do.

Wait what?

You’ve singlehandedly scared and confused yourself all at once now. Obviously you love him and he does you, but it feels as though you love him in a different way. A special way, one that you don’t think you’ve ever felt for anyone. Not even Seungmin, who you once thought was hands down your soulmate.

What you failed to realize, however, was that your soulmate has been here the whole time, and he’s holding you in his arms like he never wants to let you go.

You cut off your train of thought because he doesn’t want you like that and you’re making assumptions that could get you hurt.

Too late.

Another wave of sadness that has nothing to do with what upset you earlier washes over you.

“Baby? Hey, where’d you go?” Baby. Fucking baby. He’s got to stop calling you that. You want to tell him to stop, so why can’t you open your mouth and form those simple words.

“Mhm, ’m okay.” You can’t even bring yourself to put the tiniest bit of distance between your bodies.

You mentally scream at yourself for sounding so noticeably pathetic. He must think you are how could he not when you’re making it so painfully obvious.

“Don’t hide from me, baby. You know you don’t need to hide anything from me.” How ironic.

“I’m not- I just-” you huff and lean your forehead against Jeongin’s chest. God, when did he get so…buff? Has he always been like this?

He pulls your head back to force your gaze to meet his. “What did I tell you, hm? Talk to me baby. I’m all ears.” His arms encircling your body is the last straw before the world comes crashing down on you.

Tears flood your vision and you aren’t even sure as to why you’re crying this time.

Pathetic and dramatic. Great.

Jeongin immediately thinks he’s overstepped now, he took it too far and made you uncomfortable. He removes his hands from you immediately though the action kills him inside, when in reality you want the exact opposite. You want him to pull you closer, you want your chest flush against his to the point where you can feel his heart beating.

“I’m sorry, Innie. I’m sorry.” You finally climb out of his grasp and step away from him. He follows you and with every step he takes forward you move backward until you collide with the wall.

“Why are you sorry when you didn’t do anything wrong? I don’t want you apologizing to me for no reason. If anyone should be apologizing it’s Seungmin, but it’s his fault and his loss, you know that.” You wish Jeongin would stop being so supportive, it’s making it ten times harder to ignore your surfacing issues.

“That’s not the problem, Jeongin.”

Since when did you call him by his full name?

“Then what is it? Is it me? Please I- I just want to help you.”

Your tears have finally halted and you couldn’t be more thankful. You need to be able to properly look into his eyes.

“You can’t help me.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do.”

“Why are you being so difficult all of a sudden?”

“I’m not.” You cross your arms over your chest.

Jeongin blows out a frustrated huff. “Why can’t you tell me? Is it because Seungmin and I are friends becau-”

“I love you.”

“I know you do, which exactly is why you should be talking to me right now instead of bottling it all up-”

“No, Jeongin. I love you. Not in a friend way, not in a platonic way. I want to kiss you and hold you and-” You’ve worked yourself up so much you have cut yourself off in order to calm down.

Jeongin’s mouth stays agape for a solid five seconds before he even processes what you’ve said. “You love me?”

“Is that not what I just said?” Jeongin has to bite back his smile at your remark but quickly frowns again at the expression on your face. You look regretful, like you wish you never spoke. You’re just waiting for his rejection, willing it to come faster so you he’ll leave and you can wallow in self pity by yourself in the comfort of your bed. You disturbed the peace that was your friendship.

“I- the breakup is still fresh and you aren’t thinking straight, baby. Don’t say things you don’t mean.” Jeongin pleads. Is he trying to convince you or himself?

“But I do mean it Jeongin. I really do and I can’t believe it took me this fucking long to figure it out and I wish I’d never caught feelings because this is just a shit show now.”

He goes to speak but you quickly interrupt him. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything. Just forget about it,” you expect him to leave, or to at least move away. But he doesn’t, instead he leans in closer to your ear and whispers in a hushed tone,

“Didn’t I just tell you to stop apologizing, baby?” The way he says ‘baby’ sends shivers down your spine, it’s different than the other times he’s called you that. This time his words actually do have a hidden meaning. His breath ghosts the shell of your ear for a moment before he slowly pulls back to look at you. As if he hasn’t studied your every feature to the point where you’re engraved in his mind.

“You have to promise me that you actually understand what you’re saying and that it isn’t the post breakup neediness talking.” He looks at you sternly and fully expecting a response in words.

You, on the other hand, have absolutely no intention of speaking as you instead grab him by the collar of his hoodie before pressing your lips against his.

Kissing your best friend is much more intimate than you ever expected. He kisses you like it’s not the first time and with more than enough purpose. It starts off aggressive but soon simmers down into a delightfully slow and passionate rhythm and as cliche as it sounds, it’s in this moment that you finally know where you belong, where your home is.

No matter the circumstances, Jeongin always left a space for you in his heart. His subconscious wouldn’t let him fill it with someone else even if he wanted (which he didn’t), forever waiting for you to find the spot with your name written all over it and stay there for as long as you may live.

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tags: @skzstarnet @godslino @myseungsunglove @seungseung-minmin @azuna-sz @chanyeolsrealwife

#snowyquokka #skzstarnet #stray kids #skz #skz imagines #skz x reader #skz scenarios #skz reader insert #skz reactions #yang jeongin x reader #yang jeongin #skz angst #stray kids angst #i.n skz #skz imagine #kim seungmin #stray kids scenarios #stray kids imagines #skz fic #stray kids fic #stray kids i.n #i.n angst #i.n x reader #stray kids x reader

[spuffybot]

Ok was just having this debate with a friend who thinks Mission Impossible 2 is an abomination. And while I will give her that it is an anomaly within the MI canon and arguably is not a MI movie (Ethan doesn’t go rogue, he’s behaving OOC, the tone and vibe are off) I stand by the fact that it is a quintessential, iconic, and absolutely incredible Y2K movie.

1. The Soundtrack: much like the year 2000 classics Charlie’s Angels and Dracula 2000 this movie features Limp Bizkit, Metallica, Rob Zombie, Butthole Surfers, and Foo Fighters to name a few. It’s such an abrupt departure from the first film (the majority of songs on the first MI soundtrack aren’t even featured in the movie.)

There’s just something so utterly Y2K about Ethan throwing his glasses over the side of a mountain and them exploding to the sound of Limp Bizkit.

2. Ethan: just Ethan Hunt in this movie. Listen there are 6 MI movies that show Ethan as a perpetually serious genius with a passionate dedication to his friends and his mission. But there is only one movie where Ethan hunt is a sexy playful badass and that’s MI2. I would go as far as to say that Tom Cruise has never looked better in his life and I know that’s blasphemy against our lord and savior Lestat. But Ethan in MI2 is just GIVING. The arms. The smile. The ridiculous blowout that both falls into his eyes and tousles in the wind. This is peak sex appeal Cruise (it’s also before we knew he was all culty and creepy so it feels less bad to be deep in my feels about how hot he is.)

3. The John Woo of it all: John Woo said the year is 2000 and we will have DRAMA we will have FASHUN and we will have BIRDS. There is so. Much. Unnecessary. Slo. Mo. In. This. Film. SO MUCH. And the action sequences? I know this is a franchise known for its over the top action sequences but the ones in this film don’t even make sense.

4. The Title Sequence: honestly if anything in this movie is a fever dream (even more than the doves that fly out of an explosion) it’s the title sequence which feels like a mashup of every Y2K music video and action movie combined.

5. The Birds: listen I wasn’t going to ignore this scene. THIS SCENE. What can be said? It’s iconic. It’s absurd. It’s the epitome of the decadence, drama, and corniness of the year 2000.

Anyway, thanks for coming to my Ted Talk. MI2 may not deserve a place of honor in the official canon of Mission Impossible but it is hands down one of the best movies of 2000 and it deserves to be remembered as such.

#mission impossible #mission impossible 2 #ethan hunt #tom cruise #y2k movies #y2k aesthetic #y2k #movie review #movies #year 2000

[frxxxncx]

wet shirt - y. jeonghan

»boyfriend!¡yoon jeonghan x fem!¡reader.

»Summary: you were just playing with the cold water, but jeonghan was getting hotter and hotter.

»Tags: smut (MDNI), pet names, establish relationship, comedy?(I tried), exhibitionistm, dirty talk, suggestive (I didn’t write a full sex scene, sorry😭), sex in public, fingering, unprotected sex, creampie, jeonghan and reader are two broke collage students, there’s no a/c in the middle of the summer, jeonghan is down bad for readers waist, mingyu’s cousin is car washing with her cheerleaders friends, dom!jeonghan, sub!reader.

»Words: 2,5k

note: I’m struggling to survive during the heatwaves in my country.

note 2: Any typo or incoherence that you might find was completely intentional, it’s for the sake of learning about my mistakes.

An extremely hot day of September, Jeonghan and you were about to die because of the heat, with the a/c broken and without any money to get it fixed, the only thing that was left for both of you to do was endure it.

You were laying on the cold living room floor, feeling briefly fresh, well, only your backs felt cool, but that was better than nothing at all. You wanted to cry so bad, maybe if your boyfriend and you have gotten an smaller apartment or if you had gotten another part-time job all your problems would be solved, but that was the closest apartment to the campus and both of you were in a moment in your carriers were only one job was starting to crash with you studies.

Jeonghan let out a loud sigh and approached you sliding slowly through the floor, a long arm wrapped you tightly, body’s melting together, he hugged your pretty waist, and your face hid in his chest while he smelt the scent of your shampoo.

“Jeonghan, get away from me, we are in the middle of a heatwave with no a/c and the last thing I want is sweat” you said trying to loosen his grip, you only managed to get even more impossibly close to him.

“Your waist is very pretty, did you know?” He stated, letting you go, but now he was outlining your figure, specifically the big curvature of your waist while you were lying on your side.

“It’s not that pretty” a shiver ran through your body at the soft feeling of his hot hands over your covered skin.

“It is, and I like it a lot” he left a cute little peck on your lips, before getting up to go to the kitchen.

You giggled like a high schooler whose boyfriend just kissed her for the first time, and kicked the air once you were laying over your back again. You found the ceiling very interesting for a moment, thoughts ramming in your head, and then one of your top 10 most humbling moments of all time popped up. Well the floor was an incredible place to think about shit from the past.

Trying to forget by closing your eyes tightly you didn’t notice when your boyfriend came running from the kitchen with his phone in his hand, jumping like a child whom just was rewarded with candies.

“¡Baby!” He called you many times jumping beside you, but when you didn’t answer at the fifth call he got genuinely annoyed for a moment.

“Fucking bitch, get up, we are going to earn some quick money” he declared upset, putting one of his feet’s on you stomach.

“Ouch, take your feet away from me and my tummy” you said while grabbing his ankle trying to move him away.

You sat up stretching your back that cracked very loud making you win a weird look from Jeonghan, that was a nice crack though.

“Babe, my tummy” your voice came in a childish tone making you cringe.

“Tummy my ass, get up, we are going to work” he said at the same time he offered you his hand.

“Work?, wher-, no, how? Don’t tell me, did you sell one of my kidneys?” The fake fear in your voice made Jeonghan crack a smile while helping you get up.

“But you can live with only one” he played along, and you gave him a weak punch in his arm “Come on, I would never sell your organs in the black market, they are for me in case I get sick” he said boasting

“You little fucker” you whined in a very high pitched tone while he laugh loudly “Now, for real, where are we going to work in a Sunday afternoon?” You asked, getting close to your boyfriend so you could steal a soft kiss from him.

“We are going to wash some cars with Mingyu’s cousin and her cheerleaders friends” you looked at him in disbelief, where you were going to wash the cars?, Mingyu lived in a New York size apartment with no parking lot “you know the gas station where he works?” You nod and he smiled, an “ooh” left your mouth.

Jeonghan kissed you again, but this time, instead of giving you just a cute peck, you felt his tongue caress your lower lips and with a weak moan you give the wet muscle permission to enter you mouth, his hot tongue stroked your own, a whimper escaped from the kiss and Jeonghan stopped but not without biting onto your lower lips, you were just so cute and desirable.

“Let’s go?” He said licking his pinky and glossy lips.

“Yeah” you felt pathetic from the way your voice came out in a thread. Shit.

[🍭]

The sun was in a burning heat, attacking mercilessly everyone, you were squeezing the sponges, feeling drops of sweat dance in your forehead when you saw how the cheerleaders along with Mingyu's cousin were playing with the water, wetting themselves while soaping the cars.

Both of you were damp in sweat and your hands hurt because of the rough texture of the sponge, but you and your boyfriend were firm, both determined to get the money to fix their portal to heaven. The air conditioner.

Mingyu finished his turn a few hours ago, leaving you and Jeonghan alone, with a bunch of “pretty” teenage girls that were rubbing themselves in the windows of the cars. You noticed how this man who seemed quite old and looked… somehow weird got into the space given from the gas station for the car washing, the car was shining like it was brand new, even the wheels were sparkling.

“Disgusting” you mumbled, but as the time passed by, you didn’t even care to look again if the cars were clean or not, more money for the a/c.

Yet the sun was affecting you, tiny tears were starting to build in your eyes.

“Hannie, my eyes hurt” you said, pounding to just sit next to your boyfriend -whom was cleaning the rims- and hug his side, resting your face in his arm.

“Baby, we’ll be lucky if we just get out of here with our eyes hurting and not with a sunburn,” he said, kissing the top of your head.

“Can’t wait to have the apartment as cold as the north pole” you whimpered with a high pitch tone.

“Me neither”

[🍭]

You guys didn’t have any idea of how the things turned out this way, the girls were having a wet shirt contest and maybe it was the fact that the school shirts were so soaked they looked translucent and that some of them didn’t have bra, but the clients were giving money like crazy, the tips jar was about to burst, and that indeed made you both so happy.

But your happiness was about to be doomed, you saw how JiWon -Mingyu’s cousin- was getting closer with the old green hose in her hands, with determination in her eyes.

Jeonghan and you ran like a soul who is hunted by the devil, the much younger girl was faster, relentless and with no mercy, the first one to get drenched With the extremely cold water was Jeonghan.

His grey shirt attached to his chest like a second skin, Jeonghan thought that the feeling was going to be excruciating, but the only thing that he felt was satisfaction, making his muscles relax.

“Jiwon!, me too, me too!” You beg when you saw how your boyfriend enjoyed the bath of cold water.

Your cousin’s friend did as requested, soaking you more than your lover who was laughing soundly, he was going to crack a joke when he finally caught more than a glimpse of you, mouth agape at the sight.

The thin fabric of your blouse outlined your delicate figure, accentuating your small waist and the curvature of your breast, black underwear, noticeable under the cloth, your hair looked darker, droplets of water travelled over your neck, disappearing at the collar of the shirt.

Jeonghan was certain, he needed more than just a little splash of water, he was getting hotter and hotter, and if the water wasn’t going to cool him down, only your arousal could.

You gave him a bright smile, his heart melted because you were just too adorable. He wanted to eat you whole.

A smirk was painted in Jeonghan’s pretty face, walking towards you while feeling his hardening cock rub against the fabric of his shorts.

He grabbed you by the waist, body’s so close your face was pressed to his chest, and you couldn’t help but joggle at the hard touch of his dick on your belly.

Jeonghan’s face got close to your ear, biting down your earlobe; he felt you trembling at the action.

“You know, pretty doll?” His hoarse whisper in your ear was ecstasy for you “In this wet shirt’s contest, you are the winner” his grip on your waist tightened taking your breath.

“Han-hannie” you said in a pathetic cry of his name, his hot chest against your was to much,

he was holding you firmly, making you that you could feel his dick poking your belly “We’re at the gas station, Hannie” you tried to move away from him, only managing to make him let go of your waist, but now he was fondling your breast over your shirt in a public space.

“Mmh, you’re right, but I think everyone is focused on the girls, so maybe, it would be better…”his face approached to yours, so close his lips stroked yours faintly “It would be better if we get into the car”he said with his honeyed voice, abiding into your ears“I’m going to fuck you so good, doll” his hot tongue licked you lips and you wanted to cry so bad, because of how much you craved his touch.

Your boyfriend grabbed your hand, interlocking your fingers and guided you towards the old -old- jeep, that was parked behind the gas station.

Once you were beside the car, Jeonghan parted away from you, this time groping the curvature of your ass, making you yelp.

With some struggle he opened the back door of the truck and manhandled you into the back seats, getting inside after you, closing the door with a slam.

He hovered over you, dragging with his hands your oversized shorts, smoothing your cute and puffy thighs, feeling the wet and slightly cold skin.

“Jeonghan, I don’t think this is a good idea” you stuttered, containing a loud and scandalous whine because of the flaring touch of your lover getting closer to your crotch.

“It is a bad idea, in fact it is an incredibly bad idea, but that doesn’t mean we are not going to do it anyway” he whispered with mockery splattered all over his voice, his soft lips grazing over you neck, making you shiver.

Jeonghan hands descended completely to your crotch, touching just lightly over your clothed cunt to then grab your waist tightly once again.

His fingers soothed your flesh over the shirt, they stroked your back, meeting with the hem of your shorts and sneaking inside your underwear.

The skin from your ass was smooth and warm, he massaged up and down, squeezing and spreading your asscheeks shamelessly while you drowned your whimpers in his mouth.

His fingers groped your tight and sticky core, caressing carefully, enjoying how you tried to silence your moans biting your knuckles.

He got his hands out of your shorts, unbuttoning them with expertise, pulling them out in a quick swing, skin reddening at the friction.

Your cheeks were bright red, embarrassed because of the situation you were in, naked from the waist down, with the strong and obscene gaze from your boyfriend over your body. Your forearm rested over your eyes, feeling overly exposed. It's not the first time Jeonghan sees you like this, but you still have the entitlement to feel a little bit of shame because of how vulnerable you are right now.

“You’re perfect” he said, grabbing your arm and pinning them over your head with one hand. “You’re perfect and only mine.” He howled and kissed you passionately, sucking, biting your lips, enjoying the sugary taste of your mouth, and swallowing your moans delightedly.

With his free hand, he lifted your soaked shirt, now contemplating your soft and milky skin, his eyes now fixated over your breasts, his free hand moved your bra, tits now spilling over your chest, perky buttons saying “hi” to Jeonghan in neediness.

He licked his lips with lewdness in his eyes, his hot breath made your perky buttons even more sensitive -if that was even possible-, his lips left an open mouthed kiss, gifting you a hickey just above the bud of nerves, to then proceed and bite and suck your nipple, your boyfriend couldn’t help but feel thrilled by the cry��s that slipped from your mouth.

“Ha- nnie” you said in a pathetic mewl, you felt feverish when his teeth bit into the sensitive flesh, just like you were about to pass out from the sensation.

Jeonghan pressed his fingers in your mouth, making you lick and suck them. Once they were covered in your spit, his hand went once again to your cunt, pressing his fingers into your soaked core.

Two of his fingers entered into your inviting pussy without a warning, digits curling and hitting deliciously every good spot inside of you, Jeonghan savored how your face was showered in ecstasy, knowing that only him could make you feel this good.

You rolled your eyes and your mouth fell agape, gutural moans coming from you, your damp hair sticking to your soft skin and your cunt drooling exited, velvety walls pulsating and sucking his fingers, making him grunt because sooner than later it would be his cock fucking you to the hilt.

“Y/n l/n, hear your name now, pretty, because I’m going to fuck you so hard you’re going to forget it”.

[🍭]

Fast forward to now, Jeonghan was doing the roll of a crutch so you could walk properly towards the younger girls. The mess spilling from your cunt into your underwear making you feel embarrassed, and the burn in your gummy walls, only made you more expectant for what was coming at home.

“Jeonghan, I can assure you that you fucked something inside of me” you whispered not feeling your legs at all, they were asleep because of the cramped place you just had sex in.

“I did more than that,” he said nonchalantly, tightening the grip on your waist.

“Shut up!” you said in a funny cry.

Once you were close to the group of girls, they excitedly gave you an envelope full of money as they thanked you for the help.

Jeonghan got so excited that he let you go, making you lose your balance. You felt a sharp pain in your knees, a loud howl slipped from your mouth, and when your boyfriend looked at you, he felt his dick twitch in his shorts at the view, you were giving him such a mean glare.

“Don’t look at me like that, I might fuck you again”

#I swear the jokes were funnier in my head 🥲 #this is a fever dream so it doesn’t have to make sense #I hate car washing manually 🫠 #seventeen #svt #svt fanfic #svt x reader #seventeen x reader #svt smut #svthub #jeonghan #svt jeonghan #seventeen jeonghan #yoon jeonghan #hannie #jeonghan smut #seventeen smut #seventeen fanfic

[totallyhextra]

People? In MY computer?? It's more likely than you think!

The following is a fanvertisment and is not connected to the show. ****Yet.*** *Also yes, this is the fourth time I'm posting this because TUMBLR WONT LET ME EDIT SPELLING MISTAKES!

ANYWAY,

Once upon a time, back in 1987, Dire Straits put out this music video for “Money for Nothing”, which, as you know, was a song about wanting my MTV. 

The video was made by two guys (Gavin Blair and Ian Pearson) on a very moody computer. After the video went out, these two guys went to a pub:

Ian: “Hey, we should make a whole show like this!”

Gavin: “Dude, making three minutes almost killed us.”

And so it was decided!🎉

The two guys were joined by two other guys (Phil Mitchell and John Grace) and created the Hub, which then became Mainframe Entertainment. They got even more people, and then they all holed up in this hotel.

They were mad lads with a dream: a whole cgi animated show, and they made it happen a whole year before Toy Story!

Behold! ReBoot!

(Yes that fever dream was real)

Now before I get any of this:

Let me lay this down. If you can’t with the animation of the first season because it was CUTTING EDGE IN 1994, you can close your eyes and listen to it. ReBoot wasn’t just a CGI gimmick. The characters are fully developed, the voice actors are peerless, the plot is sharp, and there’s so many easter eggs that you’ll never find them all.

Never

(And yes the episode "Bad Bob" was the actual catalyst for Fury Road. Look it up)

ReBoot is about what life is like in a computer (in the 90s, because it was the 90s) called Mainframe (because of course it is). People are sprites, the guys that look like 1s and 0s are binomes (which represent 1s and 0s). Bad guys are viruses, and the good guy is a Guardian named Bob, who is a certified cinnamon roll.

In the first season the eps are light and self-contained, mainly because there was constant friction between the Mainframe studios and the Board of Standards and Practices.

They still got away with some pretty dark stuff, like Megabyte (virus) making Enzo (the kid) watch his dog get sliced open (dog got away, obviously) , Dot (sprite) have a hallucinatory breakdown, and the fridge horror of realizing the thousands of worm things (nulls) that plunged off a bridge to their death were actually people.

And Hex's (virus

best girl) scary face single-handedly traumatized an entire generation. 🙂

But busting through a window was a no go, because WhAt If tHe cHiLdReN dID iT tOo?

Anyway, halfway through the second season, ABC cut them loose, so they were like, fuck it, we’re going to start going hard. The story shifted from episodic to arcs and things start to get serious.

Third season the show moved to YTV in Canada, which gave no fucks about shielding the innocent children.

So it got DARK

How dark?

The UK refused to show the entire season, so the audience there had to wait until pirated copies made it across the pond to see how it ended.

Also by 1997, the animation was gorgeous. (Best example of third season animation I could think of that didn't have spoilers)

The show was green-lit for a fourth season on Cartoon Network, but halfway through production Warner Bros took over and the same fucking thing happened.

Because Mainframe was halfway done, they decided not to scrap all of it, but knowing they wouldn't be able to finish it correctly, Mainframe stripped anything that would hint at Season Four's true ending, then left what remained on a cliff-hanger of angst.

FOR 22 YEARS

(It's also why the last four eps of season four seem to make no sense)

And so it was.

Other crap happened, the soul left Mainframe, and its animated corpse spat out “The Guardian Code” in 2018. 

But never say die! The year is (almost) 2024, 30 years later. ReBoot shall rise from the dead, because here come the documentary!!

Do you dare see what you’ve been missing?

What the (UK) government doesn’t want you to know?? 

Then come on down to ReBoot!

We got:

Magnificent bastards with sexy voices!

(Tony Jay at his best)

Kickass women who could probably crush your head with their thighs and you’d enjoy it!

Innuendos in a kid's show!

💗 This adorable cinnamon roll!! 💗

Insane third season glow-ups!

YOUR NEW GOD

These guys!

(Gay roller-skating binome is my boi. I named him Jerry)

Nonstop cultural refs (You'll never find them all. Never.)

(There are literally videos dedicated to trying)

So many computer puns!

Body Horror!

Existential Crisis!

HAVE I MENTIONED YOUR NEW GOD?

This is it, folks! The real thing, the gem hidden in the moose-filled forests of Canadia!🌲🌲🌲

Take a trip inside a mid-90’s computer!

See the World Wide Web! (omg):

Witness the original purple Gamecubes that randomly fall from the sky when the owner of the computer (OUR GOOD LORD THE USER) wants to play a game. If it lands on people and they lose, they dissolve into mindless energy leeches, fated to tormented by their former bretheren for all of eternity.

Just like in real life! 🙃

So watch the eps! They on YouTube!

I think they're on Pluto, Hulu, Sling, and Tubi too! Also DVDs for people who have the patience to wait for them!

WATCH! BELIEVE! SUFFER THE SOUL-CRUSHING RAGE OF THE SEASON 4 CLIFF-HANGER!* (come on, its fun!)*

HYPE THE DOC!

The more people hype, the better the chances of actually getting it finished.

NOW SHARE THIS WITH EVERYONE!

And now I will leave you with this screenshot from the ep "Painted Windows", where dicks can clearly be seen drawn upon the wall behind the fleeing anthropomorphized television.

(PS: If you heard the clown pic at the top of the page in your head, you're welcome)

IMPORTANT UPDATE

This message is now approved by Gavin Blair! He's an awesome guy. Show him some love on TWITTER (fuck you musk) at @TheRealMrSweary Also, if you want to share this with non-tumblr friends, here is my attempt at a webpage version:

theseventhstarprojects.com/REBOOT.html

#90s #90s aesthetic #90s nostalgia #90s kid #canada #reboot show #Reboot cartoon #hexadecimal #reboot 1994 #reboot #bob (reboot) #dot matrix #mouse (reboot) #megabyte reboot #Enzo reboot #Phong reboot #gavin blair #Ian Pearson #mainframe entertainment #reboot mainframe #mainframe studios #canadian art #canadian animation #retro cgi #old cgi #vintage cgi #cgi #animation #media recs #watchlist

[after-witch]

A Linnet on a Bough [Yandere Scaramouche x Reader]

Title: A Linnet on a Bough [Yandere Scaramouche x Reader]

Synopsis: Isolation takes its toll, and you begin to sleepwalk out of the gilded manor Scaramouche has procured for you. 

Word count: 3300ish

notes: yandere, married reader, sleepwalking, isolation, unhealthy/controlling behavior 

Being the spouse of a Harbringer is no simple matter, and you are no simple spouse. 

If you had married someone from  your village, your life would be simple. You would do what your parents had done, and their parents had done, and their parents had done. Cooking and mending and minding the children, and living out your days without ever venturing very far, except on rare occasions that would be something you would treasure forever.

You would grow old within the confines of the village and die surrounded by your children, who would bury you near your own parents and go on to live out their lives much as you had done.

But you didn’t marry someone from your village, and your life is not so simple. Instead, you were wed to Scaramouche. Sometimes it doesn’t seem real, even now, and you pinch yourself to make sure you’re not nursing some long standing fever-dream. 

Who would have thought? Certainly not you. Sometimes you wonder if even he expected to ever make such a match. But he told you that he intended to marry you, and let the words hang in the air, to be caught or cut down with your decision.

You said yes. Really, you couldn’t say no… but part of you wanted it. Yes, you can admit that much. It was flattering, and isn’t it nice to be flattered? Especially when you were nobody. Just someone who trudged to the town well to fetch water for your elderly parents, someone who helped a stranger (Scaramouche, it turns out, was not the helpless waif you’d assumed) and got a husband for their troubles. 

So, no, life is not simple. Both in the figurative and literal meaning of the word. 

And now, wife of a Harbringer as you are, you have grown acquainted with--and acquainted is the only term for it, for you could never say you were accustomed to any of it--certain luxuries. Food, to your liking, whenever you would like it. Sometimes it is even brought to you out of season, the greatest luxury of all. Clothing made with rich materials; ribbons, jewels, the softest of slippers to adorn your feet. Servants and pampering the likes of which you had only heard about in your old life. 

But there is one luxury that you are routinely denied, no matter how much you pout your lips, no matter how prettily you ask, no matter how many tears blur your vision and wet your eyelashes: the outside world.

You’re not meant to go outside, Scaramouche had told you, the first time it became clear that you were not going to waltz out of the stately manor he’d brought you to for the wedding in order to take in the scenery. 

And so… you don’t go outside anymore. Not in the traditional sense. You rest in covered litters with the windows tacked shut and he’s not above smacking your hand if you try to lift up the corners to catch a glimpse of whatever (or whoever) waits outside. Of course, when he’s not accompanying you, your pitiful looks sometimes convince one of the guards to let you keep one flap untouched so that you can take a peek.

But seeing flashes of the world you used to live in are not the same as truly being within it. The ghost of a breeze against your half-hidden face is not the same as basking in the sunshine. Hearing the sounds of life from a village as you’re carried through it is not the same as stopping at a market stall to buy a treat, asking someone how their day is going, and absorbing the hustle and bustle of everyone around you.

There is no substitute for living out in the world. 

You just don’t know how to convince Scaramouche of that fact.

--

There is a fine line between gratitude and ingratitude, between obedience and surliness, and Scaramouche finds that you walk it all too well. 

It doesn’t matter how much he takes away; how much he removes the temptation by tacking up screens or keeping you within interior apartments, free from all the noise and sights and smells of the outside. You still want to go outside. Something about it calls to you, pulling on your sleeves, no matter what he does.

No matter how much he tries to occupy your mind with something different. Better. Himself, most often (for you should be grateful for that) but things that no one else could say he gave them. Gifts. Trinkets. Things that suited your interests, which he knew very well, because he hangs onto every word that comes from your mouth.

Even the ones that drive him mad. 

He loves to hear your voice, nightingale that you are, but sometimes he is so gravely tempted to press a finger to your lips and tell you to hush. 

At least until you learn to stop saying things that grate his ears and the space where his heart should be. 

The pleadings that come so softly and sweetly--but if that was all, he could manage. It’s the way that you weave your thoughts into every conversation like a pattern in a tapestry--remarking on the weather conditions in regions that the two of you might be traveling in, asking if the retinue had encountered certain flora or animals during the journey. You want to know about the world; you want to be in the world. 

Little things, little threads, connecting you to a world that isn’t exclusively him… why has nothing successfully cut them from your grasping fingers? 

--

“They only blossom under certain conditions, you know.” Your voice is soft and lilting, carrying on the one-sided conversation over a shared table of delicate foods. You take bites in between your verbal fascination with the local flora, a subject you’re all too keen to share with him. “The flowers are said to be so lovely that people have wept at the sight of them. And the fragrance…” You sigh a little, and pick a piece of fruit to nibble on. “There’s nothing like it. Or so I’m told.” 

A pause. You glance at him, eyelashes practically fluttering, then look back at your dishes. 

“And… I’ve never seen one in person,” you add as you reach for another helping of fruit. “I wonder what they’re like.” 

Do you think he doesn’t know what you’re trying to do? Looking at him so sweetly, asking how he finds the food, interspersing dinner with notions of flowers blooming right outside the borrowed manor the two of you have been living in for this current assignment.

But he won’t give in. He won’t be manipulated, not even by you. 

Still… that doesn’t mean he can’t try to fulfill this hunger of yours. Much like filling a better, a taste should be enough to keep you from grumbling. 

Within the week, he has some unlucky Fatui tasked with the mission of cutting a fresh bouquet of the very flowers that you were waxing on about so prettily. And you wake up one morning to find them on the nightstand next to your bed, set in a clear vase.

He thinks that you’ll smile, and thank him, and if all goes well, he won’t have to hear any more not-so-subtle hints about your desire to go outside.

But you don’t smile and fling yourself at his feet, thanking him for such a thoughtful, fine gift. You don’t tell him that this is all you need--the flowers he gifts you, the clothes he has painstakingly crafted to suit our form and above all, him. 

Instead your hand goes to your mouth, covering the smallest of gasps. 

And, well, he thinks--you’re surprised. That’s all. That’s to be expected., if anything. You did often complain about the monotony of your days, so a little surprise was bound to get a reaction from you. 

But instead of breaking into a grin and thanking him, your hand reaches out to touch the delicate blossoms. Like they’re going to break. More than that--like there’s something wrong. 

“What is it?” And if there is a snap in his voice,  you surely couldn’t blame him.  You are so difficult to please, and hiding the fact that he wants to please you at all is a tiring chore all on its own. You exhaust him as much as you fill him.

“How much prettier they would be in nature…” Your lips curve downward, a soft frown that feels aimed right at him. “I’m sorry that you cut them…”

Sometimes, you make him want to scream.

He’ll take out his pent-up irritation on someone else. Irritation that is not at you, but with you. Yet not with you as well. It’s all a jumbled mess that he doesn’t want to untangle, and he won’t. He’ll shove it down deep into some cavernous hole, perhaps the one that exists inside of him no matter how hard he tries, and move on with his day.

If only you would stop looking at those flowers like they were broken glass.

--

You’re gone. The space that you occupy (the left half of the shared bed, all wrapped in blankets and often clutching a pillow instead of him, a trait he does not find endearing but does not wish to push on) is empty, bereft of anything but cool rumpled sheets.

There’s fear, at first. Fear that something has happened. Someone has taken you. Perhaps it was Her… perhaps She, of all the unholy things, has slithered past his defenses and snatched you up just to snap another piece from his broken patchwork body. 

It doesn’t have to be Her, though. He has many enemies. And enemies will target your weakest point, and you, you, you. You are exactly that to him. 

So there is fear, yes, that you have been snatched away and perhaps you are already dead, and they took you not for blackmail but for some kind of revenge. To see him wither. 

But then he retrieves the lantern from the dresser and lights it, the warm glow illuminating the silent, heavy room. He can feel his breath quickening, his chest tightening, and he doesn’t know why or what to do with any of it.

It only gets worse when he realizes that there is no sign of forced entry. No broken door-locks, no sprinkles of glass on the rugs, no drops of blood on the windowsill to mark where you might have been dragged through.

The fear ebbs away, replaced by a sour, sickly feeling of betrayal. 

You’ve left him. After all he’s given you. All he’s done for you. 

Yes, he’s taken away your freedom, but you didn’t have the capacity to understand why that was not something to begrudge him for. Freedom was not for delicate things that needed to be kept alive, protected, harbored from the rest of the world. 

He clutches the lantern in one hand and storms out of the room, still wearing his night-clothes. The hallways are dim, barely light by small windows that let in a trickle of moonlight. He listens. 

You couldn’t have gone far, and you’d better hope he catches you himself before morning, because if he has to engage a search party on  your behalf, no one (least of all the Fatui stationed with him) will be enjoying it.

He dismisses one of the guards who spots him. He doesn’t want them involved, not yet. He pushes out one of the side doors and begins to walk the perimeter of the grounds. You might have gone off into the forest, or perhaps you went down the paved path, hoping to find a traveler who might help you.

He is about to decide which option to take when he hears something from behind him, near a half-broken brick enclosure that had seen better days. Were you hiding in there? Trying to trick him? He couldn’t put it past you. 

He braces himself, feeling something thrum through him that made him want to turn away and rush forward all at once, and walks through the open gate of the enclosure. 

And… you’re there.

Sitting in the midst of a garden, some untended thing that was left here by the previous tenants, before it was abandoned and absorbed into the network of buildings useful to the Fatui. And to him, for keeping you in one secure location for months on end.

It was wild and overgrown, and some of the rocks creating the garden path were moss-covered. It’s a wonder you didn’t slip on them, he thinks, and there’s a flash of fear mingled with his irritation. How could you do something as stupid as sneak outside at night, in the dark, and walk into some unknown, overgrown eyesore? 

You haven’t heard his footsteps, evidently, because you go on standing. You’re swaying a little, and your hands brush the flowers. He can hear you talking to yourself, something low and sweet. He can’t see your face but it’s easy enough to imagine that you’re smiling. 

“What are you doing?” There was an attempt, in his mind, to keep his voice level. But it quakes anyway, with fury and irritation and that still-sour worry that you betrayed him in the night.

He waits. You don’t turn around. He thought that, when you heard his voice, you were going to jump like a scared little animal and apologize and try to smooth things over with your teary lashes and pouting lips.

But you don’t turn around. And when you answer him, it’s not a word, really. It’s mumbling. Low. Almost a groan.

He’s had enough. He walks forward until he can grip your upper arm, and moves to turn you around. But you don’t pout or jerk away or tell him that you just wanted to go outside. You’re looking straight at him but he can tell right away that you don’t truly see him at all.

You’re… asleep. 

Standing up, eyes blinking rapidly as if in the throes of some waking dream, in the middle of a garden.

But asleep, all the same. 

He presses his lips together. You were a nuisance. Truly. He should leave you here, let you wake up in the morning cold and shivering and covered in slick green moss.

Instead, he lifts you up. You flail a little, arms jerking this way and that, but it’s easy enough to grip you close and carry you bridal-style back down the hallway (the Fatui stationed in the hall is wise enough to say absolutely nothing as he sees him returning) and continues until he can lay you gently down onto your side of the bed.

You gasp, then, perhaps half-waking. But it’s eased enough when your hands instinctively grab your pillow and curl up with it. 

Before heading back into bed, he grabs a fire poker and slides it through the handles of your bedroom doorway. You wouldn’t be getting out, not in your sleep, anyway.

His dreams that night are fitful.

--

The first thing you realize upon awakening is that you’d really rather go back to sleep, because your dream was lovely. You were in a garden, fragrant and lovely. There was cool fresh air on your face and grass under your toes and sounds, real sounds. Birds and insects buzzing and everything that is forever kept on the other side of walls and windows now.

Over breakfast, you smile, and serve your husband his dishes before you tuck into your own. And is it wrong that you want to tell him about your dream? Is it wrong that you hope it will make him finally let you go outside, even just for a little while?

“I had a lovely dream last night,” you say, smiling with what you hope is sweetness and not desperation. “I was in a garden…”

You don’t see the goosebumps that run up his arms at your words.

--

You sleepwalk the next night. And the next. And the next. He doesn’t know how you manage to get the bar off the door every time, how you evade the guards, how you don’t wake him up… but you do. 

Always going to the same place, the damned garden, with its stubborn flowers and broken paths.

Well. If one vase of flowers is not enough to keep you satisfied (and more importantly, inside) perhaps he needs to take it a few steps further. 

He gifts you more flowers. Bundles of them, baskets of them, stuffed into vases and pots and cracked pans his underlings found in the kitchen storage room. 

And while the rooms of the manor are soon a garden, filled with cloying blossoms and greenery that brings its fair share of insects lurking about, it doesn’t make you stop talking about the world that you’re supposedly “missing” out there. 

Not just the flowers, but the animals. The people. The markets. 

The life, teeming with every little thing, good and bad, that makes up this world. 

Most disturbingly of all: The sleepwalking continues.

What more can he give you without giving you the freedom that would break him apart?

--

It’s not that the sound of a bird in the morning is unusual. It’s just that they are normally muffled, as there are no trees near the window of the bedroom.

But the chirping that you hear now is so close that it might as well be in your ear. Groggy, rubbing away the dust of sleep in your eyes, you sit up…

And find that there is a silver bird cage sitting on top of your dresser, next to a wilting vase of flowers from a few days before. 

It’s a pretty thing. Small and  yellow. A pretty thing in a pretty cage. Another gift from your husband, after the mountains of flowers, the wreaths of blooming vines, the meals, the clothes, the comfort…

--

He can never get used to waking up without you beside him. No matter how many times he easily finds you and brings you back, mumbling and bleary, there is always those terrible, agonizing moments of panic when he thinks: you’ve left him.

But you’re not alone in the garden. 

You’re holding the cage, clutching it to your chest. He wonders what will happen if your sleeping muscles dream of something else; will you drop the cage and let it clatter to the ground? Will the delicate bird inside be jostled so terribly that it dies? And what would he do, then, to ensure that this doesn’t make you even less satisfied with your isolated life?

But you don’t drop it. One thing he has learned from watching you sleepwalk is that you are surprisingly nimble about it. 

He watches, lips pressed into a frown, as you slowly lower the cage to one of the formerly ornate pedestal tables in the garden. It must have been pretty once. Now, it’s mossy and gray and damp. 

It doesn’t surprise him, what you do next. Your fingers, shaking but surprisingly deft, undo the latch on the door and swing it open. The bird inside hops around for a few moments, tilting its head to and fro, before it launches itself into the air and flies away.

You mumble something, sweet and slurry. A farewell, perhaps. Who knows what really goes on in your pretty head when you sleep? 

And it’s his cue to take you back inside. You still fight, just a little, when he picks you up. Flail your arms and legs, until he’s held you tight enough that your muscles seem to accept the hold and relax.

He looks down at your bleary, half-awake face. Your eyes tend to close when he carries you. Perhaps your body knows that it’s okay to let them rest, now that someone else is carrying you. Holding you. Protecting you.

A pity that your mind couldn’t understand that fact. 

Sometimes he considers chaining you up at night. It would be the most practical solution. It might even ease his fears every time he wakes to find you gone, and he’s forced to track you down to this nighttime garden that no one else would bother entering.

But there’s something in him, hard and sick, that wonders. If he chains you up, he might just free you in his sleep, like you’ve freed the bird in the cage. 

It’s easier to pretend you aren’t his prisoner when your chains are invisible, after all. 

#yandere genshin impact #yandere scaramouche #yandere scaramouche x reader #yandere #afterwitch writes

[spacebarbarianweird]

The Dragon Made of Threads

Synopsis: Astarion is making a gift for you.

Tags: fluff

Read on AO3

Masterlist

Headcanons

Astarion’s mind doesn’t let him rest. 

The reverie is supposed to be a blessing, the only way for the True People to remember their long lives. But his long life was nothing but misery until  very recently and he keeps being dragged into the darkness.

Oh, Astarion was so naive to believe it could have been over by killing his master and having the “rebirth” experience on the grave. 

His past haunts him.

“You are tired,” you touch his forehead as if trying to sense fever. “You need some rest.”

“My sweet, elves can survive without trance for a week. And I am undead. I am fine.”

“You don't look fine. You have dark circles and your eyelids are puffy again. You need to rest.”

“No, I don’t!” He tries to sound confident but instead his voice resembles a rebellious teenager.

You are right, of course. The elves can survive without reverie for a week, the same way non-elves can make it through one or two sleepless nights. Then, the body and mind collapse. 

But entering the reverie… Reliving tortures and humiliation… Feeling the same sense of misery and horror and hopelessness… No, he can’t do that. Not now. Not ever.

You are ready to sleep - it’s the first time in a month that you sleep in the room, not in the tent - the thick curtains protect Astarion from the merciless sun. 

“Please,” you yawn. “Meditate.”

“I will.”

“Don’t lie to me, please, I know when you are dishonest.”

Astarion grins. “Oh, my sweet, I am no liar. I am going to reverie once you fall asleep. I just like watching you when the dreams take over you.”

“Astarion, when you say the truth your eyes are wide open. When you smirk, you lie. Listen, maybe I can do something? Something to make you… think about something pleasant? It’s been a year! There are a lot of good memories to relive. Let’s just find a way to point your mind in the right direction!”

A year of good memories. Well, a little bit more. Four months of having a tadpole in his brain, experiencing freedom and sunlight, falling in love, learning how to feel again, and how to be alive. All these memories are precious, even the ones he is embarrassed about. For example, using you in his own favor. It doesn’t matter you’ve forgiven him - it still hurts.

Astarion sighs and lies beside you. Your arms immediately wrap around him. The familiar warmth is so tender that Astarion lets himself slip away into the reverie.

He is indeed tired.

He needs to rest.

But instead of grasping a good memory, a pleasant or at least bearable, his mind collapses into the abyss.

Chained to the wall. Bleeding. Hurting. He can’t scream anymore. It’s an old memory from when he was still hoping. He begs for mercy but no one listens. Hunger. Pain. Blood. Again, again. 

The master is whistling, carving the symbols on Astarion’s back with a silver dagger. The cursed metal feels like melted lava.

Astarion doesn’t need to sleep, neither does the vampire lord. 

This is your life, forever. You are doomed. No one will save you.

No! No! It’s not true! It will end! It will take two centuries, two long and miserable centuries, but it will come to an end! 

Astarion screams in the past until his throat burns.

“Astarion! Astarion!”

He feels the warm hands shaking his shoulders. He returns to reality like a drowned man from the dark waters, numb and restless.

You don’t say anything and he collapses into your arms, crying like a lost child.

“I can’t… I can’t… I need to rest… But I can’t…”

His back… His back is still bleeding, he can feel it, but your fingers caress the scars. It’s all over. It’s been more than a year. He will never return to those dungeons. No one will ever mutilate him again.

You let him go and pick up the travel sack in the corner. 

“I bought something at the potion merchant. I think it might help.”

“Please, I - I can… handle…”

You take out a bottle with a golden liquid. 

Angelic sleep potion.

The only way to make an elf experience regular sleep.

“No.”

“Astarion, what choice do you have? One more day like this and you won’t be able to walk on your own. You need it.”

“No! I am not drinking this! My mind keeps bringing me real nightmares and I have heard  all about the creepy dreams and nightmares the sleeping mind can weave!”

“But it won't be reality! Besides, when a non-elf is exhausted like you, they don’t see dreams.”

“But I won’t be able to escape it. With reverie at least I know it’s a memory!”

You sit beside Astarion and hug him. “Please. If you don’t want to do this for yourself, do this for me. I can’t see you suffering like this.”

Astarion sighs. “You are manipulative, you know?”

“Learned from a professional”.

Astarion adjusts himself back on the  bed and opens the bottle. The potion smells intoxicating. “But I do this only for you.”

“And I am grateful for your sacrifice.”

Astarion drains the bottle and before he manages to acknowledge anything, sleep takes him.

He sees visions and images. Places and people. Some are familiar, and some are not. His mind weaves the dreams out of emotions, memories, and experiences. 

Astarion dreams of a dragon.

It’s an ancient species of dragons, otherworldly. A majestic creature capable of carrying a dragon rider on its back.

Astarion rides this dragon above the Trackless Sea. There is nothing but the water and open blue skies.

And the sun.

It feels like cat fur on his skin, gentle and warm. 

Astarion wakes up still dizzy with the unrealness of what he saw. 

And he feels amazing.

His body is rested, and his mind is clear. The dream was so vivid that Astarion would believe he was once a dragon rider if he didn’t know about the weird fantasies of non-elven dreams.

He looks at you, sound asleep in the bed. His. You are his. And he is yours. What a sheer amount of luck made you meet each other? And how lucky he is you chose him.

It is still afternoon, hours before the sunset and he knows too well you won't wake up till evening.

Astarion needs to occupy himself with something. He gets up, stretches his arms, and then sees your traveling cape on the floor. 

“Such a messy little thing”, he chuckles. Astarion picks up the cape and notices a hole in the fabric.

Astarion takes his sewing kit from the traveling sack. He loves repairing things for you - complaining all the way, of course - but he never lets you sew yourself.

And then the idea comes to his mind.

Instead of black threads, he picks the red ones. It takes him a few attempts to understand how to do that but then the stitches come naturally from his fingers.

A dragon soaring in the skies. A divine creature from other planes. A beast that came to him in his dreams.

Astarion carefully embroiders the body of the dragon, then the wings and a stream of fire from its mouth.

He still has a lot of threads left and he starts embroidering the other dragon on the opposite side of the cape. 

Then he notices something has changed.

The curtain is wide open and the moonlight streams inside the room. You sit beside him, smiling at his work.

“Oh, sorry, my sweet. I’ve been carried away…”

“It’s all right. I like watching you sew. But it’s the first time I see you making something like this.”

“Do you like it?”

“Of course!” you touch the embroidered dragons. “So real! I didn’t know you could do such things!”

“I- I’ve seen them. In a dream.”

The tender fingers touch his curls. “You’ve rested, haven’t you?”

“Yes. I have,” Astarion hands you the cape. “If you want, I can add more. I just need more threads”.

You smile and kiss him. “Of course, I do. Thank you.”

--

Tag list

@tugoslovenka @marcynomercy @wintersire @vixstarria @not-so-lost-after-all @ashiro20 @theearthsfinalconfession @herstxrgirl @starlight-ipomoea @micropoe10 @astarion-imagine-archive @veillsar @elora-the-slutty-songstress @fayeriess @lumienyx @tallymonster @caitlincat-95 @tragedybunny @valeprati @lynnlovesthestars @marina-and-the-memes @waking-electric @ayselluna @connorsui @asterordinary @darkarchangel96 @locallegume @brainfullofhotsauce @coffeeanddonutscafe 

#astarion #baldur's gate 3 #bg3 #bg3 astarion #astarion bg3 #astarion romance #baldurs gate 3 #astarion x tav #astarion x reader #astarion angst #astarion drabble #astarion short fic #spacebarbarian fics #astarion fluff #astarion comfort #baldur's gate post game #Valentine Day Fic Exchange

[steveseddie]

cold bones (you were the warmth)

rating: g | cw: none apply | word count: 1,307

tags: eddie munson lives, steve harrington is a sweetheart, pre-relationship, fluff and hurt/comfort

for the @steddielovemonth prompt “love is asking ‘do you want a blanket?’” by @thefreakandthehair

click here to read on ao3

***

Eddie wakes up feeling cold.

He always does these days. Since he almost died in the Upside Down it’s like the coolness from that place burrowed deep inside him and even now, two weeks later, he still can’t shake it off.

It doesn’t help that he’s still stuck in this room while he recovers. There’s an iciness to this place too- this secret government hospital. It’s not just the place with its gray and empty walls, but the people who work there too. The doctors, the nurses, and the government agents who are constantly walking into his room all treat him with the same indifference and apathy, and Eddie is used to people being hateful and mean, but this treatment is far worse.

The only time he ever feels warm is when someone comes to visit him, his uncle, or one of his new friends. But even then, that warmth doesn’t last long once they leave and he goes back to being cold.

With a sigh, Eddie wraps the flimsy hospital sheet around himself and rolls over on the bed, careful not to jostle the stitches covering his sides too much.

He lets out a soft gasp when he sees someone sitting on the chair next to his bed.

“Steve?” Eddie has to ask because he’s not completely sure that he’s not dreaming. Yes, Steve Harrington somehow ended up being part of that group of new friends, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t surprise Eddie every time.

Steve looks up from the book he’s reading- The Hobbit, which does little to convince Eddie that he isn’t imagining this- and smiles.

“Hey, you’re awake.”

“Am I? Because King Steve Harrington reading Tolkien next to my bed feels like something that would only happen in my dreams,” Eddie says, cringing a little at the meaning behind his words, hoping that Steve doesn’t read too much into what he said.

If Steve does, he doesn’t show it, simply chuckling softly. “Someone left it here for you. Think it was Henderson. It was either reading this or watching you sleep, and that one felt a bit creepy.”

Eddie snorts, gesturing at the worn-out cover of the book. “What do you think?”

Steve shrugs. “It’s not bad, but there are too many names, man. It’s confusing.”

“Fair enough.”

“How are you feeling?” Steve asks, putting the book back on the bedside table.

Eddie makes a face. “Like my body is being held together by stitches and prayers,” he says. A displeased frown appears between Steve’s eyebrows. “But they’ve got me on some powerful drugs here, so I can’t complain.”

The pain isn’t really what bothers him the most anyway, it’s the cold. Always the cold.

For a moment, Eddie thinks he said that out loud because the next thing out of Steve’s mouth is, “Do you want a blanket?”

“Hm?”

Steve gestures at Eddie on the bed. “You bundled yourself up like a burrito there and you were shivering in your sleep.”

“I thought you weren’t watching sleep, Stevie,” Eddie says with a smirk.

Steve’s cheeks turn a pretty pink shade. “I might’ve glanced at you once or twice. You snore, it’s annoying.”

With an undignified squeak, Eddie says, “I don’t snore!”

Steve laughs heartily. “So, blanket? I can ask one of the nurses for one.”

“You would have better luck asking Vecna for a hug, man” Eddie snorts. “I’ve asked, they- they never bring me one, either they forget or just don’t care.”

Steve frowns. “What? But they’re supposed to be taking care of you. All that shivering could mean you have a fever or something worse!” Eddie can’t but chuckle as he slips into Mother Hen Steve mode.

“Pretty sure it’s not. It’s- I think it has to do with the Upside Down? Like, being there and almost dying there left me feeling perpetually cold or something,” Eddie tries to explain. Steve’s eyes narrow at him. “I know it doesn’t make sense-”

But Steve shakes his head. “No, it does, the kids- they told me that when Will got possessed by the Mind Slayer or whatever his name was, he felt cold all the time so maybe it’s like, an Upside Down thing.”

Eddie blinks. “So you’re saying I could be possessed by a monster?”

Steve’s eyes widen in alarm. “No! No! No. I’m sure you’re not. I’m sure it will go away eventually.”

“If you say so.”

“Speaking of that. Going away,” Steve says, looking down at his watch and wrinkling his nose. “I should go, I have a shift.”

“Are people even renting movies after half the town got destroyed?”

“You’d be surprised,” Steve says. “I’ll come back later, okay?”

Then, he reaches for Eddie’s hand, halfway concealed by the hospital sheet, and squeezes it. Warmth spreads through Eddie at lightning speed from the touch. It lingers just long enough after Steve leaves so that Eddie can fall asleep again.

***

The next time Eddie wakes up- cold again, always cold- Steve isn’t there, but he comes back a few hours later, carrying a large bag.

“Back already?” Eddie asks when Steve closes the door. “Did you miss me that much, sweetheart?”

Steve splutters, almost dropping the bag and flushing a bright red. “Shut up.” He places the bag on Eddie’s bed and he recognizes the logo on the front.

“Did you raid Melvald’s on your way here?”

Steve bites his lip. He won’t meet Eddie’s eyes, staring down at the contents of the bag instead. “I figured if they weren’t going to give you any blankets here, I’d bring you some.”

Eddie blinks. “What?”

He doesn’t reply. Instead, he starts unpacking blankets from the bag- first a yellow fuzzy blanket, then a plaid one, and finally one with some animated cartoon characters on it that Eddie doesn’t recognize. He stares at them with his lips parted in shock.

“Uh, these were all they had, they donated a bunch of them to the shelter after, you know, everything.”

“You- brought me blankets?”

“Uh, I did, yeah.”

“You’re- something else, Harrington, did you know that?” Eddie says, shaking his head in disbelief.

“Uh, something good I hope?” Steve asks, fidgeting a little.

“Yeah,” he smiles. “Definitely.” It hits Eddie then that he’s in a lot of trouble. It was one thing when Steve was just an attractive guy, but it’s another thing to realize that he’s kind and good and cares about Eddie. This is a guy that Eddie could see himself falling in love with and that’s a problem.

But it’s a problem for another day. For now, he grabs the yellow blanket and drapes it over himself. The cold doesn’t go away entirely but it recedes, and Eddie sighs happily. When he looks at Steve, he’s got a pleased little smile on his lips.

Eddie figures that he’ll leave now since he already did what he came here to do. He doesn’t want him to, but to his surprise, Steve lingers and Eddie sees his eyes land on the book on his bedside table.

He smirks. “Admit it, Harrington, you’re hooked.”

Steve’s eyes dart to him and he shakes his head. “What? No, I’m not.”

“You are,” Eddie singsongs. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell Henderson. Under one condition.”

Steve narrows his eyes at him. “What?”

“Read to me?”

Steve blinks, clearly not expecting that, but then the corners of his mouth tug up slightly. “I can do that.”

He sits down on the chair after grabbing the book, and Eddie carefully rolls onto his side, facing Steve, and wrapping himself up like a burrito in his new fuzzy yellow blanket.

He feels real warmth for the first time since he went through that portal, and he doesn’t know if it’s because of the blanket or the sweet voice reading to him.

Or maybe it’s just Steve.

#steddielovemonth #day 25 #hello i have another prompt for you i managed to keep this one a little shorter but hopefully just as sweet #steddie #stranger things #stranger things fic #steve harrington #eddie munson #monse writes

[callsign-rogueone]

by your side - b.d.

Bodhi Durran x girlfriend!reader Your friends suggest that your recent bouts of nausea might be something more, and it sends you into a spiral, but Bodhi is there for you, as always. [requested] wc: 1.1k 🏷: no spoilers this time? set toward the beginning of Iron Flame (his third year and yours). descriptions of vomit / nausea, anxiety, one (1) reference to sex. healthy established relationship between reader and Bodhi :) writing this one was fun because I know exactly how it feels (it sucks lmao)

“Don’t shoot the messenger,” Imogen says rather indelicately, patting your back as you heave into the grass at afternoon formation for the third time in three days, “but is there any way you could be…”

You blink once, twice, realizing what she’s implying, and the mere idea has your stomach turning again, but there’s nothing left in your system - you haven’t been able to keep food down for days.

“Imogen,” Sloane scolds from your other side, still holding your hair back from your face, “we agreed that now was not the time.”

You take measured sips from your waterskin, trying to rinse the acid from your throat, but the burning feeling doesn’t subside.

You look to Violet, who remains quiet as the grave.

“I agree that it’s a possibility,” she says carefully. “But either way, we’re here for you, and I know he will be too.”

Oh, gods. You hadn’t even considered having this conversation with Bodhi yet. What would you even say to him? Hey, I know we’re in military school and doing this whole double-agent-arms-dealing thing on the weekends and there’s a very real chance that neither of us will make it to next month, but I think I'm pregnant with your child?

The women you’ve come to regard as younger sisters can sense that you’re spiraling.

“He’s a good man,” Sloane says, rare praise from her, “and he loves you. You’ll find a way to get through this together, whatever it is.”

You’re too drained to argue, but that doesn’t stop the swirl of thoughts in your head. 

You, Bodhi, and a child.

Maybe in another life, where the both of you hadn’t been conscripted to Basgiath, and you weren’t in mortal danger all the time… but even then, you’re barely adults yourselves, and your parents won’t be able to help you from the grave. You’d be doing this entirely on your own.

You shake the feeling off. Today is a Saturday, one that you have free. You’ve completed your assignments already. You’ll try to sleep this off, you decide, and if that still doesn’t kick it, you’ll see a healer. 

Sleep comes easily with how exhausted you are, but it does not show you mercy.

Muscled arms cradle a bundle of blankets. You recognize the swirling pattern of Bodhi’s relic easily, having spent many nights tracing the black ink with your fingertips as you lay beside him in the afterglow.

There’s a soft sound of discomfort from the baby. “Shh, darling,” he soothes, rocking them gently. “We don’t want to wake your mama.”

A hand rests on his shoulder; Xaden’s. “She looks just like you,” he says quietly, a soft smile on his face. 

A tiny hand peeks from the blanket, stretching to grasp Bodhi’s finger, which now bears a silver wedding ring.

You shake yourself awake, heart pounding as you move to sit up.

There’s a knock at your door. “It’s me.” Bodhi.

“Come in,” you reply weakly, and you hear the lock click — the day you had moved in, Xaden helped you ward it so that only you and Bodhi could open the door, doing the same for Bodhi’s room down the hall.

“Vi said you weren’t feeling good, so I brought you dinner,” he says gently, sitting on the side of your bed and touching a hand to your cheeks. “No fever,” he observes, kissing your forehead, and continuing to check you over for injury.

You’re going to cry. “Bo,” you say quietly, “I need to talk to you.”

“Anything, darling.” He says, ready to listen, and your heart twists hearing the same petname he’d called your daughter.

“I don’t know if it was a vision or just a dream, but…” you swallow, the words getting stuck in your throat.

Bodhi stills beside you, fearing the worst. 

Your signet gives you clouded images of the future, but they usually aren’t happy sights. You’ve come to talk to him about your visions in the middle of the night many times, as distressed as you are now. 

“What did you see?” He asks gently, taking your hands in his.

“You, holding a baby girl. Xaden was there, too, but I woke up before I could see anything else.”

He doesn’t follow.

“I’ve been throwing up for days, and I think… I think I might be pregnant,” you whisper, eyes brimming with tears. “I’m so sorry.” 

“Oh, darling, don’t apologize.“ He pulls you close, pressing a kiss to your hairline. “I love you, and I will be by your side every step of the way in either case.”

His words of reassurance are the last straw, and you finally start to cry, your tears dampening his collar.

“I’m going to stay right here, for as long as you want me to, and then we can go see the healers, together.”

You nod against his shoulder, too exhausted to respond.

Every step of the way.

He holds your hand all the way across the bridge to the other side of the college, only letting go when a kind older woman in pale blue healer’s robes comes to take you into an exam room.

You stay quiet as she takes your pulse, listens to your heart, and goes through the motions of a physical.

“You appear to be reacting to something you’ve been eating or drinking.” She diagnoses, handing you a small paper bag with medicine to take. “This should help.”

“So I’m not…,” you trail off, and she knows exactly what you mean. She’d seen how terrified you were walking in here, hand in hand with your boyfriend, and instantly realized what you were concerned about.

“Not with child,” she confirms with a knowing smile, and a weight is lifted from your shoulders. Thank Zhinal. 

Bodhi is still waiting outside. He stands as soon as he sees you, ready to draw you into a warm embrace.

“It was those damn berries,” you say, shaking your head, and he laughs, no doubt feeling the same relief as you. The rich sound soothes every nerve in your body.

He tugs you closer, wrapping you in his arms. The paper bag crinkles between you. “The moment we graduate, I’m marrying you.”

“What?” You ask, stunned.

He pulls back so he can look you in the eye.

“I thought about it while you were with the healer,” he says, as if it’s that simple, “and I decided that I want to be there for you for the rest of my life. Through all the visions, good and bad.” 

You smile up at him, pure happiness flowing through you. “I love you, Bodhi Durran.”

“I love you more, darling,” he says, tucking the bag into a pocket of his flight jacket and taking your hand. “Now, I snuck you an extra piece of cake from dinner, and if you aren’t going to eat it, I will.”

You burst into laughter. Yeah, you decide. This is the man you want by your side forever.

#bodhi durran #bodhi durran x reader #fourth wing fanfic #fourth wing imagine #fourth wing reader insert #fourth wing x reader #mine

[the-duchess-of-domination]

the sickfic to end all sickfics

i will never get tired of a boy going to bed feeling funny and waking up in the middle of the night feverish and horrifically sick.

he tries to brush off his sour stomach and tiredness and lack of appetite. after all, he’s been working long hours and eating the wrong things. a good night’s sleep is all he needs. he hardly touches his dinner and is in bed by 7:30.

he falls asleep quickly next to you, but his temperature rises and leaves him with feverish, confused dreams. you’re awoken by him mumbling deliriously, and when you ask him what’s the matter he starts muttering incoherent sentences that don’t seem to connect or conclude. you switch on a bedside lamp, and examine the pallor of his sweat-slicked face while using your palm to feel his forehead. he’s absolutely burning hot. his eyes, heavylidded, flutter.

“i don’t feel good” he manages to tell you through dry lips. his breaths come shallow and out of his mouth. you feel so sorry for him but can’t help but find him irresistible in such a weak state. you ask him where he isn’t feeling good, brushing back his bangs.

“stomach” is all he says. you probe further and ask him what kind of stomach ache it is, and with a heavy swallow he says “nauseous” and that “everything is spinning.” you lie there with him until his saliva is too much for his own mouth, and you have to help him to the bathroom. you stay by his side until he thinks he’s done.

the next morning doesn’t fare much better. he got sick a couple more times in the night, and is still running a fever. he mumbles incoherent thoughts about having to call into work sick, so worried about having to take a sick day, about how much he’ll be missing at work. he tosses layers of blankets to the floor and removes his pajamas, complaining about how hot it is. within fifteen minutes he is shivering and you have to help him put his pajamas back on.

he goes a couple hours without throwing up, and you suggest crackers. he manages to keep those down, and before long he agrees to a can of chicken soup. when you come to place the tray over his lap, he is lying there staring off into space looking so miserable and pale. you hope the soup will give a little color to his face.

he slurps the soup down to its bottom. you’re glad to see him eating, and after he’s done you take the bowl to wash. as you’re doing the dishes, you hear him coughing. you think he might be trying to clear his throat.

you hear him start to retch.

you leave the sink and come back into the bedroom. his head is hung over a trash can. he looks up.

“im sorry,” he mutters. “im so sorry. i didn’t mean to.”

this sight absolutely breaks your heart. in this woozy state he feels the need to apologize, worried about upsetting or offending you for throwing up the soup you made. you rub circles on his back and hush him as he apologizes again and again and again. after he’s done you tuck him back up, kissing his burning forehead. you sit at his bedside to play with his hair and make him sleepy. he goes in and out of sleep, and senses when you’re not there. when he wakes he weakly cries out for you, begging for you to make it all better. all you can do is pet his hair and shush him, hoping it’ll all be over soon.

#tummy ache #belly ache #emeto kink #sickfic #emetophilia #vomit kink #whump writing #whumpblr #whump scenario #whump prompt #whump #whump community #whumpee #emeto fic #emeto tw #fantasies from the duchess 👑

[7-wonders]

Sick Day

Morpheus/Dream of the Endless x gn!Reader

Summary: You're sick, and the absolute last thing that you want is for an overprotective King of Dreams to find out. Of course, you should know by now that it's impossible to keep anything from Morpheus, and when it comes to you, there's nothing that he won't do to make sure that you're safe and well.

Word Count: 1.7k

A/N: I've been sick the past couple days and wrote an entirely self-indulgent sick fic. Yes, I am a full-on simp for this anthropomorphic personification. Fight me. No use of pronouns or Y/n in this :)

You’re sick.

You had tried to deny it when you felt a tickle in your throat days ago, one that wouldn’t go away no matter how much water you drank. Allergies, you thought. There was no way you were getting sick, because you’re far too busy lately to actually get sick.

When you woke up yesterday with your head feeling like it was stuffed full of cotton, you still tried to brush it off as nothing more than a mere nuisance. And it was just a nuisance, until the day dragged on longer and you started to feel worse and worse until all that you wanted to do was just go home. You were freezing even though you were wearing a heavy coat, your limbs ached, and the exhaustion that clouded your senses made everything feel slow and jerky. You had left work early, which is something that you almost never do, and had fallen into bed upon returning home with the hopes of sleeping this bug off.

Unfortunately, the fever that you’re dealing with makes it impossible for you to actually rest. You hover on the precipice of sleep and waking, reality seeming to melt around you when you think that you’re finally asleep. There are times where you’re sure that you’ve slept for days, only to check the dimmed light of your phone and see that it’s been merely an hour. This sickness is really trying to make you miserable, then; you can’t even escape into dreams to see your own Dream, your Morpheus.

At some point, there’s a tapping on your window that brings you back to full awareness. You wish you could say that it wakes you up, but you can’t. You groan, blearily pushing your bedroom curtains open to see what it is disturbing you. After wincing from the sunlight and having to wait for your vision to clear, you make eye contact with a large, black raven sitting on the windowsill. You were wondering when Matthew would finally come looking for you, considering you haven’t left your bedroom since yesterday. Morpheus is nothing if not overly protective of you and your safety, which means frequent visits to the Waking by his raven.

Fumbling with the latches on your window, you finally unlock them and push the window open to allow Matthew to hop in. Early on in your relationship with Morpheus, you had taken the screens out of your windows to allow Matthew easy entrance whenever he was tasked with coming to check in on you. Once he’s in safely and you close the window behind him, you fall back against your pillows, the exertion too much for your weakened body.

“Hi, Matthew,” you mumble, looking over at him.

“You look rough, kiddo. I don’t need hands to know that you’ve got a fever.”

“Thanks,” you say bitterly.

“I was wondering why you hadn’t left your home for a day. Guess I got my answer.” He hops closer to you, and you have to turn your head so you don’t sneeze all over him. “One nice thing about being a raven now is that I don’t have to deal with getting sick.”

“Just keep rubbing it in, why don’t you.”

“Sorry,” Matthew apologizes. You wave him off, letting him know you’re not actually offended at his actions. “Do you need anything? There’s not a lot I can help you with, but I can do some things.”

“I’m okay, I’ve got the essentials.” Gesturing towards your nightstand, you name it off, “Water, meds, thermometer, crackers in case I finally get hungry.”

“Okay, if you’re sure.” Matthew doesn’t sound like he’s too assured by you, but if you say that you don’t need anything, he’s not going to try and force you to name something you need.

You lay in silence for a bit, your fingers lightly petting along Matthew’s silky feathers as you near that almost-sleep you’ve been in and out of for almost a day. When a thought actually forms in your foggy brain, you force your eyes open again. “Matthew?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t tell Morpheus I’m sick, okay?”

His body stiffens beneath your fingers. “Are…you sure?”

“He’s gonna freak out, because he doesn’t understand how mortal illnesses work. I’m gonna be fine, I just need to rest.”

If you weren’t sick, you’d probably remember that Morpheus has the ability to see through Matthew’s eyes, and thus it’s only a matter of time until he finds out. In fact, Matthew can literally feel the King of Dreams in the back of his mind right now. But since Matthew’s a good friend and he doesn’t want you to work yourself up when you’re already not feeling well, he just nods. “Okay, I won’t tell him.”

You smile and pat his head. “Thanks.”

“Hey, I gotta get going. Think you can open up the window for me before you doze off?”

You do as he asks, bidding him farewell before closing and locking the window. Pulling the covers up over your head, you burrow into the pillows and hope that you can finally get some rest…your lungs, of course, choose that moment to spasm and make you cough harshly. Groaning miserably, you mentally count the hours and sigh when you realize that you have to wait another four hours before you can take another dose of cold medicine.

It’s impossible for you to determine how much time has passed between when Matthew leaves and when a cold hand sneaks under your blankets to rest on your cheek. It feels so blissfully cool that you lean into it before remembering that you live alone and there shouldn’t be anybody touching your cheek. Tossing the blankets off of you, you try to ready yourself for a fight until you make eye contact with Morpheus, who looks like he’s teetering between chastising you and fussing over you. 

Logically, it makes sense that he would be the one here. But considering you’re sick, running on no good sleep, and have some heavy cold medicine in your system, logic has basically abandoned you.

“Hi,” you say guiltily, like a child with their hand caught in the cookie jar. “Matthew snitched?”

“No, Matthew did not…’snitch’.” You giggle at how odd the word sounds coming from Morpheus’s prim and proper vocabulary. “I wish he would have, though. You’re ill.”

“It’s just a flu bug.” You sneeze harshly. “I may look like I’m dying, and I may feel like I’m dying, but I promise I’m not dying.”

“It does not matter that you’re not dying. You’re unwell, and I wish you would have called upon me when you realized you were feeling poorly.”

“Why?”

Morpheus looks affronted. “So that I can take care of you, of course.”

“You have more important things to do than take care of a sick human.”

He removes his shoes, knowing how much you hate when he sits on your non-magical furniture while wearing shoes, and places his coat on the chair in your room before sitting next to you on the bed. You shuffle over to allow him room, feeling too tired to even bother to sit up. Instead, you look up at him as he begins to trace his fingers over the planes of your face. “You are not just a sick human. You are my sick human, and nothing is more important to me than you.”

If you weren’t already flushed from the fever, your skin would be blazing hot from the sweet words that just came from Morpheus. He can make the most mundane sentence sound like a line of poetry, and there’s something about the fact that this all-powerful king is shirking his responsibilities so he can sit in your normal, Waking bedroom with you that makes you feel extremely, undeservedly special.

“Will you let me take care of you, then?”

You nod, shoulders shaking as you try to hold back a cough. “There’s not much you can do for me, though. I really just have to wait it out.”

“Then I shall wait it out with you.”

You laugh again. “I love whenever you say modern verbiage. Sounds so funny.”

He hums, which is basically his version of a laugh, so you’ll count it as a win. Your eyes begin to close against your will as you quickly lose the small amount of energy you had gathered. When Morpheus pulls you into his arms and against his chest, you snuggle into his embrace before you remember that you’re sick and begin to push at him.

“Wait, no,” you say, “‘m gonna get you sick.”

Morpheus stares at you like you’ve lost your mind. Considering how hazy everything is, it’s not really that far off. “My beloved, I am Endless. I do not get sick.”

“...Oh.” You feel stupid for not realizing that. Obviously an immortal being who's been around for longer than you can even fathom doesn’t get struck down by the flu. Morpheus, for his part, doesn’t say anything. Instead, he just continues to hold you.

“You need not worry about anything beyond resting and recovering. I will handle everything else.”

Begrudgingly, you nod. The longer that you’re within Morpheus’s embrace, the more tired you seem to get. It wouldn’t surprise you if he were using some of his powers to actually get you to sleep; if it wasn’t Matthew that had alerted him that you were sick, it was probably the fact that you hadn’t properly been in the Dreaming for over a day now.

Before his power does fully send you to the Dreaming, you clutch just a bit tighter onto his shoulder to keep yourself tethered to the Waking. You look up at him through eyes that can only open halfway due to how heavy they are. “Love you, Morpheus.”

You think you see him smile as well before your eyes shut again and you allow yourself to be pulled to the Dreaming. “I love you as well, my starshine.”

In the safety of Morpheus’s arms, you finally have a restful, dreamless sleep; a sleep free of pain and sickness, a sleep that allows you to heal. Despite your concerns, Morpheus is more than content to simply sit with you and ensure that you remain safe, protected, and well. He would never lie to you, but especially not when he said that you are the most important thing to him.

#morpheus #dream of the endless #dream of the endless imagine #dream of the endless x reader #morpheus x reader #morpheus imagine #the sandman #the sandman imagine

[dontexpectmuch]

another request if u don't mind ! going to a kpop concert w jude and forcing him to get a lighstick/merch/learn the fanchants, etc etc 😚🫶🏽

he was gazing at the back of your head for quite some time now, though he couldn’t resist it. he tried looking away a few times, but whenever his eyes wandered around your colorful room, they somehow ended up looking at you once more. sometimes at your head, and some other times at your beautiful butt which he just couldn’t get enough of. the thing he loved the most however was your gorgeous face, the one that a look if concentration on it right now.

music was softly playing in the background, though jude knew that you weren’t this calm internally. ever since he got you concert tickets for your favorite k-pop group, you have become a ball of energy, counting down the days til d-day.

jude was laying on top of your bedsheets, arms crossed behind his back as he sighed out loud for the third time in the past five minutes. yes, he loved you for being so passionate about something, but the thought of you dolling up for some other guys just didn’t sit right with him.

“babe.“ your sweet voice pulled him out of his inner monologue, now facing him as you moved closer to his body. “how does it look?”

jude didn’t know what to focus on exactly, your face? your pretty eyes that had some sparkly things around them? maybe your soft lips, which just screamed at him to come closer and cover them with his own?

so, he just told you what he always does, what he always thinks, “you look stunnin’, baby.”

smiling, you lean down to kiss his forehead before moving back to the mirror to fix some last things around your make up.

“we should leave in ten minutes, yeah? heard the traffic is crazy.”

nodding, jude got out of your hed and moved behind you, hands resting on your hips as he continued to look at your face through the mirror.

“we should stay-“

“no. we talked about this, babe. you even know their songs now, don let that go to waste.” you turn around in his hold, your own hands gliding up and down his torso. you plant a soft kiss against his neck, hearing him sigh made you smirk.

ha, got him.

everything after that went quite smoothly. the car ride was actually really fun, with you blaring song after song from your favorite group, loudly singing and screaming along the lyrics. your excitement even got jude excited, and he caught himself silently mouthing some of the lyrics with you. all because of your smile and general influence on him.

you guys arrived just on time for the last fee free parking spaces near the arena. and since he -obviously- got you VIP tickets, you guys could enter the arena without any issues, even having enough time to buy some merch.

your indecisiveness got jude feeling a bit impatient, he admits. he doesn’t even know why, but seeing you struggling to pick one of the members special item brew jealousy in him in ways he hasn’t felt before.

as if sensing his impatience, you quickly choose everything as fast as you could, paying for your own stuff even jude wanted to oppose. you even got him a light stick, making him smile from one ear to the other.

“babe,” he began, you however interrupted him with a quick kiss in the kips before telling him to move to your seats.

and after that everything just felt like a fever dream. the members of your group came on stage, making you scream out your lungs.

every song got you dancing and jumping on the spot, dragging jude up from his seat to join you.

every sad song made tears string from your eyes, causing jude to wipe them away with an enamored smile painting his lips.

whenever a love song came on, your eyes couldn’t help bit focus on jude, who was just as lovingly looking at you as you were at him. and in that exact moment both of found immense comfort laying between the both of you.

every single thing throughout the entire concert felt so different to you guys, and when it ended it felt like it never happened to begin with.

with adrenaline and giddiness pumping through your veins, you and jude made your way back to your car, but not before taking pictures together in front the arena and a few fans of his.

“i jus’ know that people will be talking about this.” he spike up on the way back home.

this time you were the one driving, not trusting your boyfriends tired eyes to focus on the road entirely.

“about what, bub?”

leaning against the window, judes eyes focused on your side profile, your eyes still had a sparkle in them, your face was flushed and your hair messy. but you looked so fucking beautiful to him in that moment that his hand made its way to your neck, thumb brushing against the side of it.

“don’t know,” he shrugged, “that i was here, i guess.”

“here, means being a good boyfriend that makes his partner happy?” you ask him, already understanding what he was saying.

thinking about your words, jude released a relieved sigh, “yeah, you’re right. did you have a great time, love?”

“it was probably the second best day in my life, babe. thank you so much for being a part of this amazing experience.”

“the second only?”

laughing, you nodded, “the best day of my life was meeting you in that cute yellow jersey, you looked so lost and tired. it made me fall for you immediately.”

“i was a cute yute back then, i know.” he smirks, grabbing your hand to bring it up to his lips. after planting a kiss on your knuckles, he continues to play with your fingers on his lap, “it was a great concert, though.”

“i knew you’d like it!”

———————————————

#jude bellingham #football one shot #football x reader #x reader #jude bellingham x reader #jude bellingham imagine #jude bellingham one shot #jude bellingham x you #football #jude bellingham fluff #kpop #jungkook #jeon jungkook

[mandos-mind-trick]

Jesse's Girl

Summary: You're his. He'll go to great lengths to prove it.

Pairing: Jesse x reader

Warnings: NSFW, 18+, Public sex, voyeurism, possessive Jesse, fingering, unprotected sex, cockwarming kind of, Jesse is a bit of a dom but not really, author is very sick so this is probably garbage

A/N: Unprompted Jesse filth thanks to my fever. It probably doesn't make any sense but it came to me in a fever dream (lol I'm not funny) and I had to write it. Please forgive me if this is utter nonsense

MASTERLIST

(Gif found on Google cause tumblr sucks)

As soon as he pulls you into his lap you know you’re in dangerous territory. 

Jesse wasn’t one to shy away from a challenge, and the shinies eyeing you from the bar were the next competitors. 

It started when you went to the bar to get the next round of shots. You had situated yourself right in the middle of a group of shinies without even thinking about it. You’d been immediately hit with the cheesy pickup lines and the eyes trailing your form in your tight fitting blue dress. You had politely brushed them off, only staying at the bar long enough to grab the tray of shots before returning to the table with your boys. 

You could feel their eyes the entire way back. 

The whistles hadn’t gone unnoticed when you’d bent down to place the tray on the table. 

As soon as you slid back into the booth, Jesse had pulled you into his lap instead of letting you settle into your spot next to him. You could practically feel the smirk against your ear as he rested his chin on your shoulder. Your eyes had gone back to the bar, to the group of shinies still eyeing you bravely. 

Jesse’s chuckle rumbles through your back, his hands splaying across your bare thighs. “What do you say, babe?” He whispers in your ear, his tongue darting out to lick at your skin, causing goosebumps to erupt across your entire body. “Why don’t we give them a show that’ll leave them jealous that they can only sit and watch.” 

You bite your lip, grins spreading around the table as Jesse rests his chin on your shoulder once more. You bite your lip as Jesse’s hands trail further up your thighs, spreading them over his own legs. Cool air hits the damp folds between your legs, your panties having somehow been forgotten in your rush to get to the bar. 

Jesse’s calloused fingers trail up your inner thighs, your hands curling around the half empty glass in front of you. You shift just slightly in his lap, feeling the hard bulge under your ass. 

One hand grips your thigh, keeping it draped over his as the other slips between your legs, trailing through your wet folds. Your lips part in a gasp as the rough pads of his fingers ghost over your clit. He leans further over your shoulder, pressing your lips together as he slips a finger into your pussy. He muffles the quiet whine that leaves your lips as he slips a second finger in, curling them to find that spot inside you. 

You jerk in his arms as he finds it, gasping into his mouth as he kisses you. He doesn’t try to hide his actions, nothing subtle about the way his arm moves. If anyone even glanced your way they would know what was happening. 

It’s a risk you’re willing to take. 

Jesse pulls his fingers from your pussy before you can cum, shifting you just enough so he can undo his pants. You lean forward on the table, making eye contact with the shinies at the bar, still gaping at you as the tip of Jesse’s cock prods your entrance. You sink back against him, taking him inside you. Your eyes roll back for effect, lips parting in a breathy moan as he fills you. His hands grip your hips, tugging you back against his chest. 

He presses his lips to yours once more, licking into your mouth as you sit on his cock. He twitches inside you as you squeeze around him, excited by the idea of being fucked in such a public place where anyone could see you. 

“Naughty little thing.” Jesse murmurs against your lips. “But kriff, it’s so hot.” 

You smirk, pressing another kiss to his lips before you lean forward once more, resting your elbows on the table. It pushes your cleavage out more, and you can see a couple of the shinies shift just slightly at the bar. You keep your gaze on them as you slowly begin to rock in Jesse’s lap. There’s no way they can’t tell what’s happening, not with the smirk you know Jesse is giving them. 

Your lips part in a silent moan as Jesse’s fingers slip around to your clit, making your hips jerk just slightly. He pulls his hand back before you can cum, tugging you back against his chest. 

He wraps his arms around your middle, breath fanning against your neck. “I’ll keep you here all night if I have to.” He murmurs in your ear. “Until they finally realize you’re mine.” 

You smirk, tightening around him, making him groan. “Think you can last that long?” 

He gives you a dark look, his smirk widening as his fingers trail down to your clit once more. “I’m not the one you should worry about.” 

Ragu list:

@kaminocasey @rosechi @mxkyrie @bobaprint @star-trekker-0013 @padawancat97 @bamfahsoka @rain-on-kamino @thrawnspetgoose @lune-de-miel-au-paradis @wolffegirlsunite @dukeoftheblackstar @starrylothcat @blueink-bluesoul @freesia-writes @anxiouspineapple99 @wings-and-beskar @dystopicjumpsuit @littlemissmanga @madameminor @eris-k @clio3kantarella @moonlightwarriorqueen @sleepingsun501 @originalcollectionartistry @maddiedrmr @idontgetanysleep @clonemedickix @523rdrebel @deejadabbles @starqueensthings @multi-fan-dom-madness @sinfulsalutations @wizardofrozz @mythical-illustrator @sunshinesdaydream @mooncommlink @lickylickylicky @sweetheartsnips

#star wars #star wars fic #the bad batch #the bad batch fic #jesse x reader #clone trooper jesse x reader #arc trooper jesse x reader #x reader #clone thirsting #the dark side fic

[catscidr]

I think we have all seen the "Argenti thinks the Reader is Idrila" stuff on here. But what if the reader actually is Idrila? So I wanted to request Argenti/Idrila!Reader (gn or afab reader) headcanons or a oneshot where Idrila, who has taken on a mortal identity after [Insert tragic event here], and meets Argenti. They develop feelings for each other, Argenti finds out she is Idrila, they end up dating. (Maybe or maybe not in that specific order) I thought maybe after protecting her followers from Nanook she disappeared to ensure Nanook doesn't target them anymore? That part isn't as important so feel free to add whatever backstory you think fits^^ Thank you in advance, I really like your writing!

NONNIE omg im booting up star rail rn to stare at him lovingly. also i changed the scenario a smidge so reader is her own person while also being idrila? if that makes sense......?? yeah. also bc otherwise id be writing ten thousand words n i didnt want ur ask to grow dusty in my inbox d(;∀;d) but tysm for the prompt i couldn’t stop thinking about it ueue. also hey gang peep me trying to make my blog look more coherent n nicer looking. am i doin it ⸝⸝⸝⸝⸝⸝ cw: a smidge of amnesia and soulmate trope (it’s not that bad, trust), fluff, love at first sight (does that even count in this scenario....), argenti and reader are dancing around the topic a lot bc argenti is a gentleman and doesn’t want to pressure her to talk. blurbs to set up the plot + a fic after them hehe. not proofread, writer’s block is killing me  includes: fem reader (he refers to reader as "my lady"), argenti, natasha, luocha is kinda there wc: 2,3k

-ˋˏ You’d go to Natasha’s clinic at least once every other day because you always had the worst migraines. To the point where you almost got beat up by a Flamespawn one time when you were clearing out calyxes (thankfully there was a Silvermane guard patrolling the area, otherwise you would’ve been charred). The doctor always says the same thing; “Stop looking for fights so often”, “Let your body rest”, “I can’t prescribe you antibiotics”, and your favorite, “Stop slamming my door open I can’t do anything about your headaches”. She was a good friend, but whenever she repeated how she couldn’t be of any help to your predicament, you’d wish you could just take that glass vial hanging from her outfit and chuck it far, far away out of spite. 

-ˋˏ Obviously it wasn’t her fault- she'd done everything she could. Natasha even had you undergo the Underworld’s equivalent of an MRI scan because of how frequently you would visit her, insisting that something was wrong. The symptoms consisted of forgetting important things too often, feeling a foreign buzz in your limbs and brain, having a sudden burst of elemental energy come out of your attacks and a myriad of benign but annoying, irritating signs that something was up with you. 

-ˋˏ It became more of a chore than anything to leave your room. Some days you felt fine, but then when you’d go out again and beat up wave after wave of enemies in Caverns of Corrosion you would keel over, clutching your head while vague images of what could only be described as a fever dream ran through your mind. 

-ˋˏ You decided to leave the Underworld for some time- considering your absence like some sort of “vacation”. You heard of a wandering doctor (and merchant, apparently) by the name of Luocha and, from the people that crossed paths with him, it seemed like he was extraordinary at his job. A trek to the Xianzhou Luofu would be a long one, but after weighing your options you thought you’d give it a try (it was worth it if it meant you’d stop waking up at ungodly hours, holding your head in your hands while hoping, praying that the pain stops.) 

-ˋˏ You (somehow) made your way to the Xianzhou Luofu from Jarilo-VI. As competent as you were however, being stranded on a foreign planet with no map nor local to guide you was... a challenge. In retrospect, maybe you should’ve gotten in contact with that Luocha doctor and had him come to Belobog instead of you going to him since, well, he was a traveling merchant. Going from planet to planet is what he does (you assume). 

✧✧✧ 

If you had read up more on general information about the Luofu you would have been aware of how many enemies were roaming around the docking area. But you didn’t. So, unbeknownst to you, a rogue mara-struck soldier was on your tail, trying to sneak up to you to snag the goods you hid in your bag (which were basically just different types of painkillers and sustenance that bodes well on an upset stomach. He doesn’t know that though.) 

Your head was throbbing; ever since you set foot on the planet, your physical health had slowly dropped down to levels you wouldn’t be enduring if it wasn’t for the promise of a competent doctor once you get to the main city. Painkillers weren’t working, your feet hurt and to make matters worse, you felt the familiar lack of something in your head. It was so bad to the point where you had to have a tangible mark somewhere to remind you that you did, in fact, just take something for your headache and if you took two more painkillers, your body wouldn’t agree with your decision. It was a struggle even remembering what you did five minutes ago, no way were you going to be in top shape, beating up every enemy crossing your way. 

Clouds began covering the bright sun, casting shadows over the desolate, geometric area. You huff, irritated that, from the looks of it, you won’t be able to find a cozy place to set up camp. Though sleeping on a ground made of primarily iron and steel was considerably less nerve-wracking than sleeping on the mushy, cold, dirty ground of Jarilo-VI. So, with a pout aimed at no one in particular, you find some place that you deemed decent enough to set your humble tent. It wasn’t often that adventurers slept outside of safe zones, however with your condition you couldn’t afford to miss out on some rest and possibly get even more lost than you already are. 

You set your heavy backpack down, rolling your shoulders to soothe the ache in your muscles from carrying something so bulky. As you ruffle through your belongings, you open a bottled soda and take a swift gulp, sighing contentedly at the pleasant taste on your tongue. Now that you were sat and could rest your bones (until you started setting up your tent, at least), your ears were able to pick up on some not-so-distant footsteps. 

There’s no time for you to react; the mara-struck soldier that had been following you lunges at you, aiming for your bag. Your eyes widen and you open your mouth to yell, but before any sound can leave your mouth, a long, red and gold spear pierces the ground between you and the rabid man, making you yelp in surprise. You scurry as far back as you can in your current state; however, the soldier doesn’t have time to take advantage of your weakened stature. The owner of the spear lodges himself before your shaking figure and the mara-struck, yanking his spear out of the ground with impressive elegance, and summons an array of thorny vines to catch your assailant. 

It takes little to no effort for the seasoned fighter to take down the mara-struck as he swings his weapon, swiftly knocking the blunt end on the soldier’s plexus, knocking the wind out of him. A strangled scream leaves his throat as he scampers away, leaving your belongings safe with you and the strange red-haired man. He lowers his spear, careful to keep the sharp edge far from you, and turns around to face you properly. His brows raise a smidge for a split second before he composes himself and bows before you, the action short and curt.  

“It would have been a shame to lose a beauty such as yourself,” he says smoothly, straightening his back to look down at you with a warm smile. He stretches his hand out, a polite offer to help you stand up, as he continues speaking. “My name is Argenti, I belong to the Knights of Beauty. What might you be doing so far away from civilization, dear...?” he trails off, waiting for you to introduce yourself. 

You were in a state of shock, your mind still processing what had happened in such a short amount of time, that you failed to notice the lack of pain at the back of your head. As you meekly tell him your name, you hold onto his hand to help yourself up- as soon as his armored glove comes in contact with your hand something flashes in your mind; too quick to allow you to think about it too much, or to recognize what you saw for a millisecond. 

“So far away from civilization... do you know how to get to the city?” you ask as you feel a glimmer of hope spark in you. His words were refreshing, probably the best thing someone has ever said to you in the past month. He nods, reaching into his pocket to fish out a blue handkerchief embroidered with a delicate gold trim. Argenti hands it over to you and you gratefully take it, blotting the sweat and... dust off of your face. 

“I have made my way around the Luofu for long enough to show someone the way,” he says kindly. “Besides, even if I didn’t, I would still offer to accompany you through your trek. It is my duty as a Knight of Beauty, for I must uphold chivalry and distinguished manners, in the name of the Goddess guiding me.” His words resonate within you, making you beam, nodding in understanding. 

Your reaction doesn’t go unnoticed by the knight. As you hand his handkerchief back, he smiles at you and gestures to your bag. “What brings you so far from your homeworld, my lady?” Argenti asks gently, though a glimmer of doubt swirls in his sparkling, verdant eyes. The question makes you pause, a memory flashing in your mind too suddenly for you to know what it meant. Although, from what you could tell, you knew you could trust him with what troubled you somehow. 

“Ah, it’s a long story,” you start sheepishly, “I’ve been having these incredibly painful migraines recently. And sometimes I feel like my memory is fading too quickly for what would be considered normal,” you say, trailing off slightly at the end. “I’m looking for a healer, a doctor by the name of Luocha...?” 

Somehow, the doctor was currently the least of your worries. You’d never felt so refreshed before, at least not that you could remember; simply being in Argenti’s presence seemed to be enough to make your aches disappear like a starskiff smoothly gliding through a cloudless sky. 

“I’ve seen the man only a handful of times,” Argenti mutters aloud, pulling you out of your thoughts. “I can do my best to guide you to him, but if I may... you don’t seem to be injured?” the knight says, his voice trailing off into a questioning tone despite the observation. You shake your head, wondering how you should explain your predicament to the man. 

“Like I said, it’s a long story,” you say again, shrugging sheepishly. You wondered if you should even go into the nitty gritty- he could always just be making small talk to help you get comfortable or something. Sensing your unease, he changes the spotlight to him instead. 

“There’s no need to delve into details if you wish to keep them secret,” he says with a kind smile, bending down to take ahold of your hand- gently pressing a chaste kiss on the back of your hand. Red flushes your ears immediately, words caught in your throat at the sight of his hair cascading over his shoulders, a beautiful contrast from the gold and silver armor glittering in what was left of the sunlight. 

“As for myself, like I mentioned earlier, I am a Knight of Beauty. I’m on a quest to find my dear Goddess Idrila once more, for I need to pay my respects to them after they saved me from a particularly grim fate.” His words echoed in your mind, your brows knitting together as you felt what could only be described as a cold bucket of water being dunked on your head. “I-Idrila?” you parrot, your voice coming out as a choked noise. Argenti perks up, the hand that had been softly holding onto yours now holding it with a firmer grip, his other hand joining it. 

“Yes, Idrila. Have you ever heard of them? Or...” he trails off, looking deep into your eyes expectantly, almost as if he knew something you didn’t. His eyes seemed to suck you in, bringing a comfortable wave of warmth over you, making you yearn for something. 

“I...” you begin, your gaze falling down to look at your feet. As you thought long and hard about what you wanted to say, what you tried to remember, you slowly look over to his spear, lying flat on the ground- long forgotten since the fight earlier. As if a lightbulb went off above your head, you perk up just as he did, and look at him, beaming. The words were caught in your throat; there was so much you wanted to say, to declare, to do in this moment of clarity, but with how fast your mind was running to catch you up on the current events of your life it was a struggle. 

“Argenti,” you murmur, the name rolling off your tongue smoothly, as you realized seeing the traveling merchant was no longer required. Though the road might have been arduous, and you may have almost lost your mind in the process, being with Argenti suddenly made everything make sense. That’s why your migraines mysteriously disappeared as soon as you were in the knight’s presence, that’s why you had gaps in your memory, that’s why you were freakishly powerful... at convenient times.  

Everything clicked into place. 

The both of you share a pregnant pause, eyes locked together as the world seemed to come to a stop around you. If it were possible, you’re sure there would be delicate, silky rose petals floating around your figures, suspended in the air. You glance down at his lips, and for the first time, make a decision with a clear head. 

His lips felt smooth against yours, the faint taste of vanilla mixed with roses transferring to your own lips. The kiss almost felt like it could be the result of a symbiotic relationship; now that you had Argenti, or at least had him by your side once again, you didn’t think you’d be able to continue on without him. 

#i may or may not have butchered the ending bc i DIDNT KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH THEM /SOBS #i did my best #୧ ‧₊˚orderup! #hsr x reader #honkai star rail x reader #argenti x reader #argenti x fem reader #argenti x you #argenti x y/n

[wandasfifthwife]

hiding from plain sight

— lara croft x fem!reader

summary | lara didn’t think that her last minute tactic to hide would end up with the two of you confessing

tw | R & L basically make out, SUGGESTIVE CONTENT, awkward confessions, they’re running from people wanting to hurt them

a/n | NOT PROOFREAD. this scene is following what happened in the game, but I obviously changed it a bit. enjoy :)

༺ lara croft m.list ༻

Landing in Peru had a rough start. Going off of the plane crash you tried to have hope that it all would stop. The flood from before was sickening, everyone just barely surviving. Just before the plane had begun its descend, Lara had gone on about how she awoken something, but you still had hope this was all a fever dream. That she awoke nothing and was another tangent of hers.

That hope was a fantasy.

If you were a friend of Lara. Anywhere the woman went injuries and chaos followed.

You all were grateful for the support from a nearby city after the back-to-back death experiences. Lara and Jonah had been at these adventures far longer than you, so it made sense that they wouldn’t look as bothered. What didn’t make sense is for you to be just as unbothered, but you tried for the sake of not disturbing them.

Lara had gotten up from the table you all were sitting, saying she wants to look around.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to come,” Jonah starts but Lara waves it off, saying she’s told him before that he’s deserves rest.

“I could?”

Jonah puts a handle hand near you, “are you sure. You still look like you’re in shock.”

“I’ll be fine.”

You follow Lara out towards the city. The mountains and shrubbery surrounding were breathtaking, bringing life to the already crowded streets.

“Being out here makes it difficult to want to go back home, why would someone wish to stare at architecture all day?”

A glare is sent her way, “You seek out stone, Lara, and stare at it for days. Sometimes weeks.”

She hums, looking over to you with a small smile. A sigh comes from her then, sounding exhausted.

“I feel terrible,” she points at you and Jonah in a fluid motion, “I’ve dragged you through hell.”

She leans on her right hip, a new habit of hers as she rubs a finger over your cheek. You hiss when it comes into contact right where your face had unfortunately crashed into the broken glass on the ground.

“Thankfully it’s not too deep,” she looks like she’s going to continue her doting and you’re quick to shut it down with a playful swat to. her hand.

“I'm going to live with a few cuts and bruises. How’re you, I haven’t even asked.”

“I’ll live.”

The end of her sentence is cut off with a guttural shout, Jonah’s body barreling into hers being the cause. His hand comes on end shoulder to steady her.

“You have to move,” he shoves you forward, “go.”

He’s calm on the outside, but the constant looking over his shoulder makes you nervous. As you run he attempts to explain the situation, a hoard of attackers are running through the town. An arrow flies through the air, a sound sharp in your ear as it narrowly misses your head.

“Jonah I’ll call you on your radio, stay safe.”

He’s giving a curt nod, looking to the both of you, before sprinting to the opposite end of the city. With you all separated, Lara grabs your arm and drags you down a decently sized cliff. Her hands steady you but she’s barely giving you any time before she’s tugging you along again. You’re trying your best but you’re out of breath, every deep breath feels you’re allowing needles into your lungs.

“Lara,” you gasp, “please, I need a moment.”

She doesn’t make any sign that she’s heard you, but you’re too scared to ask again, feeling like you’ve used all your petty asks. When she begins to speak you realize she’s heaving air just as a rough as you.

“Okay,” a crevice between two buildings is where she leads you, “we can rest here for a minute, hide from the general view.”

Her grip slips from yours as you slide down the wall and fall onto the ground. Sweat drips down onto the ground with the way your head fit between your legs. Lara’s at the entrance, looking around and listening to every word someone’s speaking nearby.

“What’s happening?”

Lara shakes her head and comes to rest beside you, “I’m not sure. Could be Trinity, or an enemy of the village we’re in.”

A minute passed and you feel it’s easier and even lighter to breathe again. Neither of you have said much for the sake of trying to saying hidden until the yelling in the distance quiets down. You’re hoping with every bone in your body you won’t have to run again.

“I think-“

“We could lead you to the mountain.”

Goosebumps line your body. Lara looks to you before walking towards the entrance of the alleyway. Judging by how fast she’s pushing her way towards you, you’re assuming it’s nothing good. Her hands find their way on your shoulders, face turned towards the little space between the buildings you’re squished between.

“Trinity,” she whispers, exasperated, “they’re here?”

“Do they know that we are as well?”

“It’s possible.”

The little stones in the dirt below you dig into you as her hands tighten around you. Her breath hot on your face as she mumbles nonsense under her breath.

“There’s nowhere for us to go,” you express your concern.

“That much is obvious, I’m trying to hear how far they are compared to us. Maybe we have a chance of running.”

That second she hears Dominguez’s voice what sounds like only a few steps away. She’s cursing, looking above and around you two.

“Lara,” you ask worryingly, hearing the footsteps getting clearer. Your eyes stay on her, frozen in fear if you two have to fight.

“Do you trust me.”

Your chest brushes hers with each breath. Her hair brushes your face with close she is. Your eyes are focused on her heavy ones as they search your face for an answer. Looking at how you two are, it’s almost funny how she thinks you don’t trust her. In the moment she’s your solid ground like she’s always been since you’ve ran into her.

“Yes,” you say and immediately her face is closing the distance between you two. A soft gasp comes from you as she moves her lips gently over yours. Hands push your legs apart, the space allowing for her body moves closer.

“Put your hands on me,” she murmurs against your lips.

You tuck your fingers into her buckle loop and tug her closer if possible. She kisses you with more passion now. Every sound coming from you is distracting when she’s trying to focus on the danger walking nearby.

“Lara is here in Peru?”

His tone is cold, scaring you. You act quick, weaving a hand into Lara’s hair and dragging her ponytail loose. Every second following you’re removing item after item to try and seem unrecognizable.

Her hands are fiddling with the buttons of your shirt. She’s pressing a kiss under your jaw, guiding down your neck. You’re embarrassed by the genuine moan that slipped.

You spot his figure come into view from behind Lara’s head and right away you’re shutting your eyes again. Ignorance is bliss.

Her lips find yours again, hands resting atop of yours. Thumbs rub soothing circles on the back of your hands as she navigates your arms to rest on her shoulders.

Another minute passes. The ministrations between you calming down as you realize he’s left. Your face heats when you look down to her rather swollen lips.

“I think he’s left,” she’s avoiding looking at you with the way her face is turned all the way around. “We can call Jonah and find where he’s at.”

She looks back to you and begins to ramble, guilt resting in her tight expression.

“I’m sorry. That was insensitive of me.”

“What?”

“I didn’t have to do that to hide. I should’ve thought more carefully about my actions.”

“It wasn’t unwelcome, I actually quite enjoyed it.”

She looks decently surprised, maybe satisfied, “yeah?”

“Yeah,” you smile.

Her face comes close so she can place one on your cheek, “like that?”

You nod and she’s leaning in again to kiss at your collarbone, asking the same question before and getting the same answer. You relax into a full kiss, bringing a hand to comb through her long hair.

“That too?”

You laugh, “I like the kisses and the one giving them.”

She returns your ecstatic attitude, placing one last kiss on the corner of your lips, “me too.”

You grin fully, fear almost fading into a distant memory. The sheer joy on your face finds its way through how you’re pulling her near to kiss at her cheek. Trinity could come back any second, but you’re on cloud nine, so what else matters?

“We probably should dial Jonah,” she tries but grows weak at now you whine in disbelief. You’re about to agree when you hear his voice coming up.

“I heard you two through the radio,” his forehead shiny from the sweat rolling down his face, “why are you on the ground?”

You let a snarky laugh, nudging Lara but she’s putting her hands up. Jonah blinks, looking down to your neck, “woah what bit you?”

“Lara?” you say meekly.

“Is that some kind of species here?”

taglist

@thiskingdomwillendure

#lara croft x fem reader #lara x fem!reader #lara x reader #lara croft x fem!reader #lara croft x reader #tomb Raider #shadow of the tomb raider #tomb raider lara croft #lara croft #lara #tomb raider lara

[frodo-with-glasses]

More Reading Thoughts: The Old Forest

FINALLY making some progress in the book again, holy cow. It was beginning to feel like Fellowship really would take seventeen years.

I really love the thunder in Frodo’s dream from the last chapter turning into the sound of Merry banging on the door at the start of this one. It’s incredibly cinematic and mashes you feel like you’re watching a movie :-D

“Even Pippin is up” Even Pippin, he says! Pippin the notorious late-riser

Today’s vocabulary word is: spinney! It’s a British term for “a small area of trees and bushes.”

Aww Fatty seeing them off with “good luck to you—today and every day!” That’s a blessing Frodo is gonna sorely need.

Pippin: “Is it actually dangerous in here?” Merry: “Nah, the trees only bite sometimes.”

Tolkien is so good with suspense and writing things that give you the creeps. This is one of those times.

Pippin’s solution to the trees being mean is to yell at them

It’s really interesting to notice the pattern of hope and despair in the way Tolkien writes. Every time get the sense that the hobbits are about to give up, like clockwork, some good fortune entices them to take another step. First the appearance of the Bonfire Glade, and then the easier path, and now the hill…little valleys of despair juxtaposed with little victories, leading them forward like a breadcrumb trail.

Ooh the Barrow-Downs, dun dun dunnn

The forest slowly forcing the hobbits off the track they want to go is SO CREEPY and so good

There is definitely something almost hypotonic about the repetition of the word “willows” as Token describes the river scene

Heeheehee Old Man Willow time

There is something about Merry begging Frodo and Sam to follow Old Man Willow’s orders that is just DEEPLY disturbing to me. Gives me vibes like that episode of Sherlock when Moriarty is speaking through helpless people to whom he has strapped a vest full of explosives. But Old Man Willow doesn’t have a voice, so how does Merry know what he wants?? How is he speaking through this hobbit?? I hate it I hate it I love that I hate it

IT’S TOM BOM

TIM BIM

THOMAS BOMBADOMAS

In which Tom Bombadil spanks a tree for being naughty

Old Man Willow spitting Pippin out will never not be funny 🤣

The whole Tom Bombadil sequence is definitely a fever dream of “I don’t think we’re in Middle Earth anymore, Toto”, and ya either love it or you hate it

#frodo baggins #meriadoc brandybuck #merry #peregrin took #pippin #tom bombadil #old man willow #lord of the rings #lotr #my writing #chapter review

[seasonsbloom]

bad habit part iii (hangman)

part i, part ii

pairing ; hangman x female!reader

synopsis ; the moment you meet hangman, you know you hate him. and then suddenly, you’re not so sure anymore.

wc ; 23k; yes you read that right you can’t be more confused than me idk either and i wrote it in six days

warnings ; angst, explicit language, mentions of alcohol consumption, mentions of previous character death, explicit sexual activity (Explicit sexual content (oral f and m receiving, p in v, like one sentence about choking but not rlly, some dom/sub elements, a little bit of degradation and praise kink), age gap, inexperienced reader, more angst, sappiness, feelings so many feelings all the feelings

note ; i don’t know what to say, this is literally INSANE i’m feeling INSANE this was a fever dream i wrote 8k words today none of this makes sense but it’s OVER IT’S DONE IT’S FINISHED anyways this isn’t proofread but i love you all besties and girlies and babes pls don’t hate it

also this would never have been possible without sol aka desertsagecelestial the best lines in this whole thing are credit to her sol i love you hand in marriage NOW

Hangman doesn’t lose.

And people call him cocky, arrogant, conceited… but the thing is, it’s the truth. He’s not exaggerating. He just really is that good.

When Hangman wants something, he gets it. Promotions, missions, girls, difficult to obtain first editions of Spiderman comic books… Hangman figures out a way.

Of course, it wasn’t always like that. Back when Jake was younger, when he was the invisible kid at the back of the class who nobody wanted to play with, he had to fight tooth and nail for everything. When his father said he’d never amount to anything, it took Jake years to push back, to say no, you’re wrong. But he did, eventually, joined the Navy, graduated top of his class at Top Gun, became someone people knew, someone people looked at, someone who wanted to be seen.

So Hangman doesn’t lose because Jake learned how to fight.

This situation, then, is a complete novelty.

Jake rips his helmet off, ears still ringing with the roaring of the engine, heart still hammering the way it always does after a landing. He’s half adrenaline, the highest of high, half jitters. Head still firmly stuck in the clouds. Only this time, there’s the unfamiliar, bitter taste of failure on his tongue. 

He doesn’t know whether to be embarrassed or surprised.

Captain Mitchell, having climbed out of his own plane, approaches with a frown. Just a few steps away, by the entrance to the hangar, where the Californian sun is flooding the asphalt with golden light, a throng of the other pilots has formed.

If Jake even sees Rooster, he might start throwing punches. He’s toeing a precarious line here - ascension or plummeting.

“What was that?” Maverick wants to know, fiddling with his helmet’s clasp. “You flew straight into my line of fire, Hangman.”

So, yeah, maybe Jake just got shot down in less than a minute. So, yeah, maybe he made a rookie mistake. So, yeah, maybe Jake is having a really bad day.

“I still maintain that he got dumped last night,” Coyote says. There’s no malice to the words, but Jake wouldn’t be surprised if he and Payback had some money running on this.

“I did not get dumped,” Jake growls for what feels like the fiftieth time. Seriously, his tongue is starting to go numb.

“Oh,” Phoenix says, “you totally got dumped.”

Now that might be actual malice. Phoenix decided last night that whatever had happened between you and Jake was clearly his fault, and she was therefore firmly and squarely on your side.

In Jake’s opinion, there are several things wrong with that assessment.

First of all, there shouldn’t even be any sides. It’s not like your circle of friends has to pick teams in a divorce. Secondly, even though she constantly complains about him, he’s known Phoenix for years. She met you less than a month ago. Shouldn’t she be in his corner? And then lastly and most importantly… Jake has no idea what the hell he did wrong.

It’s all pretty unfair.

“I told you that I didn’t get dumped,” Jake repeats, forming the words slowly and carefully in the hopes that they will sound more convincing than he knows them to be. “We weren’t dating.”

And he can’t explain it, that clenching in his stomach, that lump in his throat. He can’t explain any of it, except that it hurts in a way that’s unfamiliar, in a way that’s unwelcome.

Man. He really needs a drink.

“The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”

That’s Rooster, definitely. Jake tilts his head back towards the high, high ceilings of the hangar to avoid catching the other pilots’ eyes. 

Lord, give me strength, he thinks.

“Don’t quote Shakespeare at me.”

“Wow, you know Shakespeare?” Phoenix says immediately. “I didn’t know you could read, Bagman.”

Before Jake can retort something, Maverick steps between them.

“Hangman,” he says, and something about his voice is severe enough that Jake snaps to attention. “Is that true?”

“Is what true?”

He’s one hundred percent playing for time here. Sue him. He needs to come up with an excuse.

“Did you mess up because you were thinking about a girl?”

And the thing is, Jake wants to say no. He wants to say, No, Sir, I had a bad night. He wants to say No, Sir, the sun was in my eye. He wants to say, No, Sir, I was dodging a bird strike.

But every word turns to vapor on his tongue. He can’t get anything out.

And so he just stands there, blinking like an idiot at his instructor.

Because the truth is, Jake can’t for the life of him remember what he was thinking about as he went up on the plane. Considering you’ve been on his mind pretty much non-stop since you met, and it’s only gotten worse since you stormed up to him at the Hard Deck last night, it’s not unlikely that he really was knee-deep in a train of thought revolving around you.

You’ve been haunting him. A specter squeezing into the cockpit with him. A ghost sneaking into his bed. Riding shotgun in his car.

You’re everywhere, at the bottom of each glass, soaring in the skies, under his skin, in his bloodstream. He can’t shake you.

There’s real disappointment on Maverick’s face, and Jake’s stomach drops. The older man sighs, running a hand through his hair.

“You guys…” he says softly. “This isn’t a joke. Up there, you can’t be distracted, not by girls or boys or anything juvenile like that. You can’t be distracted by anything. This is life or death. Death, do you get that? I won’t have it. And this goes for all of you.”

He makes sure to let his pointing finger wander over all of them before he storms off, the door slamming behind him.

An awkward silence spreads among them, punctured only by the shuffling of feet and somebody clearing their throat.

“Well,” Rooster says finally, slapping Jake on the back with enough force it almost buckles his knees as he makes for the door. “Thanks for that, Hangman.”

Jake should probably say something, but his mind is wandering again. He’s thinking of you, standing in a sea of broken glass, Mojito staining the front of your shirt, eyes shuttered and forlorn in a way he hadn’t seen before… 

He gets the feeling now.

“Jesus,” Coyote says, stepping up beside Jake. “The way Captain Mitchell is talking, you’d think he isn’t hooking up with Penny on the down-low.”

Something about Coyote’s voice tells Jake he feels bad for him. He doesn’t like the idea of that, not one bit, but he also can’t really find it within himself to do something about it right now.

“Mitchell and Penny are hooking up?” Jake asks, genuinely surprised.

Bob, passing by them, frowns. “Hangman, you really aren’t very perceptive, are you?”

It’s so out of character that for a moment, Jake considers if he’s somehow managed to go through a black hole and ended up smack dab in a parallel universe where Bob, of all people, goes around insulting others. Where Jake, eternal bachelor, famed ladies’ man, messes up flight maneuvers because he’s too busy thinking about a girl.

“Did… did Bob just shade you?” Coyote asks.

For a moment, Jake seriously considers hitting his head against a wall.

So, yeah, maybe Jake is having a really, really, really horrible day. So much for never losing.

+

Something’s off.

First of all, Penny’s never invited you to dinner. Second of all, this is decidedly not the kind of establishment you were expecting.

Penny seems like a burger and fries in her car sort of girl. Maybe a few bottles of beer or a couple of milkshakes to wash it all down. The little restaurant twinkling golden on the beachfront is entirely out of character. 

Narrow round tables are covered in red and white checkered tablecloths, fairy lights are strung to the rafters, and behind the floor-to-ceiling windows, boats bob up and down on the waves. It’s a tiny place, cramped but charming. Upbeat Jazz plays from invisible speakers, and a smiling waitress leads you past what seems to be only couples on anniversary dates.

“Here you go,” she says as she seats you at your table, right at the glass front, and hands you each a menu. “I’ll come to take you guys’ order in a minute.”

You sit in the plush chair, frowning. Penny is perusing the menu like nothing’s wrong.

“Oooh, Lasagna al Forno… that sounds good, doesn’t it?”

“Penny,” you interrupt, not even opening your own menu. “What’s going on?”

Penny barely glances up at you. “You needed to get out of the house, sweetie.”

And she’s not wrong. You spent the last week since your… altercation with Hangman curled up in your bed, letting the anxiety eat away at you. The walls of your room closing in on you, the weight on your chest pushing you down until it practically molded you to the mattress.

Everywhere you looked, the world had grown teeth.

“I’m fine,” you say, but the words sound empty even to your ears.

Penny doesn’t indulge you.

“No, you’re not,” she says, voice firm. “You’re miserable.”

When you ended things with Hangman, you didn’t think much about whether you were making the right decision. You just wanted out. You wanted it to end, so scared of what would happen if it didn’t, if you let it continue, if you dipped even deeper into that pool. So scared that it might start meaning more than what it already did, that you would put your heart on something that was bound to end anyways.

Because guys like Hangman… handsome guys, confident guys, guys that hang around bars with toothpicks in their mouths… guys like that break you apart without a second thought.

And you’re already broken enough.

“I’m fine,” you reiterate and finally open your menu, staring at the entrées without seeing a thing. “I’m glad things are over between Hangman and me. It’s better this way.”

Penny is quiet for a moment, then she says, “Sweetie, you need to talk to him.”

“No, I do not,” you answer immediately. This is not the first time you’ve had this conversation. “What could I possibly have to talk to him about?”

“Oh, just… maybe you could explain to him just why you decided to break both your hearts, I don’t know.”

You purse your lips. “Penny. Hangman doesn’t care. He said so himself. This didn’t mean anything to him.”

And it’s so stupid. But his words replay in your mind like a broken record, like an endless loop, again and again. This was nothing. The cold upward turn of his mouth as he said it. Calm, collected. Unfazed.

You’re an idiot. You spent a few weeks flirting with a guy who wanted to get into your pants, and you made it into something it never was - made it big, made it important, made it matter, when really, to him, it had only ever been a game from the very beginning.

And now he’s off, somewhere, flying his planes, living bigger than you ever will, dreaming better, and you’re left on the ground, scrambling to pick up the pieces of yourself.

It’s pathetic.

But Penny looks at you from across the edge of her menu and says, “Pete says he’s been fucking up majorly during training. He’s distracted.”

It gives you pause for a moment and your heart - that stupid, incorrigible thing that never learns, never lets go, that latches onto everything - stutters in your chest.

“Huh?” you ask eloquently.

Penny jerks her head. “This wasn’t nothing to him.”

The smiling waitress returns with a notepad, and Penny orders lasagna and a bottle of wine. You settle for some kind of risotto, mainly because it’s the first thing your eyes land on.

After she’s left, you take a deep breath.

“It…” You hesitate. It’s so difficult to say it, to admit it, but you think if you don’t get the words out now, you never will. “It didn’t, Penny. I’m not… I’m not really someone people remember. I’m just… I don’t know. I’m just me. This didn’t matter to him. I didn’t matter to him.”

And Penny’s face softens. All her irritation of the past few weeks, the constant nagging when you came over for the tutoring session, the stream of texts asking you to come over for drinks, when she knocked on your door earlier, uninvited, and forced you into the shower, into a dress, into her car, it all just melts away. There’s nothing there now, not even pity, nothing there but genuine, real compassion, and you think you’re going to cry right here, in the middle of this restaurant…

“Oh, sweetie,” she says, reaching across the table to cup both your hands in hers. “You’re worth so much more than you think. When will you finally realize that?”

And it’s like this: since your mother’s death, you’ve just been so horribly, achingly lonely. The sort of loneliness that goes bone deep, that burrows into your bloodstream. You’ve drifted through the world unmoored, untethered, not belonging anywhere. Sure, you met people, but they disappeared from your life as quickly as they entered it. You let yourself become invisible, see-through like cellophane.

But with Penny, it’s like she sees you. Really sees you. In a way you don’t think anybody except your mother ever did, right down to your insecurities and flaws.

And somehow, with Hangman, it was the same. He saw something there with you, saw what you needed and what you wanted before you even really knew it yourself. And you don’t know if that’s just something about him, something he can do with any girl, or if it’s something special, if he understood you, all you know is that it terrified you half to death.

There’s something reassuring about remaining in the dark.

It’s a good thing the waitress comes back with a bottle of wine and a bread basket because you’re pretty sure you would have started sobbing otherwise.

You think you’re going to thank Penny, eat your food, try and enjoy the evening, and then maybe crawl into bed at the end of the night and cry a little more. Just… make the best of it.

But Penny glances over your shoulder, and something mischievous passes over her features. Suddenly, you feel a little sick.

She rises from her seat, and by the time you’ve glanced over your shoulder, they’re already at your table.

“Hi, Pete,” Penny says, grinning. “Hi, Hangman.”

You’re doing your very, very best not to look at him. Your stomach is turning. Perspiration builds up lightning-quick on the inside of your palms.

“Hi, Penny,” the older pilot you’ve never talked to but have seen hanging around the bar several times echoes, giving her a soft smile. He greets you by name, and you’re so stunned, so excruciatingly uncomfortable, that you can’t even react.

Pete manhandles Hangman into Penny’s vacated chair with two hands on his shoulders, and then you don’t really have a choice but to stare at him. He’s right there, in your line of sight.

Hangman looks as shocked as you feel, but there’s something else, too. He’s still handsome, of course, still tanned and blond and perfect, but something seems to have shifted. His hair is just a little less tidy, the bags beneath his eyes a little more pronounced. For the first time ever, you see him in civilian clothes - a t-shirt and jeans, something softer around the edges that makes your insides clench.

All initial instincts of flight bleed right out of you. It’s half hope, half fear, that keeps you rooted to your chair.

“You said this was a lesson,” Hangman says to his superior, looking, for lack of a better word, desolate.

“It is,” Pete answers, patting his shoulder before withdrawing.

And Penny says, “Listen, I know the owner. If you guys leave before finishing your dinner, there’ll be hell to pay.”

She points at Hangman. “I know your boss.”

Then she points at you. “I am your boss.”

And that’s final. Penny has a way of getting what she wants.

Before she leaves, she leans down to hug you and whispers softly, “Sweetie, you don’t need to go out of this evening dating him. You don’t need to do anything you don’t want to. But I think he deserves an explanation, at the very least.”

She draws back, smiles at the two of you as if she’s just performed some great, benevolent act, and then disappears with Captain Mitchell.

You half expect Hangman to get up and leave the moment the two are out of earshot. You half expect yourself to do the same.

But you both stay where you are, at that table, actively avoiding the other’s eyes.

The waitress comes to drop off your food. Hangman pours both of you a glass of wine and then downs his in one go.

Finally, he sighs like he just lost some internal fight and says, “I can’t believe they totally just parent-trapped us.”

“Parent-trapped?” you repeat, a little dumbly.

“Yeah, like… tried to set us up. You know, like in the cinematic milestone with Lindsey Lohan?”

You nod.

For a moment, there’s nothing but silence. The gears in your head are turning on overdrive. You feel near frantic with nerves.

“Personally,” you say, your mouth moving before you’re really aware that you’re speaking, “my favorite bad matchmaker is Emma Woodhouse.”

Hangman frowns. “Who’s Emma Woodhouse?”

That has you gaping at him. 

“You don’t know Emma? By Jane Austen?”

“Jane Austen?” Hangman takes a sip of his water. “Is that the one with the Pride & Prepaid something? Where everybody goes to each other’s houses and just talks for hours?”

You’re going to have an aneurism. 

“Emma,” you say, now having trouble controlling your voice, “is one of the greatest pieces of literary fiction ever created. And you mean Pride & Prejudice.”

“Really?” He leans back and looks at you. “So what’s it about, then?”

“Well,” you launch into an explanation, jumping at the chance not just to fill this horrible silence but also to talk about one of your favorite books, and the words just seem to flow from you now, “Emma Woodhouse is this really pretty, really rich young Lady, yeah? And she decides that she’s not gonna get married, so instead, she tries to find a husband for her poor friend Harriet. So she wants to set her up with Mr. Elton, only it turns out Mr. Elton is actually into Emma, and at some point, they’re alone in a carriage, and he proposes marriage to her, and it’s super awkward, but then Emma thinks she’s in love with Frank Churchill who also turns out to not be for her and in the end, she realizes she’s really been in love with Mr. Knightley all along, who’s like a really close family friend, only now Harriet might be in love with Mr. Knightley, too, and they have a bit of a falling out and….”

Much too late, you stop yourself. The embarrassment comes belatedly, but it settles all the stronger.

Hangman is looking at you with a somewhat dazed expression. You can’t believe you just said all that.

You drag your fork through the mess on your plate, cheeks hot, and round it off by saying, “Anyway, it’s really about Emma realizing the errors of her ways and becoming more considerate of others, and it’s a commentary on class and privilege and all. It’s pretty good.”

“Okay,” Hangman says, and you have never wanted the powers of teleportation more than you do at this moment.

The embarrassment is going to eat you whole.

After another moment, Hangman says, “That just sounds like the plot of Clueless.”

You freeze, fork halfway to your mouth. 

“You… you know Clueless?”

One of Hangman’s eyebrows raises nearly to touch his hairline. “Do I know Clueless?” he repeats. “Is Cher Horowitz one of the best cinematic characters ever created? Of course, I know Clueless, I’m not a barbarian.”

You stare at him until a big blop of risotto rice lands on the tablecloth.

“Oh, I…” you stutter, moving to mop the spilled food up with your napkin. “Clueless is like, one of my favorite movies ever.”

“Yeah?” He grins, seemingly relaxing just a little bit. “Mine too. So, did Jane Austen steal the plot?”

You can’t help it - it punches a laugh out of you.

“No, it… Clueless was based on Emma. The novel came out like… 180 years earlier, I think.”

“Right.” Hangman nods. “Well, if it inspired Clueless, it must be a pretty good book then.”

You’re almost sure this is the longest conversation you’ve ever had without Hangman trying to get into your pants. It also might be the longest conversation you’ve ever had about your interests without someone shutting you down.

You’re developing a headache.

“Listen,” Hangman says suddenly, leaning forward in his chair. Something in his face has gone serious. “I understand what happened. I was pushing for something you didn’t want, and I pushed too hard, and you put a stop to it. That’s fine. It’s good, really. I respect it.”

And that’s not it at all. But you don’t know how to tell him that he’s got it all wrong, that it’s not that you didn’t want it. It’s that you wanted it too much. Wanted him so much it felt dangerously close to falling for him. Wanted him so much you knew you were giving him the power not just to see you, but to leave you.

He takes a deep breath.

“That doesn’t mean we have to avoid each other. Let’s just… let’s just be friends, okay?”

You feel like somebody punched you in the face.

“Friends?” you repeat softly.

“Friends,” Hangman confirms. He’s nodding his head.

Penny told you to explain it to him, made it seem like an imperative, but as you sit there, you realize she was wrong. You realize it doesn’t matter. Not to him, at least. Those words in the bar cross your mind again. It was nothing. His indifference to all that emotion you carry everywhere you go.

And you’re so angry with him, even if you know that you’re the one who brought this down on you, you’re the one who decided to end it. So angry you want to take him by the shoulders and shake him until that mask he carries finally slips off, until you get to see what lies beneath that.

Because the truth is, beneath the anger, beneath the frustration, you’ve spent the past week thinking of him. In bed, in the shower, at the gas station. And you missed him, even if that doesn’t make any sense.

And if you don’t tell him the truth, if you just let him believe his sexual advances were just a little too much for you instead of revealing the real depth of your feelings… well, then maybe you can at least preserve the last shreds of your dignity.

Besides… maybe, you think, it’s better to get any piece of him than nothing at all. Better to be friends than never to see him again. At least this way, you’d be safe.

“Yeah,” you say, and your voice sounds far away. “Yeah, friends. Okay.”

Hangman smiles, and it’s a real, genuine smile as opposed to his usual smirks. His eyes go all crinkly, and you clutch your fork tighter.

And after that, it’s… nice. You find out, to your own horror, that you actually do like Hangman. He’s funny and witty, and when he isn’t trying to fuck you, you realize you actually have things in common.

Together, you empty the bottle of wine and have another glass each, finish your meals, and share a plate of tiramisu that seems to melt on your tongue.

You squabble about the bill, but finally, Jake concedes and lets you pay, even though he looks like he’s about to start muttering in anger.

You like it. It kind of feels like finally being on even ground after weeks of fighting an uphill battle.

When you step out of the restaurant, leaving the Jazz and the smell of pasta behind, you pause. It’s a bit of an unsettling realization to come to, but you don’t want the night to end.

Hangman stops a pace or two behind you, tipping his head back into the breeze.

He looks younger like this, out of his uniform, with a blush painted on his cheeks by the wine, with the wind tousling his hair. All his edges blurred into something almost gentle. Boyish.

Calling him Hangman seems wrong.

Jake, you think, and something deep inside of you aches. Jake.

Smiling, he turns to you. “Do you need a ride home?”

You don’t trust your own voice, so you just nod.

“Alright.” He starts towards his car, then immediately stops. “Actually… do you mind taking a walk on the beach? I think I should sober up a little more.”

No, you don’t mind one bit, and that’s the danger of it all.

“Fine,” you agree. You mean for it to be clipped, but instead, it comes out like a squeak.

Jake, who doesn’t seem to notice your tone, smiles and leads the way down a trodden path that takes you by the restaurant’s trash cans and then onto the sand of the beach.

It’s colder here, enough that you wrap your arms around your torso to leech off your own body warmth.

Jake is already halfway out of his jacket before you begin protesting.

“Come on,” he says. “I know you don’t believe it, but my mother actually did raise me to be a gentleman. I keep telling you.”

So you let him drape the jacket over your shoulders, and suddenly you’re enveloped in his scent, and your mouth is dry, and your stomach clenches.

“Thank you,” you say quietly.

You walk along the beach for a while in perfect silence. The wind dances through your hair, the air smells crisp and fresh and salty, and the waves roll in from the sea, white foam that nearly licks at your feet.

It’s peaceful. Serene. It’s dangerous because it feels so much like a date, and you want to hold Jake’s hand so bad, and he’s almost devastatingly handsome in this light, but you ignore it. Look straight ahead and pretend you’re not feeling it.

Finally, Jake stops and sits down in the sand. Hesitantly, you follow his example, pulling your knees up to your chest.

“What did you want to be when you were a kid?” Jake asks, staring out at the waves.

You frown. “Seriously?”

“What? That’s a normal question people ask their friends.”

You don’t know about that, but you do answer, “I don’t know. I don’t really remember?”

“Not at all?”

You pause. It’s almost too easy to be truthful with him, and with a start, you realize that you trust him.

God, you must be an idiot.

“I used to…” You clear your throat. “Well, there was this house on my street back in Seattle. A house with a blue door. I used to dream about buying it one day and living there with my husband, and my kids, and our dog.”

You half expect him to laugh at you, call you childish or naive, or a romantic. But he doesn’t. He just listens, face utterly void of judgment, and your stomach swoops.

“Do you still want that?” he asks.

“I don’t know,” you answer truthfully. “But it was the first real dream of my life. I don’t know if you ever really grow out of those.”

Jake nods. “Yeah, you probably don’t, right?” He’s quiet for a moment, and then he continues, “Mine was becoming spiderman. Honestly, I’d still give my right arm for it.”

And it actually makes you laugh. An honest, genuine sound that echoes across the beach.

Jake’s smile is brilliant in the night. 

“I like that sound,” he says softly. “Do it again.”

To cover up the feeling rising up in you - something you’d describe as bashfulness, if that wasn’t so disgustingly ridiculous, something that warms you inside out - you feign nonchalance, say, “Well, tell me something funny, then.”

“Something funny, yeah?” He leans back in the sand with a sigh as you nod, balancing his weight on his elbows, and turns his head up at the night sky like he’ll find inspiration up there. “I thought Star Wars was real for like… an embarrassingly long time.”

“What?”

“Yeah, like, full on.” He nods, face almost solemn. “I looked Han Solo up in history books and shit, I got so confused when I couldn’t find him. I was just like, do people know about this, like, they have to know about this, like about little green Yoda guys and….”

You can’t help it. You start dissolving into laughter halfway through, and Jake looks up at you, grinning.

“Are you serious?” you ask through your laughter. The thought of little Jake thumbing through history books frantically as he searches for Han Solo - who you just know was his childhood idol - is almost too much.

He shrugs. “That’ll be my secret. Did make you laugh, though.”

“Yeah, you did,” you admit, and then you let yourself fall into the sand beside him. It’s cool, grains catching in your hair, and you’re pretty sure you’ll spend the rest of your week trying to get them out again, but it’s worth it for the view. 

The night sky stretches endless above you. You’re close enough to the sea and far enough from San Diego that the light pollution has bled out here, that you can see the stars twinkling up there. A million miles away, yet so close you think you could pluck one if you just stretched out your arm.

“Maybe I should be a teacher,” you say, and then freeze up. Because, what the fuck? Where did that come from?

You’ve never even thought about that, but it just burst out of you, like something you’ve been carrying in your chest your whole life.

Awash in the surprise, you can do nothing but blink for a while.

“A teacher?” Jake repeats. “What subject?”

“English,” you say immediately. Okay, well. Guess we’re having epiphanies about ourselves then. “It’s just that… well, I… I like tutoring Amelia. It’s my favorite time of the week, I think. And I… I love all those books other people are forced to read. I even like Catcher in the Rye, can you believe it?”

“Even Catcher in the Rye?” Jake says, mocking you by letting out a scandalized gasp and slapping a hand over his mouth. You laugh and shove at his shoulder. 

Grinning, he says, “I think you’d be a great teacher.”

And your heart beats faster. “Yeah?”

He nods. “I think you’d be great at anything you put your mind to, really. But I saw you talk about that book earlier… it’s like you were glowing. You love that. People are always best when they do what they love.”

It’s unexpectedly wise. It knocks the wind right out of you.

You need to take a moment to collect yourself, avoid the intent gaze of his eyes that makes it feel almost like he knows you.

“Have you always wanted to be a pilot, then?” you ask.

Jake shrugs, a movement you feel more than see, his arm moving up where he’s pressed against yours, shoulder digging a deeper furrow into the sand.

“Maybe. I guess.” You think he won’t say anything else, but after another moment, he goes on, “My father is a general, you know? It’s sort of a family tradition.”

You didn’t know that, but it sort of makes sense. Another shade to color Jake Seresin in with.

“He must be really proud of you,” you say, thinking of your own father, who hasn’t called in months.

Jake is quiet for so long that you glance over to check that he hasn’t fallen asleep. His eyes are open, though, and his throat bobs as he swallows.

“Not really,” he says, finally. “My father always thought I was a disappointment. I remember one time in middle school, there was this boy… He was a real bully. He liked to slam me into lockers, and one time he broke my nose. My dad just said it was my own fault for not fighting back.”

His jaw moves as he grinds his teeth.

“Nothing I do ever really… is enough for him.”

There’s something in his voice you never thought Jake capable of: defeat.

Your chest aches with it.

“Not even when you graduated Top Gun?” you ask carefully. “You were top of your class, right?”

Jake shrugs again. “He didn’t come to the ceremony. Mom said he was sick, but… I don’t think that’s true.” He exhales, and it’s a shaky, fragile sound. “Sometimes… sometimes I think he’d only ever be proud of me if I got shot down. If I died in combat or something.”

Your reaction is visceral. Heart plummeting, stopping, arm jerking against him.

“Don’t…” you begin, then shake your head vehemently. “Don’t say that, please.”

He glances at you, looking almost surprised at your outburst.

“It’s not…” You hesitate. “It’s not worth it. Not if he doesn’t recognize it already.”

“Recognize what?” 

And Jake won’t take his eyes away from you. You feel like you’re going to fall apart.

“That you’re… that you’re a good pilot.”

You swallow, immediately embarrassed by your own words. You can’t even look him in the eyes.

Jake raises an eyebrow. “You’ve never even seen me fly.”

“It doesn’t matter,” you say, and mean every word, “I know.”

It’s not enough. It’s way too much.

It doesn’t say half of the things you want to tell him, at the same time as it reveals much more than you want it to.

And you remember: It was nothing. Shrugging off everything he made you feel. Laughing as if nothing had happened. Telling you without as many words that you were just another conquest, just another girl in a line of girls, nothing special about you, nothing important, nothing relevant.

You want to hate him, yet something about Jake makes it impossible. Something about him keeps drawing you back. Even after everything that’s happened, wanting him is like a bad habit you can’t shake.

You can’t explain that.

But Jake reaches out to you and slots his fingers into the spaces between your own. Squeezes once.

Your fear got in your way. Even now, it chokes all words from you.

But that’s fine. You think, somehow, Jake understands anyway.

He’s quiet for a while and then says, “Why are you here, then? In Fightertown, I mean.”

It’s a good question, one you don’t know how to answer. 

Finally, you say, “My mother died.” 

And then you freeze. It’s the first time you’ve ever said it out loud, and suddenly it’s real in a way it wasn’t before. 

Haltingly, almost shell-shocked by it, you continue, “And it… it made me realize that I’d built my whole life around her. And when she was gone… well, that life was gone, too. Like that dream about the house with the blue door… It didn’t seem to matter anymore. So I just left. I just… drove until I got to Fightertown, and then I decided to stay because… I don’t know. There was nowhere else to go, anyway.”

Tears pool in your eyes, and you concentrate hard to blink them away.

“And do you like it here?”

You’re so grateful. You’re so grateful he doesn’t tell you that he’s sorry about your mother, that he doesn’t judge you for not having had a life apart from her. That he doesn’t ask about your father or your friends. So grateful that somehow, again, he seems to understand what you need: Not the past, but the present.

“Yeah,” you say and are surprised to find you’re telling the truth. “Yeah, it’s not so bad.”

Then you glance at him. “Unless the most obnoxious naval aviator in the history of the world almost knocks you over in a bar, of course.”

Jake laughs, a carefree, bellowing sound that has you feeling a little bit like you’re soaring.

“Only because you’re so pretty, sweetheart,” he says, winking at you.

And it’s toeing the line. Not really friendly, not really platonic, but so Hangman, so Jake, that you don’t even mind.

You smile back, and then you turn your eyes up to that sky, to those stars, and listen to the whisper of the waves, holding tight to Jake’s hand.

+

The thing about fear is that it’s not a one-time situation. Overcoming it once doesn’t get rid of it - it just goes stagnant for a while, lulls you into a false sense of security, and then it pounces again.

So walking into the Hard Deck is a little easier, but the rest of it is just as hard. Reassuring yourself that you’re wanted here, that you’re not intruding, that nobody will look at you weirdly.

Hangman and Phoenix invited you. Separately, you tell yourself. You know the owner. You’re gonna be okay.

You can’t spot any familiar faces when you finally get the courage to make it from the front porch into the actual bar. It’s all just strangers mingling.

Mostly looking for a little bit of liquid courage and something to occupy your time with until the others arrive, you make your way to the bar and flag down one of the unfamiliar bartenders to order a cocktail.

After, you turn to people watch. They’re everywhere, laughing and flirting, people lining up shots in neat rows on bar tops, people knocking back shots, people playing darts and pools and footsie, people laughing with their friends or at their friends. It’s almost shocking, all that display of life. It makes you think of yourself, alone in your room for days, weeks, years. How much did you miss?

“Can I buy you another?”

The guy is handsome. That’s the first thing you notice. Not Hangman-level handsome, but… that’s not the sort of thoughts you should be having anyway. Curls, kind eyes, a dimple on his cheek. Cute. The kind of guy you might have stared at in the supermarket a few months ago, would have lost your mind over if he had smiled at you in the frozen foods section.

“Oh,” you say as he slides up to you, folding and bracing his arms on the tabletop. “Uhm…”

“No strings attached,” he promises, holding up his hands like he wants you to check that he’s not carrying any weapons. “You just looked lonely.”

You laugh, feeling a little bit out of your depth. “Did I really?”

He nods, eyes twinkling, and says, “Yep. I could tell all the way from the other end of the bar.”

That’s probably not a good sign, you think. Gotta start working on my poker face.

“I’m Jason, by the way,” the guy introduces himself, offering you a hand.

This feels a lot like a precipice.

Part of you knows you should give in. Let this guy buy you a drink, let him flirt with you, let him take you home. Get an ego boost and have a nice time. This, you think, was what Penny meant all the time she talked about getting the sexual frustration out of your system. 

Not whatever the fuck that twisted thing you and Hangman had going on was. Definitely not that, because it didn’t get a single thing out of your system. In fact, it only ended up injecting more into your system. More worries, more insecurities, more pain.

And it’s over, you know it is. He listened when you asked him to stop, and he’s made it abundantly clear he’s not interested in you, that you were less than a fling, that you were just a possibility that never came true. That you were nothing. And yet… you’re not ready to let it go. To let go of whatever sliver of hope you’ve held onto.

But then you think of Jake at the restaurant, how easily he’d brushed it all off, how he’d said friends. He hadn’t wanted to talk about it, not really. He’d just wanted to get it out of the way. And he’s so confident, so sure of what he wants, and if he wanted you… then he would have gone after you by now.

You know he would have.

So you smile and say, “Are you a naval aviator?”

Jason seems surprised by that, but he nods his head. “Yes, Ma’am. Just graduated Top Gun a few weeks ago.”

“Oh no,” you say. “That’s not good.”

Jason laughs. “Not the reaction I usually get. Are you not a big fan of pilots, then?”

“Not particularly,” you say. “I don’t think they’re good for my mental health. Or the environment.” 

And then he laughs, and his dimple distracts you, and it’s light and not heavy, and it feels simple in a way you’ve been missing.

So you let him buy you a drink. And you let him flirt with you. And you try, try, try your best to forget about the anxiety gnawing at your bones, about the voice telling you it’s wrong, about everything that’s holding you back.

You just want to be normal. You just want to have fun. You just want to be free of the ghosts haunting you.

And in a way, it’s easy. Jason isn’t aggressive like Jake was, isn’t so handsome it seems like a miracle he’s even looking at you. He’s nice and funny and a little bit boring, and that’s good, boring is good because boring is normal, it’s trivial, it’s safe.

Hesitantly, you place a hand on Jason’s arm and bask in the way it feels when he smiles at you.

And then the intrusive thought comes, unbidden, unstoppable, bleak: If Jake were here…

You banish the idea as soon as it crops up.

It was nothing.

If Jake were here, he would not care.

+

Jake is having an aneurism.

That’s the only logical explanation for any of this. He feels like somebody is peeling his skin off like he’s an orange.

“Yo, Hangman!” 

A hand starts wiping up and down through the air right in front of him rapidly, and Jake blinks against the blur of colors it leaves on his vision.

“There you are, dude,” Payback says, laughing. “I’ve been trying to get your attention for like 5 minutes.”

“Yeah, well,” Jake mutters, turning back to his friends. “You’re just not that interesting, Payback.”

Way less interesting than that scene unfolding near the bar, at least. But also decidedly less prone to provoke Jake into committing arson, so probably the safer choice.

“What are you looking at anyway?” Payback inquires, getting on his tippy-toes to look across everybody else’s heads.

Jake just manages to catch him by a shoulder and force him in the opposite direction. The last thing he needs is to get shit for this, too. He’s already got enough to deal with by just trying to untangle the thicket of his own emotions.

“I’m looking for Bob. We shouldn’t leave minors unaccompanied,” he lies, forcing a nonchalance he doesn’t feel into his voice.

From where she is leaning against the vintage Pacman machine, Phoenix gives him a look like she isn’t buying anything that he’s putting down. But she doesn’t point it out, and Jake sort of feels like weeping in gratitude.

He takes a seat at the table next to Coyote and starts playing with the label on his beer bottle, mainly so he doesn’t feel the urge to start looking for you in the mess of the crowd again. The paper is soaked through by the condensation, crumbling into tiny balls that stick between his fingers when he rubs too hard.

“So, day after tomorrow, huh?” Fanboy says. “Gonna know our fate. You nervous, Hangman?”

The worst part is, Hangman - Hangman, of all people, whose life for the past ten years has revolved around little more than the Navy, than his plane, than his performance up in the air - has pretty much forgotten that the day after tomorrow they’d announce who was about to go on the mission that could potentially become the most important of his career. It’s just that there are much more imminent, pressing things happening right here, right now. Like some dude chatting you up with what are probably the sleaziest lines you’ve ever heard just a few steps away.

He clears his throat. “Why would I be nervous?” he asks, but it lacks his usual edge. “I’m going anyways, no question about it.”

“I don’t know,” Rooster interjects. “You’ve been flying sort of shitty the past week.”

Jake’s fingers clench around the neck of the bottle.

“No shittier than you, Bradshaw. You fly like you’re trying to let senior citizens pass through traffic.”

Payback frowns. “You okay, Hang? That barely made any sense.”

Truthfully, Jake is so distracted he can’t even concentrate enough to come up with something that’ll really piss Rooster off. Not when you’re right there, and he’s not the one making you laugh. Not when he asked you to be friends while really all he can think about is you underneath him with that glazed look in your eyes he’s put there once before, you moaning his name, you in his shirt, you with your mouth wrapped around his…

“Hangman!” That’s Phoenix, now sitting next to Rooster, looking like she’s about an inch from slapping him over the head with her beer bottle. “I asked you a question.”

“Huh?”

Everybody’s staring at him. He’s still trying not to look at the bar.

“I said,” Phoenix repeats, speaking deliberately slow like she’s scared he won’t understand otherwise, “that I don’t want to see any physical fights. So we’re all going to accept the decision tomorrow. Get it, Bagman?”

He shrugs. Right now, he’s so decidedly uninterested in who goes on that mission he can’t imagine even getting upset about it.

“Fine by me,” he mutters and moves to take a sip of his beer. Only, when he tips his head back, it brings the bar right into his line of sight.

And there you are, sitting almost in the exact same spot you were the very first night he approached you. Back in one of those dresses, the ones that drive him insane, the ones playing much more prominent roles in his late-night fantasies than he’d ever like to admit. Legs crossed primly and tucked to the side, all that smooth, soft skin, and Jake can’t stop himself, can’t not imagine getting to run his mouth down the line of that leg, can’t not imagine taking that dress off you, can’t not imagine making you whimper for him, again and again and…

A pale hand lands on the small of your back, just half an inch from where the dress drops low to expose that skin he was just thinking about, and Jake feels like somebody sucker-punched him.

“Okay, somebody switch seats with me right now,” he says, and his voice has climbed to unprecedented heights. It just bursts out of him.

It startles Bob so much he almost drops his beer. Liquid goes sloshing all over Coyote’s lap, who yelps, jumps up, and dumps half his whiskey over Payback in the process. In the ensuing mayhem, everybody seems to forget about the culprit.

Everybody. Everybody, except Phoenix.

She looks at him with the sort of knowing, accusatory eyes that make him think he should be on his knees begging for forgiveness or something.

Discomfort makes him shift his weight in his seat.

And then a hand ghosts over his shoulder, fingernails painted a delicate pink, and for a second, he hopes, thinks he’s going to turn around and find you there, smiling at him, eyes shining, but it’s a different face that greets him. His heart, soaring for a moment, plummets to the ground.

He’s seen the girl around the bar a few times before. She’s pretty. The type he’d go for usually, the kind of pretty thing he’d fuck and leave and never think about again.

“Hi,” she says, smiling in a way that makes the corners of her painted mouth curl up like the lower half of a heart. “I’ve seen you around. Can I buy you a drink?”

It’s the sort of straightforward behavior he prefers usually. Hangman has never been much for playing it coy, for insecurity. He likes someone who goes after what they want, who knows what they want. At least he’s always thought he did.

For a second, he can see it: a little bit of flirting, some coy touches, letting her take him home, getting his rocks off, then disappearing forever.

But his heart just isn’t in it. The whole thing feels empty. Useless. Wrong.

So he shrugs her hand off, gives her a polite smile, and says, “Maybe some other time.”

The girl is drunk enough that she doesn’t care much, just shrugs and saunters off to find someone more accepting of her advances.

When Jake turns to face his friends again, Coyote is gaping at him with his mouth hanging open.

“What?” Jake asks, for the first time in his life actually uncomfortable with the amount of attention he’s receiving.

“Are you like… sick?”

“Why?”

“Cause you just…” Payback looks seriously concerned. “You just turned down a pretty girl, man. Are you feeling okay?”

And that’s when Jake realizes what just happened. With a dawning sort of horror, he sets his bottle down on the table and stares at the condensation rings, the crumpled napkins, the half-eaten bowl of peanuts. His head is spinning.

So, like… what the fuck?

Since Jake finally got to move out of his parent’s house, since he got out from under the gaze of his father - always judging, always finding him lacking - since he joined the Navy and found out that he’s one of the most talented pilots they’ve ever had, he’s had a pretty good idea of who he is.

Arrogant, sure. Cocky, even. Abrasive, at times, calculated, cunning. But with enough skill to back all of it up a hundred times. He knows he’s handsome, knows he can get any girl he wants, and he enjoys that. Basks in it. Based half his personality on it.

So Hangman knows who he is. Knew it perfectly well, right up until the moment he met you.

And just like that, he’s going not just after an inexperienced girl but a girl who might not even like him, and he keeps telling himself it’s just about the chase, just because you’re the prettiest thing he’s ever seen, and there’s something exciting about getting someone who doesn’t make it easy, but it’s starting to sound like a bad excuse, because then why did he ask you to be friends just so he could stay close to you, why did he tell you things he’s never told a soul, why did he feel like the earth was shattering beneath him when you said he was a good pilot? Why can’t he stop thinking of you?

“Hangman, are you having a stroke?” 

Even Rooster sounds genuinely concerned, but Jake doesn’t hear him. Not really, at least.

Because up at the bar, the guy has leaned in even closer, leaned all the way into your space (and Jake just knows he stinks of beer and sweat, and his palms are probably damp where he’s groping your waist), and is whispering something into your ear and you’re giggling, and Jake sees full-on, deep, deep scarlet.

He’s out of his seat before he can register it, halfway through the bar before he remembers moving. Elbowing people out of the way and probably spilling more than one drink in his path. He doesn’t care. In fact, he doesn’t even notice.

All his attention is laser-focused on you and all the places that dirtbag is touching you.

“Alright,” he says much too forcefully when he finally reaches the bar and slaps his hands onto the countertop with a noise so loud it almost has you jumping out of your seat. “I think I told Penny all her drinks are on my tab. Like perpetually. Eternally. Whatever, pick one.”

The poor, unassuming bartender stares at him. “I… Who are you, Sir, like I…?”

Jake ignores him. He turns to face you and the douchebag, both of you staring at him with wide eyes. 

“Hi,” he says, aiming for casual and missing by a mile. Now he’s a little concerned his smile might look like a serial killer about to woo his newest victim.

“Uhm,” you say slowly, glancing at the guy behind you, “Hangman….”

“Sweetheart,” he interrupts before you can even get out a complete sentence, “I told you you can call me Jake.”

You pause. Then you start again, “Jake….”

“I don’t think we’ve met.” He leans around you, offering a hand. “I’m Hangman.”

The guy blinks. “Yeah, hi. Jason. Nice to meet you.”

Jake nods, shakes his hand, then turns to you. Bends down to press a kiss to your cheek, lingers for too long. Draws back and basks in the stunned look on your face, the wide eyes, just for a moment.

“You sleep well after last night?” he asks. “You must have been exhausted.”

And he’s laying it on thick, he knows he is. Leaves his hand resting on your shoulder for too long, lets his thumb stroke over your collarbone in a slow, drawn-out movement just for the hell of it.

He can’t explain it. It’s just… it’s just that he can’t forget the guy’s hands all over you. It’s just that he can’t forget your face last night, bathed in the moonlight, your laughter that made him think his chest was caving in. It’s just that he feels if somebody else makes you laugh like that, he may never be happy again.

“I don’t…” You blink up at him, face almost entirely blank. “What?”

One of his hands lands on your thigh, just above the knee, half on the fabric of your dress, half on the warm skin of your leg. And it’s pushing it, he knows that, but it’s not like he decided to touch you. It’s more of an instinct, a reassurance to himself. You’re there. You haven’t left.

Not yet, anyway.

He can see the way Jason looks at you. He knows that look, knows exactly what he wants to do, and it lights a fire inside of him, something pathetic and possessive and uncalled for.

And all he can think is: That guy won’t treat you right, I can do it better, I know what you like, I know it, I see it, I know you…

But apart from his own ego, apart from the cocky part of him that knows he’s got you pegged, knows he could set you off and have you coming on his tongue, his fingers, his cock quicker than you could make sense of, there’s something else there too. A strange, unfamiliar protectiveness. Something that makes him think: What if this guy hurts you?

Not because you’re fragile, not because you don’t know yourself, but because Jake knows you. Has seen you. 

Knows this runs deeper than anything else, even if he doesn’t know what that means. Even if it scares him shitless.

He can’t let some other guy take you home. He just can’t.

“Hangman,” Jason says, leaning across you and giving Jake a small, almost shy smile. “Man, you’re a legend.”

“I…” Jake was prepared to hit him with something else bordering on rude, but this throws him for a loop. “What?”

“At Top Gun. Everybody talks about you all the time. It’s an honor to meet you.” 

The guy’s eyes are positively glowing, his cheeks ruddy with alcohol and excitement. Jake, who was hellbent on hating him, suddenly doesn’t know what to do with his hands.

Between them, you’ve gone very still.

“Oh,” Jake says, “well…”

“I’m sorry, by the way.” The guy - boy, some spiteful part of Jake things - gestures in your general direction. For a second, Jake feels indignant on your behalf before he realizes he’s the one responsible for this. “I didn’t realize this was your girl. Backing up right away. Sorry.”

With raised hands, he disappears into the crowd, blending seamlessly into the sea of uniforms.

Jake’s triumph is short-lived.

You’ve slid half out of your seat, gathering your bag from where you’ve draped it over the back of the chair by the strap.

“Where are you going, sweetheart?” he asks, reaching out to help you but withdrawing his hands immediately when you whirl to face him.

There’s something on your face, something he’s never seen before, and with his stomach dropping down to his knees, he wonders suddenly and belatedly if he may have miscalculated severely.

That night at the bar, when you’d walked up to him and told him to leave you alone, it had been a little like somebody had pulled the ground right from beneath his feet. Like that magic trick with the tablecloth, only this one had been bad and botched and bungled, all the china and the glasses and the cutlery falling and smashing.

And yet the way you’d looked at him… He could have sworn you weren’t telling the truth. 

Jake isn’t dumb, fuck what Phoenix says, and he’s been with enough girls to recognize desire when he sees it. So he was almost entirely sure you were lying when you told him to leave you alone.

But then… what if that had just been his own hope? Building nothing into something. Wanting you to want him the same way he wants you.

In the end, what he thought you wanted didn’t matter. All he had to go off were your words, and those were clear enough. The choice needed to be yours, or it meant nothing.

And Jake was a lot - bastard, asshole, fuckboy - but he wasn’t going to push you into something you didn’t want. Never.

So he’d let up. He’d listened to you. He’d tried to pull back. Even as it had hurt him in a way he could not explain. Even as it had broken him apart.

And then Maverick and Penny had to meddle, and he’d gotten to know you in a way he hadn’t planned for at all. Had learned that he didn’t just want you, he liked you. Wanted to keep listening to you as you rambled on and on in intelligible loops about books you liked. Wanted to read them, wanted to talk to you about them. Wanted to make those dreams come true: buy you that house with the blue door, give you that dog.

He can’t understand it. He can’t explain it. All he knows is he wants to be close to you.

But with the way you’re looking at him right now, pure, unadulterated anger on your face, he realizes you might not feel the same way at all.

“What the fuck, Hangman?”

“What?” he asks, genuinely confused. “What did I do?”

This is not his day at all. Or his week. In fact, he’s not sure it has been his month.

You frown at him for a moment, completely silent, and it unsettles Jake in a way he can’t explain. 

He’s always known who he is, has been so sure of it, but now, with you… It’s like you make him question everything.

“I’m going home,” you say, pushing past him and heading for the door.

He’s too dazed to move for a moment, and then he’s chasing after you, trying to recapture his earlier speed but failing. It’s gotten even more crowded in here, every available inch of space occupied with sweaty bodies. He calls your name, but you don’t turn.

By the time he catches up to you, you’re out in the parking lot.

“Sweetheart!” he calls.

You whirl on him with a murderous expression on your face. He stops dead in his tracks.

“Don’t call me that,” you say. “Who the fuck do you think you are?”

Since you first met, the two of you have been exchanging sharp remarks. You have teased, you have taunted, you have circled around each other like wild cats around prey. Always toeing the line between flirting and fighting. Always toeing the line between foreplay and sparring. A tightrope act.

But this tips the scales decidedly. There’s nothing coquettish about it, nothing good-natured. The words have teeth, have fangs, have claws. They sink into his heart with perfect precision.

“I…” he begins, but you don’t let him finish.

“What the fuck are you doing?”

“I was…” He clears his throat and straightens his shoulders. Tries to grin but thinks it might end up as more of a grimace. “I was saying hello.”

You shake your head before he’s finished his sentence. “No, you weren’t. You were ruining my night. You always… you always have to ruin my nights.”

And wow. Okay. That one hurt.

“I just…” Jake realizes he might have to explain this to you. Or at least attempt to, since he doesn’t even know what his explanation would be. “That’s not a good guy.”

You glance back at the bar, and an incredulous expression spreads across your face. 

“That?” you repeat, voice rising. “Are you serious?”

“Yeah!”

“You don’t even know him.”

“You don’t either!”

“So? I wasn’t… I wasn’t about to marry him.”

Jake’s chest feels tight. He’s breathless when he asks, “What were you going to do with him, then?”

“I was…” You shake your head suddenly, breaking off halfway through the sentence, changing course. “That’s none of your business!”

“Yeah, it is!” he protests, but he knows he’s in the wrong. Still, he can’t stop himself. “He’s not a good guy.”

“Oh my god!” You throw your hands into the air, and he’s never seen you so upset. Everything that came before now seems only like a crude imitation. This, though… this is true, genuine anger. “Stop it. He’s… he’s just a cocky pilot, you’re not that different….”

Somehow, the comparison has Jake clenching his teeth. He amends, “He’s not good for you, then.”

For a moment, your face goes slack, and he knows he’s just said the wrong thing.

“That is notyour decision,” you say, voice suddenly quiet and all the more dangerous for it. “That’s no one’s decision but my own.”

And God, if Jake doesn’t know that. 

You’ll always make your own choices. He hasn’t had a shred of an illusion to the opposite even for a moment, hasn’t even wanted it any other way. You will always go your own way.

You’re so much stronger than you realize. Going on after losing your mother. Giving up a whole life. Starting over a million miles away without family, without friends, without anything but yourself.

It’s what he admires. It’s what drives him insane.

“I don’t want you to get hurt,” he says because it’s the truth. “You’re my friend.”

Something on your face shatters. 

“Friend,” you whisper dispassionately. “Sure.”

You rub your hand over your face, and suddenly you look so tired. All he wants is to wrap you in his arms, tug you closer, take you home. Make sure you’re okay.

“Hangman,” you say softly, almost gently. “I think this was a mistake. I don’t think I can be your friend.”

And it’s fear coursing through him. Naked, unmistakable fear.

If he can’t see you again, what will he do? This new Jake, the one who’s unsure about everything unless he’s right next to you, that new Jake… what will he do?

How can he go back to how he used to be when it’s like slipping into a costume that doesn’t fit anymore?

“My name is Jake,” he says because he doesn’t know what else to do. Because he needs to hear you say it. “I want you to call me Jake.”

“Stop it!” Your voice is louder again, an edge of desperation creeping into it. “Everybody else calls you Hangman, who cares if I….”

“You’re not everybody else!” It just… slips out. And then it’s out in the open, and he can’t believe he said it, doesn’t know where it came from, only knows that it’s the truth. “Not to me.”

You’re staring at him. Chest rising and falling rapidly, fingers tangled in the straps of your bag.

And you’re so beautiful, even in this empty parking lot, even in the unflattering light of the street lamps. Even with the sweat pooling at your hairline and the anger in your eyes.

“Hangman,” you say, “don’t.”

But he’s shaking his head. He let you go once, but now… now he has to… he has to…

“You’re special,” he says, even as you’re shaking your head. “You are to me, sweetheart, you are, you….”

“You said it meant nothing,” you blurt out, then shut your mouth with an audible click of your teeth as if you wish you could clamp the words back in somehow.

Jake blinks. “What?”

He can see your throat move as you swallow.

You take a moment, teeth sinking into your lower lip, and then you say, “That night when I told you to leave me alone. You told Coyote that this… thing between us. That it was nothing.”

Jake inhales. Exhales. His mind is blank.

“I… I did?” he asks, words slow, sluggish, like he’s thrusting them forward through the mud.

Your face falls. You say, voice almost a whisper, “You don’t even remember, do you?”

He wants to say no, I do, of course, I do. He wants to protest.

But if there’s one thing he can’t do, it’s lie to you.

Truth is, he doesn’t know at all what he said. The moments after your confrontation in the bar are shrouded in a fog of confusion for him. He was just trying to make sense of what you’d said, untangle the mess of his mind. He was just trying to save face.

It’s not nothing, he should tell you. It was never nothing.

But then, if it’s not nothing… what is it? This thing between us, you’d called it.

Jake doesn’t have an answer. He doesn’t even understand why he can’t just let you go the way he usually does. He could just turn around, go back inside, find some other pretty girl, but something keeps him rooted to the spot.

I think of you when I go to sleep and when I’m touching myself, and I can’t stop thinking about you. I carry you with me up into the plane, into the sky, into the clouds. I want to sit with you in bars and in restaurants and on beaches. I want to hold your hand. I want to kiss you. I want, I want, I want…

There’s pain on your face, something raw, something real.

Jake can’t breathe.

“I’m leaving,” you say, and then you just stand there for a moment, looking at him almost like you expect him to say something.

He seems to have lost all ability to speak. You purse your lips, your eyes waterlogged, and then you turn on your heel and walk to the car.

Jake stands in the gravel of the parking lot until the headlights of your car have faded into the dark of the night. Then he trots back into the bar blindly, finds their now mostly deserted table at the back, and slumps into a chair.

He feels empty.

Phoenix’s face appears in his vision after what could have been five minutes or five hours, almost comically large.

“I think I’m having a heart attack,” Jake says, but his voice sounds like a stranger’s.

Immediately, Phoenix squats down to look at him better. “What?”

He points at his chest, where it feels like a tiger is on a rampage. “It hurts.”

“What hurts?”

“My chest.” He’s quiet for a moment, and then he says, “Phoenix, I think I fucked up. Like… big time.”

Her face goes from mildly annoyed to honestly worried. She asks, a tinge of panic edging into her voice, “Did you drink too much? Hangman?”

He shakes his head. “I think I hurt her. I don’t know, I… I think I fucked it up.”

She searches his face for a moment, and then she’s straightening up, taking Hangman by the arm and pulling him out of his chair. Her grip is like a vice around his wrist, and he yelps.

“Alright,” she says, “you’re coming with me. Now.”

Jake would have protested, but the look Phoenix gives him shuts him right up. If there’s anybody he’s ever met capable of coldblooded homicide, it’s Natasha Trace.

So he lets himself be tugged into the last corner not yet wholly occupied by people past the halfway point to intoxication.

Phoenix lets go of his wrist in favor of stemming her hands into her hips. He’s pretty sure he’ll find bruises on his skin come morning.

“Don’t,” she says.

“Don’t what?” Jake asks, even though he has a pretty sure idea where this is going.

“Don’t… meddle, okay. You had your chance, you blew it. Let her move on.”

“It’s not…” He struggles. “It’s not like that. We’re friends.”

“Friends,” Phoenix repeats. God, she really is capable of violence, he knows it, and she’s not far from resorting to it. “Are you stupid, Hangman?”

He opens his mouth, but she’s already plowing on.

“Friends don’t look at each other like they’re about to rip their clothes off and go at it in crowded bars, Jacob.”

Jacob. The last time somebody called him that was when his mom caught him trying to sneak out of the window at sixteen to go see a band with his first girlfriend. He got grounded for three weeks.

Somehow, he thinks Phoenix won’t be that merciful.

“Like… obviously you have some kind of feelings for her, but….”

He doesn’t even hear the rest of what she says. Her mouth keeps moving, but none of her words reach his ears. All he can hear is a high, whistling noise cutting clean through his eardrums.

“Hold on,” he interrupts, “I don’t have feelings for her.”

Phoenix pauses for a moment, staring at him like he’s trying to convince her the earth is flat.

“Jake,” she says - not Hangman, not Bagman, not even Jacob, and hoooh boy, he’s in for it now - slowly, “don’t lie to me.”

“I’m not lying,” he says.

Phoenix blinks. Takes a moment. Another. Then she says, almost carefully, “Jake, you can’t be that stupid. Please tell me you’re not that stupid.”

It’s not the first time she’s called him stupid, but it might be the first time she actually means it.

And Jake would protest, only he feels pretty stupid right about now, too.

“Please…” She touches her forehead like she has a headache and exhales loudly, slowly. “Please tell me you’re not honestly stupid enough not to know.”

“Know what?” Jake asks, and he’s never felt less like himself.

He’s in control of things. He takes risks gladly, but they’re always calculated. Things don’t just… fly under his radar.

But right now, he feels like he missed something profound.

Phoenix looks at him with what could be either pity or actual hatred.

“Jake,” she says, enunciating each word with perfect precision, “you’re in love with her.”

“I don’t know her,” he says, almost automatically, and he’s so dizzy.

Phoenix waves his words away with a quick jerk of her hand. 

“There’s a difference between loving someone and being in love with someone, Jake,” she tells him. “When you’re with her, how do you feel?”

“I feel…” And he can’t believe he’s talking about this, but in a way, it makes sense. Maybe Phoenix is the only person he could ever tell this. Phoenix, who has always seen through him and all his bravado. “When I’m with her, it’s like… like I can just be myself, you know? And I want… I want to know her. Everything about her, even the bad things, but I want her to know me, too. Not just Hangman but… Jake. And I want to… I just want to be with her all the time. I want to tell her about, like, everything, even the little things that I’d never tell somebody else, and I…. When I’m with her, it doesn’t feel like I need to prove anything. It’s like I can just be. I’ve never… never felt that before.”

His voice trails off.

The irritation has bled out of Phoenix’s face, making way for something softer, smoother, something almost tender. She puts a hand on his shoulder.

“Bagman,” she says, voice halfway to affectionate, “you know what that means.”

For a few moments, he just breathes.

And yeah, he does. In a way, maybe he’s known for a while now, at least since the set-up, and he just didn’t want to admit it to himself. That it’s more than just wanting to fuck you. That it’s so much more than nothing. That it’s so much, it scares him.

It wasn’t quick, it wasn’t instantaneous. It crept up on him. You permeated his life in stages, and now you’re everywhere.

At first, he just thought you were pretty, thought he could get into your pants and out of your life in the span of a night. But you gave as good as you got, kept pushing back, and suddenly it was like a personal quest to get you to give in. You looked up at him on the beach behind the Hard Deck through eyes as scared as they were determined, and something shifted. Not profound yet, not significant, but the first domino to drop in a long, long, long line.

And somewhere, at some moment, he could no longer pinpoint, the game he’d played had ended, and he hadn’t even noticed. The last domino had toppled.

It was real now. Real and scary and over.

“I’m in love with her?” he says, almost a question with how his voice rises towards the tail-end of the sentence.

Phoenix nods, smiles gently at him. 

“Oh God,” he says. “Then I… then I really fucked up.”

“Yeah,” Phoenix agrees through a breathless laugh. “Yeah, I think you really did.”

+

It’s the hottest day of the year, and the aircon at the gas station breaks down.

The heat is unbearable. You stripped off your employee vest hours ago, but it barely helps. The single fan you found in the back oscillates stale air through the room.

You’re counting down the minutes until the end of your shift, until you can drive aimless circles through town just to bask in the cool of your car. Until you can drown in your own self-pity and another family-size serving of pasta and the dark thoughts swirling around you like storm clouds.

Your boss has disappeared into the back room, and it’s only five more minutes until you’re off, so you trek towards the cold drinks section and wonder if you should spend the few extra dollars on an iced tea. When the bell rings, announcing the arrival of a customer, you’re still standing undecided in front of the opened fridge, letting cool air caress your face.

Phoenix is in civilian clothes, her hair released from its tight bun for the first time. It falls in glossy waves down to her shoulder blades as she smiles at you warmly.

“Hi.”

“Oh.” The sight of her makes something in your stomach clench uncomfortably. Couldn’t she have come in five minutes later? You’d have been gone by then. “Hi…”

“Penny said you’d be here.”

You blink. “You… were you looking for me?”

Phoenix nods and steps up to the register to look at the cheap sunglasses on display.

“I wanted to talk to you,” she says casually.

The fear of it all creeps up on you, and then it envelopes you. You’ve been trying and failing to push it to the very back corners of your mind for the past day, keeping your hands busy in hopes it would keep your head idle. Pretending you weren’t constantly replaying last night in your head - the bar, the parking lot, the anger, and the ridiculousness of it all. Jake saying you’re special, and then not even remembering the moment he’d broken your heart. Looking helpless in a way you’d never seen before.

In the rearview mirror, growing rapidly smaller and further until he disappeared completely, Jake looked almost like a little child.

“You and Hangman had a fight,” Phoenix says, and it’s not even a question. Just a statement.

“Yeah,” you agree because it doesn’t feel like there’s much sense in arguing. And no reason to, either.

Phoenix nods and watches as you round the counter. For some reason, you feel it’s not a bad idea to get some distance between you and her for this conversation. The counter is like a barrier.

“Hangman is…” Phoenix hesitates. “Hangman is an idiot.”

“No, he isn’t.” The words are out before you can stop them, and then frustration almost makes you bite your tongue. “He… he’s actually a pretty smart guy.”

Phoenix raises an eyebrow. “I’ve been told you hate him.”

You swallow, look away. Shrug your shoulders. “No, I… I don’t know.”

None of this matters. After last night, you’re never going to see him again.

For a long, long while, Phoenix is silent. And then she says, “He’s in love with you.”

And it should be earth-shattering, world-stops-spinning, music-stars-playing. But they’re just words.

Your heart is racing.

“He…” You shake your head. It’s a cliff, the plummet beneath you, your fingers gripping the edge for dear life. You want to believe her so very, very badly, but your common sense tells you it can’t be true. “He barely knows me.”

“That’s what he said,” she says, chuckling, then shakes her head. “I know, but… you have to understand… This is something special. I mean, this is Hangman we’re talking about… he doesn’t open up to people.”

You think about sitting side by side out on the beach. Sharing secrets before you let the waves carry them out to sea. Spilling your heart into his hands and trusting him with it. Realizing, suddenly, that he had done the same.

“I think…” Phoenix’s voice has gone very gentle. “I think you’re very similar. You and him.”

A week ago, you would have laughed at her. Just five minutes ago, you wouldn’t have believed her. And now…

You fall.

When you think about it, it’s not so far-fetched. Jake, up in those clouds. You, down on the ground. In the end, you’re both lonely. In the end, you’re both afraid.

“Anyway.” She smiles at you and pushes off the register. “I just thought you might want to say goodbye.”

Something inside you stumbles. 

“Goodbye?” you repeat slowly.

“Yeah, we’re shipping out tomorrow morning.”

“Shipping…” Suddenly, it takes tremendous effort to breathe. “What?”

Phoenix pauses, furrows her eyebrows. “Didn’t Jake tell you? About the mission?”

“What mission?”

Phoenix groans, shaking her head. “See, I told you. He really is an idiot.”

+

Jake looks like he didn’t get a wink of sleep. The dark bags beneath his eyes have bloomed into purplish bruising overnight, and he blinks at you almost owlishly.

 “Why weren’t you going to say goodbye?”

That’s the first thing you say to him, and it’s not at all what you were planning in the car on the way here. It slips out the moment you see him, and your voice isn’t firm or strong at all, it’s a small, fragile thing. A teacup teetering on the edge of a moving tray, about to shatter.

He looks at you like you’re an apparition. “How did you get here?”

“It… Phoenix gave me your address.”

Jake has rented a place on the second floor of a modern apartment complex off base. It’s so much nicer than the house you’re living in, with stairs that don’t creak, no mildew in the hallway, and locks that look like they actually work.

“It doesn’t matter,” you say, and you sound out of breath. It’s not even because of the stairs you just took two steps at a time. “Why weren’t you?”

Jake exhales audibly, nods once, and opens the door wider. “You wanna come inside?”

Only now do you notice that he’s shirtless, wearing nothing but gray sweatpants slung almost as low as his swim trunks were that day on the beach. Hastily, you snap your eyes away, head already spinning.

You push past him and into the apartment, careful not to touch any of his skin. Who knows what other unhinged things that might drive you to do?

His apartment is neat, tidy, clean, but that doesn’t surprise you much. It’s also obviously a rental, lacking any personal touches except for a few shoes kicked off haphazardly by the door and his Top Gun diploma and plaque displayed on a dresser. Of course Jake travels with those, you think, almost grinning. He’d never miss out on a chance to show off.

There’s an aircon blasting somewhere, and you almost crumble to your feet with gratitude.

“Do you want something to drink?” he asks, heading towards what you suppose to be the kitchen. “I have… water? I’d offer to make you a Mojito, but I don’t think I have any limes. Or any rum. Or any mint, so…”

“Can you…” You falter and watch as he pauses in the doorway, one hand braced against the wood. “Can you just explain it to me?”

His shoulders lift and lower with his breaths. After a moment that feels endless, he turns to face you.

“Explain it to you?”

You nod. “Why you didn’t tell me. Why you weren’t going to say goodbye.”

He shrugs, unperturbed, but there’s something affective to the movement, something almost performative.

“After last night… I didn’t think you wanted to see me again.”

“That’s not what I mean.” You’re shaking your head, jaw clenching. “Why didn’t you tell me before then? That you’re about to go on some, some… stupid top-secret mission, that you might die, that….”

He interrupts you, “I didn’t tell you because it shouldn’t matter. I’m not…”

“Of course it matters!” Your voice is shaking. “It matters! It changes… everything.”

He squints at you. “How could it change anything?”

“It… it changes things because….” You stumble, try to find the words that elude you. “Because I thought we’d have more time.”

“More time?” Something about his voice is almost hopeful. “I thought you… I didn’t think you wanted to see me again.”

He’s right. You didn’t. At least you thought you didn’t. You thought the best thing you could possibly ever do for yourself, for him, was to stay as far away from Jake Seresin as possible. In a change-your-name-and-leave-the-country kind of way.

And then Phoenix walked into that gas station, and losing him had suddenly seemed so real, had gone from a distant fever dream to reality, and you didn’t have much choice anymore. All you wanted was to see him again. All you wanted was for him to call you sweetheart, smile and flirt and tease. Even if it drove you crazy. Even if it was the last time.

“Hangman…” You shake your head, correct yourself, “Jake, I… Do you like me?”

He looks at you, really looks at you, for the first time since you knocked at his door, and something in his expression changes. Without hesitation, without a slither of doubt in his words, he says, “Of course. Of course, I like you.”

You have to sink your fingernails into your palms to keep yourself grounded, to keep yourself from jumping several paces ahead. In your chest, your heart speeds up.

“And not just…” you pause, the word carnally already on your tongue. “It’s not that you just want to fuck me?”

He’s shaking his head before you’ve finished speaking. “No. Not at all. Yeah, sure, that’s what it was about in the beginning, but then… I just… It started changing, and I’d never felt that, and I… I think I got scared.”

“You got scared?” you ask, not unaware of the note of disbelief in your voice. It’s hard to imagine someone like Jake could ever be scared. Someone so confident, so brilliant.

He raises an eyebrow, and it’s a glimpse of the Jake you know, the one who drives you to the brink of insanity, “I’ll take that shock as a compliment.”

It’s a white-hot relief to find that he can still joke with you. That not all of the relationship you’ve built has washed away in the torrent of the last few weeks. 

“It’s just…” You look for a way to explain it. “I don’t know. You just always seemed like you had everything figured out.”

That makes him laugh, and you stare at his face scrunching up, his eyes shining. He says, “I’ve got nothing figured out. I haven’t even figured out what to eat for dinner tonight.”

You laugh. Even through all of it, he can still make you laugh. Even though nothing is resolved, even though you don’t understand any of it, he can always, always make you laugh. Even when you don’t want to. Even back when you still swore you hated him.

Jake settles down, and something darker crosses his expression. When he speaks next, his voice is almost hesitant.

“I’ve never… I’ve just never done something like this?”

“Like this?” you ask softly. 

Neither of you has ever defined this thing between you. You’re scared now, scared he has a different idea about it. Maybe you don’t want to hear his answer, want to live just a moment longer in this fantasy where Phoenix is right, where he likes you, where he wants you the same way you want him.

Carnally, romantically, wholly. Just… all of him. The good, the bad, the worst. The parts that drive you insane with anger and the ones that drive you insane with lust. The way he can break you apart and put you back together.

If he calls you his friend again now, if he says it was nothing… You don’t know if you can handle it. You don’t know that you won’t just break apart.

“Like this,” Jake repeats. “Something real.”

And your heart soars.

“Real?” you whisper, voice so quiet you think he can’t possibly have heard it.

Jake nods. “Real.”

“So it…” You trail off, shake your head, try again, “So it wasn’t nothing?”

He lets out a breathy, quiet laugh. And there’s none of his bravado, none of his cockiness. The armor is discarded, the mask is off, and there’s just Jake beneath it, not some hotshot pilot who’s got it all figured out, but a man, one who’s a dumbass at times and broken in so many ways and just as scared as you are.

You’ve never felt the way you feel about him before. Not once in your life.

“No,” he says, “it was never nothing to me. I’m sorry I said that. I know I hurt you, and it’s not an excuse, but I just… I just said it because I got scared. Because you dumped me, and honestly, I was hurt, and I liked you so much, I didn’t know what to do with myself, and I had all of these doubts, and I didn’t understand it, but… It was never nothing, sweetheart. It was… everything.”

He shrugs, something on his face that tells you he’s embarrassed by his own earnestness, uncomfortable with it, but your ears are ringing with that word. You can’t stop the smile from spreading on your face - broad and genuine and a relief after all these days in that prison of your room. Like stepping into the light after all the darkness. Like setting foot into airconditioned climates after hours out in the Californian heat.

And Jake smiles back, like a reflex, like a magnet. If you move, I move.

He’s made a step, and now it’s your turn.

So gather all your courage, that slithery, dodgy thing that’s been eluding you for months, and you grab it by the neck and thrust it forward, say, “Jake, I think I’m in love with you.”

His face goes completely blank, and with a sudden, horrid lurch, you think that maybe you’ve miscalculated, maybe it’s too much, maybe…

You backpedal, “I know it’s way too early, and I don’t really know you, and maybe in a month I find out you don’t like peanut butter, and I can never speak to you again, but this has never happened to me before, Jake, and I’m terrified, I’m so scared, but I just know I wanna be with you, I wanna figure it out together, and I hope you feel the same way, because, because I… I think I…”

“I like peanut butter,” Jake interrupts you. When you blink at him through the haze your rambling has plunged you into, he’s grinning from ear to ear. The sort of grin you have never seen him give to anyone but you.

“You.. you do?”

“A lot,” he confirms.

“Well, that’s… good then.”

“In fact,” he says, moving closer to you, “I love peanut butter.”

“Yeah?” 

Your voice is a little breathless.

He nods, hands going to cup your face. 

“Sweetheart,” he says, as you tip your face up, as your heart pounds, as your vision blurs, “I think I might be in love with you, too.”

And you don’t want to start crying, but you can’t help it. They just well up, like all those emotions you’ve been swallowing down for months now, longer than you’ve known him really, have finally ballooned into something too big for your body to hold, looking for any way out.

Jake frowns, wiping at a teardrop from your cheek like he’s trying to get an annoying stain off his laptop screen. Only like… a little gentler.

“It’s not that horrible, is it?”

You laugh, a water, bubbling sound. “No, it’s… it’s not… it’s fine.”

“Fine?” he asks, looking down at you with his eyebrows raised way too high for it to be anything than exaggerated. “I confess my love, and you think it’s fine? Jesus, romance really is dead.”

“Oh, shut up and kiss me already, Bagman, or I’m gonna strangle you, I swear I will, I’m not….”

You don’t get to finish.

Kissing Jake isn’t at all like you imagined. He’s soft but firm, and yet you can tell, underneath it all, that he’s almost nervous. Unsure. Like he doesn’t know at all how to proceed now that it’s actually real. That it means something.

All that cockiness melted away.

It’s so strange, but suddenly you realize that maybe, just for a moment, you’re going to have to take over. So you wrap your arms around his waist, draw him closer, draw him in, open your mouth beneath his and sigh into it all.

Jake comes willingly, follows your pace easily, smoothly, casually. The way he does everything. Ready to take anything you throw his way.

Finally, something inside of you seems to whisper. There’s an ache, a yearning, something that swells inside of you, grows bigger and stronger by the minute. You’ve never wanted someone this bad. It’s finally happening.

All that waiting, all that wishing and hoping and dreaming… It was worth it, you think. All of it.

His hands are warm on your cheeks, and they feel large, in a way that makes you clench your thighs. His lips are a little chapped, but he tastes sweet as if he’s been eating chocolate. He angles your face back a little more, his tongue running along the seam of your mouth, his fingers clenching into your hair, and your heart seizes as you think, suddenly, how close you came to losing this, to never having it at all, to missing out on it, and it’s so… it’s so…

You pull back when the intrusive thought inserts itself into the moment, when the anxiety makes your bones itch, look at him and say in a voice that seems to come from miles, worlds, universes away, “You’re not going to die, are you?”

It’s all you can think about - your mother fading away, flowers raining on an open grave, and being alone, alone, alone…

But Jake just smiles, rubs his thumb once along the line of your cheekbone, and says, “And miss out on getting to kiss you, sweetheart? Not a chance.”

And you haven’t belonged anywhere in so long. Have been so lonely, so broken, for so long you thought you’d never feel any different again. But here, right now, with him solid before you, with the knowledge that it’s real, it’s true, it’s not a game, and it’s not in your head, it doesn’t feel so horrible.

Because Jake knows you. Not just the pretty parts, but the ugly ones too.

How you push people away. How your fear paralyzes you sometimes, makes you mean and closed-off, and makes you lie. To him, to yourself, to everyone.

Jake has seen it, and he’s wanted you regardless.

And maybe that’s just it… how he can calm that anxiety with a word. Not banish it, not erase it, but silence that nagging, gnawing, horrible voice you’ve carried with you for so long. Make it bearable.

You’re going to die if you don’t have him. And yeah, maybe that’s dramatic, but who cares? If the past few weeks have shown anything, it’s that you and Jake aren’t just good with the dramatics… you excel at them.

“I did it,” you blurt out, and then immediately regret the words, clamp your mouth shut and feel the blood rush up into your cheeks.

Jake draws back a little to get a better look at you. “Done what?”

And you could kiss him for taking it all in stride. For not pushing you, for letting you set the pace.

Actually, you could kiss him just for… well, existing. But his ego is big enough already; he really doesn’t need to know all that.

“Well, what… what you asked.”

Jake stares at you blankly. 

“Care to be a little more specific, sweetheart?” he says gently. “I think we’ve established I don’t have the best memory.”

“I…” You hesitate, fingers going to trace a constellation of freckles on his shoulder, and there’s just so much of him, so much golden skin and so much muscle and so much confidence, and you’re going to fall apart, you know you are, you’re not going to survive this. “I touched myself. The way you asked.”

Your voice is barely more than a whisper, an exhale, but you know he heard you. Because the reaction is visceral - fingers tightening where they have slid from your face to your waist, chest undulating with the sharp intake of breath, shoulders stiffening.

Nerves make it impossible to look at him. What if he doesn’t like it, what if…

But, as always, somehow, Jake seems to know what you need. Seems to understand without ever having to say it that now, you want this to be something else. 

“Sweetheart,” he says, fingers hooking beneath your chin and turning it upwards, “look at me.”

And you do. It’s not like you have a choice, your body reacting before your mind even registers the words.

Right now, you think, Jake could tell you to jump off a bridge, and you’d go find the nearest one for a dive.

Somehow, his eyes have gone darker, hodded, an intent shining in them that scares you as much as it excites you.

“You touched yourself?” he asks quietly.

You nod, too scared your voice might fail you to try and use it.

“So, are you ready to answer my question, then?”

You know what he means right away, which is just a testament to your memory being decidedly better than his.

Instantly, the words ghost through your mind again, wrap around you like vapor. Have you been a good girl?

“I don’t…” You clear your throat as Jake steps even closer, walks you backward until your back hits the wall, until his hips are inches from yours, until he’s crowding against you like he wants to climb into your skin. “I don’t know what you mean.”

He’s so close now, and it’s different, the whole air is different. Charged now, darker. Hot even with the aircon running.

Maybe you’re going to faint. You feel like you’re going to faint.

“I think,” Jake says, voice lowered into a mumble, “you know exactly what I mean.”

He braces both hands on the wall by your head and cages you in. It’s so reminiscent of the night out behind the shack that you would have laughed if you hadn’t been scared to move even a muscle.

Not trusting your voice, you just shake your head. And it’s an act because by now, even you have understood that that’s half the fun in this game of power Jake and you have been playing from the very moment. But you also just want to hear him say it again, have been dreaming of those words on his lips for weeks now.

Jake hums, and his breath washes over your face. There’s barely an inch between the two of you now - you can’t even think anymore.

“I know you’re smarter than that, sweetheart.”

“No,” you whisper, shaking your head. “I don’t know what you mean.”

He smiles, just for a moment, and it’s sweet, a little dopey, and so decidedly out of place that you realize he knows just as well as you do that you’re pretending. That he appreciates it as much as you do.

“Alright,” he whispers finally, leans closer to run his mouth over the arch of your jaw, lips barely a whisper of a touch as you strain into it, breath catching in your throat. “Sweetheart… have you been a good girl for me?”

It’s the rasp in his voice and those words and the agonizing whisper of separation between your bodies. It’s the lack and the promise and that tight, hot coil of want that writhes in the pit of your stomach.

With a gasp, you clench your thighs together in search of relief.

“I don’t know,” you say because, truthfully, you don’t. You don’t even know your own name anymore.

Jake raises an eyebrow, and all your pretense shatters.

“Yes,” you say, immediately, voice almost a whine, head spinning, “yes, Jake, I’ve been a good girl for you.”

He acknowledges it with a nod, entirely unaffected, face blank as he moves to card a strand of hair behind your ear.

“What did you think about?”

He asks it almost casually like he’s asking about the weather or your shopping list and not just which sexual fantasies you got out of the spank bank the last time you got off.

“I…” And his hand begins tracing a long, long line from your cheekbone down to your mouth, dragging across your jaw and onto your jugular. And there, just once, he presses his thumb into your pulse point. It’s the barest hint of pressure, the illusion of the rest of his fingers wrapping around your throat, but your eyes almost roll into the back of your head. 

It draws the truth right out of you.

“You,” you gasp, “I thought about you.”

Jake acknowledges it with a nod, but there’s something to be said about his eyes flicking to your mouth, about the hand still braced against the wall by your head clenching.

“What part of me?”

You want to answer, but he leans forward to press his lips to the side of your throat where his hand had been just a moment ago, and for a second, you lose all ability to speak.

“I… Your mouth?”

“My mouth?” Jake repeats, words muffled against your skin.

Pressed flat against the wall, unable to move, with your heart pounding a patter against your ribcage, you can do nothing but nod. “Yeah.”

Jake hums, and the sound vibrates through your body. By now, you must be soaking through the front of your shorts, you think.

“And where did I put it?” he asks softly, drawing back to look at you.

And there’s such… hunger on his face, his pupils blown wide, his mouth slack, and it’s going to kill you, death on impact, you’re not going to make it.

But that’s fine. What a way to go, anyway.

“On… on me,” you whisper.

Jake laughs, and it’s so… mean. You like it.

“Come on, sweetheart,” he drawls. “Be specific.”

“I don’t know.” 

It’s all you can say. Who cares what you thought about that night? He’s here right now, so can’t you just do it for real instead of talking about your fantasy like this?

Jake clicks his tongue and shakes his head.

“You can do better than that,” he says. “You’re not that dumb.”

And it could be crossing a line - should cross a line, maybe. You never would have thought it possible that you could be into something like this, but you are. It sets you off in a way you wouldn’t have expected, makes you weak in the knees and dizzy, and you want him on you, want him everywhere, want him more than you’ve ever wanted him before.

Besides… you feel pretty dumb right about now.

When it came down to the wire, you know you’re the one with the finger on the lever anyway. The moment you say no, stop, he’ll listen. So you’ve always been the one with the final decision.

Maybe that’s why this whole thing works.

“I…” You have to close your eyes, swallow against the lump in your throat. “You put it between my legs.”

He squints.

“Here?” he asks, and his hand lands on the inside of your thigh, about two inches off from where you want him.

It startles you enough that you jump, a sound of surprise falling from your mouth. And then he applies pressure, squeezes the meat of your thigh once, and you’re moaning, eyes widening with the sensation of it all.

Jake grins.

Bastard, you think, but then that thought goes out the window too, disappears in the fog that has descended on you.

“You imagined my mouth here?”

You shake your head, whimper, tip your face back and open your mouth like you can compel him to kiss you just like that.

“Be a good girl and tell me, yeah?” he whispers, but there’s something strained to his voice, something glazed to his eyes.

“No, I…” But you can’t say it. Not like this. It’s still too much, and it frustrates you, makes your eyes burn, makes your breath hitch into a gasp like you can’t get enough oxygen into your lungs. You whimper, “Jake.”

“Shh,” he whispers, leaning forward to press a kiss to your cheek. “I got you, sweetheart. Don’t worry.”

And then finally, because in the end, he always does, Jake takes pity on you.

“Did I put it on your pussy?”

The sound that escapes you is pathetic, barely more than a whimper, and before you know it, you’re nodding as you slump against him.

“Tell me,” he says into your ear, hand still on your thigh, mouth still against your cheek, his breaths fast and loud, “I want her you say it.”

And if you weren’t sandwiched between him and the wall, if he weren’t holding you up, you know your legs would have given out.

“You…” You swallow and take a deep breath, stell yourself, say, “You put your mouth on my pussy.”

And he groans, a loud, sudden sound that seems to burst from him unbidden like he just couldn’t hold it back. 

You’re almost stunned by it, by the discovery that he’s just as affected by all this as you are, that he wants you, too, and it does your head in, makes the world spin, makes you clutch at him a little tighter.

“You like that?” he asks, something almost frantic to his words now. “Having your pussy eaten? Does that get you off, having a tongue in your tight little cunt?”

You can’t help it. You mewl, drop your head into the crook of his neck, and wish you could stay there. And you’re so wet, can feel it pooling in your panties, feel it soaking through the fabric. Every move has the seam of your denim shorts pressing against your cunt, sends shocks of lightning through you, but it’s not enough, not enough, never enough.

Your heart is beating in your throat, and the embarrassment takes a moment to set in amidst the chaos of your sensations, but it comes. Eventually, the way it always does.

“I…” You falter, squeeze your eyes shut, push your face further into his neck, so grateful he can’t see you, and then you whisper, as if speaking it out loud could somehow make it more real, “I’ve never… you know… no one’s ever….” 

Instantaneously, Jake’s fingers tighten against your thigh, and then they tangle in your hair, and he pulls your head back with enough force that you can feel it, that it travels in shock waves through your scalp, all the way down to your toes.

He’s looking at you like he wants to devour you.

“Honey,” he says, and there’s something serious to the word beneath all that desire.

And you have trouble concentrating because honey, he called me honey, and your chest is so full of that feeling you only get with him, the one that makes you feel that everything will be alright, that nothing will hurt you, that you’ll be just fine.

“Honey,” he repeats, “do you trust me?”

And you don’t pause. Don’t think about it. Not even for an instant.

“Yes,” you say, and mean it. Mean it like you’ve never meant anything.

And Jake smiles, smooths your hair back, rubs his nose against yours. And then he said, “Would you let me? Would you let me put my mouth on you, would you let me eat your pussy until your legs are shaking? Would you trust me with that, my gorgeous, gorgeous girl?”

You’re going to disintegrate. It can’t be possible for one person to want another so much. It just can’t be possible.

“Yes,” you exhale. “Okay. Jake.”

He makes a choked sound, and then he steps back suddenly, tugging you with him by your wrists, and you stumble against his chest, let him guide you through the apartment blindly. It’s a wonder your knees don’t give in as you stumble against him like a fawn, as he pulls you like a ragdoll.

“Where are we going?” you ask, head spinning in rapid circles. Like you just got off a merry-go-round.

“I’m not going to eat you out against a wall for the first time,” Jake says.

And it would be almost romantic if it weren’t so filthy, such a quick turn-around that it could give you whiplash.

“Oh.” You blink as he pulls you into his bedroom. “I thought the wall was sort of hot.”

He laughs. “Don’t I know it?”

But then he turns, lets go of your wrists, leans down to press a quick, soft kiss to your mouth that leaves you chasing after him.

Affectionately, he brushes his fingers over your cheek and says, “I’ll do it right, honey, I promise I’ll make it so good, you’ll wonder how you ever went without it. I’ll have you coming for days.”

The thing is… you don’t even doubt it.

Jake has always been able to back up all that talk. It’s one of the things you hate about him. It’s one of the things you love about him.

“Now,” he says, “take off your top.”

It’s so much harder when he makes you do things because that’s when the anxiety gets behind the wheel, when the doubt creeps in. But in the end, that strange instinct to listen to him, to trust him, always wins out.

You pull your shirt over your head, and you can’t look at him.

“Shorts, too,” he orders and then, almost like an afterthought, adds, “and your bra.”

Your hands are shaking so hard that you struggle with the clasp of the bra, the button on the shorts, but finally, you free yourself of both, and then you’re standing in the middle of his bedroom, naked except for a pair of panties so wet you think you’re probably gonna have to throw them out come morning, and you’re shaking even though you feel like you’re burning up, like a fever in your blood, like a yearning in your bones.

It’s exhilarating and terrifying, and you want to cover yourself, but you can’t move, can’t do anything but stand there as you feel his eyes on you like hot irons, as you stare at the cologne bottles on the dresser.

What if he doesn’t like me? you think, mouth dry. What if I’m ugly.

And then Jake says, “Sweetheart. You’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen.”

You’re going to cry.

“Now get on the bed and spread your legs so I can get my mouth on that gorgeous cunt.”

You’re going to have a stroke, and then you’re going to cry.

You do as he says, scooting backward on the mattress until you’re far enough up the bed to put your head on one of the pillows. Jake’s sheets are a dark blue, soft cotton, and they smell like him, like his cologne. Cinnamon and spice. The scent wraps around you, envelopes you. You clench around nothing.

If this is what his smell alone does to you, how are you going to survive his mouth on you?

The mattress dips under his weight, but you can’t look at him, keep your head on the ceiling instead. It’s all too much. It’s not nearly enough.

And then his face appears above you, and his smile is almost goofy as he leans to kiss you once, twice, three times. They’re just soft pecks, but you open your mouth and pull him down to you until you’re chest to chest, until you can feel the weight of him.

He slides his tongue into your mouth with a groan, pulls you closer with a hand on your hip. And it’s skin to skin, his palm hot and heavy, and you want him all over you, want to cover yourself in him, every inch. It’s very wet, very warm, too much spit in both your mouths, but you don’t even care, not when his teeth nip at your lower lip, when he pants against you, when it makes you feel like you’re going to fall apart right here, right now.

Finally, you get your hands on him too, on all that skin, let them run across his chest because you’re so drunk on the feeling of it all you forget even to think if you’re allowed to do this. His heart is racing beneath your palm, just as quick as yours is, and that’s a reassuring thought, that he’s affected by it all too.

Jake does something with his tongue, something that has your insides twisting, clenching like a fist, and you moan into his mouth, wrap your legs around his waist and buck your hips up, desperate for some kind of friction, of relief, not above humping him if that’s what it takes.

You feel it immediately - Jake is rock hard against your center, against the quick but firm pressure of your cunt, and it makes you squeak the exact moment it makes him choke.

“Jesus,” he grunts, fingers wrapping around your wrists and pushing them back into the pillow, pulling you off him and forcing you down into the mattress with a force as gentle as it is firm. “Stop distracting me, sweetheart.”

He draws back until he kneels between your legs, looming above you. All the lamps are off, but the blinds aren’t drawn, and moonlight spills like liquid mercury across the bedroom floor, across his skin. Inevitably, you think of that night out on the beach behind the Hard Deck, the light tangled in his hair, a study in blue.

“I think I remember telling you to spread these,” he says casually, tapping a single finger against your kneecap.

You want to tease him, want to say something about how his memory seems to be working pretty well of a sudden, but your brain won’t cooperate.

Instead, you do as you’re told, even as you feel like it might kill you, and spread your legs further.

Immediately, Jake’s eyes go to what lies between them.

“Fuck,” he whispers, voice gone husky, “you’re so wet, honey.”

If you look at him, you think your heart is going to fail, so you just keep your eyes on the ceiling. Unlike your own, it’s completely free of water stains, and that’s just about the last coherent thought you have.

Jake leans forward, maneuvering around until his chest is pressed to the mattress, one hand on your thigh, the other spread on the sheets, and then his mouth is on you.

And okay. No more teasing then. Straight to business.

Over the fabric of your panties, his tongue moves against your center, and you can’t do anything but close your eyes, open your mouth even as no sound escapes. He just mouths at you for a moment, inhales deeply like he’s trying to smell you, and the thought sets you off, has you clenching your teeth, curling your toes. Then he presses a kiss to your clit through your cotton, and you’re seeing stars. 

“Oh,” you say, and he laughs, moves away to hook his fingers beneath the elastic of the panties, pulls them off unceremoniously, helps you lift your hips. They become another piece of fabric added to the pile of your clothes when he throws them over his shoulder without looking, eyes focused only on your center.

And then he leans forward, and you’re bracing yourself, steeling yourself, but nothing could ever have prepared you for the first stroke of his tongue through your folds. It has your hips rising, hed rearing back into the pillow, mouth shaping a word that never escapes it.

Jake’s fingers tighten on your thigh, and he moans once, and then he really goes for it. Burying his whole face in it, opening his mouth like he wants to devour you, tongue wet and wide and hot on your cunt, teeth just grazing your clit as he licks broad stripes from your hole up to the apex. He sets a leisured, moderate pace like he’s got all the time in the world, but you’re pretty sure yours is running out. Five more minutes of this, and you’re a goner, and it’s all too much but not enough, and you want to get away at the same time that you want him closer, and your head is spinning, your heart stuttering, your fingers tightening in the sheets.

He wraps his lips around your clit and sucks, and you all but keen, fingers flying to his hair, his shoulders, your stomach. You can’t settle, can’t stop jerking, have no control over your own body anymore. All over the place, all over him, mind a mess and heart a mess and body a mess, and you can’t believe nobody’s ever done this to you before, and how have you ever lived without the feeling of Jake’s mouth on your pussy and you’re going to rip your own heart out and…

And then he catches your wrists in one hand, forcing you to look at him where he’s barely lifted his head from between your thighs. And you freeze, all the world narrowing down to nothing but his face, his voice, just him, right there with you.

He says, “I got you. I’m taking care of you, pretty girl.”

Above the sheets, by your hips, he laces his fingers through yours.

When his mouth meets your cunt again, there’s no restraint left. He fucks his tongue inside of you shallowly, your eyes rolling back, your legs straining to spread even further, to the point of pain when your muscles protest, but you need him closer, deeper, harder, and you’re so empty, aching with it. The only thing grounding you are his hands, the only point of you that seems connected to reality as the rest goes floating into space, reduced to nothing but a conduit for pleasure, for want, for yearning.

His tongue goes from your hole to your clit, one hand untangling from your death grip so he can slide a finger into you. He’s gentle about it, careful almost, but there’s no point, you’re so wet he goes without resistance, not an ounce of tension in any of your muscles. You couldn’t tense up if you tried, everything gone liquid and loose and lax. 

And it’s good, so good, so…

Jake pulls off you for a moment, breath panting and hot against you, just to check, “Did you do this too? When you thought about me, did you fuck yourself on your fingers?”

And it takes you a moment because you can’t remember if you have a mouth, can’t remember how to use it, and when you finally do, anyways, your voice is like a foreign sound, something from a different planet.

“I… tried, but it… I can’t… angle’s all wrong, it doesn’t….” He crooks his finger, and you sob, moment of dubious coherency gone, and then there’s only one word left in you. “Jake.”

And he grins, always so cocky, always so sure, adds a second finger, and buries his face into your cunt again. You keen.

It’s so wet, all of it. Your pussy and his tongue and his fingers fucking through it, fucking in with squelching sounds that should be embarrassing but make you burn hotter instead, your bodies slick with sweat, and you’re pretty sure there’s saliva dripping from your mouth, but you can’t stop it, can’t help it, can’t do anything but hold on and take it. Everything he’s giving you.

And you remember your ex trying to finger you in that bedroom covered in Twilight posters, eons ago, nothing but discomfort and awkwardness, and god, if this is what it should have been like that you want a refund, you think you’re owed compensation from the universe because that’s not fair, people were feeling this while you were telling yourself five minutes of rutting against your own finger on your clit was enough to satisfy you?

“You taste so good,” Jake groans into your cunt, “could eat this pretty pussy all day. Could stay right here forever, with my tongue in my gorgeous girl.”

And it’s almost scary, the way it builds, how high it goes, how tight it winds you. The precipice gapes below you.

“Jake,” you whimper, gasp, thrash, “Jake, wait, I’m gonna….”

“It’s okay,” he whispers, pupils blown, cheeks flushed, voice vibrating down into the darkest parts of you. “I’m here, honey, you can let go now, come on, sweetheart, I wanna see, I wanna taste….”

And you’re crying, cheeks and chin and neck wet with the tears, and you feel pathetic, but you can’t help it, free hand going to tangle in his hair, holding where you want him as he moves his fingers just so, grazing something inside you, tongue circling around your clit with just enough speed, just enough pressure.

“Please,” you sob, terrified he’s going to change up, and it’s going to get away from you, terrified he’ll stop. “Please. Please.”

It becomes a mantra, a litany, and then he squeezes your hand and plunges his fingers deep, curls them, and you’re toppling over that edge, hurtling, spinning, falling.

It’s bone-deep. It curls around you, it breaks you apart. A rope snapping. A coil unraveling.

You feel it everywhere, in your core and your toes and your fingers. A tightening and then the breathless, heart-stopping release of it all racing through you. It has you arching off the mattress, fingers tightening in his hair, legs trembling with tremors you can’t control, howling his name.

It seems to go on forever, his fingers fucking you through it, his tongue stroking you through it, and there’s nothing in your head, nothing but that blinding, strung-out pleasure.

Jake just keeps going until you push his head away with force, overstimulated to the point that pain shoots up like tiny pinpricks. You try to close your legs, but he keeps them open.

“I don’t know who those guys who didn’t eat your pussy were, sweetheart,” he says from between your legs, mouth still slick with you, eyes still dark, voice still breathless, hands still on your thighs, “but they must have been the biggest idiots in the history of mankind to miss out on that.”

You can’t answer. You’re afraid you might never be able to speak ever again.

Jake crawls up the bed until he can stretch out beside you, and finally, you can close your legs, draw them up to almost to your stomach and angle them away. You’re still pulsing, clenching around nothing, more exhausted than you’ve ever been.

“You okay, honey?” he asks softly, leaning in to kiss you. You can’t even reciprocate, just stare at him.

“Uhm,” you say.

He laughs at you, and if you could move your arms, you’d hit him. As is, you just blink at him, dazed, confused, still caught up in the intensity of it.

“That good, huh?” He grins like the cat that got the cream and wraps an arm around you, pulls you against him. There’s something reassuring to the feel of him, the slight damp of his skin and the solid muscle against the mush of yourself.

And then, voice suddenly so much softer, he says, “You did so well, honey. My best girl.”

Maybe you shouldn’t like it so much, but you can’t help but beam, cling to him.

“Next time,” he says, voice back to the levity of his pride, “I think you should sit on my face.”

You can’t help it. You gape at him.

“Your… face?” you repeat, hesitantly, unsure if you’ve misheard.

Shameless, he nods. 

“Don’t worry about suffocating me or any of that shit, it’d be an honorable way to go down.” 

“Oh my god,” you say, and then you laugh, and he laughs with you, and it’s like somebody poured liquid sunlight into your chest.

But then you shift against him, trying to get comfortable, and suddenly you’re not just aware that you’re lying in a puddle of what is essentially your own slick and Jake’s spit, that you’re still completely naked, but even more pressingly that he’s still hard.

Almost immediately, something inside of you seizes up again.

“Oh,” you whisper.

Jake, who has stilled your movement with a hand on your hip, clears his throat. He has a look of pure concentration on his face.

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll just… go to the bathroom.”

And he means it, is about to get out of bed when you hold onto him, wrap yourself around him like an octopus, shove your face into his chest, so you don’t have to look at him as you say, “No, I… I want it.”

Jake freezes.

“Sweetheart,” he says softly, “you don’t have to….”

“I want to,” you interrupt. And it’s clumsy rather than sexy, but you reach for his sweatpants, palm at him through the fabric, breath catching when you notice the dark stain of pre-cum on the front. “I want you inside of me.”

It’s so much more forward than you’ve ever been, so out of character, but it feels good to be honest, to tell the truth, to articulate what you’ve been dreaming of for months.

Jake groans loudly as you begin to rub at his length, drops back against the mattress without any protest.

“You want it?” he asks, searching your face as if he’s looking for any trace of a lie, of hesitancy.

Well, he won’t find any.

You smile and nod.

“I want it,” you confirm.

Jake clenches his eyes shut for a moment, exhales a shaky breath, and then he nods, leans over to open a drawer on his nightstand, and gets out a condom.

And he’s saying, you’re driving me crazy, sweetheart, but you barely hear him.

Because there it is, right on his nightstand. Front cover up, a gas station receipt shoved as a bookmark between the pages about a quarter into it.

Emma by Jane Austen.

“You… you’re reading it?” you say, interrupting whatever other filth was pouring from it, and Jake blinks, follows your gaze, pauses.

And then he has the audacity to blush. 

“Well,” he says, “you said it was your favorite, and I wanted to… I don’t usually read much, so it’s… a lot, but I think I get it, why you like it I mean, and….”

You pull him into a kiss, and you pour all of yourself into it. All the gratitude and the longing and the love. Everything you feel for him, right there, condensed into the slide of your mouth over his.

When you pull away, his eyes have gone dark again.

“I like you,” he says, and it should be bumbling, awkward, but it’s beautiful instead. “So much.”

You giggle. 

“I like you too,” you say.

From the first moment, Jake and you were planets circling each other. And now, finally, you’ve locked into orbit.

Jake rolls over you, kisses you again, only it’s even filthier this time, reminiscent of what he did between your legs, and within moments it’s gathering in your stomach again, growing once more, and you’re wet and wanting and pliant beneath him.

He pulls back to finally get rid of his sweatpants - how weird that he was still wearing them this whole time, you think - moves to roll on the condom, and you look down at his cock, open your mouth and… falter.

“Jake,” you say, “that’s not going to fit.”

And the moment you’ve said the words, you regret them. God, you sound like somebody hired you for an extremely low-budget porno, but you’re just honestly concerned.

Jake laughs, and you can’t believe you just fueled that ego even further.

“We’ll work with what he can. But sweetheart…” And he leans down, presses the tip of his cock first to your clit, then your entrance in a way that makes your vision blur, and his voice drops to a whisper, right in your ear, “Personally, I think you can take it.”

You can’t even answer, can’t do anything, because he starts pushing inside of you. And it’s excruciating, so slow it’s almost impossible, the stretch just the right side of unbearable. Jake braces a hand by your head, face scrunched up in pleasure, mouth hanging open, one hand guiding himself. And you just tip your head back and moan, a sound that rips free from the very core of you.

“I’d like to think I did a pretty damn good job at warming you up,” he grounds out, jaw clenched with concentration, “but- god, you feel so fucking good - we’ll take it slow, yeah? Just… tell me if you want to stop, honey.”

Stopping is the last thing on your mind. You just want him in you, want more, more, more, had it once, and already you’re so greedy.

The slide seems almost endless, stretching your walls further than you thought possible, and you can’t hear anything, not even Jake’s voice spilling endless praise in loops that make no sense, not your own heartbeat hammering away, only the rushing of your blood in your ears.

And then finally, when you think you can’t take it anymore, he bottoms out with a grunt and just stays there for a moment, pelvis pressed to yours, breathing in the same rhythm.

“How you feeling, sweetheart?” he asks gently, one hand moving to brush the hair matted to your face with sweat away from your forehead.

“I…” And you can’t think, doesn’t he know that you can’t think, why does he keep asking you questions when all of your brain is currently occupied with reminding you to keep breathing. “… Full.”

Jake’s face crumbles like he’s in pain, and then he drops his head against your chest, his breath hot where it hits your skin, and moans. Inside you, his cock twitches, and you gasp.

“Sweetheart,” he grits out, “can’t just go around saying shit like that. So I’m trying my best to hold on here, yeah?”

And it makes you crazy, thinking that you’ve made him like this, that he’s riding that edge because he buried his face in your pussy, and you can’t help it, hook an ankle over his thigh and tug him forward, force him to move.

“Fuck,” he groans. “You sure.”

And you nod, so far gone you don’t care anymore, can’t even remember to be embarrassed. 

“Yeah. I want it, Jake, please, please.”

It really doesn’t take all that much. He immediately complies, moving back, drawing almost all the way out before plunging back in. And it’s more than you can take, and not enough, it’s too slow, and too fast, it’s too hard, it’s not hard enough, it’s everything at once, and above all else, it’s good, so good you can’t put it into words, can’t believe it’s real, can do nothing but hold onto him and hope you make it out at the other side.

Jake keeps it even, keeps it slow even as you can see the muscles in his stomach rippling with the effort of keeping still, even as his face is tight.

“Okay,” you whisper, looking him right in the eyes only to find he’s already looking back, “give it to me, Jake.”

It sets him off. He goes from measured, collected to focused, thrusting harder, reaching deeper, and your eyes roll back into your head. He’s fucking you with enough force that it rattles the headboard against the wall, that you feel it reverberate all along your bones.

“Jake,” you whimper, and he groans, grasps one of your thighs, and bends you nearly in half, and it should be uncomfortable, but like this, he reaches even deeper, grazes that spot that paints stars in your vision. You can’t describe the sound you make as anything but a strangled scream, and it should be embarrassing, maybe, but you can’t bring yourself to feel anything but the pleasure of it all.

“Fuck,” he whispers against your neck, “fuck, sweetheart, you’re so… fucking… wet….”

The sounds are obscene. His cock plunging into your wetness, the headboard slamming against the walls, your own whimpers, and Jake’s moans, all of it mixing into what could possibly result in a noise complaint from several neighbors. And you don’t care. Not one bit.

He leans down to kiss you, barely more than your mouths slotting together, breath on breath, then his hand wanders down toward your pussy, and the other clasps yours, fingers slotting together. He’s thumbing at your swollen, sensitive clit, and it throbs, and things get even wetter, and you make a sound like you’re going to die right now, wrap yourself around him, arch into him, tongue stroking against his, his moan slammed against your teeth.

“Sweetheart,” he whispers, rubbing tight, concentrated, purposeful circles on your clit, “come for me, I wanna feel your pussy clench on me, you can give me that, yeah, honey, you can be a good girl for me, can’t you?”

It’s been pretty clear from the moment he slid inside that neither of you would last very long, but that undoes you.

You’re saying yeah yeah yeah please please please jake jake jake, and he sinks his teeth into the side of your neck, sends his tongue after to soothe, and then it barrels through you, more intense than the first because it’s closer to pain, fingernails digging into his back, his palm, mouth ripping open around a sound that would have been his name had you had the breath, that dies before it leaves your lips, world-shattering, ground falling out from under you, and if you didn’t know any better you’d swear you black our for a moment, everything fading away.

When you return to it, Jake is saying, “… fucking, I can’t, god, pussy so wet and tight, so pretty, my gorgeous girl, my best girl so good, and you’re so, you’re so….”

You never do find out what you are because he goes from focused to frantic, hips undulating wildly, fucking into you at a shallow, quick pace, and then suddenly he freezes, shudders, his cock jumps - and then he’s groaning, arching over you as he empties into the condom.

He tries to roll off you immediately, but you wrap both arms and legs around him and hold him to you, in you, stay like that with your hearts thundering against each other like they’re knocking up a storm against your ribcages in an effort to embrace. Even like this, you still wish you could get him closer.

If I could, you think, I’d live inside your chest.

That’s a stupid thought.

For a while, you just lie like that. You’ll have to get up and go pee in a minute, but you don’t want to think about it yet. For now, you just want to lie here.

After an eternity, Jake says, “When I leave tomorrow….”

There’s something like hesitancy in his voice. Worry.

Into your hair, Jake whispers, “Will you wait for me?”

And that’s the thing about Jake. He’s always, always given you a way out. The decision was always yours.

So you could still walk away. Turn your back on this and forget about it. Rebuilt those walls and go back to the routine of your life before him.

But his heartbeat is quick and uneven against your chest. His voice is familiar.

You think of that house with the blue door back in Seattle.

Maybe, you think, it was never so much about the house as what it stood for: Sitting with your mother on the couch and listening to the rain. Laughing in Penny’s kitchen with her and Amelia. Watching the waves roll in that night at the beach with Jake.

Home, you think and blink the tears away. I’ve finally come home.

“Yeah, I’ll wait for you,” you answer, tighten your arms around him, press your face into his chest. “In fact, I might never leave you again. You got air conditioning.”

+++

“Jake,” you say, “this is the dumbest thing you’ve ever done.”

“Wrong.” He turns the car left, and you hold onto the door handle for dear life. “The dumbest thing I’ve ever done was the time I almost let you go.”

“Jesus,” you mutter, “you’re getting so sappy.”

But when you stretch your hand palm-up over the middle console, and he takes it immediately, you’re smiling from ear to ear.

“Will you let me take this stupid blindfold off now?” you ask, the fingers of your free hand reaching up to trace along the line of the old bandana Jake tied over your eyes earlier before getting you into the car.

“Nope,” he says, sounding cheerful. “Don’t ruin the surprise, sweetheart.”

In reality, Jake isn’t the best at surprises. You’ve been together for four years now, and in all that time, you don’t think he’s managed to pull a single planned thing off. You knew about every surprise birthday party, every surprise anniversary dinner, every surprise homecoming. 

It’s a testament to his love for you, though - you’re the first person he wants to share things with, even the ones he should be keeping from you.

(And you indulge him, every time. Pretend to be shocked. Pretend he pulled it off. 

You’ll do it even when he finally decides to get out that ring box you found in his sock drawer last week. You know he’ll ask. Soon. 

You’ll wait.)

Maybe this one will actually work, though, because really, you have no idea where the hell he’s taking you.

“We’re here,” Jake says, and you hear the rhythmic thumping of the turn signal.

Jake parks the car, and you wait in silence until he’s back to open your door and help you out, one hand holding yours and the other on the small of your back. Then, carefully, he maneuvers you around.

The feeling in your chest catches somewhere between excitement and trepidation. God, you hope he didn’t do anything stupid.

Then, his voice is low in your ear as he says, “Ready, sweetheart?”

You’re not exactly sure if you are, but you say, “Ready.”

When he takes the blindfold off, you blink into the bright sunlight.

There’s a house in front of you. A beautiful place, the kind you always point out to him when you’re taking strolls through your neighborhood. White wood paneling, a front porch that wraps around the whole ground floor. Balconies with wrought-iron railings for the second stories. Flowerboxes before every window.

From behind you, Jake says, “It’s ours.”

Your heart is in your throat. Your eyes burn.

“Ours?” you repeat, voice so soft it almost gets carried off by the breeze.

Jake nods, then swallows and scrambles to say, “I didn’t sign the contract yet, of course, I’m not crazy enough to do something that big without talking to you first, you know that. But if you want it, then… it’s ours.”

The tears are hot on your face. You feel like your ribcage is going to splinter apart. Behind it, your heart has grown to three times its previous size.

“Oh,” Jake says, spotting your tears, and the hands that were wringing the bandana suddenly fall along with his face, “you don’t like it. That’s okay, we’ll just….”

“Shut up, Bagman,” you say, laughing even through the tears, a bubbling sound, fragile as glass, fragile as you feel, “I love it. Of course, I love it.”

He grins, eyes all crinkly and luminous, and fuck, you’re so in love, so far gone, it feels like you could hug the whole world. 

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“God, I’m so whipped,” he says, laughing like he’s trying to rival the sun, reaching for you. “My gorgeous, brilliant girl.”

He pulls you against his chest, and you wrap your arms around him and press your smile into his neck, and it’s 84 degrees in the shade, but you don’t mind because you love him, and he sees you, and you’re home, you’re home, you’re home.

The door to your new house is painted a tender baby blue. Kind of like the ocean. Kind of like the Californian sky. Kind of like your dream.

#hangman fic #top gun maverick #hangman x reader #hangman #jake seresin #jake seresin fic #jake seresin x reader #mine #f: bh #goodbye