#5 bar stools | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

swampthingking · 2 months

Text

can’t study for my test because i’m having brain rot about neil accidentally getting super drunk and stumbling up to aaron like “andrew???” and aaron is like “wrong one” and neil is like “andrew.” and aaron is like “???? are you stupid” and neil goes to look for andrew but he stumbles into the table, and aaron has to catch him or he will get trampled for fucks sake, and neil just collapses into him in a drunk cuddly heap. and aaron is like “neil. you need to stand up” and neil is like “i am” and aaron is like “that’s because i’m holding you up” and they get neil to stand but neil kinda just flops into aaron’s arms again. and neil is like “i don’t hate you, i don’t, but it’s okay if you hate me” and aaron is like “ugh, ew are you really an emotional drunk???” and neil, to aaron’s horror, looks at him with tears in his eyes because you know when you’re too drunk and you kind of just get a little scared and you need help???? ya. and aaron is like … ok. and kinda holds neil until andrew comes back from the bar with more drinks. and he sees neil basically asleep on aaron’s shoulder, and aaron looking uncomfortable but accepting, so he kinda raises an eyebrow, an okay? and aaron nods and is just patting neil on his back

and tomorrow they’ll wake up and neil will toddle downstairs with his hand against his temple and aaron will have advil ready for him, and he’ll say “you’re annoying and you don’t know when to shut your mouth or mind your own business, but i don’t hate you” and the thank you for helping repair my relationship with my brother and thank you for testifying and thank you for staying goes unsaid but yeah

and that’s how aaron and neil became kind of friends

edit: vomited out a one shot for y’all (this will prob become a 5+1)

Aaron swirled his drink a few times, listening to the ice clacking against the glass.

Eden’s was packed tonight, courtesy of it being the end of the school year. College students and the regular patrons flocked to the bar, the dance floor, and all of the tables, leaving Aaron to reserve a high-top table, and his legs to dangle from the stool.

“Drew?”

Aaron ignored him in favor of the twinkling sound the ice makes in his glass. He’d already taken shots, danced, had another drink, danced again, and now Aaron’s body was heavy with alcohol and exhaustion.

“Drew,” Neil said again.

Aaron looked around their table and didn’t see Andrew. He remembered Andrew getting up and walking to the bar with their empty tray. Aaron found him a few seconds later, hands in his pockets at the bar. That and Neil, staring up at him, looking uneasy.

Before Aaron could tell Neil to get out of his face, Neil was speaking.

“Are you’nt having fun?” Neil frowned, blinking sleepy, hooded eyes at him. He leaned closer to study Aaron’s face.

“What are you doing?” Aaron grumbled, pushing Neil’s face away.

Aaron hadn’t even pushed him hard, he more removed Neil from his space rather than pushed him, but Neil wobbled like his world had tilted out of orbit. Aaron realized, quickly, that Neil was going to fall backwards. He grabbed two fistfuls of Neil’s shirt and pulled him forwards. Neil’s head lulled on his shoulders with the force, his chin hitting his chest then righting itself.

Aaron’s stomach lurched, sick with the thought that someone had put something in one of Neil’s drinks, as he would for anyone, but thankfully he’s never been put in that situation. Neil’s eyes were hooded, his face flushed. Aaron snapped once at Neil’s ear, and Neil recoiled immediately.

“Does your head hurt or anything?” Aaron asked. Neil shook his head, frowning.

“Are you dizzy? Follow my finger.” Aaron pushes Neil back so he can see his face, keeping one hand on Neil’s shoulder to hold him up. Neil follows Aaron’s finger as it moves back and forth, albeit a little labored, but not as if he’d been roofied. Aaron declares that Neil’s reaction times and responses are fine, but he still pulls the front of his shirt up and checks his belt, the button of his pants.

“What—?” Neil slapped a hand on his abdomen, stopping his shirt from being lifted any higher. Aaron didn’t need to see anything but his pants, but it was reassuring that Neil still had inhibitions.

His clothes were fine. His belt was still done, zipper up. No one had tried anything. Aaron relaxed.

“Sorry,” Aaron said. “Sorry, I just needed to…”

While racking his mind back to why Neil is this drunk, Aaron remembered Neil taking shots with Aaron, Nicky, and Kevin. Four shots. He’d seen Neil sip on another drink like the idiot had the tolerance for alcohol that the rest of them had.

“You’re a fucking idiot,” Aaron said and released Neil. Neil attempted to step back, his hands raised in surrender.

“No?” Neil asked warily. Even drunk as fuck, he still respected boundaries. Andrew’s boundaries specifically, as it still hadn’t registered that he wasn’t talking to the right twin.

“I’m not Andrew,” Aaron said.

“Where’s Andrew?” Neil asked, turning his head pathetically in search. Aaron only had a good view of Andrew because they were seated at a high-top. Over the throng of taller people coupled with strobing lights, Neil’s view was obstructed.

“At the bar,” Aaron nodded in that direction.

Neil turned towards the bar. Well, he attempted to. He pivoted, lost his balance, and toppled into the table. He tried to right himself and started to fall to the other side. Aaron caught Neil before he could bust his shit and get trampled.

“Jesus Christ, Josten,” Aaron spat, righting Neil with hands on his biceps. Neil slapped a hand on the table and leaned his weight on it. The table quaked under such abuse, but held.

Neil turned slowly, grappling against the table as if he was standing in one of those spinning fair rides. In his excursion to simply spin 180°, his hand slipped off the edge of the table as he faced Aaron once again. He reached for the table, missed, reached for it again, missed, said, “Motherfucker,” under his breath, and finally gripped onto the edge. His eyes locked on Aaron’s again, and Neil’s useless hand landed on Aaron’s shoulder.

“Andrew,” Neil said. Aaron didn’t know if it was more a request or if it was just not registering.

“Wrong,” Aaron said, tense under Neil’s hand, but he didn’t push him off. He’d rather hold Neil up than peel him off the floor. “Aaron.”

“‘m very drunk,” Neil said, looking up pleadingly at Aaron as if he had a magical cure to shitfacedness, and all Neil had to do for it was look a little scared. “I’m sorry.”

“Why?” Aaron asked.

“I’m drunk.”

Aaron snorted. “That’s kind of the point when you’re at a bar.”

“But,” Neil said, taking a labored breath, “I’m…too drunk.”

This was beginning to feel exceedingly similar to speaking to a child. Aaron was annoyed, but not completely heartless, unlike the narrative of Aaron Neil had likely concocted. “It’s okay, Neil,” Aaron said. “You should sit down.”

Neil promptly sat as if there was a chair under him, but there was not. Aaron, still holding Neil vertical, got pulled out of his chair with the momentum. To avoid toppling to the ground—which did not get mopped as often as it should—Aaron planted his feet on the floor and hauled Neil up by his armpits.

“Help,” Neil murmured. His arms dropped to his sides as he yielded his dead weight to Aaron.

“Stand up,” Aaron grunted, readjusting to wrap an arm around Neil’s back. One of Neil’s arms flopped over Aaron’s shoulder.

“I am,” Neil complained.

“No, you are not.”

“I am.”

“Neil,” Aaron said through clenched teeth, “I am holding you up. You need to lock your knees.”

“Oh,” Neil said. He looked at his feet as if he needed to check they were on the ground.

To be fair, Neil did lock his knees, but he also leaned all of his upper body on Aaron, arms still hanging limply at his sides. He tucked his head into Aaron’s neck with, what seemed, every intention to make a home there for the night.

“Neil,” Aaron said, frozen against the hair tickling his cheek. “God dammit.”

“And…ron,” Neil spoke against his shoulder.

“Yes,” Aaron said sarcastically. “That’s me.”

“Can I j’stay here?” Neil slurred.

From what Aaron had seen of Neil’s dynamic with his brother, he knew Neil would get off if he said no. He could place Neil into a stool or pull up a chair with a back so he wouldn’t fall out and concuss himself. He could shove Neil off and make him fend for himself. He could pawn him off to Andrew.

At the moment, those other options seemed like far too much work.

That, or maybe it was the med student in him, the intrinsic urge to heal and help and nurture that smarted at the thought of pushing Neil off.

Aaron didn’t push him off when Neil readjusted and tucked an arm into his chest, the other gripping Aaron for stability. He didn’t when Neil asked again, a quiet, “Aaron.”

“Okay,” Aaron conceded. He rubbed a hand up and down Neil’s back placatingly, but also because Neil seemed like he needed it. And he came to Aaron for it. Well, he came to Andrew and got Aaron. But he didn’t push Aaron off, and Aaron hasn’t done the same.

And they just…stood like that. For what seemed like a long time, but it probably was only a few minutes before Neil spoke again.

“Aaron,” Neil said.

Aaron hummed in response.

“I don’ hate you.”

“What?” Aaron asked. “What the fuck are you talking about, Neil?”

“I don’t hate you.”

“What?” Aaron said again.

“I don’wanna fight.” Neil lets out a colossal breath.

“We haven’t fought in a long time,” Aaron says, his idea of agreement. Acceptance.

Neil was quiet, because it was true. Neil seemed content to lay in Aaron’s arms, and Aaron didn’t have another stool next to him. He sure as shit wasn’t giving his up for Neil, but Neil was genuinely so unsteady on his feet that Aaron couldn’t let him go.

He trembled a bit, and Aaron was almost amused that after everything Neil had been through, being a little too drunk is what finally did it for him.

But Aaron had felt that way before. Inebriated and scared in a crowded room of strangers. Neil, however, has people he knows. How can Aaron be upset at Neil for wanting the comfort that he also craved? How can he be upset that Neil feels safe enough with Andrew to ask for help? That his brother finally feels safe with someone too?

“Aaron,” Neil said.

“What,” Aaron said.

“It’s okay if you hate me.”

“Oh God,” Aaron groaned, “Ew. Are you really an emotional drunk?”

Neil pulled back and, to Aaron’s horror, there were actual tears in his eyes. His lip trembled as he bit it, holding the tears in. Aaron hated how much of himself he was seeing in Neil tonight. The harrowing fact that maybe they are quite similar.

“Oh God,” Aaron said again, mortified. He grabbed the back of Neil’s head and shoved it back into his shoulder, effectively hiding Neil’s teary face.

He cast a desperate look to Andrew, who was finally on his way back to the table. He patted Neil on the shoulder, like one would burp a baby when they have no idea how to do so.

“Andrew.”

Andrew didn’t need prompting to look. His eyes were trained on Neil and Aaron from the moment he turned around. By the nonchalance of his movements and his lack of alarm, Aaron guessed he had been watching their interaction.

Andrew set the tray down on the table and cast a significant look between them, settling on Neil’s intoxicated form keeled over on Aaron’s shoulder.

Andrew raises one eyebrow, a silent question, an okay?

Aaron finds himself nodding, and unsure why. All he knows right now, a few drinks in, is that he doesn’t hate this. And he doesn’t hate that Neil doesn’t hate him.

The smell of coffee set Neil’s feet moving like a Pavlovian response. He was half awake already with a pounding headache, like his eyeballs were beating his closed lids to death.

Neil toddles down the stairs with his eyes closed, a hand pressed hard to his temple, stabilizing his brain.

Aaron was standing at the counter already, facing the sputtering coffee pot. His arms were crossed, hair ruffled from sleep. At the sound of footsteps behind him, he turned.

The memories from last night played past Neil’s mind like a sped-up movie. He grimaced in embarrassment, and felt a little sick at how drunk he was. How stupid he was, to drink that much. He should have known his tolerance isn’t matched with the rest of them. He could have gotten hurt, could have said something—

Fuck.

“Fuck,” Neil said, covering his eyes. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Aaron said. He turned back to the coffee, though his posture was rigid.

Neil grabbed a glass of water. He noticed Aaron watching from the corner of his eye, but Neil chose to ignore him, figuring that’s best. He sat on the counter with his water, sipping it slowly while he and Aaron waited for the coffee to finish brewing.

The silence was thick, but they were both too stubborn to leave the kitchen. Usually, they preferred to wait and pretend the other wasn’t there.

That’s what Neil thought, at least. After a painful few minutes, Aaron huffed and grabbed the bottle of Advil from the drawer next to the sink. He shook two pills out and sat them next to Neil.

Neil stared at them until Aaron cast a pointed look at the pills, then physically gestured to them with raised brows. Neil took them while Aaron watched.

The coffee pot beeped. Aaron made a split second decision, grabbing two mugs and pouring coffee into them. He slid Neil’s across the counter. It sloshed over the side, but Aaron wasn’t capable of caring at the moment. His mind was busy, and he knew Neil had noticed his lack of eye contact; the analytical fuck.

“Look,” Aaron said. He did not look at Neil to say it. “You’re annoying, and you never know when to shut your mouth or mind your business. Most of the time, I’m convinced you have a death wish, and a lot of the time I find myself resenting you. You complicated our lives, put us all in danger, didn’t give a shit.”

Neil’s chest hurt. He didn’t know if it was anger or guilt. Aaron started talking again before he could figure it out.

“But I don’t hate you. I can’t, really. I can’t even fault you for the shitty things you did, because it all worked out.” Aaron glanced quickly at Neil, looked away. His cheeks were red.

The thank you for helping repair my relationship with my brother and thank you for testifying and thank you for being good to Andrew went unsaid, but Aaron hoped Neil wasn’t obtuse enough to force him to say it out loud.

Neil must have understood, because he nodded. Aaron figured that was as close to a reconciliation they were going to have, so he leaned against the counter and pretended everything was normal.

For the first time, they drank their coffee in silence without animosity orchestrating it.

Neil’s mug was half empty when Andrew joined them. He paused in the doorway, squinty eyed and mussed, looking between the two. Neil on the counter, Aaron leaning against it. Their silence, but lack of tension.

“This is weird,” Andrew finally said, his voice gravely from sleep.

“Yeah,” Neil and Aaron said simultaneously.

Neil glanced over his mug at Aaron, the corner of his mouth twitching. Aaron regarded it, but looked away, because something like contentment had made its way onto Andrew’s face.

Aaron smiled at that instead.

1K notes · View notes

gitaspeaxdaily · 1 year

Photo

Kitchen in Atlanta

#Inspiration for a mid-sized farmhouse u-shaped medium tone wood floor and brown floor kitchen pantry remodel with a farmhouse sink #shaker cabinets #white cabinets #quartzite countertops #gray backsplash #ceramic backsplash #stainless steel appliances #an island and gray countertops island farm sink #bar stools #pendants #blue kitchen cabinets #glass upper cabints #5 panel shaker door #shaker

0 notes

going-to-ikea-for-the-fries · 3 months

Text

It's a Match! || 141 x reader

[ Chapter 5 ] || [ Chapter 7 ]

Pairing: Price x gn!Reader || 141 x gn!Reader Words: 1.4K~ cw: firing guns, i guess (but John's teaching you). Summary: While overcoming recent heartbreak, you decide to join Tinder in search of a rebound. Your friends advise to just Swipe Right indiscriminately... What happens when 4 soldiers from the same squad match with you?

Chapter 6: John.

You crossed the entrance to the small pub, head held high, in your most honest attempt at feigning confidence.

After you had accepted, jokingly, to meet with this ‘Captain John’, only as an opportunity to roast the three men behind the account some more, Kyle had reached out to you, through John’s account, saying he also accepted and wanted to meet you today, Friday night, at 8 P.M.

You almost backed out.

Keyword, almost.

Because when you went to your groupchat to ask for support from them, your girlfriends encouraged you.

You almost set a Siri reminder to get better friends.

Either way, you have to admit that it feels… better to meet up John. Your heart is still a bit sore, the wound of heartbreak still struggling to swell closed…

Meeting with Simon or Kyle or Johnny would’ve meant rehashing it. You couldn’t risk getting attached to them after a night of casual sex. But there’s no expectations here… John is older than you, than them. This is just drinks, according to Kyle. He had insisted, in fact, that it be just drinks.

It felt more comforting to know you weren’t expected to go home with him at the end… Even though he’s handsome enough that you wouldn’t exactly refuse had your heart not been in its current state.

So, here you are. You keep his Tinder profile open on your phone, like it has been since you left the house, trying to memorize his features so that when you spot him, you recognize him instantly.

In a way, this feels like a blind date… And it’s strangely exciting.

You spot him from the door the moment your eyes scan the room. He’s at a table in the far corner, his back against the wall, taking up a bar stool. You stop by the bar before making your way over, getting yourself a drink.

You’re not sure if he’s spotted you, if he knows who you are. So you take the time to get a proper look at him that isn’t through a grainy picture on your phone.

He’s about as wide as he is tall and his forearms are covered in hair (“built like a bear”, check.). He’s got a tumbler of ambar liquid in front of him, you can infer it’s whiskey (“likes Whiskey”, check.). His beard is a bit thicker than in the pictures you were sent, and he looks knackered, his eyes surrounded by heavy dark circles.

He sits with his back straight, however his head hangs low and he keeps looking around through his eyebrows like he’s suspicious of everyone. His legs are spread, heels hooked on the footrest of the stool, the jeans he wears clinging tight to his strong thighs. His hands hang limply between them. He’s wearing a maroon button-up atop a white crewneck t-shirt, the sleeves rolled up to show a black watch on his left wrist.

In short, he’s handsome. And does not look his age.

Stopping in front of the table, you offer him a smile. “John?” You ask, as if you don’t already know it’s you.

He seems to finally notice you, and his harsh face softens with a smile that scrunches his nose.

“Hi. How are you?” He asks politely as he pulls back the stool on his right side for you. You take the seat, squirming a bit as you look for a good position.

“Can’t complain. You alright?” You return and you catch how he looks at you, up and down, his head hanging low, as he glances at you.

“What are you drinking?” He asks.

“Oh, just… a Sprite.” You answer as you keep glancing at him.

He goes quiet and nods, looking away for a moment, giving you every indication that he’s not interested in being here.

“I get it, you know.” You say after a beat of long, strenuous silence.

John’s blue eyes immediately flitter over to you, eyebrows raised in confusion.

“Get what?” He asks with a mix of confusion and disdain in him.

“Being forced to go out… Meet someone.” You explain as you sip your Sprite through the black straw the bartender gave you.

“Oh, really?” He retorts as he leans his left elbow on the round table and swivels to look over at you.

“Oh, yeah.” You say with a nod. “Recovering from a break-up.” You tell him. “My friends put me up to the whole… dating app-get laid thing. So, I get it. It’s… awkward.” You add.

“Hm.” He says with a nod and presses his lips together a bit, as if conceding to you.

“We don’t have to make this a whole thing, if you don’t want to.” You tell him and smile a bit. “I can leave, if you’d like. Or you can.” You offer, noticing how his eyes soften a little.

“No… it’s alright…” He tells you. His eyes slip away from you and he looks down at his lap, blinking a little. He seems… a bit lost in thought. He goes quiet again.

“Okay, then.” You say simply. “I just figured you needed a distraction, you know… Your lads were complaining about you being stressed…” You add, your eyes stuck on him, to try and spot his reaction.

He curls his fists closed and then uncurls them, running his clammy palms over his jeans for a moment. Then, he inhales sharply before slapping his hands on his thighs and turning to you swiftly.

“You ever shot a gun before?” He asks you, causing your brows to raise in surprise.

“No?” You answer, watching as he downs the rest of his whiskey and jumps down from his stool.

“C’mon. I’m teaching you.” He demands as he contours the table and helps you down, guiding you back out of the pub.

“Bend your arms about 10 degrees at the elbows.” John tells you from behind you, his big rough hands adjusting your shape with tender but determined touches.

John’s driven you to a firing club’s range just outside of London. You’ve been at this for an hour now and it’s… surprisingly fun.

You’ve yet to land a proper shot, your arms always shaking a little out of aim… But you’ve landed them in the target, which is more than you thought you were going to succeed.

“How the fuck do you handle this every day? This damn rifle is heavy, my arms hurt and we’ve only been practicing for an hour!” You tell him after firing another shot that did not land.

“Lots of practice, love.” He replies, his tone amused. He stepped up behind you, once more fixing your stance, giving little taps to your hip with one of his large hands to force you to stiffen.

John’s been trying not to snicker every time you fire. At first it was because you were flinching, but now it’s because your aim is that bad. But you don’t mind the mockery. He’s got a smile on his face, his smile lines and nose all crinkled.

“Go on, again.” He demands as he helps adjust you, his breath brushing against your ear, the warmth of his torso against your back, and his eyes above the rifle, to try and see if you’re in target. He makes some last second adjustments and then you fire.

This time it was a bull’s eye. “THERE WE GO!” You cheer for yourself and shimmy your shoulders a little while holding the rifle steady. This time, John doesn’t contain himself, and fully laughs. Deep and rich, right next to your ear, making you shiver a bit, your skin covered in goosebumps.

“Good job.” He praises you and gived you another little tap on your hip, this time, sort of catching the side of your ass. Your eyes widen a bit in surprise and you bite your lip before looking up at him.

“You’ve had enough yet?” He asks you with a cocked brow as you lower the rifle into a safe handle, pointing down and to the side.

“Depends.” You find yourself saying as he takes the rifle from you to return at the rental counter.

“On what, love?” He asks you, eyes locked on yours as you turn to face him fully. He seems to be in a much better mood.

“Me having enough of shooting…” You trail off. “Will that end the night? Are you going to drop me off at home?” You ask him.

His eyebrows raise for a bit, but then they lower and his eyes narrow as a ghost of a smirk tugs at the corner of his lips. “Oh no, I’m taking you home, but not dropping you off. I’m spending the night with you.” He assures you.

Then, he walks off out to the armory counter, as if he hasn’t just said that.

taglist: @daisychainsinknots , @bunnysdaydreams , @iite-cool , @lahniu , @pagesfalling , @tapioca-milktea1978 , @live-love-be-unique , @thelaisydazy , @littleghosthunter , @bossva , @emotion-no-hot-yes-hotel-trivago , @chamomiletealeaf , @ghosts-hoe , @kariiiel , @ltbarnes , @irregulardongyoung , @spacelia , @hayleybarnesx , @infpt-zylith , @xxshadowbabexx , @frescoisnotinthemilitary , @leeeenistop , @lucienbarkbark , @zombie-freak , @wittleespur , @agoodmoviekiss , @l0lziez , @whos-fran , @greatstormcat , @openup-yourmind , @neoarchipelago

#ikea writes 💚#it's a match! fic #cod modern warfare #cod fanfic #captain john price #john soap mactavish #kyle gaz garrick #simon ghost riley #text story #cod x reader #call of duty x reader #john price x reader

1K notes · View notes

praeluxius · 1 month

Text

Blasé

part 4 of folie à deux. masterlist

male reader x kim minju (ex-iz*one) ft yujin, gaeul and rei of Ive

Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4 / Part 5 / Part 6

words: 9.15k - a lot of set-up in here for future parts, sorry

Blasé - indifferent

It’s a far cry from elegance—the way you’re both scooping up pieces of clothing from the ground.

"Trousers?" You’re scanning wall to wall, behind stools and tables until your eyes rest on the woman across the room. "Where did they go?"

Minju's got her hands at her waist, fitting her own trousers. “Over there.” She simply tilts her head in a direction of vague guidance.

Aside from the distant voice from the flickering television in the corner, showing scenes of the news, and the soft sounds of jazz music, there's an uneasy amount of silence for a bar in the mid-afternoon. Another knock at the door—Wonyoung must be getting impatient. No surprise.

You're pulling on your trousers as Minju slides her arms into her blazer, settling it onto her shoulders. As she brushes down her clothes, fixes her hair and steps over to her shoes, she has shifted back into the unassuming young woman you first set your eyes on. Not a trace of the indecency remains. Not even a slight indication that, despite the attempt she made to clean up with a few napkins, there's likely still your cum running from her cunt.

She has spent the past couple of minutes explaining how this will go—how you're going to sit back at the bar and Minju is going to re-open as if nothing happened. She didn't tell you exactly how she plans to deal with the Wonyoung problem, but, ‘just let me handle it’ is somehow enough for you.

You sit where it all started, joining your drink at the bar. The last remnants greet you in a sorry state of neglect. You do what you can to straighten up, a hand through your hair, a smoothing down of the wrinkles in your shirt, and a tug on the sleeves to straighten the cuffs. It is when you start to think you've got yourself somewhat under control that you realise just how bad you must look. There’s the undeniable sign that you can’t ignore—that rising tide of musk and sweat from your body and the discomfort it brings.

Another loud rattle of the door against the frame, vibrating across the hinges and into the metal fixings. A call of your name, but it's not quite how you think it should sound.

Minju flicks a series of locks on the door; three separate bolts—heavy-duty clunking metal. Finally, she drops the latch and unlocks the main lock. She has her hand on the handle of the door and she hesitates, looking over her shoulder to check on you once again. One last look.

Just smile.

She opens the door, standing in the opening, between you and the woman outside.

"Wonyo—" Minju begins. "Sorry, who are you?"

You twist in your seat and watch the scene unfold. You expect anger, an outpouring of venom from a woman so full of ego, arrogance, vanity, and maybe even jealousy.

Reality is far from the expectation.

The woman asks Minju if you're here, and while you're still racking your mind to work out who she is, Minju lets her in and, in a way, you're grateful for seeing her walk into the room and folding her umbrella.

"Gaeul?"

"Finally, I was a minute away from leaving. What were you—" She looks around the room, at the out-of-place stools, and then at you. She scrunches her nose and sniffs, confirming her suspicions through the scent of sex. "Oh."

She turns her eyes to Minju. Gaeul lingers, eyes fixed on the bartender's face.

"We... we were talking." Minju chuckles in amusement.

"With the door locked?" Gaeul is easy to read, even across the room, and you can see the genuine concern on her face. You hear it in her voice too. Suddenly, even being here feels wrong. Discomforting is the silence. Unnerving is the smile that stretches on Minju's face—a much prouder look than you're giving.

"Relax darling, we were just talking, and then…" Minju dismisses and Gaeul rolls her eyes.

"No, no. Please. Don't say another word," Gaeul waves her hands in front of her, a gesture of surrender. "I don't want to know the details."

"You sure you don't want to hear about how he just—?"

"No. Just no." Gaeul turns from the grinning woman and heads to you.

She struts in that same determined way she always does. Steady are her paces. Bag over her shoulder, short hair half-tied up and black jeans hugging her legs. As usual, she dons the casual grace that suits her so well.

“Bro, what the hell happened?”

“You seriously don’t know?” you answer the question with a question.

“You got called away. Wonyoung said she had somewhere to be and the rest of us were left waiting, but nothing ever happened. Then classes end and Wonyoung finally just tells me I could find you here.”

“I’m in a shit-storm, Gaeul.” You say, resigned to your seat.

Figuratively, of course. Though Gaeul looks like she’s been in one herself as she throws her rain-drenched raincoat over a stool. The one outside probably isn’t bad enough to require a name, but you know the one that you’re facing all too well. Storm Wonyoung.

You recount the abridged version for her. Of course, the details of you and Wonyoung and your benefits need little introduction. As for the rest, it’s difficult to explain the parts you still don’t understand, like how this all comes down and you and you alone. It takes two to fuck.

"You can't just hide in here from it all."

You laugh a little and say, "not hiding." An obvious lie, and Gaeul gives you a forced smile that says she's not convinced.

"You had us worried."

“Even Wonyoung?” you ask; it’s a test more than a question. You know the answer. You know that she doesn’t give a shit, but you want to see if Gaeul tries to sell the lie.

"Ha! That would be a first." Minju mocks with a scoff. She walks back to where you first found her, behind the bar, and she's still pulling and tugging at her shirt to get the fit back how she likes it.

"I’m sure she does," Gaeul says, with little confidence in her words. She sits herself down next to you and drops her bag off her shoulder and onto the bar.

"You’re still trying to convince yourself," Minju mutters with a shake of her head. "She really has you all around her little finger."

Gaeul is trying her best to ignore the interruptions. "Wony and Yujin—they can fix this."

"Yujin, huh? Now that's a new name." Minju interjects yet again, looking at you with eyes sharp enough to cut. She has her back to the shelf of alcohol, her arms folded under her chest. The more you think about it—the more the pieces seem to fall into place—the clearer it becomes that Yujin is the best friend who replaced Minju.

You scratch your ear. What a mess.

"Gaeul, there's no way the school let me back in."

"You don't know that."

Minju steps forward, a little closer. Her tongue dances across her lips as she readies herself to speak. "Oh, you think Wonyoung is going to get daddy's money and pay your way out of this mess? What's she going to tell her father? Hey daddy, please can you bribe the school to help this guy who's been fucking your princess silly? Seriously? She’s probably the one who got you kicked out in the first place."

That same laughter. That same mocking, belittling attitude that Minju had toward the idea of Wonyoung earlier. As if Minju sees nothing but weakness. Sure, Wonyoung has her fair share of faults, and sometimes she comes off too entitled, but right now, in this situation, her heart is actually in the right place. Or that's at least what Gaeul is saying.

“She would never do that! Wonyoung takes care of her friends and I’m sure she…” Gaeul gives up on her argument as Minju continues to laugh in the face of it.

Minju holds one elbow in the palm of the other hand and places her index finger on her cheek. She flicks it over to Gaeul and points. “Where are my manners? Drink?”

"Coffee, I guess."

"Come on, we're in a bar, let me pour you a—"

"No." Gaeul snaps. "All that stuff does is tear lives apart." An unexpected sternness in her tone—not one you’re accustomed to. There's a hardness that washes over her features—even her hair seems to have stood up a bit on end.

"Gaeul, it's just a drink—"

"That's how it starts and before you know it—" The door opens and a couple of men walk in, silencing her. They look to choose their seats and Gaeul seems to shrink into her stool.

"Alright. Coffee it is," Minju says before shifting her focus to you. "Anyway, Yujin—you fucking her too?"

"No." It's not a lie. Close call? Sure. Want to? Of course. Fucking her? No.

With Minju it just seems like if you give her any opportunity to fan the flames and she’s there. She’s the type to see you caught in a storm and perform a rain dance.

She laughs. She knows. It’s written on your face. "Of course not. Maybe she will let you one day." Minju laughs again and turns to pour out a coffee from the machine on the back of the bar.

Gaeul leans in close, making sure Minju can't hear you over the sounds of the coffee machine whirring to life. She whispers, "bro, what’s wrong with this girl? And how does she know Wonyoung?"

"High school or something. They go back. Way back."

Minju approaches you, drink in hand, and without a word, places the coffee in front of Gaeul. Her expression speaks a hundred mocking words, and she shows little remorse for how she only seems to have stirred the pot further. Her earlier words ring in your ears—how you should be more selfish and that there's more to life than Wonyoung and Yujin.

But here's the hitch.

The problem.

You can't shake the feeling that you really like those girls. No matter how complex their games get or how hard they play with your emotions. There's some innate charm about the two of them; a kind of charisma that not only attracts but holds. No matter how impossible their demands are, you keep on wanting more.

You're attracted to their sheer arrogance. Drawn by the magnetism of their utter assurance. Entranced at the depth and certainty of their convictions. And if Minju could read your thoughts right now, she would tell you just how stupid you sound.

As Minju walks away and towards her new patrons, sitting at the other end of the bar, you can only admire her.

Not just physically, but who she is. She doesn't care what other people think. She lives for herself.

"Bro, you gonna keep staring her down like that or you gonna talk to me?"

"Gaeul, I have to ask: why are you here?"

"To save you from doing something stupid. Though I might be too late." Gaeul throws a side-eye down the bar to Minju while she takes a drink.

"Don't take it out on her." You shrug. "She—"

"Hey, I get it, she's hot," Gaeul rests her cup back on the bar and brushes a hair away from her cheek and back behind her ear. "I could tell when I walked in. It wasn't hard to put the pieces together, but what I don’t understand is you. Do you just enjoy being used by anyone with a nice body?" Gaeul put her hand up between you, palm showing, stopping you from replying. “Actually, don't answer that. What I'm saying is, don't you want more?”

Gaeul takes another drink from her coffee, holding you in suspense. The truth is that you don't really have an answer and you're not in any state of mind right now to make one.

"Look, all I'm saying is that we girls talk. About love and relationships and sex and well... Just stop being so naïve, will you? If you get caught up playing the game, you're the one that's going to end up played." She picks the cup up again, cradling the warm mug between her fingers, wrapping her slender digits around it, squeezing gently. A long inhale follows as the aroma rises, the scent strong and enticing.

"I didn't ask for any of this." It's a defence so weak that you don't even support yourself. It's a hard denial of the fact that you have been used. Wonyoung has had you under her thumb from the start. And maybe you have gotten a little too comfortable under there.

"Listen, stop thinking with your cock for one day, bro. Tomorrow morning, go pick Yujin up from her house and take her out to get a dress for the party." She's talking fast, laying out a plan you weren't prepared for.

"She asked you earlier, remember, and don't worry, I already picked out a few that I know she will like. I'll text you the photos and what stores they're in. And for the love of god, just enjoy her company without trying to cum on her."

You shouldn’t feel insulted by that, but you do. These girls really share everything.

Gaeul continues her instructions, "and then you turn up at the party on time, take the opportunity to forget everything that's happened and have a fun evening with Yujin, okay?"

It sounds so logical that it's impossible not to follow—even if it's rarely ever that simple. You agree. A silent nod, but enough to assure her that her words have reached you.

"Oh, and one more thing."

"Yes?"

Gaeul places the coffee mug back down on the table, pushes it away, and turns to face you. "Please make sure you dress nice, too. None of this"—she motions to your clothes—"can make an appearance. Seriously.” She smiles to herself as she stands up from the stool.

"Did I hear something about a party?" Minju returns with a renewed smile.

Gaeul rolls her eyes and gives you a slight shake of her head. Her way of letting you know that she has already seen enough of the new addition to your life.

"I think I've spent enough time here already. You should probably get home, too.”

You glance toward your drink, and Gaeul rolls her eyes. She laid out the recipe to success so simply and left you in charge of your future.

She offers Minju no quarter, merely walking toward the door she came through without a word. And she gets none in return, Minju quickly forgetting she was ever here to spoil your fun.

Minju repeats her earlier question. "So, party? Tomorrow? Are you talking about Sakura's?" The name is somewhat familiar. The truth is that you don't know for certain whose party it is, or why it was happening, just a time and a place, but as Minju confirms the details with you, they match up. Not that you have ever met this girl in question, it's just another friend of Wonyoung's.

"I didn't plan to go, but if you're my chaperone, then I could be convinced." Minju's got a glint in her eye and a flirtatious lilt in her tone—the kind a girl pulls out when they're trying to tempt you into doing exactly what you know you shouldn't.

Gaeul told you just minutes ago to stop thinking with your cock and it’s easier said than done as Minju stares down at you with those eyes that look oh-so-pretty and the desire floods into you once again.

Still, there's some semblance of resistance in you. "It's not a good idea, for more reasons than I can even explain right now."

She stares at you in silence, smiling as she tries to understand, but her hands reach across and her slender fingers stretch over the top of yours. Fingers brushing over your knuckles and her thumb tucking under your palm.

"Don't ruin the fun," she replies. That spark. Flash. That temptation for more is so hard to resist. Gaeul’s words melt away.

"It's just that—"

"Think about the message it will send: I'll wear my sexiest dress and turn up arm-in-arm with you and Wonyoung will never know how close you were to being broken when you turned up here." It’s probably the worst message you could send, but it does sound exciting.

A momentary smile—lost to a sigh at the thought. "That's only going to stir up more trouble, Minju."

"All's fair in love and war. You ever heard of that? Your move.." She smiles at you—the sly, playful smile of someone who's in complete control, and is too willing to show it. Her hand tightens on yours and her eyes are unrelenting, and despite every sensible part of you warning yourself of her dangers, there's a spark that keeps growing inside that draws you back in.

"Are you really getting all proverbial with me right now?" You try to avoid giving her the answer she wants, but the girl is too smart to let you do that.

"Are you really avoiding giving me an answer? Well, it's too late now. We're going. You can come by and pick me up at seven?"

"Seven," you repeat. A resigned affirmation. "Here?"

"Not here, stupid. My apartment. I put my address in your phone notes."

"My phone?" You pat at your pockets, not feeling it anywhere.

"Here." She pulls it from her back pocket and throws you a gentle wink. "Don't forget about me now."

***

Luckily, it seems that news of your expulsion is still under wraps for now. Not only has no one from the class sent you a text about it, being their usual prying selves, but if the news had gone beyond the school and someone like Yujin's father had found out, he wouldn't have let you anywhere near his daughter.

Actually, everything today just feels so... normal. Even Yujin has avoided mentioning it while you have been out with her.

You're still out now, sitting on one of those chairs outside the changing rooms. You know the ones—placed there for a very specific set of people. The ones for the disgruntled boyfriends who hate this sort of thing and all it entails. With their various bags by their side full of clothes, jewellery and shoes.

That's a lot of guys anyway, but you—

"What do you think?" Yujin calls out as she pulls back the curtain and steps out into the hallway. "It looks nice, right?"

—aren't in their ranks today. You appreciate this ritual for what it is. There is no exasperation. No annoyance. Nothing but the simple delight of watching a beautiful woman twirl in front of you before her reflection.

"Looks great, Yujin," you answer with an honest smile.

She gives you another twirl, arms out, her slim and toned legs shown by the dress's thigh-length cut, her arms bare and the rest of her dress is tight fitting across her flat stomach and rounding her breasts. She's playing gently with the strap on her shoulder, adjusting it against her skin. With another turn and twist, the backless nature of the dress catches your eye.

"You say that about every dress I try."

"Well, they're all gorgeous. It's hard for me to pick one."

Her laughter is sweet and musical, and it hits your heart with a dull thumping, like a heavy drum being struck inside your chest. "You're not as much help as I hoped. What do you really think?"

Yujin drops a hand to her hip, planting it there and posing with a soft pout on her lips. She has her hair held back into a ponytail. "Tell me, am I sexy?" She punctuates the question with a shake of her hips. "Pretty? Cute? Tell me, do I look good enough to eat?"

"Eat?"

Yujin does that thing she always does; where when she finishes laughing after teasing you and she bites her tongue and it pokes through her lips. She drags the curtain back across, obscuring your view again, and you're left with nothing but the plain white corridor. That and the sounds of her carefully undressing on the other side of the draped fabric. You can imagine how she undid the zipper. How it opens from her lower back. The sound the fabric will make as it slides over her naked curves—

Fuck. Stop. Don't fantasise now. Not here.

You rock your head back, resting it against the wall and staring up at the ceiling. The white tiles aren't exactly exciting, but they are preferable to imagining anything Yujin is or isn't currently wearing.

"Can you believe it?" Yujin calls from behind the curtain, wrangling your attention back. "Nine whole days. No warning at all."

"Did I miss something?"

"My dad. He's gone for nine whole days this time. Only one day after momma has gone to visit my aunt. The house is weird without them. It's just me and the staff. It's cold and quiet. You should come over more." It's all so nonchalant for her to ask that. No mention of what happened the last time you were in her house. How you—

Yujin pulls the curtain and steps out. A new dress. It's hard to look away and even harder to look her in the eyes. This is an elegant red one, an alluring warm hue. The dress is cut high up on the thigh, close enough to the line of the panties you're actively not thinking about. Tight on her waist and a neckline that follows the collarbone and frames her neck and shoulders in soft fabric.

"Well?"

"Yes." It's the only word that comes to mind. She's the most beautiful thing. Your favourite image. She is like a perfect portrait, hung there just for your view.

"Yes what?" she asks.

"Yes to this dress. This is the one."

She pulls a look. One you're not exactly sure how to read. "And about coming over?"

"Um..." The old you would have leapt at the chance. Fuck, the current you wants to too, but you still haven't addressed the elephant in the room.

"What's going on with you?" Yujin quizzes. She knows you haven't been your usual self the whole day. Everything weighing on your mind, including a future where you quite literally have no idea what tomorrow will bring. You can feel it—have felt it—holding you back.

"Look..." You run a hand through your hair. "The school thing has been playing on my mind." It's half the truth.

"Is that it? It's only school."

"Yujin. It's my life. I don't have money or assurances or—"

"You have me." Yujin steps forward, looking down at you in your seat, smiling. "Right?"

You look at her all confused. How do you reply to that? What does she even mean by that?

"I've got your back, okay? Always," Yujin assures, her smile so calming and comforting and yet, her words leave something to be desired. "Trust me."

Yujin raises a delicate hand toward your cheek, hovering millimetres from touching, just close enough for you to feel her heat and her draw. For an agonising second, all is silent as the air hangs tense. Then the touch. The smoothness of fingers that have never worked a day in their life against your skin.

"I already called the school. Told them Daddy would cut his funding if they didn't brush it under the rug." It's all so easy for her. How casually she flaunts her money and influence. But as the fingers trace the edge of your jaw, graze across your cheeks and come to rest their pad beneath your chin, tilting your head upward and casting your vision toward the young woman's bright smile, you can’t help but pin your hopes on her.

There's this moment you're stuck in, staring at her smile and wishing you could kiss it. Her fingertips threaten to draw you in but just as you let them, she slips them off you and pulls herself back. "But—" Yujin says with a wink, "you owe me."

She takes three steps back, slipping back into the cubby of a changing room across from you.

Yujin turns to the mirror, admiring the dress, her fingers running flat against her stomach. Her arms trail up along her side and around, stroking and smoothing down the fabric. Her shoulders shift, tugging on the fabric and perfecting the fit as she always does. "You're right. This is the one. You have good taste."

Yujin reaches her hands behind her back, fingers reaching her upper back and to the fabric of the dress. You watch, breathing steadily, as her fingertips begin to work the zipper, sliding it downward ever-so-slowly, exposing an inch of skin, then another, and another…

She tilts her head and gives her hair a subtle shake, exposing the nape of her slender neck. With a gentle roll of her shoulders, the dress falls loose, slipping from the sharpness of her shoulders, and gathering up on her elbow and waist. Her back is bare to you, and when you can drag your eyes to the mirror, a lot more too. That's when you catch her gaze, looking back in the mirror, watching the effect she has as the dress falls further, fully from her arms and waist to the floor.

Now only her underwear hugs her hips, the soft lace of her panties a little sheer, framing her perfectly round ass. Her eyes are fixated on your own, her face almost twisted, so sadistically joyous, revelling in the sight of your torture. Yujin says nothing—how could she say a word to ruin this tension? A laugh slips through her lips, and then she reaches behind her for the curtain. Drawing an end to the act as she conceals herself behind the fabric.

“Take this," she calls through the curtain and you're still trying to settle back into reality when out pops her hand, the dress draped over it. "You still have my card, right? You can go pay."

You take the dress, not knowing how to reply.

Yujin continues, "meet you by the door."

***

"Did you two just—?"

"She's in the changing room, Rei. At the store."

"Oh." Rei sounds out of breath and fatigued, her words come heavy, laced with pants. "Fuck it. You can help me. You're the only person who answered."

"What's wrong Rei?" You're talking with your eyes fixed across the room, waiting to see Yujin emerge.

"What's the best excuse to get out of a guy's apartment?" Rei is hushed a little now.

"Wait. Are you in there right now?"

"In the bathroom, he can't hear me right now, but yeah. I need an out. This guy was texting me about how well he was going to fuck me and he blew in like a minute." There is some disgust in her tone, a clear sense of disillusion. "Dude ended up just watching me get off. Prick."

Trying to keep it on topic, and trying to not imagine Rei masturbating, you say, "family emergency is always a good one. Hang up. Walk back into the bedroom. Then I'll call you pretending to be your uncle."

"A sexy uncle or a creepy uncle?"

"Your choice?"

"I'd say you're more of a sexy uncle."

You try not to indulge her. "Rei. Go."

"Right."

She hangs up. And you give it a minute, counting back from sixty. You call her, and when she answers, you turn up your volume, which grabs the attention of a few people in the store. "Rei! Rei! Where are you?"

"Uncle? What's wrong? Calm down!" She even sounds slightly convincing.

"Your aunt. There's been an accident. You need to hurry." You're quieter now, and the eyes around you go back to whatever they were doing.

"Yes uncle. Right away! I'm on my way now." Then you barely hear her ad she's speaking to the mystery man in the room with her. "Sorry, I have to go. It's my uncle. My auntie... she..."

Wow. She even sounds so genuinely upset. There's probably even a fake tear in there somewhere. There's some more muffled conversation you can't make out, likely Rei's dropped the phone while she dresses. You can imagine it, even if you couldn't make out what's going on in the background. She's feigning a panic, apologising to the guy, quickly pulling on her panties while he's laid there all confused. She's grabbing a shirt, jeans, a coat, and then rushing out the door. All the while maintaining her worry.

"Uncle?" she calls down the phone after some sounds of commotion. "I'm on my way now." There's the sound of a door slamming in the background.

"Rei? You good?" you ask.

"I'm out now. Thank you. Ugh. At least one guy didn't let me down today. Why is it so hard to just get a good fuck?" She lets out the words with a sigh, her tone is annoyed, and the sound in the background has changed. Her steps. The outdoors. The sound of cars.

"Take it as a compliment. Maybe you're just too hot for him."

She laughs a little, "yeah or my pussy is too good. Some people aren't prepared for what my pussy can do." She laughs again, louder this time and it brings a chuckle from yourself.

"Got to go now, Rei. Text me when you're home," you tell her.

"Wait! Before you go, what are you doing in say... an hour?"

"You what now?"

"Come on." She whines in that exaggerated way she can't quite contain. "If you're not busy then..." She trails off and silence follows.

You're not even sure what to think. Not sure what to say. "Rei..."

"Just kidding. Thanks again." She speaks in a hurry and hangs up the phone quickly too, before you can even say goodbye. You bring the phone in front of you, to make sure the call ended. It did.

You look up from the screen just as Yujin appears across the store.

***

Yujin leads you through the mall as you trail just behind her, one arm draped in bags full of clothes worth more than triple the car you drove her here in.

"Trust me. If it's not in a cone, then it's just not right," Yujin insists. You're not sure how you've come down to arguing about the semantics of eating ice cream, but here you are.

"But what if it's in a glass and it has a wafer with it? It's the same taste. The same substance," you contend, trying to reason.

"That's a sundae and sundaes are a whole different thing altogether. Everyone knows that."

"Okay, so what's wrong with that, but in a plastic cup?"

"You mean in a disposable container with not much thought, nor flavour nor creativity?" She stops in place, turning to you and saying, "Ice cream is an experience." She raises her hand to her head, grabbing at it and feigning frustration.

"So, glass okay, cone okay, plastic cup, not okay? Even if it's the same ice cream in all three?"

"Exactly." That's her reasoning, for leading you all the way to the other side of the mall, to the place that puts ice cream in a cone, and not in a little tub.

You hold your tongue for a minute and follow. Waiting for that perfect moment to throw your next question out there. You're slipping through the crowds of people, cutting around groups as they browse and peruse the items on display at the front of each store, and occasionally avoiding the people mindlessly walking on their phones.

Yujin is looking ahead and she doesn't see it coming. Two kids running right across her path. You quickly reach for her arm and pull her out of the way just in time to avoid them running headlong into her.

"What are you—"

"Careful." You tilt your head towards the kids as they run across in front of you.

"Oh." Yujin flicks her gaze after them and turns it up at you, smiling. "My hero," she says whimsically, almost to the point you feel she's mocking you. Yujin lifts her arm under your grasp until she meets your hand with her own, and then interlocks her fingers into yours. She continues leading as if nothing at all has changed. You're following her again, past countless stores, your hand bound with her all along.

"So, Yujin, soft-serve or—"

"Don't even go there." Yujin laughs, turning to flash you a smile. She pulls on your hand to bring you to a stop. "Here we are."

"But, we didn't even discuss flavours..."

***

It's different, and not entirely comfortable. Usually, Yujin is buried in her phone, scrolling down her feed, flicking through stories or reading all those weird Instagram message requests she gets from her followers. Not this time. No, Yujin is sitting beside you in the passenger seat, her phone nowhere to be seen—enjoying life. Enjoying your company.

She still has her ice cream, in a cone just as she wanted, and she's sharing it with you as you drive. She reaches over between her licks to give you a taste.

It's not just that, it's how talkative she is—now more than ever. Never has she been so willing to discuss her family. She's just finished telling you all about her auntie and how her mother helped her set up a shop overseas, and how she’s visiting her right now. All this talk has led her to her father, who she talks about with much less fervour.

You will never forget the first time you met him; the imposing aura the man commands and his rigorous standards for everything. Her stories though? They seem more like myths.

"He ran a whole rival company into the ground. Pricing them out of deals, cutting shady deals himself. It was ruthless. But effective," Yujin says, pausing before she gives her ice cream another lick. "Hundreds of people lost their jobs; it was all on the news. I was young, so I didn't really understand. Mother tells me it changed him. He was away for a long time. I went years without really spending time with him."

"Yujin... I don't understand. He always seems so..."

"Nice?" Yujin completes the statement for you with a sarcastic laugh. "When he's home, he puts on the act. But when he's away, sometimes mother just wishes he would stay there." She's looking straight ahead now, focusing on the view out the front window as you dip off the highway.

"Can I ask about the scar, then?" It's a topic you're unsure about broaching, but it feels like the kind of chance that won't come again if you leave it.

"Scar? The one on his neck? He wouldn't even tell me or mother how he got it. Probably some ex-employee, or... an ex-lover." That's the one thing you knew about him. Yujin told you before about how he barely even hides his trysts from his wife and the damage it has caused.

"Sometimes I wish the entire company would just burn, and we would all be left with nothing. Have a normal life."

“A normal life isn’t any better, Yujin. Just a different shade of the same colour.”

There's a vulnerability to her now that always seemed so elusive. It's the softness of her tone and the almost timid smile that crosses her face when you look over. Then comes the quiet. The silence as she waits—waits for the world to answer all her unanswered questions. Waits for you to give the reassurance she needs, to know she's not alone.

With one hand still on the wheel, you reach the other over to her lap and find her hand.

"Don't." Yujin pushes back at first. But the harder she pushes, the tighter you squeeze and you let her know that you're going to be here. Her resistance crumbles and the fight subsides. And Yujin entwines her hand back with yours, locking her grip. "Thank you."

You turn the next corner and the molten orange afternoon sun burns ahead of you, threatening to fall below the horizon. Its warm rays burst with vivid colour.

"You never talk about your parents," Yujin asks with a soft curiosity.

"I don't know them. It's just my brother and me. Always has been. Always will be. He raised me," you explain so simply.

"Oh. I'm sorry. I sound so ungrateful now." This might be the first time you have ever heard Yujin utter that word—sorry. She holds a little tighter onto your hand, a returned reassuring squeeze to tell you she cares.

You keep hold of her as you turn into the gated grounds of her house, pull up into her long-cobbled driveway and pull the car over in front of the door.

"You should come in, stay with me until the party," she offers, refusing to let go of your hand.

"I have to go home, I have to wash and change and..." You trail off, omitting the fact you also have to go to Minju's place before the party. Her hold on your hand loosens as you speak but you hold a little tighter and tell her, "but, I'll see you soon."

The warmth of her touch departs your grip. Her face seems more understanding. "You will." She smiles and behind her, through the window, you spot her staff approaching to help with her bags. "Don't be late, okay?"

You give her a firm single nod as she steps out of the car.

***

You're about to buzz for the third time, but you pause to check your phone. You read the address over and over. You're at the right place. Maybe Minju made a typo? Maybe she did this on purpose just to waste your time? You press the buzzer a third and final time. It rings and rings until eventually the screen lights up.

Minju's face is pressed to the camera. "You're early."

"Actually, I'm right on time."

She turns away from the camera to check the clock on the wall. She leans a little to get a better look, bringing more of her into view. More accurately, bringing her bare shoulders into the camera shot. "Fuck," she says as she turns back to the camera. "Okay, look, just come up."

"But I have a taxi here waiting."

"So wave them away." The camera cuts off and the door buzzes open.

You roll your eyes and open the door, turning to the taxi driver and lazily waving a hand before you enter.

When you make it to Minju's apartment, a surprise awaits. You find the door unlocked—that's not the surprise. What's behind it is what is so unexpected. It looks like the aftermath of a localised apartment tornado.

There are shoes on the floor between strewn-out items of clothing as soon as you enter. There's a pair of her jeans right by the door and next to them a bra. You drag your eyes across the room and things don't get any better. You don't even want to know how that pair of tights ended up hung over her TV. Or why there's one of her bomber jackets hung from the fridge? And you especially don't want to question how the back of her sofa became her de facto underwear drawer—there are six or seven pairs laid out along it.

"Minju, it's me," you call out.

Minju pokes her head from her bathroom door. "Take a seat."

"And where in the world am I supposed to find one?" Even her dining chairs hold two folded stacks of work clothes.

Minju shrugs and scrunches her nose before ducking back into the bathroom. A moment of silence is followed by the blaring of a hair dryer. You navigate the floor like a minefield until you close in on the door she just slipped into. You check your watch, just twenty-five minutes until when you told the girls you would be there. Until when Yujin is expecting you—alone.

"Minju!" You call over the sounds of her drying her hair..

She speaks from within, her voice almost completely muffled. "What's wrong?" The sounds cut to quiet.

"Ten minutes until we need to—" Your voice is caught in your throat as Minju emerges from the bathroom. She's wearing nothing but the scent of her soap and the soft glisten of her damp skin. And, in true Minju style, she doesn't cover herself, she doesn't even shy away.

It’s all so… blasé.

"My eyes are up here." Her giggling is playful and sultry, luring you to her, and there is no place else for your gaze to drift. All you have to do is watch. Follow every drop and curve, every exquisite angle. The wet, raven hair hangs heavy down her back.

"You— we— clothes— where are your clothes?"

"Ummm..." Minju raises her hands in a form of shrug as she twists and scans around the room. "They're somewhere here. Probably." She keeps walking, across your path and into the kitchen. You watch her as she struts all the way to the far counter. She stands for a moment or two in a pose, her weight on one leg and the other propped on her tiptoe.

She finally turns back to you, half a bottle of wine in her hand and a half-cocked smile on her lips.

"Minju, I need to—"

"When was the last time you had a drink? Anything since yesterday afternoon?" she asks as she sweeps two glasses that don't even look clean from the countertop.

"No, nothing, but—"

"How about sex? Fucked anyone else since me?" she's asking so casually as she places the two glasses on the small part of her table that isn't covered in books, papers and boxes. She uncorks the wine bottle and begins to pour.

"What? No, but Minju... it's almost—" Your pointless protests are stilted by the young woman thrusting a glass of wine towards you, which you feel compelled to step closer and take. You stand across from her, glass in hand, staring at a face that's staring back.

"Me neither. Cheers," she says, tilting her glass toward you as an invitation. You clink them together and follow her lead, drinking the wine in one go. “That's the drink out of the way. Now how about a fuck?"

Minju places her glass onto the table and then she approaches, sauntering one foot in front of the other until her bare chest presses against yours.

"Time is ticking, I know." Her mouth is beside your ear, whispering into it and brushing the tip of her nose across your cheek. “But we can be quick."

She slides back a step, her hand taking hold of your collar, tugging you toward her as she takes another step. You pass by the table and you take the chance to place your glass alongside hers before she continues to draw you across the room.

You don't resist. Couldn't stop yourself even if you wanted. You step as she guides you. Follow as she leads until her hips rest against her kitchen counter. There you close the space, pressed together, looking into her dark eyes—tainted with want. There's something about Minju that makes everything simple. All the world, the noise, the games. All the expectations and pressures of normal life are foregone and stripped away, leaving only you, her, and basic instinct.

Your fingers cup her jaw, following the smoothness and warmth of her cheeks. It's a subtle action, a movement slow in motion yet so immediate in meaning. As you make your desires known, the sparkle that plays at the corners of her eyes draws your lips into hers.

You near a kiss until she turns away at the last moment, leaning herself forward and presenting her bare back to you. "What do you see?" she asks, looking back at you.

The soft curve of her spine paths her back all the way to the dimple at the base. You smooth the flat of your palm along her sides, touching gently across the silkiness of her warm, wet skin. Your lips come down, pressed to her shoulder and you brush the tip of your nose along her nape. And just like that, you're intoxicated by her. All sense and rationality abandoned. "You."

"Then fuck me." Her voice is sweetly coarse, a gentle whisper. You hear a faint noise escape, a gentle mewing of want.

And fuck you will. Your hands run over her, squeezing gently as you lower. All the while she presses and writhes herself against you, rubbing and stirring at your building lust, toying it further and further. Minju bends over more, backing herself against you until you're made to take a step back. She keeps her hands against the wood as she lowers her head further and slightly parts her legs.

You're quick to unbuckle your belt, pop the button, unfasten the zipper and slip your boxers low enough to take out your dick. Hard, ready, wanting, and there's an invitation in front of you. Bare and inviting, warm and moist, enticing and so perfect.

Minju turns to flash her eyes over her shoulder, holding the very image of invitation. So, with only that little cue needed, you slide inside her. One short stroke followed by a deep, stretching push, all the way, your hips crashing to meet her. Slow, sensual motions in and out as you grip her waist.

"Faster. Like you mean it." There it is. The thing you love and hate about Minju—the expectation, the challenge, the attitude, the need for more.

A few deep breaths and you grip a little tighter. Brace your legs a little firmer and with a shift of weight forward you drive harder into her and her mewl of approval spurs you onward. You hit a rhythm that suits you both. Her back arches. She sways forward with each motion before bucking her hips back, pushing you as hard as you're pulling, matching your want with hers.

As you both find comfort in your actions, a rhythm that doesn't chase a high but pleases wholly, Minju looks over her shoulder again with a question on her lips. "Who's Yujin?"

A quick answer leaves you. "Not now," you respond, while you pull at her hips and pull a whine from her.

Minju's voice is barely a whisper. She repeats the name, questioning it a second time and asking, "You didn’t tell me yesterday. Who is she?"

"Can't you let it go?"

"You have your cock in me. Least you can do is answer my question." Minju is smiling when she says it, showing her teeth with a look that just dares you to not do as she says.

"Fine," you reply and then slide your hand up her body, reaching to cup one of her tits while you fuck her. "Yujin is a friend," you say, and you know how unsure you sound. "And she's a friend of Gaeul and Wonyoung too."

"So, really, have you fucked her too?" The question is as blunt as she can possibly make it and Minju emphasises it further with a deliberate shake of her ass into you, driving her hips back to make a point.

"Nope."

"But you want to." This time, a statement, not a question.

"Why do you think that?"

"As soon as I mentioned her name I could feel you twitch inside me. Fuck me a little bit harder. You wish I was her." Minju laughs, a hand moving behind her back, snaking around to grip her own ass.

"I didn't. I just— It was you, I—"

"I don't care. Think about her if you want. As long as you fuck me." Minju is demanding, the statement becomes her prerogative. She bites her lip and plays with herself. She knows exactly the way to tease and taunt. "That's why you're even doing this? Did Yujin not show enough affection? Too high and mighty to put out? Or does she just not like you?"

"It's complicated." You slow your movements to a series of leisurely strokes. It gives you a moment to collect your thoughts and choose your words. "We've had... moments... but I don't really understand her. But fuck she drives me insane. She's this mystery and sometimes a contradiction and you know what, Minju? Sometimes she infuriates me with her teasing." You remember just earlier today, her little show in the changing room and how it led to nothing more. You hold Minju a little firmer with a tight grasp on her waist and her breast. The anger pushes your hips against hers with a little more force.

"Ooohh... someone is frustrated. It's fucking hot when girls play coy, isn't it? Seeing her and the power she has over you. Dangling the prize and not giving it to you." Minju arches her back and looks at you, a curl in the corner of her lips as she asks, "would you rather be inside her?"

"I'm inside you," is all the answer that comes. It is a grunting, panting whisper. You thrust a little deeper and a moan fills the air.

"Fuck me harder then, use me. Fuck me like I'm Yujin. Like I'm the fucking tease that's finally giving you what you want."

There's something about the way she's taunting and coaxing you that awakens this raw, carnal lust. How does she read you this well? She's got your thoughts down to the very emotion in such a perfect moment, in a time of emotional fragility, and in a way that's strangely flattering, a kind of praise in and of itself. And Minju is saying everything that excites you most about the way you think about Yujin. All of the want and the unfulfilled frustration. All of it validated.

So you fuck her. Truly fuck her.

And you try and bury into her how much Yujin affects you. You push Minju's hips against the counter, slamming her against it and she sends a couple of pots flying in her wake. "Yes, you want her like this," she says in between pants as your thrusts speed to new heights. Minju bucks her hips into you to meet your motions, but even as she braces herself as best she can, she cannot quite catch up.

"Take her as you take me," she cries, letting out the mewing moans with a chorus of gasps, one for every time you grind your cock deep within her, you feel a squeeze, the gripping of her walls, the milking, beckoning tightness. "Break her, like she's never been fucked."

"Ahhh Minju..." You grind in deeper.

"Yujin. You're fucking Yujin!" Minju calls.

You are driven to your deepest. One final stroke as Minju clamps her thighs together.

She yells her words in an abrupt, lustful explosion. "What does Yujin like? Does she like this?" Minju teases, trying to sound seductive despite the audible lack of air in her chest and the torrents of orgasmic energy flooding through.

"Fuck," you grunt, clapping your hips against Minju's ass. Your mind is a cocktail of reality and imagination. A beautiful girl in front of you. The image of Yujin taking off her dress in your mind. That fucking tease, showing you and playing with you and taunting you. She's smiling—they're both smiling. Minju and Yujin. Looking back at you. Smiling, goading, taunting, playing.

"Harder! Fucking harder!" Minju squeals with excitement as she throws herself against the surface in front of her, sending more things flying out the way onto the floor. You have a hand in the centre of her back, pinning her down while you slam into her throbbing cunt. Again and again, the slaps and the wet smacks resound with every impact. "Let it out," she squeals.

Her words stir an inferno, building a flame inside and its warmth fans out, spreading and warming every part of you. Its fire melting and burning you in its powerful force. And then with one last plunge, you hold yourself, pressing as deep into her as possible, filling her up and sending yourself bursting and exploding through her.

The rushing wave. Flooding torrent. Thunderous release.

Everything let go.

In her, and held fast, still spasming, still releasing, spilling, and pouring everything. Everything spent, empty, drained. You try and catch the breath that evades your racing heart and heaving chest. Sweaty and slick. Warm and tender. The exhaustion settling in.

It's all so fucking cathartic. A long-suppressed and repressed fire finally unleashed and given its time to burn. Unhindered and unchained, and all under the watchful eye of your own personal confidant, coaxing out what's been buried, releasing its lock, freeing its bounds.

"Now tell me... how long have you wanted that?" Minju asks, and the satisfaction in her voice makes it clear that she already knows.

With your pulse pounding and breath racing, you're not ready to face her just yet. It takes another moment, holding her, pressed against her, feeling the closeness in a way that you could almost say is romantic. Minju wriggles under you and releases a laugh.

She shuffles and slides away from you, forcing your still sensitive, softening dick to slip from her. Now she is facing you and it's a sight worth appreciating, but at the same time, so, so dangerous. Her beauty is special, but your mind is a mess.

"So..." Minju pulls her bottom lip into her mouth, trapping it between her teeth for a second as she dips her head then she laughs. "Did you have any other fantasies with her?"

"Minju." It's the most exhausted warning you can muster as you sink to the floor, sitting back against a kitchen cupboard.

"If it's any consolation. She's missing out. You're a great fuck. Just what I needed."

"Right back at you," you say, leaning back your head, exhausted, to rest on the cold wood. You stare up at the white ceiling, in a strange reminisce. It isn’t exciting but it’s preferable to your thoughts.

"Hmmm, that's cute." Minju is still standing beside you, using a piece of kitchen towel to awkwardly clean herself up. She wipes the thick, slick mess away and asks, "And look. What we just did, it's not weird. I get it. We're two friends just helping each other out. No strings."

You nod slowly, taking her sentiment.

"Don't worry. Yujin will know nothing. Our little secret," Minju says, patting your head. You sit for a moment in silence, Minju still by your side, she's getting herself a bottle of water now from the pack next to her.

"Minju?"

"Yeah?"

"Why is your place such a fucking mess?"

***

A/N: future parts will pick up in a smut sense with the other characters, promise.

also, I have no idea what i'm doing anymore with this part, I feel like this part isn't very good, but trust me, big things are coming.

#minju smut #kim minju smut #izone smut #yujin fluff #gaeul #rei smut #m reader #kpop fanfic #male reader #kpop smut #ive smut #ive fluff #folie a deux

848 notes · View notes

ode2rin · 1 year

Text

petty!rin is so baby girl i love writing him as much as i love clingy!rin | warnings: profanity and lil ooc | mentions of food

itoshi rin, likes to believe that he is one rational man.

he truly is. he is a man grounded with rationality, the real definition of calm and quiet. he prides himself on his ability to be stoic and composed at all costs.

he is one to be blunt, approach what’s wrong head on with his words that bleeds. never to cower, never one to hesitate.

truly indeed, itoshi rin is a rational man.

so, why the fuck is he in the kitchen, tightening all jars that he could see?

apparently, when rin is faced with the seemingly impossible mission of getting you to talk to him after a small (he thinks so) disagreement, all rationality goes out the window.

suddenly, he finds himself overcome with a desperate need to hear your voice, to mend whatever rift has come between you. and so, he does the only thing he can think of at this point: he heads to the kitchen.

there, he methodically tightens every jar he can find, each twist of the lid a small act of rebellion against his own calm demeanor. he puts your favorite snacks up high on the shelf, just out of reach, hoping that you'll come to him for help.

on a normal day, rin would never do this. this is nothing but a foolish, incredibly ridiculous, absurd plan. he would never do something like this, but he exhausted every rational option he had at his disposal. he already asked you if you wanted takeout (you just looked at him, you never say no to takeout), asked if you knew where his cleats were because he couldn't find them (of course he knows where they are), and his last resort was to play your favorite show in the living room in the hopes that you'd join him on the couch.

nothing worked. zero successful attempts. nada.

you are officially ignoring him for 5 hours and 36 minutes (not that he’s counting, the wall clock in the living room is just obnoxiously big for its purpose and it keeps reminding him of the time, yup, that must be it).

and rin thinks if this goes on for much longer, you might suggest sleeping in the guest room out of stubborness. no, rin thought of the idea.

there’s no way in hell would rin sleep away from you. that’s just vile torture in his book. a cold ass bed without you? sleep without you in his arms? (he might genuinely prefer to be locked in a room with shidou than have that). that is atrocious, he needs to prevent that from happening, or else he would really lose it.

seemingly content with his scheme, rin places himself on one of the bar stools at the kitchen countertop to wait, boring holes into the bedroom door you've isolated yourself in. if this doesn't work, pinning you down until you utter a word to him may be the next best (worst) option.

after what felt like an eternity (it was ten minutes, max) to rin, you finally emerged from your shared bedroom with a purpose, and that is to fill your grumbling stomach. making your way in the kitchen, you ignored how rin is intently watching every step you make.

you open one of the cupboards to get your leftover bag of chips from yesterday, only to be met by an empty shelf. looking up, you see the said chips placed two shelves higher than usual.

when did that even get there?

hastily, you reached out for a stool to reach it. rin can’t help but let out a silent huff at the sight of you standing on a stool. that stool must be fucking with him, because why is it conveniently there?

rin shifts expectantly on his seat when he sees you looking for the jar of dip you always combine with your chips. and the heavens must be siding with him as he sees you annoyed and struggling to open the said dip.

“let me.”

you were about to deny his offer when you felt his chest already pressing on your back as he reached out for the culprit of your annoyance.

“thanks.” you timidly uttered, but rin didn’t move an inch from where he was pressing on you.

instead, rin tentatively wrapped an arm around your waist and pressed a kiss to your temple. you felt the side of his jaw on your temple, his other hand rubbing smooth circles on your shoulders, tapping on it three times.

you shut your eyes tightly at the feel of his touch, "rin," you started, but you didn't know how to continue.

“i know. i was in the wrong,” he trailed off, tapping three times once again on your exposed collarbone as if the gesture was a language you two only understand, “i’m sorry, y/n,” he said, voice laced with remorse.

you looked over your shoulder to meet rin's gaze. his eyes were soft, and his expression held a hint of guilt that you rarely saw. he seemed to be waiting for your response, and you took a deep breath before answering.

“i only want what's best for you, rin. seeing you exhaust yourself like that hurts me,” you explained, turning to face him and resting your hands on his chest. “and i'm sorry for being immature and ignoring you. it wasn't the right way to handle things.”

immature? only if you knew.

he tightened his grip on you, burying his face in the crook of your neck. “i hate it when we fight," he mumbled, his voice muffled. “it hurts when you don’t look at me.”

taken aback by rin's confession, you struggled to find the right words to alleviate what you’ve done. instead, you tapped three times in his chest, right where his heart beats.

in which you earned a - “not more than i do,” reply from rin, suggesting he understood.

“as you should, rinnie.” you replied with a playful teasing smile.

ah, there it was - the smile rin loved so much. the smile that always promises him that it will be fine - you two will be fine.

if it meant earning that smile over and over again, rin wouldn’t mind throwing out every ounce of rationality from his body.

he’ll never tell you about it though, you’d tease him to death. besides, if you knew, how could he use the same scheme again?

note. i love this trope in books so much that it's everything i think of lately (˘･_･˘)

#☁️ my ode to you #once again #I AM CRAZY ABOUT ITOSHI RIN #itoshi rin x reader #itoshi rin #itoshi rin fluff #itoshi rin x y/n #blue lock x reader #blue lock imagines #blue lock fluff #bllk x reader #bllk imagines #rin itoshi x reader #rin itoshi

5K notes · View notes

holllandtrash · 7 months

Note

thinking about 6to1 lando and yn going to the chapel to scare charles and make him freak out but tell him its a prank later and then when the two are alone lando would deffo say something like i will marry you one day you. know that right?

another 6 to 1 blurb

"Don't even think about it."

Charles saw the post you were looking at, completely by accident because he just so happened to be standing right behind you when you came across the photo. He hadn't meant to snoop but thank god he did.

"Excuse me?" You locked your phone, placing it on the bar top in front of you.

"The chapel," Charles glanced at the phone screen and back at his younger sister, his baby sister. "Don't even think about it."

It was almost perfect timing, Lando walking into the hotel bar at that very second, wearing all black which now that Charles looked at him, noticed it contrasted well with your all white attire. Almost like you planned this.

"Oh mon Dieu," Charles breathed out, his face turning sickeningly white.

Lando helped you off the stool before reaching for your glass that had about a sip left of whatever cocktail you ordered. He twirled it, mixing the ice around before finishing off the drink, not even paying attention to all 5 stages of distress Charles was currently experiencing until you laughed, telling Charles to calm down.

"What's going on?" Lando asked, clearly having missed something. He slid his arm around your waist and that's when he noticed that Charles was about 6 seconds away from throwing up.

You opened your phone screen and showed Lando the photo of the F1 themed Wedding Chapel. Lando wanted to laugh, but he had walked into a perfect situation- he was always looking for ways to fuck with Charles.

You wearing white and him wearing all black, that was just an added bonus and Lando was going to run with it.

He handed the phone back to you and looked at Charles with the most serious expression he could muster, "Well, why do we think we came to Vegas early, mate?"

"Don't even joke about that," Charles warned.

Lando scoffed, "It's not a joke. You're welcome to come, but we were just going to elope."

You put your hand on his chest, tongue clicking against the back of your teeth in attempt to scold him but he only tightened his grip on your side and flashed you a smile.

Charles, truthfully, couldn't tell if Lando was being sincere. He wanted to call him out on his bluff but respectfully, he couldn't take any chances with the McLaren driver.

He turned to you instead, "You're not getting married without maman present."

"No but she knows," Lando interjected, a master of thinking on his feet. "Of course I asked permission first. And Enzo, asked him too and Arthur."

"But not me?"

"You'd say no."

"Of course I'd say no."

"That's why I didn't ask you," Lando chuckled. "Honestly, we asked Pascal if she wanted to fly out for this but she said as long we do another vow ceremony in Monaco she's fine to miss this Vegas wedding."

Charles hated that Lando had an answer to seemingly everything. You didn't hate it, but you were worried this was going to go on for far too long.

"Okay," you stepped in, a timid smile on your lips. "Lando's lets' just-"

"Eager, are we?" Lando's grin grew. "Come on then."

And then he took your hand and practically sprinted out of the hotel, leaving Charles wondering what the hell was going on. With his fingers squeezing yours tightly, he took a sharp right outside the doors and led you further and further into the Vegas nightlife.

He just wanted to give Charles a heart attack, Lando didn't even know where the chapel was.

"He's going to murder you," you told him once you'd finally slowed down.

"He'll calm down when he realizes I'm joking."

"He'll realize it after being arrested for murder."

Lando dropped your hand and draped his arm over your shoulders instead, pulling you closer as you walked side my side. He kissed the top of your head as your raised your hand up, reconnecting your fingers because let's face it, you always wanted to be holding his hand.

The usual magic of Vegas wasn't the same thanks to the construction of the paddock and grand stands, but you could still appreciate the energy that came with this lively city.

You had no idea where Lando was leading you. It wouldn't shock you to know that Lando also had no idea where he was going. You were happy to just be walking with him, pointing out the sights and fascinating characters you wouldn't see anywhere else.

You stepped into casinos, checked out a few different hotels, really just being typical tourists for a while, and purposely ignoring all of Charles' calls until Lando eventually took your phone before you let it go to voicemail for the eighth time.

"Mate we're just about to exchange rings, can this wait?" And then he hung up, sliding your phone into his pocket so you didn't have to deal with it anymore.

"You're insane, Norris," you told him.

"You love it."

"I do."

Lando stopped walking, eyebrows raised at your words and it took a few seconds to you to realize exactly what you had said. His stupid smirk made you blush and you pushed on his chest, giving him one of your typical eye rolls because what else could you do in this situation.

"You do?" Lando repeated. "I do, too, I mean. I do- I would, you know? Like- I do."

You laughed at his stammering, "What are you even saying?"

"I'm saying I'd marry you," Lando blurted out and even though his words were followed with the most infectious laughter, there was no doubt in your mind- you knew he meant it with his whole heart.

In the middle of Las Vegas, under the bright lights and suffocating sounds, there was Lando. Holding your hand and looking at you like he was getting a glimpse into his future. Maybe he was.

"I'd marry you," Lando repeated, no laughter this time. He glanced at your hand, your left hand, finger tracing over the spot where he sort of wished he was sliding a ring onto. "I don't- this isn't a proposal, Y/N, I don't have a ring, I wouldn't-" he chuckled at the insanity of all of this. "I wouldn't propose to you in Vegas, I know better. But I would marry you."

And what could you say to that? This wasn't a proposal, but it seemed to be a promise and you were good with that. A promise was all you needed.

You cupped his cheeks with your hands and pulled his face down to yours. He smiled as he kissed you, thinking about the day he would propose, the day he'd get to see you walk down the aisle. And not some cheap Vegas alter.

"I love you," you told him, lips brushing against his. "So much, Lando. I love you."

"Love me enough to marry me one day?" He asked, fingers resting below your chin.

Your lips curled back over your smile. Your faint nod was all Lando needed but you added a few more words, just to reassure him you were all his.

"All you have to do is ask."

landonorris

liked by ynleclerc, danielricciardo, mclaren and 1,184,003 others

tagged: ynleclerc

landonorris something about who's most likely to get married in vegas

view all 25,399 comments

carlossainz55 😮😮 no way

charles_leclerc oh mon dieu

landonorris we're brothers now charles_leclerc we are not

danielricciardo i feel like this is fake

danielricciardo but i would not be surprised if it was real

mclaren is this why you were late to the track walk on thursday?

oscarpiastri i owe logan $500 if this is in fact real

ynleclerc i love you but delete this before maman sees and thinks we got married in vegas

#6 to 1 series #6 to 1 #lando norris au #lando norris x reader #lando x reader #ln4 #lando norris x y/n

1K notes · View notes

sundays-sims · 1 month

Text

C Y P R E S S . (early access, patreon)

Hi everyone!

My new Cypress bathroom set is finally here! The set contains 23 new meshes, including lot of vanity counter variations, without and without sinks, wall cabinets. You will also find a vanity stool, a bathtub, some really chunky marble door frames (perfect for wet rooms & showers), towel racks, a mirror with a really cute foggy swatch & wall lights. I also made a fake marble half wall, you can add it right behind the vanity counters & use it as a small shelf.

Please note that this set is NOT meant to be a kitchen counter set, all surfaces are made separately, they have different width to maximize customizability & are all functional as surfaces (not kitchen counters). You can place them easily and seamlessly by having the cheat "bb.moveobjects" enabled in game & ALT key.

I focused a lot on bigger pieces this month but used a lot of my other set's clutter objects for the previews. All the cc used in the pictures is mine, except the windows. The windows are from the Soho set, by Felixandre. In regards of my cc, I used a lot of clutter from my previous bathroom sets (Lombok, Amed, Isla, & Ungasan).

I hope you enjoy this set & happy simming! ♥

↓ details & download link under the cut ↓

DOWNLOAD LINK : [X] (patreon, early access)

SET DETAILS:

Vanity Cabinets (6 versions) - 24 swatches

Tall Cabinets (2 versions, open & close) - 24 swatches

Floating Vanity Desk - 24 swatches

Wall Cabinet - 8 swatches

Single Marble Arch (2 heights) - 5 swatches

Double Marble Arch (2 heights) - 5 swatches

Vanity Desk Stool - 10 swatches

Mirror - 6 swatches

Wall Light - 2 swatches

Bathtub - 16 swatches

Marble Half Walls - 3 swatches

Deco Towel & Bar - 14 swatches

Towel Rack Shelf - 2 swatches

Single Sink Vanity - 24 swatches

Double Sink Vanity - 24 swatches

** cypress will be released (free) on May 31st**

→ terms of use / TOU ← / / → instagram ←

S. xx

#ts4 #simblr #ts4cc #sims 4 cc #sims 4 interior #sims 4 #sims 4 inspo #sims 4 cc finds #sims4 #sims 4 cc download

801 notes · View notes

fyorina · 2 months

Text

ᡣ𐭩 YOUNG GOD

FEATURING: dazai osamu

SUMMARY: after an agonizing two weeks, dazai finally returns to you and a much needed conversation takes place. {wordcount: 11.6k; fem!reader, sfw, romance}

AUTHOR'S NOTES: WOW I CAN'T BELIEVE WE'RE AT INSTALLMENT 5 ALREADY!!! this is so bittersweet i'm literally about to cry, i hope you guys have enjoyed badlands and i hope y'all join me for unreal unearth next week!! i got to add one of my favorite quotes in this chapter hehe you guys get extra points if you spot it. reblogs definitely appreciated!! i’ll reblog with the taglist as soon as it decides to show on the dash & in the tags!

WARNINGS: explicit mentions of past suicide attempts + past self harm & scars

SEE: BADLANDS SERIES MASTERLIST READ: UNREAL UNEARTH SIDE B

Dazai is exhausted. His ears ring and his bones ache, his feet are unsteady beneath him and his body pleads for him to rest. Around him, the other members of the Agency are ecstatic, he thinks he’s gotten more hugs in the past hour than he’s gotten in his entire life. A part of him feels warm—he feels like he belongs, and his place in the Agency has always been one that he’s questioned. On bad nights, he used to think that the last place he truly belonged was on one of those three bar stools all those years ago, that being a member of the Agency—more than just in name, actually being a member—was nothing but an unattainable dream, because how could he possibly belong amongst people who are so unfailingly good that it makes his tainted heart stick out like a sore thumb?

But now, Atsushi cries in relief at the sight of him and Yosano wraps him in a hug so tight that his already brittle bones threaten to snap; Kunikida’s throat spasms as he squeezes Dazai’s shoulder and Kenji and Kyouka throw themselves into his arms. Naomi and Haruno cling to his hands, while Tanizaki tears up in front of him with balled fists as he tells him that he’s missed him. Ranpo shoots him a wild grin and a salute and Fukuzawa pats the top of his head telling Dazai that he’s proud of him, and Dazai thinks he might cry because he feels like he’s finally found a home.

An incomplete home, but a home nonetheless.

Because even as he recounts his side of the story, watching hazily as Kunikida writes it all down, his mind is barely connected to his own body. His body feels prickly and his mind is muddled with fatigue, his brain throbs so painfully that he thinks he might actually be dying. He’s overwhelmed and anxious—the strain that the constant games of misdirection and manipulations with Dostoevsky has placed on him is finally becoming too much for him to handle. He’s on the verge of collapse and he needs to be somewhere he feels safe before that happens, and there’s only one place—one person—that fits that criteria.

You.

He doesn’t even register what’s happening as Kunikida, Yosano and Atsushi help Dazai out of the office and into the back of Kunikida’s car. Atsushi sits with him in the back seat as Kunikida and Yosano take the front—they’re driving him somewhere, but Dazai isn’t even entirely sure where, and his tongue feels too heavy in his mouth for him to even ask. Atsushi is talking to him, he might even be telling Dazai where they’re going but the words sound like a distant hum and as he tries to read the boy’s lips, it all just seems blurry and unfocused.

He doesn’t even know if you’re okay.

Queen captured.

The words ring in his head over and over again as they have since the moment Dostoevsky uttered them aloud, but he doesn’t know what Dostoevsky’s capture of you entailed. He doesn’t know if you were killed. You could have been killed. If Dostoevsky had a lover, a weakness that Dazai could target, then they would have been the first person that Dazai aimed to take out to throw the Russian off of his game, and he would show no mercy. You could be dead, for all he knows; no one in the Agency had mentioned whether or not they knew if you were okay, or if they had, Dazai hadn’t heard it.

You could be dead.

Dazai’s vision spins again, his stomach lurches as Kunikida takes a turn too wide—he can’t keep himself grounded no matter how hard he tries. He wants to tell Kunikida that he needs to see you, he needs to get to your apartment complex and make sure you’re there, and if you’re not, he needs to talk to your neighbors and make sure you’re at least okay. Until he does that, he can’t rest, no matter how much his body begs him to give in.

He loves you. He’s sure of it now. He knew it before he left you two weeks ago. He thinks he might have known it all the way back then on the night you rescued him at the shore, when you woke up in the middle of the night and sat with him on the couch after making him hot chocolate. He thinks he fell in love with the bright smile that lifted to your lips when he took a sip of the drink you made him and you realized he enjoyed it—no one has ever looked so happy to see him happy with something before, no one has ever cared enough about him for that.

He is so completely and irrevocably in love with you that Dazai doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to live in a world without you. The thought alone makes his skin crawl and his chest cave in. Before he met you, he had long accepted that he was destined to be alone, that he wasn’t a human but instead a thing caught between monster and man—he had accepted that he was incapable of loving, and even more so, that he was incapable of being loved.

You had changed his perspective on everything, you had changed it so absolutely that Dazai doesn’t think there’s any going back to how he once viewed the world, how he once viewed himself. He’s started looking forward to sunrises, if it means he could watch them with you. He’s found himself looking around Yokohama and seeing places to take you rather than scouting out places for possible attempts. God, he’s even saving his money—Dazai Osamu has never saved money in his life because he hoped that each day would hopefully be his last. He’s blow it on alcohol and food and stupid trinkets that he didn’t need, but now, he’s caught himself putting aside some of his paychecks so he can save up for a nicer apartment that the two of you can live in together.

Dazai thinks that he can’t breathe, his throat feels swollen and he brings one of his hands up to tug at the collar of the white sweatshirt he’s wearing, tugging at it as if it’s the reason that he can’t breathe properly.

Dazai can’t go back to a world without you. He can’t.

Next to him, Atsushi is reaching out to him, as if trying to get him to calm down and Dazai doesn’t even want to know what the expression on his face might be right now. Everything is crumbling and tunneling around him—Atsushi, Kunikida, and Yosano are all dissolving, the car doors are fading away, the buildings and the streets and all of the scenery is just disappearing.

Shit, he thinks, trying to figure out how the hell to ground himself. Shit, shit-

The car comes to such an abrupt stop that Dazai would have gone flying into the seat in front of him were it not for Atsushi throwing an arm across his chest to stop it from happening, the brakes screeching loudly and the car skidding. Yosano is pointing wildly, shouting something and Kunikida is shouting something back, something along the lines of her nearly causing him to get into an accident, but Dazai can only follow to where Yosano is pointing too, gaze dragging across the woman’s arm in the direction of the beach to the left of the car.

He wonders if he’s hallucinating.

His fingers are shaking violently as he reaches out to push open the car door, squirming out of Atsushi’s protective hold. He flings himself out of the car desperately, nearly crashing hard onto the concrete—the fresh air is almost dizzying as he inhales it, pushing himself to his feet as quickly as possible. His broken leg screams in protest, but Dazai ignores it, vision blurring for the sparest moment before it focuses in on the figure standing on the beach in a familiar long, tan coat.

His lips part to call your name but no words leave them—he’s not sure if it’s because he’s still half out of it or if it’s because he’s scared that if he calls your name and you don’t respond, it’ll confirm it’s just a hallucination.

But he doesn’t have to say your name, whether it’s just by chance or if you heard the brakes of the car screeching, you turn in his direction.

You’re wearing his coat; it’s too long on you—the tan edges are dragging against the sand and whipping around you as the wind picks up. But you’re wearing his coat and you’re beautiful; your expression shifts into one of recognition and then shock as soon as you see Dazai in the near distance, the sun is starting to set over the horizon and the soft orange glow casts an unearthly glow over you, and Dazai thinks everything about this is entirely unreal. He thinks that you might be some sort of angel, or some other type of divine being, and he thinks that he doesn’t even deserve to look at you, much less consider you his.

As he makes his way toward you, he can’t even put together all of his thoughts in a coherent manner. You’re alive is the first thought that rings through his head, the relief is almost debilitating. All of the days he spent with his heart in his throat, unsure of whether or not his decision had gotten you killed, have finally come to an end. The next thought that runs through his head is god, because he’s imagined this moment dozens of times since he first had to leave you. He’s imagined running to you, scooping you into his arms and swinging you around, holding you close and refusing to let go because Dazai doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to let go of you again.

Except that’s entirely how it doesn’t go.

Dazai barely makes it to you before his legs are giving out on him, as much as he tries to ignore the pain, it evidently becomes too much for his body to handle. He’s collapsing into you the moment he makes it to you. His head is still throbbing, his leg is screaming, his body is aching, but your hands are instinctively grabbing him to break his fall, his knees crashing against the sand, and Dazai just can’t bring himself to care about the agony. He doesn’t care that his body is coming apart at its seams, he doesn’t even notice as you lower yourself down into the sand with him.

“Osamu.” His name leaves your lips in a breathy whisper, one that’s riddled with disbelief and longing—something else too, but Dazai can’t decipher it in his muddled state. “You’re here.”

He tries to say your name, but he’s pretty sure it comes out garbled and unintelligible. Distantly, he can feel his fingers twisting into the fabric of his jacket, trying to clutch onto you as best as he can in spite of the numbness that still threatens to consume him. Then, your grip on him shifts from the instinctual grab into your arms wrapping around his waist, one hand splayed across his back and the other sliding up to cradle his head to your chest as you hold him close, and Dazai thinks all is right in the world again. He doesn’t want to move, he doesn’t want to think, he doesn’t want to do anything but just let himself melt into you.

The feeling of your touch for the first time in weeks is enough to chase away the creeping numbness and anxiety, and everything still hurts but all of it dulls in comparison to being in your arms again. Dazai’s breath is shaky, he teeters over the edge of collapse now that he’s finally with you, his weary brain betraying him as it uses the comfort of your arms as an excuse to finally surrender. His vision swims—he’s not sure if it’s from relieved tears or exhaustion, maybe both—his nose is flooded with the scent of you, the scent of home.

“You’re here,” you whisper again as if you can’t believe it; Dazai can’t even blame you because a part of him still fears that if he lets go of you, you’ll disappear, a cruel trick on him played by his treacherous mind. You pull away from him and Dazai’s fingers instinctively cling to you harder, trying to get you to stay in place, but his body is far too weak for it to be effective.

You lean back and bring your hands up to cup Dazai’s cheeks and it takes all of his willpower to not just let himself fall limp. Your expression twists a bit, he’s not sure what you see—nothing good, definitely. Yosano splinted his leg and cleaned up the wounds on his face, but his ability canceling hers prevents him from getting the wounds healed quickly, so his face is bruised and swollen, cuts litter his skin from when the elevator had crashed to the bottom floor.

He thinks he must look disgusting, he doesn’t even know how you can bear to look at him. But he supposes that’s not a new thought to cross his mind, he’s never understood how you can look at him the way you do.

“What happened to you?” you breathe out, and Dazai’s lashes flutter as your thumb ghosts over his cheekbone, eyes searching his for an answer to your question. Dazai doesn’t know how to respond, so he doesn’t, leaning into your touch. “God, Osamu, you look like you’re about to drop dead.”

“Are you calling me ugly?”

Even in his objectively terrible state, Dazai is able to croak out the five words, although he’s sure the playful lilt is lost in his fatigue. You stare at him for a moment, as if you didn’t hear him properly, but then your expression shifts into one of disbelief and your hand flies to your mouth to smother the laugh that he’s missed so desperately the past two weeks.

“Can you walk?” you ask after a moment, hand lingering on his cheek before dropping down to his forearm, squeezing gently.

Dazai winces at your words, shaking his head—he barely even made it to you, he’s not going to make it all the way to your apartment complex.

You let out a puff of air caught between a laugh and a sigh. “Guess we’re doing this again,” you say, a teasing cadence dancing in your tone. Dazai’s brows furrow a bit in confusion, but then you’re grabbing his arm and trying to heave him to his feet. “At least you won’t be pretending to be unconscious this time.”

Dazai struggles to help you as you do your best to get him onto your back; a nostalgic feeling sweeps through him as he remembers the first time the two of you met, waking up after a failed suicide attempt to find you cursing and complaining as you try to haul him back to your apartment. He wonders if you knew what you know now back then, if you would have still stopped to help him—but that leads him to a line of questioning that he doesn’t want to approach yet.

Do you know where he’s been?

Do you know his past?

Do you know everything he’s done?

He pushes the thoughts away.

As if the gods above remember the event and want the two of you to reenact it as close to the original as possible, he feels a few drops of rain splatter against his face.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me.” He hears you complain as you finally get him settled on your back. “Keep your gangly legs to yourself this time, I don’t need them knocking into me this time.”

“... I was purposely trying to trip you, you know?” Dazai admits, voice hoarse and weak and the smile curling to the edges of his lips is lazy but it’s real for the first time in what feels like forever. “I thought it would be funny.”

You gasp loudly. “I knew it! You’re such an asshole.”

Dazai laughs, letting his head fall into the crook of your neck—he wants to bask in the light feeling that’s replacing the emptiness in his chest, but a part of him can’t help but feel like this is only the eye of the storm.

Back in the car, Kunikida looks a bit worried as you struggle to get Dazai onto your back.

“Should we go help her?” he asks quietly, glancing over at Yosano.

But Yosano doesn’t respond to him. She has an uncharacteristically soft expression on her face as she watches you laugh loudly at something Dazai says. He finally looks somewhat coherent again now that he’s with you, still in pain but that detached, disconnected look in his eyes that had been terrifying Atsushi is gone.

“No.” Atsushi is the one to respond to Kunikida, smiling lightly as he finally drags his gaze away as he watches a genuine smile twitch to the corners of Dazai’s lips as you nearly trip and fall under his weight. “Let’s head back to the office.”

Dazai has been sleeping for hours.

You let out a soft puff of air as you idly comb your fingers through his hair, eyes tracing his face. His right eye is completely swollen, his lip is split, you can see bruises littering his neck that disappear beneath the bandages he wears, his leg is broken and splinted. Despite all of that, he still somehow looks at ease as he rests in your lap.

You’re not as at ease.

Well, a part of you is, against all of your common sense. Having Dazai back in your arms is far more comforting than it should be, with the conversation that needs to be had looming over you. The sight of him sleeping peacefully in your lap, the feel of his heart thrumming beneath your hand, the sound of his steady breathing, it’s all enough to alleviate your body and mind of the stress and anxiety that has been crippling you for the past two weeks.

He’s alive. He’s okay. He came back to you.

You find consolation in the thoughts—in the few days you were detained by the Hunting Dogs, all you could do was think about Dazai. Your mind raced with worst case scenarios and crippling fears. In spite of all of the allegations placed against him, you still love him—you’d known it well before he left and the relief you felt seeing him again before was enough to confirm it.

You think it’s dangerous, and maybe a bit stupid; a part of you knows that you should run for the hills, the crimes that Jouno Saigiku listed out are nothing to scoff at, and even putting aside morality, his former position as an executive of the Port Mafia should be more than enough to have you fleeing, if only because that puts you in danger too. No one gets to the position that he supposedly obtained without gaining masses of enemies and no one leaves it alive without doubling said enemies.

But you’re not running for the hills—not because of his crimes, and not because of the risk of being with him—and that scares you a bit. You’re having trouble reconciling the Dazai you know with the one you’ve been told exists. Even when you recall all of the times you woke up to find him staring out your window with an unsettlingly detached expression, eyes too still and too black to be normal, as if they absorbed all sound and light around him; when you recall all of the man’s strange idiosyncrasies that just don’t line up with the front he puts up; when you recall that night in Kyoto where he refused to divulge what his previous job was, you just can’t.

The logic fits, your brain can see it and piece it together, your heart just won’t accept it.

Your knuckles graze the side of his face, a conflicted expression crossing over your own.

You don’t know what to do.

A part of you doesn’t want him to wake up, because you know that when he does, you’ll be forced to have the talk that you’ve been dreadfully anticipating since you learned about his crimes and imprisonment. You don’t know what you expect from the conversation, you don’t know how to approach it, you don’t know what you want to know nor why you want to know it, you don’t even know if you should continue with your relationship with him and you don’t even know why that’s still a question in your mind because obviously you shouldn’t continue a relationship with him.

Your brain feels like it might implode.

You take a step back.

As you always do when you’re faced with conflict and feel yourself getting overwhelmed, you try to take a more logical approach. First, you make yourself a chart: pros and cons, always a favorite of yours, centering around Dazai and your relationship with him. Then, you make a list: everything else you need to know to properly weigh into each of the pros and cons.

Pros:

Dazai makes you happy. (An important pro, you think, maybe it’ll outweigh all of the rest.)

Cons:

138 counts of conspiracy to murder.

You pause.

Distantly, you wonder what your life has come to—making a pro/con chart with one of the cons being 138 counts of conspiracy to murder. You press your hand against your mouth, staring ahead as you reconsider every action you’ve taken to lead to this moment. Promptly, you decide to scrap the pro/con chart and move right on to the list of things you need to know.

What do you need to know?

First off, you need confirmation over whether or not the allegations are true—if they’re not, then you’re spiraling for nothing and you can move on happily in your relationship with Dazai.

If they are?

You swallow thickly. You need context—you’re not sure what type of context would justify those crimes, you don’t think there’s any justification for them, honestly, but there must be a reason as to why you cannot reconcile the Dazai that you know with the one you’ve been told exists. You like to believe that you’re good at reading people—although you’re definitely questioning it now—so there must be some context that you’re missing as to how the “alleged Dazai” became the “known Dazai.”

And maybe—just maybe—if you can understand that, then maybe you can still move on in your relationship with him. Because even if his crimes aren’t justifiable, people can change and it would be beyond you to scorn someone trying to do their best to become a better person. It’s not like you’re some squeaky clean, paragon of virtue anyway: your university and grad school is mostly being paid off by your brother’s blood money from the underground rings, and yeah, it doesn’t really compare to being a former executive to the most dangerous gang in Yokohama but it definitely narrows your room to judge.

You glance back down at Dazai.

Your eyes meet wide, tired brown ones that immediately shut as soon as he catches you looking at him, as if pretending to still be asleep.

“Dazai Osamu, we are not playing this game again.”

Dazai reopens his eyes with a sheepish smile but he doesn’t say anything for a moment. Slowly, his expression shifts, the corners of his lips furling downward as a mixture of realization and resignation pools in his eyes.

“You know.”

The two words are so unassuming yet so damning, your heart lurches and your stomach churns. Dazai isn’t looking at you anymore, he’s staring up at the ceiling, waiting for you to speak.

Is that confirmation? Just like that?

“I don’t know anything until you tell me,” you decide to say, your voice a bit tighter than you intended for it to be.

Dazai’s eyes draw back to you, studying you carefully. He looks conflicted—over what, you’re not sure. You think if he tries to blow this off rather than explaining it to you, you might lose your mind. You’re giving him a chance to explain on his own terms and if he doesn’t take it-

You reach out instinctively as Dazai starts to push himself off of your lap into a sitting position, fingers brushing his back worriedly.

“You shouldn’t be moving around,” you tell him quietly.

He only shakes his head, finally speaking, his voice so quiet that it’s barely audible. “Let me take you somewhere.”

S. ODA

The four letters engraved into the headstone before you have been weathered by time, you can see lichen creeping across the slate and stone flaking at the edges—enough for you to put together that whoever has been put to rest here has probably been gone for a few years. Questions itch at the tip of your tongue but you bite them, waiting for Dazai to say something instead so that he can lead the conversation.

He has yet to say a word. From the moment that he slid into the passenger seat of your car, the only words that he’s spoken have been directions to the cemetery. The conflicted expression that had been etched onto his face has finally disappeared, smoothing out into an eerily blank one that you can hardly stand to look at because you know only dark thoughts must be racing through his head.

You wrap your arms around your waist as another chilly wind whips around the two of you, grateful that you’d thrown a jacket on before leaving your apartment. Dazai is only dressed in his trench coat, too thin for the cold but he refused to wear anything else. You’re not sure why, but you have caught him burying his nose into the collar and inhaling, memorizing your scent as if it’s about to disappear.

“I officially joined the Port Mafia when I was fifteen,” Dazai finally says. You raise your eyebrows a bit, wondering just how much autonomy a fifteen year old has to willingly choose to join the Mafia, but you don’t voice your thoughts, waiting for him to continue. “I met Nakahara Chuuya, a current executive of the Mafia, that same year and we earned the moniker Double Black for being the most lethal pair in Yokohama’s underground. At sixteen, I was put in charge of the boss’s personal covert ops unit and I was promoted to executive for all of my accomplishments, youngest underboss in the Mafia’s history. I’d eliminated countless rival organizations, opened numerous new distribution channels for all of their illegal trades, and had a hand in planning nearly all of the major operations both within and outside of Yokohama.”

His voice is void of any emotion, a cold monotone as he speaks the words like a bland recitation of a prewritten speech; his eyes are too empty and far too still as he stares ahead at the grave in front of the two of you. It’s unnerving; somehow, you think you like it even less than the actual matter of what he’s saying.

“Until I was eighteen, I continued to be the driving force behind the Mafia’s rapid growth and ironclad control over Yokohama; while I was an executive, no foreign organization dared to try to usurp control over any of our territory. They’d give up their territory if they knew I was the one heading the expansion operations, because they were scared of me and because they knew it was a lost cause trying to defend against me. Whatever you heard about me, it’s all true and probably way worse than you could ever imagine.”

The silence between the two of you following his words is damning—the wind is too loud and the distant sounds of cars honking and brakes screeching is jarring. You can hear your heart thudding in your ears, you can feel your gut twisting, your fingers tremble from where they’re stuffed in your pockets. Dazai is a statue next to you, his eyes haven’t budged, his limbs are stiff. If you didn’t know any better, you’d think him a corpse

Your lips part to speak but no words leave then. You take a moment before trying again. “How did you end up with the Mafia?” you ask, your voice is much weaker than you intended for it to be.

Because that’s what you need to focus on—the context, that’s what you’d decided before he woke up and that’s what you’ll stick to, not what he’s done, but first how he ended up there and then why he left. You can’t imagine a fifteen year old willingly choosing to join the Mafia, so you think there must be more to the story.

For the first time since the two of you arrived at the grave, Dazai moves—it’s subtle, a twitch of his fingers and a tug at the corner of his lips but it’s gone in an instant, you almost miss it.

“I tried to kill myself when I was fourteen.” Bile rises to your throat almost as soon as his words process, you finally turn to look up at him but his expression hasn’t shifted at all. “The doctor tending to me ended up becoming the new leader of the Port Mafia. I was kept around as an insurance policy, and partly by my own volition, but I joined willingly at fifteen after turning him down several times.”

“Why?”

“I… thought something would happen. For so long, I just… couldn’t feel anything, and I didn’t see the point in living because of it. I thought that maybe the more extreme emotions—violence, death, desire—all of the things that are found in abundance in the Mafia… I thought that if I could be around people who display all of these things so plainly, that I would be able to see and understand what makes humankind human. I thought that maybe it would help me feel more human, and find some sort of reason to keep living.”

You exhale, eyes sliding shut for a second. You feel nauseous—hands lighty trembling as you desperately try to digest the large pill he gave you as quickly as you can because you still have more questions but god, what type of fourteen, fifteen year old feels so empty inside that he turns to the Mafia to try to feel something?

“You were a kid, Osamu. You’re not some incarnate of evil for ending up where you did, you were failed by all of the adults in your life,” you finally say quietly; you’re the one staring ahead now, and you can feel his eyes on you but you don’t dare to turn to look at him because you know that it’ll make you crack and you need to continue. Clearly something else happened when he was eighteen that led to him leaving the Mafia but what? Your gaze trails back to the grave in front of you, a sinking feeling in your chest. You take a deep, steady breath before asking your next question: “What changed at eighteen?”

“I didn’t leave the Port Mafia because I had some great epiphany as to the immorality of my actions,” Dazai snaps. His voice is tight and borderline antagonistic, emotion finally seeping into the monotone, as if he’s trying to convince you that he is what you claim he’s not. “I-”

He cuts himself off abruptly, his voice cracks, you lift your gaze to his face and your throat spasms when you notice the black pits have been replaced with the warm brown you’re used to, a vast array of emotions swimming within them, too many for you to pinpoint a single one.

“He was my friend,” Dazai finally says softly. “My only one, maybe. When he died, he told me that if both sides are the same to me—evil and justice—that I should become a good person, I should save people. So, do you understand? Nothing about me has changed since back then, and the only reason I’m on the side of the ‘good’ is because someone else asked it of me, not for any altruistic reason. I’m still the same now as I was then.”

“... I don’t think that’s quite true,” you tell him after a few seconds of silence, and you can feel him look at you and you can practically hear the bitter ‘what do you know?’ that he’s about to let out, so you force yourself to continue before he can. “I think that if someone had told me all of this a few weeks ago, I would’ve laughed in their face. I never once-”

Dazai scoffs. “So, you don’t understand,” he says, voice reverting back to that empty tone you hate, but his body is tense and he’s looking anywhere but you. “I’m good at putting up fronts, wearing masks depending on who I’m around; it’s how I learned to blend in with people. The man you know doesn’t exist. I’m a fraud, my blood runs black; when I’m pushed into a corner, I invariably fall back into old habits. I’ll never leave the dark and I don’t belong-”

“I think you’re wrong,” you interrupt him, recalling Yosano’s words from two weeks ago—he’ll never believe it himself. “I don’t think you’ll ever see yourself from an objective standpoint. I don’t think you want to believe that you’ve changed for the better, but I think you have. I’m not stupid, Osamu, and I’ve never been one to fall for people’s acts, no matter how good they might be. I’ve known something was up with you since that first night when I woke up and found you staring out the window, and still, I have never once doubted that you were a good man.”

“I killed people to get out of Meursault, I was willing to torture people to get information when the Guild showed up in Yokohama and then again when the Decay of the Angel arrived, I’ll manipulate anyone and everyone around me to see my plans through, I…”

Dazai is still listing off all of the reasons why he’s still a bad person, and maybe you should be listening but you can hear the way his voice is becoming increasingly more tinged with desperation, as if he’s intent on convincing you to change your viewpoint on him. You wonder if he thinks you’ll run, and then, you wonder if he’s trying to make you run—each sentence he speaks becomes more descriptive than the last.

He’ll find himself sorely disappointed, because you’ve already decided that you won’t run. You’re still not convinced that this is the smartest decision on your part; Dazai is dangerous and being with him is dangerous, not because of him himself, but because of the threats that still linger from his past, but you suppose love always drives people to do stupid things in its name anyway. Even now, as he lists off all of these terrible things, you can’t imagine your life without him—you think a life without him will be dull and gray, and you’ll always look back to the time you spent with him as the happiest you ever were, regretting the decision you made here.

You’re not the type of person to live a life full of regrets.

And whether he sees it or not, you think he has changed. You’re not the only one—Yosano, Atsushi, all of the members of the Agency see him in a similar light as you, but he’s so blinded by his past that he refuses to see himself in the present. Even the things he says now, all of it was done in the name of protecting the people he cares about, and that’s not something you’re going to condemn him for.

“I think he’d be proud of you.” You cut off his tangent with seven quiet words and Dazai goes utterly still and utterly silent next to you. “I didn’t know him, of course, but I think he’d be proud of the man you’ve become, Osamu. Change doesn’t happen overnight, you were surrounded by the dark for so long, and from such a young age, that it might take decades to remove its influence over you, but you’re trying and you’re saving people. I wish you could see yourself the same way I see you. I think he would be proud.”

You wonder if you pushed too far, sparing a glance his way. His brows are furrowed so intensely that you can’t hope to try to imagine what might be going through his mind, brown eyes flooding with emotion as he looks down at his friend’s grave.

“I’m not someone that was born to be with people,” he finally croaks out. “Romantically or platonically. I’m not right in the head. Manipulative, constantly trying to kill myself, prone to jealousy, pettiness and casual cruelty. There are so many people trying to kill me that I stashed guns in your apartment when you weren’t home just in case they came after me while I’m there—I don’t care if they get me, but they might go after me when I’m with you, or even go after you to get to me. Sometimes, I regret leaving the Mafia because I feel like it’s the only place I actually belonged because it’s the only place where I was actually good at what I do.”

You don’t speak, instead letting him list off everything that he thinks is wrong with him, laying out bare all of the things that he tried so hard to hide from you over the past few months. He can’t look at you, eyes trained ahead and you can see the way his fists are clenched in the pockets of his trench coats. He lowers his face into his collar again, burying his nose in the fabric before continuing.

“During really bad slumps, I can barely get out of bed even though I can’t sleep; sometimes I won’t eat for days unless someone notices and forces me to and if they do, I usually get nasty with them; and I’ll do just about anything to die. Atsushi-kun has had to fish me from more rivers than I can count, Kunikida-kun has had to drag me to the hospital after trying to overdose on pills or drink various types of poisons, Yosano-sensei has spent days watching over me because she didn’t trust me not to try again once one of them saved me.”

His voice has mostly returned to that cold monotone, but there’s a hint of emotion clinging to the edges that he just can’t wipe away, something caught between desperation and pleading. Your throat feels tight and swollen and you think that your heart might be shattering a bit with how he’s so set on pushing you away and convincing you that he’s simply too horrid to be loved.

“I can’t cook. I don’t clean. I hardly shower. I’m more often drunk than I am sober. I can barely go a week without trying to kill myself at least once. I suck at saving money because I figure I’m going to die soon anyway, so I don’t see the point in it. I have an awful lifestyle and more unhealthy habits than I can count. I've tried to change it but I always fail. I don’t know how to comfort people and when I’m confronted with conflict by people I care about, I’ll avoid them until I can act like nothing's wrong. I’ll be more of a bother than anything else, really.”

“I still want you,” you finally say quietly, watching as a distressed expression sweeps over his face.

“You really don’t,” he protests weakly. You wonder if he’s trying to convince himself of it, or you—maybe both.

“I do. I’ll take care of you.”

“It’s rotten work,” he breathes out, a last ditch attempt to persuade you away.

“Not to me,” you tell him firmly. “Not if it’s you.”

“I don’t deserve this.” Dazai shakes his head, voice so quiet that you can barely hear him. “I don’t understand—everything I told you and you’re still… I don’t deserve it. I don’t deserve you.”

“I disagree, but regardless, that’s hardly relevant,” you say absently, finally reaching out to loop your arm in his, resting your head against his bicep. “Do you want this? Do you want me?”

“Yes.” His voice is so hoarse and so low, as if he can barely bring himself to say the words out loud.

“Then it’s yours. I’m yours.”

Dazai’s jaw is clenched so tight that you’re worried he’s going to damage his teeth, he brings his hand to his eyes as if to cover the upper half of his face. You squeeze his arm a bit, comforting, eyes sliding shut.

“Everything I touch withers and turns to ashes,” Dazai rasps. “Anything I never want to lose is always lost. I’m scared that by being with you, I’m also killing you.”

“I’ll take that risk, if it means I can be with you,” you tell him, watching as he shakes his head, still refusing to look at you.

“You’re so damn stubborn,” he exhales quietly.

“You love me for it,” you tease lightly.

“I do,” he admits, and your eyes shoot open a bit at his words. You glance up at him, but he’s looking ahead, expression downcast. “And I’m sorry about that.”

“Are you apologizing for loving me?” you ask, a bit incredulously.

“Yeah. I am.”

“Osamu…”

Your voice is soft, you’re not sure what you want to say but you falter when Dazai suddenly looks down at you. His eyes are so exhausted, he looks like he hasn’t had any rest in years—his shoulders sag and his arms hang limply at his sides. You think that maybe you shouldn’t have agreed to all of this when he’s still recovering, but you also think that the fatigue is not just physical.

“I’m so tired,” Dazai suddenly whispers, resting his forehead on the top of your head. His voice cracks a bit over the word, you slip your arms around his waist, letting him lean into you.

“Then let’s go home, yeah?”

“... Yeah, let’s go home.”

When you get back to your apartment, it’s still dark but you know dawn will break soon; as Dazai stumbles over to your bed, you make your way to the window. You close the curtains so that Dazai will be able to sleep easily even after the sun rises, and then move over to your nightstand to turn on the dim lamp so you can at least see a little bit.

Dazai drops his coat onto your desk chair before he takes a seat on the edge of your bed, feet planted on the floor as he stares ahead at the wall. He looks lost, conflicted; you don’t know what to say to draw him out of it, so you decide not to say anything. Instead, you make your way over to him and take a seat next to him—your thigh brushes his, arms ghosting each other’s, and Dazai immediately leans over to rest his head on your shoulder, eyes sliding shut.

You lift your hand to cradle the back of his head, fingers idly carding through his dark locks. You feel him let out a shaky breath, the air hot against your skin, and you turn your head to the side, pressing your lips to the top of his hair, lingering for a moment before resting your head against his.

“Lay down and get some sleep,” you tell him softly. “I’ll stay with you.”

Dazai exhales, but he doesn’t budge from where he’s leaning heavily against you. “... I need to take off my bandages,” he finally says quietly. “They’re drenched in sweat and blood, haven’t had a chance to change them since I left… I don’t want to get in bed with them on.”

You pause and then ask, “Do you want me to go grab the new roll I bought? I can step out.”

“I don’t have the energy to put them back on,” he finally murmurs, and then a bit more hesitantly, he adds: “Can you help me take them off?”

You think your heart is in your throat. In the months you’ve been with Dazai, the only glimpse you’ve gotten of his body beneath the bandages was that day he showed up at your doorstep bleeding out and you had no choice but to cut through some of them to patch up the wound, and even then, you only saw the sparest bits of his body, only what was necessary to stop the bleeding. He’s been so careful to keep it hidden from you and now…

“Yeah,” you breathe out. “Of course, I can.”

You shift a bit so that you can kneel behind him on the bed, fingers curling around the hem of his white long sleeved shirt. You tap his arm gently, a silent ask for him to raise his arms, and when he does, you slide the thick cloth off of his body, leaving him in his pants and the bandages that cover every inch of visible skin besides his face and hands.

He was right, they do look disgusting—most of them are yellowed and frayed at the edges, as if they’d been drenched with water and dried several times over. There’s blood staining the bandages on his side and a black tarry substance clinging to the bandages wrapped around his waist. You lean forward and press your lips against his shoulder, over the somewhat clean bandages that are covering the skin there, and you can hear Dazai let out a sharp, shaky breath in front of you.

“Ready?” you whisper, fingers grazing the clip fastened to the bandages on his neck, holding them in place.

He only nods, so you press another soft kiss to him, this time to the crook of this neck, and unfasten the clips to unwind the bandages from around his neck. To your credit, your fingers don’t falter when a rugged, discolored scar is revealed, looped around his neck; it’s mostly faded, but it’s still rough beneath the pads of your fingers. Your eyes linger though, there’s no question as to what caused the scar and your mind instinctively draws back to all of the offhand comments and jokes that Dazai has ever made about ceiling beams and nooses and your throat feels a bit tight.

You dip your head down to press your lips against the nape of his neck, right over where the rough skin crosses. You can hear his breath hitch, you can feel the way he shivers, but you don’t say anything as you continue to unwind the bandages around his chest and torso. You’ve seen most of the scars that litter his back from when you’d had to patch up his bullet wound, but it’s different seeing them without the fear of him bleeding out fogging your brain.

They look much harsher against his pale skin now—the worst is still that deep, jagged one that runs from his shoulder to the corner of his hip, but you can’t help but notice that there are more that you hadn’t noticed that day. Most of them are various types of cuts and slashes, some deeper than others, and healed bullet wounds, your gaze is particularly drawn to the most recent one on his upper back. It’s fresh compared to all of the others, still red and easily agitated—your fingers brush over it for a moment before you lean in to press another kiss to his shoulder blade, right over where the worst of the scars begins.

You shift from behind him to sit at his side, dropping the bandages that had been covering his chest, torso and neck haphazardly onto your bedroom floor before reaching out for his right arm.

Dazai withdraws immediately.

His expression is guarded, you think that his eyes seem a bit glassy but you can’t tell with the dim lighting. You don’t say anything, and you don’t reach out again; after a few moments of him studying you, his shoulders slump and Dazai moves his arm so that it’s back in your lap. Your eyes trace his face one last time, making sure he’s okay, before you lift your fingers to start unwrapping the bandages, starting at his bicep.

The skin of his bicep is mostly clear—there’s one light scar cutting through its side, as if a bullet had grazed him. When you move down to his forearm, Dazai is stiff and you can see the discomfort on his face, but he doesn’t pull away, so you continue.

And you falter, because as you loosen the bandages to remove them, you catch sight of the deep scars lining his wrist and forearm. The skin is uneven and discolored, there’s hardly an inch of visible skin on his lower arm that’s not covered by the vertical scars. He’s staring at you, dark eyes heavy and inspecting your every reaction—he’s looking for something, and you don’t know what, but you just decide to do the same thing you’ve done every other time you finished taking off a set of bandages and lean down to press your lips against his pulse point, moving over to do the same to his other wrist after unwrapping the bandages there too.

Your gaze flickers down to his legs, where you can see the bandages on his ankles peeking out from the white pants he’s wearing, a bit too short for his long legs. You pat his thigh gently and say, “C’mon, let’s get you out of these ugly things.”

Dazai shifts up just enough for you to help him slide the loose plants off so you can toss them off to the side, leaving him in his briefs and the bandages wrapped around his thighs and calves. You move to kneel in front of him, instantly getting to unwinding them, starting at his ankle.

“Do you remember what you told me back then?” Dazai asks quietly, looking down at his lap instead of you. “The day we met?”

“I told you a lot of things that day,” you say lightly as you glance up at him, careful as you unwrap the bandages around his calves. You kiss his knee. “You’ll have to be more specific.”

“You said you’d change the trajectory of my life,” he murmurs, twisting his fingers absently.

Vaguely, you remember the words, smiling a bit in amusement.

“About the hot chocolate?” you question, laying a kiss to his other knee before shifting up to unwrap the bandages on his thighs; you make sure not to let the pain show on your face when you notice that his inner thighs are as littered with scars as his wrists and forearms, all of them dangerously close to his femoral artery.

“Yeah.” He lets out a puff of air akin to a laugh, but when you glance up at him, you see there’s very little amusement on his face. In fact, he looks more wistful than anything else. “You really did, you know? Not with the hot chocolate, obviously, but just… you. You did.”

You sit back on your heels as you look up at Dazai, taking his hand into yours before lifting it to your lips, kissing his knuckles softly. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” he agrees quietly. When he continues, his voice is hoarse, bordering on a plea, “Don’t ever go somewhere I can’t follow.”

“Somewhere without you?” you ask, a teasing lilt to your voice as you kiss the palm of his hand before letting go so you can move to unwrap the bandages from his other leg. “Sounds dreadful, I would never.”

He lets out a noise as if he doesn’t entirely believe you, as if it’s some inevitable fate that the two of you will face. So when you finish unwinding the bandages and push them off to the side with the rest of them, you lean up on your knees to cup his cheek, pulling him down a bit to you so you can press your lips to the corner of his.

“You’re stuck with me.”

“I think it’s the other way around,” he croaks out, and the wry laugh he lets out falls flat.

You squeeze his hand again before you rise to your feet, and when you do, Dazai’s throat spasms as you stand in front of him, looking down at him. He’s stripped bare in front of you now—physically, emotionally, and he looks at you with an expression that lets you know that you have the power to utterly ruin him. He’s trusted you with his heart, handed it over to you on a platter after having guarded it so desperately and carefully for so long, and you can see the vulnerability in his dark eyes as he watches you restlessly, waiting to see what you’ll do with it.

You lean forward again, pressing your lips against his forehead softly and then to his own, a chaste, innocent kiss that lasts no longer than half a second.

“I love you,” you tell him quietly.

Humans cannot live without a heart, so if he’s to give you his, it’s only fair that you give him your own—though realistically, yours has already been his for a long time. Your heart beats in his chest now, and his in yours, and you wonder if he understands the gravity of what that means but you think he does, if the way his expression crumbles has anything to say about it. His hands fly to your waist, dragging you down onto his lap. His fingers bite a bit too deeply into your skin for it to be comfortable, but you only wrap your arms around his shoulders and let him bury his face into the crook of your neck.

“I think I might’ve been born just so I could meet you,” Dazai admits, words thick and throaty, muffled against your neck.

You smile lightly, toying with the hair at the nape of his neck, turning your head to the side to kiss his temple. “I feel the same,” you whisper, because there’s no way anything but destiny led you to Dazai Osamu on that beach—one way or another, you were fated to be with him.

Dazai pulls his face from where he’s had it tucked in your neck to press his lips to yours; he kisses you desperately, hands rising to cup your cheeks. In one swift motion, he has you pinned down on the bed, hips and chest flush to yours, hand slipping behind your head to tilt your head so he can deepen the kiss, and you’re reeling at his sudden switch up, struggling to keep up with him. His tongue traces the inside of your lip, deceptively gentle compared to the way he has body pressed against yours.

Your hands fly to his waist, sliding over his bare skin, over all of the rough ridges of his scars and his body shudders against yours violently, unused to the feeling of someone touching him without his bandages as a barrier. He pulls back, tugging at your bottom lip softly before moving just far enough away for your lips to be brushing, sharing the same sliver of air. You can feel his breath fanning across your lips, it smells of the peppermints you have littered across your desk and distantly, you can’t help but wonder when he managed to steal one, but the thought is only fleeting. It’s dizzying, hot, so intimate that you think your heart is about to fly out of your chest.

“I don’t think I’ll ever get used to this,” Dazai breathes out, dark eyes searching yours as he speaks.

“Me neither,” you agree, and then you smile, leaning up to steal another kiss from him, and then another, and then another. “Good thing we have the rest of our lives to try.”

Less than a week later, you stand in the chaos of the Armed Detective Agency as they argue over a new case—and by they, you mean Yosano and Kunikida with Dazai occasionally making antagonistic comments to try to make Kunikida blow a fuse. You don’t really know what you’re doing here, you suppose the Agency doesn’t really care and you have nothing better to do anyway —you lost your internship at the Ministry of Defense, obviously, with all of the chaos that went down and classes have yet to start up again, and Dazai begged and pleaded for you to come with him to work because he ‘can’t stand having to look at Kunikida-kun’s ugly mug all day,’ but you figure it’s only because he wants to sneak off to you whenever Kunikida is distracted.

Like now.

Dazai has flopped onto where you’re lounging on the couch as he watches Kunikida and Yosano go at it, head resting on your chest, giggling to himself as Kunikida’s face goes red and Yosano looks increasingly more entertained. You’re idly playing with his hair as you scroll through your phone, distantly listening to the argument that you’re pretty sure Dazai instigated just so he could slink away from his desk.

It’s only a matter of time before Kunikida notices Dazai’s scheme and drags him off of you, but it’s nearly the end of the day anyway and you and Dazai are going to the theme park in the Kanagawa prefecture once he can leave work, so you’re excited. You think you’re going to ask Atsushi, Kyouka and Kenji to come along with the two of you, even if Dazai pouts and scowls over it, because they’ve spent most of the day talking to you when Kunikida was forcing Dazai to actually do his work.

“Ranpo will be here soon,” Yosano goads Kunikida. “We’ll see what he says.”

Kunikida’s eye twitches and he parts his lips to speak but before he can, the door to the Agency flies open and a familiar dark-haired man comes bounding in, snacking on a bag of sweets. Tanizaki follows behind him, looking exhausted if not a bit relieved to be back.

“Tanizaki got us lost three times,” Ranpo complains, making his way through the reception area toward the interior. Tanizaki looks disgruntled, as if he doesn’t entirely agree with Ranpo’s statement but is beyond arguing about it. Ranpo pauses next to the couches where you and Dazai are lounging. “It’s you.”

Your eyebrows raise a bit when you notice the thinly veiled irritation in Ranpo’s voice. Dazai looks up, eyes a bit narrowed, and both Yosano and Kunikida pause from where they were about to bring their argument to Ranpo, sharing a look with one another.

“Ranpo-san, don’t be ru-” Dazai starts to complain, although you can tell there’s a hint of tightness to his voice.

“First, everyone in the Agency ignores me when I tell them not to take this case; then, I go out of the way to warn you about the Hunting Dogs and instead of listening to me, you throw yourself into the heart of Yokohama and make yourself easy pickings for them,” Ranpo rants. “I don’t even know why I try.”

Realization strikes fast, your face feels a bit hot. Dazai sits up from where he’s laying on you, looking between you and Ranpo, a bit confused.

“... You were R,” you realize sheepishly, wondering how you hadn’t put it together sooner.

Ranpo all but sneers. “Aren’t you supposed to be an honors student at Waseda? I swear, sometimes I think I’m the only person in my life with brain cells.” he says snidely, pointedly raising his chin and looking away from you as he adds: “I suppose your arrest wasn’t entirely a bad thing, though—made the police force more willing to open their eyes with their wives and family members going off the deep end about the Hunting Dogs. But still, after all the effort I went through to get that warning to you…”

He finishes with a loud scoff, but you’re more focused on the aghast expression on Dazai’s face as he looks at you, and you brace yourself for the conversation that’s about to come, wondering how the hell you’re going to get out of it.

“You got arrested?” Dazai blanches, eyes wide and face a bit pale.

You wince, laughing a bit sheepishly. “Yeah… ha, look at us, in jail at the same time! Couple goals, huh?”

Dazai doesn’t look half as amused—a mix of disbelief, guilt and a hint of anger all visible on his face. You don’t know where the guilt is coming from, but you figure he must blame himself for it somehow, which you think is a bit ridiculous because it was your choice to let yourself get arrested when you had the chance to flee. You think that your trip to the amusement park is going to be tainted now, because you know that as soon as Dazai gets the chance, he’s going to bully you into an interrogation over what happened, so to salvage the night and spare yourself the headache, you finally make your move.

“Atsushi-kun, Kyouka-chan, Kenji-kun, Osamu and I are going to the amusement park later, you should join us!”

The look Dazai gives you is nothing short of betrayal, but luckily, Atsushi, Kenji and Kyouka, who’ve all lit up at your words, excited, can see it from where they’re sitting. You smile sweetly up at Dazai, leaning up to steal a kiss; he is disgruntled, narrowing his eyes at you.

“Oh? The one in Kanagawa?” Yosano suddenly asks, interested. “We’ll come too.”

Dazai buries his face in your chest, letting out a muffled groan. Yosano tosses you a wink, seemingly having forgotten about her argument with Kunikida as she throws her arm around the man and gives him a sharp look.

“Won’t we, Kunikida?” she asks with a terrifying smile. Kunikida looks as if he’s going to protest but before he can, Yosano’s arm around him tightens. “Won’t we?”

“Fine,” Kunikida bites out, looking none too pleased. “I need to hurry and finish this report then, so let go.”

Ranpo points at you. “You’ll fund my cotton candy for the night as an apology for the unnecessary headache,” he declares and you let out a huff of laughter in agreement.

“Can Naomi and I come too?” Tanizaki asks, a bit hesitant as he glances at you and notices the way Dazai has slumped into your chest, defeated. “We’ve only been once when we were kids. It’d be fun to go back.”

“‘Course,” you agree easily. “Dazai and I are gonna head out now though, I have to run to the store before we go.”

Kunikida only waves you off—he probably doesn’t even register what you asked, too focused on getting his report done—so you push Dazai off of you and rise to your feet, stretching because your back has become a bit sore from lounging around all day. Dazai nearly topples onto his ass, shooting you an accusing look before standing up straight.

You hold your hand out to him, he takes it, looking a bit mollified.

“See you in a bit,” you tell the Agency, and you get various different goodbyes as you leave the office.

As soon as the door shuts behind the two of you, Dazai is scowling at you. “You’re devious,” he claims. “Inviting them all to avoid a much needed conversation. Diabolical.”

“Learned from the best,” you coo, leaning into him and nudging his arm with your shoulder. He rolls his eyes, you grin. “Please, you and I both know you would spend the whole night trying to talk about it if we go alone and it would piss me off. We can talk about it when we get home.”

“And now.” The smile that Dazai gives you is all teeth, you grimace. “How did you get arrested?”

You just shrug. “They asked me for information, I refused to give it. I figured if they were going to come after me one way or another, it’s better that it happens in public—people don’t really take kindly to watching someone get arrested for associating with an organization that they’ve all associated with at some point or another because they’ll get scared that they’re next.”

Dazai looks at you, distinctly impressed. “You are devious.” He sounds proud, your cheeks heat up a bit, but then his expression drops again. “But still reckless. You could’ve been killed.”

“But I wasn’t.” You wave him off and then absently bid goodbye to the cafe owner and his wife as the two of you leave the cafe and make your way down the street to where you’d parked this morning.

“But you could’ve been,” Dazai stresses the words, he’s a lot more tense than you expected, his jaw is tight. He catches the way you’re looking at him and shakes his head, letting out a puff of air. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?” you ask, brows furrowed.

“It’s my fault,” he tells you, and you immediately scoff, rolling your eyes. “It is, you don’t understand—I was with Dostoevsky in Meursault, I had to make a decision-”

“Shut up,” you tell him, irate. His mouth shuts instantly. “Stop acting like I have no autonomy. I knew what I was walking into, I chose to do it anyway. That’s the end of it, stop blaming yourself for every little thing that goes wrong, Osamu. You’re only human, you can’t control everything.”

You can tell that Dazai doesn’t believe you, but that’s an argument for another day. Luckily, Dazai doesn’t look too keen on pressing the subject anyway. Instead, conflict sweeps over his face as he studies you.

Finally, he asks quietly, “You never doubted the Agency?”

You let out a sharp laugh. “Are you kidding? There’s no way anyone’s going to convince me that the people in that office building are terrorists. That’s absurd, I figured there was something supernatural going on, just didn’t know what.”

Dazai looks at you, disbelief painted on his face. You’re not sure why until he lets out his own laugh, shaking his head. “The Decay of the Angel had a reality altering book,” he explains, eyeing you as the two of you continue down the sidewalk. “And you managed to somehow subvert the reality they created with it.”

You can’t tell if it’s a question or not, and for some reason, you feel distinctly seen as he looks down at you with an indecipherable expression. So you just shrug. “They shouldn’t have written such a ludicrous reality, then,” is all you say, a bit awkwardly.

Dazai only laughs again, slinging an arm around your shoulder. You lean your head into him, smiling softly. You bask in his presence, letting the warmth of the setting sun wash across your face as you share a few moments of silence.

As the two of you reach the parking garage you’d parked in, Dazai suddenly stops, looking down at you. “Do you believe in fate?” he asks quietly, uncertainty in his eyes as he watches you for a response.

“Yeah,” you tell him. You’ve always believed in fate, and you believe in it a bit more after meeting Dazai, because somehow you know that you were always destined to meet him, that your fates have been intertwined since the moment the two of you were born. You simply cannot imagine a life without him, not in this world or any other. “String theory, multiverse, I think the world’s a lot bigger than just ours. Why?”

You glance up at him curiously. “You do?” he asks a bit distantly, leaning down to ghost his lips against your forehead. Then a bit more hesitant, he continues, “If you think there’s more worlds like ours… do you think we’re together in all of them?”

You snort, which is obviously not the reaction Dazai expects from the way he jolts, but before he can take offense to your reaction, you speak.

“Definitely,” you say so confidently that he almost looks taken aback. “I’ll find you in every universe, you can count on it.”

You think he looks beautiful right now as the sun finally sets over the horizon, the pale orange tints of the coming dusk making his skin glow, his eyes soft and fond, full of longing as he looks down at you. You’re struck with a distinct urge to kiss him, but he looks so divine in this moment that you can hardly bring yourself to move, spellbound as you admire him.

“Yeah,” he finally breathes out, “I will.”

i don’t even really have words guys 🥹 i’m literally about to weep i can’t believe it’s over

#ᡣ𐭩 carina’s archives #dazai x reader #dazai x you #dazai osamu x reader #dazai osamu x you #bsd x reader #bsd x you #bungo stray dogs x you #bungo stray dogs x reader

531 notes · View notes

upsidedownwithsteve · 10 months

Text

Simmer #5

CH5. Wake 'n' Bake | The Menu [4.9K] Eddie Munson x shy fem!reader: a line cook au.

“Well, you don’t know what we can find. Why don’t you come with me, little girl? On a magic carpet ride.”

The diner was quiet and the radio was louder than usual, lilting through the kitchen and between the empty tables. It was a too hot Sunday, with most of the usual clientele swapping leather booths for loungers by the community pool. Only Mr Creel sat in his usual stool by the bar, parked perfectly underneath the TV screen that was playing the same old western movie that came on every day at three o’clock. Jonathan was manning the counter, pouring the old man refills when he grumbled, whistling as he went.

Everyone else had either gone home earlier or was preparing for the night shift that started at eight that evening. The diner was too hot, the old AC barely keeping up, blowing out a whisper of cool air that you and Jonathan had taken turns standing under, watching the glass door for any signs of life out on the street.

None came.

So you’d long taken off your apron and after some internal arguing with yourself, you had plucked up the courage to push the doors to the kitchen open. There wasn’t much happening there either. Eddie was the only chef in, clock watching until there was a customer to feed or for when Argyle would arrive to take over the next shift.

And now? Well, now you think you were just annoying him. But he was allowing it, and that was something.

“And what’s that?” You asked for the fourth time.

You were hunkered down on the stool you’d dragged over to Eddie’s station, elbows on the stainless steel and your cheeks squished between your hands as you watched the boy work. He’d told you and Jonathan he’d made some lunch, and after some back and forth (Eddie argued enough until Jonathan gave in), Eddie was making some ramen.

“It’s gochujang,” Eddie mumbled back. He was too busy concentrating as he tapped a teaspoon of the red paste into the pot on the stove. He was more relaxed than you’d seen him, with no big orders to cook, he’d been humming along to the radio, his curls knotted on the top of his head to keep himself cool. He’d merely smiled when you plopped yourself down at his table. “And if you ask me what something is again, m’gonna put you in this pot too.”

You didn’t take offence, not anymore. You scrunched your face at him. “Mean,” you said. “When’s it ready? It smells real good.”

“Soon. And I’m not mean,” he grumbled back, tossing some ramen noodles into the pot that had been ready to overspill with bubbles. “You’re annoying.”

You gasped, all faux dramatics. “And he’s rude too,” you told no one. You grinned when Eddie rolled his eyes and shook his head, but when he bent over to chop up some spring onion at a scarily fast speed, you saw him smile. “Can I do anything?”

“You could get us some drinks,” Eddie suggested and he peered out of the hatch at the empty tables. Mr Creel glared back. “Seeing as you know, you’re not doing anything. At all.”

You huffed but there was a laugh under it that Eddie was beginning to recognise. He raised his brows at you as you let your sneakers slap onto the floor, hands pushed to the worktop as if getting up was an awfully exhausting thing. “I suppose I could manage that,” you told him wistfully. “If you’ll cope without my help for five minutes.”

Eddie snorted, stirring a delicious smelling broth he had simmering in another pot. He levelled you with a stare that a month ago, would’ve made your stomach churn with nerves. “I’ll try,” he played along. “I’ll tell Jim it was your fault if the kitchen burns down though.”

“Snitch. Coke?” You asked him as you made your way to the door.

“Just the one line, sweetheart, I’m driving,” Eddie smirked back.

He had an adorable habit of letting his head tilt to the side when he joked with you, as rare as it sometimes could still be. Dimples in both cheeks, stray curls over those big eyes, thick lashes that he liked to bat at you when he thought he was being real funny. It was becoming a problem.

“You’re hilarious,” you told him flatly from the other side of the hatch, shooting some soda from the gun into a glass for him. “Jonathan, coke?” You called to the other boy from across the diner, holding up an empty glass for him too.

“Shhh!” Mr Creel hissed at you, teeth bared, brows furrowed and you grimaced back, a smile that wasn’t customer service worthy but you’d long learnt to stay away from him.

“God, stop annoying the customers,” Eddie told you when you came back in holding two pints of coke, he was grinning as he ladled your lunch into a big blue bowl, letting his eyes settle on you as you passed him his drink.

“Don’t tell Jim,” you joked, but the humour in your voice fell flat as you watched Eddie bring the glass to his lips and gulp the fizz down.

His neck bobbed as he swallowed, chin tilting up and back as he led his eyes flutter close and you could help but stare at the line of his jaw, the up and down of his Adam’s apple, the push of his lips against the cup. Your mouth felt dry, your head a little empty and when he opened his eyes and put the empty glass down, you were still staring.

“What?” Eddie was staring back.

You shook your head, words unable to form. You stuttered and stammered and shrugged your shoulders, gripping tightly to your own glass. “Nothing,” you finally managed. “What?”

“What?” Eddie squinted at you.

“What?” You asked again, before you could help yourself and you realised too late that you’d asked him a question there wasn’t even an answer to. “Shit.”

The corner of the boy’s mouth lifted and he looked at you, amused, if not a little concerned. “Okay,” he drawled, sliding your lunch over to you. “Here, eat. Lack of good food must be makin’ you loopy or somethin’, christ.”

So you ate in silence, sitting across from Eddie and exchanging shy smiles as he watched you hum at each flavour, nodding at Jonathan when he slapped him on the back in thanks, taking his own bowl outside so he could smoke at the same time. It was a new kind of friendship that still made you nervous, too aware when Eddie looked at you - like, really looked at you. Eyes earnerst, watching, gauging what you liked and what you didn’t. He knew that a scrunch of your nose meant you were unsure, a little taptaptap of your feet on the stool meant you loved it.

He still made you shy, even though you spoke more. Stomach dipping and somersaulting when he called your name out of the hatch, some kind of plate made up for you, grouching good naturedly about how you needed to stop skipping meals. It made your heart jolt when he got too close, when fingers brushed as he passed you a bowl of fruit, a sandwich you could inhale between serving tables.

But then again, maybe that wasn’t nerves. Maybe that was just the crush you were telling yourself you didn’t have.

It was becoming harder to lie.

“Good?” Eddie asked like always, letting his foot kick gently against yours. He’d finished his own bowl and was watching you with a fond look on his face as you wrestled with the last few noodles.

You nodded and hummed happily, “mhmm. Could’ve done with some more salt though.”

Eddie did a double take, lips parted to argue because he knew that broth was damn perfect, before he realised you were joking. He narrowed his eyes at your grin, tried to hide his own smile when you laughed.

“Oh, she’s actin’ real cute today, huh?” He snarked but everything about him told you he thought you were hilarious. He took your empty bowl from you, poked at your shoulder with a chopstick. “The self proclaimed crybaby s’gettin’ bold.”

It was a meaner type of teasing that you’d grown used to, but still, you wrinkled your nose at the boy as your cheeks burned, head ducking down at the memories of your teary eyed encounters with certain customers. You heard Eddie laugh as he dumped the bowls in the sink, but it wasn’t a cruel sound at all. And when you lifted your chin back up from your chest, he was back on the other side of the work station, elbows on the stainless steel and leaning over to you. Close. Closer than before.

You blinked and Eddie smiled, a lazy, knowing thing, his eyes darting over your face like he was able to read you. Maybe he could. “There she is,” he murmured softly. “Shy thing.”

“Oh my god,” you tried to joke weakly, your voice a soft, embarrassed drawl. “Stop.”

It made Eddie laugh, a wide grin pushing at his cheeks until the dimples you rarely got to see appeared. You wanted to push a finger to one, to see if the tip of it would fit perfectly into the dip. You sat on your hands instead.

“What?” The boy asked. “She’s got no jokes now?” But he smiled a little softer and went back to preparing the dough for tomorrow’s rolls, not saying anything else when you leaned back over the counter to watch. If you’d looked up, taken your eyes off the way his big hands kneaded at the sticky mess, you’d have caught the boy watching you, still smiling. Awfully fond.

—————

“Hey,” you interrupted a while later, once Robin had arrived to take over you shift, once Argyle was throwing some burgers on the grill for the customers that had finally shown up. “What’re you doing tonight?”

Eddie looked a little startled as he closed over his locker, chef whites in a bundle in his bag, ready for washing. He blinked at you, pretty, pouted lips parted as he wondered where this conversation would lead. “Uhh, I- I dunno. Probably gonna go home, roll a joint and wait for another day in this shithole to start. Why?”

You wondered if Eddie could hear your heartbeat. ‘Cause it echoed in your ears, inside your head. A thud that made your mouth feel a little dry and suddenly the bravery you’d felt when asking that question melted away with the boy’s gaze on you. You weren’t sure what you’d planned to ask. Maybe if he knew of any good films to rent. Maybe if there was a nice park to explore. Maybe if he’d want to hang out—

“That sounds like a really good night,” you said instead, a nervous laugh following your words and Eddie’s brows shot up in surprise.

“You smoke?” He asked in disbelief.

You shrugged, leaning back against your locker as you tried not to sound completely uncool. “Kinda? Not really. I don’t like to smoke it but- but I’d sometimes, you know, bake some brownies or something. I haven’t done it in a while, but—” you wrinkled your nose. “—moving to a new city really makes you wanna just… get really fucking high.”

Eddie was laughing and nodding, beaming at you with a pink flush covering his cheeks. You watched him swallow hard and then gesture to the door. He almost couldn’t meet your eyes when he said, “d’you, uh, wanna come hang out? Smoke with me?”

It took Eddie a whole ten minutes to drive to his house. A trailer that was tucked into the back of the park you passed every day. You shot him a look when he parked up and he rolled his eyes, like he knew what you were about to say.

“You drove me all the way home that day, when you live, like, seconds away from—“

“Oh, shut up,” he told you, scrunching his face. “It was a fuckin’ tsunami that day. You weren’t walkin’ anywhere.” He nipped his fingers playfully at your knee as he bent over to snatch his rucksack from the footwell. When he sat back up, he was too close. You held your breath. “Besides, Wayne told me I had to, remember?”

It was your turn to roll your eyes then, shoving at his shoulder as he cackled. “God, you’re such a gentleman.”

He was still laughing as he jumped out the van, surprising you as he appeared at your door to open it as you busied yourself with gathering your bag and jacket. Eddie waved his hand in a dramatic gesture as you got out, eyeing him suspiciously.

“I’m gentlemanly enough to be sharing my weed with you, sweetheart, don’t put me down too much.”

It made you soften and you followed him to his front door, the trailer humming from a generator you couldn’t see. “Thank you,” you told him shyly. “For this. For the invite.” Somewhere in an ugly part of your head, was an even uglier voice that was telling you you’d made him feel bad enough that he had to invite you. That he felt sorry for you.

You told it to shut up.

But Eddie turned the key and looked back at you over his shoulder, his eyes soft. “S’alright. What’re friends for?”

You blinked, unable to help the smile that spread across your lips. Your cheeks ached with it. “We’re friends, huh?”

Eddie walked into the trailer and waited for you to follow. “I know,” he drawled dramatically. “I don’t know how it happened either.” He was grinning, an awfully pretty thing.

You didn’t know what to say, or do, for that matter. This felt close to flirting, something that made that horrible crush you had rear up in interest, it’s heart pounding. But maybe that was just your own.

“Here,” Eddie gestured to a small dining booth, a c-shaped bench around a little table. He cleared a pile of laundry from it and looked flustered as he decided where to put it. It got thrown onto an armchair in the corner. “Sit down, you want a drink?”

That’s where you sat with a can of soda, watching with a stuck laugh in your throat as Eddie upended his tiny kitchen, looking for the bag of flour he insisted he had. “I swear, it’s in here,” he told you, holding various jars of spices and cake moulds. “What the fuck?”

“You’re supposed to be a chef, Eddie.”

“I know,” the boy wailed mournfully, swearing when he dropped a whole tub of dried fruit, chocolate sprinkles and vanilla pods. “Shit, kid. Looks like you’re gonna have to be a big girl and smoke up.”

He turned, raising his eyebrows at you like a challenge. You huffed, tipping your head back so he wouldn’t see the panic in your eyes. “Fine.”

And that’s how you ended up in Eddie’s bedroom, a space filled mostly with his double bed, a glaringly personal thing that you felt like you couldn't even look at. But he blushed and spread back the unmade sheets, fluffing up his pillows before he told you to make yourself at home. So you perched on the edge and toed your sneakers off, watching as Eddie flitted around his room, kicking things under the bed as he went, pushing cook books and comics back onto his shelves. Then he plopped himself down beside you, knees almost knocking, an old tin lunch-box on his lap. He flipped the lid and grinned as he produced an already rolled joint, wagging it in front of your face.

“A chef is always prepped,” he whispered conspiratorially.

“You’re a dork,” you whispered back but you leaned into his pillows as he brought it to his lips.

A lighter flickered, a flame lighting up his face in amber just for a second or two, and then he was blowing a cloud out towards his open window. You watched Eddie’s eyes shutter closed, pretty lashes fanning over his cheeks and his lips hung open for a second or two, letting out a sigh along with blue-grey smoke. He let his shoulders drop, his head roll. Melting, like butter in the heatwave.

Then, “here, have at it, sweetheart.” Eddie handed you the joint, careful that you didn’t burn yourself on the glowing ash. He watched you take it dubiously, eyeing it with caution as you prepared yourself to bring it to your lips. You cringed a little, inhaling too sharp, too quick, coughing it all back out before you could even inhale it properly.

You were mortified, coughing into your hand as you handed the joint back to Eddie blindly, eyes tearing up, blurring him and his room. He took it quick, making sympathetic noises as he rubbed his other hand down your spine. He waited until you wiped at your eyes, until you managed to catch your breath. “You alright?”

You wanted the ground to swallow you. “Mhmm,” you managed, keeping the heels of your palms pressed to your eyes, just so you wouldn’t have to look at him. “Sorry.”

“Nah,” Eddie said quietly, voice soft. “None of that, c’mon. You want another drink?”

You ignored him, reaching for the smoke instead, insistent on showing him you weren’t a complete loser. But Eddie tsked and held it out of your reach, frowning at you with concern. You wanted to tell him you’d almost missed that stitch between his brows. “Hey, woah, slow down, yeah?” Eddie knocked a hand into your knee, a comforting touch that didn’t push either of your boundaries. Yet. “You sure you wanna smoke? I can run back to Jim’s, see if I can smuggle some flour and we can make brow—”

You shook your head emphatically, not wanting to be any sort of annoyance. “No, no, it’s fine. I can try again.”

You weren’t sure if it was the setting sun that was coming through Eddie’s window that was turning his face fuschia, or if he was suddenly blushing something furious. It took him a second or two to meet your gaze and when he did, you saw a shyness there you’d never really seen before. Eddie was blushing.

“I could, uh,” the boy cleared his throat noisily, awkward and fumbling. He gestured to the joint he still held, to you, to himself. “I could, I could help. I could help you. You know?” He frowned at himself, annoyed at his own stuttering.

You frowned too, confused. “No?” You replied, unsure. Your hands were fisted in his sheets, a nervous reaction.

“Shotgun. I could, well— I could shotgun you.”

“Oh.”

The room suddenly felt infinitely smaller. Warm and intimate, soft with the last of the sunlight, dust motes floating in the rays that came through slats of the blinds. You were on Eddie Munson’s bed. With Eddie Munson. You sucked in a breath. “Okay.”

“Okay?” Eddie seemed as surprised as you were at your answer but you nodded firmly, keeping your gaze on his, your chin lifted in a boldness you so rarely felt. So Eddie nodded too. “Right. Um, yeah. Just— c’mere.”

It was a clumsy thing, the way you both shuffled closer, the mattress dipping, sheets rippling. You moved until your knees knocked against Eddie’s and he was watching you so carefully, cautious enough that you felt too shy, a burning in your chest that spread up across your neck, your face. Eddie was holding the joint out to the side, the smoke being drawn to the open window and you looked back and forth between the cigarette and the boy.

“Done this before?” Eddie asked you quietly.

It was suddenly silent in the trailer, in the whole park. Fuck, Hawkins had fallen asleep, you were sure of it, because looking at Eddie this close, you couldn’t hear the way the generators hummed, you couldn’t hear the crickets or cicadas, no car engines or muffled televisions. You could hear Eddie breathe though, normal enough before it hitched a little and he had to exhale that little bit heavier - like he was nervous too.

You shook your head and swiped your tongue over your bottom lip, chasing the taste of the orange soda you’d drank at the kitchen table. “No, never like this. I— I know what to do though.” You sounded so naïve, small and a little silly, but Eddie smiled and nodded encouragingly.

“Atta’ girl,” he murmured and then he was bringing the joint back to his lips. He spoke around it, muffled. “Ready, yeah?”

You watched the way his cheeks hollowed out, how his gaze got a little heavier even though he kept looking at you. And this time, instead of blowing the smoke out to the window, he leaned in, one hand holding the joint away from you both, the other gesturing for you to come closer. You obeyed, moving forward with your heart lodged in your throat. You moved until Eddie’s fingertips met your jaw, skimming over the skin there and he tapped gently with his thumb.

His gaze was lowered, lashes fanning out over his cheeks as he leaned in closer still, eyes searching yours for some kind of hesitation, a sign that you’d maybe changed your mind. And when he found none, he coaxed you a little further until his nose bumped yours and you gasped, lips parted and waiting. The boy opened his mouth, just barely, smoke slipping from between his lips and he gently blew it into yours. You didn’t realise how his hand had fallen to your neck, fingers curling around the sides of it, the cool metal of his rings on your overheated skin and the blunt scratch of his nails in your hair.

You inhaled, a shuddering breath, shaky from how close the boy was - nothing to do with the weed. Eddie’s hand on your throat made you feel higher than anything else had before. And when there was no smoke left, when the last of it had floated up towards the ceiling and had turned into wisps in the sunlight, neither of you moved. You were still close enough that your nose bumped his when you tilted your head and you could see the freckles on the bridge of it, the tiny silver coloured scar at the end of his right brow. You wondered what Eddie could see when he looked at you, if he’d find your imperfections, if he’d find them as pretty as you did his.

You watched as his eyes looked into your own, unabashed and completely shameless, like another hit of the joint made him a bit more bold than before. Maybe it had, because you were feeling fuzzy, a warm, heavy feeling pulling you into the mattress, into Eddie.

Your forehead touched his.

His thumb was on your jaw, tucked into the space underneath your ear and it was pressed there like he meant it. Like he wanted you to feel it and god, you did. You did. His eyes wandered, flicking from yours to your lips and back again, warmer than ever, a honey colour in the setting sun. You wondered what you both must’ve looked like, sitting cross legged and knees knocking on Eddie’s unmade bed, heads bent together like you were sharing secrets, like you were going to share more.

The boy swallowed harshly, Adam’s apple bobbing and his stare on your mouth and it all made you feel so heavy and warm and lightheaded at once. You weren’t sure if it was the weed, you weren’t sure if it was Eddie.

“Your eyes are really pretty,” he whispered and he sucked in a breath when your idle hands found his bare knees through the rips in his jeans.

You played with the frayed hem, the loose threads and tried not to squirm at such a compliment. You hummed, nose wrinkling even when you smiled. “Thank you,” you replied politely and just as quiet. “Your eyes are pretty too.”

The boy turned pink, a pretty flush over the bridge of his nose that you wanted to trace with your fingertip. He tilted his head, inspecting you, eyes flicking over each of your features like he was drawing you in his head. “You shouldn’t be handing out compliments,” he mumured bashfully. “Not when I was such a dick to you.”

You shrugged, smiling as you leaned back just a little, too focused on the way Eddie’s lips moved as he spoke. The small space you put between you both gave you some air and Eddie’s hand dropped from your neck to trail down your arm. His fingers found your ring, a dainty thing on your middle finger that was so different to his own that it was comical and he played with the gold as you did with the rips in his denim.

Touching. Still touching.

“S’okay,” you told him gently. “You’ve made up for it now.”

A wry smile, a thumb brushing over the inside of your palm. “I have?”

“Oh, yeah. Free food and free weed?” You grinned when Eddie scoffed. “What more could a girl want?”

It was a rhetorical question. Eddie knew that, but still, he hummed as if he were thinking about it, his fingers dancing over your wrist now, climbing, climbing, climbing. You wished he’d cup your jaw again, warm, wide hands making you feel small and soft.

“I dunno,” he mused. “What about a d—”

Whatever Eddie was going to say was interrupted by the opening of the trailer door. A sharp noise in the quiet and it rattled off of the wall as Wayne barged his way in, arms full of pizza boxes and a giant bottle of soda. “Ed!” He yelled out in greeting, oblivious. “Grubs up, boy, come get.”

It made you spring apart, the mattress squeaking obnoxiously at the movement and you burned at the noise, at what it made it sound like you were up to. You stared wide eyed at Eddie, like a teenager caught doing something they shouldn’t and suddenly you wondered if Wayne would shout at you both for getting high.

But then Eddie was yelling back something noncommittal as he got off the bed, looking back down at you with an amused expression. He bent at the knees, shins hitting the mattress and his hands found your knees where he squeezed them reassuringly. “Hey, hey,” he smiled like he found you funny. Maybe he did. “S’all good, relax. Wayne doesn’t care.”

You sucked in a breath and willed away the weed induced panic you could feel brewing in your stomach, a knotting of nerves that Eddie managed to unravel with the way his fingers smoothed over your lower thighs. So you smiled back and nodded even though you felt like cardboard and when Eddie offered his hand to help you stand, you took it.

“Hey, Wayne,” Eddie called out into the living room. “We got a dinner guest, that alright?”

You could hear the rustle of pizza boxes being opened, the smell of basil and tomatoes wafting through the trailer. Your stomach rumbled and Eddie laughed, chuckling harder when you batted the back of your hand into his side for his lack of manners.

“You can’t just announce that!” You hissed. “That’s so rude.”

Eddie rolled his eyes and then held out his hand to the bedroom door as if to say ‘see?’ when Wayne grunted and said, “If it’s Steve, tell him I ain’t paying extra for those damn mozzarella sticks when there’s already cheese on the pi— oh, hey, kid.”

Wayne looked surprised to see you as you shuffled out of Eddie’s bedroom in your socks. The boy had his hand on the small of your back as he coaxed you forward into the main space of the trailer. “Hi,” you waved shyly, watching with a hot face as Wayne looked at you, at his nephew and back again, brows raised in interest. “Sorry I interrupted your dinner plans, I—”

“Nonsense,” Wayne said at the same time as Eddie scoffed, “shut up.”

“C’mon, now, sit and grab a plate,” the older man urged. “Hope you like Jeopardy! ‘‘cause that’s pizza night tradition.”

You smiled and nodded as Eddie slid into the breakfast nook beside you, hips nudging yours as you budged up. And as Wayne argued with the remote control, the boy loaded up your plate with pizza slices, ignoring your protests completely.

“God, you’re such a feeder,” you joked weakly, still embarrassed to be crashing the Munson pizza night.

Wayne was still frowning at the buttons when he grunted and laughed. “Yep, the boy doesn’t know how to give someone a damn hug, but he’ll make sure you never go hungry. Gotta show love one way or another, huh?”

Nobody said anything and Wayne won the battle as the channel flicked over and the voice of Alex Trebek filled the room. You couldn’t quite look at Eddie and both of you sat side by side as you ate your pizza, Eddie’s curls hiding his face from view. You wondered if he was pink again, blushing and cursing out his uncle in his head.

You wondered if you should’ve said something.

But then, as if to prove some kind of point, Eddie barely glanced at you as he picked up the last slice of pepperoni from the box, and slid it onto your plate.

#eddie munson #eddie munson x y/n #eddie munson x reader smut #eddie munson x you #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson smut #eddie munson fic #eddie munson fanfic #eddie munson fluff #eddie munson fanfiction #eddie munson oneshot #eddie munson drabble #eddie munson imagine #linecook!eddie

2K notes · View notes