#I’ve watched it twice already and started watching the old anime too | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

gifted-burnout-archive · 4 years

Text

Like It’s Now Or Never

Requested?: Yes. You lot wanted JaTP smut, so here it is.

Word Count: 10.5K+ (oops)

Author’s Note: Three things. 1. This was meant to be up last night, sorry. 2. This was posted and then deleted because Tumblr didn’t show any of the text. 3. I’ve based the concert off of this Sunset Curve: Greatest Hits playlist by @pattersonluke who I absolutely adore. Linking it here, please check it out!

Warning: smut, duh.

Quick Context: this is an AU where the band don’t die, so alive!Luke x Reader

Y/N Y/L/N was used to being overlooked by people.

It wasn’t something that particularly bothered her, a teen of rather nervous disposition, and often meant she was able to operate without interruption. At school, she kept good grades while never being touted as a scholar; at work, she picked up extra shifts and was her manager’s favourite without ever being called out as ‘Employee of the Month’. She was a quiet soul, something she had been told she got from her grandfather.

It made it all the more impossible for people to believe she was really managing her cousin’s rock band.

“Woah, woah…” A bouncer about twice the girl’s height knocked on the window of her car as she parked in the alleyway by the Orpheum, prompting Y/N to struggle with the old Volvo’s window crank until she could poke her head out and let the man finish what he had to say. “Sorry sweetie, you can’t park here. We’ve got a band playing tonight, need this space for official vehicles only.”

“Oh, that’s me. I’m an official vehicle. Manager to Sunset Curve.” Y/N responded with a smile, lifting her hand and stretching it out the window to greet the bouncer.

“You?” He asked, sincere in his surprise, and Y/N responded by rummaging around and locating the backstage pass she had been gifted earlier in the day. When the bouncer’s boss had told them the band had equipment arriving that night, the last person he thought would bring it was a teenage girl no more than seventeen.

“Indeed. Would you mind helping me bring the stuff inside?” She asked, waiting for the bouncer to step back before exiting the vehicle, jumping out onto the street and looking up at the towering man. “Everything’s labelled, if you just leave it in the hall it would be really helpful.” She explained, walking round to the car’s trunk and opening it up to show an array of neatly packed boxes and instruments. The bouncer followed, chuffing in pleasant surprise at how tidy everything looked: he was pretty sure that the t-shirts had been folded with tissue paper to avoid creasing. Not something he saw with every rock band. “Sorry, I’m Y/N. What’s your name?”

“Mac… Any order I need to follow or…” The bouncer asked, and Y/N shook her head, running round to the front passenger seat to lift out her handbag and a stack of pizza boxes.

“If you just get it in the hallway, Mac. I can sort everything out from there.” She smiled over, headed for the door. “I had a feeling I’d need someone’s help getting all this in with the boys on stage, so I’ve got you a pizza from Alfredo’s on 9th to say thank you.” She added, and Mac looked up with a smile. He had certainly never met a band manager who had bought him pizza before. Not just pizza, either: Alfredo’s on 9th pizza.

“I’ll be sure not to break anything then.” He responded, and Y/N tossed him over her car keys before pulling open the Orpheum’s side door with her foot and making her way down the hall.

A few steps into the building, Y/N was welcomed by feedback, the band starting their sound check, shortly followed by a wave of music that hit her like a high-speed train and caused her to pause. She took a moment acquainting herself with the volume change, a smile appearing on her face as she heard the familiar sound of her best friend’s voice before she made her way further into the building. She had been there the day before, dropping off the drum kit and amps, and she memorised the building’s floor plan, and quickly locating the staircase she needed to head down and taking it with a sure set pace.

It took Y/N no more than a minute to emerge from the tangle of backstage passageways onto the venue’s main floor, pizzas still perfectly balanced in one hand while she rummaged through her bag for something. She quickly made her way over to the bar in the room’s centre, setting the pizzas down on the countertop as she pulled an inhaler from her purse, and looked up as someone cleared their throat over the music.

Y/N’s eyes met those of the bartender, a girl maybe a year older than her, with her hand caught underneath the stack of pizzas Y/N had absentmindedly placed down.

“I’m so sorry!” She squeaked, lifting the boxes off the girl’s hand only to be met with a smile and light laugh.

“It’s alright, just teasing.” She called over the music, then gestured to the band. “They’re good, right?” She said with smile, and Y/N turned to look at the stage, finally taking the chance to stop and enjoy the music.

No matter how many times she saw her friends in action, their music always seemed to take her breath away. On that stage, the boys she had grown up with had never been more themselves. They radiated this confidence and energy that made you want to sing along, the sort of pull that Y/N had only witnessed with bands like Queen, ACDC: it was an undeniable star power. Up there, under the blazing lights and playing together, those boys had the ability to melt away all her troubles, make them vanish under the bang of drums and the shredding of guitar.

She watched until their sound check ended, clapping wildly and whooping along with the bartender as the guys caught their breath, taking it as her cue to head up there and join them, scooping up the inhaler as she made her way onto the stage.

“Thank you, we’re Sunset Curve. Tell your friends.” Reggie, Y/N’s very own blood, said into the mic, sending a wink towards the bartender and earning a punch in the arm from Y/N as she passed by him. “Hey!” He pouted, though it didn’t last long.

“Too bad we wasted that on sound check. That’s the tightest we’ve ever played!” Bobby commented as he set down his guitar and grabbed a towel, fist bumping Luke as he turned back around.

“Just wait until tonight, man, when this place gets packed with record execs.” Luke was practically vibrating with excitement, and Y/N smiled on as the boys congregated.

“Alex, you were smoking.” Reggie complimented their drummer as he came down from his stand, drumsticks in hand.

“Oh, no.” Alex responded with a shrug. “I was just warming up. You guys were the ones on fire.” He gestured to the other three.

“Could you just own your awesomeness for once?” Reggie asked with a waving of his hands that nearly hit Y/N in the face, but she was quick enough to dodge it.

“… All right, I was killing it!” Alex admitted, Luke’s hands coming up to pat his bandmate on the shoulders, shaking the lanky blonde a little from his own excitement.

“Nicely done, guys.” Y/N spoke up, the four pairs of eyes landing on her, each with a bright smile on their faces. Her best friends, all together, all happy: it made her heart swell. “First off, Alex.” She turned, tossing over the inhaler. “You left it in my car this morning. Don’t let it happen again.” He caught it quickly, mouthing a quick ‘thank you’ before shoving it in his pocket. “Second, I got Alfredo’s.” She gestured to the pizza boxes on the counter beside the pretty bartender and, in a chorus of whoops, the four guys rushed passed her and jumped off the stage, Reggie first to the boxes and shoving a slice of pizza into his mouth before Y/N had even got herself back on the main floor.

“You guys are really good.” The bartender complimented, continuing her previous activity of buffing the bar before the soundcheck had happened. For the first time in a while, she was excited to be working.

“Thank you.” Luke said with a dopey grin, sorting through the stack and pulling out the one labelled with his name, promptly digging into a delicious slice of pepperoni.

“I see a lot of bands. Been in a couple myself. I was really feeling it.” She continued, Y/N walking up and joining the boys, lifting out one of the pizza boxes and setting it to the side for Mac the bouncer, before sliding down Bobby’s and Alex’s. Reggie was already on his second slice.

“That’s what we do this for. I’m Luke, by the way.”

“Hi, I’m Reggie.” A muffled add on.

“Alex.”

“Bobby.” He winked at the bartender, and Y/N stifled a laugh at the dark-haired boy’s attempt at flirting.

“Nice meeting you guys.” Luke noticed the eyes Bobby was making at her a moment after Y/N, sticking a finger in his mouth before shoving it in the taller boy’s ear. “I’m Rose.” The bartender introduced, and Reggie quickly grabbed his cousin’s purse off the counter, opening it up and grinning when he saw a top and CD inside, pulling them out.

“I was gonna…” Y/N sighed as she watched Reggie turn back to Rose with the objects in hand, one of them being the shirt Y/N had planned to change into for that night.

“So, uh. Here’s our demo, and a t-shirt. Size beautiful.” He handed them over with raise of the eyebrows, Alex and Y/N groaning at the same time.

“Thanks! I’ll be sure not to wipe the tables down with this one.” Rose grinned, and Alex swallowed the slice of pizza he chewed on.

“Oh, good call. Whenever they get wet, they just kinda… fall apart in your hands.” He admitted with a nervous laugh, and Bobby leaned forward on the bar.

“Vegan-friendly though. I could… I could never hurt an animal.” He said with a dashing smile to Rose, and Y/N quickly realised why the boy had called her up not a half hour before to change his food order to ‘something, anything vegetarian’. “Hey Y/N, won’t you be needing a hand with the guitars? The boxes… stuff?” He asked, the girl looking up and rolling her eyes at Bobby before nodding quickly, picking up the pizza for Mac while Luke, Alex, and Reggie grabbed their own food.

“He had a hamburger for lunch.” Luke called as he followed his friends towards the hallway that led backstage, earning a glare from Bobby before he turned back to the pretty bartender. Y/N had a feeling they wouldn’t see him again until call time.

“I’ll be back in two, gotta get this to the bouncer. Dressing room’s down the stairs to the right.” Y/N instructed the guys, who headed off towards the comfy couches and air con while she made her way back to the side door, the contents of her car neatly stacked along the wall. “Mac, you are an angel.” She said softly to herself.

“Well, I try.” She received a reply from the bouncer, stood outside the door, and smiled wider, placing down his pizza on a shelf by the exit, and picking up her car keys from the surface. “Need anything else?” He called through.

“No thanks, I got it from here! Enjoy the food!” She said back, quickly lifting the first stack of boxes and balancing them along the corridor.

By the time she had finished moving everything to where she needed it; the t-shirts and demo CDs to front of house, the smoke machine and spare strings and picks to stage side; the guitars along to the dressing rooms, the boys had already finished their pizzas, and were now raiding the complimentary snack basket from the venue.

She kicked open the dressing room door to find her cousin and friends three quarters of the way through a fruit bowl of trail mix.

“You guys seriously never stop eating, do you?” She asked, setting down the instruments and collapsing into an armchair, letting out a sigh of relief. Her evening was only beginning, of course, but she was ahead of schedule, and felt she deserved to sink into the chair’s comforting embrace. “What do you think Bobby’s chances are of getting the pretty bartender’s number?” she asked, her eyes closing as her muscles relaxed.

“30, 40%?” Alex offered, receiving a laugh from Reggie.

“More like zero.” He said through a mouth of nuts and Reece’s Pieces.

“What, like you could get it, cuz?” Y/N asked, her eyebrow raising despite her eyes still being closed.

“Tell me why we let Y/N hang around again?” Reggie responded, his tone playful and lacking the malice one might normally accompany with the rhetoric, and Y/N’s eyes opened as a smile spread over her lips, the happiness radiating from them all.

“Maybe because she’s the person who got us this gig?” Luke offered, walking over and ruffling Y/N’s hair with a laugh as she swatted at him. “Plus, Alex and I are living in her garage…” He shrugged, and sent a grin Y/N’s way as she fixed her hair back to its original styling.

“Yeah, and!” Alex chimed in, leaning back against one of the vanity’s with his hands in his pockets. “None of you ever remember my inhaler. And I’ve never seen someone restring and tune a guitar as fast as Y/N… And like, also the whole best manager in the world thing.” He added, and Y/N found herself sitting up a little.

“To be honest Reggie, I think what the guys are saying is: I’m amazing, and you’re really lucky you play bass.” She teased her older cousin with a cheeky grin, earning laughs from Luke and Alex while Reggie looked on, a little confused.

“Wait, what do you mean I’m lucky I play bass?” He asked, not quite catching on to what she implied, and only making his three friends laugh more.

“Ok, ok.” Y/N said after a moment, pulling herself off the chair and walking over to the stack of instruments, lifting a tote bag from amongst the cases. “So, I was obviously out today doing errands.” She began, walking back over and sitting down on the edge of the chair Luke lounged in, the boy smiling up at her as she did. “But I made a little pitstop.” Her hands reached into the bag, her tongue sticking out as she felt around the canvas, quickly pulling out a square box. “Reggie.” She said with a grin, handing over the present to the boy, whose eyes had lit up like a kid on Christmas morning. He lifted the box’s lid off slowly.

“No way!” He yelled, lifting the device out the box with care, Luke and Alex leaning over to see what it was.

“I know you’ve been using one you bought at the flea market when we were 13 for years, and I thought… Well, you only get a first time playing the Orpheum once. Thought you should try it out on a new bass pedal… That also works with the banjo.” She smiled, looking back in the bag and pulling out the second gift as Reggie marvelled at the item in his hands. “Alex.” She called, throwing the next gift to the blond boy, who already had a feeling what might be inside the long, thin box.

“How much did you spend on this stuff, Y/N?” Luke asked as Alex lifted out a set of drumsticks, twirling one through his fingers and grinning from ear to ear as he noticed the engraving on them.

“Sunset Curve…” He said softly, showing the engraving on the butt of the sticks to Reggie. “Thanks Y/N.”

“Bobby can get his later, serves him right for flirting and not joining in on band bonding time so…” Y/N sat one of the gifts on the table before pulling the final present from her bag, an envelope with ‘Sunset Curve’ in cursive on the front.

“Y/N… How much did you spend on this?” Luke asked with a frown. He wasn’t the best at math, but he knew working part time at a diner did not cover the cost of a top-grade bass pedal and personalised drumsticks, plus whatever she had bought Bobby.

“Yours just took effort, Patterson.” She said with a smile, and Luke raised an eyebrow. “I worked some extra shifts, ok? Now open your goddamn present or I’ll take it back!” She exclaimed, reaching out to snatch the gift back, put Luke held just out of her reach.

“I’ll open it! I’ll open it, alright?!” Luke yelled as Y/N reached over him, stretching for the envelope. “But if you take any more extra shifts, I will personally come into that crappy diner and carry you out.” He warned, and Y/N sat back down, her hands tucked between her knees as Luke’s fingers tore open the paper. He tipped the envelope rip-side down, a letter falling onto his lap. Luke lifted it up to inspect closer.

“What is it?” Alex asked, Reggie still engrossed in his own present to notice the expression of shock on Luke’s face as he turned to a beaming Y/N.

“Is this real?” He asked, looking up at her. Y/N nodded quickly, and within an instant Luke had stood up and lifted her off the ground, spinning her as he hugged her by the waist, Y/N letting out a squeal as her best friend spun her around.

“Ok, why is it that Y/N gets hugs without even asking?!” Alex asked, receiving a middle finger from their lead guitarist, and prompting Reggie to walk over with his arms open. “Don’t touch me.”

“Well, this is why no-one hugs you.” Reggie muttered, and Luke finally set Y/N down, passing the letter over to Reggie, Alex quickly at the bassist’s shoulder.

“Dear Miss Y/L/N. The demo album you recently sent to our label crossed my desk this afternoon.” Alex read aloud, Luke holding onto Y/N still. “Sunset Curve is exactly the new sound I’ve been looking for… Looking forward to seeing them live…” Alex skimmed through his narration, picking out the most important phrases. “Looking forward to meeting you, Chris Baxter.” He stopped, looking up at Y/N and Luke.

“For a second I thought that said Chris Baxter, like Fall Down Records Chris Baxter.” Reggie laughed, looking around to see Y/N, Luke and Alex staring at him. “Wait… Wait, wait, wait.”

“Y/N got Chris Baxter coming to our show.” Luke almost yelled from excitement, the realisation quickly dawning on his bandmates and causing them to race forward, engulfing Y/N in a hug, the poor girl trapped in the middle.

“Need… To tell… Bobby.” She muttered out, struggling to breathe, and the boys let her go. She grabbed their rhythm guitarist’s present from the table, pressing the letter to Luke’s chest as she left. “What would you guys do without me?” She asked with a grin, and Luke smiled right back, his eyes trailing after her as she rounded the corner out into the hallway.

“Watch out, Luke.” Reggie said after Y/N was gone, snapping his fingers in front of Luke’s face. “You were practically drooling all over my cousin there.”

“He was drooling, Reggie. Puppy dog eyes and everything.” Alex remarked with a cheeky grin, and Luke frowned at the pair.

“She’s my best friend.”

“So you’ve been saying for the past 6 years.” Reggie rolled his eyes, starting back on the trail mix.

“Because it’s true.” Luke stated, his eyebrows gathering close, and Alex let out a laugh.

“Keep telling yourself that… At this rate, Bobby is winning the bet.” The blond sighed.

“What bet?” Luke asked again, sitting back down, turning the letter over to re-read the words.

“Well, Alex said you two would be dating by 16. I said 18. Bobby said never. Whoever is closest wins.” Reggie said with a full mouth, and Luke sighed.

“She doesn’t like me like that. You both know that.” He said softly, running his fingers over the name printed on the letter: Chris Baxter.

She really was the best friend a guy could ask for.

Y/N’s night was nothing short of busy.

After presenting Bobby with his new Capo for his guitar, she found herself rushing around once more: to get herself ready in the backstage bathroom, slipping on one of the tops she had packed so carefully in tissue paper since Reggie decided to give her own shirt away, fixing her hair and makeup, slipping into a pair of shorts instead of the yoga pants she had been running about in earlier; to set up the merchandise stand at one of the booths with their albums and t-shirts ready to sell; to discuss timings with the front of house staff; to chat with the light crew and stage hands about special effects and a last minute draw up for one of the song’s, which involved a spotlight on Luke.

By the time people were filing in, Y/N had drunk three cups of coffee and downed four cans of Coca-Cola, knowing the worst thing she could do was burn out.

However, it all seemed to be worth it. The crowd was killer, with more people than Y/N could have ever imagined making their way into the Orpheum. It seemed to be bursting at the seams, and by the time the house lights were going down, Y/N had sold half of their t-shirt stock and two-thirds of the CDs, not to mention the chant that had started to get the boys on stage.

“Sunset Curve! Sunset Curve!” The crowd cheered, a few of the faces ones that Y/N recognised from school, some complete strangers, but all of them here to see the boys play. As another group of kids came up asking for t-shirts, the resonating sound of Reggie’s bass filled the air.

All attention turned to the stage as Y/N’s cousin walked on stage, beginning to pluck out an improved bass line, applause starting up as he placed his right foot down and the sound became more and more distorted: he was making quick use of his gift.

Bobby was next, joining in on a melody line for nothing in particular, walking on stage and sending a wink to the girls in the front that left one stumbling into her friends. His fingers were nimble on the strings, making the work put into the skill seem effortless, and the crowd began to clap along in time with the beat.

The claps brought in Alex, who sat himself down at the drum kit and started a steady bass, snare, hi-hat line, gulping down the lump in his throat as he looked out at the crowd, adrenaline taking over.

“Good evening Los Angeles!” He called into the mic, the crowd exploding into cheers and applause, the three members on stage sharing a smile. “Are you ready to rock?!” He asked, receiving a unanimous shout of ‘Yes!’ from the few hundred people that had crammed themselves into the venue.

For a moment, everything went dead silent, Alex, Reggie and Bobby halting their playing and leaving the crowd confused, only to then continue with the thunderous applause as Luke ran on stage, taking his position at front and centre as Alex tapped his new drumsticks together.

“One, two! One, two, three…”

The whole show flowed perfectly. The band started with ‘Now or Never’, moving quickly onto ‘Rest in Peace’ and ’The Anthem’, the second of which got the crowd jumping along as the boys sang together. The feeling in the crowd was electric, and as their third song of the night ended, Y/N was sold out of CDs and on the last of her t-shirts.

“Welcome, everyone, to the Orpheum!” Luke called into his mic, Y/N looking up at the stage as he began to speak. “It is such an honour to be playing here tonight, it really is, and before we continue, we just want to thank you all for listening and sharing in our music.” He called out, earning whistles and clapping from the crowd. “We’re slowing it down for this next one, we hope you enjoy… Unsaid Emily.” Luke announced, taking off his electric and switching it for the acoustic sat behind him. Y/N watched him as he fiddled with the capo, a plectrum between his teeth and his whole body shimmering with a thin layer of sweat, captivated by her friend so much it took a yell for her to tune back into reality.

“Sorry…” She apologised to the girls waiting, giving them the t-shirt prices and taking their cash with a smile.

“Do you know the band?” One asked, pulling her t-shirt over the clothes she was already wearing.

“Yeah, I do. In fact-” Y/N started, but was quickly cut off.

“Will you give Luke my number?” The second asked, handing over a scrap of paper to Y/N, who looked at the phone number with astonishment.

“And Bobby mine.” The first demanded, placing her scrap of paper atop the other in Y/N’s hand before they shoved their way to the front row. Y/N slipped the piece into her shorts pocket, serving the next customer as Luke began to sing, sitting himself down on the edge of the stage and serenading the same girls Y/N just met.

Another two songs later, one of them being Alex’s original ‘Coming Clean’, and Y/N had closed up the merchandise stand, allowing the audience to take over that booth while she made her way back stage. She swung her way round the stair bannister, breaking into a light jog to reach the wings, quickly attending to the guitars that needed re-stringed, and setting up the smoke machine for the final number, a song Luke had written only a week or so before called ‘Bright’.

“So here's your holiday.” Y/N looked up from the smoke machine as Reggie came to the last chorus of the song he wrote, their penultimate tune of the night, Luke harmonising with him. “Hope you enjoy it this time. You gave it all away, it was mine. So when you're dead and gone, will you remember this night? Twenty years now lost… It's not right.” The pair sang with Alex and Bobby on backing vocals, the crowd with their lighters in the air, swaying along as Bobby played the outro, Reggie running off-stage with the applause, busted bass in hand.

“Got a fresh bass, little cuz?” Reggie asked, taking a moment to catch his breath. Y/N tossed him a towel to wipe down his hands and face of sweat, tuning the last string on the second bass. The pair did an exchange, towel and bass guitar. “Fog machine ready?” Reggie asked, and Y/N gave a firm nod.

“Now get out there and seal the deal. I saw Baxter earlier.” Y/N explained, giving him a thumbs up as he ran back on stage, and she knelt down to start the fog machine as Bobby plucked out the opening chords of their closer, Luke coming close to his mic to sing.

“Sometimes I think I'm falling down, I wanna cry, I'm calling out for one more try to feel alive.” Luke sang, Reggie coming in with a mellow bass line. “And when I feel lost and alone I know that I can make it home. Fight through the dark and find the spark. Life is a risk, but I will take it, close my eyes and jump.” Alex started on a bass drum beat, building up to the chorus, and Luke glanced over into the wings, spotting Y/N. She smiled and waved, quickly giving him a thumbs up as he continued. “Together, I think that we can make it, c'mon let's run. And rise through the night, you and I we will fight to shine together, bright forever. And rise through the night, you and I we will fight to shine together, bright forever.” Luke and Reggie sang over the screams and cheers of the crowd, Y/N watching on from the wings with a grin, Luke glancing over at her for a second time as Bobby took the next verse.

And for a second, she could have sworn Luke winked at her.

Y/N found herself busied for the rest of the song, packing up guitars while she kept a watch on the fog machine in her peripheral, refusing to look back at the stage until she heard the song ending. At that point, she started taking things from the stage area to the hallway by the side entrance.

“We’re Sunset Curve! Tell your friends!” She heard the band shout in unison as they ended their show, the applause alone enough to make someone’s ears ring.

She kicked open the side door, fishing her car keys out her pocket before hearing a polite cough to her left.

“Need a hand?” A deep, male voice asked, and Y/N looked over to find the voice’s owner. “Maybe you could point me in the direction of Y/N Y/L/N afterwards?” The man suggested, taking two of the four instrument cases Y/N had in hand, allowing Y/N to unlock the car’s trunk and place in the guitars.

“Might I ask who you are?” She quizzed, walking back to the side door, and smiling as one of the employee’s brought along the fog machine for her. She quickly picked hit up and waddled out to the car with it, setting it in carefully.

“Chris Baxter.” Y/N slammed the trunk shut as he gave his name, turning to face him with a surprised smile.

“Wow… Y/N Y/L/N.” She held out a hand, the man taking it and shaking firmly. “It’s... It’s an honour to meet you, sir.” She started, but he waved it off with a smiling, their hands dropping.

“No, it’s an honour to meet you.” Chris countered. “You had some balls coming in last week with that demo…” Y/N went red at his words, scratching the back of her neck.

“Traditional methods weren’t working?” She laughed nervously, and Chris grinned.

“No, no they weren’t. But blasting the album on a boom box in my record label’s HQ was certainly a risqué move, Miss Y/L/N.” He almost reminded her that her stunt the week before was a one-off thing, and Y/N nodded in agreement: she would never be doing that again.

“You did what?” Luke asked from the doorway, the four boys staring at her and Chris Baxter in shock, and her eyes widened, the girl quickly changing the subject.

“Sunset Curve, Chris Baxter from Fall Down Records. Chris Baxter, meet Bobby, Reggie, Alex and Luke.” She introduced, Chris walking forward and shaking each boy’s hand, unphased by their dishevelled and sweaty appearances.

“That show was… Absolutely terrific. I’ve already listened to the album three times this past week, and I didn’t know how you could top the sounds on that, but you all clearly can.” Chris complimented as he went down the line.

“The boys are, above all else, a live band.” Y/N chipped in with a nervous smile, begging the boys to say something, anything.

“Mr Baxter, thank you so much for coming.” Alex came back to reality first. “Your work with Pink Floyd on the Dark Side album was incredible.” He said with a smile, and Chris smiled back.

“I’m quite proud of that one, so thank you. And please, call me Chris.” He dropped the formality quickly. “Look, I won’t keep you. After a gig like that, you should all be out celebrating. I just wanted to say well done, and ask if a meeting next Monday would work for all of you? My label would be interested in signing you on, and of course you’ll be meeting with other teams… I just wanted to get right in there, show you all what we can offer.” Chris was blunt, straight to the point, and it caught them all off-guard.

“Did you just say…” Reggie trailed off from the shock.

“A record deal? With Fall Down?” Luke clarified, still rather astonished by whatever Y/N had done to get the biggest record label head on the West Coast to come to their concert.

“Hopefully more than one record, but yes.” Chris grinned, and Reggie had to nudge Bobby from his shock induced freeze.

“Next Monday is free for all of us, Chris.” Y/N stepped in, realising the guys wouldn’t do much good. “Shall we say 2.30?” She suggested, and Chris nodded, his hands going back into his coat pockets as he started on his way out the alley.

“You know where my office is, Miss Y/L/N.” He called back, four pairs of eyes landing on the girl as she took a shaky breath.

“You just…” Reggie started, but couldn’t find the words.

“Chris Baxter…” Bobby muttered.

“Best manager ever.” Alex assured.

“We did it…” Luke said softly, looking around his friends with wild eyes. “We played the Orpheum!” He yelled to the sky. The boys and Y/N soon joined in the shout, hugs shared amongst the team before they bundled together in a group hug, bouncing from the excitement.

“We need to celebrate properly. Tattoos?” Bobby suggested, to the delight of Reggie and the worry of Alex.

“The club on 6th?” Alex offered instead, and Y/N smiled as the boys tried to come up with a plan for their night out, slipping passed them back inside to collect the last of their belongings. The drum kit and amps would be a job for the morning, but everything else had to go, and as quickly as possible.

Where the guys were messy, Y/N was efficient and clean: the dressing room went from a bomb site to sparkling clean in a matter of minutes, which she packed into one of the boxes as a chap came on the door.

“Uh, Y/N?” The girl turned to see Rose, the bartender, stood in the doorway. “Tell the guys I loved the show. These,” she passed over a small bundle of cards no bigger than a credit card. “are for you. Record label execs, as Luke called them.” She explained, and the pair shared a giggle.

“Thank you Rose, I was just about to find you.” Y/N explained, slipping the cards into her back pocket. Rose left with a smile and a wave, allowing Y/N to head back out to the car, only to find that Alex, Reggie and Bobby had all seemed to have disappeared.

“Thought you could use the company.” Luke grinned, lifting the boxes that weighed Y/N down with ease, quickly slipping them into the back seat of her car.

“Luke, you should be out on the town, celebrating.” Y/N insisted, a hand gesturing to Sunset Boulevard and beyond, but Luke caught the hand in his.

“I’d rather help you out. I know for a fact you won’t let yourself have fun until everything is done tonight, and I have enough energy to power a jet plane.” Luke offered his assistance as his leg bounced and his hand locked with Y/N’s before he spun her under his arm. “Please?”

“Get in, Luke.” She responded with a happy sigh as she opened the driver’s side door, Luke bouncing so much on his way round to his side of the car Y/N wondered if he might have eaten a kangaroo by mistake.

“Do you want to stop for burgers?” He asked as they both got in, Y/N looking over at him with a smile and shake of the head, starting the car and following the alley to its exit.

“I swear to God Luke, you don’t stop eating.” She commented, but six years of friendship had made it blatant fact rather than speculation. “Are you sure you want to help me unload all this crap? You should be out with the guys doing something stupid.” She said, starting the short drive back to her house. She only lived a ten-minute drive from the Orpheum, though it never seemed like it. Her house was in the suburbs, tucked away at the end of a cul-de-sac away from prying eyes, and the change from city lights and gum-decorated sidewalk to perfectly-cut front lawns and uniform cherry blossoms trees along the road front made the drive feel like they were entering a completely different world.

“The quicker we do this, the quicker we both get to go out.” Luke shrugged, unable to stop his leg bouncing. “Music, can we at least put on some music?” He asked, opening Y/N’s glove compartment and rummaging through her CD collection. He quickly lifted a disk out and slotted it into the player, fiddling with the control panel of the car as Y/N tried to focus on the road.

The song came on as Luke watched Y/N with a smile, just waiting for her to connect the dots and respond to his song choice. It only took a few chords for her to get it, slowing at a stop light to quite clearly roll her eyes at Luke, who then decided to start singing to her.

“Left a good job in the city, working for the man every night and day. And I never lost one minute of sleeping, worrying about the way things might have been.” Luke put on the twang of the Creedence Clearwater Revival singer, throwing an arm around the back of her seat and leaning over to sing to Y/N, who was doing her best not to smile. “Big wheels keep on turning, Proud Mary keep on burning.” Luke sang right in her ear, and Y/N couldn’t help the giggles from erupting in her as she made one of their journey’s last turns. “And we’re rollin’, rollin’, rollin’ on the river.”

“Cleaned a lotta plates in Memphis,” Y/N reluctantly joined in.

“Yes Y/N!” Luke yelled.

“Pumped a lotta pane down in New Orleans. But I never saw the good side of the city, until I hitched a ride on a river boat queen.” She sang along, pulling onto her road.

“Big wheels keep on turnin’, Proud Mary keep on burning.” They sang together, pulling into Y/N’s driveway but staying in the car. “Rollin’, rollin’, rollin’ on the river.” The sang in harmony, before both brought up air guitars to play the iconic riff together.

“Ba da dum, ba da dum, ba da da da da duhda da dum!” They cried out, both in fits of laughter as Y/N shut the car off, the only light nearby being through the windows of the garage.

“Guess that nonna is fast asleep then.” She said with a smile at her home, the lights all shut off. She glanced at Luke, who was wiping tears from his eyes. “You stay quiet, alright? That woman deserves her rest.” Y/N scolded pre-emptively, and the boy held his hands up in surrender.

“I love your nonna! I won’t wake her, mainly because she lets me stay in your garage.” He pointed out, and Y/N smirked, the pair getting out the car in unison. Luke ran to open the garage doors while Y/N headed for the trunk, lifting out a few guitar cases. Despite the weight of them making her posture sag and her hands hurt, she strode towards the garage, liking the idea of finishing the mundane as quickly as possible: not so much for a night out in LA, rather for some more time with her friends.

“You know, I can’t-” Y/N started to speak as she walked past Luke, setting down the guitars and beginning to sort them into their allotted spaces in the room, only to look back and find the boy frozen. “Oh, right…” She mumbled, forgetting that this was meant to be a surprise for him and Alex later.

Amongst other things, and while the boys stayed over at Bobby’s the night before to get in a last night of practice before the Orpheum gig, Y/N had ventured into the garage to start loading her car, only to be met by cobwebs on their equipment and excessive layers of dust on every surface. She was in the garage a lot, sure, but most of the time she was popping in and out to hear new songs or tell the guys about a new gig she had booked them. And with Alex and Luke spending a lot of time in her house, quite happy to keep her nonna company over lunch with songs and idle chatter, Y/N hadn’t been properly in the garage for a while…

What Luke was gazing upon was an entirely new room from the one he left the day before: the single lightbulb that had lit the place the day before was gone, replaced by string lights that looped around the walls of the room; with surfaces dusted and polished, their clothes neatly folded into a chest of drawers Y/N had brought in, the musical instruments hung up on the walls alongside posters of the boys’ favourite artists. The windows had been cleaned, the floors hoovered and bearing a rug Y/N had found in her attic, Luke’s sofa bed sporting freshly made sheets, Alex’s blow up in the corner in a similar state, an extension of her house’s landline sitting atop one of the shelves…

And a mini fridge installed…

“When did you… How did you…” Luke stuttered in disbelief, Y/N walking back round him to continue unloading the car. “The lights and the guitars and…” Luke tried to start again, falling short of what exactly to say, just watching his best friend walk by and store things in their new locations. When he had asked to couch surf all those months ago, when she had replied without hesitation, Luke didn’t expect much. Then she offered the garage as a full-time hub for the band, and offered Alex a place to stay after coming out to his parents went even worse than expected.

And looking at what she had done, how she had turned the dusty garage into something more, into a home… He was amazed by the girl before him.

“Y/N.” He stopped her for making her last trip to the car, a hand on her arm. The girl looked up and smiled at him, and he smiled right back. “Thank you…”

“Anything for you, you know that.” She replied, meaning the words. It had been the same way since they were kids. “Get yourself a soda, check the voicemail. It’s the number I’ve been giving everyone who wanted to speak with Sunset Curve.” She explained, making her last trip out to the car for the smoke machine and a few loose items. Luke did as he was told, grabbing two cans out of the fridge and glancing over at the phone.

6 new voicemails…

“This… This is crazy.” Luke muttered, cracking open the can of orange soda and sitting on the coffee table as Y/N put the last of their things away, coming to stand in front of him. He handed up a can, which she took with a smile, joining him in taking a sip.

“Crazy is the right word, yes… But it’s exactly what you guys deserve.” Y/N said softly, ruffling his hair before starting a walk around the room.

“I know but… this is crazy. We have a meeting with Chris Baxter, Y/N! All because of you!” Luke jumped up onto the coffee table, standing tall and spinning around. “We have a shot at actually… Actually making this stupid idea work!” He said with a laugh of astonishment.

“Luke, you and the guys earned every bit of this. You are all amazing, and Chris Baxter would be an idiot not to sign you.” Y/N reminded him with a smile, and Luke held a hand out to her. She took it, getting up beside him on the table. “To Sunset Curve.” She proposed, raising her can of soda.

“To making crazy daydreams reality.” Luke offered back, the pair clinking their drinks together. “You know, we should keep this up. Do more crazy stuff tonight! I mean, we’ve been lucky so far.” He suggested, the sugar quickly mixing with his adrenaline and getting the boy hyped up once more.

“What do you have in mind, Patterson? I can drive us along to the club on 6th, the guys are probably still there. Or get us a taxi?” She suggested, coming down from the table and heading over to top drawer of the cabinet the mini fridge sat on, not noticing that Luke’s eyes had settled onto her. “Look! Red Vines!” She showed him with a grin, taking one out the packet and chewing on it thoughtfully. “You know, tattoos don’t sound so stupid now that I think about it.”

“No, Y/N… I mean doing something really stupid.” Luke said softly, and Y/N smiled up at him, oblivious to what Luke actually meant.

“What? You want to go cliff diving? Reggie would be up for it.” She grinned, and Luke felt the breath leave his body.

He wasn’t sure if it was the soda sugar rush, or the adrenaline from the show, or some subconscious death wish, but Luke couldn’t stop himself from jumping off the coffee table, couldn’t stop himself from walking towards Y/N. She was so beautiful, so kind, so sweet, so funny… His best friend…

And Luke took her face in his hands, pressing his lips to hers.

It was chaste, his touch disappearing just as Y/N was about to fall prey to her senses being completely invaded by Luke’s presence, her lips and cheeks tingling from where he had held her, her pupils blown from the shock, the attraction. She had never thought he would have liked her like that, but as he stepped back, surprised by his own recklessness, Y/N wondered why she hadn’t thought of him like that before.

In fact, as they stared at each other from across the room, both recovering from Luke’s actions, all she could think about was the past near seven years of friendship: every hug and hand hold, every joke cracked and song sung to cheer one another up. Her mind raced with memories of their road trip around California the summer before with the band, to their friend dates on the pier, to nights in the house or the garage, spending time with her nonna and Alex and Reggie. The nights they’d sleep over at each other’s houses, or the camping trip the guys and her went on at 15, the night she and Luke stayed up and named constellations in the middle of nowhere.

Suddenly, she was filled with an overwhelming sense of idiocy: because she had quite happily mistook her romantic feelings for her best friend as platonic… For years.

“Y/N, I’m so sorry.” Luke muttered, running a worried hand through his hair, trying to read his friend’s expression, to gauge some sort of reaction. “Fuck…” He said under his breath.

“Don’t be sorry…” Y/N responded softly after a moment, and Luke’s eyes met hers. “One of us had to make the first move, right?” She added nervously, wondering for a moment if it had just been a stupid, heat of the moment, action.

“You’re not mad?” He clarified, taking a step closer, and another. Y/N moved towards him too, lifting his hand in hers and interlocking their fingers, admiring the way his hand held hers, the callouses on his fingertips feeling smooth and firm as they brushed over her knuckles.

“Not one bit.” She promised, looking up at him their hands breaking apart, Luke’s hands dropping to her waist, travelling under her shirt to hold her bare skin like they had a mind of their own.

“Good… Because I’ve been wanting to do that for years.” Luke admitted with a shaky breath out. There was a pause, both double checking with the other they were sure of their actions before Luke’s and Y/N’s lips found one another again.

There was an element of it that felt forbidden, the unspoken rules the pair had laid out for their friendship must have had a subsection that clearly stated something like this could not happen, but neither cared. The kiss was hungry, sweet, borderline desperate as they stumbled backwards and Y/N’s back hit one of the support beams for the loft space, rooting them in place as Y/N’s hands moved from his chest to his neck, her fingers finding their way into the back of Luke’s hair. It was still damp to the touch with sweat, his skin smooth and near silky against her fingertips.

All Luke could smell, feel, taste, touch, was Y/N. Her perfume mixed with the smell of her shampoo had short-circuited his brain, her lips on his had him feeling lightheaded, the way her fingers in his hair pulled him closer had him lifting her legs up and holding her up against the beam by her thighs.

“This is so stupid…” Y/N muttered as she pulled away to catch her breath, eyes fluttering open to view Luke, his attention taking focus on the crook of her neck as he pressed a kiss to the soft skin. Her heart was thudding, ringing in her ears louder than anything she had heard Alex play, and as a whimper passed by her lips without permission in response to Luke’s attention, she was sure he could feel the erratic pace against her chest.

“Really fucking stupid…” Luke agreed with a smirk, looking up at her with nearly black eyes, only a thin ring of green around pupil left. “If you want me to stop, tell me now…” He said, his hands moving up the back of her thighs to the hem of the shorts she had decided on that night. “Or now…” He offered, pressing his lips to her collarbone, following them up until his mouth found her sweet spot and earned a moan from the girl in his arms. “Or now?”

“You’re an asshole Luke…” Y/N muttered, taking his face in her hands and pressing her lips to his, shutting him up with a swipe of her tongue that had Luke’s mouth opening and giving in to her lips, her mouth, quite happily.

When Y/N’s hands found the way to the hem of Luke’s shirt, the guitarist walked them over to the sofa bed on the other side of the room, breaking the kiss to make sure he didn’t run into the coffee table. He pulled a face as he dodged the room centre piece, and Y/N burst into a fit of giggles that Luke challenged by dropping her onto the bed.

The action wasn’t the only thing that left Y/N breathless though, biting her lip as Luke pulled off the sleeveless tee Y/N had been tugging on only moments earlier. She had forgotten for a moment that when Luke wasn’t play music, he was working out, and had to take a second to register his toned body that matched his arms.

“Liking what you see, Y/L/N?” Luke grinned as he teased her, and Y/N pursed her lips, glaring him down playfully before deciding to join in on the game.

“You’re not the only one who looks good naked, Patterson.” She countered, and though she wasn’t quite sure she believed the words, she was on a high and wasn’t planning on slowing do whatever had begun. She quickly pulled off her top, throwing the white tee with the band’s name printed across the front to the floor by the bed and holding herself up on her arms as she leaned back a little, a plain white bralette beneath. Luke’s mouth went dry at the sight of her topless, his jeans quickly became tight, and he actually found himself blushing.

“Seems you’re right there…” He breathed out, leaning over her, one hand giving him balance as the other lifted her chin and brought his lips to hers. An open-mouthed kiss, Luke’s tongue was gentle yet demanding, taking control of the kiss as Y/N found herself lying back on the fresh sheets, and Luke found himself on top of her.

She wanted him, and in that moment nothing else seemed to matter. It was like everything else disappeared as her body melted into his: the only sounds she heard were his groans and her whimpers; all she could feel was the cool cotton beneath her and Luke’s rough hand against her flushed face; all she could smell was sweat and his cologne, taste the orange soda that lingered on their lips.

“You’re killing me here, Y/N…” Luke muttered through ragged breath as he pulled away, sitting back on his knees, kneeling. Her thumbs had found themselves running along the waistband on his jeans. “Have… Have you done anything like this before?” He asked.

It was clear exactly where this was headed.

“Not all the way… No.” Y/N said softly, her breathing a step short of hyperventilation, but Luke was very much the same. They both had experience, they had both dated in the past. Hell, Luke and Alex were even a thing for a while.

“Ok, so we’re in the same boat then.” Luke nodded with a gulp, and Y/N raised an eyebrow, moving to mirror his sitting position, inching closer.

“What about the red head? Last summer? Hayley?” Y/N quizzed, and Luke let out a nervous chuckle.

“Yeah… You were going out with that Nathan guy… Might have lied a little bit about what happened with her…” Luke admitted, and Y/N threw her head back laughing. In retrospect, it had made her rather jealous.

“Good to know...” She nodded as she spoke, coming down from the laughter, the pair falling silent for a moment. “You know… We do this, and everything changes.”

“I know…” Luke said softly, sharply intaking as Y/N’s hands came back to his jeans’ waistband.

Her hands made quick work of the belt, Y/N looking up at Luke as she unbuttoned and dragged down the zipper on his jeans, the material sitting slack on his hips. He stood up at the foot of the bed, Y/N not hesitating to push the material down past his knees, the clothing quickly pooling at his feet atop his sneakers.

“Shit, I forgot about shoes.” Luke whispered, trying to slip off his sneakers with his feet, only to stumble back and have Y/N quickly catch him by the waist before he fell over. “Shit! Sorry! Sorry…” He laughed out, managing to get off his shoes and jeans as Y/N quickly got her own mismatched converse off. “I feel like you’re wearing more clothes than me.” Luke said softly, looking her over as he strained against his boxers.

“Maybe you could help change that?” Y/N wasn’t quite sure where the sexual confidence was coming from, but she lay back on the bed, her head landing on the pillows as she looked down the bed at Luke.

“Uh huh… Yep. Definitely.” He nodded, his jaw slack as he got back on the bed, his hands coming to the button of her jean shorts and taking off the denim at record speed, revealing a pair of high cut panties that matched the white bralette covering her chest. “Fuck me…” Luke muttered.

“That’s the plan, handsome.” Y/N grinned back, and Luke took his eyes off her body to look into her eyes, to look at her smile and the way she held herself and how she looked at him the way he always wanted her to look at him.

“This has to be heaven.” He smirked, leaning over and pressing a kiss to her cheek before reaching out to the side table to the couch’s right, opening one of the drawers and lifting out condom from an inconspicuous looking box.

“Not quite, but we’re getting there.” Y/N smiled sweetly, taking a moment to undo her bra and let it fall onto her lap, discarding it and her underwear as Luke rid himself of his boxers and slipped into the condom. “Are you nervous? I’m kinda nervous.” She admitted, and Luke leaned forward to kiss her again, gentle and soft. Whatever anxiety she had vanished as his lips touched hers, and with a nod for Luke to continue, her best friend moved onto the bed, his length lined up with her entrance.

As he pushed past Y/N’s folds, slowly but surely completely filling her, Luke let out a string of groans and curse words, all intertwined. He wasn’t alone in it, Y/N muttering her fair share of choice language as she became accustomed to his size, the slight pinch of pain she felt disappearing and being replaced with pleasure as her inner walls clenched around Luke’s member.

“Jesus…” Luke muttered, his breathing heavy, doing his very best not to ruin the moment by cumming from just the sight of Y/N below him, naked, moaning because of him. “Does that feel alright?” He asked, and Y/N nodded.

“You can move now.” She whispered, bringing his lips to her as Luke pulled out and started a slow and steady pace, filling her with each thrust. Y/N moaned his name into his ear, her hands threading into his hair once more as the pace picked up, only prompting them both to get a little louder.

The benefits of soundproofing the studio.

“Fuck Luke…” Y/N muttered, breathing heavier by the minute, her stomach forming into knots, tight and tighter in her abdomen as Luke’s thrusts became deeper.

The whole thing was slow and sweat: the heat outside only made the garage warmer, Luke’s forehead soon sporting a layer of sweat that had his hair sticking to it. Y/N’s fingers wrapped around and dug into his bicep as he rocked into her, the rolls of their hips synchronising and make for more pleasure shared.

It felt like a dream, for both of them. Luke never thought he would ever have Y/N as more than a friend, regardless of how he felt, never thought the goofiness and over-confident demeanour that had attracted her to him platonically would have ever translated to… This. Y/N had seen the girls and guys Luke dated, and while she wasn’t one to compare herself to others often, she realised she never made a move because she had never been Luke’s type before.

“Y/N…” Luke whispered, his own high fast approaching. He leaned down, pressing his lips to Y/N’s collarbone, nipping at the skin until it bruised, smirking at every moan he managed to elicit in response.

“Shit, Luke… I-” Before she could finish speaking, Y/N threw her head back into the pillows and let out a whimpering moan, her grip on Luke’s bicep tightening as the tension that had built in her stomach finally released in the form of euphoria, waves of pleasure tightening her core and leaving Luke to its whim as he moaned out her name, struggling to hold himself up as he spilled into the condom. They stayed like that for a moment, both breathing heavy and looking into one another’s eyes.

They had just had sex… Both admitted feelings of attraction…

The flash of headlights and the sound of a car rolling up had both of them freezing for a second before Luke quickly pulled out, Y/N scrambling to locate her clothes as Luke tied off the condom and binned it before finding his jeans. He tossed her over her t-shirt while she threw back his underwear, the sound of the boys’ voices quickly approaching the garage.

Y/N glanced down at the state of herself, opting to press a kiss to Luke’s cheek before disappearing into the bathroom to finish getting ready, leaving the guitarist to deal with his band.

“I swear to God, I can’t believe we’re doing this.” Alex said with a sigh as he opened up the garage doors to reveal Luke sat on the bed, fixing his shoes. “Wow…” He muttered, and for a moment Luke thought it was in judgement, that he and Y/N had been made immediately. But Reggie, Bobby and Alex walked into the room and started investigating the new layout, and Luke remembered than not an hour, he had been doing the same thing.

“She’s something else, isn’t she?” Reggie said with a proud smile, and Luke fixed his shoe on before getting up. “Luke, where’s Y/N?”

“Right here.” Y/N answered, walking out the bathroom with her makeup and hair fixed, and fully dressed. Luke smiled over at her, and she smiled back before turning her attention back to the guys. “What, the club on 6th realise your IDs were fake?” She asked, and Reggie started nodding before Bobby slapped his arm.

“I’ve convinced Alex of the tattoo idea. But we can’t go without the two of you. We’ve got a taxi waiting outside.” Bobby explained, Alex shrugging in defeat.

“I suppose they’d look cool.” He said with a smile.

“Awesome! I’ll meet you in the car, just got to grab my bag… And fake ID.” Y/N said with a smile, Bobby and Reggie running out to the car as she quickly grabbed her stuff. Alex turned to go, stopping at the door and turning to look back at his friends, to look at the messed up bed, noticing the red on Luke’s arm.

“You alright, man?” Luke asked, the guitarist putting a hand on Alex’s shoulder as Y/N glanced over, the blond getting a distinct whiff of a sweet smell from Luke…

Y/N’s perfume.

“Oh my God, you guys slept together.” He muttered, the two freezing.

“Alex…” Luke started: it hadn’t been more than two years since they had dated, and a part of him worried more than one friendship was ending that night because of what he and Y/N had just done.

“You’re crazy to think-” Y/N chipped in, but was cut off by Alex letting out a yell.

“YES!” He shouted, clapping his hands together in excitement. “Finally!!” He grinned, and Luke and Y/N took a joint sigh of relief.

“Wait-” Luke started, but Alex was already gone to share the news with Bobby and Reggie.

“Bobby, you owe Reggie $50.” The pair could hear Alex calling, met by gasps and grumbles from beyond the door. Luke and Y/N laughed as Alex left, but as it died out, they were surrounded by silence.

Neither was sure what to say, neither wanting to stay in the silence.

“Luke-” Y/N said softly, looking up as he walked across the room and pressed his lips to hers. His hands pulled her close by the waist, her hands holding onto his shirt, pulled up to her tiptoes.

“I think we should talk a bit more about what we want to be… We don’t have to do it right away, but I don’t think that this was a mistake… Or stupid.” Luke whispered as he pulled away, Y/N responding by taking one of his hands and interlocking their fingers with a smile.

“I think that sounds like a great idea.” She responded, letting her best friend, her something more, lead her out to the awaiting taxi, to their friends, with a smile on his face and joy in his voice.

Y/N Y/L/N was used to being overlooked by people, but in that moment, under the glare of headlights and with Luke’s hand in hers, with his kiss on her lips and her image in his eyes…

She had never felt more seen.

Tags: @reggiesleatherjacket @leahstypewriter @walkingonshunshine @dylanstilinskiposts @crybabyddl @kaylinfayezink @oswin05 @middaydramatic @freshflowerbasketballgoth @megnmendes @lolychu @a-whole-a-lot-of-fandoms @millenniumx @delicatelukepatterson @lovesanimals @-episkey- @korydickson @katemaire07 @theatricalfangirl @avs-hart @futuremrsb-r-main @mjflower @siennanoelle01 @reggieandthereggies @kristencoontz @independentgirl @eries45 @amortiff @lilstanxd @crappy-unicorn @ghostlyb1tch @marinettepotterandplagg @im-a-writer-right @caitsymichelle13

#luke patterson #luke patterson smut #luke patterson x reader #luke patterson x y/n #jatp luke x reader #jatp luke #jatp au #jatp #julie and the phantoms #smut #fluff #fluffy smut

3K notes · View notes

agapaic · 3 years

Text

[19 days] whiplash [ch. 365 after-shot]

The shop will be closing soon. He’s seen an attendant wandering around, who will probably ask him to leave in the next five minutes. There’s no one else here. His clothes are vivid against the neon glow of the tanks. The fish cast strange shadows on his shirt, living out a second life on his skin.

They swim in half-circles before sharply changing direction, never touching the glass. He wonders if they know it’s there, as if they can sense some immovable wall that holds them back.

He’s not getting deep about this. He could contemplate, quite extensively, about how their freedom must be bought by some higher power, and they would really only go from one tank to the next, slightly bigger, slightly richer. It’s all fake shit, and he remembers that in some ways he’s got it better than an animal. He can, at least, run away. Maybe he won’t get far. Just to the edges of the city villages where he’ll get a job earning less than before and lose his place in school.

Guan Shan puts a finger on the glass in front of him. There’s a label in the corner, peeling away from the glass. Veiltail goldfish. They have wispy, membrane-like tails. He could put his hand on the other side and see all the way through. Guan Shan watches the only black fish in the tank move placidly through the water.

Beneath the label, a smaller one: Black moor. For a minute he considers tugging the label off and putting it in his pocket, a little secret. He remembers that would be stealing, in some way, and someone in the shop would have to go to the effort of printing and laminating and reapplying the label just for one fish.

Guan Shan turns away.

He wanders for a few more minutes. He’s aware of his reflection in the glass. He worries about how long the attendant will let him stay there, and the thought that they will make him leave makes him feel slightly sick. He likes it here—the quiet, the muted hum of the tanks, the strange lights. They make him feel somewhere else.

His mother is working the night shift and won’t be home until just before he’s meant to go to school the next morning. They’ll have long enough together that he could tell her he got fired from the shop, but not long enough that he could reasonably pretend to have forgotten as he tugs on his uniform and slips out the front door.

She won’t be mad—she never is.

She can’t take on another shift.

Mentally, he has started taking stock. His Xbox is a few years old, but he’ll get something for it. He has a stack of old music magazines from his dad that could catch the eye of a collector. His computer, maybe.

The earrings.

His stomach twists.

Really, it’s not much. It’ll earn them a month, which could be just long enough for him to get another job, but what’s the likelihood of that in a city where most kids are just trying to bulk their CV’s for their college applications. Besides, his grades speak for themselves. He got lucky with the shop, and lightning doesn’t strike twice.

‘Hey, kid. We’re closing soon, so unless you wanna buy something…’

Guan Shan nods. His shoulders round.

For no logical reason, he says: ‘Can I take a goldfish?’

‘Sure. The black moor? Saw you had your eye on that one.’

‘No, one of the others.’

The attendant comes up next to him. ‘Just the one? They don’t like being on their own, you know.’

He presses his jaw tightly. A small sound comes out of him. He looks at the price tag and is somehow shocked and saddened to see the figure so low.

‘Fine,’ he says. ‘The black one, too, I guess.’

He pays, then leaves. It’s late enough that the streets are quieter than he expected. He’s usually home by now, his shift over, reheating leftovers while he works on his homework. He stands there while the shop attendant locks up behind him, holding the plastic bag with two fish in his hand. He feels stupid. Behind his eyes, he can feel a sort of stinging sensation.

He has the unnameable urge to grab one of the passing strangers and tell them how he’s feeling, what has happened, what could happen. On some level he knows that everyone has their own problems, and he’s not the type of person to overstep his bounds. Instead, he watches them pass, and after a few more minutes he goes to the nearest subway station and gets the train home.

He had half expected He Tian to find him on the street. He’d imagined it, He Tian catching his arm as he wandered from store to store, deliberating at large windows with thin mannequins and expensive jewellery without price tags. There is a part of him that’s disappointed that it didn’t play out like this, a part of him that is even angrier to find He Tian sitting in the stairwell of his apartment when he eventually does get home.

It’s close to midnight, and the stairwell is clinically quiet. Outside, the stars are dusty and covered in a thin layer of smog that is less noticeable in the day. He Tian looks exhausted. He’s the type of good looking where even the slightest imperfection somehow makes him even more attractive. Guan Shan hates it.

He stands when Guan Shan walks in, suddenly filling the space, and Guan Shan says, ‘Get outta my way.’

‘Where have you been?’

Guan Shan shoulders past him. There’s a moment where he thinks He Tian will grab him around the shoulders, the air around him simmering enough that Guan Shan is convinced it’s a near thing, choking with danger, but he lets him pass. He follows Guan Shan up the staircase, his footsteps silent, his body casting long shadows on the steps where Guan Shan sets his feet.

At the door, Guan Shan pockets the notice that’s taped there, knowing He Tian has already seen it. Less sharply, he picks up the notes in He Tian’s and Jian Yi’s writing and folds them into careful squares.

‘You’re not comin’ in,’ he says.

‘I called you, like, fifty times. Did you block me?’

Guan Shan thinks He Tian sounds angrier than he really has a right to be. He turns and presses his back to the door. He has his keys clenched tightly in a closed fist.

‘Yeah. I didn’t want to talk to you. I thought you would’ve gotten that.’

‘I can get you another job. Something better paid.’

‘You’re so fuckin’ clueless.’

He Tian’s eyes tighten.

‘You’re ruining my life,’ says Guan Shan.

‘That’s—that isn’t true. I’ve helped you. You would’ve been expelled if—’

‘Maybe I would’ve gotten expelled. But I wouldn’t have had She Li on my dick all the time, would I? Wouldn’t need you to get me a job ‘cause you made me lose my last one, would I? You’re just—stickin’ a bandage on shit when you hurt me first.’

‘It’s not always like that. Don’t make it sound like it’s always like that.’

Guan Shan shakes his head. ‘I want you to go. I told you I didn’t want to see you again. Fuck off.’

He Tian says, ‘Let me pay what was on the door.’

‘Fuck off.’

He Tian doesn’t move and Guan Shan squeezes his eyes shut. He’s going to cry again, the frustration bubbling sourly in the back of his throat. He doesn’t trust himself to open the door while He Tian is still here because he knows he’ll probably let him in.

‘Do I really make you feel like a failure?’

Guan Shan rubs at his eyes with his fist. His voice comes hoarse and thick: ‘I am a failure. Bein’ around you just makes it so much more fuckin’ obvious.’

He doesn’t want He Tian’s pity when he says this, or his reassurance. He’s just being honest. Saying it out loud is kind of breathlessly relieving. He couldn’t say something like that to his mother, or any of the teachers at school. He couldn’t say it to Grey, who he’s known for years. He Tian knows more about him than anyone. It’s a terrifying thought.

If they never see each other again, will He Tian tell everyone the things Guan Shan has told him? About the restaurant and his dad, or about She Li and the things Guan Shan has let him do to him? He feels vulnerable and sick thinking about it, completely powerless, as he does a lot of the time when he’s around He Tian.

He oscillates between that feeling of uselessness and the feeling of being so empowered that he thinks it must be what being high or drunk feels like. That latter has him trusting his own convictions, having an unadulterated faith in himself like jumping from a bridge and thinking he might just fly—so long as He Tian is with him. He doesn’t like how it’s one or the other, empowered or powerless, and rarely anything in between. He’s heard adults on TV talking about being codependent, pulled punishingly into each other's orbit, and he wonders if this is the same thing.

In the end he supposes it doesn’t really matter. So what if He Tian tells everyone? Probably, he won’t see the rest of the year out at school. He’ll get a job on a different side of the city and no one will hear from him ever again. The embarrassment will all be internal and will only last a week or two. Then life will move on. He wishes he were older and wiser and better at believing this. He wishes it didn’t feel like the universe might fall out from beneath him.

‘Doesn’t matter what I do, it turns to shit,’ he tells He Tian. ‘No matter how hard I work, I’m never gonna earn enough. I can spend three hours studyin’ for a test and still come last. If it isn’t She Li, then it’ll be someone else. I just—I can’t catch a fuckin’ break, He Tian. But you do somethin’ and you come first every time. Life’s so easy for you.’

He Tian shifts from side to side. ‘Do you think things wouldn’t feel so hard if you stopped focussing on what you think my life is like?’

‘You’re pissin’ me off.’

‘I don’t know how I’m meant to help you. You won’t let me give you money. It’s like pulling teeth from you just trying to know what’s going on with you. What are you so fucking afraid of?’

‘I never asked for your help.’

‘You shouldn’t have to—that’s why we’re friends.’

‘I never said I wanted to be your friend.’

He Tian frowns, his look very serious. He isn’t teasing tonight. Neither is Guan Shan. There is the sense that their interactions are always anything but teasing, really, some dark undercurrent that runs between the two of them like dark veins.

He Tian says, ‘Are those fish?’

For a moment Guan Shan thinks he’s joking, deflecting wildly to distract from the seriousness of what Guan Shan has just said. Then he feels the crinkle of a plastic bag in his hand and, remembering how he’d just spent the last few hours, nearly drops the two goldfish onto the floor.

‘Yeah,’ he says.

‘You don’t have a tank.’

‘Yeah, no. I don’t know why I bought them.’

He Tian hesitates. There is a curious, predictable gleam in his eyes. ‘Red and black?’

‘It’s all they had left at the store.’

He Tian is looking intently at the bag. ‘Do you remember when we went to the aquarium? And you said I wasn’t someone you could forget?’

‘I just meant that—’

‘I know what you meant. But I always pretend like you meant it the other way.’

Guan Shan thinks, Don’t you think things would be easier if you stopped focusing on what you want me to mean and what I actually mean?

Instead of saying anything, he looks down at his sneakers. They’re scuffed and starting to rip at the seams. The thought of having to buy new ones makes him panic and the thought of buying a pair of second-hand ones online makes him panic even more. There’s no shame in it, but the thought of wearing someone else’s clothes makes him feel strange, especially when he knows He Tian could buy fifty pairs without blinking.

Guan Shan considers that thought and replays what He Tian has just said about focusing on his life too much more than his own. Maybe part of that is true.

Before He Tian, did he always feel things so intensely? Did the bad always feel so fucking awful? He knows that things were mechanical, and he was mean and didn’t think much about other people in particularly nice ways. He knows he didn’t laugh much then, or have dinners and sleepovers with friends. He knows everything hurt on a distant, muted level that was easy to ignore. Not much time has passed since then, and he reasons that nothing about him has probably changed, just everything else around him.

‘I can’t understand why you won’t let me help you,’ says He Tian, when the silence has stretched too long.

‘Because I’ll get used to it.’

He Tian frowns, not understanding.

‘One day, you’re not gonna be around. And I’ll be fucked.’

‘I’ll always be there for you.’

‘You don’t know that. People say that a lot and then they disappear or get taken away, even if they didn’t want to.’

It’s obvious they’re talking about his dad, but it feels safer to talk about things in vague, subjective conversation. Maybe things would be easier if they talked openly about things and didn’t use metaphors and hypotheticals. As it is, Guan Shan doesn’t feel ready to try the alternative. He is conscious of the fact that this feels like a conversation. They are passing words back and forth that hold meaning and neither of them has touched the other yet. It feels new and fragile as an oil painting, still wet, and so he doesn’t let himself think about this for long.

‘I think you’re getting this wrong,’ says He Tian. ‘I’m not asking you to rely on me. Obviously, I’d kind of like that. I like the thought of you needing me, and I know that says something about me. But—I’m just asking you to let me help you. Just here and there, no strings.’

Guan Shan rubs his forehead with the back of his knuckles. His keys are starting to pinch his skin and he can feel a headache starting to surface.

‘I’m tired,’ he says. ‘I actually do want you to go.’

He Tian’s jaw clenches and he breathes out heavily through his nose. He’s probably thinking he’s wasted his time.

‘Okay,’ he says then. ‘But we’re not done.’

A new wave of exhaustion comes over Guan Shan, crippling and final. He wants to get into bed with his skin against cold sheets and sleep for twelve hours without waking once.

‘You’re not the only one that ever gets to decide that,’ he tells He Tian, a little sharply. ‘You’ve gotta learn to let people go.’

‘But what if I know I can help them?’ says He Tian. ‘If I don’t, I’ve just—failed.’

They look at each other.

A minute stretches into an eternity that could be seconds or hours, and everything has gone backwards. Everything is the same.

Guan Shan can’t put his finger on what has just happened, but he feels like laughing. Their fears are twinned, self-perpetuating, some kind of ouroboros chasing its tail. Who will get caught first?

They both seem to take in a breath at the same time, and He Tian takes a step back.

‘Goodnight,’ he says.

Guan Shan nods. He waits for He Tian’s retreating back to disappear a few flights down before opening the door to his apartment, and shuts it swiftly behind him.

There’s a knock at the door while he’s brushing his teeth. The fish are swimming placidly in their bag on the edge of the bathroom sink. It’s past one, and he keeps all the lights off because his eyes are feeling sore. He’s adjusted to the dim glow that comes from street lamps seeping through the curtains, the blink of the timer on the electric stove, his Xbox gleaming in his bedroom. His mother shouldn’t be home yet and she has her own set of keys.

With a sinking heart, Guan Shan pictures his landlord demanding payment.

Worse, he pictures He Tian. Before He Tian left, they’d resolved nothing. It feels like being back to square one, chasing each other around a chess board. It fills him with a vast emptiness that makes him feel like he’s existing outside of himself, waiting for someone else to take over.

He pads silently towards the front door, his toothbrush jammed into his cheek, and peers through the viewer. There’s toothpaste dripping down his chin. In the hall, there’s no one there. He’s half-convinced he imagined it. He counts to ten before he opens the door, steps out—and his foot connects with something hard. There is a cardboard box sitting on the welcome mat.

Guan Shan peers around. The light in the stairwell is artificially bright. He kneels down and opens the tabs on the box, which hasn’t been taped. He swallows.

For the fish, says the note on the second box, nestled inside the first. Careful, it’s fragile.

Guan Shan rubs the heel of a palm into his right eye. He sighs. Then he reaches out, braces himself, and picks up the tank. He carries it into his apartment, and the door locks behind him.

thank you for reading! if you’d like to support me on my ko-fi/request a short drabble, you can do so here: https://ko-fi.com/agapaic 💞

#19 days #tianshan #old xian #he tian #mo guan shan #my fanfic #sorry for errors - it's late but i couldn't get this out my head

285 notes · View notes

harbingerofsoup · 3 years

Text

The comprehensive guide for why absolutely everyone should read and watch this work of art.

First of all, Iruma is best boy! He loves his friends and his family, his instinct is to help others, and like… just look at him. So good, so pure. But what truly makes Iruma a protagonist worthy of having a slide to himself is his character development. He actually starts off as a completely selfless person due to how his awful parents groomed him, and his whole character arc is learning how to be more selfish. Of course, Iruma’s selfishness manifests as eating all the food he wants, holding on to his family and friends, and finding ambition.

Sullivan (the first guy) adopts Iruma as his grandson after his parents sold him. This dude radiates grandpa energy and his number one priority is to spoil his new grandson. He’s also the principal of the school he sends Iruma too. And one of the most powerful demons in the netherworld. Opera is Sullivan’s butler, and warms up to Iruma a bit slower than Sullivan (so like a few days). They’re not very expressive facially. Rather they mainly express emotions through their ears and tail. They’re a total Badass™ and surprisingly mischievous. Alice Asmodeus (on the left of the 3rd pic) swore his undying loyalty to Iruma after Iruma accidentally kicked his ass. This man is ride or die, and honestly my words can’t do him justice so it’s better if you just experience this gay disaster for yourself. Clara Valac (right of the same pic) is a gremlin and I love her. Her priority is to play with her friends All. The. Time. But she also has insecurities about her personality after it stopped her from making friends. I put Ameri Azazel (please step on me) in between them. She’s the student council president, a badass, and a huge romantic. Naberius Kalego is the homeroom teacher of the misfit class (the class Iruma ends up in.) He’s a Very strict teacher, but genuinely cares about his students and is good at his job. There are so many other characters, but I want to avoid spoilers and get sleep tonight.

14 year old Suzuki Iruma was raised by his parents to do chores and make them money. Eventually they decided that he wasn’t bringing in enough, so they sold him to a demon who takes him to the netherworld. Instead of eating him though, Sullivan (the demon) asks him to become his grandson, and Iruma, who’s unable to say no under any circumstances, says yes. He starts school at the demon school Babyls (pictured above) where he attends as the only human. Of course if anyone finds out they’ll eat him. While at school, he realizes that he doesn’t have an ambition of his own, so Ameri suggests that he try climbing the ranks (all demons are ranked by their power you know the drill).

This manga is hilarious! With such jokes as Iruma eating a ridiculous amount of food, every interaction between Asmodeus and Clara, and Ameri’s obsession with shojo manga. One of the funniest bits is that due to some unfortunate circumstances, Kalego becomes Iruma’s familiar, and you’ll learn all about this if you check it out, but for now all you need to know is that that fluffy chicken is Kalego. Crossdressing has been used for comedy like three times now, but not in a degrading way. It’s not the butt of the joke or anything. That’s Iruma, and he looks fucking amazing as many other characters have said many times 100% seriously. Moving on, cause explaining humor is difficult!

I adore how Clara is allowed to be a hyperactive gremlin, and I’m not talking “oh she’s quirky” I’m talking playing involves battle axes and acting like a demon bowling ball. You know the trope where the powerful girl isn’t actually that serious and instead is a huge romantic? Well Ameri may be a romantic, but her seriousness isn’t an act. She is 100% dedicated to her ambitions. And look at the designs for some of the recurring background characters! Too often in fantasy settings the female monsters, demons, etc are reduced to almost entirely human, with the exact same body type, and maybe horns or something. Not Here! There’s also the girls in the misfit class who all have their own motivations and interests. I’m also now realizing how many tall girls are in this series… awesome.

Ok so the fact that there’s even more than one queer character already make this amazing. But in addition to that, it’s never treated like a big deal. I mean look at the second picture “gender doesn’t matter to demons” love wins! So Eiko is a recurring character who has a huge crush on both Iruma and Ameri, and later becomes comrades with Asmodeus specifically when it comes to Iruma (they share photos of him it’s hilarious). Asmodeus having a crush on Iruma isn’t explicitly stating, but like I’d like to see someone argue that he doesn’t. Besides, his feelings are always treated the same as Clara’s and Eiko’s when it comes to Iruma. The holy grail of representation though is Opera who’s never referred to by gendered terms. The english dub of the anime actually specifically uses they/them pronouns. When I tell you I screamed! I could go on, but I’m I’m trying to avoid introducing too many characters.

In Mairimashita! Iruma-kun a good family supports and loves each other completely, regardless of blood relations. But it’s not either or. Sullivan, Opera, and Iruma are my golden standard for found family. I mean their love of Iruma is over the top and unconditional, which is what Iruma needs after a life without any such love from his parents. Biological relations are shown as something that isn’t always great, yet it’s not something to be expected either. Clara’s family is a gift, and Asmodeus’ family is one of the funniest dynamics I’ve seen.

These are typically considered negative traits, but here they are portrayed as desirable and useful. And it’s a convincing argument. Through Iruma we see that having your own ambitions and getting pissed is necessary for living a fulfilling life, and we see this because he starts out without having that. Every single time Iruma declares his own ambitions or says something selfish it’s just… chills. It’s always a powerful scene. Whenever Iruma gets truly pissed over something (which has legitimately only happened twice) we all cheer cause we’re so proud of him. I could write a whole essay about this one aspect of the story, but just know that I consider this to be an incredibly compelling narrative, and my favorite part of Mairimashita! Iruma-kun.

In conclusion, I’m posting this on my birthday, so as a present I would like more people to get into this fandom because it deserves a larger fanbase.

#mairimashita! iruma kun #welcome to demon school iruma kun #i said i was gonna do it and i did #my favorite series needs more love

1K notes · View notes

ashintheairlikesnow · 3 years

Text

Learn to Fly

CW: Self-loathing, some internalized victim-blaming, references to parental death and grief, VERY vague reference to past noncon once or twice

Note: I made a decision to switch a little of the timeline around, so Laken and Chris’s breakup at this point happens after the original conversations about the Speak Out Arc start happening but before the Olympics themselves. I’m folding this bit into the larger Speak Out Arc.

Follows Time Apart and It Doesn’t Work As Well As You’d Hoped

He curls up on the couch in the coffeeshop, sipping something warm he barely tastes. It might have coffee in it - he feels a little drowsy, and that usually happens when there’s just a little caffeine.

Maybe that’s just because he hasn’t slept since Jake was hurt, not really. And he’s slept even less since... since he and Laken broke up.

Outside, there's unseasonable heavy rain. The clouds are low and heavy, a deep gunmetal gray that blocks out the light and has the streetlights on at 9:30 in the morning. The raindrops seem less to fall than to slam into the ground with terrible violence.

The baristas talk in low voices about how grateful they are for the rain, burying the wildfires outside the city in a deluge the heat can’t overcome. Chris likes the rain, too, if only because it reflects the inside of him, suggests that the world can tell he is a storm within himself and reflects it to him.

He takes another sip.

He hasn’t showered in three days. His hair is dulled with it, like a penny left too long in the dirt. He’s dressed himself like he used to, back before when he was still learning he was a person and not a pet - in one of Jake’s hooded sweatshirts over his compression shirt, so oversized on him it’s nearly a tunic, and a pair of mesh basketball shorts. His knees still look knobby, he thinks.

He can see the ghosts of the bruises there that used to never quite heal before his Sir sent him to his knees and made new ones to lay over them. He can see a couple of scars, some from training when the baton would crack into the backs of his legs and send him dropping like a stone, some from gymnastics, some from just being a kid.

Chris’s eyes lower, to look at his own hands holding his coffee cup. He put star stickers on his nails last night, and a few of them have already peeled off. Those that remain glitter, just a little.

Something about the sight of it - the memory of when he put star stickers on Laken’s cheekbones at a concert until they sparkled under the starlight, laughing, a blur of bright eyes and dark hair - makes his throat nearly close, sends a new rush of tears to burn hot behind his eyes.

He has to close them to hold them back.

“You’ve had a hard time of late, have you, then?”

The voice is a rumble, cracked with decades of cigarettes and too much liquor, but Chris remembers it, anyway. At least, he remembers it now.

He turns to look up at the old man, in his shirt and slacks, a bit bent with age. There’s a merry twinkle in his slightly rheumy eyes, though, that shows that a young man is still there, under an old man’s experiences. There’s a slight smile on his face, warm and welcoming.

Chris swallows, struggling to find the words. They flit away from him, he has to chase them down, but eventually he manages to clear his throat and says, “I, I, um. I know you. You, you, you knew my dad.”

“I did, at that. Worked with him for years.” The old man settles onto the other end of the couch, giving Chris plenty of space, a nice wide berth for safety. “What’s got you looking like a television commercial for depression, hm, Tristan?”

No one calls him that.

Chris feels his heart twist, a little.

By the time they saw the meteor, Tris, it was already too late for anything but a blink or two. When it touched down into land, it was so big the end of it was still in space. Can you imagine anything so big? Can you?

No, Dad.

The earthquakes alone would have been immense thousands of miles away. Imagine, you’re eating leaves, living your life, and you see a shadow - and then in an instant, the world is shaking and you’re breathing glass. How does life go on after that?

I, I, I don’t know, um, um... how how does it?

It just does. That’s what’s amazing, Tris. It just goes on.

“Nothing. I, I, I broke up with my, my partner is all.”

“Hm, that nice young person who comes with you to the shops?” The old man nods, slowly. He’s got his own cup of coffee, plain black, steaming gently into the air-conditioning. Outside, the rain creates a curtain that walls them off from everything else. Chris can’t even see all the way across the street. He can barely see a woman with an umbrella racing from her car into the nail salon place off to the side.

“Yeah, them. I’m, um. It wasn’t anything they they they did.”

It’s something I did.

It’s something I am.

It’s something I’ll never stop being.

“Well, breakups do happen now and again. Usually the one who does the leaving isn’t the one who does the moping about and staring at rain, though.”

“I didn’t want to.” Chris sits back, keeping his coffee cup in one hand. The other drops to his stomach, to tap, soothing his nerves at being so close to a man he knows and doesn’t-know. His memories are there, fuzzy and hazy from being overwritten by fear and pain, but they’re there. He knows this man, Mr. Malley, who would watch him sometimes when his parents went out, or when his father needed to stop by work.

The memories are there, but they still hurt.

His head starts to throb, a pulsing pain behind his temples.

“I didn’t-... I, I love them, I d-didn’t want to.”

“Well, now, that’s a conundrum, isn’t it? Are you moving, then, Tristan?”

It hurts to hear his name, but it hurts in a way that feels good. He was that person, too, before he was Chris. He hums, low under his breath. “No. I, I, I just… you know, um, I’m just. I’m… hard. Difficult. To, to, to, to be with, to, um, to-... there’s a bunch wrong with-... with me.”

“You sound like your dad.” Mr. Malley laughs, a deep chuckle that rumbles more in his chest than out of his throat. “You know that? You sound just like him.”

Chris ignores the pain in his head and he turns, now, to look fully at Mr. Malley, blinking rapidly. “My, my, my dad?”

“Yep. Paul was a good man, and a good dad, but before he was that he was a scared boy with a baby on the way and a plan that might not work.” Mr. Malley sighs. “A scared boy who’d always had it a little rough, trying to make the world work for him when it did nothing but work against him. You were always his spitting image. He’d probably be tickled to see you still are.”

There is a sense, in Chris’s mind, of a blurry man with short red hair, sitting near him but not quite touching him, speaking with animation about how there are dinosaurs that lived closer to human beings than they did to other dinosaurs.

He remembers a man whose eyes sparkled with animated focus when he talked about the world millions of years ago, who loved him by sharing the information he held within his own mind.

He and his dad had understood each other, in ways that no one else did but his mother, and Chris was beginning to see that it had been her determination to know him that had fueled his mother’s actions, her endless support. The same way Jake and Nat were determined, and stubborn, and kept trying even when they got it wrong.

Everyone gets it wrong sometimes, but that doesn’t… that doesn’t mean they aren’t trying.

Maybe he got it wrong.

“He never broke up with your mom, but oh, he thought about it. You know, when he came to work with us, he had a plan. But plans… they have a way of going off the road and into a ditch. He worried he couldn’t make it work, he worried that it would be too hard for Ronnie to be with him and have a child, too.”

Ronnie.

Chris’s throat closes up, and he closes his eyes.

All right, Tris, I got you these so the noise won’t bother you so much. We’re going to have a good day at the parade, okay?

“Her family never liked him, for one. That’s a rough spot to be in, I think.” Mr. Malley is quiet for a moment, sipping his coffee and watching the rain fall. “Ronnie didn’t see it that way, of course. That woman was a freight train and God help anyone who got in the way. My late wife, God rest her soul, helped Ronnie with some things when her own family wouldn’t. She’d come over big as a house, eyes sparkling. You were a kicker, she used to say, kept her up all hours of the night. Just a girl, still, your mom, but she had a steel spine and she wasn’t going to live any life but the one she wanted. But your dad… he worried, that it would be too hard on her.”

“Having, um, having me would?”

“No. Having him. Paul was a smart man, you know. He knew his job would be trouble. He gave her chance after chance to go, if she wanted. But that’s the thing, isn’t it? She didn’t.”

Chris looks at his phone, lying on the little table in front of the couch. There’s some text messages he hasn’t looked at. Couple of voicemails he hasn’t listened to.

“Maybe he, he, he didn’t want to keep hurting her,” Chris whispers.

“Hurt’s a part of living, lad, take it from someone who’s given out his fair share of it and more.” Mr. Malley hums. Outside, a car pulls up, almost bumping the curb. “Perhaps you’re meant to separate from your young partner, Tristan, perhaps not. It’s like I told your dad, way back in the Stone Age. You choose if you love someone, to be sure, but they choose if they love you back. You can’t decide that for them.”

“But, but I’m-... but, but I’ve been… what I am, it’s-”

“I know what you’ve been made to do,” Mr. Malley says gently. “You don’t have to explain, lad. We knew.”

Chris’s lips tremble. He doesn’t want his coffee any longer. He sets it down next to his phone, on the little table. The baristas talk quietly about a date that one went on the night before, there’s a low sound of machinery. It all filters into Chris’s mind, a cacophony of sound he picks apart or doesn’t. Right now it’s hard for him to think around all the sound, but he tries. “Then, then, then why… if you knew, um, why… didn’t you-”

He can’t finish the question.

Why didn’t you save me from it?

“We couldn’t. It’s shite, is what it is, but we couldn’t. And by the time we could, you were with that nice young man who you live with now. I’m sorry for the time you lost, Tristan, and sorrier still I can’t give it back to you somehow. You’re your dad’s child through and through, but you’ve got your mother in you, too. You know what Ronnie did when there was something she couldn’t get through?”

Chris turns to look at this man, who knew his mother and father in ways he never could have. He swallows. “What?”

“She went over it. Or around it. Or blew it to smithereens and went through the wreckage. Whatever it took. They tried to kick you out of school when you were a wean, she fought them ‘til they realized they’d never win against her. They tried to tell her you wouldn’t read, she told them to go, well, to go sit on a thing or two and not to tell her what her boy could or couldn’t do.”

Chris thinks of Nat sitting next to him on the floor, patiently encouraging him to keep trying to turn the letters into words, despite his headaches, his tears, his certainty he’d never get reading back.

You will, Chris. I know you will. Just keep fighting for it. They won’t take anything from you forever, I won’t let them and you won’t let them either.

Don’t let them keep you from yourself.

“They told her she’d never have a happy life, having a wee one so young, but she built that happy life anyway with her own two hands and dared anyone to try and knock it down.”

“Someone… some, someone did, though.” The gunshots, his mother’s eyes going dull and blank, her whispered I love you so much, Tris…

“Sure. Yes.” Mr. Malley’s expression goes serious, and sad. “But it took breaking into her house at midnight and bullets to stop her. You’ve got plenty of your mom in you, lad. Plenty of your dad, too, he was always a stubborn git himself. Do you love this person you’ve broken up with? Hm?”

“Yes.” The answer comes without hesitation, even though his voice shakes and his heart races. “I, I, I do. That’s, that’s why I don’t want to-to keep hurting them by, by, by by being messed up from what, um, from what happened to me, I don’t… I don’t want to keep h-hurting them-”

“Let them decide how they feel about that,” Mr. Malley says, voice gentle and low. “Plenty of people are hurt and find their way forward together after.”

Jake and Kauri, laughing in the kitchen as Jake spins Kauri around in a circle, dips him backwards, presses a kiss to his nose that has him giggling.

Antoni at the stove, sighing but with a smile on his face, watching them. Being pulled into the hug not quite against his will, all three of them laughing then. Kauri bright and sparkling, Jake a deeper harmony, Antoni soft and genuine.

“Maybe it won’t last, maybe it will - but don’t let a hard past keep you from the people who love you. I’ve seen many ruined by believing you may only be loved if you’ve no pain inside you. We’ve all got pain, lad. Carrying it together’s a sight easier than trying to go it alone.”

From the car parked right outside, an elderly man unfolds himself, opening an umbrella to shield from the driving rain. Mr. Malley looks up and smiles. “Ah, right on time, must be ten sharp. That’ll be Cilly. D’you remember Cilly, lad?”

Chris looks as the man shuffles his way inside, pushing open the door. The little bell over the top jingles and the baristas cut off their conversation, standing up straight to call out a familiar greeting to a regular customer.

He squints.

“Not… not very well,” He confesses, a little ashamed.

“Ah, well, that’s not a problem. He and I’ve known each other a long time. I was an angry man for a while after my wife died, you know. Seemed a crime that I should outlive her, when Christa deserved to live to a hundred and six if she so wished. Cilly helped me carry that anger when I needed to be angry, and he helped me put it down later on.”

He gives a wave to the man - to Cilly - who looks at Chris and then back to Mr. Malley with clear surprise, then heads towards the counter to make his own order.

“Be angry, Tristan,” Mr. Malley says, a little heavily, leaning over to him on the leg as he pushes himself, with a grunt of effort to his feet. “You may need your anger, in the days ahead. But if you’ve a love to help you carry it, who wants to help you carry it and who will be angry right there with you, and you love them back… well… don’t let the wickedness of others keep you from the happiness you could have. You’ll be a poorer person for it.”

Mr. Malley walks away without another word, leaving Chris by himself again on the couch, tapping at his stomach, thinking. He keeps looking at his phone, thinking about all the texts he hasn’t read, the way he’s refused to call them back when Laken kept trying to reach him.

He leans over to reach out.

He stops, hand hovering just above the plastic with its colorful case, the sensory sticker on the back of it that Laken had bought him.

What happened after all the dinosaurs died, Tristan?

I, I, I don’t know, Dad.

Trick question, buddy. They didn’t. Paul’s eyes, bright and vibrant, gesturing to a bird in a tree nearby. Nothing stays the same and lives forever except alligators and sharks.

Right because, because they’re perfect.

Exactly. Dinosaurs died, sure, but they didn’t die, too. They just changed to suit the world after the one they knew how to live in was gone. Imagine, Tris.

Imagine what?

Imagine the world destroyed and in darkness, buried in ash. Everything you know is gone, ruined, wrecked beyond repair. And imagine… imagine that you learn to eat seeds and little mice instead of big animals and leaves. Imagine you become smaller and smaller. Imagine that your arms turn to wings, that your bones hollow out to carry you higher above the piles of ash that turn to grass and to life again.

What? I, I, I don’t, um, I don’t understand-... Dad, um, I don’t, I don’t... know what you mean.

Right, sorry. Just... imagine you’re a dinosaur.

He’d laughed. Okay.

Now imagine your dinosaur family is gone, and you have to become something else. What do you become? Being a dinosaur means dying, right?

Um. Right.

So imagine that you look at death and say, no thanks. No, you’re not going to be over. This isn’t it for you. Even a meteor the size of the entire sky can’t end you. Instead of dying out, no, you look at history, at geological time, and you say…

Paul had trailed off.

Say what? What, what do I say?

Don’t tell your mom but-... you look at the end of the world and you say... fuck this, I’m going to learn to fly.

Chris picks up his phone, finds Laken’s name and photo in his contacts. It’s a photo of the two of them together, Chris and Laken smiling and laughing as he smears whipped cream on their nose and they smear a cross of fluffy white into his forehead.

He dials.

They pick up on the third ring.

“Chris? Oh my God, Chris, are you okay? Are you-... are you okay, baby?” Their voice shakes, and he closes his eyes.

This time, he lets the tears slip out and run down his face. “H-Hey, Laken, um, I, I, I-... I’m… I wondered if you, um, if you could, uh… are you busy?”

“Am I-... Chris, where are you?”

“The, um, the coffeeshop-”

“I’m on my way. Don’t you dare fucking move.”

At their usual table, at their usual time, Cilly and Sean Malley start to talk amicably about the week ahead. But he keeps an eye on Paul’s boy, where he speaks a few sentences and then hangs up the phone, looking out the window at the rain.

It’s twenty minutes before a new car pulls up outside, and umbrella-less, the partner Sean has seen with Tristan before comes racing inside, a blur of black clothes and black hair and brown skin. Paul’s boy stands, and his partner throws themself at him so hard the two of them fall backwards onto the couch.

They start laughing, and shortly after to cry.

Their hands come up to either side of Tristan’s face, and they lean forward to kiss the scar on his forehead. He can’t hear what they say to each other, but he doesn’t need to.

Ronnie, he thinks, would like this spitfire person that Paul’s boy is so in love with.

That’s one wrong put right, at least for the moment.

One more to go.

Sean smiles and sips his cooling coffee.

@burtlederp @finder-of-rings @endless-whump @astrobly @newandfiguringitout @doveotions @pretty-face-breaker @gonna-feel-that-tomorrow @boxboysandotherwhump @oops-its-whump @cubeswhump @whump-tr0pes @downriver914 @whumptywhumpdump @whumpiary @orchidscript @nonsensical-whump @outofangband @eatyourdamnpears

Just Go On from Kimmy Schmidt

180 notes · View notes

supeson · 3 years

Text

run me over

"How long're you outta town for?" Jason asks, setting his gun up in the window. The mobsters across the street in the casino don't suspect a thing, but he's still got an hour before his target shows up, so he'd decided to kill it on the phone with you.

"I'm not even out of town," You retort. "I'm in suburban Gotham petsitting, like thirty minutes away from my house. Sorry I'm not three rooftops away like you're used to."

"Y'know, you're really hurting me. And on my birthday, too? You're downright ruthless."

"To be fair, I offered for you to come spend the night with me. I've even got your present here already, waiting for you," You say as you let the dog out into the backyard. The house is nice, if a bit big and empty.

Jason straightens against the wall he's chosen to wait on. "Oh really? How long will it be waiting for me? Will it come off at some point?"

You snort. "You horny bastard it's not a sex present. I actually got you something. You should come over sometime this week and come get it."

Jason looks through the crosshairs and sees his target walk into the private dealing room. "I gotta go, baby. I'll see about stopping by, okay?"

"Alright, have fun. Don't get blown to bits."

You're relaxing on the couch scrolling through social media while the TV plays in the background, the time clocking in at around 11PM. As far as jobs go, this one is pretty easy. You feed the animals twice a day, and make sure the dog gets her medication every twelve hours. You feel a bit lonely in such a big house by yourself, but it's easy money. Deciding to call it a night, you're about to call the dog to her crate when she starts barking at the back door.

"What is it, Harley?" You walk up to the back door to look out into the backyard and see nothing. You shrug, figuring it's just a squirrel running across the yard she's excited about. You open the door to let her out, but she just continues to bark. You look again, and sure enough, there's a figure in the backyard shuffling towards the house. You feel a terrible jolt up your spine, and you're about to dart back to the couch for you phone when you make out a faint red symbol. The tension leaves your body and you huff, going outside to help him inside. "Jason you idiot. Did you really have to show up here all busted up?"'

You him wheeze out a laugh as he limps closer. "Do you ever really worry about me?"

You shake your head as you slip an arm under his own, heaving him up onto your shoulder. It takes twenty minutes to drag him inside, but once you've got him in, you dump him on the couch and run to your overnight bag, pulling out a stupid amount of first aid supplies. His mouth quirks up at one side as he watches you prep everything, but takes the top half of his suit off without saying anything.

It takes you an hour to clean and patch everything up, but when you're done, Jason whistles. "Damn babe, your skills are getting better. Who's been teaching you?"

"This one vet at work just assumes all of my questions are purely innocent. The man is smart when it comes to animal medicine, but kinda stupid when it comes to everything else," You supply, giving him one more wipe down with a sterile wipe. "Stop coming to me after you get fucked up, birthday boy."

You walk across the room to the kitchen island and wash your hands. Jason finally sits up and winces, pulling your stitches slightly. "'S not my fault these guys wanted a hot piece of birthday ass."

You roll your eyes and head to the fridge, snagging two forks on your way. He watches you pull out a takeout container, then stop at your bag and pull out a nicely wrapped box, and finally come to sit next to him, placing the items in front of him on the ottoman. He gives you the side eye as he pops the lid on the takeout container. "No. Fucking. Way."

"Yep," You say, popping the 'p'. "A triple chocolate deluxe from Trina's. You may think I'm just full of jokes and good sex, but I listen when you talk, and I remembered you saying this was your favorite as a kid."

You nudge the wrapped box as well, looking from him to the box. He grabs it, slowly unwrapping it. Tossing the tissue paper aside, he pulls out a shiny new leather jacket with a faux fur lining on the inside. He shrugs it on immediately, and of course it fits like a glove. "Shit babe, you knocked it out of the park this year. This is sick as hell."

"Yea, well. It's a talent of mine. And," You lean in, running your hand up his bare chest, smoothing it over the stitches and old scars. "if you think you've got enough blood left in you to get it up, I've got a third present for you in the guest bedroom upstairs."

Jason's face turns pink, and he immediately stands, everything else forgotten. "You've got ten minutes to get these animals situated for the night before I carry you upstairs."

#jason todd/reader #jason todd x reader #red hood/reader #red hood x reader #jason todd #red hood #happy birthday jason i didn't even kno lol

243 notes · View notes

luci-in-trenchcoats · 3 years

Text

If I Fell For You (Part 13) - Whiskey & Cookie Cake

Summary: After returning from his parents, the reader and Jensen have a very special impromptu date. The following day, they make things official and the reader shares an important part of her past with Jensen...

Masterlist

Pairing: Jensen x nanny!reader

Word Count: 6,000ish

Warnings: language, flangst

A/N: It’s not my fault if anything in this part makes you cry. Nope, none. Or if you want whiskey and cookie cake ;) Please enjoy and let me know what you think!

________

“I appreciate you two coming shopping with me,” said Alan as he stared at the flour section of the grocery store, Jensen off in the deli section getting some fresh meat for the grill. “Would you mind getting two bags for me?”

“No problem,” you said, bending down to get some. You sat them in the cart and walked down the aisle with him as he tossed in some yeast. “Are you gonna make your own hamburger rolls?”

“No, Jensen’ll get some from the bakery. My wife likes to make bread and send the kids home with a fresh loaf or two whenever they visit.”

“By kids you mean Jensen,” you said with a smile.

“Well, the other two are close by. They still get it. He liked it a lot after the accident. Couldn’t keep much down the first two weeks aside from bread and rolls,” he said.

“Why’s that?”

“Something about trauma, grief and a major leg surgery not being a good combo the doctor told us,” he said as Jensen came up the aisle with his own cart.

“Hamburgers. Hotdogs. Oh and steaks for me and Y/N,” he said, smiling at his dad.

“You really gonna milk last night for all it’s worth, aren’t ya,” he said.

“Relax. It’s salmon,” said Jensen with a smirk, his dad groaning. “So yes. You’re gonna eat your fish and stay away from the red meat today and maybe we can start letting last night go.”

“You’re blackmailing me.”

“Blackmailing you would be saying you’re gonna start taking your cholesterol medication everyday,” said Jensen. His dad opened his mouth and Jensen crossed his arms. “Dad. You’re old. Take the medicine. Please.”

“Old. I run three miles every morning. Three,” he said.

“Daddy. Take your medicine.”

“What else do you want?” he sighed. Jensen smirked and walked down the aisle, pointing to the left. “No.”

“Yes.”

“No!”

“One time offer. We will never discuss last night ever again if and only if, you get me what is owed to me.”

“This is a grocery store?” you asked, Jensen chuckling. He ran back to grab your hand, pulling you away towards the bakery.

“Boom,” he said, showing off a massive, massive cookie about the size of two sheet cakes.

“Jensen that’s like two hundred dollars,” you said.

“Eighth birthday. I remember being promised a particular cake from this particular store for my birthday if I got a A’s on every single one of my spelling tests all second grade long and guess who kept up his end of the deal,” said Jensen, crossing his arms.

“Spell optometry,” you said.

“O, p, t, o, m, i-”

“Etry,” you said, his dad walking over.

“Well I think I’ll buy the cake for the one that can spell after all,” he said. Jensen’s jaw dropped and he pouted. “Should you tell him or should I?”

“Jensen that cake behind you says Happy Birthday JJ.” He spun around and looked at the cake, cocking his head. “The one next to it says For Mrs. Rodeux’s best speller. Better late than never.”

“Oh. You...got me a cake,” he said.

“I called them first thing to get the second one done. You think I don’t know you kid?” chuckled his dad. Jensen looked at you and narrowed his eyes. “You don’t have to share it. It can go home with you.”

“Yes!” he said, doing a fist pump.

“Yeah, figured that’d win you over,” said his dad with a big smile.

“He really likes cookie cake huh,” you said.

“Just don’t let him eat too much at once or he gets sick.”

“I will do my best.”

Later That Evening

“Where’d Daddy go?” asked Zeppelin as you watched him take a bath back home in Austin. You were starting to get him comfortable with at least somewhat washing himself but for the most part he was still too interested in playing.

“I think he went to the bathroom downstairs,” you said, glancing at the clock on the wall. “You want to get in some warm jammies and have a bedtime story?”

“Not particularly,” he said. You got off the bench and squatted down next to the tub, ruffling his damp hair.

“How about we dry you off at least,” you said as you felt the water, a little cooler than you would have liked. “Come on. Time for jammies and bed.”

“No thank you,” he said.

“Hm. Well that sucks considering...well, you know…” you said. He turned his attention away from his boat and stared up at you. “Don’t you know?”

“No. What?” he asked as he got to his feet.

“You don’t know?” you said, his head shaking. “You gotta dry off and get in your pajamas then so we can go see.”

“See what Y/N?” he asked, climbing out of the tub with your help and picking up his towel. You helped him dry off and handed him his shirt and a pair of pull ups. “Y/N…”

“It’s in your room,” you said, never seeing him change faster as you drained the tub. He ran out the second his shorts were on and down the hall to his room, opening the door. He looked up at you and you nodded to his bed. He climbed on top and and you went over to his bookshelf, picking up the stuffed animal. “You know Wolf Wolfington?”

“Yeah,” he said, kneeling up in bed.

“You know how he’s your favorite?” you said, walking over with the animal behind your back. He nodded and you smiled, pulling the toy out. “I thought you might like him.”

“Wolfington!” he said, giving the stuffed thing a squeeze. “This is awesome!”

“I talked to Wolfington you see and he really wants you to get a bedtime story,” you said. “A really quick one even.”

“Okay,” he said, climbing under the covers with his new toy and his favorite blanket. Ten minutes later he was passed out and you put his book back on the shelf, hitting his light off and nightlight on. You skirted out of the room and shut the door. After cleaning up the bathroom, you wandered downstairs and found Jensen on the back balcony.

“Hey,” you said as you opened the back door. You slid it shut behind you, Jensen looking out over the yard. “Feel alright?”

“Mhm,” he hummed. You stood beside him, Jensen shifting behind you, wrapping his arms around your shoulders. He rested his chin on your shoulder and you smiled.

“S’nice night,” you said.

“Yeah,” he said quietly. You took his hand and turned back towards inside.

“Meet me on the trampoline in five,” you said. He smirked and headed down the stairs while you gathered up a few items. He was bouncing up and down by the time you got out there, a bottle of whiskey in one hand and a container in the other.

“Well this looks promising,” he said, plopping down on his bottom. You set the items down and stepped inside, sliding the container over to him. He popped off the lid and grinned. “You cut up my cookie cake for me.”

“Only if you share,” you said. You cracked the peel off the bottle and took a swig, mouth burning but the taste was good. You handed it to him and took out a piece of cake for yourself, Jensen smirking as he threw back a good two shots. He shook himself out and put the cap back on, taking a big bite of his cake and moaning. He lay back with his head in your lap, smiling up at you.

“I’m gonna keep you,” he said, smirking and taking another bite.

“I’ll make you a deal. You catch me, you can keep me,” you said, leaning down and pecking a kiss to his nose. He wrapped his arms over his head and around your waist, leaving his cookie on his chest. “No silly. You’re supposed to wait until I’m ready.”

“Oh, my mistake, miss,” he said, popping the last of his piece in his mouth. You took a few more of yours and wiped off your hands, Jensen sitting up just in time to tackle you back on the net, making you both along with the bottle and container bounce. “You’re not very good at this.”

“You don’t play fair,” you said, Jensen smirking before he plopped down on top of you. “Jensen.”

“See that’s twice I’ve caught you. I think you should honestly give up now and accept your fate with me forever.”

“Oh no! The cookie cake!” you said. He sat up and spun around, giving you a chance to crawl out from under him and over to the other side of the trampoline. “Sucker.”

“That you’re just gonna have to pay for,” he said. He jumped and bounced over to you, missing you as you rolled away. You giggled and went to stand but he was already right there and picking you up. “What to do with a troublemaker like you?”

“Drink, eat way too much dessert and look at the stars?” you asked.

“Cuddling is non-negotiable,” he said.

“I suppose I can live with that,” you sighed dramatically. He grinned and started to bounce lightly, your arms going around him. “Don’t drop me.”

“Never,” he said, jumping up high with you, your arms squeezing him tight. He laughed and did it again before setting you down. He held up a finger and jogged back to the house, ducking inside and returning with a blanket. He handed it to you and you laid it out on the trampoline, Jensen laying back beside you.

“Just so we’re clear,” you said, taking a sip from the bottle while he got out another piece of cake and trading with you, “I totally let you catch me.”

“Gonna play it that way are we?” he chuckled.

“Yup,” you said, Jensen turning and resting his head back on your stomach. You played with his hair, his eyes closing briefly while he chewed. He stared up at the dark sky, humming to himself. “I can tell you’re better than this morning.”

“Yeah. I know this chick. She has a knack for making everything better,” he said. You ran your fingers through his strands, taking a deep breath. “Did you know I make music on occasion?”

“The guy with guitars and records and music stuff all over his house? No, never,” you laughed. He reached a hand up and ruffled your head.

“I’m serious, like I’ve recorded in a studio. I have an album,” he said.

“Really?” you asked. “You’ve never told me that.”

“I lost the mood for it a while back. It might be coming back,” he said. He was quiet and you twirled a piece of his hair, Jensen smiling and nuzzling back against you.

“Where’d you go during kiddos bath?” you asked.

“Mom had it handled,” he said. You took a bite of your cookie and felt him pull your hand in his hair down to his chest. “Was that okay?”

“Yeah,” you said quietly. You finished off your cookie and he reached into the container for another. “Plane.”

“Where?” he asked.

“Kinda to the left,” you said.

“I think I missed it.” You felt his gaze on you and you turned your head, green eyes looking back. “They get two moms is all. It’s no big deal.”

“They don’t have to call me that,” you said.

“I know.” He went back to looking at the sky, a few stars out in the clear night. “You know I heard from this chick, same one as before and all, that adoptive moms are kinda the shit.”

You sat up and his head wound up in your lap.

“You want that?” you asked.

“Eventually, yeah. After the wedding and everything,” he said. “Speaking of which, and I know a lot of women have their vision and all that but I was thinking maybe you’d be interested in something smaller? You don’t strike me as the let’s have a huge thing kind of person.”

“You want me to adopt the kids?” you asked again. He nodded and sat up, moving an arm around your back.

“If you don’t want to, that’s okay,” he said, your head shaking. “What is it?”

“I don’t...want to overstep and…” you said. He smiled and reached into his pocket, pulling out a piece of paper.

“We have permission from the beyond it turns out,” he said. He held it out to you and you swallowed. “She wrote me a letter a few years back after the twins were born. I found it in my desk drawer last fall. I finally read it after we got home tonight.”

“Jensen, I can’t. This isn’t for me.”

“Well if you don’t read it, I’m gonna tell you what it says anyways.”

“This is yours,” you said, pushing the paper back towards his chest. “She was talking to you. This was meant for you and only you.”

“Actually you’re wrong,” he said, putting it in your hand. “Some of the letter was for me but this page? This page I haven’t read because it’s not addressed to me. It’s for you and I need you to read it because this is the last of her voice I ever get from her for a really long time so I need you to read it and tell me what it says.”

You shut your eyes and took a deep breath before unfolding the sheet.

To The Next One,

I hope there is a next one. Like seriously. I’m telling you upfront that I was the one that did the asking out, not him. He’s shy and I swear Jensen if you’re reading this I’m kicking your ass the second I see you again.

“She’s funny,” you said, biting your bottom lip.

So. Next person he falls in love with. Here’s the deal. I got some contingencies for you and him getting together. Technically I have no say. Technically I can guilt trip from beyond the grave though so, you know, I win. But if you are the person he loves, tell him that you love him. He bottles shit up and shoves it down. He pretends he’s fine and he’ll take on the weight of the goddamn world with a smile cause he’s good like that. But he hurts and you’ve probably seen him cry as much as I have at this point. You can only be that good and kind and loving when you got a lot of love jammed in there.

So I imagine he was pretty fucked up after I bit the big one. Probably put on a brave face and powered through. But you know that. Do me a favor and put that boy in his place. Tell him to go cry or watch The Notebook. He says he hates it but it’s what he watches when he needs to cry. You know what else? Encourage that shit more. He’s getting there, really he is. He is the least toxic man on the planet. But you know, try to help him diffuse or something? I used to give him lavender bubble bath and he was all, no way and then next thing I know, he’s taking his bubble bath on a stressful day. Pay attention to that stuff I guess is what I’m saying.

Another thing. Presuming he’s not the most handsome geriatic man there could be when you’re reading this, have a fucking kid with him. Have two if you want, or more. Adopt the three that we made. Or adopt if you can’t. It’s fun and he is so good with a baby. He was walking around with Arrow earlier cooing at her and that’s the most adorable shit I’ve ever seen in my life and you deserve to see it too.

He’s special. Normally I’d never agree to sharing him but if you’re the person he gave this letter to, I’ll make an exception for you like I’m sure you had to make an exception for me. Make him happy and the kids. Let them make you happy. Maybe in another life we can catch up over a drink, figure out how to share there too.

And just between us, don’t stop acting like kids in love for the first time. He won’t and you shouldn’t either.

See you around The Next One.

Dee

P.S. His blue henley is the softest thing on earth. He hides it in his gray suitcase. Steal it or I swear we can’t be friends.

“Y/N?” asked Jesen as you folded up the paper. You smiled and put it in your pocket. “What’d it say?”

“I don’t think it was meant for your eyes,” you said, planting your hands behind you and leaning back. “But she’d like us to do everything we’d like. Also found out a few things I’m gonna have to keep a secret.”

“Oh really?” he said, smirking at you. “Like what?”

“I think that’s between us girls,” you said, laying back on the trampoline. “We are going to share you though so I think you’ll like that.”

“You’re really not gonna tell me?” he chuckled. “After all that?”

“She loves you a lot. I mean a lot Jensen. Pretty much it’s her asking me to take care of you guys and some little ways to do that,” you said. He nodded and lay back, smiling to himself. “Do you-”

“No. If I change my mind I’ll just ask to see it,” he said.

“Why’d you finally read the letter she had today of all days?”

“I was ready, after my parents and how you acted. I’m not letting her go or moving on so much as...I want my first girl to love my second girl and I’m pretty sure you two would care about each other, for me and the kids sakes.”

“Well I gotta love her. I happen to know the location of a certain...shirt I’m supposed to steal,” you said. He turned his head and his jaw dropped.

“She told you about the blue henley! No, it’s so soft!”

“I was instructed to steal it so I’m afraid I must make this sacrifice for Dee. It’s really the only respectable thing to do.”

“You two are somehow still managing to gang up on me,” he said with a laugh. “Oh my God. I don’t know if I can handle an afterlife with the both of you.”

“Yeah but threesomes on the reg,” you said. He let out a deep laugh, running a hand over his face while you giggled. “Sorry. That was so inappropriate.”

“No, no that’s Dee for ya. She would be more than down,” he chuckled. “Yeah, she’d like you a lot.”

“We both have excellent taste in men,” you said, reaching for the container of cookie. There was one piece left and you held it out, Jensen leaning up to take a bite.

“That’s not the whole thing right?”

“Jensen it was the size of a sheet cake. This is like, a fifth of that,” you said.

“Good cause as you can see, I have no cutoff when it comes to this stuff.” He took another bite and you put the rest in your mouth, his eyes narrowing. He pecked a kiss to your lips and pulled you to lay back with him. “I have a fun idea for tomorrow while the kids are at school and daycare.”

“Lay in bed naked and drink coffee?”

“That is an excellent idea we will be touching upon Tuesday morning. However, it seems to me that my fiance is missing something,” he said, lacing his fingers with your left hand.

“You want to go pick out an engagement ring?”

“Hm, I think you’ll just have to trust me on this one,” he said.

“Okey dokie.” You turned onto your side and curled up beside him. The air was warm and comfortable, Jensen stretching out. “Love you.”

“Love you too, honey.”

You woke up to the sound of birds, Jensen groaning beside you. The air felt different and opening your eyes told you exactly why.

“Howdy neighbors,” said Jared. You bolted up and turned on your bottom, Jared chuckling while Jensen grunted again. He pulled you down to lay and Jared laughed. “Stopped by to get the keys to your jet skis when I saw those three inside eating cereal out of the box and watching cartoons.”

“See? They can fend for themselves,” mumbled Jensen. He sat up and brought you with him before rubbing his eyes. Jared walked over to the entrance of the trampoline and smirked. “Shut up.”

“What’d you two crazy kids get up to last night?” he asked.

“Nothing,” said Jensen.

“There is a half drunk liquor bottle and you both smell like whiskey and chocolate.”

“It was cookie cake,” you said. “I think we accidentally fell asleep out here.”

“The trampoline don’t make a half bed mattress,” said Jensen. You crawled out of the entrance, Jared holding the bottle and empty container when you handed them off to him. Jensen followed after as you stretched out. “What time is it?”

“A little after eight,” he said.

“Shit. JJ’s late for school,” he said, Jared shaking his head. “Ah, thank you.”

“Gen took her and the boys. I dropped the twins off at daycare after I came out here and made sure you were both alive,” he said.

“I thought something poked my back,” you said.

“I figured I’d let you guys sleep,” he said. “You want to hit up the water with us? Double date while the kids are at school?”

“We have plans,” said Jensen with a soft smile. “But dinner here later?”

“What are we having? Cause you know we got our tradition for last week of school,” said Jared with a grin.

“You guys handle the sides, we’ll handle the meat,” said Jensen. Jared smirked and you shook your head. “You’re a child.”

“You handle that meat real good,” said Jared, Jensen whacking his arm.

“Be careful with the skis. Wear your life jacket doofus,” he said.

“Yes mom,” said Jared as he handed you back the bottle and container. “Six thirty ish?”

“Sounds good. Oh and if Gen is in the mood to make extra queso…” said Jensen, Jared rolling his eyes. “Thank you Jared.”

“Yeah, yeah. You guys finish up your thing early you know where to find us,” he said. He headed back up the yard as you and Jensen ducked inside.

“I am going to shower,” you said. Jensen grinned and grabbed your free hand. “Do...do you want to shower too?”

“We would save a lot of time if we did it together,” he said.

“I like the way you think Ackles.”

“I am so confused,” you said an hour later, sat on the hood of Baby with a blindfold on. “You know normally you would do the blindfold and then give the ring, not the other way around.”

“Eh, quiet with your back sass. I have a surprise for you that requires some preparation,” he said.

“Oh you know prep work is very important,” you laughed.

“Jared’s a bad influence on you.”

“You’re a bad influence on me,” you said. “So to recap, after we showered and got dressed in what I should say is a particularly flattering romper-”

“I like the red one but you had to go with the blue, didn’t you,” he chuckled.

“The red one is so tight on my ass it’s not even funny.”

“We have different definitions of problems with clothing,” he laughed.

“Well, this light blue one is strapless.”

“I know. I find that very, very appealing.”

“Anyways, my randy fiance hits me out of nowhere with a ring he’s had in the closet apparently and then he kidnaps me away to his muscle car, throws a blindfold on me and after approximately twenty one minutes of driving, mainly highway, we park and he has abandoned me like a damsel to fend for myself in the summer heat.”

“You trying to win an Oscar over there?” he chuckled.

“I’d settle for an Emmy.”

“Oh yeah. Everybody can get one of those,” he laughed. “You can calm yourself little lady. I am almost done and frankly your timing estimation is scarily accurate.”

“Well I know how far the brewery is from the house so not that impressive,” you said.

“We’re not at the brewery,” he said.

“We are literally at the brewery. I heard someone shout your name.”

“Technically we’re on the land next to it, smarty pants. Two more seconds,” he said.You leaned your head back, enjoying the breeze and smell of fresh pizza.

“Hey Jensen. What’s this dinner tradition thing with the Padaleckis?”

“Oh we started it a few years back. This is the kids last week of school. Since tomorrow and wednesday are half days, we kinda always get together as like an end of school celebration that Monday night. We’ll go out this weekend with them but we do a home cooked meal, normally a tex-mex blend sort of thing for this. I got a guy we can get some marinated brisket from on the way home. We’ll put her in the grill on low and she’ll be good to go.”

“You ever have a sandwich with brisket, coleslaw and jalapenos? It is so, so good.”

“I’m gonna have to try that out tonight,” he said, his hands on your arms. “For now though, please remove your blindfold, madam.”

You undid the bow in the back and pulled it off. A small table was set up with a two candles on top, a box of pizza at the end and a six pack beside it.

“You really do know the way to my heart,” you said. You laughed and he walked you over to it, pulling out your folding chair. “I thought I smelled pizza.”

“I know you like the one we sell quite a bit,” he said, taking a seat next to you. “I actually...don’t laugh but this was kinda my idea of how I actually wanted to propose. It’s private but simple. You’ve never been the fanfare type. I thought you would have liked it.”

“You could always ask again.”

“Wanna marry me?”

“Yup,” you said. He wiped off his brow and and you gently smacked his arm. “I do like it. Just us. It’s really peaceful here.”

“I’ve always thought so. Our own little slice of country,” he said.

“I never told you, did I,” you said, smiling to yourself. “I grew up on the outskirts of Austin, about ten minutes down the road.”

“That’s all farm country out there,” he said. You shrugged and he chuckled. “You grew up on a farm?”

“My mom owned acreage from her parents, their parents before them. She left it to me. I haven’t been in over a year. A local farmer makes sure the house is in order but we got fields and a house and barn. I never sold it in case I needed a place between nanny jobs.”

“Would you show me sometime?” he asked.

“Yeah. We can go after our lunch date. Promise.”

“What do you think?” you asked when you walked up the front path to the house nearly an hour later.

“This is gorgeous out here. It’s so quiet,” he said as he looked around at the small hills and trees, the swaying long grass in the breeze. “We should keep this.”

“Huh?”

“You said you kept it for a place to stay between jobs. I think we should definitely keep it though, for us. It’s like a different world almost but it’s within driving distance of home.”

“I haven’t lived here since I was sixteen,” you said, tucking your hair behind your ear. “But...I think you’re right. Mom would want us to keep it. I really did love it here. It’d be great too for when your family is in town. We only have the one guest room but this is a much shorter drive for like your siblings families and they don’t need a hotel or anything.”

“That’s a great idea. I know they’d visit more often if they had the space for the kids and some grown up space even,” he said. You picked up a rock by the steps and grabbed the key, undoing the front door. It smelled only a bit musty as you stepped inside. You left the door open, leaving the screen one shut to air it out as Jensen turned his head. “This place is huge. Your mom got it from family?”

“Her parents died when she was in college. Only child. There’s five good sized bedrooms,” you said. “That was the dining room which honestly we only used for holidays. Stairs, hallway to the back. Left is the family room.”

He started to wander and you followed after, showing him the kitchen before taking him up.

“This was my room,” you said as you opened a door. It was fairly empty aside from a bare bed and a few boxes. He thumbed over the doorframe, catching each notch in the wood.

“Hit your growth spurt around twelve?” he asked. You nodded and he smiled. “I was so short.”

“Not short anymore,” you said while he walked around.

“Do you have any pictures of your mom? The downstairs looked a little bare.”

“Yeah,” you said. You showed him down to the master, opening up a box on the bed. “That’s where they all are.”

“Would it be alright if we took these home with us?”

“Yeah,” you said quietly, taking a seat. He sat beside you and you took out an album, Jensen smiling at the first page. “Don’t laugh.”

“That is the ugliest dress I’ve ever seen.”

“I didn’t have much say in the matter,” you said. “That’s from the day I got adopted.”

“You were adorable, even if it looks like you’re wearing a drape,” he chuckled. He turned the page and cocked his head. “Is this your mom?”

“Yeah.”

“She’s so happy,” he said. “I bet that was one of the best days ever for her.”

“I agree,” you said, Jensen flipping some more before stopping at one. “What is it?”

“Where’s this from?” he asked.

“I think Miami. We went there on vacation one year with Ray. I was nine I want to say,” you said.

“Was it March?”

“Yeah, how’d you know?”

“Dee went on her spring break to Miami one year in college,” he said. He pointed at a couple of girls that were in the background behind where your set up was, one of them looking very familiar.

“That looks just like-”

“I know. Might not be her. Odds are-”

“How many Danneel’s have you ever met with their name on their bag,” you said, pointing at the purse.

“Oh my God. She was such a little preppy nerd,” he chuckled. “I bet she did that cause of her friends.”

“You can have that if you want.”

“I think we can share it,” he said. He turned through the pages and finished with the album, picking out another. You let him look and ask questions for a while before he’d gone through most of the box. He carried it downstairs with him and packed it away in the backseat before you brought him around to the back of the house.

“Come here,” you said. You dragged him over to the tree with the wide swing, space enough for the both of you to sit. “I used to stay out here all day sometimes. Day of the funeral I must have sat here for hours and hours.”

“Not a bad place to grieve. It’s pretty.”

“It was the last time I sat on this swing. I said I’d never feel at home here again,” you said. “Ray and I got an apartment closer to town, moved the next week.”

“How do you feel now?” You smiled and leaned back.

“Now...home is people, not a place. I want to share this with you, the kids. Our family. I was so unhappy as a child and this place changed that for me cause of my mom and even Ray. It’s a good place again for me. Home is somewhere else now but it feels warm here again, not sad and cold.”

“Thanks for taking me out here today,” he said.

“Maybe we can even do that camping trip in one of the fields. You gotta see the stars out here, way more than at the house.”

“Camping with indoor plumbing only steps away. Best of both worlds,” he said. “Do you own anything else big? We never really talked about that kind of stuff I suppose.”

“Actually I own the Dallas Cowboys. I didn’t want to intimidate you,” you said. He rolled his eyes while you bumped his arm and giggled.

“Okay wise guy.” He threw his arm over your shoulders and you expected a noogie but only got a kiss on the head. “You’re lucky I know how long you spent on your hair this morning or else you’d be so screwed right now.”

“Losing your edge, Ackles.” He didn’t hesitate that time to put you in a headlock and you managed to ruffle his some before he gave in with a laugh. You could feel a few strands out of place but he stood and undid your hair tie, moving behind you and scooping it all up. He hummed and put it back in a messy bun for you, smiling as you leaned back to catch him fixing his hair. “I don’t have much else besides this place, my car and a savings account.”

“You know, speaking of your car...I’m gonna have to be an asshole about something,” he said.

“Oh? What’s that?” you said as you stood. You walked in front of him and he rested his hands on your hips.

“I’m going to have to insist on a new one.”

“Ah, come on. It’s my first car. I got if for my sixteenth birthday,” you said.

“That car is almost as old as you are. I know you don’t have to drive it as much lately since we take mine but please can we get something from the current decade? Pretty please?” he asked, jutting out his lip.

“Are you worried?” you asked. He nodded and you smiled. “I will look at something newer, I promise.”

“Thank you,” he said, checking his watch. “Want to go get that meat, get started on it?”

“Oh I bet you want to handle that meat,” you said. He gave his bitch face and walked away as you laughed.

“Your crude humor is very immature,” he said as you caught up with him. “I don’t go for that kind of low brow thing.”

“I watched you make a dick out of a banana and two oranges at the grocery store yesterday.”

“Touche,” he said.

“You’re silly,” you said, wrapping an arm around his waist. “But I like that.”

“Me too, sweetheart,” he said, kissing your temple. “Anything besides the brisket you want to pick up? Chicken? Burgers?”

“Hm, I’ve never made my world famous chicken thighs for you yet. I gotta grill ‘em but the secret is you heat them up in the oven again with this marinade sauce. I got a raise out of it once actually.”

“First off, the face you can grill is extremely attractive. Second, how’d you manage a raise?” he asked, stopping by Baby.

“I made them for the couple I was working for at the time. She took credit of course but they had a fancy dinner party with her boss and she got named partner at her firm for it so she gave me a raise for helping out.”

“Well now that you’ve hyped these things up to here we gotta have some for sure,” he said. “Why don’t we head out to the store. We only got about an hour before we need to grab the twins from daycare.”

“After you babe.”

________

A/N: Read Part 14 here!

#supernatural #spn #jensen ackles #jensen ackles au #jensen x reader #jensen series #rpf #rpf series #jensen ackles x reader #spn fanfic #jensen ackles fanfic #supernatural fanfic

392 notes · View notes

lifeofkaze · 3 years

Note

Hi love!

Sorry for bothering you, but could you do something like really cute and fluffy between Charlie Weasley and reader where he's all shy and delicate maybe teaching her about dragons and their characteristics pls? Like, something that feels really intimate, you know?

I absolutely love your writing and I believe that you could make justice to the character.

Take care darling,

-A

Thank you for the request, loveliest anon! This is actually the first fic request I’ve ever gotten and I’m so happy you like my stuff so much, this makes me very very soft.

This fluff piece was just what I needed to get my mojo back hopefully. Please let me know if this is like what you had in mind - I for one had a lot of fun with it! <3

***

Favourites

Charlie Weasley x Reader

Word Count: ~ 2.800

As a Care of Magical Creatures test covering dragons of all things is imminent and you were too distracted in class to pay proper attention, you know just who to turn to for help.

“You want me to do what?”

Charlie Weasley blinked at you in confusion. He could feel his blood rushing in his ears as he looked at you standing in front of him, clutching you Care for Magical Creatures book to your chest as you raised your eyebrows at him.

“I asked if you could help me studying for the test next week?” you repeated your question, brow slightly furrowed. “I can’t keep track of all these dragon traits and who would know them better than you?”

Charlie felt the heat creeping up on his face. Of course, the test. It was all he had been able to think about ever since Professor Kettleburn had announced the topic; all except you of course.

He tried to formulate a coherent answer that wouldn’t make him look like a blabbering fool in front of you, but the way the dappled sunlight that broke through the trees reflected in your hair distracted him more than he cared to admit.

So he resorted to a weak nod. “Uhm, sure, I’d love to. See you at six in the library?” he managed to stammer out eventually.

A beautiful smile formed on your face as you nodded in enthusiasm. “Sounds great, see you there!”

Charlie watched as you swished around and walked back to your friends, who greeted you with giggles and whispers as they glanced in his direction. You gave one of them a playful swat on the arm, before your clear laugh carried over to him onto the warm summer air and made his heart clench.

He knew all of his dragons by heart, of course he did; this test was the first he hadn’t bothered studying for at all. But now, he suddenly felt the overwhelming urge to prepare himself.

The light of the sun had already started to turn into the beautiful golden shade that heralded the end of a warm autumn day as you skittered into the library. You were a little bit late for your study session with Charlie, and the exertion from running all the way from your Common Room flushed your cheeks slightly red. Your friends just hadn’t let you go, all of them just as excited for what they called ‘your dragon date’ as you were. Not that you’d ever tell them that.

You found Charlie sitting at a table near the windows and your breath caught for a moment as you took in the warm light that washed around his frame; it was making his ginger hair glow like fire, the only vibrant speck of colour in this dusty old room full of books.

He had his nose buried in a big, leather-bound tome, his eyes darting over the pages frantically; you noticed how the tip of his tongue stuck out between his lips in concentration. He was so immersed in his reading, that he only noticed you approaching as you sat down next to him. Jumping in shock at your sudden appearance, he almost knocked over his ink bottle, only catching it at the last second before its dark, inky content could wash over the thin pages of his book.

“Oh, you’re here already, I didn’t even notice you until now.” His freckled face had flushed a shade darker than usual as he put his ink bottle back into its position and made room for you on the table.

“I’d rather say I’m here finally,” you responded, feeling a little bit guilty at making Charlie wait. “But I see that you started without me.”

He hurriedly closed the book. “No, I was just reading up on some facts about Welsh Greens so I have them sharp in my mind,” he explained, “in case you have questions, you know?”

It was only now that your eyes took in the numerous heaps of books piled up on your table. “First question,” you said as you ran your fingers over the backs of the tomes stacked on top of each other. “I thought the test was about dragons native to Europe and not every single one in existence,” you pulled out a particularly old looking book containing myths and fables, “and beyond.”

You silently counted the numbers of books Charlie had amassed and your eyes went wide. “Charlie, these must be all the books about dragons in the whole library,” you laughed, giggling at the flustered expression of the boy beside you.

“Well, not all the books,” he clarified sheepishly. “There are quite a few in the Restricted Section and then there’s the two I have up in my dorm but forgot to bring and- “

You cut off his rambling by gently touching his arm; he shut up almost instantly, glancing nervously down to where your hand was lying. “It’s alright, it was just a joke.”

“Of course,” Charlie muttered slightly embarrassed. What was wrong with him?

He watched as you pulled your notes from your bag; they were rather sparse compared to the almost three scrolls of parchment he had scribbled down himself.

“Where do you want to start?”

You hummed to yourself as you considered your choices. A warm, fuzzy feeling spread inside Charlie’s chest as you drew your lips into a pensive pout and tapped your index finger against it.

Finally, a neat stack of white flashcards, that lay hidden behind a book on Sea Serpents, caught your attention. You reached over Charlie and pulled them towards you.

Your mouth dropped open as you flicked through them; on every one of the laminated cards was an extensive profile of every kind of dragon imaginable. The descriptions were written out in a neat, accurate hand that looked nothing like the careless scrawl you’d seen on Charlie’s class notes.

But what took your breath away were the detailed drawings below the text. They were done by pencil and although they didn’t move like magical pictures often did, they were so lively as if they only waited to pounce off the paper and take into the air.

Charlie watched you apprehensively as your fingers traced the outline of what appeared to be a Swedish Short-snout. He felt his heart beat faster at the soft, admiring look in your eyes as you turned towards him.

“Did you do these yourself?”

He nodded in response. “It’s hard to find decent descriptions all in one place,” he explained quietly. “I don’t know how accurate the sketches are though; I’ve never seen a dragon in real life.”

You flashed him a radiant smile that had his heart rate pick up considerably. “I don’t care if they’re realistic; they’re brilliant!”

Encouraged by your excitement, he took the flashcards out of your hands and fanned them out, their blank backs facing you. “Then I’d suggest we start with them; pick one!”

Running the fingers along the cards twice, you finally settled on one and drew it out of his grasp. Charlie’s freckled face lit up as he saw which one you had chosen.

“The Ukrainian Ironbelly,” he exclaimed, “my favourite!”

All of his former shyness was suddenly forgotten; this was his prime discipline.

“The Ironbelly is native to the Ukraine, as its name suggests, obviously. It’s considered the largest dragon species in existence with an immense wingspan, long talons and scales that are said to be harder to pierce than steel. It’s name stems from the metallic grey colour of his underside and ever since one particular large specimen carried off a whole sailing ship in the late 18th century, they are under strict observation by wizarding authorities.”

You did your best to jot down the information Charlie dumped on you with impressive speed but there was no way you could keep up with his excited ramblings. So you resorted to listening to him as he lectured you about feeding habits, hunting methods and the average temperature of the flames an Ironbelly could produce.

He sighed wistfully as he paused for breath. “They’re amazing.”

You couldn’t hide your smile at his dreamy expression as you picked out your next card from the stack. “Okay, how about this one?”

The dragon it showed had ridges running along its back, ending in a nasty, arrow-shaped spike at the tip of its tail. It barred its teeth at you in a vicious snarl.

“That’s my favourite, the Hebridean Black,” he repeated his words from before, positively bouncing with energy this time around.

You glanced at the card you two had just worked your way through. “I thought the Ukrainian Ironbelly was your favourite?” you teased him.

Charlie’s bouncing stopped instantly as he blushed bright red; you hadn’t meant to bring him down and felt sorry all of a sudden. So you propped the card against one of the book piles and turned to him.

“So, tell me more about it.”

Relieved to be able to tread on secure ground again, Charlie immediately recounted all the facts about one of the two dragon breeds native to the British Isles to you.

You continued in this fashion; your pulled a random card from the stash and Charlie would tell you everything he knew about it. He grew more animated with every new flashcard; as it turned out, every dragon you talked about was his favourite.

Seeing him so caught up in his favourite subject had a warmth spread in your chest and the smile on your lips never vanished even once. You had given up on writing Charlie’s words down about four cards ago and were merely staring at him explaining to you everything about these fantastic beasts that made up all of his dreams and musings.

His excitement quickly spread to you and you found yourself hanging onto his every word. But the more you were listening to him, the more you found your concentration shift from the dragons you were discussing to the boy beside you.

Your head propped on your hand, you admired how recounting scale colours and preferred environments of Romanian Longhorns brought a twinkle to his blue eyes and how his contagious laugh had you chuckle at the idea that people would confuse a Hungarian Horntail with a Norwegian Ridgeback.

The dimples forming in his freckled cheeks as he smiled at you were the exact reason why you had needed help with studying for this test in the first place. When you had talked about dragons in class, the eager smile and the slight scrunch of his nose as he scribbled down every single word Professor Kettleburn had to spare had left you breathless and unable to concentrate on anything but the butterflies dancing in your stomach.

The pile of flash cards had dwindled down until only a few more were left. Your breath caught in your throat as you turned around your next pick; the pictured showed a slender dragon directly from the front. It’s wings were outstretched and it seemed to be staring directly at you out of wide, pupil-less eyes. It was the only drawing so far that was coloured.

Your finger traced the subtle colour gradient rippling over its pearly scales as Charlie looked over to see which one was next.

“The Antipodean Opaleye,” he murmured, taking in your fascinated expression, “it’s singularly coloured scales and eyes are the stuff of legends.”

“It’s beautiful,” you whispered, trying to imagine how the scales of a real life Opaleye might shimmer in the sunlight.

“Not as beautiful as you,” Charlie suddenly blurted out. The words had fallen from his lips before he’d even had a chance to stop them.

Both of you froze as what he had said sank into your consciousness. You couldn’t believe your ears and were half sure that your mind must have played a trick on you.

You carefully glanced over to Charlie out of the side of your eyes; he looked incredulous and you could watch the colour of his face turning from ghostly white to a deep, vivid scarlet that clashed with his ginger hair in a matter of seconds.

Feeling your own cheeks starting to blush at the unexpected compliment, you desperately were looking for something to say to take the shock out of his widened eyes. But your mind wasn’t working properly anymore, so all you managed was a meek “Wow, uhm, thank you Charlie, that’s really sweet.”

It was apparent your words didn’t help his flustered situation as he covered his face with his hands and groaned “I can’t believe I said that out loud; I’m such an idiot.”

You didn’t know what to do to help him; you felt utterly flattered and confused at the same time. You thought about putting your hand on his arm to reassure him what he had said actually made you happy, but paused halfway, not quite daring to touch him again.

Still unsure of what to do, you got up and picked up one of the books he had used to illustrate the facts on his flashcards.

“I’d better get going, I guess,” you stammered without looking at the wretched boy sitting at the table next to you, “thank you so much for helping me, I think I’ll manage the rest on my own. Can I borrow that book though?”

He didn’t raise his face from his hands, but nodded anyways. You felt bad for leaving him like that, but your head was spinning and you desperately needed to sort out your thoughts.

But seeing Charlie’s slumped frame sitting at the table, all the bubbly excitement from before completely drained from him, tugged at your heartstrings so hard it almost hurt. So instead of turning around and leaving, you drew a deep breath, gathered your courage and stepped behind him, placing a light kiss on his cheek.

You could feel his shoulders tense and his breath hitch as your hair tickled his jaw and were glad he couldn’t see the deep blush on your cheeks as you straightened up, picked up your bag and his book and hurried out of the library with a racing heart, too afraid to turn around once more.

Charlie and you hadn’t spoken again after what had happened in the library. It had taken him quite some time to be able to think properly again after you had left; he had just sat at his table, hand on his cheek where you had kissed him, staring into nothingness, the peachy smell of your hair still hanging in the air.

Even though the thought of how soft your lips had felt on your cheek had been the most prominent thing in his mind, he had passed his test with flying colours; some things just couldn’t be erased from his mind, no matter what was happening around him.

He had just returned to his dorm after a particularly tiring Quidditch practise when he saw it lying on his bed, propped up against his head bord; the book you had borrowed from him to finish studying on your own.

For a brief moment, he wondered how you had managed to get it up here, when he noticed something white sticking out of the pages. Curious, he picked up the book and flicked it open.

Even without looking, he knew what chapter it was you had marked with whatever you had put in there; he had read this book more times than he could remember. It was the chapter on the Antipodean Opaleye; he grimaced at the memory of when he had last thought about this particular dragon.

A white flashcard was stuck between the pages, its laminated surface flashing as Charlie turned it around to read it.

A big smile stole onto his face as he saw the photograph of you laughing and waving at him that you had stuck on the front side. His eyes swept over the lines written in your feminine hand and his smile grew even wider as he read the ‘special characteristics’ section:

It has to be remarked, that this particular specimen was able to pass her test with full marks.

He was glad to hear his blurted out compliment hadn’t affected your marks in the end. He sighed wistfully, when he noticed the very small, scribbled note at the very end of the card; it wasn’t as neatly written as the rest, almost as if your hands had shaken while writing it down.

Greatest weakness: While not many weaknesses are recorded of this specimen, it is said that it can be easily tamed by ginger-haired dragon trainers in the making. Whether these rumours are true, remains to be determined.

Charlie’s mouth dropped open as he read the last section over and over again, not daring to believe what he thought they said. But after the tenth time, he finally allowed the butterflies that had been fluttering in his stomach to spread into the rest of his body, his smile growing into the widest grin as he tucked the flashcard carefully into the book again.

This time, he was sure; this one was his favourite.

Tagging: @weasleysandwheezes

#harry potter #hphm #hogwarts mystery #charlie weasley #charlie weasley x reader #L writes #by request

215 notes · View notes

shirophantomvox · 3 years

Text

Random date night with Illumi, Hisoka, and Chrollo

Hello, anon! Ask and you shall receive! This prompt is very interesting and I will try to keep it in character as much as possible. To sum this up, Hisoka would take you to an ice cream shop, a carnival, or apple orchard while Illumi would rather go to an art or historical museum. Chrollo would persuade you to attend a book reading/author signing or go hiking. Depending on who you are and what your ideal date is, I’m sure you’d find them all fun. Going to a carnival or apple orchard is my go-to since I’ve barely been because they’re all in the suburbs. These headcanons are explained much more than the others. That is why Chrollo and Illumi seem to be short, but they’re not. Also, I can’t wait for Halloween because these headcanons are going to be amazing. I am extremely sorry if there are grammar errors! Taking classes on Zoom is frustrating and now my brain has to relearn everything that I lost in 3 months! Before we get started, I have a few announcements.

This post is more laid back than my other headcanons because I tried to keep it as canon as possible.

I want to thank you all for 65 followers! It means a lot! I’m happy to see that a lot of you enjoy my writing and like it enough to follow me! I have a challenge for you! When I reach 100 followers, I will host some type of writing event here...but I need ideas. I’ve seen some pages do specials where you can send an ask and pretend like you're talking to a character and I respond with what they’d say. SEND ME IDEAS! I WILL CREDIT YOU!

I will be stepping back a little more than before. I’ll still be logged in and re-blogging but as far as writing posts like this...it may only be once or twice a week. You see, I’m in college and I’m struggling financially and I have to work on scholarships. If you all send me an ask, be patient.

Voltron posts will only be created based on asks. I will not be writing posts about VLD if no one requests them. I do not receive any feedback from it anymore and no one seems to like them.

Now, let’s get into the post.

Let's start with Illumi first.

Headcanon 1: Illumi has a secret admiration for different types of art but he specifically enjoys pop art and surrealism. He has commented on how surrealism makes his brain twist and his feelings swirl as he tries to figure out the piece and what inspires it.

He prefers not to participate in tours as he likes to digest the art at his own pace.

Headcanon 2: In his spare time, he paints on a canvas. His art style consists of both surrealism and abstract art. For a person with a dark personality, his compositions always contain bright colors and abstract techniques that leave you wondering about his TRUE personality. He is truly a good man with a bright personality but after being abused for so long, those behaviors/personalities have been shoved so far down his throat that they may not come back up.

He has a bad habit of asking you what you thought about every single piece of art you passed. The conversations were great but this is a date after all. The playful conversation slowly turns into a lecture about art. Although you loved your bf’s dictionary-like brain it also drained your energy.

One of his favorite artists is Vincent Van Gough. Although he favors surrealism, Van Gogh’s art style was mind-blowing to him. So amazed that he buys several Van Gogh t-shirts from the gift shop.

His favorite piece created by Van Gough is “Starry Night”.

He notices that you are becoming bored and decides that it is time for MORE excitement, one that you are certain to enjoy.

“Where are we going,” you ask, pretending to be interested.

“Down to the basement. We are going to have a bite to eat.”

Since Illumi rarely smiled, when he did smile it drove you wild. The anticipation of what his next move was going to be is what drove that wildness. Being a bounty hunter was thrilling already but dating a smart, badass assassin was totally out of your league but it worked out.

Headcanon 3: Illumi’s idea of being romantic is dramatically different from yours. He believes just spending time with you on the couch was enough. He is correct; but if you have the time and funds, your time together should be a little spontaneous. You insisted on dates outside of the house because his family will not stay out of your business.

“Illumi, I am too hungry for more trivia.”

He chuckles. “Don’t worry. So am I. That is why I’ve decided to take you to a wine and cheese party.”

Huh? Wine and Cheese at 3PM? That’s ok. When was there a time limit on when you can drink alcohol?

Illumi has indirectly attended parties as such when he was 15 years old. He never drank, but he watched as his mother’s friends (surprisingly) talked about business and their children. This time, you weren’t going to talk about business for once. Instead, you two were going to actually talk about what couples discuss.

Headcanon 4: When introduced to alcohol for the first time, Illumi immediately stated how he hated brown liquor. That includes Hennessy, Jack Daniels, etc. It makes him sick to his stomach. He prefers to drink Smirnoff mixed with fruity drinks like strawberry or pineapple.

He loves it when you make these drinks for him on a summer day.

Hence the title wine and cheese, you both go to a stand-up table, place your brochures down, and actually have a wonderful conversation not involving work or hunting.

Illumi smiled a few times, more than usual. Whenever he appears to be softer even around you, that is because he has mellowed out and doesn't have the overbearing weight of his family on his shoulders. You set him free.

Hisoka

According to a one-shot that another manga artist created, they expressed that Hisoka was found on the side of the road, was taken in by someone that worked at a local circus, and learned Nen in a matter of days. Hisoka’s clown look and having the skills of a magician proves that this has to be canon in some way.

Headcanon 1: Given this potential backstory, going to a carnival is his go-to every summer. He wants to take you to a circus but saves that for you as an engagement gift.

Everyone with a heart knows that whether or not you’re in a relationship or not the carnival is fun as hell! Expensive fried food, elephant ears, funnel cake, ICEE’s, rides, and stuffed animals are to die for!

Being at a carnival relaxes him so his bloodlust isn’t activated unless someone bumps into him and causes a scene.

Headcanon 2: PDA is something that Hisoka does well; he doesn’t overdo it but does it enough where people get the impression that you are a couple and aren’t “best friends”.

While completing a mission depending on how rough it may be, he insists that you tag along to see how he handles the situation. You’ve already seen his ruthlessness from Hunter’s exam but he insists.

His sense of pride gets the best of him sometimes. Sometimes his head is so big that it reminds you of a large birthday balloon.

Headcanon 3: ANYWAY, given his nature, he is very adventurous, dangerous, and courageous. If he wants to go on the Demon Drop, he’ll do it and you DO not have a choice in the matter. He’ll tease or guilt trip you into doing something that you would not like to do.

“Well, you wouldn’t want me to cling on to someone else, would you?”

“No. Of course not,” you reply.

“Let’s go then, scaredy-cat.”

As a hunter, you’ve seen worse. Why are you so afraid to go on a ride?

Headcanon 4: At apple orchards, cornfield mazes are one of his favorites. You cannot for the life of you figure out how to get out but he can. He grabs a scarecrow and scares you from behind. That annoys you but is nothing compared to later on that night.

Oh. My. God. It’s haunted house time!

“Hisoka, I’m not going in!”

“Why not? I’ll protect you.”

“Because they’re monsters and I already have to deal with one.”

It took him a second to catch on that you were talking about him.

“That’s going to bite you in the butt, kitten.”

Headcanon 5: Like Killua, Hisoka has a sweet tooth. Don’t allow his buff appearance to fool you!

He LOVES caramel apples, elephant ears, funnel cake, freshly squeezed lemonade, fudge, and cotton candy. How can this man manage to stay in shape? The world may never know.

Headcanon 6: He isn’t one to play by other people’s rules but he sets his own rules with your relationship that you both must obey. One of those rules says that neither of you can be on your phones while together.

Headcanon 7: Hisoka insists that you both wear either matching pants or matching shirts to avoid unnecessary flirtation.

He isn’t jealous but on “us time”, he doesn’t want to lose a single second.

Headcanon 8: Hisoka only jumps in when necessary. Given that you’ve passed the hunter’s exam and work as a bodyguard, he knows you can handle your business. If the person can’t take a hint, then he steps in. They almost back up immediately considering Hisoka is towering over them.

When the moon shines, you both go to the car and off to sleep in your comfy king-sized bed.

Chrollo

We all know that Chrollo loves to read! What does he specifically like to read? What Genre? Does he like to read alone or with other people?

Although Chrollo is a thief and must be hidden in the shadows, the authorities have called off the search for him for at least 3 years. Slowly but surely, he begins to find himself in the outside world again.

Chrollo once discussed a book with the Phantom Troupe when they were being transported to another place for a mission. He read “Tears of a Tiger” by Sharon M. Draper.

The reading sessions are opened with an affirmation and a reason to be thankful to be alive. He says he is thankful for the troupe, glances at you, and smiles. No one catches on to that sly face except for Phinks.

Headcanon 1: Chrollo is very silent and shy to an extent. He only associates with people he knows and trusts. You are the social butterfly at this moment.

Chrollo tags along behind you like a shy child, holding your hand while you stick out your free hand to greet everyone.

Today, the book club was going to read “Divergent”.

Headcanon 2: Although he loves to read, he hates it when others read out loud. Most people are drably read and it annoys him. After a while, he takes over. Chrollo was tense the first 30 minutes of the meeting because two cops were there but neither of them noticed it was him.

Headcanon 3: Chrollo often acts the part of the character that he is reading in the book. His tone, attitude, and emphasis on certain words keep the group engaged. He is complimented on his acting!

“Good Job, honey,” you whisper.

He responds by tightly squeezing your hand.

His tone was so impressive that the host insisted that he read for the entire night. He was ok with that because in between reads he was often distracted by a lovely pair of jeans and shoes you had on. You were into writing, so hearing others read and act out the characters helped.

Headcanon 4: In some settings, Chrollo is very braggadocious. He insisted that the group read one of your stories so you could be provided with feedback.

“We’d be delighted to view your story, y/n!”

“It will be fun!”

The book club wasn’t a stereotypical club that only consisted of soccer moms but instead consisted of men and women who were involved with a business, law enforcement, health, etc. This was an open space for everyone to relax and forget about their demanding jobs.

After the meeting, the group went to dinner at a nearby pizzeria. You all enjoyed large pizzas, beer, salads, and dessert. How could your stomach (or anyone’s stomach) hold that much?

Chrollo laughed so much that it made you question if he was your actual boyfriend or not. He even engaged in conversations with the two off-duty cops! For once, you helped Chrollo experience the greater things in life; true love, friendship, and happiness.

“Thank you,” he whispered and slyly placed a kiss on your hand. “For everything.”

139 notes · View notes

wonderlandhatter · 3 years

Text

Comfort in you.

Pairing: Spencer Reid x femReader

Summary: You have a cuddly secret that is keeping you up at night, and your solution makes Spencer think you are falling out of love. (sorry that's not a great summary)

Word count:2580

Warnings: I don't think there's any, itsy tinny bit of angst if you squint but just a load of fluff

A/N: To be honest I don't know how I feel about this, I like it but idk. if I missed a warning feel free to tell me and if you have any feedback it is very welcome I am looking to improve my writing. Hope someone enjoys this :).

A/N2: My old account got deleted so I'm just reposting my fics I would appreciate if you could bust this so i could get back to where my account was thank you for your time.

Everyone has a source of comfort, something that makes everything bad disappear even for just a moment. For some it was a hobby and for others it was a person, either way everyone had one, yours just happened to be one most people have had but said people have also left it behind, along with wearing dippers and eating crayons.

You weren’t a child; you weren’t you just found comfort in it. So, what if you were in your twenties and still slept with a plushie who's business is it anyways. You can’t help it you just can’t sleep without it; you've had it since the moment you were born, plus your parents never made a move to take it away when you were younger. So here you are now.

It had never really been an issue, yes, your friends teased you but not in a hurtful way besides you had been friends since primary school, so they didn’t really care, as long as you were happy. Now boyfriends are a whole different story. You hadn't had many so it was never really an issue, you have had 3 in total if one of them even counted I mean it lasted until lunch time and you were 5 and he wouldn’t have minded since he also slept with a stuffed animal.

Your second boyfriend was in high school, you were sixteen, you hadn’t even thought about the fact he might find it strange so the first time he came over you didn’t try to hide it, it didn’t go well, he called you a baby and threw it around, and got annoyed at you when you asked him to stop because he was going to damage the plushie, the nerve of the guy. Well that did not last awfully long not just because of the plush but because he was a prick.

And now here you were 23 and dating the wonderful Dr Spencer Reid, you guys have been dating for nearly 8 months, and what amazing 8 months have they been. You owned quite a popular bookshop and that is how you met; he had come in a few times before he was able to muster up the courage to even say hello. He found everything about you wonderful, the way you handled books with such care and how you carried yourself with such grace, (the grace one wavers as in his second visit he witnessed you trip twice, but he just he found it endearing and wonderful). Honestly, he already had a bookshop he had frequented previously but this one had something no other shop could ever have. You, and so he kept coming, and you two kept talking, and talking in the shop lead to talking at the coffee shop, which lead to talking over dinner and then talking for 6 months which may have lead to some activities with some inappropriate talking, and now 8 months later and you have never been happier.

Honestly it’s a miracle you’ve made it 8 months without him finding out about your little secret, it helps that you guys hadn’t started having sex until 2 months ago, neither of you had been in a rush and so took your time, and the first time was wonderful, but that’s a story for another time. Another thing that helped was the fact that he was nearly always on a case, he made time for you, and you understood he had to be away and admired his career choice, it just meant that when you were together most of the time you chose to spend time together, saying that there have been times as soon as Hotch has dismissed him he has gone straight to your apartment and is picking you up and too your room, but what can he say, he is just but a man and you are just but a very hot woman. Thankfully that time he had been so preoccupied with getting his clothes off that you were able to put the plush under your bed without him noticing (you did feel bad about shoving it under the bed but you had no time he was a man on a mission), you hadn’t been able to sleep that night or any night you had stayed with him, so you stopped staying over even if it was just to sleep..

Now the issue came when Spencer got a couple of weeks off from work around the holidays, so you were off too. And oh boy were you tired it wasn’t that you were doing it like bunnies but you did enjoy time together so you wanted to be together for as long as you could, and you were absolutely loving all the stolen kisses and the reading to each other and arguing who the best doctor is (the sex is very good too), the trouble only came at night when he said you should stay, he hated you being out by yourself at night, too many cases involving creeps, so you would stay.

But after a few days without sleep you were so exhausted, you started making up excuse to not stay and to stop sex, it worked for a few days until it didn’t.

You had been watching some foreign film Spencer had seemed very excited for, you loved watching these with him, not because you understood what they were saying, it was complete gibberish to you, but you quite enjoying feeling his breath on your neck when he leaned down to whisper the translations for you, he knew there were subtitles and you knew there were subtitles but this turned you on and you both knew it. So, it confused Spencer when after the movie was over and after two hours of whispering and you subtly rubbing your thighs together you yawned and said you should get going.

He would never force you into anything, and would never expect sex from you, but he knew you were turned on and he knew you wanted it, he knew what you looked like when you wanted him, he had seen it enough times, and he loved the sight, but here you were clearly frustrated and about to just leave. Don’t misunderstand Spencer here it isn’t just the leaving clearly horny it’s the not having slept in the same bed for days, he knew you had some trouble sleeping any time you had slept over, he just assumed it was being out of your bed, but you almost always went out of your way to not sleep together in your bed. So, he chose to say something.

“Y/N can we talk”, “oh that seems serious” you replied humorously while tying your laces, until you looked up and saw his face, “you look upset, did I do something”, you said clearly upset,“ No! no you didn’t do anything, well you did but um ahh, I don’t know how to word this”, this was a first, he always had the words to say, normally he couldn’t stop talking, but right know all he was thinking was how his girlfriend couldn’t stand to be on the same bed as him, and how she was doing what she could to avoid sex, he knew he wasn’t overly experienced but neither was she, but he always made sure she was getting some sort of pleasure, and made it his goal to get you to finish at least twice.

What if you had faked it, what if you were falling out of love, was it all the hours he had to work or was…his thoughts were cut short by you “ Spencer please talk to me, what did I do, I’m sorry if I’ve upset you”, he could see the worry in your face and without thinking he just blurted out “do you not like me anymore”, “ What!!!” you said almost immediately, he could see the confusion in your face but you spoke before he could, “Spencer I love you, why wouldn’t I like you anymore, do you not like me anymore”, he saw the hurt in your eyes as your mind wandered and he couldn’t speak fast enough to stop that train he needed to take that hurt away, “no, no god no I love you too, I love you much it’s just that lately you’ve um, you’re always coming up with reasons to not sleep with me, and I don’t mean sex I mean even just sleep, well you’re also avoiding sex but that’s not the point, I also know you never really sleep when you’re with me and I’m sorry if being that intimate with me makes you uncomfortable, because I can see you were turned on after the movie and you were just going to leave and I just need to know if I make you uncomfortable.”, Spencer spoke so fast you were left there stunned and a little embarrassed at him knowing he turned you on but also you were backed into a corner, you could see the pain in his eyes, he though he made you so uncomfortable you couldn’t sleep in the same bed as him, at the thought of how you hurt him your eyes began to water.

“Spencer I don’t know what”, “please don’t deny it Y/N its been over a week since we slept in the same place” Spencer interrupted before you could get your pathetic attempt of n excuse out, so you were going to come clean, he is going to break up with you was the only thing going through your head but you had to tell him, you hurt him and that was worse.

So you mustered up all the courage you had and looked down because you might cry if you looked at him in the eyes, oh well all your courage could only do so much, “you don’t make me uncomfortable Spencer. You’re wonderful that isn’t why”, spencer interrupted before you could continued, he just needed answers, “then, why?”, “promise me you won’t laugh at me”, he looked confused how could you ever think he would take your feeling for granted and laugh at them, “of course I won’t” he simply said as he gently pulled your chin up with his hand, he could see your you were nervous and so gave you a kind smile, and did something you two do quite often, he offered up his pinkie, you giggled as you put your pinkies together to make a promise, after your pinkies were separated you looked slightly down again and quickly blurted out “Icantsleepwithoutmyplushieandididntwantyoutoseethatistillneededitandthatswhyicantsleepbesideyouandwhyicantsleepwheniamwithyuo” it was so quickly the flash couldn’t have understood, his confused face was honestly adorable but your adoration was cut off by his very confused “what?”, and so you took a deep breath looked at him, thought over your words for a second and finally said much slower, slightly hesitantly and embarrassed “ I can’t sleep without a plushie,” you said shyly he smiled softly at this and you continued after a beat “that’ s why I can’t sleep when I’m with you, I didn’t want you to know, I mean I’m in my twenties and still sleep with a toy its pathetic, and after a few days of not sleeping I was exhausted and so I thought I could just avoid having to sleep without it, I understand if you want to break up or if you want to make fun of me”, you stopped talking when Spencer pulled you in for a quick kiss, “sorry you were spiralling and that’s what you do when I’m spiralling”, he smiled while his face was still only a breath away, you simply nodded and made no move to move.

“So you’re not breaking up with me” you asked shyly, assuming since he had just kissed you, “why on earth would I be breaking up with you”, “because its childish and ridiculous that I can’t sleep without it”, he gently smiled and pulled your chin up to look at him with one hand and held your hand with the other. “it isn’t strange or childish, actually 44% of adults still own a childhood toy and 34% of adults sleep with a stuffed animal, its perfectly normal, and honestly really cute” the last bit made you blush but all together you felt better, “thanks bub”, “what for”, you shrugged an simply said for not making fun of you and with that he pulled you into a hug, and neither made an attempt to move.

And so here you were now in Spencer’s car on your way to your apartment, if you were being honest you were too tired to be as embarrassed as you would have normally been, but he wasn’t shaming you and all you wanted was to sleep by his side. As you got to your apartment complex you walked hand in hand, made your way inside, and went to your room.

Spencer had been there multiple times before so he had some clothes he could sleep in already there (also you may have stolen a good amount so he could borrow those too), so he put some plaid pyjama bottoms on and a graphic tee and made his way to his side of the bed, you had gone to the bathroom to do your skin care routine and came out in some thin cotton pyjama shorts and one of your (his) old Cal tech sweatshirt, he can’t deny he absolutely loves seeing you in his clothes, to him it is possibly one of the most beautiful things he has and will ever see.

You made your way under the covers and cuddled him, you both shared some lazy kisses and light touches before you stopped so you could sleep, you made an attempt to try an sleep without it but Spencer nudged you and gave you a half amused smiled so you sighed dramatically and stretched over to your bedside table were your plushie was living, as you took it out and made your way back to Spencer’s side you held it close so he couldn’t really see it. He wasn’t really having that though.

What he’s curious he wanted to see it, so with a much more amused smile and looking down at his adorable girlfriends he asked “ can I see it”, “no” you answered almost immediately and in more of a grumble against his chest, “please, you look adorable and it looks really soft, can I please see it”, and so without looking up you not so gently pulled it out from nearly fully under you and pushed it to his chest, and hid your face deeper into him. He gently picked it up and inspected it, you didn’t hear him say anything so you looked up and saw him already looking at you with simply love in his eyes, “what?” you asked slightly confused, he simply kissed you and you understood, no words were needed to explain what he felt.

You picked up the toy and hugged it again and Spencer hugged you, you felt safe, you felt loved and overall, you were happy. Maybe Spencer could be your new comfort source, you would never get rid of your plushie but maybe it wouldn’t be a necessity maybe holding him would be enough. But being honest he already was he was enough; he was more than enough. And with that thought you both drifted off exchanging quiet I love yous.

#spencer reid fic #spencer reid #spencer reid x reader #spencer #spencer reid fluff #criminal minds #criminal minds fic

166 notes · View notes

whump-town · 3 years

Text

Stubborn

Everybody taking care of old Hotch because... I don't like it when old Hotch gets left to just die on his own :( don't ask why that's where I draw the line

No pairings

No warnings

In Jack’s second semester of his junior year, Hotch collapses again. He’s home this time, out in his garden under the glaring sun. The day had begun no different than any other. The birds on the powerline chirping and causing their disturbances, as eager for the day to begin as the school-aged children shouting in the street. He’d watched them from the sliding glass door facing the street, his tea warm in his hands. He’d waved at a few, the older ones who recognize him as a mystifying adult with stories to be unlocked. The younger children give him a face akin to a monster’s, his mystery horrifying in their already confusing enough lives.

It’s an hour before lunch. Two hours before Spencer shows up because it’s Thursday and he teaches a class on this side of town every Tuesday and Thursday at 2. One that he occasionally asks Hotch to attend -- as a guest lecturer, as a treat to his students, or just for the company.

He could call just about anyone.

Emily’s downtown, on her way back from a meeting with the Department of Justice. She’d be thrilled for an excuse to not go back to the office and spend an hour or two in his kitchen telling him about those pretentious assholes.

Garcia’s about ten minutes away, working at a nonprofit teaching “at-risk” kids how to code. Being the guiding hand she’d needed as a teenager so that they might not repeat the same mistakes she made. She was lucky, Hotch saved her but he’s not around to catch any more kids like her.

Morgan got hired by a family two streets over to fix up their house before they move in. He’s there now, tearing out rotting beams.

This collapse is not of the life-threatening kind. Not to Hotch at least. There’s no internal bleeding, no emergency surgeries. He doesn’t even need stitches but he’s on so many medications that thin his blood that it’s just on the safer side. From the hospital, he calls who he needs to. Reid first, he’ll worry when he gets to Hotch’s house and sees his truck gone. Then, Jack, it’s better to hear this sort of thing from him and not Emily in half an hour when she needs to yell at someone and who better than the son of the idiot she hates right now? Dave and Emily follow and he trusts them to carry the news the rest of the way. Rather, he simply doesn’t want to talk about it anymore and he’d rather Garcia and JJ and Morgan and everyone else just be mad at him than go on to have another conversation about how he’s feeling.

Fine. He just got light-headed. It was the heat and his perpetually low iron and probably his thin blood (the killer had been his blood pressure but they’re working on that). He just needs to get better about remembering to eat breakfast -- a larger breakfast than just tea and toast. Fainting, he assures Dave, happens. Jack’s seen it happen. The heat makes it worse, the summertime drains him. He’s come in from the garden and gotten weak in the knees plenty of times. He actually moved some chairs around the sliding glass door to the yard, prepared for this exact problem.

This over clarification does not help.

Made only the more complicated when he explains his head is fine. The fainting thing really isn’t a big deal, he just needs a ride home. He’d landed weirdly and pulled his back. He left with a new problem entirely, a torn ligament in his shoulder. That is a problem for a different day.

The surgery is set for the week just before Jack’s finals. Armed with a suitcase full of textbooks, his laptop, notes from this semester (and a few from last), and just enough clothes to recycle a few and still be fine, Jack shows up on his father’s doorstep. “I mean, the hospital isn’t exactly the library… but it’s not the worst place I’ve studied.” It’s far too late to send Jack back but Hotch is reluctant to let him stay. Even if he does prefer Jack be his ride rather than the likes of Penelope and that tiny green eye-sore of a car she drives or leave him to Reid and his defensive, jerky driving.

To the sound of “Aaron Hotchner November 2, 1971”, Jack settles down with his books. He tries to put himself in the right headspace for studying but it’s harder than he anticipated. The constant motion of the room unsettles him and he looks up several times to see his father’s reaction. To gauge the anxiety in his face, in the deep breathes that he pulls in through his nose. In how tight his fists are holding the sheets underneath him. It’s a simple surgery and they’ll be out of here in no time.

“Young” his heart had not handled the heavy sedatives and morphine well. Then again, those incidents are always hard to measure against a thing like this. Rushed into the ER with nine chest wounds and having nearly bled to death, it’s natural to conclude the stress of his depleted blood supply and his very recent trauma had caused his heart to stop on the table. That said trauma was the reason his heart had maintained to be a steady problem up until they released him. Again, when he was brought in with some of the worst internal bleedings the staff had ever seen. His heart had given them trouble too.

Jack is staring blankly at his flashcards when the doctor comes out.

Hotch had gone to Georgetown to be a lawyer like his father and his grandfather. Jack went to Georgetown to get an Art History degree. He was lead by something else. Not chasing some shadow, clutching at a lie he spoonfed himself. Jack didn’t live in anyone’s shadow, never felt the pressure to look and act a certain way. Was never beaten into submission or told to hold his tongue. Jack went to museums every Saturday with his father, preferred them to the aquariums and the zoo. Hotch held him close to the artwork, pushed his dense schedule around to go to new shows, and learned the names of pieces just to recite the knowledge back to Jack.

In his lap, Jack is memorizing pieces of art like his father had years ago for him. He’s stuck on The Anatomy Lesson, eyes glued to the details. The way colorless skin is held in forceps, peeled back to reveal angry red. He can feel the pinching teeth on his own skin, feels the heavy flow of hot blood spilling down over his arm.

“Hotchner?”

Jack flinches, caught completely off guard. He stands, flushing as he tucks his notecards into his textbook, and stands. “Ugh, yeah. That’s me.” He wipes his hands off on his pants, rubbing away the nervous sweat he’s built up.

The doctor recognizes him from earlier. He’d watched Jack and Hotch get out one last goodbye. Jack pulling up a nervous smile, dirty-blonde hair, and light eyes a complete contrast to Hotch’s ever-darkening features. Somehow more solemn, voice taken by the sedatives already working through his body. He hadn’t said a word, eyes vacantly following Jack’s movements but unaware.

Jack expects the same monologue he hears every time. The one that comes out so dry and perfect that they must practice it in front of the mirror, say it softly to themselves as they as they get ready each morning. He’s got it memorized himself -- the bits about recovering in post-op, make a full recovery, and whatever on the fly timeline they give for access back to the room.

“But he’s-- He’s okay? He’s--”

Jack feels impossibly childish. Five years old and Emily’s chilled fingers brushing his tears away, “baby, I know you miss your mommy. But you’re being so terribly mean to your daddy.” He had been, a terrible little monster squirming away from his father and refusing to eat anything. Throwing tantrums about nothing and everything. Screaming and crawling under his bed every chance he got. Pushing himself to the wall knowing he couldn’t be reached.

Now he can remember Hotch just sitting at the edge of the bed. There on the floor for hours. Sometimes he read, would pick up a book, and just start from wherever just to make it so his voice was reaching where he couldn’t. He slept there too, on the hard ground just to make sure Jack knew he was there. Slipped strawberry pop tarts on crazily designed animal plated under there, offered bites of his own food to the darkness under the bed. Sippy cups full of chocolate milk and juice.

He feels like a little boy again, getting news that he has no idea how to handle.

“He’s okay?” Jack stammers. “He’s going to be okay? I can see him?”

Hotch remembers those days under the bed too. Waking up in the middle of the night as Jack groggily curled close to him, still under the bed but crawling under his blanket. The ends of those awful sobs, Jack’s little chest jerking as he hiccuped. The force of his sorrow was too much for his little body. And Jack would fall into his lap, exhausted and needing comfort. His little fingers tracing the scars on Hotch’s face. How he whispered “thank you” and “please” from underneath the bed and how he’d pop his head out to say, “Daddy, I’m going to potty. I’ll be right back.”

Jack’s legally old enough to drink now and Hotch still sees that little boy. The three-year-old wiping his snot on Hotch’s dress shirt. The six-year-old holding his hand and reminding him to look both ways twice before crossing the street. The eight-year-old he left the hallway light on for, old enough now to think he needed to brave the night without a nightlight. So Hotch would offer to keep the hallway light on, not for Jack but for him because he doesn’t like the dark. The ten-year-old sheepishly offering him a father’s day gift he bought with saved allowance, a t-shirt he’s now worn the words off of. The fifteen-year-old curling up beside him on the couch, seeking his comfort but not sure how to ask anymore. The eighteen-year-old as tall as him talking his ear off while he tries to get dinner ready, sticking his fingers in the pan and sitting on the counter.

How did he grow up so fast?

He’s not a little boy anymore. Hasn’t been for a long time.

The creaking of a chair moves Hotch’s attention and he looks away from Jack. Away from the sight of his little boy curled up on a cot, drooling onto a pillow and notebook still open, a pen dangling from his fingers. He looks over and Emily’s sitting up, her reading glasses precariously sat on the tip of her nose. “Oh look,” she mumbles. She stretches out, groaning as her joints complain from being held in this miserable hospital chair for hours. “You’ve decided to join the land of the living.”

Hotch watches her fold the thin black frames of her glasses up, gently sits them down by his hand as she stands up. Jack had called her, even though he promised he wouldn’t worry anyone. Hotch didn’t want anyone else coming to the hospital over something so small and though Jack protested that their concern wouldn’t be because he was bothering them but because they love him. The very same reason he’d come home is that people gather after these sorts of things. They need reassurance that he’s alive and he’s just going to have to accept that. They compromised in the end, everyone could come to smother him in worry after he got home from the surgery.

But Jack was scared. He called the only person he could think to, the woman whose role in his life that was never really clear. She’d gotten on him about his grades, smacked the back of his head when he said something stupid, and always let him taste-test her wine at Thanksgiving dinner. Emily knew things that not even Jessica knew and she could be sterner than both Hotch and Jessica and also more relaxed, more understanding. She was always there for both of them, in the same capacity as Jessica and yet her own unique one. A friend Hotch trusted and loved and Jack could understand that. His friends always wanted to know if they were dating and he knew intuitively that the answer was no but he would hesitate to try and explain. But he didn’t understand the gravity that pulled them together, adults and their relationships far too complex to fit it into his simple understanding of love.

He did understand she was the only person to call.

“What’d he do this time?” she asked and knew she was playing the wrong role for the wrong Hotchner because no sooner than she could ask she had an armful of Jack. She sat with Jack for hours, let him get his fear out. Held him while he sobbed, felt pulled to the past. When it was Aaron on her shoulder, terrified he’d lose his son. Life has this very odd way of bringing everything full circle.

“I bet you’re hurting.” Emily moves to the table and pours water into the little paper Dixie cup left by the nurses. “Been right dramatic this afternoon,” she informs him, a dissatisfied matter-of-fact tone in play. “I know you find that to be particularly taxing.” She holds the cup for him, gentle despite her annoyance. She’s close enough to see the iodine on his skin. Dark orange swipes across his pale skin, the smell burns with its strength.

He pulls greedily from the cup, mouth impossibly dry. Stopped only by how little she poured, he sinks back heavily into the pillows behind him. His shoulder hot and angry from forcing himself upright.

“They’re going to let you go in the morning,” she says, sitting back down. He won’t remember this in the morning. Emily holding his hand, whispering thickly how angry she is with him as tears fall down her face. How scared she was getting that phone call from Jack, racing down here to be a composed person to comfort his son thinking her best friend was in the morgue.

He’ll wake up with a pit in his stomach, residual feelings from the night before he can’t tie down to memories. Emily shows no inclination to repeat herself, just coldly informs him that she’ll have Penelope make him a cardiologist appointment (it’s unspoken that no one trusts him to do this himself). Jack walks on glass, close by but terrified of being pushed away. Hotch is too out of it to put up much of a fight, by the time the morning shift has their hands on him he’s silent. Properly dosed up for a ride home and out of his mind.

He’s groggily propped up on pillows, watching Jack and Emily fight over if he has the right to wear shoes or not. Emily wants to hold them captive, he won’t run off or refuse the wheelchair without them and Jack shakes his head, “he’s not our P.O.W, Emily. He’s even going to get that far if he does try to run.” He’s given his shoes but Emily makes a point to collect his cane, holds it while the nurse helps him into the wheelchair. He’s a flight-risk and she’s not going to trust him, he’s run off on her too many times for that.

At the house the other’s have gathered up, having nothing better to do evidently on a Wednesday at ten in the morning. Penelope’s frying eggs and bacon, the carnage it takes to feed their brood spread out on his kitchen counter. Reid sitting on the counter, Hank in his lap, and the two of them watching Penelope. Derek’s on the sofa, feet kicked up on the coffee table, and Savannah learning on his shoulder. Dave’s getting orange juice from the store declared them all lawless, and didn’t trust them to get the right kind.

Hotch is granted his cane to get back inside the house but Emily threatens to kick it out from underneath if he tries anything fast. He smacks her ankle and Jack has to actually step between them to keep them apart. It’s in times like these where Jack finds himself wondering how these two ever had any role in raising him at all.

“Don’t you have jobs?” Hotch asks, hooking his cane over the coat rack and toeing his shoes off. He ignores the hand Emily places on his arm, afraid he’ll knock himself over. He manages just fine, has the whole house set up so that every other step is within arms distance of something to lean on. Fingers trailing the back of the couch he limps past Derek, smiling when Savannah offers a soft “glad you’re okay”. She pats his hand and he nods back.

“Up for some food, sir?” Penelope asks and she’s not taking no for an answer. They might be having heaping servings of eggs and bacon and gravy and orange juice but she’s made two small bowls of oatmeal. She takes the medicine Jack tosses up on the counter, puts it at the end where the rest of his medication sits. “I cut up apples,” she tells Hotch with a wide grin, sliding the bowl in front of him. “Dashed a little cinnamon and sugar in there, it’ll stick to your bones. Keep you healthy.”

He’s at a healthy weight at the moment, not as thin as he leans to when he’s sick but with Hotch, it’s always a good thing to have some collateral weight for the “in case”. Lifting the spoon in his left hand he scoops some of the oatmeal up, doing his best to hide his annoyance at how weak his extremities still are. How his hand shakes under the light strain of the oatmeal. He looks up, watches Spencer carry Hank over to the highchair sitting at the table beside him. He’s distracted so Emily swoops in, takes his spoon from his hand, and tries his oatmeal. He lets her do it. He raises an eyebrow and she shrugs. She likes it. He nods, it’s pretty good.

Hank immediately knocks his spoon on the ground and makes a low whining sound in the back of his throat. “Hop help,” he whines, pointing down at his spoon. His speech is still developing so he pronounces help and hop nearly identically but Hotch understands the difference. He just can’t bend over like that. His right arm is still pinned to his chest in an intricate web of gauze and this sling.

“Reid,” Hotch calls. His voice is deep, strained from intubation and anesthesia. It makes him sound sick. “He’s dropped his spoon.”

Reid nods, he already knows.

Hank points to his shoulder and frowns, “Hop fall down?”

Hotch nods, that is pretty much what happened and at the same time, Emily sweeps in and tickles Hank. She presses kisses to his face and making him laugh loudly. “That’s what happens,” she says. “Hops is just old.” Hank is too distracted by the ongoing attack to defend Hotch not that a toddler rising to his defense is very helpful.

Hotch sighs as Jack comes up behind him, stealing his spoon too. He takes a bite of the oatmeal and deems it nearly as good as the kind that Jessica makes. Hotch wants to be annoyed by it and yet all he does is nod and finds himself smirking just a little.

Penelope calls everyone in for breakfast and Hotch ignores the kisses pressed to his cheek as people drag chairs to the table around him. To the hands that slide over his back, assurance of life he remembers Jack calling it.

Derek slides him a mug of tea, made exactly how he likes it. He sits across from Hotch, close to Hank in case either needs assistance. Emily sits to his left, slides her coffee up beside his tea so he can have some if he’s quick about it. Jack sits beside her and the rest is a blur, too much motion at once for him to take in without his contacts or glasses. Penelope slides a tea plate to him, his medicine on it, and kisses his head while he’s still scowling at the plate.

They don’t leave him alone all day.

He ends up taking a nap with Hank, the toddler’s sticky little fingers holding onto his shirt as he finds himself unable to fight off the effects of the medicine and his full stomach.

He’s squished on the couch between Derek and Dave, forced to watch baseball because he can’t worm his way upright again just yet.

They change the dressings on his shoulder, his teeth clenched tightly so that he doesn’t let anything slip.

At midnight he wakes up on the couch. Jack’s bedroom door is shut, he’s sleeping peacefully inside. His heating blanket is pulled up to his chin, the heat turned up all the way. He can’t remember getting into this state himself but he has a fate memory of JJ helping him move his hand to his mouth, encouraging him to take the pain killers before bed. Of Derek making sure he didn’t just fall straight over onto his side. He manages to find Dave stretched out on the Lazyboy -- the chair he got Hotch for his fifty-something birthday. He’ll wake up in the morning to more food being made in his lonely kitchen, JJ this time. She’ll make blueberry waffles.

If he’d wanted attention, Emily will tease the next morning, he could have just asked. And he didn’t even know he wanted this. He never finds the words to ask for it to continue but every Saturday morning it happens anyway -- his kitchen and living room full of pajamas and suits in varying degrees depending on who has what to do that morning. The fainting thing is not cool but he considers this to be a good trade.

#criminal minds fanfiction #criminal minds #aaron hotchner #derek morgan #savannah hayes #hank morgan #jack hotchner #emily prentiss #david rossi #penelope garcia #spencer reid #jennifer jareau

63 notes · View notes