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mangoisms · 1 year

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i'll be the dangerous ledge (you be the parachute)

━ chapter two: out of my depth at this altitude | read chapter one | read chapter three

━ pairing: tim drake x f!reader

━ word count: 4.4k

━ warnings: none

━ masterlist

━ a/n: this fic is supposed to be updated once a week on fridays but the reception has been so nice, i couldn't help myself from posting a bonus chapter before then. as a treat. also... would anyone be interested in a tag list for this fic? let me know, and enjoy!

You joked about it but, really, Tim Drake is a quick study. Not that doing your laundry is that hard to begin with — well, if you have no idea where to start, it is, but once you know the basics, it’s all fairly self-explanatory. You get to ask about the fabric softener when you two go back to put your clothes in the dryer and he mutters something about them feeling weird afterward, which you valiantly try not to laugh at. By the way, he sighs at you, you are not successful.

But after that? Well… that’s kind of it and you step off the elevator at one in the morning with a basket full of warm and freshly-folded clothes, feeling a tad disappointed that it’s all over with.

But then Tim says, “See you next weekend,” and the feeling disappears quickly.

Fate, you quickly learn, also seems to be looking out for you.

The next day at noon, you’re waiting to head downstairs, eyes narrowed on your compact mirror as you roll on a darkly tinted lip balm. The elevator doors open, but you’re distracted with the lip balm, so you don’t notice who else is in there. Not until Tim calls your name, surprising you so much your hand jerks and a light smear of the tinted lip balm shines on your cheek.

He sputters a laugh. “Sorry!”

“This is payback for all my jokes, then, is it,” you say, stepping in and, seeing the button for the ground floor pushed, start digging through your tote bag for the small pack of makeup wipes you usually carry with you.

“It’s not,” Tim says, smiling. “The jokes were a fair tradeoff for you teaching me the ways of laundry.”

You nod sagely. “Indeed.”

He chuckles. “Where are you off to?”

“Grocery shopping,” you say, cleaning off the streak on your cheek, then making sure you didn’t smudge anything else around your lips. “You?”

“Same, actually. Well, just for the detergent. Speaking of, you know, I realized sometime last night I never got the brand from you. They turned out pretty good.”

“Like your butler did it?”

“I never should’ve told you that.”

You laugh, putting away your makeup wipes, the mirror, and the tube of lip balm.

You realize, then, that Tim is dressed in something other than sweats and a t-shirt — which is an excellent look, definitely, but he’s in his outside clothes, in jeans and a thick jacket much like you are to fight off the early February cold.

He looks like a model, to be honest. You spy the brand of his jacket. Patagonia. A Patagonia model, then. Jeez. Patagonia’s expensive. But to him, it’s probably nothing. You managed to thrift yourself a slightly worn Columbia parka which has served you well against several years of bitter Gotham winters.

He tucks his hands in his pockets, cornflower blue eyes trained on the red numbers that tick by for each floor you pass. His side-profile is disturbingly perfect. So not fair.

“Where do you do your shopping, then, if you don’t mind me asking?” he asks, glancing at you and making you look away.

“Stalking me?”

“That’s why I said if you don’t mind me asking. So, we didn’t have to do that.”

You laugh. “Nah, don’t worry about it. I figure a… mostly high-profile figure like yourself can’t be in the business of being creepy. Reputation and all that. Though I suppose you could pay people off. Or call a hit on them.”

But while the other notable rich families of the city have all kinds of skeletons in the closet, the Wayne’s don’t. Mostly. No whispered rumors of them paying off sexual harassment rumors or other morally reprehensible shit.

“Oh, please. And what’s this about mostly high-profile figure?” He almost looks offended but you spy a playfulness to him, so it’s more of a mock offense than anything. Like he doesn’t actually care. He probably doesn’t.

But still, you go along, smiling apologetically as you shrug.

“Weeell… it’s not like I recognized your face.”

“Some do.”

“But I did recognize your name. So. Mostly high-profile. See, if you were, say, Lex Luthor —” he wrinkles his nose in deep disgust and you choke out a laugh “— then yeah, I’d recognize you immediately.”

“Fair enough. And also, please don’t ever compare me to him again.”

“What, you don’t like him?”

“Do you?”

“Fair point, fair point. Anyway,” you chuckle, “I’m going to ShopRite.”

“The one off Schnapp Ave?”

“That’s the one.”

“Oh. Me, too. Are you in the parking garage?”

You snort. “No. I bike. Not great for bulk shopping but what can you do?”

He pauses, seeming to think hard. You raise an eyebrow as the doors open and the two of you step out, heading for the lobby.

“I could — I mean, since we’re going to the same place…” he gestures a little awkwardly; it’s not the request itself that trips him up, you think, it’s something else — probably not trying to come off creepy. “I could give you a ride?”

“A ride, huh?”

Tim spreads his palms. “I’m not trying to kidnap you or something, I swear.”

“But a would-be kidnapper would say that, would he not?”

“I don’t know,” he says, awkwardness easing out for vague amusement. “I think a would-be kidnapper would be, well, better at this whole thing. Like not taking you out from the main entrance.”

“Think about that a lot, do you?”

“Text a friend where you’re going,” he says, smiling. “And let me give you a ride so you can bulk up on your groceries without worrying about getting it back here.”

“You drive a hard bargain.”

But of course you’re going to say yes. You consider yourself a fairly good judge of character.

There is much to be said about Tim Drake.

As mentioned before, the adopted son of billionaire Bruce Wayne; his parents — you shamelessly looked it up last night — used to own Drake Industries, a company that specialized in medical equipment and supplies before it eventually closed down. Both of them passed away, his mother first when he was younger, then his father later; Bruce Wayne adopted him in his teens.

He had a brief stint as figurehead CEO of Wayne Enterprises when he was seventeen, was also apparently engaged to Tamara Fox, the daughter of the current WE CEO, Lucius Fox, and also had an assassination attempt on him. This is followed up with being, like, regularly held hostage for ransom.

A lot of drama, basically, but not much about him himself.

You expected — and you’ll admit this — a much haughtier persona than the one you are currently encountering. After all, he could have taken offense at your teasing about the laundry and refused your help. But he let it happen — not hesitating to add his own jokes at his expense, too.

And here he is now, offering you a free ride and free use of his car’s trunk for your grocery shopping pleasure.

Maybe you are about to be kidnapped.

But at least it was in the name of bulk shopping.

He scratches his head. “I also have a Costco membership if that sways you?”

You’re practically in love.

“You know the way to a woman’s heart,” you sigh dramatically.

“Free trunk space and Costco?”

“Free trunk space and Costco.”

You text your brother for good measure, though.

It’s not serious. Mostly, it’s you having your fun.

i’m going grocery shopping with tim drake. if i don’t text you back by five, call the cops

WHAT

WHAT???

WHAT!!!!!!!!!!

You just smile and put your phone away.

You have nothing to worry about.

Well, you knew that but over the course of the day, as you first hit Costco and buy toilet paper, paper towels, detergent, and other groceries in bulk, then you go to ShopRite to get the rest of the stuff, you realize Tim is actually… a lot of fun.

He has this snark to him that comes out in the most unexpected moments and you would be lying through your teeth if you said you didn’t like how it keeps you on your toes.

Plus… it’s fun to grocery shop with someone else. Maybe that sounds weird but… you don’t know. You like the companionship.

(And that, of course, could be the gnarled loneliness inside of you finally being soothed away in the company of a person who doesn’t have to be here with you, yet is.)

The sun is setting when you two get back to the apartments. The parking garage is adjacent to the building and they have little carts people can use to take up their groceries more quickly.

“I mean,” Tim starts, easily lifting the case of water bottles from the trunk and dropping it into the cart. “At the risk of sounding creepy again, I don’t mind helping you take this stuff up.”

“In that case, I owe you.”

“Nah, don’t worry about it.”

“Aw, come on. You let me monopolize your trunk, your Costco membership, and your time.”

“Believe me, I didn’t have anything planned for today. This is a much better use of my time.”

You don’t know how to handle that. Which is why you insist.

“You know the Indian place on Cameron? On me.”

“They do have good biryani,” he muses. “Alright. Why not.”

You manage to haul everything into two carts. He only got the detergent, which he says he’ll just take upstairs with him after.

You dig out your keys on the elevator ride up, the two of you deciding on what to order.

“Just leave the carts near the door,” you say when you get to your apartment. “And take off your shoes, too, please.”

“Sure.”

You unlock the door, belatedly realizing you did not prepare your place for guests but you are assuaged by the reminder that you’d cleaned last night like you always do, so, there’s that.

Your apartment is an open floor plan, with the kitchen immediately to your left and then the living room to the right. Your bedroom and bathroom are off to the side of that.

You scan everything quickly as you kick off your shoes. Your coffee table is the only thing not quite suited for visitors, with your laptop and graded papers scattered over it. Right, that reminds you, you need to finish those for this week and get the grades inputted…

“Nice socks.”

“Huh?” You blink, turning and spying an amused look on Tim’s face. Your eyes flicker to your socked feet in the next second, barely remembering you had put on a pair of black socks with a pattern of the Flash’s symbol on them.

You grin proudly, looking back at him. “Thank you. I think he’s pretty cool. Well, I think most of them are cool…”

“League supporters are hard to come by these days.”

You roll your eyes. “I know. But I don’t care for the government’s posturing about what they should and shouldn’t do. They’ve saved the world, like, a bunch of times. They should be grateful.”

“Hard to accept they need the help.”

“Yeah, then they go pouring my tax dollars into the military when it can go literally anywhere else. Jerks.”

Tim takes off his shoes and sets them aside while you shut the door behind you. He stands up, taking in your apartment with clear curiosity.

“Welcome to my humble abode,” you say, gesturing to it. By now, more than six months after moving in, you’ve made it your home. Picture frames on the walls, a few choice paintings, some old drawings from when you worked at Gotham Elementary right after graduating. Decorating the TV stand and various surfaces are little figurines and pieces of pottery you’ve made. You do pottery classes twice a month at the rec center in Chinatown. You’ve been doing it since you graduated three years ago.

His eyes spy your twenty-gallon tank against the wall, behind the couch and beside the bookshelves.

“Reptiles?” he guesses, squinting to get a better look.

You smile, stepping forward and beckoning him with you.

“No, they’re hermit crabs. I needed some pets like me.”

He snorts, then bends forward to peer inside. A thick layer of substrate covers the bottom. You have two ponds of freshwater and saltwater on opposite sides of the tank, a handful of sanitized shells scattered about, moss pits, a little holder suctioned to the glass with a fish net attached to it so the crabs can climb into it, and then various fake plants and pieces of driftwood and hollowed logs.

“This is their crabitat,” you inform him. You point to a crab with a pink shell mottled with brown, currently climbing the fishnet. “That’s Sid.” Then to another crab with a tan shell speckled with red moving into a hollow log. “That’s Diego.” And finally, a crab with a darker shell, with black spots chilling by a plant. “And that’s Manny.”

You both are bent forward, peering into the crabitat. Tim scrunches up his face and looks at you. “Did you… name them after the characters from Ice Age?”

You grin widely at him. “Yes.”

He laughs. He laughs for a while, actually, enough so that you start to feel a tad embarrassed.

“Hey!”

“No, no, no, I’m not making fun of you,” he quickly says, a little breathless, cornflower blue eyes bright with mirth. “I just… Talk about a blast to the past. I think the last time I saw those movies I was a kid.”

“Well, see how it makes an impact? You remembered their names.”

“True,” he says, chuckling. “Haven’t they come out with a bunch of movies since?”

“Mm, yeah, and they’re okay, except for the most recent one. That one is just a total mess because a handful of the actors didn’t come back for it. And also they tried some new animation and it looks so bad.”

“Kids probably don’t notice that,” he points out teasingly.

“Well, they should pay their respects to the original movies! All my childhood media was enjoyable for me and sometimes for my parents, too, because they always had adult jokes in it. Like in Spongebob. Or the earlier seasons, anyway.”

“I was never allowed to watch that,” he admits.

“Ugh, you aren’t the first person to tell me that. Some of my old college friends said their parents didn’t let them watch it because it would ‘kill their brain cells.’ You know what’s not just killing brain cells but indoctrinating them, too, these days? Paw Patrol.”

Tim lets out another loud laugh.

“I don’t watch it, either, okay! I just watch Spongebob sometimes and I guess it thinks I’m a child so it plays, you know, commercials geared towards kids and god, the amount of Paw Patrol commercials I get is so annoying.”

“I’m surprised you lean toward it,” he says, the two of you going over to the carts. “Since you’re a teacher’s aide.”

“Well, that’s the good thing about middle schoolers. They’re out there watching TV and movies that they probably shouldn’t be watching, so that’s not what I’m hearing about.”

“I’m not sure I’ve heard the words ‘good’ and ‘middle schoolers’ in a sentence before.”

You snort, then feel bad immediately. Your kids are good. Annoying sometimes, sure, but they’re kids. Everyone is annoying every now and then. Plus…

“I wasn’t too keen about being saddled with the six graders, either,” you admit. “But I’ll tell you what Ms. C — the teacher I help — told me. Maybe the reason middle schoolers are so… not fun to be around is because they can tell their teachers and practically every other adult in their life doesn’t want to be around them, either.”

He tilts his head. “Fair point. But also — puberty.”

“There is also the puberty,” you agree.

Tim chuckles and the two of you get to unpacking the groceries. You tell him he doesn’t have to — seriously — but he simply says he might as well help out. Of course, the process is made doubly longer by the fact that he has no idea where anything goes and you have to point him in the right direction but just like earlier, you don’t mind.

After, he pulls on his shoes, grabs the container of detergent he bought, and tells you he’ll take the carts back downstairs and put his stuff away, then come back.

You let him go and call in the order to the restaurant, then feed your crabs and collapse onto your couch. Your weekends are usually for resting your abused feet, since during the week, you are moving and standing constantly, but you don’t mind today’s aches, knowing it was accompanied with… one of the best days you’ve ever had in a long while.

With that, you decide to let your brother know there is no need to call the cops.

hi i made it unscathed

haha just kidding today was so fun

i went to costco!!! my tp is stocked for Days

Hello????

hello

Don’t do that. What on earth are you doing hanging out with Tim freakin Drake?

I don’t think that’s his middle name. Isn’t it jackson?

You can faintly recall that from when you unashamedly googled him last night.

A knock on your door. You heave yourself from the couch and open it. Tim steps inside.

“Hey, what’s your middle name?”

He raises an eyebrow. “Jackson. Do you want to know my mom’s maiden name, too? Maybe the street I was born on?”

You grin, going to sit back down. “I don’t know. I mean, if you’re offering.”

He shakes his head at you, then hesitates. You gesture to the couch. “Make yourself at home, seriously. After today, we’re practically BFFs.”

“Should I be worried about you?”

You wave a hand. “That’s just the crippling loneliness, don’t worry about it.”

“You’re…” He shakes his head again and sits down. You have the TV on, one of the various streaming services you shamelessly leech off your brother for pulled up. The page for Ice Age is there, too, waiting for you to hit play.

“You said you didn’t have anything else to do and I took that to heart.”

“I can see that,” Tim says dryly, but the quirk of his lips belies the tone.

You glance back at your phone where your previous text is. You snort.

“Your middle name really is Jackson?”

“Yes…” he says warily. “Why?”

“You have three first names.”

He lets out a choked laugh. “You’re the worst.”

You giggle and pick up the remote, pressing play. “Sorry!”

“Whatever. I do all this…”

“Hey!”

He grins and glances at the kitchen. “You mind if I grab a green tea?”

“Only if you grab one for me, too.”

He stands. “I guess. Even though you’re bullying me.”

“I’m sorry, you just make it so easy.”

Tim rolls his eyes good-naturedly at you and crosses to your kitchen, opening the fridge.

“There’s ice in the freezer since they’re not cold yet. And the cups are in the cabinet to the left.”

“Got it, thanks.”

You take a second to watch him shut the fridge, then step to the side to open the cabinet, pulling out two glasses. You’re crazy for thinking it, you know, but you don’t… terribly mind the sight of Tim in your kitchen. You really don’t.

It’s a good thing you two are friends, then.

Wait.

You are friends, right?

“Hey, Tim?”

“Yeah?”

“Are we friends now?”

Maybe it’s elementary to ask but… communication is important and all that. You would hate to think of you two as friends only to later realize he thinks you two are just… you don’t know, acquaintances?

He turns, smiling faintly. “And here I thought my offer to let you use my trunk and Costco membership said that clearly.”

“I didn’t want to assume!”

“I don’t just let anyone do those things, you know. Not strangers. Only for friends and strange girls who judge me for not knowing how to do my laundry and make fun of my name.”

“I am buying you dinner.”

“Do you buy dinner for strange guys who don’t know how to do their laundry?”

“No,” you admit. It really does say it, the fact that you even let him inside your place. Let him commandeer your kitchen for green tea, too.

Your face warms and you look away. “Alright! I’m just making sure, okay…”

“Yes,” he says, and when you glance at him, he’s smiling at you. “We’re friends.”

The butterflies in your belly go a little crazy at that. You have to look away again.

“Cool,” you mutter.

He chuckles and turns back to pour out the drinks.

You split your attention between him and your phone. He doesn’t stand in front of the counter but allows the glasses with the ice to be in plain view. For your sake, you’re sure.

we’re friends. just discussed it. i made a friend!!!

…….. He’s TIM DRAKE

so?

Jesus christ

Tim returns with a now-cold glass of green tea, ice clattering around inside, and you hit play on the movie. Your dinner arrives shortly after. You were right, of course, in that the very first Ice Age movie is more than a little amusing even for adults. Especially for adults.

“What other movies do you like, then?” he asks.

“Hmm. I’m partial to Mamma Mia. I like ABBA. And Meryl Streep and Amanda Seyfried. You know, I almost named the boys, um, Sam, Harry, and Bill.”

He blinks at you.

“You know, the — the guys! The baby daddies!”

A slow shake of the head.

“You’ve never seen Mamma Mia?”

“I’ve seen… The Devil Wears Prada?”

You pause, raising an eyebrow. 2000s dramas don’t seem to fit him but honestly you’ve never actually seen the movie, so maybe it’s different from what you think.

“I’ve never seen that one.”

He gives you a look, saying See? You, too.

“Alright,” you say, grinning. “You have to see Mamma Mia and I have to see The Devil Wears Prada.”

“We could just do it now,” he says, glancing at the TV, where the credits for Ice Age are rolling. The second movie, Ice Age: The Meltdown, is being advertised as the next movie you should watch.

“Which one? I think we should watch Mamma Mia.”

“Well, I think —” he stops as something vibrates. You think it’s your phone initially but then he slips his out of his pocket. It’s already nine. He grimaces. “I think we’ll have to make that decision another time.”

“Hey, no worries. I’ve taken up enough of your time. I should probably be getting ready for bed, too.”

Though, the good thing about Gotham Pointe being a newly-opened and very funded charter school is that, in a move to distinguish itself from the other charter schools in the city, school starts at nine instead of seven-thirty. It was a point that they wanted to move the starting time later, in an effort to heed the countless research that kids were better off starting their school days later rather than earlier. It still ends at four like the other ones, too.

But you have to be there at eight. Which is still a better alternative than anything else, of course.

He types something into his phone, lips pursed, then stands, collecting the trash from dinner and putting it back into the bag.

“You don’t have to —”

“Least I can do,” he says, tying off the bag, your coffee table now clear of trash. Your laptop and stack of… shit, not graded papers sits in the corner. You still have to do that. Damn. Oh, well. This was too much fun.

“So,” he starts, lips pursed, thinking quickly as he runs a hand through his hair. “I’ll take a raincheck. I’m thinking you can host for Mamma Mia and it’s only fair if I host for The Devil Wears Prada?”

“Oh, you mean —?”

“If you’re comfortable with it,” he quickly says. “If not, we can do it here. I just, I don’t know. Want it to be fair so I’m not always hogging your space.”

I don’t mind, you want to say.

You don’t.

Instead, you smile and shrug. “You haven’t kidnapped or killed me yet, so, sure, I’d like that.”

“Well, you see, I need to build trust first.”

“Ohhh, of course, of course. Makes sense.”

He grins at you and picks up the bag. “I’ll see you later.”

“Yeah. Have a goodnight.”

You sit up to pull your laptop and the papers to you, picking up your blue glitter pen. The kids tease you about it but you think they secretly like it.

“Oh, wait,” he says, straightening after pulling on his shoes.

“What?”

“Your number,” he says, shaking his head. “I was about to leave when I realized I don’t have your number and you don’t have mine.”

You stand, picking up your phone. “I completely forgot, too. Here.”

You pass off your phone and squash down any hesitancy in him handling it, with the yellowed clear case and a couple cracks in your screen protector. Then you gingerly accept his, sleek and new, the display bright and flowing smoothly as you type in your phone number.

“Please don’t leak my number to the press,” is what he says when he passes his phone back to you.

You laugh. “I promise on my Justice League sock collection.”

“Now, that’s serious.”

You back away, giving him a two-fingered salute like you did last night. “I’d never betray them.”

He smiles, bids you one last goodnight, then steps out. You lock the door behind him.

Then you step away, staring at it for a moment, a silly grin full of giddiness growing on your lips.

You look back at your phone, then burst out laughing when you see how he did his contact.

First Name: Timothy Jackson

Last Name: Drake

A poke at you for that comment about his name, you’re certain.

Not like it matters, anyway.

You are far too pleased to have his name in your phone.

Not because he is Timothy Jackson Drake, twenty-three-years-old and one of Gotham’s most eligible bachelors, but because he is Tim, your friend who can’t handle spicy foods but eats it, anyway, who likes The Devil Wears Prada, and who has so much more about him that you cannot wait to find out.

Your friend.

What a thought.

reblogs are appreciated!

#red robin #dc comics #tim drake x reader #tim drake x you #tim drake x y/n #dc comics x reader #red robin x you #red robin x reader #red robin x y/n #tim drake imagine #dc comics imagine #batfam x you #batfamily x reader #batfam x reader

140 notes · View notes

twiixr4kidz · 2 years

Note

Helloo!! I was wondering if you could do TDI or Sally Face head cannons of before/while dating?

i'd love too!! this one will be TDI, but feel free to ask for SF ones so i can write those too >:)) here r some dating hcs for some of the characters i didn't do the last time!!

heather:

she may be a total bitch most of the time, but you're an exception

there's a soft side to heather that nobody but you gets to see

she's a whole different person around you

soft, gentle, and quiet heather?? WHAT??

sure, she still orders you around because that's who she is

you'd be pulling my leg if you said you didn't expect her to tell you to go get her something to drink or something to snack on, to do a particular favor for her that she doesn't want to do herself, and so on

but she's also a lot more understanding

steals your clothes but refuses to be caught dead in them because your "styles are too different" or something

she'll do what it takes to win, but she will NEVER throw you under the bus.

she loves modeling outfits for you, and insists you rate them on a scale of 1 to 10

1 means "incredible" and 10 means "spectacular" because her fashion is, to her, on point every time

insists on styling you, and painting your nails and messing around with makeup if you let her

insists you take her shopping and then carry bags full of clothes and shoes she spent thousands on, and you'll be damned if you didn't say yes

trent:

bro's love language is music

he writes songs for you, songs about you, songs about things that remind him of you

you become this core part of his music writing process, like you're his whole MUSE

he's also hella charming

the "shows up at your house and throws rocks at your window before serenading you with the most beautiful melody you've ever heard" type

he's also the "writes the most intimate, beautifully worded love letters to you whenever you cross his mind" type

he's sickeningly sweet and you're going to get used to it

he has such a way with words it's hard NOT to love

he also LOVES grand gestures and displays of love

if it's not your thing, he can respect that. but if you're cool with it? he goes ALL OUT.

paths with rose petals, renting whole movie theaters for date nights, FREE FOOD AT RESTAURANTS??

you aren't sure how he does it, but he does it all for you

and that alone is enough to make the butterflies in your tummy go haywire

courtney:

she's independent

she's a strong, powerful woman who loves to do things for herself, and she NEEDS you to respect that about her

because even though at the end of the day, she'll curl up next to you and sleep like a baby, she's kicking hella butt all day long

and you think she's a total badass for it

whether she's yelling at chris for being a jerk, or someone else for doing something they absolutely shouldn't have, you're cheering her on from the sidelines

and she does the same for you

your relationship is built on a strong mutual respect for each other

she's a sucker for calling you weird names to confuse everyone

the words "pookie wookie bear" sometimes leave her lips, and everyone is in pure shock because of how unexpected it was

PLEASE watch the sunrise with her

she wakes up early every morning just to watch the colors of the night melt into those of the day, and if you pose the idea of joining her, she will FREAK. OUT.

she'll never directly say it, but she is so touch starved please hug her

geoff:

bro's a party animal, a cowboy, AND a gentleman

he's both the "let's get drunk as fuck and do stupid shit" kinda guy, AND the "opening car doors and letting you walk across his jacket so your shoes don't get wet" kinda guy

you have worn his hat on NUMEROUS occasions

he loves taking you with him EVERYWHERE

to parties, to fancy restaurants, to rodeos?? literally wherever he wants to go, he's gonna let you come

he'll also proudly become your personal uber

if there's anywhere you wanna go, you can bet he'll drive you

he ALWAYS keeps an extra pair of pjs set aside for when you come over

it's a t-shirt of his and a pair of old pajama pants that don't fit him anymore

and for as much as he loves going out, he also loves staying in

he makes really good wings and even better nachos, and he always has a bunch of really yummy snacks and drinks so the two of you can chill on his couch with a bunch of blankets and binge-watch tv shows

he'll do this thing called a "tv show roulette" where he picks a show neither of you have seen and you pick a random episode (or vice versa) and try to guess what's happening

he's shown up at your house with a bouquet of roses almost every week since you got together tbh

leshawna:

ANOTHER GIRLBOSS???

leshawna absolutely does not mess around when it comes to love

she's doting but not in an overwhelming way

she's an absolute sweetheart and a total badass

she'll defend you when you need it, but also lets you fight your own battles

she LOVES taking you to her favorite spots so she can share her love for them with you

she knows the coolest facts about everything

like if she sees something that makes her remember a fact, she proudly blurts it out

she also tells you whenever she sees something that makes her think of you

she absolutely loves cuddles

PLEASE take her on late night drives

music blaring, windows down, nothing but the cool night air in your hair and the sweet smell of that night life

tyler:

bro fell HARD

he tripped over his own two feet and fell down the stairs onto his head for you

that being said, he can and will do whatever you want him to

even if you don't explicitly ask him to

if you mention you're craving a specific food or drink, he'll get it for you within an hour

he'll splurge his entire wallet on you

as long as you watch his favorite sports teams with him, ofc

he's hella sensitive and cries A LOT, but he doesn't want you to think of him as any less than a man for it

please please PLEASE reassure him because it gives him a lot of anxiety

he likes getting outside and playing games with you, even though he's super uncoordinated and gets hurt a lot

you're going to have to start carrying a first aid kit with you EVERYWHERE because this boy has fallen up escalators before

HOW

when you're out and you mention that you feel chilly, his jacket is on your shoulders faster than you can say "FUCK"

he may be a little dumb, but he tries his best and always makes sure you know how much he loves you

lindsay:

there is not a day that goes by where she doesn't remind you that you're the hottest person she's ever seen

if you mention being insecure, she won't really get it, but she will say something along the lines of "you don't have to worry about that, i only date hot people :)"

she's a total dumbass and you're going to have to pull her out of sticky situations

super clingy and she sticks to you like GLUE

she smells really good too

absolutely INSISTS you go shopping with her so she can show you all of these cute outfits, and maybe even pick something out for yourself

she doesn't care what kind of shopping it is, even if it's grocery shopping, SHE LOVES IT

sometimes jokes fly right over her head and you're going to have to explain to her what they mean and why they were funny, but it's honestly kind of cute how dense she can be

sure she's a dummy, but she's your dummy

and what she lacks in brains, she makes up for in everything else

she's gorgeous, sweet, caring, and a total dork

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switchy-niki · 1 year

Text

Master post (please read ty)

Last updated - April 20th, 2023

Disclaimers

Hello !!! This is a SFW role play blog that will include tickling (not all the time) if that’s not your thing then please feel free to ignore/block.

I am not Niki (Nihachu) and I am not trying to impersonate her! As stated before this is a SFW role play blog

I am a minor. This is an SFW account ran by a minor.

I live in the PST time zone so be aware of that!

I will also do roleplays that don’t include tickling! Be aware I have my own interpretation of niki and I am not caught up on lore! I also struggle with angst so I apologize if it’s not up to your expectations. When roleplaying I usually don’t roleplay off of lore so please tell me before hand if you want to roleplay off of lore /nf

I struggle with tone and interpreting what people are feeling/trying to tell me, so using tone tags is appreciated. I also use them so I know people know what I mean and how I mean it.

Boundaries

I will not do any sort of shipping.

I will not do tickle tools, if your character has wings or a tail then I will allow it. But that’s it.

It would be much appreciated if you dm’d me about what you want to rp before sending an ask. But you don’t have to. I just like knowing what you expect out of me. (Idk if I phrased that right)

No feet tickling. Absolutely none. I will drop the roleplay if it seems like it’s heading towards that.

Pinning is okay. No bondage, the most I will do is wrists being tied together. That’s it.

I will do OC rps! Just know the interactions might not be what you expect since they aren’t characters that have interacted before! I will try my best, once again if you want the best results dm me! /nf

Please use underarms instead of armpits, the word makes me uncomfortable.

Sometimes tumblr says I’m active but I’m actually not, so be aware of that! I will not always answer right away so do not spam me plz and thank u

Lastly, feel free to send me an ask, dm me, anything! /nf

Under the cut is headcanons and extra notes. It’s a bit long and you do not have to read to roleplay with me!

——Under Construction——

General Headcanons

Niki uses she/her pronouns but does not mind they/them!

She is a very light hearted person, none for her bubbly and sweet personality. But she is known to be a little feral around people she is comfortable with. She’s very clingy but only shows it subtly around people. Example being following someone around, standing close to someone, occasionally holding hands if the person is comfortable with it, hugging people, side hugs. She never lets go first when she’s hugging people. She would be usually be way more clingy but she’s kind of shy to show it.

She is a very sleepy gal she is almost always tired and always taking naps wether they are 10 minutes to hours long and although it might be because she loves to stay up at night and watch the sunrise in the morning she usually gets good sleep she is just a napper

Appearance

Niki has scars, not a lot, but they are there (and they are a little ticklish but shhhh)

Short choppy pink hair, with two braids on the sides. It’s surprisingly really fluffy.

She is usually wearing light makeup because she likes how it makes her feel pretty.

Niki has light eye bags, barely noticeable.

Niki loves cardigans and sweaters, she was one in particular that she loves to wear for all seasons (it’s one that she stole from Wilbur) it’s a nice faded blue with a sun with a smiley face on it. She swears she didn’t steal it. Most of her clothing is faded colors, or whites and beiges. She has one pair of platform shoes, but the rest of her shoes are usually colorful high top converse or boots. She has knitted Shruggies and skirts, usually worn in the winter.

If it’s more of a formal type of thing, she’ll wear a flowy dress made of soft material. She likes the way it swishes when she spins :]

she also loves fuzzy gloves with weird colors washed together like those gloves coralline wanted in the movie

#Masterpost #switchy-niki

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moonlight-cp · 2 years

Text

Proxy in Command (Creepypasta x Reader) Chapter 17

Series Masterlist

I took a glance at the mirror in front of me to make sure I had looked perfect. I had worn a black knee-high dress with heels and styled up my hair. Obviously, I had to wear makeup especially since I had to cover up my bruises on my neck. Now that I think about it, I had no idea if Derek remembered he made them last night.

Derek texted me an hour ago stating we were going to a fancy restaurant, so I had to get ready. He would arrive and change before we both leave.

I lifted my dress and stared at the two thigh holsters wrapped around each of my thighs. I carefully inserted two sharp knives before I heard the door to the penthouse open. I quickly lifted my dress down and pretended I was fixing my lipstick with my fingers. In less than a minute, I heard him enter the room. He had opened his closet to pick out his clothes. I got out of the bathroom and slowly made my way towards him. He turned around and stared at me with amazement.

"Wow...I'm speechless," he smirked as he lifted my chin to look at him. "I think I'm having second thoughts love. You look ravishing. I think I want us to-"

Before he had the chance to finish his sentence I took his hand away. "You owe me a date night for leaving me alone. Plus I'm hungry."

He leaned his head back and laughed. "Of course darling. Just let me shower real quick and then we can go." He grabbed his black suit from the bed before he left to shower in the bathroom.

It took him ten minutes to shower. In the meantime, I patiently sat on the bed while going over the plan I had thought of last night. It was dangerous but it would definitely eliminate Derek and his associates. If I made it out alive, then I would definitely arrive back at the mansion on time.

Once Derek got out of the bathroom he smirked at me again. His hair was slightly wet even though he was wearing his black suit. What caught my attention was the cologne he sprayed on himself. He smelled nice, I'm not going to lie.

"You sure you want to head out? We can stay here and have fun," he suggested. I scoffed before heading downstairs with Derek following behind.

"As I said, I'm hungry and you owe me a date night." He chuckled before wrapping his arm around my shoulder.

"Don't worry babe, I'll make sure you'll never forget this date."

I silently gulped at his words. I had to remind myself that I'm carrying my knives as a precaution. I was prepared if he was going to lure me to a trap.

/~~~/

L.J silently sat on the couch in the living room as he witnesses the blonde boy rage in Mario Kart. The other Creepypastas including Jeff, Puppeteer, and Painter were also in the room to kill some time before dinner.

They've only known each other for a limited time but well enough to recognize their weird behaviors. For L.J's case, it was rare to see him reserved.

"So does the child know Y/N won't be returning today?"

L.J glanced at Jeff before looking away. "Splendorman offered to spend the day with Sally in an attempt to distract her. He doesn't want to guarantee her that she'll arrive tomorrow based on what Ben had informed us."

" Why? Because you chickened out?" Puppeteer teased him.

"I may be a cold-hearted killer but Sally is an exception. She was looking forward to seeing Y/N again and I do not want to be the one to crush her spirit."

/~~~/

"Would you like some tea Mr. Splendy?"

"It would be an honor, Ms. Sally."

Currently, Splendor and Sally were having a tea party in her room. Splendor had hoped by spending the day with her, she would forget the idea of waiting for Y/N.

Sally smiled as she pretended to fill up his cup with tea. He lifted it with his hand but stopped after hearing Sally's question.

"What are we doing for Y/N's birthday tomorrow?"

Splendor stared at her for a few seconds before answering. He truly didn't expect the child to remember her birthday.

"Sally," he paused before continuing. "Remember that she doesn't like celebrating her birthday."

"But we can do something just the three of us!" She exclaimed. "We can bake a small cake and hold a party inside my room!"

Splendor forced a smile. For starters, Y/N didn't like entering this room for some unknown reason, and knowing Slenderman, he might assign her another task that same day. He recalled her previous birthdays how she locked herself in her room despite him and his brothers would always visit her on her special day.

"She's not going to come back today is she?" she quietly asked.

Splendor stood astonished by her intelligence. He never expected Sally to catch on to what was happening.

"Sally, you're a smart girl. Y/N won't be coming home today but she's alright. Ben checked up on her at midnight."

"So she's coming home tomorrow!" Her eyes lid up with excitement. "I hope she does!"

"I also hope too but for her safety," he whispered.

/~~~/

"I want you to wear this," Derek grinned as he held a black blindfold. We were inside the limo as the new driver was still driving. I had completely forgotten Derek had fired his previous one.

I smirked."You're getting kinky are we?"

He let out a small laugh. "I wish. I want to surprise you with something."

I sighed but eventually gave in. I made sure I could easily untie the knot if the worst scenario came true.

Once the limo stopped, he held my hand to use it as a guide. I felt the cool wind hit my face once I stepped out.

"Don't worry we'll get inside in a few seconds. I'll let you wear my jacket after we're done eating dinner."

After a few minutes of walking, we finally stopped. I had heard chatter until I heard an elevator door open and felt myself going up. After what seemed like a minute, I heard the door open. Derek held my hand again and led me forward. He eventually stopped.

"Are you ready love?" he whispered near my ear which sent shivers down my spine.

I gulped before nodding. Derek claimed this was a dinner date but if he somehow figured out my identity and lured me into a trap, I had to be prepared and act quickly.

He slowly took off the blindfold. I flinched at the light but my eyes soon adjusted to the scene in front of me.

"Derek," I whispered. "I-I don't know what to say."

He chuckled as a way of response. He grabbed my hand and led me to the circular white-clothed table. We were the only ones on this floor. A plate of chocolate-covered strawberries was placed in the middle for us. This was definitely too much.

I sat on the chair as he helped me push it in.

"Y/N you know how much you mean to me right?" He asked.

I nodded my head. "And you also mean the world to me, Derek," I said with a sweet tone. "Is everything alright?" I asked. If Derek had indeed known my identity, I wouldn't doubt he would ask me a question regarding it.

"Of course! You don't have to worry about anything!" He bit his lip before smiling. Something was definitely wrong.

"You sure?"

He insisted everything was alright but I knew something was off. We ate our dinner almost in complete silence. Even though I was eating, I noticed how his gaze kept moving away from me. I knew how an anxious person acts.

It wasn't until we finished our meals when I finally confronted him about it.

"Derek," I said. He moved his gaze towards me. I held his hands on top of the table. "What's wrong? I know something is off."

He sighed before nodding. "I guess I can't hide this any longer." He stood up from the chair and walked to the side of my chair. I felt fear slowly take over my body. I felt my breath hitch as I slowly raised my dress and place my hand on my knife on the opposite way where he was located.

"R/N L/N, you make me the happiest man on Earth. You inspire me to become the best and motivate me in doing the things I love. Ever since I met you I knew you were going to be the woman I want to marry. I don't know what the fuck I did to deserve you and what the hell I did before I met you because I can't see myself without you. In other words, R/N L/N, Will you do the honors and marry me?" He got down on one knee and lifted a silver ring that was inside a red velvet box.

I widen my eyes as soon as I saw the ring. I felt my tension release. This whole time he was planning on getting engaged with me instead of setting a trap as I initially thought of.

"Yes, Derek! I will happily marry you," I exclaimed. I still had to play the role of R/N if I want to set forward my plan. He placed the ring on my ring finger and then kissed me on the lips.

If anyone had seen the scene, they would probably think we were a happy couple but how wrong they were. I couldn't complain because this was better than stepping into a trap.

Derek had proposed to someone who he met five days ago. He was actually mentally insane as Rachel and Chloe had stated.

/~~~/

The pastas were silently eating dinner, not daring to break the tension in the room. For the past five days, their meals consisted of pure silence when Slenderman was around, especially after his threat when it came to mentioning Y/N.

Slenderman had read their minds. He knew they were all thinking about Y/N mostly because she was expected to come back tomorrow at eight. Knowing how his proxy worked, he was surprised she wasn't back.

"I know what you are all thinking," he broke the silence. "Y/N should come back tomorrow."

"To celebrate her birthday!" Sally exclaimed as she stood up on her chair. The pastas looked at her in shock. They were surprised to find out about her birthday through Sally.

Upon realizing what she said, she quickly covered her mouth with her hands. She had forgotten the deal she made with Y/N.

" When I come back from my mission, I'll just lay in my bed and sleep throughout the whole day. That's how I imagine spending my birthday," Y/N stated. It had been the day before she had gone to her mission.

"Do you promise you'll come back?" Sally's voice cracked as she was playing with the hem of her dress.

Y/N held her hands as she smiled at her. "I promise to come back if you don't tell anyone about my birthday," she winked at her.

Sally widen her eyes as she felt tears come out from her eyes. "She's not going to come back!" She yelled. "I broke her promise!"

L.J and Splendor rushed to her side to calm her down but she kept pulling her hair back.

"She's not coming back!" She screamed.

Slenderman sat in silence. He stared at the distressed girl and couldn't help but to get flashbacks from a few years. To be exact, when Y/N was stressed when it came to her training.

He turned his head towards Offender who was staring at him back. Slenderman read his thoughts before teleporting to his office.

He didn't want to deal with Sally nor Offender at the moment. He knew the others would help comfort the girl but Offenderman was still an issue for him.

He hoped his brother wouldn't visit him in the next few hours.

/~~~/

After Derek's proposal, we arrived back in the penthouse around 8 pm meaning I had four hours to kill him and the four remaining associates. It was too early for me to proceed with my plan and had to kill some time.

"So, I was thinking we can watch Netflix," Derek trailed off as we went upstairs to our bedroom.

"And I'm going to the bathroom," I said before going to our closet to pick up a black hoodie and leggings. It wasn't my proxy uniform but it had been the second thing close. If I was going to kill them then I had to make sure I wore comfortable clothes.

I made sure to lock the bathroom door behind me before I took off my dress along with my two black thigh holsters. I took my time changing into my black hoodie and leggings. Wiping off my makeup took forever especially since I had foundation on my neck to cover my bruises. I stared at them for a few seconds before remembering this was going to end soon. If everything went according to plan, then I wouldn't have to take a step in this place. I took another glance at myself before going back inside the room.

Derek had laid on the bed while holding a remote in his hand to pick out something to watch. I made my way to the bed and placed my head on his chest.

"Would you ever lie to me R/N?" He randomly asked. I lifted my head to look at him with a confused expression.

"Why would you ask that? You know I love you and I wouldn't lie to you," I assured him.

"You just did," he muttered. Before I had the chance to react, he pinned me to the bed. I felt him insert something in my neck that made me lose control of my body. I saw him getting out of bed to watch me on the side before I felt my eyelids heavy.

"What did you do?" I whispered before darkness took over.

/~~~/

Slenderman sat on his seat looking through his paperwork that consisted of future proxy and creepypasta's missions. He knew he should have trained the Creepypastas these past few days to prevent them from getting hurt in the upcoming battle with Zalgo but got distracted with the fear of being discovered by humans. He had sent his strongest proxy to a man he didn't know about his future actions but was fully aware of his threat to his kind. He knew it was either a stupid or a wise move.

He sighed as he remembered he was aware of something while the others didn't.

Immediately he heard his door slam open and shut. He slowly looked up and saw his younger brother make his way towards him. He wanted to avoid this confrontation during dinner which is why he skipped it halfway.

"What do you want Offender?" he annoyedly asked.

"You know why I came here."

Slender stared at him for a few seconds before looking away. It was true. He had read his thoughts during dinner.

"You better not consider her dead if she doesn't arrive tomorrow," Offender warned him. "You probably already know Y/N isn't close to done in finishing her mission."

Slenderman shook his head. "I will have to. She may or may not finish the mission before he kills her."

Offenderman slammed his fists onto the table. He would get frustrated whenever Slenderman talked about Y/N's death.

"What the fuck do you mean by 'before he kills her!' Who's he, Derek?"

Slenderman shook his head. " There's a reason why Y/N doesn't celebrate her birthday and I don't blame her. Think brother, why do you think I want her back in the morning?"

Offender growled at him but then his mouth was agape as he unclenched his fists upon realizing what his older brother had confirmed.

"Her birthday is a curse for her," he whispered.

Series Masterlist---Next Chapter -> (Chapter 18)

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falcqns · 3 years

Note

hi ! big fan of your writing here, i love your angsty fics and was wondering if you could write more with chris evans. maybe something along the lines of him making a snide comment about your weight not realizing how much if affects you, resulting in a fight. thank you 😊

didn't mean it

pairing: Chris Evans x Reader

warnings: angst, fluff, mentions of weight

a/n: hope you enjoy, and thank you for the request!

you honestly thought you looked fine in the dress you were wearing, but clearly you were wrong.

you also never thought that Chris would say something like that, but you were wrong again.

you were wearing a black body con dress, a dress you had worn millions of times before, and it had fit you perfectly. last week, however, you accidentally put it in the dyer, when you were supposed to hang it up, and it shrunk a little.

that meant that it fit a little snugger than usual, but you didn't care. you were doing your makeup when Chris walked into the bathroom and gave you a weird look when you smiled at him.

"what?" you asked, looking at yourself to see what was wrong.

"that dress is looking a little..." he chewed on his lip as he thought about the right word. "small." he said. his eyes were locked on your stomach, and you felt the sudden urge to cover it with your hands.

you felt shame crawl up your body as his gaze focused on you, and you felt like he was scrutinizing every little thing about you. "i didn't realize i looked so horrible." you spat, tears threatening to surge over.

you wrapped your arms around yourself and walked into the bedroom. you grabbed a pair of sweats and a sweater and headed to the guest room to change. by the time you had gotten the dress off your body, and into the garbage bin, Chris was knocking on the door.

"baby," he begged. "i'm sorry. i didn't mean it at all." he said, and you ignored him. the tears clouded your vision as you shoved your legs inside of the sweats, followed by slipping the sweatshirt over your head.

once you were dressed, you walked out of the bathroom and faced your very upset and ashamed looking boyfriend. "but you still said it. if i looked that bad in it, you could have just told me instead of insulting me like that." you said, the tears making tracks down your cheeks.

you walked away from him and into the bedroom, where you climbed in bed. Chris sat at the foot of the bed and sighed. "i know. i'm sorry. i never meant it like that, but i could've kept quiet because you looked beautiful in it." you shook your head as you cried into the pillow.

"baby." he said, rubbing your leg under neath the blanket. "let's get you dressed, okay? we're running late." he explained and you scoffed. you shuffled away from him and burrowed yourself under the blankets even more.

"no." you said, and Chris took a deep breath.

"honey, we have to go." he tried to reason but you shook your head. "i need to go to this party, so we need to get going." he stated, as if there was no room for argument.

you peaked your head out from under the covers. "then go to your stupid party."

Chris rolled his eyes, but tried to keep his annoyance down. "that's what i'm trying to do but i cant with you under the blankets and not even dressed."

"i'm not going." you stated and Chris groaned in frustration.

"y/n, what do you want me to do? i said i was sorry, i apologized, i'm trying to make it better. we need to go." he argued and you shook your head.

"i said i'm not going."

Chris threw his hands up and stood from the bed. "whatever. i need to leave." he said, and walked straight out the door, without even saying goodbye.

you were awoken later that night by Chris crawling into the bed with you, and wrapping his arms around you. "i'm so fucking sorry, y/n." he said, and you snuggled closer.

"i don't know what came over me, baby. holy shit i wasn't even thinking, and i definitely shouldn't have stormed out like that." he apologized, and you mumbled incoherently. "please forgive me baby." he begged and you nodded.

"can i go back to sleep now?" you asked, and Chris chuckled.

"yes honey. we'll talk in the morning."

#chris evans x y/n #chris evans fanfiction #chris evans steve rogers #chris evans x you #chris evans series #chris evans angst #chris evans imagine #chris evans fic #chris evans drabble #chris evans x female reader #chris evans x reader #chris evans fluff #chris evans one shot

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watchmegetobsessed · 3 years

Text

Never Have I Ever - Harry Styles (part 8)

a/n: oh my! we have finally reached the end of this story and I never thought it would turn out to be this long but im happy it did! thank you for reading and loving it, and now, enjoy the last part!

pairing: Harry x actress!reader

word count: 4k

warning: just pure fluff

SERIES MASTERPOST

masterlist

“Girl, even if you don’t win, you’ll surely take the title of the hottest woman on the red carpet tonight.”

Florence’s words make you chuckle, but you try not to move your lips too much as the makeup artist finishes up the last touches on them, using a nude shade.

“Stop, my head is big enough already,” you tell her, giving her a look through the mirror. She is standing a few feet behind you, already wearing her beautiful, golden Versace gown that hugs her perfectly. Her hair is up in a neat bun so her back can be on full display and the diamonds in her ears can also shine brightly. She looks amazing while she is the opposite of what you’ll look like tonight.

Rhonda, the makeup artist has an amazing notion about your look when you showed her the gown you’d be wearing tonight and since the dress is not the sparkly kind, like Florence’s, she went a little heavier with the glitter on your eyes, using mostly whitish-silver colors, creating rosy cheeks and topping it with nude, glossy lips. Your hair is in loose curls with a bunch of extension, creating the illusion that you might as well be Rapunzel herself tonight. But you are the most excited about the gown that’s already waiting for you to be finally put on.

“What time is it?” you ask Florence as you don’t have your phone on you, but she has hers in her hands already.

“We still have half an hour before we have to leave. Dude, I can’t believe you are an Oscar nominee and might turn into a winner tonight!” she sighs, eyes shining bright with excitement. She hasn’t come off of this high for days, so over the Moon that you get to walk the red carpet tonight as a nominee.

“Don’t jinx it, Flo,” you warn her.

There’s a knock on the door of the hotel suit you’ve occupied for the glamming and Florence is quick to rush to it answering, but you both know who it is. As she throws the door open Harry comes to your sight, looking as handsome as ever, wearing his custom made Gucci suit with a pink dress shirt underneath that matches your gown perfectly.

“Florence, you look wonderful!” his british accent fills the room, making you smile. Rhonda sets your makeup with some spray and you’re finally done. Standing up you move your legs around a bit as they went a little numb from all the sitting.

“Thank you! Pink suits you well, Harry,” your friend compliments your man and you watch them smiling.

When Harry’s eyes set on you, the light up, his smile widening from ear to ear. He looks spotless, freshly shaved, his hair recently cut and combed into place for a change. Not that you don’t like it when it’s all tousled and messy, especially when it’s because of your fingers.

“Angel, wow!” he breathes out as he walks up to you, taking your hands in his. You know he wants to kiss you, but doesn’t want to risk messing your lips up, so he is left with admiring you with only his eyes.

“Just wait until you see her in the dress!” Florence chimes in making you chuckle. You kept your dress a secret, wanting to surprise him with the first look. You gave out only the most necessary details for Lambert so the two of you could match.

“You’d be great like this too,” he teases, taking a look at your fluffy robe.

“I’m not going to the Oscars in a robe,” you tell him with a narrow-eyed look.

“I know, I’m just saying that you’d still be stunning,” he mumbles with a boyish smirk.

“Y/N? Time to choose a necklace!” Your stylist, Rupert appears from the room where your gown is hanging. He has a few jewelry boxes in his hands and he sets them all to the coffee table, opening up you are met with four breathtakingly beautiful diamond necklaces, each of them different yet so magical looking, you can’t decide which one you like the most.

“Harry, which one do you like the most?” you ask, kneeling down next to the table, mesmerized by the jewelries in front of you. Harry leans down and inspects them one by one before poking on the last one in the row. It has three rows of diamonds, not too big, the stones in the last row are shaped like water droplets, it’s such an elegant looking piece, it surely caught your eyes as well and you think it would be perfect with the dress.

“This one,” he tells you and you nod, shutting the other boxes, satisfied with the choice.

“Alright, time to get you into the gown, girl,” Rupert winks, gesturing at you to follow him into the room.

“I’ll be right back,” you tell Harry, risking a quick peck on his lips before you disappear in your temporary dressing room.

You fell in love with the gown on the first fitting when Rupert pulled it out, still in the finishing phase. It still has pins in it, but it already took your breath away. It has a massive A-line skirt and a tight upper part that hugs your body perfectly, a row of buttons running down the middle of it. The sleeves are puffy, but then end in a tight run from a little above your wrists, the same set of buttons appearing like on your chest. It’s giving out some Victorian style vibes in a more sophisticated and simpler way, but it’s by far your favorite dress you’ve ever worn to any event.

It surely needs the extra pair of hands from Rupert to put it on, but once you are secured in it, you feel like a princess straight out of a fairytale and surely, your prince is standing on the other side of the double doors.

“Alright! Everyone get ready for the big reveal!” Rupert announces, sneaking out the room so he can open the door for you. He waits a few moments as you hear everyone shuffle around outside, probably lining up to see you walk out in your finished state. “Okay, three! Two! One! Welcome our Oscar nominee!” he cheers, a round of applause is heard before you even appear, but it’s quickly replaced with gasps when Rupert pulls the doors open and they get the first glimpse of you in your gown.

“Holy fuck!” Florence gasps, mouth hanging open as she keeps raking your form up and down. Your eyes find Harry’s gaze and you see him in a state you haven’t often found him in the past almost two years you’ve been dating. He is completely speechless, eyes glued to you in awe as if he just saw an angel in real life.

“Y/N, I—wow,” he breathes out, still at a loss of words.

“You like it?” you ask with a shy smile.

“I fucking love it, baby. You look… You really are an angel,” he tells you, making you chuckle at his words.

“Would you please help me put on the necklace?” you ask him and he nods eagerly, carefully taking the jewelry out of its box and walking behind you, he brings it around your neck, his fingers delicately working on the clasp. Once it’s all set, you step to the floor to ceiling mirror, taking in the final look.

“There won’t be a straight woman left on Earth once you step on the red carpet,” Florence bluntly comments, making everyone in the room laugh.

“Let’s take some photos, I need to immortalize this masterpiece,” Rupert gestures around, already grabbing his camera.

The next ten minutes you take hundreds of photos, alone, with Florence and then with Harry. He still seems a little stunned by your look, feeling shy when he circles his arm around your waist, but it’s cute that you can still have such an effect on him after being together for almost two years.

Florence snaps some with your phone as well, your favorite is when he held your waist and leant you back, making you arch backwards as your noses touched since he couldn’t kiss you. You already know it’ll end up as your lockscreen, replacing the selfie the two of you took on your latest trip to Hawaii.

When it’s time to leave you grab your little purse with your phone and other necessities and the three of you pile up in a minivan, since your dress needs all the space so it doesn’t get wrinkled before you step out to the red carpet.

As you sit in the car and watch the buildings pass by, your nerves start to rise in you. When the nominations came out a month ago it seemed so far, you couldn’t imagine yourself actually attending the Academy Awards, but now here you are, on your way to find out if you’ve been good enough to be the best.

Your role in Sinful Heaven has brought a lot to your life aside from the nomination. The three months of filming was one of the hardest times in your life you’ve ever worked through and at some points, you didn’t even think you’d get through it. Working so closely with Levi took a toll on you while you were trying to prove in such a heavy and serious role. It was a mess especially at the beginning when you and Harry were still in this weird phase, but that eventually turned right when he literally punched Levi in the face and ten minutes later asked you to be his girlfriend. It’s a badass way to start a relationship and you wouldn’t trade it for anything, especially because it put Levi into place or at least scared him enough to get off your back for the rest of the filming.

When Harry left following that visit, you couldn’t see each other until filming wrapped and you flew straight to him and travelled with him for the next two weeks, hopping from one city to the other, watching him perform every other night and spending all your time with him.

When the movie premiered eight months later, you didn’t appear with Harry by your side, Maya was your date for the evening, but by that time everyone knew you and Harry are an official couple. Neither of you felt like hiding it or caring about what others would think and you were able to focus on each other and rely on the strong foundation you’ve built for your relationship.

He was there with you when the nominations came out and probably screamed louder when your name appeared in the list. With tearing eyes and choked out sobs you jumped into his arms as he mumbled into your ear.

“I’m so proud of you, Angel. So, so proud!”

And now you are on your way to the show, only hours away from finding out if your dreams will come true tonight. Harry squeezes your hand and you turn to face him, his soft eyes meeting yours.

“Nervous?” he asks with a small smile.

“Very,” you admit with an airy chuckle.

“Whatever happens tonight, I’m very proud of you. Don’t forget that.”

“Thank you,” you whisper, giving his hand a squeeze back.

Since it’s the first time you and Harry appear on the red carpet as a couple, once you set your feet out of the car, everyone goes nuts. He helps you out and even fixes your dress so it falls just perfectly around your frame before he offers his arm. You link your through it, taking a deep breath as the two of you start walking down the carpet, posing for the photographers.

You feel powerful and strong, like it’s the peak of your career, but you also feel that it wouldn’t be the same without Harry by your side even though he is making sure to let you shine tonight. At one point he even steps back for a moment so photographers can snap you alone and you think it’s such a caring move from him.

You feel a little dizzy from all the flashlights by the time you walk into the theater, Harry holding your hand tightly as he leads you to your seats.

You’ve been to plenty award shows and it’s not even your first Academy Awards appearance either, but for obvious reasons, it’s the most important. Sitting in your plush chair, you can barely stop yourself from continuously fidgeting as one category follows the other and it’s still not yours.

Then following a jaw-dropping performance from Dua Lipa, Chris Evans walks out with a golden statue and an envelope in his hands and your heart skips a beat, but not because of the man himself, but because you know he is the presenter of the Best Actress category.

Your hold on Harry’s hand on your lap tightens and you glue your eyes to the big screens behind Chris as he smiles around.

“Good evening. It’s a pleasure to be here and to present the award for Best Actress. The theater tonight is filled with exceptional talents, but let’s see the nominees,” he speaks into the microphone and then he starts listing the names.

Emma Stone, Anne Hathaway, Margot Robbie and Rooney Mara are called and a camera fixates on each of them when Chris says their names, all smiling brightly and waving around before your name is called at the end. Taking a deep breath you plaster your most wonderful smile across your face, waving around like the other nominees did before the big screen splits, showing the five of you simultaneously.

“We’ve seen some spectacular performances from these ladies and now let’s see who proved herself to be the best this year.”

Chris flips the envelope open and pulls the little paper out that has the winner’s name written on it and for a moment you’re convinced you’ll pass out. You’ve never felt this anxious before and you’re gripping Harry’s hand so tightly you’re surprised he hasn’t pulled it back, but he is patiently putting up with your nerves, his eyes glued to the man on the stage as well.

“And the Academy Award for Best Actress goes to…” Chris starts with a charming smile, holding a short pause before he finally says the name. “Y/N Y/L/N for her role as Marie Davidson in Sinful Heaven!”

Your mouth hangs open, ears ringing as you process that your name was called. Everyone around you jumps up, including Harry, who is screaming just like when the nominations came out, while you are completely blank. It takes you a couple of moments to realize that you in fact just won your first Oscar and everyone is waiting for you to go and get your little statue.

“Baby! Baby you won!” Harry cheers as he helps you up from your seat and you throw yourself into his arms as reality sets in. “I fucking love you, Angel. Go and get your Oscar!” he laughs, pride all over his face as he urges you to walk up to the stage.

“Walk me up, please!” you stammer, not trusting yourself with walking in this fragile state. He offers his hand without a second thought, walking you to the stage where Chris is politely waiting for you to help you up on the stairs.

“Thank you,” you breathe out once you’re finally up on the stage, every set of eyes on you as Chris hands you the little statue.

“Congratulations,” he smiles as the two of you exchange two kisses on the cheeks before he steps aside and lets you give a speech.

You thought about writing a few words beforehand, but you figured if you end up being the winner you’d forget the whole thing, so there would be no use and that’s the case. Your mind is still blank as you look down at the award in your hands, the crowd still cheering on you, giving you a few extra moments to figure out what to say.

“I uhh—I don’t even know what to say, this feels like a dream,” you admit talking into the microphone, the clapping dying down so that everyone can hear your words. “I want to thank to everyone who worked on Sinful Heaven, because I wouldn’t be here without them. To my wonderful director and amazing costars, it’s been such a wonderful journey with you all. Thank you to my friends and family who were there with me from the very start, believing in me when I was losing faith in myself, thank you for never giving up on me. To my parents who I assume are now crying in front of the TV,” you add chuckling softly, imagining your mom and dad in tears as they listen to your words. “This is a wonderful sign to me that I am where I need to be and that I’m on the right path, so thank you for giving me even more motivation to keep me going on my way.”

Your eyes roam around all the guests until they fall on one proud man staring at you in his Gucci suit and pink dress shirt, his green eyes looking glossy as he listens to your words.

“And last but not least, thank you to one special person, because I’m convinced I wouldn’t be here tonight without him. I have one thing to tell you.” Forgetting about everyone in the theater you hold up the Oscar in your hand as you finish your speech: “Never have I ever loved someone like I love you.”

The crowd starts cheering again as you step away from the microphone and Chris is quick to jog up to you and help you down the stairs, Harry rushing back to take your hand once Chris lets go of it.

You catch him wipe a tear off his cheek as the two of you walk back to your seats hand in hand. Once you are settled, you take a deep breath and turn to Harry who is already looking at you, the same proud smile you saw from the stage still on his handsome face.

“I have never,” he tells you as his answer to the last line of your speech and you chuckle as your free hand finds the back of his neck, pulling him close. The lipstick on your lips long forgotten as you finally kiss him for the first time tonight.

“I have never either,” you whisper against his lips before kissing him again and again.

***

Smiling around you wait for the audience to quiet down as you make yourself comfortable in the familiar armchair. It’s such a nostalgic feeling to sit here again.

“Y/N, it’s so nice to have you here again,” Ellen greets you once the clapping has stopped.

“Thank you for inviting me.”

“Of course. A lot has happened since the last time you were here, you won an Oscar just a few weeks ago, congratulations!”

The cheering starts again as a picture of you appears on the screen behind you, wearing your iconic pink gown, holding your Oscar in your hands.

“Thank you,” you shyly smile, still not entirely in peace with the fact that you are now an Oscar winning actress.

“Such a major thing, congrats.”

“Thank you, it is a huge thing, yes.”

“Do you already have a spot for the award? Does it have a designated place?”

“Well, for now it is in my study along with some more mementos, but I’m planning to have a little stand made in the living room,” you share your plans.

“Surely, I would want to show it off if I had an Oscar,” Ellen chuckles. “You have such a busy time behind you, have you been up to something new lately?”

“We finished filming the third season of The Umbrella Academy, so now I’m having a little break before I jump into anything new.”

“Sounds nice, you deserve all the relaxing. Anything planned while you’re on a break? A new book to read, or maybe a concert to go to?” she asks and you already know where this is heading.

“You know you can just ask if I’m planning to attend a Harry Styles concert,” you bluntly tell her, making the audience and Ellen laugh.

“Well, I was just asking around about your plans, but I’m happy you plan to visit Harry’s concert! It’s also good to know that the situation has changed since the last time you were here, you definitely have been to one of his concerts since then.”

“I have been, yes,” you admit smirking.

“And I assume the two of you are now very close, am I right?” she asks and suddenly a paparazzi photo of the two of you appears where you’re walking down the street hand in hand just a couple of weeks ago.

“You could say that,” you nod, biting into your bottom lip.

“Amazing, because he is going to join us now. Everyone, please welcome Harry Styles!” Ellen announces and turning around you spot Harry walking out from backstage, the audience screaming for him. He shyly waves around walking up to the center, greeting Ellen with a kiss on the cheek before he turns to you, pecking your lips shortly as he sits down next to you.

“Harry, so good to see you again,” Ellen smiles at him.

“Good t’ see you as well,” he nods.

“So, the last time you two were sitting here, you—it was the first time you ever met, right?”

“Right,” you nod with Harry.

“And now you are…” she gestures at the two of you, not finishing the sentence, but everyone knows what she meant by that.

“And now we are… not strangers anymore,” Harry says chuckling, making everyone in the studio laugh.

“Certainly,” Ellen nods. “Alright, I thought that we could play another game, just to bring back some nice memories,” she explains, reaching behind her armchair, grabbing the familiar board from her, flipping it in your hands with a nostalgic smile.

“Can we keep it PG rated though?” Harry asks, examining his board before looking up at Ellen.

“No,” she simply answers, reaching for her cards as the audience starts laughing. “Okay, you know how to play it, no need for explanation. Here is the first one: Never have I ever used my fame to get in somewhere.”

Ellen is quick to show the I HAVE side of her board and you slowly do the same while Harry thinks to himself.

“Oh come on, you surely have,” you elbow him playfully as he smirks in your way, holding up the same side as you and Ellen.

“We all have, it’s not a shame,” Ellen shrugs. “Next one. Never have I ever forgotten the name of someone right after they introduced themselves.”

Ellen holds up the I HAVE side and you do the same again while this time Harry flips it over to I HAVE NEVER confidently.

“Really?” Ellen asks him, surprised at his answer.

“I’m good with names,” he simply shrugs.

“That’s a good trait. Alright, let’s move on. Never have I ever punched someone in the face.”

It’s a sneaky and very shady statement. Just a few days after the incident with Levi, word got out that he was punched, a few blurry pictures floating around the internet of his bruise, then fans figured out it had to happen around the time Harry visited set and people were quick to put the picture together and assume that Harry was the one who hit Levi, but it was never confirmed.

Glancing at your boyfriend you are fighting your smile back, holding up the I HAVE NEVER side as he is looking back at you slyly, continuously flipping his board before it finally lands on I HAVE, the audience immediately rumbling at the partial confirmation and seemingly Ellen is also amazed by Harry’s honesty.

“Alright, interesting. Love that for you, Harry,” he comments making everyone laugh as you reach over and give Harry’s hand a squeeze. “Last one,” Ellen announces, reading the last statement from her cards. “Never have I ever fallen in love with someone I played never have I ever with.”

Ellen quickly shows her I HAVE NEVER side as you suck your lips into your mouth, glancing at Harry again. You share a look before you both slowly raise your boards, both reading the same sign on them: I HAVE.

#harry #styles #harry styles #harry styles fanfiction #harry styles fanfic #harry styles au #harry styles oneshot #harry styles fluff #harry styles one shot #harry styles series #harry styles x reader #harry styles x you #harry styles x y/n #harry styles x famous!reader #harry styles x actress!reader #never have i ever series #harry styles never have i ever #harry styles never have i ever series

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sturnioloshacker · 2 years

Text

birthday surprise - a daniel seavey smut

a/n: my first blurb that isn’t short! yay! enjoy this one guys xoxo also, m/n means middle name

warnings: smut, daddy kink, praise kink, spanking

THIS IS AN 18+ BLURB. if you are not 18+, PLEASE DO NOT CLICK THE READING TAB! if you choose to click the keep reading tab, READ AT YOUR OWN RISK. what you choose to consume on the internet and here on tumblr is completely up to you. other than that, enjoy your reading 💕

i roll over to daniel’s side of the bed, only to get fresh air and the coolness of the pillow hitting my head. i yelp as the cold touches my cheek and i sit up. getting out of bed, i walk down the stairs of the why don’t we residence to find not one single body. hm. that’s weird. they must be at the studio working on music. this gives me all day to get ready for daniel’s birthday!

as i make myself breakfast, the conversation i had with daniel came back to me.

i don’t want any presents. all i want is to spend my birthday with you. in fact, all i want for my birthday is my princess.

a smirk plays on my lips as i eat my breakfast. i place my dishes in the dishwasher and race back upstairs to our room. i rummage through my side of the walk-in wardrobe and my eyes are immediately drawn to two dresses that i’ve never worn in front of daniel. i bring them out to try them on when my eyes lay on a set of lingerie that daniel brought me on valentine’s day. i put the dresses back and bring out the lingerie set. i put it on and i immediately know that i’m in trouble when daniel gets home. i remove the set from my body and lay it on the bed. as i get myself ready, my phone rings and daniel’s name appears on the screen. i smile as i answer

“happy birthday baby!”

“thank you, angel! how are you?”

“i’m excited to celebrate your birthday tonight!”

“i’m excited too! i can’t wait to spend my birthday with my princess!”

a blush spreads across my cheeks at the name. he really knows how to make me weak.

“so… um… don’t be mad at me but i got you a present”

“no baby why! i told you i didn’t want anything! i just wanted you and that’s it!” he whined.

“i can promise you that you’ll absolutely love it! trust me?”

“of course, i trust you, pretty girl! i better love it!”

oh, you definitely will!

“anyway, what time will you be home?”

“hopefully by 8 tonight. why?”

“i wanna spend time with the birthday boy! my boyfriend!”

“you’re cute! i should be home by 8 so we can celebrate”.

“yay! I’ll let you do what you need to do. happy birthday, dani! i love you so much!”

“i love you, sweet girl. i’ll see you tonight”.

after hanging up, i head to the spare study room and grab a piece of paper and a marker. i write down a little note for daniel for when he arrives home and i place it on the dining table. hopefully he sees it…

~LATER THAT NIGHT~

i put on the finishing touches of my makeup and look at myself in the mirror before walking back into the bedroom and waiting for daniel to walk in. the front door opens and i hear the loud booming voices of the boys.

“yo daniel! check this out!” i hear jonah yell out to daniel.

i smirk to myself. thanks jonah! daniel walks to where jonah is and begins to read the note i left him.

happy birthday daniel james! your present is in our room ;)

i hear footsteps racing up the stairs and the rest of the boys wolf whistling at daniel. the bedroom door opens and i watch as daniel stops and rakes his eyes up and down my figure. i get off the bed and jump straight into his arms. i plant a sweet yet seductive kiss on his lips before kissing up to his ear.

“happy birthday sweet boy!” i whisper in his ear and watch as goosebumps form across the nape of his neck. daniel sets me back down and takes another look at my figure.

“so, what’s my present?” he smirks as his eyes turn darker with every passing second.

i bite my lip and i slowly unbutton the shirt i was wearing. the last button comes undone and i slowly take it off my body, leaving it to drop into a crumpled heap on the floor. i watch as daniel’s jaw drops. i give him a little spin before giggling at his reaction.

“is this my present?” he practically growls.

“mhm! you like it?” i ask with pure innocence in my voice.

“like it? i fucking love it!”

and with that, he pulls me in by my waist before smashing his hungry lips to mine. he pulls away to drink in the way the bra fits my tits and the way the panties sits against my ass.

“would you like to unwrap your present, birthday boy?” i say, pointing to the ribbon that’s holding the bra together.

“fuck yeah i do!” he says, coming close that our faces practically touch.

daniel slowly unravels the ribbon and watches as the bra falls off my shoulders and to the floor. he slowly brings his eyes back up from the floor to my tits where he stares at them in complete awe.

“well happy fucking birthday to me!” he breathes, watching as my nipples get hard from the cold air.

“you wanna touch?” i giggle

daniel’s hands immediately fly to my tits and he begins groping them. i moan at his touch and my hands go to his hair where i start playing with his curls. i then feel his tongue swirl around my hardened nipples and i tug at his curls. he releases his hold from my tits and he lets his hands travel down my body.

“you’re so fucking sexy baby! now turn around and lemme see your ass”.

i turn around and wiggle my ass in front of him. i moan at the feeling of his hands squeezing my cheeks.

“god your ass looks so fucking good in these panties, princess. it’s a shame that they’re coming off” he says before smacking my ass and watching it jiggle from the vibrations.

i moan at the feeling of daniel spanking my ass and he brings his hand down and across my ass for another one.

“fuck daniel!” i cry out as i feel him slap my ass for the third time.

“let’s take these off, shall we?”

I hear the panties rip and they fall to the ground.

“daniel! you brought that for me and you ripped it!” i whine.

“i brought an extra set so it’s fine princess”.

daniel pushes me onto the bed and immediately begins eating me out from the back. i grab the nearest pillow and squeeze it as hard as possible. it feels so good, i don’t want it to stop.

“you like this, princess? you like it when i eat your sweet pussy like this?”

“y-yes! oh, fuck!” i cry out from the pleasure of daniel’s tongue against my tight walls.

“yes what?”

“yes, daddy! fuck that feels so fucking good! please don’t stop!”

i feel my orgasm coming and daniel senses that i’m close. he inserts his index and middle fingers inside me, curling them against my g-spot and pumping to the extreme.

“fuck daniel i’m gonna cum!” i cry out, my breathing becoming heavier and uneven.

“cum all over my fingers baby. be a good girl”.

i feel my orgasm wash over me and i collapse into the pillow, my moans turning into whimpers as i feel my walls clench around daniel’s fingers that are now soaked with my cum.

“mmm… you taste so good gorgeous. you did such a good job cumming for daddy”.

i feel daniel flip me over so that i’m flat on my back. as i look up, i notice the glow of sweat lining his body. the way it shines on his biceps, his back and his abs. without any hesitation, my hands hook around his neck as i stare into his lust-filled eyes.

“such a pretty baby. you gonna be a good girl and cum all over my cock?”

“yes, daddy”.

“that’s my sweet girl”.

i feel daniel’s cock stretch my walls out, making me moan out in pleasure. i give him the go-ahead after adjusting to his size and he slowly rocks back and forth. a whimper escapes my lips, signalling to daniel that i want more, i need more. his pace speeds up until he’s at the point where i can’t stop moaning at the feeling of his cock stretching my tight walls.

“is my birthday boy… enjoying his… surprise?” i ask in between moans.

daniel lets out a groan which lets me know that he’s definitely enjoying every second of it.

as i get closer to my release, daniel slowly starts rubbing my clit. i flinch slightly at the sensitivity of it but it all becomes one big pleasurable moment as his fingers move in small fast circles on my hardened bud. my moans notch up an octave as i feel the knot in my stomach starting to unravel at great speeds.

“daniel, i’m gonna cum!” i cry out.

“yeah? cum on my cock, princess. cum all over my cock for me”.

those words send me over the edge and i feel my walls clench around daniel’s cock. the knot finally unravels and my orgasm sends me into oblivion. my eyes roll back and i feel my pussy clenching around daniel’s cock as my juices drip all over it. this causes daniel’s orgasm to wash over him. daniel groans as he pulls out and cums all over my tits and stomach.

“fuck sweetheart! you did so good for daddy!”

“anything for my birthday boy!” i giggle.

daniel jumps off the bed and grabs towels to clean up the both of us. after cleaning up, he hops into bed and i lay my head on his chest.

“happy birthday daniel james. i love you so much”.

“thank you y/n m/n. i love you so much”.

silence fills the air as daniel and i fall asleep against each other. i’m so happy he enjoyed his surprise. i will definitely be using the extra set for next year!

…

“did they die from fucking too hard?” zach asks after not hearing daniel and y/n for a while.

“no the fuck? they probably fucked each other so well that they got tired and fell asleep! idiot!” jack told his bandmate after slapping him in the back of the head.

“oh well! we’ll just smash the cake in their faces when they wake up!” corbyn laughs.

#daniel seavey #why don't we #daniel seavey imagines #why don't we imagines #daniel seavey smut #why don't we smut

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alicanta77 · 3 years

Text

[7:13am]

You felt the throbbing ache in your head before you had even properly registered that you were awake. Every part of your body was slow, it felt as if you were constantly moving through tar, and after the simple act of opening your eyes made you question whether you’d need to do an emergency run to the bathroom, you abandoned all idea of sitting up.

Hazy memories of the night before flashed through your mind, some of them making you screw your eyes shut in hopes that that would make them disappear. If you hadn’t felt so worn down, you would have groaned, but the thought of making any noise at all made you feel more nauseous than you were willing to admit.

However, you were definitely not the only one in that state, because the stuttering gurgles emitting from your boyfriend’s chest as he lay beside you, proved that he was dealing with just as bad of a hangover as you were. You rolled your head slowly to the side, ignoring the way your brain seemed to roll around your head as you did. Hyuck did the same thing and one look into his tired, regret filled eyes made you burst out into a chuckle.

Hyuck immediately laughed at the state of you, making you know immediately that you looked like a trainwreck, but he wasn’t looking that fresh either so you weren’t fussed. It wasn’t a joyful laugh by any means, it was a quiet messy laugh, one where you can’t really believe what you’re looking at. Hyuck forced himself to sit up, and you followed, the two of you pausing when you caught your reflections in the floor length mirror opposite his bed.

If your head hadn’t felt as though it was about to implode, you would have died laughing. Your hair was a mess, a complete lack of control to the way it was hanging over parts of your face and bending in weird directions. Your makeup was smudged, half of it being left on your pillow. You were missing an earring, still had one shoe on and wearing some else’s trousers, which confused you since you came in a skirt.

Hyuck looked just as bad. His hair was sticking up in all directions, the same way a cartoon character’s does when they’re electrocuted. He had dark bags under his eyes, a lipstick mark on his neck that you vaguely remembered being your doing. His shirt was inside out, and, at some point in the night, he had found some neon leg warmers and put them on his arms, meaning the bright yellow was blinding against the black of his shirt.

Neither of you said anything, just halfheartedly laughing at your appearances, until Hyuck just picked up his phone and pointed it at the mirror, snapping a few pictures. You turned to look at him, squinting your eyes as you croaked out a threat.

“If that goes anywhere, I will end you.”

“Yes ma’am.” Hyuck replied, attempting a mock salute but instead just flopping back down on the bed.

The sudden movement seemed to be a very bad decision as Hyuck groaned at the way his stomach was thrown around in its current sensitive state. You rolled your eyes at him, lowering yourself back down a lot slower.

The two of you lay in silence for the next few hours as you tried to get the courage to get out of bed. While the silence was comfortable, your physical states were decidedly not.

Gradually over the time you had pulled yourself into a sitting position and by now you were ready to get up. You hadn’t slept much over the last night, knowing that the few hours you had slept was nowhere near the amount that you needed. You pushed yourself up to standing, stretching slightly before beginning to slowly shuffle out of the door, moving remarkably similarly to a zombie.

You registered the sound of shuffles behind you and assumed that Hyuck had decided to follow you. Somewhere on your way to the kitchen you paused to take off the one shoe that was left on your foot, carefully stepping over a sleeping Chenle to find Jaemin and Jeno in the kitchen.

As the two of you entered, Jaemin’s laughter disrupted the previously silent and healing atmosphere. Since Jaemin doesn’t like alcohol, he never has to deal with the next day effects of drinking too much, leading to him almost always making fun of those of you in a slightly more fragile state than he was. While Jaemin was casually wandering around in his mint green hoodie, making a cup of coffee without a care in the world, Jeno seemed to resemble the two of you.

Like Hyuck, his hair was a catastrophic mess and his eyes were almost fully shut as he leant on his hand to keep himself upright. Every so often he slipped down slightly, startling him into sitting back up again. He gave you a groan of some kind in greeting, one that you both returned just as inarticulate.

“Well, aren’t you a cheerful bunch today.” Jaemin grinned, sitting across from the three of you and taking another photo.

You sighed at the knowledge that yet another person has proof of your sorry state. Hyuck pulled out his phone, immediately selecting a food delivery service and you rested your head on his shoulder in silent thanks. He moved slightly to place a soft kiss to your forehead, never taking his eyes off the screen in front of him.

You watched him add your favourite order, before adding food for himself and then sliding the phone over to Jeno. Jaemin then took over, adding some stuff for the other boys who hadn’t even appeared yet, and a small something for himself.

You kept your head in Hyuck’s neck, his natural scent covering your senses and bringing you an indescribable feeling of comfort. For the first time that morning, you didn’t feel your hangover at all. You didn’t feel your pounding head, or your stomach that was both excited and nervous at the thought of putting food in it. You didn’t feel embarrassed by any of the memories you have from last night.

You just felt Hyuck.

His hand reached out, grabbing yours and pulling it onto his lap and he allowed his head to land on top of yours. His thumb rubbed gentle circles into the back of your palm, a silent reassurance that he was here and he had you.

But you knew that. You knew that, no matter where you were, what you looked like, how hungover or unresponsive you were, Hyuck would have your back. He would be there for you, ready to catch you if you fall. He didn’t just bring comfort, he brought comfort, safety, security all within a gentle touch. Hyuck had always been a physical being, but you’d just assumed that it was because touch brought him comfort. You soon learnt that it was also the way he gave it.

Whenever you had a bad day, you never felt better until you’d had a hug from Hyuck, and Hyuck never felt okay until he’d given it to you. You were the person he wanted to cuddle, annoy, love for the rest of his life. You were the person that understood him better than anyone else had ever done. You were the person that could wake up with him, look like death itself and look at him like he put the stars in the sky. You were the person that made him become the person he was today. You were the person he wouldn’t exist without. You were the person that completed him.

You were his person.

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cinemassance-oneshots · 3 years

Text

Don’t Touch Her—Spencer Reid

Word count: 3.6k

angst and fluff

Synopsis: you and Reid go undercover for a case and it goes wrong. You finally hear how Reid feels about you.

Warnings: mention of violence and gore.

A/N: I’m quite new to one shots, so I hope you enjoy. You are free to send in requests. I am still new to tumblr, so I hope to figure stuff out soon on here. I plan to do more characters, make a master list pinned to my board, and do smut chapters in the future <3

I was originally getting my morning coffee until I got the call from Garcia. I pressed my lips together as she confirmed it was another case before I proceeded to ask what coffee she wanted. If I ever got a call about a case and I was already at a coffee shop, I would grab coffee for the rest of the team. It was only fair, and they would do the same for me. We’re all a family.

I carefully carried the trays of coffee in my hands to the building.

“Do you need a hand?” I didn’t have to look up to see who it was. I would know that voice anywhere.

I turned to look at him with a smile. “That would be great, Spence.”

He shot me a smile as he reached over and grabbed a tray. The brief contact of our skin touching made my heart flutter momentarily.

Without hesitation, Spencer opened the door and let me in. “You shouldn’t spoil us with coffee all the time.”

I shrugged my shoulders as I glanced up at him. “It’s fine. I’m keeping tabs,” I joked. “Don’t worry. I got your coffee how you like. Although, I don’t understand why you insist on dairy since you’re lactose intolerant.”

“What can I say? I like dairy.” “But tummy aches,” I replied. “A little pain is worth it.”

I rolled my eyes at him. He could be so stubborn at times. We stepped into the elevator to go meet the rest of our team. Most of them were already seated at the table.

“You’re such a life-saver,” JJ told me with a grin. I smiled back as I started to hand everyone their coffees.

“Last, but not least,” I said as I turned to face Spencer. “Dr. Reid,” I finished in a softer tone. I could’ve sworn I saw him gulp, but I was probably imagining it.

As soon as everyone showed up, Garcia went on to tell us about the new case. We all flipped through our files as she spoke. It’s not hard to admit this job is difficult, especially with how monstrous some people are.

“Wheels up in 30,” Hotch told us as he left the room.

***

Spencer and I were partnered to go to the coroner’s office. The person went over the details as I looked at the bodies and Spencer read the files.

“Can he really read that fast,” the woman asked me, making me briefly glance up at her.

“Yes,” I replied before looking back at the bodies. “You said the male was most likely hit with an iron chain that was also used to strangle him afterwards?”

“That’s what it points to. Why?”

“Wielding a big chain is a lot harder than most people tend to believe,” Spencer informed as he handed her the file back.

“Here’s the other thing though,” the forensics started to speak, “the female victim had lacerations on her skin from leather. It’s possible she was whipped with leather while he was whipped with a chain.”

“We could be looking at two unsubs,” I thought out loud as I looked up at Spencer. He nodded.

“I think so too.” “I’ll call Hotch.”

I stepped outside of the room as I called him. Not long after Hotch answered. “What did you guys find?”

“We’re looking for two unsubs. One is strong enough to wield an iron chain as a whip and the other is weaker since they used a leather whip on the female victim.”

“Thanks. If you and Reid find anything else, let me know.”

And with that, the call ended. I found my way back to Spencer to catch up on any more details he learned. He caught me up on the information, which shocked forensics to see he spoke every detail verbatim.

We thanked the woman before leaving to head to the precinct to catch up with the team.

“What are you thinking Reid?” I glanced over at him as I drove. It was as if I could see the wheels turning in his head.

“I know it seems weird, but I think it might be a couple who committed these murders.”

“So the guy kills the male and the girl kills the female. They probably get off on watching each other torture and kill their victim.”

“The male uses a chain to beat and kill the guy showing his dominance and strength.”

“And the woman uses a leather whip which is usually associated with BDSM.”

“Exactly,” Spencer agreed.

As soon as Spencer and I got to the precinct, we told the team what we came up with and what forensics showed. We all went around putting in our input based on the evidence all of us gathered and learned.

Unfortunately, that’s when we all received news there were more victims just found.

I went with Emily and Morgan to look at the crime scene. The victimology was the same. The male was brutally tortured and killed with a metal chain and the female with a leather whip. It’s unsettling to know there are couples who do these things together, let alone a single person.

Once we returned to meet with the rest of the team, we learned each couple went to the same bar the night they went missing. It was no coincidence. That bar meant something to that couple. With all the information we gather, we were finally ready to deliver the profile.

After it was delivered, Hotchner began to talk about a plan he had in mind.

“We need to set up an undercover operation for tonight,” Hotch spoke. “We’ll have multiple people stationed throughout the area to keep an eye out.”

Everyone nodded. Everyone understood the plan.

“Two of my agents will be the ones going undercover. I need as many others as possible to be around the area ready to catch this couple. Be careful and aware of everything, but remember to be subtle. We don’t want to announce our presence before they’ve made themselves known. Any alarm could ruin this.”

And with that the plan was set in motion.

Hotch pulled me and Spencer aside to speak with us. “I need you two to go undercover as the couple.”

I almost wanted to look at Spencer and imagine it was all real. I desperately wanted to know what it would be like to be with him, but I made sure to keep my mind fixated on the case at hand.

JJ helped me get ready. I wasn’t exactly great at doing my makeup myself, so I was glad she helped.

“Try to explain to me why you and Reid aren’t dating in real life again,” she asked with a small smirk.

“I don’t know..,” I softly said.

That was the truth. I didn’t know how to make a move or what to do with Spencer. Every time I thought about it, my palms would sweat profusely and my heart would race that I would have to change the subject in my head.

“I see the way you both look at each other. Trust me, everyone does.”

I quirked a brow. “What?”

JJ let out a small chuckle. “After we close this case, I think you should go for it. I just hope you do it soon, otherwise I’ll lose this bet going on.”

“You have a bet going on about me and Spencer?”

JJ did a sly smile and shrugged her shoulders. “Good luck tonight. We’ll make sure nothing happens to you two.”

“Thanks, JJ.”

I felt a little odd wearing a dress. I prefer slacks or skirts but dresses always felt different to me. I at least felt more secure having one of my smaller guns strapped to my thigh.

“Hey, hot mama,” Derek said with a grin.

I lightly punched his arm. “I can still kick your ass, Morgan.”

He let out a laugh as I rolled my eyes. Hotch walked up and handed me my earpiece. “We’ll be listening to everything. We’ll tell you and Reid if we notice something.”

I nodded as I listened and put the piece in. I let my hair fall over it to help conceal the device.

As soon as Reid walked over, my heart raced at the site of him. It was rare to see him in jeans and a plain button down. He looked good in anything.

Hotch gave him his earpiece as well and told him what he just told me. I almost felt that out of the corner of my eye I saw Reid glance at me a few times.

Spencer and I made our way outside of the precinct to use one of the undercover cars to drive to the place. He got on the drivers side.

“You, uh, look really pretty,” Spencer spoke. His voice came out a little broken and nervous.

I felt my cheeks heat up as I smiled. “Thanks. JJ did a good job.”

I watched as his mouth parted but closed after a second. I wanted so desperately to know what he was planning on saying. Usually he never thought about not speaking once something was on his mind. It made me even more curious.

“You look good too,” I decided to speak. I watched as he gulped and lightly blushed.

“I-I do? I haven’t worn jeans in about 20 years.”

“You always look good,” I mumbled. I was afraid he would hear what I said.

“What?”

“Oh, sorry,” I replied in a fast tone. “I was mumbling to myself.”

“Oh… Okay.”

I glanced over and saw a ghost of a smile on his lips. My heart raced as I asked myself if he heard me or not.

When we arrived at the bar, Spencer opened the door for me like he usually does.

“Such a gentleman.” I smiled and looked up at him.

“Well, you deserve the best.”

My heart fluttered. Did he mean himself? Was he trying to be the best he could? For me?

He held out his hand before I grasped it in my own. I couldn’t deny that it was a wonderful feeling holding his hand. Mine felt so small in his.

We walked inside to find it crowded. Apparently it was a popular bar. It was also happy hour, so that explained a lot of things.

“What would you like to drink,” Spencer leaned in and asked me. His breath on my skin sent exciting shivers down my back.

“Cranberry juice. That way it looks like I might be drinking a mixed drink,” I whispered to him. He nodded.

I don’t know how long we were there, but it felt like a while. Spencer and I sat at the bar sipping our drinks, talking, and looking around inconspicuously.

I leaned in and whispered into Spencer’s ear. “I don’t know if this will be enough to attract them. But when I pull away, act as if I said something enticing to you.”

When I pulled away, I saw a smile on Spencer’s lips as he looked at me.

“I’ve never seen you two in before.”

Spencer and I turned to see a guy in his mid-30’s holding two beers.

“We’re just visiting. We had to try this place out because we kept hearing so many good things,” I replied with a smile.

“We always love welcoming new people. I’m John, by the way. That’s my fiancé Cindy over there.”

He turned and pointed to a blonde woman seated at a table who waved over at us with a bright smile.

“Fiancé? Congratulations,” I told him. “When is the special day?”

“We’re still settling on one. You both are more than welcome to join us at our table.”

I looked over at Spencer to meet his eyes. “Does that sound good, Matt?”

He nodded with a smile as we walked over and joined them at the table.

“Hi, I’m Cindy,” the woman said with a smile.

“June.” “Matt.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you both. I hope John wasn’t bothering you. We’ve just never seen your faces around here before.”

“We’re visiting,” I answered.

Something in my gut told me this was them, but I didn’t have any proof. Yet.

We spoke with them a for a while. Without thinking, I reached under the table and searched for Spencer’s hand. It was almost like he knew because his hand found mine and squeezed it reassuringly.

“How about another round of drinks,” John asked as he stood up.

“I’ll come with,” Spencer replied as he stood up.

They left leaving me and Cindy alone. “You’re a lucky girl,” she told me.

“You are too. You and John look so happy together.”

“But the way Matt looks at you,” she spoke and bit her lip lightly. “John never looks at me that way. You got yourself a winner.”

“I think we both do.”

I suddenly had a nausea wave over me. “Woah, hun! You okay there?”

“Yeah, I, um—where’s the restroom?”

“Here, I’ll help you. You don’t look so good.”

I didn’t have time to think since I felt like I was about to puke any second. Cindy stood up and helped me stumble my way to the restroom.

I rushed into a stall and immediately threw up. I plucked the piece out of my ear and held it in my palm so the others wouldn’t have to listen to me puking. I know I wouldn’t want to listen to it.

I slumped over after I finished.

“Are you finished yet?”

I could barely form a word as I glanced over and saw the end of a barrel. How could I be so stupid? I just hoped someone would come crashing into the bathroom to get her, but no one came.

“Get up,” she told me.

I could barely stand as I did what she told me to do. I briefly looked around and noticed the restroom didn’t look like a public one but a single person one. I cursed myself in my head.

She grasped my arm tightly and held the gun to my side. “Walk with me like normal and I won’t kill you right here. I want to at least have some fun before I do that.”

There was excitement laced in her voice. It made me sick again hearing it. How someone could be so excited to kill something else. Another human being.

I was led to a van. Every step I prayed someone would come help. Anyone.

I was shocked inside with the door immediately closed behind me. I threw up again. I couldn’t think of when my drink could’ve been drugged.

My legs and arms felt numb as I slumped onto the floor of the van. I wanted to reach for my gun or do something, but my body wouldn’t let me.

I could barely make out the sound of Spencer’s voice as he clung onto me.

“What did you do to her,” he demanded. I don’t think I’ve ever heard him so angry.

“Relax, why don’t you,” John snapped. “She’ll be conscious enough soon.”

And with that, Spencer went unconscious beside me after the end of a gun butted against his temple.

***

My eyelids flickered open adjusting to the lightly. My arms were tied being my back with rope. I looked over to find an unconscious Spencer. I knew my gun was snatched away by them, so the hopes with that were gone.

I softly spoke his name as I tried to move closer to him. A hum left his throat as his head slightly moved. I nudged him lightly a few times.

As soon as his eyes opened, they landed on me with a worried expression.

“Did they hurt you?”

I shook my head as I looked at the small patch of blood on his temple.

“Is your head okay?”

“It’ll be fine… I’m so sorry.”

“You have nothing to be sorry about, Spence.”

“I should’ve paid attention more, then we wouldn’t be here. I could’ve done more to protect us, protect you,” he said as he looked away.

“Spence, look at me,” I pleaded. “None of this is your fault. We’ll get out of this.”

I looked around, but we were in a completely bare room with nothing that could help us. When I looked back at Spencer, he was looking at me.

“Why are you looking at me that way?”

“I want to make sure the imprint of your features are engraved in my brain in case something happens.”

How could he make my heart swarm in a situation like this?

“This might sound insanely morbid, but if I had to die with anyone, I’m glad you’re the last person I’ll see.”

A small chuckle left his throat. I loved that sound so much.

“That is extremely morbid, but I understand what you mean... I have to tell you something.”

I stayed silent to let him know I was listening. I watched as he glanced down and swallowed hard.

“I want you to know that I’ve liked you ever since you joined the team… I regret never doing anything about it. I guess I was scared.”

Spencer slowly looked back up at me. I almost felt like I was going to cry from both the situation and finally hearing those words leave his mouth.

“I like you too, Spence.”

I wanted to say more, but the door busted open and the couple walked in.

“Well, ain’t that precious,” John said in an amused tone.

Cindy walked closer to me. I tried to move away, but I was helpless.

“Don’t touch her,” Spencer demanded as he lunged forward but was held back my John.

“You don’t get to make demands. I can’t wait to see you watch her die. Cindy is amazing with her craft.”

I felt sick at his words as she wrapped a hand around my throat. Her grasp tightened as she pulled me up. John ordered Spencer to get up as well as they led us to another room.

Spencer was forced into a chair and was tied down as my arms were lifted above me to be locked to a chain.

I watched with disgust as Cindy stroked Spencer’s face. “Oh, I’m gonna enjoy this one. He loves her so much.”

She smiled wickedly as she glanced up from beside him. “I can’t wait to see the look on your face when she takes her last breath. I’m getting turned on just thinking about it.”

“Kill me first,” his voice broke out.

“What?”

“Kill me first. It should be me.”

I yanked on the chain as tears threatened to stream down my cheeks. I wanted to scream at him for saying such a thing.

Cindy stood up as she hummed. “I thought John told you that you don’t get to make demands.”

I kept my eyes on Spencer that I didn’t even notice her pick up her whip. It wasn’t until the first slash cut into my skin that I noticed.

A cry erupted from my mouth as my eyes squeezed shut.

Spencer screamed out as he tried to get out of the chair to help in some way. Tears poured down both of our faces.

I could feel my own blood run down my skin as the slashes kept coming. It soaked my torn clothing and my body. My throat finally started to feel hoarse from my cries. My legs couldn’t even keep my body up. Only the chain kept me up.

“FBI, put your weapons down!”

I could barely raise my head to see what was going on. I heard a shot ring out before I felt hands on me.

Spencer gently held me and made sure to not touch the cuts as someone else freed my wrists from the chains. I fell into his arms as he kept me up.

“I need a medic,” he cried out.

My heartbeat was going incredibly fast. The pain was unbearable.

“Someone get a medic now!”

Everything was a blur. One moment I was in Spencer’s arms, then I was in an ambulance with Spencer holding my hand firmly in his before I went unconscious.

***

I woke up in a hospital bed.

I felt something beside me and saw Spencer’s hand holding mine with his head slumped over on the bed asleep. A small smile formed on my lips.

I moved to readjust as I felt a wave of pain sear throughout my body. I hissed at the sensation, which immediately woke Spencer up.

“What’s wrong?” He instantly asked as he looked at me with a worried expression.

“Just the pain,” I replied.

I saw guilt wash over his face as he looked down. His hand left mine. It felt cold and lonely without his touch.

“It’s my fault you’re like this.”

“Hey,” I reached up to hold his face with my hand closest to him, “None of this is your fault. Don’t you dare feel guilty about any of this. You did everything you could.”

Spencer reached up and grabbed my hand. He brought it back to the bed and held it in both of his hands.

“I’m so sorry.”

I gave his hand a light squeeze. “I’ll let the others know you’re awake.”

I grasped his hand tighter to stop him. “In a little bit. I just want to be with you right now.”

Spencer sat back down as he nodded.

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Anything,” he said as he looked up and gave me his full attention.

I took a deep breath before I parted my lips to speak. “Did you mean everything you said back there?”

His brows furrowed together. “I meant every word. I would never lie to you.”

My heart fluttered at his words. It made me so happy to hear him say that despite all the pain I was currently in. In a way, having him beside me and talking with him made the pain easier.

“I, um, was wondering if maybe we could try a real date once you’re better and everything,” Spencer softly spoke as he looked down at our hands. I smiled at how cute he was being.

“I’d love that.”

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spine-buster · 3 years

Text

Patience is a Virtue ft. Matthew Tkachuk | 𝒥𝓊𝓈𝓉𝒾𝒸𝑒

CONTENT WARNING: this story deals with cults, polygamous cults, escaping cults, strict adherence to religion, gender roles, abuse, miscarriage, and a character with a traumatic past. T͟h͟i͟s͟ ͟c͟h͟a͟p͟t͟e͟r͟ ͟s͟p͟e͟c͟i͟f͟i͟c͟a͟l͟l͟y͟ ͟h͟a͟s͟ ͟m͟e͟n͟t͟i͟o͟n͟s͟ ͟a͟n͟d͟ ͟d͟e͟a͟l͟s͟ ͟w͟i͟t͟h͟ ͟m͟i͟s͟c͟a͟r͟r͟i͟a͟g͟e͟ ͟a͟n͟d͟ ͟s͟e͟x͟u͟a͟l͟ ͟a͟s͟s͟a͟u͟l͟t͟.͟ Please be warned.

Word Count: 14,637

Please consider donating to my Ko-Fi page if you are able. Link in my bio & Masterlist.

A/N: “Courage” officially broke my record for most notes on a debut chapter, so thank you all so much for all your likes and reblogs! This chapter is more serious in parts, but we get to see an evolving Effie and an evoling Effie/Matthew dynamic. Enjoy!

* * * * *

Effie. Her name was Effie. And everybody knew it.

Rachel was no more. Rachel was a thing of the past and she was going to stay there. Rachel was a person who had been hurt and abused. Rachel was named by an abusive, violent, cruel, despicable tyrant who called himself Abraham and proclaimed he was a prophet. Rachel was a girl with no voice, no agency, nothing to call her own. Rachel was a girl who belonged to someone.

Effie was new. Effie was her chosen name and a thing of the future. Effie was a person learning to come to terms with her trauma after years of hurt and abuse. Effie was name by herself, for herself, to reclaim her identity after years of it being denied to her. Effie was a girl with a voice, agency, and even though she could only count a few things as her own, they were just that – her own. Effie was a girl who belonged to nobody but herself.

That was how she liked it.

Naming herself instilled a new sense of confidence within her. It was small, and it was gradual, but the people around her could notice it. Matthew knew he could. She was more assertive…in her own way. She didn’t ask “Can I ask you a question?” before asking questions anymore. She just asked. She was proud of her learning and was getting used to showing it off. Her independence increased. She’d walk to Starbucks to get her strawberry frappucinos instead of having Jenna drive her. She engaged in more conversation. She made jokes. She laughed at jokes. She went grocery shopping with Jenna and said “I want to buy corn dogs” so she and Jenna bought corn dogs and they had them for dinner one night. She went to Levi and said “I want to get a phone so I can text Annica” and so he gave her an old iPhone he had in the house. She asked Annica more about makeup, even though she was still a bit apprehensive about using it. She asked Geneviève about words she’d read and wanted to know more about. Feminism (that was the best word she learned, Effie thought. She was a feminist). Socialism. Communism. Democracy. Geneviève explained them all to her. She asked Geneviève about pants.

She wore pants.

It was weird at first, wearing pants. She’d only ever worn skirts and dresses, even in the privacy of her own home when she was in the cult. The prophet demanded it; women were not allowed to wear pants. So when Jenna encouraged her to try on an old pair of jeans that she had, Effie did. They were big – Effie was still, well, small, and gaining weight every day – but Effie liked them. “Can I buy a pair of jeans?” she asked Jenna. Jenna promised to take her shopping at the mall on the weekend. It would be Effie’s first time in a mall.

Effie wanted to be fearless, but there was still a lot of fear in her. Everything was so new, and so big, and sometimes so complicated, and she wished things were easier but she knew they couldn’t be. But instead of before, when she would let the fear overcome her, she embraced it instead. She worked through it. She did things in spite of the fear. She did things because she didn’t want the fear in her anymore.

That’s why she found herself walking now. Walking to Starbucks. Well, not to Starbucks exactly, but to the complex that held the Starbucks and a bunch of other stores. Effie had noticed one particular one a few storefronts down and had taken mental note of it for when she was ready for it. And now, walking with purpose through Aspen Woods, clutching something very important in the pocket of her jacket, she was ready.

“Chop it all off.”

“What?!” the hairdresser shrieked as she looked at Effie through the mirror, after putting a robe around her and running her hands through her long blonde hair. “But your hair! It’s healthy and it’s long and luscious and—and it would be a disservice if I chopped it all off!”

“Please. I need you to cut it. I need you to—”

“This is the greatest head of hair I’ve ever seen—”

“You don’t understand,” Effie interrupted. “I escaped a cult. I escaped The People’s Dominion of Christ. This hair was never mine; it was always someone else’s. I need you to cut it off so that it’s mine, so that something on my body is mine for once in my life.”

The hairdresser looked at Effie through the mirror, blinking a few times as she realized what Effie was saying. Without saying another word, she reached over to her station and grabbed her scissors. “How much do you want off?” she asked.

Effie unfolded the picture from one of Jenna’s old magazines that she had crumpled in her hand, showing the stylist. “Like this,” she said. “I don’t even want it touching my shoulders.”

The hairdresser nodded, placing the picture face up at her station so Effie could look at it as the hairdresser did her magic. She took one last look at it before tying an elastic loosely around the hair. “Ready?” she asked, gripping it.

Effie nodded firmly. “Ready.”

***

Effie had six numbers stored on her phone. Levi. Jenna. Annica. Geneviève. Jacob Markstrom. Matthew Tkachuk.

“Hello?” he asked as he picked up his phone.

His voice was a welcome sound to Effie, who was nervous but excited as she looked at herself in the mirror. “Matthew? I’m—I’m sorry to bother you, but can you come pick me up?”

“I—yeah—is everything okay?” his voice sounded immediately worried. “Where are you?”

Effie didn’t even know. She covered the receiver with her hand and turned towards the hairstylist. “What’s the address?”

“225 Mercer Street, Unit 13.”

“225 Mercer Street, Unit 13,” she repeated into the phone.

Matthew was officially confused. “The Starbucks complex?”

“Yes…but a few stores down,” Effie informed him.

“I’ll be there in like, five minutes.”

***

Matthew was nervous. Effie hadn’t sounded nervous on the phone, but he was still nervous. It was out of the ordinary for her to call him to pick her up from anywhere, let alone from a place where she knew how to get home from now that she took the initiative to walk most places she wanted to go. It wasn’t like he was going to deny her – he was speeding through the streets, if he was being completely honest – but the thoughts in his mind were running a mile a minute, and he had no clue what to expect.

When he pulled into the complex, he searched for unit 13 and parked right in front of it. It was only when he turned off his car that he actually saw the name of the store he’d parked in front of. Abigail’s Hair Salon.

Matthew walked in.

He stopped dead in his tracks. In front of him, Effie stood sheepishly, her long, flowing blonde hair chopped off almost completely, and in its place, a chic blonde bob, perfectly styled and perfectly her. She had a t-shirt, baggy skinny jeans, and old Doc Martens on – no doubt all borrowed from Jenna – and she looked like a vision. He couldn’t help the smile that overtook his face. “Effie,” he said her name bashfully, breathlessly, because it was so much to take in and she just looked so…cute.

“Does it look nice?” she asked, patting it down at the sides.

“It looks great, Effie,” Matthew said, and she could tell he meant it sincerely. He bit his bottom lip before continuing his line of questioning, even though all he wanted to do was look at her. “You wanted it this short?”

Effie nodded her head.

“It suits you,” he nodded. “Did you pay?” Effie nodded her head. “Did you tip?”

Effie looked scared for a moment. “Tip?”

Matthew automatically took out his wallet and pulled a $50 from inside, giving it to the hairstylist. He turned to Effie without another word. “Wanna grab some lunch?”

“You—you’re not busy? I thought you would just drive me home.”

“Let’s grab lunch,” he said casually, like it was no big deal. “Grab your jacket. What do you feel like eating?”

***

Matthew watched Effie for most of the meal, if he was being honest. He couldn’t keep his eyes off of her regardless of how hard he tried. But he kept any emotions or any feelings at bay, kicking himself for anything he was feeling that was…questionable. He didn’t want to be that guy. He didn’t want to make things more complicated for her when she was already learning so much, when the world was already a complicated place for her and she was trying to find her place in it.

“What team does your brother play for?” Effie asked, picking at her plate left with all her fries. She ate her bacon cheeseburger first and devoured it in less than ten minutes. For Matthew, it was impressive. He knew she was trying to gain weight. He shuddered to think what she looked like a year ago.

“The Ottawa Senators,” he replied.

“In the capital city,” she said, and Matthew nodded his head. “You must be very thankful that he’s in Canada with you. What about your sister?”

“She plays field hockey at the University of Virginia.”

Matthew watched as Effie furrowed her brows. “She can play sports and go to university? That’s a thing?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Matthew smiled, chuckling slightly. “She’s a great field hockey player. She committed to the school when she was a junior – when she was sixteen – and now she’s finally on campus. She’s going to school too, obviously. That’s the most important thing. But she’s also playing Division 1 field hockey.”

Effie nodded her head, considering all the things Matthew had just said. Women could go to university – she knew that now thanks to Jenna and Geneviève. But…women could play sports and go to university? Women could play sports for their university? That was new information. Effie thought about girls playing hockey and whether or not they could do the same thing. She thought to Levi watching Toronto Raptors games at home and wondering if women could do the same thing with basketball. She had not been allowed to play sports. Anything more than running, women were not allowed to do. Taryn had been sixteen and had committed to play field hockey for a university. When Effie was sixteen, she was definitely not doing that. “Your sister is very lucky,” she said softly. “To be able to do that. She’s very lucky.”

Matthew knew there was weight behind those words. They weren’t to be taken lightly. He could only imagine what Effie was up to when she was sixteen years old as opposed to Taryn. “She knows,” Matthew said. “Taryn’s a really smart girl. She knows she’s really lucky.”

“It’s kind of nice how in the normal world, women can go to university, and get an education, and play sports, and do whatever they want, and wait to have their children,” Effie said.

Matthew shrugged. “If they even want kids at all. I know some of my friends back home don’t want them. Nobody says women have to have them,” he said it like a throwaway comment, looking down at his plate to grab a fry and dip it in some ketchup.

Silence. Pure silence from Effie. He stuck his fry in his mouth and noticed how quiet it got and he looked up with half the fry in his mouth and half the fry still between his fingers, like a dumbass, only to see Effie staring at him with a blank look on her face. When he looked closer, he saw her eyes were glossy. He gulped. “Wh…What do you mean that women don’t have to have children?” she asked.

Matthew chose his words carefully. He should have known. He should have fucking known, but he just had to go open his big mouth. Now, he realized the words he was about to say would change Effie’s perception of things dramatically. The last thing he intended was for the conversation to swerve in a direction like this, but they were here now, and he had to live with it. Own up to his actions. Be the person he promised himself he would be around her. “So, like…women in modern society have the choice. They can choose not to have children. Some women don’t want to become mothers. It’s a personal choice. And nowadays, women don’t feel as pressured to have families. Like, maybe they want to pursue a career instead, but it’s not even that. You can just…not want children.”

Effie had heard the word of God her entire life. It was the first thing she remembered; it was her earliest memory. Some days – on bad days – it was her only memory, the thing that haunted her most at night, and she’d toss and turn in her bed to try and get the rolls and rolls of scripture out of her head. Be fruitful and multiply. Be fruitful and multiply. Be fruitful and multiply. But this – what Matthew was telling her – this was not the word of God. This was something else. This went against everything she knew. This went against everything she was brought up to believe. “Oh, okay,” she whispered.

Matthew could tell he had just said something to Effie that rocked her foundation. And then he thought to himself ‘Of course this would be happening. Everything is new for her.’ The modern world was completely alien to her. She didn’t know anything. No women’s liberation. No women’s rights. No individuality. Voting. Elections. Doctors. Hospitals. Jeans. T-shirts. Wearing her hair however she wanted. Makeup. Cell phones. Instagram. Twitter. Snapchat. Hockey – literally the most unimportant thing at this point. She was learning, and making great progress, but things like this – these big ideas – still shook her to her core. They went against everything she knew and everything she was brought up to believe. It wasn’t easy for any person to have their foundation cracked; Matthew knew it would be even harder for her.

“Can you excuse me for a second?” Effie said suddenly, not bothering to hear an answer from Matthew before she pushed her chair back and stood up from the table, escaping back into the restaurant.

Matthew felt like there was cement in his feet as he replayed the moment over and over in his mind, the sight of Effie’s glossy eyes realizing children were optional in the real world burning itself into his mind forever. God, to find out this way – over bacon cheeseburgers at some restaurant and not in a safe space where she felt comfortable. To have it be him, a man, that told her this instead of someone like Jenna, or Geneviève, who had been teaching her everything. He was an idiot. He was such an idiot.

A jolt of electricity struck through his body and finally jolted him out of his seat, his legs making him run towards the back of the restaurant near the washrooms where he knew Effie went. “Effie? Effie?” he called out as he opened the door to the women’s washroom.

When he stepped inside, he saw Effie huddled in a heap on the floor, her knees to her chest as tears flowed down her face. Her skin was red and blotchy and he could see her chest heaving up and down. “Effie—” he bent down to be at eye level with her.

“I need you to take me home.”

“Effie—” he reached out to touch her.

The second – the millisecond, the nanosecond – that Effie felt his touch for the first time, her entire body flinched so violently away from him that it scared him. Matthew recoiled his hand quickly as his breath caught in his throat. “I’m sorry—I’msosorry—I’m so sorry—” he stuttered out.

She was silent as she looked at him for a moment through her tears. There was a look of pure fear in her eyes that Matthew hadn’t seen before, not even the first time he met her at Noah’s birthday at the steakhouse. “What if women can’t have children?” she asked, her voice so small and frail that it broke Matthew’s heart.

He struggled to find the words because it was such a simple concept for him but such a complicated one for her. “That’s…that’s not their fault,” he said calmly, but the tone of obviousness was still apparent.

“What do you mean it’s not their fault?” Effie’s tone was incredulous, like a seven-year-old child learning prematurely that there was no Santa Claus.

“It’s not their fault, Effie,” he reiterated, not knowing how else to explain it. “I…it’s not their fault. It can be a medical thing. I mean most of the time it is, if they can’t have children. And it’s not their fault,” he just kept repeating it.

“What if…what if women don’t want to have children, but can? Are…are they punished?” she asked.

“Why would they be punished? No,” he shook his head.

“Matthew…” she was apprehensive. “Are you telling the truth?”

“I wouldn’t lie to you Effie,” he said softly, wanting so desperately to just reach out and touch her, hug her, but knowing that if he did, he’d just inflict more fear in her. “I know it’s not what you’re used to, but it’s the truth. Some women can’t have children, and some of them don’t want children, and both of those things are perfectly okay.” He watched as the tears streamed down her face as she stared him in the eye. Shaking.

Then it finally hit him like a ton of bricks.

“Effie…” he said uneasily.

“There were seven.”

The words hung in the air for an unknown amount of time. It could have been years for all Matthew knew. But as he stared into Effie’s eyes, he felt an incredible pain in his heart; a pain reserved only for her, that only she could give him. He thought of how she kept all her own pain inside her constantly, how the trauma was a part of her just as her hair, her fingers, her toes were. She carried this with her every single day. Every. Single. Day.

“It’s not your fault, Effie,” he whispered. He knew better than to try to reach out and touch her again. So he settled on words, because words were his best option. “It’s not your fault.”

***

“Did you really think you’d be able to come to a therapist’s office and think you’d be able to discuss a patient?”

Matthew stared at Dr. Jessica Barlow sitting across from him – her seated on her plush chair, him sitting on the couch he was sure all her patients sat on – and he didn’t really appreciate her tone of voice. So maybe it wasn’t the most flawless plan. Maybe there were holes. But he was there, damnit, and there for a good reason. The best reason. She was the best psychotherapist that specialized in cults in Alberta – probably in western Canada, judging by how many degrees and certificates and awards she had displayed in her office. She was the best and most qualified person to help Effie, surely, which is why Effie met with her three times a week. That meant she was also the best and most qualified person to help Matthew.

“Maybe,” he mumbled out. Matthew would have been intimidated, but for some reason, he wasn’t. Even considering they were alone in her office, even considering he’d never met or been to a therapist before, he wasn’t nervous or intimidated. He was determined. “I need you tell me what I need to do. Tell me. Tell me and I’ll do it.”

“For who?”

“Effie Schaffer.”

Dr. Barlow looked incredulous, like a mix between seeing a ghost and not believing the words that were coming out of Matthew’s mouth. But then he watched as her face softened slightly, and turn inquisitive instead of suspicious. “You’re Matthew,” she said, framing it as a statement more than a question.

He knew what that meant. “Effie’s told you about me?” he asked.

It was a lost cause – he knew that the second the question left his lips, because he knew Dr. Barlow wouldn’t tell him a word. Doctor-patient confidentiality and all that. If dentists couldn’t even talk about their patients, there was no way in hell a psychotherapist who worked with cult survivors would say a peep about anything. “Effie’s opened up to you quite a bit, hasn’t she?”

Matthew leaned in. “Yes. That’s why I need you to help me. I want – I need to know how to help her.”

“Matthew,” Dr. Barlow took off her glasses. “First you need to tell me why you want to do this,” she said matter-of-factly.

Matthew didn’t want this to become a session. It wasn’t about him; it was about Effie. “I’ve just become her friend, and I’ve been spending a lot of time with her lately, and—and I just want to know what I can do to help her get even better.”

“Because you’re her friend.”

“Yes.”

“Because you care about her.”

“Well, yes. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t care about her in any capacity.”

Dr. Barlow paused. “It’s not that simple, Mr. Tkachuk—”

“Why not?” he asked, interrupting her. “She’s leaps and bounds better than when she escaped! At least according to her brother!” he defended himself. “Listen, I know it hasn’t been a long time that I’ve known her but I – damnit, I can help her. I can help her but I don’t want to hurt her – I never want that to happen ever again, even if it’s by accident, and you need to tell me. You need to tell me how I can do that so I can actually do it.”

Dr. Barlow stayed silent. “You’ve already been incredibly patient with her,” she chose her words wisely. Matthew could read between the lines. So maybe Effie spoke about him more than he initially thought. “We should just leave it at that. I appreciate the effort, but—"

“She told me how there were seven,” he said, his voice steady and calm but firm and resolute. When he looked up at Dr. Barlow, she was staring back at him with a stoic yet shocked look on her face. “She told me there were seven, and when I tried to—to console her, to touch her, the way her body jumped away from mine…I…” he trailed off. He rubbed his fingers against his lips nervously.

“So then you know and realize that Effie was a member of a religious cult where she was routinely raped by its leader so he could impregnate her with the son of God for almost five years.”

It was the first time the word had been said out loud. He didn’t want to repeat it. He wanted it burned from his memory, from Effie’s memory, from the dictionary, everywhere. He knew it happened but he didn’t want to admit it to himself. Saying the word out loud made it different; it made it real. It made him acutely aware of the trauma Effie had been through, and how she didn’t deserve any of it, yet she was burdened with it for the rest of her life. He was biting down on his bottom lip so hard he thought he’d draw blood. “Yes,” he said curtly. “I realize.”

“I know how close – relatively – you and Effie have gotten ever since you were introduced. Her progress has increased dramatically since it,” Dr. Barlow began, again choosing her words wisely. “I know everything you two talk about on your Starbucks dates. I know you introduced her to candy and watched Little Women with her. Matthew – I’m not telling you this because I’m making some point that Effie tattles and tells me everything about her relationship with you. I’m telling you this because you’ve already been doing what you need to do. You didn’t need to come here and ask me for specifics.”

“But I don’t want to hurt her,” Matthew said, his voice barely above a whisper. “What happened that day when she told me and when—when I tried to touch her…”

“It might take a while for her body not to seize up anytime a man touches her,” Dr. Barlow said. “That doesn’t mean she’s not making progress. It’s the mental progress we want to see. And it doesn’t mean you’re doing anything wrong, either. Just give her time, Matthew. Exercise patience with her.”

***

The next time Matthew saw Effie, she didn’t know he was coming. But he called Levi and made sure it was okay, and so when he descended down the stairs into the basement and saw Effie’s bedroom door opened, he took a deep breath. He collected himself. And he moved forward. He knew he didn’t have to do this – any outsider would have said that – but he knew he needed to do it. He needed to make it right.

“Effie?” he knocked lightly on her door before stepping into the door frame, finding her sitting at her desk reading something.

She turned her head to look at him and a smile appeared on her face. It felt like a weight had been lifted off his shoulders to see her smiling. He didn’t exactly think she’d be cradled in a corner crying, but he did think that maybe she wouldn’t be happy to see him. It was a relief. “Hi Matthew.”

“Can I come in?” he asked.

“Of course,” she nodded, pushing her desk chair out as he walked in slowly. “How’ve you been?”

“I’ve been okay…” he said, biting down on his bottom lip nervously. “How—I mean, have you been okay since that day?”

He saw something flash behind her eyes – a memory of the tears, the feeling, the questions. He knew he relived it every other minute since it happened because he felt so guilty about it. He wondered if Effie relived it every moment too and whether or not it brought her constant pain. Matthew would never forgive himself if it did. “I’ve been good. Learned a lot, as you can imagine,” she joked slightly. “I read up on what we talked about. Geneviève helped me.”

“So you know it’s a thing now.”

Effie nodded. “It made me realize I never want children.”

Matthew should have been shocked by that statement, but he wasn’t. Knowing what Effie had been through, he understood why she wouldn’t want them. It was her choice to make and hers only, and nobody could or should influence her otherwise. “That’s good. Good that you can…you know, say that out loud. That you’re not forced into something you don’t want anymore.”

Effie nodded her head. “I knew it all along. I mean, children are a blessing, but they’re not for me. And knowing the way I was brought up, with abuse and no loving parenting from my parents or from anyone around me, I don’t want to pass that legacy on. I’m too scared to fall back into that. I’d have no idea how to raise a child. I know that now,” she said, watching as Matthew walked further into the room and lean back slightly on her desk. She looked up at him. There was a moment of silence between them as they were just there, staring at each other in her bedroom. Effie tried not to get lost in his blue eyes. She wondered if he could see past her calm exterior. “I’m sorry that I flinched away from you that day,” she said quietly.

“I should be the one apologizing—”

“No,” she said as sternly as she could, getting him to stop. “You don’t have to apologize for anything. You didn’t hurt me that day, so don’t think you did. I just…I get apprehensive about touch, because we weren’t allowed to, and because once I finally was, it wasn’t…nice,” she revealed, knowing he’d get the point. “But I know that your touch is nice.”

“How do you know?” Matthew asked.

“Because you’re a nice person.”

She took it upon herself to look at his hands. They were on either side of his body, gripping her desk just in case it collapsed under his weight or something – who knows. But they were there, exposed, for her to look at. They were big – bigger than Abraham’s – and younger, of course, rougher around the edges due to hockey but still better than the only other pair of hands she’d had experience with.

He caught her looking. Slowly, almost painstakingly slowly, he brought his right hand up and opened it, palm facing her, fingers pointing up towards the sky. He watched as Effie brought her hand up too, even slower than he had, opening it up and facing her palm towards his. There were a few moments where she was stagnant, thinking about how this was the first time she was going to touch a man other than her predator fake husband or her brother. Then she moved her hand closer. Closer. Closer.

When she finally touched Matthew – when she finally touched him – a million electric bolts ran through her body. The feeling of his skin on hers, his delicate yet rough touch as she pressed her small hand into his large one so she could feel his entire hand on her hand – it was unlike anything she’d ever felt before. The simplest action gave her the most surreal feeling. There were no words for it. No words, in fact, because all she could do was smile. A big, wide smile, spanning from ear to ear as she kept her hand against his.

Matthew smiled too.

***

“This was a very quick progression from ‘Can women get tattoos?’ to ‘I’m getting a tattoo’, you know,” Geneviève laughed as she and Annica watched Effie take a seat in the tattooist’s chair. The tattoo artist, a young woman with sleeves of her own, was preparing everything appropriately as the women chatted. “The turnover rate was, what, a week?”

“Less,” Annica giggled.

“When I went to the orthodontist’s when I was ten, I saw a man there with his entire arm covered in tattoos. I was so scared I started crying. I asked the prophet about it when I got back to Sheerness and he said they were marks of sinners and that the devil influenced them,” Effie laughed along with them. “But I see them on people at Starbucks all the time. I think they look really nice.”

“And you’re absolutely sure you want what you’ve requested? You’re not gonna regret it, right?” Annica wanted to make sure Effie was making the right decision.

Effie nodded her head emphatically. “Definitely. Definitely.”

“What is it? Can we see it?” Geneviève asked.

Effie shook her head. “I want it to be a surprise,” she said, biting her lip. “You guys don’t think I’m crazy, do you? Doing this to my body?”

“Absolutely not,” Geneviève replied automatically, her tone telling Effie that the notion was absurd. It was nice for Effie to know that the two women in front of her would never judge her. It was nice to know a woman could be supported in her decisions, and not be told it would make God angry and that she was sinning and going against the prophet. “It’s your body, remember? Your body, your choice.”

Effie nodded after a moment. “My body, my choice.”

***

“It’s still a bit red and itchy. Annica said I need to put an elastic around my wrist and snap it whenever I want to itch it,” Effie said, her voice filled with excitement but a certain anxiousness that was characteristic to her.

“It’s alright. Just show me,” Matthew smiled as he watched her roll up the sleeve of her cardigan. When she finally did, and stretched out her arm, Matthew’s mouth gaped open. “It’s huge!” he exclaimed, definitely not expecting it to be that big. He thought Effie would get a dainty tattoo; something small. He didn’t exactly think she’d have a “go big or go home” attitude about a tattoo – something on her body forever. But it was big. It took up at least two-thirds of her forearm. The linework and shading were impeccable; the detail exquisite. It was made up of flowers – he didn’t know what kind – but they were big and small, all sizes really, and there were a few leaves, a few stems, and it just looked so beautiful. He brought his hand up to touch, but stopped himself. “Can I?” he asked.

Effie nodded. “You can touch me,” she said, preparing herself.

Matthew brought his hand up slowly. He touched her arm, grazing his fingertips over the linework delicately. It was still bumpy, a testament to how new it was. “It looks amazing, Effie,” he whispered, his fingers still grazing delicately.

“You haven’t even seen the best part yet.”

“The best part?” he arched his eyebrow. What could be better than this?

She turned her arm over, palm facing up, where another large flower was tattooed on her skin. Matthew noticed some handwriting along the flower, and he leaned his head down to read it. ‘I am mine before I am anyone else’s’.

Matthew smiled from ear to ear. “Effie,” he whispered bashfully, just like he had when he saw that she cut her hair short for the first time. He was so bashful because he was so happy to be seeing her making her own decisions for once in her life. “Do you love it?” he asked.

She nodded enthusiastically. “I love it so much. It’s mine. It’s mine.”

***

“Did Jenna make these?” Matthew asked Levi once he was done with his stretches, noticing a giant Tupperware filled with some sort of cookies. Matthew had seen some of the other guys in the locker room with them and decided to investigate. He took a massive bite of one and his entire mouth watered. In that short moment, he was sure he’d never had a cookie so good in his life. “These are phenomenal,” he said with a full mouth.

“Nah, Jenna’s not a baker,” Levi shook his head. “Effie made those.”

Matthew’s brows rose. He gulped the bite of the cookie down. “Effie? Effie bakes?”

Levi smirked, side-eyeing him. “Effie knows how to make and churn butter from scratch. She had to learn in the cult. She knows how to bake and cook a lot of things because she had to be a traditional wife. But she enjoys baking the most. Baking is what brings her the most joy, so she’s started baking again.”

Matthew nodded nonchalantly. “She can bake all kinds of stuff then?”

“Bread, sweet stuff…yeah, pretty much,” he said. “She actually…well, she’s trying to find a job where she can put it to good use, since she actually likes doing it.”

“Effie’s getting a job?!” Matthew exclaimed, louder than he intended. Levi could only chuckle. Matthew felt the need to cover. “Where? What—where? What’s she gonna do? How is she—I mean, why?”

“She’s gotta support herself, doesn’t she? If she wants to move out, or earn her own money—”

“Effie’s moving out?!”

“She’s not moving out tomorrow, Matthew, but she’s going to be moving out soon.”

This was all news to Matthew, of course. He tried to play it cool, calming himself down and not making a big deal out of it – well, more than he already had. The fact that Levi, Jenna, and Effie were discussing jobs and moving out had absolutely nothing to do with him. He was just on the outside. He didn’t need to be part of the decision making at all…at all. But he still got nervous. Effie was still learning about a lot. And ultimately, at the end of the day, he wanted her to be safe. A safe job. A safe apartment. “Where’s she looking?”

“There’s a cute little hipster coffee shop in the downtown core she has an interview with,” Levi informed him. “If she gets the job, and if she enrols in the online business certificate program Geneviève recommended to her, I promised to pay three months worth of rent until she can pay it on her own. She’d earn enough from minimum wage and tips for sure, especially downtown.”

Hipster coffee shop. Online business certificate. New apartment. There was so much new information coming at Matthew that he didn’t know how to process it all. He was happy for Effie – he was – and he wished her only the best, but it was still a lot. “Well…when you need help moving, call me and we could put these muscles to work,” he said, flexing his arm for dramatic effect, trying to hide the fact that he so obviously cared, and miserably failing to hide that fact to Levi.

Levi let out a haughty laugh. “I’ll be sure to mention it.”

***

Matthew downed a shot of tequila – the good tequila – and smashed his shot glass down on the bar as the smooth liquid coated his throat and made his stomach burn. Noah let out a loud ‘Wooooo!’ and Sean, ever the dumbass, choked on it as it went down. Matthew almost spit up the shot out of laughter watching Sean struggle to swallow it, picking up his glass of whisky the bartender had just poured. “You’re already wrecked, buddy,” Matthew chastised him as he got control of his coughs. “You’re embarrassing.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Sean sneered. “We all know you’re trying to get all your alcohol in before Effie gets here.”

Matthew chuckled. “Fat chance of that happening. Effie’s not coming.”

Sean rolled his eyes. “Well, either I’m high or you’re wrong, because she just walked in the door.”

Matthew’s back stiffened as he whipped his head around to look through the crowd of people. Sure enough, he could see Effie raising her hand to chest level so the bouncer at the door could stamp her hand. Noah made a noise that sounded like a seagull and Sean let out a chuckle and a muffled “Dude owes me a fucking drink for that one”. Before Matthew’s legs could move him forward, he noticed Meredith approach Effie; she hugged her and Effie allowed Meredith to grab her hand so she could guide her through the crowd and into their spot at the back of the lounge. The music was loud and the floor felt like it was vibrating but it was nothing compared to the beat of Matthew’s heart.

Fuck.

When Meredith and Effie finally made their way through, he saw that Effie was wearing Jenna’s ballet flats, skinny jeans that were still a bit big, and a sequined top that fit so big any other girls in the club would have probably worn it as a dress. He could feel the whisky burning his stomach and the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.

Fuck fuck fuck fuck FUCK.

“Effiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeee!!!!!” Claudia squealed once she noticed her, sauntering over to her in her high heels and bending down to hug her. “You made it! I’m sooooo happy!” she continued squealing. Matthew wondered if Effie noticed that Claudia was already drunk. “Is this your first time in a place like this?”

“Yeah,” Effie nodded her head nervously. “I’m sorry—I—I know I wasn’t supposed to be here and I said no, but—”

“Are you kidding? The more the merrier! Let me take you to Andrew so you can say happy birthday!”

Matthew watched as Claudia led her to Andrew, tapping him on the shoulder to reveal Effie. Andrew was happy to see her, and – knowing better than to go in for a hug – politely held his hand against his heart when she wished him a happy birthday. None of the guys on the team had ever touched her – well, except Matthew. He seemed to be the exception to a lot of things regarding Effie, and he was proud of that. He didn’t want anyone else touching her, even if they were his teammates.

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK

“You came alone?” Andrew asked her. Effie nodded. “We’ll have to find you Matthew then. He’d kill us if we didn’t tell him you were here.”

Matthew didn’t know what Andrew was saying – the music was too loud, and he couldn’t read lips – but the cement in his legs finally dissolved and he found himself walking over to them, wanting to make his presence known at that very moment. When Effie saw him, he could swear her face lit up. “Fancy seeing you here, Effie,” he smiled, holding his glass of whisky near his chest.

She went in for a hug.

Matthew was so shocked he almost didn’t hug her back. Even Andrew was looking at them like he’d just seen a monkey perform a magic trick. Matthew draped both arms around her and hugged her back, making sure not to spill his whisky all over her. He tried not to let it seem like he was shocked – hugs should be a normal thing for Effie, he thought – so when she pulled away, he was already smiling down at her. “What brought you here?”

“I wanted to see what these places are like,” she said when she pulled away. She took a look down at his drink. “Is that iced tea?”

“Whiskey.”

She looked around at everyone else, noticing they were all holding glasses with drinks in them too. “Is everybody drinking alcohol?”

“Pretty much,” Matthew giggled out.

“I’ve never drunk alcohol before,” she revealed.

“Do you want to try some?”

“No,” she shook her head. “I’m not ready.”

“That’s okay. Do you want something to drink, then? Some water? I’m sure the bar can make you a virgin drink if you ask for it.”

“A virgin drink?”

“Virgin means no alcohol,” Matthew covered quickly. “They’ll make you whatever you want.”

Matthew watched as Effie considered it, looking over to the bar before she shook her head. “I’m not thirsty yet. I’ll go when I’m thirsty.”

***

Effie didn’t dance. She didn’t drink. All she did was look.

By looking, she was learning. She watched how people interacted with one another in this type of setting and she internalized it. She watched girls approach the bar and get served by the bartender. She watched as guys flirted with them and bought them drinks. She watched people take shots and then ask for another. She watched people get handsy, with touches on hips and lower backs and arms the most popular spots she saw men putting their hands on women. She watched people drag one another towards the dance floor. She watched kisses being placed on necks and shoulders and lips, tongues dragging across, shocked that people would be doing so out in the open. She watched girls raise their drinks in the air and kick their leg up as they posed for photos with their friends. She watched girls move their hips seductively. She watched guys getting their bodies as close to them as possible.

“What are they doing?” she asked Matthew as she watched them dancing like a hawk.

“Uh…it’s called grinding.”

She’d talk, and ask questions, and Matthew was beside her the entire time answering her questions and milking his whisky, not caring that he wasn’t partying with Andrew or with the other boys, because when Effie was around, he was all about Effie – nobody else mattered. He’d stay with her until last call if she wanted to stay that late. He’d already resolved that he��d be going home when she was going home because he needed to make sure she got back to Aspen Woods safe, and also because there was no reason to be at the club when Effie was gone.

Did he hear himself? Did he really just say there was no reason to be at a club full of beautiful girls during his friend’s birthday?

Fuck.

Noah, Sean, and Johnny ended up coming back to the booth for some water. Johnny made eyes at Matthew and Matthew subtly gave him the finger; Effie didn’t notice because she was looking over at the bar. “I’m thirsty. I’m going to go get a drink.”

“Let me go for y—”

“No,” she said sternly as Matthew was about to get up, standing up herself and holding her hand out. “I’ve watched. I know what I need to do. I can go.”

Matthew gulped. He didn’t want to deny her independence but he didn’t want her to go alone. “Are you sure?” he asked. She nodded, and Matthew had to let her go. And all he did was look.

***

Effie approached the bar slowly, trying not to get shoved around by people crowding around the bar. It was much busier actually being in the crowd than just looking at it, and Effie was almost regretting her decision. She’s never been in a place with so many people. Well, that was a lie, maybe – church was always busy, obviously, especially the church for the People’s Dominion. Sundays were the worst. But there were definitely not this many young people congregated in one place. Effie knew this is what young people did in the normal world – Geneviève told her so. It was one thing to know about it, to be apart from it in a different area and watch; it was something completely different, actually being in it.

She made her way to right behind a few people at the bar – some scantily clad girls with some really pretty dresses on. Effie admired their beauty. They had beautiful long eyelashes and their lips were red and berry-coloured. Their skin was flawless and tanned – weird for April in Calgary, but tanned nonetheless. Effie wondered if they were wearing makeup, and wondered whether or not she’d ever wear makeup herself. When they got their drinks, they began to move. One of them noticed Effie behind them and gave her a quick up-down. “Take our place, sweetie,” she said, letting Effie move into their place before she watched them make their way through the crowd and back onto the dance floor.

After watching, she knew now she had to get the attention of one of the bartenders. Every single one of them was busy pouring drinks. She watched as a couple of men on the opposite end of the bar raised their hands and the bartenders went over to them, so she decided to do the same. After a few minutes, a bartender came. “What can I get you?”

“Um, water please.”

“You driving tonight, darling?”

Effie shook her head. “I don’t drive. I just don’t drink alcohol.”

“Do you want anything more exciting? I mean I can at least get you ginger ale or a coke.”

Effie didn’t like coke – she thought it was too sweet – but when he mentioned ginger ale, she reconsidered. “Okay. Ginger ale is good.”

The bartender nodded, grabbing a glass and filling it with ice before getting the drink gun. “Do you have a tab going?”

What was a tab? Effie shook her head. “What’s a tab?”

The bartender looked at her skeptically. “How are you paying, darling? Are you with a party?”

“Oh! I’m here for Andrew’s party! Andrew Mangiapane.”

“Got it,” the bartender winked. “Here you go, darling. Enjoy.”

Effie grabbed the drink and took a sip out of the straw. It was nice and cold, just the way she liked it. Just as she was about to leave and go back to Matthew, a big body slipped into the empty space beside her. A man – a very large man, it seemed, though she was so small that every man looked large to her – took up all the space. He was looking down at her with a very, very amused expression on his face. “Ginger ale, girl?” he mocked her.

Effie couldn’t tell. “What’s wrong with ginger ale?”

“You’re gonna come out to a bar looking like a walking felon and order ginger ale?” he pressed, winking at her.

“A walking felon?” she repeating. She didn’t have a clue what he was talking about.

“Let me buy you a drink,” he said. “A real drink.”

“I don’t drink.”

“Wanna start?”

“No,” she said firmly.

“That’s fine. I can think of better things we can get up to than drinking, anyways,” he smiled.

Effie furrowed her brows. “Like what?”

The guy smiled, and it was creepy, and she finally saw behind his eyes every thought and every intention he currently had. “Let me show you,” he said, and Effie saw, out of the corner of her eye, that he was bringing his hand up to touch her. At the same time, he was leaning his head down.

“HEY!” a loud voice boomed, and Effie immediately recognized it as Matthew’s. Before she could even see him or realize where he was coming from, he squeezed his way in between him and the man. Matthew’s hands were now on her body instead, the man’s hand nowhere near her. “Get the fuck out of here, buddy.”

“Who the fuck are you?”

“You touch her one more time and you’re fucking dead,” Matthew growled.

“Dead, eh? So you get to touch her but I don’t?”

“Fuck off.”

Effie was taken aback by the anger in Matthew’s voice. She’d never seen or heard him so angry. She knew he was capable of it, by how he played hockey, but she didn’t think he’d be able to get this angry in a social setting. Her body tensed up. “Can we go back to our booth?” Effie asked loudly, placing her hand on Matthew’s, hoping to get his attention.

Matthew looked back at her quickly, and when he saw the trepidation on her face, he immediately listened to her. As he turned to leave, pushing Effie ahead of him with his hands still on her waist guiding her, he heard the man make one last call out to Effie. “You don’t want to have some fun, girl? I can show you a better time than this dick with my dick!”

Matthew had had it. He knew he couldn’t punch out a guy in a bar. He knew he couldn’t do much without causing a scene and the cops getting called and everything getting out of hand. So instead, he used everything at his disposal to make his point, the most important thing being his size. He turned around and flexed, standing up straight and making himself as physically big as possible, bumping up against the guy on the chest and backing him up against the bar. He had only a few inches on the guy, but he was suddenly intimidated. “You even so much as breathe in her general direction and I won’t hesitate to knock your teeth down your throat,” Matthew growled, making fists with his hands. He didn’t even wait for the guy to say anything. Instead, he just turned and walked away, noticing Effie waiting for him in the crowd.

“Is everything okay?” she asked.

“It’s fine,” he said curtly, leading her out of the crowd and back to the booth.

“Are you sure, Matthew?”

“Positive,” he mumbled as they finally got to the booth.

Effie turned around to get a good look at him. She knew he was lying because she could see how angry he was on his face. She got nervous – really nervous. “Matthew—”

“Did he touch you? He didn’t touch you, did he?” Matthew demanded. He needed the answer to be no so he could calm down.

“Please don’t be mad at me.”

Everything in Matthew suddenly cleared. All he saw – all he was able to see – was Effie’s face, and how nervous she was, and how she was looking up at him with a certain tenseness. “Effie—no—I could never be mad at you. I’m mad at that guy for being gross.”

He noticed Effie furrow her brows slightly. “Was he trying to get me to have sex with him?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what he wanted. But he was being gross and the second I saw him wedge his way into the bar I got up.”

Effie nodded. “But you’re not mad at me, are you?” she asked again.

“Never, Effie. Never.”

***

Annica had never been more flabbergasted or without words than when Effie asked her to explain what Instagram was. Geneviève had to step in, giggling as she mixed together the baked feta pasta the girls were having for lunch. “It’s supposed to be a platform for sharing pictures,” Geneviève explained. “You know, like the book you’re reading, or where you’re going, if you go on vacation, or if you see something cool, or let’s say you go out to eat and you want to show what you’re eating…that sort of thing.”

“People want to know that stuff?” Effie asked innocently, causing the girls to giggle. “People want to know that about me?”

“I’d love to follow you on Instagram. I’d love to see how you see the world,” Geneviève said. “It would be a breath of fresh air, to be honest.”

“How would it be a breath of fresh air if everybody is doing it?” Effie asked again.

“Everybody’s not doing it. That’s the point,” Annica said. “Instagram has transformed into this, like…God, I don’t even know what to call it. It’s one big advertisement now.”

Effie considered what the girls were telling her. She trusted them both, which is why she asked. Annica talked about it a lot, and was on it a lot, which is why Effie became interested in it in the first place. Geneviève was on it too, of course, running her own account and also having access to the account for her literary magazine Atomic (she’d given Effie a bunch of old copies to read through, and she was going to devour them right after she finished Geneviève’s book, which was technically a collection of essays). For a girl who just wanted to be as normal as possible, it seemed to her like Instagram was the logical next step. “Can…can you guys help me make a profile?”

“Of course,” Annica said as all three of them sat down at the table. “We can do it after lunch.”

“I’m not your therapist, but you should use it to chronicle your journey and what you’re doing outside of the cult now,” Geneviève offered. “That’s what I meant when I said I’d love to see how you see the world. You can post all the things you’ve been baking recently, or the pretty things you see in Calgary when you’re out and about on one of your walks.”

The second that Geneviève mentioned ‘chronicle your journey’, it was like a switch went off in Effie’s brain. She nodded her head. “That’s what I’m gonna do. Let’s make a profile after lunch.”

***

FOLLOW REQUEST: effieschaffer7

You have accepted effieschaffer7’s friend request.

Effie?????

Hi Matthew

U made an insta?

Is it okay if I follow you? Annica helped me

Yes of course it’s okay if u follow me

I am going to post my baking I think

That’s good! I will have to try some one day

When you get back from the road trip there will be something new. Levi requested a lemon meringue pie and you can have some too if you want.

I’m gonna make sure Levi drives us home then

***

It was Effie who swung the door open excitedly. Matthew was excited to try the lemon meringue pie, but apparently she was excited about something else. Her eyes were as wide as the moon and as bright as the sun. “I got the job!” she screamed.

Levi dropped his bag as he screamed, catching her as she jumped from the doorway into his arms. Matthew started cheering too and started clapping; it was only then that Effie even remembered he was standing there, but he really didn’t mind. “Congratulations, Effie!” he smiled from ear to ear. “Look at you go!”

She let go of her brother, but still held on to his arms. “That means I can get the apartment! That means I can pay for the tuition for the business program! That means…I…I’m just so excited!” She looked over at Matthew, seeing his smile, and did the unexpected.

She hugged him. She jumped into his arms just like she did with her brother and wrapped her arms around him tightly. He reciprocated easily, wrapping his own arms around her too. “That’s amazing, Effie!”

“I just—aaaahhhhheeeeeppppp!” she half yelled-half squealed, letting go of Matthew so they could get back inside. April in Calgary was still cold. Both Matthew and Levi set their bags down at the front door and walked straight to the kitchen, following Effie who was practically kicking her heels up. “I can’t even speak! I mean, this is—this is me getting to work! I get to work! I get to make my own living and make my own money!”

“You should be really proud of yourself,” Matthew said as he sat down on one of the kitchen stools. “And you get to do something you like to do! Not a lot of people get to say that.”

She nodded enthusiastically, opening the fridge. “Here, try this,” she said, taking out the lemon meringue pie she had promised them. “The owner of the coffee shop said I’m going to start with cookies and brownies and small stuff like that, and then maybe I can expand,” she said.

She cut the pie, plated it for her brother and Matthew, and handing them forks. Matthew dug in automatically, shoving a giant piece in his mouth. The second it hit his tongue, he groaned. “Oh…oh Effie…” he said in between chews. “This is gonna be dangerous.”

“Is it good?”

“You may need to bake me something every day, now, Effie. Either that or I’m gonna come visit you every day.”

***

“Piiiiiiivvvooottttt!!!!!”

“If you say that one more time, I’m gonna kill you,” Matthew screamed at Sean holding the other end of the couch at the bottom of the stairs.

“Piiiiiiiiivvv—”

“Monahan!”

“Is everything okay, boys?” Effie’s sweet voice asked from the top of the stairs, popping her head out of her brand new apartment.

“We’re fine!” Matthew called out, not wanting her to worry. “Monahan is just being a jackass!”

“Am not!”

They got the couch upstairs. They got the bedframe upstairs. They got the mattress upstairs. In a little one-bedroom apartment above a storefront on 8th Avenue SW in downtown Calgary, Effie Schaffer was moving in. Well, Effie was in her apartment unpacking boxes and organizing everything. Levi, Matthew, Sean, and Jacob were helping move in her furniture. She was going to thank them gracefully with another pie – this time, she’d experimented with a banana cream pie with salty bourbon caramel. It was in the fridge waiting. Each of them would get a nice big slice.

Geneviève came over for a bit, helping Effie with organizing the kitchen. And Jenna dropped by after work, making sure everything was in order. Jacob and his piece of pie left with Geneviève, and Levi and his piece of pie left once he knew everything was in order, and Sean and his piece of pie left after he and Matthew had finished putting the couch together. Matthew hadn’t left with his piece of pie yet. Matthew stayed.

“This apartment is so great for you, Effie,” he said as he sat down on the couch, admittedly exhausted from all the hauling but despite that, still not wanting to leave. There was so much to do and say and admire with Effie now that people weren’t around, and though he’d never admit it out loud to them, he always wanted to be alone with her. It was different when he was alone with her. With other people around, he couldn’t stare at her too long without being caught, or they couldn’t talk about things from their previous conversations that only they knew about. With people gone, they could. He’d stay until Effie told him to go home; if she would even tell him to go home. He was unsure if she knew she could tell people to leave because she was tired or just wanted to be alone.

“Tomorrow Levi and I are going to go to the mall to get me a laptop for school,” she said, opening her fridge. “My course starts in June. It’s going to be really exciting.”

“That’s great,” he said, looking at her from the couch. “It’s business, right?”

She nodded her head enthusiastically. “Business administration. Are you going to come try this pie or what?”

Matthew hauled his sore body off the couch and made his way towards the kitchen, standing next to Effie as she sliced a piece of the pie for him. He reached over her head and grabbed two plates from the cupboard, setting them down. Their bodies were close – purposely, he had to admit selfishly, on his part – so that every time she turned the pie and made a slice, her arm and elbow would touch him. He watched as she carefully plated the slices.

Before she moved to grab the forks, she looked up at Matthew. “Can I try something?” she asked timidly.

He furrowed his brows slightly. “Of course.”

Effie hesitated, looking Matthew in the eye, wondering if she should really go through with what’s been on her mind since Andrew’s birthday party. She resolved with herself to never let fear get in the way of her making a decision in her new life, especially now that she was free to make those decisions. So she did it. She did what she wanted to do.

Effie Schaffer stood on her tip-toes and kissed Matthew Tkachuk.

It was light, chaste, and pure; no tongue, no longer than three seconds, and no warning. But she kissed him. With her eyes closed. And for the first time in a long, long, long time, when she closed her eyes and kissed someone her body didn’t seize up. When she closed her eyes and kissed him, she didn’t think of the other kisses she had to endure rather than enjoy. When she closed her eyes and kissed him, she didn’t see Abraham. Matthew’s lips were much softer; there was nothing about him like was like Abraham, not one atom on his body. She liked it that way. And the fact that she didn’t remember her past life when it happened made it all the better for her.

Matthew, for his part, was shocked. Shocked that she, Effie Schaffer, who grew up abused in a cult and didn’t start wearing pants until just a few months ago, would do something so forward. He’d be lying if he said he didn’t want it to happen, because he did, against all of his better judgement and the rational side of his brain telling him not to. “Was that okay for you?” he asked softly.

Effie nodded. “Of course it was. I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t think it would be okay for me.”

Matthew’s word vomit got the best of him. “Do you think it—”

“Don’t talk to me like you’re my therapist please,” she said quickly. “Talk to me like you’re a guy.”

“Sorry,” he apologized quickly.

Effie looked down, suddenly nervous. She wasn’t second-guessing her decision to kiss him, but what she was doing now was wondering what Matthew thought of it. He’d kissed her back. He didn’t just stand there and take the kiss – he kissed her back. He moved his lips too. That meant something, right? “Matthew?” she finally asked, her voice soft.

“Hmm?”

“Do you like me?” she asked.

“Of course I like you, Effie.”

“No, I mean do you…do you like me. Like how boys like girls sometimes.”

Matthew looked her in the eye, his entire ego dropping to the pits of his stomach. Having the completely inability to be able to lie to her, he gave her a quick nod of the head. “Yeah, I do.”

Effie bit her bottom lip. She didn’t know a lot, but she knew this was a huge moment. But she swallowed hard, her thoughts getting the best of her. “Even after everything that happened to me?”

Matthew’s heart broke. It always did when he spoke with Effie. “Of course,” he said simply. “You’re not what happened to you. You’re so much more than that, Effie.”

Effie nodded her head. She knew that. Dr. Barlow, Levi, Jenna, Geneviève – everyone important in her life had been telling her that. She knew it was true, but she needed to hear the words from Matthew. She couldn’t just assume them. “I want to let you know that was the first time in my life that I’ve initiated…physical contact with a man,” she said quietly, her voice just above a whisper. “I did it…I did it with you because I feel comfortable with you. I wouldn’t have even thought about doing that a year ago but…but you’ve really helped me these past few months, and you make me feel so comfortable to try new things like corn dogs or kissing. Even just…you know, touching. I just want you to know that.”

Matthew nodded. This was huge. He was pretty sure he hadn’t let out a breath since her lips met his. “I hope you always feel comfortable around me.”

“I think I will,” she said, smiling slightly.

Matthew smiled. “Well, in that case, can I kiss you again?”

“No.”

Matthew chuckled to himself. Her deadpan delivery dissolved everything. She was in total control. “Fair enough.”

Effie moved to grab the forks from the drawer she was standing in front of. Before she put them on the plates, she looked up at him again. “But if I kissed you again, would you like it?”

Matthew nodded his head. “Would you?”

Effie nodded her head.

***

“What about this?” Matthew asked, pointing to a fake plant hanging from a little black pot. “Everybody loves fake plants.”

Ikea had a lot of options – too many, if Effie was being honest. But she nodded her head, and Matthew took the initiative to grab the plant and put it in the cart. There were a bunch of frames already in there, and some decorative stuff for her new place. “Matthew?” she looked up at him.

“Hmm?” he looked down.

She stood on her tip-toes and kissed him.

***

“I’ve got an Americano with room for milk for Matthew!” the barista called out, setting the drink down on the counter. Matthew approached to grab his drink, bringing it to the other station where he was able to pour in his milk and two packs of brown sugar before popping the lid on. He rejoined Effie.

“Does it feel like you’re cheating when I bring you to Starbucks?” he asked her in a light-hearted tone.

“Matthew?” she looked up at him.

“Hmm?” he was already looking down.

She stood on her tip-toes and kissed him.

***

“I think these are your best ones yet,” Matthew said through a mouth full of chocolate-dipped almond biscotti. Effie was trying out recipes. He was her unofficial-official taste-tester. The whole team was, really. And if they sold well in the coffee shop, the manager would allow her to expand. So far, so good. “I love the almond flavour. It’s there but it’s not too strong, you know?”

He watched as Effie nodded her head. “Matthew?” she asked, looking at him eye-to-eye since he was sitting down on one of the stools in her kitchen.

He knew what was coming.

She leaned forward and kissed him. His lips tasted like almonds.

***

“Are you excited for the movie?” Matthew asked as he poured the popcorn from the steaming hot bag into the bowls Effie got for them.

“Very,” she nodded. Tonight they’d be watching Emma, the 2020 movie version of Jane Austen’s classic. Effie liked to see all the amazing clothes the women used to wear. A part of her wanted to dress up like that now, but she knew she’d get stared at. The other part of her never wanted to wear a dress again if she didn’t have to. “Matthew?” she asked.

“Hmm?” he looked down at her. He knew what was coming.

She stood on her tip-toes and kissed him.

***

It was always when the two of them were alone. It never happened when she would wait for him and Levi and Jacob with Jenna and Geneviève after games. It never happened if they were ever out with a big group, or even just with Levi and Jenna. Matthew was sure Effie had told them she was kissing him – she probably told Dr. Barlow too, now that he thought about it – but nobody had ever approached him about it. “I heard you’ve been kissing Effie.”

It was always the same, but he wouldn’t have it any other way. They were alone. They were usually doing something mundane. Then Effie would ask “Matthew?” in her soft, sweet voice. He’d look down at her. She’d go on her tip-toes, and she’d kiss him.

It was always initiated by her.

***

“Can I take you out on a date?” Matthew asked one day when they were alone in her apartment.

Effie looked shocked. Surprised, even, though Matthew didn’t think the question was out of the ordinary. “You…you want to go out on a date with me?” she asked.

“Yes, of course I do,” Matthew said, wanting there to be no doubts in her mind. “You know that I like you, Effie. I think it’s something that could be really fun for you…for us.”

Effie was deep in thought – Matthew could tell. She nodded slightly. “We have been doing a lot of kissing lately…” she mused. He couldn’t help but smile, even though it faded slightly when she looked up at him nervously. “Matthew, I—I’ve never been on a date before.”

“I figured as much.”

“I mean, I—even with Abraham. He never—I mean, I was just told I was marrying him because he wanted me. I told you that. But even before that. Women couldn’t date. Nobody could—I mean most couples were just thrust together, but—but—women weren’t even allowed in the same room alone with the opposite sex because we’d tempt them.”

“I know Effie, it’s okay,” he said softly. “Listen, if you’re scared or nervous or not ready, we don’t have to. But you know that I like you. And I know you like me too. It’s what people do when they like each other. So if you’ll let me, we could go out for dinner or something. Nothing too big or fancy. Just a dinner.”

If she went on a date with Matthew, Effie would be giving a giant middle finger to her past. She would be asserting her agency in making her own choices. She’d be doing something she wasn’t allowed to do for eighteen years of her life. It was an action of justice at its very core – going on a date with a boy because she liked him and found him attractive. She wasn’t even allowed to touch other men besides her husband less than two years ago because of his abusive and totalitarian “sermons”. She remembered back to her begging to her mother not to get married at fourteen and her mother refusing to listen to her. Here was Matthew saying “If you’re scared or nervous or not ready, we don’t have to.”

Effie nodded her head. “I want to go out on a date with you.”

Matthew smiled bashfully. He was sure his cheeks were going to turn red like some sort of teenager. “What kind of food d’you wanna eat?”

***

“How’d you get that shiner, buddy?” Sean asked.

“I’m not gonna talk about it,” Matthew mumbled.

***

“What the hell happened to you?” Johnny asked the moment he saw him in the locker room.

“I’m not gonna talk about it,” Matthew mumbled.

***

Mark Giordano was not happy to see one of his star players show up to the arena with a black eye. But he didn’t want to confront Matthew in a full locker room, so he waited until there was only a few people around – and even then, they were far away enough that he knew they wouldn’t really pick up on the conversation. “What the fuck happened to your eye?” Mark asked, approaching Matthew

“I’m not gonna talk about it,” Matthew mumbled, not even looking at his captain.

Mark furrowed his eyebrows. There had to be something, a clue of some sort, to help him get to the bottom of this. It was nobody’s birthday, so Matthew hadn’t gone out to a bar. He didn’t get into a fight or scuffle on the ice that was too bad, so it couldn’t have been that either. But then Mark remembered. “I thought you spent time with Effie last ni—”

“I said I’m not gonna talk about it!” Matthew hissed as he got up abruptly, stomping away and leaving the room.

Mark took a deep breath in, putting his hands on his hips. Kids. He had to get to the bottom of this. It was in his nature. And as captain, he took his role seriously. He needed to make sure his teammates were okay. The media was definitely going to pick up on the black eye, and they’d need a good cover. He left the locker room, following the path Matthew took, knowing he was probably letting off some steam in an empty trainer’s room. Mark popped his head into two of them before finding Matthew in a third, facing away from the door and taping his stick. Mark knew Matthew heard him walk in and shut the door behind him, but Matthew didn’t turn around.

“Sit,” Mark said sternly.

Matthew took a deep breath in but did as he was told. He wasn’t going to defy Mark – he respected him way too much. And he knew he had out let out the steam by telling someone, and Mark was probably the best person to tell.

Mark sat down casually beside him, hunched over with his elbows on his knees so it looked like they were about to have a casual conversation, just in case anyone else barged in. “Tell me what happened.”

Matthew took a deep breath. “I took her out on a date last night.”

“Effie.”

“Yeah,” Matthew nodded slightly. “And it was nice. We went to a really nice Italian restaurant downtown. She was having so much fun. And she came back to my place and—”

“Please don’t tell me—”

“No no—it wasn’t—no,” he emphasized. “I might be an idiot but I’m not that much of an idiot.”

“You can’t fault me for thinking it.”

Matthew shook his head. “She came back to my place and I guess—well, I guess because the whole thing was so new for her, it was mentally exhausting. She sorta kept saying how tired she was. I told her she could stay over. And it was fine. We were just sleeping in the same bed.”

“And then?”

Matthew grumbled. “And then I moved.”

There was a pause. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

***

“I’m so sorry,” Effie whispered through tears, looking at Matthew’s back as he sat on the edge of the bed, pressing a bag of frozen peas against his face.

The entire night had been lovely. She’d felt so good, and so comfortable, and so normal. The food was delicious. The walk through the park was magical. The thing’s they’d talked about ran through her mind the entire night. They hadn’t stopped talking. They’d gone back to his place. She was tired. He suggested she stay over, knowing Levi wouldn’t mind. She agreed. She borrowed an old t-shirt and shorts. They’d fallen asleep in his bed. And it was lovely.

And then at some point, in the middle of the night, with Effie’s back facing Matthew as he switched positions in his sleep, all she felt was a body pressing up against her slightly. So she did the only thing she needed to do.

She punched him. Hard.

She hit between his eye and nose. A loud “FUCK!” escaped him after the sound of skin hitting skin permeated through his bedroom. Her body seized up and, like countless times before, she jumped out of bed. When she turned around to look down at the bed, Matthew was clutching his eye in pain. It was then that she realized just that – it was Matthew. It wasn’t Abraham.

“M—M—Matthew,” she stuttered out.

“What the fuck, Effie?!” his temper got the best of him.

“M—Matthew—I—I thought—Abraham—I thought you were Abraham—”

With his one clear eye, he looked at her. His chest was heaving. But he didn’t say anything. His shoulders slumped slightly. And without saying anything, he got up out of the bed and walked out of the room.

Effie immediately dropped to her knees on the bed. It’s what she would have done before, to ask for forgiveness for denying her husband satisfaction whenever and wherever he wanted it. But now, in the new world, in her new world, it wasn’t like that. She didn’t have to repent for her sin. It didn’t have to be that way. Abraham wasn’t in bed with her. It was Matthew. Sweet, soft, rough around the edges Matthew.

She started crying. She couldn’t believe that she’d just done that to him. She cried so hard she didn’t even realize he’d come back into the room quietly, with a bag of peas pressed against his face where she’d punched him.

After she apologized, and he said nothing, she crawled over to him, the last of her tears spilling over her cheeks. She lay her hand on his back. “Matthew—”

He flinched at her touch. She recoiled her hand back so quickly she didn’t know she could move that fast. Her heart tightened in her chest, knowing she’d just caused him – and was continuing to cause him – such physical pain, when all he’d given her over the last few months was patience and support.

Matthew heard her sharp intake of breath when he flinched. He didn’t mean to flinch – really – he just didn’t expect her to touch him after she’d just punched his face for brushing up against her. He took a few deep breaths to control his emotions before he looked behind him, seeing her tear-stained face looking at him.

When he saw the lingering fear in her eyes, he couldn’t be angry.

***

Matthew played his hockey game, and he managed to score a goal and record an assist, but after the game, his mind was somewhere else. Effie hadn’t shown up to the game; she wasn’t waiting with Jenna and Geneviève, and Jenna told him she was tired from work which is why she stayed home. He needed to talk to her. Needed to talk to her. But he didn’t know how, and he didn’t know what to do.

Jacob, Geneviève, Levi, and Jenna all left early, leaving him to go home alone. He trudged down the hallway and took the elevator to the parking garage, his feet dragging on the concrete and he walked with his head down, a storm forming in his mind about what he was going to do.

“Matthew?” he heard a soft voice.

He shot his head up. For a second he thought he was hallucinating, or some sort of mirage, but no – Effie was in the parking garage, standing right next to his car. He had no idea how she got in but at this point he didn’t really care. All he cared about was that she was there. He rushed over to her as quickly as his legs would take him. “You’re here,” he said, once he got close to her. Her face was red and blotchy. He hated seeing it like that. It reminded him of the incident in the washroom. “What’s going on?”

“I spent the whole day crying thinking about what I did to you,” she said, her voice sounding like she was on the verge of tears again.

“Effie, I told you it was alri—”

“It’s not alright, Matthew,” she asserted. He’d said it all last night while she was profusely apologizing, but she didn’t believe him. He’d said it up until she was picked up by a taxi to be taken back to her place. He’d begged her to stay. She couldn’t see how she could when she’d just punched him in the face. “I wish you would stop saying that. I hit you. I gave you a black eye. Nothing about that is alright—”

“Effie—”

“I just—I thought you were Abraham because he’d do that a lot and—because I would always try to say no otherwise, and so he had to get me at a point where—”

“EFFIE,” he said loudly, over her frantic voice, and she stopped immediately. They stared at each other for a few moments in pure silence before Effie could feel Matthew’s hands grab hers. He pulled her towards him and wrapped his arms around her tightly, and she nestled her face into his chest and inhaled his scent. A wave of peace flowed throughout her body. He hadn’t asked to touch her, but at the same time, she hadn’t flinched. His touch was so…so pure and so soft – so unlike anything else she’d felt before – that there was no reason to flinch or be scared. His hands wouldn’t hurt her like other hands had. She realized this, inhaling his scent one more time. He wouldn’t hurt her.

When he released the hug, she brought her own hands up to cradle his face. His facial hair was a bit rough against her skin, but it was still the softest she’d ever felt on a man. Maybe it was because he always gave her butterflies. Maybe it was something else. “You’re so soft, Matthew…” her voice was barely above a whisper.

“What’s that mean?” he asked, his voice equally as low. “I’m not soft.”

“Yes, you are. You are for me,” she clarified. “You’re the softest man I’ve ever felt. I don’t want that to change.”

He realized what she meant now. It hit him like a ton of bricks, like most things did with Effie. “It won’t,” he asserted. “You can count on me.”

“I know I can,” she nodded her head.

Matthew couldn’t take it anymore. They couldn’t continue this in the parking garage. “Can I take you back to my place again and we can talk? Properly?”

Effie nodded her head.

***

Matthew let Effie roam in his kitchen while he changed out of his suit into some comfier clothes. When he emerged from his room, Effie was sitting on his couch – just like she had been last night – a glass of water in her hand, sipping from it delicately. He knew she’d end up back on his couch since she had commented last night how big and comfy it was. Matthew didn’t even know where it was from – it came with the apartment. But ever since she’d sat on it and made the comment, he found it comfier.

He walked over to her slowly, and she watched him, not saying a word. Instead of taking a seat beside her, he knelt in front of her, between her legs. He was still almost at eye level with her. Boldly, he took the glass of water out of her hand and set it down on the coffee table. He grabbed her hands in his and rubbed the backs of her hands with his thumb tenderly. “Can I ask you a question?” he asked.

“Of course.”

“What happened that night? After you punched Abraham?”

Effie was silent for a moment. “I…I—I got pregnant.”

The words stabbed Matthew in the heart. He squeezed her hands to let go of some pain, and she squeezed back. “I’m so sorry for what I did, Effie—”

“You have nothing to apologize about,” she said. “You did nothing wrong.”

“But I scared you. And I promised I’d never do that. And it brought up bad memories…”

Effie was shaking her head. “You didn’t scare me. My mind did. My mind thought you were Abraham. But you’re the farthest thing from him, Matthew, and you need to know that. You don’t scare me at all. Not even a bit. Not like Abraham scared me.”

Matthew bit his tongue so he could feel some pain and keep himself from crying. To think about how she was so scared for eighteen years of her life, and now she wasn’t, and part of that was because he was around, helping her feel comfortable…he couldn’t have asked for anything more. He knew he shouldn’t feel guilty for what happened, especially since Effie was telling him what she was telling him, but he knew he would for a while. It’d take him a while to get over it. “When we went on the date…did you—I mean, did you just do it because you felt like you had to? Because you had to experience a first date to be normal or whatever? Or did you actually want to?” he asked.

“I actually wanted to,” she said without hesitation. Matthew could feel his heart beating in his chest. “I wanted to, and with you. Not with another guy and not with, like, Sean or whatever,” she said, and it made Matthew break out into a smirk. “It was you. And even though…I mean—I mean I think we could…and we would…” she tried to formulate her thought into coherent words.

“But I don’t know if we should,” he finished her sentence.

Effie nodded. “At least not yet. I’m not—I’m not mentally there yet. I’m not ready. And it wouldn’t be fair to bring you along so closely with something I know I’m not ready for. There’s so much I still need to learn…about, well…everything.”

Matthew nodded his head. He understood completely. “You know that I never expected anything, right?” he asked.

“Oh, of course not,” she said like it was the obscenest idea in the world. She knew Matthew would never expect that of her. “I think what’ll be good is you going home during the summer, and me starting my course in June…and by the time you come back in September, you might even see a brand new me.”

Matthew couldn’t help but smile at that. He rubbed the backs of her hands with his thumbs again. “You’re already a brand new person, Effie. When I come back you’ll just be wiser. Do you promise to message me on Instagram about everything you learn and the stuff you experience?”

Effie nodded her head, a smile adorning her face now. “Matthew?” she asked after a moment of silence.

This time, he looked up at her. He knew what was coming.

This time, she didn’t need to stand on her tip-toes. All she had to do was lean forward and kiss him.

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storiesforallfandoms · 3 years

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worst first ~ machine gun kelly

word count: 1649

request?: yes!

“MGK and his girlfriend reader are doing worst first podcast with brittany furlan(lee) and there all cute. Sorry if this one is weird. Love your writings <3″

description: in which they go on a friend’s podcast to talk about their worst first experiences

pairing: machine gun kelly x female!reader

warnings: swearing

masterlist (one, two)

Sharing my most embarrassing and personal stories on a podcast for the world to hear was definitely not how I expected to be spending my Monday afternoon. But there I was, sat in front of a microphone next to my boyfriend, Colson, across from our friend, Brittany.

Brittany had invited us on to her podcast, Worst First, where the point was basically to talk about your worst moments in life. I was a pretty private person, so I was a bit skeptical about going on the podcast, but I had trouble saying no to Colson’s blue, puppy dog eyes.

“Have you guys ever talked about your worst first relationship stories?” she asked us.

“I don’t think I’ve told Colson all of mine,” I admitted.

“I don’t think I have either,” Colson agreed. “I feel like we definitely have a lot of stories that we just haven’t gotten around to sharing yet.”

“What’s some you have shared?” Brittany asked. “Like...okay, starting off easy, what is your worst first ‘I love you’ story?”

“A girl I was hooking up with said it to me during sex once,” Colson responded almost immediately.

Brittany and I laughed at his quick response. “What, like a one night stand?”

“No, it had been a few times,” Colson explained. “It was this girl, for lack of better words she was a groupie. She followed me to basically every American show I performed and would track me down at the after parties. It was long before I even met (Y/N), so I decided ‘fuck it’ and slept with her a few times. The last time, we were...you know...doing the deed, and she suddenly tells me she loves me.”

Even though I had heard this story before, I couldn’t help but snicker as I heard him tell us again. “That will never not be funny to me.”

“What happened to the poor girl?” Brittany asked.

“Well, me - having some brain cells - went to her hotel room instead of bringing her to mine. So I just got up and left. Never saw her again. I’m pretty sure we have each other blocked on social media and everything.”

“None of my stories will ever measure up to Colson's,” I said. “I’m just an actress, I’m not a world famous rockstar with groupies and shit.”

“What’s your worst first ‘I love you’ then?” Brittany asked me.

“My ex before Colson, I planned this special date where I cooked us dinner, dressed up all fancy, bought lingerie to surprise him with and all. I told him I loved him for the first time over dinner and he broke up with me basically immediately afterwards, then left.”

“That’s cold!”

“It’s not as good as having a groupie tell you she loves you during sex.”

“You have plenty of interesting stories,” Colson said. “Your worst first date story is my favorite.”

Of course it was, because it was probably my most embarrassing story ever. I was going to kill him for bringing it up right now.

“What’s your worst first date story?” Brittany asked, leaning forward in her seat with her head resting on her hand.

I sighed, slightly annoyed that the story was brought up. “It was one of my first real dates. I was like...maybe 16 or 17, on the cusp of my fame so I wasn’t being followed by paparazzi or anything, luckily. This guy I had met about a month before the date had asked me out to this fancy restaurant on a first date, and I was so excited. I went and bought a new dress, did my hair and makeup, even shaved basically every inch of my body. I was so excited, and then the date came and...he was just...boring.”

Colson was covering his mouth to keep back his laughs and giggles, knowing what was about to come.

“We didn’t talk for the first 20 minutes of the date,” I continued. “I tried, but he just couldn’t keep a conversation. It took ordering our food for him to finally talk. Even then, he just talked about stuff I didn’t understand because he was an athlete and he counted his carbs to make sure he loaded them right, or whatever. Stupid shit.”

Brittany was absolutely engulfed in my story. “What did you do?”

“Well, I tried my best to stay throughout the whole date. I wanted to just up and leave so many times, but I figured that would be rude and, being young and naïve, I knew I didn’t want to be rude. So I toughed it out for as long as I could. It wasn’t until we had gotten our first course and he talked about himself for roughly another 20 minutes that I finally had enough and knew I couldn’t stay. So, I politely excused myself to the bathroom, where I found myself very fortunate to find that there was a window just above the toilet that was big enough that my small stature could wiggle out of it.”

I had Brittany absolutely hooked. She was literally on the edge of her seat, her eyes staring me down as I continued to tell my story. I felt my heartbeat picking up as I neared the most embarrassing part of my already awful date story. I wanted to end it there, to insist that was the worst part of the date, but I knew Colson wasn’t going to allow that.

“Unfortunately for me, the window wasn’t quite big enough for me to get through without some problems. So, I got up onto the toilet, I started to hoist myself out of the window, when suddenly my dress caught onto the latch to lock and unlock the window. I didn’t realize until too late, so I hurtle myself out of the window only to hear the fabric of my dress RIP loudly behind me. When I looked down, I had tore basically the bottom half of my super expensive dress off, which left me in just my skin colored tights with the underwear I had worn for the occasion being showed off for the world to me. To make matters worse, I didn’t bring my jacket to be able to cover myself up with.”

Colson could not contain his laughter any longer and finally began to laugh so hard that I could see tears forming in his eyes. Brittany covered her mouth in shock, but I could tell by the shaking of her shoulders that she was laughing, too.

“What did you do then?” she asked once she had composed herself enough to speak.

“I got what fabric I could reach and covered myself up the best I could. Borrowed a strangers cell to call my mom to come get me. I’ll tell you, the looks I got from that stranger and from the people around me were...interesting, to say the least. My mom got there just as the guy was exiting the restaurant, I guess finally realizing I had bailed on our botched date. I was so glad he never saw me like that. I’d probably be the subject of all his stories until the end of his days if I were. And I’m so glad I wasn’t famous enough to be tailed by paparazzi then or else my career would’ve been ruined before it even started.”

I could feel my face burning up with embarrassment as Colson and Brittany continued to laugh. It was truly the worst moment in my life, and I had yet to come to a point where I could look back and laugh at it. I knew it was such a hilarious story, but, until I could also find it that funny, I hated sharing it with anyone.

I got pretty quiet for the rest of our appearance. I only answered some questions from Brittany and told another story or two before the show finally ended. Brittany thanked us for being her guests that week and hugged us both, giving me an additional squeeze as she did so. I guess she felt a little sorry for me after I shared my story.

The ride back to Colson’s place started off quiet, before Colson finally spoke. “Are you mad at me?”

I looked up at him. “What? Of course not. Why would I be?”

“I made you tell that story.”

“You didn’t make me tell it. I could’ve said no.”

“But we both know Brittany and I would’ve begged you to tell it if you didn’t.”

He had a point. There was no way I was getting out of telling that first date story after Colson brought it up.

“I knew it embarrassed you, but I didn’t know how much until you got quiet around the end there. I feel like such a sack of shit for even bringing it up.’

I reached across to give his thigh a reassuring squeeze. “Don’t stress it too much, babe. It is a super embarrassing story, but it’s one of my better ones. I always said I’d write about it eventually when I got famous enough to write a memoir.”

Colson chuckled at my joke and took my hand in his. He raised it to his lips, his eyes still on the road, as his lips brushed against my knuckles.

“We should’ve told the story about our first date,” I said, watching Colson’s face for a reaction. I giggled when I got the one I wanted: Colson’s face cringing at the memory.

“No way. I want to forget that first first date ever happened. Our second date is the first date, we agreed on that.”

I giggled and continued to tease him about it as we pulled into his driveway, which earned me a seat on Colson’s lap once he put the car in park, and his long fingers tickling my sides until I was crying from laughter.

#machine gun kelly #machine gun kelly imagine #machine gun kelly x reader #colson baker #colson baker imagine #colson baker x reader #mgk #imagine #one shot #request #fanfiction #fanfic #fandom

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writingsbychlo · 4 years

Text

let me down slow (02)

word count; 9652

summary; stiles once again ditches you, and mitch ditches his own plans to cheer you up.

notes; y’all had such amazing reactions to the first part, you picked up one every tiny little detail about their relationship that I put in, so I really hope you enjoy this part, and all the little things that make them up, too!

warnings; smut, thigh-riding, dry humping, slight spit play, that’s about it.

In a bid to make up for the failed movie night last Friday, Stiles had absolutely promised to be there for this week’s. In a bid to ensure you believed him, he’d offered to buy the pizza himself this time, and was even letting you choose what it was that you both had. He’d loaded up movies and set up drinks and even dragged down the spare blankets and cushions from the upstairs cupboard to make the couch look more like a pit of pure comfort than a couch.

It was impressive, actually, and he had sent you a series of pictures as he constructed it, promising that he was here to stay with you, his pyjama pants already on, and a raggy old shirt that he wouldn't dare go out in, and so you were making your way up the front-drive eagerly once again, the door flying open before you’d even had to knock.

He was beaming at you, flannel flapping around him as he reached out to pull you into him, arms around your shoulders to squeeze you into his body and crush the air right out of your lungs in a breathless laugh as you hugged him back. Your arms circled his waist, hugging him just as tightly, before poking lightly at his sides in the spots that you knew he was ticklish in, making him yelp and try and jerk away from you, glaring falsely as you finally released him. Kicking the door shut behind yourself, you hung up the light coat you’d wrapped yourself in up in on the hooks fastened to the wall, kicking off your shoes and following him through into the rest of the house.

He was practically bouncing with each step, spilling over with information about the movies he'd chosen, and speaking even faster than usual as he guided you through to the kitchen to hand you his phone, the pizza ordering app already pulled up on the screen, and Mitch was lurking around behind the counter, the fridge door open as he shuffled through the contents, leaning around the door and offering you a smile as he saw you. Stepping out and bringing the butter with him, he dropped it down onto the counter beside whatever it was he was going to make, pulling his phone from his back pocket and bringing up a recipe.

The room looked even better in person, the lights had all been flicked off to give the large flatscreen a cinema-style appearance, drinking glasses and bottles of pop sitting out in preparation, condensation forming on the bottles from the coolness within, and a stack of movies beside the TV that the pair of you had spent all week choosing for this event.

The boy at your side was talking your ear off, and you slowly constructed an online shopping basket full of food that you could share between the two of you; stuffing yourselves full of the greasy fast food while hanging out with your best friend was exactly how everyone should spend their Friday nights, in your opinion.

You had even worn your comfiest clothes, an old pair of black legging and the biggest jumper you had, your face clear of makeup and a scrunchie on your wrist in case you decided to tie it up later, most likely when the food arrived. You handed the device back to Stiles so that he could make his own food choices, the boy following you through to the living room as you poured yourself a drink, his fingers tapping against his thigh and his teeth biting at his lower lip, and you watched him with a raised brow, but he was either ignoring your stare or he didn’t notice it, because he purposefully avoided your gaze.

“Why are you so jittery, Sti? Did you take your Adderall today?”

“Yes, I took my Adderall today, thank you very much.” He stuck his tongue out at you playfully, the scowl on his face having no heat to it as he moved past you to make his own drink, and he was twitching so much he could barely hold the bottle still. “I’m just excited.”

“For movie night?”

“Yes, for movie night.” He confirmed, but avoided your eye, and you let out a sigh, glancing up through the open doorway to try and catch Mitch’s eye, but he was also ensuring he wasn’t looking at you, busing himself with cutting overly precise cubes of butter and dropping them into the pan over the hob.

“No, you’re never this weird about movie night. You’re all anxious, I can practically smell it.” You took a seat beside him, his body facing the TV as yours faced him, and he glanced at you out of the corner of his eye, lips flicking up in a small smile. “Just tell me what’s up, we can figure it out together.”

“Nothing! I promise nothing is up. Nothing that needs figuring out, or anything like that. Y’know, just got a call before but it’s totally fine now, nothing bad! I can turn my phone off and we can watch movies and we will have an awesome night! Promise!” His words spilt out from his mouth so quickly that you didn’t even have a chance to properly process them, but you caught a few keywords, enough to make your heart sink in your chest as you leaned back into the cushions, and the roles were reversed.

Now, you were avoiding his eye, and he was trying his best to reassure you that it was okay, but everything about his twitchy behaviour and erratically strung together sentences let you know that it was not okay. “Who called, Stiles?”

“Nobody important.”

“Who?”

He sighed, and you finally met his gaze, a slightly saddened look on his face as he shrugged a little. “Lyds.”

You felt your heart clench a little in your chest, but offered him a little smile instead, shrugging your shoulders. “What did she need?”

“She had an argument with Jackson, and wanted some company and someone to talk to, but I told her I was busy tonight, and that I’d call her back later, or tomorrow morning, so don’t even worry about it, w-”

“You should go.” With a sigh, you cut him off, placing your hand over the top of his and squeezing in comfort, both for him and yourself.

“Really?”

“Yeah, she needs you more than I do. We’ll do a movie night another night, or whatever.” You waved your hand, dismissing it like it wasn’t crushing you to say the words to him, and like it didn’t break you a little more at the way his face lit up like he’d felt trapped being here with you, like he was gaining freedom. “You should totally go, it’s fine.”

He jumped up to his feet, a wide smile on his face as he looked at you, mumbling his ‘thank-yous’ under his breath as he wiped sweaty palms on his pyjama bottoms, before looking down at himself and racing away upstairs to get changed. Your body slumped down into the couch, and the shuffling behind you caught your attention, your head turning so that you could look at the man who was leaning against the post in the doorway, a look on his face that you couldn't decipher.

“Why did you do that?” He nodded his head towards the stairs his brother had disappeared up only seconds prior, the familiar crashes and thumps of his presence sounding out as you shrugged.

“I want him to want to be here with me. You should have seen how much happier he looked when I told him he could go. I didn’t want him to have to stay when he’d rather be somewhere else.” You stood up yourself, wrapping your arms a little tighter around yourself as he came back down the stairs. He had a more presentable outfit on, the usual khakis and flannel shirt buttoned up, running a hand through his hair as the other jingled his car keys.

“You’re the best, thank you so much.” He pressed a kiss to your cheek, before making his way to the front door in a dizzying flurry of movement. “We will have a movie night, I promise!”

With that, the door was slamming shut, the jeep starting up only seconds later, and you gaped at the spot he’d been in, leaving you in a tense silence with Mitch, who shuffled from one foot to the other, before his eyes finally met yours. You gave him a watery smile, feeling the tears well up in your eyes, and his whole body seemed to deflate, before he was crossing the room and pulling you into his arms before the first cry had even left your mouth, muffling it as he let you press your face into his shoulder.

One of his hands came up to cup the back of your head, fingers slipping into your hair to rub the pads over your scalp soothingly, his cheek pressing to the top of your head as the other arm wrapped securely around your waist, holding you to him as tightly as he possibly could with your hands crushed between your bodies, your fingers gripping at the cotton of his shirt and your eyes squeezing shut, your body shaking with each wracking sob you tried to suppress. He shushed you quietly, rubbing his hand up and down you back carefully and playing with your hair, distracting you enough for you to calm the shaking of your body and the racing of your heart.

“He didn’t even offer me a ride home!”

“I know, kitten.” He pressed a kiss to your temple, shifting you when your knees buckled a little, letting you lean on him further, his hand slipping down to grip at your hips and take the weight of your body to keep you standing.

“He didn’t care! He was gone so fast, he didn’t even ask me what I was going to do! He didn’t even try and fight it, or insist he should stay! He just.. just left!” It only made you cry harder, pressing into him further and shifting to press your face into his neck, that patch of his shirt damp from your tears, but you smoothed out your fingers until your hands were sitting flat on his chest, using the steady thump of his own heart under your hand to calm yourself.

“I know, I know.” He mumbled, shushing you lowly on a hum, and holding you without question until you detached yourself from him.

Your cheeks were stinging and sore, eyes red and throat raw, but he just cupped your face, smoothing his thumbs over the irritated and splotchy patches. You felt weak, your body felt like it was sagging in on itself, and so you stepped away, wiping at your eyes and sitting back down on the couch, laying out along the length of it and letting out a long and slow sigh. He moved across the room, inspecting the DVD stack you’d built with your friend.

“You know, I for one have never seen-” He picked up the one on the top, his face scrunching up a little as he looked at it, before giving you a deadpan look with a hint of amusement, and dropping it back into the stack. “I have seen Star Wars, it would be impossible not to, being related to Stiles.”

He shuffled through them, grinning up at you when he heard you let out a soft laugh at his words, winking in your direction. “I think Batman is in there, too, and one of the Avenges movies.”

“Well, I’ve seen all of those, but I will happily rewatch them with you.” He came to stand beside you, and you propped yourself up on your hands, hopefulness once again flooding your veins as he spoke. “Or we can just go on Netflix, and find something neither of us has ever seen before.”

“Are you asking me if I want to Netflix and chill with you, Mitch?”

He smirked at your words, leaning in close enough for you to press your foreheads together, a darker chuckle sounding from him. “We can get to that later, kitten.” His lips brushed the tip of your nose as he pulled back. “You were promised a movie night, and you’re gonna’ get one. I made some popcorn, and we can eat all the snacks Stiles bought as revenge. Sound good?”

“Sounds really good, actually.” You watched him for a second, searching his eyes and his face for a sign that he was going to leave you too, like he was going to ditch you just as Stiles had, but he held his hands out to you to pull you back up to your feet. “You don’t have anything else to do on a Friday night?”

“I was going to facetime some friends from college later, but nothing important, no. Besides, a movie night would be fun, it’s been a while since I had time to binge-watch anything, and I have a few series’ in mind that we could try.” He inched the pair of you to the kitchen, nodding his head in the direction of the pan on the stove. “Why don’t you get our popcorn sorted and load up whatever you want to watch, and I’ll go put something more comfortable than jeans on, and we can watch?”

“Cool.”

He shook his head, a fond laugh forming on his lips as he watched you back away from him, before you were spinning on your heel, and listening to him set off up the stairs, searching the cupboards for a bowl big enough to put it all in. Locating the blue patterned one at the very back, you produced it with a proud huff and removed the cover from the pan, salty and buttery steam filling up into the air as you tipped the heated kernels into the dish.

Taking it with you, you set off into the living room, bringing a spare glass for Mitch to use and swapping it with the still full and fizzing drink Stiles had made for himself, rolling your eyes at the waste as it was tipped down the sink and left abandoned in the kitchen. You had barely finished it all up before the man was padding back into the room, heat crawling at your cheeks as you looked at him, scoffing a little under your breath.

“You don’t have a shirt on.”

“Is that a problem?” He was offering you a smirk like he already knew the answer to your question, and so you didn’t bother replying. Mitch collapsed back on the couch, stretched out along the entire length as you grabbed the remotes, turning on the TV, and perching yourself on the edge of the cushion mound that Stiles had built for the night as you waited for the device to power up so you could log into the app. “Are you going to sit down there all night? ‘Cause you’re blocking half the screen.”

He had the bowl of popcorn tucked under his arm when you turned to glare at him, and he was half laying down, half sitting up, but smirking widely and pushing a handful of the salty treat into his mouth, and you made your way over to him, settling comfortably into his warmth, and sitting up with your legs crossed, sorting through the accounts to select Mitch’s, and he hummed happily as you did, chewing his food and wrapping an arm around your waist.

You were adjusted, pulled back into his body as he moved the bowl to sit in front of you, and you scrolled through the things he had added to his list as he moved behind you, pouring himself a drink and moving both yours and his to within reaching distance of your position, pulling the snacks over too and setting them up around you bodies until it was a clear little space that the two of you were inhabiting, everything within arms reach.

“You want to watch That 70’s Show?”

“Yeah, thought it looked pretty funny but Katrina didn’t want to, so we watched some British thing instead.” You hummed clicking it open and snuggling down a little, getting yourself comfortable and reaching for the popcorn.

“It's fucking hilarious, you’re going to love it.”

It took you two whole episodes for you to finish your snacks, and a third for you to actually start feeling better. Cuddling wasn’t exactly something you were used to. Sure, you had very tactile friends, but cuddling was new to you. Mitch seemed entirely settled with it, he hadn't shifted once, his arm slung over your waist and his chin sitting on your shoulder as he watched the screen, and yet he only ever smirked at your mumbled apologies each time you shifted, or needed to change positions, and he happily obliged, lifting his arm for you to move before settling down.

The popcorn bowl was empty, and so were all the snack wrappers, and the bottles of pop were on their way out too, and by the end of the fourth little episode, you were beginning to feel better. There was just something about Michael Kelso’s innate and adorable stupidity that lifted your mood no matter what.

You were actually comfortable now, and feeling more settled, your back pressed up to his chest and the warmth of his body washing over you, his fingers resting on your stomach, drawing patterns absentmindedly, and you were certain that if you were allowed to cuddle with your fuck buddy, then you could hold his hand. Settling your hand over the top of his, his motions paused for a second, before he was lifting his hand out from under your own and you panicked for a moment, stiffening only slightly, before his hand closed over the top of yours and laced your fingers together, thumb rubbing at your hand as he snorted at yet another joke on-screen.

“Have you ever got high?”

He twisted to look at you, letting you roll onto your back to peer up at him, your connected hands now sitting up above you as your fingers played together, and his brows raised a little, your attention on the screen gone as you focused on one another instead, leaving the gang to smoke in Eric Foreman's basement. “Yeah.”

“Really?”

His neutral expression pulled up into a sly grin, his teeth flashed to you as he nodded, licking over his lips. “Yeah, kind of like a college rite of passage, I guess. I’m not really a fan, I don’t like how it makes me feel afterwards.”

“What’s it like?”

He shrugged, moving to lean over you a little, his mouth opening and closing a couple of times as he tried to work out how to answer you. “It’s different for everyone, I think, but for me I didn’t really feel all that different when I smoked, just more relaxed, I guess? But when I came down, I always really hit rock bottom. Just got depressed, and started overthinking and feeling shitty, so I’d throw myself into my studies and workout for a couple of hours to try and make that feeling go away, which meant I had a headache and I was all sore in the morning, and tired as fuck, and I still felt like shit.”

“That sounds like it fucking sucks.”

“Eh, everyone is different.” He lay down a little more, taking his hand from your own when you rolled over to face him, and he settled it back over your waist, his hand sitting on your lower back now. “I think it would work for some people, like Stiles, for example. He'd probably do great from it, but there’s no way anyone around here is going to sell weed to the Sheriff’s kid, so he would have to wait to get to college.”

You snorted, thinking about your best friend being stoned out of his head, and still being the same clumsy mess he was now.

“What makes you ask?”

“Nothing really, I was just thinking about it because it was on the screen.” You glanced back to the screen, watching for a second as a few of the characters moved around, and you tried to pick back up on the plot you’d missed, your lips flicking up at the sides with one of the jokes, but you inevitably felt your gaze going back to Mitch. His eyes were glued on the screen once again, the reflections in the dark making the honey brown colour look as though it was speckled with red, blues, and greens, all the colours that came up.

He was similar in his looks to his brother, the moles and the cute nose and the eyes, but he was also entirely different in a way that made them seem like opposites. Mitch had longer hair, in a style that you knew would look wrong on Stiles but just looked so right on him, and he had a jaw covered in dark smatterings of stubble that were fully formed, not patchy and childlike but thick and grown, and his features were sharper.

The stress of being the eldest son of the sheriff, and watching his mother die, and trying to care for a hyperactive nuisance like Stiles during his teenage years had taken a toll on him, but he was only twenty and already seemed like he’d seen and experienced everything there was in the world, and he wore that knowledge and wisdom like a crown.

“Stop staring at me, you weirdo.”

You scoffed out a little laugh under your breath, and he glanced down at you as you rested a hand on his cheek, pulling his attention away from the screen and down to you as his mouth slotted against your own with perfect accuracy. His fingers tightened on your waist as he sighed into your mouth, pressing his lips to yours in slow movements that were just as relaxed as you were finally feeling.

There was no rush, or tension, and you certainly didn’t feel the need to speed anything along. Stiles would be out for hours yet with Lydia, and the sheriff was on yet another night shift, and so you didn’t have to feel anything but pure bliss as Mitch rolled you both onto your sides, pulling one of your legs up onto his hips as you settled one hand on his shoulder and the other into his hair, nails scraping at his scalp the same soothing way he’d done for you only a couple of hours prior.

You could feel the press of his stubble into your skin, and the slight roughness of his lips against your smooth ones, and the way your skin tingled each time he tipped his head and moved his mouth in a different direction, the drag of his lips against yours in an entirely new way sending sparks along your body. Wrapping a foot around his leg, you pulled your body in a little closer to him, the arm that had been sitting on your waist was slipping down further and further, until he was taking a handful of your ass and squeezing so roughly you let out a sound between a squeak and a moan into his mouth.

You felt the way he reacted to the sound, the way he pushed in a little closer to you, and took the chance at the parting of your lips to deepen the kisses, your tongues tangling as innocent kisses became a needy makeout, your fingers tightening into fistfuls of his hair instead of soothing through the locks, your hips rolling in time or meet his as you ground down onto his thigh when he lifted it to press better between your legs.

Your calm heart rate had shot through the roof, each time you pulled back from desperate breaths before you were diving back into one another's mouths, tongues tangling visibly between your mouths as he growled a little every time you pressed further into him, and you whimpered each time he tilted his leg a little, sending a burst of energy and pleasure along your nerves, until you could feel it all the way in the tips of your fingers and toes.

When the burn for oxygen between gasping breaths became too much, you pulled back, biting on your slightly swollen lower lip as you rocked your body down against his leg, the tent in his pants pressing into your hips each time he moved, and you felt like the heat in the room was getting way too high to be allowed, choosing instead to push him back until he was laying on his back, his eyes wide as he watched you move, peeling your jumper up over your head and throwing it away to the side, taking a seat across his lap instead of thigh. Pressing your core down against his, the layers of fabric did nothing to dull the pleasure either of you felt from the pressure, sounds of bliss let out in unison, harmonising in the air.

“Fuck, kitten.”

You grinned, thriving on the fact that you could make the man below you feel so good, and you reached behind yourself to unclip the loose bra you’d put on, tossing that away too. You felt yourself shake, a tremor running along your spine from the look he gave you as your breasts fell free before his eyes, and the thought flashed across your mind that this was the first time he’d ever actually seen your tits, without a shirt or bra in the way.

Propping himself up on his hands, he dipped his head to take one of your nipples between his lips, holding himself firm as you rocked your bodies together, grinding yourself down onto his cock as he grew to be solid beneath you. Your own hands were on his shoulders, one coming up to cup the back of his head as you sobbed out at the way his mouth felt as he lapped at your tits, sucking darkening marks into the plump flesh and teasing the taut buds with his tongue and teeth.

The electricity coursing through your body was delectable, and when he was satisfied that he’d left your chest in enough of a state, for now, he tipped his head up to find your lips once again.

“Jesus, sweetheart, you’re going to be the death of me.”

Letting his body collapse back onto the couch, you followed after him, propping yourself up above him with hands on the cushions either side of his head, his legs coming up to bend behind you to give him the ability to raise his hips up to meet you with each thrust, and you whimpered as his covered cock collided with your clit perfectly each time. “Oh, fucking hell, Mitch!”

He grinned, his hands coming up to find your waist and guide you in rotating your hips each time he pushed up into you, the drag of material over you sodden core making a cry leave you as you shot over into a climax just from the stimulation, and he continued to ride you through it, until you were spent and trembling above him, and his legs dropped down as he allowed you to fall into his lap, hands bunched up in the blankets beside his body as you came down from your high.

“You know, it occurs to me, you’re too old to be dry humping on a couch like a highschooler. I can get away with it for another few weeks, at least until graduation.”

You were breathless and your voice was unsteady, but he caught your words and let out a laugh upon processing them, his eyes sparkling as you looked up to him, and he shook his head fondly, leaning up to press a kiss to your lips. You returned it, pressing a few pecks to his lips, before pushing yourself up on shaky arms, and letting out a yelp when you accidentally dragged you overstimulated clit across his still prominent erection, which earned you a cheeky smirk from the man below you as he folded his arms under his head, making his arms and chest flex as a by-product.

Your mouth went dry at the sight, and you ran your fingers lightly over the prominent veins in his forearms, all the way up to where they disappeared at his biceps, before you were travelling along to his chest, digging your nails in a little, and he hissed at the contact, biting down on his lip, the honey colour switching to a darker whiskey shade, pupils widening, and the background noise around you both faded away leaving just the two of you there, in your own little world. “I want to try something.”

“Oh, you do?” He teased, and you rolled your eyes a little, his hands smoothing along your arms to sit on your wrist, wrapping around them gently as he urged you on. “What might that be?”

“I want to suck your cock.”

The breath was forced from his lungs as he stared up at you, wide eyes and parted lips, before he was letting out a string of curses under his breath. “You’ve never done that before?”

“My experiences before you are limited to pretty much how our first time went.”

“Sloppy, drunk sex that was pretty subpar, all things considered?” You nodded in response, and he hummed under his breath. He seemed to be thinking about it for a minute, his brows furrowing, before he was bringing up a hand to cup your jaw and running his thumb over your lips, slipping it into your mouth carefully and letting you suck on the digit as he mulled it over. “I got off the other night just thinking about fucking your pretty little mouth, you know.”

“You did?”

Your words were muffled around the finger in your mouth, and he pressed the pad of his thumb into you tongue a little, you lips sealing around the digits once again, sucking it lightly and swirling the wet article to soak his skin, lapping and teasing as his eyes glossed over and went half-lidded. “Yeah, I did. You want me to tell you about it?”

You nodded around the digit, and he grinned up at you lazily, pulling out his thumb, and replacing it with two long fingers instead, letting out a deep sound of satisfaction when you took them both without complaint.

“I was thinking about your lips, and your eyes. You have this cute little innocent look in your eyes but I get to know that you have a dirty mouth. I thought about you licking at my cock, before taking it all.” You squeezed your legs a little around him on an instinctual wish to clamp your thighs together, and his other hand came to sit on your thigh, squeezing it roughly as he acknowledged the effect his words had on you. “Thought about letting you choke on my cock, until there were tears in your eyes, and you were swallowing everything I gave you, like the good girl I know you can be. You’d be good for me, wouldn't you, kitten?”

He pulled out wet fingers from your mouth, and you took a raspy breath, strings of saliva snapping as he pulled the digits away from your mouth, and you nodded at him, leaning down closer to him, pressing kisses to his lips and cheeks, along his jaw until you were sucking at the base of his neck, and he was stretching his head back for you. “I’d be so good for you, I promise.”

“I know you would.” He stretched the skin out a little further, and you licked at the patch you’d been working on, the salty taste of his skin much like that of the popcorn taste that had lingered in his mouth during your kisses, and you sealed your lips around that particular spot, teasing it with your lips and teeth. “You can leave a mark, I don’t mind. Mark me as yours, kitten, that’s okay.”

You let out a muffled sound against his skin as he gave you permission for the action you’d been so wanting to complete, and he let out a shaky breath as you worked until the skin was flourishing with angry red and splotching with hints of a darker colour already.

“Gonna’ suck my cock, sweetheart?”

“Yeah.. yeah I am.” You whispered, pressing wet kisses along his skin as you lower yourself down along his body, the same way he had done when he’d gone down on you a few days before, and he shuffled his hips up when you tapped at his hips, the pants already sitting low were tugged down to his thighs swiftly, taking his boxers too, and his cock sprang up before your face, dribbling precum in shiny trails along his throbbing flesh, a breathy noise leaving him as he was freed from the confines of his underwear.

One hand came down to lace into your hair, quickly followed by the second as he pulled the strands up and into a makeshift ponytail, trying to let you take it at your own pace, despite the way his thighs and fingers were twitching to take control. You pulled back, just enough to reach your wrist to try and find your scrunchie, but found both arms bare, and the feel of fabric weaving into your hair, Mitch navigating the bundle easily into the elastic, and you gaped at his dark smirk, never even having known when he’d taken the item from you.

“Damn, Mitch..”

“I’m smooth like that.” He replied on a mumble, voice shaking just a little, before his eyes were fluttering shut, his head resting back in the pillows of the couch behind him. Leaning in, you dragged your tongue along his length, lapping at the head and clearing the arousal that had already gathered at the tip, and he gripped at the bundle of hair he had created, letting out a deep and throaty sound that vaguely resembled your name as you sealed your lips around his tip.

His thighs clenched, body shaking a little as you shifted, giving yourself a moment to grow accustomed to the heavy weight of his cock sitting on your tongue, before you were once again moving. He was holding himself back surprisingly well, fingers pulling at your hair as he began to guide your head in gentle bobs, praises falling from his lips under his breath, confirming you in your movements and giving you confidence in what you were doing.

Hollowing your cheeks a little, he released one hand from your head, throwing it up to grip the cushion beside his face with a cry, his entire body shaking as you sunk as far down as you could, before you were gagging, pulling back a little bit, not missing the high-pitched noise he made. Glancing up at him through your lashes, you found his head tipped back into the pillows, a thin layer of sweat covering his skin. He looked incredible, red and swollen lips parted as he panted for breath, letting you take him apart with your mouth - even if you didn’t know what you were doing all that well - and his hips bucking occasionally to chase you when you pulled back to focus on his tip in a way that made his core clench so tight you could see the firmness of the rigid muscles underneath.

Pulling away from his cock, you use the slick mixture of spit and precum that was covering his skin to pump him quickly, and he fucked up into your hand, grunting each time you swiped your thumb under or across the head, finding all the sensitive patches that drove him wild. You were pressing kisses to him, sucking another hickie into the skin of his hip when he pulled you up, uncaring of the wet marks left on his skin as he used his tight grip on a handful of your hair to navigate you up until he could press his mouth to your own in a frenzied kiss.

It was a clash of tongues and teeth, and you were gasping into his mouth for air every time, it felt like every hot kiss he gave you was sucking the air straight from your lungs, you head spinning with the urgency of it as you pressed back into him, kissing him with everything you had until the two of you were forced apart, panting and pressing your foreheads together.

“What’s wrong? No good?”

“No, you were fucking incredible, sweetheart. If you didn’t stop, I definitely would have cum, and I would very much like to be inside of you when I cum tonight.” He nudged the tip of his nose against your own, smiling happily when you let out a sweet whisper of his name, before you were nodding, and pecking his lips a couple of times quickly. “You want that?”

“Yeah, I do. I really do.”

“Mm, me too.” He pushed you up a little, the cool air sweeping in between you as your bodies separated momentarily like a refreshing wake up, your mind clearing a little, and you caught sight of yourself in the reflection of the TV that had turned itself off due to inactivity a while ago, and you looked as thoroughly fucked up as he did, your lips twisting in a subtle grin at the sight of you both. “Condom. We need a condom.”

“Shit, right, want me to get it?”

“You remember where they are?” You nodded, hopping up from the couch as he grinned, placing a loud slap to your ass as you went, and you glowered over your shoulder.

“Stop slapping my ass every time I walk away from you!”

“Fine, I’ll start slapping your ass when you’re here.” He retorted, and you stuck your tongue out at him, rubbing lightly at the stinging patch as you made your way up the stairs, his laugh fading into the background. Reaching his room, you noted the way it was still clean and tidy, the same way it had been, the covers a little messy where he’d been sitting on them earlier, but still entirely neater and more coordinated than Stiles’. Opening the drawer, you tipped one out, swiping up the blue foil packet, before making you way back down to the man waiting for you.

He was pumping his cock slowly when you reached the room, pants discarded to leave him entirely naked. His head was tilted back to lay along the back of the couch, and he smirked at you, eyes locked with yours as he picked up the pace of his hand moving along his shaft, dragging his gaze along your body as you moved towards him, before fixing his sights on the way your tits bounced with each step.

“God, you’re so fucking beautiful.”

“Shut up, you sweet talker.” He simply flashed white teeth at you in a smile, reaching out for the packet in your hand and tearing the top off with his teeth, rolling the condom onto his length in a way that should not have been as attractive as it was, but maybe it wasn’t the action, but simply the man that had done it. Each time he moved his fist up or down his cock, his fingers would flex, his wrist moving and the veins in his arm standing out as his muscles flexed with the simple moves, and yet it had your mouth dry and mind empty just watching him.

“On your knees, hands on the back of the couch. You better hold on, kitten, because I want to hear you screaming my name, tonight.”

“Do you even hear yourself sometimes? Do you know how fucking hot you are, or does that just happen?” You muttered, shaking your head at him despite his smile, and you wiggled your leggings and panties down your legs, dropping them to the floor before passing him by to climb onto the couch.

“It just happens when I’m around pretty girls who are ready to fuck.” You didn’t bother responding, but leaned over a little more, shaking your ass at him in order to tempt him forwards after you’d parted your knees, and he ran two fingers through your folds teasingly, letting out a satisfied and aroused noise as he felt the wetness that had accumulated there. “Fuck, you’re dripping for me.”

“Yeah, well, it just happens when I’m around hot guys who are ready to fuck.”

Your retort was met with a loud slap to your ass, the skin flaming up with a delicious burn, a large hand soothing the mark as he dragged his teeth over your shoulder in a light bite, his hair tickling your cheek as you turned to look back at him. “I like it when you get a little bit sassy with me, kitten. Makes it so much more fun.”

“It would be even more fun if you were fucking me. Like, now.” You pleaded, being met with an equal spank on the other side, and you pushed back into the touch happily as the slight pain fuelled on your pleasure, feeling the head of his cock swirl through your wetness, gathering it up before he could line up at your core.

Taking your ponytail back in his hand, he pulled your head back, setting his other hand on your hip and slamming into you without hesitation, your eyes rolling to the back of your head as you cried out his name, shuddering all over at the feeling of suddenly being so full and stretched out once again.

“Fucking you was one of the best decisions I ever made, I swear to God..” You were barely even aware of the ramblings you were letting out as he laughed into your ear, beginning to set a steady and quick pace, each thrust seeming to hit deeper than the last. Within only minutes, you were reduced to a sobbing mess of curse words and his name, your entire body flushed with heat and your eyes flashing with colour as you tried to stay even somewhat sentient with the way he was sending you into the clouds.

His hips were colliding with you each time, your thighs up to your ass burning with each powerful collision, the sound of skin slapping again skin filling the room, and you parted your legs even further, allowing him to sink even deeper within you, making both of you shake and falter at the way it felt to entirely wrapped up in each other, everything else becoming irrelevant. Slipping his hands around to your front, he took your tits in each of a large palm, the rub of calloused hands against your nipples making every sound you made become illegible, a mess of mumbles and begs for only him to hear as he took you to places you never thought you’d get to experience.

You were squeezing him each time, clenching around his cock and drawing him back in, and despite the rubber between you, you could feel every throb he made within your walls, and every time he twitched when you rolled certain muscles focusing on the movements you could make that made his pace falter or a pornographic noise fall from him that drove you wild. You were pushing back to meet his thrusts, tears welling up in your eyes as he pushed against your g-spot with every movement, pressing the patch solidly, the head of his cock sliding over it on repeat each time and the stimulation was building up to be more than you could handle, but you were in far too deep to be able to back up, you didn’t want to, you just wanted to lose yourself in the way it felt to be with him.

“Can feel you, so tight and wet ‘round me. You’re perfect, fucking incredible. I need you to cum for me, okay? Need to feel you cum.”

You nodded, your voice to unreliable to even speak, but he pulled you up until your back was to his chest, the angle changing as you became even tighter around him and he hissed under his breath, hot breaths washing over your cheek with every pant he made, and you gripped at the hand that slipped up to sit around your neck, needing the support as the other went down to flick at the button between your legs in rough strokes that made your entire body jump and quiver at the stimulation, the screams he had wanted tearing from your lips as you crashed into a mindblowing orgasm, eyes lining with tears and voice cracking.

He followed behind you by only seconds, his body going rigid as he came, before he was collapsing over your back, trying to hold himself up with hands on the edge of the couch, before he was pulling out of you and letting the both of you collapse into a heap of sweaty and spent bodies on the couch. “Christ, that was fucking incredible.”

You threw a tired arm up over your face and hummed your agreement on a silent voice, wiping at the wetness that had come onto your cheeks once again, a tired smile on your face as you sniffed a little wiped your face clean, and you heard him shuffling around, pulling off the condom and wrapping it in a pile of tissues from the box, before he was leaning over you, nimble fingers pulling your hand for your eyes.

“Are you crying?”

“Guess you’re just that good.” You joked, and he used his own fingers to wipe away the tears, but you could see the pride that was filling him at the claim, his chest puffing up and his wide smirk widening, eyes sparkling with cheek.

“Well, I would definitely rather have you crying over my dick than over being ditched, so I think tonight was a huge success.”

You slapped an idle hand at his chest, leaving it laying there, too tired to move it as you rolled over and pressed yourself into his side, and he placed his hand on top of yours, letting you cuddle into the side of him and lifting his head so you could tuck your face into his neck. “Thanks for hanging out with me tonight.”

“I mean, it was really pretty great for us both, so no thanks neede-”

“No, I meant movie night. Thanks for hanging out with me. I knew it was going to end in sex anyway, but thanks for hanging out with me before that, it made me feel better. A little less lonely, y’know?” He squeezed you in silent acknowledgement, but never said anything in reply, and you weren’t sure whether your walls were down because you’d just had your brains fucked out, or whether it was simply how safe and assured you felt when with him, but you were opening your mouth and letting the words pour out before you even had a chance to stop them; “I feel lonely a lot, lately. It’s hard when all of your friends know about your feelings towards one of the others, and they know it’s never going to work out. I know it’s never going to work out, but it doesn’t stop it hurting, and I try not to hang out with Stiles and Lydia together a lot, but I can’t make them choose between me or them, that’s ridiculous, so I don’t see them as much anymore.”

He twisted to look at you, raising a hand to tuck some loose hair that had fallen from your ponytail away behind your ear, before nodding his head and swallowing thickly. “I came home from college because all my friends became friends with Katrina, and her friends, and it became too painful to see all of them when all they did was remind me of her, but now I feel alone.”

“I’ve never told anyone that before.” You confessed, and he smiled a little, his eyes sliding closed as he nodded, like the secret was kept between just the two of you, and you knew that was where it would stay.

“Neither have I.”

The moment was a little too heavy for you to handle without becoming overwhelmed, so you instead pressed yourself back into him, not having to look at the caring look in his eyes, instead just feeling the tentative way his hands smoothed up and down your body comfortingly, the heat in the room dissipating until you were beginning to feel the chill, despite the furnace of a human being pressed up along the length of you. You were just about to move and grab your clothes again when he spoke again;

“Do you want to go get something to eat?”

“What?” He shrugged as you sat up, stretching yourself out and searching around for your bra, finding it and pulling it on, clipping it behind your back and adjusting it on your chest as you stared at him inquisitively.

“I don’t know about you, but I’m starving. I figured I’d drive you home, but we could go to In-N-Out or something on the way.”

“You know what? I would love that.” Your stomach rumbled at the offering of food, and you flushed with embarrassment at the loud sound, but Mitch only laughed, rolling to his feet and swiping up the tissue bundle and condom to take to the kitchen while you continued to dress yourself. You had located his boxers and sweats, and offered them to him when he returned, to which he pulled on both quickly, before making his way upstairs to grab a shirt. He was pulling on shoes as he came down the stairs in awkward footsteps, before lacing them up when he reached the bottom, and grabbing a hoodie for himself from on the coat hooks by the door, shrugging it on over his head.

“Ready?”

“We need to put the blankets away first.”

He shook his head as he looked around, holding his hand out towards the door instead, and swiping up his keys as he went. “Nah, I cleaned up everything that would give away what we did, but Stiles can clean up the rest. That’s what he gets for ditching you, he doesn’t get movie night, but he still gets clean up duty. It’s only fair.”

You gave it one final glance, before deciding you absolutely fucking agreed, and offered him your brightest smile as you headed out towards the older brother’s car, the sleek black calling to you as it reflected the streetlamps dotted along the sidewalk. “Can we put the heated seats on again?”

“If you want to, sure.”

You nodded eagerly, hopping up into the car once it was unlocked and settling yourself into the seat, flicking the button yourself this time once Mitch had started up the vehicle and set off onto the roads, a chuckle on his lips as he watched you play with the large console of buttons, turning on the regular heating and the radio, too.

Instead of the widely broadcasted channels, however, the music system began to blast out the last song that Mitch has been listening too, and you jumped at the sudden and loud bass, the car swerving a little as clearly Mitch was caught off guard too, but you were soon gasping in realisation of the beat that was playing, turning the volume down a little but tapping your fingers in time with the tune.

“I love this song!”

“You do?” You nodded, opening the box on the dashboard and looking for the CD album, but he only offered his phone to you, giving you a pointed look as he tapped the bluetooth symbol showing up on the screen. “Not used to modern-day technology, driving around in that old jeep all the time, huh?”

“That jeep has history!”

“You sound like Stiles.” He muttered, rolling his eyes but grinning at you anyway, and you scrolled through his music selection, the conversation between you both flowing easily as you bonded over your music choices, and your favourite songs, which had quickly devolved into favourite movies and your preference on sports teams, and toppings on pizza.

You had flown through the drive-thru, almost empty in the late hour, and he had insisted on paying, calling it his treat, and telling you that you could pay next time.

Being in Mitch’s company was easy. It wasn’t burdened with the worry of rejection or the loss of friendship, it wasn’t weighed down with unrequited love and the fear of not being accepted. With Mitch, you didn’t have previous commitments and complicated friendships and worries about college. He was fun, and warm, and he made everything that plagued your mind go away when you were with him, even if it was just for a little while.

The ride was filled with jokes and laughter, the two of you driving around the empty roads aimlessly until you were pulled up in front of your house, giggling as you finished your milkshakes, used wrappers and cartons stuffed into the bags you’d been given the food in, sitting long discarded by your feet as you peeled the top off of your plastic cup and tried to use the straw to scrape at the whipped cream that had fallen to the bottom.

You managed to scoop some up, humming happily as the sweet goodness filled your mouth and covered your senses, before you were dropping it back down to add to the rubbish in the bag, and licking at your lips to clear it away.

“You know we’ve been driving around for, like, three hours?”

He glanced down at the clock, the time flashing up, despite the engine being turned off as you sat parked up outside of your house. “Oh, shit. I thought we’d been out for an hour, or so.”

“Time flies when you’re having fun.” You teased, and he finished up his drink, putting the empty plastic into the cupholder, his gaze finding yours, and he watched as you lifted a hand up to the side of his mouth, wiping above his lip at the froth caught in his stubble, before smearing it away on a napkin, your head tipping to sit on the headrest as you faced him. The music was playing quietly throughout the car, and you covered your yawn, but his eyes crinkled at the sides as he looked at you, catching the sight of tiredness on your features.

“Tired, kitten?” You mumbled your acknowledgement, your eyes sliding closed a little, and you felt his hand coming up to hold yours, lacing your fingers together and sitting them on the console between you both, and you could feel his stare lingering on you. “I did have fun, you know.”

“Me too, it was a really awesome night. Probably better than any other movie night would have been, actually.” You opened your eyes to look at him now, and he nodded, a bashful look covering his features as he pulled you in a little closer to him, and you happily leaned over towards his space.

“I want to kiss you.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time, but I appreciate the chivalry.” You joked, and he barely let out a laugh this time, his hand coming up to cup your cheek and he let out a content sound when you nuzzled a little further into his palm.

“No, those were different. Those were kisses leading up to sex, and that’s what we’ve been doing, what we are doing.” You studied him carefully now, brows furrowed as you watched him try to get his words out. “There’s no sex after this, nothing else. I just want to kiss you goodnight.”

You stared at him for a moment, before bringing a hand of your own to sit on his other cheek, pulling his face in towards yours, brushing your noses together, before connecting your lips softly.

He tasted like the salt of french fries and the whipped cream on top of his chocolate shake. He pressed into you firmly, his fingers digging in under your jaw, just enough to make sure you wouldn't pull back too soon, so that he could prolong the connection, and the drag of your lips against his.

When he did finally pull back, his lips were still puckered or a moment, brushing your lips together before he was letting out a soft sigh, and pressing a kiss to your nose and your forehead. You let him do so, before you repeated the action on him, earning yourself a shy and intimate smile as you kissed at his forehead and he tipped his head down to let you do so, your lips lingering on his skin before you pulled back, giggling so quietly you weren’t sure if he had even heard it, but it didn’t matter.

“I'll text you, okay?

“I hope so. Don’t want it to be days before I talk to you again.” You mumbled, before grabbing your things and hopping out of the car, walking around to the side of the car, and he rolled his window down, brows raised as he looked at you lingering outside his car. The lights in your house were still on, and you glanced back at the windows, before leaning in through his and pressing your lips to his in a final short kiss, a smile gracing his lips as you spoke your next words; “Thank you for making this night so much better than I thought it would be.”

“Goodnight, kitten.”

“Goodnight, Mitch.”

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serendipityjxmn · 3 years

Text

Mr. President

Chapter 2

TW: Mentions of bruises, scars etc

Words Count: 1.3k

Link to Masterlist

Link to Chapter 3

The sun feels very blinding on your face. Trying to move your muscle one by one, pain suddenly rips through your body making you whimper.

“Careful.” A voice in the room says which you somehow immediately know belongs to Mr. Park.

Your eyes fling open to search for him and you find him in no time as he is seated on the bedside, watching you carefully. It’s almost unfair how illegally good looking he is.

You try to sit up but ends up groaning in pain. Your whole body hurt, every muscle is aching and screaming in pain.

“Your body’s still recovering. You need to take it slow.” He says impassively, not a hint of warmth.

“Where.. am I..?” Your voice hoarse.

“My house.” He simply says.

His house??? How- why-

Wincing and grunting, you eventually manage to sit up. You finally realize that you’re in a large and spacious bedroom with sleek beige furnitures and interiors decorating it.

You then allow yourself to stare at your saviour. Now that it’s morning, you can clearly see him and all his features. His gaze bores into you but you can’t deny how beautiful they are, his nose although not high but is sharp enough, his cheeks high and his lips.. he has a pair of very pretty pink plump lips, you note. Almost reluctantly, you drop your gaze to avoid being called lunatic or pervert for staring unashamedly.

Your gaze flickers back up when he stands, one hand in his pocket.

“I placed the painkillers there.” He juts his chin towards the bedside table and only now you notice the medicine and a glass of empty water there. “Feel free to leave once you’re capable enough to do so.” He frowns slightly, then turns.

You reach forward almost immediately, wincing at the throbbing pain on your ribs especially due to sudden movement. Without thinking, you reach for his free hand, gripping it desperately.

“Please-“ you croak and he turns, still frowning at your daringness to touch him. “Please- take me in. I’ll- I’ll.. do anything, I’ll work for you- anything. Just.. just please don’t-“ You trail off, because you don’t exactly know what you wish for.

For several moments, he just regards you. And for the briefest second, you think he would smile, takes your hand and mutters softly that he’s going to help you.

But nothing of the sort happens.

He just continues to stare at you impassively, clearly not impressed. The way he stares at you makes you feel small so you withdraw your hand, flustered and embarrassed for coming to this point in your life.

He sighs then. “Just rest.” Is all he says before he turns and leaves you alone, feeling even more helpless than ever.

Your shoulders slump back down and suddenly the realization that you really are going to be in the streets with no one to help brings fresh tears to your eyes. So you cry. For hours until you’re exhausted enough to fall asleep again.

The dark must’ve just set when you find yourself awake again, body aching even more now though there’s a lesser pain in your chest since you’ve let it all out from all the crying session.

You struggle to sit up when you feel your throat burning. You’re very thirsty. Letting out small squeaks with each muscle and limb you’re moving, you manage to sit yourself on the edge of the bed.

There’s a faint knock on the door that you think if you’re asleep you wouldn’t have heard them at all. Before you could react, the door opens and an elderly woman with her hair tied up in a bun appears. She smiles kindly as she calls your name.

“Miss..?” She hovers near the doorframe. “I brought you some fresh clothes, you can change into them. The bathroom is just beside you and if you’re done you can come outside and I’ll show you to Mr. Park’s study. He wants to see you.”

Your stomach lurches in response. He couldn’t possibly want to sue me.. or worse, kill me, right? Flashes of images of him beating your brother makes you shudder. One thing you know for sure is that he’s not someone to be messed with.

You stand though staggering slightly as your legs wobble. The elderly woman who introduces herself as Mrs. Lee immediately steps in and asks with a concern look whether you need help. You shake your head, telling you just need to take it slow and Mrs. Lee leaves you at your own devices after that.

Though not without numerous wincing and grunting, you somehow manage to shower as well, or more like wiping your body here and there. You briefly think that if you’re well enough, you’d be basking in the warm water the hot tub offers and appreciates the lavish interior of the bathroom.

You flinch when you see your own reflection in the mirror. You couldn’t have been in a worse state than this throughout your whole life. Bruises littering your body everywhere, it’s all marks of blue and purple, wounds and scratches from being thrown to the ground and your lips are slightly torn at the edge. There is also a cut above your right brow. You couldn’t really recognise yourself.

Sure, you had plenty experiences of being beaten by your abusive brother but last night, your brother seemed determine to beat you half dead. You sigh, tears almost threatening but you quickly brush it off. You have to be strong.

Outside the bathroom, there’s a white medium dress laid on the bed together with matching undergarments. You pick the dress up, eyes litting up at the beauty of it. You’ve never worn a dress before, simply because you can’t afford to be dressing up when you’re burdened with financial debts your whole life.

Still, you’re grateful since wearing a dress is still an easier task than having to fit through a jeans or leggings.

There’s a knock on the door again and Mrs. Lee appears again. Wow, she really has a knack of figuring your timing. She approaches you as you stand awkwardly on the dressing table.

“Would you sit down, Miss? Let me brush your hair.”

“Y- you don’t have to.” She doesn’t listen though, instead placing firm hands on your shoulder and putting slight pressure to make you sit in front of the dressing table. It somehow feels weird to be staring at your own reflection.

Mrs. Lee brushes your hair tenderly like a mother would her daughter. She then braids your hair slightly and tie it up in a bun, letting a few strands fall freely on each side of your head.

You feel weird. For once.. you think you look decent. Though bruises are still apparent on most of the surface of your skin and no makeup to cover your face, you don’t look so tired like always.

“Miss..?” Mrs. Lee interrupts your reverie as she taps your shoulder lightly. “I’ll show you to Mr. Park’s study. He’s waiting for you.”

And there goes your stomach churning again at the mention of Mr. Park. You’ve no idea what to expect and that makes your stomach churns further, anxiety almost swallowing you whole.

Mrs. Lee leads you out of the bedroom into the hall filled with arts and paintings on the wall and only coming to a stop when you almost reach the end of the hallway in front of a double mahogany door. She knocks on them and you don’t miss the escalating heart beat of yours as your anxiety heightens as she announces your arrival to whoever’s waiting on the other side of the door.

She doesn’t wait for an answer but opens the door and urges you to enter. Filled with trepidation as if you’re entering a lion’s den, you step inside.

If you thought the bedroom you were in just now was huge, it doesn’t compare to this study room. It’s vast, with bookshelves surrounding it and rows and rows of books, old or new filling it. Across the room, there’s a table by the window and you finally see the man sitting behind it. He doesn’t look up when you enter so you stand there awkwardly, fidgeting with the hem of your dress.

There’s also another man standing across the table, facing Mr. Park.

He turns at the sound of you entering and your jaw almost drop at the visual of this man. He’s tall, skin slightly tanned but above all, the features of his face are almost out of this world. Eyes sculpted to perfection, tall nose and sharp jaw, he stares at you making you stop short in your tracks. The corner of his lips tugs very lightly as he addresses your presence.

“Ah, Miss Y/N.” His voice is very, very low without him having to make the effort. “Please, come here and have a seat.”

He gestures towards your right and you notice a seating area with plush white sofa and modern table. You don’t move until the guy who was speaking just now moves towards the sofa followed by Mr. Park. You chance a glance at Mr. Park as he takes confident strikes across the room and you marvel at the way even his walking exudes charisma. He takes his seat gracefully, sitting cross legged and you miss the way he eyes you from top to bottom as you walk over while the tanner guy remains standing beside him and only now you notice he’s holding several papers in his hands.

He looks at you and gestures you to take a seat once more which you do. You almost buckle in nervousness as the two’s gaze land on you.

“So, Miss Y/N,” the guy standing starts. “My name is Kim Taehyung, nice to meet you.”

If your senses aren’t tingling all the time and you aren’t fidgeting so much in anxiety, you’d probably have half the brain to answer to his sentence but right now you’re trying very hard to do as much as breathing that you end up mumbling incoherent reply, much to the guy named Taehyung’s amusement though Mr. Park’s expression remains impassive.

“I understand that your family had been a tenant of one of Park Corporations housing area for more than twenty years now. You also have a history of late payment since five years ago and currently has a backlog of payment for one year, amounting 4 million KRW. Is that correct?”

You feel beads of sweat starting to appear on your forehead but you still nod nevertheless.

“You failed to pay for the past year which resulted to the house being seized and you’d be homeless but.. here you are..”

You try to hide the grimace as Taehyung addresses the obvious situation.

“And you still owe Mr. Park here 4 million KRW and may I ask if you have any means to settle them within this month?”

You swallow. You want to ask for another chance, to give more time but you know even if they do give you a chance, there’s no way you can rake millions just like that. Unless you sell yourself, perhaps. And that still might not make up the amount of money. So naturally, you just shake your head slightly.

“So, Miss Y/N, since you’re owing such huge amount to Mr. Park and you have no means to pay.. that means you’re technically..” Taehyung continues but was cut off by Mr. Park.

“Mine.” He says and the word echoes in your mind a million time. You’re.. what? You look up at him and see the corner of his mouth slightly quirks up like he’s smirking. Your gaze flickers to Taehyung too and he’s doing the same as well making a shiver run down your spine. Why do you feel like you’re being sold to the devil..

“So I have a proposition for you.” This time it’s Mr. Park speaking. “A marriage contract.”

A WHAT?

Link to Chapter 3

Posted on 210325 9:00PM

#serendipityjxmn #serendipityjxmnmrpresident #mrpresident #bts fic #jimin fic #jimin au #park jimin #parkjimin #jimin smut #smut #kpop #mafia #jimin mafia #ceo jimin #bts smut #bts au #bts mafia

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taylorswifthongkong · 3 years

Link

Taylor Swift broke all her rules with Folklore — and gave herself a much-needed escape The pop star, one of EW's 2020 Entertainers of the Year, delves deep into her surprise eighth album, Rebekah Harkness, and a Joe Biden presidency. By Alex Suskind

“He is my co-writer on ‛Betty’ and ‛Exile,’” replies Taylor Swift with deadpan precision. The question Who is William Bowery? was, at the time we spoke, one of 2020’s great mysteries, right up there with the existence of Joe Exotic and the sudden arrival of murder hornets. An unknown writer credited on the year’s biggest album? It must be an alias.

Is he your brother?

“He’s William Bowery,” says Swift with a smile.

It's early November, after Election Day but before Swift eventually revealed Bowery's true identity to the world (the leading theory, that he was boyfriend Joe Alwyn, proved prescient). But, like all Swiftian riddles, it was fun to puzzle over for months, particularly in this hot mess of a year, when brief distractions are as comforting as a well-worn cardigan. Thankfully, the Bowery... erhm, Alwyn-assisted Folklore — a Swift project filled with muted pianos and whisper-quiet snares, recorded in secret with Jack Antonoff and the National’s Aaron Dessner — delivered.

“The only people who knew were the people I was making it with, my boyfriend, my family, and a small management team,” Swift, 30, tells EW of the album's hush-hush recording sessions. That gave the intimate Folklore a mystique all its own: the first surprise Taylor Swift album, one that prioritized fantastical tales over personal confessions.

“Early in quarantine, I started watching lots of films,” she explains. “Consuming other people’s storytelling opened this portal in my imagination and made me feel like, Why have I never created characters and intersecting storylines?” That’s how she ended up with three songs about an imagined love triangle (“Cardigan,” “Betty,” “August”), one about a clandestine romance (“Illicit Affairs”), and another chronicling a doomed relationship (“Exile”). Others tell of sumptuous real-life figures like Rebekah Harkness, a divorcee who married the heir to Standard Oil — and whose home Swift purchased 31 years after her death. The result, “The Last Great American Dynasty,” hones in on Harkness’ story, until Swift cleverly injects herself.

And yet, it wouldn’t be a Swift album without a few barbed postmortems over her own history. Notably, “My Tears Ricochet” and “Mad Woman," which touch on her former label head Scott Borchetta selling the masters to Swift’s catalog to her known nemesis Scooter Braun. Mere hours after our interview, the lyrics’ real-life origins took a surprising twist, when news broke that Swift’s music had once again been sold, to another private equity firm, for a reported $300 million. Though Swift ignored repeated requests for comment on the transaction, she did tweet a statement, hitting back at Braun while noting that she had begun re-recording her old albums — something she first promised in 2019 as a way of retaining agency over her creative legacy. (Later, she would tease a snippet of that reimagined work, with a new version of her hit 2008 single "Love Story.")

Like surprise-dropping Folklore, like pissing off the president by endorsing his opponents, like shooing away haters, Swift does what suits her. “I don’t think we often hear about women who did whatever the hell they wanted,” she says of Harkness — something Swift is clearly intent on changing. For her, that means basking in the world of, and favorable response to, Folklore. As she says in our interview, “I have this weird thing where, in order to create the next thing, I attack the previous thing. I don’t love that I do that, but it is the thing that has kept me pivoting to another world every time I make an album. But with this one, I still love it.”

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: We’ve spent the year quarantined in our houses, trying to stay healthy and avoiding friends and family. Were you surprised by your ability to create and release a full album in the middle of a pandemic?

TAYLOR SWIFT: I was. I wasn't expecting to make an album. Early on in quarantine, I started watching lots of films. We would watch a different movie every night. I'm ashamed to say I hadn't seen Pan's Labyrinth before. One night I'd watch that, then I'd watch L.A. Confidential, then we'd watch Rear Window, then we'd watch Jane Eyre. I feel like consuming other people's art and storytelling sort of opened this portal in my imagination and made me feel like, "Well, why have I never done this before? Why have I never created characters and intersecting storylines? And why haven't I ever sort of freed myself up to do that from a narrative standpoint?" There is something a little heavy about knowing when you put out an album, people are going to take it so literally that everything you say could be clickbait. It was really, really freeing to be able to just be inspired by worlds created by the films you watch or books you've read or places you've dreamed of or people that you've wondered about, not just being inspired by your own experience.

In that vain, what's it like to sit down and write something like “Betty,” which is told from the perspective of a 17-year-old boy?

That was huge for me. And I think it came from the fact that my co-writer, William Bowery [Joe Alwyn], is male — and he was the one who originally thought of the chorus melody. And hearing him sing it, I thought, "That sounds really cool." Obviously, I don't have a male voice, but I thought, "I could have a male perspective." Patty Griffin wrote this song, “Top of the World.” It's one of my favorite songs of all time, and it's from the perspective of this older man who has lived a life full of regret, and he's kind of taking stock of that regret. So, I thought, "This is something that people I am a huge fan of have done. This would be fun to kind of take this for a spin."

What are your favorite William Bowery conspiracies?

I love them all individually and equally. I love all the conspiracy theories around this album. [With] "Betty," Jack Antonoff would text me these articles and think pieces and in-depth Tumblr posts on what this love triangle meant to the person who had listened to it. And that's exactly what I was hoping would happen with this album. I wrote these stories for a specific reason and from a specific place about specific people that I imagined, but I wanted that to all change given who was listening to it. And I wanted it to start out as mine and become other people's. It's been really fun to watch.

One of the other unique things about Folklore — the parameters around it were completely different from anything you'd done. There was no long roll out, no stadium-sized pop anthems, no aiming for the radio-friendly single. How fearful were you in avoiding what had worked in the past?

I didn't think about any of that for the very first time. And a lot of this album was kind of distilled down to the purest version of what the story is. Songwriting on this album is exactly the way that I would write if I considered nothing else other than, "What words do I want to write? What stories do I want to tell? What melodies do I want to sing? What production is essential to tell those stories?" It was a very do-it-yourself experience. My management team, we created absolutely everything in advance — every lyric video, every individual album package. And then we called our label a week in advance and said, "Here's what we have.” The photo shoot was me and the photographer walking out into a field. I'd done my hair and makeup and brought some nightgowns. These experiences I was used to having with 100 people on set, commanding alongside other people in a very committee fashion — all of a sudden it was me and a photographer, or me and my DP. It was a new challenge, because I love collaboration. But there's something really fun about knowing what you can do if it's just you doing it.

Did you find it freeing?

I did. Every project involves different levels of collaboration, because on other albums there are things that my stylist will think of that I never would've thought of. But if I had all those people on the photo shoot, I would've had to have them quarantine away from their families for weeks on end, and I would've had to ask things of them that I didn't think were fair if I could figure out a way to do it [myself]. I had this idea for the [Folklore album cover] that it would be this girl sleepwalking through the forest in a nightgown in 1830 [laughs]. Very specific. A pioneer woman sleepwalking at night. I made a moodboard and sent it to Beth [Garrabrant], who I had never worked with before, who shoots only on film. We were just carrying bags across a field and putting the bags of film down, and then taking pictures. It was a blast.

Folklore includes plenty of intimate acoustic echoes to what you've done in the past. But there are also a lot of new sonics here, too — these quiet, powerful, intricately layered harmonics. What was it like to receive the music from Aaron and try to write lyrics on top of it?

Well, Aaron is one of the most effortlessly prolific creators I've ever worked with. It's really mind-blowing. And every time I've spoken to an artist since this whole process [began], I said, "You need to work with him. It'll change the way you create." He would send me these — he calls them sketches, but it's basically an instrumental track. the second day — the day after I texted him and said, "Hey, would you ever want to work together?" — he sent me this file of probably 30 of these instrumentals and every single one of them was one of the most interesting, exciting things I had ever heard. Music can be beautiful, but it can be lacking that evocative nature. There was something about everything he created that is an immediate image in my head or melody that I came up with. So much so that I'd start writing as soon as I heard a new one. And oftentimes what I would send back would inspire him to make more instrumentals and then send me that one. And then I wrote the song and it started to shape the project, form-fitted and customized to what we wanted to do.

It was weird because I had never made an album and not played it for my girlfriends or told my friends. The only people who knew were the people that I was making it with, my boyfriend, my family, and then my management team. So that's the smallest number of people I've ever had know about something. I'm usually playing it for everyone that I'm friends with. So I had a lot of friends texting me things like, "Why didn't you say on our everyday FaceTimes you were making a record?"

Was it nice to be able to keep it a secret?

Well, it felt like it was only my thing. It felt like such an inner world I was escaping to every day that it almost didn't feel like an album. Because I wasn't making a song and finishing it and going, "Oh my God, that is catchy.” I wasn't making these things with any purpose in mind. And so it was almost like having it just be mine was this really sweet, nice, pure part of the world as everything else in the world was burning and crashing and feeling this sickness and sadness. I almost didn't process it as an album. This was just my daydream space.

Does it still feel like that?

Yeah, because I love it so much. I have this weird thing that I do when I create something where in order to create the next thing I kind of, in my head, attack the previous thing. I don't love that I do that but it is the thing that has kept me pivoting to another world every time I make an album. But with this one, I just still love it. I'm so proud of it. And so that feels very foreign to me. That doesn't feel like a normal experience that I've had with releasing albums.

When did you first learn about Rebekah Harkness?

Oh, I learned about her as soon as I was being walked through [her former Rhode Island] home. I got the house when I was in my early twenties as a place for my family to congregate and be together. I was told about her, I think, by the real estate agent who was walking us through the property. And as soon as I found out about her, I wanted to know everything I could. So I started reading. I found her so interesting. And then as more parallels began to develop between our two lives — being the lady that lives in that house on the hill that everybody gets to gossip about — I was always looking for an opportunity to write about her. And I finally found it.

I love that you break the fourth wall in the song. Did you go in thinking you’d include yourself in the story?

I think that in my head, I always wanted to do a country music, standard narrative device, which is: the first verse you sing about someone else, the second verse you sing about someone else who's even closer to you, and then in the third verse, you go, "Surprise! It was me.” You bring it personal for the last verse. And I'd always thought that if I were to tell that story, I would want to include the similarities — our lives or our reputations or our scandals.

How often did you regale friends about the history of Rebekah and Holiday House while hanging out at Holiday House?

Anyone who's been there before knows that I do “The Tour,” in quotes, where I show everyone through the house. And I tell them different anecdotes about each room, because I've done that much research on this house and this woman. So in every single room, there's a different anecdote about Rebekah Harkness. If you have a mixed group of people who've been there before and people who haven't, [the people who’ve been there] are like, "Oh, she's going to do the tour. She's got to tell you the story about how the ballerinas used to practice on the lawn.” And they'll go get a drink and skip it because it's the same every time. But for me, I'm telling the story with the same electric enthusiasm, because it's just endlessly entertaining to me that this fabulous woman lived there. She just did whatever she wanted.

There are a handful of songs on Folklore that feel like pretty clear nods to your personal life over the last year, including your relationships with Scott Borchetta and Scooter Braun. How long did it take to crystallize the feelings you had around both of them into “My Tears Ricochet” or “Mad Woman”?

I found myself being very triggered by any stories, movies, or narratives revolving around divorce, which felt weird because I haven't experienced it directly. There’s no reason it should cause me so much pain, but all of a sudden it felt like something I had been through. I think that happens any time you've been in a 15-year relationship and it ends in a messy, upsetting way. So I wrote “My Tears Ricochet” and I was using a lot of imagery that I had conjured up while comparing a relationship ending to when people end an actual marriage. All of a sudden this person that you trusted more than anyone in the world is the person that can hurt you the worst. Then all of a sudden the things that you have been through together, hurt. All of a sudden, the person who was your best friend is now your biggest nemesis, etc. etc. etc. I think I wrote some of the first lyrics to that song after watching Marriage Story and hearing about when marriages go wrong and end in such a catastrophic way. So these songs are in some ways imaginary, in some ways not, and in some ways both.

How did it feel to drop an F-bomb on "Mad Woman"?

F---ing fantastic.

And that’s the first time you ever recorded one on a record, right?

Yeah. Every rule book was thrown out. I always had these rules in my head and one of them was, You haven't done this before, so you can't ever do this. “Well, you've never had an explicit sticker, so you can't ever have an explicit sticker.” But that was one of the times where I felt like you need to follow the language and you need to follow the storyline. And if the storyline and the language match up and you end up saying the F-word, just go for it. I wasn't adhering to any of the guidelines that I had placed on myself. I decided to just make what I wanted to make. And I'm really happy that the fans were stoked about that because I think they could feel that. I'm not blaming anyone else for me restricting myself in the past. That was all, I guess, making what I want to make. I think my fans could feel that I opened the gate and ran out of the pasture for the first time, which I'm glad they picked up on because they're very intuitive.

Let’s talk about “Epiphany.” The first verse is a nod to your grandfather, Dean, who fought in World War II. What does his story mean to you personally?

I wanted to write about him for awhile. He died when I was very young, but my dad would always tell this story that the only thing that his dad would ever say about the war was when somebody would ask him, "Why do you have such a positive outlook on life?" My grandfather would reply, "Well, I'm not supposed to be here. I shouldn't be here." My dad and his brothers always kind of imagined that what he had experienced was really awful and traumatic and that he'd seen a lot of terrible things. So when they did research, they learned that he had fought at the Battles of Guadalcanal, at Cape Gloucester, at Talasea, at Okinawa. He had seen a lot of heavy fire and casualties — all of the things that nightmares are made of. He was one of the first people to sign up for the war. But you know, these are things that you can only imagine that a lot of people in that generation didn't speak about because, a) they didn't want people that they came home to to worry about them, and b) it just was so bad that it was the actual definition of unspeakable.

That theme continues in the next verse, which is a pretty overt nod to what’s been happening during COVID. As someone who lives in Nashville, how difficult has it been to see folks on Lower Broadway crowding the bars without masks?

I mean, you just immediately think of the health workers who are putting their lives on the line — and oftentimes losing their lives. If they make it out of this, if they see the other side of it, there's going to be a lot of trauma that comes with that; there's going to be things that they witnessed that they will never be able to un-see. And that was the connection that I drew. I did a lot of research on my grandfather in the beginning of quarantine, and it hit me very quickly that we've got a version of that trauma happening right now in our hospitals. God, you hope people would respect it and would understand that going out for a night isn't worth the ripple effect that it causes. But obviously we're seeing that a lot of people don't seem to have their eyes open to that — or if they do, a lot of people don't care, which is upsetting.

You had the Lover Fest East and West scheduled this year. How hard has it been to both not perform for your fans this year, and see the music industry at large go through such a brutal change?

It's confusing. It's hard to watch. I think that maybe me wanting to make as much music as possible during this time was a way for me to feel like I could reach out my hand and touch my fans, even if I couldn't physically reach out or take a picture with them. We've had a lot of different, amazing, fun, sort of underground traditions we've built over the years that involve a lot of human interaction, and so I have no idea what's going to happen with touring; none of us do. And that's a scary thing. You can't look to somebody in the music industry who's been around a long time, or an expert touring manager or promoter and [ask] what's going to happen and have them give you an answer. I think we're all just trying to keep our eyes on the horizon and see what it looks like. So we're just kind of sitting tight and trying to take care of whatever creative spark might exist and trying to figure out how to reach our fans in other ways, because we just can't do that right now.

When you are able to perform again, do you have plans on resurfacing a Lover Fest-type event?

I don't know what incarnation it'll take and I really would need to sit down and think about it for a good solid couple of months before I figured out the answer. Because whatever we do, I want it to be something that is thoughtful and will make the fans happy and I hope I can achieve that. I'm going to try really hard to.

In addition to recording an album, you spent this year supporting Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in the election. Where were you when it was called in their favor?

Well, when the results were coming in, I was actually at the property where we shot the Entertainment Weekly cover. I was hanging out with my photographer friend, Beth, and the wonderful couple that owned the farm where we [were]. And we realized really early into the night that we weren't going to get an accurate picture of the results. Then, a couple of days later, I was on a video shoot, but I was directing, and I was standing there with my face shield and mask on next to my director of photography, Rodrigo Prieto. And I just remember a news alert coming up on my phone that said, "Biden is our next president. He's won the election." And I showed it to Rodrigo and he said, "I'm always going to remember the moment that we learned this." And I looked around, and people's face shields were starting to fog up because a lot of people were really misty-eyed and emotional, and it was not loud. It wasn't popping bottles of champagne. It was this moment of quiet, cautious elation and relief.

Do you ever think about what Folklore would have sounded like if you, Aaron, and Jack had been in the same room?

I think about it all the time. I think that a lot of what has happened with the album has to do with us all being in a collective emotional place. Obviously everybody's lives have different complexities and whatnot, but I think most of us were feeling really shaken up and really out of place and confused and in need of something comforting all at the same time. And for me, that thing that was comforting was making music that felt sort of like I was trying to hug my fans through the speakers. That was truly my intent. Just trying to hug them when I can't hug them.

I wanted to talk about some of the lyrics on Folklore. One of my favorite pieces of wordplay is in “August”: that flip of "sipped away like a bottle of wine/slipped away like a moment in time.” Was there an "aha moment" for you while writing that?

I was really excited about "August slipped away into a moment of time/August sipped away like a bottle of wine." That was a song where Jack sent me the instrumental and I wrote the song pretty much on the spot; it just was an intuitive thing. And that was actually the first song that I wrote of the "Betty" triangle. So the Betty songs are "August," "Cardigan," and "Betty." "August" was actually the first one, which is strange because it's the song from the other girl's perspective.

Yeah, I assumed you wrote "Cardigan" first.

It would be safe to assume that "Cardigan" would be first, but it wasn't. It was very strange how it happened, but it kind of pieced together one song at a time, starting with "August," where I kind of wanted to explore the element of This is from the perspective of a girl who was having her first brush with love. And then all of a sudden she's treated like she's the other girl, because there was another situation that had already been in place, but "August" girl thought she was really falling in love. It kind of explores the idea of the undefined relationship. As humans, we're all encouraged to just be cool and just let it happen, and don't ask what the relationship is — Are we exclusive? But if you are chill about it, especially when you're young, you learn the very hard lesson that if you don't define something, oftentimes they can gaslight you into thinking it was nothing at all, and that it never happened. And how do you mourn the loss of something once it ends, if you're being made to believe that it never happened at all?

"I almost didn't process it as an album," says Taylor Swift of making Folklore. "And it's still hard for me to process as an entity or a commodity, because [it] was just my daydream space."

On the flip side, "Peace" is bit more defined in terms of how one approaches a relationship. There's this really striking line, "The devil's in the details, but you got a friend in me/Would it be enough if I can never give you peace?" How did that line come to you?

I'm really proud of that one too. I heard the track immediately. Aaron sent it to me, and it had this immediate sense of serenity running through it. The first word that popped into my head was peace, but I thought that it would be too on-the-nose to sing about being calm, or to sing about serenity, or to sing about finding peace with someone. Because you have this very conflicted, very dramatic conflict-written lyric paired with this very, very calming sound of the instrumental. But, "The devil's in the details," is one of those phrases that I've written down over the years. That's a common phrase that is used in the English language every day. And I just thought it sounded really cool because of the D, D sound. And I thought, "I'll hang onto those in a list, and then, I'll finally find the right place for them in a story." I think that's how a lot of people feel where it's like, "Yeah, the devil's in the details. Everybody's complex when you look under the hood of the car." But basically saying, "I'm there for you if you want that, if this complexity is what you want."

There's another clever turn-of-phrase on "This is Me Trying." "I didn't know if you'd care if I came back/I have a lot of regrets about that." That feels like a nod toward your fans, and some of the feelings you had about retreating from the public sphere.

Absolutely. I think I was writing from three different characters' perspectives, one who's going through that; I was channeling the emotions I was feeling in 2016, 2017, where I just felt like I was worth absolutely nothing. And then, the second verse is about dealing with addiction and issues with struggling every day. And every second of the day, you're trying not to fall into old patterns, and nobody around you can see that, and no one gives you credit for it. And then, the third verse, I was thinking, what would the National do? What lyric would Matt Berninger write? What chords would the National play? And it's funny because I've since played this song for Aaron, and he's like, "That's not what we would've done at all." He's like, "I love that song, but that's totally different than what we would've done with it."

When we last spoke, in April 2019, we were talking about albums we were listening to at the time and you professed your love for the National and I Am Easy to Find. Two months later, you met up with Aaron at their concert, and now, we're here talking about the National again.

Yeah, I was at the show where they were playing through I Am Easy to Find. What I loved about [that album] was they had female vocalists singing from female perspectives, and that triggered and fired something in me where I thought, "I've got to play with different perspectives because that is so intriguing when you hear a female perspective come in from a band where you're used to only hearing a male perspective." It just sparked something in me. And obviously, you mentioning the National is the reason why Folklore came to be. So, thank you for that, Alex.

I'm here for all of your songwriting muse needs in the future.

I can't wait to see what comes out of this interview.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

For more on our Entertainers of the Year and Best & Worst of 2020, order the January issue of Entertainment Weekly or find it on newsstands beginning Dec. 18. (You can also pick up the full set of six covers here.) Don’t forget to subscribe for more exclusive interviews and photos, only in EW.

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