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just-another-blog-of-fluff · 3 years

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Not so Tough After All

Word count: 4600

Warnings: some fighting and violence, bickering coworkers, tickles

You can interpret this one platonically or flirtatiously, whatever suits you!

Tagging @atlas-of-the-universe and @writingfics-passingtime because this is semi similar to atlas’ prompt and because writingfics seemed so excited to read it just now 😊

Sunlight streaked through the trees, painting jagged designs across the bed of leaves and fallen branches coating the forest floor. The occasional snapping of a twig was the only audible sound, save for the birds chirping in the trees overhead. Everything around you looked the same as the area you’d just trapsed through before. The vast woods were enough to disorient anyone.

But not you.

Being a secret agent, you’d developed a keen sense of direction. A civilian may not be able to tell the difference between each individual tree, but your eyes were trained to analyze every detail, every crevice in the bark, every branch, committing them to memory as you pressed on toward your destination. You were determined to make it there and back before nightfall, even if it meant dragging your insufferable partner through the forest.

“Are you certain you know where you’re going?” Loki muttered, his lanky legs making long strides to keep up with your determined pace.

“Shh! Keep it down,” you chastised, keeping your voice at a hiss of a whisper. “Yes, I know where I’m going. The compound should be due west from here. Should be another quarter mile or so.”

“If you’d let me use my seidr, I could tell you exactly how far it was.”

“We’ve been over this, Loki. This is a stealth mission. We can’t risk the enemy detecting us, and they will definitely pick up on a sudden burst of magic on their defense signals.”

“Do you truly believe the enemy’s system is sophisticated enough to detect my seidr?” he chuckled humorlessly. You paused, turning to glare at him, pressing a finger to your lips. His eyes rolled, scoffing as he continued on in your wake.

You marched on in silence, thankful that the trickster had finally stopped complaining for a few minutes. While the two of you bickered frequently when placed on missions together, when it came to the physical work, you worked together seamlessly, fighting in tandem to wipe out any enemy that made the grave mistake of getting in your way. It would be a perfect pairing, if only Loki didn’t enjoy pushing your buttons so immensely. He so enjoyed making subtle digs at your fighting skills, reveling in the sharp glares you would shoot him when he succeeded in getting under your skin. You wouldn’t mind it so much, if it weren’t for the fact that he often did it in the middle of missions, when you were trying to focus.

“By your account, should the enemy facility not be right here in this clearing?” Loki asked, dragging you from your thoughts. You halted in your tracks, glancing cautiously around the area for any sign of a secret entrance.

“Yes… it should.” You began to feel wary at the situation. There was nothing there – no secret knots in the trees, no trap doors hidden in leaves. It was as if there had never been a building in this location in the first place.

“Can I please use my seidr now to seek out the compound?” Loki asked, exasperated. You stood from the fallen tree you’d been inspecting, eyes scanning the clearing for signs of motion. Something didn’t feel right, you were sure of it.

“Fine. Just do it quickly,” you relented, shifting your weight to the balls of your feet in case you needed to run. A wave of green light emanated around your mystical partner, spreading out across the foliage and beyond your field of vision. His brow furrowed for a moment, suddenly glancing around in confusion. “What? What is it?”

“There has never been a facility here, I suspect,” he began slowly, backing his way toward you protectively as he gazed guardedly around the clearing. “I suspect… it’s a trap.”

As if to punctuate his suspicion, you heard rough rustling in the trees above from the edges of the clearing. You turned to stand with your back against Loki’s, arms lifted in a fighting stance. You heard the metallic unsheathing of Loki’s daggers as he conjured them with a flick of his wrists, holding them protectively in his outstretched hands.

Suddenly you were surrounded, enemy soldiers appearing from all sides with weapons drawn – swords, spears, arrows, and the like – all aimed at the pair of you. With a quick glance back at Loki, you both sprang into action. You ripped your own dagger out of the sheath on your waist, sprinting full force toward the first enemy you laid eyes on and driving it to the hilt through his chest before he had the chance to swing his sword. Ducking, you felt an arrow graze by your ear as you whipped around to swipe the legs out from under the next soldier, leaping to your feet and slicing your blade through his throat.

Behind you, Loki was a blur of metal and limbs, his swings broad and swift as he made quick work of laying waste to the enemies on his side. He leaned to dodge a bullet aimed for his head, lunging forward with dagger outstretched to gut the offending soldier.

You made quick work of taking out a few more soldiers, fists flying and weapon glinting in the sunlight as you fought. You leapt backward to avoid a roundhouse kick from the soldier you’d just disarmed, feeling a taut wire against the backs of your ankles. Swiftly, you dove out of the way, just in time to avoid being scooped up in the mesh net hidden beneath the leaves.

“Loki! Watch your footing, they’ve got traps laid out. Just found a trip wire,” you called back to your partner, glancing just for a moment at him as he pulled a soldier in closer so he could stab him in the back.

“Not the most advanced group of criminals, are they?” he goaded, his eyes darting up to meet yours for just a moment with a small smirk on his face before diving back into the fray.

A powerful arm wrapped around your torso, pinning your dominant arm to your side as you were dragged off balance into an enemy soldier’s chest. You felt the sharp, cold metal edge of a sword pressed against your throat, a slight sting as the blade dug into your skin. Loki spun around at the sound, eyes widening when he saw you trapped. He raised a hand, palm glowing green briefly before a blast of light slammed into your assailant’s chest, sword flying uselessly out of his grip as he fell stunned to the ground. Loki was on him in an instant, plunging a dagger into his neck.

The clearing fell silent once again, save for the heavy breathing of yourself and your companion as you recovered from the sudden ambush. You looked up at Loki, rolling your eyes in annoyance.

“You didn’t have to do that, you know. I could have taken him down myself,” you insisted, re-sheathing your weapon and dusting yourself off.

“Oh, of course not. You could have easily managed to prevent him from slicing a hole in your throat with your dagger-wielding hand pinned to your side,” he snapped sarcastically, mirroring your eye roll. You scoffed, walking over to the fallen tree you’d inspected earlier to sit and rest, catching your breath.

“I could have handled it,” you mumbled. “Are there any more around?”

“No, that seems to be the last of them,” Loki confirmed, walking over to stand near you as you looked yourself over for missed wounds. Hands running through your hair along your scalp, you checked yourself head to toe for signs of bleeding or sore spots that you may have missed in the adrenaline of battle. No broken bones in the arms, no broken ribs, no gashes on the legs…

“Shit.” You lifted your foot to find a large arrow dug deep into your boot. Now that you’d noticed it, the searing pain became evident in your foot. You hissed, gritting your teeth to brace yourself for the pain as your fingers closed around the arrow shaft, yanking hard with a grunt as it dislodged from your foot. You honestly weren’t sure how it had gotten there – must have been sticking up out of the leaves from one of the fallen enemies, you thought. You gingerly removed your boot and groaned at the blood staining your sock just medial to the ball of your foot.

“You’re wounded,” Loki stated, hovering over you.

“No shit, Sherlock,” you snapped, an extra layer of bite to your tone from the pain. “I’ll be fine. I have bandages and antiseptic in my bag. Basic first aid.”

“Let me take a look at it, I know a healing spell or two,” Loki suggested, sitting beside you on the log.

“No!” you shouted, almost too quickly. Clearing your throat and regaining your composure, you continued. “No, Loki. I’m fine. I promise. Don’t worry about it.” You began fishing around in your bag for your first aid kit. The dark-haired Asgardian glared at you disapprovingly.

“You’re being ridiculous. Why would you want to continue walking on a wounded foot when I can easily heal it for you?”

“I said I’m fine, Loki!” you argued, finally finding your first aid kit, and opening it on the log beside you to take out the necessary wound care materials. Loki grabbed your upper arm firmly, finally forcing you to look up at him.

“It doesn’t make you weak to accept my help. Just allow me to do this for you,” he insisted, tone softening a bit but still firm in his resolve. You sighed, closing the first aid kit. You knew he meant well, truly he did. And you really didn’t want to explain why you didn’t want his help.

“Fine. Have at it then,” you finally obliged, turning your body towards him.

“Thank you,” he responded, gently grasping the ankle of your injured foot, and lifting it into his lap. You had to bend your knee awkwardly out to the side so he could see the injury on the sole of your foot.

He slipped his fingers under the elastic of your sock, sliding it off carefully to avoid aggravating the injury. You sucked on your teeth, biting down on the inside of your cheek, trying to play it off as a reaction to the pain. He couldn’t find out you were helplessly ticklish. You would NEVER hear the end of it from your mischievous friend. But you could barely stand it when someone touched your feet; you knew you had to focus on controlling your reactions.

“It seems the wound does not extend through the entirety of your foot,” he explained, holding your foot with his thumb pressed against the arch just underneath the wound. If you didn’t move, the sensation was bearable enough. “I should be able to heal this in just a few minutes.”

“Great. Go for it,” you urged, ready for this to be done. He took his free hand and held it close to the wound, palm glowing green as you watched your skin knit itself back together. The pain ebbed away slowly, until finally it was non-existent as the wound completely healed over to normal skin.

“It appears to be completely healed,” he observed, gently pressing his fingers around the area where the wound had been to assess for residual damage. You tried desperately not to twitch, trying to pull your foot away, but his hand held fast to your ankle.

“Wonderful. Are we done now?” you implored, unsure how much longer you could tolerate his poking and prodding.

“Just let me ensure I didn’t miss anything.” He wrapped his hand around your foot, pressing his thumb against the former injury and sliding it gently over the area. You jolted a bit, biting back a giggle. His eyes flitted up to observe you for a millisecond, and you held your breath, praying he didn’t notice.

“Does it look alright now?” you asked.

“Hmm… There may still be some residual deep tissue damage here,” he hummed, the weight of his touch lightening as he ran his fingers across the ball of your foot. You groaned to cover up the laugh that bubbled to the top of your throat. “Does it still hurt?”

“Y-yes,” you fibbed, trying to pull away again, but his grip on your ankle tightened. His eyes lifted to meet your gaze, and your stomach dropped at the mischievous gleam that had settled in his stare.

“Tsk, allow me to fix it for you.” He began scratching all five fingers along the upper part of the sole of your foot, a smirk spreading across his face as he watched your resolve crumble, giggles spilling out of your mouth.

“Loki!” you scolded, reaching for his hands. He tugged on your ankle, making you lose your balance a bit as your bottom slid across the log you were perched on. Turning his body away from you, he wrapped an arm around your ankle to lock it in the crook of his elbow before dancing his fingers up and down the entirety of the sole of your foot.

“How have I not learned of this? You are utterly and hopelessly ticklish,” he teased, scratching just above your heel, making you snort.

“Shut up, Loki!” you growled, trying to sound menacing, kicking at him with your other foot. He ignored you, using one hand to pull back your toes as he wormed the fingers of his other hand underneath. You shrieked, pulling harder on your ankle, finally yanking it free. You stumbled backward onto your feet, hopping to replace your boot on your foot while watching Loki warily. He rose to full height, eyeing you predatorily.

“Tough, battle-hardened secret agent… undone by just a gentle wiggling of fingers against her skin,” he taunted, gradually advancing toward you. Trying to hide the color that was rising in your cheeks, you glared hard at him as you backed away.

“Don’t you dare come any closer,” you threatened, lifting your arms in a fighting stance. He laughed, throwing his head back dramatically, his dark locks falling loosely around his face as his eyes settled on you once again.

“Are you planning to fight me, darling?”

“If you try to tickle me again, then yes, without hesitation,” you confirmed, eyes narrowed.

“Ooh… such hostility. You must be unbearably ticklish to be getting this angry.” He took a lurching step forward, making you twitch and recede a few steps backward, thinking he was lunging for you. A knowing grin crossed his face, and he tilted his head cockily at you. You felt your heart pound harder against your ribcage.

The dance continued, step by step, eyes unblinking, assessing every muscle movement for a potential attack. He knew very well he was faster than you, but you’d sparred with him before, and he’d learned the hard way you could really pack a punch when you set your mind to it. So, instead of using brute force, he toyed with you, fraying your nerves with his unblinking stare and his wicked, teasing grin. You would never admit it, but he was starting to get under your skin.

One misstep, and you fell backward to the ground as he descended on you. Not so easily beaten, you planted your hands on the ground and swung your leg around as he neared you, swiping his legs out from under him. You leapt to your feet as he fell on his back, hopping backwards as he quickly rose to his feet once again.

“Very good. I must say, you have skill unmatched by any other Midgardian I know,” he praised. You knew better – he was trying to get you to drop your guard. It wasn’t happening.

“I trained hard so I could fight superhuman beings such as yourself,” you boasted. “Trust me – you know as well as I that I can hold my own.”

“I must admit, I feel we may be at a stalemate,” he lamented, dropping his fighting stance and staring at you with his arms at his sides. You maintained yours, wary of the possible tricks he could pull.

“What are you playing at?” you demanded.

“Oh, darling, the game has only just begun,” he responded, his tone laced with mischief. You had just enough time to catch the faint green glow surrounding his frame before you were snatched from behind around the waist, the Loki in front of you vanishing as the real Loki claimed his prize.

“LOKI! You’re such a cheater! You can’t use your damned clones,” you hollered, thrashing to break his hold. He merely tightened his grip, fingers pressing into your sides before digging into the soft skin, making you double over with laughter. Even Loki seemed taken aback by your reaction, laughing tauntingly in your ear as he clawed into your sensitive sides. You slammed an elbow into his gut, causing him to grunt in pain as he released you. Your momentum from leaning against his hold caused you to fall forward, but you expertly tucked and rolled, bouncing back to your feet to face him.

“There are no rules to this game, love. Only physical limitations apply,” he argued, recovering quickly from the blow you landed to his stomach.

“Are you such a coward that you feel you can’t best me without your magic?” you goaded, a triumphant smirk tugging at your lips.

“I’m merely utilizing all of my resources,” he responded casually, unphased. The dance had begun once again, you side-stepping to keep him in front of you as he paced, eyeing you threateningly.

“You may as well give up,” you urged, “You must know by now that my strength and skill make me a formidable opponent. You’ll never catch m- AHH!”

Something suddenly tightened around your ankle, yanking you off balance and cutting off your sentence as you shrieked in surprise. Dragging across the ground for a moment, you were lifted off the ground, a rope knotted around your ankle. The rope trap finally came to a halt, leaving you dangling upside-down a few feet off the ground.

“Are you alright?” Loki asked, genuinely concerned.

“Fine, I’m fine,” you huffed, reaching up with some difficulty to grasp at the rope. “Must be another one of their elementary-level traps that got left behind.” You were able to reach the knot, tugging at the rope as you swung slowly like a pendulum. “Damnit. This knot is too tight.”

Holding the rope with one hand to stay upright, you reached for your dagger, heart skipping a beat in panic when you noticed its absence on your waist. Relaxing your abdominal muscles and allowing yourself to hang upside down once again, you scoured the ground around you for any signs of your dagger, finally seeing the glint of sunlight against metal buried in the leaves where you’d been standing when you’d tripped the rope. Sighing with relief, you reached out for the weapon, fingers grazing the hilt. It was just barely out of your reach.

“Loki, hand me my dagger, will you? I’m just going to cut myself down,” you requested, glancing up at your companion. Your stomach dropped when your eyes landed on him, finally noticing the wicked smirk on his face. “Woah, Loki. I… I know what you’re thinking. Don’t you DARE even THINK about it.”

“Or… what, exactly?” he asked tauntingly, gradually pacing toward you. You held both hands out in front of you protectively, urging him to stay back.

“I-I’ll make you regret it.”

“Empty threats. You must be nervous, darling. You never can think straight when you get flustered.”

“Loki…” You glanced up at the rope around your ankle hopelessly, wondering desperately if you could bite through it. Immediately, you knew that was an impossibility – it was far too thick and strong. “Don’t… don’t you dare come any closer.”

He was only just out of arms reach from you now, hands clasped behind his back as he gazed amusedly at your panicked expression.

“You haven’t provided me with any reason whatsoever not to.”

“Loki! I’ll kill you! Don’t even… not one step closer…” Your threats fell on deaf ears as he stared at you menacingly, suddenly reaching out toward your sides. “Don’t – Loki, I swear – DON’T EVEN –“

Threats dissolved into laughter as his fingers found your sides, picking up where he’d left off, kneading into the soft skin above your hips. You swung your fists wildly at him but he dodged you with ease, never once relenting in his attack as his fingers explored across your belly and around to the small of your back, taking advantage of the sliver of bare skin showing below your shirt as it rode up from your squirming.

“LOKI! LEHEHEAVE ME ALOHONE! I WILL KIHIHILL YOU I SWEHEHEAR!!” you screeched. Shaking his head pitifully, he chuckled at your desperate attempts to deter his tickling fingers.

“I much prefer you when you’re in hysterics. Your threats aren’t so… threatening,�� he teased. “It almost makes you bearable.”

“MEHEHE BEARABLE?!?!” you exclaimed, incredulous. “YOHOHOU are the one being obnOXIOUS!!” The volume of your voice pitched up as his left hand continued traveling up your ribs, his right hand moving to squeeze the thigh of your trapped leg just above your knee. You grabbed hold of his wrists and tried to push his hands off, but you had absolutely no traction to push against as you dangled from this tree. He had you exactly where he wanted you, and there was absolutely nothing you could do about it. “LET ME DOHOHOWN!!”

The hand on your knee wrapped around to scribble against the back of your thigh, his other hand worming its way under your arm. You clamped your arm down at your side, reaching desperately for the hand tormenting your leg with your free arm, but he was quick to swap his hands, slipping past your defenses underneath your now outstretched arm.

You tensed and jolted violently as his fingers found the one spot on your uppermost ribs, just below your underarm, that drove you completely crazy. Squeezing your arm tighter against your side, you hoped he didn’t notice. Unfortunately, your partner was perceptive.

“What do we have here?” he asked amusedly, a triumphant grin crossing his features. You sucked in air desperately, taking advantage of the brief reprieve as his fingers remained motionless against your ribs and leg. You glared at him as threateningly as was possible, which only served to draw a laugh from the mischievous god. “Do you think you look frightening? I can’t possibly take you seriously with that hysterical smile on your face.” You growled, swatting at him with the arm that didn’t currently have his fingers pressed underneath it, threatening to tickle you to pieces. “Now then – where was it that just elicited that reaction?”

“What – you think I’m going to just hand you that information?” you retorted. His fingers skittered along the back of your leg, bringing back your rapid giggles, trying to make you jolt again without success. With difficulty, he switched to vibrating his fingers into your underarm, pressing into your upper ribs as much as he could with your arm shoved against your side.

You grabbed hold of his wrist again, but your panicked reaction gave you away. He twisted his wrist to turn the tables, grabbing your wrist instead and dragging your arm away from your side so he could have easier access, poking and prodding to find the spot that triggered such hysterics. He ignored your boisterous cursing and empty threats, methodically pinching at each of your upper ribs until finally –

“AHH!” Loki grinned wickedly at you as you stared wide-eyed back at him, his fingers stilled against that rib, applying just enough pressure to allow the threat of the torturous tickling that was to come. “No. No, no, no. Loki –“

“What’s wrong, darling? Is this too much?” His fingers twitched against your ribs, making you jerk violently at just a simple increase in pressure.

“Loki, please…” you begged, grabbing his wrist desperately with your free hand. “Please… doHO- dohon’t do this… I caHAN’T take it!” Your voice squeaked with every threatening pulse of his fingertips, and you looked up at him with pleading eyes. Your desperation only served to enhance his mischievous demeanor.

“Oh-ho! This must be a bad spot, if I’ve successfully reduced you to begging,” he teased maliciously, moving his hand away from that awful upper rib only to gather your free wrist along with the other, holding them both against his chest. You shook your head frantically, cheeks burning, already giggling with anticipation as his fingers came to rest on that spot once more.

“YEHES! Yes, Lo- LOHOKI! I’m begging yo-YOHOU!” With one last feeble attempt at tugging your wrists free from his grasp, you gave in and submitted yourself to your ticklish fate. “Plehehease!”

He leaned in closer, accentuating his threat with his face mere inches from yours. “It must be terrible for you, trapped and nowhere to go, when I can so easily break your resolve by simply… tickling you.” His fingers sprang into action once again, squeezing mercilessly at that horribly sensitive upper rib. You screeched, laughter echoing in the clearing, your mind completely overtaken by the overwhelmingly ticklish sensation. When he’d decided he’d weakened you adequately, he released your wrists and shot his other hand under your other arm, finding the same triggering rib on the other side and pinching at it rapidly. One final jolt was all you had left, allowing yourself to just hang there and accept the torture.

Finally, at long last, he decided he’d had enough fun listening to your wild laughter, his fingers slowing to a stop against your sides before removing them with some difficulty from under your clamped arms. Loki smiled at you as residual giggles flowed from your lips, amused at the bright color of your face and the wild, tangled mess that your hair had become during your struggle. You felt exhausted, sweaty, sore, and… contented. You couldn’t remember laughing this hard or this long in quite some time. And, if you were being completely honest with yourself, you didn’t mind the playful banter from your companion either. It was certainly better than his irritating complaints, and he seemed to be in better spirits after having tickled you to tears. Even if it was at your expense.

He picked up your dagger from the ground, handing it to you after you had a moment to recover. You reached up to cut the rope, feeling his hands press against you, one on your back and one behind your knees, catching you with ease as the dagger sliced through the fibers. He lowered your feet to the ground, waiting until you were steady on your feet before removing his hand from your upper back. You had started regaining your nerve now, and you turned to point a threatening finger in his face.

“You tell ANYONE about this, and I swear to god, I will make your life a living hell,” you hissed. He chuckled, shaking his head.

“I won’t tell a soul, darling. Wouldn’t want to hurt your tough-girl image, now, would we?” Satisfied, you turned and began to head back the way you’d come, annoyed that the sun was already beginning to sink below the horizon. “I should warn you, though –“ You spun around, shooting him an exasperated look. He merely grinned, continuing with his threat, “Next time you become irritable with me on a mission, I know exactly how to exact my revenge.” He punctuated his threat with a wiggle of his fingers in the air, making your face burn. You scoffed to hide your embarrassment, whipping back around and continuing to march your way out of the forest.

You’d have to start scolding him more often.

Part 2: Mr. Know-it-All

#ticklish!reader #tickle fluff #loki tickle #tickle fic #marvel tickle #ler!loki #lee!reader

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apocalypticgargoyle · 3 years

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𝘽𝙇𝙊𝙊𝘿𝙔 𝙆𝙉𝙐𝘾𝙆𝙇𝙀𝙎 | 𝙠𝙖𝙧𝙡 𝙟𝙖𝙘𝙤𝙗𝙨 (18+)

∘ request(s):

“aaah your edgy karl is just *chefs kiss* so good!! could i get the reader patching up edgy karl after a particularly bad fight?”

“can we get something a bit softer for the edgy!karl series? Just love when guys like that are soft with the reader xx”

"ouu maybe for the next part of the edgy karl series reader makes it all about karl? like they end up sleeping in the same bed or smth and while karl is still sleepy/barely waking up reader just makes him feel good"

∘ pairing: edgy!Karl Jacobs x fm!reader

∘ warnings: nsfw (18+), mentions of blood, mentions of fighting, drug use (smoking weed), crude language, oral (m. receiving)

∘ word count: 2417

∘ links: AO3, prev. chapter

∘ a/n: THANK YOU FOR ALL THE REQUESTS FOR EDGY!KARL. YOUR IDEAS ARE HNNNNGGG SO GOOD JESUS CHRIST!

Also if you guys would like to make some of the edgy!Karl edits for the headers and submit them to me, I'll use them :D

This is a bit more dOmEsTiC than this series has been going but, hopefully you guys are still into it. Anyway, I hope everyone is having a good week! Happy reading :)

The air was crisp as the sun began to set; night slinking towards your apartment to envelop you and Karl within its darkness. The two of you watched intently as the ball of light crept towards the horizon line. Karl's arm threaded across your torso, fingertips brushing against the skin of your stomach peeking from beneath the hem of your shirt. You leaned your head against his embrace, wrapping your own arms around his as you sat between his legs. The sound of soft chatter from other floors beneath you filled the expanses between your apartment building and the one adjacent to it. As night fell, people cracked open their windows and hung their feet over the fire escapes.

You and Karl had been out prior to this, sharing a joint as you watched the stars roll in. Karl's back was pressed against the brick wall beneath your window, the blunt hanging loosely from his slender fingers as he bent his knee, giving you something else to curl your arms around. From across the way, someone began playing music, making someone in the apartment directly under the two of you to begin singing.

Karl took a drag off the blunt before letting the thick smoke pour from between his lips. "I think I need to teach you how to skate," he stated rather nonchalantly as he offered you the joint.

You scoffed at his remark, leaning your head back against his chest and taking the blunt from him. "I'd like to see you try," you shot back jokingly, fully knowing you didn't have the balance and he didn’t have the patience, yet something churned within you at the thought. You knew you shouldn't have thought anything of it really, but Karl sharing a portion of something he's passionate about with you was next to a love language.

Since spring break had begun, Karl had begun staying over at your place more frequently. During these nearly intimate moments where it had been only the two of you keeping each other company, you'd come to see Karl as more of a friend than just a booty call. Slowly peeling back the layers of his esoteric aura, you found out his quirks that you'd come to only associate with him, such as the brand of nail polish he trusted because it was a recommendation from a girl in his art class, or how when he was thinking about something deeper than a food order, he'd slick a hand through his hair to brush his bangs out of his eyes.

Yet this meeting was spurred by something else. He’d shown up on your doorstep with a black eye and bruised knuckles. You knew his housemates were beginning to trickle back to campus, so you figured almost instantly that Todd had figured out what the two of you had been up to when he was gone.

You pulled your front door open, tugging your hoodie closer to your body against the wind from outside. Karl stood before you, leaning a hand against your doorframe with a small smile plastered over his busted lip. There was a cut across his cheekbone as if whoever had hit him wore various rings. You gave into the impulses ringing in your body and reached up for his face, gently brushing a thumb against his jaw, which you could now tell was also beginning to bruise. One of his hands reached up to hold your wrist, his fingers grazed against your skin with such gentleness. The action was almost a juxtaposition to the way he looked.

Karl sat down on your toilet, his eyes watching each of your movements as you fished through your cabinet for your roommate’s first aid kit. He wasn’t acting like he had been dragged around instead, he seemed more excited to see you than anything. Maybe that was due to the fact that you fed him, and stray dogs always come back to food.

After clearing most of the dried blood from his wounds, you went about disinfecting and sealing him up. You stood between his legs, gently dabbing at the cut on his cheek, trying desperately not to think about how you were finally living out one of your fantasies. He leaned into your touch almost as if your skin held the elixir of life. You fought not to ask him what had happened because you knew he didn’t like talking about it, but you couldn’t help but worry about him a bit.

You hugged the arm he had around you tighter to your chest, your eyes fixating on an open window across the way from the two of you. There were two people having dinner in a room next to the window, a warm glow from the lamps inside spilling into the dimming night. "Did it get lonely in that big ass house?" You inquired, watching his fingers reach to throw out the dead bud. That hand moved to play with your own, threading his fingers in and out of yours. The bandage wrapped around the base of his fingers stiffened his movements, but he seemed not to pay any mind to it. “I mean, even though you spent most of your time over here…”

You felt him shrug against you. "I don't know." He was quiet for a minute as he thought. "I had the memories of what we did in—what did you call him? Todd?—Todd's bed, to keep me company," he quipped, making you snort. You leaned further back against him, enough to where your head was resting on his shoulder so you were looking up at the faint stars dotting the light-polluted sky. He rested his chin on your shoulder quietly.

As the night grew colder, the two of you climbed back through the window, the haze of the weed still stimulating your mood, yet you quickly found yourself falling asleep in Karl's arms as he tucked your plush comforter around the two of you. His breathy sigh cascaded over your shoulders as he dug his face into your hair. He'd discarded his hoodie before joining your side, so his skin was now warm and inviting as he pressed against you. You bit back a laugh as you silently wished his aftercare was as soft as moments like these.

A crack of thunder shook you from a dream, pulling you awake rather quickly. Your gaze lifted to peer at the clock on your nightstand as the rain seemed to hammer harder on the windows of your bedroom. Karl was sleeping peacefully beside you, arms lazily threaded through your pillows, unintentionally keeping your body closer to him. The bruising on his face somehow had gotten worse, but you were hoping there wasn’t any permanent damage. Maybe he’d have a scar like Johnny Cade?

You slipped into his arms, earning a content sigh from Karl as his hands pushed beneath your shirt to brush his coarse fingers against the soft skin of your back, dipping into the valley of your spine. You pressed your lips against his shoulder before traveling the length of his collarbone and ending at his neck. He hummed in pleasure, still groggy from sleep. You let your lips glide over his skin, before leaning up to kiss him softly. He pulled you closer to him, deepening the kiss with hints of passion despite the fact that he was still taking his time to wake up completely.

Your hands danced towards his sweatpants and you felt him smile against your lips. You pulled away from him slightly, digging your face into the crook of his neck. “Let me make you feel good,” you leered, earning a lazy chuckle from him, his fingers knotting into your hair. A clap of lightning flashed outside, the thunder following to sound as if the storm was sitting on your building’s roof.

Your fingers dipped beneath his waistband, palming him over his boxers slightly. A hushed moan of gratitude slipped past his lips as he softly bucked his hips against your hand while you applied more pressure. Karl sealed his lips against yours, the kiss sending heat throughout your body as his tongue pressed into your mouth, swirling with your own. A moan echoed through his body and into your mouth as he hardened against your hand, asking for more. One of his hands grazed the length of the arm that was working on him, his hand gently grasping your wrist.

You heeded his silent requests, moving your hand so you could straddle him. You ground your hips against him, the friction between your clothes making the fabrics seem thicker and more barrier-like than anything. One of his hands pressed against the small of your back, driving you harder against him. You broke the kiss breathlessly, sitting off of him and tugging your shirt over your head, his eyes grazed over you almost thankfully.

You pushed back the heavy covers, slinking down his legs until you were laying flat, tugging his boxers down in front of you. Your room flashed a bright white as the lightning from outside began to pick up. The sound of the rain's war against your windows was the only sound mixing with Karl's soft moan as your hand wrapped around the base of his cock. You pressed your lips against his tip, one of his hands moving to rest behind his head so he could see you better. Your fingers icked to please him, his body reacting to each of your movements.

He tensed under your grasp as you began to pump your hand, drawing out another soft moan from the man above you. "Does that feel good?" You taunted looking up at him through your eyelashes. He chuckled slightly, a dusting of pink settling into his cheeks. Your tongue slid along his length, basking in how his moans edged on being vulgar as you eased your mouth around his arousal. You bobbed your head once before pulling off of him, continuing to speed your hand motions gradually. His gaze was hazy as he attempted to avoid your sultry eye contact, him twitching at your movements each time he did.

His lips were redder as he chewed on the flesh of them, evident as he continued to fight each moan wanting to escape. You were slightly surprised at this, considering Karl was always shamelessly loud. Maybe it was because he was so vulnerable to you know, and you were in charge.

Your lips slowly traveled back to his arousal, his gray irises swimming with pleasure as you settled into to take him deeper into your mouth. His grip on your arm tightened as you pushed his tip past your lips once again, a strangled groan of pure pleasure hissing through his teeth. As he reached the back of your throat, tears began to brim in the corners of your eyes and his arousal twitched in your mouth. You began to bob your head once again, edging him on further with each of his moans of your name which you knew was a warning that he was close. You alternated the movements of your mouth and hand, making him fight against bucking his hips towards you. His cock tensed and in an instant, hot sticky strands of pleasure were filling your mouth.

He reached forward to brush his finger against your cheek, wiping away some tears that had pressed from your eyes. You pressed your lips against his thigh before crawling back up towards him. He tugged you on top of him again, lips kneading against yours as a silent appreciation. You push his hand back, threading your fingers with his own, careful not to squeeze against his bruised knuckles that you could tell were sore. You bit back a laugh at the thought of your poor broken boy.

As the rain picked up heavier, you sank down on his arousal, earning a deep moan from Karl. The feeling of him inside of you this early in the day was a new kind of bliss. You curled your hips against him before bending down to press your lips against his, his hand tightening around yours. You ground against him, pushing him deeper into you, looking to elicit more of his sultry noises that alone—you were convinced—could send you over the edge. Your mind was set on getting him to climax again. Your teeth brushed against his teeth before moving alongside his jaw, letting him catch his breath.

You pushed his shirt up as you sat back, fingers grazing down his chest as you moved, watching his eyes cloud with bliss to replace their morning hue. As you began to pick up your pace and use him as leverage, you held onto the forearm of his that was gripping onto you. He moaned a few curse words, his head dipping back in bliss, causing the veins in his neck to be more prominent. You moved the hand that was holding onto your waist up to your face. You slipped his index finger into your mouth and his lips parted, eyes fully focused on your actions as your tongue swirled around his fingers.

His attention burned into you, his jaw tensing with each of your tactics. His hand moved from your mouth to wrap around the back of your neck, bringing your lips back to his. As the coolness of his tongue ring grazed against your own tongue, your hips pressed against him harder. You swallowed his moans, feeling him twitch inside of you as you sped up, tightening around him. Thunder shook your tiny apartment again.

He cursed darkly, biting back another groan. In no time, you felt his heat come undone inside of you, pride swelling in your chest at how easy it was for you to get him off. Pleasure drenched his expression, gray irises blooming with bliss and contentment. He pressed his lips against yours briefly before you curled into bed beside him. The two of you sat in silence, listening to the rain.

Karl cleared his throat slightly. "If we do that enough times, do you think we'd get horny whenever there's a storm?"

You furrowed your brows. "What, like you want me to Pavlov you?"

"Yeah."

There was a beat of silence as you fought how to respond to his question. "It'd be interesting to be in your head for a day," you opted.

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@mrwinemaker @madsbbg @idiotinnit

#karl jacobs x you #karl jacobs smut #karl jacobs x reader #edgy!karl #edgy!karl jacobs #dsmp smut #college au karl jacobs #karl jacobs headcanons #karl jacobs imagine #karl jacobs x y/n

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chudleycanonficfest · 3 years

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Day 20, Story #2 is by @floreatcastellumposts

Title: Dittany Author/Artist: FloreatCastellum Pairing: Neville/Hannah Prompt: Bravery Rating: T Trigger Warning(s) (if any): Discussion of maternal death, mentions of violence.

Hannah's mother had been a muggleborn, and that had been her death sentence.

Or rather, she had been a muggleborn with the audacity and bravery to be proud about it.

Most muggleborns ended up slipping entirely into wizarding society, and as much as they might say that they would keep in touch with their roots, the magic took over. Jeans became robes, electronics didn’t work in their homes so their pop culture references grew stale, the effort involved in keeping the statute of secrecy for extended family and old friends was too exhausting to sustain, so they saw them less and less and eventually…

This had not happened for Mum, even though the Abbotts were a very old family, well rooted in the magical community. She had agreed with Dad to live in Godric’s Hollow, because the Abbotts had lived there for many generations, but she had insisted on Hannah attending the local primary school, where she could make muggle friends. She was adamant that they make regular trips to Liverpool, to visit her side of the family, who believed that she worked in HR (which she did, but for a potion manufacturer, not for a haulage company as they believed) and that Hannah had received a scholarship to an exclusive boarding school, and that Dad owned a pub (which he did, but they neglected to mention that it was frequented by witches, wizards, goblins, the occasional hag and a half giant). And when the Stephens side of the family came to visit, they would have a flurry of activity where they would hide away anything magical-looking, and from the loft they would bring down the big television, and they would speed read some muggle newspapers so they could give their opinions on Tony Blair or Men Behaving Badly or Charles and Diana’s divorce or whatever else they thought might come up.

That was life as Hannah knew it, and it never felt complicated or brave or shocking or daring or any of the things she later found out it was.

She remembered certain details from the day very clearly. She’d been easing sneezewort plants out of their pots, the last repotting before winter, her fingers shaking at the long, pale roots, creating a rain of soil. The last of the cream coloured petals, curled and brown at the edges, fell onto the potting bench. There was a sudden shock of cold air, a breeze from the door opening that hit their faces and whipped through their hair.

‘Professor Dumbledore’s here,’ said Susan with surprise, and Hannah had glanced up to see him closing the door to the humid greenhouse, his long white beard tucked into his belt, Professor Sprout hurrying over to him.

Hannah looked back down at her plant. The roots were all tangled together. Professor Dumbledore was probably here for Harry Potter, there were all sorts of rumours flying around about secret meetings between the two of them.

The plant needed a much bigger pot, but the roots were strong, there was no rot there.

‘Hannah.’

There was no hiding the bewilderment on her face. She had never had a direct conversation with the Headmaster before, and here he was, speaking kindly, gently, softly, one hand touching her shoulder and the other, black looking, gesturing to the door.

‘I need to-’ she started saying, as he led her out. Everyone was staring.

‘Don’t worry, dear,’ said Professor Sprout, and her voice sounded so strange, ‘I’ll finish up here for you.’

Perhaps part of her had known then. She knew it was something terrible. She was too afraid to ask. No one was ever pulled out of class for a good reason. She walked up to the castle alongside him as though in a dream, her heart beating up through her throat and into her mouth.

She was not sure how it happened, but suddenly she was in the warmth of his office, staring at Professor Dumbledore’s grave face, his lips moving, without really hearing, except for that first, terrible, world destroying little phrase.

‘I’m so very sorry to tell you that your mother has been found dead.’

There would be no worse event, no greater loss, no stronger pain in her entire life.

There was still dirt under her nails and in the creases of her palms, she noticed, as she reached into the silver box of floo powder.

It had been so long since she had seen Godric’s Hollow like this, golden and red in its autumn. Fallen leaves tumbled and floated down the river that rushed through the village, or collected in the gutters along the cobbled roads, damp and heavy. The sun stayed a little lower each day, casting long shadows across the beer garden of The Lost Owl, and the wind ruffled the sign on the door which read ‘Closed due to family bereavement.’

During the days, she wondered what to do with herself, stuck between boredom and terrible, overwhelming grief. When she could cry no more, she wondered if there was something wrong with her for wanting to find something interesting or fun to do, but when she tried to read, she could not focus. When she tried to listen to the radio, she would fall asleep. She could not bring herself to ask her weeping father to play cards or chess or anything with her. She thought of going back into school, but how could she see other people? Now that the world had ended? She wanted to tell people about it, wanted to say the words enough until they made sense to her, or until someone found the right words to say back that would make it OK, but she did not want to do this to her friends.

At nights, she would cry herself to sleep, and her whispers, please come back please Mummy please come back, would grow and grow and grow into sobs, begging into her pillow as the agony of it tore at her, the desperation, the feverish thought that there had to be something, that this couldn’t be it, there had to be a way, a special way, just for them, just for her, because it was her mother and there was no way she could live without her. Mum wouldn’t leave her like this, there was no way Mum would allow it, she would go to the ends of the earth to make sure that Hannah was happy, she had always said so, she had always promised…

But Death was something parents could not protect their children from, it seemed. The more Hannah thought on it, the more she became crushingly devastated, horrified to realise that each and every human on Earth had to endure this at some point. In different ways, at different times, with different feelings, but the mere act of bringing a child into the world was to condemn that child, one day, to the unbearable pain of loss. Every person she passed, she wondered, have you suffered as I have? Or is it yet to come for you? She wished she could spare them from it.

The aurors said she was probably targeted because she loudly and openly discussed her muggle heritage in the pub, and it must have been heard by the wrong people. That was what passed for bravery these days.

In the church of St Jerome, the stained glass window pattered with rain, and Hannah looked up at the colours of red and yellow and green rather than looking at the coffin with the splay of lilies, and she wondered when this nightmare would end, when Mum would come back, and tell her that everything would be all right.

***

Months passed in unbearable agony, worse than she could have imagined. But there were glimmers of light there too.

Here, at the school she thought she would never return to, in the place that was filled with unimaginable horror and oppression, she had purpose again. More purpose, in fact, than she had ever had in her life. And with it, new friendships that ran deeper than she had ever expected.

‘This way,’ Neville whispered, and they ran low across the lawn of the grounds. Some of the windows in the castle behind them blazed with light, so that she thought for a terrible moment that they must be visible from the Great Hall, but, of course, the windows would be black with night to anyone who looked out from them.

It was the summer term now, but the air was still cold as they panted, as though Dementors were close, which, she reasoned, they might be. She could feel the dew of the grass, left to grow long since Hagrid had left, soaking the bottoms of her jeans, seeping through her ratty trainers.

Following the dark shadow of Neville’s figure, she ran through the grounds until she heard the crunch of gravel underfoot, and, ahead, the slight shine of starlight reflecting off the greenhouses.

‘They’re in greenhouse three,’ Neville muttered, and her stomach dropped.

He did not notice, and continued to hurry along the garden path, past the raised beds for the hardier plants and herbs, and she followed, but at a walk now, dread gnawing at her.

He stopped at the door, holding his hands up to the glass to peer in. ‘OK…’ he said, still breathless from the run. ‘OK, looks clear… Now, while I talk to the venomous tentacula, you grab a tray, and fill it with perlite and only a few handfuls of compost, it’s a mountain plant so it likes it nice and rocky.’

‘OK,’ she said, and though she thought she sounded normal, he turned to her. She could barely make out his expression in the darkness.

‘Are you all right?’

‘I… I’m sorry, I just… I haven’t been in the greenhouses for a long time… especially not this one. I should have thought before I volunteered, I'm sorry.’

She felt immediately embarrassed for blurting it out, and she had no idea if Neville would even grasp what she was getting at. He had been in the class, yes, but did he even remember that day? What had been the worst day of her life had been a perfectly ordinary school day for the rest of her classmates, and so many terrible things had happened since then.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘I can’t leave you out here.’

She thought he was telling her off, or saying that they had to go back, but before she had the time to feel hurt or ashamed, he was holding out his hand towards her.

She swallowed, and then placed her trembling hand in his. She was not unaccustomed to physical touch with him, or many others. Over the past year, she had tended wounds and comforted people as they cried, she had grasped hands and arms and knees under desks to soothe people or tell them to control themselves, she had passed secret notes and morsels of food and whatever else needed smuggling, slipping it nimbly from her fingers into their palms as they passed in the corridors.

But now his fingers pressed firm and reassuring against hers, and there was something very different about them holding hands.

She let him lead her into the greenhouse; the humid, warm air surrounded them at once, like an odd sort of hug that sat heavy on their lungs. Tall, leafy plants towered above them, brushing the domed glass high above their heads, which magically reflected the brilliant stars above them and lit the place in glorious silver.

Now that she was in here, she felt a little better. The dread that had stopped her ever returning here, that had caused her to drop herbology and pretend that this part of the castle no longer existed, had not come to pass. It was, after all, simply a greenhouse, and Mum could not die again.

‘Are you all right?’ he said gently.

‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘Thank you.’

He nodded, and reached for some gloves on a nearby bench. She missed his hand around hers. ‘Let’s move quickly, and get you out of here,’ he said, donning some goggles and a thick leather apron.

She went to the potting tables where Professor Sprout always stood, and seized a large seedling tray. As she took handfuls of compost and perlite, she could see Neville wrestling with the venomous tentacular, saying, ‘I’ll bring you doxy granules tomorrow - I’ll move you to a sunnier spot - I already checked with Professor Sprout - come on, you knew this was part of the deal, we agreed-’

Eventually, when he had tied enough of the writhing vines together with garden twine and stroked the shoots into calmness, he gave a nod to Hannah, and started to remove his protective gear as she hurried over and they squeezed behind the plant

There, on a table surrounded by blue lanterns to make up for the blocked light caused by the tentacula, were long, deep pots, stuffed with dittany. Their slender, arching stems were clustered with pleasant green leaves, with a dusty sort of whiteness, and they were dotted with pink flowers. She had never seen the plant as it was before; she had only ever remembered the little vials of dittany kept in their first aid kit, good for scraped knees and cuts from any broken glass in the pub. Mum had always said it was good to be prepared in an emergency, it had been one of her funny little things like that, along with being a bit of a hypochondriac, and so Hannah had had a vial in the bottom of her trunk when she returned to school. That, combined with her good potions knowledge, had helped her stumble into a kind of mothering role that she found had rather suited her.

‘I just need the flowers, the book says,’ she said, as Neville started gently pulling some up by the roots.

‘Yes, but I think it’d be good if I can grow another set somewhere, as a back up so we don’t have to keep sneaking out here. It’s just me and Seamus in the dorm, I don’t think he’d mind if I put them in the window between Harry and Ron’s beds. Here, take these, cut the flowers where the stem splits off - yeah, there - so it’ll grow back.’

‘It’s really pretty,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t expecting it to be so pretty. It’s usually that the most useful plants are the ugliest.’

‘It is,’ said Neville absent-mindedly. ‘It’s from Crete. The healing properties were only discovered in the 17th century - people used to think it was an aphrodisiac, and it’s still used in some love potions.’

She looked at him, and though the light in the greenhouse was white starlight only, she could still see his cheeks burn red.

‘It’s… it’s not, though,’ he mumbled. ‘Well… a little bit, but I… I don’t know why I said that.’

‘Because it’s interesting,’ she said quickly, as he busied himself repotting the seedlings. He nodded rapidly, and cleared his throat a little, and she cast around for something to say. ‘You… you should be careful, growing these in the dorm. If you’re caught-’

‘There’s no rule against growing plants,’ he said. ‘I’ve had plants up there loads of times. Especially my mimbulus mimbletonia, that’s had pride of place for a while.’

‘You know they don’t need an explicit rule,’ she said quietly. ‘They do what they want. If they think you’re… doing anything good, anything kind. That’s enough.’

He nodded, looking down at the delicate, thin roots of the dittany. There was a reason that he and Professor Sprout were growing such an innocent plant in such secrecy. ‘I know… but… it’s worth the risk.’

‘That’s very brave.’

‘Is it? Just growing a plant? Is that what passes for bravery these days?’

‘Yes,’ she said honestly. ‘Anything good does now. And it’s not just that.’ She paused, still cradling one of the delicate, rose pink flowers in her hand. ‘I mean… what were you thinking in muggle studies the other day? I hated seeing you screaming like that.’

‘Well I had to say something. It was repulsive, what she was saying about muggle children.’

‘No one believes her, no one really thinks-’

‘We don’t know that. Maybe some people might start believing her, because it’s easier. And anyway, it’s not just about that. Remember Umbridge?’

‘I try not to,’ she said dryly, and in the pale, washed out starlight she saw him grin.

‘I know it’s stupid, but as Ginny and Luna haven’t come back, and Harry and Ron aren’t here, or Dean, or loads of other people… I’ve been-’ he sighed, as though frustrated he couldn’t find the words, ‘I’ve been trying to think about what they would do. I can’t afford to be Neville Longbottom, I’ve got to be someone braver. And Harry used to just completely go off on her, used to tell her straight in lessons that You-Know-Who was back, and, yeah, it got him more trouble than it felt like it was worth at the time, but you know what? I always found it really inspiring.’

‘I did too,’ she said quietly. ‘I remember thinking… well… why would he stick to a lie through all that?’

‘Exactly. He had principles, and if he was here he wouldn’t stand for any of that rot. There’s a lot of times over the past few months where I’ve just tried to…’ he shrugged helplessly, ‘pretend that I’m Harry. That I’m brave.’

‘I don’t think you’re pretending at all,’ she said. ‘You are brave. You always have been. You’re a Gryffindor, aren’t you?’

‘Somehow.’

‘No somehow about it. You’re the bravest man I know, and that includes Harry.’

‘How on earth does it include Harry?’ he asked, and he sounded like he was on the verge of laughter.

‘Because he’s had to be,’ she said. ‘I’ve grown up in Godric��s Hollow, you know, I’ve seen the ruined house that he lived in. He’s had to be brave all the way from when he was a baby. But I didn’t. You didn’t. You’ve chosen to be brave, you’ve chosen to channel him. You're a pureblood, you could choose, every day, to keep your head down and get on with things, but you don't. You stand up and call her a bigoted liar in class and get tortured and you never back down. I find that more inspiring than anything.’

‘That’s very kind of you,’ he said quietly.

‘And you were brave lots of times even before. Don’t you remember winning those points all the way back in first year?’

He beamed, and looked at her directly, for the first time since he had blurted out that dittany was an aphrodisiac. ‘You remember that?’

‘Of course I do. Dumbledore pointing out about standing up to your friends - he was so right, that does take a lot of bravery. I tried to do it next year, when Ernie was telling me that Harry was the heir of Slytherin. I’m sorry to say that I wasn’t as brave as you, but at least I tried, I suppose.’

‘I think you’re very brave too,’ he said. ‘Looking after everyone like this, handing out essence of dittany, running out here with me to get more… I’m sorry that you’ve had to come back in here. I didn’t think.’

‘I didn’t either,’ she said, and she started cutting more flowers. ‘I was just so focused on the idea of more, I didn’t really think about where I’d be getting it from… But, you know, I’m OK, actually. The thought of it was worse than the reality. It’s just a greenhouse.’ She looked around. The white starlight bleached the dark greenery into shades of silver, bounced off the watering cans, sparkled in the droplets of water from the sprinklers. ‘A very beautiful one.’

‘I like to think so,’ he said, a little hoarsely. ‘I always found this whole place beautiful, but now it… sometimes feels like only the greenhouses still are. They’re the only place I haven’t seen people being tortured.’

She paused. ‘I’m secretly thankful my mum isn’t alive to see this. Is that awful? I’m just glad she never had to worry about me being here. I feel bad enough for Dad.’

‘It’s not awful,’ said Neville. ‘I know what you mean.’

‘Do you?’

‘My parents don’t know anything about what’s going on, and for the first time in my life, I’m glad,’ he said, and for some reason his words seemed to surprise him.

‘What do you mean?’ she asked, and without thinking she put down the little secateurs and touched his arm. He breathed deeply, not quite meeting her eyes, pressing down one of the seedlings quite firmly into the tray, before finally turning to her.

‘I live with my gran, because… my…’ He took another deep breath, and suddenly there was a clanging from outside.

They froze, and heard a low voice swearing. 'Bloody wheelbarrow…'

Hearts thudding, they ducked down and stayed silent, Neville silently mouthing for Hannah to get onto the large empty shelf under the potting table, where bags of compost were usually kept. He reached up, fumbling for the secateurs, and then started crawling along on his belly.

'What are you doing?' she whispered, horrified. Alecto Carrow was opening the door to the greenhouse, still muttering and swearing about the wheelbarrow he had tripped over.

He put a finger to his lips, and then pointed at the venomous tentacula, which had begun to writhe against the twine. The snip snip snip of the secateurs seemed unreasonably loud, but from the other side of the greenhouse Carrow did not appear to hear them, rifling noisily through the plants and shrubs, sending terracotta pots crashing to the floor.

'Anyone in here?' he demanded. 'I saw your footprints in the gravel. Hello?'

The vines of the tentacula waved threateningly, and Hannah watched with trembling fear as one of them reached out to Neville, still prone on the ground, and started to wrap itself around his throat.

'Don't be cheeky,' she heard him mutter to it, and he calmly prodded it with the secateurs until it released him.

It kept one tendril around his ankle, but Neville seemed to allow it as a compromise, and instead watched through the vines as Carrow upturned a table, still shouting and swearing.

After several, agonisingly long minutes, Carrow came close to them. The venomous tentacula silently released Neville’s ankle, and raised it's spiked tendrils.

'OW! Son of a bludger-'

A long line of expletives followed, and the venomous tentacular shook noisily, whip-like noises echoing through the greenhouse as it reached after Carrow, now bolting from the room.

'Grab the tray,' Neville told Hannah. 'He'll be heading straight to the hospital wing, we should have a clear path back. Quickly, before the tentacula gets over-excited and turns on us-'

She did so at once and he held back the spiked vines as she squeezed past the plant, and hurried safely out of range.

She stood there, holding her tray of little dittany plants and the heads of the flowers. She watched as Neville easily unentangled himself from the tentacula, patted it, said, 'thanks mate,' and grabbed a clear cover for the tray. He came close to her as he fitted it over the dittany, protecting them from the cold night air they would have to hurry back through.

His face was inches from her own, and she felt her breath hitch in her throat a little as she looked up at him. There was a slight clunk as the lid of the tray found its place. For a moment, they were perfectly still, just their breathing in that humid place, and his eyes, shining light blue in the pale light, lifted from the tray of dittany to meet her own.

'Do you really think I'm brave?' he whispered.

She nodded, and he seemed to be steeling himself for something. Please, she thought, please make this place good for me again. Her hands gripped the edges of the tray.

Very gently, very slowly, he leaned closer over the tray. His hand moved as though to softly move her face to meet his, but he didn't need to, for she was already naturally tilting her head, and her heels were lifting a little off the ground without her bidding them to.

Their lips met, soft like the petals of the dittany between them, sweet like the fragrance. His fingertips were trembling slightly as they caressed against her cheek, but then they calmed as the kiss deepened.

The tray pressed into them as he tried to move closer, and it reminded them where they were. They broke apart, panting and gasping as though they had just finished the run down from the castle.

She had never kissed anyone before. She was glad, unbelievably, overwhelmingly, joyfully glad, that her first kiss had been with Neville, in this place where the warm air was scented with damp soil and sweet flowers.

'We… we should take these back,' he said, his voice slightly hoarse. ‘Let - let me take them.’

He took the tray from her, and in her happy daze she allowed it, and let him lead the way out of the greenhouse. Joy had returned to her again, beneath the fogged glass, amongst the green plants, bursting with life.

#chudleycanonficfest2021 #HP fest #hp canon pairings #canon fest romantic #submission #neville x hannah #tw: maternal death #tw: mentions of violence

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moririki · 3 years

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⤷ AN EIGHT-LEGGED PROBLEM

OIKAWA TOORU & SAKUSA KIYOOMI & HAIBA LEV & MIYA ATSUMU X READER -> 1.8K you save your boyfriend from a massive problem which is currently in the corner of your bathroom )

REQUEST -> n/a CONTAINS -> spiders, bugs, you picking up said creepy crawlies, hq boys being no! help! at! all! (but that's ok bc we love them for it), fanon-ish sakusa cos i haven't read the manga and he had like 5 seconds of screen time so i'm just going off of what i've read + seen, clear favouritism despite the fact that i know basically nothing about sakusa, manga timeskip spoilers in sakusa's MORI'S THOUGHTS -> haven't seen one where the reader is the one in the relationship who takes care of bugs so since i'm a #girlboss who throws spiders out of my room whenever i see them without breaking a sweat i'm writing that into a fun lil thing with the haikyuu boys that i strongly believe are scared of bugs. also besides the point but look at the pretty colour palette that their banners make fjfjfjdj will go back to writing the requests after this! inspiration just struck

❍ OIKAWA TOORU

-> omg this fucking guy

-> don't let his pride fool you this man HATES bugs with a burning passion

-> he'll never admit it though

-> between you and the aoba johsai team he would never hear the end of how the great king oikawa would cower at the sight of a moth doing laps around a lightbulb

-> so when you pretended not to hear the shriek that left your boyfriend when he saw something flying around the bathroom light and he declined your offer to get rid of the moth for him, this left oikawa in a pretty difficult situation

-> it was just him alone in the bathroom, trying to brush his teeth while eyeing the bug warily

-> you came in a few minutes later, getting ready to go to bed as well

-> "you know, babe, that moth's been there for quite a while," you teased him

-> oikawa hummed in response, his eyes never leaving it as it continued its circumnavigation of the light fixture

-> "oh, you know. who am i to kick someone out of their home? i'm no monster"

-> you almost snorted at how poor of an excuse that was, but ruffled your boyfriend's hair anyway

-> "i'll take care of it, ru, you just finish getting ready"

-> "but y/n-chan, that moth has feelings! don't be mean to it!"

-> you gave tooru a very blank stare at that

-> "so do you want me to leave you alone with your new friend?"

-> "......no"

-> "that's what i thought"

-> you went up to the moth, managing to trap it in your hands before releasing it from a window

-> oikawa shuddered as you came back to the sink, giving your hands a quick rinse before resuming with brushing your teeth like nothing had happened

-> "you're so brave, my love"

-> "anything for you, babe"

❍ SAKUSA KIYOOMI

-> bless this poor boy

-> so it's no secret that sakusa isn't the fondest of germs

-> and that extends to bugs and spiders too

-> besides a normal amount of disgust that he held for them, the thought of where the insects had been or placed one of their many feet on never failed to make his skin crawl

-> that's where you, his wonderful significant other, comes in

-> as much as he loves you, he just can't understand how you always stared at bugs with wonder in your eyes

-> you'd even pick them up, cooing at the way they crawled up your arm while sakusa just stared at you in disbelief with a can of bug spray in hand

-> tonight was one of those swelteringly hot summer nights

-> you know, the ones where the air seems to be still no matter how many windows you open and every insect in a mile radius is actively trying to enter your home

-> you were spending the night at your boyfriend's apartment, ready to have a relaxing night in with him since your schedules had finally synced up and allowed you both to enjoy a day off at the same time

-> it took months of trust before sakusa finally admitted to you how much he enjoyed doing skincare

-> so whenever you two spent the night together, you decided to start the evening with some face masks and idle binging of a tv show

-> against his half-hearted protests, you had insisted that sakusa wore a headband while this happened (one that had a very cute duck face printed on it)

-> just to keep the curls out of his face, of course

-> whenever he caught you sneaking a candid of him with facemask and duck headband on, he just shot you a halfhearted glare and threatened you to never send that to atsumu or the rest of the msby team

-> (you set it as your home screen instead)

-> anyways, i digress

-> so tonight you decided to cool down from the heat with a few facemasks and cuddling in your boyfriend's heavily air conditioned living room

-> but he kept all his skincare stuff in the bathroom, so you went to go get them as he set up a show to watch along with some snacks

-> you flicked on the light, going to his cabinet when something in the corner of the room caught your eye

-> there was a fairly large spider, desperately trying to crawl up the smooth tile wall

-> you decided to take pity on it and release it

-> but when you had it cupped safely in your hands, you decided to terrorise your poor boyfriend just a little

-> "hey, omi, look what i found!"

-> your boyfriend perked up at your signature nickname for him, though his eyes narrowed as he saw your clasped hands held in front of you

-> "no"

-> "but baby, you haven't even seen-"

-> "no"

-> you giggled at how defensive he had become

-> "come on, don't you want to name it? it's very cute"

-> "i want you to throw it out, y/n"

-> "alright, alright"

-> you took the spider to a window, releasing it back outside before heading back to the bathroom and grabbing a few masks for real this time

-> sakusa gave you the cold shoulder as you sat down next to him, humming as you gave him a face mask and putting it on without a word

-> "aww, baby, i'm sorry"

-> "..."

-> "i'll give you a head massage if you stop ignoring me?"

-> sakusa turned to you, his eyes narrowed in thought as he stared you down

-> the act soon broke, though, and he smiled against the sheet mask that was on his face

-> "it better be a good one," he huffed as he tugged the duck headband off, already sighing at the sensation of your fingers against his scalp

-> "omi, come on, what do you take me for?"

❍ HAIBA LEV

-> ngl lev gives off equal amounts of being terrified of like the tiniest spider or just finding bugs insanely cool vibes

-> it's funnier to imagine this 6-foot-something guy scramble away from a fucking crane fly in terror though so this is how it's going to play out

-> when you invited your giant of a boyfriend to your flat, you didn't anticipate just how small he made everything appear

-> he even towered in your doorway, having to stoop to step through into your hall

-> "woahh, i love your place!"

-> it was his first time staying over for the night, and lev was making sure to drink in every aspect of your interior design

-> you found it sweet of him, and watched as he stared in wide-eyed wonder at the little trinkets you had collected over the years to make your small apartment seem more like a home

-> you didn't expect him to scream at the top of his lungs and practically run back to you, though

-> you jumped at the sound, watching as he scrambled away from your lamp and pointed back at it with a shaking finger

-> you squinted at it, making out the very menacing form of a crane fly as it bumped into the lampshade and continued on its path

-> "lev, you big baby," you giggled, heading to the kitchen to grab a glass and trap it

-> "y/n, don't leave me alone with it!" he yelped, and you rolled your eyes at his antics

-> you came back, smoothly capturing the insect and throwing it out of a nearby window

-> lev was sat on your couch the whole time, hands covering his eyes as he curled in a ball

-> "is it gone?" he asked, and you you giggled at how childlike he was acting at the moment

-> "it's all good, baby" you smoothed his hair and lev gratefully leaned into your touch, a sigh of relief leaving him

-> "thank you, y/n"

-> "i'll get rid of all the bugs in the world for you, lev"

❍ MIYA ATSUMU

-> gives off the vibes that he used to eat bugs as a child i'm sorry but

-> have mercy on his soul lmao

-> so twins are supposed to be identical right?

-> anyone who spends more than a few minutes around the miya twins know that that's a complete fucking lie

-> and you've had the misfortune of being friends with them for a very long time

-> like your mums were friends and you were all born around the same time

-> you've been pulled into their shit before you could walk or talk

-> so you're well aware of just how different these mfs are

-> even though they were both absolute bastards, osamu always had a slightly more mellowed out approach which would always end up with atsumu getting the blame for what they got up to

-> especially as a child, osamu loved to terrorise his twin with the unwilling help of you

-> one of the ways was through osamu exploiting one of his twins' fears

-> that being bugs and spiders

-> he always cackled at the sight of atsumu screaming and trying to run away from him due to the spider he was holding

-> as they both grew up, this became less of a frequent thing for osamu to do

-> you also somehow started dating atsumu, but nobody could exactly pinpoint a moment that signified a beginning to your relationship

-> but since you're dating the world's biggest manchild in disguise, and osamu gets annoyed with atsumu quite easily, you would have to swoop in to rescue him from time to time

-> recently the twins had been getting a little snappy with each other, and it had yet to sort itself out

-> from what you had heard your boyfriend was in the wrong this time, but you still listened to him whine and rant about it

-> you were going to the inarizaki school gym to say hi to your boyfriend and best friend before practice started, only to see absolute chaos unfolding

-> with kita yet to arrive, the twins were effectively unleashed and that much was clear with the way atsumu was practically screaming his head off as he ran around the gym

-> your eyes took in the rest of the players- aran had his head in his hands, suna was snickering with his phone out to record the newest miya twin fight, and osamu's deranged laugh could be heard above everything else as he chased his brother, hand held out in front of him

-> only one thing was capable of making atsumu scream like that, so you already knew what was happening

-> atsumu quickly spotted you hovering in the doorway, and made a beeline to where you were

-> his eyes were panicked, and you were quick to wrap him in a hug as you shot osamu a nasty glare over his shoulder

-> literally this lmfao

-> "that's enough, 'samu"

-> your best friend paused, before a smile spread across his face as he dangled the centipede in front of him

-> "you know it was rubber, right?"

-> you felt your boyfriend tense in your arms and you bit your lip to stifle a small giggle

-> but at least they would be back to normal by the end of today

back to the menu - ,, 🕷 ·˚ ༘ ꒱

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amarriageoftrueminds · 3 years

Note

Now now, we all know how Bucky's been in love with Steve (and known about his feelings) his whole life, but what about Steve? I've always swayed towards the theory 'Steve's been in love with Bucky his whole life as well, he only realised after Bucky fell from the train', but what if Steve's known he's in love with Bucky since their Brooklyn days? That would shed an entirely different light on his interactions with Miss Nazis Hirer and the whole 'right partner' talk

Going by canon, I think there must've been either: a declaration of mutual feelings, or; the first foray into a sexual relationship in their late teens, because one of Bucky's trigger words was 'seventeen', and Steve said he felt like a 16 year old again when he heard Bucky's name.

What's interesting is, at that time, and especially in that place*, there wasn't the idea that gay sex acts made you gay, because there were loads of 'straight' men around (eg. sailors.) going with other men just for sex. This was pre pill, pre sex-before-marriage for most, especially for Catholics like Steve.

So it might be that Bucky and Steve were doing the do with each other looong before either of them came to the realisation that they were also, coincidentally, in love.

I agree that Bucky, simply because he's exposed to dating women more than Steve is, has more of an opportunity to Realise before Steve. He'd have the benefit of being able to contrast his experience of feelings with Steve, with his experience of feelings for others, leading him to a lightbulb moment.

And he'd cover this up (and keep up the pretense of believing both he and Steve are really straight) by going out with girls in the meantime; in a period-appropriate gentlemanly way, not bedding them. Also to protect him and Steve from any potentially dangerous accusations.

I don't see Steve as not knowing precisely that he is in love with Bucky; I think he knew before the events of CATFA started, and it was a big part of his motivation for wanting to go to war.

But I do think it hadn't occurred to Steve that he might only be attracted to Bucky / men until after he got serum -- because, before then, his health would've been a limiting factor.

Before then, I can see him thinking 'well it's no wonder I have no libido like Bucky does around women, I'm just too unwell!' and not connecting the dots.

This would explain why he seems so panicked when sexual situations arise with women, after the serum; because he's realising 'oh shit! actually, I don't even like this when I have Perfect Health!' and hastily trying to backpedal himself out of an unwanted situation.

My HC is both of them thinking they're the only male-attracted one in the relationship and they're just engaging in sex acts together for convenience' sake but the other one's only going to keep doing it until he can get a girl.

So when Steve shows up all heterosexual-passing, looking like he can get any girl he wants, Bucky looks devastated because he thinks that signals the end of his physical (in his head unrequited romantic) relationship with Steve.

(But then between Peggy showing up and he and Steve going to the Continent together with the Howlies, Bucky mysteriously seems to perk up!)

By which point Steve, with his strong moral instincts and anti-Fascism, has come to the conclusion that if he's a physically perfect man, and he's still in love with and attracted to Bucky, then there must by definition be nothing wrong with feeling physically attracted to Bucky.

IDK if it makes it better or worse to imagine that they finally confessed to each other before the fall?

Maybe it'd be nice if they saved that for Post-WS, especially since Bucky might be then in even more doubt as to Steve's feelings for him. It's a common choice in fic for a reason!

There are two ways to read the 'right partner' talk Steve has with Peggy.

One is:

Steve's a straight man acting like an incel and attempting to pull pick-up artist tricks on Peggy which don't work, because she's not interested in him, and so doesn't take the bait (we only don't notice he's being a creep because Cevans and HA play it as benign, and because the writers, being themselves douchebags, don't realise what they've written; and probably wouldn't care even if they did.)

Two is: (particularly egregious if you flip the genders and imagine a woman saying this to a man)

Steve going out of his way to make it clear that he doesn't want to date, isn't interested in dating right now, while there's a war on, and finds women terrifying.

And yet as soon as he's fuckable, Peggy pulls a 180 and starts claiming she always liked him as he was, despite the fact that her actions directly disprove this; she didn’t ask him out when she had the chance and the encouragement.

Naturally, her arrogance leads her to the immediate assumption that if Steve is waiting for The One, then she must be the One to whom he was referring.

The fact that his wording either means he’s already found the One and is waiting for them, OR that he hasn’t met them yet, both exclude her from the running (since he’s known her a week) is... immaterial. She never asks if he has his eye on someone, does she? Would Steve being already married stop her?

(You don’t say ‘I don’t want to date because I’m waiting for the One’ to the person who IS the One, or whom you suspect may be the One. This ain’t rocket science!)

And hey, did you notice, that Peggy is just so important and special and perfect that her sudden interest in Steve means that Steve's stated wishes are now irrelevant?

The staggering hubris of waltzing up to him to go ‘hey, by the way, one day... when all this is over... I will allow you to date me.’ 😘😌

Too bad he didn’t ask!

The fact that Steve explicitly told her he isn't interested in dating and didn’t specify he’d be interested in her is invalidated by his new looks and her desire.

Sheesh. These Carter girls sure are rapey as hell.

(Also, in characteristic NOT-A-FEMINIST Peggy Style, the first thing she does upon seeing Big Steve is yank a t shirt out of the hands of a waiting nurse, because Saint Poppins is apparently so good at everything without training or experience that she can do nursing better than an actual nurse, too? (Could be she's also being characteristically territorial, pissing a circle round her chosen prey.) While simultaneously, out of nowhere, affecting a dumb ‘oh I’m so soft-and-feminine’ voice she didn’t have before?? Does that sounds like someone Steve ‘son of a nurse’ Rogers would admire? UGH.)

The irony of all this is ^ you can read Steve as 100% gay and not have to change a single piece of his characterisation or interactions with women at any point.

I've touched on this in other asks, but:

He never asks Peggy out when he has the opportunity; only when he knows it's too late and he won't be expected to follow through (due to him being dead.)

He never makes a move on any of the chorus girls or his female fans (no matter what those creeps M&M claim). Or Private Lorraine. Or Nat. He has to be nagged to make one on Sharon (while Peggy's body's barely had time to cool, and looks fine about never seeing her again lol!) But he goes out of his way to befriend Sam, and waay out of his way to get Bucky back.

Throughout all his films he's consistently assaulted by women, even friends, and never looks happy about it; he also never looks upset when he's rejected or cut off from women love interests, or when he's able to dodge flirting (by, eg. jumping out of a frickin' plane!?)

It's 'his choice', in his own words.

He seems his happiest with women in platonic situations, and only sad about them when it's a question of a shirked duty, a bereavement, or him feeling he's let them down; eg. when Nat dies, when his mother dies, when he's unable to deliver a promised dance to Peggy, etc.

(But it makes people uncomfortable to address this since many of his fans are female.)

But even marrying a woman (albeit the most OOC choice it's physically possible for a Captain America to make, not to mention that it involves abandoning our-Bucky alone in the future). It doesn't preclude Steve from being gay, since lavender marriages were hella common (doubly so for famous gay men).

He could be gay and still in a relationship with Bucky, and married to Peggy. I mean, he's guaranteed a wife who'll spend most of the time away at work, able to use her connections to squash any inconvenient press; and unable to out him or Bucky without ruining her own prestige. Perfect!

Still makes EG Steve a douchebag tho. 😒

*we know they frequented north Brooklyn, because Steve said 'I know this neighborhood!' while the Brooklyn Bridge was in sight behind him; but, they got the street angle wrong, cuz they made it look like the BKB has a street which looks right at it, when in fact the street with that famous view is of the Manhattan Bridge. The places Steve describes being beat up; a parking lot, alleyway, and diner, are also all places you'd go while you're Out, rather than where you live. So IMO Steve and Bucky lived somewhere near DUMBO, but not so far east that their view was of the Manhattan Bridge; either Brooklyn Heights or Downtown. So that puts them right in the heart of Gay Brooklyn (as in, Truman Capote had a house there, because Walt Whitman wrote a famous poem about there; that level of gay), next to the Navy Yard and Sands Street (gay cruising central) and they also frequented gay cruising mecca Coney Island (big burlesque hot spot).

#mcu meta #antipeggy #toAyourQ #hey nonny #steve meta #bucky meta #p*ggy meta #anti st*ggy #endgame steve is a skrull #antiendgame #dat's me #bucky barnes #meta #mcu #yet each man queues the thing he loves

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retroateez · 3 years

Text

me and you, together, at the end of the world

san x reader

angst, apocalypse au

word count: 1.1k

heavy mentions of death, so if you’re due an existential crisis i would probably give this one a miss

they all said it would come one day. experts predicting the fall of society, the dismantling of humanity and detailing the chaos to ensue afterwards.

but you had never expected it to come during your lifetime.

accepting the end of the world had been difficult, but as time went on and the inevitable drew closer, the kinder death as an option seemed.

the past week had been the hardest. monday, the radio stations and television channels instructed people to stay indoors, to not panic and assured the public that help was on the way. tuesday, nobody came. wednesday, you were beginning to wonder if the copious amounts of pasta and baked beans in your student apartment would see you through to the end. by thursday, still nobody had come. on friday, an emergency broadcast was sent out, telling civilians to get to a giant, communal safehouse in the middle of city by noon on saturday.

saturday morning, your boyfriend san showed up. he told you grab what you could; you were leaving. one hour before noon, the usual, panicked news broadcast was interrupted.

the newsanchor told you and everybody else watching that death was imminent. the cause of the destruction was going to be eliminated, as were you.

the phrase 'for the greater good' had never seemed so bittersweet.

you watched as san flopped lifelessly onto your small, worn out couch.

the man on the screen informed you that all safehouses across the country were full, and that the people inside them would be the next generation.

"the generation of hope" he called them.

he then went on to explain the governments plan to bomb the remaining parts of the country. deeming such extreme measures the "only way to exterminate the threat of extinction".

it was at that exact moment both you and san knew you would die.

sunday morning, sitting on the rooftop with the love of your life, watching the sunrise with your hands clasped tightly as if to never, ever let go.

the burnt orange hue across the horizon cast a warm glow across the city below your building. broken down cars litter the middle of the streets, when a week ago the early morning rush would just have been starting.

you remember how you would complain to san about how the honking of horns and yelling of angry businessmen below your apartment would always wake you up.

how silly that seems now.

the two of you sit in silence, neither of you able to find anything to say despite these being some of your last living moments.

the feeling of his thumb slowly ghosting over the skin of your hand reminds you that you are alive, and that the nightmare you are living in is inescapable.

"i love you, y/n." san says suddenly, speaking softly as he faces out over the city.

"I love you too, san."

you couldn't estimate how long you had been sat there with him, keeping a tight grip on his hand to remind yourself that he was there. only when the sun had reached directly above your heads did you realise it had been hours.

you could feel it's hot rays beating down on your neck, your instincts yelling at you to go inside and put on sunscreen. but you have to keep reminding yourself that nothing matters anymore. everything you do now is meaningless, eating breakfast, making the bed, putting trash in the correct bin.

nothing matters when there is nobody left to care.

"i'm going to marry you in the next life, y/n."

"what?"

"that was the only thing i was sure that i wanted in this life. and now it's being ripped away from me. so in the next life, i'm going to marry you, and nothing, and nobody can stop me."

"okay."

you hated the fact you couldn't give san a proper response, only staring numbly at the quiet, desolate expanse below you.

some time later, you hear the rumbling of armoured trucks making their way to the center of the city. above you, helicopters hover hundreds of metres above your head.

you always thought that you would be scared, or that you would be a fighter and survive your way through the end of the world and come out the other side unscathed.

but with san's slender fingers wrapped around your own, none of that really matters anymore.

"i wish i could've had it all with you, san. marriage, children, pets. coming home after a long day and arguing over whose turn it was to do the dishes, going to parties and leaving early to watch movies in bed, going on road trips and getting flat tires, reading our children to sleep, forgetting to put the eggs in the brownie mix and making a mess, celebrating your next big promotion at work, everything that seems so meaningless, i want it, and i only want it with you."

the emotions spill out through the cracks in your voice, the tears welling up in your eyes and the tightening of your hand over san's.

he says nothing, but the squeeze he gives you is his way of saying me too.

the sun begins to set behind you, san stands up and tugs you up too, bringing you to the other side of the roof to watch the sunset.

"i wish i had appreciated the sunset more," he tells you. "i wish i had appreciated a lot of things more than i have done."

"we have eternity to do that now." you whisper to him.

he reclasps your hand and the two of you return to your tranquil state of sitting in silence, watching the entire world go by with the comforting presence of each other.

ironically, the city is encased in peace. the usual bustle of life has vanished, leaving san's shallow breathing the only thing left for you to hear. it's poetic, really.

the world's sound has disappeared and manifested itself in san, who now is your world.

no, he's your universe.

night brings with her darkness, that she sweeps over the empty houses and abandoned stores, cafes and playgrounds. an unwelcome guest she too brings with her.

chaos is hard at work, the silence broken by a distance boom, indicating the beginning of the cull.

san's hand tightens on yours once more, and this time you both truly know you don't have long left.

the explosions are getting louder and more frequent, the blackness of night shielding your view from the smoke and destruction in neighbouring cities.

"i love you."

"i love you too."

you were content at that moment.

when it was just you and san, together, at the end of the world.

#san #choi san #ateez #san angst #ive been reading so much apocalypse lit recently #partially inspired by the walking dead #and station eleven #why do i always write depressing things #retroateez #san x reader

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luminescencefics · 3 years

Text

fade in, fade out - part six

story page // chapter moodboard // read on wattpad // banner credit

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A/N: Since this chapter is quite long, mobile viewing is probably not the best option because Tumblr can sometimes be finicky! I would recommend viewing in a browser. Happy reading, loves! x

***

The Climax

January 2013

Marcus and Nora break up during the spring of her second year.

He wanted things to move much faster than they were, and Nora was far too comfortable with their normal—the normal in which Marcus lived a floor above her and they could wrap around each other in his tiny twin bed without worrying about things outside of their protective bubble. Because this normal was easy, it was simple, it was safe—and doing anything different, switching up their normal, would make it the complete opposite.

So when he tells her that he found a small studio apartment in the West Village one April afternoon underneath a budding black tupelo tree in Central Park, and he would love more than anything for Nora to move in, she immediately declines. She wasn’t ready for that step—wasn’t ready to not live with Ebony and switch up her normal and pop their bubble.

Breaking up wasn’t in Nora’s plan, but she knew that it was bound to happen. It was an amicable split, something that didn’t shake her world or leave her feeling lost at sea without an anchor in the unforgiving rough waters. And two months later, when she’s spending her final summer at home with her mother, Nora wonders if there’s something wrong with her heart when it still feels intact and the still-beating flesh isn’t ripping apart at the seams.

But life moves on, and so does Nora.

When she arrives back on campus at the start of her third year, Nora finds that she has room in her schedule for extracurriculars due to her influx of AP credits from Townbridge. On a whim, she decides to fill in the gaps with Film Study classes, and Nora finds that her heart is thumping in a way that it never has before—in a way that makes her feel that she’s finally found purpose, finally found her passion, finally found something close to unadulterated happiness.

Her favorite film professor is an older woman named Suzanne Davies who insists she be called Sue, or more radically, Suzy. She’s built of thin bones and worn skin, mahogany eyes that have seen almost everything that Nora wishes she could, with grey curly hair that twists at the nape of her neck and covers a brain that Nora wishes she could pry apart and indulge in every memory like a film projector reel on a thin hanging sheet.

She teaches Film Theory & Criticism, and when Nora listens to her thick British accent work through Apparatus theory and Structuralist theory, she can’t help but think of London—a city that feels an entire world away, and how badly she wishes she could visit, if only for a short amount of time.

One dreary November afternoon when Nora is the last one to leave the lecture hall, Suzy stops her and asks her what she wants to do with her life. Nora is instantly brought back to a time in December three years ago, in a different state with a boy she thinks about every now and then, who asked her this very same question as the snow was falling outside and they were laying down on concrete steps, eyes facing the cracked ceiling above. She was honest then, not even hesitating when spilling the words freely from her lips, because for some odd reason, she trusted him entirely in that small moment in time.

She feels the same now, and suddenly, she’s telling her professor about the pressure she feels of choosing a stable career, of how she needs her mother to be proud of her, of how she studies Communications but craves Film, of how she’s never been happier than when she’s watching old movies and dreaming up plots of her own. She tells Suzy how she’s never left the country, of how she wishes to see places that aren’t coastal Newport or rural Connecticut or bustling New York City.

When Nora sits in her usual seat in the middle row for her next class a week later, she finds an application for Columbia’s exchange program with University College London on her desk. She skims through the pages, finding that Suzy has filled in most of the basic information, leaving the personal questions for Nora to finish. And when she looks up at her professor just as she’s beginning the lecture, Suzy feels her gaze warm her wrinkled cheek and shoots her wink, going right back to discussing human nature as a fundamental theme in A Clockwork Orange.

Nora sends in her application right after class, and receives her acceptance letter the week before Christmas break. She feels as if she’s floating through thin air, and the only thing keeping her from floating into the stratosphere is the glossy folder from UCL with the words Congratulations! and welcome and 4 January 2013 printed on thick paper. Her mother might possibly be more thrilled than Nora, and when she’s back in Newport folding thick sweaters and knitted scarves and thrifted trench coats into her suitcases on New Year’s Eve, Nora can’t help but think that if moments could be bottled, she would pick this one to cherish forever.

Time seems to pass much faster for Harry. His first year meshes into his second year without hesitation, his afternoon’s at his internship with his father fall into nights spent with his mates almost thoughtlessly—and it’s only once he’s been doing the same thing for almost an entire year when he feels himself growing tired of it all. He’s sick of this routine. Sick of drinking himself into a place where he doesn’t have any feelings, doesn’t think of all of his past mistakes, doesn’t do anything else except simply exist for a few hours. And when he falls into his bed the next morning feeling his brain throb against his skill in agony, he comes to the conclusion that he’s completely and utterly exhausted from this meaningless lifestyle.

When his third and final year comes along, he decides to stop answering his mates when they call. He doesn’t show up to their penthouse parties anymore, he doesn’t frequent the same claustrophobic clubs he knows they’ll be at. Harry keeps to himself, and when he sees a flyer after his Business Ethics lecture about intramural football tryouts, he brings his old kit to the pitch the next afternoon. He’s a bit rusty, but Harry finds that most of the lads are, and that thought alone makes him start to feel something other than emptiness.

He makes the team and meets a boy named Niall. He’s from Ireland and drinks like a fish, but he’s kind and easygoing and doesn’t care that Harry’s surname is Styles—and it’s a refreshing change from the incessant partying and shallow people he wasted away with his first two years. Niall is warm and comfortable, and reminds Harry of slipping on that warm jumper he’s had for years in the back of his closet whenever the weather gets cold, and it’s nice having a real friend for once in his life.

As October changes into November, Harry feels a change within himself, too. It’s subtle, the smallest of shifts that allows his icy heart to thaw ever so slowly, and he finds that he welcomes it with open arms.

He meets Niall’s girlfriend just as the long stretch of autumn begins. Her name is Piper and she’s practically made for Niall, in the way that the top of her head reaches just under Niall’s chin so that he can rest it there whenever they’re talking to other people, in the way that his hand practically swallows her much smaller one whenever they’re walking from pub to pub, in the way that she instinctively makes him a cup of tea whenever she brews her own, knowing exactly how he takes it. It makes Harry a little bit jealous, because for the first time in years, he finds that he yearns to wrap a body part around another warm person just to inform them that he hasn’t forgotten their presence, yearns to swallow palms with his own, yearns to have another person think of him while doing the most mundane of tasks.

Yearns to have somebody want him in a way he hasn’t ever been wanted before.

Piper is in her third year at UCL, and she met Niall at a house party during their first year hosted by a mutual friend. They fell in love quickly and seamlessly, and after three weeks Niall told her that she was the one for him, and it all sort of made sense.

She welcomes Harry into their eclectic group, filled with a few lads from footie and a few girls from Piper’s dorm, and they’re the fastest friends Harry’s ever made. They spend their fall semester at a small pub in Camden on Wednesdays that plays live music and is filled with seemingly normal people like Harry’s new mates, and busy house parties hosted by UCL students on the weekends, with the occasional club sprinkled in between.

As autumn trickles into winter, Harry finds that he’s quite sad to watch Niall leave for Ireland for the holiday break. He’s not sure how time passed so quickly, and as December fades into January, Harry’s counting down the days until his loud brown-haired mate is back in London, showing up on his doorstep to drag him to the pub around the corner for a pint.

When Nora exits Heathrow during one of the coldest days of the year, she finds that not even the weather can dull her perpetual shine. She barely slept the entire flight, her excitement of being on a plane for the first time and receiving her first official passport stamp keeping her wide awake throughout the entire seven hour journey.

During the car ride from Heathrow to her residence hall in Central London, Nora’s face is glued to the window pane, her eyes taking in every sight that flashes by. Her mouth is close enough to the glass that her humid breaths are causing the window to fog over, but she can’t even think about how rude that probably is. All she can think about is the fact that she’s in another country, in a brand new city, experiencing all of this for the very first time.

When the black car finally pulls up to a brick building, Nora clutches her two suitcases in each hand, her leather backpack strapped tightly against the wool material of her trench coat, and makes her way to the sixth floor.

Nora’s room is small but homely, a single twin bed against one wall with a wooden wardrobe on the other. A white desk sits underneath the decently-sized window straight against the back wall, and when she looks around and takes everything in, she feels herself breathe properly for the first time since stepping on English soil.

Her floor is quiet, but before Nora can begin to explore, she decides to be smart and starts unpacking, knowing that the longer she puts it off, the less inclined she’ll be to put her clothes away properly.

After about an hour, she decides to venture down the hallway into the common room where a small kitchen and lounge area reside. Nora notices a few coats thrown over the back of the couch haphazardly, and before she can build up the courage to turn down the other adjacent hallway and meet her new floormates, she decides to brew a cup of coffee to push past the jet lag attempting to invade her insides.

When she turns the kettle on and rummages through the cupboards to try and find some instant coffee, Nora discovers nothing but various tea flavors. Disgruntled, Nora plucks a package of Earl Grey and places it inside a mug she grabbed from the shelf, moving the plaid tea towel a little bit further down the countertop as she waits for the hot water to boil.

Nora leans her right hip on the counter while she waits, drumming her fingertips against the laminate material as she tries to remember if she even likes the taste of tea to begin with. She drank chamomile tea once after studying for finals so that she could sleep, and whenever she was sick with a cold, her mother would make her a cup with a dollop of honey to soothe her scratchy throat. She wonders if she’s allowed to put milk inside so the color isn’t a deep murky brown, or if sugar would help with the bitter taste.

Suddenly, Nora detects something that smells distinctly of burning. She springs upright, wondering what on earth she could have possibly done. Water can’t burn, right?

But before her fuzzy brain can start functioning properly, she looks down to her right and notices that the edges of the plaid tea towel have charred, and when she blinks, Nora realizes that the red light on the hot plate has been turned on.

“Shit!” Nora squeals, flicking the switch off that she must have accidentally turned on when she lazily rested her hip against the edge of the counter moments ago.

Just as she makes a reach for the burning tea towel, she hears a high-pitched accented voice behind her shriek, and suddenly, freckled arms are appearing in her periphery, snatching up the ruined tea towel as she yells, “Oi! No tea towels on the hot plate!”

With a flick of her wrist, the girl throws the tea towel into the sink, turning the cold water on while Nora’s cheeks burn bright. “I’m sorry! I didn’t even realize—Christ,” she splutters, tearing her eyes away from the wet fabric inside the steel basin and focusing them on the smaller girl in front of her.

“Ah, you’re the new American exchange student.” The girl says it in a way that makes Nora wonder if it’s a good or bad thing, as if her identifier explains why she nearly burned their residence hall down a mere three hours after being allowed in the country.

Before Nora can apologize or worse, make an even bigger fool of herself, the pretty girl in front of her chuckles in a way that makes Nora breathe in a deep sigh of relief. And before she can even realize what she’s doing, Nora starts to laugh along with her—loud enough until her cheeks feel bruised from smiling so brightly and her ribs hurt from the lack of air pumping through her lungs. The kettle starts to whistle, forcing them to break their eye contact.

Just as Nora reaches over to turn it off, the girl’s freckled arm beats her to the punch, knocking her hip against Nora’s with a bright smile, “Let’s keep you away from any more potential fire hazards, yeah?”

The lightness in her tone makes Nora believe that she’s being genuine, and when the girl begins to pour the hot water into the mug and shoots a kind smile over her shoulder, Nora takes a step back and feels a bit more at ease.

“I’m Nora, by the way,” Nora announces, watching the pretty girl with auburn hair dunk the tea bag exactly seven times into the water.

“I’m Piper. How do you take your tea?” she asks, looking over her shoulder again. Nora gets a bit distracted by the smattering of freckles covering the bridge of her nose and falling onto the apples of her cheeks. Her eyes are the brightest shade of green Nora’s ever seen, and when the girl tilts her head to the side in question, Nora shakes her head, realizing that she has no idea how to properly drink tea.

“Uh, I’m not sure,” she admits sheepishly. Piper gives her a soft smile, before reaching into the refrigerator and grabbing a small carton of milk.

“You’ll take it like me, then. Reckon I’ll convert you into a proper tea drinker by the time your exchange is over, Rah,” Piper calls out, pouring a dash of milk and plopping one sugar cube inside the cup, stirring it another seven times. Nora wonders if that changes the taste or if it’s just a little quirk her new floormate does.

Nora’s eyebrows furrow at the unfamiliar name that falls from Piper’s pink lips. “Rah?”

Piper hands over the mug with twinkling eyes. “Gotta give you a nickname if we’re meant to be proper mates, right?”

It’s a question that seems to not need an answer, because Piper is the type of girl that says things with an air of unbridled assurance. Piper could tell you that the glowing star in the sky wasn’t the sun, instead, it was a dripping egg yolk that warmed everything underneath, and you would believe it. So when she calls Nora by her nickname, she doesn’t even bat an eye, because if being called Rah means she has a new friend in this unfamiliar place, then Nora will accept it without hesitation.

“Let’s get you all settled in then, yeah? I’ll have my boyfriend bring us some dinner. I think you’ll like him,” Piper says, grabbing Nora’s hand and dragging her into her bedroom at the other end of the hall.

A few hours later, when a brown-haired boy with matching blue eyes and a thick Irish accent shows up with two bags of Thai takeaway in one hand and a twelve-pack of Fosters beer in the other, Nora finds that Piper was right—she likes him quite a bit. They seem to get on like a house on fire, and when he cracks open a beer for her and tells her that he thinks she has a funny accent, Nora laughs and throws his comment right back in his face. The three of them end up eating too much food and drinking too much beer, but Nora doesn’t mind the bellyache when she falls into bed later that night, thinking all of it was worth it, because she made two new friends on her first night.

The next evening, Piper swings open Nora’s door without knocking, and begins rummaging through her wardrobe and pulling out her nicest pair of blue jeans, a cute sweater she got on the clearance rack at some New York City boutique, and one of her thrifted trench coats. She tells Nora to get ready because they’re going out tonight, and before she can decline, she hears Niall yell over from the common room, “Get yer arse dressed, Rah! It’s pub night!”

Barely thirty minutes later, Nora finds herself sandwiched between Niall and Piper in the cold January air, heels stomping against the pavement as they zigzag their way through the crowded streets of Camden Town.

Niall’s phone begins to ring, and before Nora’s head can snap in his direction, the sleek black device is already pressed against his ear as he begins speaking loudly into the night air. “Curly! How’re ya, mate? What? Yes, of course we’re goin’ to the pub. It’s Wednesday! Late? What d’ya mean, late? Oh. Yeah, sure, take yer time, Pipes and I have our hands full breakin’ in Rah over here. What’s that? Rah? Pipes and I adopted her. Yer gonna love her. Right, see ya later!”

He looks over at Nora as he slides his phone into his back pocket. The question is at the tip of her tongue, but when she takes in the mischievous twinkle in his eyes and finds that Piper’s are matching, she just shakes her head softly before muttering, “Do I even want to know?”

Niall flings his arm around her shoulder and Piper’s much smaller one wraps around Nora’s waist. “Best not to know anything,” Piper whispers into her ear, giggling as they make their way around the corner to the brick-faced pub at the end of the street.

When they finally pull Nora inside, it takes her a few moments to get adjusted to the unfamiliar setting. She’s only been twenty-one for two months now, and even though she knows the legal drinking age here is eighteen, she’s still only been inside a handful of bars in her short existence.

Bars in New York City are nothing like the place Nora currently finds herself in. She’s used to proper lighting, sleek bar tops, upholstered seating, and fancy liquor bottles lining the mirrored walls. Instead, she finds herself surrounded by chipped wood, sticky paneled flooring, and string lights fastened to original crown molding. The bar itself has more beer taps than she’s ever seen another place have before, and instead of ornate tequila bottles on thick glass panes, Nora finds numerous bottles of dark liquor haphazardly placed on oak shelving. It’s all wooden stools and high-top tables and stained rims on old surfaces, and when she notices an elevated platform along the farthest wall with musical instruments placed a bit too close together to make up for the lack of room the space provides, Nora finds that she likes this place a little bit more than the ones back home.

Instead of asking Nora what she’d like to drink, Niall just bends down and speaks into her ear, “You trust me, right?” And when she nods and finds that she surprisingly does trust this friendly stranger after only twenty-four hours, he grins and smacks a kiss to the crown of her head, prancing over to the bar with a giddy smile on his face.

Piper just shakes her head with a chuckle, grabbing Nora by the hand and dragging her over to a high-top closer to the empty stage. “Come meet the gang, Rah,” she says, squeezing her palm a little tighter when she notices the nervous look washing over Nora’s features.

With her palm in Piper’s, Nora is happily introduced to a group of five people clutching pint glasses with two plates of chips in the middle of the table. She recognizes two of the girls from her residence hall, and smiles when they compliment her boots and coat. The rest are names Nora tries her hardest to file into her memory, and when she slips into a stool with Piper sliding into the one on her right, she finds herself feeling much more comfortable.

Niall appears with a black tray covered in spilled beer and shorter glasses filled with a deep brown liquid Nora can only assume to be whiskey inside. She gulps, attempting to alleviate her dry throat, mentally preparing herself because she did tell him moments ago that she trusted him. And when she slides the liquor down her throat and feels it burn her insides, she chases the warmth with cold beer and hears Niall’s loud cheer across from her.

“Way to go, Rah! Yer a natural!” Nora feels Piper squeeze her shoulder affectionately, and before Niall can slide another shot glass in her direction, Nora watches his eyes lift over the top of her head to something behind her. His blue eyes suddenly widen and his teeth rip through his skin, grinning widely as he calls out, “Curly! Just in time, mate!”

Nora hears a deep chuckle behind her, and for some strange reason, it sounds all too familiar.

She’s instantly brought back to a time three years ago in the dead of winter, the rolling green Connecticut hills covered in thick white blankets of snow, in which a boy and a girl spent ten days together without any interruptions. She heard that chuckle enough times in those ten days to permanently have it imprinted in her memory, and suddenly, Nora feels her stomach clench uncomfortably, because how, after all of this time, can Nora still remember that sound?

But then she hears it. His voice—much deeper now, but still gravelly and throaty, forming words slowly with his accent tilting at the end of specific phrases. It’s much thicker now, no doubt from his time spent in his home country, and all at once, Nora feels her face pucker with discomfort. She wonders if anybody else can notice the inner-turmoil wreaking havoc underneath her skin, but then he speaks again, and it’s close enough to cause her to momentarily forget how to breathe.

“What do we have here, then?” Nora can’t bring herself to move. She feels as if her bum is glued to the wooden seat, the soles of her boots are transfixed to the legs of the stool, and her upper body has lost all proper motor function. Nora is almost certain that she’s panicking, but then she’s brought back into focus when Niall’s cheerful voice echoes off the walls of the crowded pub surrounding her.

“This is our Rah! Came all the way from America on exchange, so don’t go and scare her off,” Niall calls out, his grin faltering a little when he notices the alarmed look covering Nora’s face.

“Came all this way and the first person she meets is you? Well, let me formally apologize for that disappointment—” Nora gulps one last time and swivels around in the old stool, finally revealing herself, causing his words to fall flat.

When their eyes finally meet, Nora’s relieved she isn’t holding the pint glass in her hand, because if she were, she’s certain that it would fall to the floor below her, breaking with a resounding crack when she finally faces Harry Styles for the first time in three years.

It feels like everything is happening in slow motion. Sea green eyes widen in shock, and Nora watches as his neck pushes his face outward, as if his body was forcing him to take in every inch of her face to re-familiarize himself with it. He’s a bit taller now, still wearing an expensive dark-colored trench coat, still choosing an inappropriately thin t-shirt underneath. He seems to have grown up in every sense of the word—with the way his chest is a bit fuller and his arms are a bit thicker and his stomach is a bit tighter. His jawline seems to be more pronounced, the bone practically slicing through his skin with the way the lines effortlessly sculpt his face that is still annoyingly perfect. She notices that his hair is pushed back into a low bun, the curls escaping the thin hair tie just kissing the nape of his neck. She can’t help but wonder what the tendrils would look like if she pulled the knotted elastic from his hair, allowing them to fall freely down his back.

“Nora Priestley?” Harry barely calls out. He feels as if he’s hallucinating.

Because the last time he saw Nora Priestley in the flesh, she was all blonde hair and skinny limbs and knobby knees. There’s no denying that this is still her, considering her blue eyes are practically tattooed underneath his eyelids whenever he tries to fall asleep at night, and nobody else can steal that shade. She’s practically a fully-blossomed woman sitting in front of him—all slender legs and tiny waist, long torso that has rigidified over time, undulating hips that truly show a level of maturity that didn’t exist three years ago back in Connecticut. Her face is still angular, her nose is still buttoned, her lips are still pouty, her cheekbones are still high on her face and tinted pink. But when he looks at her hair, he notices that the blonde is gone. In its place is a deep shade of brown, nearly black, flowing over her shoulders and down her back languidly. Her fringe is still there, all messy strands framing a face that she’s finally grown into, and Harry finds a calming sense of familiarity in that.

She’s beautiful—she’s always been this effortlessly cool type of beautiful, and Harry can’t actually believe that she’s sitting in front of him. Can’t actually believe that her lips are moving on her face, forming his two-syllable name. Can’t actually believe that he’s been staring at her hearing white noise flood through his ear canals, blocking whatever else is falling from her mouth.

“Your hair. It’s different,” are the words Harry chooses to say once he realizes her mouth is closed, mentally berating himself for being so wrapped up in this New Nora that he seemingly forgot how to hold a normal conversation.

She seems to be on the same page, with the way she slowly tears her eyes from his own, staring blankly at the wall over his shoulder when an odd sense of déjà vu clouds her vision, before nodding absently.

“Yeah,” she finally voices, bringing her forlorn gaze back to his. “I could say the same for you.”

He smiles a bit, wondering how to maneuver through these unfamiliar waters with her. But before he can even properly locate his mooring, Niall interrupts, causing Nora to swivel back in his direction so that her back is once again facing Harry.

“I’m confused—have you two met?” Niall asks, observing the two with wide eyes, a crinkle in his forehead as he tries to dissect the interaction unfolding across the table.

“Uh, yeah. We went to boarding school together,” Nora explains, filling in the gaps. She sees the pint glass in her periphery and grabs it tightly, bringing it to her lips and gulping three heavy swallows of the bitter liquid to slow down her erratic heartbeat.

“Wait—here? I thought you said you’ve never been on a plane before, Nora!” Piper calls out from Nora’s right side, her auburn hair flicking back and forth when she notices the tension radiating off of their bodies.

“No, in America,” Harry answers for Nora when he realizes her mouth is preoccupied with downing her entire pint in one go. Her cheeks are flushed and her eyes are darting in every direction that isn’t the blue of Niall’s eyes or the bright green of Piper’s, and Harry can conclude that Nora is uncomfortable.

“Well, that’s a plot twist I didn’t see comin’,” Niall says through a chuckle, moving his eyes away from Nora’s as he takes a long swig of his drink, shaking his head at the uncanniness of it all.

The whole group seems to be a bit shocked by this revelation, and before Nora can suffocate under the unnatural silence surrounding the table, Piper asks the rest of the group a question about the new band performing tonight, and just like that, all is forgotten.

Nora can feel the body behind her disappear, and when she sees black wool material flutter past her eyesight, she breathes in a sigh of relief when she notices the only chair available is the one diagonal from her, almost conveniently out of her line of vision.

She looks up when she sees a fresh pint glass being pushed in her direction, and when her eyes lock with Niall’s and she realizes that he’s given her the second beer he originally saved for himself, she smiles appreciatively before bringing the cool glass to her lips, swallowing deeply with her eyes shut tight.

If Nora’s meant to endure this entire evening, she’s going to need all of the liquid courage she can muster. Because the universe must be playing some sort of sick-twisted game with her, giving her the opportunity to travel to a new city while simultaneously thrusting the boy who almost broke her heart right in the epicenter of it all. She wonders if this is her karma for ending things with Marcus, for not agreeing to move in with him and take the next steps in their relationship.

Nora sighs, wanting so badly to laugh at her situation, but knows deep down that she can’t. Because London is supposed to be a big city—filled with nine million people and her chances of potentially running into Harry were meant to be astronomically low. The numbers should have been on her side—considering Oxford University is sixty miles away from UCL, and Oxfordshire is an hour and a half away from Central London, and out of the three hundred pubs in all of Camden, the probability of running into him at this very one in this exact moment in time is far too outstanding to even be considered a possibility.

But it is, and it’s happening all around her, and suddenly—Nora needs to leave.

She can’t be sat so close to him after all this time and act like everything’s okay. Because it’s not okay and she’s not okay and this whole fucking scenario will never be okay, and in order to be okay, Nora needs to locate the closest escape route and disappear.

Her head is swivelling and she’s not listening to any of the conversations happening around her, and as if the gods were pitying her, sensing her panic attack all the way from the heavens above, they send her a sign in the form of Niall grabbing Harry and bringing him over to the bar with the guys for another round.

Once they’ve left, Nora abandons her half-emptied glass and grabs her coat, flinging it on her body without even buttoning it properly. Piper looks over, realizing that Nora’s face is flushed and her eyes are a bit widened, and before she can get too far, she asks, “Rah, you alright?”

Shit, Nora thinks, I forgot about Piper.

“Uh, yeah. Just need a smoke,” Nora lies, teeth forming a barely-there smile to try and prove to her new friend that she’ll be okay and doesn’t need to be followed.

Piper warily falls for it, and when Nora watches her freckled face turn back towards the girls at the table, Nora sighs in relief and hurries over to the front door, flying out into the cold January air as she tries to navigate her shaking feet back towards the Underground.

She doesn’t make it very far, barely rounds the corner of the street before she hears her name being roughly called from raspberry lips she’s too terrified to face. But his legs are longer than hers and his strides are more purposeful, because just as Nora’s identified the Underground entranceway, Harry’s large palm wraps around her tensed bicep and suddenly, she’s spinning on the heels of her boots, officially caught trying to run away in the middle of a busy sidewalk surrounded by throngs of people.

Nora immediately flinches, shaking his hand off her body before she becomes familiar with the warmth that encapsulates the fabric adorning her skin. Harry gets the hint and dejectedly brings his hand back down to his side, shuffling in his brown suede shoes as he tries to form the correct words to say to her.

“You don’t have to leave,” he starts, trying his hardest to identify the wary look in her eyes. Because he’s never seen her look like this—so completely and utterly defeated, and Harry almost wishes she would lash out instead of continue to look at him the way she is doing right now.

“I do,” Nora says, moving her eyes down to the cracked pavement. She can’t bring herself to look at his face anymore.

“Piper said you were having a smoke. I didn’t think you did that.” Harry’s words cause her head to lift abruptly, and she’s not sure if it’s because his voice sounds so broken and dejected, or if it’s because he’s insinuating that he still knows things about her.

“You don’t know me anymore, Harry,” Nora spits out, leveling her blues with his greens in a standoff that she doesn’t feel ready for.

Harry frowns, rubbing his palm against the back of his neck, choosing to back down. “I know.”

It’s sad. The whole situation is terribly sad, because suddenly, Pandora’s box has been ripped open—the lid practically flung across the pavement as feelings that have been buried underneath the surface for so long are unforgivingly being unearthed right in front of their eyes.

Nora turns away, knowing there’s really nothing left to be said between the two of them. Not until she’s properly processed it all. Not until she’s dealt with her emotions the right way instead of screaming in his face and never looking back.

“Nora,” Harry tries, his voice pleading with hers. He waits until she turns around before saying, “My birthday is in a few weeks. The first. Niall’s throwing me a party and all that, and uh—” he takes a massive gulp, his entire body riddled with nerves, “I’d really like for you to come.”

“I’ll think about it,” Nora says after a moment’s pause, offering him a shaky smile in hopes that it’ll be enough for him to allow her to enter the Underground without another interruption.

“And Nora?” her eyes find his one last time before he says, “It’s really great to see you.”

The next Wednesday pub night, Nora decides to stay home. It’s not that she doesn’t want to hang out with everyone, because she does—she just knows that Harry will definitely be in attendance, and she still isn’t really sure how to feel about everything. The last thing Nora wants to do is make things awkward with this new group of friends she just met, so staying in was the easiest option.

On the Wednesday after that, Harry decides to skip out. He doesn’t want Nora to feel like she has to avoid her new friends because their relationship (or lack thereof) is stuck in limbo. Traveling to a new country, especially for the first time, is never fun to do alone—and Harry would hate himself if he made her feel that isolating herself is the best option. So he stays home, and tries not to text Niall and ask him if Nora decided to show up (even though he stalks his mates’ social media and finds that she did, in fact, go).

Niall and Piper try not to ask the invasive questions that are dancing on the tip of their tongues, because it’s so blatantly obvious that Nora and Harry were never “just” mates from school. Nora never explicitly tells her new friends about what happened, but Piper can figure it out, because she’s a girl, and girl’s know what Nora’s eyes mean when they twinkle and break at the mention of Harry’s name. Harry, on the other hand, drunkenly spilled anecdotes to Niall in the past about a girl who deserved so much better than what he could offer her, and with one look at the bruised skin underneath Harry’s vacant eyes in the days that follow their reunion, Niall understands then that the girl in question is none other than his special Rah.

The first of February comes along with a dip in temperature, and before Nora can mull over Harry’s birthday party invitation any longer, she decides to throw caution to the wind and go. She shops for a pretty dress with Piper, and when she finds a discounted Topshop number that pairs excellently with the only pair of heels she stuffed into her suitcase, she purchases it without a second thought.

The girls get ready together and Nora lets Piper curl her hair, and when the rest of their friends make cocktails in their tiny shared kitchenette, Nora feels her worries wash away with each sip of fruity liquor that slides down her throat.

When they arrive at the club Niall organizes all their mates to meet at, Nora barely has time to try and locate the birthday boy. Because suddenly, she’s meeting a handful of new people and being dragged to the dancefloor against her will, and after her second (or third?) Sex on the Beach, she’s in that perfect state of drunkenness in which she feels light and airy and nothing but happiness radiates off her sticky skin.

Harry, oppositely, is in that state of drunkenness in which his words are slurring together and his eyes are glossy. He feels airy, practically lightheaded at this point, and his teeth stretch the skin around his mouth wide as he laughs along to whatever his friends are saying.

He’s barely had time to make the rounds, because people kept approaching him left and right with birthday praises and a shot glass filled with pungent liquor for him to shoot back. Niall finally rejoins him at the U-shaped leather booth in their corner of the club, and when Harry asks him something that sounds like Piper, Niall points in the direction of his girlfriend twirling around the dancefloor with a group of her friends.

When he refocuses his blurry vision on the group, Harry instantly notices brown hair floating through the air. The curls seem to have fallen a bit as the night dragged on, and when the girl turns around to mouth the lyrics of the upbeat song to Piper, Harry grins when he recognizes the pouty lips that are painted a refreshing shade of sherbert. Her cheeks are tinged and Harry wonders if it’s from exertion or alcohol, and when she spins back around to shake her hips to the beat of the overplayed pop song, he can’t tear his eyes away. It’s only once her hands scoop the hair at the back of her neck, pushing it upwards to let the prickling skin underneath breathe for a bit, when Harry notices the new etchings of ink on her body.

Three equally-sized birds are tattooed on the back of her right shoulder, swirling on her ivory skin whenever her arms move above her head as she dances. Harry can’t seem to look away—suddenly wondering if there’s anything else about her that has changed in three years. He finds that he wants to know everything about her within the time period when they weren’t in each other’s lives, and it’s that startling realization that causes him to ignore the advances of the yellow-haired girl sitting across the table from him.

“Y’alright, Curly?” Niall asks after Harry waves the girl away, and he nods distractedly, bringing his whiskey and ginger to his mouth to gulp back heavily. Niall shakes his head and tells him that he’s going to go dance with Piper, and Harry just watches idly as his friend saunters away.

For some reason, Harry doesn’t get up. Instead, he pulls more sips from the liquor at his table, watching in curiosity as Nora mingles with his mates and dances with Niall and Piper. He thinks it’s fascinating, thinks that in a parallel universe he and Nora would be doing this every night, and instead of random girls vying for his attention, Nora would undoubtedly have all of it.

With that thought running through his head, he sloppily gets up from his seat, drunkenly hobbling over to his group of friends on the dancefloor near the bar. When he approaches them, he flings an unsteady arm around Niall’s neck for extra support, grinning widely when everyone calls him the birthday boy and pinches his cheeks in drunken adoration.

“Mm, think ‘ve had enough, mate,” Harry slurs in Niall’s direction, resting a good portion of his weight on his shorter friend who has to tighten his grip around Harry’s waist.

“I’ll call a car, have ‘em bring you home. Need me t’come with?” Niall asks, and when Harry looks at each of his mates in their small circle, he shakes his head cheekily and smiles in Nora’s direction.

“No, I want Nora to.” It’s innocent in the way that he just wants to spend time with her, because he hasn’t even had the chance to speak to her tonight, and all he can think about is how much time has passed between them and that he misses her in a way he didn’t think was possible.

Nora watches Harry whine in Niall’s ear, and even though the music is too loud for her to make out everything he’s saying, she somehow manages to hear the words want and Nora and please. Niall looks over in her direction, and when he asks her if she’ll take him home, she considers accepting for some odd reason. Because he’s drunk and needy, and she’s never seen a needy Harry Styles before, and as if the time frame has blurred right in front of her, Nora finds herself in the backseat of a fancy town car driving off into a quieter part of the city.

They sit on opposite ends of the car with the middle seat unused between them, and after a few minutes of silence, Harry decides to break it by saying, “‘M really happy you came tonight.”

Nora’s not nearly as drunk as he is, and she finds it quite adorable the way his deep voice cracks over the slurred syllables, and his lips are bright red from his teeth gnawing into them, and his cheeks are almost a deeper shade from the alcohol surging through his veins.

“It’s your birthday. It would have been mean of me not to,” Nora says softly, watching as Harry tears his eyes away from the blurred streets and onto her face.

He grins. “I don’t think y’know how t’be mean, Nora. Not sure there’s a mean bone in your body.”

Nora just smiles back gently, unsure of how exactly to respond. Thankfully, the car pulls to a stop on a quiet street just in front of a white stucco townhouse. There’s a small iron-clad gate on the sidewalk that comes about waist-high, and when Harry unlocks it and begins his wobbly trek to the navy blue front door, Nora can’t help but look around his neighborhood in slight awe.

The jostling of keys breaks her out of her reverie, and when she finds Harry struggling to place the correct key into the lock, she calmly pushes him out of the way and flicks her wrist to unlock the door, pushing it open and allowing him to step in first.

She barely gets a chance to take in the interior of his home before he’s grabbing the keys from her hand and dropping them loudly in the bowl on the hallway table, unsteadily stepping out of his shoes and leaving them haphazardly on the floor, reaching for her hand and dragging her up the stairs to the loft bedroom above.

Before Nora can even comprehend what Harry’s doing, he’s suddenly flinging his clothes across different surfaces of his room—starting with his trench coat over his desk chair, his belt on the shoe rack in his closet, his wallet on the bureau nearest to the door. It’s only once he starts fumbling out of his jeans when Nora turns around with a squeak, feeling a bit awkward watching him drunkenly scramble out of his clothes.

“What’re you doin’?” He slurs, the sound of his feet struggling to get out of the tight material ceasing abruptly.

“Giving you privacy,” Nora explains, finding herself counting the knobs on his dresser instead of hyperfocusing on the fact that Harry is undressing behind her.

She can hear him chuckle a bit, and then the sound of a body flopping onto a mattress takes over. Harry grunts in frustration, and it’s only once he’s called Nora’s name when she peeks over her shoulder timidly, finding Harry lying flat on his bed with his shirt still on, his feet firmly planted on the hardwood floor as his jeans seem to be stuck around his knees.

“Can you help me?” He doesn’t seem to be making a pass at her, because his voice is whiny and his neck is strained, and he really seems to be struggling taking off his tight skinny jeans.

Nora laughs a bit before walking over, grabbing his jeans by his knees and forcing him to straighten his legs as she pulls. Harry watches, leaning up on his elbows as he wiggles the material off of his skin, gleaming proudly when they’re off and discarded into his hamper.

With her back to him, Harry reaches for a pair of joggers and shuffles them on, swapping his wrinkled dress shirt for an old band tee that he wore the night before. When she hears him trying to untuck his duvet from underneath the throw pillows on his bed, Nora turns around and places her palm on his back in the place just between his shoulder blades, causing him to freeze.

“Go brush your teeth. I’ll do this before you fall on your face,” Nora says through a giggle, and Harry does as he’s told, watching her through the reflection of his mirror with wide eyes as she delicately places the throw pillows on the bench under his window and pulls back the duvet and sheets pristinely.

After he spits out the mint toothpaste and waddles back into his room, Nora pats the spot on his bed that she’s left untucked for him, smiling softly as she says, “C’mon birthday boy.”

Harry grins sleepily, pushing himself on the mattress and burrowing into his pillows, chuckling when Nora pulls up the sheet and duvet until it’s tucked underneath his chin. She checks his nightstand to make sure that his phone is plugged in, and after confirming that everything seems to be put into place, she tries to wish Harry goodnight before he interrupts and asks, “Will you stay?”

Nora attempts to shake her head, telling him that it isn’t a good idea, causing Harry to try an alternative approach. The whiny, annoying kind, that usually works magnificently on the likes of Niall and Piper.

“Please, Nora! ‘S my birthday. ‘S all I want, and you didn’t get me a gift!”

Nora pauses, reading Harry’s face and finding the ghost of a smile hidden underneath his lips. She admires his tactic and decides to play along, stubbornly adding, “I didn’t know what you’d like! Not quite sure I can compete with all of the nice things your friends already got you.”

Harry scoffs indignantly. “I would’ve loved it anyway. ‘Cos it’s from you.”

“Harry—”

“—Please stay,” Harry interrupts, causing Nora to frown as she’s torn. “We can watch a film! Like we used to! I know y’love films, Nora. I even ‘ave a bunch in a drawer over ‘ere, look—”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Nora rushes out, placing her hands gently over the duvet covering Harry’s chest, forcing him to lie back down on his bed. “No need to get up. It just took me ages to get you tucked in!”

“You’re right, ‘m sorry. ‘S over there.” Harry aimlessly points in the direction of his television stand at the far end of the wall. Nora nods, turning on her heel and beginning to walk in that direction, bending at her knees as she opens the drawer in question.

As she scans over the movie titles, she’s surprisingly impressed at his collection. They span across multiple genres, although Nora does note that he owns a decent amount of romantic comedies for a twenty-two year old boy. She almost chooses Ferris Bueller’s Day Off to reminisce, but those memories are jaded now, and she hasn’t seen the film since she sat thigh to thigh with Harry in his twin bed all those years ago, so instead, she plucks 10 Things I Hate About You and places it into the DVD player.

When the title screen loads, she checks on Harry over her shoulder and finds that he’s grinning from his position tucked snugly in his bed.

“Did y’know this was based on Taming of the Shrew?” he asks suddenly.

Nora pauses her act of getting up from the floor, shocked at the fact that Harry is willingly giving her film trivia that she used to provide. And when she stands up after a beat, looking down at him from the end of his bed, she smirks and asks teasingly, “Have you been studying film trivia?”

Harry just shrugs, a shy smile covering his face as his cheeks bloom pink.

She turns around then and hits play, and once the opening credits begin to roll on the screen, she rounds his king-sized bed and lays beside him on the other end, making sure to lay on top of the covers in her dress to keep a safe distance between them. Harry tries his hardest not to pout at the absence.

“Does this mean you’re staying?” Harry whispers just as the opening scene flashes onto the screen.

With her eyes trained on the screen, Nora just nods quietly, trying her hardest not to look over in his direction. And around halfway through the film, just after Patrick belts “Can’t Take My Eyes Off Of You” to Kat on the staircase, Harry looks over to find Nora sound asleep on the other side of the mattress. Without waking her up, he grabs the blanket at the end of his bed and throws it over her body, watching as she welcomes the warmth as she snuggles into it.

It’s far too early when Harry wakes up. The sun has barely started to stretch its sunbeams outside of his window, and when he blinks through the dimness of his room, he finds that the first thing he sees is Nora Priestley. They’re both lying on their sides facing each other, a little bit closer than when they first dozed off. Harry can feel their bent knees brushing against the other’s underneath their respective blanket layers, and when Harry focuses on the hand that isn’t buried under his pillow, he realizes that his fingertips are ever so lightly grazing Nora’s much smaller ones. He smiles to himself, and just before falling back asleep, he hooks his pinky finger around Nora’s.

When he wakes up a few hours later, Nora is gone. He looks around his room to see if she’s in the ensuite or banging about downstairs, and finds himself frowning when all he’s met with is silence. Just as his eyes sweep over his nightstand, he finds a note near a glass of water with two paracetamol tablets on top. He scoops up the medication in one hand, and brings the note up to his eyes with the other.

Happy birthday, Harry. Here’s the best I could do on short notice. -Nora

He glances over to his alarm clock and realizes that it’s not even noon yet, and without really thinking, he reaches for his mobile and rings Niall to ask him for directions to Niall and Piper’s residence hall.

“Curly? What’re you doin’ up before noon?” Niall’s loud voice asks through the receiver.

Before Harry can bring himself to respond, he hears a giggle that sounds almost identical to Nora’s in the background, and suddenly he’s asking, “What’re you up to?”

“Hangover brunch, mate. Sunday tradition,” Niall responds easily, the sound of the late morning air ruffling through the speaker.

“Since when?” Harry asks, straining his ear to see if he can try to hear Nora again.

Niall laughs loudly, breaking his focus. “Since always! Yer dead to the world until the afternoon, so Rah always third-wheels with Piper and I—oof! I’m just messin’ around, Rah! You know we love yer company!”

Suddenly, Harry’s springing out of bed, running into the bathroom to brush his teeth and splash cold water onto his face to wake him up. He asks Niall the name of the restaurant, and just as the words leave his mouth, Harry hangs up and throws on the first clean pair of jeans and jumper he can find, shoving a beanie over his mangled hair and flying out the door.

He arrives just as tea gets brought to the table, and when he finds that the only open chair at their table of four is the one across from Nora, he grins and slides right in, watching the way her cheeks blush as her eyes burn holes through the plastic menu.

“Any particular reason why yer up and at ‘em this mornin’, Curly?” Niall asks, a knowing look on his face as his eyes dart between Harry’s and Nora’s accusingly.

“Just felt like waking up, I suppose,” Harry says in Niall’s direction, ordering a cup of tea from the waitress as she passes by. When he realizes that Piper and Niall are indulged in their own conversation, Harry leans forward over the table and asks Nora lowly, “So, what’s good here?”

Nora’s eyebrows dart up in surprise, asking, “You’ve never been here before?”

Harry shakes his head, smiling when he coaxes a pretty giggle out of Nora’s mouth. He finds that she looks cute in the morning, all sleepy eyed and puffed out cheeks. He almost wishes he caught her before she snuck out of his flat. He would have loved to see what she looked like buried in his pillows.

“I usually get a full English and give Niall my tomatoes,” Nora explains, sipping her tea generously.

“Why’s that?” Harry asks.

Nora scrunches her nose. “Not a fan of them.”

Before Harry can say anything else to her, the waitress pops over to take their order, and when their plates arrive and the first thing Nora notices Harry does is eat a bite of his grilled tomato, she pierces her fork through the two on her plate and drops them on his own instead of giving them to Niall.

If anybody at the table notices, they choose not to say anything.

After that Sunday morning, Harry finds that he can’t stay away from Nora. He remembers lurking through her Facebook page a year ago and finding that she has a thing for coffee shops, and after asking Piper for her class schedule, he waits for her outside her lecture hall one dreary Tuesday afternoon and brings her to his favorite café a few miles away from her residence hall.

It’s called the Muddy Cup and Nora’s surprised that it’s a place Harry frequents, considering it’s the complete opposite of his personality. It’s all bright colors and mismatched furniture, uniquely shaped mugs with bluesy, light jazz music playing in the background. It smells of coffee grinds and a hint of vanilla, and after their third trip there, Nora finds that this version of Harry is just like the one she remembers enjoying during their ten days together back in Townbridge—except, it’s heightened here in London. He tells her things without hesitating, he seems to have recognized how wrong his actions were, he seems to have a plan for his life. It’s a lot all at once, but Nora takes it all in stride, constantly reminding herself not to hold grudges and to try to remember that people are continuously changing and evolving, and that if Harry is trying his hardest to let her see this side of her, then she should at least give him the opportunity to allow him to do so.

But she’s not naive. She knows that she can’t just hand him her heart without precautions all because he’s trying to show her how much he’s changed. Because underneath all of her strong walls, all of the barriers she’s constructed to ensure that she doesn’t feel pain again, she knows that if anybody has the power to weave through all of her booby traps and decoys and rattle the infrastructure, it’s him.

Harry knows this, too. Knows that even though this New Nora in front of him changed her hair and grew up a little bit, she is still guarded, and he really can’t blame her for being overly cautious of him. He’s trying though—really trying, because if there’s anybody in this world that can bring out the best version of himself, it’s her.

After a few more coffee dates and a walk around his campus, Harry finally comes up with a plan. He’s not sure why he hadn’t thought of it sooner, because he’s almost positive it’s going to be the best first date Nora Priestley has ever been on. And he wants that for her—so badly, because she deserves it.

Harry schemes with Niall and Piper to make sure that Nora is free on a rare sunny late February afternoon. He shows up outside of her residence hall in his black Range Rover, watching the way she smiles bashfully at him when she notices him leaning against the passenger door of his car, posture nothing but attractive confidence with the way his jean-clad left leg is bent resting on the steel door, the way his emerald green jumper stretches across his chest due to his arms being crossed over the thin material, the way his long hair is free flowing down his shoulders as the wind ruffles the tendrils in the cool air. He weaves his sunglasses atop his head when he sees her exit her building, giving her a one-armed hug as he simultaneously opens the car door with his other hand, allowing Nora to fall into the warm leather interior.

“Where are we going?” Nora asks after they’ve merged onto the motorway. Harry looks over at her then, one hand resting on the steering wheel while the other pushes and pulls at the skin covering his lower lip nervously. He offers her a shy smile, before muttering, “A surprise,” causing Nora to blush immediately.

Once the colorful pastel townhouses flood into view, Nora isn’t sure how she didn’t realize it sooner. The streets are winding and her nose is practically glued to the window as she takes in the flashes of raspberry, lilac, peach, coral, and mint lining Notting Hill. She can’t wipe the aching grin covering her face, and when she whips her head around to look over at Harry and finds that he’s already looking at her, it’s almost instinctual when she slips her hand into his and squeezes it in gratitude.

When Harry has to park the car, he almost whines at the fact that the moment he removes his key from the ignition, Nora’s hand will leave his own.

They spend the afternoon weaving through the crowded streets. Harry leads her through Portobello Road Market and watches as Nora’s eyes flick through racks of clothing and tables filled with various antiques and collectables. She notices Harry eyeing a gold ring from a jewelry stand towards the end of the market, and when he offers to buy them a cup of coffee from a small café across the street, Nora sneakily purchases it for him as a way of saying thank you (and maybe for another reason entirely, too.)

As Nora sips through her warm styrofoam cup of hazelnut coffee, she notices a string of bookshops across the street. She laughs to herself, her memory immediately reverting to three years ago in her tiny twin bed at Townbridge when she and Harry were cuddled up underneath her mom’s handmade blanket watching Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant meet for the very first time. She wonders if Harry is thinking about the same thing, too, but she doesn’t dare ask him. Instead, she links her hand with his and drags him to the first shop she sees, pushing the door open with her hip and letting the smell of old books and worn leather fill her senses.

Harry isn’t sure if Nora is doing it intentionally, but as they scan through the spines of books resting on dusty shelves, her hand never leaves his own. It warms his insides up in a way he’s never experienced, and he feels as if he’s floating through air, and the only thing that’s keeping him grounded is her small hand squeezing his ever so lightly.

Once they’ve rounded the end of the store, Nora looks over and asks him, “Do you have any suggestions?”

Harry’s heart thumps a resounding string of three beats, and he can’t help but wonder if she felt the same whenever he asked her to pick out her favorite films for him three years ago back in her tiny dorm room. From the smile coating the lower half of her face, Harry can assume that she most likely does, and without slipping his hand from her own, he drags her to the classics section and peruses through the titles.

Nora watches as he somehow maneuvers three paperbacks into one hand while keeping her own nestled tightly in his, and when he brings her to the front of the store and easily grabs his wallet from his back pocket, she tries to wriggle her hand from his grasp to stop him from paying for her. Harry doesn’t allow this though, and instead, shushes her by squeezing her hand tighter, looking down at her with his chin resting on his shoulder as he shakes his head with a coy smile covering his face. Nora isn’t sure how to respond—mainly because she’s mesmerized by the turquoise twinkle in his eyes, or the way his large hand wrapped around her own makes her feel overwhelmingly safe, or the way she can’t seem to look anywhere else but at the profile of his structured face. The realization strikes her straight into her heart, an electrical current causing the beating flesh to vibrate almost erratically, making her skin prickle with warmth and her stomach twist and turn with giddiness, and she finds that she never wanted her hand to leave his in the first place.

Before they even realize it, the afternoon is over. Harry intentionally slows his gait so that he can do everything in his power to extend the time he has with Nora’s hand nestled in his own and the left side of her body sidled up to his. But unfortunately, not even Harry has the ability to slow down time, and sadly, they’ve approached the car in despondent silence.

He turns her around just as they’ve reached the passenger side door, Nora’s back resting on the cool steel as she lifts her head up. Harry’s eyes are focused on their tangled hands, toying with her fingertips as he tries to figure out what she’s thinking.

“I got you something,” Nora says after a beat, waiting until Harry’s eyes are on hers before she slips the hand that isn’t knotted with his inside her jacket pocket. He watches as she removes the gold ring from the paper envelope and drops it into his palm gently.

“Nora—” Harry starts, pausing as he stares at the thick gold band with dancing bears engraved in the middle. The sun makes the metal twinkle in the light, and when he shifts his eyes into Nora’s blue pools, he isn’t sure which is brighter.

“Put it on me?” he asks. Harry knows that he’s fully capable of putting it on himself, but that would require removing his other hand from her own. Also, he selfishly wants to feel Nora’s smaller digits tickling his skin, and when she obliges with a gentle smile and grabs the ring from his opened palm, Harry tries to conceal the shudder shaking his body when she obeys his request.

“You didn’t have to get me anything,” Harry whispers into the small space between them when Nora’s fingers push the gold ring past his knuckle.

She just shrugs, looking up at him timidly. “I wanted to.”

While Harry’s eyes are focused on the newest addition to his growing jewelry collection, Nora decides to be brave and reaches up onto her tiptoes with the intention of planting a kiss on his cheek as a way of saying thank you without having to properly vocalize it. But, Harry notices everything she does, and when he watches her body shift towards him in his periphery, he lifts his head up at the last moment in question, causing Nora’s plump lips to land on the corner of his mouth.

The contact only lasts a measly two seconds, but it’s enough to cause them both to freeze. Nora’s eyes widen, and before she can let her body fall into his own, she springs back and places a generous two foot gap between them.

Harry’s not even sure what to think. He’s almost positive that he’s frozen to the pavement, his thick boots stuck in sludgy cement as he tries to bring them to move forward so that Nora doesn't feel so far away. But he can’t move—the neurons in his brain aren’t connecting to the muscles in his legs, and he has no fucking idea why.

Nora stares at him, trying her hardest to force her mouth to form the words “sorry.” But when she really stops to think about it, she finds that she isn’t sorry at all. The smallest feeling of his mouth on hers was enough to cause her body to zap with excitement, and when she looks up at him underneath the curtain of her eyelashes and find that his pupils are dilated to the fullest degree, she decides to forego her apology and leans in, pressing her lips to his with reckless abandon.

Instinctively, Harry’s arms wrap around her waist to support her body as their lips re-familiarize themselves with one another. The sigh he breathes into her mouth is nothing but relief—because ever since he left her dorm room three years ago back at Townbridge, all Harry’s been thinking about is feeling her lips on his again. And now that it’s finally happening, he feels as if he can’t breathe.

Nora’s hands clutch the lapels of his woolen jacket over his chest to bring him closer to her, because even though his body is flushed with hers, it still isn’t enough. Harry brings his right hand up to cup her jaw ever so delicately, his thumb pulling her chin down so that her jaw falls slack, allowing him to slip his tongue inside to meet her own. The moan that springs from the back of her throat almost causes Harry’s mouth to still, but when her fingertips wrap around the ends of his hair dusting his shoulder, tangling until she pulls at the roots on top of his head, he can’t help but reciprocate the sound.

When Harry’s neck starts to ache from leaning down to meet her lips, he trickles his palms from her temples to the back of her head, threading his fingers through her thick dark hair until they clasp together just above her neck, allowing him to tilt her head backward and kiss her properly. Nora hums inside his mouth, wrapping her arms around the middle of his back so that she can pull him closer to her in order to feel his heartbeat against her chest through all of their warm layers, his heart thrumming against her skin as if the fleshy organ was screaming at her own “I missed you! I missed you! I missed you!”

Eventually, they break apart, sucking in deep inhales of cool February air to try and quell the lightheadedness caused from their second first kiss. Harry rests his forehead on her own, his eyes shut tight as he tries to permanently ink that memory into the pink pillows of his brain. His warm hands are cupping her jaw in order to keep her as close to him as possible, and Nora can’t help but squeeze the fleshy parts of his arms, keeping their fronts pressed together so that the warmth that emanates from his skin continues to stay wrapped around her.

“Go to dinner with me,” Harry whispers against her skin once his eyes blink open, the fuzziness dissipating when he notices the pinkness of her swollen lips and the tinge of red coating the apples of her cheeks. He missed this. He missed her.

“When?” Nora asks, her voice hoarse from the lack of oxygen ripped from her airway.

“Right now, tonight, tomorrow. Don’t want to let you go just yet.” Nora leans in, her nose resting on his warm cheek as she giggles against the smooth skin. Harry brings his hand to rub soothing circles against her back, wondering if they could stay in this position forever.

Harry can feel her smile against his cheek, and when she moves her head to press two subsequent kisses against his ripe lips, he knows that he’s fucked. Because it’s Nora fucking Priestley—it’s probably always been Nora Priestley—and she’s here wrapped up in him nodding against his skin at his outrageous request, and Harry’s never felt this complete in his entire life. It’s like flying and falling, searing warmth and bitter coldness, being too close but still not close enough—a paradoxical rush of adoration shooting to his heart with a loud cacophonous pang that sends his brain into overdrive.

They have dinner together that night, and the night after that, and if not for Harry’s evening lecture, they probably would have gone for a third consecutive date. He takes her to tiny hole-in-the-wall restaurants that serve the best food Nora’s ever tasted, and although a small part of her was expecting him to go all out and take her to outlandish posh eateries, Nora finds that Harry knows her much better than she originally thought, and he’s constantly full of surprises.

On the next Wednesday pub night, Harry and Nora show up together. Nobody says anything, but Nora can practically feel the scorching looks Niall and Piper are shooting at her from across the table warming her cheek. And after her third beer, just as the band starts to play their first song, Niall saunters over to her side and wraps a heavy arm around her shoulder, whispering excitedly into her ear, “Knew you were special, Rah.”

Harry's insides are buzzing, whirring to life with each sip of bitter beer that falls down his esophagus. The liquor seems to make Nora a bit looser, and once she’s developed a thin layer of drunkenness that causes her cheeks to flush and her guard to falter, Harry practically explodes when she brings her body to rest against his, her back leaning on his front as she allows his warmth to envelope her as they listen to the band playing on the far side of the room. He wraps his arm around her shoulder so that his right hand is splayed out against her collarbone, holding her close in a protective stance as she lets her head fall back on his shoulder comfortably.

After three songs, Nora finds that she’s had enough. Harry’s hand feels too hot pressed against her chest, his hair feels too silky tickling her exposed neck, his chin feels too heavy sitting atop the crown of her head. She wants more, finds that she suddenly needs more, and when she twirls around abruptly and finds that his green eyes are practically black, eagerly searching for her own, she doesn’t hesitate before whispering in his ear, “Can we get out of here?”

Harry’s pretty sure his pants have never felt tighter around his waist. He doesn’t even care about the unfinished pint in his hand, doesn’t even care to make the rounds and properly say goodbye to his mates, doesn’t even care when he hands Niall too much money to pay for their drinks that are absently left on the sticky high top table, doesn’t even care about the looks he receives when he slips his hand in Nora’s and drags her through the front door and into the Underground so that they can reach his flat before her confident streak runs out.

When they’re both standing in his loft bedroom, hands tangled in each other’s hair and lips pressed to warm skin and clothes strewn against hardwood flooring, Nora finds it easier to forget about all of her past hurt. Because his hands feel that good, and his mouth tastes that good, and his warm body looks that good. But when she backs away to pull off her sweater so that she’s left standing in front of him in just her bra and underwear, she suddenly hesitates to move forward.

The memory hits her like a bullet to the chest. It’s of her, standing in her Townbridge dorm room wearing a sports bra and sleep shorts, her arms wrapped around herself protectively as she tries to stifle the rib-racking cries shaking through her body as she watched Harry disappear right in front of her face, leaving her alone to try and wrap her head around what he had done to her and what it all meant. Because he was her first real sexual experience, something that Nora didn’t necessarily place on a high pedestal, but still ultimately was a big deal for her. It took a lot of trust to allow Harry to take that from her after ten days of unassuming happiness, and just as quickly as he showed her a different side of herself, he simultaneously ripped it away when he left her alone and confused barely eight hours later in the early morning light.

It’s as if the memory is being broadcasted in Harry’s bedroom, Nora’s blue eyes the screen and her bruised heart the projector, because suddenly, her lips are trembling and her hands are shaking and her eyes are staring blankly at the wall over his left shoulder—and he knows right then and there that her walls are now ten times thicker, constructed with stronger material that will no longer allow him to seep through the cracks. Not without an explanation. Not without an apology.

“Nora—” Harry starts, taking a tentative step forward. The small motion of his feet approaching hers is enough to break Nora out of her daze, her head shaking violently as she takes three more steps back, reaching for her sweater and throwing it over her head without a second thought.

“Please, I—” Harry is panicking. He doesn’t want her to disappear, but he also doesn’t want to make her feel uncomfortable. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. He wanted to talk to her without the cloudy sexual energy suffocating them, without her dreamy silhouette obstructing his vision, without her sudden desire to escape more prominent than her desire to stay and listen to him.

“I need a minute, we shouldn’t do this, not when—”

“—Just please listen to me. I can’t let you leave, not like this. Not when you’re finally here after all this time. And I’m not saying this because you’re standing half-naked in my bedroom, it’s just—fuck. I should have said this three years ago. I should have said it when I sent you a friend request on Facebook. I should have said it that first Wednesday pub night. I just got distracted and—”

“—Harry—”

“—I’m sorry, okay? I’m truly so fucking sorry.” Harry seems to have taken the breath trapped in Nora’s throat, because suddenly she’s staring at him wide-eyed and frozen in place, whereas Harry’s chest is erratically shifting up, down as he struggles to contain his uneven breathing pattern.

“I fucked up. I was a dumb, stupid kid who hurt you—and you didn’t deserve it. Not one second of it. I thought about what I did all the time in the aftermath, it fucking ate me alive, Nora. And I’m not saying that for you to pity me, because you shouldn’t. You shouldn’t even be here giving me a second chance, because I don’t deserve it. I never deserved your kindness to begin with. You’re too good for me and I just, fuck. I’ll make it up to you for the rest of my life if I have to. I just want to be good enough for you. And I’m so sorry—”

Nora shushes him with a collision of her body into his, her arms wrapping around him tightly as she buries her head into the crook of his neck. Harry’s response is inherent; strong arms encapsulating her smaller body, wide palms spread out evenly along her upper back for support, warm cheek nestled into the velvety waves resting at the top of her head.

“It’s okay, Harry. I forgive you. You’re enough, you deserve kindness too,” Nora mutters into the skin of his neck like a mantra of self-love and acceptance. Because even though Harry nearly broke her heart and made her resent him, she never wanted him to feel hurt, too. Not when it’s self-imposed. Not when it can be dealt with in a different way.

Nora thinks the phrase “an eye for an eye” is ineffectual. Just because you hurt somebody else, does not mean the same fate should be bestowed upon you. Humans are constantly changing and evolving, and pain and acceptance are a part of the long and winding battle in figuring out who you are as a person. If Harry is finally realizing that now, all Nora can do is hug him tighter and forgive him. Because that’s what any decent person would do.

Without unlocking their tangled bodies, Nora slowly steps forward, causing Harry to shuffle backward, until they’re both lying horizontally on his king-sized bed. She turns them over so that his back is flat on the mattress, her leg hooking over his hip as she rests her head against his beating chest, rubbing soothing patterns against the warm skin until he finally calms down.

They spend that night talking for hours. Harry wants to know everything she’s done in their three-year absence, and Nora doesn’t hesitate to give him the details of her new life in New York City. She tells him about Ebony, her roommate-turned-best-friend who supports her without question, who she misses practically every waking moment she’s not with her. She tells him about Marcus, the boy she had more firsts with, who she never found herself loving completely, but still appreciated him for helping her grow up and feel new things. She tells him about the tattoo shop in Brooklyn she went to after her twentieth birthday where a girl with pink hair and purple eyes etched three identical birds on the back of her shoulder.

He doesn’t tell her about the drinking and drugs and blank-faced girls he wasted his time with for the first two years during their time apart, because he’s aware that she already knows—considering his Facebook page holds a track record of every Nadine and Scarlet he toyed around with to fill in the empty hole Nora unknowingly carved into his heart. He doesn’t tell her that hearing about Nora’s ex-boyfriend causes the green monster who has been dormant inside of him for years to suddenly wake up, his blood laced with envy as he thinks of how somebody else got to see her in a vulnerable position he stupidly took for granted.

Harry realizes that this is a bit unfair, considering Nora lived her life without thinking about how it would affect him. And if Nora is jealous of the girls he slept with two years ago, she never shows it. Because she’s much more rational than he is—the calmness to his angst, the mooring to his shipwreck, the comfort to his unease.

They talk until the inky sky turns into an aegean blue, signifying that dawn has begun to break. Nora muffles her yawn into Harry’s neck and he wraps his arm tighter around her body, bringing her against his chest as he closes his eyes, reveling in the feeling of having her close again after so much time apart.

When Harry wakes up well into the afternoon, he can’t stop thinking about Nora’s body, considering she shed her sweater sometime in the middle of the morning when they were sleeping, leaving her in just her black bra and underwear as her warm skin suctioned to his own. He hasn’t felt this close to somebody in so long—probably ever, if he really stops to think about it—and before, when he was mindlessly fucking girls to cure the loneliness aching inside of his chest, he never cared about the act of intimacy surrounding sex. But now, with Nora’s body wrapped around his own and the swells of her breasts moving up and down with each languid sleepy breath she takes, the curve of her ass bending whenever she cuddles deeper into his chest, the stretch of her legs winding whenever she coils them around his sinewy hips—Harry feels like he’s in a fucking trance.

He never pushes it, but it’s practically all he can think about in the weeks that follow. He finds that when they’re together he always chooses a new part of her body to hyper-fixate on—whether it’s the angular cut of her jaw, the long arch of her neck, the thin layer of skin covered in gold necklaces on the top of her chest, the fleshy part of her hips that connect to her thighs—Harry feels completely and utterly famished.

Nora feels it, too. Feels that if she has to stand so close to him on Wednesday pub nights and feel the warmth of his body enveloping her own without him moving any closer, she’ll burst. Feels that if she has to observe the coiled strands of his long hair weave down his neck without her hands tangled at the root, she’ll explode. Feels that if his raspberry lips mouth her two-syllable name followed by his infamous smirk without her own swallowing the last vowel, she’ll shatter.

It finally happens as springtime infiltrates the streets of London, melting any remnants of snow and bringing forth longer stretches of sunlight on the horizon. Nora spent the week studying for a major exam in her Emerging Media Studies course, causing her to miss out on Sunday brunch and Wednesday pub night. Her absence hit Harry the hardest out of everybody, and when she walks out of her lecture hall Thursday night after she handed in her exam, she can’t help but catapult into Harry’s arms when she sees him waiting for her.

They drive to his flat and he cooks her a hearty pasta dish and when he suggests watching a movie tangled in his sheets afterward, Nora finds that she has no interest in absorbing the content on his television screen. She’s made Harry wait long enough, and it feels like the month after his birthday has been a continuous long stretch of unbearable foreplay that Nora can’t wait to act on.

Before Harry has even made it back to bed after setting up the film, Nora’s already pulled his borrowed sleep shirt over her head, leaving her in the matching navy blue lingerie set Piper encouraged her to purchase at Selfridges last week.

Nora’s never seen Harry move faster in his life at the first sight of her. She can barely make out his pupils darting from the exposed skin above the waistline of her underwear to the swells of her breasts uncovered by the lacy underwire bra before he’s jumping on the bed, her entire body shaking with the mattress as he plants searing kiss after searing kiss all over her flushed skin.

He dotes on her body, mumbling praises in between each suction of his lips as he works his way from the top of her forehead to the tips of her toes. “Christ, look at you Nora,” he whispers into the skin underneath her jawline, “All for me? How’d I get so lucky?” he mumbles into the tight skin between the valley of her breasts, pausing to dart his tongue underneath the lacy fabric covering her nipples, pulling a delicious moan from the back of her throat, “You’re fucking perfect,” he purrs into the thicker skin covering her upper thighs as he noses his way teasingly around the edges of her underwear, making her wiggle in want and need.

And when she finally allows him to slowly peel each piece from her body, leaving her bare in front of him as her dark hair fans against his charcoal-colored sheets, Harry’s almost positive he’s forgotten how to breathe. He’s never wanted somebody this badly before—needed somebody this badly before, and when Nora leans up on her elbows and urges him to come closer to her with a slow drag of her fingertip, he almost bursts at the sudden rush of his heart thrashing against the walls of his chest.

All because of her.

“I’m done for,” Harry whispers against her lips before slotting them together with fervor, gripping the skin at the back of her neck tightly to keep her close to him. Nora doesn’t mind, in fact, she absolutely loves his roughness—loves it so much that she can’t help but reciprocate when she wraps her legs around his waist and flips them both over so that their positions are switched and she can be the one to run her lips and teeth down the front of his body in domineering adoration.

Where everything with Marcus was simple and easy, Harry is the complete antithesis. He is everything new and exciting, complex and invigorating, compelling and beautiful. Nora didn’t think it was possible to feel this starved and fulfilled at the same time—but when Harry’s naked body is hovering over her own, his teeth sinking into the fleshy part of her shoulder blade, one hand gripping her ankle and the other holding her hip close to him, she finally feels fireworks burst underneath her eyelids when he enters her for the first time. Her skin feels as if it were bubbling, her heart pumping blood as if it were working in overdrive, and her brain fills with fluttering images of Harry’s chiseled jaw, his matted hair, his supple mouth, his hungry eyes.

It’s everything and more—Harry is everything and more, and when they’re spent and the white noise in Nora’s ears has finally subsided to a gentle hum, she can’t believe that she waited this long to experience this. She wonders if her first time was a dud, a faulty scenario in which her partner didn’t understand how to satisfy her properly. Or maybe, just maybe, it had nothing to do with Marcus at all. That the feeling of her heart exploding and stars bursting through her vision and fireworks cracking in the air above were solely caused by the boy lying beside her, his heart seemingly entangled with hers.

Nora wonders if it's fate or if she’s magnificently cursed for the rest of her life.

As March fades into April, Nora has never felt closer to another person before. It’s incredibly new—this feeling of freefalling off of a cliff into the rocky waters below with nothing but Harry’s strong hand holding hers to remind her that this is all new for him, too, and there’s nobody else he’d rather experience this with than with her.

Harry’s never been the best at giving himself completely over to another person, considering vulnerability is a difficult construct for his mind to wrap around. And when he lies awake at night while Nora sleeps soundly beside him, her arms wrapped around his waist and her head rising and falling with the scattered breaths escaping his lungs, he wonders what’s holding him back. Wonders why it’s so easy for her to talk about family and the future and everything that falls in between—because for the first time ever, Nora is the one that’s completely sure of something in their relationship. Harry, on the other hand, is hesitant. Apprehensive. Scared.

Because it’s so much easier to hide certain aspects of his life from her. Harry has enough skeletons in his closet to fill an entire graveyard, and they all tend to orbit around his shitty relationship with his parents and his innate desire to fall apart whenever he succumbs to the inordinate amount of pressure his father places over his head.

Nora doesn’t deserve to see that. Nobody does. So Harry does what he thinks is right and hides this part of his life from her, lying straight through his teeth whenever she questions where in the world his parents are, and instead of them being in Hong Kong or Indonesia or Dubai, they’re just a forty-five minute drive away. But that’s far too close for Harry to manage, so refocusing her brain on something else is the better option.

Because while Nora was falling hard, giving Harry the directions to make it through the labyrinth to claim her heart, she figured he was doing the same. Letting her in unconditionally and trusting her with this new feeling. But, unbeknownst to Nora, he was shielding her from the life he’s always dreaded being a part of. She was just in too deep to fully realize it.

The first lie starts at the end of April. Harry doesn’t even realize he’s lying in the first place when it falls from his lips that he has to skip out on Wednesday pub night to stay on campus and prepare for a group presentation the following Monday, but once it’s out he can’t force it back into the depths of his being. So while Nora texts him that she misses him and things aren’t the same without him there, Harry’s pushing the lie deeper and deeper inside of him until he’s swallowed the lump whole and it rests heavily at the bottom of his stomach.

Because while his mates are drinking in Camden, Harry’s only eight kilometers away in Knightsbridge wearing a navy blue suit sipping gingerly at a glass of bourbon and initiating small talk with his father’s stuffy work friends. It’s some charity event his father had mentioned in the past, and although Harry’s mind is preoccupied with thoughts of Nora, he suddenly becomes alert when his father introduces him to the only other person that is relatively close to his age.

Harry remembers her from one of the events he was forced to attend during his internship at his father’s office. He doesn’t recall much from meeting her nearly a year ago, considering he was a bit of a dickhead and was more focused on plotting ways to dip out early without being caught to meet up with his mates than trying to mingle with other guests, but now—now that she’s standing in front of him wearing a pretty mauve dress with expensive strappy heels, hair perfectly in place as her almond-shaped eyes gaze into his own, Harry doesn’t hesitate to shake her hand properly.

Her name is Jacqueline Van-Doren, and although she’s the type of beautiful that people can’t help but gawk at, Harry finds that he’s subconsciously comparing her to Nora. Her eyes have more of a greyish tint to them, and while Nora’s sparkle whenever any trace of light reflects off of her irises, Jacqueline’s are more lackluster in comparison. Her cheekbones are higher than Nora’s, but they lack the subtle shade of pink that always appears whenever Nora’s in a close enough radius to Harry. And while she’s much taller, much more confident, much more put together than Nora and all her mumbling and stuttering and clumsiness—Harry finds that he would indubitably pick Nora over a girl like Jacqueline any day.

The second lie happens in the middle of May just as the temperature is rising and the trees are green and blooming. Harry had plans to take Nora on a day trip to Bath so she could tick off another destination on her travel list, but unknowingly, he double-booked himself as his father reminded him he had a familial obligation to attend that same day in the form of an elaborate wedding at The Savoy.

He tells Nora that he has to attend a networking dinner in Oxfordshire, and somehow the lies get easier and easier to tell the more he spews them. Harry’s grateful that Nora doesn’t fact-check his excuse with Niall, but then again, she has no reason to suspect anything, right?

Harry spends the entire reception sitting in the back of the room in his charcoal Louis Vuitton suit with a sick feeling settling inside of him. It grows stronger with each candied sip of whiskey that falls down his throat, and when his father approaches him with a familiar blonde-haired grey-eyed girl practically matching his ensemble, Harry tries his hardest not to laugh. Because his father obviously is not shy in trying to set the two of them up, and although Jacqueline is still undeniably gorgeous after four whiskey neats, it’s not what he wants. She’s not what he wants.

But the pressure of displeasing his father is too much to bear, so he kisses her cheek cordially and allows her to sit with him. They talk the rest of the night but Harry genuinely has no idea what the content was, and when his father tells the pair of them that they’re required to attend an intimate work dinner at the end of the week, Harry just nods and goes along with it.

As May reaches its end, Nora can barely think straight. Her time in London has been nothing but an absolute dream—a whirlwind of newfound friendships, acclimating to her second favorite city in the world, and falling in love with somebody she never thought she would find solid ground with. She’s never felt this way about anybody before—not with Connor, not with Marcus, not with anybody. Nora isn’t even sure if her heart can feel this way about someone ever again. Not after Harry.

She’s hyperaware that her time in London is coming to an end, and reluctantly, she doesn’t want to leave. Not when she’s decided that she’s in love with Harry. Not when he can give her a reason to stay.

Nora has never unexpectedly shown up at Harry’s place before, but after rewriting the conclusion to her final essay for the fourth time and it still not making any sense, she grabs her jacket and oyster card and makes her way to the Underground to head towards Hampstead Heath.

She doesn’t bother calling or texting to alert him that she’s on her way, because in her mad rush to leave her residence hall, Nora forgot to grab her phone that was charging on top of her duvet. Nora’s never been impulsive or brash before—but it’s Harry and she’s in love, and she needs to tell him.

The white townhouse and small iron-clad gate come into view before Nora’s even figured out the words to say to Harry when he opens his navy blue front door. She figures that when she sees his face she’ll finally figure out how to explain what her feelings are, but when his green eyes meet her blues in trepidation, Nora wonders if she made the wrong decision in showing up unannounced.

In the tense silence that follows, Nora pauses for a minute, taking in Harry’s crisp white button down shirt tucked into a sleek pair of slacks. He seems to have been in the process of finishing fastening them, considering Nora can still see the tops of his butterfly tattoo and the swallows underneath his collarbones almost perfectly.

“Nora? What’re you—did we have plans?” Harry’s cheeks are blushed and he’s fidgeting uncomfortably in his fancy brogues and for the first time in months, he looks like he doesn’t want to let her inside.

“No, I uh—” Nora’s confidence is crumbling, and she’s suddenly not sure if this was a good idea at all. Maybe being brash and impulsive is a thing protagonists only do in the movies. “I had to tell you something. But this obviously isn’t a good time, so…”

Before she can turn to leave with her tail tucked between her legs, something inside of Harry clicks into place. He quickly opens his door wider and lets her in, ignoring the warning bells ricocheting inside of his brain as his brain fights with his heart for control over the situation. His heart ultimately wins in the end, and once Nora takes her first few steps inside his home, Harry can feel his insides quiver with nerves.

Nora barely makes it past the foyer, standing just at the cusp of his living room when she notices the expensive blazer thrown over the back of his leather sofa, his crisp black wallet on the fireplace mantle, and the heavy cardstock with cursive script that seems to be an invitation of the utmost importance lying parallel on the surface.

Why didn’t he tell her he was going somewhere? Was he hiding things from her? Was he ashamed to bring her to his gaudy work events? Does she really look that unappealing on his arm? Why has this all of a sudden become too confusing for Nora when just minutes earlier, she was unquestionably sure that she was in love with him?

Harry’s playing with the links on his shiny wrist watch nervously, attaching it with fumbling hands around his inked skin when Nora finally decides to break the silence. “Where are you, uh, going?”

He looks up at her, a bewildered expression on his face, and suddenly, his mouth has gone bone dry. Nora grows more and more skittish with each quiet breath that passes between them, and she’s never felt more unsure about their relationship.

God, when did things get so awkward between them?

“My dad’s back in the country, and it’s just this stupid event he’s making me go to. I tried to get out if it, honest, but it didn’t work. So, uh, I didn’t think it was a big deal to mention it to you,” Harry says quietly, feeling his lungs begin to constrict in the most agonizing way.

This lie feels worse than all the others he’s told her, because for the first time, there’s a crack in his resolve. Harry knows then that he’s done something very wrong, and he immediately regrets it all when he notices the hurt expression clouding Nora’s vision.

Nora knows this, too, because his chest is moving up and down from the thundering beats of his heart inside of his chest, and his hands are shaking against the smooth material of his pants, and his eyes are blown out so wide that Nora can make out all of the different shades of green hidden inside. And when his tremulous pupils finally focus on her own, Nora can see that Harry looks completely panicked in front of her, and she isn’t quite sure what to think.

“Oh,” Nora lets out in a soft exhale. It sounds defeated and she’s not entirely sure why, because nothing has even happened between them yet.

But maybe that’s the point. Maybe that’s why she feels so low all of a sudden. Because it’s been months of almost something’s—of days spent exploring different parts of the city and nights spent exploring different parts of each other. All without a label. All without a conversation. And now, standing in the front room of Harry’s home with shaking hands and trembling lips, Nora doesn’t understand how nothing can be said.

When her blue eyes fall to the floor, Harry springs into action. He’s in full recovery mode, approaching her slowly until the tips of his brogues bump the white of her trainers. His hands find purchase on her shoulders, gently kneading the skin until she finally looks up at him.

“I’ll only be there for an hour. We can do something afterwards, yeah? Just, uh, stay,” he pauses suddenly, eyes wide when he realizes what he’s saying before swallowing deeply, squeezing her soft skin a bit harder. “Stay here while I’m gone. Please.”

“You want me to stay here?” Nora echoes, blinking once, twice, a winsome dumbfounded expression gracing her features.

Harry nods, moving his right hand from her shoulder upwards until his warm palm is cupping the underside of her jaw tenderly, his thumb offering soothing strokes against the pink skin covering her cheekbone.

“Yeah, I do.”

Nora’s doubts are finally subsided, because how can he not feel anything towards her if he’s allowing her into his space for the first time without supervision? He obviously trusts her, and he obviously needs her—and that’s all the confirmation she needs to quiet her racing head and settle her thumping heart.

Her small hands settle on Harry’s waist and he instinctively brings her closer, cupping her jaw with his other hand so that he can angle her head back gently and press his lips against her own. It’s soft and sweet and soothing, and how can he not feel the same way when he kisses her like this?

Before they can get too carried away, his doorbell buzzes and Nora giggles when she feels him groan against her lips, shaking his head softly and backing away, looking down at her with a childlike pout on his lips.

Nora can’t help but trace the protruding flesh with her thumb, causing Harry to shiver. He’s dreading this event even more now, because all he wants to do is drag Nora upstairs and lock her in his room and turn their clock off for just one night.

But the doorbell buzzes again, and he sighs, knowing he can’t do that.

“That’s the car. I’ve got to go,” Harry whispers, giving Nora one last kiss before shrugging his blazer on and grabbing his wallet, keys, and invitation in one fell swoop.

Nora nods, a bit breathless at the sight of him. Harry opens the door, and before he can fully retreat, he peeks his head over his shoulder, long hair tucked behind his ear as he gives her one last small smile.

“One hour. Don’t miss me too much.”

As if she doesn’t miss him instantly when he leaves her.

True to his word, Harry comes back an hour later with a slice of red velvet cake he nicked from the dessert table before sneaking out undetected. He finds Nora burrowed in the thick sheets of his bed wearing the same Rush band tee he wore earlier in the day, her eyes lifting from the movie on the screen to the green of his eyes.

“Hey you,” she says softly, sitting up taller on his bed so that her back is flushed with his headboard and the tops of her thighs are poking out from underneath his duvet.

“Hi,” Harry responds, toeing off his shoes and walking over to her languidly, “Got you a present.” He drops the takeout container on her lap, grinning when she squeals and dredges her pointer finger through the thick frosting.

“Mmm,” Nora sighs, licking her finger dry as she smirks mischievously at Harry, watching as he undresses mindlessly. He isn’t sure if she’s doing it intentionally or if she’s always been a secret seductress, but when she repeats the action and swirls her tongue along her sticky digit, Harry snatches the box from her lap and slides his arms around her waist, switching their positions effortlessly so that she’s on top of him as he falls easily back onto the mattress.

“Someone’s feeling cheeky,” Harry says against her lips, his nose bumping hers repeatedly as she giggles against his skin.

“Can’t help it. I missed you,” Nora explains, adjusting her knees so that her weight is evenly distributed along his lower half, her backside resting against his front as her hands twist in between the curls along the crown of his head.

“Yeah?” Harry coaxes, his fingertips sneaking underneath his shirt as he plays with the lace material covering the bottom of her underwear.

“Always.” Nora seals her response with a fiery kiss, bringing her lips to his and pressing her entire body against his searing torso. She wonders if it’ll always feel like this—white hot electrical current shooting up her veins, warming her entire body up with just one simple press of his lips to hers.

Once Harry starts nipping at the skin of her lower lip, Nora responds by grinding into his lower half, the thin material of their underwear leaving little to the imagination as they garner enough friction to cause Nora’s knickers to dampen and Harry’s briefs to tighten.

They kiss until they’ve reached their very last breath, and when their lips depart, Harry uses this time to throw his shirt off of Nora’s body, leaving her sitting against his lap in just a nude pair of lacy underwear that makes his eyes roll to the back of his head.

With his head resting back against his neck, Nora decides to attach her lips to the column of Harry’s throat, causing his entire body to shudder as a carnal moan rips through his throat and settles between them. Her fingers draw a tantalizing path down his chest and abdomen until they’ve settled along his waist, red lines marking the path Nora’s fingernails greedily traced.

Her small palm cups his growing length trapped inside the strained cotton material, rubbing and squeezing as her teeth bite into the sharp cut of his jaw. Harry hands grip the skin of her waist in anticipation, and once Nora’s decided that he’s had enough teasing, she rolls the band of his briefs down, freeing his length in the stifling air of his bedroom.

“Christ,” Harry whispers, his eyes shut tight as he breathes through the feeling of Nora’s bare hands on his newly uncovered skin. She shushes him with gentle kisses, lapping her tongue against his own once he’s finally calmed down a bit more and begun reciprocating her tenacity.

Before he can take control, Nora makes the decision for him as she slides her underwear down her legs, flinging the thin material against his floor. Harry’s eyes snap open as he takes in the sight of her naked against his lap, the moonlight flooding into his bedroom outlining the curve of her body, the shape of her breasts, the valley of her stomach, the stretch of her legs.

No matter how many times Harry’s seen her like this, he never fails to stop and appreciate her. Because he’s taken it for granted too many times in the past, and every time he sees her exposing herself to him in the most vulnerable way there is, he can’t help but feel his heart grow in his chest, hammering against his ribs as he marvels in the fact that Nora Priestley chose him.

“What?” Nora asks shakily, shrinking into herself when she realizes Harry’s been staring at her for a beat longer than necessary.

“Nothing,” Harry admits, bringing a hand up to her face and tucking a stray piece of hair behind her ear. “You’re just beautiful.”

Nora responds with a smile, pressing her lips to his tightly. “I want you like this.”

“Are you sure?” Harry asks, his hands tightening against her waist as he watches her scoot up higher on his lap so that her core is lined up with his aching length.

Nora nods, her teeth sinking into the plushness of her lower lip as she wraps her arms around his neck. Before he can say another word, she begins teasing her entrance with the tip of his cock, watching the way his eyes widen almost cartoonishly and the vein in his neck starts to pulse.

“Nora, fuck, baby, wait. I need—fuck. Need a condom,” Harry stutters, holding her tightly in his grasp as she hovers over his tip.

“It’s only been me, yeah?” Nora asks, the muscles in her thighs straining as she holds herself in the position over his length.

“What? Why would you ask me that? Of course it’s only you,” Harry says quickly, a look of bewilderment gracing his features.

“Then let’s not use one. I want to feel you like this,” Nora whispers, her hands holding his face tightly so that he has no choice but to stare into the blues of her eyes.

Harry feels his stomach bottom out, constantly amazed at the girl in front of him. “Are you sure? Have you ever done this?” he asks, disquietude lacing his every word.

Nora shakes her head. “Have you?”

“No,” he answers, much to Nora’s surprise. “I haven’t.”

“Well, Harry Styles,” she whispers, rubbing her palms over Harry’s hands that are gripping her waist, signalling that she wants him to loosen his hold, “There’s a first time for everything.”

Harry’s teeth widen at her quip, remembering the way she uttered those same exact words to him three years ago when he was experiencing another first with her. Before he can say anything back, Nora gives him one last kiss before sinking down on his length, causing his brain to forget every single thought rushing through his head other than the fact that he’s inside of her with no barrier between them, and it’s probably the closest he’s ever (and will ever) feel with another person.

They both seem to be in the same headspace, with the way Nora freezes on top of him, her throat pinching when she realizes she can feel every ridge and curve of his length from this position, and it’s only once he asks her his standard question of, “Are you okay?” when Nora starts to lift herself on her knees, before sinking back over him once more.

“Oh my god,” Harry exclaims, wrapping one arm around her lower back and the other gripping harshly at the back of her neck, holding her as tightly and as closely as possible so that he can feel every shudder of her body and every thump of her heart against his own.

Nora angles his head back so that she can crash her lips to his, swallowing his moans as she swivels her hips against his own, feeling his tip bump against the spongy spot inside of her walls that causes her toes to curl. When he expertly hits it for a third continuous time, Nora’s neck falls back as she cries out into the stuffy air.

Harry noses at the clammy skin of her neck before pressing his lips to the spot near her jaw, licking and sucking until she’s whimpering above him. “Feel so fuckin’ good,” Harry whispers against her skin, sinking his teeth deeper into her flesh when he feels her clench around him.

“I’m close,” Nora says through an exasperated breath, weaving her fingers through his long hair until she’s wrapped the strands around her wrist in a makeshift ponytail, pulling just enough to cause Harry to groan against her.

“Fuck, baby. Me too. Do that again,” he instructs, feeling himself lose control when Nora obeys his request.

Nora’s never been on top for this long before, and while her thighs are burning and her lungs are losing air the closer and closer she gets to her release, she’s never had sex feel this good before. The knot inside of her stomach is tightening with every thrust Harry meets her with, and when his right hand sneaks down between them and rubs at her swollen mound, it only takes three rotations until the knot is uncoiled and Nora’s careening towards her end.

She stills on top of him, trembling with the aftershocks as she comes down from the most intense orgasm she’s had yet. Her body doesn’t even feel like her own, with the way she’s vibrating all over and her skin is dampened and her hair is knotted. It’s only once Harry’s pushed her backward, hovering over her as she’s horizontal on his sheets, when the fuzziness finally dissipates from her vision. She’s thankful that she can finally see clearly, because when her blue eyes meet his, she watches as he slips out of her, pumping his length until white ribbons coat the skin underneath her belly button.

They’re both staring at each other with heaving chests and dotted irises, coming down slowly as they realize what had just transpired between them. When Harry finally catches his breath, he whispers, “Shit, I’m sorry I probably should have asked—”

“Shh,” Nora coos, always the one to calm his racing heart and wild thoughts. “It’s okay. That was amazing. You’re amazing. C’mere, please.”

He smiles before crashing his lips to hers, kissing her soft and slow, a thousand words spilling through their lips without their voices ever speaking them. They break away softly so that Harry can grab his discarded shirt from the floor to clean Nora’s stomach, his arm reaching for the article of clothing without getting up so that he can keep her underneath him for as long as humanly possible.

As he dotes on her ever so delicately, Nora’s convinced that he feels the same way. She argues over how to tell him in her head as he wipes at her stomach and in between her thighs, before throwing the shirt into his hamper across the room. She debates the wordage as he wraps his arms around her gently, heaving them up the bed until they’re tangled together underneath his sheets. And just when she’s about to say it, he mumbles against the skin of her neck in his throaty voice, “I wish time could stop and we could stay like this forever. Just you and me.”

Nora freezes. Because suddenly, her heart pangs with the startling realization that she’s leaving London in four days. Moments like these with Harry are dwindling away one by one, and she really needs him to give her a reason to stay.

She needs to hear him say it.

And just as she’s built up the courage to whisper her declaration out into the air, Harry’s soft snores whistle against her neck. So she pushes it down, and waits for another day.

Nora wakes up in the middle of the morning with a nervous knot lodged inside her throat. She’s not even sure what spurred this on—considering she fell asleep tucked underneath Harry’s arm feeling safe and warm, her head lulling against his chest as his sleepy breaths ruffled the brown strands of hair falling against her cheek. But now, at six forty-three in the morning, Nora feels completely unsettled.

Her skin feels hot but she’s shivering for some strange reason, and when she’s reminded of the weight of Harry’s arm wrapped around her waist, she suddenly feels weak under the heaviness of it. She doesn’t feel comfortable, and all at once she feels the urge to get out from under the stifling duvet and get some fresh air.

She sneaks away from Harry’s body, tip-toeing towards his bedroom door with nothing but her cardigan on from the night before. Just as she’s closing the door, Nora makes sure to peek at him one last time, smiling to herself when she watches him flop onto his stomach and clutch the pillow she was just using tighter into his grasp. Nora wonders if he sleeps like this when she’s not with him.

She wonders if he’ll sleep like this when she leaves in three days.

Sighing, Nora makes her way to the sliding door connected to his kitchen, plopping herself down on the brick steps of the tiny porch overlooking his back garden. With her thighs pressed to her chest and her chin resting on the oversized knitted material of her buttoned cardigan over her knees, she despondently watches the blues and oranges and yellows of the early morning sun paint a picture of this piece of London she’s grown to love almost as much as the sleeping boy upstairs.

Nora’s not sure how long she sits out in the cool June air contemplating what the uneasy feeling was that forced her out of bed, but it’s long enough for her to notice the sun rising with the rest of Harry’s neighborhood. Her stomach begins to grumble then, and the thought of making coffee and toast urges her legs to carry her back inside the flat and into the small kitchen.

Just as she’s distractedly buttering her toast, Nora feels two strong arms lock around her waist from behind. She jumps at the feeling of it, even though there’s no other person it could possibly be besides Harry. Nora’s not sure if it’s just a residual effect from this morning, but still, she leans into him when her pulse decides to go back to normal, and she can feel Harry’s nose bumping against the side of her neck.

“You’re up early,” Harry mutters in that raspy morning voice of his that never fails to make Nora’s thighs clench together. There’s just something about him in the mornings.

“Couldn’t sleep,” Nora explains, her teeth ripping a small piece from the corner of her toast before bringing it over her left shoulder for Harry to try.

He hums in appreciation. “Don’t like when you’re not with me when I wake up,” he admits, tightening his arms around her as he swallows so that her backside is fully flushed with his.

“I know,” Nora whispers, the knot suddenly reappearing in her throat without warning. The half-eaten toast in her hand is no longer appetizing to her, and when she places it on a paper towel with trembling fingers, Nora comes to the conclusion that it’s now or never. She needs to tell him—because holding it hostage deep down inside of her is causing her to feel physically ill, and she’d rather face the consequences than always wonder what could be.

Harry notices her switch in demeanor almost instantly, and before Nora can even gather her bearings, he’s spinning her around, one opened palm cupping her jaw with his thumb rubbing her cheekbone delicately while the other tucks a stray piece of hair behind her ear as he observes her closely.

“Everything alright?” he asks, nervously watching the way her eyes seem to focus on everything but his own, her hands seem to shake erratically against her sides, her lips seem even darker due to the incessant nibbling she’s done to them throughout the morning, and Harry suddenly wonders if she’s finally caught up to all of his lies.

Nora takes one last breath before bringing her eyes to his own, “I think I’m in love with you.”

Now Harry’s the one that’s panicking.

As if his brain is no longer controlling his body, his hands suddenly disappear from Nora’s face. He takes a tentative step back, leaving a cold space where his warm body was just flushed against her own. Nora watches as his skin turns an uncomfortable shade of pale, and as if they had completely swapped roles, Harry’s now the one who can’t seem to hold her gaze.

“Wait—what?” Harry unnecessarily asks. He mainly utters it as a placeholder, considering he’s let an awkward wave of silence wash over them both with his inability to say anything of importance.

Nora breathes through her nose, concerned. “I said, I think I’m in lo—”

“Why?”

Nora wonders if he’s joking.

“What do you mean, why?” Harry can feel her slowly losing her patience, her arms wrapping around herself slowly, creating a layer of armor that she’s used in the past to protect herself from his callous words.

“I mean—are you sure?”

“Are you serious?”

Sure, Harry knows that he cares for Nora with everything in his being. And sure, a part of him understands that when his heart speeds up and his chest tightens and his cheeks bloom pink whenever he’s around her, it’s all due to his feelings for her.

But even though that all stands true—Harry can’t help but be wary. Because how are you supposed to know how to love somebody when you’ve never properly been loved yourself?

His best times with Nora are always a dream-like trance Harry finds himself reliving over and over again. They’re always short glimpses of time, weeks or months with an expiration date looming over their heads because Harry can only allot himself momentary feelings of bliss and vulnerability before he realizes that his heart has the capacity to break in half if he continues on any further.

While Harry’s heart and mind battle with one another, Nora decides that she’s had enough. There’s only so many minutes she can stand in front of him watching as he silently stares at the linoleum flooring of his kitchen instead of explaining his reasoning to her. It’s only once she feels the pressure of tears welling at her waterline when she ends up slinking around him, gathering the rest of her clothes and belongings in record speed so that she can leave his home before the first tear falls.

Harry’s frozen in place. He’s still staring at the spot Nora once filled, hearing the sounds of her slipping her shoes on by the door and twisting his door knob, but none of it is actually registering in his clogged mind. He’s not sure why—he’s completely and utterly recalibrating the entire inner-workings of his head, body, and heart.

It’s only once he’s heard the navy blue door slam shut when he snaps out of his catatonic state, realizing then and there that even though he hasn’t figured out how to explain his warped outlook on love to her, he still owes it to her to acknowledge her declaration.

But he’s too late—he’s always too late when it comes to Nora Priestley. Because while he’s approached the iron-clad gate wearing just his black briefs, Nora’s already rounded the corner of his street, leaving a flurry of dark brown hair and tears staining the pavement in her path.

Harry knows that his immediate reaction should have been to chase after her, but instead, he decides to grab the first bottle of liquor he could grasp from his bar cart, slinking down onto his couch and bringing it to his lips without an ounce of food in his stomach.

This is where Niall finds him hours later, a nearly-emptied bottle of whiskey at his feet while Harry stares at the black screen of his television with blank eyes, still wearing his briefs from this morning. He’s replayed the conversation so many times in his brain that he can recite Nora’s staggered breathing patterns by heart, and Harry knows that Niall is privy to this because instead of yelling at him, he sneaks off into his bedroom and throws a clean set of clothes at his bare body.

“Up you get, Curly. Time to dilute all that whiskey with some greasy food.”

In hindsight, Niall probably shouldn’t have brought Harry to the pub down the road from his flat. But he couldn’t carry his deadweight any further, and he figured the only place that would be okay with serving somebody who was already drunk was the ancient barman that knows the two by name at this point.

“Where’s that pretty girlfriend you’re attached to?” Said barman asks the moment Harry and Niall fall into the creaky barstools. Before Niall can try and alleviate the situation, Harry’s already ordered a pint of Carlsberg and a shot of Jameson, ignoring Niall’s pleas of trying to urge a burger and chips down his liquor-ladened throat.

He’s rang Nora at least six times now, currently going for a seventh after Niall returned his stolen mobile when Harry refused to put something in his whiskey-sloshed stomach. He obliged, only because he really wanted to get a hold of her and apologize for being an absolute twat. But she’s ignoring him, and he knows deep down that she has every right to, because she trusted him with her feelings and all he did was shut her down in the worst way possible.

Harry’s not sure how Niall agreed to it, but after they’ve closed out and Harry’s capable of standing on his own two feet, they’ve somehow ended up outside of Nora and Piper’s residence hall. Harry knows that Piper has to let Niall in, so in his drunken convoluted mind, he comes up with the plan to sneak past them both and head up the stairs to beg for Nora’s forgiveness.

What he didn’t account for was Piper’s protectiveness over her crying friend upstairs.

“Harry, I can’t let you do that,” Piper says, closing the door a bit so that only her face is poking out from the glass paneling.

“Piper, please. I’ve got—’ve gotta talk to her. ‘S important.” He tries entering the building again but somehow Piper’s much smaller body blocks the entrance, her arms holding the door frame in order to keep Harry out. Niall sighs from behind her, conflicted. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way.

“Harry, you’re pissed. I can’t—”

“No! Piper, please. I need t’go upstairs. I’ve rang ‘er and texted ‘er and I know—I know her, Piper. Fuck, it’s—” he pauses, breathing in deeply and trying his hardest to straighten out the jumbled thoughts causing his entire body to shake. “It’s Nora. Please.”

Before Piper can close the door on her friend one last time, she feels Niall’s hand on the middle of her back, and she calms almost instantly.

“Let ‘im try, Pipes.”

With a final sigh, she opens the door and Harry sprints up the stairs, nearly tripping over himself as he tries to get to Nora’s door in one piece. He knows he’s drunk, knows he’s probably a mess, knows that she has every right to send him away—but he needs to talk to her or he’ll fucking explode.

He knocks about eight times on the wooden door before Nora appears behind it, eyes puffy and skin pale. Her hair is a knotted mess and her fringe is frizzy and Harry feels his chest crack in half when he realizes that he’s made her cry again.

“Harry—”

“You lov—” he hiccups loudly, causing his words to cut off the moment his body shakes abruptly. He pauses, tries to remember what he was going to say, before starting again, only to fail to pronounce the godforsaken word appropriately. “You lo’ me?”

He knows his mouth can barely utter the word, and his voice comes out a bit more squeaky than he would like, but he can’t help it. That word has always felt foreign coming out of his mouth, and he’s never understood the magnitude of its meaning. Not dead sober, and especially not after drinking the entire pub’s collection of whiskey.

Nora doesn’t say anything, but she does look into his glassy eyes and realizes that it’s from alcohol and not sadness. His hair is somehow knottier than hers and his part is amok, and she knows it’s because he ran his fingers through the tendrils one too many times. His cheeks are flushed, and before she can respond, his mouth is already opening.

“‘Cos I panicked. And ‘m sorry, but it’s just—nobody’s said that t’me before and properly meant it. Like my parents. They don’t lo—. Yeah. They don't. And me, I don’t even think I feel that way about m’self, either. ‘S just—it scares me, and I don’t know how to lo—”

“—No,” Nora says softly, interrupting Harry’s drunken monologue with a sad shake of her head.

Harry blinks once, twice, his blurry eyes trying to focus on her frame as the tears begin to bubble along her waterline. “No?” He’s confused, feels as if his life is completely off-kilter with the short utterance of a simple, two-lettered word.

“I don’t love you like this.”

Harry wonders if Nora can hear his heart begin to rip inside of his chest. “Nora—”

“You can barely even say it! Even when you’re piss drunk, you can hardly say the word love, let alone stick around long enough to hear somebody say it to you!” Her voice echoes through the small hallway of the sixth floor, and Harry stares back at her, flinching with each raise of her voice. “I can’t do this, Harry. I’d rather have you not say it sober than try and spit it out when you’re drunk. I just—I deserve better.”

“Nora please, I—you don’t understand—”

“—No I think I do. Quite clearly, actually.” Before Harry can try to force himself through the door one last time, Nora’s already begun to close it on him. “I think it’s best you go.”

“Nora! Please!” Harry calls out against the heavy wood, but it’s no use. She’s already flicked the lock, already sunk down to the floor with her back resting on the other side of the door, already begun muffling her sobs with trembling hands. And every time Harry bangs on the door with clenched fists and Nora can feel the wood shake, she just clenches her teeth on her bottom lip harder, praying with everything in her that Harry can’t hear her cry.

Harry’s not sure how long he’s stood there pounding on Nora’s door, repeating the word please enough times that it’s somehow lost its meaning. It’s only once he feels Niall’s hand on his back, ushering him out of the hallway and down the stairs, sticking him into the back of a cab when Harry feels the weight of his mistake rest heavy on his shoulders.

The only reason Harry gets any semblance of sleep that night is because he forces himself to swallow back five generous sips of whiskey before collapsing onto his mattress.

When Harry wakes up the next morning, his head isn’t the thing that hurts the most. Somehow, it’s his heart—and even though he’s suffering from the worst hangover he’s had in a very long time, it pales in comparison to the ache resonating through the inside of his chest.

But he can’t feel sorry for himself anymore. Because the longer he sits wallowing in his own self-induced misery, the more Nora drifts away from him. Feeling sorry for himself isn’t going to fix this. He needs to own up to his mistakes, find Nora, and beg for her forgiveness—because even though he doesn’t deserve her, he can’t make her feel horrible anymore.

Just as he’s rummaging through his wardrobe trying to find the cleanest shirt he owns, he hears his mobile ring for the third time that morning. When he looks over at the screen he realizes that it’s his father again, and although they aren’t very close, seeing him try to reach him a handful of times is enough to be worrisome. And just as he’s about to slip his shoes on, his father rings again. Harry begrudgingly answers, wondering what the hell is going on.

“Good to see you know how to answer your mobile,” his father says instead of a normal greeting, his voice filled with sarcasm. Harry almost hangs up the phone on him, his head filled with much more important things than dealing with another ribbing before noon.

“What’s going on? Did someone die?” Harry asks, flying down the staircase in order to locate his trainers that he remembered throwing across the floor in his drunken stupor last night.

“Very funny,” his father retorts, the sound of an unamused chuckle floating through the receiver. “Surprised you haven’t seen it yet.”

“Seen what?” Harry asks, tying the final lace as he begins the search to locate his wallet and keys.

“Page Six. Lovely spread of you and Jacqueline leaving the work event from two evenings ago. That’ll definitely make for some good press surrounding our merger with the Van-Doren’s. Well done, son.”

Harry didn’t think it was possible to feel worse, but somehow, after hearing his father congratulate him for being photographed with the girl he’s been trying painfully hard to set him up with, Harry feels as if everything around him is falling apart.

He doesn’t even respond to his father. Instead, he hangs up the call, typing his name in the Google image search bar. Sure enough, a picture of him and Jacqueline standing close enough to each other for it to be a story is covering his screen. Harry’s never felt more enraged, because he suddenly realizes that if his father has seen it, then Nora definitely has as well.

This can’t be happening to him.

She leaves tomorrow. He can’t let her go like this, not when he wants her to stay. Not when the words are practically at the tip of his tongue, ready to be shouted out into the sky. He’s ready to tell her.

He needs to tell her.

But before he can walk down his front steps and through the iron-clad gate, Niall is standing there blocking his path, a sullen look covering his face.

“Mate, she’s gone.”

*** A/N: I’m sorry times infinity. I know it must seem like I’m torturing you, but I promise I’m not! Everything will make sense in time, even though it’s a bit painful to read. My inbox is open for all complaints/theories/ill-wishes.

Sadly, the time has come that I no longer have completed chapters already written. I've tried to keep up, but real life got in the way. I have like barely half of the next part written, so I’m not entirely positive if it will be posted next Friday. I want to give you guys the best I can offer, and if it feels rushed I know it’ll be quite disappointing! I’m aiming to have it up by Friday, but if it isn't, I will surely keep you posted. Thanks again for sticking with me and this story, please be kind to each other and I’ll see you (hopefully) in one week!

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mintymiknow · 3 years

Text

Trust Fall ch. 8 | Lee Minho

summary | character profiles | masterlist

Pairing: Lee Minho/Lee Know x Reader

Summary: Little discussions here and there seem to open some eyes and hearts, but is it enough to fully break down the walls that were built?

Genre: Secret agent/spy au, romance, angst, action

Word count: Approx. 5.8k

Warnings for this chapter: Genre-typical violence & blood due to fight scenes (rest assured, it isn’t gore; just basic or typical violence for fight scenes). Let me know if I missed anything or should add more warning tags though!

A/N: I know you all had to wait for a bit, but I used my break to spend time with family (and play Genshin so...hehe I needed some “me-time”). Anyway! I’m back and here to give you all the next chapter for the series. I hope you enjoy reading it as the end scenes have been my favorite to write so far ‘cause you’ll be getting some tension and fluff at the same time. Leave an ask for any questions and comments!

“I’ve fallen into a daily routine now. I’m used to everything and go about my day normally now.”

That’s what you’d like to say anyway.

While it’s somehow true that you’ve fallen into a systematic rhythm in SKZ, it’s still something that weighs down on you, and you just want to get things over and done with. You still have to drag your body away from the bed, drag your feet here and there, and work in the lab department.

This systematic rhythm consists of working in the lab with Seungmin and Jisung - and eating your meals with them mostly. It also involves Minho and the other boys going on smaller-sized missions, each return giving you more things to work with and whatnot.

In the very back of your head and heart, the brief moments Minho spends with you - namely late nights in the lab discussing the recent findings and theories - are somewhat a breather as it reminded you of the times you and Dr. Kang would stay in the doctors’ lounge, talking about how your rounds with the patients went for the day.

Well, at the end of it all, at least you’re basically good friends with Seungmin and Jisung now. Being with the two gave you a sense of freedom as if you were back in your more relaxed college days or something of that sort.

After getting showered and dressed for another day, you head to the lab department. On the way, you bump into Felix in the courtyard-like area of the HQ. The young male greets you with a smile, “Morning, y/n! Lab duty again?”

You offer a small smile and nod in response, “Hi, Felix. Yes, as usual.”

“I see.” Felix chuckles lightly, “Don’t forget to stand up and stretch from time to time. Sitting for long hours isn’t good for your posture! Though you’re the doctor so I’m sure you knew that…”

“We can forget.” you chuckle, “Thank you for the reminder. You should keep that in mind too.”

“Yeah, sitting in front of computer screens and whatnot is bad for my eyes, but probably my back too.” Felix laughs, his eyes filled with so much brightness.

You release a soft sigh and smile, “I commend you and your efforts in the tech division.”

“Thanks…” Felix says sheepishly, “I’m not one for being in the limelight, but it’s nice to hear that us tech agents are doing good too. We are working in the background most of the time.”

“Well, I’m sure that without you and the other tech guys, Minho and the rest of the agents would be doing missions blindly and without any advantages.” you say seriously yet warmly.

“That’s true.” the younger laughs, “Gee, you’re really nice, you know that?”

“Not really...just...um, saying facts.” you stutter, suddenly taken by surprise by his compliment, “It’s from a completely objective perspective after all…”

Felix grins wider, shaking his head, “I can tell you’re a nice person, y/n! Minho says you’re a bit closed off, but it’s understandable. Jisung and Seungmin know you best, and they like you a lot, so that’s more than enough to like you too. Besides, you wouldn’t be here if you really didn’t care, right?”

After that statement, another agent calls for Felix, so the freckled male has to excuse himself. As he trots off to the main HQ building, you stand there, dumbfounded.

“Besides, you wouldn’t be here if you really didn’t care, right?”

You’ve been blaming Minho and Jung and SKZ for dragging and forcing you back into the game. Blaming them for giving you no choice no matter what, but deep down, you knew that you did have a choice. You could run away any time, turn to the government or something to fight for your rights. You could give in to the dark whispers of joining Cle to end whatever struggle once and for all.

But you had a choice, and you chose to work with SKZ.

Because yes, you cared. Yes, you wanted to make sure no one lost their lives over a stupid serum.

You chose this.

Who knew that Felix, happy-go-lucky and carefree as he was, would just nonchalantly utter words that would open your eyes and heart. Well, maybe it was that innocence and cheerfulness that made it more believable and genuine to you.

Shaking your head to release yourself from a trance, you clear your throat and make hurried steps towards the lab department. You take the elevator and go down to the underground level where most of the work is done. You then venture further inside, heading for the hallway where various rooms are lined. You’re about to scan your ID to open the door to the lab room you frequently use when the door slides open by itself; you’re met with a tall figure in front of you.

You look up, only to see Jung standing in front of you, tilting his head to the side. “Oh, Dr. Song, good morning.” he chuckles.

You nod politely, “Yes, good morning, Jung. What...what brings you here?”

Jung rarely stepped foot into the lab unless you guys summoned him and the agents for briefing on test findings and results. As far as you were concerned, the results for the tests Jisung ran yesterday are due later in the afternoon, not this morning.

Unless...something happened and Jung needed to speak directly to you, perhaps?

“Did...something happen?” you ask again, clearing your throat.

Jung shakes his head and offers a smile, “Well, technically I was looking for Seungmin, and since you both work closely, I thought he’d be here...where’d that boy go?”

“Seungmin’s doing his rounds in the medical wing, I think.” you explain, “Did you need something from him? Maybe I’d know…”

“Oh, no. It’s just about an agent that needs treatment, and I think Seungmin would be the best doctor to work on it.” Jung sighs and offers a small smile, “No matter, I’ll look for him myself.”

“I see, alright then.” you nod.

“Have a good day, Dr. Song. Don’t forget to take breaks. Minho says you’ve been working non-stop.” Jung calls over his shoulder as he walks away, muttering something about ‘where is Kim Seungmin’ afterwards.

You go inside the lab room and press the button for the door to slide shut. Call it “trust issues”, but as soon as the door closes, you scan the room and check everything there, making sure how you left it last night was how it was until now.

Not a single thing was out of place, so you mentally slap your mind for being so suspicious.

You then proceed to study whatever chemicals and substances the team has brought back the past few days, and you study them along with...well, vials of chemicals that you’ve hesitantly withheld from the rest - from Minho. These withheld items were things you’d only test and analyze when you were working by yourself, keeping the observations and notes in a small notebook that you kept in utter secrecy and safety.

If Jisung and Seungmin wanted to enter the lab room, they’d have to knock or scan their IDs, and if it were the latter, the beeping sound before the door opens gave you enough time to conceal whatever substances you were hiding under the table or in the desk drawers.

After a few hours or so, you finally decide to take a break and keep the vials and flasks in a locked cabinet before clearing up the desk and returning whatever equipment you used. However, you still remain seated on the stool, going through the notes you’ve written in your notebook and rattling your mind to come up with mental calculations and formulas to make sense of your findings. So far, you don’t have anything, and your eyebrows knit together in desperation.

“Y/n.”

You freeze in your spot upon hearing that sharp and clear voice; you don’t even bother to make any moves in hiding your notebook - that’s too suspicious. Instead, you simply close the notebook and try your best to look as calm as possible as you look up, “Agent Lee.”

Minho crosses his arms, something you’ve learned to look away from - unless you want to internally drool over how attractive the simple gesture looks. “I thought you were supposed to be with Jisung for today? That’s what he told me last night anyway.” he says plainly.

You sigh. Did they all keep tabs on you or what? “I was just about to meet with him.” you answer, breaking eye contact with him once again, “I just...wanted to check some things here.”

“Anything of use?” Minho raises an eyebrow, and you know he’s trying to get you to explain yourself.

You lift up your notebook and weakly wave it in the air before explaining, “Just...going over some notes from previous findings and trying to connect the dots. I...am yet to see anything of significance.”

Once again, not a complete lie; yes, you were trying to connect that dots and whatnot, but nothing of significance? That was a lie. You’ve already noted some pretty significant findings aside from the ones you discovered with the other scientists, but you didn’t need to tell Minho that. Not yet...maybe.

Minho walks over, stopping a bit too close for you, and you involuntarily flinch at the suddenness...and proximity. The agent notices the subtle reaction, eyes slightly lidding in either annoyance or guilt...you aren’t sure which one. He plants a hand on the desk, leaning against it as he raises an eyebrow again, “Care to share anything else?”

You shake your head, moving to put your notebook in your small purse and slinging it onto your shoulder. You stand up from the stool, but instantly regret it as Minho takes one very miniscule step towards you. That tiny step is enough to cause you to take your own step back, unfortunately bumping into the stool behind you. The male catches you with ease, a hand lightly supporting your lower back as he tugs you close with one swift and effortless motion.

Your hands fly out to settle against his chest in an effort to put as much distance between you two. Minho leans close, his head perfectly and dangerously near the side of your neck; his dark hair tickles your ear, and you can almost feel the tip of his perfect nose against the skin of your neck. You can’t help but gulp, and you’re sure the agent notices it. Despite his body warm against yours, you’re frozen like ice, unmoving as Minho remains in that position for a few more seconds.

After, he pulls back and stares at you with an unreadable expression, dark eyes still somehow sparkly despite the tension in the room. “Did you...perhaps drink at the bar before coming here? While on duty?” he asks sternly, as if reprimanding you.

You blink your eyes, staring at the male with confusion. “Excuse me?” you blurt out.

“You smell like alcohol.” Minho says in a deadpan manner.

You angle your head to sniff your shoulder to see if he was telling the truth. Surprisingly, you caught a whiff of alcohol from your jacket and internally groan, closing your eyes in embarrassment. If this were a cartoon, your cheeks would be tomato-red. You open your eyes to see Minho smiling at you, the curl of his lips nothing short of teasing and playful. Your cheeks are probably redder now.

“I didn’t drink today.” you clear your throat, tearing your eyes away from Minho’s to look down. Instead, your eyes land on his tie, already loosened at the top with the first few buttons of his shirt unbuttoned. Your mind goes hazy.

Minho laughs lightly, “You do know it’s against the rules to go to the lounge bar when on duty, right?”

You snap out of whatever reverie you were in, dragging your eyes back to Minho’s. You nod, narrowing your eyes to mask your flustered state, “I drank yesterday, but with Seungmin and Jisung. I didn’t do anything today. This is the jacket I wore yesterday, that’s why.”

“I see.” Minho tilts his head innocently, pulling away and retracting his hand from your back; you suddenly miss the warmth.

You clear your throat once more before bowing politely, “Now if you’ll excuse me, Jisung might be waiting.”

You don’t wait for Minho to reply, skirting around him to leave the room in a hurry. Minho watches your retreating figure with warm eyes, but as soon as you’re gone, he narrows said eyes and scans the room. Though nothing in particular seems wrong, he does notice a small sheet of paper on the floor, perhaps slipping from your notebook when you hurriedly put it back in your purse. He bends down to pick it up, flipping it over to reveal a small polaroid photograph.

Minho’s eyes glaze at the photo, taking into account the three individuals posing happily. He sees a woman on the right, one eye closed as she makes a winking face with a smile wide and bright as she flashes a peace-sign with her hand.

In the middle is a male who Minho recalls is the man you met up with before - Dr. Kang Hyunbin, the one you claimed to be your good friend. He smiles calmly, eyes twinkling even through a photograph as he has one arm around the other woman’s shoulder, and another arm around your shoulder.

There, at the left side you stand, smiling wider than Minho has ever seen, eyes full of life and not dull like how it is in here. The three of you were in casual clothes, though still wearing your usual lab coats in what seems to be the outdoor garden of Gongjak Hospital.

“Never thought I’d see someone smile like this after her.” Minho thinks to himself, “How cruel is fate, huh?”

He catches himself looking at you a second too long than he intended, so he releases a sigh and pockets the photo, making a mental note to return it to you soon. Turning on his heel, the agent then heads for the training facility in the main building.

“If I may be so bold, I’d say you’re in love.” Jeongin laughs after finishing a routine on the treadmill, plopping down onto a bench, “Not kidding.”

Minho leans against one of the gym equipment, raising a displeased eyebrow as he utters, “Yeah, you’re being too bold as usual, Innie. That’s not even - I don’t even know what to say in response to that.”

Chan wipes the sweat off his forehead with a towel after he finishes his turn with the punching bag. “I am intrigued how you came with that conclusion though.” the eldest says.

Jeongin laughs, his eyes narrowing into a playful yet sincere disposition, “Well, you don’t show it, but we know you well enough to see that you really do care about her. And it’s not just because you’re her partner or it’s your job to do so. I know how you are when you genuinely care about someone, and your eyes tell me that you do care about y/n more than you lead on.”

“Ok, but what if I’m only like that because I don’t want her to die? Because we’re agents? We’re supposed to be protectors of this country and its people?” Minho reasons, heading towards the punching bag.

“You’re pretty touchy and teasing with her, am I right? Kinda flirty and charming.”

“It’s called a cover, Innie. You’re familiar with that.”

“I just have a feeling. You don’t care about people to that extent. You tend to act out of duty and obligation, not attachment and emotion. With us being an exception to that, the other person I can see this side of you with is when you’re with y/n, or if it involves y/n.” Jeongin leans back against the wall, his smile not faltering one bit, “Not saying you’re attached to her, but I’m just saying that there’s already an emotional connection, and I have a feeling it won’t be long until it becomes something more serious.”

Chan looks at the youngest in awe, smiling like a proud father as he slowly claps his hands. He puts a hand on Jeongin’s shoulder and gently shakes him before turning to Minho, “You know, I do have to agree with Innie on this. You don’t even have to act on feelings or whatever. Just...try not to close yourself or your doors, alright? Maybe you’ll earn another new friend along the way.”

“I don’t need her if I have you guys.” Minho lightly punches the bag a few times, “She’s a waste of time. I just need her to finish her part so we can finally conclude this long mission.”

“You’re probably going to shoot me for saying this,” Jeongin starts as he hides behind Chan, “but are you just saying that because she reminds you of Jiyeon?”

At that, Minho shoots a glare at the two males, eyebrows furrowed. Jeongin sheepishly chuckles, but he boldly presses on. “Changbin told us...how much y/n reminds you of Jiyeon, and well, yeah, we do see it too. Is that why you don’t want to get attached? Not even romantically...platonically, even.”

Minho’s eyes soften as he looks down at the floor, “I’ve made myself clear when I said that emotions are a waste of time and are a useless distraction - things I can’t afford in this job. I’m here to protect people, not make friends and fall in love.”

Chan hums, offering a slow and easy smile as he looks at the male with warmth. “Y/n isn’t going to kill you. Or us. Or anyone for that matter.” the eldest agent states confidently, “It goes against her principles...against the doctor in her. That’s more than enough to convince me she’s on our side.”

“Wasn’t that what we thought of Jiyeon?” Minho scoffs, “Noble woman serving the organization to protect the people because of her pure heart?”

“No.” Chan says in an instant, his voice filled with certainty, “Y/n cares about lives, otherwise she wouldn’t be here. She’ll do everything in her power to fix this just so she can prevent harm...and maybe find peace from whatever past is haunting her.”

Then Minho and Chan stare at each other, a brotherly connection swarming in their eyes as whatever determination Chan has to share makes its way to Minho. The eldest agent then continues with a softer, more apologetic voice, “Jiyeon...is the opposite of y/n, now that I think about it. Y/n reminds you of the mask Jiyeon had, but not Jiyeon herself. That woman...worked in the complete opposite way of what we stand for - what y/n stands for.”

Minho releases a sigh, slumping down onto the bench beside Jeongin. With a groan, he leans his head back and rests it against the wall. Chan chuckles, giving his friend a light pat on the shoulder.

“Jiyeon’s gone, so let go of her now.”

A day later, Jung sends Minho and a small team to a factory site for investigation. He requests your presence as well, as the factory was used for chemical experiments, and you might have additional input as the investigation is carried out.

You sit in the backseat of the car, staring out the window as Minho sits next to you, and despite being on the other end of the backseat, you can feel his warmth radiating from him. Usually, he’d be driving or seated in the passenger seat if Chan was driving. But right now, two other agents were in front, and while Minho was supposed to sit in front, he swapped places with the other agent and sat with you.

Though, if you were being completely honest, you couldn’t decipher why, because right now, the man has barely spoken or looked at you. It’s a quiet ride, and you aren’t sure if it’s because he’s with agents who aren’t his usual circle of friends; you decide to keep quiet as well.

The agent driving parks the car by some trees along with another car before your groups begin to trek up a small hill that leads to a secluded factory building. The other agents go their own way with Minho reminding them to keep things subtle and quiet. The male agent then addresses you, but he does not look your way, “Follow me.”

Not that you really cared, but his indifferent - or more indifferent than usual - demeanor slightly puts you in a confused state, but you follow him nonetheless. Once inside the factory building, you look around and whisper, “Is this an abandoned site?”

Minho shakes his head, sharp eyes looking around, “Technically not. Cle occupied and used this site, but as per intel, they’ve only recently relocated the operations for this place somewhere else. This is now just a backup hideout, in simpler terms.”

You nod your head, and Minho continues, “We’re here to investigate, nothing more, nothing less.”

“Ok.”

With that, another blanket of silence befalls you two, and you find yourselves searching and investigating the room you were in. You both work in silence, and while it has its pros and cons, you can’t help but feel uneasy. On the bright side, you could focus on your task at your own pace and not get distracted, keeping things to yourself if needed. However, you’re slightly used to him asking questions and checking on you every now and then, so you can’t help but think if he’s upset or angry.

Or he knows something about what you’ve been hiding.

Impossible; that couldn’t be the case right?

He’d confront you if that were the case, not avoid you...right?

Unfortunately, there’s nothing of interest and significance in this room, so you tell Minho. It would seem he has the same thoughts because he furrows his eyebrows and gestures towards the rooms down the hallway nearby. “They must have swept this place clean.” he sighs tiredly, “Let’s move on.”

You nod and follow him in silence, the agent carefully and quietly navigating through the confusing halls and rooms of the factory building. Unfortunately, it was as he said; it would seem Cle did a good job in making sure no traces were left for SKZ to pick up on, leaving you empty-handed. The agents communicate with Minho through their communication devices and inform the male that they’ve moved on to the North building which was on the opposite side of the factory compound.

You and Minho head to the last location to scout, and it turned out to be a run-down lab room. The interior and leftover equipment and tables were clean, but you could see specks of rust forming on the surface. You gingerly brush your hand on one of the table surfaces, sighing, “This kind of environment could affect whatever chemicals and substances they were working with.”

“Unless this is a set-up to make it look like they haven’t been doing anything here.” Minho points out, squatting down in front of one the shelves lined with bottles of murky liquid and chunks of...whatever specimens, “Any idea if these will be useful?”

You walk over to him and look at the stuff on the shelf. You sniff the bottles of murky liquid before contorting your face in disgust, “This is just stagnant water. It’s murky because of dust and dirt.”

“But these…” you trail off, tilting your head to examine the containers with whatever solid specimens, “...these are…”

You gulp, unable to finish your sentence as your mind finally registers what those specimens were; pieces of body parts that had long decayed, probably to be used for observational purposes but rotted over time.

Minho notices the way you stiffen, gulping hard as if urging yourself to keep the bile to yourself. He breaks whatever “silent treatment” he had going on, putting a hand to your shoulder to get you away from the shelf. He steps in front of you to block your view, bending slightly just to get to your eye level. “Y/n, just rela - ”

He doesn’t get to finish his words because in a split-second, his eyes leave yours as they fill with urgency. Before you know it, he grabs your shoulder more firmly and pushes forward. You yelp as you land on the ground with him on top of you at the exact same time you see a small dagger lodging itself into the shelf. Your eyes widen and fall to Minho who already has his icy eyes on the newcomer to the room.

He mutters a hurried “get out of here” before getting up and facing off with the stranger. However, you can’t bring yourself to move, frozen on the floor as you watch the stranger lunge for Minho. The two men engage in a frenzied hand-to-hand battle, but it would seem like the man is at par with Minho, keeping up with the skilled agent’s moves.

Minho refuses to draw out his gun to make sure he doesn’t make any noise to prevent attracting attention should there be more enemies around the area. He manages to gain a short upper-hand, sending the enemy a few feet back with a strong spinning kick. He then rushes over to you and grabs your hand so that he can pull you to your feet.

“Let’s go.” he says in a low voice, not wasting any time in running from the room.

You’re both running as fast as you can, hand tightly gripping each other’s as if your life depended on it. You arrive in one of the open-space rooms, and as you continue to run, the wooden floor below creaks softly. The enemy is a quick runner as well, somehow managed to catch up with you two. He reaches out, grabbing your other wrist and pulling you from Minho’s grasp and pulls his fist back to land a punch. The agent refuses to let him do so and turns around, using whatever momentum to pull you behind him just as the enemy’s fist lands on his jaw. The impact causes Minho to let go of you as he falls to the side, and you find yourself yelling his name.

The opponent chooses to go for Minho instead of you, picking the agent up by the collar of his shirt. He bashes his head against Minho’s, and while the agent winces in pain, he grits his teeth and fights back, back to being on equal ground with the enemy. They engage in another physical combat, landing blows on each other here and there. As if nothing could be worse, another stranger runs into the room, grabbing you from behind in a choke-hold.

You do your best to stop him from suffocating you, kicking and trying to elbow the man behind. Minho sees it from the corner of his eyes, clicking his tongue in exasperation. His opponent lunges an arm forward, holding a knife, so Minho grabs said arm and pivots with complex skill, doing some sort of flip and twisting the enemy’s arm so he could end up behind the agent. With the opponent in a similar choke-hold, Minho grabs the knife and skillfully throws it towards the stranger holding you.

Unfortunately, because you were both moving a lot, the blade seems to approach you instead. Your eyes widen with fear, but thankfully, it only shallowly cuts your cheek before lodging itself into the stranger’s neck. He lets go and collapses on the ground with a thud, blood now pooling around him.

However, because of that moment, Minho’s opponent gains the advantage once more, headbutting Minho’s chin, prompting the agent to let go. The enemy is quick to turn to Minho, another knife in his hand to jab at the male who is recovering his bearings. You don’t know how you managed to bring yourself to do it - maybe the adrenaline rush or fear of having Minho killed in front of you - but you pull out the knife that killed the other stranger and run towards Minho’s opponent, stabbing the blade into his shoulder as he was wearing a muscle tee.

You try to ignore the blood painting the enemy’s skin, using the time he takes to get the blade out to rush to Minho’s side. You both then take steps to run away; however, the enemy isn’t too pleased with what you’ve done, shifting his attention to you instead of Minho. As he takes a step forward, however, the wooden floor beneath creaks loudly, and Minho’s eyes catch the subtle splintering around the three of you.

“Minho, let’s go.” you say in panic when the agent seems to be standing still.

Minho’s eyes are stuck to the wooden floor, making some sort of mental calculation in his mind.

One more step.

As the enemy makes one more step, the floor makes a breaking sound and gives out. Minho, however, is able to push you back just in time, allowing you to remain on the unbroken part as he and the enemy fall to the floor below with a sickening crack.

“Minho!”

You see the agent pushing himself to get up with a few coughs, but so is the opponent. The agent then looks up to you, eyes still calm yet with a sense of urgency, “Go now! Run to the rendezvous point! I’ll follow!”

“But - ”

“I promise, just go!”

You bite your lip, nodding in understanding as you turn on your heel and make a run for it. Minho then wipes the blood dripping down his chin and turns to his opponent, a cold and almost cruel smirk playing at his lips, “Now that I don’t need to hold back, I hope you’re ready.”

Meanwhile, you pump your legs as hard and fast as you can, running towards the rendezvous point. Unfortunately, that meant where the cars were parked, but you still had a bit of distance to cover since you and Minho ventured deep inside the building. Just as you’re about to reach the end of the hallway near one of the back doors, you hear gunshots, bullets barely missing you. You try to conceal your screams, ducking down and running into a rather large room, quickly finding a hiding spot behind a cement pillar.

The shooter repeatedly shoots the structure as you cover your ears. Fragments of the pillar crack of and fly here and there, dusting your hair and shoulder with chalky-white bits. After a moment, the shooter stops to reload his gun, and you take the chance to sprint to another hiding spot.

He begins to shoot just as you drop down and make your way behind an old couch, a bullet barely missing your leg. He shoots without stopping, the couch fillings flying everywhere. Another round to reload his gun, and you grab a nearby ceramic vase and throw it to him as hard as you can.

The shooter shoots it, but the split-second allows you to find cover behind a desk in the other end of the room. You curl yourself up, hugging your knees to yourself as you take deep and shaky breaths. In the dead silence of the room, you can hear your shooter’s footsteps approaching slowly, the grasp of fear locking onto you as you cover your mouth. You hear the clicking of the shooter’s gun, and you close your eyes, anticipating the worst.

However, when you hear a bang followed by a thud, you don’t feel anything and instead see a body collapse to the side, thankfully facing away from you. A few seconds later, Minho appears, kicking the body away from you and kneeling beside you. “Y/n.” he whispers.

You let out a deep breath, only noticing now that tears have streamed down your face. Minho’s expression softens, eyebrows knitting in concern as he reaches out to brush off the cement particles that dusted onto your hair and shoulders during the shootout. He then moves to wipe your tears with his thumb.

Never have you seen so much warmth in his eyes as he stares at you, eyes never leaving yours as you let out quiet sobs that rattle your shaky figure.

Despite the cuts on his bleeding lip, bruises painting his cheekbone, blood trailing down from his head to the side, and disheveled hair, he still looked familiar, warm and comforting - like a home you’d return to after a hard day’s work in the hospital.

You didn’t know it was possible for him to look like that.

You close your eyes when his thumb stops brushing your tears away, his hand now moving to cup your cheek with a tenderness opposite of how he fought off his opponents. “Hey.” he whispers so softly, only you can hear it like a secret message, “Are you hurt?”

You shake your head, still trembling. Minho nods in understanding and helps you up before telling you to wait for a second. He walks over to a nearby window and communicates with the rest of the team, giving them an update on the situation. Meanwhile, you kneel down next to the shooter’s dead body upon noticing a small plastic vial filled with red liquid. Quickly, you swipe it and shove it into your brassiere for extra measure. You stand back up, walking over to Minho.

He finishes communicating with the team before gently taking your hand in his, “Come on.”

Without a word, he leads you out, walking calmly towards the rendezvous point. Once there, it would seem like the team was still on the way from the other building, so Minho sits on the hood of one of the cars, eyes still on the sharp look-out for any enemies. You sit next to him, exhaustion clouding your eyes as you stare straight ahead.

“I’m sorry.”

You hum emptily, “Hm?”

Minho sighs, turning to face you. You don’t pull away when his hand finds your face, thumb gently dancing around the cut you got from the knife from earlier. The blood had dried up, but it made its mark. The agent’s thumb is soft as he strokes the skin under the cut, “Sorry about this. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“It’s fine.” you clear your throat, looking at him for a fleeting moment before turning your eyes to his chest, “You still saved me, so thank you.”

“And you saved me.” Minho responds, offering a small smile.

You can only nod, the impact of the events finally catching up to you. Tears swell in your eyes again, and you feel a light shiver travel down your spine. Minho isn’t new to comforting people; he may say he doesn’t care, but he knows what to do and how.

So he reaches forward, gently tugging on your arm to pull you close to his chest. Once your head comes into contact with his chest and you feel his arms wrap around you, providing warmth and security, you weakly sob against him. He brings a hand up to your head, softly stroking your hair as he whispers against your temple, “This mission wasn’t supposed to go this way. My bad for not being able to foresee these circumstances. Sorry you had to go through it.”

Perhaps today, you put your guard down enough for him to console you. You let yourself believe and trust him. Just for today. Tomorrow, who knows?

You shake your head and clear your throat, “Not your fault. It’s part of the job, isn’t it?”

“Yes.” Minho sighs, hoping you don’t notice the way he holds you closer and tighter, “It is.”

Maybe Jeongin and Chan were right.

Loved you? Maybe not that.

Cared about you? Genuinely? Perhaps he sees it now.

But can he afford such a luxurious feeling? Such an emotion?

Last time he allowed himself such indulgence, he paid a cost too high.

148 notes · View notes

lunarmessenger · 3 years

Note

Hiya! Could I request the RFA (+ minor trio, if it isn't too much trouble) with an MC who gives neck kisses frequently? 👉👈 I am just. A simple soul with simple desires skfkek. Please and thank you💞

Of course you can sweetie! This is such a cute prompt!!! Sorry to everybody who I’ve kept waiting; I’m slowly gaining back my strength, so I should be back to writing soon! - luna xx

RFA + V, Saeran, and Vanderwood Reacts to an MC Who Gives Neck Kisses

Zen

• He loves it so much honestly

• The first time it happens you honestly caught him off guard

• You were both sitting on the couch watching one of his performances

• His arm was around your shoulders and your legs were in his lap, snuggled closely as he studied his moves

• “Honey~” You whispered nonchalantly, trying to catch his attention as he leaned forward slightly

• “One moment my sweet; I just want to make sure I don’t make the same mistake that I made here in my next performance.”

• You understood, but still huffed; all you wanted was to kiss him

• The two of you hadn’t gone all the way yet, so you always hesitated to kiss him in rather intimate spots like the neck or chest

• You loved doing neck kisses so honestly it’s been killing you

• With slight hesitation you leaned up, kissing his neck a couple of times

• His entire body becomes rigid and he freezes

• “Y-Y/N...”

• You did it again, giggling the second time as you noticed his neck and chest growing hot

• “Ah I see, so you’re doing it purposely then.” He smirked, turning off the TV and immediately pouncing on you

• You had to be careful when giving him neck kisses because it usually turned into something more after you’d finally went all the way~

Yoosung

• He’s such a blushy boy that when it came to your neck kisses, he just didn’t know how to cope

• When you’d first done it you’d been dating for only a couple of weeks

• It was mindless really, and you’d felt like giving him some affection so you figured; why not?

• “Yoosung; can we order in tonight? I think we both deserve a break, and I’ve been craving some hot pot~”

• “Sure! Let me just finish writing this paper and we’ll go.”

• You grinned and without thinking leaned in, placing a chaste kiss to his neck

• Never in his life had he turned red so fast, and when I say red I mean r e d

• “H-Hey! Don’t do that without warning...” He whined, placing one hand over his face to try to hide his blushing

• He’s literally so cute pleaSE

• You did it again, enjoying the way he squirmed at his desk as he groaned.

• “I’m never going to finish this paper if you keep that up, Y/N.”

• It had reached the point where he wouldn’t get turned on every single time, but it was still enough to make him blush

Jaehee

• She herself isn’t very affectionate, besides the occasional hugs and kisses that she shared with you in private

• So when you kissed her neck for the first time, she had frozen up with a deep blush

• The kiss wouldn’t leave her mind, she thought about it all day really

• When it became obvious that this was something that you did frequently?

• It was all she looked forward to

• “Y/N.”

• “Yes, Jaehee?”

• “May...may I possibly have another kiss?”

• This poor woman is touch starved omg

• You were happy to oblige, especially if it meant that you got to see her gentle smile every time you did it

• She wouldn’t allow you to do it in front of the others though due to her own embarrassment

• She’s also low key jealous but she’ll never admit that GJEJGEAHG

Jumin

• He’s actually a huge fan of the neck kisses

• He makes it known the first time that you do it, your lips softly grazing against his neck as the two of you sat in bed

• He was finishing some last minute paperwork while you silently read a book beside him, his glasses falling down the bridge of his nose as you tilted your head

• It had been a long day and you wanted to stay up with him but you were just so tired

• “Please don’t stay up if you’re tired, Y/N. Once I’m finished with this file, I will be ready for bed. I promise.”

• You yawned, a small smile gracing his face as you bookmarked your book

• “Okay Jumin. Goodnight, I love you~” And bloop you had kissed his neck

• He was still for a moment, his brain processing what happened as he gave another smile

• His eyes shifted towards you; you’d already fallen asleep, head resting against his arm as he chuckled.

• “Goodnight, Y/N.”

• Since then he’s been obsessed, demanding that you give him neck kisses every time he leaves for work, and when he comes home

• You happily oblige every time, the action becoming a little secret routine between the two of you

707

• He absolutely loves that you give frequent neck kisses

• Like Jaehee, he’s pretty touch starved

• So it’s super reassuring that whenever you’re cuddling, or hugging, or sitting in his lap

• You’ll just lean over and place a soft kiss to his neck

• It makes him feel loved, safe, and wanted

• When you’d first done it, you had fallen asleep on the sofa while he finished some work assigned by Jumin

• He didn’t want to wake you so he took you into his arms and carried you to your shared bedroom

• In your sleep you’d craned your neck up, kissing him softly on the neck as you mumbled

• “I love you...” You’d whispered, burrowing deeper into his chest as his breath hitched

• His heart felt warm, and he smiled down towards your sleeping figure, a hint of blush tinting his cheeks as he whispered back

• “I love you too, Y/N.”

• A flustered mess

• This poor man isn’t used to affection, but unlike the others he’s grown used to not having any

• So when you kiss his neck it’s like he malfunctions

• He stutters over his words and tries not to blush, even though it’s fairly obvious

• “I...wow. I um, I actually really liked, well, um—“

• You kinda liked having this much power over him to be honest lol

• He loves it when you kiss his neck, he just doesn’t know how to express it with his words

• He never stops you when you do it though, and you can see it in his eyes that he appreciates that it’s one of your ways that you show your affection for him

• “Jihyun~ I love you.”

• That phrase is usually followed by a neck kiss, his cheeks red as he nods and pulls you close

• “I love you more, Y/N. For the rest of my life.”

Saeran

• Love love, loves your neck kisses

• He returns them actually, and that in turn makes you extremely flustered

• When you’d done it he grinned, rubbing his nose against yours as he cuddled you close

• “My darling Y/N.”

• Then when you’d least expected it he’d done it back; very nonchalantly to be honest

• You were helping him in the garden, and you’d successfully cross bred a rose with him

• He was so happy and proud of you that he just couldn’t help it; he’d kissed your neck

• You blushed hard, but he wasn’t phased at all

• You honestly didn’t think you’d meet somebody who gave neck kisses as much as you did, but here he was

• It was a reminder that the two of you were definitely meant for each other

• It became one of the most frequent and common ways you showed your affection for one another

Vanderwood

• Like V, he isn’t used to affection so when you first do it to him he’s genuinely startled

• “H-Hey...who do you think you are?”

• Your partner duh lmao

• He’s very good at keeping a poker face, but his actions definitely give away the fact that he loves it

• The way he cranes his neck a little towards you when you’re cuddling him

• The way he lays his chin on top of your head to give you complete access to his neck

• It was obvious to you, and you happily obliged every time he silently asked for a neck kiss

• You could never get away with teasing him though; he shut it down before you could even start

• “You know love, if you enjoy my neck kisses all you have to do is say—“

• “Hush. I don’t have to say a damn thing, about anything, okay?”

• Translation?

• Please don’t ever stop

240 notes · View notes

shotofire · 3 years

Text

Crystal Clear

Satoru Gojo x F!Reader

Overview: You meet the bizarre Gojo in a library. He shows you his eyes, and explains his profession. It’s a lot to take in at once

Warnings: Cursing, implied smut

Having Satoru Gojo as a friend was, well, different. The guy would always wear a black mask and never tell you why. Also he was so, mysterious. It’s cheesy to say but really, he seems to have many secrets. It was hard to not flood him with a million questions but you knew he would manage to avoid every single one.

Sometimes you wouldn’t even classify what you two have as friendship. There was no texting, calling, or hanging out of any kind besides at a little library in Tokyo. Not many went there, there’d be ten people on a good day. So the first time a tall white haired boy, who really stood out, walked in you were in a trance. He’d talked to you that day which you didn’t expect, but then again who expected someone like him to even come there.

“I’m trying to find a book on how to deal with stress, do you know of such a thing?” He’d scared you when he’d first walked up. It was like the guy was a ninja and moved light on his feet because you didn’t hear his footsteps in the silent library at all. “Uh, yeah I do actually.” The situation was so weird considering you could feel him looking into your eyes, but his were hidden.

Then Gojo began to show up every Tuesday night. You couldn’t help but wonder what his profession was for him to just have this time every single Tuesday. Sometimes you’d show up later or earlier than usual, and somehow he’d always arrive a few minutes after you. The man was light on his feet so at one point you thought he was following you, like you had a stalker on your hands or something.

One time, as if reading your mind, he had said, “I just have a feeling when you’re going to show up. It’s my special talent.” Honestly you believed him, the guy sometimes finished your sentences. Maybe he was a fortune teller of some kind.

Basically, that’s how the relationship went. Gojo would show up when you did, ask for your help to find a new book, and chat for a bit. He was a funny guy and had sly things to say but never made you uncomfortable. What you found odd though was he never read the books you helped find, they’d just sit on the table where you two sat and he’d talk your head off.

The man would sit with his legs crossed and one elbow propped on the head of the chair. His free hand would usually run through his hair every so often or tap against the wooden table. Majority of the time he’d only want to talk about you, and would avoid anything having to do with himself. Over time feelings started to come into play, and you hated yourself for it. You hadn’t even seen the mans eyes and the most you know about him is his name, yet you like him.

Gojo has this thing about him that you can’t seem to pinpoint. As if there’s something about him that draws you in, but you couldn’t let this get any deeper. He was a brick wall that wasn’t going to break anytime soon. You didn’t like the whole gaining feelings thing, so you stopped going to the library. The fact you could just look at him and think of him in so many ways wasn’t a good thing. If the guy was interested in you, he’d actually tell you things about himself.

Staying away from him seemed like a good idea. There was no way of contact besides the library, so the process of forgetting and getting over him should be easy, right?

Wrong.

You’d managed to keep away from the library, even though you love it there, but nothing changed within you. He’d still creep into your mind on a late night as if he was the only thing you could think about. His voice rung through your head like a bell, and everything reminded you of him. Even your bed made you think of him due to his frequent sly remarks.

“Did you sleep well?” he’d asked on a rainy day, observing the dark circles under your eyes. “No, my bed is shit.” His laugh had sent a tingle to your legs, which hadn’t happened up until that point. “I bet I could help make it comfortable.” A blush had been fast to creep onto your cheeks, and his smirk had your head spinning. You assumed he messed with you because a romance novel was always in your hands, there was no way he actually had interest in you.

Right now you are sitting on your couch wrapped in a blanket. It’s dark outside, and it’s Tuesday. It has been a few weeks since you’ve gone to the library, and you miss Gojo. You had moved to Japan recently with your family when he’d first came into your life, so he was sort of a refresher. Then he became too much for your hopeless romantic mind. Tuesday’s always consisted of you battling with you emotions.

It’s your day off from work, and you have nothing to do, and no new books to read. The sweet librarian was probably wondering where you were as well, she always let you have books longer than the due date. She’s even let you keep a couple. At this point you’d have to nail your feet to the ground to stop yourself from leaving. You needed something new, and you needed to see him.

Before you knew it the library was in sight. It was a short walk from your home and didn’t take much energy. Plus you enjoyed seeing all the nature things along the way. The lighting from the windows were dim as always, and it seems empty as usual. Maybe Gojo has already gave up on coming from you absences, and it’ll conform it’s just not meant to be.

Once you open the glass door the familiar smell of cinnamon fills your senses. Oh how you missed this place, it was like your second home. You grab more books than you could carry, and start to have trouble seeing where you’re going.

Someone takes a few novels from the stack, and before you can protest you’re left with a loss of words. It’s Gojo himself, but he looks different. His mask is gone snd instead replaced with black circle glasses, and his beautiful white hair is down instead of up. Also, his prominent collarbones are out on display. You can’t help but stare at him.

“Hi stranger.” Holy shit you missed the way his voice sounds. “Hey.” The nerves within you are moving around like butterflies. He turns on his heals with your books in hand, heading straight for the unspoken reserved table. You follow suit, eyeing his broad shoulders from behind. “Where have you been?” He sets the books down on the table and sits down, forming his usual position.

Why are you so nervous right now? This is Gojo, you know him. Well, actually you don’t. That’s the whole reason you needed to take time for yourself and figure shit out. But it’s not like you’ve never talked to him before. You feel as if he’s a random hot guy asking you for your number.

“Uh, just been busy.” Gojo knows that’s complete bullshit. Even if you had a million things to do you’d make time to come to the library, even if just to grab one book. Your eye contact wavers with him as you speak, so it’s a even more dead five away that you’re lying. “Busy, huh? Or have you just been avoiding me?”

It’s the first time you feel this towards him, anger. Why does he know you so well? Why can he read you like a book yet you have nothing to say about him. He sees the way your jaw clenches at his words, and he’s unsure of why. He may be smart, but he’s just as clueless.

“You know everything about me Gojo,” your eyes are narrowing, “yet all I know of you is your name and a few minor details. You won’t even tell me what you do for a living, or if you even have a job. I feel like you’re hiding too much, and honestly is makes me uncomfortable. I don’t like being around someone who could possibly be a fucking murderer for all I know.” He’d never seen this side of you, or heard your voice sound so frustrated.

It’s silent for a few seconds, but it feels like minutes. You’re breathing heavily, completely vexed. What was the point of being your friend if he didn’t want you to know anything about him? “I’m sorry.” His words surprise you, and your stiff face loosens. His finger is tapping against the wood in a anxious manner. Did your little anger moment effect him that much? You don’t say anything, not even sure what to say.

“I, um,” the boy was never at a loss for words but he sure is struggling right now. His mind seems to be moving a million miles per hour, as if he’s trying to find the right thing to say. Instead of saying anything, he grabs the hinges of his glasses. His fingers rest for a moment as you watch with wide eyes. Then he does it, he slides them off of his face.

Gojo’s eyes are like blue crystals. You’d never seen eyes so beautiful and captivating. Why the hell would he want to cover up such a unique thing about him? “Woah,” is all you can muster up. He has a small smile on his face, but you can tell he’s unsure of his own actions. “You have gorgeous eyes.” You’re trying to make him feel more comfortable. “Thank you.”

You two stay like that for a moment, just gazing at one another. The swirls of white in his orbs become more noticeable as you observe them, and the dark shades of blue. They remind you of the ocean as well. “Why do you cover them? They’re so pretty.” He puts his elbows on the table before resting his head in his palms.

“My eyes are extremely sensitive due to-“ he stops himself, and you notice, “they’re just sensitive and I prefer to cover them.” He was still holding back. You press your lips together in a line, and this time you’re the one who can read him. “You’re lying and telling the truth at the same time.” How the hell do you know that? He bites the inside of his cheek to keep himself from saying the wrong thing.

“If I told you everything about me you would call bullshit.” “Try me,” what you says surprises him, “how can you know that if you haven’t even tried?” You were right, but it was much deeper than you could ever antispate. There was a whole realm of things you didn’t know about, but again... he should still try. You are so willing to listen.

“I work at Tokyo Metropolitan Jujutsu Technical High School.” You’d never heard of it, not once. Yes you were new to the area but you still knew most of the schools, considering your siblings went to a high school nearby. He sees the puzzled look on your face, of course you had no idea what it is. “It’s a school for jujutsu sorcerers.” You definitely weren’t catching on. It sounded like make believe, but his face was so serious.

He isn’t lying.

“My job is to exorcise cursed spirits that are active and posing a threat to anyone or anything. I am a sorcerer myself, I contain cursed energy that can be used to fight these spirits,” Yep, what he was saying makes no sense, “I know this sounds insane to you but i’m telling the truth.”

Even though it did sound like some big story, and made no sense to you, you still knew he wasn’t lying. The concept of what he’s saying is making you freak out a bit on the inside, but you try not to show it. “I believe you.” He didn’t expect you to so easily, yet you do. “Well, thank you. I know it’s all hard to believe, and you can’t see curses so I don’t know how to physically prove it to you.”

A small smile forms on his lips and he bats his white eyelashes at you, making your stomach do a small flip. “But we could talk more about it over dinner Friday night, if you would like.” Holy shit, your face is already red. Why does it have to heat up so fast? “Yeah, I-I would like that,” of course you just had to stutter. He stands up from the table with a sly smile on his face, “Awe you’re blushing. Eager to go on a date with me, doll?”

Date? Doll? Gosh this boy was trying to make you pass out with his words. “Personally, you have me eager for a lot of things. But i’m going to earn it with my gentlemen-ness, and telling you everything you wanna know.” At this point he was just trying to make your head spin and legs tingle, he likes the way your eyes sparkle at the thought.

Gojo gives you a small piece of folded up paper, “See you Friday.” He sends you a wink before walking off with his hands in his pockets. His parents really made a hot ass son.

You open the paper and are met with numbers, his number. “Oh shit,” you whisper. He’s expecting you to call him? The nerves set in, this is all so much. The guys a sorcerer, has beautiful eyes, just gave you his number, and wants to go on a date.

You’ve struck gold.

217 notes · View notes

chocosvt · 4 years

Text

⚬ pairing: junhui x reader ⚬ word count: 8125 ⚬ warnings: none! ⚬ genres: secret relationship, some slice of life uni moments, FLUFF, very light angst, spice, roommates!wonhui.

✧✎ synopsis: you’re friends with junhui - but also, not really. it’s friends and a little bit more than that. it’s difficult keeping your relationship a secret, especially when you’ve never loved someone the way you love him.

✧✎ a/n: NOBODY MOVE! I WROTE A JUN BDAY FIC ;_; this is really just me projecting all my years of love onto a word doc. enjoy!!

It was midnight, and the apartment was dark, unmoving. No one had bothered to clean the blue cereal bowl left in the sink and there remained bread crumbs on the countertop from lunch. As you flicked through the strange glimpses of late-night television, yawning in an outrageous width, there was a hunger pang, accompanied by an immediate craving for some sort of sweet candy.

So, you did what seemed best: fit into your sneakers and a windbreaker and push open the door to Jun’s bedroom while he was curled up on his side watching his drama. Wonwoo would usually be occupying the adjacent bed, though he had stayed over at Joshua’s dorm to study for his next history summative. Yet he’d left his beat-up, decaying textbook on his pillow.

“Put on your slippers or something, we’re going to the convenience store.”

Jun didn’t say anything, rather he continued holding out his phone, the bedsheets pulled taunt to his nose. Looking at Jun’s desk that sat next to the door, you picked up the rubber band ball he’d been adding to since his twelfth-grade year and threw it at his shoulder.

“Ow!” He squeaked dramatically. His head then poked over his shoulder as he attempted to see where the ball rolled off to.

“Put on your slippers,” you reiterated, “I want strawberry tangs.”

Without much effort, Jun quickly gave up looking for the elastic ball and returned to watching his drama, establishing his comfort while somehow still persisting to ignore you. He was very much so a homebody, and if it weren’t for you guiding him out the apartment like a grandchild taking their elderly for an afternoon walk, then he might’ve never left his bedroom apart from his class schedule. Yet, you knew exactly how to persuade him, weaken his heart that was already soft and golden.

An immediate whine rumbled in his throat when you jumped on the bed, pulling at him until he finally rolled onto his back, at last pressing pause on his phone. You tossed a thigh over each side of his silhouette and gripped the boy’s wide shoulders, gazing unflinchingly past his black fringe and into those big, glistening eyes.

“Come with me to the store,” you weren’t sure if you were offering or demanding, “please?”

“I-Isn’t it a little late for that?” Jun stumbled through his laughter. “Why do you need me?”

It was a surface-level question really, but nonetheless, your heart still skipped a beat. In only a second or more the silence was bearing down too heavily and it felt like your heart was a book with all its pages out. Jun’s eyes were twinkling as he blinked up at you.

“Walking around alone at night? Hello? Do you have no concern for me?” Came your joking counter.

He tossed his head back, the black fringe bouncing from his lashes. His capitulating yelp of, “fine, fine, I’ll come” was satisfactory enough for you to remove yourself from the boy’s tiny waist, where you stepped on the floor and nearly sprained your ankle due to that dumb, elastic ball. At least you found it. While you returned the toy to his desk, Jun quickly threw a worn jean jacket over his black long sleeve and didn’t bother bending down to fix his sneakers, his heels jutting out the back.

At the convenience store, the only shoppers were you, Junhui, and this lady wearing a huge pair of sunglasses, though you figured she was far from the strangest of the midnight stragglers.

It was rather quiet, even with the fluorescent lights buzzing and the battery-powered fan keeping the cashier cool at the register. You grabbed the first package of strawberry tangs while Jun sorted through the other flavours very meticulously.

“What about blue raspberry?” He said. “You don’t want that?”

“I don’t know, I just really have a craving for strawberry.”

Jun detached a bright green package from the rack. “Sour apple? What about that?”

“Not tasty at all. Pass.”

He grabbed another package and quirked his eyebrow. “Sweet cherry? Come on. That sounds good.”

You lightly hit his arm with the strawberry candy, your laughter echoing over the shelves, “I just want strawberry! If you think the sweet cherry sounds good then you buy it!”

But Jun just shook the black fringe from his playful gaze, stuffing his hands in his pockets. “Tangy zangys are the bottom tier of gummy candy. No way.”

“So shut up then.” The words were harsh, yet your smile was no more menacing than a butterfly.

Since it would be impossible for Jun to leave the store without stocking his snack collection, you shopped for longer than expected, filling a basket with spicy chips and hard candies and a few chocolate bars. Heading home down the nighttime street, beneath the moonlight, the infinite expanse of a blackness that felt like a cocoon, you had already ripped open your strawberry tangs while Jun tore the corner off a tiny pouch of bubblegum poprocks.

They crackled loudly on his tongue, in which he made sure to hover in close proximity to your ear, ensuring you could detect every small fizzle. Each time it warranted you to shove him away, muttering a cheap laugh about how it wasn’t required that he lean in so generously, though you couldn’t evade that one nervous thought ticking at the back of your head: you wanted to kiss him, wrap your palm around Jun’s neck and taste the electric bubblegum from his heart-shaped mouth.

“Aren’t you glad you came with me?” You asked, suckling the sugar off a red candy strip.

Jun swallowed his poprocks. “I guess you can word it like that.”

Standing at the living room fish tank, you opened the tab to the flake box and shook the food into the water, your pink guppy who you had so fittingly named, Princess Pebble, swimming toward the surface in order to nip at the flakes. Wonwoo observed you from his seat at the kitchen table, dragging his spoon through the remainder of his cereal, scooping out the last soggy pieces.

“I feel good about it,” Wonwoo hummed, referring to the history test he wrote yesterday, “I think I might’ve left out some information on the essay question.”

You closed the fish flakes and returned to the table, where you left your cup of tea.

“Eh, who cares,” you mumbled behind the rim, “you’re gonna get like a ninety-five anyways.”

The boy shrugged, pressing a fingertip to his glasses, moving them higher up his nose. He had always been diligent with his studying, though he often left the apartment to write notes at the library or a classmate’s dorm. It was difficult to accomplish much when Junhui would distract him, and rather than reading his textbook, Wonwoo would always end up playing computer games with the latter.

“Did you hear Jun come home last night?” You asked, gulping the rest of your tea.

Wonwoo set his bowl into the sink and filled it with water, smiling. It irked you somehow. You were only curious about whether or not he heard Jun return from his dance practice.

Joining him at the sink to clean your mug, you bumped his elbow. “What’s so cute over here?”

“Nothing,” he hummed dismissively, “I heard him crawl into bed, that’s pretty much it.”

“And that’s funny or something?”

“You ask about him quite frequently.” Wonwoo turned to you with a suspecting glance, one that made you subtly desire to dump a cup of water over his head. “You know that, right?”

The morning air was cool, yet your face felt immensely heated, almost prickling.

“I ask because we’re fri—”

“Friends. Yeah, yeah.” Wonwoo huffed, the omniscient smile creeping back toward his mouth, to which you could do nothing apart from gawk at your roommate despite his reiteration of a musing that wasn’t at all unfamiliar. “I’ve always loved you for your innate sense of comedy. It’s priceless.”

It’s what everyone assumed anyways. You and Jun fought tooth and nail to articulate your friendship, to paint with the colours that would lead everyone to believe it was true. Most often your explanations worked, yet there remained some who were particularly stubborn. Wonwoo was an evident case. But he was too close, too eagle-eyed, and he saw that you and Jun behaved in a manner completely beyond friendship. Despite the likewise feelings, something unbeknownst kept you apart.

“I know exactly what that means, idiot!” Echoed your shout as Wonwoo disappeared down the corridor, hoping to take refuge in his bedroom.

“I’m glad!” The depth of his voice reverberated into the kitchen, and you heard his door quickly shut.

No less than a few seconds later did Junhui reveal himself from around the corner, clean and freshened up after a steamy shower, one he desperately needed upon immediately passing out, sweat-soaked and exhausted in his bed the night before. Soonyoung definitely hadn’t taught their lesson with any degree of ease. Pretending you weren’t just quipping at Wonwoo, you smiled.

“Were you two fighting?” Jun asked, pulling out a frying pan from the cupboard. He usually whipped together an omelette for breakfast.

“No, not at all. We never fight, remember?”

Jun scoffed while opening the fridge, removing an egg carton and a plastic wrapping filled with vegetables. Still hungry, you started peeling open a tangerine from the fruit basket and stood next to him as he organized the produce onto a cutting board. Ever so faintly, you could smell the crisp scent to his aftershave. It was peculiar how a bit of foam could render your chest that cottony.

“In fact, when’s the last time you even remember an argument Wonwoo and I had?” You prodded.

“Two days ago,” Jun laughed, “when Wonwoo wanted to watch that exploration documentary on King Tut, but you changed the channel so you could finish the last season of Home Makeover.”

Pressing his rose lips together, Junhui casted you an innocent glance. “So there’s that.”

Separating a small slice of tangerine, you gently pushed the clove into the boy’s mouth. He smiled softly as he began to chew. With the gentle tang of citrus in the air, you set a hand on Jun’s shoulder and buried your face against his warm neck, whispering, “yeah, and it was definitely worth it.”

Quite frankly, neither you, Jun, Wonwoo, or Joshua were fairing optimally at the library. While Wonwoo sat on the opposite side of the table helping Joshua organize his economics presentation, you were neglecting your biology packet, instead choosing to sketch a tiny Princess Pebble in the paper’s upper corner. Jun had been tasked with reviewing his latest theatre script, yet he hadn’t even flicked through it. He was intrigued by one of the numerous mangas he’d saved to his phone.

“Take the last point off here,” Wonwoo said, peering over Joshua’s shoulder at his laptop, “there’s too much text, and this isn’t a major branch of your topic anyways.”

Joshua sighed as he made a few clicks on his keyboard. “Dude, I don’t think I can edit another word. This class is so boring.”

“Mr. Canning is just a boring professor,” Wonwoo sympathized, “it would be best if it were someone who weren’t so… dry. I guess is the right word.”

Slumping back in his chair, Joshua huffed, “he’s like a human chalk stick.”

Desperate to discuss something that wasn’t related to his lacklustre econ class, Joshua spared a glance at Jun’s unopened script. “Shouldn’t you be learning that?” He asked.

Jun didn’t look away from the phone in his lap. “I can’t do it here.”

“That means he’s going to open it for the first time at one in the morning, the day of his performance.” You chuckled, outlining the sketch of your guppy using Wonwoo’s pink gel pen.

Harshly, Jun’s hand smacked your knee under the table and you couldn’t help but laugh, garnering an over-the-shoulder glare from a student in the corner who’d been trying to focus on their colossal textbook. Wonwoo smiled at them apologetically while Joshua feigned as though he were typing something on his laptop. However, Jun’s hand didn’t leave your knee, and your laughter became an immediate drought, to which the sole thing you could feel was his palm creeping higher up your leg.

Attempting to be subtle, you turned your head slightly and looked at the boy with a bit of a warning expression, though Jun simply continued to scroll through his manga.

“I’m going to check the world history section,” Wonwoo announced, rising from the table, “anyone want to come with?”

Joshua pushed out his chair. “I’ll come just so I don’t have to stare at this shitty powerpoint.”

As soon as the boys walked beyond earshot, you pinched the edge of Jun’s ear. He finally tossed his phone onto the table, though he didn’t exactly appear compassionate, rather he was smirking, for he knew if you truly didn’t want his hand touching your leg then you would have bumped it away.

“You can’t do that.” Nonetheless, there surmounted a need to establish some insignificant boundary, one that neither of you were going to follow through. “Not when they’re so close.”

“But they didn’t see.” Jun replied, squeezing your inner thigh. “It shouldn’t matter.”

“It does. What if Joshua saw?” At that point, Wonwoo was fairly conditioned to your lingering fingertips, grazes and stares. He usually pretended not to notice them. However, Joshua was a risk.

Jun shrugged. “I don’t know. Don’t you worry too much? I always touch your leg.”

That was the problem. People trying to convince other people that their relationship was wholly platonic didn’t linger in such an intimate way. They didn’t creep fingertips up the other’s inner thigh beneath a tablecloth, or possess a gaze that traced the other’s lips like a delectable piece of candy when they spoke. There shouldn’t be any whispers pressed quickly against the other’s ear when no one else was looking, or the dire urge to climb into the other’s lap when their legs were wide open.

Both of you were afraid. Neither of you wanted to break the question that would thrust your relationship into the light. You kept waiting for the right time, but it always seemed one step ahead.

The movie theatre was nearly empty as the longwinded credit screen continued rolling, the last few congregations throwing their soda cups and empty packages into the garbage on their way out. Still, the floor of practically every row had been scattered with butter popcorn or melted m&m’s, shiny chocolate wrappers left crinkled in the recliners like the employees were supposed to take them home as gifts. Wonwoo put his hands on the back of his head, examining the disastrous rows.

You sensed he was feeling rather lucky about not being scheduled that night. Jun forced himself from the recliner and picked up his cup of fruit punch, jammed with way too many ice cubes.

If no one else was going to comment, you might as well. “That wasn’t the worst.”

“Agreed.” Wonwoo said, pushing up his glasses. “The murderer’s ploy was difficult to follow at times. I started getting confused when he left his car in the woods.”

“What?” Jun gawked. “That’s when you got confused? I didn’t even know what was happening after the first half hour.” His eyes gleamed in astonishment.

“Same.” You admitted. “I guess you’ll have to explain in the car.”

Reaching into the cupholder, you pulled out the package of strawberry tangs with nothing but a tiny amount of the powder-like sugar left inside.

“Thank you for picking up your trash,” Wonwoo sighed, taking the lead down the stairway while the credit music still played, “I’d hate to be working tonight.”

The wide corridor was completely vacant by the time you exited the theatre. Ever so slightly you could hear the galactic sound effects from the arcade machines. That buttery scent of popcorn seemed to waft no matter where you stood in the cinema. Wonwoo announced that he was going to check the concession counter to see who was on cash, but assured he would meet you and Jun at the back exit. Jun hurriedly downed his fruit punch in a large gulp before you emerged into the night.

You were confined to the small overhang by the doorway, for a hard rain was pelting against the concrete and turned the night air considerably cooler. Not one of you had checked the forecast beforehand, and you would undoubtedly get drenched straight through to the flesh in your thin long-sleeve.

“How are we going to make it to the car?” You groaned.

Pulling up his hood, Jun only laughed. “Now is a good time to be able to teleport.” He then stuck out his hand for a moment, the raindrops hitting his palm.

“Does it feel like bullets?”

“No. It feels kind of nice actually.” He remarked.

Curious, you rolled up your sleeve and extended your arm into the downpour. Jun was right, it felt satisfactory as each of the brisk droplets splashed your skin. However, you prematurely discovered the rain wasn’t so appealing when Jun suddenly shoved you from beneath the overhang.

“Hey— what the hell?!” You squealed upon the immediate repercussions, the cold water already leaking through your top while Junhui slapped his thigh, cackling.

Wanting to erase that luminous grin of his, you attempted wrestling the lanky boy into the weather, but no more than a few harmless drops skimmed his shoulder. Yet, with another brute shove, Jun stumbled, feeling the silver needles of rain pour down from the night sky and swirl at his dampening sneakers. He was laughing as he grabbed your wrist, pulling you hard against his chest before you were even cognisant that an immense wetness was soaking through your every article.

You wished it had been indignance drumming in your heart rather than affection, because it was taking every single fibre of your being not to kiss him. As the droplets beaded down his skin, he was like a springtime flower caught in the morning dew, and when he carded back the wet, black hairs plastered to his forehead, you thought it was possible to fall into him and never feel that concrete scrape your knees. Gently, his hand touched the small of your wet back, his breaths deepening.

He urged you in tighter as his tongue ran along his bottom lip, tasting the rain.

You were shivering, frigid, though your blood was far too warm to let yourself take note. Instead, you moved your head closer, closer, Jun’s cold palm cupping your cheek and your eyes fluttering shut and your soft mouths just brushing together— until Wonwoo appeared from inside.

Instantly, you two pushed away from each other. With his eyes widening, Wonwoo stuttered.

“I-I’m… I’m going to pretend as best I can that something weird didn’t almost happen.” He stated, swallowing thickly. “Just… Why did you two have to get soaked? You’re sitting in my car, y’know!”

At last, you felt that icy shiver trickle down your spine.

“S-Sorry.” You hummed, teeth chattering.

“I guess it’s fine,” Wonwoo sighed, “I have some towels under the passenger’s seat.”

Not long after returning to the apartment, Wonwoo gathered his laptop and slipped into his pyjamas. He proceeded to flop onto the couch to edit his research paper, though it didn’t take much for his eyelids to start weighing down, his dense paragraphs blurring together on the screen. More often than not you would take advantage of Wonwoo’s midnight crashes in the living room.

After exchanging your damp, terribly cold clothes for a warm t-shirt and sweatpants, you found yourself cozied beneath Jun’s comforter for the umpteenth night. The boy’s head rested against the crook of your neck, where his slow breaths were cool to your skin, though they occasionally became heavier when your fingertips stroked at his smooth hair. He was much like a kitten who loved a thorough scratch behind the ears. You swore that he purred whenever you rubbed the right spot.

Holding out his phone, he’d been finishing an episode of his drama before bed. You tucked some of the black locks behind his ear, noting how much it’d grown over the months. Then your gaze wandered over every detail that shaped his face, as though he were a textured oil painting.

His eyes were always glimmering, seemingly innocent and curious, yet you knew just how much that earthly shade could darken when he fell into his professions. When Jun acted on stage, his gaze lost its untainted nature. It moulded into the role of the sinister characters he preferred playing. When he danced in blazing lights, those eyes were sharp enough to consume, to cut, almost like a razorblade.

But then you studied his lips, his heart-shaped cupid’s bow, the small constellation of moles that dotted his skin like kisses from past soulmates. You thought back to the mist and the rain, his hand resting against the small of your back, how close you were to tasting the flavourful, fruity mix of his drink. In fact, you wondered why you didn’t just kiss Junhui whenever you wanted. What was stopping you, in that moment, from turning his head toward you so that your lips could press to his?

Suddenly, the boy laughed at his phone screen, to which you felt the brassy reverberation erupt in his chest, his eyes glinting and his mouth stretched into a box-like smile. You pulled a few strands of hair from his forehead as he seemed to be glowing, his cheeks rosy.

Jun mewled in surprise when your fingers threaded rather tight through his black locks, feeling you tilt his head up until his gaze was burning into yours.

You didn’t hesitate. Leaning forward, you kissed him sweet and slow.

Jun’s eyes fluttered as the pressure warmed his mouth, a small whine getting caught in his throat upon the gentle sting of your hand tugging at his tresses, his scalp tingling. His phone sunk into the bedsheets, and instead he was gripping your t-shirt, moving his head with yours as the kiss deepened. He tasted like mint, and his small whines were silky.

How on earth could you have ever shied from kissing him when it felt so relieving? Nothing else held any significance to you apart from making his pretty lips shine.

However, you needed to catch your breath. Releasing the firm grasp on his hair, you detached your mouth from his, your chest rising and falling in great lengths. The boy’s eyes couldn’t be more glazed, his lips shimmering, flushed garnet and slightly swollen. Neither of you uttered a word. The blankets fell from Jun’s shoulders as he straddled your waist eagerly. Again, his mouth slotted with yours, and your hands slid up his caramel thighs, imprinting his flesh with the curve of your fingernails.

If you kept quiet enough, then perhaps Wonwoo would remain asleep until morning.

Standing amongst the crowd in the cramped performance hall, it was inevitable that you would get bumped around like a tiny, flying pinball. After rutting into Wonwoo’s shoulder for the third time, he seemed dauntingly close to losing his indolence and snapping, though he realized it wasn’t your fault that others were pushing toward the front of the stage and bit his tongue.

It became tradition for Soonyoung and his students to rent the downtown performance hall and host a fundraiser. The event typically lasted a few hours, with a few short interludes where the dancers would retreat backstage to catch their breath. Being Jun’s roommate, you and Wonwoo were always granted access into the small dressing room, and though you never admitted it, you loved experiencing that small flash of pride whenever the moonstruck audience watched you slip away.

The next interlude was closing in. Despite the different dancers on stage, you really, truthfully, only watched Jun. Each time he captured the centre position, you couldn’t help but cup your hands around your mouth, being one of the first to cheer overtop the deafening music as he moved so fluidly, with poise. He was a completely different person when he performed. Somehow, his tender-hearted nature would peel back and he’d emerge a domineering beacon.

As soon as the stage ended, an uproar rippled from the audience and resonated deep in your ears, to which you couldn’t help but slightly bury your head against Wonwoo’s shoulder to muffle the cacophony. Nonetheless, you were clapping, smiling, staring fondly as Jun grabbed his collar and fluffed it out, welcoming a slight gust of humid air. His skin was dewy with sweat, and yet he glowed beautifully, even when he was breathing so heavily through his nose.

Soonyoung was speaking into his microphone, but you missed half his speech, and before you knew it you were being dragged by Wonwoo through the crowd toward the backstage entrance. The room was at least big enough to accommodate the dancers. Jun was in the corner, gulping down his water.

“Only three more songs,” Wonwoo smiled, “you guys really stepped the level up this year.”

It took a moment before Jun replied, the column of his neck glittering as he completely crushed the plastic bottle in his hands.

“Yeah,” he burst out, “I’m freaking dying.”

“It’s for a good cause at least.” Wonwoo reasoned, ignoring how you stepped on his foot.

After Jun rolled his eyes, he was staring at you.

The air grew much too thick, and you had to clear your throat. “S-Seriously, you’ve improved so much. I can’t believe it.”

“Thanks,” Jun replied, scratching his nape, “it’s nothing special, really.”

“Uh? Nothing special?” Wonwoo quirked an eyebrow. “Didn’t Soonyoung say you’re one of the best in the class?”

When Jun innocently flitted his gaze toward a distant spot and pressed his lips together, Wonwoo merely huffed, announcing he was going to the lobby for a drink of water. You watched him wind between the busy dancers, either wiping down their sweat or fanning themselves, until he disappeared out the door. When you faced Jun again, you looped your fingers through the satin collar of his stage outfit and kissed him quickly, knowing everyone was too occupied to take note.

He squeaked, “what happened to being careful?”

“This is your fault.” You eagerly pinned it on him. “Try being less hot.”

“That’s horrible advice. And also not possible. Which makes it worse than horrible.”

You weren’t sure whether or not you wanted to feel his mouth again or whack the side of his head with his deflated water bottle. Opting for latter, you stole another kiss, though you tensed in surprise when Jun wrapped his arm around your waist to secure your body firm against his. Hastily, you pushed at his toned stomach, your heart drilling manically as you looked over your shoulder toward the dancers. It didn’t appear as though anyone had seen and you breathed out in relief.

Suddenly, Soonyoung poked his head through the doorway.

“Ten minutes!” He shouted before disappearing.

Jun was staring at you with the most ingenious twinkle.

“That was your fault.” He purred, tapping your thigh with his water bottle. “Try being less hot.”

You did feel a small sliver of guilt. After all, Wonwoo had been waiting back at the apartment for approximately an hour, twiddling his thumbs, wondering why you and Jun required so much goddamn time just to buy some hot fudge sundaes. The molten taste of the chocolate, the vanilla ice cream, cold and sweet, was completely stolen from your lips by the boy whose lap you were occupying. Wonwoo’s sundae sat on the dashboard, dripping slowly beneath the evening sunlight.

And yet, that infinitesimal sliver was plucked straight out when Jun latched onto a sensitive patch of your neck, softly digging in his teeth and swirling his tongue. Your fingers sheathed through the black hair and pulled up at the roots, knowing how much pleasure he took from the dull sting. Button by button, Jun started to simultaneously open your shirt, to which you questioned if this was really happening, if you were really going to sort of out the complications of intercourse in his car.

The device abandoned in the passenger’s seat buzzed. You already knew the name to the text. As Jun kissed his way down to your collarbone, licking and suckling, you reached for your phone, feeling it buzz again with another impatient text. The guilt from earlier began to resurface.

[ wonwoo | 7:49pm ] This is suspicious now. WHERE ARE YOU? >:(

[ wonwoo | 7:49pm ] Actually screw that. WHERE IS MY HOT FUDGE SUNDAE?

The screen blipped with yet another message.

[ wonwoo | 7:49pm ] I know you’re reading these… Answer me or I won’t feed Princess Pebble!!

“J-Jun,” you piped up, hearing his low, husky mumble while he continued to mark your collarbone, “I think we need to go home now.”

The boy splayed a few more open-mouthed kisses against the skin before peeking up at you, his eyes wide and glimmering, lips flushed a deep magenta. With half the buttons of your shirt hanging open and your heart blazing, you had to snip the venereal longing in its bud.

“What’s wrong?” Jun hummed, pushing his fingers through the loops on your jeans. “Who’s texting?”

“Wonwoo. He’s been waiting for almost an hour, and his sundae is gonna be a puddle at this rate.”

He blinked a bit cluelessly, though still in musing. “There’s no way to be quick about this, is there?”

Rebuttoning your shirt, you shook your head and laughed. “Let’s wait before we ruin the car. I’m sure there’ll be a better time in the future.”

Jun nodded in agreement and relaxed back into the seat, a ray of sunshine that bled golden slanting through the windshield. Somehow, Wonwoo’s sundae wasn’t a complete pool sitting in the plastic cup, but that didn’t negate the fact he was still going to start his theory on responsibility and trust the moment you stepped onto the welcome mat. As you finished clasping the last buttons, something had caught Jun’s eye out the window, for he immediately panicked and tightly gripped your waist.

“Oh my god, g-get off my lap,” he grunted, to which your head bumped against the ceiling during the hurried shuffle and your knee whacked the gearstick.

“Ow! Okay, I’m going! Jeez, could you not give me a warning?”

“No,” Jun remarked, looking quickly to the rear-view mirror to straighten out his hair, “it’s Jeonghan and Soonyoung. They just came out of the store.”

When you glanced out Jun’s window, you noted the duo making their way across the parking lot, some plastic bags filled with groceries hanging from Jeonghan’s hand while Soonyoung appeared to be texting someone. To both your dismay, Soonyoung immediately recognized Jun’s car. You watched as the blonde bumped Jeonghan’s shoulder, how they took a slight detour on their way over.

“We have to talk to them?” You whined. “Are you kidding? Lock your window.”

Jun’s brow pinched together. “How is that going to help? They already saw us so just relax.”

“You’re telling me to relax? You practically threw me off your la—”

“Shht,” Jun snapped as the two boys drew nearer, “just shhhhht okay?” And with an incredibly large gulp, he plastered a happy-go-lucky smile to his mouth and let the window slide open.

“Jun?” Soonyoung called, leaning down slightly to peer inside the vehicle. “What’re you doing out here, huh? Back from shoplifting?”

Jeonghan bent down too, grinning snidely. “You looked a little frazzled or something.”

“Me?” Jun pointed at himself. “No, I’m fine. Just – we have to leave. Wonwoo is waiting.”

“Wonwoo?” Jeonghan seemed excited. “I haven’t seen him in a while. Hey, tell him I’m still appreciative for writing my World History paper on the Persian Empire.”

You knew it was best to stay quiet, but you couldn’t help your slight choke. Wonwoo had come home one day saying that one of his classmates offered him seventy-five bucks if he’d write their history paper. He wasn’t going to oblige originally, but cracked after listening to his classmate type out their introduction in the library, that it was just so bad Wonwoo felt piteous and decided to pitch in.

Gaping at Jeonghan, you exclaimed, “that was you?”

“Yeah. I mean, I still dropped that class. And Wonwoo definitely thinks I’m a dumbass. But I didn’t have to do a spot of work, and now I’m getting smooth nineties in English. You just have to make up some shit and do a couple fancy indents and you’re set.”

Jeonghan paused, then leaned in a little further to look you up and down. “Y’know, I’ve never seen you before. How easily do you give out your numbe—”

“We really have to go,” Jun interrupted, already clicking the button to roll up the window, “see you at practice, Soonyoung. Bye Jeonghan!”

The two boys didn’t really have any other option apart from stepping back, allowing Jun to exit the parking space and turn onto the road. Not that it would help much, you turned on the air conditioning until it felt like the wind was pure ice, hoping that you’d be able to preserve Wonwoo’s melting fudge sundae. You made sure to text him on your whereabouts, that you were heading home, and churned up a white lie about how you ran into Jun’s friends who held a persistent conversation.

It wasn’t entirely false. And yet, Wonwoo still managed to see through it.

[ wonwoo | 7:54 pm ]: Just say you were making out.

[ wonwoo | 7:54 pm ]: Btw, I fed Princess Pebble.

[ wonwoo | 7:54 pm ]: I’m not a sinner. Unlike you guys.

Later that evening, after delivering Wonwoo his melted cup of chocolate ice cream, after Jun quickly threw some extra clothes into his backpack and ran to his late-night dance practice, you were standing at the fish tank with some new plants you bought for your guppy. As the bright lights of the tank reflected across your face, there was a strange feeling inside you. It seemed like turbulence, confusion, your heart experiencing one sentiment but your brain thinking another.

You hadn’t realized you were absently standing there until Wonwoo came into the dark living room, holding a crumpled tube of toothpaste and his toothbrush. Watching the pink fish swim in between her new seaweed arrangement, he asked you if there was an extra tube stored in your bedroom.

“Don’t think so. Text Jun and ask him to stop at the store when his practice ends.”

“I’ll do that…” Wonwoo sighed. “Hey, you know I already fed Princess Pebble?”

He accompanied you at the tank. For some reason, you refused to look at Wonwoo. You felt unusually vulnerable, like a fragile shell that could be cracked open even by the gentlest hands, and the more you thought into your emotions, the harder your heart started pounding.

“I-I know,” you smiled weakly, “but I got her some new plants today. I just put them in.”

Wonwoo could always tell when something was off-kilter. You almost hated how sharp his senses were, that he was able to detect with such accuracy how you were being eaten up inside. Softly, he touched your shoulder, urged you to turn toward him so he could see the honest colour in your eyes.

“What’s wrong?” He frowned, pushing up the bridge of his glasses.

You felt terrified, but there was no sense in pretending.

“How do I tell Jun that I’m in love with him? That I don’t want us to be a secret anymore?”

It was a weighted question, and you knew that. But it was also the truth. As much as it could be invigorating to maintain a secret relationship, you were beginning to feel the brittle side effects that came with keeping such love behind closed doors. You didn’t want Jun to push you from his lap just because his friends might’ve seen you, nor did you want to keep an eye out for whether or not you should knock his hand off your thigh in public. The secrecy had been fun, but it wasn’t enough.

Scratching the blue collar of his shirt, Wonwoo appeared uncertain.

“I’m not sure, honestly. I just think you shouldn’t repress this. You need to be upfront.”

“How?” It sounded like a desperate plead. “I don’t know how, Wonwoo.”

“Stop overthinking it,” the boy advised, grabbing onto your shoulders and giving your frame a small, grounding shake, “you know Jun. You know he isn’t a rash person. You know if you tell him he’ll hear every word of it. It doesn’t take a genius to see you’re all he thinks about.”

Wonwoo brushed at the side of your cheek with his thumb. “Don’t hurt yourself like this, okay? The next time you’re alone, just say how you feel. I promise it won’t be as bad as you’re hypothesizing.”

You inhaled a deep breath and nodded. Overthinking was a poison to you. It shouldn’t be that difficult to be honest, especially when you knew how attentive Jun was, the manner in which he always adapted himself to be of a comforting presence.

“Okay,” you attempted to draw together some confidence, “I’ll do that.”

“Good.” The boy grinned, still fiddling with his empty tube of toothpaste. “It really doesn’t bother me that you guys run around together. Just… please… never do anything weird in my bed.”

The next time you were alone with Jun, it was all but a desirable circumstance. Once you came home from work and heated up some leftover dinner in the microwave, you decided to feed Princess Pebble, though your jaw unhinged as you noticed something a little unorthodox about her tank: a pink blotch floating against the surface of the water. Immediately, the tears welted hot and stinging against your eyes. You had to use the small net to scoop your guppy out from the water.

Remarkably, Princess Pebble had lived a long life for a fish. You remembered walking with Jun to the pet store one summer afternoon, after you two finished your last day of eleventh grade and had just escaped a brutal chemistry exam. Rather than studying beforehand, you spent ample time researching different types of fish, and would often send Jun pictures asking him to choose which one he thought was cutest. Yet, at the end of it all, you chose a guppy with the prettiest pink scales.

“Don’t most people want a puppy? A kitten? And you choose a boring fish.”

Jun had teased, sounding awkward and a bit lisped through his braces.

Somehow, Princess Pebble had managed to live a five-year lifespan. Wonwoo told you most guppies live for two years, three years if the owner takes good care. Sitting at the kitchen table, you placed her body onto a piece of paper towel, the thick tears dripping down your cheeks while your sinuses grew wet and congested. You didn’t know if it was petulant to be your age, crying over a pet fish. In fact, you didn’t even possess the heart to rise from the table and discard her body.

It wasn’t much longer until Jun returned home after his theatre class, to which you heard his key rattling in the lock. Wonwoo was scheduled for a shift at the cinema, most likely handing out overpriced popcorn and chocolate and having to reject every person who asked for his number.

“Hey,” he called, shouldering off his backpack, “Wonwoo texted me. That weird thriller we were looking at is playing next week. We should—,”

Jun paused the moment he heard your runny sniffling. He didn’t realize that your fish was sitting on the paper towel until he took a few steps closer. You felt embarrassed Jun had to see you like this. If you were crying, it had always been over something with a little more gravity, like the time you were distraught about flunking your laboratory practical, and Wonwoo couldn’t persuade you to open your bedroom door no matter how frequently he stood outside, pleading.

Plucking at the collar of your shirt, you used the fabric to clear away the tears. Without a word, Jun grabbed another chair from the dining table and pulled it next to you, scooting in close. As soon as you felt his arm drape around your shoulders, it was like someone had pulled the plug on a bathtub filled with water, to which you pressed your face against his neck and sobbed harder.

“I’m so sorry.” Jun whispered, hugging you tight to his comfortable chest. “It’s okay to be upset. I know how much she meant to you.”

He drew soothing strokes down the back of your head, and he sat with you until those wet pearls ran dry with salt. You knew it wasn’t wise to keep her body out in the air, that you would have to discard her somehow, yet the thought of having to flush her away seemed too cruel. Jun wiped the soft glisten from your cheeks with his sleeve, his fingers then tracing up and down the side of your face.

“I-I don’t want to flush her.” You blubbered.

The boy shook his head. “We won’t do that. We’ll find a good way to handle it.” His thumb brushed tenderly below the fragile skin of your eye for a moment, and he seemed to be in musing.

“Wait here.” He announced, suddenly running into his bedroom.

You could hear Jun shuffling through his closet, moving around clothing hangers and pushing aside boxes still filled with some of his old belongings from homelife in Shenzhen. When he remerged into the living room, he was holding a particular tissue box, one that you hadn’t seen since twelfth grade biology. You, Jun, and Wonwoo had painted and decorated the box as part of an optional project, to see if you could grow any plants from the packets of radish and tomato seeds your teacher had.

Nothing ever grew. Wonwoo claimed there had been some green sprouts when it was his turn to look after the makeshift garden, but that his cat snuck into his room and ate them all. Jun always kept a multitude of random things that dated back to your adolescence. As awkward and bumpy as those times were, seeing the tissue box reminded you that there had been precious moments too.

“Why do you still have that?” You laughed, even if your chest was aching.

“Because that was the first time us three did something together.” Jun said, returning to his seat beside you. “It was one of the first memories I made after moving away from home.”

You fondly looked at Jun while pulling the tissue box toward you, slathered in old, chipping acrylic paint and obnoxious, starry glitter.

Licking the dry salt off your lips, you smiled. “Princess Pebble would love this.”

“It can be her shrine. When Wonwoo comes home, we can find a good place to bury it.” Jun explained. “I know I called her boring five years ago, but I didn’t mean it. I loved her too.”

In the pensive silence, you thought back to your conversation with Wonwoo, recalling his firm grip on your shoulders as he reiterated the importance of freeing your heart, of not bogging yourself down with too many untold truths. Then, you glanced at Jun. You thought about that fluttering feeling when you kissed him, when you ran your fingers through his hair, listening to his deep-chested laughter whenever he gleefully buckled over into your lap after telling one of his hit-or-miss jokes.

The boy tensed slightly as you pulled him into a hug, though he quickly came to ease and warmth. You thanked him, because it just felt like the right thing to do for his compassion.

And then you told him something else.

“I love you.”

Without missing a heartbeat, he murmured against your hair, “I love you too.”

It was late, unreasonably late, the past-midnight late where the entire world falls still like an unperturbed pond. Downtown was completely hushed. Every so often the wind picked up, though it inevitably withered away in between the buildings and emerged a pitiful whistle onto the street. And yet, despite the fact you should be tucked in bed while the moon protected the silence in her silver hands, you were pushing outside the convenience shop with Jun close behind.

He took the end of a straw into his mouth and slurped at the sweet, cherry-flavoured slushie that was beginning to empty. Immediately, he crinkled his forehead and his face contorted.

“How many times have I said not to do that?” You laughed as he passed you the slippery cup.

“I don’t know. Three?” Jun replied with a grimace. “I can really feel it. Wait, I need a moment.”

You stopped next to the traffic post at the end of the street. Jun grabbed at his hair and squeezed like it was some miraculous remedy for curing a brain freeze. Directing the straw into your mouth, you sucked up the cherry syrup and crushed ice until you felt the distant ache thrum inside your head.

“Okay…” Jun concluded, brushing the long, black fringe from his eyes, “I’m good now.”

Thrusting the drink back into his hands, you couldn’t help but huff: “you’re such a baby.”

As though to prove your point, Jun started whining. “My head is so, so cold. It’s freezing.”

“So put this up or something.” You teased, reaching around the back of his neck to pull the boy’s hood over his head. Giggling slightly, you grinned at him as he shot you a questionable glance.

The streets remained quiet, and the sky was remarkably clear, no more than a few ragged and thin clouds drifting over the stars. The last time you had been on this corner, you were licking the strawberry sugar off your fingertips while Jun crumpled his last packet of popping candy. You remembered tracing the rose tint that warmed his lips, each fibre in your muscle twitching because you just wanted to wrap a hand through his locks and kiss him like he was your last breath.

You didn’t understand how you could love one person so much. Why love often fused itself into your bloodstream more than functionality. Your heart knew how to beat, yet it stumbled whenever you gazed at him. Your lungs knew how to filter the air, yet they closed up whenever you caught his eye. Your tongue knew how to articulate, yet it tied itself in a knot the moment he’d touch you.

“Hey,” you mumbled, patting his arm, “can I ask you something?”

Jun looked away from the stars, sipping at his drink again. He nodded.

The moon probably wanted to crush your heart in her hands for how loudly it was thumping.

“What if I told you that I want people to know we’re together? What would you say?”

Despite your anxiousness, you weren’t as afraid as you anticipated. Maybe it was because Jun didn’t immediately sour or attempt to disparage your sentiments. You couldn’t tell what he was thinking as he blinked at you, but it didn’t matter. When it was most important, Jun picked his words carefully.

“I’d tell you that I want the same thing,” he admitted, his tone deepening and the amber in his cheeks sparked with pink, “that I want people to know how I feel about you… That I’ve always been in love with you.”

You smiled wide, like a kid who just got their braces off. Unable to contain such a rapturous energy, you stepped in close to Jun and held onto his shoulders, dotting the corners of his mouth with small kisses before you pressed your lips against his. You felt him smirk, though it seemed too devious. Jun had suddenly wrapped his arms around your lower back, pushing you in chest-to-chest. You melted as he kissed you, your fingertips ghosting along the soft hairs at his nape, the moonlight on your skin.

When you arrived back at the apartment, you could hear a few of Wonwoo’s gentle snores echo from behind the bedroom door. Just before you slipped away into your own room, Jun left a goodnight kiss to the top of your head, his hand thoughtfully squeezing your hip.

“I-Isn’t it a little late for that?” Jun stumbled through his laughter. “Why do you need me?”

You finally knew what you should have said.

“Because I love you.”

✧✎ a/n: HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY SWEET PRINCE!! never would i have imagined that someone who’s on the opposite side of the globe could mean so much to me ;_; mr. moon has been such a healing presence, and it’s bc of him that i have found so much happiness these past five years! whenever i see him smiling and laughing and have good ol times just being himself, all my worrisome thoughts somehow fade away and i feel only joy!!

anyways, i don’t want to ramble for too long (i could really fill a page with my cloying sentiments r.i.p) but i hope this was a wholesome fic!! the stars aligned and for once i was able to write a fic for a member’s birthday :_)

#svt fanfic #jun scenarios #seventeen scenarios #jun fic #seventeen fics #seventeen imagines #jun imagine #jun x reader #svt x reader #wen junhui #seventeen fluff #svt fluff #junhui scenarios #jun fluff #junhui fic

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