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integra1127grimmreaper · 8 months

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The Replacement - Part thirty

Negan Masterlist

Series Masterlist

Part 29

Warning: violence, death, swearing, little bit of angst

Thousands of rockets are fired directly at Negan and Maggie then, hitting Walkers and then exploding on impact as they attempt to take cover amongst them.

They managed to escape but not without injury, Negan and Elijah manage to meet back up with Maggie, inside one the building and they head toward the infirmary.

Maggie grabs medical supplies, heading toward the entrance of a secret room then, Negan followed behind her whilst supporting an extremely Elijah.

"Ok, what now?" Negan enquires once they were locked inside the secret room.

"Wait till dawn... hunt 'em down" Maggie comments, staring through a peep hole in the wall.

Exhaling heavily, exhausted and in pain; Negan suggests then.

"Or we just take the food and go?"

"I wanna walk out here with our arms full..." Maggie states, scowling at his words.

"As long as we walk outta here, yeah..." Negan remarks.

"Unless chow ain't the only thing we're here for?"

"I'm not leaving Daryl and Gabriel" Maggie responds.

"And I won't risk being followed home."

The conversation comes to an end when a Reaper enters the infirmary in search for them, his radio goes off then and the group silently listens to the order to kill every one of them he comes across.

Upon hearing the order, Maggie looks to Negan with a 'I-told-you-so' face. With squinted eyes, he's forced to admit that she was right; they had to take all of them out if they ever wanted to make it back to Alexandria alive.

The group had cornered the Reaper in a corridor; Maggie and Elijah in front of him and Negan at his back.

Smirking at Negan, he turns to Maggie then.

"Well, I gotta say thanks for this... was getting tired of all the searching."

Tired of him running his mouth, Negan goes at him with an iron pipe, but he manages to dodge it; elbowing Negan in the back and shoving him into the others.

It instantly becomes a full-out battle then as Maggie, Elijah and Negan attempt to take the Reaper down. Things weren't looking too good for them though; with Elijah and Negan both being injured it seemed that the Reaper was getting the upper hand on them.

Maggie and Elijah were more-or-less down for the count while a winded Negan attempted to catch his breath, and that's when he notices the perfect weapon right in front of him.

While the Reaper was distracted, with a plan in mind, Negan slips out the exit.

Maggie and Elijah were both taken down by the Reaper then, and just as he was about to finish Maggie off; back entered Negan.

"Hey..." Negan calls out at him, a huge brass bell in his hand.

"Over here, shit-dick."

"This should be fun..." the Reaper smirks stalking toward him.

Elijah takes the opportunity then to launch his weapon at the Reaper; distracting him, giving Negan the opening to throw a handful of dust in his face and knocking him out cold with one swing of the brass bell.

"Well-ding-ding..." Negan remarks, turning to look at Elijah.

"Thanks, kid."

An extremely wounded Maggie gets up; silently staring Negan in the eye as they both attempt to even their breathing.

An exhausted Negan slides down to the floor to rest while Maggie goes over to Elijah; the two of them silently communicating with one another as he hands her his weapon.

"Stop!" Daryl comes running up towards Maggie just as she was about to put an end to the Reaper.

The Reaper stirs and Daryl knocks him completely out this time.

"We don't kill him yet."

"He needs to pay for what he did" Elijah argues.

"I agree" Daryl remarks.

"But once we go down that road, we all gonna make it alive. No offence. I hate this prick, but we got him now, let's use him. Do what we want and go home."

"Are you doing this for her...?" a frustrated Maggie remarks.

"No" Daryl responds.

"No, I'm not. I'm doing this for of us. Leah wants us gone but not more than saving her family, especially this asshole."

"This could go wrong eight hundred different ways..." Negan comments then.

"Me...? I am down with us getting out of this alive."

Elijah protests at their suggestion; wanting retribution for his sister's death. Eventually, Maggie gets him to see reason and Daryl make the move to contact Leah over the radio.

The group walks out into the courtyard where they arranged to meet with Leah; Daryl led the front of the group, Maggie was assisting an injured Elijah, whist Negan led now the restrained Reaper at knifepoint.

Leah and the two other remaining Reapers meet Daryl in the center of the yard while the others hid behind the garden structure to his right.

"Throw your weapons on the ground" Daryl orders whilst holding their captive at knifepoint.

"What are you offering?" Leah responds.

"Lose your weapons, and we let you leave" Daryl instructs.

"Is that all...?" one of the Reapers comments.

"Head north, no turning back..." Daryl replies.

"If I see anyone, anyone at all... I'm gonna kill him. Once we're far out enough, I'll let him go."

The captured Reaper attempts to mumble something through his gag.

"Shut up!" Daryl shakes him.

"You expect me to trust you now...?" Leah remarks.

"Yeah, I do" Daryl responds.

"We're doing this all wrong... we survived everything, for what? Keep fighting and killing each other?"

"If-that's-what-it-takes..." Leah nods in responds.

"Don't have too..." Daryl comments.

"I'm giving you a chance to save what's left of your family, and mine."

Leah pauses for a moment to contemplate her options.

"No more lies... Jensen..." she then calls out into her radio and a shot is suddenly fired at the ground close to Daryl's feet, causing him to whip around in the direction it came from.

"That was a warning!" Leah yells out.

"The last one! Everybody out!"

Negan and Maggi assist Elijah as they step out from their hiding spot and into the clearing.

"Lower the knife, cut the rope" she orders Daryl.

Daryl refuses to obey as he silently stares her down.

"Jensen..." Leah calls out over the radio yet again, uttering out only two words.

"The-woman..."

Daryl, realizing he had no other option, let's go of their captive.

"Fine..."

Cutting his restrains, Daryl steps back to allow him free to go to his team. Seeing his sister's killer walking away freely; Elijah attempts to go after him.

"No-one-moves!" Leah points a finger at him in warning and Maggie tries desperately to stop him.

"He takes one more step, he dies!"

Elijah refuses to listen; hell-bound on avenging his sister, he slowly limps toward the Reaper to kill him while the man silently mocked him. It soon became a shouting match between the two groups; Leah ordering Elijah to backdown, and Daryl attempting to make him see reason.

In his weakened state, Elijah manages to make it to the Reaper but ends up collapsing once he reaches him. The Reaper, finding the entire situation amusing; raises his leg to kick Elijah, when suddenly he gets shot in the leg.

Everyone recoils in shocked confusion at what just happened. Leah runs to cover her fellow Reaper, yelling over the radio then.

"Jensen...! What the hell!"

"Jensen...?!"

"Nope..." Gabriel's voice sounds out throw the radio.

"No Jensen here... Call-me... Gabriel..."

A very amused Negan looks up in the direction of where Gabriel was now stationed.

Realizing they were now outnumbered; Leah sighs, turning to Daryl then.

"You're deal still stands?"

"You had your chance..." Maggie intercepts herself into the conversation then.

"You would have killed us. Picked us off... one-by-one... right...? Now, Gabriel does the same thing to you."

Standing up, Leah stares Maggie down then.

"Maybe, you're right... Your friend has the rifle, but I bet we take a couple of you down before he takes us all."

A silently Daryl observes the interaction as Leah continues.

"You can have your town. We walk..."

She turns toward Daryl then.

"You save your family. I save mine."

"Yeah..." Daryl nods in agreement.

Maggie turns to silently scowl at him, turning toward Negan thereafter.

"Negan...?"

There was no fucking way that they would give up so easily, and he knew it.

"You know what I think" Negan responds to her silent question.

Maggie remains silent for a moment, turning back toward Leah then.

"Drop your weapons and go."

"Not without Carver" Leah responds.

"No" Maggie replies.

Leah silently looks to Daryl for help, but he doesn't react. Taking a moment to compose herself, she turns to the rest of her team.

"Do it."

They both silently stare at her in confusion.

"I-said-do-it" Leah commands them and they discard all their weapons to the ground.

Lowering down to Carver, Leah holds his head in her palms.

"I'll see you soon."

Maggie, hearing her last words, realizes then the same as Negan did. She goes to cheek on Elijah, and he reminds her of all the people they lost to the Reapers.

As Daryl goes to retrieve their captive, Maggie stands up, silently making her way in the direction Leah and the other two were heading. Pulling the gun out front behind her back, she silently stalks behind them; aiming the gun and hits the two men.

Leah, hearing the shots attempts to run but Maggie shoots her in the arm. As she slowly attempts to flee, Maggie continues stalking her while Daryl tries to stop her. Suddenly, she makes a U-turn then; shotting one of the Reaper's that was still alive, in the head.

"What-the-hell-was-that?!" Daryl shouts out, continuing after Leah but Maggie doesn't respond.

Coming up to the Carver, Maggie stands over him as he laid bleeding on the ground. Aiming the gun at him, she pulls the trigger but it's out of bullets.

Negan stoically stands to the side as Maggie goes for Elijah's weapon, kicking at Carver's hand when he tries to reach for the knife lying close by. Lifting the weapon up high, Maggie brings it full force down into him then.

After the dust had settled, the group began to load all the supplies onto a cart. Stepping out of one of the buildings, Negan watches deep in thought as Maggie leaves ahead of the others.

She was a loose cannon; it would be extremely dangerous to be living near her, especially with him now having a wife and baby on the way.

Knowing that she was heading to the church to retrieve Alden, Negan decides to follow her.

Coming across Maggie deep in the woods; busy at a fresh grave, Negan takes a moment, moving closer toward her then with his steel pipe in hand.

Realizing that there was someone behind her, Maggie turns toward him.

"You were always going to do what you did, Maggie..." Negan remarks.

She doesn't respond to his words, merely stares at him silently instead.

"I don't blame you. You see, when it comes to me... promise or not. It's just a matter of time before you make the same call."

A paranoid Maggie slowly reaches for a knife then as Negan continues talking.

"So, I ain't gonna give you a chance to do that."

Maggie remains silent still as she waits for Negan's next move as he lightly bounces the pipe in his hand.

"I'm gonna be on my own way..." Negan states matter-of-factly, turning to leave then.

"Wait!" a surprised Maggie calls out to him.

"What? Ya not happy with me leaving?" Negan turns around scowling at her.

"Wanna put in one of those graves as well, I'm guessing?"

Maggie doesn't reply to his question, asking him one instead.

"What about Y/N?"

With a faint smirk, Negan releases a heavy breath and shrugs.

"Like you said before... she'll be better off without me."

It was a beautiful morning, that perfect morning after a huge storm; in this case it literary was. The Walkers that had invaded Alexandria had been taken care of, the fire in the windmill as well. Only problem that everyone still was facing; was the lack of food.

The team that left for Meridian had been gone for quite some time now and it was making you nervous. The fear that something terrible had happened along the way to there, or that they had fallen to the forces that was the Reapers, was causing you to slowly lose your mind. But the one thought that was making you a complete and utter wreck, was the possibility that Maggie had done something to your husband.

If anything had happened to Negan, you knew it would be the end of you. If you didn't die trying to kill Maggie, then you mostly certainty would from a broken heart. Negan had to make it back alive for the sake of both you and your unborn child, there just was no other options.

You were busy in your house; tidying up from the storm when you heard commotion coming from outside. Stepping outside to see what it was, you were surprised to see the Meridian group had returned.

Walking as hastily as you could, yet careful not to stumble and fall, you make it to the crowd at the cart. You frown upon not noticing any sign of your husband as you scan the surroundings. Heading toward where Daryl, Carol and Lydia were to ask of his whereabouts; you pause when Lydia speaks up.

"Where's Negan...?"

"He left" Daryl answers and you felt as if your whole world had crumbled down around you.

"What...?" you call out in shocked confusion, causing a disheartened looking Lydia to spin around at you.

"Y/N."

"No" you shake your head in denial.

"It's not true. He would never leave."

Stepping closer to you, Lydia pulls you for a hug as you begin to sob.

"He-wouldn't-leave. He-wouldn't-leave-me..."

"It's-ok..." Lydia attempts to console you.

"No, it's not!" you jerk away from Lydia's embrace, glaring at Maggie's direction then.

"She did something to him! I know it!"

Lydia and Carol both jump to restrain you then as you attempt to gun toward Maggie in anger.

"Daryl!" they both call out to him for help, and he rushes towards the three of you.

"You tell me the truth right now!" you point at him as tears run down your face.

"Did she kill him?!"

Daryl cups your face in his palms, calmly staring into your eyes.

"No, she didn't. He left on his own. Said it was the best for everyone."

"He wouldn't have!" you sob in denial.

"You know why he wouldn't!"

"I'm sorry, kid..." Daryl sadly shakes his head at you.

"He did."

You walked zombie-like back to your home; nothing but white noise surrounding you as you took what felt like 'the walk-of-shame'. While everyone celebrated with their returning loved ones, you were now being pitied as the fool that loved a man who at the first chance, up and left you.

What did you expect? Were the words behind their silent stares.

The man was a prison for years before interacting with you. You were the first woman in a long time to take interest in him, of course he was going to jump at the opportunity to get into your pants. You were just dumb enough to fall for his bullshit charm.

It was an hour or so later that Daryl came around to deliver some supplies to you, making sure you were ok and to reassure you yet again that Maggie hadn't killed Negan; he had left on his own accord.

It was quite late into the night, and you were wide awake still; silent tears running down your face while sitting in bed with your wedding ring in the palm of your hand. You were so lost in your heartbroken thoughts, that you never noticed the sound of someone entering your home; not until you heard a familiar voice speak up.

"Now who do I have to fuck up for making those beautiful eyes cry?"

"Negan?!" you head snaps up, staring in open mouthed surprise at him.

With a broad dimpled grin on his face, Negan spreads his arms out wide.

"I'm home, Honey..."

Letting out a soft chuckle, you get up from the bed to walk towards Negan. Stopping in front of him and staring deeply into his eyes; you smile at him. Then you raise your hand; slowly pulling it backward and bring it back forward to deliver a hard smack to his cheek.

Negan's head violently whips to the side at the force of the blow.

"Ow...!" a surprised Negan cries out, rubbing at his cheek.

"What was that for...?"

"They said you fuckin' left!" you tearfully glare at him.

"That you left me..."

Those tears soon begin to flow freely then as you place a hand over your stomach.

"Left us."

"Oh, Sweetheart..." Negan croons out, gently cupping your face.

"I could never leave you."

"Then why did they say you did?" you sniffle out, resting your forehead against his.

Negan gently nuzzles your nose with his own.

"Leave my wife and unborn child...? Fuck, no!"

Pulling your face away from his, you frown at him in confusion.

"Then why did you let them believe that you did?"

Letting out a deep sigh, Negan gently leads you to sit on the bed.

"I had to make them believe I was leaving for my own safety."

Squinty your eyes at him, you utter out one word.

"Maggie."

"She's become a loose cannon" Negan nods in response.

"It ain't safe here around her anymore. She gonna snap one day, very soon and I can't risk your and the baby's safety when that happens."

Silently nodding for a few moments, you look into his eyes dead serious then.

"When are we leaving?"

"Tonight" Negan replies just as seriously.

Part 31

tag list: @rockey258 @ultrasweetnephilim @twd-fanfics @starry-night-20 @dellsdeath @vaaalexandra @thatgirljayy @aleemendoza2425-blog @conrzd @tonysterco @igotmajordaddyissues

#twd negan #twdlovestory #twdfanfic #negan x reader #negan x you #the walking dead #negan #jeffrey dean morgan #jdm

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the-writer-ofthe-fandoms · 4 years

Text

In His Arms (Seth Clearwater)

Pairing:Seth Clearwater/Reader

Words: 2.2k+

Warning(s): Kidnapping, blood mention, fighting

A/N: My bby boy seth! Love him ♥ Hope you enjoy this oneshot!

Request: Seth Clearwater x reader, human. The reader is new to Forks after Breaking Dawn pt2, they meet while walking around town. After hanging out Seth asks them out on a date, they say yes. He goes to her house and her older brother slams the door in his face. They still go on a date. 3 years later they are going to get married. Her brother disappeared two years ago. On the night before the wedding her brother returns as a vampire kidnapping the reader. The two packs up rescue her and Seth fights him ( @hecatemacbeth7 )

---------

You shoved your hands into your sweater pockets as you walked down some random street in Forks. It was about to rain, go figure it is Forks, and you were rushing to find a temporary shelter until your brother could pick you up with his truck. You took notice of a cafe pergola that was the perfect shelter for the oncoming rain. You quickened your pace and successfully made it under the outdoor roof, just in time before the rain began to pour. You sent a quick text to your brother and watched people run and scurry to get out from the downpour.

To your left you saw a group of guys laughing and rushing to get under the same pergola you were under, all soaking wet, but they just laughed it off. You chuckled with them and watched them goof around, their happiness was a bit contagious. One of the guys looked your way, catching you watching them. You could admit that he was one of them you were eyeing most. You sheepishly smile after being caught, but noticed that when his eyes met yours his jaw slacked. You notice of the guys around him patting his back and looking your way. You definitely were confused. You decided to mind your business at pay attention to only the road.

"Uh hey!" You looked back and saw the guy next to you, a grin on his face. "I'm Seth, Seth Clearwater. Sorry about that back there, um you were just so pretty it uh... took my breath away."

"Oh thanks. Sorry about staring, you guys laughing was contagious. And your particular smile as well. " Your face heated with warmth from his compliment. "I'm (Y/N) by the way, nice to meet you."

"I was wondering if you would want to do something together? Like come back to and get to know each other?"

"That would be nice. Want to swap numbers and set a date?"

"Yea that sounds great!" His face lit up and you both swapped numbers.

You heard a honk and saw your brother waiting at the curb. "That's my ride. Text you later?" You wave to him and make a dash to the truck, trying to stay as dry as possible.

"Who was that?" Your brother said with a displeased look.

"Oh that's Seth, I just met him." Your brother didn't respond to your answer and focused solely on the road. You shrug your shoulders and sent the first text of many to Seth.

---

You stood in front of your mirror, adjusting and fixing your outfit and hair. You and Seth are going on your first date after a week and a half of texting and calling each other. He seemed like such a genuinely sweet guy who you felt a pull towards. You decided everything about your look was adequate enough and went down stairs to wait for Seth.

A knock on the door made you grin, knowing it was Seth. Before you could approach the door your brother jumped from the couch and opened the door before you could.

"Hello, you must be-" Seth went to greet but was cut off by Richard.

"(Y/N) isn't going anywhere with you, so leave." And promptly slammed the door in poor Seth's face.

"What the hell, Richard!?" You shouted, flabbergasted at his behavior. "Why would you do that?"

"Because I said. Don't question me or my decision." He snarled and went back to sitting on the couch. You glared at him and made your way back to your room, cellphone in hand. Quickly you sent a text to Seth telling him to meet you at your bedroom window on the left side of the house. When you got to your room you made sure to close the door and to prop your desk chair against the door knob. You opened and looked out your window and saw Seth looking back at you.

"I am so sorry about him. My brother is kind of a dick." You smiled sadly. "Do you still want to go on our date?"

"Of course, (Y/N)!" He grinned. "How are you gonna get down?"

"Do you think you can catch me?"

"Most likely! Just be careful."

You bit your lip but felt determined. You carefully get you legs out of your window and you were now sitting on the windowsill.

"Careful!" Seth got in position, his arms ready to catch you.

"Here I go." You took in a deep breath and pushed yourself out. You bit your tongue, keeping your impulse to scream at bay. Before you knew it you felt strong arms catch and hold onto you.

"I didn't expect our first date would have you in my arms." Seth joked and let you down to the ground.

"Thank you for catching me, lover boy. Now, lets go to the cafe."

--------

That first date with your now soon to be husband was something you cherished forever. You and Seth were extremely close after that first date. You soon learned about who he truly was, a wolf shifter, and you learned how you were his imprint; which made you swoon even more. No wonder you felt such a pull to him.

Leah and the rest of the pack practically became family, and the Cullen's (whom you learned were vegetarian vampires) became close friends. You gained an amazing second family that you needed, especially after your brother disappeared two years ago. He was a hardass and a jerk at times but he still was your only family in Forks. The pack and Cullens helped you through your grief from losing your brother.

You were in the car with Leah, Rosalie, Alice, and Bella; coming home from your bachelorette party. It was a fun day of shopping at different stores in Seattle and a lovely dinner for you and Leah. Alice parked the fancy car in front of your house, and her and Rose turned to face you.

"Get some beauty sleep for the big day tomorrow (Y/N)." Alice grinned, giddy with excitement. She was the one who practically volunteered to arrange everything for your wedding.

"Seth texted me he still out with the guys for his party. Do you want us to stay with you?" Leah asked.

"No it is okay. I am pretty tired so I will probably crash once I hit the pillow." You laugh and gather your things.

"Remember, you need to be at my place at 7 am sharp so we can get your hair and makeup perfect!" Alice reminded and you nodded.

"I will, see you guys tomorrow." You give them a wave after you left the vehicle and walked up to your small house. It was a fixer upper for sure, but it was a place for you and Seth to call home. You place the things that were bought on the dining table to deal with later.

After changing into your pajamas and having a small snack, you crawl under the sheets of your bed. You smiled and snuggled into the pillow, waiting for sleep to carry you off. The sound of your floor board squeaking caused your eyes to snap open. You could feel your heart leap but you assumed it was Seth returning home from his bachelors party.

"Hey Seth-" You sit up and yawned, but it wasn't Seth who was standing in your bedroom.

It was Richard, your missing brother, standing there.

"Hey (Y/N)." His voice was strained as he took a step forward.

"Richard... what are you doing here? Where have you-" In the blink an eye, his freezing cold hand gripped your throat tightly. Your panicked eyes met his an then you realized: they were blood red.

"You're coming with me."

------

Seth arrived back at his house a bit later than intended. The rest of the pack was on his left while the Olympic coven guys were on his right.

"Thanks for the good night but I should probably turn in..." His train of thought trailed off when he smelt something not right coming from the house. Judging by the others faces, they picked up on it as well. "Paul, Emmett can you join me?" They both nodded and the three began walking up towards the house.

"We will surround the house just in case." Edward nodded at Seth and the others followed suit.

The three stepped into the house and immediately the scent of vampire hit them in the face. For Seth though, there was some familiarity to the stink he picked up; he couldn't put his finger on it.

"No smell of blood. That's a good sign." Emmett whispered. Seth grimaced but made his way to the bedroom where the scent was the strongest. The bed looked like a mess, but he noticed the lamp and picture on the bedside table were knocked to the ground.

"Why is the scent familiar to me?" The wolf shifter whispered to himself. He investigated the rest of the bedroom for any clues of who it may be. His dark eyes glanced towards other pictures and his focus landed on one small one. A picture of (Y/N) and Richard...

"Richard!" Seth growled. Paul and Emmett joined him in the bedroom, both looking confused. "No wonder I knew this smell. The vampire that took (Y/N)is their brother."

"Lets get back to Carlisle's."

------

You sat bound in a chair in some random dirty home, covered in sweat and dirt. It has been a few days since he kidnapped you and you haven't seen him since your bedroom. You were still trying to process the fact your brother was now a vampire and that he was still alive... well not alive but around. What happened two years ago to lead to this outcome?

"How are you feeling?" Your brother walked into your field of view.

"Wonderful, Richard. It's not like now vampire brother kidnapped me the night before my wedding and is keeping tied to a chair with no food or water." You gave a tight lip, sarcastic smile.

"Here." He pulled out a bottle of water and gripped your chin, opening your mouth to pour water in. You tried your best not to choke but your brother didn't take that into consideration. "Food will come later. You'll need to stay strong."

"Why are you doing this? What happened to you?"

"A vampire turned me on my way home from work and brought me here. Him and his friends kept me alive for a bit to feed off me and then ultimately turned me. That's what is going to happen here."

"Why me?"

"Simple. Revenge." He smirked. "Your wolfy boyfriend killed one of ours. What a better way to get revenge than to take someone close to him."

"You're sick." You spat, lip snarled.

"Be thankful. The others wanted to just bleed you dry and kill you. If it wasn't for me you would be dead already."

"Thank you." You rolled your eyes. Your brother gave you a sarcastic smile, before he sped out of the room. "Damn it!" You yelled.

-----

The pack and the Cullens stood outside the house in the small area of Neilton were (Y/N) was being held. Outside was a small group of vampires ready to fight. Seth did not see Richard among the group, which made his blood boil and fur raise.

"We don't want a fight, but it seems you have a friend of ours." Carlise tried the mediator route with the group. "Would you please let them come home?"

"We ain't letting our fresh blood bag go so easily." One snarled. The fight began in the blink of an eye between the two sides. It was obviously pretty one-sided for the Pack and the Olympic coven. The group of red-eyed vamps were severely out numbered but they tried fighting anyways.

Seth diverted from the group to look for his imprint, following their scent through the house to the back room. There he saw Richard hovering up a tied up you and immediately Seth jumped to attack. His jaw snapped towards the vamps head all while Rich feebly attempted to fight but Seth's rage and urge to protect his imprint was stronger.

His sharp teeth gripped Richards head and with one clean rip, his head was clean off. Seth glared down at the decapitated vampire, his breath ragged.

"Seth..." Your whimper snapped him out of his trance. Quickly, he shifted back to his human form and untied your wrists.

"I'm here baby. I've got you, (Y/N)." He whispered, getting the ropes off your wrists and ankles. Immediately you wrapped your arms around his neck, holding onto him like he was about to disappear at any second. His arms follow suit, keeping your body close as you sobbed into his shoulder. "You're safe. I've got you."

"Seth..." You cried. "I-I love you so much."

"I love you so much too. I'll always protect you."

#Twilight wolf pack #twilight x reader #twilight #twilight saga #seth clearwater x reader #seth clearwater #seth clearwater imagines #seth clearwater imagine #seth clearwater x you #twilight imagine #twilight imagines #wolf pack #wolfpack #wolf pack x reader

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darkficsyouneveraskedfor · 4 years

Text

One Night 🌙 1

Warnings: noncon sexual acts (to be warned later in series); consensual sex (one night stand, dirty bathroom sex)

This is dark!Andy Barber and explicit. Your media consumption is your own responsibility. Warnings have been given. DO NOT PROCEED if these matters upset you.

Summary: One night changes your entire life.

Based on these lyrics:

‘It's New York, baby, always jacked up (Hey) Holland Tunnel for a nose, it's always backed up [Sniffing] When she's alone, she goes home to a cactus (Uh) In a black dress, she's such an actress [Sniffing] Driving me crazy, but I'm into it, but I'm into it I'm kinda into it It's getting crazy, I think I'm losing it, I think I'm losing it Oh, I think she said "I'm having your baby, it's none of your business" "I'm having your baby, it's none of your business" (it's none of your, it's none of your) "I'm having your baby, it's none of your business" "I'm having your baby, it's none of your, it's none of your...’

for @kittykatlow‘s 200 Follower Celebration

Note: I haven’t written Andy yet but here’s the first part of a short series! The darkness will come slow so warnings will be given on all chapters just to protect people. Anyways, let’s get started.

Hope you enjoy it. Thank you. Love you guys!

Please leave some feedback, like and reblog <3

Warmth hazed your vision. A stronger heat radiated from your chest. You were so deliciously drunk you barely noticed the smell of piss that undercut the dusky cologne of the man against you. His short beard tickled you as he kissed your neck hungrily.

You clung to the top of the stall as he pinned you against the metal divider. Your legs wrapped around him as your skirt bunched up around your thighs. Well, you'd borrowed the denim atrocity from Felicia but that didn't matter much.

He hiked your skirt higher, rolling it around your waist as his large hand stretched over one half of your ass. His other hand fumbled between your bodies as he struggled to undo his fly.

His breath shuddered and his deep voice whisked over your lips as he looked into your eyes. Your eyelids were heavy with liquor and you felt like you were floating. He was drunk too, his cheeks flushed red with rye.

"Are you sure?" He asked.

You grabbed the back of his neck with your free hand and pulled his lips to yours. You kissed him sloppily as your hand snaked down his shoulder and around to his chest.

Lower, you grasped the top of his pants and slid down his zipper. You reached into his boxers and pulled your head back with a giggle. You stroked him and tugged the front of his pants and boxers below his dick. He groaned as you turned your hand and fondled his sac.

"I'm sure," You breathed as you grasped his length again. "I want you."

You pulled aside your panties and rubbed his head along your folds. You teasingly guided him to your entrance. You squeezed him tighter with your legs as you welcomed all of him. He gasped and kneaded your ass as he slapped the stall with his other hand.

"Oh god!" He groaned as he pushed himself as deep as he could go.

You purred and tilted your hips into him. He lifted you and began to rock, gliding you up and down his cock. You bit your lip as you gripped his shoulder tightly.

A toilet flushed but you barely noticed the slosh of water. Your other hand stayed hooked around the top of the wall as the man worked in tandem with you.

His hot hand left the wall and he pushed it between you. He pressed his thumb to your clit as he stepped back slightly. You hung at an angle between him and the side of the stall as he watched himself play with you. Watched him slide in and out of you, faster and faster.

Your thighs tensed around him as your voices mingles in a drunken melody over the beating of your flesh.

"You cumming?" He asked gruffly and flicked his thumb faster.

You let out a strangled moan and your eyes rolled back. You gasped, ‘yes’, and the waves rolled under your skin and crested in a great deluge.

"You gonna make me cum?" He growled. "Yeah, baby, I'm gonna cum."

You tried to blink away your dizziness as his words cut through your drunken haze. He kept your body bouncing against his. You wanted him to stop but couldn't think of why. More, you wanted him to keep going.

"Here it...comes," He jerked into you several times as he hung his head back. He grunted and slowed to halt as his entire body trembled. A long sigh escaped his lips.

He pulled out of you slowly and lowered you back to the floor as your legs fell from around him. You braced the metal wall and wobbled in your chunky heels.

His cum leaked down your leg and you drunkenly reached for the roll of tissue. You wiped yourself with the rough one-ply and missed the toilet bowl as you tossed it.

His zipper was loud as you fixed your panties and pulled your skirt straight. He sniffed and puffed his chest.

"That was..."

"Fun." You finished for him. "My friends are gonna start looking for me."

"Ah, yep," He nodded. "Luckily, I don't have that problem."

"Shouldn't drink alone," You murmured. "You'll get in trouble."

"Think I already did," He laughed and unlocked the stall door. "You okay?"

"I think I'm great," You grinned dopily.

You nodded past the door and he returned the gesture. He left as you waited there. You stumbled out of the stall shortly after the bathroom door closed.

You crossed to the mirror and stared at your reflection. Through the alcohol burning the pit in your stomach, the shame began to seep through.

You hadn't expected a night at the bar. Didn't expect to be dancing on a stranger to old 90s jams. Or to be riding him by the toilets.

You also hadn't expected to have your hours cut at the diner. The job you'd worked forty hours a week for almost ten years gave away your hours to the owner's daughter so she could "pay her own way".

You shook your head and stepped away from the sink. Your drunken antics had already led you to stupidity, it would do no good to get yourself worked up. Not in this state. Not here.

Best to go find Felicia and tell her it was time to go.

🌙

Usually you worked Saturday breakfasts but Brittany had that pleasure now that she was saving for college. All the better as you didn’t even roll out of bed that morning. You were so hungover that your mom even came in to check on you. She left a bottle of tylenol and a glass of water beside your bed. And you didn’t miss the look she sent your way.

You were too old to be drinking like that. Too old to be living in your parents house. Well, that wasn’t entirely within your control.

The day was spent in the dark. Still, silent.

Sunday you woke up, mostly recovered. You did your laundry, a hamper full of clothes formerly strewn across your bedroom floor. You dropped the denim skirt in last, a string of semen dried across the hem. Felicia didn’t need to know.

As you wasted time on your phone, you still had a shadow over you. You could barely remember the night. Only glimpses of the bar and the bathroom stall. The vibrant sensation which had overwhelmed you. The soft tickle of a thick beard and eyes bluer than the ocean. Eyes a deep and ominous as the harbour.

Monday saw you back to work. You served coffee to the regulars as the small flat screen mounted in the corner played the news. You went to grab the order from the window and returned to Brenda and Leah; the two widows who argued over soap operas and ogled the cook.

As you set their plates down you glanced up at the screen. You froze as you saw the familiar face staring back at you.

‘...Barber’s wife and son were found a year ago today. His wife lost control of their vehicle and crashed into the side of an overpass. While his son, Jacob, remained on life support for only a month, his wife, Laurie remains in the hospital. Doctors await Mr. Barber’s decision as he returns to his position as Assistant District Attorney for Newton.’

You blinked and felt a warmth on your hand. Leah’s creased fingers cupped yours.

“You okay, sweetie?” She asked.

“Uh, yeah, I just… Did you need more coffee?” You cleared your throat.

“Oh, no, doctor says I need to cut back on the caffeine.” She said.

“We have decaf.” You offered.

“I’m good with water.” She smiled.

You nodded and backed away. You went to the large industrial coffee machine and replaced the filter for a new pot. You made another round of the diner as you offered refills and tried to outrun your own thoughts.

That was the man. You knew it. It all came flooding back as his picture shone on the screen. That night, in your drunken trance, you’d sworn you recognized him but you also had half a bottle of sambuca burning out your brain. You were sure now as you recalled the stall, the feel of his body against yours, the heat of his flesh, the sheer pleasure etched across his face. You knew it because that tickle formed in your core and did not relent.

You checked the clock. Only nine. You had a whole six hours left. You just couldn’t focus now as you avoided looking again at the television. He was married. Worse, his wife was in a coma. Sure you two were drunk but that wasn’t an excuse.

Had he taken advantage of you or was it the other way around? Either way, you wouldn’t go to that bar again. Thankfully, you’d likely never see him again. Newton was a big enough town for that.

🌙

Your shift at the diner ended and you raced to the cafe three blocks down, barely dodging a car as you crossed the street. You had less than ten minutes to get in and change into your other uniform. Two months since the diner pared down your hours and your second job offered just enough to augment what you’d lost, though your days often lasted more than twelve hours and your nights were shorter and shorter.

You felt sick at the smell of the quiche baking in the oven as you entered. You slipped behind the counter and into the back room. You passed the racks of empty muffin tins and dipped into the storage room. You quickly exchanged your minty green shirt for the plain black one with the golden name tag.

You rubbed your stomach as you clocked in and tiptoed out behind the counter.

“Am I on cash?” You asked Taylor as she plated the quiche for her customer.

“Dishes,” She said staunchly and turned back with a fake smile to serve up the smelly egg tart. “You’re late.”

“No, I punched in on time,” You argued.

“Yes, but you should be on the floor five minutes early. We’ve had this conversation.” She smiled as another customer entered. “Now go do the dishes.”

You went to the end of the counter, where the sink was hidden next to the espresso machine. You ran the hot water and dumped the stack of square plates into the deep sink. You took the hose and began to scour each before setting it into the silver rack above. Your stomach flipped again and you gulped back the mouthful of bile which rose suddenly.

You shook it off and kept on. When you finished you dried each plate, bowl, and mug carefully and set them along the pristine shelves. You went back to Taylor and she huffed.

“Take the other till,” She said as if you were clueless. “It’s almost six, that’s mean the rush is coming.”

You nodded. You saved your retort as it threatened to come up with your lunch. Maybe those leftovers weren’t as fresh as you’d thought. You went to the other machine and greeted a customer. As you took their order, you struggled not to spew and repeated it back to them, each word measured and fearful.

“I’ll just get that coffee,” You said and turned to fill a paper cup from the machine. “I just need to pop back to grab cinnamon.”

You spun, not awaiting a response and rushed into the back. You flitted through to the back door and opened it just in time for your guts to spill over the tarmac. You wretched, mindful not to dribble any on your apron, and stayed bent over your mess. You waited, making sure it was all out and stood.

You let the door shut heavily and tore a wad of paper towel from the wall and wiped your mouth. You shuddered at the curdle in your stomach. You grabbed a bottle of cinnamon and headed back out. You didn’t need to give Taylor anymore reason to be a bitch. You’d rather nausea than her attitude.

🌙

When the nausea didn’t persist for a week, you caved and went to the clinic. You spent your day off in a waiting room and cursed yourself. It wasn’t a flu, you had no coughing or sneezing, or any other outstanding symptoms.

After a round of questions, there was one that caught you entirely off guard. ‘Are you sexually active?’ Not exactly.’ ‘Well, when’s the last time you had sex?’ ‘Two months ago’.

You stared at the doctor. Dumbfounded. It couldn’t be. You couldn’t recall if he had... inside of you. Had he? Had you let him?

“Okay, well, we’re just going to take a blood sample and rule out pregnancy before we proceed.” Doctor Neshi was short and her dark hair was greying at the roots. She never smiled but wasn’t unkind.

You nodded and she set aside her clipboard. You made yourself sit still as your blood was taken and you were left to wait in purgatory. Please, please, please. You couldn’t be pregnant. And with a stranger’s baby. Well, you knew who he was. Most of Newton did. But you didn’t know him.

You swung your legs as you sat on the bed, hands folded in your lap. You felt your stomach. Was it bigger? Was it all in your head? Too many croissants from the cafe? The door opened and you sat straight, dropping your hands to your side.

“Miss,” Dr. Neshi closed the door softly and turned to you. “It would seem you are pregnant and that is likely the source of your illness.”

You shook your head and sighed. You touched your forehead and held in a sob.

“I can prescribe you anti-nausea medicine safe for pregnancy and it is our policy to provide all those in need with resources on their options in this situation.” She went to the counter in the corner and gathered a handful of fliers from the stand there. “These will be good to start with. I would suggest a visit to the hospital, they provide counseling service as well as several others offered in these.”

She held out the brochures and you took them from her stiffly. You hopped off the table and swallowed.

“Thanks,” You said breathlessly.

Her expression was almost sympathetic. Almost.

“Sorry, dear,” Her voice showed more than her face as she showed you out of the room.

You walked out onto the street and shuffled through the pamphlets. Adoption, abortion, pregnancy care, home birth…

You were going to be sick. Again.

#andy barber #defending jacob #dark andy barber #dark!andy barber #andy barber x reader #dark andy barber x reader #dark!andy barber x reader #fic #dark fic #dark!fic #short series #mini series #series #writing challenge

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hadtochangemyurlquick · 3 years

Note

24+82 for shoni. i picked those at random so i hope they work 🤷

Rules: Send me two (2) tropes from this list + a ship and I’ll describe how I’d combine them in the same story.

Soulmate AU & Second Love

well this one got sad. oof. i haven’t read it so lmk if there are any glaring mistakes.

Shelby was remarkably young when she met her soulmate. Seven and a half, to be specific. Seven a half and a girl with the bluest eyes Shelby’s ever seen in her whole life clips with her bike, racing down the thin sidewalk on a summer day so hot it could fry an egg off a hubcap.

“Hey!” Shelby calls after her and the girl stops.

“Sorry! Did I get you?”

Shelby gapes at her.

The girl blinks. “What?”

Soulmates are rare, her parents tell her, special. Sometimes soulmates aren’t a man and a woman, but two women or two men. People can get confused about what it means but only a woman can love a man like he deserves to be loved, and only a man can love a woman like she deserves.

Shelby won’t ever have love like that, but her and Becca will be friends. Best friends. That’s why soulmates between women exist and it’s important she don’t get confused.

Shelby gets confused.

See, on her arm it says, “Sorry! Did I get you?”

And on Becca’s arm it says, “Hey!”

And whenever Becca holds her hand or kisses her cheek, or laughs at her jokes, or goes along with a prank, Shelby’s heart stops beating and she thinks she’s gonna burst. And whenever her parents talk about love, all Shelby can hear is beccabeccabecca.

In hindsight, it’s gotta be some kinda miracle she lasts as long as she does. Twelve years before making a single move. Twelve years before she even dares to press her lips as carefully and as quickly as she does to Becca’s.

Becca pulls away, like across the room away, and laughs loudly. “Shelby, oh my god, I’m not gonna actually give you a flavor savor!”

“What’s going on in here?”

Shelby jumps, badly, at her dad’s voice.

Becca is giving her some kinda look and Shelby swallows hard. “Just—um, messing around, Daddy,” she said.

“In your pageant dress?” He asks.

She nods. “You’re right I should—I should change.”

Becca leaves to help with dinner and just as she does her eyes meet Shelby’s and gives her this kinda half smile. beccabeccabecca

Getting out of Texas is like fighting a war, they battle through years of brainwashing, with only their love for defense. They battle through their peer’s spitting words, even if they aren’t directed at them, and their parents at the dinner table, they fight it all. And all that time Shelby thought they were braving it together, that they could handle it together, could survive until college, but Becca lied.

Becca, holding her waist from a bleeding bullet wound, said: “I’m fine.”

And Shelby believed her. Shelby loved her. Shelby trusted her. Becca lied.

Shelby doesn’t even hear about it first hand. Her dad sits her down when she comes home from school and he asks her if she knew anything, if she’d heard anything, if Becca ever talked about it to her. He assumed she’d already known, had heard about it at school or something.

There’s all sorts of grief support groups for people who lose their soulmate but it ain’t enough. Nothing is enough. If you lose your person—your person since you were seven, your heart, your head, your sense of humor, your conscience, your kindness, your everything—nothing will ever be enough.

It’s not like Shelby wants to die, but she wishes life would hurry up already so she could see Becca again. She wades through it, trying not to get caught in the weeds as she trudges forward. There’s not really any point, is there? She’ll be all alone, just like her Daddy threatened.

But she can’t think like that because Becca wanted to run so many times but Shelby just wanted to get her diploma but if they ran she would still be alive and Shelby wouldn’t be alone like she’ll be now anyway for the rest of her life.

Her parents force her to apply to colleges, she applies to the one’s furthest away and gets into Minnesota State even if her grades suck, because she’s from Texas, she can pay full freight, and her mom wrote a damn fine essay about losing the one you love the most. Shelby did try to write it, she did, but it didn’t seem worth it. Nothing did.

Her roommate, Leah, lets her skip most of her classes, and she’ll drag herself to whatever grief group her parents demand she goes to, but she doesn’t really bother with trying. Not usually.

Until someone nearly runs her over.

She jumps to the side, falling over into the grass of the lawn, and the car stops a few feet away. A girl hops out. “Sorry!” She says. “Did I get you?”

“Watch where you’re going you frickin’ jackass,” Shelby says back, more emotion coming forth than she’s felt in years.

The girl stares, and Shelby’s stomach drops because she knows that look. That look is burned into the back of her eyelids, she could never forget that look.

She runs. She gets up and she bolts. Distantly, the girl screams after her, begging her to stop, come back, wait please, but Shelby doesn’t—Shelby can’t.

She runs until she sees a bus and jumps on it first thing, she looks away as she feels the girl’s eyes on her and has to contain her breathing.

There are two options: Becca wasn’t her soulmate, or this girl isn’t. Shelby doesn’t want to know if it’s the latter, and the girl might as well never know if it’s the former. It’d only hurt them both.

It’s just not worth it.

#the wilds fanfic #soulmate au #second love au #prompt game #gus writes #the wilds #shoni #goodfoe #goodfoe fanfic #gus answers

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magdelen69 · 4 years

Text

The Meeting

I had just crossed the finish line of the Mini Marathon. I was glad that I had flown out from South Dakota. Indianapolis wasn’t my last stop on my trip. I was going to Jersey, the Island dependency of the UK. I was going to run in the Durrell Challenge. It’s a 13k, not as long as the Half Marathon I’d just run, but between the two races, I would be short 6 miles of running a full Marathon.

So after my shower, I checked out and called my Uber. I was on my way to the Indianapolis International Airport. I had my compression sleeves and socks. They were helping with the recovery by opening the circulation and getting the acid that comes with running 13.1 miles to go down.

My flight will get to London by way of a layover in New York. In London, I will need to take a taxi to the Ferry where I get on and go across the Channel to the Island. Then another Taxi to the Hotel. But fate had other plans.

I hate flying. When I say that I mean I haven’t flown in a plane since 1992 when I got out of the Army. I had to fly from Seoul, South Korea to San Francisco to my home town of Rapid City, South Dakota. I was also four months pregnant at the time. I’m also superstitious. If I have heard of a third plane crash, I’m not getting on the plane. I’m convinced death comes in threes. I’m going to be on that third plane when it goes down. I know its stupid Lol....

But to say I’m looking forward to this layover is an understatement. I booked myself a first-class ticket on British Airway A380. You get a Massage (and after the Half Marathon, this is much needed), Spa and British Airways own skincare used on you. Full wait service and a full meal with wine pairing. Bed service (hopefully they can wake me up).

I was looking at my phone, not paying attention, reading comments on my Social Media from my Back On My Feet Family when I tripped over my own two feet. When I looked over, I was staring at Kal Cavill, the scuba diving, feline chasing big bear and jungle pig himself. He was looking at me wondering what this human was doing on the floor at his level. He looked up at his Adonis and Hercules's looking owner, Henry, a question on his face (She’s one you)

Looking down and trying not to laugh, “Are you okay?”

“ Yeah, I do this all the time.” This was not how I wanted to get Henry’s attention but since I had it. I was going to with the flow of the moment.

“Thanks for checking. The last time I did something like this I broke my wrist. I was also 10 and I was playing soccer at the time. I mean Football that is what you call it in England right?”

“I’m impressed That you know that. I’m Henry Cavill.”

“I’m Leah and I know who are. I’ve been watching your career since you starred in The Tudors. I’ve seen most of your movies correction I own most of your movies.”

“Impressive. Which ones haven’t you seen, and why haven't you seen them?”

“That would be Hellraiser: Hellworld and Bloodcreek. Horror and I just don’t get along it’s my thing.”

“Would you like to join me? I was just about to eat a light meal and read my script.”

“I would love to, but I know that you don’t get a lot of time to yourself because of fans like myself. I don’t want to interrupt you or anything.”

“It’s because of my fans that I’m where I’m at. Besides, I asked you. It’s not like you fell on purpose. Or did you?”

“I will never tell..lol but no I didn't I was looking at my phone. (yawning) If I fall asleep will you wake me up? That massage really got me to relax.”

“Now I’m your alarm clock and you haven't even answered my question!”

“Oh My GOD! How did I forget that? I blame it on your handsomeness. Yes, I would love to join you.”

“Why are flying to England?”

“To meet you.”

“What? Wait..”

“Let me explain. I’m running in the Durrell Challenge. I signed up as a VIP. I raised enough funds to get to have breakfast with you and get the photo op.”

“You just run a Half Marathon and next week you’re going to run a 13k?”

“Yeah”

“Are you ..”

“Insane? I have my moments where I don’t think everything through. I figured this was the only way to meet and get a photo with you.”

“Why not go to Comic-Con?”

“That’s a lottery draw. I’m not guaranteed a ticket. This way I get to help endangered animals and run and meet you.”

“Why a week early? Why not fly out Thursday?”

“I want to acclimate to the weather. I want to see the Hills that some people have told me is killer.”

“You’re going to do some training before the race?”

“Yeah, just to familiarize myself with the course since you or Charlie wouldn't answer my question on Instagram. I had to fly out early.”

Later…

“Thank You for inviting me to join you for dinner, Mr. Cavill.”

“Leah, I told you, it’s Henry.”

“ I really can’t call you by your name.”

“We just spent an hour having dinner together. You can call by my name. I insist.”

“I enjoyed it. Is it alright if I pet King Kal?”

“Yes. He enjoys a head scratch now and then.”

“I’ll see you on the plane. Hopefully”

I move to gather up my stuff, making sure I have everything as I was getting tired from the days earlier race.

Henry could tell something was amiss.

“Leah, what’s wrong ?”

“I’m just tired from the race. My anxiety about flying is going into hyperdrive. I'm not big on flying. In fact, I haven’t flown since I was in the Army back in 1992.”

“You were in the Service?”

“Don’t look so surprised. I mean, I know I don't look like Gal Gadot, but I did just run 13.1 miles. I can hold my own. I can shoot pretty well, you know.”

“I didn’t mean to offend. You just don't look like the type.”

“I get that all the time.” Yawning one more time. “I know that I am going to pass out in my seat.”

“I’ll wake you up when the plane gets to London. How are you getting to Jersey?”

“I’m taking a taxi to the Ferry, then another Taxi to the Hotel in Jersey.”

“ You really have this all planned out, didn't you?”

“ Yeah, all except for meeting you in New York. That kind of threw a kink into all my plans. But it was a good thing because I probably would have skipped dinner and wine. But you didn't get to look over your script.”

“With the way you're yawning. I'll get to look over it while the plane is flying. It is a seven and a half hour flight.”

“ Oh great, that means I can sleep. If we crash Superman will save me… Right?”

“ Now you’re being cheeky”

“You mean just like you were when you were when you were on Fallon?”

Talking on the way to the gate, I make sure I have my boarding pass out so that the flight attendants can see it.

Henry looks at it and sees that it's right beside where he and Kal are gonna be, that way he can wake me when we land.

After the seven and a half hour flight, Henry leans over and wakes me up.

“Hey, beautiful wake up.”

“No, I don’t want to, Mom. I was having a great dream.”

“ Hey, beautiful wake up. This is Superman. I'm here to save you.”

“Shit. we’ve crashed.”

“So you are awake.”

“Yeah I heard the Captain say chairs in the Upright position”

“ Did you have to call me Mom?”

“ Well, I could’ve called you Dad, but you get called that all the time on the internet.”

“You’ve seen that.”

“More like I’ve watched the Thirst Video.”

“Are any of those-”

“Those are my questions. I'm not saying nor am I going to admit anything.”

“Did you get to read your script?”

“Yes and No. There was an angel sleeping beside me who kept whimpering. Kal went over

several times to make sure you were okay.”

Blushing a little bit. “I’m so so sorry. Everyone says I do that. I told you I hate to fly”

Looking up at Henry to make sure it was ok to touch Kal. “Thank You for checking on me. I owe you a flavored bone the next time I see you. If that is ok with you, of course.”

“I don’t see why it wouldn't be Ok”

As we make our way off the plane and down towards the carousel where we pick up our luggage I see my black luggage. Henry was standing just a few feet away and grabbed the same luggage but when I looked at the tag on the one I had in my hand. It said Henry Cavill. This can't be happening to me. Why does fate want to embarrass me in front of God and everyone?

“Excuse me, Henry, your luggage looks like mine and I took it from the carousel by mistake.”

“I think you just wanted another way to talk to me again.” Smiling with a mischievous look in his eye. “Leah, why don't you save your money and get into the car with me? I'll take you to Jersey.”

This is for the writing challenge that @cavillanche posted.

Synopsis: This story is pure fluff.

personal note I tag a few of you because all of you inspired me to write it. I missed a few @sciapod@adorkbeezle

feedback is welcomed. remember first one. Thank to my editor @ hollydaisy23.

#@cavillanche @littlefreya@alyxkbrl@oddsendsfanfics@hollydaisy23

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adenei · 3 years

Text

Fake It Til You Make It - Ch. 6

AO3 || FFN

A/N: *Denotes a movie quote (it was too good to leave out). Lyrics belong to Ed Sheeran, not me, or Ron, for that matter. BUT I imagine musician!Ron to be quite like Ed Sheeran. Can't imagine why...

Wrong.

“You’re not giving up, Ginevra,” George warned her over the phone.

“Yes, I am! This is the stupidest, pointless stunt I’ve ever tried,” Ginny was standing her ground. “Come pick me up.”

She’d almost made it a week. It was Thursday. Surely, she could fake Ron being sick for a week before he returned.

“When have you ever given up on something? That’s not like you. So you’ve had a rough week. That’s no reason to give up! We just need to get the guys to like you.”

“And how do you suggest I do that? Clearly acting and talking like the guys is not working in my favor.”

“Hmm. It’s Thursday, right? Are they going out anywhere tonight?” George asked.

“They mentioned something about the Leaky. Neville accidentally let it slip, and all the guys glared at him because I was in earshot. I probably wasn’t meant to hear.”

“I’ve got it!” Fred yelled in the background.

Ginny heard a bunch of muffled muttering before George came back on the line and said, “Text us the time, and we’ll be there with Verity and Leah. Be prepared to act like a player, alright? We’re gonna show those guys that you’re irresistible with the ladies.”

“If you say so,” Ginny said unconvincingly.

She hung up the phone, already dreading what the night was going to bring.

***

Ginny showed up at the Leaky Cauldron a little after seven. She looked around the pub and saw Fred and George in a corner. Her feet instinctively began walking toward them, but they shooed her off in the opposite direction. Harry and the rest of their teammates were on the other side of the room, so she reluctantly made her way over them instead.

It wasn’t lost on her when the guys were trying to rearrange themselves around the table so there wouldn’t be room for her. She was about to turn around and leave when,

“Ron? Ron! Is that you? Over here!” Ginny turned around to see Verity walking toward her.

Here goes nothing, she thought. “Verity! Hey girl, how you doin’?” she said as Verity drew Ginny into a sensual hug.

“I’ve missed you,” she said in her ear.

“I know, baby, I know. But you know how things are. I’ve been busy.”

“Will you be available soon? I’d love to get together,” Verity purred.

“As soon as I have a free night, you’ll be my first call, you know what I’m sayin’?” Ginny added in a head nod.

Ginny played hard to get as Verity puckered her lips and wrapped her arms around her to say goodbye. Verity settled for a kiss on the cheek as Ginny grabbed her arse, per Fred and George’s instructions. She watched Verity walk away before turning back toward Harry’s table with a newfound swagger. Her confidence was spurred on by the gaping looks on their faces. She made it about two steps from the table when she heard another voice call Ron’s name. This time it was Leah.

“Ronnie, baby, I thought that was you!” she said eagerly.

“Oh, hey Leah, how’s it goin’?” Ginny asked.

“Why didn’t you call me after that night out in London?” Leah pouted.

Ginny gave her a perplexed look. “Babe, you know I have a strict one night rule. What we had was special, but I gotta stay true to who I am, and I’m not one to settle down.”

Leah gave a deep sigh. “I’ll always be here in case you get bored,” she resolved with a wink.

She leaned in and kissed Ginny on the cheek before turning around to sashay away. Ginny awkwardly smacked her on the bum as she walked off. Fred and George were high fiving each other, which Ginny took to mean the mission was successful. When she turned around, Seamus and Dean greeted her with a slow clap.

“Damn, Ron!” Colin said approvingly. “Teach me your ways!”

“I didn’t realize you were quite the, uh—” Harry started to say.

“Player?” Neville finished.

“Er, yeah,” Harry agreed.

They all moved to make room for Ginny to sit down when she felt a buzz in her pocket. Fred texted her. Code: Purple. Get out of there NOW.

Shit, shit, shit. It couldn’t be—

“Won Won?”

Fucking hell, of all the nights, Ginny swore to herself. Her phone buzzed again. Do NOT let her see your face. This was not good. She began backing away as Lavender made her way to the guy’s table.

Seamus, the good bloke that he was, offered an unintended distraction. “Hey sexy, if you get bored with Weasley, I’d be happy to show a good time.”

Ginny froze behind another table to see if she’d take the bait.

Lavender froze and eyed Seamus before letting out a grunt of disgust. “You have got to be kidding me. I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but girls with asses like mine do not talk to boys with faces like yours.”*

Ginny found it difficult to stifle her laughter. Lavender was undoubtedly full of herself. Before Ginny could think of all the reasons Lavender was not as hot as she thought she was, the blonde nuisance turned back toward her.

“RONALD WEASLEY, DON’T YOU DARE IGNORE ME!” Lavender screamed, getting the attention of the whole pub.

Ginny darted toward the back of the restaurant and grabbed a menu to cover her face.

“Lav, leave me alone.”

“No! You’ve been ignoring me for over a week. Be a man and talk to your girlfriend!”

One of the hosts took the menu from Ginny’s hands, so she spun around and grabbed two pitchers of Coke. “It’s OVER Lav. Why can’t you just take a hint? You’re not as hot as you think you are, and you’re too high maintenance for me.”

Ginny continued to move around towards the bar. She set the pitchers down as Lavender screeched, “IT ISN’T OVER UNTIL I SAY IT’S OVER, AND IT IS MOST CERTAINLY NOT OVER!”

Lavender was closing in as Ginny made one last-ditch effort as she skirted between two tables just as another worker was carrying a large stack of boxes. Lav wasn’t paying attention and ran right into the worker, causing all the boxes to collapse into a heap as she fell backward into a random family’s table. A glass of red wine spilled down her front, and Lavender screamed bloody murder.

“THIS ISN’T OVER!” she screeched as she stomped toward the exit.

Harry, Dean, Seamus, Neville and Colin all erupted into cheers as Ginny fell back toward them.

“That was bloody brilliant!” Neville and Colin both shouted.

“How do you do it?” Dean wanted to know as Harry and Seamus looked on with impressed faces.

Ginny didn’t suppress the grin that spread across her face. She was finally one of the boys.

****

The next morning found Harry, Ginny, and Colin in biology. They were starting labs today as Professor Sprout called out, “Gentleman, come pull a name out of the basket to determine your partners for the semester. We’re going to start with identifying organisms under the microscope today.

Harry reached into the basket eagerly and pulled out a slip. “Please be Hermione, please be Hermione, please be—aw man, you’ve got to be kidding me!”

“Who’d you get?” Colin asked.

“Luna,” Harry said with an eye roll.

“Aw. Er, I mean—she’s not that bad,” Colin said.

The disappointment on Colin’s face did not go unnoticed by Ginny. I wonder if there’s something more there, Ginny wondered as she looked at the blonde. She’d already heard plenty of stories of how she was odd from the guys.

“Who’d you get?” Harry asked her.

“Huh? Oh, um—Ginny checked her slip—Hermione,” she said as Harry shook his head in disbelief.

“What the hell!”

“Sorry, bro,” Ginny shrugged.

She walked over to Hermione’s table and sat down.

“Hello again,” Hermione said brightly.

“Hey,” Ginny said as she set down her books. “So we’re, er, supposed to look for things in the microscope?”

“Yes, do you have the packet from last week?” Hermione asked.

“Uh, yeah, in that notebook, I think.” Ginny gestured to the notebook.

Hermione shot her a playful smile as she reached for the notebook and looked inside.

Ginny was distracted by Harry attempting to work with Luna and the fact that Draco was hovering a little too close to them for Ginny’s liking. She didn’t see that Hermione had opened the book to one of Ron’s lyric pages.

“What’s this?” Hermione asked in amazement. “So you can keep me inside the pocket of your ripped jeans. Holding me closer until our eyes meet. You won’t ever be alone, wait for me to come ho—”

“Nothing! That’s—uh, nothing,” Ginny snatched the notebook back. “Here’s the packet. She pulled out the papers they needed to complete their work for the day.

“You write song lyrics? That’s right, you’re here on a music scholarship, aren’t you?” Hermione said interestedly.

“Er, yeah. How did you…?”

“I help out in the administration building, remember? I was working when you bumped into me last week,” Hermione reminded Ginny.

“Oh, right,” Ginny said. “Should we get on with the work?”

Hermione nodded as they began completing the assignment. There was no denying it; Hermione was definitely flirting with her. And that wouldn’t go over well. Not while Ginny knew Harry had his eyes on her. The bro-code was sacred. She’d have to play it cool and not let Hermione find any more of Ron’s lyrics.

That evening, Ginny flopped onto her bed after a grueling training session. She was about to pass out when a pillow hit her in the face. “What the hell was that for?” Ginny asked, tossing the pillow back at Harry.

“That was for flirting with Hermione today! You know I had my eye on her!” he snarled.

“I wasn’t flirting with her! Trust me, she’s not my type.” If she was being honest, she and Ron might make a cute couple, but Ginny was definitely not into girls.

“Well, why was she giving you the flirty eyes?”

“I don’t know, man. I don’t know! I can put in a good word for you if that’s what you want,” Ginny suggested.

Harry froze and sat on his bed. “You know, that’s not a bad idea. You’d really do that? Talk me up, see if she’s interested?”

“Yeah, sure.” Why not? Ginny thought.

“What do you want in exchange?” Harry asked her.

“Wh-what?” Ginny asked.

“It’s only fair—you help me out, I help you out,” Harry thought for a moment. “You wanted to play in the Beauxbatons game, right? What if I helped you train and get better? Maybe Coach McGonagall will move you up?”

Ginny’s face lit up with excitement. “You really think so?” She realized a second too late that her voice was too high. “I mean, you really think so?” she said again after she lowered it.

“Er, yeah.”

Ginny held out her hand. “Deal.”

As Harry took her hand in his, her phone rang.

“Ah, bollocks, what does Mum want?” Ginny let it go to voicemail and listened to the message after.

“Hi, Dear! It’s Mum. I’m just calling to remind you about the carnival this weekend! Remember, you and your sister both promised to be there, and Aunt Muriel will have a cow if you’re not there. I’ll be expecting to see you, alright? Okay. See you Sunday. I hope Hogwarts is treating you well. Love you!”

“Ah, that bloody carnival,” Ginny said as she laid back on her bed again.

“The debutante thing?” Harry asked.

“Yeah, my aunt roped my sister into participating in the season. She’s not happy about it. And it looks like I have to go too for some ruddy reason.”

“My Aunt Petunia’s on the board, too. At least Hermione will be there! You can give me pointers,” Harry figured.

“Er, yeah, it’ll be great,” Ginny lied.

How in the bloody hell am I going to pose as Ron and me? Ginny thought as she made a mental note to text the twins tomorrow. If she survived the day with Harry, Hermione, and Lavender, it’d be a miracle if it wasn’t a disaster.

#hinny #harry x ginny #she's the man inspired #I promise chapter 7 is going to be a whole lotta hinny!

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embarrassingsmartphonegame · 4 years

Text

Moving In - Nik Ryder x f!MC

Summary: “You know, most people exchange phone numbers before they move in with together.” “Most people also haven’t been brought together by fighting a murderous bag of bones. Also you already have it...” “Wait what?!” Leah moves in with Nik officially after Chapter 5 of Anything. It goes exactly as expected.

Warnings: two people who bicker almost as much as they love each other, some swear words, kissing, mention of trauma and alcohol, overall pretty light-hearted

“How-” Push. “Much-” Push. “Clothing-” Push. “Do you own?!”

Nik liked to think of himself as physically strong (and he would say he had the abs to prove it). But just how can one box of clothes be so heavy? He was huffing and puffing the entire walk from the moving truck and into the Graveyard Shift, especially when they had to go up a flight of stairs to get to his--no, their apartment.

“I own a normal amount of clothes. Maybe you just need to work out more,” Leah teased as she put down her own box effortlessly on the floor of the living room, stopping to stretch her arms over her head. She had to admit her Fae power of super strength came in handy sometimes and she was thankful that she was now able to summon it even when it wasn’t an emergency.

He snorted. “Chasing monsters keeps me plenty fit, thank you very much. But you sure do own a lot of clothes for someone who loses them like you do.”

Her cheeks burned at the memory of their reunion. “I had to prove it was me!”

“That was really your first instinct?!”

“You complaining about that?”

Nik chuckled and pulled her by the waist, nuzzling her neck. “You know I would never, darlin’.”

Leah rolled her eyes and pecked him on the lips. “I come back and agree to be with you and since then it’s been ‘rook’ or ‘babe’ or ‘sugar’ and now ‘darlin’’. Is that why you’re called Nik...because you’re a...nickname type of guy?”

“Shit, rook; was just tryin’ to be romantic here,” Nik groaned as she laughed a little too hard at her own joke. Any exasperation instantly dissipated once he heard her laugh; he missed it the past three months. She kissed him again, enjoying every moment.

“I know. I just love teasing you.”

“Lil’ shit.”

“Ah, another one, Mr. Nic--hey!” Leah shouted out as Nik suddenly wrapped her up in a bear hug, swinging her around. Her shouts soon turned into laughter, and soon the small apartment was filled with the sound of both of them laughing.

Nik finally put her down on the counter with his hands still on her hips. She rested her forehead against his, still in slight disbelief that she was moving in with him. It was only one week before that she crash landed back into his life, and after they talked things out and survived yet another attempt on their lives (he owed her his life...again), she decided to move to New Orleans for good.

The thought of it as their apartment still felt weird to them both; but it was his idea for her to move in with him. Nik remembered giving some half-assed excuse about them being both business and personal partners so it only made sense financially...he ignored that dark voice in his head irrationally sneering at him that if he took his eyes off her for even one second she would disappear again. Leah agreed with his staunch assessment, if only to curb the fear that this was all another weird (but wonderful) dream and she was actually alone in Wyoming. She frowned at the thought of her old life. Nik noticed the pensive look on her face.

“Penny for your thoughts?”

The corner of her right lip quirked upwards without amusement as she shrugged. “Are you sure it’s okay for me to move in? After I’ve been probably the biggest pain in the ass since we met a few months ago?”

“First of all, it was my idea for you to move in; no offense but we’re technically unemployed until a client hires us and I’m in a better position from whoever hired me to protect you,” Nik answered, actually hoping that his honesty wasn’t too offensive. “And second, you’re a pain in the ass...but you’re my pain in the ass and you had your reasons for everything. I love you just the same, okay? So no saying you can’t live here unless you really don’t wanna.”

“I do have student loans to pay off...” Leah grinned. “Gotta love your definition of romance, babe. This pain in the ass loves you too!”

Satisfied and sneaking in one last kiss, the woman jumped off the counter. She tied her hair and rolled her sleeves up. “Now let’s get unpacking!”

After a few hours of them unpacking Leah’s things, bickering, and randomly making out (“We’re never gonna get anything done like this, rook!”), the two Nighthunters stood in their now shared bedroom, about to finish up. Nik took out the last piece of clothing: a very familiar velvet, royal purple dress with a gold body chain to go with it. He held it up to her, brow quirked mischievously.

“Any chance I could see you in this again?”

Leah collapsed the last box and put it in the pile with all the others. Her eyes moved to the dress that cost more than half her wardrobe. “Still can’t believe you picked that one out. If we sneak into Persephone again, maybe...”

“How about on a date? A real one.”

“You asking me out, Ryder?”

“What’s it look like, Mendoza?”

She couldn’t help the silly grin on her face, as if she was suddenly a teenage girl talking to her crush for the first time. “I accept. Would this be technically our first date? Because I don’t know whether to count us running from the Bloodwraith...”

“Yes, a real date, rook. But no promises that monsters won’t try to attack us or anything, sorry,” Nik responded, hanging the dress up in their shared closet space.

“I wouldn’t have it any other way.” She smiled brightly and took a seat on the bed. “We’re really doing this backwards, huh? You know, most people exchange phone numbers before they move in together.”

“Most people also haven’t been brought together by fighting a murderous bag of bones.” Nik turned to her and sheepishly scratched the back of his head. “Also you already have it...”

“Wait what?!”

Nik took a deep breath before speaking again. “First, I wanna say I’m so sorry for this; I shouldn’t have contacted you when it was clear you didn’t wanna talk to me. Katherine offered me your number one night after I asked about you and I wanted to be selfish and take it.”

“So...you called me while I was gone?” Leah asked, her eyebrows coming together in confusion. “But I don’t remember you calling...I mean I had dreams you did a few times, but those weren’t real.”

“Well, one of them wasn’t a dream,” Nik went on. “It was nighttime and you picked up the phone slurrin’ drunk. I remember asking if you were safe, and you said you were home.”

Leah’s cheeks burned and she put her head in her hands. “Oh my God...I really don’t remember anything from that conversation. This is so embarrassing! You must’ve thought I was such an idiot!”

“No, you have nothing to be ashamed of, rook.” Nik cautiously sidled up beside her, resting a hand on the small of her back. “I’m so sorry I didn’t respect your wishes. I’m the wrong one here.”

Leah didn’t pull away, but she also couldn’t look at him. She tried to remember anything from the past three months that didn’t involve alcohol; she could count them all on one hand. “I...I really had a problem. I have a problem. I know that moving and being in a relationship won’t fix everything, but it’s hitting me that I need real help.”

“And I’m with you every step of the way.” He pulled her into a hug, letting her rest her face into his shoulder. “I meant it when I said that I’m with you...”

“To the bitter end,” Leah finished, her voice breaking at the last word. Nik tightened his hold on her, an aching in his chest as he remembered that he once kept that promise; but he never anticipated it to be her bitter end. He closed his eyes and relished in the warmth of her body against his, blocking out the memory of her cold, pale skin and still heart. Eventually he loosened his hold and tilted her chin up to look into her eyes.

“All the ragged parts of me...stitched back together when I’m with you,” he murmured only for her to hear. “I only want the same for you.”

Leah pulled him in for a warm, tender kiss. When they pulled away, a serene smile graced her features; Nik could swear there was something magical about her smile.

“I love you, and I can’t wait to see what tomorrow brings us,” she said, her voice strong and hopeful. Leah could feel her sunny disposition returning day by day, and it showed.

“I love you too, rook.” Nik pulled her to lie down beside him, their fingers intertwined. “What do you wanna do tonight? No jobs. We can go out or stay in, and I promise no snake tequila for either of us.”

Leah snorted and sprang up. “I say we stay in tonight in our apartment. Takeout?”

“You read my mind.”

“And there’s a reality show I’ve been meaning to catch up on...” Leah was already making her way to the living room while Nik followed. She babbled on about how it was a show where an American and a foreigner have to get married within 90 days for a special visa and that itself is, of course, where the drama begins and this season was especially dramatic and blah, blah, blah. Nik snorted at how invested she was in the show while they looked at food places.

The two Nighthunters spent the entire night snuggled up on their couch, talking and eating and canoodling. Leah sighed in satisfaction as sleep eventually took over them, her head resting on Nik’s chest. She finally felt like her life was going somewhere, and all that mattered was that they were in it together.

================================================

A/N: I hope you like yet another fic of me refusing to let these two go onto the next installment just yet! Okay in reality I’ve been writing the first chapter of that and am almost done but med school got weird and my mental health took a dive and COVID-19 happened and blah, blah, blah. Bonus points if you know exactly what reality show Leah is talking about! Any and all comments are greatly appreciated, and I hope you’re all staying safe and healthy 💗

Permanent tag list: @furiouscloddonutpeanut @inlovewithrebels @mistressofspiesxenia

Nightbound tag list: @saivilo

Anything tag list: @samara-rani @god-save-the-keen @xxdangerouscapri15xx

#nightbound #nik ryder #nik x mc #choices fanfiction #choices #playchoices #choices: stories you play #nik ryder x mc #phoebe writes choices

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littlemisswolfie · 4 years

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i get too attached

Based on this post [x]. New Moon AU where Charlie calls Harry instead of Billy when Bella gets depressed because he thinks Leah can help.

Bella Swan is a pathetic girl, Leah thinks. And it makes her angry because she used to be a pathetic girl, too.

She never asked for this. She never asked to babysit the daughter of the white guy her dad hangs out with. But her dad said, “You know what it feels like to be in her shoes. You’re her best hope,” and Leah can’t bear to let her father down after he weathered her meltdown after Sam left, so she agreed. And now Bella is sitting in her living room in a hoodie than hangs off her too-thin frame and barely breathing.

Jacob Black has been sniffing around the house, but Leah chased him off with her dad’s rifle after the fifth time he knocked on the door. “If she wanted you,” she spat, “she woulda asked. Get off my property.”

Everyone around her--her dad, her teachers, her friends--are babying her. And Leah doesn’t think that’s what she needs, because it’s definitely not what she needed. So she barks, “Hey, Swan, you like cooking, yeah?”

Slowly, excruciatingly slowly, Bella lifts her head and meets Leah’s eyes with her own. “Yes,” she says, so quiet Leah almost can’t hear her over the sound of the waves nearby.

“Good.” Leah throws the fridge door open and gestures vaguely to the insides. “Mom’s working a double tonight and none of the rest of us can tell our ass from a frying pan. If you’re gonna be hanging around here, you might as well pull your weight.”

Leah waits for the command to register, and watches with no small amount of satisfaction as Bella slowly rises from the couch and makes her way to the small house’s small kitchen. “Allergies?” she asks, sounding a little more sure of herself now that she has a task.

Biting back a smug grin, Leah says, “We’re garbage disposals. We’ll eat anything.”

Leah isn’t gentle with Bella Swan. She doesn’t talk to her in a soft voice or walk on eggshells around her. She’s loud and commanding and crude, because that’s what she wanted when she was mourning the loss of Sam and his love.

And, lo and behold, not babying an almost adult and making her confront her feelings actually works. Who fucking knew?

Leah looks at the two trashed bikes in the bed of the old truck, then to Bella, then back to the bikes, then back to Bella. “Are you high? What makes you think I know anything about bikes?”

Bella doesn’t cower like she used to when Leah snapped at her. “What? Are you afraid of getting your hands dirty or something?”

“Where’d you even get these pieces of shit?” Leah asks, not willing to dignify her taunt with a response.

“I found them on the road.”

“And you just picked them up?”

“No one else wanted them, obviously.”

“Yeah, I wonder why.”

“You can bitch at me and hold a wrench at the same time. Let’s see if we can get these babies up and running.”

And, well. A snarky, swearing Bella is a lot more entertaining than a zombie Bella, so Leah rolls up her sleeves and gets to work.

Bella brings a printed out tutorial for riding motorcycles to the rez after the bikes are fixed up and they spend a few days teaching themselves how to ride. When Bella falls off and scrapes her knee and passes out at the sight of her own blood, Leah runs back to town to buy her knee pads. The only kind the closest store has are kiddie ones, but Bella’s definitely small enough, so Leah buys a whole set of sparkly Barbie elbow-and-knee pads.

Bella laughs when she sees them, and the sound makes Leah’s heart thud a little harder in her chest.

Leah’s over at Bella’s for once, sitting with criss-crossed legs on the cool tile of the Swans’ kitchen floor while Bella whips up a lasagna that smells so good her mouth is actually starting to water, when she finally feels comfortable enough to open up.

“Do you ever wonder why your dad called my dad instead of Billy?” she asks.

Bella pauses in her layering and tilts her head down towards Leah. “Not really. Why?”

“Because he knew I know how you feel.”

Bella freezes. “What do you mean?”

And so Leah tells her about a girl and a boy, and about a life they were supposed to spend together, and about the girl’s heart-sister who took her happily ever after away.

She doesn’t even realize she’s crying until Bella’s arms (still too thin, god, she needs to eat more, what the fuck?) snake around her shoulders and pull her head to rest on her pale shoulder, exposed by her too-big Mariners shirt that is probably actually Charlie’s. “I’m here,” she says in a soothing voice that somehow doesn’t make Leah feel like she’s being pitied. “I’m here.”

It takes another twenty minutes for the lasagna to make it into the oven, but Leah doesn’t complain.

Despite her newfound friendship with Bella, Leah feels her temper rising. Little things like Seth using up the rest of the milk or her mom not closing her door when she leaves her room send her flying off the handle. For a few weeks she thinks it’s PMS, but when her period comes and goes and she still feels angry all the time, she starts to worry.n

It all comes to a head one night when her dad gets upset with her for a bad grade on an English test. What could have been a quiet, if heated, confrontation becomes a shouting match that makes Seth (little Seth, who’s grown what seems like a foot in a month) start edging towards the gun mounted on the wall.

Then her dad says, “Maybe I should call Charlie and tell him not to send Bella ‘round anymore if you can’t focus on your studies--” and that’s what does it. Anger tears through her like a bullet and suddenly her bones and muscles are snapping in unnatural directions and her clothes are shredding and where she was once a young woman she is now a gray wolf.

Leah knows she killed her father.

That’s why she doesn’t answer Bella’s phone calls. That’s why she keeps her door locked when she smells Bella coming into the house.

Her father had a heart attack because of her. And she’ll never forgive herself.

Maybe being in the boys’ heads and the boys being in her head is her punishment. Having to see Emily living the life she was supposed to live is how she can pay for her father dying.

(Except it doesn’t hurt, seeing them together. She doesn’t want Sam anymore. She doesn’t think she has in a while. The worst thing about the pack mind is Jacob fucking Black and his 24/7 Bellathon.)

(She refuses to think about the implications of that.)

(Because Bella already loves someone else. A very male, very leech-like someone else.)

The day of the funeral, Bella has finally had enough.

She pounds on the door to Leah’s bedroom. “Fuck you, Leah Clearwater!” she shouts. “You don’t get to abandon me! Not like Edward! I won’t let you!”

“Leah.” She winces at the sound of her mother’s stern voice. “Bella’s right. I understand you’re hurting, but you can’t cut yourself off. Get your ass out of your room and come to the funeral, or else I’m gonna tan your hide.”

Leah’s already dressed in her funeral dress that’s a few inches too short on her, even though she wore it to old man Joseph Featherstone’s funeral six months ago. Must be the werewolf thing. She looks at herself in the hand-held mirror she nailed to her wall by the handle in an attempt to recreate a vanity a few years ago and sighs. “Time to face the music, Lee Lee,” she mutters to herself, and she stands up and throws open the door.

As soon as her eyes meet Bella’s, her whole world crumbles and rebuilds itself, with a skinny, pasty, leech-loving white girl at the center of it all.

“Fuck,” she says. and before either Bella or her mother can react, she pulls Bella into her arms and buries her nose at the point where her shoulder slopes up to her neck and inhales, and, for just a moment, things aren’t terrible.

One day, they might even be kind of alright.

#twilight #leah clearwater #bella swan #leah/bella #bella/leah #my writing #my post #mine

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dailyaudiobiblechronological · 4 years

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1/21/2020 DAB Chronological Transcription

Genesis 27 - 29

Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible Chronological. I'm China. Today is the 21st day of January, welcome. It is so great to be here with you guys today. As we continue on through our week. We continue on in the book of Genesis. We are in chapters 27 - 29, and we are going to be in the English Standard Version for this week. Commentary

The story is so crazy. It's so crazy. We read about Jacob and Esau and Jacob deceiving his father Isaac into giving him the blessing. And being the first born, having that blessing was a big deal. We saw just the words that were spoken over Jacob and from that, the father's blessing and really just speaking, it's so much more than just like identity, but it's literally speaking blessing over them. And so there's so much power in that. And Jacob steals that. And so not only does he have his brother's birthright because he took that from him, he deceived him into giving it to him. Now he's also taken his blessing. And so Jacob is, he's, he's freaked out. He's like, okay, I got to leave because I'm not trying to get killed. And so he flees. And he comes across this, this man who's basically, I mean, he is family and I believe it's his, his uncle. And so he's like married to his cousins, which is so different. It's different times, but, uh, it's reading those details. Those are what stick out to me. Um, yeah. And so something very interesting happens and Jacob is like, okay, cool, I'll work for you seven years. They're gonna feel like days because I'm so in love with Rachel. And the Bible talks about Leah being, she having like a weak eyes. And that's like a kind way of saying that she was not attractive. She was not pleasant to look at. And Rachel was. And so every time I read this story, I'm like, "homie, how did you, like you're in love with someone. How do you not know like your, like sleeping with someone else that like, and you can't tell their voice or whatever". Um, but thinking about, it's like, okay, it's dark, there's no lights, there's no way for him to really know. Again, weird details that my brain thinks of. And so he's, he's completely deceived. So like they're, they're married, they've slept together, they are asleep, they wake up, the sun is up, he sees her face. It's not Rachel, it's Leah. And he goes to the Laban and he's like, "Hey, like wrong daughter. Did you like mean to do that or do you just hate me or what's going on"? And Laban, the truth comes out and he's like, look, "if I didn't give Leah to you, Leah probably would've never been married". And also it's like not custom for the oldest daughter to not be married, but the youngest daughter to be married. So they kind of have them go like in birth order. And it's just very, very interesting how much birth order matters in this time. And yeah, and so we have the story where he served another seven years. Just crazy. I'm like a year is forever, but seven heck like you better really be in love dude. And so he waits 14 years to be with Rachel, in love with her for 14 years. So they finally are married, which is the weirdest story ever. He has two sisters for wives and, and so we, we see that Leah is, is able to conceive, she's having sons and Rachel is not. And so after all of that summary, remember yesterday when I was talking about, um, pay attention to some of the things that we see, uh, that are repetitive. And just something that we've seen today is Jacob had things like, he was deceptive, he was manipulative and he stole things that weren't his, that were not rightfully his. And so now the narrative is being flipped where he was deceived, he was manipulated. And unfortunately, it doesn't just stop in this family line that like, he doesn't just say like, okay, wow. I'm like, this is all catching up with me. Lord, I repent. Um, how do I stop this going any further? Uh, none of that. And so we just kind of see this trickling downfall of manipulation, the seat and taking things into our own hands and really just so interesting to me, but also seeing the Lord being so sovereign in the fact of, okay, a blessing is a blessing. And yes, Jacob, you did steal it and it wasn't yours, but I will continue to bless you because that's who I am. And I love that about the Lord where he looks at our heart and he looks at also his promises in his word. And I don't think it's in the way of where he's like, "Oh, I like, that wasn't in the plans, like I still have to do that". I think that it was the Lord's grace that he continued out this plan with Jacob. Do I think that it was maybe supposed to be Esau this whole time? I have no idea. I'll ask when I get to heaven and let you know. But um like, it's those types of things that spark a lot of questions for me. And understanding the Lord's love in a deeper capacity of how could you have loved him this well, even though he did some really terrible things and hurt his family and then abandoned them all, wasn't even there for a conversation with his brother after he just stole his entire life. But just seeing who the Lord is in his goodness and how he forgives and how he loves and how he continues on his plan with his people. Prayer

And so Jesus, we love you. We thank you for your word. God, I just, um, I thank you for all of the stories that we read today. And if there are any of us who are like, wow, that's my family line or that feels familiar or this just kind of brings up some things that have yet to finish the healing works. Um, God, I thank you that ultimately this isn't our story. You are rewriting our stories and today is a great day to change heart to change course. If you're calling us back home to you, if you were calling us back into your arms, uh, which we we believe that you are. And so Jesus, if we resonate with the story of Jacob where we have caused havoc and mayhem and we have left the scene and abandoned our family or anything in that situation, God, I just pray that our hearts would be softened and that we would just feel your presence in this moment. Um, and then if we resonate with the Esau, God I just pray that we would really just begin to pray for those people that have caused us that pain, and that we would be able to love them in the way that you do and see them in the way that you do, and uh, have grace and understanding and peace that surpasses anything. And yeah, Lord, we just thank you for the continuation of healing in our families. And I thank you that we have stories like this that remind us to be mindful of our family and to continue to pray for our family line or what is to come and for what has uh, has been. And so Jesus, we just love you. We praise you. It's in your son's name we pray, amen. Announcements

Dailyaudiobible.com is our website. That is our home base and place of connection, so be sure to check that out. We are more than halfway, we are like definitely more than halfway into our fast, but if you don't know, we are doing a 21 day fast. And uh, it ends, we have four more days left. And so, um, so, so crazy, so exciting. But um, it's been so good. I've, I've noticed a difference in, uh, like for me, so like kind of just a refresh of what I've been fasting is, um, specific foods that have been very disruptive and very inflaming to my body. And, um, really just like drawing a line in the sand and saying like, I'm not eating those foods because I'm actually gonna press in when I like want them or when it feels like, what am I going to make tonight for dinner? Or what's like, how do I grocery shop or what do I eat or what do I do when I'm traveling? It really just pressing in and asking the Lord just to be in all of that. Cause that's never something that I invited him into, which is like a weird thing to think about. But um, that has been really beneficial for me and for my health and have definitely felt so much better. Um, and then also just like time before bed and being intentional to, um, take that time to pray over my family, over, um, people in just in my circle of life, uh, anything that I really just like, I've actually been really experiencing, a lot of fear, uh, lately and didn't even realize it until during this fast that that was exposed. And I have like, literally for like the past two weeks have woken up in the middle of the night, like three or four times, like, have not slept well and like, I don't know what it was that clicked in my brain, but, um, just thinking like, wow, what if the Lord's actually speaking to me in the middle of the night. And like, I've missed it just because I've thought it was either my dog or my husband snoring and I was just irritated. And so it's little things like that that I've really been able to be more sensitive and attuned to the Holy spirit where I normally wouldn't have been. I would've just been like, Oh, I'm, I'm hungry and, uh, this is the closest thing in my way. And so I'm just gonna eat this, but I'm not gonna feel good later. Or just be really easier to like, watch Netflix or just to be on my phone before bed so that I can get tired or anythings of that. And so swapping out those habits and just pursuing the Lord, has been so fruitful and definitely nourished my soul. Um, and so yeah, I'm really excited to hear what you guys, uh, think and are saying after this, fast. Like we can come back together on Sunday, um, and just really decompress, all that these 21 days have been and uh, yeah. And then we'll do a harvest fast in the fall, but yeah, continue to call in with this updates and how you're feeling and what you're fasting and all of the things, uh, through our prayer request line or through the app. That is all for today. I'm China, I love you. And I'll be waiting for you here, tomorrow. Community Prayer Line

Hello DABC family. This is Terry B, from Delaware. I am in my 13th year as a part of the Daily Audio Bible community. Shout out to my More sisters, hello. I am calling to say that I am doing the 21 day fast. I honestly didn't think I was going to do a fast at all, but China, when you came up with the idea, I thought, what should I do? And I thought, ah, perfect time do the Virgin, the JJ Virgin fast. So, um, got past the first week, uh, with a lot of sensations, but I'm working through it, uh, doing good so far. So asking for your prayers for the rest of the way and hoping to find out what I am, uh, having issues with. I've definitely been having some issues, uh, with my food allergies and so this should help me to finish figuring out what that is. I am praying for all of you who are doing the fast and look forward to hearing your story. Love y'all. Bye. Bye. Hi, this is Rachel from Pennsylvania and I just wanted to call in to Chronological and, um, let you guys know that I am looking forward to the phrase or word for this year. Um, the year of promise. When I first heard it, I was thinking, um, man, I'm just so happy and content right now. I feel like God has done everything I asked in 2019, so I don't have any more promises that I'm waiting on him for. But actually, um, then it just struck me like, hello, I am, I'm waiting for my husband to come to know the Lord. Um, and to be a believer and have a personal relationship. So I'm really excited about the year of promise because I'm, I'm looking forward to having my husband join me in my walk and, um, I'm looking forward to being able to talk with him about the, you know, the readings and, um, you know, all of the things that God is doing right now I feel like I scare him away if I tell them all the things I think God is moving and doing and it's so exciting for me. So I am really excited about the year of promise and I'm really excited that I believe God is going to do that for me and my husband this year. Um, I always say God works in his own time. Um, but really there isn't anything else, um, that God has promised me, um, personally. So I think that must mean that this is the year. Um, so I'm really looking forward to it. Um, thanks China for sharing that. Um, phrase with us, bye. Hello DABC family. It's EZ in Georgia. First of all China, I have to say thank you. Thank you, thank you for not playing a bunch of prayer requests in one sitting because I am the poster child as we all discovered this year when I tried to be a Double Dabber for four days for a short attention span, not about everything, about some things and I would like to fix it, but I can't. So I am calling to request prayer for my family. My father has had a very interesting history in my life. He was one of the most loved people in the community that I grew up in and I'm still a part of. Then he became a massive alcoholic and was for most of my life, we didn't have a relationship at all, to speak of. Um, came back into my life in about 2007 straightened his life out completely and things are wonderful, but now he is a chronic, severe diabetic and refuses to do anything to take care of himself. He has the most amazing genetics in the world. That's probably why he was a great athlete. So he lives with diabetes, blood sugar numbers that would probably kill most people and he just continues to function. I mean three, 400 it's ridiculous. And it's almost all in and out of the hospital all the time and just refuses to change anything, he's violent and aggressive. My mom is also very ill, she has rheumatoid arthritis and is incredibly sick and can't exactly do everything for him and he can do it for himself. If he would change his lifestyle, he would be fine. And I'm very resentful, I can't lie, he's in the hospital right this moment is why I'm even bringing this up. So I asked for prayer that I will love him again, that I will care. Because it's really easy for me not to because he was out of my life for so long. And that he will finally understand somehow by some miracle 'cause that's what it'll take, that he's got to do differently in his life or he is going to die. Doctors have told him, we have told him he doesn't listen, he doesn't care and that he will treat all of us better cause we all live in one house and it's kind of Bedlam and awful the way that it goes. So it's, it's, it's terrible. It really is, and it'll take a miracle, but I believe, thank you guys for the prayers.

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canonicallyanxious · 6 years

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i can’t even fake it anymore

SKAM Austin | One-sided Shay Dixon/Megan Flores | 1.4k words

So this is just a quick thing I had to get out of my system, an imagining of Shay and Meg’s first proper meeting. Title is pulled from “Forever” by Ekali. Thanks to @arindwell, @offbeat-leah, @pronouncingitwang and @crazyheartfics for the encouragement! <3 Hope y’all like this small thing =]

It’s warm for January, even if it’s Texas. There’s a lot of things not to like about living in this dumb state, and the weather is just one of them. What Shay wouldn’t give to move to a place that knew what seasons were supposed to be.

Then again, maybe there are worse things than the kind of afternoon that would let her lie on her back in the grass, sun kissing her cheeks, new colors dancing behind her closed eyelids. Maybe she wouldn’t mind that much if this moment lasted a little longer. If she lived in a world where leaving the present was less of an inevitability and more of a choice to make.

Something nudges against her foot. Probably Tyler’s crusty shoe.

“Hey, dipshit,” Tyler says. “We should probably get going.”

Shay doesn’t open her eyes. She doesn’t speak.

Just soaks it in.

A nudge against her shoulder now, harder, more insistent.

“Lazy ass.”

She cracks a single eye open and turns it slowly toward him. It’s the most she’ll let him have. “Bro, can’t you just let me chill for a hot second?”

“No,” Tyler intones. “No chilling for Shay Dick-son allowed, ever.”

Shay rolls her eyes. How original.

She props herself up on her elbows, racking her brain for the appropriate comeback, but before it comes to mind Tyler elbows her in the side and says, “Look, here comes Marlon and his new chick.”

Shay groans internally. She loves Marlon, she does, she’d give up her life for him in a damn heartbeat if she had to but the boy’s got ninety-nine problems and a bitch is all of them. She kind of wishes he’d stop bringing them to their practices. It always makes her feel a little off-balance, strangely, a little like a bright spotlight is being shone on her when he’s got those pretty girls with the empty smiles and the emptier heads sitting on his couch, nodding as if they know anything about music and acting like they’re not waiting for them to be done already so they can start sucking on Marlon’s face in front of the rest of them. That “I’m not like other girls” mentality is the kind of bullshit Shay’s been trying to kill inside herself for years because it’s never done her or anyone else a bit of good, but in those times she still can’t help but feel the difference between her and them keenly, her rough sharp edges bumping up against their almost untouchable perfection in that garage, that place that’s too small for all of them.

They’ll never notice her, is the thing that makes her feel weirdest of all. To them she’s practically Marlon’s sister, and that makes her harmless. Not even worth a second glance.

Though honestly she doesn’t know what would be worse, that or if they did pay attention to her. If they were actually watching.

Whatever. It’s complicated. That’s why Marlon should stop bringing his girlfriends to practice. It’s always complicated.

Especially with the new girl. God, there in one person is enough drama to last them all the fucking century.

“Hey, guys.”

She doesn’t startle because she’s too cool for that shit but her head snaps upward toward Marlon’s voice almost of its own volition. He’s towering above them and Megan’s there too, hand intertwined in his. The sun’s behind them, annoyingly, meaning Shay has to squint at them and she still can’t see their faces that well.

How much of a dumbass must she look, she thinks hazily, how unflattering must this angle seem?

“Hi,” Megan says, a little shyly, and Shay doesn’t know her too well but somehow there’s this image that comes to mind of the uncertain smile that might accompany that word. She’s just got one of those voices, Shay supposes, where you can tell what the person’s feeling from a single word. Heart not so much on her sleeve as it is exposed for the whole world to see, if you knew where to look.

Which is some dangerous shit, all things considered. It almost makes Shay want to feel bad for Megan, despite her best judgment. A girl like that is destined to have a hard time in this shit ass universe.

Shay brings a hand to her face, a poor attempt to shield her eyes from the sun. She still can’t see for shit. “Hey,” she says. Tyler says nothing.

“So, uh,” Marlon says, and he’s definitely not a heart-on-sleeve kind of person in general but Shay is maybe one of the only people in the world for whom that doesn’t matter. She knows intimately well the exact way his voice goes whenever he turns into a small wreck specifically because the girl he likes wants to kiss him back. Truly, a burden she must bear. “Y’all know Megan. She’s gonna watch us practice, if that’s chill.”

Tyler jumps to his feet. “As long as you don’t try to impregnate her in my garage. That’s basically public indecency, you could probably get arrested for that.”

Well, there’s no point in staying down here if she’s the only one. Shay gets up too. “Don’t be a dick, asswipe,” she says. “Yeah, it’s chill. We could use an audience.”

“Thanks,” Megan says, and smiles, very briefly, at Shay.

Marlon and Tyler have already stopped paying attention, arguing about some pop quiz they had in world history. Megan turns toward them, and Shay blinks.

It’s strange. Her back is to the sun now, but somehow she still feels like she’s squinting.

“All right, bitches,” Tyler says, spinning away from the group in the direction of the parking lot. “Let’s go.”

Practice goes without much of a hitch, surprisingly, considering Marlon and Meg are still very obviously and very squarely in their gross awful honeymoon stage and won’t stop making eyes at each other. Despite that they manage to get a good bit of work on one of their newer songs. Shay works out this cool syncopated beat they decide would be great for the chorus. It’s satisfying, she has to admit, to come up with something entirely on her own that everyone agrees is a good idea. She’d never say it to the boys, they’d probably give her shit until the end of their days, but it’s always nice to feel like she isn’t useless.

After they wrap up Marlon leaves to get them drinks, and Tyler and Shay collapse on the couches. Somehow Shay ends up on the one Megan was already sitting on. She didn’t think about it. She’d almost forgotten Megan was even there.

“You guys sound good,” Megan says. There’s that small half-smile on her lips, except it’s real and not imagined. It’s almost as quiet as her voice itself.

“Wow, thanks,” Tyler says, clear sarcasm dripping from his voice because he can’t go two seconds without being a total douche, apparently. “Your opinion means so much to us.”

“Seriously,” Megan says without a beat of hesitation, earnest and undeterred even if her voice is as gentle as before, and just for a moment, so brief Shay almost thinks or maybe hopes she imagined it, her heart twinges in her chest. “I’ve never seen a band live before. It’s cool.”

“Well, that definitely wasn’t us at our best, but it’s sick you liked our sound,” Shay offers before Tyler can jump in and be an asshole again. “That probably means we’ll kick ass when we actually get where we want to be.”

“You guys definitely will,” Megan says. “Especially you.”

Shay’s heart, that stupid treacherous thing, skips a very small beat. “What?”

“Yeah,” Megan says, tilting her head as her smile gets ever so slightly wider. “You’re such a badass on the drums.”

“No, I’m not,” Shay says, almost reflexively. “I’m, like, mediocre at best. Keeping time, that’s all I’m good for.”

She means it as a joke, but Megan doesn’t laugh.

“You’re not,” she says instead. “You’re really, really not.”

And her voice is as quiet as ever, but the kindness in her eyes is so damn loud.

It’s almost deafening.

And it’s then that Marlon comes back into the garage, drinks in hand and typical smirk on his face. “Got you your sprite, dumbass,” he says to Tyler, tossing the can over before throwing himself down between Shay and Megan and wrapping his arm around her, easy as an afterthought. They lean toward each other that way, too. Shay looks away just in time.

Tyler catches her eye. Badass? he mouths at her, raising his eyebrows.

Because of course. She’s not a heart-on-sleeve kind of person, either. She’s the kind of person with a heart you could probably see from the goddamn stars themselves.

Megan and Marlon are kissing now, really hard, which she doesn’t need to see because she can hear it. She looks the other way and sinks a little deeper into the couch, a little more inside herself.

Badass. What a fucking joke.

#skam austin #shay dixon #megan flores #shay x megan #sarah does writing #i don’t know the last names of the other characters oops #tyler and marlon show up in this too though

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justsomebucky · 7 years

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The Only Exception (Part 3)

Summary: AU. Reader is given the task of running a popular love advice internet show when her coworker is fired. Her cynical attitude toward love makes her offer some harsh advice, and more than a few hearts are caught in the aftermath. Will hers be one of them?

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x reader

Word Count: 3,523

Warnings: language, fluff, wishful thinking, hot firemen, sarcasm, cynicism, bad jokes, drinking, sad story retelling (mentions of death and loss)

A/N: Moving right along…and yes, I used a Keep Reading line. Also, shout out to @redgillan for making my day brighter.

Part - 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10

“What do you mean this is my office now?” You stared at your name, which was now fixed on a plate outside of the door. “I didn’t actually agree to anything long-term yet.”

“I don’t think May cares,” Scott said with a shrug, moving inside the office. “Views are clicks, and clicks are money. That’s basically all they want right now.”

To your surprise and horror, all of your belongings were now in Leah’s office. “When did they manage this?” You stepped in cautiously, as if more awaited you inside.

“Two guys from Maintenance and one from IT were here an hour before you to set everything up.”

You reached into your pocket and pulled out your phone, sending a quick text to your so-called assistant (and so-called best friend). When were you planning on telling me about the move?

“Right now!”

At the sound of Natasha’s voice, you whirled around and narrowed your eyes at her. “You’re supposed to tell me things like this before I get to work and find everything moved already.”

“This part is actually not as bad as the other thing I have to tell you, Y/N.”

Now you were worried. “What? Explain yourself. What other amazing surprises should I be expecting?” You moved closer to where she was standing, your hands on your hips.

“Well,” Nat began, pulling out her own phone and scrolling a bit. “There were four things total. First, you have a meeting with the creative team this afternoon.”

“I knew about that,” you nodded. “Keep going.”

“You have a new office, yaaay!”

Your eyes narrowed some more. “Also knew about that, thanks.”

Natasha gave you a nervous smile. “Here’s a good one: I took the liberty of setting up a date for you and Bucky tonight, once his shift is over.”

“You WHAT?” Now you could feel the out-of-control anger rising. “Natasha! I never agreed to that! He hasn’t even contacted me, and it’s been an entire week!”

“Yeah, about that, he busted his phone on the job Monday night, and begged Steve to ask me for your number again.”

“Likely story,” you huffed, turning away to look out the window. If you were going to be stuck in this office, at least it had a view. You did your regular calming exercise. There’s the Empire State Building…

“Last but not least, May wants you to stream your show live today.”

“Live?”

“Yeah, you know, as it happens. Not pre-recorded. Live,” Scott supplied.

“Got it.” You’d forgotten Scott was even in the room, that’s how quiet he’d been. “Scott, did Leah ever have to live stream her episodes?”

“Oh shit, no, never,” he laughed. “Can you imagine how awful that would have been? We had to do at least three or four takes every episode.”

“Doesn’t matter.” Nat’s voice was grim. “May saw some article about how more and more companies are using live stream on YouTube or Facebook to connect with an audience, so she wants to try it.”

“Don’t you generally have to advertise this so they can actually get an audience?” Scott asked, crossing his arms over his chest. He didn’t look happy, either.

“Well…that’s another thing…a fifth thing, if you will.”

“Spit it out, Nat,” you growled. “What else?”

“May has been advertising it, on the site that your show links to at the end. And not that you want to hear it, Y/N, but there’s been an awful lot of interest.”

“This cannot be happening.” You moved to sit at your new desk, head in your hands. The room wasn’t spinning, right? That wasn’t a thing that happened. It was just you, feeling faint. “I don’t want to do this.”

“I believe May’s exact words were, ‘She has to do it.’”

You groaned, letting your head fall to your desk.

This day just kept getting worse.

“Okay, just the same as ever, Y/N. I’ll count down, but instead of reading questions from email, you’ll be reading questions live from the comments. Nat is going to be picking them as they come in.”

“Try not to pick terrible questions, Nat, okay?” You were still mad at her for not telling you sooner, though you knew it was unreasonable. Knowing sooner would have just made you worry that much longer.

“Fine. Just, can we get to it? It’s almost time.”

Scott nodded, checking his watch. “Okay, ten seconds.”

You glanced in the mirror, touching your hair one last time before staring at the camera.

You can do this, you can do this you can do this…

“In five, four…’

Shit, you can’t do this! Don’t do this!

“…three, two…” After another beat, Scott pointed at you.

“Hi, I’m Y/N, the Love Therapist, and I’m here live streaming today with all of you to answer your questions, and hopefully offer up some helpful advice. Let’s get right to the chat, shall we? My assistant is going to be picking questions, so if yours doesn’t get answered, don’t worry, the regular show email is still available for you to send in a question.”

Scott left the camera on you as Nat read off the first question.

“Isaac212 asks, ‘I got a girl pregnant, but I don’t really like her at all. She’s terrible, boring, and clingy as hell. What should I do?’”

You made a face at Nat, then the camera. “Well, Isaac, I’d say first of all, it doesn’t really matter what you want anymore. You have a kid with this person you loathe, and the only one I feel sorry for here is the child. Congrats, dad. Time to take responsibility for your actions, even if you hate the woman. Next question.”

When she didn’t say anything, you glanced over at her. “Aren’t there any more questions?”

“Well, actually…this question comes from user Confused in Brooklyn’s Ex-Fiancé.”

More follow up? Why would you have expected anything less… “Go on.”

“He writes, ‘I just wanted you to know that you ended a relationship the other week, and I’m still pissed off, because you gave an answer without thinking of the consequences of your actions. I hope other people think first before they take your advice.’”

There was a brief silence in the room, before you cleared your throat. “Fair enough, Ex-Fiancé. I deserve that. It was my first show, and I did give out advice that was somewhat vague, which led your former significant other down a certain path and away from you.”

You glanced to your right, to the window and your beloved city, before looking squarely at the camera. “But, if you think I caused the problems in your relationship that led to its ultimate demise, you are sadly mistaken. You need to look at yourself and the role you played in making your fiancée feel like she couldn’t talk to you about your problems, so much that she relied on a stranger from the internet for help.”

Scott was nodding behind the scenes, but you were too fired up to acknowledge him.

“It sounds to me, Ex, that you thought everything was sunshine and rainbows when it wasn’t. Were you the only one benefiting from the relationship? Were you even paying attention to the poor woman? I suggest you work on your communication skills, and I sincerely hope everything works out for you in the future. Moving right along…”

The show continued live for an hour, and by the end of it you were mentally and emotionally exhausted. The thought of going home and curling up with a nice book or binging a TV show sounded like heaven right then.

You didn’t even bother to ask permission to leave; what were they gonna do now, fire you? You grabbed your coat and phone, determined to leave work’s baggage where it belonged.

“Where are you going?” Natasha called down the hall.

Dammit; you’d hoped to sneak out before she saw. “I’m going home, Nat. I’m tired.”

“You have a date with Bucky tonight, remember?” She rushed to catch up with you, keeping pace beside you as you hauled ass down the hall.

“No. No, I cannot tonight. I’m sorry. Maybe some other time.” The thought alone made you downright drained.

“Um, well…he’s downstairs waiting.”

That stopped you in your tracks, and if looks could kill… “Excuse me?”

“Steve sorta…asked where we work and I told him.”

“Nat, I love you, I really do, but you have to stop meddling in my personal life. I didn’t ask for your help, and I didn’t ask you to set me up with Bucky again.”

“Well you weren’t going to see him on your own!”

“Maybe that’s the point!” Your voice was getting too loud, so you tried to calm down a little. “I’m not ready. I’m not.”

“You’ll never be ready,” she snapped, before turning and walking away from you.

You didn’t really have a retort to that. Maybe she was right; maybe you were never really going to be ready. Why was it that you could give good advice to strangers, but not take it for yourself?

With a big sigh, you trudged to the elevator, then the lobby, where Bucky Barnes was indeed waiting for you.

“Hey,” he said with a smile, though it didn’t quite look like it was reaching his eyes. “Ready to go?”

“I don’t know if I really want to go out tonight, Bucky,” you said apologetically. “I just had a bad day at work and I kind of just want to go home and veg out.”

“What’s wrong? I watched your show, by the way, on my lunch. That was pretty intense.”

Great. Just what you needed, for the guy you were kindofsortof seeing to see you embarrass yourself live. “So then I guess you heard the one guy who blames me for ruining his life?”

Bucky’s eyes widened. “That was something, wasn’t it.”

“Yeah,” you scoffed, glancing around the lobby. “It’s not my fault his fiancée was having doubts, but suddenly I’m the bad guy who ruined everything. All I did was tell her to evaluate things for herself. Then he goes and suggests that no one should listen to me….Ugh! Whatever.”

“Hmmm. Well, I am a fireman…I can rush you to the burn unit if you want?”

You glanced back at him to see he was absolutely kidding, his eyes now twinkling with mischief. “Hilarious.”

“Just thought I’d offer.”

“Mmhmm…” You nodded out the door. “Well, are we having this date, or what? I could use a distraction, I guess.”

“Ah, that’s the enthusiasm I was looking for,” he joked, motioning for you to lead the way.

You weren’t sure why it surprised you, but your day definitely got better the moment Bucky showed up. He’d taken great care to make sure you were laughing the whole way to dinner.

He’d taken you to a Japanese restaurant, conveniently located halfway between your apartment and the firehouse, because he personally knew the owner. When she first saw Bucky walk through the door, her eyes lit up, and she swooped in to grab him and hug him tightly. He hugged her back with such ferocity, and a fondness you’d never seen from him before.

Now the two of you were seated across from one another, at a small table near the kitchen.

The entire restaurant was comprised of the main dining area and then the small kitchen in the back, but the way it was laid out and decorated made it feel like it was twice its size. Hand-painted designs played out scenes from history and mythology all along the bright yellow walls, while heavy red curtains and red tablecloths brought you back down to reality.

So far, the date was going a little too well. “You won’t be called out again, right?”

Bucky shook his head, a small smile lifting the corner of his mouth. “Not tonight, no. I swapped on-call shift with Steve so I could be here, uninterrupted.”

A warm feeling spread through your bones, seeping into your heart a little, though you’d never admit it. When was the last time someone put effort into spending time with you? It had been…well, you couldn’t recall, but it had been a long time.

Bucky must have noticed a shift in the atmosphere around you both, because he started fidgeting in his chair. You wondered what could have brought on his discomfort, when he was the one to make such a bold statement.

“I used to live in an apartment above this place,” he explained quietly, his eyes traveling to the staircase in the back of the room. “They were very gracious landlords when I first struck out on my own. She and her husband treated me like family. Her husband passed away last year, so I try to stop by and see her as often as I can.”

You let your own eyes wander over his features while he was lost in thought. His brown hair was getting a little long, and his blue-grey eyes were contemplative. His eyes had little laugh lines around them, and you saw a scar across his chin. Maybe that was from a fire fight gone awry; you’d have to ask him sometime.

When his eyes met yours sooner than you were expecting, you saw surprise flash in them. “You’re staring at me. Was it something I said?”

“No.” You shook your head, feeling your face heat up a little at being caught observing him. “You just haven’t told me much about yourself before.”

“Ah. Well, there’s not much to tell. I was born and raised upstate. My parents moved a little closer to the city, though, after…”

You were almost afraid to ask. “After what?”

His fists clenched on the table, and when he noticed, he moved his hands to his lap. “When I was eighteen, I had just left to go to school down here in the city. My parents were off playing cards with the neighbors, and they left my little sister alone.”

Bucky’s eyes dulled and his expression darkened for a moment, but he shook it away before looking back at you. “She had some kind of candle burning, then they think she fell asleep. There wasn’t much left of the house after they were done putting out the fire.”

“I’m so sorry,” you whispered, your heart aching for him. You had a sudden urge to try to fix everything, though you knew that was not only absurd, but impossible.

“That’s why I became a fireman, anyways. I wanted to help prevent other families from going through that if I could.” He averted his eyes. “So, tell me why you went into the advice business.”

It was pretty obvious that he was not comfortable talking about his past any longer, so you indulged him this one time. “I didn’t get into the advice business. I got into the therapy business, at least I wanted to.”

“Why, though?” He lifted his curious gaze to meet your eyes again. “What made you decide that was the career for you?”

You didn’t answer him for a moment, trying to collect your thoughts. After his big revelation, you didn’t want to sound like an idiot. “Ever since I was a kid, when someone else was hurting and they didn’t deserve the pain, I hurt, too. If a kid was bullied, I comforted them. If a stray cat was hungry, I fed it. I just-”

You looked down, fiddling with the tablecloth in front of you. “I’ve been told I am empathetic. Over the years, it got to be too much, and it would weigh me down. So I decided that if I could channel it into something more productive it wouldn’t hurt me as much. I don’t know if you noticed, or anything, but I have a hard time letting people get close to me.”

“It sounds like self-preservation.”

Your eyes flickered up to Bucky’s, and while you were expecting judgment, you only saw understanding in them. “Really? Because the guy on the live stream today, the one with the wedding I inadvertently helped cancel, basically told me that I’m a life-ruiner. I’m not going to be able to get over that anytime soon.”

Bucky visibly flinched, but he coughed to cover it up. “Let’s just have a nice meal and forget work and our pasts and anything else but the two of us, okay?”

“That’s the best idea I’ve heard all night,” you admitted, reaching for your sake. Things were getting too sad and deep here, and you didn’t want to chase him away yet.

The owner came over just then with both of your plates in her hands, and your stomach rumbled in appreciation at the delicious food she placed in front of you.

“Thank you, this looks amazing as always,” Bucky told her, laying on his typical charm with a smile. The gloom his eyes held earlier was gone, and for that you were grateful.

“You are welcome. Maybe next time you won’t take so long to visit?” She turned her eyes to you, her eyebrows raised. “And you, good for you for putting up with this one. I hope he doesn’t scare you off like he did the last one.”

That must have been a sore spot for him, because he cleared his throat and gave her a nod. “I’m sure I’ll swing by again soon.”

“Good.” She gave a sharp nod to you both, then disappeared through a swinging door into the kitchen.

“What was that about? You scared off your last date? Should I be worried?” You tried to sound like you were kidding, but you were wondering why she would bring it up.

“It’s nothing,” he shrugged, taking a bite of his food. “Don’t worry about it.”

Instead of pushing the topic, you decided to follow his lead and eat your dinner. You even beat Bucky to a clean plate, leaning back with a satisfied groan. “That was amazing, but I’m too full to move.”

Bucky laughed, the little lines you’d noticed earlier finally making an appearance as he stood. “No dessert then?” He gave you a mischievous glance as he pulled out his wallet and laid some money down on the table.

“Let me pay my half,” you offered, reaching into your bag as you stood up too.

Bucky’s hand covered yours before you got very far. “Let’s just head out. I don’t like extended goodbyes.”

“Okay.” You let him take your hand in his and lead you out the door.

Outside, under the weird orange light from the restaurant’s sign, without any warning at all, Bucky cupped your jaw and kissed you for the first time.

If he’d meant it to be a chaste kiss, you wouldn’t know, because you moved closer and deepened it almost instinctively. His other arm wrapped around your waist, locking you tightly against him.

It felt really good to be wanted.

Bucky pulled back after a moment, looking more than a little disheveled and breathing hard. “Y/N, I have to tell you something.”

“Right now, on the sidewalk?” You made a face. “Can’t we wait until we’re indoors somewhere?”

“I don’t want to go any further with this-“ he gestured between the two of you, “-without talking about it.”

“Have you murdered someone?”

Now it was his turn to make a face. “No.”

“Are you…seeing someone else?”

“No, I’m not.”

There was only one logical explanation left, and it hurt to even say out loud. You felt your chest tighten as your anxiety made its presence known. “It’s me, isn’t it? You just aren’t into me? Well, at least you tried, you know, that’s more than most men, and-“

“No,” Bucky interrupted, his hand lifting to brush your cheek gently. “That’s definitely not it at all, I just…I’m worried that when I tell you, you won’t want to see me anymore.”

“What is it then?” you breathed, feeling like your insides were tying in knots. “Because I don’t exactly have a lot of self-confidence, Bucky, and I really need to know.”

He took in a deep breath, then let it out slowly as his eyes searched yours. “It’s a long story. I-“

You could have cursed the entire planet when his (new) phone started going off, interrupting him with an emergency alert. “I thought you said you weren’t on call tonight?”

“If it’s a big enough emergency, I don’t have a choice. I’m really sorry. I don’t want to have a short conversation about this, or text about it. Can we hang out tomorrow?”

“Okay, I will carve out some time for you tomorrow. But we’re doing something that I want to do for once.”

“You got it.” He leaned over and kissed your cheek, then walked backwards slowly. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Can you get home okay?”

“I think I can manage the three blocks to my apartment. Be safe.”

“You, too.” With a final wave, Bucky turned and jogged up the road to the firehouse.

You sighed, holding your bag a little closer as you walked the other way to your apartment.

There was no way you would sleep peacefully that night.

Part - 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10

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#bucky barnes x reader #bucky x reader #bucky barnes fanfiction #bucky barnes reader insert #bucky x tony #bucky barnes au #AU!buckybarnes #au!bucky #this is fanfiction so if you don't like it keep scrolling and no i cannot fix tumblr's app issues

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teenmomtruths · 7 years

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One More Week! (Submission)

When was the TMOG premiere again? I don’t like it when there’s zero Teen Mom going on. Nice distraction at a work :) Speaking of which, let’s clarify, shall we? Some people work. They also very much want to be parents. These people have no choice but to utilize a thing called ‘daycare’. And, having worked 6 loooonng years in daycare, from the infant room to the 3’s and 4’s and afterschoolers, I can speak on it dammit. If you have a full time job and have no other option, I get it. If you need a few hours here and there and do 8-12, 3 days a week, I get it. But to put a child as young as Kai in it full time is just lazy. Sorry. Not sorry. SHE is sorry. Taking that baby out and putting him in a room all day so she can go back to bed is sorry. There is NOTHING the people in that building are going to teach Kaiser that Jenelle couldn’t easily do herself, IF she had a mind to. She’s supposedly very bright and was good in school (grades-wise). She could teach Kai his ABC’s, his colors and how to count to 20+. She could teach him to wash his hands and put away his toys. That’s all anyone teaches in daycare. Know why? Because 'real’ teachers, i.e., people who hold at least a four year degree in education, would not work in daycare, unless they own that bitch. You’re not going to make $8, $9 an hour and no benefits when you could be starting at $32,000 with full health and dental coverage. No. That would be dumb. And so, generally (because the state, at least mine, has started to require daycare workers to enroll in a few hrs of early education classes, but they get hired on and Then start the class) the people working in them have no higher education than high school. Don’t get me wrong here. That’s not to say they’re dumb or unfit to look after children. There are many wonderful women who go above and beyond for very little pay or thanks. And there are many who just couldn’t find anything else and are not good with kids. I’ve seen it. I’ve seen the abuse. I won’t get into all that, but suffice to say, i came out of it vowing that if and when I ever had a child, it wouldn’t be unless and until i could stay home at least the first few years with them. I’m very grateful that I was able to learn that lesson before I was in that position. So, and believe me, this tastes bad coming out, I agree with Nathan. Kai doesn’t need it. Unless you want to consider the States’ newest theory as applying to him. They’ve started the 'first steps’ program for younger kids to start. These are generally kids the state (without quite saying it outright) have determined would be best off with as little time at home as possible and as much extra time spent on learning just how to act right as possible. Because they know the parents aren’t teaching them even how to pick up their trash or not hit. That’s pretty bad, but Jenelle’s money keeps Kai out of it. Maybe he is better off there. Idk exactly what goes on in that house all day. I do know that Jenelle is capable and able and is just straight up Not interested. She had school as her excuse before. Now she’s going to say he’ll be 'socialized’. Oh, and learn all kinds of crap she ticked off that he’s not capable of yet. Guess what? They play Around each other that young. And any interaction he gets playing with cousins or Jace would be just the same thing. I just can’t with her. She bitches at Nathan for not getting Kai, yet she skips weekends with Jace and can’t see how Babs is ever annoyed by it. Nathan Does get Kai and oh, then he can’t see Jace! Was Jace there? No? Oh, nevermind. Fruitless trying to make sense out of it. All I know is there are so many moms out there who would get down on their knees and thank God that they had the blessing of being able to experience being a parent and not working. So many who tearfully drop off their babies and call during the day, who beat themselves up, who would Kill to have her money and her opportunities as a mom. And she just throws it away. She’s throwing all that time with him away. Nathan’s already got him almost half the month, now she’s voluntarily giving up half Her time too. it’s just sad.

Kail used to be that kind of mom. It’s sad to me to watch her too. It really is like she’s having an early mid life crisis. She used to be all about Isaac. At least she seemed to be. Maybe she wasn’t, now that I’m thinking on it. Maybe her sneaking Jordan into the house was a sign of things to come. She seemed to consider him a lot more though, you know? Like how will this effect him, how will Isaac feel seeing that? Now, it’s like, oh, he’s ok. He’s just always gonna be ok. I’m glad Jo tweeted that Isaac was in a much better place now. I felt a little better. Jo said on the show that at times it seemed like Isaac was just 'broken somehow’. That was good wording for it. He just looks at a loss sometimes and you can see he just doesn’t understand and feels betrayed. He never in a million years imagined Javi picking just Lincoln up and not him. His face when Javi did :( Omg. Because the whole 'this is your new daddy’ thing was driven home so much and so hard. I’d be much more forgiving and think, she’s young. Kail didn’t understand then but now she sees and won’t make that mistake again. But she’s pregnant. Hard to wrap the head around. She goes on and on about school and a career and time for herself. I just think she’s created more drama where it was so un-necessary and now she’s going to have things even more complicated. I can’t believe she did it. She’s been pregnant some 6,7 times and suddenly thought she couldn’t have one? None of that story makes sense. if she’d had serious treatment no dr would recommend trying right away. They’d all say, let you body heal first, get the toxins out from the foreign substances we’ve subjected it to. I think it was yet another spontaneous, impulsive decision on her part. But Javi can’t say shit. Javi walked into this trainwreck begging for a ticket. He Loves the attention and eats up the limelight and I think Kail is shitting herself realizing she put him there. He said he was going over because he didn’t want to fight and they needed to speak like adults. It lasted literally two seconds. The very first thing was him asking for a drink and her being petty and refusing even water. So he gets mad and starts saying messed up stuff. I’ll throw this, I’ll break that, It’s My house. He storms out and remembers himself, tries to go back and guess what? He does it again, Right away! Turns around to apologize and goes, but I’m not knocking because it’s my house. Wrong wrong wrong, ya bof wrong! BOTH of them seriously need to Grow UP.

Chelsea was seriously about to strangle the words in her mom’s throat :) Idk why her mom just kept bringing up Adam as opposed to Cole and Chels was like What Are You Doing? Now? Really? As in, there’s cameras here mom, thanks. it was funny. Super proud of Leah. She said she wants to take English classes, things she’s interested in, figure it out. I think it’s God’s plan. His plan wasn’t beauty school, because her heart didn’t seem to be there. And hey, if you didn’t get the best education growing up, all you can do is try and educate yourself. That’s a much more admirable option than remaining ignorant and choosing to use your bad public school as an excuse for the next 50+ years. People have teased her for not speaking very well. All she can do now is educate herself and her children, so kudos to her. I really hope she’s doing as well as it seems.

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you-make-me-wander · 7 years

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Eros - Chapter 1

Summary: Stiles and Lydia find in lust the escape they so often need because they think they don’t deserve love. But what if they do? Strangers/Soulmates/College AU

Rating: Explicit

Word Count: Over 12,5k

Tags: Alternate Universe, Strangers, Soulmates, College, Angst, References to Previous Characters’ Deaths, Emotional Hurt, Comfort, Strangers to Lovers to Anchors to Friends to Soulmates, Friendship, Loss, Love, Sexual Content, Romance, Alcohol, Bad Decisions

Read on AO3, FF, Wattpad or under the cut.

Author’s Note: Huge thanks to Leah - @grounderstiles -, Giulia - @lydias-martin - and Olivia - @lydiamartinu - for beta-ing this for me. You guys are incredible!

And of course to @bebethsas, to whom this work is dedicated AND who’s pretty much my other half. God knows why she puts up with me as it is, and truly a great deal of my inspiration comes from the headcanons and fic ideas we throw back and forth, so thank you for that as well. Honey, may we discuss smutty and fluffy Stydia until the end of our days!

“If Love's a Sweet Passion, why does it torment? If a Bitter, oh tell me whence comes my content? Since I suffer with pleasure, why should I complain, Or grieve at my Fate, when I know 'tis in vain? Yet so pleasing the Pain is, so soft is the Dart, That at once it both wounds me, and Tickles my Heart.”

- "If Love's a Sweet Passion", from the libretto of Henry Purcell's The Fairy-Queen, act 3.

Lydia empties her red cup again, drinking all that remains in one gulp and feeling warm all over but not quite drunk, not yet.

She watches with scrutinizing attention to detail everyone that passes her by, from those who are too high on drugs to understand what they’re doing, to those who run outside so that they can throw up on the lawn. From betrayed individuals that want nothing but to get out of there, to their significant others who rush behind them to see if they’ll be granted a second chance. From couples that flirt for the first time, to those that sneak to the upper floor to fuck inconspicuously.

It all seems ethereal, Lydia thinks, as if she’s watching the room from behind a veil. Everything in plain sight but too far from her reach, and if that’s not a metaphor for her fucked up life she doesn’t know what is.

Lydia resumes walking to get another drink (she can't decide between water to subside the headache that she knows is coming, or something stronger than the mildly alcoholic beverage she was just drinking to worsen the hangover she can already foresee because honestly, she just doesn't care), the music blaring from the speakers with a volume that leaves her slightly disoriented as she bumps into sweaty bodies and grabby hands that cause the redhead to scrunch her nose in disgust as she makes her way to the improvised bar.

She doesn't have it in her to do something about that invasive closeness though, because the alcohol will help her forget about all of this as the night goes, like it always does.

Well not always, she knows, but it sure as hell helps and she’ll take that any day.

Lydia adjusts her shirt to show a little more cleavage before bending over the counter to get the bartender's attention; a girl that Lydia recognizes from one of her classes. She’s busy with other students, each in their own degree of sobriety or lack thereof and Lydia has never hated being in college so much.

The other girl has at the very least twenty other people to tend to and she's all alone behind the counter at the moment, and the fact that she’s been eyeing Lydia ever since college started just over two years ago doesn’t get the redhead another drink any faster, regardless of how impatient Lydia is to get one. As far as she knows, the other girl is bisexual much like herself and her name is Caitlin, so she thought that maybe a little flirting would help her out because seriously, Lydia just needs to get drunk.

Or rather, she just wants to forget.

Apparently luck doesn't seem to be on Lydia's side tonight, because the group of jocks at the other end of the bar are certainly taking their time demanding the bartender’s attention, and Lydia wouldn't want to get the girl into trouble just because she can't handle her own problems properly and needs another drink sooner rather than later.

The redhead huffs in annoyance, resigned for the moment. Turning around to lean against the counter as times passes and she waits for her turn, Lydia studies her surroundings once more, always watching.

Her eyes land on his almost immediately, for at least the fifteenth time that night if Lydia recalls correctly. It may have been more since she’s already a little tipsy, but she can't help but to be lured in once again. He is not exactly the type she usually goes for, not at all, not too build but lean instead, tall and with dark hair, brown eyes that seem to glow when the right light hits them, long fingers that make Lydia wonder if they're any good where it matters.

She's been watching him all night and it's the first she's ever seen him around. In all honesty, she doesn't know what seems so inviting about him but for sure there is something calling her name, pulling her in, catching her attention in a way that it hasn't for a long time and fuck it, Lydia wants him. It's been nearly four months since she's been with someone and tonight is as good a night as any to be fucked by a stranger.

And don't get her wrong, she doesn't do this as often as she used to anymore, not since she started getting better after everything around her fell apart. Obviously she’s still not healing as she should but Lydia still needs the distraction that it provides, the thrill of it. She still needs to get her mind off of things when it’s all too much to bear.

And deep down, she just wants to feel something.

Something that makes her forget that she's alone in this world and has no one, that her life truly fucking sucks, and anything that makes her forget about it is welcome in her book.

Even if it’s just for one night.

He stares back at her from across the room, sitting on one of the couches while he sips on his beer distractedly. He’s by himself just like her, Lydia thinks, and hasn’t made a move at all for the almost three hours that she’s been at the frat party and finding herself staring at him. He’s just there, almost wallowing, his eyes with a lack of spark that Lydia would recognize anywhere.

It’s the same dull, empty gaze she finds every day when she looks at herself in the mirror.

Their eyes have locked occasionally throughout the night but neither has done anything so far, the guy drinking on the couch as Lydia moves around the room with a cup in hand, trying to find a better spot to watch everyone else come and go, trying to find someone who can put her mind at ease at least for the time being but she finds that her eyes keep diverting inexplicably to where he’s been.

He holds her stare for a bit longer this time, his fingers tapping on the bottle as he lets his eyes wander over her form appreciatively, returning to her own when he’s seemingly pleased.

Lydia smirks.

It vanishes quickly though, when he decides to finally get up from his seat and make his way towards her. He stumbles twice in a manner that Lydia believes relates more to his character than however drunk he may be, which she thinks isn’t that much from what she’s been able to gather from him all night. Her eyes never leave his as he shortens the distance between them and it’s refreshing, honestly new to Lydia that instead of making a move right away, he stops at her left and places his empty bottle of beer on the counter as she stares up at him warily, their elbows brushing together as they face away.

Even though she likes the game, Lydia finds herself apprehensive at times.

She doesn’t want love. She doesn’t want happy endings and she doesn’t want strings attached. She just wants a distraction, someone who can leave her mind blank for one night so that she can go back to torturing herself the next morning because it’s all that she can allow herself to have from time to time.

It’s all she knows.

It’s all she deserves.

And nothing is gonna change that.

When he glances back at her, Lydia finds it intriguing how his eyes - looking lost and almost devoid of emotion - remind her of her own so much that she’s hit with an urgent feeling of selflessness before she can put her walls back up.

It hasn’t happened in so long that Lydia gets distracted for a bit, and doesn’t really acknowledge that he’s talking to her until he raises his tone enough for Lydia to focus on his voice over the noisy music.

“What are you drinking?”

Lydia doesn’t allow herself to waver any more than that, however. Never.

Not even when she wants to.

“Vodka,” she decides, “if the bartender gets to serve me anytime tonight.” She replies quickly, tilting her head in the brunette’s direction with a frown.

“Hey, Caitlin,” the stranger yells, surprising Lydia. The bartender turns to face him at the sound of the familiar voice and smiles at him warmly. The redhead watches their interaction carefully, silent beside him. “I’m taking one, alright?” He says, reaching over the counter and taking one vodka bottle from a hidden nook which Lydia would have never guessed was there.

The girl, Caitlin, just nods and gets back to work while the guy snatches a bottle opener as well, offering both items to the redhead who is looking at him like she’s forever grateful. Their fingers linger for a beat too long as she wraps her fingers around the bottle before opening it easily, admiring how others would have opened it for her and maybe put something in her drink while he obviously hasn’t. He doesn’t strike her as the type, anyway. “Thanks.”

“She’s in my dorm. I know her, so I get privileges. I’ll just pay her later,” he explains nonchalantly, taking a swig when Lydia offers the bottle to him after she drank first.

“Oh, you don’t have to pay for me.”

He gives Lydia a cheeky, playful grin, and if Lydia were to ever care she’d say it was almost endearing. Still, it didn’t escape her how it didn’t reach his eyes. “Who said I was paying for you?” He quips teasingly.

“How could I ever repay you the favor, then?”

She doesn’t mean for it to sound flirty even though she doesn’t mind at all that it does. She just really wanted another drink and she’s glad that he stepped in to aid her in such a moment of need.

“You looked like you could use a drink and I thought I could help. I’m just glad to know that I did.” The words are honest, but he doesn’t tell her that it’s because she reminded him of himself when he’s in need of a cloudy mind so bad that it shows, but he has a feeling that she is aware of that anyway.

For a second, Lydia wonders if he can read minds or if he’s actually not so good at flirting not to use an opening like that. Either way, she finds herself immediately curious.

“If you get me another one, we can dance,” she offers, a mischievous smile taking over her plushy pink lips that makes his heart skip a beat even if he doesn’t notice it.

He leans in to speak in her ear, taking advantage of the excuse that she might not hear him with the music so loud. “And who said I want to dance?”

Lydia smirks again, taking a good look at his features now that he’s closer, noticing for the first time several moles across his cheeks and neck that honestly only make him look more distinctive, better, hotter. She wonders where else he has them… “You did come all the way here from across the room, now didn’t you?”

They stare at each other intently as if the first one who looks away is gonna lose a game they never really agreed to, hearts beating slightly faster as time passes them by and neither moves.

He's the first to break the tension - a very welcome tension if he might say so, for it's been so long since he's felt such a thing and he needs it, craves it to his core because he just needs to feel something. He reaches over the counter again to grab another bottle, with an amused grin as he raises his eyebrows playfully at the redhead beside him. He gets a chuckle out of her unexpectedly, which is an occurrence that doesn't happen often to Lydia anymore.

He suspects as much. He’s been in such a position a few times before - hell, he’s in that position right now - and honestly he doesn't know where it comes from, so naturally.

In truth, neither does she.

It surprises them both and it’s like they don’t know how it feels to be happy anymore, but they don’t have it in them to care much about it.

In return he gives her a small smile in understanding, at least pleased to see how beautiful she looks when she seems contended. Just contended but not happy, because it's blatant to him that she's probably just as miserable as he is and seems to be looking for the same thing. Her eyes remind him of his own when he looks at himself in the mirror sometimes, empty at best, but contended nonetheless even if for a fleeting second.

She surprises even herself when it happens and how, almost effortlessly, the laugh escapes her, so Lydia drinks a little more to make sure that it doesn't happen again.

"We'll share," he tells her, opening the second bottle for himself.

Lydia raises her own and nods in thanks. “I’ll drink to that.”

It’s surprising to both of them how well the other can handle their alcohol. On his part he never thought that someone so small as her could ever drink vodka that fast but she does, almost as if it’s water, and to her it’s only unexpected in the way that he doesn’t get grabby or more flirty - inconvenient is what she actually means - or just plain stupid like most men do as they get more and more drunk.

She would know.

Unfortunately, she would know.

Instead they just stand there, close to the bar and to each other finishing their drinks in silence as they occasionally check the other out, testing the waters. It’s different, Lydia thinks, and unexpected and intriguing and so, so interesting that Lydia will be damned if she gets out of this party tonight without having a taste of him.

They finish drinking practically at the same time, and before he knows it she’s grabbing hold of his hand and pulling him to the dance floor, their bottles forgotten on the counter behind them.

He doesn’t dance, not really, but if a girl this beautiful wants you to do something, you do it, no questions asked. He knows that if his life wasn’t as fucked up as it is, this girl would have never picked him tonight, not in a million years, and that she’s only doing it because he’s broken and damaged and because he can tell that she is the same.

That’s probably what, in a way, seems appealing to her about him.

He doesn’t care though because if he’s right, if they want the same thing and that’s to just feel something for a change and forget about whatever torments them even if only for a night, a distraction from however damaged they might be, he’s in.

He’s so in and god, he could seriously use a distraction right now. Tonight is not a good night for him at all.

It surprises him how her thought process is apparently similar to his own. Already in the middle of the improvised dance floor (the fraternity’s living room, even if he doesn’t know which frat house it is), the redhead lets go of his hand and faces him head on, getting up on her tiptoes to whisper in his ear, her hands grabbing at his shirt for leverage and not so subtly to feel his torso under her touch. “This is a one-time thing.”

“Good” it’s all he replies with, and it’s honestly all he was wanting and counting on.

He doesn’t want love. He doesn’t want happy endings and he doesn’t want strings attached. He just wants a distraction, someone who can leave his mind blank for one night so that he can go back to torturing himself the next morning because it’s all that he can allow himself to have from time to time.

It’s all he knows.

It’s all he deserves.

And nothing is gonna change that.

The beautiful girl smirks and turns around, moving closer to him until her back is pressed against his chest as she starts moving to the beat. If there’s something he’s learned since he started these “nightly adventures” of his almost two years ago, it’s that it is far easier not to get attached if he’s not looking the other person in the eyes for long. Thankfully, this girl seems to think the same thing.

A new song comes on and their heads throb with the loud music and the hard liquor that’s starting to kick in. His hands quickly settle on her hips to make sure that she’s as close to him as she possibly can be. Even if he doesn’t know how to dance well at all he sure figures out what to do, moving along with her and drinking her in.

She’s much shorter than him, even in heels, long fiery hair falling to her waist freely in loose curls that he believes smell vaguely of strawberry. She’s wearing a navy blue shirt with a low neckline that gives way to show her generous cleavage, tucked into a white skirt that is so short it barely leaves anything to the imagination. She has all the right curves in all the right places and he wonders briefly why he’s getting so lucky tonight, more so when she starts grinding on him and all he can do is pull her even closer, feeling her however she gives herself to him.

Her hands come up and reach behind her to rest on the nape of his neck and pull him down a little. Lydia tilts her head to allow him to do as he pleases, her nails softly scratching at the skin there making him shiver. In return, his hands start trailing up her waist, his lips brushing against the shell of her ear as he feels drunker by the minute.

She does too, her mind becoming fuzzier, free in a way that it hasn’t in a while. Lydia encourages him by keeping grinding on him, noticing soon enough how he’s becoming hard under her ministrations, which turns out to be a good surprise. The last three times she went out for a “distraction”, two of her partners were so drunk they could barely get hard and the third couldn’t finish.

She’s not a lucky girl.

His lips start moving on their own accord as well, tentative at first when he nibbles at her ear, slowly kissing her neck when he notices her relieved sigh at the initiative, his hands moving higher and higher, ever so slowly, teasing.

Lydia messes up her hair a little, suddenly feeling all too hot and not from the alcohol. She can’t for the life of her remember when was the last time that someone’s lips and tongue on her skin felt so soft and determined and just generally good all at once so she gives in easily, his hands unhurriedly brushing up her flanks when Lydia rewards him by shamelessly rubbing herself against him.

His lips trail down her neck with longing kisses, all too lazily because he’s starting to lose track of time, and in his experience that’s a good thing. It means that his mind is drifting off and that’s exactly what he needs. He’s not even sure how long they stay like that, dancing close, his hands and lips on her skin, her hands on her hair and eventually on his, the music inducing them to a state of peace they haven’t reached in quite a while despite being surrounded by countless college students who are completely wasted, without much space to move freely at all.

Neither minds it though, their heads becoming lighter and lighter when a new song comes on, then another, a third starting and finishing before they even think about moving from where they are, alcohol starting to cloud their judgment. Lydia eventually turns around to put her lips on him too.

She pulls him down enough that she can suck a bruise on his collarbone, her fingers grazing his jaw and feeling the stubble there as she idly wonders how good it would feel in between her legs, chest against chest, his grasp firm on her sides but his thumbs brushing the underside of her breasts almost ghostly. Lydia looks up at him then, his pupils completely dilated, his stare fuzzy, his mouth looking sinfully inviting.

It doesn’t even take her a second to crash her lips on his, reveling in the way he gives into it just as easily as she does, always trying to pull the other closer, their mouths moving together in a way that feels almost rehearsed. He’s good, she’ll give him that, knowing exactly when to slide his tongue along her bottom lip and taking advantage of the way she sighs into his mouth to deepen the kiss before she has the chance to do that exact same thing. He tastes of alcohol and more alcohol and mint, if she’s not mistaken. Something about the way he feels is comfortable to her, soothing, almost familiar in a way she can’t explain how.

His kiss is tentative only at first, soon turning adventurous as they move together almost rhythmically, her hands in his hair when his go back down to her waist again, the other way around when Lydia decides that she wants more.

Her fingernails rake over his shirt down his torso and abdomen and she’s pleased to find how his body reacts instantly under her touch. Her palms feel the muscles underneath the large t-shirt that he uses to hide in (she doesn’t really know why) before moving further down to feel how hard he is already.

Truthfully, she doesn’t care if someone in the room is watching them – which she thinks not. Too many drunk and/or high students around them, dancing or making out or just tripping to even notice them particularly –, but if someone is she doesn’t care anyway. If there’s one thing that Lydia Martin is not, it’s shy.

He doesn’t seem to mind much either, letting her do what she wants and breaking the kiss only so that his lips curve into a playful smirk. She wants nothing but to wipe it away.

She does think he looks so fucking good when he smirks, though…

Lydia goes in for another kiss just so that he stops looking deviously at her like that - not that she minds much, really - but the guy is smarter, quicker, dodging her advance teasingly just because he likes to play.

It’s the best thing he could have done, really.

Because she likes the game too, and it’s been too long since she has let herself enjoy it so Lydia gets lost in the feeling, deciding on kissing up his neck just to tease him but it doesn’t quite work in her favor. He’s taller than her enough that Lydia - who seriously doesn’t want to get on her tiptoes and lose her balance only to fall, now that she’s more than just tipsy – doesn’t quite reach his chin with her lips if he straightens completely, and impulsively he starts laughing quietly at her failed attempts.

It frustrates her, knowing that he has the upper hand like that but she likes it at the same time, craves it even. It’s been a while since she’s met someone who can rile her up like this, someone who can make her heart beat faster with something so innocent, and she needed it more than she’d ever be willing to admit even to herself. So when she stops and just looks up at him, the flashing lights around them making her see him as if in slow motion, he stops too, and she’d be lying if she said that his piercing warm eyes didn’t turn her on more than anything else in that moment.

It’s instinctive really, and in a second she’s pressing herself back against his body, tilting his chin down to try and effectively kiss him fully on the lips but he doesn’t let it, playing her again, dodging her advance once more with a kind smile. She doesn’t mind much, enjoying the chase and the freedom of making wise decisions that comes with her state of inebriation. Her fingers lace behind his neck as she stays unmoving in the middle of all the restless bodies that sway with the music around them.

He does the same thing, his hands settling on her hips instead only to move lower and lower. When his fingers dig softly into the flesh of her ass and squeeze once, they’re nose to nose again, and he’s the one who tries to kiss her this time but can’t when she avoids him as well, mimicking him, biting on her lower lip enticingly.

Lydia can’t for the life of her say how long they stay like that, so very close to kissing and so very not, lost in a state that’s almost hypnotic, their eyes never breaking contact even with the flashing lights. When they do give in, Lydia thinks it’s one of the best kisses she’s ever had, all the anticipation more than making up for the wait. The kiss is slow and soft at first, growing demanding and urgent as time passes them by, and it’s not before long that one of her hands is sneaking underneath his shirt only to feel hot skin and barely defined muscles under her palm.

She’s not sure who is the first to move but the fact of the matter is that Lydia finds herself walking backwards and pulling him along with her, slowly so that their lips don’t part, connected as if they’re the life support the other needs. Nothing about it is rushed or unintended, and for such a small room Lydia thinks it takes them an eternity to reach the wall closest to the stairs.

He likes to take his time, she gladly notices, which turns out to be another pleasant surprise about him. On all the other previous occasions when Lydia had allowed herself to have a distractive encounter of the sort, by now she’d be more than done, and certainly not satisfyingly at that. In such a state of drunkenness, her partners have always favored celerity over pleasure, over fun, and so Lydia finds herself lingering now, tasting his mouth and savoring his touch almost lazily.

He pins her against the wall gently. In fact, Lydia barely registers that he did it, only noticing that she’s against a flat surface when his body is even closer to hers than before, and now she can feel him, jeans tight where he’s hard against her. If Lydia parts her legs slightly and he eases in between them just enough to create some friction where she most needs it… Well, she’ll list it as a very fortunate coincidence on such a lucky night.

She idly thinks that the planets must be aligned tonight for such fortuity.

They lose track of time completely. The dry humping must last for quite a while, they figure, for Lydia’s underwear is completely damp by the time she pushes him away, the same way she’s positive that he’ll have to discard of his jeans sooner rather than later given the very visible tightening of his pants.

Either that or they are both extremely turned on by the other right now, which is more than likely if they’d stop to think about it. They weren’t lowly moaning just for the other to hear for no reason, after all.

Either or, really. But what does it matter?

Lydia feels her neck and left shoulder burn under his ministrations, a little sore even, and she knows she’ll have bruises all over when morning comes because his mouth is insatiable for her skin, it seems, but that’s not what makes her stop him. It’s the wanting for more, the need for it. Pushing softly against his chest and looking him over, Lydia realizes that he’s breathless, hair tousled where her hands had been mercilessly tugging at, lips full from her ministrations, eyes hooded by pure lust, and god he’s so beautiful.

A true sight for sore eyes.

And in that moment, Lydia thinks time stills.

Because for a fleeting second, amidst all the people around them, the throbbing sound of the music and the flashing, bright lights that envelop them, Lydia wonders if this is it. If this can be what Allison had once said to her. How one day they’d both find someone who’d make everything bearable and unbearable all the same. How they’d find someone who’d make everything look different, brighter, better. How they’d find someone who’d take their breath away at the smallest thing and who’d make their heart fill with happiness like never before. How everything unknown in their lives would make sense when they’d meet their other halves. How all the unconscious longing and missing someone they’d never met would be repaid with care and love and companionship, with unwavering devotion and trust when the right time came. How they’d find someone who’d finally make them feel at peace.

How they’d find someone who’d finally make them feel at home.

For a fleeting second, Lydia’s heart both skips a beat and crumbles at the thought that maybe her best friend hadn’t been just a dreamer. That maybe there was some truth to her words. Staring into kind eyes that look like molten gold in that moment, Lydia thinks that maybe Allison had been right all along. That maybe there’s still hope that everything in her fucked up life will one day make sense.

But Lydia can’t take that thought. Allison will never have such a thing, will never feel such an emotion and neither will Lydia. She knows it.

She knows because her best friend is no longer. The most beautiful, kindhearted, nicest girl in the whole world will never get to learn and experience new things and Lydia will never be able to see her heartwarming smile again. Lydia will never hear the other girl’s laugh at her own typical antics, or be able to lean on her best friend again in times of hurt and distress.

The brunette was taken away from her just when Lydia most needed her, when they both most needed each other. And if Lydia regrets anything, regardless of how much suffering she’s endured throughout her own twenty years of life, Lydia regrets that she’ll never see Allison fall in love the most. If anyone deserved everything good in this life and the other it was her late best friend, and if Allison will never have the chance to have everything, anything, why should Lydia?

And so, as soon as that fleeting second brings Lydia a wave of nostalgia as she gets lost in his eyes, the feeling is gone, and if the memories of Allison that popped into her mind so quickly served any purpose at all other than to hurt her, it was certainly to remind Lydia why she puts herself in this position from time to time. Why she finds herself occasionally looking for someone who can make her forget everything.

Because truth is in the end Lydia is all alone, and most times not even the alcohol or distractions will help her miss out on that.

Ignoring the whirlwind of remembrances and emotions that flashed through her mind so rapidly, Lydia swallows dryly before composing herself. Standing straighter, her fingers rake down the guy’s torso and she leans back in, hoping he didn’t see her waver in that damned second.

If he did, he doesn’t show it, deciding instead to grip her thighs. Lydia would be lying if she said it didn’t feel, even if only momentarily, like he was anchoring her.

She kisses him chastely, briefly, and bites on his lower lip enticingly before pulling away biting down on her own, lust taking over her. Rising on her tiptoes carefully, Lydia whispers in his ear, her lips ghosting close to his skin enough to have it break into goosebumps even if he’s anything but cold. “Please tell me you have a condom.”

He smirks confidently, wiggling his eyebrows in an effort to try and make her feel better because yes, he did notice how her gaze emptied all of a sudden, and with it came a rushing feeling of urgency to suppress his own afflictions, so it’s better that they stick to what they want instead of what they can’t deal with. Meaningless sex they can handle.

“Yeah, in my wallet,” he tells her, nodding. “Back pocket.”

Lydia moves closer once more, lips barely touching his as she reaches to take his wallet out for him and squeezing his ass cheek in appreciation, a grin appearing on her face as she searches for the condom under his smitten gaze. When she finds it and looks it over, she returns the wallet to him and waves the little foil packet as if it is a prize. “Upstairs?” She asks, a sly smile making his blood boil in his veins.

He doesn’t hesitate in taking the condom from her and leading the red-haired girl to the upper floor, hands clasped tight together to make sure he doesn’t lose her in the crowd that still surrounds them. And to make sure they have a little privacy, they search the entire floor for an empty, more secluded bedroom but find none open, instead opting for the only bathroom available down the hall.

It looks neat, Lydia registers, which she’s sure it’s only due to the room being so far away from the staircase and having another two bathrooms on its way. Those Lydia suspects have to look much messier, so this isn’t a half bad deal. Granted, she usually favors comfort but her mind is clouded still and so is her judgment, and in that moment she needs nothing but to have her mind completely blank so she’s not gonna be picky.

By the end of the night, she’ll have to admit to herself, it couldn’t have been a better choice.

The guy makes sure to lock the bathroom door behind them and turns on the lights, placing the condom on top of the marble counter where two fancy sinks are, catching his attention. In all truth, he hadn’t paid much thought - none, really - to the house overall, but a glance at the elegant decoration around the big room tells him it has to be majestic. Not only this bathroom is almost as large as his dorm room and has one of the biggest showers he has ever seen, but there’s an imposing mirror covering the entire wall behind the faucet, a long rectangle reflecting everything from the counter up until a little over his height.

As soon as he sees it, he knows they’ve made a right choice too. It may be a first for them both, yes, but neither is mindful enough to care about it in the moment.

Much like her, however, that thought will come to mind later.

Lydia walks backwards slowly until her back hits the edge of the counter, and he’s pressed up against her in a second, holding her close in a heated kiss that escalates quickly given the arousal they were already feeling. Their hands roam each other’s body unashamed now that they’re finally alone, and soon they’re both feeling more out of breath than they have been in a very long time.

He takes a step back first, panting with flushed cheeks and Lydia is grateful, for once, that the lights are on. She usually prefers to do it in the dark, a way of detachment that Lydia often needs but tonight feels different, is different already from all the other times she’s done this. Had they been in complete darkness, Lydia wouldn’t be able to appreciate properly how beautiful his eyes really are even if the spark that lights them now, she knows, won’t be there for long if she’s right and they’re in a similar situation.

He looks young too, probably about her age, and Lydia tugs at his shirt for him to take it off so that she can admire his physique, a playful smile on her lips as curiosity takes over. He hesitates for a second, and she sees in his eyes how he seems to debate with himself for a moment but gives in nonetheless, and when his shirt his thrown mindlessly somewhere to his left, Lydia can just stare.

He’s lean, definitely not the sports players Lydia typically chooses for her nightly endeavors, muscles defined without pushing it too much and Lydia just honestly finds herself openly staring, speechless, wondering how she could easily lose herself counting the moles that she gladly realizes are scattered throughout his body, on his chest and shoulders and arms like they do on his face. How he’s obviously strong but in a modest, surprising way. Her mind wanders, and she gets lost in thought trying to decide which sport he does practice to be so subtly defined like that. With that, Lydia realizes that maybe he is her type a little bit after all, mauling over the reason why he’d choose to hide in large clothes since Lydia can’t fathom one.

He’s gorgeous. A vision really, with the unruly hair and fair eyes, the playful smile and the distracting moles, the veiny arms and the long fingers, the firm and warm hands. Her eyes wander lower, naturally, and Lydia loses herself in the trail of dark hair that dips into his jeans, biting on her lip distractedly. It isn’t until the guy crosses his arms, unintentionally flexing his biceps and shifting Lydia’s attention again, that she’s reminded of the matter at hand.

She moves slowly as if in a trance, her fingers softly grazing his broad shoulders while her stare lazily roams up his body and she finds herself wanting to catalog everything about him. The reason why, she wouldn’t know. He is different from the others in such a manner that Lydia can’t understand, not yet, but in such a short amount of time he’s caught her eye, has her intrigued beyond comparison in a way that she hasn’t been in so, so long.

Without realizing it, her breath quickens and Lydia licks her lips absently, forgetting about everything else in that moment but to study him, as if staring at him for long enough will help her figure him out. As if she’d ever even wanted that in the first place.

Confused, he raises his brows quizzically, half in amusement and half in insecurity, Lydia notices, as if he wasn’t expecting such a blatant reaction from her. He must feel self-conscious, she realizes, probably one of the reasons why he doesn’t dress for his body size and shape. “Surprised?” He questions in a tone that’s teasing, but it doesn’t escape Lydia how his voice falters a little.

The redhead replies with an honest, breathy “Yes”, and if her cheeks redden at the admission she’ll blame it on the alcohol. Still, he doesn’t seem convinced as he asks her if it’s a good surprise or a bad one, and when Lydia realizes that his anxiety is coming to the surface she wants nothing but to make it go away. Their shitty lives have to be the reason why they’re in this position, and if he’s anything like Lydia the last thing he wants right now is to feel insecure or alone in this, so Lydia takes the reigns to make sure that it doesn’t happen.

“It’s a very, very good surprise,” she almost hums, the blasting sound from the music downstairs muffled by the distance between them and the living room where the party is being held at, and so he can finally hear her melodic voice perfectly.

And if it suddenly makes it feel all the more intimate, neither comments on it.

“In fact…” She continues, reaching for the hem of her top and pulling it over her head, discarding of it swiftly. The boy tries his hardest to keep eye contact and succeeds, which only makes Lydia more intrigued by him. Shrugging her shoulders nonchalantly, she smiles sweetly. “In the spirit of reciprocity.”

“Reciprocity, uh?” He murmurs, a hint of a smirk on his lips as he takes a step closer and rests his hands on her waist. Their lips touch again, barely, as if they can’t help but to gravitate towards each other. Still, yet without kissing.

Instead, they stay close like that for a beat too long, a breath too many and Lydia finds herself warming up again at their proximity, eyes locked with his, her voice raw when she barely acknowledges that she’s whispering “Yes” to his wanting lips, and if their mouths finally crash together after that, seeking more, she sees it as inevitable.

He’s good with his hands, she’ll give him that too, slowly but expertly mapping her body with his fingertips as they lose themselves in a heated kiss. When his hands find her covered breasts, his lips part from hers so that he can look down and finally give her bosom the appreciation it deserves, and he’s so tender then that Lydia almost wants to cry. Usually men just want to ravish women’s breasts as if they’re nothing but an accessory, a toy that they can play with as they please, barely none registering that it is an erogenous zone that can be rather sensitive. But him…

Lydia doesn’t know what turns her on more; if the soft, teasing brush of his fingers or the knowledge that lies within. It’s obvious that he knows exactly what he’s doing, that he knows how to work a woman up, that he knows how to make her want even more of him if that’s possible. She chooses to look past it though, and to just focus on how grateful she is that she’s found him tonight, forcing herself to forget everything else but him and his body, and what him and his body can do to her and her own.

He cups her breasts fully, gently, the pad of his thumb slowly brushing her nipple over the black lace and he feels it hardening under his touch. Lydia should resent the way her body responds to him so eagerly but she doesn’t, not at all when he decides to keep on doing that and to take her earlobe in his mouth, nibbling softly, and her hands come up to run through his hair again. She’s so distracted in fact, that she doesn’t remember pulling him even closer to her body but he is, his fingers languidly tracing the underside of her breasts, mindlessly drawing circles on her skin as they venture lower, her chest fully against his when their mouths meet once more.

He can feel how warm she is, how breathless she’s becoming so he continues, incited by her response. When they find themselves tangled up in each other and grinding again, Lydia lets out a low moan, too worked up and yet not nearly enough. He smirks, the bastard, teasing her and Lydia bites on his lower lip as playful punishment, his hands sliding from her waist to her lower back and pulling at the end of her auburn curls then, gently enough that he’s not hurting her but surely enough having her notice it, and Lydia finds herself tilting her head and letting his lips work their magic on the skin of her neck.

He’s delighted to do so, she finds, for his erection stands to attention against Lydia’s frame and her own hands wander lower as well, her nails scratching down his torso and making his abs react at her touch once again. She lets out a little laugh, uncaring at the moment about what all of this means, distracting herself by fumbling with his belt until it’s thrown to the floor mindlessly and then concentrating on unbuttoning his jeans. When he sucks another bruise, this time just under her chin, Lydia doesn’t hesitate in pushing his pants out of the way enough so that she can shove a hand down his boxers to finally feel him on her palm, and to say the least she’s very, very well impressed.

Granted, she had already palmed him when they were downstairs in the living room, but the fabric of his jeans doesn’t really make him justice. He’s not abnormally big or large, not by any means, but he’s definitely more endowed than average and more so than Lydia would take him for at first glance. So yes, to say that she’s thrilled that they chose each other tonight is an understatement.

He lets out a low grunt, both at her initiative and at the feeling of her hands on him, her touch nothing short of divine if he were to be asked. And when she slowly starts pumping him, smearing the pre-cum already there and her grip on his erection not too tight but not so loose either, he guy breathes out shakily, losing himself in the feeling until her voice breaks the silence.

“Tell me you’re clean,” she asks almost shyly, her tone too desperately hopeful when she realizes that she should have asked it before her hands were on him, the adrenaline dissipating the cloud on her mind a little and apprehension in her tone, her hand stopping for a moment.

His eyes search hers for a second and he smiles kindly, nudging her nose with his own when he realizes what she’s asking. “Yeah. STI free,” he says honestly. “And you?”

Lydia nods more eagerly than she’d like to ever admit. “Me too. And I’m on the pill,” she tells him in the name of full disclosure, ready to have more of him.

It should make her stop, it should, this being different, because she’s not supposed to be enjoying herself so much. When there’s nothing in her life but darkness around every corner, when that’s all she knows for the time being, why should she be blessed like this? Why would some guy have the gift to make her feel so alive? Worse even, why would she let him?

She shuts her inner voice by tightening her grip around his erection just the tiniest bit but he can tell the difference, of course. When she focuses on the head for a moment and then another, after that gently fondling with his balls and continuing with her ministrations, his eyes fall shut and his mouth parts as he sighs softly, her lips trailing hot kisses on his chest distractedly as she works him up.

And then he opens his eyes.

He opens his eyes and Lydia swears that it’s the most burning gaze she’s ever held, making her insides clench as he worries his lower lip, breathing labored, eyes hooded by an unmistakable awe that Lydia has never really witnessed first-hand before. Vocally she can’t respond, she finds, but her hand moves of her own accord and starts jerking him off faster in response. In a swift movement though, after a minute or two he stops her, his voice dropping an octave.

It feels as if he finds it hard to speak as well. “I’m close.”

His cock is heavy and hot against her palm, and she knows for a fact that she’s good with her hands as well but having him so close to ejaculating in such a short amount of time has to be her personal record.

As if he’s reading her mind, he adds “Well, you’re something” with a fond voice and a smile she can’t really decipher, quiet and enigmatic.

She releases her grip on him and a beat passes them by, then a second one, and in the third Lydia’s lips are on his again for what seems like the hundredth time that night, gentle yet consuming. He lingers despite his best efforts not to and he finds that she’d doing the same thing, so for a moment they’re silent, their lips the only part of their bodies that’s touching before he leans his forehead against hers and breaks the kiss, eyes closed.

He doesn’t know that hers are too as she takes it all in. Under her skin, she feels a tingle she’s never felt before and an unprecedented exhilaration, her heart beating wildly against her ribcage as Lydia forces herself to open her eyes and make the moment less intimate, but she can’t. Instead, her lips find his again and she cups his cheeks, and had she known that he was feeling the exact same way in that moment maybe she would have stopped.

In the end, the very end, she’ll know she did the right thing by giving in to her instinct.

However, in the moment, she can’t help but to feel a little scared of what all of this might mean, so this kiss is unsure and tentative whereas the others had had more blaze to them. It’s almost vulnerable, and the emotion in this connection is so strong and raw that the guy, who was feeling resistant to giving in for the same reason she was, finds himself letting go too.

Lydia can’t do anything but to follow after as if her will lies with him completely, and soon they’re losing themselves in the kiss again. Feeling dissatisfied to a degree neither of them wants to logically comprehend as things get hotter and more desperate, he struggles with her skirt as Lydia steps down of her heels and pushes them aside with one foot carelessly, losing height all of a sudden. They both part chuckling, him at how adorably short she really is and Lydia at his vain attempts of getting rid of the garment.

Cheeks flushed, Lydia unzips her skirt easily and takes it off, sliding it down her fair legs and handing it to him in a playful display of victory. He laughs and scratches the back of his neck almost bashfully before taking the fabric out of her hands and placing it in the far end of the counter behind her, his fingers hooking on the sides of her matching panties to slowly starting pulling them down.

Lydia bites down on her lower lip once more, enticed and more turned on than she’s probably ever been, more so when he starts moving down her body, his lips marking her just under her chin again, then pressing a feather-light kiss in between her covered breasts and another on her stomach. As he kneels in front of her, Lydia idly wonders if this is how she’ll die.

She’s pretty sure she’s about to combust just from the anticipation.

A demanding, urgent knock on the door followed by two others startles her out of her reverie, and it seems to disconcert her partner for the night as well since he scrambles back up to his feet as if he’s been caught red-handed, both their hearts beating faster from the scare, cheeks flushed bright red.

“You gonna take long in there?” A male voice asks in a shout from outside the bathroom door, the man’s fist repeatedly thumping against the wood.

Lydia and the boy share a cautious look, both from how unexpected the interruption was and from the insistence of the knocking.

Her partner answers before she can even think of urging him to do something. “It’s occupied,” he tries, hoping it’s enough to make whoever is outside go away.

“Man, c’mon…” The words come out slurred, a speech that almost sounds sleepy, definitely uncaring. Lydia figures the guy outside the door is either drunk or high, maybe both. And he keeps whining. “All the other rooms are full.”

“Why do you think I’m here?” The brown-haired guy quips, signaling Lydia to keep quiet.

There’s more banging on the door. “Look, I got me a girl here. I’m just trying to get laid.”

A feminine giggle follows and Lydia’s partner groans lowly, giving her an apologetic look. “So am I. Will you just fuck off?”

Lydia chuckles and the guy can’t suppress a smile either, his body gravitating towards hers again as they wait for the response from the other side. It comes out slightly aggressive, although mostly wretched. “Where am I gonna fuck my girl, man?”

Her partner huffs in clear annoyance, rolling his eyes. “Sounds like that’s your problem, mate, not mine. Now will you just get out of here?”

For a moment there’s silence, and Lydia and the guy share another look, apprehensive. Then there’s what sounds like a slap on the door, final, before whoever was outside leaves them be.

Lydia wishes her laughter didn’t come out so naturally, but soon the guy is following suit, dissipating some of the tension in the room. He doesn’t comment on how she’d been surprised by her own chuckle before when they were downstairs and how it comes easier to her now, and Lydia is glad for that. In a way, he’s making Lydia feel free enough that she’s giving him a glimpse of a shadow of her old self, whereas she’s been nothing but an empty shell for the last couple of years, at the very least.

In all honesty, Lydia had never thought she’d see the day where she’d feel like her old self again, even if just faintly. And if it’s the guy, this particular guy that’s bringing out this side of her or if she’s so drunk that she’s hallucinating the whole thing, Lydia is not really sure.

Or more likely, she prefers to pretend that her inebriation is enough reason to pass the unexpected feeling as some kind of mirage, instead of accepting that there could be more to him than she’s ready to admit.

Pushing such terrifying thought aside, one of her hands rakes down his abdomen, bringing both their attentions to more pressing matters. A smirk appears on her lips and her eyes glimmer with mischief. “So you’re gonna fuck me, uh?”

He seems surprised at first, and Lydia thinks she sees insecurity crossing his eyes swiftly before he brushes it away, her fingers burning against his skin bringing him back to the moment. He tilts her chin up and whispers to her glistening lips, voice hoarse, barely an inch separating them. “If you let me.”

Lydia would be lying if she said that didn’t make her even wetter than she already was.

She gets closer, her lips brushing his enticingly as the words come out of her mouth unhurried. “And if I let you, what will you do to me?”

He swallows dryly, his gaze moving from her green eyes to her beautiful pink lips and then back up before he answers breathily. “Anything.”

Lydia finds herself nodding fiercely, of course, as any sane person would in this situation or so she figures. Pulling his jeans further down his legs and out of the way, she grins smugly when she straightens back up, one of her hands grabbing his neck and pulling lightly. “I believe you were going down,” she remarks playfully, “before we were so rudely-”

“Interrupted, yeah.” He finishes for her, stealing a kiss from her lips and proceeding to worship her body like before; a soft kiss under her chin where he’d marked her just a couple of minutes ago, another in between her breasts and a third one on her lower belly this time. Promptly sinking to his knees, he licks his lips and locks eyes with her briefly, cheeks rosy and hair disheveled. Lydia thinks she’s never seen anyone look this good from her perspective.

He looks thoughtful for a moment, staring at her covered mound as if he’s deciding what is the best approach to the situation at hand as Lydia grows impatient for his touch. When he speaks though, all reserves about him vanish. “Hands or mouth?” He asks with a nonchalant shrug of his shoulders, leaving the choice to the redhead.

When she bites down on her lower lip – and she’s an almost sinful vision from his point of view too in all honesty, her fiery hair framing her like a warm halo -, he knows he did well in asking.

“Would I sound too eager if I said both?” She’s quick to answer, biting the nail of her left thumb nervously since even this seems to be different from everything Lydia has ever done before. It’s the first time she’s asked such a question and, again, it should make her stop. She doesn’t know if it’s the anticipation, but she feels overwhelmed.

Instead, she laughs when he replies cheekily, rather truthfully with “Not in my book”, and Lydia finds herself staring at him when he reaches up and pulls her hand away from her mouth, admonishing her. “Don’t do that.” When she glares at him inquisitively, implicitly asking why he’d do such a thing, his answer is factual and logical, just the way Lydia has always liked her facts. “That implies that you’re nervous, and so by extension I’ll be too. More than I really am, anyway, and that wouldn’t be good for uh-” He gestures between them. “This. It wouldn’t be good for this so please don’t do that, okay?”

At this rate, he’ll have her orgasm without actually touching her.

He’s kind, almost too kind for her, and the thought that maybe Lydia doesn’t deserve him at all, even if only for one night, crosses her mind before she can do anything about it. He seems to be too good for words, leaving her speechless which almost never occurs, and maybe they really should just stop.

The thing is that Lydia is feeling selfish tonight and she’s allowed to be, every once in a blue moon, so that’s most definitely the reason why Lydia decides to look down at him and run a hand through his hair lazily, cheeks reddening a little before the words come out of her mouth unabashed. “Fuck me.”

She’ll deal with the consequences of her actions tomorrow.

Or not. Whatever.

His dick twitches when she hums the words and his chest rumbles with the guttural groan he lets out. “With pleasure,” he muses, wiggling his eyebrows and grinning. When the girl seems to wait for his instructions, his confidence boosts and he almost wants to high-five himself. He’s never really had the reigns before. Allowing his dirty mind to come out to play and locking eyes with the girl again, he’s assertive when he says “Turn around and bend over.”

She complies immediately, her grin deliciously warming him up inside before she turns to face the mirror and bends over the counter like he’d asked and it’s a crime really, that she looks so freaking desirable like that.

Even though her underwear is black, it’s with delight that he notices a darker spot where she seems to be damp and he licks his lips absently. When the redhead props her elbows on the counter and moves all of her hair to one side so that she can glance back at him over her shoulder, a lopsided smile makes its way to his lips.

Lydia doesn’t think she’s ever been this turned on in her life, regardless of how blurry her mind still is from the alcohol.

The fog on his own seems to lift a little when he starts concentrating on what he wants to do, mind reeling with possibilities. Teasing her covered folds with his knuckles, fingers precise and determined, he watches as her eyes close at the sensation and she sighs in what, to him, seems almost relief. Not wanting to waste much more time, he reaches for the sides of her panties again, and watches her take a deep breath as he slowly pulls the fabric down her legs, his face close to her center and Lydia can feel his breathing on her skin.

Placing the underwear on top of her skirt on the counter, he runs a hand through his hair as if he’s preparing himself, feeling his skin prickling with energy, and before he can ask if the girl is really sure about this she mumbles “Just get on with it” with a little laugh, eyes sparkling, and he doesn’t hesitate. With his left hand splayed on her lower back to make sure that she stays in position, his right one parts her lips and he licks her once tentatively, a stripe that starts with a firm flick on her clit and that moves up to her entrance.

The moan she lets out at the sensation of his tongue on her is both arousing and downright dirty.

Such response entices him, and this is good because he doesn’t always get to come when he goes out to find a distraction from his problems, and tonight he might just get a chance for a change. At least, he knows he’s been much farther from it on previous encounters. Savoring her, a smug smile appears on his lips. “You’re so wet, god…” Because that won��t make Lydia even wetter. “Taste so good.”

The redhead soon realizes that he must be an accomplished guy despite the reasons that have him fucking a stranger randomly, because he wastes no time in getting to work and not after long he just buries his face in between her thighs, as if it’s the end of the world and he’s determined to prevent it, a man on a mission, and the sounds he tears out of Lydia are at the very least obscene.

She’d care if he was to pause but he doesn’t, instead adding a finger after a good minute of eating her out, his movements excruciatingly slow as he works her up, then another finger after a few more moments, every so often rubbing her clit with his thumb in soft circles, his stubble only increasing her arousal against her sensitive skin, and the rhythmic motion he sets combined with how deliciously good his knuckles feel when he curls his fingers inside of her just slightly, trying to find her g-spot, not to mention the added sucking on her clit in the end is what has Lydia coming in record time. Not that she’s really keeping track (and she couldn’t really, lost in the feeling as she is), but she can’t for the life of her remember ever orgasming like this, so fast and so suddenly.

The waves of pleasure hit her out of nowhere, and Lydia can’t do anything but to grip the counter tightly as she pants, finding purchase on the edges of the surface while still riding his face.

He’s relentless, she discovers appreciatively, more so when he seems to want to go for another orgasm right away. Granted, it’s not that any girl in her right mind should object to that, but Lydia finds herself reaching behind herself to tug at his hair softly and pull him away. It’s gladly that she notices how splotched with red his chest is, how hard his erection seems to be as if he hasn’t touched himself at all.

If anything, it makes Lydia want him even more.

Mouth dry and licking her lips, her voice comes out hoarse and breathy. “I need you.”

She hadn’t meant for it to come out so desperate, voice raspy and low like a whispered plea, but he doesn’t hesitate for a second. “You can come again, right?”

Lydia feels hot all over, her chest rising and falling unevenly as she nods more fiercely than she probably ever has.

The guy gets up on his feet and, still standing behind her, reaches for the condom that has been beside her this entire time, just sitting on top of the counter and waiting to be of use. As he picks it up with his left hand, the fingers of his right in his mouth as he licks them clean, he notices how warm the redhead is, little droplets of sweat all over her hot skin and he decides to kiss her from down on her lower back to high up on her neck while he fumbles with the foil packet, tasting the saltiness right off her body. Griping her hips and noticing how her breath hitches at the contact, he kisses just behind her ear and proceeds to drag his lips along her jaw, stepping closer and Lydia can feel him against her core.

She swears lowly at the proximity, watching him through the mirror as he finally puts on the condom and rolls it down expertly, stroking his erection a few times for good measure. When he aligns himself with her entrance, the head teasing her folds and earning what sounds like a wrecked wail from her mouth, he does what he knows he shouldn’t.

He locks eyes with her reflection in the mirror as if he already knew she was staring at him, green and amber meeting once more and they both know that they should look away but they can’t, nor do they want to in all truth, completely entranced by the other as if under a spell.

When he pushes in, slowly filling her, the way her eyelids fall closed for a second and her mouth parts to let out a sigh is almost a sinful vision, and surely all the more reason why he should look away but he can’t bring himself to do it. Because then her eyes open once more, and her gaze burns holding his own and he thinks, he feels like if he was to die like this, to repent for his sins this way, he’d gladly accept death and never look away from her again.

She’s speechless for a moment and so is he, an unexpected current running through their bodies and the feeling of a subconscious realization taking over them even if their conscious, still slightly drunk selves can’t make out what it is. They decide to ignore it, logically, and as they’re both facing the mirror - their eyes never leaving the other’s reflection - he starts moving, fucking her just right, lazily thrusting at first and building a faster rhythm as times passes them by, as they start nearing what they came here for.

They completely lose track of time, that crescent flame pooling low in their abdomen taking over all of their senses as they let themselves go entirely, for once, and Lydia honestly couldn’t tell how long they actually fuck in some random fraternity’s bathroom. The only things she can focus on are the sounds they make as he slams into her harder and faster and Lydia meets him thrust for thrust, the way his left hand grips at her curls for a moment (not exactly pulling or hurting, but Lydia can tell that he’s completely distracted to notice he’s doing it) and how hot his right palm feels on her skin. Granted, she feels so hot that she almost seems to be feverish, but his hand honest-to-god burns against the skin of her right thigh and he keeps going, and going, and going.

Fleetingly, she wishes it will leave a mark just so that the next morning she can be sure that this was, indeed, real.

As she starts approaching her climax again, Lydia goes for what she always does. There hasn’t been a single nightly endeavor of hers ever since her life went to shit that hasn’t ended with her getting herself off in one way or another (really, either her partner is not so bad and she just lends a hand, or they end up being awful and unfulfilling and she’ll finish it by herself back at her place), so it’s only natural that her hand moves to place itself in between her legs.

The guy stops thrusting suddenly, the hand he had on her thigh catching her wrist and stopping it halfway to its destination, aware of what she was going to do. “Don’t touch yourself.”

His voice comes out low and hoarse, something she wasn’t expecting. If she bites down on her lower lip even more turned on, if that’s at all possible by now, she decides to believe it’s completely unrelated. The thought occurs to her too soon however, because he lets go of her wrist and it’s his own hand that settles on her waist and moves lower to her front until it’s in between her legs, and he bends over Lydia enough to place a kiss on her bare shoulder. Meeting her eyes in the mirror again, he whispers “Let me do it” against the shell of her ear and Lydia thinks that that is the hottest thing she’s heard from his mouth all night.

Lydia turns her head to face him, and he’s so close that she can feel his breath on her lips. It takes everything she’s got not to kiss him then, and it’s probably the most ardent desire she has had to suppress in her whole life. Instead, she finds herself nodding and rolls her hips just enough for him to smirk and start thrusting again, slower this time around as his index and middle fingers lazily circle her clit.

She thinks they both come at practically the same time, and the fire within is released so rapidly and powerfully that Lydia bends over the counter completely, the arm that held her up relaxing entirely and making her lose her support, and he’s still pulsing inside of her when he bends over her body as well, breathless yet still careful enough not to trap her completely with his weight, his hips still thrusting a few times as they ride out their orgasm.

Lydia is panting, honest to god gasping for air which had never happened before, and she feels truly satisfied for once, fulfilled in a way she doesn’t really think she ever has been. It isn’t until he’s pulling out of her that they lock eyes again. To her surprise, he smiles softly at first, his mouth splitting in a grin that Lydia - despite all the reasons she could enumerate not to - wouldn’t mind seeing again.

She smiles too, her cheeks reddening enough that he notices, and when she bites on her thumbnail this time he knows it isn’t out of nervousness but playfulness instead. His inner voice appeases him, tells him that he did good tonight. If anything, the girl seems happy for as long as the rush from what just happened remains, and if she’s feeling remotely close to how he is right now at least he thinks it might last for a little while longer than usual.

He can only hope the hangover he knows will come in the morning won’t wash away any memory of this.

“So…” He wets his lips briefly and chuckles to dissipate the tension. He honestly doesn’t think he’s met eyes so piercing before, and her gaze stays on his frame for as long as he discards of the condom. “That was something…”

Thankfully, he doesn’t see Lydia’s grin as he turns around to clean himself. If he hadn’t missed it, Lydia thinks it would have been too much in a night of exceptions after exceptions, and she already doesn’t have a clue as to what it all means, if anything, as it is. “I’ll say,” is all she lets out, the flirtatious tone slipping out accidentally even though she doesn’t really care in that moment, turning around to face him just as he pulls his boxers back on and buttons his jeans.

She gets a nice view of his ass when he bends over to grab his t-shirt from the floor, and it’s with regret on her part that he does it all too quickly. When he stands straight again, right in front of her, Lydia feels bare and not because the only item of clothing she still has on is her bra. She feels his gaze invading her soul, somehow. He stops and stares at her profoundly for an instant, utterly lost in thought before he’s brought back to reality and realizes what he was doing.

His hair is a complete mess, and Lydia can still notice the blush on his chest just above the collar of his t-shirt, as well as on his neck and cheeks. He gives her a lopsided grin and swiftly runs a hand through his unruly dark-brown hair. “I had fun tonight,” he states honestly, his pulse picking up.

“Me too,” she murmurs, her mouth feeling dry all of a sudden. “Thank you. I-” She hesitates, her subconscious telling her both to stop talking and to prolong the moment. She tries but finds no reason to lie to him. “I really needed this.”

There’s a silence that stretches for a few moments while neither can look away, and it’s her own heartbeat that picks up when he whispers back “That makes two of us, so I should thank you too.” She breaks the gaze, feeling overwhelmed at how vulnerable he sounded. How both of them did, really. He finds himself taking a step forward and holding out his hand for her, a kind smile on his lips.

As she looks at his outstretched hand, Lydia ponders her choices. After she debates with herself for a good ten seconds, she decides to take it. She’d be lying if she said that this wasn’t one of the most intimate things they did all night. Her eyes meet his and she thinks she has found solace, at last, and doesn’t realize that she’s openly staring at him until his voice breaks her out of her daze. “I’m Stiles, by the way.”

The oddity of the name makes her raise an eyebrow inquisitively, amused. “Stiles? What the hell is a Stiles?”

He chuckles, used to this reaction from pretty much everyone he’s ever met. “It’s a nickname. Don’t ask,” he replies cheekily.

Lydia gets closer to him even if she doesn’t seem aware of it, looking up at him under her lashes. The light hits her eyes just right, allowing him to see how they appear to be emerald green, yet he’s met with specks that range from lighter to darker tonalities of green and brown as well and he’s left mesmerized.

She brings him back to the moment. “So you get to fuck me and I don’t get to know your name?”

Her question is playful and he laughs, leaning in so that they’re only an inch apart and she can feel his body heat once more. If Stiles doesn’t leave soon, she might have to do him again. To make matters worse, he licks his lips again and she feels the need to do it herself.

“Maybe I’ll tell you another time,” he answers, and it feels like an implied promise. Lydia wonders if she’ll hold him to it if she ever runs into him again.

“Well, I’m Lydia,” she offers. “And it was a pleasure meeting you.”

She’s never meant anything so wholeheartedly in her whole life and Stiles seems aware of it. He feels the same way as he replies with “Indeed” and they’re left like that, close yet not touching except for their hands, still holding on to a moment that neither wants to let go of.

When they do part and he takes a step back, breaking the spell, Lydia feels a part of her walking away with him. Strangely, she finds it, as such has never happened before and she doesn’t know what to make of it. Stiles walks to the door with a sigh and unlocks it, turning back to glance at Lydia one last time and to say “I’ll see you around” before he heads out.

In a moment he’s gone and Lydia is left alone, naked in the middle of the unfamiliar bathroom with her disarrayed thoughts, and she can’t for the life of her explain why she’d ever want to go after him.

Author’s Note: Don’t go out to parties looking for a Stiles on my account. We’re not all as lucky as Lydia lol

Please leave a review and let me know what you think. You can check all the Pinterest boards for my fics here

#stydia fanfiction #stydia #martinski #my writing #stiles x lydia #stiles stilinski #lydia martin

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embarrassingsmartphonegame · 5 years

Text

Anything (Chapter 4) - Nik Ryder x f!MC

Summary: After surviving an attempt on her life, she discovers there are worse fates than dying. And they’re all ice cold.

Warnings for this chapter: swear words, very slightly NS*W, some secondhand embarrassment probably

Links to previous chapters: one // two // three

Leah Mendoza had done many, many awkward things in her life. And at least half of them involved her losing her clothes in some way, shape, or form; case in point: the time they revealed their secrets and underwear in the Fate’s mansion. But that night, she would’ve preferred facing the Fate in her underwear as she stared down her...former bodyguard? Ex? Guy she ran from once he started reciprocating her love after a week that culminated in a death experience for her? Well, what she called him didn’t matter, but it had been at least a few minutes and he was still staring at her in shock. She squirmed in her seat and briefly considered taking him to the ER to make sure nothing (at least nothing more than what she already knew) was wrong with him. But she sat there and let him take his time to process her practically breaking into his apartment after she disappeared for three months.

“Umm…Nik?” Leah finally said something after a few more awkward minutes, the silence getting to her. She stood up and started walking towards him, and Nik seemed to snap out of his trance and immediately tackled her to the floor. She yelped as he pinned her to the ground with his body, his eyes dark. “Hey!”

“Shapeshifter, you’ve gone too far. I’m only gonna ask you this once: how the fuck did you get this form? How did you find her and what did you do?” His hands shook with unadulterated rage as they pinned hers above her head, and she shivered at the hateful look in his eyes.

“Nik, stop, it’s really me! Garrus let me in!” Leah pleaded, hoping that this wouldn’t be how she actually goes. “I can prove it if you let me up!”

“Nice try. I’ve given you too many chances. Hope hell is nice.” Shit. In a panic, Leah’s super strength suddenly kicked in and she surged forward and managed to flip their positions too quickly for him to react. Without thinking, she slipped her shirt off as she straddled him, exposing the three crimson, raised linear keloid scars on her chest. Another awkward moment that involved her stripping down to avoid certain death. She blushed as Nik laid there beneath her. He studied her scars and realization dawned on his face.

“Would a shapeshifter know what this looks like? Would they know what happened?” she questioned softly, vulnerable and exposed in more ways than one. She slowly got off him and slipped her shirt back on. Nik sat up and got off the ground, in a state of shock in his eyes again. She couldn’t tell if the blue-purple-almost black bags under his eyes were due to lack of sleep or getting punched in the face, and the dreadful part of her knew it was most likely due to both. She noted his new grown out stubble into a full beard and longer hair, and her usual inner dumbass would’ve thought it was hot if the hair clearly wasn’t grown due to him not caring. Leah decided to start saying what she needed to say to him.

“I...I came to apologize,” she began, awkwardly sitting on the floor with him and gazing sincerely into his eyes. “For how things turned out between us. I ran because I was afraid of everything that had happened and what I found out about my life, and hurt you in the process. You don’t need to forgive me; I wouldn’t forgive myself. I’m sorry. That’s all.”

Her open palm reached out and squeezed his hand one last time before she started to get up, but his hand found hers again and pulled her back. “Wait.”

And oh, would she have waited forever if he asked. Nik looked at her with what seemed to be fresh eyes, as if he was seeing her for the first time. He studied her intently and carefully placed his hand on her cheek. Leah felt extremely self conscious about her own messy, grown out hair and dark purple eye bags, and even more about her unintentional weight loss and old hickeys on her neck. He ran his rough fingers gently over the side of her face.

“R—Leah…” he quickly corrected himself, remembering that things weren’t the same as they were before. “You’re really here.”

“I am, Nik. I’m here.”

“But how? Why?”

“I needed to make things right with us. What happened...I couldn’t live with myself. Especially knowing from Ivy, Krom, and Garrus how you are now.”

“I mean...you’re not exactly in the best shape either. No offense.” His own tired eyes searched hers, and she could see the steel walls stacked flush against each other in an impenetrable fortress guarding his heart. “Is that it? Because you knew—and I told you this when I was being an idiot at that time—that I wouldn’t be fine. And I do have another job in a few hours.”

Leah shook her head. “No, it’s not. And to be honest, I’m scared to let this all out. You probably won’t wanna hear it; I should let you get to sleep.”

Nik seemed to think for a moment. “Try me. I wouldn’t be able to sleep anyway.”

He pulled her up and led her to his couch. They kept a careful distance apart so that they were close enough for whoever was brave enough to reach out but far enough that they weren’t too tempted. His expression was in a perfectly neutral expression, save for a furrow on his left eyebrow that indicated the smallest form of curiosity. She couldn’t see through his steel walls that he built around himself the night she left, and her heart sank in realization that he probably hated her after all this time. Leah steeled herself and began talking.

“So I ran back to my life in Wyoming, even though I was planning on leaving my job anyway even before I came to New Orleans. But after everything that happened...I just couldn’t take it. And when you were out of my life...I felt nothing. Absolutely...nothing. I was going through the daily motions of my shitty office job and paying the bills. I tried to dance again, tried to sing, tried to play the violin. Tried to find anything, anything to fill the void. Found other people and had a different person in my bed each night...still nothing,” she puffed out all in one breath, noting how Nik inhaled sharply at her last statement yet stayed silent, allowing her to continue. “I woke up in an empty apartment every day and it was exactly like Katherine said, I was freezing to death in absolutely nothing. And when I...died...I felt nothing. Going back to my old life without you...it felt like I was dead.”

Nik couldn’t believe what he was hearing; his heart pounded in his chest. “You really mean that?”

“Yes,” she continued her confession. “I’m not expecting anything and know that this entire thing might even be selfish when you’re trying to move on with your life, but I wanted you to at least know that I’m really sorry for how things ended between us.”

Nik stayed silent for a moment before he became the brave one and reached for her hand. He interlaced their fingers together, and she found comfort in the warmth of his calloused, dirty palm against hers. “Dammit Leah...you know I’m not good at this stuff and that’s what caused all this in the first place.”

She laughed mirthlessly. “You’re talking to the girl who ran back to Wyoming of all places after you told me you loved me.”

Nik shook his head and began to speak, hoping his words were right this time.

“I couldn’t move on, not after everything that happened between us. It’s why I’ve been working so much. I never would’ve pushed you away at the parade if I knew it might’ve been the last time I saw you. When you were on the ground, bleeding and cold and dead…” Leah could’ve sworn she heard him choke on his words, but she let him continue. “I thought loving someone was scarier than anything...I was wrong. The scariest thing was losing you.”

Boom. Leah heard the metaphorical walls crash down. She had never seen him look so vulnerable, even when she left him three months before. Matching his bravery, she cautiously wrapped her arms around him, resting her head against the crook of his neck. His arms found their way around her smaller form, and he squeezed her as if his life depended on it. The pair stayed like that for God knows how long, letting a few tears slip out. As the sun began to rise, they finally let go and faced each other.

“Where do we go from here?” Leah asked, playing with the shorter hairs on the nape of his neck. “Honestly, I wasn’t expecting you to hear me out. I thought you hated me by now.”

Nik pressed his forehead against hers. “I could never hate you...rook.”

Her heart soared at cadence of the familiar nickname, and she smiled genuinely. Nik felt his heart leap at her smile, and it took all of his willpower not to surge forward and take things too far. It didn’t feel right. He instead continued, “It’s your call. But I will say this: nothing about my feelings for you have changed. You...you still make me feel like a real person.”

Leah thought about it for a moment before continuing to speak genuinely. “Well...nothing about my feelings for you have changed either. But I’m still a fucking wreck…like therapy for life level wreck.”

Nik nodded tersely, his shoulders slumping slightly. “I understand.”

“Wait wait wait,” Leah quickly clarified, taking his hands in hers. “I may be a wreck who needs to get her life together, but if I learned anything, it’s that I don’t want just anything. I want you. Only you. Just maybe...we should take it slow? That week we had was way too fast. And I’m not gonna count me sitting on you with my shirt off last night.”

“I...can’t say I disagree.” Nik chuckled softly, reminiscing. “No other job could compare since then.”

“Just a job?” she teased, her heart lighter than it had been for a while.

“At this point I’d call it a career,” he teased back, their old dynamic naturally resurfacing. At the mention of a career, Leah groaned, yanking herself back from la-la land.

“I literally came back to New Orleans because I was so miserable with my job and life in Wyoming. I’m definitely fired for this, but I’m not too upset about it. Just don’t know what to do for work now.”

“Do you really have no ideas?”

“Well I do have one.” She stared down at the palms of her hands. “I haven’t been able to use my powers since my father died, and I was considering training under Lady Thalissa’s wing and helping out with Lamrian. I still feel guilty that they’re in this situation because of me.”

“Rook, you know that happened ‘cuz your punk ass brother let that thing in,” Nik said firmly, cradling her hands in his. “And if you’re sure you’re ready, that sounds like a great idea.”

“I’m really not sure, but I guess it wouldn’t hurt to try.” Leah focused all of her energy into the palms of her hands, willing them to glow. But nothing. Zilch. Nada. She sighed, figuring that it might be better when she arrived in Lamrian.

“So...wanna explain why you tackled me earlier and thought I was a shapeshifter?” she changed the subject, genuinely curious.

Nik rubbed the back of his head sheepishly. “Well, a few weeks ago I kinda pissed off this shapeshifter by putting his brother in jail for grave robbing. No idea why he was grave robbing, but that’s besides the point. Had it out for me since and transformed himself into Garrus, Krom, and Ivy at least a few times since he’s seen me pretty much only go in and out of the Graveyard Shift if I’m not on a job. When I saw you, I thought that maybe the bastard somehow found out about us and got to you and…”

He took a deep breath. “I couldn’t stand the thought of you, of all people, getting hurt. Especially because of me. Not again.”

Leah hugged him again, rubbing circles on his back. “Well, I’m here to stay. I’m not leaving you again. I hope things work out for me in Lamrian. If not...Garrus did offer me a job earlier.”

For the first time in a long time, she felt her optimism creep back up. Maybe things were going to be okay after all, even if she really didn’t know what she was doing with her life at that point.

“So when do you wanna do this?” Nik asked. “Going to Lamrian? I’m going with you.”

“Nik, you’ve already done so much for me; you don’t have to. Also, don’t you have a bunch of other jobs lined up already?”

Nik shrugged. “My next job just told me they want that ghoul gone by the end of the week. I got time. And I want to be with you.”

Leah nodded, secretly relieved that she didn’t have to go alone. “Thank you, Nik. But maybe we should at least get some sleep before then? And you should rest that limp. I’ll go back to my motel and see you back here in a few hours.”

A sudden wave of exhaustion immersed them both; neither of them had gotten much sleep in the past three months. Nik was about to pull her closer and tell her she could stay but decided against it. They did say they wanted to take things slow, whatever that meant for them. Instead he nodded and called a cab for her, knowing with contentedness that he would see her again. Eventually Leah ended up back at her motel, and both slept well in the same city for the first time in forever. Everything was finally different for her, and this time she couldn’t help but be glad.

==============================================

A/N: Lol updating schedule? What updating schedule? This chapter came out a lot faster than the previous one due to me finally learning how to procrasti--I mean, practice self care in med school. Changed my mind a few times for how many chapters total; there are 2 more chapters of this story left before I work more on my next Nightbound series. Please let me know what you think! Thanks for reading 🖤

Tagging: @furiouscloddonutpeanut @nighthunterkatherine @saivilo @samara-rani @god-save-the-keen @xxdangerouscapri15xx @inlovewithrebels

#nightbound #playchoices #choices: stories you play #nik ryder #nik x mc #nik ryder x mc #choices fanfiction #playchoices fanfiction #choices #pixelberry #nightbound nik #phoebe writes choices

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