#leaving my recipes up will probably remove the rest later
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That Owl House show was pretty good
#the owl house#my last post#leaving my recipes up will probably remove the rest later#bye everyone Im married with 2 kids now what a twist
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Dandelion wine apple's tart
Thank you @2023gisecretsanta for organizing everything, I've never done something like this before and it was really fun. I had a great time writing this! :))) This is my first time writing for this fandom and I’m really excited for your opinion!
FOR: @hotgirlshit5 (hello!)
GENRE: Family, Fluff, a bit of Angst
WARNINGS: Bad writing (?) OOC characters (?) not proofread, grammatical errors (cries)
Winter is a moderate season in The City of Freedom.
The houses get cozy and warm, banishing the snow and eventual harsh cold winds to the outside, while on the inside tarts of citric fruits are baked and pheasants are roasted, smelling like a rainbow of flavors ready to embrace you in a big hug.
At Angel's Share barstool, Master Diluc was readying himself to call a day and return to Dawn Winery, since most people preferred to stay home with their family during the cold times, thus allowing him to close at sunset.
Apparently, that was not the case for the Knights of Favonius, with the Cavalry Captain opening the door for their Outrider, that entered soon after.
"Good afternoon, Master Diluc. I hope we are not bothering you, but I invited Captain Kaeya for a snack while we discuss one of the new projects Jean wants to try in the city”
Amber’s smile was truly captivating and he didn’t actually have anything important to do that day, besides tedious amounts of paperwork that sometimes he wished he could just, well… set on fire with a flick of his wrist.
Therefore, Master Diluc prepared them a comfortable table on the upper floor, with a plate of chicken mushroom skewers and a jar of water.
A few hours later he was starting to regret the decision. It was going to be a long walk home in the cold, and he didn’t want to preoccupy Adelinde with the sudden change.
As he was going to ask if the pair were done, the wind outside started to pick up slightly, rattling the trees around them, and shaking them in different directions. One branch, of the older trees behind the tavern, makes the sickening sound of breaking, landing right on the roof with a loud impact.
“What was that?” Amber yelped descending the stairs, Kaeya behind her.
"Probably a dead branch on the roof" Diluc ranged the rag he was using to wipe the counter
"We are already leaving, how much for your services Master Diluc?" Kaeya asked with a small side grin, while Amber went to check the weather outside.
"It's on the house" he replied without looking from the task at hand.
"Captain... We may have a problem. The door is not opening" Amber's voice broke their discussion, as she turned on her feet and walked back
"The impact probably dislodged the snow from the roof and blocked the door. Don't worry, each morning someone comes to clean, and we will be able to leave" Diluc explained
"Seems like we will be spending the night together Ragnvindr" Kaeya teased removing his coat
"In your dreams, Alberich" he replied, although it was more teasing back than insulted.
The hours passed and dinner time soon came. Amber, a bit bored from the silence, and also a bit hungry already, had an idea.
"Master Diluc, do you have any cooking books here? If you let me, I would like to use the kitchen"
"I think I have some, something specific on your mind?" he asked from the table he was seated, nurturing a glass of apple cider in one hand and making calculations with the other
"I was thinking something simpler, like an Apple Tart"
"Diluc definitely knows how to make one. Trust me on this" Kaeya's muffled voice reverberated from under the pillow his face rested in
"He does?" Amber's voice sounded a bit unconvinced. Not without reason, the young man inherited a considerable fortune at a very young age, it wasn't like he needed the knowledge.
"Yes. I do... I asked Adelinde for the recipe..."
"Oh, would you mind helping me?" a hopeful tone in her voice
"Right now?"
Amber scratched her neck
"Yes..."
"I wouldn't mind helping you Amber" Kaeya offered getting up from the sofa "I'm actually a bit hungry myself"
"I will not let you into my kitchen without a responsible adult Kaeya"
"Then you better find one around"
The kitchen was not very big, with a stone table at the center and a few chairs, a couple of sinks, and an oven and pantry, sufficiently full for their dinner.
It wasn't particularly easy making they both cooperate, with more than once Amber having to interrupt a flour fight between the boys, but they made a great team and their Apple tart was ready.
It was going to be only the next morning when some of the Knights passed cleaning the snow on the roads that they would discover the unique sight: The captain of the cavalry, the outrider of the Knights of Favonious, and Master Ragnvindr all sleeping near the oven of the Angel Share's kitchen.
@hotgirlshit5 Hope you had a great time reading it! (And I'm so sorry if this is bad, It's been forever since I wrote anything TT3TT)
Happy Holidays @idyllic-affections @https-furina @soleillunne @ilyuu, @floraldresvi and all my other beloved moots <3!
#genshin impact#secret santa#diluc ragnvindr#kaeya alberich#apple tart#genshin fanfic#dessert#gixrsecretsanta2023#outrider amber#mondstadt#fanfic
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Mishima sank onto the ground, exhausted.
Ryuji sat beside him, chest heaving.
“You’ve... got a lot... of stamina for such... A small guy...” Ryuji panted, looking over at Mishima.
“I’m a member of the volleyball team. I have to,” he responded, hugging his knees to his chest. “...It sucks, you know.”
Ryuji tilted his head. Mishima always found that endearing, how his classmate resembled a puppy when he did that.
“It sucks that your endurance and stuff was fucked after.... You know,” Mishima muttered. Kamoshida’s name always tasted like poison on his tongue when he said it. Even just thinking the name made him want to hurl.
Despite his reservations towards uttering that bastard’s name, Ryuji had no bones about it.
“After Kamoshida? Yeah, it does suck. But hey, Phantom Thief work has helped. Sorta.”
Mishima rested his head on his knees. He liked Ryuji’s company, god he liked it, but he was starting to get that itchy feeling under his skin, screaming at him to leave, to isolate himself again.
“Yuuki, you good?”
The use of his first name made him lift his head from his knees. He’d forgotten that Ryuji was one of the only ones who did that- he’d forgotten he had a first name.
“You seem kinda out of it. Wanna come over to my place? Mom’s usin’ Boss’s curry recipe. I think you’d like it,” Ryuji said, placing a gentle, caring hand on his shoulder. He tried to swallow back the bile as he replied.
“I would like to, I really would...”
Ryuji removed his hand, frowning empathetically. “But your folks would flip?”
Mishima forced himself to nod. His parents didn’t give a shit some nights, while others they would scream at him if he came home two minutes after curfew. It was a delicate thing that was hard to explain to others.
“Speaking of, I should head out. This has been fun, Ryuji. It really has,” Mishima said, standing up and grabbing his bag from the floor. Ryuji mirrored him, slinging his own bag over his shoulder.
“See ya later, Yuuki,” he said, jogging away from the station.
All the better for him, Mishima supposed.
He started towards the station, nausea welling up in his throat.
Yuuki Mishima had always been good at lying. Even about something as mundane as being okay.
I’m okay, he would say. No need to worry about me. Leave me alone. Let me die. Don’t leave. I want to stay with you.
Yuuki Mishima had a fascination with trains and death. How easily intertwinable they were. How one could easily be gone before anyone realised what had happened.
Yuuki Mishima hated lying. He hated surviving. He hated death.
Yuuki Mishima was filled with hatred.
He was filled with loneliness and a desire to be alone.
Yuuki Misuima regretted ever speaking to Akira Kusuru the day he speculated their involvement in Kamoshida’s case.
Yuuki Mishima loved and hated love.
Yuuki Mishima was everything and nothing all at once.
im going to be honest when I say i didnt care for mishima that much. im definitely not a mishima hater but he was more just "oh cool character he's cool!" but now im like. "MISHIMAAAAAAHHHH"
i love the way you write and view mishima i love seeing other people's perspectives on characters. it helps me see things i never saw before and honestly makes me like the character a lot better. i love that mishima hates people caring about him. he hates that he got dragged into having friends who care about him. he just wants to be alone so he can do things without guilt. my boy needs some help but he's too scared to get it and he's so real for that. the end part hit hard because to me it feels like an existential crisis which I have a lot. probably not the way you intended to write it but i just interpret it that way.
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Naughty
Characters: Filip "Chibs" Telford x Y/N
A/N: I just had to get this out of my system, I guess. Also, here's a recipe for the Purple Nurple
Words: ~ 2.2k
Warning: Smut
You were in the Clubhouse, sitting in front of the bar. Nobody in the club knew that you two had something going on. You weren't sure why Chibs hadn't introduced you yet, but you were fed up with hearing his excuses over and over again. Therefore, you figured that it was time to provoke your man a little bit. You knew that the club was having a party this evening, so you decided to dress up and surprise your favourite Scot. Your black lacy lingerie was brand new, and he hadn't seen it yet. He was in for a surprise when he'd undress you this evening.
"Another beer, honey?" Gemma asked you. You nodded and thanked her after she had slid the beer over the counter to you. Gemma came around the bar and sat on the stool beside you.
"Is everything okay?" she wanted to know. You chuckled - Gemma had always been good at sensing your mood.
You had known Gemma since you were young. Her son Thomas had been your best friend in kindergarten and first grade. It had broken your heart when your best friend's health was getting worse and worse, and after his death, you had been devastated. From that time on, Gemma had taken you under her wing.
"Nah, it's nothing. Work's just a bit stressful at the moment," you lied, hoping that she wouldn't notice it. But of course, she would. After all, it was Gemma you were talking to.
"Honey, I know that this is not your 'my work sucks' face but your 'men problems' face."
You sighed. Why was she so good at reading you?
"You're right," you admitted.
"So, what kind of man is troubling you?" she asked.
"The kind who doesn't seem to be sure if he wants a serious relationship or not."
"What makes you think so?" she asked, "Did he say that directly?"
"We've been together for a while now, and I know that he’s the type to be in a serious relationship, but he doesn’t want to make it official and introduce me to his friends,“ you complained.
"Well, did you introduce him to yours?" She raised an eyebrow as if to prove her point.
"Gemma, that's not the point. I mean, he made it pretty clear that he isn't interested in that. So he probably also isn't that interested in me," you replied sulkily.
"Honey, maybe he just needs some time. Also, men can be pretty dense sometimes. You two should probably just talk it out, trust me. I've been with the most stubborn and dense men you can find in Charming," she said, laughing heartily. Hearing her laugh, you couldn’t help it and joined in.
"Well, I hope everything will work out in your favour. I'll see you later!"
You nodded and smiled at her. Talking to Gemma always lifted your mood.
You grabbed your beer, took a big sip, and looked around the Clubhouse. You were familiar with most of the club members, but as always, there were also some people you didn't recognize - especially the Crow Eaters. Sometimes you wondered if Chibs still hung around with some of them. Whenever you tried talking to him about making it official, he was blocking you. He said that he had his reasons, and at first, you believed him, but as the situation didn't improve, you got increasingly frustrated. And speaking of the devil, or rather, thinking of the devil, there he was.
You gulped, why was he so sexy? You took another sip of your beer, debating whether you should just go to him or leave the decision up to him. Mentally, you slapped yourself to stop staring at the Scot. To your displeasure, you found that others were also interested in your man. Fucking Crow Eaters. One of those bitches was clinging to the Scot, ogling him. You clenched your fists as soon as she started to caress his shoulder in a flirty way. Forcing yourself to look away, you exed your beer, giving the guy at the bar a sign that you wanted another one. Or even better, something stronger. You ordered a Purple Nurple, hoping that this one would numb your thoughts - and feelings.
Still, you couldn't help it and had to sneak a peek. And what you saw made you hold your breath. That bitch from before had her hand in your man's back pocket, and it seemed as if she was biting his earlobe. Instead of pushing her away, he was - grinning?
You saw red. Alright, two could play this game. It was time to take some action. You knew that Tig was always up for some fun, no feelings attached, so you made your way over to him.
"Hey, Tigger," you greeted him. You used the nickname because you knew that it would make Chibs furious - albeit knowing that he couldn't even hear you at this moment.
"Y/N, what's up?" he said, a mischievous glint in his eyes.
"Wanna dance?" you asked.
"Sure, babe," Tig replied, smirking. He took your hand and led you to the centre of the room.
You circled each other, gazes remaining locked. You knew that the other Sons were watching you, so you were fairly certain that Chibs' eyes would also be on you. Tig wiggled his eyebrows as you danced towards him, lewdly swaying your hips. You gently rested your hands on his chest. Slowly, your hands slid down his body as... you could hear someone clear their throat.
"Am I interruptin' somethin'?" that someone asked with a thick Scottish accent. You turned around and were greeted by an angry-looking face. Chibs nodded at Tig, who got the hint and excused himself.
"What's your problem?" you asked, knowing that the question would get him even more agitated. His eyes turned dark.
"You're mine," he growled.
"Well, last time I checked, you weren't willing to tell anyone about us," you snapped.
"Then it's time to change that," he replied, scowling.
"Oh, all of a sudden?" you retorted. You knew that you got what you wanted, but it still made you angry that you had to play the jealousy card.
"Lass, ye'r comin' wi' me," he said huskily. Chibs grabbed you by your wrist and pulled you with him towards the door. While being dragged away, you caught a glimpse of Gemma, who was smirking. Of course, she would connect the dots immediately.
Instead of going to his bike, he went for one of the trucks.
"Get in," he growled, holding one of the doors open.
"Why should I?" you replied, arms crossed in front of your chest.
"I'm not discussin' this wi' ye," he answered. You knew that both of you had done their wrongs, so you got in without another word.
The tension was so thick you could cut it with a knife. You just hoped that you would get to your flat soon. Your eyes kept wandering to him. Did you finally fuck up? Was this the point of no return? All you wanted was for him to finally acknowledge you in front of the others. You sighed. You sighed. Finally, you arrived at your flat. He went straight for the door. Reluctantly, you got out of the truck. Had you pissed him off so much that he would end your relationship? Hands trembling, you opened the main entrance and went up the stairs. You could hear him follow you. Luckily, your apartment was on the second floor.
"I'm so angry wi' ye right now, I cannae put it into words," he snapped.
"Tch, what are you angry for?" you huffed.
He growled.
"Ye'r MINE, lass." His eyes had a dangerous glint to them. If you hadn't been so angry, maybe you would have been turned on by now. Scratch that, you definitely were turned on. But you still had to stand your ground.
"Yours, huh? Certainly didn't seem like it when that fucking Crow Eater was feeling you up. You don't even have the balls to tell the others about me! Maybe I'm just tired of waiting, Tig didn't seem to have a problem being seen with me in public."
You looked at him challengingly.
And Chibs snapped. He saw red, thinking back about you dancing with Tig, touching him. He pinned you against the door and kissed you hard, wandering from your mouth to your neck. You moaned into his ear, which only turned him on even more. You could feel how hard he was, and you began stroking him through his pants.
"Bed," he growled while picking you up. But instead of just throwing you onto the bed, he sat on its edge and bent you over his knees.
"You've been bad, lassie," he murmured while grabbing your ass.
"Guess I have to punish ye," he drawled, accent getting thicker the more turned on he got.
"Lift yer ass," he said, tone demanding. You did what he said, and he immediately pulled down your shorts, taking in a sharp breath as he saw your new lingerie. It seemed as if your surprise was working. Frantically, he also took off your shirt.
"Ye look good. But don't think you'll get off your punishment just because of that," he hummed, rubbing you through your pants. You hissed - you were already wet. He began rummaging through the bedside cabinet where you stored your toys. He chuckled, which probably meant that he had found what he had been looking for. He blindfolded you and you could hear him opening a bottle. You shivered in anticipation. He pushed your panties aside and let two fingers glide between your buttcheeks, making them slick with lube. You gasped as he entered your hole.
"Relax," he murmured into your ear. You concentrated on his voice.
"Maybe this will help you," he said. Before you could ask him what he meant, he shoved something into your mouth. "Suck on it," he commanded. You recognized the shape as one of your buttplugs. You squirmed under his touch, excited for what was about to happen. Maybe you should be naughty more often if that meant that he would punish you this way.
He removed his fingers, only to replace them with the buttplug shortly after. You drew in a sharp breath.
"Ye like that, dinnae ye?" His thick voice made you even wetter, which he immediately noticed.
Still bent over his knees, he spanked you a couple of times. Each time his hand connected with your ass, a wave of pleasure surged through you. Blindfolded, every sensation felt more intense. You bit back a moan.
Sternly, Chibs told you to get on all fours and lift your arse. You could hear from the sound of his voice that he was annoyed with you. He was displeased with your behavior at the clubhouse. Now he had to make you behave again.
You heard him opening his jeans and sliding them down his hips. They fell to the floor with a thud. You were so wet, he would be able to slide into you at once. You bit your lip, and your hips rolled involuntarily at the thought of this. You needed some friction, right now. You needed HIM. You gasped as he opened your lips with the head of his hard cock, teasing you because he didn't immediately put it inside you. It felt like an eternity. Chibs ran the tip of his cock up and down your folds, making you long for more.
"Filip," you whimpered, begging him to finally fuck you.
"Don't come. I'm going tae fuck ye just a little 'n' slowly. Don't ye dare come before ah say so."
He thrust into you, at last giving you what you so desperately needed. Spreading your buttcheeks, he stroke over the buttplug with his thumb, making you moan out loud. Chibs leaned over you, bringing his hot mouth toward your ear.
"Who's the only one allowed to touch ye?"
"Y-you," you barely managed to get out.
"What was that? Say it louder," he demanded. Why was his voice so sexy?
"You!" you cried out with pleasure.
"Good girl," he murmured into your ear before grabbing your hips and beginning to fuck you harder and faster. You were almost there, but he hasn't allowed you to come. You spread your legs wider, rotating your hips and meeting his movements. Your breath became short.
"Do ye want to come?" Not being able to form any coherent sentence, you just nodded.
Instead of answering, he took off the blindfold, flipped you over, and kissed you hard. His thrusts became more erratic. He brushed your hair out of your face and leaned his forehead against yours.
Your orgasm hit you like an earthquake, bucking your hips you enclosed Chibs with your legs, wanting to feel him even deeper inside you, be even more connected with him. He groaned and you could feel his cock twitching as he came, shuddering. He kissed you deeply, almost tenderly, conveying all his feelings for you.
------------------------------------------------------
Both of you were still shaking, as you snuggled up to him.
"When are we going to tell the others?" you wanted to know.
"Lass, I don't think there's a need to do that anymore - they already know now," he laughed.
You punched his shoulder, glaring at him.
"Alright, alright, I got the message. Tomorrow, okay?"
Well, you could live with that. Smiling, you cuddled up against him, never wanting to let go again, ever.
#sons of anarchy fanfiction#sons of anarchy#filip chibs telford x reader#chibs telford x reader#chibs telford fanfic#chibs smut#chibs telford
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Tired Feet and Nimble Fingers
Sooo.....
I wrote more Ravio fics. This is one of two, the second one still needs to be reread and checked for errors, but rest assured to whomever requested a fic for Ravio getting some fussing, I nearly killed the kid for you :)
Mr. Hero had nice hands.
Oh sure, they were rather thin, and a bit knobby at the knuckles, aged in a way most people their age would not understand for decades yet, but they were nimble, quick, and forever flitting from one thing to another with the easy grace of a person who’s done everything with their life except sit still and rest.
Mr. Hero’s hands were worn and aged but feather light in their touch and still impossibly firm when he’d grab Ravio by the scarf and pull him down the one inch that was between the two of them so he could glare at him for one thing or another. Honestly, he rarely really did anything questionable, but the ever irritated “Why?” that Mr. Hero always shot at him when he raised the price of an item or tacked on another fee, be it emotional repercussions charges for tending his wounds, or a petty increase when he’d been made to actually worry for someone else, or even in the rare instance when Mr. Hero managed to actually make him angry. Either way, soft or firm, Mr. Hero had nice hands, and on the rare instance Ravio had actually seen him remove his rings (Mr. Hero had complained of swelling, and had nearly had to pry them off) he always smiled at the sight of them.
Was that weird? Probably. But there was a lot you could tell about a person by their hands, and Mr. Hero’s told the story of someone who gave and fought for others since he’d been able, and even if the caring person hid behind the shadows of his bangs or the icy pain in his eyes, Ravio knew that person was still in there.
And at times like this, he got to actually see it.
“What are you doing?” The merchant shifted uncomfortably, glancing down at the other end of the couch where Mr. Hero had been sitting since he’d stumbled through the door with a tired groan. He’d collapsed onto the couch not long after, drenched and covered in mud, and it had been all Ravio could do to convince him to shed his extra layers and change into something clean, at least. Sure, he’d had to actually dig through the scant wardrobe in the bedroom to find something, but once the over-sized tunic had been shoved in the veteran hero’s face, he’d agreed to strip off his wet things, and Ravio had given him the space to do so while he’d made some warm cocoa for the two of them.
He would have preferred cider, but Mr. Hero still refused to share the recipe with him.
Now, however, he’d flopped onto the couch himself, uncaring for the fact that he’d had to settle his legs in the lap of his friend. After all, if Mr. Hero minded, he would have pushed him off. As was though, the pink-haired teen was staring at his feet with no small amount of displeasure, and Ravio was half considering pulling them back to himself and resigning himself to just curling up on the couch into one corner so he could give the other boy his space.
Firm hands latched around his boot, tugging with a small grunt and surprising the merchant greatly. “Mr. Hero, I just-”
“No shoes.” The pink-haired hero huffed. “Not on the couch.”
“Says the one who trudges dirt all over my freshly cleaned floors!” Ravio huffed, trying not to wiggle too much as Mr. Hero not only pulled off his shoes but, after making a disgusted face at the smell of his feet, had also yanked his socks off, throwing them over to the pile of sopping laundry on the floor. Ravio made a note to pick that up and help wash it later.
“My floors.” Mr. Hero corrected him, tugging the towel Ravio had given him earlier off of his shoulders and wiping its wet ends over the merchant’s feet, making him stiffen. “It’s my house I’ll have you know.”
“Mr. Hero, are you- are you cleaning my feet?”
“It’s not like you ever do it, when’s the last time you bathed, you filthy bunny?”
“Two days ago.” Ravio huffed into his cocoa, savoring the taste and the thrum of warmth that bloomed in his chest both at the drink and the sensation of Mr. Hero’s nimble fingers helping to clean the grime from his, admittedly, filthy feet. “More recently than you, I daresay, Mr. Hero.”
“I just showered.” Violet eyes flitted up to meet his as Mr. Hero motioned to the door ad likely the stormy weather outside.
“That doesn’t count!”
“It does for me.”
“When did you last bathe? With soap?”
Mr. Hero didn’t answer, instead continuing to rub the dirt and dust off the bottoms of his house-mate's feet with the wet towel. Ravio hmphed. A fight for another day then, it isn’t as if he had the energy to draw a bath and push his friend into it anyways.
A delightful, rough sensation rubbed over the base of his foot, firm and still somehow incredibly relaxing, and the bunny merchant found himself torn between sinking into the cushions with a sigh as some of the pain in his limbs faded and staring down at Mr. Hero to see what had been done. In the end, he’d sunk into the cushions of the couch, lids fluttering as a heavy sigh pulled itself from his lungs. “What-”
“You’re as tight-string as my gran’s horses.” Mr. Hero drawled, and the sensation repeated itself, warm pressure sliding across the ridge of his foot. “This used to work on my uncle, relax.”
It took longer than necessary to actually realize that his friend was rubbing his feet, but Ravio was too warm and comfortable to really care, especially with how sore the appendages in question had been with scurrying here and there over the last few days tending to the shop.
Mr. Hero’s hands were miracle workers, and Ravio was hardly even awake when the veteran hero had finally stopped with his self-assigned task, pushing himself up and leaving Ravio to stretch out over the length of the couch. All the merchant could register was the increase of weight on top of him, the clinking of two empty mugs being placed in the kitchen sink, and the door creaking open.
He never felt the draft when Mr. Hero left back into the outside world to continue his quest, but when he woke the next morning, it was to find the hero’s favorite blanket spread out over the top of him and a fresh pair of fuzzy socks slipped over his clean and no longer painfully tense feet.
“Ravio, sit.” Mr. Hero groaned, leaning back on the couch and pinned in place by the sailor using his legs as a back rest. “If you don’t, I swear I’m going to have Twilight throw you at the couch!”
The merchant in question pouted, he’d been trying his best to tidy the living room, after all, Mr. Hero and his family had been quite unexpected that evening and the place was, unfortunately, a mess. One had to take inventory now and again, and the sad fact of it was that that required pulling everything off the shelves and out of storage and from around the house to count it up and figure out if he should risk attempting to return to Lorule or attempting to work Mr. Hero’s small smithy out back in order to restock his items.
He’d only counted up everything and had been working on cleaning and polishing his various items when the heroes had come knocking at the front door, and then he’d been so busy helping them warm up from the chill (they were all wearing the scarves he’d given them and it pleased him to no end) and making a meal with Mr. Hero that he’d been left unable to finish gathering the things that had been scattered across the floor. Of course, after dinner was finished, he’d set right to it, but now that everyone was settled around the fire with warm mugs in hand and fluffy scarves around their necks, Mr. Hero seemed to only be agitated by his puttering about and moving everything again.
To be fair, he hadn’t stopped moving for the last thirty minutes since the others had helped gather his things back up so they could sit, but there was so much to put away!
“Mr. Hero, I still-”
“Sit.” Mr. Hero squeaked grouchily, earning a few giggles as Mr. Rancher and Mr. Chosen Hero exchanged glances, smiles wide. “My feet hurt just from looking at you.”
Like it or not, Ravio’s ears were already pricking up at those words.
Since that first time, Mr. Hero had done him the favor of massaging his feet after a hard day many times, and as much as Ravio didn’t want to expect it of him, it was incredibly nice to have someone fuss over him, if only for a little bit, and if there was even a chance that it would happen again, well...
It was entirely intentional that he flopped onto the couch, feet resting easily in Mr. Hero’s lap as he stretched out. He could have sat down, he really could, but the fact of it was that he simply didn’t want to. Fortunately, Mr. Hero didn’t seem to mind, and too the merchants delight his friend immediately started pulling off his shoes with the same old familiar huff and wrinkling of his button nose, tossing the shoes as far away as possible to avoid having to remain in contact with them for long.
It was a practiced and much appreciated ritual that was Mr. Hero helping him relax after a long day. Just as cocoa or cider was prepared when either was having a particularly long or difficult day, or how Ravio always made sure Mr. Hero ate three meals a day and slept for at least four hours, taking care that his friend wasn’t positioned too uncomfortably wherever it was that he finally passed out. Mr. Hero touching his feet was normal, just like him playing with Mr. Hero’s hair once the other boy had settled down at last.
Perhaps though, it wasn’t all that common for the others.
“Vet?”
Mr. Hero blinked up from his work, violet eyes meeting the midnight blue of Mr. Rancher impassively.
“What in Ordonia are ya doin’?”
The veteran hero cocked a brow. “Foot massage, he won’t relax otherwise, and foot pains a-” Captain Hero Sir Jr. shot a look their way and Mr. Hero quickly amended what he’d been about to say. “Foot pain sucks.”
“You are touching feet.” Mr. Rancher wrinkled his nose. “Isn’t that a bit... gross?”
“Says the man who eats bee larva.” Came the quipped reply. “I wash them first, pities sakes.”
“By my head!?!?!?” Tune started jumping up and away and shooting Mr. Hero a hurt look. “Like, yeah, sure, I help Granny on bad days too, but warn a fellow if you’re gonna be having feet by his head.”
“Don’t sit on my legs.”
Ravio chuckled, letting the noise and chatter wash over him.
Mr. Hero’s hands never failed to sooth the pains of the day.
The heroes had stumbled in time and again over the months, and Ravio had grown quite used to their presence. Time passed differently on both ends of things, but he’d since learned when abouts to expect that they'd appear, and the house was, thankfully, stocked fully for each visit.
Autumn had brought about harvest, and the heroes had darted in and out, occasionally offering help and other times only crashing wearily in the living room and Mr. Hero’s bedroom for the night before they had to return to chasing the monsters. Today was one of the longer stays, especially if how Mr. Captain Hero Sir was moving so stiffly was any indication.
“Do you need me to step on you again?” Mr. Smithy asked worriedly as Mr. Captain Hero Sir eased his way down onto the couch, earning a few looks both from the merchant and the other heroes while Sheerow flitted about the man's head, chirruping worriedly and earning a gentle word or so from the captain.
Mr. Captain Hero Sir was in quite the state, stiff as a board and moving as poorly as the old pump in the village. It made him worried, and try as he might, he couldn’t think of any of his items that would help.
Mr. Hero appeared to already have an answer though. “Tunic off, Cap, and on the couch.”
Sharp blue blinked over in confusion to where Mr. Hero was already shedding his boots and rolling up his sleeves with a purpose. “I’m sorry, what?”
“Massage. Works wonders for back pain. Hop to it or I’m rescinding my offer.”
It was one thing to be on the receiving end of matters, but another entirely to be one of those who watched. Mr. Hero put his full weight into his hands as he worked, kneading out the knots in his friend's muscles while Mr. Captain Hero Sir melted into the couch with little relieved noises.
Maybe it took the others realizing that the vet didn’t just help him, but after that it wasn’t at all uncommon for him to carry in his attempts at cider or his wonderful cocoa and see Mr. Hero standing over one of the others and putting his clever hands to work in soothing tensed muscles back into place, the heroes under his hands melting under his touch.
The first time he heard Mr. Hero humming under his breath while he worked, the other heroes had all looked incredibly surprised, but not upset in the slightest. It was a lovely tune after all, and Tune himself started playing with his baton in time the gentle music, swaying in his seat and waving the instrument while the others continued working on repairing and tending their various items and clothing articles.
There was a pattern. For Mr. Captain Hero Sir it was his back, although rather rarely, and the same went for Mr. Chosen Hero.
For Captain Hero Sir Jr. It was his neck and shoulders.
Mr. Smithy got stress headaches that seemed to ease when someone helped message his temples.
Mr. Rancher had problems with his left wrist specifically.
Ravio of course had poor feet, and while Tune and Wild seemed to be mostly left unscathed from the repetitive pains that the others did, they took every opportunity to cling to Mr. Hero with their whole bodies when they felt that they wanted pets or attention when their mentor’s/brothers were too busy.
He’d attempted to return the favor all of one time. The black eye and bloody nose he got out of it weren’t even made better with the nearly tearful apologies of his best friend as Mr. Hero had jumped to his feet and dashed outside to get some ice for the injury.
Once the blood was cleaned up, the vet had sat in shame as Ravio had joined the others in teasing him for his “killer reflexes”.
“I can’t help it! People touching my feet- It-” Mr. Hero tugged at his hair frustratedly, eyes turning to the sky hopelessly. “I’m sorry, Ravio. It was an accident, I swear.”
“I know, Mr. Hero, I know.” He’d giggled out the reassurance, but from that day on he avoided touching Mr. Hero’s feet in any way possible.
(Oddly enough though, that didn’t stop a few of the others from trying, and Mr. Hero’s sleep was interrupted many times by heroes that had been kicked in the nose or even the mouth because they’d dared each other to touch the teen’s feet while he slept. Mr. Captain Hero Sir had complained for days until his own black eye healed, and Mr. Hero hadn’t even bother apologizing, stating that the others shouldn’t have tempted fat so foolishly.)
He felt a bit guilty for not returning the favor, but he knew better than to try again where so many others had failed.
And then winter had sprung up. Winter with its harsh gales that blew in half frozen heroes that tracked ice and snow across the floor as they bundled in front of the fire, wrapped head to toe for the weather. Winter when he’d brew hot cocoa to warm them all up, letting Mr. Hero tug down blankets to wrap around their on-and-off house-mates (guests no longer applied at this point). The mugs offered were warm, and Ravio smiled as each hero offered him a word of thanks as his tray grew lighter and lighter until he only had the two mugs left.
Mr. Hero had pulled together his usual nest before the fire. His huge blanket and a few spare pillows all bundled together into a comfortable place to sit for the younger heroes in order to make up for the lack of a second couch, and the vet sat in its center, still working to arrange the cushions with stiff fingers and chattering teeth until Ravio had pulled on his friend’s tunic and urged him to sit down.
When he offered the mug though, Mr. Hero had fumbled it and nearly dropped it, a hiss of irritation whishing from between his teeth and he glared down at his stiff digits. “Blast! Din’s sake, why does the freaking cold always freaking-”
Warm hands, worn from housekeeping and smithy work, wrapped around the vet’s as Ravio gently rubbed some warmth back into the stiff fingers. Mr. Hero started slightly at the touch, but didn’t complain as the merchant continued to press his into the rises and against the bones of his friend’s gnarled hands, offering warmth and relief against the pain and the cold both for a few short minutes, and Mr. Hero melted into the touch, as he always inevitably did, letting Ravio have his way for the moment and leaning to sit back-to-back with Wild while the merchant worked.
When he’d released his housemate, it’d only been to press a mug into the vet’s hands, but then he’d been settling across from him on the blanket nest, stockinged feet coming to rest in his friend’s lap as he’d pulled his own mug close for a sip. Violet eyes offered a begrudging smile that was returned in rupee green, but no words were spoken between the two as they enjoyed their cocoa.
Mr. Captain Hero Sir however wasn’t about to let it pass. “So, hand holding now, uh? Should I be talking to Fable about a wedding day?”
Ravio was certain that the only thing keeping some very rude signs from being exchanged as the fact that Mr. Hero wasn’t willing to stress his hands further or release the warmth that he held in them. The pink-haired hero did shoot a very disappointed look towards the captain though.
#do not tag as ravio/i#linkeduniverse#linked universe#lu legend#lu ravio#fluffics#ketto's cottagecore collection#idiot writes fluff#idiot writes cottagecore
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Love Breathing Not Fully Bloomed: A Kanroji Mitsuri Meta
Some thoughts that have been brewing since we got a deeper look at the birth of the Breath of Love in the Rengoku Gaiden, boiling down to that Mitsuri had not yet reached her full potential.
SPOILERS AHEAD~!
While we don't have any reliable timeline for this series, we know that Mitsuri has been practicing swordsmanship for only about two years, likely less.
The "two years ago" stated in her flashback to her failed engagement was back when she was 17, so let's be generous and say that was 2.5 years ago. But, we must also keep in mind that she's been a Pillar for at least several months by the time Swordsmith Village arc takes place. The Pillar meeting Tanjiro met her at was possibly her first of the twice-a-year meetings, but I wouldn't put it anywhere beyond her second.
After the failed marriage discussion she would have spent some unknown period of time dying her hair and starving herself, before deciding to join the Demon Slayers. She accomplished her Flame Breathing training under Rengoku in six months, roughly half the time most Breath users train under their cultivators. Tokito is noted for becoming a Pillar in two months after taking up the sword, but Mitsuri probably stumbled her way into Pillarhood within months of passing the Final Selection; making the Kamaboko squad's quick ascension up the ranks look like nothing as she blows away the usual five years it takes someone to become a Pillar (or if they are especially skilled, more like two years, as stated by Gotouge in Taisho Secrets).
While the way of swordsmanship and battle became Mitsuri’s everyday way of life, thereby leading to huge improvements, that's a really short time to develop actual battlefield experience. Among the Pillars, she is the least seasoned or naturally inclined for battle, it really is by accident of her bizarre strength that she’s gotten so far.
That's hardly surprising, given her background and motives. For context, her interests are very domestic what with all the pet-keeping (four cats, a rabbit, and a whole hive of bees, by my count) and sweets and recipes, and her stated hometown would have been in the heart of developing city culture, with shopping and restaurants and movie theaters. There would have been no exposure to swords and the culture that goes with them, making her justifiably embarrassed of how monstrously her strength makes her stick out. Her inability to fit into a normal family life makes her feel worthless, even if she does have a base of love and support. (*Put a pin in these things, I'll be drawing a comparison to another character later.*)
However it was that she was introduced to the Corp, it must have taken a huge leap of hope and/or desperation to leave the otherwise comfortable lifestyle for a life of battle. While Rengoku's home is not terribly far from hers, it still would have been a total break from the life she knew before, so she must had been betting everything on both her ultimate wishes; living in accordance with who she is, and finding a husband. Let's refer to these respectively as Wish A and Wish B. Note that "becoming a strong swordsman" and "elimating demons" are not among these goals; they are merely means to her goals.
Now if we try to to follow her path as a swordsman chronologically, six months since taking up the sword under Rengoku, she's passed the Final Selection. On a mission with Rengoku, who now treats her as a peer, she's nonetheless filled with shame that she hasn't really picked up much skill and just waves her sword around with brute strength.
I love this bit of characterization because that is so, so easy a trap to fall into with martial arts. Even if you understand things in theory and do your best on proper form when taking things slowly, all of that very easily goes out the window when you're using them in the heat of the moment. The less experience you have, the far more likely one is to do this. Falling back on just throwing a punch as hard as you can instead of throwing a good punch makes Mitsuri so, so, so relatable. She is a normal girl with abnormal strength, not a battle genius. Like us normal people, and even like Tanjiro, she can only improve her battle sense with experience.
This puts her in a very different situation than the other Pillars, who she meets either when they are very experienced, or when they are outright geniuses. This gives her a different sense of shame, which we'll come back to.
While feeling ashamed that she can't live up to Rengoku's teaching, her fighting suffers with this lack of self-confidence (which, again, makes her very relatable because this is applicable to just about all of us normal people), and she only realizes the Breath technique when applying it through her own unique emotion-driven fighting style. While she goes on to name this Breath after Wish B (given that this is a romantic version of "Love"), it's powered more by a philanthropic love, realized only when she is protecting other people. This becomes a newly discovered third wish, as well as a source of confidence.
In the side story novels, Mitsuri later on suffers another blow to her confidence which compromises her fighting and makes her fall back into wanting to hide herself, for she is ashamed of how her motives compare to Shinobu's. Besides Shinobu's encouragement and giving Mitsuri a venue in which to openly express her love and appreciation for other people, another child whom Mitsuri has rescued looks up to her and says a few things to restore her confidence. Getting that feedback and being able to express herself openly (Wish A) is the cycle that powers Mitsuri's confidence and keeps her ultimate weakness, shame, at bay.
This, combined with words of encouragement from Ubuyashiki and Rengoku, is what really empowers her to embrace her unusual constitution and develop the Breath of Love. While it's said that this is an offshoot of the Flame Breathing she's formally trained in, it's more of a stretch than the relationship between something like Snake Breathing stemming from Water Breathing, and more like she's hit at the basis of Breathing itself to create a technique suited to her, like Inosuke did with his entirely self-taught Beast Breathing. (*Put a pin in this self-created Breath style thing, we're going to come back to this too.*)
So, Mitsuri went on to become the Love Pillar. With the rate at which Pillars cycle in and out (based on how many the Upper Moons claim to have killed), I have to wonder how fast the Lower Moons getting cycled in and out too. Even though these are her peers and we never see any other Pillars looking down on her, she sees herself in a lower position than the rest of them. Case in point, one thing I love that the anime did is that when Tokito chips the rock at Tanjiro and tells him off, Mitsuri is silently fangirling, and then when Tokito orders the Kakushi to draw back/leave, Mitsuri silently and automatically obeys and shrinks back. That wasn’t directed at you, silly!
Though her Breath requires confidence, she still has a ways to go.
When we see her again later, she's in a position of being a protector to everyone around her; the swordsmiths and her juniors, and she's treated with the awe and respect and acceptance of a Pillar; in this kind of setting she is fully in accord with Wish A (reinforced by her less formal third wish) and, thanks to Shinobu's encouragement, not ashamed of Wish B, thereby eliminating a big part of her shame-based weakness. She's added all this power and just as importantly, experience to her preexisting raw strength and flexibility.
The experience is key here; she's gained a lot of battle sense since her first mission. She's not as taken off guard by demon abilities, and with her risen confidence, she's also gained more flexible thinking and can make quick adjustments in battle as needed.
Not entirely, though. At her core, she still relies on that brute strength.
Ultimately, though toward the end she thinks she might be overpowered after all, it's that boost of confidence and cycle of philanthropic love from her juniors and desire to protect them than she recovers and makes use of her mark. (I'm glad no one's told her that this means she's doomed to a short marriage, should she ever even get one.)
Following this historic feat; acting in a way that is natural to her and to her Breath to unlock a mark she didn't even know existed, she still feels a little shamed among the other Pillars for being so shamefully inarticulate about battle technique; despite this being what she's dedicated her life to. Again, it was never her natural desire to be a fighter, so it’s unsurprising that this part doesn’t come as naturally to her as it does to all those geniuses in the room.
Moving on to the battle with Nakime, this is mostly played for laughs because Mitsuri's lack of battle sense compared to other characters is put on full display. She's emotional from the get-go and easily overwhelmed and this affects her concentration drastically, leading to stupid mistakes and ultimately having to fall back on her brute strength to break through pieces of the fortress instead of survive and fight through observation. Getting called out on this is meant to help her, and she absolutely does her best to summon back her battle sense, but it's all downhill for Mitsuri and her Love Breathing technique from here.
As the battle with Muzan starts, that third wish is thrown back in her face as so many of her juniors die protecting her. Since he's powered by philanthropic love and confidence, she cannot recover any battle sense, and quickly falters so much that she must be removed from the battle rather than weigh everyone down. The difference between her and the other Pillars here is stark; her inexperience and lack of natural fighting inclination is, again, painfully obvious and relatable to a lot of readers. She has natural strength, but not natural talent.
When she does return to battle, she only has that core strength to rely on again--no room for peace of mind, only brute emotional strength resulting in a panel that made me throw my fist in the air and cheer out loud because damn, that is hardcore, girl.
But, in the end, Mitsuri succumbs to her injuries, and only right before death does she get closer to Wish B. Even with Iguro's promise, it's too late.
This is super frustrating for a number of reasons, but if we're focused solely on the actualization of Love Breathing, it's because Iguro could have said something much, much, much sooner if he wasn't so ashamed of his own blood tainting her in this lifetime (not that she would have cared). Words from other people have such a huge influence on Mitsuri that if she had actualized Wish B, for which her Breath is named, she could have made humongous gains in confidence before being romantically loved, and having someone to openly shower in love. Imagine what she could have unlocked, if that shame she still carried for being too monstrous to be married could have been eliminated.
But that's not all. What if the timeline had been different? What if she had not two, but five years’ experience? Or even more than that? What if, for a long duration of her experience as a swordsman, she was also experiencing a happy marriage?
I invite you to consider the implications of a Mrs. Iguro Mitsuri who has the comfort and confidence of being herself with a husband, in addition to being in a leadership role in the Corp? A Mrs. Iguro who, with a little honesty from her husband who feels bothered that she’s embarrassed, stands up to Maeda-san and says that as a married woman she needs a more modest uniform?* A Mrs. Iguro who gained a level-headed battle sense that can only be refined through experience, not based in brute strength alone?
She'd be such a happy badass.
*(Not looking for a modern-era Western culture based debate on this; this is defined based on Mitsuri's desire for a proper Taisho Era marriage.)
Now, remember those pins I put in place?
Consider someone else who realized a natural Breath technique all on their own, who attained a mark without any intention to, who felt like a monster due to super human abilities that made them shamefully unable to fit into the ideal family life, despite only wanting a peaceful, happy wedded life? Someone who valued bonds with other people, a kind person who lived to protect others?
Now, I'm not saying that Love Breathing is as powerful as the Breath of the Sun, or that Mitsuri is as innately powerful as Yoriichi (their natural skills were of different types entirely). But, as all Breath techniques stem from the same natural Sun Breathing source, Love Breathing might have found its way back a little closer to that source, in some way or another.
Which is all to say, never look down on Love Breathing or on Mitsuri just because she didn't play as big of a role as the others in the final showdown.
After all, that Breath was not yet all it could have been, and as a swordsman, she was not yet in full bloom.
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Remember Me: Chapter Three
Summary: Y/N and Bucky were the unlikely match when it came to love, but they were inseparable since they met. After a fight, Y/N left to be a trauma surgeon in the military and returns without her memories. How will Bucky remind Y/N how she is the fire in his bones?
Word Count: 3.6k
Warnings: Mentions of drugging and sexual assault. Small bit of violence.
Series Masterlist
All Writings Masterlist
*gifs not mine
Chapter Three - Hunger
Bucky had been awake most of the night watching Y/N sleep soundly on his lap but eventually his tiredness took over and he fell asleep himself. When he opened his eyes to the smell of freshly brewed coffee, he immediately looked down to see Y/N not there anymore. There was a small bubble of panic as he got up quickly, walking to the kitchen to see Peggy with a mug of coffee. Without a word, she pointed to the front door with a smile to let him know where Y/N was. Bucky gave a soft smile of thankfulness before making his way to the front door, opening it as his eyes fell on Y/N’s back as she sat on the porch steps. He froze in that moment, listening her hum the tune to their song. Was she remembering bits and pieces? He slowly moved to sit next to to her.
Y/N stopped humming when she noticed Bucky sit by her, looking at him quickly. She had a banana on her lap with a cut through it and was practicing sutures on it with tweezers in her hands that held the needle and thread, “Good morning, sleepy head.” She said with a smile towards him before returning her focus on her practice sutures, “You ever wake up with a song in your head that feels like it’s your favorite song but can’t remember it? Because I cannot get this song out of my head and I can’t look it up because I don’t know the words, just the tune.”
Bucky smiled over at her, watching as she threaded the needle through the peel of the banana and suture the peel back together with black thread, “Everyday darlin’,” He told her. Their song had been stuck in his head on repeat since the night they found it. It was one of his favorite memories. Y/N had snuck out with him and they went to a field on his dirt bike. He had brought a blanket so they could watch the stars together while the little radio he had played music. He kissed her for the first time to the song Hunger by Ross Copperman. It had been stuck in his head from that moment on, like a theme song to their relationship, “Is the banana going to make it?”
Y/N giggled a little bit, “I think so. I’m a very good surgeon.” She told him as she tied a knot onto the last suture and put the tweezers down in her lap as well, “There. He should live a long life of 24 hours before he turns to mush.” She looked back at him, running her eyes along his facial features. She had never seen a smile so sincere that she could remember, “I’m practicing so eventually I can go back to work at the hospital. From what Steve says, I have a very good reputation there as their old trauma surgeon and they’d be happy to have me back. Plus I still have all my memories when it comes to medicine and surgical procedures which should help.”
“That’s great.” Bucky told her, happy that she was still pursuing the thing she had dreamed about since she graduated. Y/N was still her, even without her memories. He couldn’t help but wish the things she remembered were him and the love they had between them. It was an epic love and Bucky wanted that back, “I should probably head home and change into some clean clothes. I’ll be back later to replace the fan in your room so you can sleep soundly.”
Y/N looked at him, observing him as he spoke. She could see something in his eyes that didn’t want to leave. Or maybe it was that he didn’t want to leave her. She bit her lip, “I was actually thinking, since we were so close before, maybe seeing your place would bring back some memories. Plus Peggy already said they didn’t have anything for breakfast.” She smiled at him, “Do you have breakfast supplies? I can cook while you change and stuff.”
Bucky grinned at her idea, it was just what he wanted. Her to come home with him, “Sounds like a plan, doll.” He told her, knowing he had supplies for her favorite food already. He had gone to the store as soon as he heard she was coming home, buying all her favorite things to eat in case she remembered him and came back home, “You think you remember how to make blueberry pancakes?”
Y/N scrunched her nose as if trying to think of the steps on how to cook, “Nope.” She said with a large pucker of her lips on the sound of the ‘p,’ “But I’m a surgeon. I can figure out how to make pancakes… probably.” She said with a small laugh before licking her lips and staring at him, “Does this mean you’re taking me home on your motorcycle?”
Bucky stood and smiled down at her, “Oh no, I still think you need some more time after I found you walking down the street in the middle of the night. I just live a street down, we can walk it isn’t far.” As much as he would like to take her home on his bike, he didn’t want to rush things with her and knew Steve wouldn’t be too keen on the idea.
Y/N nodded, a little sad she wasn’t going to be able to remember the feeling Bucky had told her about when she rode with him but was happy to adventure out of the four walls of Steve’s home. She stood by him for a moment before opening the door and telling Peggy she was going with Bucky and she was alright before turning back to the dark haired man, “Lead the way, Bucky.” She told him with a smile and a wave of her hand, following as he walked, “I’m curious, tell me more about this girl you loved.”
Bucky looked at her as he walked down the sidewalk beside her, “Love.” He corrected, “I still love her and I always will.” He stared at her for a moment as if waiting for her to say it back before connoting, “We were a very unlikely match, total opposites. I already told you she was smart, I have no idea how she fell in love with me. I was a mess, always getting in fights and causing trouble. When she came into my life, she was like the little angel that appeared on my shoulder that helped me choose the right path to go down.” He smiled at the memories, “But she always told me I was the one that made her feel truly alive, like the world was brighter and made sense. She calmed my wild soul and I brought out the wild in her’s.” He had rambled on the whole time they walked, not being able to stop himself until they were in his driveway, “Home, sweet, home.”
Y/N smiled as she listened to Bucky talk about the woman he loved. It was obvious he was still completely and undeniably in love with her. She looked at the house, taking in its features when they stopped, “It’s a pretty house.” She complimented before following him inside. She watched Bucky hurry and pick up a shoe box on the coffee table, taking it into what she assumed was his bedroom. Curiosity sparked in her as it seemed like Bucky didn’t want her to see it and that made her want to know more but wouldn’t pry. She went to the kitchen, “Okay… Pancakes..” She said to herself as she closed her eyes tightly trying to remember the ingredients. When she opened them, Bucky was already pulling out all the ingredients with a smile on his lips, “Thank you. I’ll try not the screw it up.”
Bucky watched her scan over the ingredients and when he saw she didn’t remember where to start, he pulled out a notebook. Y/N always wrote down the recipes she loved. It helped Bucky cook a few meals for her when she got home from working at the hospital, “Here’s the recipe. You got this.” He encouraged, “I’m going to take a quick shower. Try not to burn the house down.” He said as he started walking out of the kitchen and down a hallway towards the bathroom.
Y/N watched him go before scanning her eyes over the recipe. She tilted her head as she recognized it as her own hand writing. She bit her lip lost in thought for a moment, trying to put puzzle pieces together. She finally snapped out of it and looked at the ingredients nodding to herself, “Alright, Y/N. You know how to do a double lung transplant. You can make blueberry pancakes.” She encouraged herself. She wondered around the kitchen, finding pans and utensils to help and started the mission of making breakfast.
Bucky came out to find Y/N flipping pancakes with extreme focus on her face as if it was a life or death situation which made him smile. He wore dark jeans with a short sleeved black shirt that showed off his tattooed left arm. He walked into the kitchen, gently taking the spatula from Y/N who looked grateful that he was taking over, “They look delicious. I’ll finish up.” He told her, adding the blueberries and flipping the pancakes.
Y/N let out a sigh of relief when Bucky took over, stepping back and hoping up onto the counter as she watched him closely, observing every move he made while he cooked. She couldn’t deny she was attracted to him, something about him drew her towards him. She ran her eyes up and down his figure, biting her lip as she took in every part of him. Y/N was very observant and when she saw the small red heart tattoos between the rest of his ink, her eyes narrowed. She recognized them as her own which made her curiosity grow. When she first woke up after having the bullet removed, the doctors had her draw shapes and write her name to make sure she still had the ability to write and those hearts looked exactly like the ones she had drawn.
Bucky turned to look at Y/N, seeing her looking at his tattoos. He wondered if it was sparking anything to remember him. He held two plates of pancakes in his hands which he set down on the table gently before pulling out the syrup and pulling out a chair for Y/N, “Breakfast is served.”
Y/N took a seat in the chair Bucky pulled out for her, “Thank you.” She said with a smile towards him, picking up the syrup and slathering enough on to cause a toothache, but she always had a sweet tooth. She licked her lips slightly at the view before digging in.
Bucky kept his promise to Y/N, replacing the fan in her bedroom with a small chandelier which made her smile when it sparkled in the light. Y/N got to know Bucky better. He was over everyday entertaining her but as much as she brought up the idea of Bucky taking her on a ride, he would deny it and his reason was that Steve wouldn’t like it. Y/N was smart and everyday she spent with Bucky and listened to him talk about the girl he once loved, the puzzle pieces slowly started to be put together in her mind. She had a feeling by the way he talked and spoke to her that she may be this mystery woman that he had broken the heart of but she wouldn’t know unless she asked. One day at dinner with Steve and Peggy, Y/N finally built up the courage to confront her brother on her thoughts, “Stevie, did Bucky and I use to date?” She said out of the blue.
Peggy and Steve both almost choked on their food at the question, sharing a look. Steve looked at Y/N trying to keep a straight face, “What.. Why would you ask that?”
Y/N bit her lip, narrowing her eyes at their reaction. She was pretty sure she was given her answer by the way they choked on their food. Or she was dead wrong and they couldn’t believe her question, “Just some things I’ve noticed. He has a recipe book in my handwriting at his house and the heart tattoos look like hearts I draw.” She said, giving him a short list instead of talking about the way Bucky looks and speaks to her. The way he made her feel.
Steve opened his mouth to speak but couldn’t find a good answer so looked to Peggy with pleading eyes for help.
Peggy looked at Steve then smiled gently at Y/N, “You should talk to Bucky about that, honey.” She said simply.
Y/N frowned a little at them, her eyes flickering between the two, ���Why can’t you just tell me?”
They both stayed silent for a moment as if trying to think of a good answer, glancing at each other and their food trying to avoid eye contact with Y/N who was staring at them intently.
Y/N rolls her eyes and sighs, standing up, “I’m not going to break.” She told them with bitterness in her voice before walking towards the front door. She grabbed her small backpack and a jacket, pulling it over her figure and opening the front door, “Don’t report me as missing person!” She called back before exiting the home. She walked down the street, muttering words under her breath in frustration towards her brother. Why couldn’t he just answer the question? It bothered her and she wanted answers about who she was and who she was to Bucky. Y/N found herself walking into a bar, smiling slightly when she saw someone she recognized sitting at the bar from the BBQ, Sam. Y/N hoped up on the stool next to him, “Hi. Sam, right?”
Sam looked at her, holding a bottle of beer in his hands, “Y/N! Yeah, Sam.” he smiled at her. He had known her for a few years, he was one of Steve’s army friends, “Whatcha doin here?”
Y/N shrugs, “Brothers being annoying. Needed to get away for a little bit. Do you know what kind of alcohol I like?” She asks with a tilt of her head. She remembered she has drank before but couldn’t remember what she enjoyed.
“Tequila. Lots of tequila.” Sam remembered with a small laugh, “You said it got you through your surgical internship.” He waved his hand at the bartender, “Can we get a tequila shot?” To which the bartender nodded and placed it in front of Y/N with a lime.
Y/N narrows her eyes at the liquid in the shot glass in front of her with a lime resting on the top, “Okay, so lime first or second?”
Sam chuckled, picking up the lime and putting it on his napkin, “You don’t like the lime.” He reminded before watching her take the shot and her nose crinkle, “Just like old times.”
Y/N wrinkled her nose at the sting then let out a small laugh, “Yup. That is definitely something I would fall in love with.” She looked away from Sam as another man sat next to her with a smile. She didn’t recognize him but from the look on his face it seemed like he knew her from how comfortable he was to come up to her.
“Hey, pretty girl.” The short haired dark man said to her. He had a sharp jaw that matched his sharp cheek bones with some stubble for a beard, “It’s been a while.”
Y/N bit her lip at the new man, “I’m sorry… I don’t remember who you are.” She told him, “I lost my memories on deployment from an injury so you’re going to have to reintroduce yourself.” She added quickly as to not hurt his feelings.
“I’m sorry to hear that.” He smiles at her before holding out his hand, “Brock Rumlow. We used to hang out, or at least you came to one of my parties when we were younger. It was fun.”
Y/N scrunched her nose in thought, “Nope, sorry don’t remember. But it’s nice to meet you again.” She smiled at him. She hadn’t noticed Sam glaring at the man and didn’t notice when he got up and walked away to make a call.
Sam stood away from as many people as he could, dialing a number on his phone and pressing it to his ear as he watched Y/N talk to Brock who was buying her another shot of tequila, “Hey, Buck. It’s Sam…. I’m at the Howlin’ Cammandos bar with Y/N…. She said her brother was being annoying and wound up here, I don’t know man. Listen, Rumlow just came over and reintroduced himself to her…. Yes, Brock Rumlow the one you and Steve told me about…. He’s buying her shot after shot… Alright, I’ll stay close to her..” He hung up the phone, shaking his head before returning to his spot beside Y/N, listening to Brock put all the moves on her while she laughed like it was the first time she had heard his cheesy pick-up lines which Sam determined was because she couldn’t remember hearing them before.
It didn’t take long for Bucky to walk through the doors, immediately grabbing Brock by his shoulder to turn him around before landing a hard punch straight to his nose. He grabbed him by the collar of his shirt, pushing him up against the bar, “I told you to never come near her again!” He growled out at Brock before landing a punch to Brock’s cheek followed by another. He wasn’t holding back, he was putting everything he had into every punch.
Y/N jumped a little at the sight, her jaw falling open as she watched Bucky punch Brock. She looked at Sam as if it say ‘help’ and watched as Sam got up and separated the two, pushing Brock out the door telling him to get out of here. Y/N looked at Bucky once Sam had gotten rid of Brock, “What the hell, Bucky?” She said to him.
Bucky turned his angry stare to Y/N after watching Sam drag Brock out the doors, “C’mon. I’m taking you home.” He said, grabbing her hand and pulling her outside. Sam was standing out there, watching as Brock’s car pulled out onto the street before heading back inside with a nod towards Bucky. Bucky kept pulling Y/N towards his motorcycle, passing her a helmet, “Put it on.”
Y/N held the helmet in her hands for a moment before setting it down on the seat of his Harley, “No. Not until you tell me what that was all about.”
Bucky rolled his eyes at her stubbornness, picking up the helmet again and holding it out to her, “Put it on, Y/N. I’m taking you home.” He said again in a more stern voice.
Y/N folded her arms instead of taking the helmet, frowning at him. She was already irritated at Steve and now she felt like she was being babysat by Bucky, “Talk or I walk.”
Bucky stared at her, knowing that look. She was stubborn and she would walk away from him if he didn’t spill what he knew, “Fine, Y/N. When you were eighteen you went to a party at Brock’s house because we got in a fight. You thought he slipped something in your drink and called me right away. I got there just in time to find his hands all over you in his bedroom while you were passed out but it hadn’t gone any further than him copping a feel. I told him if he ever came near you again, I’d kill him.” He sighs, “Now you’re back with no memories and he would’ve taken advantage of that. He’s not a good person, Y/N.”
Y/N looked suddenly saddened as Bucky spoke, her lips parting a little in shock. That was something she rather not remember and was partly grateful she wouldn’t have that memory living inside her brain. She looked down, “I didn’t know. I’m sorry.” She apologized. She sighed deeply before dropping her hands to her sides, “I asked Steve something tonight and he wouldn’t answer me. Peggy said I should talk to you about it.”
Bucky’s couldn’t help but frown as Y/N looked sad, that was something he didn’t want her to remember. It was an awful memory for both of them and Bucky had never felt such rage when he saw Brock’s hands all over her. He had beaten Brock to a pulp, almost unrecognizable and he would’ve again tonight if Sam wasn’t there to stop him, “What is it, doll?” He asks in a gentle tone, knowing whatever she had asked Steve was bothering her.
Y/N ran her tongue along her lips for a moment, not daring to look at Bucky. She wanted to know and she felt like she already knew the answer from all the hints Bucky had given her. Half of her didn’t want to ask but the tequila was giving her courage and the need to know was overwhelming, “Am I the girl you talk about? The one you still love?”
#bucky x y/n#bucky x reader#bucky x you#bucky barnes x y/n#bucky barnes x reader#bucky barnes x you#bucky barnes fanfic#bucky barnes fanficiton#bucky barnes series#marvel fanfic#marvel fanfiction
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lola.
summary: a year in the life with professor harry, post graduation - part 2 of when i’m sixty four
pairing: professor!harry styles x reader
warnings: smut, fluff, some angst? pregnancy stuff!
word count: 18.6k
song inspo.: lola - the kinks
The day is going suspiciously well, so far, and it’s making you nervous.
You’d invited both of your families over for dinner and to break the news and you suppose you’d expected it to go about as horribly as post-graduation dinner had - that’s the last time you’d gathered both of your families in the same place, anyway. You and Harry visited Anne and Gemma quite a bit and you’d gone, on your own, to see your mother (wanted to scope out her feelings for your relationship before bringing Harry to see her again - and, luckily, she seems to be warming up to it) but you hadn’t made another attempt to stuff them in the same room together yet.
Until now.
You’d made Harry swear to you that he wouldn’t tell his mum or his sister about the pregnancy until you could get everyone at the apartment to tell them together, and that’s what this is - you can hear them, laughing together in the living room from where you’re seated on the kitchen counter, watching Harry work over the stove. You’d been out there with them for a few minutes, laughing and sharing stories before you’d claimed you should probably go help Harry with dinner and retreated into the kitchen. Hearing them all seem to get along should make you feel better about the entire situation but all you can think about is how terribly everything will crash and burn when you finally tell them.
“Don’t y’think you should be out there with them? Making sure no fights break out, an’ whatnot,” Harry questions, turning to glance at you over his shoulder with one quirked eyebrow. “Like having you in here wit’ me, but …”
You shrug, picking at the seam of your jeans (that are beginning to fit a bit tighter than they usually do.) Both of you know that your excuse of wanting to keep him company while he cooks is absolute bullshit but you’re getting too nervous, sitting on the couch between your father and Gemma. Keep thinking that you’re gonna say the wrong thing, accidentally spill the secret before you’re ready. But you just shake your head at him, folding your hands on your lap. “They sound like they’re doing good. No need to interrupt their bonding, right?”
Harry merely hums, reaching down to turn off the stove and stirring his pasta sauce once more before resting his wooden spoon on top of the pot. “You need t’bond too. Been in here practically the entire time.”
“I’m just nervous,” you confess, voice drowned out by a sudden bout of laughter that you recognize to be your dad’s, coming from the sitting room. “My mum just started cooling down about our relationship - now we need to drop this on her.”
“We’re going to have t’tell her at some point. Better now, ‘cause she’s in a good mood.”
You ponder that, letting out a deep breath. You know you’re not being too great of a host, now, holed up in the kitchen instead of being out there but you can’t bring yourself to leave - “Are you almost done with dinner, then?”
He hums, turning around and leaning against the counter so you can meet his gaze. “Yeah - just the garlic bread, still in the oven. S’store bought, but I’m gonna tell your mum that it’s homemade, so jus’ back me up with that, would you? Want her to be impressed with me.”
You giggle, pushing yourself off of the counter and closing the distance between you two. Your arms loop around his neck and his hands instinctively land on your waist, smoothing over your skin through the fabric of the loose shirt you’re wearing - you’d been too paranoid to wear anything tight, because you swear your stomach is starting to round out, just a bit, now that you’ve reached the 11 week mark. “She’ll ask you for the recipe, you know. What’re you gonna do then?”
“Not sure,” he shrugs, leaning down to land a soft kiss on your lips when you pucker them at him impatiently. “We’ll cross that bridge when we get there, I guess.”
“Sounds like a faulty plan,” but you can’t help the grin from breaking out across your face. You press another kiss to his lips before breaking away, deciding to make yourself useful and reaching up into the cabinet above your head to grab a stack of plates. “I’ll set the table, if the garlic bread will only take a minute or two.”
Harry nods as you pick up the napkin holder, resting it on top of the plates and rifling through the utensil drawer to pick up the six knives and forks you need. “If you’re leaving, maybe you should talk to our family. They probably think you’re mad at them, or something.”
“I doubt they think I’m mad at them,” you tell him, bumping the drawer shut with your hip when you have all of the utensils, firm in your hand. “Why would we invite them over if I’m mad at them?”
“To make amends?”
“For what? Haven’t seen them in weeks.”
“You’re missing the point,” and then Harry rolls his eyes with a small smile, turning back to the stove. “Jus’ go. The bread’s gonna be done in a minute.”
So you do - pad out of the kitchen with your hands full, make your way to the kitchen table that’s been stripped of the usual flower vase that usually sits in the center. Marie sits on top of the table, as though daring you to remove her, but you do, anyway - pick her up, ignoring her soft, angry meows, and set her on the ground with a soft apology and an order to shoo. Immediately you rest the plates on the counter, setting the forks and knives down beside it before getting to work - out of the corner of your eye you can see everyone gathered on the sofas, chattering loudly, and hearing them all getting along makes you smile, now.
Also out of the corner of your eye you can see your mother standing up from her spot, pressed between your father and the arm of the sofa. Then she’s walking towards you, the sound of her low heels on the hardwood making you turn your head to look at her from where you’d been folding six napkins in half.
“Hey, mum,” you call once she’s close enough to hear you without your dad’s rambunctious laughter infiltrating your ears. “Dinner’s gonna be ready in just a minute, alright?”
“Alright.” And you expect her to turn around, head back to where she’d come from, but instead she reaches for the plates, pulling the first one off the top of the stack and beginning to place it around the table. “I just figured I’d help you set the table - if you don’t mind, of course.”
You shake your head, feeling a smile tugging at your lips as you fold the sixth and final napkin in half, beginning to rest them next to the plates your mum is setting up. “‘Course I don’t mind.”
There’s only another brief second of silence between the two of you, as your mother meticulously adjusts every plate so they’re all perfectly aligned with the napkins you’re lying out, until she pauses, hand resting on the edge of one of your white, porcelain plates, finally saying, “It looks like you and Harry have a nice thing going here.”
You pause where you’re beginning to lay out the forks and knives on top of the napkins, trying to resist the urge to grin (or maybe cry, if you’re being honest) as you nod slowly. “Yeah, we do.”
“The apartment is very nicely decorated. Did you decorate it?”
“Mostly Harry, actually,” you admit to her, which is mostly true, anyway, and you relish in the surprise that lingers, ever so slightly, in her eyes. “He lived here for a while before I moved in, so most stuff is his.”
She hums softly and you can hear the oven ding from the kitchen, then Harry shuffling to take the garlic bread out, and then your mother says, “Well, I’m very glad you’re happy. I know I don’t always show it - but if you love Harry and Harry loves you, I’m fine with it.”
God, you really could cry at that, and you’re not sure if it’s solely because of the hormones like you’d love to believe. You’d talked to your mother more times than you could possibly count since she found out about you and Harry and this is the first time she’s ever admitted she’s alright with your relationship - it only makes sense that you would get emotional.
But you swallow the lump in your throat, giving her a small smile from across the kitchen table. “Thanks, mum. That means a lot,” and she looks so relieved with your response that you wonder if the sudden slight animosity between you two had been affecting her as much as it had been affecting you.
You wonder if she’ll be fine with it once you tell her that Harry knocked you up - but you’ll worry about that later.
Later comes entirely too soon, though, once you’re seated at the dinner table with bowls of pasta and tomato sauce spread out in front of you. Harry sits beside you, arm thrown across the back of your chair as though he can sense how nervous you’re feeling - you’ve barely picked at your pasta and only taken a bite of your garlic bread (which tastes, for the record, absolutely homemade, and not like it was picked up at the store.) Harry’s an excellent cook and what you have eaten, you’ve thoroughly enjoyed, but you feel like if you eat too much you’ll throw it back up.
“This is delicious, Harry,” your dad declares, reaching towards the bowl of pasta for his third helping in the past ten minutes. “You could be a chef, you know.”
Your boyfriend laughs at that, fork full of pasta hovering barely an inch from his mouth. “M’not sure about that - can really only make pasta, to tell you the truth.”
That’s not true, you want to say - Harry cooks nearly all the meals for you two and he’s spectacular at it. Can recreate any recipe first try and make it better than the original - but you can’t bring yourself to interject into the conversation. You feel like you might throw up, to be honest, so you merely flash Harry a tight lipped smile and glance back down at your plate, collecting a piece of pasta onto your fork.
Harry seems much more relaxed than you - diving into a story about how he used to cook when he was a child - which checks out, of course. You had no doubt that Anne and Gemma would be over the moon about the pregnancy, judging from the many dinners and brunches you’d had with them. It was, really, only your mother who would present any sort of issue, and you’d taken to worrying about it much more than Harry had.
“Y/N,” Anne begins from across the table, and you’re snapped out of your thoughts almost immediately, giving her a smile that, you hope, doesn’t put on display just how nervous you’re feeling, “do you like to cook, too?”
You understand her intention - she’d probably assumed, from your almost complete lack of contribution to the conversation, that you’d been feeling left out - but having five pairs of eyes suddenly on you makes you feel significantly more nervous than before, and Harry’s hand lands comfortingly on your shoulder. It takes just a beat too long for you to reply but finally, you reply, “Um - I’m not too good at cooking, honestly. Pretty rubbish at it, actually. I like to bake, though.”
Harry swoops in, then, squeezing your shoulder and continuing, “She’s great at baking! Should try her brownies some time.”
Have you ever made brownies that weren’t from a box?
You swallow thickly, resting your fork on your plate, and then you add, “I’m best at making things that come from boxes.”
There’s a collective laugh at that, and then your mother pipes up with a story from when you were a kid and she’d tried to get you to help her bake cupcakes for a fundraiser - you’re not quite listening, especially when Harry uses his hand on your shoulder to pull you in to him, lips brushing your ear when he whispers, “I think we should tell ‘em now. Right now.”
You pause, shooting him an alarmed look before he continues, “You’re a bloody wreck, babe, m’sorry. Look like you’re gonna have a nervous breakdown. Wouldn’t y’rather get it over with?”
No, you want to say. You’d rather never do it, but the thought of spending the rest of dinner so nervous you can hardly stand to eat seems akin to torture. Whatever reaction the news garners from your families won’t change whether you do it now or in twenty minutes - why put it off?
So you nod, head jerking up and down once, and Harry squeezes your shoulder again, leaning in to press a kiss to the side of your temple. Your hand nearest him lands on his knee, squeezing onto the fabric of the loose jeans he’s wearing.
“Actually,” and Harry’s voice cuts through the mixture of laughter erupting at the table. He waits a minute, for it to calm down - in the meantime, he glances at you again, fingers rubbing into your shoulder, and your hand smooths over his knee. There’s a lot being said, in the brief second your eyes lock while he waits for the attention to land on him - it’ll all be okay, and then no matter what, we have each other and the everpresent I love you that lingers whenever you look at him. And - finally - when there’s only expectant silence at the table, Harry breaks your gaze, turning back to your families with a small, nervous smile. “We have something t’tell you all.”
—
You’d had today marked on your calendar for weeks, it should be said.
As soon as your doctor - Dr. Ferguson, who Kaitlyn, weirdly, had convinced you to go to - had told you that at your next appointment, we’ll likely be able to tell the baby’s gender, you and Harry hadn’t been able to shut about it. You’d facetimed Anne that night, told her that in two weeks time, we’ll know the gender! And you’d texted your parents the same news - even if they weren’t as immediately excited about the pregnancy as Anne and Gemma, the celebratory Bitmoji they’d sent back made you smile, anyway.
You’d left the house twenty minutes early and still managed to nearly be late, getting stuck in traffic and waltzing into the office with less than two minutes to your appointment. Harry had gone to check you in while you’d perched yourself onto one of the waiting room sofas with cushions that were oddly sticky against your palms, and your knees jiggled up and down as your eyes scanned the room you’d become entirely too familiar with - the wall of pamphlets next to the restroom, the framed photos of happy mothers and pregnant women. There’s exactly one other person waiting in the chair across from you, legs curled beneath her and face buried in a magazine, and you feel oddly uncomfortable staring at her but you feel too nervous to do anything else.
“Said it may be a bit of a wait,” Harry murmurs to you when he’s done signing you in - his arms instinctively wrap around your shoulders, and you rest your head on his with a deep breath. “Somethin’ about her last patient runnin’ late, or something. So - that's good”
You nod, gnawing on the inside of your cheek as you lean into your boyfriend. You’re not sure if he’s feeling half as nervous as you are but something about the way he keeps drumming his hand on his thigh, humming softly beneath his breath, convinces you that he might be. So - to break the tension, because there’s something truly terrible about seeing Harry nervous when you’re usually the worrier - you ask, voice hardly above a whisper (out of courtesy for the woman across from you,) “What do you think it’ll be?”
“A boy,” Harry whispers back with not a moment of hesitation, and you furrow your eyebrows at him. “What? I reckon we’re gonna have a little Harry Jr. in there,” and he pats your stomach for good measure.
“You’re crazy,” you tell him, playfully swatting his hand away from you. “I’m almost positive it’s a girl - isn’t there a maternal instinct, for these kinds of things?”
“There’s a paternal instinct too, you know.”
“I don’t think so.” And then you pause, staring up at the smooth white ceiling above you with your bottom lip pulled between your teeth. “And if it is a boy, I’m putting my foot down on Harry Jr.”
Harry huffs playfully, and there’s a pause between you two before he says, “Should we bet on it?”
You give the words a moment to sink in, and then push yourself off of him, glaring at him and trying (and failing, naturally) to hide the smile that threatens to tug up your lips. “I’m not betting money on the gender of our baby - that’s terrible, professor, really.”
“I never said money,” he interjects, crossing his arms over his chest with one side eye glance at the woman across from, still hunched over the magazine she’s reading. “If he’s a boy, I get a blowjob.”
Your cheeks burn immediately and you raise your hand up, swatting his shoulder with an apologetic glance to the lady across from you, who’s looking up from her magazine with an absolutely affronted look. “Harry!”
But he merely continues on as if he’d been talking about the weather. “And if he’s a girl - well, what do you want if you win?”
Where he was rather blasé about discussing your sex life in front of a poor stranger, you can’t bring yourself to tell him exactly what you’d want if you’re right - so you shrug, focus your eyes on tugging at a loose thread in his sweater. You’d made him change out of the t-shirt he’d been wearing and change into this thick sweater Anne had given him for Christmas - it was December, after all, and he’s terrible when he’s sick. “Well - um - I want you to do the laundry for a month.”
He raises his eyebrow, staring at you with a slightly amused smile, and then questions, “That’s it?”
You can feel your cheeks burning up even more as you continue to pluck at Harry’s sweater. “And - you can’t complain when I wear your clothes.”
“I don’t complain, baby, you know I love when you -”
“And,” you continue, flicking him in the forehead to cut him off. “There’s something else that I won’t say here, because we’re in public, but I’ll tell you in the car.”
Harry raises his eyebrows again and you can’t resist the urge to laugh, leaning in to rest your head on his shoulder for a moment to regain whatever semblance of composure you could scrap together. His fingers tug at the ends of your hair as you pull your head back up to look at him, and when your eyes have met he says, “Well, that’s actually quite the long list of things to do if it’s a girl, so I’m changing mine to three -”
Whatever he was going to say (and you had a pretty good guess) is cut off immediately at the sound of one of the nurses calling your name, and your eyes widen with an air of slight nervousness before you both stand - smile at the nurse and follow her down the hall to the exam room that you’ve come to know entirely too well, even if you’re not too far into your pregnancy.
When the nurse leaves the exam room you clamber onto the table, feet knocking into each other you lie back. Harry settles into one of the chairs beside you, pointedly pulling it closer so he can rest his chin on the table. “Are y’going t’tell me the third thing you want if you’re right - which you’re not?”
You merely roll your eyes, turning your head so you can look at him. “Rather like sitting on your face - guess I’ll opt for that, before I get so big I’ll suffocate you if I try.”
He frowns at that, pressing a kiss to your hand where he’s got your fingers intertwined with his. “M’a big boy, you know. I’ll always let you sit on m’face - think I love it more than you do.”
You know he’s wrong but you just press your palm to his cheek, letting him rest his head into your hand before saying, “Don’t think you’re gonna be singing that tune when I’m the size of a whale.”
“Are you kidding?” you’re not, clearly, and he scoffs as if he’s offended by the mere concept of it. “I’ll be singing it until the day I die. I’ll let you sit on my face every single day, jus’ to prove it to you. Don’t laugh - I’m being serious!”
But you can’t maintain any sort of serious composure for more than a moment without grinning, so you rest your head back and gaze up at the ceiling while Harry continues to fuss about how much of a disgrace it is - that you’d ever dream of yourself being too big to sit on his face, but you opt to merely block him out, feeling your own worries starting to swell back up in your mind now that you’re not focused on talking to him. You don’t care, truthfully, if your baby is a boy or a girl. You’d be just as happy with either but for as long as you’d known you were pregnant, you’d sworn up and down that it’s a girl. Blamed it on your maternal instinct and all that, because you simply knew you were having a daughter.
If you’re wrong, does that mean you have no maternal instincts? Are you going to be a bad mother?
The door to the exam room opens again before you can focus too much on it, and Harry’s ranting about you sitting on his face ends so abruptly you could swear he’d never even opened his mouth. Dr. Ferguson gives you both wide smiles, asks the general questions - how’s it going? How’s baby? How’s mom? And you squeeze Harry’s hand when she finally settles beside you, turning the ultrasound machine on, and you reach down to tug your sweater up.
“Generally, 15 weeks is where we can determine the baby’s gender - assuming they’re in the right position to check,” Dr. Ferguson tells you, using the probe to spread the cold gel on top of your stomach. Your fingertips drum against the back of Harry’s palm as she asks, “Do you guys think you want to know the gender of the baby?”
You nod furiously as Harry proclaims, “Yes - definitely. Been talking about it for weeks, haven’t we?” And - because he tends to ramble a bit when he’s nervous - he continues, “I think s’a boy - she reckons it’s a girl. We’ve got a bet going, about it, too -” and that’s where you squeeze his hand and shoot him a glare to shut the hell up.
The doctor merely chuckles at the pair of you, raising a manicured nail to point at the ultrasound screen as she moves the probe closer to your lower tummy. “Unfortunately for you, Mr. Styles - I think you’ve lost the bet.”
There’s a pause after that, the both of you letting the words settle in.
If he lost the bet - then that means -
“It’s a girl?”
Harry’s words come out in barely a breath, and you can feel the familiar prickling in the back of your eyes as you squeeze Harry’s hand.
“You two are having a girl,” Dr. Ferguson confirms, a smile spreading across her face as she watches the two of you - your eyes well up with tears as you turn to look at Harry, his mouth dropped open and upturned ever so slightly in a wide grin. Your eyes meet and you swallow thickly, not bothering to try and hide the smile that graces your features as he stands up, throwing his arms around you in a tight hug. Neither of you pay much mind to the doctor as she murmurs, “I’ll go and get your prints,” and slips from the room, but you’re beyond thankful - you need a moment with him, for this.
As soon as the door shuts you let the tears drip down your cheeks, burying your face in Harry’s sweater and wrapping your arms around his torso with a soft hiccup. His voice is soft when he mutters, “Can’t believe we’re gonna have a baby girl - God, you were right.”
Your cold hands slide up his sweater, smoothing up his warm back, and you can feel him jump at the contrast of temperatures - “I knew it,” you can’t help but declare quietly, voice crackling wetly as you sniffle. “Our little girl. I knew it.”
He chuckles, which is mostly a soft exhale into your hair. “Can’t believe you’re turning this into a told you so moment.”
“Only saying that ‘cause you lost.”
There’s no response from your boyfriend for a moment - mostly because he knows you’re right - just his arms tightening around you. “Oddly enough, I don’t quite think I mind losing.” The sentiment is sweet and you pull back, leaning up to press a lingering kiss to the underside of his jaw, and you almost miss the mischievous smile spread across his face, even if the way he’s rubbing your back is ultra innocent. “I get a daughter and my ultra hot girlfriend is sitting on m’face tonight - what more could I ask for?” And, for that, you smack his shoulder again, laughing through the joyful tears blurring your vision.
—
“Are you honestly mad at me right now?”
You huff, sinking lower into the couch at Harry’s mocking tone. Truthfully - though you wouldn’t admit it to him - you are feeling just a bit cross, as you stare at the ten cards in your hands that are nowhere close to being a run of seven. “No,” you tell him, shorter than you’d anticipated. “But you’re three phases ahead of me, and I feel like you’re rubbing it in.”
Harry rolls his eyes playfully, resting his elbows on the coffee table across from you. You’d started out both sitting on the couch, but then you swore you caught him peeking at your cards and banished him to the other side of the coffee table, on the ground, no matter how many times he promised he was just changing the music blaring from his phone. (Which, for the record, you didn’t believe, because he was a firm believer in letting the music play out and never changing it.) “Baby, m’not rubbing it in. Jus’ playing the game.”
“You keep skipping me,” you mumble, barely audible over Ring of Fire coming from his phone on top of the table.
“S’how you play the game. So if you happen to go out, m’not stuck with 15 extra points.”
“You know I’m never going to go out, right?” And just to prove your point, you reach in to grab a card from the deck, rolling your eyes when you see it. It’s another three, your fourth one, and you rest it on top of the discard pile with a pointed glare at Harry.
He merely shakes his head, reaching in to take a card. “I don’ even know why you wanna play Phase 10 all the time, ‘cause you always get mad at me when we do.”
You furrow your eyebrows at him, a frown tugging the corners of your lips downwards. “That’s not true! I don’t get mad at you. Just get irritated, because you’re good at it, and you always beat me.” There’s a pause while you wait for Harry to discard a card, and when you look up at him, he’s gazing at you with a slightly guilty look in his eyes. “You’ve got to discard a card, Har.”
And then, instead of putting a card down on the discard pile, he lays down his cards on the table - a set of sevens and a set of tens. Your shoulders slump as you stare at his completed phase and then at the cards in your hand, still a jumbled mix of numbers with absolutely no hope of becoming a run anytime soon.
“M’sorry for this, honey,” Harry tells you, voice faux sweet, and you look back up just in time to catch him placing his skip down on the discard pile, making it his turn again. And, just as you open your mouth to say something, he reaches for the deck and pulls a card. You watch, feeling heat creep up your neck, as Harry slaps a wild card down next to his set of sevens and then presses his final card - a two - into the discard pile - fuck.
“Jesus fuck,” you exclaim, tossing your cards down onto the coffee table. Harry’s staring at you with a smug, satisfied grin on his face, and you could reach over and slap it right off. “How?”
“S’just luck,” he tells you, as if he’s the master at it, as he reaches over to collect your cards off the table. “You’ll get it next time, alright? S’just a game, it’s fine.”
“It’s easy for you to say.” You cross your arms over your chest as Harry mouths the point values of your cards, flicking through your stack. “Mr. ‘I’ve-Gone-Out-Every-Single-Time.’”
He snorts at that, grabbing all of the cards strewn about the coffee table and shuffling them together. “You had two skips, y’know. Why didn’t you skip me? 15 points each.”
“Because I felt bad,” you tell him, frown deepening at the way he barks out a laugh. “Why’re you laughing? Was just trying to be nice.”
Beside Harry, resting on the carpet, is the stray piece of notebook paper he has to add up your scores with each round, and you sigh, reaching for the stack of cards so you can begin shuffling them. “The point of the game isn’t to be nice, baby. You’ve gotta play your skips - that’s why you’re 325 points behind me.”
You can’t put your finger on why you’re getting so worked up over this. It is just a game and you know that but you’ve always been competitive. You’d been rather proud of how, nearly 21 weeks into your pregnancy, mood swings hadn’t been hitting you as hard as you’d expected - but, God, they’re getting you now. And Harry is four phases ahead of you now, and what’s worse than being beaten is that it is just luck, which means yours is being really shitty right now, and you’re tired of it.
You focus your eyes towards your lap where you’re working on shuffling the deck as the song segues to Ain’t No Mountain High Enough, just a bit too loud for you to handle. “I just wanted to be nice,” you repeat, cringing at the voice crack that cuts through your sentence. From the corner of your eye you can see Harry’s head snap up as he hears it, his brows furrowed. “God, I hate this game.”
There’s another beat of silence, and then Harry’s pushing himself up off the floor, coming to sit beside you on the couch. His arm wraps around your shoulders, pulling you to him (as close as he can get, with your rounded tummy between you both) as his lips land on the top of your head, and, as nice as he’s being, you can feel how his lips are turned up into a grin. “Are you going to cry?”
“No,” you insist, but the frustrated tears prickling the back of your eyes are on its way to proving you otherwise as you lean your head into his shoulder.
Harry’s hand smooths up and down your back soothingly as you sniffle into his shoulder pathetically. “Sorry for teasing you,” he murmurs, barely heard against the music, and you nod slowly. “You’re jus’ being nice, and that’s very sweet, even if it goes against the point of the game -” and, for that, you raise your hand up and land it against his shoulder with a firm slap, and he laughs - “but I’m sorry, really.”
You press your cheek to his shoulder, leaning in to press a small kiss to the side of his neck. “It’s just hormones, I reckon. Didn’t mean to get so upset.”
“Should have a word wi’ the little one,” Harry murmurs, sliding his hand around from your back to your stomach. The second he’d started to notice your stomach growing he’d become obsessed with feeling it, which you suppose you should have been expecting all along, really. “Tell her not to make mommy so sad, right?” You exhale a soft giggle at that, and he hums contentedly. “But I guess s’my fault too, getting all the good cards.”
You lift your head up, pulling away slightly so you can look into Harry’s slightly amused eyes, and he’s still smiling softly. “Awfully rude of you to be so good at Phase 10,” you tell him, pouting dramatically as you gaze at him through your watery lashes. You’re already feeling quite a bit calmed down and also fairly silly for getting so upset about something so trivial, but what’s done is done, you suppose.
He nods, and you can see the laugh he’s struggling to conceal as he tries to keep up his serious facade. “It is rude of me,” Harry agrees. “I can be a real asshole sometimes.”
“A real asshole.”
“Should probably make that up to you, right? But how will you ever forgive me?”
You pause, pretending to think as you gnaw at your bottom lip, eyes darting around the apartment as if searching for ideas. “Dunno. You’re really gonna have to work for it, professor.”
The instant effect the name has on him never fails to amuse you as his gaze darkens - hardly noticeable to anyone who doesn’t know him as well as you, but you can read him like a book. Harry’s thumb swipes up to wipe at the tears, still brimming in your lower lash line, as he says, “Lay back f’me, then.”
You grin as Harry unwinds his arms from around you, shifting backwards until you lie across the sofa, instinctively throwing your legs across his lap, just to watch the way he playfully rolls his eyes. His hands smooth up and down your calves, fingertips drumming against your skin, and you push yourself onto your elbows. Wiggle your feet at him, and Harry smiles at you. “Don’t think you’re far enough along to need foot massages.”
“First, I absolutely am, and second, I don’t need them,” you agree, “but I want them.”
“Another time,” he promises, shifting off the couch so he’s on his knees beside it. One soft kiss lands at your ankle and it sends shivers through your body as you watch him, shifting so he’s positioned between your thighs. Harry leads a trail of kisses up your legs, hands following behind his mouth, massaging up your legs until he reaches the soft skin of your thigh.
Your breath hitches in your throat as you watch him, lips attaching to your inner thigh, suckling in a love bite. He loves leaving marks in places only he sees - your ass, namely, and your thighs and your boobs and everywhere else that’s reserved for him. In summer it becomes a problem, when you have to don swimsuits and shorts to bear the heat, but it’s January, now, so you let him go wild with his hickeys.
“Harry,” you groan, reaching down to curl your fingers into his hair. He looks up at you with a bemused look in his eyes, tongue lapping over the mark he’d left on your thigh. “Don’t tease me.”
He chuckles breathily, blowing softly on your wettened skin, and you whimper quietly. “M’not teasing,” Harry assures you, hands working up your thighs until he reaches the hem of your panties, fingers hooking into them to begin pulling them down your legs. “Jus’ taking my time.”
You lift your hips up so he can discard the offending material, tugging them off of your ankles and tossing them onto the coffee table, right on top of the abandoned Phase 10 cards. Fingernails scratch against Harry’s scalp, twirling his curls around your fingers, and you can see the blissful smile that briefly graces his features before he returns to the matter at hand. He grips the bottom of the oversized shirt you’re wearing, pulling it up around your waist, and then he mumbles, “Bloody hell, s’that my shirt?”
You laugh, the noise soft and barely perceptible over the horns in Can’t Take My Eyes Off Of You. What you want to say is that, truthfully, his large shirts are one of the few that fit your stomach, so you opt for them most times - but Harry isn’t looking for a response. He just grabs your wrist, drags it to your waist where the shirt is bunched up, and you take the hint to grab onto the material, pulling it up over your stomach. Make sure he has enough room to work, without it getting in the way.
“God,” he mutters, grabbing your thigh to hoist it up, putting your glistening pussy on display for him. “You’re so beautiful, y’know that?” You can feel emotions bubbling in your chest with just the small compliment, and further as he breathes, “Not sure how I got so lucky. M’fucking obsessed with you.”
You’re beyond thankful that he doesn’t look up into your eyes again, because you’re not sure that he’d ever let you live this down - your eyes, filled with tears about to trickle down your cheek while he’s inches from your cunt. But he merely leans in, presses a soft kiss to your clit, and you’re too distracted by the sudden jolt of pleasure to think about the moisture building up in your eyes.
You moan at the same time Harry does, his tongue licking up between your folds. His noise rolls through your body and you toss your head back, hitting against the arm of the sofa with a long whine, cunt clenching around nothing as he laps at you. Your eyes roll back into your skull as you slump against the couch, not bothering to try and hold yourself up to see what he’s doing to you.
But - well, you should’ve remembered that Harry is a stickler for eye contact, and within moments of your gaze being torn from where he’s working at you, he stops. Pulls away so the only place you can feel him is his hand on your thigh, holding you up, and you push yourself up again to glare at him. “No teasing, Harry, please -”
“Y’gotta look at me,” Harry tells you, raising his eyebrows. “Come on, baby. Wanna see your pretty face - yeah, that’s a good girl.”
A soft moan escapes your throat at the pet name, and you focus your attention on not dropping your gaze from Harry’s head between your thighs. He takes a second to make sure your eyes are firmly on him, and then you’re groaning for fuck’s sake, professor, do something, and he’s back to it. His hand that’s not maintaining grip on your thigh joins his tongue at your pussy, spreading your lips apart to give him easier access to exactly where you need him. You watch as his tongue flexes, sliding into your dripping hole, fingers working at your clit.
“Oh, fuck!” you gasp, walls fluttering around Harry’s tongue. Your clit is pulsing with the pressure of his finger, rubbing circles into the sensitive nub, and with your eyes focused on him you can catch exactly the way his lips upturn into a cocky smirk. He’s the only one who can make you fall apart like this and he knows it, and it should bother you but it only turns you on more. “God, Har, keep doing that, please.”
Harry hums softly, “M’not planning on stopping,” as his tongue dips in and out of your cunt, lapping up every last drop of your arousal lingering on your folds. “Tell me how good it feels, baby. C’mon, wanna hear how much you love it.”
What a dick, you think as you stare down at him. Harry’s fingers slide down from your clit to your hole, replacing his tongue, pumping in and out of you. The first curl of his digits brushes against that hidden spot inside of you and your hips roll forward into his hand as his lips wrap around your clit, tongue flicking firstly against it before he hollows his cheeks out and sucks. “Oh - god, Harry! Feels so good, love it so much -”
Your eyes meet his again and he raises his eyebrows, silently egging you on, and you continue, voice high pitched and breathy as you cry, “Please, make me feel good, please!”
“That’s m’girl,” Harry grunts, fingers digging into your thigh so hard it’s sure to leave marks, and then his face is sinking back into your folds - his tongue licks up your folds, nose nudging your clit, and you collapse back against the couch. If he was focused on watching you surely he would see how you’ve abandoned the eye contact but he’s paying attention solely to the pleasure he’s giving you. His tongue flattens as he licks up your folds, two fingers still pumping in and out of your heat so fast and hard you can hear the sounds of your wetness. “Taste so fucking good.”
His voice is muffled against your pussy and you lower your gaze back down to him, chest heaving as your grip tightens both on his hair and the fabric of your shirt, still hiked around your waist. Your fingernails dig into his scalp so hard that you know you’re leaving small, crescent shaped indents into the soft skin of his head but it never seems to bother him - you can hear him whine into your cunt, proving your point.
The hand on your thigh drops and your leg falls over his shoulder - it, instead, sneaks up your stomach and into the bunched up material of your shirt, palm resting overtop of your tits through the sports bra you’re wearing, the one with cherries on it, and his hand squeezes around the mound of flesh just as his teeth graze your clit. Both sensations have you tossing your head back with a sob and Harry pulls away briefly, strands of saliva connecting him to your core, as if begging him to return to where he’d been working at.
You love seeing him like this - nearly unhinged in his quest to get you off, eyes lust blown and pupils so wide they’ve overtaken all the green in his orbs. Harry is so desperate to make you feel good and you can see it in his eyes, as he presses a kiss to the top of your mound before returning his tongue to your clit.
Your pussy is clenching relentlessly around his fingers, hips bucking up into him at a staccato rhythm - you’re going to cum, you’re right there, and he knows it. Harry’s tongue swirls around your clit again and again as his fingers curl into you, hitting the perfect spot inside of you over and over until all of your muscles tense, your eyes roll back, and -
“Fuck, yes,” Harry moans, pulling his head back to watch you come undone beneath him, body spasming with the force of your orgasm. His fingers still slowly thrust in and out of you, forcing your orgasm onwards until you’re reaching down, grabbing his wrist and pulling it away from your cunt. “Doin’ so good f’me, yeah.”
You can hardly breathe once you’re finally coming down, gasping for air as Harry rests his cheek to your inner thigh, fingertips dancing up and down your hips. Your clit is throbbing with the intensity of it all and your body feels weak, like you couldn’t move even if you tried, and Harry’s face looks just as self satisfied as you’d expected.
“Oh my god,” you breathe, loosening your grip on Harry’s hair, smoothing your fingers over the skin you’d been assaulting. “Jesus, fuck, you’re good at that.”
Harry chuckles, then, pressing one wet, open mouthed kiss to your inner thigh before rising up from his spot, kneeling on the ground, to sit back on the sofa. He grabs the material of your shirt, tugging it back down to cover your body. “Did I make it up to you?” And, when your brows furrow ever so slightly in confusion, he says, “‘Cause I beat you in Phase 10.”
You grin, reaching out for Harry’s hand so you can push yourself to sit up, leaning against the arm of the sofa. His thumb smooths over the back of your palm, watching you with a look of pure adoration in his eyes, and you’re sure yours look much the same. “I guess so,” you shrug, working on the act of faux nonchalance, even if you know he doesn’t believe it.
“Well, that’s good,” he proclaims, leaning forward to rest his body between your legs, pressing a kiss to your lips softly. “Hope I get t’fuck you now. Can hardly wait - was gonna cum in m’pants, watching you get off.”
His words make your stomach flip and your clit pulse, and you want nothing more than to pull him down to you, let him fuck you until you can’t walk tomorrow. But you cross your arms over your chest, staring into his overly confident eyes as you decide, “No.”
“No?”
“No,” you confirm, relishing in the way Harry’s shoulders droop, how his eyebrows crease in confusion. You shift away from him, swinging your legs over the edge of the sofa so you can focus back on the Phase 10 cards, still set up on the coffee table. “If you win your next phase, I’ll let you fuck me, to make up for you being rude again.”
There’s silence between you two as Harry stares at you, mouth parted in shock, looking positively bewildered until he asks, “Are you serious?”
You nod.
“What happens if you win?”
You both know you won’t win - you’ve been on the same phase while Harry has gone through four - but you pretend to think, already reaching down to the table for the stack of cards. You brush your panties off of them, letting them fall to the floor. “If I win, I’ll let you fuck me, ‘cause I lost.”
Harry nods slowly, and then says, “So I’ll fuck you either way?”
“Well, yeah,” and then you resume shuffling the deck. “But I just like making you wait.”
—
You have to say - you think you’re getting pretty good at grading essays.
Through your entire relationship you’ve loved to help Harry grade stuff, and it’s always been easy for you, because you’ve completed every essay and every exam and done great on all of them (with the exception of 1984, so Harry pointedly does not let you grade those.) And it’s fun, too, turning up music and sitting at the kitchen table, humming along to the tunes and occasionally asking the professor what he thinks about a certain word, or if the flow of a certain sentence sounds too wonky to ignore.
Sometimes, though - sometimes, it’s not too fun.
Harry had been putting off on grading the essays he’d assigned on The Fountainhead, which is, if you recall, the only essay you’d written for his class that made you consider dropping out, with how nitpicky the rubric was. Every year it was a pain for Harry to grade, so you suppose it only figures that he’d put off grading them as soon as possible - which is how you ended up here. There are stacks and stacks of essays spread across the kitchen table that have to be graded before Monday, and one glance at the clock on the wall behind you shows that it’s already nearly 11:30 on Saturday night - which means you and Harry have been grading for just about four hours since your last break to eat reheated pizza from the night prior.
“Do you think it’s time to go to bed?” you question, voice soft and raspy, cutting through the comfortable silence that’s been hovering between the two of you since Harry turned off the music an hour ago, murmuring that it was giving him a headache. “It’s almost midnight, professor. And it’s not good to work yourself too hard.”
He exhales softly, flipping a page in the essay he’s working at that’s getting marked up so much with red ink that the paper hardly even looks white anymore. “Y’can go to bed if you’d like,” he tells you, which is exactly what you’d expected him to say but it still makes you sigh dramatically. “What’re you huffin’ at? I’ll do a few more, an’ come to bed in a little bit.”
You shake your head, placing the essay you’d just graded on top of the finished pile and reaching for a fresh one. You click your pen a few times, squinting at the name printed on top just to check if you recognize it (which you don’t) before getting to work grading it. “One more, alright? And then bed, ‘cause otherwise you’re just gonna be cranky tomorrow.”
“M’never cranky, baby.”
“You are when you go to bed at midnight and then wake up at 7 to grade,” you murmur, uncapping your pen to scribble a comment in the margins of Daniel Garcia’s essay and ignoring the dramatic, scandalized gasp that your boyfriend lets out. “Just finish up that one, and I’ll do this, and then we’re going to bed.”
Harry’s silent for a second and you know that you’ve won - you won’t stop until you do, anyway, so it’s best that he gives in now. “When did you start wearing the pants in the relationship, m’dear?” he questions, giving you a cheeky smile, and you roll your eyes.
“Since you put a baby in me,” you reply, drawing a line through an unnecessary sentence in Daniel’s paper, and then you pat your stomach as if to remind him. “But long before that too, I think.”
“In the bedroom, though -”
“Don’t give yourself a boner, Har, it’s almost midnight.”
He laughs at that, bending back over the essay he’s grading with a grin still present on his lips. You watch as he returns to writing a note on the paper and you look back down at Daniel’s, pulling your bottom lip in between your teeth to conceal your smile as your eyes scan over the last paragraph of the first page before flipping it to the next one.
The next five minutes passes in the same vein, Harry occasionally asking for your input on the essay he’s working on, and you do the same. The end of your pen drags along the paper, tracing the Times New Roman font that’s beginning to look entirely too small now that your eyelids are beginning to droop with sleepiness overtaking your bones - the sleepiness that’s only heightened when Harry finally tosses his overly marked essay into the finished pile and leans back in his chair with an almost mocking grin when you meet his eyes.
“M’not sure I’ve ever graded such a horrible essay in my life,” he announces to you, pushing his chair back to stand up, arms stretched over his head. “Got a bloody 26.”
Your eyes glaze over the essay sitting on top of the finished pile, taking in the cover page that’s doused in Harry’s small, scrawled handwriting. Then you glance back down at Daniel’s essay, hardly marked up at all, and shrug. “He’s doing alright. Only taken off 5 points for some grammar issues.”
Harry leans over the table to peek at what you’re doing, and you lean back so he can scan the words on the page. “Might have the highest grade in the class, then.”
“Higher than mine?”
“‘Course not,” and he scoffs, as if the suggestion that any student’s essay could be better than yours was absolutely preposterous. “D’you want me to stay in here with you?’
You furrow your eyebrows as you look up at him, and then you shake your head. “Go to bed, professor. I’ll be done in a few minutes - almost on the last page, see?” And you spread the pages apart to prove it to him.
He nods, and then leans down to press a quiet kiss to your nose before padding down the hall to the bedroom - gives you a departing whisper yell to scream if y’need him - well, maybe don’t, ‘cause we do have neighbors, and then you’re left alone, hunched over Daniel Garcia’s essay. There’s not much work to be done as you read the last paragraph on the second-to-last page - you merely write out a suggestion in the margins before setting your pen down beside you and flipping to the next page.
You take a moment to yawn, stretching your arms high above your head as you squeeze your eyes shut. God, you are tired. From down the hall you can hear the sink turn on and you smile, briefly, thinking of Harry brushing his teeth with the pink princess toothbrush you’d bought him as a joke, and now he refuses to use any other one. Always makes you laugh when you see him using it, ignoring the other clean, adult ones right in the holder beside the sink.
Sooner you finish Daniel’s essay, the sooner you can catch him using it.
It’s motivation enough, and you open your eyes to begin on the last page of the paper you’d been working on for the last ten minutes. Immediately you notice, right in the middle of the final page, is a neon pink sticky note that you hadn’t noticed previously - you peel it off the paper and bring it up to your eyes, squinting to read the words written in dark black pen, a contrast against the bright color.
Mr. Styles -
Thank you for reviewing my essay! I made some of the changes you suggested, so I hope it’s better than it was before.
I hope you’re having a good semester, and congratulations on the pregnancy!
- Daniel
You smile as you read it - whatever critiques Harry had suggested had clearly worked out, as Daniel’s essay was easily the best you’d graded all day. It’s only when you reach the last few words that you bring it closer to your face, making sure you’re reading it correctly - congratulations on the pregnancy?
“Har?” you call, voice soft but still loud enough to reach him across your apartment. You can hear shuffling in the bathroom and then footsteps on the hardwood, growing in volume until Harry’s standing in the doorway of the hall, princess toothbrush in his mouth and his eyes wide with concern. You give him a smile, to assure him you’re fine, and you can hear his soft sigh in relief. “Daniel left you a note.”
You hold it up for him to inspect, and he closes the distance between you two to bend down, eyes narrowing as he reads Daniel’s loopy writing. “Aw - s’sweet,” he says, voice strained with the toothpaste in (and dripping out of) his mouth, and you can sense he’s confused as to why you called him to read it.
“I didn’t know you told your students about the baby,” you say, mainly to his back as he darts down the hall to the bathroom, and you can hear him spitting into the sink before he walks back.
“Yeah - I did.” Harry’s eyebrows crease in confusion as he leans against the doorway, arms crossed over his chest and mouth free of all toothpaste and brush. “Was I not s’posed to?”
No - that’s not what you’d meant at all. Truth be told, it made your heart absolutely swell to imagine Harry telling his students about you and the baby, and you’re getting quite embarrassed with how easily you’re crying lately but you can feel tears in the back of your eyes already. You swallow, pushing yourself up from your chair to pad closer to him, and his hands fall to the sides of your protruding tummy once you’re close enough. “No - I’m not mad. The opposite, really - what did you tell them?”
You know, now, that he can sense exactly how you’re feeling about it. His hands smooth over your tummy through your sleepshirt, and you lean in to rest your head to his shoulder. “Just told ‘em that my girlfriend’s havin’ my baby, and that I’m very happy about it. Might’ve told ‘em that a few times, though.”
“How many times do you consider to be a few?” you question, bringing your head back up to look at him, and the sheepish look on his face tells you exactly what you’d expected. “Do you talk your class’s ear off every day about it?”
“Not every day,” he insists, leaning his head back against the doorway, and you raise your eyebrows at him. “Not every day! Really. But m’students ask about it, and y’know I can’t help myself, sometimes.”
You do know exactly what he’s talking about, and your cheeks are beginning to hurt with how hard you’re smiling. His hands slide up your chest and neck until he reaches your cheeks, pulling your face up so you’re staring at him, cheeks squished together. There’s still a smudge of toothpaste in the corner of his mouth and you bring your thumb up to wipe at it before mumbling, voice slightly incomprehensible due to his hands on your face, “That - that makes me really happy, Harry.”
His eyes soften and you’re expecting him to drop his hands back down to your side, but he merely pushes your cheeks further in and leans down to land a kiss to your lips. “Why wouldn’t I talk abou’ you? Most important thing in my life, you are.”
You bring your hand up to swat at his wrists so your face goes back to its normal shape, and he reluctantly complies. “It’s just sweet. And I’m really tired right now, so I might cry if I think about it for too long, but -”
Harry tosses his head back with a laugh at that, and you watch him with unsaid tears shining in your eyes. Sometimes, you’re not quite sure how or why you got so lucky - but as he grabs your hand, intertwining your fingers to pull you down the hall towards your bedroom, you decide you’ll never stop appreciating it for the rest of your life.
—
You’d known from the very beginning of the night that Harry wasn’t fit to go out, and you know you’ll hold that over his head later. A little I told you so to make up for the way your knees are aching, pressed to the cold black tile, and you know he’ll roll his eyes, maybe snip back that you weren’t complaining with m’dick down your throat, baby. But, for now, you merely look up at him with a smug glint in your eyes, and, in response, his grip on your hair tightens.
The second you’d stepped out of your bedroom at the apartment, adding another smooth layer of rouge to your bottom lip, you’d known, just from the look he gave you, sitting on the couch. Tonight was going to be that sort of night, where Harry walked with his hand shoved in his pocket to try and make his half hard boner less obvious through the entirety of dinner, assuring you over and over that he was fine to go out. You’d almost believed him until he’d parked the car in a parking garage right outside of the restaurant and begged you for just a quickie in the backseat before you went in - but you’d refused.
You’d waited for date night for - well, two weeks, but it felt entirely too long. And you hadn’t spent so long getting ready, trying on all of your dresses before finally finding one that made your 30 week belly look flattering, to have him ruin it in the backseat.
You could be quite strong willed when you wanted to, and most times you didn’t. It always shocked Harry, the moments you decided to use it.
“Can I try that, Har?” Your voice is saccharine sweet as you look up at your boyfriend with a smile, taking note of the way his jaw is set as he pokes at his gnocchi. His eyes are stone cold and if you didn’t know him as well as you did, you would guess that he’s angry - but the way his ankle is locked with yours beneath the table, heel brushing against his ankle, assures you that he’s not. “Looks delicious.”
You’re already reaching over with your fork to Harry’s plate before he can respond, taking a piece of the thick pasta and bringing it back over to your plate. You take your time chewing it, admiring your boyfriend’s features, illuminated in the candlelight - he’s always gorgeous, like a statue carved from stone, but especially so when you know he’s so turned on he can hardly function.
And you suppose you’re to blame for that. It isn’t as though you haven’t been torturing him the entire dinner, lifting your foot up to drag up his calf, pulling his dress pants up, even going so far as to brush it against his thigh, though you’ll blame it on the thick white tablecloth able to disguise every action. Every single reaction he gave you felt like adding gasoline to a fire, and you were loving it.
“That’s really good,” you tell him, resting your fork on your plate and grabbing your slice of margherita pizza. “The sauce is good, too. Thick and creamy - you know.”
Harry shifts in his seat, and you tighten your hold around his ankle, sliding forward in your seat just a tad. He doesn’t respond for a moment, and then he leans over across the table, loose fabric of his pink button up falling dangerously close to his pasta, and says, “You’re being mean.”
You can’t help the cocky grin that tugs at your lips as you lean back in your seat, increasing the distance between you once more. “How am I being mean? Just trying to enjoy dinner with you - once the baby gets here, who knows how many more we’ll have for a while.”
It’s getting more difficult by the minute to disguise your own arousal, but you try to, anyway. It isn’t nearly as fun to tease Harry when he knows you’re just as turned on as he is, so you’ll hide it for as long as you can.
“S’difficult to appreciate our last date night when I’m so fuckin’ turned on - I can’t even eat my gnocchi.” He pouts, as if it’s an absolute disgrace that he can’t enjoy his pasta, and you roll your eyes. It’s rare you get to see Harry so desperate like this, so needy it’s all he can think about. But he’s reaching over the table to clasp his hand overtop of yours where you’re clutching your fork, bringing the back of your palm up to his mouth to press a kiss to your skin, and you smile down at your pizza. It’s sweet, even if you know he’s only doing it so you’ll agree to leave dinner early to go home, or perhaps run out to the car for a quickie.
“Never said last,” you tell him, pressing your free hand to the front of your stomach. “It better not be the last, professor.”
“Not the last,” Harry agrees, lips still firmly planted to your hand so every word is mouthed to your skin. You watch him with arched eyebrows, trying to anticipate his next move, when he leans over further and says, voice soft and nearly pleading, “Are y’sure you don’t want a quickie? ‘Cause I can read you like a book, honey, an’ I can fuckin’ feel you clenching your thighs, y’know. Can practically smell how wet you are. M’not dumb.”
Fuck.
You exhale a soft shaky breath, and you know he’s got you right where he wants you, if the satisfied smirk on his face tells you anything. He drops your hand and you dig your fingers into the tablecloth, watching as he leans back in the booth.
It’s your move and you’re not sure how to play it, taking the brief moment to run through all of your options. You could go home, spend the rest of the night in the apartment, but you don’t reckon Harry would be able to wait so long. And you’re not too sure your back would appreciate getting fucked in the backseat, so the only other option is -
“Alright,” you murmur, and then your ankle unhooks from around his ankle so you can slide out of the booth. When you’re standing you rest your hand on the underside of your stomach, reaching out a hand for Harry to grab as you tug him from the booth. Immediately his arm wraps around your waist and you lift your head up to reach his ear, voice hardly rising above a whisper, “The bathroom, Har.”
His eyes flutter shut at your words, breathing out a slow groan, and you give him just a second to relish in the subtext of it - the second passes, though, and you nudge him once more. He tightens his arm around you and leads you from the booth, dragging you through the restaurant to a sleek, black staircase, a sign on the wall beside it declaring that the restroom is downstairs. When you’re out of sight from most customers and workers in the dining room, the two of you practically run down the stairs, Harry grabbing your hand to make sure you don’t trip, and you’re nearly breathless when you finally locate the bathroom.
Not a second after Harry pulls you inside, slamming and locking the door shut behind you, your lips are on his. Hands roam up and down your back through your dress and your fingernails dig into his neck, and for a moment, that’s enough - just feeling his touch after feeling deprived, even if you’d been trying to pretend you didn’t need him. But, God, he’s looked so good the entire night, donning a loose pink dress shirt, the first two buttons undone, and black dress pants - it’s not unlike what he would wear to class and maybe that’s why you love it so much.
The moment passes, though, because you know this needs to be fast and merely making out against the cool door won’t do either of you too much good. Harry’s fingers hook in the hem of your dress, beginning to pull the fabric up over your ass but you stop him, fingers wrapping around his wrist and meeting his look of confusion with one of pure seduction.
You slowly adjust your dress again, tugging it back down to the mid-thigh point where it belongs, and Harry watches you - his chest is heaving and his palms are pressed to the door, and you’re not sure you’ve ever seen him like this. So far gone already and you’ve barely touched him - it’s a gorgeous contrast from how it usually is, where you’re the one so needy and desperate for him.
The moan that cracks through the air when you drop to your knees in front of him sends a rush of arousal straight to your core. You’d love to have him pound into you right here, against the black tiled walls of the restroom, but when he’s like this? You need him in your mouth - God, you’re fucking aching for it. And waiting will merely make the inevitable pleasure so much better, later.
As if on instinct, Harry’s hand presses to the back of your head, fingertips gently smoothing your scalp as if to comfort you. “Sure y’don’t want me to fuck you? Know you wan’ it - feel bad makin’ you wait.”
You shake your head, leaning in to gently nuzzle at the bulge, so prominent in his pants. Harry’s hips jerk forward at the slight sensation and you give him a soft glare as he murmurs quiet apologies into the suddenly warm bathroom air. “No,” you tell him, voice hot against his dick even through his trousers. “Need you in my throat, professor.” And the resulting moan spurs you onwards, reaching for the zipper blocking you from what you need.
He’s rambling as you tug the zipper of his pants down, fumbling with the button so you can pull his boxers down over his member. You wait a moment before making any type of contact with his length, glancing up to meet his lust blown eyes with a small smirk gracing your lips. Harry’s digits tangle in your hair as you lean in, ghosting a soft kiss to the base of his cock before wrapping your fist around him. “God - gonna suck me off, hmm? Look so good on your knees, y’know that? Fuck, please don’t tease me -”
Your hand pumps up and down his length, hot and heavy in your palm, the head red and angry and already leaking precum. It’s a show of how deprived your boyfriend is as he hisses near violently when you press an open mouthed kiss to the dripping tip of his cock, hand still jerking up and down the base of him.
As much as Harry had begged you not to, you’re tempted to tease him - kitten licks to his dick until he’s begging harder than he already is - but you have to remind yourself that you’re not in your apartment, and you don’t have enough time to be going as slowly as you are. So you stick your tongue out, use your hand on his base to guide him so it’s sitting, heavy on your tongue. His breathing has all but stopped, watching with his mouth dropped open as you take him into your mouth, closing your lips around his cock when it’s nearly halfway down your throat.
The feeling of your lips shutting around his member has a wet grunt escaping his throat, and his fingers tighten in your hair to the point where you reckon you can feel strands disconnecting from your scalp - but you find you don’t truly care. It goes straight to your clit, every one of Harry’s reactions, from the way his fingernails dig indents into your head and his head falls back against the bathroom door with a dull thump that reverberates through you. Normally you wouldn’t hesitate to try and alleviate the pressure growing in your clit - maybe pull your dress up and get yourself off - but the thought of how good it’ll feel if you wait keeps your hands from wandering.
“Oh my god -” you look up at Harry where he’s got his fist, half buried in his mouth, muffling every noise he lets out. His face is coated with a thin sheet of sweat, eyes squeezed shut, looking as though you’d been sucking him off for hours instead of five minutes. “Please, baby - God, feels so good.”
You’ve been giving him blowjobs for over two years and yet, every single time, you need time to adjust to his size - it never fails to make him smirk but he’s too far gone to focus on it now, as you slide his cock down your throat, taking as much of him as you can without gagging. Harry’s fingers in your hair tangle, holding your head to his length though you had no intention of letting up any time soon, anyway - and you’re not sure he’d intended to push you further down on him, nose brushing to his pubic bone, but the way you gag around him has him crying out, entirely too loud even around his fist.
“Sorry, m’sorry - jus’ couldn’t help it -” he’s murmuring, voice strained as he pulls you off of him, letting you bring your wrist up to wipe at the strands of saliva still connecting his cock to your lips. You take just a second to catch your breath before leaning back in, flattening your tongue to lick a thick stripe up the bottom up his member, swirling around his tip once you’ve reached it. “M’really close - gonna cum so fuckin’ hard -”
You’d known from the telltale twitch of his cock when you wrap your lips around him that he’s close, and, as much as you love sucking his dick, your knees are aching and you’d do anything to run home and continue this romp in the sheets. So you continue pumping him, sloppy jerks of the wrist that have moans tumbling off his lips like a mantra, and then you release your lips from around him with a soft pop and stick your tongue out again, resting his head neatly in the center.
Whatever qualms Harry had been holding on to about keeping silent are almost immediately forgotten as his cock thrusts forward onto your tongue, your hand still thrusting the part of him that isn’t resting in your mouth. His head drops forward with a low, throaty moan and you barely get a moment to prepare before he’s cumming, ribbons of milky cum pooling in the valley of your tongue. You can’t help yourself from whimpering at the sensation that you’ve grown to love so much - it helps that his cum doesn’t taste terrible, though you suppose you don’t have much to compare it to.
Your scalp burns when Harry releases your hair, pressing his entire palm to the back of your head and keeping his cock firm in the center of your tongue, though you wouldn’t dream of pulling away until you’ve milked every last drop. He’s panting, chest heaving with desperate gasps of air, and you can’t tear your gaze from him even if he won’t meet it.
It’s Harry who finally pulls away first, shifting his hips backward until his length slides off of your tongue, eyes drifting shut. You reach for his thigh, pinching the soft skin through his trousers until he hisses, glancing down at you like you’d wanted, and you take the brief connection of eye contact to close your mouth, making a show of swallowing the cum you’d collected at the base of your tongue.
“God,” he breathes throatily, hand on your head smoothing down until he’s cupping your cheek, and he smiles when you show him your tongue again to prove that you’d swallowed everything. “Gonna fuckin’ wreck you when I get home.”
You take Harry’s hand when he offers it, intertwining your fingers so he can pull you up. Your knees burn and your back is beginning to ache, and you need him so bad that just his words have you feeling like you could cum in your panties. “Is that a promise?”
There’s that cocky grin you’d expected, spreading slowly across his face as he lands an open mouthed kiss to your lips - a show of love, considering his cock was in your mouth mere seconds ago. It’s a promise that whatever bits of dominance you’d had over him while you were on your knees has dissipated, and you’re more than happy to let him take over. “S’most certainly a promise,” Harry assures you, thumb coming up to wipe at your lip where your lipstick has surely smudged, as you reach down to tuck him back into his pants. “Now, let’s hope there’s not a line, right, baby? Wouldn’t want everyone to know what a dirty girl you were, sucking m’cock like that, now would we?”
And it’s all you can do to shake your head, watching as he feels for the doorknob and undoes the lock.
—
At the time, buying a book of nearly 10,000 baby names had seemed like the perfect idea. You and Harry had hardly talked about what you were to name your daughter, besides that her last name would, naturally, be Styles, and as you approached 34 weeks pregnant, you suspected it was about time to start considering it. Sure, she wasn’t due for weeks, but, realistically, couldn’t she pop out at any moment? You should at least be prepared. And, in the back of your mind, you’d expected to open the book and immediately find a perfect name you both agreed on, because it had seemed like your tastes aligned fairly well in just about every other aspect of life.
Now, though - you can understand why it may not be too great of an idea. If you hadn’t obsessed over her name before, now you were - there were hundreds of names you liked, and almost every single one Harry shot down. The ones that he liked you despised, and the ones you agreed one simply weren’t perfect.
It was all you thought about. The origin of the name had to be perfect, the spelling, it couldn’t clash with her (admittedly unusual) last name and you both had to agree on it.
“Do you like Madison?”
You can see Harry scrunch his nose from where he’s sitting, cross legged on the floor, glaring at the instructions for the crib you’d gotten the week prior. It’s the last part of the nursery to come together, and, admittedly, the most important - though Harry teased, I think the baby is the most important part, actually, and that is exactly why he’s on crib duty. You, meanwhile, sit in the rocking chair your parents had given you, humming to the music blaring from his phone and squinting angrily down at stupid book. Marie sits, curled on your lap, and you absentmindedly stroke your fingers through her fur as you read.
“Y’asked me about Madison last week,” Harry tells you, resting the manual on the plush, cream rug beneath him to examine the pile of disassembled crib lying in front of him. “I didn’t like it then, an’ I don’t like it now.”
You raise your eyebrows, exhaling softly as you flip through the pages of your book, already well worn from how often you’d been searching through it. “Alright, cranky. Sheesh.”
He chuckles at that, running a hand through his locks that fall around his face. You break your gaze from watching him and turn back to your look, scanning your finger down the list of ‘O’ names. Finding one that you like and that you haven’t already asked Harry about is a task easier said than done, and you can feel yourself getting more and more frustrated by the minute with every name you read.
“Ophelia?” you question, trying the name out on your tongue against the background of This Is The Kinks, currently playing The Contenders loud enough that you can barely hear your own voice - but you hear it enough to know you don’t like the name.
“I like that,” Harry says, picking up a piece of crib off the ground and glancing back at the instructions before resting it back on the floor just as quickly.
“I don’t,” you tell him, grinning at his responding snort. “Olivia?”
“Already asked me about tha’ one - s’a no.”
“Oakley?”
“Absolutely not.”
You sit further up, grabbing a section of the book’s pages and pointedly squeezing your eyes shut - Marie stares at you as though annoyed with your movement. “I’m going to flip to a random page,” you announce, voice rising in volume to be heard above The Kinks, “and we’ll pick a name off of whatever page it is.”
You can’t see him but you know he’s rolling his eyes before saying, “That’s a horrible way t’name our child -” but you’re already flipping through the book at random, ignoring whatever he’s calling above the music.
When you decide that you’ve flipped enough, you rest the book on the ottoman in front of the rocking chair and open your eyes, staring down at the page you’ve turned to. Sarah, Sadie, Sabrina - “We’re in the S section.”
“We can’t have our baby’s name be an alliteration.”
“Fine,” you huff, squeezing your eyes shut again, “I’ll flip again -”
“Baby,” Harry calls, and when you don’t react he repeats the pet name until you open your eyes, staring expectantly down at where he’s sitting on the rug. He lets the directions flutter down to the floor before pushing himself to stand, padding across the room until he can grab the baby name book, replacing its spot on the ottoman just in front of you. “We don’t have t’pick a name right now.”
You cross your arms over your chest, hardly able to resist your smile as Harry lifts the book up, flipping past the S section until he’s gazing down at a list of T names and their origins. “Aren’t you supposed to be putting together a crib, professor?”
He merely rolls his eyes, jabbing his finger in the middle of the page. “What about Tiffany?”
The Contenders transitions into All Day And All Of The Night and you bob your head to the change in music, gently kicking Harry’s ankles to try and distract yourself from the stress that’s slowly rising in your chest. “I hate it - and, besides, she might grow up with a complex if she’s named after one of the greatest movies of all time.”
Harry exhales with a small chuckle, finger sliding down the page until it stops again. “Thalia?”
That one makes you pause - it is pretty, and combining it with his last name doesn’t roll off the tongue too terribly. But it isn’t perfect, and you can’t possibly give your baby a name that isn’t perfect. So you shake your head, craning your neck so you can glance at the page with him, dragging your fingers down Marie’s soft back. “Tessa could be pretty, right?”
But he shakes his head, turning a few pages back until you’re staring into the R section. You rest a hand on top of your stomach, as if to ask your daughter what, exactly, her name is, and Harry presses his palm overtop of yours, lacing your fingers together absentmindedly. “I like Riley,” he murmurs, fingernail tapping against the small print of the name and question.
“It’s too similar to Styles,” you disagree, and when he gives you a doubtful look you continue, “The beginnings sound the same - Ri and Sty. Just sounds sort of weird.”
You’re in the middle of reading about the origin for the name Ryan when Harry slowly presses the book shut, and you hardly have time to give him an annoyed glance before he’s telling you, “We’ll look at this tomorrow, alright? We don’t have to find one right now - s’fine.”
“I feel like we’re running out of time,” you confess as he stands up from the ottoman, resting your dumb baby name book on top of the dresser and returning back to the middle of the floor. Marie, meanwhile, hops off your lap, bounding out of the room with her tail high in the air. “I feel like she’s gonna come and we’re not gonna have any sort of name picked out - and we won’t have a crib, by the looks of how this is going.”
“Watch your mouth, lazy butt.” But he can’t help the grin from appearing on his face as he flips through the pages of the small instructional pamphlet with the same degree of dedication you’d put into searching for your daughter’s name. “And y’know she won’t hate us ‘cause we didn’t pick out her name a month and a half before she came.”
You push yourself off of the chair, sending it rocking back and forth with just enough force that it gently hit the walls of the corner it was boxed into, and you maneuver your way through the mess of parts scattered on the floor until you can find a clean spot to sit down in, just beside Harry. He gives you a smile once you’re beside him and leans down to press a kiss to your temple, and you lean backward, resting your weight on one arm and pressing your other hand to the front of your stomach. “She could come next week, you know. Or tomorrow.”
“She won’t,” Harry says, voice sharper than what (you assume) he’d anticipated it to be, because it softens near immediately as he continues, “She won’t, but if she does, we don’t have t’have a name picked out jus’ yet. We’ll find the perfect one, and it’ll fit her, and it’ll be fine.”
His confidence is (unsurprisingly) not at all reassuring to you but you tuck your head against his shoulder anyway, feeling his lips land on your forehead. Your mind is whirring and you can still feel the beginnings of anxiety running its course through your veins, and you know it’ll only get worse until you find the perfect name for your girl - but you feel like you’ve looked at every single one and not a single one is right. Perhaps your superfluous worry about being a terrible mother was the source for it but you don’t want to bring it up to Harry. Not right now. Though he has to be feeling some of the same fear you are, it’s practically a no-brainer that he’ll be the perfect father.
You wish you had the same confidence in yourself, but you’ll work on it later.
“I just want to find the perfect name,” you mumble, muffled against his shoulder and entirely too soft to be heard over the guitar, strumming during the opening of Lola.
“We will,” he promises, and then holds up his pinky for you to hook yours into. A promise in its simplest form, and it makes you smile. “Maybe it won’t be in the book, though - feel like you’ve read every single name.”
You opt not to respond, mouthing the words to Lola as you pick up the directions, eyes scanning over the words without taking any of them in. As expected, you don’t quite understand what any of the guidelines mean - instead, you turn to the pictures, and when Harry pushes himself up, grabbing a small baggie of screws to get to work, you hand them back to him willingly. It was your meek attempt to help, but - well, as Harry had said, you were bringing the most important part of the nursery to the room, so you were fine to sit back and let him do the crib.
It’s only a second, though, of singing along softly to the song while you watch him begin to assemble the crib before it hits you - in plain sight (or plain sound, you suppose) is the name. You’d spent so long buried inside your dumb baby name book that you’d skipped over this because it’s perfect, rolls off your tongue so beautifully when you mouth it, soft enough that your boyfriend can’t hear it over the blaring of the song you’d taken it from.
“Harry,” you call, growing louder in excitement with every syllable. You wait until his eyes are on you, because you want to see his reaction when he hears it - it’s all you can do to pray it’s a positive one, because you know this is it. “What about Lola?”
He pauses, in the midst of inserting a screw into the small hole it’s destined for, and you can see his mind whirring - testing out the name experimentally, the same way you had. And then he says it, loud enough that you can hear, and it sounds as spectacular coming from him as it had from you.
“I love it,” Harry tells you, though you’d already known just from the gleam in his eyes. The excitement that burns through you is nearly fucking overwhelming as you push yourself up (slower than you’d wanted, but your stomach does tend to do that nowadays) and step over the pile of crib parts carefully. His arm hooks around your waist as soon as you’re close enough and you stumble into his arms, winding your arms around his neck to press yourself as close as you can to him - and feeling his face in your hair, repeating the same three words over and over, is feeling strangely akin to paradise.
—
It’s so early in the morning that your bedroom is drowned in thick darkness, like a sheet wrapped around you. Can hardly even be considered morning, you think - as you reach over to tap the screen of your phone, squinting at the way it lights up obnoxiously, you discover that it’s 12:58 AM.
You’re half - no, completely - tempted to curl back into the comfort of Harry’s arms wrapped around you. One is thrown over your torso, palm pressed to the front of your stomach, and the other is pressed between your side and the mattress, hand curved possessively over your boob. He’s a cuddler and you know this, but you tend to move so much during the night with weak attempts to find a position that doesn’t destroy your back that it’s rare to wake up enveloped in him. But now that you’re awake you can feel Lola, pressing on your bladder to the point where falling back asleep would surely just result in an accident later in the night - so, reluctantly, your fingers curl around Harry’s wrist to lug his arm off of your waist.
He groans in his sleep, rolling onto his back, and you push yourself to sit up so you can spend just a second gazing down at him. It’s dark in the room, still illuminated only by your phone screen, but you can see him just enough. He’s a vision when he’s sleeping - mouth parted slightly, hair damp and spread over the pillow you’d been sharing. Hazy eyes take in every bit of his face that you can, blinking away the sleep that threatens to take you back over.
One hand goes to Harry’s cheek, stroking the soft skin and slight stubble dusting his jaw. You swear you can feel him lean into your touch - but then your phone screen finally dims, flooding the room with darkness again, and you sigh before swinging your legs over the edge of the bed, pushing yourself up.
You rest your hand on the bottom of your stomach, waddling across the room to the cracked door of your bathroom. You make sure to leave it cracked, just a tad - Harry’s a light sleeper, and you can’t be positive that the soft click of the door shutting won’t wake him up. He’s been working himself again, preparing for exams that are already beginning to roll around, and you want him to get as much rest as he can get.
You bring your first up to rub at your eyes before flicking on the light switch, chasing out the darkness from the small bathroom. Eyes still blurred with sleep can’t quite take in your reflection, but you try anyway - your hair is knotted and the heels of your hand is still pressed into your eyes, and the oversized tank top you’d been donning to bed for months stretches taut against your boobs and stomach. It’s weird - and slightly scary - to imagine that, entirely too soon and yet not, your daughter will be here. Not sitting in your stomach, protruding it outwards, but lying in your arms. And you and Harry will be parents, finally, after nearly 10 months of waiting.
It’s too much to think about at barely 1 in the morning - so you tear your gaze from your reflection, head past the mirror to the toilet. You’ll ponder how strange it is to imagine your baby finally arriving later, but not now. Not when you’re forced to clench your thighs together to stop yourself from peeing, so -
Later.
When you’ve finished you wash your hands, making sure the tap doesn’t run too loud, but you swear you can hear a soft groan come from your connecting bedroom. You shut the light off once your hands are dried and push the door open softly, trying to ignore the inevitable creaking noise that will reverberate throughout your bedroom. It’s soft but still present, and you cringe slightly before padding back across the hardwood and rug until you reach your bed. You slowly sit down on the mattress before swinging your legs over and settling back beneath the covers, where Harry hadn’t moved too much since you’d left him earlier.
His breathing isn’t as steady as it had been, though - softly, barely above a breath, you murmur, “Harry?”
There’s a beat where he doesn’t respond, and then he grunts softly in lieu of a response.
So he is awake. You tug the duvet further up your body, shifting so you’re on your side and facing him. The room is still dark and you can’t see him open his eyes, but you can feel his hand move up until it’s wrapped around your torso. “Did I wake you up?” you question quietly, feeling his fingers already pressing soft circles into your hip. “Sorry.”
“No,” Harry tells you, voice raspy and dripping with desire to be asleep. It’s how his morning voice is but you’re not quite sure you can even classify this hour as morning. “Was awake - ‘cause I felt you move m’arm.” You nod, even if he can’t see it, and then he asks, “Wha’ time is it?”
“1.” You shift closer to him, as close as you can with your stomach acting as a barrier between you two, nuzzling your head into the pillow. “Had to pee.”
He hums softly, tilting his head so he can press a kiss to your nose. “I think tha’ means you’re 38 weeks, today. An’ that means 2 weeks until baby is here.”
Huh. You hadn’t known that, but Harry had been better at keeping track of that stuff than you were. “Assuming she arrives on time,” you remind him, eyes drooping shut. “Could come tomorrow.”
“She better not,” he mumbles. “M’not prepared to be a dad so soon.”
“You’ll be great no matter when she comes,” and you mean it. God, he’s been such a great dad so far, and you don’t even have a physical daughter yet. He knows your symptoms practically before you do, has read all of your baby books time and time again and he’s been so good working on the nursery - you can’t even imagine him being worried about her coming. “She’s gonna be a lucky girl, having such a great dad.”
There’s silence and for a second you think he might have fallen asleep - but after a moment he murmurs, “You’ll be the best mum, too - an’ the hottest one.”
You can hardly find the energy to roll your eyes at that but you do anyway, smiling as you hear his low chuckle. Harry’s hold around your waist tightens, tugging you just a bit closer and shifting his body so he can curve around you. You lean forward, puckering your lips softly and feeling him land a soft peck against them. Neither of you bothers to move your heads when you pull apart, merely resting them an inch apart from each other so you can feel his breath, hot on your face, as it begins to steady out again.
He’s an easy sleeper - it’s always been a bit more difficult for you, though. You don’t want to move again and wake him up but you can feel the beginnings of pain settling in your back and lower stomach, and your mind is whirring. 38 weeks feels awfully farther along than 37 and the real reality that you and Harry could be parents as soon as fucking tomorrow is terrifying. There’s so much you feel like you haven’t done yet, even if you know you’ve covered all of the necessary bases - she has a name, she has a crib, she has loving parents. You haven't taken any labour classes - were they necessary? Perhaps you’d made a mistake, not going to any. When the day came, would you be unprepared? Would the nurses be able to tell you’d never practiced any breathing exercises?
You haven’t even packed a hospital bag yet, and you’re not sure what’s supposed to go in it. Tomorrow, you’ll watch a YouTube video while Harry is at work, pack the bag and have it ready to go for when it happens. You’ll practice your breathing, too. Maybe even google some of the best stretches to do, to prepare for labour. It never hurts to be prepared.
“Can hear you thinking,” Harry whispers, snapping you out of your thoughts, and you sigh, eyes opening though you can’t see anything in the darkness. Should’ve known from his fingers, still rubbing circles into your skin, that he was still awake - you just hadn’t thought of it. “Go t’bed, baby.”
You nearly open your mouth to worry him with your concerns - you could tell him about the exercises and the breathing and the bag. Part of you wonders if he feels the same concern but masks it better. He’s been so steady about the entire thing from the very beginning, balancing out your nerves with logic, and you know that’s what he would do now. But it’s 1 AM, and he has to work tomorrow, even if all you’ll be doing is stress-packing a bag. Maybe tomorrow you’ll open a conversation about it, see how he’s feeling. So you hold back, exhaling softly as you bring your hand up to press against his cheek, skin soft beneath your touch. “I love you, professor.”
You can feel Harry’s face stretching into a lazy smile in your hand, and he turns his head to press a kiss to the underside of your wrist. “I love you too,” he tells you, melodic and soft. “G’night.”
“Goodnight.”
You take a second to stare at him - even if you can’t see him, knowing he’s beside you is comforting enough that you allow your eyes to shut. The pillow is soft against your head as you sink into the bed, holding the covers to your chest with the hand that isn’t pressed to his face. It isn’t as though you’d gained too much closure from your very short interaction with Harry, and your tired mind is still threatening to race into another dimension, but it’s easy enough to even out your breathing and let the sleep you’re desperately craving to finally overtake you.
It lasts for a blissful two hours - and in your dreams, you’re lying in a hospital bed with Harry by your side. And you’re staring down at your daughter, a small bundle who looks identical to your boyfriend, and then she’s sitting in front of a birthday cake, and then she’s climbing into a school bus, and then Harry’s helping her with her homework -
It’s, truthfully, a rather nice one, watching dream-Lola grow up. It’s only a strange swooping sensation in your stomach that starts you awake, eyes snapping open to stare up at the ceiling. Harry’s arm is still around you though you’ve turned so you’re resting on your back, covers pushed down so they’re resting just on top of your stomach.
For a moment you reckon you may have actually managed to sleep through the entire night, though judging by the lack of sunlight peeking through the curtains, you haven’t. The insomnia that’s affected you through the entire pregnancy has only been getting worse and God, you’re tired of it. You don’t have a cramp, your back doesn’t hurt and you don’t have to pee.
It’s only when you shift onto your side, reaching for your phone to check what time it is, that you feel it - oh fuck. For a moment you think you’ve peed yourself but no, you just peed two hours ago. But the sheets are dripping wet beneath you, soaking through your sweatpants, and if it’s not pee, then -
“Oh, no.” It’s all you can think, sliding your hand beneath the duvet to feel the liquid that’s gathered on the sheets. Your phone screen, illuminated with a news notification, brightly informs you that it’s 3:28 in the morning, and Harry still snores beside you. “Oh no. No, no, no -”
As if he can sense that you’re seconds away from crying out his name, Harry groans softly beneath you, shifting just enough that you know he’s awake - barely, but you’re not quite all there yet, either. You lift your hand that isn’t coated in liquid to swat at his shoulder, feeling an entirely too familiar lump building in your throat as you do. “Harry - Harry, wake up, wake up -”
He finally jerks awake after the fifth hit to his shoulder, pushing himself to sit up so fast you can hear the familiar thunk of his head hitting the headboard. “What? What -”
You can hardly get the words out but you don’t need to as Harry reaches over to the nightstand, fumbling with the lamp for a minute before turning it on - light floods the room, finally. It’s not immediately obvious, staring down at the comforter beneath you, what’s wrong, and you can see the confusion clouding in his eyes before you throw the covers off of you, exposing the soaked sheets, and that’s when it hits him.
There’s still a second, like the calm before a storm, where all either of you can do is stare at each other, eyes wide and full of horror. She isn’t due for two weeks. And you knew it could happen at any minute but you hadn’t expected it to be this minute - you thought you had more time. But there’s a pile of wetness sitting beneath you, telling you that you’d fucking thought wrong, and that’s when you snap out of it.
“Oh, fuck,” Harry breathes, and then you’re both moving - you gingerly shift so your legs are over the edge of the bed and your muscles are aching, your head is spinning, and your pants are drenched. You need to change.
But you can’t bring yourself to do anything more than sit there, paralyzed, while Harry moves around the room. He’s digging through your dresser, pulling out clothes at random - next to you lands a pair of baby pink joggers and one of his shirts for you to wear. In your head you try to recall the things you’re supposed to have at the hospital when you give birth, and maybe you should run to the nursery, where her clothes and supplies are, and try to pack a bag quickly -
“Baby, we need to go t’the hospital.”
His voice sounds like it’s coming from far away - much farther than barely five feet away from you - and you can’t process a single thing he’s saying. You need more time. You want to go back to sleep and do this in two weeks, when she’s supposed to come, because your heart is hammering in your chest. This isn’t right - it can’t be. “Harry - she isn’t supposed to come yet.”
It’s then that you feel a dip in the bed beside you, an arm around your shoulders. Harry’s breathing is heavy and the panic oozes from every word, every breath, as he says, “I know. But - but it’s happening, baby. S’happening now, and we really need to go.”
“I’m really not ready, Harry. We - we need to pack a bag. We need a hospital bag.”
“I’ll ask your mum to bring you stuff at the hospital,” because he always manages to have a logical response even when he’s stressed. And then he’s gently gripping your chin, turning your head so you’re looking at him, vision cloudy through the tears burning the back of your eyes. “It’s gonna be alright - I promise. Jus’ let me help you change.”
Truth be told, you’re more than content to sit here and panic about the entire situation but you let common sense take over, nodding slowly as Harry helps you up. You work with him to change out of your wet sweatpants, sliding on the fresh pair that he’d gotten you, and you merely throw his shirt over your tank top - you can’t be bothered to take it off.
The two of you slowly make your way out of your room, down the hallway to the sitting room, with your arm around Harry’s shoulders and his firm at your waist. You’re not sure if you need the physical support so much as the moral support - hearing his soft, congratulatory murmurs when you merely slide on your shoes is making you feel significantly better. As Harry ducks down to tie his shoes, you lean against the wall and turn to look at your apartment. It’s quiet and clean, and Marie sits perched on top of the couch, clearly having been recently woken up by your hysterics.
Next time you’re here, you’ll have a baby.
“Are you ready?” Harry questions, standing back up and returning his arm around your waist. You’re thankful he’s managing to keep his composure together because you most certainly can’t. You know him well enough to know just how fucking terrified he is but he’s keeping it more in check - when you’re at the hospital, settled into a bed, you’ll feel better. But for now, the mere task of walking down the hall to the elevator feels daunting.
You give your apartment one last fleeting glance before turning back to the door, hooking your arm back around your boyfriend. “I guess so,” you tell him, which is all the confirmation he needs to haul you out of the apartment.
—
You’re slowly brought back to consciousness, nearly 24 hours after your water first broke, by Harry’s soft voice, cooing besides you - even before you open your eyes to see him you’re smiling, and it only widens when you turn your head and glance at him.
As you’d expected, Lola is lying in his arms. Wrapped in a soft, white hospital blanket and eyes wide open, you still feel a soft urge to cry every time you look at the two of them. Harry’s rocking her so gently, her tiny fist wrapped around his pointer finger, and you reckon you could simply sit here and watch them forever - him murmuring so quietly to her that you can’t quite hear it.
And you’re not sure you’d like to. You like the thought of guessing whatever he might be whispering to your daughter when he thinks you’re not listening, but you’re more desperate to hold her again than to continue watching, so you softly clear your throat.
“Oh!” Harry exclaims softly, scooting his chair closer to the edge of your hospital bed. You reach out your arms for your baby and he maneuvers her into your arms, and immediately you lean down to press a soft kiss to her nose. “How’re you feeling, m’love?”
You smile at him, pushing yourself to sit up against your stack of pillows, and he’s quick to adjust them so it’s easier for you. You can’t tear your eyes off of Lola, and if you weren’t so tired you know the mere sight of her would send you into overjoyed tears again. You offer your finger to her, and you reckon your heart could nearly burst as her small fist wraps around the digit. “My vagina feels like it’s burning,” you confess to Harry, grin widening at his soft laugh. “But - God, she’s really beautiful, Har. Looks just like you.”
And it’s true - she has his nose, and his eyes, and the curve of his chin. You trace one of your fingers down her soft cheek, skin feeling like porcelain beneath your touch.
“She does, a bit,” he says, voice staying at its quiet, breathy level, though she’s clearly wide awake. You can sense that, though you’d just taken her from him, he’s already desperate to hold her again - it’s just the glint in his eyes as he stares at the two of you. So you move over on the bed, leaving a sliver of space large enough for him to inhabit, and he gives you a grateful smile before standing up and lying on the bed. It’s tight, and the bed certainly isn’t meant for two people, but you find that, when he wraps his arm around you and presses a soft kiss to the side of your cheek, you don’t quite mind. “I think she has your lips, though.”
Gently tracing your finger along her soft, pink lips, you think he may be right. “She’s perfect,” you repeat, leaning your head into Harry’s shoulder, and his fingers gently comb through your hair. It’s tangled and sweaty - the result of not showering for two days - and his fingers get caught on the knots a few times before resorting to wrapping his arm around your waist instead. “Can you believe we made her?”
He exhales quietly, and you can hear the disbelief present in his voice when he agrees, “Still feels like I’m dreamin’ - like m’gonna wake up, and you’ll still be pregnant.”
“I hope not,” you tell him, voice dropping even quieter as Lola slowly shuts her eyes, lips parting open just the slightest. “I really don’t want to go through that again - not for a few years, at least.”
Harry perks up, just a bit, at that, arm tightening around your waist as the other comes around to help you cradle your daughter. “Y’want to have another baby?”
“In a few years is the keyword,” you remind him. “Stay in the present.”
But no matter what you say, you can’t ignore the visible joy he’d gotten from your words - furthered only as he rests his two fingers on the bottom of your chin, tugging your face in for a soft kiss. “I love you,” he breathes against your mouth, and you can feel heat creeping up your cheeks. “And I love our daughter - s’our perfect little family.” He pauses, then, resting his forehead to yours. “And Marie.”
“And Marie,” you confirm, giggling before turning your attention back to your baby. She’s proper asleep now, breathing soft and steady, fingers loosening around yours. You rest her arm against her chest, pulling the blanket further up her body, and she nuzzles the fabric in her sleep. Your eyes are already beginning to well again, and you’re too bloody exhausted to turn on the waterworks again - so, reluctantly, you hand Lola over to Harry, and he’s more than glad to accept her back into his arms. “M’gonna try and get some rest - when is your mum coming?”
“She said 6,” he replies, attention undivided as he gazes down at the sleeping bundle in his grasp. He cradles her like she could break at any moment - gentle hands holding her head up, fingers softly tracing her blanket. “S’about two hours for you to nap, then.”
You nod, already snuggling into your bed as Harry stands, rocking Lola gently as he makes his way towards her cot. The last thing you hear before drifting off again is his voice, soft and full of love, cooing, “We love you, Lola - g’night, angel -” and you fall asleep with a soft smile on your face.
#harry styles x reader#harry styles fluff#harry styles smut#harry styles angst#prof!harry#harry styles blurb#harry styles imagine#wowie
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@over-under-through1 requested: I was wondering if you could do a modern au/nobody dies with Willex and a sleepover/sort of comfort?
Okay, so in my professional opinion, this is probably one of the cutest things I’ve ever written. Thank you for suggesting it, I hope you like it!
Title from All You’re Dreaming Of by Liam Gallagher.
Underneath the Moon
For the first time in almost eighteen years, Alex had the house to himself for an entire night. His father was away on a work trip, some head-office-organised bonding experience he’d been less than excited about; his mother was out of the state entirely, having a girls’ weekend with her four sisters; and his little sister was staying at his aunt and uncle’s house while both parents were away because as responsible as Alex was, he was only seventeen and his parents hadn’t been foolish enough to leave him in charge of a twelve-year-old who had a tendency to dodge rules.
Alex couldn’t remember the last time he’d been this excited – having free rule of the house felt like a dream come true. The moment he was alone, he had quietly broken every rule that had ever been set out for him: he had worn his shoes in the living room, rested his feet on the furniture, eaten ice cream straight out of the tub, watched a horror movie, and stood in the middle of the living room bellowing curse words for half an hour for no other reason than that there was nobody to stop him. They were petty acts of rebellion, sure, but to Alex they felt freeing and supremely satisfying.
His plan was to have a party. Well, not a party party – there was no way he’d be able to clean up all that mess before his father got home, and having so many people in the house would scare the living daylights out of him. The party would consist of just him and his closest friends having fun together, eating pizza and playing Just Dance and probably sleeping through most of it.
He opened up the group chat which consisted of him, his boyfriend Willie, and his best friends Luke, Reggie, Julie, Carrie, and Flynn. After typing out an invitation for them all, he read it through more times than he could count to make sure all the information was right. But before he could hit send, his phone buzzed with a notification from Willie.
Abandoning his own text, Alex opened up his private chat with just Willie. The text read: I’m feeling a little fragile, do you mind if we hang out?
Usually when Willie felt down it was something to do with his adoptive father, Caleb. They argued a lot, Alex knew, but Willie was normally quite closed off about the whole situation – Alex figured he would talk about it more when he was ready, so he had never pried.
He opened up the group chat and deleted his long message, thankful he hadn’t sent it, before going back to his conversation with Willie. Alex shot back a quick reply asking if Willie wanted to spend the night at his place before he could overthink or regret it.
Alex had stayed over at Willie’s a few times but never on purpose. He often fell asleep while they were having a movie marathon because being wrapped in Willie’s arms like that was sinfully comfortable and Willie radiated heat, so it was easy to doze off. He would wake up in the morning groggy and with no clothes to change into and no toothbrush to use. And Willie hardly ever came to Alex’s house because it was easier for them if they avoided his parents, so he’d never been able to spend the night.
But his parents weren’t here and Willie could be and this time Alex could plan to be with him all night.
Willie replied with an affirmative a moment later and Alex began the slightly unnecessary task of making the house look presentable. There wasn’t a lot to do; his mother had made sure everything was tidy before she had left for the airport, and Alex hadn’t made too much of a mess in his rule-breaking spree earlier. All he needed to do was straighten a few cushions and clear away a few plates and bowls he hadn’t taken to the kitchen earlier.
It was getting dark by the time Willie arrived. Alex could always tell when Willie was at the door because he didn’t ring the doorbell like any normal person, he held the button down and let it ring until somebody answered. It drove Alex’s parents round the bend, which was half the reason Alex found it so endearing.
Willie did the same that night, holding down the button and letting the shrill chime of the doorbell draw Alex to him. When Alex opened the door, Willie was looking up at him with a smile on his face and his board tucked under his arm.
“Hey hotdog,” he greeted, standing up on his tiptoes to press a kiss to Alex’s cheek. “Good day?”
“Yeah,” Alex replied, wrapping him in a one-armed hug and pulling him inside the threshold of the house. “How about you?”
Willie shrugged evasively. “Great now that I’m with you.”
Alex smiled in return, shut the door behind him, then took Willie’s hand and led him to the living room. They plonked themselves down on the sofa and Willie automatically curled himself around Alex like a koala.
This had been what Alex was expecting – when Willie was down, he did his best to cover it up. He hid his sadness behind avoidance and false smiles, but little gestures (like holding Alex so tightly that he thought he might actually burst) were what gave him away.
Willie picked up the remote and flicked the TV on, landing on a David Attenborough documentary. His eyes were trained on the television like it was all he ever wanted to see, which was how Alex knew that there was something he was avoiding talking about.
“Hey,” he said gently, tilting Willie’s head to face him with two fingers under his chin. “You sure you’re okay?”
Willie swallowed but clearly decided lying wasn’t worth it, giving a short shrug. “I don’t know. It’s just been a long day.”
“Do you want to talk about it?” Alex pressed carefully. “Because if you do then I’m more than happy to listen.”
He was given a weak smile in return. “Not tonight. Maybe just help me cheer up?”
“Of course,” Alex said, nodding. “What do you want to do?”
“Well, first I want to do this – sit and talk with you. Then I thought we could make cookies, I even brought the ingredients for that amazing recipe you made for my birthday.” He nodded down to a plastic carrier bag that Alex hadn’t seen before, placed down by their feet – he could see an ungodly amount of chocolate in it and couldn’t help but smile. “And I want to sleep with you.”
Alex short-circuited. He had not been expecting that. His face flushed and his mouth bobbed open and closed in a half smile – he didn’t think he could form words anymore.
“Oh, wait, that sounded wrong,” Willie said hurriedly. Alex breathed a little easier. “Not like that. No, I just meant I want to sleep next to you, you know, together. Like I said, it’s been a long day.”
“Right,” Alex said, half-relieved. “Right, okay, that makes more sense.”
Willie giggled – that was always an unfair thing to do because it was guaranteed to make Alex lose his mind – and rested his head on Alex’s shoulder. “I love you, hotdog.”
“I love you too.”
They stayed curled together on the sofa until the documentary finished, Alex gently weaving his fingers through Willie’s hair, Willie clinging to Alex like his life depended on it. It was calm and quiet and hardly anything like what Alex had previously planned for that night, but he wouldn’t have changed it for the world.
As soon as the credits began to roll, though, Willie was up out of his seat, had picked up the bag of ingredients and was making his own way to the kitchen. “Come on, hotdog,” he called over his shoulder, “I’m hungry.”
Smiling fondly, Alex followed him to the kitchen and pulled from a shelf the old recipe book he had used a hundred times as a kid. He used to bake with his mother when he was little because they both enjoyed it and they had fun together – they still baked together every now and then, but it was filled with stony silences rather than banter and the only time either of them spoke was when they asked the other to pass them something.
Still, Alex enjoyed baking and he always would, and it had become his favourite pastime with Willie now. Willie was hopeless in a kitchen, but Alex was a whizz and the combination led to mediocre results – the end product didn’t matter, Alex thought, as long as he and Willie had fun making it.
It didn’t take long for things to descend into chaos, as was to be expected when Willie was placed in a kitchen.
“Willie,” Alex said, reaching for exasperation to cover up the adoration in his voice, “if you keep eating the chocolate chips then there won’t be any left to put in the cookies.”
“Don’t worry,” Willie said dismissively. “I bought plenty, there’s still three bags left.”
“We only need one bag for the cookies, why did you buy so many?”
“To eat,” Willie replied like it was the most obvious thing in the world. Alex tried to look unimpressed but quickly gave up when Willie fed him a chocolate chip, beaming, and he simply had to smile.
The smile had vanished when he’d smelled burning.
“Is something on fire?” he asked, peering past Willie to the cooker.
There was no fire, thankfully, but the chocolate that Willie had been melting was quickly turning black and sticky and it stank of smoke. Willie let out a curse that would have sent Alex’s mother running for the hills and tried to salvage it in vain, scraping at the sides of the bowl with a spatula, trying to un-burn the chocolate.
To top it off, the smoke alarm started beeping.
“Okay,” Alex said, steering Willie away from the stovetop and handing him a tea towel. “You go wave that at the alarm until it stops beeping, I’ll sort out the chocolate.”
Willie did as he was told, whipping the tea towel around his head like a lasso as he made his way out to the hallway to fight the fire alarm, and Alex turned the heat down on the stove, gently removing the bowl of chocolate. He disposed of it easily enough, but there was some fused to the cooker, so he scrubbed at it to get it off. By the time he’d done as much as he could, there was still a small stain, but it was hardly noticeable. As Willie came back, Alex started melting the chocolate himself.
“Sorry,” Willie said, slipping his arms around Alex’s waist from behind. “I wasn’t paying attention.”
“It’s fine,” Alex replied, awkwardly turning his head to place a kiss on the tip of Willie’s nose. “It just means you get one less bag of chocolate chips to eat – I’m using them for this.”
Willie groaned and buried his head between Alex’s shoulder blades, mumbling something about life being so unfair. Alex shook with suppressed laughter.
Alex took over control of the cookies from then on, at Willie’s insistence. It wasn’t the easiest of tasks because Willie refused to let go of him, so whenever he needed to move around the kitchen he had to employ an awkward shuffle so that Willie could come too. Still, by the end they had a fresh, warm, gooey batch of heavily chocolatey cookies and the grin on Willie’s face was worth all the hassle.
Alex watched him take his first bite and smiled proudly as Willie’s eyes closed in contentedness. “Good?” he checked.
“I am so in love with you,” Willie replied. Alex wasn’t sure if it was directed at him or the cookie, but he took it as a win.
They found themselves sprawled on the sofa again, the cookies and a half-eaten packet of chocolate chips between them. They ate in comfortable silence – Alex was conscious that it was almost ten o’clock and that it would be a good idea to go to bed soon and that people weren’t supposed to eat before sleeping, but he ignored those niggling thoughts. He enjoyed simply being with Willie, together in his house for once and happy.
Willie was the one to break the silence.
“I was arguing with Caleb earlier,” he said, looking at the cookies instead of Alex.
“Yeah?” Alex said, careful to keep his voice level. “About what?”
“He wants me to start doing shows at the club again,” Willie sighed. “I thought we agreed months ago that after I turned eighteen I wouldn’t have to do the shows if I didn’t want to. And I don’t want to. But he says that apparently the crowd miss me and I should come back.”
“That sucks,” Alex said, hating how lame it sounded. “I’m sorry. Are you still looking for your own place?”
“There’s practically nowhere in my price range,” Willie said, “but I’m supposed to be viewing an apartment next week that might be doable.”
Alex tried for a smile, reached over and held Willie’s hand. “Well, if it works out then you can move out and you’ll be free. No more guilt trips, no Caleb – you won’t even have to think about going back to the club.”
Willie smiled weakly. “Will you come and view the apartment with me?”
“If you want me to then of course I will. Anything, Willie.”
With one last tiny smile, Willie dropped the subject and finished the last bite of his cookie before checking the time. Alex didn’t miss him stifle a yawn.
“Come on,” he said, tugging Willie’s hand and pulling him up. “You’re tired, let’s go to bed.”
Willie didn’t look too enthusiastic about being made to sleep, but he didn’t protest. While Alex got changed in his bedroom, Willie got ready for bed in the bathroom. Suddenly Alex wasn’t sure how all this worked – was it weird for him to be waiting in the bed when Willie entered the room? Surely it was weirder if he was just stood next to it awkwardly and only got under the covers when Willie came in? Maybe, he thought, he should try to make himself look busy so that he wouldn’t seem strange when Willie came in. He tried it, rummaging around in his chest of drawers, but then realised that if Willie asked what he was looking for he wouldn’t have an answer.
He stopped, took a deep breath, and just climbed into the bed. He picked up his phone and scrolled through social media, just for something to do with his hands. Maybe that would look more natural anyway.
When Willie came into the bedroom, he jumped beneath the bedcovers like it was all he had been wanting to do all day, curling around Alex, resting his head on his chest and his hands on his abdomen. Alex put his phone down and pulled Willie closer, hands clasped around his back. He had no idea why he had been worried about this – doing anything with Willie felt natural and safe, why should this have been any different?
“Thank you for everything, Alex,” Willie said softly.
“It was my pleasure,” Alex returned, burying his face in Willie’s hair. “You know I’d do anything for you, right?”
Willie laughed. It sent shivers down Alex’s spine. “Yeah. I know. Goodnight, hotdog.”
“Goodnight, love.”
But Alex couldn’t sleep. He tried, he really did. For whatever reason, he lay there for hours, unable to drift off. Maybe it was having Willie so close, knowing he would stay that close for a long time. Maybe it was the summer air drifting through his open window, warm and soft even though it was nearing midnight. Maybe it was the fact that he’d gone against his gut and eaten those cookies right before sleeping. Whatever it was, Alex couldn’t sleep.
He moved his head to look at Willie, the tiniest movement possible, and saw that Willie’s eyes were open too.
“Can’t sleep?” he asked, tracing Willie’s cheekbone gently with his thumb.
Willie shook his head. “Can you?”
“No,” Alex returned. Then he had an idea. “Wanna do something cool?”
Willie beamed and the two of them clambered out of bed. Alex picked up his duvet then crossed the room to his half-open window and wrenched it open completely. Because of the layout of Alex’s house, his bedroom window led directly onto a gently sloped section of roof. He hoisted himself through the window, then did the gentlemanly thing of helping Willie through too (though he was more than certain Willie could have managed it on his own, more gracefully than Alex had too).
Alex laid the duvet down on the roof like a picnic blanket, sat himself down and patted the space next to him for Willie to join him. The night wasn’t cold – it was summer, so the warm air danced across their faces, keeping them cosy and comfortable while they lay together underneath the moon, watching the stars and the deep night sky.
“I come out here sometimes,” Alex said softly, “because it feels lonely. Not in a bad way, just… it feels so far away from everything and everyone. It’s nice to just be alone sometimes.”
Willie hummed, a gentle response that settled some deep unnameable worry inside Alex’s chest. He softened, melted against Willie, relaxed.
They stayed there for hours, Willie pointing out constellations and giving them names and stories that Alex was almost certain were made up (“That’s Lord Crumpet, he vanquished the dreaded army of Abominable Snow Crabs which is why he has a pincer for a hand.”). It was simply nice.
Once Willie started to yawn, the ends of his nonsense sentences lost to his exhaustion, they crawled back in through the window and back into bed. Warm, close, cuddled, both of them were asleep within seconds.
#jatp#willex#alex mercer#julie and the phantoms#willie jatp#willie x alex#alex x willie#willex fic#julie and the himbos#jatp fic#writing#fluff#emotional hurt/comfort#caleb covington#modern au#alive au#comfort#as much as I love Alex-anxiety fics Willie isn’t immune to bad feelings and deserves love too!!!!!#fanfiction#fanfic#request
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The Undershirt
The Sleuth of the Ming Dynasty - Suitang - 2k - G - first kiss fluff - AO3!
..............
“Hand it over,” orders Sui Zhou.
Tang Fan pouts, a pout somewhere in between his “I’m hungry, feed me” face and “Dinner was an hour late, I almost died” face.
“I ran out of clean ones,” he says when Sui Zhou holds out his hand, “and I had to pack in a hurry—”
“I had only three rules. Rule one: Don’t mess up my house again—”
“Alright, alright,” Tang Fan says before Sui Zhou can lecture him. Leave it to Sui Zhou to take an inventory of his clothes as soon as he got home, all because Tang Fan had left his things just the tiniest bit mussed! “Take your stupid undershirt back; it’s too big on me anyway.”
Sui Zhou turns back to his cooking as Tang Fan slips halfway out of his robe, making a face as he removes the undershirt. Missing Sui Zhou, Tang Fan had pilfered the distinctive draped-neck garment from his things after he’d left on his ill-fated “business trip.” “Happy now, Sui-baihu?”
Sui Zhou glances up briefly from the soup, eyes flickering over Tang Fan. Sui Zhou’s handsome features are soft in the warm yellow candlelight and the orange glow of the stove. “Better.”
Tang Fan stands there with his robes draped around his waist, chest exposed, shyly holding the undershirt in front of him, watching Sui Zhou’s strong, sure hands as they slice vegetables and meat and then, once dinner is cooking, assemble the dessert, grinding the sesame seeds and working the delicate mixture.
A swell of fondness fills Tang Fan’s chest as Sui Zhou puts the finishing touches on the little sesame cakes, decorating each with a pink circle of honeyed flower petals.
"Aren't you going to put the undershirt back on?” Tang Fan asks as Sui Zhou puts the last petal in place. Most of the shyness has worn off as Sui Zhou tells him about how he developed the recipe, his deep voice low and soothing as it fills the cozy little kitchen.
"Later." Sui Zhou glances up, eyes flickering once again over Tang Fan's bare chest before returning to his work. Perhaps it's the warm glow of the candle, but Tang Fan imagines there's a hint of color in Sui Zhou's cheeks.
Too late it occurs to him that he should have at least put his robes back up over his arms and chest. Jiejie had driven it through his head that to wear robes without an undershirt was uncouth and a sure way to get the robes dirty, but…
"Do you still have your prison clothes? That was a good look." The question escapes Tang Fan before he can censor himself. "I mean—your uniform is good too—I mean, your normal undershirt is better than that prison one.” He dangles the undershirt from his fingertips, as if this question was just an extension of him returning Sui Zhou's undershirt. “I mean...”
Sui Zhou cranes his neck away slightly, as if trying to avoid looking at Tang Fan but probably only checking to make sure Dong'er isn't nearby to see Tang Fan in this state of undress. "Be careful with that. You're going to set the kitchen on fire again."
Grinning, and more at ease now that the conversation is back in familiar teasing territory, Tang Fan sidles closer to Sui Zhou, waving his shirt near where the mutton soup is bubbling on the fire. "Oh, that was on purpose. You know, to get you to free Dong'er—"
Sui Zhou gives him that look of his, the one that appears completely expressionless but in fact contains a half dozen emotions from all corners of the spectrum. "You set fire to my house on purpose?"
"Well—"
"What about the time you fell asleep with the candle beside your bed, and the time you tripped and fell holding the lamp—"
"Fine, it wasn't on purpose. But the bad food was! I can cook, if I wanted to—”
"You can't cook."
Tang Fan inches closer. He's not quite sure why. "You could teach me."
Sui Zhou frowns slightly. "You step foot in my kitchen without me here, and you sleep outside with the sheep."
Tang Fan wrinkles his nose. "The sheep has a name ."
"Li Qing?"
Tang Fan almost drops the undershirt on the stove. "How did you—”
Sui Zhou turns away again as if to hide a grin. Li Qing is the main character of Tang Fan's magnum opus, My Sexy Lady .
"You didn't read it!" Tang Fan leans forward in consternation. He's not sure why he's so thrown. It's a brilliantly-written work, like all of his books, but somehow to have Sui Zhou privy to—to all that — "Wang Zhi told you or something—wait till I get my hands on him!"
Sui Zhou is definitely holding back a grin. "I liked the part where the ‘sexy lady’ sets fire to Shi Yang's house after she thinks he stole her necklace."
"That never happened! She never did anything half so crazy!”
Sui Zhou is no longer holding back his smile. "Maybe in the sequel, My Sexy Wife."
Tang Fan laughs out loud. People who don't know Sui Zhou think he's stiff and cold and completely humorless, but Tang Fan knows better. It's subtle, but Sui Zhou's sense of humor and appreciation of the outlandish is definitely there. If it weren't, Tang Fan doesn't think he would get along with him as well as he does.
Which, when he stops to think of it, is rather odd. His getting along with him so well, not the sense of humor. Despite having lived in the capital for years, and having many acquaintances, Tang Fan has few close friends. As he knows he’s a delight to be around, never complaining and generously standing people meals, he can only assume it’s a failing in other people.
A failing that Sui Zhou evidently doesn’t have, to appreciate Tang Fan’s virtues, both hidden and overt.
It’s not that Tang Fan annoys people. That can’t possibly be it, no matter what Jiejie says. But he can’t deny that not everyone appreciates him, and that hurts, sometimes.
A sudden thought, and Tang Fan abruptly stops laughing. Why did Sui Zhou pick that example? Surely it was just a joke after what they'd been talking about—he knows it is—but of all characters to pick—
Tang Fan had based a lot of Li Qing on himself. Like him, she's a beautiful genius often put-upon by those who fail to appreciate her properly, driven to do the right thing at whatever costs, someone who appreciates fine food and faces the world with a smile no matter how she's feeling.
No. Sui Zhou is just teasing him, as usual. That's it. He probably hadn't even finished the book...
He wants to ask Sui Zhou if he liked the book, but despite it being his best-selling work, he’s hesitant to ask. Sui Zhou is nothing if not honest, and what if he didn’t truly like it?
Tang Fan resolves to start work on a sequel that night. Perhaps Shi Yang could enter the imperial guards and, together with Li Qing, solve a series of increasingly exciting mysteries that pit them against the world. Back to back, they’ll chase justice and stand strong against the winds of—
“Here.” Sui Zhou slides the plate of sesame cakes towards him. “For coming to get me.”
Tang Fan grins. “You mean rescuing you.”
Sui Zhou turns back to the soup. "Just eat them."
Tang Fan inches even closer, more to annoy Sui Zhou than anything else, he thinks. "Go on, say it. I rescued you."
"Keep this up, and you're getting kicked out of my kitchen."
" Your kitchen? Why is it—oh, right. It's your house." Tang Fan looks down at the sesame cakes. It's almost a shame to eat them, they’re so beautifully decorated. "Am I allowed to eat them before dinner, or are you going to get all sulky?"
Sui Zhou gives Tang Fan a look as if to say, I'm not the childish one here, and reaches for a sesame cake just as Tang Fan does. Their fingers brush, and tingling current runs up Tang Fan's arm. Startled, he jerks away, dropping Sui Zhou's undershirt on the stove.
Spattered in mutton grease, it erupts in a column of flame.
"Augh!" Panicking, Tang Fan drops the shirt in the soup. “Put it out! Put it out!”
Sui Zhou snatches the shirt out of the soup and drops it in a pot of water. "What did I just tell you about setting my house on fire?"
Smiling weakly, Tang Fan begins sidling in the opposite direction as Sui Zhou comes closer. "You startled me! You grabbed at me just as I was trying to eat, I haven't eaten all day, I was hungry, you forced me to take a cake—"
He bumps up against the wall. Sui Zou leans over him, one arm framing him, his face a mix of exasperation and—and fondness, Tang Fan wants to believe, though it’s hard to when there's a charred, soup-soaked undershirt not five feet away.
"It wasn't my fault I burned your shirt!" Tang Fan continues bravely. Whining has always worked on Old Pei and Jiejie, though he still hasn’t quite learned the exact point Jiejie’s indulgence tips over into slapping-him-across-the-face territory, hence all the slapping. "Tired after weeks of traveling, traveling across half the empire to rescue you, if you recall, weeks of seasickness and danger and unpadded saddles and not being able to finish my rice noodles in the one good restaurant between here and I thought you were dead at one point, and that was almost as bad as the noo—"
Sui Zhou bends forward and kisses him.
Tang Fan goes rigid.
Did—did Sui Zhou just—
Sui Zhou kisses him again, as if to clear up any doubts.
"Well, that's one way to stop you from talking," he says.
Tang Fan's heart is beating like a war drum, but strangely enough it's not from nerves. There's a smile on Sui Zhou's lips (rather full lips, he notices. Until now he's been too distracted by his arms and shoulders and—well—all the rest of him, most likely), and there's definite fondness in his eyes.
"I once talked through an acupuncture session for a sore tooth," Tang Fan says boastingly, more to calm his nerves than anything else.
He’s never been kissed before. Or rather, being a man, perhaps it was more appropriate to say he’d never kissed anyone before.
He’d always changed the subject when Old Pei brought it up. The local girls had never interested him, and he’d never though there were other— options—
"You can ask him at dinner,” he blusters on, pulse fluttering. “I was probably able to give him some good tips and pointers, I once read a book on acupuncture that—"
Sui Zhou shuts him up again, cupping his face in his hand. It smells of honey and spice, the callused palm somehow soft against Tang Fan's cheek, his long fingers curling around the back of his neck as he kisses him.
Tang Fan is suddenly very aware that he's half-naked, but it's somehow nice being around Sui Zhou like that, not uncomfortable as he's sometimes felt in the past around others. Natural, despite his first-time nerves.
He suddenly realizes that Sui Zhou is looking down at him as if waiting for him to say or do something.
"Am I allowed to speak again?" Tang Fan asks.
Sui Zhou half-smiles. "Nothing could stop you from talking for very long."
"I want another one of your undershirts, but a black one this time. I saw one tucked away in the chest, but Dong'er said it wouldn’t match my robes, though what does she know? I want the black undershirt, and—"
"Black to hide any future char?"
"This was an accident! You startled me!"
"The one you were wearing today is mostly black now, after you set it on fi—"
Tang Fan kisses him.
"You're right," he says, grinning at Sui Zhou, who seems to have forgotten how to speak. "That does work."
*
AO3
#suitang#the sleuth of the ming dynasty#tsomd#tang fan#sui zhou#tangzhou#katie sleuth of the ming dynasty lotus
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ᴴᵉʸ i already apologized to Dante, but I guess I also have to apologize to y’all. So… once again, sorry I did a kick flip so sick it made the tag ill. I’ll be sure to think of you all when I’m living a solitary life as a hermit in the forest who’s mistaken for the ghost of a witch.
uuummmmmmI also finished the jetsam fic last night 👉👈 so here you go bestys <3
@jetsam-kisa
Jetsam knew getting into some sort of activity with Aito would be a mistake. Usually the little creature was up to something malicious, and even if you couldn’t figure it out immediately, at some point something would take a sharp right turn and now she’s tricked you into being his accomplice for whatever his next cruel joke is. Aito hasn’t revealed what this trick will be, but it definitely terrifies him considering that they’re in the kitchen.
“It’s just that Mich’ gave me such a pretty skirt yesterday.” Aito had explained, her wiry tail wagging from side to side. “And both Ikuto and Haru said I should say thank you with a little gift in return!”
And so Jetsam (foolishly) agreed to help Aito make cookies. Aito had found the recipe and ingredients, all she needed help with was execution. Jetsam wasn’t sure if he was stressed about how little he could vet the ingredients, or if he was relieved because he was helping with so little- he couldn’t possibly get in trouble for just making cookies right? Right???
“So we have flour, baking soda… salt right here…” Jetsam mumbled, his usual plumes of smoke going up and dissipating into the air as he read off what ingredients they would need and making sure Aito got the right stuff. Aito sat on the counter nearby, watching Jetsam sort everything out silently. After making sure everything was in place, Jetsam gave Aito the thumbs up and Aito hopped off the counter to come help. “Could you preheat the oven-” Jetsam immediately recognized the fault in leaving Aito alone with a heat source and took it back “ah, no, lemme get the oven, you can start mixing th-” nope! Aito would probably be worse if he was left unsupervised with ingredients that someone would be eating, and took that back as well. “Ok then… I’ll preheat the oven, you can just… just stand there for a second.” he finally settled on, stepping away and quickly setting the oven before looking back to check on Aito and-
And she didn’t seem to be doing much. Just kinda standing around, scrolling through the phone that they were using to look at the instructions. Seeing as it was Aito’s phone, Jetsam didn’t see any reason to panic as he returned to Aito’s side. “Next we have to mix the flour, baking soda, and salt.” Aito said, scrolling up and down the instructional website in boredom. “Sounds easy, lemme get the thingies.” by ‘thingies’ Aito apparently meant measuring tools, and (with a nervous Jetsam’s supervision) measured out the dry ingredients and put them into a bowl.
“Have you started on the report for history?” Jetsam asked, starting to mix the wet ingredients together with a handheld mixer- much too afraid of something motorized being in Aito’s hands to let her help. “I know what I wanna write about, I just haven’t started.”
“Yeah, Haru made me start before we left class.” Aito responded vaguely, strangely not taking the opportunity to lightheartedly complain about her friend.“It's lame, but I’m halfway done.” she shrugged, hopping onto the counter and watching like a cat on a windowsill, her tail even swaying side to side as she watched the ingredients mix. “Now we add the chocolate, right?”
“Roawr”
“Meow?” Aito perked up and looked to the floor of the kitchen, Jetsam not far behind as Aito jumped down from the counter to greet their new guest. “Oh! Look who’s here Jetsam!” Aito smiled, picking up a small black kitten who had wandered into the kitchen. “Oh wait, You’ve never met little Jiji, have you?”
“No?” Jetsam said, not wanting to get in trouble for being seen with a pet in the dorms but… but it was just the smallest little kitten he’s ever seen! And Aito was just bringing him to him! “H-hello there sweetheart.” Jetsam hummed, carefully putting his hand out for the kitten to sniff as he realized that the kitten didn’t seem to have eyes- a terrifying realization when in relation to Aito “Can he see anything?”
“No, I think it was a birth thing though.” Aito said, petting the kitten fondly before putting him down again. “He needs to walk around a bit, get a feel for the space.” she explained as the kitten stood still for a second before realizing that Aito wasn’t going to pick him up again and running off to go explore. If Jiji ran into a few walls, Aito ignored the sound, and so did Jetsam. “I think he got out through my vent, I'll have to close it next time.” Aito shrugged, finding the bag of chocolate chips and opening it.
“Why was the vent open in the first place?” Jetsam asked, worried about Aito’s answer, but deciding that it would be worse not to know.
“Sometimes Haru locks his door so he can destress.” Aito said, pouring the chips into one of the measuring cups. “I need to be able to stop that as quickly as humanly possible.” he explained, not going into detail as Jetsam nodded, not wanting any more details. Aito poured the chips into the mix and let Jetsam mix it for her, again taking her place on the counter to watch.
“You named the cat after the Jiji sticker on my wallet?” Jetsam asked, suddenly realizing how quiet Aito was being (at least compared to the insane amount of talking she normally did) and wanting him to talk again.
“Mhm.” Aito responded, watching the dough spin around in the bowl
“It’s from a show you know.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah, I could show you it some time.”
“I’d like that.”
Jetsam could taste the silence in the room as he put the mixer down. He thought he was scared of an over excited Aito, but a deathly silent one was twice as agonizing. He let Aito get the sheet pan and spray it down, but decided to let her play with a small portion of the dough as he quickly divided the rest into even little balls, all spread across the sheet, with a small space for Aito’s.
When he looked up to the girl on the counter, she had her back turned to him as she messed with the dough. Aito felt eyes on his back and looked up, noticing that Jetsam was finished, and held up the plate she was working on.
The cookie dough was formed into a crude little heart shape, rough around the edges, and still needing some work. “It looks good, Aito-kun.” Jetsam said, not sure how well it would turn out in the oven, but also not willing to put Aito down when she looked so contemplative. She turned around and put the plate back down on the counter, as if to let Jetsam see what she was doing.
“You know they found a body…” Aito said, barely above a whisper as she carefully formed the dough “on an Arabian Peninsula…” Jetsam felt his heart beat quicken with nervousness as he tried to hide the larger clouds of smoke billowing from his mouth. “It was an archeological dig and… they think she’s 4000 years old- the bones that is- she was… they think she was 18 when she died.” Good lord- Aito-kun always tells her stories in the worst way possible. “I’m writing my history report on her. Her bones were all messed up- way too thin for her to do much. She was severely disabled and would have needed around the clock care… but… but they also saw that she had… she had a lot of cavities, and her teeth were falling out and it didn’t make sense till…” Aito paused momentarily, as if trying to remember what his hands were doing before he continued the story. “till they realized that she… she just ate too many dates.” He giggled, sharpening the bottom of the heart as best as he could. “They just loved her so much… they loved her to death.” Aito paused again, looking over his handiwork and immediately started poking it again, less out of a want to shape it, and more out of a need to do something with his hands. “They always say survival of the fittest and- and I think they’re right!” He said, her voice rising a bit in volume. “Humanity’s made it this far because we found out that what makes us fit for survival is love and compassion and empathy and community and- and…” Aito just stood there, collecting her thoughts as he tapped a rhythm on the center of the cookie, as if trying to make it beat on its own. “And I like things better when they’re heart shaped.” She finally finished, still tapping the dough, but calming down a bit. “Can we… um”
“We can make them all heartshaped, if you want.” Jetsam offered, pointing to the rest of the cookies. Aito simply nodded and finally removed her hands from the dough, frowning a bit at the messy edges, but not willing to reshape it as she moved it from the plate to sheet pan.
Jetsam showed Aito how to make the dough into a shape that would actually end up as a heart after the oven, and together they finished the sheet, Jetsam slipping in into the oven and turning back to face Aito. Aito still looked tentative, swinging his legs over the side of the counter, but a bit more confident than before. “You said you still needed to start on your report?” Aito asked, and Jetsam nodded. Aito hopped down from the counter. “I’ll be back.”
Jetsam followed Aito to the door of the kitchen, but stayed put as Aito continued down the hall to the dorm rooms. Aito returned a bit later with a paper, pencil, copy of their history book, and a cozy looking blanket. “You should start now. I need a nap.” Aito said shortly, turning away from the kitchen and into the common room. Aito laid Jetsam’s supplies on the adjacent coffee table and let him sit down before wrapping herself in the blanket and laying her head across his lap.
“Is this my copy of the textbook?” Jetsam asked, recognizing some of the graffiti across the well used pages. “This was in my dorm room.”
“Mhm.” Aito hummed, looking over the pages as well.
“My dorm was locked?”
“Yeah,” Aito chuckled, sitting up a bit to explain himself. “But all the doors kinda suck. If you know what you’re doing, you can get into any dorm you want without a key.” He said, flipping a few pages and ignoring the nervousness on Jetsam’s face. “Your door in particular is a bit harder though, if it’s any comfort. You have to point the handle perfectly vertical and knee it really hard. Easy once you get used to it, but I don’t exactly go around telling people these things.” He mumbled, tossing his arms over Jetsam’s legs and resting his head on his arms.
“Thanks?” Jetsam shrugged, mildly uncomfortable with the fact that Aito could just break into his room whenever… maybe he should invest in a deadbolt…
“But what do you plan on writing your report on?” Aito asked, closing his eyes and very clearly not planning to listen to Jetsam’s report. So Jetsam gave a quick summary of his ideas till he was sure that Aito was out cold (luckily she fell asleep quickly) and continued working on his report in silence till the alarm on Aito’s phone went off.
Aito immediately jumped awake at the noise, but grumbled and complained as he turned the alarm off. Aito yawned like a cat and stepped over the couch like it was nothing- and seeing how often she disregarded the proper use of furniture, she probably saw it as such. Jetsam was still sorting his supplies, as well as his (mostly finished!) report when he heard Aito mumble something along the lines of “oh I hate this part” and the sound of running water. Jetsam immediately sprung to the kitchen, only barely making it to the door before Aito reached into the oven with his BARE HANDS and pulled the pan out, before throwing it on the counter and immediately putting her hands into the sink, under the running water. “I hate this I hate ovens I hate heat I hate-“ Aito rambled on and on about hating this and that about the stupid decision he just made, leaving Jetsam in completely stunned confusion.
“Why didn’t you just??? Use the mits???” Jetsam howled, running over to inspect Aito’s reddened hands.
“Mitts? You use those for cold things?” Aito asked, as if Jetsam was the moron here.
“You… they’re called oven mitts, Aito-kun!” Aito started at Jetsam, as if finally putting something together
“Oh…”
“Oh…?”
“Oven mitts are kitchen gloves.” Aito hummed, turning the water off and reaching into the drawer that the mitts were kept in, wincing a bit as his still red hands made contact.
“What?”
“Yeah ah… mama calls them kitchen gloves and… and ours are made of cloth.” Aito explained, pulling out the silicone glove. “I thought… you know, I thought these were two different things.”
And suddenly Jetsam understood why that prehistoric 18 year old was so important. Everyone will always not know something, it’s inevitable. Maybe it was something stupid like what oven mitts were, or something less stupid like living. Nobody knows anything. One day fire may burn cold, or the sun just not rise, or our blood may not pump… and all we could do is be kind, and caring, and compassionate.
“We have to take the cookies off the sheet.” Jetsam advised, patting Aito’s shoulder as she returned the mitt to it’s drawer. “They’ll keep baking if we don’t get them on a cooling rack.”
And so, in a more comfortable silence then before, Jetsam and Aito moved the cookies to the rack, pausing only at the last one, the one Aito had made first. Jetsam was right, the shape didn’t survive too well in the oven, the tops of the heart looking more like a single hill and the bottom having lost it’s point, and yet Aito moved it without hesitation onto the rack.
“I like it.” He said softly, making sure it fit onto the rack with all the rest. “It’s a little messed up, but it’s still heart shaped.”
#Ohhh I just love jetsam so much <333#Sillie little guy <3#jetsam kisa#aito takao#bnha oc comeback#knha // kimi no hero academia#Kori stories
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I LOVE YOU 3000!
-PART 37
Two weeks passed in the blink of an eye. Every day with Louis was a new adventure and Harry couldn't remember the last time he'd been this happy. It's like he'd been missing out on something all his life and Louis fit in his life like the missing piece.
The movie marathon was going pretty good too and Harry planned on another night stay at Louis' coming Saturday but the weekend had different plans.
Weekend 6
When Louis rang the bell to Harry's apartment, he was greeted by a cheerful man in his late twenties.
"Hello sir, you must be Mr. Tomlinson. I'm Dave, Harry's personal assistant."
"Hi and please call me Louis," Louis called, making his way in.
"Harry said the same thing when I joined," Dave smiled, gesturing Louis to follow him, as he led the way to Harry's room. Clifford sniffed around aggressively and Louis had to keep tugging the leash to hold him still.
On reaching the door, Louis handed one of the bags he was holding to Dave, "Can you heat the soup and bring it in a bowl?"
"Yes sir, sure."
Dave took the bag from Louis' hand a retreated from the bedroom.
Louis slowly opened the door to find Harry on his bed, duvet yanked up to his chest, staring hard at the ceiling. With a loud bark Clifford jumped towards the bed but got stuck due to the leash. Louis removed it from his neck and at once Clifford was jumping playfully on Harry, trying to tug at the duvet and licking him.
"Did you miss me Cliffy?"
Clifford responded in joyous barks and settled himself beside Harry.
Louis proceeded towards the armchair near the foot of Harry's bed, but Harry stopped him.
"Sit here Lou," he said, patting the area of the bed next to him, "it's not contagious. And oh my god you brought your guitar too?!"
"Yeah, I wondered if music would make you feel better" Louis replied making his way over to Harry.
"It sure will!!" Harry replied enthusiastically. "Now what's that?" Harry asked, pointing to the colourful paper bag on Louis' hand.
"Uh I got you chocolates," he said, handing the bag to Harry, "and umm the dvds of the next 3 movies too incase you were bored."
Harry's eyes were gleaming with joy. He smiled and mouthed a silent thank you to Louis who had sat himself beside Harry.
"So what do you wanna do today?" Louis asked, resting his hand on Harry's head and brushing his forehead with the tip of his tongue.
"You tell me. You've come all armed to rescue me from boredom." Louis smiled at that and Harry cooed, "my knight in shining armor."
"Shut up Haz," Louis giggled.
"You could hug me while we watch a movie."
Louis bit back a smile and said, "Okay as long as you don't fall asleep."
"Ugh, you'll keep bringing that up won't you?"
"Always."
Meanwhile Dave came back with a tray containing a bowl of soup, spoons and Harry's medicines.
"Aw thanks Dave," Harry said as Dave set the tray on the bed.
"It wasn't me. Louis brought it for you."
Harry whipped his head instantly towards Louis who ducked his head, face hiding under his fringes.
Harry watched as Dave left the room, Clifford following behind and then turned to Louis again.
"You - you cooked?"
"Yeah," Louis replied sheepishly, "asked Mum for the recipe. She helped me through."
"Oh -- Lou, I -- I'm -- thanks," Harry blurted, not knowing what else to say.
"Save that for later. First see if it's edible or not."
It was.
And Harry loved it.
And he kept saying that over and over again.
They spent the rest of the afternoon talking about the most random things and if it had been somebody else, Louis would probably would have ended up sassing them, but with Harry, every bit of it made sense. They finished the movie Harry fell asleep watching and after another round of meal and medicine for Harry, Louis took out his guitar and played soft tunes. He remembered all of Harry's favourite songs and played them one by one till Harry fell asleep.
Louis caressed Harry's face and leaned in to kiss his forehead and in a minute he'd packed up his guitar. He sat for a while longer beside Harry, gazing at the perfect boy who was fast asleep, for whom Louis had cooked the first meal in his life.
He whistled to Clifford, who was playing an animated game of catch with Dave and soon left, after having a word with Dave. He'd visit again tomorrow.
--
The next day, as much as Louis wanted to spend his day with Harry, it wasn't possible. He got stuck at work (a very important meeting according to Nick) and it was a long day. It was almost 7 p.m. before he finished and left for Harry's at once.
Harry looked a little better. Some colour seemed to have returned to his cheeks and he was more than pleased to see Louis.
They talked for sometime and Harry would have loved it if Louis stayed the night but Cliff was alone.
With great reluctance Harry let Louis go, but any disappointed he was feeling disappeared in a second when Louis stood up and kissed the top of Harry's head, murmuring a low "take care, Haz" before leaving out the door.
--
On Monday, Harry was feeling very stiff and wanted Louis to go for a morning walk with him.
It was a pleasant morning, just the right amount of warm with a light breeze.
Harry had wanted to buy ice cream again, and Louis had to drag him away. Louis' walking playlist wasn't according to Harry's taste who was in a really jumpy mood.
There was a moment where Harry wanted to hold Louis' hand but thought better of it when he saw people recognising him.
Finally after a solid 2 hours, Louis walked Harry to his apartment, near which he'd parked his own car and drove back home.
PREVIOUS / NEXT
INTRO
#i love you 3000#larry stylinson#louis tomlinson#harry styles#liam payne#zayn malik#niall horan#taylor swift#marvel#mcu#larry#ziam#lilo#zouis#lirry#narry#zarry#nouis#niam#ziall#social media au#smau#halo stylinson#louis styles#harry tomlinson
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Alex meets Ari, epilogue
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 |
Content Warnings: demon/incubus character, romance, established relationship, car accident mention, injuries, bruises, arguments, angst, emotional whump, caretaking, consensual kissing and touching, happy ending
Tag List: @deluxewhump @grizzlie70 @gatheringofsuffering @xmonster-under-the-bed @emreads @whumpingmydarlings @endless-whump
Author’s Notes: I can’t believe I actually finished something I started!! Once again, thanks so so much to everyone who’s read these. :)
----
Dating Alex is like dating the weather. There are storms and dreary skies, calm overcast days, days of warm sunshine. Getting to know him is like diving into a lake he thinks is shallow only to find unexpected depths of thoughts and feelings, of humor and intelligence. In spite of the relatively mundane life they lead, Arinn finds he is never bored.
All of it is a novelty. Staying with the same person, of course, takes adjustment. Arinn had such a set routine and methodology when it came to finding sustenance that he feels a little lost when it’s gone. But that void is always quickly filled. They binge shows, they try recipes, they take walks. They go to movies and restaurants and, yes, the mummies exhibit and other museums. It’s the closest thing to a normal life Arinn has ever had, yet it feels strange and exciting.
Perhaps the most astounding thing is the lack of pressure to have sex. Before this he was in bed with a new person a couple times a week. Often someone he didn’t particularly like, just to scrounge for the smallest touches to keep himself going. Worse than that, sometimes he would end up discovered, captured and tormented, with no one to help, not like that day Alex found him. The things that were done to him, that he had to bear alone…
But now he only has sex when he actually wants to, and it feels like a small miracle. He enjoys sex well enough, but is more than happy with cuddling, kissing, even lying with his feet across Alex’s lap. And if the kissing gets heated or Alex looks particularly gorgeous that day, well…Arinn certainly isn’t going to complain if they end up in bed.
A little over eight months into dating, Arinn’s lease ends and he moves in. He spends most nights there anyway, but still, it’s a little daunting. But between their jobs and Alex’s therapy and workouts, it doesn’t feel like they’re constantly around each other. Arinn adjusts to it quickly. He can’t deny how incredible it feels to know without a doubt that he won’t go to bed alone each night.
They both work early shifts, starting before dawn and getting home in the early afternoon. So Arinn isn’t prepared at all when Alex comes home telling him he’s going to have to work an evening shift for a couple of weeks.
During the first week, Arinn returns from work only an hour before Alex has to leave to catch the bus. Other than that single hour and when Alex crawls into bed at night, they have no time together. By Friday, Arinn is beyond ready for the weekend. He works Saturday morning, but he doesn’t care. He’s prepared to stay up late just to greedily take in a little extra time with Alex.
“I’ll be home by 10:30,” Alex promises as he gets dressed.
Arinn has the restraint to wait until he’s finished buckling his belt to go over and kiss him. “10:30. I’ll be here.”
Alex’s smile warms him like nothing he’s ever felt. “Good.” He kisses Arinn once, then again, then a third time. He’s contemplating a fourth when Arinn nudges him towards the door.
“Go on,” he says reluctantly. “Have a good day. Night. Whatever.”
Alex laughs as he slips his shoes on. “I’ll try.” And then he’s out the door.
----
10:30 rolls around. Arinn has showered, tidied up the house, and threw together a small meal for Alex to heat up if he’s hungry. Then he plops onto the couch and waits.
At 10:37 he assumes the bus is running late. At 10:49 he wonders if Alex missed the bus and had to catch another. He bounces his leg impatiently and checks his phone every couple minutes in case Alex calls or texts.
He doesn’t.
By 11:00 Arinn is up and pacing. He calls Alex but gets no answer. He leaves voicemails, his voice shaking. He texts him. Where are you? Are you okay? Did work run over? Please answer me.
He said 10:30, Arinn thinks. He said no later than that. He promised. But he isn’t here…
Arinn doesn’t know what to do. He flips between worry and anger and hurt. What if something happened? What if he went out for drinks with coworkers? What if he lied? The possibilities spiral through his mind unchecked.
Then, at 11:43, there’s a key in the lock. It clicks, and the door creaks open.
Alex steps - stumbles - inside and closes the door slowly behind him before leaning back against it with a long sigh.
He looks like hell. His hair is a mess. There’s a bruise on his cheek. His jacket is torn and his clothes are dirty. He’s got one arm draped across his opposite side and he’s breathing raggedly.
Arinn can’t process this. Alex said 10:30, he wasn’t here, Arinn was going out of his mind, and now he shows up looking like this. It’s too much. Before he can stop to think, he explodes.
“Where the hell were you?! It’s been over an hour! Did you get into a fight or something? What the fuck, Alex?”
Arinn is shaking. If he could just stop and think he’d know he isn’t really angry, just shaken. He would see the hurt in Alex’s eyes. He would reach for him with care rather than lash out with accusations.
Alex’s face hardens. He kicks off his shoes and hangs his keys up on the hook.
“Bus crashed,” he mumbles. “Driver had a stroke or something. Ran off the road and rolled onto its side. None of us could leave until we were all looked over by the paramedics and questioned by the police.” He winces as he removes his jacket. “I was lucky I guess. Just some bruising. Got cleared and got a ride here from a cop. Some people left in ambulances.”
Something sinks inside of Arinn. His resolve crumbles and he’s left at a loss for words.
“Why didn’t you call?” he manages weakly. “I would have - have - “
“Have what? Picked me up? We don’t have a car.”
“You still could have told me! Or at least answered my texts!”
“My phone fell out of my pocket!” Alex bursts out. “It’s probably still in the bus being towed halfway across town by now. It’s not like they were going to let me go look for it while they were trying to pry out people who were trapped!”
He begins to walk stiffly toward the kitchen, past Arinn without so much as looking at him. Arinn follows numbly. He watches Alex take a pack of frozen veggies from the freezer and hold it to his side while he leans on the counter for support. His back is to Arinn.
“Fuck...” he whispers. “Alex, I - god, that’s - I don’t know what to say…” Say sorry you idiot! “Thank god you’re alright...I don’t know what I’d do if something happened to you…”
Alex huffs. “Guess you’d have to find a new meal ticket,” he snaps.
As soon as he says it the room feels colder. Tension hangs over them like a dark cloud. There’s a hesitation from Alex. For a moment it seems like he might speak. Might take it back. But he only sighs and carefully makes his way into the living room. Arinn hears him groan as he sits on the couch. He continues staring at the place where Alex was just standing.
Arinn’s feet are moving before he knows what he’s doing. He throws his shoes and coat on over his pajamas and is out the door.
He hears it slam behind him.
He hears “Ari, wait! Shit - “
He keeps going.
He doesn’t look back.
Arinn is a block from the apartment building before he finally slows down. He can barely see the sidewalk ahead of him through the blur of tears.
I fucked up. I fucked up. It’s over. I fucked up.
He’s angry, but only at himself. If Alex meant what he said it has to be because Arinn screwed up, didn’t show him enough that he cared, wasn’t good enough at communicating. He should have known he was in over his head. That it was too good to last.
“Arinn!”
Arinn stops walking. It can’t be…
He whirls around to find Alex staggering after him. Even in the dim light from the street lamps Arinn can see that he’s struggling to remain standing, let alone walk. Yet here he is.
“What are you doing?” Arinn croaks. “Y-you’re hurt, you need to be resting…”
With considerable effort, Alex catches up to him. He’s panting heavily. Arinn can’t decide if he wants to turn and run or pull Alex into his arms. He does neither.
“I’m - sorry - “ Alex gets out between breaths. “I didn’t mean it. I swear. I was angry - it, it just popped out - “
“I don’t blame you,” Arinn says quietly. “Given what you know about me. But if it means anything, I - I don’t see you that way. As just a - a meal.”
“I know,” Alex says, putting his whole heart into the words. His eyes are shining. He looks desperate and fragile and Arinn just wants to gather him close and make it all okay again.
“I know that,” he says again. “Please believe me. I shouldn’t have said that, it was so stupid. I shouldn’t have yelled at you. I’m sorry.”
“Why are you apologizing?” Arinn asks a little too harshly. He flinches and softens his tone. “I attacked you the minute you walked in the door. After the night you had that’s the last thing you fucking needed. I was just scared.” He puts his face in his hands. “I don’t know what I’m doing, Alex. I don’t know how to do any of this.”
When Alex speaks again he’s a little closer. Just a few feet from Arinn, but still not close enough to touch.
“Me either,” he says. “This is the first time since coming here that I’ve had to actually use the things I’m trying to get better at...it’s like, therapy was just training but this is the real deal. And I’m so scared I’m going to fuck it all up. Like I did tonight.”
“That makes two of us,” Arinn whispers. He lowers his hands and wraps his arms around himself, feeling cold and brittle. “This - us fighting - is what I was most afraid of. I can’t help what I am. If - if it goes wrong, if we spend time apart or - or - “ he can’t bring himself to even say the words break up aloud for fear they will manifest as real. “ - or separate, what am I supposed to do? I can’t just go sleep with someone else if we’re still together, or if it’s unclear! I’m a lot of things but I’m not a cheater. I - I wouldn’t, I couldn’t…”
Alex listens. He always listens. Even when he’s tired or stressed or angry. Even now, when he’s injured and shouldn’t even be out here.
“You’re right,” he says when he’s sure Arinn is finished. “You can’t help who you are. And I won’t ever really understand what that’s like.” He takes a shaky breath. “What if we made some kind of deal or something. Like, if...if it ever comes to that, you can do what you have to do. No questions asked.”
Arinn’s chest feels tight. He’d do that? He’d let me do that? He knows the depth of Alex’s abandonment issues, between parents who were never around and friends and boyfriends who left him when he needed them most.
And yet he’s willing to look past Arinn sleeping with someone else, willing to trust that it’s nothing more than for his survival. It’s an offer that so many others would happily exploit. The amount that Alex is putting his heart on the line is daunting.
“I don’t want that,” Arinn replies, his voice cracking. “I don’t want anyone but you.”
As soon as he says the words he knows that they’re true.
Alex steps a little closer. His expression is indecipherable. His bottom lip is trembling.
“Really?” And oh, the disbelief in his voice is the most heartbreaking thing. Arinn feels a swell of hatred toward every person who made Alex feel like no one could ever want him.
“Yes, really.” Arinn steps a little closer, too. “Alex…”
The next words terrify him. He feels as though he’s hanging off the edge of a cliff, and if he doesn’t make his move, however risky, he’s going to fall to his death. The truth is all he has now. It could ruin everything, or save it.
“Alex, I love you.”
Fragile silence follows, filled only by the soft chirp of crickets, the hum of someone’s television from a house, a train off in the distance.
A car comes up the road. Its headlights illuminate Alex’s face for a moment and Arinn can see the deep sea of emotion in his eyes.
Arinn is tensed so tight he feels like he might snap. He can feel his mind seeking a way out, the walls he’d let down going up -
“I love you too, Ari.”
With those softly spoken words the walls crumble to dust. He stares, dazed, at Alex.
“Don’t say it just because I said it,” he begs. “Don’t say it if you don’t mean it.”
Alex is shaking his head. He’s searching for words.
“No, no - you don’t understand, I-I do. I have. For a while now. But I was scared, I didn’t know where we stood. Or if it was too soon.”
“For...a while?”
“Yeah,” Alex says, hanging his head like a chastised child. “Don’t even know exactly when. I think maybe...I was a little in love with you right from the beginning. Which sounds crazy, I know.” He shrugs. “I’m a little crazy, I guess. And a lot to handle. But I know what I feel. And I love you.”
Arinn starts to speak but chokes on a sob. He throws his hand over his mouth. Tears stream from his eyes as he stares at Alex. Alex loves him. No one has ever loved him. He’s never loved anyone. It’s so much all at once, he can’t even get a word out. His sobs grow harder, everything he’s feeling boiling up and spilling over.
He doesn’t see Alex move closer, but he feels it when Alex’s arm wraps around him. He’s right here, warm and solid and real. He loves me…
Arinn finds himself pulled in by his gravity, leaning closer until he can bury his face in Alex’s shoulder. Alex tips his head to rest against Arinn’s.
“Please come home,” Alex whispers. “Please.”
Something between a hiccup and a laugh bubbles out of Arinn. “Of course I’m fucking coming home,” he says, the words half muffled into Alex’s shirt. He slips his arm around Alex’s uninjured side and holds on desperately. Alex kisses his head. Arinn doesn’t comment on the tears he feels drip into his hair from Alex’s cheek.
They stay like that until Arinn’s sobs cease and Alex’s breathing calms. By then it must be near one in the morning. A chill runs through Alex and his breath hitches as the movement jostles his injuries. The sound finally spurs Arinn into action.
“Come on,” he says, gently easing Alex’s face up. Alex looks like he could fall asleep where he’s standing. Arinn cups his cheek and kisses him deeply. “You’ve had a long day. Let me take care of you.”
Alex nods gratefully. He remains glued to his side, leaning heavily against Arinn as they slowly make the walk back.
----
Arinn’s hands shake as he prepares two cups of tea. In the quiet of the apartment there’s nothing stopping him from turning over the events of the night in his mind.
Tonight things came too close to ending, in more ways than one. If Alex hadn’t followed him he doesn’t know if they could have salvaged things the next day or not. He’s never done this. He doesn’t know when to keep fighting and when to give up. Tonight...tonight he gave up too quickly.
But what has him more shaken is the crash Alex was in. What he said was right: he was lucky. Arinn hates that he’s hurt at all, but it could have been so much worse. He could have been hospitalized, paralyzed, concussed, killed…
Arinn shudders and nearly drops the kettle as he goes to put it back. He stops and takes a few deep breaths to calm himself. He’s okay. He’s okay.
He sets the cups on a tray - a real tray, not the baking pan Alex once brought him breakfast on - and carries them to the bedroom, trying to appear more together than he feels.
Alex is resting on the bed with his eyes closed, breathing softly. When they got back he managed to remain sitting up long enough for Arinn to peel off his ruined clothes and get some boxers onto him, then he flopped back against the pillows with a groan while Arinn maneuvered his legs onto the bed and pulled a sheet up to his waist.
Arinn sets the tray on the bedside table and looks at him. He focuses first on the slow rise and fall of his chest. He’s okay. He’s okay. It’s impossible for his eyes not to wander to the deep bruising that mars Alex’s skin, from the left side of his face trailing down over his shoulder and arm, his chest and ribs and side, fading out at his hip.
It’s a fucking miracle that nothing is broken. Something must have padded his fall somewhat. Arinn tries not to think about it too hard, because if he does, he imagines Alex’s body being tossed like a ragdoll against unforgiving metal and he wants to scream.
“Hey,” he says. He sits at the edge of the bed and strokes Alex’s cheek until his eyes open. As soon as he sees Arinn he presses his cheek into his hand. Arinn smiles. If he didn’t know better, sometimes he’d think Alex was the one who survived on touch.
“Tea’s ready. I have medicine, too. Tomorrow I’ll go get you something stronger but this will have to do for now. And then we can go to sleep.”
Alex nods, blinking slowly. He turns his face and kisses Arinn’s palm. “Thank you…”
“Stop that. You don’t have to thank me.” He reluctantly takes his hand away from Alex’s face. “Can I prop you up a little?”
Alex nods again, reluctantly. He draws in a sharp breath when he tries to sit up a little so Arinn can put another pillow behind him. “Ah...fuck, it hurts…”
“I know...I know, babe…” Arinn gets the pillow back there as quick as he can and then eases Alex gently back against it. He kisses all over his face in praise. “Just think, if it was worse and you went to the hospital, some nurse could be doing this right now.”
Alex chuckles. “Guess you’re my nurse instead.”
“Hmm. I don’t think nurses are supposed to do this to their patients…” he dips in and kisses him. Alex’s eyes slip shut and he sighs as their lips part.
“No, you’re right,” he agrees. “That has to be against some kind of protocol.”
Hearing him joke around lightens the weight in Arinn’s chest. He kisses Alex one more time and then takes his teacup from the tray and holds it up for him. “Here…good arm only, remember.”
Alex takes the cup with his right hand and takes a sip. He hums with approval.
“This is good.”
“This is how tea is supposed to taste when you don’t over steep it,” Arinn teases gently.
“Guess you’re making the tea from now on.”
“Gladly.”
While Alex sips at his drink Arinn looks through the things he pulled from the medicine cabinet. There are a couple different varieties of pain pills and some sort of bruise relief gel he’s never heard of.
“That’s for work injuries,” Alex says when he notices Arinn holding the bottle. “Doesn’t happen often but sometimes I drop something on my foot or lose my footing and fall. A coworker recommended it. It does help. I’m not sure I’ll be able to move enough to put it on, though…”
“Who said anything about you putting it on?” Arinn turns the bottle over to read the back. “You aren’t moving an inch. I’m taking care of you.”
When Alex doesn’t answer he looks up. His breath catches when he sees the open fondness on Alex’s face.
“What?”
“Nothing...I’m just...really lucky.”
Arinn feels his cheeks heating and he can’t do a damn thing about it. “Well...I am your nurse, right?”
“Mmhmm. My hot nurse.” Alex winks suggestively. In his weariness the gesture is clumsy, but it still makes Arinn’s blush deepen.
“Good lord, you’re already loopy and you haven’t even taken the pain meds yet.” Arinn pops open the bottle and puts a pill in his hand.
Alex reaches for it, but Arinn decides it’s only fair to turn the tables a little. He shakes his head and holds the pill up. Alex’s eyes follow it as Arinn slips it onto his own tongue.
His brow pinches. “What are you - oh - “
Arinn leans forward and kisses Alex slowly. As he does, he slips the pill into his mouth. When he pulls back, Alex is the one blushing.
He fumbles a little with the tea cup and drinks down the last of it, swallowing the pill. He lets out a shaky breath when he’s finished. “Holy shit Ari, you can’t just do things like that. I’m too banged up to - to - “
“To bang?”
Arinn grins. Alex groans, but he’s smiling. “You’re worse than I am.”
“And yet, you love me.” The words are still as foreign on his tongue as they are in his mind.
Alex’s expression turns soft, almost shy. He takes Arinn’s hand and squeezes it. “Yeah. I do.”
Arinn could drown in that deep gaze. To stay afloat he busies himself with opening the bottle of gel and squeezing some out into his hand.
“Alright. Last bit and then you can go to bed.” His hands hover over Alex’s heated skin. He chews his lip. “I don’t want to hurt you…”
“It’ll only hurt at first,” Alex reassures him. “Then it’ll help.”
“Yeah. Yeah, you’re right. Okay…”
He starts small, rubbing a tiny bit of the gel onto Alex’s bruised cheek. That goes fine. He rubs it onto his arm and shoulder as carefully as he can and Alex barely flinches.
The bruising on his side is the worst of it, though, and Arinn dreads it. But that’s also where he needs this the most.
Arinn gets some more gel onto his palms. Slowly, gently, he smooths it over the tender skin, flinching himself every time Alex makes a pained sound. “Hang in there…” He makes sure he’s covered every inch before finally moving down to his hip. When he’s done he presses an apologetic kiss to Alex’s chest. “All done…”
Alex breathes a sigh of relief. “Thank you…” He closes his eyes as Arinn continues trailing comforting kisses up his neck and cheek, avoiding the bruised side.
When Alex’s breathing has evened out, Arinn gathers everything onto the tray and brings it to the kitchen to deal with tomorrow. He makes sure the door is locked, shuts off the lights, and then finally slips into bed beside Alex.
He lies there a while staring at Alex’s silhouette in the darkened room. Alex is so still, his breaths so slow, that Arinn assumes he must be sleeping. So it’s a surprise when his eyes open and he turns his head to meet Arinn’s gaze.
“You’re too far away,” he mumbles sleepily.
Arinn exhales. “I can’t exactly sprawl on top of you right now,” he whispers back.
“Then just…” he pats the small but notable empty space between them.
How can he not give in? At least it’s Alex’s uninjured side. He presses up close to him and holds his arm like a child holding a stuffed animal. “Better?”
“Better.”
After another stretch of silence, Arinn can’t help himself. “...Alex?”
“Yeah?”
“I can’t...can’t stop thinking about how it could have been so much worse…”
His tail curls over his hip, brushing against Alex’s hand where it lies on the bed. Alex cradles it and strokes it with his thumb.
“But it wasn’t. I’m right here, Ari.”
“But if you weren’t...if you hadn’t made it...you never would have known...” he nearly chokes on the whispered words.
“Known?”
“That I love you.”
“...neither would you,” Alex replies.
Arinn holds his arm a little tighter. He hadn’t thought of it the other way around, but Alex is right. In their fear and insecurity they both held in something the other desperately needed to hear.
“But now - “ Alex’s words are broken by a big yawn. “ - now we know…”
Arinn kisses his shoulder, overwhelmed with relief, gratitude, and love. “Yeah. Yeah, we do.” He kisses again and again, each one slower and sleepier than the last. “Get some rest,” he whispers against his skin. “I’ll be here in the morning.”
And the morning after that...and the next, and the next...
...and every morning after, for as long as you want.
-- The End --
#incubus character#demon x human#romance#emotional whump#angst#established relationship#car accident#injuries#bruises#arguments#reconciliation#saying i love you#kissing#touching#caretaking#love#angst with a happy ending#whump writing#my writing#my ocs#arinn#alex
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Strangers (Part 4)
Summary: Sam has returned into Dean’s life for some reason and the reader is there to try and help Dean through having Sam around again...
Masterlist
Pairing: Doctor!Dean x patient!reader
Word Count: 2,000ish
Warnings: language, mention of surgery/injury
A/N: I hope you enjoy!
____
“Hi,” said Sam, giving you a quick wave. He stared at Dean who was already on his feet. “I need a place to crash for the night. If that’s okay.”
“What happened to the apartment, you were sharing with that girl, Jessica.”
“She died a few years ago,” he said.
“You kill her?” asked Dean. You got up, still holding your box of swiss rolls and Sam frowned. “You’ve been out of touch for three years. It’s not an unreasonable question.”
“I didn’t kill her,” said Sam. “I saw...it was a serial arsonist. I saw who did it and he ran with a bad group. I’ve been in witness-”
“Witness protection? Are you serious? I’m the fucking easter bunny while we’re at it,” said Dean.
“De, I think he’s telling the truth,” you said, nodding towards him. “He’s obviously upset.”
“You’ve been in witness protection? This whole time?”
“Yes,” said Sam. “Things have been happening lately. A lot of things. These guys are no longer a problem so I can come home. Except for the fact I don’t have a home anymore and had to drop out of college.”
“I filed a missing persons report on you.”
“I know.”
“I hung up flyers, search parties, fundraisers.”
“I know.”
“I drove to the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night because I thought I got a tip about you.”
“That was me. I had to relocate after that.”
“I looked for you for so long. Even when mom and dad gave up, I didn’t. There was no foul play but the cops told us it was unlikely we’d ever find you. You probably walked out and didn’t want to be found. I was so angry at you. They told us you were dead cause someone hurt you or you walked away. Those are two very different things,” said Dean. You dropped the box on the couch and grabbed his hand, Dean pinching his nose with his other.
“I can leave if you want,” said Sam.
“Don’t you fucking dare,” said Dean. You rubbed his back and he walked over, giving his brother a hug.
“Finally got a girlfriend?” teased Sam as he returned it.
“You two are gonna get along great. You can swap stories,” laughed Dean. “Oh, I need a drink. Also how’d you get in my house?”
“My handler had a key made. They took it from your locker at the hospital,” he said.
“Lovely.”
“I know it sounds…” said Sam as he glanced at you.
“Crazy is kind of our thing,” you said. “I’m Y/N.”
“You look familiar,” he said.
“My ex boyfriend tried to kill me. With bleach. In my drink.”
“Oh yeah. He was fucking nuts,” said Sam.
“Yup. That’s been our fun for the evening,” you said. “He got out. He’s dead now. It’s fine. Better than fine cause I’m gonna eat a whole box of swiss rolls and not feel bad about that.”
“Yeah, I will get along with you just fine,” said Sam, giving Dean a look. “Not sure about you though. I wanted to-”
“S’okay,” he said. “I’m just...happy you don’t hate me after all.”
“I wanted to call you so many times. It was too dangerous though. I couldn’t put you in that position,” said Sam.
“I’m getting kind of used to that,” said Dean. Sam smiled and you walked over to them both.
“I crashed date night, didn’t I,” he said.
“Just a bit,” said Dean.
“Well I am really happy to meet Dean’s little brother,” you said, giving him a hug. “You don’t mind if Sam hangs out with us, right?”
“No, never. As long as you’re cool with it,” said Dean.
“Of course,” you said.
“I appreciate it but honestly I’m wrecked. I could use with a shower and a bed,” said Sam.
“The guest room is right down the hall,” said Dean, pointing the way. “You hungry?”
“Nah. I’ll keep out of your guys hair,” said Sam. “Thanks.”
“It’s no problem,” said Dean. Sam started to head for the hallway when Dean grabbed his arm. “I’m really happy you’re home, Sammy.”
“Me too.”
He smiled before he left, Dean taking a deep breath as he locked up the front door again.
“So you got a brother,” you said.
“Yeah. I probably should have brought him up at some point,” said Dean. You shrugged and rested your hands on his hips, Dean smiling softly. “I thought he was dead.”
“I’m glad he’s not,” you said. “I’m gonna have to back out on the being roommates thing though.”
“What?” he asked.
“Sam needs it way more than I do. I can stick around my parents until my apartment is ready. Seriously, it’s okay. He’s gonna need a lot of help. Trust me. He’s gonna want you,” you said.
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah. My parents aren’t that bad. Someday we can be roommates though?” you said.
“Okay. I’ll take a raincheck for now,” he smiled.
“Tonight’s not so bad,” you said. He nodded and you pulled him close to your body, Dean’s arms wrapping lazily around you. “You doing okay?”
“I’ve been the happiest I’ve ever been in my life, the most terrified I’ve ever been in my life and the most relieved I’ve ever been in my life tonight. I honestly don’t know where to begin,” said Dean.
“I got a box of chocolate with your name on it that might be a good place to start.”
“That sounds like a good plan,” he said. “You okay too?”
“My night’s ending on a good note. I’m good Dean. Let’s get back to our date. I was in the middle of cuddling you if I remember.”
One Week Later
“Howdy handsome,” you said, the elevator doors at the hospital opening to Dean standing there in his navy scrubs.
“Gorgeous,” he said, giving you a quick kiss as he stepped on. “You already have your follow up with Mace?”
“Yeah. I am progressing well I guess. We’re switching my immunosuppressant to try something that doesn’t make me as tired and won’t make me as susceptible to illness,” you said.
“That’s good. I know you’re on the strong stuff right now. Mace is pretty good about finding the right med combo by the second or third try,” he said. “Transplant meds are tricky.”
“I’ve learned. How’s your day going?” you asked. “Saving lives?”
“Easy going day. Took out some tonsils on a teenager, did an appendectomy on a toddler, did a bone reset on a kid that broke her leg. Nothing they won’t all recover from 100% percent.”
“That sounds good,” you said. “When do you get off?”
He snickered and you whacked his arm.
“Such a boy,” you said.
“I have one more surgery for the day but I’m heading home after that. Our parents are coming into town. They’ve been in Florida cause their vacation plans got screwed up with the pandemic last year so they rescheduled and of course it’s this week and there’s tropical storms so they can’t get a flight out and they finally are getting home today. It’s been a nightmare. I’m supposed to cook dinner so that’ll go wonderfully.”
“You’re a good cook!” you said as the doors opened and you walked with him down the hall. “You don’t give yourself enough credit. They excited to see Sam?”
“Yeah. They feel bad about...they thought he was dead. Like it hasn’t been long enough to legally declare him that way but they were going to. I’ve always had a somewhat tense relationship with my dad. We fought a lot about Sam after he disappeared.”
“I think no matter what happened before, dinner’s gonna go good for you guys tonight,” you said.
“You’re coming right?” he asked.
“You want me to?”
“Yeah. I...you make me feel...safe,” he said as he stopped walking. You smiled and grabbed his hand, lacing your fingers together. “You don’t have-”
“I’d love to. I really like Sam and I want to be there for you. I like that I make you feel safe, makes me feel good,” you said. He rubbed the back of his neck but you caught the smile on his face. You gave him another kiss, a whistle coming from further down the hall.
“Get a room, Winchester,” said a guy as he walked by with a laugh.
“Better be a soundproof room,” you said, the guy stopping in his tracks.
“Okay, I approve of this one,” the guy chuckled. Dean rolled his eyes but he was biting down a laugh.
“Y/N, this is RN. Lafetite or Benny as well call him. He’s Donna’s boyfriend,” said Dean.
“Oh yeah, she was great,” you said. “She removed my appendix.”
“That woman knows her way around a blade,” said Benny. “You had the digestive transplant done a while ago, right?”
“Yeah,” you said, Dean making a face beside you.
“Badass,” said Benny. “I worked with Mace some on you.”
“You’re a surgeon too?” you asked.
“No, no. I’m a surgical nurse,” he said.
“They’re pretty important,” said Dean. “The really good ones could perform minor surgeries themselves like Ben. I keep trying to convince Benny here to go to med school and join the rest of us.”
“Oh you know you’d miss me too much, Deano. You me and Novak are the dream team of pediatrics,” he said.
“Sure we are,” said Dean with a laugh. “Y/N and I were having a little get together on Sunday, watch a little football, food. Round up the usual suspects?”
“I can get the crew together. I’ll bring my beer dip and some of those pretzels. Very easy on the digestive system,” said Benny to you.
“That’s considerate,” you said. “It’s okay. I’m alright with most stuff. I just got to watch the grease a bit.”
“These are really not greasy at all. I’ll give you the recipe sometime,” said Benny as his phone went off. “I think we’re late for pre-op.”
“When are we not?” said Dean. “I’ll see you tonight, sweetheart.”
“See you later, Dean.”
“I’m so sorry I’m late,” said Dean that night as he rushed in the house. You and Sam were working the kitchen, Dean checking the clock. “They’re gonna be here in five minutes.”
“Go wash up. Sam and I can cook a few pieces of chicken and make mashed potatoes,” you said. You were nearly finished anyways, the chicken baking away in the oven. Dean made a thud down the hall but shouted back that he was fine before you heard the bathroom door shut. “He always been a worrier?”
“Pretty much,” said Sam as he got out the plates. “He seems different. Good different. More easy going.”
“It’s all I’ve ever known from him so I don’t have much to go off of,” you said.
“You might have something to do with it,” he said. He smiled and finished up with setting the table. “You’ve never met our parents Dean said.”
“No. We’ve only been together a few months,” you said.
“This’ll be an interesting evening then,” said Sam as the doorbell rang. He suddenly looked nervous and you rubbed a hand up and down his back.
“It’ll be okay,” you said. “Trust me.”
“I see why he likes you,” said Sam. “Here goes nothing.”
______
A/N: Read Part 5 here!
#dean winchester#supernatural#spn#dean x reader#spn reader insert#supernatural reader insert#au#doctor!dean#spn fanfic#supernatural fanfiction#dean winchester x reader
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