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sweetwhispersofchaos · 4 months

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Mornings of Gold

I'm so far behind its not even funny, but I have FINALLY finished my second entry for @roosterforme Top Gun Rocktober event. I used my all time favorite song to create this completely self indulgent romance piece and I have zero apologies for it. ;) Pairing: Phoenix and Bob Words: 5433 Warnings: fluff, mild smut (no grave detail), kissing, did I mention fluff? *I do not own the Top Gun characters.*

Lightening illuminated the windows while rain tap danced across the glass. A deafening crack of thunder shook the entirety of Bob’s apartment, rattling some of his frames on the wall and causing both he and Phoenix to jump in their seats. They were deep into their third round of Go-Fish and a lunch wager was riding on the winner of this last bout. It was serious and they both were concentrating so hard on their cards that the storm jolted them out of their haze.

“I hope the power holds.” Bob said while studying the dwindling stack of cards in his hand.

“And if it doesn’t, we light some candles and keep going.”

“Phee, I don’t have any candles.”

“Floyd. I thought you were a Boy Scout?”

“I didn’t say I was a good one.” he whispered with a sheepish shrug.

“Thank goodness for flashlights.”

“I don’t have those either.”

Phoenix let out a huff “Guess I should plug my phone in, just in case huh?” she said exasperatedly as she stood to grab her charger from her backpack.

Phoenix loved being back in Lemoore with Bob, despite returning to their original squadrons. She missed flying with Bob, but their weekly meet ups for movies and card games helped. After the uranium mission they seemed to gravitate to one another, no one else able to understand the weight of what they went through together, especially since it was top secret, and they weren’t allowed to speak of it. Between the bird strike and the mission, both of them had changed and they were thankful they had each other to lean on. Bob had suffered nightmares for a while and Phoenix had trouble enjoying things outside of work in the “real world” like she used to. Their friendship carried them through those foggy first few months post mission.

Things had started to feel warm and fuzzy to Natasha about three months after their return to Lemoore. She was spending a lot of time with Bob, and they had become relaxed with each other. Movie nights now consisted of Bob wrapping his arm around her while she leaned into his side or Phoenix running her hands through his hair when he laid his head in her lap on the couch. Card games now include occasional rubs of one foot on the others under the table. Trips into town might find them holding hands and the one Saturday they drove out to the coast Bob held her hand on the gear shift of his truck the whole way. Neither of them spoke of the closeness they were experiencing; it was comfortable and comforting and neither seemed to find issue with it or the need to discuss.

Phoenix returned to the small dinning nook where Bobs card table and folding chairs were set up. He was quite a minimalist, but she didn’t mind, up until now anyways. She plugged the phone in then flopped on to her backwards chair, straddling it in her plaid pajama pants and eyed Bob mischievously. Another rumble of thunder rattled the walls, and her grin grew in feigned innocence.

Bob looked up at her over his glasses with a furrowed brow, then back to his cards.

“Got any eights?”

“Go fish”

He grunted and picked up a card from the pile between them. “Phee, how is it possible you are so good at everything right down to child level card games?”

She giggled at her bespeckled best friend.

“What can I say? It’s a gift.” She winked at Bob, and he shook his head with a boyish grin.

“I’m pretty sure I’m a few cards away from owing you sushi.”

“I think you might be right.”

And he was. Moments later Phoenix won and jumped out of her chair, fist pumping the air victoriously. Bob just smiled at her then cleaned up the pile of cards.

“Movie time! What do you want to watch?” she asked, flitting into the living room, and flopping down onto the couch.

Bob called from the kitchen where he was cleaning up their snack mess from the table.

“I chose last week. It’s your turn.”

“Ok let me see what I can find.”

Bob joined her on the couch, pulling her legs into his lap as he sat next to her.

“My feet probably stink, Bob.”

“I don’t smell anything, so you’re good.”

She smirked and went back to scrolling through the movies on the streaming service app on Bobs tv.

Suddenly Phoenix sat up quickly, her legs flying out of his lap.

“OH!” she shouted, causing Bob to startle. “This is my favorite movie ever!”

“I thought Die Hard was your favorite?” He asked.

“That’s my favorite Christmas movie.”

“Phee. Die Hard is not a Christmas movie.”

“I’m not having this argument with you again for the hundredth time, Robert.” she said as she gently popped his chest with the back of her hand.

Bob put his hands up in defense then looked up at the screen to see a picture of a heavily made-up David Bowie surrounded by furry characters.

“Labyrinth? What’s it about?”

She whipped around on the couch to look at him with complete disbelief on her face.

“You’re joking? You’ve never heard of Labyrinth!? I know you’re a baby and all but it’s only one of the most amazing cult classics of the 1980’s. David Bowie, Jennifer Connelly, and a host of Jim Henson puppets.”

He smiled at her enthusiasm. “I am not that young and no, I haven’t. I’m gonna to be honest Phee, this surprises me.”

“What? Why?” she asked frowning.

“Your idea of a top-notch movie usually involves heavy gunfire and a string of cuss words throughout. Not Muppets.”

Phoenix rolled her eyes then pressed play. She shifted her legs around so she could lean into his side and Bob instinctively wrapped his arm around her shoulders as they settled in to watch the fantasy movie.

“Yeah well, this one is special from my childhood and my favorite song on the planet is in it.”

“Oh yeah?” he asked.

“Yeah. I’ll tell you which one when it pops up.”

The opening refrains of Bowie began to trickle through the surround sound as they relaxed together on the couch. Somewhere along the way Bob began to rub small circles on Nat’s bare arm and her head came to rest on his shoulder.

Later in the movie, the main character of Sarah bit into a laced peach and Natasha whispered up to Bob.

“This is it. The dream sequence has my favorite song.”

The light melody of As the World Falls Down by David Bowie began to serenade the masked dancers on screen and Natashas eyes lit up. She had always loved this part as a child. The stunning attire, the soft lullaby of the love song. As she grew up, she began to realize the whole movie was a euphemism for coming of age and the song gained all new meaning for her. The lyrics started to take the shape of her journey out into the real world. College, commissioning, flight school, and traveling the globe. She missed her picturesque childhood, but it was time to grow up, whether she wanted to or not. The only thing she hadn’t found along the way was the magical love story she thought she would have when she watched the costumed actors waltz around the dreamscape as a young girl. What she considered the last card in the grown-up deck. She had relationships over the years, but nothing that swept her off her feet the way she thought would happen. No one had promised her mornings of gold or Valentine evenings like the song said, but she was hopeful that might change, sooner or later.

Once Sarah shattered the walls of the fancy ballroom, ending the pretty scene, Bob reached over to grab the remote from the coffee table and paused the movie. Phoenix didn’t move other than to pick up her head and look at him questioningly.

“Phee. The movie is weird. But that song is beautiful. I can see why you like it. It’s sort of sad too.”

She gave him a gentle smile. “It really is. And this scene has always been magical but also sad for me. Romantic and whimsical. Sarah’s caught between being a child and a woman and all the things she thinks she wants but also the things she doesn’t realize yet she will miss about being a kid. I relate to the song and the themes of the movie.”

“You do?” He questioned.

“Sure. I had a normal, happy childhood, but like most kids, I couldn’t wait to grow up. I wanted the adventure, the freedom, the uh” she hesitated, lowering her eyes to his chest, “um, love, found only in the grown-up world. Now though, I wish I could go back sometimes. I love my life, but I miss the, um, innocence of being a kid. The tough stuff like top secret scary missions didn’t exist yet.” She nudged him with a knowing look, and he grinned.

“Good at kid’s card games and carrying philosophical conversation about children’s movies to boot. You’re not as scary as people think you are.” He mused.

She snickered and lightly elbowed him in the ribs. “Yes I am.”

Bob grunted on impact, then blew out a heavy breath. “Fine. You’re not as scary as I thought you were. You’re just a big softy.” And he winked at her.

Another bang of thunder rolled through the skies above and they both jumped.

“We better finish this before the power goes out.” She said and he mumbled his agreement, pressing play on the remote again.

The storm began to clear out as the movie came to an end. Phoenix stood and stretched her arms over head while Bob turned the TV off.

“Final verdict?” She asked when he stood up next to her.

“I still say weird, but Bowie’s music is brilliant and it’s definitely a unique way of portraying the transition from child to getting older. 4 out of 5 stars.”

She smiled at him adoringly before patting his cheek and heading for the entry way.

“I’m glad you liked it. I think our friendship would be over if you hadn’t.” she said with a laugh as she scooped up her backpack from the floor and started rummaging for her keys.

“Nat?” she turned to face Bob while shimmying into her sneakers.

He seemed nervous, shoving his hands into the pockets of his shorts. “Were you planning to go to Captain Holloways wedding next weekend?”

That wasn’t what she was expecting. They both received invitations, but they hadn’t really talked about it.

“I don’t know, you?”

“Well. I was thinking.” He ran his right hand through his hair, stalling. “That is. Do you want to go with me?” He rocked back and forth from his toes to his heels like a rocking horse, his shoulders all the way to his ears as he waited for her to respond.

“Oh! Why Robert Floyd, are you asking me to be your date?” She crossed her arms with a questioning smirk on her face.

His cheeks turned a light shade of pink. “Well, ah, Yeah, I guess I am. But” he put both hands up defensively and his words rushed out. “I get it if you don’t want to go. Or go with me. We can just meet up there if you want. Or do something else? Shoot. I bet you already have a date. Or I don’t have to go at all if you want to go with someone else or go alone. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have been presumptuous. You know what? Let’s just forget I asked.” And he let out a nervous chuckle.

Phoenix had not changed body or face position through his little freak out. She found him absolutely adorable when he was nervous. Inside a plane he was steady as the driving rain outside, but on the ground, he was shy, and it was endearing.

“Bob” she said, then she took the three steps across the entry way to stand in front of him. Phoenix placed her hands on his biceps, rose up on her tippy toes, and lightly pecked him on the cheek. “I’d love to be your date for the wedding. Pick me up at 6?” Then she gave him a brilliant smile.

Relief washed over his face. This sweet man was really starting to create warm feelings in her that she wasn’t expecting but didn’t hate.

“Oh, ok. Great. I’ll pick you up at 6 then. You be careful out there going home, ok?” She removed her hands from his arms then slid them around his midsection to hug him. He wrapped his long lanky arms around her and gave her a light squeeze over her backpack.

“I will. See you tomorrow.” And with one last sweet smile she grabbed her umbrella from the porch, popped it open, and darted out into the muggy drizzle, an extra bounce to her steps as she made a beeline for her car.

Several days later, after a busy week at work, Phoenix was staring at her reflection in the full-length mirror in her bedroom. It had been a long time since she had attended a wedding, or any sort of formal event, that wasn’t for the military and didn’t involve her dress uniform. The ceremony was going to be outside overlooking a vineyard, the reception in an open-air barn, and it was quite warm for May in southern California. Many of her coworkers would be in attendance, including her very special date, so she knew she was never going to hear the end of it when they caught sight of her in something other than a flight suit for once.

She spent the afternoon before at a local department store trying on dresses. She honestly didn’t even own an appropriate dress for an evening summer wedding. The few dresses she owned were tiny, black, and were rarely donned. She must have tried on at least 25 dresses, looking for the right one. If she was honest with herself, she was a little nervous. Yes, she and Bob had been friends for a while now, but this felt different. It was different. The little butterflies in her stomach told her things were changing and that thought both scared her and thrilled her. He was so different from anyone she had ever been with before. His strength wasn’t in his brawn or bravado, it was in his quiet determination, unyielding devotion, and his rarely shared dry wit. He was handsome in an old Hollywood sort of way, and he never tried to make her feel small, obviously not scared of a female leader. She could admit that their friendship was based, at first, on trauma bonding but had since evolved into something she trusted. She just hoped he felt the same way. He did ask her out after all, so surely, he felt the shift in their relationship too.

The dress she settled on was a pale pink satin draped dress with spaghetti straps. She purchased a simple shawl in an even softer pink shade and nude kitten heels to go with it. Her hair was always up in the regulation bun so tonight she put a little curl in it and left it down, her grandmother’s pearl earrings completing the ensemble. Natasha ran her hands over the smooth fabric as she studied herself in the mirror. She felt one hundred percent confident until it came to her feminine side. She loved being a woman and pretty things, but she was more prepared to fly an F/A-18 in drab green flight suits and kick back for beers with the guys after work than step out for a night on the town in a slinky pink dress. Just as she was preparing to talk herself out of going, she heard a knock at her front door.

Shit. Bobs here. Too late now.

Giving herself one more glance in the mirror, she hesitantly tucked a small strand of hair behind her ear, placed her phone in her small clutch, and headed for the door. With one last deep breath, she opened the door and watched the pool-blue eyes on the other side grow exponentially in a matter of seconds.

Phoenix watched Bob swallow hard and begin to stammer but bless the man no actual words came out at first. She managed a small smile at him and his large grin in return made her heart flutter.

He cleared his throat then tried again. “Wow, uh Phee, you look, um, just wow.” His cheeks were bright red.

Bob looked incredibly attractive in a tailored three-piece grey suit with a white shirt and a striped tie in darker shades of blue. Phoenix felt a little flustered as well, not just from Bobs reaction but her own attraction to the handsome WSO in front of her. She stepped out of the apartment, locking the door behind her, then turned back to Bob’s still wide eyes. With a small giggle she pecked his cheek.

“You’re pretty wow yourself. Ready to go?”

Bob shook his head, seeming to clear fog from his mind, letting out a small chuckle as he offered his elbow for Phoenix to take. “Yes mam.” And they took off for the evening.

The ceremony was nothing short of spectacular. The sunset showed gorgeous hues of purple and orange as the couple said their vows and exchanged rings. Somewhere in the middle of the captains’ vows while he spoke of feeling whole and complete by his soon to be wife, Bobs hand slid over and picked up Phoenix hand, wrapping his fingers between hers and moving it until both of their hands came to rest on his leg, his eyes remaining transfixed on the alter ahead. Phoenix tensed briefly, her eyes shifting sideways then quickly to their joined hands and finally back to the service. Was she sweating? Between the heavy emotions of the wedding, the story book surroundings, and Bobs large, calloused hand gripping hers, Phoenix skin was prickling warm, and her heart fluttered in her chest.

Once the groom kissed his bride and the procession was completed, the guests made their way to the outdoor barn for the cocktail hour and reception. Bobs hand slipped to Phoenix lower back as he gently guided her along the brick path toward the glowing string lights twinkling above the tables of the party area. Soft music played from the DJ stand as they gathered drinks from the bar and made their way to the seats at a round table labeled with their names on dainty gold embossed cards. Before she could say or do anything, Bob pulled her chair out for her with a gentle grin. Phoenix returned the smile and thanked him as she took her seat amongst some fellow aviators from various squadrons at Lemoore and their dates.

Once seated, Bob leaned over and whispered low in her ear “Thank you for coming with me. You’re so beautiful Phee. I’m honored to have the prettiest date here.”

Phoenix turned her head slightly, her eyes meeting his glowing blue orbs, and the butterflies in her tummy began to dance all at once. She could feel warmth creeping up her cheeks. He was too sweet for words, and she knew she was falling hard.

“Thank you for asking me. I’m having a wonderful time. And you’re not too bad yourself.” She said as she reached up to straighten his tie.

He smiled at her, a full, toothy smile that made the corners of his eyes crinkle and she returned the smile wholeheartedly.

All through dinner and the initial formalities such as a toast and first dance, Bob continued to land gentle touches to Phoenix, sending chills along her body even through the warmth of the Southern California evening. At one point he wrapped his arm around the back of her chair and began rubbing tiny circles on her bare arm while he carried an idle conversation about something work related with the pilot sitting next to him. They didn’t speak out loud to each other much, choosing to just relax and enjoy the joyous atmosphere around them as their tablemates came and went. An hour or so into the event, the party really kicked up when the dance floor opened, and the DJ began turning various tunes from slow country to club beats.

Bob and Phoenix decided to find the Bride and Groom to give them their congratulations then mingle amongst their friends and colleagues. Phoenix ended up surrounded by several ladies she knew, some from work and some the spouses or girlfriends of other aviators. The gaggle began praising her looks, asking questions about her dress and shoes. Phoenix was so wrapped up in the conversation, trying not to appear as uncomfortable as she felt, that she didn’t notice her date slip away.

A soft melody began to float through the air, and she recognized the early refrain immediately. It was her song. The one she loved so much from her favorite movie. Phoenix excused herself quickly, turning to search for the person she knew had to be responsible. Standing a few feet away, next to the dance floor, was Bob, his outstretched hand beckoning her to join him. She closed the distance between them and slid her hand into his, allowing him to lead her to the middle of the dance floor.

He spun her slowly under their joined hands then wrapped his empty arm around her waist, pulling her in close to his chest, their joined hands coming to rest over his heart. The movements took her breath away. The whole thing was straight out of her childhood dreams. They swayed to the melody under the twinkling lights and her heart all but burst. Bob pulled her so close that her head came to rest sideways on his chest and she heard his dulcet tones begin to sing the song quietly into her head.

I’ll paint you mornings of gold

I’ll spin you Valentine evenings

Though we’re strangers until now

We’re choosing the path

Between the stars

I’ll leave my love

Between the stars

She looked up at him with surprise. “You learned the words!?”

His soft smile matched the gentle look in his eyes. “I listened to it on repeat for the last three days.”

She didn’t know what to say, this was something straight out of a fairytale. Out of her dreams. He requested her song. He made her imagination come to life. Phoenix knew nothing in her life could ever overwhelm her emotions like this beautiful moment with her Bob. As she began to fight the tears pooling in her eyes, she laid her head back on his chest and continued to sway as the song came to an end. Even after the tune changed to another slow song, they just stood still, holding each other. Phoenix could feel Bobs heart pounding through his chest, and she knew her own heart matched his rushing rhythm.

She barely heard his whisper above the sounds of the party around her. “Wanna get out of here?”

Not trusting her voice as she still fought back tears, she shook her head in affirmative. His hand still holding hers moved to raise her chin and their eyes met, his looking slightly wet like hers. “Your place?” he asked nervously, his cerulean eyes searching hers.

Phoenix released a small gasp, understanding the implications of his question, then nodded her head yes as she let out a breathy “yes.”

The ride back to her small two-bedroom bungalow was quiet, Bobs old truck rumbling down the road with tender tunes on the radio and his hand holding hers on the gear shift. They didn’t look at each other, nervous tension instead filling the cab. He pulled into her driveway and hurried out of the truck, practically sprinting around to the passenger side to open her door. He offered his hand, and she took it, not ever saying a word as they walked hand in hand up to the small wooden porch. She began to open her small clutch to pull out her keys but his large hand reached up and brushed the back of her hand, stopping her movements.

“Phee” he whispered, and she looked up at him, watching his eyes cloud over. Bobs hands worked their way across the slippery fabric covering her hips and he pulled her in impossibly close. Then their lips met, slowly. Stars exploded behind her closed eyes, blinding her in white light that felt warm and inviting. His lips were smooth and moved hesitantly at first. With her ears ringing she pushed into his lips slightly and he understood her nudge, deepening the kiss assuredly. Phoenix wrapped her arms under his and around his waist as she opened her mouth slightly, allowing him entrance. So many words unspoken poured into their kiss, and the world fell down. Her walls slipped away and she realized all at once that this was the love she had been hoping for.

All at once she broke the kiss, her eyes watching his flutter open confused. She was a little breathless but she gave him a soft smile.

“Stay with me?” she asked, feeling extremely shy and vulnerable.

The almost startled expression his face shown caused her to giggle, but he managed to shake his head yes before she opened the door and led him into her dark house by his hand. Bob barely got the door closed behind him as she walked him through the house to her tiny back bedroom. Once they reached the door, she dropped his hand to enter the room and turn on the bedside lamp. He remained in the doorway, and she looked over her shoulder with a smile at him, dropping her shawl and clutch on the bedside table before she began to remove her earrings. It was like an intimate dance. His eyes were on her as she removed small articles, a show she was putting on just for him. A way of saying thank you for the special night and that she wanted this with him. She hoped she wasn’t coming on too strong to scare him away. If she really admitted the truth to herself, she had wanted Bob in this way for a long time.

Just as she was about to tell him they could just watch a movie if he wanted, she watched him strode into the room, coming to stand behind her. She was just placing the second earring on the bedside table as she felt his hands slide around her waist from behind. Her hands came to rest on his and then her body shuddered when his lips met the bare skin of her shoulder.

“Phee.” He barely said above a whisper. Then he kissed slightly higher, sending a chill straight down her spine when his warm lips met the sensitive skin where her shoulder met her neck. “Look at me.”

She turned in his arms until they were eye to eye, her head craned back to look up at him. Bobs large hand ghosted across her cheek and into her hair, tucking a few strands behind her ear. Then that hand cupped the side of her neck, and he pulled her in for another languid kiss. Her skin felt on fire, everywhere. Phoenix had never felt this way before and she couldn’t believe what was happening, but in the best way possible. She broke the kiss with a small pop of their lips and once his eyes were open and on her she all but blurted out “I love you, Bob.”

Embarrassment at her hasty declaration was coloring her cheeks and he let out a chuckle that made her squirm with further mortification. But if Bob noticed, he didn’t say anything. He simply guided his other hand to the other side of her neck and smiled the most brilliant smile before returning her words. “I love you Natasha Trace.”

She could feel the tears welling in her eyes again as she found her words again. She felt bold as she stood up straighter and asked, “Stay with me?”

He kissed the tip of her nose then said through a smile “As long as you’ll have me.”

The next few moments were a blur of touching and kissing. Her hands worked the buttons of his vest and undoing his tie while his slid the zipper of her dress down her back. Once the tie and vest were off, she guided the straps of her dress down her arms, letting it drop to the floor. There she stood in nothing but her white strapless bra, a thin white thong, and her heels. She felt exposed and unsure of what to do as his eyes looked down her body then back up, taking her in.

“God Phee, you’re stunning. I’m, uh, I’m.” He hesitated as his eyes met her again. “I’m honored that you trust me like this.”

There was the confidence she loved hidden under the shyness. His appreciation of her was nothing she had ever experienced before, and she suddenly didn’t feel so uncertain anymore. She knew she wanted to share herself with him and in turn, take him in. Her damp eyes remained on his as her hands swiftly worked the buttons of his dress shirt open, practically ripping it off of him. Then her eyes grew wide.

“Robert Floyd, you’ve been keeping a secret.” She rasped with a mischievous look on her face. He began to blush under her scrutiny, and she giggled. Phoenix ran her manicured fingernails down his chiseled abs as she reached for his pant button.

After that, all clothes removed and his glasses discarded by her pearl earrings, they slid slowly onto her bed, a tangling of hands and kisses full of love and admiration. He worshipped her skin with his lips and touches, leaving no spot untouched. Phoenix felt like she was going to melt away, the heat of her body searing with each feather light kiss he left. He worked his way down her body, then back up, her chest now rising and falling quickly with pants of lust. She had never needed someone so much in her life as she needed Robert Floyd at that very moment. While he nibbled on the juncture of her shoulder and neck, she turned her head toward his and whispered into his ear.

“Love me. Please? Make love to me?” she asked with assurance.

Bobs eyes met hers, looking a little surprised at first, then they relaxed, a dazed grin crossing his lips. He lowered his head to kiss her as he moved himself between her legs.

It was slow and burning and passionate and beyond any of her wildest dreams. Their bodies rocked in tandem as he whispered his love onto her lips. He filled her body and spirit with everything they had been feeling for months and she couldn’t pull him close enough to her. They became one. It overwhelmed her, made her feel desperate on a whole new level she didn’t know she could feel.

The feelings overtook her, and she began to whimper as she met the most beautiful sensation she had ever felt before. Hot and freeing. She found what she had been missing. Her new favorite song became the pants of her name on his lips over and over again his own finality was reached.

A mess of hot breath, rapidly rising and falling chests, and wet eyes lay stilling in the hazy lamp light. A single tear escaped her eye, and he caught it with his finger as it ran down her cheek. Bob rolled them over and tucked her small frame into his side as their breath slowed. She felt him gently kiss the top of her head.

“Thank you.” He said through ragged breaths.

She sat up on her elbow and looked at him, trying to convey with her face all the love she felt in that moment.

“No. Thank you. For making my fairytale come true.” They smiled at each other before she moved back to his side, and she realized Bob was the morning of gold she had been waiting for. Her world was no longer falling down, and she drifted off to sleep feeling he had placed the moon within her heart. She wanted to follow a path between the stars with him forever.

#top gun maverick #top gun rocktober #robert bob floyd #natasha phoenix trace #bob floyd #natasha trace #top gun fanfiction #top gun #phoenix x bob #bob x phoenix

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fortheloveofwonderland · 3 years

Text

Under Silken Skies [Spencer Reid x fem! Reader]

A/N - just an angsty little oneshot I needed to get out of my head. Fufills my Break Up Square on my CM Bingo Card for @cmbingo . My permanent Tag List is open. Find my CM Bingo Masterlist Here. Find my full masterlist here.

My request are also Open for prompts/reqs/headcannons/aesthetics or just to say hi.

CW - major character death and lots of angst. Very vague mentions of smut and virgin! Spencer, vague mentions of Maeve and what happens to Spencer in the S15 finale (if it had ended differently). This does not have a happy ending.

WC: 4K

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He was eleven and you were thirteen. You didn’t know his name, only he was smart and awkward and got teased because of those things.

You found him tied to a flagpole as you’d left detention one night on your way across the soccer field. He was naked aside from his underwear and blindfolded.

He cried as you untied him, his skin like ice. You insisted you were there to help, whether he believed you or not you weren’t sure.

You stripped off your oversized jumper and slipped it over his head, helping him guide his arms in the holes. He didn’t thank you. He didn’t ask why. He just wrapped himself in the warmth.

He told you his name was Spencer. Spencer Reid and he’d been tricked by a girl and stripped of his clothes and tied to the flagpole.

He’d been there hours before you found him.

You sat together on the dewy grass, no more than a handful of words passed between you. He asked why you’d helped, why you’d stayed but you’d simply shrugged.

Maybe you’d felt bad for him or maybe you’d felt drawn to him. You knew all about school bullies.

He seemed so small and unsure of himself, as though the mere act of sitting with you was cause for panic.

He didn’t make eye contact. You saw him glance in your direction a few times when you weren’t looking.

He was so fragile you didn’t understand how anyone could do that to such an innocent creature. He just wanted to fit in, isn’t that all we really wanted?

He couldn’t help being smart.

There was a sadness about him that went further than what the bullies had done today. You could tell it was the kind of air that followed him around, a permanent dark cloud.

It hurt you to know someone so young could carry so much pain. It didn’t seem fair that at his tender age he already seemed defeated by the world that surely had so much more to throw at him.

What if he wasn’t strong enough to cope with the terrors of the world? You hoped maybe these formative years would make him stronger against what was to come. Maybe it was helping to build up those walls early, making him stronger for the horrors he would no doubt have to face later in life.

You weren’t sure, but one thing you were sure of was Spencer Reid had sad, sad eyes. You could tell he needed a friend and maybe you could be it. Maybe you could protect him.

So for now the two of you sat side by side on the soccer field, under the moonlit silken sky.

***

He was twelve and you fourteen and he was finally getting out of the hell hole that was high school.

It was his graduation day and his gown drowned his small frame and his cap was too big for his head and kept falling to the side.

You straightened it for him again and gave him a soft smile.

He was going to CalTech in the fall and you were so proud of him, but gosh were you going to miss him.

It had only been little over a year since the night on the soccer field but the two of you had become friends. He helped you with your homework and you kept the bullies away from him.

You’d become his protector, he looked up to you and although he would never tell anyone this, he had a crush on you. A big one.

He was excited about CalTech but he was sad to leave you.

There were a lot of mixed emotions in the air. You’d stay in touch and he’d come back and visit but it wouldn’t be the same.

Who was going to keep him safe at college? Who was going to keep an eye on him? What happened if the bullies at CalTech were even worse and you were hundreds of miles away not being able to do anything about it?

He’d told you not to worry about him, that he’d be fine but it was hard not to. He was still so tiny and fragile, like a baby bird and if truth be told you were scared for him.

“I’m proud of you Crash.” You straightened his tie.

He rolled his eyes under his thick glasses. One time you’d heard his mom call him that and you hadn’t stopped calling him it since.

“Thanks Y/N.” He smiled but it was a sad smile.

You placed your hands gently on his shoulders, knowing what he was thinking. You’d gotten really good at reading his mind.

“Me too.” You whispered. You leant close and placed a soft kiss on his cheek.

His face turned crimson and he chewed his lip. His cheek felt like it was on fire where your lips had touched him.

“Come on Crash, it’s time.” You slid your hand in his and started leading him towards the stage he was going to walk over and accept his diploma.

Within a matter of weeks he would be gone and you’d be alone again just as you had been before you’d met him.

So for now the two of you walked hand in hard across towards the stage, under the sun soaked silken sky.

***

Spencer was sixteen and you were eighteen and you’d just witnessed his second graduation; this time from CalTech.

The gown fit him a lot better this time than it had at his high school graduation. Over the last year or so he had sprung up in height, now towering over you. He had grown up a lot over the last few years. He was slowly becoming a man.

“Look at you.” You nudged him in the arm. “So grown up.”

“Shut up.” He batted you away with a shy smile. “I wouldn’t have asked you to come here if I knew all you were going to do was embarrass me.”

“Sorry Crash.” you smirked. “I am so, so proud of you kid.”

You gently tucked a strand of his hair behind his ear. His cheeks burned in embarrassment.

He was coming back to Vegas and you would have been thrilled if it wasn’t for the fact in a few months you were going off to college yourself.

It seemed unfair life had brought you together only to tear you apart over and over again. There seemed like there was never a right time for the two of you.

“You ready?” you asked him softly, trying not to focus on the thought of being torn away from him again.

“Almost.” he nodded, taking a few deep breaths.

You assumed he was trying to calm his nerves before taking to the stage for his graduation ceremony but it wasn’t that.

His hands were shaking when he came close to you and placed them on your hips.

“What are you doing?” you tilted your head at him in confusion.

Before Spencer could change his mind about his next move he closed his eyes and moved in close to you. His lips were so soft as they pressed against yours, barely ghosting your lips. You could have been convinced it hadn’t even happened.

He chewed his lip bashfully when he pulled back, looking at the floor.

“Sorry.” he whispered. “I uhm...lets go.”

He walked past you, leaving you staring in his wake.

Had that really just happened?

You brushed your fingers against your lips in disbelief. But your lips were tingling, it had definitely happened.

Eventually you followed him in confusion but there was no time to ask him about it. Hopefully you’d get a chance to later.

So for now you walked behind him, watching him adjust his cap, under the Californian silken sky.

***

Spencer was now eighteen and you were twenty, in your final year at Georgetown.

Spencer now had a doctorate in mathematics and was working towards one in chemistry. He kept talking about doing another doctorate in engineering when he was through.

He had grown even more so and was really starting to grow into his looks. He’d always been cute, but recently when you looked at him you saw a handsome man looking back at you.

Hanging out in your dorm that night it was hard to say how it started. One minute you’d been engrossed in a movie, your head on Spencer’s shoulder and the next you lips were pressed together, his tongue exploring your mouth.

He hadn’t kissed you again since his CalTech graduation and you didn’t know where this had come from now. But you did know you’d been thinking more inappropriate thoughts about your friend as of late and they were seemingly materialising in front of your eyes.

Spencer was a virgin, you were not. In that moment you wished he could have been your first time.

It was slow and gentle and Spencer was a bag of nerves the whole time. He groped at your body with seemingly no purpose other than to feel every part of you.

He didn’t last long, the feeling of being inside of you was too intense, too sensational. But it was nice. It felt right. It felt like home.

Afterwards he held you in his arms in your small single bed too nervous to look you in the eye. You stroked circles on his bare chest feeling the most content you’d felt in a long time.

You both stared up at the ceiling which you’d painted midnight blue and was peppered with glow in the dark stars.

“Spence?” You whispered softly.

“Yes Y/N?”

“You know I love you, don’t you?”

He exhaled and pulled you into him closer.

“I know.” He kissed the top of your head. “And I love you.”

You didn’t know what would happen tomorrow. You didn’t know if this was a one time thing or if this meant you were together now. You suppose it didn’t much matter right now. The only thing that mattered right now was Spencer holding you in his arms.

So for now you laid there together on your dorm room bed, under a mural of the silken sky.

***

He was twenty two and you were twenty four, and he’d just been offered a job at the FBI.

In Quantico, Virginia.

You were sure you’d spent your whole relationship out of state from one another. The past three years Spencer had been away while he worked on a second BA and then his third doctorate.

Since leaving college you’d stayed put in Vegas, getting a job as a curator at a local art gallery.

You saw Spencer when you could but it never seemed to be enough. At least not for you.

And then he’d dropped the bombshell about his job offer and told you he was moving to the other side of the country.

It had been hard enough over the years to maintain your relationship but you were sure this would be the death of you. And so you’d told Spencer it was time the two of you went your separate ways.

He’d tried to argue that you could make it work but you weren’t willing to find out. The four years you’d gotten had been amazing but all good things had to come to an end.

And maybe you and Spencer had never been destined. It had always been just a little too difficult. You’d finally thought once you were in the same state it would be easier, but he was leaving again.

It was hard but he supposed he understood. He would miss you with every fibre of his being but this job was too good for him to pass up.

You told him if you were meant to be, you’d find your way back to each other one day, although you weren’t sure you believed that.

You sat on the swing set in the desolate park together, hands entwined together as you swung back and forth on your separate swings.

He was leaving tomorrow. He was packed, his flight was booked and he had an apartment to go to in DC.

He was leaving and you were staying and it broke your heart.

“I’m gonna miss you Crash.” You squeezed his hand.

“I’m going to miss you too Y/N.”

It felt like the end of an era but an era that had never really had a chance to begin.

He was supposed to be your one true love, your greatest love story. But this story didn’t get a happy ending.

You swung back and forth into the night, just revelling in being with him one last time. You couldn’t think about tomorrow. Tomorrow was a world away.

So for now you swung, hand in hand, under the midnight silken sky.

***

You were twenty nine and you loved him, you really loved him.

He had turned your whole world upside down and made you feel things you’d never thought you’d feel again.

You loved him, you really did.

But he wasn’t Spencer Reid.

Maybe you’d gotten lucky and got to have two great loves of your life. Your life with Spencer was over long ago, it was only fair you were allowed to move on.

You wondered what twenty seven year old Spencer was doing with his life. Was he still at the BAU? Did he get a fourth doctorate? Was he happy?

God you hoped he was happy.

It was a small ceremony in front of your closest friends and family. No frills, no fuss. Just you and him being joined in matrimony.

He was a good guy, a nice guy; he treated you right and he loved you. At the end of the day, that’s all that mattered right?

So you didn’t get butterflies in your stomach when he kissed you. Maybe you didn’t go weak at the knees when he looked at you or felt like you were coming home when you made love. And so what if you’d felt all those things with Spencer? That didn’t matter, did it? It didn’t mean you didn’t love your new husband.

It was just a different kind of love. You weren’t in your teens falling in love for the first time. This was the kind of love you had when you grew up and got older. It didn’t mean it meant any less; that he meant any less to you.

He led you outside by your hand as your friends and family showered you in confetti. He turned and smiled at you brightly. He looked the happiest you’d ever seen him, you didn’t know if you could match his happiness.

You smiled back at him, probably not quite meeting his enthusiasm but if he noticed he didn’t say as much. It was only now that you looked down at the ring around your finger did it suddenly feel like a noose. You couldn’t allow yourself to think about how wrong it suddenly felt.

So for now you allowed your new husband to kiss you, under the Vegas Springtime silken sky.

***

He was thirty one and she was thirty. Her voice was like honey and he yearned to be able to hold her in his arms.

Her name was Maeve Donnovan and she had a stalker which was preventing them from meeting.

It was the first time Spencer had felt anything akin to love since you. He was sure he would never love again, you were the only person that could take that place in his heart.

And then had started having headaches and sought out the help of a geneticist and he started falling in love with her. For the first time in years you weren’t the first thing on his mind when he woke up in the morning. He didn’t spend all his waking hours pining over you.

Maeve was slowly but surely replacing you in his heart. And Spencer really needed that. He needed you finally gone from his mind.

“I think the stalker’s gone Spencer.” she’d told him that Sunday on the phone.

A huge weight had been lifted from her voice, he could hear the smile in it down the payphone. He couldn’t help but smile in return.

“Are you sure?”

“Pretty sure yeah.” she was smiling brightly. He knew she would have a beautiful smile.

“That’s great Maeve.” he smiled, gripping the phone in hands.

Did that mean what he thought it meant? Could they finally meet now? Have a normal relationship?

“I want to meet.” her words were rushed as though she weren’t sure she should be saying them. But he caught them.

She wanted to meet. She wanted to meet him.

He didn’t care what she looked like because she was already the most beautiful woman in the world to him. But what if she didn’t like him? What if he was too nerdy, what if his hair was too long and messy? What if she took one look at him and turned and ran?

He swallowed those nerves, trying to push them aside for another day.

So for now he smiled shakily down the phone, under the blustery DC silken sky.

***

You were forty and recently divorced. You knew on your wedding day it would end this way.

You loved your husband but you would never love him the way you loved Spencer. You managed ten years before you’d called it quits. He’d always known your heart didn’t fully belong to him.

You missed Spencer everyday and it was so unfair how he could still take up so much of your mind. It was a cruel world you supposed. Maybe you just weren’t supposed to be happy.

You’d had your happiness and it had been short lived. But you were thankful for the brief happiness you had been given. It was more than some people got you supposed.

He was thirty eight and home visiting his mother. He didn’t work full time at the BAU anymore since his reinstatement after he was incarcerated and lectured at Georgetown part time. It allowed him more free time to fly out to Vegas to see his mom.

Lecturing at Georgetown brought back so many memories for him. Georgetown was the place he had lost his virginity, the place he’d told you he loved you for the first time. Georgetown held so many pleasant memories for Spencer but they were all bittersweet.

After spending some time grieving Maeve after she died, his mind landed right back on you. It seemed he was always pining over someone. It wasn’t fair.

He was getting coffee on his way back to the hotel he was staying in when a familiar face materialised in front of him.

You weren’t there one moment and then suddenly you were, as though you had just appeared out of thin air.

You held your own coffee cup in your hand, your eyes wide and jaw slack. He watched you swallow a lump in your throat.

“Hi Crash.” you couldn’t help his old nickname tumble out from between your lips.

“Hi Y/N.” his voice croaked, still trying to comprehend how you could so suddenly be here in front of him after all these years of absence.

He felt like that twenty two year old swinging with you side by side in the park counting down the hours until he left you.

He felt like the sixteen year old young man who was falling hopelessly in love with you.

He felt like the eleven year old boy utterly grateful for you untying him from the flagpole.

“It’s been a long time.” you spoke, your mouth dry.

“A really long time.” he agreed with a stiff nod.

“Uhm...do you want to...coffee?” you ignored the fact you both had coffees in your hand.

“O-ok.” he nodded stiffly again.

After all these years you had so much to say to each other but no words would come out.

So for now you walked in silence down the Vegas street, under the cloud coated silken sky.

***

He was thirty nine years old when the explosion occurred. He’d thought it was just a concussion and didn’t pay it much mind.

You were forty one years old when you received the phone call from Penelope Garcia to inform you that Spencer was in the hospital.

They called it intracranial bleeding, his brain was swelling, bleeding; shutting down. They’d told you there was nothing they could do.

How cruel this life had been to you. It had stolen Spencer away from you when your relationship barely had a chance to blossom. It had brought him back into your life, for the two of you to fall back in love with each other only to have one final year together.

It had been the greatest year of your life and you had to try and focus on that as David Rossi read his eulogy.

He spoke all about Spencer’s life, the life you’d barely gotten to be a part of. Hearing it second hand and not from Spencer’s lips was tragic enough in itself.

You didn’t really feel as though you belonged here. You didn’t know him the way his team members knew him. You felt like a stranger in this place now.

You’d jumped at moving to DC when you and Spencer reunited because there was no way you were making the same mistake twice and letting him get away again. But now DC seemed like a suddenly very lonely place.

As the brilliant man you knew and loved was being lowered into the ground, his final resting place, the heavens opened. The rain cascaded down from the sky and you couldn’t help but think how apt it was on this already bleak day.

Garcia came to you at his graveside when the ceremony was over. The rain disguised your tears. She nudged you with her shoulder, her own tears falling.

“The world is going to be a very different place without boy genius in it.” she sobbed as she spoke.

“You’re telling me.” you chewed your lip, your eyes locked on his headstone as you spoke.

“He loved you know? He always loved you.”

You nodded statically not looking at the other woman. You knew he loved you, that much you were sure of. You only wished you had more time.

Maybe if you’d know what life had in store you would have come with him to DC all those years ago. Had you known you didn’t have all the time in the world, that your love only had a finite number of days you might have been more inclined to cling to them.

That was hindsight though you supposed and dwelling on it didn’t change the past. What was done was done. You didn’t go to DC with him, you stayed in Vegas. You spent years pining over him only to have the universe throw you back together again.

And then he’d been snatched from you once more in the most horrific way. And now it was over for good.

“Come on Y/N, you’ll catch a cold if you stay out here.” Garcia placed a gentle arm on your shoulder.

“I’ll be right there.” you told her, still not looking away from where the love of your life was buried beneath the dirt.

You heard her leave as more tears started to fall from your eyes. Your knees gave out and you fell to the grass in the rain.

You sobbed into your hands, cursing life for being so unyielding. But there was nothing you could do about it. The wheels had been set into motion long before you and Spencer had even met. This was always the way things were going to end up. Fate was a cruel mistress.

And so you knelt in the dirt sobbing next to the grave of the love of your life, under the grey, weeping silken sky.

----------------------------------------------------------------

Tag List -

@muffin-cup

@andiebeaword

#spencer reid #dr spencer reid #spencer reid fanfiction #cmbingo21 #criminal minds #criminal minds fanfiction #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid x y/n #spencer reid x fem!reader #spencer reid x you

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stargazing-dreamer-girl · 3 years

Text

Returning home

Requested by anon: “ can i request anything with reggie? idk i just need something with him lol💖 “

A/N: Here’s a little Reggie love for you! It’s been a while since I’ve written anything this quickly, but this just kinda flowed out of me. It’s kind of short, but I hope you enjoy it nonetheless.

Pairing: Alive!Reggie Peters x reader

WC: 1k

Summary: Reggie comes home after being on tour for six weeks.

It had been six weeks since you last saw Reggie. After their amazing performance at the Orpheum they had signed a contract with a record company and shortly after a tour had been planned. You would’ve loved to join them and see them play all over the US, but your schedule wouldn’t let that happen. So, you ended up going to your classes and lectures, doing your homework, watching movies and shows alone in your bed and reading comments from fans who were able to see Julie and the Phantoms live. It made you miss them. A lot. Your friends, but especially Reggie. You tried to talk every day, but sometimes your schedules just didn’t align, so you would just text, sometimes waiting up to two hours for an answer. Those days were the worst. Those days when you wouldn’t get to hear his voice, his laugh. It always felt like home. He felt like home. Talking to him after a stressful day made everything feel better.

It had been six weeks since you last saw Reggie, but today you would see him again. Yesterday had been their last concert in New York and today they would fly back to California where you were eagerly waiting for their arrival at the airport. You weren’t the only one either. A bunch of teenagers were standing right outside the baggage claim area, so they wouldn’t miss the band’s return to their home state. A few of them were even holding up signs proclaiming their love for the band or certain people. Most of them were directed at Luke, but a few of them also held Reggie’s name. It made you smile at how far they had come. You remembered the days when they were practicing in Julie’s garage hoping that their music would get out there and they would reach people. Everything had changed since then, but they were still the same people they were back when nobody knew their names.

You were pulled out of your thoughts when the fans started screaming. An obvious sign that the band must have arrived. You tried to catch a glimpse at them, but they were shielded from you by the mass of people hoping to get pictures and autographs. Your friends were eager to give the fans what they wanted, taking pictures, signing journals and posters and all kinds of stuff.

He saw you before you saw him. He loved the interactions with his fans, but as soon as his gaze fell on you, he excused himself and made his way through the crowd. You noticed the shifting bodies and when Reggie emerged, eyes locked on you as he made his way over, you couldn’t help but fall into a run to reach him as fast as possible.

He caught you when you jumped into his arm. He would always catch you. His bags were lying on the ground forgotten as he wrapped his arms around you, holding you tightly against his body. He took in a deep breath, the smell of your perfume you would always put on for special occasions filling his mind. “I missed you so much,” he said, pressing a kiss onto the top of your head.

You moved away from him slightly, not letting go completely, but enough to look at his face. His cheeks were flushed, just like they were most of the time. His lips were pulled into a small smile as he looked into your eyes and you felt loved in that moment in a way you hadn’t felt before. Being away from Reggie for so long made you realize that you wanted to be by his side forever. For Reggie, being away from you made his heart ache. Being able to talk to you over the phone was nice but not being able to touch you was like torture. But he knew, whenever he would have to leave, you would be there to come back to. As he looked at you now with your hand gently cradling his cheek, he was certain that he would ask you to marry him one day. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but someday he would get down on one knee and ask the question.

“I missed you, too,” you told him before connecting your lips in a kiss. He had missed that, too. The feeling of your lips moving against his. He still got butterflies in his stomach whenever you kissed. He couldn’t get enough of you. When you moved away, he stood there, pouting, while you greeted the others. He wanted more hugs, more kisses. He wanted you all to himself now that he was back and could actually hold you in his arms.

As quickly as you had greeted everyone you had said goodbye. You grabbed Reggie’s hand who had picked his bag back up and led him to your car. He excitedly told you about their last show on the drive home since you hadn’t been able to talk since then. His hand was placed on your leg. At least every third sentence was about how much he had missed you and every time he said it, he would give your leg a little squeeze.

When you opened the door to your shared apartment, finally with him by your side again, you felt content. Now that Reggie was back it finally felt like home again. He pulled you into the bedroom where you both changed into loungewear and laid down on the bed. His head was on your chest, his arms wrapped around your waist as you held him. Your fingers carded through his hair as you talked about the tour, the shows, your classes, anything that came to mind.

Being with Reggie was fun. Being with Reggie meant spontaneous adventures. Being with Reggie meant talking through your problems when they appeared. It meant promising to never scream at each other. Being with Reggie meant cuddling and movie marathons. Being with Reggie meant having to share him with his fans from time to time, but in this moment, you were the only one important to him. You were all that mattered. Being with Reggie was being at home, because Reggie was your home and no matter how far apart you would be, you would always find your way back to each other.

#julie and the phantoms #jatp #julie and the phantoms oneshot #reggie peters #reggie peters x reader #reggie peters x you #requested #requested by anon #jatp x reader #reggie x reader #julie and the phantoms imagine #jatp oneshot #jatp imagine #imagine #oneshot #one shot #reggie peters imagine #reggie peters oneshot #reggie peters x y/n

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whereisten · 4 years

Text

Creature Feature - Part 3

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 Preview | Taeil blurb

Summary: You work at your family’s 9-5 nighttime theater for the supernatural. Your fling with vampire!Taeyong is just that: a fling.

Pairing: Vampire!Taeyong x female reader

Word Count: 4.9k words

Genre: Romance, Fantasy, Smut

Warnings: cursing, attempted suicide mention, death mention, oral sex (male receiving), fingering, penetration, cock warming

Part 3

[8:30 PM]

It was Saturday night. Your parents rewarded you with the weekend off and you caught up on some sleep and did some online shopping. You sat in your apartment in one of the many high rises in Downtown Mystic. You laid on the couch and scrolled through a webtoon on your tablet, kicking your legs like a lovesick schoolgirl. The latest chapter of the webcomic had you gushing.

Your phone sounded off a text. You didn’t even have to check who it was.

Your parents were back for two weeks now and Yuta’s gifts did not cease. He was sneaky, you had to hand it to him. He somehow always knew when your parents weren’t around to drop things off at your office. It was a good thing he never figured out where you lived.

Day 1 (when your parents came back): The Tiffany necklace

Day 2: a $250 gift card to the Hand and Stone Massage and Facial Spa

Day 3: a Versace safety pin evening dress (he knew your measurements a little too well as it fit you like a glove)

Day 4: Godiva chocolate covered strawberries delivered to you every night before you left for work

…..It made your head spin to even go to Day 14.

You didn’t use any of Yuta’s gift’s (except for the strawberries because those couldn’t go to waste and you planned to start up a payment plan with him when you kindly rejected him...AGAIN).

Every time you tried to approach Yuta, though, you were always pulled in another direction by an employee at work. You were everyone’s go-to woman. Their emotional support only daughter. You couldn’t catch a break.

To hell with it, when you got back to work on Monday night, you would ignore everyone for 10 minutes and they would just have to accept it. You would find Yuta when he “stopped by to meet a friend” like he has for the past two weeks.

Taeyong wasn’t around much either. You met up only a couple of times to French kiss like it was a contact sport but conveniently neither of you had time to be disappointed when you had to part. You both had lives to live. Separately.

So, there you were, on Saturday night, feeling antsy with nothing to do now that you had to wait for the next chapter of True Beauty to update next week. You weren’t used to being free on a Saturday. It was a weird feeling. To no avail, you called up a couple of friends to see if they were down to go clubbing. You were always the designated driver so you thought they would jump at the chance to avoid paying for a Lyft.

Alcohol only had a temporary effect on your body: hence, the dream designated driver. 99% human. You wished there was a name for the type of creature you were. Your parents were adamant that you were a human but you knew you stood out from the rest of that population. Your parents were never particularly fond of talking about your family history either so that did wonders for your anxiety.

Age 16

“But mom, how is that I can sense things? The other day at CVS I got change back from the cashier and I knew he wasn’t human. How does that make sense?” I asked.

“You were kissed by an angel, sweetheart. You were blessed with all sorts of quirky gifts. But you are a human: the purest of all of the creatures. Well, below angels. But we’re pretty close.” She replied, winking. I inherited humility from her, apparently.

Now that you were getting older...you were starting to have doubts about this whole “kissed by an angel” business. Why didn’t your mom have any of your abilities? It just didn’t add up.

You could only hold on to the things you knew: you could understand any creature, you could identify any creature in disguise, your cuts from falls healed very quickly, you could manipulate your dreams, your alcohol tolerance was most impressive, and you had a powerful urge to be with a vampire.

You missed the feel of Taeyong’s elegant fingers tracing against your thighs and moving dangerously close to your heat. His teasing was torturous but you enjoyed every second of it. You found yourself mimicking his movements to yourself and imagining he was there with you.

You got off on fantasizing Taeyong on top of you on the couch but the euphoria didn’t last long.

You sighed. You felt really stupid for not sharing your phone number with him.

🎥

You thought about going to Target for the hell of it since you never had a chance to go. Your unusual schedule would usually lead you to groggily shop for groceries at 8 in the morning once in a while. You were elated to go at nighttime and kill a couple of hours browsing.

You chose to go makeup free and in an old university tee and yoga pants. It felt good not give a fuck about how you looked for a night.

You headed over to Target and made a beeline for the Starbucks to get a frappuccino. You haven’t had one of them in months and you were close to the point of tears when you tasted the whipped cream again .

You moaned in happiness. “Yes.”

“I’ve heard that before,” a voice came from behind you.

You jumped at hearing Taeyong’s voice. “AH!’

Taeyong chuckled when you turned around. “Stop! I could’ve dropped my frap.”

He was in a loose-fitting white tee and black jeans. They looked affordable but you knew that was not the case. He took the straw and drank some of your drink. “I would’ve bought you another one.”

You rolled your eyes. “Very charming. What are you doing here?”

“It’s nice to see you, too, y/n,” he said, pecking your cheek and caressing it.

You sighed. “Do you live around here?” This Target was down the street from your place.

He shook his head. “I’ve been on the lookout for a video game for Doyoung. I’ve been to two Targets already.” Doyoung was one of Taeyong’s vampire pals.

You frowned. “You should’ve called ahead and asked if they had it in stock.”

Taeyong’s eyes grew. “I did not realize that was an option.”

You laughed. “It’s cool. If you want, we can go to all of the Targets across town until we find Doyoung’s game.”

He smiled. “I’d like that.”

The third time was the charm as Taeyong found Doyoung’s game: Princess Peach & Pals 2. You high fived each other when you checked it out.

Taeyong asked, “I didn’t see you at Sinema yesterday. Are you okay?”

You took his hand and squeezed it. “Got the weekend off.”

Taeyong looked happier than you did when your parents told you. “I’m glad. You really needed it.”

“Yeah, you’re right. It’s kind of weird not having any plans or someone knocking at my door asking for help with the claw machine.”

He chuckled because he helped you fix the claw machine a couple of times. “So you’re free, then?”

“Yup. Why? What were you thinking?”

He stepped back and wrapped his arms around you from behind. “Spend the night with me.”

You restrained yourself from yelling yes a hundred times. “Okay.”

Taeyong led you to the parking lot. He approached his motorcycle, a 2018 Suzuki. You stopped. How could you forget that he rode a motorcycle.

“y/n?” Taeyong asked as he pulled out two helmets.

“You know what, how about I just take a Lyft over to your place? Gives you time to hide your snacks and your blood bags.” You avoided his stare.

He frowned. “Why?”

“I’m...I don’t do motorcycles.” You hugged yourself.

You were scared, Taeyong realized. He never wanted you to be afraid. He tried his best to see to it that you would feel safe without him. He never wanted to cross a line that you drew. He thought the only way he could scare you was if he bit you.

He thought wrong.

“I’ll go slow, I promise,” he said as he hugged you again.

You mumbled against his chest. “I don’t know…”

“You can trust me. I don’t live that far from here. It’ll be ten minutes, tops.”

You knew your fear was over-the-top but you couldn’t help it. So many maniacs were on the road. You could barely keep it together in your Corolla. But you were curious. You wanted to push the fear aside and be a little reckless. Taeyong wouldn’t let anything happen to you. Regardless of what your parents told you, vampires were strong and they protected their own. Taeyong regarded you as an equal. He’s said it multiple times. You were his friend and he would take care of you.

So what the hell?

“Okay,” you said, steadying your voice.

He helped you secure your helmet. He did the same for himself. He got onto the bike. He nodded for you to get on. You wrapped your arms tightly around his abdomen. It was rock solid and you could feel his heartbeat accelerate.

“Hey. Don’t let me distract you,” you teased.

He chuckled. “Even when you’re not around, love.”

You smacked his arm. “You’re so annoying.”

He laughed. “You ready?”

“Let’s go,” you said as you squeezed him tighter.

Taeyong enjoyed this more than you will ever know. He started up the bike and you moved at a decent speed out of the parking lot. Your heart rate was deceiving you and you knew Taeyong could feel it, too.

You just let yourself feel what you felt and hoped that excitement would take over. And it did.

When you got onto the main road, you cheered and laughed. You let yourself be free. For all of your life, you liked to think you had some freedom. At the root of it all, you were stuck in a lot of ways: family obligations, your career, and who you could marry, to name a few. But in this moment with Taeyong, you’ve never felt freer.

🎥

Taeyong purchased one of the properties at a luxurious oceanfront hotel, Hotel La Mar. He lived on the top floor.

“Make yourself at home,” he said. “I’m going to wash up.”

You marveled at the spacious apartment. The furniture was leather and the floor was a plush carpet. You could envision yourself curling on the floor. That’s how cozy the space felt.

The living room had a plasma screen TV with shelves and shelves of movies: everything you could think of.

Huh, a movie theater employee human hybrid (?) with a cinephile vampire lord. An interesting concept, you thought. You kept exploring and noticed that there weren’t many photographs around the space. There was one of Taeyong posing in front of the Eiffel Tower at night. Bold of him to break the rules overseas, you giggled to yourself. Another frame contained a visibly older photo. It was a picture of Taeyong and who you assumed were his family: his parents and his sister. You wondered when this was taken.

“1985,” Taeyong answered into your ear, causing the hairs on the back of your neck to rise.

You yelped.

He took the photo frame into his hands so you both could admire it. “This is my family. My mom, my dad, and my older sister Chaewon.”

1985? Taeyong looked exactly the same as he did in that picture. That must have been around the time he became a vampire, you thought.

“I turned a year after that,” he said. You noted the hesitance in his voice.

“Oh,” you said.

“When I was a human, I fell in love with a vampire.”

“Oh, so we’re going there...”

Taeyong took you out to the balcony so you could watch the night sky over the ocean.

“We don’t have to talk about it-“ He started.

“Are you kidding me?” You’ve been dying for more intel on this man.

He smiled amusingly at you. You were so curious and open with him. You were precious to him.

“I met Cleo when I was 22...She was older than me. I didn’t realize at the time just how much older. I worked at my father’s dojo over the summer after I graduated from college. I was going to get my master’s in architecture. I had everything going for me. I dated a few girls in college but I didn’t find someone I wanted to settle down with. I was...a bit of a hopeless romantic.”

Still are, you thought to yourself.

“I was closing the dojo one night when a couple of thugs broke in to rob the place. They were in the process of beating me to a pulp when Cleo and her friends came in and...took care of them.”

You understood that to mean they were sucked dry.

“She told me she’d been watching me for a while and didn’t know how to introduce herself. So that night was as good a time as any. I was shocked to see vampires for the first time. Once upon a time, the world you see every day at Sinema was a fairy tale for me.”

You figured as much. Not all vampires were born as vampires.

“But I couldn’t get Cleo out of my mind so soon I fell into that world. Never looking back.”

And that’s when you heard the regret in his voice.

“Cleo paraded me all over the supernatural parts of the country. She would take me to clubs. Introduce me to her friends. I moved in with her not even a month after we met. The first time she drank my blood...I didn’t expect the emotions to be so strong.”

The alarm bells rang off in your head.

“I was all hers after that, y/n. She bewitched me. I was at her beck and call. Nothing else mattered but how I could please her.”

You could see the pain in his eyes and how he avoided looking at you.

“That’s why...” You started.

Taeyong continued, “I can’t do that to you. It’s not worth the risk. My escorts? Those human women visited witches to give them the resistance from falling under a vampire’s spell. An attraction can grow, sure, but the intense devotion a human feels to a vampire is taboo now. Vampires don’t want to deal with what they would call collateral damage after having one night of unadulterated pleasure.”

You couldn’t believe what you were hearing. Your heart hurt for the man before you. It wasn’t his fault that he was under Cleo’s spell. She manipulated him.

“But every now and then, a vampire just won’t care,” he said.

Which means this kind of abuse still went on to this day, you realized.

“After the first bite, I begged Cleo for more. She offered to do me one better and asked for me to join her on her travels around the world: as her vampire prince. Her words. Not mine.”

Taeyong sighed and rolled his eyes. “Looking back on it, it was bullshit. But the human me was...singing from the rooftops. I idolized that woman. She was the key to my happiness. I would follow her to the ends of the earth. And that I did.”

You thought about his family and his life.

“I was a vampire. I couldn’t live my human life anymore. I was devoted to Cleo and that was all that mattered. I gave up on my master’s. I told my parents I was getting married, traveling the world, and didn’t plan on coming back. I was mad at them, y/n. They told me I was a fool for throwing away my future for a woman who sucked me in and would spit me back out. I hated that they doubted me but even more that they doubted Cleo.”

“So you left...”

“I did and it didn’t take long for me to realize that my parents were right. I loved her unconditionally, knowing full well that she was preying on other humans like me, building an empire...well, a harem would be a more accurate term. Soon, I realized I was no longer her favorite and it was eating me up from the inside. I...couldn’t take it so I-“

You felt a sense of dread at what he was about to say next.

”I never even considered the possibility that I could end my addiction to her. I just thought of the quickest way to put me out of my misery. I planned to stab myself in the chest.”

You put your hand to your mouth. “Taeyong...I-“

He squeezed your hand. “It’s okay.”

“It’s a lot...Remembering your darkest days...I don’t want you to feel pressured to tell me everything,” you added as you traced your fingers against his knuckles.

He shook his head. “I want to share this with you.” His brown eyes shifted into bright a shade of blue, suddenly.

“Taeyong, your eyes...”

“They’re blue, aren’t they?”

“Yes but why?”

“I’ll explain. Someone saved me the day I wanted to end it all. Jaejoong. Jaejoong...is like a father to me. He talked me down and helped extract Cleo’s latches off of me. And with that, my memories of her were gone. The witch who helped us with this process was able to conserve pieces of my memories and I only had the nerve to access them recently...After I met you.”

“Taeyong...”

“I wanted to know why I couldn’t let myself bite you. Something inside me was holding me back. I wanted to drink from you so badly but you weren’t an escort. I knew the rules. About the damage that could be caused. But I wanted to understand the nagging feeling at the back of my mind. And accessing those memories again...my eyes turn blue as I reflect on the darkest time in my life.”

“Oh, Taeyong...” You sat curled up against him and held him tightly. “I’m so sorry.”

Taeyong tucked some of your hair back so he can cup your face. “Thank you for listening to me. I thought you would be running for the hills by now.”

“Everyone has their dark past. Granted, mine consists of a crappy ex-boyfriend but my point is that I really appreciate you telling me about yourself. I didn’t expect that.”

Taeyong sighed. “You know, the arrangement we have...”

“Yeah?”

“I like it. But...” He stared out at the sea.

“Go on,” you said as you kissed his neck.

“I don’t want to be just friends with you,” he almost whispered. You were close enough to his lips to hear every syllable clearly.

“I know...”

“You do?” He looked down at you as you played around with the fabric of his tee.

“You told me everything...Basically. I don’t think you did it without an agenda,” you said as you removed yourself off of him and looked into his eyes.

He rubbed his hands against your legs, wishing you’d worn shorts so he can feel your soft skin heat up at his touch. “What do you think?”

You were about to respond when his hands ran up to your butt and he squeezed it. “I...I think we’re ready to move up another level.”

He smiled. “Really?”

Before he went for your butt again, you got yourself up and straddled him. “Really.”

You kissed him deeply, begging his tongue to meet yours. Taeyong quickly reciprocated.

He cupped your face again. “You are so beautiful.”

“I know you mean that,” you said, realizing you looked like a struggling college student in your getup. He really liked you. He wouldn’t avoid your stare. He was happy.

The blue in his eyes vanished and it was back to his warm dreamy brown.

“You okay?” You asked.

“Never better,” he said as you pulled you closer to him. He always embraced you like it was his last time.

He was indeed a hopeless romantic.

“So...” You couldn’t get Cleo out of your mind, though. You wondered what she looked like and how she seduced Taeyong. At one point, Taeyong was in love with her without the enchantment of a vampire. You couldn’t help but wonder if he ever compared you to her. And just how much he remembered after the memory wipe. “Where is Cleo now?”

He cleared his throat. “She’s dead.”

There was a sense of dread again at the pit of your stomach. “How did she die?” You sat beside him again.

“Jaejoong...finished her,” he continued.

“...How?”

“When Cleo found out I had defected to another clan, she was furious,” he said.

“She came after you?” You asked, shocked she would care so much.

“It’s not that she cared,” he answered your thoughts again without realizing it. “It was a matter of pride for her. I was her property. And Jaejoong took it away from her.” That infuriated you.

Taeyong continued, “Jaejoong hid me away from her for a year. So I wouldn’t be tempted to go back to her. Even if her influence escaped me, she could easily lure me in again. I was weak, starved for love. For anything I could get from her after I left everything behind.”

“Taeyong...”

“In 1987, Jaejoong and Cleo faced off. She perished from a wooden bullet shot to the heart.”

You still had so much you wanted to ask. “How do you know she’s gone?” You blurted. You didn’t have a lot of remorse for the death of this woman, you understood.

He met your gaze. “Jaejoong brought me to her body.”

You waited for him to continue.

He said, “And we burned it, making sure no trace of her remained.”

He worried that you would see him differently upon hearing this.

But you understood. She was a monster that preyed upon innocent people and played with them like dispensable toys. You hated that someone could be so vile and tinker with the heart of the man you...

Liked.

“Wow,” you said, meekly.

“I know,” he said, “Jaejoong took in the lost boys of her clan and helped them become independent. Like he did with me. Now we pledge our loyalty to him.”

You wondered if Jaejoong was really as heroic of a man as Taeyong made him out to be.

🎥

You sat with Taeyong in the kitchen. You took some cake mix out from your shopping tote and asked him if you could bake it. “Mind if I use your kitchen?”

“Depends. What flavor is the cake?”

“Red velvet,” you answered.

“Only if I can lick the spoon,” he said as he helped pull out all of the supplies and ingredients.

As you mixed the cake mix with the other ingredients, Taeyong watched you.

You were something else. After telling you some of his darkest memories, you didn’t run off. You didn’t doubt him. You stayed. And for that, he would be eternally thankful.

“You can lick the spoon now,” you sang.

Taeyong creeped up from behind you, dipped his finger into the bowl, scooped some of the batter and ran it across your neck. You stood still.

He moved his finger dangerously slow across your neck and his tongue followed even more slowly behind. You moaned at his delicate touch.

“It tastes pretty good,” he whispered. You could feel his cock grow against your leg.

Taeyong held you from behind as you finished putting the mix into a pan. You laughed at how he clung to you like a koala.

The cake would take about half an hour to bake, which meant...

“Lead the way, Taeyong,” you said.

He scooped you up and he bolted to his bedroom. You laughed.

He tossed you on the plush California king bed and nearly pounced on top of you. You yelled and giggled like you were playing tag.

He kissed you hard as he laid against the bed frame. You pulled his shirt off. He did the same. You surprised him then.

“Where’s your bra?” He asked.

“I took it off when I went to the bathroom. I thought you noticed and that’s why we’re here now.”

“I mean, your nipples looked...”

You pulled him closer. “How do they look?” You lowered your voice.

“Pretty,” he said as he kissed you again. You pulled down his pants and cock greeted you.

Taeyong stood up on the bed as you kneeled down to greet his gorgeous length.

You grasped it hard and Taeyong grunted. “Does it feel good, baby?” You asked.

“Yes, love,” he said as he ran his fingers against your hair.

You took his length into your mouth and moved slowly back and forth, enjoying the taste of precum in your mouth and the sound of Taeyong’s moans. His length tickled the back of your throat. The discomfort was mild but you liked giving him blow jobs. So with practice, the pain became pleasure. You were getting wet at the thought of pleasuring him now.

“Feel me,” you said as you moved your eyes down to your panties. Taeyong put his hands down there and gently placed two fingers inside of you. He moaned again as you sucked faster.

You wanted Taeyong to know that you weren’t there to play with his heart. That was never what you wanted. You wanted to get to know him. And you didn’t want to keep lying to yourself. You were all in. And somehow, you would find a way to make it work.

Taeyong tugged tightly at your hair as he was on the verge of his climax. The thought of his climax aroused you ever further and felt the vibrations deep down in your belly. When he came, you found yourself soaked from him and yourself. You lathered up his cum. You fingered yourself and gave him a taste of your essence. You took all of his cum in and dragged your tongue up to his abdomen and met his lips. You kissed him.

He hugged you and wiped the sweat off of your forehead. “I love you.”

You exhaled like you held your breath for a long time. “I love you, too.”

He laid you down so he could pleasure you. He kissed you again and ran his hands up your thighs and forced them open. You gasped.

He greedily lathered up your cum. “You are exquisite.” He began running his index finger in and out of your clit. You started rocking back and forth.

He tsked. “Stay still, angel. Or I’m going to stop.”

You whined. “Meanie.”

He laughed his deep laugh and just the sound of that made you moan.

His unoccupied hand gripped your thigh tightly, squeezed your ass, and caressed you face. He liked watching you come undone under him. It kept awake sometimes when he was home alone.

He continued to finger you and you mewled when he inserted two fingers. You felt yourself building up again. You couldn’t help but rock back and forth. You wanted to climax.

“Taeyong, please,” you begged.

He smiled as he removed his fingers.

You whined even more. “Evil overlord, please.”

He pecked your lips. “Your wish is my command.”

He quickly inserted his cock and it hit you hard that you cried out. The pain quickly became pleasure as you both moved back and forth.

“Fuck,” he exclaimed. “I fucking love you.”

“I...love...you...” You managed to get out until you both released.

You both went for two more rounds before passing out on the bed. He held you as he covered you under the sheets. The timer went off for the cake.

You were about to get up but Taeyong pulled you back.

“It’ll cool. It’s okay. Just stay with me,” he said as he snuggled up against you.

“You’re so clingy,” you said as you laid your back against his front. He spooned you. His cock was in your ass. You’d wanted to do this with him for a while.

Taeyong was beaming. You were beside him now and neither of you was in a rush to leave. You could take your time and enjoy each other.

He moaned against your neck. “Are you hungry, though?”

You laughed. “I’m good.”

So you laid beside each other as the sun rose and slept for hours.

🎥

You stayed asleep but Taeyong’s phone rang. He slowly got up from bed and covered you with the sheets. You frowned in your sleep like you unconsciously knew he left your side. He laughed quietly as he took his phone off the nightstand.

He walked out of the room so as not to disturb you.

“Hey Jaejoong, how was South Africa?” He asked.

His leader chuckled over the phone. “Beautiful. The great white sharks were incredible. You have to come with me next time.”

“Are you back in the country?” Taeyong asked excitedly. Jaejoong was gone for a while on his travels.

“Yes. I landed today in Mystic.”

Taeyong replied, “That’s great. You have to come over for dinner. I’ll make your favorite chicken parm and you can drop off all of the souvenirs you bought for me.”

Jaejoong laughed. “I hope a keychain won’t disappoint you. How about I come over tonight? There’s something I wanted to talk about with you.” You noticed the shift in his tone.

“Is everything okay?” Taeyong asked.

“Yeah...They’ll be even better soon enough,” Jaejoong said.

To Be Continued in Part 4

387 notes · View notes

romansleftshoulderpad · 4 years

Text

Take A Chance On Me

Ship: Royality

Word Count: 3,127

Warnings: Mentions of being horny, breakups

If you change your mind, I’m the first in line. Honey, I’m still free. Take a chance on me.

Patton had never been one for sunbathing, but he was rather inclined towards any activity that involved Roman. The warmth was like a blanket, keeping him cozy and safe (though Logan would warn quite the opposite, going on a lecture about the dangers of overexposure to ultraviolet rays). Patton was with Roman, that was safe enough for him.

“He just wasn’t my style, I guess,” Roman said, continuing on his rant. Patton was trying to listen, but the sun was putting him to sleep. He wondered if Roman would have to wake him with a kiss.

“What is your style?” Patton teased. “A knight in shining armor?”

“Hey, knights have to be strong under that armor. If a buff strong man wants to suplex me then he can go for it.”

“What if he has a frog face?”

Roman thought for a moment. “I can live with that. If he keeps his helmet on.”

Patton laughed, which made Roman laugh, which only made Patton laugh even harder. He moved his hand, letting it brush up against Roman’s. He wanted to grab his hand. He wanted to take his face and kiss him senselessly.

But the timing wasn’t right.

“Carlos sucks.”

Roman shrugged. “He’s fine. I don’t regret dating him or anything. I think it could’ve worked out if things were different.”

“Things?”

“If we were a year younger. If I didn’t know what I know now.”

“And what do you know now?”

Roman moved his hands to his chest- away from Patton- and looked to the sky. He didn’t answer, but Patton could hear him humming under his breath. It was a song he recognized from Into the Woods but he couldn’t think of a title. The two went back to cloud gazing and laid in silence. He closed his eyes, tucked under the warm blanket of sunlight, and tried to fall asleep.

If you need me, let me know, gonna be around

Roman and Patton had been friends for longer than either of them could remember. But what Patton does remember is years of movie marathons and blanket forts with a projector turning the ceiling into the galaxy. He remembers losing a tooth when they were ten and Roman pulling one of his own out in solidarity. He remembers that wasn’t a pretty picture.

He remembers being thirteen. He remembers clearing “Am I Gay quiz” from his search history time and time again. He remembers watching his friends start dating. He remembers thinking of Roman.

Roman was someone Patton always considered fortunate. Roman never had to come out, no one ever expected him to be one thing or another. Patton remembered when they were twelve and Roman told him about how he learned how to kiss in a game of spin the bottle.

Patton remembers feeling jealous. Not of Roman, but of those who had the honor of kissing someone so carefree.

The honor of kissing Roman so carefree.

He remembers being thirteen and laying by Roman’s side as Dumbo played on screen. He wasn’t watching, there wasn’t any point.

“Roman,” he whispered, “when did you know?”

Roman glanced at him in confusion. There wasn’t much light, but his braces shined from the television screen. “How did I know-“ Patton turned away. “Oh.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No, no, hey,” Roman whispered. He grabbed the remote and hit mute, giving them a moment of privacy. “You don’t, really. You just find someone attractive- and sometimes you don’t even know what that means- and you just... figure it out.”

“That sounds so simple but-“

“It’s not,” Roman sighed. “It’s not simple. But you’ll figure it out, okay?” Patton didn’t look convinced. “You have a whole lifetime to figure yourself out.”

Patton grabbed the remote, turning the volume back on and making it just louder than comfortable. “Thanks, Roman.”

If you’ve got no place to go, if you’re feeling down

He can still remember being angry, boiling with rage just after homecoming. He found Roman crying in the school parking lot. There was still an hour left of the dance.

“Roman?” he whispered.

“P- Patton, I- What are you doing here?”

“Roman, I’m here. What happened?”

Roman wiped at his eyes, stepping back into the shadows to try to hide. Nevertheless Patton knew that his cheeks were stained with tears and his eyes were red with pain. “He broke up with me,” he whispered. “At homecoming, of all things!”

“He’s an asshole and he doesn’t deserve you,” Patton said. “Can I hug you?”

Roman gave a weak nod and let himself fall into Patton’s arms. “I’m sorry, you shouldn’t have to see me like that.”

“Roman, please, don’t apologize for feeling.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Hey, hey, listen to me,” Patton said. “My date and I were going to go get ice cream. You should come, I think it’ll help.”

“I’m not going to third wheel on your date.”

“Oh, no, we’re just here as friends.”

“Still-“

“You need friends right now.”

“Okay,” Roman sighed. “Okay.”

Patton smiled and took his hand, walking him through the parking lot towards the only lit car around. “Roman, I want you to meet Logan.”

If you’re all alone, when the pretty birds have flown Honey, I’m still free Take a chance on me

It was March when Roman and Carlos broke up. It was mid-April now. The four of them were tucked up in Patton’s living room, watching the rain outside. Virgil, Patton’s new roommate, was half asleep with his head on Logan’s shoulder.

“Go fish,” he said, barely coherent.

“How are you this tired at three in the afternoon?” Roman teased, grabbing another card.

“Movin’s hard,” he yawned. “Logan, got any aces?”

“The only ace I have is myself,” Logan said. “Go fish.”

Patton grinned. “Logan made a dad joke!”

“Fuck.”

“Didn’t you move in a week ago?”

“Roman, be nice,” Patton said with a frown. “You can’t move in on day one.”

Virgil flashed him a smile and took a card. They continued playing for another hour or so before Virgil actually had fallen asleep. Roman and Logan had carried him off to his bed while Patton loaded up a movie. The storm was coming in harder and no one wanted to leave.

Gonna do my very best and it ain’t no lie

Patton smiled, quick to take Virgil’s place against Logan’s shoulder. He gave a fond sigh, accepting his fate. After knowing him for years, one simply grew accustomed to Patton’s displays of affection. (And, while Logan would never admit it, Patton’s friendship was the perfect way to stave off touch starvation.)

As the movie started, Patton could see the sad glances from Roman. He reached out and grabbed his hand, watching Roman’s eyes light up like the same old galaxy projector they’ve used for years.

If you put me to the test, if you let me try. Take a chance on me. Take a chance on me.

He had Roman exactly where he wanted him.

We can go dancing, we can go walking, as long as we’re together.

It was the first clear day in a week. Roman was stealing Patton from Virgil for all of it. They were hand in hand walking through the park on the way to Roman’s house. It was a perfect day.

Listen to some music, maybe just talking, get to know you better

When Patton and Roman were little they could lay in the same bed and feel all the space of the world between them. They were so small and the mattress was only a continent. But they’re bigger now, adults now, and the two of them on the same float drifting in the middle of Roman’s pool didn’t offer the same space. The sun was still beating down on them, but it felt different now. Their skin was still damp and Roman kept his arm around Patton’s waist to stay afloat. Patton could feel his breath on his skin.

It was hot. And Patton was dying.

He pressed his hand against the side of Roman’s face and moved even closer, smirking as he did so. He waited a moment for Roman to respond, loving the way he turned bright red. Patton held his breath and rolled off of the float, taking Roman down with him. When the resurfaced Roman’s hair was stuck to his face and he was coughing up water.

“You FIEND!” he yelled, splashing Patton with water. “Ugh! It’s in my nose! Fuck, it burns!”

Patton only continued laughing, watching Roman’s every movement. Behind him, things were blurry. They didn’t need to be focused on because Roman was there and he was the most important person alive.

Maybe he just needed to put his glasses on.

He swam over to Roman and grabbed his hands, pressing their foreheads together. “However can I make it up to you?” he teased.

“I-”

“Yes?”

Roman moved away, taking his hands back to himself. “I think we should, uh, dry off. I’m going to take a shower. If you want to too, you can- wait shit-” Patton almost felt bad for how flustered he was. Almost. “I just mean like after I’m done and-” He stepped out of the water, and grabbed a towel, wrapping it around his waist.

“I know what you mean, Roman,” Patton said. “Go dechlorinate yourself.”

“Right,” Roman gave an awkward wave, hanging his swim trunks up on the towel rack and heading inside.

‘Cause you know I’ve got so much that I want to do When I dream I’m alone with you It’s magic

It was later that month when they saw each other again. It was different from their typical meetings, Roman had called him late at night. “Hey,” he whispered. “I’m sorry if I woke you.”

“You didn’t,” Patton lied. He glanced at the clock. Just past one in the morning. He held back a yawn.

“I- It’s stupid, nevermind. I shouldn’t be bothering you right now.”

“Roman. You’re never a bother to me.”

There was a moment of silence, and Patton wondered in Roman had fallen asleep. All he could hear was breathing.

“Roman?”

“Do you, um, want to watch a movie? Like we used to?”

“We both know you’re not calling me at one in the morning just to watch a movie,” he said.

“Oh.”

“I’ll be there in thirty minutes.”

You want me to leave it there, afraid of a love affair

He walked into Roman’s bedroom exactly twenty-seven minutes later. He slipped his shoes off and let himself fall into Roman’s bed. “Welcome back to childhood.”

Roman brushed his hand against Patton’s. “Yeah. Just like childhood.”

Patton wanted to grab his hand. He wanted to take his face and kiss him senselessly.

“So, why did you call me?” He decided to let that choice be Roman’s. “You must’ve wanted to talk about something.”

“I was thinking,” he admitted. “About Carlos.”

Patton felt something settle in his stomach. Something bad.

“And I don’t like thinking about him.”

“Are you upset about the breakup?”

“No,” Roman said. His fingers brushed against Patton’s again. “You know me. I don’t like to regret the past.”

“Do you regret the breakup?”

“No, Patton, stop.” He sighed. “I regret being with him. And I don’t like that.”

“Oh.”

“He was a rebound, I guess. A distraction. He loved me and I loved that. I loved the attention.”

“Sounds like a few old memories of mine.”

“I was too busy waiting for someone to love me back. And now, I’ve been waiting for so long that I don’t know if he’ll ever-”

“Roman.”

“Yeah?”

“Shut up and kiss me.”

But I think you know

Roman moved so slowly and carefully. Patton held his cheeks in his hands and pulled him forward, kissing him like there was nothing else in the world.

That I can’t let go

“There isn’t a world where I don’t love you.”

“Oh,” Roman tiredly murmured. “Does that mean we can kiss again?”

Patton pressed a tender kiss to his cheek. “You need to sleep.”

“No, I don’t.” Roman yawned. “I need you.”

“I’m here for you, Roman.” Another kiss. “Now go to sleep.” And the world went quiet. And the world went black.

Oh you can take your time baby, I'm in no hurry, know I'm gonna get you You don't wanna hurt me, baby don't worry, I ain't gonna let you

They decided to wait a few days before telling everyone. Roman, however, wasted no time stealing every bit of Patton’s affection. “I’m starved,” he’d said. “I’ll die without your kiss, my love.”

“You’re being dramatic,” Patton said, pressing a kiss to Roman’s cheek as he made pancakes. Roman was holding onto his waist, resting his head on his lover’s shoulder. “I love you, Princey.”

Roman hummed. “Love you too, Pattoncake.”

“Awww. Roman that’s adorable.”

“Only because you are.”

Patton squealed, turning around to hide his face in Roman’s chest. He was a blushing mess; he felt like Roman when they were merely flirting.

“Your pancakes are burning, darling.”

“Fuck the pancakes, my face is burning.”

Roman laughed and flipped each of the pancakes quickly before lifting Patton’s chin and kissing him softly. “You’re too easy.”

“Could’ve said the same about you in that pool float.”

Roman kissed him again. “You’re going to be the death of me.”

“That’s how I wanna go,” Patton said. “Now go, sit, I need to make sure these don’t burn.”

Let me tell you now

They decided to tell everyone at the next game night, though it never really came to that. Logan had walked in on them making out in the kitchen, muttering “Fucking finally” before grabbing a soda from the fridge and walking out.

Patton blushed and hid his face in Roman’s chest as they both failed to hide their laughter. “I suppose we should get back to cards.”

Roman hummed, snaking his arms around Patton’s sides and pulling him close. He pressed a kiss to Patton’s lips and let it melt into more as sugar dissolved at his touch. “I have much more fun things in mind than cards.”

“Baaabe.”

“Yes?” Roman asked, kissing him again.

“If you two don’t get your asses over here I will stab you both,” Logan called.

Virgil then continued, shouting, “STOP BEING FUCKING HORNY!”

Roman laughed. “Let’s get back to cards.”

My love is strong enough

They settled into a nice routine. They spent more time together, yes, but also readjusted to spending time apart. Being a couple felt natural, it was hard to imagine living any other way.

Patton was laying in bed, squinting at his phone screen without his glasses. He smiled, half asleep but not willing to end his conversation so quickly. Roman was gushing about some book series or maybe it was a YouTube video, Patton really couldn’t tell. But it didn’t matter, seeing the stream of texts was comforting enough.

Pattoncake: Wait, hold on

Princey: ???

Pattoncake: I love you <3

Pattoncake: Okay, keep going

He smiled at his phone. He knew there had been times in life when he had been hurt. Upset. Injured. But Roman made it feel like nothing bad existed. Roman made everything feel like love.

To last when things get rough It’s magic

“Fuck,” Roman groaned.

“What’s wrong?” Patton asked, leaning against his shoulder.

“Tomorrow got cancelled due to weather.”

“That’s Florida for you.”

He groaned in response. “Florida can suck my dick.”

“But then I’d be out of a job.”

Roman’s face went bright red as Patton laughed, pressing a kiss to his cheek. Patton said, “We can still be gay in the rain.”

“Not with the other gays though.”

“We can be gay together. We can hang out with our friend gays.”

“I guess.”

“There’s other events,” Patton reminded. “Just let the weather pass. I’ll make tomorrow special.”

You say that I waste my time, but I can’t get you off my mind

Roman was out getting groceries while Virgil and Logan were sneaking into his apartment with every rainbow thing they could find. The apartment was covered wall to wall in flags and lights and for some reason a framed picture of the kiss scene from Love, Simon that had not been there before.

“Patton, I don’t intend to sound rude, but,” Logan looked up and down at Patton’s rainbow suit, “is this, perhaps, a bit superfluous?”

Patton adjusted Logan’s lapel pin, a heart in the colors and arrangement of the demisexual pride flag. “I’m dating Roman, if it’s not extra it’s not us.”

Logan rolled his eyes but gave a fond smile. “I will never understand how I am friends with either of you.”

“Yeah, yeah, love you too. Now I need you and Virgil to show how much you love me by leaving, Roman will be back any minute now.”

No, I can’t let go

Roman’s hair was sticking to his face when he came inside. He dropped the grocery bags by the door when he saw everything around him.

‘Cause I love you so

“Patton, what the fuck is this?”

“Surprise,” Patton said. “Or should I say ‘surpride!’”

Roman smiled, picking up the grocery bags and putting them properly on the counter. “You look ridiculous.”

“Do you not like it?”

“Oh, Patton.” Roman pulled him in close, holding his cheeks in his hands. “I adore it.”

Patton leaned into the touch, pressing their lips together. “I adore you.”

“Not as much as I adore you.”

“Hmm, nah,” Patton hummed. “I think I love you the most.”

“Is that a challenge?”

“Maybe,” he said with a smirk. “OH! I have to show you something!” He grabbed Roman’s hand and they ran into the living room. Patton pressed play on his phone and grabbed Roman’s hands.

“You can’t slow dance to Troye Sivan.”

“Maybe not,” he said. “But I want to. I love you.”

“I love you too.”

If you change your mind, I'm the first in line Honey, I'm still free, take a chance on me

Patton pressed his head against Roman’s chest.

If you need me, let me know, gonna be around If you've got no place to go when you're feeling down

“We should stay like this forever.”

“What? Dancing?” Roman asked. “People have died from that.”

“No, not dancing,” Patton said. “I mean...”

If you're all alone when the pretty birds have flown Honey, I'm still free, take a chance on me

“Together. Forever.”

Gonna do my very best and it ain't no lie If you put me to the test, if you let me try

“I agree completely, my love.”

Honey, I'm still free, take a chance on me

#royality #ts royality #my royality retinas #sanders sides fic #sanders sides royality

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jj-lynn21 · 3 years

Note

can you write something where Roman and his wife are having a bunch of arguments and there to the point where they don’t know if they want to stay together. Peter tells them to go to marriage counseling. The therapist tells them to spend time with each other while there at work. Reader goes to his job and Roman goes to hers. And they just talk and watch each other work.

AN ALMOST BREAK-UP

“What the Fuck do you want now?” Roman screamed into the phone. “I’m busy.”

“Fuck you Roman.” You hung up.

Roman called you back. “Why the fuck did you hang up on me? You fucking call me while I’m working and...”

“I thought you said you were to busy? Fuck off Roman.” You hang up on him again.

He was seething. You were boiling. This was getting all to much. You were ready to leave him for good. It wasn’t always like this. Fighting and fucking to make-up. You thought he was the sexiest creature you ever laid eyes on whe you saw him leaning up against a wall at school talking to Peter just ten years ago. He would stand one step off school property smoking just so they couldn’t do shit to him. He was a rebel. A bad boy you wanted to tame.

When you eventually got the nerve to walk up to him to say hell he already new you liked him. He tried to play cool, but he was as nervous as you when you went on your first date to the movies with Peter and Letha. You thought for sure he would make a move in the darkness. He was a gentleman even when you practically jumped in his lap hiding your eyes under his chin when the movie scared you. He kissed you softly when he dropped you off the day. By the third date both of you wanted each other more than you cared to admit.

After sharing a milk shake you went out out to his jag. You took your panties off. He pulled you onto his lap. You took off his belt and he had his jeans and boxers down quickerly than you thought humanly possible. You fucked in his car for the first time that day. It was intense, exhilarating and hot. What made it even more exciting is you could have gotten caught at any moment. Roman was the first man that ever made you come.

Now he didn’t seem to care if you were satisfied or not. As long as he wore you out so you were not screaming at each other anymore he seemed fine. Fight and fuck became the normal. You had enough. You barely saw him the last few weeks or maybe over a month. He would leave for work before you were awake. He would come home after you were in bed usually smelling of bourbon and cigarettes. Even if you were not asleep you pretended to be when he tried to rouse you. He even masturbated right beside you in bed this week. He was so disgusting.

Roman sat with Peter on his lunch hour chain smoking and drinking. “I don’t know what is fucking going on with her.” He told his friend. “She doesn’t even want to fuck anymore.’

“I wouldn’t either, Roman.” Peter said bluntly. “Here.” Peter handed him a business card.”Me and Letha were probably were you two are right now a few months ago but I didn’t whine about it to you. Dr. Linda helped. I think she could help you to. Sher and brush your teeth before going home. You smell like an animal.”

“You should know. “ Roman smirked putting the business card in his jacket pocket. He was not sure about going to share their grievances but he didn’t think he should come home to you cleaned up more and at a reasonable hour. He moved some calls to the next day. They didn’t need done urgently. He showered at work and changed before coming home.

When he got there it was quiet. To quiet. He could usually hear you breath when he entered. when he walked across the room to go upstairs he noticed things missing. the pink bean bag chair he set up for you to read in a quiet corner near a window for natural light was gone. Photos of the two of you were missing. He ran upstairs. All your makeup and jewelry you kept in your area were gone. None of your cloths were in the closet. He ran his hand through his hair in frustration. He use to take you out for date nights one a week. When did he stop doing that? He guessed it had been a few weeks or months maybe? He had to do something quick before he lost his only love for good, if it was not to late already.

Roman called you. It went straight to voice message. “We need to talk on neutral ground.I hope you will meet me at the address I text you.” He called Dr, Linda. She was happy to see them that night since she got a last minute cancellation. Her voice was soothing. Even if his girl didn’t show up Dr. Linda said he could count on her to listen.

It was difficult at first. Roman and the Dr. Sat quietly. She waited for Roman to be ready to speak. Once he did it was like a flood gate. A lot of shit spewed out about his Mother and work situation. You showed up within a half hour. The Dr, greeting you with a smile. You sat far away from each other on the couch beginning to scream at each other right away. Dr, Linda let it go for a few minutes to read your body language and what was really be hind your word.

“Timeout.” She yelled. “No more talking. More listening.”

You and Roman just stared at her.

“You feel opisit of what you really are saying.” Dr. Linda suggested. “You don’t need farther from each other. You need closer. I guarantee the closer you are, the closer you will feel.’

Roman huffed. You rolled you eyes.

“You said you would go along with my suggestions Roman.” She looked to you after him. “I think you really miss him. He is very busy every day. I think the date night at least once a week need to be reinstated and for at least the next You go to work with him. You can take your own lap top to do your own writing so you don’t fall behind on your projects but go to work with Roman. Can you do that for me?”

“Yes,” You both sighed thinking it was to little to late. I want to see you next week after your first date night to hear your progress.” She smiled as she scheduled your next appointment. “This date should give you enough time. I think this could be good for you two.’

“Roman turned to you. “Will you move back in Baby?” He pouted. “You can stay in the guest room if you want.”

“Absolutely not.” Dr. Linda said. “You two need to go to dinner after this and you need to be together in your home.”

““OKay,” You whined quietly.

Roman helped you move your stuff back. The two of you were quiet at dinner. It was one of your favorite spots for date night but it felt cold. When you got home you fell into your chair and picked up your laptop to write.

“I’m going to go shower.” Roman stood in front of you but you didn’t look up. “I’m sorry I have not been taking care of myself for you lately.”

“You have smelled like an animal.’ You still didn’t look up.”

“Peter told me that to.” Roman chuckled.

You smirked. “He is a smart. man.”

“Smarter than me.” He went upstairs to shower. Put on his satin pajamas and a dash of colon.

Your senses perked up when he came down stair. You glanced at him. He was looking sexier than he had in a long time. He smiled at you looking at him continuing towards the kitchen. “Do you want some hot chocolate with whipped topping?”

You got up. “I would. Thank you Roman.” You sat on the counter as he made the treat. He turned to you walking up between you lets as the water warmed. His hands were on either side of the counter. “Let’s try not to have any more bad days. Especially one that start like this one did.”

“I can try.” You stroked his hair as you laid his head on your chest.

You did not have sex that night but held each other as they fell a sleep, When you saw how stressed out he was at work you knew why he was drinking and smoking so much, He needed a release from it all. That was the only thing available. She was across the room watching as she type up some notes for her next project. When Roman slammed the `phone down for the third time that day she walked over slowly falling to her knees in front of him. He looked at her taking her chin to stroke her face.

“I understand.” You said softly. “Can I try to help?”

“I would...” The phone rang. “fuck!” He answered it. You undid his pants he petted your head as he took the call with a CEO from another company. It was just what he needed to keep him calm.

When you got home he made sure to give you all you had been missing. Working you up slowly. Making sure you came multiple times before running you a nice bath to clean you up. It was the closness you both craved and it could only get better.

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synecdochereads · 3 years

Text

Six of Crows – review

Someone said, “heist movie but it’s a fantasy setting,” and I’ve been on the lookout for this book ever since. I finally found it in the clearance section of Half Price Books, and then—couldn’t read it. I got through the first chapter, I started the second, I put it down, and I didn’t pick it up again. Not sure why, but frankly this has less to do with the book than with me. I’ve been erratic about reading for, oh, years now – either I can’t focus for more than a few pages at a time, or I spend every waking moment with my nose in the book. There’s no middle ground. There’s no telling which way the cards will fall.

All of this to say, it’s not the book’s fault that it took me so long. But then the show came out, I watched it gleefully with my mom, and somehow having seen the characters onscreen made it easier to slip into their heads on the page. Two days later, I’ve inhaled the entire book as fast as I could get away with, and I’m in love.

This isn’t a regular book review – I’m terrible at ranking things, and the five-star system gives me anxiety. It’s mostly just some Thoughts™ neatly sorted for clarity, and hopefully reading over them will help you decide if you should pick this book up and fall in love with it like I did.

Mind the cut!

Characters

I am in love with them.

It probably helps that I’ve been looking forward to this book for ages, I’ve seen lots of gifsets and the occasional meta post, and of course I did watch three out of six crows swan about being fantastic for an entire season of a show that’s not even about them. But it’s not just that. There are a lot of technical literary ways you can analyze characters – arcs, themes, etc – but quite apart from all of that there’s just…are they compelling? They don’t have to be, for a book to be good, but it sure does help. And these six characters are so compelling.

(Also really likeable, which is even less necessary for a good story but which I do personally value. And I like these kids, I really do. Even Kaz “I commit atrocities without shame or remorse” Brekker. Wouldn’t want to meet him in a dark alley, or even a well-lit avenue! But I care about him and want him to succeed.)

It’s hard to devote equal time to six character arcs while also running a fantasy heist. Bardugo doesn’t try, but even the crows who get less screen time have complexity and depth. They’re all well fleshed-out, with full and distinct personalities and all that – on a technical level, these are really well-crafted characters. Top notch. Plus everyone struggles with different traumas and goals, and handles them in different ways, which gives us wonderfully varied arcs as they each move toward a deeper understanding of themselves, for better or for worse.

It also gives us really varied dynamics – some of them hate each other, some of them love each other, some manage to do both at once, some are just along for the ride. It’s as they pull at each other’s ragged edges that the story forms, in their different desperate needs and in what they can and cannot be for each other.

The show smoothed over a lot of the sharp edges and grey morality, most notably in Kaz. Kaz Brekker is a bad person. He does bad things for selfish reasons. His arc isn’t Learning To Be Good, it’s an ongoing question of whether he might, for the sake of the first person he has (quite accidentally) let himself love, consider maybe perhaps being slightly less of an amoral monster. I’ve seen this book described as “fantasy Leverage episode” but it’s really more Ocean’s Eleven, if Danny Ocean was a vicious bastard and everyone was seventeen.

And that’s great. I love that so much! Especially because the other crows run the gamut from shining idealism to casual self-interest (with a fun detour into “shining idealism but the ideal is violent bigotry”), so we really do get a morally complex story, without any easy black-and-white answers. One of the most kind-hearted people in the whole story has committed multiple murders and dreams of becoming a pirate. Kaz Brekker may do bad things for selfish reasons, but a lot of those selfish reasons boil down to “survive.” It’s complicated! It’s compelling!

Plot

It’s a fantasy heist, what more do you need?

Plots and counter-plots, double-crosses and last-minute improvisations. Magic, though it’s used as just another tool, as impressive and as prosaic as the gunslinger’s pistols. Dramatic climbs, elaborate disguises, cunning grifts, and some good old-fashioned sleight-of-hand. Six wildly competent teenagers, one impossible job, and four million fantasy dollars waiting for them if they can pull it off.

Well, okay, that’s just half of the story – maybe two thirds. The rest is flashbacks, showing us how these characters met and how they came to be the people they are; and stolen moments in between the action beats, where we see how they’re changing each other. It’s woven in really deftly. Our knowledge of the characters expands in time with the forward momentum of the plot, so that both parts of the story – the sorrows of the past and the edge-of-your-seat excitement of the present – get their hooks in you in tandem.

Worldbuilding

There are two settings in this book: Ketterdam, where we begin, and the Ice Court, where the bulk of the action takes place. The wider world outside these two cities is sketched in, alluded to in offhand comments and minor details of backstory. In theory, reading the Grisha trilogy would fill in those sketches, but I suspect it doesn’t matter. This is a heist story, after all: one entrance, one exit, and all the traps laid firmly between the two.

You know that thing authors do sometimes where they use the aesthetic of a real time and place, in the names and the architecture and so on, as a sort of worldbuilding shorthand? I’m a big fan of that. Ketterdam is clearly based on post-medieval Holland, perhaps in the late 17th century or so – a city of canals and commerce, with a ruling merchant class and a thriving criminal underworld, and a stock exchange at the heart of the wealthier district. The similarities feel like they’re just skin-deep – I don’t know that much about post-medieval Holland, but I’m pretty sure Bardugo has her own plans for the political situation in the wider world, which I assume is relevant in the Grisha trilogy. Here it’s not, and we have just enough detail to get a quick feel for the city, with extra importance granted to the politics of the various criminal gangs Kaz needs to worry about.

If I’m honest, I would have enjoyed a bit more detail in the worldbuilding. Ketterdam is vibrant and crowded, but it feels shallow; the only information we get is what relates directly to the characters’ actions. We’re told that it’s a big and complex city, but I don’t really have any idea what goes on there beyond, vaguely, “trade, gambling, and tourism.” But that’s probably just me. I’m unreasonably invested in worldbuilding. And anyway, we do get everything we need to understand the actual story.

The same is true in the Ice Court, the frozen capital of the Fjerdans. It’s a beautiful place, white and gleaming, and the parts that we see are incredibly vivid. We get scant glimpses of history and religion, the faintest suggestion of politics, and exactly enough of the city layout to understand the heist. We do, however, get a much deeper understanding of Fjerdan culture than we did of Ketterdam’s, because one of the crows defines himself utterly by the Fjerdan worldview, and his arc is largely about the difficulty of losing his place in that world and not knowing if or how he can ever get it back.

So yeah, we really do get everything we need to appreciate the story and the characters. I would have liked more, because I like worldbuilding, but what we do get is varied and satisfying.

Themes

I can’t really go in depth here without spoilers, so this’ll be a pretty vague section. I haven’t gone full lit-major on this book and I don’t especially plan to, but at a glance, the central theme is the tension between, in short, love and vengeance.

In long, several of the crows have the choice to embrace love as a force for healing and joy, or instead hold onto the (often violent) goals that have driven and defined them for so long. If they embrace love, it’ll mean letting go of the driving purpose that has kept them alive, and risking their whole identity (and possibly their lives) on a new purpose. It’s scary! It might ruin them! And it’s really not as easy as “love conquers all.”

(Big advantage of an ensemble cast: you can explore the same theme in different ways, with different outcomes, without having to settle for a single “answer” to the question posed by the theme. I really love it when that happens, honestly.)

It’s also not just romantic love! I mean it mostly is, but one of the crows has an arc that’s really about self-love, about learning to trust and prioritize not just your survival, but your happiness, your goals, and your ideals. About putting yourself first, not in a selfish way, but in a healthy, loving way. It’s really lovely, and although it has no bearing on the plot (it’s an internal moment of revelation), it’s one of my favorite things about the whole story.

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jokertrap-ran · 3 years

Photo

(未定事件簿) 夏彦 SR [忆中人] [Tears of Themis] Xia Yan SR [Reminiscent Person] Card Story Translations (Part 2)

*Tears of Themis Masterlist *Spoiler free: Translations will remain under cut *Xia Yan’s personal tag will be #Tears of a PI. Personal master-list under construction! *Suddenly I’m sad—

Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / SMS

Location: Within the Maze

After splitting up with Xia Yan, I entered the "Memory Maze" through the other door.

The interior of the room was dimly lit. Following the narrow path that had been set out, I eventually stopped in front of a wall.

MC: Touch the Magic Wall and accept the test of Memories...

Following the instructions on the wall, I slowly reached my hand out to touch the wall before me.

A holographic screen appeared on the wall upon my touch. It wrote:

"Which day and month does his birthday fall on?"

MC: Now this question is just too easy.

Ever since he came to my house, we'd always celebrate all our birthdays together.

A cake accompanied by a table full of hearty dishes, the only difference being the increasing amount of candles as the years went by; the same homely warmth never changing.

MC: The 5th… of December.

Entering the date that I'd long since committed to heart, the "wall" in front of me opened, revealing the path hidden behind.

MC: I see, so it was a hidden door…

☆⋅⋆…⋅─────────── ⋆⋅✾⋅⋆ ───────────⋅…⋆⋅☆

Location: Within the Maze

On the other end of the maze, stood Xia Yan as he stared at the question displayed before him.

Xia Yan: Which one of the following has she never done before?

Xia Yan: Watching a movie alone, eating hotpot alone… going to the Amusement Park alone…

He looked at the multiple choices in front of him, lapsing into a long silence.

Xia Yan: I can only choose one out of the lot?

Xia Yan: In my opinion, you shouldn't have to experience any of this.

He looked at the fourth option of "All of the above" hesitantly, unable to make up his mind.

After hesitating for another 3 seconds, he tapped his finger on the third option of "Amusement Park".

The screen flashed red and a "boop" sounded; his answer was incorrect.

Xia Yan: That was actually wrong?

Xia Yan: Under what circumstances would you end up going to the Amusement Park alone…?

The door before him didn't open. Instead, the screen dimmed, entering a one-minute lock-down period.

He lowered his eyes.

His usual cheery smile disappearing for the first time since he stepped foot into the challenge establishment.

Finally, the screen lit up again; this time, a different question coming into view: “How did she spend her previous birthday?”

Xia Yan: ……

Xia Yan: We used to celebrate our birthdays together last time.

A wry smile formed on his face; his eyes obscured in gloom.

His finger trembled ever so slightly as he pressed the option of "Celebrated alone" with a long sigh.

The door before him opened, but his steps were no longer as brisk as before when he stepped through the secret door.

Xia Yan: Was our parting… Was 8 years too long of a time…?

Xia Yan: Actually, wasn't one of my intentions in coming here to understand you a little more?

Xia Yan: You'd always cover it up with a smile every time we'd talk about the ups and downs of these 8 years… I know absolutely nothing about how you've spent those years.

☆⋅⋆…⋅─────────── ⋆⋅✾⋅⋆ ───────────⋅…⋆⋅☆

MC: Huh. Does he sleep in…?

MC: (He has gone through a multitude of military training, so I don't think he'd have a chance to sleep in, right?)

Even though that was the correct answer, I still couldn’t help but to recall how he loved sleeping in way more than I did, back when we were still little.

It’d take repeated bombings by both our parents to wake any of us up every weekend.

MC: I think… he can't even sleep in even if he wanted to now...

I got a good many questions wrong this round, mostly relating to Xia Yan’s experience for those 8 years that he had been gone.

I didn’t know anything about what he had experienced for those 8 years of his life that I wasn’t a part of.

MC: 8 years can really change a person's habits, huh.

???: You have 10 minutes remaining for this segment.

The reminder was like a bucket of ice water, jolting me out of my reverie.

Re-composing myself, I hurriedly proceeded on, exploring the maze in hope of finding a way out.

It was dark and suffocating within the maze and the path led to dead ends more than half the time. Those who had a fear of the dark would probably be panicking a lot more.

MC: No wonder the Staff Member earlier said that this was the stage where most people got stuck and failed…

After going back and forth, retracing my steps for a couple of times, I finally found another door that I could enter.

A seemingly simple question appeared before my eyes:

“Does he sleep-talk when he sleeps at night?”

MC: I know this one. He sleep-talks once in a while and I’ve even teased him a couple of times about it.

MC: Huh…?

The screen flashed red and entered lock-mode.

MC: … Why would that be wrong…?

There wasn’t much time left and this one minute seemed to stretch on for a very long time.

Suddenly, I faintly heard the sound of a secret door opening nearby. Looks like Xia Yan was already close by.

MC: (Finally! A new question!)

What’s the best present he has ever received?

MC: If he’s not going to be springing any more surprises onto me, then...

As expected, the treasure chest with a Sherlock Holmes-themed periphery was one of the answers. That was something that my parents had bought for him back when we were little, and he had used it to store various prized treasures of his.

It was unfortunately, currently in the possession of Sphinx.

MC: I’ll definitely find that chest back for you, Xia Yan.

The answer was correct. The screen lit up in green and the “wall” before me slowly opened.

☆⋅⋆…⋅─────────── ⋆⋅✾⋅⋆ ───────────⋅…⋆⋅☆

Xia Yan appeared before me, but he didn’t look quite as carefree and easy-going as he had been earlier.

He was silently standing in place; who knew what he was thinking about? A familiar smile took its place back up on his face upon seeing me appear from behind the door.

Xia Yan: Oh, you’re out. Pretty quick, aren’t ya!

MC: Sad that I’m still slower than you though...

???: You have 5 minutes left for this challenge.

The faint sound of the Staff Member’s voice calling out from a distance away within the maze made me and Xia Yan rush to find the maze’s exit.

☆⋅⋆…⋅─────────── ⋆⋅✾⋅⋆ ───────────⋅…⋆⋅☆

Fortunately, there weren’t any more puzzles, riddles or questions for us to run into the rest of the way, so we managed to make our way out of the maze in no time at all.

However, there were no Staff Members coming for us this time to lead us back at the maze’s exit, and the timed reminders never sounded ever again.

Xia Yan: The maze’s exit has been deadlocked.

There was a long corridor stretching out before our eyes, but it was dimly lit at the curve, making it hard to see the path that laid beyond.

Both sides of the wall had old oil paintings hanging from it and some even had spider webs hanging from them.

Xia Yan: All these paintings… Why are they all identical?

Even the picture frames were identical. Xia Yan took one of the paintings down but wasn’t able to find any hidden clues upon closer inspection.

Returning the painting back to its original position, he frowned.

Xia Yan: Looks like we can only proceed onwards.

MC: Does this mean that we have to find the last checkpoint on our own?

Xia Yan: Not necessarily, they might pull some random quick-time events to test out reaction time.

MC: They wouldn’t… make a member of the staff dressed as a ghost jump-scare us out of nowhere, right?

I glanced at the dim and dark corridor of doom and gloom, a bad feeling settling within my heart.

Xia Yan: Weren't you not afraid of ghosts?

MC: But you’ll still get a fright if they suddenly jump out at you when you’re least suspecting it, right…?

Xia Yan: How about I scout the way ahead for you? That way, there won’t be anything out there to scare you.

MC: You’d always walk in front of me like that whenever we used to go to Haunted Houses back when we were young.

Xia Yan’s footsteps paused as he turned his head to face me.

Xia Yan: How have you been for those 8 years that I wasn't here…?

MC: Pretty well!

Xia Yan: You… When did you go to the Amusement Park alone?

MC: Are you trying to ask me “how lonely” I must have been to do that? It’s really not like that, I swear.

MC: That was actually the time when I had agreed to go to the Amusement Park with a friend of mine, but she cancelled at the last minute when I was already there, saying how she had something urgent crop up last minute and she wasn’t able to get away.

MC: Since I was already there and all, I simply decided to go in and have fun for the entire day by myself.

Xia Yan: So that’s how it is. And here I thought...

MC: You thought what?

MC: That I didn’t have a single friend to go to the Amusement Park with?

Xia Yan: No, no! That’s not what I meant!

MC: Actually, there was a period of time where I felt really lonely all by myself. You were gone, and my parents weren't around either.

MC: And during holidays, I'd eat hotpot alone, but I'd also set out four sets of bowls and chopsticks, as if all of you were there...

Xia Yan: ……

Looking at the slightly pained look on his face, I hurriedly changed the topic.

MC: But it's all already in the past; plus, I think that this was also a really good chance for me to learn how to live alone by myself.

MC: Enough about me. Are you still so busy that you don't even have the time to sleep in, even though you're now back in Stellis City?

☆⋅⋆…⋅─────────── ⋆⋅✾⋅⋆ ───────────⋅…⋆⋅☆

Location: Challenge House Corridor

MC: Enough about me. Are you still so busy that you don't even have the time to sleep in, even though you're now back in Stellis City?

Recalling all the questions that I had answered incorrectly to, I couldn't help but to start doubting myself. Was I usually somewhat ignorant when it came to him?

Xia Yan: I'm not as busy now. If I was, then I wouldn't have accepted a job like this.

Xia Yan: The reason why I don't sleep in is mostly because I'm already used to it.

MC: You're used to it?

Xia Yan: Yeah. Sleeping wasn't allowed during training.

Xia Yan: And I've been trained for so long that it looks like I don't need that much sleep anymore.

He spoke very casually about it, but I couldn't help but to feel that those three words that he had just uttered, "used to it" , wasn't as simple as he made it out to be.

MC: You don't sleep-talk anymore; was that also something that changed over time?

Xia Yan: I didn't always talk in my sleep now, did I?

MC: ……

Xia Yan: Okay… This sort of thing definitely had to be fixed through special training. Plus, it wasn't severe in my case, else they wouldn't have chosen me in the first place.

Even though there was no one in our vicinity, Xia Yan still lowered his voice as he spoke

Xia Yan: Getting rid of a bad habit definitely comes with a bit of difficulty and no short amount of effort.

Xia Yan: But these little problems aren't enough to take me down!

MC: Haa… You always make it sound so easy.

He beamed confidently, one filled with as much warmth as it did back when he was still a boy.

Just remembering those years that we were separated for, the strict training he had gone through and the dangerous nature of his job made my heart ache like no tomorrow.

Xia Yan: (Y/n), don't you think we've been walking for too long now…?

Xia Yan suddenly came to a halt.

MC: Too long?

Xia Yan: Yeah. There's obviously no way an Experience Hall like this would have such a long corridor.

MC: How strange. We've been walking for this long, but we've still yet to reach the end.

Xia Yan: We might be going round in circles… I purposely hung the painting I took down earlier a little more crookedly.

He pointed at one of the decorative paintings hanging on the wall.

MC: So, you're saying that that's the painting you took down at the start, and that we're just walking around this place in circles?

Xia Yan: Probably…

MC: Then it looks like we'll have to search around and see if there are any hidden clues lying about this corridor.

Xia Yan and I started searching for anything that might be hiding some clues in this endless corridor.

Thankfully, there wasn't anything too complicated in the area, so we were soon able to find a slip of paper hidden at the back of a mirror.

Xia Yan: Find me, take me, and the curse shall be broken.

MC: So they want us to find a certain something in particular…

MC: And as to the things here that could even be remotely referred to as "me"...

We both looked into the distance, setting our eyes onto the "bone" that was seating above the piano…

MC: No way… Is the answer really that simple?

Xia Yan: That doesn't seem quite right. I'll go take a look first, so you wait here for me.

He patted my shoulder before proceeding onwards.

Right when he reached the piano and picked the "bone" up, all the lights in the corridor suddenly went out.

☆⋅⋆…⋅─────────── ⋆⋅✾⋅⋆ ───────────⋅…⋆⋅☆

MC: AHH——!

Xia Yan: You good, (Y/n)?

I was just about to reply to Xia Yan when a hand suddenly grabbed me from behind, pulling me in the opposite direction.

MC: !!!

???: Shh—— Quiet, don't make a sound. Come with me; this is all part of the game.

The hushed whispering of a Staff Member sounded beside my ear. I hurriedly shut my mouth, letting the Staff Member pull me forward.

It was pitch-black in front of him, but it seems like this person was already used to traversing this path, for the utter darkness didn't seem to bother him in the slightest.

───⋅𝕿𝖎𝖑𝖑 𝖓𝖊𝖝𝖙 𝖙𝖎𝖒𝖊…⋆⋅☆

#Tears of Themis #Xia Yan #Translations #Otome #Mihoyo #未定事件簿 #夏彦 #忆中人 #Reminiscent Person #午夜华章 #Symphony of the Night #Tears of a PI

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totally-incorrect-theatre-quotes · 4 years

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You Need the Dark to See the Stars (fanfic)

I told you guys I would write a fanfic soon haha.

This is a fanfic about Lydia having grown up in New York City and not being used to clearly seeing the stars at night.

______________________________________________________________

Having grown up in New York City Lydia was constantly surrounded with the fast-paced life of living in the city. She was used to the chaos that startled tourists, she was one of those people that couldn’t fall asleep if there wasn’t noise coming from somewhere. She had her reservations when her father announced they would be going to Connecticut for a little bit, it was six months after her mother had died and though it probably sounded insane, being at home even though she wasn’t there anymore was a comfort. The walls and floors still had her mother’s imprint. An entire childhood filled with memories held in the creak boards on their front porch.

It was only going to be for a little bit though, she assumed, maybe getting out of the house would do her some good. Her mom always joked about how city people need to go to the countryside to get some fresh air every now and again, maybe this is just what Lydia needed. It quickly turned out to not be the case, just driving through the endless and monotonous country highways had Lydia itching for ...something to happen. It was too quiet, she thought she was dreaming when she saw a cow on the side of the road at one point. Besides New York the only place she had really been was New Jersey to see her grandparents and once she went to Philadelphia for some kind of class field trip in the second grade. She’d been to upstate New York too but nothing beat pulling up in the rock driveway of the house they’d be staying in. She didn’t understand why her dad had packed so much for this trip, sure it was the end of the school year but he would have told her if they were staying there the whole summer. Regardless she was told to pack almost everything she had and brought it with her on the trip, what was even more confusing was why Delia was tagging along. No matter how long they were staying it was kind of laughable that her dad thought Lydia even needed Delia.

Everything quickly hit the fan when she learned that they were never going back to New York, that they were all going to live here now. It was rubbing salt in the wound when he proposed to Delia, she hadn’t even known they were dating. She felt like her entire life was being replaced. New home, a new state, and now her dad was getting a new wife. Her mother hadn’t even been dead six months by that point. So much happened those early days of her living in the house, such a wide range of emotions that she didn’t take much notice of anything. It was just survival at that point.

After a chaotic week that encompassed kicking her father out, terrorizing the neighbors, an exorcism, a green-card marriage, and literally going to hell and back to say that Lydia was exhausted was an understatement. When things slowed down and she wasn’t dealing with exorcisms and possessions every five seconds she started to miss some of the craziness. It was too quiet in the house with all the adults, and ever since Beetlejuice had gone to the Netherworld to go on some vision quest Lydia had been feeling lonely.

Which she didn’t understand why she had so many people in the house that loved her and things were different now. They listened to her and she was allowed to talk about what she wanted, but being able to hear the wind and the rustling of trees from her bedroom window, it was unnerving. The quiet was dangerous because she was just alone with her thoughts, and she knew that wasn’t always the best place to be. She hardly slept and when she did it was nightmares of what happened, she’d wake up in a panic unable to calm down until she realized it was just a dream.

A week had passed since Beetlejuice had left, she tossed around the idea of summoning him but she felt selfish for even thinking about it after all she did to him. Instead, she found herself drawn to the roof again...not for the reasons before. She just felt it was where she needed to be. After being careful to not alert any of the adults as to what she was up to she pulled the window shut and stepped onto the flat part of the roof.

She walked over to the edge, careful to hold onto the railing, and just breathed. The chill June air filling her nose and she peered out to the scenery around her. She hadn’t taken notice of it when she was up here the first time, she was so focused on going through with her plan and then Beetlejuice that she hadn’t even realized how beautiful it all was. Trees for miles and miles, street lamps illuminating the main road, neighbors with houses decorated with little quirky nicknacks like flamingos and lawn gnomes. Looking down towards her own backyard and she could see the garden Adam and Barbara must have started before they died, it was illuminated with tiny glowing bugs that she had never seen in person before but knew they were called fireflies. The peaceful coos of nighttime birds, the rushing water from a creek she didn’t even know they had, the slow hum of cars driving past not consistently but enough. She didn’t ever realize how noisy the quiet was, all that was going on.

She laid down on the roof, with her hands behind her head, and looked up at the night sky. It was a perfect night, not a single cloud in her way. She was amazed by just how clear it all looked. Her mom always talked about how she wanted to take Lydia and her dad on a road trip to get away from the city for a while and just stare up at the sky, she promised Lydia when she was little that they would count all of the stars by the time they were through. Of course, six-year-old Lydia didn’t understand just how many stars there were in the sky, but her mother had been talking about this trip for years. It eventually became a running joke in the family that they would never end up going, but when Emily got sick the joke stopped being funny. The summer before she died they were supposed to go, not a whole road trip but Lydia had planned it all out, saved her money for almost a whole year just to surprise them with a camping trip upstate. They never got to go, she doesn’t even remember the reason why. She had to settle for trying to see the stars from her front porch, with all the tall buildings and light pollution blocking her view.

Now here she was, not exactly the trip they had planned but she was stargazing. Almost without meaning too, she started counting them, losing track and starting over. She started to doze off when she heard the window creak open. She didn’t react, just went back to mumbling the numbers and drawing pictures by connecting all the white dots.

“Lydia?” her dad asked, “What are you doing up here? I walked past your room and the door was open and you weren't in your bed.”

“Just wanted some fresh air. It’s so stuffy in my room.”

“You do know you have a window you can open, you don’t have to come on the..incredibly high roof.”

She glanced up and he was standing right above her head. She smiled at him, “Do you want to join me?”

“Join you?”

Lydia schooced over and patted next to her. He looked hesitant at first but he bent down, and with a typical dad groan he laid on his back and looked up at the sky. He put his hands on his stomach, “What are we looking at?”

“The stars.” Lydia told him, “They’re so clear tonight. When you were a kid did you get to see them a lot? I know you moved to the city for mom, was it hard having that shift in...everything?”

“It was hard, there was a lot to get used to but there was so much new stuff, and of course there was Emily and eventually you. I missed my hometown, but I loved what I had. Do you miss the city?”

Lydia shrugged, “Yeah, I wish you had told me we were moving. I could have maybe prepared myself a little better to have to change everything from a city slicker to a country girl.”

“Change everything?” he laughed

“Everything, dad you brought me to the middle of nowhere in Connecticut and I have no flannel, not camo, and most importantly I don’t even know how to play baseball so now I can’t have my underdog story where I join an all-boys team and wow the crowd because...girls can play baseball.”

“You have never been interested in sports in our life.”

“The point is that I could have been, and now I will never have the cinderella sports story. They could have made a movie about it.”

“Yeah?”

“Mmhh, and they’d get Brad Pitt to play you, my dad who cheered me on at every game.”

“I am so sorry I robbed you and the world of this. If it is any consolation, my life is the opposite of a Hallmark movie. Instead of Emily coming with me to the countryside, or you know just the suburbs, we moved to the big city.”

“Wow, our family missed out on so many movie opportunities. Tragic really.”

For a while they just laid up there, saying nothing. Lydia put her hand down in between them and he held it, just like he did when she was little and came into her parents’ room after having a nightmare.

“I wish mom got to see this,” she whispered, “that trip we had always planned. We never got to do this with her, she never got to see them.”

“I wish she could see this too.”

“I miss her.”

“I do too.”

Lydia shifted and looked over at her dad, she could see a faint tear streak going down his face. She didn’t mention it, she just laid back down and moved closer to him. They left space though, almost as if there was a third person between them. Someone else who should have been there looking up at the night sky with their family.

#lydia deetz #charles deetz #adam maitland #barbara maitland #delia deetz #beetlejuice #incorrect beetlejuice quotes #beetlegeuse #beetlejuice the musical #beetlejuice fanfiction #beetlejuice fanfic

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shinygoku · 4 years

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Liar Revealed! A Bug’s Life Essay

A Bug’s Life is my favourite Pixar movie and thus, it turns out I have a lot of thoughts about it. In this case, what was originally my interpretation soley in response to points I’ve seen raised on YouTube and TV Tropes has spun off into this mega essay.... all focused on a single scene.

But hey, it works with one of the film’s main messages; that something big grows out of a small idea!

The scene is the most notorious in the movie, at least from what I’ve seen, and I’m inclined to agree it’s the weakest part of this giant clock. But why is it like that and how could it have been handled better?

As I’ve said, this is actually my favourite (albeit not what I consider their very best) of Pixar’s output, and I wouldn’t have been able to go into such depth without a huge amount of love for the finished product, flawed as it may be.

It’s also possible I’ll write a more generalised thing on what I love about the film in the future, but I won’t promise anything o7;; 🐜

The Lie is ...laid

Actually, I should talk about two scenes. First is where the Lie is established:

After the humourous mutual misunderstanding between the Circus Bugs and Flik, the former are quite horrified to discover they’re expected to fight the Grasshoppers off themselves instead of putting on a show. Ahh, that old classic~

But no, they want out and Flik, who has just been informed by them during the welcoming shindig, is understandably rattled and despairing over this addition to his list of failures. He says the fallout will not only brand him, but his hypothetical grandchildren as a Terrible Loser and even says he’s as good as dead as soon as the other ants find out. Owch.

Before things get too heavy, the focus shifts around until The Bird becomes the main immediate threat. The whole Bird scene leads the ants to become convinced the Circus Bugs are really amazing warriors and, as this is the first time in what could be years that they have a crowd cheering for them it’s the success and Flik’s later idea to make a Giant Mech in the shape of a Bird instead of planning any actual combat that convinces them to play along.

So, that’s the lie set up and solidified. Now for the eventual fallout:

During a fun party after the Bird has been built, an ominous force arrives... PT Flea, the Jerkass ringmaster who had fired the Circus Bugs. This local bug promptly ruins everything by literally shining a light on the Circus Bugs and their nature as such, and then Flik is accidentally outed as the Guy Who Thought Up The Bird.

The Liar Revealed Trope

I would link the TV Tropes article here, but as tungle doesn’t like external sites I’ll just quote the more relevant parts from it:

“Liar Revealed in the Internal Reveal of The Lie, the facade maintained by a protagonist which provides the primary dramatic tension for the plot. This usually sets up the third act where the protagonists are forced to deal with the consequences of the lie on top of any external threats.

There are a few usual ways this ends up. If the lie was for selfish reasons, the protagonist will doubtless face the wrath of those he lied to, but along the way end up having a change of conscience, and try to redeem themselves through good acts and An Aesop about "what really matters". If the lie was well-intentioned, the protagonist may still find that others turn their backs on him, but go on to carry through with what they said they'd do anyway, proving themselves a hero after all.

It's worth noting that this trope is particularly easy and common to misuse, either in the tendency of the protagonist to Maintain the Lie for reasons that make no sense except for dramatic tension or of the deceived to turn against the protagonist for the deception in spite of other considerations that should by all rights absolve him.”

And in the folder there’s a specific entry for this film:

A Bug's Life has Flik supposedly finding "warrior bugs" to save his colony after misconstruing a situation. When he realizes his mistake (that they're circus performers rather than trained warriors), he's forced to keep the lie going in order to not cause panic among the other ants. Once the colony finds out, it inevitably results in one of the most painfully Played Straight examples of this trope in animation history...

As you can see there, the dislike for this scene has seeped into the entry. Of course, TV Tropes is pretty informal and I like that, but it’s telling that this is a general perception.

Continue reading below the Cut! ✂

What I don’t like

So, I think my main issue with the scene boils down to... it’s very nebulous and unclear as to what’s so bad about Flik lying. Between the Council, the Queen and Atta, there seems to be a jumbled, confusing motive traffic jam that somehow results in what TV Tropes refers to the Liar Reveal Trope being played “Painfully Straight”.

But uhh, what’s the problem? Yes, Flik lied, but we know that wasn’t something he’d planned on doing, it was his attempt at damage control. The other ants don’t know that part, but still, what are they objecting to, specifically? That the Circus bugs are Circus bugs? That the Bird Plan was Flik’s? That.... lying is treated at an absolute moral failing regardless of the circumstances??

The council dudes are like: “OH WHAAAAT, the defence plan was by Clowns??” [No, it was Flik] “OH WHAAAT, we don’t have our mafia money prepared what if Hopper finds out we nearly sicced a fake bird on him!?”

The part about objecting to Clowns drafting the defence plans is actually the more reasonable explanation, but I guess they presumed warriors habitually made Decoy Bird plans instead of fighting themselves? There’s already a hole in their objections but it only gets worse.

The Queen is like: “Wow Flik evidently you’re a self serving prick. Anyway the best thing to do is pretend this never happened and no we’re not going to tell Hopper.”

Why the fuck would that happen? ‘Oh sorry Hopper we got sidetracked doing a ...thing... so we’re still picking your food no please don’t break my legs’

But also, why THE FUCK is this the plan? Some ruler you are, you old prune. ‘We have the bird all made and ready to go but oops the idea came from a DIRTY LIAR so we’re going to return to the doomed harvesting racket even though we’ve been set an outrageous amount and we can’t possibly hope to catch up and even if we had been picking the food the entire time it was established earlier on we won’t have time for our supplies on top of all that.’

Fucking.... astonishing lack of logic. YOU MORONS HAVE NOTHING LEFT TO LOSE, GO WITH THE BIRD! Flik himself says something to a similar effect lol

But noooooo, his arguably selfish lie [which is more Omitting the truth once he knew it, really] has forever doomed everything, apparently. Honestly it comes across more like they just hate Flik and see anything he invents as doomed to fail, so the second the truth emerges that he spearheaded the Mech Bird they dismiss it as a lost cause. Even though everyone worked together to build it, and Flik’s inventions weren’t the issue but him being awkward and clumsy. But seeing how Flik’s mere presence in his first scene seemed to drive the Council members into a quivering fury, it really does feel like their objections are from them refusing to give him a chance.

And then there’s Princess Atta. Hoo Boy.

In this scene, she comes off as being ridiculously vindictive, petty and hypocritical. This applies to the Council too, but it’s more galling coming from Atta as by now she’s realised that Flik gets a lot of flak [yay wordplay] from the others and she had resolved to give him more credit. BUT OOPS, that didn’t last!

She takes the Lying thing so personally, acting like he was cheating on her or something. “You lied to MeEeEee” well golly gee whiz, was there any particular reason why he would tell you the truth? Other than his rather obvious crush on you, that is? Cause that would still be a weird reason, seeing how the ‘lie’ was after he’d finally got a bit of decent treatment from the others, why would he wanna upset the apple cart?

He probably feared coming out and confessing to Atta [or anyone else] that they’d lose all faith in him and scrap a valid plan that was the only way out of the grasshopper racket mess. Which would be a bit silly and probably the result of someone with low self esteem and confidence issues overthinking the situation but it’s Exactly what actually happens!

It wasn’t a personal slight against you, Princess! To quote Helen Parr: THIS IS NOT! ABOUT! YOU!!

And wooow, you must be awfully chilly up there on your high horse, Miss “Lied to Flik to get rid of him earlier in the film”! Did you ever feel like fessing up? Like ‘hmm I’ve grown much fonder of this doofus, maybe I should be honest with him before engaging with some more light flirting’ ? Maybe if you had, he woulda been honest in return!

I don’t even see why she and the Council bothered lying about their Snipe Hunt ploy, seeing how now they act like he crossed a moral event horizon. Why even bother making a phoney baloney decoy idea to get him away, when they clearly dislike him enough to play the Brutally Honest card without fretting over his feelings. They coulda just ordered him to stay in a corner away from interfering but instead they’re willing to risk his life on a wild goose chase.

...And she then Banishes him! For what?? Lying? About what, the circus bugs or the bird plan? Both?? It really feels like her taking undue personal offence and the Council hating him and the Queen being old and senile.

So yeah, wow, this scene has what I think is the Unintended side effect of making me hate the stupid jerkface Ant colony as every named ant in it except for Dot fucking suck and throw Flik under a bus the second they deem him to be untrustworthy. In spite of, like, that the plan itself was solid and that the Circus Bugs have all been proven to be Good Eggs. They don’t give him a chance to explain and made their own bed to lie in, so I feel dark joy and satisfaction when the grasshoppers do arrive and kick them around some more.

Wow gee, if only you dumb ass ants had some sort of already made contraption to fall back on?

Why is it like this?

I can only make guesses here, be warned!

From what I’ve gathered of an older version of the story, mostly via Wikipedia, I kinda feel like the exposing would have fit that take better. In the beta version of the story, instead of Flik the lead would have been “Red”, who was a red ant and circus bug from the start. The first draft Circus lot woulda been out to scam the ants initially and I guess would have grown genuine fondness with time. The idea of an outsider flim flamming his way into the good books and later being exposed makes the overblown outrage a lot more understandable. But that’s my hypothesis for the direction they ultimately didn’t go in. Also look at how Red looks like a fuckboi here:

But in the final version, Red doesn’t exist! Flik is a part of the colony from the get go, but also apart from it cause no one likes him as, again, his ideas were good but poorly executed and he seemed to be a hindrance. But the ants should at least see that Flik is genuine in his attempts, that he’s trying his best and they should maybe cut him some slack.

The way the ants have their knickers in a twist doesn’t gel so well with the “Well meaning screwup” angle, especially compared to a possible “Opportunistic so-and-so who doesn’t have real attachments to the colony” route.

Also it may be worth noting up there where I put a TV Tropes excerpt, I bolded the relevant half of the run down, but it seems the other half applies much more to this first draft. Interesting...

So I don’t know, but I got the idea that the scene in the movie is basically a holdover from earlier that didn’t get sufficiently updated. The Liar Revealed Scene is the first thing I’d change if I were rewriting the script, and I might go back and change it again after other parts had been redone too, cause the story needs to flow from point A to point B etc. smoothly or else viewers will get annoyed and point it out in Youtube videos or overly long tumblr text posts.

How could it be fixed?

I’m not saying I’m sitting on the perfect idea of a rewrite. But the main thing is what I already touched on, the jarring disconnect between what happens and how the stupid ants respond.

Like, Atta’s sudden grabbing of the Jerkass and Idiot Balls in this scene. Wouldn’t it have been better if she was instead unsure and conflicted? She had lied to Flik earlier and, unlike the Council, was shown to actually realise Flik Has Feelings Too and apologised for the general lack of faith. She didn’t come clean about the Snipe Hunt Lie, so that could be weighing on her during this scene, maybe she would have been the only Council member to Not want to kick him out but felt pressured into it and hasn’t got into the groove of being the Future Queen enough to pull rank and talk them down from being hate filled twats. Maybe someone will mention the flirting that had been happening as muddying her judgement?

That’s my main idea, compare that with her barging in and taking undue personal offence and shooing him off. She’s supposed to feel like she’s doomed to fail too, so her facing a moral dilemma and falling on the wrong side of the fence could tie into that! (To be honest, her arc is kinda undercooked so hey, I’m killing two birds with one stone here!)

Flik being banished at all is a casualty of The Narrative, that he and the Circus Bugs have gotta go away temporarily for the finale to be cooler and more exciting. It’s a Necessary Weasel of writing and you’ll find them in every story ever made. Sometimes things have gotta happen cause Story Structure. The trick is having them more organic and concealed.

So yeah, have the Old Fogeys be in the wrong [which is so far unchanged] but also the majority of the ‘voting’. Make it difficult for Atta to choose between loyalty to the colony as a whole and her sense of duty versus trusting in Flik, who she now knows to always have his heart in the right place. She comes close to standing up for him and herself, but ultimately falters and gets pressured into the call made in the movie. She’s still ultimately responsible as leaders are, but in a much more sympathetic way.

Summation

This got way longer than I had initially imagined, and that’s even after I cut stuff in the editing process! Let’s quickly review the three main points I’m trying to make.

The Issue with the scene - A big song and dance is made over The Lie, but no reason why it’s such a terrible thing is offered. A perfectly sound plan is dismissed nonsensically.

Suspected reasoning for the writing - The tone matches a potential alternate story much better, where someone would have lied for self serving purposes instead of for the greater good.

A suggestion for a rewrite - Make it much more nuanced and fitting the character arcs. Give the characters a reason to react the way they do and have different responses per person. If the ants are going to drop the Bird plan, at least offer a more viable alternate route than going back to what wasn’t working before.

Does it really matter?

Well, I don’t expect a 22 year old film to suddenly get a rewrite, no. And I maintain that it’s a real gem which deserves much higher praise with the other Good Pixars instead of being so constantly overlooked.

Part of what spurred me to think about the scene and what I’d alter is seeing it referred to as ‘Kinda Bad’ in a youtube video that was talking about another Liar Reveal scene in another movie, and that is a bad take, but the point about how clunky this part is isn’t wrong. I don’t want people to dismiss the whole, beautiful image cause one section of it doesn’t vibe!

It doesn’t ruin the picture, but when people have something negative to say it’s this which is the magnet. And I’m kinda guilty of doing the same thing here, haha. But I wanted to really dissect and examine it, to figure out why it’s like that and to guess how simple it may be to rework. It’s bittersweet, but there ain’t such a thing as a perfect movie.

This has been fun for me to go into though, and it’s nice to get thoughts out from just swirling around inside my head, so even if barely anyone sees and makes it through this whole dissertation, I’m glad I wrote it out. It’s a funny way to derive enjoyment from the bumpy part of a beloved movie, but hey, I’ll take it~

#A Bug's Life #Liar Revealed Trope #Pixar #Disney Pixar #Disney #CutCat writes a very long essay

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ivyveil · 5 years

Text

Truth or Drink

the one where it's worth a shot, but is it worth the truth?

A/N: Hi! This fic is based off of this video series by Cut (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auBSJIJ_C_8) . I fell in love with the idea and I thought I would do a piece on it. I hope you enjoy! 11.4k

It hadn’t seemed real until you were there.

The set was more professional than you had expected. Considering how much time you had spent with Harry’s old circle of friends, you had anticipated a low budget, maybe with the setting being a friend’s house. But it was genuinely in a production studio warehouse, with props and expensive equipment. You kept forgetting that Harry was doing much better for himself now.

They even had a snack tray, for Christ’s sake.

A sizable crew of people milled around the outskirts of the set, their shoes crinkling up the paper that cascaded down two poles, creating a white wall and floor in front of the camera. The director’s seat was empty and the camera was given a wide berth.

A wooden table had been set up in the middle of the paper floor, with three bottles of alcohol, two glasses of orange juice, and two shot glasses on top. The set-up was cute, probably ‘aesthetic’, but regardless, it sent shivers down your spine. Two chairs sat beside the table, angled out towards the expectant camera and muttering crew. Waiting for you, waiting for him.

It hadn’t seemed real until he showed up.

In a sweater colored with muted hues of greens and tans, and sunglasses pulling back his hair, Harry looked unbearably familiar. In an unsettling way, like you had watched a movie starring him at 3 am and woke up the next morning, dusty and vague memories of him coating your tongue and settling against your pillows.

It even fell down to the way he was walking, how his stance lingered more on the left than the right, and how his eyes swept the room. And how he could make you feel like the only one in the world, when his eyes landed on you and he smiled. He smiled as if you both had a secret no one else could understand, because that was partially the truth.

His boots sounded crisp on the paper. He was clipping his microphone against the collar of his shirt, ducking his head down momentarily to eyeball whether it was right. Which was a reminder of how this was all to be made public, how you two were to broadcast your conversation to countless of strangers who never asked for it, but would readily comment.

And that hadn’t seemed like something Harry would normally be willing to do, but to be fair, you hadn’t spoken to the man for almost a year.

It hadn’t seemed real until it was.

The two of you didn’t properly acknowledge each other, not in the way you would’ve if the meeting had been a casual one. Not riddled with anticipation and nerves.

Instead, you two chose to settle in the chairs and keep your attention on the objects around you. There had been smiles exchanged but the air was still thick, feeling like starch against the back of your throat. You both invented itches on your arms, a sudden interest in how your sleeves were rolled, etc, and ignored that the other was doing the same.

Harry shifted the shot glass so it was closer to him, as if anticipating the inevitable slosh of drunken choices he’d make soon. It was more likely than not, that you two – usually fairly private – would rather drink than confess anything.

“Looks like whiskey, vodka, and-” Harry opened up the third bottle, grasping onto the lid as he held up the bottle to his nose. “-maybe tequila?”

He glanced over, eyebrows raised as he tilted the bottle, presumably for you to smell as well. Perhaps there was hope in his eyes that you two could proceed with grace and without properly acknowledging the iceberg of problems between you.

The fact he could sit there and treat the situation so casually, was so frustratingly Harry that you weren’t sure how you had expected anything different. It had been a long while since you had been near him, but he still knew how to try and make you feel at ease. Like he could still read your mind as well as he had a year ago, that he could feel your discomfort and wanted to make amends.

The problem had been, and still was, that he tried to make up for whatever had gone wrong, without fully acknowledging what had actually gone wrong to begin with. His words never laid out flat what the issue was, and so you had often been left dissatisfied, searching for a resolution that he wasn’t offering.

You sniffed the bottle, because of course you did, wrinkling up your nose as you nodded. Tequila. Some strangled noise came from your throat, and Harry was clearly expecting it, for he giggled and plugged up the bottle again.

You hated tequila.

“Thanks fo’ coming, by the way. Didn’t think you’d agree to it,” he confessed, his fingers lingering on the sides of the bottle as he feigned interest in organizing them. As if a straighter line of liquor would wash away the tension, how quiet you had been, and how strangely surreal the next half hour would be.

Shifting in the seat, you crossed your legs and flexed out your foot. Getting comfortable in a situation that was anything but was not your forte by any means. It was your job as an interior designer, for Christ’s sake, to make every environment graceful and cozy.

But the tension between you two had another layer on top, which was your inherent nature of despising the something not being positioned correctly.

In this case, it was the fact you were even in the room.

“No problem. Sounded interesting. Thanks for-” you paused, unsure of what to say but feeling as though you ought to thank him back, “-thinking of me?”

Harry let out a laugh, unexpected by you, and apparently from him as well. Not that you had anticipated a change, or were even trying to notice, but his nose still wiggled when he smiled.

For the first moment since your friend had dropped you off in the parking lot ten minutes prior, you felt settled. Perhaps not confident enough to last through the list of questions without a single tear, but confident enough that you were both in the same situation. You and Harry could make it work and be alright.

It was a situation set up with the consent of each of you, after all, although that didn’t take away the nervous butterflies and worms writhing around in your chest.

Harry poured each of you a shot of whiskey, holding out the glass like a sense of a peace offering. Alcohol had never been your safe havens, but you figured it was alright to pitch a tent for a day.

You accepted it gratefully, making sure your fingers wouldn’t graze against his as you took the drink. Knocking it back felt like a rude awakening, but a necessary one, to approach what was coming.

The wall of paper rustled behind you, and the director popped his head around the corner. His name-tag read Chris, and you recognized the name as one of Harry’s newer friends, not one of the friends who would recognize you, which was a relief.

Chris was the reason Harry was doing the show, it seemed, as voluntarily airing past relationships was slightly out of character for Harry. His sense of duty towards his friends seemed to outweigh his typical cloak of privacy, and you couldn’t say you were altogether surprised. It didn’t clarify why he had asked you to be the ex on the show, though. He had a handful of others who were more likely to generate “viral content” with their outlandish drama, you knew, yet he had asked you.

“Thank you both for getting here on time. We can go ahead and get started if that’s okay,” Chris clasped his hands together, strutting past the table and towards his director’s chair. He was wearing plaid pants that swished against his legs as they moved, and that was the only noise in the room for a few seconds. Harry and you looked at each other, a bit uneasy that the moment had come upon you both so quickly. He quirked an eyebrow, as if to say there was no reason to delay it any longer. You took a deep breath and nodded.

“Okay, here’s how it’ll work. Martha will put these cards on the table. One of you will read out the question and the other will answer. If the person answering chooses not to, that person will have to take a shot. Easy enough. If you wanted to elaborate with your answers, we encourage that as well. And if you need to take a moment, let us know, but the camera stays rolling.”

It was a lot of information at once, and you found yourself nodding without comprehending as Chris rambled on. Your mind, ever the traitor, was stuck on how a week ago Harry had texted you. It was truly out of the blue, since your break up hadn’t resulted in a good, or even shaky, friendship, and you had felt certain he had deleted your number.

Hey, it’s Harry Styles. Know you probably don’t want to hear from me, but I have a favor to ask. My friend is doing a new Internet series where exes get together and talk about their relationship, and he wanted to know if I would be willing. Thought of you. Interested? Xxx.

At first, you weren’t sure. The situation seemed like a disaster waiting to happen, if you were being honest. Darkened skies and trees blowing enough to the point their trunks swayed in the wind - that sort of disaster.

There was something about seeing his face that would send you spiraling off, bubbling anger and frustration swelling up your chest when you stumbled on his Instagram those few times. And then those times when you looked him up. And then those times when you took a screenshot the particularly good photos and went back to them when you were in a pit of self-despair. But only those many few times.

“Sounds good,” Harry was saying, and you chimed in with similar agreement. Martha, presumably, moved forward and put the cards on the table. There were a sizable number of questions, enough to keep you two interested in the game and not to be tempted to drink on every one.

Which had been your plan.

“Alright, just introduce yourselves to the camera and then go ahead,” Chris gestured outwards, smiling, before settling back in his seat.

Chris’ facial expression shifted into something more serious, the friendly facade morphing into a professional stare, which made you feel incredibly aware of how awfully slouched you were. You felt like you were in front of your parents, or a teacher, like you were a kid again and had to present yourself well.

Sitting up, you turned towards the camera. It was a large, black pit of emotionless indifference. It was going to record everything and wouldn’t have the decency to look away, if tears were to fall or if blood were to be shed.

Which didn’t feel too melodramatic, if you were being honest.

Harry introduced himself as Harry, an art teacher, and gave a gentle wave paired with one of his charming smiles. You followed suit, opting to just fold your arms against the table, as you introduced yourself as an interior designer.

The truth extended a bit beyond that for the both of you, with Harry also owning a popular photography Instagram working to introduce inner-city kids to film tech. And you were working with the local homeless shelters in the area to improve structural efficiency, as well as beginning your line of eco-friendly furniture.

But the two of you had become wrapped in the other’s threads of intimacy when you were merely an art teacher and an interior designer, and it would be easier to hark back a year ago if you were no longer attached to today’s version of yourselves.

Perhaps it was a hope for the past to emerge once more.

“How long did you two date?” Chris prompted.

“Two and a half years,” Harry answered.

“And how long ago was that?”

Harry looked over at you, raising his eyebrows silently asking you to be the one to answer. You knew he knew, that the wounds were still fresh and it wasn’t some ex-relationship lost in the foggy realm of his mind. So, you obliged, replying steadily and only taking your eyes away from Harry’s for a brief moment.

“About a year ago.”

And then, abruptly, it was simply you and Harry.

The crew faded away, when you two settled in against the backs of the seats and looked at each other. Harry seemed to be toying with some type of smile, probably more out of discomfort than genuinely finding humor in the situation.

“Should I go first?” Harry offered, reaching over towards the pile.

“Yeah, go for it.”

You shifted your legs once more, crossing them so the other was on top. Your fingers rested on the edge of the table, curling against the wood and waiting for Harry to speak.

“Describe how you feel about me right now.”

Harry began chewing on his lip, not harshly, but enough for you to pick up on his nerves. His eyes shot over to the bottles, thinking you’d immediately cop out, but you began to respond.

“I feel like...” you sighed, dropping your gaze from his inquisitive eyes as you collected your thoughts, “I feel like you’re an ex. And that’s not saying a lot but that’s the best way to describe it.”

You nodded, satisfied with your answer.

“Is that a bad thing?” Harry asked.

You shrugged.

“It just is. Feels like an ending brought back up.”

And it did. You had grown a lot since you two had left the other as a broken shell, and meeting up again felt like a continuation that wasn’t supposed to be. Unnatural was a word to describe how your eyes settled on the small parts of him, deciphering what was different now, yet there was a thread of normalcy in how you two could understand the other like an instinct buried deep away.

“Ah, it’s the bad sequel,” he mused, with a grin that deepened against his cheeks when you laughed. With a smirk to himself, he put down the card in the discard pile.

It felt a bit easier than you had expected, to sit across from him. The bitter words you two had left stewing in the other’s mind had apparently evaporated for the time being. Texting Harry back your confirmation while drunk and alone on a Friday night could maybe be chalked down as a good life decision, if the goodwill carried on throughout the video.

“What about you?” you prompted. You weren’t sure if that was allowed, if the game permitted for you to turn the question onto him. But you were intrigued by the ability to ask him whatever, to find out the depths of Harry you never thought you’d be privy to again, under the guise of something that could be easily excused.

“Me?” he asked, needlessly, for there was no one else you could be asking.

“I feel kinda the same,” he spoke as if it were a question, but continued on with building confidence, “I dunno much about yeh life anymore. Remember how we’d go out on the fire escape ‘n just talked-” you smiled at that, because it was one of those things that couldn’t be remembered without being cherished “-but I also remember how we fought. Especially on tha’ last night. But it doesn’t feel bad to be here. Not wha’ I expected.”

You nodded as he spoke, already feeling the analysis of his word choice kick into gear in the depths of your brain. Nothing he said rose red flags, though, and to a sad extent, you understood him. It hadn’t been as painful as your friends had tried to convince you it would be when you were leaving the apartment that morning.

“Alright, my turn?” you looked over to Chris, who nodded towards the pile. It seemed a bit ominous, with Harry being the one to potentially answer now. Because you had control over what was said a moment ago but now it was truly up to him. It made you nervous

“Did you ever have the chance to cheat on me, and did you?”

Time almost seemed to stop, an unbearable delicacy in the way your eyes held contact with his own. An impressive acknowledgment that whatever he said, and especially the moves his body would make, held the potential of ripping a shred into the both of you.

“I had a chance.” Harry nodded slowly, and his fingers began to twist around themselves on the table. “With...with a mutual friend.”

You nodded, not even needing him to go on further. You knew who it was.

Melanie.

You valued female support and girl love for one another, but Melanie was just a straight up bitch. In the ways that men never could see, because the complexities of female language would twist around the way she eyed women up, the way her lips would curl around each false compliment, as if snapping its neck. Her words had a double meaning that only girls could decode, a simple system that carved knives down their back as she manipulated situations to her fancy.

She was in a ‘game’ no one else was playing, but she was in it for blood.

Perhaps insecurities could be an excuse, maybe there were lingering traumas in her childhood that had morphed her into the beast she was today. But it was easier for you to shut down those ideas and accept her in the monstrosity she had become, one way or another, and keep your hand firmly in Harry’s whenever you all were out together.

She had a thing for Harry.

She would sidle up next to him in the booth, when the lights were low enough to mask her demon-slit eyes and let him be blind to the venom-soaked tongue that flicked out of her mouth with two prongs.

(You were being dramatic, but that’s neither here nor there).

She would be cuddly with him, and Harry would insist to you that they were just friends. When his phone went off with her name splashed on it for the fifth time in ten minutes, he’d make up excuses. Say she was interested in his record collection, that she had sent him a link to some obscure new photography magazine that Celtic porn stars had created downtown. It was nothing incriminating but Melanie had her code, and it seemed only you knew how to read it. He was protective over her, almost, and it had bugged you to no end.

You never called him out with direct accusations, though, because you had never thought of him as the cheating type.

You’d always assumed Melanie was in it for the attention and would stop before any buttons could slip out of their hold.

It seemed you had assumed wrong.

“When was it?” you found yourself asking, the question bursting through before you could have enough time to address whether you wanted to know.

“A week before we broke up.” Harry had the decency to look unsettled, clearing his throat and glancing around the room. “I was taking her home after that night out, the one when we went to tha’ bar and we fought so yeh left early-” you nodded, so he cut to the chase, almost gratefully “-and she wanted me to kiss her when we reached the door.”

“Did you?”

Harry shook his head, his lips pursing together as he swallowed.

“No, didn’t.”

You nodded, feeling a swoosh of satisfaction dipping into your lungs. Even though you couldn’t call him yours anymore, the fact that you both had stayed honest made you feel better.

Made you realize that even though your break up felt like exposed film, negatives that could never be altered into something bursting of color, you two still had the foundation of respect. The pictures were still beautiful, even if you couldn’t see what they were.

“You?”

Glancing up from the card to Harry, you noticed his head was tilted down, his eyes up. He was the one who was unsure, now. The delicacy remained and your head tilted to the side as you replied evenly.

“No, never.”

“Ever had the chance?”

You paused, letting the question sink in.

“I guess from random guys at bars ‘n stuff, but I always said I was with you.”

Harry nodded, leaning back somewhat, as if the answer had lightened some burden.

“Was never sure about Shawn, to be honest. Thought he had a thing for you,” Harry confessed with a shrug, a light smile on his lips. His eyes were still honest, still serious, still had the heaviness that you felt in your soul.

You weren’t sure what to say, with the bright lights and the rolling camera, so you just put the card down and nodded up at him.

It was his turn now.

Another card drawn.

“What do you miss the most about us?”

“Our friendship.” Your answer was immediate, no thinking required. “We had so much respect for each other. I remember feeling so in awe about how persistent you were - like the time you crashed the governor’s party to debate school board funding?”

Harry grinned at that, his eyes crinkling more than usual at the memory, as you continued.

“We knew everything about each other, always had the other’s back, and now we just...”

Your hand waved off towards the crew, although it was meant more as a general ‘nothingness’ gesture, but Harry nodded. He almost looked relieved. A more permanent smile was on his lips, and you knew there was one on yours. It was impossible not to look back on that aspect without a consuming sense of fondness, an adoration for what had been.

“Feels weird tha’ I see still yeh face everywhere now, but like...I don’t even know how your family is doing,” Harry said and he glanced up at you, a slant to his eyebrows that spoke more than he could on camera.

“He’s fine,” you murmured, and Harry’s eyes glimmered somewhat. You could tell he was happy for you and you wondered if it were your imagination misleading you when he readjusted on the seat, and his hand went out on the table. Not close enough to be against yours, but it was possible he was trying.

“Did tha’ fucker kick you out?” Greg yelled towards the street, as if Harry were lurking behind a streetlamp watching you shuffle on the doorstep. The street echoed quietly back Greg’s words, without a reply, not even an indignant shout from the neighbors.

“No,” you sniffled, and Greg’s attention was brought back to you. He opened his door wider so you could step out of the rain, looking once more up and down the street, as if still unsure of Harry’s location. Then, he stepped inside as well.

“I just needed someplace to go. C-can’t stay at the apartment. Everything’s j-just a mess right now, y’know?”

Your eyes had kept on the floor, but Greg lifted up your chin with his fingers. He was staring at you in some odd type of way.

Somehow comforting, you supposed, but not having spoken to Greg in forever, you weren’t particularly sure if it was judgment or sympathy he was feeling towards the situation. He hadn’t seemed to approve of Harry the one time they met, but the entire evening hadn’t gone well for your family, so it was impossible to tell.

“I understand. Stay as long as you need, ‘kay?” His answer surprised you and also didn’t. You knew he wouldn’t have let you past his doorstep if he was still angry.

It seemed the pain left by Harry was enough to forgive the harsh dispute that had cracked open your ribcage first, the fighting that had stirred up your temper to high enough levels to really go at it with your boyfriend. Or ex, now, it seemed.

“I’m sor-”

“Don’t.” Greg’s voice cracked at the end, and you blinked in surprise. “We’re family. Beyond the blood or marriages or what-fuckin’-ever, that’s what we are. I love you, and that’s not going to change. All that shit doesn’t matter right now, ‘kay?” You nodded.

And that was the first conversation you had with Greg in all twenty-five years of your life, that didn��t end with screaming. It was the first time since you could remember that your half-brother hugged you and told you he loved you.

It was the first step the both of you took towards healing.

“And I have no clue how your pet fish is getting on,” you replied, as if your drama with your half-sibling would appropriately compare to Harry’s fish episodes.

You two had bought a pet fish, about a year and a half ago, for one of Harry’s projects – back when he was paying for all of the supplies but was still determined to get the kids what they needed – but Goldie kept dying, and every one of Goldie’s descendants died, as well, none lasting a month and most not seeing it through a week.

Harry laughed.

“No more fish, actually. Decided to stop trying,” he explained, and your lips formed some sort of tight smile. At least, you hoped they had succeeded in doing that, and there wasn’t some sort of disfigured grimace that would be captured on camera.

A feeling of something close to comfort draped over your shoulders as you moved to pick up the next card. The questions had been easy, almost too easy, and you were falling into a lull of belief that you could take on all the twists and turns of the segment. Being honest wasn’t feeling hard.

But it seemed like God suddenly had a call to take, or the Goddess of the Moon had her attention elsewhere, for the easy questions came to an end.

“Do I ever pop up in your head when you masturbate?”

Several of the crew laughed at your reaction. Your jaw had dropped slightly, eyebrows furrowed at the card as if the ink could apologize and scramble into a more appropriate question. You hadn’t expected that at all.

Nor did you expect the familiar swooping feeling in your stomach, because you had the all-too-vivid memories of being with Harry. Knowing his moans, the grip he prefers, the words that, when murmured against his throat at the right second, could send him over the edge.

Harry didn’t seem to mind too much, only looking like a deer in headlights for a moment, before he reached out towards the bottle of tequila, an unsure chuckle mixed with a light hysteria coming from his lips.

“Gonna need to take a few shots for that one,” he joked, shaking his head, before drawing his hand back in. Your heart started thumping rapidly.

Inhale. Exhale. You could feel your cheeks burn, even if the red wasn’t noticeable it was still felt, and the light-headed spin within your mind increased.

But it was going to be alright, you weren’t going to die, despite feeling it in your heart that it could possibly happen, once your friends saw the video in a few weeks time. Telling it to yourself over and over, you blinked at Harry and your face squinted together, in a ‘hell, you gotta answer’ type of way.

Harry was looking at you, his eyes a shade more serious than before. A flicker of confusion registered within the green, as if he weren’t accustomed to seeing you calm down so quickly (despite your anxieties not being apparent to the rest of the room, it seemed as though Harry hadn’t lost his knack for picking up on it) but he persisted on.

Fuck. You realized he was actually going to answer.

It wasn’t that you minded. The thought of him using the memories of you two wasn’t a slap in the face by any means. But it was more the confrontation of it that you were struggling to break through, escaping the ocean waves of wanting to know, while definitely not wanting to know. The waves were lapping up against the sides of your neck as you looked around, but no land was in sight.

You two were there, and the threat of drowning was imminent.

“I mean, yeah. Together almost three years, we had some good times.” His voice quietened by a fraction, as if the words would remain private. A cheeky grin still dug into his lips, a flush sort of pink dusting his cheekbones as he shrugged. But you know what he meant, beyond the clothes draped against half-done canvases and wallpaper samples.

You both knew how it felt.

“An apartment...all to ourselves,” Harry whispered, his fingertips stretching up against the bare mattress towards its edge. The sheets lay, arranged as if by a Greek sculpture, around your legs and Harry’s waist. His arm was around you, his palm laying on the small of your back to cuddle you in closer. He felt warm, smelled like coconuts. His chest rose slow, his breath evening out.

The empty space was now, indeed, yours. Your mind had been whirling ever since you first saw the structure with ideas for patio design and kitchen layout, but Harry had managed to distract you for a quick “house-warming party for two, love, gotta do it right” that had lasted all afternoon.

The sun was dipping lazily against the skyline, streaming golden and orange rays down into the home. Because it was a home now, with Harry and you in it.

“You still awake, love?” Harry tapped his fingers against your back, and you lifted your head sleepily. It felt like a thousand pounds, with your eyes fluttering closed while your mind was trying to open them. Harry chuckled.

“Tired yeh out?” he teased, and you managed to peep your eyes open enough to roll them properly, before propping your head up on his chest.

“Just sleepy. Had a long day moving in boxes. And then again tomorrow...but you’ve got work, yeah?”

Harry made an affirmative noise, soft and gentle as he looked down

His hair had just grown long enough for him to be satisfied; curls caressing his collarbones and laying against the mattress like an angel’s halo. You didn’t have to open your eyes to see it, the image was painted across the skies of your eyelids after a year of admiring him.

“Gonna be another long day tomorrow,” you mumbled around the upcoming yawn, and you felt Harry brushing your hair back. His fingers got caught, at times, against the messier curls, and he would untangle them. You’d do the same for him, if the positions were reversed, but your eyes only felt real when they were closed. Like the genuine rest would start when you weren’t looking around the room, wild ideas forming upon the walls.

You and Harry spent the rest of your first night in your first apartment cuddled. He didn’t even bring out his camera when the sun hit your cheeks just right, instead feeling in his heart like the moment was best at the time it was happening. Never to be seen again, never to happen again, it was yours, and you were his.

“Had some good times,” you agreed, gesturing for Harry to pick up the next card. It sent your heart racing once more, the thought of Harry turning the question on you. The words were in his eyes, anyway, and it went beyond crude nights spent alone with lube and memories, and into something deeper. Something about whether you treasured those times still, whether they had been tarnished by an ending.

The truth was, you did. On the romantic nights when your bed felt empty, an ocean of sheets and cold pillowcases, with that itch of needing something to bring you higher, that you recalled the good times. It felt like in public eye, you had to maintain the appearance that you and Harry weren’t compatible, that something tragic had occurred, something was wrong within the relationship, and it was irreparable. And perhaps that was true, but your feelings had a nasty tendency to not align with the truth. Contradictions galore, your mind would go to Harry and feel something deeper than an ending.

Harry gave a short nod, cleared his throat, and picked up the next card. The opportunity of waiting allowed for you to glance around the room, making eye contact with one sounds-person who seemed particularly apologetic in the way they smiled.

“How long did it take for you to get over me?”

Before you could even think, he put the card down and shook his head.

“I know this,” he claimed, and your eyebrows rose in surprise, “You hooked up with Shawn two months after we broke up.”

It was what you had been trying to avoid in the conversation earlier, how the topic of Shawn had elicited jealousy and concern from Harry, and it was not entirely unfounded. You and Shawn had ‘hooked up’, but not to the extent Harry was perhaps expecting. Shawn had kissed you after a particularly rowdy rendition of Love Shack during karaoke night. It had ended there, because the guilt welling up in your throat felt like bile and you needed some air immediately.

It still felt wrong, even when the person you thought was ‘right’ was across the city, wanting nothing to do with you.

Harry finding out about that night wasn’t a surprise, since your friend group was still, a year later, overlapped in a few areas. What was a surprise was how Harry had taken that one kiss as a sign of you officially Moving On, as if a Facebook relationship status change and a quick peck could alter almost 3 years of passion and commitment.

Three months ago.

The night had begun with dark purples and blues around your figure, the way your curtains draped against empty windows and the pillows were untouched on one side of the bed. Your friends were blowing up your phone, rattling against the side table persistently, trying to call you out of the depressing apartment and into the club life they were thriving within.

You had already decided to join them but didn’t have the fancy of responding yet. The outfit needed to be perfect, you wanted to feel like you were alive through someone else’s light for the night, before making it official. It was a process of shedding who you had been the week prior and stepping into the greasy, sweaty club as if it were an ocean of opportunity.

Through this endeavor, you found yourself deeper in your closet than you typically were. And that’s where it was, a small brown case with a white tag in the corner, gold stitching around the edges. The tag read “Harry” and your heart made a distant noise, six stories below, as it crashed through the floor.

The moment quickly altered itself, adapting a more serious tone, and the thoughts to color-coordination drifted off like smoke from your mind as you crouched down. Picked off the lid. Looked inside.

There were Polaroids. Dozens of them, stacked against each other and looped together with multi-colored rubber bands.

Photos of you, photos of him, photos of the two of you together. Some were dirtier than others, some made you blush as you fingered through the stack, but others made you pause. Like the one where you were snuggled against Harry’s neck, with Harry’s smug smile peeking out in the corner. It was taken on your first anniversary with him, when the two of you were so broke you had to spend the celebration cooking each other mac’n’cheese with flowers from the Dollar General out on the table.

Or the one where Harry was laid out on the bed, his hair curling against the pillows, shirtless and sleepily looking into the lens. You remembered taking the photo, standing up with your feet on either side of his hips, his hands wrapped around your ankles to hold you steady. You had taken your time getting the position right, making sure the light fell across Harry’s chest like cage stripes along the butterfly. Harry seemed absolutely smitten that you wanted to take a photo of him, cheekily asking, “Lookin’ good, hm?” in between shots.

You cried that night.

More than you had in months, you cried over what was lost. Even the happy moments made you cry because of their fleeting nature, how quickly they had become distant. You cried because you felt like you were mourning all over again, with the box of photos you had forgotten about in the back of your closet.

Your heels were kicked off, your dress was splotched with mascara from wiping at your eyes, and you sat against the closet wall, your knees brought up to your chest.

Within the tears held the question of what it all meant, why you hadn’t felt cried out over the entire situation. Why there were wracking sobs echoing against the walls, why the apartment suddenly seemed like a graveyard and you were a tombstone.

And within the tears held the question of whether you had let go at all.

“I’ll take the shot,” you gestured towards the vodka bottle, and Harry’s body stilled, somewhat unnaturally, somewhat in shock. He was obviously stunned at whether that was confirmation of you genuinely having gotten over him within two months, which he had said more as an accusation than a sure fact. But you couldn’t find it in you to confirm or deny. It just was, and no matter what the truth had been or was still, you weren’t going to touch on it.

“Alright,” he muttered, and with how his head was turned away as he kindly poured you what would be your second shot, you couldn’t distinguish whether he was still shocked or had made the leap to upset. And you weren’t sure which you wanted him to be.

It was bitter going down, searing your throat a bit, and you shook your head immediately, feeling the racks of shudders going down your spine as you powered on through the shot. Several of the crew members laughed at that, and your head tilted up, leaning back into your neck as you cringed.

“Fuckin’ hate that,” you whispered, eyes squeezed shut, and you heard Harry chuckle quietly.

“Alright, your turn, love,” he gestured towards the stack, and on came the next question.

“Is there anything you want to apologize for?”

The silence extended beyond the two of you, into the scope of the room and surrounding the walls like a thin layer of lace. The itchy kind.

“I didn’t know how to talk to yeh. About what I was feeling, ‘n stuff. Figured we’d be okay, no matter what.” He took a deep breath in and his eyes settled on a particularly dark knot in the wood of the table, eyebrows furrowed as her continued. “I’m sorry for tha’. Shouldn’t have assumed yeh knew.”

“Knew what?”

“How much I loved yeh. How much I wished I could’ve solved things, early on before they got to be too much.” He was choking up at the end, nodding quickly and blinking his eyes. It took a moment before you realized he was close to tears, at the memories and at the loss.

You couldn’t say you felt any different, with your own throat closing up around your words.

“We tried our best,” you said, feeling your lips wobble around the smile as if unsure. Harry shrugged, like he didn’t quite feel the same but wasn’t going to argue. The emotions ebbed upon you both quickly and remained, a wave over your heads that didn’t return back to the ocean like it should’ve.

The final fight between you two could have been avoided. It was the cumulative frustration over months of miscommunication, of Harry always being at work, of him putting his school kids first, of you needing someone there with you, of you never knowing how to speak the words of that question, of both of you deciding to be stubborn instead of empathetic. It was a disaster, a war zone marked by scowls and hot tears and rattling doors.

“You can’t take one day off to fix this?” Your voice was shattered, glass shards etching themselves into the walls. It was quiet, as it always was when Harry had something to say but refused to get the words out. He’d just shut down again, seethe in his frustration, never confess to being pissed off, as if denial in itself could create a false reality where you were Okay.

“I’ve got work,” he said it pained, as if he were powerless.

Perhaps you’d been privy to too much of his loveliness, saw too much of his bright sun, because you no longer believed in that. You knew he could do so much, that perseverance was nothing compared to his willpower, and yet you were never on the receiving end of his dedication and work, just an observer.

It was watching him fight for everything but you that sealed the deal, in the end. You had enough empty spots in your heart from people who had left without a second thought about commitment, who took your love for granted and assumed it would last for miles (and it had, which was the worst bit). You couldn’t allow for Harry to make his mark like that. He didn’t have that power over you like he had for others, you had decided.

Which was why you moved in with your brother the next day. Which was why Harry showed up the next night, still in his work clothes, with his teacher’s briefcase in one hand and your apartment key in the other.

“The fuck is this?” he spat, once you had stepped out onto the porch. The streets were slick with rain, the tree branches were weighed heavily upon one another, and Harry’s eyes were the scorched lightning setting it all ablaze.

“I’m done.”

“What yeh mean, done? Done with wha’? Done with us?”

A stunned silence.

“I said we’d work it out.”

He was trying to speak patiently now, talk down as if you had simply forgotten the way he had made you feel cozy and warm again, with promises and soft smiles, before leaving you once more.

“I asked for you to stay.”

“When have yeh ever needed someone to stay?”

It was blunt, harshly spoken, his eyes unfocusing as he furiously blinked the rainwater from his vision. You didn’t move back, you never invited him beyond the porch gate, somewhat afraid of what you’d do if he came closer.

“In the past two years, not once have yeh ever asked for me. Never asked for my advice, n-never told me yeh needed me. What the fuck ‘m I supp’sed to do with that? Know magically that this one time is when you’re actually gonna open up, genuinely gonna talk things out? Not just take whatever path yeh want, without thinkin’ of me?”

“I asked for you to-”

“Stay. Yeah. You asked for me to stay.” He sighed and whipped his head to the side, attempting to sniffle discreetly. You knew that his hay fever was acting up, and you knew he was trying to pretend it wasn’t. A sub-drama within the original, a dialogue stupidly unspoken.

“And you didn’t.”

“What would I be stayin’ for?” It was a serious question,

“For us? To make it work, to talk about what we haven’t-”

“Okay, fuckin’ fine. Talk. Tell me what yeh want me to know.”

You opened your mouth and closed it several times, unable to know what to say. It was a contradiction of overwhelming emotions and the realization that you had no idea. Everything had piled up on each other and digging through the past had no effect on the future, at that point, and you felt as though you had made your mind up the moment you left your key out on the dining table, a night bag stuffed with your everyday things, and your mind blank, to stop yourself from surrendering to him once more.

You’d never forget how he looked, at that moment. In his loose button-up and jeans, with paint on his knuckles and his hair piled in a bun, he looked helpless.

“I’m waiting.”

After a few more moments, he shook his head.

“I’ll move in with Liam next week.” It was a shuddered statement, as if he had come up with that plan on the way over. And that was the way you two ended, because the cliff had been seen for miles and neither one of you pulled the damn car over.

He paused, his body shifted back towards the gate. His hands were by his side, limp, already having given up far before his mind had, your apartment key loosely between two of his fingers.

A minute later, you were back inside. Sliding down the back of the front door, letting your hands immediately rack through your hair, your vision blurry with the loss and the lack of focus, now that he was gone. Because you were gone, and everything was right, but it felt like devastation.

“Our best,” Harry repeated, but that didn’t even sound like enough.

The studio was silent.

“Kiss on the mouth or take a shot each.”

Approximately thirty seconds later, two shot glasses hit the table. You had downed your third of the day, as Harry scrunched his face as he got down his second. Neither of you had hesitated, both realizing that it would bring the level of discomfort to excessive levels. Perhaps if you two were at a friend’s house, wine bottles being passed around in front of the fire, a brief kiss wouldn’t have been seen as much of anything. But not for a camera. Not for the Internet.

The crew was amused how the two of you were on similar tracks of mind, and if you were sober you wouldn’t have found it as funny. But when Harry had his face all squishy like a boy who just ate a lemon, you couldn’t help the giggles that manifested themselves against your lips.

“Okay,” Chris interjected, and it was the river of smooth liquor that kept you two from jumping at the interruption. You had almost forgotten about where you were.

“Just a quick question,” Chris continued, “One we’re asking all the couples.” He paused for dramatic effect, perhaps waiting for the right camera shot, before asking, “Do you feel you have closure?”

The director was bent forward, as if he were brought to the edge of his seat by something that wasn’t surprising in the slightest. Of course neither of you felt you had closure, and of course neither of you would confess to that. Whether the lack of a proper good-bye still haunted your bedposts was another ordeal, one you didn’t feel particularly keen to jump into.

“Uh,” Harry spoke with the stumbling eloquence you had somewhat missed, “Um-well, I-” his eyes flashed over to yours, and then to the side of the table, “Drink. I’m gonna drink.” You gestured with your hand to the bottles, as if inviting him to it, not quite expecting anything less.

His cheeks were flushed as he poured himself another shot, obviously quite upset that he had to further his count. He was an embarrassing lightweight, which you knew, and Chris most likely knew as well.

But Harry must’ve felt more comfortable with risking himself getting drunk on camera, than answering the question, or else he would’ve just confessed that you never let him have the opportunity for closure. And he had treated you similarly, it was a relationship destroyed like frayed clothing, feathering off near the end and getting caught in every sort of mechanism known to mankind.

You never quite understood metaphors.

Harry took the drink in one swoop, without a second thought, and despite you hoping he’d be the one to pour you a shot again, he was obviously needing a moment or two to adjust. So, you poured your own, saluted Chris with it, and drank.

Another truth avoided, and you were feeling like the haze of life had descended upon you. Warmed up and ready to strike.

It hadn’t occurred to you much, at the time, how drinking could speak volumes louder than an answer, one you could elaborate on. But no man ever said vodka brought him sense, so you continued on with the game, under the assumption that the shot glasses would be there for you if all else failed.

“Your turn,” Harry reminded you gently, nudging the cards closer.

You drew.

“Would you be with me again?”

There were flecks of gold in his irises, which felt cliche and overrated, but you were struggling to find anything else in his eyes. There they were, gold and glistening, and the gold was shifting around as Harry glanced away.

It didn’t quite sink in, the implication of his stance, how heavy the air became to everyone sober in the room. Harry nodded slowly at the question, more in the process of thinking over his answer than the nod genuinely being a response.

He started biting his lip again.

“I’m gonna have t’ drink.”

Particles of the air shifted in that fraction of a second. They turned on their sides and pierced the nothingness surrounding them until there was an invisible knife pricking against your chest. It felt hot and unwelcome, and under the gaze of the entire crew, you were speechless for a few seconds.

“I can get why not,” you mumbled after a while, your fingers fixing your hair, the collar of your shirt, anything but how tightly wound the rope was around your neck. “If it didn’t work once, probably wouldn’t work again.”

“Just don’t know who you are, now.” Harry was nice enough to cover his true intentions as he poured the shot. The glasses clinked as they were rearranged and you noticed they were no longer in a straight line. Perhaps Harry was done with easing your tension, maybe this was it. The real pair, the couple of exes with nothing but honesty, a year too late.

“I’ve changed a lot,” you agreed. “Us ending definitely showed me where I needed to work on myself. Took a while, definitely took a while, but I’m getting better.”

Harry, his lips still pursed and his eyes squeezed shut from the nasty aftershock of the shot, managed to nod. When he was able to focus again, he spoke.

“Exactly. I think what was important for the two ‘f us to learn was tha’ we had areas to work on. And we did do tha’ work, but we can’t relive the past. No take twos.”

His words had become a touch more slurred, his head was nodding more from a gradual lack of balance than a genuine agreement. But Harry’s lips were still poised in a smile, in the dopey way his heart would grow whenever he was pleasantly warm.

You couldn’t say you were feeling that sort of happy high, tipsy warmth and giddy love, but you certainly were trying to keep yourself more put together than he was.

“I’ll go, then.” Harry’s hand reached out for the card, accidentally knocking one out of place. Shuffling them back, he drew up the top one again.

“What should I change about myself for future relationships?”

You were shaking your head before Harry was even finished with the question. Which wasn’t altogether impressively fast, because his speech was slower than normal. And he seemed confused by the words - perhaps more apprehensive - and each vowel was elongated.

There was no way you felt you had a right to answer. It had been too long since the break-up. If it were six months ago, maybe, you would’ve jumped through rings of fire to be able to tell Harry what you thought about him. But the truth was, you felt like you were a million miles away from how you both had coexisted a year ago. It was likely life had done Harry the same justice, and any advice you had that wasn’t founded in bitter resentment would simply be irrelevant.

In addition, if the question had been the other way around, there would’ve been no way Harry would’ve answered. There was a possibility you would’ve just died on the spot if he did - it would’ve been hurtful, to hear what he found was such a fundamental flaw within your character that it simply had to be changed in order to make anything work with another person. Some self-problems were designed to be discovered by the individual, not by their angry exes.

“Why not answer?” Chris spoke up.

“Can’t tell him what to do, he’s perfectly fine. Was both of us that made it not work, y’know?” your words felt like syrup in the way they glided from your tongue.

“Yeh gotta drink,” Harry reminded you, a sloppier grin appearing on his face. He leaned forward, resting an elbow on the table and putting his forefinger and thumb around his lip. Sparks of fire ignited in your chest, from his eyes and how they consumed you. Once more, you were reminded how Harry could make you feel like the only person in the room, and how addictive feeling special could be.

“Know I do, Haz.”

You readied the glass and popped back open the bottle, feeling like that noise would forever be associated with this video, with your heart racing and your fingers moving restlessly.

“Called me Haz, just then.”

You simply nodded at his observation, not bothering to look up at see his reaction. A momentary slip of tongue, but it didn’t mean much. A nickname was all, and you refused to think about it for longer than that.

You drank and then quickly picked up the orange juice. Harry, at the same moment, seemed to realize there was a chaser next to the bottles, and picked up his own glass. There was a momentary break so you both could ease down a little, not feel the punch of alcohol and postpone the gentle sway of future regret and public restroom vomit.

“You ready to continue? Just a few more questions,” Chris gestured towards the last two cards on the table, and you nodded, bleating out a question.

“Who’s turn is it?”

“Yours,” Harry answered, pushing a hand down and moving the cards towards you. You snapped finger guns at him, humming with your lips to indicate that you were impressed by his memory.

It all felt smooth. A gradient of emotions, piled on top of another until the feeling was general existence. And it was nice, sitting across from Harry, seeing him after so long, knowing he was doing okay and he had been trying to improve. The harsh feelings were still there, but they were concealed by the concern of catching up, with the hopes of appearing fine on the camera would translate into actuality.

“Do you think I’d be a good wife?”

Harry’s head dropped down to his hands, his palms supporting his forehead as he moaned something unintelligible. It was a quick change of atmosphere but nothing grossly out of place for two drunk people, as the alcohol had a way of gliding over the rough patches.

You weren’t sure about marriage, in how/if it would come into your life. The topic had come up now and again during your relationship with Harry, especially when he had proposed the idea of moving in together. But the conversation was usually vague on both sides, more in the tone of possibility than probability. It simply wasn’t a major point within the way you two interacted, there was no planning or waiting for a one-knee-kneel and velvet box.

“’F course yeh would,” Harry moaned, and your eyes scanned his face, but the majority of his head was still tucked away.

“Fuck, thought yeh’d be mine, didn’t I?”

Silence.

A blank silence, a blanket of nothing cloaked your mind and your tongue. The thought had never crossed your mind, that he would be planning on proposing. He had never seemed the type to want to settle down quickly. Sure, in the deepest corners of your mind, you had thought what it would be like to take on his last name, or to have him take on yours, and to hold a ceremony to make your love ‘officially’ public, to have the societal relationship cemented by expectation and the ring to physically prove it. But it hadn’t felt realistic.

But there he was, sitting across the table from you, drunkenly confessing he had planned on making you his wife.

And all you could feel was the wet clothes on your skin again, the heavy rain that drowned away your relationship, the sopping weight of an apartment key left behind, the hollow carcass of an apartment that became too empty too soon, the rough edges of Polaroids with scratched handwriting left behind.

Near the end, you had started to think he wasn’t fully committed to the idea of your relationship. That there was a chance he was still looking - not actively, not by any means - but looking in the sense that if someone were to stumble along, someone who made his heart feel like it were floating a million miles in the sky, he would leave. Like he wasn’t completely tied down to you, because he simply was never there. That sense of loss before it had even manifested had brought you towards the edge of neediness, shoving you into desperation without knowing the language of asking for reassurance.

It felt logical at the time. If he wasn’t going to work at the relationship, if there weren’t signs of him planning in the future to cement your love more firmly, that meant he was losing interest. That he would leave, like so many others had, and you were going to be lost in another forest with dense trees of ‘not enough’. So you had lashed out before he could, you had burned the bridge before he had even set foot on it.

Your fear had brought you further away, until the crumpled bedsheets and pillowtalks had faded into sullen silences and avoidance, all while he had thought everything was going to be okay.

Harry lifted his head and dropped his hands onto the table. He looked at you warily, sensing the silence had extended beyond what could be a good thing. His hair was disheveled. His eyes were wet and the golden flecks were magnified.

“Oh.” It was all you could think to say.

Harry sniffled, his eyes batting away briefly as he raised a hand to wipe under them. A curl of hair shifted around the edge of his sunglasses as he moved, falling against his cheek. He brushed it behind his ear.

You were sitting as more an observer than an active member of the moment. It still felt surreal, amplified by the sensation of being drunk and feeling like nothing had a consequence, yet understanding at the core of yourself that this very much had a consequence.

“I’m gonna pick the next one,” Harry whispered, as if the microphone wouldn’t pick it up. You felt a flash of anger at how this moment would be exploited, because you knew it would, and his tears would become a part of the Internet. Floating between particles would be his confession, his vulnerability you hadn’t seen before.

He picked up the last card. You held your breath.

“Do you still love me?”

Despite the studio not having made any noise, a deadly quiet resettled itself into the air like a thick dust, gripping away the oxygen from your lungs. It seemed to affect Harry too, for when he was reading, his voice broke at the end. As if cut off by something other than his choice. His eyes went up to the ceiling, praying for you to not answer.

Your hands were in your lap, your fingers curling around the other nervously as you continued to sit through the worst drinking game of your life. Nothing could’ve saved that moment and it seemed the crew knew that as well. Many of them looked away, others couldn’t tear their eyes off of your quivering lip and wide eyes.

Any response seemed it had the potential to break him, but you couldn’t have him not know. He must’ve known anyway. People can’t wash away their first love like a stain, those kinds of relationships were never meant to fully end.

“Don’t think I’d ever stop. Just who we are.”

Harry’s eyes moved from the ceiling to meet yours. Underneath his eyes was a fine shade of pink, as he was trying to hold back the onslaught of hot tears, and after a moment you realized your eyes must have been the same.

The edges of your vision were clouded, the bottles on the side of the table had been washed out with a visible slur.

He looked at you silently, his lips moving without making a noise. It was clear he was trying to ask you again for confirmation with his own words and not the ones written on a card.

But he was still Harry and the words didn’t come out.

Do you love me?

“We grew up together, y’know? In all the adult ways,” your voice wobbled and a few tears slipped out, painting a fine line down your cheeks. “Can’t not love that. You’re a part of those moments, cherish them and I’m cherishing you.”

Harry made an odd light noise, somewhere between a whine and a noise of agreement. He was clearly caught between lines of emotion, unable to lift his intoxicated head above the waves. The drowning had begun.

You had accepted your fate a while back in the game, but it seemed it was only now that Harry realized the long-term impacts these questions could have. His hands were still on the table, palms down, the card between his fingers. You gently reached forward and plucked the card, placing it on the stack. As if that would help ease his pain.

And it was painful, there was no way around it. The immense loss you two had suffered, alone and unable to grieve with the other, irreparable slashes down your hearts caused equally by yourselves as by the other. It had just been a fuckery. The endings always were.

“Do you love me still?” you whispered, the whole spectrum of concentration you had left in your veins solely resting on the slope of his brow, how his eyes gazed into yours, and settled somewhat. Like it was comforting for him to see you.

Your head tilted to the side as you waited, and in the fog of your mind, you realized you had started holding his hand at some moment. Your fingers were wrapped around his outer palm, but he slowly turned his hand over. Threaded your fingers together. Moved his thumb against the side of your hand in slow, small movements.

His heartbeat could be felt through his hand, a steady rhythm like a song you used to play on repeat for days. You had forgotten what it felt like to dance to it, but your heart remembered the tempo.

“I thought I didn’t, but now,” he paused, a sudden hilt in his throat stopping him from continuing momentarily, “Now I’m not sure.”

No one spoke.

No one moved.

His eyes scanned your face. His lips were slightly pursed, in thought, and his eyebrows were low. His thumb continued moving against your skin, as if it would be a comfort to you, but you knew it was mostly for him.

Chris cleared his throat softly, and whispered something to one of his assistants.

“Okay, you two,” he spoke louder to the two of you, but you were the only one to look over. Harry’s eyes stayed on your face, before dropping to the table. Harry’s thumb moved against your skin once more, slowly but with enough pressure that it was clear he had done it consciously.

“I think we’re good, that’s a wrap. Gonna run through some clips, check audio and lighting, but then you’re free to go.”

You nodded, swallowing against the sudden lump in your throat, trying to snap back into reality.

His thumb stopped moving.

You looked over at your hands clasped together, wondering what it would feel like to no longer be holding onto Harry, now that the video was over.

The camera turned its ugly head away, the red light on the edge powering off like a suction of tension being lifted from the room. Chris and a few other of the crew started talking at normal volume, perhaps writing over the moment the best they could by avoiding looking at you two.

Harry sat back and cleared his throat, reaching his free hand up to wipe away at the growing collection of tears within his eyes. His hand began to untangle from yours, as you readied yourself to move on, to get over him again, to feel the impending loss with each step towards lot where your friends would pick you up.

It almost hurt more, losing him a second time.

Perhaps that was why you did it. Maybe it was the instinctive reaction to not ache again, to protect yourself by removing the hurt.

His fingers were barely in your palm when you reacted, leaning forward again to lock your fingers around his. Firmly, with your eyes flashing up to him, a question in your eyes but not yet on your tongue. Harry looked at you, confused but more wary than anything else, before his gaze settled back on your joined hands.

“I would like it if we could go somewhere and talk.”

You hadn’t been able to ask him to settle down to have a serious talk for the past three and a half years, but the words slipped out as naturally as if you were asking him for the time of day. Harry’s confusion deepened before he realized that yes, you had spoken and yes, you had asked for him. Asked for him, after being so vulnerable and stripping away your false sense of brutal independence in order to get together with him for a half hour.

His soft smile indicated his answer was yes, but he accompanied it with a verbal confirmation, a nudge that he was headed in the right direction. Harry was hardly ever shy, but the rosy flush on his cheeks was only partially from the drink, and mostly because of your smile back at him.

Maybe you two wouldn’t talk things out and find that elusive ‘resolution’ nestled between the vast gap where closure was supposed to take root. Maybe you two would flare up in old arguments again and end up storming out, thunder and lighting booming again in your hearts and bitter resentment welling up in your throats.

But at that moment, Harry squeezed his hand around yours, and you felt your chest slowly rise up, the butterflies, forgotten but not gone, stretching out their wings.

Maybe you two could not let go, this time.

A/N: I hope you enjoyed! This has definitely been a dear piece to me. Let me know your thoughts here, and check out the rest of my works if you’d like!

#harry styles fanfic #harry styles fanfiction #archive of our own #mine #one direction fanfic #one direction fanfiction #one direction fic #harry styles fluff #harry styles drabble #harry styles blurb #harry styles fic #truth or drink #tod #truth or drink harry #tod harry

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dacrethehalls · 5 years

Text

Wild Flowers

Summary: Samantha Harrington never expected to spend her entire spring break with Billy Hargrove and Billy Hargrove never expected to fall in love with Samantha Harrington.

Word Count: 9.9k

A/N: *RE-POSTED FROM MY OLD ACCOUNT* loosely based on the Chateau music video Dacre is in. credit to Dr. Seuss and Shel Silverstine for the quotes in this, and shout out to all my faves who we name dropped in this.

******

"Hey....Emily.....No, Amanda? No-no, it's Laura!" Tommy H. sputtered, leaning against my locker. I rolled my eyes, grabbing my books and balancing against my hip.

"Tommy, we have literally been in the same class since we were seven and you still can't remember my name." I muttered, slamming my locker shut.

"Shit, it's Andy isn't it? Or is it...something that Starts with an R? Or is it a K? Kiki right?"

He could have gone on for hours guessing my name and would still get it wrong. I held up my hand, shaking my head,

"Stop before you hurt yourself. What do you want?" I asked, shifting the weight on my feet.

"Billy is busy today, he said his brother is in town or something and I was going to ask you to-"

"If you finish that sentence with 'ask Steve', I will punch you." I cut off, turning on my heel and strutting towards the parking lot.

"Aw, come on Regan lighten up! " He yelled as he ran to catch up with me.

"That's not my name either." I groaned, "Give it a rest will ya? And last time I checked, you and Steve are not friends...like... at all so go find someone else to blindly follow."

Tommy crossed his arms glaring at me,

"Oh my god. Yes, I'll talk to him."

He smiled at me as I kept walking,

"Thank you, Dot!" He yelled out as I stuck my middle finger in the air.

"That boy really needs to get his own personality." I breathed

I plod out to my car unlocking it,

"Maddie wait!" I let out a defeated groan. "What do you want Keith?"

"Can you cover my shift tonight?"

"I quit The Palace like, three weeks ago." I huffed, leaning on my car.

"And for the last time my name is Samantha. Like the show Bewitched"

"I thought your name was Krista?"

I rolled my eyes, getting in my car driving home.

******

"Not one, but seven. Seven different names Steve. All of which are nowhere close to mine." I grumbled laying across his bed.

"Sammy, relax."

"It's kinda hard to when you have lived in the same town your entire life and nobody can remember your name. Samantha." I drew my name out slowly, "It comes after 'Steve and'."

"Uh so i'm taking Dustin and the others to see a movie tonight. I won't be home until later."

"Way to change the subject, asshole."

"What?"

"I'm telling you that your friends are being pricks to me and you just mention going to the movies with some random kid."

"He's a good kid, Sam."

"Doesn't matter if he's the goddamn president of the United States, I'm telling you that something upsets me and you're blowing me off!"

"Sam, you can't let things like that upset you, okay? Now I gotta go or we'll be late for the showing."

"What I really need is to spend time with my big brother and just forget about this whole stupid thing."

"Maybe later!" He hollered, already out the bedroom door and trotting down the stairs.

I rolled my eyes, rolling onto my stomach and letting out a frustrated groan, blowing the hair away from my face.

Those were always the words I got from Steve when I asked if I could hang out with him; maybe later.

******

The next day at school was the usual, being ignored, people getting my name wrong, including teachers.

I had a nice cry at lunch in my car and ended my day in my favorite spot, a field full of wildflowers outside of the football field.

When the snow started melting away and the temperature went up I would spend my afternoon out there finishing homework and picking the flowers around me. I sat with my legs crossed, a pile of Johnny jump ups and dandelions beside me. I wound the stems together, finding the process relaxing.

"Samantha!" I jerked my head in the direction the voice came from, Billy Hargrove was striding towards me.

"Hi?" I questioned as he reached the blanket I was sitting on,

"Hey, so I was out of school for a few days," he chuckled, pointing at the disappearing bruise under his eye, "Basketball concussion, any way, we have third period chem together and I was wondering if I could copy your notes...and maybe your homework." He asked

Of course the only thing he wanted with me was to use me for my homework. At least he actually knew my name. I'll give him that. I leaned over to my bag, grabbing my chemistry notes handing them to him.

"Do you mind if I sit here with you incase I have questions? I know missing one of Mrs. Valentine's classes really means missing like, five classes. I've missed three so basically I'm fucked."

I chuckled, scooting over on my blanket to make room for him,

"Nah, Mrs. V has been out sick we've had a sub so you haven't missed much."

He offered me a soft smile, pulling his notebook put laying on his stomach, scribbling words on his paper,

"Man, you're pretty thorough, color coded and everything." He noticed, his eyes scanning over the highlighted words and pink gel pen. I hummed in acknowledgement, eyes focusing on the floral stems I held in my lap as I weaved them together.

"Jeez, I may as well just be reading the damn textbook... except at least this shit makes sense." He grumbled as he tapped his pencil against his notepad.

"Yup." I hummed, mindlessly twisting the stems around each other.

I still couldn't shake the feeling that something was off. Billy Hargrove barely gave anybody the time of day, let alone me. Sure, he had his little groupies that followed him around, but they were nowhere in sight. Even Tommy was gone.

"So, uh, you got any spring break plans?" I questioned.

"Not really. My brother is in town, though."

"Billy Hargrove doesn't have any spring break plans?" I gasped, placing my hand over my heart, "What, you aren't going back to bright, sunny California?"

"Pfft, I wish." He scoffed, "Get the hell out of here. It's April and it's still cold!"

"Yeah, that's the midwest for ya." I sighed,

I plopped the flower crown I was weaving on to Billy's head making him break his concentration.

"What's this?" He huffed, poking away his curls from his face as his eyes darted up at me. His brows were knit together in confusion, almost going cross eyed as he attempted to get a walked at what was on his head.

"It's a crown." I beamed, placing the other one I made on my own head, "The purple and yellows in the flowers really bring out the blue in your eyes."

"What kind of hippie bullshit is this?" He questioned, plucking it off of his head and staring at it. Despite his gruff demeanor, I could see the blush creeping up on his cheeks.

"Oh, come on. It makes you walked... soft..." I hummed, gently taking it from his grasp and putting it back on his head.

"Soft?" He scoffed.

Of all the things he had ever been described as, it was never soft. He was more likely to hear a string of profanities and slurs directed at him than to be called soft. Hell, I was occasionally known to call him a dickhead every once in a while. Especially after what he did to my brother. I was about ready to take that spiked bat and go after the bastard myself.

"Balances out the black eye, you know? Actually... it kinda matches." I observed, staring at the eerie yellow color that crept under his eye and in towards his nose. A sign that the bruise was healing.

Billy took his crown off once again, setting it next to his notebook.

"Question." I blurted,

Billy hummed as I laid back on the blanket, looking over at him while he continued to scribble notes down.

"How the hell do you know my name?" I asked.

He raised an eyebrow, staring at me, "I sit behind you in third and sixth period. I see you write it on your paper. Now your last name I don't know."

I let out a loud laugh, sitting up,

"You're kidding me right? Billy, you have to be joking."

The expression on his face led me to believe he was serious,

"Samantha Harrington, otherwise known as The Other Harrington, Steve's Sister, Hey You, Little Harrington, Dakota, Anna, Becca, any and every name that is not remotely close to Samantha." I huffed, blowing a strand of hair away from my eyes.

"You and Steve are siblings?" He pressed.

"He's a whopping 18 months older than me. My parents only wanted one kid, I was an accident. They sorta treat me that way too, the entire town does." I scoffed, rolling my eyes,

"They give me a credit card just so I wont bother them. But I don't use it. I don't need shit from them."

His eyes studied my features, eyebrow still raised as if he expected me to keep talking,

"When I graduate, I'm getting the hell out of Indiana." I sighed, fiddling with the stems of the flowers I had left in my lap.

"I want to travel, live in my car go on fun adventures with my best friend-if I had one. Find a house in a field of flowers. Make as many crowns as I want." I said, placing the flowers once again on Billy's head.

He let a grunt out in defeat as he moved the curls from his eyes once again,

"You know, if you got that cut off, you wouldn't have to keep brushing it out of your eyes." I commented.

"No way in hell I'm cutting this baby off." He replied, smoothing his hand over his hair after taking the crown off again.

I rolled my eyes for what must've been the dozenth time,

"Tommy mentioned something about your brother being in town."

Billy let out a disgusted groan,

"Unfortunately."

"That bad, huh?"

"That bad. He's the favorite son... Star football player, got a scholarship to some school he's way too stupid to attend." Billy griped.

"Does he have a better hair cut? When's the last time you brushed that rats nest?" I questioned, picking up the flower crown and placing it on his head for the hundredth time. Billy grunted in defeat, sitting up.

"According to everyone, he has a better everything then me." Billy rolled his eyes, pulling his cigarettes from his jacket pocket placing one between his lips.

"Bad habit." I scolded, taking it from his mouth and replacing it with a flower.

Billy grunted again, spitting the flower onto the ground as a dragonfly flew over us then zig zagged back, landing on Billy's shoulder. He glanced over at it with a soft expression before moving his shoulder so it would fly away.

"You know dragonflies are often thought to be loved ones coming to visit you after passing away. According to the Native Americans, they bring rejuvenation after hardship." I announced, watching another dragonfly zip past us.

Billy closed his book and sat up, "Thank you, Sam." He yawned, standing up.

"You're welcome, if you ever need my notes again just ask." I chuckled as Billy put another cigarette between his lips.

"I may take you up on that, Sam. Turn the B I have into an A." He laughed as he attempted to light his cigarette, "It's getting dark out, you okay out here by yourself? Or if you want I can walk you out to your car or give you a ride home."

"Thanks, but I might stay out here a little bit longer. The stars are almost out, I like watching them." I mused, earning a raised eyebrow from Billy.

"Okay. well, have a good spring break Sammie. Thanks again." He conceded, rocking back on his heels and heading towards the parking lot.

******

A tap at my window nearly made me jump out of my skin. I spun around in my desk chair, opening the blinds, assuming Steve was an idiot and forgot his key again. To my surprise, a familiar mullet-headed boy offered me a grin and a wave. I glanced over my shoulder to my bedroom door that was still ajar. I rushed over to close it, being careful not to slam it for fear of Steve finding out who was at my window.

I returned to the window sill, unlatching it and throwing it open. I watched as Billy climbed through my window, nearly knocking my glass of water off my night stand.

"What are you doing here?" I questioned.

"You want to travel? Go on an adventure? Let's do it." He panted, adjusting his jacket as he got his footing on the carpet.

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"Let's just forget about this shitty town and our shitty parents and step out of the shadow of our siblings."

I stared up at him, dumbfounded for a moment, only to notice a new bruise on his cheek. I furrowed my brows,

"Billy. What happened?"

"Don't worry about it, Sammie," He murmured, walking over to my bookshelf glancing at the books, various academic trophies, and my collection of porcelain horses.

He picked up my polaroid camera, pointing it towards me and snapping a picture of me.

"Excuse you!" I exclaimed, trying to snatch the photo out of his hand as he shook it.

"Not a chance, princess."

"Princess." I mumbled under my breath.

He placed the picture in his jacket pocket as he grinned down at me,

"Are you really that desperate to do something over spring break that you want to spend it with me? The other Harrington?" I questioned, crossing my arms.

"Sam, knock it off. You may be a little off your rocker but it's in an endearing way," Billy grinned, lifting the camera up and pointing it at me and getting into the frame as well.

"So what do you say? Hmm? Let's go on an adventure, use up some of mommy and daddy's money. Get out of Indiana or not." He clicked the shutter button, making the camera flash.

He grinned at me, placing that picture in his jacket pocket as well.

This boy was completely crazy, but I knew that Steve would be too preoccupied with the kids that decided he was the best brother figure they could find. He wouldn't even notice that his own flesh and blood sibling was gone. It would also drive Steve up the wall if he found out who I was with.

"Okay. Fine, let's go." I cheered, jumping up and grabbing my bag, packing a bunch of clothes for various occasions. Billy sat on my bed watching as I ran around my room gathering as many things as I could.

"I don't know if Steve is still awake or not so you gotta go back through my window. I'll meet you outside in like ten minutes." I whispered as Billy got up and started climbing out my window.

I shut it behind him, grabbing my bag and heading down the stairs.

"Hey Steve, I'll be home later." I called, walking past him and all his middle schoolers who were all yelling at one another.

Steve threw up a thumb, not even acknowledging me as I pranced out the front door. The thought of getting out of Hawkins sounded more and more appealing. I bumped my bag into Billy's butt, making him turn around.

"There you are." He grinned, taking my bag from my hands.

"We're taking the Camaro."

"No, we're taking Priscilla."

"What the fuck is a Priscilla?"

I grinned, nodding my head to my bright red 1965 Volkswagen Beetle, my baby that I had saved up for and bought myself after turning sixteen.

"I am not riding in that death trap."

"It's okay, Prissy. The mean mullet man didn't mean to call you a death trap. He's just intimidated." I cooed, patting her hood and smirking over at Billy.

"I'm not intimidated." Billy whispered under his breath.

"Then lets go!" I giggled, taking my bag from him and putting it in the back seat.

Billy shook his head, opting not to continue the argument. He grabbed his bag, placing it next to mine.

"You can park your car in the garage."

I pulled out, Billy replacing my spot in the garage with his car. I shut the door as Billy climbed into my car with a grunt.

"So, I didn't think I could actually talk you into doing this since we kinda just met, so I didn't plan this far ahead." Billy admitted, glancing at me.

"It's okay. I know a great place to go to start our adventure."

******

"What the hell is this place?"

"Some boujee country club my parents used to belong to." I replied, "It's disgustingly expensive."

"Then what exactly are we doing here?" He replied, raising an eyebrow at me.

"We're getting a room for the night. For free."

"For free? Yeah, right." He scoffed.

"You think I can't do it? What with my Harrington charm?" I drawled, twirling a strand of hair around my finger.

He rolled his eyes at me,

"Tell you what, let's make a bet." I proposed.

"Now you've got my attention."

I pursed my lips, humming to myself as I thought of what our wager should be,

"If we get in... you have to get your mullet cut off."

"Hey! No way in hell!"

"What, you worried that I'm right?"

"No." He scoffed.

"Then what's your wager if you win?"

"Priscilla." He smirked.

"You got a deal."

His smirk dropped as he realized that I had the confidence to bet my car, my baby. He knew he was getting that haircut.

"Come on, blondie!" I called as I skipped up to the front of the club.

Billy and I both wondered to the front doors, inside a fountain trickled in the background and the pristine white tiles reflected the lights from the ceiling.

"Welcome, how can we help you?" The woman behind the front desk greeted. "Hello, I'm Samantha..Harring...rove.. uh Hargrove," I chirped, glancing up at Billy who looked at me with shock, "And this is my Husband.....Billy." I snaked my arm through his, leaning my head on his shoulder hugging him into my side.

He put on an unconvincing fake grin, flashing it at the woman,

"My parents had a membership here and Billy and I are newly weds. They gifted us a membership under their names." I chided.

"Yes ma'am! What are your parents' names?"

"Timothy and Patricia Harrington."

The lady's head shot up at the sound of my parents names.

"I didn't know Timmy and Trish had a daughter! I thought Steve was their only child." She beamed as I dug my nails into Billy's arm.

He cleared his throat, slightly nudging me in an attempt to get me to loosen my grip,

"You know, your parents said this place was nice, but I hear there's a much better place upstate. Maybe we should cancel the membership and head up their instead."

"If you stay here, all of our newly weds get complimentary room service." The woman offered, startled by Billy's suggestion to take our money elsewhere.

"That sounds nice, doesn't it, sweetheart?" I encouraged.

He gave me a nod, letting out a sigh of relief when I retracted my nails from his skin.

"You'll be staying in suite 315, it's between the gym and the indoor heated pool." She instructed, pointing out the window behind her.

"Thank you." I cheered enthusiastically.

"Congrats!" She called after us as we stepped back outside. Billy pulled his arm from mine,

"I think you made me bleed." He commented, staring down at the half moon marks on the inside of his arm.

"Don't be such a baby." I retorted, going to the door of our room and shoving the key in the lock.

I let out a sigh of relief as the chilled air from the room hit me in the face. The bed was enormous, covered in crisp, white sheets with the logo of the club embroidered into them with green thread. Billy trailed in behind me, throwing his bag down on the floor by the bedside table. I slipped off my shoes, immediately hopping off the floor and landing face first on the bed.

"They're so soft!" I exclaimed, voice muffled by the sheets against my skin.

Billy laid on his side beside me, reading off the menu of the country club's overpriced restaurant,

"On tonight's dinner menu we have pacific caviar and braised lamb with whipped garlic parmesan mashed spuds." He mocked in the most obnoxious, rich old lady accent I had ever heard. And I had heard my fair share of obnoxious rich old ladies at my parent's stupid dinner parties, "Darling, I heard the wine selection is to dieeee for." I rolled over, flicking my wrist while holding my hand over my heart.

"How about we just order a pizza and go for drinks later at that bar we passed. Maybe do some golf cart races?"

"Sounds like a plan to me. But first we have to do something with that rats nest on that head of yours." I smirked, running my fingers in his curls.

Billy swatted my hand away, turning his head to glare at me.

"The mullet stays," he mumbled.

"But my dear husband, remember the bet we made in the car? The one where if I could actually get us a room here you would cut your hair." I giggled, tapping his nose.

"It's never going to happen. I don't remember shaking on that deal." He grunted.

"You lost fair and square buddy. Say bye bye to the mullet."

******

I smirked as Billy strolled out of the salon, his mullet was gone and replaced by a clean shave in the back and his natural curls still up front.

He looked even more handsome than before. I let out a whistle letting, him know I liked it.

"It looks like shit," He objected, crossing his arms.

"No it doesn't. Now come on, there's a club here we can go to. We'll have a few drinks then go back to the room and order pizza." I hummed, grabbing his hand and pulling him towards the club.

"This place is obnoxious." Billy cringed, peering around at all the random couples spread throughout the bar.

"It's a country club. It's supposed to be obnoxious." I chimed, pulling Billy to a table and sitting down at it.

We ordered a few drinks and a appetizer as we people watched the rich folk around us.

The beginning of the song from Dirty Dancing started blasting through the speakers, making me gasp. I turned my gaze over to Billy with a big grin on my face.

I didn't even have to say a damn word,

"No."

"Come on please, I've always wanted to do it. Billy PLEASE!" I begged as I started swaying my hips along to the song.

I danced around his chair as he watched me with a deadpan expression,

"You're the one thing I can't get enough of!" I belted.

"No."

"AND I OWE IT ALL TO YOUUUUU." I sang as Billy groaned, standing up and walking away from me.

"Oh, come on! Where are you going?" I laughed as I kept dancing

"Are we going to do this or not?"

I let out a loud squeal, causing the people around to stare at us.

I started singing at the top of my lungs, walking towards Billy grabbing his hand as we started to twist back and forth along to the song.

"This will never happen again," He gibbed as I twirled around him.

"This is our first dance as husband and wife. We had to make it memorable." I quipped, doing a boogie away from him as the song built up. I kept swaying back and forth before running towards Billy and jumping as he caught me by the hips, lifting me above his head.

I crossed my legs, putting my arms out, smiling knowing that Jennifer Grey would be so proud.

I smiled down at Billy who had a huge shit eating grin plastered across his face. He placed me back on my feet, pulling me closer to him as we kept dancing.

"Ahem, Mr. and Mrs Hargrove, I'm going to have to ask you to leave the club for tonight. You are disrupting the rest of the customers."

Billy and I glanced over at the waiter, busting out in laughter as we ran out of the bar. "People don't know how to have a good time anymore." I groaned as we stumbled into the lobby.

Billy grabbed my hand, pulling me over to the grand piano in the corner.

"I noticed your keyboard in your room. You play?" He asked, sitting on the bench.

He cracked his knuckles, wiggling his fingers before pressing them on the keys, playing the beginning of Claire De Lune.

I glanced at him from my peripheral, pressing my fingers on the keys, playing along with him. "Been playing since I was seven. Rode my bike to my lessons every week."

Billy bit down on his lip before the corners of his mouth turned up.

"I think I started lessons at seven too."

"Who knew the Billy Hargrove has a thing for Debussy and ivory keys." I praised.

He swayed along to the music we were producing together,

"Ahem."

We both turned our heads over at the person behind the desk who was pointing at the giant sign behind us stating that the piano was not to be touched.

"Oops." I giggled, standing up, "Let's go back to our room before we get into more trouble."

"Nah, I'm sure we can find some more trouble we can get into." Billy chirped, standing up. We both shuffled outside and around the country club before coming up to a closed off section.

"You ever crash a wedding before?" I smirked, eyeing Billy as he lit a cigarette.

"Bad habit!" I scolded, taking the stick out of his mouth and replacing it with the pendant from his necklace.

"Will you stop that!" He grunted, taking the cigarette back from me, "We are not crashing somebody's wedding."

We continued our walk around the courtyard, coming across a golf cart. We both looked at each other than made a mad dash to the vehicle

Billy slid me over to the passenger side before climbing in the driver's side, pressing his foot all the way down on the gas pedal.

He drove off the sidewalk turning the wheel sharply making golf cart whip around in a circle.

Before long, the security guards pulled us over, screaming at us to stop and pointing at more signs stating boring rules for the boring people who actually paid money to stay at this place.

We laughed all the way back to the hall leading to our suite,

"Tonight was fun." Billy cackled as we walked into our suite.

"Yeah it was. I'll take the bed. Is the couch okay with you?" I questioned as Billy pulled his shirt over his head, throwing it on the floor and falling face first onto the couch.

"Mmhmm." He hummed.

"Good night, Billy." I whispered throwing a blanket over him.

He let out another soft hum.

"Good night, Sammie."

******

The next morning, I woke up and went down to the travel desk in the lobby, setting up all the things I needed to to surprise Billy with a small trip to California.

I tiptoed into the living room and over to the couch, shaking Billy slightly. "Wake up sleepyhead. Check out is in an 45 minutes and our flight leaves in an hour."

Billy grunted, lifting his head to walked at me.

"Did you just say flight?" He grumbled, his voice hoarse with sleep.

"Sure did. The in-laws bought us round trip tickets to California for the next two days." I beamed as Billy sat straight up, looking at me.

"Did you really buy tickets to go to Cali? Sam, you're shitting me."

Billy climbed over the couch, picking me up hugging me to him. "Thank you Sammie!"

I leaned in kissing Billy's nose, causing him jump a little from shock,

"Come on and get dressed!" I trilled, pushing him toward the bathroom.

******

The flight was longer than I expected it to be. Once we landed in California, I picked up the car I had rented. I eyed Billy who about fell on the ground when the blue convertible Corvette was brought to us. "That's the car you decided to rent!?" He exclaimed, almost drooling over it.

"Mmhm," I hummed, throwing my bag in the back seat and then climbing in the front.

"You know where the Chateau Marmont is?" I questioned, smiling at him.

"Did you get us a room there?" His eyes grew wide.

"Nah, it was too expensive, even for my parents. I booked a hotel overlooking the beach."

Once we got settled into the hotel, both of us were starving. We ventured out, finding some Mexican restaurant that Billy started raving about.

The food was decent and not too expensive but it wasn't like I was afraid of my parents finding out about me spending the amount of money I had in the past few days. They didn't care as long as I didn't bother them.

"Hey!" Billy yelled, catching up to me. "Uh..um.. I got you this," He panted, placing a heart shaped ring into my hand.

I examined it, smiling up at him, "Tanzanite, the December birthstone has energy for emotional healing from all worries. It brings happiness." I informed.

"Yeah..okay. I uh, just found a quarter on the ground and put it in a gumball machine. I mean, you're my wife and I didnt even give you a ring so." He grinned, gesturing to the ring.

"See, tanzanite brings happiness." I beamed as I slipped the ring on my left hand.

"So, does your mom live here?" I questioned as we made our way down the street.

"No. She passed away a while back." He sighed, a frown forming on his face.

"I'm sorry for your loss. You two were close?"

He nodded

"My mother was my best friend, she was a phenomenal woman. I never understood what she ever saw in my dad, he's a shit person." He chided through clenched teeth.

"Does he do this to you?" I asked, lightly touching the yellowing on his skin. He ignored me, walking ahead of me getting into the car.

"He does doesn't he? Are you going to be okay when we go back to Indiana?"

"Yes, Sam, I'll be okay." He retorted as we drove off into the direction of the hotel.

"Are you sure? If you ever need a place to stay you are we-"

"I'm fine Sam. Drop it." He snapped, cutting me off.

"Billy Hargrove is that you?!" Billy's head snapped to the car beside us at the red light we were stopped at.

"Sure is." He chortled, pulling his sunglasses down to his nose.

"Are you back for good?" The guy asked.

Billy shook his head "Nah, my....Sam and I came here for our spring break. We're leaving tomorrow night."

The guy in the car frowned as the light turned green.

"There's a party tonight at Olivia's place! Better see you there!" The boy yelled, driving off.

Billy's eyes lit up as he glanced over at me.

"Party tonight?" He questioned.

I pursed my lips together, rolling my eyes,

"Do we have to?" I groaned.

"Yes, I haven't seen these people in a long time!"

No matter how hard I tried to change Billy's mind, he wouldn't budge. And that's how I ended up at a party full of people I didn't know, sitting next to a Pug named Joe. Not exactly my ideal way of spending my first time in California. But I could tell that Billy missed his friends so I tried my best not to complain.

Music blared through the house as random teens danced around to Crazy Train by Ozzy Osbourne. I pushed past the crowd, finding Billy talking to some random girl by the keg as he poured himself another beer.

I was never a partier, when my brother dated Nancy Wheeler, she would always make him take me to parties. Most of the time it would end with me walking home or me hitching a ride from Jonathan Byers who hated parties as much as I did.

I stood next to Billy, nudging him with my elbow, frowning at him nodding my head towards the gate we had walked through when we arrived to the party.

"Sam, it's a party go have fun. Go drink." Billy shooed at me with his solo cup.

I rolled my eyes, walking towards the beach, digging my toes in the sand once I set foot on the grain surface. I plucked a few evening primrose from the steps, placing the stems into my plaited hair as I continued further down to the water. The booming music became more and more distant.

The beach was beautiful, and the California sunset even more so. What everyone considered a beach in Hawkins didn't even compare to this.

I took my time walking along the shore, picking up only the best shells and pieces of sea glass.

"Why aren't you at the party?" I heard a voice from behind me, I recognized it, so I didn't bother to look up,

"What're you doing?" He asked, watching as I scooped a sand dollar off the sand before the tide could pull it back in, "Collecting shells?"

"She sells seashells by the sea shore," I chirped, offering Billy the sand dollar. He rolled his eyes, taking it from me and throwing it into the ocean.

"Hey!" I hissed, crossing my arms.

"God dammit, Samantha can you not be weird for once? You're embarrassing me in front of my friends."

"I don't see anyone but us around," I shrugged, reaching into the water and picking up another shell.

"Sam. Please. Just pretend to be normal." He begged, reaching for the flowers woven into my braid and pulling them out.

"Excuse you!" I yelled, smacking his hands away, "Go party with your friends. I'll be okay by myself. Always have been." I fumed.

"I'm not leaving you out here alone. Just come back to the party, pretend to be normal and we'll come to the beach tomorrow."

"Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind."

"Are you really quoting Dr. Seuss? This is the shit im talking about. Normal people don't quote Dr. Seuss."

"If normal people don't quote Dr. Seuss, how do you know it's a Dr. Seuss quote?" I replied, and that was as close to a rebuttal as he was going to get from me tonight. I wasn't about to get dragged in to a Billy Hargrove argument. Especially not on spring break.

Billy continued to follow me as I kept examining shells and placing them into my pockets.

"Somebody has to go polish the stars, They're looking a little bit dull. Somebody has to go polish the stars, For the eagles and starlings and gulls have been complaining they're tarnished and worn, They say they want new ones we cannot afford. So please get your rags and your polishing jars, Somebody has to go polish the stars." I beamed, spinning in a small circle, kicking some water up at Billy.

He let out a frustrated groan,

"Harrington, you are really starting to piss me off." He snarled, grabbing my arm, "God, you're acting just like your brother." He snapped, "No wonder nobody bothers to get to know both of you, you're the same person."

I couldn't remain neutral any longer, I yanked my arm from his grasp and gave him a shove backward before turning on my heels and strutting back the way I came.

"Where the hell are you going?" He hollered.

I resisted the urge to turn around and scream back in his face as well as the urge to reach up to wipe the tears that had started to fall onto my cheek. I couldn't give him the satisfaction of knowing that he hurt me. My attempt at escape was thwarted when he ran up behind me, grabbing my wrist and spinning me around to face him,

"Let go of me, Billy." I hissed, straining against his grasp.

He gripped onto me with white knuckles,

"Not until you tell me where the hell you're going."

"Away from you." I spat.

"I'm not letting you leave here by yourself."

"You don't own me, you don't get to decide what I can and can't do."

"You're out here with me, I'm responsible for you."

"I'm responsible for myself, always have been. Find your own way home, asshole." I tore myself from his grasp, turning my back on him and making my way back to the car we rented, climbing in.

******

I drove around for at least two hours before heading back to the hotel. I knew that eventually the asshole known as Billy Hargrove would make an appearance, taking place of the boy I had been around for the past few days.

I figured it was from him being vulnerable with me and opening up to me about his father and mother. But the loss of his best friend and the fear of his father gave him no right to treat me or any other person that tries to get close with him the way he treats them.

I grew up almost raising myself, in a semI neglectful home with a vain mother, an absent father, a star athlete and a favorite brother. And that made me angry. That my own flesh and blood never took the time to come to my piano recitals, or come cheer me on for any academic achievement.

Hell, I doubt anyone in my family even knew that I was graduating a year early. I was counting down the days to graduation. I would be my own person, I would travel to places and do things that my brother would be too scared or stupid to do.

I opened the door to our hotel room to find Billy slumped on the couch asleep. I went over to him, taking his boots off and covering him up with a blanket.

"You're back." He grumbled, half asleep.

"Mmhm. Go back to sleep." I whispered, setting a glass of water on the table next to him then walking to the room, shutting the door.

******

I woke up the next morning to Billy shaking my arm. "Hey...Um I'm sorry about last night."

"I only accept apologies from assholes when there are pancakes involved." I grumbled, pulling the covers over my head.

"Sam..." Billy whined. I felt the bed shift as he sat next to me, resting his hand in the curve of my waist,

"Go away." I objected, kicking at his butt and wiggling out from under his touch.

A small chuckle left Billy's lips as he moved the covers from my head, "I really can't take you seriously when you're mad." He laughed.

I glared at him,

"You're a jerk. Get me pancakes and then we'll talk."

"Get up and get dressed. I'll take you to the best pancake place in town."

I wandered out of my room, passing Billy who was sitting on the counter with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth.

"Are you really not going to talk to me until I feed you?" Billy asked as he followed me into the elevator. I glared over at him angrily, not breaking our eye contact, pressing the button that would take us to the lobby.

"Sammie..."

I crossed my arms, examining the tiles of the elevator floor.

"I know.. I'm an ass okay? I'm sorry for what I said, you're nothing like Steve and it's a goddamn shame that nobody in that shit stain of a town doesn't see you as Samantha. You're crazy and quote Dr. Seuss and Shel Silverstein as a means to fight. You always know what to say and the right time to say it. I didn't mean anything I said last night."

My head still faced the opposite from where Billy was standing. I uncrossed my arms, reaching down grabbing Billy's hand.

"You're still an asshole" I asserted,

I could feel him relax underneath my touch. I glanced over at him, he was staring at me, cigarette still hanging from his mouth.

"Bad habit." I jeered, taking the cigarette out of his mouth and replacing it with a lollipop I found on the floor of the elevator.

Billy took the lollipop out of his mouth, dropping it to the floor gagging. "Gross!" "Still better than the cancer stick." I retorted, crossing my arms again and staring him down.

"You're an asshole." I repeated, skipping out of the elevator and outside to our car.

"These are some of the best pancakes you will ever have." Billy hummed as he started the car, heading in the direction of the diner he was taking us to.

He was right. They were some of the best pancakes I had ever had.

"So are you going to talk to me now?" Billy questioned, reaching for my hand and interlocking our fingers.

"I told you I would once you fed me." I quipped, pushing my plate away with my free hand.

"I'm truly sorry about last night Sam. I shouldn't have forced you to go to the party and expect you to want to stick around. And I'm really, really sorry for comparing you to Steve. You're not like him at all."

I squeezed his hand, peering up at him.

"You're an asshole. But, I forgive you."

******

Billy and I sat in comfortable silence on the car ride home from the airport. I couldn't help but have this feeling that once we got home and went our separate ways that Billy would go back to his friends and I'd go back to my flowers. Despite him profusely apologizing over our fight on the beach, I feared that he would go back to being his asshole self and only talk to me when he needed notes- maybe even to get under Steve's skin by being around me.

I pushed my feet up in the dash as Billy silently hummed to himself, tapping on the steering wheel.

"What's going to happen on Monday?" I questioned, peering over at him, "The past few days have been...amazing to say the least but once school starts back, are we going back to Billy Hargrove the king of Hawkins and The Other Harrington."

I started to nervously fidget with the ring Billy had given me, twisting it around my finger.

Billy reached over, grabbing my hand and squeezing it "When school starts back on Monday, I'll be Billy and you will be Samantha. I know im an ass, but I won't pretend this trip didn't happen, that I don't love you."

I turned my head at him in surprise over the fact that he just admitted that he loved me.

"Sammie, you make me less pissed. Not... not pissed, but I feel like I use to before I lost my mom."

"I saved that flower crown you gave me. It's in a box under my bed next to a flower crown she made for me on my fifteenth birthday."

Billy brought the back side of my hand to his mouth, placing a kiss on it.

"You promise?" I asked hesitantly. He sighed, pulling over on the side of the road.

"Sam, I'm not sure if you heard me the first time, but I'm in love with you. You somehow talked me into getting a haircut,-"

"You lost a bet and those were the stipulations." I corrected, earning an eye roll from him.

"I cut my hair for you, and I opened up to you about my father. And told you about the only other person that I knew that was as kind and loving as you are. It was a no brainer that I would fall in love with you. I just didn't expect it to happen as fast as it did."

I leaned over, kissing his cheek,

"You are an asshole with I really nice hair cut. I love you too, Billy Hargrove." I reached over, turning the volume up as the guitar riff to Highway to Hell blasted through the cars speakers. I started dancing along to the beat beckoning Billy to get out of Priscilla and join me on the side of the road.

Billy laughed, getting out grabbing me by my waist as we started dancing together. We danced and twirled around to the music, singing along to the words together.

Billy placed his hand on the small of my back, pulling me closer to him as his other hand snaked behind my neck, bringing my lips to his.

"So, uh, I was wondering if you wanted to go get dinner later? But not like friend dinner...uh like a date? And you be my girlfriend." He babbled.

I chuckled, kissing his nose,

"You're cute when you're nervous. Hasn't this week been one long date?" I questioned, intertwining my fingers with his.

Billy leaned in, his head resting it on mine. "I don't want to go home." He confessed, opening his eyes looking down at me.

"We have to go back to reality. And when graduation comes around, we'll pick back up where we left off, travel the world together forget about Indiana."

I twirled around Billy's fingers before wrapping my arms around his neck.

"So now I'm included in this adventure?"

"You are my husband, you kinda have to go with me." I retorted, resting my head on his shoulder as the song slowly came to an end.

Billy wrapped his arms tighter around me, placing a kiss on top of my head.

"Back to reality."

I pulled up in front of the Hargrove household, glancing over at Billy who was almost as pale as a ghost. "I'm going in there with you."

"No you're not. Sammie you are safe out here."

"But you aren't safe in there." I retorted, getting out of my car.

"He won't do anything to you in front of a stranger." I added, reaching down for his hand. We walked into his house to find what looked to be his father and brother sitting on the couch watching whatever game was playing on the television.

Both men drew their attention to the door. Billy's father glared at both of us his arms crossing over one another.

"Where the hell have you been?" He snarled, standing up from his recliner.

"Uh...um," Billy sputtered.

I squeezed his hand trying to give him reassurance as Neil turned his focus from his son to me.

"You were off doing God knows what with this whore weren't you?!" Neil boomed, not breaking eye contact with me.

"Um.. uh."

"That's not an answer, Billy."

I groaned,

"Yes, Mr. Hargrove he was with me. We went to my parents country club and then flew to California for a few days. It was a lot of fun. I found a lot of pretty shells. I see where Billy gets being an asshole from." I exclaimed as Billy's hand tightened against mine.

"I want you out of my house!" Neil howled, taking a step toward Billy and I. Billy instinctively took a step in front of me.

"You want me out? Fine."

Billy pushed past Neil, heading the direction of his bedroom, me following behind. He grabbed the remainder of his clothes from his closet, stuffing it in trash bags. I reached under his bed, grabbing a shoebox with his mother's name scribbled across it

"Can't forget your flower crowns." I whispered, sitting the box on the bed, helping Billy grab all of his belongings.

"You have nowhere to go." Neil laughed, standing in the doorway and crossing his arms.

"My house is big. He can live with me." I retorted, stepping in front of Neil, blocking his view of Billy the best I could.

"And your parents are going to be okay with that?" Neil challenged.

"I don't think it's any of your business how my parents react to Billy coming to stay with me."

Billy walked over to me with the trashbags full of his belongings.

"He isn't your concern anymore. You can fuck off." I spat, reaching back for Billy's wrist and bumping my shoulder into Neill as we walked in the the hallway.

"You'll be back after this slut gets tired of you." Neil yelled following after us. I stopped turning to face him.

"I can assure you, that I won't get tired of him. We got married when we were in Cali." I chortled, flashing my left hand up at him.

"Like I said, Billy isn't your concern anymore." I lifted my middle finger up at Neil as Billy pulled me out of the house and out to the car.

******

"Steve isn't going to be happy," I mumbled, pulling into my driveway.

Billy let out a small laugh, leaning over kissing my cheek. I faced him with a stern expression,

"Please be nice. I'll handle all the talking." I stressed, squeezing his hand. I placed a quick kiss on his lips before stepping out of Priscilla

"Where the fuck have you been, Samantha?" Steve gripped, walking out of our house and crossing his arms.

Billy slowly got out of Priscilla, walking around to stand behind me.

"Let me rephrase that, where the fuck have you been with Billy Hargrove." Steve seethed.

"California." I stated as a matter of factly.

"California!?" Steve blurted, his jaw dropping, "What did you do to her, Hargrove, kidnap her?!"

"He's my friend...boy," I said as Billy intertwined our fingers, "Err my boyfriend."

"Since when?"

"Since this morning."

"Sam, you don't socialize you go to school and come home."

I rolled my eyes, opening my mouth to say something only to be cut off by Steve,

"How do you two even know each other? God Samantha, leave it up to you to become friends with the biggest asshole in school. Do you even remember what happened to me in October?"

Billy stood between us placing a hand on Steve's chest. Steve quickly stepped away from Billy's touch, "Man, I know we have our issues. And I'm sorry for everything I've done to you." He began.

Steve crossed his arms over his chest, raising an eyebrow and shifting his weight onto his heels, "But I actually give a shit about Sammie. And nobody appreciates her damn near as much as she deserves." Billy mused, glancing down at me.

"Stop acting like you care, Steve." I grumbled under my breath.

"You're my baby sister, of course I care."

"Really? Do you even care enough to know that most of your friends don't even know my name?" I fired back.

"What're you talking about?"

"In fact, most people don't even know my name. Not just your friends. And you know who did? Billy. You know who came and talked to me without prefacing it with 'can you tell Steve'? Billy." I defended, "He actually talks to me like I'm a real person and not just a means to get to you."

"Are you sure that isn't what this is? A means to get to me?"

"Is it really that hard for you to believe that somebody cares about me?"

"I find it hard to believe that Billy Hargrove cares about you."

Billy dropped my hand from his grasp, balling up his fist. I stepped ahead of him, blocking his path if he decided to make a move.

"Somebody has to! Mom and dad sure don't. And you're too busy running off with a bunch of middle schoolers who you call your siblings to pay attention to your actual younger sister!"

"Sam, this isn't about mom or dad or me or them!"

"Bullshit it isn't!" I snapped, "My entire fucking life I've been walking around in your shadow and I'm goddamn sick of it!"

"How many times have I told you that people don't know my name? How many times have I said that kids I've known my whole life, gone through kindergarten with, don't know my name? All I am is Little Harrington or The Other Harrington. I'm not Samantha. I'm not my own fucking person. And that's on you, Steve!"

"How is it on me that you don't do anything to get attention?"

I could faintly hear a rumble in Billy's chest,

"Because you've never taken me seriously! Never stood up for me when I needed you to. Steve, I needed you to be my big brother and protect me and you didn't!"

Steve opened his mouth like he was going to say something, but I cut him off,

"Go take care of the rest of your 'little siblings' hope you don't let them down like you did to me." I snarled.

Billy went back over to Priscilla, grabbing my bag from the car and following behind me.

"I don't think so. You are not going into my house." Steve said, grabbing his arm.

"Fuck you, Steve." I spat as Billy yanked his arm from my brother's grasp.

They squared up with each other, chest to chest. Neither of them particularly wanted to get into a fight, especially not in front of me. I intertwined my fingers with Billy's and took him inside with me.

"What the fuck is he doing here?" Dustin asked as the other kids stood up in defense.

"Ask your older brother, he seems to be pretty open with you guys." I sneered, pulling Billy up to my room.

I shut the door behind us, leaning back on it and letting myself cry.

"Hey, hey, hey, baby, no." Billy comforted, pressing his forehead to mine. "No crying." He cupped my face in his hands, making me look at him

"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind."

I smiled softly at him as he kissed me,

"Normal people don't quote Dr. Seuss." I sassed, wiping my face with the back side of my hand.

"Well, as it turns out, I'm not as normal as you think."

******

Monday I could feel every single eye on me. The worst part of living in a small town was word got around fast.

"Christy, is it true you and Billy Hargrove robbed a bank over spring break?"

I rolled my eyes as I shut my locker door,

"No, it's not true." I grunted, walking past Carol and into Chemistry. A smile spread across Billy's face as I walked down the row of desks and took my usual seat at the one in front of him. He leaned forward in his desk, pressing a kiss to my cheek,

"I missed you," He whispered, placing another kiss on my shoulder.

"Two whole periods without me, how did you live!?" I exclaimed,

"It's not like you didn't just move in with me." I joked, leaning my head back so it was laying on his desk.

Billy chuckled, leaning forward connecting our lips together, earning various grunts and sighs from some of the girls in our class room.

By lunch people were well aware of Billy's status. People know knew who I was and who I was dating. But they still intentionally called me some random name.

Most of them probably figured that it got under my skin, so why would they stop?

"Sammie, are you okay?" Billy asked as we walked into the lunchroom together.

"Yeah, I'm just not used to being this...well known. And people are now purposely calling me different names." I sighed as I grabbed a juice and a banana in the lunch line.

"Mr. Hargrove, your new haircut looks wonderful!" Edna, the lunch lady chirped.

"Doesn't it?" I questioned, running my hand in his hair.

Billy rolled his eyes, swatting my hand away before paying for both of our lunches.

"Oh! Miss Hayley! Will you please tell Steve he still owes us money from before spring break."

I grinned at her, knowing that she didn't mean any harm by calling me the wrong name, unlike the rest of the school.

"Sure thing, Edna."

I followed behind Billy as we both sat at the lunch table with Tommy H. and Carol.

"Nicole are you lost?" Tommy H grimaced as I sat next to Billy. "No, I'm not." I mumbled. "Then why are you sitting here? Last I checked you weren't popular." Carol snorted.

The walked on Billy's face made me think he was about to kill everyone around him.

"Knock it off both of you. Samantha is my girlfriend." Billy chided.

"Ew, why would you want to date Kayla?" Tommy sneered, giving me a disgusted look "You know she's Steve's sister, right?"

In a flash Billy flew across the table, throwing his fist into Tommy's face. He then climbed on the table, placing his pinkies in his mouth and whistling.

"Just so we are all on the same page, This girl has a name, and It's Samantha. She's my girlfriend...Samantha Harrington is my girlfriend. If I hear anyone call her The Other Harrington or anything that is not Sam, or Samantha, one more time, you will really be wishing you didn't." He threatened, "Now what is my girlfriends name?"

In unison, the entire lunchroom sang out my name. I could feel my cheeks grow warm. I knew for a fact I was as red as a tomato.

"And if any of you mess with her? You'll deal with me," He yelled as one of the coaches marched over, pulling Billy off the table and escorting him out of the cafeteria.

I cleared my throat, poking at my plate as Tommy climbed back back up to the table, holding his bleeding nose.

"The chicken is really good today isn't it?"

******

The week was long and uneventful, and by Friday not only did everyone- including teachers knew my name, they also came up to me apologizing- something I'm sure was Billy's doing.

I didn't hate this new found fame but I didn't love it either. Billy made an ass out of himself at lunch, landing him a weeks worth of detention. So every day I would go sit in the field, making 2 floral crowns while I waited for Billy to get out of his detainment.

"How was detention?" I asked as Billy plopped down on the blanket next to me ,taking my floral crown from my head and placing it on his own.

"To the world you may be one person, but to one person you may be the world." Billy sang, kissing my cheek.

"Quoting Dr. Seuss again are we?" I sassed.

"I love you," He uttered as a dragonfly flew by landing on my nose.

I chuckled, shaking my head startling the bug away.

"Looks like your mom loves me too."

Billy smirked, pressing his lips onto mine before stretching out onto the blanket, placing his head on my lap, staring up at me with the utmost adoration.

It didn't matter anymore to me that people got my name wrong, or how I would become a distant memory after graduation,

The soft boy with a hard exterior had the free spirited girl with a love for wildflowers.

We had each other, we made each other shine.

And that's all that matters.

521 notes · View notes

jetsandbennie · 5 years

Text

third time’s a charm.

summary: after dating ben for four months, you decide it’s time to get over one big milestone in your relationship - your first time.

warnings: loss of virginity, smut, unprotected sex, 18+ pleeease, female receiving oral, fluff

pairing: ben hardy x reader

also want to add that the reader in this story feels that losing her virginity is really important - for some of you guys, you might agree! if you see the concept of virginity as something extremely special for you, that’s wonderful. personally, i didn’t, and if you don’t that’s completely fine. never feel bad if you go through your teen years/early 20s still holding onto your v card. idk this didn’t really make sense. have fun with the story.

You’d almost lost your virginity three times, it should be said.

When you were 16, a junior, you were invited to prom by a senior boy - Marcus - and he was nice, and held your hand and complimented your dress and your makeup and did everything right. He danced with you, and he took pictures and introduced you to his friends. You were, after all, one of the few juniors there, and all of the others weren’t your friends at all. It was a bit lonely, especially when he walked outside for twenty minutes with some of his other friends to take a smoke break, and you sat down and drank your punch and waited for him to come back.

When he came back inside he smelled slightly of weed, and you didn’t quite enjoy the stench but hell, who were you to complain, you thought? Without Marcus, you’d have been sitting home, watching Fresh Prince reruns with a face mask on. And that didn’t seem that bad, really … but no. Prom was nice. Marcus was nice. And when he pulled you into an empty bathroom, far away from anyone else, with his mouth on your neck and his hands roaming your body, it really was nice.

You let him unzip your dress slightly and slid your arms out so he could grope at your breasts - he attached his mouth to one of your nipples and that did feel nice, your back arching into him, your hands going to his head.

But nice wasn’t wonderful. And when he started to unzip his dress pants you had to stop it, really. Would you want to lose your virginity in a bathroom the night of your prom, with someone you didn’t really know, someone you didn’t really want to be there with? No. You put your hands on his chest and told him to stop, kissing his cheek, and he was good about it. Flustered, but good. You zipped your dress back up and fixed yourself in the mirror, wiping lipstick stains off of your chin. The redness in your cheeks didn’t matter. Everyone was sweaty, anyway.

When you got to college the second time came, with a girl in your history of art class who had short black hair and a nose ring, and she was so spectacular that you thought you fell in love with her just upon being partnered up with her. Her name was Emma and she wrote her dorm and phone number on your notebook in swirly, cursive lettering that didn’t match her aesthetic at all. You plugged her number into your phone and sat on texting her for a week before doing it, and even then you were so beyond nervous but she was wonderful. Lovely and blunt, with such sharp opinions and a tongue she didn’t hold back, and upon the first week of hanging out with her you found yourself underneath her.

Her breath tasted like cherry, you noted, and her hair was much softer than you’d expected. Emma ran her hands up your shirt and then dragged one down, unbuttoning your jeans and sliding her hand into your underwear and - and it was moving so fast, faster than you were ready for, and you were fairly positive she didn’t think you were a virgin. And part of you didn’t want her to know, but another slightly stronger part of you thought it was important.

You barely knew her, you told yourself, as she took off your shirt and kissed down your chest. Shouldn’t your first time be with someone special? Shouldn’t you get to know her first before giving it to her?

When you stopped her Emma glanced up at you from where she sat, mouth just below your belly button, your jeans half pulled down your hips. In rushed, panicked words you explained it, how you hadn’t really done much before with anyone and you were nervous and you thought your first time shouldn’t be right now but you did like her, really you did, but could she go out with you first? Please? Maybe get to know each other more, get into the dating side of things? You did really like her, you explained, as she sat back on her heels, gazing down at your half nude figure on her bed.

I don’t do girlfriends, was what Emma said, and she picked your shirt off the ground and gave it to you. And you put it back on and pulled up your pants, and then you grabbed your stuff and left and when you got to class the next day she’d asked to change partners. And Professor Leuschner had agreed. And you never spoke to her again. (It was for the best. She was wonderful, but wonderful wasn’t perfect. You wanted it to be perfect.)

And the third time - was now. Your boyfriend on top of you, his lips trailing across the column of your throat, his hips rocking gently across yours.

But - earlier. Earlier. How you’d even gotten to this point in the first place.

Ben and you had been dating for four months, and to call it heaven was a criminal understatement. Really, you never knew being in a relationship, and especially one with an actor, could make you feel so good about yourself. But that was all Ben did, made you feel like you were on top of the world no matter what. And you always tried to return the favour - he always deserved it.

The pair of you went on dates, hung out most every night, texted all day every day. You met his friends and his coworkers, his parents, and visited him on set more times than you could count. When you were stressed from work, he’d stop at Panera Bread and bring you home your favourite meal. The time you’d ran a high fever, he hadn’t hesitated to call off from work and stay with you all day.

And, sure. You and Ben hadn’t tapped into the sexual side of your relationship but he never seemed to mind. Or, if he did, he never brought it up to you. You two kissed and had hot and heavy make out sessions all the time, but there always seemed to be a valid excuse not to take things further. Like, you had to go to work. Or your best friend called and needed you for an emergency. And sometimes Ben would groan, but it would quickly evolve into a laugh.

You’d been waiting for the right guy - but wasn’t Ben that guy? Couldn’t he be? He was so wonderful, really. You’d love to spend your life with him, to have him for the rest of your days. And if you were going to get the deflowering thing out of the way, you couldn’t envision a better person to do it with.

Marcus or Emma really didn’t compare. You were glad you hadn’t let it get to that point with them.

You and Ben really did hang out a lot. You had date nights frequently, once a week, at least. Typically you took turns planning - Ben loved taking you out to restaurants or museums, or even just a walk around the city. You liked a little bit of everything. Like tonight - your night to plan, and you’d ordered Japanese food for you and Ben and set up a collection of movies. All of his favourites that you knew of, and a few of your own. Hopefully you’d be able to get him to stay the night and … something would happen.

(You needed to get it out of the way, right? Shouldn’t you? It seemed like such a great time, with a great guy. You could tell him, maybe if your kisses got heated, and tell him to take it. Really, you’d been going out of your mind just thinking about it. Every time you two kissed you wanted to tell him, to take it further - but you never did. And you needed to.)

The doorbell rang as you finished perfecting the pile of movies on your coffee table in the centre of the living room. You stepped back, eyes scanning over your couch - you leaned in to fluff the pillows just a bit, then smoothed your hand over the fleece blanket covering the surface. Perfect. Then you turned and set off down the hall, unlocking the door and swinging it open.

And there - clutching two plastic bags, one with the logo of the Japanese place you’d ordered from printed on it - stood your blonde haired Adonis of a boyfriend, wearing a grin that only intensified as he laid eyes on you.

“Hey, love.” he spoke softly, and you wrapped your arms around his torso, feeling rather than hearing him laugh as he hugged you back as well as he could, a bag dangling from each arm. “I - I saw the delivery guy for Jasmine’s downstairs so I thought I may as well bring it up. Make it easier for you.” As Ben spoke he held up the bag in his left hand, then put it down and raised the bag in his right. “This is ice cream. Cookie dough for you, chocolate for me.”

“You didn’t have to get ice cream!” you laughed, grabbing the Japanese bag from him and setting off down the hall to the kitchen and dining room. Ben disappeared into your kitchen and you heard him open your freezer, placing the two ice cream containers in side before crumbling up the plastic bag and putting it into the recycling bin. “Really, I was going to get cookies, but …”

“But you didn’t,” finished Ben with a small smirk, reentering the dining room, and you shrugged. “So I had to pull through and supply the dessert. Which is the least I could do, of course. Quite a large movie collection, honestly.” He glanced towards the living room, eyeing the stack of movies set up for you to choose from.

“I got your favourites!” and you bounded off towards the films. “And some of mine. But you can take first pick, you know.” Ben sat on the couch, running his finger down the stack of DVDs, mouth moving without noise as he read through some of the titles.

You sat beside him, setting the Japanese food on the table, looking up at his face without him noticing. Really, he was so beautiful. Everytime you saw him - it felt like you loved him a bit more. There was no doubt in your mind he was the man you wanted to sleep with for the first time, or the rest of your life, truthfully. You wouldn’t complain about that for a moment.

“I’ve got it.” Ben placed his hand on the top of the stack, tugging out a DVD from the middle section with such intensity that it practically forced a grin on your face. “The Bronze. Have you seen it?”

You shook your head, grabbing the DVD from him and opening it to pop the disk in your DVD player. Really, you watched most of your films on Amazon, but for a date night you felt there was just something cuter about the old timey kind of vibe. “I got your sushi,” you explained, as he reached forward and opened the bag, setting out the numerous different containers. “And lo mein for me - “

“ - no chicken, right?”

You glanced up at your boyfriend with a small grin, grabbing the clear container containing your noodles and settling back onto the couch as Ben tore open his sushi box. You reached for the remote and turned the movie on, and as Ben sat back next to you and you curled into his side, you felt … safe.

The first part of the movie was - good. It opened with a masturbation scene and Ben laughed as you turned your head ever so slightly into his chest, forkful of noodles dangling in mid air. You felt … well. Awkward but really, wasn’t a scene like that just a lead up to the conversation you’d hopefully lead later?

Anyway, that didn’t last very long. And the rest of the movie was good. You finished your noodles in record time and took one of Ben’s sushi rolls, and he didn’t complain much, just gasped softly in mock offense. The pair of you continued the movie, you tugging the blanket up over yourself and him after a few minutes. It was quite funny, and you found yourself enjoying the way Ben laughed more than the actual movie.

And then …

The sex scene was intense. More intense than you’d expected and - quite funny, really, but it brought up the whole sex thing you needed to talk about with Ben. And you felt his eyes on you, as the scene wore on and Sebastian Stan and Melissa Rauch did somersaults across the room. Of course you’d never be having sex like that but - but it was awkward.

“Ben,” you began as the scene wore on and your palms began sweating more, the uncomfortable feeling of him watching you pointedly not look at him going on and on. “Ben, I need to tell you something.” and you reached for the remote and turned the whole goddamn movie off because Sebastian and Melissa were distracting you. And Ben raised an eyebrow but you ignored it. “It might be kind of weird, but I think it’s important for you to know, you know?” “Okay.”

Whew. You rubbed your palms against your thighs and hesitated before saying, “Okay. Well. You know we haven’t really - um - “ you nodded your head to the now-blank TV screen, and Ben’s eyebrows furrowed. “ - you know, that stuff, we haven’t done it before.”

“Gymnastics sex?” He sounded amused, but he turned to look at you, the smile on his face encouraging you to talk more.

“No.” you swallowed. “Any sex. Obviously. And I don’t want you to think I don’t - want to. Because I do.”

Ben was smiling more, eyes crinkled with it. You wished he wouldn’t, now. Now that you were getting more into it - it just made you nervous. “You want to?” he questioned, and then his hand went to your thigh and your brain felt like it was flatlining.

“Yeah. I do.” then Ben leaned in, his lips on yours, and you leaned into it despite the fact that you still had more you wanted to say, but God. He was intoxicating. You could hardly think.

He moved his other hand, pressed on your stomach, and laid you down on the couch. His body was on top of yours, and you hooked your leg around his waist to pull him closer to you, despite how your brain was yelling at you to stop, begging you to push him away and continue explaining, but then Ben kept kissing down your jaw and your throat and you didn’t really want to stop, not yet.

Ben moved his hand down your stomach, down into your pajama shorts, his palm hot against your skin. His fingertips brushed the top of your panties, and then he looked up from his spot suckling a hickey into your collarbone to question, “Do you want this?”

And it was the golden spot to tell him, wasn’t it? You placed your hand on his chest and he pulled his hand from your shorts and pulled himself slightly off of you. “Ben - I have to tell you something. I’ve never done this before. Any of it.”

You hadn’t exactly meant to blurt it all out, barely taking a breath between sentences but hell, maybe it was just good to get it all out.

He looked surprised. That was just the only way to describe it - his mouth fell open slightly and his eyebrows raised and your stomach flipped slightly.

“Really?”

You rolled your eyes at his response. “Um - no. No, I’m kidding. It’s the kind of thing I say to make myself seem cooler.” And then a beat. “I’m being serious. I’ve barely gone beyond kissing. But - I want to do it with you. Really.” You pushed yourself up so you were sitting, and Ben sat back on his heels but, admittedly, it was a bit hard on the couch. So he ended up half sitting on the couch, one leg extended down to the ground.

“Fuck. Darling. I’m sorry.” Ben leaned forward to grab your hand, and you appreciated it. “I shouldn’t - I’m sorry.”

You shook your head. “No. Don’t be. I want you, Ben. Okay?”

There was a moment of silence. Ben looked down at your intertwined hands and you moved your thumb to rub his, waiting for him to speak up again.

Finally he said, “You don’t have to. You know that? If you want to wait. I don’t mind.”

“No.” your voice was firm, and then you moved your unoccupied hand to stroke his cheek. “Ben. I want you. Please.” And then you moved your head back in and kissed him again, and his hand moved back to your waist to push you back down.

It felt right. It always felt right, with him. His lips on yours, and then they were moving down your chin and jawline, and down the column of your throat - it all felt so right.

You reached for the hem of your shirt and pulled it off, dropping it on the ground next to the couch. You’d forgone a bra - didn’t think you really needed one, and now you were thankful, watching Ben’s eyes widen as he took in the side of your chest. It was exhilarating.

Your back arched up as he leaned down, pressing kisses against your left breast before taking your nipple in his mouth, groping and massaging the other one. “Has anyone ever done this before?” he questioned, eyes flickering up at you, voice muffled against your skin. You nodded, mind filled with images of your school prom, of your date doing this to you in a bathroom.

Well, Ben was certainly better at it than Marcus was. Your hand went to his blonde locks as he moved his mouth to your other breast but - well. You wanted more.

You dragged your hands to the bottom of his shirt and pulled it off, forcing Ben to move off of you as you ripped the fabric over his head. Then you grabbed his face, pulling it back up to yours, kissing him with all of your might as his hands trailed down your side, fingers hooking in your shorts and tugging them ever so slightly down your thighs. You lifted your hips up and he pulled them off completely, leaving you in just your panties.

“Wait - “ you murmured as Ben slid off of you, resting on his knees on the ground and pulling you so that his body was positioned between your thighs. “You don’t have to do this. Ben.”

Ben drummed his fingertips along your knee. “I want to. Do you want me to?”

You thought for a moment and then nodded slowly. Ben worked on tugging your panties down as your mind flew into overdrive. No one had ever, ever done this to you before - Emma had, almost, but you had stopped her. And you’d always wondered how it would feel. Weird, maybe, but good, of course. Otherwise no one would -

Oh.

Ben brought his mouth to your core, pressing soft kisses across your dripping folds. The feeling was - unlike nothing you’d ever felt before, really. As soon as his lips pressed against your most sensitive area a jolt rang through your body, and your hand flew down to his hair, running your fingers through his locks (short, too short for grabbing onto like this) and tugging as he continued. Kisses grew deeper, and his hand went to your thigh, pulling it higher to give himself more room.

“No one’s ever done this before?” he questioned again, the muffled words against your pussy causing you to inhale sharply.

“N - not technically, no. But one - “ your head flew back, crashing against the soft couch cushion as Ben attached his lips to your clit, and you cried out, fingers tightening in his hair. Fuck. Nothing you’d ever done to yourself compared to this. Nothing. His fingernails dug into your thighs as he worked his mouth at your core, but just as the burning sensation started to settle in he smoothed his hands back over the half-crescent indents on your soft skin.

Ben pulled away, mouth already wet with your arousal. “You were saying?”

You shut your eyes. The absence of his lips on you was - startling. You missed it already. “A - a college friend of mine almost did. I stopped her.”

He murmured a soft ‘ahh’ before bringing his face back between your thighs, licking a wide stripe all the way up your slit before circling your overly-sensitive nub. Ben focused his attention back on it, drawing small shapes and letters into your clit, a smirk playing at his lips as you writhed beneath him. All too soon Ben had pulled away again but not far, and when he spoke his lips brushed against your folds. “Keep telling me about this girl. How far did she get?”

You ran your fingers along his hair, breathing heavy as he continued lapping at your pussy, slowing down ever so slightly so you could answer him. “Not far at all. Didn’t - didn’t really even get below the pants. Was just kissing my stomach - “ you ran your finger down your chest, stopping just between your belly button and where Ben’s head was situated. “And she put her hand down my panties but really didn’t go further than that.”

Your boyfriend brought his head up, kissing where your finger sat on your skin, before using his tongue to drag a stripe back down to your clit. “Can you come for me, love? Need to hear you.”

You didn’t have to answer as he wrapped his lips around your clit and sucked, because your orgasm was washing over you and you hadn’t even noticed how bloody close you were, how fast he was getting you there. The one thigh that wasn’t being supported by his hand closed around his ear as you cried out, desperately grinding against his face as you rode out the rest of your climax, chest heaving violently.

Ben ran his tongue along your slit a few more times before you jolted away, sensitive after the first orgasm you’d ever had at someone else’s hands, and then he pushed himself up so he was standing, leaning over you, lips crashing back against yours. And it was extraordinary, really, the mix of his familiar taste and this new one, you, the thing you’d never tasted before.

A rather good mix, you had to say.

“Ben.” you grabbed his face, breathing rapidly still, words slurring as though you were tipsy. “That was amazing. Holy shit.”

He brought his hand back down to your pussy and gently ran a finger along your folds, delighting in how you jumped at his touch. “Darling - “

“Ben, I need you in me.”

“Are you sure?”

And you were nodding frantically, and Ben’s eyes stayed on yours for a few moments before he was lying you back down on the couch, reaching for the zipper of his jeans and releasing his member from its confinements and -

Well.

You didn’t think for a bloody minute that he would fit inside of you.

Ben climbed back over you, jeans half pulled down his thighs, and he grabbed your hand in his, running a thumb over your smooth skin. “You need to tell me if it hurts.”

“Will it?”

He smiled slightly and then leaned in to kiss you, soft and light. “Probably.”

At least he was honest.

Ben aligned himself at your entrance, and you felt as though your heart would beat out of your chest. It had all lead up to this, hadn’t it? Marcus and Emma, and turning people down at parties, and keeping your sexual life limited to your fingers. It had happened like that so this could happen so perfectly.

But when he began to push himself in - just the tip at first - it didn’t feel very perfect.

“Oh, shit.” you cried out, and Ben stopped, breathing shallow. He cursed and dropped his head to your shoulder, and you wrapped your arms around his back, keeping him pressed close to you.

“D’you want me to stop?”

Your mind was screaming to say no but the burn you were feeling was saying otherwise, and you contemplated briefly. A small, raging debate in your mind, if the pain was worth the pleasure you’d receive.

“No. No.” you hissed out, and then you hit his back lightly. “Just - just do it all at once. Okay?”

He averted his eyes to you and then nodded, and he sheathed himself completely inside of you and ohshitohshitohshit.

God. God, god, god. That did hurt like a motherfucker, the intense intrusion of such a foreign object, the stretch of your cunt around him. Ben cried out himself, his breathing now much heavier.

“Fuck. Fuck, oh God. Wait. Ben. Don’t move.”

“Tell me when, love - so bloody tight - “

You brought your leg up to wrap around his waist, breasts heaving, but the pain was - considerably lowering. It wasn’t exactly pleasing yet but getting there, and you took a few deep inhales and exhales before smacking his back again. “Go. Slow.”

Ben pulled himself out before slowly pushing back in, and judging by his shaking muscles you could tell the pace was agonizingly slow for him. Every push sent a different wave tunneling through your body - each thrust was less pain, more pleasure, as you grew a bit more accustomed to stretching around him. After a few moments you begged him to go faster, just a bit, and he did, and bloody fuck you knew why people loved to do this.

After a minute or so you kept telling him to go faster, and you could tell he was appreciating the faster pace and so were you - every time he thrusted into you it felt like he hit a new spot and the pleasure was overwhelming. God, your fingers had never made you feel so good! Ben pulled out and pushed back into you, just on the verge of what could be considered fast but not quite there.

“God, Ben, that feels so fucking good, oh my god, oh my god,” you cried out, his name like a mantra on your lips as you pressed one palm against his sweaty back, feeling the taut muscles under your hand. “Oh fuck, babe …”

He grunted into your ear with every thrust, lowering his head at one point to capture one of your nipples in his mouth and your back arched up, pushing your chest further into his lips, and you could feel the workings of your climax deep in your insides. Ben’s mouth moved against your skin, moaning out fragments of sentences, some you could barely make out - “so fucking tight, feel so fucking good on my cock, baby, squeezing so fucking tight - “

Ben snaked one hand down between your sweaty bodies, his fingertips brushing over the spot where your bodies met, over and over, the pads of his fingers landing on your sensitive clit. You sobbed out as he pressed down, rubbing furious circles into the nub, thriving on how you tightened around him, your second orgasm overtaking you as you came around his dick, moaning loudly with no regard to your neighbors, who surely, by now, knew the name of the man doing this to you.

“Ben, fuck! B - Ben …” his fingers kept working at your clit as you reached the end of your climax, arms loosening around him, and he kept thrusting for a minute or two before pulling out abruptly, his hand moving up and down his cock rapidly - you brought your hand down, fingers helping him with his task, before he leaned forward, bracing one hand on the arm of the couch beside your head, ribbons of cum spurting onto your lower stomach.

“Fuck!” Your boyfriend milked out his orgasm and collapsed on top of you, sweat covered bodies sticking together, your breaths heavy and hearts full. You brought your hand up to run through his hair again, fingers combing through the knotted locks.

There was silence for a moment, and then you laughed to yourself. “Bloody hell. In terms of first times, I have to say, mine was probably the best of the best.”

Ben rested his chin against your chest, staring up at you with a mischievous glint in his eye, a grin dancing at his lips. “Doesn’t have to be in the past tense, darling. I could do this all night.”

You shrugged your shoulders, smiling right back at him. “I’m glad. There’s still so much I haven’t done. Surely you can help me with that.”

“I’d be honored.”

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