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welllpthisishappening · 3 years

Text

Should Auld Acquaintance be Forgot

Honestly, Emma was less mad about the whole thing than she expected. Disappointed, that was the word. And everyone knew that disappointed was far worse than mad.

Because being dateless on New Year’s Eve was one thing. Being dateless while pining over a roommate with a secret Match.com profile and apparent relationship-type desires that were the complete opposite of her was—

Disappointing, really.

If Killian kissed anybody, she was going to drink an entire bottle of champagne by herself.

-----

Rating: Teen, kissing, far too many Grinch references

Word Count: 9.2K

AN: Today is our last festive prompt! Or, at least one that’s a stand-alone story. Our said prompts come from @kmomof4 who asked for “i don't wanna get up-- you're comfy."// "i'm cold. come closer." //"i love you a lot, but please stop trying to cook me dinner, you suck.” And I got all three in. As always, I cannot thank you guys enough for clicking and reading and saying such nice things. Here’s to a 2021 that’s full of even more fic, satisfying TV storylines and lots of fictional characters making out.

Also on Ao3 if that’s your jam

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“Shit.”

“Merry Christmas.”

Rolling her eyes over the top of the phone in her hand, Ruby didn’t look particularly amused at the distinct lack of enthusiasm in Emma’s voice. That was something of a theme. For like—the last thirty-six hours, but also the majority of their relationship, and none this should have come as a surprise, only she’d had a lot of wine in the last forty-six minutes, and it might have been catching up with her. Was definitely catching up with her.

“How much did you pay for the garbage alcohol you’ve been shoving at me?” Emma asked archly, and she was only slightly worried about getting home. Her head felt muddled. Like there were too many thoughts, and this time of year always did that to her brain, and her consciousness, and at least eighty-two percent of this was Mary Margaret’s fault.

For deciding that they were going to have a party.

On New Year’s Eve.

Like complete cliches.

“I’ll have you know,” Ruby drawled, eyes dropping back to her phone and whatever noise it was making, “that I paid at least twelve dollars for—”

“—Lies,” Elsa yelled, and it was a testament their current situation that she’d raised her voice at all. Nothing like that ever happened, and the overall roll rate of Ruby’s eyes was going to give her a migraine.

Her phone made another noise.

“She’s lying to you,” Elsa added. “Straight to your face.”

She’d still be staring down a dateless New Year’s Eve, but—

Emma scrunched her nose. “What else is new?”

“Oh, I take offense to that,” Ruby cried, but she was almost too obviously distracted, and the inability of this conversation to be concise was starting to grate on Emma’s nerves. Or what remained of them. Maybe she was the Grinch.

No, that wasn’t right. The Grinch had an enlarged heart, which Emma certainly did not have — and that was nice and appropriately festive for the season, the Grinch, not her, and he had a dog. Emma didn’t have a dog. If she had a dog, there was no possible way she’d be annoyed as she was.

Whatever, honestly.

Her date, or lack thereof, was not important, and she was going to drink this entire bottle of Barefoot Moscato, price tag be damned, and then she was going to figure out some way to get home. Without falling over.

Also, the Grinch didn’t have a roommate. Unless you counted the dog, and Emma didn’t think Max could conceivably hold so many titles in a twenty-two minute animated Christmas special, and she imagined the Grinch was also not pining after his dog slash roommate slash stand-in reindeer. That’d be weird.

For a twenty-two minute animated Christmas special.

She’d never seen the Jim Carey version. Or that other one with Benedict whatever-his-name-is.

Away from dating apps and wine that was very likely going to give her one hell of a headache, and Killian would at least make sure she was vaguely hydrated before she collapsed on some sort of horizontal surface. She wasn’t going to be picky about which one, honestly.

“Why are there so many versions of the Grinch?”

Ruby didn’t look at her. Her eyebrows moved, though. Lifted ever so slightly into her hairline, and Elsa’s glance wasn’t exactly subtle, and Emma needed to go home.

“Expand on that for me,” Ruby said, lips twisted as soon as she stopped talking. Something was wrong. Well, more wrong. In an alcohol-saturated sort of way that included all those previously discussed mobile dating apps.

“There are so many Grinches,” Emma said. “You think that’s a commentary on society? Like as a whole? That we need to—”

“—Embrace the spirit of Christmas?”

“Because we as a general population are all assholes?”

“You’ve had too much wine.”

“Not a question,” Elsa mumbled, elbow bumping Emma’s shoulder when she perched on the edge of the sofa, and Ruby’s eyes were still doing that thing. Widening every now and then — a flash of understanding mixing in with surprise, and Emma wasn’t sure how many muscles were in a human thumb, but she figured all of Ruby’s were getting quite a workout, scrolling as quickly as they were.

“If I have,” Emma muttered, “it is entirely Ruby’s fault. Who buys pink Moscato and expects their guests not to drink the whole bottle?”

“Seems to suggest you’re a guest, though,” Ruby said, “and that’s awfully prim and proper.”

Ruby couldn’t possibly be Cindy Lou Who in this metaphor.

Emma couldn’t argue with that. Mostly because she’d drank so much of the pink Moscato. “Ok, ok, forget the wine for two seconds. And the Grinch. Why were you making proclamations before? They were very loud and—”

Nothing changed. The phone was still there — wobbling slightly because it seemed Ruby’s forearm strength was lacking just a bit, but the screen didn’t change, and Emma was certain this was somehow also Taylor Swift’s fault. For rerecording Love Story and letting Ryan Reynolds use it in that Match.com ad.

“So…”

Although really that made it more Scooter whatever-his-last-name-was’s fault, for stealing all of Taylor Swift’s songs and being a noted and massive dick, and Emma’s inability to remember anyone’s last name was clearly something of a personality failing.

“Thoughts?” Ruby pressed.

At least twelve-thousand, but none of them seemed especially interested in being said out loud, and Emma’s tongue felt like it was simultaneously growing and dissolving in her mouth. None of it was particularly comfortable, what legitimately felt like cotton balls bursting out of her cheeks and making it difficult to breathe, and she should have lived in a cave. With her dog and the inexplicable set of antlers she owned to make that same dog look like a reindeer, and then she wouldn’t have to be staring at Killian Jones’ dating profile on goddamn Match.com eight days before a New Year’s Eve party she only marginally wanted to attend.

“Don’t people just use Tinder now?”

Emma’s voice did not sound like her own. Presumably because of the tongue thing and the cotton ball analogy, and she wondered if the Uber driver she was inevitably going to request would be especially annoyed by her desire to blast Taylor Swift in the backseat.

She’d give them five stars.

No matter what — because she wasn’t an asshole, but especially if they let Emma blast Taylor Swift in the backseat.

Ruby rolled her eyes. “You’re very old; you know that?”

Her face was very warm.

“Buy me better wine.”

Emma had never gone into cardiac arrest before, but the sinking feeling in her chest was sudden and a little jarring and she tried very hard to swallow down the wad of emotion currently taking up residence in the middle of her throat. Didn’t work.

“Only nine bucks, honestly?”

Failed spectacularly, quite honestly.

“I don’t want to know,” she announced. “Whatever he put on there is his—”

“What Killian does or doesn’t do in the world of modern dating has nothing to do with me,” Emma said, only a little disappointed because she didn’t think people got multiple miracles in their lives and to having hers ensure her voice didn’t shake over those particular words in that particular order felt lame.

“I don’t care.”

All things considered.

Scrunching her nose, Ruby’s nod lacked a certain sense of honesty. “Sure, sure, sure, well—” She shrugged. “—He’s here. Being available. Presumably for New Year’s, and…”

Emma waited for the rest. All the reasons she’d heard before, and her friends were convinced. Something about inevitable, and happily ever after, but that second part was mostly Mary Margaret and it was likely easier to believe in the fairy tale when you were living it.

Pessimism was also fairly lame. As far as defining traits went.

“What are you—” Elsa started, but then she was moving and her teeth clicked exactly five times, as soon as she looked at the screen, and Emma was not capable of dealing with any of this. Watching her friends gape at her, Ruby’s phone still held loosely in her hand, and neither one of them objected when she finally managed to get to her feet.

And the Uber driver didn’t offer to play any Taylor Swift, but Emma didn’t ask and she didn’t blast it in the backseat.

So, that felt like a victory. Which she desperately needed — to counteract the state of her pancreas and half a dozen other internal organs when her thumb hovered over the button, and it took at least two minutes and twelve seconds for Match.com to download.

She should have waited until she was on wifi.

To say that Emma’s relationship with Killian Jones was complicated would be something of an understatement. And she wouldn’t use the word relationship.

He was her friend.

Her very good looking friend, with stupid eyes that regularly flashed at her like he was too aware of the mush-like state it sent her into, and he was friends with her brother, and once upon a time she’d briefly considered hating him, but that never really stuck and he made hot chocolate better than anyone she knew. Refused to use the prepackaged mix. Did something on the oven that Emma didn’t entirely understand, and never trusted herself to try on her own, and Killian was never late with his half of the rent.

Or any of the utilities.

Living together was a decision born of convenience and the extra room Killian had once Will moved out, but it also made a lot of sense and it was good. Really good. Would have been great if Emma wasn’t pining after him and his stupid eyes like some lovelorn idiot, but she had gotten almost impossibly good at rationalizing the whole thing in the last few years, and—

“Shit, shit, shit,” she chanted, slumped in the corner of the couch with her knees threatening to impale her chin and there must have been a record for frustrated cursing while staring at a roommate's dating profile. She’d definitely passed it, like, seven minutes ago.

Scrolling down only led to scrolling back up, twisting her lower lip between her teeth while staring at photos and lists and options she was sure came from some AI or relationship-type algorithm and coming to terms with the end of the world was harder than she expected it to be.

At least the end of her love life.

Of which there wasn’t much to begin with, so it probably wasn’t very hard for the whole thing to topple over, but Emma was feeling especially melodramatic and they needed to buy some WD-40. For their very squeaky door.

“Hey,” Killian said, shrugging out of his jacket and it was apparently snowing out. Flakes dusted his shoulder, clung to several strands of hair, and Emma couldn’t melt into the couch. They couldn’t afford to buy another one. “That can’t be good for your spine.”

Humming, Killian didn’t bother brushing the snow out of his hair before he walked forward, falling onto the other end of the couch and pulling Emma’s sock-covered feet into his lap. “Are they any cookies left?”

“I’m going to tell Mary Margaret you’re a cookie glutton and—”

Sixteen guys had messaged her already.

“So I’ve heard. Whatcha you doing?”

Maybe that was a compliment. Emma didn’t think so, though.

She couldn’t believe she had to make a profile. To stalk her roommate. And his interests. There were a lot of interests on Killian’s Match.com profile.

Strictly speaking, she didn’t have much experience with shoulders and their proclivity to being rested on, but she liked to believe Killian’s was one of the more comfortable out there. Her head fit very well, at least.

“Nothing.”

So as to avoid any lingering after-effects from its continued failure.

“I’ve got twenty-seven bucks on him asking at the party,” Killian said, “but Locksley thinks he’s just going to lose any sense of self-control and blurt it out before, I just—”

Emma’s phone dinged.

Again. Multiple times, in quick succession �� and she should have turned off notifications for that stupid app, but she wasn’t really using it for its intended purpose and Killian was staring at her. With a look that made it all too clear he knew what was going on.

That didn’t make her feel any better.

“Ruby said she was thinking about bringing someone,” he muttered, “to, uh—to the thing. The New Year’s thing.”

The air shifted. Crackled with electricity Emma knew she was imagining, and want she was only barely managing to temper and if Will did propose to Belle on New Year’s Eve she refused to be held accountable for her emotional reaction. She’d totally cry.

“Call it a thing again.”

Ruby would never let her hear the end of that.

Shaking his head brusquely, Killian’s grip tightened around Emma’s ankle. She had no idea he was holding her ankle — fingers wrapped all the way around the joint until the tips threatened to touch because apparently his fingers were that long, and she’d probably only obsess about that for like the next few years, or so. Which seemed reasonable.

“Anyone good?” he asked, low and gruff and whatever was back in the middle of her throat did not appear intent on leaving any time soon. No matter how many times Emma swallowed.

Or how often Killian’s eyes flickered. Towards her throat.

The idea never even crossed her mind, honestly.

Flinching the way she did only guaranteed that Emma’s spine collided with the arm of their couch, but she was at least less inclined to melt and she supposed romantic beggars could not be choosers. “Yuh huh,” she said, “and you’re well acquainted with the noises and the reasons behind the noise?”

That probably wasn’t important.

And just like that—it was fine. Well, maybe not fine, but at last fine adjacent, and something inching closer to normal, and Killian kissed her temple again before he stood up.

“You’re avoiding my question.”

She didn’t pick up her phone until she went to bed, dragging every blanket they owned behind her down the hallway.

On the ever-growing list of problems Emma had during a week when problems were supposed to be non-existent, Killian's Match.com profile had very easily cemented itself at the top of the list.

It didn’t match — her, at least. Every single thing he was apparently looking for in some sort of potential life partner was the exact opposite of every single thing that made Emma her. Musical tastes were diametrically opposed, movies she’d never once seen him watch in the legitimate decades she’d known him were praised with the kind of adjectives even Robert Ebert would scoff at. The pictures were good, but Emma knew that was more a result of her attraction to her roommate than anything else, and he said he liked people who cooked.

She couldn’t cook.

She tried.

Twenty-four hours after the weird couch incident, which was a name only Emma was using, she was sure, and the smoke alarm had gone off and—

This was Ruby’s fault. And Taylor Swift. Whose new album was very good, and made for perfect and consistent pining music.

She was so disappointed she was positive she reeked with it.

“Cooking,” Emma said, like that was an explanation and not an excuse and she was definitely using too many of her personal miracles. “Nothing caught on fire!”

Lolling his head to the side, Killian leveled her with an exasperated expression. Brows pinched together and that shade of blue wasn’t quite as sharp, but was still somehow almost amused and she didn’t think the oven was supposed to make that noise. It was very loud. “Lack of flames is not a sign of success, love,” he said, “and it’s—ah, fuck.”

The smoke alarm was louder than the oven.

Blasting through their apartment and, Emma was sure, through the entire building, the beep hit its rhythmic stride quickly, so she reacted like an adult to the whole situation by gritting her teeth and squeezing her eyes shut. Killian breezed by her, swinging open another squeaky door and fumbling through what sounded like several dozen boxes and he cursed. More than once.

Emma nodded.

Emma cracked open one eye. “We do, I—”

Their neighbors must hate them. Rightfully so.

“We definitely own a broom,” she promised, “we’re not savages. We clean.”

Graham was probably very nice.

“Was there a reason for that?”

Emma swallowed. Still didn’t help.

“Swan.”

“Alright,” Killian said softly, “c’mere.”

Saying that what happened next happened quicker than Emma expected it to, also suggested that Emma expected it to happen at all, which was one of the bigger lies she’d told in the last week or so, and she was really growing a metric shit ton of lies, so that was especially impressive and she yelped very loudly. As soon as hands gripped her hips, lifting her off the floor and directing her underneath the questionably loud smoke detector.

“This could wake the dead,” she proclaimed, shouting the words because if they were going to descend into total farce, then she was really going to lean into it.

Killian’s head fell to her stomach. If she died right there, she hoped he didn’t drop her. Although, she’d also be dead, so—she probably wouldn’t notice.

“Just turn it off, love.”

She hated all that music.

“See,” he grunted, “that makes it sound like we don’t have a broom, and—” Adjusting her, one of her legs twisted around his, something Emma was going to claim as instinct and not that same want that was another one of her more defining characteristics, and he definitely exhaled. Loudly. And directly into her t-shirt. “—Swan, I really need you to fix this, love.”

Using his shoulder as leverage, and keeping her leg exactly where it was, she still had to stretch her arm out and it took far more movement than either one of them could apparently handle silently for her to press the button that fixed everything.

Despised The Godfather, on some sort of fundamental level and Kay deserved better than Michael Corleone, even if that version of Al Pacino was almost kind of attractive, but—

Relatively speaking, at least.

He didn’t lift his head immediately. Or drop her. That probably wasn’t a metaphor.

Emma’s metaphors regularly sucked, anyway.

“Pizza or Chinese?”

Chuckling into her stomach, Killian’s laugh warmed her from the inside out and kept the goosebumps there and she’d kind of forgotten he was shirtless. Idiot bastard, that was her.

Graham Humbert had owned more plaid shirts than anyone Emma had ever seen.

“Order extra egg rolls, and I’m in,” Killian said, finally working her back to the ground and they didn’t move. They stood there. Staring at each other, and conducting more inventory, and Emma could only imagine the penance she’d have to do for keeping her stomach in its correct spot.

“Deal.”

“She’s in love with him.”

“Which part?” Ruby asked. “How in love Emma is with Jones or whether or not we were acknowledging his shitty dating profile?”

“Doesn’t have to,” Elsa muttered over the top of her half-empty glass. “It basically broadcasts out of her.”

They took the batteries out of the smoke detector a day later.

“Either or, I guess.”

Not the safest thing they’d ever done, but Emma kept trying to cook and failing spectacularly and she was certain the people at the Chinese restaurant fourteen blocks away knew their order based solely on the sound of her voice when she called.

“Does this have a name?”

Slumped as she was over the edge of the bar, Emma barely noticed the lift in Killian’s eyebrows, but that also might have been her tendency to be preoccupied with his mouth and he was smiling at her. Wide. Meaningful—ly.

Distractingly.

At some point that afternoon, she’d decided she needed to respond to Graham’s messages. Or, well—keep responding. There’d been some conversation, what might have been construed as flirting if Emma’s thumbs didn’t keep cramping up while they flew across her phone’s keyboard, but that definitely wasn’t a sign either, and the overall lightness in her body was likely a direct result of whatever blue-colored alcoholic concoction Killian had put in front of her forty-seven minutes before. There were gummy—things floating in it.

Or there had been.

She’d eaten them.

Her mouth felt a little numb.

“What do you think we should call it?”

Propping her chin on her hand made Emma wobble a bit, Killian’s lips twitching again. Idiot bastard asshole. Poor Graham. She was a jerk. And his eyes were getting brighter.

Killian’s. Not Graham’s.

She had no idea what Graham’s eyes did.

“Are you serving me unnamed alcohol?” Emma asked, and she was sure she did not slur her words the way it sounded.

He shrugged.

Good thing the holiday season was nearly over.

And Will’s reaction was far too loud, tossing a towel over his back before he draped himself across Killian’s back, hooking his own chin over that slightly lifted shoulder. “He’s showing off, Em. That’s all it is. Are you going to die, though?”

At the bar.

“Your tongue is blue.”

Four seats away from Leroy the regular.

“Don’t move so quickly, Swan,” Killian said, a hand finding her cheek and that was fine. Totally fine. Great, even. Super—

Califragilisticexpialidocious.

So, she was more drunk than she’d been. Like, ever.

“Your fault,” she mumbled. Burrowing further into his palm was not an option Emma had, so naturally that’s exactly what she did and Will made another noise. “Something to add, Scar—” Emma paused, lifting an impatient finger when both men in front of her dared to laugh. “—Let, you jerky jerkface.”

“You will find out whenever else does, kid,” Will guaranteed. “And there were at least four different types of rum in that swill he gave you.”

That would have annoyed Belle.

Humming, Will untwisted his limbs from Killian, a different hand finding her cheek and the strands of hair that were hanging over her eyes and she scowled when he tapped her chin. “Trying to impress you,” Will repeated intently.

“Is he—” Emma’s brain couldn’t keep up. Thoughts rushed through her, firing synapses that were only passably functional, and the lights from the jukebox across the room were starting to float in her vision. Pressing her fingers into her cheek, Emma knew the skin there moved, but she also could not feel a single thing and—“You’re laughing at me.”

Her head hurt. Ached, even through the haze she’d only recently evolved into, and Emma hated bowling. Was absolutely God awful at it. The kind of awful that required bumpers whenever they’d gone, and they used to go when they were kids. On New Year’s Eve afternoon, some tradition that Ruth had come up with and David honored, even after he and Mary Margaret had segued into happily ever after, and Emma could count on one hand how many times she’d crested the 100-point mark.

“I am,” he said, “but you’re also sloshed, so I’m willing to give you a pass. And no.”

She felt oddly similar now.

Playing a game she wasn’t very good at, with more gutter balls than any self-respecting adult should record. Eight pounds of cylindrical force kept rolling through her, threatening anything in its path, but not hitting what it was supposed to, and she also could have eaten an entire tub of bowling alley snacks right now.

“Why are fries better in a bowling alley? Like, better than anywhere else.”

Will’s eyes narrowed. “Better than Shake Shack?”

Blinking continued to be one of Emma’s less impressive reactions, but she was stuck on that bowling ball metaphor and Killian’s arm around her shoulders made it impossible to talk.

“‘S’totally different.”

“You ready, love?”

“We’re leaving, love,” Killian said, and there was at least part of her that was smart enough to pick on repeat endearments. And then promptly cling to them. In her swollen heart.

“For?”

“Make sure you brush your tongue too tonight, Em,” Will advised, “otherwise that blue is going to stick.”

Saluting left her more off-balance than she’d been all night, laughter echoing behind them as Killian pulled the door shut and he’d ordered them a car. Emma honestly had no idea how they got in said car, but then they were moving and she was only slightly dizzy and he—

He made another noise, slumping next to her, which made it even easier for Emma to touch as much of him as possible and he didn’t object. She didn’t think he would. Ever, actually.

“Smell really good.”

God, poor Graham.

She was the worst.

David played hockey when he was a kid.

“Not as such, no,” Killian said, “just thinking we might be able to add something new and—” His shoulder shifted under her cheek, Emma’s soft hum of disapproval making him smile. She still didn’t check. “—Not that we haven’t been making money, but...people gotta have a schtick.”

No sound. Nothing except engines, and there could only be one engine in a car, Emma was fairly positive, so that didn’t really make sense and Killian stared ahead when she tilted her head up. “Sometimes,” Killian admitted softly, “but, uh—like I said, just trying to get something that might help us a little more and weddings are expensive, y’know?”

“Whatever,” Emma groaned, “just—I’m saying it’s a good bar.”

Thinking about melting as often as she was, was starting to become patently ridiculous.

“You’re trying to come up with ridiculous bachelorette party drinks—”

With such God awful interests in the opposite sex.

Emma rapped her knuckles against his chest. “To help pay for Scarlet’s wedding?”

The world was a joke. Happy Holidays.

“You’re not getting ready with Lucas or Elsa or anything tomorrow, are you?”

Huh. No grand slam, then.

Of all the questions she definitely wasn’t prepared for, that was at the bottom of the list. Emma was not actually making any of these lists. “This isn’t prom.”

Being hungover on New Year’s Eve was one of the crueler jokes the universe had played on her in the last week or so.

“Yeah, ok,” she said, letting her head drop back to his shoulder and Emma wasn’t sure why it sounded like he exhaled. In something almost like relief. Eyes fluttering the way they were, she must have imagined it, another ridiculous metaphor and even dumber analogy and her groan was especially pitiful when the car stopped. No way her stomach was going to stay where it was supposed to for the rest of the night.

All of Emma hurt, muscles she hadn’t been aware she was in possession of seemingly rising up in revolt of her very existence, and she couldn’t really turn her head. Which endlessly delighted Ruby in a way that was making her reconsider their friendship, and Killian kept glancing in their direction. His arm bumped Emma’s no less than twenty-four times in the car over.

And for as much as she wanted to crawl under several mountains of blankets and consider all her romantic shortcomings, something in the back of Emma’s mind preened a bit under his flitting gaze, trying not to meet his eyes too often. Only to fail every time — if Ruby’s laughter was any indication, and Will had groaned several times, but he also didn’t appear to be engaged yet and Emma had apologized to Graham that afternoon.

Through text, though. So it only kind of counted. She wasn’t even sure parts of the messages were English. Her head felt like it was going to snap open, which made the champagne she was practically shotgunning at that point a very bad decision, but she’d been on a roll on that front, so she had no intention of altering course and it was nearly midnight.

“This is depressing,” Ruby announced. “He’s staring again.”

Rolling her eyes was an impossibility if Emma didn’t want to make a spectacle of herself in front of her brother and some of the teachers from Mary Margaret’s school, and Ruby’s date was nice. Had a lot of pictures of her dog on her phone, but nice all the same.

More blinking. Honestly, she was a mess. The teachers kept hogging space on the couch. Killian smiled when he looked at Emma, that time. “Elaborate on that.”

“Are you the dumbest person alive?”

“No, this is just our general opinion of you. Both of you, really. I—are you not almost painfully aware of how in love Killian is with you? Em, he is staring at you. Like, right now. Blatantly. Obviously. Some other adverb.”

“We live together.”

Wide eyes and an impressively straight row of teeth were all the warning Emma got before there was a hand on her shoulder and he smelled just as good as she was hopeful she hadn’t mentioned last night, but that felt like wishful thinking and Emma did not, in fact, eject any bodily fluids when Killian turned her. Victories, she was flush with them.

“I’m so bad at cooking.”

“Hey,” she breathed, and Ruby groaned so loudly it likely did damage to the ozone layer.

Frozen to the spot, she tried very hard to regulate her breathing and fix her pulse, and neither thing worked. And then. Something clicked — almost audibly in her brain, and her soul and her heart’s potential for explosion was suddenly something she had to worry about.

Killian’s lips twitched. “You got a second?”

“Please don’t look at me like that,” Killian murmured. She barely heard him. Not when there were fingers tracing up her side and lingering on the small of her back, and Emma’s head moved her head as slowly as she could.

If she moved any faster, she’d either fall over or wake up from this very lucid dream and neither of those things were all that positive.

“Cooking, it’s—I love you a lot, but you are absolutely atrocious at it.”

“You’ve got to stop cooking, love.”

The world stopped. Paused, at least. Gave Emma’s muddled mind a second to catch up, and she’d need several more seconds, but she also wasn’t quite that greedy and Killian’s smile widened. As soon as her fingers curled into his shirt.

He didn’t move his hands.

“I—” she stammered. “I am...but we don’t match!”

“What is happening right now?” Emma breathed, only cautiously optimistic she wanted the answer.

A chorus of angry jeers rained down on them — Will using Robin to keep himself upright while he flipped Killian off with both hands. “Pining piner who pines like a goddamn idiot.”

“Well, I’m fairly in love with you. To an almost ridiculous degree.”

“I do appreciate the cooking effort though,” he added. “But it’s a very old profile, made almost entirely by Scarlet in—”

“I honestly forgot it existed,” Killian continued, “I’ve never used it, really. Just knew that Scarlet had made the thing, and then I ignored the messages and—”

As it was, her fingers were already tight enough that Emma very easily pulled herself up and the hand at her waist helped keep her balanced and they were very good at this. Kissing, specifically. Heads tilted automatically to an angle that made it all too easy for Emma to open her mouth, and Killian’s tongue was even more distracting when it was brushing hers, and someone was groaning, but that might have been her, or possibly him and his hair was soft. Between her fingers.

“Not as many as you did.”

Breathing was suddenly a secondary concern, and Emma’s lungs had already proved they were basically made of steel, or at least impervious to the flames currently exploding between her ribs and none of that was biologically accurate.

She never did find out where her pancreas was.

And she was so busy dealing with the way the solar system appeared to be reordering itself around the pair of them, that Emma didn’t notice the countdown or the metallic crown tossed at her feet. Only that there were eventually cheers and Ryan Seacrest’s face plastered across the TV on the other side of the room, and one of Killian’s hands had worked underneath her shirt.

The sparkly one that had made his eyes noticeably widen several hours earlier.

“How did you figure it out?”

#cs ff #captain swan #captain swan ff #captain swan fic #cs fic #festive fic a thon 2k20 #this ended up much longer than i thought #so really the perfect way to end the year #thanks for reading internet #i think you're all swell

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buckyscrystalqueen · 4 years

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Ain’t Sayin’ She’s a Gold Digger: Part 1

Pairings: Sugar Daddy!Negan x Sugar Baby!Reader

Warnings: Sugar baby relationship, swearing

Word Count: 2,298

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Livid didn’t even begin to describe your mood as you walked out of the upscale bar you worked at for the past three years until 30 seconds prior. And the reason you were fired was absolute bullshit. You had been called in on your day off to cover someones shift, only to be told that it was your shift that you were a no call no show for, that was scheduled last minute, and that you weren’t told about by the manager that had scheduled you, who had been out to get you since your very first shift. You growled and headed toward the subway as you pulled out your cell to call your best friend slash landlord slash roommate to vent.

“Dana Gold, can…”

“That fucking bitch fired me!” You interrupted with a screech. “How the fuck is she gunna call me in on my day off and tell me she fucking scheduled me…”

“(Y/N)!” She said a little loudly, making you stop your rant before you even got into it. “Can I call you back? I’m with a client, and you are on speaker.”

“Oh, shit.” You gasped as you stopped at the corner to wait for the light to change. “Sorry.”

“I’ll call you back.” She repeated before she simply hung up the phone on you. You shook your head and crossed the road with the other busy, impatient New Yorkers and wide eyed, lost tourists, and headed down the stairs to the subway. You got in a short line behind a woman with an Hermes bag you envied that was worth at least five times your rent, when your phone started ringing in your hand.

“Well that was quick.” You said as you pulled out your metro card.

“Come down to my office.” Dana nearly demanded just as you swiped your card for the train headed up toward the Upper West Side. “Let’s… have lunch.”

“You really had to decide that shit after I swipe my metro card, brat?” You asked as you turned away from the platform and headed toward the exit since her office was only a few blocks away from your old job.

“I’ll pay you for the swipe.” She dismissed. “Just get here, I’m hungry.”

“Bitch, I’m coming.” You laughed as you headed up the stairs and hung up your phone. You moved a little quicker through the throngs of people, briefly wondering why you were still living in New York like you did everyday. It was a one hundred and eighty degree difference from your small home towns, and it had once offered you so much promise in life, but it also chewed you up and spit you out like it did most people who had dreams of grandeur. But you had learned that that was the nature of the beast that was New York City.

“Good afternoon, Ms. (Y/L/N).” Jackie, Dana’s assistant said with a smile as you stepped out of the elevator in front of her desk in the decent sized, and adorably decorated office in Midtown. “Ms. Gold said to send you right in.”

“Thanks Jackie.” You said with a smile as you grabbed a Hershey’s kiss out of the heart shaped bowl on your way past. “Yo, can I sue this bitch?” You asked as you walked through Dana’s office door, only to stop the slightest bit when you saw an older gentleman in one of the two chairs in front of her desk. “Oh. Wait, Jackie said to come in…?”

“Have a seat, (Y/N).” Your friend said with a smile as she gestured to the other chair.

“I take it we’re not doing lunch.” You breathed as you loosened the white tie of your otherwise all black uniform.

“This is Mr. Morgan.” She continued with a smile as she gestured to the man sitting beside you. “He’s come in a few times the past couple weeks to look for someone to accompany him on a cruise overseas next week for two weeks or so. But none of my girls have been up to his standards…”

“I’m looking for someone that can hold a polite conversation, and who can be a respectable in formal settings.” He chimed in as he searched your eyes. “But isn’t afraid to speak their mind at the same time. Most of the girls I’ve met though Dana are all…”

“Boring.” You finished for him with a smirk as you crossed your legs and sat back in your chair. “Conceited, self involved, gold diggers that will say anything they think you want them to so that they can keep themselves in your good graces, and occasionally suck your dick so you open your bank account as far as possible.” Mr. Morgan smirked and looked over at Dana with a small nod.

“I like her.”

“She’s a real peach alright.”

“I try.” You said with a shrug.

“Dana says you’ve never been a Sugar Baby before?”

“Never had an interest to.” You told him with a shrug as he finally sat back in his seat, and let himself get comfortable. “I mean don’t get me wrong, if this is your cup of tea, then power to you. I hope you have fun with whomever you pick. But I don’t think I have the temperament to be one.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because I managed to get myself thrown out of fucking Juilliard.” You laughed with a shake of your head. “For… well I was technically drinking underage in Central Park on the weekend with some people I worked with at a catering gig I had at the time and almost got busted by the cops for being way to fucking drunk in public. But the asshole didn’t know I ran track in high school so I got away before I could get arrested. But my roommate ratted me out, so I broke her lucky violin bow before her showcase because she was a bitch, and cussed out the disciplinary committee for being mentally incapable of understanding that at twenty years old, I have the God given right to party like a mother fucking rockstar. ”

“I’ll take her.”

“Oh, I’m for sale now.” You teased as he pulled out his wallet from his inside jacket pocket.

“I’m offering an all expenses paid two week long cruise to England, Scotland, and Ireland, and possibly a continuation of the trip overseas after that, depending on how we get along and how my business venture goes plus five thousand dollars cash per week you are with me. After that, we can reconvene and discuss something long term…”

“Wait, you’re actually serious right now?” You asked as you looked at the actual metal credit card he was holding out for you. “You wanna hire me, someone you don’t even know, to go with you for two weeks, possibly more in a foreign country.”

“I want to gift you two weeks in Europe, yes.” He said with a nod, which made you reach out and take his credit card so he wasn’t holding it out anymore.

“Mr. Morgan…”

“It’s Jeffrey.” He interrupted as he put his wallet back and sat back in his chair. “Or Jeff. I’m not picky. And I’ve gotten enough information from Ms. Gold to know that you will be a breath of fresh air that I need in my life right now. I also trust her enough through years of working with her that I know she won’t steer me the wrong way. Her girls are great for dates when I’m bored. But you are someone that I think would be much more entertaining to be around for two weeks.”

“OK.” You said as you looked over at Dana, who had been trying to get you to join her ranks for years because you weren’t a typical Sugar Baby. “Are you sure about this?” You asked once more as you looked at Jeff again.

“I wouldn’t still be sitting here still if I wasn’t.” With a small nod, you sighed and looked at the credit card in your hand.

“Alright. So what’s this for?”

“A new wardrobe and the necessary luggage.” He said as he pulled out his sunglasses and stood up to leave. “Prepare for a month at least. Salon, jewelry, manicure, pedicure, lingerie, makeup… There’s no spending limit on that card…”

“I’ll go with her personally.” Dana said with a smile as she got to her feet and walked around her desk to shake Jeff’s hand. “And I’ll get her personal information to your assistant by end of day today so she can arrange transport and the fine tuning details, Mr. Morgan.”

“Ms. Gold.” He said back with a slight bow of his head. “Pleasure as always. And I look forward to spending time with you, (Y/N).”

“You’re not alone there, darlin.”

——

“OK, how is this even real?” You asked as you stood with your back to Dana so she could zip up the hundredth dress you had tried on that day.

“Are you even listening to me?” She laughed as she did the tiny snap at the top and took a step back.

“Yes, be on my best behavior. I get it.” You said as you looked at the fitted, knee length, mermaid style, purple floral Dolce and Gabbana dress in the mirror. “Shit, this thing could pay my rent for three months and then some.”

“I know.” She laughed as she looked at the dress that looked absolutely perfect on you and nodded her head. “But you need to keep your feet on the ground for me here.”

“OK, feet are on the ground.” You sighed as you turned away from the mirror to look at her. “So you were saying… his wife left?”

“Yes, his wife left him for a younger man about five or six years ago.” You nodded your head and turned around to point at the zipper as she continued to tell you her client’s back story, and continue to teach you how to be a proper sugar baby. “So he’s looking for complete and total honesty and exclusivity. Which is a general consensus in the business. But the difference with Mr. Morgan is he’s…” She looked up at you in the mirror as you stepped out of that dress and into a floor length jungle print dress that you had fallen in love with in Vogue and just had to try on. “OK, I’m just gunna say it. He’s looking to find someone to date without dating them.”

“OK, what does that even mean?”

“It means that he’s looking for someone to spend the rest of his life with.” She sighed as she turned you around to face her. “He’s wanted me to find someone that he can get along with, that he eventually wants to put up in a place, and be with most nights out of the week. But there’s a catch…”

“Ooook…” You said nervously as you started to nervously fidget with the material of the dress.

“Mr. Morgan owns the Norwegian, the Oceania, and the Regent Seven Seas cruise lines, and a large handful of hotels around the world. He’s constantly traveling, which is why he came to me to find companionship. It started as just dates but the last few months, it’s been turning more toward long term. He wants someone permanent…”

“Ok, wait, Dana.” You said as you started to catch up to what she was saying. “Wait, hold on.”

“I know.”

“Dana… wait, are you like kicking me out? Hold on, wait I’m so confused.”

“OK, no. It’s not like that.” She said as she took a step toward you and gently grabbed your wrists. “Look, I love you with all my heart. I love being your best friend, and I love having you as my roommate. I’m not mad at you and I’m not trying to break our friendship up. But I am trying to tell you you need to get out there and enjoy life. Because we both know you complain all the damn time about being lonely and not getting to do anything fun because your always so broke. Sweetie, you can’t go living life playing piano at piano bars for tips for the rest of your life, and working at the God awful bar that I am actually grateful you got fired from. And I’ve had you on my mind for months every time Jeffrey came in because every time he’s described his perfect date, it’s always been like he was describing you.”

“Which is why you’ve been bringing up me being a Sugar Baby more often than you normally do.” She nodded her head and smiled softly as she reached up and shifted the shoulder strap the slightest bit.

“And that’s why today was perfectly timed. I know you’ll like him as a person.” She wrapped up as she searched your eyes. “And I know that out of everyone I know that I could set him up with, you would appreciate him as a person, and not just as a Sugar Daddy. And I think both of you deserve that.” You sighed loudly which turned into a groan as you looked up at the ceiling in your dressing room.

“I hate you.” You grumbled with a smile as you looked down your nose at her. “And you better not put your nasty ass quinoa salad on my fridge shelf when I’m gone.”

“Listen here, it’s my damn apartment.”

“I don’t give a fuck.” You barked through a laugh as you took off the jungle animal print dress and added it to the ‘yes’ pile so you could get dressed to go to the next store. “I pay good money for that shelf.”

“And I pay good money for that quinoa.”

Part 2

#Negan x reader #Ain't Sayin' She's a Gold Digger #Negan's thirst squad #Negan thirst squad #Sugar Daddy Negan #Sugar Daddy Negan x Sugar Baby Reader

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neoneversleeps · 4 years

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dumbass | l.dh

pairing: lee donghyuck x reader

genre: fluff

warnings: none

words: 1.2k

description:

Donghyuck doesn’t always make the best decisions when it comes to spending money. In other words: Donghyuck buys an overpriced crytall ball to try and communicate with spirits.

prompt used: "Oh My God, I think the crystal is working. The spirits are telling me you're a dumbass."

notes: this is the final drabble of my halloween special. i was hopng to get it posted yesterday, but alas, life got in the way. anyway, i may not have achieved everthing I set out to do for this special event, but i’m proud of what I did accomplish. I hope you all enjoyed and thank you for reading! <3

You ran your hand over the dusty miniature statues on the shelf, eyes wandering over the carvings on the stone in mild curiosity. You could hear your boyfriend's voice off to the side, conversing with the middle aged woman who ran the place.

You don't know how you had let Donghyuck drag you to the old antique shop in the first place.

"Where are we going, Hyuck?"

"Somewhere fun! You'll see."

You failed to see the excitement in looking at what was probably dead people's old belongings in the little store that looked more like a witch's lair than anything else.Absentmindedly, you pick up one of the dusty od statues. Sketched into the stone is what you assume to be some kind of an animal. A bear maybe, you can’t quite place it. It’s eyes are two small rubies that seem to stare at you just as you are staring at it.

“Y/n!” You get snapped out of your little staring contest and direct your attention to the boy who is suddenly standing beside you, a large brown paper bag with something inside cradled in his arms.

“What is that?” You gesture at the object in Donghyuck arms as you place the small statue back on its shelf.

“You’ll see once we’re back at home.Come on!” Donghyuck doesn’t leave much room for you to speak as he grabs your hand and pulls you along, out of the small shop.

The sun has set by the time you come home, and you can start to see the trick or treaters slowly trickle out of their houses. Donghyuck pulls you inside and starte flitting around the place, shutting the blinds. You stand there, dumbfounded as to what the hell your boyfriend was doing. He places his purchase down on the couch and turns to you. “Can you help me light some candles?”

You sigh and cross your arms, but still comply to his request. You know there is no way Donghyuck would tell you what he was doing if you didn’t play along. Grabbin some candes from the kitchen’s drawers, you walk back into the living room, where your boyfriend has already lit various candles and placed them on the small coffee table. You join him, placing the rest of your candles down and watch as he starts to light them.

“Ok.” Donghyuck grabs the wrapped up object and sits down on the floor next to the table full of candles. He gestures to the space in front of him. “Sit down.”

You do, crossing your legs as you try to get somewhat comfortable on the floor. Donghyuck’s smile is filled to the brim with excitement as he starts to unravel the package. “You ready?”

You breathe out a small chuckle at the smile on your boyfriends face and nod. Finally, Donghyuck fully removed the brown paper from the object, revealing…

...a crystal ball?

Somehow out of all the things you were expecting, this was not one of them. It shouldn’t actually surprise you much though, knowing of Donghyuck’s obsession with tarot cards. You thought they were pretty and looked cool, but you didn't know if you believed in their supposed future telling power.

You can’t help the small laugh that escapes your throat. “What did you buy this for?” Donghyuck places the seemingly carefully crafted crystal ball in between you two.

“So we could communicate with the spirits, duh.” Donghyuck says as he lighty pokes your forehead. You narrow your eyes at him. “And what better time to do it than on halloween night?”

“Uh huh…”

You inspect the crystal ball a little more up close. Well, for what it’s worth, the design was very beautiful, small images of symbols etched into the bronze colored base and the actual crystal had a nice purple-ish shimmer to it. You pause in your inspection.

“How much did you pay for this?”

Donghyuck clears his throat at your question, lightly scratching at his neck as he avoids your eyes. He mutters something that sounds distinctly like eighty bucks under his breath. Your mouth falls open as you stare at him, not sure if you could believe your ears. “What?!”

Donghyuck sighs loudly. “I paid eighty bucks for it!”

You shake your head as you stare at your boyfriend in disbelief. He looks at you sheepishly, a tiny bit of colour tinting the apples of his cheeks. “Anyways, let’s just start, okay? Close your eyes.”

Shaking your head once again, you close your eyes like your boyfriend asks you to. Donghyuck starts speaking, trying to coax the spirits to come out and talk. You try to focus your energy on the ball with your eyes closed. Perhaps a teeny tiny part of you hopes the ridiculous thing actually works, for Donghyuck’s sake of course.

Half an hour passes and nothing happens. “Y/n.” You open your eyes to look at your boyfriend. “Maybe they just don’t want to talk to me. Can you try?” You want to laugh at the sheer absurdity of the situation, but you bite your tongue at the pout on Donghyuck’s lips as he speaks. Nodding in confirmation, you wait for him to close his eyes. You stare at the sphere that sits before you.

“Spirits, I call upon you.”

You stifle a giggle at the crease between Donghyuck’s brows as he concentrates. Minutes pass by and once again nothing happens. You get an idea then. You let a gasp fall from your lips as you lean forward and peer into the crystal.

“Oh my God, I think the crystal is working.” Donghyuck’s eyes shoot open, gaze flicking between you and the crystal ball beneath you. You pull your head up to face him. “The spirits are telling me you're a dumbass." You deadpan before bursting into laughter at the way your boyfriend rolls his eyes.

Donghyuck crosses his arms. “You’re stupid.”

“Oh, come on. You have to admit that was funny.” You move the crystal out of the way to crawl over to your boyfriend. You almost expect him to push you as you sit yourself down on his lap, but all he does is huff in annoyance. “Besides, I wasn’t the one that bought a crystal ball for eighty dollars.” Donghyuck grumbles something along the lines of “fuck you” as he looks away.

Giggling, you take your boyfriend’s face into your hands and turn his head to look at you. “Come on. Don’t be mad, Hyuckie.” Donghyuck’s arms stay crossed as you place a peck on his lips. You lean down again, leaving a longer kiss on your boyfriends lips this time. He sighs in defeat, warm air blowing into your face before his head falls to rest against your chest. “I really am a dumbass, aren’t I?” His voice is muffled against the fabric of your hoodie ad you hands come up to run through his hair as his arms snake around your waist.

You chuckle and place a small kiss to the crown of his head before you lean back to look at him. “Maybe a little. Doesn’t change the fact that I love you, though.” Donghyuck can’t help but let out a breathy chuckle himself.

“Thank God for that.” He leans up to capture your lips with his and you can’t stop yourself from smiling into the iss like a lovestruck idiot.

Your boyfriend might be a little bit of a dumbass, but a very sweet one at that.

this drabble is part of Lilac’s Halloween Spooky Special ♡

#neowritingsnet #cznnet #lee donghyuck x reader #lee haechan x reader #haechan x reader #donghyuck x reader #nct haechan #nct donghyuck #nct donghyuck drabble #nct haechan drabble #haechan drabble #nct x reader #nct127 #nct dream #halloween drable #halloween prompts #lilac's halloween spooky special #day 8: final

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winterromanov · 5 years

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we will grow taller together - bucky x reader

PART THREE - YOU’RE VERY LOUD FOR SOMEONE SO SMALL

parts: masterlist

pairing: bucky barnes x reader

extract: He sniffs what could be a laugh if he had any energy whatsoever. “I wish you were psychic. Then you could maybe tell me what goes through a six-year-old’s head.”

genre: nanny x single father!au

taglist: @blindedbyyourgrace17 @verygraphicink @chubby-dumplin @igotkatiepowers @welcome-to-my-studylife @bi-bi-bi-bisexualz @mywinterwolf @mychemicalimagines (still open, message to be tagged)

The following week or so is swallowed by the pre-Thanksgiving rush, so other than a quick text to confirm his number and a Facebook request you’ve not heard all that much from James. Work is mayhem as you try to learn at least eighty holiday drinks combinations and you go shopping with Natasha for Thanksgiving tableware, as her and Steve are hosting Steve’s parents for the first time at their apartment. Your whole family lives on the West Coast so you’ve decided not to make the trip to your childhood home this year. It makes you sad in a constant, throbbing kind of way, to spend Thanksgiving without them, but you’d mutually decided with your mom and dad that the trip just isn’t economically or temporally viable. Even the cheapest flights exceed two hundred dollars and you’d end up spending most of the vacation cramped in a plane seat and listening to babies screaming anyway. Natasha offers a place at their table but you can tell she’s a little anxious about impressing Steve’s family and you’d rather not add any hassle. Looks like it’ll probably be white wine and Friends re-runs for you this year, but at least you’re not fucking working for once.

You think everything has returned to normal. So much so, in fact, that when the weekend rolls around and you turn up to Steve and Natasha’s place in a party dress for their pre-Thanksgiving do it doesn’t cross your mind that James might also turn up. Or what will happen if he does.

“Looking sexy, (Y/N),” Natasha clicks her tongue approvingly when she answers the door, hand on her hip. Your frock is dark blue velvet and long-sleeved, hugging your figure in a way that makes you feel more self-confident than you actually are. It is pretty sexy, you think, but your attempts are always nothing compared to Natasha’s. Her dress is elegant and black and split all the way down the front to enhance her already impressive cleavage, and combined with the gentle curl of her red hair and matching lipstick she looks like a rebellious Hollywood starlet.

That’s always been Natasha, though. She always looks beautiful, exuding a natural class, but also in a dangerous kind of way. She looks like she could break your neck and smile while doing it. It’s pretty fucking powerful, to be honest.

“Nothing new there, then,” you remark, stepping inside. Natasha smirks and hands you a glass of champagne from the table by the door. Tipsy laughter and a Taylor Swift song play from the kitchen, so you follow Natasha’s clicking black heels to the main room of the party.

So far, it isn’t so crowded, but Steve and Natasha are pretty popular (Steve because he’s A Really Nice Guy, Natasha because she isn’t) so you expect the couches and corners will fill up as the night draws on. You recognise most of the people chatting over bowls of chips and hummus but you only know Steve by name, so you naturally gravitate towards him once Natasha’s elbow is caught by a well-built man with brown hair.

Steve is talking to a broad, dark-skinned guy with cropped black hair that you keep seeing around. Both of them look at you when you come over, the unnamed man scanning you discretely up and down with a half-smile on his face.

“(Y/N)!” Steve announces excitedly, squeezing your shoulder. “You know Sam, right?”

“I do not,” you reply, shaking his hand, “But I’m always happy to meet new people.”

“Likewise,” Sam replies. He scrubs up well in a smart shirt and shoes, Steve sporting a similar garb. As is usually the case with these things the girls have obviously made more effort, but in your experience, if a man has combed his hair and put on cologne they’re already too good to be true. “Steve may have mentioned you a coupla’ times.”

“He has?” You quirk an eyebrow, and Steve shrugs. He doesn’t look embarrassed about the fact. “All good, I hope.”

“Mostly. Although, there was an incident at one of Natasha’s parties in your junior year that you might—“

“Okay, so what happens in a crappy basement apartment during college under the influence of extremely cheap beer stays there,” you interject, the two men laughing, “I’m an adult now. All that stuff is behind me, I can assure you.”

You chat to the two of them a while longer, you and Sam mostly swapping funny stories about Steve—he feels like your safety conversation starter, the thing you have in common. Eventually Natasha drags Steve off into the kitchen and you’re left with Sam alone. What is it with Steve and abandoning you with his friends? Not that Sam is a problem. He’s attractive and funny, your sense of humour instantly clicking with his.

“So, (Y/N),” Sam says seriously, “Would you like another drink from the Rogers free bar?”

When you look down at your glass you realise it’s empty already. You’re not a big drinker, not anymore, but another glass to ease any surface anxiety wouldn’t hurt. After all, you think the guy in the jarringly expensive suit by the window might be Tony Stark, the tech billionaire, and the sheer amount of wealth that pours from his figure has left you on edge. That, and the fact you have always strongly believed that billionaires are unethical. Maybe another glass would give you the confidence to tell him that.

(You have no idea how Steve and Nat know Tony Stark, because you know enough about both of them to acknowledge he’s not their typical company.)

You shrug your shoulders and let him take your glass. “Sure. Thanks.”

Sam disappears and you trail after him at a distance, hovering outside the kitchen. You nod to the beat of a Vampire Weekend track, not really paying attention when the buzzer goes off, because people are expected to come and go. Natasha smiles as she slips past you to the door, deftly pulling the latch aside with a flick of her fingers.

Your body straightens from your slouching position against the wall when you realise who is waiting in the hall.

James. James is there, a small child clinging to his neck, the metallic frames of her bright pink sunglasses catching the hallway light.

“Hi,” you hear him say breathlessly, “Sorry I’m so late. Clover has—Clover wanted to see you both, so I couldn’t… Well. She wouldn’t let me leave her with the babysitter.”

“I don’t like Mrs Mary.” A child’s voice—Clover’s voice—responds, her tone low and sullen. “I like Auntie Nat.”

“It’s a good job that I like you too then, huh?” Natasha’s arms reach out and James hands her his daughter. “Nice sunglasses. Always useful in November.”

“If you wear sunglasses you can cry and people won’t notice.”

Yikes. The comment leaves the two adults stunned for a moment, before Natasha combs a strand of blonde hair out of Clover’s eyes, smiling fondly. “Let’s see if we can find you some cookies.”

You move out the way when Natasha comes back down the hallway, watching as James closes the door behind him. He starts when he sees you standing there, but his edges soften when he realises it’s you who is watching. He looks even more exhausted than the evening in his apartment, his eyes grey and hollow, shoulders dipping. He still manages a watery smile for you.

“Tough day?” you ask, even though it’s obvious. His mouth opens. Nods wearily.

“You could call it that.”

“If it’s any consolation, an old lady shouted at me for putting a snowflake made out of chocolate sprinkles on her mocha because she doesn’t like cold weather. I was like…I’m not paid to be psychic, Brenda, or whatever your name is.”

He sniffs what could be a laugh if he had any energy whatsoever. “I wish you were psychic. Then you could maybe tell me what goes through a six-year-old’s head.”

You smile gently, sympathetically. “I think a lot of people would have a hard time telling you that.”

Sam then reappears with your drink, but takes one look at James’ expression before sighing and disappearing again. Moments later he emerges with a second glass of champagne and shoves it into his grip.

The party returns to normal for about thirty minutes after, Clover bouncing comfortably between her dad and Nat and Steve and Sam, bright and funny and charming all the guests she doesn’t know with her gap-toothed grin. But it’s like—it’s like a light flicks in her head and suddenly she’s having a meltdown in the bathroom, screaming through tears she doesn’t know how to control. You can hear James talking to her and trying to calm her down, but his voice keeps wobbling, like he’s on the verge of breaking down too. Taking a deep breath for courage, you twist the knob on the bathroom door and invade a conversation you should probably stay out of.

James eyes glance up at you in desperate surprise. The shock also freezes Clover, like the lull in the middle of a hurricane. Her tiny face is red and wet with tears, pained in a way that is heart-breaking to see on any child. Your hand brushes across James’ back as you crouch to meet her height. Blue eyes scrutinise every single inch of your body.

“So. You’re Clover Barnes.” You delicately offer your hand and Clover looks at it, faced scrunched, before slotting hers into yours. “I’m (Y/N). I’m a friend of your dad and Uncle Steve and Auntie Nat.”

Clover blinks back, but doesn’t say anything. She’s not screaming though, so at least that’s something. You’ve done that, at least. Even if it’s just out of shock.

“I have to say, Clover, you’re very loud for someone so small.” You try not to smile as she looks mildly offended at this observation on her height, because six year old priorities, right? That’s what’s really going through her head. The fact that she’s perhaps half an inch shorter than the other girls in her class. “But people used to say that about me, too. There’s nothing wrong about being loud, but there’s no point in having such a big voice if no-one can understand you. You gotta talk to your dad if something is upsetting you—I’ve been told you’re super clever so I’m absolutely certain you can tell him what’s up.”

Clover is silent for a moment, and you wonder if your spontaneous pep talk (which you somehow pulled straight out of your ass) will go totally ignored, but she takes a shaky breath and looks James straight in the eyes.

“I don’t wanna go to grandma and grandpa’s for Thanksgiving,” she sniffles, “I heard you talking on the phone and I don’t wanna go. Please don’t make me go. I wanna stay here with you. Please don’t send me away.”

James almost crumbles away into nothing when he grabs her into a hug, squeezing all the air out of her lungs. Her hands slowly curl around his neck, meeting at the nape, her face burrowed deep into his shoulder.

“I won’t send you anywhere, I promise,” James murmurs. His eyes catch yours and he looks at you in a mixture of amazement and thankfulness and more prominently relief. “Sweetheart. Baby. You’re not going anywhere.”

The tantrum must have tired Clover out because slowly, gradually, she flops in James’ arms; her eyes flutter closed while still pressed in James’ shoulder, so he rises and gestures for you to open the bathroom door. Natasha and Steve open up their spare bedroom so you follow him in quietly, pulling back the bedsheets so he can slot Clover in to sleep the rest of the evening off. She looks so peaceful and relaxed, like a normal six-year-old girl, like she could wake up again and everything would be normal and okay.

But you know—nothing about this is normal. You thought that Steve was being a bit over-the-top about them needing help, but you can see it now. It’s not so eccentric. They need something. Something.

When James pulls the door so only a small shaft of light from the hall glows on Clover’s tranquil face, his hand curls round your wrist.

“I take back what I said, that time at my apartment.” His eyes are frantic. Pleading. “I do need your help. Please, (Y/N). I need so much fucking help.”

You turn your hand so that it clasps his, squeezing tightly. “I’m here.”

#ugh im emo #mcu #marvel #marvel cinematic universe #we will grow taller together #bucky barnes #james buchanan barnes #bucky barnes imagine #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes x you #bucky barnes x y/n #bucky x reader #bucky x you #bucky imagine #bucky barnes fic #bucky barnes au #fanfic #fic #marvel fic

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sheep-and-lykos · 6 years

Text

Young Love: Young!Gladiolus x Reader

Song Recommendations: blackboard.edu - Arlie / Heartland - Tom Walker / Kathleen - Catfish and the Bottlemen

Authors Notes (really just what was in the commision):

Gladio doesn’t have his (to quote Monica) “Green Day rip-off hair”, instead, he’s starting to grow it out into that horrible choice of a mullet.

This is senior year for you (the reader) and Gladio.

Ignis is your best friend.

Noctis and Prompto are freshmen and Ignis is a junior.

Gladio got his scar during summer protecting Noctis.

This happens right after the events from Brotherhood (ie. after the gif above).

This switches P.O.V.’s whenever there is a ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~, not a split like this:

Also a note from the commissioner:

The overall number of words has been reduced from 50,000 to 40,000 as they felt we would become overwhelmed and stretch the story a lot to the point where it becomes boring.

(This results in about 10,000 words per chapter.)

You can thank my old science teacher for giving me this experiment! (I couldn’t think of anything and I was rewatching Teen Wolf (the tv shows) and saw the science experiment in season 2 and wanted to do something like that).

Also sorry if you took chemistry, but the commissioner asked for the chemistry class to have the chemistry between Gladio and you.

Chapter 1: One Last Year

~*September 14*~

You gripped onto the straps of your backpack that had been slung over your shoulders. Your gaze scanned the line of cars until your eyes stopped on the large marble walls and pillars that made up the school. Lines of students crowded into the hallways through the multiple double doors.

"One more year."

You took a deep breath, and slowly, you started to take your first steps into senior year. Your senior year. Your final year in this prison before you're shipped off to a school that cost tens of thousands of dollars so you could get a higher education.

One more year.

You could picture it from here: Fighting, backstabbing, awful gossip and trips to the principal over and over for something one of your friends may have said but it was actually another one of your friends. You had a feeling this year wasn't going to be your year at all. To hell with the awful and awkward freshman year, your lazy sophomore year, your crammed and regretful junior year. Senior year may actually be the death of you.

By the Six, your hair may actually turn gray from how stressed you're going to be.

You heaved a sigh and looked to your feet before you looked back up at the school. The sun was starting to peak over the line of trees and it started to spill amber light into your eyes.

Amber...

Amber and eyes...

You shook your head and tried to clear it. You did not want to get that image in your mind, not here and not now. You couldn't think of him. You wanted to move past this, move past him and what you had with him but especially what he didn't have with you.

You wanted to forget your crush on him, a crush you've had since elementary school.

Slowly, you crossed the courtyard of the school and soon joined in the back of the crowd of students pushing each other into the school. Everyone was moving slowly, they were like zombies, their feet shuffling and scraping against the concrete and bumping into everything and everyone near them. Hell, some of them were even moaning like the damned ghouls. Groans were echoing throughout the crowd as you waded closer to the double doors that held your education and your future.

You, yourself, felt like groaning as soon as the memories from your freshman, your sophomore and your juniors years started to flood back into your mind. Backstabbing, gossip, cliques.

Most of the people in the crowd were complaining that we had to start our first day of school on a Friday only to have a three day weekend. You couldn't agree more, but what could you do? You couldn't do anything, you had no control over the Board of Education for Insomnian schools. Everything was completely out of your hands.

It was high school after all, and this was a part of the process.

You made a promise with your friends that there would be no nonsense, everything would be wiped clean and this year would be a clean slate so you all could grow from mistakes in the past years roaming these halls.

You gripped onto the straps of your backpack tightly as you weaved through the crowd of already sweaty students until you managed to push your way out and pop out in the cafeteria.

The custodians changed the layout of the tables yet again, but you knew where you were going. Your feet automatically carried you through the new rows of tables, your hips dodging the chairs that stuck out and weaved past the students who had already sat down and claimed their morning tables.

Your eyes were set on the wall of trophies, specifically, the football trophies where your friends had already reclaimed the morning tables there. Cheap coffee cups were clung in some of their hands, others held the cheap free breakfast the school offered in the morning until lunch came, and the rest were too busy looking at whatever their phones scrolled to show them to even pay attention to the conversations happening with the rest of the group. Classic teenagers and you were one with them.

"Ready for senior year?" you chuckled as you made your way up to them.

"Oh boy," one of your friends sighed with a roll of their eyes, "yet another year in this hell."

"Wasn't there a thing that Ifrit did? A punishment upon all of us humans?" another questioned.

"Yeah, it was school," the first retorted.

"Makes sense."

"Please don't say the word senior, I feel old and the more you say senior the more old I feel," another one of your friends piped up as they turned their phone camera to their face. "I swear I'm getting wrinkles somehow."

"Isn't that the point of senior year?" you laughed as you swung your bag over your shoulder. The bag smacked against the lunch table as you pulled the chair back and plopped down. "We're supposed to feel old. We survived thirteen to fourteen years of school. We spent most of our lives here and now we're moving on in just one hundred and eighty-odd days."

"Yeah, then we have to go back to school and pay way more for it. We'll be in debt forever."

"That is what a scholarship is for," an accented voice called out from behind you.

A smirk formed on your face as you slowly turned to face the person standing behind you. The familiar pair of seafoam green eyes paired with the thin yet sophisticated pair of glasses was enough to make you stand up from your chair.

"Ignis," you greeted with open arms.

You haven't seen Ignis at all over summer break, his duties to the crown pulled him away and demanded his utmost attention. He barely had any free time, and with that free time, he had to help out his uncle for when he retires and Ignis takes over his role as the royal advisor for Prince Noctis.

"Hello (Y/n)," he greeted as he returned with a tight hug.

You two had been friends since elementary school. The bond between you two was great and was a force to be reckoned with.

"Are you gonna join us at graduation? Or are you taking your sweet time to graduate high school?"

"Taking my time, as usual." His lanky hand moved to push his glasses back by the bottom rims. "Although it would be wise of me to graduate early, I feel as though taking my time here will work out best for me. I would like to graduate with you and Gladio though."

"How is he, anyway? Especially with... what happened?"

"Why don't you ask him?" one of your friends called. "He's been looking at you ever since you came into the cafeteria."

Turning to face your friend that just spoke, you became slack-jawed as you saw they still hadn't moved since you came in. They were still on the chair, both feet pulled up to sit on the seat and their knees up high, their thumbs were swiveling along the screen of their phone.

"How do you know that?" you asked.

"I can see him through my screen when I turn it off."

"You turn your phone off?" you smirked. They finally looked up at you. A brow slowly raised as they turned their head towards you. "I got you to look up from your phone, that's amazing," you laughed.

They rolled their eyes and went back to looking at whatever was on their screen.

"From what I heard from his father and from what he told me, he's doing alright. He did mention he still has phantom pains from it."

"I'd bet. The guy almost got his eye with that bottle."

You slowly turned your head to the side so you could see Gladio out of the corner of your eye.

Gladio was sitting on top of the chair, refusing to use it like a normal person as his feet were on the surface where you should actually be sitting on. His arms were crossed over his knees, one of them was bouncing up and down quickly. He was laughing, you could just hear that dorky laugh from across the cafeteria. It rumbled through his body and was caught in his chest, it was deep and rumbly and gravely.

He slowly looked up only to lock eyes with you. Amber orbs bore into yours, your staring contest slowly brought his smile down. His friends paid no attention to his missing smile and that he was looking straight at you.

"Why don't you go over there and ask?" Ignis suggested as he nodded in Gladio's direction.

You shook your head, knocking you out of your current condition as you turned your head quickly to look at Ignis. He had a thin brow raised, a phantom smirk playing on his thin lips.

"No, I'm good," you stated as you focused on Ignis and not the royal shield that you knew was still staring at you.

"Are you sure?" Ignis smiled. "You two were looking each other dead in the eye. You even made him stop laughing, and that is a feat of its own."

"I said I'm good, Iggy," you huffed.

"No need to become fussy over Gladio staring at you."

"Is he? Is he still staring at me?"

You wanted to look behind you, oh sweet sweet six above you wanted to just turn your head just a bit so you could barely see him out of the corner of your eye.

"He is, but he's speaking to his friends still. I think they noticed him looking at you."

"Why?" you quickly shot at Ignis. "Why is he still looking at me? Why is he still looking in my direction?"

Your heart was starting to flutter out of your chest, your stomach was slowly twisting into the most complicated of sailor knots. Just the thought of Gladiolus Amicita still staring at you after the awkward exchange that just went on was dumbfounding you yet setting alarms off in your mind.

"Should we call the wedding planner and book the happiest day of your soon?" one of your friends called behind you.

Your head shot around and your body turned on a dime. The glare you shot at the group of teenagers made them cackle instead of cower.

You sighed and took this opportunity to peek up at Gladio only to have your stomach sink when you saw he had turned his attention to his friends just as you looked at him.

Ignis held out his hand and you knew exactly what he was asking of you. Digging into the pockets spanning across your clothing, you fished through the fabric holders until you managed to pull out a folded piece of paper. Ignis took it from your grip and quickly opened it while fishing out a similar piece of paper and opening that one up as well. He quickly gazed over them before sighing and handing you back your piece of paper.

"Only lunch together," he sighed.

"Well obviously. You're a junior that's doing CCP. You're only gonna be here until lunch and then you're at whatever college you chose to study in."

"I suppose your right. I was just hoping we would at least have one actual class together instead of lunch. It is your senior year after all. That is last class I will have with you before you graduate."

"It'll be alright Ignis," you smiled. "You even said you could use an assistant when you do become the royal advisor. You'll know where to find me."

"Oogling over Gladio somewhere? Possibly in the woods?" Ignis smirked.

"I dislike you," you squinted at the tawny brunet.

"Hey (Y/n)," one of your friends called as they walked up next to you. "I'm gonna borrow this," they calmly stated as the wiggled the piece of paper out of your hand.

"You don't have to be weird about it," you retorted as you eyed them.

"Don't worry about it."

They soon scurried off, possibly back to the table to check for everyone who had what with someone in the group.

Ignis opened his mouth to say something, but his jaw stalled and his eyes widened a bit.

"What?" you asked as you crossed your arms over your chest.

"That was a mistake to allow them to take your schedule."

"Why?"

"They're taking it to Gladio to try and match schedules."

Your jaw dropped as you whipped your body around once more.

It was too late. You were about to say something, but it was too late. No amount of distractions you could make or diversions you can do to get them to stop wouldn't work as they were now practically in front of Gladio now.

How did they move so fast?

You watched on in horror as they questioned Gladio, motioning the paper in their hands to the royal shield. Gladio just seemed to shrug and fished into his hoodie pocket where his hands had been stuffed in and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper and handed it to your friend.

"I can't watch," you whispered as you turned back to Ignis once more that morning. "Tell me what's happening."

"They're uncrumpling that wad of paper," Ignis informed as he eyed the two.

"They're failing... they ended up ripping it a bit... They're looking over his... And now yours... And now both at the same time... And now they're handing it back to him and scurrying back here."

"Did Gladio see my name on the schedule?"

"How would I know? I'm not a daemon with supernatural eye-sight. Why do you think I wear glasses?"

"You don't really need them, Iggy."

"I prefer to wear them." Ignis turned his attention behind you once more to your friend who was now next to you. "Hello again."

"I have good news and I have bad news," they stated as they handed you your schedule.

"What's the good news?" you asked.

They stopped handing you your folded up schedule and squinted at you as they held the folded paper to their chest.

"Wow, you want bad news last? You're supposed to want the bad news first and good news last to cancel out the bad news before the good news."

"Okay, then what's the bad news?"

"Okay, bad news: We only have lunch together."

You deadpanned for a moment. You gave them a tired expression while Ignis cocked a brow.

"Oh no. How will I ever deal only seeing you in the best period of the day?" you asked as sarcasm dripped off every word that slipped past you.

"Could you at least play along and not be an ass?"

You laughed.

"The good news?"

"You and Gladio have a few classes together," they smirked as they watched your every move.

You seemed to perk up upon hearing the good news.

"Really?"

"Yep. Math, history, lunch, and science in that order." Your jaw opened slightly, the corners of your lips wanted to flick up in a smile only winner's show off. They flicked their hand back and dropped your folded up schedule into the palm of your outstretched hand. "You're welcome. I would like to hear how much of an amazing friend I am now, please," they cooed.

"You," you pointed at them, "are the fucking best." They smirked smugly at you, making sure to lift their chin in triumph. "But not as amazing as Ignis."

They deflated a bit, their shoulders sank quickly only to retract and rise up once more to their smug position.

"I can live with that," they huffed before smirking at you once more.

They spun on their heel to return to your friends who were laughing away and cooing over the fact that your crush was still clinging onto you like handcuffs with no key.

"I see it hasn't faded away from you over the summer," Ignis called.

You shook your head. You hadn't noticed you had slipped into a trance and you were staring into space.

"Hey Ignis," you started as you looked at him from the corner of your eye, "there's a thing called dropping it. You know, the bro code? I can lend you a copy of it, you know? I know it very well considering what I have on you and-"

"Don't you dare say her name," Ignis cut you off. He reached up and fixed his button up's collar before smoothing out the purple material. Always formal, always fashionable for Ignis Stupeo Scientia. "And why not lend it Gladio? He loves books, you know?"

"I know," you spat quickly. "I've known since kindergarten that's he's in love with reading."

"And he can read you like an open book!" one of your friends shouted from the table they were all squeezing into.

You spun on your heel one last time to glare at all of the laughing their heads off while pounding at the table. Slowly, people around us had started to look over to you all. Confusion painted their faces as they watched your friends explode with laughter.

You sighed and looked up only to lock up.

He was looking again.

He was looking at you again.

His smile slowly dropped the longer he stared at you.

Your face was burning up the longer his amber eyes bore into you. They were like fire burning bright in the night sky, they were just so bright and warm. Molten amber burned into your mind as you continued to stare back at him.

You gaze moved over to the scar that was permanently etched into his face forever. Just looking at it reminded you of the social media headlines and stories on the news stations all about it.

'Royal Prince under attack!'

'Royal Shield saves Prince from attacker!'

'Royal Shield almost loses eye protecting Prince Noctis!'

Even the images and videos of the attacker and Gladio spread across social media like wildfire.

You could just remember the nightly news broadcast the day after, the hour that was meant for parents after their children went to bed. You could still remember those images and the videos... Just the reporter's monotone voice sent chills up your spine.

But you still looked straight ahead to Gladio as your mind burned the videos into your thoughts once more.

"Good evening, ladies and gentlemen of Insomnia," he drawled on. "As of yesterday, the kingdom has been on edge due to the attack set on the Heir of Eos, Prince Noctis Lucis Caelum, had failed which resulted in the Royal Shield, Gladiolus Amicita, taking the hit instead of the Prince." You could just see the fight happening, the video blurring into your sights as you mindlessly watched Gladio like a hawk. "A man under the influence of alcohol, we will not disclose his name at this time by the order of the crown, attempted to attack the Prince with a broken beer bottle. Upon seeing the man rushing to attack the Prince, the Royal Shield stepped in and stopped the attacker, but not before taking the hit himself." The reporter only stared ahead at anyone who was watching. His icy blue eyes were hollow, his face was sunken and tired, his lips never curled up and the wrinkles only weighed his face down. "The Royal Shield took the hit to his left eye. It was unknown from yesterday if he would lose his eye, but the Royal Shield is in stable condition with both eyes unscathed."

"Why wouldn't he fight back?" your friend murmured as they finally looked up from their phone. "He could've saved both Noct and himself from that guy."

"Upon questioning the Shield on what happened last night," the reporter called out, "he told police officials that, and I quote, 'Would never dare to harm a single citizen of Insomnia. I'll do my best to make I can avoid as much conflict towards the Prince before I have to use force. The last thing I want to do is to harm a citizen of Insomnia and soil the crown's name.' A brave man he is. Gladiolus Amicita is in stable condition now, resting in Insomnian Central Hospital at this time."

You watched on as the video flashed across the screen of a man stumbling up to the Prince who was only joking around with Prompto with a broken beer bottle - it was still dripping with beads of amber liquid. Ignis was on the phone, speaking to most likely his uncle or to council members about something important. Gladio was stuffing a small moogle plushie into his hoodie pocket for Iris no doubt until he caught sight of the man. Gladio rushed forward and Ignis closed his phone as he tried to do the same. The man reeled his hand back and started to charge at the Prince with the bottle raised in the air. Gladio wasn't able to grab the bottle, but he did block the Prince from his view until the bottle came down and slashed at his eye. Ignis came barreling in and shoved the drunk bastard away as Gladio clutched his bleeding gash as Prompto stumbled to grab a tissue from his bag while Noctis tried to get Gladio to sit.

He was the shield after all... His job was to shield the Prince from harm and protect him at all costs.

You remembered signing a card for him, people from school flooded the streets and came door to door for Gladio's classmates, asking to sign cards and posterboards and donate money so they could get him flowers and balloons.

Insomnia was quiet those few days after it happened. Summer felt like winter, it was heavy and depressive and... horrible knowing that someone wanted to do this to an innocent kid and another guy protected him from anything and everything.

"I never expected that from him, to protect him" they murmured. They turned their head towards you, their eyes were now a seafoam green and not their familiar color. "Remember in middle school when Gladio didn't want anything to do with Noctis because of what happened with Iris?" They asked. You didn't answer, you just stared at the screen ahead of the two of you. "(Y/n)?"

You shook your head again and looked away from Gladio, your cheeks started to heat up greatly.

"(Y/n)," someone called to you as they shook your shoulder. You turned to them to see Ignis raising a brow. "Staring again?" he smiled.

"Shut up Iggy," you huffed.

"You're blushing."

"Don't you think I know? My face feels like it's on fire."

You moved your hands up to rub your warm cheeks with your cold hands.

"He is too."

You stopped.

Your head shot up.

What did Ignis just say?

"What did you just say?"

"I said Gladio is blushing as well." He pushed his glasses up by the bridge.

"However, it is not as dominant as yours. With him, it's only along his nose. For you, however," he chuckled, "it appears to be everywhere."

You wanted to reel your fist back and punch him in the shoulder so bad right now.

Instead, you looked behind you despite what your gut was telling you to do and smiled. Gladio's nose was a rosy red at the very least. His smile was large as he started to laugh loudly at whatever dumb joke his friends may have told him. He ran a hand through his growing hair and slipped his hat back on and shoving his hands back into the hoodie pocket.

"Is it me or does he look like he's straight from the 80's with that haircut?" one of your friends joked.

"Watch," another one spoke up while raising their hands, "he grows a mullet."

"I would vomit. We need to forget those fashion mistakes."

"Exactly." They turned their attention to me. "Would you date him if he had a mullet?"

"Shut up," you muttered.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

His amber eyes were trained on someone. His vision never faltered, his eyes remained on their form the whole time their free morning dragged on.

He watched on as they glared at their friends, spoke with Ignis, received their folded up schedule from one who compared it to his.

He especially didn't miss when he saw them look back to him and blush.

Just seeing such a sight made his nose heat up just a bit.

His friends didn't miss how his nose went from sun-kissed to almost a pale rose: A telltale sign that Gladiolus Amicitia was blushing, which could only mean one thing...

Two sets of eyes slowly looked to where Gladio's eyes were set to see a familiar person, their back was turned to three of them as their front was turned to a smirking Ignis Scientia.

Their jaws dropped open just a bit in shock... But could they really be shocked by this? Should they be shocked by this? By Gladio staring at them?

The rosy red tinting Gladio's nose hadn't lightened up nor has it darkened as he continued to stare. Instead, it only spread slowly to his cheeks and under his eyes until it met the long scar running into a near-perfect vertical line over his left eye.

Sweat started to bead right under the hat he had classically worn backwards which hid the hair he had finally decided to grow out after years of having the undershave. Sweat lined the facial hair donning his chiseled chin, the small patch of hair was short and freshly cut while the rest of his jaw was clear of both hair and scratches of failed shaves.

The two watched as Gladio kept eye contact with the back of their head, his lips were parted slightly as he was only melting deeper into that... trance he slips into when this happens.

They had to stop this before he started to drool...

One turned to look at the other who just shrugged. They had no idea what to do.

The first turned his head back to Gladio and cleared his throat.

"Still staring at 'em?" one of his friends laughed as they turned their full attention to Gladio.

Gladio shook his head and turned his attention to his friends that were standing there watching him.

This has never happened until Gladio actually met (Y/n) in middle school as they had to sit next to each other in science class when you came to school late on the first day. Ever since then, it's happened ever since. It happens everywhere too: In the halls, outside of school, if and when he sees you at the mall, on the streets or in a cafe, or in (the most common place for it to happen) school.

"So what?" Gladio asked as he smirked over at his friends. "I can't stare at anyone but you can gawk at every chick with big butts all the time and get away with it? What kind of world is this?"

"I didn't say that," he snorted as he clapped the back of his hat off of his head. "I'm just saying, usually you don't stare at the people you wanna ask out for this long. You usually eye them down the first day and go for it. But, you know, you've been staring at (Y/n) for... Hmm, how long has it been?" he moved a tanned finger up to his chin and tapped the scratchy surface before he started to play with the small facial hair. "Let's see we're in senior year, you've had a crush on (Y/n) since eighth grade when she was placed right next to you in science." He spun on his heel to look at another one of the friends. "How long is that, by the way? How long has lover boy over here been in love with (Y/n)?"

"Five years," the other friend laughed as he spun the football in his hands.

"So five years," he spun back to look Gladio right in the eyes. "Five years you have been crushing on (Y/n) and not once in those five years have you spoken to 'em or dropping 'em hints or anything."

"Remember when he was in the hospital for that cut on his eye? When he saw (Y/n)'s name on the large ass posters people brought you? He didn't look away from that name until the nurses brought him his dinner."

"I'm glad I'm out of there," Gladio groaned as he ran his hands over his face. "The food was awful."

"Even with your five-star luxury?"

"All hospital food is awful, even if I am the Royal Shield. When Noctis had that leg injury, he even told me how awful the food was. Ignis snuck him some actual food and I took care of what they gave him."

"Stop dodging the question, Glad, and tell us why you haven't asked 'em out yet," the first friend pushed.

"I'm nervous, alright?" Gladio pushed back as he picked up his fallen hat and plopped it on back on top of his head. "I'm nervous they'll just see me as a player or that someones gonna say some shit that throws me in a bad light or..."

"You're worried about (Y/n) not liking you?" Gladio nodded and shoved his large hands into his hoodie pocket once more. "That's a first. I don't think I've ever seen you this nervous."

"I've seen him nervous," the second friend piped up.

"No, you haven't."

"Yes, I have!" He placed the football down on the table and faced the first friend.

"It was back in seventh grade! Gladio-"

"Anything with Iris or Noctis or Ignis doesn't count. That's his job to protect those people," the first friend cut in as he pointed to the second friend.

"I wasn't going to say Iris and Noctis," the second friend scoffed as he smacked away the hand in front of his face. "I was talking about in seventh grade, the dentist didn't know if he should give Gladio braces or not. And Gladio was worried that braces would mess up his manly ego and he wouldn't be able to ask out any of the girls to anything anymore."

"I thought I told you not to bring that up?" Gladio questioned as his eyes narrowed in on the second friend.

"I had to prove my point!"

"Your dentist almost gave you braces?" the first one laughed.

"Yeah," Gladio sighed with a smirk. "Glad he didn't though."

"Yeah, you're manly ego you've been building up since kindergarten must stay strong. Braces will only make you look weak," the second friend mocked as he picked up the football. "You know, braces aren't a thing most middle-schoolers get."

"Shut up, my teeth are fine," Gladio laughed.

"Your nose isn't fine though, it's still red," the first friend pointed out with a nod of his head.

"I know," Gladio sighed.

"Are you gonna fix it?"

"How? Splash warm water on my face?"

"No," he snorted as he punched Gladio in the arm. "Go over there and ask them out."

"They barely know me besides from what they get from Ignis."

"You didn't learn anything from them during that whole year you sat next to 'em in science?" Gladio shook his head and eyed his friend down. "Then go introduce yourself to them for fuck's sake! Stop being so awkward! It's not like you at all and it's kinda weird."

"You never been in love?" the second friend snickered.

"I have," the other sputtered out, "but that's not what I meant! I meant this! The staring, the blushing, the awkwardness... It's not like Gladio, it's all just that mushy puppy love bullshit that Hallmark pours out to every girl and old crazy cat lady!" He mulled over the words that just came from him. "And nerds. Them too."

"It's young love, not puppy love. You're making him sound like he's some lost chocolate lab or something that's looking for their long lost love. ANd besides, Ignis is a nerd and he doesn't watch Hallmark at all."

"How would you know?"

"Because I told him," Gladio shrugged. "But Prompto does."

"Prompto Argentum? That blond kid that hangs out with the prince all of the time?"

"Oh yeah, that kid. He watches it all the time," Gladio stated. He slipped himself down from the head of the uncomfortable chair to the actual seat and leaned back, his hands still remained in the pocket of his hoodie. "He even has an advantage: His parents are never home."

"Never?"

"He barely sees them. He tells us that he'll only see them for a few hours on the weekends and then they're gone. He's free to do whatever the fuck he wants to do while they work or go somewhere or do something."

"So they only come home to practically sign shit, pay bills and put away groceries before they leave?"

"And then the whole house is to Prompto so he can watch all the Hallmark he wants and so he can cry freely."

"He told you this?"

"Me, Noctis and Ignis."

"Let me ask it this way: He trusted you enough to tell you this?"

"Yeah," Gladio stated with an unemotional face. Gladio raised a brow and smirked. "His favorites are the Christmas ones."

"You're bullshitting us."

Gladio shrugged and put his hands up.

"I'm telling the truth." His hands fell down to his sides. "I bet that if you pass him while talking about Hallmark movies, especially the Christmas ones, that he'll start talking about it too. But watch, if you either say the wrong name of the actor or actress, or you can't remember their name, Prompto will correct you. Trust me."

"I don't know if you're joking or if this is actually true."

"Only one way to find out," Gladio chuckled.

The first friend shot up and glared at the second friend.

"How did we get from Gladio blushing about (Y/n) to wanting to know if Prompto really watches Hallmark movies?" he snapped.

The bells started to ring, echoing down the halls and blaring over everyone as they tried to talk over the alarms. Suddenly, everyone in the lunchroom stood up and the screeching of the chairs' metal legs scratching against the tiles became louder than the dismissal bells going off above the students' heads. The waves of students started to file out of the lunchroom, somehow managing to crowd up and cram into the maze of hallways. People started shoving and screams and shouts popped up.

There was no doubt a fight was going to start on the first day of school. Gladio could just picture it: It would be ugly, hands smacking against skin, they would spit at each other and fists would fly. Gladio could just point it out who it was going to be.

Gladio heaved a sigh as he grabbed his bag and swung one of his arms through the straps and rested the backpack on one of his broad shoulders. He slowly stood up from the chair and looked down at his friends who were just a few inches shorter than he was.

"Distractions," Gladio stated with a confident smirk spreading across his face.

"Just ask 'em out," the second friend sighed as he slung his own bag over his shoulder.

"I will," Gladio laughed as he, once again, stuck his hands into his pockets. "Just not now."

And with that, Gladio's long legs started to carry him towards the shrinking crowds of tired students and joined in the back of the wave. His head was poking up from the crowd, sticking out like a sore thumb to his friends who were still standing back at the table, both of their faces were blank as they watched their friend walk off until he turned a corner.

"Five years," the first friend sighed.

"That's the longest he ever waited to date someone," the second added as he spun the rough football in his hands.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Time just seemed to drag on forever. Math was tiring, history was boring, English was repetitive, lunch was the highlight of anyone's day, and science was perplexing. You were not looking forward to any of those classes on top of your electives. You simply just wanted to crawl back into your house, creep underneath the covers of your bed and go back to sleep.

But you couldn't do that.

You had an education to finish!

Your feet dragged you down the crowded halls, you weaved through smelly bodies of both good smells and bad smells. You had somehow gotten through the waves of people without a scratch or scrape or bruise as you popped out from the edge of the crowd right in front of the door to your homeroom.

Upon entering, just the fake smile the teacher gave you made you feel as if lead was replacing your blood.

Fake excitement. That's all it was today. Fake excitement and syllabuses and slideshows about their lives. How old they were, how many kids they had, what their houses look like with a teacher's salary and their dogs.

One teacher had just gotten a bulldog puppy that you wanted to steal from her house. Oh, how you wanted to snatch that adorable thing up.

At least that was the only highlight of your day...

In math, Gladio sat with his two friends. In English, there were assigned seats so he sat on the opposite side of the room. You didn't have English or any electives with Gladio, sadly.

And there you were, sitting at your claimed lunch table with Ignis and most of your friends. Conversations were muffled over more conversations, chairs were screeching and groaning, tables were being banged on while the cheap plastic food trays scratched against the lunchroom tables. Sweaty teenagers were joking and cackling while others were buried deep with their noses in their phones. The smells of cheap lunchroom food provided to the school from Six knows where mixed with the scents of packed lunches. Just sitting across from Ignis made you wanna chuck your lunch away and just stare at his homemade - and possibly gourmet - food.

"How were your classes with Gladio?" Ignis asked as he didn't look up from his food.

"Boring. He either sat with his friends or we had to sit apart," you grumbled as you forced your plastic fork into the lunch before you.

"I do not know how to help this," Ignis sighed before he took a bite of his food.

"Just talk to him," one of your friends stated before biting into her sandwich.

"Just ask for him snapchat or his instagram or something," another stated with a mouth full of salad leaves.

"I can't just ask that randomly and out of nowhere," you stated as you placed your fork down onto the tray.

Deep laughter erupted from behind and it only grew closer until it stopped behind you. You knew that laughter, and by the way Ignis looked up to eye the people behind you, you could just tell it was him.

The chairs behind you screeched and scraped against the tiles behind you as three trays had been tossed onto the table.

All of your friends eyed you and stared, smirks forming on their faces as they simply chewed their food.

"Stop that," you glared.

Ignis swallowed whatever was in his mouth and calmly stated, "Gladio isn't that type of teenager that will spread rumors about you if you fail to ask him for his number, (Y/n). I've known him for years." Ignis eyed his food before smiling. "He mentioned you in our literature class," he murmured.

"Literature?"

"Gladio is not all brawn. He trains his mind as much as he trains his body. He fancies older books or books of historical fiction, although he enjoys fantasy and suspense too."

"That's actually shocking," one of your friends stated as they stared at Ignis.

"His backpack is filled with books already. He made sure to stop at the library before school to get some."

You hummed and nodded as your lips pursed. You picked up your plastic fork once more and jammed it into your food before lifting it up to your mouth.

The lunchroom conversations blurred together and blared in your ears as you tried to exchange small talk with Ignis for the remainder of the period until the bells had started to go off.

Somehow, you had made it to your last period without a fight, argument or threat. It was a miracle considering some of the people you were stuck with in class for nearly an hour. It was as if the Astrals were watching over you today... Hopefully, they'll keep watching over you for the rest of the year and protect you from them.

Your feet brought you to a halt in front of the classroom door. You quickly glanced at your schedule before looking back up at the number imprinted in the wood of the door. Nodding with a sigh, you slipped the paper into your pocket and slid into the room.

You groaned internally as you saw some of the students you were supposed to share chemistry with, most of them were the ones that you knew were going to try and test you over the school year. You huffed and made your way to an empty set of desks as you started to wonder where they were.

At least you had a class with one friend... But where were they?

A minute had passed and they were not to be found. You spent it searching through your bag quickly as soon as you sat down you didn't even notice the items placed on the desk before you. As soon as you popped your head up to look at the doorway, that's when you noticed everything.

Your eyes rolled over a large liquid measuring cup, a large cylinder that was marked with the ingredient 'Borax', a roll of thick white string, two pairs of new scissors, a stack of clear plastic cups, two measuring teaspoons, a box of popsicle sticks, and a box of pipe cleaners. You looked up to only see every table had these ingredients lying on top of their surfaces, all of them were in the same order as the stuff before you: Neatly piled together and taking up as little space before you on the table. However, something was different about most of the other materials on other's desks.

Some of the liquid measuring cups were full, steam pouring out from the large opening as the glass had steamed up and clouded. Looking up, you saw the teacher hunched over something, his khaki pants pressed flat and his green collared shirt tucked in with the long sleeves rolled up to his elbows. Steam was pouring from whatever he was hunched over, the steam making his balding head sweat and shine between the graying brown hairs.

"Don't touch anything on the desks," he called out as he cranked a dial in front of him. "We're doing an experiment."

He sounded like an old scientist... Well... He was an old scientist... At least his voice fits the part.

You nodded and watched on as he stirred something before him with a wooden spoon.

More people started to file in as the last minute crept down to mere seconds before the bell would ring. Seats around you filled up and your friend was still not here.

"Where are you?" you murmured.

You tugged your backpack up and placed it on the seat next to you, occupying it so nobody would sit down.

"If your water cools off, let me know and I'll heat it back up," your teacher stated as he reached out and snapped the dial shut. He lifted something up and turned to face the crowd of students. "It's important for the experiment!"

A large pot was held in his hands, a thick plaid towel was wrapped around the handle as steam poured out from the top.

He had a wrinkling face, no blemishes or beauty marks. His stormy gray eyes were pulled back in excitement as he shuffled around the room. He was obviously excited to do this apparently. However, something caught your eye: He had a long scar running along his left cheekbone, it was pale white against his tanned wrinkly skin.

He came up to your table and smiled at you before turning the pot and let the boiling liquids pour into the liquid measuring cup before he pulled away and stopped the liquid from falling.

"Does that say two cups?" he asked you.

Peering down, you saw the water was just above the red line. You simply nodded and resumed rummaging through your backpack as the teacher simply nodded and walked to the next table.

Suddenly, the loud bell rang and caught you off guard. You flinched as you were rummaging and ended up stabbing the palm of your hand into something sharp. You reeled your hand away and shook it before smearing the small droplet of blood across your palm.

With a sigh, you tossed your bag onto the wooden planks and leaned back in your chair as you eyed the room. Two seats were left empty: One for your friend and one for Gladio.

"As I said before, don't touch anything on the desks. We're doing an experiment," the teacher repeated as he placed the now empty pot onto the warm burner. He balled the plaid towel up and wiped at his face and dabbed away the sweat that beaded his forehead. He looked around the room. "Is this all? I was told the last period would be full." And just on cue, the two burst through the classroom door. Your friend was panting and Gladio wasn't phased. "I know that you were in the nurse," he stated to your friend. They quickly nodded and ran straight to the empty seat... not next to you. "But for you Mr. Amicita, I was expecting more from you."

"I'm sorry, sir," Gladio grumbled out as he kept his hands in his hoodie pocket.

"Being the shield for the next king is a big responsibility to pull at you, but school and your education is your responsibility when you walk through those doors." He still didn't look up to Gladio as he filed through papers. "Take a seat."

Your phone vibrated in your pocket, and as you pulled it out, you saw it was them.

'I'm doing this for you. The seats aren't assigned here, so if this tanks, I'll come back there ;)'

"I hate you so much," you murmured as you glared at them sitting across the room from you.

The sound of Gladio's bag hitting the ground shot you right out of your disbelief, your head shook and you rubbed at your eyes.

"The day's been long, hasn't it?" Gladio laughed as he sat down on the seat next to you.

"When is it never long?" you sighed.

A laugh rumbled out from Gladio's chest.

"Alright class!" the teacher exclaimed as he moved to the front of the classroom.

"We're doing a first-day experiment!" He picked up a new piece of chalk and pressed it to the already dirty chalkboard and started to scribble on it. "Borax crystal snowflakes! A perfect experiment for this three day weekend!"

"Yipee," Gladio grumbled as he sat back in his chair.

You shot him a glance and smirked at his emotionless face.

A series of numbers was drawn on the board vertically down, there were six numbers. The teacher had the piece of chalk, he rolled it in his hands as he eyed around the room with a smile plastered on his wrinkled face. He turned to the board and raised the piece of chalk.

"Follow directions carefully, if you forget, then look up to the board for help," he stated calmly.

Gladio eyed you.

"Do you really wanna do this?" he smirked.

"No, but there's no doubt about it that there may be a grade on this for participation," you rolled your eyes.

Gladio scoffed and shook his head.

"There always is," he groaned softly.

"First, take a few pipe cleaners - don't go overboard with them please - and twist them together to form your little snowflake." You eyed the box of pipe cleaners sitting before you two. "You can make it any size you'd like, just make sure it can fit in the plastic cups I supplied you all with."

The sound of chalk hitting the blackboard echoed in the room as soft murmurs between everyone as boxes had started to open. Gladio nodded to the box.

"You go first," he offered.

You inhaled and reached over and slipped six small white pipe cleaners out from the box before nudging it over to him. Slowly, you curled and twisted the wiry sticks into a small snowflake - or something that kind of looked like a snowflake - before you set it before you. You just peeked over to look at Gladio's only to snort.

That did not look like a snowflake or a star at all.

"Yeah yeah, laugh it up," Gladio rolled his eyes as a chuckle left his lips, "I'm not good at this kind of stuff. You would think with a little sister I was, but I'm not."

"At least you tried," you laughed.

"Second, cut off a small piece of string. Try to make it at least five inches (or thirteen centimeters) long and tie it to one of the edges of your snowflake," the teacher instructed as he shortened it up on the board before him.

Gladio took the roll and handed you the end of the white string.

"Cut it, I'll hold it for you."

You reached out and took a pair of the clean scissors and rolled out the string, pulling it out so far before snipping it. You handed Gladio the end of the overly-long string which he took while putting the spool down. Estimating where the middle was, you quickly snipped in the center and tied your piece to one end of the snowflake while Gladio did the same with his.

"Now, take one popsicle stick and tie the untied end around it in the center," the teacher stated.

Gladio reached out and slipped two popsicle sticks out from the small box and handed one to me. Smiling, you slipped it from his hand and started to tie the loose string to it, making sure to wrap it around a few times so it would dangle in the water and not sink to the bottom.

"This is a craft for a child," the guy next to you stated as he struggled to knot his string.

The girl beside him snatched up the poorly-made snowflake and managed to tie the string into a knot with her pointed acrylic nails.

"Now, add one cup of water to each of your plastic cups and stir in 4 teaspoons of borax until it dissolves."

Reaching out, Gladio handed you a cup and smiled. His amber eyes bore into your face, a blush was burning under the skin of your cheeks and nose. Slowly, you took the cup from him and set the cup down before you as Gladio reached out, snagged a cup for himself from the stack and dragged the large measuring cup until it was between us.

"Let me guess, you pour and I hold?" you questioned as you cocked an eyebrow.

"You took the words from my lips," he smirked.

"I must warn you," the teacher's voice called out - it cut through the trance you must have gone in as you shook your head to clear it - "the water is hot, most of it I had just boiled. Please be careful!"

He had resumed his writing on the chalkboard with his weird handwriting. It was a mixture of sloppy and neat, some letters were capital but small and some were lower-cased and big.

Gladio simply lifted the measuring cup and slowly poured the steaming liquid into the cup as you held it. Your hands were starting to burn through the plastic until Gladio pulled away and stopped the liquid from falling before he nudged his empty cup towards me. You held it with both hands and scrunched them up so they wouldn't burn as much. Quickly, his cup filled up and the liquid measuring cup ran dry with only a few drops clinging to the warm glass.

"You okay?" he laughed. "Burned yourself?"

"It's hot," you stated as you eyed him.

Your phone vibrated in your pocket but you ignored it. No doubt that it was them. You could basically see them staring at the two of you, a grin spreading across their face. Their words were practically forming in your head.

You hadn't even realized Gladio was stirring the borax into the hot water with his measuring spoon.

You quickly grabbed the cylinder of borax and measured out what you needed and kept stirring until the water was murky. You couldn't see the bottom of the cup.

You rested the wet and steamy spoon on the table next to Gladio's which had been placed down a little bit ago.

"Step five!" the teacher exclaimed as a smile spread across his wrinkly face.

"Take the snowflake you made by the popsicle and submerge it into your cup of dissolved borax. Make sure you balance it so the popsicle stick won't fall into the water. We don't want the stick to become crystalized!"

It was as if you were all in unison as we all lifted up your "snowflakes" and lowered them into your cups, balancing it in the middle and watching it soak up the borax slowly.

"And now we wait," Gladio sighed contently as he sat back in his chair again.

His hands retreated to the pockets of his hoodie once more.

"How long though?" you asked.

"And now we wait!" the teacher smiled as he quickly wrote next to the number six. "Until Tuesday then!" He reached onto his desk and retrieved a few rolls of drafting tape and came to the first table he spotted. "Write your names on these so when we come back, you can take these home!"

"So we are in kindergarten?" Gladio questioned as he cocked a thick eyebrow.

You waded through the crowd. Shoulders smacked into you, bags assaulted your body and it felt like the air was being knocked out of you every time something came into contact with you. Just the awful smell of most of the jocks and druggies was enough to make you want to hurl.

Every single noise became one mushy sound that was muffled in your ears as you pushed through on your way home after a long day at school. Your hands still throbbed slightly, they were still heated from the burns from the hot water against the plastic your hands covered.

You just got over it. You've dealt with this for three years and this is your final year in this hell hole. Just go with it all, forget it and block it out, it's not worth your time or worth your effort to even care. Just get through it every single day for about one-hundred and seventy-nine more days and you will be free to do whatever you want with your life.

You prefer to think of that timer, the sound of it ticking over all of this noise. You could just hear it ticking away in your ear, distracting you from everyone around you so much that a small smile had spread across your lips.

Until... something shouted out from the distance. It was distant, you almost didn't catch it.

"Do you need a ride home?" someone called out.

You just brushed it off, your mind was wandering somewhere and you felt like indulging it today after everything that had happened. You could feel it still: You were lost in that sea of bright, glowing amber and your ears were still ringing with that deep, earthy chuckle that would slip past his smiling lips. You could still hear it over the chaos of the first day of school finally ending, over everyone shouting and people banging into the metal lockers that lined the blandly-painted brick walls.

"(Y/n)!" someone called over the chaos.

It caught your attention. You stopped, you were outside in front of the roads and curves of the sidewalks. It was as if the noise had stopped too. You looked behind to the crowd of excited and tired students pushing past you so they could go home or Astrals knows where... Until he pushed through.

He was laughing and his eyes trailed to you as his friends slapped his hat back onto his head.

"Do you need a ride home?" he asked.

"No," you shook your head as you smiled, "I'm alright. I'm heading to a friend's later though."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah." You nodded a bit and grabbed a hold of the straps on your backpack and watch as his shoulders seemed to sink and his eyebrows raised. He seemed shocked. "But don't you have to pick Iris up from elementary school?"

"She didn't start today. They start Tuesday."

By now, the crowd around us had thinned to only the stragglers: The students with either no ride, the ones not wanting to return home to their families or the ones who had to wait to be picked up. It just left the two of you standing there.

"Why do you want to give me a ride?" you questioned.

Gladio shrugged and hoisted his bag up his shoulder as it had started to slip.

"I don't know," he stated. "I just figured that... I mean- I just..."

"Is thee Gladiolus Amicita at a loss for words?" You let out a fake gasp as you placed your hands on your hips. "I guess I should be honored then!"

"Stop that," he chuckled as he slipped his hat off of his head. He ran his thick fingers through the locks that he had decided to grow out, making sure he brushed the hair back along the curve of his skull before placing his hat back on top of his head. "I... want to get to know you more," he stated as he kept eye contact with you.

"Really?" you cocked a brow.

"I do. I really do." He placed his hands back into the pocket of his hoodie. "Iggy told me just to be direct with you. He really knows you and I trust him on this."

"Well, you're right to listen to him."

"You can never go wrong with specs," Gladio laughed as he looked the ground.

He quickly looked back up at you.

"Well, where do we go from here?"

Gladio licked his bottom lip and looked at me from the corner of his eye.

"How about I give you my number," he stated as he slipped his cellphone from his pants pocket, "and you text me later when you're not at your friend's house or when you're not doing homework or... whenever."

"Are you just gonna stay up until I text you?"

"No..?" he questioned as he squinted at you.

You both erupted into a small fit of laughter, his hearty chuckle rang in your ears and filled your stomach with fluttering butterflies. His teeth were white and straight, his eyes were squinted and full of happiness. He looked happy and alive unlike most of the other teenage population.

"I promise to text you as soon as I get home from their house," you stated as you slipped your phone out from your pocket.

"Perfect." You had no idea how he was able to type his number in and his name but he did, and it was now saved into your phone until further notice. "I hope to hear from you soon," he winked.

#ffxv #ffxv imagines #gladiolus amicitia #gladiolus #gladiolus x reader #young!gladio #young!gladiolus #werewolf!gladiolus #werewolf gladio

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parkrangercirca2016 · 5 years

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July 11, 2019; Thursday

Starting a few weeks ago work and life started to become a blur. Now that Independence Day (and Canada Day since we’re so close to British Columbia) is in the rear view mirror, that blur is starting to slow down and resemble my daily life a little bit more.

At the end of June I had to travel to Naval Air Station Whidbey Island (NASWI) to participate on behalf of the park in the Great Navy Campout. Morale, Welfare, and Recreation (MWR) put this program on every year. They host it at the campground on NASWI and invite families from all over the base to join them for activities and fellowship.

My job at the Great Navy Campout was to tell people about bears (both black and grizzly) and to help our education coordinator pass out military passes so that servicemembers and their dependents can get in through park entrance stations for free. For the most part the weekend that I spent at NASWI was nice. I wasn’t a big fan of the lack of planning on the part of the person who coordinated the weekend, but I reminded myself that I’m just a little GS-05 and it’s not my job to make plans or coordinate with outside agencies. I just go where I’m told and do what they say. I am not being paid enough to worry about logistics. (On the plus side since I was technically on travel I’ll get an extra eighty some-odd dollars in my next pay check for meals and incidental expenses.)

Driving to the air station was fun. I got to go over Deception Pass and down Highway 20 on Whidbey Island. As I crossed over the bridge at Deception Pass I was greeted by a handful of Naval EA-18G Growlers flying around. I’m not sure what they were doing. Because they are carrier-based aircraft the aviators on NASWI often practice taking off and landing from a carrier (they have a mock carrier landing strip on the air station), and I wondered if that’s what they were doing. When I pulled off the road to call the education coordinator to find out where to meet her I tried listening for the sound of the Growlers hitting their afterburner when they touched down on the practice landing strip but couldn’t hear it. Regardless, it was exciting to watch them buzzing over the highway as they flew around.

For the most part the families at the Great Navy Campout were a pleasure to work with. The kids were curious and enjoyed coming up to the table to touch bear pelts. There were two boys who got on my nerves, but that probably had more to do with their immaturity than anything else. I was more surprised when I found out that the volunteers who were helping with the MWR group weren’t the high schoolers that I thought they were. The people who I thought were probably studying to get their drivers licenses were actually “Junior Sailors,” which, I learned, is not the name of a group for teens on the air station but the name of a program for recent enlistees (18, 19, 20, 21-year olds) to meet with one another and grow into the community. I couldn’t get over the fact that they weren’t high schoolers worrying about the ACT or prom or whatever, but that they were essentially college kids who were joking with each other about the same things college kids everywhere joke about (booze & parties & relationships).

Returning from the Great Navy Campout I was greeted with the Independence Day rush of visitors. Even the weather was only marginally normal for early July (June-uary seems to have come late this year) the park was still packed. For the four days I was working over the holiday we were swamped with a constant flood of visitors aiming for our best advice. There were so many people there that I was finally able to give my morning junior ranger program to a real group!

Getting to my days off after the holiday was a real pleasure. I was getting awfully frazzled by the crush of the crowds. Everybody wanted the same thing: “I’m here for X hours. What’s the most scenic thing that I shouldn’t miss but nobody else goes to? And I don’t want to walk more than a mile or two. And I have to be in Seattle by tonight.” The thing about that is if you are looking to see “the most scenic thing” but want a hidden gem, you’re not going to get it. Especially not in a day. The scenic features along the highway that you can get to with just a few hours to visit are the same features everybody else is going to. This goes double for the North Cascades where we just have the one highway that bisects the park. Everybody has to drive it, and there aren’t that many places to stop. If you truly want to experience the North Cascades you absolutely have to get off of the highway and out of your car. (That’s definitely a drawback to the North Cascades--the very young, the elderly, and those with mobility issues can’t necessarily access the park.)

I think that, for me, the worst part of getting asked that question over and over again during the day is the way visitors walk right up to me upon their arrival to the building and essentially tell me to tell them what to do. I guess if this park is in your backyard and you’re just coming up here with the kids that’s not terrible. But the people who are driving across the country? Why wouldn’t you do any planning before visiting some place new? For the most part these are retirees. They’ve spent their whole life working and, when given the opportunity to do whatever they want with their days, they opt to let somebody else plan their days for them? Why would they relinquish that sort of control?

Just before I left for my days off we collected two bear reports from visitors who said that they saw a bear at Cascade Pass. On Wednesday Jillian and I hiked up there to see if we could find any bears. It was an overcast and rainy day. Unfortunately we only saw a few marmots along the trail near the pass. The plus side to the rain was that very few others were out hiking as well. I enjoyed feeling as though there wasn’t anybody else out there but the two of us.

#parkranger parkrangercirca2016 nationalparkservice

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ti-bae-rius · 6 years

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Kitty AU - I told my sister I have a boyfriend so she’d stop trying to set me up with people but now she’s coming to visit and I’m in too deep and I need a fake boyf ASAP

From the AU list from the ever-lovely @nerds-are-cool

You all responded so nicely to my library AU from the same list, and I wanted to say thank you to everyone for congratulating me on coming runner up in Cassie’s contest sooo...Kitty fic. Click ‘keep reading’ for the fic!

This lie had gone way too deep. Ty rarely lied, but the situation had necessitated it. Dru would never have stopped going on about it if he hadn’t told her something. Anything. And so he had. Going against all his better instincts, he’d told her she didn’t need to keep setting him up on blind dates with strangers because, as a matter of fact, he’d just started seeing someone. The blind date offers had stopped, but the endless questions about this mystery boy had begun, as had the web of lies that made Ty’s head ache and stomach twist. He couldn’t keep track of them. He’d tried to say as little as possible about this non-existent boy in hopes that, eventually, he could casually mention that they’d broken up, that Ty was heartbroken, and really not ready for another relationship for, say, ever? He’d need to keep the lie up long enough that the end of this fake relationship would be devastating enough to put him off dating for a while. Ty wasn’t sure how long that would be, but he did know that two months since he’d told Dru and now she was travelling to see him at college and he wasn’t in anyway prepared with a story. Or a boy.

He’d have thought coming out would eliminate his family’s collective curiosity and prying. They were a huge family and massively interconnected. No one could breathe without someone else asking why. After his twin, Livvy, had died when he was 15, they’d all been far more intrusive in an attempt to protect him from any more pain. He and Dru had become far closer; each of them had been lonely in their own way. When he went away to college in NYC, he’d missed Dru, but they’d video-called every day and, after a while, the rest of the family would join too, all crowded together and jostling for a spot on the screen. Coming out had never been something Ty was afraid of, really. His eldest sister Helen was married to her wife Aline. His older brother was bisexual too, and in a polyamorous relationship. No one in the family had ever really cared about things like that. So, after being bombarded by questions about whether or not he had a girlfriend at college, he’d had no problem telling them he was gay. But the questions hadn’t stopped. His family - adaptable as ever - had simply switched out ‘girlfriend’ for ‘boyfriend’ and continued their interrogations until one day Ty had told them he’d met someone. He’d been adamant that it wasn’t to be a big deal, that they’d only just started hanging out, and that his family weren’t to ask questions until Ty was sure he was interested. Pacified by the knowledge Ty wasn’t spending the entirety of his free time hiding in his room - which he was - they backed off.

Dru, having finished school for the year, was flying out to see him and her plane was due in less than an hour. The only thing Ty could think to do was head to the library. It was where he got all his best thinking done. Slinging his backpack onto his shoulders and his headphones over his ears, he set off. His playlist was playing in his ears loud enough that he didn’t notice the person talking to him until they tapped his shoulder.

“Hello? Can I give you a flyer?”

Ty turned, pushing his headphones down and hitting pause on his music. “What?”

“Flyer?” the guy repeated and Ty took the paper absently without looking up. He read it as he walked off and froze, turning back. ‘Rook’s Nook Pawn Shop’, the header read. He stared at the boy who’d handed him the flyer, took a deep breath, and made his way back over.

“Hey,” he said quietly, and the boy turned, looking surprised to see Ty again. He could certainly have done worse in his search for a boy than this, Ty decided. “Um, is this you?” he asked, pointing to the name on the flyer. “Rook?”

“My dad,” the boy replied. He was handsome, Ty thought, with tanned skin and blue eyes. His blonde hair was messy and his hoodie strings uneven under his denim jacket that Ty wanted to pull straight, but he was cute. “I’m Kit. I’m just here drumming up business so my dad might cut me some cash.”

“You need money?” Ty asked. He fished into his pocket and pulled out his wallet. He counted forty dollars in cash. “I have a job offer.”

“Forty now and forty later, right?” Kit checked, smoothing his jacket. Ty’s hands were shaking, working rapidly at his sides. He nodded mutely and turned to Kit.

“Look, I’ve never dated anyone. I don’t know what I’m doing. I’ll follow your lead. I’m so sorry. It’s...” he took a shaky breath. “I would never, ever normally do this normally but it’s an emergency.”

“Chill out, dude,” Kit said calmly. “I’m getting eighty dollars for, what, four hours work? And it’s not even work. I’m just hanging out with a cute guy for half a day and getting paid twenty an hour. There are people working in McDonald’s who hate my guts right now.”

Ty didn’t have time to think on his comment about his apparent attractiveness to this stranger. He spotted a figure in a black hoodie with a Freddy Krueger shirt underneath and grabbed Kit’s hand firmly. He could feel his cheeks getting warm. This was so not like him. This Kit guy probably thought Ty was a huge flirt. Then again, he’d never see him again after today, so why did he care what Kit thought? He took a deep breath and smiled as Dru approached them.

“Tibs!”

Dru hugged him and Ty pulled his hand free from Kit’s to hug her back, glad of a reason to let go.

“I’ve missed you so much, big brother,” Dru said as she stepped back. She looked Kit up and down approvingly. Ty could’ve died. “And this is the mysterious boyfriend. Ty refuses to tell us anything about you.”

Kit laughed easily and put a hand out for Dru to shake. “I know, he’s so secretive. I’m Kit.”

“That’s a weird name,” Dru said. “I’m Dru.”

“That’s a weird name,” Kit retorted mischievously and Dru grinned at Ty.

“I like him. So,” she said to the two boys. “What is there to do in New York?”

Kit cut in before Ty had to admit that he didn’t really go out. “There’s some great diners. This one place, Taki’s, is super cool. It’s all magic- themed with menus for faeries and vampires and stuff.” He leaned in conspiratorially. “Don’t trust the strawberry syrup.”

Dru laughed. “That’s awesome. Take me there! I just finished watching Nosferatu on the plane so I am fully here for vampires.”

Ty cast Kit a look of amazement and Kit took his hand confidently. He must be a good actor, Ty decided. It didn’t even cross his mind that Kit might not be acting much at all.

After a few hours, Dru said she was tired and wanted to freshen up and get some sleep after her plane trip. Kit and Ty walked her back to her hotel. Ty had checked her in and Kit had carried her bag upstairs when they saw the out of order sign on the elevator. Dru disappeared into a corner of the lobby to call Julian and let him know she was back to the hotel safely before coming over to Ty.

“He’s really sweet,” she said, making Ty jump as she appeared behind him. “I’m really happy for you. You deserve to be happy, Ty. You know that, right?”

Ty nodded. “It’s just, since Livvy...”

“I know, but she’d want you to be happy.” Dru put a hand on her older brother’s arm. She missed her older sister too. Sometimes it felt like Ty was the only one who understood how it felt. “She wouldn’t want you to be scared to love anyone your entire life because you’re afraid they’ll leave. She’d want you to love and to be loved. I think Kit really loves you.”

At least, one of the receptionists waved her over. “Ms Blackthorn?”

She hugged Ty tight and smiled up at him. “I’ll call tomorrow and we can do some more exploring.” As she walked over to the desk, she turned back. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” Ty replied and she smiled, waving at someone behind Ty. He turned and saw Kit, a little out of breath but still smiling.

“Tenth floor,” he panted and Ty grinned. “Well, I’d better get going.”

“Let me at least get you a cab,” Ty insisted, but Kit waved the offer away.

“It’s like a ten minute walk. It’s fine.”

The two of them and, on the corner of an avenue, Kit stopped.

“This is me,” he said, nodding at the street. He glanced up at Ty and pulled the money from the back pocket of his jeans.

“Oh, sorry, yes,” Ty said, rummaging for his wallet.

“No, please,” Kit said, pressing the notes into Ty’s palm. His hand lingered on Ty’s a few seconds before he pulled back. “Take it back. It’s been so nice hanging out with you and your sister. You really don’t need to pay me.” He smiled, and the smile was shy and vulnerable in a way the rest of his easy grins that day hadn’t been. “It’s been my pleasure, Ty. Really.”

He turned down the street and Ty’s heart tugged.

‘I think Kit really loves you.’

It was now or never. New York was a big place. He might never cross paths with this stranger again. Well, they were no longer strangers. Maybe now they were friends. That word felt wrong, incongruent, like a shard of glass in his chest.

“Well then can I use the money to take you on a real date?”

The words were out of Ty’s mouth before he could think better of it. Kit turned, cheeks pink, and nodded.

“How does the Starbucks near Central Park by Empire tomorrow evening at eight sound?”

“Uh, g-great, yeah,” Ty stuttered, thrilled.

“Cool. Well, um, good Ty, bye,” Kit stumbled before blushing and giggling. “I meant...”

“I know,” Ty laughed. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Kit danced up the stone steps to his townhouse and waved to Ty down on the sidewalk before he shut the door. Maybe, Ty thought as he headed back to his dorm, the next time his family called there would be no lying needed when he told them he had a boyfriend.

#kitty #KITTY FIC #ty and kit #kit herondale #Ty x kit #kit and ty #Ty Blackthorn #tiberius blackthorn #au #fanfic

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coolcrusadeland-blog1 · 5 years

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Spread Betting - How To Get Poor Quickly?

As I write this, I'm nursing a bit of a sore head and an empty wallet. In the last four weeks I've lost almost £30,000 spread betting for about an hour a day five days a week. So I managed to blow around £1,500 an hour. That's really quite a chunk of cash. Actually, it's not quite as bad as it looks. Fortunately, I was betting using a few spread-betting companies' demo sites. These are simulations of their live betting sites that allow you to practice before you start betting with real money. I realise that I am no financial genius otherwise I would have been rich long ago. However, the fact that I managed to squander so much money so quickly does pose the question - if spread betting seems so easy, why do so many people get completely wiped out extremely quickly?

We're increasingly seeing advertising for spread betting in investing and money management publications. In the one I subscribe to, four or five different spread betting companies take full-page colour ads each week, outnumbering any other type of advertising. Spread betting ads are already common in the business sections of many weekend newspapers and will probably soon start to appear in the personal finance sections. Spread betting could appear deceptively attractive to many savers. After all, money in a bank, shares or unit trusts will at best give us about a miserable five per cent a year before tax. Yet a reasonable run on spread betting can easily let you pocket ten per cent a week - five hundred per cent a year - completely and gloriously tax-free. So spread betting can let you earn in just one year what it would take a hundred years or more to achieve with most other investments.

Spread betters gamble on price movements of anything from individual shares, currencies and commodities to whole markets like the FTSE, Dax or S&P. It is called spread betting because the company providing the service makes most of their money by putting an additional spread around the price at which something is being bought or sold.

Spread betting appears to have many advantages compared to traditional investing:

You don't have to buy anything - It allows you to bet on price movements without having to buy the underlying assets - shares, commodities or foreign exchange.

It's tax-free - When you buy or sell shares, get paid dividends or receive interest from a bank you will have to pay taxes like stamp duty, capital gains and income tax. Unless spread betting is your full-time job and only source of income, there are no taxes to be paid as it's considered to be gambling.

You can go long or short - When you spread bet you can gain just as much whether prices rise or fall, providing you guess the direction correctly. With most other investments, you need the price to go up before you make a profit.

You can bet on a rise or fall at the same time - If the FTSE, for example, is trading at 5551-5552, you can place two bets, one that it will rise and one that it will fall. These only get triggered when the FTSE actually moves. So if it starts going up, your bet that it will rise gets triggered. Similarly if it drops, only your bet that it will fall is triggered. So it can seem that, come rain or shine, you'll probably win.

Huge leverage - If you bet say £50 a pip (a pip is usually the minimum price movement you can bet on), you can easily win four or five times your original bet if the price moves in the right direction. On a really good bet, you can win much much more.

You can wait for the breakout - Prices on many shares, currencies, commodities and other things people bet on tend to experience periods of stability followed by bursts of movement up or down, what spread-betters call 'the breakout'. You can place a bet that is only activated when the breakout comes.

Loss limits - You can put conditions in your bet that prevent your losses exceeding your chosen level should your bet happen to be wrong.

You can adjust mid-flight - With most bets, such as with horse racing or on roulette, once the race has started or the croupier has called 'no more bets' you have to wait helplessly for the result to see if you've won or not. With spread betting you can choose to close your bet at any time. So if you're ahead, you can take your winnings; if you're behind you can either cut your losses or wait in the hope that things will change and you'll be up again. Given all these properties of spread betting, it should be pretty easy to make a fair bit of money without too much effort. If only.

Industry estimates suggest that around ninety per cent of spread-betters lose most or all of their money and close their accounts within three months of starting. There seem to be another eight per cent or so who make reasonable amounts of money on a regular basis and there are around two per cent of spread-betters who make fortunes. I've been to a few presentations run by spread betting companies and at one of these the salesman let slip that over eighty per cent of his customers lost money. Even many professionals lose on about six bets out of every ten. But by controlling their losses and maximising their returns when they win, they can increase their wealth.

Why it can go horribly wrong

There seem to be several reasons why spread betting is so effective at dramatically demolishing most practitioners' wealth:

The companies want you to lose - When you first open a demo or real account, you will get several phone calls from extremely friendly and helpful young men and women at the spread-betting company asking if there's anything they can do to assist you to get going. This is customer service at its very best. Most of the people contacting you will parrot the line that they just want to help and that they're happy if you're successful as their company only makes money from the spread. Some will reassure you that they want you to win as the more you win, the more you're likely to bet and the more the spread-betting company will earn. This may make you feel good, convince you that the company is open, honest, trustworthy and supportive and encourage you to use them for your betting. But it's also a lie. It's true that the company might make a lot of its money from the spread. However, with many of your bets, you're betting against the company and so they hope you lose, big time. In fact, during the last month I've seen several companies change the conditions on their sites to make it more likely that people using them will lose. So, lesson one - spread betting companies are not your friends. The more you lose the more they win. It's that simple.

It's difficult to break even - If you bet say £50 a pip and the price does go the way you want, the spread betting company takes the first £50 you win. So the price has to move two pips in the right direction for you to win your £50 back and three pips for you to emerge with £100, doubling your money. But if the price moves three pips in the wrong direction, you lose your original bet plus £50 a pip, giving a total loss of £200, a loss of four times your original bet.

Losses can be massive - With most gambling, you can only lose what you put down on a horse, blackjack or roulette. With spread betting you can quickly say goodbye to much more than you wager. I forgot to put a stop loss on one bet and managed to lose over £800 with just one £50 bet. Because your bet is leveraged, you can make both fabulous gains and excruciatingly painful losses. Too often it's the latter. The small size of many bets, often £5 or £10 a pip can lull betters into a false sense of security. It's only when the losses go five to ten times the original bet that they realise the risk they have taken. "The spread betting leverage means that you can get rich which is a wonderfully appealing idea, but it also means you can get poor which most people ignore."

You can waste thousands on courses and systems - At one free spread-betting seminar I attended we were more than strongly encouraged to sign up for a two-day weekend course teaching us how to spread bet successfully. This would normally cost (we were told) £6,995, but there was a special offer for the first five people to sign up of only £1,997. There are many such courses and also gurus offering to sell you their special spread-betting systems, guides, webinars and all sorts of other advice. With so many supposed experts apparently making a living teaching others how to spread bet, there must be a lot of takers. But I've found that all you need to know and more is available free on the Internet. As one specialist said, 'Don't bother wasting your money on 'Guru' books written by so-called experts. Those books are crap and not worth the paper they are printed on. Nobody sells a secret trading methodology if they are really successful. The only reason these guys are writing books is because they didn't make it as traders'.

It's the bobbing about that beats you - We often hear on the news that the price of gold has risen by a few dollars an ounce or the FTSE has fallen by a hundred and thirty points or that the pound has risen by two cents against the dollar. These reports make price changes on financial instruments sound like smooth movements either up or down. However, the prices of shares, stock markets, commodities and currencies seldom move in straight lines. They jump about every few seconds. So, if the FTSE is at 5540 and you correctly bet £50 a pip that it will go up to 5545 you might not necessarily win £200. In between going from 5540 to 5545, it might drop down a couple of times to say 5535 or lower. If you have a stop loss on at 5536 or 5535 to avoid losing too much money, your stop loss will kick in and you'll lose £250 or £300 even if the index did subsequently move upwards as you predicted. I've placed over a hundred bets to test whether I won when my bets were right. On about eighty per cent I lost in spite of being right because the fluctuations triggered the stop losses even though the index did actually move from where it was to where I predicted it would go. This creates a rather odd situation where stop losses can unfortunately make you lose even when you should be winning. Yet if you don't put stop losses on and things go in the wrong direction, your losses can annihilate you.

It attracts losers - At the spread betting seminars I've attended, I've been shocked by the number of low-paid workers - waiters, porters, kitchen staff, healthcare assistants and impoverished, would-be writers like myself - who decide to have a go at spread betting as they believe that, apart from winning the Lottery, it may be the only realistic way they have of making any money. These people will be betting with their meagre life savings against extremely sophisticated financial services insiders with vast knowledge, many years experience and extraordinarily deep pockets. It's not difficult to guess who is going to win.

Sucker or smartie?

Spread betting is a 'zero sum game'. Unlike depositing our money in a bank so it can be lent to businesses or house-buyers, spread betting doesn't create wealth. It just redistributes money from the suckers to the smart. When contemplating whether to try your hand at spread betting, you need to work out whether you are likely to be in the ninety per cent who end up as suckers or the ten per cent who make money by being smart. I found it interesting that not a single one of the amiable young men and women from spread-betting companies that I spoke to actually did any spread betting themselves. By the way, when I did eventually open a live spread betting account and managed to win about £100 a day for ten days, the spread betting company started preventing me getting out of losing bets because they claimed I was "betting unfairly". However, if you do manage to spread bet successfully, please drop me an email, I'd love to find out how to do it sakong online.

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girl-icarus · 6 years

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this is the remix

he’s listening to the track for the eighty-seventh time today when he suddenly realizes that the problem is the drums are so fucking terrible that he will never be able to focus on anything else again as long as he lives until they are different. at 2:42 and again at 3:09, the snare is hitting maybe an eighth of a second late, and he doesn’t know how nobody noticed it until just now. do they even have fucking ears? it’s so obvious. this is why he can’t trust anyone else. this is why it’s easier just to do everything himself. he tries looping in a different section, but the transition is so jagged and ugly that it’s worse than doing nothing. he has to fix it. can he just strip out the entire drum track and record it again afterwards and hope it still matches up by some magical, impossible miracle? is there any chance that’s going to work?

he listens for the next hour, listening for the imperfections, hating them. he writes a list of all the errors, starting with drums, broadening to the claggy guitar in the chorus that he’s hated ever since he first heard it, and then he furiously writes “feedback in the bridge, you assholes” and underlines it five times. everyone swore it was gone, that he’s just imagining it, but he fucking hears it, still, and heads will roll tomorrow. heads will roll because he will roll them, he’ll go out in the parking lot and overturn their pretentious tiny cars and roll them, he’ll gather up everything terrible in this world and bundle it together and roll it off a goddamn cliff. he wonders what sound that would make.

“what are you thinking about?” she asks.

“stuff,” he says, because it’s too complicated and petty to explain. everyone else left hours ago, clocked out and went home to dinners and families and television. she’s still here, and he’s not sure what she’s been doing for all these hours, not sure why she stays around, but he doesn’t know how to ask her to leave.

“you should eat something,” she says, but he ignores her and listens to the track again. the verses don’t have any breath noises. they were cobbled together from so many different takes that it doesn’t sound like it was produced by a human voice. it has to be redone. everything has to be redone. maybe they could just start over from the very beginning. redo the drums, do them fucking right this time, then maybe simplify the bass line, no one wants to hear a fancy bass line. redo the vocals in fewer takes. and actually, maybe not bass at all, maybe it should be piano. maybe he should start over, rewrite it all from scratch. he sits there for hours, taking it all down, building it back up, and the sun sets, and the sun rises, and he doesn’t notice when she leaves, or even if she does.

the next morning, people filter back in, and one of them hands him coffee, and he drinks it, scalding and black, and it burns away what is old and irrelevant, and he is ready for a new day. he presses his tongue to the raw roof of his mouth, and he listens, and he waits.

people have conversations around him. it fascinates him, the way they can talk and live and interact, so unaware of their insignificance. they move with what they must think is purpose and grace, because they don’t know any better, and he wonders if that’s easier, to be so dull and unfettered. he wonders if he would like that, if he would choose to disconnect the parts of his brain that analyze so deeply that it is almost a self-dissection, self-autopsy, like he will kill himself in his mission to name absolutely everything about himself and everyone else that he hates.

they talk, and they will get paid, but they don’t do anything. they are just props. they hold him up so he doesn’t fall over and disappear into himself.

they break for lunch because the clock tells them to, not because anything inside of them has decided that they have earned the right to rest. they break, and he stays behind, and he makes lists. she shows up then, like he figured she would. she waits until they leave. she doesn’t like them, but not in the same way he doesn’t like them. she thinks they’re poisonous, but he knows they’re fangless, which is worse. they could bite him for ten thousand years, and he would die from boredom before they even broke the skin.

“what are you thinking about?” she asks.

“ten thousand years of snake bites,” he tells her. she doesn’t ask for any further explanation, so he doesn’t offer any. he listens to the track seventeen times in a row while she flips through his notebook, marking some pages with tiny check marks and others with Xs. when everyone returns from lunch, lazy and unfocused, she slips away. he reviews her review. she likes the same things that he likes, and she doesn’t like the page where he wrote “this is a fucking waste of time” over and over in tiny scrawl until his hand hurt. sometimes, he has to write just to write, and he has explained this to her, but she still doesn’t like his negativity.

he goes into the bathroom, and he runs the water in the sink, and he ducks down to get his head close to the tap, and he whispers to it, “this is a fucking waste of time. this is a fucking waste of time.” later, when everyone else has gone, he will sample this and bury it somewhere in the mix, and it will be their secret.

they leave for the night, and he stays for the night, and then the rain starts. he wanders from room to room, dimming lights, cutting through the empty rooms like a ghost. he moves through things without changing them.

in the kitchen, the rain is more insistent. there is a leak somewhere in the roof, and the water is coming closer and closer to him. in the morning, someone will find the wet patch on the ceiling, and men will come out and plug the holes, and this is his only opportunity to sit here, cross-legged on the floor, listening to the droplets plying at the thinning ceiling like fingers on skin. this is his favorite noise today. this is the best part of today.

he falls asleep on the kitchen floor, and he wakes up on the kitchen floor. she is sitting on the counter, just watching him, her legs dangling like they are connected to two separate bodies. he makes coffee and drinks it, and she watches him quietly. she is waiting for him to speak first, but he won’t.

“what are you thinking about?” she finally asks.

“it was a good rain last night,” he says.

“yes,” she says. “yes, it was.”

a door opens somewhere, and it lets in the clamor of directionless people walking vaguely towards a paycheck. she hops off the counter and disappears, and he drinks another cup of coffee and thinks about water and rain, and he wonders if evaporation makes a noise.

when he was a child, a teacher had told him once not to be the leftover kernel of popcorn that doesn’t get popped. for weeks afterwards, he imagined sitting in hot oil while his friends and family exploded their insides right next to him and got eaten, and he stayed there, getting soggy and burned, until he was finally just thrown away. he had nightmares, and he would scream himself awake, and his sister would come into his room and shush him and tell him not to be so literal, people are not popcorn, no one is getting eaten or thrown out or any of it. but he worried about it then, and sometimes, he worries about it now. what if he just needs a little more time to pop? what is he going to do if they throw him out because he can’t explode fast enough?

he writes the word “burst” on a new page. next to it, he writes “now” and underlines it. he leaves the rest of the page blank. he isn’t ready to write about this yet, but he wants to remember it for later.

he spends the rest of the day listening to birdcalls. he doesn’t think he can use any of them for anything, but they are an adequate palate cleanser. they get the taste of burnt popcorn out of his ears.

everyone leaves, and he stays. the night is really when his day begins. he needs to be alone for anything valuable to happen. he turns off all the overhead lights, and he sets up some candles, and he watches shadows flicker against the amps and the guitar racks. he sits on the floor, and after some time, she joins him.

“what are you thinking about?” she asks.

“trying not to think,” he says.

“okay,” she says, and she stays quiet for a long time, but eventually she says, “you really should eat something.”

“i will. later,” he says. one candle burns out, but the other three stay lit.

“are you getting much done?” she asks.

“sometimes, i don’t think i’m real,” he says.

“why is that?”

“when i was a kid,” he says, and then he stops. she doesn’t pry, so he decides to continue. “when i was a kid, i felt invisible. and maybe i still do. maybe i’m just different, and they can’t see me because they are all the same.”

“i don’t think it matters what they think, or what they see,” she says. “you worry about you. eat something. work. they don’t matter.”

“i don’t know if you’re right about this,” he says.

“i am.” they sit there until all the candles burn out, and then she leaves.

he makes a sandwich, and then he drives himself home for the first time in a week, and he sleeps in his own bed, and he doesn’t go into work the next day. he waters his desiccated plants, and he does laundry and pays bills. he showers longer than necessary. he closes his eyes and lets the water hit his face, and it’s softer than he was expecting. this is the part of his life that he thinks is supposed to feel like everyone else’s life, but this is the part that always feels alien to him, like he is transgressing. like he shouldn’t be allowed these simple pleasures. rest. cleanliness. solitude.

he turns off his phone and doesn’t think about work for three days. he repaints the shutters on the front of his house. he goes for a run on the beach. he spends two hours and two hundred dollars at the bookstore. he drinks coffee slowly in public. he calls his sister and listens to stories about nieces who are older than he remembers them being. he realizes that he is older than he remembers himself being. he buys new glasses. he wears them for a day, amazed at the clarity before him. for that day, his eyes work as well as his ears do. he finds this distracting and doesn’t wear them again.

and then he goes back to work. no one comments about the time that he’s missed, and he gets so much work done that he feels good about himself and his choices for the first time in a while. he might actually get this done. he might actually be capable of getting this done.

he doesn’t see her for a few weeks, and it takes him almost that long to remember to miss her. he’s alone in the studio one night, quietly drawing out the last few steps in the process. he wants this to be over, but he doesn’t like the part where it actually ends, and he deliberately denies himself the satisfaction of completing this, like he’s not sure that he deserves it yet. but eventually, he cannot prolong the inevitable, and even he must admit that the work is done, and there is nothing left for him to do but get out of the way.

“what are you thinking about?” she asks from somewhere behind him. he turns slowly in his chair. she’s sitting on the floor with her knees pulled to her chest. he can’t tell how long she’s been there. maybe she has been there for weeks, and he’s been too wrapped up in the work to notice.

“i’m done,” he tells her, and she smiles.

“i knew you could do it,” she says. “you should eat something.”

he stands up to leave, and he waits for her to join him, but she remains on the floor.

“aren’t you coming?” he asks. “i’ll buy you dinner.”

“go on without me,” she says. “you don’t need me right now.”

“what does that mean?” he sits on the floor across from her, and he watches her, and she doesn’t watch him.

“you said that sometimes, you don’t think you’re real,” she says. “do you remember that?”

“i don’t remember saying it, but i remember thinking it,” he says.

“you’re real,” she says, and she smiles, and she finally meets his eyes. “but maybe i’m not.”

“oh,” he says, as she shimmers and starts to fade from sight. “maybe not.”

#i wrote this for you years ago and never gave it to you #at the time i had an idea about which character was me and which was you #i wonder if maybe that's changed now #long post

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awkwarddystopianwarlord · 3 years

Text

The Death of My Brain

So I was at the main till covering a break last wednesday. It was a regular day, not too busy, not too quiet, so when a customer arrived I thought nothing more than, “yay, a person to help pass the time quicker”. She was older, probably late sixties and she approached me with a single item. An A535 muscle pain rub. Good stuff by the way if you're one of them achy folk like myself. The purchase came to eight dollars, eighty cents. Small item, small purchase. I asked her how she would like to pay. She moves slowly but no matter, there isn’t anyone in line. She sluggishly pulls out a stack of various old business cards and starts shuffling through them and telling me all these options she has for payment. None contain actual currency. I can’t say I wasn’t severely taken aback by this, but I kept my calm, as there was still no one in line.

I asked her “do you have any bank cards?”

She gradually pulled her attention from her card stack to leisurely rummage through her wallet and proceeded to bring out two proper money cards.

“I have an American Express one and a BMO one”, she tells me, presenting each card. I ask her to choose so she can pay. A gentleman has now taken his place in line behind her. I tense up, but refrain from worrying too much as she is about to pay. That is until she asks me how the machine works. Her card lacked a tap feature so I explain where she has to put her card in, which she eventually does, then I tell her the next few buttons to press for the prompts. We get to where she needs to enter her PIN. I’m getting nervous solely because it appears she’s never paid for anything before so I wasn’t expecting her to know her PIN number. She didn’t. She said she didn’t know it, to which I replied,

“Do you have a number you often use?”

She gave it a go, entering something she used before a couple of times. The pinpad times out. This was my bad. I had set it to accept payment the moment she originally took out her bank cards, however, it took so bloody long to get to the actual act of paying that the machine had timed out. She’s now confused, I have to restart it, the fella has grown increasingly more impatient. When I set it up again, she tries tapping the exact same card and I have to remind her to insert it and try that PIN number from before. As she does that, the phone rings. Given this woman is so incredibly slow with her movements, I pick up the phone, answer the questions asked, and hang up by the time this lady realizes she doesn’t have a valid four digit number for that card. The line now has three people.

“I have a BMO card.” she says, raising it from her pile of cards on my counter.

“Do you know the PIN?” I ask the question though I already have my doubts.

“They didn’t give me one.”

Part of my head implodes.

“We can’t use it if you don’t know your PIN number” I told her. She then brings up her American Express card that she just tried, “I have an American Express,” she tells me.

A mass of braincells commit suicide.

The fella behind her has surrendered and moved to the self checkout.

The phone rings again. I think about picking it up, but by now I’m too rattled by this lady and refuse.

I ask her if she has any other method of payment. She pulls up her stack of business cards and starts listing them. Four cards in, she tells me she has a library card. I start to shake internally. The phone rings again, I don’t answer. The fella comes to me and says that the price was incorrect on the item he wants to buy. I summoned a merchandiser over the intercom, my words came out rapidly and stressed. The lady is still shuffling through her cards, even as I explain the second issue to the merchandiser and send her to the self checkout. The line is at five people now. The gentleman had his problem resolved and went on his merry way. I am slumped on my countertop trying to puzzle what the hell I’m supposed to do with this woman who has no working cards, with a lineup growing ever longer, and no backup cash because we are so understaffed.

And then I see it, a flash of green within her wallet. I sound like a madman attempting a robbery when I frantically ask her, “DO YOU HAVE CASH? IS THAT CASH IN YOUR WALLET?”

Even her taking the bills out is an excruciating process. She counts each one before announcing that she has seventy five dollars. I’m foaming at the mouth now but I continue to hold my calm as I reach for a bill, “I’m going to borrow this ten and give some of it back, okay?”

The motions of selecting a tender, typing in the price, opening the registrar, and giving out her change happens faster than that time Superman flew the opposite direction the planet's orbit to reverse time because Lois was getting crushed in a car by sand or dirt or something. Alas it doesn’t matter much as she takes another eternity to gather up her multitude of business cards, credit cards, and receipt, after she asked if she could take it. All I can do is say, “don’t forget your cards”, “the receipt? Yes, yes you can have it, it’s yours”, make sure you don’t forget those two things there”, here’s your item so it doesn’t get left behind”. I was just trying to herd her out of there as fast as I could. My body was trembling, my head had one brain cell left in it, and I still had five people to ring through.

When she left after what felt like years, the customers that followed right after praised me on my patience. Even the gent before was never angry, though a bit exasperated. The lady herself was in her own world so much that she didn’t give me any negative attitude. No one was mad. But holy did the adrenaline from being absolutely useless keep me hyper for the remainder of my shift. I was bouncing off walls the next few hours after that simply because I had suppressed so much stress, anxiety, fear, frustration during the eight to ten minutes of that transaction. My brain died that day but my calm lived long enough to push me through those painful minutes.

#storytime #blog #weeklyblog #friday post #writing #struggles #retail

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casino123aft · 4 years

Text

Spread Betting - How To Get Poor Quickly?

As I write this, I'm nursing a bit of a sore head and an empty wallet. In the last four weeks I've lost almost £30,000 spread betting for about an hour a day five days a week. So I managed to blow around £1,500 an hour. That's really quite a chunk of cash. Actually, it's not quite as bad as it looks. Fortunately, I was betting using a few spread-betting companies' demo sites. These are simulations of their live betting sites that allow you to practice before you start betting with real money. I realise that I am no financial genius otherwise I would have been rich long ago. However, the fact that I managed to unibet casino svenska squander so much money so quickly does pose the question - if spread betting seems so easy, why do so many people get completely wiped out extremely quickly?

Spread betting appears to have many advantages compared to traditional investing:

You don't have to buy anything - It allows you to bet on price movements without having to buy the underlying assets - shares, commodities or foreign exchange.

Loss limits - You can put conditions in your bet that prevent your losses exceeding your chosen level should your bet happen to be wrong.

Why it can go horribly wrong

There seem to be several reasons why spread betting is so effective at dramatically demolishing most practitioners' wealth:

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zoemurph · 7 years

Text

to have a friend, chapter 1: $20

on ao3

hey so if you've ever been told you shouldn't have two multichapter fics going at once you should listen to that advice. i'm just...really impatient. please don't expect consistent updates from me, these are longer chapters and i'm a college student

thank you to my friend family for encouraging this and by that i mean my god stop encouraging me i have a problem!! but also thank you for putting up with me sending fake dating au prompts for like 3 hours.

this first chapter is very much a rewrite of the show from the computer lab scene until the end of the scene in the principal's office. (im sorry but i had to get through this part before anything even mildly original could happen) therefore, it deals with anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts, and a suicide attempt. please proceed with caution! i put a summary in the end notes if that's helpful to anyone!!

i hope you enjoy!!

Dear Evan Hansen:

It turns out, this wasn’t an amazing day after all. This isn’t going to be an amazing week or an amazing year. Because, why would it be?

Oh I know. Because there’s Zoe. And all my hope is pinned on Zoe. Who I don’t even know and who doesn’t know me. But maybe if I did, maybe if I could just talk to her, then maybe…maybe nothing would be different at all.

I wish that everything was different. I wish that I was a part of something. I wish that anything I said mattered, to anyone. I mean, face it: would anyone even notice if I disappeared tomorrow?

Sincerely, your best and most dearest friend—

Evan squeezes his eyes shut tightly.

It’s true that at the end of the day, all you’ve got left is yourself, so you should…like yourself. Or something. But calling himself his “best and most dearest friend” is…

Pathetic. It’s pathetic. It’s really sad and even if it is true, the fact still remains that his best friend hates him.

Evan rubs his temples. Thinking about this is just going to send him into a spiral of anxiety that will help exactly no one. Having a breakdown in the computer lab sounds like a horrible, yet fitting, way to finish his first day of senior year.

He signs off the letter with ‘me’, even though it makes his stomach twist, and sends it to the printer.

He just wants to be home and under a blanket and also maybe not existing.

“So…”

Evan freezes, eyes glued to the screen of his laptop. His heart is in his throat and he figures that there’s about an eighty percent chance that he dies right now. He risks a glance over his shoulder at Connor.

“What happened to your arm?” Connor asks, vaguely motioning in Evan’s direction.

Evan swallows and looks down at his cast. “Oh, I-I um…fell out of a tree. Actually.”

Connor scoffs. “You fell out of a tree? That is just the saddest fucking thing I’ve ever heard.” He snorts and shakes his head. “Oh my god.”

Evan forces a laugh as his stomach churn. It is sad. Really sad. Sadder than anyone will ever know. “I know,” he says weakly.

Connor clears his throat and motions to Evan’s cast again. “No one’s signed your cast yet.”

Evan takes a shallow breath. He hasn’t figured out what to tell his mom about that yet. Maybe he’ll lie and say he lost the Sharpie, even though then she’ll ask if no one else had one. Maybe he can say that they weren’t writing on the cast but then if she tests it— Evan shakes his head. “N-no, I know.”

“I’ll sign it.”

Evan looks up with a start. “Oh! Um…” His mouth goes dry and his hands are definitely getting sweaty and he has no idea what to do with this information. “Y-you don’t have to.”

Connor glares at him and Evan tries not to wilt too much under his gaze. “Do you have a Sharpie?”

Evan stares at him for a second before he fumbles with his bag. It takes him a second to find it, and in that time, he’s pretty sure Connor has successfully taken a year off his life with that glare. He holds the Sharpie out.

Connor clenches his jaw before taking it. He grabs Evan’s arm and pulls it closer, making Evan wince in pain. “Ow,” he hisses. This is exactly what his mom meant when she said he should ask people to sign his cast.

“Oh. Sorry,” Connor mutters. He scrawls his name across Evan’s cast in large, capitalized letters and then lets go of Evan’s arm.

“Oh.” Evan tries not to sound as disappointed as he is about how it looks, but he’s pretty sure he fails miserably. “Great. Thanks.” There’s probably no way of hiding Connor’s name. Jared is going to have a field day.

Connor hands Evan the Sharpie back. Evan moves to put it back in his bag, but frowns when he feels something stuck under the clip the cap. He looks down to see a folded twenty dollar bill tucked under the clip. He frowns and glances over to at Connor. “W-what?”

“Pretend to be my friend.”

Evan blinks. “I— what?”

“Pretend to be my friend,” Connor repeats, more forcefully this time.

Evan pulls the twenty out from under the clip. “Y-you’re—”

“Paying you to be my fucking friend?” Connor interrupts. “Yeah. I am.”

“But…why?”

Connor scowls. “It gets my mom off my back, now will you do it or are you giving my money back?”

“Twenty dollars to-to pretend to be your friend,” Evan says in disbelief, unfolding the bill. “That’s—”

“Per week.”

Evan almost drops the money. “What?!”

“Twenty bucks a week. Just as long as I need you to do this.” Connor crosses his arms. “I am literally offering you money you to pretend to be my friend now will you do it.”

Evan smiles weakly. “That’s…the saddest fucking thing I’ve ever heard. Oh my god.”

Connor rolls his eyes. “You’re hilarious. What’s your answer.”

Evan swallows. This could go very badly. But money… He knows his mom keeps lying about how they’re doing financially. Medicine and therapy is expensive. College is worse. Evan doesn’t have a job. There isn’t too much of a choice here.

Twenty dollars is a dinner or two when his mom isn’t home.

Pretend to be friends with Connor Murphy, who yells at people and skips class to smoke and pushes people and threw a printer in the second grade, for twenty dollars a week.

Evan closes his hand around the bill and then stuffs it into his pocket.

“I-I’ll do it.”

Connor holds out his hand and for a second, Evan thinks he’s going to take back the money and yell at him for being so pathetic that he’ll fake friendship for a measly twenty dollars, but then Connor says, “Give me the Sharpie.”

Evan hands him the Sharpie and Connor grabs his good arm. As Connor writes on his skin, the first thing Evan thinks is ‘ink poisoning’. Which is really just ridiculous, but he’s on edge.

“There,” Connor says, letting go of Evan’s arm and capping the Sharpie. “You have my number. And if you give it to anyone else, I’ll kill you.” The way he says it is so casual that Evan feels like he should be more scared by the threat than he is.

“G-got it,” Evan stutters. He glances over the numbers, hoping Connor will leave now. He needs time to process.

“Also—”

Life is never what Evan wants it to be.

“—Is this yours? I found it on the printer.” Evan feels his entire body go cold. “‘Dear Evan Hansen.’ That’s your name, right?”

If Evan wasn’t absolutely panicking right now, there might’ve been something funny about the fact that Connor paid someone he didn’t even know the name of to be his friend.

But it’s not funny.

“Oh, t-that’s just a stupid— it’s a paper I had to write for a, um, assignment…” Evan tugs on his shirt, because if he doesn’t do something with his hands, he’s going to try and grab it from Connor and there’s no way that can end except bad.

“‘Because there’s Zoe’,” Connor reads. The world tilts drastically, and everything slides toward destruction. “Is this about my sister?”

“No! Not at all!” Evan says quickly. It’s like he’s desperately trying to fix a fatal wound with Hello Kitty bandages. He’s drowning in his own worst fears and his mind is working against him and he can’t get any more words out to explain this situation because there’s no way to make this any better.

“You wrote this because you knew that I would find it.”

“What?”

“You saw that I was the only other person in the computer lab, so you wrote this and printed it out, so that I would find that.”

Evan almost starts laughing out of panic and a feeling of ‘oh god that sounds like something I would think’, but he’s so overwhelmed with everything that he can only get out a strangled, “Why—”

“So I would—”

“—would I do that?”

“—read some creepy shit you wrote about my sister, and freak out, right?” Connor snaps. “And then you can tell everyone that I’m crazy, right?” he yells.

“No. Wait— I don’t even, what?”

“Fuck you,” Connor seethes. He stalks out of the room, the door to the computer lab slamming behind him.

He still has the letter.

“But I really, I need that back!” Evan shouts. “Please. Can you just— can you please give it back.” His voice goes quiet. There’s no way he’s getting that back.

He swallows hard as he turns back to his laptop. Looks like he’s printing out another copy, even though his mind is whirling all the ways this one could end in disaster too.

Evan makes his way over to the printer, legs shaking and knees wobbly as he waits for the page to print. He stuffs his hands in his pockets and locks his knees in an attempt to stop shaking and calm down even a fraction of a percent.

His fingers brush against the twenty dollar bill in his pocket.

It burns.

—«·»—

When Evan gets home, he scrubs his arm until his skin is red and irritated and Connor’s number has vanished.

Not that the numbers aren’t branded in his mind.

He writes them down on a sticky note and hides it deep within a book that he shoves to the back of his bookshelf. Doctor Sherman keeps telling him that if something is worrying him before bed, he should write it down so he doesn’t have to think about it as much. This is the first time Evan has tried.

He keeps thinking about Connor.

Connor isn’t in school the next day and Evan feels a strange sort of relief.

He isn’t in school the next day either. Evan tells himself that it’s probably a good thing. Maybe he can reach a point where this is all just a bad memory that he only remembers the vague feeling of.

He can’t convince himself.

Connor’s name is bold on his arm like a brand.

Evan tries to convince himself that it’s nothing when he gets called down to the principal’s office. No emergency of any kind. Maybe it’s something to do with paperwork. Maybe it’s actually a good thing, which seems a little far fetched, but it gets him through the hallways.

When he opens the door, the principal isn’t there. Just two people he doesn’t know, a man who turns to look at him with blank eyes and a woman who looks like she’s about to have a breakdown.

He swallows. “Good morning. Is Mr. Howard…?” he trails off as they give him confused looks. “I-I just— sorry, they said on the loudspeaker for me to go to the principal’s office…”

“Mr. Howard is, uh, he stepped outside,” the man explains.

“Oh.” Well that’s fine, Evan can just go find him then. Leave these two to the breakdown that he can see coming from the woman in almost slow motion because he’s been there before and he doesn’t want to be present—

“We wanted to speak with you in private,” the man says. Evan stares at him. “If you’d like to maybe…” He gestures to a chair.

Evan hesitates before he sits down. He frantically searches his mind, desperate to find some sort of memory of these two, to know if they have any connection to him at all whatsoever, if they’re supposed to be people he knows and remembers.

“We’re, uh…we’re Connor’s parents.”

“Oh.” Evan is back in the computer lab as Connor reads the letter, anxiety building and crushing him into pieces. This can’t be about that, Connor wouldn’t have told his parents about it, his parents wouldn’t come to school and call him out of class because of it, it doesn’t make sense it doesn’t make sense it doesn’t make—

The woman pulls a folded piece of paper out of her purse, holding it carefully.

Evan stares at it. There’s no way…

“Why don’t you go ahead, honey, and…?”

“I’m going as fast as I can,” the woman says, her voice trembling. It sounds like she’s about to burst into tears.

Evan grips the arms of the chair.

“That’s not what I said, is it?” the man asks sharply.

The silence weighs down on Evan like an anchor. Or like his anxiety. Everything feels like anxiety, the air, the silence, the room…

Connor’s mother holds the paper out to Evan. “This is… Connor…he wants you to have this.” Her voice is shaking more now and Evan wants to be anywhere else.

Evan takes the paper. He wants to rip it up into shreds, set it on fire, and flush the ashes down the toilet.

“We didn’t,” the man starts, “we’d never heard your name before, Connor never…but then we saw… ‘Dear Evan Hansen’.”

Evan resists the urge to crumple the letter up in his hands. “He, um, he gave this to you?” he asks carefully. He still doesn’t understand. How could one pathetic letter bring the Murphys here?

“We didn’t know that you two were friends.”

Evan inhales sharply. “F-friends?”

“We didn’t think that Connor had any friends,” the man continues. “And then we see this note and it’s— this seems to suggest pretty clearly that you and Connor are, or at least for Connor, he thinks of you as…” He points to the letter, struggling through his words. “I mean, it’s right there. ‘Dear Evan Hansen’. It’s addressed to you. He wrote it to you.”

Oh. Oh no. Oh no. “You think this is— you think that Connor wrote this to me.”

The woman nods. “These are the words he wanted to share with you.”

“He wanted them to be his last words,” the man adds.

Whatever Evan wanted to say vanishes from his mind. “I-I’m sorry. What do you mean, last words?”

Connor’s parents exchange a glance.

Evan doesn’t need them to say it outloud. He already knows.

“Connor, uh, Connor tried to take his own life,” the man says slowly. “He’s in the hospital right now.”

“He…what?” Evan knows. He knows he knows he knows he knows but the words aren’t processing and everything is turning to static.

“This is all we found with him. He had it folded up in his pocket.” Evan scrambles for words, for anything that will stop this. “You can see that he’s… He probably wanted to explain it, why he tried to…” Evan shakes his head, but Connor’s father keeps going and Evan feels sick. “‘I wish that everything was different. I wish that I were part of something. I wish that what I said mattered to anyone.’”

“Please stop it, Larry,” Connor’s mother interrupts.

Evan wipes his palms on his pants. This is bad this is so bad. “But, that’s, this isn’t—” Those are his words. His. Connor never would’ve wanted— ”I’m sorry. Connor, um, Connor d-didn’t write this.”

“What does that mean?” Cynthia asks, voice on the edge of hysterical.

“Connor didn’t— he didn’t write this,” Evan stutters. He doesn’t know how much clearer he can get, but Connor — their son — tried to commit suicide and here he is telling them that what they think isn’t true because really, it would be just like Evan to become the villain in a story he didn’t even realize he was a part of.

“What does he mean?” Cynthia repeats, louder as she grabs her husband’s hand.

“He’s obviously in shock,” Larry says in such a matter-of-fact way that part of Evan almost believes him.

“N-no,” Evan protests. “I just, he didn’t—”

“It’s right here!” Cynthia points at the letter aggressively.

Evan can’t do this. He can’t breathe. “I-I’m sorry, but I should probably just— can I please go now?”

“If this isn’t— if Connor didn’t write this, then—”

“Cynthia,” Larry says sharply. “Please. Calm down.”

Evan grabs for his backpack. “I should go now.”

“But did he say anything to you?” Cynthia asks desperately. “Did you see anything—?”

“I really should go,” Evan interrupts. Because she’s grasping at straws and trying to understand and she can’t and won’t and he doesn’t want to be here for that.

“Cynthia, honey this is not the time.”

“This is all we have!” she wails. “Conor won’t tell us, he’ll never tell us!”

“Honey. Listen to me. Please.” Larry puts a hand over Cynthia’s. She pulls away and buries her face in her hands, sobbing.

Evan needs to leave.

“Cynthia.”

Evan holds out the letter, hand shaking. “You should just— you should take it. Please.” He doesn’t know what he’ll do if he keeps it. He doesn’t want to be near it anymore.

Cynthia looks up at him, cheeks tearstained and eyes overflowing, and gasps. “Larry, look!” She points to Evan’s arm. “His cast.”

Connor’s name.

Evan glances down at his cast. He’d forgotten, somehow, amidst all of this, he had forgotten—

Twenty dollars.

For as long as Connor needed him to be his friend.

“His best and most dearest friend,” Cynthia recites.

The ground opens up and swallows Evan whole.

—«·»—

They try to get him to go to the hospital. Try to get him to visit Connor. He keeps shaking his head and tripping over his words.

He can’t.

He can’t be there and see Connor in a hospital bed and pretend. He can’t keep that up. He can’t keep this up.

He feels like he’s going to be sick.

Eventually Larry got it. “He’s processing,” he had said to Cynthia.

Cynthia grabbed Evan’s hand and said, “He should be out in a day or two. But you can visit him whenever you’re ready.” And she’d smiled.

And Evan had smiled back.

Because he’s a liar.

—«·»—

When Evan gets home, he tears apart his bookshelf until he finds the book he hid the sticky note in. He pulls it out of the book and stares at it, the numbers swimming before his eyes. He’s managed not to have a panic attack yet but—

He puts the sticky note on the his laptop and finds the twenty he had stuffed in a drawer.

It’s just a bill. There are millions like it. It’s just a twenty dollar bill.

Evan swallows back bile.

He feels gross. Bad. Anxious (that’s not new). Uncomfortable.

He scratches his cast. If only this were off his arm. If only he hadn’t let Connor sign it. If only he hadn’t fallen out of that tree. If only he had.

If only he’d been higher.

His phone rings loudly from where it’s sitting on his bed and snaps him out of his trance. He doesn’t know how long he just stood there, staring at a bill, but he feels weirdly out of place now that he realizes he hasn’t moved for what was probably a strangely long period of time. Now he’s too aware of himself and his body.

It’s just a text from Jared, asking about something for class. Jared doesn’t text unless it’s related to schoolwork.

Evan puts the money down on his desk.

How the hell does he do this?

Evan doesn’t know what standard protocol for these types of things is, but he doesn’t really know what to do with himself when he sees Connor in the halls eight days later.

His first thought is ‘he’s back?’

His second thought is ‘oh no he’s back.’

Evan has been avoiding Zoe for eight days. He takes alternate routes when he sees her in the hallways, he doesn’t pass her locker if he can help it. They made eye contact once and he felt his insides shrivel up. He doesn’t know if her parents told her about the letter, he doesn’t know if they questioned Connor about it, he doesn’t know anything. He just doesn’t want to be a piece in some game that they’re playing.

It’s a bad day.

He gets through a class and a half before he stumbles into the bathroom, hands shaking and breaths shallow.

Evan doesn’t like confrontation. It makes him feel nauseous and dizzy and there’s no way this can end without confrontation.

He doesn’t know if he’s going to make it through the rest of the day.

—«·»—

Evan makes it through the rest of the day. Barely. The ‘barely’ is important. He didn’t pay much attention and when he did, he didn’t retain much of the information, but he didn’t have a meltdown in class and for now that has to be good enough.

He goes to the computer lab to print his letter for the day because it’s normal and part of his schedule. And because he’s still pretending he can do this assignment. That he can pretend that everything is okay when nothing is okay at all. That he can find some optimism in a world that’s permanently gray.

Connor Murphy is sitting at one of the computers.

He has his feet kicked up on the table and his hood pulled down over his eyes.

Evan decides the best thing to do is leave. He can print the letter tomorrow. Change his schedule to do it before school. Be anywhere other than here.

Connor sits up as soon as he turns to leave.

“Evan, right?” Connor asks, tugging on his hoody.

“Y-yeah.” Evan grips the straps of his backpack. He needs to ground himself. Somehow.

Connor sighs. “Sorry about…” He gestures vaguely with a hand. “My parents. I heard they jumped you.”

“Not ex-exactly,” Evan mumbles. He’s trying to form an exit strategy but his mind isn’t working right.

“Yeah well Larry is a piece of shit and my mom hasn’t really stopped crying in days.” Connor pulls his legs down and stands up from the chair and oh god Evan forgot how tall he was. “Good job getting out of visiting. It was the fucking worst.”

Evan glances at the ground. He sees Connor’s name on his cast out of the corner of his eye. He tightens his grip on his backpack. “W-was it planned?”

Connor shrugs. “This is like the fourth time I’ve tried, why does it fucking matter anymore?”

Evan grits his teeth. “Was it planned?”

Connor scoffs. “Why do you care?”

Evan looks up at him. “B-because you paid me!” He lifts his cast toward Connor. “You signed this cast and made it look like we were—”

“Oh my god,” Connor murmurs.

“What was I supposed to do?!” Because that’s the question. What did Connor want from him?! Why him?

Connor tore at his hair. “Are you fucking serious—”

“What was I supposed to do if you died?” Evan interrupts. “What then? Y-your family already thinks we’re best friends—”

“I can’t believe I tried to kill myself and you—”

“— Was I just supposed to lie?! Lie about being best friends with the dead kid? Was that your plan, Connor?!”

“Oh fuck off!” Connor shouts.

Evan shakes his head. His mind is spinning and there are all these possibilities and he feels like he’s going to fall over. “Because it sure feels like you were using me and I know what it’s like to— I know what it feels like and I’ve been there but I never thought ‘oh man I should drag this other person down with me’, I just jumped out of a fucking tree!”

Evan breathes heavily as Connor stares at him, eyes wide.

“…you what?” Connor asks. There’s no anger in his voice, just—

Evan reruns his last words in his mind.

Oh no.

“N-no no I-I just meant—” Evan holds his hands out in front of him and shakes his head. “I di-didn’t—” He steps backward and stumbles over himself. “I-I need— I have to go.”

He twists around, tripping as he runs out of the computer lab, slamming his shoulder against the door to open it as he flees.

He thinks Connor might call after him.

He doesn’t care.

#dear evan hansen #deh fanfic #connor murphy #evan hansen #my fics #yeah im too lazy for this

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