you’re surprised that crowley and aziraphale sacrificed themselves for humanity? the guys who had “i will follow you into the dark” by death cab for cutie on their official playlist? the song about willingly following your lover into an oblivion lacking of heavens and hells. you’re shocked?
Summary: Wally, Charley, and Rhonda are desperate to figure out the mystery girl who can see and hear them, but isn't offering much answers as to the how and why of it all. So desperate in fact, that Wally plays student for an afternoon.
Warnings: Language and Flirting w/ Mild Sexual Innuendo. As always, Canon Typical Mentions of Death.
Title from: (Just Like) Starting Over — John Lennon
WC: 2.8k
They trailed behind you like a three headed shadow for most of the day after that. Persistent enough that you almost regretted having acknowledged them, but amusing enough that you weren’t entirely put off.
From the library to your locker to your classes—they always stayed just a few paces behind you, their voices a cacophony of confusion and curiosity. For three ghosts that had all been seemingly dead for several decades, it was evident that you were the first of your particular skillset to have stumbled into Split River High.
Rhonda was hilariously easy to rile and get a rise out of. She marched through the halls stomping frustrated circles around you to try and get some sort of reaction. Some sort of answer.
Charley was equally as desperate, though gentle in his various reminders to Rhonda that talking to people nobody else can see isn’t exactly the kind of thing the living react kindly to. If getting you in their corner was their intended endgame, having you committed for some kind of presumed psychosis wasn’t the way to do it.
But it was Wally who made it the most difficult for you to keep your laughter at bay as they hovered over your shoulders in government class. Mostly because his assumptions seemed to lack much logic—something Rhonda was quick to point out.
“Guys, maybe we should back up, alright? She’s obviously scared and Rhonda yelling at her is only making it worse. This is why ghosts get a bad rap.”
“If she was scared, Walter,” Rhonda bit out through gritted teeth. “She wouldn’t have started reciting Ginsberg lines in the library with a smirk on her face like it was a fucking poetry club.”
You tucked your face down into your hands and drew out a fake sneeze to disguise the laugh that nearly escaped you. It silenced the ghosts immediately, but thankfully failed to garner much attention from the living.
A smile lingered on your face as you scrawled out a message for them on your notebook.
For dead people with nothing but time, you seem to lack patience.
Charley was halfway through reading it out loud when you added on to it.
Especially you, cherry pop.
Wally began howling with laughter and you were slightly surprised the sheer volume of it hadn’t managed to miraculously pierce through the plane of the living. Charley’s giggles on the other hand were quickly cut off by Rhonda’s glaring scowl and the near guttural growl that ripped through her throat.
Whether it was in anger or defeat—perhaps both—she stormed out of the room. Charley followed her only shortly after that with a mumble about going to make a likely futile effort at calming her down.
“Sorry about Rhonda. I wish I could say she wasn’t always like this, but I swear she’s not that bad once you get used to her,” his voice was still painted with humor as he leaned against the desk beside you. Failing to actually disrupt the student who sat there.
Your eyes stayed trained on the board at the front of the classroom, but you allowed a small quirk of the corner of your lips in acknowledgment.
Don’t sweat it. I’ve met far more intimidating ghouls than her.
His eyes went wide as he mumbled through the words under his breath.
“Wait, so we’re not the first ghosts you’ve seen before?”
Why? Did you want to be my first?
So maybe it was a bit cruel—flirting with a dead guy—but he seemed good humored enough.
Thankfully he was. He laughed, almost shyly and he stuttered over his words a bit, obviously a little uncharacteristically embarrassed. But judging by the clothes, you could only assume it had to have been a good while since anyone had been so forward with him.
“Maybe I did,” he grinned. “But now I’m just even more curious about you than I was before. Who are all these other ghouls you’re seeing besides me?”
First of all, you are hardly a ghoul. Second, lots of people. Everywhere. Not just you, your friends, and the marching band.
You could tell there were a thousand questions racing through his mind. As well as he tried to hide it for your sake, he was just as eager for answers and explanations as Rhonda was.
Still, he decided to keep the conversation light for the time being. If it was his patience you’d requested, it was his patience he would give.
“So do you always flirt with these ghosts and ghouls?”
Only the pretty ones.
He smiled again at that, and if you could have found a way to make him smile like that for the rest of his eternity, you just might have tumbled into it with him.
He’d stayed there in the class after that, aimlessly and restlessly wandering around pretending to read posters on the walls and occasionally staring out of the windows. Apart from that however, he stayed quiet and let you focus on the teacher’s droning lesson.
The two of you were halfway back to your locker when Charley came weaving through the hall, immediately asking if you’d spoke while he was away.
“Nothing yet, but she did write some more,” Wally informed him.
“And what did she say? Does she know why she can see us?”
“If she knows why she hasn’t said so yet, but she did say we’re not the first or only ghosts she can see.”
You could practically feel Charley buzzing in curious shock from behind you. They stood right at your back as you swapped your textbook for a copy of Macbeth. Charley rambled incessantly—tripping over questions directed at Wally as though he’d suddenly become the newest PhD candidate in Girls Who Can See Ghosts during the twenty minutes he’d spent in the classroom with you.
Busy with that as they were, neither noticed when you left another note to them written on the same notebook laid flat on the shelf of your locker. You cleared your throat to get their attention as casually as you could manage.
20 questions later if you promise to either shut up or leave me alone for my last class. Deal?
Their agreement at reading it over was immediate and simultaneous.
You closed your locker with that, heading towards your final class for the day.
“In that case,” Charley started, still following you. “I’m going to go find Rhonda again. She was still being kinda bitchy when I left her, but she might rein it back in once I tell her we might actually get some real answers soon. You coming with?”
Wally took a beat to answer, and you could feel his gaze burning into the back of your skull.
“Nah, I’m gonna hang back with her if she doesn’t mind. Besides, I never read Macbeth when I was still alive. Might try and give it a shot now—I think there’s supposed to be ghosts in it.”
“Right,” Charley drew out a little suspiciously. “Just don’t fuck it up for us. Try to keep your mouth shut and don’t do anything to piss her off.”
“I know how to keep my mouth shut,” Wally retorted with offense.
Charley laughed sarcastically before he shouted out, “Yeah, sure you can,” as he turned a corner and started down the separate direction.
Wally held true to his word though. He stole your paperback right off of your desk and carried a duplicate of it into the ghost world with him. You could tell he was no less restless than before in the way his leg bounced and his eyes never seemed to focus on the pages in front of him for very long. Still though, he stayed relatively still and silent until it was time to once again file out of the classroom and back into the hallway.
It was louder and far more chaotic now as everyone was in a rush to either get out as quickly as possible, or scatter towards their various after-school activities of choice.
“God that sucked,” he groaned. “I hadn’t tried to sit through a whole class and actually pay attention in years and now I remember why.”
You went back to your locker, not out of necessity, but rather out of familiarity. Though you didn’t open it, you leaned back against it, pulling out your phone to appear preoccupied.
Wally, though a bit confused, planted himself right next to you as you started typing a note out onto the screen for him.
I’m sure Shakespeare would thank you for your pains.
“Hah,” he barked out. “Shakespeare should thank me for not putting my head through a fucking wall.”
You bit back a laugh at that before starting another line.
Consider me breaking my silence a thanks. Let’s go find your friends and somewhere I won’t be seen and I’ll talk.
A deal’s a deal.
They led you to an old abandoned auto shop. It was only after you’d pushed a shelf in front of the door to make sure no one would barge in that you finally spoke.
“Well I’d say I’m sorry about having kept you all waiting, but I’m really not. Charley was right, I’m no good to anyone if I get locked up in a penitentiary.”
Rhonda scoffed and gazed off to the side, but there was no argument to be made. Though still irritable, Charley had seemed to have gotten her to calm down if only slightly.
He returned to the same question he’s asked Wally about earlier in the day. He wanted to know why you could see them.
“Nobody’s ever been able to see us before you. We just want to know what it all means.”
“Yeah, I sort of guessed as much. I would have thought this being a school—all these people passing through year after year—you’d have already come across someone like me, but apparently not. Weird.”
Wally cut in to the conversation, speaking to you directly for the first time since you’d gotten to the auto shop.
“What do you mean by that—someone like you?”
“Someone like me as in the formerly deceased and transcendentally inclined.”
“Alright,” he deadpanned. “I have no idea what the fuck transcendentally means, but you mean ‘formerly deceased’ as in you used to be dead but now you’re not?”
You offered him a curt nod of affirmation in reply.
“I died when I was a kid,” you started. “Briefly, but my heart did technically stop for about 3 minutes. Obviously I was revived, but after I woke up, I was able to see and hear people I hadn’t been able to before.
“Even when my body came back, I guess parts of my brain decided to stay behind in the after life.”
You took in their expressions as they processed the long awaited explanation, though it wasn’t long before Rhonda interrupted the thick silence.
“So if you’ve been able to see us this whole time, why today?” She was obviously angry though you couldn’t quite understand the question. Something in your face must have given away your confusion.
“All those classes we followed you around to today—senior level—which means you have to be an upperclassman at least. Why hadn’t you ever acknowledged us before today in the library? What changed?”
Wally bit out her name under his breath. A warning.
“You’re right, I am a senior, but I haven’t always been a student here. I just moved here a couple of weeks ago. I’ve seen you all around, but I hadn’t had a chance to speak to any of you without seeming off my rocker until today. The library was empty enough to take the risk.
“In fact, I was actually planning on talking to the hippie chick first, but I guess I never could pass on an opportunity to quote ‘Howl’,” you cheekily winked at Rhonda. Though it seemed to disarm her for a moment, the mask she seemed to always wear quickly replaced itself.
“That’s Dawn,” Charley chirped. “And now that you mention it, I do remember some of the kids in the LGBT club talking about a new girl last week,” he added to Wally and Rhonda.
“Yeah,” Rhonda turned to you. “Well just because you supposedly used to be one of us doesn’t mean you still are. We don’t need Lydia freakin’ Deetz just strolling on in here to do what, exactly? Blow up everything we know about our after life only to leave us behind in a few months.”
She turned on her heels—leaving through a back door you hadn’t noticed before. She mumbled something under her breath as she walked out but didn’t stop as Charley and Wally both called after her.
The silence that fell over the dim and dusty room was tense in her absence. You decided to try for humor.
“Well I’m glad being dead hasn’t stopped her from seeing Beetlejuice—great film.”
Wally laughed under his breath, but it was still strained and short. Nothing like the way he’d been laughing earlier in the day. Still, he tried to offer ease and comfort as he finally spoke.
“Don’t take anything Rhonda says too personally. She’s just old and bitter—like 80 years old, old—and she’s not really a big fan of change either,” he softly smiled at you, though you could see his timid apprehension hidden beneath it.
You returned it as fondly as you could manage.
“Really, it’s okay. People have all kinds of reactions when they first realize someone living can see them, and she’s also right. I guess I am just kind of passing through here, and though I wish I could, I can’t really make you any less dead or perpetually stuck here. I’m sorry.”
“It’s alright,” Charley smiled kindly. “We’ve all been dead a long time already, and we’re all pretty okay with it by now. It’s just nice to be seen, and maybe to have someone new to talk to other than each other. Rhonda will come around eventually, she just needs some time to adjust.”
Wally walked you back to your car after that. Well at least as close as he could get to your car without crossing the boundary and getting hurtled back to from whence his spirit came.
“Oh, the football field,” he explained far too excitedly when you asked. It was late enough and the halls empty enough to speak aloud. “I died on the field in the middle of the Homecoming game, but they named the stadium after me, so that’s pretty cool I guess.”
“Wow,” you exclaimed, your voice dripping with feigned incredulity. “If I had known I was talking to a famous ghost I would’ve worn my good jeans today.”
He laughed, unguarded and unabashedly before regaining his composure.
“Well there’s always tomorrow,” he grinned.
You smiled back. Something hopeful and only just slightly suggestive. Though really there wasn’t—for you maybe—but tomorrows had ceased for Wally a long time ago. Every tomorrow for him could only ever be the same as yesterday.
He watched your face as it slowly fell into something pensive.
“And tomorrow and tomorrow.”
He laughed lightly in confusion as you approached the doors to the courtyard. You could see the cheerleaders still practicing outside through the windows.
“Is that supposed to mean something?”
“Still got that copy of Macbeth?” He felt the front pockets of his jacket where he’d last left it after your English class. Sure enough, he pulled out the same duplicate of your copy he’d stolen—old and tattered, littered with scribbled notes lining the margins and hastily placed sticky tabs peeking out the edges.
“You should try to keep reading it. If you have nothing better to do, that is,” you smiled.
“I mean I’ll give it a shot,” he smiled shyly. “But I probably won’t understand any of it.”
“Then ask me about it tomorrow.”
He followed you through the courtyard despite the conversation being decidedly over. Though he would’ve walked with you all the way through the parking lot if he could have, he stayed right at the edge of the grass, and watched you retreat for the day. Watched as you got ready to make the journey through Split River that he never would again.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he called as you pulled open the car door, about to get in. “And tomorrow and tomorrow—whatever that means,” he added belatedly.
just found out wally clark died one month before Yes released "Owner of a Lonely Heart". i just know he was so pissed off he didn't get to experience it while he was alive.
Summary: When Wally and the ghosts come across a student at the school who can see, hear, and touch them, he tries to remind himself that one day she'll graduate, and grow up, and leave them all behind. That it's just sex, and nothing more, because it can't be. He fails spectacularly.
Warnings: Smut with very little plot, but lots of feelings. Unprotected sex, but he's dead and this isn't Twilight so it's entirely inconsequential.
Title from: Save a Prayer — Duran Duran
WC: 2.8k
It was a dangerous game the two of you had decided to start playing. But Wally had always been good at games, and he figured this one could hardly be any different.
It had been one thing to find out that you, an actual, living, breathing person could see him. Could see and hear all of them for that matter.
They’d been sitting at the table next to yours in the library, each of them hunched over stacks of DVDs when Charley had begged Wally to put away The Outsiders and pick something else.
“Okay, we get that it was one of the last things you got to see before you ended up stuck here for all of eternity, but if I have to hear ‘Stay gold,’ one more time, I’m seriously going to lose my mind.”
“Yeah,” Rhonda agreed with a dry laugh. “And I’ll be with you in Rockland, Charley.”
It took Rhonda a moment, and the other two several more, to realize that you’d finished the quote for her.
“Where you’re madder than I am.”
It had been another thing to discover that you could touch them too. To for the first time in the four decades since he’d died, feel the warmth of a person’s skin beneath his fingertips and the gentle thrum of their pulse through their veins.
He’d tried to brush it off the first time. To convince both himself and you that the feeling of your hand having instinctively reached out to find purchase on his forearm to steady yourself hadn’t been the most exhilarating thing he’d felt in his entire after life.
It didn’t matter—it couldn’t. And he just had to keep reminding himself of that lest he lose the game before it’d even begun.
It was something else entirely as his mouth pulled away from yours, but his hands held firm in their grip around your waist. His eyes searched your face as the warm glow of the old, overhead lightbulb cast shadows across the otherwise dark locker room.
Though it was far from the first of your after hours visits, he realized that it was harder now than it had ever been to remember why he’d even wanted to win the game in the first place. Now, as you stood before him, all he could think of was that he felt like Eurydice—full of the fruitless hope that you might lead him back to the light. Entirely at your mercy.
He tried to push the sentiment aside, but the best he seemed able to do was allow it to further fuel his desire for the moment and hope that you would be so kindly merciful in your victory if you’d happen to notice.
He reached up to gently tuck a loose strand of hair behind your ear before he contrastingly leaned back in for another bruising kiss. His drawn out groan into your mouth was low and throaty as you returned the kiss with matching ferocity.
The cold, harsh grating of the lockers dug into your back, but it was hard to care very much with Wally’s hands back on your waist, slowly creeping up under the hem of your shirt. His hands were cool to the touch in a way all the dead’s were, but he felt as real and solid as anything else. There was an electrifying sort of pulse that radiated off of him, and it only managed to intensify the feeling of his touch.
His fingers trailed lightly up the sides of your torso, stopping only just shy of reaching your bra. Your hands tangled into his hair, pulling him closer to you, desperate for more. His teeth playfully nipped at your bottom lip in response—his sly way of asking that you open up for him.
You pulled away instead. Half in an attempt to tease, half out of necessity.
“Some of us still need to breathe.” There was more than a hint of feigned annoyance in your tone, Wally thought, but he knew better than to let it deter him.
“If you can’t keep up, just say so,” he smirked, but didn’t wait for a reply. He dipped down to start trailing paths of wet, open mouthed kisses across every inch of exposed skin available to him. First across your jaw and towards your ear, where he pulled the lobe between his teeth as playfully as he had your lips. Then down your throat, where he stayed firmly planted.
You let out a quiet, but undeniable gasp as his teeth sharply grazed over the pulse point on your neck. He sucked on the spot with conviction, pausing only to press soothing kitten licks across the increasingly sensitive patch of skin.
If he’d soon have no choice but to be starved of you for the rest of his agonizing eternity, he wanted to enjoy all he could get for the time being.
He needed more. To see more, and feel more, and just before he could begin pleading his case, it seemed that the feeling was decidedly mutual. You pushed him away, moving just slightly forward along with him to give yourself the space to tug your shirt off.
He took the hint and did the same before his hands were on you again. This time reaching up towards the band of your bra where his fingers traced the seam of it before undoing the clasp. You shivered slightly as his hands slid the straps all the way down from your shoulders, tossing the offending garment off to the side.
It was blue—the same kind of blue that he himself regularly donned on his letterman jacket. The realization of the presumedly intentional sentiment made him go a bit dizzy, but he had far more pressing matters to attend to in the moment.
With his mouth back on yours, you let him in without question this time. His hands gripped and kneaded at your breasts, touching you like a lifeline—as though if he held on tightly enough you might manage to pull him back into the land of the living with you. All the while, he drank in your muffled moans and gasps like they were his own personal elixir of life.
You managed to pull strings of mumbled curses from his lips as you rocked your hips forward to meet his. He was unbearably hard and his hips chased back after yours as you pulled away—desperate to have more of you pressed against him.
“Someone’s insatiable today,” you laughed into his mouth.
And what was he supposed to say to that? Yes, I am insatiable today. I’m always insatiable for you. Just you. Forever.
What he said instead was, “Someone’s got some attitude today.”
“Sorry,” you mockingly pouted. “Let me make it up to you.”
Your fingers dipped underneath the waistband of his pants, pulling them down in a swift and simultaneous motion as you sank to your knees. Wally’s jaw fell slack as his gaze followed you—his cock bobbing just in front of your face, waiting to be granted your attentive ministrations.
The groan that came from the back of his throat as you licked a stripe from the base and up his shaft was absolutely sinful. If he wasn’t already dead, he might have guessed he’d be sent straight to hell for it.
His hands found purchase in your hair once your lips wrapped around his tip and pushed forward in an agonizingly slow movement. His grip was neither insistent, nor forceful, simply a steady presence.
“Fuck, baby,” he sighed, his head tilted back. “You’re killing me here.”
The irony didn’t go unnoticed and the amusement you hummed around him made his hips jerk. You pressed one hand against his thigh as the other wrapped around him at the base to keep him still.
You quickened your pace—hand included now—to further spur him on. His breathing grew faster and strained at the sudden change. Your tongue pressed flat against his underside with every push and pull, adjusting only to lick quick swirls at his tip with every withdrawal.
That did him in.
The muscles in his abdomen flexed and rippled as he felt his pleasure begin to grow, his release building towards a breaking point. Your efforts were increasing in intensity trying to bring him over the edge, but he couldn’t have that.
He wanted you—all of you—in every way you would allow him. He wanted to feel you wrapped around him. To see your face as the two of you tumbled over the edge together. Maybe it was selfish, but if he was playing a losing game, he wanted to at least pretend that maybe you weren’t winning any more than he was.
He guided your head back with a gentle tug of your hair. The obscene pop of your mouth releasing him blended deliciously with the moan that rolled out of the back of his throat. His pretenses fell away with your mouth.
“Nuh-uh baby,” he panted. The hand that had been fisted in your hair reached to take yours and pull you back up. “Need you. Now.”
His voice was raw and pleading.
He guided you back onto the bench, the surface of which was no more gentle than the lockers. Still, Wally waited until you were settled before he started to make quick work on the button of your pants.
“Why do you insist on wearing damn jeans every single time?” he groaned in frustration, though it hardly took him any time at all before he was dragging them down your thighs. Underwear going along with them.
You smirked without verbal reply, though it was answer enough. Because you liked to make him work for it. Because you knew he would.
Once free from the confines of clothes, he spread your legs apart by your knees, placing one over each side of the bench. He took his place kneeling between them as he leaned over you to close the distance with another kiss.
He could taste lingering remnants of himself on you and it stirred something primal within him. Something possessive, which did nothing to help his increasing want.
His hand quickly grazed over your breast before it dipped down between your thighs. He swiped a finger up your slit, careful to leave your entrance and clit untouched for the time being.
“Dripping for me just from sucking my cock,” he observed casually and cooly. The rasp in his voice gave way to something else however.
He sucked the tip of his finger into his mouth, watching closely for your reaction as he unabashedly tasted you. His lips curled at the sound of you whining at the sight, desperate for more of his touch.
“Want a taste?” he asked temptingly, pulling the finger out of his own mouth.
He slid it back and forth across your lips waiting for you to part them for him. When you finally did, he slipped it in as easily as he had his own mouth. His gaze held yours with an awestruck expression. You pulled it deeper into your mouth as your tongue mimicked what you’d been doing to his cock only moments before.
When he finally pulled it back out, he reached down to find your clit this time. He pressed a few tight and barely there circles to it before slowly dipping into your entrance.
He pumped his finger in and out of you going slightly deeper each time. Your back arched up off the bench with a gasp when he finally dragged the pad of his finger over your g-spot.
“Fuck, Wally,” you moaned out, loud and unrestrained. He wished the sound of his name tumbling out of you like that could play on a never ending loop in his mind forever.
You snaked your own hand down between the two of you. He was mildly surprised when he felt your fingers wrap around his wrist to pull him out and away from you. Concern painted his face almost immediately.
“You okay, baby?”
You answered with an exaggerated nod.
“Want you inside of me,” you pleaded. “Please, Wally.”
He saw his own emotions mirrored in your eyes—desperate and longing, greedy and wanting. Maybe you weren’t any better at this game than he was, he thought.
He reached up to cup your cheek in the palm of his hand. The touch was intimate and vulnerable in a way he very rarely allowed himself to be when the two of you were like this.
Though no words were exchanged, the look that passed between the two of you said everything it needed to. It was a surrender. A white flag in a field soaked with the blood that would one day inevitably spill from your shared affections.
His touch retreated to finally guide himself into your entrance. He sunk in deep and sharp with no hesitation or restraint. Two gasps simultaneously escaped each of you, but you surged forwards to catch his lips before any more could.
He drove into you with conviction though his pace remained slow. As he’d been doing the entire night—he was trying to savor you. To memorize the shape of your tongue and the impressions of your teeth with his mouth. Commit the wet, velvet heat of your cunt wrapped around him to memory.
You broke the kiss with a moan as his angle shifted to hit against the most tantalizingly perfect spot with every thrust. The sound spurred him on to pick up the speed of his thrusts. His combined efforts made your walls begin to clench around him, silently pleading for more of him.
“So fucking good for me, babygirl. You feel so fucking good.” His eyes fluttered open to look at your face strained in pleasure. His thrusts were forceful enough now that you were being rocked up and down the bench with every one.
You whined embarrassingly loudly as his hand brushed against your clit once again. If anybody else besides Wally had been near enough to hear it, you might have considered having to kill them all over again.
The pressure he kept was light and gentle—far too under stimulating considering how close you were, but still making you reel nonetheless.
“Please—” you gasped, bucking your hips up into him.
“Please, what?” he asked. His voice was breathy and strained, evidently just as close as you were.
“I need more,” you begged, your hips still searching to meet his.
“Well since you asked so politely.”
His pace became relentless with that—his cock driving even deeper into you than before. You could feel and hear the slap of his skin meeting yours with every thrust. The pressure he kept on your clit became torturous in all the right ways as your hands gripped tightly around his broad shoulders still protectively hovering over you.
He fought to hold steady though his resolve was quickly wearing thin with every push and pull of his hips and sound that fell from your mouth.
“Come on, baby, come with me.” And god what a pathetically sentimental request it was, but what more did he have to lose other than you. And he knew as well as anyone that there was nothing to be done about that.
You threw your head back against the rough bench as your eyes tightly shut, your eventual orgasm now only moments away. Wally’s hand returned to your face, gently guiding you by the jaw.
“Wanna see your eyes,” he offered in simple explanation, words beginning to fail him. You obeyed, willing your eyes to stay locked with his as the two of you tumbled towards a blissful ecstasy.
He waited to feel you unravel around him first, always the gentleman. It wasn’t until your walls were wildly fluttering around him, your back lifting off the bench to meet him chest to chest, that he finally allowed himself his own release.
His thrusts stuttered and slowed to a stop as he spilled into you. Weightless and spent, he broke your gaze only to lazily, almost messily, kiss you. It was met in earnest, only broken when he pulled away to begin to search your eyes for something.
Some kind of sign that it was okay—that as hard as he’d tried, this was one game nobody but himself had been expecting him to win. He stayed seated inside you going soft, and hovering just inches above your face. He found the confidence he needed to speak in the comforting warmth of your shallow breaths against his face.
“Promise you won’t leave me,” his eyes were pleading, holding the depths of every one of his years in ways his body couldn’t. He knew the truth of the matter—you both did—but that wasn’t what he was asking for.
“I promise.”
A/N: Please let me know if you liked the concept for this. I have ideas for more fics set in this little universe between Wally and this particular reader. I'm in the process of working on a long fic for a different fandom that's taking up most of my writing time though, so I want to know if there's an audience and demand for this one.
being a writer is so weird because sometimes you’re just writing straight up pornographic filth, but the music you're listening to while you write it is something silly and entirely unsexy like the McCartney II album
Okay, so i've always really liked the Crowley is Raphael theory, but I just finished rewatching the show for the first time in a while today and it gave me some new ideas.
Barachiel
To get started, allow me to introduce you to the son of God, Barachiel if you're not already familiar with him. In Enoch 3:6, Barachiel is listed as one of the many fallen angels who takes a human wife and mates with them to create the Nephilim—half human, half angel giants that ravage the world. And according to Genesis 6, are also who prompt God to give the humans the Great Flood. He was also known to have taught the Nephilim and the humans he knew about astrology. Some sources recount him as a Seraphim—the highest ranking order of the archangels and God's right hands.
Crowley
So there's a general list of things we must remember about Crowley in order to understand this theory.
We know that Crowley has to be at the very least, ranked a Dominion or higher. The four highest orders from least to greatest of course being Dominions, Thrones, Cherubims, and Seraphims.
We know that Crowley has a love and affinity for Earthly plant life.
Crowley was in Uz, and presumably in active contact with Satan and God, when they agreed to test Job's faith.
Crowley, for one reason or another, is assigned to live on Earth.
When Crowley is being punished in Hell for his role in thwarting the Armageddon alongside Aziraphale, it is the archangel Michael who is tasked with delivering the Holy Water that is meant to destroy him.
How It's All Connected
As I've already stated, Barachiel was once a Seraphim, which means he ranks far above Dominions and was at one point a very powerful and trusted angel. It is entirely likely that God would have appointed one of the Seraphim—perhaps Barachiel—to perform a task as important as delivering the stars to the universe. Furthermore, it would also make sense for such an angel having done so, to have great knowledge of the stars and astrology. Obviously though Crowley never mentions astrology itself, he does seem to have a well rounded knowledge of the cosmos.
When Barachiel and the other fallen angels were discovered to have taken mortal partners, a series of events befell them in the aftermath. In Enoch 4, God appoints Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, and Uriel to clean house and take care of the Nephilim and the fallen angels. Michael is ultimately the one tasked with punishing the sons of God, and is instructed to bind them to the earth until their day of judgement is upon them. Barachiel's punishment could be the reason why Crowley remains on earth rather than in Hell with the other demons. Michael is similarly the one sent to punish who is believed to be Crowley in Hell following Armageddon.
Much much later, in Job 1-2, it is said that the sons of God—the fallen angels—accompany Satan to visit God when they decide to test Job's faith. It is there that God gives them all explicit permission to destroy all that Job possesses. Obviously we know that Crowley had his permit from God and was tasked with the job by Satan/Hell, making Barachiel an entirely canonically aligned potential identity.
There are also a number of physical similarities between Barachiel and Crowley. Although it varies, Barachiel is most commonly seen as having red hair. Barachiel is known to be depicted as both male and female. Obviously all the angles and demons—fallen or otherwise—don't conform to mortal genders and sex, but it's just a thought. Crowley and Barachiel would be to of the only angels/sons of God that have been explicitly depicted as multiple genders.
And lastly: Roses. Barachiel is most commonly associated with and the patron of Roses and rose petals. Though we've never seen Crowley express particular affections for flowers, we know he loves plants—a trait unshared with any other angels or demons. And though it's a bit of stretch, we know that this show will take any opportunity to make a cheeky, meta Doctor Who easter egg. The chance to make some sort of Tenth Doctor x Rose Tyler reference by tying Crowley back to Barachiel and his roses would be too good to pass up.
my heart melted in the heat — justin russo x alex russo
Summary: When things finally calm down after the Citizenship Award assembly fiasco, Justin tries to apologize to Alex for having been so cruel to her. Instead of being let off the hook, Alex instead gives him the silent treatment, and Justin isn't quite sure how to handle it.
Warnings: Vaguely Implied Incest
Title from: Used To Be My Girl — The Last Shadow Puppets
WC: 2.3k
(the silent treatment — @badthingshappenbingo)
i.
On the first day, he decided not to push it. She was hurt, and though the whole ordeal had ended the day before with no thanks to him, it had been entirely his fault. Truth be told, leaving the spell on her really had been an accident, but it did nothing to change the fact that even when he realized the mistake he’d done nothing to help.
He tried to apologize for it that morning over breakfast, and even though the sincerity in his voice was more than genuine, it was met with a glare of indifference and not so much as a single word. He’d known better than to expect her outright forgiveness, and he knew better than to believe he deserved it.
So he let it be.
She left for school alone without waiting for Max and himself, and he tried to not let it hurt as much as it did. The commute to school felt hollow even as Max droned on about his most recent endeavors, but the feeling passed when they’d arrived and he allowed himself to be swept up in the casual, mindless chatter of his friends and his incessant focus on his classes.
He caught glimpses of her throughout the day, but never approached her. He watched from afar as she walked through the halls making conversation with friends from her art class, and as she ate lunch with Harper in the cafeteria. It was the first time she’d shown her face there in a week, and the first time that people didn’t avoid her like the plague.
Maybe it was what she needed, he thought. Maybe she just needed to be sure that the worst had passed and once everyone else had forgiven her, she could forgive him. He could hardly blame her for that.
She’d come around eventually—of that he was sure. It was them, after all, how could she not.
He didn’t mind when he realized that once again, she’d left school and returned home without him and Max. He didn’t try to make conversation or get her particular attention over dinner. And he most certainly did not spend the entire night tossing and turning, wondering if things would be different in the morning.
ii.
They weren’t.
It was a Saturday, and as usual, she’d slept in late enough that their parents had already retreated downstairs to open the Sub Station and Max had left to meet some friends in the park.
“Morning, Alex,” he said cheerily from his spot on the couch as she trudged her way into the kitchen.
Nothing. Which, to be entirely fair, wasn’t that unusual for Alex. She usually woke up groggy and unresponsive, but she’d also usually at least grunt out some kind of semblance of an acknowledgment.
She reheated a short stack of pancakes that Theresa had saved for her, but as soon as she deemed them warm enough for her liking, she took the plate up to her bedroom without so much as a glance in the direction of the living room.
His face fell—not that there was anyone around to see it. He sat in the empty silence of the loft for a moment as he turned the ordeal over in his mind. When exactly he made the decision to confront her about it, he couldn’t have said, but he was already halfway up the stairs by the time he realized where he was going.
He opened her bedroom door without hesitation or restraint and his eyes fell on her sitting up in her bed, a pancake halfway to her mouth as they met each other’s gaze.
“Good morning, Alex!” The smile on his face was strained, and his voice dripped with the sarcasm to match. She said nothing and instead returned her attention to the pancake.
“Alex, I said I was sorry. You can’t just ignore me forever!”
He was shouting at her now, and he knew it wasn’t exactly helping his case, but he figured making her angry enough to shout back would be better than their current state. She didn’t shout back though, or get mad, or even acknowledge that he was standing in front of her bed and shouting at all. He left and the moment ended as he slammed the door to her room shut behind him.
If that was the game she’d decided to play, he could play too.
He didn’t make any more attempts at speaking to her throughout the rest of the day. She saved him the effort of avoiding her in not leaving her bedroom until the stalemate came to an end at dinner. He didn’t spare her so much as a glance of acknowledgment throughout the whole ordeal. Though they sat side by side as always, he pointedly avoided her touch, dodging almost brushes of their arms against one another as they reached across the table. His body remained tense and rigid even after their retreats.
From the moment dinner was over, he returned back to his bedroom with the harsh sound of his chair scraping against the floor and his heavy footfalls petulantly stomping up the staircase.
iii.
On Sunday, he had hope.
With the new day had come clarity and he’d decided that maybe he just hadn’t tried hard enough. She had been ridiculed and ignored by every person she knew for an entire week, and all he’d done was say sorry and then get upset when she’d refused the apology. It was no wonder she was still ignoring him, so he tried again.
He woke up early—or at least early by Alex’s standards—and left before anyone could catch him slipping out. The streets had yet to fill as he walked the two blocks to Alex’s favorite art supply store, where they were just flipping the open sign as he approached the entrance.
She had mentioned to the whole family one night over dinner that she was planning to use the profits she was earning from the t-shirt sales to buy new art supplies. Of course that had been before he’d made her donate it to the school. Now, he figured if maybe his words hadn’t been enough of an apology, buying her those art supplies to make up for at least some of the losses he’d caused would be.
When he got back home, his arms desperately clutching at the overflowing bags he’d carried home, Alex was still asleep. Unlike Saturdays, their mother never made a big breakfast for the whole family on Sunday mornings, so he decided to take matters into his own hands.
He’d just finished setting the table when she finally came downstairs. She’d already gotten dressed, obviously having plans outside of the house for the day, but she paused on the bottom step of the stairs as she took in the sight before her. He’d laid out all of the art supplies he’d bought right onto the table—blank canvases, bottles of paint in as many colors as he could imagine she’d want, drawing pencils, a few brushes, and even a new sketchbook. Sat in front of all of it, was the food—plates filled with sizzling bacon and scrambled eggs, pancakes drenched in sweet syrup just as she liked them.
“I know that this is all my fault, and I know that you have every right to still be mad at me for it, but I’m trying to make it up to you in any way I know how.
“I’m sorry that I made you donate the money, and I’m sorry that I got jealous when you won the award, and I’m sorry that you had to pay the price for it and I didn’t even try to help you. I’m even sorry for yelling at you yesterday. I’m trying to be better, Alex.
“I promise I’ll be better.”
She didn’t say anything after that—only met his desperate, raw gaze with her empty stare. Despite that though, she sat down at the table with him and ate the food in silence. When she was done, she gathered the art supplies and took them up to her room before she and Harper left the house for the day.
It wasn’t quite forgiveness yet, but it was something, and that was enough for him.
iv.
Foolishly, he’d thought that maybe they’d turned a new leaf. That the breakfast and the art supplies had been enough to melt the ice that had casted over them and things would return to normal again. Evidently he’d been wrong.
Just as she’d done on Friday, she left for school without him and Max, and though he’d since grown used to the distance, he couldn’t shake the ache of her absence the way he had previously.
He no longer had the energy for false pretenses. He couldn’t be bothered with trying to keep up with what Max was saying as they rode the subway, or with the new idea Zeke was trying to pitch for the Alien Language League. He could hardly even be bothered with paying attention during his classes.
She walked through the halls with the kind of confidence he’d only ever known her to possess. He watched her across the hallway through the corner of his eye as she and Harper laughed about something by her locker. He openly stared as she walked to her history class with a guy who four days ago, was pretending he hadn’t even known her.
After school, he offered to cover her shift for her. The closer, which he knew she particularly hated to work on week nights. When the last customers of the night finally filed out and it was just him and their dad wiping down tables and counting the till, he decided he wanted to talk about it.
“I just don’t know how much longer I can take the silent treatment from her. I mean it’s one thing when she’s mad at me and being condescending or sarcastic, but at least she’d still talk to me. Now it’s like I don’t even exist.”
“Well son,” Jerry sighed as he scrubbed clean a glass. “Have you thought that maybe Alex is trying to give you a taste of what she must’ve felt when nobody was talking to her regardless of how hard she tried to apologize? Maybe you’ve just gotta wait this one out.”
He was right, of course, but it didn’t make it hurt any less.
v.
It was, he decided, what it was. He couldn’t make her forgive him, and he couldn’t force her to talk to him. He’d said his piece and he’d just have to accept that she’d say hers when she was ready.
He left for school without so much as a word to anyone—not even Max. Just because he’d accepted his fate for the meantime, didn’t particularly mean he was ready to put on a smile for everyone else’s sake and pretend her silence wasn’t gnawing away at him from the inside out.
He’d tucked himself away when he wasn’t forced to be in class in the one place he was sure he wouldn’t run into her—the library. His plan had worked as well as he’d expected it to until it was time for his expected appearance in the cafeteria during lunch. Not that anyone would have actually cared whether the Student Body President was there or not. Least of all Alex.
The halls were fairly empty and he was halfway to the cafeteria when he felt something snake around his arm from behind and pull him into an empty classroom. He could smell the vanilla on her skin and feel the magic pulsing through her veins before he saw her face.
“Where’ve you been all day? I had to listen to Max go on and on about his new idea to sell coffee but brewed without the coffee for people who think it tastes too bitter”
He couldn’t help the smile that took over his face as he was not only being gifted the honor of hearing her whining complaint, but hearing it directed at him.
“You’re talking—” he started, but his mind caught up with him before he could finish. “Wait, coffee without coffee is just hot water. Why would he—?”
“Exactly. So you can see why I’m annoyed.” His smile returned.
“You’re talking to me again.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” her voice was laced with her feigned nonchalance, but he could hear the affection hiding behind it. “Don’t get all weird with your feelings about it.”
“I’m sorry, Alex,” his tone dropped into something genuine, and serious. Solemn, almost. “I’m really, really sorry.”
“I know, I heard you the first 20 times,” she tried for indifference, but it didn’t feel quite right. Not even to her.
“I’m not saying it’s okay,” she started again. “But we’re okay. I forgive you.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes.”
They both smiled that time, but then she spoke again.
“Okay, but now it’s going to be your turn to be mad at me.”
“What did you do?” his smile fell almost as quickly as it had risen.
“I may or may not have accidentally used magic to get out of a history test, and I may or may not have accidentally made my teacher forget everything she’s ever learned about history.”
“Alex!”
But really it didn’t matter. Her face was scrunched in that adorably desperate way it always was when she had to ask for help, and even though he stuttered over his words and shouted in frustration just like their dad, he was going to help her. He was being given the privilege to help her—and how could he have ever taken that for granted?
Summary: In the aftermath of the days that never were in Puerto Rico, the Russo siblings return home haunted by the experience and desperate to find semblances of comfort in their normalcy of New York. Justin and Alex in particular find themselves drawn closer to one another mutually content with the unspoken and vulnerably intimate progressions of their relationship.
Warnings: Incest and Sexual Content
Title from: Lovesong—The Cure
WC: 4.6k
They fell in love the same way they’d done everything since Alex was born—together and with reckless abandon. Only they’d hardly remembered that as they fell.
Neither of them could remember the time when Alex was in kindergarten, and Justin held her as she cried after Gigi had been so unforgivingly cruel to her. And afterwards, he’d even reluctantly helped her plan out her revenge. They couldn’t remember the time that Justin had wandered off and hadn’t been able to find his way back to the family at Battery Park when he was 7 while trying to identify an odd looking bird that had flown past them. Nor could they remember that in the end, it was Alex who had finally found him sat at a bench and crying because he thought he never would be.
They couldn’t even remember the not very long ago time when Alex had sacrificed her entire Friday night to get him his perfect first kiss, even if it had taken him nearly 20 tries. Or the time when Justin of all people had snuck them out late at night to teach her how to fly the magic carpet and they flew all the way to Queens to catch a peek at the Mets game.
Under the canopy of the lonely rainforest and two thousand miles away from home, there was only one simple truth they could remember without doubt. The world could be scary and cruel and unfair and complicated, but everything would be okay as long as they had each other. Nothing else could matter as long as they had each other.
Max had been asleep for hours, and he hadn’t stirred any more than he would have on any other night. It made sense as they gave it some thought. Though he could still recollect the events of the days that never happened, his mind younger, and far more malleable than theirs, had been the first to go. He hadn’t spent two days in the forest with them, threats of imminent death lurking around every corner. Nor had he watched either of his siblings get sucked into oblivion, powerless to save them. He hadn’t been thrown into the battlefield and asked to prove his worth as their lives hung in the balance. He hadn’t had to stare into Alex’s eyes as tears flowed down her face in sheer terror at the realization that though she had the power to do so, she lacked the words to save them. And Justin couldn’t even remember her name.
“Why did you really give up the full powers?” His voice stern and filled with curiosity, but soft enough to lack any ill-spirited accusations. “You could have had everything you’ve ever wanted.”
She let the distant thrashing of the waves fill the silence and the humid breeze blanket around them for a moment before she answered. They could see the warm glow of lights shining through the windows of neighboring rooms, and they could feel the thrum of the electricity pulsing through the resort—all reminders of their return to comfortable safety. Still though, as they sat knee to knee on the deck, they didn’t feel much different than they had in the rainforest. The gravity of what could have been still weighed heavily on them.
“What good would it have done me if I didn’t even know how to use it to save us,” she whispered with uncharacteristic caution. “Your memories were all gone the second I won the power, and then you were gone too, and I just stood there throwing out rhymes and praying one would stick. If Mom hadn’t gotten there with the Stone of Dreams when she did, I would have disappeared too.”
The tears flowed freely and without restraint as she spoke. Justin wrapped his arms around her shoulders and pulled her in to him. He whispered the best comforts he could think of as she tucked her face into the crook of his neck and he rubbed soothing circles across her back.
“I’m sorry, Alex,” he whispered into her hair, his lips just shy of brushing against her scalp. She smelled of the sterile complimentary shampoo offered by the resort and the lingering remnants of the magic she had held just hours ago. “I’m so sorry.”
What exactly he was apologizing for he couldn’t really say for sure. Mainly he was sorry for having forgotten—for not having been able to help her or save her in that moment as if that hadn’t been his primary occupation since the day she’d been born. He was also sorry she’d been the one who had to watch both himself and Max be violently erased from existence all while knowing well enough who they were and what they meant to her. And very privately, he was sorry that as they’d trekked through the forest and the exact arrangements of their relation became increasingly distant and foggy memories, and the constraints of feelings began to blur, there had been a number of moments that had passed between them. Hands lingering on waists and eyes catching on lips for just a second too long. He was sorry that it hadn’t felt wrong—not then, and not even know.
There were parts of them that had each wondered if things would change once they were back in New York. If once they’d returned to their own home and were sleeping in their own bedrooms and falling back into their uniquely chaotic routines of so-called normalcy, the Caribbean would feel like just another one of their wacky magical mishap stories they’d bring up in attempts at teasing and mocking each other.
It didn’t.
Even as the weeks passed by and the summer turned to a cool, crisp autumn as the new school year started, Justin and Alex remained the same. Max, quite predictably, had taken to their parents more than he had to them. Haunted by the memory of his mother’s blank stares and tense frame as he’d desperately clung to her without so much as a hint of recognition on her part. But Justin and Alex had suddenly become tethered by an invisible string, the thread having been woven together in the vulnerably comfortable bond that had been birthed under the Puerto Rican sky.
Where one of them was, the other was hardly far behind. Even through their usual banter—grumbled remarks through gritted teeth and far from complimentary nicknames—that had returned along with them when they arrived back in the city, they remained inseparable. Bound together by those two terrifyingly desolate days save for one another.
The Russo siblings had always been perceived as almost codependently close to one another. Even before that summer, they always rode the subway to and from school together, schemed in hushed whispers with heads pressed together by their lockers. Aside from their differing classes and staggered shifts at the Sub Station, it had been rare to not see them together. If anybody had noticed an increase in such closeness when they came back from that summer break, they hadn’t mentioned it.
The truth of their shift was evident only in the moments alone away from the prying eyes of mortals and intrusive company of their parents. When the days were over and done with, and the loft grew still and quiet, they had a habit of settling into spaces together. Some nights they’d separately excuse themselves to their respective bedrooms. The wall they shared making their eventual reunion far simpler than it had any right being. They often alternated between rooms—one night in Justin’s room with Alex splayed out on his bed flipping through magazines as he studied at his desk, the next in Alex’s where she’d pace around the room riffling through her closet looking for the next day’s outfit as Justin’s gaze stayed pointedly locked on his book of choice.
Other evenings, they braved the communal spaces. Usually the living room where they’d curl into the couch together with a single blanket draped over the span of both of them. Like they did with rooms, they alternated picks in the nights entertainment, switching between documentaries or science fiction and comedies or reality shows. When it wasn’t the living room, it was the lair.
“I’m never going to memorize this spell,” she grumbled in defeat as she slumped down into the arm chair. Her head hung heavy in her hands.
He watched as she dug the heels of her palms into her eyes and rubbed at them petulantly. It was an act born of frustration he’d seen her perform hundreds of times, and he couldn’t help the amused smile that crept upon his face as memories of her having done it at every age she’d ever been flitted across his mind’s eye. How his mind had ever betrayed him and allowed those memories to have slipped away—even under the pretenses of magic entirely out of his control—was beyond him.
“Yes you will, Alex.” His reassurance was paired with his hand resting firmly over her shoulder. A subtle, but complimentary contrast to the gentle and soothing back and forth strokes of his thumb that rubbed against the hem of her collar. Just barely grazing her skin.
“Why are you even being so nice and helpful, anyways?” Her voice had shifted into something timid and soft. The voice that had always been buried beneath her snark and sarcasm since they were children. The one that had carried whispered confessions through the thick air of the forest, and since then had seemingly remained reserved for his ears only. “Doing all this just means I’ll be one step closer to winning the competition.” The unspoken “again” she’d left out didn’t go unnoticed.
He perched beside her on the arm rest of her chair without breaking the contact of his hand.
“Well, even when Max finally get’s a go at it, I doubt he’ll make much of a challenging opponent. The least I can do is make sure you won’t make it too easy on me. There’s hardly any fun in winning without at least some worthy competition.”
He had been trying to go for their usual competitive banter in the hopes of cheering her up, but realized it had done little as he finally caught her eyes. She pouted as she looked up at him through her eyelashes and the overwhelming emotions of exhaustion and self-deprecating disappointment were more than obvious on her face. His own face fell as he gently nudged her to make room for him as he slid down into the seat beside her.
When he settled, she draped her legs over his thighs as they wrapped their arms around one another until they were pressed so close together in the single-person chair that they couldn’t tell where one of them ended and the other began. And ever since the summer, moments like these had felt like the most natural thing to occur between them.
He sighed as he began to speak, his tone shifting to match her own.
“Because Mom isn’t always going to show up at just the right moment with a rock that grants wishes. Because as much as I wish I could be, I might not always be there to tell you what words to say to fix things. Because it’s entirely likely that one day, sooner from now than either of us would like, you’ll be a full wizard and I won’t.”
His pause was pregnant with the memory of Alex standing in front of him in the ruins of an ancient battlefield. Her face streaked with tears and her voice quivering as she professed her unyielding affections for him. Most of all however, his own feelings in that moment, which weren’t that of a brother looking at his little sister. Only a boy looking at a girl that he wasn’t sure he’d ever known, but knew he loved without doubt or uncertainty.
“And even if or when that happens, I’ll still always be there for you when you need me. I just want to make sure that if for whatever reason—if something ever stops me from getting to you—you’ll know what to do.”
They fell beyond sibling territory the same way they’d lost their memories of ever having been—slowly and with little realization that it was even happening. Neither of them could have said for sure when exactly they’d crossed that line, only that it had felt right.
When they were kids, they liked to hold hands. Whether it was walks to and from the bus stop or as Theresa dragged them around the city on errands, their hands were almost always clasped together. At least that had been until they’d both gotten to that age. The age in which Justin suddenly decided he was way too cool to be seen holding his little sister’s hand, and Alex insisted she was too old to need him to.
And how silly was that? How ironic of Justin to have ever assumed that he was too cool for Alex. How naive of Alex to have ever assumed that she didn’t need Justin. They could admit that after everything that had happened. And so they started to hold hands again. Only this time it was different—now they really were too old, and maybe not cool exactly, but rather too seemingly normal and unassuming members of modern society to be holding hands as they walked to the subway before school.
And so like all the best parts of themselves, they hid it from the rest of the world. Only to ever be seen by each other and the loyally silent walls of their home. Alex had been the first to grab his hand one night while they’d been watching TV together. They hadn’t been watching something scary or sad or anything else to suggest the notion of any pretense other than that Alex had simply grabbed his hand because she wanted to. Though her face had remained a blank slate of indifference, she’d been silently worried that he’d try to tease her about it—or even worse, pull away. But he didn’t do either of those things. Instead, he laced his fingers through hers and rubbed a gentle reminder of his presence onto the back of her hand with his thumb.
After the hand holding came the kisses, which had started out innocent enough. She’d fallen into the habit of planting a quick and chaste kiss on his cheek—or sometimes even his jaw depending on how they’d been positioned—when a moment seemed to call for it. If he’d helped her with homework or a spell, or as a goodbye before they’d finally separate and retreat to their respective beds for the night. Likewise, he’d do the same with his mouth usually landing on her forehead or in her hair. Often they were preceded by an amused chuckle at a particularly silly or nonsensical remark she made, other times the simple feeling of content he got from just being in her presence.
The shift, when it did occur, had felt almost inevitable. Alex’s day had felt long and exhausting—not bad, just heavy. Her mind had been too loud and the atmosphere too suffocating, and all she’d wanted to do was get home so she could change into her pajamas and crawl back into bed. Of course Justin had noticed, because he always did, and so she wasn’t surprised when he’d come into her bedroom holding a carton of her favorite ice cream and two spoons.
“Hey, at least I’m not the one that got grounded for cheating on their Biology exam,” he jested, but his voice held no real malice or judgement. Still, it earned him a shove from Alex just as he was spooning ice cream into his mouth, and it made him miss entirely.
She laughed at him in that very Alex way of hers, and before he could move to wipe his face with the back of his hand, she leaned in. Quickly and without any room for either of them to question what she was about to do.
Her mouth was on his skin, open and wet as to lap up the ice cream that had landed there. And though he couldn’t be entirely sure, he thought that for just a second he felt her tongue swipe over him. Really it was only the outer most corners of their mouths that had actually touched, but the thrill of it that he felt shoot down his spine and rattle in the pit of his stomach made him sure that he wanted more.
She had hardly pulled away at all before he was moving to lean into her. The kiss was really more of a peck and nothing at all like the way he’d have kissed a girl he was interested in, which was what he would tell himself later as he weighed the implications of it in his mind. But then again, the girls he’d been interested in before had never been Alex. Though their lips were slotted over one another’s and their eyes had fluttered to a close, neither of them moved, or tried to press for more. There had been no force or passion or tongue, or anything more than a gentle touch as light as it had made him feel.
They became just as common place as anything else after that. And if maybe overtime they started to last just a moment longer, or their mouths shifted over each others with just a little more confidence, then they could really only blame it—as anything else—on the natural and inevitable progression of their affections.
They fell into bed the same way they loved each other—vulnerably and with an undoubtable trust in one another. By that point, the New York nights had grown to be almost unbearably long and cold, and finding solace in one another’s arms, between the sheets of one of their beds was hardly the strangest thing about them.
It wasn’t exactly something that they did with any particular intent, or even daily, but falling asleep in the other’s bed had become an at least somewhat occasional occurrence. And for a while, it really had been just sleep—no hidden strings or innuendo attached. Clothes stayed on and hands were kept modestly placed if they’d even been touching to begin with. Most nights Alex complained that she’d never be able to sleep if he kept on suffocating her.
Afterwards, they’d both laugh at the realization that the circumstances under which that arrangement had become something else were not much different from those that had initially led them to such positions. Their parents had left town for a restaurant owners convention, and Max who was still just a bit hesitant to be parted from them for too long, had begged them to allow him to tag along. They could hardly protest as it was becoming increasingly apparent to everyone, including himself, that Max would ultimately be the one to take over the Sub Station one day.
So just as they had been that night in Puerto Rico, Alex and Justin were alone together. Free to be absolutely nobody other than their most absolute selves in only the presence of one another. It was what they had come to realize made them work—what had brought them together in such a way. A complete lack of expectations between one another aside from the promise of authenticity. Alex never expected perfection from Justin—that he have all the answers and follow all the rules and carry all the burdens of their complicated lives. And in return, Justin never expected Alex to make herself less—that she abandon chaos for order or intuition for precision. All they ever asked for was each other—two sides of a single scale, each one born to balance out the other when left in their most uninterrupted and candid of forms.
It had been their second of three nights spent alone in the loft, and it had gone just about the same as any other night. They’d waited tables and assembled sandwiches in the Sub Station until closing time when they’d finally retreated upstairs. They danced around each other in the kitchen while Justin made dinner and Alex pretended like she was contributing, but was really only there for conversation and company. They ate their dinner on the couch while Alex watched TV and Justin scribbled answers to Physics equations on his homework between bites of his food.
Later, they argued over who would get to shower first and inevitably leave the other without any hot water. Of course in the end, Alex won, and Justin used the time to study for his Monster Hunting elective. Eventually, when the books were returned to their shelves and Alex decided she’d had a more than productive enough day, they both collapsed into her bed.
They could have tried to blame it on the fact that it was late at night, and they were both so tired that they weren’t really thinking straight. Maybe they could have tried to argue that it was the first time that they’d been alone since Puerto Rico and the emotions were just too high to control themselves. If they were really trying to kid themselves, they might have even tried to believe that Alex had accidentally cast another spell and they’d lost their memories again.
The truth was that they knew exactly who they were and what they were doing—and it made no difference to either of them. They wanted it nonetheless.
“Have you ever done this before?” He looked down trying to search her face for any signs of reluctance. Her lips were red and swollen as she panted just slightly as she tried to catch her breath. For just a moment, he felt a small swell of pride in his chest knowing that he’d been the one to cause such a sight.
“No,” she breathed more than said as she shook her head against her pillow. “Have you?”
“No.” His hand rubbed a comforting stroke up and down her hip, catching just slightly at the hems of her clothes. He tried not to press his very obvious erection any further onto her than it already was. “Are you sure you want to?”
“Yes.”
And so they did.
It was clumsy and a mixture of eager and shy in the way that all young lover’s first times are. But it was also gentle and comfortably familiar in a way that could only exist between two people who had known each other their entire lives. Two people who had grown up under the same roof and been raised by the same parents and argued over minor inconveniences, but were unconditionally sworn to loving and protecting each other for as long as they lived.
They laughed as clothes got tugged and snagged and tangled between limbs as they tried to get them off of one another. Alex scowled and threatened him when a whimper escaped her lips as he sucked the peak of her breast into his mouth and made his face turn too smug for her liking. Justin mentally recited the periodic table of elements in reverse order to stop himself from coming just at the sound of it.
He missed the mark spectacularly as he reached down between her thighs to try to rub those all too familiar circles onto the one spot he hadn’t been allowed before. It had been her turn to look annoyingly smug as she filed the memory away in the “Embarrassing Things to Tease Justin About” section of her brain for later, and grabbed his wrist to guide him to the right spot.
They both stopped worrying about doing or saying things that they might get made fun of for later as he brought her over the edge of pleasure with a look of awe and adoration written across his face. She cried out his name and greedily ground down against his hand as he talked her through it.
“Come on, Alex,” he cooed. “I’ve got you.”
She laid bare before him with heavy eyes, her chest heaving with each inhale as he pressed scattered, wet kisses across her face and down her jaw and throat. They panicked simultaneously and momentarily as the realization that neither of them had a condom dawned on them. If it had been any other occasion, he would have chastised her first for using magic for such reasons, and second for having known a spell for conjuring a prophylactic, but he was far too painfully hard and desperate for release to care. He’d get around to it later.
He asked her once more if she was sure before he pushed into her as slowly and as gently as he could manage. She clutched at his shoulders and scrunched her face in discomfort as she tensed at the intrusion.
“Sorry, I’m sorry.” He stroked her cheek with the pad of his thumb and tried his best not to move any further before she was ready. “It’s okay, you’ve just got to relax.”
She took deep breaths and willed the tension in her muscles to dissipate before Justin continued. They continued on like that in small increments and with his continued words of encouragement until he was finally fully seated in her. He allowed her more than a few moments to adjust to him, and as he waited, he realized he was relieved that it was him to be her first. He couldn’t help but think back to some of the boys from school she’d taken to in the past, and he wasn’t sure any of them would have been as careful.
Her wordless nod was enough to get him to start moving, and the ecstasy of the feeling of her wrapped around him hit more than immediately. His rhythm was hardly existent for longer than he’d care to admit, but he was too far gone to care. When he finally got all the way down to Hydrogen, he switched over to the first 100 digits of Pi, composite ones removed.
Once his thrusts evened out and held steady and firm, if the sounds coming out of her mouth were anything to go off of, Alex seemed to be enjoying it too. Although he could only assume it had to be mostly the result of overstimulation in the aftermath of her previous orgasm.
She didn’t laugh when her name started to spill from his lips like a pleading prayer and the snap of his hips started to stutter not very long into the entire ordeal. Instead, and very much to his surprise, she told him it was okay to let go, and she clenched around him in encouragement. Still, he kissed her with more ferocity and passion than he’d ever kissed anyone else before and brought his hand back down to her clit as he worked with absolute determination to drag her back over the edge along with him.
Though neither would have admitted to it later if they’d been asked, they both embarrassingly whimpered at the loss of contact as Justin slowly pulled out of her and dropped back down beside her. He rolled the condom off of himself and willed it away into oblivion with an only half spoken, muttered spell. She let him pull her into his side without complaint, too spent to protest and too content in his arms to retreat. They stayed there for minutes that felt, to her, more like hours before Justin finally managed to coax her out of bed and to the bathroom where they both cleaned up.
They fell asleep that night in New York the same way they had in the rainforest—easily and with the comforting knowledge that the other was soundly beside them.
