Auggie had just wanted to make Olivia feel better as best he could, hence why he set up his bedroom and made it comfy for her, knowing she wasn't the biggest fan of her family, and part of him wanted to take care of him herself. He smiled at her softly as she picked up the spoon "I honestly just want to make sure you get healed up and have all your favorite things it helps I'm sure of it." he nodded softly sitting down on the edge of the bed "Of course you don't have to thank me, I don't mind taking care of you and also getting extra time to just spend together with you making sure you rest and heal."
After Olivia broke her nose Auggie had been trying to be very accommodating for her, had set up her favorite pillows so she could sit up in his bed, and she had been staying with him for over a week, her parents didn’t really notice but Auggie would prefer it that way, not wanting to have to see her brother when he came to visit, so he preferred her staying with him while she healed instead of being at her house. He came back from the kitchen with a tv tray, a cup of juice and some soup in a thermos, knowing the soup was one of her comfort foods and all she was wanting to eat right now. He placed it in front of her placing a spoon next to it “Is there anything else you’d like today? Are you feeling comfortable no pain or anything right?”
SEUNGHEE: oh sweetheart don’t feel bad about that kind of stuffSEUNGHEE: you’re way too hard on yourselfSEUNGHEE: seriously angel, everybody squishes a bug by accident at some point, don’t beat yourself up over itSEUNGHEE: oh my little auggie :( my little cute baby let hyungie make you hot chocolate and cookies tonight and we can hold a bug funeralSEUNGHEE: and please for the love of god stop buying your own meals and use my goddamn credit card already
2. What was my muses 5 last unsent texts yours.?
SEUNGHEE: [12:06am] u ever think i’d look good in that pretty lacy stuff u like to wear???SEUNGHEE: [03:13pm] sometimes ur too nice please stop caring so much about other people and just take care of yourselfSEUNGHEE: [08:30am] good morning to my favourite person besides minsu in the entire worldSEUNGHEE: [3:19am] lowkey i know u like love jaesun or whatever but i always hoped u and jihoon would get together since ur both my favouritesSEUNGHEE: [04:37am] do u ever think maybe the reason i adore u so much might be because i actually view u as a love interest and not a son… omg gross no ok ur only my son i’m sorry for thinking otherwise even for a moment there
3. What was my muses last snapchat to yours?
SEUNGHEE: tbh auggie you and i are just too beautiful u know? if we ever dated the universe would implode from the hotness and that’s why i view u as a son and not a lover
4. What my muse saved your number as?
[auggie uwu 💖]
5. What contact photo my muse has set for yours?
6. What ringtone my muse has set for yours?
damn, that’s my baby!
7. How many times my muse has called your this week?
Seunghee calls Auggie at least twice a week to check up on him - as a good ‘father’ does.
I'm really sorry but I'm noot using that credit card. It's too much but thank you so much
“seriously? b-but... but i got it in your name and everything! it’s your credit card, it’s just attached to my bank account! you’re my son, let me provide for you like a good father does, what the fuck? the twins would kill to have access to my bank account.”
❝oh, my precious, precious little auggie. my god, i love you so much. i always tell jihoon he’s the favourite, but we all know that nobody can possibly compare to you. how can anyone be so good? so pure? i knew from the moment i laid eyes on you that i would want to keep you and protect you. my little muffin. hyungie loves you the mostest, okay? you can always count on me to protect you and be there for you. and seriously, can you goddamn use that credit card i gave you already? i gave it to you so that you can treat yourself to all the pretty things you like. just don’t treat jihoon, that kid gets spoiled enough by me already. i guess you can spoil joon and jae with it. but i adore the hell out of you, my squishy little mochi, you are so good and pure and i love watching you mature and grow more confident in your skin.❞
⋯ send me “!” for my muse to tell yours what they really think of them. ⋯
tagging: @teddybeas & @augusthunter
location: olive with a twist, auggie’s bar & grill
time: wednesday night, ~11pm
summary: closing time, every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.
alternate summary: (alternatively: This Was A Mistake.)
TEDDY
it was late, and Teddy Graham was an idiot. That was just about the great sum of it all. Right now, she was pacing up and down the sidewalk outside of Olive with a Twist, which was a place she had no business being.
Because it was Auggie’s place. It was Auggie’s restaurant on the same street as the same ice cream shop where she’d kissed ice cream off his stupid cheek in the eleventh grade. And he was inside right now, and she was outside, and she shouldn’t be outside.
She shouldn’t even be here. She should just go home.
Or whatever her family house in Shallow Creek was anymore, because it really didn’t feel like home. But nowhere did anymore. Teddy hadn’t felt like she’d come home in eight years. (Did that mean Auggie was home? No. It meant Olive was home. That’s what it meant. It meant Auggie and Olive were a pivotal part of what made her home her home, and her home had been destroyed, and she had ruined whatever remnants were left of it, and that was it. Plain and simple.)
God. Why was she here?
Things were uncomfortably awkward, tense. And they weren’t going to get any better. So maybe… maybe they needed to be adults. Adults could talk things over, right?
Did she want to talk things over?
Maybe she just wanted to see him. She hadn’t, not really, since she was eighteen, since she was crying and hugging him and breaking things off with him for her own selfish reasons.
Okay. Yeah. She could do this.
(She couldn’t do this.) (But she had to.)
She pushed the door open, knowing that the sign in front of her was mockingly informing her that the restaurant was closing in less than sixty seconds.
The chairs were already on the tables, the lights were dimmed. Some soft indie song was playing over the speakers, and the place was cleared out aside from one figure with his back to her, writing something down bent over the bar counter.
She’d know the frame anywhere, but she didn’t say a word. She wasn’t sure if she could.
AUGGIE
It was only Wednesday, and Auggie already felt the weight of the week deep in his shoulders. He knew it had to do with the idea of everyone straggling back into Shallow Creek, and the demons that came with that. He wasn’t ready to face any of them because that meant opening up old wounds that were barely closed and seemed to be more taped and glued together than anything else.
Still, deep down he’d known he couldn’t avoid them all forever, and that there would come a time when he’d have to face everything he’d tried to put behind him. He supposed that time was now, and that this was fate’s way of remind him you couldn’t cover the sun with your thumb or whatever the saying was.
(Especially with that one person in particular who clearly still wanted absolutely nothing to do with him. He can’t blame her, even after all this time. Even if she just left)
But that was going to be a subject for him to worry about tomorrow because right now it was closing time and the floors needed sweeping, and the books needed to be done, especially with end of the month inventory fast approaching.
He’s ears deep in calculations when the bell above the door grabs his attention. He doesn’t look up, however, still focused on his books and the numbers he’d have to type back inside his office.
“Sorry, we’re closed,” he says, scribbling a few numbers in the corner.
TEDDY
He’s talking. She can hear him, and she can’t breathe, because he sounds the same. Maybe a little older, a little wearier, but exactly the same.
And suddenly, her feet are glued to the floor and she knows that the window of time for her making a run for it is getting narrower and narrower. She’s stuck now. She’s here, and he’s here, and she has to say something.
Things never should have gotten to this point with them, to a point where it physically felt uncomfortable to even say something as simple as a hello. But that’s Teddy’s fault. She’d done this to them.
She smoothes down the skirt on her dress that suddenly feels uncomfortable, fidgets from foot to foot, and keeps her hand resting on the rail of the door like a safety net.
“So, should I leave?” she finally finds her voice, heart somewhere between her lungs and her throat. “I can come back later.”
AUGGIE
The sound of her voice, a voice he hadn’t heard in seven whole years, caused his heart to sink so deeply into the pit of his stomach he thought it might fall out of his ass. It wasn’t her, it couldn’t be. And yet, he knew that no one else in the world could have a voice that could practically ruin him in the way hers could. She sounded older, yes, but her voice was unmistakable.
He turned to face her, heart racing as he turned to look at her, only to nearly stop at the sight.
Clearly, he wasn’t prepared for that, for her. For her hair no longer long and curly, but instead short and straight, framing her face and no less beautiful. She still wore dresses, or at least, was wearing one now, and looked just as beautiful, with legs for days.
“Ted…”
God, he’d missed her. He’d missed her so much. And part of him was itching for that stupid bottle of vodka behind the bar, and the other part of him wanted to run to her.
“I…” he ran his hands over his shirt, as if he could wipe away the sweat of the day to look more presentable for her. “What are you doing here?"
TEDDY
There wasn’t any turning back now, that was the thing. Teddy had fully and completely, utterly, reached the point of no return. Auggie was fully aware that she was here. He was turning around to look at her, and…
…and there he was.
He looked tired. He was beautiful as he’d ever been, but he looked tired, worn down. She wished she didn’t feel responsible for part of that — it just seemed narcissistic, really — but she did, and she knew that, some part of it, at least, was her fault.
For a moment, even after he’d said her name, even after he’d looked at her and spoken to her, she couldn’t say anything back to him. She couldn’t say anything at all.
But, she knew that she had to. After all, she was the one that had come here. This was on her.
And he’d called her Ted. He still called her Ted, even after all this time.
And that… that meant he couldn’t really hate her, right?
She knew he could never hate her. She knew she deserved for him to, but she also knew Auggie, and she knew that he couldn’t.
She was about to bite a hole in her lip, finally releasing her hold on the door and taking a few steps forward. “I… I didn’t really think… our conversation earlier was much of a conversation.”
Her hand moved to her arm, running along her upper arm and letting her fingertips trail down to her wrist. “So, I was… thinking maybe we needed a redo. If you would be okay with that.”
AUGGIE
His eyes lingered on her hand as it trailed up her arm and he was so transfixed that he almost missed what she’d said. Almost, being the operative word there. Redo. She wanted a redo, which meant she obviously cared about how badly their talk had gone this morning. Which meant she wanted more to do with him than he thought, considering how they’d left things.
This is who she was.
This is the girl he’d fallen for ten years ago, who had taught him everything there was to know about loving someone unconditionally. Suddenly he was taken back to ten years earlier, ten years when he’d first seen her across the hall and everything changed.
Fuck, it was just so easy to fall when it came to Teddy Graham.
“I’d like that,” he said carefully, part of him so worried that if he’d said the wrong thing, she’d leave and he’d lose her for good. “A lot actually… um…”
Floored for a moment, he shifts his weight from one foot to the other, unsure of what to do next. “Can I… can I get you anything? A drink or food or… my other chef is gone, but I can whip you something up if you’re hungry, or…” he trailed off, realizing he’d been rambling suddenly, and he blushed, feeling sheepish. He continued with a sigh, repeating his question instead. “Can I get you anything?"
TEDDY
She’d always had trouble breathing around him. Well. Not always. Not when they were two kids going head to head over stupid class debates and bake sales and whatever else it was that they bickered about it in middle school.
And then it shifted. Somewhere between freshman and sophomore year, when suddenly she didn’t just see him as Auggie from school, and she wasn’t just Teddy from the next street over anymore. They were something else, something bigger.
It was electric.
It never stopped being electric.
They were two teenagers with fumbling hands and stupid, nervous laughs, but it was always electric.
And it was still electric right here and right now, surging between the two of them. He was asking her if he could get her anything, and she knew that she couldn’t actually tell him what she really wanted. She wasn’t bold enough. Maybe sometimes, maybe here and there. But not right now. She didn’t think it was possible.
“No,” she finally said, finally moving forward. She couldn’t come as close to him as she wanted to, but she finally stepped further into the restaurant. She looked at the exposed brick, the aesthetic lighting, the pretty bottles lining the walls. “It’s very you,” she observed. “It’s beautiful.”
Especially the name. But she couldn’t mention the name.
“But, I’m not really hungry.”
Her tongue poked out to wet her lips for a second, head tilting to the side and fingers nervously combing through her hair. “I don’t really… know what I am, honestly. I just… I needed to see you. I guess. So I’m here.”
God. It was weird, wasn’t it?
Before she could stop herself, she was nodding back toward the door. “Should I go?” A beat passed. “I don’t want to go.”
AUGGIE
“I don’t want you to go,” he said, the words coming out quicker than a reflex, as if it was something he knew inherently in his bones. He didn’t want her to go. He didn’t want her to leave now, nor did he want her to leave back then. But back then he wasn’t brave enough to ask her to stay, and right now… well, right now, something was clearly shifting between them.
He was always able to read the room when it came to Teddy. Always knew how to read her, and now, this doesn’t feel any different than it used to.
However, as far as it was shifting right then and there, he knew he couldn’t do anything to burst the bubble they were in right now. And asking anything more than what she was willing to give right now could easily do the trick.
He inhaled slowly, trying to ease himself some, before exhaling as his eyes meet hers and he did it anyway. “Don’t go, Ted."
TEDDY
He didn’t want her to go, he didn’t want her to go, he didn’t want her to go, he didn’t want her to go, he didn’t want her to go, he didn’t want her to go.
It was all she could focus on, her head spinning — or maybe it was the room. But it was probably her.
His eyes met hers the same way they had so many times before, and she couldn’t look away. She probably needed to look away.
She didn’t.
Instead, she looked at his hands. His one hand was still on the pen, and his other was gripping the bar counter so hard that his knuckles were starting to turn white.
Reaching over, her fingertips found their way onto his hand, on top of familiar skin that really didn’t feel familiar anymore the way it used to, the way it was supposed to.
“I… I think that talk is overrated,” she found herself saying. Her hand gripped his hand tighter, until she was pulling it away from the bar, pulling it in her direction and sending him in her direction in the process. “Right? I mean. Clearly we’re not good at it.”
Breathe. In. Out.
She took a step closer. The glow of the dim lights was making his eyes shine. “I don’t want to talk to you, Auggie. Okay?”
AUGGIE
Auggie was caught somewhere between overwhelmed and completely out of sync with himself. His hand in Teddy's felt like fire, like it was burning after all these years, and at the same time, it was the most soothing balm. Like her presence alone was enough to block away all of the bad feelings that came when she left him.
It sounded dramatic when put that way, but he was a mess right now, and didn't know up from down. All he knew was Teddy Graham, and that she didn't want to talk to him. Just that she was here and she was home and she was everything he could ever want in that moment.
"I don't think we should talk..." he murmured, his heart squeezing as the words leave his lips, stepping closer to her. "We don't need to talk."
TEDDY
Bad idea. She knew this was a bad idea.
If Olive was here, Olive would be screaming it in her ear at the top of her lungs.
It wasn’t that Auggie was a bad idea, nor was it that the idea of Auggie and Teddy was a bad idea. It was more… the situation, the circumstances. This wasn’t the way anything was supposed to be happening. None of this was who they were, or where they were supposed to end up.
But she didn’t care. Maybe she didn’t want to care anymore.
Maybe it had been eight horrible years and Teddy wanted just one night where she didn’t have to think about everything that had happened before this, before… before the crash that had changed everything and shattered Teddy’s entire world as she’d known it.
Teddy was leaning closer, until his air was mingling with hers, until she could feel his breath on her lips.
And she closed the gap, leaning in the rest of the way, pressing her lips firmly to his.
She remembered what it felt like to come home, just like that. Just that easily.
Home didn’t feel the same.
She pressed closer, kissed harder, fingers finding the familiar path through his threads of hair, pulling him in tighter until he was flush against her and their knees were knocking against each other.
She murmured his name against his mouth, but then she was dragging him in again.
AUGGIE
It was almost as if the whole world shattered again the moment her lips were on his. This was not what he’d expected when he turned around to find her at his door that night. He’d expected passive aggressive, or more of the resentment he knew she felt for him, or anything else but this.
He should stop her, should push her away and tell her they shouldn’t be doing this. He should tell her there’s too much baggage between them and that the first time they see each other after nearly eight years shouldn’t be like this.
But the selfish part of him wanted this. He wanted her in any way he could have her, and this moment was further proof of that. So as she pulled him into her, he let his heart guide him instead.
He wrapped his arms around her, wanting more of her than even this was giving, forgetting every single reason why this wasn’t a good idea, and focusing on every reason why it was. Just the one, the fact that he loved her and regretted ever letting her go.
The pen he’d been holding fell to the ground with a light click before he’s nudging her backward into one of the empty tables behind her. “I missed you,” he mutters against her lips, hands trailing down her sides.
TEDDY
They still slid together, that was the thing. Even after all this time, even though things were different, even though they had been apart and been forced back together through circumstance (Olive, through Olive, because of Olive, the piece that connected everyone together in this puzzle — Olive, Olive, Olive) — they still fit.
Her arms wove their way back around his neck the way they always had and the always would, fingers twining together from where they met in the middle and pulling him closer, closer still.
“Me too,” she whispered against his lips, because she didn’t know if she had the guts or the heart to tell him just how much she’d missed him or craved him or how hard it was to not just carve the name Auggie or August or Augustine or Augustus or the number 8 into her skin all the time she was away just to feel like some part of her was close to some part of him. It was pathetic, needing someone the way she felt like she needed him sometimes. It scared her.
She was good at being independent, she’d taught herself to be good at it. She’d moved away, she’d moved on, she’d grown her own legs and grown into her own skin, she’d grown up and learned how to lead her own life, and she was happy. She was trying to be happy. But there was a whole piece of her life out there that she was missing out on. Auggie was a big part of that.
Auggie was here now. Auggie was real. Auggie was kissing her, and she was pulling him down into the crevice of her neck to feel him closer.
Her fingers were working shakily toward the buttons of his shirt, hands working faster than her mind, and she finally brought herself to really say the words. “I missed you, too.”
AUGGIE
His heart squeezed at her words, bursting in that moment with everything he’d ever felt for her from the moment they’d laid eyes on one another. Her confirmation was enough to throw caution to the wind and forget about the rest. He needed her, had from the moment they met, from the moment those lights had blinded him and turned his life upside down, from the moment she’d said goodbye and left him behind.
August Hunter needed Teddy Graham, and if right now was any indication, he would always need her.
His fingers trailed farther down, over the curve of her ass and down to her thighs, and he lifted her easily, setting her down on the table behind her. His lips trail down her chin and along her jaw, as his hands curve around her thighs, sliding up, taking her dress with them. "I need you, Ted," he whispers, nipping down on her earlobe.
TEDDY
This morning, she was lying in bed with her eyes bleary and her throat dry. She’d barely slept a wink because her head was racing with two many thoughts, stomach twisting with too many regrets of a conversation that had gone so horribly south. She never should have replied to him. They never should have talked.
So many things should have and shouldn’t have happened.
And now he was here, and she was here, and they were on one level.
More specifically, she was on a table, and he was between her thighs, and he was telling her that he needed her, and she was practically purring a response.
Things were different now. They were different. They weren’t two fumbling seventeen-year-olds worried about getting caught by their parents in her brother’s old treehouse in her backyard. They were Teddy and Auggie, and this was…
…this was just something that was really overdue. That’s what this was.
“Please,” she whispered back, knowing she was already well past the point of ready, hands working to undo the fastening on his jeans, shoving them down past his thighs. “Okay?”
AUGGIE
Auggie nodded, drawing her forward to the edge of the table so there wasn’t an inch of space between them. His hand found its way back under the skirt of her dress, drawing her underwear aside and sinking into her in one full sweep with a grunt that held everything he'd ever held back from the moment she left him behind.
Home. He’s been home all these years, but for the first time in forever, he feels at home. She’s his home. Home, home, home.
“Teddy,” he whispered, lips finding hers again, brushing his forehead against hers. He found himself breathless as he gripped her hips, rocking into her.
This wouldn’t last as long as he would have wanted, that much he knew, but he could feel somewhere deep in his bones that this wasn’t about that.
This this was beyond that. And he knew she knew it, too.
"I've got you." It's all he could manage. "I've got you..."
TEDDY
This was happening. This was real, and this was happening.
Auggie pushed into her, and Teddy felt herself expanding like a supernova under his touch. She dug her fingers harder into his shoulders, dragging him into her, pulling him harder into her, and she cried out softly.
Her lips found a home in his neck, kissing along salt skin, nipping past his throat and up his jaw, finally landing back on his lips and kissing him. Always kissing him. She let out a soft whine into his mouth, a plea for more, for deeper, for anything.
His pace picked up and her head arched back, legs finding their rightful place around his hips, locking around the ankles and dragging him in. This wasn’t the way anything was supposed to happen, but this was supposed to happen, plain and simple. Auggie Hunter was many things, but he was most importantly an inevitability.
At least for tonight.
There were so many things she needed to say - apologizes burning at the tip of her tongue, explanations screaming to be let out - but all she said was, “Please.”
AUGGIE
Desperation didn’t seem like strong enough word to describe what he was feeling in my moment, but it was the only one he could think of. Auggie was desperate for Teddy, desperate for this moment, for more, more, more. He pulled away from her lips, eyes taking a moment to take her in, and he nearly came at the sight. At the desperation in her own eyes, the pleasure on her face, and it all meant everything to him. He needed to keep going. To give her more as good as he got.
His fingers pressed into the bare skin of her thighs, hiking them up higher around his waist and thrusting into her harder, faster, with all he had, chasing something that had been left for dead years ago. (Dead. An awful choice of words considering how they were both here right now).
He then bowed his head, lips finding the curve of her neck, leaving a wet trail of kisses in his weight before his teeth sink into her pulse point. There wasn’t room to worry about what she might say about the mark he was, without a doubt, going to leave behind. And part of him wasn’t even a little bit sorry because that was the part of him that was angry with her for leaving, even if he had no right to be.
“Fuck, Ted, please…” he begged, free hand landing flat on the table for leverage.
TEDDY
She knew she wasn’t going to last very long. That was the thing. She wanted to hang on, she wanted to somehow manage to freeze this moment the way people often wished they could catch lightning in a bottle, but she knew that that wasn’t reality, that wasn’t the world they lived in. She couldn’t hang on.
Instead, she arched back as he bowed forward, clung to him harder as he thrust in deeper, and faster. She didn’t have time to think about anything — not even the things that should probably be taken into consideration. Things that Theodora Beatrice Graham would, under any normal conditions, absolutely, positively take into considerations.
The lasting impacts of what they were doing, for one. They had a trip ahead of them, the two of them having to inevitably be in cars together, do things together — and this… was just… going to complicate… everything.
God, she was such an idiot, but she was too high off the rush to care. She’d missed him too much to care right now.
Did she deserve to miss him when she was the one who had left him in the first place? Did she care?
No. She just cared about this. She cared about his lips and his tongue and his teeth on her skin, making her cry out sharply, dragging his body in closer to hers by the balls of her feet, digging into his spine.
She was teetering closer and closer to the edge, and she wanted to hang on even though she knew she wouldn’t.
Her eyes fell closed, moving in time with his thrusts, damn near falling backwards onto the table, and everything beyond her lids flooded white.
Auggie, Auggie, Auggie.
AUGGIE
The hand bracing his weight on the table found its way around her back, catching her before she could fall backward as she came. It didn’t take much longer, feeling her so tight around him pushing him over the edge.
And fuck, it was just as good as it’d been the first time and every time after that. It had been as painful as it’d been the last time before she’d said goodbye.
His arm tightened around her as he came with her name on his lips, hips rolling as he rode his high, and his forehead found itself buried into her shoulder, lost as he reveled in the moment.
He didn’t want this to end, he didn’t want her to leave again, he needed her to stay. Desperately. He pulled away, bodies still pressed together, as his eyes met hers. “Teddy…” he whispered, fingers skimming over her bangs, brushing them away from her forehead. He had a million things he wanted to say to her in that moment, after everything that had just happened, but instead, he found himself unable to speak, afraid he’d ruin everything.
Even if everything was already ruined, even before they got here.
TEDDY
He was spilling out inside of her and she was crying out his name, arching her head back, feeling her orgasm hitting her in waves. Her skin felt like every freckle was on fire, every hair standing on end. He was everywhere but he wasn’t in enough places. He was close, but he wasn’t close enough. He was too close. He was too far. They were too many things.
She couldn’t tell him that she loved him, that she still loved him and that she’d always loved him, or that she missed him. She couldn’t tell him what happened that night. She couldn’t do anything but hold him close to her and try to remember how to breathe, try to remember the familiar cadence of their heartbeats running in time with one another.
“That…”
That shouldn’t have happened.
That should happen again.
That can’t happen again.
That was a mistake.
That should have happened a long time ago.
That was over too quickly.
She pressed a kiss to his forehead, kept him pressed close to her. “You’ll have to wipe down the table again,” she said, with a little, stupid laugh. It was the only thing she could think to say without having to face the rest of reality staring her head-on.
AUGGIE
Auggie couldn't help but laugh with her, at how right she was, and at the way she still laughed the same way, almost too goofy for her own good.
"Definitely, and probably not tell anyone this happened right here."
For a second, he thinks about how ridiculous his whole situation was turning out to be, and at the fact that he'd probably never be able to look at this table the same way again.
But he was laughing, and she was laughing, and he was still inside her, and as messy as they were both literally and emotionally, all he could think about was kissing her.
So he did. He cupped her cheek, tucking a strand of her hair behind her ear, and pressed his lips to hers.
TEDDY
Teddy’s cheeks were burning red and she knew the rest of her body had to be just as flushed. Right now, she was just trying to focus on her breathing, which seemed kind of impossible to do.
Instead, she focused on Auggie’s lips on hers, humming against his kiss and trying to pretend, even for just one moment, that everything between them was normal, and that they were okay, and that when she woke up in the morning, everything was going to be the way it was supposed to be.
She knew, however, that wouldn’t be the case. But she could stay in the fantasy. He was still inside of her, they were still one unit. She wanted to eat him whole and keep him buried under her skin.
That was what Auggie did to her.
Her eyes fluttered a few times, wanting more than anything to beg Auggie to back her up against literally any other surface in the bar so they could try this again, but instead, she found herself pulling away with eyes that were fighting desperately hard to not tear up.
“I should probably go,” she whispered.
AUGGIE
He felt more betrayed in that moment than he had any right to be, especially since he'd known going in what this was. She'd started this by saying she didn't want to talk, and it wasn't like they could ever get through anything real without talking, so it was clear that this, despite how real it felt, was , in fact, not real.
"Y--yeah..." he nodded, the look on her face telling him everything he needed to know. They weren't going to talk about this, or acknowledge it, or anything in between. And this trip coming up was about to get a million times more difficult with this looming over them.
He slipped out of her with a grunt, pulling his pants and underwear back up as quickly as he could, clean up be damned. He'd risk the discomfort for this to end sooner rather than later. "Um... do you... I can get you something to clean yourself up..."
Awkward didn't even begin to cut it.
TEDDY
Teddy had spent a lot of time over the past eight years really and truly hating herself, and that was kind of a hard thing to admit. It really was.
She was Teddy Graham. She was the girl who was always smiling at you in the hallways. She was the one who baked you cookies on your birthday, when your grandmother was sick, when it was a Tuesday. She was an optimist, she tried very hard to never feel bad things — about herself, or about anyone else.
And then she’d sent Olive the text message that sent Olive’s car crashing straight into Wilco Navarro’s, and she’d kind of hated herself ever since.
She couldn’t shake it. She’d never been able to.
And that feeling was back right now, louder and angrier than ever. The voices in her head were screaming at her. “How can you see the look on his face and be okay with yourself right now?” They would ask her, and of course she wasn’t okay with herself.
None of this was okay. No part of this was okay.
And then she really was crying.
Auggie was pulling away from her like she’d sliced him with a knife, and she’d never felt more exposed, more dirty, in her entire life. Like all of her senses were suddenly more alert and heightened than they ever had been before.
She was that eighteen year old girl crying in her bathroom again. She was the girl with blood under her knees, sobbing and shaking and begging God to let it be her that had been taken away at the start of that horrible summer instead. She was small. She wasn’t the person she was supposed to be.
Wiping the heels of her hands across her eyes for a moment, she slid off the table, and she could feel pieces of August and pieces of herself all over her body, her hips and her thighs and her knees and her calves and her ankles, for God’s sake.
“I’m sorry,” she managed to get out, and she didn’t even know what she was apologizing for, not this time.
She wanted to kiss him goodbye. Hug him. Tell him she was a fool and a liar and drag him back into her one last time.
"Well, hello there!" he says, grinning at the pretty red head in front of him. A few people browsing the aisles of books stare at him, but he continues to grin at her. It was a bookstore after all, not a library. He could be as loud as he wanted. "Can I help you find something?"
