•fandom communities for OBX and Top Gun/Top Gun: Maverick
MUST BE
•21+ (im 24 sooooo yeah)
•okay with nsfw content. It wont be the whole plot but it will be involved
•okay with me randomly texting ideas and head canons throughout the day and night.
•okay with doing doubles
•ready to headcanon, plan, thirst over love interests (just your own or both idc)
•ready to maybe become besties?
WHERE?
I only write on discord as it’s much easier to keep up with for me.
🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍
Im not picky about response times, I prefer longer length replies when writing, i dont have any triggers, and I’m ready to start! Message me or like this post and I’ll get back to you soon. 🤍
Rooster hurries over to the sofa and lays your body down carefully--as carefully as he can when he’s shaking this bad. Your dress is wrecked: torn at the thighs, muddled with tequila and vomit and tequila-scented vomit, wrinkled. Now Rooster is panicking as Jake paces behind the sofa, watching the scene before him helplessly.
“Rooster, fuck, I--!”
“--The fuck happened to her dress?” Rooster asks, fingers shaking as he tugs on the skirt, desperate to cover the lower half of your body besides the obvious.
“I can’t, I don’t--I don’t know, I can’t fucking…I don’t even, like, we-we were fine, we were together and then--and then…” Jake stutters, sobbing into his fist. The scent of your vomit is hot in his nostrils--and your bile running down his back is hotter than that, heavy. “She just--she, she fucking…”
Jake doesn’t remember the last time he had a bump--he needs one. He knows now isn't the time--but he’s fucking freaking out. Your only sign of life is the involuntary lolling of your head, the bile pushing out from between your lips.
“Spit it out, Goddammit!”
Jake presses his palms to his chest--wonders if he’s having a heart attack--and sniffs hard, wiping his face off and putting his quivering hands on the back of the sofa.
“Jake,” Rooster warns, voice lethally quiet and serious. “Spit it the fuck out!”
“We were fucking fine! We-we were dancing and then she wandered off for, like, fuck--one fucking second and I found her by the bathrooms, man. She was like this already! I think someone--fuck, I think someone slipped her something.”
Rooster’s blood runs cold.
“We’ve gotta take her to the hospital,” Rooster says. If he was closer to Jake, if he had the ability to leave your side, he’d be shoving Jake’s chest hard. “The Hell you doing bringing her here? You fucking idiot!”
Rooster knows it wouldn’t make him feel any better--if he got a frantic phone call from Jake and had to drive to the hospital. But it would be better than this. Anything would be better than this.
Jake shakes his head.
“We can’t,” he insists.
Rooster’s blood is boiling.
“Fuck you mean? Look at her, Jake!”
The strangled noise that falls out of Jake’s mouth is almost indistinguishable from something primal--feral. It’s a terrified sound, the scream of prey as it is mauled by predator. He knows he’s fucked. He knows he’s fucked you, too.
“‘Cause if they screen her, man…they’re gonna find more than just tequila and coke,” Jake admits, running his hands down his face. “Fuck.”
“What’re they gonna find?” Rooster asks. He’s staring at Jake, his eyes bloodshot. “Fucking tell me!”
“Acid, man,” Jake admits. “California Sunshine or some-some shit like that. Fuck, man, I took it, too. But I’m fine! We split one! But she’s gonna be in a whole lot of trouble if they find her pumped full of that shit.”
“Bullshit!” Rooster hisses. “Everyone and their old lady does fucking dugs! Dennis knows that, he lets people--!”
“--Yeah, Dennis lets you take drugs on set in a controlled environment, man. Where you’re, like, under his supervision and authority! That’s the thing, man, that’s the fucking skinny--he don’t want other people to know about it.”
Rooster’s back molars nearly crack under the wrath of his clenched jaw.
“And, like, what’s gonna happen to some fucking bunny like Cherry if she’s gotta get her stomach pumped, like, four months into her career?” Jake argues. “No one’d fucking hire her again, man.”
“No one has to!” Rooster argues. “Dennis has her on a--!”
Jake points an accusatory finger at Rooster.
“--You know how he is, man! He don’t like you, well, you’re only filming four times this year! He’s got the fucking dough to get out of his contract with Cherry! She don’t! You know Dennis’d kill us if it leaked. And if he didn’t kill us, he’d kill her fucking career! And if, by some cosmic fuckin’ miracle, he was being a real coolhead about it all--yeah, he lets her finish it out. Then leaves her high and fucking dry! Who’ll take her then, huh? No one wants to hire a burnout!”
Rooster’s in a state of dysphoria.
He can’t believe how much sense Jake is making right now, how sober these thoughts are--which is a sheer contrast from his appearance. Everything feels twisted, convoluted. Rooster’s supposed to be the one making sense right now. He’s supposed to be the one figuring it all out. But he can’t think about anything else when you’re shivering on the sofa.
With a sense of dread seeping across his skin, he realizes that this is the closest he’s ever felt to when he was on the brown tabs at Woodstock--when he was living tangible nightmares every waking and non-waking moment, when nothing made sense.
“We’d be fucking her,” Rooster says under his breath, eyes untrained. “Fuck.”
So, without another word, Rooster falls to his knees beside you. You’re crumpled up, your body boneless and malleable in a way that makes his stomach turn.
You’re still not really in your body--your body is tissue-thin and the color of fruit juice, waving in the wind like a paper kite.
You’re not really here.
“Cherry,” Rooster tries, holding your face firmly. “Cherry, wake up.” He pats your cheeks a few times, biting his lip hard, but you don’t come to. You’re thoroughly unconscious, being punctured by rays of sun wherever you are. “Cherry, baby, wake up. C’mon, babygirl, c’mon--open your eyes. Open your eyes, baby. Please, babygirl, you gotta.”
He’s waiting for you to open your eyes like this is all some sort of joke. He wishes, for the first time ever, that you and Jake are pulling his leg. He doesn’t wanna be in on this joke at all. He wants, so desperately, to be on the outside of this for once.
He knows he’s being desperate right now. This is what he did when his ma went--when he was still high as he came to, when he swore he’d only been asleep for an hour, just an hour, sitting up in that wooden chair, when the veins in his eyes throbbed, when he woke up and she was still--
“She won’t wake up, man,” Jake cries, chewing on his fingers. “Fuck, man. Fuck! Is she gonna fucking die? Oh, my God. Wait, fuck--is…is she dead?”
Rooster snaps his gaze at Jake, pointing at him tersely.
“Shut the fuck up,” he bites at Jake. “Get your shit together. Take another fucking bump and change your threads. Go turn on the shower--cold water, alright? Then wait there for me.”
Jake does as he’s told, sobbing as he runs down the hall, tugging his hair like an upset toddler.
“Cherry, I’m gonna grab you, alright?” Rooster says softly as if you can hear him. There’s not so much as a crease, a freckle, a dot of response across your features. “I gotcha, babygirl, c’mon.”
And then he’s holding your form in his arms and you really do feel like deadweight--so much so that his knees feel weak, so much so that he almost cries out. But he can see the faintest twitch of your lips, the quietest words uttering from your mouth. He can’t make any of them out.
“I gotcha, babygirl,” he promises again, starting for the bathroom.
He won’t take his eyes away from your face, afraid to set his gaze anywhere but you, because when his ma left he wasn’t looking at her, because he fell asleep and he was so tired--
“C’mon,” Jake says shakily, grabbing Rooster’s shoulders and pulling him all the way into the bathroom--the light is golden in here, so bright that Rooster is blinking away tears. “Shower’s on.”
Rooster, because he doesn’t trust the universe or guardian angels or fate or ancestors or luck to protect you like he can, steps into the frigid water as he is. The cold is a shock to his system, which he knows is the point, and he turns so the stream pelts your belly.
“Cherry-berry,” Jake tries from outside the shower, reaching in to pat your cheek a few times. The only response is your limbs twitching from the cold, your body still totally slack in Rooster’s arms. “Get up, honey. C’mon, get up.”
Bradley sinks to his knees, still holding you against his chest, his curls soaked with ice water and his clothes not far behind. He strokes your hair, his fingers numb with the cold of it all.
“I’ve gotta make her vomit,” Rooster says sorrowfully, shaking his head. “She’s got too much shit in her system.”
“Fuck, man, she already hurled--!”
Rooster looks up at Jake, interrupts him with nothing but his blown pupils.
“If you don’t have the stomach, get lost for a minute, okay? Get towels.”
Jake listens at once, considering Bradley to be somewhat of a homebase right now.
“Towels,” Jake mutters, wiping his nose again, turning towards the door and leaving the bathroom as he unbuttons his soiled shirt. “Fucking towels, man, towels.”
Rooster presses desperate kisses to your temple, to your forehead in apology. He’s sorry that he didn’t go out with you, sorry that he’s got you under frigid water, sorry that’s about to do what he’s about to do.
He props your body forward, droplets of water wetting your hair. And then he holds your cheeks, presses his thumb between your teeth, and shoves his fingers down your throat.
☿
You’re not in your own bed. Without even opening your eyes, just by moving your bare feet on the sheets, you know that you’re in Rooster’s bed. It smells like him: expensive cologne, nice hair gel. He prefers silk sheets, too--you prefer velvet. Silk is always so cold--that’s why you have goosed skin right now, right down to your toes.
Everything hurts. This isn’t just a hangover kind of everything hurts--this is deeper, more serious. There’s a migraine pulsing behind your swollen eyes, throbbing your temples. Your limbs feel like they’ve been ripped off then reattached haphazardly with fishing wire. Your belly feels empty, which is usually how you like it to feel, but this is the kind of empty that frightens you--one that seeps into your chest cavity and sits there like a purring cat.
Cracked lips parting just so, you open and close your mouth, the putrid taste of vomit sitting on your tongue like paste.
Rooster’s been sitting in a chair beside his bed since five o’clock this morning, propping pillows behind you so you don’t roll onto your back and choke on vomit. He hasn’t so much as let his blinks linger, his gaze fixed on you entirely.
Every thirty minutes, he leaned forward, set his index finger below your nostrils, and counted to twenty. Every hour, he rubbed his knuckles along your diaphragm to make sure your shoulders were still snapping forward like they should. Although he’s been out of practice for a long time, it still feels second nature to him.
Jake passed out sometime around noon, curled up around your feet like a kicked dog. He’s still asleep now, hugging your leg. He’s sober enough to feel guilty--but not fucked up enough to do anything about it.
You take a shaky breath, which feels stunted mid-inhale.
“Mm,” you mutter, swallowing hard. “Roo?”
His heart spikes--nearly busts through his chest.
Immediately, he’s crowding you. Kneeling on the bed, his heart pounding, he gives you a once-over without touching you. He’s almost afraid to lay a finger on you, just in case you don’t want to be touched, just in case you want to be alone in your body.
“Cherry,” Rooster says, voice suddenly close to you, to your face. His breath wafts across your cheeks “You waking up, baby? C’mon--open your eyes. Lemme see ‘em, babygirl.”
You know something’s wrong when you struggle to lift your heavy lids, when your lashes are matted with sand and tears and mascara. And it’s not the morning--it’s late in the day, maybe seven or eight in the evening.
It’s an odd thing, waking up somewhere and realizing that you don’t know how you got there. It’s the first time it’s ever happened to you--you didn’t have a daddy that would carry you to your bedroom if you fell asleep on the sofa. Really, you didn’t have a mama that would let you fall asleep on the sofa.
Before really even knowing it, you know that you’ve missed something crucial.
“Oh,” Rooster whispers, voice trembling. Your eyes meet his and there you are--his Cherry girl, alive. Your eyes are swollen and bloodshot but he can tell that you’re in there, can tell that you’re going to be okay. It’s the first time all day he’s known that you’re not gone for good. “Babygirl.”
His tongue is thick with tears that he won’t let out--not in front of you. Not until you’re okay and in your body and he’s alone. He doesn’t want to scare you.
“Ow,” you just whisper.
“S’alright,” he says softly. “I know, baby. I know.”
He wraps his hands around your fingers, which are cold. And with a sad, sad smile tugging on his lips, he brings your fingers to his mouth and blows hot air on them. You’re shaking still--probably withdrawing.
If you had a voice right now, you’d ask what the fuck happened. But you can’t muster the strength to make those chords vibrate in your throat, can’t do anything except feel Rooster’s breath against your chipped fingernails.
Glancing down, you find Jake wrapped around one of your legs, blinking himself awake and groggily moving up to catch your gaze.
“Oh, mama! Up and at ‘em!” Jake says, eyes widening when he realizes you’re lucid. “Oh, fuck, Cherry-berry. We thought you were a goner.”
“Man, not the time,” Rooster hisses softly, kissing your knuckles. “Careful with her.”
Jake crawls up your body, careful not to put too much pressure on you, and peppers your warm face with some kisses. Rooster watches, still just holding your hand, still just relieved that you’re awake.
Jake picks up your other hand, the one that is freezing to the touch. He kisses your ruby ring over and over again, like he always does in greeting, and you let your eyes slip shut again.
Rooster’s just silently watching you, his lip tucked between his teeth, tears heavy on his waterline. There were a few moments throughout the night that he thought he was going to lose you--like actually lose you. He thought he was going to fall asleep, just like he did when his ma was sick, and wake up to your face entirely still and your heart stopped.
He knows now--and he knew before, too, just couldn’t put words to it--that he won’t be able to live without you. Not in any capacity, in any universe, in any dimension. He knows it full and well as you struggle to swallow, as your brows knit, as your fingers tremble.
“God, you were real nasty last night,” Jake says, muffled by your fingers. Rooster has half a mind to strike the back of his head, but then a pathetic and crackley laugh tumbles from your lips. “You hurled all over me! Ruined my shirt!”
Now you’re laughing a bit harder, wheezing, a few tears slipping from your eyes.
Jake keens at this precious sound. It’s the only thing that can make him feel better right now, even as his fingers shake. This is the longest he’s been sober in months--and it’s just for you.
“Made a mess on the entryway tile,” Rooster adds very quietly, an almost-there smile pushing his bottom lip. “And the couch. And the bed.”
It hurts to laugh--there is a particularly deep ache in your diaphragm, like someone’s been punching you there all night long.
“Ow,” you say again, pouting, but still giggling.
It’s a pathetic sound. It makes Bradley’s chest ache. So, he nudges Jake and then shakes his head at him. No more.
“Sorry, babygirl,” Rooster says, stroking your matted hair from your face. “No more goofing, huh?”
☿
Jake leaves around midnight. He kisses your face all over, presses his forehead to your temple, attaches his lips to the shell of your ear and whispers, “Don’t ever do that to me again, okay?” And as he’s walking out of the house, he passes your ruby ring sitting on the entryway table--Rooster put it there while you bathed. Not confiscating it, but maybe hiding it.
Jake palms it, stuffs it in the pocket of his jeans, and drives home in the quiet of the late night. If you ask him if he’s seen it, he’s not going to lie to you. He’ll give it back. Just not until you verbalize your want to him. It makes that pit in his belly fill up with tissue paper--dissolvable, fleeting. But still there.
Rooster’s sitting up against his headboard, right underneath the Joni Mitchell painting, and you’re hugging his legs, cheek pressed against the familiar terrain of his thighs. You feel a bit better now after having showered and ate, hair still wet and belly full of chicken broth. But you still don’t feel good--not by a longshot.
Rooster’s just about ready to keel over. It’s been over twenty-four hours since he’s slept and every follicle of hair on his head, every nerve in his being, can feel it. He’s absently stroking your damp hair, eyes drooping, heart lulling.
But he won’t let himself fall asleep.
“Did I scare you something awful?” You whisper.
He nods--you feel it.
It’s quiet for a few minutes. He’s just stroking your hair, relishing in the steady breaths falling from your vaseline-smeared lips.
“My chest hurts,” you tell him quietly.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers. He reaches down, lets his fingers just barely graze your diaphragm--your shoulders still come together anyway. There are bruises where he pressed his knuckles--he feels guilty about it, but not guilty enough to have changed anything. “Had to make sure you were still in there.”
“It’s groovy, daddy.”
Another lull falls over the two of you.
You’re thinking hard about what happened before it all went dark, before you were just a paper kite floating over black poppies. You don’t think you were in your body. You don’t know where you were, you don’t know how you got back, but you’re glad that you are now. You don’t know what you would do if you could never be here again, on Rooster’s lap, in his bed.
“It’s what I did with my ma,” he says quietly. He doesn’t know why he’s telling you this--maybe because he’s on the verge of sleep, maybe because he just needs you to know. “Like, it’s how I’d figure out if she fainted or if we had to skitty on to the hospital.”
Swallowing hard, you nod.
“You didn’t take me,” you whisper.
“No, we didn’t.”
“Why?”
Rooster inhales deeply--tries to feel anything but tired, but can’t seem to--then cups your swollen cheek.
“Worried you’d wake up without a job,” he tells you. “Who’s gonna hire a bunny that got her stomach pumped less than a year in, huh?”
It makes you feel very young. So young that tears start to well in your eyes.
“Guess I was pretty much a space cadet then,” you say, sniffling. “Shouldn’t have done what I did.”
“Everyone does shit, Cherry.”
“Yeah,” you sigh. “But not everyone’s got a Daddy Warbucks to make them barf up all their mistakes.”
For the first time in hours, Rooster smiles softly.
“I told you I’m gonna take care of you,” he says. He clears his throat, takes a composing breath. “I should’ve taken a rain check with Nix. Shouldn’t’ve let you go out with Hangman alone.”
God, Phoenix. You forget that’s how this entire mess started. When you were envious at the thought of them touching each other, when you went to the disco with a sore body and a hunger for anything that would make you feel better, different.
“Nah,” you whisper. “Would’ve taken the tabs anyway.”
“I don’t think it was the tabs,” Rooster tells you quietly. “Think some chump slipped you something.”
Wrinkling your nose, you glance up at him.
“Like what?”
You know that he must not be talking about coke--you already had a fair bit of it in your system.
Rooster doesn’t know how to explain it to you. He doesn’t know how to tell you that someone slipped something in your drink in the hopes that they could finish tearing your dress, drag you off and away from Jake, and have their way with you. It’s hard for him to even think it--he’s frustrated, his jaw clenching, his knuckles white.
“Nothing,” he tells you. “Forget it, huh?”
You’re too tired to argue, so you nod.
“Alright,” you whisper.
If he closed his eyes right now, he knows he’d be asleep in seconds. So, he just keeps his gaze trained on you, on your sweet and sad form holding onto his legs.
“What am I gonna do?” He whispers.
He’s not even sure that he’s said it outloud. He’s not sure if he’s meant to say it aloud.
You don’t look up at him, your own eyes slipped shut now.
“What’re you talking about?”
“How am I gonna keep you safe if I’m not right next to you?” He asks softly. He doesn’t really expect you to answer him--but he has to say it aloud. “How am I gonna live with myself now?”
Hugging him tighter to you, you kiss his thighs a few times.
“Stop,” you whisper. “Don’t.”
His tongue is dry.
“Baby,” he whispers. “You were really sick.”
“I know,” you mutter. “You got me.”
He doesn’t know how to articulate to you that he would rather relive the worst day of his life--the day his ma died--a thousand times than not know if you were going to make it through the night. Not because he loves his ma any less than he loves you--but because her death seems predestined, even now. The cancer was always there, watching and waiting. But you’re so young, so full of love that it wedges itself between your ribs and underneath your fingernails.
“But I didn’t,” he whispers. “I didn’t…Cherry, I didn’t have you.”
Now you look up at him, your face sponged clean of mascara and vomit, and really see him for the first time since the two of you laid down together. He’s tired, like the kind of dead-tired your daddy used to be in the winter after doing barn chores. His eyes are red and drooping, there are purple bags touching his lower lashline, and there are very nearly tears rolling down his cheeks. His lips are twisted and his brows are drawn together.
This is the purest expression of anguish you’ve ever seen on anyone’s face before.
Chewing on your lip, still feeling too weak to do anything but lay here, you reach up and carefully finger the gold chain he always wears. Your teeth have touched this--chewed on it, clamped down. It brings you comfort the same way a baby blanket would.
“I’m good,” you tell him, voice thin. “We’ve got each other, huh?”
He shakes his head, sniffling hard, ready to break down entirely.
“I was so scared,” he tells you. His voice is wobbling, his fingers trembling. “God, I was so scared that-that I’d fall asleep.”
Brows knit, you shake your head.
“Why’s that give you the willies?”
Two fat tears stream down his face--he can’t stop them anymore, can’t take them back. He’s desperately stroking your face, sniffling.
“‘Cause I was only asleep for an hour when she left,” he cries softly. He knows, really, that you probably don’t understand what he means. He knows that. But he’s so worked up now, so upset, so fucking tired, that he can’t stop. “I was right there. I couldn’t hear her.”
“Who?” You whisper. The fear in your bones tells you that you already know.
“My ma,” he whispers.
And then he breaks down entirely. It’s the kind of breakdown toddlers have when they’re over-tired. His cheeks are pink and his sobs are choked. There’s snot dribbling down his face and his tears are fat and hot.
You’re holding onto him, kissing his skin, unable to get yourself to sit up. And he’s leaning over, hugging your torso close, pressing his wet face just beside yours.
“Roo,” you whisper to him. “Roo, everything’s chill now, honey. We’re all good. It’s okay.”
He can’t stop, though--a spigot that has broken.
“Don’t ever fuckin’ leave me,” he mutters to you.
You shake your head.
“Won’t,” you simply utter.
“Don’t die before me, okay?” He says very seriously. “Don’t fucking die before me.”
Your skin gooses. You’re not sure what to say, how to agree. So, you just nod.
“Okay,” you whisper. “Swear it.”
And because you’re not sure what to do, you wipe his face with your hands, not caring about snot or tears or heat or skin. And you kiss his hair, inhale all that familiar scent of his that you feel like you could drown in.
Then you unclasp his gold chain take it off his throat. He takes only a moment to register that you’ve done it, lifting his head slightly. But then you’re handing it to him and turning away, silently signaling to him that he must put it on you.
He does so silently, careful to move your hair out of the way before he clasps it.
Then you turn back to look at him, holding his cheek. The chain is still warm from his skin and it sits loosely around your neck, falling into the hollow of your throat as you gaze up at him.
“Your halo,” you mumble. “It’ll protect me, huh?”
His heart squeezes.
“Yeah,” he agrees, sniffling. He tries to compose himself as you wipe his face clean again, kissing his flushed skin. “It will.”
The chain was his father’s. One of the only things he got of his, one of the only things that survived the arduous task of time. He wasn’t wearing it when he died--Rooster thinks that must mean something.
“C’mere,” you insist.
It’s the kindest thing you’ve ever done for Rooster. You move your sore body so you’re laying on the pillows, pull his large body up beside you, and spoon him. Face pressed against his neck, feet against his calves, hips connected, you press kisses down his shoulders.
He hasn’t been held in a very long time. So long that it doesn’t really feel real that this is happening. But all the same, he sinks into the water bed, counts every single one of your heartbeats, and melts into the mattress.
“Hold onto me,” you whisper quietly.
Just the same, it’s been a long time since you’ve asked to be held.
He moves his arm behind him, wraps it awkwardly around your hips, and lets his grip rest on your lower back.
“Don’t die,” Rooster whispers, slurred with sleep.
It’s an odd thing to say--kind of funny, but also not at all. He’s being serious. You know that.
“I won’t,” you whisper.
“Don’t,” he says again, almost entirely asleep now. “I won’t live.”
“Shh,” you mutter.
And when he’s asleep, heat pouring off his body like a radiator and his body heavy against yours, you stay awake for a long time just being alive.
acid - hollanov - @taylorswiftmicrofic - word count: 653 - click here for my hollanov microfic archive on ao3
"...so yeah. Jackie swears that it's true, and I have to agree," Hayden rambled over dinner one evening, not keeping Shane’s attention at all.
"Sorry," he muttered, trying to focus on his best friend's words and not thoughts of his boyfriend's face. "What was that?"
"That so many guys lately just don't know their girls. I mean, did you hear Martins going on in the locker room the other day, complaining about how his girlfriend was mad because he didn't get her the right color flowers? Like, is it really that hard to know her favorite color?" Hayden scoffed, rolling his eyes.
And Shane's whole world collapsed.
"Y-yeah," he muttered, because Hayden was looking at him, obviously waiting for a response. "Not hard."
He didn't know Ilya's favorite color.
He tasted acid in his mouth as his heart began to hammer against his ribs. Fuck, what kind of boyfriend was he if he couldn't name Ilya's favorite fucking color? Jesus, Ilya deserved someone better. Someone more caring, more attentive, someone who knew him.
As soon as he escaped from Hayden, he pressed his phone to his ear.
"Hello, malysh, I was just thinking of you, I-" Ilya answered on the first ring, voice cheerful.
"I'm a terrible boyfriend," Shane cut him off, already spiralling.
Ilya paused for half a second. "Hollander? What? What do you mean, what did you do?"
"I didn't do anything. I just–fuck, I don't know your favorite color, Ilya! What else should I know that I don't? Like...what's your favorite food? Your favorite book? Your favorite season?" he rattled off, panicking more and more as he realized he knew none of this information.
"Shane. Moy lyubov, breathe for me," Ilya ordered patiently, waiting to speak again until Shane obediently sucked in a breath. "What has got you so panicked?"
"M'not panicked," he protested, frowning.
"Yes and I am not best hockey player in league, hm? Why are we telling lies?"
"I just.." he paused, breathing again. "Hayden said that boyfriends should know these things. That it's the bare minimum. And he's right, I-"
"Pike is idiot. And Shane, let us be honest here, hm? We are not...normal boyfriends, yes? We do things differently?" Ilya said with a small laugh, making Shane laugh too.
"What, not all boyfriends sneak around for like seven years before committing?" Shane replied, smirking.
"Ah, no. We are special this way. So the way we get to know each other is special, too. But I know that you know me. For example: what is my favorite drink?" Ilya asked, confidence in his voice.
That was easy. "Coke," he answered, rolling his eyes. "But everyone knows-"
"And what is my least favorite animal?" the other man continued, a smile in his voice.
He laughed. "Loons, I’m guessing. But-"
"And do I like pineapple on pizza?"
It'd been a rousing debate between the two of them while they'd stayed at the cottage, ending in two separate pizzas ordered and an orgasm so good Shane'd seen stars. "Yes, and it's fucking disgusting," he answered, rolling his eyes. "But Ilya, none of that is-"
"Shane." Now Ilya's voice was softer, more vulnerable. "You know...things others do not. I tell you about my father's sickness, about his death. I share with you about my asshole brother and about–about my mother and her past. I make you Russian food! You think these are things I tell everyone, do with everyone?"
He bit his lip, calming down a little. "No."
"Is much more important than a stupid color. You know me, Shane," Ilya murmured, and Shane's whole chest filled up with adoration for the man on the other end of the phone. "You are the best boyfriend. I know."
He couldn't help but smile a little now. "Okay. But can I know your favorite color?"
I’m not meant for chaos. I don’t resonate with raised voices, constant tension, or unnecessary back and forth. I don’t welcome anger in my spirit or anything that pulls me away from who I am at my core. I am gentle. I am loving. I move with intention. If something disturbs my peace or shifts me into negativity, it no longer has a place in my life.
