requests are CLOSED | no nsfw zone

Billy stood leaning against the hood of his car, smoking a cigarette as he looked at the houses nearby, the lights, the shadows passing by windows. But the moment he saw you, he stubbed out his cigarette and pulled you into his arms, kissing you passionately. As he pulled away, he smirked. “You're late, sweetheart. I was beginning to wonder if you’d show up at all.”

“I had to wait for a bit, I think Steve is suspicious,” you mumbled, putting your hands on his shoulders. “You know that if he found out, he’d never again let me leave the house.”

“Let him try,” he scoffed, tightening his hold on your body. “I want him to find out, to show him I will never let you go.”

“You are not doing anything,” you warned him, bringing a finger up in front of his face. “You hear me?”

“It would be hot to see you defending me, and your right to be with me.”

You shook your head. “Billy.”

He sighed. “Fine.”

You relaxed again, letting yourself lean against him. “Good.”

His smile reappeared. “But on the other hand… keeping this a secret, and knowing you’re a forbidden fruit kind of turns me on too.”

You huffed, hitting his chest half-heartedly. “Oh, stop it.”

He had never said you annoyed him, but you just couldn’t see how anyone would think your behaviour was cute either.

But turned out that it was exactly how he felt about it — he just thought he was misinterpreting and you weren’t interested in him, and were just being friendly.

So, you ended up on that date, and you knew it before even ordering your food that your relationship would turn out to be such a beautiful thing, so much more than neither of you had sought for when you had first called that number.

He called you his happy ending, even though he told you you shouldn’t tell Henry he called you that — the boy had an imagination way wilder than any movie ever made, and you shouldn’t feed into that. Even when he did agree it was strange of him to know you two would end up together, like in the tale of two grasshoppers, who he thought you two were.

“Our relationship. It’s been over for a while now.”

“Dustin—”

“I mean it,” he interrupted you. “It’s not working, and it has never worked.”

“No, Dustin, listen—” your voice broke, but you forced yourself to keep going. I have always loved you.”

“Well,” he said quietly, “I never loved you.”

The silence after that was the loudest you had ever heard before. Your ears rang, thoughts were screaming, tears welling up in your eyes.

But you swallowed, forcing yourself to stand upright, to meet his eyes. “Fine.”

Dustin nodded, before turning away, leaving you standing there with a broken heart filled with grief and bubbling anger. After everything you had gone through, he thought it was proper to leave you like that.

What you didn’t know, though, was that from the moment he turned away, his own tears started to fall, but he held himself back from sobbing until he knew he was out of sight.

It was better this way, even if he didn’t want to end it like this. Making you angry at him was infinitely better than see you hurt, dying, even having Vecna using you against him. He told himself he did it to protect you, even if he knew that wasn’t true, and he actually did it to protect himself. He couldn’t take another loss, not after Eddie, and to prevent that he had to let you go.

He wrung his hands on his lap. “I thought… I did not find mine, so I thought perhaps, well, we are friends, so you would not mind—”

“Kurt,” you interrupted him. “It doesn’t matter we are friends. I don’t want to put something that has been in someone else’s mouth in my mouth, even if your mouth doesn’t have anything disgusting living there. Please don’t use my toothbrush again.”

He bowed his head in shame, his ears going flat against his head. “Ja. I am sorry. I am very sorry. I swear I will never again even look at your toothbrush. I will buy you a new one— no, I will buy you two new ones. And I will mark my own toothbrush with a permanent marker.”

You felt like smiling at his overflowing regret, but forced your expression remaining sour. “You’d better.”

“…I truly am sorry.”

You sighed. “I expect the two toothbrushes on my desk by the end of the day.”

He nodded, putting the book aside. “Ja. I will get them for you. I will get them for you now.”

It took a while, just staring at the orange hues of the sky, but eventually you made yourself talk.

“I can’t do it anymore,” you muttered, wiping your eyes before tears could fall. “I have to, I know, but Steve, I’m just so tired.”

He sighed, and reached over, his fingers interlacing yours. “I know.”

You took in a shaky breath, squeezing his hand. “This all just seems so pointless. It feels like Vecna will win, he’s just playing with us, and when he leashes his full power, we won’t be anything more than sludge of blood and intestines on the floor.”

He was quiet for a moment, looking at your joined hands. “I feel like that too sometimes.”

You looked up, surprised. “You do?”

He nodded. “I think all of us do. Nobody wants to keep fighting, but we force ourselves to, because the only other option is letting Vecna win and kill everyone and everything we love. We don’t wake up and feel good about the thought of getting to whack some Demogorgons today.”

You frowned. “Yeah, but… the motivation. Everyone else seems so motivated to keep fighting him.”

He cupped your cheek with his other hand. “The motivation isn’t out of pure want to keep going. It’s like… a duty. We have Eleven, and Eleven needs our help to destroy Vecna. There may be others, but we are the only ones who she can fully trust.”

You swallowed, dipping your head down and closing your eyes, a tear slipping out from your eye. “It’s just so hard.”

“I know.”

“I fear I might break, slow you down.”

He nudged you slightly, making you look at him again. “You won’t. You’re too strong for that. When we’re out there at the field, you’re always such a badass who makes me proud.”

It had started small, like those things usually began. You started paying attention to his smile, his laugh, the way he frowned when he was concentrating. And soon, most things he did just made you fall deeper.

You are pathetic, you thought one evening when you had stared at him for what felt like hours.

You pulled your knees into your chest, forcing yourself to turn your eyes back to the fire.

Why is it so difficult to remember for you, your mind told you. Relationships never end well for you. You are not fit for them, they just end up hurting you.

You knew that. Trying to get closer to Frodo that way would be a mistake, something that would pay you dearly.

And yet.

Sometimes you thought you saw him looking at you — with a soft expression, mirroring the one you looked at him with.

Sometimes you caught Gandalf looking between you and Frodo and chuckling, as if he saw something going on.

Gimli had barked at you once that when you’ll confess to each other, because “he can’t look at the tension any longer”.

And the worst thing was that you felt that too, the tension. The way you both were awkward and shy around each other. But still, your mind kept screaming that you shouldn’t go through with it, that it would just end up hurting you.

You could only hope it would pass, and you would be able to be part of the Fellowship like you were supposed to be, without any foolish feelings towards anyone in the group. Especially not Frodo.

It wasn’t a fake smile, it wasn’t a polite one, it wasn’t an awkward one — it was a real one. One that reached your eyes, one that made blood rushing to his cheeks immediately.

He’d like to think it was one that had stars twinkling in your eyes whenever you looked at him, one that was reserved only for him. One of like Steve had teased him about.

“What?” he forced himself to say, and you shook your head.

“Nothing,” you mumbled. “I just… it’s adorable how much you love talking about this stuff.”

His face would explode any moment, he was sure of it.

“Y-yeah. I really do,” he said, lowering his voice a little.

Your smile widened a fraction, before you turned your eyes back to the device, and Dustin raised his notes in front of his face a little, hoping you wouldn’t see a dust of pink coating his cheeks.

It had surprised you first, that he’d listen to you rather than his spider, but you still provided all info you could to him, anything that could help in their upcoming heist. It wasn’t like you held any affection for those merchants or especially their children, and were just glad to know Kaz would make them rip their hair off their heads.

Kaz also started giving you more authority. You had been just a bartender first, but now you were already in charge of them — doing shifts of your own, but you were in charge of other’s shifts.

—

It was during one of your shifts when Inej first told you.

“He told me to start following you home across the rooftops a while ago,” she suddenly muttered, as she saw you looking towards Kaz’s office door.

“Kaz?” you asked, frowning. “Why on earth would he do that?”

She took a sip of her drink. “I believe he’s worried and wants to make sure you’ll make it home safely. Even if he doesn’t call it that.”

“He what?” you almost exclaimed, but held it back at the last moment, making it sound like a choked whisper instead. “Since when?”

She smirked. “A few months.”

A few months? And you had never suspected a thing?

You glanced towards his office door again. “Did he say why he wants you to follow me?”

Inej sighed, swirling the liquid in her glass. “You know how he is.”

“So you might be wrong? Maybe he’s just stressed, or—”

She shook her head. “Nina also hears his heart jumping every time he sees you.”

You fell silent at that, turning to look at the counter, the rag you held in your hand. You opened your mouth, trying to make up an excuse, but all that came out was, “Oh.”

Inej bowed her head with a small smile. “You should talk to him.”

—

You didn’t knock like you usually did. It was more like fingernails quietly scratching wood, but Kaz still heard it. “Come in.”

You frowned — he never had his door unlocked like that. But you still opened the door slowly to see him sit behind his desk, writing something on parchments, papers and maps scattered around the table. He didn’t look up.

“Shift’s done,” you told him. “I sent Lieve home early, she was feeling sick.”

He moved the paper aside to look at one underneath it, before putting it back on top of it. “I know. You locked the door?”

You nodded. “Yes.”

Silence. His quill scratched against paper, and you heard your heart thumping in your ears. Say it.

“Inej talked to me tonight.”

He stopped writing, and glanced up. He met your eyes, but then lowered his eyes back down and continued writing.

“Did she,” he just said, and you could hear he already guessed what you had talked about.

“She… she said you had told her to follow me home for months. Is that true?”

“Ketterdam is dangerous,” he replied, sighing. “You’re a valuable asset. It would be an inconvenience to lose you.”

“An inconvenience.”

“An expensive one.”

You felt your heart dropping a little bit, and your face fell into your toes. “Oh.”

Silence again.

“Did you expect my answer to be something different?” he suddenly said, and you looked up again.

“No,” you said first, but then shook your head. “Yes.”

He looked at you again, this time holding your gaze. “Elaborate.”

“Last month, you asked me up here and asked what kind of drink I prefer. You had never asked it before. And then you suddenly started having a cup of tea for me whenever you asked me up,” you started, words flowing now uncontrollably. “And last week, you kicked out a customer because he was being rude to me — and I later found out you had instructed the doormen to not let him in ever again. You never do such things with anyone else. You told Rotty it was a policy issue.”

Kaz said nothing.

You shifted. “Was it a policy issue?”

“He has loose lips. He would have been trouble.”

“No,” you sighed, shaking your head. “That’s not why.”

He stared at you in silence. His jaw clenched slightly.

You took a careful step closer. “Inej says you’re worried about me. That you… care about me, and not in a way you care about others.”

He huffed, laying his eyes on the parchment again, and kept writing. “Don’t make it into something it isn’t.”

“I’m not doing anything,” you mumbled. “I just… I know we have something, Kaz, something beyond a relationship between an employee and a boss.”

Kaz stopped writing again, and you saw his throat working. You almost saw him struggling to say things he wanted to say, and you started to feel like you’re pushing him to do too much, too quickly.

So you took a step backward. “I think I should—”

"The chair," he said suddenly. "You come here. You sit in that chair. It's easier to think. When you're in the room." He was quiet for a moment. "I don't entirely know what to do with that."

You immediately felt your heart fluttering. “You don’t have to do anything, if you’re not ready.”

He didn’t reply again. You bit your lip, a wide gring threatening to break through. “I have an early shift. See you tomorrow, and… let’s talk more then?”

He didn’t reply anything again, but you could see the faintest nod, before you nodded yourself. “Good night, Kaz.”

But every time you did, something new came up, something that pushed telling about it farther away

When Vecna started tormenting Max, the secret began to crack.

But you couldn’t break, not now

Even after she fell into a coma and was hospitalised, you still wouldn’t show the true nature of your relationship

You were the only thing that kept Max going when she was in her cave

Reminding her of how she has to persevere

You sat by Max’s bed every single day after school, telling her funny stories and how you had been busy searching Vecna and her, and later the kids

Everyone thought you were there because Max was the most important person to you, as important as a sister

And you always bit on your lip when they referred to her as your best friend

You knew they didn’t mean anything bad by it, but you wanted to scream and tell them she was so much more than just best friend

The day Vecna sent demogorgons after her

You begged to let the song play

And the moment Max woke up

You kissed her

Everyone stared

No one saw that coming

So you finally had to come clean about what your relationship actually was

After a moment of silence, Will laughed a little.

“That explains quite a few things,” he said

Everyone started chuckling a little, and you just pressed your forehead against Max’s, relieved the secret was finally out, even when it happened so dramatically

And it was so much better to go through what was to come when you could hold her hand in the face of danger

“You know,” he had said one morning, with his bread roll in hand. “I once wrote a ballad and performed it at the wedding of a certain duke. The bride — the duchess now, I believe — was so moved by it that I heard she cried for three days. Three.”

“She was weeping because she had to listen to you talk,” you had scoffed.

Jaskier’s expression had immediately turned sour, and he pointed his bread roll at you accusingly. “You are not a very pleasant person.”

You had taken a bite of your own bread roll, chewing slowly while glaring at the bard. And as soon as you swallowed, you had told him, “I don’t feel the need to be. I did not ask for a story time of how grand and lovely you are.”

After that, you had gone through a similar fight every day. Him telling stories of making women weep and breaking hearts, and you scoffing and huffing at those stories. But at the same time, some small voice at the back of your mind waited to see him each morning. You always silenced it, though — it was just boredom, you enjoyed arguing with him because there was little else to do when watching Yennefer and Geralt falling in love and bitterly remembering how every romantic relationship in your past had ended because of your supposed “walls”.

Then came that one night, when moon was full, and Geralt had left to track a werewolf that had been stalking a nearby village for the past few months. Jaskier was asleep, almost cuddling his lute, and you stared at him for a moment. But then Yennefer snapped you out of it.

“You should stop,” she said, sitting beside you. “Pretending you hate him.”

You rolled your eyes. “Not again, Yen. I do hate him, no matter how many times you try to tell me it’s hidden feelings.”

She sighed, brushing some dust off her dress. “I know you remember every song and every tale he has ever told you, word to word. You may not realise why, or you forbid yourself from acknowledging it, but… I do know how love looks like when I see it.”

“Love,” you scoffed. “Me, Jaskier and love don’t fit in the same sentence.”

“I also see he loves you,” she continued. “A few nights ago, he pulled the blanket up your body when it had slipped away from your shoulders. He didn’t see me looking at him.”

Your heart skipped a beat. “He… what?”

She hummed with a small smile. “I know you think you don’t deserve love, but I know that if you gave it a chance… Jaskier could make you happy.”

You didn’t say anything to that, even when you were tempted to keep fighting — but a small sparkle of hope flickered in your chest, and you got a flash of what if.

Yennefer smirked. “I can arrange some alone time for you two tomorrow.”

“Could you hand me the tape?” Lucas called out from somewhere between the pile of boxes. You glanced around, seeing the roll on the bookshelf, and grabbed it.

“Do all of the books come too?” you asked, stepping over a pile of yet unpacked action figurines and reaching over to hand him the tape.

“What books?” he first asked as he took the tape, before he sat up to peer in between the boxes. “Oh, yeah. Those are photo albums. Mom probably wants to keep some of them, just take them out and let’s go through them together, I’d like to keep some pictures of our group.”

You hummed, a little smile spreading on your face, and went back to the shelf. You pulled out the photo albums one by one — some of them were heavier than they looked. You placed them on the floor, and when you pulled out the last one, something slipped from between the pages and dropped onto the floor. You frowned, placing the last album down and crouched to take the piece of paper. It was a polaroid photo, a little dirty and sticky at the corner, and you turned it around.

It took a moment from you to register what was on the photo. A little boy, standing proudly in front of Hawkins daycare, in his fabulous striped shorts and even more colorful suspenders with a dinosaur shirt peeking from underneath — and suddenly you realised it’s Lucas before even reading what read underneath the picture.

“Awww, is this you?” you squealed, tilting the picture a little so Lucas could see it.

He turned to look, apparently thinking it wasn’t that, but his eyes widened the moment he registered what were you holding.

“Gimme that!” he exclaimed, scrambling up and lunging towards you. You skipped away, lunging over his bed, keeping the picture over your head.

“No!” you chuckled, before bringing the picture back down and looking at it again. “You’re so cute, look at those pants!”

He pressed his lips together, looking through his room to make up a way to you, but found nothing, unless he’d want to risk knocking over some boxes. So he just groaned. “I thought they were cool, my uncle got them from me — I learned only years later that there’s a reason why he never married.”

“Oh, I can see why,” you agreed. “How did your mom agree to that?”

“I begged her to let me dress like that,” he sighed, looking away, apparently trying to banish the memories from his head. “Just… put it back.”

You laughed. “Back? Oh, no. This is going on the fridge.”

“We don’t have a fridge.”

“Not yet, but we will have one soon.” You shrugged. “I want to show everyone how handsome my future husband has been when he was a child.”

“Husband, huh?” he repeated, and grinned.

You tilted your head, biting your lip. “Yeah.”

He glanced at the picture. “Okay, it’s going on the fridge. As long as you will provide an embarrassing childhood picture of yourself too.”

Soon, he also started covering you with his coat if you were feeling cold, and ordered a hot cocoa if that didn’t help enough. He ditched most of the flirting, knowing you weren’t fond of being charmed like he usually got close to people, and he respected that. Inej knew he had a crush on you, and she had told him that he’d be a perfect boyfriend to you if he tweaked his usual behaviour around you, at least for now. It was hard at first, he did admit that, but for you… he’d do it, knowing how uncomfortable he could make you quick if he approached you too boldly like he did with other people.

One Friday, after Kaz had had a meeting with the Crows about an upcoming job, Jesper appeared behind your door. You opened it, smiling the moment you saw him standing there, and gestured him to come inside, but he gestured behind him instead.

“I was thinking… we could take an evening walk,” he suggested. “To… watch the sunset?”

“Sunset?” you repeated, glancing towards the window — the sky was more grey than the inside of Slat’s oven, as usual. You turned back towards him. “Are you sure we would see a sunset through all of those clouds?”

“I mean, we can try, I heard the sky may clear for the sunset,” he hurried to correct himself.

You blinked, before you shrugged and grabbed your own coat. “Well, I don’t have anything better to do anyway. The book I’m reading has had a few boring chapters after a bunch of captivating ones.”

He smiled in relief when you didn’t see through his excuse, or maybe you chose not to say anything about it, the sunset would be in less than thirty minutes and he knew that unless Inej’s Saints would bless the moment, it was impossible for you to see the sunset. But your reason might be an excuse too just to spend time with him. You both were fools, according to Nina. She had told him many times that both of your hearts almost jumped out of your chests whenever you were near each other, and he was barely able to concentrate on anything when you two were near, lovesick for each other.

You might be the very first of Jesper’s loves. At least he felt stronger for you than anyone else before — and in case others were right, he was in for a ride that could finally settle him down. Maybe after some years from now, Kaz would move from doing heists to settling down with Inej, as soon as she would come back from hunting slave ships. Maybe then, you all could settle down wherever you’d want to go.